Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

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盗人にとり残されし窓の月 nusubito ni torinokosareshi mado no tsuki Ryōkan - The thief, left behind, the moon in my window

This is a philological study of the haiku 盗人にとり残されし窓の月 (nusubito ni torinokosareshi mado no tsuki), first printed as Ryōkan's in 1914 inside a story of a robe given to a thief, and in 1918 under a bare headnote. It traces the story from a burglary told of him without any verse, through the three incompatible tellings the verse gathered, and follows the verse through eleven English renderings.

Abstract

盗人にとり残されし窓の月, the thief left it behind: the moon in the window, is given to Ryōkan. It is first printed in 1914, in a life of him that tells how he gave a thief his old padded robe and reports the verse as something he is said to have composed, and in 1918 under a one-line headnote naming a burglary at his hut; a burglary was told of him before any verse was, in a book of anecdotes composed within sixteen years of his death, where the thief pulls the sleeping mat from under him and no poem follows, and in Ryōkan's own Chinese quatrain on meeting a thief, where he sits all night below the window in the rain. Around the verse the story took three incompatible shapes — a robe given away, a futon rolled off, a family's morning after — none agreeing on what was taken or where the hut stood. Miyamori carried the verse into English in 1932 and Blyth in 1942, and at least nine more renderings followed.

Overview

The text. The scroll carries 盗人にとり残されし窓の月, and the record carries one text in three writings and one real departure. ぬす人 / 盜人 / 盗人. The 1918 全集 and the books that copy its headnote write ぬす人 [1]; the 1914 life, the 1918 lecture, the 1930 literary history and the 1940 Zen lectures write 盜人 [2][3][4][5]; the scroll writes the modern form. 取り殘されし / とり殘されし / とりのこされし / とり残されし are writings of one word; the 1917 sermon and 相馬御風's 1918 life write it all in kana [6][7]. The 1938 place-name dictionary writes 盜賊, a prose writer's substitution that no verse witness shares [8]. Miyamori's とりのこされたり is a different verb form, たり for し, and no Japanese witness has it; it is his or his printer's, and Blyth and Carter romanize the し that every Japanese book prints [9]. The sense holds across all of them. The meter is five, seven, five: ぬ・す・び・と・に, と・り・の・こ・さ・れ・し, ま・ど・の・つ・き.

The sense. The 1914 life gave it the robe and the rising moon, as hearsay [2]; the 1918 edition printed the verse under a headnote and no story [1]; the preacher of 1917 and 1918 gave it the robe in his own words [6][3]; the gazetteer of 1938 gave it the futon [8]; Miyamori in 1932 gave it a family distressed the morning after [9]. The three tellings do not agree on what was taken, when the verse was made, or where the hut stood, which is what a legend looks like. Its earliest attestation with the verse is 1914, and the story is older than the verse's print: the futon telling is the anecdote collection's entry 45, where Ryōkan, pretending to sleep, rolls over so that the thief can pull the mat from under him, and no verse is told [10]. Tsuchida 土田 in 1924 read it as the beauty a thief cannot reach [11]; the 1946 essayist as the one thing that cannot be carried off [12]. Blyth in 1942: the robbed that smiles steals something from the thief, from Othello, and Ryōkan stole the moon from the thief, and smiled in seventeen syllables; in 1952: in any other poet but Ryōkan this verse might be suspected of affectation, but our knowledge of Ryōkan's daily life enables us to read this as it was written, in complete simplicity and truth, with Cory's Heraclitus, For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take [13]. 加藤 in 1940 set it beside 南泉 as a Zen anecdote [14].

