Page:Four Japanese Tales.pdf/51

 pathos: Masushige shaved his head and as a monk entered a Budhistic monastery, which just at that time had been built on the other side of the valley; he entered a monastery and did penance for his sin and for O-Take, while she in Yeddo, the Tokyo of today, was enjoying her short fame as the first profane dancer of Japan. In a short time she broke with her lover and took a new one, she performed charming and poetic dances before the haughty and the humble, she invented new forms of dancing which no one after her could execute, and for the space of two or three years she was showered with successes and riches, with the good will and admiration of all. She exchanged one lover for another, a circumstance which, however, the ballad discreetly evades, and her dances became more and more daring, until at last she was banished along with her last lover, an impoverished samurai, into exile on an island between Japan and the Loo Choo Archipelago. There she pined away with longing for fame and love, though of course the ballad affirms well-meaningly that O-Take died of grief over her transgression and vain longing for the Temple of the Winds, where once she had been so happy. And before she went away to the Kingdom of Shadows, into Meido, she remembered Masushige and sent him as a keepsake a wonderful, exquisite mirror, made for her by the greatest artist of the time, who had been enthralled by her charms, like so many others, an artist who for a short time had been her lover, like so many others. These were the sceptical additions of the enginnerengineer [sic]; the ballad limited itself to recording that from her death-bed O-Take sent Masushige her soul in the shape of a mirror.

Once more my companion interrupted his story. “I suppose it is unnecessary to call your attention to the fact that the mirror was of metal. At that time Nippon knew no other kind. And as you probably also know, these metal, always round mirrors were little miracles of beauty and taste. They were usually of bronze, and their face was magnificently polished with a mixture of tin and mercury, the back was decorated with embossed flowers, birds, dragons, or Chinese ideographs; this kind of mirror always had a handle giving the whole the appearance of a metal fan. But perhaps I may call your attention to that occult relation of the mirror to its mistress’ soul, in which our humble folk believe and have believed from time immemorial. An old Japanese proverb says that a woman’s mirror is her soul. We have many peculiar traditions about mirrors. For example, a mirror is supposed to feel all the joys and sorrows of its mistress, becoming bright and dull. Another legend relates of the mirrors of two women jealous