The Reed Cutter and Captain Shigemoto's Mother: Two Novellas

by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Anthony H. Chambers (Translator)

With a precision and brilliance unmatched perhaps by any other novelist of the twentieth century, Junichiro Tanizaki interweaves a sense of his country's deep past with the kind of pathologies and obsessions we are likely to think of as modern. Here, in two eerie and beautiful novellas, he displays this skill at its most elegant and affecting.

The Reed Cutter has a contemporary setting, though it might have taken place any time in the past thousand years. On a fine September evening, the narrator decides to make a solitary excursion to the site of an ancient imperial palace south of Kyoto, a place now lost and overgrown near the banks of a river. Musing upon old poems, passages of history, and topographical antiquities, he eventually finds himself among the reeds of a sandbar sipping sake from the bottle he has brought with him, watching the moon rise over the river, and scribbling bits of verse in his notebook. Suddenly he is surprised to discover that he is not alone. A strange man joins him and begins to tell a most extraordinary tale about his father, about a scene glimpsed in a moonlit garden forty years before, and about a mysterious woman who has become a lasting obsession.

Captain Shigemoto's Mother is more violent but no less strange. It takes place in tenth-century Kyoto, in a world in which poetry and brutality, power and sexual impulse, shape the lives of the courtiers. Beginning in an almost whimsical vein with an account of the amorous exploits of a Heian Don Juan called Heiju, it gradually shifts mood to focus on three people—Shihei, the powerful Minister of the Left; his doddering uncle Kunitsune; and Kunitsune's ravishing and much-younger wife, a woman known only as Shigemoto's mother. How Shihei succeeds in taking Kunitsunes' wife away from him in the course of a bizarre and drunken party is a story as shocking—and memorable—as anything Tanizaki ever wrote.

Genres: Japan, Japanese Literature, Fiction, Literature, Literary Fiction, Novella, Classics

180 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) was a Japanese author, and one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki.

Some of his works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions; others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society.

Frequently his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of "the West" and "Japanese tradition" are juxtaposed. The results are complex, ironic, demure, and provocative.

Reviews

[Daniel Warriner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (July 24, 1886–July 30, 1965) was a master at burrowing right down into the heart of human relationships while describing them with precision and clarity. English translations by Anthony H. Chambers of his short story "The Reed Cutter" (蘆刈, or "Ashikari" in Japanese) and Captain Shigemoto's Mother (少将滋幹の母, or Shōshō Shigemoto no haha), published in 1932 and 1949, respectively, appear in this book which came out in 1993. The narrators for both quote from a number of old poems and other stories. Among the main themes is the transience of life, including our endeavors made out of love and for family, and the consequences of our actions over generations.

I enjoyed reading both, perhaps "The Reed Cutter" more. In Captain Shigemoto's Mother, the narrator digressed too often, which was intentional but made the narration hard to follow at times. What's best about the stories is the imagery, particularly the descriptions of nature and autumn in the first half of "The Reed Cutter" and those of death and rot towards the end of Captain Shigemoto's Mother. Remarkable writing from one of Japan's most revered literary figures.

[Mariana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tento tanto gostar de autores japoneses, mas algo no seu estilo narrativo me deixa sempre confusa ou insatisfeita. Estes contos são uma estranha mistura do histórico / real / ficcional, que parece começar e acabar em pontos escolhidos pela estética, mais que por qualquer atenção ao abrir e fechar de uma narrativa. Apesar de já o esperar, fico sempre um pouco desconcertada por estas escolhas. Talvez já esteja demasiado formatada por narrativas ocidentais por conseguir apreciar este tipo de história.

[Blaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've wanted to read Tanizaki for some time, and when The Reed Cutter was nominated for a group read I decided to jump the gun and read it, whether or not it wins,(particularly as that seems sadly unlikely at present). The story is exquisite, enchanting and amazingly complex for its length of just 40 pages and with my limited knowledge of Japanese art and literature I'm not sure I could do it justice in a review

(But I'll try when I'm more awake.)

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading these two novellas by Junichiro Tanizaki was to fulfill what I had expected from my three-week waiting for its copy to arrive. I posted a brief note above why I longed to read them, especially, "Captain Shigemoto's Mother" in which there are 11 chapters, however, the excerpt from Chapters 9 and 10 translated by Edward Seidensticker is the prime motive urging me to read all.

