Modern Japanese Literature

by Donald Keene

  But he had come running with his temper up; he frowned and stamped his foot two or three times. “Why do you protect him? He has stolen some oranges.”

  “But he is only an animal.” She repeated it; then after a little, smiling sadly, “And since you call him Yoshihide, it is as if my father were being punished. I couldn’t bear to see it,” she said boldly. This defeated the young lord.

  “Well, if you’re pleading for your father’s skin, I’ll pardon him,” he said reluctantly, “against my better judgment.” Dropping the switch, he turned and went back through the sliding door through which he had come.

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  Yūzuki and the monkey were devoted to each other from that day. She hung a golden bell that she had received from the Princess by a bright red cord around the monkey’s neck, and the monkey would hardly let her out of his sight. Once, for instance, when she caught cold and took to her bed, the monkey, apparently much depressed, sat immovable by her pillow, gnawing his nails.

  Another strange thing was that from that time the monkey was not teased as badly as before. On the contrary, they began to pet him, and even the young lord would occasionally toss him a persimmon or a chestnut. Once he got quite angry when he caught a samurai kicking the monkey. As for his lordship, they say that when he heard his son was protecting the monkey from abuse, he had Yūzuki appear before him with the monkey in her arms. On this occasion he must have heard why she had made a pet of the monkey.

  “You’re a filial girl. I’ll reward you for it,” he said, and gave her a crimson ceremonial kimono. Whereupon the monkey with the greatest deference mimicked her acceptance of the kimono. That greatly tickled his lordship. Thus the girl who befriended the monkey became a favorite of his lordship, because he admired her filial piety—not, as rumor had it, because he was too fond of her. There may have been some grounds for this rumor, but of that I shall tell later. It should be enough to say that the Lord of Horikawa was not the sort of person to fall in love with an artist’s daughter, no matter how beautiful she was.

  Thus honored, Yoshihide’s daughter withdrew from his presence. Since she was wise and good, the other maids were not jealous of her. Rather she and her monkey became more popular than ever, particularly, they say, with the Princess, from whom she was hardly ever separated. She invariably accompanied her in her pleasure carriage.

  However, we must leave the daughter a while and turn to the father. Though the monkey was soon being petted by everybody, they all disliked the great Yoshihide. This was not limited to the mansion folk only. The Abbot of Yokogawa hated him, and if Yoshihide were mentioned would change color as though he had encountered a devil. (That was after Yoshihide had drawn a caricature of the Abbot, according to the gossip of the domestics, which, after all, may have been nothing more than gossip.) Anyhow, the man was unpopular with anyone you met. If there were some who did not speak badly of him, they were but two or three fellow-artists or people who knew his pictures, but not the man.

  Yoshihide was not only very repellent in appearance: people dis liked him more because of his habits. No one was to blame for his unpopularity except himself.

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  He was stingy, he was bad-tempered, he was shameless, he was lazy, he was greedy, but worst of all, he was arrogant and contemptuous, certain that he was the greatest artist in the country.

  If he had been proud only of his work it would not have been so bad, but he despised everything, even the customs and amenities of society.

  It was in character, therefore, that when he was making a picture of the Goddess of Beauty he should paint the face of a common harlot, and that for Fudō1 he should paint a villainous ex-convict. The models he chose were shocking. When he was taken to task for it, he said coolly, “It would be strange if the gods and buddhas I have given life with my brush should punish me.”

  His apprentices were appalled when they thought of the dreadful fate in store for him, and many left his studio. It was pride—he imagined himself to be the greatest man in Japan.

