Nao Deguchi - Childhood

	*The Sun That Lights*
*The Graphical Interfaces*

Português

NAO DEGUCHI
A Biography of the Foundress of Oomoto

Chapter One

Childhood

        Being born during a year of exceptional famine and at a low point in the family fortunes was only the beginning of the hardships that lay in wait for the Foundress. Her father, by nature headstrong and cantankerous, would often resort to physical violence when he had been drinking. When Nao was only two years old, Gorôsaburô in a fit of rage threw her out into the snow in the back garden. Again, when Nao was four, her father sent her out to buy rice wine. Lost in play, she forgot her errand and when she returned empty-handed, her father bundled her up in the bed clothes and shut her in a closet.

        He mother Soyo, on the other hand, was a truly good woman, gentle, and scrupulous in her duties as a parent. Her conduct was so exemplary that her mother-in-law, a rather difficult woman, often boasted about her son's wife to the neighbors. Nao's strength of character, so evident in later years, no doubt owed much to the upbringing she recieved from her mother.

        Meanwhile things got worse and worse for the Kirimura family until Gorôsaburô was reduced to eking out a living as a street vendor of a kind of sweet drink made of fermented rice. Finally in 1846, when Nao was nine years old, Gorôsaburô developed malignant cholera and after a day of suffering passed away. The loss of the breadwinner to a family already in such unenviable circumstances was a blow that is difficult to imagine. As a result Nao went into service at a certain Kanaya rice merchants' in Fukuchiyama.

        In her new surroundings, Nao's industry and tidy appearance earned her good name with both the master of the house and the other servants. In addition, her devotion to her mother was outstanding. All of her salary she saved for Soyo. Twice a year the servants received new kimonos, but Nao exchanged hers for money and sent the money to her mother. Such exemplary behavior attracted wider and wider attention until the lord of the fief of Fukuchiyama awarded her a commendation when she was eleven years old.

A corner of the kitchen in the house where Nao Deguchi was born.

After three years at the rice merchants' Nao went on to employment at a number of other households, but the family needed her at home and at age of sixteen she returned to help with her mother's work, the spinning of yarn. Due to her perfectionist nature, she was so skillful that her yarn brought twice the usual price, it is said.

Adoption Into the Deguchi Family

Enter your e-mail address to receive
a message when this page is updated

Last modified on August 5, 1999

This page has already been visited

times

Marcelo Ghelman