Japanese Gothic Tales

Afterword: A Discussion of the Tales

¥ 159 ¥ Afterword A DISCUSSION OF THE TALES The Surgery Room Kyòka’s first published work was Crowned Yazaemon (Kanmuri Yazaemon ), which appeared serially in the literary column of the Kyoto Morning News (Kyòtò hinode shinbun). Beginning its run on October 1, 1892, it turned out to be far from the great success for which Kyòka had hoped. In fact, so poorly was the novella received that Iwaya Sazanami (1870–1933), a Ken’yûsha writer who had become the literary editor of the newspaper, immediately received over twenty letters from disappointed readers, all asking that the story be discontinued. Sazanami implored Ozaki Kòyò (1868–1903), who was Kyòka’s mentor and the one who had recommended him for the job, to “change to another writer if possible, and to come up with some way to release the present one.” Kòyò refused to comply on the ground that such an action would be a crushing blow to his student.1 Protected from any knowledge of just how poorly his work was being received in Kyoto (Sazanami claimed to be losing readers by the day), Kyòka had the satisfaction of seeing his manuscript printed in full. The final installment appeared on November 18, with two afterwords following in December. 160 ¥ Afterword It is not hard to imagine the difficulties that the Kyoto Morning News readers had with Kyòka’s first publication. Yazaemon offers little new in the way of theme, its plot is difficult to follow, its characters are numerous and weakly developed, and, even for a Japanese story of this period and type, its scenes are strangely disconnected. No doubt, these shortcomings are in part due to Kyòka’s choice to rework an already existing story and to his assumption that his readers would already be familiar enough with its general outline. Kanmuri Yazaemon had been preceded by Takeda Kòrai’s (1819–1882) The Pine of Kanmuri, the Storm at Mado Village (Kanmuri no matsu mado no arashi), a kusazòshi, or illustrated fiction, in two bound volumes of three books apiece, which first appeared in the fall of 1885. This parent work is a straightforward report of a peasant uprising that took place in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1883. It illuminates the avarice of Matsugi Chòemon , who deceitfully acquired land from the peasants of his village. The peasants’ appeal to a higher authority succeeds, only to be overturned by Matsugi’s legal advisers. Driven to a point of desperation, the villagers plan and successfully carry out a vendetta. Kanmuri Yazaemon, whose character is developed only through an aside that shows his son’s reaction to a reporting of the rebellion, is their leader. Kòrai’s commitment to the facts is unwavering. A representative example of the newly emergent Meiji reportage, his account also includes mention of how the newspapers of the time eagerly took up the story and how the public’s sympathy for the rebels influenced the Kanagawa peasants’ eventual exoneration. From other documents we know that, in fact, the Kanagawa uprising was indeed a newsworthy event, and that it became the material not only for Kòrai’s kusazòshi but also for the raconteur Matsubayashi Hakuchi’s oral account, which was taken down and published as A Fire and Sword Showdown at Mado Village (Mado-mura yakiuchi sòdò) by Imamura Jirò in October of 1898, six years after the initial publication of Kyòka’s story. From the existence of this and other versions, we can assume that interest in the event was sustained. At the time of Kyòka’s writing, the rebellion was probably already part of the common imagination, though he seems to have overestimated his reader’s ability and willingness to fill in the gaps in his own version. Kyòka was attracted to the dramatic potential of Kòrai’s account, as well as to its strong indictment of class oppression. But to this A Discussion of the Tales ¥ 161 rather straightforward incident of class struggle he added various human entanglements that remind us of the bizarre, rococo patterns of Bunka-Bunsei–period drama (1804–1830). Tangled à la Nanboku, the threads connecting the principal characters in Kyòka’s story tie themselves into a melodramatic knot. Kanmuri Yazaemon’s sister Onami is the wife of Shinjurò, whose daughter Kohagi is forced to marry Ishimura Jirozò, the son of...