SOURCE: “The War Years (1941–1945),” in Japan, edited by Roy E. Teele, Twayne Publishers, 1975, pp. 91–118, 166–69.

[In the following essay, O'Brien discusses Dazai's writings during the war years (1941–1945), focusing on his retelling of both fairy tales and the writings of Ihara Saikakau.]

A RETELLING OF THE TALES FROM THE PROVINCES

Although the title of this work is based on Ihara Saikaku's Tales from the Provinces, a collection of thirty-five stories published in 1685, only one of Dazai's twelve tales, “Stubborn in Poverty,” is based on this particular Saikaku collection. The remainder are scattered throughout such other works by Saikaku as The Eternal Storehouse of Japan and Tales of Warriors and Duty.

The stories in A Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces were initially published in various magazines from January to November, 1944. The following January the entire collection was brought out under its present title by the Seikatsusha Publishing Company. In a short preface Dazai claimed that his works were not translations of Saikaku into modern Japanese—something he called a “meaningless exercise.” Nevertheless, the adaptations from Saikaku are closer to the originals than the Collection of Fairy Tales he was to retell shortly. Okuno Tateo has conjectured that Dazai, who calls Saikaku in his preface the “world's greatest writer,” was probably constrained by his great respect for Saikaku.

This relative fidelity on Dazai's part results in a preservation of much of Saikaku's quality. Dazai successfully incorporates the social background and value clashes of the earlier stories, and even manages to capture something of Saikaku's quick wit and deft character typing.

“STUBBORN IN POVERTY”

The range of Dazai's selection suggests a wide acquaintance with Saikaku's work. His stated purpose in writing raises the question of why he chose these particular twelve stories out of such a great number—one story, for example, out of a total of thirty-five from Saikaku's Tales from the Provinces. “Stubborn in Poverty,” the one selection from Tales from the Provinces, affords ample material for a comparative study between Dazai and his source. After giving a comparative analysis of these two tales, it will be well to briefly describe each tale, concentrating especially on those features of the narrative that might have prompted Dazai to choose it.

“Stubborn in Poverty,” the first story in Dazai's collection, centers on a New Year's party given for his friends by a poor ronin, or masterless samurai, named Harada Naisuke. His samurai guests, as poor as he, have been invited to celebrate Harada's good fortune in receiving a gift of ten ryo from his brother-in-law, a doctor living near the Kanda Myojin shrine. At first Naisuke's seven guests are downcast. One of them confesses that he has gone so long without sake that he has forgotten how to drink; the others confess that they have forgotten how to get drunk. Nonetheless, once the guests understand that Naisuke has come into a windfall and will not charge them for the sake, they set about drinking with gusto. Once the party has livened up, Naisuke passes around the ten coins he has received. When they come back Naisuke finds one missing, but he is too timid to issue a challenge. After he finally reveals that one coin is missing, everyone, with a single exception, disrobes to prove that he has not stolen the coin. Eventually two coins turn up; the men discover one by the lamp stand, and Harada's wife finds another in the kitchen, stuck to the lid of a bowl from which the guests have been served. Naisuke is furious at this unexpected turn of events—he will not, despite his poverty, accept charity from his friends nor will he be made a fool of. When no one will admit to planting the extra coin, Naisuke works out a scheme whereby the owner may pick up his coin at the front door unseen.

Saikaku's original story, entitled “A New Year's Reckoning That Didn't Figure,” is less elaborate than Dazai's retelling. Harada's brother-in-law, a doctor, sends a witty prescription in hopes of curing a case of poverty. Finding himself the recipient of ten ryo, a “marvelous medicine” for curing countless ills, Harada invites seven of his samurai cronies to celebrate the windfall. After they arrive Harada passes the coins around, and finds one missing when they are returned to him. Two of the guests remove their sashes to show they have no money, but a third balks at putting himself to the test. Having just sold some goods he happens to have one ryo and some change on his person. He is on the verge of disemboweling himself when the missing coin is suddenly discovered in the shadow of the lamp stand. The appearance of the wife announcing the discovery of a second coin and Harada's stratagem for allowing the anonymous donor to get his ryo back without revealing his identity are basically the same in Saikaku's original as in Dazai's retelling.

Saikaku spins his yarn with characteristic brevity. He gives only an occasional glimpse of the characters he is portraying. The four or five opening lines of the tale suffice to tell the reader the basic facts of Harada Naisuke's existence: his lack of the necessities of life, his disheveled appearance, his threatening look as he makes an appeal to a rice-shop clerk. Harada the ronin has had to borrow a sword from the clerk, and he asks why he cannot keep it past the New Year into spring.

Saikaku packs his narrative tightly with brief details and shifts the focus of his tale from Harada to the brother-in-law to the seven friends and back to Harada with his customary speed and dexterity. Dazai, by contrast, is more concerned than Saikaku that the reader develop a definite conception of Naisuke. Dazai takes the poverty of Saikaku's Harada as an invitation to portray situations and responses recalling aspects of his own life. Describing the gift by the brother-in-law, he borrows Saikaku's witty pun, but—no doubt mindful of his own benefactors—he adds a touch of hauteur to the relatively benign figure of the brother-in-law in Saikaku. With Harada feigning insanity at the approach of New Year's Eve with its obligation to pay off all debts, his wife appeals to her doctor brother. The doctor's prescription, a “dose” of money, seems in the Dazai version a rather poor joke. Dazai implies that penurious souls like Harada (and himself) can readily be made fools of by their affluent relatives.

Harada, though, is not simply portrayed as the victim of his poverty. Departing radically from his source story, Dazai describes Harada refusing at first to accept charity. And, once he does accept, Harada feels an obligation to share his bounty with friends. No doubt Saikaku's Harada Naisuke is moved by similar feelings. Dazai, however, takes pains to make this feeling of obligation very explicit in his narrative.

Saikaku, after briefly describing Harada's character, sets the plot moving and proceeds to the end without any delaying commentary. Dazai, on the contrary, is constantly tampering with Harada. As usual, Dazai is interested in the tale for its moral. Harada stands forth as the victim required by circumstances to accept charity, and as the plucky underdog who, within the limits possible to him, insists on his honor and dignity.

