Page:In ghostly Japan (IA cu31924014202687).pdf/132

 Thus it came to pass that Shinzaburō was buried beside O-Tsuyu, in the cemetery of Shin-Banzui-In, in Yanaka-no-Sasaki.

—Here ends the story of the Ghosts in the Romance of the Peony-Lantern.

My friend asked me whether the story had interested me; and I answered by telling him that I wanted to go to the cemetery of Shin-Banzui-In,—so as to realize more definitely the local color of the author’s studies.

“I shall go with you at once,” he said. “But what did you think of the personages?”

“To Western thinking,” I made answer, “Shinzaburō is a despicable creature. I have been mentally comparing him with the true lovers of our old ballad-literature. They were only too glad to follow a dead sweetheart into the grave; and nevertheless, being Christians, they believed that they had only one human life to enjoy in this world. But Shinzaburō was a Buddhist,—with a million lives behind him and a million lives before him; and he was too selfish to give up even one miserable existence for the sake of the girl