  In short, though exceptionally gifted, he behaved much above his station. Among artists who were not on good terms with him, many maintained that he was a charlatan, because his brushwork and coloring were so unusual. Look at the door-paintings of the famous artists of the past! You can almost smell the perfume of the plum blossom on a moonlit night; you can almost hear some courtier on a screen playing his flute. That is how they gained their reputation for surpassing beauty. Yoshihide’s pictures were reputed to be always weird or unpleasant. For instance, he painted the “Five Aspects of Life and Death” on Ryugai Temple gate, and they say if you pass the gate at night you can hear the sighing and sobbing of the divinities he depicted there. Others say you can smell rotting corpses. Or when, at the command of his lordship, he painted the portraits of some of his household women, within three years everyone of them sickened as though her spirit had left her, and died. Those who spoke ill of Yoshihide regarded this as certain proof that his pictures were done by means of the black art.

  Yoshihide delighted in his reputation for perversity. Once, when his lordship said to him jokingly, “You seem to like the ugly,” Yoshihide’s unnaturally red lips curled in an evil laugh. “I do. Daubers usually cannot understand the beauty of ugly things,” he said contemptuously.

  But Yoshihide, the unspeakably unscrupulous Yoshihide, had one tender human trait.

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  And that was his affection for his only child, whom he loved passionately. As I said before, Yūzuki was gentle, and deeply devoted to her father, but his love for her was not inferior to her devotion to him. Does it not seem incredible that the man who never gave a donation to a temple could have provided such kimono and hairpins for his daughter with reckless disregard of cost?

  But Yoshihide’s affection for Yūzuki was nothing more than the emotion. He gave no thought, for instance, to finding her a good husband. Yet he certainly would have hired roughs to assassinate anyone who made improper advances to her. Therefore, when she became a maid at Horikawa, at the command of his lordship, Yoshihide took it very badly; and even when he appeared before the daimyo, he sulked for a while. The rumor that, attracted by her beauty, his lordship had tasted her delights in spite of her father, was largely the guess of those who noted Yoshihide’s displeasure.

  Of course, even if the rumor were false it was clear that the intensity of his affection made Yoshihide long to have his daughter come down from among his lordship’s women. When Yoshihide was commanded to paint Monju, the God of Wisdom, he took as his model his lordship’s favorite page, and the Lord of Horikawa, highly pleased—for it was a beautiful thing—said graciously, “I will give you whatever you wish as a reward. Now what would you like?” Yoshihide acknowledged the tribute; but what do you think was the bold request that he made? That his daughter should leave his lordship’s service! It would be presumptuous to ask that one’s daughter be taken in; who but Yoshihide would have asked for his daughter’s release, no matter how much he loved her! At this even the genial daimyo seemed ruffled, and he silently watched Yoshihide’s face for a long moment.

  “No,” he spat out, and stood up suddenly. This happened again on four or five different occasions, and as I recall it now, with each repetition, the eye with which his lordship regarded Yoshihide grew colder. Possibly it was on account of this that Yūzuki was concerned for her father’s safety, for often, biting her sleeves, she sobbed when she was in her room. Without doubt it was this that made the rumors that his lordship had fallen in love with Yoshihide’s daughter become widely current. One of them had it that the very existence of the Hell Screen was owing to the fact that she would not comply with his wishes, but of course this could not have been true.

  We believe his lordship did not dismiss her simply because he pitied her. He felt sorry for her situation, and rather than leave her with her hardened father he wanted her in the mansion where there would be no inconvenience for her. It was nothing but kindness on his part. It was quite obvious tha
t the girl received his favors, but it would have been an exaggeration to say that she was his mistress. No, that would have been a completely unfounded lie.

  Be that as it may, owing to his request about his daughter, Yoshihide came to be disliked by his lordship. Then suddenly the Lord of Horikawa summoned Yoshihide, whatever may have been his reason, and bade him paint a screen of the circles of hell.

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  When I say screen of the circles of hell, the scenes of those frightful paintings seem to come floating before my very eyes. Other painters have done Hell Screens, but from the first sketch Yoshihide’s was different. In one corner of the first leaf he painted the Ten Kings2 and their households in small scale, the rest was an awful whirlpool of fire around the Forest of Swords which likewise seemed ready to burst into flames. In fact, except for the robes of the hellish officials, which were dotted yellows and blues, all was a flame color, and in the center leapt and danced pitch-black smoke and sparks like flying charcoal.

