Iwa ni Hana

Photo of Shiba Ryōtarō (1923 - 1996), writer and historian.

It seems no exaggeration to say that Shiba Ryōtarō [司馬遼太郎,] was the foremost intellectual in post-war Japan. I think you would enjoy his prose writings if you enjoy reading informed opinion (let me stress the informed part).

We have many nouns for describing those who can gaze and see the future – fortune-teller, soothsayer, prophet, visionary etc; but we have only one noun for describing those who can gaze and see the past – historian. I once read somewhere that a writer and historian like Robert Graves (of I, Claudius fame) would probably not find himself lost if he were were suddenly transported through time travel back to Augustus’ Rome; he would know just every street and corner there as though he had lived there all his life. To apply the same comment on Shiba Ryōtarō, I think he would just know his way around Tokugawa Iemitsu’s Edo if he ever found himself transported there.

There are other reasons why Robert Graves and Shiba Ryōtarō overlap in my mind. One of them was that both wrote erudite essays on a wide range of topics. Those written by Robert Graves seem to have sadly fallen out of print (I now have only the notes I took when I borrowed those books from my university’s library). Those written by Shiba Ryōtarō are still popularly in print and I was lucky to get a large number of them at a second-hand bookstore. I have already read about twenty volumes of his prose writings and interview transcripts so far this winter. I just started to tackle his series of travelogue which runs to some twenty volumes. (It was also from these books that I suddenly got inspired to do what I call the “Shiba Ryōtarō pilgrimages” – I want to visit the historic sites he highlighted – not all in one go but gradually from area to area. Please stay tuned for more.)

There is another reason why Robert Graves and Shiba Ryōtarō overlap in my mind: they were both deeply scarred by their wartime experiences as young conscripted soldiers (the former in WWI and the latter in WWII). I think of them as kindred spirits – they seem to be coloured by the same spirit of disenchantment or disillusionment about the world at large. It makes you wonder what kind of conversation would have sprung between them if the two had met.

My favorite so far is a series of essays entitled Kono Kuni no Katachi [この国の形]. Below is an essay from that series that I translated, because I have a feeling I will be referring to it in future posts -

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Photo of Harada Munenori (1959 - present).

Harada Munenori [原田宗典] is one of the finest humorists in Japan today.

Once upon a time when I was still a university student, I often translated newspaper articles I picked in random from English into Japanese and vice versa, not for homework (though there was a lot of similar exercises for homework too) but for my own practice. One day, it occurred to me that one of the true tests of translation is translating the humour of one language into another, and dry materials like Asahi Shinbun’s editorial Tensei Jingo [天声人語] would probably not cut it. To challenge myself, I asked my profs for recommendations of humorists in contemporary Japan, and Harada Munenori was one of the names that came up.

17-Sai Datta [17歳だった] was the first book by Harada Munenori that I read. It is a collection of articles in which he reminiscences about his happier days as a teenager in the 1970s. I consumed the book mostly on my way to class by bus. I think I laughed aloud so hard, that on more than one occasion other passengers on the bus nearly called for medical assistance.

I have posted below my translation (dated 2005) of one of the articles in that book. The original title is Bungaku Seinen he no Michi [文学青年への道] but to translate it literally as “The Road to Being a Young Man of Literature” sounds somewhat flat in English, and so (with apologies to James Joyce) I translated it as A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Man.

I think I will let his writing and sense of humour speak for themselves. Enjoy.

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