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An Undercurrent in Modern Japanese Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Jun Etō
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Extract

One often has the impression that young Japanese writers today are more eager to follow Western fads than to explore the Japanese tradition. Far from being devotees of Zen Buddhism, they are more likely to come to it through translations of Kerouac and other beatniks. In this paper, I propose to examine the cultural and psychological bases for this curious situation, which I suggest stem largely from the Japanese obsession with being up-to-date or Westernized. Young Japanese writers are never free from the pressure of the reading public that they should be au courant with the latest trend in Western literature, and this imposes such a heavy burden that it is no wonder that they have no time to go to a monastery and practice Zen.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , May 1964 , pp. 433 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1964

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References

1 This article is based on a paper originally entitled “Neglected Topics in Japanese Literary Criticism,” which was delivered at the AAS meeting in Philadelphia, March 27, 1963. The author wishes to express his appreciation to the Rockefeller Foundation which made it possible for him to stay at Princeton University to pursue his studies in literary criticism, to Professor Marius B. Jansen of Princeton University for his encouragement and useful advice, and to Mr. Wesley I. Johnson, graduate student at Princeton, for his sharing with the author a discussion on the subject treated in this article.

2 Gunzō published three translations of contemporary Western novels in nine months in 1962: Gregory Bakhranov's “Do not Whip the Dead” in March, Alfred Andersch's “Die Kirschen der Freiheit” in September, and Alan Sillitoe's “The Fishing Boat Picture” in December. Bungei probably published other translations of which I have no information.

3 Etō Jun (“Nihon no shinwa doko ni aruka”; in a collection of essays entitled Dorei no shiso o haisu, Bungei Shunju Shinsha, 1958) refers to the problem of the Old Testament in Japanese translation as a new literary style.

4 The autobiographical watakushi shōsetsu is sometimes called the confessional novel—Kokuhaku shōsetsu, in the late Taisho period.

5 The meditative or contemplative I-novel was named by Kume Masao and Nakamura Burafu the Shinkyo shōsetsu in the late Taisho period.

6 Hibbett, Howard S. in “The Portrait of the Artist in Japanese Fiction,” The Far Eastern Quarterly, XIV (May, 1955)Google Scholar treats the problem of the watakushi shōsetsu in detail. As he suggests, it is generally agreed among Japanese critics that the I-novel was originally motivated by European romantic and naturalistic literature (Thibauldet said that naturalism is a degenerated form of romanticism). But having thus been motivated by Western influence, the I-novel authors actually evoked their own literary tradition of Buddhist confession on the one hand, and Haiku and Zuihitsu on the other.

7 Of course there have also been writers, especially in the 1920's and 30's, who never “returned.” But on the whole, they were writers of less significance who never made a success of transplanting new Western literary fashions.

8 No doubt Tanizaki felt more at ease in the Edo or the exotic (like Kirin) than, in contemporary settings in developing his Wildean ideas.

9 “Tanizaki Jun'ichiro shi no sakuhin,” Mita Bungaku, November, 1910.

10 During this period of artistic depression which ended in 1924, Tanizaki even sought employment at a newly established movie studio, a fact that reminds us of F. Scott Fitzgerald's turn to Hollywood when he had lost his creative vigor. I think that this is a logical consequence of Tanizaki's early predilection for things new and Western. Apart from financial reasons, it is quite conceivable that Tanizaki looked to the movie world for a new version of “Diabolism”: that is, (1) it was an artificial world made available by new Western technology, and therefore it seemed to satisfy his concern with things new and Western even more directly man “new” literature; (2) it was a sort of exclusive club full of beautiful females supposedly free from the conventions of ordinary society—and therefore “dangerous” and “wicked.” The result was disastrous to Tanizaki, however, as it is to any other talented novelist, because it was just a world of stupid make-believe in which he could not meet a single “beautiful” and “wicked” Wildean goddess.

11 Story of Tomoda and Matsunaga is the tale of a doppelgänger character Tomoda-Matsunaga. As Tomoda Ginzō, he frequents shady places in Yokohama where he can dally with Caucasian prostitutes, speaking English and French fluently as if he were a half-Westerner. Every three or four years, however, he feels unbearable disgust with the Western way of life and begins longing for low-protein Japanese foods and traditional Japanese clothes. As a result, he comes back as Matsunaga Gisuke to his wife and lives in a village near Nara. Even his physical features change completely from fat and gay Tomoda to thin and reticent Matsunaga. At the end of the novel Tomoda, now moved from Yokohama to Kobe (like the author) because of the earthquake, begins to feel a presentiment that he must soon return to traditional Japan never to come back to the “West” again. Tomoda's confession runs like this: “… But what will become of me in the end if I am to live on and on this way? I'll be forty-five before long, and I know I'll very soon be Matsunaga Gisuke again. However, this time I feel an uneasy sentiment that I cannot return to Tomoda Ginzō any more. Last time I turned from Matsunaga to Tomoda, I spent more time in Yokohama than in Shanghai, fearing that I shouldn't have been safe had I gone far from Japan. Kobe is still closer to the home of Matsunaga Gisuke than Yokohama, you see.”

12 Mitsuo, Nakamura, Satō Haruo ron (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju Shinsha Co., 1961)Google Scholar brilliantly analyzes the “conversion” of Tanizaki Jun'ichirō by contrasting his rival in art and life, Satō Haruo, who, according to Nakamura, has remained unconverted.

13 The first half of the original version of Manji was written in a modified female Osaka dialect somewhat closer to standard Japanese than as it stands today. Tanizaki revised it completely when he published it in book form in 1931. This shift from the modified Osaka dialect to the elaborate, genuine, female Osaka speech indicates the extent of his involvement in traditional Kansai culture.

