To native speakers! I would like to accomplish the Japanese-English translation for a literature of the famous author, Akutagawa Ryunosuke. His works are really fascinating, aren’t they? This time, I would like to introduce “Hana” (Nose). This story is about a priest in a high position whose nose was huge. He had an extreme self-conscious on his nose and everybody aware about it (and laughed over it) but the priest pretended not to. Anyway, it is Akutagawa’s short story in early period.
Our goal is not to aspire after perfection (I can’t anyway^^ ;), but to challenge it with our limited words and expressions. I find it interesting to challenge the translation of literature. Also I hope somebody, native speakers would make corrections so that we would learn from there. Thanks for your cooperation!
To begin with, of course, everyone in Ikenoo knew about Zenchinaigu's nose. It was eighteen centimeters long, hanging past his upper lip to beneath his chin. Instead of tapering at the end, it remained the same thick width from top to tip, giving the impression of a pendulous sausage hanging in the middle of his face. Naigu was over fifty years old, and had always been bothered by his huge nose, from his first day as a Buddhist priest til his success as a high-ranked priest. Of course he didn't show his inner turmoil and pretended that nothing was wrong: A saintly priest is meant to concentrate on the teaching of Buddhism and the virtue of others, not his own faults. Most of all, though, he didn't want people to suspect that he cared about his nose, even though he trembled in fear every time someone said the word "nose."
There were two reasons that Naigu found it too difficult to deal with. One is that his nose was technically inconvenient. For heaven’s sake, when eating, he couldn’t eat alone. If he tried, it would reach to the rice in a metal rice container. So he asked one of his apprentices to sit in front of him uplift his nose from far away with two long chopsticks that were 3cm width and 60cm long. But it was not that easy for both of them, the apprerentice and Naigu. Once when Chudouji (a waiter) tried, his hands trembled when he sneezed, so Naigu dropped his nose into the porridge. That story was spread around. --But the main reason that suffered Naigu was not about his nose. He actually hurt for the pride that the nose constantly gives the pain.
>>9 There were two reasons Naigu found his situation difficult to deal with. One was that his nose was inconvenient to deal with. Why, he couldn't even eat alone! His nose was so long that it would reach to the rice in the bowl. He asked one of his apprentices to hold his nose up with long chopsticks, but even this solution wasn't always an easy one. Once, a waiter named Chudouji tried holding the nose up, but when he sneezed, his hands shook and dropped Naigu's nose into the porridge! The story was spread around, but Naigu was not really hurt by his nose. He was hurt by the damage his nose did to his pride.
People in Ikenoo said, for Zenchinaigu’s, he is happy that he is being a secular. Because they thought there would be nobody who wants to be his wife. Among in the civil, some even criticized that the Naigu became a priest for the reason of that (awful) nose. But as to Naigu, he has never thought the torment that he has been holding became less after being a priest even a tiny bit. Naigu’s pride was too delicate to be affected by the fact that one will eventually get married. (Naigu’s heart was too delicate to even think about the fact that one has choice to get married or not??) Therefore, aggressively and passively, he tried to recover his good name.
>>14 First, what he thought was how to show his nose shorter than the actual size This attempt, he examined himself by looking at the mirror and exercised his ingenuity on staring it from every angle. In some way or other, he was not satisfied enough by changing the angles so tried to put his chin on his hands, or he put his one finger on top of his chin and arduously staring into the mirror. But it never made him satisfied even once to make his nose successfully looked shorter. The more he worked, the more his nose would be seen longer than how it was. In that case, Naigu put his mirror back to the box and sighed and got himself back to the Buddhist sutra desk reluctantly and read the Kannnon sutra.
