Orientation

They never laughed so openly before. Our dear Naigu would sometimes 
break off intoning the scriptures and mutter this sort of thing to himself, 

---

62 
 
 
tilting his bald head to one side. His eyes would wander up to the portrait 
of the Bodhisattva Fugen
4
 hanging beside him. And he would sink into 
gloom, thinking about how it had been for him a few days earlier, when 
he still had his long nose, “just as he who can now sink no lower fondly 
recalls his days of glory.” The Naigu, unfortunately, lacked the wisdom 
to find a solution to this problem. 
The human heart harbors two conflicting sentiments. Everyone of course 
sympathizes with people who suffer misfortunes. Yet when those people 
manage to overcome their misfortunes, we feel a certain disappointment. 
We may even feel (to overstate the case somewhat) a desire to plunge 
them back into those misfortunes. And before we know it, we come (if 
only passively) to harbor some degree of hostility toward them. It was 
precisely because he sensed this kind of spectator's egoism in both the lay 
and the priestly communities of Ike-no-o that the Naigu, while unaware 
of the reason, felt an indefinable malaise. 
And so the Naigu's mood worsened with each passing day. He could 
hardly say a word to people without snapping at them – until finally, 
even the disciple who had performed the treatment on his nose began to 
whisper behind his back: “The Naigu will be punished for treating us so 
harshly instead of teaching us Buddha's Law.” The one who made the 
Naigu especially angry was that mischievous page. One day the Naigu 
heard some loud barking, and without giving it much thought, he stepped 
outside to see what was going on. There, he found the page waving a 
long stick in pursuit of a scrawny long-haired dog. The boy was not 
                                                            
4
  Sanskrit: Samantabhadra. Often depicted riding a white elephant to the Buddha’s right, Fugen 
symbolizes, among other things, the Buddha’s concentration of mind. The trunk of the 
elephant might also have attracted the Naigu’s attention.  
simply chasing after the dog, however. He was also shouting as if for the 
dog, “‘Can't hit my nose! Ha ha! Can't hit my nose!’” The Naigu ripped 
the stick from the boy's hand and smacked him in the face with it. Then 
he realized this “stick” was the slat they had used to hold his nose up at 
mealtimes. 
His nose had been shortened all right, thought the Naigu, but he hated 
what it was doing to him. 
And then one night something happened. The wind must have risen quite 
suddenly after the sun went down, to judge by the annoying jangle of the 
pagoda wind chimes that reached him at his pillow. The air was much 
colder as well, and the aging Naigu was finding it impossible to sleep. 
Eyes wide open in the darkness, he became aware of a new itching 
sensation in his nose. He reached up and found the nose slightly swollen 
to the touch. It (and only it) seemed to be feverish as well. 
“We took such drastic steps to shorten it: maybe that gave me some kind 
of illness,” the Naigu muttered to himself, cupping the nose in hands he 
held as if reverentially offering flowers or incense before the Buddha. 
When he woke early as usual the next morning, the Naigu found that the 
temple's gingko and horse-chestnut trees had dropped their leaves 
overnight, spreading a bright, golden carpet over the temple grounds. 
And perhaps because of the frost on the roof of the pagoda, the nine-ring 
spire atop it flashed in the still-faint glimmer of the rising sun. Standing 
on the veranda where the latticed shutters had been raised, Zenchi Naigu 
took a deep breath of morning air. 
It was at this moment that an all-but-forgotten sensation returned to him. 

---

63 
 
 
The Naigu shot his hand up to his nose, but what he felt there was not the 
short nose he had touched in the night. It was the same old long nose he 
had always had, dangling down a good six inches from above his upper 
lip to below his chin. In the space of a single night, his nose had grown as 
long as ever. When he realized this, the Naigu felt that same bright sense 
of relief he had experienced when his nose became short. 
Now no one will laugh at me anymore, the Naigu whispered silently in 
his heart, letting his long nose sway in the dawn’s autumn wind. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
F
rom Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories, tr. 
Jay Rubin (London: Penguin, 2006).