The words. 盗人に is by the thief, the に of the agent with a passive; read nusubito, the colloquial contraction being nusutto, and the meter takes either at five. とり残されし is left behind, 取り残す in the passive with the attributive し of the classical perfect: the thing left is the moon, the one who left it is the thief, and the whole line is a relative clause on 窓の月, the moon in the window, an autumn word by the moon. As words the line says: the moon in the window, left behind by the thief. Tsuchida Kyōson's gloss of 1924 is the Japanese sense in one sentence: whatever a thief steals is a thing self-interest can touch; only Ryōkan's sense of beauty stands apart from self-interest, and no thief can do anything with that [11].

The verse in English. Miyamori in 1932 [9] and Blyth in 1942 and 1952 [13] carried the verse into English first; Suzuki in 1959 [15], Shibayama in 1970 [16], Stevens in 1977 [17], Shigematsu in 1988 [18], Carter [19] and a dictionary of Buddhism in 1991 [20], Corman in 2003 [21], Tanahashi in 2012 [22] and Kern in 2018 [23] followed. Miyamori's Japanese text alone departs from every other witness, with a different verb form.

The historical record

Before the verse. 解良栄重, 良寛禅師奇話; Ryōkan's quatrain 逢賊. The anecdotes a village headman who had played with Ryōkan as a child wrote down within sixteen years of his death tell a burglary at the hut on 国上山 with no verse in it: There was a thief who broke into the Master's hut at Kugami. Finding nothing to steal, he pulled at the Master's sleeping mat, attempting to remove it without waking him. Pretending to be asleep, the Master rolled over, allowing the thief to pull the mat out from under him and carry it off [10]. Ryōkan's own Chinese quatrain, printed in the 1918 全集 under the title 逢賊, meeting a thief, sets the night: 禪版蒲團把將去、賊打草堂誰敢禁、終宵孤坐幽窓下、踈雨蕭々苦竹林, the meditation board and the cushion, he took them and went; a thief struck my grass hut, and who would dare stop him; all night I sat alone below the dim window, a thin rain sighing in the bamboo [24].

1914. 西郡久吾, 北越偉人沙門良寛全伝, 目黒書店. The earliest print of the verse, in a life of Ryōkan: 空くして歸らんとす、禪師呼び留めて古布子を脫ぎて與へられけり、折から、月、東山に上りたりければ、盜人にとり殘されし窓の月と詠まれしとかや、こは神甞月の夜、蓑一つ着たる人の門に立ちて物こひければと〔端書ある和歌と同時の作なん〕めりと思はるれど, he was going away empty-handed when the master called him back and took off his old padded robe and gave it to him; just then the moon rose over the eastern hill, and it is said that he composed 盜人にとり殘されし窓の月; this seems to have been made at the same time as the poem headed "a night of the ninth month, when a man in a straw cape stood at the gate and begged", and the author goes on to Ikkyū's poem on a thief [2]. The robe telling, with the moon rising, told as hearsay, and paired with a waka on a beggar at the gate. The bracketed words are the July 1914 number of the calligraphy magazine 書苑, which prints the same sentence [25].

1916, 1917. The gazetteer; the preacher's first telling. 越佐大観 (1916): の如き、ぬす人に取りのこされし窓の月』と口吟して、梁上の君子に, …murmuring the verse, to the gentleman on the beam [26]. 新井石禅's 曹洞宗綱要 (1917), printed page 76: 泥棒は感心し乍其布子を持つて出懸けて往つた。… 折しも月が雲間を出でゝ皎々と輝き、其影を窓に懸けて居るので、良寛和尙思はず知らず一句を咏じた 盜人にとりのこされし窓の月, the thief, impressed, went off with the padded robe … just then the moon came out of the clouds and shone brilliantly, hanging its light in the window, and the master, without thinking, composed a verse [6].

1918. 玉木礼吉 (ed.), 良寛全集, 良寛会; the 俳句 section. 俳句 / 五合庵へ賊の入りたるあとにて / ぬす人に取り殘されし窓の月、 / 渡部村阿部氏に宿し鰯賣の走るを見て / いくつれかおよひてゆくやいわしうり、, printed page 241. The headnote stands on its own line above the verse, set apart from it; it names a burglary and the hut on 国上山 and nothing else [1]. It is the headnote's first appearance in the NDL's digitized books, so in print the story came four years before the headnote. Whether its words are Ryōkan's or the editor's, nothing read decides.

