Japanese Literature PDF

# Chapter 8 JAPANESE LITERATURE ## Objectives: 1. Discuss the important facts and figures about Japan 2. Trace the development of Japanese literature from the beginning up to modern period 3. Identify the life and works of Japanese authors 4. Summarize the novel Tale of Genji 5. Find pleasure in r...

# Chapter 8 JAPANESE LITERATURE ## Objectives: 1. Discuss the important facts and figures about Japan 2. Trace the development of Japanese literature from the beginning up to modern period 3. Identify the life and works of Japanese authors 4. Summarize the novel Tale of Genji 5. Find pleasure in reading and analyzing Haikus 6. Compose Haikus ## Introduction: JAPAN ### Facts About ### LAND - Area: 377,801 sq. km (145,870 sq. mi) - Capital and largest city: Tokyo (1993 est. pop., 8,080, 246) ### PEOPLE - Population (1995 est.): 125,200,000; density: 331.4 persons per sq. km (858.3 per sq. mi) - Distribution (1995 est.): 77% urban, 23% rural - Annual Growth (1995 est.) 0.3% - Official Language: Japanese - Major religions: Buddhism, Shinto ### EDUCATION AND HEALTH - Literacy (1995): virtually 100% of adult population - Universities and graduate schools (1992): 523 - Hospital beds (1992): 1,678,000 - Physicians (1992): 218,008 - Life expectancy (1995 est.): women 83 men-76 - Infant mortality (1995 est.): 4.3 per 1,000 live births ### ECONOMY - GNP (1994): $28,190 per capita - Labor distribution (1993): agriculture - 6%; manufacturing and mining -23%; construction - 10%; utilities, transport, and communication -7%; trade and finance - 26%; public administration and defense - 3%; service -23% - Foreign trade (1994): imports - $ 231 billion; exports $339.5 billion; principal trade partners - United States, Taiwan, Hongkong, China - Currency: 1 yen = 100 sen ### GOVERNMENT - Type: Constitutional monarchy - Legislature: Diet - Government leaders (1996): Akihito - emperor, Hashimoto Ryutaro-prime minister - Political subdivisions: 47 prefectures ### COMMUNICATIONS - Railroads (1992): 38, 125 km (23,690 mi) total - Roads (1992): 1, 112,844 km (691,844 mi) total - Major ports: 5 - Major airfields: 4 Japan is one of the world's leading industrial and trading nations and the first Asian nation to develop a technologically advanced industrial economy. It is a small country compared with such nations as the United States but it is larger than the United Kingdom, Germany, and all other major European nations except Sweden, France, and Spain. Before World War II, Japan was the center of an empire that at times included Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria, much of eastern China, southern Sakhalin island, and the Marshall and Marianas islands of the southwest Pacific. Today, following concessions of territory at the end of the war, Japan, greatly reduced in size, consists of four main islands - Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu - and hundreds of lesser islands that stretch in a series of arcs for nearly 3,000 km (1,875 mi) along the eastern edge of the Asian mainland. Japan's closest neighbor is Russia; Sakhalin island, a Russian possession, reaches to within 50 km (31 mi) of Hokkaido across the narrow Soya (La Perouse) Strait. The nearest mainland neighbor is South Korea, which lies about 200 km (124 mi) west of Japan across the Korea Strait. To the southwest is Taiwan, and to the north, the Russian mainland. The name Japan is based on the Chinese reading of the name Nihon or Nippon, which means "land of the rising sun." The islands were known to European traders during the 15th century, but during the Tokugawa period (1603-1867), an era of isolation, Japan developed a highly original and distinctive culture. The country reopened contact and trade with the outside world under the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912). Although Japan possessed few industrial raw materials, it developed into one of the world's leading industrialized nations. Japan waged war against the Allies during World War II but surrendered after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The country achieved a rapid recovery, and Japan became the world's second leading economic power, after the United States. ### LAND AND RESOURCES Japan's four main islands, which together constitute 98% of the total area, are Hokkaido, in the north; Honshu, the largest and most populous, located in the center; and the southern islands of Kyushu and Shikoku. The two southern islands are separated from the main island of Honshu by the protected waters of the Inland Sea, which has been Japan's core for over 2,000 years. Also integral Iki and