This is a story about the Enkogawa, the river that flows through the Minami Ward of Hiroshima.
A long, long time ago, there was a humble fisherman’s hut on the banks of the Enkogawa River. An old man and an old woman lived peacefully there together.
One summer night. The old woman woke up thirsty in the middle of the night, and went to the sink to get a drink of water. Then suddenly, as she looked up at the grating over the sink, she saw a long hairy hand through the holes in the grating. The hand slowly but surely stretched out, and the woman was as astonished as could be.
“Husband, oh husband, are you awake?”
“It’s the middle of the night, why are you shouting like that?”
“Dear husband, there’s something here. You need to have a look. There’s something long and hairy, seems like a hand.”
At the end of the hairy hand, which was as slender as a burdock root, were three or four fingers. The hand, wet from the water, glistened dully. Sure enough, the horrific dark hand began to move again. It was slightly different from a human hand. Suddenly, the old man remembered legends speaking of the Enko. Long ago, it was said that the Enko used to live in this river. Stories told that when the Enko got hungry, they would eat human innards.
“Oh my, maybe this is the hand of an Enko. Perhaps it has come to feast on our innards.”
“Oh husband, it surely cannot be that!”
The old man stared at the hand stretching forwards in the moonlight. “Well now, calm down, calm down. And try to be quiet. Let’s see what we can do about this.”
Unaware that anyone was looking, the Enko’s hand smoothly stretched out, and sliding across the sink, swiftly grabbed the sardine remains, which had been left in the sink, and then retracting its hand, it did not appear again. The old man and the old woman couldn’t sleep that night, because they were so afraid. In the morning, they placed bamboo in the gaps of the grating. But, by midnight that night, the hairy hand was reaching out again. The bamboo had done nothing to deter the Enko.
“Husband, don’t you think we should keep feeding the Enko those sardine remains? It would make him happy and we could both sleep peacefully.”
“Indeed. We don’t really need the sardine remains and we don’t have children either. We should think of the Enko as our child.”
“All we have to do is believe we have children. I can’t think of a better solution.”
So, with that, they put the dead sardines in the sink and went to bed. The next day, the intestines were completely gone. So, every night, the old man and old woman left the sardine remains in the sink and went to bed. That summer, not even one child drowned when swimming in the Enkogawa River. So, the summer passed by for two or three years. They were always happy to see that hairy hand. Summer would pass into Autumn, and they couldn’t wait until the next year. When the old couple spoke of the Enko, they would look younger and everyone would say, “That old man and old woman, they look so much younger recently.”
When the old man went to sell the fish, they would fetch a high price because everyone knew they were high quality. In the winter, when he couldn’t fish, the old man’s fishing rod would stand untouched. But then, the rumours circulated, “That old man, he is a master of fishing. He can even talk with fish.” And so their lives became easier.
Many years passed, and even though the old man and old woman reached their eighties, they were still healthy. However, the wood of the sink grating grew old and splintered.
“Oh Ma, this is no good. If the Enko tried to slip its hand through here, it could get caught and cause itself serious injury.”
“I wonder. Perhaps we could take out the rotten wood and refit the sink with brass instead?”
“Pa, that’s just the thing! Then it would last forever.”
So they fixed the sink with brass. And as usual they left out the sardine remains for the Enko. However, even though they waited until past midnight, the Enko never came. Night became dawn and the morning sun climbed into the eastern sky. The new brass sink shone brightly in the light. But the sardine remains were still sitting on the sink where they had been left. The next day and the day following that, the sardine remains stayed untouched. Though the Enko was never heard from again, it must have been the terrible sparkle of man-made things that scared him away.
The End
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