A Book falls open.

I visited a dealer in Nihon-tō [Japanese Swords] and Hizen-zogan [inlay], at his shop in Kumamoto in Kyushu. While my friends were engaged in conversation I called upon my professional organ, or nose, and began to explore the boxes stacked on his lower shelves. Pushed to the back of a cupboard I found not a Sword but a box wrapped in fabric. It called out to me, so that I asked what was in it. It proved to be a box of karin, a very hard and rather rare red sandalwood.<br /> Inside, carefully wrapped, was a tiny signed golden figure of Amida Buddha of the best workmanship, under a delicate silver canopy, supported by a silver dragon, with an elaborate stand.<br /> The evening after buying the golden figure I lay down on my futon in the ryokan before sleep, to read a little from Mitford’s Tales of Old Japan. The book fell open at a page, where I was faced with a paragraph which I had never seen before. It described the foundation legend of the Temple of Asakusa Kannon-sama in Kyoto :<br /> "In 1241, on the morning of the 6th day of the 3rd month of the 36th year of the reign of the Emperor Suiko, three impoverished ronin - Hashi no Nakatomo, Hinokuma Haminari and Hinokuma Takenari - went to fish on the Asakusa river, in a last desperate attempt to earn a living. Try as they would they could catch no fish, but they kept netting a Buddha figure, and although they kept throwing it back it re-appeared in their nets. Eventually they recognized the portents and built the now famous temple for the Buddha on Golden Dragon Hill [ Kin Ryu San ] at Asakusa."<br /> The final sentence of Mitford’s tale was : “Tradition says that the figure fished up in the net was one sun and eight bu in height.” I leaped from my futon to measure the little golden Buddha, which of course was one sun and eight bu in height [ what Mitford calls one and eight tenths inches ]. On the back was a dedication to the temple of the Kin Ryu San.