On Paths Unknown discussion

Thread for discussion of "In a Grove"

This finally arrived at the library today, and is now in my hands :) I'm looking forward to diving in this weekend and discussing these stories!!

BJ wrote: "This finally arrived at the library today, and is now in my hands :) I'm looking forward to diving in this weekend and discussing these stories!!"

Oh, goody goody! This one, In a Grove, is quite long and invites a lot of discussion. The other one that I made a thread for, Rashomon, (here https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...) is short but should make for an interesting psycho-sociological discussion, so if you don't have it, it would be nice if you quickly read it online so that we can discuss!

I really, really loved this one. (Which surprised me given the subject matter. (view spoiler)[I am so, so tired of men writing rape in a way that robs the woman of her agency as a person in the story. (hide spoiler)] None of that foolishness here! I absolutely loved the shifting perspectives and the lack of resolution in the end (view spoiler)[about the murder (hide spoiler)]. All these versions can't possibly be true, and yet how can we say any of them are false? They all feel like the truth!

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I really, really loved this one. (Which surprised me given the subject matter. (view spoiler)[ I am so, so tired of men writing rape in a way that robs the woman of her agency as a person in the story. (hide spoiler)]" None of that foolishness here!..

Well, no, and also one needs to look at this particular story in the context of how Japanese society views concepts of honor and dishonor. What happens to the woman and the Japanese views on honor is of course an integral part of the story and how each character views the events.

Darn, I still wanted to watch my film of this, and dig up my old notes, but Christmas preparations have been stymieing me. Will be back soon, apologies for the delay.

No worries. I'm going to be on the road myself tomorrow, and I might not get back to this until after the holiday due to my family being somewhat difficult to read around ;-) We will get there when we get there!

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "No worries. I'm going to be on the road myself tomorrow, and I might not get back to this until after the holiday due to my family being somewhat difficult to read around ;-) We will get there when..."

Ok, I'll get my *** together and do a post or two in the meantime, as soon as I've watched the movie, because the movie has been quite culturally significant.

Oh, and you guys must please tell me which of the other stories in here you'd like to discuss. But that can flow on, we've got nothing planned for after this in any case. I'll probably do a thread on Spinning Gears when I've had time to read it, and see who bites. :)

I have seen, and very much enjoyed, the famous movie version of this story. (view spoiler)[What I thought was most interesting about the story version, was the fact that not a single testifier had any interest in establishing their innocence or goodness. Which is different than the fact that all three principles confess to the crime, which is obviously the point of the story. But they don't just confess to the crime, they confess to the crime with a kind of pride, almost. For each participant, only by being the one to stick the knife into the body, can they keep their sense of self or their sense of control intact. But of course, from my perspective, anyway, the bandit is responsible no matter what; he is the one who created the situation; he is the one who committed the key rape. That rape itself was horrifying and disconcerting. The reaction of each character to it clearly comes out of a very different moral system than I live in, or even from the victorian mindset I associate with older literature (which makes sense, of course, since this is a story in a non-European tradition). The characters do not exhibit the least bit of interest in looking outside of that moral code, or even feeling sympathy for the woman beyond the rape's effect within the context of the moral system they've all bought into. (hide spoiler)] Which, like Rashoman, left me feeling very cold and distanced from the action. Who are these cold, feelingless people, who cannot see outside of the moral strictures of their time even in such a desperate and extreme situation? Who cannot create a larger sense of responsibility, beyond grasping at the agency of murder in response to the unagency of rape? Did husband and wife always view each other with contempt? Or is that too an artifact of their desperate need to exert control over the narrative? I hesitate to ascribe this to some kind of Japanese tradition of honor. Obviously, that is part of this, but literature is full of people constrained by codes of honor at odds with their emotions or innate moral sense. This does not seem like that kind of story to me, although perhaps it is intended to inspire such reflections in the reader.

In terms of other stories to discuss, I enjoyed the Nose, Dragon, and The Spider Thread, all three of which were like little moral fables. I'm not sure if there is much to say about them, other than they seemed both highly contrasting to Rashoman and In a Grove, and also, from purely a readers perspective, a welcome relief. However, I would very much like to discuss Hell Screen, which is absolutely horrifying. And that is as far as I've read in the volume up to now!

Also sorry for being so late to the party! The holidays are a very unpredictable time for reading for me, where I might spend many hours buried in a book one day, and then spend three days in a row without even opening one!

