I went back to bed and once more pretended to be asleep. Again there was the sound of tapping. When I shouted, “Aha!” opened the shutter, and ran out, the old man came out too, yelling, “Gotcha!” But there was nothing there, so we both got very angry. Even though we looked in every corner of the property, we couldn’t find a thing.
This went on for some five nights running. Wearied by it all, I finally came to the conclusion that I could no longer stay there. But then a servant of Jōū’s house came and said, “You will not be disturbed tonight, sir. This morning one of the villagers shot an old badger in a place called Yabushita. I know for sure that all that fuss and trouble was the work of this badger. Rest well tonight.”
And indeed, from that night on, all the noises ceased. I began to think sadly that the animal that I had thought of as a nuisance had really offered me some comfort from the loneliness of my lodging. I felt pity for the badger’s soul and wondered whether we had formed a karmic bond. For that reason I called on a cleric named Priest Zenku, made a donation, and for one night chanted the nenbutsu in order that the badger might eventually achieve buddhahood.
aki no kure Late in autumn
hotoke ni bakeru transformed into a buddha
tanuki kana —the badger
A badger had come to the door to visit, and people said he made tapping sounds with his tail, but that was not the case. In fact, he had pressed his back against the door.
[Buson shū, Issa shū, NKBT 58: 279–280, translated by Cheryl Crowley]
TAKEBE AYATARI
Takebe Ayatari (1719–1774) was a noted haikai poet, kokugaku scholar, novelist, and bunjin painter. He was the second son of a powerful house elder (karō) in Hirosaki Domain (Aomori) and was probably groomed for a political and military career as a domain administrator. But a great scandal—apparently an affair with his sister-in-law—resulted in Ayatari’s banishment from the province and the removal of his samurai status. For the next thirty-five years he traveled—teaching, writing, and painting. He first pursued a career as a haikai poet and teacher, began to study painting, and then, around the age of forty-five, turned to kokugaku (nativist learning), becoming a student of Kamo no Mabuchi (1697–1769). His involvement with nativist learning led him to press for the revival of the archaic katauta (5–7–7 syllable poem), as opposed to the 5–7–5 hokku. Besides Chinese vernacular fiction, kokugaku also inspired Ayatari to write two major novels, Tale of the Western Hills (Nishiyama monogatari, 1768) and Japanese Water Margin (Honchō suikoden, the first part published in 1773), in which he created romantic, imaginary worlds using a neoclassical style. Ayatari was later considered by Takizawa Bakin, the nineteenth-century master of the yomihon, to be the founder of the yomihon (reading books) genre. As a painter, Ayatari traveled to Nagasaki and studied under Chinese émigré painters, excelling in both bird-and-flower and ink landscape paintings. He also strove to expand his style of painting through the publication of several painting manuals (gafu), including Painting Manual of the Cold-Leaf Studio (Kan’y ōsai gafu, 1762).
Although not as well known today as his talented contemporaries Hiraga Gennai (1728–1779), Yosa Buson (1716–1783), and Ueda Akinari (1734–1809), Ayatari was considered by observers at the time to be one of the best painters and writer-poets of his day. During the final decade of his life, Ayatari deliberately abandoned a lucrative career as a professional haikai master to devote his many talents to achieving the bunjin (literatus) ideal of scholarly and artistic detachment, of someone who refused to join the established sociopolitical order and instead pursued a life of painting, music, and poetry and interacted with like-minded friends. While traveling, Ayatari died at the age of fifty-five.
TALES FROM THIS TIME AND THAT (ORIORIGUSA, 1773)
Tales from This Time and That (completed in 1771 but not published in Ayatari’s lifetime) is a collection of thirty-six short vignettes organized according to the four seasons. Ayatari wrote the vignettes in an archaic style that used the genre of Heian-period miscellanies (zuihitsu), such as Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book, in a contemporary setting. Someone later edited the manuscript and in 1798 published seventeen of the vignettes with illustrations under the title Random Stories on the Road (Man’yūki). In his introduction to the first printed version of Tales from This Time and That, written in 1908, the noted Meiji novelist Kōda Rohan (1867–1947) praised the work as an unusually compelling collection of short stories with realistic scenic representations.
