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

by Неизвестный

  There is a ring of raucous laughter. Guitar music plays. The man turns into a motionless silhouette. Only a marble, held in the hand of the woman standing upstage, continues to glimmer.

  Curtain

  ESSAY

  ŌE KENZABURŌ

  Ōe Kenzaburō (b. 1935) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994, the second Japanese writer to receive this honor. Unlike Kawabata Yasunari’s address, which also is included in this volume, Ōe’s acceptance speech is not on aesthetics but on the ambiguous role of Japan in the contemporary world and the legacy of its own troubled history. Ōe’s sense of engagement and responsibility as expressed here marks him as a contemporary figure. His observations thus seem to be a fitting conclusion to this anthology, in which we, as its editors, have tried to trace, through literature, Japan’s cultural and artistic path from its opening to the West in 1868 to the present.

  JAPAN, THE AMBIGUOUS, AND MYSELF

  (AIMAI NA NIHON NO WATASHI)

  Translated by Hisaaki Yamanouchi

  During the last catastrophic World War, I was a little boy and lived in a remote, wooded valley on Shikoku Island in the Japanese archipelago, thousands of miles away from here. At that time there were two books that I was really fascinated by: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. The whole world was then engulfed by waves of horror. By reading Huckleberry Finn I felt I was able to justify my habit of going into the mountain forest at night and sleeping among the trees with a sense of security that I could never find indoors.

  The hero of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is transformed into a tiny creature who understands the language of birds and sets out on an exciting journey. I derived from the story a variety of sensuous pleasures. Firstly, living as I was in a deeply wooded area in Shikoku just as my ancestors had done long before, I found it gave me the conviction, at once innocent and unwavering, that this world and my way of life there offered me real freedom. Secondly, I felt sympathetic and identified with Nils, a naughty child who, while traveling across Sweden, collaborating with and fighting for the wild geese, grows into a different character, still innocent, yet full of confidence as well as modesty. But my greatest pleasure came from the words Nils uses when he at last comes home, and I felt purified and uplifted as if speaking with him when he says to his parents (in the French translation): “ ‘Maman, Papa! Je suis grand, je suis de nouveau un homme!’ ” (“Mother, Father! I’m a big boy, I’m a human being again!”)

  I was fascinated by the phrase “je suis de nouveau un homme!” in particular. As I grew up, I was to suffer continual hardships in different but related realms of life—in my family, in my relationship to Japanese society, and in my general way of living in the latter half of the twentieth century. I have survived by representing these sufferings of mine in the form of the novel. In that process I have found myself repeating, almost sighing, “je suis de nouveau un homme!” Speaking in this personal vein might seem perhaps inappropriate to this place and to this occasion. However, allow me to say that the fundamental method of my writing has always been to start from personal matters and then to link them with society, the state, and the world in general. I hope you will forgive me for talking about these personal things a little longer.

  Half a century ago, while living in the depths of that forest, I read The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and felt within it two prophecies. One was that I might one day be able to understand the language of birds. The other was that I might one day fly off with my beloved wild geese—preferably to Scandinavia.

  After I got married, the first child born to us was mentally handicapped. We named him Hikari, meaning “light” in Japanese. As a baby he responded only to the chirping of wild birds and never to human voices. One summer when he was six years old we were staying at our country cottage. He heard a pair of water rails calling from the lake beyond a grove, and with the voice of a commentator on a recording of birdsong he said: “Those are water rails.” These were the first words my son had ever uttered. It was from then on that my wife and I began communicating verbally with him.

  Hikari now works at a vocational training center for the handicapped, an institution based on ideas learned from Sweden. In the meantime he has been composing works of music. Birds were the things that occasioned and mediated his composition of human music. On my behalf Hikari has thus fulfilled the prophecy that I might one day understand the language of birds. I must also say that my life would have been impossible but for my wife with her abundant female strength and wisdom. She has been the very incarnation of Akka, the leader of Nils’s wild geese. Together we have flown to Stockholm, and so the second of the prophecies has also, to my great delight, now been realized.

  Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese writer to stand on this platform as a Nobel laureate for literature, delivered a lecture entitled “Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself.” It was at once very beautiful and very vague. I use the word “vague” as an equivalent of the Japanese aimaina, itself a word open to several interpretations. The kind of vagueness that Kawabata deliberately adopted is implied even in the title of his lecture, with the use of the Japanese particle no (literally “of ”) linking “Myself ” and “Beautiful Japan.” One way of reading it is “myself as a part of beautiful Japan,” the no indicating the relationship of the noun following it to the noun preceding it as one of possession or attachment. It can also he understood as “beautiful Japan and myself,” the particle in this case linking the two nouns in apposition, which is how they appear in the English title of Kawabata’s lecture as translated by Professor Edward Seidensticker, one of the most eminent American specialists in Japanese literature. His expert translation—“Japan, the beautiful, and myself ”—is that of a traduttore (translator) and in no way a traditore (traitor).

