The Man Who Was Woken Up Twice. [Tengu Sabaki]

The man is not dreaming.
Or if he was, he doesn't remember it.

He could have just made up a story, but if he didn't see it, he didn't see it.
It could be said that this lack of 'ability to go with the flow' or 'ability to cater to others' demands and feelings' is what caused the story known as 'Tengu Sabaki' to become so complicated.

It is not the fault of the 'nosy, ignorant people' around him.
It was his stubbornness in insisting on only the 'truth' that blew things out of proportion.

'What kind of dream did you have??'

His wife asked him casually.
'I didn't have one.'The man retorted.

The wife, who had objective evidence of her husband's sleeping face—smiling or looking troubled while asleep—became jealous and suspicious, thinking, 'He must be hiding it because it's something he can't tell me!' when he insisted he 'didn't have one.'

Once the argument between the couple escalated to threats of killing each other, the neighbor living in the thin-walled tenement had no choice but to intervene.

A mediator in a fight is sometimes called a 'god of the moment'.
This likely means that a fight caused by a sudden emotional outburst can be calmed down if there is a trigger to help the parties cool off. Therefore, the mediator is just a 'god of that moment' whose intervention happens to be effective simply because they were there.

The mediator calmed the woman down and sent her off to the neighborhood well.
Afterward, he asked the same question out of curiosity.

'You probably can't tell a woman, but what kind of dream was it?'

The man asked, intending to share a secret.
But he was retorted with'I didn't have one.'

Another fight ensues.
Trivial fights are always waged by staking the greatest values an individual holds.

For a couple, it's the 'bond of marriage'.
For friends, it's 'years of friendship'.

When the landlord intervenes and asks the same curious question, it leads to an argument, and finally, it becomes a legal matter of 'get out' or 'I'll sue you'.

With the landlord, it becomes a struggle over their 'livelihood'.

The tenement they live in is the landlord's property.
Tenants and landlords were more closely linked than in modern rental properties, and there were no intermediaries.
The landlord watched over all aspects of life and took on the role of managing the town, including public safety. He was also a bridge to public authority. He was also called a town official, and without his signature, men in Edo couldn't even shave their heads as they pleased.

Therefore, 'defying the landlord' meant defying the most immediate authority.
Even so, he retorts with'I didn't have a dream.'This man is just too stubborn. What is wrong with him?

Eventually, the matter is brought before the town magistrate for investigation.

'Are you an idiot, landlord? For a town official to demand an eviction over something like this is ridiculous,' the magistrate scolds the landlord. It is said that in those days, it was rare for a case to be judged directly by the town magistrate in the so-called 'white sand' court, but the principle of non-intervention in civil affairs probably didn't exist in the Edo period either.

After all, the town magistrate was a figure who held absolute power, handling both administration and justice. You could say he was simultaneously the mayor, city manager, fire chief, and police commissioner. That is precisely why taking up such a trivial complaint just to scold them, saying 'Don't bother the authorities with such nonsense!', is an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind event.

However, perhaps that is precisely why the town magistrate, while lamenting, 'What kind of complaint is this?', became intrigued, thinking, 'What kind of dream could it be that he feels the need to keep secret, to the point of causing such a dispute, and to the point of believing he could win a case before the authorities?'

For some reason, the man who absolutely refuses to fabricate anything pushes back even against the absolute authority of the town magistrate, saying,I didn't see it.

If the town magistrate fails, one might expect the story to escalate to the man being summoned to Edo Castle by the senior councilors or the Shogun, or even to the Imperial Court to be questioned by the Chief Advisor Takatsukasa or the Emperor of the time... but for some reason, that does not happen, and suddenly a supernatural being, a 'Tengu', appears.

The Tengu saves the man from the tyranny of human public authority, but then, not relying on human values, gets angry based on Tengu standards, threatening, 'I'll tear you to pieces if you don't tell me, you rascal...' Thinking, 'Oh, I have to tell him... but I didn't see it... oh, I'm going to be killed...', the punchline is that the whole thing was a dream itself...

It is not convincing at all.
In this story, where the man who refuses to tell his dream because he didn't see it keeps escalating the people he faces—from his wife to the neighbor, the landlord, the town magistrate, and finally the Tengu—where exactly does the 'dream' begin in the first place?

Perhaps the very first time he was woken up by his wife was still an event within a dream.

The man is woken twice.

If the very act of 'not telling a dream I didn't see' was a 'symbol of the stubbornness he holds onto' that could only be achieved within a dream, then it means that the frustrations of his daily life (where he normally doesn't fight with his wife or anyone else) manifested in his dream in that form.

Thinking about it that way, one can see the limits of the thought process of an ordinary commoner, for whom figures above the town magistrate (like the Shogun in Edo or the Emperor at the Imperial Court) would have been beyond their imagination. For a simple townsman, the next authority figure after the town magistrate, who is the greatest power in his life, is a 'Tengu'.

Perhaps this is not an escalation story where a small beginning turns into a big deal, but rather a truly heartwarming tale that carries the meaning of 'a super cute, everyday bit of nonsense from a commoner in the midst of a tiny, tiny slumber'.

I wonder what kind of dream it was.