1918. Arai Sekizen 新井石禅, 青年指導修養講演, a Zen abbot's lectures to young men. Printed page 69: 或時泥棒が何か取る積りで這入つて來た見ると巾着も米櫃も簞笥も皆空つぼう、大變な見込違ひブツ〳〵いひ乍らすご〳〵と歸らうとするのを和尙が呼止めて折角來たものぢやから何か持つて行け、持つて行けつて何にもないぢやありませんか、茲にまだ一遍しか着ない布子があるから這入つた紀念に持つて行け、そんな抹香臭い物はいやです、さう云はないで持つて行け、折角の思召止を得ないから頂戴致しますと泥棒が出て行くのを戶口で見送つて道中不用心だから氣を付けろよ、室に戾つて見ると窓一杯に月影が映つて居るあゝ泥棒奴此月影の妙趣を知らぬと見ゆる不憫なものぢといひつゝ 盜人にとり殘されし窓の月 と詠じた, one time a thief came in meaning to take something and found purse, rice-bin and chest all empty; grumbling at his miscalculation he was slinking off when the master called him back: you came all this way, take something; take what, there is nothing; here is a padded robe I have worn only once, take it as a keepsake of your visit; I don't want a thing that smells of incense; don't say that, take it; the thief accepts, and the master sees him off at the door: the road is unsafe, mind yourself; goes back into the room and finds the window full of moonlight: ah, the thief, poor fellow, seems not to know the beauty of this moonlight; and he composed the verse. The robe telling, in speech, the same year as the 全集 [3].

1918, June. 相馬御風, 大愚良寛, 春陽堂. Under 良寛の俳句: 五合庵へ賊の入りたる後にて / 盜人にとりのこされし窓の月, the 全集's headnote with the verse in kana, in a life whose sources list names 西郡's 1914 book and the 良寛會 全集 first among its authorities [7].

1920–1926. 菅原洞禅; 野々村直太郎. 菅原's 改造の基礎 (1920) and 日本禅門偉傑伝 (1924): 更に再び賊の入りたるあとに歸り來て、ぬす人に取り殘されし窓の月, and again, coming back after a thief had got in [4]; 野々村's 禅と念仏 (1926): たま〳〵賊の爲にその大切の布子を盜み去らるゝやぬす人に取り殘されし窓の月と詠じた, when a thief happened to carry off his precious padded robe he composed [27].

1924, 1929. Tsuchida Kyōson, 教育思潮叢書; 福岡師範学校附属小学校, 教育の純粋相と真指導. Tsuchida: 五合庵へ賊の入りたるあとにてぬす人に取り殘されし窓の月 たゞ此の一句であるが、味ひはなか〳〵に盡きない … 盜人の盜む樣なものはすべて利害心の關與し得る品物である。ひとり良寛の美意識だけは、さうした利害心を離れたしろものですから、いかなる盜人も其れをどうする譯にはいかない, just this one verse, but its savor is far from exhausted; and the gloss above. The Fukuoka school reused it five years later as a lesson in 心の磨き, polishing the heart: まんまるい月が窓に浮んでゐる。なんと澄んだよい情趣だ [11][28].

1930. 福井久蔵, 近世和歌史. 乙子祠畔の草庵で唯一枚しかない古布子を量賊にくれて、窓にさし入る月を眺め、「盜人にとり殘されし窓の月」と口ずさんだ, in his thatched hut by the 乙子 shrine he gave a thief the one old padded robe he owned, gazed at the moon coming in at the window, and murmured the verse; the hut moved from 五合庵 to the shrine below it [5].

