The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by Неизвестный

  3. Ango’s defense of imitation is part of his polemic against Taut, who opens his book A Personal View of Japanese Culture with the following epigram: “Imitation is the death of Beauty.” Throughout his writing, Taut offers approval of only those Japanese works of art faithful to indigenous traditions.

  4. Like the figures mentioned in the opening paragraph, all these artists and schools from various periods in Japan’s history were praised by Taut and considered representative of Japan’s unique cultural tradition.

  5. The word “vulgarity” (zokuaku), along with the related “fraudulent” (inchiki) and “kitsch” (ikamono), represents a key concept in this essay. Taut used these words to denigrate cultural practices that deviated from Japan’s indigenous aesthetic tradition—anything imitative—and Ango rehabilitates them in his attempt to reorient the lines of cultural discourse.

  6. Oki Kazuo, the son of a wealthy Kyoto family, worked with Ango on a number of literary projects in Tokyo.

  7. Saga and Mount Atago, both located in northwestern Kyoto, often are associated in classical poetry with their elegant cherry blossoms and exquisite foliage. As such, the setting contrasts sharply with the all-too-worldly, here-and-now concerns of the Kurumazaki Shrine, discussed later.

  8. Signs on the shrine grounds identify the deity as the scholar Kiyohara Yorinari (1122–1189), and the practice described here by Ango persists to this day.

  9. Both Mount Kiyotaki and Mount Ogurayama are famous for their autumn leaves. Mount Ogurayama also has long been a favorite spot for viewing cherry blossoms, and it lends its name to a famous collection of Japanese poetry, the Ogura hyakunin isshu (One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, ca. 1235). As in the preceding section, Ango is evoking sites celebrated in the classical arts before a jarring juxtaposition of them with a more humble, “vulgar” place. Earlier, it was the Kurumazaki Shrine; here, it is the Arashiyama Theater.

  10. “Nekohachi” was originally a generic label for the Tokugawa (Edo) period (1600–1868) street performers, who would imitate cats, dogs, roosters, and other animals. By Ango’s day, the word referred to a broader range of itinerant entertainers. “Byōyūken” indicates this particular performer’s professional affiliation. The “satisfaction guaranteed” clause was actually all loop-hole: because there was no claim to be the original Nekohachi of Tokyo’s Edoya, the performer could not possibly be revealed as an imposter.

  11. The True Pure Land sect, Jōdo shinshū (or, more simply, shinshū), was founded by the monk Shinran (1173–1262). In keeping with his belief that Buddha’s grace forgives all imperfections and in hopes of further spreading Buddhism among the laity, Shinran abolished the prohibition on marriage for monks. He himself married and raised a family. Later mentioned are the headquarters of two branches of the sect. The Western Honganji was built in 1591, and the Eastern Honganji in 1602.

  12. “Southern school paintings” (nanga) is another name for the “literati paintings” (bunjinga) described in footnote 1.

  13. Ryōanji is a Zen temple in the northwestern section of Kyoto and dates to 1450. Its rock garden, consisting of fifteen large and small rocks placed on an intricately racked bed of white gravel, is the subject of many different metaphysical interpretations.

  14. The Shugakuin Detached Palace, most of which dates to the late seventeenth century, is famous for its buildings done in the sukiya style, in which an apparently simple, rustic dwelling reveals, when carefully inspected, intricate craftsmanship. It also is known for gardens employing the technique of shakkei, or “borrowed landscapes.” Trees and bushes are placed and shaped to direct visitors’ eyes to mountains visible in the distance, thereby “borrowing” elements of the natural terrain beyond the garden’s walls. The Shugakuin was another of Taut’s favorite pieces of Japanese architecture.

  15. Ike Taiga (1723–1776) was an eclectic artist who traveled widely from his base in Kyoto. He was an iconoclast, insisting, for example, on painting ugly subjects at a time when the portraits of beauties were all the rage. The poet-monk Ryōkan (1758–1831) grew up not far from Ango’s hometown in what is now Niigata Prefecture. He became a monk early in life, studying at various monasteries and traveling incessantly throughout Japan. Ryōkan was known for living in complete compliance with his whims: he slept, drank saké, meditated, or played just as the spirit moved him. Ryōkan was well into his sixties when he fell in love with a nun forty years his junior. She recorded many of the poems from his final years.

