Herons and Mandarin Ducks
In this compact, comic essay, Ryunosuke Akutagawa recalls spotting two striking young women on a blazing summer day in Ginza. He privately names the slender sister “the heron” and her fuller-figured companion “the mandarin duck,” admiring their silhouettes with the practiced eye of an artist. A chance meeting on a streetcar, however, brings him close enough to notice the decidedly unromantic details that distance had concealed. Akutagawa turns the encounter into a sly attack on idealized beauty and on the observer’s own vanity. His self-mockery is as sharp as his satire: even the gallant surrender of his seat proves less an act of virtue than a strategic retreat. The final advice is blunt, sensory, and deliberately indecorous.
It was the summer two or three years ago. As I was walking through Ginza, I discovered two women. And they were no ordinary women. I discovered two whose figures from behind were striking enough to make me catch my breath.
One was slender and graceful as a heron. As for the other—describing her is a little more troublesome. Since ancient times, it seems that praise of a fine figure has meant the leanness of Zhao rather than the plumpness of Yang. Yet this other woman was plump—plumper than what one would call a medium build. Even so, the balance of her body was not impaired in the least. In particular, the stately way she advanced at an easy pace, with a gentle sway of the hips, was as splendid as a mandarin duck. They wore matching kimonos of striped Akashi cloth or something of the sort, matching silk-gauze obi, and matching parasols covered with the netting then in fashion; perhaps they were an elder and younger sister. I studied every plane and line of the pair as though I had set them upon a model’s platform. It is, after all, the thinness of their clothing that makes women’s figures in summer so—though women’s magazines have been saying as much over and over for thirty years.
To make certain, I passed the two of them and glanced sideways to inspect their faces. They were indeed sisters. What was more, both were beauties of about twenty, their hair arranged in the same spade-shaped coiffure. Only the mandarin duck was perhaps a little less handsome than the heron. After that I forgot them and strolled on down the street. The street, as I have already said, was Ginza beneath the beating summer sun. I did not forget them because I lacked an innate gift for lyric poetry. Rather, I was expending all my powers of mind on the struggle against the molten heat: wiping my sweat with a handkerchief, using my summer hat as a fan, and so forth.
About ten minutes later, however, I boarded a streetcar at Ginza Fourth Street, and by a curious coincidence they immediately appeared in the same car. The car was not crowded, but there was only one seat left, directly to my right. The heron, with the discretion befitting the elder sister, quietly sat down beside me. The mandarin duck naturally remained standing before her sister, one hand resting on a strap. I opened the book I was carrying and set about conquering a biography of Mahatma Gandhi, oppressive enough even without being read in summer. No—I did not set about conquering it. I merely intended to. As the streetcar started, I saw the mandarin duck stagger one step, and at once surrendered my seat to her with a courtesy surpassing that of any gentleman. Without waiting for their thanks, I promptly moved away. It was no accident that I, a self-professed egoist, performed this act of self-sacrifice. Seen from below, long hairs protruded from the mandarin duck’s nostrils. The heron too must have neglected her grooming, for the odor of her hair was extraordinary. Even these things might have been tolerable; worse, the subject they were discussing so earnestly was some clinical fact concerning menstruation.
Ever since then, “the figure of a woman in summer” has unfortunately symbolized bitter disillusionment for me. However exquisitely graceful a beauty in Ginza at high noon may appear, one should not rashly pay her homage. At the very least, before paying homage, one ought first to give her scent a sniff. . . .
(June 1924)