Washington - Alumni Book Club

This month’s reading should present a change of tack, since it’s a full-length historical novel, rather than a short story or tale, and it’s largely in the realistic tradition, rather than overtly fantastic (with some important exceptions I’ll discuss below). Chronologically, it takes place primarily in the Meiji period (1868-1912), but it was written in the postwar period (published in book form in 1957). According to John Lewell’s Modern Japanese Novelists: A Biographical Dictionary, it’s based in part on “true stories” told to Enchi by her maternal grandmother (75).

First, some background information on the author: Enchi Fumiko (1905-1986) was born in Tokyo and was the daughter of a well-known scholar of Japanese language and classical literature. In addition to the influence of her indulgent and scholarly father and childhood in a house full of books, she was influenced by the many ghost stories, plots of kabuki plays, and tales from Edo literature told to her by her father’s mother (source: Lucy North, article on Enchi in Modern Japanese Writers, ed. Jay Rubin, 91). She made her debut as a playwright in the modern style as a young woman in the 1920’s, and she was associated with the progressive women’s magazine Nyonin geijutsu. After marrying in 1930, she gave birth to a daughter and began writing prose fiction in addition to plays. She endured many personal hardships during the 1930’s and 1940’s, including her father’s death and her own health crises, including tubercular mastitis resulting in a single mastectomy and uterine cancer resulting in a hysterectomy (North, 93). Surviving these episodes, she reemerged as a prominent writer in the 1950’s, publishing such major works as The Waiting Years (1957) and Masks (1958).

Next, some words on the historical background. In The Waiting Years Enchi imagines the life of a woman from a samurai background of her grandmother’s generation, trying to live honorably in according to the stoic values of her class in a world dominated by selfish men. Tomo’s husband, Yukitomo Shirakawa, is an official of samurai background from the southwestern island of Kyushu, who was allied with the samurai who overthrew the Tokugawa regime in the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The Meiji rebels, mostly from distant southern provinces such as Kyushu, installed themselves as the new government in Edo, the former seat of the Tokugawa Shogunate, now renamed Tokyo. They abolished the samurai class and the feudal class system, and deposed the various lords of feudal domains, setting up new provincial governments, the prefectures. In the novel, Yukitomo is named by the Meiji oligarchs as governor of Fukushima Prefecture, well to the north of Tokyo, even though he’s from the southern island of Kyushu and has no connection with the culture and society of the area.

As you know, the Meiji oligarchs initiated a policy of rapid modernization, and they also began a diplomatic initiative to raise the international prestige of the new regime and renegotiate the unequal treaties with the Western powers. Part of this diplomatic initiative was the adoption of new aristocratic titles (such as Viscounts and Barons) for the top elite, and the staging of elaborate Western-style balls in a guest hall called the Rokumeikan, which is mentioned in Enchi’s text. The closed, dictatorial, and status-conscious Meiji government quickly attracted opposition from reformers (the Freedom and People’s Rights movement) who had hoped that the Restoration’s change of regime would usher in a more democratic government. In the novel, Yukitomo is in charge of cracking down and repressing this movement and its Liberal Party. Eventually, despite the brutal suppression of the Freedom and People’s Rights movement, some of its demands were met, in an extremely limited fashion, through the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution of 1889, which established limited popular representation through the Japanese Diet.

In addition to this political background, another key to understanding the novel is the importance of the ie, or family system, to Meiji society (and subsequent generations in Modern Japan, including Enchi’s own). Based in part upon the family traditions of the former samurai class, the ie was redefined in the Meiji period and installed as a model for people of all social classes. Literally meaning house or household, ie refers to the “household” conceived not as snapshot of members of a family at any given moment, but to the household as a unit over time, designed to preserve its continuity from past to present to future. The present members of the household are responsible for maintaining the continuity of the ie, in honoring its ancestors, upholding its family traditions, maintaining the household’s property and reputation, and transferring these to future generations. The family patriarch was the head of the ie, and succession of the ie passed on to the eldest son. Though it was a deeply patriarchal system, women of the family, especially the wife of the patriarch, had weighty responsibilities in helping to manage the family’s wealth and maintain its traditions, as well as bearing and raising a son and heir (and eventually training her daughter-in-law in the ways of the family).

Enchi refers directly to these weighty responsibilities in important scene on pages 189-190: “Everything that she had suffered for, worked for, and won within the restricted sphere of a life whose key she had for decades past entrusted to her wayward husband Yukitomo lay within the confines of that unfeeling, hard, and unassailable fortress summed up by the one word ‘family’ [ie].” Tomo’s final request delivered to her husband Yukitomo, then, is especially shocking (though its meaning may be hard to understand at first), since it strikes at the symbolic heart of the ie system as it pertains to the Shirakawa family.

