The Awataguchi Sword

On a winter night in old Edo, a sword dealer’s clerk carrying a great lord’s heirloom blade, a Kunitsuna by the smith of the legendary Onimaru, is robbed on a riverbank by a hooded samurai. Saved from hanging himself by Sentarō of the Cargo Boat, a hot-tempered boatman with the strength of five men, he joins a search that will take years. The official answerable for the sword is dismissed and murdered, and his son Kozaburō takes to the road as a mendicant flute-player to find the blade and his father’s killer, while his betrothed is tricked into selling herself to a Yoshiwara house in the belief that her price will buy the sword back.

Around the vendetta San’yūtei Enchō weaves a haunted heir married to a dead courtesan’s memorial tablet, a clairvoyant abbess, a pilgrim father, highwaymen on the Narita road, a blind man’s night in the Yoshiwara’s temporary quarters and a mother who punishes her own son, until the sword is recovered by a ruse and the enemy is cut down on the Ayase River. The great storyteller’s serial is presented here complete and unabridged, with all forty-five original chapters, concise notes and a documented source record.

A New English Translation in the series Japanese Classics in English Translation.