Uchiyama Gudō, "A View on Lieutenant General Itō's Adultery"
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,[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. 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,[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 those distinguished personages known as the reading public.
Pitiable Yōichi 陽一—how wretched is one who lacks faith! Unable to cut through the deluding net of the system of private property,[7] 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,[8] in which no selfish human will ought to intervene.[9] Only by entering into this faith will woman, for the first time, escape this world of suffering[10] and become a person of the Kingdom of Heaven. Know that if it is not so, eternal damnation cannot be escaped.[11]
O-Hara お原, 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.[12] 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.[13]
Foolish Lieutenant General Gigorō 中將義五郎—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 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 think that this affair of yours may perhaps be Heaven's command for you to destroy this foolish society. Stop tormenting yourself and reflect deeply.[14] 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;[15] 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.[16]
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 subsequently moved into socialist circles associated with the Heiminsha 平民社. She founded and edited Sekai Fujin 世界婦人 beginning in January 1907; the magazine carried contributions from Heiminsha-affiliated writers such as Abe Isoo 安部磯雄, Kinoshita Naoe 木下尚江, and Kōtoku Shūsui 幸徳秋水 before being suppressed by the authorities in 1909. Gudō's honorific address here, joshi 女子, was a period convention for addressing a woman of standing; it is not part of her given name.
- ↑ Kakugan no itari 赫顔の至り, literally “the utmost of a flushed face,” is an expression of embarrassment or shame at falling short of another's conduct.
- ↑ The officer is identified in the title by surname and rank, Itō Chūjō 伊藤中將, and later in the body of the essay by rank and given name, Chūjō Gigorō 中將義五郎—the same person addressed in two different ways.
- ↑ Kaitō ranma 快刀亂麻, literally “a sharp blade cutting through tangled hemp,” is an idiom for resolving a complicated or tangled problem swiftly and decisively.
- ↑ Tengoku 天國, “Kingdom of Heaven.” Gudō repeatedly employs Christian-derived vocabulary in this essay, including shinkō 信仰 (“faith”) and fukuin 福音 (“gospel”), alongside language with Buddhist resonances. This is consistent with the religiously eclectic vocabulary evident elsewhere in his writings of this period.
- ↑ Shihonka shinbun 資本家新聞, “capitalist newspapers.” Gudō's framing pits his own anarchist reading of the scandal against the mainstream newspapers' moralizing coverage of it.
- ↑ Shiyū seido 私有制度 (“the system of private property”) is a recurring target in Gudō's writing and a central term of his anarcho-communist critique; he uses it here to reframe a personal scandal as a symptom of a systemic institution—private ownership extended by analogy to the ownership of a spouse—rather than an individual moral failing. The original compounds this with meimō 迷網, “net of delusion,” with mayoi 迷 carrying the familiar Buddhist sense of ignorance or delusion. Gudō thus casts the institution of private property itself as an entangling form of delusion from which one must become free.
- ↑ Shizen no ribetsu 自然の離別, “a natural parting”: Gudō here articulates a position closely resembling the “free love” arguments current among contemporary anarchist and socialist circles, which challenged lifelong monogamous marriage as an extension of the property system and held that a relationship should endure only as long as mutual affection does.
- ↑ Jin'i no shishin 人意の私心, “the selfish will of human intention.” The character shi 私 (“private,” “selfish”) here echoes shiyū seido 私有制度 (“the system of private property”), linking private possession with selfish human intervention.
- ↑ Ku naru kono sekai 苦なる此世界, “this world of suffering”: ku 苦 is also the standard Sino-Japanese Buddhist term for suffering (Skt. duḥkha). Gudō frames escape from the private-property marriage system in Buddhist-inflected language immediately before returning to the Christian-derived “Kingdom of Heaven.”
- ↑ Eigō no dagoku 永劫の墮獄, literally “eternal falling into hell.” Gudō again combines the language of hell with the Christian-inflected “Kingdom of Heaven” and “faith” that structure the passage.
- ↑ Kyoei to seikatsu no dorei 虛榮と生活の奴隷, “a slave to vanity and to livelihood.” Dorei 奴隷 (“slave”) was common vocabulary of contemporary socialist and labor discourse; Gudō extends the figure here to describe bondage both to social appearance and to the material necessities of life.
- ↑ The Japanese transcription presently reads kono shiyū seido o tenpuku suru 此私有制度を轉復する. The translation “overturning this system of private property” follows the apparent sense of the passage, but the reading 轉復 should be checked against the original printing in Sekai Fujin.
- ↑ Hanmon 煩悶 denotes anguish, distress, or agonized inner struggle; chinshi mokkō 沈思黙考 means to think or reflect deeply and silently.
- ↑ Yanaka Cemetery 谷中墓地, established in 1874 in northeastern Tokyo, was and remains one of the city's largest public cemeteries.
- ↑ The Japanese transcription of this sentence presently contains the doubtful reading eiyo ni okuran kana 榮譽に奥らんかな. The present translation follows the apparent sense of the passage, but the reading should be checked against the original printing in Sekai Fujin.
Source Note
Uchiyama Gudō 内山愚童, 「伊藤中將姦通觀」, 『世界婦人』 [Sekai Fujin], no. 21 (1 January 1908): 7. The Japanese transcription underlying this translation has not yet been checked directly against the original printing. Accordingly, translations of several uncertain readings remain provisional.
How to Cite this Text
Uchiyama Gudō (1908). “A View on Lieutenant General Itō's Adultery” (Itō chūjō kantsūkan 伊藤中將姦通觀). Translated and annotated by Lajos Brons; revised by James Mark Shields. The Radical Buddhism Project. Version of 6 October 2026. http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/UG08ITO-T.
