Sangetsuki

Do you know the short story Sangetsuki (The Moon Over the Mountain)?
It is Atsushi Nakajima's debut work, published in 1942. It appears in Japanese language textbooks, so many people have read it.
It is a story you can finish in under thirty minutes, so if you have not read it, please do — then come back to this blog.

For those who have already read Sangetsuki, here is a quick summary of the plot.

An official named Yuan Can is walking a night road when he meets a tiger. The tiger quickly turns away and hides in the grass. At the same time, it murmurs in a human voice.
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Yuan Can recognizes the familiar voice and realizes the tiger is his friend Li Zheng. Li Zheng tells Yuan Can how he became a tiger. (Li Zheng's account takes up most of the story.)
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Li Zheng had been an official whom many people, including Yuan Can, recognized as brilliant and excellent — a star among his peers. But he had always longed to be a poet, so he quit as an official and became one.
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In that field, though, he got nowhere. Still, he refused to mix with other poets and polish his craft together; he stayed alone, absorbed in writing poetry.
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Still no results. Years later, after falling into poverty, he returned to being an official to feed his family.
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Back as an official, his old peers had of course risen. While Li Zheng had been lost in poetry, they had been diligently working as officials. Li Zheng now had to keep bowing his head to them.
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Gasping under that situation, he went mad, and one night ran out into the wild. Before he knew it, he had become a tiger.
That is the rough outline.

It is a story in which Li Zheng looks back on his life and confesses his inner conflict. (After that come striking scenes — for example, he entrusts Yuan Can with poems he wrote after becoming a tiger, while mocking himself for still clinging to poetry.)

Sangetsuki is often discussed alongside the keywords Li Zheng himself utters: cowardly pride and arrogant shame.

When I read it in high school, I think my impression was simply that it was a sorrowful life.
After a while, though, that impression changed.

If you interpreted it the way a modern Japanese literature class might, you might explain what was wrong with Li Zheng based on past events.
For example: he should have used his talent as an official; or even as a poet, he should not have overestimated his gifts and should have mixed with peers and competed; or after becoming a tiger, he should have cast off his old self and found his own way of living. Honestly, I do not remember how the class at the time explained it.

In any case, the desirable reading might be that you should choose a way of living that avoids the story's theme — "cowardly pride and arrogant shame."

But when I reread it after some time, I came to a slightly different view. I think it was when I was a university student.

That view was: "Li Zheng could only live that way."

There are endless ideas about how one ought to be, but Li Zheng probably could not live any other way.
Of course that is not only about Li Zheng; it applies to every life, including mine.
Looking at successful people — or at unpleasant people nearby — I think: this person can only live this way, so of course they are like this now.
It is not a matter of good or bad, and it is not some grand fatalism.
At the very least, it is definitely not material for shrugging things off — for example, "a bad person can only live as a bad person, so correcting them is pointless." (Though as a result, the feeling may resemble a kind of resignation.)

Even now I have not sorted it out well, and I can only define it abstractly as "not X," which is frustrating.
And if I told someone this and they summarized it as "so what you mean is this," I would probably answer, "No, that is not it." (A thoroughly difficult personality.)

But when I pulled the closest nuance out of my head, I thought of the famous "Path" passage from the late Konosuke Matsushita's book Opening the Path. It is a wonderful piece; please read the whole thing. Here I quote only part of it.

"There will be times when you wonder whether this path is good or bad, when thought alone is not enough. There will be times when you want consolation. But in the end, is this not the only path there is?"

It is a very strengthening line. The first time I read that poem as a student, with all kinds of conflict inside me, I remember being deeply moved late at night.

Personally, when I hold the view that "one can only live this way," not only my own values but other people's values often settle into place more easily.

As usual there is no neat insight or conclusion, and in the end I even borrowed strength from Konosuke Matsushita. (He really was great.)

When things are hard, try rereading Sangetsuki.
I think you can enjoy the story from angles other than a hopeless life of high pride.