shukaku

Updated: May 23, 2025

And there was another writer, famed greatly for his skill, named Onomo Toku, who laughed at some characters on the tablet of the Gate Shukaku- mon, written by Kobodaishi; and he said, pointing to the character Shu: 'Verily shu looks like the character "rice". And that night he dreamed that the character he had mocked at became a man; and that the man fell upon him and beat him, and jumped up and down upon his face many times even as a kometsuki, a rice-cleaner, leaps up and down to move the hammers that beat the rice saying the while: 'Lo!

Lafcadio Hearn - Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan : First Series