J314 The Meiji Years
Let us consider the background of the modern novel form in modern Japan. To be sure,
it has its origins in the Edo period (1600-1868) when a monetary economy and
the rise of a bourgeoisie created a "class" to consume new literary artifacts.
Transportation, population, literacy and publishing were all on the rise. Gesaku--or
playful--fiction, which is parodic, episodic and self-referential, was popular,
as was Kabuki, poetic forms like renga, and haiku, not to mention the visual arts of woodblock
prints, painting, etc. The shôsetsu--Japan's version of the modern novel--came into existence, only in the mid-Meiji
period.
The Meiji period was one of the most intense, change-filled epoch's on record.
In 1868 Japan was politically fragmented, militarily weak, economically backward
and primarily and agrarian society. By 1912, Japan was unified, economically
dynamic and had undergone an industrial revolution. Iniitally, the political
leadership was guided by some broad principles stated in the Charter
Oath of 1868. Of course, there were costs. In the face of the threat of
Western imperialism, Japan's leaders knew Japan would have to be politically
integrated, militarily mobilizable, well-educated and extremely hard working,
frugal and disciplined. Therefore, the "new Japan" was created largely from
the top down with the interests of the state, as expressed in terms of the emperor,
paramount. Japan soon came up with its own version of Imperialism to go along
with its new Capitalism. Individualism was respected only in the sense that
the release of individual energies was perceived of something that was of essential
value to the state in carrying out the process of "modernizing" Japan. One expressed one's loyalty to the emperor by studying and
working hard, and by achieving success for the state, by making Japan a "Rich
Country with a Strong Army."
From a long-range perspective, there is every reason to argue that this rapid,
top-down driven social and economic change, created a distorted Japan, an Imperialistic
Japan focused on surviving/thriving in a ruthless international environment
in which the Great white nations dictated to the rest of the world. This meant
individuals sacrificed themselves for the state, and rather than values of individual
freedom and liberty. In turn, the society and the culture expecxted and rewarded duty, discipline,
loyalty to the emperor and submissiveness to those in authority. Authority,
from mid-Meiji times on, was exclusively male authority. The Civil Codes adopted
in 1890 defined a patriarchal family structure in which men dominated the family
entirely, bequeathed their assets to their eldest sons, and could divorce their wives with
impunity. Women could not vote, nor could they attend political meetings. Women
did receive education but were separated from males at an early juncture and
at the secondary level were expected to learn in order to become "good wives
and mothers."
Feeling that since Japan was in the throes of a rapid transformation, it ought
to have a literature worthy of the new experiences that the society was encountering--i.e.,
the experiences of modernity or of becoming modern--younger Japanese writers
began to call from a pull away from the beautiful but rigid limitations of the
classical language and the creation of a modern vernacular language that made
realistic prose and convincing dialogue possible. Called the genbun'itchi
movement--or the union of speech and writing--it was much discussed in the 1880s after Mozome Takami wrote an essay
of that title in 1886. It was the fortuitous coming together of a Waseda University
Shakespeare professor and a Russian language student that really got the movement
toward colloquial language off the ground. Tsubouchi Shoyo offered the framework in his essay, Shôsetsu shinzui, or the
Essence of the Shôsetsu.
Published in 1885–86, Tsubouchi Shoyo's Shôsetsu shinzui (The
Essence of the Novel) was the first major work of modern Japanese literary
criticism. In the essay, Shoyo, an author and literary scholar, attacked the
loosely constructed plots and weak characterizations of contemporary Japanese
novels and urged writers to concentrate on analyses of personality in realistic
situations. He also rejected didacticism as a legitimate purpose of fiction,
insisting instead on the importance of artistic values. The work also expressed
Shoyo's conviction that novels, hitherto despised by the intellectuals, were
worthy of even a scholar's attention.
The main function of the novel is to accurately portray human emotions. Novels
or fiction can do four things:
1) ennoble one's character by presenting that
which is beautiful;
2) learn to evaluate good and evil;
3) learn about other
times, other places; and
4) teach literary style and modes of expression.
