Tales of Moonlight and Rain

by Ueda, Akinari

  3. Diana Yu, trans., “Eternal Prisoner Under the Thunder Peak Pagoda,” in Y. W. Ma and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds., Traditional Chinese Stories: Themes and Variations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), pp. 355–378.

  4. Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari, ed. Yamagishi Tokuhei, Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 14 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1958), p. 178.

  5. Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari, NKBT, vol. 14, p. 196.

  6. Joanne R. Bernardi, Writing in Light: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), pp. 300–304.

  7. “what era was it?” (itsu no tokiyo nariken): this opening formula echoes the openings of earlier tales, such as The Tale of Genji—“In which reign was it?” (izure no oontoki ni ka)—and thus gives the reader an early hint that the story is probably set in the Heian period.

  8. Yamato Province corresponds to the modern Nara Prefecture, north of Shingū and south of Kyoto.

  9. Toyoo is showing off his learning. This poem, by Naga Okimaro, appears in the Man’yōshū, no. 265. Sano Crossing was southwest of Cape Miwa, now in the city of Shingū.

  10. Nachi refers to the various sacred sites of the Nachi area, including the Kumano Nachi Shrine and Seiganto Temple, in Katsuura, south of Shingū.

  11. In former times, mats (tatami) were placed on a polished wooden floor as needed for guests. The curtain stand (kichō), decorated cabinet (mizushi), and draperies (kabeshiro) were all characteristic furnishings of aristocratic houses in the Heian period. The cabinet would have been decorated with lacquer; the draperies, often painted or embroidered silk, were used to separate one living space from another.

  12. That is, “If I died without saying anything, some god would be blamed unfairly for my death, and so I shall tell you.” Manago’s speech tends to be flowery and decorated with poetic allusions. In this case, the allusion is to a poem by Ariwara no Narihira:

  If I died of love unknown to others, pointlessly,

  which god would carry the unfounded blame? (Tales of Ise, sec. 89; Shinzokukokinshū, no. 1157)

  13. The origin of the proverb “Confucius stumbled on the mountain of love” is unclear. It appears in the “Kochō” (Butterflies) chapter of The Tale of Gen ji, in reference to Higekuro (Murasaki Shikibu, Tale of Genji, p. 424).

  14. An allusion to a poem by Naga Okimaro:

  Even in the palace it can be heard—

  the cry of a fisherman assembling the net boys to pull in the nets. (Man’yōshū, no. 238)

  15. Great Shrine (Shingū Hayatama Jinja): the festival was held on the fifteenth and sixteenth days of the Ninth Month.

  16. “certain man’s wife”: here and later, the text uses stock expressions to indicate, without repeating them, that all the details are being provided.

  17. “avatar”: in the blend of Buddhism and Shinto that was characteristic of premodern Japan, the Shinto deity enshrined at Shingū was considered an avatar (gongen) of a Buddhist figure.

  18. This description of the house and grounds echoes that of the residence of the lady of the “evening faces,” in the “Yūgao” (Evening Faces) chapter of The Tale of Genji (Murasaki Shikibu, Tale of Genji, pp. 68–69).

  19. Tsukushi is the island of Kyushu.

  20. “shizuri”: cloth woven from various fabrics and used principally for sashes in ancient times.

  “katori” (literally, “tight weave”): a thin but tightly woven silk fabric.

  “hoes” (kuwa, here perhaps “plows”): symbolic of agriculture, are often found among a shrine’s treasures.

  21. Naniwa is the present-day city of Osaka.

  22. Twin cedars standing on the banks of the Hatsuse River and associated with the sun goddess, Amaterasu, were celebrated in poetry as a sign of meeting or reuniting. In the “Tamakazura” (The Jeweled Chaplet) chapter of The Tale of Genji, Ukon, overjoyed to find Tamakazura at Hasedera, recites:

  Had I not come to the spot where twin cedars stand

  would I have met you on this ancient riverbank? (Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari, NKBT, vol. 15, p. 354)

  23. After reciting her waka, Ukon adds, “on the rapids of joy” (ureshiki se ni mo), in which se (rapids) also denotes an occasion or opportunity and echoes the “se” in Hatsuse (Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari, NKBT, vol. 15, p. 354).

  24. Mount Takama is the highest peak in the Katsuragi (formerly, Kazuraki) Range, southwest of Hatsuse. The passage recalls a poem by Retired Emperor Go-Daigo:

  Clouds on Kazuraki’s Mount Takama:

  even from a distance it is clear that evening showers fall. (Shinshūishū, no. 289)

  The image of clouds rising at night and producing rain, which then abates at dawn, suggests lovemaking. There is perhaps an echo here of the legend of King Xiang of Chu, who dreams that he has slept with a woman at Shaman Hill who turns out to have been a rain cloud (Sun Yü, “The Kao T’ang Fu,” in The Temple and Other Poems, trans. Arthur Waley [New York: Knopf, 1923], pp. 65–72).

