“Let me show how I repay your cruelty.”
He came to after a time. Opening his eyes just a little, he saw that what had appeared to be a house was in fact a Samādhi Hall in the desolate field, and only a statue of the Buddha stood inside, darkened with age. Following the barks of a dog coming from the faraway village, he ran back home and told Hikoroku what had happened. “You were probably tricked by a fox,” said Hikoroku. “A deceiving spirit will possess you when you feel low. A grief-stricken weakling like you needs to pray to the gods and buddhas and calm your heart. There is a venerable yin–yang master in the village of Toda. Have him purify you and ask him for some talismans.” Leading Shōtarō to the yin–yang master, he explained the situation in detail, from the beginning, and requested a divination. The master considered his divination and said, “Misfortune is already pressing close upon you. This is no easy matter. The spirit first took a woman’s life, and yet its resentment is not dissipated. Your life, too, could end tonight or tomorrow morning. Because seven days have passed since the spirit left this world, you must shut yourself inside for forty-two more days and exercise the greatest restraint on your behavior during that period. If you obey my warning, you just might escape death; if you go astray, for even a moment, you will not escape.” After giving him this firm warning, the master took up a brush, wrote characters in the seal-style on Shōtarō’s back and limbs, and gave him a number of paper talismans written in cinnabar. “Affix these charms to every door and pray to the gods and buddhas,” he instructed. “Make no mistake, lest you lose your life.” Feeling both fearful and jubilant, Shōtarō returned to his house, where he affixed the cinnabar charms to the doors and windows and shut himself in, exercising the greatest restraint.
That night, during the third watch, he heard a horrid voice. “Oh! I loathe him! Sacred charms have been put up here,” it muttered. That was all. Terrified, Shōtarō bewailed the length of the night. At dawn, reviving, he immediately pounded on the wall that separated his house from Hikoroku’s and recounted the events of the night before. Finally grasping the uncanny accuracy of the yin–yang master’s words, Hikoroku, too, stayed up the following night and waited for the third watch. The wind in the pines sounded fierce enough to topple things over, and then the rain began to fall. As this extraordinary night progressed, the two men called to each other, back and forth through the wall, until the fourth watch came. Then a crimson light pierced the window-paper of Shōtarō’s house. “Oh! I loathe him! They have been affixed here, too!” The voice was even more horrible so late at night; the hair on Shōtarō’s head and body stood on end, and he fainted away. At daybreak, he talked about the night before; at nightfall, he longed for daybreak: the days and weeks seemed to pass more slowly than a thousand years. Every night, the spirit circled the house or screamed from the ridgepole, its angry voice more horrible each night than the night before.
This continued until the forty-second night. It would all be over in one more night, and Shōtarō exercised special restraint. At last, the sky of the fifth watch brightened. Feeling as though he had awakened from a long dream, Shōtarō immediately called to Hikoroku, who came to the wall and asked, “How are you?” “My strict confinement is over now,” Shōtarō said. “I have not seen your face for a long time. I long to see you and to comfort my heart by talking with you about the pain and fear of these past days. Get up. I shall step outside.” Hikoroku, being a rash and thoughtless man, replied, “What could happen now? Come over here.” He had not yet opened the door halfway when a scream pierced his ears from the eaves next door, and he fell back on his rump. Thinking that something must have happened to Shōtarō, he picked up an ax and went out into the main street, where he found that the night, which they thought had ended, was still dark; the moon cast a dim light from high in the sky, the wind was cold, and Shōtarō’s door stood open, but he was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he had fled back inside? Hikoroku ran in to see, but it was not the sort of residence that offered any place to hide. Was he lying in the street? Hikoroku searched, but found nothing. What could have happened to him? he thought, both puzzled and afraid. Holding up a torch, he looked all around, until, next to the open door, he saw fresh blood dribbling from the wall onto the ground. And yet neither corpse nor bones were to be seen. In the moonlight, he glimpsed something at the edge of the eaves. When he held up the torch to look, he found a man’s topknot hanging there, and nothing else. The pity and horror were more than can be expressed with brush and paper. When dawn came, he searched the nearby fields and hills, but he could find no trace of Shōtarō.
