Yet, has this Western intelligence really brought defeat to our country? Now, in these final days, must we clash with this “emptiness”?
No, not at all. We must now make every effort to trample on this nihilism. Yet remember, we feel that it is precisely because of this Western intelligence, this new mentality, that we could accept the mission of establishing a new Japan. As for those young poets of Meiji and those romantic politicians of the period who strolled around on the brick streets of a new Tokyo, were not the dreams they dreamed under the pale gaslights focused on one idea, that of Western intelligence? This was all because of that spirit of “civilization and enlightenment,” because a sound was given to the meaning of a new Japan in the midst of a fresh world, a new sense of beauty and life. In the past, we absorbed many abstract words from China; we learned how to grasp the fact that, in addition to knowing an object only in its concrete reality, we could now conceptualize it as well. With this new mode of intelligence, we were able to absorb the splendid civilization of Tang China, eternal, incomparable, and to create ourselves our own art in the Hakuhō [672–686] and Tenpō [1830–1844] eras, and to give birth to the vigorous lyric poetry of Nara [710–784] and Asuka [latter sixth century–710]. And now, for a second time, as we have absorbed a new mentality, that of the West, the withered youthfulness of Japan has been reborn; now we possess the will to build again a culture of Japan in the world, one that must replace the ancient Tang.
The present reality is nullity. There is nothing in present-day Japan. All culture has disappeared. Yet as we intellectuals battle in the midst of this desolation, we are crawling upward as we face the construction of what is to come. We have the will of the Absolute. We brood; we sigh; we suffer. For although we despair in our disappointments, we have not abandoned the will needed to move forward. In times past, we were lonely because we were thinking beings, we were étrangers precisely because we were Western. And so it is that now, when we hold both praise and criticism for our own native land, we face a great dilemma and we worry doubly, since the situation seems difficult to salvage. Loneliness and solitude represent the fate of those intellectuals who are born into this country, one that we will try to escape for many long years.
Let us return to what is truly Japanese! As far as we poets are concerned, this seems to be the song of a lamenting wanderer whose very soul finds no place of succor. Will someone write a poem for the song of the advancing bugle to match the victory song of the military? May that voice grow grander still and give us our orders based on our own sense of national purity. We must leave the quiet place where we have been for so long.
KOBAYASHI HIDEO
During the war years, Kobayashi Hideo (1903–1983) turned back to the Japanese classics, perhaps as a modern intellectual seeking a way of coming to terms with the literary and spiritual past of the culture into which he was born.
“On Impermanence” (Mujō to iu koto) and “Taima,” both written in 1942 and both labeled “prose poems,” reveal Kobayashi’s mentality during this troubled period. Note that the preceding chapter contains an essay that he wrote about the state of modern literature.
ON IMPERMANENCE (MUJŌ TO IU KOTO)
Translated by Hosea Hirata
“Someone told this story. At the Mountain God Shrine in Hie, in the middle of the night when no human voice could be heard, before the Jifuzenji god, a female servant, young and immature, pretending to be a shrine medium, tapped a hand drum ‘tum tum tum . . .’ and sang with the voice of a person whose heart was pure: ‘No matter how it is, please, please.’ Asked what she was thinking, she replied. ‘When I think of how impermanent this world of life and death is, I do not care much about this world. I asked the god to save me in my afterlife.’”
This is found in Ichigon hōdan shō. When I read it, it impressed me as a wonderful passage. The other day, I went to the Hie Mountain and wandered around the Mountain God Shrine, absentmindedly looking at the surrounding greenery and the stone wall. Then suddenly, this short passage floated into my mind as if I were looking at the remains of a picture scroll from that age. Every piece of the text thoroughly permeated my heart as if I were tracing the delicate lines of an aged painting. I was rather taken aback because I had never experienced anything like this before. Even when I was slurping some noodles in Sakamoto, I could not stop feeling strange. What was I feeling then, what was I thinking? These questions bother me now. Of course, it must have been some trivial hallucination. It is easy to think that way and be done with it. But why can’t I bring myself to believe in such a convenient explanation? To tell you the truth, I have begun to write this without knowing exactly what I am going to write.
