The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by J. Thomas Rimer

  Tamekichi stood up.

  “Before we try to get outa here, can you get me a drink of water? Water. . . . I need a drink of water.” Sakamoto was groaning.

  III

  Everything was just as the police said. Sakamoto Shintarō was dead. At the same time, a man named Mori Tamekichi had disappeared from the face of the earth. Gone. Lost forever.

  Shortly after the Norwegian ship, the Victor Karenina, weighed anchor at Kobe and set out for the high seas, a big bundle wrapped in sailcloth, with a heavy weight attached, was thrown overboard into the surging waves.

  On deck, whistling and smiling, Sakamoto Shintarō bid his final adieu to Japan.

  Following the time-honored custom that is the unwritten code among seamen the world over, neither Sakamoto Shintarō, who was the “shanghaied man,” nor Sakamoto Shintarō, who was “the man who shanghaied himself,” ever stepped on land again.

  TANIZAKI JUN’ICHIRŌ

  Like Kawabata Yasunari and Shiga Naoya, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965) had a long career as a writer, and his popularity has never waned. Artful, sometimes erotic, elegant, and always masterful, Tanizaki is often considered in Europe and the United States as the writer who best typifies the highest aesthetic accomplishment of twentieth-century Japanese literature. His unusual story “The Two Acolytes” (Futari no chigo, 1918) is a moving and somewhat unusual example of his ability, like that of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, to recast themes from the Japanese past in order to serve his own artistic purposes.

  THE TWO ACOLYTES (FUTARI NO CHIGO)

  Translated by Paul McCarthy

  The two acolytes were only two years apart in age—thirteen and fifteen. The elder was called Senjumaru, the younger Rurikōmaru. Each had been entrusted by his parents at an early age to Mount Hiei, the great Buddhist monastery to the northeast of the capital, where no women were permitted access. There, an eminent monk took charge of the two boys’ upbringing. Senjumaru had been born into a prosperous family in the province of Omi, but circumstances arose that led to his being brought to the monastery when he was four. Rurikōmaru was actually the son of a lesser councillor at the imperial court; but he, too, for certain reasons, was taken to the holy mountain—the spiritual protector of the imperial capital—at the tender age of three, soon after being weaned from his wet nurse’s breast. Of course, neither of the boys had any clear memory of what had happened, nor any reliable evidence of their own families; there was merely talk and rumors from here and there. They had neither father nor mother, only the monk who had so carefully reared them. They relied on him as a parent and felt sure it was their destiny to enter the Way of the Buddha.

  “You should regard yourselves as very lucky boys. If ordinary people yearn for their parents and long for their hometowns, it’s all the result of worldly passions and karmic attachments. But you two have known nothing of the world beyond this holy mountain and have no parents, so you’re free of the suffering that comes from worldly passions.” The monk often told them this, and indeed they felt grateful for their situation. Why, even the good holy man himself, before retreating to Mount Hiei, had known the pangs of all kinds of desire in the world outside. He had engaged in meditation for a very long time before he was able finally to cut the bonds of attachment, it was said. And there were many among his present disciples who, though they listened to his lectures on the sutras each morning and evening, were still unable to conquer their passions and mourned the fact. But the two of them, not knowing anything of the world, had been immune to the dreadful sickness of desire. They had learned that once the passions were overcome, the fruit of enlightenment was one’s eventual reward. And here they were, free from those temptations from the very start! They eagerly looked forward to having their hair shaved off and taking the precepts of a monk and, in due course becoming true followers of the Way, just like their teacher. They were sure of it and spent their days in that hope.

  Nonetheless, they had a certain innocent curiosity about the perilous outside world of passion and pain. Neither ever wanted actually to try living in such a sinful place, but they did think about it and imagine it from time to time. Their teacher and other elders told them that of all the places in the defiled world, only the holy mountain where they now were gave some hint of the glories of the Pure Land to the West. The vast expanse of land stretching in all directions from the foothills of the holy mountain beneath the blue sky dappled with white clouds—that was the world of the five defilements so vividly described in the sutras. The two of them would stand on the top of Mount Shimei and look down toward where, as they’d been told, their old homes were; they couldn’t help fantasizing, indulging in childish dreams.

