At the hour of the snake (10 A.M.), the hour appointed for the execution, the people from the neighbouring villages and the castle-town, old and young, men and women, flocked to see the sight:  numbers there were, too, who came to bid a last farewell to Sogoro, his wife and children, and to put up a prayer for them.  When the hour had arrived, the condemned were dragged forth bound, and made to sit upon coarse mats.  Sogoro and his wife closed their eyes, for the sight was more than they could bear; and the spectators, with heaving breasts and streaming eyes, cried “Cruel!” and “Pitiless!” and taking sweetmeats and cakes from the bosoms of their dresses threw them to the children.  At noon precisely Sogoro and his wife were bound to the crosses, which were then set upright and fixed in the ground.  When this had been done, their eldest son Gennosuke was led forward to the scaffold, in front of the two parents.  Then Sogoro cried out—­

“Oh! cruel, cruel! what crime has this poor child committed that he is treated thus?  As for me, it matters not what becomes of me.”  And the tears trickled down his face.

The spectators prayed aloud, and shut their eyes; and the executioner himself, standing behind the boy, and saying that it was a pitiless thing that the child should suffer for the father’s fault, prayed silently.  Then Gennosuke, who had remained with his eyes closed, said to his parents—­

“Oh! my father and mother, I am going before you to paradise, that happy country, to wait for you.  My little brothers and I will be on the banks of the river Sandzu,[65] and stretch out our hands and help you across.  Farewell, all you who have come to see us die; and now please cut off my head at once.”

[Footnote 65:  The Buddhist Styx, which separates paradise from hell, across which the dead are ferried by an old woman, for whom a small piece of money is buried with them.]

With this he stretched out his neck, murmuring a last prayer; and not only Sogoro and his wife, but even the executioner and the spectators could not repress their tears; but the headsman, unnerved as he was, and touched to the very heart, was forced, on account of his office, to cut off the child’s head, and a piteous wail arose from the parents and the spectators.

Then the younger child Sohei said to the headsman, “Sir, I have a sore on my right shoulder:  please, cut my head off from the left shoulder, lest you should hurt me.  Alas!  I know not how to die, nor what I should do.”

When the headsman and the officers present heard the child’s artless speech, they wept again for very pity; but there was no help for it, and the head fell off more swiftly than water is drunk up by sand.  Then little Kihachi, the third son, who, on account of his tender years, should have been spared, was butchered as he was in his simplicity eating the sweetmeats which had been thrown to him by the spectators.

When the execution of the children was over, the priests of Tokoji took their corpses, and, having placed them in their coffins, carried them away, amidst the lamentations of the bystanders, and buried them with great solemnity.