Mandarins (31 page)

Akutagawa, who first published this story in July 1922 (
Ch
Å«
ō
-k
ō
ron
), is writing of the great transitional era two decades before his own birth, the decline of the garden—and the fall of the Nakamura family—emblemizing the passing of Old Japan. The perspective of the writer, himself very much part of the modern era, blends a sense of sad inevitability with the subtle irony that is a consistent characteristic of his work.

The vain and irascible first son may be seen as representing the last of the old order, his younger brothers being unable either to sustain it or to adapt to the new. With the death of the eldest, the third son returns to assume his duties but apparently can do no more than fantasize about making easy money. In the entrepreneurial flurry of the early Meiji period, rice speculation was very much a reality. (In 1872, exactly a half century before the publication of this story, a modern silk-reeling mill had been established in Tomioka, Gunma, a town lying on a secondary route connected to the Nakasend
ō
.)

The ballad sung by the old woman refers a battle in November 1864, between, on the one hand, the Suwa and Matsumoto clans, defenders of the shogunate, and, on the other, pro-imperial rebels from Mito in eastern Japan. Akutagawa's notes suggest that it was his own adoptive father who passed on the song, having learned it from a courtesan he had engaged while traveling.

In describing the dissolute second son, Akutagawa uses the Sino-Japanese term h
ō
t
ō
, in his own time already familiar to his readers as the loan-translation of a word used in a well-known New Testament parable. It is perhaps not too much to suppose that here too Akutagawa is being ironic, for the prodigal, having, it is suggested, squandered his absconded portion
on harlots and even contracted syphilis, returns not to a loving father but to a younger brother, who, rather than forgiving, is simply indifferent.

1
Variously translated as ‘cuckoo' and ‘nightingale,' the
hototogisu
makes a frequent appearance in Japanese verse. It is said to sing until it coughs up blood and has thus often been used as a symbol for tuberculosis.

The Life of a Fool (
Aru Ah
ō
no Issh
ō
)

In the original title, the word
ah
ō
, ‘fool, simpleton, idiot,' originates in Western dialects. As a term of abuse (and sometimes affection), it competes with the more commonly heard
baka
, though the latter has the more restricted meaning of ‘stupid'.

Whatever self-deprecation there is in Akutagawa's use of the word, he is also putting himself in the grand tradition of socially alienated, morally flawed, but nonetheless prophetic “fools”—specifically, no doubt, of Strindberg, whose
Confessions of a Fool
(
En dåres försvarstal
[1887], lit. ‘A Madman's Defense') is mentioned in the text. Though Akutagawa does not, for all his many other literary allusions, refer to Shakespeare, the English-speaking reader may also recall the words of Jaques in
As You Like It
: “Oh that I were a fool! I am ambitious for a motley coat . . . Invest me in my motley; give me leave to speak my mind, and I will through and through cleanse the foul body of the infected world.”

Though Akutagawa explicitly identifies himself with Icarus, there appears to be a more consistent, albeit implicit, suggestion of Baudelaire's famous albatross, the gracefully soaring bird, which, when land-bound, becomes terribly awkward, its name in Japanese being, appropriately enough,
ah
ō
-dori
, lit. ‘fool-bird'. The mention of “flying sickness” in “Cogwheels” suggests much the same idea.

“The Life of a Fool,” published in October 1927 (
Kaiz
ō
[Reconstruction]), three months after Akutagawa's death, is not without its painful excesses. Surely a single line of Baudelaire is not “worth more than all of life,” and even the vain Goethe might have blushed at being compared (favorably) to Christ. Yet, together with “Cogwheels,” likewise published posthumously,
we may read it both for its poignant flashes of brilliance and as a chronicle, both lyrical and grim (
Dichtung und Wahrheit
), of the author's relentless journey into night.