I would like to focus to its second novella since, in fact, it needs more attention than the first one (I may rethink on it later). Of course I found Seidensticker’s translation fascinating and fear-inspiring but, from my brief comparison, he might have translated for its literary sense rather than for its exact meaning. For instance, in Chapter 9 (pp. 387-388, Seidensticker translation), he needs only an opening paragraph while this translation needs 8.5 pages with dialogs and two poems (pp. 145-154, Chambers translation), then the two paragraphs that follow each text are a bit different as we can compare from the two following excerpts.

Shigemoto followed him, bewildered. His father’s gaze was fixed dead ahead, he looked neither the left nor the right. He marched down the stairs, slipped his feet into a pair of sandals, stepped to the ground. … (p. 388, Seidensticker translation)

Surprised and curious, Shigemoto followed him. His father peered straight ahead as he went down the steps, put on a pair of sturdy straw sandals, and stood on the ground. … (p. 154, Chambers translation)

And another two first sentences at the beginning of Chapter 10:

While his father knelt in meditation over the corpse, Shigemoto crouched behind the mound, trying to quiet his breath. .. (p. 390, Seidensticker translation)

While his father meditated on the corpse, Shigemoto crouched behind one of the mounds and held his breath. … (p. 157, Chambers translation)

Moreover, this comparison process would be more interesting if one could read its Japanese text because he/she can learn which version is better, closer to its original and why.

We may wonder why his father (Fujiwara Kunitsune) went out to such a place in the moonlit night, one of the reasons was that it was part of his “Contemplation of Impurity” (pp. 152, 158) in which he needed to meditate on a lady corpse to console his grief and sadness due to his abducted wife. In other words, he longed to have her back from Shihei (nickname of Fujiwara Tokihira), his nephew, but it was impossible and he still lovingly missed her so much as evidenced from his oddity in this paragraph:

Feeling his wife nod silently against his forehead, the old man pressed his face even closer to hers and, with his hands supporting the back of her head, caressed her hair for a long time. … Another of his peculiarities was to insist on keeping the lamp burning as brightly as possible. This was because he was not satisfied just to caress his wife with his hands: now and then he liked to draw back a foot or two, the better to gaze admiringly at her beauty, and so it was necessary to keep the room brightly lit. (p. 86)

Finally, I liked the last scene in Chapter 11 in which, angelically written by Tanizaki, it depicts how Captain Shigemoto met his mother as a nun:
…
“Excuse me …”
Startled at the sound of someone so near, the nun turned to face him. Shigemoto leaned forward, as if some force were pushing him from behind.
“Excuse me … Are you, by any chance, the mother of the late Lord Middle Counselor?” Shigemoto stammered.
“I was as you say, before I left the world. … And you?”
“I … I … I am the late Major Counselor’s orphan, Shigemoto.”
Then, as if a dam had burst, he suddenly cried, “Mother!” The nun staggered as the bulky man rushed up and threw his arms around her. With some difficulty she sat down on a rock at the side of the path.
…
(p. 179)

In brief, this novella is one of his best, I think, since it’s not too lengthy and you would find reading the festivity/abducting scene in Chapter 4 fantastically written and unthinkably rashness-oriented by such a complacent nephew.

[Ian Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was reasonably underwhelmed here...

Check out my full review:

https://ianjoshyateswriting.blogspot....

[meeners · Rating 4 out of 5]

chambers does a good job getting the flavor across without overtranslating. (though it's a pity the visual effect of ashikari couldn't really be preserved.) pairing these two novellas together was a good choice - you get some new riffs on your standard tanizaki themes (mother worship, some truly weird substitution fetishes, kansai, etc.).

[Hális Alves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tanizaki is audacious in the description of affective relationships and has a penchant for building unusual femme fatales, but he weights his hand on historiographic and heraldic details a bit too much.

[Taylor Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterful.

[Geoffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually, Captain Shigemoto's Mother is sort of tedious.

[Mark Darrah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tanizaki wondered how Japanese fiction would have developed absent the influence of the West. Captain Shigemoto's Mother may be his attempt to show us.

This novel spins out from ancient texts and features historical characters similar to the way a midrash does in the Judaic tradition. It evolves into an unusual story of bitter humor, dark pathos, and strange beauty. Psychologically and structurally complex, it concludes with remarkable poignancy.

