Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

  6. Five Levels of Rebirth… Ryūgaiji temple gate: In Buddhism, the five graduated realms to which the dead proceed depending on their virtue in past lives: heaven, human, animal, hungry ghost, hell. Ryūgaiji is a temple near Nara (see “Dragon: The Potter’s Tale”).

  7. Monju: Sanskrit: Manjusri, bodhisattva of wisdom.

  8. a fox spirit: Japan is particularly rich in folklore about foxes as spiritual creatures with both threatening and nurturing aspects. See Karen A. Smyers, The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998).

  9. the Five Virtues: The five Confucian virtues: benevolence, justice, courtesy, wisdom, and fidelity.

  DR. OGATA RYŌ SAI: MEMORANDUM (Ogata Ryō sai oboegaki)

  Portuguese Jesuits arrived in Japan in 1549, and edicts forbidding the practice of Christianity were issued as early as 1587. The story is set in 1620 (the year of the Monkey), when the Tokugawa government was still observing adherents for signs of subversive activity, and foreign missionaries were not yet being jailed and executed. After the martyrdom of fifty-one Christians in 1622, the government would move against the foreign religion with increasing severity, all but obliterating it in 1638 with the suppression of the Christian-inspired Shimabara Rebellion (see headnote to “O-Gin”). One favored technique for ascertaining an apostate’s sincerity was to have the person tread upon a holy image such as a picture of the virgin or a cross. The place is a remote village in the Province of Iyo at the western end of the island of Shikoku, far from such active Christian (Kirishitan) centers as Shimabara and Nagasaki on the island of Kyushu. Dr. Ogata Ryōsai is a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, in which the taking of the pulse was (and is) a major diagnostic tool.

  1. Bateren: From the Portuguese “Padre.”

  2. Deus Come Thus: Deusu-Nyorai, an amalgam of Japanized Latin and an honorific suffix for the Buddha. The combined term was used by Portuguese missionaries to give the foreign word “Deus” a familiar religious cachet. The Buddha is sometimes referred to as one who has “come thus” from the world of truth to save all sentient beings in the world of illusion.

  3. the people of our village: Murakata normally means the three peasant-class officials of a village (headman, assistant headman, and peasants’ representative), but here and in the crowd scene below, Akutagawa seems to be using it to refer to villagers in general.

  4. the hour of the hare: 6:00 a.m.

  5. pillow to the south: In Buddhism, the dead before cremation are laid out with the head pointing north; the living try to avoid this inauspicious position.

  6. cold damage disorder: Shōkan, the equivalent in Chinese medicine of typhoid fever.

  7. the hour of the dragon: I.e. close to 9:00 a.m.

  8. the red-hairs: “Red-hair” (kōmōjin) originally meant Dutchman as opposed to a Portuguese, but came to designate all foreigners in Japan during the Edo Period.

  9. iruman… kohisan: Both from the Portuguese: irmão, a missionary next in rank to a Bateren, and confissão, confession.

  O-GIN (O-Gin)

  The historical periods mentioned in the opening line, Genna (1615–24) and Kan’ei (1624–44), came near the beginning of the relatively peaceful Tokugawa Period, during which Christianity was suppressed as a destabilizing force (see headnote to “Dr. Ogata Ryōsai”). The Catholic Church officially recognized 3,125 martyrdoms in Japan between 1597 and 1660(Edwin O. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank, East Asia: The Great Tradition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), p. 597), but the smashing of the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–8 marked the virtual end of the “teachings of the Heavenly Lord” in Japan. The events in “O-Gin” take place shortly before the rebellion and are set some fifteen miles to the west of Shimabara, in Urakami, a district just north of the city of Nagasaki, where the secret practice was especially strong. (In modern times, after Urakami was absorbed by the city and Christianity ceased to be an outlaw religion, an impressive cathedral was built there, only to be destroyed, along with hundreds of Japanese Catholics, by the atomic bomb. The community has survived in the area, however, and the cathedral was rebuilt in 1959.)

  Akutagawa takes most of his doctrinal language from Dochirina-Kirishitan, a book of Christian dialogues published in Nagasaki in 1600 for the propagation of the faith. Having learned their Catholicism from Portuguese missionaries, the secret Christians of the Tokugawa Period frequently used religious terms that were accurate neither as Portuguese (or Latin or Hebrew) nor as Japanese, and this is reflected in the translation. “Amen,” for example, appears as “Ammei,” and “Inferno” as “Inherno.” The “g” of “O-Gin” is hard, as in “gingham.”

