TUN-HUANG

by Yasushi Inoue

  The luminous, gentle tone of these passages is central to Inoue’s art. Leon Picon, in his 1965 introduction to The Counterfeiter and Other Stories, says that “Human pathos and suffering, loneliness and isolation, Oriental fatalism and Buddhistic concepts of predestination form dominant strands in the fabric of virtually all of the writing of Yasushi Inoue,” and while I can’t exactly disagree, I am certainly dissatisfied with the dated clichés, and suspicious of the capitalized Orientalisms on display here. The note in The Shōwa Anthology is surely closer to the center of the truth, characterizing Inoue’s work as “the examination of the faintest ripples of cultural interchange between Japan and the outside world, ripples often created by lonely individuals who remain essentially nameless and faceless in the annals of official history.” I would say—aware that my own reflections will no doubt seem time bound and off-key in a few decades, not to mention the centuries that are Inoue’s usual time scale—that Inoue’s great theme, spanning his historical, contemporary, and autobiographical works, is how the life you lead is not your real life. What we think of as our personal struggles—our decisions, desires, deliberations, the choices we make and the things we do—are less real, less to be trusted, and perhaps ultimately less important than the wider forces of historical destiny or the cultural past or the way we started to feel as a child, or simply the fact that other people are not who we think they are, and nor are we.

  The challenge of any historical fiction—especially a book structured like this one, leading up to an important historical event that readers know about before they begin—is how to make the story nonetheless feel like life. (If there is anything essential to the experience of living your life, it is that you don’t know what will happen next.) Near the end of the book, transporting the library of scrolls to the cave, Hsing-te looks at “the sight of sixty large [camels], each loaded down with scrolls and documents, advancing across the moon-bathed desert,” and finds “something moving” about the vision, though he “could not define why it was so. He wondered whether it might be that he had been wandering around the frontier regions for years just for this night.” In a certain literal sense, he’s right: Inoue did build a whole book of Hsing-te’s wanderings just to get him to that night. Yet somehow Hsing-te and history itself have kept their freedom, their feeling of choice and drift and life, throughout this remarkable novel.

  — DAMION SEARLS

  1The Counterfeiter and Other Stories (Tuttle, 1965), p. 9; Tun-huang, p. xxii, below; The Roof Tile of Tempyō (University of Tokyo Press, 1975), p. xvi; The Shōwa Anthology: Modern Japanese Short Stories (Kodansha International, 1985), p. 247.

  2Schwarze Flut, translated by Otto Putz (Suhrkamp, 2000), quotations from pp. 21 and 176; my translation from German.

  3“Les roseaux,” in Combat de taureaux: nouvelles, translated by Catherine Ancelot (Stock, 1997), p. 179; my translation from French.

  4James T. Araki, translator’s introduction to The Roof Tile of Tempyō, p. xiv. Apparently, Inoue was allowed to return to Japan due to athlete’s foot. On November 2, 2009, the Chinese People’s Daily Online reported that Inoue’s wartime diaries had been discovered in his widow’s house after her death, but there does not seem to be any other information available about his wartime activities.

  5“Briefan Iasushi Inoue,” dated March 14,1988, in Langsam im Schatten (Suhrkamp, 1992), pp. 62–63, quotation from p. 62; my translation.

  6 The story can be found in The Shōwa Anthology, translated by Stephen W. Kohl, pp. 246–68, quotations from pp. 254–55 and 268.

  7 My thanks to Jonathan Lipman, Professor of Asian Studies at Mount Holyoke College, for the historical information in this paragraph.

  AUTHOR’S PREFACE

  The novel Tun-huang was originally published in 1959 as a five-part serial in the literary magazine Gunzo. Although nearly twenty years have passed since then, I still have not set foot in Kansu Province, China, the setting of the novel. Moreover, not a single contemporary Japanese scholar has ever been to Tun-huang, although in Japan scholarly interest in that city has been so great since the Meiji era (1868–1912) that the term “Tun-huang studies” has come into common use in academic circles.

  Last year, in 1977, I journeyed very near: I had the opportunity to visit Sinkiang (called Hsi-yü in ancient times), the Uighur autonomous region bordering Kansu Province. I could not travel to Tun-huang then, but I may soon have that chance through the generosity of officials of the People’s Republic of China.

  Be that as it may, the novel was written without my ever having been to Tun-huang or the Thousand Buddha Caves. It is possible, indeed, that it was written precisely because I had not been there. Logically, this might seem a paradox. It would seem one ought to see the place about which one writes a novel, but inspirationally, it is in fact a different matter.

  From the time I was a student I have enjoyed reading works on Central Asia, and over the years I have developed compelling mental pictures of each of the several walled cities west of the Yellow River that collectively served as the gateway to that vast desertland. Even today, those mental pictures created entirely out of what I read—images of the walled cities and the desert which I kept so long in my mind’s eye—have a strangely solid reality for me. I suppose the only way I could finally separate fantasy from reality would be to travel to that area. Yet if ever I go there, I anticipate no need for major revisions of my conceptions: my long-held vision of the Takla Makan Desert needed little revision after my trip to Sinkiang last year.