"to show his nose shorter than the actual size"= "to make his nose look shorter than the actual size" "changing the angles so tried to put" = better "so HE tried to put" "or he puts his one finger" = "or to put his..." "successfully looked shorter" = "look shorter" "and got himself back to the Buddhist sutra desk reluctantly" = "and went reluctantly back to the Buddhist sutra desk"
First, what he thought was HOW TO MAKE HIS NOSE LOOK SHORTER THAN THE ACTUAL SIZE. This attempt, he examined himself by looking at the mirror and exercised his ingenuity on staring it from every angle. In some way or other, he was not satisfied enough by changing the angles so HE tried to put his chin on his hands, or TO put his one finger on top of his chin and arduously staring into the mirror. But it never made him satisfied even once to make his nose successfully look shorter. The more he worked, the more his nose would be seen longer than how it was. In that case, Naigu put his mirror back to the box and sighed and WENT RELUCTANTLY back to the Buddhist sutra desk and read the Kannnon sutra.
In addition, Naigu was always concerned with other people's noses. The temple in Ikenoo was one that often held big events such as Sougukousetsu (the big lectures to the priests). Inside the temple, the monk's anex houses were lined up with no space between them, and in the bathhouse, shrine priests boiled water day after day. Accordingly, countless priests and laics visited the shrine. Naigu hunted out their faces with perseverance. He hoped that he would find even one person with a nose similar to his, and find relief in that. So Naigu’s eye had no need for their dark blue Suikan (their outfit – the outfit in Heian period), nor for their white Katabira (summer outfit); it was all out of focus. Additionally, their tangerine-colored hats and Shiinibi no Koromo (the robes) were too common for his eye; it was as if they did not exist. Naigu foccused only the nose, not the man.
In addition, he always cared about other (peoples') noses. The (temple) at Ikenoo often held big events such as (large lectures for the priests). Inside the shrine, (the priests' quarters) were lined (up one after the other) and, in the (bathhouse), the priests (boiled) water day after day. Accordingly, (innumerable) priests and (laymen) visited the (temple) Naigu (searched) their faces with perseverance. He (wanted relief) (by finding at least) one person with a (nose similar to) his own. (To) Naigu's eye, their (daily clothing) and their (light kimonos) were all (out of focus), (not to mention their tangerine orange) hats, and (their robes so) ordinary (to) his eye (that) it was (as if) they (did) not (exist). (Without seeing the people), Naigu only focused on the noses.
>>28 -- But all he saw was beak shaped noses, not the one like Naigu’s. In accordance with unlucky times of not seeing one, Naigu mounted more and more uncomfortable feelings. While Naigu talked to someone, he advertently picked up the tip of his nose that hangs down, he suddenly blushed in spite of his age to realize it. It was due to this dismal feelings. At last, Naigu tried to find a person who owns the nose just like his in Naitengen (in the Buddhist sutra and other books), he tried to comfort himself but none of which said Mokuren (a well known Shaka’s apprentice) had a long nose, nor Sharihotsu owned. Ryouju and Menou are the peaceful gods who owned reasonable sized noses. Naigu once heard the story of China, in the era of the Three Kingdoms, the king, Ryugentoku’s ears were long. How he wished it had been his nose, not ears. At the same time Naigu worked hard passively like that, it is needless to say that he also tried aggressively not to show his nose long. Naigu tried almost everything he could do. He once tried to decoct one grass and drank Karasuuri (cucurbitaceous perennial plant). He even tried to glop a mouse’s urine onto his nose. But whatever he tried, his 18cm long nose was still there, hanging up on his upper lip.
>>31 But one day in autumn, one apprentice went up to Kyoto for an errand for Naigu and learned from one physician how to make the long noses short. That doctor had originally come from Shintan (China) and was now a temple priest in Chouraku temple. Naigu, as usual, pretended as he never cares about the nose and didn’t get hooked on the idea so he didn’t say he would try this method But on the other hand, he tried to sound casual and said something like he felt sorry to trouble to force the apprentices helping him each time when eating meal. Inside, of course, he was waiting for the apprentice to convince him and tell him to try this method. Naigu was sure that the apprentice could have understood his plan. But (for the apprentice), rather than the antipathy, seeing Naigu who has been attempting his plan and imagining his mental state which led to pursue this plan made him more sympathy. As Naigu expected, the apprentice monk started to convince Naigu to try this method as wordy as possible. Then as Naigu expected, he came to be convinced and obeyed to what the apprentice said.
