Rashomon by Akutagawa Ryunosuke (best book clubs .TXT) 📖

“Oh, you say people on the streets have gathered! Then I’ll go too. Boys, follow me, and don’t forget to bring the big fans.

“Greetings. I’m Takakuni. Pardon the rudeness of my scanty attire.

“Today I have a request to make of you, so I’ve had my coach stop at the tea-house of Uji. Lately, I’ve been thinking of coming here to write a story book as others do. But unfortunately I know no stories worth writing. Idle as I am, it bores me to have to rack my brains. So from today I plan to to have you tell me the old stories so that I may put them into a book. Since I, Takakuni, am always around and about the Imperial Court, I shall be able to collect from all quarters many unusual anecdotes and curious stories. So you, good folks, troublesome though it may be, will you grant my request?

“You all grant my request? A thousand thanks! Then I will listen to your stories one by one.”

“Here, boys. Start using your big fans so that the whole room may have a breeze. That will make us a little cooler. You, ironmaster, and you potter, don’t be reserved. Both of you, step nearer to this desk. That woman who sells ‘sushi,’ if the sunlight is too hot for you, you’d better put your pail in a corner of the verandah. Priest, lay down your golden hand-drum. You, samurai, and you, mountain priest, there, have you spread your mats?

“Are you all ready? Then if you’re ready, potter, since you are the oldest, you first tell us any story you prefer.”

“We are greatly obliged for your courteous greeting,” the old man replied. “Your Lordship graciously said that you would make a story book of what we humble folks are going to tell you. This is a far greater honor than I deserve. But if I should decline, Your Lordship wouldn’t be pleased. So I’ll take the liberty of telling you a foolish old story. It may be somewhat tiresome, but please listen to my tale for a while.”

The old man began his story.

In old days when I was quite young, in Nara there lived a priest called Kurodo Tokugyo who had an extraordinarily large nose. The tip of his nose shone frightfully crimson all the year round, as if it’d been stung by a wasp. So the people of Nara nicknamed him Ohana-no Kurodo Tokugyo.* But because that name was too long, they came to call him Hanazoø. ** I myself saw him a couple of times in the Kofuku Temple in Nara. He had such a fine red nose that I, too, thought that he might well be scornfully called Hanazo.

[* Ohana-no Kurodo Tokugyo. ‘Ohana’ means a big nose. ‘Kurodo’ means an official in the Imperial Archives. ‘Tokugyo’ might mean a person accomplished in religious austerities. ** Hanazo might mean a big-nosed fellow.]

On a certain night, Hanazo, that is, Ohana-no Kurodo Tokugyo, the priest, came alone to the pond of Sarusawa, without the company of his disciples, and set up, on the bank in front of the weeping willow, a notice-board which said in bold characters, “On March third a dragon shall ascend from this pond.” But as a matter of fact, he didn’t know whether or not a dragon really lived in the pond of Sarusawa, and needless to say, the dragon’s ascension to heaven on March third was a black lie. It would have been more certain if he had said that no dragon would ascend to heaven. The reason why he made such needless mischief is that he was displeased with the priests of Nara who were habitually making fun of his nose, and he planned to play a trick on them this time and laugh at them to his heart’s content. Your Lordship must think it quite ridiculous. But this is an old story, and in those days people who played such tricks were by no means uncommon.

The next day, the first to find this notice-board was an old woman who came to worship Buddha at the Kofuku Temple every morning. When she neared the still misty pond, leaning on a bamboo cane with her rosary in her hand, she found the notice-board, which she had not seen under the weepingwillow the day before. She wondered why a board announcing a Buddhist mass should stand in such a strange place. But since she could not read any of the characters, she was about to pass it by, when she fortunately met a robed priest coming from the opposite direction, and she had him read it for her. The notice said, “On March third a dragon shall ascend from this pond.” They were astonished at this.

The old woman was amazed. Stretching her bent body, she looked up into the priest’s face and asked, “Is it possible that a dragon lives in this pond?” The priest assumed an air of still more composure and said to her, “In former times a certain Chinese scholar had a lump over his eyelid which itched terribly. One day the sky suddenly became overcast, and a thunder shower rained down in torrents. Then instantly his lump burst and a dragon is said to have ascended straight up to heaven trailing a cloud. Since a dragon could live even in a lump, tens of dragons could naturally live at the bottom of a big pond like this.” With these words he expounded the matter to her. The old woman, who had always been convinced that a priest never lied, was astounded out of her wits, and said, “I see. Now that you mention it, the color of the water over there does look suspicious.” Although it was not yet March third, she hurried away, scarcely bothering to use her cane, panting out her Buddhist prayers, and leaving the priest behind alone.

