Taiheiki

The Taiheiki is a chronicle (gunki monogatari) detailing events in medieval Japan. Although around forty chapters long, only the first twelve chapters have been translated into English. (They have also been abridged, because according to the translator, there was a lot of extraneous local history) Anyway, the record opens during the Kamakura period. As in much of Japanese history, the emperor is a puppet controlled by a powerful clan, in this case, the Hojo family, descendants of the Taira, who are based out of Kamakura, meaning it’s quite a commute from there to the capital. Go-Daigo, the emperor, is tired of this, and with the help of his son, the Tendai abbot, loyal retainers, and various opportunists, attempts to strike down the Hojo shogun and take up the reins of the state. After quite a few setbacks, he succeeds in restoring himself to the throne. But, this is only the first twelve chapters. Much of the later story, involving the activity of Ashigaka, a Minamoto descendant who betrays the Hojo to aid the emperor, then turns against the emperor, initiating a split of the Imperial house into Northern and Southern Courts, is missing. In many ways, the story is difficult to follow for those who are not well versed in the history of this time, and unless you’re a Japanese history major, that’s probably you. It’s certainly me.

 

From the End of Volume 10

Scene from the end of vol 10.

Disclaimer: I am not perfectly fluent, so neither is this translation perfect. Read at your own risk.

 

Forbidden Colors

Just finished, after a long period of procrastination, Yukio Mishima’s Forbidden Colors. Since I was reading this book after having various discussions about translation practices and the ideal of translation, I frequently wondered, especially during the extremely abstruse passages, just what this or that word was in the original, or how something was phrased in the Japanese, and tried to guess at; but, this only was a somewhat productive activity because I do know some Japanese, and probably at some point will try reading the original.

Anyway, as for the story, an elderly writer, Hinoki Shunsuke, one day meets a peerlessly beautiful youth, Minami Yuichi. Shunsuke, BTW, is full of a misogynistic passion of revenge against all women. Yuichi is going to marry Yasuko, the former lover of Shunsuke, but confesses to Shunsuke that he is full of misgivings because he’s gay and finds it impossible to be sexually attracted to women. Shunsuke, struck by a flash of inspiration, tells Yuichi that he shall give him some money if he marries Yasuko and aids him in his scheme to take revenge on the female sex by seducing them without desire, throwing them into the hell of a passion that will never be reciprocated (I think: in some ways I’m vague about why exactly Shunsuke feels so wronged by women, given that he deliberately runs after women he has contempt for, and just what will make him satisfied.) So, Yuichi accepts his offer, and accepts Shunsuke’s instructions in attempting to seduce two of his former lovers. Meanwhile, Yuichi finally enters the secret world of homosexuality, and becomes a great object of desire. Basically, Yuichi is the center of the book; he possesses a perfect beauty, described like that of a young wolf’s, and everyone wants him. (In some ways, Yuichi reminds me of sort of an evil version of the hero of the Sound of the Waves, who was written as some kind of masculine ideal, or a perverse, homme fatal version of the incarnation in Runaway Horses.)

The most interesting parts of the book, I found, were the descriptions of the coffee houses, cruising areas, hotels, and underground parties that made up the underground gay milieu, and what must be Mishima’s philosophies about homosexuality. The recurring motif of the mirror (the constant discussions of the look seem to coincide interestingly with modern ideas about the so-called “male gaze,” and subject/object. Maybe throw in some Lacan also. I feel that maybe to really unpack this book I’d have to go through it with the eye to writing a paper about the symbology, because sometimes, as in the recurring firetrucks, things are a bit too blatant), the psychology of Yuichi, who becomes pathologically narcissistic (this isn’t a story about Forbidden Gay Love, in the sense that Yuichi is in love passionately with one person, himself) and rather sadistic over the course of the book, are also rather fascinating, but many of the more aesthetic portions about What is Beauty and The Nature of Art simple seemed obscure and indulgent; they’re perhaps one reason why this novel is so long.

