The Miura family of Okuni is the richest in the village. Two or three generations ago, in the master's time, they were still poor. His wife was somewhat absent-minded.
One day the wife went along the stream that flowed past their gate to gather butterbur. Good butterbur was scarce, so she went farther and farther up the valley.
Suddenly she saw a fine house with a black gate. Wondering at it, she went through the gate and found a wide garden full of red and white flowers, with many chickens running about. Going round to the back, she found many cows in the cowshed and many horses in the stable. But there was no one to be seen.
She stepped up through the entrance and found, in the next room, many trays and bowls of red and black lacquer set out. In the inner parlor, an iron kettle on the brazier was boiling and hissing. Still there was no one.
Could this be the house of a mountain man? Suddenly frightened, she ran all the way home.
When she told people about it, no one believed her.
But one day, as the wife was washing things at the kado, the washing place by the stream, a red bowl came floating down from upstream. It was so lovely that she picked it up, but if she used it for eating, she might be scolded for its being dirty. So she put it in the rice chest and used it to measure grain.
From the time she began measuring with this bowl, the grain never ran out, no matter how long. When the family wondered at it and asked her, the wife at last told them she had picked it up in the stream.
From then on the family's fortune turned, and it became the Miura family of today.
In Tono, a strange house in the mountains is called a mayoiga. Whoever comes upon a mayoiga should always take something home, a utensil or an animal from the house. For the house shows itself in order to give it to that person.
This wife had no greed and brought nothing back. That is why, they say, the bowl came floating to her of its own accord.
* Kado here is not "gate" but kawado, a place each household made on the riverbank in front of the gate for drawing water and washing.
* In the original, kesene means grain such as rice or millet, and kitsu the chest that holds it.
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Kanazawa village lies at the foot of Shiromi, one of the most remote mountain places in Kamihei district, and few people come and go.
Six or seven years ago, a man from this village married into a family at Yamazaki in Tochinai village. On his way to visit his family home, this son-in-law lost his way on a mountain road and came upon that mayoiga again.
The look of the house, the many cows and horses and chickens, the red and white flowers: everything was just as in the earlier story. Going in at the entrance, he found a room with trays and bowls set out. In the parlor the iron kettle was boiling, as if someone were just about to make tea. He even sensed someone standing somewhere near the toilet.
The son-in-law stood dazed, then grew more and more frightened, turned back, and at last came out at the village of Okuni.
No one in Okuni believed the story, but the family at Yamazaki was different.
"That must be a mayoiga. Let's go and bring back the trays and bowls and become rich."
With the son-in-law in the lead, a crowd of them went deep into the mountains to search. They came to the spot where he said, "The gate was here," but found nothing, and came back empty-handed.
Nor have I heard that the son-in-law ever became rich.