Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

were all carefully bolted from the inside, and there was no hole by which
he could effect an entrance. All was still, however, and the people of the
house were evidently fast asleep; so he climbed up to the second storey,
and, having contrived to unfasten a window, made his way in. With soft,
cat-like footsteps he crept downstairs, and, looking into one of the
rooms, saw Sanza and his wife sleeping on the mats, with their little son
Kosanza, a boy of thirteen, curled up in his quilt between them. The light
in the night-lamp was at its last flicker, but, peering through the gloom,
he could just see the Prince's famous Muramasa sword lying on a swordrack
in the raised part of the room: so he crawled stealthily along until he
could reach it, and stuck it in his girdle. Then, drawing near to Sanza, he
bestrode his sleeping body, and, brandishing the sword made a thrust at
his throat; but in his excitement his hand shook, so that he missed his
aim, and only scratched Sanza, who, waking with a start and trying to
jump up, felt himself held down by a man standing over him. Stretching
out his hands, he would have wrestled with his enemy; when Banzayémon,
leaping back, kicked over the night-lamp, and throwing open the
shutters, dashed into the garden. Snatching up his sword, Sanza rushed
out after him; and his wife, having lit a lantern and armed herself with a
halberd, 41 went out, with her son Kosanza, who carried a drawn dirk, to
help her husband. Then Banzayémon, who was hiding in the shadow of
a large pine-tree, seeing the lantern and dreading detection, seized a
stone and hurled it at the light, and, chancing to strike it, put it out, and
then scrambling over the fence unseen, fled into the darkness. When
Sanza had searched all over the garden in vain, he returned to his room
and examined his wound, which proving very slight, he began to look
about to see whether the thief had carried off anything; but when his eye
fell upon the place where the Muramasa sword had lain, he saw that it
was gone. He hunted everywhere, but it was not to be found. The precious
blade with which his Prince had entrusted him had been stolen,
and the blame would fall heavily upon him. Filled with grief and shame
at the loss, Sanza and his wife and child remained in great anxiety until
the morning broke, when he reported the matter to one of the Prince's
councillors, and waited in seclusion until he should receive his lord's
commands.
41.The halberd is the special arm of the Japanese woman of gentle blood. That which
was used by Kasa Gozen, one of the ladies of Yoshitsuné, the hero of the twelfth century,
is still preserved at Asakusa. In old-fashioned families young ladies are regularly
instructed in fencing with the halberds.
68