Ostrigarji v vasi Šino v deželi Tanba

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Ostrigarji v vasi Šino v deželi Tanba

This, too, happened long ago. In a place called Shinomura in the province of Tanba, oyster mushrooms had grown in such abundance for years that there was no end to them. The villagers gathered them, giving some to others as tokens of goodwill and eating some themselves, and so the years passed. Then one night, a leading man of the village dreamed that twenty or thirty monks with shaggy heads appeared before him and said, “There is something we wish to tell you.” “Who are you?” he asked. “We are monks who have lived here these many years and served you faithfully. But our ties to this village have come to an end, and now we must go elsewhere. We feel some sorrow at leaving, and we could hardly depart without telling you why we must go. That is what has brought us here.” At this he woke with a start. “What can this mean?” he wondered, telling his wife and children about it. Many other villagers then reported having had just such a dream. They felt there must be some meaning in it, and in due course the year drew to a close. By the ninth or tenth month of the following year, when the mushrooms had always appeared before, they went into the mountains to gather them, only to find scarcely any at all. The people of the village and the surrounding countryside were wondering what had happened when the story reached the late Chūin, a priest of the rank of sōzu, who had been unrivaled as a preacher. “Well, well,” he said. “There is a saying that monks who preach with impure motives are reborn as oyster mushrooms.” So it seems that, by all means, oyster mushrooms are something one can well afford to leave uneaten.