Despite the serious note, “Stubborn in Poverty” is very much a comic story. To read it in conjunction with Saikaku's tale provides insights into certain of Dazai's comic techniques. The economy of Saikaku's narrative style afforded Dazai a number of opportunities to rewrite or expand the original. In several instances Dazai, more conscious than Saikaku of the possibilities and demands of realism, creates in his characters a range of response wider than did Saikaku. Once the extra coin is discovered, the guests in Dazai's version bring forth the very plausible suggestion that Harada's brother-in-law might have added the extra coin just for fun. In Saikaku, on the other hand, the guests are silent on this question.

Again Dazai spells out meanings that are only implicit in the Saikaku narrative. In Saikaku, once it becomes clear that the owner of the extra coin will not reveal himself, Harada simply says that he will place a measuring box with the coin inside on the garden wash basin. The guests are to leave one by one; thus, the owner of the coin will be able to pick it up in private.

In his closing scene, Dazai is very explicit about making it difficult for the other six guests to gather any hints in leaving as to who the owner of the coin might be. Dazai's Harada says: “If we put the coin at the edge of the step in the darkest place, no one will be able to see whether or not it's there. The owner of the coin alone is to feel around with his hand, then go out as if nothing were amiss.”

The interesting aspect of this is not the idle question of which version is more effective or foolproof. Rather, the reader should simply be aware of the double irony involved in Dazai's reordering of Saikaku. For Saikaku himself had taken similar liberties as an author, writing parodies of earlier Japanese literature with such titles as Nise Monogatari and The “Gay” Tale of the Heike. Saikaku even tampered with the best of classical Japanese fiction. The fifty-four chapters of The Man Who Spent His Life in Love parallel the fifty-four chapters of The Tale of Genji; the multiple sordid adventures of Saikaku's hero Yonosuke parody the Genji tradition of high romance.

Dazai's intentions, then, in writing “Stubborn in Poverty” involve certain aspects of his own life and the possibilities he saw in the Saikaku original for the application of comic techniques of style. That he wrote about the ronin so soon after describing Minamoto Sanetomo in his historical novel, Sanetomo, Minister of the Right, reveals Dazai's continued interest in the relation of the samurai ethic to life.

Dazai could also have been drawn to the original tale by the ambiguity inherent in Saikaku's narrative method. Readers of the several excellent English translations of Saikaku's koshokubon, or erotic works, will realize the difficulty of determining the author's attitude toward events and characters he describes. In Five Women Who Loved Love, for example, Saikaku's characters often fall in love in ways that violate social law and custom only to meet “justice” ultimately on the execution ground. In these cases, Saikaku appears to sanction the harsh penalties of the Tokugawa code; at the same time, he describes the illicit love affair with such gusto that no reader can believe he is absolutely condemning his lovers.

A similar ambiguity exists in Saikaku's “New Year's Reckoning That Didn't Figure.” The subject of Saikaku's work is listed as giri, or obligation. But the reader, having finished the tale, is less than certain of Saikaku's feelings. “In the quick wit of the host, the behavior of his familiar guests, indeed in many ways the relations among the samurai are different [i.e., from those of the townsmen],” Saikaku declares, ending his tale. But, as so often happens in Saikaku, the final moral comment can hardly obliterate the import of the narrative. One feels with Saikaku that the samurai are rather foolish in their insistence on dignity. Why should the mere sum of one ryo create such havoc? Why should a man under suspicion by his friends for a petty crime ready his sword to take his life? Surely the merchants and townsmen who read Saikaku found such behavior strange.

Shortly before he began his Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces, Dazai had expressed his admiration for the samurai virtues in Sanetomo Minister of the Right. In “Stubborn in Poverty” he examines the lives of ronin at the very bottom of the samurai class. If the shogun Sanetomo represents an ideal, the ronin in “Stubborn in Poverty” perhaps represent what is amiss with the ethic of the warrior. Or, rather, they represent attitudes and behavior of noble samurai diminished (perhaps to the point of absurdity) by the poverty in which these men now find themselves. As usual, the reader of Dazai finds it difficult to pin down his elusive, ironic author. Surely Dazai saw something noble in the samurai virtues; perhaps he felt that these were the sole virtues that could survive the war. Regardless of whether he looked foolish or pompous, a man ought to cling to such a heritage.

“GREAT STRENGTH”

The second tale, a thin piece entitled “Great Strength” and taken from Saikaku's Twenty-four Instances of Unfilial Conduct in Our Country, details the feats of a sumo wrestler, Saibei. An uncouth youth given to beating up other people, Saibei is urged by his father to try his hand at other sports, football, for example, or even flower arrangement. His mother, hoping to plant in him the seeds of compassion, persuades him to take a bride. Unfortunately, as Saibei reveals to his wife on their wedding night, he has taken a vow to the god Marishiten never to touch a woman. The story ends abruptly when Waniguchi, Saibei's old wrestling tutor, defeats his ex-pupil in a wrestling match by a clever stratagem. Dazai was prompted to retell the story, one might imagine, to capitalize on the opportunities for wit and humor it afforded at a number of points.

“THE MONKEY'S GRAVE”

The third tale, “The Monkey's Grave,” is drawn from The Inkstone of Nostalgia and is clearly Dazai's kind of story. As in the case of “Great Strength,” Dazai was doubtless intrigued by the comic potential of “The Monkey's Grave.” Jiroemon dispatches a friend to talk to the father of his beloved Oran about arranging a marriage. The father is anxious that Oran, brought up in the Nichiren Buddhist sect, marry a fellow believer, and he immediately traps the hapless go-between into admitting ignorance of Jiroemon's religion. Then, to make matters worse, the go-between blurts out that this makes no difference; Jiroemon, regardless of his present beliefs, can always convert to Nichiren. Condemning this opportunism, Oran's father reveals that he has already betrothed her to another, a firm Nichiren believer.

Oran and Jiroemon, taking matters into their own hands, decide to elope. At this point in the story enters Dazai's favorite animal, a monkey.

