Hakkenden (The Eight Dog Heroes - 八犬伝) (genre )
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Biography:
Kyokutei Bakin (曲亭馬琴: 1767-1848) is one of the great figures of Japanese literature. Much of his life was a struggle. In fact, in old age "...he managed to write a prodigious amount, began to feel the pains and defects of age, was disappointed in a son; he might loathe the work he was so compulsively attached to, and was reduced to using an amanuensis to complete his longest work. This was Nansō Satomi Hakkenden, better known as Hakkenden.
He spent thirty-eight years (age forty-seven to seventy-five) on this immense work in ninety-six kan. It features over four hundred people. And it is in the last stages of this work that poor Bakin, losing his sight, had to count the characters off, kanji and kana, one by one, for the printer. For reasons that are more depressing than exhilarating, it is a life calculated to stifle any boast one might be tempted to make of one's own achievements. Few writers have had to endure such privation, few have written so much so complexly, and few have had to wait so long for the fame sought at such a price."
Kyokutei Bakin (曲亭馬琴: 1767-1848) is one of the great figures of Japanese literature. Much of his life was a struggle. In fact, in old age "...he managed to write a prodigious amount, began to feel the pains and defects of age, was disappointed in a son; he might loathe the work he was so compulsively attached to, and was reduced to using an amanuensis to complete his longest work. This was Nansō Satomi Hakkenden, better known as Hakkenden.
He spent thirty-eight years (age forty-seven to seventy-five) on this immense work in ninety-six kan. It features over four hundred people. And it is in the last stages of this work that poor Bakin, losing his sight, had to count the characters off, kanji and kana, one by one, for the printer. For reasons that are more depressing than exhilarating, it is a life calculated to stifle any boast one might be tempted to make of one's own achievements. Few writers have had to endure such privation, few have written so much so complexly, and few have had to wait so long for the fame sought at such a price."
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A summary of the origins of The Eight Dogs Chronicles (Nanso Satomi Hakkenden) by Kyokutei Bakin (1767-1848) can be found in Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology 1600-1900 by Haruo Shirhane, pp. 887-888. Bakin's tale was serialized between 1814-42.
"In 1814 Bakin began writing The Eight Dog Chronicles, a historical novel of the strange and supernatural set in a time of medieval war. By the time he had completed it, in 1842, the work spanned 106 volumes*, making it one of the world's longest novels. Because Bakin's eyesight began to fail in he temporarily stopped writing Eight Dogs but finally was able to complete the work with the help of a scribe. The popularity of Bakin's yomihon reached unprecedented heights in the late Tokugawa and early Meiji periods. Even though it was severely criticized by the influential Meiji critic Tsubouchi Shōyō for its lack of realism and for its didactic framework of 'encouraging good and chastising evil,' the popularity of Eight Dogs continued unabated through the late Meiji period.
One of the outstanding characteristics of The Eight Dog Chronicles, considered the epitome of the yomihon, is its elegant style, which uses classical diction and Chinese compounds as well as classical rhetorical flourishes such as engo (word associations) and kakekotoba (homonyms), often in a melodious 5-7 syllabic rhythm. At the same time, Bakin sought to create a work on the kind of vast scale found in Water Margin, a narrative that would be the Japanese equal of that great Ming novel. Besides sharing the hallmarks of earlier yomihon — the interest in the supernatural and the use of the principles of rewarding good and punishing evil and karmic causality — The Eight Dog Chronicles stresses the need to overcome attachment and seek enlightenment.
Bakin's primary interest, however, was in human psychology and behavior. His favorite Japanese text was the Taiheiki (Record of Great Peace), the mid-fourteenth-century medieval chronicle that describes the war-torn period of the Northern and Southern Courts. He admired the samurai ideals found in such historical and legendary narratives, but he also sympathized with the oppressed and those who had met with misfortune in the past. In The Eight Dog Chronicles, he gives them new life in an imaginary world. The full title of the book is The Chronicles of the Eight Dog Heroes of the Satomi Clan of Nansō (Nansō Satomi hakkenden), which refers to eight little-known fifteenth-century heroes (each with 'dog' in his name) who helped the Satomi clan reestablish itself in Awa Province (Chiba) and later expand north to the area known as Nansō, thus establishing its rule over most of the peninsula east across the bay from what later became Edo. Despite its praise for warrior values, the book may be obliquely criticizing Tokugawa corruption, especially under the shōgun Tokugawa Ienari (r. 1787-1837). The Tokugawa shōgunate regarded the Satomi as enemies and confiscated the clan's lands in 1614.