 

Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata

Finished reading this book, Kawabata’s last, and I think my primary reaction is to recommend one of his others. Not that this book wasn’t, as usual, beautifully written (well, as much as one can assert such a thing when reading the translation: the descriptions of the works of art, of the paintings and novels, are excellet), but the story was rather unsatisfyingly enigmatic. The story is such: a novelist in his fifties, a married man with a son and a daughter, on a whim, decides to visit his former mistress in Kyoto, who has since become a famed painter. The novelist started his affair with her when she was fifteen and he about thirty, and during their affair she became pregnant, but the baby was stillborn, after which they parted, and he wrote a famed novel about their relationship, which ironically became the basis of the prosperity of his family. His meeting with his former lover is anticlimactic. She takes a philosophical view of the circumstances, even though she has decided since then never to marry; her protegee (and lover) Keiko, an abstract painter, becomes obsessed with the thought of avenging her teacher, despite her teacher’s pleas to give up such an idea. Although some readers found Keiko fascinating, I think I was more irritated by her shocking statements and insane plans; perhaps this is because she vaguely reminded me of one of the sadistic fatal women in Tanizaki’s works, but less blindingly perverse. The novel is quite short, and the ending very sudden, and slightly unexpectedly so.

 

Tun-Huang

This novel is quite similar in format to the short stories in Lou-Lan, except, obviously, it’s longer. Tun-huang, located in what is today China, but was in olden times on the Chinese frontier, on the Silk Road. During the 20th century, priceless Buddhist scrolls and historical records were found in the Buddhist caves near the city. Inoue imagines the events which might have led up to this. The main character arrives from China, and through a complex series of events, joins the Hsi-Hsian army, fighting against various other groups. As in Lou-lan, the political events are quite confusing. Seen from today’s perspective, the lands and peoples depicted are obscure, and their finery and victories vanished under the sand. Perhaps because I read the author’s short story collection on similar themes, and also because there was far less discussion of Buddhism than I thought there would be, I didn’t read this book with as much gusto as I did his short story collection, but it is still worth reading for the unusual setting.

 

This Scheming World

Finished This Scheming World, by Saikaku Ihara, but now I want to read it again. I have always meant to read Saikaku, but have never known where to start out. So I grabbed this book because it looked short. If I read a long book, I would feel compelled to finish it, even if I disliked it. This book not really like a novel as we traditionally understand it, but more of a set of short sketches and episodes featuring various sorts of townspeople during the Edo period in the 1600s, on New Year’s day. I read this in translation (I would be unable to read this in the original, because it’s not modern Japanese), but even there, a strong, strangely light-hearted (even when describing rather depressing things) voice emanates from the work. It feels in a way quite medieval, as it describes a world full of, well, worldliness, the vicissitudes of fortune, and folly. Now, when you think Japanese New Year’s, you envision the stack of mochi topped with an orange, visits to the shrine, snow and chill, ozoni soup, osechi-ryori, kadomatsu, mochi pounding, family visits, and in general, a mood of reflection, somber and cheerful at once.

Well, actually that mood comes through a bit in This Scheming World (there are some interesting details, like the fact that it was traditional for people to put Ise lobsters out with the mochi to welcome the gods. A lobster is mentioned as lasting two weeks, which confuses me; there are also many fascinating details of daily life), but during the Edo Period, the New Year had another meaning: it was the time when debt collectors came pounding on their door, because (I gather) it was their last chance to collect debts, and otherwise they would often just cancel them. So while the rich spent this time squabbling over their social obligations (as New Year’s is also a time to give gifts to people), the poor and financially struggling spent their time scheming to avoid bill collectors and thinking up schemes for making money. So in the end, actually many of the stories revolve around money, appropriate for the world of the townspeople, where money was how one climbed to the top of the ladder. (Rather than artistic refinement or military valour).

 

The Square Persimmon and other stories

Finished reading this collection by Takashi Atoda. These short stories have a decidedly more contemporary air to them than most of the other books I’ve been reading lately; most are Showa era, and even then, the stories set in the past are moved there via reminiscence. (A frequent theme is a character recalling their childhood vividly, reflecting on what is lost from the past, and accepting its transience) The settings are generally realistic, although there are some horror-esque twist endings, which I cannot give away for fear of spoiling them, and a few fanciful tales, although IMHO, these are the weaker stories. On the back cover, Atoda is described as a “popular” novelist, and I suppose this means that his stories are not exceedingly enigmatic, although a few stories end on a deliberately open note, and many are more straightfowardly and wholesomely emotional than certain high literature works. Although the note also says that the stories do have more “human warmth” than Kawabata, I suppose I’d characterize them more as being (as far as I can feel style in translation) much more stylistically subdued than Kawabata, although the writer does move in some stories towards heavy aesthetic description. (extreme austerity sometimes becomes almost ostentatious?)

