Cheap Fiction Nirvana
I
It was a morning in September, 1831. The great bathhouse in the Dōbō neighborhood of Kanda, as usual, had been filled with customers since the morning. The scene today was not at all different from the once in Shikitei Sanba’s comic novel, published god only knows how many years ago: “The bathhouse of the floating world, with room for gods, for the Buddha, for love and evanescence.” Within the bathhouse were poor boys singing old ballads of failed romances; playboys wringing towels by the side of the bath; sumo wrestlers having their tattooed backs bathed. There was Yoshibei Yako, who for some time had been washing only his face. There was Abuhachi Tonbo, a boy who was sitting in front of the fish tank, pouring water on his head and playing with his bamboo bucket, pots, and goldfish. People from all walks of life were here in this narrow wash, their wet bodies glimmering smoothly, moving blurs in the thick steam and morning light coming in from the windows. And the noise was not constant throughout. First there was the sound of bathers splashing water on themselves and of buckets. And then there were voices, talking or singing. Finally, there was the occasional sound of the clerk’s signal. Therefore, on both sides of the bathhouse’s low door, it was as noisy as a battlefield. Then, ducking under the curtain in the entrance, comes a merchant. Here comes a beggar. Naturally, people were going in and out. Amidst the confusion—
Quietly going into the corner, amidst the confusion, was an old man of about sixty silently washing himself off. He looked to have passed sixty. His sidelocks had decayed in an unsightly manner, and he appeared to have somewhat poor eyesight. However, in his loose skin of his hands and feet, he still had the power to resist the coming of old age to his undaunted, skeletal—or rather, ghastly— physique. This, too, was apparent on his face, in the cheeks stuck to his lower jaw, and in the area around his largish mouth. The awesome glimpse of this energy was no different from the old man’s long-ago glory days.
Once the old man had finished cleaning the upper half of his body, he began to wash his lower half, without clearing out his bucket. However, no matter how much he scrubbed with his silk washcloth, he could not get the filth (which there was enough of to require the word filth) out of his clear, wrinkled skin. Perhaps this awakened in him a lonely, autumn-like feeling. Upon meticulously cleaning his feet, the old man suddenly stopped moving his hand holding the washcloth, as if all the power had gone out of him. Then, his eyes fell to the muddy water in the bucket, where vividly reflected was the sky through the window. In the reflection, as he saw ripe persimmons below a corner of the tiled roof, sparse, narrow branches were criss-crossed.
In his mind, the old man saw a reflection of death. However, that ‘death’ did not hold anything unpleasant like something which might have once threatened him. You might say that in the sky in that bucket, he sensed a peaceful tranquility which was silent, yet yearned for. How delightful would it be were he able to escape from all the petty material troubles, and slip into that ‘death’—were he able to sink into the dreamless sleep of an innocent child! He was not just exhausted by the day-to-day. For decades, he had been fatigued by the anguish of his incessant writing…
The old man, discouraged, raised his eyes. Around him were still voices chatting lively, as well as a great number of nude figures bustling around in the steam. The strains of voices singing songs both sad and happy were added to the ballads inside the low door. In here, of course, there was not an atom of the shape of the eternal thing which now cast a shadow upon his heart.
“My! Mr. Kyokutei, I cannot believe my eyes! I would not have thought, even in my dreams, that you would come to the morning bath, sir!”
The old man was suddenly surprised by this very shout. When he looked, there was a boy of good complexion, average height and means, thin hair. Wet towel on his shoulder, Thin Hair laughed heartily as he stood before the bucket. He appeared to have just gotten out of the bath and was ready for rinsing.
“It is good to see that you are in good spirits, as usual,” Bakin “Sakichi” Kyokutei* replied, a little sarcastically, and smiled.
II
“It is good to see you, too. I am not fine in the least. But speaking of fine, sir, I’m well into Eight Dogs, and it is an exceptionally strange, fine work,” Thin Hair said in a raised tone as he put the towel on his shoulder into his bucket.
“Funamushi, disguised as Goze, tries to kill Kobungo. He is apprehended for that and after a period of torture, he is saved by Sōsuke. There is no planning involved, because Sōsuke has another shot at Kobungo! It is kind of silly to bring it up, my name is Ōmiya Heikichi. I work at the general store. I really believes it’s a cut above the rest, sir. Not even I could find a single thing to criticize about Eight Dogs. It really is terrific!”
Bakin, silent, started washing his feet again. He, of course, had long held considerable feelings of good will for his dear readers. But because of that good will, there was no chance that their evaluation of his character would change. For the wise Bakin, it was the most natural thing in the world. And the strange thing was that, conversely, there was nothing at all that evaluation could influence in regards to his good will. So, depending on the situation, he might feel scorn and good will towards a single person, at the same time. Like this Ōmiya Heikichi. He was surely one of those readers.
“Anyway, writing something to that caliber must have been backbreaking work. Now, when all is said and done, they may be calling Eight Dogs the Japanese Romance of the Three Kingdoms! You’re Japan’s answer to Luo Guanzhong!–Oh, but I am being rude.” Heikichi laughed loudly. The voice might have frightened someone. A squat, cross-eyed man with short dark hair looked over his shoulder at Heikichi and Bakin, and then, giving them a strange look, spat into the drain.
“You’re busy with poetry, I assume.” Bakin deftly changed the subject. However, this does not mean than he had any interest in the cross-eyed man’s expression. His eyesight, fortunately (?), had declined so much that he could not see clearly.
