The Third Period: Fugitives and Masqueraders

Nakamura Mitsuo (1911-) wrote even more disparagingly of the shishosetsu than Yokomitsu and Kobayashi did. With "Watakushi shosetsu ni tsuite" (1935) he inaugurated a career that was to culminate in such devastating critiques of modern Japanese literature as Fuzoku shosetsu ron (1950) and Shiga Naoya ron (1954). As with Yokomitsu and Kobayashi, Nakamura's strong background in French literature deeply colored his judgments of the native literature and particularly of the author's relationship to society. After reiterating Kobayashi's assessment of the individual in the west as a "socialized self," however, Nakamura carried his analysis of junbungaku one step further. "Unlike western romantics," he writes, “shishosetsu writers had no awareness of any confrontation between society and the individual. Indeed, they lacked the concept of 'society' altogether. Society for these writers was only those people who had a direct impact on their sensibilities: family, friends, lovers, etc."^[32]

This is a shrewd observation. Rather than argue, as Kobayashi did, that the Japanese writer possessed no "socialized self," Nakamura redefined society on a scale commensurate with the writer's consciousness, which extended to his immediate acquaintances ("family, friends, lovers") and not to some larger, more abstract system of institutions and relationships. His comment that personal experience in early twentieth-century Japan was felt to be a perfectly adequate mediator between the writer and this micro-society, moreover, underscores Maruyama Masao's theory of traditional social organization that we reviewed in Chapter 1.

Nakamura summed up his argument fifteen years later in a sweeping critique of modern Japanese literature, Fuzoku shosetsu ron . This work differs markedly from the period's other major essays on shishosetsu in its relentlessly critical tone. Nakamura singles out 1906-7 as a watershed in modern Japanese literature, when a "duel" took place between Toson's Hakai (1906) and Katai's Futon (1907). The literary "revolution" sparked by the former's broad social awareness was nipped in the bud, he argues, by a second revo-

[32] Nakamura Mitsuo zenshu 7:134.

lution sparked by the latter's claustrophobic self-consciousness.^[33] Now the naturalists and their followers were exempted from modern literature's most difficult task, which was to write about oneself and one's life in universal terms. Futon's success changed the course not just of the naturalist movement but of all twentieth-century Japanese letters. "Most of the Taisho period's best works ... were written in a style imitative of Futon ," he writes. "This is most unfortunate when we consider its innumerable defects and shortcomings."^[34]

An obvious difficulty with Nakamura's analysis lies in his acknowledgment of good works, and even masterpieces, in a form he argues has no redeeming qualities. It is a paradox he never quite resolves, because his assumptions have inevitably generated a set of literary guidelines that modern Japanese letters simply do not meet. Even as he redefines the perimeters of "society" in accordance with the writer's marginalized existence, he cannot bring himself to abandon the social vision and narrative perspective offered by the classical western novel. Although he repeatedly notes the early twentieth-century Japanese writers' great attraction to western literature, it is finally Nakamura himself who succumbs most completely. By western standards, Japanese naturalism, not surprisingly, is inferior to the European model. Nakamura never questions the motives, which he doubtlessly considers reasonable, of Japanese writers who try to assimilate the western view of literature. Assimilating this particular aspect of western culture is just one more way of competing at all levels with a hegemonic power. Nakamura speaks to this idea very bluntly in an essay he wrote two years earlier.

Foreign influence has a characteristically great impact on the literature of second- or third-rate nations. It would not, however, result in an endless succession of schools or movements in a first-rate nation—that is, one with a first-rate literature. I think that it would be profitable to compare literary circles in Japan with those in such second- or perhaps third-rate nations as Romania or Poland. The latter are susceptible to any new literary trend that develops in Paris. I am sure that this is the case. In this regard, modern Japanese literature has little to brag about. Many Japanese, I know, believe that their

[33] Fuzoku shosetsu ron , 29-31. See also the discussion below, 113-14.

[34] Fuzoku shosetsu ron , 53.

own literature is not worth studying at all and that they would be better-off reading translated literature.^[35]

The political implications of this statement, written just three years after Japan's defeat at the hands of the Allied Powers, are unmistakable. A nation's literature is only as viable and as reputable as its global position, as can be seen in Nakamura's equation of a first-rate literature with a first-rate power. Nakamura is quite naturally at a loss how to assess a literature that appears to be subordinated to the hegemonic culture but is in fact anything but derivative.

Another difficulty with the analysis lies in its exaggerated assessment of Futon as the turning point in Japanese letters. Katai's narrative indeed helped spark the "revolution" in literary confession of which Nakamura speaks. But it provided, at most, the trigger, not the powder. When we note Futon's marked similarities to Katai's previous writings and its differences from the shishosetsu that followed (as we shall do in Chapter 5), we can only conclude that the work was not in fact a radical break with, but rather a stage in, the process of development in the Japanese narrative that took place over a significant period of time. If anything, Futon was as much a result as it was the cause of this narrative development, which we have already traced to the Edo-period literary tradition. This is not to deny the importance of Katai's particular achievement or to minimize the influence—perhaps it would be more correct to say the overwhelming presence—of a narrative form legitimized by (in the eyes of the Japanese) a superior culture. It is only to remind ourselves that these "revolutionary" developments actually grew out of the literary tradition.

