Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/82

 by Shiga Naoya

This is the story of a young boy called Seibei, and his gourds. Later on Seibei gave up gourds, but he soon found something to take their place: he started painting pictures. It was not long before Seibei was as absorbed in his paintings as he once had been in his gourds.

Seibei’s parents knew that he often went out to buy himself gourds. He got them for a few sen and soon had a sizeable collection. When he came home, he would first bore a neat hole in the top of the gourd and extract the seeds. Next he applied tea-leaves to get rid of the unpleasant gourd-smell. He then fetched the saké which he had saved up from the dregs in his father’s cup and carefully polished the surface.

Seibei was passionately interested in gourds. One day as he was strolling along the beach, absorbed in his favourite subject, he was startled by an unusual sight: he caught a glimpse of the bald, elongated head of an old man hurrying out of one of the huts by the beach. “What a splendid gourd!” thought Seibei. The old man disappeared from sight, wagging his bald pink pate. Only then did Seibei realize his 78