“I must thank you profusely for bothering to talk with me. As much as I love poetry I have no hand for it, and so I am always barging into places trying to practice the art, but poets never turn up. Incidentally, sir, if I may ask, might you have a particular preference for either song or poetry?”
“Oh no, I’m rather out of practice with that sort of stuff. It’s been quite some time since I’ve done either.”
“Surely you jest!”
“No, it simply doesn’t agree with me, though it’s not for lack of trying.”
Bakin put particular stress on “doesn’t agree with me.” He was not of a mind that he could not compose songs or poetry. And so he of course was confident that he was not lacking in understanding of that field. However, he had long held disdain for that area of the arts. This was because when he poured even his whole heart and soul into songs or poems, the form was too short. Therefore, even when constructed masterfully, the only requirement was that his work be of a certain number of lines, that what could be expressed in a single line or verse, be it emotion or description, be of a certain number of lines. For Bakin, that was a second-rate sort of art.
III
Behind Bakin’s particular stress on “doesn’t agree with me” lurked this scorn. Unfortunately, Ōmiya Heikichi did not appear to pick up on this at all.
“Oh! so that’s how it is! We all think that, were we such a master of the craft as you, sir, we should be able to write as we please—oh, but they do say that God does not grant two gifts,” said Heikichi with restraint, rubbing at his skin with his wrung towel until his skin turned red. But the conceited Bakin, who had taken his kind words literally, was more disgruntled than ever. And on top of that Bakin did not care at all for Heikichi’s tone. He then threw his towel and sponge aside, and, rising halfway, he started grandstanding, his face sour.
“Of course, I plan on attaining mastery of contemporary poetry.”
However, as soon as it left his mouth, Bakin felt embarrassed by his childish boast. Even before, when Heikichi had used words of highest praise in regards to Eight Dogs, he did not feel particularly happy. So in that sense it was clearly a contradiction to feel the opposite now, to feel disgruntled when appearing to be unable to write song or verse. Upon undergoing this sudden self-examination, Bakin, to conceal his red face, floundered about and washed his shoulders with the bucket.
“Of course. So it seems that such masterpieces are not waiting in the wings. But when you, sir, write songs or poems, they will surely appear great to my meager eyes. Oh, I’m just flattering myself.” Heikichi again laughed loudly. The cross-eyed man from before was no longer beside him. His spit was flowing through the water in which Bakin had bathed. However, it was apparent that Bakin’s shame had increased since. “My, I’ve spoken for too long. I think I’ll go take a bath now.”
The unusually unlucky Bakin felt an irritation towards himself along with this reply, while at the same time he stood slowly to at last escape the clutches of his good-natured dear reader before him. However, Heikichi, enthused, appeared proud, totally fulfilling his role as the author’s fan.
“Then, sir, I hope you might write be a song or a poem one of these days! You won’t forget, will you? Well then, please excuse me. You have been of great help to me, and if you ever find yourself passing through, please feel free to drop by. I’ll leave you alone now.” The words came out as if they were on the run.
Then, starting to wash himself with his cloth again, Heikichi watched Bakin retreat through the entryway. And when he was on his way home, he thought he might make his wife listen to the time that he met Mr. Kyokutei.
IV
Within the entryway was the dimness of night. The steam from the baths was thicker than mist. Bakin, whose eyesight was poor, uncertainly pushed his way through the people within and somehow groped his way to the corner of the baths. There, at last, he soaked his wrinkled body in the water.
The water was a little too hot. Feeling the hot water soak into his fingertips, Bakin drew in a long breath and slowly looked around the bath. There might have been seven or eight heads bobbing in the darkness. Around all the people talking, or singing, the smooth surface of the water, greasy with humanity, reflected the dull light coming from within the entryway, bobbing in a bored fashion. There, that nauseating “bathhouse smell” infiltrated their noses.
There had long been a tendency towards the romantic in Bakin’s imagination. In the steam, without meaning to, he conceived of a scene in a novel he would try to write. There was a massive ship’s sun shade. On the sea outside the sun shade, it was twilight and a breeze appeared to be blowing. The sound of the waves rapping on the side of the ship was gloomy, like moving oil. Along with that sound, there might be the flapping of the wings of a great many bats, causing the shade to flutter. One of the crew looks on silently from the side of the ship to realize this. Above the sea, crawling with mist, hangs in the sky a desolate, red, new moon. And then…
His imagination was suddenly shattered. For from that entryway, someone’s criticism of one of the books he had written slipped into his ears. Furthermore, it seemed almost that the loud, clear voice had spoken intentionally to make him hear it. Bakin, for an instant, made to get out of the bath, but stopped and began to listen closely to that criticism.
“Mr. Kyokutei, or the Master Writer, or whatever he’s calling himself now, he might seem big, but the stuff guys like them write isn’t original. It’s just warmed over! Let’s be frank: isn’t Eight Dogs basically the same book as Water Margin? But even if you let that slide, all that’s good about it was in the original. Anyway, the original is hundreds of years old. So all you have to do is read that one first. However, that’s still warmed over Kyōden-type writing; Kyōden did the same thing years ago. I’m not angry, I’m amazed.”
With his hazy eyes, Bakin tried to pick out the man bad-mouthing him. Obscured as he was by the steam, it might even have been that cross-eyed man who had been beside him. Were that the case, he had surely grown irritated over Heikichi’s praise of Eight Dogs and spoke purposely so that Bakin would hear.
