Directory of Lost Causes

I suppose there must be such a thing as an organised writer, but for me the particular curse of a literary life is perhaps best typified by the kind of despair that comes with an ever-growing collection of papers and reading matter, the limited space that results from lack of funds, and the disorder of the former within the latter exacerbated by a mind absent in dreaming and energy reserves brought low by the lack of reward for all one's best efforts.

Today, it seems, has been a day in which the despair of that disorder had to be confronted, at least to some extent, and so the hoover came out of the cupboard. Everything that had been on the floor was piled onto the bed, and the window was opened to let in the outside air, which hopefully would blow away the stale smell of dust.

I have never been very good at packing my luggage for travel, and it seems that being tidy in one's digs is a similar skill. How do you pack everything efficiently? I need to sort through all the papers lying about, but how to store them? It occurred to me that I could make use of the two computer bags behind the desk. Perhaps in one of them I could put my manuscripts, and those that have been sent to me. Oh, and letters, too, since I'm not sure where else to put them for the moment. And in the other, maybe I could put materials relating to 'work'. I wonder what that pile of papers under the bags is? As luck would have it, the pile of papers consists mainly of manuscripts. Why didn't it occur to me before to put them actually in one of the bags?

I'd forgotten some of these things. There's an autobiography, called Nenashigusa, that I started writing in Japanese. It seems unlikely I'll ever finish it. Oh, and here are some translations I made of some poems from the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. One or two of them don't seem so bad:

#24

I came away in haste, without the usual offerings.
May the gods accept instead
The brocade of Mount Tamuke's maple leaves,
And bless this journey!

#37

A wind-beaten autumn field.
White beads of dew are scattered
Like pearls whisked from a broken string.

#70

Weary of my loneliness
I step outside to see
Everywhere, only the same autumn evening.

#87

Around the needles of cedar,
Still wet with the passing shower's dew,
The autumn evening rises with the mist.

I'll have to put these where I can remember them, on top of the other manuscripts in this bag.

I also discovered the xerographic copy I made of Higuchi Ichiyo's tale 'Umoregi', which I have not yet read. 'Umoregi', literally translated, means something like 'buried log' (my Japanese-English dictionary gives the definition as 'bog-wood', and my Japanese-Japanese dictionary gives some incomprehensible definition), referring, I believe, to a dead tree in a forest, rotting beneath undergrowth, fungus and so on. Apart from the literal meaning, however, this phrase is a metaphor indicating 'obscurity', as in, lack of worldly success, as in... Well, you know the story.

As I said, I haven't read this particular tale of Ichiyo's yet, and I believe that no translation of it exists in English, but I've read a synopsis of the plot, which involves a master craftsman of ceramics who fails, with depressing consistency, to make a name for himself. Then there are some shenanigans involving the marriage of his sister, I believe, and, in the end, disgusted with the world, ambition, and absolutely everything, he takes a hammer and smashes his masterpiece into smithereens. If I try to translate the opening of the story, it goes something like this:

When he began painting, from the tip of his single brush there would spring five hundred ancients and sixteen deities; towers were builded in the air, and grand designs were worked around on all sides. On three inch tea burners, or five inch vases, would appear personages of Yamato, and Cathay; the elegance of the age of Genroku lived again, and the age of the gods was summoned back. The armour of warriors he devised, the patterns of the costumes of courtiers in the palace he selected, or, painting around a vessel, his brush waxing ornate, he would decorate with birds and flowers, and scenes of nature's beauty...

There are, I'm fairly sure, some mistakes in that (in other words, I had to guess some of it), but I thought I'd just see how far I could get before I had to give up. Higuchi Ichiyo wrote in the classical style, without full-stops. The text as reproduced in a modern book has some punctuation, but it's mainly commas. In this story, there only seem to be full-stops at the end of each chapter.

I think I'll leave these sheets out somewhere, since I want to read this story, despite the difficulties involved. (It will also help me to keep up my Japanese.) But I suppose it will add to the general clutter that I am trying to reduce. And yet, if I put it away, will I forget it again? Will it become, as its title suggests, a buried log?

Some time back, I announced that I would like to introduce to my readers, through this blog, a number of short stories, with my own commentary, simply in order to share and encourage interest in the form. I have not forgotten this intention. In fact, I am about to fulfil it by delivering the first in the series of my recommendations. It's taken me this long in part because I have been thinking carefully about my selection. I didn't want to choose something too likely to be familiar to my readers, but I didn't want to choose something (to begin with at least) with which I was not all that familiar myself. In other words, I wanted to choose something that is a favourite, or close to being a favourite of mine, available online in a form that is not an insult to the reader's intelligence, but which I haven't already mentioned on this blog one thousand and two times. And I have finally chosen the first story. It is 'Rashomon', by Akutagawa Ryunosuke.