  That vision rose out of lines in ancient chronicles such as these:

  “Not a single bird in the sky

  Nor a beast roaming the land”

  (Fa-hsien, dates unknown)

  and these:

  “Bones of men and beasts

  Merely serve as guideposts on our journey”

  (Fa-hsien)

  and from lines in Hsüan-tsang Tripitaka (602–64) that evoke images of ruins half-buried in sand:

  “The walled city stands stolidly,

  No trace of smoke from homes remains.”

  I have long known from my student readings of the enormous quantity of priceless documents relevant to world cultural history discovered by Sir Aurel Stein, Paul Pelliot, and the Japanese expedition led by Kozui Otani in one of the Thousand Buddha Caves at Tun-huang. The questions I pondered in those days were: When were the documents hidden in the cave, and why so many? What forces impelled their concealment? There was no historical account to answer these questions, and no historian came forth with an opinion.

  Some time after I became a writer, the questions I had contemplated as a student and set aside somewhere in my mind returned to me clearly and without conscious effort as likely material for a novel. I started preparing for this novel in 1953, and for the next five years I searched through history books and other works of literature. As I look back now, that was a very satisfying time for me.

  When were the ancient documents hidden in the cave? I learned that the most recent of them was dated Jen Tsung (1023–63) of the Sung dynasty. Judging from that, I could only assume that some sort of political and social upheaval occurred at about that time. (I was not alone in this assumption; it was shared by certain historians.) But then, what sort of upheaval? And why did it take place? The only reasonable answer was an invasion from outside. And speaking of invasion, what figures occupied center stage in that area at that time? The Hsi-hsia. It seemed logical, then, that the concealment was related to the Hsi-hsia conquest of Sha-chou and Kua-chou and the overthrow of Ts’ao, the powerful administrator of the western frontier territories. Finally, the content of the documents strongly suggested that the person who hid them was either a member of a religious order or a government official.

  I experienced extreme difficulty not only in ascertaining the personality of the politically powerful viceroy of Kuachou, but in the general task of reconstructing the history of the region. Of necessity I turned to the Sung History (T’ot’o, et al., 1313�
�55) for many relevant facts. But for the crucial ten years following 1026, I drew a complete historical blank. In the end, I resolved to fill the gap left by the historians with a novel. Tun-huang fits exactly into the space provided by their silence. However, the theme in the novel of the hero failing in his examination and his subsequent impressment into service for the Hsi-hsia is no mere plot device. Actual records exist which chronicle the fact that the Hsi-hsia kept a sharp eye out for bright young men who failed the civil service examination and enlisted them as government advisers.

  It was in San Francisco in 1964 that I first met Jean Moy, translator of Tun-huang. I was then in the United States at the invitation of the State Department to do research for my novel The Ocean (Wadatsumi), and she had already started on the translation of Tun-huang. Fourteen years have gone by since then, and I am very pleased that Tun-huang is now to be published in English by Kodansha International, Ltd.

  I would like to end this note with an expression of gratitude to Jean Moy for her many years of hard work.

  YASUSHI INOUE

  INTRODUCTION

  The walled city of Tun-huang (Sha-chou) was an outpost on the northwestern frontier, whose importance was due primarily to its location for it was a military base on the Silk Road connecting China with Central Asia and the Western world. More recently it has attracted attention because of its proximity to the Thousand Buddha Caves. The recorded history of Tun-huang dates back to the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220), when a governor was dispatched to this frontier post by the Chinese emperor. Thereafter, owing to the vacillating fortunes of a succession of Chinese rulers, the incompetence of the Chinese court, and the insurgence of various local tribes, the city changed hands many times.

  The novel Tun-huang is set in the eleventh century, just before the city was wrested from Chinese hands by the Tangut tribe known as the Hsi-hsia. Although the Hsi-hsia officially declared vassalage to Sung China, its leaders frequently took advantage of China’s political and military impotence to wage local wars of conquest. By the time the novel begins, the Hsi-hsia tribe had overrun great portions of the western territories, had established its own capital, and had even developed its own writing system. Since Buddhism was the official Hsi-hsia religion, the Thousand Buddha Caves just outside Tun-huang were restored with the Hsi-hsia conquest in 1036, after years of neglect.

  In 1127, the Hsi-hsia in turn were overthrown by the Mongols. The caves, however, retained their importance as a religious site for several centuries more: the murals in the caves date back to the Yüan (1271–1368) and Ming (1364–1644) dynasties. The site fell into general neglect during the late Ming era and lay buried in the desert sands for many years.

  At the time of the Hsi-hsia invasion, some person or persons unknown chose one of the caves as a hiding-place for thousands of Buddhist sutras and other manuscripts. These exquisite writings lay concealed for nine centuries until their discovery by an itinerant monk early in the twentieth century. Through the aid of that man, thousands of scrolls and other documents were recovered by archaeologists Paul Pelliot (1878–1945) of France, Sir Aurel Stein (1862–1943) of Britain, Kozui Otani (1876–1948) of Japan, and S. F. Oldenburg (1863–1934) of Russia. These scholars subsequently astonished the academic world with the revelation of the vast cultural and historical significance of the find. Tun-huang deals with the circumstances surrounding the concealment of the remarkable cache.

