Summary of the Loving Mother
The Loving Mother is a supernatural story about the living form of a dead soul (incarnation of the soul). In the story, the dead soul takes a living form and helps a baby to give life.
According to the story, Shoji Sakota, a pharmacist was living alone in his room. In one stormy night od 1964, he was preparing the annual report. He had a drug store and his wife had died several years earlier. When he was preparing an annual business report, suddenly he heard a knock at the door. First, he ignored it, later thought it was the howling sound of the storm.
When he looked out on the third knocking and saw a woman standing, he thought that someone might have planned to rob him. He called out and said the store was closed. But the woman requested him for ame on a stick for her baby, he opened the door. The woman was lean and thin.
Her eyes were pale as if she was from the next world. She asked ‘ame on a stick’ for her baby and went out by paying a few cents. Shoji Sakota was surprised by the behavior of the woman. After this almost every day she started to come to buy ‘ame on a stick’.
Mr. Sakota decided to find out the cause of her arrival only at night time. So, he called his friends to take her photo by hiding in the corner. By taking photo, they cleaned film, but there was no picture at all. They were surprised by this event. So, one day they followed the woman up to her apartment.
Although the woman knew that they were following her but she seemed unnoticed. Finally, She disappeared into the apartment. They found the door was left open and went inside. There is a bed, a baby was licking ‘ame on a stick’ and besides baby, a woman was dead for long days. But, the same dead woman had gone to buy ame on the stick.