So, what is it about? An old man's grief over the loss of his beautiful, young wife. A son's lifetime longing for his mother. The escapades of two great amorists and their poetry. And, of course, the mysterious mother of Captain Shigemoto.

I found the beginning of this book difficult to get through. Part of that stems from my lack of knowledge of Japanese history. More of it resulted from my Western expectation of a concise storyline. Still, this is a master work by a masterful writer.

[Sidney Lock · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reed cutter was okay but Mother was just plain boring

[Mariana Manrique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Performance. Mask. Half obscured woman. Theater.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

My reading of both these novellas is heavily influenced by having recently read Tanizaki's Naomi a story of obsession. Both stories in this book are similarly about men obsessed with a certain woman.

While Naomi has a personality, a rebellious streak and likes to have a good time, the objects of affection in the two stories in this book have no personal characteristics. They are admired and pampered for their beauty. While no personality elements are ascribed to either of them, they are totally passive and show little to no feeling for others. They have no work, no defined interests, and I could not help but wonder what they did with their time.

In these two novellas, there are social barriers that restrain communication and divide families. These are accepted, and seem to add to the mystic of the obsession.

Like Joji, who accepts whatever crumbs of a relationship Naomi will give him, the men in these novellas are prepared to accept the longing, loneliness, drudge and/or humiliation that results from their obsession. In "Reeds", the Father gives up his life for what appears to be no more than an image. While the "Mother" title suggests this is about a mother-son relationship, there is more text and drama (the chamber pot and Contemplation of Impurity scenes are most memorable) devoted to those who are romantically obsessed with Shigemoto's mother than to Shigemoto's (also obsessive) relationship with her.

Knowledge of The Tales of Genji, other Japanese classics and geography would enrich the reading of these stories. Knowledge of Japanese culture would be helpful too. Westerners can relate to the pedestal aspect of the stories since the adoration of female beauty as portrayed can be considered an extreme variation of the European tradition of courtly love. The last scene in Mother" has an unmistakable western counterpart.

Tanizaki is known for his modern translations of The Tales of Genji. Very different from this work and these stories is his longer work The Makioka Sisters which must be a classic defining Japanese life just prior to WWII.

[Ad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ashikari ("The Reed Cutter").
One fine evening, the narrator who lives in the Kobe area, decides to visit the Minase Shrine near Oyamazaki, between Osaka and Kyoto at the confluence of the Katsura, Kizu and Uji rivers. This area is historically famous as being the location of the Detached Palace of Emperor Gotoba in the late 12th c. Musing upon old poems and passages of history, the narrator eventually finds himself sipping sake among the reeds of a sandbar in the river, while enjoying the view of the full moon. Then a voice rings out: he meets a man who tells him how he used to come here every year with his father when he was a small boy. The father would stop at the hedge surrounding a large mansion and peep through it (a reminder of such behavior in Genji Monogatari, where this is called kaimami) to watch the annual moon-viewing party of the beautiful Lady Oyu. The story continues: when he was older, the boy heard the story of Oyu (who looks like a traditional beauty from the Heian period) from his father. The father happened to meet the twenty-two-year-old Oyu in the theater; it was love at first sight, but Oyu was already a widow, and as she had a son, her husband's family did not allow her to remarry. Oyu's sister Oshizu thereupon offered to help: she would marry her sister's lover but in name only, so that the sister and her husband could be together in a ménage-à-trois. Thus they lived happily until Oyu's son died, and she was married off by her family to another man - therefore the peeping into the moonlit garden. The mysterious woman has become a lasting obsession - and who is the mother of the man who tells this story to the author: Oyu or Oshizu?
Filmed in 1951 by Mizoguchi Kenji as Oyusama.

[Ronak M Soni · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are two fabulous novellas, exploring the tension between a strict conservative society and sexual human beings, by someone who is obviously an accomplished writer.

"The Reed-Cutter" is about a man who goes to visit a shrine steeped in a particular piece of history which he has always been fascinated by. There, he meets a man who tells him the story of his father who was in a sexless menage a trois of selfless love and great sacrifice. Mixing nostalgia of an age long past and an undercutting of the nostalgia, Tanizaki successfully synthesises a resolution that has both these feelings and an ultimate respect for people and their roles in society.