  The story begins in 1026. The main character, Chao Hsing-te, has gone to K’ai-feng to take his Palace Examination. He falls asleep while awaiting his turn for his oral examination and thereby loses his opportunity to take the test. He wanders about the city in despair until he comes upon a Hsi-hsia woman who is being sold in the marketplace. He is drawn by her intrepid spirit in the face of adversity; indeed, his interest in the country of Hsi-hsia itself is aroused by the woman, who to him symbolizes the spirit of the newly founded country. This is the first of two chance meetings—both with women—that will decide his fate.

  From K’ai-feng he goes forth to the western territories and is pressed into the Hsi-hsia vanguard, a unit composed of Chinese mercenaries. Chu Wang-li, commander of the unit, is impressed with Hsing-te’s educational attainments and his valor in battle, and gradually places trust in him and gives him increasing responsibility. Eventually, Hsing-te asks to be sent to Hsing-ch’ing to learn Hsi-hsia writing. There he becomes one of the creators of the Hsi-hsia—Chinese dictionary and, moreover, his interest in Buddhism is awakened. Before his departure, however, during his unit’s invasion of Kan-chou, he had met and fallen in love with a young Uighur princess to whom he promises to return. During his absence in Hsing-ch’ing, the princess is forcibly taken as a concubine by the Hsi-hsia ruler. She throws herself from the city wall to prove her loyalty to Hsing-te. When he learns of her death, he vows to devote the rest of his life to copying Buddhist sutras for the repose of her soul.

  One of the major characters is the Chinese commander Chu Wang-li, an indomitable warrior, who for years has fought for the Hsi-hsia army. His destiny, too, is determined by an encounter with the beautiful Uighur princess loved by Hsing-te. Although the princess appears but briefly and dies halfway through the story, her lingering influence on the two soldiers forms a central focus of the novel. The circumstances of her suicide arouse such rage and desire for revenge in Chu Wang-li that he casts all discretion aside and revolts against the Hsi-hsia emperor. This revolt brings about Wang-li’s destruction and moves Hsing-te finally to conceal the valuable scrolls in one of the Thousand Buddha Caves.

  Two interesting secondary characters are Wei-ch’ih Kuang and Ts’ao Yen-hui. Kuang is a young man of royal birth reduced to the roles of traveling merchant and highwayman; Yen-hui is a devout Buddhist. Kuang is totally absorbed in making a profit and is oblivious to the rise and fall of tribes around him. His belief in his own invincibility never falters. Even as the death struggle between Wang-li and the Hsi-hsia army rages in the east and the Muslims invade from the west, he attempts to turn the situation to his advantage. Hsing-te plays upon this avarice to persuade Kuang to transport the sutras to the Tun-huang cave. To the dauntless spirit and single-mindedness of the renegade Kuang, Yen-hui’s nihilism and religious fervor afford at once a dramatic contrast and a complement.

  Tun-huang is not a historical novel in the conventional sense. The true hero of the story is Tun-huang itself, which kept its secret for nine centuries. Despite many battles and other lively scenes of human activity, a deep sense of loneliness and sadness permeates the book. Its theme is essentially the passage of time and the sweep of history. Published in 1959, Tun-huang was awarded the Mainichi Prize the following year.

  JEAN ODA MOY

  CHAPTER I

  In the spring of 1026 Chao Hsing-te arrived in the Sung capital of K’ai-feng from his provincial home in Hunan, to sit for the Palace Examination.

  At this time government bureaucracy was all-powerful. To control the military, official policy had for some time been to place civil servants in key positions. Civil servants were also dispatched to sensitive posts in the army. Those who wished to succeed sought their goal by study, and success lay in passing the civil service examination held every three years.

  Emperor Chen Tsung had personally written a poem to impress upon his subjects the importance of education:

  No need to acquire rich lands to increase the family’s wealth,

  For in books are a thousand measures of millet.

  No need to build mansions in which to dwell in peace,

  For in books are abodes of gold.

  Complain not that you have no attendants when you leave your home,

  For in books are horses in numbers beyond reckoning.

  No need to lament the dearth of fair maidens when you marry,

  For in books are maidens with countenances of jade.

  You who would realize your aspirations,

  Use the light from your window and recite the Six Classics.

  If one did
well in the Palace Examination, it was possible eventually to become a minister or some other high-ranking official, and provincial prefects were often selected from among those who had passed. As implied in Chen Tsung’s poem, wealth, beautiful women, and nearly everything else of value could be gained through study.

  Thirty-three thousand eight hundred candidates from the provinces had gathered in the capital to take the examination that year. From this group, five hundred were to be chosen. Hsing-te had been living in the capital from spring until early summer with a friend whose home was near the Gate of Western Splendor. The city was overflowing with candidates both young and old. During this period Hsing-te had taken examinations at the Board of Procedures in the inter-pretation of the prose classics and other literature, in current affairs and in poetry. He did brilliantly in all of them.