Tales of Moonlight and Rain

by Ueda, Akinari

  Whether in fields or in mountains my heart will surely wander. (Kokinshū, no. 947)

  7. An allusion to a poem by Shirome: “Composed when parting from Minamoto no Sane at Yamazaki, as he set out for the hot springs of Tsukushi”:

  If only life obeyed the wishes of our hearts

  what pain would we feel in our partings? (Kokinshū, no. 387)

  8. This sentence contains a pun on kaeru, which means both “to return” and “to turn over.” Arrowroot, being one of the “seven autumn grasses,” signifies autumn.

  9. “roosters crow” (tori ga naku): a pillow-word for Azuma, the East Country, an old name for the region now called Kantō, or greater Tokyo. The image is further enriched by the truism that roosters crow at dawn and the fact that the word “Azuma” is often written with characters signifying “my wife.”

  10. “lands east of the barrier”: refers to the eight provinces to the east of the barrier station at Hakone: Sagami, Musashi, Awa, Kazusa, Shimōsa, Hitachi, Shimotsuke, and Kōzuke (corresponding to the modern Kantō prefectures of Kanagawa, Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Ibaraki, Tochigi, and Gumma).

  11. “decorated cock of Meeting Hill”: cocks decorated with mulberry-cloth ribbons were occasionally sent to the barrier stations around Kyoto, including the Ōsaka Barrier, as part of a purification ritual. On the Ōsaka Barrier, see the introduction to “Shiramine.” Since “Ōsaka” (the barrier, not the city) means “Meeting Hill,” poets frequently used the name in a double sense, as in this anonymous poem:

  Does the decorated cock of Meeting Hill, like me,

  long for someone, and that is why we cry in vain? (Kokinshū, no. 536)

  and in a poem by Kan’in: “Sent to the Middle Counselor Lord Minamoto no Noboru, when he was Vice-Governor of Ōmi”:

  If only I were the decorated cock of Meeting Hill,

  crying, I could watch you come and go. (Kokinshū, no. 740)

  12. “bestowed the flag on”: in the autumn of 1455, the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa appointed Tsuneyori (1401–1494), a leading poet and commander, to subdue the disloyal Shigeuji and his supporters.

  13. Shimotsuke corresponds to the modern Tochigi Prefecture; Mino Province, to Gifu Prefecture.

  “domain of Shimōsa”: Akinari mistakenly wrote “Shimotsuke” instead of Shimōsa.

  “Eight Provinces”: see note 10.

  14. Yoshimasa’s reign (1443–1490) was a golden age in culture, as the shogun led the way in promoting garden design, architecture, nō theater, and other arts. His Ginkaku (Silver Pavilion) in Kyoto, with its splendid garden, is the most famous relic of the period.

  15. An allusion to a poem by Ki no Tsurayuki: “Composed for a person who was going to Michinokuni”:

  Even far away where white clouds pile in myriad layers

  let not your heart grow distant from him who thinks of you. (Kokinshū, no. 380)

  16. Misaka in Kiso is an old name for Magome Pass, on the Nakasendō (highway through the mountains between Kyoto and Edo), at the border of Gifu and Nagano Prefectures.

  17. Musa is now part of the city of Ōmi Hachiman, Shiga Prefecture, on the shore of Lake Biwa, about twenty miles northeast of Kyoto.

  18. The Hatakeyama brothers Masanaga and Yoshinari fought for some years over which should hold the office of shogun’s deputy (kanrei). Their dispute was one of several that led to the infamous Ōnin War (1467–1477), which devastated the capital. Kawachi corresponds to the eastern part of the modern Ōsaka Prefecture, just southwest of Kyoto.

  19. “cosmic epoch” (kō): kalpa, a Sanskrit word for an almost unimaginably long period of time. Here the reference is to the second kalpa, during which there is life on earth. Epidemics and famines occurred throughout Japan in the 1450s. This sentence echoes Kamo no Chōmei’s description of Kyoto in 1182, in Hōjōki (An Account of a Ten-Foot-Square Hut, 1212).

  20. “grass of forgetfulness” (wasuregusa): a kind of daylily (Hemerocallis aurantiaca), mentioned in section 100 of Tales of Ise: “Long ago, as a man was passing by the Kōrōden, a high-ranking lady sent a message out to him, saying, Do you refer to the grass of forgetfulness as grass of remembrance? to which he replied with a poem:

  This may look to be a field overgrown with grass of forgetfulness,

  but it is remembrance, and I shall continue to depend on you.”

