The years 1961-1965 were characterized by a heedless pursuit of economic gains. It was the time of the "economic animals" working hard to get a better life. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that aspiration, but the world is more than only money. In fact, Japanese literature in the 1960s is plagued by the question of the identity of the Japanese, and there exists still a strong trauma from the militarism in the recent past, and the defeat in WWII. The end of the war brought the destruction of sociopolitical identity that had
functioned for many decades. In its place came new education, a consumer
society, new economic patterns, a rise in the status of women, the advance of the
conjugal family, etc.
The highlight of this period were the Tokyo Olympic Games of 1964, which showed the whole world that Japan was back - in a new democratic form.
The doyens of Japanese literature continued writing strong works, such as Diary of a Mad Old Man by Tanizaki; The Old Capital and Beauty and Sadness by Kawabata; and Black Rain by Ibuse.
The writers from the three generations who started their careers in the postwar years were now at their best: Abe Kobo with his masterpiece The Woman in the Dunes, and also The Face of Another; Oe Kenzaburo with his great novel A Personal Experience; Mishima with what many consider as his best work, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, as well as Spring Snow, the first volume of The Sea of Fertility.
New writers in this period are Mizukami (Minakami) Tsutomi who wrote fine and complex novellas, but also published important thrillers; Kono Taeko with her creepy short stories; and Nosaka Akiyuki with The Pornographers and Grave of Fireflies.
"Popular" literature or genre literature also flourished. New popular writers were: Matsumoto Seicho (detective and historical fiction), Shiba Ryotaro (historical fiction), Genji Keita (stories about salary-men), Hoshi Shinichi and Komatsu Sakyo (both science fiction).
1961
Shimanaka Incident: right-wing zealot tries to murder the publisher of the magazine Chuo Koron.
Death of Uno Koji (1891-1961).
(1) Mizukami Tsutomu writes three great novellas.
- Gan no Tera ("The Temple of the Wild Geese," 1961)
Mizukami
used thriller techniques in this semi-autobiographical novel, set in a
Kyoto temple called "the Temple of the Wild Geese" (a sub-temple of
Zen temple Shokokuji) because a famous painter has decorated the sliding doors with
these birds. The story centers on Jinen, a thirteen-year old novice
with a mysterious background. The orphaned son of a beggar, he has a
grotesquely formed head and is generally unhappy and ashamed of his
past. The priest of the temple, Jikai, has taken an ex-geisha from Gion,
Satoko, into the temple. In modern Japan, priests are allowed to
marry, but playing around with a geisha is of course a sign of lewdness in
a priest. On top of that, Jikai is a notorious tippler. The lonely
Jinen develops a crush on Satoko, and she does not completely discourage
his youthful fancy. The unlikely love triangle leads to a brutal climax
- Jikai disappears. Has he really departed on a walking tour of
penance, as Jinen says? A story with great psychological depth and
written in a beautiful style. The Temple of the Wild Geese was filmed in 1962 by Kawashima Yuzo in vibrant black-and-white with Wakao Ayako as Satoko.
[tr. Dennis Washburn, Dalkey Archive Press]
- Gobancho Yugiriro ("The Yugiri Brothel at Gobancho," 1963)
A young woman from a poor family in Fukui is sold to the Yugiri geisha
house in Nishijin, Kyoto. A rich merchant wants to be her lover, but she
is already in love with a local boy who has become a novice in the
Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Out of frustration he in the end sets
fire to the priceless structure... After Mishima, the second novel to take up the theme of the arson of the Golden Pavilion. The Yugiri Brothel at Gobancho was filmed in 1963 by Tasaka Tomitaka.
[No English translation]
- Echizen take ningyo ("Bamboo Dolls of Echizen," 1963)
A
young bamboo craftsman, Kisuke, takes his father's prostitute Tamae as a
wife and insists on treating her as a mother - the two never become
lovers. The story has weird Freudian overtones. Cared for by Tamae,
Kisuke becomes a renowned craftsman, a maker of the bamboo dolls the
region is famous for. Part folk tale and part social realism, set in the
isolated rural scenery of Fukui Prefecture. Lots of local color, often
of a primitive and ghostly nature. Bamboo Dolls of Echizen was filmed in 1963 by Yoshimura Kozaburo as a stylish melodrama.
[tr. Dennis Washburn, Dalkey Archive Press]
[Mizukami Tsutomu]
Mizukami
(Minakami) Tsutomu (1919–2004) was born as the son of a shrine
carpenter in the Wakasa region of Fukui Prefecture, on the Japan Sea
coast above Kyoto. After staying as a novice in a Kyoto temple, in
1936 Mizukami entered Ritsumeikan University to study Japanese
literature, but dropped out due to financial problems. He also studied
with the author Uno Koji, but was unable to achieve success. Mizukami's
breakthrough finally came in 1959 when he published a popular mystery, Mist and Shadow. It was detective fiction with a social theme, a genre initiated by Matsumoto Seicho. In 1961 Mizukami wrote The Fangs of the Sea
in the same vein, a mystery novel about the Minamata Disease, which won
him the Mystery Writers' Club Prize. His most enduring popular work in
this genre was Straits of Hunger from 1963. Mizukami used the financial security provided by these mystery novels to return to pure literature. The Temple of the Geese
(1962) was based on his own temple experiences and won him the
prestigious Naoki Prize. The years of literary and social apprenticeship
now paid off and several masterworks followed. His study of the 15th c.
eccentric Zen-master Ikkyu was awarded the Tanizaki Prize in 1975.
