by David Peace
The dog turned its face to stare at Yasukichi, and then barked once, twice, a third time, then a fourth; only four times, exactly four times –
Yasukichi had had enough of signs, enough of warnings; he walked towards the one shop which at least seemed to be open, a shop he had known for a long while, that overpowering bright red TOBACCO sign hanging down from its eaves as always. Yasukichi paused under the eaves, before the window of the shop, smiling at the familiar model of the battleship Mikasa, its Rising Sun flag hoisted, enclosed in a bottle of Curaçao, displayed among the adverts for condensed milk, then went inside, inside the familiar, welcoming shop; the coloured glass above the shop door cast its customary green light over the stucco walls and myriad goods of the store: the Kamakura hams still dangling from the rafters above, the poster for Kinsen Cider still hanging over the door to the back, just as they had always done; the tins of English cocoa, the boxes of American raisins all neatly arranged on the shelves as usual; the Yamatoni beef, the Scottish whisky, the Manila cigars and the Egyptian cigarettes, all were as they always were, all as it always was, familiar and comforting, welcoming.
Yasukichi picked up a large box of his usual matches; he loved the design of this box so much that he had often been tempted to frame its trademark. But as he looked down at the sailboat on the choppy sea now, he was reminded again of the wooden tally he’d stumbled, almost tripped over, the man buried at sea, lost to the sea, and again he felt inundated, again overwhelmed, drowning on dry land, drowning in this store. His palms sweating, Yasukichi put the box back on the shelf, wiped his palms on his handkerchief, then walked over to the woman sat at the counter.
Yasukichi had known the woman since the first day he had come into the shop, the same day he had started to teach at the Naval Academy, eight years ago now. In fact, if he was honest, with her hair done up in a Western style, with her pale cat-like face, she had been the initial, real reason he had become such a frequent, regular customer. But today, sitting at the counter as she always did, reading a newspaper as she usually did, the woman seemed somehow changed, in some way different, not the same, no longer the same.
‘Excuse me,’ said Yasukichi. ‘I wonder if you have any other matches, other than Ship, perhaps a box of Swan Vesta?’
The woman did not look up at Yasukichi, appeared not to even hear him, but then she got up from her seat and walked into the back of the store.
How strange, thought Yasukichi, but he stayed where he was, waiting for her to return, glancing at the abacus standing on its end, looking down at the newspaper spread over the counter, its characters all upside down.
A few moments later, the woman returned from the back of the store, holding a box in her hand. But still she did not look at Yasukichi, not even to glance his way. The woman sat back down in her seat, opened up the box, took out a caramel, unwrapped its paper, put the sweet in her mouth, and then picked up the newspaper, now holding up its front page, its photograph and headline staring Yasukichi in the face –
RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA, RENOWNED AUTHOR, COMMITS SUICIDE AT TABATA HOME
Yasukichi tried to cry out, to protest, ‘Mada-dayo! Not yet—’
The woman looked up from the newspaper, over the counter, down to the floor. She put down the paper, got up from her seat, came out from behind the counter and picked up a box of matches that must have somehow fallen to the floor. The woman put the box back on the shelf, then returned to her seat and the newspaper, and turned the page.
After Words
Bibliography
The twelve tales which form this novel are inspired and informed by the stories, essays and letters of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa himself, incidents from his own life, and the memories and writings of people around him.
I have included a complete list of all the sources used in the writing of this novel but, for anyone who has not read Akutagawa, I would begin with:
Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories, trans. Jay Rubin (Penguin, 2006).
Kappa, trans. Geoffrey Bownas (Tuttle, 1971; Peter Owen, 2009).
Both books also include very useful biographical information.
Many of the stories of Akutagawa have been widely translated, over many years, though most collections are now out of print:
Akutagawa and Dazai: Instances of Literary Adaptation, trans. James O’Brien (Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University, 1988; Kurodahan Press, 2004).
The Beautiful and the Grotesque, originally published under the title Exotic Japanese Stories, trans. Takashi Kojima and John McVittie (Liverlight, 1964 and 2010).
‘A Bizarre Reunion’, trans. Steven P. Venti, in Kaiki: Uncanny Tales from Japan, Volume 3: Tales of the Metropolis (Kurodahan Press, 2012).
Cogwheels and Other Stories, trans. Howard Norman (Mosaic Press, 1982, 2015).
‘The Death Register’, trans. Lawrence Rogers, in Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll, ed. Lawrence Rogers (University of California Press, 2002).
