Nao Deguchi - A Grandmother's Prediction

	*The Sun That Lights*
*The Graphical Interfaces*

Português

NAO DEGUCHI
A Biography of the Foundress of Oomoto

Chapter One

A Grandmother's Prediction

        The years 1836 and 1837 were years of terrible famine in Japan. Torrential rains inundated the fields, destroying the crops. Starving people ate everything conceivably edible, to the point of boiling and eating the rush outer layer of the mat flooring to stave off the pangs of hunger. Even the wealthy had nothing to eat, many dying of starvation with fortunes at their sides.

        Families everywhere viewed with horror the arrival of another mouth to feed, and the abandoning of unwanted infants was an open practice. Given the lax attitude of society towards this primitive method of birth control, sucessive crop failures sealed the fate of countless innocent babies.

        At the time there lived in the village of Fukuchiyama in the province of Tamba a certain Gorôsaburô Kirimura, who followed the family tradition of carpentry. At one time the Kirimuras had been carpenters in the service of the nobility, entitled to surname and sword, a privilege usually denied those below the rank of samurai. They were also innkeepers and led a very comfortable life. From Gorôsaburô generation, however, a series of family misfortunes forced the Kirimuras to sell their estate and take up residence in a small house.

        Gorôsaburô and his wife Soyo had two sons, and in 1836, at the peak of the famine, Soyo conceived a third child. This event precipitated a family crisis and Gorôsaburô and Soyo would lie in the bed talking over their predicament in whispers until far into the night. The only solution seemed to be to get rid of the baby, until one night Gorôsaburô's mother Takeko overheard their discussions from the adjoining room.

        Deeply incensed, she took them to task saying, "How can you talk that way about a child God has blessed you with! You know the old saying that children born in times of distress make a mark on the world. There must be some reason for you to have a child in a year like this. This old woman has only a few more years to live, and if the worst comes to the worst, just let me starve instead. At any rate, I don't want to hear you talking like this again!"

        Thus it was that on the morning of the 22nd of January, in the accursed year of 1837, as the faint rays of the morning sun brought life to the mountains of Tamba, Nao Deguchi, the Foundress of Oomoto, gave a healthy first cry.

Childhood

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Last modified on August 5, 1999

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Marcelo Ghelman