by Donald Keene
3 As a priest it would be his business to recite prayers for the dead.
4 The portable shrine around which most Japanese festivals center. Yatchoi, yatchoi is a childish variant of the chant with which mikoshi-bearers mark time. Mikoshi were, until very recently, carried only by men and boys; hence the resentment of the girl who speaks next.
5 For the traditional New Year game of battledore and shuttlecock.
6 The Yoshiwara, the quarter of the story. The expression “Five Streets” also refers to the Yoshiwara.
7 In its simpler forms, used for the New Year game of battledore and shuttlecock, but often, as here, a heavily decorated display piece.
8 The father seems to have been adopted into his wife’s family. Upon her death he returned to his own, but Shota, heir to the pawnshop, had to stay behind.
9A priest’s wife is called Daikoku, “god of the kitchen.” Hence Midori of the Daikokuya should be ideal for Nobu of the Ryugeji Temple.
10 Often called “the Wall Street of Tokyo.”
11 Yang Kuei-fei, loved by the Tang Emperor Hsūan Tsung. A poem by Po Chū-i describes the Emperor’s grief after her death.
12 A popular song describing the tangerine boats from Kinokuni in southern Japan. Midori was born in Kinokuni, the present Wakayama Prefecture.
13 Buddhist priests were once, but for the most part are no longer, forbidden to marry and eat fish or meat.
14 Tamagiku was an eighteenth-century courtesan famous for her kind heart. Each July the Yoshiwara was decorated with lanterns in her honor.
15 A very famous house in the Yoshiwara. It is still in business, almost the only house that makes any attempt to preserve Yoshiwara traditions.
16 There was a crematorium at Nippori, just north of Ueno Park.
17 Murasaki was the great love of Prince Genji in the Tale of Genji. The widow of the Azechi no Dainason was her grandmother.
18 The Otori fair is held on those days in November that fall under the zodiacal sign of the bird. Some years there are two, some years three.
1 Then as now Japanese schoolboys were fond of using foreign words; sänger is used to mean “geisha.”
2 A raised passageway which goes from the back of the theatre through the audience to the stage.
3 A style of dramatic singing somewhat similar to the tokiwazu which Otoyo teaches.
4 A romance written in 1832-1833 by Tamenaga Shunsui. The hero Tanjiro was for many years considered to be the great prototype of a passionate lover.
1 Character in a Gorki story, “The Three of Them.”
2 Yosano Tekkan (1873-1935), a leading poet of the day. For poetry by his wife Akiko, see pp. 202-3, 206.
3 An artistic and literary club—1908-1912—led by the poets Kitahara Hakushū and Yoshii lsamu. The club stood for both European literature and the art of the Tokugawa period.
4 The letter is written in a combination of common, dialectal speech and old-fashioned phrases redolent of epistolary manuals.
5 Takuboku’s wife.
6 Kindaichi Kyosuke, the distinguished philologist and student of the Ainu, was a close friend of Takuboku’s, and lived in the next room during this period.
7 A small copper coin, half a sen.
1 The “New School,” a late nineteenth-century development in Kabuki, founded by Kawakami Otojirō.
2 In Japanese slang a boisterous drunken man is called a “tiger.”
1 The third of the Five Great Kings, guarding the center. In his right hand he holds a sword to strike the demons, in his left, a cord to bind them.
2 Judges of the underworld.
3 The Five Virtues of Confucius: Humanity, Justice, Propriety, Wisdom and Fidelity.
1 The “thousand-stitches belt” is a talisman, with red threads sewn by well-wishers for a Japanese soldier when he leaves for the front. It is supposed to protect him from wounds.
1 At the Shin Yakushi-ji, a temple in Nara of the eighth century. The contrast is drawn between the sunshine outside and the silent darkness inside the building, where the once resplendent statue stands.
1 Maka Shikan, a major text of the Tendai sect of Buddhism.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Introduction
KANAGAKI ROBUN: The Beefeater
HATTORI BUSHŌ: The Western Peep Show
KAWATAKE MOKUAMI: The Thieves
Modern Poetry in Chinese
TSUBOUCHI SHŌYŌ: The Essence of the Novel
FUTABATEI SHIMEI: The Drifting Cloud
HIGUCHI ICHIYŌ: Growing Up
KUNIKIDA DOPPO: Old Gen
Modern Haiku: I
NATSUME SŌSEKI: Botchan
SHIMAZAKI TŌSON: The Broken Commandment
TAYAMA KATAI: One Soldier
NAGAI KAFŪ: The River Sumida
Modern Poetry: I
Modern Waka
ISHIKAWA TAKUBOKU: The Romaji Diary
MORI ŌGAI: The Wild Goose
IZUMI KYŌKA: A Tale of Three Who Were Blind
NAKA KANSUKE: Sanctuary
SHIGA NAOYA: Han’s Crime
SHIGA NAOYA: At Kinosaki
KIKUCHI KAN: The Madman on the Roof
KUME MASAO: The Tiger
AKUTAGAWA RYŪNOSUKE: Kesa and Moritō
AKUTAGAWA RYŪNOSUKE: Hell Screen
KOBAYASHI TAKIJI: The Cannery Boat
YOKOMITSU RIICHI: Time
HINO ASHIHEI: Earth and Soldiers
KAWABATA YASUNARI: The Mole
Modern Poetry: II
Modern Haiku: II
TANIZAKI JUNICHIRŌ: The Firefly Hunt
TANIZAKI JUNICHIRŌ: The Mother of Captain Shigemoto
DAZAI OSAMU: Villon’s Wife
HAYASHI FUMIKO: Tokyo
MISHIMA YUKIO: Omi
Short Bibliograph
Footnotes
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