“Most importantly, only a little bit of what Bakin writes sticks. It’s like an empty stomach. And if there is something it’s most likely just what his primary school teacher taught him about the classics. He’s not relevant to the modern age. The proof? If it’s not more than a hundred years old, he hasn’t written about it. When he writes about the tale of Osome and Hisamatsu, he doesn’t call it Osome and Hisamatsu, he calls it The Romance of the Seven Autumn Flowers. Bakin does this sort of thing all the time when he’s plagiarizing.”
Bakin could not rouse feelings of anger, even if he wished to, because he understood which of them was superior. Though Bakin was irritated by these remarks, he held no hatred for their owner. Instead, he felt a desire to express his own disdain and show how ignorant this man was. It was likely only his age that stopped him.
“On that subject, Jippensha Ikku and Sanba are quality writers. There’s realistic characters in their writings. They’re not fabrications built out of superficial knowledge and being too clever. Totally different from the likes of Bakin.”
Bakin had learned first-hand that hearing criticism of one’s own books was not just simply unpleasant, it was downright dangerous. This does not me that he would lose his nerve over the criticism, but rather that it would then later join the items reacting against his creative energies. And he feared that the result of retreating under dishonest motives would be multiple deformed literary works. It was no problem for authors who only chased the latest fads, but for an author with just a little spirit, this was a danger to which it really was quite easy to succumb. And so Bakin, for these many years, had tried to avoid reading criticism of his works as much as possible.
Despite those thoughts, however, he did not lack for temptation to read criticism. Now, in this bath, listening to the cross-eyed man, he had half given in to this temptation.
Realizing this, he scolded himself, still immersed in the bath. Then, ignoring the high-pitched voice, he made to stand in the doorway with great vigor. Outside he could see the blue sky amidst the steam, and a persimmon tree kissed by the gentle sun. Bakin came to the water tank and began to rinse.
“Anyway, Bakin’s a hack. I suppose that’s what you get from Japan’s Luo Guanzhong.”
However, the man from before in the bath, perhaps thinking that Bakin was still there, continued in his violent philippic. Perhaps the cross-eyed man, beset by disaster, had not seen the figure in the entryway.
V
However, Bakin had been in the dumps when he exited the bathhouse. The cross-eyed man’s poison tongue had definitely had at the very least its intended effect. Walking though bright, autumnal Edo, he went over the minute details of the criticism with a fine eye. Then, on the spot, he determined that it was a fool’s baseless argument from any angle. Despite this, though, he could not easily bring his emotions back to as they had been before.
Bakin raised an unpleasant gaze to the houses on either side of him. The houses, separate entities from his feelings, carried on under the sun. A copper banner reading “TOBACCO,” a sign for a “GENERAL STORE,” a lantern with “PALANQUIN” on it, a flag for “FORTUNE TELLING” –all this formed a meaningless parade and just passed by Bakin’s eyes in a jumble.
“Why am I, who disdains criticism, so affected by it, I wonder?” Bakin continued to think. “What displease me the most is that that cross-eye had a grudge towards me. Regardless of the reason, though it is uncomfortable to be thought of like that, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
As he thought, Bakin felt ashamed of his own timidity. Truthfully, in order for there to be few men like him who acted as though no one else was around, there would also have to be few men like him who were susceptible to the intentions of others. So, the two effect of appearing totally opposed to those deeds were of the same cause: he realized, naturally, the fact that they were born of the same nerve effects.
“However, there is something else I find disagreeable. That is being put in a position to antagonize the cross-eye. For a long time have I disliked being put in that sort of position. It is for that reason I do not gamble.”
Upon this analysis, Bakin took one more step, and then an unforeseen change wrought itself on his mood. I daresay you could see it in the way his lips, pressed tightly together, slackened suddenly.
“In the end, the fact that the one who placed me in that position was the cross-eye makes me uncomfortable. If it had been someone of somewhat higher caliber, surely I would have had the heart to rebel against that feeling. How dumbfounded should I be that that cross-eye had such an effect!”
Laughing, Bakin looked up at the sky overhead. The cries of hawks and the rays of the sun fell like rain. He was conscious of his spirits, which had been low, lightening by degrees.
“However, no matter what that cross-eye said about my books, at his best all he could do was put me ill at ease. No matter how much the hawks cry, they cannot halt the progress of the sun! Eight Dogs is surely perfection. And so there is no romance in Japan, now or in the past, to equal it.”
Tending to his injured pride, now on the recovery, Bakin headed for home down a quiet narrow path.
VI
Once he had returned home, on the porch there were a pair of familiar, thin-stripped sandals. Once Bakin saw this, his guest’s blank face immediately came to mind. Then he remembered, bitterly, this time-wasting annoyance.
“You’ve wasted the whole morning today, too,” Bakin thought as he ascended into the house. His maid, Sugi, hurriedly threw herself to the ground at the return of her employer. Looking up at him, she said, “Mr. Izumi! Welcome home!”
Nodding, Bakin gave his towel to Sugi. However, he did not want to go to his study just yet.
“How is O-hyaku, the widow?”
“She is praying at the temple.”
“With O-michi?”
“Yes, and with your grandson, young Master Tarō.”
“And my son, Okitsugu?”
“He has gone to see Mr. Yamamoto.”
His family were all absent. For a moment Bakin felt a taste of something resembling disappointment. Out of options, he opened the door to the study, next to the entryway.
