Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

BJ wrote: "Also sorry for stealing your thunder, Traveller! Once I saw how different the pdf you linked was, I couldn't resist digging in a little!..."

Hahaha, no I don't need thunder at all, BJ, I am only too happy when other people actually participate in these discussions and I don't have to listen to the monotonous droning of my own voice. After all, I know what's in my own head - it's finding out what's in yours that makes it fun and enriching. Well done on your excellent research, and thank you!
The wordplay on the 'armed' that you mention, was probably done by Rubin, but that is exactly the type of wordplay that the Japanese are known for, and which I was lamenting losing out on in translation.

In my translation comparisons, (I also found 3 or 4 of them) I will then focus on another aspect of this story, the painter and his art - but please do not let that deter you from posting your own thoughts! The artful depiction ( which you have to sort of read between the lines) of the narrator himself is also pretty interesting.

Hmm, and speaking about translations, I found this translation by Takashi Kojima http://arteflora.org/wp-content/uploa...
to read online.
The Rubin translation seems to be a bit of a bowdlerized version of the story. He seems to leave certain details out, such as for example that Yoshihide's daughter was only 15 years old when she was taken in as a lady-in-waiting- oh wait, another source tells me this story is in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, which I have.

Confirmed that in the book I have, the t/lation is by Morinaka Akira, so not the same one that I linked to above.. ...so give me a sec and I'm going to do a few comparisons.

If you look around on the internet, it should be available to read in your browser somewhere, but please be WARNED: It is a truly hellish, horrible story. Very disturbing.

Just having a bit of fun, I enjoy teasing people re their squicks - I'm not bothered by blood gore and pus, due to having done nursing jobs in a hospital as student holiday jobs, but my daughter is a lot like you, so I always have to clean up the yucky stuff.
...but I do get to tease her with moldy stuff and of course, spiders.

My own phobia is for cockroaches, but no way is she going to go there to try and tease me back, ha ha.

But the yuckiness of The Pear-shaped man is not to do with gore or pus, really, it's a rather unique yuckiness that Martin manages to create pretty well. You'll probably never know what it is, then...😉😏

I'll venture to say that: (view spoiler)[Obviously the narrator is a highly unreliable one, ( a bit like Benjy Compson in The Sound and the Fury both due to the fact that he is "stupid" as he himself proclaims, and he is clearly highly biased in favor of "our great Lord of Horikawa", which we can clearly see, between the lines, is an utter monster (at the beginning already, when the "Great Lord" offers a human sacrifice - we can also see the narrator's lack of judgement where he deems it an honor for a man to be impaled by his "Great Lord's" Ox. (EDIT: I see in the older translation, that he was only knocked over, not impaled, which makes more sense.) A bit like a blindly adoring Trump-supporter? )
His "Great Lord" also obviously takes pleasure in witnessing the suffering of a human being, so who knows what the hell has really been going on behind the scenes, since the sycophant narrator is obviously covering up since his saintly Great Lord surely can't do anything wrong.

One cannot be sure of the narrator's depiction of Yoshihide either, since he is clearly biased against Yoshihide.

From what I have picked up about Akutagawa, he was quite a strong social critic and a bit of a feminist, disgusted by men's ill-treatment of women, so it looks as if he is doing a bit of scorching satire there.

What he (the author, not the narrator) might be saying about Yoshihide, seems more complex - I'd have to chew over that myself for a while. (hide spoiler)]

Not sure why I'm using spoiler tags, since this thread is only for this story, probably habit, but anyway...

Re The Nose and The Spider-Thread, I found them a bit like fables, just The Nose was told in far more detail, as Amy mentioned!

It was with The Dragon and the Spider-thread stories that I started to wonder if we're not missing out on the lyricism and descriptive power that Akutagawa's prose apparently had.

The Spider-Thread seemed, for me, to point to an uncomfortable truth: (view spoiler)[ some people seem to be born selfish, and some people never change... (hide spoiler)]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "The Nose grossed me out horribly even though I liked the story over all. He definitely has a fascination with disgusting details!."

