J 314 Enchi Fumiko, Masks

Harume and the Fireflies

 

We first learn of Akio's Twin Sister, Harume, on pp. 36ff.

One of Mieko's students had sent her some Fireflies from Shiga Prefecture so she decides to hold a "Firefly" Garden Party at her house and to invite Heian Literature and Genji specialist Professor Makino, to be the featured guest and to deliver a lecture on the" Hotaru Chapter" of the Genji (Ch. 25). He had been Ibuki's Sensei, so Ibuki is obliged to hang out with him most of the evening. ("Who but Mieko would think of something so old-fashioned and romantic as having Professor Makino come and talk about the 'Fireflies' chapter in The Tale of Genji," says Mikame, p. 38)

So what is this "Fireflies" chapter?

Well, it includes the scene we already encountered in the Prologue when Genji happens onto Tamakazura reading and illustrating the old monogatari with her ladies, and the discourse on the role and meaning of fiction ensues. This is in Chapter 25 of the Genji and prior to that moment, Genji has invited his half-brother to come over and check out the lovely Tamakazura as a possible match for him. She is coy, keeps herself hidden, and lets one of her ladies handle all the correspondence with the Prince, so he is hardly getting the desired "picture" of her that he seeks. Below is a scene taken from the Tale.

 

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From Ch. 25 of the Genji:

She [Tamakazura] was sunk in thought, unable to answer the Prince’s [Hotaru] outpourings. Genji came up beside her and lifted the curtain back over its frame. There was a flash of light. She looked up startled. Had someone lighted a torch? No — Genji had earlier in the evening put a large number of fireflies in a cloth bag. Now, letting no one guess what he was about, he released them.

Tamakazura brought a fan to her face. Her profile was very beautiful.

Genji had worked everything out very carefully. Prince Hotaru was certain to look in her direction. He was making a show of passion, Genji suspected, because he thought her Genji’s daughter, and not because he had guessed what a beauty she was. Now he would see, and be genuinely excited. Genji would not have gone to such trouble if she had in fact been his daughter. It all seems rather perverse of him....

Now we see the same scene from the Prince's perspective:

The Prince had guessed where the lady would be. Now he sensed that she was perhaps a little nearer. His heart racing, he looked through an opening in the rich gossamer curtains.

Suddenly, some six or seven feet away, there was a flash of light — and such beauty as was revealed in it! Darkness was quickly restored, but the brief glimpse he had had was the sort of thing that makes for romance. The figure at the curtains may have been indistinct but it most certainly was slim and tall and graceful. Genji would not have been disappointed at the interest it had inspired.

 

“I hope I make myself understood.”

Speed was the important thing in answering such a poem.

It was a brisk sort of reply, and having made it, she was gone. His lament about this chilly treatment was rather wordy, but he would not have wished to overdo it by staying the night. It was late when he braved the dripping eaves (and tears as well) and went out. I have no doubt that a cuckoo sent him on his way, but did not trouble myself to learn all the details.

So handsome, so poised, said the women [of Prince Hotaru] — so very much like Genji. Not knowing their lady’s secret, they were filled with gratitude for Genji’s attentions. Why, not even her mother could have done more for her.

 

Unwelcome attentions, the lady was thinking. If she had been recognized by her father and her situation were nearer the ordinary, then they need not be entirely unwelcome. She had had wretched luck, and she lived in dread of rumors.

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So, Tamakazura had retired into the dark interior of her room, which is when Genji smuggled in a bag filled with fireflies (hotaru) and when he opens it up, they fly about and light up her face. This enables the Prince to catch a glimpse of her.

How cool is that scene???

This was the famous incident from the Tale that is recreated (sort of ) in Enchi's novel when Yasuko and Ibuki are talking on the train, just before she suggests they get off at Atami and spend the night together.

