Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

  If the birds could see it, how much more so the rest of us, down to the lowly conscripts. Trembling inwardly, scarcely breathing, and filled with a bizarre sense of adoration, we kept our eyes fastened on Yoshihide as if we were present at the decisive moment when a lump of stone or wood becomes a holy image of the Buddha. The carriage flames that filled the heavens with a roar; Yoshihide under the spell of the flames, transfixed: what sublimity! what rapture! But among us only one, His Lordship, looked on as if transformed into another person, his noble countenance drained of color, the corners of his mouth flecked with foam, hands clutching his knees through his lavender trousers as he panted like a beast in need of water…

  20

  Word soon spread that His Lordship had burned the carriage that night in the Palace of the Melting Snows, and there seem to have been many who were highly critical of the event. First of all came the question of Yoshihide’s daughter: why had His Lordship chosen to burn her alive? The rumor most often heard was that he had done it out of spite for her rejection of his love. I am certain, however, that he did it to punish the twisted personality of an artist who would go so far as to burn a carriage and kill a human being to complete the painting of a screen. In fact, I overheard His Lordship saying as much himself.

  And then there was Yoshihide, whose stony heart was also apparently the topic of much negative commentary. How, after seeing his own daughter burned alive, could he want to finish the screen painting? Some cursed him as a beast in human guise who had forgotten a father’s love for the sake of a picture. One who allied himself with this opinion was His Reverence the Abbot of Yokawa, who always used to say, “Excel in his art though he might, if a man does not know the Five Virtues,9 he can only end up in hell.”

  A month went by, and the screen with its images of hell was finished at last. Yoshihide brought it to the mansion that very day and humbly presented it for His Lordship’s inspection. His Reverence happened to be visiting at the time, and I am certain that he was shocked at the sight of the horrible firestorm blasting through it. Until he actually saw the screen, he was glowering at Yoshihide, but then he slapped his knee and exclaimed, “What magnificent work!” I can still see the bitter smile on His Lordship’s face when he heard those words.

  Almost no one spoke ill of Yoshihide after that—at least not in the mansion. Could it be because all who saw the screen—even those who had always hated him—were struck by strangely solemn feelings when they witnessed the tortures of the Hell of Searing Heat in all their reality?

  By then, however, Yoshihide numbered among those who are no longer of this world. The night after he finished the screen, he tied a rope to a beam in his room and hanged himself. I suspect that, having sent his daughter on ahead to the other world, he could not bear to go on living here as if nothing had happened. His body lies buried in the ruins of his home. The little stone marker is probably so cloaked in moss now, after decades of exposure to the wind and rain, that no one can tell whose grave it is anymore.

  (1918)

  UNDER THE SWORD

  DR. OGATA RYŌSAI: MEMORANDUM

  The following memorandum is intended to comply with the order that I provide the government with a detailed report of my observations regarding adherents of the Kirishitan sect who have been misleading people of this village through the practice of their heretical doctrines.

  To wit: On the seventh day of the third month of this year, a woman named Shino, widow of the farmer Yosaku, late of this village, visited my residence and pleaded with me to perform a pulse diagnosis on her daughter, Sato (age 9), who, she said, was gravely ill.

  This Shino was born the third daughter of the farmer Sōbē. She married Yosaku ten years ago and gave birth to Sato, but she was soon preceded in death by her husband. She did not remarry, but instead survived one day at a time through weaving and other piecework. At the time of Yosaku’s illness and death, however, owing to some error in judgment, she professed an exclusive devotion to the Kirishitan sect and began frequenting the home of one Bateren1 Rodrigue in the neighboring village. Some in this village said that she had become the bateren’s mistress, and she was widely condemned. Her entire family, including her father Sōbē and all her sisters and brothers, tried to reason with her, but she insisted that the most auspicious of all gods was her Deus Come Thus.2 She and daughter Sato worshiped each day before a tutelary image called a “kurusu” shaped like one of our impalement racks. She even failed to tend her husband Yosaku’s grave. Soon she was disowned by her relatives, and the village officials were said to be meeting frequently to discuss formally banishing her from the village.