  One day Senjumaru, gazing toward the province of Ōmi, pointed at Lake Biwa shining beneath a faint purple haze and said to Rurikōmaru in the confident manner of an elder brother to a younger, “Well, that’s the ‘fleeting world’ everybody talks about, but what do you suppose it’s really like?”

  “They say it’s a horrible place, full of dust and dirt, but when you look at it from here, the surface of that lake looks as clear as a mirror. Doesn’t it seem that way to you, too?” said Rurikōmaru a bit timidly, as if afraid of being laughed at by his older friend for saying something stupid.

  “Oh, but under the surface of that beautiful lake lives a dragon god, and on Mount Mikami on the shore there’s a giant centipede that’s even bigger than that dragon! I’ll bet you didn’t know that. The world outside looks very pretty from up here, but if you once go down, you’d better be careful! That’s what our master says, and I’m sure he’s right.” A knowing smile played about Senjumaru’s lips.

  Another time Rurikōmaru was looking at the sky over the distant capital. He pointed at the ripples of gray roof tiles there in the lowlands, spread out before them like a landscape scroll. Wrinkling his brow in wonder, he said, “That’s part of the world outside, too, Senjumaru, but look at those wonderful halls and towers! They’re just as grand looking as the Hall of the Healing Buddha and the Great Lecture Hall here, don’t you think? What do you suppose those buildings are?”

  “There’s a palace there where the emperor of all Japan lives. It’s the grandest, noblest place in the whole outside world. But for someone to live there, to be born as a ruler with the Ten Virtues, he’d have to have piled up an awful lot of merit in his former lives. That’s why we have to practice so hard on the mountain here and let the roots of goodness grow deep down inside us.”

  Senjumaru did his best to encourage the younger child. But neither the encourager nor the encouraged found his curiosity to be easily or fully satisfied by this kind of exchange. According to their master, the world outside was nothing but delusion. The scenes they viewed from the mountaintop, though they might seem lovely, were like moonlight reflected on the surface of the water, mere shadows, or foam on the sea. “Look at the clouds above the mountaintop,” their master would say. “Seen from afar, they seem as pure as snow, as bright as silver; but if you were in the midst of them, you’d find they weren’t snow or silver but just dense mist. You boys know what it’s like to be wrapped in the clouds of mist that rise from the valleys here on the mountain, don’t you? The world outside is just like those clouds.”

  The boys felt almost convinced by their master’s helpful explanations, but not quite. Their greatest source of unease was the fact of never having actually seen the creature they called “a woman”—some sort of human being that lived in the outside world and was held to be the source of almost every calamity.

  “They say I was only three when I came to the mountain, but you were out in the world until you were four; weren’t you? So you must be able to remember something about it. Never mind about other women—you can remember something about your own mother, can’t you?”

  “Sometimes I try to remember how she looked, and I’m almost at the point of being able to, but then a kind of curtain seems to come between us. It’s so frustrating! I just have some vague impressions of the way h
er warm breasts felt against my tongue and the sweet smell of her milk. Women have these soft, full, rounded breasts, completely different from anything on a man’s body—that much I do know. Memories of those things keep coming back, but the rest is vague, remote, like things that happened in a former life. . . .”

  At night, the two boys had whispered conversations like these as they lay side by side in the room next to their master’s.

  “If women are supposed to be devils, why should they have such soft breasts?” wondered Rurikōmaru.

  “You’re right. . . . How could a devil have nice, soft things like that?” echoed Senjumaru, bending his head a little to one side, as if starting to doubt his own memories.