But
to do all this, the novel must become accessible to readers, and in order for
this to occur, colloquial language must be introduced. (from:
http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article-9322655)
This Futabatei Shimei did in his 1889 novel, Ukigumo, called Japan's
first modern novel, a portrait of life in modernizing Japan focusing on yuppies
of the day and their posturing and maneuverings. Other writers followed suit
in the 1890s and we could say that the shôsetsu was established as a form by
that time, though it really achieved maturity and a high level of accomplishment
at the hands of Natsume Soseki.
The shôsetsu that developed in the 1890s and after, was never wedded
to the Aristotelian model of the interpretive beginning, middle, end. Doing
away with the tension of a beginning that potentially contains the destination
and closure of the narrative, the shôsetsu also rejects the acceleration
of a counterforce that will brake the narrative movement to the standstill of
an ending. As Masao Miyoshi points out, the shôsetsu is not an expression
of order and suppression as the novel is, but an expression of space, decentralization
and dispersal. There may no omnipotent creator/author driving the text, but
rather a shamaness who articulates the tribal spirit by hearkening to it. This
was perhaps especially true of the hybrid form of the shôsetsu which
soon developed, the shishôsetsu, or watakushi-shôsetsu, AKA the
I-Novel, a confessional or autobiographical form of fiction in which the author
only thinly disguised his or her identity and wrote the details of a writer's life--and
loves, of course. Influenced by French naturalism, these authors aimed for frank
disclosure even if it were quite shocking.
If we contrast this shôsetsu or shishôsetsu with the western
novel, we see that the modern, Western novel expresses the problematic of the
individual in the contradiction between formal constraints in emplotment and
the ideological characterization of the individual as a free agent. The hero
struggles against obstacles in order to overcome them and make his mark on society.
The shôsetsu is the reverse: while the character is always defined in the close
texture of society, thus imparting to the character an approximation of a role,
the plot is open-ended and spacious, as if one's true existence is irrelevant
to the actual details of living, the acts and events of actuality.
If the novel is a "credible fabrication which is yet constantly held up as
false," the shôsetsu is an "incredible fabrication that is nonetheless
held up as truthful." (Miyoshi) Art is hidden while honesty and sincerity are
displayed. The shôsetsu is an art that refuses to acknowledge art. An
author's will is directed to allowing order to emerge between the self, the
work, and the reader, rather than within the work itself. Unplanned, the narrative
usually unfolds, its shape constantly being altered along the way.
NOTE: There may
be no real conclusion. In writing and reading shôsetsu, the individual is expected
to merge with others, to hearken back to the voice of the tribe. Contextuality
is all-important.
Roland Barthes argues that the past tense (preterit) and third person narration
in the western novel "are nothing but the fateful gesture with which the writer
draws attention to the mask he is wearing." In Japan, weak first/third person
distinction = "nothing but the fateful gesture with which the writer draws attention
to his/her naked face, which, whether he/she is aware of it or not, is no more
than a mask." Dispersed and decentralized, the reader and the writer may become
aware of the space outside the work as much as what is inside it.
Natsume Sôseki
Not that the "problem of individualism" has not been treated by Japanese writers.
As anyone who has read, Natsume Sôseki knows, he had some grave reservations
about the costs involved in the rush to westernize and modernize.
In Kokoro,
he evokes a vision of a society in which human relationships fail because real
communication is so difficult. So he describes loneliness, alienation and mental
anguish and breakdown. He wonders, we might say, what a society will function
like if everyone is looking out for their own interests. What mechanism will
operate to ensure that people will be moral and ethical? What if people act
exclusively in terms of their own selfish interests? In this world, people are
psychologically vulnerable, driven by fears and anxieties. Though human nature
may not be evil, there are certainly dark corners in the human soul which do
not bear the light of day so well.
