Emperor's palace. And the Emperor at Kyoto having asked him why he had
not put the ten beside the character, Kobodaishi answered: 'I forgot;
but I will put it on now.' Then the Emperor bade ladders be brought; for
the tablet was already in place, high above the gate. But Kobodaishi,
standing on the pavement before the gate, simply threw his brush at the
tablet; and the brush, so thrown, made the ten there most admirably, and
fell back into his hand.

Kobodaishi also painted the tablet of the gate called Ko-kamon of the
Emperor's palace at Kyoto. Now there was a man, dwelling near that gate,
whose name was Kino Momoye; and he ridiculed the characters which
Kobodaishi had made, and pointed to one of them, saying: 'Why, it looks
like a swaggering wrestler!' But the same night Momoye dreamed that a
wrestler had come to his bedside and leaped upon him, and was beating
him with his fists. And, crying out with the pain of the blows, he
awoke, and saw the wrestler rise in air, and change into the written
character he had laughed at, and go back to the tablet over the gate.

And there was another writer, famed greatly for his skill, named Onomo
Toku, who laughed at some characters on the tablet of the Gate Shukaku-
mon, written by Kobodaishi; and he said, pointing to the character Shu:
'Verily shu looks like the character "rice".' And that night he dreamed
that the character he had mocked at became a man; and that the man fell
upon him and beat him, and jumped up and down upon his face many times--
even as a kometsuki, a rice-cleaner, leaps up and down to move the
hammers that beat the rice--saying the while: 'Lo! I am the messenger
of Kobodaishi!' And, waking, he found himself bruised and bleeding as
one that had been grievously trampled.

And long after Kobodaishi's death it was found that the names written by