Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories Read Free Page B

made an honest effort to shape his or her life accordingly.
    One more point—and this should be the last—is that a writerof national stature should have given us not only solid classics but popular works that appeal to a broad audience—and to young people in particular: works easy enough to read that they appear in the nation’s primary and middle-school textbooks and can be memorized whole by most children. Nat sume S ō seki’s
Botchan
(1906), 2 for example, is read by virtually everyone in Japan who receives a middle-school education.
Botchan
is hardly S ō seki’s most representative work, but it is a uniquely enjoyable, easy-to-read short novel. Much the same can be said for Shiga Naoya’s innocent allegorical story, “The Shopboy’s God” (1920) and Kawabata Yasunari’s refreshing novella of youth, “The Dancing Girl of Izu” (1926). 3 Shimazaki T ō son produced not only ponderous long novels but also spontaneous and moving lyrical poems in the traditional
tanka
form. 4 Mori ō gai is most respected for his scholarly historical novels, but he also wrote the love story “The Dancing Girl” (1890) in remarkably beautiful language, and “Sansh ō the Steward” (1915) 5 is his rewrite of a medieval tale for a modern young audience. The number of readers who have made it all the way through Tanizaki Jun’ichir ō ’s long novel
The Makioka Sisters
(1946–8) 6 may not be very large, but the work has been filmed several times with some of the most beautiful actresses of their generations in the roles of the four lovely sisters, leaving vivid images in the memories of thousands of viewers. In other words, like spring rain, these works in easily accessible forms have seeped silently into the fertile soil of people’s minds to form something like the foundation of the culture or sensibility of the Japanese.
    Surely in all nations, in all cultures, there exists this kind of basic cultural realm that functions almost subliminally. England has Dickens and Shakespeare, and the United States Melville and Fitzgerald among others. The French have Balzac and Flaubert. The works of these “national writers” are imprinted in the hearts and minds of each individual citizen during youth in forms that take on a nearly absolute authority, and, before anyone is aware of it, they go on to comprise a common perception of literature and culture in the region—i.e. a common identity.
    These works are handed down from teacher to pupil, from parent to child, almost without question, like DNA. They are memorized, recited, discussed in book reports, included in university entrance exams, and once the student is grown up, they become a source for quotation. They are made into movies again and again, they are parodied, and inevitably they become the object of ambitious young writers” revolt and contempt. Finally, each becomes an autonomous sign or symbol or metaphor that functions much like the national flag or the national anthem or one of the country’s primary landscapes (say, in the case of Japan, Mt. Fuji or cherry blossoms). And of course, for better or worse, each becomes an indispensable part of our culture. For without the creation of such archetypes—without such subliminal imprinting—it is almost impossible for us to possess a common cultural awareness.
    For reasons like these, I, like most other Japanese people, came to read several stories by Akutagawa Ry Å« nosuke when I was in elementary school. Some I read in textbooks, and some as summer homework assignments requiring book reports. I have no idea how much of Akutagawa today’s school children read (or are required to read), but I imagine the situation is not much different from my own time. What I mainly read then were several of the excellent stories that he wrote especially for children—“The Spider Thread,” “Tu Tze-chun,”