 

Yasuko asks Ibuki if he ever knew that Akio had a twin sister and reminds Ibuki that he actually met her once at the "Firefly" (Hotaru) party when he happened upon this mysterious beauty outside by an arbor who appeared like "like a large white flower bathed in light, magnificent in her isolation." (39)

Yasuko suddenly apears out of nowhere and stands beside her but slightly in front. Maybe she's b eing a little protective? When asked by Mikame who the person behind her is, she feigns surprise but the narrator calls her reaction "suspect." (40)

Yasuko claims she is not a guest but a "distant relative." As the young woman becomes aware of Ibuki and Mikame, her face breaks into a smile and Ibuki notices something strangely alluring about her as her eye-lashes flutter "like a dark butterfly." (40)

However, a "persistent feeling nagged" Ibuki as he finds that her face reminds him of the Zô-no-Onna mask with its "coldy beautiful" features suggesting a "haughty cruelty." (see p. 23). Yasuko explains to him that the woman they met that night at the Firefly Party was, indeed, none other than Akio's twin sister Harume.

Ah, hah!

Yasuko tells Ibuki that Harume and Akio were raised separately; Mieko's parents actually took Harume in and raised her. She would never again live in her home with her parents and Akio. There was talk of both Akio and Yasuko wanting to escape from Mieko's powerful influence and it may have started when Harume returned.

Clearly, there is something unusual about Harume. Though she must be age 30, she looks barely 20; she has a childlike appearence but her vacant, dreamy face suggests that there may be something wrong with her. (41)

 

What is the whole point of this hotaru episode?

Again, Enchi is showing her skillful use of intertextuality and her mastery of classical literature and the Tale of Genji by embedding and recreating a famous scene from the Genji into a contemporary setting--Mieko's garden party--as a way to "shed light" on her character, Harume.

She manufactures the occasion of the party, brings in the fictional Professor Makino, expert on the "Hotaru" Chapter, to focus everyone's attention on the Genji and to set up her next move, which is the introduction of the fictional intertext, Nonomiya-ki (野々宮記), or the "Account of the Shrine in the Fields," supposedly authored by Mieko back in 1937.

 

The immediate context for it's introduction into the narrative is Mikame calling up Ibuki who is hoping to hear from Yasuko after their tryst in Atami. But it's Mikame, and he wants to discuss a discovery he has made: a reprint from an old edition of Clear Stream (the poetry journal) of an essay on spirit possession and the Genji that is written by Mieko. This would constitute proof that Mieko was interested in spirit possession long before Akio was.

Also, they had known previously that Mieko was interested in poetry, in the Shin Kokinshu aesthetic of "mystery and depth," but this was the first they had heard about any discursive prose writing. A hidden dimension to Mieko? It's always, all about that!

So, along with all the classical poems that have already been quoted, the paintings, and, of course, the Noh masks at the Yakushiji's house--all of which help to structure and to undergird the narrative--we can now add to this list the wonderful "fictional intertext" about the Rokujô Lady/Haven.

 

What does Mieko's essay have to say?

 

Account of the Shrine in the Fields

The "Account of the Shrine in the Fields" gives Mieko an opportunity of express her take on the Rokujô Haven not as the bearer of some malign, evil spirit, but as someone of deep understanding and elegance, but also, a woman of strong will and ego who will not allow herself to be dissolved into a man's ego. She becomes the archetype of a woman who embodies the strength that men inherently fear in women.

Mieko argues that the Rokujô Haven has long been misinterpreted and that she is a very important, and positive character, one who exercised a great influence on Genji himself.

As we saw, when her husband decided to step down as Heir Apparent (or Crown Prince), the Rokujô Haven was denied "the glittering future that awaited her," and this was "a grave wound to her pride." Then her husband up and died. Double whammy!

She still possessed her "superb gifts as a writer, poet and calligrapher, and her unrivaled taste in matters of music and fashion." (49-50) Enter our Shining Prince Genji.