In November 1914, just three months after completing Kokoro, Sôseki delivered a public lecture at the elite Gakushuin University on Watakushi
no kojinshugi (My Individualism). In this lecture he reminisced:
At the university, I majored in English literature. What exactly is English
literature, you may well ask. I myself did not know the answer to that after
three years of furious study. Our instructor in those days was Professor Dixon.
He would make us read poetry aloud, read prose passages to him, do composition;
he would scold us for dropping articles, angrily explode when we mispronounced
things. His exam questions were always of one kind: give Wordsworth's birth
and death dates, give the number of Shakespeare's folios, list the works of
Scott in chronological order. . .Can this be English literature? Is this any
way to instill an understanding of what literature is, English or otherwise?
All right, you say, forge through on your own. But this is like the proverbial
blind man peeking through the fence. I would wander about in the library searching
for something that would give me a start. But there was nothing. This was
not simply because I lacked motivation; the field was represented by the most
meager collection of books. For three years I studied, and at the end I still
did not know what literature was. This, I might say, was the source of my
agony.
His struggle and agony took the form of a period of study in England where
he was quite literally isolated and may have suffered depression and even a mental breakdown.
If you have studied abroad for a period of time, you might understand some of what this writer was experiencing.
But he continued to work very hard on his quest to understand what literature
is, and what it does. As he explained in his lecture:
I worked hard and strove to accomplish something. But none of the books
I read helped me tear through the sack. I could search from one end of London
to the other, I felt, and never find what I needed. I stayed in my room, thinking
how absurd this all was. No amount of reading was going to fill this emptiness
in the pit of my stomach. And when I resigned myself to the hopelessness of
my task, I could no longer see any point to my reading books.
It was then that I realized that my only hope for salvation lay in fashioning
for myself a conception of what literature is, working from the ground up
and relying on nothing but my own efforts. . .My next step was to strengthen--perhaps
I should say build anew--the foundations on which I stood in my study of literature.
For this, I began to read books that had nothing to do with literature. If,
before, I had been dependent on others, if I had been other-centered, it occurred
to me now that I must become self-centered. I became absorbed in scientific
studies, philosophical speculation, anything that would support this position.
. .Self-centeredness became for me a new beginning, I confess, and it helped
me to find what I thought would be my life's work. I resolved to write books,
to tell people that they need not imitate Westerners, that running blindly
after others as they were doing would only cause them great anxiety. . . .
My anxiety disappeared without a trace. I looked out on London's gloom with
a happy heart. I felt that after years of agony my pick had at last struck
a vein of ore. A ray of light had broken through the fog and illuminated the
way I must take.
At the time I experienced this enlightenment, I had been in England for
more than a year. There was no hope of my accomplishing the task I had set
for myself while I was in a foreign country. I decided to collect all the
materials I could find and to complete my work after returning to Japan.
Upon his return, he moved into teaching for a while until he began to serialize
his fiction in the Asahi Newspaper--and get well paid for it.
While he believed in the independence of the individual, his commitment to
individualism was qualified as he explained in his famous speech
to Gakushuin students:
If you want to carry out the development of your individuality, you must respect the individuality of others. If you want to utilize the powers in your possession, you must be fully cognizant of the duty that accompanies it. If you wish to demonstrate your financial power, you must respect its concomitant responsibilities....Unless a man has attained some degree of ethical culture, there is no value
in his developing his individuality, no value in using his power or wealth.
. . .When a man is devoid of character, everything he does presents a threat.
When he seeks to develop his individuality without restraints, he obstructs
others; when he attempts to use power, he merely abuses it; when he tries
to use money, he corrupts society. . . .
. . .I simply believe that freedom without a sense of duty is not true freedom,
for such self-indulgent freedom cannot exist in society. . .I sincerely wish
for all of you to be free. At the same time I want to make very certain that
you understand what is meant by duty.
Wow, as we read this today, we see how powerful the cultural imperatives about duty and responsibility and selflesslnes were! This seems a long way from the self-centeredness that he was advocating in London! Perhaps a tough, but fair question would be, what does he mean by "some degree of ethical culture?" How would one acquire that ethical culture? On what would it be based? Isn't this reminding us that there will always be some ideology informing any given writer or critic's interpreation or "take" on any given situation? Same applies to us as readers.