  Under that title Kawabata talked about a unique kind of mysticism which is found not only in Japanese thought but also more widely in Oriental philosophy. By “unique” I mean here a tendency toward Zen Buddhism. Even as a twentieth-century writer Kawabata identified his own mentality with that affirmed in poems written by medieval Zen monks. Most of these poems are concerned with the linguistic impossibility of telling the truth. Words, according to such poems, are confined within closed shells, and the reader cannot expect them ever to emerge, to get through to us. Instead, to understand or respond to Zen poems one must abandon oneself and willingly enter into the closed shells of those words.

  Why did Kawabata boldly decide to read those very esoteric poems in Japanese before the audience in Stockholm? I look back almost with nostalgia on the straightforward courage he attained toward the end of his distinguished career which enabled him to make such a confession of his faith. Kawabata had been an artistic pilgrim for decades during which he produced a series of masterpieces. After those years of pilgrimage, it was only by talking of his fascination with poetry that baffled any attempt fully to understand it that he was able to talk about “Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself ”; in other words, about the world he lived in and the literature he created.

  It is noteworthy, too, that Kawabata concluded his lecture as follows:

  My works have been described as works of emptiness, but it is not to be taken for the nihilism of the West. The spiritual foundation would seem to be quite different. Dōgen entitled his poem about the seasons “Innate Reality,” and even as he sang of the beauty of the seasons he was deeply immersed in Zen.

  Translation by Edward Seidensticker

  Here also I detect a brave and straightforward self-assertion. Not only did Kawabata identify himself as belonging essentially to the tradition of Zen philosophy and aesthetic sensibility pervading the classical literature of the Orient, but he went out of his way to differentiate emptiness as an attribute of his works from the nihilism of the West. By doing so he was wholeheartedly addressing the coming generations of mankind in whom Alfred Nobel placed his hope and faith.

  To tell the truth, however, instead of my compatriot who stood
here twenty-six years ago, I feel more spiritual affinity with the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature seventy-one years ago when he was about the same age as me. Of course I make no claim to being in the same rank as that poetic genius; I am merely a humble follower living in a country far removed from his. But as William Blake, whose work Yeats reevaluated and restored to the high place it holds in this century, once wrote: “Across Europe & Asia to China & Japan like lightnings.”

  During the last few years I have been engaged in writing a trilogy which I wish to be the culmination of my literary activities. So far the first two parts have been published, and I have recently finished writing the third and final part. It is entitled in Japanese A Flaming Green Tree. I am indebted for this title to a stanza from one of Yeats’s important poems, “Vacillation”:

  A tree there is that from its topmost bough

  Is half all glittering flame and half all green

  Abounding foliage moistened with the dew. . . .

  “Vacillation,” lines 11–13

  My trilogy, in fact, is permeated by the influence of Yeats’s work as a whole.

  On the occasion of his winning the Nobel Prize the Irish Senate proposed a motion to congratulate him, which contained the following sentences:

  . . . the recognition which the nation has gained, as a prominent contributor to the world’s culture, through his success . . . a race that hitherto had not been accepted into the comity of nations.

  Our civilisation will be assessed on the name of Senator Yeats. Coming at a time when there was a regular wave of destruction [and] hatred of beauty . . . it is a very happy and welcome thing. . . . [T]here will always be the danger that there may be a stampeding of people who are sufficiently removed from insanity in enthusiasm for destruction.

  The Nobel Prize: Congratulations to Senator Yeats

  Yeats is the writer in whose wake I would like to follow. I would like to do so for the sake of another nation that has now been “accepted into the comity of nations” not on account of literature or philosophy but for its technology in electronic engineering and its manufacture of motorcars. Also I would like to do so as a citizen of a nation that in the recent past was stampeded into “insanity in enthusiasm for destruction” both on its own soil and on that of neighboring nations.

  As someone living in present-day Japan and sharing bitter memories of the past, I cannot join Kawabata in saying “Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself.” A moment ago I referred to the “vagueness” of the title and content of his lecture. In the rest of my own lecture I would like to use the word “ambiguous” in accordance with the distinction made by the eminent British poet Kathleen Raine, who once said of Blake that he was not so much vague as ambiguous. It is only in terms of “Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself ” that I can talk about myself.

  After a hundred and twenty years of modernization since the opening up of the country, contemporary Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity. This ambiguity, which is so powerful and penetrating that it divides both the state and its people, and affects me as a writer like a deep-felt scar, is evident in various ways. The modernization of Japan was oriented toward learning from and imitating the West, yet the country is situated in Asia and has firmly maintained its traditional culture. The ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the position of an invader in Asia, and resulted in its isolation from other Asian nations not only politically but also socially and culturally. And even in the West, to which its culture was supposedly quite open, it has long remained inscrutable or only partially understood.

