ra Takeshi, a native of the province of
Oshiu, who came to Yedo to set up in business as a fencing-master, but
was too poor to hire a house, hearing that there was a haunted house,
for which no tenant could be found, and that the owner would let any
man live in it rent free, said that he feared neither man nor devil,
and obtained leave to occupy the house. So he hired a fencing-room, in
which he gave his lessons by day, and after midnight returned to the
haunted house. One night, his wife, who took charge of the house in
his absence, was frightened by a fearful noise proceeding from a pond
in the garden, and, thinking that this certainly must be the ghost
that she had heard so much about, she covered her head with the
bed-clothes and remained breathless with terror. When her husband came
home, she told him what had happened; and on the following night he
returned earlier than usual, and waited for the ghostly noise. At the
same time as before, a little after midnight, the same sound was
heard--as though a gun had been fired inside the pond. Opening the
shutters, he looked out, and saw something like a black cloud floating
on the water, and in the cloud was the form of a bald man. Thinking
that there must be some cause for this, he instituted careful
inquiries, and learned that the former tenant, some ten years
previously, had borrowed money from a blind shampooer,[71] and, being
unable to pay the debt, had murdered his creditor, who began to press
him for his money, and had thrown his head into the pond. The
fencing-master accordingly collected his pupils and emptied the pond,
and found a skull at the bottom of it; so he called in a priest, and
buried the skull in a temple, causing prayers to be offered up for the
repose of the murdered man's soul. Thus the ghost was laid, and
appeared no more.

[Footnote 71: The apparently poor shaven-pated and blind shampooers of
Japan drive a thriving trade as money-lenders. They give out small
sums at an interest of 20 per cent. per month--210 per cent. per
annum--and woe betide the luckless wight who falls into their
clutches.]

The belief in curses hanging over families for generations is as
common as that in ghosts and supernatural apparitions. There is a
strange story of this nature in the house of Asai, belonging to the
Hatamoto class. The ancestor of the present representative, six
generations ago, had a certain concubine, who was in love with a man
who frequented the house