The Miracle of the Pilgrim Temples

Mizushi Mataichi, a hot-blooded young samurai, loses a courtesan to his superior and murders him on a dark Edo street. Years later he turns up in a provincial town as the priest of a Shingon temple, where the same woman, now a merchant’s wife, joins him in killing her husband with a hatchet. Then the two take to the roads of the mountain provinces, leaving murder behind them wherever they go.

The thread dealer’s daughter O-Tsugi, just thirteen when her father was killed, sets out as a pilgrim on the thirty-three temples of the Saigoku circuit to find the killer. On the road she finds allies: a young man whose sister the same priest murdered, a samurai and his runaway lover who have hunted him for years, and at the last, beside the Saruko Bridge in Fukagawa, a plasterer’s laborer with a stick. Before then comes a terrible mistake in the dark. Told by the great Meiji storyteller San’yūtei Enchō, this is a story of desire, crime and dogged revenge, full of comic crowds and the life of old Edo. Complete and unabridged in all sixty-three original chapters, with concise notes and a documented source record.

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