弟子の僧のことをapprentice monkと言ってましたが、noviceという 一語であらわせるようなので、これからはnoviceと言うことにします。 (*Even if nobody care...I just want to say)^^;
>>34 The method was as simple as this; to boil the nose and have someone tread on the nose. Hot water is being boiled everyday in Yuya (bath house). So soon, the novice came back holding the hot water filled in a small silver pot that you could not put your finger in. But there was a fear that he would burn his face with hot steam if he directly let his nose soaked in the pot. So what they did was making one hole on a tray and put it over the pot as a lid so that Naigu could let the nose stick through the hole into the hot water. He never felt hot only when it was his nose, so he could soak it as much as he wanted. After a while, the novice said, “It’s probably about the time it is done, isn’t it?” Naigu smiled grimly. Because just to hear what the novice said, nobody would imagine that the novice was talking about Naigu’s nose. After steamed by the boiling water, his nose itched as if bitten by a flea. After Naigu took off his nose from the hole of the pot, the novice started to tread the nose(that is still steaming) by his foot with stress. Naigu, laying down, while extending his nose on the floor boards, looking at the novice's foot moving up and down in close. The novice sometimes put an apperance of sorry on his face and looked at Naigu’s bold head and said like this.
>>39 “Doesn’t it hurt? The physician told me to tread hard but are you sure you are ok? Your Reverence?” Naigu wanted to shake his head and tell the novice it was not painful. But with his nose being trodden on, he couldn’t shake his head. So he tried an upward glance and looked at the novice’s chapped skin foot and said in sort of angrily voice and answered "It doesn’t hurt".
But actually it was rather comfortable than painful to have the itchy part trodden on. As treading a while more, some rashes started to appear on the nose. The shape was like an unfeathered little bird that had been roasted whole. When the novice saw it, he paused and said as talking to himself,
”The physician said to pluck it out with tweezers". Naigu let the novice does, holding some objection in his mind and pouted sulkily. Of course, it was not that Naigu didn’t appreciate what the novice had been doing but he felt uneasy that his nose was treated as a commodity. Naigu looked like a patient who was going to get an operation by a doctor whom he would not trust. Grudgingly he was glancing that the novice taking off his oil by a tweezers. The oil looked like a stem of bird’s feather, and it was half an inch long.
When the novice was almost done, he sighed with relief and said, "Ok now, I think we should boil it one more time, Your Reverence." Naigu frowned and showed a sulky face but anyway, he hung on the novice's sleeves. After he put out the second boiled nose, it surely looked shorter. It was even barely distinguishable from one of those ordinary hooked noses. Touching his shortened nose and with difference, he embarrassedly tried to look into the mirror which the novice held forth. The nose, that had been hanging down to under the chin, was now unbelievably shrank and it still cowardly kept its numbered life on this upper lip. Brindled rash was probably the result of the treading. Now nobody will laugh looking at his nose. Naigu’s face inside the mirror loooked at the Naigu’s face outside the mirror and he satisfactorily blinked his eyes.
But on that day he was worried about his nose that might become long again. So Naigu tried to touch his nose whenever his hands were free - such as while reading sutra, eating meals, but the nose felt like it conducted well, sitting on his upper lip and doesn’t look like it may hang further down than that part. Next night, he went bed and woke up early in the morning and touched his nose. He felt it but it was still short. Has he ever felt this refreshment or relief for a long time! It was the same feeling with that - long time ago when he amassed spiritual merit by copying out the Lotus sutra. However, he discovered the surprising fact.
