Uchiyama Gudō, "A View on Lieutenant General Itō's Adultery"
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⚠ Awaiting Peer Review ⚠ This English translation is complete but has not yet undergone review by a language specialist. |
Uchiyama Gudō (内山愚童) (1908). 「伊藤中將姦通觀」 [A View on Lieutenant General Itō's Adultery], 『世界婦人』 21 (1 January 1908): 7. (Original Japanese here.)
Translation
A View on Lieutenant General Itō's Adultery
- Uchiyama Gudō
Madam Fukuda (福田女子)[1], it has already become that busy season when only fifteen days remain in the year. I have just now read the twentieth issue of Sekai Fujin 世界婦人 (World Women). At your actions—carrying out Heaven's mission by bringing light into the dark world of women—people like us are deeply ashamed of ourselves.[2]
I hear that you intend to bring out the January issue before the year's end. I am certain that the present matter of concern, the Lieutenant General's adultery incident,[3] will be treated on your pages to bold, decisive new interpretations from various eminent contributors, for your readers to see.[4]
How would it be—would you not print my own view of this adultery in whatever blank space remains on your pages? I do not insist upon it in the least; but if there is anything in it worth taking, please let it be printed.
To state my faith plainly: only when filial piety is removed from the dictionary of ethics, loyalty cast aside, and, moreover, the word chastity thrown out, will the world at last behold the Kingdom of Heaven.[5] For this reason my view of the present adultery incident differs somewhat in character from that of the capitalist newspapers of the world,[6] which single out the Lieutenant General alone for abuse.
With this much said by way of preface, let me attempt, in the very simplest terms, a brief comment on each person concerned, and put the question to the assembled ranks of the world's readers.
Pitiable Yōichi (陽一)[7]—how wretched is one who lacks faith! Unable to cut through the deluding net of the system of private property,[8] it is the superstition that she is “my wife” that has brought about this incident. Even supposing the trial ends in Yōichi's victory, what benefit does this bring to Yōichi himself? Surely he cannot thereby recover the love that O-Hara (お原) sold to the Lieutenant General. How sad, Yōichi—you ought now to cast aside the superstition that a wife is one's private possession, and hold instead to the faith that husband and wife should remain so only for as long as their love endures; that when either partner's affection moves elsewhere, this should be regarded as a natural parting,[9] in which no selfish human will ought to intervene.[10] Only by entering into this faith will woman, for the first time, escape this world of suffering[11] and become a person of the Kingdom of Heaven. Know that if it is not so, eternal damnation cannot be escaped.[12]
O-Hara (お原),[13] captive of present-day society, O-Hara who stands at the very center of this adultery affair—when the Lieutenant General first proposed sexual relations to you, why did you not divorce Yōichi beforehand, and only afterward consent? It is said that you asked the Lieutenant General for a week's grace; had this thought occurred to you within that week, the present incident would never have arisen. And yet, having said this, you too are a child of your age; there is no one today in this world who is not a slave to vanity and to livelihood.[14] Since you had no prospect of becoming the Lieutenant General's wife, you could not summon the resolve to divorce Yōichi and openly share your love with him. Considering this, is not the system of private property in present-day society itself a thing to be cursed? Devote all your strength for the rest of your life toward overturning this system of private property, which has cast you down into your present fate—this alone will strike down the enemy that thrust you into today's pit.
Foolish Lieutenant General Gigorō (中將義五郎)[15]—I am not one who condemns this act of yours as a sin. And yet you too have been unable to cut through that net, and so cannot escape being called foolish. An incident such as this is nothing rare among your fellow officers; strip away the flimsy black curtain from today's society—filled as it is with those who fall into degradation because money is freely available to them and those driven to degradation by hunger—and one finds it everywhere. And yet the newspapermen of the world attack you as though they had encountered an enemy that comes but once in a thousand years; their sheer foolishness is enough to make one burst out laughing. At the same time, is it not also foolish of you to remain bound by so trivial a social system that you are even driven into administrative suspension?
I wonder whether this affair might not be Heaven's command to you to destroy this foolish society. Stop tormenting yourself and reflect deeply.[16] Is not the present society—contending as it does over honor as insubstantial as smoke and profit as fleeting as foam—fated sooner or later to perish? What is honor? What is property? And the very protagonist who contends over them—what is he himself? Stop this useless torment. Cease your torment, and after supper take up your cane and stroll through the cemetery at Yanaka (谷中);[17] there you shall come upon a clear gospel.
Thus having attained this new light, you shall arrive at an honor twice that of the rank you have won today by the sword. Do not torment yourself—go forward and fulfill your heaven-given mission.
Notes
- ↑ Fukuda Hideko (福田英子, 1865–1927), the addressee, was a prominent Meiji-era women's rights activist and former Freedom and People's Rights Movement activist who later moved into socialist circles. She founded and edited Sekai Fujin 世界婦人 (World Women) beginning in 1907. Gudō's honorific address here, joshi 女子, was a period convention for addressing a woman of standing and is not part of her given name.
- ↑ 赫顔の至り, literally “the utmost of a flushed face”: an expression of being humbled or put to shame by another's admirable conduct.
- ↑ The officer is identified in the title by surname and rank, Itō Chūjō 伊藤中將 (Lieutenant General Itō), and later in the essay by rank and given name, Chūjō Gigorō 中將義五郎 (Lieutenant General Gigorō).
- ↑ 快刀亂麻, literally “a sharp blade cutting through tangled hemp”: an idiom for resolving a complicated problem swiftly and decisively.
- ↑ 天國, “Kingdom of Heaven.” Gudō repeatedly employs Christian-inflected vocabulary in this essay, including “faith” (信仰) and “gospel” (福音), alongside language with Buddhist resonances.
- ↑ 資本家新聞, literally “capitalist newspapers.”
- ↑ Only a given name is used for the husband.
- ↑ 私有制度, “the system of private property”; 迷網, literally a “net of delusion.”
- ↑ 自然の離別, “a natural parting.”
- ↑ 人意の私心, the “selfish will” of human intention.
- ↑ 苦なる此世界, literally “this world of suffering.”
- ↑ 永劫の墮獄, literally an eternal falling into hell.
- ↑ Only the woman's given name, with the conventional honorific prefix “O-,” is used.
- ↑ 虛榮と生活の奴隷, literally “a slave to vanity and livelihood.”
- ↑ The text here reads 中將義五郎—“Lieutenant General Gigorō”—without the surname. This is the same officer identified in the title as Itō Chūjō 伊藤中將.
- ↑ 煩悶 means anguish or agonized inner struggle; 沈思黙考 means to reflect deeply or contemplate in silence.
- ↑ Yanaka Cemetery (谷中霊園), established in 1874, is a large public cemetery in Tokyo.
