Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

  So far he had written two eulogies. The first had been for young Lieutenant Shigeno, who died of appendicitis. Yasukichi had just started teaching then and barely knew the man by sight. But it was his debut in funeral oratory, and he had approached the task with some enthusiasm, turning elegant phrases in the lofty style of the Chinese masters. The second eulogy was for Lieutenant Kimura, who had accidentally drowned. Yasukichi had been commuting to the school with Lieutenant Kimura from the same seaside town, and so he was able to write an honest expression of grief. Lieutenant Honda, though, was just a face in the mess hall—and a vulture-like face at that. Yasukichi had lost all interest in the composition of eulogies, but now he had become Horikawa Yasukichi, Literary Mortician and Undertaker of the Spirit, with orders to bring the ceremonial lanterns and the artificial flowers at the right time on the right day of the right month. Cigarette dangling from his lips, Yasukichi began to sink into a state of melancholy.

  “Excuse me, Sir. Mr. Horikawa?”

  Yasukichi looked up, as if from a dream, to find Lieutenant Tanaka standing by his desk. The young lieutenant possessed an amiable face with a trim moustache and an opulent double chin.

  “Lieutenant Honda’s file, from Captain Fujita.” He laid a bound sheaf of lined paper on Yasukichi’s desk.

  “Oh, yes.” Yasukichi let his eyes drop to the lined paper. There, row after row of small square characters listed the dead man’s assignments and their dates. This was no mere curriculum vitae; it was a symbol of all the lives spent in bureaucracies, both civil and military.

  “And also, Sir, could I ask you to explain a word to me?—No, not seafaring lingo. Something I found in a novel.” Tanaka held out a scrap of paper with a single foreign word scratched on it in blue pencil. “Masochism.” Yasukichi’s eyes went from the paper to the Lieutenant’s boyish, rosy-cheeked face.

  “This? ‘Masochism’?”

  “Yes. I can’t seem to find it in a regular English–Japanese dictionary.”

  Sullenly, Yasukichi gave him the definition.

  “Is that what it means!”

  Lieutenant Tanaka’s beaming smile never faded. In Yasukichi’s present mood, nothing could be more irritating than this kind of self-satisfied grin. He was tempted to hurl every word from Krafft-Ebing into the Lieutenant’s happy face.

  “Now, this writer whose name the word comes from—Masoch,1 you said?—are his novels any good?”

  “No, they’re all terrible.”

  “He must have been an interesting person, at least.”

  “Masoch? Masoch was an idiot. He tried to convince his government to take money out of defense and put it into keeping whores.”

  Newly apprised of the idiocy of Masoch, Tanaka at last gave Yasukichi his freedom. The business about whore support was far from certain, of course; Masoch probably believed in national defense as well. But Yasukichi knew there was no other way he could impress the cheerful lieutenant with the stupidity of abnormal sexuality.

  Alone now, Yasukichi lit another cigarette and began roaming the office. True, he taught English, but that was not his real profession. Not to his mind, at least. His life’s work, he felt, was the creation of literature. Even after coming to this job, he had continued to publish at least one short story every two months. The current issue of a certain literary monthly contained the first half of the piece he was writing now, a recasting of the Saint Christopher legend in the style of the old Japanese Jesuit translations of Aesop.2 They wanted the second half from him for the next issue, and today was the seventh of the month, which meant the manuscript was due in— No, this was no time to be turning out eulogies. Yasukichi wrote with such painstaking care that he could work day and night and still not finish the story on time. He felt his resentment toward the eulogy beginning to mount.

  Just then the wall clock chimed for twelve-thirty, with much the same effect as the apple falling at Newton’s feet: Yasukichi realized that his class was still thirty minutes away; if he could finish the eulogy in that time, there would be no “A sad occasion brings us together today” to intrude on his more anguished creative labors. It would not be easy to lament the passing of Lieutenant Honda, “a man of innate brilliance,” “affectionate to his brothers and sisters,” in just thirty minutes; but to shrink from the task would mean that twelve centuries of pride in the riches of the native tongue, from Kakinomoto no Hitomaro to Mushanokoōji Saneatsu,3 was sheer braggadocio. In an instant, Yasukichi was at his desk and writing.