Still longing for Fujitsubo, he pursued the older Rokujô Haven but while "Fujitsubo had learned to mold herself to a man by dissolving her identity into his, the Rokujô Haven, in contrast, possessed a spirit of such lively intensity that she was incapable of surrendering to any man." (50)

All this strong, smoldering will of hers needed an outlet but she did not have a healthy one so spirit possession became the avenue she pursued--but not consciously! Mieko likens the Rokujô Haven to a "Ryô-no-onna: one who chafes at her inability to sublimate her strong ego in deference to any man, but who can carry out her will only by forcing it on others--and that indirectly through the possessive capacity of her spirit." (52)

 

Meanwhile, Genji had his crazy affair with Oborozukiyo--the Minister of the Right's daughter, and right under his nose, which got him caught in the act!!--and then he exiles himself to Suma on the coast...where he dwells in solitude and loneliness. While there, though, he is invited to nearby Akashi where a former nobleman wants him to court his daughter, known as the "Akashi Lady" in the Tale. They play music together, exchange poems--she is beautiful, gifted, and talented. Eventually, they get together and she bears Genji a daughter. After the birth, Genji explains every thing to Murasaki who agrees to raise the little girl as her own, to prepare her for life at the Court. So they come to Kyoto join Genji's household.

The Akashi Lady has willingly entrusted her daughter to Murasaki because there is no one better positioned to mentor her and prepare her for a life at Court. The "Little Akashi Princess" will eventually grow up to become an Empress, showing that her mother, the Akashi Lady, had done the right thing. Mieko concludes that she had a sufficiently keen intellect and enough common sense to avoid squandering "her mental energy on spirit possession, turning instead to literary creation." (55)

 

So, unlike the Rokujô Haven, the Akashi Lady has an outlet for her strong sense of pride and her spirit. Able to play music and compose wonderful poetry, she can "bask happily in Genji's continuing affection, cherished for what he calls her 'infinitely deep sensitivity'." (55) In the Heian Court world, nothing beats sensitivity, grace and refinement!

Mieko breaks some new ground in her essay proposing that rather than see the Rokujô Haven as a villain, responsible for seizing Genji and Aoi in the form of a malign spirit, she argues that all this could be the workings of his own guilty conscience. She preceives a link between "women's extreme ego suppression and ancient female shamanism, showing both in opposition to men." (57) In other words, if pushed to the brink, women can reach deep down and summon up some strong psychic powers linked to an age when Japanese women shamaness rulers.

She calls it "a stream of blood flowing on and on, unbroken from generation to generation." (37)

 

Mieko concludes her essay:

Just as there is an archetype of woman as the object of man's eternal love, so there must be an archetype of her as object of his eternal fear, representing, perhaps, the shadow of his own evil actions. The Rokujô Lady is an embodiment of this archetype.(37)

 

Wow! Great stuff!! Linking the ancient shamanistic power of women and bringing it down to the Heian Period, and into the Tale of Genji, in the character of the Rokujô Haven.

She argues that women have had this capacity to manifest a very ancient kind psychic power or energy, something unique to women, and the text has already hinted that while Mieko's face may appear serene, she too harbors a kind of deep psychic energy that few contemporary women possess.

 

The bottom line here is that Mieko is very sympathetic to the Rokujô Haven--she is like a "loyal sister" to her. And Mieko argues that two other characters, Akikonomu, the Rokujô Haven's daughter, and the Akashi Lady, "each express[...] a different facet of the Rokujô Lady...[and since] both find favor with Genji and form lasting relationships with him, never forgotten or cast aside, indicating a particular regard which he had for women of strong character--foremost among them, the Rokujô Lady." (56)

 

So, this can even be a way of arguing that the Genji is less about the central male character, the Shining Prince Genji, than it is about the women who enter his orbit and affect his trajectory.

 

Fascinating ideas! You gotta love it!

 

Note: The final sentences of Part Two.

Also, there is the matter of some curious language in the Japanese version at the end of Part Two. The translation reads,

"He [Ibuki] drew her to him again."

But the original Japanese suggests a process of layering and substituting that is going on. These last lines, not really rendered into English by the translator are,

“Ibuki once again drew Yasuko to him and lay(ered) his face on top of her flower-like face.”

 

In Japanese, after the quote about becoming a fool, we find,

言いながら、伊吹(Ibuki)は もう一度 康子を 抱きよせて、

"While saying this, Ibuki once again drew Yasuko to him, and,

 

花なような顔の上に 顔を重ねた。

Hana no yoo na kao no ue ni, kao (w)o kasaneta

Literally,

 

"On top of her flower like face, he lay(ered) his own face."