That was when one Samurai had an errand and visited Ikenoo’s temple, the samurai hardly talked but gazed at his nose with giggle-eye. He showed even more amusingly expression on his face than ever before. But not only that, Chudoji (The youngest novice, aged 12 ~13, worked as a waiter, who once dropped Naigu’s nose into a porridge) was looking down at first when he passed in front of Naigu at the hallway, but sucked in his cheeks to keep from bursting into laughing, but then soon he couldn’t control and suddenly gave a loud laugh. When Shimoboushi boys (the lower ranked novices) were sitting, they kept a good behavior when Naigu was facing them but once the moment came that he turned back, they started to giggle. This even happened more than once or twice.
>>53 Naigu, at first thought it must be because of the alternation of his nose. But it seemed like it was not only the reason. – of course it must have been the reason why Chudoji and Shimoboushi boys laughed at, but the color of their laughter was not same with the time when the nose was simply long. It could be said that the short nose which they were not used to see was funnier than the long nose that they were used to see. But to say it, it would be end of it. But in more depth, there must be something else. “They hadn’t laughed as open as that”.
Naigu, sometimes stopped his reading in middle of sutra and touched his bald head and murmured. The lovable Naigu usually looked at the Fugen’s picture (the priest who supports Shaka positioning shaka’s right, riding on the white elephant), thinking back to his 4 to 5 years earlier when he had a long nose and fell in depression. As” he who decayed evil recalled the days of his prosperity.” Naigu, unfortunately was not perceptive enough to response this difficult question.
>>57 Human nature contains two conflictiing emotions. Of course nobody sympathize someone’s tough luck. However, once the person managed to extricate the trouble, people usually feel unsatisfied. To put it bluntly, people wish him plunging into the same fate again, and unconsciously and passively, people start to have some kind of hostile feeling to him. Naigu, without knowing that, without being aware, sensed the observer’s egoism in each priest’s and laymen's behavior.
So what made the Imperial Chaplain so uncomfortable about the attitude of the Ikeno-o priests was really nothing more than their own ambivalence, and concerned him only indirectly. But, alas, he did not realize that.
>>60 So Naigu got grumpy from day to day. He scolded whoever it was nasty at a drop of the hat. At the end, his level of cruelty so worsened that the person like novice who had remedied his nose even said ill behind his back as this, “Naigu will be punished after the death of Houkendon” (after death, the punishment he will deserve because of the unmerciful behaviors while living in present life). Moreover, it was Chudouji who angered Naigu the most. One day there was a noisy barking of a dog, so Naigu went out to look what was going on. There, Chudouji was chasing around a shabby skinny dog with a long wooden stick. He was not just chasing it but saying nonsense refrains as “I’ll hit you on the nose, I’ll hit you on the nose!” Naigu snatched the long strip away from Chudouji and hit him soundly. It was the wooden stick that once had been used for hold up his nose while eating.
>>64 Naigu, in that moment, regrets the most his present shortness of the nose. One night, after the night fell, suddenly wind blew and the wind bell hanging from the pagoda eaves was tinkling noisily, not only that, it was suddenly getting very cold, so the old Naigu could not sleep. So he was rolling onto his back in futon. He suddenly became aware of itchiness at his nose When he touched his hand on the nose, it was swollen after it got moisture. It also felt hot. “Probably I’ve got this by having it shortened violently.” Naigu murmured and pushed on his nose as if he respectfully offered incense and flowers before the tablet of the deceased.
>>68>>69 Next morning, when he woke up early as usual, as he looked out, he saw the gingko and horse chestnut trees in the temple grounds had lost all their leaves during the night and it was all bright as it was carpeted gold. Pagoda roof was white with frost. Kurin (the accessory of pagoda hanging from the upper part) finial was glistened dazzlingly in the pale dawn light. Zenchi Naigu stood on the balcony where paper screen door was open and breathed deeply. That moment was the time when a certain sensation that he had tried to forget came back to him. He was in a rush and touched the nose.