The Essential Akutagawa, ed. Seiji M. Lippit (Marsilio, 1999).
Die Fluten des Sumida, trans. Armin Stein (IUDICIUM Verlag, 2010).
A Fool’s Life, trans. Will Petersen (Grossman Publishers, 1970).
A Fool’s Life, trans. Anthony Barnett and Naoko Toraiwa (Allardyce, Barnett, 2007).
‘General Kim’, trans. Jay Rubin, in Monkey Business Vol. 3 (Villagebooks, 2013).
Hell Screen and Other Stories, trans. W. H. H. Norman (Hokuseido, 1948).
Hell Screen, Cogwheels, A Fool’s Life, trans. Takashi Kojima, Cid Corman, Susumu Kamaike and Will Petersen, with a foreword by Jorge Luis Borges and introduction by Kazuya Sakai (Eridanos Press, 1987).
Japanese Short Stories, trans. Takashi Kojima (Liverlight, 1961).
Kappa, trans. Seiichi Shiojiri (Akitaya, 1947, and Hokuseido, 1951).
Kirishitan Stories by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, trans. Yoshiko and Andrew Dykstra, in Japanese Religions, Vol. 31 (2006).
Mandarins, trans. Charles de Wolf (Archipelago, 2010).
‘The Mirage’, trans. Beongcheon Yu, in Chicago Review, XVIII, No. 2 (1965).
Rashōmon and Other Stories, trans. Takashi Kojima (Liverlight, 1952).
Rashōmon and Other Stories, trans. Glenn W. Shaw (Hara Shobo, 1964).
The Spider’s Thread and Other Stories, trans. Dorothy Britton (Kodansha International, 1987).
Tales Grotesque and Curious, trans. Glenn W. Shaw (Hokuseido, 1930).
Three Strange Tales, trans. Glenn Anderson (One Peace Books, 2012).
The Three Treasures, trans. Takamasa Sasaki (Hokuseido, 1951).
‘Travels in China’, trans. Joshua A. Fogel, in Chinese Studies in History (1997).
Tu Tze-Chun, trans. Dorothy Britton, with woodcuts by Naoko Matsubara, and an introduction by E. G. Seidensticker (Kodansha International, 1965).
‘Western Man, Western Man Continued’, trans. Akiko Inoue, in Posthumous Works of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (Tenri, Tenri Jihosha, 1961).
‘Wonder Island’, trans. Dan O’Neill, in Three-Dimensional Reading: Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911–1932, ed. Angela Yiu (University of Hawai’i Press, 2013).
The following texts contain studies of Akutagawa’s life and work:
Akutagawa Fumi, Tsuisō Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (Chūō Kōron-sha, 1981).
Bates, Alex, The Culture of the Quake (University of Michigan, 2015).
De Vos, George A., with Hiroshi Wagatsuma, ‘Alienation and the Author; A Triptych on Social Conformity and Deviancy in Japanese Intellectuals’, in Socialization for Achievement, ed. George A. De Vos (University of California Press, 1973).
Fowler, Edward, The Rhetoric of Confession: Shishōsetsu in Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Fiction (University of California Press, 1988).
Fukasawa, Margaret Benton, Kitahara Hakushū: His Life and Poetry (East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1993).
Hibbett, Howard S., ‘Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’, in Modern Japanese Writers, ed. Jay Rubin (Scribner’s, 2001).
Hibbett,
Howard S., ‘Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and the Negative Ideal’, in Personality in Japanese History, ed. Albert M. Craig and Donald H. Shively (University of California Press, 1970).
Hirotsu Kazuo, Shinpen Dōjidai no Sakka-tachi (Iwanami shoten, 1992).
Iga, Mamoru, ‘Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’, in The Thorn in the Chrysanthemum (University of California Press, 1986).
Ishiwari Tōru (ed.), Akutagawa Ryūnosuke Shokan-shū (Iwanami shoten, 2009).
Ishiwari Tōru (ed.), Akutagawa Ryūnosuke Zuihitsu-shū (Iwanami shoten, 2014).
Karatani, Kōjin, ‘On the Power to Construct’, in Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, trans. Brett de Bary (Duke University Press, 1993).
Keene, Donald, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984).
Kondō Tomie, Tabata Bunshi-mura (Chūō Kōron-sha, 1983).
Kuzumaki Yoshitoshi, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke Miteikōshū (Iwanami shoten, 1968).