Tsushima, located in the narrow Korea Strait; and Sado, located off the northwest coast of Honshu, Okinawa, one of the Ryukyu Islands, an island chain located southwest of Kyushu, was administered by the United States after World War II but was restored to Japan in 1972. Located approximately 600 km (375 mi) away in the Pacific Ocean are the Marcus, Bonin, and Volcano (including Iwo Jima) island groups, which were returned to Japan in 1968. Japan disputes the claim by Russia to some of the Kuril Senkaku Islands, which stretch northeastward from Hokkaido, and also the claim by Taiwan to the uninhabited Senkaku Islands located 344 km (213 mi) southwest of Okinawa in an area of rich sea floor petroleum deposits. Japan's islands are part of a tectonically unstable zone of volcanic activity and continuing mountain building that rims the Pacific Ocean. The islands of Japan are actually the peaks of otherwise submerged mountain ranges. About 50 active volcanoes are known in Japan; every year about 1,500 minor earthquakes occur; and hot springs and other features of crustal instability are found. Mount Fuji, a dormant volcano and Japan's highest mountain, rises to 3,776 m (12,388 ft). ### PEOPLE The dominant ethnic group is the Japanese, a Mongol-oid people. The Japanese have developed a culture that was strongly influenced between the 3rd and 10th century by contact with the Chinese and Koreans, contact with the West during the 16th century, isolation during the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), and renewed contact with the West and the rest of the world after 1854. ### EDUCATION Virtually the entire population is literate, education is free and compulsory for all children between the ages of 6 and 15. Education after the age of 15 is a matter of individual choice, but more than 90% of all students, male and female, continue to high school, and about one-third of all students attend an institution of higher education. The higher education system includes about 500 universities and graduate schools and more than 600 junior colleges and technical schools. The latter provide a wide range of practical training. Admission to most schools is highly competitive and based on performance in entrance examinations; the competition to enter a prestigious university is so severe that a large number of juku (extra-hour schools) operate to prepare students for the entrance examination. ### GOVERNMENT Japan is a constitutional monarchy, with a hereditary emperor and a parliamentary system of government. The present constitution was adopted on October 7, 1946, and became effective on May 3, 1947. The emperor is the ceremonial head of state with little governmental power. Emperor Hirohito reigned from 1926 until his death in 1989, he was succeeded by his son Akihito. Legislative power is vested in the Diet, a bicameral body composed of a House of Representatives, with members elected to 4-years term, and a House of Councilors, whose members serve staggered 6-years term. Executive power rests with the cabinet, which is headed by a prime minister, who heads the majority party in the Diet. Judicial power rests with the supreme court, whose justices are appointed by the government but subject to review in public referenda. Each of the 47 prefectures has its own elected governor and assembly. All citizens over the age of 18 are eligible to vote. ### LITERATURE Japanese literature is noteworthy for the rapidity with which it began to flourish after the development of a writing system, for its rich variety of literary forms, and for its continuing vitality and complex development under the influence of Western literature. The major work of classical Japanese literature is the early-11th century novel, Tale of Genji, considered by many critics to be the first true novel of psychological depth and complexity written anywhere in the world. The style of No drama, or Noh drama - restrained dance drama with lyrical, poetic texts and masked actors- has excited considerable interest in the modern West, exerting influence on Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats. The 17-syllable poetic form, the haiku, has become well known outside Japan through a wide Western audience through translation. The Hejan period (794-1185), which takes its name from the establishment of the capital at Heian-kyo, was the high point of purely indigenous prose fiction. Poetry in the classical 31-syllable waka form flourished between the 10th and 14th centuries, in part because of imperially commissioned anthologies. The most famous of these were the Kokinshu of 905 (Eng. trans., 1922) and the Shinkokinshu of 1205. The great dramatic works of No date from the 14th and 15th centuries, while the 17th and 18th centuries were the peak period for the Bunraku and Kabuki theaters. **Beginnings.