Preface to the Lives of the Eight Dog Warriors, Collection III

No shop can sell wine with a mad dog by the front gate, and yet the shopkeeper who does not know this will resent the fact that his wine does not sell. The passionate fool is like this; we call such the masses. Among the masses there are clear and cloudy, just as there are among wines; the clear ones are dry to the taste, and their intoxicating effects soon wear off, while the cloudy ones are rich to the taste, and leave one thoroughly drunk. Why, oh why do so many of us think only of the present, and fear not for the future? For this reason was it that Gautama¹ expounded the Law, thereby setting forth the existence of Hell and the pleasures of the Heavenly Hall, that by this means those who think not on the future may learn fear. And why is it that so many of us respect what our ears tell us, but despise what our eyes show us? For this reason was it that the sage Southern Efflorescence² settled objects and arguments, thereby seeking to banish disputes, that by this means those who respect what their ears tell them and despise what their eyes show them might know shame. Nevertheless, while those who praise such quietist teachings, even unto flattery, are many, few indeed are those who follow them to enlightenment. How can it be otherwise? The flatterer may be able to recite a sutra, but never can he interpret its meaning. Those who are lost in this way might pray in their hearts for profit and advantage, but by the very action of desiring it, they cannot know where it lies. A battle helmet of such a nature, worn in such a spirit, would be of no avail. Long ago in Cathay there were men of raven-black hair and good sense. They speculated as to karmic causes and elucidated their effects, used vulgar stories to entice the public and encouragement and chastisement to awaken them. Their conceptions were exquisite, and their writing marvelous. They made expedient means their warp and allegory their woof, and with them wove a beautiful brocade. The sweetness of their work is as of candy or honey that sticks to the ignorant as to an ant so that he cannot escape it, but his sufferings, where it has attached, are converted to excrement and finally eliminated through the anus, so that all unknowing he has arrived within the precincts of good, and become, for a spell, a person cleansed of the filth of the world. And is this not a prodigy? Since the days of my youth I have been lost in error, pursuing my inky amusements with no more sense than a dog that chases horses’ tails until he grows old in the streets. And yet, when it comes to encouragement and chastisement, I will not rate any of my works lower than the ancients’. I desire to help women and children enter the precincts of good. This is my whole reason for writing the Lives of the Eight Dog Warriors. I have continued to produce Volumes until now the third is about to be printed, and so I have written a few lines to be placed at the head of it. Ah, the Buddha nature of puppies, whose eye-word³ is “naught!” The cravenness of humans, who love to wag their tails! My fear is that I shall blunder by barking at the Emperor Yao.⁴ My hope is that the unseeing might have their maze opened unto them through hunting the dogs of the passions of this world. O Reader, bless me, and reproach me not for the baselessness of what is written herein!

Last day of the ninth month of the first year of Bunsei⁵

Saritsu the Eremite Fisher⁶

1. This preface is written in kanbun, with minimal glosses. The preface title is followed by a seal reading Chosakudō, one of Bakin’s alternate pennames.
 The name of the historical Buddha.

2. Zhuangzi.

3. “Eye-word” is a somewhat literal translation of jigan, a critical term from kanbun and kanshi denoting a character whose excellence or lack thereof makes or breaks a composition.

4. A reference to the Chinese proverb, “Zhi’s dog barks at Yao.” The proverb occurs in Shiji, chapter 92, and notes that although a dog belonging to Zhi (a tyrant) barked at Yao (a virtuous ruler), that did not mean that Yao was bad—only that Yao was not the dog’s master.

5. 1818.

6.Gyoin, one of several poetic epithets connoting reclusion.
 On Bakin’s seals: The left one says “Bakin” in seal script. The right one consists of a thatched hut between the Daoist trigrams for Heaven and Earth. It refers to a couplet from the third of five poems under the title “Late Spring” by Tang-era poet Du Fu: “Myself and the world: a pair of tangled tresses; / Earth and Heaven: a single thatch pavilion.” See Du Fu, “Late Spring: On My Newly Rented Thatched Cottage at Rangxi,” in The Poetry of Du Fu, trans. and ed. Stephen Owen, vol. 5 (Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 81.