古典Corner 3: Nuns go crazy on Magic Mushrooms

One of the selected translations I read recently from  the Konjaku Monogatarishu (the tale I am referring to is in the Japan (Honcho) section本朝世俗部 section of the work,  今は昔の物語 第二十八巻第二十八話 「尼共、入山食茸舞語」)  relates the strange tale of some woodcutters who losing their way on the mountains north of the capital, encounter a groups of wildly dancing nuns, unable to stop dancing like crazy due to having eaten some ‘dancing’ or 舞茸 maitake mushrooms. The nuns invite the woodcutters to partake of the same mushrooms and lo and behold, they too start uncontrollably busting a few moves all over the mountain forests until they are all danced out and collapse in a pile of rave weary woodcutters. Well, it is a volume dealing with humourous or ridiculous stories滑稽譚and this one certainly fits the bill but could it also be a very early example of (un)holy drug abuse?

The translation I read is in Haruo Shirane ed. Traditional Japanese Literature, An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600, but it also seems to have caught the imagination of some other translators, notably an Esperanto version here . I wanted to see if I could find a manuscript version of the tale in order to have a closer look at the original text (as original as possible) but it does not seem to be a surviving part of the Suzuka manuscript (鈴鹿家旧蔵本) at Kyoto University Library. The collection of tales are from a variety of sources, some other earlier collections and possible transcriptions of orally transmitted tales not written down elsewhere, and according to the Wikipedia entry for the Suzuka Manuscript that it’s likely that it is the source manuscript from which the other later extant fragments and works originate although the whole picture about the Konjaku seems misty at best.

I wonder if there was more than one compiler or a team of compilers (a monk version/s of the Brothers Grimm either travelling around or collecting orally transmitted folk and local tales from travelers from other regions as well as using earlier collections of setsuwa) over many years and in several areas added to the work building it up into the 31 Volume beast that it became…has anyone read all of the tales contained in it?

Maitake (舞茸), or Grifola Frondosa, an edible polypore mushroom which is often found growing at the base of oak trees and common to Japan. It is traditionally used in Japanese and Chinese herbal medicine (as well as being eaten for food generally) as a regulator of blood pressure and a general tonic for fortifying the immune system. It is known in Japan as 舞茸 probably due to the undulating wavy form of its lobes suggesting a dancing image. And yet I can’t help thinking that the nuns may have stumbled upon a patch of psilocybin –rich lookalikes.

Woman in the Dunes Chapter 2 Section 1

Chapter 2 (page 8-18) covers the journey from the everyday world from which the man has disappeared to the insect collecting grounds where he hopes to find his sought after specimens and make a name for himself. There are roughly four or possibly five sections in this chapter. The first section deals with his arrival at the end point station and his heading off in the direction of the seaside.

ある八月の午後、大きな木箱と水筒を、肩から十文字かけ、まるでこれから山登りでもするように、ズボンの裾を靴下のなかにたくしこんだ、ネズミ色のピケ帽の男が一人、S駅のプラットホームに降り立った。

だが、このあたりには、わざわざ登るほどの山はない。改札口切符を受取った駅員も、つい不審の表情で見送った。男はためらいも見せず、駅前のバスの、一番奥の座席に乗り込んだ。それは山とは逆方向に向うバスだった。

‘On an August afternoon, a man, a big wooden box and a water flask slung crosswise over his shoulders, his trouser bottoms tucked into his socks and wearing a grey piqué hat, looking for all the world as if he were off on a mountain climbing trip, stepped down onto the platform at S- Station.

And yet there was nothing here in the way of mountains worth climbing. The station staff at the ticket gate waved him through with an involuntary expression of surprise.  Without dropping his stride, the man jumped into the bus outside the station and headed for a seat right at the back. It was bus headed in the opposite direction to the mountains.’

Notes

ある八月の午後:    As I mentioned before this is a reprise of the opening of Chapter 1. And so seems to be almost like a second Chapter 1 as opposed to a Chapter 2. The impression of déjà lu adds a layer of surreality to the novel. Was the first chapters August this one? Is the man who disappeared the same man in chapter 1?

I looked briefly at the Dale S. Saunders translation of these initial passages and he seems almost perfunctory in his treatment, resulting in a kind of stark realism or quasi-factual prose style but I think that this loses the strange unreal atmosphere and the feeling that we are travelling in the wrong direction in the universe into a place where imperceptible changes take place, when exactly it is hard to tell and the crossing of a border into an untenanted and mysterious world. I will touch more upon this in the section following.

