Who Is Shikibu Heinai / Heinai's three retainers (Matsuoka Bungo, Dobashi Kyuzo, Okamura Heiroku)?
The mysterious young samurai seen in a cup of tea
Shikibu Heinai
Shikibu Heinai is the young samurai whose face appears in Sekinai's tea in "In a Cup of Tea" from Lafcadio Hearn's Kotto. Whether he is a man, a ghost, or a monster is never revealed.
On the night Sekinai drinks the tea, face and all, Heinai appears silently in the guard room and says: "My name is Shikibu Heinai. You treated me very roughly today." When Sekinai strikes at him, he passes through the wall and vanishes. The next night, three men who say they are Heinai's retainers — Matsuoka Bungo, Dobashi Kyuzo, and Okamura Heiroku — appear and announce that their master was wounded and has gone to the hot springs to heal, but will return on the sixteenth of next month to take his revenge.
Hearn wrote that this story breaks off unfinished in the old book it came from, and he chose not to invent an ending. Heinai is a strange figure who leaves behind a fear with no answer.
