‘However much we fret, we mortals can’t arrange things to suit ourselves. You should take that to heart and never force things but leave everything to the Lord Amida,’ she had said, and again and again she had advised Tomo to attend the Honganji temple on her return to Tokyo, so as to avail herself of the comforts of the Shin faith.

But it was not until after her mother’s death that Tomo had put her advice into practice. Even though she had not fulfilled her promise during her mother’s lifetime, she had always had the excuse that household affairs did not allow her sufficient leisure, but once a husband had been found for Etsuko, and a wife, however unsatisfactory, for Michimasa, of whose marriage she had almost despaired, the last wishes of her departed mother had come to seem like a duty that she could not decently ignore.

Nonetheless, for some time it was no more than a feeling of duty to her mother that took her to worship or to hear the priests’ lectures, for the constant painful efforts she must make to cover up for Yukitomo’s loose behavior and ensure that it did not undermine the foundations of the family seemed unlikely to be assuaged by abstract phrases such as ‘the vow of the Lord Amida.’

It was not until around the time when she first learned of the illicit relationship between her daughter-in-law Miya and Yukitomo that the first small buds of faith began to form in her mind.

No one could tell the sorrow and loathing aroused in Tomo through the years by Michimasa’s excessively self-centered, almost half-witted nature. However despotic a husband Yukitomo might be, he had quite enough sense to realize that his own position depended on others and on society at large; in that sense, at least, he was to be respected as a man. But in Michimasa’s mind neither the code of conduct nor the love that had served as Tomo’s creed throughout her life carried any weight whatsoever. Just as in dealing with others he always ended by offending them, so towards the woman he had taken as his wife Michimasa felt no love of any kind other than the desire that was satisfied by the flesh. It was doubtful even whether Miya would have stayed so long with Michimasa had she not known that the same house harbored the unexpected happiness yielded by Yukitomo’s skillful attentions.

At the period when she had first heard about Miya, Tomo’s samurai breeding had made her violently scorn Miya’s delight in being trifled with by her father-in-law; Miya was a wretched woman, rotten to the core. Used though Tomo was to the constant sense of gloom and vague dissatisfaction caused by Yukitomo’s relations with women even apart from Suga and Yumi, she could not help feeling a fresh alarm when faced with the question of Miya.