A Vague Uneasiness

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.