Twice ToldHonchō koji innenshū (1689): the plate mansion of Matsue
- Language
- Japanese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 24 September 2026
Honchō koji innenshū (本朝故事因縁集, “Stories of cause and effect from our country”) is a collection of short Buddhist tales printed in Genroku 2 (1689) by Yorozuya Seibei in Edo and Karigane-ya Shōbei in Osaka. Each story ends with a comment headed 評曰, “the comment says”. This copy is in the Yaguchi Tanba Memorial Library and is served by the National Institute of Japanese Literature (DOI 10.20730/100125240). No. 58, in the second volume, is the earliest plate-counting ghost in print that we found; no. 19, in the first volume, is an entry on the pines of Himeji.
五十八 雲州松江皿屋敷
正保年中ニ雲州松江ノ士秘藏セシ皿拾ノ内一ツヲ下女取落シテ碎ク。士怒テ古井ノ底ヘ押落シテ殺ケリ。此女死シテ亡魂消ズ。夜々井ノ端ニ現シテ其皿ノ数ヲ一ツ二ツ三ツ四ツ九ツト云テ十ト云事ヲエイハズ。ワツト叫ブ事不止。有時智者ノ僧来テ一ツヨリ九ツト云ヤ否ヤ十ト脇ヨリ数ヲ足シタレバ形消失テ再ビ不出。
評曰。十アル皿ヲ一ツ打碎テ其亡執不尽シテ幽霊ト成ヌ。然ルヲ十ノ数ヲ足タラバ亡執ノ尽タルモ理ナリ。
十九 播州姫路並木松
姫路ノ並木ノ松ハ枯テ紅葉シ亦甦テ青葉ト成。延寶年中ニ國主是[ヲ?]感シ柵ヲ付テ置レタリ。
評曰。松ハ不變ノモノナリ。色ヲ變ズルハ國ノ災ナルベシ。[the comment continues on the next page; not transcribed]
Translation
No. 58. The plate mansion of Matsue, in Izumo.
In the Shōhō era (1644 to 1648), a samurai of Matsue in Izumo kept a set of ten plates as a treasure, and a maid dropped one of them and broke it. In his anger the samurai pushed her down to the bottom of an old well and killed her. After her death her ghost did not fade. Night after night it appeared at the edge of the well and counted the plates, one, two, three, four, up to nine, and could never say ten; it only kept crying out. Then one day a wise monk came, and as soon as she had said nine he supplied the number from beside her: ten. Her shape vanished and never appeared again.
The comment: ten plates, one broken, and because her attachment was not spent she became a ghost. So once the count of ten was made up, it stands to reason that her attachment was spent.
No. 19. The avenue pines of Himeji, in Harima.
The pines along the road at Himeji wither and turn red, then come back to life with green needles. In the Enpō era (1673 to 1681) the lord of the province was struck by this and had a fence put round them.
The comment: the pine is a thing that does not change. If it changes colour, that must be a disaster for the province.
Notes
- Transcription conventions: characters as printed (藏, 碎, 變, 延寶); 叓 is given as 事. The katakana glosses beside the kanji and the return marks are left out; the punctuation is ours. The count is printed as it stands: 一ツ二ツ三ツ四ツ九ツ, “one, two, three, four, nine”, an abbreviation for the whole count.
- In no. 58 the maid has no name, the samurai has no name, and nobody hides a plate: she breaks it herself. The well, the count that stops at nine and the helper who supplies “ten” are all here, 69 years before the Edo version of 1758 and 52 before the Osaka puppet play of 1741.
- Konita Seiji quotes the same passage (日本文学 36-12, 1987, p. 55) as the earliest plate-counting story he found. His text reads 押シテ殺シケリ; this printing has 押落シテ殺ケリ, glossed コロシ.
- No. 19 names no maid and no ghost. The Hyōgo Prefectural Museum of History reports a Himeji pine that withered in the rainy season and turned green after it, later called the Tsuyu pine and attached to the Okiku story; Harima kagami (1762), as the museum reports it, treats that pine purely as a wonder. The 1689 entry does not say when the pines turned red, so we cannot tell whether it describes the same tree.
- The comment on no. 19 continues beyond the sentence given here; we have not transcribed the rest.