Akutagawa Ryunosuke's work may already be familiar to some readers without them even knowing it (a fate that befalls many writers). If you are a fan of Japanese cinema, then the chances are you will have seen the film Rashomon, from director Kurosawa, the plot for which is constructed from two of Akutagawa's short stories, 'Rashomon', and 'In a Grove'. In fact, the short story 'Rashomon' only provides the framing device for the action of the film, most of that action being a reproduction of the plot of 'In a Grove'. Therefore, if you have seen the film Rashomon and now read the short story, you will not know from the film what is going to happen. It should perhaps also be noted that the final ending of the film suggests a far more hopeful future than is ever suggested in either of the original stories.

Chris Power of The Guardian, writing on Akutagawa, tells us, "Using limpid prose to blend traditional and modernist storytelling, Ryunosuke Akutagawa is an under-acknowledged master". Under-acknowledged? This is questionable. I suppose he is under-acknowledged in at least two ways. Firstly, he is under-acknowledged simply because he is a writer and all writers (with only one or two exceptions) are under-acknowledged. Secondly, he is underacknowledged in the English-speaking world, because nothing outside of the deathly tedious 'comedy of manners' in Britain, and the 'great American novel' in the US, is generally deemed even to exist. In Japan, Akutagawa's name is attached to the foremost literary prize - the Akutagawa Prize. Of course, that one fact alone doesn't mean that he is sufficiently acknowledged, even in Japan. People say 'Dickensian', thinking (inevitably wrongly) they know what it means, even if they have never read Dickens. This could easily be the case with Akutagawa in Japan, too. However, I wonder if that was what Chris Power meant. Or did he simply mean that Akutagawa is Japanese, and therefore you will never have even heard of him, let alone read him? Sadly, I suspect that he did.



I'm not really criticising Chris Power here. He seems to know his Akutagawa better than I do (I'm not going to get into a competition about this). I just find the underlying assumption very sad, even if it is (because it is?) a correct assumption with regard to the attitudes of English-speaking readers.

I also noticed something else in what Chris Power has written:

As a final note, Jay Rubin's translations in the recent Penguin edition of Akutagawa's stories represent a significant improvement on several past efforts. The choice of Haruki Murakami to write the introduction is a puzzle, however, given that he only musters faint praise for his subject. But that's an irony Akutagawa, who once ended a story by claiming that if her boyfriend didn't brutally deflower his heroine then the critics most surely would, might well have enjoyed.

If they do represent such an improvement that's because past efforts have been abysmal. One of the many curses of Japanese literature is that lack of interest in the West means no money in translating, which means that the dismal trickle of translations that do appear are usually executed by anaemic academics, with no idea of literary style, in their coffee breaks, between marking exam papers. I wonder if Chris Power has been able to compare Jay Rubin's translations with the originals here. I often remark blurbs that say what a good job the translator of such-and-such a story has done, from reviewers who obviously don't have a clue what they're talking about.

Also, he's right to say that Murakami only "musters faint praise". Why was Murakami, who doesn't even care about Japanese literature, drafted in to write this introduction? Because he's probably the only Japanese writer who people in the West can name, I imagine. He provides an introduction that reads like an essay he was forced to write for high school, with a few metaphorical I's dotted and T's crossed. And all the while, beneath the surface of the introduction, is the subtext, "Forget about Akutagawa. That's old Japan. Pre-war stuff. Worhship me! Me! Me! ME! ME! MURAKAMI. MURAKAMI. MURAKAMI. MURAKAMI. MURAKAMI. MURAKAMI. MURAKAMI. MURAKAMI. MURAKAMI FOR THE CUP!"

Chris Power suggests Akutagawa would enjoy this irony, but having one's grave shat on is not really so much an irony as something that's very boring and expected for a writer. My personal guess is that Akutagawa wouldn't 'appreciate' it at all; and there's no reason he should do.

Anyway, I shall proceed to my thoughts on the story in question. I can't remember when I first read 'Rashomon', but it would have been in one of those bad translations at university. I found it understated, but it stirred something in me. In any case, I remembered it, when I forget so much of what I read. I've since read it again at least twice in other English translations as well as once in the Japanese orginal. Reading it in the orginal I found the whole thing suddenly came alive to me, and I understood. What did I understand? The usual line in describing Akutagawa's work is, to borrow Chris Power's words again, that he achieves his effects by "applying modernist techniques to [...] adaptations of traditional stories". 'Rashomon' is set in Mediaeval Japan, the distant past, at a time when the country was collapsing into barbarism at the end of the effete gentility of the Heian Period. The opening passages mention a series of disasters that have ruined the capital - "earthquakes, whirlwinds, fire and famine". This is, in fact, the period written of by Kamo no Chomei, author of Hojoki, or, A Record of My Hut, and Akutagawa seems to borrow some images straight from this work, including the Buddhist effigies used for firewood. They are images that conjure up the idea of a 'dark age'. Reading the story in the original, however, it suddenly struck me with a ghoulish tingle, as if I could see the piled corpses before me - this was not only the distant past, this was also the future. It is that tingle, I think, at once understated, and also vast and chilling in its scope - the tingle of an observer in a gold-plated, air-conditioned atrocity exhibition - that is the hallmark of much of Akutagawa's work.