The final point I would like to highlight in this introduction is the role of classical literature, especially The Tale of Genji, in the novel. As we have seen, Enchi was raised in an environment of great respect for classical literature, and as a pioneering modern woman novelist it is not surprising that she would be drawn especially to The Tale of Genji, the great narrative written by a woman of the Heian court roughly a thousand years before. (Indeed, Enchi later devoted years to writing her own translation of The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese.) Perhaps the most intriguing echoes of The Tale of Genji in The Waiting Years are the subtle hints of spirit possession and the role of the female shaman, or miko. In The Tale of Genji, Prince Genji divides his attention between many wives and lovers, and one of them, Lady Rokujô, becomes incapable of controlling her anger at Genji and her jealousy at his other women. Drawing on contemporary beliefs about spirits (mononoke) traveling outside of the body of the living or dead, the author of The Tale of Genji has a mysterious spirit attack several of Genji’s women, making them gravely ill. Priests and female shamans are called to communicate with the spirit, and the shamaness becomes possessed with the spirit and speaks Lady Rokujô’s resentments out in her own voice. Arguably, this female spiritual and shamanistic power looms quietly but powerfully in the background of The Waiting Years.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do you think that Enchi chose to tell this tale of a woman of her grandmother’s generation? Is the story believable? How do you feel about the protagonist, Tomo?

2. Do you think that the patriarch, Yukitomo, is painted to be too evil a character? Was he an interesting character for you? Which of the secondary characters did you find interesting?

3. Enchi makes numerous references to the frailty of the human body and its illnesses. In one especially striking scene, she describes the blood from Suga’s hemarroids (pp. 152-154). What are the significance of such descriptions?

4.  How does the author use symbolic elements, such as colors or natural imagery, in the novel? Do you find the use of these elements effective?

5. Why does the author introduce the Buddhist parable of Lady Vaidehi? What is the role of the Buddhist conception of karma in the novel?

6. How do you interpret the meaning of Tomo’s final request? Why does it have such a strong effect on Yukitomo? Did you find this a satisfying ending?

7. How would you compare this novel with other literary works you’ve read, whether Japanese or from other traditions?

The second book for the book club is Izumi Kyôka’s Japanese Gothic Tales, translated by Charles Shirô Inoue. As the introduction to the collection outlines, Kyôka was a member of the generation of Japanese writers who reinvented the Japanese novel under the influence of nineteenth-century European literature, including Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism. However, while many of his Naturalist peers were trying to invent a pared-down style of narration that more closely resembled colloquial speech, Kyôka was drawn to the rich, highly figurative qualities of classical literary Japanese. And thematically, Kyôka was often inspired by Japanese legends and folktales, which had fallen out of favor as superstitions of the “old Japan” during the push for “Civilization and Enlightenment” following the full opening of Japan to the West in the Meiji Period (1868-1912). However, far from recreating classical literature or tales, Kyôka created his own highly individual imaginative world and literary style, which is as modern in its own way as any of the works of his peers.

Perhaps the best introduction to Kyôka’s artistic interests is provided by Kyôka himself, as translated by Joshua Figal:

     I wonder how many people there are in the world today who truly have a sense of the taste for twilight? It seems to me that many people have lumped twilight and dusk together. When speaking of “dusk” the sensation of the color of night, the color of darkness, becomes dominant. However, twilight is neither the color of night nor the color of darkness. So saying, it is neither simply a sensation of day, nor of light. In the momentary world of entering night from day, at the momentary boundary of entering darkness from light, is that not where the twilight world lies? … I consider it a great mistake that people in the world think as though there were no other worlds outside of night and day, darkness and light. It is my belief that there is a singularly subtle world of the in-between outside of sensations that approach the two extremes of dusk and daybreak. I have been thinking that this taste for twilight, this taste for dawn, is something I would like to impart to people in the world.

      This taste for twilight, this taste for dawn, is not something that exists merely in the relation of day with night. I believe that in similar fashion among all things in the universe there are singularly subtle worlds. For example, even when it comes to people, good and evil is something like day and night, but in between this good and evil there is in addition a singularly subtle place that we should not destroy, that we should not extinguish. In the momentary space of moving from good to evil, in the momentary space of entering from evil to good, humans display singularly nuanced shapes and feelings. I would like primarily to sketch and to transcribe such a twilight-like world. I have been thinking that I would like to impart in my works a world of the singularly in-between, a taste of the singularly in-between, which is neither extremity of good and evil, right and wrong, pleasure and displeasure. (Quoted from Joshua Figal, Civilizations and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan (Duke UP, 1999) pp. 1-2.