Walking the Neighborhoods of Negishi in Search of a Woman
“Walking the Neighborhoods of Negishi in Search of a Woman,” from the “Spring” section of the collection, is an enigmatic look into one physician’s efforts to find a mysterious woman he had been called on to treat for an animal bite. The vignette shares more with the work of such modern writers as Kawabata Yasunari and his depictions of male obsession than it does with eighteenth-century Edo fiction. Ayatari casts his story in an intriguing blend of contemporary language and an archaic, neoclassical style reconstructed from his study of ancient Japanese texts. It is this combination of a strikingly modern scene described in a hybrid written style that identifies this work as a prime example of bunjin prose narrative.
The New Year and the arrival of spring are so delightful in Edo, in the province of Musashi. The pine-and-bamboo decorations found throughout the city are unlike those of any other place. Whether they are great houses or small, their gates have truly become forests of greenery. On the expanses of the rivers, boats crossing back and forth show off their spring adornments, each according to its own means, providing the onlooker with a sense of serenity. Negishi lies to the northeast, away from bustling districts, and since it is a hamlet like a mountain’s droplets, its water is pure in essence, and its dwellings are comfortable. The homes depend only on bamboo and brushwood hedges for protection and put up only rough-hewn woven gates as barriers.37
On the second day of spring in the new year, my friend invited me to accompany him and led me around the neighborhood composing poems as we walked. The day was gentle and pleasant, with a mist hanging among a grove of tall trees, while at the low riverbank, the willows were budding. Warblers also were singing. As we curved around a winding path, we reached a rustic-looking woven gate that opened onto the garden of a distinguished-looking residence. In the garden we were struck by a camellia tree in full bloom and stopped to look at the vibrant colors of the blossoms.
My friend stood there for a moment. “It must have been next door to this house,” he said as he peered across but shook his head and muttered to himself, “It’s not here either. This is really strange.”
A hermit’s residence in the idyllic hamlet of Negishi, from Guide to Famous Places in the Edo Area (Edo meisho zue, 1834–1836), edited by Saitō Yukio and his son Yukitaka and published by his grandson Gesshin (1804–1878), with illustrations by Hasegawa Settan (1778–1843). A hedge made of bound kuretake bamboo encloses the hamlet. A well-to-do retired man wearing a hemmed cap and a pair of black-rimmed glasses is playing go with someone smoking a pipe. A female servant greets a vendor at the thatched gate. The text (upper right) reads: “Perhaps because of its refined location in the shadows of Ueno, many cultured men of the city come to live in seclusion at the village of Negishi, known for its kuretake bamboo. Both the bush warblers that sing among the flowers and the frogs that live in the waters of Negishi carry a melody that is widely admired.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“It’s a very mysterious thing. Let me tell you about it.” Walking quietly along, he began explaining. “It happened last year on the twenty-third day of the Eleventh Month. There was a certain woman, not of this neighborhood, I had been seeing and in whom I had come to lose interest. That evening I was on my way to see her and to provoke her into a senseless quarrel, thereby gaining an excuse for breaking off our relationship. So I was hurrying along this road when as it grew darker, it started to snow heavily, and I could find no place to go for shelter. I
am quite familiar with this neighborhood and was definitely next door to the house we see before us now. An elderly woman of great refinement came out and said, ‘Where on earth could you be going? How do you expect to travel in this weather without a broad-rimmed sedge hat? Let me lend you a straw cape. Please come in for a moment.’ Overjoyed at this offer, and since she did not seem at all like the mountain hag Yamauba, I followed her inside.38
“The house turned out to be swept and cleaned to a sheen, more than I had imagined from having seen it from the outside. She then said, ‘Come this way.’ This was totally unexpected, so I merely sat at the edge of the veranda and explained, ‘I am in a hurry to be someplace right now, so I shall just stay here. Please lend me the straw cape.’ She replied, ‘Actually I have a favor to ask of you; please don’t stay there. I beg you to come in.’ An attractive young girl then appeared, took hold of my sleeve, and gave it a tug. I followed her without resisting and came to a room that I took to be the parlor. It gave off a very pleasant fragrance, and the walls were covered with skilled drawings of autumn pastoral landscapes.