  The bell at Hatsuse Temple anticipates that of Dōjōji, the temple that figures in the ending of the story.

  25. There is a strong association between yayoi, the third month of spring in the Japanese lunar calendar, and cherry blossoms.

  “fair of name” (naguwashi): a pillow-word for Yoshino.

  26. Manago alludes to a poem by Emperor Tenmu: “On the occasion of a visit to the Yoshino palace”:

  Yoshino, which good people could well see was good, and said is good—

  look well, good people, look well. (Man’yōshū, no. 27)

  The poet puns on “good” (yoshi), “well” (yoku), and Yoshino (good field).

  27. The place described is Miyataki (Palace Falls), on the Natsumi River. Royal visits to the villa that used to stand there are mentioned frequently in the Man’yōshū.

  28. The Yamato Shrine, now called Ōyamato Jinja, is in the present-day city of Tenri, about three miles north of Tsubaichi. The old man would have passed through Tsubaichi on his way back to the shrine, in any case.

  29. Mino Province (Gifu Prefecture) produced high-quality silk used by aristocrats.

  30. Uzuki Hiroshi convincingly identifies Shiba with the present Kurisugawa area of Nakaheji-chō (formerly, Shiba-mura), Nishimuro-gun, Wakayama Prefecture, about twenty miles west of Shingū (Ugetsu monogatari hyōshaku, Nihon koten hyōshaku zenchūshaku sōsho [Tokyo: Kadokawa, 1969], pp. 538–539).

  “steward” (shōji): originally designated one who managed a manor (shōen) on behalf of its aristocratic owner, but later came to be applied also to village heads and wealthy families of a region.

  31. “I shall not write about it”: Akinari uses a narrative device often found in Heian monogatari, such as The Tale of Genji.

  32. Tomiko echoes the spirit that possesses the lady in the “Evening Faces” chapter of The Tale of Genji: “Though I admire you so much, you do not think of visiting me, but instead keep company with this undistinguished person and bestow your favors on her. I am mortified and hurt” (Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari, NKBT, vol. 14, p. 146).

  33. “vows of the sea and of the mountains”: in addition to reminding the reader of the cliché that vows are “deeper than the seas and higher than the mountains,” this phrase refers to the seas around Kii Province and the mountains in Yamato Province.

  34. Kurama Temple is on Mount Kurama, in the north of Kyoto. Its mention here is probably due to two literary precedents. First, a popular tradition holds that Murasaki Shikibu was thinking of Mount Kurama when she had Genji, seeking a cure for his illness, visit a sage in the northern hills in the “Wakamurasaki” (Lavender) chapter of The Tale of Genji. Second, the monk Anchin of the Dōjōji legend was from Kurama.

  35. The biography of Guo Wen in the Jin shū (The Book of Jin, seventh century) contains the lines “If a man has no wish to harm the beast, the beast will not hurt the man.” In “Eternal Prisoner Under the Thunder Peak Pagoda,” this saying becomes “Though a man means no harm to the tiger, the ti
ger will hurt the man.”

  36. Dōjōji is about twenty-five miles from Shiba.

  37. Hōkai resembles the sage in the “Lavender” chapter of The Tale of Genji, who “was old and bent and unable to leave his cave.” When Genji goes to him to be cured of malaria, the sage says, “My mind has left the world, and I have so neglected the ritual that it has quite gone out of my head. I fear that your journey has been in vain” (Murasaki Shikibu, Tale of Genji, pp. 84–85).

  38. Poppy seeds were burned in exorcism rituals of esoteric Buddhism. A vestment imbued with their smell, having been exposed to many such rituals, was deemed to possess special powers. In the “Aoi” (Heartvine) chapter of The Tale of Genji, the Rokujō lady is appalled to discover the scent in her own clothing. It is there because, against her will, her jealous spirit has possessed Genji’s wife (Murasaki Shikibu, Tale of Genji, p. 169).

  39. A monument before the main hall of Dōjōji is said to mark the site of the bell in which Anchin died. A “serpent mound” (jazuka) stands outside the temple grounds, in what used to be an inlet, marking the spot where Kiyohime is said to have plunged into the water.

  40. The story ends, as it began, with a conventional formula (to nan kataritsutaekeru). Some chapters of The Tale of Genji conclude with an abbreviated form (to nan, to zo, or to ya), and most of the stories in the late-Heian setsuwa collection Konjaku monogatari shū (Tales of Times Now Past, ca. 1120) end with to nan kataritsutaetaru to ya.

