Garyū tensei

Information

Description

Because the Japanese written language uses Chinese characters, it is possible to read Chinese literature in Japanese with a little training. The grammar of the two languages is different, so the order in which the characters are read changes slightly. Moreover, the Japanese language uses additional phonetic characters to conjugate verbs, act as prepositions, etc.

This was one of the first pieces of Chinese literature that I studied in Japan: an old Chinese story about painting dragons. I loved hearing my teacher read it in Japanese, and as I was reminded of it while painting the dragon on my denim jacket, I thought it would be fun to try writing the story in Japanese, using both Chinese characters (kanji) and Japanese characters (kana).

The original text is as follows.

張僧繇呉中人也。武帝崇飾仏寺多命僧繇画之。金陵安楽寺四白竜不点眼睛。毎云点睛即飛去。人以為妄誕固請点之。須臾雷電破壁両竜乗雲騰去上天。二竜未点眼者見在。

In Japanese (and written in the Roman alphabet), it would be read as follows.

Chōsōyō wa go chū no hito nari. Butei butsuji wo sūshoku shi, ōku sōyō ni meijite, kore ni egakashimu. Kinryō no anrakuji no shihakuryū wa, gansei wo tenzezu. Tsune ni iu, “Hitomi wo tenzeba, sunawachi tobisaran to.” Hito motte moutan to nashi, kataku kore wo tenzen koto wo kou. Shuyu ni shite raiden kabe wo yaburi, ryōryū kumo ni nori, jōten ni noborite saru. Ni ryū no imada me wo tenzezaru mono kenzaisu.

Translated into English, it would be something like the following.

“Zhang Sengyou (a monk) was a native of the kingdom of Wu. The emperor of the time wanted to demonstrate his piety, so he had Buddhist temples decorated, and Zhang was asked to help paint many of them. At the Anle Temple in Jinling, he painted four white dragons but did not add pupils to their eyes. He said, “If I add the pupils, the dragons will fly away.” The people of Jinling got together and foolishly demanded that Zhang add the pupils. (He complied and added them to two of the four dragons.) Not long afterwards, the wall on which the dragons were painted was struck by lightning and destroyed, and the dragons rode up to heaven on a cloud. The two dragons to which Zhang did not add pupils remain to this day.”