"LORD bless me!" said Uji Dainagon Takakuni 1. "Awaking in a dream from my nap, I feel it's especially hot today. Not a breath of wind blows to shake even the wisteria flowers hanging from the pine branch. The murmuring of the spring, which at other times makes me feel cool, is nearly drowned out by the singing of the cicadas, and seems only to add to the sultry heat. Now I will have the servant boys fan me."

"Oh, you say people on the streets have gathered! Then I'll go too. Boys, follow me, and don't forget to bring the big fans.

"Greetings. I'm Takakuni. Pardon the rudeness of my scanty attire.

"Today I have a request to make of you, so I've had my coach stop at the tea-house of Uji. Lately, I've been thinking of coming here to write a story book as others do. But unfortunately I know no stories worth writing. Idle as I am, it bores me to have to rack my brains. So from today I plan to to have you tell me the old stories so that I may put them into a book. Since I, Takakuni, am always around and about the Imperial Court, I shall be able to collect from all quarters many unusual anecdotes and curious stories. So you, good folks, troublesome though it may be, will you grant my request?

"You all grant my request? A thousand thanks! Then I will listen to your stories one by one."

"Here, boys. Start using your big fans so that the whole room may have a breeze. That will make us a little cooler. You, ironmaster, and you potter, don't be reserved. Both of you, step nearer to this desk. That woman who sells 'sushi,' if the sunlight is too hot for you, you'd better put your pail in a corner of the verandah. Priest, lay down your golden hand-drum. You, samurai, and you, mountain priest, there, have you spread your mats?

"Are you all ready? Then if you're ready, potter, since you are the oldest, you first tell us any story you prefer."

"We are greatly obliged for your courteous greeting," the old man replied. "Your Lordship graciously said that you would make a story book of what we humble folks are going to tell you. This is a far greater honor than I deserve. But if I should decline, Your Lordship wouldn't be pleased. So I'll take the liberty of telling you a foolish old story. It may be somewhat tiresome, but please listen to my tale for a while."

The old man began his story.

In old days when I was quite young, in Nara there lived a priest called Kurodo Tokugyo who had an extraordinarily large nose. The tip of his nose shone frightfully crimson all the year round, as if it'd been stung by a wasp. So the people of Nara nicknamed him Ohana-no Kurodo Tokugyo 2. But because that name was too long, they came to call him Hanazo¯ 3. I myself saw him a couple of times in the Kofuku Temple in Nara. He had such a fine red nose that I, too, thought that he might well be scornfully called Hanazo.

On a certain night, Hanazo, that is, Ohana-no Kurodo Tokugyo, the priest, came alone to the pond of Sarusawa, without the company of his disciples, and set up, on the bank in front of the weeping willow, a notice-board which said in bold characters, "On March third a dragon shall ascend from this pond." But as a matter of fact, he didn't know whether or not a dragon really lived in the pond of Sarusawa, and needless to say, the dragon's ascension to heaven on March third was a black lie. It would have been more certain if he had said that no dragon would ascend to heaven. The reason why he made such needless mischief is that he was displeased with the priests of Nara who were habitually making fun of his nose, and he planned to play a trick on them this time and laugh at them to his heart's content. Your Lordship must think it quite ridiculous. But this is an old story, and in those days people who played such tricks were by no means uncommon.

The next day, the first to find this notice-board was an old woman who came to worship Buddha at the Kofuku Temple every morning. When she neared the still misty pond, leaning on a bamboo cane with her rosary in her hand, she found the notice-board, which she had not seen under the weeping-willow the day before. She wondered why a board announcing a Buddhist mass should stand in such a strange place. But since she could not read any of the characters, she was about to pass it by, when she fortunately met a robed priest coming from the opposite direction, and she had him read it for her. The notice said, "On March third a dragon shall ascend from this pond." They were astonished at this.

The old woman was amazed. Stretching her bent body, she looked up into the priest's face and asked, "Is it possible that a dragon lives in this pond?" The priest assumed an air of still more composure and said to her, "In former times a certain Chinese scholar had a lump over his eyelid which itched terribly. One day the sky suddenly became overcast, and a thunder shower rained down in torrents. Then instantly his lump burst and a dragon is said to have ascended straight up to heaven trailing a cloud. Since a dragon could live even in a lump, tens of dragons could naturally live at the bottom of a big pond like this." With these words he expounded the matter to her. The old woman, who had always been convinced that a priest never lied, was astounded out of her wits, and said, "I see. Now that you mention it, the color of the water over there does look suspicious." Although it was not yet March third, she hurried away, scarcely bothering to use her cane, panting out her Buddhist prayers, and leaving the priest behind alone.