 

Three-Cornered World

I rather like the opening of this novel, by Natsume Soseki: “if one lives by the intellect, one grows harsh. If one lives by one’s feelings, one is swept away, and by pride, one is confined, in any case, it is not easy to live in the human world.”

I read it in English, but maybe I should have stretched and tried the Japanese: “智に働けば角が立つ。情に棹させば流される。意地を通せば窮屈だ。とかくに人の世は住みにくい。

I expected the rest of the novel to be an illustration of this, but unfortunately (okay, not really), it’s mostly a meditation about aesthetics, in which the narrator (a painter wandering around in the Japanese countryside) stays at a hot springs inn near a temple and a village in 1906; the Japanese-Russo War is in the background. He converses frequently with the strange and individual daughter of the landlord. The narrator insists that art must remain objective, and praises the objectivity of nature (so this reminded me of Doi’s Anatomy of Dependence, in that the charm of nature is located partially in its inhumanity), which interested me because I was reading something about John Gardner, who insists that literature where we don’t enter in the feelings of the characters suffers from the flaw of frigidity. Indeed, although the narrator insists that the novel is a low form because it’s gossipy and concerned with the self-interests of the characters, there’s nothing like that for getting people interested in reading a story. Anyway, this book probably isn’t a good way to start out Soseki, as it is largely devoid of incident, although quite well-written, and filled with outstanding natural descriptions; I suggest Kokoro if you want to be depressed, and Botchan, if you want to be somewhat more amused.

 

Lou-lan and other stories

Finished reading this short story collection by Yasushi Inoue, and I liked it quite a bit. It’s fairly traditional in style, historically based, and the prose in many of them doesn’t have that overt “this was translated from the Japanese” feel, perhaps because many of the stories don’t take place in Japan. The doorway to the past in these stories is archaeological and historical: each story contains artifacts, or is written from the perspective of the present day, so the gap in time is tangible. The first story, Lou-Lan (楼蘭）, is written in the style of a history, dramatizing the sad history of the tiny city state on the shores of the Lop-Nur, caught between the Hsiang-nu (a powerful nomadic confederation. I think they’re also known as the Huns) and Han dynasty China. Loulan is forced to throw in its lot with one or the other, and suffers greatly in the process; the fluctuations of the desert eventually bury the lush lakeside city in sand, until the present day, when it is rediscovered. The most powerful story, I felt, was the last one, set in 1600s Japan, which tells of the “tradition” of abbots sailing to Fudaraku (a divine isle in the Pure Land), which reads almost like a horror story.

 

Almost Transparent Blue

Just finished this short novel by Ryu Murakami, his first, and Akutagawa Prize-winning novel. The novel’s basically about a guy (named Ryu, just like the author. Well, probably technically Ryuu), aged twenty, who spends time getting wasted in a squalid apartment, shooting up heroin and taking all kinds of substances, hanging out with his dissipated friends (who are just as dissolute as he is, and some of them more violent), going to drug-fueled, bisexual orgies with members of the American military, and other somewhat monotonous activities. There isn’t much of a plot to the book, and aside from Ryu, who seems to have some kind of artistic gift or sensibility, the other characters are difficult to remember. Anyway, what makes the book stand out is the precision of the prose, which rises to beauty even when describing all kinds of disgusting things (I think if you took a shot of whatever your poison is every time a character vomits (described lovingly; this is not a book you want to read while eating), food is rotting, or there’s an act of violence, by the end you’d probably be an addict too); even in the translation, the originality of the prose comes through, and there are moments of great clarity. (In reviews, I see people comparing it to Burroughs and other counterculture writers. I haven’t read the Beats, but at one point, the narrator mentions Genet, and I definitely saw a resemblance.)