  21. An allusion to an anonymous poem:

  I wish for a horse whose hoofs would make no sound.

  Across the jointed bridge of Mama in Katsushika would I always go to her. (Man’yõshū, no. 3387)

  22. This paragraph contains several echoes of the “Yomogiu” (The Wormwood Patch) chapter of The Tale of Genji, in which the Hitachi Princess has waited for ten years for another visit from Genji (Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari, NKBT, vol. 15, pp. 155–160). Her mansion has fallen into ruin, most of her servants have left, and she is almost without resources, when Genji happens to notice her dilapidated estate. He sends in his attendant, Koremitsu, to learn whether the princess still lives there. Koremitsu first lets his presence be known by clearing his throat, in response to which an aged voice asks, “Who is there? Who are you?” He recognizes the voice, that of an attendant. After identifying himself, he says, “If the princess has not changed, then my lord’s desire to visit her, too, has not ceased.” The aged voice replies, “If my lady had changed, would she still be living in this reed-choked moor [asaji ga hara]?” When Genji finally meets the princess again, he composes a waka for her:

  I found it hard to ignore the waves of wisteria blooms

  because the pine they drape on is the mark of your waiting house.

  23. Kiso road refers to the section of the Nakasendō between Nakatsugawa (Gifu Prefecture) and Shiojiri (Nagano Prefecture). The Tōkaidō ran along the Pacific coast between Kyoto and Edo; the Tōsandō, through the mountains between Kyoto and the northern tip of Honshū.

  24. “Cloud of Shaman Hill”: refers to a story in the Wenxuan (Anthology of Writing, sixth century), edited by Xiao Tong, in which King Xiang of Chu dreams that he has slept with a woman at Shaman Hill (Wushan, in Sichuan) who turns out to have been a cloud (Sun Yü, “The Kao T’ang Fu,” in The Temple and Other Poems, trans. Arthur Waley [New York: Knopf, 1923], pp. 65–72).

  “Apparition in the Han Palace”: derives from a story in the Han shu (History of the Former Han Dynasty), by Ban Gu (32–62), in which the Han emperor Wu, grieving the death of a beloved lady, commands a sorcerer to summon her spirit.

  Both tales bespeak a confusion of illusion and reality.

  25. “autumn I relied on” (tanomu no aki): a pun on tanomu no hi (the day relied upon / the day of the fruits of the field), a harvest and gift-exchanging festival on the first day of the Eighth Month. Compare a poem by the Sesshō Daijōdaijin: “On the returning geese”:

  Do not forget, oh geese who rise from the sheltering marsh by the fields,

  the wind on the rice leaves in the evening of autumn. (Shinkokinshū, no. 61)

  26. The Milky Way, which brightens as the air becomes less humid in the autumn, is associated with the Tanabata festival, the seventh night of the Seventh Month, the only night when, in Sino-Japanese legend, the Oxherd (the star Altair) may cross the River of Heaven (the Milky Way) to meet his love, the Weaver Maid (the star Vega).

  27. Miyagi employs the usual pun on matsu, which means both “pine tree” and “to wait.” The pine also echoes the tree that leads Katsushirō to his house, and Genji to the mansion of the Hitachi Princess, where he finds foxes and owls.

  28. An allusion to a poem by Taira no Kanemori:

  If unknown to him I die of longing while I wait for him to come,

  for what shall I say I have exchanged my life? (Goshūishū, no. 656)

  29. An allusion to a poem by Priest Henjō:

  The house is ruined, the people are grown old—

  garden and brushwood-fence have both become a wild autumn moor. (Kokinshū, no. 248)

  30. An allusion to a poem by Ariwara no Narihira
:

  The moon is not that moon nor the spring the spring of old,

  and I alone am as I was before. (Tales of Ise, sec. 4; Kokinshū, no. 747)

  31. Nasuno, in Shimotsuke Province (Tochigi Prefecture), produced a thick, sturdy paper of high quality.

  32. Miyagi’s waka is borrowed from the collection of the courtier and poet Fujiwara no Atsutada (905?–943): Gon Chūnagon Atsutada kyō shū, in Hanawa Hokiichi, comp., Gunsho ruijū (Classified Collection of Various Books) (1819), vol. 9, no. 235.

  33. The proverb Sōden henjite sōkai to naru (mulberry fields [sōden] change into blue seas [sōkai]) refers to the world’s mutability.

  34. “home of tree spirits and other ghastly monsters”: another echo of the mansion of the Hitachi Princess in “The Wormwood Patch” chapter of The Tale of Genji.