  The day of Lieutenant Honda’s funeral brought flawless autumn weather. Yasukichi, dressed in frock coat and silk hat, joined a dozen other teachers and civilian officials near the end of the procession. Some moments later he glanced around to find several important men walking behind him—Admiral Sasaki, the Headmaster; Captain Fujita; and the chief civilian teacher, Mr. Awano. Embarrassed, he gestured humbly to Captain Fujita just in back of him.

  “Pardon me, Captain. Please go ahead.”

  “No, that’s all right,” Captain Fujita said with an odd grin.

  Awano, a man with a trim moustache, had been talking to Admiral Sasaki. “You know, Horikawa,” he said to Yasukichi, “in Naval protocol, the higher the rank the farther back the position. You certainly wouldn’t come behind Captain Fujita.” Awano was smiling too, and Yasukichi thought for a moment that he might be joking. But, embarrassingly enough, there was the affable Lieutenant Tanaka far ahead in the procession. A few quick strides brought Yasukichi up alongside the young officer.

  “Lovely day. Have you just joined us?” Tanaka spoke with such good cheer he seemed more a wedding guest than a mourner.

  “No, I was back there.” Yasukichi explained his change of place, which brought a hearty laugh from Tanaka that seemed to threaten the dignity of the cortege.

  “Is this your first military funeral?”

  “No, I was at Lieutenant Shigeno’s and Lieutenant Kimura’s.”

  “Where did you march then?”

  “Way behind the Headmaster, of course.”

  “Oh, great—that made you an Admiral!”

  The procession had entered a poor neighborhood not far from the temple. Yasukichi went on talking with the Lieutenant, but he took careful note of the people who lined the route. Experienced funeral-watchers from childhood, they had developed an uncommon talent for estimating the cost of a procession. The funeral for the father of the mathematics teacher Kiriyama had come this way on the day before summer vacation. Beneath the eaves of one house had stood an old man dressed for the hot weather. Arms bare, shading his eyes with a fan, he cried out, “Aha! Fifteen yen for this one!” Perhaps today, too— but unfortunately there was no roadside talent today. One sight would stay with Yasukichi, however: an Ōmoto priest with an albino child—his own, it seemed—perched on his shoulders. Yasukichi toyed with the idea of one day writing a story about the townsfolk here. He could call it “Funerals.”4

  But Lieutenant Tanaka would not stop wagging his tongue. “I see you have a story out this month—‘Saint Christopher’ or something. I saw a review in this morning’s Jiji —or maybe it was the Yomiuri. I’ll show it to you later. It’s in my coat pocket.”

  “That won’t be necessary, thanks.”

  “You don’t write criticism, do you? That’s one thing I’d like to try my hand at, maybe write something on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. You know, the character of Hamlet is really…”

  Epiphany for Yasukichi: it was no accident that the world was full of critics.

  The cortege finally entered the grounds of the temple, which overlooked the sea. The calm surface of the water shone through the pine trees at the back of the temple grounds. This must have been a tranquil place ordinarily, but now it was swarming with the squad of cadets who had formed the vanguard of the procession. Yasukichi left his new patent-leather shoes at the entrance to the priests’ quarters and walked down a long, sunny corridor to the mourners’ section in an old chapel with new floor mats.

  The mourners were divided in
to two groups—the family in a row on one side, and the guests facing them. The old gentleman seated nearest the coffin at the head of the family row was probably Lieutenant Honda’s father. He had that same vulture like face, but his stark white hair made him look even more ferocious than the son. The young man in university-student uniform seated next to him was certainly Lieutenant Honda’s brother. The young lady in the third place was almost too good-looking to be the Lieutenant’s sister. Next to her— but no one else in the family had distinguishing characteristics.

  At the head of the guests’ front row was Admiral Sasaki, and next to him Captain Fujita. It was directly behind the Captain, in the second row of guests, that Yasukichi lowered the seat of his trousers to the mat—not in the formal position on his heels like the Headmaster and the Captain, but cross-legged to keep his legs from going numb.

