A bronze mirror refuses to melt, a dead woman promises wealth, and a temple bell becomes the object of relentless human greed. These are the linked elements of Lafcadio Hearn’s “Of a Mirror and a Bell”, published in Kwaidan in1904. Set at Mugenyama in the old province of Tōtōmi, the story combines a ghostly pledge with reflections on religious offerings and imagined substitutes. Its supernatural incidents belong to the narrative; Hearn supplies no dated investigation establishing that they occurred.
The Bell of Mugen also survives in a different tradition published by Kakegawa’s municipal tourism service. That version attaches the bell to Awagatake mountain and a summit well. Reading the accounts separately matters: the local mountain setting does not authenticate every detail in Hearn, and their contrasting endings should not be blended into a single supposed historical record.
The gift that could not be surrendered
Hearn begins with priests seeking old bronze mirrors from local women to provide metal for a large temple bell. One donor, a farmer’s wife, regrets giving away her family heirloom. It had belonged to successive generations of women, and its reflected faces connected her with her mother and childhood. She recognises it among the other offerings by the raised pine, bamboo and plum design on its back.
The woman has no money to offer in exchange for its return. She repeatedly sees it behind the temple railing but cannot retrieve it. Hearn makes the emotional conflict central: an object outwardly donated remains inwardly inseparable from its owner. His explanation invokes a saying linking a woman’s mirror with her soul. That is the belief through which the story interprets her distress, rather than a physical theory established by examination of a surviving object.
When the mirrors reach the foundry, this particular one supposedly resists the furnace. The failure becomes public knowledge and is attributed to the donor’s unwillingness to part with it. Shame and anger follow the disclosure. The woman dies by suicide, leaving a letter predicting that her mirror will now melt and promising great wealth from her ghost to whoever breaks the completed bell by ringing it. The account’s tragedy can be understood without treating the community’s supernatural explanation as a finding about her death.
A bell overwhelmed by its own promise
After her death the casting succeeds within the tale. Crowds then try to earn the promised reward. They strike the bell vigorously, ignoring the priests’ objections, but cannot break it. The noise continues until the priests dispose of it by rolling it downhill into a deep swamp. Hearn says the bell vanishes there and its legend remains. He does not describe a recovered bell, an inscription, an excavation or a later examination confirming its location.
The change from religious gift to speculative prize reverses the temple’s original purpose. The donor’s attachment prevented the offering from being wholehearted; the crowd’s attachment to wealth then prevents the finished instrument from serving peacefully. This connection is visible in the structure of Hearn’s narrative. It does not require an assumption that the metal actually behaved impossibly or that a ghost controlled the furnace.
When another object stands for the bell
The second part of Hearn’s chapter discusses nazoraëru: mentally treating one object or action as a substitute for another. His religious examples concern sincere intention, such as a modest offering made with the devotion that might otherwise build a temple, or turning a revolving library with the wish to read its Buddhist texts. He also places magical beliefs within the discussion. These passages explain the imaginative framework of the stories; they are not demonstrations that symbolic actions change physical events.
One example concerns Umégaë and Kajiwara Kagesue, travelling without sufficient money. Umégaë breaks a bronze basin while imagining it to be the missing bell and asks for three hundred gold ryō. Crucially, Hearn provides a human donor: another guest at their inn hears the commotion, asks what has happened and gives the requested sum. The story’s success therefore includes an act of generosity. It should not be retold as coins appearing inexplicably inside the basin.
Another man, a farmer near Mugenyama on the Ōigawa, tries to copy that success after dissipating his resources. He makes a clay bell, breaks it and demands wealth. A white-robed woman with loose hair appears and gives him a heavy covered jar. He takes it home, where he and his wife open it. Hearn deliberately refuses to tell his reader what fills the vessel. Any retelling that names its contents adds a detail absent from this text. The withheld ending turns an apparent supernatural reward into a joke at the greedy petitioner’s expense.
The mountain version is different
Kakegawa’s local legend collection instead describes a hermit’s bell placed in an old pine on Awagatake. Repeated ringing supposedly brought blessings and lasting wealth. The rush to reach it caused misfortune, and a cruel rich man’s attempt ends in punishment. In this version a priest eventually hides the bell at the bottom of a summit well. The account places those events in named ancient eras, but presents them as legend rather than contemporary documentary evidence.
Those differences are substantial. Hearn’s woman, donated mirror, foundry and swamp do not appear in the municipal origin story, while its hermit, pine and well do not supply Hearn’s ending. Both traditions connect the attraction of wealth with consequences for the seeker. Their agreement on that broad theme is evidence of a related cultural motif, not independent confirmation of a single supernatural incident.
Location, image and present access
The map uses an approximate Awagatake mountain reference near Kakegawa, rounded from the checked geographical record. It anchors the municipal version of the Mugen tradition. It does not identify Hearn’s foundry, swamp or private household, nor establish where a bell lies. Hearn’s opening “eight centuries ago” is a storyteller’s relative chronology; no calculated incident year has been assigned to it.
The lead image is a real Edo-period bronze mirror in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Its pine and cranes provide material context for decorated Japanese mirrors. It is not the woman’s heirloom, and its decoration should not be confused with the full pine-bamboo-plum motif described in the story.
Kakegawa’s current municipal visitor guidance confirms hiking access to Awagatake’s summit and Kapposhi Terrace. It warns about narrow roads and traffic restrictions and encourages able visitors to walk. Check that guidance and conditions before visiting. Public mountain access does not give permission to enter wells, disturb land or search for the legendary bell.
Assessment and source trail
The case is classified as Insufficient evidence. The sources support a substantial regional ghost-and-bell tradition, but provide no independently verified apparition or miraculous object. Hearn’s complete “Of a Mirror and a Bell” is the primary literary source reviewed here. The municipal tradition is a separate local retelling. Neither publication date is an incident date, and neither account is presented as proof of supernatural causation.
Visit Awagatake mountain, Kakegawa
Municipal tourism guidance confirms public hiking to the summit and Kapposhi Terrace. Check current conditions and traffic restrictions; the city warns of narrow roads and recommends hiking for able walkers. This does not authorise access to wells, excavation or private land.
Official visitor information → · Access information checked 2026-11-13. Check current opening and booking details before travelling.
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