Lippit, Seiji M., ‘Disintegrating Mechanisms of Subjectivity: Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Last Writings’, in Topographies of Japanese Modernism (Columbia University Press, 2002).
Matsumoto Seichō, Shōwa-shi Hakkutsu (Bungei Shunjū, 1978).
Morimoto Osamu, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke Denki Ronkō (Meiji shoin, 1964).
Napier, Susan J., The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature (Routledge, 1996).
Niina Noriaki, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke no Nagasaki (Nagasaki Bunkensha, 2015).
Richie, Donald, Rashōmon (Rutgers, 1987).
Schencking, Charles J., The Great Kantō Earthquake (Columbia University Press, 2013).
Sekiguchi Yasuyoshi (ed.), Akutagawa Ryūnosuke Shin-Jiten (Kanrin shobō, 2003).
Suter, Rebecca, Holy Ghosts: The Christian Century in Modern Japanese Fiction (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015).
Uchida Hyakken, Watashi no ‘Sōseki’ to ‘Ryūnosuke’ (Chikuma shobō, 1993).
Ueda, Makoto, ‘Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’, in Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature (Stanford University Press, 1976).
Weisenfeld, Gennifer, Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 (University of California Press, 2012).
Yamanouchi, Hisaaki, ‘The Rivals: Shiga Naoya and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’, in The Search for Authenticity in Modern Japanese Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1978).
Yamazaki Mitsuo, Yabu no Naka no Ie (Bungei Shunjū, 1997).
Yoshida Seiichi et al. (eds), Akutagawa Ryūnosuke zenshū, 8 vols (Chikuma shobō, 1964–5).
Yu, Beongcheon, Akutagawa: An Introduction (Wayne State University Press, 1972).
The following texts are of or about the times in which Akutagawa lived:
Bargen, Doris G., Suicidal Honor (University of Hawai’i Press, 2006).
Beongcheon Yu, Natsume Sōseki (Twayne, 1969).
DiNitto, Rebecca, Uchida Hyakken: A Critique of Modernity and Militarism in Pre-war Japan (Harvard University Press, 2008).
Dong, Stella, Shanghai (William Morrow, 2000).
Gluck, Carol, Japan’s Modern Myths (Princeton University Press, 1985).
Heinrich, Amy Vladeck, Fragments of Rainbows: The Life and Poetry of Saitō Mokichi (Columbia University Press, 1983).
Irwin, John T., The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
Karatani, Kōjin, History and Repetition, trans. and ed. Seiji M. Lippit (Columbia University Press, 2012).
Kawabata, Yasunari, The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa, trans. Alisa Freedman, with a foreword and afterword by Donald Richie (University of California Press, 2005).
Keene, Dennis, Yokomitsu Riichi Modernist (Columbia University Press, 1980).
Kurosawa, Akira, Something Like an Autobiography, trans. Audie E. Bock (Vintage Books, 1983).
Lifton, Robert Jay, Katō, Shūichi, and Reich, Michael R., Six Lives, Six Deaths (Yale University Press, 1979).
Mansfield, Stephen, Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History (Signal Books, 2009).
Mitford, A. B., Tales of Old Japan (Macmillan, 1876).
Ōgai, Mori, Not a Song Like Any Other: An Anthology of Writings by Mori Ōgai, ed. J. Thomas Rimmer (University of Hawai’i Press, 2004).
Ōgai, Mori, Youth and Other Stories, trans. and ed. J. Thomas Rimmer (University of Hawai’i Press, 1994).
Poe, Edgar Allan, The Complete Tales and Poems (Penguin, 1982).
Rimmer, J. Thomas, Mori Ōgai (Twayne, 1975).
Saito, Satoru, Detective Fiction and the Rise of the Japanese Novel, 1880–1930 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2012).
Saitō, Mokichi, Red Lights: Selected Tanka Sequences from Shakkō, trans. Seishi Shinoda and Sanford Goldstein (Purdue Research Foundation, 1989).
Seidensticker, Edward, Low City, High City (Harvard University Press, 1983).
Seidensticker, Edward, Tokyo Rising (Charles E. Tuttle, 1991).
Songling, Pu, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, trans. John Minford (Penguin, 2006).
Sōseki, Natsume, Kokoro, trans. Edwin McClellan (Regnery Publishing, 1957).
Sōseki, Natsume, The Tower of London: Tales of Victorian London, trans. and with an introduction by Damian Flanagan (Peter Owen, 2004).