This monkey, named Kichibei, was so attached to Oran it hobbled off in pursuit the night she ran away with a strange man. When Jiroemon and Oran had covered about three miles, the girl noticed her pet. Though she scolded and pelted him with stones, the monkey limped along after her. Finally, Jiroemon took pity. “He's followed you this far. Let him join us.”

“Here boy,” Oran beckoned and the monkey came bounding. As she hugged him the monkey looked mournfully at his two companions and blinked his eyes.

After Oran and Jiroemon settle in a humble cottage, Kichibei helps about the house. With the birth of a son, Kikunosuke, the monkey becomes a baby-sitter.

The story comes to a tragic end, though, just as Oran and Jiroemon are laying plans to return to society to give Kikunosuke the advantages of a respectable upbringing. They leave Kichibei to tend the baby while they go off to discuss a business deal with a neighboring farmer.

In a little while Kichibei recalled it was time for the infant's bath. So he lit a fire under the stove to boil some water—precisely, he recalled, as Oran always did.

When bubbles started to rise Kichibei poured the steaming water into a basin to the very rim. Without bothering to test the water he stripped the child naked, lifted him, and—peering into his face in imitation of Oran—gently dipped the child two or three times in the basin.

“Waa!” The parents, hearing the shrill cry of the scalded baby, glanced at each other and came running back to the house. The stunned Kichibei stood transfixed as the baby floated about the basin. Oran, lifting the corpse, could scarcely bear the sight of this “broiled lobster.”

The hysterical Oran tries to kill Kichibei, but Jiroemon intervenes to save the monkey.

One hundred days after the infant's death, Kichibei, standing on the new grave, takes his own life in atonement. Oran and Jiroemon bury him sadly; they have forgiven him the crime he committed in his animal innocence and have come to realize that, after the baby's death, Kichibei is the only thing they have.

Kichibei, then, is one of a considerable group of symbolic monkeys in Dazai's works. Kichibei represents a Dazai ideal: unselfish service to the interest of another. At the same time, his innocence causes him to blunder in such a way that his ideals, like the author's, bring destruction and sorrow.

“MERMAID SEA”

The following tale, taken from Saikaku's A Record of Traditions of the Warrior's Way, is entitled “Mermaid Sea.” Like Sanetomo, Minister of the Right, “Mermaid Sea” is an expression of certain samurai virtues.

A boat encounters a freak storm on the ocean. Everyone aboard gradually loses consciousness, with the exception of the virtuous samurai Chudo Konnai. When a mermaid appears in the waves, he shoots her with an arrow. She sinks, the storm subsides, and Chudo's companions regain consciousness.

When a report of this feat is made to the regional lord, one of the samurai in attendance expresses disbelief. Aozaki, the samurai in question, is described by Dazai as a good-for-nothing who holds a high official position only by virtue of the exploits of his father. But so forcefully does Aozaki express his contempt toward wondrous events that the other samurai present at the occasion become utterly bewildered. Chudo, in true samurai fashion, will not rest with his word called into question. He organizes a search of the area of the sea where the slaying occurred. Yet, when a thorough search uncovers no evidence of his feat, he begins himself to doubt the event.

At this point, the narrative switches to Chudo's house, where his daughter and her attendant are growing restless and concerned over his safety. Finally, they set out in search, only to find his corpse on the beach wrapped in seaweed. A samurai follower of Chudo's arrives on horseback. He dismisses the entire question of the truth or falsity of Chudo's account and charges the daughter to avenge her father by killing Aozaki. The latter is guilty of slandering and sending him to his death. The daughter kills Aozaki and marries a young samuari, who takes the name Chudo in order to carry on the dead man's family name. Finally, for good measure, the skeleton of a mermaid, with Chudo's arrowhead embedded in the shoulder blade, is washed ashore.

“BANKRUPTCY”

In paying deference to Saikaku in his preface to A Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces, Dazai added the caveat that, for him, Saikaku's series of erotic stories were not to his taste. But, of course, this was Saikaku's métier, and most Japanese readers today, as well as Westerners who have read him in translation, associate Saikaku with this series of works.

The next two stories, “Bankruptcy” and “Naked in the River,” deal with another important concern of Saikaku—money. “Bankruptcy” comes from the collection treating the crafty practices of the Osaka merchant, The Eternal Storehouse of Japan. “River of the Naked,” along with the next tale, “Obligation,” is taken from Tales of the Knightly Code of Honor.

“Bankruptcy” slyly narrates the downfall of the prosperous house of Yorozuya. The owner of the family business is a self-made man of nearly fanatical thrift. Fearing for the future of the business, he disinherits his effeminate son and adopts in his stead a young man whose thrifty habits appear to guarantee continued prosperity for the house. With admirable foresight the adopted son recommends that a jealous woman be found for him to marry. The hard opposition of a shrew will protect him from the temptation so common among the merchants of Tokugawa Japan of squandering the family fortune in the pleasure quarter.

Unfortunately the wife proves to be such a killjoy that her husband is soon looking for relief. When his foster parents die, he leaves for Kyoto and squanders his fortune in a year. Returning home he sets to work rebuilding the family business in hopes of returning to Kyoto for another round of fun. Concealing his actual penury, he operates a thriving brokerage simply on the appearance of wealth. Before he can recoup his fortune, an accident upsets his well-laid plans. One New Year's Eve, the night for clearing all debts, a poor ronin enters his office demanding change to pay off a trifling debt. The broker does not have the money to make the transaction, and so small is the amount that he cannot plead that he is short of ready cash. The poor ronin's cry of surprise informs the neighbors that the apparently prosperous business is in fact bankrupt.

“RIVER OF THE NAKED”

The opening scene of “River of the Naked” shows an official of the Kamakura Bakufu named Aotosaemon transporting government funds across a river. Opening the money pouch, he accidentally drops eleven coins into the river. Although the loss represents a small sum, Aotosaemon hires at considerable expense to himself a group of peasants who search the river for the missing coins.