When he opened the door, in the middle of the room was a man, smoking a thin silver pipe in the middle of the room, strangely unsurprised. His face was pale and gleaming. Apart from the rubbings on the folding screens and the nature scrolls that hung to the ground, there was nothing approaching decorative. Along the wall were no less than fifty shelves of unstained wood, standing lonely on one side. It looked to have been at least one year since the paper in the shōji screens had been put up. Above the white, speckled here and there with patched paper, the shadows of old banana leaves appeared at an angle, moving oddly. To cut it short, this shabbily-dressed guest did not fit at all with the atmosphere.
“Well, welcome home, sir!” said the guest when the door was opened, bowing his head in reverence. This was the bookseller Izumiya Ichibei, the publisher of his new edition of The Plums in the Golden Vase. It was his first book after Eight Dogs, and it had been well-reviewed.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. Don’t usually go to the bath in the morning.” Bakin grimaced instinctively, and with his usual politeness, took a seat.
“Oh, a morning bath! I see,” Ichibei said with admiration. Men who could praise any trifling incident as easily as him were rare. No, men who could make an admiring face were rare. Taking a puff, Bakin, as usual, steered the conversation towards business. He had no taste for this Izumiya’s admiration.
“So what business do you have here today?”
“Well, I was hoping you might have another manuscript for me,” said Izumiya in a girlish voice, making a show of twirling his pipe around his fingertips. This man was possessed of a strange disposition. This is to say that his outward deeds and his inward thoughts did not usually agree. Not only did they not agree, but they could be at opposite ends of the earth at any given moment. So while he had a strong will, his voice, in inverse proportion, was rather gentle. When he heard this voice, Bakin again grimaced instinctively.
“No way I would have something ready.”
“Well, something must be distracting you.”
“Nothing’s distracting me. I’ve written a lot this year, and I’m not about to get into picture books.”
“I see, so you must be busy.” As soon as he spoke, Ichibei tapped his pipe on the ashtray, as if it was a signal, and making a face as if the previous conversation was forgotten completely, he launched into a story about Jirodaiyū the Rat.
VII
Jirodaiyū the Rat, a thief of good reputation, was arrested in early May this year, and sent to prison in the middle of August. As he had crept into the residence of the regional governor and given the gold he had stolen to the poor, he was generally referred to by the strange pronoun ‘chivalrous thief,’ and he had great popularity.
“Anyway, the governor’s estate that he entered was of seventy-six buildings, and I was surprised to hear that he absconded with over 3,000 ryo. He may be a thief, but that’s a deed beyond the caliber of normal men.”
Bakin’s curiosity was stirred. After Ichibei had told him the story, he had always liked to believe that he had given him the impetus of a story. That conceit was obviously a great irritation to Bakin. However, though he was irritated, his curiosity had nevertheless been stroked. For Bakin, who took his duty as an artist seriously, was wont to fall into temptation, especially on this matter.
“Hmm. I see, he’s a great man. I had heard many rumors, but I hadn’t imagined anything such as that.”
“It must simply be that he is the best of all the thieves. It has been whispered that all he has done previously is been in the employ of the governor of Tottori’s chief retainer, and that is how he was so knowledgeable about the layout of the governor’s estate. I heard from an eyewitness account that he is a stout, charming man, and that he wore simple clothes, dark blue on top and white on bottom, of Echigo Province hemp. Might that be of use to you, sir, were you to write something on this?”
Bakin gave some vague reply and took another puff from his pipe. But Ichibei was not a man to be surprised by so much as a vague reply.
“What do you think? Can I expect some piece featuring this Jirodaiyū, in the vein of The Plums in the Golden Vase? I, of course, understand that you are rather busy at the moment. I would appreciate your agreeing to this.”
The Rat had come to here, and then suddenly returned to his original request for a manuscript. However, Bakin, accustomed to these parlor tricks, would not consent. Besides, his mood had darkened rather more than it had before. This was because he had been foolish enough to fall for Ichibei’s plan and let his curiosity be stimulated. Smoking clumsily, Bakin at last expounded on this theory.
“First of all, were I to write unwillingly, I could not produce something satisfactory. It goes without saying that this would have an effect on sales, and people like you would find it boring. So my unwillingness is good for the both of us, no?”
“I understand. I am asking something great of you. Something like that,” said Ichibei, “stroking and surrounding” Bakin’s face with his eyes. (This was a phrase Bakin used to describe Ichibei’s eye movements).** Then, scatters of cigarette smoke came out of his nose.
“I really can’t write anything. I don’t want to and I don’t have the time. Sorry.”
“That’s really very troubling.” Abruptly, this time Ichibei went into stories about contemporary authors. All the while with his narrow silver pipe clenched in his thin lips, of course.
VIII
“The author Ryūtei Tanehiko has some new book coming out, I hear. It may one day be the most graceful work of misery. It has been said that nobody but Tanehiko could write something of such humanity.
When Ichibei got into one of these moods, he tended to throw out names of authors left and right. Whenever he listened to this, Bakin thought to himself that “nobody but Bakin” must have been said. Where was the need for this man, who regarded authors as his own, to go so far as to toss out names from his frivolous mouth, just to get a manuscript? Even when Bakin got worked up, it was seldom that he got angry like this. Today, when he heard Tanehiko’s name, he could not help his already bitter face screwing itself up all the more. However, Ichibei realized not a bit of it.
“And then, I learn that my little shop is to publish the works of Tamenaga Shunsui. You may not like him, sir, but that is the way the simple folk will turn.”
“Oh! Is that it, huh?” In his memory Bakin recalled the face of Shunsui, crudely exaggerated, which he had once glimpsed. “I am no writer. I am a laborer who writes the love stories that my dear customers desire.”*** Bakin had long heard the rumor that Shunsui had spoken thusly. Naturally, Bakin felt, in his soul, great disgust for this utterly un-writer-ly writer. Nevertheless, he was still unable to suppress his usual feelings of discomfort when listening to Ichibei toss out names.
