World and Lore / Kyoto mystery

Never Too Old to Change

There once was an old woman who lived in a rundown manor in the capital. One night, while she was peeling some chestnuts to roast by the fire, she was startled by a hand rising out of the ashes of her sunken hearth and gesturing as if it were begging for something. Startled, the woman threw a chestnut in its direction, and the hand slipped back under the ashes. But after a short while, it appeared again...and again...and again, on and on it went until the dawn had broken. Wondering what could have caused this, the old woman inspected the area around the hearth whereupon she found an old ladle. Now, when an item has been used for a hundred years, it is believed to acquire a tsukumogami, or bound spirit. As if to symbolize the idea that "old things will take on new forms," the ladle in this story appears to have been inhabited by just such a spirit.