Laudator Temporis Acti

R.H. Blyth (1898-1964), Oriental Humour (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1959; rpt. 1968), Plate XII (between pp. 248-249):


Transcription (without Japanese characters):

PLATE XII

THE HUNDRED DAYS LAW-PREACHING

This picture, "The Teaching of the Law of a Hundred Days," is by Sengai. The "hundred days" seems to mean of always, every day. At the side is written:

Now then! Eat away!
Drink up your tea!

[and fart like mad, without the repression of good manners.] The picture shows the beatific pleasure of the farter, perhaps a child, and his helping the farting with the right hand stretched to the rear. From the Freudian point of view we must say that farting is a sexual pleasure, and a sexual symbol. But more profoundly, the universe is God's fart. Most of us find that it stinks, and hold our noses. We should, instead, take a deep breath of it.

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Thanks very much to Macaulay Curtis, who writes:

Blyth’s interpretation of the Japanese drawing in your post this morning struck me as being way off the mark (I am a Japanese translator by trade), so I thought I would share the fruits of my morning’s research.

The title is a reference to a proverb, 百日の説法屁一つ (one hundred days of preaching and one fart), referring to all the honour of a long and virtuous labour being undone by a single embarrassing gaffe. The joke here is perhaps to equate the fart to the teaching, rather than contrast them.

The caption to the side is also not quite right in Blyth’s translation. これ, which Blyth translates as “Now then!”, should be “this,” referring to the fart. So a better translation is “Eat this with your tea,” which does sound like the kind of thing a boy might shout before farting in your face.

However, some googling reveals that there is another, more famous drawing by Sengai with the same caption (attached). Drawings of circles are common in Zen, and for the uninitiated like myself, tend to induce a kind of shame-faced shuffling of the feet in our ignorance of what this circle could possibly mean. But the caption reveals all: “Eat this with your tea” ­– it’s not a profound philosophical circle, it’s a sweet bun!

I suppose that the fart picture came later, as a more vulgar riff on a successful work. Sengai was a famous jokester, and I think that background does a little more justice to his sense of humour.

Labels: noctes scatologicae