One of the searchers, a scoundrel named Asada, has hired on simply to share in the reward. Bored with the search and aware that the subsidy from Aotosaemon greatly exceeds the value of the lost coins, Asada decides to conclude matters by pretending to find the coins. Deceiving his companions, he pretends to probe the river bottom with his foot as he surreptitiously slips the requisite coins from his own sash.

While the peasants celebrate the find with a banquet, Aotosaemon returns home and happily reports to his family the details of the incident. Suddenly he is taken aback by a remark of his daughter. She reminds him that he was carrying two coins fewer than usual, and thus his original calculation that eleven coins had fallen into the river must be revised.

Enraged, Aotosaemon returns to the river and compels Asada to search alone for the money, insisting that he stay in the river until every missing coin is recovered. Asada emerges on the ninety-seventh day, having turned up, in addition to the coins, numerous articles people have lost or discarded in the river over the years. His task finished, Asada unabashedly demands from Aotosaemon the eleven “counterfeit” coins.

“OBLIGATION”

In his next selection from Saikaku, [“Obligation”], Dazai again portrays a man willing to carry out unhesitatingly an action imposed on him by the dictates of a feudal society. In this instance Dazai's protagonist is a samurai compelled by obligation to sacrifice his innocent son.

The villains and heroes are clearly marked in this work. Muramaro, the son of an important lord of the province of Settsu, decides on a whim to make a journey to the distant northern island of Hokkaido. To accompany his son, the lord chooses a varied group of men from among his followers. A trusted samurai named Kamizaki Shikibu is to oversee the journey; Kamizaki's son Katsutaro, along with a youth named Tanzaburo, are designated to make the trip as companions to the son of the lord. Like his father Shikibu, Katsutaro is a model samurai; Tanzaburo, the son of an official associated with Shikibu, is lazy and pleasure loving.

As the group heads north, progress is delayed by the carousing habits of Tanzaburo and the young lord. Each night, at a different inn, the two youths stay up late feasting and reveling with the serving-maids. Mornings they remain slugabed, while the members of the retinue idly await their pleasure.

Eventually the travelers reach the Oi River, which empties into the Pacific midway between Kyoto and Tokyo. Kamizaki Shikibu, responsible for the general welfare, counsels that the group pass the night at a nearby inn and attempt the difficult crossing the following morning. But the young lord, impetuous by nature, urges an immediate crossing; spurred on by the thoughtless Tanzaburo, the young lord fords the treacherous stream on horseback. Tanzaburo begins to regret his role in calling for an immediate crossing the moment his own turn arrives. Although Shikibu and Katsutaro try to guide their charge carefully, Tanzaburo falls from his saddle and disappears in the current.

As soon as Kamizaki Shikibu reaches the shore, he orders his son Katsutaro to drown himself in the river. Prior to the journey, Kamizaki had guaranteed to Tanzaburo's father the safety of the son. Once the pledge is broken, Kamizaki, in true samurai fashion, demands of himself the same loss inflicted on the father of Tanzaburo.

When the entourage finally returns to Settsu, Kamizaki and his wife exile themselves from society to pray for the salvation of Katsutaro. Hearing of Shikibu's sacrifice, the father of Tanzaburo is impelled to leave society with his family and likewise pray for the salvation of the unfortunate Katsutaro.

“FEMALE BANDITS”

Most of the works in Dazai's A Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces have a rural setting. Occasionally a story has both a rural and an urban setting. “Female Bandits” is one of these latter tales; it is also the only story in the collection to explicitly contrast urban and rural values.

A prosperous bandit from the northern region of Sendai arrives at the capital of Kyoto to amuse himself. Though uncouth, he gains a considerable reputation throughout the town as a liberal spender. One day he catches sight of an attractive girl and falls immediately in love. Overwhelming the girl's greedy father with munificent gifts, the bandit wins the girl as his bride and takes her off to Sendai.

At first the girl is appalled at the barbarism of life in the north; she is also shocked to discover the source of her husband's prosperity. Within a short time, however, she becomes accustomed to her new life. After giving birth to two girls, she sees to it that both are brought up wise in the methods of brigandage.

When the daughters reach late adolescence, their father is crushed to death in an avalanche of snow. At first, there is some argument as to whether the two daughters, with help from their mother, can continue their dangerous and demanding way of life.

Eventually a strange turn of events brings their operation to a halt. Having divided a stolen fabric, each sister concocts a secret scheme to kill the other. Disillusioned with the uncouth ways of Sendai, each sister has begun yearning for a feminine mode of life. Each sister wants the other's fabric to make herself a lined kimono.

Before anything drastic can occur, the younger sister breaks into tears and begs forgiveness. Having caught sight of smoke rising from a nearby crematorium, she has suddenly come to realize the vanity and evanescence of human life. The elder sister, needless to say, makes a similar confession and asks forgiveness. Thereupon the two sisters, in the company of their mother, renounce the world and take up a life of prayer in expiation for the misdeeds of their past.

“THE GREAT RED DRUM”

[In “The Great Red Drum,”] Tokubei, a weaver in the Nishijin area of Kyoto, has always been an industrious worker and upright person. Despite his good qualities, he seems destined to live out his life in poverty. While the other weaving establishments carry on a thriving business, Tokubei's remains close to bankruptcy.

When it becomes known throughout Nishijin that Tokubei will be hard pressed to meet his debts at year's end, ten of his peers agree to donate ten ryo apiece in hopes of giving the worthy man the start he needs. They deliver the money to Tokubei's house and celebrate the occasion with a boisterous party. After the guests depart, Tokubei and his wife discover that the money is also gone. Despondent over the loss, the couple decide to put an end to their misfortunes.

Tokubei's wife adorned herself in the white kimono she had managed to keep despite their poverty. Then, facing the mirror to comb down the black hair people had praised from her childhood, she mourned her nineteen years of conjugal intimacy suddenly reduced to a mere predawn dream.

She composed herself and gently woke her two children. The older child, a girl, mumbled drowsily: “Is it New Year's, Mommy?” The younger, a boy, asked whether she would buy him a top today.

Blinded by tears Tokubei and his wife set the children without a word before the alter. Holding aloft the vigil lamps with their quivering flames, each member of the family joined his hand in prayer to the ancestral spirits.