He reported this to the Izawa family, who tearfully informed Kasada. Thus it was said, as people passed the story down, that the accuracy of the yin–yang master’s divination, and the ultimate rightness of the cauldron’s unfavorable oracle, were truly precious and sacred.
NOTES
1. Helen Craig McCullough, trans., Tales of Ise: Lyrical Episodes from Tenth-Century Japan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1968), pp. 87–89.
2. Asai Ryōi, The Peony Lantern: “Botan no tōrō” from Otogi bōko (1666), trans. Maryellen Toman Mori, An Episodic Festschrift for Howard Hibbett, vol. 3 (Hollywood, Calif.: Highmoonoon, 2000).
3. The Akamatsu clan governed Harima Province, now part of Hyōgo Prefecture, from the mid-fourteenth century until 1441, the first year of Kakitsu, when Akamatsu Mitsutsuke assassinated the shogun and was, in turn, forced to commit suicide, in what is known as the Kakitsu Incident. The family later regained power in Harima and governed there until 1521.
4. The port of Tomonotsu, now part of the city of Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture, is about twenty miles west of Niise/Niwase.
5. “Sode only wailed … chest”: this wording is almost identical to that in the “Aoi” (Heartvine) chapter of The Tale of Genji, in which Genji’s wife is possessed by the spirit of the Rokujō lady (Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker [New York: Knopf, 1976], p. 165). Sode’s plight also recalls an incident in the “Yūgao” (Evening Faces) chapter of Genji, in which one of Genji’s lovers dies, apparently in the grasp of a possessing spirit (pp. 71–72).
6. The Way of Calling Back the Spirit was a ritual practiced in ancient China: when a person died, someone would ascend to the roof and hold the deceased’s clothing toward the north while calling his or her name three times.
7. An allusion to a poem by Ōe no Chisato:
Looking at the moon I am saddened by a thousand things—though the autumn is not for me alone. (Kokinshū, no. 193)
8. “clouds in the sky” (amakumo no): a pillow-word, here modifying “elsewhere” (yoso).
9. The reasons are unclear, but presumably have to do with the slander mentioned in the previous sentence.
10. Most commentators interpret this sentence (machiwabitamawan mono o) as something the woman says to herself: “She will be waiting for me, [I had better go].” Uzuki Hiroshi agrees, but suggests that the words are a double entendre, directed at Shōtarō as well: “She will be waiting for you” (Ugetsu monogatari hyōshaku, Nihon koten hyōshaku zenchūshaku sōsho [Tokyo: Kadokawa, 1969], p. 431).
11. This description echoes that of the residence of the lady of the “evening faces,” in the “Evening Faces” chapter of The Tale of Genji (Murasaki Shikibu, Tale of Genji, pp. 68–69).
12. It was customary for upper-class women to receive men from behind a screen. It is unclear whether the lady has crept to the edge of her bedding, the edge of the room, or the edge of the veranda—or all three. Uzuki opts for “the edge of the room, in other words, near the veranda” (Ugetsu monogatari hyōshaku, p. 436). In what follows, it is also unclear where the screen is and where Shōtarō is when he addresses the lady behind the screen. The woodblock illustration accompanying this scene in the edition of 1776 appears to have Shōtarō and the maid kneeling in the garden and the lady kneeling or sitting on her bedding, just inside the open door, as she pushes the folding screen aside.
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“pickled in salt”: one form of punishment in ancient China was to mince and pickle a criminal’s flesh.
Kibi no Kamowake: Kibi Kamowake-no-mikoto, the younger half brother of Ōkibitsuhiko-no-mikoto, the deity enshrined at Kibitsu.
“red cord … broken”: this sentiment derives from a Chinese tale about an old man who possessed a red cord that he would use to bind the legs of a man and a woman. Once bound, they would inevitably marry.
“If it came to that”: the implication seems to be “if she lost her mind” or, even, “if she took her own life.”
“the crane’s one thousand years, the tortoise’s ten thousand”: proverbially, cranes live for one thousand years; tortoises, for ten thousand. The families use these conventional phrases to wish for a long, happy marriage.
“woman of pleasure” (asobimono or ukareme): an indentured prostitute, whose contract could be redeemed by a patron who wanted to take her as a wife or mistress.
