The Demon at Agi Bridge and Other Japanese Tales (Translations from the Asian Classics)

by Philip K. Dick

Shocked and saddened by these words, on the following day the man opened his bag to find the bill of the female bird paired with that of her mate. Because of what had happened, he abandoned his regular occupation and took the tonsure. He was a samurai in the service of Lord Nakayoshi, former commissioner of the Ministry of Justice.

  1.A shaku, a unit of length, is just short of one foot.

  2.The Minister of the Right was Fujiwara no Tadatsune (1173–1229).

  3.Shichihan was a gambling game played with dice.

  4.In 1201, Fujiwara no Sadayoshi (1148–1209) retired to the Buddhist temple of Ninna-ji and took the tonsure.

  5.The mon was a coin of small value that had a hole in it and was customarily strung on a string.

  6.The kan was a unit of currency, a sum equal to a thousand mon.

  TALES OF RENUNCIATION

  SENJŪSHŌ

  Tales of Renunciation (Senjūshō, late thirteenth century) is a collection of 121 Buddhist setsuwa divided into nine books. Although the date of 1183 is given in its colophon, it probably was composed about a century later. The collection has been popularly attributed to Saigyō (1118–1190), a noted monk and waka (classical poetry) poet of the late Heian period (794–1185), probably because Saigyō figures prominently in the collection. He appears as the first-person narrator in one of the tales, and poems from Collection of a Mountain Home (Sankashū, 1180), Saigyō’s poetry collection, are incorporated into several tales, whereas several other tales appear to be based on head notes from Sankashū. But it is clear that Saigyō was not the author or compiler.

  The Senjūshō is unified by the theme of renunciation. The tales usually begin with an anecdote, followed by an exposition or a commentary on the main theme of the anecdote. The first tale in Senjūshō, “The Venerable Zōga” (1:1), is representative of the format of the stories. The commentary, which is almost as long as the anecdote itself, argues that attachment to worldly possessions and reputation leads to sin and must be overcome, which Zōga does in an extreme fashion. Significantly, the eccentric Zōga is inspired by Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, whose presence reflects the Shinto–Buddhist syncretism typical of the medieval period. The story “The Woman of Pleasure at Eguchi” (9:8), which recounts Saigyō’s encounter with a prostitute, is the most famous of the Saigyō episodes and was the source for the nō play Eguchi.

  The Venerable Zōga (1:1)

  Long ago, there was a man called the Venerable Zōga.1 From a very early age, he longed to attain enlightenment, and he spent a thousand nights cloistered in the Konponchūdō, the main hall of the Tendai headquarters on Mount Hiei. There he prayed earnestly, but somehow still could not seem to acquire the true determination needed to pursue the search for enlightenment.

  Once he went alone on a pilgrimage to the Grand Shrine in Ise.2 There it was revealed to him in a dream that if he wished to gain the true determination for enlightenment, he must learn to look on this body of his as not a body at all. On receiving this revelation, he was much startled and concluded that it meant he must cast aside all desire for fame and gain. “Very well,” he told himself, “I will cast them aside!” With that, he took off all his priestly robes and gave them away to the beggars. He proceeded in this fashion until he had given away even his unlined under robe, and he left the shrine in a state of total nakedness.

  The people who saw him gathered around, thinking that he had gone mad to behave in such a strange and unsightly manner. He paid not the slightest attention to them, however, but went on his way, begging as he did so.

  After four days, he returned to the place where he had lived formerly on Mount Hiei and entered the quarters of his mentor, the Great Teacher Jie.3 Some of his fellow monks supposed that this man, a court consultant’s son, had gone out of his mind, while others were embarrassed even to look at him. The Great Teacher Jie, summoning him into his presence, acknowledged that he had understood the importance of rejecting fame and gain. But he cautioned him that there was no need to go to such extremes. “Just behave in a respectable manner and banish from your mind all thoughts of fame and gain!” he said.