So, in what would Sôseki's beliefs, his ideology be rooted? What do you think?
There is a lot of evidence to suggest that Chinese philosophy provided a powerful underpinning for him. He found that Chinese philosophers asked a lot of important ethcal questions, and they posited that it was essential for individuals to morally cultivate themselves, to follow "the Way'" usually a Confucian path of spiritual and moral development. The goal would be to become someone embodying the "higher" human principle of ren, which refers to "Authoritative Conduct," though the more common translation used words like "Good," "Goodness," and "Humaneness." All of thse point to a deeper wisdom and understanding, probably including for Sôseki, as Marcus suggests, the sokuten-kyoshi (則天去私) philosophy of "Following the Way of Heaven and Leaving the Self Behind."
Wouldn't that sort of person, who does not necessarily put his own "egotistical self" first, but who is capable of thinking of the universal good, the well-being of others, be a better member of society, a more responsible citizen?
But even understanding one's duty, one's sense of moral responsibility, doesn't
mean that the individual will be freed from experiencing loneliness. As he states:
[I]ndividualism is not forever running with the group, forming cliques
that thrash around blindly in the interests of power and money. That is why
there lurks beneath the surface of [t]his philosophy a loneliness
unknown to others. As soon as we deny our little groups, then I simply go
my way and I let the other man go his, unhindered. sometimes, in some instances,
we cannot avoid becoming scattered. That is what is lonely.
So, as Kokoro seems to make so abundantly clear, "loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves." (30) This is something that he feels we need to watch out for, something about which we should be wary or cautious.
Writers have a responsibility to talk about things like this, because these are things that matter! It is up to writers, Sôseki believed, to speak the truth about what they see,
even if it is not a pleasant, enjoyable truth. He was fond of saying: "No fine
is charged if one does not buy or read a literary work!" In other words, people
will only read fiction if they are drawn to it, if they enjoy or appreciate
it. If they feel they are getting something out of it. Otherwise, they will just do something else, right?
He describes a four-stage process by which a reader might get pulled into
and learn from a piece of literature:
There is no signboard declaring "We sell truths!" nor a band of hired musicians
advertising truths with fanfare. Still, truth gradually reveals itself--moves,
struts and marches, pushing aside everything else without hesitation, as calmly
as Heaven's Will. The reader first rubs his eyes and watches with pleasure the
fresh, stimulating sight. He then nods his head, for what he sees is an indisputable
fact: he has the pleasure of hearing something within him answer the call from
outside. Third, the reader realizes he has made a discovery, and thereby he
gains the pleasure of having unearthed a fact that has been buried. Fourth,
he is pleasantly surprised, for now he finds out that his discovery was a truth
about human nature, though it was made in an unlikely place.
Our SLOs for "Interpreting Texts" suggest that understanding the dynamic relationship between author, reader and text is very important. Doesn't it seem that Sôseki has been actively thinking about this process and coming to understand it? He paints a picture in the passage above about the dynamics of how something starts to dawn on the reader's mind as s/he enters into the text and reads it. Then something resonates within the reader, as the reader engages more deeply with the text, as s/he engages with what the author has to say; and then the reader steps up in order to "answer the call," to deal with the questions that the text poses. The reader becomes excited and feels good about the discovery that is occurring while reading, and this pleasure and satisfaction intensifies when the reader comes to appreciate how much is at stake:the reader has unearthed or discovered some fundamental truth about human nature, about oneself, about the possibilities for living a better life, for understanding the world and appreciating our place in it. All this is important! It matters!! This is what can be at stake in the reading process.
You may feel that Sôseki is not very optimistic about human nature, or the human condition; and, indeed, he seems to align himself with the Chinese philosopher Xunzi, a proponent of the darker side of Confucianism, who thought that human nature is sketchy and unreliable, at best. Basically, deep down, human beings are not necessarily good. They can be evil, in fact. They can behave disreputably. Why? Because they are selfish.