“In the room I could vaguely see the form of a woman reclining behind some screens that had been set up. She seemed to be about twenty years of age, and with her pillow drawn up a bit, she was engaged in thoughtful conversation. Her manner of speech indicated high birth and refinement, and her voice sounded lovely. I could tell immediately that she was not like any ordinary person. I mulled over in my mind why someone of such apparent rank might be hidden away in this place but could not come up with a satisfactory explanation. I was about to inquire, but at that moment the elderly woman who had first led me in appeared, saying, ‘The person you see before you is my mistress whom I have raised from childhood. It is not important at this point to explain to you just why we happen to be here now. I asked you to come in here because as my mistress was on her way for dawn prayers yesterday, she was attacked by a miserable cur. Although the people with her were able to chase the dog away, it bit one of her legs. She lost a great amount of blood and, from the shock of her ordeal, also fell into a faint. In that state of distress, she was finally placed on something and brought to this place. According to what people say, if someone gets sick from being bitten by a dog, it’s almost always hopeless. For this reason, perhaps, she has a fever, and nothing we give her helps. She is just lying here as you see her. It is obvious that you are a physician, so please give her some medicine and some immediate relief for her distress.’ She begged me fervently, and looking at the woman, I could see that her face was indeed flushed and that she was in some distress.
“I responded, ‘This is certainly unexpected! Today of all days I am out alone without an assistant and without my bag. However, in case of an emergency, I always have with me in my breast pocket a small amount of medicine, which should be of some use here. How is her leg? I need to examine it.’ ‘By all means,’ she said.
“She had the young people around the woman move away and began to raise up the bedding. The young woman’s quilt was of Chinese silk on whose surface were overlapping patterns of cherry blossoms and maple leaves woven with gold thread in overlapping patterns, and on the underside was a layer of deep crimson. She rolled up the thick cotton batting at the edge and said, ‘Please show him your leg.’ With some embarrassment, the woman exposed her slender gam, which was pale with a translucent sheen. I saw that she was uncommonly beautiful, but since I could not detect any sign of a wound, I asked, ‘Where did the dog bite you?’ The elderly woman smiled and replied, ‘She is shy about such matters. I shall raise the covers for you a bit more.’ She then folded over the soft white-patterned fabric and pulled it up so I could see the full extent of the woman’s thighs. I could clearly see the bite marks in the badly swollen flesh. ‘This would have been a hopeless matter, just as you said, madam, if the bite had been from a diseased dog. This one, though, does not look like that, and it seems as though the bite was not too deep. Put on the medicine I have brought, and wrap up the wound. It should heal quickly. I would like to come back later and examine it again.’ At this, everyone smiled. The woman then said, ‘I hope we can depend on you from now on as well. This place is very inconvenient, so in two days we shall be moving to the home of my mistress’s cousin in the Yanagigahara district of Kamita.’39 She brought out an inkstone box with a richly lacquered design painted on it, and, rubbing a hard stick of fine ink into the stone’s inkwell, pushed the box over to me. She then untied a long, deeply dyed, tasseled cord tied around another, similarly lacquered box, from which she took a sheet of thick michinoku paper, placed it before me, and withdrew. Watching the elderly woman go through even these simple motions made me regret the waste it would be to defile this ink and paper with my unsightly bird scratchings, but I swallowed my pride and wrote as boldly as I could. I announced to the people around me, ‘I’d like to come back and look in on you again,’ and prepared to take my leave, but they suddenly began to rush around, offering me something to eat. Part of me was tempted to stay, but the snow had let up, and so I rushed off without even borrowing the straw cape. Even so, as I was walking on the stones and through the snow, I found myself thinking about how fascinating the woman was. At the third hour of the cock [about 6:00 P.M.], I finally arrived with some difficulty at my lover’s place.