I too have just finished the story, on Christmas day to boot! (Compliments of the Season to all btw)
For some strange, subliminal reason I kept word playing "in the Grove" to "in the Groove" - perhaps as a forerunner of trying to change gears into the Japanese mindset.
I didn't find the story morally abhorrent, just somewhat annoying -that the outcome wasn't particularly clear on who the actual perpetrator was.
I did enjoy different protagonists giving their own versions and it reminded me of the Zen concept of "There are many truths" - implying nothing is absolute.

BJ wrote: "I have seen, and very much enjoyed, the famous movie version of this story. [spoilers removed] Which, like Rashoman, left me feeling very cold and distanced from the action. Who are these cold, fee..."

Ending spoilers only about the short story 'In A Grove' will be discussed from this point onwards. No ending spoilers for the film Rashomon or any other story than In a Grove are revealed.

Hi BJ, thanks so much for your rich input there. I’m so glad you mentioned the movie. I re-watched it a day or two ago so that I can freshly compare the text to the film, something which I like to do with films and the texts they’re based on. I sometimes find it amazing how screenwriters can take creative liberties and change aspects of the story that change a lot of the essence of the original story. Sometimes the complexities of a text don’t transfer well to the visual medium and that can’t be helped. But other times the change is deliberate in order to change the tone of the story. The most egregious example I’ve seen to date, was when the ending of Nicollo Amminti’s book I'm Not Scared was completely changed from being a bittersweet and terribly fitting and poignant ending in the book, to an upbeat ending in the film which seemed to miss the point of what Amminiti was trying to do with his story.

In his film named ‘Rashomon’ Akira Kurosawa definitely "prettied up” the In a Grove story. He gave it the setting of the Rashomon gate that we encounter in the first story, to give the film a nicer ‘frame’, and then of course he also changed other small bits and the ending to make it more upbeat and one probably can’t blame him for that. Initially I had thought that Kurosawa had managed to pretty it up to add an additional viewpoint without detracting too much from the ‘relativism’ theme to be found in the story.

But on further reflection, I realized that in Akutagawa’s story, no moral judgements are made by the author. Note that no moral judgements are made in the first story, Rashomon, either. Akutagawa shows but doesn’t tell anything, which is part of what makes his text rich for reflection and discussion.

The film, however, spoonfeeds the viewer with the reflections of the characters who meet at the gate. It’s as if the screenwriter/director is saying: “Hey, I can improve on this story!” but in making it prettier and easier to swallow he also detracted from that objective testimony quality that the original text gives you.

I think the story does at least 2 things among possible others: firstly, it demonstrates a strong relativism. As you may know, throughout the many different kinds of relativism, they all have two features in common.
(1) They all assert that things (e.g. moral values, beauty, knowledge, taste, or meaning) are relative to some particular framework or standpoint (e.g. the individual subject, a culture, an era, a language, or a conceptual scheme).
(2) They all deny that any standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others.

Now, I myself used to be a strong relativist, because that to me, was the point of view that seemed most fair if applied to anthropology, sociology, psychology and so forth. However, when it comes to epistemology, relativism is of course trash because “truth” and “falsehood” can’t both apply if you look at things in absolute terms. When it comes to relativism, you have to define your frame or reference point.
Akutagawa is showing us that the interpretation of events can be very different depending on whose eyes are looking at those events.
Obviously not all who claimed to do so, could have killed the Samurai, although it’s quite possible that all of them had a stab at him, including the Samurai himself.

I see that you did acknowledge the importance of honor in the Japanese context, but it does feel to me as if you might underestimate a bit the complete weight and gravity that honor carried in times when Samurai still ruled in Japan, and especially to the highborn Samurai class. I refer to my review of, Patriotism by Yukio Mishima, since I dealt with it quite extensively there.
For the Samurai, losing your honor often quite literally meant losing your life, since the tradition was to commit seppuku as a means of counterbalancing the loss of honor by dying "honorably” and with dignity.

The tradition of suicide might seem loathsome to Westereners, but we must be careful, in my opinion, of one culture being too quick to pass judgement on another culture when their customs seem alien to ours. People don’t “just buy in” to a certain moral code, especially if that’s all they’ve known since they’re little babies, they're indoctrinated into it, and the indoctrination starts at birth, doesn’t it?

I was very interested to read your comments as to the motivation that each individual had to mold the story into a version that suits them, or in any case, that is how you see it of course, when you comment that their main motivation seems to be to take control of the narrative, and you find it interesting (as did I) that none of them are all that interested in proving their innocence with regard to the murder.

…but imagine that you were raised to put honor above all else - and this is not a uniquely Asian thing, many European and other nations had this idea of “honor” - I’d refer you back to the code of honor of the European medieval knights, for example, and the strong ideas about purity and chastity that you find in Roman Catholic and Islamic cultures even to this day.
(Also keep in mind that we are dealing with Akutagawa's text here, and not the completely different version that the film gives. The film has very definite ideas of what the characters are like - quite different from Akutagawa's story).