The Eight Dog Chronicles revolves around conflicting issues of morality, spirituality, fate, duty, sincerity, filial piety, and chastity, enforced in different ways by Confucian, samurai, and Buddhist values (of detachment, enlightenment, and karmic retribution) and complicated by the simultaneous associations of animality (carnal desire) and virtue (fidelity, self-sacrifice) implicit in the various dog figures. While praising warrior-class and Buddhist values, The Eight Dog Chronicles reveals Bakin's obvious fascination with carnality and commoner culture, which gives a compelling quality to a wide variety of characters, even those who are morally weak or evil. The book also raises fascinating issues of gender and human-nonhuman relations. The book presents a number of strong female characters, such as the brave young woman Fusehime, who is the spiritual creator and inspiration of all eight heroes. The Eight Dog Chronicles also contains many suggestions of androgyny, a common late-Edo theme. In the scenes translated here, Fusehime is described as being manlike, and by spreading her seedlike soul beads, she becomes the virtual mother-father of the eight heroes. Yatsufusa, who marries Fusehime, is a male dog possessed by a female soul. Shino, the first dog-hero to appear in the story, grows up disguised as a girl and imitates a female god. Fusehime is faced with the tragic dilemma of attempting both to achieve spiritual purity and preserve her chastity and to accept her destiny of bearing the children of a dog."
*Shan Ren of the University of Alberta (see below) says it was written in 9 volumes with 180 chapters.
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The fall and rise in the popularity of the Hakkenden
"In the latter years of the Edo period, The Eight Dog Warriors became such a popular literary phenomenon that it gave rise to endless variations in other forms of fiction such as the gōkan, ukiyo-e prints, and kabuki. Though it remained popular reading well into the modern period, the denial of the Edo literary tradition by Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859—1935) and other subscribers to Western realism during the Meiji period doomed this monumental work to its present status as the great underresearched classic of the Japanese literary canon. On the other hand, the elements of fantasy and sexual deviation that raised the eyebrows of Meiji intellectuals have proved an irresistible inspiration for a variety of modern adaptations. A considerable number of films, modern novels and plays, television shows, manga, anime, and computer games have all been inspired by this voluminous historical novel. In kabuki, various versions have been staged since the nineteenth century, the most noteworthy modern adaptation being Ichikawa Ennosuke's The Eight Dog Warriors (Hakkenden, first produced 1993), extravagantly produced as one of his high-tech “super-kabuki” works."
Quoted from: An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan's Mega-City, 1750-1850.
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In a 2019 master's thesis at the University of Alberta Shan Ren postulated that Bakin looked to three Chinese classics. Mainly he used the Shuihu zhuan or Suikoden (水滸傳) in Japanese, the Sanguozhi yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Sangokushi engi (三國志演義), and the Xiyou ji 西遊記 (Journey to the West or Saiyūki).
Ms. Ren gives a good synopsis of the beginning of this story:
"Eight Dogs begins with the story of Princess Fuse 伏姫 , the daughter of Satomi Yoshizane 里見義実, the ruler of Awa 安房 Province (modern Chiba Prefecture). During a time when Awa was experiencing a famine, a neighbouring province attacked, and Yoshizane could not find a solution to this crisis. When he walked in the garden, he saw his family dog Yatsufusa 八房 . Yoshizane promised Yatsufusa that if he could bring back the head of the enemy’s general, he would grant him Princess Fuse. The dog does return with the enemy’s head, and then carries Princess Fuse to a cave in Mount To 富山 . Although Yatsufusa and Princess Fuse did not have a physical relationship, Princess Fuse becomes pregnant sometime afterward. Out of embarrassment, she persuades Yatsufusa to commit suicide with her, but they are both accidentally shot by one of Yoshizane’s retainers. On waking up and finding out that her father came to the mountain to see her, Princess Fuse cuts her belly to prove her chastity, revealing that she has no babies inside her, and releasing a white mist that envelops her eight rosary beads. The beads, representing the eight Confucian virtues in Bakin’s view — jin 仁 (benevolence), gi 義 (righteousness), rei 礼 (propriety), chi 智 (wisdom), chū 忠 (loyalty), shin 信 (fidelity), kō 孝 (filiality), and tei 悌 (fraternity) — fly away in eight different directions.
This scene is similar to the beginning of Water Margin, in which Marshal Hong Xin 洪信 (J. Kō Shin) opens the sealed door of the “Hall of the Vanquished Demons” in the Temple of Holy Purity on Dragon-Tiger Mountain and releases the 108 spirits that fly away in different directions in Chapter I. The similarity here is very clear. Both stories feature a person opening a closed space (in Princess Fuse’s case, it is her own belly, while in Marshal Hong’s case, it is a hall) to let out a mysterious power. Both episodes include other similar details: for instance, both Princess Fuse and Marshal Hong meet a boy on a cow’s back, with a flute in hand, who foretells their fate."
Ms. Ren notes that the 8 Confucian virtues are the ones Bakin chose to use. She also notes the similarities between the beginning of the Hakkenden and a Chinese myth, the story of Panhu, in which a dog wins a princess as his mate and carries her off to a cave. Three years later she gave birth to six sons and six daughters who became the barbarians.
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In Eight Dogs, or "Hakkenden": Part One—An Ill-Considered Jest translated by Glynne Walley, on page Xi it says: "Hakkenden poses difficulties for a modern reader, however. Serialized over a period of twenty-eight years, it is one of the longest sustained narratives in the world. It was written in a (heavily modified) classical grammar and syntax, only a few decades before that language was rendered antiquated by Japan's modernization. And it was written for an audience that expected its fiction to be studded with allusions to and borrowings from the entire canons of poetry and prose of both Japan and China. All of factors—its scale, its linguistic remoteness, and its intertextual complexity—make it a daunting read, to say the least."