e; I will give you food
and clothes and pay also,' He went with her to the Yoshiwara where she
had a small house with five or six girls. Every night he must stand
in front of the house, calling. Then the drunken workmen, and the
gamblers, and the bad _samurai_ would come and pay their money. And
they pay their money to him, our great-great-grandfather. When the
girls were sick, or would not receive guests, he would beat them, and
starve them, and burn _o kyu_ (a medical plant called moxa, used for
cauterization) on their backs. One day he said to the woman who was
mistress of the house, 'Your girls are too old. The rich friends do
not come any more. Let us sell these girls. I will go into the
country and get new girls, and then you will marry me and make me your
partner.' The woman said, 'If we have good luck with the girls and
make money, then I marry you.' So our great-great-grandfather went
back to his own country, to Akabo; and his old friends in the country
were astonished, seeing how much money he had to spend. He said 'Yes.
I have many rich friends in Yedo. They want pretty country girls to be
their wives. See, I pay you in advance five pieces of gold. After the
marriage more money will be given. Let me take your prettiest girls to
Yedo with me. And they will all get rich husbands.' They were simple
country people, and they believed him because he was a man of their
village, of Akabo. He went back to Yedo with about twenty girls,
fifteen or sixteen years old. He and the other clerks of the Yoshiwara
first made them _jor[=o]_. From those twenty girls he made very much
money. So he married the woman who kept the house. Then he hired a big
house called Tomonji. He furnished it very richly; and he would only
receive guests of the high-class people. Five of his girls became very
famous _oiran_. Even their pictures, drawn by Utamaro, are worth now
hundreds of _yen_. When our great-great-grandfather died he was a very
rich man. His son was the second Fujinami. He bought more houses in
the Yoshiwara and more girls. He was our great-grandfather. He had
two sons. One was your father's father, who bought this land and first
built a house here. The other was my grandfather, Fujinami Gennosuke,
who still lives in the _inkyo_. They have all made much money from
girls; but the curse was hurting them all, especially their wives and
daughters."

"And my father?" asked Asako.

"Your father wrote a book to say how bad a thing it