A lost prince of Japan is being given new life.
The historical Takaoka was a royal who lived during the Heian Period (794-1185). Following a failed power play by his father, then-retired Emperor Heizei, against the new emperor, Saga, Takaoka’s family lost its influence and he became a Buddhist monk. Decades later, the prince went to study in China, and from there set out for India, but he went missing along the way, presumed dead somewhere near present-day Singapore.
Takaoka’s Travels, by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa. Translated by David Boyd. 178 pages, MONKEY, Fiction.
“The Prince was nonetheless the first Japanese person of his time to venture so far to the west,” says translator David Boyd’s afterword to Tatsuhiko Shibusawa’s “Takaoka’s Travels,” a fantastical novel based on the real-life prince. This kernel of history serves as the basis for Shibusawa’s only full-length novel, which was published in 1987 and won the Yomiuri Prize. Translated into English for the first time by Boyd, it’s a romp across Asia that’s both bawdy and spiritual.
When we first meet Takaoka, he is 65 years old, having had a wife and three children as a young man when he was still prince, though they’re only mentioned once in passing. He hasn’t had sex for decades, and part of his swagger is that he’s somehow “over it.” He’s an interesting hero for a boys’ adventure tale, one who’s not driven by money, glory or carnal pleasures, but rather by bemused curiosity and an inward calling to see India, here called Hindustan.
The story picks up after Takaoka has been in China for two and a half years and sets sail for India. His entourage is made up of two other Japanese monks, Anten and Engaku, and a young boy they encounter on the way named Akimaru. The land-hopping travel narrative is reminiscent of “Gulliver’s Travels” and “The Odyssey,” stories full of threatening and beguiling beasts and civilizations. The novel mocks anthropological field study of a certain age of exploration, drawing grotesque and extreme portraits of the “exotic” in a way that feels anachronistic in today’s global literary landscape. There are women who sleep with dogs and have canine-headed offspring; young half-bird “monotreme women,” who lay eggs instead of giving live birth and offer their bodies in a royal harem; queens who, once they bear children, must instantly be killed and embalmed by a mystical flower. To no one’s surprise, the women of ninth-century Asia really get the short end of the stick.
Anachronism itself plays an explicit role. “Takaoka’s Travels” breaks the fourth wall every so often, as in the example of Engaku arguing with an anteater about whether the animal should exist yet, since Christopher Columbus won’t have stepped foot in the New World for another 600 years. It’s a funny moment, and adds to the dream-like quality of the novel, which slips out of reality just as easily as it slips to the present.
“So, it seems, you are just what the Brahmin ordered,” is another chuckle-inducing line fine-tuned by Boyd for the modern English ear.
Underneath the shenanigans, the novel also presents an interesting dichotomy within the wise and experienced monk. Despite his worldly renouncements, Takaoka is secretly driven by the memory of a beautiful woman, one of his father’s concubines who also gave him early sexual experiences. Somewhere between a mother, teacher and lover, Kusuko is a spirit that propels him to travel to India. Ultimately the monk is still a seeker, and the conflict he navigates within is as familiar as his external journey is surreal.
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