I remember also that when the people at home set offerings of hot botamochi[1] before the household shrine [butsudan], I inhaled the vapor of the offerings. . . . Grandmother, never forget to offer warm food to the honorable dead [Hotoke Sama], and do not forget to give to priests--I am sure it is very good to do these things.[2] . . . After that, I only remember that the old man led me by some roundabout way to this place--I remember we passed the road beyond the village. Then we came here, and he pointed to this house, and said to me:--'Now you must be reborn,--for it is three years since you died. You are to be reborn in that house. The person who will become your grandmother is very kind; so it will be well for you to be conceived and born there.' After saying this, the old man went away. I remained a little time under the kaki-tree before the entrance of this house. Then I was going to enter

[1. Botamochi, a kind of sugared rice-cake.

2. Such advice is a commonplace in Japanese Buddhist literature. By Hotoke Sama here the boy means, not the Buddhas proper, but the spirits of the dead, hopefully termed Buddhas by those who loved them,--much as in the West we sometimes speak of our dead as angels."]

when I heard talking inside: some one said that because father was now earning so little, mother would have to go to service in Yedo. I thought, "I will not go into that house;" and I stopped three days in the garden. On the third day it was decided that, after all, mother would not have to go to Yedo. The same night I passed into the house through a knot-hole in the sliding-shutters;--and after that I stayed for three days beside the kamado.[1] Then I entered mother's honorable womb.[2] . . . I remember that I was born without any pain at all.--Grandmother, you may tell this to father and mother, but please never tell it to anybody else."

The grandmother told Genzo and his wife what Katsugoro had related to her; and after that the boy was not afraid to speak freely

[1. The cooking-place in a Japanese kitchen. Sometimes the word is translated "kitchen-range," but the kamado is something very different from a Western kitchen-range.

2. Here I think it better to omit a couple of sentences in the original rather too plain for Western taste, yet not without interest. The meaning of the omitted passages is only that even in the womb the child acted with consideration, and according to the rules of filial piety.]