1930. 法蔵館 (ed.), 現代布教全書, a handbook of sermons. The futon telling, the master roused by the cold and seeing the moon fill the window, and then: 盜人に取りのこされし窓の月 … これは和尙自身の作であつたかどうかわからぬけれども、その時の和尙の心もちがぴつたり, whether this was the master's own composition I cannot say, but it fits his feeling at that moment exactly [29].

1937. 三木清 et al. (eds.), 人生読本, the Ryōkan reader. After striking たくほどは風がもて來る落葉かな from his canon on Issa's 七番日記: 彼獨自の味はいを見せた作品としては、有名なも,五合庵に賊入りたる後にてぬす人に取り殘されし窓の月の俳句と、霞立つ長き春日を … の歌と … の外には、殆どない, as works showing his own flavor there is almost nothing beyond the famous verse under its headnote, the long-spring-day poem, and the exchange with 貞信尼 [30].

1938. The gazetteers and the place-name dictionary. 躍進長野県新潟県総覧: 五合庵に盜人が忍び入つた。所が何一つ盜む物もないのに、盜人もあきれ返つた。然るに良寛は、其は盜人に氣の毒であると云つて、わざと蒲團からころがり出たので、盜人は好機逸すべからずとなし、蒲團を抱へて逃げ去つた … ぬす人にとり殘されし窓の月と詠んだと云ふ, a thief crept into the hut, found nothing to steal and was dumbfounded; Ryōkan said that was hard on the thief and rolled himself off his futon on purpose, and the thief seized the chance and ran off with it … so it is said: the futon telling. The 日本地名大辞典, under 島崎村, writes 「盜賊にとり殘されし窓の月」と口ずさめ [8][31].

1940. 加藤咄堂, 碧巌録大講座, 良寛和尙と盜賊. The robe telling once more, 一夜盜賊に見舞れた … こゝにたつた一枚、大切にしてゐる綿入ぬの布子があるから、これをお持ちかへり下され … 盜賊を見送るために窓を開けると、皎々たる月が … 盜人にとり殘されし窓の月と一句を詠んだ--といふ有名な話がありますが, there is the famous story that …, set beside 南泉, who gave away everything for the monks [14].

1941, 1946. After the record. A novelized life, 善き人々 (1941), has the verse written on a sliding door in the poet's own hand, ぬすびとに取り殘されし窓の月, and a visitor admiring 唐紙に書かれた良寛さまの書; an essayist of 1946, 静に思ふ, retells the futon telling, has the master regret that the night's visitor was not 『東村の叟』, the old man of the east village, and then laugh: 『なるほど、何を持つて行つても、これだけは持つて行けぬわい。ありがたいことぢや。』, of course, whatever they carry off, this one thing they cannot carry; a blessing [32][12].

The attribution. Ryōkan's, on the testimony of the 1914 life, which reports it as hearsay eighty-three years after his death [2], of the 1918 collected edition, which prints it under a headnote naming his hut [1], and of every book after them. Nothing older is in the NDL's digitized books, the ones it serves only in Japan included, under any spelling; the anecdotes 解良栄重 wrote down tell the burglary without it [10]; and the collection his pupil 貞心尼 made, 蓮の露 (self-preface 1835), is held at NIJL in one copy without images. One book doubts it: the 1930 sermon handbook cannot say whether the verse is his own [29]. The 1937 reader that strikes the falling-leaves verse from his canon on the strength of Issa's diary keeps this one among the few it accepts as his [30]. Miyamori in 1932 gave it to him in English with a different verb form, Blyth in 1942 and 1952 with the received text, Carter in 1991 with the headnote; none of the English translators argues the attribution [9][13][19].

What is not a source. The stories are legend: the verse's floor is 1914, and the burglary without the verse is older, in the anecdote collection [10]. Miyamori's とりのこされたり is his own text [9]. Nothing in the poet's hand, and nothing from 蓮の露, has been read: the one NIJL holding has no images and the 定本全集 is not among the witnesses.