  35. The legend of Tekona (or Tegona, the pronunciation that Akinari preferred) of Mama is told in the Man’yõshū, nos. 431–433, 1807–1808. The old man’s narrative is based on a long poem by Takahashi Mushimaro, “Of the Maiden of Mama of Katsushika” (Man’yõshū, no. 1807). See The Manyōshū: The Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai Translation of One Thousand Poems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), pp. 223–224.

  * * *

  “riding on a drifting log”: signifies rootlessness and anxiety, as in the “Matsukaze” (The Wind in the Pines) chapter of The Tale of Genji (Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari, ed. Yamagishi Tokuhei, Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 14 [Tokyo: Iwanami, 1958], p. 199):

  How many autumns have come and gone as I was dwelling here—why now should I return, riding on a drifting log?

  Zhoulu: in the present Hebei Province, China, the scene of an ancient battle involving the legendary Yellow Emperor.

  “crushed … tile”: that is, “I would not prolong my life [the perfect tile] by being unfaithful, even though death [the crushed jade] might be the consequence.”

  “fifth watch”: the time between sunset and sunrise was divided into five equal watches of about two hours each. The fifth watch corresponded roughly to the period from 4:00 A.M. until daybreak.

  “dharma name” (hōmyō or kaimyō): a posthumous name, usually composed by a Buddhist priest and inscribed on a gravestone with the date of death.

  THE CARP OF MY DREAMS

  TITLE

  The title, “Muō no rigyō,” comes from the first paragraph of the story, in which Kōgi gives this name to one of his paintings.

  CHARACTERS

  “The Carp of My Dreams” has only one important character, the Buddhist monk Kōgi, who narrates the story within the story. According to the setsuwa collection Kokon chomonjū (Stories Heard from Writers Old and New, 1254), edited by Tachibana Narisue, there was a painter-monk named Kōgi at Miidera, but nothing else is known of him.

  PLACES

  Miidera, also known as Onjōji, an important Buddhist temple established in the seventh century on a hill overlooking Lake Biwa, in what is now the city of Ōtsu, just east of Kyoto, is the setting of “The Carp of My Dreams.” During his underwater journey around Lake Biwa, Kōgi passes a number of famous sights, including several of the famous Eight Views of Lake Biwa (Ōmi hakkei):

  Mount Nagara: behind Miidera, west of the southern end of Lake Biwa.

  Great Bay of Shiga: southwestern part of Lake Biwa, offshore from the former Shiga capital. This section echoes a poem by the monk Jakuren:

  Strollers tread the ice along the shore,

  crossing without getting wet at the Great Bay of Shiga. (Shokukokinshū, no. 641)

  Mount Hira: west of Lake Biwa. “Evening Snow at Hira” is one of the Eight Views of Lake Biwa.

  Katada: village on the western shore of Lake Biwa, now part of the city of Ōtsu. “Wild Geese Descending at Katada” is one of the Eight Views.

  Mount Kagami (mirror-mountain): southeast of Lake Biwa.

  Okino Isle: slightly southwest of the center of Lake Biwa.

  Chikubu Isle: near the northern end of Lake Biwa, famous for its Benzaiten shrine, enclosed by a red-lacquered fence.

  Asazuma Boat: ferry connecting the Nakasendō (highway through the mountains between Kyoto and Edo), on the northeastern shore of Lake Biwa, with Ōtsu, on the southwestern shore. Onboard prostitutes provided companionship for travelers.

  Mount Ibuki: east of the northern end of Lake Biwa, paired with the Asazuma Boat in a poem by Saigyō:

  It makes me anxious: will the Asazuma Boat not face

  the brunt of the gale blowing down from Mount Ibuki? (Sankashū, no. 1005)

  Yabase: village on the southeastern shore of Lake Biwa, connected by ferry to Ōtsu. “Sailboats at Yabase” is one of the Eight Views.

  Seta: river at the southernmost tip of Lake Biwa, spanned by a bridge. “Sunset at Seta Bridge” is one of the Eight Views. Carp-Kōgi is frightened by the guard’s footfalls on the planks of the bridge.

  TIME

  Summer (peach season), one year during the Enchō era (923–931).

  BACKGROUND

  In contrast to the late twelfth and mid-fifteenth centuries, during which the first three stories take place, the Enchō era, a little more than a century into the Heian period (794–1185) and the time frame of “The Carp of My Dreams,” was a period of relative stability and calm in Japan.