  The sutra chanting began immediately. Just as he liked the old Shinnai style5 of singing, Yasukichi enjoyed the chanting of the different Buddhist sects. But the degeneracy of most Tokyo-area temples was sadly evident in even this most basic discipline. Long ago, it was said, the deities from Kimpusen, Kumano, and Sumiyoshi came to hear the High Priest Doōmyoō chanting the sutra in the garden of the Hoōrinji Temple.6 But with the arrival of American civilization, music of such ineffable beauty had departed this polluted world forever. And now the bespectacled chief priest—to say nothing of his four disciples—was reading off the Daibabon as if it were something he had memorized from a government-approved textbook.

  Soon the chanting ended and Admiral Sasaki approached the coffin. It rested in the entrance to this, the main chapel, facing the altar and covered in white figured satin. Before it stood a table decked with artificial lotus blossoms and flickering candles, among which lay cases holding Lieutenant Honda’s medals and ribbons. After a bow toward the coffin, Admiral Sasaki opened the formally inscribed text of the eulogy. This, of course, was the literary gem that Yasukichi had composed three days earlier. It contained nothing of which he need feel ashamed. Such sensitivities had been scraped away from him long ago, like the surface of an old razor strop. And yet it was hardly comforting for him to be cast in the role of author of the eulogy in this comedy of a funeral—worse still to have that fact thrust in his face. The Headmaster cleared his throat, and Yasukichi’s gaze dropped instantly to his knees.

  The Headmaster began to read in subdued tones. Beneath a delicate patina of experience, his voice surged with a pathos beyond description. It was unthinkable that he could be reading another man’s text. Yasukichi had to admire his acting ability. The hall was hushed, the mourners still. The Headmaster read on, the sorrow in his voice deepening—“a man of inborn brilliance, affectionate to his brothers and sisters”—when someone in the family group stifled a laugh. Once it started, it grew in volume. Yasukichi felt a rush of horror and strained to see past Captain Fujita’s shoulder. But what he had taken for desecrating laughter, he discovered, was in fact the sound of weeping.

  It was Lieutenant Honda’s sister. Half hidden beneath the swirls of an old-fashioned hairdo, the lovely young girl pressed her face into a silk handkerchief. The brother, too, so stolid-looking a moment ago, was now sniffling and fighting back his tears. The father quietly blew his nose in one tissue after another. Yasukichi’s first reaction to this scene was one of surprise. Then came the satisfaction of the playwright who has succeeded in wringing tears from his audience. But in the end he felt an emotion of far greater magnitude: a bitter self-reproach, a sense of wrongdoing for which there could be no penitence. All unknowing, he had tramped with muddy feet into the sacred recesses of the human heart. Yasukichi hung his head for the first time in the hour-long course of the funeral…. You, Lieutenant Honda’s family, could not know that this English instructor even existed. But in Yasukichi’s heart a Raskolnikov in clown’s costume has been kneeling in the muddy roadway these eight long years, begging your forgiveness.

  The sun was setting as Yasukichi stepped from the train and started down the back street that led to his lodging on the shore. Woven bamboo fences, a mark of this resort town, formed continuous walls down either side of the narrow lane. Moist sand clung to the soles of Yasukichi’s shoes. A fog seemed to be closing in. Clumps of pine beyond the fences revealed patches of evening sky and released a light scent of resin into the air. Yasukichi hung his head and trudged toward the ocean, oblivious to the tranquil scene.

  He had met Captain Fujita as they were leaving the temple. The captain congratulated him on the excellence of his eulogy. Particularly appropriate to the death of Lieutenant Honda, he said, was the phrase “a swift and glorious end, like the shattering of a precious stone.” After the sight of the family in tears, this praise for his use of a military cliché was enough to reduce Yasukichi to despair. But there had been more. The ever-amiable Lieutenant Tanaka took the train with Yasukichi and showed him the Yomiuri review of his story by the then-fashionable critic N. After a thorough panning of the piece, N delivered the coup de grâce to Yasukichi himself: “The last thing we need in the literary world is the spare-time jottings of a Navy school teacher!”