  In the history of modern Japanese literature, the writers most sincere in their awareness of a mission were the “postwar school” of writers who came onto the literary scene deeply wounded by the catastrophe of war yet full of hope for a rebirth. They tried with great pain to make up for the atrocities committed by Japanese military forces in Asia, as well as to bridge the profound gaps that existed not only between the developed nations of the West and Japan but also between African and Latin American countries and Japan. Only by doing so did they think that they could seek with some humility reconciliation with the rest of the world. It has always been my aspiration to cling to the very end of the line of that literary tradition inherited from those writers.

  The present nation of Japan and its people cannot but be ambivalent. The Second World War came right in the middle of the process of modernization, a war that was brought about by the very aberration of that process itself. Defeat in this conflict fifty years ago created an opportunity for Japan, as the aggressor, to attempt a rebirth out of the great misery and suffering that the “postwar school” of writers depicted in their work. The moral props for a nation aspiring to this goal were the idea of democracy and the determination never to wage a war again—a resolve adopted not by innocent people but people stained by their own history of territorial invasion. Those moral props mattered also in regard to the victims of the nuclear weapons that were used for the first time in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and for the survivors and their offspring affected by radioactivity (including tens of thousands of those whose mother tongue is Korean).

  In recent years there have been criticisms leveled against Japan suggesting that it should offer more military support to the United Nations forces and thereby play a more active role in the keeping and restoration of peace in various parts of the world. Our hearts sink whenever we hear these comments. After the Second World War it was a categorical imperative for Japan to renounce war forever as a central article of the new constitution. The Japanese chose, after their painful experiences, the principle of permanent peace as the moral basis for their rebirth.

  I believe that this principle can best be understood in the West, with its long tradition of tolerance for conscientious objection to military service. In Japan itself there have all along been attempts by some people to remove the article about renunciation of war from the constitution, and for this purpose they have taken every opportunity to make use of pressure from abroad. But to remove the principle of permanent peace would be an act of betrayal toward the people of Asia and the victims of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not difficult for me as a writer to imagine the outcome.

  The prewar Japanese constitution, which posited an absolute power transcending the principle of democracy, was sustained by a degree of support from the general public. Even though our new constitution is already half a century old, there is still a popular feeling of support for the old one, which lives on in some quarters as something more substantial than mere nostalgia. If Japan were to institutionalize a principle other than the one to which we have adhered for the last fifty years, the determination we made in the postwar ruins of our collapsed effort at modernization—that determination of ours to establish the concept of universal humanity—would come to nothing. Speaking as an ordinary individual, this is the specter that rises before me.

  What I call Japan’s “ambiguity” in this lecture is a kind of chronic disease that has been prevalent throughout the modern age. Japan’s economic prosperity is not free from it either, accompanied as it is by all kinds of potential dangers in terms of the structure of the world economy and environmental conservation. The “ambiguity” in this respect seems to be accelerating. It may be more obvious to the critical eyes of the world at large than to us in our own country. At the nadir of postwar poverty we found a resilience to endure it, never losing our hope of recovery. It may sound curious to say so, but we seem to have no less resilience in enduring our anxiety about the future of the present tremendous prosperity. And a new situation now seems to be arising in which Japan’s wealth assumes a growing share of the potential power of both production and consumption in Asia as a whole.

  I am a writer who wishes to create serious works of literature distinct from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer culture of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large. My profession—my “habit of be
ing” (in Flannery O’Connor’s words)—is that of the novelist who, as Auden described him, must:

  . . . , among the Just

  Be just, among the Filthy filthy too,

  And in his own weak person, if he can,

  Must suffer dully all the wrongs of Man.

  “The Novelist,” lines 12–14

  What, as a writer, do I see as the sort of character we Japanese should seek to have? Among the words that George Orwell often used to describe the traits he admired in people was “decent,” along with “humane” and “sane.” This deceptively simple term stands in stark contrast to the “ambiguous” of my own characterization, a contrast matched by the wide discrepancy between how the Japanese actually appear to others and how they would like to appear to them.

  Orwell, I hope, would not have objected to my using the word “decent” as a synonym of the French humaniste, because both terms have in common the qualities of tolerance and humanity. In the past, Japan too had some pioneers who tried hard to build up the “decent” or “humanistic” side of ourselves. One such person was the late Professor Kazuo Watanabe, a scholar of French Renaissance literature and thought. Surrounded by the insane patriotic ardor of Japan on the eve and in the throes of the Second World War, Watanabe had a lonely dream of grafting the humanistic view of man onto the traditional Japanese sense of beauty and sensitivity to nature, which fortunately had not been entirely eradicated. (I hasten to add that Watanabe’s conception of beauty and nature was different from that of Kawabata as expressed in his “Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself.”) The way Japan had tried to construct a modern state modeled on the West was a disaster. In ways different from yet partly corresponding to that process, Japanese intellectuals tried to bridge the gap between the West and their own country at its deepest level. It must have been an arduous task but also one that sometimes brimmed with satisfaction.