Samādhi Hall (Sanmaidō): samādhi is a Sanskrit word meaning “concentration”—the calm state in which all desires and distractions are absent and the mind is prepared for enlightenment. A Samādhi Hall is a place where one tries to achieve samādhi or, as here, a cemetery chapel where visitors pray for the enlightenment of the dead.
“yin–yang master”: in the Edo period, yin–yang masters practiced divination using the I jing (The Book of Changes) and physiognomy, performed Shinto purifications, and recited Buddhist incantations for the protection of their clients.
“forty-two more days”: in Buddhism, the spirit of the dead was believed to wander in this realm for forty-nine days.
“third watch”: the time between sunset and sunrise was divided into five equal watches of about two hours each. The third watch corresponded roughly to the period from midnight to 2:00 A.M.
BOOK FOUR
A SERPENT’S LUST
TITLE
The title, “Jasei no in,” refers to a monstrous serpent’s lust for a handsome youth, Toyoo.
CHARACTERS
As in “The Kibitsu Cauldron,” all the characters in “A Serpent’s Lust” are fictional. The principal figures are Toyoo, the studious son of a fisherman, and Manago, the serpent-woman who seduces him.
PLACES
“A Serpent’s Lust” begins at Cape Miwa, now part of the city of Shingū, Wakayama Prefecture (formerly, Kii Province), on the southeastern shore of the Kii Peninsula. The story then moves to several other sites.
Tsubaichi (Tsuba Market), now part of Miwa-chō, in the city of Sakurai, Nara Prefecture (formerly, Yamato Province), was a market town at the foot of Mount Miwa on the approach to Hasedera, the celebrated Buddhist temple at Hatsuse (now Hase, in Sakurai).
Yoshino is a region in Nara Prefecture, south of Sakurai, celebrated since ancient times for its beautiful mountain scenery and vast groves of blossoming cherry trees. Mount Mifune and the Natsumi River (an alternative name for part of the Yoshino River) are among the famous sights. Yoshino is also mentioned in “The Owl of the Three Jewels.”
The Buddhist temple Dōjōji stands about one mile from Komatsubara, now part of the city of Gobō, on the southwestern coast of the Kii Peninsula, through which pilgrims passed on their way to and from the temple.
TIME
Late autumn of one year, spring of the following year, and later in the same year, apparently. Although the date of “A Serpent’s Lust” is unclear, there are hints that it takes place during the Heian period (794–1185).
BACKGROUND
Shingū is home to the Kumano Gongen Hayatama Shrine, which is about three miles north of Cape Miwa and one of the “Three Mountains of Kumano”: the Shinto shrines of Hongū, Shingū, and Kumano Nachi, which together constituted a popular destination for pilgrims in the Heian period. The retired emperor Go-Shirakawa—a younger brother of Sutoku, one of the protagonists in “Shiramine”—is said to have made the pilgrimage, a round trip requiring nearly a month, as often as thirty-four times.
The Buddhist temple at Hatsuse, now called Hasedera, is dedicated to the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (J. Kanzeon or Kannon) and was another popular destination for aristocratic pilgrims. It appears frequently in Heian literature. In a well-known example in The Tale of Genji, Tamakazura and her party undertake a pilgrimage to Hatsuse, having been told that it is “known even in China as the Japanese temple among them all that gets things done.” They stay at Tsubaichi, where by chance they are reunited with Ukon.1
Another association makes Tsubaichi especially appropriate to “A Serpent’s Lust.” The deity of Mount Miwa “was notorious in early literature for his liking for beautiful women” and “was regarded as a snake—or at least as frequently assuming the form of a snake. Today, Mount Miwa is the center of a flourishing religious cult; the mountain, itself considered sacred, is infested with snakes, who consume the offerings left by the pious, and stories of supernatural marriage are grouped together by Japanese scholars as ‘Mount Miwa type’ tales.“2
The Buddhist temple Dōjōji is famous for its association with the legend of the young monk Anchin, from Kurama, and Kiyohime, the daughter of the steward of Masago in the village of Shiba. According to the legend, Kiyohime fell in love with the handsome Anchin when he spent the night at her father’s house during a pilgrimage to Kumano. When he failed to return to her, as he had promised, her jealous anger transformed her into a serpent and she pursued him to Dōjōji, where he had taken refuge inside the temple bell. She coiled herself around the bell and roasted him to death with the heat of her passion.
