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Seven Japanese Tales
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
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Translated by Howard Hibbett
CONTENTS
A Portrait of Shunkin (Shunkinsho, 1933)
Terror (Kyofu, 1913)
The Bridge of Dreams (Yume no ukihashi, 1959)
The Tattooer (Shisei, 1910)
The Thief (Watakushi, 1921)
Aguri (Aoi hana, 1922)
A Blind Man's Tale (Momoku monogatari, 1931)
Introduction
The seven tales collected in this volume span half a century in the extraordinary literary career of Junichiro Tanizaki, a career which has outlasted more than one edition of his “Complete Works.” Among his many distinctions have been an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949, after he had published the whole of his great novel The Makioka Sisters, and, in 1943, the suppression of that work as a menace to the national war effort.
Tanizaki continues to alarm or delight the Japanese reading public with the audacious vigor of his recent novels. One of these is The Bridge of Dreams (first published in October 1959), the confessional narrative of a young man who has grown up in the shadow of a guilt-laden obsession with the memory of his mother, and with the beauty of the girl who took her place. Here the exploration of erotic mysteries leads into a tangle of relationships as bizarre and unhealthy as those of Tanizaki's earlier novel The Key, in which a middle-aged professor attempts, with gratifying success, to corrupt his demure wife. The Bridge of Dreams, in the form of a memoir rather than a pair of diaries as in The Key, has a similarly tantalizing blend of candor and deviousness. Again the reticences of an old-fashioned Kyoto household provide a hushed setting for scandal.
But there is also a subtle nostalgic flavor to The Bridge of Dreams and a hint of thematic reference to Lady Murasaki's eleventh-century Tale of Genji, that towering masterpiece which few were able to scale (except in the lucid English version by Arthur Waley) until Tanizaki made his long, loving translation of it into modern Japanese. The moving coda of Genji describes a young man's frustrated pursuit of a girl whom he identifies with the obsessive memory of her dead sister; and its last chapter is entitled “The Bridge of Dreams” — an image symbolizing the insubstantial beauty of life itself, once poetically alluded to by Prince Genji as “a bridge linking dream to dream.”
Dreams, daydreams, elaborate fantasies — often dramatizing the secret affinity of love and cruelty — have had a significant place in Tanizaki's fiction ever since he began writing short stories in his twenties. The first and most famous of these is The Tattooer (1910), an elegant little sadomasochistic fable of an artist who fulfills his wish to tattoo the skin of the Perfect Woman. The time is late Tokugawa (around the 1840's), the place Edo, and the style lush fin de siècle. Aside from being “representative,” in the Japanese sense of being an obligatory anthology piece, The Tattooer illustrates at once Tanizaki's fascination with the Japanese past and with the seductively evil blossoms of exotic decadence. Terror (1913), a highly colored fragment of the case history of a man with “morbidly excitable nerves,” is set in a modern urban milieu of streetcars and jostling crowds, as disturbing in their way as the phantoms of the past. It is another of the early stories which depict abnormal psychological states in a prose of great sensuous beauty.
The Thief
(1921) is in a plainer style and exposes a different sort of aberration, one which is confessed (“I have not written a single dishonest word here") in the equivocal manner of the narrator of The Bridge of Dreams. But the predominant tone is rational. In Aguri (1922), however, Tanizaki indulges in a vein of almost surrealist fantasy: Okada, drained of health by a vampirish young mistress, is a prey to terrifying hallucinations. Aguri herself is merely a pleasure-loving, acquisitive young waitress or bar girl, a mannequin requiring adornment in order to become the idolized fatal woman who appears in so many guises in Tanizaki's fiction. Her metamorphosis is to be accomplished, not by actual tattooing, but by dressing her in those alluring Western garments which seem to give the female body a fresh, vividly tattooed skin, and yet which, unlike the constricting trousers, coat, and tie (with stickpin) of fashionable Western-style gentlemen, release its vital powers.