 

 

 

 

What does this language suggest or bring to mind? Certainly the layering possibilities make us think of masks and the process of masking, disguising. For some more ideas, click here.

 

 

Something to also remember, In Japanese, Mieko's name is written with three characters that suggest she is a woman of considerable depth (3 layers or levels), and complexity.

And, of course, Mieko is most closely associated with the Fukai mask. Click here and here to see a picture of a Fukai mask.

 

 

 

 

Spoiler Alert: More about Harume taken from the Part Two, "Masugami":

 

 

Here (pp. 70ff), we encounter Harume again, first as a disembodied voice singing the "Kanazawa Snow Song," where it is suggested again that there "was something vaguely disturbing about her face, a sort of incoherence" and that she is "destined forever to be a little girl."

It turns out that while in the womb with Akio, his feet kicked her repeatedly and put pressure on her head so that she experienced brain damage. Moreover, Akio seemed to bear an inborn hatred for his sister once they were born, so that she had to be removed from the home to protect her; she was sent off to live with Mieko's mother. Having no memory of her, Akio grew up not even aware that he ever had a sister until he became an adult.

Harume, then, was both simple and, at times, "beastly" in a raw, primitive, animalistic sort of way, especially when she gets her period. She shares facial features with Akio which is why Yasuko nearly fainted at the Yakushiji household showing of the Noh masks when Yoritaka put on the Zô-no-Onna mask. It was as though Yasuko was seeing Akio's face transform into Harume's--male into female--and then back again so it seemed for a moment as though Akio was coming back to life right before her eyes!

 

Thinking about How to Interpret Masks

Though only 141 pages, this novel is packed with ideas and it can be a challenge to interpret. Mieko has been following a certain path since she was 20 years old, after the Aguri incident. But what is her master plan? What is the nature of her plot?

 

Is it only about Revenge?

 

 

 

Let's think about it. What does Mieko actually do?

She does one unthinkable thing: she conspires to enable a man, the unsuspecting Tsuneo Ibuki, to impregnate her mentally impaired daughter.

Why would she do that?

And then, once Harume is pregnant, Mieko forces her to bring the baby to full-term and to give birth even though she is unlikely to survive the ordeal. And, in fact, she does not. She is a victiom who has been sacrificed for Mieko's endgame...but what is it?

We first learn about the pregnancy when Ibuki's wife, Sadako, hires a private investigator to find out what her husband is up to. This step is considered crass and aggressive by others, and she is described as a hardened woman. (115)

She sees Ibuki and Mikame as puppets being manipulated by Yasuko. The whole house is like a Witch's Den and the two men appear to have fallen under Mieko and Yasuko's spell what with their long-standing interest in spirit possession. The two women have some kind of bond that is so strong--they are even likened to lovers! (117)

The investigator discovers that Ibuki has been going to the house in Meguro where Mieko and Yasuko live with Harume and Yû, and Ibuki and Yasuko have been making love in Akio's old study, a room in which a painting of Mieko by Minoru Shimojô, hovers over the bed. Weird!

As Harume's pregnancy develops, she looks increasingly haggard and more like her mother, Mieko. Yû calls out Mieko for all the plotting and manipulating she is up to. Yû begs her not to go through with her plot, not to make Harume have the child, suggesting it is far worse than what her husband and Aguri had done to her so long ago!

"Your revenge has come full circle."(122)

"Don't compound the evil you've already done," Yû implores, but Mieko is unyielding. Yû just bows her head and cries. (123-125)

Yasuko knows that what Mieko is doing is inhumane but she confesses to her own excitement at "the prospect of a baby with Akio's blood in its veins." So, in fact, they are accomplices in "a dreadful crime--crime that only women could commit. Having a part to play in this scheme of yours, Mother, means more to me than the love of any man." (126) They both want the baby!