“Anyway, when it comes to the romantic, he is a talented one. He has become synonymous with it.” Ichibei looked to Bakin, then immediately dropped his eyes to the silver pipe on which he was chewing. That instantaneous glance was the mark of an inferior who should be afraid. That was what Bakin thought, at least.
“Even when Shunsui has written at that level, his brush continues to slide across the paper, double or even triple what he has done before. He may have not even left the paper. Might you, sir, or others, sometimes be as quick?”
Along with discontent, Bakin felt as though he was being threatened. For a man so full of himself as Bakin, having his writing speed be compared to the likes of Shunsui or Tanehiko was of course something which did not agree with him. Furthermore, he was a slow writer. Appearing as it did to be proof of his own incompetence, it often brought him down. On the other hand, however, as a measure of his own artistic conscience, it was often something he wished to admire. However, if left to the scrutiny of the masses, no matter how he felt it would decidedly not be allowed. Then, allowing his eyes to drift to the nature scrolls, Bakin spat out:
“There’s a time and a place. If there’s an early time, there’s a late time.”
“Oh, I see. A time and a place.”
Ichibei thrice gave his admiration. However, it goes without saying that it was admiration that ended with the saying of the words themselves. Immediately afterwards he cut right back in.
“That being said, I would be honored to look upon one of these manuscripts you mention so frequently. You know, Mr. Shunsui…”
“I’m not Shunsui.” When Bakin was angered, the left side of his lower lip crooked downwards. It was now crooked downwards with terrifying energy. “You’ll have to excuse me. Sugi, Sugi, have you got Mr. Izumiya’s shoes?”
IX
Once he had chased away Izumiya Ichibei, Bakin leaned against the pillar on the porch and gazed out at the small garden, going to great unsuccessful efforts to quell the queasiness in his stomach that his anger had aroused.
In the sun-bathed garden, clipped-leaves banana trees and closely-trimmed parasol trees were among the greenery of the pines and bamboo, basking in the gentle warmth of the spanning autumn. The lotuses near the font were already bereft of most of their flowers, but the sweet scent of the osmanthus growing outside the opposing fence had not yet diminished. The usual cries of hawks from the distant sky sometimes reached here, like the blowing of a whistle.
In contrast to this nature, Bakin remembered the entrenched vulgarity of society. The unhappiness of men who live in a vulgar society, being caused by that selfsame vulgarity, lends to one’s unavoidably doing and saying vulgar acts and deeds. In truth, now Bakin had driven Izumiya Ichibei away. To drive someone away was, though vulgar, insignificant. However, because of the vulgarity from another, Bakin had been pushed to the point where he would have to be vulgar. And he had. He had done nothing more than, to the same degree as Ichibei, debase himself. To put it simply, he was as depraved as the rest of them.
In this line of thought, Bakin recalled a similar incident in the recent past. Last spring, there had been a man—Nakajima Masabei, maybe?—from Upper Shinden in Sōshūkuchiki who had sent him a letter seeking to become his apprentice. According to his letter, he had become deaf when he was twenty-one. Now twenty-four, he had resolved to understand the whole world via writing, and he had been diligent at writing novels. It does not need to be said that he was a great fan of Eight Dogs and Chronicle of an Island Tour. And being in this rural area is in some way a hindrance to my craft. So, might I be allowed to live with you for a while? I have manuscripts for six books. And, with your pen, I want to publish them through a proper store… It went on like this. This whole request was naturally, for Bakin, rather too selfish. However, the part about him being hard of hearing seemed to have tugged at Bakin, himself poor of sight, to some degree. In his reply, in which he at last said that he would be unable to accede to the man’s request, Bakin laid thick the politeness. Then, in the letter Bakin received in reply, there was not one sentence, from beginning to end, which was not a violent attack.
“I gave a patient read to your clumsy books, Eight Dogs and Chronicle of an Island Tour, both of them overlong, but you have refused so much as to glance at my six books. Surely, this is because of the vulgarity of your character?” This was how the letter began, and it wrapped up with an attack that the reason why the master had chosen not to allow an apprentice into his house was that he was an old miser. Angry, Bakin immediately composed a reply. Within, he included a line about it being to his eternal shame that his works were read by shallow brats such as you. Bakin had heard nothing of him since then, but to this day he still wondered if those manuscripts would be published. Would they someday be read all throughout Japan?
Lost in memories, Bakin could not help but feel pitiable, towards this Nakajima Masabei and towards himself. Again, he was guided by some indescribably loneliness. The banana trees and the parasol trees did not so much as ruffle their leaves. The cries of the hawks were clear, as before. This nature and that man… Until, ten minutes later, when his maid Sugi came to inform him that she was preparing lunch, Bakin leaned absentmindedly, as if in a dream, on the pillar on the porch.
X
Bakin, finishing his solitary lunch, at last retired to his study, where, to appease his uncontrollable discomfort, he opened Water Margin for the first time in a long while. By chance the section he opened to was the one where General Lin Chong, the “Panther’s Head,” on the run, takes shelter in a temple on a windy, snowy night. There, he watches from afar as his fodder depot is burned in an attempt on his life. That theatrical scene had always inspired interest in Bakin. Though, he was strangely uneasy that this would not continue.
His family had still not returned from the temple. The house was silent. Water Margin in front of him, Bakin made a melancholy face and smoked clumsily. Then, in the smoke, he was plagued by the never-ending doubt he carried with him always.
