Mandarins (32 page)

ginkgo-leaf style
(Japanese
ich
ō
-gaeshi
): Originally the hairstyle of unmarried women of the samurai class, it came to be common among women of various ages and classes after the beginning of the Meiji era, including apprentice geishas.

haikai
: Refers both to what would now be called haiku and to
haikai no renga
‘linked verse'.

haori
: A jacket worn over a kimono.

hokku
: An initial stanza, consisting of 5-7-5 syllables, sometimes functioning as a verse on its own.

kana
: Referring to the two sets Japanese syllabic letters,
hiragana
and
katakana
, deriving originally from simplified Chinese characters.

koto
: A thirteen-stringed plucked zither.

-kun
: A somewhat less polite honorific name suffix than “-san,” typically used in reference to young men.

marumage
: A married woman's hairstyle, with a bun at the top. It was going out of fashion even in Akutagawa's time.

Meisen
: A famous silk fabric produced in Tochigi Prefecture and characterized by its glossy sheen.

nagauta
: Kabuki dance music, lit. ‘long song'.

o-
: An honorific prefix; until recent times, it was still used before women's names, as in “The Villa of the Black Crane.”

ojisan
: Lit. ‘uncle', though often used fictively, particularly as a vocative.

okusan
: A polite term for wife, it is sometimes used vocatively.

ot
ō
san
: ‘Father', as a polite term of reference or address, sometimes used by wives when speaking to or about their husbands.

q
í
l
í
n
: The birth of sages, notably Confucius, is said to be heralded by the
q
í
l
í
n
. (Also see
fènghu
á
ng
.)

sen
: One-hundredth of a yen, valued at the time at fifty cents.

sensei
: Derived from Chinese (lit. ‘prior-born'), the term is used most commonly to address and refer to teachers and physicians, but also, more generally, attorneys, politicians, and writers. It can be used sarcastically and, as such, is regarded with ambivalence, particularly by frequent addressees. Akutagawa nonetheless refers in his writings to his mentor Natsume S
ō
seki as “Sensei.”

shaku
: A measure of length, ca. 14.4 inches.

shamisen
: A three-stringed plucked lute.

sh
ō
ch
Å«
: Sometimes described as “Japanese gin,” it is a distilled liquor made variously from rice, barley, and sweet potatoes.

suikan
: An upper garment, washed without starch and left to dry, came to be part of the uniform dress of low-ranking attendants, though the thief in “Fortune” is also noted as wearing one at the time of his capture.

tatami
: A straw mat covered with a soft reed surface. A six-mat room measures approximately 18 square feet.

ukiyo
é
(lit. ‘pictures of the floating world'): This genre of woodblock print, a symbol of the Edo period, was already dying in the Meiji era.

yukata
: An unlined summer kimono, typically made of cotton.

N
AMES

Abbot Toba
(or Toba S
ō
j
ō
, 1053–1140): Best known for his association with the Heian-period satirical depiction of frolicking animals, he is no longer believed to have been the author of this or any other work credited to him.

Fukuzawa Yukichi
(1835–1901): Born into a low-ranking samurai family, Fukuzawa became a highly influential educator and writer, founding what is now Kei
ō
University. His image appears on the Japanese ten-thousand-yen note.

Gozeta H
ō
bai
: A play on the names Goseda H
ō
ry
Å«
(1827–92) and Goseda Yoshimatsu (1855–1915). H
ō
ry
Å«
was a student of the Italian painter Antonio Fontanesi; Yoshimatsu, his son, studied in France and was known in particular as a portrait artist.

H
é
Rú Zh
ā
ng
(1838–91): China's first modern ambassador to Japan (1876–79).

Hiroshige
(1797–1858): The
nom d'artiste
of And
ō
Tokutar
ō
, most famous for his
Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road
.

Ichikawa Sadanji I
(1842–1904): One of the three great Kabuki actors of the Meiji era.

Inoue Seigetsu
(1822–87): The wandering poet was much extolled by Akutagawa. He is buried in the City of Ina in Nagano Prefecture.

Iwai Hanshir
ō
VIII
(1829–82): A famous
onnagata
, a Kabuki female impersonator.

Kikugor
ō
V
(1844–1903): Regarded as one of the two greatest Kabuki actors of the period, he first appeared in Western garb in the 1880s.

Mushanok
ō
ji Saneatsu
(1885–1976): A painter as well as an important literary figure; a co-founder of Shirakaba (‘White Birch'), a literary school intended to offer an alternative to naturalism.

Shu Shunsui
(1600–82): Japanese form of Zh
Å«
Shùnshu
Ä­
, who fled Manchu
rule in China to settle in Japan, where he made an important contribution to the understanding of Neo-Confucianism. The monument was erected in 1912 at the elite T
ō
ky
ō
First Higher School, where Akutagawa was a pupil.

Sonojo
(1649–1723): A female disciple of Bash
ō
.

Taiso Yoshitoshi
(1838–92): Known for his realistic, indeed shocking, wood-block prints; became a newspaper illustrator in the Meiji era.

T
ō
kab
ō
: Also Watanabe no Kur
ō
, Kagami Shik
ō
. Still in his late twenties when Bash
ō
died, he had only recently become a disciple. He later wrote
Oi–Nikki
(
Knapsack Diary
), one of the accounts of Bash
ō
's death.

P
LACES

Asakusa
: Located on the west bank of the Sumidagawa not far from where Akutagawa grew up, it is a symbol of
shitamachi
, the low-lying eastern area of T
ō
ky
ō
known both for the temple Sens
ō
ji (Asakusa Kannon) and for its entertainment area, including the Rokku area.

