Chapter 3

Most of the Japanese stories about butterflies appear, as I have said,
to be of Chinese origin. But I have one which is probably indigenous;
and it seems to me worth telling for the benefit of persons who believe
there is no “romantic love” in the Far East.

Behind the cemetery of the temple of Sōzanji, in the suburbs of the
capital, there long stood a solitary cottage, occupied by an old man
named Takahama. He was liked in the neighborhood, by reason of his
amiable ways; but almost everybody supposed him to be a little mad.
Unless a man take the Buddhist vows, he is expected to marry, and to
bring up a family. But Takahama did not belong to the religious life;
and he could not be persuaded to marry. Neither had he ever been known
to enter into a love-relation with any woman. For more than fifty years
he had lived entirely alone.

One summer he fell sick, and knew that he had not long to live. He then
sent for his sister-in-law, a widow, and for her only son,—a lad of
about twenty years old, to whom he was much attached. Both promptly
came, and did whatever they could to soothe the old man’s last hours.

One sultry afternoon, while the widow and her son were watching at his
bedside, Takahama fell asleep. At the same moment a very large white
butterfly entered the room, and perched upon the sick man’s pillow. The
nephew drove it away with a fan; but it returned immediately to the
pillow, and was again driven away, only to come back a third time. Then
the nephew chased it into the garden, and across the garden, through an
open gate, into the cemetery of the neighboring temple. But it
continued to flutter before him as if unwilling to be driven further,
and acted so queerly that he began to wonder whether it was really a
butterfly, or a _ma_[16]. He again chased it, and followed it far into
the cemetery, until he saw it fly against a tomb,—a woman’s tomb. There
it unaccountably disappeared; and he searched for it in vain. He then
examined the monument. It bore the personal name “Akiko,” (3) together
with an unfamiliar family name, and an inscription stating that Akiko
had died at the age of eighteen. Apparently the tomb had been erected
about fifty years previously: moss had begun to gather upon it. But it
had been well cared for: there were fresh flowers before it; and the
water-tank had recently been filled.

On returning to the sick room, the young man was shocked by the
announcement that his uncle had ceased to breathe. Death had come to
the sleeper painlessly; and the dead face smiled.

The young man told his mother of what he had seen in the cemetery.

“Ah!” exclaimed the widow, “then it must have been Akiko!”...

“But who was Akiko, mother?” the nephew asked.

The widow answered:—

“When your good uncle was young he was betrothed to a charming girl
called Akiko, the daughter of a neighbor. Akiko died of consumption,
only a little before the day appointed for the wedding; and her
promised husband sorrowed greatly. After Akiko had been buried, he made
a vow never to marry; and he built this little house beside the
cemetery, so that he might be always near her grave. All this happened
more than fifty years ago. And every day of those fifty years—winter
and summer alike—your uncle went to the cemetery, and prayed at the
grave, and swept the tomb, and set offerings before it. But he did not
like to have any mention made of the matter; and he never spoke of
it... So, at last, Akiko came for him: the white butterfly was her
soul.”