Discussion questions:

1. How does Kyôka’s writing style differ from Ueda Akinari’s Edo-period Tales of Moonlight and Rain? Can the differences be ascribed to Western cultural influences or to other factors? 

2. This collection includes an example of Kyôka’s early, experimental “conceptual” stories (”The Surgery Room”), the story which established Kyôka’s mature style (”The Holy Man of Mt. Kôya”), and two stories from later in his career. What elements connect the stories, and how does his technique evolve from the early to the later works?

3. Several of the stories feature framing devices, multiple narrators, and “tales within the tales.” What do these framing devices and multiple narrators add to each story? 

4. In the Holy Man of Mount Kôya, what is the significance of the Monk’s journey through the mountain forest before he arrives at the woman’s house? 

5. Many of Kyôka’s stories do not seem tightly plotted, but rather seem to follow a more dreamlike procession of images and episodes. Often times, he seems to set up several possible directions the story could go, and only follows one of them. For you as a reader, did you enjoy the looseness of the narrative style, or did you find it frustrating? Did you find that some story threads are “red herrings” or “dead ends”? Could you find links between story elements that at first seemed unrelated?

6. How do you interpret the circle, square, and triangle motif of Kyôka’s “One Day in Spring”? What significance do you see behind the ghostly “play” witnessed by the traveller in this story? What is the relationship between the first traveller and the second (the narrator)? What is the significance of the lion dancers?

7. To what extent do the women at the center of each tale seem to be “real” people with believable motivations and personalities, and to what extent do the seem to be “types” or “ideals” divorced from reality? What do you think these women represent for Kyôka?

8. How did you like the stories?

[Click on "No comments>>" or "# comments>>" below to add comments.]

Ueda Akinari, Tales of Moonlight and Rain

Please see the post above (The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature) for an introduction to the themes of the course and some historical/cultural context for Ueda’s collection of stories, Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain, 1776).

While Ueda is the family name of the author, he is usually referred to by the pen name, Akinari, he uses in place of his given name, Senjirô. (This is also true of other authors on our reading list who use pen names, such as Izumi Kyôka, often referred to as Kyôka, and Edogawa Rampo, often called Rampo.)

The extensive introduction by translator Anthony H. Chambers provides some very helpful background for understanding the text, and the translator also gives many reading notes. Indeed, it seems that one of the goals of this scholarly edition is to demonstrate the rich intertextuality of Akinari’s text, which refers extensively to Chinese and Japanese literary sources. In some cases, these references, such as the many references to Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, would have resonated with most contemporary readers, reminding them of the elegant, pathos-filled, and sometimes eerie atmosphere of that famous 11^th Century work. Other references to more obscure Chinese and Japanese sources probably would have been recognized by only a few Ueda’s fellow scholars and literati.

Beyond overt reference to characters, settings, and situations found in earlier works, Ueda’s tales employ many structural and stylistic elements from Chinese and Japanese literary and dramatic tradition. For example, as discussed in the Introduction, some of the tales, such as “Shiramine,” borrow the character roles of waki (a traveler to the scene of a local legend), and shite (often a legendary figure who appears as a ghost). Another common literary device is the use of poems (usually the 31-syllable waka or the 17-syllable haiku, aka haikai) to express characters’ feelings or establish an emotional or atmospheric high-point in the text. Unfortunately, in my opinion these poems often fall flat in Chambers’ rather literal renderings, but his translation does at least attempt to preserve the rhythmic alternation of prose and poetry in the original work.

Questions:

1.     How are the stories similar to or different from Western short stories and ghost stories?

2.     How does the author create “atmosphere” in the text? What are the markers of the supernatural or liminal in the stories? What is the author’s attitude towards the supernatural?

3.     What sorts of states do you think the texts elicit in the reader: are they meant to be horrific, eerie, spooky, moving, awe-inspiring? Are they meant to convey a moral “lesson”?

4.     How does the author convey a sense of the characters’ personalities? Do his characters seem like authentic individuals, or merely “types”?

5.     What is the moral universe of the stories? What constitutes good or bad character or behavior? Are these standards the same for both men and women, and for characters of all social classes?

6.     Does the author lead you to sympathize with the weak, immoral, or “bad” characters, or simply to condemn them? Are the morally good characters credible?

7.     What are the merits and demerits of Anthony Chambers’ literal, scholarly approach to the translation?