But
Sôseki is not really a total pessimist, either. Admittedly, the picture he paints is not a cheerful
one. It can be fairly bleak. Betrayal, living like a mummy, living in this version of death we call life (to quote Bob Dylan), or committing suicide--these are the main options
which face his older male characters. But he leaves the door open with a ray of hope. At least that is one way to read the novel!
Spoiler alert! The next several paragraphs discuss the ending of Kokoro. Probably best to avoid them for now! Let's scroll down to author Tanizaki Jun'ichirô.
Yet if there is a ray of hope in this narrative, it can be found in Sensei's
"Testament" in the last third of the novel where he writes about the possibility a "new life" lodging in I's breast. (129) Then, there can be a transfer
of real knowledge from teacher to student. The Sensei now becomes a true sensei. He is finally able to
teach somebody something; and "I" may learn. There is hope in this great possibility. Up until this point in his life, Sensei has not been able to do anything; when I says that "I always called him Sensei," it is highly ironic because Sensei really is not a Sensei, not a teacher. The title is an empty one; it has no content, no meaning, no truth. He has no students, no job, no children, no disciplies. He has no one to teach, no one to pass along what he has learned about life through his deeply personal experiences. He thought he was so much better than his family, than his Uncle who deceived and robbed himof his inheritance, and disrespected his own brother in the process.
Sensei lived his life taking the moral high-ground. He was above the evil-doing ways of his untrustworthy uncle. But, when push came to shove, what did he do when he was faced with a critical choice? He acted out of fear, out of insecurity; all of a sudden, his love for Ojosan became a competition that he refused to lose. Even though K. was his best friend, he was not above throwing him under the bus, not if it meant he could protect himself from harm and win the day, win the girl, get the best of his opponent. What is what it became all about. So many times he had wanted to tell K.; but K., who trusted his friend, confessed his feelings for Ojosan to Sensei first. Sensei was stunned. "He's beaten me to it!" (204) The first emotion he feels is pain; then fear; then Sensei goes rigid like a piece of stone or iron. He is frozen.
When it was time to stand up and do the right thing, he thought of himself first; he put his own ego and self-interest first. He prioritized his own welfare over that of his best friend, someone whom he loved and admired. But he did not want to lose to him. "Through cunning I have won," he writes. "But as a man, I have lost." (228) Yes, Sensei, you did lose something. You lost part of your soul, part of your humanity. These days, we like to use the expression, "Oh, that is not who you are. You are better than that." Well, it turned out that Sensei wasn't; he was who he was. This was a difficult truth about himself to face. He made his move, and part of his move was to throw back in K.'s face the very words he had uttered about people with no spiritual aspirations being idiots. Ouch! At this point, Sensei did not just want to best an opponent; he wanted to demolish him, to crush him. Then he went behind K.'s back and asked Okusan for Ojosan's hand in marriage. So how much better than his uncle was he?
This is Sensei's dark truth; he stood at the abyss, looked into his own "Heart," his own soul, and learned exactly of what he was capable. But by revealing his dark truth to the one person he can trust in this world, the one person he can believe in, someone he can see as sincere, he finally does something. It may not be an act of redemption, but in this little act of coming clean, of owning up to what he did, of taking the opportunity to convert his experience into a teaching--to provide "I" with the lesson that I believed he wanted Sensei to teach him--does Sensei finally acheive something substantial in the end? Once the truth is revealed, he cannot live with it; he can no longer live among his fellow human beings, not even with beloved wife. He has to take the final steps on his journey alone. He will tell all, leave no secrets unrevealed, immerse himself in shame in order to do something worthwhile. in order to complete his journey and become a real Sensei, to finally teach somebody something. He lets "I" in on his secret, the knowledge that his life esperience taught him. He passes it on for whatever good it might do "I."