  1. San Jo-an Batista… Miguel–Yahei: St. John the Baptist. Believers often took Christian names which they linked with their Japanese personal names.

  2. Jean Crasset… Amida: Jean Crasset (1618–92) wrote the two-volume Histoire de l’église du Japon in 1689. Akutagawa paraphrases the opening passage of the Japanese translation of Volume 1, an edition commissioned by the Japanese government in 1878 (an English translation appeared in 1705–7). Shakyamuni lived about a thousand years before Japan received Buddhism from China (see “The Spider Thread,” note 1). He never preached outside the Indian subcontinent, and the worship of Amida (Sanskrit: Amitabha), which was such a widespread hindrance to the spread of Christianity in Japan, was a much later elaboration of Buddhist doctrine.

  LOYALTY (Chūgi)

  This story is based on an actual event that occurred in 1747 (the fourth year of the Enkyō Period), about a century and a half into the long rule of the Tokugawa family. From the time of family founder Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616), the Tokugawa Shōgun was the de facto ruler of Japan. He received his title from the Emperor, who was little more than a ceremonial figurehead. The Tokugawas ruled from their huge castle (called simply “the Castle”) in the new capital, Edo (modern Tokyo), while the Emperor remained in Kyoto.

  Under the Tokugawa system of “centralized feudalism,” a feudal lord’s importance was indicated by the amount of rice produced in his domain, as measured in a unit called the koku (180.30 liters/4. 96 bushels). A “Great Lord” (daimyō) had lands that produced at least 10,000 koku, while the most important of those had over 1,000,000 and the Tokugawa Shōgun himself had some 7,000,000. The House of Itakura had an income of 30,000 koku, but Itakura Shuri (1725– 47), the central character of “Loyalty,” was head of a minor Itakura branch family earning only 7,000 koku. As one of approximately 5,000 “bannermen” (hatamoto) of the Tokugawa, Shuri was permitted to come into the presence of the Shōgunon certain formal occasions. Although he is certainly a “lord and master” to those who serve him, his status is much lower than those normally associated with the title “lord.”

  Readers might at first find daunting the large number of names in “Loyalty,” but to follow the action one need keep track of only four characters plus another who enters near the end of the story:

  Shuri: The central character, 22-year-old head of his branch of the Itakura family; he is best known for the events recounted in this story.

  Rin’emon: The “House Elder” assigned by the Itakura main family to watch over Shuri.

  Sado-no-kami: Head of a more important branch of the Itakura family and currently serving as a “Junior Councilor” to the Shōgun.

  Usaemon: Shuri’s old tutor and second “House Elder” called to replace Rin’emon.

  Etchū-no-kami (Munenori, Hosokawa Etchū): A “Great Lord” of the immensely wealthy Hosokawa family.

  The names of other characters can be enjoyed—or at least tolerated—as a sort of background music. One of the best stylistic features of fiction about the samurai—in the original—is their wonderfully resonant names. The following information is provided for those who desire to know more about samurai names, but it is not necessary in order to follow the story.

  Like Mori Ōgai, that other great modern writer who created stirring fictional narratives ab
out actual Tokugawa Period samurai, Akutagawa lards his prose with more of these evocative names than are necessary to the plot. At one point, for example, he gives the names of the lowly foot patrolmen who rush to the scene of the crime. For a Japanese reader, these names give the text a special sense of being anchored in reality: each such name is a string of Chinese characters that suggest imposing architectural structures—castle gates, guard houses—and the armed men who actually populated them. The formality of the style reflects the formality of this privileged stratum of society when samurai were more bureaucrats than warriors, engaged more in documentation than swordplay.

  A warrior usually has three names: a family name, a rank designation of some kind, and finally a personal name, each ringing with pride and tradition—and with the constraints on the individual that such tradition imposes. The full name of Shuri, for example, is Itakura Shuri Katsukane. This tells us that he is of the noble Itakura lineage; that he has been granted a modest title by the imperial court naming him a palace repairs officer (which of course he was not: “Shuri” was strictly ceremonial); and that he has a personal name, Katsukane, which echoes those of the many other Itakura men with katsu (“victory”) in their names, including the deified clan progenitor, Itakura Shirōzaemon Katsushige (1545–1624).

