Tales of Times Now Past: Sixty-Two Stories from a Medieval Japanese Collection (Volume 9)

by Marian Ury (Translator), Anonymous

Tales of Times Now Past is a translation of 62 outstanding tales freshly selected from Konjaku monogatari shu, a Japanese anthology dating from the early twelfth century. The original work, unique in world literature, contains more than one thousand systematically arranged tales from India, China, and Japan. It is the most important example of a genre of collections of brief tales which, because of their informality and unpretentious style, were neglected by Japanese critics until recent years but which are now acknowledged to be among the most significant prose literature of premodern Japan. “Konjaku” in particular has aroused the enthusiasm of such leading 20th-century writers as Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Tanizaki Jun’ichiro.
The stories, with sources in both traditional lore and contemporary gossip, cover an astonishing range—homiletic, sentimental, terrifying, practical-minded, humorous, ribald. Their topics include the life of the Buddha, descriptions of Heaven and Hell, feats of warriors, craftsmen, and musicians, unsuspected vice, virtue, and ingenuity, and the ways and wiles of bandits, ogres, and proverbially greedy provincial governors, to name just a few. Composed perhaps a century after the refined, allusive, aristocratic Tale of Genji, Konjaku represents a masculine outlook and comparatively plebeian social orientation, standing in piquant contrast to the earlier masterpiece. The unknown compiler was interested less in exploring psychological subtleties than in presenting vivid portraits of human foibles and eccentricities. The stories in the present selection have been chosen to provide an idea of the scope and structure of the book as a whole, and also for their appeal to the modern reader. And the translation is based on the premise that the most faithful rendering is also the liveliest.

Genres: Short Stories, Japanese Literature, Literature, Fiction, Japan, Classics

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Brendan Coster · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories were pretty interesting. Having read much of the classic poetry up to the Kamakura period, I was missing the prose tales. This one was just the Konjaku, so the stories were almost all (if only at the end) modified to make a point as part of a Buddhist sermon. I'm already into Royall Tyler's (who's translations I find superior) "Japanese Tales" which covers most of the same materials, but pulls in stories from a number of other collections and tales. Anyways, the Konjaku Tales I've read in there are already far clearer and more interesting then what Marian Ury did in this volume.

Anyways, I'll probably leave off my "short stories" review for Tylers book when I'm finished.

You too could probably skip this and track down "Japanese Tales" and have yourself a much better experience. Not that Ury's version is bad, just in comparison it's bland and doesn't do the content justice.

[Nanako Water · Rating 5 out of 5]

This translation sixty-two short stories come from the Konjaku monogatari shu, a collection of over a thousand stories (some originally from India and China) collected around the year 1120 by an unknown monk in Japan. Yes, that's about 900 years ago! These stories are a mix of practical, religious, supernatural, and absurd tales--some of which were later rewritten as short stories, children's stories and even movies. I was particularly interested in the Buddhist and secular tales of Japan. One tale, "How a Falconer in the Western Part of the Capital Renounced Secular Life Because of a Dream" I recognized as a story about a duck hunter in a children's book, and another tale, "How a Man Who was Accompanying His Wife to Tanba Province Got Trussed up at Oeyama" was the basis for "In a Grove" (藪の中 Yabu no Naka) a 1922 short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Akira Kurosawa then used this story as the basis for the plot of his award-winning movie Rashōmon. This book gave me an appreciation for the wealth of Japanese literature and its long history.