This was the doubt as to whether or not he could negotiate between the two poles of being a moral person and being an artist. For a long time Bakin had had no doubts about Confucianism. His own works were certainly artistic representations of the so-called The Way of the Sages. So there was no contradiction. However, there was an unexpectedly large discrepancy between the value The Way of the Sages gave to art, and the value he would have his feelings give to art. Therefore the moral man within him affirmed the former, and at the same time the artist within him, consequently, affirmed the latter. Of course, Bakin could not say that he had never considered some cheap compromise to slice through this contradiction. In truth, behind his half-baked harmonious works for the public was a vague attitude towards art which he tried to hide.
However, even if the public were deceived, Bakin himself was not. In denying the value of cheap literature, while calling it “the tools of moral instruction,” he always encountered the waxing artistic inspiration within him. All of a sudden this made him uneasy. To be honest, it was for this reason that a single sentence of Water Margin could exert such an unexpected effect on his mood.
On this point, the ideologically cowardly Bakin, smoking in silence, forcefully tried to wash away thoughts of his absent family. However, Water Margin was in front of him. As his unease was concentrated there, he could not easily separate it. Then, as luck would have it, a friend whom he had not seen in a long time came knocking. Kanzan Watanabe was clad in a robe and overcoat, and under his armpit was a package wrapped in purple cloth; perhaps he had come to return the books he had borrowed.
Delighted, Bakin went out to the porch himself to meet his old friend.
“I have come by today to return the books you graciously lent to me, and also to see your face,” said Kanzan, as Bakin had expected, on the way to the study. Besides the package, Kazan held something which looked like a silk canvas, wrapped in paper.
“If you have a moment I would like you to see something.”
“Of course, right away.”
Kanzan, as if he was trying to hide his excitement, gave a half-forced smile and unwrapped the silk canvas. There were painted a smattering of lonely, naked trees in the distance. Among them were stood two men, holding hands, engaged in friendly chatter. Between the autumn leaves scattered in the forest and the crows darting about the treetops, there was no place you could look which did not call to mind a chilly autumn.
Bakin’s eyes, when they fell upon these lightly colored Hanshan and Shide, gradually became tinged with a wet, sparkling halo.
“Wonderful as always. I recall the poet Wang Mo Jie: “The nested crows descend at the sound of the gong, and as I walk in the empty forest there is the sound of leaves.”
XI
“This is something I painted yesterday, and as I was pleased with it, I have come thinking to present it to you, my elder,” said Kanzan, satisfied, stroking his chin, dusted with a young beard. “Though I say I am pleased, this is about as far as I have gotten among all that I have painted. I cannot paint something just as I see it, no matter how I try.”
“I’m honored. Though I do feel embarrassed over how much you do for me,” Bakin muttered as he looked over the painting. Thoughts of his work, still unfinished, suddenly flashed through the back of his mind for some reason. Kanzan, being Kanzan, looked as though he thought Bakin was still thinking about the painting.
“Each time I look at a paintings of the ancients, I wonder how they painted it. The trees, the rocks, the people, they’re really trees, rocks, people. And also, the souls of the ancients who painted them live gently within. Just that is something grand. Were we in that age, we would not even be children.”
“The ancients call their descendants terrifying, I imagine.” Envious of the attention Kanzan was paying to his own painting, Bakin, unusual for him, cracked a joke.
“Their descendants are terrifying. We, caught in between the ancients and posterity, cannot move; we are only pushed and prodded forwards. It is not just us, of course. It was the same for the ancients, and it will be the same for their descendants.”
“If you do not progress at all, you will be pushed over. So finding a way to advance, even if by a single step, must be essential.”
“Indeed! More essential than anything else.”
The host and the guest, moved by their own words, were silent for a moment. Then, both of them listened closely for the quiet sounds of the autumn day.
“You have made the usual progress on Eight Dogs?” Kanzan at last moved the conversation to another topic.
“No, not a step, but what is there to be done? Not even the ancients were able to do it.”
“You worry me, sir, when you say things like that.”
“I worry more than anybody else. However, I will not make it any further than I already have. I am prepared for to die in battle with Eight Dogs.”
Having said this, Bakin gave a bitter smile, born out of his own shame. “It may only be cheap fiction, but there are numerous reasons why it cannot be.”
“It is the same thing with my painting. When I start, I want to make it as far as I can.”
“Perhaps we shall die together.”
The two let out a shout, laughing. However, within the laughter flowed a loneliness understood only by the two of them. And at the same time, both host and guest equally felt a kind of powerful excitement from this loneliness.
“Though I am jealous of your painting. It must be wonderful not receiving any kind of government censure or the like.” This time it was Bakin who completely changed the subject.
XII
“Not receiving any… Sir, you should not need to worry about that in the works you write.”
“Oh no, I very much need to!” As an example of Bakin’s books being redacted by the town censor in an unbelievably blockheaded way, Bakin told the true story of being ordered to revise a section in one of his own novels because a government official takes a bribe. So I have those sorts of critics as well.
“And is it not funny that the more problems censors find, the more they reveal their own corruption? Because they take bribes, if someone writes of them taking bribes, they find it disgusting and force them to revise it. Because they themselves are depraved, they label any book that so much as speaks of feelings between men and women as pornography! It is ridiculous that they put themselves on a higher moral level than authors. It is as though they are monkeys looking into a mirror and baring their teeth at their reflection. They take offense at their own vulgarity!”****
Kazan sniggered in spite of himself at the fervor of Bakin’s comparison. “That may be how it is! However, being made to revise your work should not be an insult to you, sir. No matter what the censors may say, if what you have written is wonderful, that should be enough.”