Amy, if that grossed you out, I DARE you to read The Pear Shaped Man. If you read that story right to the end, I will take Linda's medal for getting through Autumn of the Patriarch away, and give it to you instead.
Are you up to the challenge? 💪😁

Yes, he does seem to have had a fascination/preoccupation with noses for a while there! Interesting also how granular he can get, right down to describing a person's pimple, as in the first story.

Re your remarks on t/lation: I think you have something there, and I'm afraid I'm going to have to say it's the Americanisation of things that makes everything so flat and homogenous. They do a similar thing with films as well, for example the Americanized remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I hate it, it removes all the flavor, all of the entire charm of anything foreign and turns it into just some more Americanized fast food.

And what it reflects of the American mind is a peculiar solipsism that I swear you'd only find in the US of A: not even the Japanese and their insularity can come close to the big Americanizing machine that grinds up the strange, delicate and wonderful, and spews out a tasteless paste, similar to the paste that Mc Donald's chicken nuggets are made of.

There is a certain vocal minority in the US that demands this homogenization, but I wonder what would happen if filmmakers and translators were to stop catering to them, if some people started standing up to them and make them see that they are flattening their world and shrinking their own horizons? Stopped spoonfeeding and suggest that they start adding some crunch to their diets? The best way to achieve this, would be to make it an expensive-sounding fashion touted by reality-show stars or talk-show hosts, ha ha.

I know, get Oprah to talk about it!

I absolutely loved the 'Dragon' story! (view spoiler)[ Perfect for today's conspiracy theory crowds and fake news. I feel like E'in's name could have been X.... Yeah, scary how fake stories can start to put on a life of it's own. I can't remember if it was here on GR or on another site, where we had made a thread for Urban Legends. If it wasn't here on GR, it might be fun to make one in this group, actually. (hide spoiler)]

Since this thread shares three stories, let's use spoiler tags, shall we?

For those new to GR /HTML and spoiler tags, this is how you do it:
(spoiler) Hello, hello, I'm a big old spoiler (/spoiler)

Write your text inbetween the two words "spoiler", but write the words 'spoiler' inside sharp instead of round brackets, like this: use only a single < ....> on each side, for example like I bracket this 9 : <9> and then, at the end, make sure to do a / in front of the second word spoiler at the end, like so: [/spoiler] (but in sharp brackets).

I'll do a similar thing here: make the threads, and we must each post as we see fit - ok, threads made for The Nose; Dragon: The Old Potter's Tale ; The Spider Thread <-- as one thread, and then another for Hellscreen, and another for Shifting Gears.

Might as well access them from this central point: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

Thread for discussion of 'Shifting Gears'.

Thread for discussion of the story: Hellscreen.

Hello fellow explorers, per request, I am opening this thread for discussion of the stories The Nose, Dragon: The Old Potter's Tale and The Spider Thread. I'll do yet another thread for Hellscreen, and another one for Shifting Gears.

EDIT: Why do these stories have the same "feel" to them than Rubin's t/lation of Murakami's tales? Is it my imagination, or might the translator be leaving his mark. T/lation studies, as far as I know, agree that the translator should be as invisible as possible. Something which, IMPO, Scott Moncrieff did not do with Proust, for example, and that kind of irritates me.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Hello, all. What I wonderful discussion you've been having! I did intend to actually finish this collection over the New Year's holiday, but real life intervened. I am definitely on board for more...."

Thanks so much for that interesting info, Amy! I want to apologize again for neglecting On Paths- I had really thought that Proust group was dead, and the last thing I expected was for it to rise from the dead again - so that's been eating up all my spare time that I had put aside for this.

Anyway, hmm- I've quickly read that first article which goes on so much about the Kappanese novella, and find myself rather perplexed, because I had thought that his last novella was 'Shifting Gears', contained in the Rashomon and 17 stories collection. (Which is what I got the collection for, but sadly haven't had time to get to yet.