  The eulogy he wrote in less than half an hour evoked that amazing response, while the story he had spent endless evenings polishing by lamplight produced not a fraction of the effect he hoped for. Yasukichi retained the composure to laugh off N’s critique, but his current situation was not something he could dismiss with a laugh. His eulogies worked, his stories failed miserably: it was funny for everyone but Yasukichi himself. When would Fate be kind enough to ring down the curtain on this sad comedy?

  Yasukichi glanced up. Pine boughs stretched across the empty sky, and in them hung a copper-colored moon devoid of radiance. As he stood looking at the moon, Yasukichi felt the urge to urinate. The lane was hushed and empty, enclosed on either side by the bamboo fences. Aiming at the base of the right-hand fence, Yasukichi enjoyed a long, lonely pee.

  He was still at it when the fence creaked and began to pull away from him. What he had thought to be a section of the fence was in fact a gate. And through it strode a man with a moustache. Unable to stop himself, Yasukichi turned aside as discreetly as he could.

  “Oh, no,” the man sighed, as if dismay itself had become a human voice. When he heard this, Yasukichi discovered that the sun was too far down for him to see his own stream.

  (March 1924)

  THE BABY’S SICKNESS

  Natsume Sensei looked at the calligraphic scroll and muttered as if to himself, “It’s a Kyokusō.” He was right: the seal was Kyokusō’s. I said to the Sensei, “Kyokusō was Ensō’s grandson, wasn’t he? What was the name of Ensō’s son, I wonder?” He answered, “Musō,1 probably.”

  Then I woke up. The light from the next room was shining into the mosquito net. My wife seemed to be changing the diaper of our seven-month-old baby boy, who was crying the whole time. I turned my back to them and tried to get more sleep.

  I heard my wife say, “No, Taka,2 I don’t want you to get sick again.”

  “Is something wrong with him?” I asked.

  “I think his stomach is a little funny.”

  This baby tended to get sick much more often than our older boy; I felt both worried and ready to ignore it as more of the same.

  “Have Dr. S3 look at him tomorrow,” I said.

  “I was thinking of calling the doctor now.”

  When the baby stopped crying, I went back to a sound sleep.

  I still remembered my dream when I woke in the morning. I suspected that “Ensō” was Hirose Ensō, but Kyokusō and Musō were probably imaginary. Come to think of it, there was a storyteller named Nansō. I thought about these “-sō” names more than I did about the baby’s sickness, but that started to change when my wife came home from Dr. S’s.

  “Another upset stomach, he says. He’ll come to look at him later.” She spoke almost angrily, cradling the baby in one arm.

  “Fever?”

  “Just a little. 37.6. But he didn’t have any l
ast night.”

  I went up to my study and set to work. As usual, I made little progress, not necessarily because of the baby’s sickness. Soon a hot, steamy rain began to fall, rustling the trees in the garden. With my half-written story lying on the desk before me, I smoked one cigarette after another.

  Dr. S came once before noon and once more in the evening. On his second visit he gave Takashi an enema. Takashi stared hard at the light bulb while this was being done to him. The liquid of the enema soon washed a thin blackish mucus out of him. I felt as if I were looking at his very illness.

  “How’s he going to do, Doctor?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Just don’t stop icing his forehead. And don’t hold him too much.”

  With that advice, the doctor left.

  I continued working into the night and finally got to bed around one in the morning. Coming out of the toilet just before that, I heard a knocking sound in the pitch-dark kitchen.

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me.” The voice belonged to my mother.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Cracking ice.”

  Embarrassed at my own stupidity, I said, “Why don’t you turn the light on?”

  “Don’t worry. I can do it by touch.”

  I ignored this and switched the light on. She looked as if she had just crawled out of bed, her rumpled sleeping gown held closed by a slim sash. No wonder she had wanted the light off: this was no way to be seen, even at home. She was clumsily smashing ice with a hammer. The electric light glinted off the sharp water-washed angles of the smashed ice.

  By morning, however, Takashi’s fever had climbed to just over 39. Dr. S came before noon and gave him another enema. I helped him with the job, hoping to see less mucus this time. When he withdrew the nozzle, however, much more mucus came with it than the night before.