Tale of the Painter Yoshihide

The Uji Shūi Monogatari, Book Three, Story Six, "On the Painter Yoshihide Rejoicing as His House Burns Down," recounts that a painter of Buddhist images named Yoshihide once had a fire break out in the house next door. The wind carried the flames to his own house, and he fled into the street, leaving his family inside. Standing on the opposite side of the road, he watched his house burn down, nodding repeatedly and quietly laughing. When passers-by asked how he could laugh when his house and his family were being lost, he replied that for years he had been unable to render the flames of Fudō Myō-ō, but that he had now grasped the form of those flames, and that what he had gained outweighed the loss.

The episode runs through the outbreak of fire, the spread to Yoshihide's house, his flight to the street, the quiet laughter as he watches the flames, the questions of the bystanders, and the disclosure of the artistic realization.

The narrative is set in the Heian capital (modern Kyoto). The tale does not assign a specific street or district, treating the city as a late-Heian urban setting.

Uji Shūi Monogatari, Book Three, Story Six (early Kamakura period, 13th century). The Masamune Atsuo-edited Uji Shūi Monogatari in the Nihon Koten Zenshū series (Nihon Koten Zenshū Kankōkai, 1929, NDL pid/1110315) preserves a pre-1945 critical text.