In the nick of time a nursemaid rushes in to put a stop to the proceedings. When word of the theft spreads in the neighborhood, the famous Judge Itakura is called in to solve the crime.

His solution is ingenious. After narrowing the number of suspects to a group of ten men, he decrees that each suspect, with the assistance of his nearest female relative, must carry a large red drum from his office to the Hachiman shrine and back. Ten days later, when each couple has carried the drum once, Itakura assembles the suspects:

Now among this group there is one woman who, upon entering the cedar forest with the great drum, raised such an insane racket she seemed to be possessed by a devil. One by one she brought up her husband's past blunders, while he tried in vain to calm her. So nettled did the husband grow at the increasing clamor that, as they emerged from the forest into the field, he counseled her in a hushed voice: “Calm down please. If we can persevere in this nasty chore, the one hundred ryo will be ours. When we return home take a look in the chest of drawers.”

Surely the speaker remembers his own strange words. The gods didn't inform on him. But the young acolyte I ordered to hide inside the drum heard all and reported back to me. Now you know why that red drum was so heavy.

“THE REFINED MAN”

Dazai wrote several stories between the end of World War II and his death in 1948 that seem to reflect his awareness that he was not fulfilling his role as a husband and father. Typically these stories depict a man squandering his income while his wife remains at home trying to meet her household responsibilities as best she can. The present story, “The Refined Man,” might well be considered the first in this thematic series of tales.

It is the last day of the year, that favored day in Saikaku's writings when all debts must be cleared. Dazai's “Refined Man” departs early from home, leaving his wife with only a few inadequate coins to meet the crowd of anticipated creditors. Arriving at one of the few teahouses where he is unknown, the protagonist presents himself as a wealthy patron looking for a place to pass the time. He tells the teahouse matron that his wife is expected to bear a child this very day, and that the people attending her have chased him from home.

The matron, wise in the ways of the world, sees through this tale, but goes along with his pretension. She serves up a boiled egg and a plate of herring roe, along with several cups of sake. With the help of an aging geisha, the matron soon relieves the “Refined Man” of his paltry fortune.

Unable to maintain the pretense of wealth any longer, the man dismisses the geisha and stretches out on the floor of the teahouse parlor to sleep through the rest of the day. Presently two henchmen burst in to admonish him for wasting the money he owes his creditors. They strip him of his jacket, kimono, and sword. Left with only his underwear, the “Refined Man” fabricates an outlandish explanation for the intrusion and insists on remaining in the teahouse until evening in order to leave unseen.

“ADMONITION”

“Admonition” describes an adventure of three young dandies from Kyoto. Bored with the pleasures of their own city, the dandies journey in search of new amusements to Edo, the city that developed into modern Tokyo. At first they find Edo little different from Kyoto. Eventually, however, their attention is drawn to a store where goldfish are sold for considerable sums. Awestruck, the three friends do not recognize in the seedy fellow selling mosquito larvae for goldfish food their bosom friend of earlier days, Tsukiyo no Risa. The latter, who has recognized his old cronies, tries to slip away unnoticed, but, before he can escape, the three dandies catch up with him and begin railing at his aloofness.

Tsukiyo no Risa invites his old friends to a wretched tavern and treats them to drinks with the money he has just earned selling larvae. Eventually the four companions wend their way to Tsukiyo no Risa's house, where the three Kyoto blades renew another old acquaintanceship. Once an attractive Kyoto geisha, Tsukiyo no Risa's wife Kichishu is now a careworn housewife with four “monkey-faced” boys to look after. Appalled by the squalor of Tsukiyo no Risa's life, the three friends surreptitiously leave behind some money as they depart from the house. Their friend stubbornly refuses such charity and leaves shortly thereafter for the countryside with his family. The three dandies return home, vowing to amend their lives. The sight of an old friend fallen into misfortune has served as a reproach to their own carefree, luxurious mode of life.

“MOUNT YOSHINO”

[In “Mount Yoshino”] ayoung man, for reasons never precisely disclosed, has rejected society and exiled himself deep in the Yoshino Hills of Nara Prefecture. Confessing that his action was rash and regrettable, the hermit writes an old friend lamenting his exile and imploring certain favors.

The harsh demands of a solitary life in the wild have obliterated the vague romantic notions that seem to have prompted the move into exile. Mentioning an aristocratic poem which “elegantly confuses” snow on a bush with the eagerly awaited spring flowers, the writer bitterly complains that, for him, snow is simply snow. He reserves even harsher criticism for the peasants and farmers in the vicinity. By the hermit's reckoning, these scoundrels are out to gouge him for the simple necessities he must buy just to survive.

In the course of the letter, he confesses his desire to return to society. But several considerations prevent such a move, particularly the thought of his fearsome grandmother who might have already discovered that he has stolen her cache of money. After asking his correspondent to carry out several transactions, the hermit brings his letter to a close on an uncertain note. Unable to return to society, he expresses the hope that his acquaintances will see their way to paying him a visit in the spring.

A RETELLING OF THE TALES FROM THE PROVINCES IN RETROSPECT

The hermit in “Mount Yoshino” is the closest figure in the collection to what might be termed a Dazai surrogate. In general, the stories depict outgoing people active within their respective societies. The brooding, withdrawn figure so common in Dazai's earlier works is almost nonexistent in the world of Saikaku.

This is not to imply that Dazai, in choosing to re-create Saikaku, misjudged the nature of his own talent. Quite the contrary, for some of the finest passages in A Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces—the drinking scene in “Stubborn in Poverty” with its gruff camaraderie, for example—represent social activities. And Dazai, it must be added, was not simply borrowing Saikaku's deft skill at colloquial, idiomatic dialogue. In his next important work, Tsugaru, Dazai utilized his own talent for dialogue to vividly re-create scenes of nostalgic camaraderie he experienced himself on a trip through the region of his birth. Indeed, in reading Tsugaru, one almost feels that Saikaku has taught Dazai to relax and enjoy himself in the company of others. The priggish Dazai of “Beggar-Student” is nowhere in evidence in Tsugaru.