Another of Tanizaki's cruel beauties is the gifted blind heroine of A Portrait of Shunkin (1933), perhaps the finest in a series of short novels which reflect both in style and in subject his deepening appreciation of the traditional culture of Japan. This time the narrator is a scholarly man with antiquarian tastes who has come into the possession of a curious biography of Shunkin, a few anecdotes and reminiscences about her, and a single faded photograph — apparently the only one ever taken — of her bland, lovely face. Shunkin grew up in the still-feudal merchant society of the late Tokugawa period and lost her sight before the arrival of Perry and the upheaval of the Meiji Restoration, events which (though unmentioned) doubtless would not have made such a strong impression on her as the death of one of her prized larks or nightingales. Indeed, as her servants remark, she has more affection for her birds than for any human companions, even her long-suffering guide and pupil, the devoted Sasuke.
The theme of blindness — so often associated with love in Tanizaki's world — occurs also in a slightly earlier novel centered on a servant and his mistress: A Blind Man's Tale (1931). But here the setting is one of the most confused and violent ages of Japanese history: the century of civil war which ended with the decisive victory of Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. Among Tanizaki's characters are two conquering generals — the ruthless, vindictive Oda Nobunaga and his cleverer and even more ambitious successor, Hideyoshi — who imposed a harsh order on the chaotic pattern of relations among the warlords of sixteenth-century Japan. Yet the alliances and treacheries, the battles and sieges, the incessant movement of forces, are seen only obliquely in his narrative, through a mist which is not dispersed by the false sunlight of the popular costume novel. The nightmarish facts of history compose a fitfully lighted background to the story of the servant Yaichi's devotion to Lady Oichi and her daughters, a devotion which is at last rewarded by cruelty.
All the characters of A Blind Man's Tale (except the narrator) figure in the historical records of the time. Familiar heroes such as Hideyoshi reveal new qualities to the novelist's imaginative perception, and there is even something enigmatic about the lovely women whose superficial calm is the mask of strange and complex emotions. A portrait of Lady Oichi, commissioned by her dutiful eldest daughter, has been preserved in a temple on Mount Koya. She sits in a serene formal pose, holding a sutra in her right hand. Her bland, expressionless face recalls the “face of classic oval outline and features so delicately modeled that they seem almost ethereal” in the faded photograph of Shunkin.
HOWARD HIBBETT
A Portrait of Shunkin
Shunkin (born as Mozuya Koto, but better known by her professional name) was the daughter of an Osaka drug merchant. She died on the fourteenth of October in 1886 — the nineteenth year of the Meiji era — and was buried in the grounds of a certain Buddhist temple of the Pure Land sect in the Shitadera district of Osaka.
Some days ago I happened to pass the temple, and stopped in to visit her grave. When I asked the caretaker how to find the Mozuya plot, he said “It's over this way, sir” and led me around the main hall. There, in the shade of a cluster of old camellias, stood the gravestones of generation after generation of the Mozuya family — but none of them seemed to belong to Shunkin.
I told the caretaker about her, and suggested that she must have a grave somewhere. He
considered this for a moment. “Well,” he said at last, “maybe it's the one on the hill.” And he took me to a flight of steps leading up a steep slope on the eastern side of the grounds.
As you may know, the Ikutama Shrine stands on a height overlooking Shitadera: the slope I mentioned rises from the temple grounds toward the shrine and is densely wooded, quite unusual for Osaka. We found Shunkin's gravestone in a little clearing about halfway up. It bore this inscription:
MOZUYA KOTO, also called SHUNKIN
Died October fourteenth
In the nineteenth year of Meiji
At the age of fifty-seven
On one side were carved the words: “Erected by her pupil, Nukui Sasuke.” Perhaps the reason why Shunkin was buried apart from her family was that, although never legally married, she had lived with her “pupil,” the celebrated samisen master Nukui Sasuke, as man and wife.
According to the caretaker, the Mozuya family was ruined long ago. The relatives hardly ever came to visit the graves any more, certainly not to Shunkin's. “I didn't think she belonged to the same family,” he told me.
