Steven D. Carter - The Columbia Anthology of Japanese Essays: Zuihitsu from the Tenth to the Twenty-First Century

The Columbia Anthology of Japanese Essays

THE COLUMBIA ANTHOLOGY OF JAPANESE ESSAYS

Zuihitsu from the Tenth to the Twenty-First Century

EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY

Steven D. Carter

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW YORK

Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Japan Foundation toward the cost of publishing this book.

Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Department of East Asian Languages, Stanford University, toward the cost of publishing this book.

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New York Chichester, West Sussex

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Columbia anthology of Japanese essays : zuihitsu from the tenth to the twenty-first century / edited and translated by Steven D. Carter.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-231-16770-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-231-16771-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-231-53755-1 (e-book)

1. Japanese essaysTranslations into English. I. Carter, Steven D., editor of compilation translator. II. Title.

PL772.C65 2014

895.64dc23

2014012763

A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at
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COVER IMAGE: Ogata Gekko, title page of Zuihitsu (ca. 1886). (Bao Ming Collection)

COVER DESIGN: Milenda Nan Ok Lee

To Charles, Joseph, and Riley

Contents

SEI SHNAGON

YOSHIDA NO KENK

SHTETSU

ICHIJ KANEYOSHI

SHHAKU

THE FUJIWARA LAY MONK

ANRAKUAN SAKUDEN

KINOSHITA CHSHSHI

MATSUO BASH

AMENOMORI HSH

MATSUZAKI KANRAN

MORITA MORIMASA

DAZAI SHUNDAI

MOTOORI NORINAGA

TACHIBANA NANKEI

MATSUDAIRA SADANOBU

ISHIWARA MASAAKIRA

MURATA HARUMI

SHIBA KKAN

BAN KKEI

TADANO MAKUZU

NATSUME SEIBI

HIGUCHI ICHIY

NATSUME SSEKI

TOKUTOMI ROKA

TAYAMA KATAI

NAGAI KAF

TERADA TORAHIKO

KIKUCHI KAN

UCHIDA HYAKKEN

DAZAI OSAMU

SHIGA NAOYA

KAWAMORI YOSHIZ

OSARAGI JIR

KAWAKAMI TETSUTAR

SHNO JUNZ

KDA AYA

KNO TAEKO

MUKDA KUNIKO

TAKENISHI HIROKO

HIRAIWA YUMIE

DEKUNE TATSUR

KIZAKI SATOKO

SHIROYAMA SABURO

SAKAI JUNKO

As always, I thank my wife, Mary, for her support. Jeffrey Knott and Benjamin Carter assisted in proofreading. Two anonymous readers for Columbia University Press made a number of helpful suggestions, for which I am duly grateful. Irene Pavitt and Jennifer Crewe of Columbia University Press provided valuable assistance in guiding the project through to completion.

This book presents translations of Japanese literary works from the tenth through the twenty-first century that are collectively called zuihitsua genre of writing that, as Donald Keene notes, has no close European counterpart but is generally called essay or miscellany.

Anyone who has attempted to define the word zuihitsu can sympathize with the frustration felt by the modern novelist Dazai Osamu in trying to write one:

Lately I was asked for a zuihitsu by a newspaper, so I took courage and set myself to the task. But I kept tearing up whatever I wrote, and even after working on ideas for three or four days, I had ten pages at the most. It seems that I wanted to write a zuihitsu so brilliant that I would have readers thinking, Thats ithe has it right! But after working at it too long, I no longer knew what was what; I didnt even understand what a zuihitsu was supposed to be.

I rummaged through my book box and took out two books: The Pillow Book of Sei Shnagon and Tales of Ise. I thought that I could use these books to find the zuihitsu traditions of Japan. What an imbecile I am.

Bookstores generally shelve books by genrehistory, religion, science, philosophy, literature, self-help, and so on. In the library stacks, though, one finds a more complicated mix based on a broader range of subject categories and many more subdivisions. And in real life, books pass by like currents in a river, all jumbled together, which is only appropriate since so many books are themselves jumbles of things. As Mikhail Bakhtin and others have demonstrated, this is particularly true of the modern novel, but one may submit that it is even more true of the zuihitsu, a supergenre in which one will often find a mix of subgenres, everything from reportage and travelogue to poetry, literary criticism, biography, confession, journalismand so on, almost ad infinitum.

Perhaps the best way to introduce the pieces gathered together in this book is to quote some of the things said by a few of their authors, beginning at the beginning, with Sei Shnagon, a tenth-century lady-in-waiting at the Japanese imperial court, whose Pillow Book is generally (although not universally) considered to have inaugurated the zuihitsu tradition in Japan. For in several passages, Sei makes comments that go far toward defining her methodor, more properly, her antimethod. The first of these is that she has written her thoughts alone... never thinking that anyone would compare my book with other writings or that I would hear people saying I did a passable job, In conclusion, one may put Seis comments into one declarative statement: she writes personally and casually, for the joy of it, about anything that comes to mind, providing that she thinks it might impress readers. All that one need add to make the statement complete as a description of her approach is that she excludes anything purely fictional.

Sei is true to her own definition. In her Pillow Book, we find a dizzying maelstrom of thingsanecdotes, based on her own experience or what she has heard from others; lists of things of interest to her, including everything from Disgusting Things to Waterfalls; reminiscences; homilies and pronouncements of taste; and what in journalistic jargon might be called opinion piecesall presented with little sense of organization.

It is obvious that many later writers of zuihitsu were influenced by The Pillow Book and by Seis ruminations on her project. Yoshida no Kenk (1283ca. 1350), whose Essays in Idleness is second only to The Pillow Book in prominence within the Japanese zuihitsu tradition, surely must have had that book in mind when he began his own collection with the words How foolish I feel when I realize that I have spent another day in front of my inkstone, jotting down aimless thoughts as they occurred to me, all because I was bored and had nothing better to do.

Sei Shnagons statements (and her example) were not the only influence on Kenk, however. Also important was the eremitic tradition represented by Kamo no Chmei in The Ten-Foot-Square Hut (1212),houses as a motif. Chmeis work would also cast a long shadow, which would fall on later writers from Shhaku and Kinoshita Chshshi to Matsuo Bash, Natsume Seibi, Shiga Naoya, and Osaragi Jir. While remaining casual in style, these works are not as desultory in organization or varied in subject matter as