Shunkin (born as Mozuya Koto, but better known by her professional name) was the daughter of an Osaka drug merchant. She died on the fourteenth of October in 1886 — the nineteenth year of the Meiji era — and was buried in the grounds of a certain Buddhist temple of the Pure Land sect in the Shitadera district of Osaka. Some days ago I happened to pass the temple, and stopped in to visit her grave. When I asked the caretaker how to find the Mozuya plot, he said "It's over this way, sir" and led me around the main hall. There, in the shade of a cluster of old camellias, stood the gravestones of generation after generation of the Mozuya family — but none of them seemed to belong to Shunkin. I told the caretaker about her, and suggested that she must have a grave somewhere. He considered this for a moment. "Well," he said at last, "maybe it's the one on the hill." And he took me to a flight of steps leading up a steep slope on the eastern side of the grounds.