This story in the original Japanese can be found here.
***
The Zoo
Elephant
The elephant! You say that long ago Kipling caught your ancestor’s nose in a trap, and so even now you walk with a long dangling nose. But I simply cannot find what you say to be honest. Your ancestor, in the time of the Great Buddha, must have been taking a nap among the reeds of the river Ganges. Surely an extraordinarily large leech, hidden in the river mud, must have latched onto the tip of his then-small nose. Otherwise, your nose would not stretch and contract like a great leech. The elephant! You were born in the great India. As I have said, that Kipling’s books are great pack of lies passed around by word of mouth. So that you might wipe away your ancestor’s shame, please, just once, lift that nose and give me a big trumpet blast!
Stork
If, uh, your neck’s all done up like a necktie, then why in the hell are you of a mind to untie it?
Camel
Sir? Is your work on the lily done? Then please take a break. My, where did you leave that iris-print leather tobacco box?
Tiger
The tiger! You are a cosmopolitan. The one upon which the great monk Li Gan rode. The one who was caught by Koxinga. And then the one who was sung of in William Blake’s famous poem. The tiger! You are the ultimate cosmopolitan.
Duck
The number that children wrote on the chalkboard to entertain themselves. 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2.*
Peacock
Here is an old lady. Her eyes have gone slightly bloodshot. I do hope that she will see each of the sightseers, one by one, with her tortoiseshell glasses.
Fruit Bat
Your wings are the locks of Nikki Danjō. The stage candle can easily be extinguished with a single gust. When that happens, a face with a sharp nose, strong eyes, and a mouth curled into a frown, eerily comes into view, like a dim mica print. It bears the signature of Sharaku…
Kangaroo
A child is carried in your stomach pouch. Even when you take it out, will not a British flag or something come out, like a magic trick?
Parrot
It is a good thing that you are standing fixed upon a branch of a peach tree in a painting from the Tang Dynasty. If you were to carelessly flap your wings, the paint upon your body would come off.
Lion
Oh, that mud on your shoes, are you trying to wipe it off with the mane on your head?
Monkey
The monkey! So are you crying, or are you laughing? Your face is like a tragedy mask, but at the same time like a comedy mask. My memory is that I was taken to a monkey show at a festival. A short stool of cherry wood, a paper-maiche bell, and then the nervous light of acetylene gas. Wearing a tall gold hat and dressed in a striped red kimono, you play the role of a terribly sarcastic dancer named Hanako. The doubt that has for the first time taken root in my chest was surely when I happened to cast a look at your face in the role of that Shirabyoushi. So are you crying, or are you laughing? The monkey! The more human than human monkey! I have not seen such a deft tragic comedian as you. When I mutter as such in my heart, the monkey suddenly makes its body dance, and while hanging from the wire mesh in front of me, you return my thought with a shrill voice. “And you? Huh, what’s with your scowl?”
Salamander
When I asked, what the hell are you? with my face towards you, your tail replied, I’m a salamander!
Crane
In the entryway of the prefecture’s number one inn, there is a vase arranged with pines and peonies, a framed picture of the characters in Itō Hirobumi’s name, and then a pair of you stuffed and mounted…
Fox
That scarf. You’ve gone to bed angry.
Mandarin Duck
A willow dusted with snow, water like silver paint burnt black, and also vibrant couples of you floating: your painter was Itō Jakuchū.
Deer
It is good that you have placed the swords emblazoned with the Tokugawa seal, both long and short, reverently upon this marvelous sword rack.
Persian Cat
The light of the sun, the scent of jasmine, yellow silk clothes, Les Fleurs du Mal, and then your touch…
Cassowary
Konnichiwa, Strindberg-san! **
Bear
Anna Karenina, Russian calico, and Ōizumi Kokuseki: born in a country now without a tsar. You are all on your own, the unpopular one!
Cockatoo
There’s a dance today, too, at the Rokumeikan. The glow of the paper lanterns, the white chrysanthemums, and you are the beautiful Miss “Day-After Tomorrow” who danced with Loti.
Shiba Dog
A lamp in the shape of the moon appears in the artificial willow. I wish you would just bark from afar.
Reindeer
Well, this is the end, but you—you are the registered trademark of some gun shop?
Chinese Mouse
Coat of white velvet, eyes of garnet, and gloves of pink satin: you are all so sweet, just like the beautiful women of China. When the three thousand beautiful women in the harem are spoken of in the “Song of Everlasting Regret,” I always imagine the places where all of you have built your nests, within a tall building. Look! When the legendary beauty Xi Shi chews on the skin of a yam, does not Yang Guifei spin her wheel around with all her might?