  16. “Nothingness is the absolute value” (naki ni shikazaru) is a key concept in this section of the essay, in which Ango is radically rereading the legacy of certain premodern artists whose eccentricities earned them the status of folk heroes. While their rejection of worldly goods and securities—their embrace of nothingness—is often interpreted as evidence of the erasure of their ego, Ango here recasts it as the ultimate expression of that same ego: so committed was their quest for perfection that they refused to settle for anything less.

  17. The Tōshōgū Shrine, completed in 1646, enshrines Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616), the man who completed the unification of Japan and whose descendants reigned as shōguns for more than two hundred years. Incredibly ornate, even gaudy in its extensive use of gold foil and intricate carvings, the Tōshōgū represents the polar opposite of the stark, minimalist aesthetic seen in the tearoom and the Shugakuin and Katsura Detached Palaces. Taut was influential in canonizing the minimalist sabi aesthetic as the core of Japan’s indigenous arts and effacing the more ornamental veins, which he believed were merely derivations of Chinese models. Taut often represented the latter with the Tōshōgū, dismissing it as mere “kitsch.”

  18. Of humble origin, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598) rose to the position of general under Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582). After avenging Nobunaga’s death, Hideyoshi was largely successful in his unification of the country; he also tried twice to invade the Korean Peninsula. Hideyoshi’s love of grandeur is legendary: in addition to owning a golden teahouse and, in 1587, providing for more than a thousand guests the world’s largest tea ceremony, Hideyoshi employed record numbers of workers to construct his various mammoth castle residences, gathering materials from the outer reaches of the realm. Hideyoshi had a colossal wall (fourteen miles long, nine feet high, and thirty feet wide) built around the city of Kyoto and commissioned wall paintings measuring more than three hundred square feet. Many of them were painted by Hasegawa Tōhaku (1539–1610), known for depicting monkeys in his works. In fact, Hideyoshi’s nickname, given to him by Nobunaga, was “monkey.”

  19. The Sanjūsangendō, located in Kyoto, was built in 1164. It is known for its collection of Kannon statues, a main hall so long that it can accommodate an archery contest every year, and the remains of the Hideyoshi wall (Taikōhei). The original Chishakuin Temple, once located in modern Wakayama Prefecture, was burned to the ground in one of Hideyoshi’s military campaigns. Ironically, the paintings that Hideyoshi commissioned for another temple were later housed in the new Chishakuin, rebuilt in Kyoto. One of these enormous paintings covers four full sliding doors (fusuma), each approximately five and a half by four and a half feet.

  20. Sen no rikyū (1522–1591) is the man responsible for making the tea ceremony the austere, understated art form that it is today. He served first Oda Nobunaga and later Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who eventually demanded that the tea master take his own life. Although the reasons for this command remain a mystery, Ango is referring to the theory that it was rikyū’s refusal to surrender his daughter to Hideyoshi that prompted the death sentence.

  21. Located in Nara Prefecture, the Hōryūji is closely associated with the great statesman and champion of Buddhism Shōtoku Taishi (574–622), and it holds many priceless Buddhist statues and paintings. Parts of the temple date back to the seventh century, making it Japan’s oldest extant temple. Byōdōin, located in Uji, southeast of Kyoto, is considered one of the finest examples of late-Heian-period (974–1192) architecture, and it has a grand collection of statues
and paintings of its own. Both temples were favorites of Taut.

  Chapter 5

  EARLY POSTWAR LITERATURE, 1945 TO 1970

  With the end of World War II in 1945, Japanese literature seemed to take, in the eyes of both writers and readers, a number of new and potentially creative turns.

