Twice ToldTensei jingo, column of 10 December 1926: the Finance Ministry's head mound
- Language
- Japanese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 15 October 2026
天声人語 (Tensei jingo, “Voice of heaven, voice of man”) is the daily column of the Osaka Asahi shimbun. This book collects columns of 1926 and early 1927 by the pen name Shaku Hyōsai; its preface is dated 31 March 1927. The column headed “A dog, too, has Buddha-nature” (狗子佛性あり) is dated 10 December, which the book’s contents list under Taishō 15 (1926). The passage below is one of its short paragraphs, which are separated by dashes. The print has no readings beside the characters here.
——早速藏相の死、武內次官の病氣、三木參與官の負傷、濱口內相の病氣なぞ、大藏省構內の將門首塚を祀らぬためと、片岡藏相がかつぎ、祠をきづいて將門祭をやるといふ、狗子にかへつて佛性あり、誰か一句をつくるものぞ。
Translation
Finance Minister Hayami’s death, Vice-Minister Takeuchi’s illness, Councillor Miki’s injury, Home Minister Hamaguchi’s illness and the rest: Finance Minister Kataoka superstitiously puts it down to the fact that the Masakado head mound inside the Finance Ministry was not honoured, and he reportedly intends to build a shrine and hold a Masakado festival. “A dog, after all, has Buddha-nature”: will someone make a verse of it?
Notes
- かつぎ is from かつぐ, to take something as an omen; the column’s tone is that Kataoka is acting on superstition. Kataoka is the one taking the omen, not the column’s writer.
- The last sentence echoes the column’s title, which comes from the Zen question whether a dog has Buddha-nature. We read it as the writer’s joke; our rendering is loose, and we are not certain of the sense of 「狗子にかへつて佛性あり」.
- The paragraph treats the list as known (“and the rest”) and gives no source for the link to the mound beyond the finance minister’s remark. It is the earliest printed link between the mound and the officials’ illnesses that we found; the 1928 items in Tsukuda’s booklet come later.