Orangutan
That orangutan wears a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez upon its nose. Can you not see them? If you cannot, stop writing poetry, just for today.
Heron
Dusk fell on the town of good omens along the river. Indigo willows, indigo bridge, indigo cottages, indigo water, indigo fishing, indigo grasses: when everything in submerged in a half-black indigo pit, all at once there was the white flash of color of your soaring wings—though I wish you would not fly out all the way to the outside of the plate.
Hippopotamus
It is said that Emperor Xian Yan, poses a question to the Zen Master Bodhidharma. What sort of thing is Buddhism? Master say: a hippopotamus underwater.
Penguin
You are a waiter reduced to poverty. Does not the phantom of your glittering past—the great dining hall of the hotel you worked at previously—waver even now in your pitiful eyes, like the aurora australis?
Horse
In the corner of a town beset by a chill wind, your bronze back is straddled by a likewise bronze prince. He goes, looking with scorn upon the traveling men and women. Then, upon the breast of that prince’s military uniform, I am sorry to say, a crow’s white droppings…
Owl
To the Brocken! An old woman riding a broom soars in a straight line from a chimney across a sky beset by a red moon. Then, from behind her, a single owl—no, it may be the old woman’s pet cat which had at some point sprouted wings.
Goldfish
When the dim light of the sun arrives, autumn also becomes evident on the algae. I… the goldfish with scales shorn off here and there. In a short time, probably, a body will show on the surface of this cold water. But despite that, until that final day, flapping its tail with the tip missing, it will go on swimming like that dandy Brummel, I daresay.
Rabbit
Within the Buddhist story (jataka) “How the Three Beasts Practiced the Way of the Bodhisattva and the Rabbit Roasted Himself” in the fifth volume of Tales Now Long Ago, there is this sort of portrait of you: “The rabbit, with an eager heart… …He raised and cricked his ears, widened his eyes, lowered his forelegs, and opened wide his anus.*** Though he searched north and south, east and west, he ended up finding nothing…”
Sparrow
This is a painting of southern China. Above the desolate bowed bamboo, you rise, as though you might vanish. If you read the signature, it appears as a sage ermite.****
Musk Deer
Beyond the pale red sheer silk sheet hanging in the doorway of the shop, the loose woman Pan Jinlian, sleeping alone tonight, has a mysterious dream.
Otter
The leftovers from the prostitutes’ dinner left out in the hall run out! They said an otter took them. Last night, too, the customers who returned by boat had the lanterns extinguished on them.
Black Panther
You are a Black Mary with beautiful teeth. If I brought a necklace of glass beads or a woolen shawl, I am sure you would be delighted to have them around your neck.
Gray Heron
I hear that the scent of green willow after the rain was when the surface of the river steams. A single one of you is atop a willow tree. “A small sunset good weather begets.” Just as the song goes, do you remember me as a child?
Squirrel
In Aōdō Denzen’s copper-etched forest, within the twilight of the era, branches and thick branches cross. Above those branches you squat, with such a sad look in your eyes as to be ridiculous…
Crow
“Good evening.” “Good evening. When the wind blows through this bamboo grove, I am dumbfounded by the racket.” “Yes, and also on moonlit nights, I can’t sit still—oh, by the way, how was Onbō Canal?” “Onbō Canal? There, as always, was the corpse nailed to the door.” “Ah, that woman’s corpse? Oh! There are a number of strands of hair hanging from your beak!”
Giraffe
This is a toy. Yellow paint and black paint, sticky on account of not yet having dried. As is right for a child of men, it may be just a little too big. When all is said and done, bring me the toys of that precocious enfant Christ.
Canary
At the front of the barbershop, morning sun bathes the pot of a lily. The sound of scissors, the sound of water, the sound of spread newspapers: mixed in with those sounds is your chirping as you circle around a full basket—who is that woman, who is now greeting the master?
Sheep
One day I fed a variety of books to a caged sheep. Scripture, Une Vie, T’ang-era poetry… the sheep ate it all up. But in all that, there was one book that I thought it would not eat, no matter how much I shoved it in its face. That was an anthology of my own short stories. I won’t forget this! It was made of cotton, you idiot!
(September 1920)
***
* Apparently the number 2 looks like a duck? Someone explain this to me.
** This was originally in English: “How do you do. Mr, Stiridberg ?” I think the Japanese I chose should be more or less intelligible to all.
*** I would just like to highlight the fact that the translation I looked at for this had bowdlerized “anus” as “the gap in his hindquarters.”
**** “Wise hermit.” This was originally in Chinese. I decided to translate it as French because I could kind of understand the Chinese version, and I kind of understand the French version.