1
A reference to the novelist Tanizaki Jun'ichir
ō
(1886–1965), with whom Akutagawa often collaborated. Together with other writers, they met in June 1917, at Caf
é
Maison
Ō
tori-no-su in Nihonbashi. In conformity to Japanese thinking, Akutagawa regarded Tanizaki as an “upperclassman” (
senpai
), as he had also attended T
ō
ky
ō
Imperial University. Tanizaki had, however, interrupted his studies two years before Akutagawa began his own.

2
In the original, the term used derives from Classical Chinese, meaning literally ‘acid nostrils'.

3
Koshibito
refers to a person from northeastern Japan. Akutagawa composed (in classical form) the collection of twenty-five love poems by that title as a means of resisting the temptation to become involved with the poetess and translator Katayama Hiroko, an older woman married to a banker originally from Niigata, a prefecture in the northeast.

4
Though Villon was sentenced to be hanged in 1462, at the age of 31, he was reprieved in early 1463; his subsequent life is unknown . . . The poet Edward Young reported that on a walk through Dublin, Jonathan Swift saw an elm tree with a withered crown and (prophetically) remarked: “I shall be like that tree; I shall die at the top.”

5
The words attributed to the young writer Radiguet (1903–1923) before his death of typhoid fever, are, in fact: “Dans trois jours je vais être fusill
é
par les soldats de Dieu” (‘In three days I shall be shot by the soldiers of God.')

The Villa of the Black Crane (
Genkaku-sanb
ō
)

In the central character of this story, published in January–February 1927 (
Ch
Å«
ō
-k
ō
ron
), when his own health was failing, Akutagawa undoubtedly sees something of himself, though the story is otherwise hardly autobiographical. The biting irony with which it concludes might be seen as social
commentary, particularly regarding the status of women. Yet Akutagawa is an observer, not a revolutionary, the writer of elegies, not manifestos. If J
Å«
kichi's cousin is reading Wilhelm Liebknecht, the father of the Sparticist Karl Liebknecht, J
Å«
kichi himself is merely staring out the window, wearily noting the changing urban landscape and, with it, the passing of his father-inlaw's era.

Genkaku
is written with the Chinese characters meaning ‘black crane', but there is much homophony in Japanese, so that though the inquiring student surely knows this, he asks why Genkaku has chosen the name as his
nom d'artiste
. Written with other characters,
genkaku
can variously mean not only ‘strict' but also ‘hallucination'.

The death of the artist Genkaku suggests parallels to that of the admittedly nobler but nonetheless forlorn poet Bash
ō
in “O'er a Withered Moor.” More distantly, the description of a selfish old man contemplating his miserable life and impending death in an isolated room surrounded by a family he has somehow contrived to alienate may be heard echoing in François Mauriac's (1932)
Le Noeud de Vipères
(
The Vipers' Tangle
). The difference, of course, is that while Mauriac's Louis ultimately experiences grace, the despairing Genkaku chants familiar words from the twenty-fifth chapter of the
Lotus Sutra
and then thinks of a decidedly profane folk song and dance. When we last see him, he is quite unintentionally amusing his grandson with a failed attempt to strangle himself by means of his own loincloth. The reader is grimly reminded of Akutagawa's own experiment, as recorded in “The Life of a Fool.”

1
Bunka-mura
: the word
bunka
‘culture' was a highly fashionable term of embellishment and thus came to be applied to newly constructed suburban settlements.

2
Shoes left at the entrance are normally turned outwards to facilitate departure. The task would normally be that of the host or a servant. The fact that the woman performs it herself indicates her sense of inferiority—or her residual status as a domestic.

3
A mother would normally not address her own son as “Botchan” (‘young
master'); O-yoshi is presumably doing so as a sign of deference toward the child's father and his family.

4
This was the slogan of the political parties that sought to challenge the power of the bureaucratic elites. In 1913, they forced the resignation of the prime minister and in 1918 saw one of their own brought to power.

5
Translated by Burton Watson as: “Wonderful sound, Perceiver of the World's Sounds, Brahma's sound, the sea tide sound—they surpass those sounds of the world.”