Meanwhile, Mieko sat there and

meditated on the deep and turbid feminine strength within her that had all but taken possession of Yasuko, wondering silently what power on earth might deliver her from the heavy load of karma that weighed upon her. The road down which she must blindly grope her way, helplessly laden with that unending and inescapable burden, seemed to stretch before her with a foul and terrifying blackness. (126)

Oh my goodness. There is so much packed in here!

At the very least, Mieko is conscious of all that she has done, and she knows it is unforgivable. She realizes that she still must traverse the road ahead of her while she being weighed down by her karmic burden. And this is a burden from which there is no escape. The road stretches out before her and she has no choice but to grope her way along it, dark and terrifying though it may be.

A vision comes to her reminiscent of the goddess Izanami from the ancient myths and her anger at Izanagi, the male procreative deity. (127)

 

Does Mieko's spirit vacillate between lyricism and spirit possession like the Rokujô Haven's?

 

Meanwhile, Ibuki, on a trip to Kyoto, goes out to the Nonomiya Shrine and at Jikôji, a nearby Buddhist Temple, he hears a voice singing the "Snow Song" and catches a glimpse of a pregnant Harume, whose beauty--despite the blankness of her face, her lack of vivacity--is striking. He stands for a while staring in reverence until Yû takes her in from the veranda where she was sitting. (135)

The scene then shifts to Mieko and Yasuko's house in Meguro, where they are all packed up and ready to move out to Kamakura, an hour outside of Tokyo by train, where the two women will raise Harume's son, starting a new life together. Toe Yakushiji comes by bearing a gift from her late father--who has finally succumbed to stomach cancer. The gift is one of his favorite Noh masks, one that he especially wanted Mieko to have.

It is the Fukai mask: yellowed with age, hardened and grief laden. Just like Mieko? The mask has the depth brought by experience and understanding--and Toe's father liked to see it "as a metaphor comparing the heart of an older woman to the depths of a bottomless well--a well so deep that its water appears to be totally without color." (138)

The Fukai mask represents the heart of an older woman, a woman who has known the pain of losing a child. It is a sorrow-stricken face with a look of lonely solemnity. Mieko takes the mask and holds it. "What an exquisite sad sort of beauty it has. Women today have lost this quiet gracefulness." (139) But maybe not Mieko?

Here is how the novel ends:

Mieko was kneeling on the floor in the slowly deepening dusk. She lifted the mask Fukai from its box again, and was studying it in solitude.

She is almost like the consummate Noh actor studying the mask in the mirror room before donning it. She and the mask clearly commune.

The pale yellowish cast of the mournful thin-cheeked mask in her hands was reflected on her face, the two countenances appearing faintly in the lingering daylight like twin blossoms on a single branch. The mask seemed to know all the intensity of her grief at the loss of Akio and Harume-as well as the bitter woman's vengance that she had planned so long, hiding it deep within her...

The crying of the baby filled her ears.

 

What a scene! We can picture that eerie light as the late-afternoon sun bathes everything in a pale yellow color. The mask itself has its own yellowish cast, so it mirrors the quality of light which permeates the scene. As Mieko stares directly at the mask, the two faces hang there, suspended, "like twin blossoms on a single branch."

In that moment the mask drops from her grasp as if struck down by an invisible hand. In a trance she reached out and covered the face on the mask with her hand, while her right arm, as if suddenly paralyzed, hangs frozen, immobile, in space. (141)

 

OK, isn't this another of those powerful but indeterminate ending, an open-ended freeze-frame moment. Yes, the women are moving out of the Toganô house in downtown Tokyo to Kamakura by the seaside--"a healthier environment for the baby"--where some kind of new life will begin. Mieko, Yasuko, the baby and presumably Yû.

It is not clear how much Mieko will be an active participant in this new life, given what she has just gone through above. Unless, perhaps, we choose to believe that she is being transformed in that final scene.

Does staring into the face of the Fukai Mask bring her face-to-face with all that she has done? Is she now fully conscious of just who and what she is? A grieving mother who understands full well that she has sacrificed her own mentally retarded daughter...but to what end?

Can we think of Mieko at all as someone like Sensei in Kokoro, who has done something pretty horrific and then must live with the consequences of his actions? We do know what happened to Sensei but it is "I" whose future we are uncertain about.

