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Buddhist or Christian nuns and the shrine maidens of primitive Shinto. When their bodies are not being borrowed by a deity, shrine maidens harbor emotions much like those of young wives occupying lonely bedchambers while their husbands are away, their bodies seething with wild passions and replete with things that attract men.
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    Two reasons may be suggested to explain why Toyome’s confessions were recounted in A Tale of False Fortunes. First, she had borne two daughters, Ayame and Kureha, as a result of this sort of “public secret.” Second, the unexpected death of her lover was caused by none other than the words of the god that possessed her.
    Toyome’s lover, Usuki no Yoshinori, was a military officer in the service of the provincial governor.
    In spite of having grown up in a military household, Yoshinori had a refined disposition and was accomplished at both writing and calculating. Should the opportunity present itself, therefore, he hoped to abandon his swords and secure a peace-ful occupation—perhaps the stewardship in an influential nobleman’s household or something like that. He was actually a rather unassertive man, and even the beginning of his love affair with Toyome apparently owed less to his own advances than to seduction by the untamed passion peculiar to shrine women.
    Yoshinori had promised Toyome that someday he would return to a settled life in the capital, that he would then take Toyome and their two daughters with him, and that they would all live in peace and harmony. However, his life was unexpectedly cut short through a singular occurrence, the circumstances of which are recorded thus in A Tale of False Fortunes: One year, many of the sacred deer in the precincts of Kasuga disappeared. Then children of merchant families turned up missing, and it was noised about that something suspicious was afoot. When the favorite serving girl of the governor’s wife disappeared one night, the situation grew quite intolerable. A rigorous investigation was conducted throughout the entire province, but to no avail. Some said that there must be bandits hiding in the mountains, and places like Kazuraki and Yoshino were searched. When this yielded no leads, they determined for better or for worse to seek an oracle from the God of Kasuga. This command was delivered to the shrine, and the chief priest had Toyome purify herself and seek the God’s oracle.
    As Toyome held up the offering of braided paper strips 26 c A Tale of False Fortunes and prayed, the God took possession of her body. Her face became pale, her eyes twitched, and she began to shake in a most frightening manner. After a while, a dreadful voice issued from her mouth: “The bandits who are stealing and eating my deer and taking my people’s children are in the mountains of Ikoma. However, they will not be easy to destroy. The man to subdue them will have one large mole near his eye, and the middle finger of his right hand will be somewhat long. Make no mistake about this.” After the God departed, the governor and all of the high officials reverently feared the oracle and searched Ikoma, where they found some bandits of truly strange appearance living in a cave deep in the mountains.
    Those outlaws did not even appear to be Japanese. Their hair was cut short, they had blue eyes, their faces were very ruddy, and they could run as fast as birds in flight.
    Now then, according to the oracle of the God, the one to subdue these bandits could be none other than Usuki no Yoshinori. Near Yoshinori’s left eye was a large mole, and the middle finger of his right hand was somewhat longer than that of his left. His comrades all knew that when he put his hands together, the right side was longer. They overwhelmingly chose Yoshinori in the belief that they would certainly subdue the bandits with him at their lead.
    Yoshinori felt utterly wretched and tried many times to refuse, but the governor would not listen to his petition, and he