  The Venerable Zōga walks after having discarded his clothes. (From an Edo-period wood-block edition of Senjūshō, with the permission of Komine Kazuaki)

  “But this is precisely the way someone who has long ago cast aside fame and gain ought to behave!” said Zōga. Then, exclaiming, “Oh, oh, what happiness is mine!” he rushed out of the room. The Great Teacher Jie followed him out beyond the gate, where, the tears flowing helplessly from his eyes, he stood and watched as Zōga went on his way.

  In the end, Zōga wandered about until he reached Mount Tōnomine, in Yamato Province, where he settled in the spot where the Meditation Master Chirō had had his hermitage.

  Truly there is nothing more reprehensible than the desire for fame and gain, or the ills that arise from the three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance. Because we believe that this body of ours really exists, we devise all kinds of measures to help it along. Men born into warrior families will draw the arrows from their quivers, brandish their three-foot swords, and risk their lives in battle, though it may mean death, all for the sake of fame and gain and mastery over others. Women will paint their willow-leaf eyebrows in thin lines of mascara and scent their garments with orchid and musk, hoping to drive away every trace of love’s fickleness, and this, too, they do only because of their desire for fame and gain.

  And, again, when people don the black-dyed robes of clerics and twirl their rosaries in their hands, it is all done simply because they calculate that they can win others over to their faith and thus earn their living in the world. Or when they strive for high position or high office, hoping that they may take part in the Buddhist ceremonies of the noble families and be attended by three thousand monk disciples, it is because they cannot get fame and gain out of their minds.

  Such, it goes without saying, are those who do not understand the facts. But those who have had their eyes opened by the Yuishiki or Shikan teachings4 and who can comprehend the highest principles expounded in the Buddhist scriptures still fail to cast aside fame and gain, but go on dwelling in the sea of birth and death.

  Anyone who has tried to reform these habits of mind that have been with one through lifetime after lifetime knows how difficult that can be. And yet this Venerable Zōga was able in an instant to divest himself of thoughts of fame and gain. Was that not an admirable feat?

  If he had not had divine assistance from the Grand Shrine in Ise, however, how could he have driven such thoughts from his mind? He swept away the massive clouds of greed, anger, and ignorance; washed himself clean of the perpetual darkness of fame and gain in the waters of the Isuzu River;5 and through the holy light of the great goddess Amaterasu rid himself of it. This was a most wonderful and auspicious affair, one that, whatever the age, should never be forgotten!

  The Woman of Pleasure at Eguchi (9:8)

  Some time ago, around the twentieth day of the Ninth Month, I passed by a place called Eguchi. I could see the houses crowded together along the riverbanks to the north and south, lodgings of harlots hoping to cater to travelers on the boats passing up and down the river. As I was gazing at them and thinking what a pitiful sight they were, a sudden icy shower, impatient for the start of winter, began drenching down. I approached one of the houses, an odd and dilapidated affair, and asked if I could beg lodging until the rain let up. But the “woman of pleasure” who presided over the house showed no inclination to heed my request. On the spur of the moment, I recited this poem:

  Yo no naka o It’s hard to despise

  itou made koso the whole world

  katakarame as a borrowed lodging,

  kari no yado o but that you should begrudge me

  oshimu kimi kana even a brief stay!

  The woman of the house, smiling a little, replied with this poem:

  Ie o izuru Because I heard you were someone

  hito to shi kikeba who had left the household life,

  k
ari no yado my only thought was to warn you:

  kokoro tomu na to don’t let your mind dwell

  omou bakari zo on this borrowed lodging!

  Then she quickly ushered me in. I had intended to stay only until the shower was over, but her poem was so interesting that I ended up spending the entire night.

  The woman of the house was at that time something over forty, highly refined in both appearance and manner. We spent the whole night talking of nothing in particular, and she said to me, “I have been a prostitute since the time I was very young. But although for years I have carried on in this fashion, it has always been profoundly distasteful to me. Women, they say, are deeply sinful in nature. But to have to live the life of a harlot—it must surely be due to some fault that I committed in a previous existence. How hateful it is! These past two or three years, I’ve come to deeply regret such conduct, and since I’m well along in years, I no longer follow those ways.