Will it help "I"? Earlier, Sensei was sketptical that it would. What will "I" do with all this truth that Sensei has passed along to him? Remember, we don't know the final disposition, we don't know where things will actually go after I finishes reading Sensei's Testament. All we know is that he is still on that train, still heading for Tokyo, where the one light in that city in which he can believe, may already be snuffed out. But the author has left the ending open for us to enter into, to become active readers and thinkers and to figure things out for ourselves. Where do we stand? Do we know? Are we sure? Would we act very differently from Sensei. I am sure we would all like to think so; we want to believe that about ourselves. Just as Sensei wanted to be better than his Uncle, we as readers all want to be better than young Sensei. We won't ever make a mistake like that. Will we?
The novel ends with a kind of "freeze frame" like at the end of a film. "I" is sitting on the train, manuscript in hand. He has had a close encounter with the truth. Sensei has forced him "into the shadows of this dark world of ours." He tells "I" not to flinch, not to be afraid; to take whatever will be of use to him from Sensei's Testament and move on. Sensei makes it clear that what he means by "darkness" is a "moral darkness." (128) You say you wish to grow and learn; here is your chance, my young friend. Can you do it? To paraphrase the Aaron Sorkin film, A Few Good Men, can you handle the truth? We don't know exactly what" I" will he do with the hard truth that Sensei is teaching him. It is about what is inside us, and how we operate, how we function in the world, in life. Will he learn from it and grow? Will he avoid the mistakes his mentor made? Can we be hopeful that the next generation that the young "I" represents, will do a better job of communicating,
of forging genuine human bonds between one another? Will they do a better job of trusting each other and being worthy
of the trust of others?
So here is something for us to grab on to in this novel and it is considerably more than just a single, fragile straw. It is a sturdy limb, a lifeline with which we may pull ourselves up to some higher ground, we cam reach a higher level of understanding. We as readers may learn along with "I" and we may also get better ourselves. This is the hope for the future. We can get better. Indeed, we must get better and make the world a better place, too. Right? What else can we do?
Other Important Writers
A few other "great," or at least very well-known Japanese writers come to mind: Akutagawa Ryûnosuke, Tanizaki Jun'ichirô, Mishima Yukio, Kawabata Yasunari and Oe Kenzaburô. The latter two were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Kawabata in 1968 and Oe in 1994. Great story there. when Kawabata came to Stockholm to receive his award, he wore a Japanese kimono, had a shock of white hair, and delivered his address in Japanese which he titled: "Japan, the Beautiful and Myself," expressing Japan's unique approach to aesthetics and art by incorporating much classical Zen poetry.
Actually, his title is not even that straightforward: "Utsukushii Nihon no Watakushi"[美しい日本の私] which literally means "The Me of Beautiful Japan," or "the me who Belongs to...." Oe answered or echoed him in 1994 appearing in a western suit and talking about the Irish Yeats as much as anybody else. His acceptance speech was titled "Aimai na Nihon no Watakushi" or "Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself." He dedicated the first several minutes of his talk explaining how different he felt from Kawabata, but also alluding to how the Japanese may have a preference for vagueness over specificity.
The first two writers mentioned above, Akutagawa and Tanizaki were mainly prewar writers; Akutagawa died by his own hand in a dramatic suicide with his lover in 1927, while Tanizaki died in 1965 having been nominated for the Nobel Prize many times. Akutagawa and Tanizaki engaged in a famous "debate" over the importance of plot in thr 1920s. Akutagawa argued persuasively that the medium--how the story is told--is the key, not the structure or "architecture" of the novel that. Tanizaki, more of a classical novelist, loved imaginative plots, so he strongly defended the importance of plot.
In a way, it seemed that Akutagawa might have won the day...but then he committed suicide in 1927 so he doesn't have as impressive a track record as Tanizaki does. The fact is, there is room for both approaches--and many more, I am sure. Akutagawa's suicide was not linked to the debate at all though his decision may have been affected by a meeting he had with Marxist poet Nakano Shigeharu where they spoke privately about the importance of literature being socially conscious and doing something more for the people, the masses, of Japan. Nakano believed during both the prewar and postwar years that literature needed to address the needs and concerns of the poor and laboring classes.