** The origins of Japanese literature lie in oral poetry and mythology, and the earliest surviving work in Japanese, the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters), transforms such myths into written form, explaining the cosmology of the Japanese and justifying the legitimacy of the ruling house as descendants of the sun goddess. The mid-8th-century Man'yoshu (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) is a compendium of some 4,500 poems in several forms, including both waka and longer poems. The idea of compiling such early works was unquestionably inspired by Chinese models, but these two works mark the beginning of native Japanese literature. The characters are used sometimes for their meaning and sometimes for sound alone. By the 9th century the development of Kana, a syllabic writing system better suited to Japanese, helped foster advances in prose forms. The early 10th century work Tales of Ise is a collection of poems with long prose contexts. The Tosa Diary is a prose travel diary by the courtier-poet KI NO TSURAYUKI, who maintained the ruse of being a woman writer; in fact, the greatest prose works of the period were produced by women. Most famous are The Tale of Genji by MURASAKI SHIKIBU and The Pillow Book, a miscellany of various short comments by SEI SHONAGON. **A Period of Instability.** The Gempei war of 1180-85 brought an end to the comfortable, aesthetic life of courtier-poets and court ladies writing in the capital. These battles, in turn, were the subject of Japan's major epic, the Tale of the Heiks, a work of complex mixed oral and written origins that reached its current form in 1371. Collections of short tales, some religious, some secular in nature, enjoyed continuing popularity A few significant 14th-century works also continued the classical literary style. Most notable of these are The Confessions of Lady Nijo, by the imperial consort, LADY NIJO, and Essays in Idleness, by the Buddhist monk YOSHIDA KENKO. Under government patronage, and largely through the writings of ZEAMI MOTOKIYO, No drama was transformed from rural folk entertainment into a highly literary, dramatic art that is still frequently performed today. **The Tokugawa Period.** Some of the most notable works of the Tokugawa period (named after the shogun, or military governor, Tokugawa Iyeyasu and his successors of 1600-1867) include the haiku and poetic travel accounts of BASHO; the plays of CHIKAMATSU MONZAEMON, author of Bunraku puppet texts of lasting literary value; and the witty fiction of IHARA SAIKAKU, with its dominant themes of lust and greed. Later Tokugawa fiction is best represented by the writings of UEDA AKINARI and TAKIZAWA BAKIN (1767-1848), whose work shows some influence from the flourishing Kabuki theater. **The Modern Period.** Japanese literature of the modern period (1868 to the present) has absorbed the influence of Russian, Western European, and American literature while retaining a characteristically Japanese flavor. TSUBOUCHI SHOYO published a critical monograph, Shosetsu Shinzui (The Essence of the Novel, 1886), which introduced many ideas from Victorian literary criticism as standards for creating a modern style of literature for Japan. Among well-known modern authors, MORI OGAI wrote novels that were often heavily romantic in mood, some based on his experiences in Germany, others dealing with events in Japanese history. The naturalist SHIMAZAKI TOSON is best known for The Broken Commandment (1906; Eng. trans., 1974), which deals with problems of discrimination in society. NATSUME SOSEKI's introspective, philosophical novels assured his enduring public esteem. ABE KOBO produced surrealistic fiction and drama greatly influenced by Western avant-garde literature. The works of both TANIZAKI JUNICHIRO and the Nobel Prize-winning KAWABATA YASUNARI, prolific writers whose careers spanned the years of the Second World War, were extensively translated into English. The writings of MISHIMA YUKIO whose life of right wing political activity, and eventually public suicide, electrified the nation - also found an enthusiastic foreign audience. OE KENZABURO, the 1994 Nobel Prize winner, writes out of a postwar, and post-Hiroshima, sensibility. Contemporary Japanese writing in translation has found a wide audience in the West, in part because much new fiction uses American literary approaches - fast, wild action, low-down language, irreverent attitudes toward