  “Although they are the same bells from the temple in the fields that I always hear, when evening comes they seem to me so sad that before I know it, I give way to tears. This life, brief as it is—must it always be as drab and meaningless as this? Then, when dawn comes, my mind clears a little, and when I hear the birds taking fond leave of one another, I am struck even more by the sadness of things.

  “At evening, I wonder how I will fare when the night is over. When dawn comes, I ponder whether, now that the night is over, I should not make up my mind to become a nun. But so many long months and years I’ve lived in the world in this fashion that I’m like the cuckoo of the Himalaya Mountains.6 And so, regrettable as it is, I have yet to take that step!” Her voice trailed off in sobs.

  Listening to her, I found her words so pitiful, and so filled with meaning, that the sleeves of my black monk’s robe were drenched with tears. When morning came, we took leave of each other, promising at a future time to meet again.

  During my return trip, I recalled her with admiration, the tears again and again springing to my eyes. Even now, she remains in my thoughts, and just the sight of grass or trees will often stir deep memories of her. When people speak of how “wild words and fancy phrases” can lead one to praise the Buddhist doctrines, this must be what they mean.7 If I had not recited my poem, inept as it was, with the words “that you should begrudge me / even a brief stay!” she would not have granted me lodging. And then how would I have ever come to know this remarkable person? It was all because of “you,” I keep remembering with joy, that I was able, for a moment at least, to glimpse within my heart and mind the seeds of unsurpassed enlightenment.

  The month when we had promised to meet again arrived, and I thought of visiting her. But an important personage came from the capital, disrupting my schedule, and I was unable to carry out my plan.

  However, I found someone who was traveling in her direction and was able to send word by him, entrusting him with a poem that read:

  Karisome no Don’t let your thoughts dwell

  yo ni wa omoi o on this fleeting world!—

  nokosu na to those words

  kikishi koto no ha you spoke to me

  wasurare mo sezu I’ve not forgotten.

  She sent her answer back by the same messenger. I hurried to open it, and found these words written in a beautiful hand:

  Wasurezu to Not forgotten—no sooner

  mazu kiku kara ni had I heard those words

  sode nurete than tears wet my sleeve.

  waga mi wa itou I too have come to hate

  yume no yo no naka this world of dreams.

  And at the end she added, “I have changed my garb for that of a nun, but my thoughts have yet to go along!” And she enclosed this poem:

  Kami oroshi I’ve shaved my head,

  koromo no iro wa my robes

  somenuru ni are now dyed black,

  nao tsurenaki wa but my thoughts

  kokoro nari keri fail to make the change.

  Once again, I found myself deeply moved, the tears drenching my sleeves. What an admirable person, this “woman of pleasure”!

  Women of her type who make their living in that way hope, it seems, to find someone suitable who will love and look after them. But this woman put such hopes aside and thought only of what awaited her in her next existence. A rare case, is she not? Surely she must have performed more than her share of religious acts in her previous existences. And the seeds of those virtuous deeds that she planted in one lifetime after another were then brought to fruition by the waters of the river at Eguchi.

  Even her poems are interesting. And when she said to me, “At evening, I wonder how I will fare when the night is over,” or “When dawn comes, my tears flow”—did she remain to the end in this questioning frame of mind? But no, she became a nun.

  After that, I hoped to pay her a visit, but I heard that she was no longer living in Eguchi, and so those plans came to nothing. Again and again, I find myself wondering what sort of end came to that “woman of pleasure.”

  1.The Venerable Zōga (917–1003) was the son of Tachibana no Tsunehira, the “court consultant” mentioned later in the tale. He studied to become a monk at Enryaku-ji, the head temple of the Tendai school on Mount Hiei, and later retired to Tōnomine, a mountain south of Nara.

  2.The famous Grand Shrine in Ise was dedicated to Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. That Zōga, a Buddhist monk, would pray at the leading Shinto shrine indicates the degree to which the two religions were intertwined in this period of Japanese history.

