Worlding Sei Shônagon: The Pillow Book in Translation

Appendix III: A selection of modern Japanese versions

Appendix III A selection of modern Japanese versions Appendix IiI 274 Tanabe Seiko Mukashi akebono no—shôsetsu Makura no sôshi 1986. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1987 Tanabe Seiko (b. 1928) is a highly prolific novelist and essayist known especially for her readable adaptations of Heian literature, including the Genji Monogatari and the Hyakunin Isshû, into modern Japanese. This particular book rewrites Sei Shônagon’s text in the form of a contemporary novel. Tanabe was born in Osaka (many of her contemporary stories are set in that city) to a family that ran a photography studio. Just two months before the end of World War II, their house was destroyed in an air raid and her father died later that same year. She nonetheless received a good education , earning a degree in Japanese Literature in 1947. Tanabe turned to writing after seven years’ working in a retail environment and was awarded the Akutagawa prize in 1964. In 1966, she married a physician named Kawano Sumio, although they maintained separate residences for the first year of their marriage (for further biographical details, see Mulhern 397–402). In her afterword, Tanabe comments on how the original Appendix IiI 275 contains many “mysteries” and so gives rise to interesting interpretations. She also states that because much scholarly writing in Japan treats the text from a masculine viewpoint —erroneously in her view—this version (Dawn Long Ago – The Pillow Book as a Novel) is in part a reaction against that practice. Appendix IiI 276 私は興にのって書きつづけていった。 「春はあけぼの。次第に白んでゆく山ぎわ、少し明 るくなり、紫がかった雲がほそくたなびいている美 しさ」 「夏は夜。月はまして。 闇もなお。――蛍が飛びちがうさまの風情。 夏の夜の雨もまた、いい」 「秋は夕暮れ。 夕日花やかにさし、山ぎわに近く鳥の二つ三つ四つ と飛びゆくさえ、しみじみとする。 まして雁のつらなりが小さくみえるあわれさ。日が 入ってのちは風の音にも虫の音も」 「冬は早朝。雪の降っている情趣のたとしえなき、 そのよさ。霜が白くおいたりして。 また、雪霜はなくても寒気のきびしい朝、火などを おこして炭火を持ってゆく、その風趣も身に沁む」 私はそれらの書き捨てた反古を、いつとなし、手も との筥にためていた。 (p. 42) Appendix IiI 277 I continued to write with enjoyment. “As for spring the dawn. The beauty of the little by little whitening mountain’s edge, slightly brightening, and the purplish clouds thinly trailing.” “As for summer the night. Not to mention the moon. The darkness even more. —The sight of fireflies flitting about. The summer night’s rain also, again, nice.” “As for autumn the dusk. When the evening sun shines brilliantly, near the mountain’s edge birds fly off in twos threes fours, it affects me deeply. More than this, when a line of wild geese appears small, it is moving. After the sun sets, also the sound of the wind, also the sound of insects.” “As for winter the early morning. The mood when snow is falling is incomparable, that niceness. The frost sometimes lies white. Or, even if there is no snow or frost, on mornings when the cold is severe, when they kindle fires and so on, and take around charcoal fires, that sight also sinks into me.” These written and discarded scrap papers, in no time, I stored in a box at hand. [D. M.] Appendix IiI 278 Hashimoto Osamu “Dai ichi dan” Momojirigoyaku Makura no Sôshi Tokyo: Kawade Shobô Shinsha, 1987 Hashimoto Osamu was born in Tokyo in 1948. Having studied Japanese Literature at Tokyo University, and following an initial stint as an illustrator, he began publishing widely: novels, essays, scripts and poems. His award-winning novel Momojiri Musume (Peach-bottomed Girl) appeared in 1977. He has also “translated” The Tale of Genji from a modern male viewpoint. The passage on the following page appears at the beginning of his popular modernization of The Pillow Book. For the book, Hashimoto wrote two maegaki or introductions: a “Male Version” and a “Female Version”, in which he wittily plays on gendered speech patterns. This particular translation —studded with girlish verbal mannerisms such as concluding phrases with the emphatic and highly conversational particles yo, wa, ne or nante; sprinkling the text with typically overused adjectives such as suteki (“cool”); and employing exuberant punctuation—updates and radically rewrites Sei Shônagon to appeal to both young readers and anyone who can appreciate satire. Appendix IiI 279 Meredith McKinney, whose recent English translation appears in the main part of this compilation, comments justly that Hashimoto’s version “is certainly excruciating reading for anyone who isn’t a contemporary Japanese girl, and reduces Sei’s subtleties of perception and expression to tedious cliché, but it does capture the delight, and the vividness of voice and personality, that are the essential experience of reading The Pillow Book. She isn’t my Sei Shônagon, and she certainly isn’t Ivan Morris’s, but she’s a Sei Shônagon who makes a lot of people nod and smile, and this is enough to prove...