  Another important character, Itakura Sado-no-kami Katsukiyo, has a far more impressive “middle name” than Shuri’s. It tells us that the imperial court has made him titular “Governor of Sado” in keeping with an income that is more than four times larger than his cousin Shuri’s.

  Likewise, Etchū-no-kami is the titular “Governor of Etchū,” and his income was nearly twenty times the size of Sado-no-kami’s. Etchūno-kami is sometimes called by that title and sometimes by his personal name, Munenori; at one point he also uses his surname when he identifies himself as Hosokawa Etchū. Use of the rank name, when there is one, tends to be more respectful (one thinks of the lords in Macbeth referring to each other by their domain names), the personal name more intimate. The choice was often a matter of personal preference.

  1. Maejima Rin’emon… Itakura Shikibu: No dates are available for the character identified as Maejima Rin’emon in Akutagawa’s immediate source but as Noguchi Bun’emon in earlier source material. See Takahashi Keiichi, “Itakura Shuri no ninjō,” in Kokugo to kokubungaku 73:5 (May 1996), pp. 73–84. At the age of nine, Itakura Shikibu Katsutsugu (1735–65) became the sixth-generation head of the Itakura family and fourth-generation lord of Fukushima Castle. Decisions in his name as a minor at the time of the story were actually made by a senior retainer.

  2. Ōkubo Hikoza: (Or Tadataka, or Hikozaemon) (1560–1639) served the first three Tokugawa Shōguns with legendary dedication.

  3. Hotta–Inaba clash: Even drawing a sword inside the Castle precincts could be punished with death. The killing of Hotta by Inaba in the Castle had occurred in 1684. Still closer to hand and even more sensational had been the events behind the famous tale of The 47 Loyal Retainers, which started in 1701 when a slighted lord drew his sword in the Castle and wounded his opponent. He was forced to commit seppuku (hara-kiri) and his domain was confiscated. See Donald Keene, Chūshingura (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971).

  4. Mencius: The Chinese philosopher Mencius (372–289 BC) was not a believer in unswerving loyalty but taught, rather, that a ruler should be replaced if he failed to heed proper advice.

  5. Military Governor: The Shoshidai kept an eye on the doings of the Imperial Household and the aristocratic families of Kyoto for the Shōgun to help ensure that they would remain politically harmless. He also wielded more general police and judicial powers. Matazaemon (1586–1656) held the post for more than thirty years. Mondo Shigemasa (1588–1638).

  6. the nineteenth year of Keichō: 1614–15. The Tokugawa forces failed to take the Castle then and concluded a peace treaty, but they attacked again, successfully, the following summer.

  7. siege of Amakusa: 1637–8. Amakusa was a Christian stronghold crushed as part of the Shimabara Rebellion (see headnote to “O-Gin”).

  8. Junior Councilor: Three to five Junior Councilors (wakadoshiyori) served on a monthly rotating basis below the Senior Councilors (rōjū) and overseeing “bannermen” such as Shuri. Itakura Katsukiyo (1706–80).

  9. Usaemon: No dates are available for this character, who is identified as Katō Usaemon in both Akutagawa’s immediate source and earlier source material. See Takahashi, “Itakura Shuri no ninjō.”

  10. His Sequestered Lordship of the Western Enclosure: The grandiloquent title (Nishimaru no ōgosho-sama) for the retired (but still powerful) eighth Tokugawa Shōgun, Yoshimune (1684– 1751; ruled 1716–45).

  11. the fifth hour of the morning… Munenori: 8a.m. One of Akutagawa’s sources had the personal name of Shuri’s victim wrong: it should be Munetaka (1716–1747), who had a huge domain of 540,000 koku.

  12. the General’s Star: In Chinese astrology, a reddish star in the Andromeda galaxy thought to be shaped like a general in battle gear.

  13. Kyōgen: Short comic plays performed between the more somber works of the Nō theatre.

  14. Tashiro Yūetsu: A Buddhist attendant dressed like a priest and took a priestly personal name (“Yūetsu”) but did not actually take the tonsure and retained his “worldly” surname (“Tashiro”). Many of the great lords kept such low-ranking samurai on stipend as advisors in the tea ceremony and other aesthetic and religious matters. The Akutagawas were of such a lineage.