Ichigon hōdan shō was thought to be one of Yoshida Kenkō’s favorite books. One could easily insert this passage in the text of Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness, fourteenth century) without damaging the quality of his text. Pity. Now, facing this text, I can think of only such trivial things. I can still feel that it is a fine example of treasured writing, but where did the beauty go that moved me so much? Perhaps it did not vanish. It may well still be in front of my eyes. What has vanished is perhaps not the beauty but the condition of my mind and body necessary to grasp such beauty. And I do not know how to regain it. Such childish questions push me into an endless labyrinth. Being pushed, I do not resist. For I cannot find anything dubious in that state we call the budding moment of aesthetics. I will, however, never reach the pedantic field of aesthetics.
No, I wasn’t imagining things. I was just gazing at the green leaves glinting in the sun. I was looking at the way moss had grown on the stone wall. With absolute certainty, I traced each word, each line, which so clearly appeared in my mind. I wasn’t thinking of anything else. I wonder to what natural conditions my mental state corresponded so perfectly. No one knows. Not only is there no answer, that sort of questioning is already part of a joke. I am simply recollecting that a fulfilled time once existed—a time in which only the testimonies of my being alive overflowed, a time in which I could clearly discern each such testimony. Of course now I am not remembering it very well. But wasn’t I, then, remembering well? Remembering what? The Kamakura period [1185–1333]? Perhaps. It might be so.
I used to think that it was truly difficult to escape from such ways of thinking as “a new perspective on history,” or “a new interpretation of history.” Equipped with what looked like various beguiling arts, they allured and tried to overpower me. Yet the more I looked at history, the more it began to appear as a certain immovable form. It appeared as something that cannot be easily shoved around by new interpretations. History is not such a frail thing to be so easily manhandled by new methodologies. When I understood that, history began to appear increasingly beautiful. One shouldn’t even consider the claim that in his old age, Mori Ōgai fell to the level of a mere historical researcher. Most likely, by beginning that immense historical research, Ōgai joined the spirit of history for the first time. I felt the same sort of thing when I read Kojikiden [Commentary on the Record of Ancient Matters]. Only that which rejects interpretation and stays confidently being itself is beautiful. This is the most powerful thought Motoori Norinaga [1730–1801] embraced. In our age where interpretations overflow, this is the thought most hidden from our sight. I began to think like this one day. On another day, a thought came to me suddenly. I remember talking to Mr. Kawabata Yasunari, who happened to be beside me. He merely smiled and did not reply to my following comment: “Living human beings are such a nuisance. Has anyone ever understood what people, including oneself, are thinking, going to say, going to do? Living people can hardly be appreciated like art works. Neither can they be a model object for a scientific observation. But think. Dead people are amazing. Why do they become so clear and solid? They truly possess a human form. Well then, can we say that living people are a kind of animal in the process of becoming human beings?”
I liked the idea that we are a kind of animal, but I lost the thread of thought until now. Only dead
people reside in history. Thus, only the most compelling aspects of human beings are manifested. Only the immovable, beautiful forms appear. We often say that everything recollected looks beautiful. But everyone has mistaken what that means. It’s not us who tend to beautify the past. It’s the past that mercifully prevents us from remembering useless things. Remembering saves us from being a kind of animal. Memorizing is not enough. We must recollect. The reason that the majority of historians remain as a kind of animal is because they fail to recollect the past with an empty heart. Their minds are too full of memorization.