  To some extent, of course, a new generation had come to the fore. Some of the older masters, like Kawabata Yasunari and Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, continued to write and, indeed, produced some of their best work after 1945. But other important prewar figures, such as Shiga Naoya, remained virtually silent. Along with those older writers who began to publish new works, several younger novelists, poets, and playwrights now appeared, many of them part of a generation with personal experiences of the war. Some of these writers regarded their experiences as tragic or nihilistic, whereas others found sardonic elements in them.

  In addition, Japan’s writers were faced with a topic they never before could have imagined, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. For several decades, the horror of those events provided a thematic grounding for much of their writing. In addition, during the twenty-five years from 1945 to 1970, at least three main currents could be found in the literature.

  The first current was a resumption of the contact with contemporary developments in Western literature. During the decade or more of war, Japanese writers’ and intellectuals’ contacts with their counterparts in Europe diminished and then virtually disappeared altogether. Now, however, their enthusiasm for contemporary literature from abroad, particularly from France, was renewed. These new realignments can be seen in the writings of such an avant-garde author as Abe Kobo. These works would have been unimaginable during the war years, and their example brought a fresh spirit to the early postwar scene. The end of both the war and the Allied Occupation also brought an increased curiosity about the United States, including its literature. Writers such as William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams were now admired and widely read by Japanese.

  Second, the pain and deprivation of the war and the early postwar period became a subject of considerable importance. Concerns about the causes of the war also led a number of writers, particularly those with liberal or Marxist leanings, to reflect on the reasons that Japan had created such a catastrophe. Other writers, like Mishima Yukio, tried to locate and describe the heroism in this wartime mentality that so greatly influenced his generation.

  Some writers found that they had to rediscover the kinds of ties to earlier Japanese culture that would give them pride in their heritage, now seemingly discredited, and that could provide a continuity to bridge the past and the present, transcending the mistakes and pain of the war years. To do this, some writers turned to historical subjects or to folklore, as did Kinoshita Junji.

  Finally, at a time when most Japanese writers had abandoned the military values of the recent past, others looked for completely new ways of living in what they hoped would become an atmosphere of postwar freedom. Women writers, in particular, found more opportunities to express their own sense of self. Some male writers seemed to find this new freedom in personal decadence; others, like Endō Shūsaku, portrayed the challenges of maintaining some larger faith—in his case, Christianity—in what was rapidly becoming a largely secular society.

  FICTION

  ABE KŌBŌ

  Abe Kōbō (1924–1993) was raised in Manchuria and thus always maintained something of an outsider’s view of Japan. Like Mori Ōgai and Anton Chekhov, he studied medicine, although he never practiced it. Some critics see this early training as the basis for his analytical style. But Abe’s manner of writing, sometimes termed “international,” owes as much to science fiction and Kaf ka as it does to the traditions of modern Japanese letters. His bleak, yet somehow comic, version of the world is made explicit in such novels as Woman in the Dunes (Suna no onna, 1962) and The Ark Sakura (Hakobune Sakura-maru, 1984), but even his earliest stories capture the basic components of his literary stance. In this sense, he is an appropriate harbinger of the new postwar artistic climate in Japan. “The Red Cocoon” (Akai mayu, 1950) was Abe’s first success and made him widely known.

  THE RED COCOON (AKAI MAYU)

  Translated by Lane Dunlop

  The sun is starting to set. It’s the time when people hurry home to their roosts, but I don’t have a roost to go back to. I go on walking slowly down the narrow cleft between the houses. Although there are so many houses lined up along the streets, why is there not one house which is mine? I think, repeating the same question for the hundredth time.

  When I take a piss against a telephone pole, sometimes there’s a scrap of rope hanging down, and I want to hang myself. The rope, looking at my neck out of the corner of its eye, says: “Let’s rest, brother.” And I want to rest, too. But I can’t rest. I’m not the rope’s brother, and besides, I still can’t understand why I don’t have a house.

  Every day, night comes. When night comes, you have to rest. Houses are to rest in. If that’s so, it’s not that I don’t have a house, is it?

