Part 1

TALES GROTESQUE AND CURIOUS

by AKUTAGAWA RYUNOSUKE

_Translated from the Japanese by_ GLENN W. SHAW

THE HOKUSEIDO PRESS

COPYRIGHTS, 1930, By GLENN W. SHAW AND HOKUSEIDO

_First edition, July, 1930_ _Second edition, June, 1938_

INTRODUCTION

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke was born in Tōkyō on the first day of March, 1892, and drank poison and died in Tōkyō early on the morning of July 24, 1927. Of the thirty-five years of his life, lived almost entirely in that same Tōkyō, he spent some eighteen mostly in school as a young prodigy and some eleven mostly at his desk as the fashioner and polisher of perhaps 200 over-wrought short stories, of which this book contains eleven, translated into English as nearly word for word as possible.

His father, a man named Niihara Toshizō, is said to have given him the name Ryūnosuke (Dragon-helper) because he was born at the dragon hour on a dragon day in the dragon month of a dragon year. But his father’s part in the story ends there. His mother was unwell, and he was given in infancy, in the Japanese way, to her childless elder brother, Akutagawa Shōdō. His adoptive mother’s great uncle is reported to have been a man of fashion in the latter days of the old Edo period, but beyond this very frail hint, no home influence has been suggested as contributing to his genius.

When in the third year of primary school, bright young Ryūnosuke picked up Tokutomi Roka’s book of sketches, _Shizen to Jinsei_ (Nature and Man) and read it with a pleasure that is said to have turned him to literature. He went into the First High School in Tōkyō on recommendation without examination, passed through the school an honor student and entered the Imperial University of Tōkyō, where he studied English literature, graduating in 1916. His graduation thesis was entitled, _Wiriamu Morisu Kenkyū_ (A Study of William Morris).

He was like Morris in his surrender to the fascination of the Middle Ages, but he had none of the practical reforming tendencies of that artist socialist. He has been more aptly compared to Flaubert for the seriousness with which he took his art and the preciousness of his style. And the post-bellum point of view has been expressed by a Japanese social worker who, at his death, compared him, as a man with a keen sense of humor and knowledge of human nature and “an arbiter of elegance in the vicious society in which he lived,” to Petronius.

He says of himself while at the University that he did not attend classes very well and was an idle student, but we may take this for the expression of a sincere wish to be more like some of his hardier classmates, for Kikuchi Kan, one of them and to-day the literary Crœsus of Japan, says that Akutagawa went to his classes faithfully and had the confidence of his professors.

Writing some time after 1921, Kikuchi said of his friend Akutagawa that, when he thought of him as he was during their school days together, the first thing he always saw was the bright spot his red lips made in his pale white face. Akutagawa was very quiet and self-contained as an honor student. He was always buying new literary books, and always carried one with him wherever he went. Kikuchi envied him the books but thought at first that he was trying to show off when he carried them about with him. And he disliked the clever remarks and paradoxes with which Akutagawa was wont to pepper his conversation. Later he admired him as a writer. His life, like his writing, was most meticulous. He had a good memory and was full of ideas and of a delicate understanding. He was doing, Kikuchi felt, the most artistic work then being produced in Japan, but he was too cold and intellectual. He played with life with silver tweezers, but never touched it and had no real experience of it.

In 1923 Kikuchi was writing again that he thought Akutagawa, who had turned down an offer of a professorship at the Kyūshū Imperial University, should be given the recently vacated chair of English literature at the Kyōto Imperial University. It was his opinion that Akutagawa, who always had hanging on his door the sign, “Sick, Compliments to Callers,” that he might have more time to read, was the most scholarly of the literary men of Japan. He expressed a wish, however, that Akutagawa would forsake Persia and Greece and their curios and devote more time to men like Marx and Shaw.

Kikuchi first came to admire Akutagawa when, with a few others at the University, they began in 1914 the publication of the third series of the magazine _Shinshichō_. His maiden effort appeared in the first issue, attracting no particular attention. But in the following year he published in the magazine _Teikoku Bungaku_ two stories, the second of which, Rashōmon, became the title story of his first volume, published in May, 1917, and is now always associated with his name. It is a gruesome thing concerning the old two-storied south gate of Kyōto in the days when that landmark was falling into decay with the rest of the ancient capital toward the end of the twelfth century. By way of lame extenuation, this much, at least, may be said for the story (which is the fourth in this volume), that in other tales, Akutagawa has written with even more disgusting realism of this truly distressing period.

In December, 1915, while still at the University, Akutagawa became a disciple of the preëminent writer of the day, Natsume Soseki, who probably had a greater influence than any other man on his literary life. Mori Ogai, the versatile army surgeon, who tried his hand at so many things in the literary field during the periods of Meiji and Taishō, has been credited with having had the next greatest influence on him.