social institutions-to make works that are still distinctively Japanese. In Japan the most famous of the young authors who write in this style are HARUKI MURAKAMI (A Wild Sheep Chase, Eng. Trans., 1989). Feminism has also found a literary voice in Japan, through the work of a generation of women writers whose leading voice is probably that of SAWAKO ARIYOSHI (The Doctor's Wife, Eng. trans., 1978; The Kabuki Dancer, Eng. trans., 1995). Kabuki is a popular Japanese theater form in which stylized acting is combined with lyric singing, dancing, and spectacular staging. The characters with which the word Kabuki is written in fact mean song, dance, and acting. The female entertainer OKUNI first performed Kabuki dances and comic Sketches in 1603. Since 1629, however, when women were banned from professional stages, both Kabuki and the puppet drama Bunraku have been performed only by men. In Tokyo, ICHIKAWA DANJURO (1660-1704) created a bravura acting style for such history plays as Saint Narukami (1684), while in Kyoto the elegant actor SAKATA TOJURO (1644-1709) created a gentle, comic style for romantic domestic plays such as Love Letter from the Licensed Quarter (1678). Bunraku plays were adapted for Kabuki actors in the 18th century, and dance plays such as The Subscription List (1840) were adapted from Kyogen and No drama in the 9th. Gangster plays, with thieves and murderers as heroes, were the classic Kabuki plays still performed at commercial theaters in Japan, and some modern authors have tried to create new Kabuki plays. Following the custom of No drama, the all-day Kabuki program provides variety by alternating play types and acting styles. The female impersonator (onnagata) stylizes feminine traits into a half-real, half-artificial art. Background music appropriate to the scene is selected from among some 500 melodies and rhythms and is played by an offstage ensemble consisting of No drums and flute, the three-stringed shamisen, plus a score of other drums, gongs, bells, and flutes. During a dance play, this ensemble - or one playing Joruri music is seated on stage. ### The Tale of Genji The most famous of all Japanese novels, The Tale of Genji was written early in the 11th century by a lady of the court, Murasaki Shikibu, for the amusement of the emperor and his courtiers. Genji, the central character, is the indulged younger son of an ancient emperor, and his adventures, particularly the great loves of his life, are recounted in a style remarkable for its mixture of Japanese romanticism and worldly candor. The most notable female character is the beautiful child Murasaki, who is loved by Genji with all the tremulous yearning of a wooer and adopted by him for her protection. Genji's absence from the last ten chapters of the book suggests that the novel was never finished. The Tale of Genji is valued not only for its picture of court life in Kyoto but for its depth of characterization and stylistic beauty. Lady Murasaki portrays the fogs, the clouds, the flowers, the meditating woman, the mountain, and the monk with all the simplicity and poignancy of traditional Japanese painting. The novel was first translated (1925-33) into English by Arthur Waley. ### The haiku The haiku is a traditional Japanese verse from expressing a single emotion or idea in which 17 syllables are arranged in lines 5,7, and 5 syllables. The form emerged during the 16th century and was developed by BASHO into a refined medium of Buddhist and Taoist symbolism. A vogue for Western imitations of the haiku was initiated by Ezra Pound and other members of the imagist movement. **Haiku** - Matsua Basho * Many, many things They bring up to mind Cherry-blossoms. * On a withered branch A crow has settled Autumn nightfall. * Cool it is and still: Just the tip of a crescent moon Over black-wing Hill. - Old pond: * Frog-jump-in Water sound. * Some of them with staves And white-haired-a whole family Visiting the graves! * Spring rain! And as Yet The little froglets' bellies Haven't got wet! * Noe poem you send In answer - O, young lady! Spring is at its end! * Blossoms on the pear; And a woman in the moonlight Reads a letter there.. * What piercing cold I feel! My dead wife's comb, in our bedroom, Under my heel **By Taniquchi Buson** ### MURASAKI SHIKIBU Murasaki Shikibu (978-1026), a Japanese author and lady of the court in the time of the empress Akiko, wrote the classic Tale of Genji, considered by many to be the world's first novel. It narrates the amorous adventures of a prince and, although lacking a well-developed plot, is far ahead of its time in delineation of character and analysis of subtle