Tale of the rain and the moon..

I was watching some movies recently on my PC and I came across this particular scene in a Japanese movie I was watching.  It was about a samurai clan which was recruiting new intakes.  One of the new recruits was a particularly attractive youth, and soon enough friction arose within the samurais because they were trying to get his "favours".. if you get what I mean.

Anyway, this particular scene was when that attractive youth was required to kill his first lover due to some code of ethics (which had nothing to do with his proclivities).  The narration below was taken almost ad verbatim from the English subtitle.  The story was related by another samurai to his friend tasked with witnessing the assasination (so pardon the flow of English)


"There was once a scholar who took care of a samurai who had fallen ill while travelling through his village. After a while, in the course of his recovery, they grew close. Soon enough they took an oath of everlasting friendship.
 
But soon enough too, the samurai must return to his own group far away. So he eventually left, promising he'd return the following year on September 9th.


Times passed by slowly. Then the chrysanthemum season came around.

And soon it was September.


On the morning of the 9th, the scholar and his mother prepared flowers, rice wine and fish. But the samurai didn't turn up at his door. The scholar's mother tried to comfort him, but in vain.

He went outside his house. The moon was behind the mountains. All was dark around him. He was about to go back inside when he saw a man in the shadows. The samurai had finally returned as promised...

The scholar showed him inside the house. Once inside, the samurai seemed strangely sad and quiet. He wouldn't eat or drink.



Suddenly the samurai said that he no longer belonged to this world. He said that on his journey home to his group, he had been taken prisoner. He couldn't escape. So he killed himself and kept his promise. His spirit was carried in the wind....

Moral of the story : avoid frivolous people and surround yourself with friends you can count on. If you have just one friend like that samurai who would even take his life just to keep his word, then count yourself as a lucky person...."