The Curse of Letters (1942)

Nakajima Atsushi (1909–42) was a man of letters active at the height of the imperial period in Japan. During his childhood Nakajima spent several years in colonial Korea, and after studying literature at Tokyo Imperial University he worked first as an educator in Yokohama and then as a low-level education official in Palau. Nakajima had not yet become a prominent figure in the literary community at the time of his death in December 1942, but today his short adaptation of a Tang Dynasty-era tale about an aspiring poet who is transformed into a tiger, "The Moon over the Mountain" (Sangetsuki), is an established part of the high school curriculum across Japan.

"The Curse of Letters" (Mojika) was first published in the leading literary magazine Bungakukai (Literary World) in February 1942 along with "The Moon over the Mountain," representing Nakajima's first major success as an author. In July of that year both pieces were included among his so-called "tales of yore" or "ancient stories" (kotan) in the compilation volume Light, Wind, and Dreams (Hikari to kaze to yume), named after the fictional memoirs of Robert Louis Stevenson's life in colonial Samoa that earned Nakajima his sole nomination for the Akutagawa Prize. "The Curse of Letters" describes the quest of Nabu-Ahhe-Eriba, an Assyrian scholar of the seventh century BCE, to determine the source of the mystical powers of the written word. On the surface this appears to be a quiet topic of research, but it soon leads the scholar down a path fraught with psychological, political, and even physical peril.

Nakajima's writings have often been analyzed according to how they relate to two central settings often employed in his work. One set of Nakajima's writings was strongly affected by his academic background and the influence of his father, a China scholar; this includes his many adaptations and reinterpretations of Chinese classics, as well as his kanshi (Chinese-style poetry). Another category of Nakajima's works revolves around his uneasy relationship with Japanese imperialism, and the composition of these texts was closely related to Nakajima's personal experiences in colonial Korea and the South Seas Mandate. However, Nakajima was also well read in the work of Western authors, particularly a wide range of poets including Arthur Rimbaud and Oscar Wilde, and he dabbled in translating Franz Kafka into Japanese at a time when Kafka was next to unknown in Japan. Further, despite his erudite reputation, Nakajima was not as singularly interested in bookish topics as are the characters in "The Curse of Letters"; in the poem "Song of Spinach" (Supinejji no uta), for example, he playfully noted the simple pleasures of going out to see Popeye cartoons at the movie theater on Saturday afternoons. Thus, pieces such as "The Curse of Letters" that do not fit into easy categories broaden our understanding of Nakajima's work by serving as proof of his cosmopolitan interests that went beyond traditional China and the contemporary Japanese empire.

"The Curse of Letters" also helps illustrate the threads that connect the two better-known segments of Nakajima's oeuvre. First, the work illustrates the remarkable attention to detail that is evident in his reimaginations of Chinese classics. Next to early drafts of "The Curse of Letters" (then known by the less judgmental title "Letters"), Nakajima's journals from the time include pages of notes on the history of Assyria written in German, Japanese, and English. Doubts about the faithfulness of historical records became a major theme of "The Curse of Letters," but at the time of the story's composition Nakajima took care to reflect what was known of the history, literature, and religious traditions of Mesopotamia.

Second, setting "The Curse of Letters" in ancient Assyria allowed Nakajima to raise questions about how the state exerts and maintains control over language—questions that would have been difficult to express more directly in the Japanese political environment of the early 1940s. The timelessness of "The Curse of Letters" can be attributed to the universal nature of this theme. The story can be...