I also find it fitting that the first work I present in this series of short stories, should be written by someone who wrote no 'full-length' works. I hope that, even in translation, it demonstrates that the worth of a writer does not come from the bulk of his or her output. As a matter of fact, it would have been difficult for Akutagawa to produce an oeuvre of great volume. Suffering in his final years from poor health, and fearing the onset of hereditary madness, which he believed might be his destiny, in 1927, at the age of 35, he took an overdose and ended his life. He had written just prior to his death that he felt "a vague uneasiness" about the future.

So, readers, just in case you missed it the first time, let me provide a link to an English translation of 'Rashomon'. I won't comment on the translation, except to reiterate that I did find there to be a considerable difference between the translations I had read, in their impact, and the original Japanese. I hope that you will enjoy the translation sufficiently for it to be worth your while. It is, after all, only a short story. And finally, I will give that link again; readers, let me present, the future.

They say - someone said - that there's no friend as loyal as a book.

Sometimes I get really wretched thinking about my position in society and the state of my relations with other human beings. Not that I'm universally reviled or anything like that, but, without wanting to go into detail, I sometimes feel like I've committed a crime for which I can never atone, just by being who I am. At such times it feels like every word I utter and every act I make only serves to dig me deeper into the pit of my shame.

Luckily there's art in this world, and, for me, especially literature.

Recently, someone sent me a little package from Japan containing a book about one of my favourite authors, Nagai Kafu. It is his picture that you see on the right hand side of this screen, in a hat and raincoat, walking along a street away from his favourite cafe in Asakusa, Tokyo. The cafe still stands. It is called Arizona Kitchen, and I have visited there twice on pilgrimage.

The title of the book sent to me is Nagai Kafu to iu Ikikata, which translates roughly as The Nagai Kafu Way of Life. The little wraparound slip tells us:

"Living freely, as you please, in a manner true to yourself! Hints we may pick up from the great author on how to live a stress-free life."

Japan seems to be big on this kind of lifestyle book, and it's kind of amusing that such an ultimate individualist and contrarian as Kafu should become a model for one of them. The author, Matsumoto Hajime, has written a great deal on Kafu, and I think this was probably an angle suggested to him by the publisher.

Anyway, here's what the inside cover says:

"Life becomes more and more enjoyable with age. The name Nagai Kafu brings to mind a man of letters responsible for such peerless works as Pleasures and A Strange Tale From East of the River, which influenced an age. However, the life behind those works, too, is unique; without relying on relatives or in-laws, having no traffic with other writers, vilified as a miser and a womaniser, he lived a full seventy-nine years on his own and in his own way. In his diary, Dyspepsia House Days, which he kept continuously for forty-two years, right up until the day before he died, we find not only the deepest thoughts of Kafu the man, but also a precious record of social and sexual customs that spans the three ages of Meiji, Taisho and Showa."



I've read a little of the book already. Unfortunately, I can't read the whole thing yet because I'm still maintaining my policy of finishing four books before I start any other, so I only dipped into it. I read, though, of how he came by his pen-name. Sent to hospital at the age of fifteen, he fell in love with a nurse there, though he never divulged his feelings to her. Her name was O-hasu, which means 'lotus'. The character 'ka' in 'Kafu' also has a meaning of 'lotus'. In fact, the two characters of 'Kafu' together mean 'lotus-wind'. As Matsumoto Hajime remarks, in this way, Kafu kept alive the memory of his first love throughout his entire life:

"It is said that there are few men who knew as many women in their lives as Kafu, and so it's rather interesting that such a Kafu should employ a pen-name that paid tribute to his first love his whole life. Unfulfilled love, which ends before it begins, is not forgotten. If one has a full chance to enjoy the love of the other, there is always the chance that one will tire of it, or be disappointed. However, if one sets a seal on it before it begins, it remains beautiful."

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing.

It's easy to see why someone might want to write a book about Kafu as a sort of how-to on avoiding stress, because, well, reading Kafu does tend to relieve my stress. Everything in life suddenly becomes of merely aesthetic consideration. Not having read Matsumoto's book, I don't know exactly what lessons he will draw from Kafu's life, but off the top of my head, if there is a lesson to learn, it seems to me it's that Kafu just didn't give much of a damn what other people thought about him. Is that why life becomes more and more enjoyable as he gets older? One of my favourite photos of him shows him towards the end of his life, with a broad grin in which many of the teeth are missing.

I leave you with a quote from Kafu's diary, as translated by Edward Seidensticker:

"It has been four years since I commenced this life of solitude, living in the maid's room and cooking for myself. At first there was a certain novelty in the arrangement. Then, toward the end of last year, the ways of the military government began to grow more arbitrary, and there came a change in the world; and somehow the drab and inconvenient life of the bachelor has come to seem so appropriate to the moods of the days that I would not now find it easy to change. Indeed, my feelings and thoughts are quite beyond description when, on an evening of a sudden autumn rain, I drag my sandals along the cliff, taking care that the frayed thong does not break, and buy onions and radishes in Tanimachi. I am quite drunk with the melancholy poetry of it all. However malicious and arbitrary may be the ways of the government, it cannot keep one's fancies from running free. There will be freedom while there is life."