Modern Japanese Short Stories

by Ivan Morris

  Despite this ancient and diverse tradition, the modern Japanese story form in this century has owed remarkably little to the pre-Meiji collections of which examples have been given above. It is true that a number of the Meiji-period writers (including Higuchi Ichiyō, Ozaki Kōyō, Kōda Rohan, and Tayama Katai) recognized in Saikaku’s stories the same vigorous realism that they had found in modern French literature. Saikaku’s realism, however, served to confirm such writers in their already established literary approach, rather than to inspire them. When it actually came to writing stories, the main influences derived, not from Saikaku or the other pre-Meiji masters of realistic fiction, but from the recent literature of Europe and America.

  The history of the modern story in Japan can be considered to date from the introduction of Maupassant’s work in the 1890s. One of the earliest writers to attempt to produce in Japanese the type of story that was current in Europe was Ōgai Mori, who after his return from Germany in 1888 did so much to familiarize Japanese readers with Western literary forms.

  Of the two masters of the late-nineteenth-century short story in Europe, Maupassant exerted considerably greater influence in Japan than Chekhov. The reason is not far to seek: the introduction of Maupassant’s short stories coincided with the rise of naturalism in Japanese literature and, indeed, was one of the important influences on this movement. It was Maupassant’s direct, realistic, and often harsh approach to his material that affected Japanese writers, rather than his mastery of the short story form itself.

  Although Maupassant, like Chekhov, regarded the short story as being a genre in itself and although he contributed so greatly to giving it the characteristic form with which we are now familiar, his early influence in Japan did not on the whole lead writers to make the clear differentiation between the novel and the short story that is accepted in the West. The line of demarcation in Japan between the two genres has always tended to be vague. This is reflected in the terminology. Both forms are known as shōsetsu, the word for “short story” being differentiated only by the prefix tampen (“short piece”). Shōsetsu is also used with the prefix chūhen (“middle piece”) to describe an intermediate length of work having about 40,000 to 60,000 words; this roughly corresponds to what is sometimes known as “novelette,” but the form is very much more popular in Japan than in the West. Thus there is a regular continuum from tampen-shōsetsu through chūhen-shōsetsu to shōsetsu. The only real differentiation is in the matter of length, which itself tends to be very indefinite. This is not simply a matter of terminology, but extends to the conception—or rather, lack of conception—of the short story as a distinct literary form. Very frequently we find the same piece of fiction being described alternatively as a “novel” and as a “short story.”

  One result of this vague differentiation is the absence from so many Japanese stories of certain stylistic qualities that we have come to regard as essential to the modern short story in the West. This is certainly not to suggest that the story is a narrow form with certain strictly defined rules or canons. Far from it. A genre that so greatly antedates the novel is bound to have enormous flexibility. The history of the story in the West goes back to the “Tales of the Magicians” and traces its complex descent through Aesop, Boccaccio, Chaucer, the Bible, and La Fontaine, to name only a few of the great landmarks. Any neat definition is both impossible and undesirable. As the well-known short-story writer Kay Boyle has said: “The only continuity it [the story] possesses is that it was isolated individuals, sometimes writing centuries apart, who spoke with freshness and vigor, in a short-winded rather than a long-winded form, of people, and ideas, and incidents, which seemed to the reader moving and true.”

  Since the time of Gogol, however, the story has developed in a certain manner that we may characterize as the “style of the modern Western short story.” Its outstanding feature is an economy of means. This has involved a tendency to compression, to the dropping, as H.E. Bates puts it, of all inessential paraphernalia. The tendency has continued until the present day and has been given particular impetus by the short stories of Ernest Hemingway, whom H.E. Bates describes as the “man with an axe … [who] cut out a whole forest of verbosity.”6 Without economy there can be no short story in the modern sense of the term. This, of course, does not preclude the existence of short stories of considerable length. The tendency since the time of Tolstoy has certainly been in the direction of brevity, but the modern story may vary from a few hundred words to fifteen or even twenty thousand. What is essential is the close construction, the casting of all the material round a single central image, and the overall compression that have become the marks of the successful modern short story in the West.

  By these general standards a considerable proportion of tampen-shōsetsu are not short stories at all; frequently they appear to be sketches, essays, or truncated novels. A large number of Japanese story writers are primarily novelists for whom stories tend to be what Elizabeth Bowen has called “side-issues from the crowded imagination.” Since the novel and the modern short story are two totally different genres it is most unlikely that a writer will be equally at home in both, and this applies in Japan quite as much as in the West. The plethora of literary magazines in Japan has encouraged many writers to produce stories when their style was better suited to the novel. As a result, their work frequently lacks the stylistic compression that is the essence of the modern short story. This is not primarily a matter of word length (though it is worth noting that Japanese stories are as a rule far longer than their modern Western counterparts), but of failure to apply the indirect, suggestive, and dramatic methods which are indispensable for economy of style. In a country that has produced the most compressed forms of poetry in world literature it is remarkable that stories should so frequently be marked by a turgid verbosity which cries out for the ministration of a blue pencil.