  Given the woman’s history, I had to tell her, despite her bitter pleas, that I could not perform a pulse diagnosis on her daughter. She went home in tears but returned the next day, the eighth. “I shall remain forever in your debt,” she begged, “if only you will examine her pulse.” She would not accept my repeated refusals and finally threw herself down, sobbing, in my entryway. Then, angrily, she said, “I thought it was the duty of doctors to cure people’s illnesses. I tell you that my daughter is gravely ill, and yet you ignore me. This, I cannot understand.”

  “What you say is entirely reasonable,” I replied, “but my refusal to perform a pulse examination is not devoid of reason either. Your behavior of late is truly offensive. In particular, I have heard that you often vilify the people of our village3—including me; you say that our worship of the gods and Buddhas is an act of heresy, that we are possessed by the devil. If you are such a pure follower of the path of righteousness, how can you now ask someone like me, possessed by evil spirits, to cure your daughter of her grave illness? Instead, you should ask for help from your own ‘Deus Come Thus’ in whom you believe so deeply. If you want me to perform a pulse diagnosis, you must first renounce your faith in the Kirishitan sect and never go back to it. Unless you agree to do so, I absolutely refuse to perform the pulse diagnosis. Medicine may be, as they say, a compassionate art, but I also fear the dark punishments of the gods and Buddhas.”

  There was nothing Shino could say in response to such an argument. Recognizing that it would be futile for her to persist, she went home looking utterly dejected.

  On the next day, the ninth, a heavy rain began to fall at dawn and for a time the entire village seemed deserted. It was still the hour of the hare4 when Shino arrived at my doorstep without an umbrella, drenched to the skin. Again she begged me to perform the pulse diagnosis, to which I replied, “I may not be a samurai, but I am no less true to my word. I must ask you to choose between your daughter’s life and Deus Come Thus.”

  This time, Shino turned into a madwoman. She prostrated herself before me, pressing her forehead to the ground again and again, and clasping her hands together as if in prayer. “What you say makes perfect sense,” she sobbed, “but in the teachings of the Kirishitan sect, if I fall but once, then both my soul and my body will perish for all the future lives to come. Please try to understand and take pity on me; please show me mercy on this one matter alone.” All but strangled with emotion, she implored me again and again.

  Follower of the evil faith though she was, she seemed to be as devoted a parent as any, and so I did feel some degree of pity for her, but one cannot simply abandon the proper path because of personal feelings. I continued to insist, therefore, that unless she “fell,” I could not perform the pulse examination. Shino stared at me for a time with an indescribable expression on her face, but then, with a sudden gush of tears, she cringed at my feet and muttered something that I could not hear clearly over the sound of the rain then pouring down. Finally, after I had urged her several times to repeat herself, it became clear that she was saying she had given up and would indeed allow herself to fall.

  I told Shino that she would have to prove to me that she had “fallen,” whereupon, without a word, she took one of those kurusu things out of the breast of her kimono, laid it on the entryway step, and silently trod upon it three times. She gave no sign of being
agitated, and her tears seemed to have dried up by then, but all my servants said that there was an eerie gleam in her eyes, like that of a person in fever, as she looked down at the kurusu underfoot.

  Now that Shino had honored my request, I immediately set out through the downpour with her, my servant carrying my medicine case. At Shino’s house, I found Sato lying alone in a cramped little room, her pillow to the south.5 Her body was extremely hot to the touch and she seemed barely conscious. Her little hand traced a cross shape in the air again and again, and she kept deliriously uttering the word haluleya, a joyous smile forming on her lips each time. This “haluleya” is the Kirishitan version of the “All hail,” which they say in praise of the Buddha of that sect. Shino told me this, crying, as she knelt by her daughter’s pillow. I immediately examined the girl’s pulse and determined both that she was suffering from cold damage disorder6 and that it was too late to treat her: she would probably not survive the day. I had no choice but to tell this to Shino, who once again seemed to lose her mind.