Cogwheels (
Haguruma
)

The first section of this story appeared under the title of
R
ē
n-k
ō
to
(‘Raincoat') in the June 1927 edition of
Daich
ō
wa
(‘Great Harmony'). All six sections were published in
Bungei-shunj
Å«
in October of the same year; the posthumous title was
Haguruma
, lit. ‘toothed wheel(s)'.

The image easily suggests Charlie Chaplin's vision of
Modern Times
(1936), the hapless human individual caught in inhuman, industrial machinery, but, anachronism aside, the reader soon realizes that Akutagawa's themes are, as ever, far more personal and psychological than social.

As with the previous story, there is autobiographical detail that is not so much lost in translation as obscured by time; there is also, of course, the issue—especially given the writer's state of mind—of the boundary between fact and fiction. Moreover, Akutagawa, the voracious reader, was not a meticulous scholar. The story about the lad who went home “meandering like a reptile” is indeed from ancient China, but Akutagawa has his sources confused, for the folktale is found in
Autumn Floods
by the Daoist Zhu
ā
ngz
Ä­
(fourth Century
BCE
), not in
H
ÿ
n F
ē
iz
Ä­
by the third century
BCE
legalist philosopher H
ÿ
n F
ē
i. And the atheist Prosper M
é
rim
é
e did not, in fact, convert to Protestantism but merely arranged for a Protestant burial to spare his friends scandal.

Not surprisingly, Akutagawa drops hints that are more apparent to Japanese than to non-Japanese readers. When he refers to dragons, he plays on his own name, the
ry
Å«
(‘dragon') of Ry
Å«
nosuke; black and white are funeral
colors. “White” occurs so often in the story that even the “white, rectangular U” at the wedding reception becomes, at least in retrospect, a morbid symbol. The Sino-Japanese word for ‘four' (
shi
) is homophonous with that for ‘death', resulting in a superstition shared by other East Asian peoples.

1
In March 1914, Henriette Caillaux, wife of Joseph Caillaux, the former prime minister and at the time the minister of finance, shot and killed the editor of
Le Figaro
. She was acquitted, and by the time of this story, her husband was again in the throes of directing financial policy . . . The member of the Japanese imperial family to whom reference is made is probably Prince Higashikuni (1887–1990), who had studied at the Ecole Sup
é
rieure de Guerre in Paris from 1920 to 1926. Having become accustomed to
la dolce vita
, he had to be ordered home by the Imperial Household Ministry.

2
Clearly taken from Jeremiah 10:24, cf. Psalms 6 and 38.

3
In Canto XIII of
The Inferno
, Virgil guides Dante to the Seventh Ring of Hell, in which they encounter gnarled, black trees, inhabited, he learns, by the souls of those who have done themselves harm, squandering their wealth or committing suicide.

4
The statue is of Kusunoki Masashige, the warrior chieftain who in obedience to the reckless orders of exiled Emperor Go-Daigo went off in 1336 to certain death in battle with the turncoat Ashikaga Takauji, founder of the Muromachi shogunate. Kusunoki was idealized by both Edo period Neo-Confucianists and modern nationalists as a symbol of loyalty.

dh
ā
r
ā
ni
: A long chant, recited in Chinese-transcribed Sanskrit, as pronounced in Japanese, intended, among other things, to ward off evil.

fènghu
á
ng
(Chinese): Whatever the cross-cultural roots of the
q
í
l
í
n
(Sino-Japanese
kirin
) and the
fènghu
á
ng
(Sino-Japanese
h
ō
ō
), the narrator's bold and improbable suggestion in “Cogwheels” that they are of Occidental origin is clearly intended to provoke. Similarly, though Y
á
o and Shùn are thought to exemplify the wisdom of nonhereditary rule, a distinctly un-Japanese idea, Confucianism was part of Japan's eclectic ideology, so that the narrator is again baiting the scholar by denying the historical existence of the philosopher-kings.