  Both of them should have been well aware from the sutras they’d been studying since early childhood what ferocious creatures women were, but they were quite unable to imagine what form their ferocity took. There were the lines from the Sutra of King Udayana: “Women are the worst workers of evil. They bind men and lead them through the gates of sin.” And in the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra: “One can take up a sword against an enemy and conquer him, but much harder yet is it to prevent the tribe of women from harming one.” So, then, women must be like robbers who bind men’s hands behind their backs and drag them off to some sinister place. Then again there was the passage in the Nirvana Sutra: “Woman is the Great Demon King, capable of devouring men in their entirety.” So perhaps women were monstrous beasts, larger and more fearsome than lions or tigers. And if the words of the Great Treasure Store of Sutras were true, where it says, “One glance at a woman can mean the loss of all innocence in the eye. Better to look at a great serpent than on a woman,” then the latter must be some kind of reptile that spits out poison from its body, like the huge pythons that lived in the depths of the mountains. Senjumaru and Rurikōmaru sought out fresh passages concerning women from many different sutras, then compared notes and exchanged opinions.

  “You and I had two of these ‘evil women’ for mothers—they even cradled us on their laps! Yet we managed to come through it all right. So maybe women aren’t like wild beasts and huge snakes that swallow people whole and spit out poison, after all.”

  “It says in the Treatise on Consciousness Only: ‘Women are messengers from Hell’; so they must be even more terrifying than wild beasts and snakes to look at. We were very lucky not to have been killed by them!”

  “But do you know the rest of that passage?” interrupted Senjumaru. “‘Women are messengers from Hell, in whom the seeds of the Buddha have long since been destroyed. Their outward appearance is like unto a bodhisattva, but their inner nature is like unto a demon.’ Well, then, even if inside they’re demons, they must have beautiful faces! The proof is that a merchant who came to worship here the other day was staring at me in a kind of trance and muttered to himself that some of these acolytes were as pretty as any girl.”

  “Me too! There’ve been lots of times when the older monks teased me for looking ‘just like a girl.’ I thought they meant I looked like a devil and got so upset I started crying once. But then someone said I shouldn’t cry, they just meant I had a bodhisattva’s face. I’m still not sure if I was being praised or blamed.”

  The more they talked to each other like this, the less they could grasp what sort of being a woman really was. Even on the holy mountain, sacred as it was to the memory of the founder, Dengyō Daishi, there were poisonous snakes and powerful wild animals. It was just like the world outside in that when spring came, the bush warblers sang and flowers bloomed, while in winter the trees and grasses withered and snow fell. The only difference was that there was not a single woman anywhere. But if the Buddha disliked women so much, how could they look like bodhisattvas? And why were women more dangerous than great serpents if their faces were so beautiful?

  “If the world outside is an illusion, then women must be beautiful illusions, too. And because they’re illusions, ordinary, unenlightened men are led astray, like travelers in deep mountain country who get lost in the mists.” Having thought about the matter carefully, the two boys came to this conclusion. A beautiful illusion, a beautiful nothing, that’s what a woman was. This was the only conclusion that could satisfy them and calm their minds.

  Now the younger Rurikōmaru’s curiosity was a passing, whimsical thing, like the fancies of a young child about some fairyland. But something much stronger than mere curiosity lay coiled in his older friend’s breast. Night after night Senjumaru gazed at the innocent face of the boy lying fast asleep across from him and wondered why he alone had to undergo such torments. He couldn’t help envying the other his innocence. And when he did manage to close his eyes, images of women of every kind floated before him so vividly that his whole night’s sleep was disturbed. At times they appeared as buddhas with the thirty-two signs of sanctity and seemed to embrace him in a purple golden radiance; at others, they took the form of demons from the Avici Hell about to burn him up with tongues of flame that blazed from the tips of their eighteen horns. Sometimes, covered in a cold sweat, he would be wakened from his nightmares by Rurikōmaru and would start up from his bed in terror.

  “You were moaning and saying strange things in your sleep! Were you being attacked by some evil spirit?”

  When Rurikōmaru asked him this, Senjumaru would bow his head in distress and say, his voice shaking a little, “I was being attacked by women in my dreams.”