  There was a priest named Enchin, or Chishō Daishi (814–891), who restored Miidera and was famous for his Buddhist paintings.

  AFFINITIES

  Akinari adapted “The Carp of My Dreams” from two Chinese stories in Ming collections: “Xue lu-shi yu fu zheng xian” (Junior Magistrate Xue’s Piscine Metamorphosis), in Feng Menglong’s Xingshi hengyan (Constant Words to Awaken the World, 1628), and “Yu fu ji” (Account of a Piscine Metamorphosis), in Lu Ji’s Gujin shuohai (Sea of Tales Old and New, sixteenth century).1 Uzuki Hiroshi has identified three stories—“Concerning Priest Myōtatsu of Ryūgeji in Dewa Province” (13:13), “In Which a Man from the Province of Settsu Who Killed an Ox Returns from the Underworld Through the Power of Releasing Living Beings” (20:25), and “In Which a Man from the Province of Sanuki Goes to the Underworld and Comes Back” (20:17)—in the late-Heian setsuwa collection Konjaku monogatari shū (Tales of Times Now Past, ca. 1120) as being closely related to “The Carp of My Dreams,” in that they deal with people who come back from death because of merit accumulated by releasing captured creatures.2 Ultimately, the roots of the story can be traced back to two passages in the Chinese Taoist classic Chuang Tzu (fourth–third centuries B.C.E.):

  Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn’t know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou.3

  Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu were strolling along the dam of the Hao River when Chuang Tzu said, “See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!”

  Hui Tzu said, “You’re not a fish—how do you know what fish enjoy?”

  Chuang Tzu said, “You’re not I, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy!“4

  OTHER OBSERVATIONS

  Kōgi’s clockwise circuit of Lake Biwa—a kind of michiyuki—is a rhetorical tour de force and a masterpiece of imaginative, scenic description. Mishima Yukio called it “the ultimate in the poetry that Akinari attempted.“5

  Long ago, in the Enchō era, there was a monk at Miidera named Kōgi, who was recognized as a master painter. He did not limit himself to painting buddhas, landscapes, or birds and flowers. On days when he was free from temple chores, he would go out on the lake in a small boat and give money to fishermen in exchange for fish that they had caught with their nets and hooks, and then he would release the fish into the bay,6 watch them swim about, and paint them; and as he did this over the years, he became extremely precise and skilled. Once, as he concentrated on a painting, he
grew sleepy and dreamed that he had gone into the water and was swimming about with all kinds of fish, large and small. As soon as he woke up, he painted exactly what he had seen and fastened the painting to his wall. He called it The Carp of My Dreams. Marveling at how wonderful his paintings were, people jostled for a place in line to acquire them, but Kōgi, though he happily gave his flowers, birds, and landscapes to anyone who wanted them, stubbornly held on to his paintings of carp. Playfully he would say, “This monk will never give away the fish he has reared to ordinary laymen who kill living things and eat fresh meat.“7 Word of his paintings and of this joke spread throughout the realm.

  One year he fell ill and, after seven days, suddenly closed his eyes, stopped breathing, and lost consciousness. His disciples and friends came together to grieve, but, finding that his chest was still a little warm, they gathered around him to keep watch, thinking that he might recover; and after three days, his arms and legs seemed to move a little, and he suddenly heaved a long sigh, opened his eyes, and sat up as though awakening from sleep. “I have forgotten human affairs for a long time,” he said to the people around him. “How many days have passed?” His disciples said, “Master, you stopped breathing three days ago. People from throughout the temple, and others you have always been close to, came to discuss your funeral, but noticing that your chest was still warm, we watched you without putting you in a coffin, and now that you have come back to life, we are all rejoicing that, fortunately, we did not bury you.” Kōgi nodded: “Someone go to the house of our dānapati the Taira officer and report that I have mysteriously come back to life. The officer is now pouring saké and preparing thinly sliced fish, but ask him to interrupt his banquet for a moment and come to the temple. Say that I will tell him a most unusual tale, and look closely at what everyone there is doing. Repeat exactly what I have told you, nothing else.” The messenger was dubious, but he went to the mansion, gave the message to an intermediary, and then stealthily looked inside. The officer, his younger brother Jūrō, his retainer Kamori, and others were seated in a circle, drinking saké. The messenger was startled, because the scene was exactly as his master had said it would be. When they heard the message, the people in the officer’s house were greatly surprised. Putting down his chopsticks, the officer went to the temple, attended by Jūrō and Kamori.