In 1916, in a fourth revival of the magazine _Shinshichō_, Akutagawa published _Hana_ (The Nose), the second story in this book, which drew from Natsume the highest praise. He told his young disciple that if he would write twenty or thirty more stories like it, he would find himself occupying a unique position among the writers of his country, a prophecy which came true. Out of old material, with the greatest attention to detail and to the atmosphere of the period of which he wrote, Akutagawa had produced a grotesquely amusing thing, writing into it some modern psychology and the little lesson that ideals are precious only so long as they remain ideals. This new way of treating historical material in Japan attracted the attention of his countrymen and became characteristic of much of Akutagawa’s work. Of this sort of tale, “Lice” and the Chinese story, “The Wine Worm,” go one step further in grotesquery, while “The Pipe” turns to lighter and more wholesome humor.

In 1917, when Akutagawa published his second volume of short stories, _Tobako to Akuma_ (The Devil and Tobacco), he had already established himself as one of the foremost writers of the day. The title story of the volume is the opening story in this book. In it we see an Oriental saturated with western literature playing with an old theme in a highly amusing and clever way. (Incidentally Akutagawa was himself an inveterate cigarette smoker.) It is one of the many stories he wrote about the early Catholic missionaries of the sixteenth century, one of them so cleverly that it fooled Japanese students of the period into believing that it was a translation from an old Latin text, non-existent, but called by Akutagawa _Legenda Aurea_.

Of the other stories in this volume of translations, a few comments may be of interest. Prof. Hasegawa in “The Handkerchief” is generally recognized as the distinguished author of _Bushidō_, Dr. Nitobe Inazō. “The Spider’s Thread” was written for a young peoples’ magazine. “The Badger” is one of those comic bits in which Akutagawa, making extravagant use of his wide reading, loved to play with a quaint idea in make-believe seriousness. “The Ball” is a re-creation of a fragment of that strange and romantic period in Japanese history when, soon after the Restoration, the West was being swallowed whole, only to be cast up again in revulsion in the inevitable reaction of the nineties. The Rokumeikan was the, to later eyes ridiculous, center of the social phase of this effort, and Pierre Loti, fresh from the sordid little transaction in Nagasaki out of which he made his best-known book on Japan, makes quite a respectable hero there. Who could have been the original of Mōri Sensei in the character study at the end of the volume, I do not know, but I have seen so many Mōri Senseis like him during my years in Japanese schools that I cannot read it without a doubtless gratuitous, but none the less poignant, feeling of the futility of many men’s lives, or should I, in a very general sense, say, “of all our lives?”

Just before he killed himself, Akutagawa coolly set down at considerable length an explanation of the ending of his short life (naming all the suicides of Eastern and Western history, including even Christ) on highly reasoned and philosophical grounds, which do not matter much here, for the simple truth seems to be that he was at the time a physical and nervous wreck, having been all his life a high-strung and frail man. Though he mentions an unnamed woman as furnishing some immediate excuse for it (he was a normal husband and father), and though the poetess Byakuren has gone out of her way to drop a hint that this woman was her own very good friend Kujō Takeko, the poetess and woman of letters whom public sentiment has made the ideal woman of modern Japan, Akutagawa seems simply to have been world-weary and, after coldly contemplating death for years, not able himself to say exactly what did drive him to it. All that can be said surely about it is that it took the vast majority of his countrymen greatly by surprise.

Then here ends the story of a sort of literary ascetic, whose history, as one biographer puts it, is really little more than a list of the dates on which he published his stories and the names of the magazines in which they appeared. But there can be no doubt that he had more individuality than any other writer of his time and has left in Japanese literature a mass of artistic work, often grotesque and curious, that, while it undoubtedly angers the proletarian experimenters who now hold the stage and fight with lusty pens and a highly developed class consciousness against all that he stood for, will continue to live as long as men go on treasuring the fancies their fellows from time to time set down with care on paper.

The translation of _Rashōmon_ here given was first published in the English study magazine, _Eigo Seinen_, in 1920, three years after Akutagawa published the original in his first book. “Lice” was published in the same magazine in 1921. I am grateful to the magazine for permission to republish them in this volume. I am once more grateful, too, to my very sympathetic Japanese colleagues, whom I have always used freely when, from time to time, dictionaries and my own imagination have failed me. And finally I am grateful to the author, whom, though his days of seeing and hearing are over, I here address as would a Japanese: Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, at last I am publishing the book I started with your approval years ago. May you find it pleasing.

Glenn W. Shaw

Osaka, June 10, 1930.

