Sonjō and the weeping woman of Akanuma
In a dream, a weeping woman stands at Sonjō's pillow and asks why he killed her husband. They were happy together at Akanuma, she tells him.
In Hearn's telling in Kwaidan, Sonjō dreams one night that a beautiful woman comes into his room, stands at his pillow and weeps. She weeps so hard that listening to her feels to him like having his heart pulled out.
She asks him why he killed her husband and what the husband had ever done wrong. She tells him the two of them were happy together at Akanuma. She says he has killed her as well, because she will not go on living without her husband.
Japan Nature Guides, in a piece on the mandarin duck, places Hearn's tale among folk stories about the bond between male and female mandarins. By its account the husband was a mandarin drake, and the bond Sonjō broke was the one between him and his mate.
"That night he dreamed a dreary dream. It seemed to him that a beautiful woman came into his room, and stood by his pillow, and began to weep. So bitterly did she weep that Sonjō felt as if his heart were being torn out while he listened. And the woman cried to him: “Why,—oh! why did you kill him?—of what wrong was he guilty?... At Akanuma we were so happy together,—and you killed him!... What harm did he ever do you? Do you even know what you have done?—oh! do you know what a cruel, what a wicked thing you have done?... Me too you have killed,—for I will not live without my husband!..."
- Mandarin: the Hooded Love Bird of the East, Japan Nature Guides