Tanizaki Jun'ichirô
Nine years younger than Sôseki was Tanizaki Jun'ichirô who was born into a
merchant family in downtown (shitamachi) Tokyo in 1886. His mother, Seki, was
by all accounts beautiful and he idolized her and always had a special thing
for beautiful, powerful women. He was coddled, breastfed until he was five or
six or so, and indulged, encouraged to "play" (asobi) and fantasize, including
playing the game of "brothel." Began to write in last year of primary school
and was encouraged by a teacher who introduced him to Ueda Akinari, the Genji,
etc. Studied both classic Confucian texts at a Chinese Academy, and European
culture with four English women.
After primary-school he moved in with a restaurant family in Tsukiji and attended
First Middle-school where he was very successful. Entering the First Higher
School to study English law, Tanizaki soon switched to English Literature. He
soon began publishing in various literary journals, including "The Tatooer,"
a challenge to the prevailing Naturalism and shishosetsu style. Strongly praised
by Nagai Kafu in a review as unique, mysterious writer. His career was launched.
Tanizaki became a thoroughgoing devotee of things western until he moved from
Yokohama, where he had lived, to Kansai after the great Earthquake of September
1923. Startled literary world when he toyed with giving his wife Chiyo to novelist
Sato Haruo which he eventually did in 1927 sending out formal announcements,
etc. Meanwhile, he was drawn to Nezu Matsuko, also married, whom he would eventually
settle down with in 1935. Drawn into Genji monogatari which he studied and rewrote
in the 1930s, when he also wrote Shunkinsho (A Portrait of Shunkin). During the war years he wrote a maginificant family saga known as The Makioka Sisters. More on him, here.
Enchi Fumiko
In Masks, Enchi takes the shosetsu to unparalleled levels of complexity
through rich imagery and brilliant use of intertextuality. Bringing together
the issues of shamanism and feminine power, Noh, masks, the Genji, she evokes
a powerful energy in her work. Like Tanizaki before her, Enchi immersed herself
in the Genji and came up with a modern "translation" or reinterpretation of
it.
In a text that works as a good companion piece to Kokoro, Enchi Fumiko
points to a different kind of darkness in The Waiting Years. Those who
had virtually no voice in Soseki's work are addressed in Enchi's. What does
the patriarchal family system do to women? How does it silence, repress and
psychologically demean women? How does it thoroughly subjugate and corrupt women?
Are there any options? Do women have any control, any power they can exert?
If so, where might it come from?
The Waiting Years is set in the prewar years, between the 1880s and WWI. The text is loaded with specific time references so we are never in doubt. It is her way of tracing the process by which the modern patriarchy became fully established in prewar Japan. The novel opens in the mid-1880s, just at the time when the
Popular Rights Movement was spreading and becoming radicalized. We are talking here about the influence of John Stuart Mill, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the idea of indvidual rights and freedoms. Natural Rights theory. These ideas were introduced in the early 1870s and by the 1880s political parties dedicated to the idea of "popular rights" were cropping up all over Japan. Disillusioned by the Meiji government's unwillingness to grant Japanese citizens any of these fundamental human rights, during the early 1880s many poor peasants were becoming radicalized and mobilized to engage in serious political upheavel and even violence.
In 1883, a particularly ruthless and authoritarian official, Mishima Michitsune
[the Kawashima Michiaki of our text] was appointed provincial governor
of Fukushima Prefecture. He conscripted poor peasants to build roads, closed
down lectures and meetings sponsored by popular rights activists, and dispatched
sword-wielding police to break up protest demonstrations, etc. Enchi, then,
sets the stage for us by linking her villainous character, Yukitomo Shirakawa,
with the infamous "demon governor," this relentless suppresser of popular rights. The Waiting Years is very much a "tel-it-like-it-is" novel, and one that is direct and hits hard. In Masks, she goes much more with subtlety and indirectness but still very much engages the nature of female power in Japan.