feelings. MURASAKI also left a diary (1007-10), which constitutes an invaluable source of information about Japanese court life and the history and mores of the period. ### BASHO Basho was the pseudonym of MATSUO MUNEFUSA, (1644-1694); the finest writer of Japanese haiku during the formative years of the genre. As a young man he served as a samurai. From 1667 he lived in Edo (now Tokyo), where he began to compose haiku. His attention to the natural world transformed this verse from a frivolous social pastime into a major genre of Japanese poetry. From 1684, BASHO traveled widely, keeping diaries, such as The Narrow Road to the Far North (1689; Eng. trans., 1974), and collaborating with local poets on the linked-verse forms known as renga. **The Madman on the Roof** (Shingeki Play) Kikuchi Kan **Characters:** - Katsushima Yoshitaro - the madman, twenty-four years of age - Katsushima Suejiro - his brother, a 17 - year old high school student - Katsushima Gisuke - their father - Katsushima Oyoshi - their mother - Tosaku - a neighbor - Kichiji - manservant, twenty years of age - A Priestess - about fifty years of age **Place:** A small island in the Inland Sea **Time:** 1900 The stage setting represents the backyard of the Katsushimas who are the richest family on the island. A bamboo fence prevents one from seeing more of the house than the high roof, which stands out sharply against the rich greenish sky of the southern island summer. At the left of the stage, one can catch a glimpse of the sea shining in the sunlight. Yoshitaro, the elder son of the family, is sitting astride the ridge of the roof, and is looking out over the sea. - Gisuke : (speaking from within the house) Yoshi is sitting on the roof again. He'll get a sunstroke - the sun's so terribly hot. (coming out) Kichiji! Where is Kichiji? - Kichiji : (appearing from the right) Yes! What do you want? - Gisuke : Bring Yoshitaro down. He has no hat on, up there in the hot sun. He'll get a sunstroke. How did he get up there anyway? From the barn? Didn't you put wires around the barn roof as I told you the other day? - Kichiju: Yes, I did exactly as you told me. - Gisuke : (coming through the gate to the center of the stage, and looking up to the roof) I don't see how he can stand, sitting on that hot slate roof! (He calls) Yoshitaro! You'd better come down. If you stay up there you'll get a sunstroke, and maybe die. - Kichiji : Young master. Come on down. You'll get sick if you stay there! - Gisuke : Yoshi! Come down quick! What are you doing up there anyway? Come down I say! (he calls loudly Youshi!) - Yoshitaro: (indifferently) Wh-a-at? - Gisuke : No whats! Come down right away. If you don't come down, I'll get after you with a stick! - Yoshitaro: (protecting like a spoiled child).. O, I don't want to. There's something wonderful. The priest of the god Kompira is dancing in the clouds. Dancing in me to come. (crying out ecstatically) Wait! I'm coming! - Gisuke : If you talk like that you'll fall, just as you did once before. You're already crippled and insane - What will you do next to worry your parents? Come down, you fool! - Kichiji : Master, don't get so angry. The young master will not obey you. You should get some fried bean cake; when he sees it, he will come down, because he likes it. - Gisuke : No, you had better get the stick after him. Don't be afraid to give him a good shaking-up. - Kichiji : That's too cruel. The young master doesn't understand anything. He's under the influence of evil spirits. - Gisuke : We may have to put bamboo guards on the roof to keep him down from there. - Kichiji : Whatever you do won't keep him down. Why, he climbed the roof of the Honzen Temple without even a ladder; a low roof like this one is the easiest thing in the world for him. I tell you, it's the evil spirits that make him climb. Nothing can stop him. - Gisuke : You may be right, but he worries me to death. If we could only keep him in the house. It wouldn't be so bad, even though he is crazy; but he's always climbing up to high places. Suejiro says that everybody as far as Takamatsu knows about Yoshitaro, the Madman. - Kichiji : People on the island all say he's under the influence of a fox spirit but I don't believe that. I never heard of a fox climbing trees. - Gisuke : You're right. I think I know the real reason. About the time Yoshitaro was born, I bought a very expensive imported rifle, and I shot every monkey on the island. I believe a monkey-spirit is now working on him. - Kichiji : That's just what I think. Otherwise, how could he climb trees so well? He can climb anything without a ladder. Even Saku, who's