CONTENTS

PAGE

TOBACCO AND THE DEVIL 1

THE NOSE 15

THE HANDKERCHIEF 29

RASHŌMON 45

LICE 57

THE SPIDER’S THREAD 67

THE WINE WORM 75

THE BADGER 89

THE BALL 97

THE PIPE 109

MŌRI SENSEI 123

TOBACCO AND THE DEVIL

TOBACCO did not grow in Japan in the beginning. And the records do not agree as to when it was introduced. Some put it in the Keichō Period (1596-1615) and some in the Tembun Period (1532-55). But the plant seems to have been already widely under cultivation by about the tenth year of Keichō. And in the Bunroku Period (1592-96), smoking was so widespread as to give rise to the pasquinade,

Things without effect On men are the smoking law, The counterfeit law, The imperial voice secluded And Gentaku the physician.

To the question, “By whom was tobacco introduced?” any historian would answer that it was by the Portuguese or the Spaniards. But these are not necessarily the only answers. There is, besides, one more in the form of a tradition. According to it, tobacco was brought here from somewhere by the Devil. And the Devil was brought all the way over to Japan by a Catholic Padre, perhaps St. Francis.

When I say this, Catholic believers may find fault with me for slandering their Padres. But for myself, I cannot but believe it probable. For it is most natural that when the god of the “Southern barbarians” came to us from across the sea, their devil should come with him,--that is, when the good of the West was brought in, the evil should be brought in too.

But I cannot say positively whether the Devil truly brought tobacco to this land or not. Of course, according to a book by Anatole France, the Devil once tried to tempt a certain priest with mignonette. Then surely we cannot simply say that the story that he brought tobacco into Japan is a mere lie. Even if it is a lie, it may be, in a certain sense, surprisingly near the truth. With this thought, I have decided to try writing here this tradition concerning the introduction of tobacco.

* * * * *

In the eighteenth year of Tembun, the Devil, assuming the form of a Brother in St. Francis Xavier’s company, came safely across the wide seas to Japan. He was able to change himself into this Brother because, while the genuine Brother was ashore at Amakawa or somewhere, the “black ship” which carried the party sailed away and left him behind without knowing it. Then the Devil, who had up to this time been hanging head down with his tail wrapped round a spar secretly watching what was going on in the ship, instantly took on the appearance of this man and began to wait on St. Francis constantly. Of course such a trick was nothing for him, since he was the expert who, when he called on Dr. Faust, could assume the shape of a splendid red-cloaked knight.

But when he reached Japan, he found things quite different from what he had read of them in Marco Polo’s Travels while still in the West. In the first place, in the Travels, the whole country seemed to be overflowing with gold, but look where he might, there was nothing of the kind to be seen. Then he might be able to tempt people a good deal by scratching crosses with his nail and turning them into gold. And it was said that the Japanese knew a way of raising the dead by the power of pearls or something, but this also seemed to be one of Marco Polo’s lies. If it was a lie and he should spit into all their wells and spread a plague among them, practically all men would forget the coming Paradise in their agony. Laudably following St. Francis about here and there sight-seeing, the Devil secretly thought such thoughts and smiled to himself with satisfaction.

But there was one thing that troubled him. Even he did not know what to do about that one thing. Francis Xavier having just reached Japan and it being necessary for him to preach widely before he could make any converts to Christianity, there was not a single all-important believer for him to tempt. With all his being the Devil, this perplexed him not a little. In the first place, for the time being, he did not know how to while away his tedious leisure hours.

So after considering many things, he thought he would kill some time gardening anyway, for he had been carrying various kinds of seeds in the hollow of his ear ever since his departure from the West. As for land, if he borrowed a neighboring field, he would have no trouble about that. Moreover, even St. Francis gave his hearty approval. Of course he supposed that one of the Brothers in his company was going to introduce western medicinal herbs or some such plants into Japan.

The Devil immediately borrowed a spade and a hoe and began energetically to till a roadside field.

It was just at the vapor-laden beginning of spring, and the bell of a far-off temple sent its sleepy boom through the floating mist. The sound was ever so tranquil and did not strike him on the crown of the head with the disagreeable sharp clang of the church bells of the West to which he was accustomed. But if you suppose that the Devil felt calm in these peaceful surroundings, you are quite wrong.

When he once heard the sound of this temple bell, he scowled more unhappily than he had when he heard the bell of St. Paul’s and began to dig furiously in the field. For when, bathed in the warm sunshine, he heard this calm bell, his heart was strangely relaxed. He had no more mind to work evil than to do good. At this rate, his crossing the sea on purpose to tempt the Japanese would be all in vain. The only reason the Devil, who hated work so much that he was once scolded by the sister of Ivan for having no blisters on his palms, was willing to toil away with a hoe like this was simply that he was madly determined to drive away the moral sleepiness that threatened to overcome him.

After some days the Devil at last finished his work and sowed in furrows the seeds he had in his ear.