14 Sasamcyuki first appeared serially in Chūō Karon in 1943, but was stopped soon afterwards because of governmental censure. It was completed in 1947.

15 Shoshō Shigemoto no haha was published in 1950, In'ei raison in 1934.

16 Monumenta Nipponica Vol. XVI, 1960–61.

17 As for Yamato, the most secluded of

Lands—Yamato, retired behind Mount

Awogaki encompassing it with its folds, is

Delightful.

Let those whose life may be complete stick

(in their hair) as a head-dress the leaves

of the bear-oak from Mount Heguri—those children!

Kojiki Vol. II Sect. LXXXIX (Chamberlain translation).

18 Yukio, Mishima (“Hayashi Fusao Ron,” Shinchō, February, 1963)Google Scholar also classifies the “West,” conceived as ideas or thoughts within a writer, as something opposite and contradictory to “Japan,” conceived as traditional sentiment.

19 Constance Garnett translation, (Modem Library edition, Part IV, p. 520.)

20 This may be one reason that Japanese intellectuals are usually so anxious to listen to the Westerner's opinion on the Japanese way of life. Since they are vaguely aware of the fact that something is wrong with their “West,” they want to have an authentic scale against which to measure their image of the “West.” But at the same time, this may be a reason why the Westerner's advice is seldom accepted, for the Japanese intellectuals' image of the “West” tends to be so real that mey can hardly believe what they are told about the real West.

21 Bunzō, Hashikawa: “Nihon Romanha Hihan Josetsu” (“An Introductory Study on the Issues of the Nihon Romanha”) (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1959)Google Scholar and Jun, Etō: “Shinwa no kokufuku” (“The Subjugation of the Myth”), an essay included in a book called Dorei No shiso wo haisu (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju Shinsha, 1958)Google Scholar make detailed analyses of the structure of the Nihon Romanha ideas and their historical significance. Hashikawa's book is valuable because it is written from the point of view of one who was, according to the author himself, most deeply affected by the outcome of the movement. It also includes a comparative study of the Nihon Romanha with its German counterpart. Etō's article is devoted mainly to the analysis of the aesthetical and psychological structure of the Romanha ideas and to their effect on postwar writers such as Mishima Yukio, Inoue Yasushi, and others.

22 People like Otakane Jirō, who used to be a member of the group and who is now working on a biography of Itō Shizuo, regard Mishima as the only possible spokesman for the lost Romanha cause. Expectation of the world's destruction, the theme that has appeared almost obsessively in his postwar works, is one of the most typical ideas of the Romanha group. This theme is clearly recognized, for example, in his novels Bitoku no yoromeki (The Tottering Virtue), Kyōko no ie (The House of Kyoko) and Utsukushii hoshi (The Beautiful Star) and even in short stories like “Hashi Zukushi” (“Seven Bridges on the River Sumida”). Moreover, Mishima never fails to take every opportunity to remind the reading-public of the fact that he is particularly interested in remnants of the Romanha. Every time a new postwar writer with a trait of the Romanha appears on the literary scene, Mishima is invariably among the first critics who praise him. His extraordinary homage to Yoshida Mitsuru's Senkan Yamalo no saigo (The Last Hours of the Battle-Ship Yamato) and his unusual interest in Ishihara Shintarō may be relevant evidence, because the pathetic beauty of the former reflects somehow the ideal of the Romanha literature, and the latter can be considered as a successor, if not a good one, of the Romanha in postwar literature.

23 I think it should be admitted that this “thirst” or “longing” does not belong particularly to the Japanese writer, but is more or less shared by people living in the West and elsewhere who have a sense of uncertainty about the future of the world, or about the perversion of values. However, the other side of the coin should not be ignored either. For many Japanese writers, this “thirst” or “longing” is not just a contemporary phenomenon, something peculiar to the “Cold-War” when people are constantly threatened by the fear of thermonuclear destruction, but, on the contrary, something that they have been exposed to since the beginning of the modernization period. As the obsession with the “West” began with the modernization of the country, so the acute sense of crisis has never ceased. The “thirst” comes primarily out of this perpetual, if not consciously held, sense of crisis.

24 “D'une façon générale, si (pour rendre) la démarche du vieillard, alleguant la vieillesse, on plie les reins et les genoux, si l'on se tient courbé, la fleur disparaît et l'on paraît vieux jeu (le style d'avant la réforme du sarugaku par Kan'ami). Dans ces conditions, l'intérêt est mince.” (Quoted from the translation by Rene Sieffert of Zeami's “Kadensho”—La Tradition Sécrète du No, (Paris: Gallimard, 1962)—Livre II, Remarques sur La Mimique, p. 71)

I think that Zeami refers in this part of the article to the wrongness of actors who try to base their performances merely on the understanding of the notion of the “Old Man.” In the part immediately following, Zeami stresses the importance of becoming one with the essence of the “Old Man” by introducing his esoteric symbol of “la fleur”—“flower,” which runs as follows: “Dans l'ensemble, il suffira d'adopter une démarche élégante, et le plus possible sans vulgarité. La tonalité propre aux danses de vieillands, en particular, est d'une importance capitale. On étudiera en détail les procèdes (qui permttent), tout en ayant la fleur, de paraètre vieux. Bref, comme si une fleur devait éclore sur un vieil arbre.”

25 Robert Jay Lifton (“Youth and History,” DÆDALUS, Winter, 1962, and also “Individual Patterns in Historical Change,” a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease, New York, December 8, 1962) aided me in forming a hypothesis about the “paradoxical process.”