The Young Man Who Wanted to Get Rich - original text

It's more than a few years ago now that I wrote my first (and almost assuredly my last) short story in Japanese, "The Young Man Who Wanted to Get Rich". By the time I finally got around to publishing it online, I thought I had lost the original Japanese manuscript, and had to content myself with adding a brief note that it was "translated from the original Japanese by the author". Today, I finally found the original Japanese manuscript!

Here, for those who can read Japanese or are interested in such details, is a scanned PDF of the story as I wrote it in the original Japanese.

How times have NOT changed!

I've been reading George MacDonald's The Princess and Curdie to my boys as a bedtime story whenever we are at St. John's House in Vancouver for the night, and tonight I ran across this passage. MacDonald's 19th Century fairy-tale description of a society in decay sounds eerily familiar...

At last river and road took a sudden turn, and lo! a great rock in the river, which dividing flowed around it, and on the top of the rock the city, with lofty walls and towers and battlements, and above the city the palace of the king, built like a strong castle. But the fortifications had long been neglected, for the whole country was now under one king, and all men said there was no more need for weapons or walls. No man pretended to love his neighbour, but every one said he knew that peace and quiet behaviour was the best thing for himself, and that, he said, was quite as useful, and a great deal more reasonable. The city was prosperous and rich, and if everybody was not comfortable, everybody else said he ought to be.

When Curdie got up opposite the mighty rock, which sparkled all over with crystals, he found a narrow bridge, defended by gates and portcullis and towers with loopholes. But the gates stood wide open, and were dropping from their great hinges; the portcullis was eaten away with rust, and clung to the grooves evidently immovable; while the loopholed towers had neither floor nor roof, and their tops were fast filling up their interiors. Curdie thought it a pity, if only for their old story, that they should be thus neglected. But everybody in the city regarded these signs of decay as the best proof of the prosperity of the place. Commerce and self-interest, they said, had got the better of violence, and the troubles of the past were whelmed in the riches that flowed in at their open gates.

Indeed, there was one sect of philosophers in it which taught that it would be better to forget all the past history of the city, were it not that its former imperfections taught its present inhabitants how superior they and their times were, and enabled them to glory over their ancestors. There were even certain quacks in the city who advertised pills for enabling people to think well of themselves, and some few bought of them, but most laughed, and said, with evident truth, that they did not require them. Indeed, the general theme of discourse when they met was, how much wiser they were than their fathers.

Lewis Quote: On Essays

Just ran across the most wonderful quote from C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy as I was reading it to my children as part of our usual bedtime ritual (which, for the last couple of years has consisted of a Bible story, a story from the complete Thomas the Tank Engine collection, and a chapter from one of the Narnian Chronicles - we're on our second pass through both of the latter now). It struck me as particularly wonderful right now as I am writing my thesis and marking essays over Spring Break!

In Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to read the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.

Update to ChristianFantasy.com

At long, long last, I have finally updated my long-neglected ChristianFantasy.com site! The new addition is actually an old one: an essay I wrote on one of my favourite movies, The Princess Bride, for Dr. Peter Bouteneff's Christian film course at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary.

Holy Saturday and Aslan

A blessed Holy Saturday to all of you! Just wanted to share with you something I noticed as we were reading the praises of Holy Saturday Matins this evening—reminded me a lot of C.S. Lewis:

O Saviour, as a lion
Thou sleepest in the flesh,
yet as a lion's cub Thou didst arise,
casting off the old age of the flesh!

May the Lion of Judah, Who endured fearful suffering, the life-creating Cross, and voluntary burial in the flesh on behalf of us men and for our salvation, Christ our true God, have mercy on us and save us, for He is good and loves mankind!