Ito Sei (2905-69) thought carefully and productively about the shishosetsu as a species of narrative quite disparate from the novel. His shosetsu no hoho (1948) is probably the most comprehensive study of modern narrative written in Japan up to that time. Like Nakamura, he acknowledges the great prestige of western literature. In his preface, Ito provides readers with a list of "required readings," of which nearly half the titles are European.^[36] But his recognition of the indigenous narrative tradition is apparent as well

[35] "Kindai Nihon bungaku," in Nakamura Mitsuo zenshu 7:415-16.

[36] shosetsu no hoho , 9-10. Included, incidentally, in these "European" texts are two stories by Poe.

in his inclusion of texts from the premodern canon (from Genji monogatari to Koshoku ichidai onna ) and in his discussion of the modern Japanese narrative against the background of its premodern predecessors. Ito argues that it makes much better sense to talk about the stories of an author like Masamune Hakucho, for example, who writes about the literary company he keeps, in terms of Tsurezuregusa or Hojoki than in terms of western narrative.^[37]

Ito thus connects the shishosetsu with certain premodern forms and opposes them all to the western novel, arguing that comparison with the latter can only be counterproductive. He emphasizes, moreover, as no one did previously, the role that a small homogeneous audience played in the shishosetsu's development, spotlighting the peculiar literary economy known as the bundan . Regarded as social outcasts and usually living in poverty, bundan writers had little opportunity to experience the world outside their immediate surroundings. And so they wrote, inevitably, about themselves, their peers, their sordid affairs, their hand-to-mouth existence, and their struggles to meet publisher's deadlines, because this was the only life they knew. Since the audience consisted mostly of their own peers, such things as character depiction and plot were as unnecessary as introductions at a club. Poverty may have cramped the imagination, but the limited narrative scope also turned out to be a blessing, Ito argues: it eliminated the need for fictionalization and allowed writers to focus on what they considered to be the most pressing issue, which was not how to write but rather, as reclusive rebels unconcerned with social convention, how to live.

Ito's argument builds on the assumption that the self and the personal voice to which it gives rise are the primary concerns of modern literature, whether Japanese or western. The two literatures differ, Ito suggests, in the way the authors present their "selves." Paradoxically, it is the more modern society that places greater constraints on self-expression. European writers, unwilling to subject their private lives to public scrutiny, resort to fiction because it provides the facade they need to function in society. Japanese writers, on the other hand, excluded by their professions from respectable society, have nothing to fear from confession because they have no social position to lose in the attempt.^[38]

[37] Ibid., 15-16.

[38] Ibid; see esp. 55-56, 106-7.

"Masqueraders" (kamen shinshi , literally, "gentlemen in masquerade") and "fugitives" (tobo dorei , literally, "runaway slaves") are the picturesque terms Ito coined in a contemporaneous essay to describe these two groups of writers. In this essay, which summarizes many of the arguments in shosetsu no hoho , Ito poses several important questions. What is it about fiction (shosetsu ) that moves Japanese readers, and how does western fiction differ from it? Is fiction's essence in its structure or its philosophical content? And what is fiction's role in the two cultures? He argues that the shosetsu , as a "report" of the writer's life, moves the reader to the degree that it is able to depict that life unerringly. One cannot have one's "philosophy" and fictionalize it, too, Ito seems to be saying. Bundan writers may be social outcasts, but they are also part of a respected literary tradition that idolizes the writer—a Saigyo or a Kamo no Chomei or a Basho—who rejects society and the material world.^[39]

Whereas Nakamura measures the shosetsu against the standard of the European novel and argues that it comes up short, Ito argues that it is by no means inferior just because it moves away from fictional narrative and toward essay and autobiography. The shosetsu , he insists, is an ideal medium for intimate expression that would suffer from too much attention to structure. The only way to write successfully in such a medium is to live, as a morally free person in an otherwise restrictive society, with a mind to documenting one's life as faithfully as one can.

Ito's assessment of the shosetsu is a valid one. But his faith in the importance of content ("philosophy") over form ("structure") leads him inevitably into the trap we identified earlier as the myth of sincerity. "The Japanese have no use for masks," Ito states flatly. "Fiction is rubbish—good only for writers who would dress up in coattails for the evening. Fugitives need not stand on ceremony. They can dazzle their readers with the slightest handiwork. But they must take great care not to overdo it lest they be labeled phonies and ostracized by their peers."^[40]

[39] "Tobo dorei to kamen shinshi" (1948), in Ito Sei zenshu 16:286-91; see esp. 287-88.

[40] Ibid., 291. See also shosetsu no hoho , 71. In Literature and Sincerity , Henri Peyre provides a useful corrective to Ito's argument that the western writer is necessarily less sincere because he has determined (as in Stendahl's case, to take one of Peyre's examples) that "only in fiction could he reach truth" (190). Although this felt need for fiction may confirm Ito's characterization of western writers, it does not change the fact that the concept of sincerity and the struggle to give it form in literature has occupied countless writers in the last two centuries and given birth to what Peyre calls the "personal novel." See ibid., 161-202.