The Loving Mother

The Loving Mother

              The story The Loving Mother is about a mother’s love for her child. It talks about how a mother’s spirit is not in peace after leaving behind a small child. Even after the death the mother comes back to the child in order to look after her. Since it talks about spirit and ghost it is a supernatural story.

              Shoji Sakota is a pharmacist in Sapporo, a city in northern part of Japan. He lives alone in an apartment behind the drugstore. His wife has died earlier. The building being the same he sometimes works till late. One stormy night Shoji Sakota is busy preparing his annual business report. At about midnight there is a knock at the door. He ignores the knock and goes back to his work. When there is s knock for second time he thinks it could be the wind. The knock is louder next time and he goes towards the door thinking that it could be an emergency. He turns on the light and is surprised to see a young woman standing there. Thinking that it might be a trick to rob him he doesn’t open the door. Rather, he says that the pharmacy will be opened at 8 o’clock next morning.

              But the woman pleads that her daughter needs something immediately. Thinking it to be an emergency he lets her in. A thin, young woman stands in front of Mr. Sakota bending her head. Her dress is worn out and her hair is uncombed. But as she raises her head and looks at Mr. Sakota, it seemed that her eyes are looking through him and not at him. She says that she needs ame for her baby. The doctor gives her ame and she goes her way. For him it was a strange request in the night. Not long after he is back at the desk, he decides to stop working for the night because he can’t remove the image of the strange visitor out of his mind.

              The next two nights the same thing happens. It is strange why she comes at night and not during the day when the shop is open. When she comes for the fourth night the pharmacist’s photographer friend takes some photographs of the woman from a hiding place. When the film is developed, the things of the store are there but not the picture of that woman. When she comes the fifth night they decide to follow her so that they could find out who she was and what she was doing. The woman finds that she is being followed but it doesn’t matter to her. She acts as though she wants them to see where she is going.

              A few blocks away, she enters an old apartment building and disappears through a door at the end of a dark narrow hallway. They go inside and find the switch despite darkness. They see a baby, perhaps eight or nine months old, licking ame on a stick. The child looks happy and satisfied. Beside her a woman lies, appearing to be asleep. They think that it is the same woman and couldn’t be asleep so fast. They think she is perhaps acting. Mr. Sakota goes near her and touches the shoulder. Finding her body cold and lifeless he says she is dead. He looks more closely and finds that she has been dead for a number of days.