Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

Sôgorô and his wife were bound to the crosses, which were then set upright
and fixed in the ground. When this had been done, their eldest son
Gennosuké was led forward to the scaffold, in front of the two parents.
Then Sôgorô cried out—
"Oh! cruel, cruel! what crime has this poor child committed that he is
treated thus? As for me, it matters not what becomes of me." And the
tears trickled down his face.
The spectators prayed aloud, and shut their eyes; and the executioner
himself, standing behind the boy, and saying that it was a pitiless thing
that the child should suffer for the father's fault, prayed silently. Then
Gennosuké, who had remained with his eyes closed, said to his
parents—
"Oh! my father and mother, I am going before you to paradise, that
happy country, to wait for you. My little brothers and I will be on the
banks of the river Sandzu, 78 and stretch out our hands and help you
across. Farewell, all you who have come to see us die; and now please
cut off my head at once."
With this he stretched out his neck, murmuring a last prayer; and not
only Sôgorô and his wife, but even the executioner and the spectators
could not repress their tears; but the headsman, unnerved as he was, and
touched to the very heart, was forced, on account of his office, to cut off
the child's head, and a piteous wail arose from the parents and the
spectators.
Then the younger child Sôhei said to the headsman, "Sir, I have a sore
on my right shoulder: please, cut my head off from the left shoulder, lest
you should hurt me. Alas! I know not how to die, nor what I should do."
When the headsman and the officers present heard the child's artless
speech, they wept again for very pity; but there was no help for it, and
the head fell off more swiftly than water is drunk up by sand. Then little
Kihachi, the third son, who, on account of his tender years, should have
been spared, was butchered as he was in his simplicity eating the sweetmeats
which had been thrown to him by the spectators.
When the execution of the children was over, the priests of Tôkôji took
their corpses, and, having placed them in their coffins, carried them
away, amidst the lamentations of the bystanders, and buried them with
great solemnity.
78.The Buddhist Styx, which separates paradise from hell, across which the dead are
ferried by an old woman, for whom a small piece of money is buried with them.
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