Can you people remember that the protagonist in the Murakami story "With the Beatles" mentioned that story of Akutagawa's? It's the discussion of it in that story that motivated me to want to read the story. (Story within a story - talk about metafiction; how po-mo of Murakami - but then that whole collection was pretty po-mo.)

Got to run - thanks again, Amy!

BJ wrote: "Well, I can't read history and have it not be work, that's for sure. But then, reading history for work is a pretty lucky position to be in, ..."

You wanna bet! But I have always consoled myself with the idea that field research must surely have it's boring bits. (No, don't inform me, let's leave it at that! 😜)

Your research area, for example, sounds rather sad and uncomfortable. Yes, a lot of history is sadly not fun, much as it is (for me anyway) human nature to want to know more about our past, and therefore very satisfying to find out more about it.

I'm so bad that reading history can be more fun for me than reading fiction, especially if I get to pick and choose the subject, and there lies the rub, I guess.

EDIT: Oh, and just to add to that, I've had this book on Japanese history for a long time, A History of Japan, so I lied a bit when I said our discussion motivated me to read more - I've always been interested in Chinese and Japanese history. In fact, I picked this book up in the middle and immediately recognized the persons under discussion, Nobunaga and Hideoshi, from a doccie I had watched. Interesting to read/view the various sources and see how the focus shifts from source to source.

Forgive me, people, I'm back to work again, but will read and comment on the stories you have mentioned as soon as I am able, BJ and Bonitaj! (So give me a few days).

BJ, how wonderful that you are a historian - thanks for sharing that with us! I wonder if being one as a profession might spoil one's armchair endeavors a bit, or does it enhance one's readings of history? Pray tell, BJ, I feel pretty envious of you now, I must say...

Thanks so much for sharing your informed insights, especially where it pertains to our literary explorations here on Paths into the Unknown, but you must also tell me anything now that will make me feel a bit less envious - what is your focus area, for example?

Love, love love how you people are getting involved here. This discussion has become what I had hoped for, exceeding my expectations, even. Just the fact that this short piece of writing has made you ask all those questions, and consider all those angles, is making it worthwhile for me.

Indeed, BJ, and certainly, one short event in a country's history can radically change the milieu, like the Russian revolution of 1917, the French Revolution, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960's to 1970's.
I know it probably won't help all that much in understanding Akutagawa's work better, but I've already been motivated to read more re Japanese cultural history to at least be aware of the main movements in it.

And indeed, those two things, time and language, create, like you said, a barrier nigh impossible to fully penetrate, but it is tantalizing to peer through the veil nonetheless. Since Akutagawa did not live in the 12th century, he was obviously forced to look at it through the lens of his own time, and we are constrained, from our positions, not only by language and time but also by culture.

I'm always aware of the fact, when reading works translated from Chinese or Japanese, (especially poetry) that we Westerners not familiar with their pictographic alphabet stand to lose out on the play that many of their writers make between word and symbol. Yet it is still worthwhile trying to get a sense of it. I always feel that glimpses into different cultures are like windows into different worlds.

Thanks for your contribution as well, Bonitaj, as well as everybody else participating in this thread, and a happy, healthy and blessed New Year to all of you! ❤

Linda Abhors the New GR Design wrote: "I will do my best!
Not doing an in depth study or research....but he is one of the masters, so I will soldier through"

You will receive the Medal of Honor for On Paths bravest soldier! 🎖️

💪And your prize shall be a compass for wending your way through the jungles of difficult literature🧭, you will be the coolest🆒, the most erudite, 👩‍🎓and our very own super-explorer!🐱‍🏍
Yah, sorry, I'm tired, and I found all these other emoji's while looking for a medal emoji...

Linda Abhors the New GR Design wrote: "Lol, you're welcome? :D
Don't know what I'm doing, beyond finishing it...but sure!"

I thought you said you'll be posting comments, Linda! I truly appreciate your input, since this is kind of your area of specialty. Will be looking forward to your notes and comments. :)