AFFINITIES
Akinari based “A Serpent’s Lust” principally on “Bai Niangzi yong zhen leifengda” (Eternal Prisoner Under the Thunder Peak Pagoda), a Ming vernacular tale in the collection Jingshi tongyan (Warning Words to Penetrate the Age, 1625), edited by Feng Menglong, and several other Chinese stories.3 It also shows many signs of Akinari’s intimate knowledge of the Man’yōshū, The Tale of Genji, and other Japanese classics.
Much of the description of the temple in Yoshino, for example, derives from two passages in the “Wakamurasaki” (Lavender) chapter of The Tale of Genji:
The sun rose high in the sky. Stepping outside, he looked out from the high vantage point and could clearly see monks’ residences here and there below.4
The sky at dawn was very thick with haze, and mountain birds were chirping everywhere. The blossoms of trees and grasses whose names he did not know scattered in a profusion of color.5
The story of Kiyohime and Anchin is familiar in many versions, including the no play Dōjōji and kabuki plays.
OTHER OBSERVATIONS
Despite their superficial resemblances, the angry, vengeful spirit of Isora, in “The Kibitsu Cauldron,” and the serpent-woman Manago, in “A Serpent’s Lust,” are essentially different. The former is the spirit of a good woman who has been wronged by her husband. While Isora is still alive, her spirit appears to act without her knowledge, like the spirit of the Rokujō lady in The Tale of Genji. After Isora dies, her spirit, now free of human morality, takes revenge on Shōtarō for his betrayal. The latter, though, is not a woman, but a monstrous serpent that has temporarily assumed human form. Manago is motivated by simple lust for a young man.
The serpent-woman in this story is repeatedly associated with images of water. Manago first appears during a rainstorm that has blown in from the southeast—tatsumi, the direction of the dragon (east-southeast) and the serpent (south-southeast)—and she first meets Toyoo in the rain, on a seashore. Rain falls at night when she and Toyoo are reunited near the Hatsuse River. She is seated next to the falls at Miyataki, on the Natsumi River, when a Shinto priest recognizes her as a serpent. As she dives into the river, water boils up into the sky and a heavy rain begins to fall. Later, a Buddhist monk mixes orpiment with water in order to combat the serpent, and when the serpent repels him, Tomiko’s family unsuccessfully tries to revive him with water.
“A Serpent’s Lust” has survived in the twentieth-century popular
imagination. It was adapted to the silent screen in 1921 in Jasei no in, directed by Thomas Kurihara, with a screenplay by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō. A partial translation of the screenplay appears in Joanne R. Bernardi’s Writing in Light.6 More famously, “A Serpent’s Lust,” along with “The Reed-Choked House,” was the basis for Mizoguchi Kenji’s film Ugetsu monogatari (1953). This was followed, in 1958, by Hakujaden (Legend of the White Snake), released in the West in 1961 as Panda and the Magic Serpent. It was the first full-length, color, animated film made in Japan and was based on “Eternal Prisoner Under the Thunder Peak Pagoda,” the Chinese story that inspired “A Serpent’s Lust.”
Once—what era was it?—there was a man named Ōya no Takesuke, of Cape Miwa in the province of Kii.7 Enjoying the luck of the sea, he employed many fishermen, caught fish of every kind and size, and lived with his family in wealth. He had two sons and a daughter. Tarō, the eldest, had an unaffected, honest nature and managed the family business well. The second child, the daughter, had been welcomed as a bride by a man of Yamato and gone to live with him.8 Then there was the third child, Toyoo. A gentle boy, he favored the courtly, refined ways of the capital and had no heart for making a living. Distressed by this, his father deliberated: if he left part of the family fortune to Toyoo, it would soon find its way into the hands of others. Or he could make Toyoo the heir of another family; but the bad news, which surely would come sooner or later, would be too painful. No, he would simply rear Toyoo as the boy wished, eventually to become a scholar or a monk, and let him be Tarō’s dependent for the rest of his life. Having reached this conclusion, he did not go out of his way to discipline his younger son.
Tales of Moonlight and Rain Page 15