まるで:   ‘Looking for all the world..’ Alternatively could be translated as ‘as though’ or ‘as if’. But I think that ‘まるで gives that impression that the guy is decked out in the whole mountaineer/hiker look in all its slightly train-spotter glory and quite brazen in a way or obviously standing out’

ピケ帽:    I wonder what this hat actually looks like, not only in my imaginations eye, but what comes to the eye of the Japanese reader (or other readers of the Japanese for that matter) I have put it down as a (Fr, Piqué) cap which refers to the material it’s made of or at least the design of the weave. The shape is something I am more interested in is the shape. I can see a cotton hat with a short brim all the way round, the kind you see old geezers wearing when they go fishing or for a ramble in the countryside. Does this matter anyway? Strangely it does to me! Insect hunters just don’t wear any old hat they have to wear those fishing hats to look the part! I often wake up at night wondering about the type of hat the protagonist of Woman in the Dunes is wearing. I have not seen the film for many years so I am really quite in the dark over this apart from my mental image of the grey fishing hat. It’s also a good way of heightening the strange atmosphere by contrast – the hat and some objects the man is carrying are described minutely – the environment he is moving in begins to shift and becomes hard to define, to pin down. For me this heightens the intensity or resolution of the lone figure in an increasingly otherworldly landscape.

S駅:  This reminds me of the 学校の会談 series of books I used to read…many a year ago when I was learning Japanese and looking for a fun (and creepy!) way to improve my reading skills. In A School, F Town in H Prefecture it’s said that if you walk round the toilets three times..you know the rest..It gives a kind of anonymity but at the same time it could be a real town, it could be YOUR town! You can see this in some literature of the 18^th-19^th Century in England. I am thinking of the ghost story in particular and specifically those of M.R.James where only the first letter of a town or the name of an estate is given, leaving in place of total anonymity, a tantalizing clue as to the possible identity. Let’s face it, at this point in the novel, the station has more of a name/identity than the protagonist who is still just ‘a man or the’ man at this point – and you can’t say that with many novels.

つい不審の表情で見送った:   It’s the つい part that I am particularly concerned with here. In this context what is it doing? What does it mean here? Can it be left out or changed? I think it implies an involuntary action or reaction, so the station staff could not help but look at him with a quizzical air. So it’s quite important to have this in the text and in translation. The idea being that in Japan and doubtless in other countries station staff as well, it’s not appropriate to react openly to a passengers appearance however odd or out of place. Here the appearance was so unusual that the station staff could help himself and hence つい.

ためらいも見せず: 　Literally ‘without showing any hesitation’. I jazzed it up a bit.

古典 Corner 2 - 蜻蛉日記

I reached the section dealing with this Heian period work yesterday. The Anthology I am reading just gives a few excerpts from the whole poetical diary but even from that little its clear that its a work of great psychological and emotional depth.

It was written around the end of the 10th Century CE by a figure we have come to know as the mother of Michitsuna and is an example of the diary literature genre 日記文学 of the period. The diary covers the period of the authors life 954-974, 天暦8 to 天延2 (The Era dates Tenryaku 8 to Ten'en 2), and in terms of format is divided into 3 sections consisting of memoir, day to day entry style and a mixed section of poetry and observations/reflections.

It also features several examples of poetry (of remarkable depth and elegance) that are exchanged between the author and her husband Fujiwara no Kane'ie, a noble who had attained the post at court of Captain of the Right Guards. They would have probably been texting each other nowadays...how times change and yet remain the same!

It is often regarded (I have read quite amusing asides by readers of various editions and formats of the work) as a dark and sombre, even depressing piece of literature, but there are also great moments of levity,  as well as vivid and detailed description too in the midst of her constant relationship woes. It is really remarkably moving and well worth poring over. It is not entirely clear to me whether this is a 'real' diary or not - perhaps it will never be entirely sure and the work does seem very egocentric almost self-obsessed to the exclusion of other people and events as seperately realised objective figures. Fascinating as an early example of prose fiction still on its newborn tentative fragile legs and significant as the very few works of its kind of any length that has survived pre-Genji Monogatari. The transcriptions are based upon a composite amalgamation of texts and fragments.

There is an interesting article entitled 'Style and Point of View in the Kagero Nikki' - Watanabe Minoru and R.Bowring on JSTOR (From Journal of Japanese Studies Vol.10,No.2 (Summer 1984) which is in turn based upon a translation by Richard Bowring of a chapter of a book by Watanabe Minoru, 'Heiancho Bunshoshi' Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai 1981 (｢平安朝文章史」東京大学出版会 1981).

Amongst other things the article deals with Watanabes concept of the 'unmediated author' of the Kagero Nikki and a contrasting appraisal of the prose work and poetry as vehicles of expression and degree control of emotions in the Kagero Nikki.

From Watanabe's interesting and at the time (1981) novel appraisal, bringing his skills as a Language history expert and expertise in stylistic analysis to bear on weighing up the artistic merits of the text it would appear that this works position/status in Japanese Literature is a trailblazer (albeit an unconscious one) in early Japanese prose fiction - not entirely successful but certainly a significant precursor if not enabler of greater works to come such as the Genji Monogatari. It is also noteworthy as one of the first works to have been written for its own sake as opposed to having been commissioned by another.

From here on in..Chapter 2 and beyond: Structure

Chapter 2 will be the subject of the next posts. It seems to me that this is the real beginning of the action of the novel from the standpoint of the protagonist. There is more substance to the following chapters than the prescript of Ch.1 so what I plan from here on in is the following:


1. Give an indication of the Chapter characteristics in terms of the text I am using (cf. the first post re Woman in the Dunes for my purposes referred to as WOD from now on). So for example Ch.2  is from pp 8-18 in the text I am looking at.