Had it not been for the people about him, the priest would have split his sides with laughter. This was only natural, for the priest was none other than the author of the notice-board, that is, Kurodo Tokugyo, nicknamed Hanazo. He had been walking about the pond with the preposterous idea that some gullible persons might be caught by the notice-board which he put up the night before. After the old woman left, he found an early traveler accompanied by a servant who carried her burden on his back. She had a skirt with a design of insects on it, and was reading the notice-board from beneath her sedgehat. Then the priest, cautiously stifling his laugh with great effort, stood in front of the sign, pretending to read it. After giving a sniff with his red nose, he slowly went back toward the Kofuku Temple. Then, in front of the big southern gate of the temple, by chance he met the priest called Emon, who lived in the same cell as he himself.

"You are up unusually early today," Emon said, furrowing his dark, thick, stubborn brow. "The weather may change."

"The weather may really change," Hanazo readily replied with a knowing look, dilating his nose. "I'm told that a dragon will ascend to heaven from the Sarusawa Pond on March third."

Hearing this, Emon glared dubiously at Hanazo. But soon purring in his throat, he said with a sardonic smile, "You had a good dream, I suppose. I was once told that to dream of a dragon ascending to heaven is an auspicious omen." So saying he tried to go past Hanazo, tossing his mortar-shaped head. But he must have heard Hanazo muttering to himself, "A lost soul is beyond redemption." Turning back with such hateful force that the supports of his hemp-thronged clogs bent for the moment, he demanded of Hanazo, in a tone as vehement as if he would challenge him to a Buddhist controversy, "Is there any positive proof that a dragon will ascend to heaven?"

Thereupon, Hanazo, affecting perfect composure, pointed towards the pond, on which the sun was already beginning to shed its light, and replied, looking down at him, "If you doubt my remark, you ought to see the notice-board in front of the weeping willow."

Obstinate as Emon was, his normal keen reasoning must have lost a little of its initial impetuosity. Blindly, as if his eyes were dazzled, he asked in a half-hearted voice, "Well, has such a notice-board been set up?" and went off in a thoughtful mood, with his mortar-shaped head to one side.

You may well imagine how this amused Hanazo, who saw him going away. He felt the whole of his red nose itch, and while he went up the stone-steps of the big southern gate with a sullen expression, he could not help bursting into laughter in spite of himself.

Even that first morning the notice-board saying "On March third a dragon shall ascend" had a great effect on the public. In the course of a day or two the dragon in the pond of Sarusawa became the talk of the whole town of Nara. Of course some said, "The notice-board may be somebody's hoax."

Also at that time there spread in Kyoto a rumor that the dragon in the Shinsen-en had ascended to heaven. Even those who asserted that the prophecy on the notice-board was a hoax started to waver between belief and doubt as to the truth of the rumor, and began to think that such an event might possibly occur.

Just then an unexpected wonder took place. Less than ten days later the nine year old daughter of a certain Shinto priest who served the Shrine of Kasuga was drowsing, with her head in her mother's lap, when a black dragon fell like a cloud from heaven, and said in human speech, "At last I am to ascend to heaven on March third. But rest at ease, since I expect to cause no trouble to you townspeople." The moment she woke up, she told her mother about her dream. The talk that the little girl had dreamt of the dragon in the pond of Sarusawa caused a great sensation in the town. The story was exaggerated in one way and another: a child possessed of a dragon wrote a poem, a dragon appeared to such and such a shrine priest in a dream and gave him a divine revelation.

In the course of time, one man went so far as to say that he had actually seen a dragon, although no dragon could be expected even to have thrust his head above water. He was an old man who went to the market to sell fish every morning. At dawn one day he came to the pond of Sarusawa. Through the morning haze he saw the wide expanse of water gleam with a faint light under the bank where the weeping-willow stood and where the notice-board was set up. At any rate it was the time when the rumor of the dragon was on everyone's lips. So he thought that the dragon god had come out. Trembling all over with this half happy and half dreadful thought, he left his catch of river fish there, and stealing up, he held on to the weepingwillow and tried to look into the pond. Then he saw an unknown monster like a coiled black chain lurking ominously at the bottom of the faintly illuminated water. Probably frightened by human foot-steps, the dreadful monster uncoiled and disappeared somewhere in a twinkling. At this sight the man broke into a cold sweat, and returned to the place where he had left his fish, only to find that a score of fish, including some carp and eels which he was carrying to the market, had disappeared. Some laughed at this rumor, saying, "He was probably deceived by an old otter." But not a few said, "Since it's impossible for an otter to live in the pond which the dragon king rules and protects, the dragon king took pity on the life of the fish, and must have called them down into the pond where he lives."