Hagidera
(lit. ‘bush-clover temple'): An alternate name for Ry
Å«
ganji, located in eastern T
ō
ky
ō
, across the Sumida River from Miura's mansion.

Keij
ō
: The Korean capital (Seoul) as it was known during Japanese rule (1910–1945).

Oumayabashi
: The bridge crosses the Sumidagawa just below Kumakata, once the site of the entrance to Asakusa Temple.

Shubi-no-matsu
: In Edo times, men would take boats through a canal of the Sumida River to Machiyama and there proceed to Shin-Yoshiwara, the licensed quarter. The tree in question (‘pine tree of beginnings and endings') was a point of rendezvous going to and fro.

Suijin
: In the forested area (‘the grove of the water god') of Muk
ō
jima Shrine, on the eastern side of the Sumida River.

H
ISTORICAL AND
L
ITERARY
R
EFERENCES

An'ya K
ō
ro
:
A Dark Nights Passing
is as heavily autobiographical novel by Shiga Naoya (1883–1971).

Divan
:
West-Östlicher Divan
, written between 1814 and 1819, reflects both Goethe's Orientalism and his ambivalence toward Christianity.

Divine Age
:
Kamiyo
, a term dating back to the early eighth-century
Chronicles of Japan
(
Nihon-shoki
), which begins with a mythological account of the nation's origins.

Jigokuhen
: “Hell Screen,” Akutagawa's heavily adapted story from a Heian-period collection of tales (
Uji-sh
Å«
i Monogatari
) about a brilliant but monstrous painter.

Jinp
Å«
ren Rebellion
: The “League of the Divine Wind” (also
Shinp
Å«
ren
) was formed in 1872 by former samurai in Kumamoto, Ky
Å«
sh
Å«
. Deprivation of their right to wear swords triggered a short-lived rebellion in 1876, leading to other insurrections in southern Japan.

Nans
ō
-Satomi-Hakkenden
:
Chronicle of the Eight Dogs of Nans
ō
Satomi.
The epic by Takizaki Bakin (1767–1848) is set in the fifteenth century. After being defeated in a rebellion, the warrior family Satomi puts down roots in Kazusa (Nans
ō
). The eight “dogs” (with each bearing ‘-inu', ‘canine', as a name suffix) are the warriors who lead the successful restoration of the clan.

Shakk
ō
:
Red Lights
by Sait
ō
Mokichi, Akutagawa's friend, physician, and the provider of the Veronal with which Akutagawa killed himself.

Shinsei
:
New Life
by the writer Shimazaki T
ō
son (1872–1943), who confessed to having seduced and impregnated his own niece Komako before running off to France to escape the consequences.

Shuju no Kotoba
:
Words of a Dwarf
, serialized between 1923 and 1927 in
Bungeishunj
Å«
.

Tenkibo
:
Death Register
, published in 1926. The autobiographical sketch mentions, among other things, the mental illness of Akutagawa's mother, hence the comment that ends the conversation.

“The district in which I was born,” wrote Akutagawa Ry
Å«
nosuke in 1912, “lies near the banks of the Great River.” Still in secondary school when he composed a youthfully exuberant encomium to the lower reaches of the Sumidagawa, flowing through the heart of Japan's capital and into the bay, he was already composing autobiographical fiction. In fact, the author was born in Akaishi, on the western side of the river, not far from Tsukiji. His boyhood home was Muk
ō
jima, situated on the eastern bank, across from Asakusa, and known for its geisha and teahouses. The date of his birth was March 1, 1892.

As is clear from the stories, Akutagawa was a voracious and eclectic reader. Since boyhood, he had been particularly fond of the classical folktale collection
Konjaku Monogatari
[Tales of Times Now Past]. While still a student, he wrote several ironic and psychologically insightful adaptations of these (cf. “Fortune”). If judged solely by titles, the most famous of these is
Rash
ō
mon
, published in 1915, though in actual content, it is
Yabu no Naka
[In a Grove] (1922), which centers on a crime of rape and murder (or suicide) related from multiple perspectives. It is this story that forms the basis of Kurosawa Akira's renowned 1950 film
Rash
ō
mon
. Though the film's title is only peripherally related to Akutagawa's tale of the same name, it has nonetheless become the source of
rashomonesque
, an epithet for the theme of subjectivism.

In his later years, Akutagawa suffered greatly from physical and psychological ailments, the latter aggravated by his fear of hereditary insanity. On July 24, 1927, a Bible beside his bed, Akutagawa took an overdose of Veronal. Included in letters left for his wife and friends is the oft-cited, cryptic explanation: “a vague sort of anxiety about my future” (
boku no sh
ō
rai ni tai-suru tada bon'yari to shita fuan
). The event was cause for a huge media sensation, and these words in particular were seized upon by pundits as somehow symbolic of the times and portentous for Japan.

It is not difficult to imagine that Akutagawa himself would have found it all both amusing and exasperating. In 1935, a literary prize in his honor was established at the suggestion of his friend and fellow writer, Kikuchi Kan (1888–1948), by the magazine
Bungei-Shunj
Å«
. In the West, Akutagawa's name, though hardly unknown, is most likely to be associated with those stories containing macabre or supernatural elements, with the theme of
Rash
ō
mon
, or simply with Japan's oft-noted history of literary suicides. His more famous works have been translated and retranslated, with considerable variation in literary skill, leaving Akutagawa to suffer less from obscurity than from typecasting. The present collection, containing several stories made available to the English-speaking audience for the first time, is intended to contribute to a richer understanding and appreciation of this, one of Japan's early modern literary giants.