“Despite that, there is so much that is just a little too tyrannical. Yes, once or twice I wrote a passage about sending food and clothing to prisons, and had five or six lines cut out.” As he said this, Bakin, along with Kanzan, broke out into giggles.
“However, come fifty or a hundred years, when there are no more censors, Eight Dogs shall still remain.”
“Whether or not Eight Dogs persists, I feel as though the censors will be around for a good long while!”
“Really? It does not seem that way to me.”
“No. Even if there are no censors, there will always be men like censors. They will never be truly stopped. Think back to the burning of the books and the burying of the scholars in China, and you will see that you are quite wrong.”
“You are saying nothing but hopeless things, sir.”
“I am not hopeless. What is hopeless is a world overrun with censors.”
“Then should we keep on working?”
“You cannot do anything besides that.”
“Then let us die in battle together.”
This time the two did not laugh. Not only did they not laugh, but Bakin hardened his expression and looked at Kanzan. There was a strange edge to Kanzan’s joking words.
“However, the young one has the choice to live. For the young can die in battle at any time,” Bakin said, after a moment. Bakin, who was aware of Kanzan’s political views, might have felt a sudden sort of unease. But Kanzan forced a smile and did not reply.
XIII
After Kanzan had returned home, Bakin, channeling his remaining interest, turned to his desk for to work on the manuscript for Eight Dogs. It was an old custom of his to, before he put brush to paper, read over once up to where he had written yesterday. And today, too, he carefully read through the many pages of narrow rows of writing with correction in between.
There, for some reason what had been written did not at match up with his feelings. Between the characters lurked an impure grating, one that wrecked the conclusion of the harmony. Bakin, at first, chalked it up to his own temper.
“I’m in a poor mood today. I should just write what little I can.” With that in mind, Bakin again began to read. However, the madness of the rhythm had not changed at all. He was in such a state that you would not think him to be an old man.
“Perhaps I’ll just go back a bit.” Bakin tracked his eyes across what he had written previously. All there was were coarse words and phrases all jumbled together. Bakin read even farther back. And then farther and farther.
However, clumsy arrangement and disorderly sentences gradually unfolded before his very eyes. Here was a description which produced no image. An exclamation containing no emotion. And an argument following no logic. All his batches of manuscripts, which he had spent many days writing, were nothing more than needless loquacity to today’s eyes. Bakin suddenly felt a stabbing pain in his heart.
“I’ll have to start over from the beginning!” With this cry in his mind, Bakin thrust the manuscript away in irritation, then flopped down, resting up on one shoulder. And yet, his eyes would not leave his desk, as if they were still interested. Upon that desk, Bakin had written Crescent Moon; he had written The Dream of Nanka; and now he had written Eight Dogs. And on top of that was a Zhaoqing inkwell, a paperweight of a dragon poised to strike, a copper jug in the shape of a toad, a porcelain inkwell depiction lions and peonies, and a bamboo brush stand engraved with orchids. All of this stationery had accompanied him through the agony of writing. Even though it was connected to his seeing all those objects, Bakin could not stop his distasteful unease that today’s failure, as a matter of course, cast a dark shadow over all his life’s work—that his own ability was fundamentally shaky.
“Until a little while ago, I had resolved to write a work unparalleled by any in this land. However, that may be the regular human hubris.”
This unease brought about a feeling of desolate isolation upon him, more difficult to bear than anything. He had never forgotten to be humble before the masters of the craft in Japan and China whom he so respected. However, to his fellow contemporary boring, worthless, writers, he had been not just haughty, but arrogant to the last. Bakin had been so ready to label them hated, big fish in small ponds, recognizing them, in the end, as owners of the same ability as him was no easy task. Furthermore, his strong sense of self was brimming passionately, sheltered in between “enlightenment” and “resignation.”
Still lying before his desk, gazing at his failed manuscript with the eyes of a shipwrecked captain looking at his sinking ship, Bakin continued to battle silently with the forces of hopelessness. If not at that very moment had the doors been flung open behind him, a voice said, “Grandpa, I’m home!” and a tiny tender hand grabbed his neck, Bakin might have been caught permanently in that melancholic state. But as soon as his grandson Tarō flung the screen open, he, with the pluck and frankness only a child possesses, suddenly jumped energetically onto Bakin’s knee. “Grandpa, I’m home!”
“Oh, you’re home early.”
With those words, the joy of another man sparkled on the wrinkled face of the author of Eight Dogs.
XIV
Bakin could hear the shrill voice of his wife, O-hyaku, and the reserved voice of his daughter, O-michi, animated, from the direction of the living room. The voice of fat man interspersed occasionally meant that his son Sōhaku appeared to have returned with them. Tarō had serious face pointed up at the ceiling to catch what they were saying. His cheeks, exposed to the air, were red, and the nostrils of his small nosed moved each time he drew breath.
“Hey, Grandpa,” Tarō, clad in rich brown clothes emblazoned with the family crest, blurted out suddenly. His dimples were going in and out with the effort of thinking and the effort of trying to resist the urge to laugh. This, naturally, felt like Bakin to be an invitation for him to laugh himself.
“All day, every day.”
“All day, every day, what?”
“Be diligent.”
At last Bakin erupted in laughter. In the middle of his laugher he continued suddenly: “And then?”
“And then…um…don’t get angry.”
