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Updated: May 26, 2025
As a result, her head was always untidy, a fact upon which her relatives commented. "She does not look like a great foreign lady now," said Mrs. Shidzuyé, the mistress of the house. The other women tittered. One day the old woman of Akabo arrived. Her hair was quite white like spun glass, and her waxen face was wrinkled like a relief map.
"That Englishman was strong and healthy. There was living together for more than a year, and still no child." "If she is barren, then a son must be adopted," said the old gentleman. "To adopt twice in succession is unlucky," objected Mr. Fujinami Gentaro. "Then," said Mrs. Shidzuyé, "the old woman of Akabo shall come for consultation. She shall tell if it is possible for her to have babies."
Her eventual doom was almost certain. But there was no question, no choice, no hesitation and no praise. Every Japanese wife is obliged to become an Alcestis, if her husband's well-being demand it. The children were sent to the ancestral village of Akabo. O-bune no Hatsuru-tomari no Tayutai ni Mono-omoi-yase-nu Hito no ko yuye ni.
The prayer tickets disfigured his house. They looked like luggage labels. They injured his reputation as an esprit fort. He ordered the students to remove them. After this sacrilegious act, the old woman, who had lingered on in the family mansion for several weeks, returned again to Akabo, shaking her white locks and prophesying dark things to come.
But I believe there is a curse. You also, you have been unhappy, and your father and mother. We are cursed because of the women. We have made so much money from poor women. They are sold to men, and they suffer in pain and die so that we become rich. It is a very bad ingé. So they say in Akabo, that we Fujinami have a fox in our family. It brings us money; but it makes us unhappy.
Akabo was the up-country village, whence the first Fujinami had come to Tokyo to seek his fortune. The Japanese never completely loses touch with his ancestral village; and for over a hundred years the Tokyo Fujinami had paid their annual visit to the mountains of the North to render tribute to the graves of their forefathers.
Marry the man whom you love. Then you will be happy." "Japanese girls are never happy," groaned her cousin. Asako gasped. This morality confused her. "But that would be a mortal sin," she said. "Then you could never be happy." "We cannot be happy. We are Fujinami," said Sadako gravely. "We are cursed. The old woman of Akabo said that it is a very bad curse. I do not believe superstition.
I will go into the country and get new girls, and then you will marry me and make me your partner. The woman said, 'If we have good luck with the girls and make money, then I marry you. So our great-great-grandfather went back to his own country, to Akabo; and his old friends in the country were astonished, seeing how much money he had to spend. He said 'Yes. I have many rich friends in Yedo.
In Akabo, even poor people will not marry with the Fujinami, because we have the fox." It is a popular belief, still widely held in Japan, that certain families own spirit foxes, a kind of family banshee who render them service, but mark them with a curse. "I do not understand," said Asako, afraid of this wild talk. "Do you know why the Englishman went away?" said her cousin brutally.
They want pretty country girls to be their wives. See, I pay you in advance five pieces of gold. After the marriage more money will be given. Let me take your prettiest girls to Yedo with me. And they will all get rich husbands. They were simple country people, and they believed him because he was a man of their village, of Akabo.
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