>>68>>69 The thing he touched was not the short nose last night. That was the old long nose that he had had, the 18cm hanging down from upper lip to under his chin, the long old nose. He came to know that the nose had changed to long once again during last night. And at the same time, from somewhere out of the blue, lighthearted feeling that he once had felt when his nose became short came back to him. “OK now. Nobody’s going to laugh at me!” Naigu whispered to himself, as he dangled his long nose in the autumn breezes.
One spring late afternoon, at sunset, a young man stood blankly looking up at the sky at the west gate of Rakuyo. His name was Toshishun. He was once a son of a rich father but he had spent all his money and now being down-and-out, living as he has hardly able to make ends meet even a day. You know, Rakuyo city those days was the most gorgeous city that had few equals, a city of successfully thrived business, so there was many people and cars coming and going on the busy street.
It is a twilight time of one spring day. There is a young man who aimlessly looks up the sky sitting under the west gate of a city called Rakuyo, a city of the Tang dynasty.
His name is Toshishun, who is a son of a once rich man but has eaten up all his fortunes. He has reduced himself to a poor shabby man who has to eat from hand to mouth just to live. The city of Tang back then was a prosperous city that no other city could compare, and on the streets were continuous flow of passengers and cars.
The whole west gate was bathed in a setting sun. The scenery of continuous stream was so beautiful as if we were watching at an old painting; a sheer silk hat that an old man wore, a Turkish woman's beautiful gold earrings and colored string rein decorated on a white horse made the whole thing beautiful. In spite of all this, Toshishun was leaning against the wall of the gate and gazed only the sky. In the sky, there was already a thin moon, shimmering in the mist, seen as a scratch of a nail, being white comfortably and peacefully floating there.
'It's getting dark, I am starving, and on top of that, there would be no more kind people who let me stay in tonight…would it not be better to throw myself into the river than bearing this fate and keep alive…' Toshishun was murmuring this piece of crap and thought it over for quite a while. Then, out of nowhere, there stood before him an old man. He had only one eye. The old man was bathed in the sunset and let the huge shadow down on the gate, watched Toshishun's face and said insolently. 'What are you thinking?'
'Oh me? I have nowhere to sleep tonight and I was just wondering what to do….' Since the old man's question was too sudden, so he could do nothing but to glance down and honestly he answered to the old man's question. 'I see that's poor of you, young man'. The old man was pondering for a while then he pointed to the road where the evening sun light is.' 'I'll tell you something good. Stand in the light of the setting sun, look at the place where your shadow shows on the ground, and dig at the spot where the shadow of your head shows. You will find a cartload of gold buried there.' 'REALLY?' Toshishun was surprised and looked up from downward. And to his surprise, the old man was completely gone and disappeared without the trace. Instead, the moon in the sky got even whiter, and in the sleepless busy street, there he found two fluttery bats who came a little bit earlier than usual.
Toshishun became the richest man in Rakuyo overnight after following the old man's advice―he remembered the spot where the shadow of his head pointed at dusk and secretly dug there after the sun had set, finding a huge amount of gold that even a big cart couldn't carry.
Now the big timer Toshishun has built a gorgeous house and begun a wild spending spree that no one but the then emperor Genso could afford. He sent an errand for sake of Ranryo(liquor with the flavor of turmeric), got the precious Ryugan meat from Keishu(a southern prefecture of the Tang dynasty), planted in his garden rare peonies that changes its color for times a day, had a lot of white peacocks unleashed in the backyard, collected precious stones, made craftsman weave silk fabrics, ordered items such as a car made of a scent tree and a chair of ivory. He continued such extravaganzas that it is impossible to refer to all of them.
Aikoさん、>>87への暖かいレスありがとうございます。しかし今見直すとミスが ひどい・・・The city of Tang back thenとかpassengersとか。あと自分は 逆にblanklyを見て、あ、そうだった!と思いました。aimlesslyだと、なんか ぶらぶらウインドウショッピングみたいでね。一点をボーっと見つめるのはまさに blanklyだな、と。