“My! I hope that’s all.”
“There’s more.” Looking up into the face with narrow sideburns, Tarō himself burst into laughter. Looking at his laughing—narrowed eyes, white teeth showing, and apparent dimples—Bakin, sinking in awareness of happiness, could not think that this boy would grow up to have a face that held the sorrows of modern man. And then again, his heart was tickled.
“There’s more?”
“There is. There’s a lot more.”
“Like what?”
“Um… Grampa. You’ve gotten even greater.”
“I will?”
“So. Really. They say you just hang in there.”
“I am!” Bakin said reflexively, in a serious voice.
“More, really, just hang in there, they said.”
“Who’s saying that?”
“Well…” Tarō glanced mischievously at Bakin’s face, and then laughed. “Who?”
“Yes, who? You must have been listening to the monks when you went to the temple today.”
“Nope.” Shaking his head firmly, Tarō lifted up his back halfway from Bakin’s knee and stuck out his chin a little. “Um…”
“Yes?”
“The goddess Kwannon of Asakusa said so.” As he spoke, the child, laughing happily loud enough to be heard throughout the whole house, suddenly leapt away from Bakin, as though he was afraid of being caught. Then, clapping his hands in amusement at so leading on his grandfather, Tarō, almost tripping, fled towards the living room.
It was then that for an instant something grave flashed through Bakin’s heart. A happy smile came to his lips, and his eyes were filled with tears. He did not question whether this joke was something of which Tarō had conceived, or if it was something his mother had taught him. It was strange that he should hear those words at this time, from his grandson’s mouth.
“Did the goddess say that? Be diligent! Don’t lose my temper! And hang in there!”
The sixty-something old artist, laughing and crying, nodded his head like a child.
XV
That night.
By the light of a dim lantern, Bakin began to continue working on his manuscript of Eight Dogs. His family did not come into his study while he wrote. The sounds of the lampwick drinking the lamp oil, along with the chirping of crickets, spoke to the loneliness of the long night.
When Bakin first put down his brush, it was as though some faint light was moving in his head. But, in between lines ten and twenty, according to his brush, the light gradually increased in size. Bakin, who knew that this thing had happened in his experience, held his brush with extreme caution. His muse was no different than a flame. If he did not know how to stoke it, even if it burned once it could go out just as quickly…
“Don’t hurry! Just write the best that you can,” Bakin repeatedly whispered to himself as he held back with his brush, as he was liable to rush. But the thing in his head, already like a smashed star, was flowing faster than a river. And moment by moment it increased in power and pushed Bakin forward, despite himself.
At some point he lost the sound of crickets. Likewise, his eyes were not troubled a bit by the faint light of the lantern. The brush moved with its own energy, sweeping across the page. Bakin continued writing frantically, feeling as though he was locked in a battle for his with a god.
The current in his head, like the Milky Way running across the sky, flowed greatly from an unknown source. Bakin was afraid of that fierce energy, and he realized that there was a chance that his body could not bear such energy. Gripping his brush tightly, he shouted this to himself over and over:
“Continue to the end! If I do not write what I am writing now, I may never be able to!”
However, the current, like shining haze, did not slow down at all. Rather, with bewildering activity, drowning all, it attacked Bakin in a surge. At last he became its captive. Then, forgetting everything, he worked his brush with the energy of a storm in the direction of the current.
At that time, what was reflected in his eyes, now like a king’s, was not advantage and disadvantage, not love and hate. And thoughts of being troubled by praise had long gone from the corners of his eyes. What was there was a simple, strange joy. Or perhaps a feeling of ecstatic tragedy. Those of you who do not know this sensation cannot taste the mental state of cheap fiction nirvana! You cannot understand the majesty of a hack novelist! It is here that “life” washes the dregs, and it as though, before the author, it glitters beautifully like new crystals…
***
At that time, around the lantern in the living room, the mother-in-law O-hyaku and the daughter O-michi continued to knit opposite each other. Tarō must have been put to bed already. The sickly Sōhaku had retired a little while ago, preoccupied with his medicine.
“Is Father not in bed yet?” murmured O-hyaku in disapproval, oiling her needle.
“He must be writing again, so he must be lost in thought,” replied O-michi, without taking her eyes off the needles.
“Good-for-nothing, that one. He doesn’t even earn a lot of money.” As O-hyaku spoke, she looked at her son and daughter. Sōhaku pretended that he hadn’t heard her and gave no answer. O-michi, too, said nothing and continued with her needles. The crickets, here as well as in the study, chirped without change to herald the autumn.
(November 1917)
*Bakin is occasionally referred to throughout the story by a series of nicknames and pen names. I have generally just changed these to Bakin, unless they are necessary for the story to make sense. Also, I do not pretend to understand the way authors have a dozen or more pen names.
** This was apparently a real phrase Bakin used that Akutagawa pulled from his diary.
*** I don’t know if Shunsui was known to say something like this, but this is rather close to how Akutagawa described his own profession: “merchant of writings.” This whole story, really, seems like it is dripping with Akutagawa’s personal experiences.
**** After reading this passage I immediately flipped to the end to look at the date of publication, to see to what degree censors would have had to read this passage. November 1917 might not be the best time in Akutagawa’s career to write something that so blatantly accuses censors of moral deprivation, but I would say he was probably reasonably safe. He’s also accusing fairly low-ranking government officials, and not higher-ups or royalty, which probably helped. Akutagawa had periodic troubles with censors throughout his career, but nothing major. He committed suicide shortly before censorship started kicking into high gear.