  “The one and only reason that I fell was to save my daughter’s life. If you let her die now, it will have all been in vain. Please try to understand my anguish at having turned my back on Deus Come Thus. You must save my daughter’s life!” She prostrated herself not only before me but before my servant as well, pleading with us to do something, but I tried to convince her that she must realize there was no longer anything that any human power could do. The rain happened to let up just then and so I placed three packets of infusion medicine on the floor next to her and started to leave. Shino, however, clung to my sleeve and would not let go. She seemed to be attempting to speak, but no words emerged from her trembling lips. I watched as the blood drained from her face, and suddenly she began writhing in agony. I was greatly startled by this, and my servant and I immediately set about treating her. Eventually she came to her senses, but she no longer had the strength to stand up.

  “Unworthy woman that I am, all I have done is lose both my daughter’s life and Deus Come Thus,” she sobbed. I tried my best to comfort her, but nothing I said seemed to make an impression on her, and since, furthermore, her daughter’s condition appeared to be hopeless, there was nothing more for me to do but take my servant and hurry home again.

  That afternoon, however, when the village headman Tsukagoshi Yazaemon brought his mother for a pulse examination, I learned from him that Shino’s daughter had died and that Shino had finally lost her mind out of grief. Sato had apparently died about an hour after I took her pulse, and by mid-morning Shino was already deranged and clutching at the corpse, loudly intoning one of her barbarian-language sutras. Yazaemon told me that he saw this himself. Also present were the village officials Kaemon, Tōgo, and Jiheē, and so there is no doubting its factual accuracy.

  On the next day, the tenth, a light rain fell starting at dawn, followed by a spring thunder shower late in the hour of the dragon.7 During a brief clear spell, the village samurai Yanase Kinjūrō sent a horse for me and requested that I visit him to perform a pulse examination. I set out immediately, but when I came as far as Shino’s house, I encountered a crowd of villagers gathered out front angrily shouting to each other about the “Kirishitan” and the “bateren” such that I could not make the horse pass by. The house door was wide open, and from where I sat on the horse, I could see one of the red-hairs8 and three Japanese wearing some kind of long black garments like the Buddhist priests’ clerical robes. Each of them was holding up a kurusu or a thing that looked like a censer and they were chanting “haluleya” over and over again. In addition, crouching at the feet of the red-hair in an apparent swoon, her hair in disarray, was Shino, clutching her daughter Sato. What utterly amazed me, however, was that Sato had her arms wrapped around Shino’s neck and was alternately intoning her mother’s name and “haluleya” in a sweet little voice. Of course, at that distance I could not make everything out with perfect clarity, but Sato’s color appeared to be quite good, and every now and then she would release one hand from her mother’s neck and make as if to grasp the smoke rising from the censer like object. I dismounted and asked the villagers to give me the details of Sato’s revival.

  They told me that the red-hair Bateren Rodrigue had come to Shino’s house from the neighboring village that morning, bringing with him a number of his iruman. After he had heard Shino’s kohisan,9 the group performed incantations to their Buddha, they sent up clouds of their alien incense, they scattered their sacred water, and did other such things, whereupon Shino’s derangement quieted down, and soon afterward—the men told me fearfully—Sato came back to life. Since ancient times, there have been not a few examples of people dying and coming back to life, but most of these have been cases of alcohol poisoning or of contact with natural miasmas. I have never heard of a case like Sato’s, in which a person who has died from cold damage disorder regains his soul.

  This account, then, should serve to illustrate the heterodox practices of the Kirishitan sect. In addition, let me note that the spring shower produced intense thunder just as the bateren was entering this village. I take this to mean that Heaven was showing its abhorrence for him.

