Once when my five-year-old daughter was out playing with her mother, digging violets and picking ears of reeds, some ladies accompanying a certain aristocrat viewing the blossoms strolled by, and one of them asked her: “Little girl, what is your name? How old are you?” Looking down, my daughter said, “My name is Ito. My age is this,” and spread her fingers. Everyone thought that was lovely, and laughed. This telling of her name to exalted persons was to become the greatest honor in her life, for she died in the sixth month of the same year [1793]. This year, longing to see the place with the blossoms, I went and walked alone with a stick by the Sumida River, but my heart was not consoled at all. Only the willow by her old gravestone stirred in the wind, as if obeying it, as if resentful of it:
“I want to die”—at times I think, looking at the cherries