The verse in English

1932. Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, printed pages 602–603, THE MOON OF THE WINDOW. 盗人に とりのこされたり 窓の月 良寛; The moon at my window is left / Unstolen by the thief. Ryōkwan, with the morning-after telling and a biography giving 1756–1831 [9].

1942, 1952. R. H. Blyth. Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, Hokuseido, page 298: The thief / Left it behind / The moon at the window, with the Othello line; Haiku, volume 3, Summer–Autumn, 1952, page 395: Nusubito ni / torinokosareshi / mado no tsuki — The thief / Left it behind,— / The moon at the window. Ryōkan, with the paragraph quoted above [13].

1959. D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, Princeton (Bollingen Series), page 365. The robe telling, the burglar leaving the outside amado open, from which a bright moon poured its light into Ryokwan's room: A burglar failing to carry off the moon, / It shines in from the window!; then the waka Where, I wonder, is he passing the night, / This cold freezing night, said to have been composed … after another unwelcome visit by a stranger, the pairing the 1914 life makes [15].

1970. Zenkei Shibayama, A Flower Does Not Talk, Tuttle. An autumn evening with a beautiful moon; Ryōkan comes back to find his bowls and dishes stolen: "The moon out the window! / Left by the thief unstolen." [16].

1977. John Stevens, One Robe, One Bowl, Weatherhill, page 75. The thief left it behind— / the moon / At the window, Blyth's words in new lines, with the note This is another haiku, Ryokan's most famous one [17].

1988. Sōiku Shigematsu, A Zen Harvest, North Point Press, no. 472. The burglar has / Forgotten to steal: / The moon in the window, beside a verse on poverty as the best defense against a thief [18].

1991. Steven D. Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry, Stanford, no. 1079. Written after thieves had broken into his hut — At least the robbers / left this one thing behind— / moon in my window, with the romaji; the headnote rendered [19]. The same year The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, under Ryōkan: The thief left it there / There in the windowframe— / The shining moon, after a thief had stolen all the meagre possessions [20].

2003, 2012, 2018. Cid Corman, One Man's Moon, Gnomon Press, page 77: The robber had been / but had somehow left behind / the wide window's moon [21]. Kazuaki Tanahashi, Sky Above, Great Wind, Shambhala, in the introduction: Only thing / the thief left behind— / moon in my window; the book's anecdotes tell the futon story [22]. Adam L. Kern, The Penguin Book of Haiku, page 162: the burglar / left it behind — / moon in the window, beside Yasharo's burglar who praises the moon on his way home, with the romaji in the commentary, page 339 [23].

A reading

I read the verse as Tsuchida glossed it: not a story about a thief but a sentence about what cannot be stolen, with the thief as its grammatical agent and the moon as its subject. The tellings are what a century did with a burglary that was told of Ryōkan before any verse was, and with a headnote of eleven characters that reached print four years after the first story. Ryōkan's own quatrain on meeting a thief has him sit all night below a window in the rain; the verse, whoever first set it to that night, gives the same window its moon. The text is one text; the scroll's is the 全集's in modern writing.