  15. cutting his hair: Perhaps as a sign of religious atonement, as in taking the tonsure.

  16. Mizuno Hayato-no-shō: This incident occurred in 1725. The victim recovered from his severe wounds. The attacker and his family were punished by confiscation of their considerable holdings (70,000 koku), but the family was allowed to keep its name. Altogether, there were seven such armed attacks in Edo Castle during the Tokugawas’ two and a half centuries of rule.

  THE STORY OF A HEAD THAT FELL OFF (Kubi ga ochita hanashi)

  The Sino-Japanese War (1894–5), fought over control of Korea, was Japan’s first foreign war in modern times. Japan succeeded in capturing the valuable Liaodong Peninsula from China but was soon forced to give it back by the “Triple Intervention” of Russia, Germany and France, which laid the groundwork for the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5). The central character of this story, He Xiao-er (Kashōji in Japanese), is a Chinese soldier caught in the first struggle for Liaodong. The translation omits most mentions of the surname to avoid confusion with the English pronoun.

  1. Empress Dowager:Cixi(1835–1908), the powerful “Last Empress” of China.

  2. Strange Tales of Liaozhai: The collection of supernatural tales is Liao zhai zhi yi by Pu Songling (1640–1715), which has been partially rendered into English as Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, tr. John Minford (London: Penguin Books, 2006), and Strange Tales of Liaozhai. Story 72, “A Final Joke” (in Minford’s edition), tells how a certain man named Jia literally laughed his head off many years after receiving a near-fatal wound. It gave Akutagawa the idea for this story (IARZ 3:394).

  GREEN ONIONS (Negi)

  1. Takehisa Yumeji’s illustrations: Painter, poet, and graphic designer Takehisa Yumeji (1884–1934) was one of the most sought-after illustrators of fictional works of his day, specializing in tall, slim beauties projecting a dreamy, elegiac mood.

  2. Miss Mary Pickford: “Green Onions” appeared in 1920, four years before Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s novel Chijin no ai (translated by Anthony Chambers as Naomi (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985)), with its waitress-heroine who resembles the screen star Mary Pickford (1892–1979).

  3. naniwa-bushi, eat mitsu-mame:The naniwa-bushi style of chanting with stringed accompaniment was oral literature for the semiliterate, recounting rousing tales based on old-fashioned plots that pitted duty against personal desire; mitsu-mame is an equally plebeian and old-fashioned dessert of sweet beans and agar-agar cubes in thick syrup, rather like Western canned mixed fruit.

 
; 4. The Cuckoo… in the Valley: All but the last could be ranked as sentimental or melodramatic works appealing to popular taste, though in O-Kimi’s eyes their Western and modern elements would certainly place them above the pre-modern plebeian preferences of O-Matsu: Tokutomi Roka (1868–1927), Hototogisu (1900), tr. Sakae Shioya and E. F. Edgett, as Nami-ko: A Realistic Novel (Tokyo: Yurakusha, 1905)—see also note 7 and “Daidōji Shinsuke: The Early Years”; Shimazaki Tōson, Tō son shishū (1904) and see “The Life of a Stupid Man,” Section 46(and note 27); Akita Ujaku (1883–1962) et al., Matsui Sumako no isshō (1919), biography of the life and loves of a notoriously “liberated” actress; Okamoto Kidō (1872–1939), Shin-Asagao nikki (1912), a modern version of an 1832 puppet play; Prosper Mérimée, “Carmen” (1845), the story upon which the Bizet opera was based; Takai yama kara tanizoko mireba (possibly just an echo of a line from a popular song of 1870) has not been identified (IARZ 5:340).

  5. Kaburagi Kiyokata: Major figure (1878–1927) in the selfconsciously nativist modern Nihonga (literally, “Japan picture”) movement, which distinguished itself from Western oil painting by use of watercolors on paper and silk. Kaburagi was noted for his portraits of traditional beauties, of which Genroku Woman was representative. The Genroku Period (1688–1704), saw a flowering of arts produced for an audience of commoners—woodblock prints, Kabuki drama, the puppet theater, etc.

  6. Kitamura Shikai: Modern pioneer (1871–1927) in marble sculpture. His Eve (1915) is owned by the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art. Akutagawa wrote to a friend in 1915 that he found one of Kitamura’s works (not Eve) just as “stupid” and “unbearable” as most of the other sculptures in an art show he had attended (IARZ 5:340).