  As the days passed, the look on Senjumaru’s face, his gestures and movements, gradually lost any trace of a child’s natural liveliness and simplicity. Whenever he had the chance of doing so unobserved by Rurikōmaru, he would stand in the inner sanctuary of the Great Lecture Hall and gaze dreamily at the lovely faces of the bodhisattvas Kannon and Miroku, lost in his own thoughts.

  At such times the line from the Treatise on Consciousness Only, “Their outward appearance is like unto a bodhisattva,” would fill his mind. Even if their inner selves were fiendish, even if their appearance was unreal, if there lived in the world human beings like the bodhisattvas worshiped in the many halls and pagodas of the holy mountain, what a grave sort of beauty they must possess! As he thought of this, he found his fear of women fading; all that remained was a strange kind of longing. He spent his days dreamily wandering among the sacred halls—the Hall of the Healing Buddha, the Lotus Hall, the Chapel of the Ordination Platform, the Chapel of the Mountain King—gazing at the holy images, the central ones with their attendant statues, and the host of carved angels that flew along the beams. He no longer indulged in speculation about women with his younger friend. The word “woman” came to Rurikōmaru’s lips as easily as before, but now, for him, such talk had come to seem strange and deeply sinful.

  “Why can’t I treat the whole business of women innocently, like Rurikōmaru? Why do evil fantasies of women come to mind even when I worship the sacred images of the buddhas there in front of me?”

  Perhaps this was what was meant by “worldly passions.” . . . The very thought made his skin crawl. He had been relying on the master’s assurance that there were no seeds of passion to be found on the holy mountain, yet had he himself not become a prisoner of the passions? All the more reason, then, to reveal his troubles to the master. But a voice whispered over and over in his ear, “Do not reveal yourself so easily!” His troubles were painful but, at the same time, sweet. He wanted to keep them all to himself, somehow.

  It happened in the spring of the year that Senjumaru turned sixteen and Rurikōmaru fourteen. The mountain cherries were in full bloom in the five valleys that surrounded the Eastern Precinct, and among the young green leaves that enfolded the forty-six hermitages, the sounds of the monastery bells were muffled by an atmosphere that was somehow heavy and oppressive. One day at dawn the two boys were on their way back from an errand they’d been sent on by their master, to the high priest of Yokawa. They had stopped to rest a while, sitting in the shade of a cryptomeria in a place where passersby were few. Senjumaru let out a gre
at sigh from time to time, gazing intently at the morning mist as it rose from the bottom of Paradise Valley and flowed up to join the clouds above the mountaintop.

  “You must think I’ve been strange lately,” he said suddenly, turning an unsmiling face toward his young friend. “Ever since we talked about the world outside, I’ve been worried about this matter of women; I think about it all the time. I don’t want to actually meet a woman at all; but to my shame, I find that when I kneel before the image of the Tathagata, no matter how hard I try to pray, images of women keep flitting before my eyes, with hardly a moment when I can concentrate on the Buddha. I’m disgusted with myself!”

  Rurikōmaru was surprised to see tears flowing down Senjumaru’s cheeks: It must be serious, he thought, if his friend was so distressed. Still, he couldn’t understand how the problem of women could cause him so much pain.

  “You won’t be ordained for another year or two,” continued Senjumaru, “but the master said that I was to become a monk this year. But what’s the point of taking a vow to follow the path to enlightenment in this shameful state of mind? Even if I practiced the six bodhisattva virtues and kept the five major precepts, this obsession of mine would ensure that I was never released from the round of birth and rebirth, to the end of time. Women may be just a sort of mirage, like a rainbow in the empty sky. But fools like me have to go right into the clouds to see for themselves that the rainbow is unreal; they won’t learn just from listening to well-meaning advice. And that’s why I’ve decided to slip away from the mountain just once before my ordination and see for myself what this creature they call woman is really like. Only in that way can I hope to understand the nature of the illusion. And then the obsession will vanish—in a flash—I’m sure of it!”