“At that, she and I entered into a heated and unrestrained discussion, and the hour grew late, so I curled up and slept there that night. I returned home at dawn the next morning, and even though I now had a cold, the memory of that evening when I took shelter from the snow stuck in my mind. I waited for someone to come calling for me, but day after day passed, until finally the year ended without any word at all from the household. I found myself so fascinated with the young mistress that I finally decided to look for the house myself. That is why we are now here. Things were so confused that evening that I don’t have any memory of her house. I do remember, though, the bright blossoms of the camellia tree in the garden next door and the fact that the roughly woven gate had a roof over it made of bark-covered wood. This house is clear in my memory, but the one next door is gone without a trace. I’m sure it’s been only about a month since I saw it. How could a house disappear in that period of time—how could a hedge? That’s what was on my mind as I stood here just now staring at this place. I couldn’t have been elsewhere. If I had known this would happen, I would have made it a point to learn the name of the household or to find out more about its occupants. Damn!” He spoke with heartfelt regret.
In this woodblock illustration from Random Stories on the Road, an edited version of Tales from This Time and That, the doctor, dressed formally in a crested black kimono and hakama (divided overskirt), discusses the condition of the mistress’s leg while sitting in the parlor, which is lit by an oil lantern. A serving woman, offering him a large lacquered writing box, asks him to write down his instructions. The ailing mistress looks on from the adjacent room, reclining on an armrest. The sliding door, with an autumn landscape on gold leaf, decorative handles, and lacquered borders, suggests the resident’s wealth, as does the patterned curtain stand (kichō).
I commented, “If you are so certain that this is the place, then why don’t you go and inquire at that house with the camellias in bloom? If the house has been torn down and the people there have moved, then you should be able to find out where they’ve gone.”
He agreed and, approaching the house, cleared his throat and called out, “There is something I wish to ask you.” There was no response, however. He muttered to me, “Somebody should be home even on an ordinary day, and here it is New Year’s when a person might come calling!”
“Maybe the master of the house is taking a nap. Speak a bit more loudly,” I suggested.
He cleared his throat again and called out, “I have something to ask.” Since still no one answered, and because the sliding door was partly open, he rattled it open the rest of the way, poked his face in the doorway, and yet again called out, “I’ve come with a request.”
Suddenly an old lady’s face appeared, and placing her fingers behind both ears, she shouted, “Speak up!” She was practically deaf.
Responding with “We beg your pardon” so loudly that it echoed everywhere, my friend inquired in detail about the house next door.
The old lady listened and said, “Today they went out, saying that they were going to call on the mansion for a New Year’s visit. Since they took both of the other servants, only this old lady before you is left to look after things here.” Deducing from this exchange that they had not yet moved, he repeated his question even more clearly.
She replied, “The master of this house is a lower official in the Bureau of the Storehouses. He has now left his house and his name behind to his heir and lives quietly here, as you see.” She just could not hear him!
Figuring that he might get her to hear in spite of everything, he raised his voice to a high “A” in the banjiki mode and asked, “When was the house next door demolished? And the occupants—when did they leave, and where have they moved to?”
She gave the impression that she caught a little of what was said and started to flap her ancient tongue in reply. “That’s why I shaved my head in the spring the year before last. And then I came here last fall.”
This response frustrated us all the more; knowing that we could get nowhere with her, we just nodded over and over. My friend muttered, “Old coon dog, senile old woman!” but did not ask her any more questions.
Cracking a broad, unsightly smile, she exclaimed, “Why don’t I bring you a cup of tea?” and stood, but since the entire situation seemed so ludicrous, we laughed as we took our leave.
At this point my friend decided that it must indeed have been the wrong place, so we searched about here and there looking for a garden in which a camellia would be in full bloom, and where the gate would be crowned with a bark-covered wooden arch, but however much we looked, we found nothing. In fact, we were scouring the neighborhood so thoroughly that people started to glare at us as though they suspected we might be burglars. I tried to put a bright face on this unfortunate situation by laughing and suggesting, “Just forget about it now. I’m so famished that instead of walking around looking for camellias, we should go to a place where they sell camellia cakes!”40 We thus started out on our way back home.
Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 Page 79
