This story in the original Japanese can be found here.
***
The Pagoda Tree
It was when I was listening to a presentation of the play* “The Stone Mattress” when I recalled the name of the wood of the pagoda tree. I am not a worldly enough man to have studied theater, of course. But I had picked up some by ear from my parents and others practicing it. Those verses were all from Kwannon’s appearance in “The Top of the Aged Pagoda Tree.”
“The Stone Mattress” goes basically like this. An old woman allows a traveler to sleep on her stone mattress. In order to take his traveling money, she robs him of his life by dropping a large rock tied to a rope on him. Next comes a handsome young boy seeking shelter. The old woman grants him the stone mattress, and, as you might expect, kills him and tries to take his money. But the old woman’s beloved daughter had secretly fallen in love with the young boy and switched places with him. After that, the young boy manifests as Kwannon to teach the old woman a lesson about karma.
The pond which the old woman threw herself into remains to this day as “The Pond of the Old Woman” on the grounds of Sensouji Temple. Seeing Kuniyoshi’s painting** of this tale as a young man led to me taking more of an interest in “The Stone Pillow” than other plays like “The Eight Views of Yoshihara” or “Black Hair.” I also remember that Kuniyoshi’s painting used Western-style techniques in Kwannon’s clothing.
After that, I would see young pagoda trees somewhere and think that their sketchlike foliage was quite suitable for the appearance of Kwannon. But four or five years ago, when I was enjoying myself in Beijing, all I could see were endless pagoda trees, and I some point I came to feel that they, though they should be inherently poetic, were not. Now it is just the young seed pods that I can still find elegant.
Beijing: There are just seed pods / Lying on the ashy roads / From pagoda trees***
(October 1926)
***
*Akutagawa specifically references a joruri play, a style of theater about which I know literally nothing.
**Akutagawa specifically references ukiyo-e here.
***This poem would look a lot better if the second and third lines were reversed. I’ve toyed at times with not trying to keep the meter of a haiku when translating it, because a lot of plant and nature terms tend to be much, much longer in English.