In those days a Michinoku girl who carried water up from the sea was in love with a salt maker of the same village. But she lived alone with her mother. And since they tried to meet nightly without her mother knowing it, there was no slight worry.
Every night the man crossed over a hill by the sea and came near the girl’s house. And she, her mind on the time appointed, would slip stealthily out. But out of regard for her mother’s feelings, she was likely to be late. Sometimes she would finally come as the moon was beginning to decline. Sometimes she had not yet come even when it was time for the first cock to lift his voice far and near.
It was one night after things had gone on thus for some time. The man, squatting under a high rock like a folding screen, sang a song to beguile his loneliness as he waited. He gathered up his impatience in his salty throat and sang with all his might against the surging waves.
The mother, hearing the song, asked her daughter lying beside her what it was. The girl shammed sleep at first, but after she had been asked a second and third time, she could not but answer. “It doesn’t seem to be a man’s voice, does it?” she said deceitfully, frightened out of her wits.
Then the mother came back with the question what could sing save a man. And through sheer quickness of wit, the girl replied that it might be a badger. Through the ages, time and again, has love taught such wit to women.
When morning came, the mother spoke of having heard the song to an old woman of the neighborhood who wove straw mats. And the old woman was one of those who had heard the song. She expressed her doubt that a badger could sing but handed the story on to a man who gathered reeds.
When, after passing from mouth to mouth, the story came to the ears of a mendicant priest who had come to the village, he explained with reason how a badger could sing a song. In Buddhist teaching there is a thing called metempsychosis. So the soul of the badger might originally have been the soul of a man. In which case, what the man could do, the badger could do. Such a thing as singing a song on a moonlight night was not greatly to be wondered at.
After that in this village any number of people came to say that they had heard the song of the badger. And then at last appeared even a man who said he had seen the badger. He said that one night, while on his way home along the beach from gathering seagulls’ eggs, he had seen distinctly by the light of some remaining patches of snow a badger hulking along singing a song at the foot of a seaside hill.
Already even its form had been seen. It was natural that after that practically everybody in the village, young and old, male and female, should have heard the song. Sometimes it came from the hills. Sometimes it came from the sea. And sometimes, besides, it came from over the roofs of the rush-thatched huts scattered about between the hills and the sea. And that was not all. At last one night the girl who drew sea-water was herself suddenly startled by the song.
She, of course, thought it was the man singing. She listened to her mother’s breathing and thought that she was fast asleep. Then she stole from her bed, and opening the door the least bit, peeped out. But outside there was only a dim moon and the sound of the waves, and no man’s form anywhere. Involuntarily, in the chilly spring-night wind, she pressed her hand to her cheek and stood transfixed. There in the sand before the door were dimly visible the scattered footprints of a badger.
This story was immediately carried across hundreds of miles of mountain and river to the district of the capital. Then the badgers of Yamashiro changed their shapes. The badgers of Omi changed theirs. Finally the related racoon dog began to assume human form, and in Tokugawa days, a fellow called Sado-no-Danzaburō, who was neither a racoon dog nor a badger, began to bewitch even the people of Echizen Province across the sea.
He did not begin to bewitch them, but it came to be thought that he did, you may say. But how much difference is there after all between being bewitched and believing that one is bewitched?
This is true not only in the case of badgers. Is it not a fact that all things that exist for us are in the end but things in the existence of which we believe?
It is written in “The Celtic Twilight,” by Yeats, that some children on Lake Gill believed without a doubt that a little Protestant girl in blue and white garments was the Holy Mother Mary herself. When we think of them as both living in the human mind just the same, there is no difference between Mary on the lake and the badger in the wilds.
Should we not believe in that which lives within us just as our forefathers believed that the badger bewitched men? And should we not live as bidden by that in which we believe?
Herein lies reason why we should not despise the badger.
THE BALL
I
It was the night of the third day of the eleventh month of the nineteenth year of Meiji (1886). Akiko, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the distinguished family of ----, accompanied by her bald-headed father, climbed the stairs of the Rokumeikan, where the ball that night was to be held. Great chrysanthemum blossoms, which seemed almost to be artificial, formed threefold hedges up the sides of the broad, brightly gas-lighted stairs. The petals of the chrysanthemums, those at the back pink, those in the middle deep yellow, and those in front pure white, were all tousled like flag tassels. And near where the banks of chrysanthemums came to an end, already floated out incessantly from the ball-room at the top of the stairs lively orchestra music like an irrepressible sigh of happiness.
Akiko had early been taught to speak French and dance. But to-night she was going to attend a formal ball for the first time in her life. Wherefore in the carriage, when her father spoke to her from time to time, she returned only absent-minded answers. Thus deeply had an unsettled feeling that may well be defined as a glad uneasiness taken root in her breast. Till the carriage finally came to a stop in front of the Rokumeikan, time and again she lifted impatient eyes and gazed out of the window at the scanty lights of the Tōkyō streets drifting by outside.
But immediately she entered the Rokumeikan, she experienced that which made her forget her uneasiness. When half way up the stairs, she and her father overtook some Chinese officials ascending just ahead of them. And as the officials separated in their fatness to let them go ahead, they cast surprised glances at Akiko. In good truth, with her simple rose-colored ball gown, a light blue ribbon around her well-formed neck and a single rose exhaling perfume from her dark hair, Akiko that night was fully possessed of the beauty of the girls of enlightened Japan, a beauty that might well startle the eyes of these Chinese officials with their long pigtails hanging down their backs. And just as she noticed this, a young Japanese in swallow-tails came hurrying down the steps and, as he passed them, turned his head in a slight reflex action and likewise gave a glance of surprise after Akiko as she went on. Then for some reason, as if suddenly having an idea, he put his hand up to his white necktie and went on hurriedly down through the chrysanthemums toward the entrance.
When they got to the top of the stairs, at the door of the ball-room on the second floor they found a count with gray whiskers, who was the host of the evening, with his chest covered with decorations, and the countess, older than himself, dressed to the last degree of perfection in a Louis XV gown, extending a dignified welcome to the guests of the evening. Akiko did not fail to see the momentary look of naïve admiration that appeared and faded away somewhere in the crafty old face even of this count when he saw her. Her good-natured father, with a happy smile, introduced her briefly to the count and countess. She experienced a succession of the feelings of shame and pride. But meanwhile she had just time to notice that there was a touch of vulgarity in the haughty features of the countess.
In the ball-room, too, chrysanthemums blossomed in beautiful profusion everywhere. And everywhere the lace and flowers and ivory fans of the ladies waiting for their partners moved like soundless waves in the refreshing sweetness of perfume. Akiko soon separated from her father and joined one of the groups of gorgeous women. They were all girls of about the same age dressed in similar light blue and rose-colored ball gowns. When they turned to welcome her, they chirped softly like birds and spoke with admiration of her beauty that night.
But no sooner had she joined the group than a French naval officer she had never seen before walked quietly up to her. And with his two arms hanging down to his knees, he politely made her a Japanese bow. Akiko was faintly conscious of the blood mounting to her cheeks. But the meaning of that bow was clear without any asking. So she looked round at the girl standing beside her in a light blue gown to get her to hold her fan. As she turned, to her surprise, the French naval officer, with a smile flitting across his cheek, said distinctly to her in Japanese with a strange accent,