Shinkei Kasane-ga-fuchiThe Ghost Story of Kasane Pool

At the end of An'ei 2 (1773), Minagawa Soetsu, a blind acupuncturist living in Nezu Shichiken-cho, lends out the money he has saved bit by bit at high interest. He goes to Fukami Shinzaemon, a poor hatamoto living at Hattorizaka in Kohinata, to demand repayment of thirty ryo. Shinzaemon, who is always drinking, flies into a rage during the argument, draws his sword and cuts Soetsu down. He has a manservant carry the body away in a wicker trunk, but after a series of twists it is found in a tenement near Soetsu's home, and his daughters learn of their father's death.

Soon Shinzaemon's wife falls ill, and masseurs passing in the street are called in to treat her. One night, the face of the masseur they call in looks to Shinzaemon like the man he killed, and he strikes out with his sword. But the one lying on the floor is his wife. Later, Shinzaemon himself is killed while on duty, and the Fukami house is abolished. His young second son, Shinkichi, is taken in and raised by Kanzo, the gatekeeper.

“Fukami Shingoro.” Shingoro, the eldest son, had run away from home. When he comes back, the house has been abolished and both his parents are dead. As he is about to take his own life, the master of Shimosaya, a pawnshop in Yanaka, saves him and takes him into service at the shop. Shingoro falls for Osono, a maid at the same shop, but she is Soetsu's younger daughter. Neither knows who the other is. For some reason Osono finds Shingoro creepy and cannot stand him, and when the desperate Shingoro pushes her down onto some straw, there is an oshikiri (a chopping blade, set edge up) underneath, and Osono dies. Shingoro runs away. Three years later, while fleeing the men sent to arrest him, he steps on another oshikiri and cuts his foot deeply, and he is caught on the anniversary of Osono's death.

“The Death of Toyoshiga.” Nineteen years pass. Toyoshiga, who teaches Tomimoto-bushi (a style of sung narrative with shamisen) in Nezu Shichiken-cho, is Soetsu's elder daughter and is known as a teacher of strict virtue. The one who starts coming to help her is Shinkichi, twenty-one, who has grown up thinking Kanzo is his uncle. One cold night, Toyoshiga, thirty-nine, becomes Shinkichi's lover, but again neither knows of the fate that binds their parents. Gossip spreads and her pupils leave. The only one who still comes is Ohisa, the daughter of a shop selling small goods, who is treated harshly by her stepmother.

Each time she sees Shinkichi and Ohisa laughing together, Toyoshiga burns with jealousy. Then a swelling appears under her eye and spreads quickly until her face is disfigured, and she takes to her bed. Unable to bear nursing her, with her grabbing him by the collar in the middle of the night, Shinkichi goes out and runs into Ohisa. They go up to the second floor of a sushi shop. But suddenly Ohisa's face, too, seems to swell up, and Shinkichi runs off in a panic.

He rushes to the home of his uncle Kanzo, and there Toyoshiga, who should not be able to be there, is waiting. She apologizes for how wrong she has been and says she wants to part with him cleanly. Kanzo arranges a kago (palanquin) to send her home in, and just then a man from her tenement comes to tell them, “The teacher has died.” When they open the door of the kago, it is empty. Back at her home, when they lift the bedding, they find a note Toyoshiga left behind.

Later, in “The Killing of Ohisa,” Shinkichi elopes with Ohisa to Hanyu Village in Shimosa. On a rainy night on the riverbank at Kasane-ga-fuchi, Ohisa falls onto a grass-cutting sickle and cuts her knee. Her face again looks like Toyoshiga's to Shinkichi, and he kills Ohisa with that sickle. From here the story goes on to the second half, which draws in Dote no Jinzo and the other people of Hanyu Village.