“So the grave is neglected, is it?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “not really. An old lady from Haginochaya who looks to be about seventy comes here once or twice a year. She prays and offers flowers and incense, and then —” He paused, pointing to another grave at the left of Shunkin's. “You see that little stone next to it? As soon as she's finished she goes over and does the same thing there. She pays the temple to look after both graves, too.”
I went to examine the other stone. It was about half the size of Shunkin's, and had this inscription:
NUKUI SASUKE, also called KINDAI
Pupil of Mozuya Shunkin
Died October fourteenth in the fortieth year of Meiji
At the age of eighty-two
So this was the grave of the famous virtuoso. The fact that his monument is smaller than Shunkin's and that he is described on it as her pupil shows that he wished to remain humble toward her even in death. As I stood there on the hillside, near the two stones glowing in the late-afternoon sun, I looked down at the city spread out below me. No doubt this hilly terrain, which stretches westward as far as the Tenno Temple, has had the same contour throughout the long history of Osaka. Today the grass and foliage are soot-stained, dead-looking; the great trees are withered and dusty, giving an air of drabness to the scene. But when these graves were dug it must have been a luxuriant setting; even now this is surely the most tranquil burial place in Osaka, and the one with the finest view. Here, high over the busiest industrial city of the Orient, over the innumerable tall buildings that pierce the evening haze, teacher and pupil lie together in their eternal sleep, bound by a mysterious fate. Osaka has changed almost beyond recognition since Sasuke's day, but these two stones still testify to his love for Shunkin.
The Nukui family belonged to the Nichiren sect of Buddhism, and all of the family tombs except Sasuke's are at a temple in Hino, his own birthplace, in the province of Omi. Yet because of his ardent wish to be buried beside Shunkin, Sasuke abandoned the faith of his ancestors and joined the Pure Land sect. They say that all arrangements for the two graves — including the size and position of the stones — were made while Shunkin was still alive. Shunkin's gravestone appeared to be about six feet high, and Sasuke's less than four. The two were side by side on low flagstone-covered bases, and a pine tree, planted to the right of Shunkin, stretched its green limbs protectingly over her. Sasuke's gravestone stood a few feet to the left of hers, like a humble servant, just beyond the rip of the pine branches. As I looked, I was reminded how faithfully Sasuke had served his teacher, following her like a shadow and attending to all her needs. It seemed to me as if the stones had souls, and even now he took pleasure in her happiness.
After kneeling at Shunkin's grave for a moment, I ran my hand affectionately along the top of Sasuke's stone. Then I wandered about on the hill until the sun had dropped out of sight beyond the city.
Not long ago I acquired a slim volume called The Life of Mozuya Shunkin, which awakened my interest in her. The book has sixty pages, bound in the Japanese style, and is printed in large characters on pure handmade paper. I gathered that Sasuke had asked someone to compile his teacher's biography for private distribution on the second anniversary of her death. Although the text is written in the old-fashioned literary style and Sasuke himself is referred to in the third person, he undoubtedly supplied all the material and may well be regarded as the real author.
To quote from the Life:
For generations the Mozuya family has kept a pharmaceutical house in Dosho-machi in Osaka, under the name of Mozuya Yasuzaemon. Shunkin's father was the seventh in that line. Her mother, Shigé, came from the Atobé family of Kyoto, and bore her husband two sons and four daughters. Shunkin was the second daughter, and was born on the twenty-fourth of May, 1829, the twelfth year of the Bunsei era. . . Even as a child, Shunkin was not only remarkably intelligent but gifted with an aristocratic grace and beauty quite beyond comparison. When she began learning to dance at about the age of three the correct movements seemed to come to her effortlessly; her gestures were more charming than those of any young professional dancing girl. They say that her teacher was astonished at her skill. “What a marvelous child!” he would murmur. “With her looks and ability she could become one of the most famous geisha in the country. It's a pity she was born into a respectable family!” Shunkin began to read and write at an early age too, and her progress was so extraordinary that she soon surpassed her older brothers.
Supposing that the source of this information was Sasuke, who seems to have idolized her, one hardly knows how much of it to believe. Still, there is a good deal of other evidence to suggest that she was indeed blessed with “aristocratic grace and beauty.”