References

  1. 玉木礼吉 編『良寛全集』, 良寛会, 1918, printed page 241. National Diet Library pid 957395, scan 128. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/957395/1/128
  2. 西郡久吾 編『北越偉人沙門良寛全伝』, 目黒書店, 1914, scan 156. National Diet Library pid 943462 (served to registered readers in Japan only); the passage as the NDL Digital full-text search displays it: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=殘されし窓の月&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  3. 新井石禅『青年指導修養講演』, 1918, printed page 69. National Diet Library pid 959268, scan 36. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/959268/1/36
  4. 菅原洞禅『改造の基礎』, 1920. National Diet Library pid 963224, scan 147. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/963224/1/147
  5. 福井久蔵『近世和歌史』, 1930. National Diet Library pid 1127659, scan 201. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1127659/1/201
  6. 新井石禅『曹洞宗綱要』(布教文庫 2), 鴻盟社, 1917, printed page 76. National Diet Library pid 944069, scan 43. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/944069/1/43
  7. 相馬御風『大愚良寛』, 春陽堂, 1918. National Diet Library pid 959199, scan 291 (良寛の俳句); scan 9 (the sources). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/959199/1/291
  8. 内外通信社『躍進長野県新潟県総覧』, 1938. National Diet Library pid 1053297, scan 111; pid 1457668 (twin printing).
  9. Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, 1932, printed pages 602–603.
  10. Ryūichi Abé and Peter Haskel, Great Fool: Zen Master Ryōkan — Poems, Letters, and Other Writings, University of Hawaii Press, 1996: 解良栄重『良寛禅師奇話』 in translation, no. 45; the date of composition, p. xiv.
  11. 土田杏村『教育思潮叢書』, 1924. National Diet Library pid 937890, scan 116. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/937890/1/116
  12. 静に思ふ (随筆集), 一聯社, 1946. National Diet Library pid 1130452, scan 42.
  13. R. H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, Hokuseido Press, 1942, p. 298; Haiku, vol. 3, Summer–Autumn, Hokuseido Press, 1952, p. 395.
  14. 加藤咄堂『碧巌録大講座』, 良寛和尙と盜賊, 1940. National Diet Library pid 1246931, scan 133. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1246931/1/133
  15. Daisetz T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Bollingen Series LXIV), Princeton University Press, 1959, pp. 365–366.
  16. Zenkei Shibayama, A Flower Does Not Talk: Zen Essays, Charles E. Tuttle, 1970, the essay on Ryōkan.
  17. John Stevens, One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan, Weatherhill, 1977, p. 75.
  18. Sōiku Shigematsu, A Zen Harvest: Japanese Folk Zen Sayings, North Point Press, 1988, no. 472.
  19. Steven D. Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology, Stanford University Press, 1991, no. 1079.
  20. Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber et al., The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen, Shambhala, 1991, s.v. Ryōkan.
  21. Cid Corman, One Man's Moon: Poems by Bashō and Other Japanese Poets, expanded edition, Gnomon Press, 2003, p. 77.
  22. Kazuaki Tanahashi, Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan, Shambhala, 2012, the introduction and the anecdotes.
  23. Adam L. Kern, The Penguin Book of Haiku, Penguin Classics, 2018, p. 162; commentary, p. 339.
  24. 玉木礼吉 編『良寛全集』, 良寛会, 1918, the quatrain 逢賊, National Diet Library pid 957395, scan 42, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/957395/1/42; in translation as A Thief Visits, Abé and Haskel, Great Fool, 1996, p. 126.
  25. 『書苑』4(3), 法書会, July 1914, scan 29. National Diet Library pid 2732715 (served to registered readers in Japan only); the passage as the NDL Digital full-text search displays it: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=殘されて窓の月&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  26. 西村駿次 編『越佐大観』, 越佐会事務所, 1916, scan 10. National Diet Library pid 954684 (served to registered readers in Japan only); the passage as the NDL Digital full-text search displays it: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=のこされし窗の月&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  27. 野々村直太郎『禅と念仏』, 1926. National Diet Library pid 1019168, scan 148. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1019168/1/148
  28. 福岡師範学校附属小学校 編『教育の純粋相と真指導』, 1929. National Diet Library pid 1464446, scan 73.
  29. 法蔵館 編『現代布教全書』, 法蔵館, 1930, scan 336. National Diet Library pid 1171734. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1171734/1/336
  30. 三木清 等 (eds.), 人生読本, 良寛讀本, 1937. National Diet Library pid 1220735, scan 30.
  31. 『日本地名大辞典』, s.v. 島崎村, 1938. National Diet Library pid 1116270, scan 203.
  32. 善き人々, 丁字屋書店, 1941. National Diet Library pid 1042908, scan 19.

Authors