Однажды перед наступлением нового года эры Дзисё четверо...

One day before the onset of the new year of the Jisho era, four friends gathered at a furoshi bath to relieve the fatigue of the day and wash away the sins of the past year. One of them, named Takamasu Hiramon, was a calendar maker and liked, as they say, from time to time to decorate his kimono with the coats of arms of the Fujiwara clan, that is, to drink. Another served as master of ceremonies for Prince Takeda and was called Oichi Minonosuke. He, too, was a master at admiring in the early spring how white cranes fly over the Sarugashima Strait - that is, again, to drink. The third of the friends was a famous sumotori wrestler named Sumiyama Shinzen and, like all wrestlers, was always ready to wet his sleeve, or even both with the first dew from the leaves of five hundred years of cryptomeria - in other words, to drink properly. The fourth asceticised on the stage of the theater. But under the pseudonym Takanaka Senzaburo, after the performance, he also often allowed himself to watch the full moon rise from the thickets of young bamboo, which again means taking a sip of a glass.