Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

following day, the officers of that ward were sent for by the prison authorities.
They thought that they were summoned that Zenroku might be
handed back to them a free man, as he himself had said to them; but to
their surprise, they were told that he had died the night before in prison,
and were ordered to carry away his dead body for burial. Then they
knew that they had seen Zenroku's ghost; and that when he said that he
should be returned to them on the morrow, he had alluded to his corpse.
So they buried him decently, and brought up his son, who is alive to this
day.
The next story was told by a professor in the college at Yedo, and, although
it is not of so modern a date as the last, he stated it to be well authenticated,
and one of general notoriety.
About two hundred years ago there was a chief of the police, named
Aoyama Shuzen, who lived in the street called Bancho, at Yedo. His duty
was to detect thieves and incendiaries. He was a cruel and violent man,
without heart or compassion, and thought nothing of killing or torturing
a man to gratify spite or revenge. This man Shuzen had in his house a
servant-maid, called O Kiku (the Chrysanthemum), who had lived in the
family since her childhood, and was well acquainted with her master's
temper. One day O Kiku accidentally broke one of a set of ten porcelain
plates, upon which he set a high value. She knew that she would suffer
for her carelessness; but she thought that if she concealed the matter her
punishment would be still more severe; so she went at once to her
master's wife, and, in fear and trembling, confessed what she had done.
When Shuzen came home, and heard that one of his favourite plates was
broken, he flew into a violent rage, and took the girl to a cupboard,
where he left her bound with cords, and every day cut off one of her fingers.
O Kiku, tightly bound and in agony, could not move; but at last she
contrived to bite or cut the ropes asunder, and, escaping into the garden,
threw herself into a well, and was drowned. From that time forth, every
night a voice was heard coming from the well, counting one, two, three,
and so on up to nine—the number of the plates that remained unbroken—and
then, when the tenth plate should have been counted,
would come a burst of lamentation. The servants of the house, terrified
at this, all left their master's service, until Shuzen, not having a single retainer
left, was unable to perform his public duties; and when the officers
of the government heard of this, he was dismissed from his office. At this
time there was a famous priest, called Mikadzuki Shônin, of the temple
Denzuin, who, having been told of the affair, came one night to the
house, and, when the ghost began to count the plates, reproved the
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