  Fortunately a number of good modern writers in Japan have treated the short story as an equal and separate genre of literature, not merely as an abbreviated novel or as a sketch. Of the authors represented in the present collection, the three who stand out in Japanese letters as short-story writers are Naoya Shiga, Ryūnosuké Akutagawa, and Ton Nakajima. The fact that these three writers are all masters of literary style is not irrelevant. Like the poem, the short story is undoubtedly a type of writing in which style or form is all-important. An indifferently written or poorly constructed novel may succeed by the ingenuity of its plot, by the evocation of some unusual scene or atmosphere, or again by the vivid portrayal of a character; but a badly written short story is almost bound to fail, regardless of its content.

  * * *

  In the present collection twenty-five well-known modern Japanese writers were chosen and each of these writers represented by one story. The period covered by the stories is from 1910 to 1954; the stories appear in the order of the authors’ years of birth. About one half of the stories were selected by the editor, the other half by Mr. Yasunari Kawabata and members of the Japanese National Commission for Unesco, for whose advice and cooperation I should here like to express my grateful thanks. The stories were divided among four translators, three of whom have English as their mother tongue and one Japanese.

  Any selection implies a degree of criticism. Omission of certain distinguished writers from the present collection does not, however, suggest any adverse judgment. In several cases writers were omitted because it seemed impossible to represent their work adequately by means of a story. The most notable instance is that of the great novelist, Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), whose name has appeared several times in the present introduction. Ozaki Kōyō (1867–1903), Kōda Rohan (1867–1947), Shimazaki Toson (1872–1943), Arishima Takeo (1878–1923), Itō Sei (b. 1905), and many others would certainly have been included if it had been possible to find suitable stories.

  The many-sided literary gifts of men like Kafū Nagai and Jun’ichirō Tanizaki can certainly not be represented by a single story or even by a single novel. The most th
at can be hoped is to display some facet of their talents. Clearly this is more difficult in the case of writers whose forte was the novel and for whom the writing of a story was merely a side issue. From the point of view of most readers, however, a story provides a more satisfactory way of sampling the work of an unfamiliar writer than a selected passage or a synopsis of a novel, even though the novel itself may be a far more representative and interesting work than the story. Few modern novels are susceptible of effective extract and the summary of a novel can hardly be enjoyed as literature. Fortunately a number of modern novels, as well as many other short stories, have been translated into English; readers who wish to read further works by a particular author may find the fairly complete list at the end of the book helpful.

  Even the best chosen story, of course, is unlikely to convey the real individuality of the writer, and when stories by twenty-five different writers are put together the effect is likely to be one of blurring and confusion. It is hoped, however, that if each story is read in conjunction with the corresponding note on the author, something of his distinctive personality will emerge. The notes are the work of the respective translators.

  Readers who are acquainted with modern Japanese literature will undoubtedly be struck by the inclusion of works by certain writers who have a far less important place in modern Japanese fiction than some others who (for lack of space) have not been represented at all. Two reasons account for this seeming anomaly. First, certain selections were made, not to represent the work of a particular writer, but because the story itself seemed to be worth including on its own literary merits. Secondly, it was felt that a collection of this type should attempt to carry a few works which, if not eminently successful as short stories, represented certain specific types of modern Japanese writing. Examples of this are the naturalist story, the proletarian story, the plotless, lyrical story, the political satire, the historical story, and the story of village life. The twenty-five selections represent almost every main type of modern Japanese story—with the exception, that is, of the most common form of all, namely, cheap-magazine stories written by popular writers (taishū-sakka) whose sole aim is to appeal to as large a public as possible.

  There has been no deliberate effort to represent all the different aspects of modern Japanese life. The twenty-five stories do, however, give a remarkably wide picture of the various strata of society during the first half of the present century, and for many readers unfamiliar with Japan this may provide as much interest as their actual literary content. Not a single story has been chosen for its specifically Japanese or Oriental quality. While characteristic Japanese scenes, customs, and psychology emerge throughout the stories, the reader will find nothing in the way of quaintness or “Japonaiserie.” Many of the stories do provide an insight into unfamiliar ways of life and thought. In social life as well as in literature it is often the very degree of Westernization in post-Meiji Japan that makes the specifically Japanese qualities stand out. To read the works of a wide range of modern Japanese writers is to rid oneself of many preconceptions and commonly accepted generalizations concerning Japan and her people. At the same time it brings home to us that, impressive as it has been, the break with the past marked by the years 1868 and 1945 was in some ways not nearly so complete as might be supposed.

  The question of tradition and foreign influence may be briefly outlined as follows. The Meiji Restoration marked an almost complete break in some fields (e.g., official recognition of a social system in which the warrior class was supreme, official support for Confucianism) and a partial break in others (e.g., the bureaucratic structure, eating habits); but in some fields (e.g., Noh theater, family system in rural areas) there was considerable continuity.

