JSLL #53 - The Spider's Thread, part 1

After a fairy tale and a traditional horror story, we're jumping into modern Japanese literature with a 1918 short story by Ryuunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) called "The Spider's Thread." 

Akutagawa is probably best known for his short story "Rashoumon" which, together with his short story "In a Bamboo Grove," formed the basis for the famous Akira Kurosawa movie Western audiences know as "Rashomon." It owes its fame to the same story being told by multiple characters, in ways that can't all be true, leaving the reader or viewer with no definitive way to figure out what actually happened.

"The Spider's Thread" is written in four parts of unequal length, but before we start, let's look at the title: 蜘蛛の糸, which introduces two new words and three new kanji.

Vocabulary

• 蜘蛛 (くも) means "spider"
• 糸 (いと) means "thread"

Kanji

蜘 and 蛛 are both kanji that are not jouyou kanji, that is, not part of the common-use set of kanji. They also don't have an N level. Finally, they both occur only in 1 common word, which is obviously the word 蜘蛛. The only other noteworthy thing is that the left half of each kanji is 虫 , which on its own means "insect, bug, cricket, moth."

糸 is an N2 kanji that occurs in only 5 words.

With that under out belt, let's start reading the story. We'll stick to just two sentences for now; as you'll see, there are many new words and kanji to process.

General note

The story is narrated in a polite style, using, for example, でございます instead of です.

Sentence 1:

ある日の事でございます。

Translation

One day, ...

Sentence 2:

御釈迦様は極楽の蓮池のふちを、独りでぶらぶら御歩きになっていらっしゃいました。

おしゃかさまはごくらくのはすいけのふちを、ひとるでぶらぶらおあるきになっていらっしゃいました。

Vocabulary

• 御 can represent either politeness prefix, お- or ご. We see it used twice in this sentence.
• 釈迦 means Buddha, and the construction お釈迦様 is of course a polite way of referring to him.
• 極楽 means Sukhavati (Amitabha's pure land) or "paradise, heaven on earth."
• 蓮池 means "lotus pond"
• ふち is usually written with kanji. There are 2 common words pronounced ふち: the most common one (level N3) is 縁 meaning "ridge, rim, edge, brink," but there's also 縁 which means "deep pool, deep water, abyss; depths (say of despair), grip (say of death). I'd say it's likely that this word was written without making a kanji choice, to leave it ambiguous.
• 独りで is an unusual way to write 一人で. Both are pronounced the same way (ひとりで) and both mean the same thing: "alone, by oneself." You'll notice that while 独, even in other combinations, never refers to insects, the right hand part of the kanji is again 虫, "insect." Again, I'm going to assume that the choice of kanji was deliberate.
• ぶらぶら is an onomatopeia meaning "dangling, swaying, swinging; (walking) leisurely, aimlessly, strolling, wandering, rambling"

Kanji

Kanji	N-level	Occurs in how many common words?
御	N3	140
釈	N1	6
迦	(none)	2
蓮	N1	2
池	N2	5

Grammar

This sentence combines a verb of movement 歩く ("to walk") with a direct object ふち ("the edge"), using the particle を rather than the more common に or へ. The difference is that を indicates movement "all over" the location described by the noun, while に or へ signifies movement toward the location. Compare 森に歩きました "I walked into the forest" versus 森を歩きました "I walked through the forest."

The verb at the end of the sentence is 御歩きになっていらっしゃいました。This is a great example of how a simple verb can get really long because of polite language. The dictionary form of the verb is 歩く "to walk." The verb form being used is the progressive past 歩いていた. One way to make the verb more polite is by changing it to お歩きになっていた (prefix the verb with お, use its masu-stem 歩き add the particle に and finally add the progressive past form of なる. But on top of all this, the writer also changes the verb いる at the end into its polite counterpart いらっしゃいました. So it's  a very polite way of saying "was walking."

Translation

(I won't even attempt to approximate the level of politeness expressed in the original.)

御釈迦様は極楽の蓮池のふちを、独りでぶらぶら御歩きになっていらっしゃいました。

(One day,) the Buddha was walking on the edge of the lotus pond of the Pure Land.