On another plane Dazai conceivably sought in Saikaku some kind of religious or ethical guidance. Readers familiar with Saikaku's superficial treatment of certain moral and religious problems of early Tokugawa Japan may well question such a suggestion. It is nonetheless remarkable how often religion plays a momentary but crucial role in A Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces. Consider, for example, Waniguchi's monkish guise in “Great Strength,” the religious obstacle to the marriage proposed in “The Monkey's Grave,” the Buddhistic sense of life's emptiness in the final scene of “Female Bandits,” the moral lesson of a friend's decline in “Admonition,” the sense of futility at leading the purest kind of religious life in “Mount Yoshino.” And a careful search will begin to uncover here and there in the collection Dazai's own moral notions presented as a natural expression of character or plot. One recalls Naisuke in “Stubborn in Poverty,” ready to claim a right precisely when it goes against his self-interest, or the monkey Kichibei in “The Monkey's Grave,” unselfishly carrying out a service which becomes a disaster for those he would serve. The brooding Dazai surrogate may be missing, but the style and the “ideas in disguise” reveal the author behind these tales.

Above all, Dazai possibly saw many of the characters of A Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces as examples of simplicity in the face of complex urbanity, and frugality in the face of extravagance. Such themes are especially evident in “Bankruptcy,” “River of the Naked,” and “Obligation,” where the simple demands and prompt, virtuous actions of samurai figures contrast with the deceptive and selfish behavior of the commoners, the merchants, and the pampered higher nobility. A sophisticated contemporary reader might criticize Dazai for seeking anything other than the entertainment values of good narrative in the world of Saikaku; but it seems likely that Dazai saw in such virtues as frugality and simplicity a bulwark against the self-destructive conduct of his youth. In this sense A Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces reaffirms the resolution that Dazai voiced on the occasion of his marriage to Ishihara Michiko to develop his talents in pursuit of a useful life.

A COLLECTION OF FAIRY TALES: “TAKING THE WEN”

The first of Dazai's four tales is entitled “Taking the Wen.” In his introductory comments to this tale, Dazai records his belief that the earliest extant text is that contained in the thirteenth-century collection Tales from Uji. Evidently Dazai read to his daughter during the war from one of the children's editions of fairy tales, editions which generally rework the original story in a simple, colloquial style.

The Uji text of “Taking the Wen” is vague about the domestic situation of the main character, an old firewood gatherer. The first paragraph, after mentioning the wen on the man's right cheek, moves quickly to a description of a storm that detains the wood gatherer in the forest one day. Hiding in the hollow of a tree, the old man notices a swarm of hideous demons gathering nearby. The demons drink themselves into a merry state, and presently each is in turn performing his favorite dance. So entranced by their spirit is the old man that he ventures forth to perform the most exciting dance of all.

The demons ask the old man to return another day to dance; to guarantee his return, they take the wen from his cheek as a kind of security. Thereupon the wood gatherer returns home and reveals the adventure to his wife and neighbor. The neighbor, an old man with a wen on his left cheek, decides to have his wen removed in the same way. But he dances so poorly that the demons decide to attach the first man's wen to the right cheek of the second. A moral, appended at the end of the tale, cautions against envy.

Dazai expands the tale considerably. As in his adaptation of Saikaku's “Stubborn in Poverty,” he makes the action of “Taking the Wen” more diverse and the characters more complex. He describes at length the old wood gatherer, a mediocre man with a cold, efficient wife and a virtuous prig of a son. The old man seems impelled to drink as a cure for loneliness; with no friends whatever, he is reduced to regarding the wen on his cheek as the focus of his affections.

In Dazai's version the wood gatherer goes forth to dance in front of the demons, emboldened by an evening of solitary drinking. The demons are again so pleased by the dance that they take the wen to assure the old man's return. Upon his arrival at home, only the neighbor with the wen on his left cheek seems interested in the old man's adventure. As in the original, the neighbor enters the woods in hopes of having his wen removed, only to end up with a wen on both cheeks.

Dazai's alterations of the original tale tend to underline the theme of camaraderie. The wood gatherer is not depicted as lonely in the original tale, and his wen is simply a physical deformity. Dazai's wood gatherer, quite tipsy at the time, seems drawn to the demons mainly by their revelry. The demons, in turn, are greatly impressed by the utter spontaneity with which the old man performs his simple folk dance.

Dazai implies that self-dignity and formality are obstacles to friendship and camaraderie. The son of the old man takes his meals in decorous silence and responds in absurdly formal language to the naïve questions of his father. The neighbor exasperates the demons with his self-consciously formal attempt to perform a dance as he declaims a strange poetic passage derived from such diverse sources as No drama and Shimazaki Toson. Finally, in a long, emphatic (and totally irrelevant) passage, Dazai intrudes to contemptuously dismiss the reverence accorded by the Japanese to certain paragons of contemporary culture.

The two earlier works already treated in this chapter, A Retelling of the Tales from the Provinces and Tsugaru, help to illuminate the motives behind Dazai's decision to turn the old man in “Taking the Wen” into a figure of pathos. In the two earlier works, scenes of warm friendship most commonly occur when men gather together for drinking. In “Taking the Wen” the old man forgets his habitual loneliness and grows ecstatic just once: when he realizes that the creatures before him, although hideous demons, are nonetheless drinkers like himself.

Still, his trust in the demons proves to be misplaced. For, in accordance with the traditional tale, the demons deprive the old man of his sole consolation, the wen he has come to regard as an affectionate grandchild. In the end, a reader might conclude that the demons simply show their true colors. Dazai, however, nullifies such an interpretation with his parting remark. He declares everyone blameless—including the supposedly “envious” neighbor who, by Dazai's correct reading of the original, is guilty only of being overly tense about performing in front of the demons. The tale becomes a comedy of errors demonstrating, in Dazai's terms, the “tragicomedy” of human character. Dazai has returned to the world of “The Monkey's Grave,” where the innocent and well-intentioned being becomes victimized by his own actions.

