Sanshiro
Page 30
37. De te fabula: Odd fragment of a phrase from Horace’s Satires, “de te fabula narratur,” meaning, “the story is told of you,” from a longer line meaning, “What are you laughing at? Change the name, and the story [of greed] might just as well be about you.”
38. Anglo-Japanese Alliance: Treaty concluded in 1902 intended to limit the advance of Russia into East Asia. Abrogated in 1922.
39. Itchūbushi: A genteel style of narrative singing, concentrating on mournful scenes from kabuki and other dramatic traditions, with the accompaniment of the three-stringed shamisen, originated by Miyako Itchū (1650–1724) and still practiced today.
40. Idiot’s Delight: Baka-bayashi is Tokyo shrine festival music, performed with drums, bells and flutes.
41. Noh drum: Cords control the tautness of the leather head of the small hand drum used in the Noh theatre since medieval times. When the player releases the tension at the moment of striking the drum, it gives off a pleasant hollow plop rather than a sharp crack.
42. Utamaro-style: Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806), woodblock print artist.
43. Seiyōken in Ueno: The capacious Ueno Park branch of a famous Western restaurant originally founded in 1872.
44. Toyotsu: An actual village a short distance from the model for Sanshirō’s Masaki Village.
45. Tanseikai: “Tansei,” meaning “red and green,” suggests the colors used in painting and is itself a synonym for “painting.” According to art historian Haga Tōru, the fictional society here called Tanseikai was probably modeled on an actual organization known as the Pacific Painting Society (Taiheiyō Gakai), the sixth exhibition of which was held in June 1908, featuring over 200 works by “brother and sister” Western-style artists Yoshida Hiroshi (1876–1950) and Fujio (1887–1987), including scenes of Venice. Hiroshi had been adopted into the Yoshida family, and became Fujio’s husband in 1907 or 1908.
46. Fukami’s… works are there: Fictional artist thought to be modeled on the recently deceased Western-style painter, Asai Chū (1856–1907).
47. bronze figure at the top of Kudan: Japan’s famous (and internationally infamous) Yasukuni Shrine, dedicated to the spirits of the country’s war dead, is situated at the top of a long hill known as Kudan Slope. There, in 1893, Tokyo’s first bronze statue was unveiled, a memorial to Ōmura Masujirō (1825–69), a founder of Japan’s modern army, who was assassinated by reactionary samurai for his overly Western views. At the time that Sanshirō was being serialized in 1908, the sculptor of the piece, Ōkuma Ujihiro (1856–1934), an influential member of the Ministry of Education’s Committee for the Judging of Art, was at the center of a widely reported clash between conservative and progressive forces in the Tokyo art world. An outspoken critic of government meddling in aesthetic affairs, Sōseki was no doubt using Haraguchi to poke fun at Ōkuma.
48. the Literary Society’s: Founded in 1906 to promote the modernization of Japan’s literature, drama, fine arts, education, and even religion, the Literary Society (Bungei Kyōkai) soon narrowed its focus to drama and gave rise to many key developments in modern Japanese professional drama and the performance of translated Western drama by the time it disbanded in 1913.
49. Hydriotaphia: Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82), Hydriotaphia, Urne-Buriall: or, a Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urns Lately Found in Norfolk (1658).
50. bell of the Great Buddha in Nara: The Tōdaji temple, first built in the eighth century, houses a huge bronze image of Buddha and a giant bell. It is located in the ancient capital city of Nara, over 300 miles west of Tokyo.
51. unohana-odoshi: The protective plates of samurai armor were held together with elaborately woven colored thread “bindings” (odoshi), distinguished by color (unohana, or deutzia, combined white and yellowish green).
52. Genroku: A style of robe popular in the Genroku Period (1688–1704) and again at the time of the novel.
53. Kannon: The Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion, Kannon (Chinese Guanyin, Sanskrit Avalokitesvara) is usually depicted as a female. Ukiyo-e prints: Woodblock prints of everyday life, beautiful women, actors, etc., flourished in Japan from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Two representative artists are named below in the paragraph: Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806) and Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671–1751).
54. Pierre Loti… Madame Chrysanthème: The writer (1850–1923) published his novel in 1887.
55. The opportunity of time… he would say: Here and in the next quotation, Yojirō is playing with phraseology familiar to educated Japanese of Sōseki’s day from the Chinese philosopher Meng-tzu or Mencius (c.371–c.289 BC). The passage in question reads as follows in a classic English translation: “Mencius said, ‘Opportunities of time vouchsafed by Heaven are not equal to advantages of situation afforded by the Earth, and advantages of situation afforded by the Earth are not equal to the union arising from the accord of men.’ ” See James Legge, The Chinese Classics, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), vol. 2, p. 208.
56. selling encyclopedias in Japan: In 1902, the London Times contracted with Tokyo’s Maruzen book store to sell the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in Japan, delivering all twenty-five volumes upon receipt of a 5-yen down payment and accepting the remaining 190 yen in monthly installments of ten yen.
57. Minister of Education… ceremonies: See Translator’s Note and Chronology. Sanshirō would have been in his fifth year at the time, Hirota in his twenty-third (or twenty-second by Western count).
58. ancient Japanese nobility: Sōseki attended the Literary Society’s second performance series on 22 November 1907, which included Sugitani Daisui’s (1874–1915) Daigokuden (“Great Hall”) on the assassination of Minister Soga no Iruka in 645, and five acts from Hamlet, the full text of which was not performed in Japan until 1911.
59. Kabuki claque: It was (and is) customary for audience members—or theater staff seated among the audience—to shout their support for the star players in a Kabuki performance. The elevated “stage ramp” mentioned in the next paragraph is a standard Kabuki theater fixture, running perpendicular to the stage, left of center, which enabled actors to make dramatic entrances and exits through the audience. The audience here is seated in matted four-person boxes, separated by low railings, as in a traditional theater.
60. restrained Noh style: Developed largely in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Noh (or Nō) survives as a form of masked theater noted for its restrained aesthetics and slow, stately pace.
61. O-Shichi: The fifteen-year-old daughter of a greengrocer, O-Shichi is thought to have fallen in love with a temple acolyte her age whom she met when she and her family were taking shelter in a temple after a fire in the Oiwake district of Edo (where Sanshirō lives) late in 1682. Convinced that arson would be the only way to meet him again, she was caught attempting to start a fire and executed in 1683. The story was retold, with many variations, in drama and fiction. See, for example, “The Greengrocer’s Daughter with a Bundle of Love” in Ihara Saikaku, Five Women Who Loved Love, trans. Wm. Theodore DeBarry (Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1956), pp. 157–94.
62. The women outnumber the men… even now: In fact, women of marriageable age did outnumber their male counterparts in Japan at this time.
63. For I acknowledge my transgressions… sin is ever before me: From Psalm 51.
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Note on Japanese Name Order and Pronunciation
Chronology
Further Reading
SŌSEKI’S WORKS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
STUDIES OF SŌSEKI
Introduction
Translator’s Note
SANSHIRŌ
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Notes