Now it is long ago. There were two monks on pilgrimage to Kumano. One was old, and one was young and very handsome. In Muro district of Kii they took lodging at a house. The mistress of the house was a young widow.
Late at night the woman crept into the young monk's room, lay beside him under her robe, and pressed him: "I gave you lodging because I loved you from the first sight. Please be my husband." Startled, the monk said, "I am in a state of purity on my way to Kumano. When I have made my pilgrimage, on the way back I will surely do as you say," and so calmed her and escaped.
The next morning the two set off for Kumano. The woman counted the days on her fingers waiting for his return, but the monk, afraid of her, went home by another road. Unable to wait any longer, she asked people on the road, and they said, "Those monks passed by long ago." She was furious, went home, shut herself in her bedroom and suddenly died. Then from the bedroom crawled a great poisonous serpent some five fathoms long, and it raced along the road after the monk.
Hearing from those who saw it that "a great serpent is coming behind you," the monks fled into Dojoji and begged for help. The monks of the temple conferred, hid the young monk under the temple bell, which they let down, and closed the gate.
The serpent soon reached the temple, came in over the gate, circled the hall, and at last coiled around the bell. It beat on the dragon-head mount with its tail and squeezed for some time, then, shedding tears of blood from both eyes, raised its head, licked its lips and went back the way it had come. When the monks of the temple came near and looked, the bell had been burned by the serpent's poisonous fire and was too hot to touch. They poured water on it to cool it, raised the bell and looked: the young monk had burned away, and not even a few bones were left.
Afterward the young monk appeared in the old monk's dream in the form of a serpent and begged, "I have been made the husband of that wicked woman and have become a serpent, and I am suffering. Please copy the chapter on the Lifespan of the Tathagata of the Lotus Sutra, make offerings, and save the two serpents." The old monk, together with the monks of the temple, copied the sutra and held a service. Then the two appeared again in a dream with bright faces and said, "Thanks to you we have left our serpent bodies: the woman has been born in the Heaven of the Thirty-three, and I in the Tushita Heaven." And they rose into the sky.
This tale later became, under the names of Anchin and Kiyohime, the Noh play Dojoji and the Kabuki dance The Maiden at Dojoji. At Dojoji in Hidakagawa, Wakayama, preaching with picture scrolls (etoki) is still performed today.