In a similar way, we don't know for sure what lies ahead for Mieko, Yasuko and the child. There is the distinct possibility that Mieko may have died, or is near death, or is incapacitated...but we have no reason to think that Yasuko will not raise this child--the child with Akio's blood in its veins--and continue to live her life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some Deeper Interpretive Possibilities:

 

The paragraphs below will also be reproduced in a seperate page under a Link for "Twin Blossoms"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doris Bargen has written a very engaging essay on Masks, which she titles "Twin Blossoms on a Single Branch," borrowing language directly from the text.

She opens her essay in this way:

The novel Onnamen (Masks), by Enchi Fumiko (1905-1986), is a complex work about love and hate, bereavement and mourning, liminality and transformation.' Structurally, Onnamen can be imagined as a series of discoveries, as a set of triangular relationships, or as a modern parallel to a major episode in Genji Monogatari.

Thematically, it involves the reader in a meditation on revenge, sacrifice and self-sacrifice, and atonement.

Seen anthropologically, the novel suggests that the obliquely aggressive strategies adopted by Heian women in response to their situation in a polygynous society may still be effective in our time. Enchi is an accomplished woman writer who bridges the gap between the Heian and the modern feminine sensibility.(147)

So, we can look at Masks structurally, thematically, or anthropologically. Bargen starts to formulate her argument in a section with the heading "Masking" by noting that:

Masking

As the title of Onnamen indicates, the single most important symbolic concept uniting all the intricate strands of the action is that of masks, specifically a wide range of women's masks used in the noh theater. In Enchi's novel, masks are not worn as artistic devices for stage acting. Although they figure in the story as significant artifacts, they are, more importantly, associated with the characters for the role that each mask brings to life on the stage. To the theater-goer, the actor's off-stage personality may be of no little consequence, but to the reader of Enchi, Onnamen dramatizes the relationship between character and role with the sophistication of metacommentary.

Symbolically, masking can hide or disguise the self; it can also be a form of self-disclosure or revelation. Sometimes masking is associated with twinning in that the doubled face has the effect of blurring or confusing identities. Masking also has the potential for making a face both more elusive and more expressive.

No matter what the interpretation, the 'effect of this double exposure is central to the aesthetics of Noh. It can also create the impression of immutability, thereby claiming universality.

Finally, in philosophical or religious terms, the process of masking and unmasking corresponds to the process of Buddhist enlightenment by ascending and descending the mountain. Thus the layering and piling up of experience contributes to the refinement and, ultimately, the enlightenment of the human heart.

Within a ritual context, masks become instrumental in the dramatization of liminal crises and foreshadow the eventual transcendence of conflict. Masks epitomize character and signify 'categorical change'. Thus the concept of masks in this novel spans a whole range of meaning from the mundane to the religious....(148-49)

And after visiting the Yakushiji family's storehouse of Noh treasures, Bargen notes that:

Deeply impressed by the masks they have seen, Yasuko confesses that the female Zô mask when worn by the male member of the Yakushiji brother-sister team had made Akio's spirit come alive (just as, apparently, the seance had). It is as if masks were either oblivious to gender distinctions or were able to transcend them: 'male and female had suddenly become one. . .' (25/34). For the Noh this assumption is in keeping with the tradition that requires an all-male cast. Yasuko's train of associations puts her late husband in the category of androgyny.

As has yet to be revealed, Akio's sexual otherness is causally tied to his female twin Harume. In the moment of epiphany, when the dead come alive, Yasuko perceives his true form to be both male and female. Later, when Yasuko attends to Harume's toilet, she has the vivid optical illusion of the superimposition of the twins: 'the two faces of Harume and Akio coming together as one before her eyes' (73/95). Inspired as it is by masking, the metaphor employed (kasanaru 重なる, to be piled up, to lie on top of one another) introduces the crucial concept of twinning--the illusory notion of two in one.

Yasuko's vision furthermore has the quasi-religious effect of returning her husband from the dead in the figure of his female twin.

