Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/446

Hidetsugu!” She also presented secretly a sum of money to the Hōkō Temple, asking that it be used as a personal offering to the spirit of General Hideyoshi. She was always giving herself such absurd airs.

Her fortune eventually ran out, and she built a little house in the village of Namba where she lived out the rest of her days. She bought a coffin and hung it up by the gate, and spent all day drinking with her friends nearby. One day she went out in the hot sun and dropped dead in the street. The villagers, recognizing her, carried her body into the shop where she had always bought her wine, and rushed off to inform her household. Her corpse was prepared and then laid away in the coffin. They buried her at the Temple of the Secret Spring in Namba. She was seventy-five when she died. A marker carved like snowflakes was set up for her, along with stones in the shape of a tortoise and a mountain peak, which are still there. For this reason people say that her two companions were buried with her.

The story of Snowflake cannot, of course, be taken as a model of conduct. But in her time there were women who conducted themselves like men, while today we see only men who behave as women. I have hoped herein to divine the rise and fall of Fortune and to elicit, perhaps, a sigh.