2009-03-23

Fountain of age

A tale of filial piety from SUZUKI Shōsan 鈴木正三's Donkey-saddle bridge 驢鞍橋 (previously:

一日人来曰、去大名の奥方、我れむさき事を作して、人にさらゑさする事恐れ也と云て、雪陰をさらゆる者に銭をくれ給ふと云。師聞曰、扨々有難人哉。尤の事也。我も衆聚たらば、片廻りにさらゑさすべし。後世を願ふ者は、さなき事にさへ人を使ふは悪き也。[...]

是に付て古き物語を思ひ出す。去る山寺に博士一宿す。明日其寺に十二三の児有を見て曰、此児、夕部までは三日の中に死すべき相有けるが、今朝は八十迄の長命の相に成。一夜の中に七十年の寿延たる事不思議也。何たる善心を起されたぞ、いかなる善根ばしせられたぞと問。一寺の衆も驚子細を問。児曰、何たる善根も作たる覚ゑなし。夕部雪陰ゑ行ければ、踏板よごれて暫時がほども居にくかりし時、ふと思ひ当るやうは、片時の間さゑ、かやうに居にくきに、我母は総身屎尿になれども、更に苦と思ふ念なく、只かわゆひと計思ひ給ゑる深恩、扨々報じ難き事哉と。此恩に報ふと思ひ、手を以て雪陰の板のよごれたるを払清む。別に覚ゑなしと云。人人此功徳なりとて、感ぜられたると云。是貴き物語に非ずやと也。

A visitor one day said: "They say that a certain Daimyō's wife feels so bad about having someone else clean her outhouse after she gets it all disgusting that she tips the cleaner." Hearing this, the Master said: "Well, well, what a rare bird! What an excellent thing to do! I'm going to have to work up a cleaning roster for when people get together here too. It's wrong for someone who cares about the afterlife to make others do that kind of work for them. [...]

"This reminds me of an old story. There was once a scholar who spent the night at a mountain temple. In the morning, when he saw the boy of twelve or thirteen who lived there, he said: 'Last night that boy looked like he'd be dead within three days, but today he looks like he might live until he's eighty. To extend your life by seventy years overnight is quite a marvel. What manner of virtue has been aroused within you, what kind of good deed did you do?' he asked. Everyone else in the temple was equally surprised and asked for details too. 'Please, guv'nor,' the boy said, 'I don't remember no good deed. Last night when I went to the outhouse, the floor was so disgusting that it was almost unbearable, even for just a few minutes, but then it occurred to me: I could hardly stand it here even for a moment, but even when my mother had been covered in shit and piss, she hadn't think of it as suffering at all — no, she'd just thought I was more adorable than ever. How could I ever repay such deep love? Well, as a first step, I used my hands to clean the outhouse floor. I don't remember anything else to speak of.' Everyone was very moved by the boy's meritorious deed. Isn't that a great story?

Shōsan's appeal, for me, lies as much in his language as anything else. He was liable to slip into casual speech or dialect when dealing with ordinary folks, and even when he stays in a fairly high register, as he does here, the result is still freakishly easy reading.

In this passage there are several great words or turns of phrase. Setsuin 雪陰, for example: a sadly extinct Buddhist word for "outhouse," with several competing etymologies half-submerged in the murk of pre-modernity.

Musa(k)i is another good one, an adjective meaning "disgusting, vulgar, greedy," which survives nowadays as a prefix: musakurushii ("messy, dishevelled", from musa + kurushii, "trying, painful"); musaboru ("crave, lust after", from musa + horu, "want").

More obscurely: 扨 for sate I have discussed before. (抔 for nado also gets a good workout in this book.) And the use of ゑ instead of へ for the directional particle is, if I am not mistaken, in accordance with the erroneous style decreed by Fujiwara Teika himself.

Popularity factor: 6

§

denske:

'Please, guv'nor'? That set off a wicked Mary Poppins flashback.

§

Sgt. Tanuki:

Cool. I wasn't really aware of Suzuki Shôsan, but this is a great little anecdote. You're right about the prose, too: freakishly easy to read.

So do you have any sense of what a 雪隠 would have consisted of? You translate 板 as "floor," which is probably essentially what it was, but I'm picturing a board laid across the hole. "Board" or "plank" here might be more evocative - and really, when we're discussing privies, I think we can all agree that the more evocative you get, the better.

Also, I wanted to bring up this matter of 相. You kind of elide it by translating it "looked like," but I'd imagine (and I'm sure you're aware) he's referring to a more particularly Buddhist belief in signs of enlightenment/salvation/auspicious fate/whatever being visible in one's countenance. I don't know quite how to get all this into a translation of 相. Something like "your face bore the signs of someone who would be dead within three days," maybe? That might be overdoing it...

§

無名酒:

相 as physiognomy isn't particularly Buddhist. It's not not Buddhist, but Daoists and other sorts claimed it as well. (As in the first chapter of Genji has it, people from the continent were supposed to be particularly good at it, even if physiognomy per se doesn't have to be originally Chinese. So maybe it's best part of the mess of things that came over. And which, like Song-style medicine, monks tended to be associated with; even if it wasn't exclusively Buddhist.)

§

Matt:

Yeah, to be honest I wasn't sure what the precise meaning of fumiita was (a step up to the raised hole-seat? something you step on while doing your business? something you lay across the hole and step on instead of falling into it, as you suggest? etc.), so I fudged it. If anyone can hook me up with some reportage on premodern monastic bathrooms, now is the time. Either way, you're right, "board(s)" would have been better.

As for 相, I actually meant to bring this up in my discussion afterwards, but... forgot. Like MMS suggests, I think that it's not so much specifically Buddhist as something that Buddhist monks tend to be associated with because, in Japan since post-Heian times at least, they are the ones who do most of the heavy lifting w/r/t esotericism and mystical beliefs. (The 博士 here was presumably big on studies of that kind.)

§

Sgt. Tanuki:

Re 相, the question is, is the 博士 thinking in terms of physiognomy, which you're right had a wider currency than just Buddhism, or was he thinking in terms of the way 相 occurs in sutras and other specifically Buddhist contexts? It's probably impossible to tell, as these concepts would have been fused long before this time, but the fact that the anecdote is connecting these 相 specifically with good deeds is what made me wonder...

I loves me a good translation problem. I'm glad I found your blog, Matt.

§

無名酒:

Just to clarify a little, I can say that 相 as a term is used oft in divination texts, and in compounds can refer specifically for geomancy.

These were not divorced from Buddhism (while sometimes onmyoji were allowed in places monks were forbidden, like new-built houses less than 3 days inhabited), of course. And that's Heian, which is a bit before Mr. Suzuki's Method, above. (A new book,　平安文学の環境 has a chapter 相と夢, incidentally.)

Comment season is closed.