In the meantime, the notice-board message "On March third a dragon shall ascend from this pond," came to be more and more talked about, and Hanazo, elated by this success, chuckled to himself, and dilated his nose. Time went on and the third of March drew near. Four or five days before the scheduled ascension of the dragon, to Hanazo's great astonishment, his aunt, a priestess in Sakurai in the province of Settsu, came up all the long way to Nara, saying that she wanted by all means to see the dragon's ascension. He was quite embarrassed, and resorted to frightening, coaxing and a thousand other means, to persuade her to go back to Sakurai. But she obstinately refused and stayed on without listening to his advice, saying, "I'm very old. If I can have a glimpse of the dragon king and worship him, I shall be happy to die." He could not now confess that out of mischief he himself had put up the notice-board. At last Hanazo yielded, and not only did he agree to take care of her until March third, but he had to promise her that he would accompany her to see the dragon god's ascension on the day.

Since even his aunt, the priestess, had heard of the dragon, the rumor must have spread to the provinces of Settsu, Izumi, and Kawachi, and possibly as far as to the provinces of Harima, Yamashiro, Omi and Tamba, to say nothing of the province of Yamato. The mischief he had done with the intention of playing a trick upon the people of Nara had brought about the unexpected result of deceiving tens of thousands of people in many provinces. When he thought of this, he felt more alarmed than pleased. While he was showing his aunt, the priestess, around the temples of Nara every day, he had the guilty conscience of a criminal hiding out of the sight of the police commissioner. But while on one hand he felt uneasy when he learned from hearsay on the streets that incense had been burnt and flowers offered before the notice-board, on the other, he felt as happy as if he had accomplished some great achievement.

Days passed by, and at last came the third of March, when the dragon was to ascend to heaven. As his promise left him no alternative, he reluctantly accompanied his aunt to the top of the stone steps of the big southern gate of the Kofuku Temple, which commanded a bird's-eye view of the pond of Sarusawa. It was a clear and cloudless day, and there was not a breath of wind to ring even a wind-bell at a gate.

The spectators who had been looking forward to the day thronged in from the provinces of Kawachi, Izumi, Settsu, Harima, Yamashiro, Omi, Tamba and others, to say nothing of the city of Nara. Looking out from the top of the stone steps, he saw, as far as the eye could reach, a sea of people stretching in all directions to the end of the thoroughfare of Nijo in the hazy distance. All kinds of ceremonial headgear rustled in waves. Here and there ox-carts, elaborately decorated with blue or red tassels or in tasteful shades, towered over the mass of people, their roofs inlaid with gold and silver shining dazzlingly in the beautiful spring sunlight. Some people had put up sunshades, some pitched flat tents, others set up elaborate stands on the streets. The area in the vicinity of the pond, spread out under his eyes, presented a scene reminiscent of the Kamo festival, although out of season. Priest Hanazo who now saw this, had little dreamt that setting up a mere notice-board would cause such great excitement.

"What tremendous crowds of people!" Hanazo said in a feeble voice, looking back at his aunt as in great amazement. And he squatted down at the foot of the column of the large southern gate, apparently without even the spirit to sniff with his large nose.

But his aunt, the priestess, was far from able to read his innermost thoughts. Stretching out her neck so far that her hood almost slipped off, she looked around here and there, and chattered continually, "Indeed, the view of the pond where the dragon king lives is exquisite. Since such big crowds have turned out, the dragon god will be sure to appear, won't he?" and so on.

Hanazo could not keep on squatting at the foot of the column, so reluctantly he stood up, to find a large crowd of people in creased or triangular ceremonial head-gear on the stone steps. Then in the crowd, who did he recognize but Priest Emon looking intently toward the pond, with his mortarshaped head towering conspicuously above the others. At this sight he suddenly forgot his wretched feeling. Amused and tickled by the idea that he had taken in even this fellow, he called out to him, "Priest," and asked him mockingly, "Are you here also to see the dragon's ascension?"

"Yes," Emon replied, looking backward arrogantly. Then, assuming an unusually serious look, his dark thick eyebrows growing rigid, he added, "He is slow in coming out."

Hanazo felt that the trick had overreached itself and his buoyant voice sank, and he looked vacantly down over a sea of people, as helpless as ever. But although a long time passed, there were no indications of the dragon ascending in the limpid surface of the water, which apparently had already become slightly warmer, mirroring distinctly the cherries and willows on the bank. Probably because masses of spectators were crowded for miles around, the pond today seemed smaller than usual, furthering impression that there could be no dragon.