  Because the village headman, Tsukagoshi Yazaemon, has already tendered his report concerning the fact that Shino and daughter Sato have moved to the neighboring village with Bateren Rodrigue, and also that Shino’s house was burnt to the ground at the behest of Nikkan, the chief priest of the Jigenji Temple, I will limit my account to this rough outline of what I myself have observed. If, however, I have omitted anything, I will tender additional written reports as called for at a later date. The above, then, constitutes my provisional memorandum.

  Signed this 26th day of the third month of the year of the Monkey, —— Village, Uwa County, Iyo Province.

  Ogata Ryō sai, Doctor of Medicine

  (7 December 1916)

  O-GIN

  This happened sometime during Genna or Kan’ei—in any case, a long time ago.

  Back then, as soon as a person was discovered to be following the teachings of the Heavenly Lord, he was either burned at the stake or impaled on the rack. “The Lord for whom all things are possible” seemed to provide especially miraculous protection to believers here in proportion to the severity of the persecutions they had to endure. Angels and saints often came with the light of the setting sun to visit the villages around Nagasaki, and tradition has it that San Jo-an Batista himself once appeared to the believer Miguel–Yahei1 in his Urakami mill. Satan also frequently appeared in the villages then to disrupt the devotions of believers. He would take the form of a strange black man, say, or an imported flowering plant, or a wickerwork carriage. Even the rat that tormented Miguel–Yahei in his underground dungeon, where he could not distinguish night from day, was said to be an incarnation of Satan. Yahei was burned at the stake with eleven other believers in the autumn of the eighth year of Genna.

  This, then, was the situation in Urakami during Genna and Kan’ei—a long time ago.

  In the village of Yamazato in Urakami there lived a girl named O-Gin. Her father and mother had wandered to Nagasaki from far-off Osaka, but before they could establish a life there, they died, leaving O-Gin alone. Because they came from another part of the country, they could not have known anything about the teachings of the Heavenly Lord. What they believed in was Buddhism—Zen, perhaps, or Tendai, or Pure Land Buddhism—in any case, the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha. Jean Crasset, a French Jesuit, tells us that Shakyamuni was a man of innate cunning who roamed across the length and breadth of China, preaching the Way of a Buddha called Amida.2 From China, Shakyamuni came to the Land of Japan to teach the same Way. His doctrine claimed that at death a human being’s anima would become a bird or an ox or a tree depending on the degree of the person’s sinfulness. According to Crasset, Shakyamuni killed his own mother at the time of his birth; his teachings were obviously a pack of lies, and just as obvious was the enormous evil of Shakyamuni himself.

  As suggested earlier, howeve
r, O-Gin’s parents would not have had the opportunity to learn these truths. Even after death, they continued to believe in the teachings of Shakyamuni, dreaming their fragile dreams of a Buddhist Paradise there beneath the graveyard pines, never knowing that, in the end, they would fall into Inherno.

  Fortunately, however, O-Gin was not tainted by her parents’ ignorance, for the farmer Jo-an–Magoshichi, a longtime resident of Yamazato and a man of deep compassion, poured the holy water of baptismo upon the girl’s forehead and gave her the name Mariya. O-Gin did not believe that Shakyamuni was born pointing to the sky and the ground and proclaiming, “Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the honored one.” Instead, she believed that “Santa Maria, a maiden profoundly gentle, profoundly compassionate, and sweet above all others,” had come spontaneously to be with child. She believed that Zesus, who had “died upon the cross and been laid in a stone sarcophagus deep in the earth,” came back to life three days later. She believed that when the trumpet sounds on Judgment Day, “Our Lord will descend from Heaven in great power and glory, and reunite people’s material bodies, which have turned to dust, with their original anima. Then the good people will enjoy the pleasures of heaven above, and the bad people will fall down into hell with the devil.” And she especially believed in the holy sagramento in which “the bread and wine, though unchanged in shape and color, became the actual flesh and blood of Our Lord through the divine power of the Word.” O-Gin’s heart was not, like those of her parents, a desert swept by searing winds. It was an abundant field of ripened wheat mingled with simple wild roses.