Chapter XIII: Part II (3)

Gratified by the youth's apparent religious fervour, the holy man invited him to come to his study, and thereupon gave him some instruction in the Buddhist doctrines. He listened with the utmost attention for the whole afternoon to the bonze's learned discourse, and thanked him repeatedly for the condescension and trouble he had taken in instructing one so unworthy as himself.

The afternoon waned and the hour for the evening meal came round. The priest ordered a bowl of macaroni to be brought for the visitor, who proved to be the owner of a phenomenal appetite, and consumed three times as much as a full-grown man.

He then bowed most courteously and asked permission to return home. In bidding him good-bye, the priest, who felt a curious fascination for the youth, presented him with a gold-lacquered medicine-box (_inro_) as a parting souvenir.

The lad prostrated himself in gratitude, and then took his departure.

The next day the temple servant, sweeping the graveyard, came across a badger. He was quite dead, and was dressed in a straw-covering put on in such a way as to resemble the clothes of a human being. To his side was tied a gold-lacquered _inro_, and his paunch was much distended and as round as a large bowl. It was evident that the creature's gluttony had been the cause of his death, and the priest, on seeing the animal, identified the _inro_ as the one which he had bestowed upon the good-looking lad the day before, and knew that he had been the victim of a badger's deceiving wiles.

It was thus certain that the temple had been haunted by a pair of goblin-badgers, and that when this one had died, its mate had continued to inhabit the same temple even after it had been abandoned. The creature had evidently taken a fantastic delight in bewitching wayfarers and travellers, or anyone who carried delectable food with them, and while mystifying them with his tricks and illusions, had deftly abstracted their baskets and bundles, and had lived comfortably upon his stolen booty.

[Footnote 1: The badger and the fox as tricksters figure largely in Japanese superstition and folk-lore.]