  Suddenly, I get an idea. Maybe I’ve been making a serious mistake in my thinking. Maybe it’s not that I don’t have a house, but that I’ve forgotten it. That’s right, it could be. For example, I stop in front of this house I happen to be passing. Might not this be my house? Of course, compared to other houses, it has no special feature that particularly breathes out that possibility, but one could say the same of any house. That cannot be a proof canceling the fact that this may be my house. I’m feeling brave. OK, let’s knock on the door.

  I’m in luck. The smiling face of a woman looks out of a half-opened window. She seems kind. The wind of hope blows through the neighborhood of my heart. My heart becomes a flag that spreads out flat and flutters in the wind. I smile, too. Like a real gentleman, I say:

  “Excuse me, but this isn’t my house by any chance?”

  The woman’s face abruptly hardens. “What? Who are you?”

  About to explain, all of a sudden I can’t. I don’t know what I should explain. How can I make her understand that it’s not a question now of who I am? Getting a little desperate, I say:

  “Well, if you think this isn’t my house, will you please prove it to me?”

  “My god. . . .” The woman’s face is frightened. That gets me angry.

  “If you have no proof, it’s all right for me to think it’s mine.”

  “But this is my house.”

  “What does that matter? Just because you say it’s yours doesn’t mean it’s not mine. That’s so.”

  Instead of answering, the woman turns her face into a wall and shuts the window. That’s the true form of a woman’s smiling face. It’s always this transformation that gives away the incomprehensible logic by which, because something belongs to someone, it does not belong to me.

  But, why . . . why does everything belong to someone else and not to me? Even if it isn’t mine, can’t there be just one thing that doesn’t belong to anyone?

  Sometimes, I have delusions. That the concrete pipes on construction sites or in storage yards are my house. But they’re already on the way to belonging to somebody. Because they become someone else’s, they disappear without any reference to my wishes or interest in them. Or they turn into something that is clearly not my house.

  Well then, how about park benches? They’d be fine, of course. If they were really my house, and if only he didn’t come and chase me off them with his stick. . . . Certainly they belong to everybody, not to anybody. But he says:

  “Hey, you, get up. This bench belongs to everybody. It doesn’t belong to anybody, least of all you. Come on, start moving. If you don’t like it, you can spend the night in the basement lockup at the precinct house. If you stop anyplace else, no matter where, you’ll be breaking the law.”

  The Wandering Jew—is that who I am?

  The sun is setting. I keep walking.

  A house . . . houses that don’t disappear, turn into something else, that stand on the groun
d and don’t move. Between them, the cleft that keeps changing, that doesn’t have any one face that stays the same . . . the street. On rainy days, it’s like a paint-loaded brush, on snowy days it becomes just the width of the tire ruts, on windy days it flows like a conveyor belt. I keep walking. I can’t understand why I don’t have a house, and so I can’t even hang myself.

  Hey, who’s holding me around the ankle? If it’s the rope for hanging, don’t get so excited, don’t be in such a hurry. But that’s not what it is. It’s a sticky silk thread. When I grab it and pull it, the end’s in a split between the upper and sole of my shoe. It keeps getting longer and longer, slippery-like. This is weird: My curiosity makes me keep pulling it in. Then something even weirder happens. I’m slowly leaning over. I can’t stand up at a right angle to the ground. Has the earth’s axis tilted or the gravitational force changed direction?

  A thud. My shoe drops off and hits the ground. I see what’s happening. The earth’s axis hasn’t tilted, one of my legs has gotten shorter. As I pull at the thread, my leg rapidly gets shorter and shorter. Like the elbow of a frayed jacket unraveling, my leg’s unwinding. The thread, like the fiber of a snake gourd, is my disintegrating leg.

  I can’t take one more step. I don’t know what to do. I keep on standing. In my hand that doesn’t know what to do either, my leg that has turned into a silk thread starts to move by itself. It crawls out smoothly. The tip, without any help from my hand, unwinds itself and like a snake starts wrapping itself around me. When my left leg’s all unwound, the thread switches as natural as you please to my right leg. In a little while, the thread has wrapped my whole body in a bag. Even then, it doesn’t stop but unwinds me from the hips to the chest, from the chest to the shoulders, and as it unwinds it strengthens the bag from inside. In the end, I’m gone.