a professional climber, admits that he's no match for Yoshitaro. - Tosaku: (Looking up at Yoshitaro) Your son's on the roof again! - Gisuke : Yes, as usual. I don't like it, but when I keep him locked in a room, he's like a fish out of water. Then I take pity on him and let him out, Back he goes up on the roof. - Tosaku : But after all, he doesn't bother anybody. - Gisuke : He bothers us. We feel so ashamed when he climbs up there and shouts. - Tosaku: But your younger son, Suejiro, has a fine record at school. That must be some consolation for you. - Gisuke Yes, he is a good student and that is a consolation to me. If both of them were crazy, I don't know how I could go on living. - Tosaku : By the way, a Priestess has just come to the island. How would you like to have her pray for your son? That's really what I came to see you about. - Gisuke: We've tried prayers before, but it's never done any good. - Tosaku: This priestess believes in the god Kompira. She works all kinds of miracles. People say the god inspires her, and that's why her prayers have more effect than those of ordinary priests. Why don't you try her once? - Gisuke : Well, we might. How much does she charge? - Tosaku : She wont take any money unless the patient is cured. If he is cured, you pay her whatever you feel like. - Gisuke : Suejiro says he doesn't believe in prayers... But there's no harm in letting her try. (Kichiji enters carrying the ladder and disappears behind the fence.) - Tosaku : I'll go and bring her here. In the meantime you get your son down off the roof. - Gisuke: Thanks for your trouble. (After seeing that Tosaku has gone, he calls again) Yoshi! Be a good boy and come down. - Kichiji : (Who is up on the roof by this time) Now then, young master, come down with me. If you stay up here any longer, you'll have fever tonight. - Yoshitaro: (Drawing away from Kichiji as a Buddhist might from a heathen.) Don't touch me! The angels are beckoning to me. You're not supposed to come here. What do you want? - Kichiji : Don't talk nonsense. Please come down. - Yoshitaro: If you touch me the demons will tear you apart. (Kichiji hurriedly catches Yoshitaro by the shoulder and pulls him to the ladder. Yoshitaro suddenly becomes submissive). - Gisuke : Be careful. (Yoshitaro comes down to the center of the stage, followed by Kichiji. Yoshitaro is lame in his right leg.) - Gisuke : (calling) Oyoshi! Come out here a minute! - Oyoshi (from within) What is it? - Gisuke : I've sent for a priestess. - Oyoshi (coming out) That may help. You never can tell what will. - Gisuke : Yoshitaro says he talks with the god Kompira. Well, this Priestess is a follower of Kompira, so she ought to be able to help him. - Yoshitaro: (looking uneasy) Father! Why did you bring me down? There was a beautiful cloud of five colors rolling down to fetch me. - Gisuke : Idiot! Once before you said there was a five-colored cloud, and you jumped off the roof. That's the way you became a cripple. A priestess of the god Kompira is coming here today to drive the evil spirit out of you, so don't you go back up on the roof. (Tosaku enters, leading the Priestess. She has a crafty face.) - Tosaku: This is the Priestess. I spoke to you about. - Gisuke : Ah, good afternoon. I'm glad you've comé this boy is really a disgrace to the whole family. - Priestess: (casually) You needn't worry anymore about him. I'll cure him at once with the god's help. (Looking at Yoshitaro) This is the one? - Gisuke : Yes. He's Twenty-four years old, and the only thing he can do is climb up to high places. - Priestess: How long has he been this way? - Gisuke : Ever since he was born. Even when he was a baby, he wanted to be climbing. When he was four or five years old, he climbed onto the low shrine, then onto the high shrine of Buddha, and finally unto a very high shelf. When he was seven he began climbing trees. At fifteen he climbed to the tops of mountains and stayed there all day long. He says he talks with demons and with the gods. What do you think is the matter with him? - Priestess: There's no doubt but that it's a fox spirit. I will pray for him. (Look at Yashitaro) Listen now! I am the messenger of the God Kompira. All that I say comes from the god. - Yoshitaro: (uneasily) You say the god Kompira! Have you ever seen him? - Priestess: (staring at him) Don't say such sacrilegious things. The gods cannot be seen. - Yoshitaro: (exultantly) I have seen him many times: He's an old man with white robes and a golden crown. He's my best friend. - Priestess: (taken aback at this assertion, and speaking to Gisuke) This is a fox spirit, all right, and a