Yasushi Inoue (1907-1991) was one of Japan's finest historical novelists. Works such as "Lou-lan," "Tun-huang" and "The Roof Tile of Tempyo" established his reputation and are still in print. Among his most popular successes are the fictionalized biographies of Confucius and Genghis Khan, and the 1959 "Furin Kazan" is still much admired.
The title refers to the famous war banner of Takeda Shingen (1521-1573). It contained four Chinese characters that signified: "Silent as a forest. Swift as the wind. Rapacious as fire. Immovable as a mountain." These qualities summarized the art of war for the Chinese general Sun Tzu (sixth century B.C.) -- qualities also deemed necessary for military success during the civil wars that defined the Sengoku Period and eventually resulted in a unified Japan.
Among the would-be unifiers (along with Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi) was Takeda Shingen, and his noble failure is among the most popular Japanese historical chronicles.
There have been numerous film and television adaptations of the tale. The best known is Akira Kurosawa's "Kagemusha" (1980), but the most popular was Hiroshi Inagaki's 1969 "Furin Kazan (Samurai Banners)" with Toshiro Mifune as the hero. The most expensive was Haruki Kadokawa's "Ten to Chi (Heaven and Hell)" (1990) filmed in Canada with hundreds of otherwise unemployed Canadians as the charging samurai.
Inoue's version is seen through the persona of a Takeda follower, Yamamoto Kansuke, an ill-favored but intrepid samurai -- brave, invariably loyal and a master plotter. We share his observations and also his feelings.
"Kansuke learned for the first time that both love and hate could coexist at the same time and appear alternately without any logic. This discovery was beyond his understanding and he had no idea how to cope with it."
It is his military machinations and emotional upheavals that we are to experience -- the details of which you will discover if you read the book. These are all told in the plainest of prose. Sobriety is the quality rendered and the film versions had to take considerable liberties to render them exciting enough for a general audience.
Here, in the original, the battle scenes are in long shot, as it were, the motives are examined in close-up, and comment is mixed with observation. "He was more intent on arranging his strategy in this minor court intrigue than in any other battle he had faced before."
Rendering this plain style into English is difficult because plainness can look like dumbness and simple recounting can appear shallow. Inoue's style has been most successfully rendered by Edward Seidensticker, the late James Araki, and Roger Thomas, all of whom found equivalents to render the qualities (dignity, probity, simplicity, elegance) of the original.
Translators sometimes make a distinction between a literal (katai) translation, which respects the original language, and one that favors the necessities of the language into which it is being translated. The merits of both are much debated and the ideal is often some accommodation of the two ways.
Yoko Riley, the translator of this volume, favors the original. For example, "suddenly Kansuke unconsciously lifted his hips from his stool . . ." This gives us the authentic flavor of the Japanese since we do not say this in English: We say that he stood up.
"Every time he stepped with his right leg, his body leaned heavily to that side." "He stumbled backwards . . . onto a stone." The native language is given preference over the target language.
This offers the English reader some indication of what Japanese is like, but whether it manages to express the spare elegance for which the author's prose is celebrated must remain a subject for debate. We are here, however, offered the first translation of one of Inoue's most lasting popular successes.
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