The Spider's Thread

1

 One day, Buddha was wandering alone at the edge of the lotus pond in paradise.
The lotus flowers in the pond were all white as jade, and the indescribable aroma was constantly flooding the area from their golden stamens.
It was morning in paradise.

 Soon, Buddha was standing at the edge of the pond, looking through the lotus leaves that covered the surface of the water, and suddenly he was able to see the scene below.
Because the bottom of this lotus pond of paradise is just the bottom of hell, the scenery of the Sanzu River and the mountain of needles could be seen clearly through the crystal-like water, just like looking through a spyglass.

 Then he saw a man named Kandata wriggling in the depths of hell with other sinners.
Kandata was a great thief who had done many evil things, including killing people and setting fire to houses.
But Buddha still remembered only one thing that Kandata had done that was good.
One time he was walking through a deep forest and saw a small spider crawling along the roadside.
So Kandata immediately raised his foot and was going to step on it to kill.
But he suddenly thought back,
"No, although it is small, it too must be a living thing.
I feel sorry for it, taking its life without any reasons."
He saved the spider without killing it.

 As Buddha looked at the scene in hell, he remembered that Kandata had saved the spider once.
Buddha thought that he would be able to repay Kandata for doing such a good deed by rescuing Kandata from hell if he could.
Fortunately, he saw a spider of paradise on a jade-colored lotus leaf with a beautiful silver thread.
Buddha gently took the spider's thread in his hand and brought it down from the jade-white lotus leaf straight to the depths of hell far below.

2

 This is Kandata, who was floating and sinking in the pool of blood in the depths of hell, along with other sinners.
Everywhere he looked, it was pitch-black, and every once in a while the vague scene of the needles of the mountain of needles shining came up out of the darkness, and that is the very uncomfortable thing to see.
It was as still as the inside of a grave, and the only thing that could be heard now and then was the faint sighs of sinners.
The people who had come down to this place must be so exhausted by the torments of hell that they had lost the ability to cry out.
Kandata, the great thief, was also choking on the blood in the pool of blood, and like a frog on the verge of death, he was just struggling to survive.

 One time, a silvery spider's thread from far, far up in the sky, glistening in a single, thin line, as if it was afraid of being seen, and then slowly drifted up to him in the quiet darkness.
When Kandata saw this, he clapped his hands in delight.
If he clung to this thread and went up as far as he could, he would surely be able to escape from hell.
No, if he succeeded, he would even be able to enter paradise.
Then he would no longer be driven up to the mountain of needles, nor would he be drowned in the pool of blood.

 Thinking this, Kandata began to climb upward, grasping the spider's thread firmly with both hands.
He was a great thief by nature, so he had been used to this kind of thing for a long time.

 However, since there were tens of thousands of miles between hell and paradise, it was not easy to get out of there, no matter how much he tried to hurry up.
After a while, Kandata finally grew tired and was unable to climb up.
So he decided to take a break and looked far down from the middle of the thread.

 Then, after all his hard work, the pool of blood where he had been a moment ago was now hidden in the depths of darkness.
The vaguely shining mountain of needles was now under his feet.
If he kept climbing at this rate, it might not be too long before he got out of hell.
Kandata, his hands entwined in spider's thread, said in the voice he hadn't heard in years since he'd come here, "I've got it," and laughed.
However, he suddenly realized that at the bottom of the spider's thread, there were an unlimited number of sinners following his climb up, like a procession of ants, climbing upward in unison.
When Kandata saw this, he was surprised and scared, and for a while he just kept his eyes moving with his mouth wide open like a fool.
How could this fine spider's thread, which even one person could cut off, withstand the weight of so many people?
If he were to break it in the middle of the way, he would have to let himself fall back to hell he came up from.
If that happened, it would be a disaster.
However, in the midst of all this, hundreds and thousands of sinners crawled up from the bottom of the dark pool of blood, crawling up the thin, shiny thread of the spider, making a single line.
If something was not done in the meantime, the thread would break in two and all would fall.

 So Kandata shouted loudly and said,
"Hey, you sinners! This spider's thread is mine. Whom did you ask to climb up? Get down! Get down!"

 At that moment.
The spider's thread, which had been nothing at all until now, suddenly broke off from where Kandata was dangling with a snapping sound.
Kandata couldn't help himself.
Spinning around like a spinning top, he had fallen headlong into darkness in the twinkling of an eye.

 The spider's thread of paradise, which was thin and glittering, was hanging briefly in the middle of the sky where there is no moon or stars.

3

 Buddha stood on the edge of the lotus pond and watched the whole thing, but when Kandata sank to the bottom of the pool of blood like a stone, he began to wander around again with a sad expression on his face.
In the eyes of the Buddha, it must have seemed so shallow that Kandata, whose mind was merciless, tried to escape alone from the hell, and that he fell back to the original hell as the punishment to the extent.

 However, the lotus in the lotus pond in paradise didn't care about such a thing in the least.
The calyxes of the white flowers like jade were shaking around the feet of Buddha, and the indescribable aroma was constantly flooding the area from their golden stamens.
It was almost noon in paradise.

(I translated The Spider's Thread (蜘蛛の糸, Kumo no Ito) by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.)

- To return to Japanese short stories translated into English