The former Toyosuke was a carpenter and twenty-eight
years old at the time he entered his new family and married
Nao. He brought wit him three apprentices and a sizable
debt.
Masagorô, as he was to be called, was a very lighthearted
fellow and extremely fond of sake (Japanese rice wine) of
which we are told he drank about two quarts a day. While
drinking he liked to amuse everyone with an endless repertoire
of songs and jokes. His work as a carpenter, however, was
outstanding and very much in demand in the area. Unfortunately,
he was by nature generous and easygoing so that he often took a
loss on his various projects, and he was also inclined to free
his apprentices before there was time for them to repay their
master for teaching them their skills.
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Nonetheless, the newlyweds managed to live comfortably
at first, even building a new house immediately after the
wedding. Such felicity did not last long. Masagorô chronic
negligence and mismanagement in matters of the family's finances
and his over-generous attitude toward associates and relatives
set the family fortunes on a downhill course that ended in
ruin.
As their resources dwindled, the number of their children
increased. The year after their marriage a daughter, Yoneko,
was born, followed by three children who died in infancy.
Next came a second daughter, Kotoko, a son, Takezô, a third
daughter, Hisako, a second son, Seikichi, a third son, Denkichi,
a fourth daughter, Ryôko, and on February 3, 1883, the day of
Setsubun, when Nao was forty-six, the fifth daughter, Sumiko,
was born. This last daughter was to become the second spiritual
leader of Oomoto.
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