Author: Ryunosuke Akutagawa

About: Akutagawa's deceptively simple tale of Yoshihide, "The Greatest Painter in Japan." Hired by the Grand Lord to put the underworld on canvas, the single-minded painter fulfills his commission with startling, yet understated results.

Excerpt:

Now let me mention his objectionable habits. He was stingy, harsh, shameless, lazy, and avaricious. And worst of all, he was so haughty and arrogant that “his being the greatest painter in the whole of Japan” was hanging from the tip of his nose. If his arrogance had been limited to painting, he would not have been so objectionable. Moreover, he was so conceited that he had a profound contempt for all customs and practices in life.

Here is an episode about him told by a man who had been under his apprenticeship for many years. One day a famous medium in the mansion of a certain lord fell into a trance under the curse of a spirit, and she delivered a horrible oracle. Turning a deaf ear to the oracle, he made a careful sketch of her ghastly face with brush and ink which he found at hand. In his eyes, the curse by an evil spirit may have been nothing more than a jack-in-the-box for children.

This being his nature, he would in picturing a heavenly maiden, paint the face of a harlot, and in picturing the god of fire, the figure of a villain. He committed many such sacrilegious acts. When he was brought to task, he declared with provoking indifference: “It's ridiculous for you to say that the gods and Buddhas I have painted should ever be able to punish their painter.” This so amazed all his apprentices that many of them took leave of him immediately in fearful anticipation of terrible consequences. After all, he was arrogance incarnate who thought himself the greatest man under the sun.

Accordingly, one can understand how highly he esteemed himself as a painter. However, his brush-work and colorings were so completely different from those of other painters that many of his contemporaries who were on bad terms with him, would speak of him as a charlatan. They claimed that famous paintings by “Kawanari,” “Kanaoka,” and other master artists of the past have graceful episodes attached to them. Rumor has it that you can almost smell the delicate fragrance of the plum blossoms on moonlit nights and almost hear the courtier on the screen playing his flute. But all paintings by Yoshihide have the reputation of being unpleasant and uncanny. For example, take his painting representing the five phases of the transmigration of souls which he had painted on the gate of the Ryugai Temple. If you pass under the gate late at night, you can almost hear the sighing and sobbing of the celestial maidens. Some say they even smelled the offensive odor of the rotting bodies. The Grand Lord's court ladies, whose likenesses Yoshihide painted at the Lord's command, all fell ill as if their souls had left them and died within three years. Those who disparage his paintings say that all this is because they are works of his black art.

Yet, as I told you, he was an extremely cross-grained crank, and was boastful of his very perversity. Once when the Grand Lord said to him, “You seem to have a strong partiality for the ugly,” he replied, with a grin on his red lips, “Yes, my Lord, unaccomplished artists can't perceive beauty in the ugly.” Admitting that he was the greatest painter in the whole country, how could he ever have been so presumptuous as to make such a haughty remark in the presence of the Grand Lord. His apprentices secretly nicknamed him “Chira-Eiju” to slander his arrogance. “Chira-Eiju” is, I presume you know, a vainglorious long-nosed goblin that flew over to Japan in olden times.

However, Yoshihide, who was a perverse scoundrel beyond description, had one tender side showing that he was not altogether lacking in human kindness.