The far more accomplished "Captain Shigemoto's Daughter" continues this fascination with history and tells the story of the eponymous woman's life in a mixture of the styles of a chronicler and a storyteller; at the same time narrating a story from different points of view and citing the sources which make the narrator (a distinct persona unto himself) believe that that was how events transpired.
It not only explores the same tension between sexuality and society, it also propounds a theory on the role of religion in this conflict and the importance of how a story is told - like the title, none of the story is from the point of view of the woman herself (apparently, her name is not known); so much so, it seems like cheating to figure out whether this is based in actual historical fact or not.

[Scott Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

In these two tales (novellas), Jun’ichiro Tanizaki intertwines sexual desire and love triangles of bygone Japan. In the Reed Cutter, the narrator describes how our age dictates acceptance of past experiences, “In other words, for a young person, love for the past is nothing but a daydream unrelated to the present, but an older person has no other means for living through the present.” Tanizaki then proceeds to recount a complicated love tale between a man and two sisters. In Shigemoto’s Mother, Tanizaki transports the reader to 10th century Japan. Once again, the complexities of a love triangle unfold. The common denominator in both stories is the author’s redolent descriptions of a culture far different from current western norms and values. Both stories include historical footnotes and describe the effect of these complicated liaisons upon the ensuing offspring. Jun’ichiro Tanizaki was born in 1886 in Tokyo; he subsequently moved to Kyoto after his home was destroyed in the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923.

[Noam · Rating 5 out of 5]

tanizaki could literally write about the difference between the local grasses of two different parts of japan for a whole novel and it would still be fascinating... not a single thing happens for at least half of the reed cutter, but you don't even mind, and when the intensely romantic story starts all of a sudden it's like it's just the natural order of things. nothing too slow or too quick and nothing out of place at all. and the second book is just the same; it's really three or four stories in one but, to use an exhausted cliche, it feels more like it's just life... an unending flow of events, where the people and places and events are almost incidental. by the time we finally get to the titular shigemoto, there is once again no need to hurry or even to make it last longer. whatever tanizaki does is absolutely fine with me, no complaints here.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was my first book by Junichiro Tanisaki. Although I was not thrilled with the book I have a feeling it has more to do with my lack of background knowledge. After reading a few more I am sure I will revisit this book and take far more away from it.

Tanisaki uses historical reference and folklore to create two tales of human vulnerability. Both tales center around obsession and mother love, making a well-fit pairing. I would have preferred the stories had been more contradictory, making a more interesting juxtaposition. As was, it felt like both said about the same thing with different tales.

[Shiroiken · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Reed Cutter is really good, but has a strange start. The only downside is that it contains dialogue, but no quotation marks, so sometimes it becomes hard to follow.

Captain Shigemoto's Mother is a harder read, coming off as a quasi-history book. I barely managed to finish it, and admittedly, some chapters were so bad that I skimmed them instead.

[Jae B · Rating 1 out of 5]

This just wasn't my kind of book. I love the flowing, poetic style of Japanese writers, and the author did not disappoint. However, the stories read more like an historical account than a work of fiction. This is my first time reading anything by this writer. I would like to try one of his other novels. In fact, I think Mishima and Murakami may have to make it back into the rotation very soon.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both novellas start with a dense, dryly allusive and almost abstract exposition. After several pages, it's impossible to say when, you find yourself completely immersed in almost bodice-ripping human drama. Then the ending blows you away.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The reed cutter has an uber-slow start, a review of poetry in Heian period. if you overcome that, you have a beautifully written story, a romance a bit uncomprehensible for occidentals yet described with exquisite detail, and an end in the style of old japanese narrative

[Kevin K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of "The Reed Cutter": 5 stars
Beautiful story of longing on different levels.
Longing for an unattainable beautiful woman, and for an old Japan that is fading away just like her. Rich in Japanese detail and ambience.

[Joanne Fate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got out of the habit of reviewing but I usually noted how many stars. I'll go back into reviews in 2024 and try to rectify, but I'm injured and just going to do the star ratings and copy and paste this explanation. Happy Reading!

[William Gortowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

First time reading Tanazaki. Would help to know a little bit more about Japanese history and culture. Otherwise what came through was bizarre sexual behavior, which is OK...