Had it not been for the people about him, the priest would have split his sides with laughter. This was only natural, for the priest was none other than the author of the notice-board, that is, Kurodo Tokugyo, nicknamed Hanazo. He had been walking about the pond with the preposterous idea that some gullible persons might be caught by the notice-board which he put up the night before. After the old woman left, he found an early traveler accompanied by a servant who carried her burden on his back. She had a skirt with a design of insects on it, and was reading the notice-board from beneath her sedgehat. Then the priest, cautiously stifling his laugh with great effort, stood in front of the sign, pretending to read it. After giving a sniff with his red nose, he slowly went back toward the Kofuku Temple. Then, in front of the big southern gate of the temple, by chance he met the priest called Emon, who lived in the same cell as he himself.

“You are up unusually early today,” Emon said, furrowing his dark, thick, stubborn brow. “The weather may change.”

“The weather may really change,” Hanazo readily replied with a knowing look, dilating his nose. “I’m told that a dragon will ascend to heaven from the Sarusawa Pond on March third.”

Hearing this, Emon glared dubiously at Hanazo. But soon purring in his throat, he said with a sardonic smile, “You had a good dream, I suppose. I was once told that to dream of a dragon ascending to heaven is an auspicious omen.” So saying he tried to go past Hanazo, tossing his mortarshaped head. But he must have heard Hanazo muttering to himself, “A lost soul is beyond redemption.” Turning back with such hateful force that the supports of his hemp-thronged clogs bent for the moment, he demanded of Hanazo, in a tone as vehement as if he would challenge him to a Buddhist controversy, “Is there any positive proof that a dragon will ascend to heaven?”

Thereupon, Hanazo, affecting perfect composure, pointed towards the pond, on which the sun was already beginning to shed its light, and replied, looking down at him, “If you doubt my remark, you ought to see the notice-board in front of the weeping willow.”

Obstinate as Emon was, his normal keen reasoning must have lost a little of its initial impetuosity. Blindly, as if his eyes were dazzled, he asked in a half-hearted voice, “Well, has such a notice-board been set up?” and went off in a thoughtful mood, with his mortarshaped head to one side.

You may well imagine how this amused Hanazo, who saw him going away. He felt the whole of his red nose itch, and while he went up the stone-steps of the big southern gate with a sullen expression, he could not help bursting into laughter in spite of himself.

Even that first morning the notice-board saying “On March third a dragon shall ascend” had a great effect on the public. In the course of a day or two the dragon in the pond of Sarusawa became the talk of the whole town of Nara. Of course some said, “The notice-board may be somebody’s hoax.”

Also at that time there spread in Kyoto a rumor that the dragon in the Shinsen-en had ascended to heaven. Even those who asserted that the prophecy on the notice-board was a hoax started to waver between belief and doubt as to the truth of the rumor, and began to think that such an event might possibly occur.

Just then an unexpected wonder took place. Less than ten days later the nine year old daughter of a certain Shinto priest who served the Shrine of Kasuga was drowsing, with her head in her mother’s lap, when a black dragon fell like a cloud from heaven, and said in human speech, “At last I am to ascend to heaven on March third. But rest at ease, since I expect to cause no trouble to you townspeople.” The moment she woke up, she told her mother about her dream. The talk that the little girl had dreamt of the dragon in the pond of Sarusawa caused a great sensation in the town. The story was exaggerated in one way and another: a child possessed of a dragon wrote a poem, a dragon appeared to such and such a shrine priest in a dream and gave him a divine revelation.

In the course of time, one man went so far as to say that he had actually seen a dragon, although no dragon could be expected even to have thrust his head above water. He was an old man who went to the market to sell fish every morning. At dawn one day he came to the pond of Sarusawa. Through the morning haze he saw the wide expanse of water gleam with a faint light under the bank where the weepingwillow stood and where the notice-board was set up. At any rate it was the time when the rumor of the dragon was on everyone’s lips. So he thought that the dragon god had come out. Trembling all over with this half happy and half dreadful thought, he left his catch of river fish there, and stealing up, he held on to the weepingwillow and tried to look into the pond. Then he saw an unknown monster like a coiled black chain lurking ominously at the bottom of the faintly illuminated water. Probably frightened by human footsteps, the dreadful monster uncoiled and disappeared somewhere in a twinkling. At this sight the man broke into a cold sweat, and returned to the place where he had left his fish, only to find that a score of fish, including some carp and eels which he was carrying to the market, had disappeared. Some laughed at this rumor, saying, “He was probably deceived by an old otter.” But not a few said, “Since it’s impossible for an