  * * *

  “heir of another family”: he could marry Toyoo into another family, whose adopted son and heir he would become.

  “stand by you”: that is, become your husband.

  “stay from time to time”: in Heian court society, it was customary for the husband and wife to live separately and for the husband to spend the night at his wife’s residence from time to time.

  “obvious offense”: possession of a stolen sword.

  “My robes … a shadow”: a popular belief held that ghosts cast no shadows, nor did their clothing have seams, however cunningly they might disguise themselves as humans.

  “between the heavens and the earth”: that is, as long as I live.

  “I know one end of the bow from the other”: in other words, “I have some knowledge of the martial arts” or “I am a samurai.”

  BOOK FIVE

  THE BLUE HOOD

  TITLE

  The title, “Aozukin,” refers to the dark-blue cowl that Kaian transfers from his own head to the head of the mad abbot of Daichūji.

  CHARACTERS

  After the large cast of “A Serpent’s Lust,” the number of characters shrinks in “The Blue Hood.” Kaian, or Myōkei (14221493), was a priest of the Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism, while the abbot of Daichūji is a fictional character.

  PLACES

  “The Blue Hood” takes place at and near the Buddhist monastery Daichūji, on the lower slopes of Mount Ōhira in Nishiyamada, village of Ōhira, Tsuga County, Tochigi Prefecture (formerly, Shimotsuke Province). A large establishment, Daichūji contains a number of buildings on about eighty wooded acres.

  Like “Shiramine” and “The Owl of the Three Jewels,” “The Blue Hood” includes a michiyuki, though it is a very brief one:

  Ryōtaiji: temple of the Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism, in the city of Seki, Gifu Prefecture (formerly, Mino Province).

  Ōu: area around Echigo Province (Niigata Prefecture).

  Shimotsuke: Tochigi Prefecture.

  Tonda: now called Tomita, part of the village of Ōhira, Shimotsuga County, Tochigi Prefecture. It used to be a station on a post road.

  TIME

  Autumn of 1471 and winter of 1472.

  BACKGROUND

  In 1489, seventeen years after the probable setting of “The Blue Hood,” the locally powerful Oyama clan asked Kaian to reestablish Daichūji—which had been founded in 1154 as a monastery of the Shingon sect—as a monastery of the Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism. Shingon and Zen are clearly distinguished in the story. Kaian is explicitly identified as a Zen master, while the abbot of Daichūji is referred to as an ajari, a title that designates a high clerical rank in Shingon. Shingon is the esoteric sect established by Kūkai (Kōbō Daishi), who figures in “The Owl of the Three Jewels.” Zen (meditation [Skt. dhyāna]) Buddhism was introduced to China in 520 by the Indian monk Bodhidharma (Ch. Da Mo, J. Daruma), who is regarded as the first Zen patriarch. Zen emphasizes “extralingual transmission” (kyōgai or kyōge, short for kyōgebetsuden), the nonverbal conveyance of Buddhist truths from master to disciple, in preference to a reliance on the verbal teachings of the Buddha as recorded in the sutras. This is true of both the Sōtō school of Zen (Kaian’s affiliation) and the Rinzai school, which is more familiar in the West.

  Like “The Chrysanthemum Vow,” “The Blue Hood” alludes to a sexual relationship between two males. Sexual relations between monks and acolytes were common in premodern Japan, and the sexual nature of the relationship in this story would have gone without saying.1 No stigma is attached to wakashudō (sexual relations between a man and a boy) per se. The abbot’s mistake is “failing to control his mind” and allowing himself to become attached to something ephemeral, which deters him from progress toward enlightenment. Attachment to a woman would have been just as undesirable for a monk in the society of the time. As Kamo no Chōmei wrote in Hōjōki (An Account of a Ten-Foot-Square Hut, 1212), “The essence of the Buddha’s teachings is that we should cling to nothing.”

  AFFINITIES

  “The Blue Hood” seems not to have been adapted from any particular Chinese or Japanese source. It recalls a number of Chinese and Japanese stories that deal with mad monks or cannibalism (or both), and some details were inspired by scenes in chapters 5 and 6 of Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong’s Shuihu zhuan (Water Margin, fourteenth century).

