Japanese Literature Summaries
日本語

The Five-Storied Pagoda — Summary and Characters

A carpenter stakes his life on a pagoda

Author
Kōda Rohan
Published
November 1891
First appeared in
Kokkai Shimbun
Form
Novel
Genres
  • Psychological
Setting
  • Tokyo
Length
56,213 characters
Reading time
About 1 hr 52 min
Orthography
Modern script and kana

About this work

A novella serialized in the Kokkai Shimbun from 1891 into the following year, and the best-known work of an author famous for dignified classical prose. Jūbei, a carpenter nicknamed "the sluggard" for being awkward and bad at getting on in the world despite his sure hands, pours the passion of a lifetime into building the five-storied pagoda at Kannōji, even setting himself against Genta, the senior craftsman to whom he owes so much. The stubbornness of the artist, the obsession with making, and the night of great storm that falls on the finished pagoda, carried in bold prose. A monument of Meiji literature.

Summary

There was a carpenter, sure enough in his craft but clumsy at getting on in the world, whom everyone nicknamed Jūbei the Slowcoach. When the Kannōji at Yanaka resolves to raise a five-storied pagoda, Jūbei longs to carry out this great work of a lifetime with his own hands. But everyone assumed, of course, that the building would go to Kawagoe Genta, the able master carpenter who had always looked out for him. Jūbei goes over the head of the man he owes so much to and appeals directly to the abbot to be allowed to build it. Torn between obligation and feeling, Genta proposes that the two of them build it together; but Jūbei will not yield an inch — unless he is allowed to do it alone, he says, there is no point in it. Seikichi, Genta's hot-blooded young follower, flies into a rage and cuts Jūbei with a blade; and still Jūbei's single purpose does not waver, until at last the abbot entrusts the work to him alone. Genta swallows his pride as a man, and neither helps nor interferes but watches; and Jūbei pours himself entirely into the work and completes a magnificent pagoda. Then, just before the ceremony of dedication, an unheard-of storm strikes Edo. Jūbei climbs to the top of the tower with a chisel between his teeth, ready, if it falls, to fall with it, and faces the tempest. When the night is over and every building in the town has been damaged, Jūbei's pagoda stands piercing the sky, not a nail loosened, not a board torn away. The abbot calls Genta and Jūbei up into the tower together, inscribes their two names upon it, and honors their labor.

Characters

Chapter-by-chapter synopsis

The app covers this work chapter by chapter (full text in the app).

  1. 1. About This Work
  2. 2. Main Characters
  3. 3. Main Supporting Characters
  4. 4. The Slowcoach's Petition — A Single-Minded Devotion Poured Into a Model
  5. 5. “This Decision I Leave to the Two of You” — The Rich Man and His Two Sons
  6. 6. He Cannot Become a Parasite Vine — Two Refusals and a Breach
  7. 7. Reconciliation at the Pond's Edge, and Breakdown Once More
  8. 8. Seikichi's Adze — The Loss of an Ear
  9. 9. The Night of the Great Storm
  10. 10. The Conclusion — Two Names Carved Into the Tower
  11. 11. Key Motifs and Foreshadowing

The opening (original text)

Facing a solidly built long brazier, its body of handsome-grained zelkova and its rim deliberately of red oak, a woman of about thirty sits alone with no one to talk to, looking a little lonely. The splendid, almost manly eyebrows were shaved off at some time or other, and the blue-black trace of them holds the color of a mountain after rain, so fresh to the eye that the green of it has a particular charm; her nose runs straight, the corners of her eyes turn up crisply, and her newly washed hair is wound round and round in a hard knot and pinned through with a single hairpin set off with a strip of paper — she has got herself up with no thought of allure. And yet a strand or two of that enviably crow-black, glossy hair has slipped loose and falls across a face which, dark-complexioned though it is, has lost all its coarseness, so that even a man with no taste for women past their first youth could hardly help praising her. A rake would say behind her back, though no one asked him, that if she were his he would like to dress her so and so; for all that, this is the dress of a woman who has thrown over appearances and prides herself on being steady. The pattern she has chosen is not unrefined, but it is only a padded garment of double-woven cotton with a satin collar, without a touch of anything showy about it; and the jacket thrown over it is of a coarse striped silk that must have been something once, though it too has been through the wash any number of times.

The Five-Storied Pagoda by Kōda Rohan (Aozora Bunko)

The ending (original text)

On the day when the dedication ceremony, thrown out of its arrangements by the storm, was at last performed, the abbot expressly summoned Genta and went up into the tower with him and Jūbei; and having a novice bring the brush he had made ready with some purpose, he soaked it well with ink and said, "I shall set an inscription on this tower for you. Look, Jūbei; look, Genta." And in thick, bold strokes he wrote: Jūbei, dweller in the eastern capital, built this; Kawagoe Gentarō completed it — with the year, the month and the day. When he turned round, his whole face wreathed in smiles, the two men had nothing to say, but bowed to the ground in thanks. And from that time the treasure tower has soared into the sky for ever: seen from the west, its flying eaves at times give forth the plain moon; looked at from the east, its balustrades swallow the red sun at evening. And now, more than a hundred years after, the story lives on.

The Five-Storied Pagoda by Kōda Rohan (Aozora Bunko)

Famous passages

Seated alone before a long, sturdily built brazier of fine-grained zelkova wood, its rim deliberately fitted with red oak, with no one to talk to, sat a woman of about thirty, looking somewhat forlorn.

An opening that builds outward from the fine detail of a woman before a long brazier. In Rohan's characteristically elegant style, it opens the story of the carpenter Nosso Jūbei, who stakes his whole life on a single pagoda.

Read the original

The original Japanese text is available at Aozora Bunko, and the app downloads the same text for its vertical-text reader.

Aozora Bunko library card

Related works