Читать книгу Legends of Japan - Hiroshi Naito - Страница 9

2. Wrestling a serpent

A LONG TIME ago, in the province of Tango, now the northern part of Kyoto Prefecture, there lived a sumo wrestler of great strength, named Tsuneyo.

Near his house, there was an old marsh. It was not a big marsh, but it was so fathomlessly deep that its bed had never once dried up, even in a long spell of dry weather. Its surface was as smooth as a mirror, and its water very stagnant.

One summer evening, Tsuneyo came out to the edge of this marsh for a stroll. When standing by a big tree, he saw floating weeds before him sway, though there was not even a puff of wind. All of a sudden, the water swelled, and the next moment the head of a huge serpent appeared. An ordinary person would certainly have been paralyzed with terror at such a sight, but Tsuneyo was so stout-hearted that he calmly gazed at it. The serpent also stared at him, shooting out its red tongue and waving it up and down. For a while, they continued this staring match. Then, the serpent turned its head and began to swim across the marsh toward the other side. It was indeed a very horrible sight to see the monstrous serpent swim off, zigzagging its body, which was as thick as the trunk of a big tree. Since the marsh was not very wide, the tail of the serpent remained on the near side even though its head had reached the other.

Suddenly the creature flung its tail out of the water and extended its end toward the wrestler. The next instant, the monster began to wind its tail around the wrestler's left leg.

"Gosh, this will be fun!" Tsuneyo muttered, deliberately letting the serpent do what it pleased. The serpent coiled its tail around his leg, from ankle up to knee, and then began to pull him with great force.

"Well, she is going to drag me into the marsh!" he said to himself. He stood firm on the ground by stretching his legs and the serpent continued to pull him. In rivalry with the monster, Tsuneyo stood stauncher than ever before. The serpent with more strength drew the wrestler inch by inch, but the next moment the wrestler pulled back the distance he had lost.

Thus they desperately continued to pull each other for half an hour, when the wrestler's clog straps suddenly snapped. Well, that was the worst possible thing that could have happened!

The wrestler, with his steady posture giving way, was quickly drawn about two or three feet toward the edge of the marsh. But he lost no time taking off the broken clogs to get a steadier footing. His feet gradually rooted into the soil as much as six inches. Another half an hour passed.

When the serpent tried to draw the wrestler with her utmost strength, her tail suddenly snapped off like a straw rope. At that, the wrestler fell on his buttocks with the force of his effort, because he had thrown all the strength of his body into his legs.

"Oh, what a strong monster she is!" he exclaimed. After a while, his pupils came to gather around him. "What's happened, sir?" they asked.

"Nothing. I've just had a contest of strength with a huge serpent. You should have seen it, boys," Tsuneyo laughingly replied.

"Sir, your left leg..." one of them cried, pointing to Tsuneyo's leg. Tsuneyo looked down and found his leg clearly marked with a spiral line. It was the trace of the serpent's coiled tail. There were even some bloodstains on the skin. But the wrestler was as calm as if he knew nothing about what had happened to him.

"The tail of the monster must be around here. You all look for it," he ordered. The pupils searched all over the place and found it in the bushes close by. Its length was well over six feet and its opening was as wide as one foot. It was bluish black and greasy, and presented a forbidding appearance. All the pupils were astonished at the size of the tail.

One day, local citizens who had heard the story asked Tsuneyo how strong the serpent was. Thereupon he had his left leg wound round by a thick rope and let a group of ten men pull it hard. The people asked whether the pullers' strength corresponded to that of the serpent. The wrestler, however, said more men were needed. The people therefore added new hands five by five, and finally the total number of the rope-pullers amounted to sixty. Now the wrestler said flatly that the serpent's strength was as great as that. But, since he had won the contest, his strength was apparently greater than that of the monster. The people thought that Tsuneyo's power must have equalled the strength of at least one hundred men.