* * * * *

During the following months, the seeds the Devil had sown sprouted and grew into high plants and, at the end of the summer, broad green leaves completely hid all the earth of the field. But there was no one who knew the name of the plants. Even when St. Francis asked him, the Devil only grinned and held his tongue, vouchsafing no reply.

Meanwhile the plants put out clusters of flowers on the ends of their stems. They were funnel-shaped and light purple. The Devil seemed to be delighted with the flowering of the plants in proportion to the trouble he had taken with them. So every day, after the morning and evening services, he always came out into the field and cultivated them devotedly.

Then one day (St. Francis had gone off on a preaching tour for several days and was absent) a cattle dealer passed by the field leading a yellow cow. There across the fence in the field full of purple flowers stood a southern barbarian Brother in his black priest’s robe and broad-brimmed hat busily picking worms off the leaves. The flowers were so curious that the cattle dealer involuntarily stopped, took off his mushroom hat and called to the Brother politely,

“I say, holy one, what are those flowers?”

The Brother looked round. He had a flat nose and small eyes and was an altogether good-natured looking “red-head.”

“These?”

“Yes.”

The “red-head,” leaning on the fence, shook his head. Then he said in awkward Japanese,

“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell that one thing to anybody.”

“Oh, then did Francis Sama say that you shouldn’t tell?”

“No, not that.”

“Then won’t you just tell me once, for I’ve recently been instructed by Francis Sama and become a believer in your religion, as you see.”

The cattle dealer pointed proudly to his breast. The Devil looked, and sure enough, there was a little brass cross hanging from his neck and shining in the sun. Then, perhaps dazzled by it, the Brother screwed up his face a little and dropped his eyes to the ground, but quickly in a more familiar tone than before and so that you could not tell whether he was joking or not, he said,

“Still I can’t. For by the law of our country, it’s forbidden to tell. Better still, you make a guess at it yourself. The Japanese are clever, so you’re sure to hit it. If you do, I’ll give you all the plants in this field.”

The cattle dealer probably thought the Brother was making fun of him. With a smile on his sun-burnt face, he gave his head an exaggerated tilt.

“What can it be, I wonder. To save me, I can’t guess it right off.”

“Oh, you needn’t do it to-day. Think it over for three days. I don’t care if you consult others about it. If you guess it, I’ll give you all these. Besides, I’ll give you some rare wine. Or shall I give you a picture of the Heavenly Paradise.”

The cattle dealer seemed to be surprised at his earnestness.

“Then if I don’t guess it, what’ll I have to do?”

Pushing his hat back on his head, the Brother waved his hand and laughed. He laughed in a sharp voice like a crow’s, that took the cattle dealer a little by surprise.

“If you fail to guess it, I’ll take something of yours. It’s a gamble. It’s a gamble whether you can guess it or not. If you guess it, I give you all these plants.”

As he talked, the red-head’s voice again took on a friendly tone.

“All right. Then I’ll do my best, too, and give you anything you say.”

“Will you give me anything? Even that cow?”

“If she’ll do, I’ll give her to you right now.”

Smiling, the cattle dealer patted the yellow cow on the forehead. He seemed to be taking everything the good-natured Brother said for a joke.

“And in exchange, if I win, I’ll thank you for those flowering plants.”

“Good. Good. Then it’s a real bargain, isn’t it?”

“It’s a real bargain. I swear in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

When he heard this, the Brother flashed his little eyes and snorted twice or thrice as if with satisfaction. Then putting his left hand on his hip and leaning a little back, he put his right hand out and touched the purple flowers.

“Well then, if you don’t guess it--I’ll take you, body and soul.”

With this, the red-head made a large circle with his right hand and took off his hat. There were two horns like a goat’s in his shaggy hair. The cattle dealer, changing color, dropped his hat from his hand. Perhaps because the sun was obscured, the brightness of the flowers and leaves in the field all at once vanished. Even the cow, as if in fear of something, lowered her horns and gave a bellow like the rumbling of the earth.

“Even a promise made to me is a promise. You’ve sworn in the name of one to me unmentionable. Don’t forget. You have three days. Good-bye.”

Speaking thus in the courteous tone of one who has made a fool of somebody, the Devil deliberately made the cattle dealer a very polite bow.

* * * * *

The cattle dealer regretted that he had fallen into the Devil’s trap so carelessly. If he left things as they were, he would finally be seized by that “shag-pate” and have to burn body and soul in the everlasting fires of hell. Then his having forsaken his former religion and having been baptized would be of no avail.

Since, however, he had sworn in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, he could not break the promise he had made. Of course if St. Francis had only been there, something might have been done yet, but unfortunately he was away. Then for three days, during which he could not sleep a wink, he tried to think how to outwit the Devil. To do so, there was absolutely no way but to learn the name of the plant. But where could there be anybody who knew a name unknown even to St. Francis?