A Harsh Winter Deep in the Mountains Chapter2

———————————-（continued from Chapter1)————————————–

In addition, this year has been different from any other. If it goes by the name of winter, is it ever anything but cold? If it goes by the name of summer, is it ever anything but hot? Still, though I don’t know how it has been in other provinces, the cold here in Hakiri has been exceptional. When we ask the longtime older residents, the ones who are eighty, ninety, and a hundred all say there has never been a winter as cold as this.

No one visits from ten chō or twenty chō away beyond the mountains surrounding my hut in all four directions. Thus I don’t know how things are there, but about one chō away from here, the snow is piled up to a height of ten feet, twenty feet, or five feet even in shallow places.

On the thirtieth day of the intercalary tenth month, it snowed a bit, but it melted right away. This month there was a heavy snowfall that started at the hour of the dragon [7:00–9:00 a.m.] on the eleventh day and continued right up to the fourteenth day. Two or three days later, a light rain fell, the snow froze as hard as diamonds, and it still has not melted. It is unusual for it to be bone-chilling cold both day and night. The sake has frozen over as hard as stone, frozen oil gleams like gold, and when just a bit of water remains in the cooking vessels, it freezes and they shatter. And as it keeps getting colder and colder, and our clothing is thin and food scarce, no one ventures out. Our living quarters are as yet only half finished so there is no keeping out the snow or wind, and we have nothing to lay down as floor covering. There is no one to go out in search of wood so we are unable to build a fire. The skin of those wearing a single old soiled quilted robe is like the skin of those in the hell of the crimson lotus or the hell of the great crimson lotus.² Their voices resemble those that emit from the Hahava hell and Ababa hell.³ Hands and feet freeze, crack, and break open, and there is no end to people dying. The beards on the laymen look as if they had ornaments dangling from them, while the noses of the priests seem to be strung with bells.

Such an extraordinary event has never occurred before. And not only that, but I have had a bout of diarrhea since the thirtieth day of the twelfth month last year, which failed to improve even in the spring or summer of this year. Fall passed and around the tenth month⁴ it actually worsened. After that there was a slight improvement, but it is apt to start up again at any moment.

It was just at such a time that the two quilted robes arrived from you two brothers. Even with forty ryō of cotton padding they are as light as an unlined summer robe. The contrast is all the more apparent because until now I have been wearing a robe so thinly padded it seemed to be no more than a single layer of cloth. Try to imagine how this must have been. Without these two robes, I would surely have frozen to death this year.