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The Snake That Bowed
Fiction. Edward Seidensticker, translator of many works of twentieth-century Japanese literature and author of several books on Japan, brings to life three stories from Okamoto Kido's A Record of Hanschichi's Arrest. The opening story is set in 1861, just before the shogunate's overthrow and the rise of Tokyo where a severed alien head is found. Through Hanschichi, a fictional okappiki (police officer) detective work, glimpses of old Edo are marvelously exposed.
143 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Edward G. Seidensticker
50 books34 followersEdward George Seidensticker was a noted post-World War II scholar, historian, and preeminent translator of classical and contemporary Japanese literature.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 11, 2012
Hanshichi, the mid 19th century sleuth, was originally created by the renowned Japanese writer Okamoto Kidō. He first appeared in print in January 1917, in the monthly magazine 'Bungei kurabu' (Literature Club), and by the time of Kidō's death, in 1939, Hanshichi had featured in sixty-nine short stories. A couple of years ago I read a translation of eleven of those stories, published together as 'The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi', and thoroughly enjoyed them. I enjoyed that compilation so much that I decided to read 'The Snake that Bowed', which is based on Kidō's work.
In the original stories, Hanshichi, now over seventy years of age, recounts the events of his career as a master sleuth to the young narrator of each tale. The retired policeman's reminiscences hark back to the days before Japan's modernisation, to a time when people still believed in water sprites, goblins, demons and shapeshifters, and in each one there is a great sense of nostaliga for a time almost completely lost. That nostalgia is one of the key elements of each of the stories.
In The Snake that Bowed, Edward Seidensticker has taken three of the original Hanshichi short stories and woven them together to create one novel. To do this, he has taken three tales set in different years and moved them all to 1861, so that Hanshichi can investigate the three cases from those tales at the same time. The pace of the original short stories is lost, which is the first major flaw in this book. The second is that he has removed the young narrator of the original tales. Hanshichi isn't recounting his exploits for an eager young listener, for whom the past is a distant land shrouded in mystery. In The Snake that Bowed, Hanshichi is in his prime; there is no harking back, no sense of nostalgia. A key element of Kidō's originals has been removed entirely.
The characters of Kidō's stories were larger than life; Seidensticker's are flat. Kidō's wry humour is missing from Seidensticker's book; there are constant attempts at humour, but they simply don't hit the spot. And it is very difficult to remain interested in a story when the main protagonist, Hanshichi himself, doesn't seem all that interested in what's going on around him.
The writing style is so decidedly stiff, which makes it a difficult book to read. This is an example of one of the passages from Seidensticker's book. Note, the repeated sentence about the hair is not a mistake on my part - this is how the passage appears in the book:
'The corpse lay on summer matting. The hair was somewhat disordered A light coverlet had been pushed to the legs. The hair was somewhat disordered. It lay diagonally across the matting, from which the head protruded. The pillow had been shoved to one side. There was a frown on the face, the lips were twisted, a whitish tongue showed itself.'
Here's the description of the same scene in Ian Macdonald's translation of the original short story in The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi:
'Kameju had laid a sleeping mat on top of her futon, and a thin cotton blanket had been pushed down toward the edge of the mattress. She had been sleeping facing south and her pillow was shoved over to one side. The body lay face up as though she had been about to get out of bed. Her braided hair was disheveled as though someone had been tearing at it. In death, the traces of her last agonizing moments were clearly inscribed upon her face - the furrowed brow, the contorted lips, the protruding white tongue.'
I really don't like posting negative reviews, but in this case I feel that I really have a duty to Okamoto Kidō and Inspector Hanshichi to do so. I would hate for anyone to think that 'The Snake that Bowed' is indicative of Kidō's writing talent and sense of humour, or Hanshichi's character and charm. Seidensticker has transformed the detective into a disinterested wise arse who seems to care more about bedding a snaggle-toothed prostitute than solving crime.
I loved The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi and was really looking forward to meeting up with old Hanshichi again in The Snake that Bowed. Unfortunately, Edward Seidensticker's distorted, disjointed and dull novel was extremely disappointing.
In the original stories, Hanshichi, now over seventy years of age, recounts the events of his career as a master sleuth to the young narrator of each tale. The retired policeman's reminiscences hark back to the days before Japan's modernisation, to a time when people still believed in water sprites, goblins, demons and shapeshifters, and in each one there is a great sense of nostaliga for a time almost completely lost. That nostalgia is one of the key elements of each of the stories.
In The Snake that Bowed, Edward Seidensticker has taken three of the original Hanshichi short stories and woven them together to create one novel. To do this, he has taken three tales set in different years and moved them all to 1861, so that Hanshichi can investigate the three cases from those tales at the same time. The pace of the original short stories is lost, which is the first major flaw in this book. The second is that he has removed the young narrator of the original tales. Hanshichi isn't recounting his exploits for an eager young listener, for whom the past is a distant land shrouded in mystery. In The Snake that Bowed, Hanshichi is in his prime; there is no harking back, no sense of nostalgia. A key element of Kidō's originals has been removed entirely.
The characters of Kidō's stories were larger than life; Seidensticker's are flat. Kidō's wry humour is missing from Seidensticker's book; there are constant attempts at humour, but they simply don't hit the spot. And it is very difficult to remain interested in a story when the main protagonist, Hanshichi himself, doesn't seem all that interested in what's going on around him.
The writing style is so decidedly stiff, which makes it a difficult book to read. This is an example of one of the passages from Seidensticker's book. Note, the repeated sentence about the hair is not a mistake on my part - this is how the passage appears in the book:
'The corpse lay on summer matting. The hair was somewhat disordered A light coverlet had been pushed to the legs. The hair was somewhat disordered. It lay diagonally across the matting, from which the head protruded. The pillow had been shoved to one side. There was a frown on the face, the lips were twisted, a whitish tongue showed itself.'
Here's the description of the same scene in Ian Macdonald's translation of the original short story in The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi:
'Kameju had laid a sleeping mat on top of her futon, and a thin cotton blanket had been pushed down toward the edge of the mattress. She had been sleeping facing south and her pillow was shoved over to one side. The body lay face up as though she had been about to get out of bed. Her braided hair was disheveled as though someone had been tearing at it. In death, the traces of her last agonizing moments were clearly inscribed upon her face - the furrowed brow, the contorted lips, the protruding white tongue.'
I really don't like posting negative reviews, but in this case I feel that I really have a duty to Okamoto Kidō and Inspector Hanshichi to do so. I would hate for anyone to think that 'The Snake that Bowed' is indicative of Kidō's writing talent and sense of humour, or Hanshichi's character and charm. Seidensticker has transformed the detective into a disinterested wise arse who seems to care more about bedding a snaggle-toothed prostitute than solving crime.
I loved The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi and was really looking forward to meeting up with old Hanshichi again in The Snake that Bowed. Unfortunately, Edward Seidensticker's distorted, disjointed and dull novel was extremely disappointing.
April 7, 2022
I don't get it: Seidensticker is one of the most famous translators of Japanese literature, who has even tackled The Tale of Genji. So why would he make an adaptation of these detective stories by Okamoto Kido? It is also too wordy - Seidensticker's translations are more concise. The detective stories of Okamoto Kido are quite interesting, so I advise to read them in translation: The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo .
See my blog about Okamoto Kido and Hanshichi: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/20...
See my blog about Okamoto Kido and Hanshichi: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/20...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews