Mandarins (29 page)
Authors: Ryunosuke Akutagawa
The Handkerchief (
Hankechi
)
The Japanese have long been known for ruminating on who they are and where they are goingâespecially in relation to Western culture. Even if the notion of reviving
bushid
Å
(âthe way of the warrior') is now (almost entirely) out of fashion, the concerns of Professor Hasegawa would make him feel quite at home among today's Japan's earnest, if self-absorbed, intellectuals.
Plus ça change
. . .
As would have been obvious to many of Akutagawa's contemporaries, when the story was published in October 1916 (
Ch
Å«
Å
-k
Å
ron
), Professor Hasegawa is based on Nitobe Inaz
Å
(1862â1933). Born in northern Japan, he first studied agricultural economics in Hokkaid
Å
and then, following his conversion to Christianity, entered T
Å
ky
Å
Imperial University to study English literature. He spent a total of six years abroad, in the United States and Germany, earning several doctorates and publishing books in several languages. Like Professor Hasegawa, he married an American woman and perceived himself as a “bridge” between Japan and the West. At T
Å
ky
Å
Imperial University, he became a professor of colonial policy before leaving with his wife for the United States, where in 1899 he published
Bushid
Å
: The Soul of Japan
, a widely read, if controversial, book. In 1918, he attended the Versailles Peace Conference and later served as the undersecretary general of the League of Nations.
Akutagawa's portrait of Professor Hasegawa may, on the whole, seem unsympathetic. Westerners familiar with Japan may also squirm at the repeated references to the Gifu lantern, seeing in it a symbol of naïve and sentimental exoticism. Yet the story is arguably not intended as a satire on individuals but rather as a meditation on abstract intellectualism and facile multiculturalism.
1
German
Manier
(Swedish man
é
r) is in the original, transcribed in Japanese as
maniiru
. The earliest translations of Strindberg were into German and English.
2
Shonanoka
: the day of the death being included in the calculation.
3
German
Mätzchen
ânonsense, hokum' is apparently the translation of the
Swedish
choser
âaffectations'. Akutagawa uses the Japanese word
kusami
âbad odor, affectation', glossing it phonetically as
mettsuhen
.
An Enlightened Husband (
Kaika no Otto
)
In the original title,
Kaika no Otto
(February 1919,
Ch
Å«
gai
[Home and Abroad]), the Sino-Japanese term
kaika
âopening, enlightenment, progress' forms part of a Meiji-era slogan:
bunmei-kaika
âcivilization and enlightenment'. Akutagawa, who had just become an adult when that era ended in 1912, looks back on it with a characteristic mixture of nostalgia and irony, the question posed by Viscount Honda at the end of the story being very much his own. At the same time, the setting reflects Akutagawa's enduring love for the capital's eastern region, his childhood home, in particular the Sumida River, which he first celebrated in
Å
kawa no Mizu
(âThe Waters of the Great River'), published in 1914, when the writer was still a university student.
From the Meiji era until 1947, Japan had a peerage system, whereby aristocratic titles were conferred first on former samurai and later on successful entrepreneurs and distinquished civil servants. Viscount Honda also appears in Akutagawa's
Kaika no Satsujin
[A Civilized Murder] (July 1918,
Ch
Å«
Å
-k
Å
ron
).
Both in form and mood, “An Enlightened Husband” may remind readers of Natsume S
Å
seki's
Kokoro
, published only five years before, in 1914. There too most of the story is taken up by a secondary narration, telling of love and shattered ideals. Yet while the beautiful woman portrayed in S
Å
seki's novel is almost implausibly innocent, the women in Akutagawa's short story have an aura of evil about them.
1
In the original, the term is
gonsai
(âapparent provisional wife'); this became a commonly used euphemism in the Meiji era as Japanese society adopted “modern ways,” albeit fitfully. Miura's choice of words is the unadorned
mekake
(âconcubine').
2
The word in the original is k
Å
t
Å
, lit. âhigh grade', a Sino-Japanese compound that came to be used to express concepts ranging from higher education to higher species. Like
kaika
(âenlightened'), Akutagawa uses
it with irony. By the time of this story, k
Å
t
Å
had also come to appear in
Tokubetsu-k
Å
t
Å
-keisatsu
, “Special Higher Police.”
3
The Kabuki play by Kawatake Mokuami (1816â93) was written in 1879, shortly after the trial and execution (the last legal decapitation) of Takahashi O-den, a notorious young murderess. The play serves to extol the new civil code, including ideal male-female roles hardly consistent with the couple being described by Viscount Honda.
4
Kan-ts
Å«
, a punishable offense for women until 1947.
Autumn (
Aki
)
“Autumn” first appeared in the April 1, 1920, edition of
Ch
Å«
Å
-k
Å
ron
(
The Central Review
). The beginning of the story may lead the reader to expect a sad but familiar tale of quintessentially “Japanese” self-sacrifice and the crushing of a woman's budding literary talent by a brutish, philistine husband. The actual content, however, proves to be richer and subtlerâand indeed ultimately ambiguous.
Akutagawa's grim description of the T
Å
ky
Å
suburb where Teruko and her husband live may be seen as consistent with her apparent unhappiness, yet it also clearly reflects the writer's own view of residential expansion, a development that was only accelerated by the Great Kant
Å
Earthquake of 1923.
1
The renowned swordsman Miyamoto Musashi (1584â1645) developed the two-sword fencing style.
Gorin no Sho
(
The Book of the Five Rings
), attributed to him, became something of a cult classic in the English-speaking world during the 1980s.
