Page:Tales from old Japanese dramas (1915).djvu/173

 O-Somé and Hisamatsu

I

HERE once lived a young man named Hisamatsu. He was in the service of the proprietress of a prosperous oil-shop close by the Kawaraya Bridge, in the city of Ōsaka. He was eighteen years of age and had an amiable disposition, an honest character, and a very handsome person.

His father, Sagara Jōdayū, who had formerly been a noble samurai of the Ishizu Clan, in the province of Izumi, had in his custody a Yoshimitsu blade, which was an ancestral treasure of his liege lord. This blade was stolen and, as a mark of apology, Jōdayū committed seppuku and his house was ruined.

Hisamatsu was then a mere baby, under the protection of his nurse O-Shō. Both nurse and child were taken to the house of the former's elder brother Kyūsaku, a farmer in the village of Nozaki several miles from Ōsaka. Kyūsaku brought the 119