  OTHER OBSERVATIONS

  A confident, dependable man (Kaian)—a type established in “The Chrysanthemum Vow“—is contrasted with an unstable man (the abbot), repeating a pattern seen in “Shiramine” and “The Owl of the Three Jewels.” Kaian’s maxim—“He who fails to control his mind becomes a demon; he who governs his mind attains to buddhahood“—applies equally well to Sutoku, in “Shiramine”; Hidetsugu, in “The Owl of the Three Jewels”; and the abbot, in “The Blue Hood.” To a lesser extent, it could also be applied to Katsushirō, in “The Reed-Choked House”; Shōtarō, in “The Kibitsu Cauldron”; and Toyoo, in “A Serpent’s Lust.” Although the maxim has the look of a quotation, no source has been identified. “Hankai,” the last story in Akinari’s Harusame monogatari (Tales of the Spring Rain, 1808–1809), concludes with the same sentiment.

  The structure of “The Blue Hood” roughly follows that outlined by Robert Ford Campany in his discussion of Chinese Buddhist tales: “A seed of religious instruction or pious habit is planted in the protagonist. … The protagonist does something that is ‘marked’ … in the field of specific Buddhist values or precepts. … There occurs an anomalous—often strikingly contranatural—response to the protagonist’s act. … Others react with amazement to the response. … These events in turn stimulate … positively marked Buddhist acts by others.“2

  “The Blue Hood” has apparently been translated into English more often than any other story in the collection—at least ten English versions exist, including this one.3 No doubt the taut, economical narrative, references to Zen Buddhism, and intrinsic drama of the story have appealed to translators.

  Long ago, there was an eminent priest of great virtue, called Zen Master Kaian. From the time he came of age, he understood the spirit of extralingual transmission and surrendered his body to the clouds and waters. One year, having completed the summer retreat at Ryōtai Temple, in Mino Province, he set out on a journey, having decided to spend that autumn in the Ōu region.4 Traveling on and on, he entered the province of Shimotsuke.

  The sun set as he reached a village called Tonda.5 When he approached a large, prosperous-looking house to ask for a night�
��s lodging, men who had just returned from the paddies and fields seemed to be struck with fear at the sight of a monk standing in the dim twilight. “The mountain demon is here! Everyone come out,” they shouted. An uproar began inside the house, with women and children screaming, thrashing about, and hiding in shadows and nooks. The master of the house took up a cowl-staff and rushed outside, where he found an old monk, close to fifty years of age, standing with a dark-blue hood on his head, a tattered black robe on his body, and a bundle on his back. Raising his walking staff, the monk beckoned to him: “Dānapati, why do you take such precautions? I am an itinerant monk, waiting here for someone to receive me as I seek lodgings for one night. To be met with such distrust is not what I expected. This haggard monk is not about to rob you. Please do not be suspicious of me.” The master of the house dropped his cowl-staff, clapped his hands, and laughed: “Thanks to those fellows’ undiscerning eyes, we have startled you, a venerable traveling monk. Let me compensate for our crime by offering you lodging here tonight.” With all signs of respect, he escorted the monk inside and cheerfully invited him to dine.

  The master of the house gave this account: “There is a reason why those fellows panicked when they saw Your Reverence and cried ‘The demon is here.’ I have a most unusual story to tell you. Please pass it on to others, though it is a strange, wild tale. There is a monastery on a mountain above this village.6 Originally, it was the family temple of the Oyama clan, and many priests of great virtue have resided there over the generations. The current ajari, the nephew of a certain lord, was famous for his learning and asceticism, and the people of the province were devoted to him, making frequent offerings of flowers and incense. He often visited my house, too, and spoke without reserve; but then came the spring of last year. He was invited to Koshi to administer the vows at an initiation ceremony and stayed for more than one hundred days.7 He brought back with him a servant boy in his twelfth or thirteenth year, whom he made his constant attendant. I noticed that he began to neglect his longtime practices, entranced as he was by the boy’s elegance and beauty. Then, around the Fourth Month of this year, the boy took to his bed with some slight illness, and as the days passed his condition grew more serious. The abbot, greatly distressed and saddened, even called in the official physician from the provincial capital, but their ministrations had no effect and the boy finally passed away. Feeling that the jewel of his breast had been snatched from him, that the blossom adorning his crown had been stripped away by a storm, the abbot had no tears to weep, no voice with which to cry out, and in the extremity of his grief he neither cremated the boy nor buried him, but pressed his face to the boy’s and held his hand, until, as the days went by, he lost his mind and began to play with the boy just as he had when the boy was alive, and, finally, lamenting the decomposition of the flesh, he ate the flesh and licked the bones until nothing was left. The other people of the temple fled in a panic, saying that their abbot had turned into a demon. Since then, he has come down the mountain every night, terrifying the villagers or digging up graves and eating fresh corpses. I had heard of demons from old tales, but now I have truly seen one with my own eyes. How can we put a stop to this? Every family now locks its doors tightly at dusk, and word has spread throughout the province, so that no one comes here any more. This is why you were mistaken for a demon.”