very extreme case. I will address the god. (She chants a prayer in a weird manner. Yoshitaro, held fast by Kichiji, watches the Priestess blankly. She works herself into a frenzy and falls to the ground in a faint. Presently, she rises to her feet and looks about her strangely.) - Priestess (in a changed voice) I am the god Kompira! (All except Yoshitaro) fall to their knees with exclamations of reverence.) - Priestess: (with affected dignity) The elder son of this family is under the influence of a fox-spirit. Hang him up on the branch of a tree and purify him with the smoke of green pine needles. If you fail to do what I say, you will all be punished! (She faints again. There are more exclamations of astonishment.) - Priestess: (rising and looking about her as though unconscious of what has taken place) What has happened? Did the god speak? - Gisuke : (hesitating somewhat) Kichiji, go and get some green pine needles. - Oyoshi No! It's too cruel, even if it is the god's command. - Priestess: He will not suffer, only the fox-spirit within him. The boy himself will not suffer at all. Hurry! (Looking fixedly at Yoshitaro) Did you hear the god's commands? He told the spirit to leave your body before it hurt. - Yoshitaro: That was not Kompira's voice. He wouldn't talk to a priestess like you. - Priestess: (insulted) I'll get even with you. Just wait. Don't talk back to the god like that, you horrid fox! (Kichiji enters with an armful of green pine boughs. Oyoshi is frightened.) - Priestess: Respect the god or be punished! (Gisuke and Kichiji reluctantly set fire to the pine needles, then bring Yoshitaro to the fire. He struggles against being held in the smoke.) - Yoshitaro: Father! What are you doing to me? I don't like it! I don't like it! - Priestess: But it's cruel! (Gisuke and Kichiji attempt to press Yoshitaro's face into the smoke. Suddenly Suejiro's voice is heard calling within the house, and present he appears. He stands amazed at the scene before him.) - Suejiro : What's happening here? What's the smoke for? - Yoshitaro: (Coughing from the smoke and looking at his brother as a savior.) Father and Kichiji are putting me in the smoke. - Suejiro : (angrily) Father! What foolish things are you doing now? Haven't I told you time and again about this sort of business? - Gisuke : But the god inspired the miraculous Priestess - Suejiro : Smoke won't cure him. People will laugh at you if they hear you've been trying to drive out a fox. All the gods in the country together couldn't even cure a cold. This Priestess is a fraud. All she wants is the money. - Gisuke : But the doctors can't cure him. - Suejiro : If the doctors can't, nobody can. I've told you before that he doesn't suffer. If he did, we'd have to do something for him. But as long as he can climb up on the roof, he is happy. Nobody in the whole country is as happy as he is perhaps nobody in the world. Besides, if you cure him now, what can he do? He's twenty-four years old and he knows nothing, not even the alphabet. He's had no practical experience. If he were cured, he would be conscious of being crippled, and he'd be the most miserable man alive. Is that what you want to see? It's all because you want to make him normal. But wouldn't it be foolish to become normal merely to suffer? (Looking sidewise at the Priestess) Tosaku, if you brought her here, you had better take her away. - Priestess: (angry and insulted) You disbelieve the oracle of the god. You will be punished! (She starts her chants as before. She faints, rises, and speaks in a changed voice.) I am the great god Kompira! What the brother of the patient says springs from his own selfishness. He knows if his sick brother is cured, he'll get the family estate. Doubt not this oracle! - Suejiro: (excitedly knocking the Priestess down.) That's a damned lie, you old fool. (He kicks her.) - Priestess: (getting to her feet and resuming her ordinary voice) You've hurt me, you savage! - Suejiro : You fraud! You swindler! - Tosaku: (Coming between them) Wait, young man! Don't get in such a frenzy. - Suejiro: (still excited) You liar! A woman like you can't understand brotherly love! - Tosaku : We'll leave now. It was my mistake to have brought her. - Gisuke : (giving Tosaku some money) I hope you'll excuse him. He's young and has such a temper. - Priestess: You kicked me when I was inspired by the god, You'll be lucky to survive until tonight. - Oyoshi (soothing Suejiro) Be still now. (To the Priestess) I'm sorry this has happened. - Priestess: (leaving with Tosaku) The foot you kicked me with will rot off. (The Priestess and Tosaku go out) - Gisuke : (to Sue