Dear Lot's Wife, I owe you much gratitude. Many moons ago, in a discussion about the Tokyo South Mission, you recommended that I read something by Izumi Kyoka. I finally got around to reading The Saint of Mt. Koya, and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Set, and written, in late 19th century Japan, it is a gothic tale of a novice Buddhist monk, and his bizarre trials and tribulations on a solo pilgrimage on a narrow mountain road, as told by himself years later.

It has mystery, fantasy, suspense, mild erotica, and an underflow of subtle humor.

It's no doubt not for everybody, but for anyone interested it's available for free at intangible.org. You can read it on the web, but the Acrobat version might be a little easier to read.

Again, many thanks Lot's Wife. (That was the purpose of this post - not a book review.)

And to anyone who reads it and hates it - sorry.

A pleasure, my friend.

Kyoka is a fascinating writer, caught in the intersection between Old Japan and New on the one dimension and East and West on the other, sort of like Yoshida's woodblock prints in which the old style blends into a Western use of perspective. Neither here nor there, really, and yet symbolic of fecund cross-pollination of merging cultures.

My favorite of Kyoka's rather gothic tales relates the story of a man waiting in a small railway station in snowy mountains and watching a prostitute sitting on a bench. He describes, without judgment, the woman and the fire and the station in various hues of red and then, when his train arrives, departs. It is a deeply human and emotional scene, caught between the warmth and passion of red and the cold solitude of the falling snow.

I see so many parallels in that work. Was Kyoka aware that Dostoevsky was using the color yellow in much the same way in the opening scenes of Crime and Punishment and that later in the book there would be a fantastically red image of a beaten horse and then a white scene of a dead woman on a staircase landing? Or did the two authors stumble more or less simultaneously on the same usage of color to create emotional depth?

Was there any connection between Kyoka's use of the train in the snowy mountains and Thomas Mann's transporting and translating the young and naive Hans Castorp up to the sanitorium in Davos by a train traveling into snowy mountains? Or Kawabata's opening Yukiguni, that story of ill-fated love between a man and a geisha, by having the man board a train and travel through a blizzard to reach his personal Davos?

I'm told Kyoka's writing style is somewhat difficult for modern readers: sort of midway between the old Meiji style and more modern Japanese. But that too would make him a creature of the in-between.

Thank you for the fascinating comments, Lot' Wife. Kyoka's writing is indeed challenging. The flow and the story telling are masterful, but he uses words and Chinese character compounds that were archaic even in his day. I read the original Japanese, and I soon became bogged down with looking words up in my dictionary or online, or trying to figure out the meaning from the context. It took a second reading to really enjoy the story and appreciate his writing.

And thank you, anybody, for providing the link. I don't expect anyone will read it, but someone interested in Buddhism might find it interesting, though I should mention that though it is sort of about religion (so this thread is on topic), it's definitely not religious.

Wow. I'm impressed.

You'd mentioned that you haven't been in the States for ten years, from which I inferred that you were probably in Japan. I also noted the hours at which you generally post.

There were/are so many missions in Japan that the number of fluent RMs in the country must be enormous. Dime a dozen. But judging from what I've been told, someone who's good enough to read Kyoka must have an unusually strong grasp of the language.

Somewhere sometime I'd love to hear more details about your life. I suspect you may have traveled an unusual path.

That’s quite the detective work! Yes, I am in Japan. I must say that my Japanese ability, such as it is, is the result of time and circumstances rather than any special talent.

I’ve enjoyed reading the thoughts and experiences of the wonderful people on this board for many years, so perhaps in the near future I should share some of my experiences as well. Consider yourselves warned!

+1!