“THE TALE OF URASHIMA”

In “The Tale of Urashima,” on the other hand, he quotes only a snatch or two from a traditional version near the end of his retelling. Indeed, reading Dazai's work, one sometimes has the impression that the author is more intent on elaborating certain of his pet ideas than in rendering a modern version of a traditional tale.

The original Urashima is often referred to as the Japanese Rip Van Winkle. Urashima, a young man from a fishing village, rescues a sea turtle from some mischievous children and sets the animal free on the beach. Later the turtle returns to thank Urashima and to take the young man on his back to the underwater realm of Ryugu. Urashima visits the princess of Ryugu and passes a number of carefree days in her realm before deciding to return home. Upon his departure the princess gives Urashima a small box with instructions never to open it.

When he reaches the beach near his village, Urashima fails to recognize the scenes and people he knew before. Disappointed, he opens the box, in spite of the princess's warning. Thereupon, a puff of white smoke comes forth from the box and Urashima instantly turns into an old man in tatters.

Dazai, assuming a knowledge of the traditional tale in his reader, spends his early paragraphs developing a portrait of Urashima. Dazai's Urashima is an eldest son, with certain pretensions that draw criticism from his younger brother and sister. Proud of his aesthetic and cultural sense, he longs for a world where people are not subjected to the harsh criticisms of others. In this wish, he conceivably represents his creator, Dazai. In most of his attitudes, Urashima resembles the typical eldest son of a propertied family of the times, a conservative in line to inherit the wealth and status that assure a life of comfort.

Thus, his reluctance at first to accept the turtle's offer of a ride is quite understandable. A true aesthete by nature, Urashima believes that such mythical places as Ryugu exist only in the minds of poets. Only after the turtle affirms that criticism and cavil do not exist in the underworld realm and that Urashima's reluctance to make the trip reveals a lack of trust in the turtle does the young man consent to the ride.

When Urashima arrives at the underwater realm, he finds practiced certain ideals he would like to see in human society. For example, the princess who welcomes Urashima possesses a self-reliant composure; she neither criticizes others nor covets their praise for herself. She plays the koto or Japanese harp beautifully, with no concern whether others hear her music.

Yet, Urashima soon discovers the negative side of his ideals. After meeting the lovely princess, Urashima follows her toward what he assumes will be her palace. But the human courtesies, along with the bickering, do not exist under the sea. The princess, the turtle explains to Urashima, has already forgotten her guest, as she goes in pursuit of whatever pleases her fancy at the moment.

The underwater world, then, is peaceful (an intimation, perhaps, of Dazai's suicide by drowning); but it is not very interesting. There is no anxiety and, thus, in Dazai's terms, there can be no literature. Urashima spends his days eating, drinking cherry wine, and, eventually, frolicking in the princess's chamber. But, as he finally admits, he “is a human and belongs on land.” Again, unlike the turtle (“Is this amphibious creature a fish of the sea or a reptile of the land?” Urashima ponders), he is all of a piece and cannot divide his time between two fundamentally different spheres. Ultimately, Urashima turns missionary. Unwilling to simply renounce the peace of the underwater world for the interest of the human, he decides to teach this latter world the ideals he has learned.

Dazai's narrative from the departure of Urashima for home to the end is much closer to the traditional tale than the early part of his work. Within the narration of events, only one crucial difference occurs: the princess in Dazai's version says nothing in giving the box to Urashima.

The traditional tale, brief and cryptic, does not venture a statement as to the moral of the events. Dazai, however, seems bent on wrenching some significance from these strange happenings. He spends several paragraphs examining the differences between the outcome of the Greek story of “Pandora's Box” and the Urashima legend. Since the gods were taking revenge on man and the box still contained “hope” after all the evils were let loose, the Greek tale seems more acceptable to “human” understanding than the Japanese. Nevertheless, Dazai regards “The Tale of Urashima” as representative of the “profound compassion” discernible in the Japanese fairy tale. “The passing of time is man's salvation; forgetfulness is man's salvation,” the author recites in almost the final lines of his work. The nostalgia Urashima might feel for the past is swiftly foreclosed as he moves three hundred years into the future. And, Dazai adds with no warrant from the traditional tale, he “lived ten years thereafter as a happy old man.”

“THE CRACKLING MOUNTAIN”

More clearly than the other three works of this collection, “The Crackling Mountain” reveals Dazai's method of abstracting a “moral” or “truth” from the original tale, then clarifying his discovery by alterations and additions in the retelling. In Dazai's version of “The Crackling Mountain,” the traditionally virtuous hare is revealed as a scheming vixen while the traditionally villainous badger becomes a pathetic victim of cruelty.

In the traditional tale an old man and his wife have a pet hare. One day a badger gobbles up the food intended for the hare. Seizing the badger, the old man ties him to a tree and threatens to kill him. When the man goes off to cut wood, the desperate badger cajoles the wife into setting him free. Then, avenging himself on the old man, the badger kills the wife and makes a broth with her remains. When the old man returns, the badger transforms himself into the form of the wife and serves the dish. After the meal the badger assumes his true form and tells the man he has just relished the remains, not of a badger, but of his wife.

Having learned of the tragedy, the hare determines to wreak vengeance on the badger. First, the hare sets fire to the faggots the badger carries on his back. (The title of the story derives from a remark during this episode; when the badger detects a strange “crackling” sound at his back, the hare explains away the phenomenon as a regular occurrence on “Crackling Mountain.”) Later, feigning concern, the hare applies a poultice of cayenne pepper to the badger's back. The climax occurs as the hare tricks the badger into making a journey to the moon in a clay boat. The hare ventures forth on a river in his wood boat, followed by the badger in his boat of clay. Only when the badger's boat begins to sink does the hare show his true feelings. In the vivid language of Mitford's translation:

… then the hare, seizing his paddle and brandishing it in the air, struck savagely at the badger's boat until he had smashed it to pieces, and killed his enemy.

When the old man heard that his wife's death had been avenged, he was glad in his heart, and more than ever petted the hare, whose brave deeds had caused him to welcome the returning spring.