  In the case of literature there was hardly any break in the development of Noh or in Haiku poetry, for example, but an almost complete break in the novel and the story. It follows that when we read a collection of modern Japanese stories which attempt to give a realistic picture of contemporary life, we find two things. First, the actual form of the stories owes far more to modern Western influences than to pre-Meiji Japanese literature (here we have a case of the “almost complete break”). Secondly, much of what is reflected in the stories about modern Japanese life (e.g., the social position of women, the geisha system and its ramifications, the attitude to authority, the Buddhist sense of fatalism, the absence of any sense of sin regarding suicide) derives from pre-Meiji cultural traditions. For those who value the persistence of cultural diversity in the modern world this continuity is bound to be a cause for satisfaction.

  Footnotes

  1 Shōyō Senshii (“Collected Works of Shōyō”), Tokyo, 1927. Vol. Ill, p. 3.

  2 See, for example, the biographical note on Yoshiki Hayama. One of the best known proletarian writers, Kobayashi Takiji (1903–33) died while in the hands of the local police during one of his many periods under arrest.

  3 See p. 466. Dazai started to write long before the war and, strictly speaking, cannot be regarded as an apure writer. There is no doubt, however, that he was the literary hero of the apure generation.

  4 Among the writers included in the present collection Ōgai Mori, Kafū Nagai, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, and Haruo Satō frequently show classical Chinese or Japanese influence in their writing; the tradition has been carried on by Yasunari Kawabata, Ton Nakajima, and Yukio Mishima.

  5 Quoted by Miyata Shimpachiro in “Translated Literature in Japan,” Japan Quarterly, Vol. IV, p. 169.

  6 H.E. Bates: The Modern Short Story, pp. 168–69.

  UNDER RECONSTRUCTION

  BY Ōgai Mori

  TRANSLATED BY Ivan Morris

  Ōgai Mori (1862–1922) is considered by many Japanese critics to be the country’s outstanding literary figure since the Meiji Restoration. Whether or not we accept this view, Ōgai’s name comes logically at the head of any list of modern Japanese story writers.

  Ōgai was the son of a doctor. After graduating from the medical department of Tokyo University, he became a surgeon in the imperial army. In 1884 he was sent to Germany to pursue his study of medicine. He remained there for four years, and was thus the first important Japanese writer to become well acquainted at first hand with Europe. Of the Western countries, Germany was to have the greatest influence on Ōgai’s thinking and writing.

  Ōgai was endowed with extraordinary energy and he succeeded in pursuing a very active literary career while at the same time carrying out his official army duties. Much of his early work consisted of translations of German poems and short stories. In 1890 he published his first piece of fiction. This was “The Dancing Girl,” the romantic story of an unhappy love affair between a German dancer and a Japanese man. (There is an echo of this subject in “Under Reconstruction,” translated here.) The story appears to have been closely based on personal experience, and Ōgai himself describes it as an Ich Roman. This is an early example of the “confessional” type of writing that was so enthusiastically espoused by the naturalists and the other practitioners of the “I-novel.”

  Having served in the army during both the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, Ōgai rose in 1907 to the rank of surgeon-general. He retired in 1916 and was appointed director of the Imperial Museum.

  During all these years, and until his death in 1922, Ōgai continued his voluminous and many-sided contributions to the literature of the Meiji and Taisho periods. Whatever doubts the Western reader may have about the encomiums that are bestowed on Ōgai by Japanese critics, there is no denying the important pioneer role that he played in the development of the modern literature of the country. His great linguistic ability, combined with an unusual literary gift, enabled him to produce translations of very high quality—and the importance of translations during the Meiji period can hardly be exaggerated. Ōgai is especially noted for his translations of Goethe, Schiller, Ibsen, and Hans Christian Andersen. His translations of Ibsen and Hauptmann had a great influence on the development of shingeki (modern theater), while h
is translation of a volume of European verse gave a strong impetus to modern Japanese poetry. A profound student of the Japanese classics and of Chinese literature, Ōgai developed a limpid, lucid style which enabled him to set a new standard for translated literature.

  Apart from translation, Ōgai was instrumental in introducing the Western type of short story to Japan. He wrote plays in the Western style and at the same time took a very active interest in classical Kabuki. Not the least of Ōgai’s contributions was that he helped to found the first systematic literary criticism in the Meiji period; in this he was greatly influenced by the aesthetic theories of Karl von Hartmann.

  Together with Natsume Sōseki, Ōgai was one of the first important writers of the Meiji period to rebel against the influence of the naturalists. Despite the “confessional” aspect of many of his early works and despite his interest in realistic psychological analysis and clinical detail, Ōgai vigorously opposed the naturalists, mainly because of their mechanical attitude to life and their disregard of aesthetic values. In 1909, at the height of the naturalist movement, Ōgai published his novel Vita Sexualis, a sort of sexual autobiography, in which he attacked the naturalists on their own ground, insisting that the sex instinct, strong as it was, must be considered as only one aspect of human life and not necessarily the most important.