  3.The Great Teacher Jie was the renowned Tendai monk and scholar Ryōgen (912–985).

  4.The Yuishiki, or Conscious-Only, teachings are those of the Shingon school of Buddhism; the Shikan, or Concentration and Insight, teachings are those of the Tendai school. Both were taught in the temple of Mount Hiei, where Zōga studied.

  5.The Isuzu is the small river that runs through the Grand Shrine in Ise.

  6.According to Buddhist lore, the cuckoo of the Himalayas is a foolish bird that, having failed to provide itself with adequate protection against the cold, shivers all night, vowing to build a proper nest the next morning. But with the warmth of dawn, all its good intentions are forgotten.

  7.The phrase “wild words and fancy phrases” (kyōgen kigo) derives from a piece written by the Chinese poet Bo Juyi (772–846) when he deposited a copy of his writings in a Buddhist temple in Luoyang. In it, he expressed a wish that “these worldly literary labors of my present existence, these transgressions of wild words and fancy phrases,” might be transformed into causes for deeper religious understanding. But many Buddhists felt that undue attention to poetry and other types of secular literature was in fact an impediment to such understanding.

  COLLECTION OF SAND AND PEBBLES

  SHASEKISHŪ

  Collection of Sand and Pebbles (Shasekishū, 1279–1283) consists of ten books. After editing the collection, Priest Mujū (1226–1312) revised and rewrote a number of the setsuwa, often with the intention of making difficult Buddhist doctrine easier to understand. Some of the setsuwa are stories about everyday life, with humor, wordplay, and comic twists at the end. Indeed, the collection greatly influenced later fiction, particularly the hanashi-bon (humorous books), kana-zōshi (kana booklets), and ukiyo-zōshi (books of the floating world) genres of the Edo period (1600–1867), when the text was reprinted many times.

  The Shasekishū differs from other setsuwa collections in that the individual stories are used to advance Mujū’s own arguments and to explain complex Buddhist issues. He uses metaphors, cites sources, and alludes to other texts, making the collection more like a vernacular Buddhist treatise (hōgo). But Mujū also was interested in monogatari (court tales), which is evident in his writing and in his treatment of salvation and fiction writing. Both “The Scholar Who Loved Poetry” (5:11) and “The Deep Meaning Underlying the Way of Japanese Poetry” (5:12) encapsulate Mujū’s views on this complex subject.

  Conventional morality held that kyōgen kigo (wild words and fancy phrases)
could lead to sin, attachment, immoral conduct, and corruption. The prevailing Buddhist view was that both the composition and the appreciation of fiction and poetry were to be avoided as impediments to enlightenment, but Mujū argues that “wild words and fancy phrases” could serve as a vehicle for achieving Buddhist awakening (nirvana) in this world, as an expedient means to a higher end. That is, poetry may lead us to a deeper understanding of the impermanence of the world or to a better appreciation of the Pure Land, the Western Paradise.

  This function of literature as an expedient (hōben) was even more true for waka (classical poetry), which Mujū regarded as a means of meditation, particularly in the form of dharani, mystic verses that served to establish rapport with the divine. In Shasekishū, Mujū introduces the issue of honji suijaku (original ground–manifest traces), with Shinto deities in Japan seen as manifest traces of the Buddhist gods, who originated in India. The native Shinto gods composed waka, regarded as the manifestations of the Indian-derived dharani, which enable the chanter to become one with the Buddha.

  The Scholar Who Loved Poetry (5:11)

  In his studies, the Supervisor of Priests Eshin1 paid no attention to other disciplines but was wholly concerned with matters pertaining to the religious mind. He therefore had great disdain for trivial concerns such as those commonly referred to as “wild words and fancy phrases.”2

  Among his disciples was a young boy who day and night devoted his thoughts to the composition of Japanese poetry. His fellow disciples several times reported on the matter, saying, “Students are naturally expected to spend all their time on their studies. But this boy is quite hopeless and cares for nothing but poetry. One like that can set a bad example for the others. Under the circumstances, he had best be sent back to his home village tomorrow.”