Fantastic Metropolis

There is only one thing in the world besides painting that Yoshihide cares for and that is his fifteen year old daughter, Yuzuki. He dotes on her, giving her money and lavish gifts. She, of course, is as beautiful in mind and body as he is ugly. As the narrator says, his affection for his daughter is the only true sign that there is some humanity in him. Because of this, he is devastated when she is called to serve at the Great Lord’s mansion as a lady’s maid. She distinguishes herself for her intelligence and depth of character and soon becomes a favorite of the Lady of the mansion.

Then the Lord’s son is given a present of a monkey, and being the precocious lad he is, he names the monkey Yoshihide, after the painter. The monkey is a thief and a trouble maker, stealing tangerines and shitting on the reed mats. One day, Yuzuki comes upon a scene where the young Lord is beating the monkey with a switch for its most recent theft. The monkey runs to her for help, and she takes it up in her arms. She implores the young Lord to not beat the creature, because to her it is as if her father was being chastised. From that time forward the monkey is her constant companion and changes its ways, suddenly becoming well behaved and understanding its role as an entertainment for the court.

Because of the change that she has wrought in the beast’s personality, Yuzuki is noticed by the Great Lord. For her good work, he gives her a silk, scarlet robe. The narrator has the following to say about this gift, “It should be recalled that the Lord took the girl into his good graces because he had been impressed with her filial piety and not because he was an admirer of the gentle sex, as rumor had it.” Here is the first instance of many in the story where the narrator doth protest too much about the designs the Great Lord might have on Yoshihide’s daughter. It is soon after this that the Lord summons the painter to his court and requests that he paint a portrait of a cherub. Yoshihide does such an amazing job on the paintings that the Lord tells him he can request anything. The painter asks that his daughter be released from the Lord’s service. The Great Lord flatly refuses, and with this more rumors abound that the ruler is enamored of the girl. As the narrator admits here, many believe the commission of the hell screen may have come about due to Yuzuki having spurned the Lord’s advances.

At this point in the narrative, the narrator tells that Yoshihide is commissioned to paint a screen for the Lord that depicts the torments of Hell, and that he accomplishes it in terrifying detail and with great originality of style. Then the story ends with a general description of the completion of the screen, but the narrator begins again. The story that follows is a detailed description of Yoshihide’s tribulations in completing the commission. This narrative technique of stopping and starting fresh is rather odd, coming in the middle of the story, and as yet I do not understand its purpose. Perhaps he has this unofficial close to detract attention from the fact that the Lord’s thwarted designs on Yuzuki may have been the reason for the commission. The start of the next section shifts the attention of the story to Yoshihide.

The painter approaches the commission of the Hell Screen with total concentration, and the early sketches and preliminary brush work are harrowing to behold. There follows a series of encounters that Yoshihide’s assistants have with their master, in which he requires them to pose in dangerous and frightening situations in order that he might capture their true expressions of suffering and fear. One is bound with heavy chains and his body contorted, one has a great owl set upon him, etc. There is also one telling scene where one of the assistants goes into Yoshihide’s room while he is in a trance like state and hears him muttering in the voice of a “drowned man”—“What? Do you tell me to come?... Who is it that says, ‘Come to the burning Hell. Come to the burning Hell.’ Whoever is this?... Who could it be but…?”

This cryptic scene along with the descriptions of the painter’s frenzied attempts to complete the screen lead the reader to think that he is possessed in some way. Who could it be who summons him to hell? Is it his art? The Great Lord, who has been shown to have mystical powers, exorcizing ghosts and having the power over life and death? Akutagawa gives no ready answers but merely lays the story out through the guise of the narrator, pointing in many different directions at once. The ambiguity mixed with restraint elicits an unsettling sensibility in the reader.