“What is wrong?” But he sobbed quietly, saying nothing. His mother spoke again: “If you resent your brother Akana now for breaking his pledge, you will have nothing to say if he comes tomorrow. Are you such a child that you can be so foolish?” Thus she admonished and encouraged him. Finally Samon replied, “My brother came tonight to fulfill our chrysanthemum pledge. When I welcomed him with saké and food, he refused them again and again and said, ‘For this and that reason, I was about to break our pledge, and so I fell on my sword and came these one hundred ri as a ghost.’ Then he vanished. — An Excerpt for the Chrysanthemum Vow by Ueda Akinari