Chamberlain described the story as 'a very curious legend' and it is, indeed, hard to know how to read it. Hoderi and Howori have something in common with Walton's Piscator and Venator, in that the former is entirely committed to fishing and the latter to hunting. Chamberlain says that Hoderi 'got his luck on the sea' and Howori 'in the mountains', adding a little more about the term 'luck' in a footnote:
For the archaic Japanese word sachi, here rendered 'luck,' there is no satisfactory English equivalent. Its original and most usual significance is 'luck,' 'happiness;' then that which a man is lucky in or skillful at, - his 'forte;' and finally that which he procures by his luck or skill and the implements which he uses in procuring it.The crux of the story is that Hoderi and Howori decide to swap their 'luck'. The idea comes from the younger brother, the hunter, and initially the fisherman, is reluctant. But in the end Howori prevails and goes down to the sea to see what he can catch. The text does not tell us how Hoderi got on in the mountains but Howori was a failure as a fisherman. He 'never got a single fish' and, what is more, 'he lost the fish hook in the sea'.
The elder brother, who now emerges as a rather austere figure, suggests that they end the experiment: 'A mountain-luck is a luck of its own and a sea-luck is a luck of its own. Let each of us now restore to the other his luck.' In another footnote, Chamberlain interprets this as an assertion of the need to accept what is naturally so and he glosses Hoderi's speech in a way that resembles the most stultifying bureaucratese: 'Some men are naturally good hunters and others naturally good fishermen. Let us therefore restore to each other the implements necessary to the successful following of our avocations.' Howori is not, of course, in a position to return the implement necessary to the successful following of his brother's avocation because he has lost it in the waves. He tries to make amends by breaking up his sword and fashioning five hundred new fish hooks from it but Hoderi, who sounds increasingly priggish, insists that he wants the original.
The next section of the Kojiki explains how Howori managed to recover the hook and we'll come to that another time. But what have we gleaned from the story so far? Is it a tale about wisdom? A rather conservative tale perhaps? People should stick to the sphere that is ordained for them? Do not start fishing if you aren't a fisherman to start with? There must be some material on the story hidden away in the murky depths of the library - lost like Hoderi's hook. When I have a moment, I'll go down there and look for it.
I wonder if Luck is translated properly as you would think it should be "Skill" and if it is skill this makes it a different story. I can't imagine that, like poker, anyone is really thinking that fishing or hunting has much luck in it. The last three posts seem to be about whether things can come easily or have to be worked for or even if they are worked for they are someone else s gift and this gift is easy to give. I'm not sure that wisdom is about luck and I'm wondering if we have thought about the relationship between Skill and wisdom. I was once on a course about basic skills training with 4 artists 2 set designers and a couple of muscians. I clearly remember in the first session the course leader asking us to describe what a skill was and us all basically not been able to work it out at all over the full six weeks of the course. In the end I drew a diagram and it looked like a cold front on the BBC weather with arrows and numbers on it but we didn't get anywhere. The things we are trying to look at are like fish slippery they are hard to pin down so we need to get at them sideways. I think in fishing we have a relationship with knowledge,skill,patience and a bit of something else and perhaps this is the "Contemplation the unfixed bit which links to luck or gifts, muses, inspiration perhaps this is where the writing and stories are going.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, Steve - I like it, particularly your point about fishing containing a constellation of things: knowledge, skill, patience, and that 'bit of something else', which is connected to luck, gifts, muses, inspiration.
ReplyDeleteRe the translation, all the experts on the Kojiki seem to agree that the best way to render 'sati' or 'sachi' is 'luck' but they all include footnotes to discuss the not-quite-adequate nature of the term. I get the impression that there isn't such a sharp distinction between 'luck' and 'skill' in the Japanese concept. And in a way I can understand that. On the one hand, skillfulness often originates in relentless practice. But, on the other, having a talent for something is also a matter of good fortune. I could never have been an Olympic javelin thrower, no matter how hard I'd practised - that just wasn't given to me. In a sense, the story is about knowing what you have been given, which might be a kind of wisdom?
Wisdom has often been tainted by this moment of putting and keeping things in their place. Wisdom disappeared when that disappeared. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, became problematic. Rescueing the idea of wisdom in my view has to deal centrally with the problem you pose here. That is why, when we speak of intergenerational wisdom, we have to assume it is not just the old who may be wise and pass their wisdom on to the younger, or at least set then on the path towards it. It can also be the other way around. We have to ask: what might 'wisdom' mean for us? It must involve a wisdom of transgression.
ReplyDeleteYour previous posts and this ones particularly because of its Japanese connection have been reminding me of various incidents in a famous Japanese 'graphic novel' Lone Wolf and Cub because of its use of Buddhist and zen philosophy and especially its exploration of concept of 'mu'. The main character Ogami Itto is a formidable warrior and a master of the suiō-ryū swordsmanship, who serves as the Kogi Kaishakunin (the Shōgun's executioner) which is a position of high power in the Tokugawa Shogunate. He enters exile and works as an assassin with his young son when his wife is murdered. What is interesting is that many of his sword-fights show long periods of contemplation before any attacks are made, with Itto winning because he successfully applied his understanding of technique, his environment, or bushido code. With many incidents that initially seem like lucky escapes actually being applications of skill.
ReplyDeleteMostly this has come into my mind because the most famous sword technique for the suiō-ryū school is the wave-slicing stroke where the samurai would crouch low in a river concealing his blade in the water and making use of the refraction of light to make their opponent uncertain before they struck.