But all the spectators waited patiently with breathless interest as if unconscious of the passage of hours. The sea of people under the gate spread wider and wider. As time went on, the ox-carts became so numerous that in some places their axles jostled one another. It may well be imagined from the preceding account how miserable Hanazo felt at this sight. But then a strange thing happened, for Hanazo began to feel in his heart that a dragon was really likely to ascend — at first, he began to feel that it might not be impossible for a dragon to ascend. Of course he was the author of the notice-board, and he ought not to have entertained any such absurd idea. But while he was looking at the surging of the ceremonial headgear, he actually began to feel that some such alarming event might happen.

This may have been because the excitement of the multitude of people impressed Hanazo without his being aware of it. Or it may be that he felt guilty when he thought over the fact that his trick caused such great general excitement, and that without being aware of it, he began to desire in his heart, that a dragon should really ascend from the pond. Whatever the reason, his miserable feeling gradually faded away, though he knew quite well that it was he himself who had written the sentence on the notice-board, and he too began gazing at the surface of the pond as intently as his aunt. Indeed, had he not conceived such a fancy, he could not have remained standing under the large southern gate all day long, waiting for the impossible ascension of the dragon.

But the pond of Sarusawa, not a ripple rising, reflected back the spring sunlight. The sky was bright and clear with not a speck of cloud floating. Still the spectators, as closely packed as ever under sunshades and flat tents and behind the balustrades of stands, awaited the appearance of the dragon king in the throes of expectation, as if they had been unaware of the passage of time from morning to noon and from noon to evening.

Nearly half a day had gone by since Hanazo had arrived there. Then a streak of cloud like the smoke of a joss stick trailed in mid-air. Suddenly it grew larger and larger, and the sky which had been bright and clear became dusky. At that moment a gust of wind swept down over the pond and ruffled the glassy surface of the water into innumerable waves. Then in the twinkling of an eye, white rain came down in torrents before the spectators, prepared as they were, had time to scurry helterskelter. Furthermore, terrific claps of thunder suddenly pealed, and flashes of lightning flew past one another like wefts of a fabric. Then hooked hands seemed to tear apart a cluster of clouds, and in the excess of their force they raised a spout of water over the pond. At that instant Hanazo's eyes caught a blurred vision of a black dragon more than one hundred feet long ascending straight into the sky, with its golden talons flashing. But this happened in a twinkling. After that, amidst a storm, cherry blossoms around the pond were seen flying up into the dusky sky. It hardly need be said that the disconcerted spectators, as they scurried away, formed waves of humanity which surged like the waves in the pond.

Eventually the torrential rain stopped and a blue sky began to peep through the clouds. Then Hanazo stared around him as if he had forgotten his large nose. Was the figure of the dragon which he had just seen an illusion? While he wondered, author of the notice-board as he was, he began to feel that the dragon's ascension was impossible. Nevertheless, he did actually see it. So, the more he thought over the event, the more mysterious it became. At that time, when he raised his aunt, who had been lying more dead than alive at the foot of the column near by, he was unable to conceal his bewilderment and fright. He asked her timidly, "Did you see the dragon?" His aunt, who had been stunned for a time, heaved a great sigh, and could do nothing but repeat her nod in fear. Presently in a trembling voice she answered, "Surely I did. Wasn't he a dragon, black all over, with only his golden talons flashing?"

So probably it was not only the eyes of Hanazo, or Kurodo Tokugyo, who saw the dragon. Yes, later it was said that most of the people of all ages and sexes who had been there on that day had seen the black dragon ascending to heaven in a dark cloud.

Later Hanazo confessed that the notice-board had been his own mischievous idea. But I am told none of his fellow-priests, not even Emon, believed his confession. Now did his notice-board hit the mark? Or did it miss? Ask Hanazo or Kurodo Tokugyo the Big Nosed, and probably he himself will be unable to reply to this question.

"What a mysterious story, indeed!" said Uji Dainagon Takakuni. "In the old days a dragon seems to have lived in that pond of Sarusawa. What! You cannot tell whether it did even in the old days? Yes, in the old days it must have lived there. In those times all people believed that dragons lived at the bottom of water. So, naturally, dragons ought to have flown between heaven and earth and at times ought to have appeared in mysterious forms like gods. But I would rather hear your stories than make my comments. The next story is the itinerant priest's turn, isn't it?"

"What?" Takakuni went on. "Is your story about a long-nosed priest called Ikeno-no-Zenchinaigu? That will be all the more interesting following the story of Hanazo. Now tell it to me at once..."