Although the technique of substituting the lost loved one with another reached its literary zenith in the Genji Monogatari, it is spun to its logical extreme by Enchi through her literary use of twins. Thus, biological anomaly allows for the comforting confusion of the presence of the dead in the living. (152)

 

One thing I appreciate about her essay is that Bargen argues convincingly that if Mieko's motive had simply benn revenge against the Toganô's, then she had accomplished that already, way back when she conceived Akio and Harume with another man. Bam! Not a drop of Toganô blood there; Toganô bloodline ended.

But she could have told him the truth on his deathbed and gotten all the satisfaction she desired, right. That would have been a decisive blow, right 'In your face'. But she didn't do that, did she? Bargen points out that:

Mieko did not vent her aggression openly as Aguri had done, because that strategy had failed. Instead, Mieko adopted an oblique strategy....Like the Rokujô Haven, Mieko is a highly sophisticated, proud, and lonely figure. Rather than voice her deepest resentments directly to a confidante, she resorted to the indirections of art. Through artistic sublimation she immersed herself in the study of poetry, Noh theatre, and the Genji. Her medium for coming to terms with a reality too harsh to endure is the literary medium that magnifies conflicts and employs a powerful creative imagination to resolve them. As a literary critic, she created an intellectual forum in which to discuss obliquely her psychological traumata. (156)

So, in this reading, "Mieko is not merely a petty and vindictive woman who seeks to give Toganô what he may well deserve." She may well have a grander design in mind, a much more subtle, ingenious power play!

She may aiming for the destruction of male supremacy and the reconstruction of female power independent of the patriarchy, out there in Kamakura where two women will raise a male childfree and clear of the worst patriarchal influences.

 

Frankly, I really like this interpretation! It is strong, powerful and convincing.

But...Bargen is not content to stop there. She goes on to suggest that:

...it may be Mieko's own miscarriage that becomes central to the reconstitution of lost power. The loss of her first child becomes the driving force of Mieko's struggle, the mysteriously ruthless quest for a child conceived in a macabre kind of innocence. Harume's baby can be a hope that carries forward into future generations. As a purified male, the child will paradoxically continue Mieko's bloodline.

If Mieko's original grievance, the mizuko, is the driving force of the novel, what is the function of Yasuko's subsidiary role? While Mieko's final goal is to reconstitute the lost child through the generative scapegoating of Harume, Yasuko's motivation for becoming Mieko's accomplice is to 'have' a child with Akio through surrogate coupling (Harume and Ibuki). She confesses to be entranced 'by the prospect of a baby with Akio's blood in its veins' (126/ 164)....

Yasuko and Mieko are thus united in their quest for a child. Even though the child born to Harume embodies two different, generationally defined meanings for his grandmother and his foster mother, he is the essence of the mask come alive in so far as he inherits the 'ambivalence [that] is central to masking.' The child is a personification of 'the greatest paradox of all . .. creation and destruction, birth and death. In these most moving and most dif- ficult of all transitions, the use of masks illustrates the continued attempt to confront paradox by recourse to personification, to state that mutability is a precondition of personality rather than an aberration.'(167)

 

OK, wow, that is good stuff! This adds to her interpretation of Masks the idea that:

What initially appears to be a war between the sexes gradually takes on a medicinal aspect, the passionate pursuit of healing. Male figures who half-unwittingly inflicted almost incurable wounds, foremost among them, Toganô Masatsugu, are counterbalanced by those with varying capacities for healing: spiritualists and academics, doctors and artists. It is from the group of artists that Mieko is able to derive the energy to live through the violent ordeal of the cycle of retribution, and to extract the elixir of life.

As the fate of the twins clearly demonstrates, healing involves suffering, in extreme cases, death....Just as there is a triangle of female actors, based on Mieko as the shite, so Mieko's lover, Ibuki, and Mikame seem to form a complementary triangle of male actors whose various functions combine to help achieve the climax of Onnamen.

Confronting the mask, Mieko sees a mirror image of the inner self she had concealed from others as well as herself. Whether she has matured enough to endure this insight is a rhetorical question. The moment of recognition is as precious as it is brittle, ready to collapse at the first sign of life's eternal cycle: the disruptive cry of the baby. Mieko's solution is too perfect and cannot but clash with mundane reality.