It is extremely difficult to recollect well. But it seems to me that that is the only truly effective way to escape from the following pale, sickly thought: history as time stretched from the past to the future like an elongated candy. (This, by the way, seems to me to be the largest illusion that modernity has wrought.) I believe that there is a chance to succeed. “This world is impermanent” is not a mere Buddhist teaching. That is a type of animal state in which every human being, in any age, is inevitably placed. We, moderns, do not understand the impermanence of things as well as the unknown young woman of the Kamakura period did. It is because we have lost sight of what is permanent.
TAIMA
Translated by Hosea Hirata
I saw Manzaburō’s Taima at the Umewaka Nō Theater.
I was walking along a night street. Stars shone. Patches of snow still remained. I was thinking: Why do the sounds of the flute and drum linger in my ears, as if to break a dream? This dream, wasn’t it indeed broken? The white sleeves flutter; the golden crown glitters—Princess Chūjō still dances before my eyes. This isn’t merely a lingering sense of pleasure. What in the world was it? How can I name it—the sight of those two pure white socks, quickly beginning to move, driven by the sound of a flute? Nay, why should I ask? Didn’t Zeami name it “Taima” with such clarity? Well, then, does this mean that I have faith in the person Zeami, in the poetic spirit named Zeami?
This sudden thought astonished me.
A visitor to the Taima Temple, a priest, listened to an old nun’s tale about a legend surrounding the origin of the temple. The old nun also seemed to be at the temple for some religious business. She recounted: A long time ago, Princess Chūjō secluded herself in this mountain. While she was devoting herself to praying, she witnessed the coming of the actual Amitabha Buddha. As the old nun related the story, she herself was transformed into the ghostly nun who had led Princess Chūjō to the temple in the legend. Then the nun left. Now the spirit of Princess Chūjō appeared on the stage and danced. There remained only the forms of music, dance, and singing, which were absolutely minimized. The music had become something like a primal scream: the dancing, the daily movements of standing and sitting; the song, a succession of invocations. And all these things kept whispering to me as if to say, “Yes, this is it. Let it be. What else do we need?” By the simple but tenacious flow of sounds and forms, I felt that I was gradually being entranced, then completely overcome. To be honest, at the beginning of the play, I was thinking that one of the priests looked like someone who would be a pretty good mah-jongg player. . . .
The old nun appeared at the bridgeway, wearing a pale violet coat, holding a cane. One could barely see through the gap in her pure white hood, but some gray features of a face showed through. It gave me the bizarre impression of some ghostly metamorphosis; I couldn’t keep my eyes off this face. It didn’t seem that a part of a nō mask was showing through. Rather, it gave me the impression that a pile of kitten carcasses were showing through a cloth-wrapped package. I had no idea why it prompted such a strange association. As I had vaguely expected, the granny neither did anything particular nor said anything special. Because her voice was muffled, I couldn’t decipher it well, but it sounded as if she wanted to say, “It’s best to keep chanting to Amitabha.” In short, it seemed that her real intent was to have the priest as well as the audience stare at her strangely covered face. Of course, one can laugh at my conjuring up such an absurd image as the carcasses of kittens. But what can we call such a face?
It was already the time for a comic-interlude play. The theater was abuzz with murmurs. I began to think: Why were we all staring at such a bizarre face? An elaborate, twisted contrivance, one may say. Still, I can’t dismiss the indescribable, intense impression the face left in me. I just can’t think that I was duped. Why couldn’t I take my eyes off it? There are lots of faces here in the theater, but I see not a single face interesting enough to command such attention. Every one of them has an insecure, boring look. Even I, who am thinking in this way, must have a totally imbecile look. This means that no one can take responsibility for the look on one’s own face. Worse still, we all are stupidly satisfied with the fact that we can read one another’s facial expressions. What an idiotic, comical situation this is! When did we fall into this vexing, sorry state? It couldn’t have been that long ago. In fact, the stage in front of us tells us that there existed, with much severity, a way of life in which people thought that as long as we wear clothes, we should also wear masks.