  The brushwork of this alone was enough to astonish one, but the treatment of the sinners rolling over and over in the avenging fire Was unlike that of any ordinary picture of hell. From the highest noble to the lowest beggar every conceivable sort of person was to be seen there. Courtiers in formal attire, alluring young maidens of the court in palace robes, priests droning over their prayer beads, scholars on high wooden clogs, little girls in white shifts, diviners flourishing their papered wands—I won’t name them all. There they all were, enveloped in flame and smoke, tormented by bull and horse-headed jailers: blown and scattered in all directions like fallen leaves in a gale, they fled hither and yon. There were female fortunetellers, their hair caught in forks, their limbs trussed tighter than spiders’ legs. Young princes hung inverted like bats, their breasts pierced with javelins. They were beaten with iron whips, they were crushed with mighty weights of adamant, they were pecked by weird birds, they were devoured by poisonous dragons. I don’t know how many sinners were depicted, nor can I list all their torments.

  But I must mention one dreadful scene that stood out from the rest. Grazing the tops of the sword trees, that were as sharp as an animal’s fangs—there were several souls on them, spitted two or three deep—came falling through space an ox-carriage. Its blinds were blown open by the winds of hell and in it an emperor’s favorite, gorgeously attired, her long black hair fluttering in the flames, bent her white neck and writhed in agony. Nothing made the fiery torments of hell more realistic than the appearance of that woman in her burning carriage. The horror of the whole picture was concentrated in this one scene. So inspired an accomplishment was it that those who looked at her thought they heard dreadful cries in their ears.

  Ah, it was for this, it was for this picture that that dreadful event occurred! Without it how could even Yoshihide have expressed so vividly the agonies of hell? It was to finish this screen that Yoshihide met a destiny so cruel that he took his own life. For this hell he pictured was the hell that he, the greatest painter in the country, was one day to fall into. . . .

  I may be telling the strange story of the Hell Screen too hastily; I may have told the wrong end of the story first. Let me return to Yoshihide, bidden by his lordship to paint a picture of hell.

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  For five or six months Yoshihide was so busy working on the screen that he was not seen at the mansion at all. Was it not remarkable that with all his affection, when he became absorbed in his painting, he did not even want to see his daughter? The apprentice to whom I have already referred said that when Yoshihide was engaged on a piece of work it was as though he had been bewitched by a fox. According to the stories that circulated at that time Yoshihide had achieved fame with the assistance of the black art because of a vow he had made to some great god of fortune. And the proof of it was that if you went to his studio and peered at him unbeknownst you could see the ghostly foxes swarming all around him. Thus it was that when once he had taken up his brushes everything was forgotten till he had finished the picture. Day and night he would shut himself up in one room, scarcely seeing the light of day. And when he painted the Hell Screen this absorption was complete.

  The shutters were kept down during the day and he mixed his secret colors by the light of a tripod lamp. He had his apprentices dress in all sorts of finery, and painted each with great care. It did not take the Hell Screen to make him behave like that: he demanded it for every picture he painted. At the time he was painting the “Five Aspects of Life and Death” at Ryugaiji, he chanced to see a corpse lying beside the road. Any ordinary person would have averted his face, but Yoshihide stepped out of the crowd, squatted down, and at his leisure painted the half-decayed face and limbs exactly as they looked.

  How can I convey his violent concentration? Some of you will still fail to grasp it. Since I cannot tell it in detail, I shall relate it broadly.

  The apprentice, then, was one day mixing paints. Suddenly Yoshihide appeared. “I’d like to take a short nap,” he said. “But I’ve been bothered a lot by bad dreams recently.”

