the village where I grew up, and the chrysanthemum in the rock.
If one thinks of the rock as the grave of a woman with no grave, would
the chrysanthemum then be an offering? The story concerned an
unfortunate, nameless woman. It was the sort of story one hears all the
time, of a woman from a family living in the mountains. The woman was
waiting for a man behind the rock, and she froze to death. That’s the story.
The village I come from lies in a valley with a river running through it,
and there are many rocks around it, both lining the banks of the river and
within the river itself. The rock behind which the woman waited was one of
the largest of these— there was no danger that she would be discovered if
she stood behind it, even if someone were to pass by.
There was a small pool at the base of the rock. The shadow of the rock
was so big that it filled the pool, that the pool could not contain it. The
woman must have been waiting very eagerly. From time to time she would
climb up onto the rock, raise her head over the top and look down the road
along which the man was supposed to come. The ghost that appears, the
woman’s head floating over the rock, must represent the woman as she was
at those times. The woman climbed up to the hollow in the rock and stood
there. And so that’s where the chrysanthemum was planted.
I went out the main gate of the old temple in Kamakura and, walking
along under the row of cedars, spoke to the ghost of the woman whose head
floated over the rock in my hometown.
“Your long hair is wet. Did your tears stream down into your hair? Or
did tears stream even from your hair?”
“It must have gotten wet in the sleet yesterday. I’m happy waiting here
for him. I have no reason to cry.
“It looks like it’s going to snow again tonight. Go home quickly—you’ll
freeze if you don’t. I doubt he’ll come today, either.”