It is suggested that Yasuko inherits Mieko's previous role and mask when she agrees to raise Harume's child. Conversely, Mieko can be seen to hand over to Yasuko her 'curse' as well as her technique of transformation and transcendence. If the child comes to transmit the 'endless river of blood, flowing on from generation to generation' (127/164), he also symbolizes hope compressed into a single tear. He represents the sacred child born from a mythically incestuous union, making possible 'the rebirth of the ancestral soul.'

In hindsight it appears that Akio, well aware of the Japanese shamanistic tradition and its symbolic representation by mountains, may have sought the redemptive union with his twin. Although individual pain and conflict may be transcended, the victory is elusive for universal ambivalence will remain.

...Can Mieko in the end be said to have exorcised the trauma that held her in its grip? Does she achieve peace when she takes possession of the Fukai mask? Have spirit possession and mizuko been successfully incorporated into a healing ritual? The novel does not permit unambiguous answers... In accord with the unfinished quality of Noh performances, which present a never-ending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, Onnamen too 'ends' with the suggestion of a new beginning.(170)

 

Again, this is really good stuff!

But Bargen pushes her ideas even a little farther:

At the end of the novel, we see Mieko study her new mask like an actor who is expected to have mastered many roles. Yet her life falls short of art: hers is the confused ambivalence of a mother who is 'reunited' symbolically with her mizuko (a baby lost through abortion, miscarriage, or stillbirth), her lost child, but must, at the same time, mourn the death of her twins. Her loss cannot be overcome without suffering new loss. (170)

When Mieko drops the mask, in a final Noh-like gesture, one is reminded of the liminal hovering of Rokujô's foot on the threshold of the torii at Nonomiya [as in the Noh Play]. Mieko's unorthodox behavior in response to her past rules out any sudden concession to conventional moral judgment. The astonishing events of Onnamen cannot convincingly be reduced to 'Mieko's empty feeling' as mirrored in Enchi's 'treatment of the theme of female revenge.' (a reference to an article by scholar Yoko McClain)

Rather, Mieko is caught in an existential dilemma between lingering on in this world and achieving enlightenment. She appears to be still in the limbo of trance, one hand covering the mask at the sound of the crying baby, the other frozen in mid-air. She has become the Japanese female version of a shaman who 'is not only a sick man; he is, above all, a sick man who has been cured, who has succeeded in curing himself.' (170-171)

(Bargen cites Hiromi Sodekawa, 'Enchi Fumiko: A Study in the Self-Expression of Women', M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia)

 

[This is certainly one way to interpret the ending of Masks. In which case, like at the end of a typical Noh play, the shite is transformed (or in this case, healed) and her spirit or soul is freed up to merge with the universe, or enter Nirvana/Paradise.]

 

But....

Alternatively, we could also think that Mieko does indeed die, metaphorically, in the sense that her tormented ego dies, so that she can enter a new phase of reincarnation in Yasuko, a phase of less intense passion. [In this interpretation, then,] Does Yasuko become Mieko's 'migawari '身代わり(literally, one body substituted for another), one who suffers on behalf of others, like a Jizô Buddha? (171)

Bargen suggests that..

...we may not be able to know the answers to questions like these because the transformative medium of the mask permits only ambiguous glimpses. But Enchi has created a mode of thought in Onnamen that provokes religious ecstasy by perforating the mysterious boundaries between birth and death, beauty and sadness. (171)

So, as we read Masks we might want to think of it as representing a "mode of thought," one replete with ideas for us to ponder.

This concludes my rather unsatisfactory recap of some of Bargen's main arguments; but please do not blame Professor Bargen for it's shorcomings! You are free to read the complete article which is in the Resources folder, if you want, but I am not asking or expecting you to do so.

But, sometimes it is just good to see how someone else has done some difficult and creative interpretive work on a text, and to expose yourself to some of his or her ideas and conclusions.

So, besides this summary, there are also some similar comments on this page. But you will need to scroll down quite a bit if you go there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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