This will help when I am referring to a passage that I may not post in translation but wish to mention in connection with a comment or reference.

2. Describe a overview of the structure of the 'action' or content of the individual chapter. So with Ch 2., I can break it down into about 5 sections.

3. Post a selected passage for translation and language/style comment from each section of a given Chapter structure.

4. Give a synopsis or recap every so often so that I can remind us all of where we have been with the novel and where we might be headed.

5. Provide links to freely available and free access articles about the novel and related subjects. I have found a couple already but although very interesting as they are they refer to the novel as a whole (spoiler alerts and so on) and cover areas I have not posted about so I will leave them until a bit later on.

Next up will be Chapter 2.

I still haven't located a copy of the 1991 English translation of Dale Saunders (in Penguin Modern Classics) so I am still flying by the seat of my pants translation-wise so I am sure to be making some errors. When I can get hold of it for comparative purposes I may have some more things to say re that! I am very interested in the process or 'art' of translation, especially in terms of Japanese novels and therefore will be trying to add more about the process I am going through to arrive at a given take on a particular passage, phrase or word.

Chapter 1, Part 2. Continued II – Insect Collectors and Sexual Deviancy (Bonus Vibe – ‘Owning’ Kafka)

The chapter continues in a speculative vein but attempts to delve further into what kind of man it was that has disappeared. We learn that his wife gave out the information that he was off on an insect collection trip. This initially quashed the first wave of speculation in the text (the narrator) as to the nature of the disappearance only to shift focus to the kind of adult who would engage in a hobby such as collecting insects.

「昆虫採集家が、しばしば旺盛な所有欲の持主であったり、極端に排他的であったり、盗癖の所有者であったり、男色家であったりするもの、決して偶然ではないのである。そして、そこから厭世自殺までは、あとほんの一歩にすぎまい。」

‘It’s surely no mere coincidence that insect collectors often possess character traits such as a highly developed acquisitiveness, the attitude of the obsessive loner, kleptomania, homosexual tendencies even..one could argue that from there it is just a step away from misanthropic suicide.’

Apparently they aren’t healthy people! (Or rather this kind of thing is ok for a schoolboy but for an adult a worrying thing – signs of an Oedipus complex even according to the text). I had some difficulties with translating this part (as you might notice), for example,

盗癖(とうへき)

I translated this as kleptomania and it may be a touch too much for something which the kanji suggests as just a stealing habit, but in the context of the stereotyped negative image of the adult insect collector, it seemed to fit. Similarly with terms such as 極端に排他的 I wanted to convey the Gollum like loner, mumbling 'my preciousss desune!' over a few rare black winged moths! 排他 comes out in my denshi-jiten as 'boycott/reject others at the expense of ones friends' but again the context of the solitary collector seems to imply a man who has retreated into his boyhood hobbies. (Note to Self: Must check on my full set of hand painted Sailor Moon figurines - only joking..or AM I?). Maybe his only 'real' friends are moths....moving on.

But to be fair rather than a character assassination, this first chapter has the atmosphere of nonplussed exasperation at there being no clues to the vanishing act. Chapter 1 seems to be the alpha and omega of the case and end s with the casual statement of fact of the man’s ‘missing presumed dead’ official status after 7 years of no news. Chapter 2 starts with the day in August again but it’s an August day outside of the open and shut Universe of Chapter 1. We are finally with the man as he sets out on his fateful collecting trip.

Bonus Vibe – ‘Owning Kafka’

My little joke here, Kobo seems to be riffing on Metamorphosis here with the man’s insect collecting hobby. The insects are subject to the protagonist’s will and seem to me to be an embedded reference or ‘nod’ to Kafka’s Metamorphosis. I thought it looked as though Kobo was ‘owning’ Kafka by saying ‘Yeah I got Kafka here in a little glass jar held by the protagonist!’ Ironically the man later becomes the trapped insect so the ‘owning’ is purely on Kobo’s part not the protagonist’s and of brief duration. Just a nod as I said.

Woman in the Dunes continued: Chapter 1 Pt. 2

Chapter  1 Continued:

The chapter continues regarding the disappearance and in the formal, slightly removed style of a police report of newspaper article, begins to speculate as to the nature of the disappearance and its possible motives:-

「殺人や事故であれば、はっきりとして証拠が残ってくれるし、誘拐のような場合でも、関係者には、一応その動機が明示されるものである。しかし、そのどちらにも属さないとなると、失踪は、ひどく手掛りのつかみにくいものになってしまうのだ」

In the case of a murder or accident, there is a clear remnant of evidence, with kidnappings there is usually an apparent motive concerning those involved. But with a disappearance, which falls into neither one nor the other of these categories, it’s nigh on impossible to grasp hold of any clues.

Koten Corner - Current Reading

I am currently reading this book, the section I have jumped to is the Heian period since I am quite interested in Setsuwa and early prose works. Its a fascinating read so far. I am reading selections from the Nihon Ryoiki.