2
Rather than R
é
my de Gourmont (1858â1915), the French symbolist poet and critic, the source is more likely the English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley (1872â98).
3
J
Å«
san'ya
, the thirteenth day of the ninth month according to the lunar calendar, a traditional moon-viewing evening. (
J
Å«
san'ya
is the title of a novel by Higuchi Ichiy
Å
[1872â96] about an unhappy marriage.)
4
The price of rice rose in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. Newspaper coverage of the rice riots of 1918 led to press censorship.
Winter (
Fuyu
)
Though “Winter” is fictional, Akutagawa was clearly thinking of his elder sister's husband, Nishikawa Yutaka, when he completed this story in June 1927, a month before his death. Both the theme and ambience are familiar: unhappy family relations set against the background of a cold and gray society. They may also remind us, particularly in the description of the prison visit, of another writer: Franz Kafka, whose posthumous work
Der Prozess
(
The Trial
) had been published just two years before.
The narrator visits his incarcerated relative, to whom he refers as his cousin, more precisely, we may surmise, his cousin-in-law. (There are speech-level differences in the original that suggest he is not a blood relative.) He then travels to his home on the western edge of T
Å
ky
Å
, in “uptown” Yamanote, which, particularly after the Great Kant
Å
Earthquake, was becoming culturally dominant. His general hints at the social contrasts in wealth and status are reinforced by his remarks about the vicissitudes of fortune relating to his cousin.
The oppressiveness of a highly conformist society is reflected in the reference to the youth organization (
seinendan
) of which T is a leader. Such groups were already taking on a nationalistic, militarist character, and though the story is set in the waning years of “Taish
Å
Democracy,” Akutagawa would have been well aware that at the end of that period, in 1925, all
seinendan
had come under government control in a federation known as the Dai Nippon Reng
Å
Seinendan. That same year had seen the passage of the Peace Preservation Law, intended to introduce thought control and suppress dissent.
The nature of the charges against the narrator's cousin-in-law are never specified, but whatever they are, Akutagawa does not need to explain to his readers the dire social consequences of T's arrest or the significance of the narrator's question to his cousin: “The neighborhood doesn't know yet?”
Ichigaya is located to the northwest of the Imperial Palace in central T
Å
ky
Å
. Though the inmates of the now long-since-vanished prison were for the most part the not-yet-convicted, it was also there that prominent radicals were hanged for high treason.
The ending of the story seems to echo Akutagawa's account in “Cogwheels” of his visit to his sister following the suicide of Nishikawa Yutaka. Another autobiographical element is the fact that Akutagawa, like the narrator, was at one time a journalist, though his contributions were that of a writer, not a news reporter.
1
In the original, this literally means âvarieties of people' but perhaps refers specifically to
The Charactres
by Theophrastus (372â287
BC
).
2
“Long live Master T!”
Fortune (
Un
)
The title of the original is a Sino-Japanese word that may be variously rendered into English as âfate', âfortune', or âluck'. Published in January 1917 (
Bunsh
Å
-sekai
), the story is among those Akutagawa adapted from the folk-tale collection
Konjaku Monogatari
[Tales of Times Now Past]. The setting is the imperial capital in the late Heian period. As in Akutagawa's famous
Rash
Å
mon
, inspired by the same folktale collection, there is an aura of decay. Just as the great city gate has fallen into ruin and become a refuge for outlaws, so has the Yasaka pagoda been taken over by a thief and his apparent confederate, an elderly nun.
In
Konjaku Monogatari
, all thirty-nine stories in Volume 16 center upon the wondrous workings of the bodhisattva Kannon (Kanzeon), known in India as Avalokiteçvara, in China as Gu
Ä
ny
Ä«
n, and sometimes in the English-speaking world as the goddess of mercy. KJM 16:33 is consistent with the other tales of piety. A poor woman takes a pilgrimage to Kiyomizu-dera (âtemple of clear water') to pray to Kannon, where she is told in a vision to comply with the commands of a man she is to meet. He takes her to the nearby Yasaka pagoda of H
Å
kanji and, in the morning, offers her both marriage and gifts of valuable cloth. He then departs, leaving her with strict instructions to remain. When she discovers his treasure horde, she concludes that he must be a thief. Waiting until the old nun attending to her has gone for water, she makes her escape, taking the gifts with her. She makes her way to a friend's house and spies the thief in the hands of the authorities. Having profited from the sale of the cloth, she is able to marry and live in comfort.
In Akutagawa's otherwise faithful adaptation, the waters are muddied by the moral uncertainty concerning the old nun's death and the religious agnosticism implicit in the old potter's role as narrator. The banter between the two men strikes a note of ironicâand irreverentâhumor entirely lacking in KJM.
1
An
aozamurai
(or
aozaburai
), lit. âblue retainer', a low-ranking attendant.
2
Foxes were regarded as quasi-supernatural creatures, capable of assuming the form of humans and of bewitching them. There are many stories concerning them in Japanese folklore.
3
The bush warbler (
ettia diphone
),
uguisu
in Japanese, known for its beautiful song, is regarded as a symbol of joy and good fortune.
4
One of Ky
Å
to's landmarks. The formal name for the temple is H
Å
kanji, of which only the oft-destroyed and rebuilt pagoda remains.
Kesa and Morit
Å
(
Kesa to Morit
Å
)
Published in April 1918 (
Ch
Å«
Å
-k
Å
ron
), the story is based on an incident recorded in
Genpei-seisuiki
[
The Rise and Fall of the Genji and Heike
]. First compiled in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, this work is an account of the colossal struggle between the Minamoto and Taira, culminating in the final defeat of the latter in 1185.