From the opening paragraph of his retelling, Dazai evinces a concern for the fate of the badger. Apparently the children's version Dazai read to his daughter had the badger wound rather than kill the old woman. His daughter, reacting to the violence of the conclusion, remarked about the “poor badger,” and Dazai seems to have sympathized with her response. Upset in particular with what he regarded as the unjust treatment of the badger, Dazai decided to give both animals in the tale entirely new representational roles.

The hare becomes an attractive girl of sixteen, with a dawning realization of her power over infatuated males. The badger becomes a thirty-seven-year-old man, a lecher and glutton with an extremely dark complexion. It should be added that Dazai does not portray these two figures as a girl and a man; he merely says that, in fact, the badger is such a man and the hare such a girl. Focusing intently on these two figures, Dazai, except for brief references, eliminates the old man and woman from his account.

As with the two previous tales, Dazai adds “personalities” to the cardboard figures of the traditional badger and hare. The badger, anxious to present himself in the best possible light to the hare, lies about his age and shows himself willing to go along with the merest whim of the hare. But so lazy and lecherous is the badger that he cannot conceal these weaknesses and thus becomes an easy prey for the watchful hare.

To a degree Dazai describes the badger in terms suggestive of himself. The dark complexion of the animal recalls an adolescent concern of the author; the actual age of the badger is perilously close to Dazai's at the time he wrote the tale. When the badger drools in sexual anticipation, packs a lunch in a box the size of an “oil can,” or fails to see that the hare selling him medicine is the vengeful hare, the reader is sorely tempted to conclude that Dazai's penchant for self-satire is again at work. And then, one reads in the commentary by Okuno Tateo that Dazai in fact is poking fun at a friend, Tanaka Eiko. With that piece of knowledge, there dawns a new realization concerning Dazai's art: he has developed methods of comedy and satire so firmly in his earlier works of self-denigration that the attempt to satirize another runs the risk of emerging as self-satire. Dazai had saddled himself with a method, and he remained in large measure subject to the limitations of that method until the final work of his career, a brief fragment entitled “Good-bye.”

“THE SPLIT-TONGUE SPARROW”

Like two other stories in the volume, “The Split-Tongue Sparrow” describes an adventure involving an elderly married couple. As in the case of “Taking the Wen,” the couple in “The Split-Tongue Sparrow” are at odds with one another.

The old man has a pet sparrow which he nurtures with great care. One day the sparrow pecks away at his wife's starch paste, whereupon the enraged woman cuts out the sparrow's tongue. When the old man returns and hears that the unfortunate sparrow has fled, he decides to search out the bird.

Presently the old man finds himself at the sparrow's home in the woods. After a hospitable reception and visit with the sparrow's family, the old man is offered the choice of a parting gift. Two wicker baskets, one heavy and one light, are put before him. Explaining that he is too decrepit to carry a heavy burden, the old man chooses the lighter basket and sets out for home. When he opens the basket at home, he discovers a treasure of gold, silver, and other valuables.

His wife, unable to control her greed, asks the way to the sparrow's home and immediately sets out in hopes of securing a second treasure. She manages to find the house and persuade the sparrow to offer her a gift. Once again, two wicker baskets are brought forth, and the woman unhesitatingly chooses the heavier one. On the way home she opens her booty—only to release a host of goblins who torment and frighten her to death. The old man adopts a son and lives a prosperous life thenceforth.

In his recreation of “The Split-Tongue Sparrow,” Dazai again acts more as commentator than storyteller. He explains that he initially intended to include among his stories the celebrated tale of “Peach-Boy.” However, Peach-Boy is simply too perfect a hero for Dazai's taste. A weak person like himself, Dazai apologizes, simply cannot identify with such a hero.

Of course, self-abasement is a theme common to much of Dazai's writing. But, as Edward Seidensticker has pointed out, Dazai's self-abasement alternates with sudden manifestations of pride. In his version of “The Split-Tongue Sparrow” there is no such explicit manifestation by the author. Yet, in remarking that the old man is not quite forty years old, Dazai hints that the man is a surrogate for himself and thus nudges the reader to identify the old man's psychology as his own.

The old man makes an interesting study. A subdued, gentle creature almost overwhelmed by a shrewish wife, the old man can scarcely articulate his ideas and reactions. He feels most comfortable bent over a book or scattering seeds for his pet sparrow. Only in conversing with the sparrow does the old man show himself verbally adept. Late in Dazai's story, when he finds the sparrow mute because of her split tongue, the old man is perfectly content, as the sparrow also seems to be, to sit and enjoy the quiet.

Such a man can hardly endure the assaults of criticism. When his wife claims she overheard him talking in their house to a girl with a charming voice and demands an explanation, the old man meekly acknowledges his conversation with the sparrow. Imagine a callous wife accepting a tale like that! And, even when the sparrow criticizes him for inactivity, the old man can only claim that he is hopefully awaiting the arrival of a task he alone can perform.

How seriously should the reader take this old man? Dazai's ending, though slightly different from the traditional version, has the old man surviving his greedy wife to live in prosperity. The old man in Dazai's tale attains a high official position, and refers sardonically to the role his wife's “efforts” have played in his rise to prominence.

Dazai does not explicitly show any sympathy for the pathetic wife. Yet, recalling his sympathetic treatment of the traditionally evil badger of “The Crackling Mountain” and the envious old neighbor of “Taking the Wen,” one wonders whether the author didn't harbor like sympathy for the woman. Shrewish and greedy she is. But she does hear her husband speaking to someone with a charming, feminine voice; and she is unable to communicate with him, not because he is genuinely timid, but simply because pride keeps him from dealing with people in a normal, human way. Perhaps the old man is correct in claiming that people simply lie to one another and, therefore, it is best to remain silent. But the reader of Dazai suspects that his author was capable of regarding such an attitude as a mere pretension of superiority, as he hinted in “Mount Yoshino.” Again, in portraying the sparrow as a puppet two feet high, Dazai, according to Okuno Tateo, intimates that the old man's interest in his pet is erotic in nature. There is little in the man's reactions to the sparrow to confirm such a judgment, but one is always left with the unsolved question of why Dazai changed the neutral, colorless sparrow of the traditional work into a young female with an enchanting voice.