So, imagine you had been indoctrinated into the “women must be pure, loyal and chaste”, and men must be “strong, loyal and good fighters” code, and the lynch-pin that holds it in place is that to be so is honourable and not to be so, is to be unworthy and dishonourable, and then look at the story from that point of view.

Firstly, the bandit had deeply dishonoured the proud Samurai who was stupid enough and weak enough to be captured and rendered helpless by a lowly bandit. That must have hurt a lot, regardless of what happened to the woman, but as it turned out when the woman is attacked, her husband had also failed in protecting her. So the Samurai is acknowledging his fall from being honourable, by claiming to have committed suicide – an ancient tradition for Samurai warriors who had been dishonoured, as I referred to in my ‘Patriotism’ review. (Too long to reproduce here.) So it is not at all difficult to believe that he committed seppuku.

Secondly, the woman was dishonoured by the bandit, in spite of her fighting back – you surely cannot have called her disloyal, because she fought back, but still, she was physically violated and according to Samurai, RC and Islam standards, thereby “sullied”. And this is reflected in her compulsive belief that her husband is looking at her with scorn and contempt – the film makes this true, but the original story makes it feel as if this was more her imagination than anything else, since in the story, the Samurai testifies:
“ But meanwhile I winked at her many times, as much as to say "Don't believe the robber." I wanted to convey some such meaning to her. But my wife, sitting dejectedly on the bamboo leaves, was looking hard at her lap. To all appearance, she was listening to his words. I was agonized by jealousy…

The wife IS by the standards of the Samurai proclaiming her innocence, because she claims that the husband felt such shame that Seppuku was the best option, although her story falls a bit flat on that since she could easily have untied him and allowed him to push the sword/dagger into himself, which is the honourable way. She then claims to have tried to follow him by committing suicide herself, as is the tradition for a wife when her husband commits seppuku. Suicide is indeed not easy, especially if you’re nineteen, but I’d wager not impossible – I’m guessing she was pretending to be honourable though in actual fact she very much wanted to live. But see, there I’m passing judgment and filling in thoughts and motivations for her, which of course Akutagawa does not do. So, hmm, her story –could- be true, in that she wanted to erase her husband’s hurtful scorn – which she quite likely imagined but which could also actually have existed.

Then the bandit – perhaps the bandit actually killed the Samurai while he was still tied up, and ran off, but in order to make it look like an honourable duel, he tells the court that it was 1) the woman who incited him, and 2) that he wanted to do it the honourable and fair way, by entering in consensual battle with the Samurai after having cut him loose. He even mentions that it took a while for him to get the upper hand, and brags that no man had lasted more than 20 strokes of swordfighting against him, as the Samurai did. (I personally find it rather hard to believe that a Samurai would lose against a bandit, but it’s possible that the bandit had superior abilities and a lot of practice).

As for his interaction with the woman not being consensual and not being moral, he tries to excuse his immoral behavior by claiming that he was completely infatuated beyond redemption with the woman, and that he wanted to marry her.

And so, I think much to Akutagawa’s delight if he could have read our discussions, we have once again proven that there are several ways to look at and to interpret his story, none of which are necessarily more “correct” or more superior than the others. :)

Bonitaj wrote: "I did enjoy different protagonists giving their own versions and it reminded me of the Zen concept of "There are many truths" - implying nothing is absolute..."

Hi Bonitaj, I'm so glad to see you popping up here as well! Yes, indeed, I like your observation there.

I think I was still busy working on my humongous post above (my hands are actually sore from typing it, because GR swallowed my first attempt, and I had to rewrite the whole thing, this time prudently in Word) when you posted your comments, so I shall simply refer you to that set of comments, since it does cover your own observations as well.

And thank you, season's greetings to you as well. :)

whew Traveller, I can clearly see why your wrists would be sore, typing up that much! Looks enticingly interesting, but given that I have only read "In a Grove",
I'll delay perusing your magnificent contribution till I've read the other stories. Thank you so much for your amazing contributions, as always! Bloody brilliant... as the Brits say!! ;)

Ha, Bonitaj, that was actually only about the one short story, In a Grove, the story that we're supposed to be discussing here. I do make reference to the film that was based on it, but if you've read the story, nothing that I say about the film would be a spoiler for the film, since I didn't mention in any detail how the film ends. I basically just commented on a technique or two used in the film. No other stories were mentioned in that post, the warning was only for In a Grove.

In hindsight I now see that! Thanks a bunch! ;)