“Take off your masks, look at the naked faces!” So screaming, modern civilization seems to have run off without knowing where it is headed. Contrary to what many think, Rousseau did not confess anything in his Confessions. I suspect that some effeminate and poisonous thoughts, of which neither the author nor the reader was aware, were scattered and buried here and there in the book. And they somehow began to spread freely.
Thinking this during the interlude play, I felt as if I were embroiled in a nightmare.
The resplendent figure of Princess Chūjō began to move all over the stage at will. It looked like a flower that had sprung up from the muddy water of history, making me wonder how a philosophy of life and death could take on such a simple and pure form. Then suddenly I understood the reason that such a form could totally ignore the progress of civilization: In short, all we have accomplished is merely to hang around that beautiful human form/doll. No one has succeeded in crawling into the interior of that carefully contrived mask! Zeami’s “flower” is certainly hidden.
I wonder how the recent craze for the so-called appreciation of nō started among us moderns. What sort of idea was pushing us to this vogue? It seems to be a truly insolvable puzzle. But one thing is certain. We are damned. We are condemned for staring and observing one another’s faces. Of course nobody wants to notice that we are damned. Look, historians are feeling self-satisfied by merely calling the Muromachi period [1392–1573] ranse, a turbulent period! How can they put such a name on that wholesome age, in which people harbored absolutely no suspicion of the transience of this world and the eternity of faith?
No, that age is not far removed from ours. I say this because I almost believe in that age. I thought about how Zeami pondered the question of beauty in such an age, in which no useless ideologies competed with one another. Then I came to the clear conclusion that there was absolutely nothing suspicious about his thoughts on beauty. “After completing every possible form of training and after exhausting every possible way of improving, one must find a state in which the flower no longer disappears.” There exists a beautiful “flower.” There is no such thing as the beauty of a “flower.” Contrary to what many think, the ones who are really outwitted are those modem aestheticians who rack their brains over the obscurity of Zeami’s concept of “flower.” Zeami is simply telling us to correct the movements of ideation by means of the movements of the body, because the latter is far more subtle and profound than the former. It is better to hide with a mask such a trivial thing as one’s facial expressions, which uncontrollably mimic the inconsistent movements of ideation. If Zeami were alive today, he would want to tell us so.
I walked along the night street, looking at the stars and the snow. “O, whither the snow of yesteryear?” No, no, I shouldn’t fall into such a state. I again looked at the stars and the snow.
SAKAGUCHI ANGO
Sakaguchi Ango (1906–1955) began writing s
tories and novels in the 1930s and became famous in the early postwar years for his works classified as “decadent.” But he is probably most famous for his remarkable essay “A Personal View of Japanese Culture” (Nihon bunka shikan), published in 1942, excerpts of which are presented here. Like Kobayashi Hideo, Ango was driven during the war years to examine his own cultural past, but what he found was startlingly different from that described in an elegiac tone by Kobayashi.
A PERSONAL VIEW OF JAPANESE CULTURE (NIHON BUNKA SHIKAN)
Translated by James Dorsey
Things “Japanese”
I know next to nothing about traditional Japanese culture. I’ve never seen the Katsura Detached Palace, which Bruno Taut praised so highly, nor am I familiar with his precious Mochizuki Gyokusen, Ike Taiga, Tanomura Chikuden, or Tomioka Tessai. As for his Hata Zōroku and Chikugen Saishi, well, I’ve never even heard of them.1 For one thing, I’m not much of a tourist, so the towns and villages of our homeland, with all their varied local customs and landmarks, are a mystery to me. On top of that, I was born in what Taut called the most vulgar city in Japan, Niigata, and I adore the strip running from Ueno to Ginza and the neon lights, both of which he despised. I know none of the formalities of the tea ceremony, but I do know all about getting rip-roaring drunk. In my lonely home, I’ve never once given anything like the tokonoma a second thought. Still, I don’t believe that having lost sight of the glorious ancient culture of my homeland has impoverished my life as I’ve just described it. (I do, though, agonize over what it lacks in other respects.)
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 124