In those days most women were short in stature, and Shunkin is said to have been less than five feet tall, exquisitely formed, with very fine features and slender wrists and ankles. There is a photograph of her at thirty-six which shows a face of classic oval outline and features so delicately modeled that they seem almost ethereal. However, since it dates from the eighteen-sixties, the picture is speckled with age and as faded as an old memory. Possibly that is why it makes such a faint impression on me. In that misty photograph I can detect nothing more than the usual refinement of a lady from a well-to-do Osaka merchant family — beautiful, to be sure, but without any real individuality. She looks as if she might be thirty-six — or then again she might be ten years younger.
Although this picture was taken more than two decades after Shunkin lost her sight, she merely looks like a woman who has closed her eyes. It has been said that the deaf look like fools and the blind like sages: the deaf, in their effort to catch what others are saying, knit their brows, gape their mouths, and goggle their eyes, or cock their heads this way and that, all of which gives them an air of stupidity; while the blind, because they sit calmly with their heads bowed a trifle as if in meditation, appear to be extremely thoughtful. However that may be, we are so accustomed to seeing the half-closed “merciful eyes” with which Buddha and the Bodhisattvas gaze on all living things that closed eyes seem more benevolent to us than open ones — may even seem awe-inspiring. And Shunkin is such a meek, gentle-looking woman that one feels a sense of compassion in her veiled eyes, as one would in those of the merciful goddess Kannon.
As far as I know, this is the only photograph ever made of Shunkin. When she was younger the art had not yet been introduced to Japan, and in the same year that this one was made she suffered a calamity, after which she would certainly not have allowed herself to be photographed. Thus we have only one dim reflection of her to help us imagine her appearance. No doubt I have given a vague, inadequate impression of how she looked. Yet the photograph itself is perhaps even vaguer than the impression which my words convey.
It occurs to me that in the year Shunkin's picture was taken — when she was thirty-six — Sasuke himsel
f became blind; the last time he saw her she must have looked rather like this. Was the picture of her which he carried in his memory in old age as faded as this photograph? Or did his imagination make up for a gradually failing memory? Did he create an image of another lovely woman, of one altogether different from the woman in the photograph?
The Life of Shunkin goes on with this passage:
Consequently, her parents regarded her as their precious jewel, and favored her over all of her five brothers and sisters. However, when Shunkin was eight years old she had the misfortune of contracting an eye disease; soon she lost her sight completely. Her parents were heartbroken: her mother seemed almost insane with grief, full of bitterness toward the whole world because of the misery of her child. From that time on Shunkin gave up dancing and devoted all her energy to the study of the koto and the samisen, and the allied art of singing. She dedicated her life to music.
It is not clear what sort of eye disease Shunkin had, and there is no further mention of it in the Life. But Sasuke once made this remark: “A tall tree is envied by the wind, as the saying goes. Just because she was more beautiful and more talented than the others, my teacher was the victim of jealousy twice in her life. All her troubles came from those two attacks.” His words suggest that peculiar circumstances lay behind Shunkin's affliction.
Another time, Sasuke said that his teacher was blinded by purulent ophthalmia. Now, Shunkin had been more than a little spoiled by her pampered upbringing, but as a child she was so gay and charming and vivacious, so considerate to those who served her, that she got along very well with people. She was on the best of terms with her brothers and sisters, and seemed to be the darling of the household. However, her youngest sister's nurse is said to have secretly hated her out of resentment at the favoritism shown by her parents. Since purulent ophthalmia is a venereal infection of the mucous membranes of the eyes, Sasuke must have been hinting — whether or not he had any better grounds for thinking so — that the nurse had somehow managed to rob Shunkin of her sight. The later violence of Shunkin's temper does make one wonder if some such incident helped to shape her character; still, Sasuke's opinions are by no means to be trusted implicitly — this was not the only time that his grief over Shunkin seemed to poison his mind toward others. His suspicion of the nurse was probably quite unfounded.
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