Sōseki, Natsume, The Wayfarer, trans. Beongcheon Yu (Tuttle, 1969).
Tanizaki, Jun’ichirō, Red Roofs & Other Stories, trans. Anthony H. Chalmers and Paul McCarthy (University of Michigan Press, 2016).
Tietjens, Eunice, Profiles from China (Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1917).
Tyler, William J. (ed.), Modaniizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913–1938 (University of Hawai’i Press, 2008).
Uchida, Hyakken, Realm of the Dead, trans. Rachel DiNitto (Dalkey, 2006).
Waley, Paul, Tokyo: City of Stories (Weatherhill, 1991).
Waley, Paul, Tokyo Now and Then (Weatherhill, 1984).
Yokomitsu, Riichi, Shanghai, trans. Dennis Washburn (Centre for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2001).
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations:
Frontispiece: Akutagawa, in his study, 1924.
Title page: Kappa drawn by Akutagawa, c.1922.
After the Thread: postcard of the Shinobazu Pond in Ueno, Tokyo, c.1910.
Hell Screens: Akutagawa, c.1896, 1905 and 1927.
Repetition: photographs of General Nogi and his wife on the morning of their deaths, September 13, 1912, taken by Akio Shinroku.
Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom: a Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin, as mentioned in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, 1899.
A Twice-Told Tale: Men’s Head by Kazimir Malevich, date uncertain.
The Yellow Christ: The Yellow Christ by Paul Gauguin, 1889. Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York.
After the War: postcard of the Bridge of Nine Turnings, Shanghai, date unknown.
The Exorcists: Kappa drawn by Akutagawa, 1927.
After the Disaster: Saika no Ato by Ikeda Yōson, ink and mineral pigments on silk, 1924. Collection of Kurashiki Shiritsu Bijutsukan.
Saint Kappa: Akutagawa, 1925.
The Spectres of Christ: the yukata made from material Akutagawa bought on his trip to China in 1922, and which he wore on the night of his death in 1927.
After the Fact: Akutagawa in death, by Ryūichi Oana, July 24, 1927.
*
Certain chapters and sections of this novel were previously published in the following edited or substantially different forms:
After the Disaster, Before the Disaster in March Was Made of Yarn, a collection of stories written to commemorate the first anniversary of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, published in the US and UK by Vintage in 2012.
A Twice-Told Tale, under the title After Ryūnosuke, Before Ryūnosuke, in the Japanese literary journal Monkey Business in 2013.
After the War, Before the War in Granta 127 in 2014.
After the Thread, Before the Thread was originally written for Fantasma, an Italian collection of the three stories listed above, pu
blished by il Saggiatore in 2016.
Finally, parts of Saint Kappa were written for the twelfth Bridge the Gap? in Genoa, Italy, organised by the Centre for Contemporary Art Kitakyushu, Japan, and presented to the audience in the booklet After the Crash, Before the Crash on March 4, 2016.
*
I would like to thank the following people: Ian Bahrami, Stephen Barber, Andrew Benbow, Ian Cusack, Walter Donohue, Didier Faustino, Laura Oldfield Ford, Luca Formenton, Giuseppe Genna, Jean-Paul Gratias, François Guérif, Jeanne Guyon, Mike Handford, Yuka Igarashi, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jason James, Joan Jonas, Rob Kraitt, Justin McCurry, Sonny Mehta, David Mitchell, Shunichiro Nagashima, Kazuo Okanoya, Anna Pallai, Richard Lloyd Parry, Roger Pulvers, Sukhdev Sandhu, Junzo Sawa, Katy Shaw, Anna Sherman, Motoyuki Shibata, Pelin Tan, Peter Thompson, Paul Tickell, Rirkrit Tiravanija, David Turner, Rob Turner, Kate Ward, Gen Yamabe, and the Peace family, here and there, and finally, Matteo Battarra, Angus Cargill, Hamish Macaskill, Akiko Miyake, and Jon Riley, without whom this book would never have been finished.
About the Author
David Peace – named in 2003 as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists – was born and brought up in Yorkshire. He is the author of the Red Riding Quartet (Nineteen Seventy Four, Nineteen Seventy Seven, Nineteen Eighty, and Nineteen Eighty Three), GB84, which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, The Damned Utd, and Red or Dead, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. The final part of his Tokyo Trilogy - to follow Tokyo Year Zero and Occupied City - will publish in Summer 2019. Patient X is his tenth novel. He lives in Tokyo.
By the Same Author