  Since this was not extraordinary the apprentice answered briefly but politely, “Indeed, sir,” without lifting his hand from his work. Whereupon the artist said, with a loneliness and diffidence that were strange to him, “I mean I would like to have you sit by my pillow while I rest.” The apprentice thought it unusual that he should be troubled so badly by dreams, but the request was a simple one and he assented readily. Yoshihide, still anxious, asked him to come back in at once. “And if another apprentice comes, don’t let him enter the room while I am sleeping,” he said hesitantly. By “room” he meant the room where he was painting the screen. In that room the doors were shut fast as if it were night, and a light was usually left burning. The screen stood around the sides of the room; only the charcoal sketch of the design was completed. Yoshihide put his elbow on the pillow like a man completely exhausted and quietly fell asleep. But before an hour was out an indescribably unpleasant voice began to sound in the apprentice’s ears.

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  At first it was nothing more than a voice, but presently there were clear words, as of a drowning man moaning in the water. “What . . . you are calling me? Where? Where to ... to hell? To the hell of fire . . . Who is it? Who is your honor? Who is your honor? If I knew who . . .”

  Unconsciously the apprentice stopped mixing the colors; feeling that he was intruding on privacy he looked at the artist’s face. That wrinkled face was pale; great drops of sweat stood out on it, the lips were dry, and the mouth with its scanty teeth was wide open, as though it gasped for air. And that thing that moved so dizzily as if on a thread, was that his tongue!

  “If I knew who . . . Oh, it is your honor, is it? I thought it was. What! You have come to meet me. So I am to come. I am to go to hell! My daughter awaits me in hell!”

  At that moment a strange, hazy shadow seemed to descend over the face of the screen, so uncanny did the apprentice feel. Immediately, of course, he shook the master with all his might, but Yoshihide, still in the clutch of the nightmare, continued his monologue, unable, apparently, to wake out of it. Thereupon the apprentice boldly took the water that stood at hand for his brushes and poured it over Yoshihide’s face.

  “It is waiting: get in this carriage. Get in this carriage and go down to hell.” As he said these words Yoshihide’s voice changed, he sounded like a man being strangled, and at length he opened his eyes. Terrified, he leapt up like one pierced with needles: the weird things of his dream must still have been with him. His expression was dreadful, his mouth gaped, he stared into space. Presently he seemed to have recovered himself. “It’s all right now. You may leave,” he said curtly.

  As the apprentice would have been badly scolded had he disobeyed, he promptly left the room. When he saw the good light of day, he sighed with relief like one awakening from a bad dream.

  But this was not the worst. A month later another apprentice was called into the back room. As usual Yoshihide was gnawing his brushes in the dim light o
f the oil lamp. Suddenly he turned to the apprentice. “I want you to strip again.”

  Since he had been asked to do this several times before, the apprentice obeyed immediately. But when that unspeakable man saw him stark naked before him, his face became strangely distorted. “I want to see a man bound with a chain. I want you to do as I tell you for a little while,” he said coldly and unsympathetically. The apprentice was a sturdy fellow who had formerly thought that swinging a sword was better than handling a brush, but this request astonished him. As he often said afterwards, “I began to wonder if the master hadn’t gone crazy and wasn’t going to kill me.” Yoshihide, however, growing impatient with the other’s hesitation, produced from somewhere a light iron chain a-rattle in his hand; and without giving him the opportunity of obeying or refusing, sprang on the apprentice, sat on his back, twisted up his arms and bound him around and around. The pain was almost intolerable, for he pulled the end of the chain brutally, so that the apprentice fell loudly sideways and lay there extended.

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  He said that he lay there like a wine jar rolled over on its side. Because his hands and feet were cruelly bent and twisted he could move only his head. He was fat, and with his circulation impeded, the blood gathered not only in his trunk and face but everywhere under his skin. This, however, did not trouble Yoshihide at all; he walked all around him, “a wine jar,” making sketch after sketch. I do not need to elaborate on the apprentice’s sufferings.