(2) Utsukushisa to kanashimi ("Beauty and Sadness") & Koto ("The Old Capital") are serialized by Kawabata Yasunari
- Utsukushisa to kanashimi ("Beauty and Sadness").
A
complex melodrama that is in itself entertaining with elements as lust,
jealousy and revenge, but which lacks the more quiet aesthetic of
Kawabata best work. John Lewell has called it: "a complex melodrama exploring the idea that true beauty is always to be found in pathos, and vice versa." A novelist, Oki Toshio, who is getting on in years, goes to Kyoto to visit the woman, Ueno Otoko, who was his mistress a quarter of a century earlier. Ueno Otoko is now a famous painter and recluse, living with her female protégée and jealous lover, Sakami Keiko. Keiko states several times that she wants to avenge Otoko for Oki's abandonment (which has ruined Otoko's life, moreover the baby she had with Oki was still-born), and when Oki has returned to Kamakura she seduces him, and then turns her attention to his son, Taiichiro. The story coalesces into a climactic ending: a motor boat accident on lake Biwa. It is as if Kawabata wants to say that karma moves along parallel lines, and that actions are repeated endlessly. The novel was filmed in 1965 by Shinoda Masahiro.
[tr. Howard Hibbett]
- Koto ("The Old Capital")
Set in Kyoto, this novel sometimes reads like a tourist pamphlet for the ancient capital. Chieko,
the adopted daughter of a kimono trader from Nishijin, discovers her
lost twin sister, Naeko, who works in the cedar forests to the north of
the city. She become so obsessed with this rediscovered twin sister, that the novel reads like a feminine love story. Chieko tries to have her boyfriend, Hideo, marry Naeko, but the twin sister believes Hideo's love is an illusion. From her side, Chieko has no intention of marrying Hideo. In the end, Naeko decides to return to the forest where she was brought up - a plantlike philosophy that is a relic of the past. The plot is delightfully inconclusive. Three film adaptations were made of this novel: by Nakamura Noboru (1963, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film), by Ichikawa Kon (1980, the last movie in which actress Yamaguchi Momoe appeared her marriage) and by Saito Yuki (2016).
[tr. J. Martin Holman]
(3) Stories and a novel from the early 1960s by Mishima Yukio.
- Star (Suta, 1960)
Published shortly after Mishima had his first starring role in a film,
"Star" tells the story of a popular young actor, disillusioned with fame,
and the anxieties he feels over his career and public image. The film was Afraid to Die (1960) helmed by Masumura Yasuzo, and Mishima played a young gangster. It was hard work for Mishima as Masumura was unsatisfied with Mishima's acting skills, and demanded many retakes as a result. The story "Star" was relatively forgotten in Japan and overshadowed by Mishima's other works, but it is a quite interesting story, and what is says about "stars" is still relevant in this all-too-starry age.
[tr. Sam Beth]
- "Yukoku" ("Patriotism," 1961)
"Patriotism"
stages Lieutenant Takeyama Shinji and his wife Reiko’s ritual suicide
following and attempted coup by an army unit on February 26, 1936. The couple’s
demise, intended to solve a moral dilemma, is presented by the narrator
as a praiseworthy example of dedication to Japan and the emperor. Mishima filmed it with himself in the role of the seppuku-committing lieutenant, as if it were a rehearsal for his own suicide in November 1970. All in all, a rather disgusting expression of Mishima's fascism and ridiculous ideology.
[tr. Geoffrey W. Sargent in Death in Midsummer]
- Mikumanomode ("Act of Worship," lit. "Pilgrimage to
the Three Shrines of Kumano," 1965)
There are two central characters in this story: a famous professor of classical Japanese literature and himself a well-known poet, and his loyal housekeeper, who under his guidance dabbles in tanka poetry. Both are unattractive as persons: the professor is so solitary and outlandish that is dubbed Dr Weirdo; the housekeeper, a 45-year old widow, is lacking in feminine charm and very shy and submissive. When the professor makes a trip to the three Kumano shrines in southern Wakayama, he surprisingly takes the housekeeper along, the first time they have traveled together in their ten year long association. It installs some romantic notions in the mind of the admiring housekeeper who is secretly in love with the professor. The true motives of the professor to travel together are very different - they form the central puzzle of the story, and will be slowly ferreted out by the housekeeper. Why does he bury combs with a woman's name on them at each of the shrines? The description of their trip - Kumano with the Nachi waterfall is an ancient cult site that often figures in classical poetry - is skillfully interwoven with references to waka poetry from the past. One of the most accomplished stories Mishima wrote.
[tr. John Bester in Acts of Worship]
- Kemono no tawamure ("The Frolic of the Beasts", 1961)
Mishima wrote 34 novels, so it is not so strange that one has fallen below the radar, even in Japan. But in the case of "The Frolic of the Beasts," that is certainly undeserved as this short novel proves to be vintage Mishima. It is true literary fiction with overtones of the No theater and not one of the more easy novels Mishima also wrote in this period. Mishima has used elements from the classical No play "Motomezuka," about a young women who had two suitors, but could not make a choice between them and - being pulled from one to the other - in the end drowned herself, upon which both suitors also committed suicide. Besides being a variation of the plot of the No play, the faces of the protagonists in the novel are regularly compared to No masks. The love triangle involves the penniless student Koji, one of Mishima's hot-blooded young men (he reminded me of Saburo from Thirst for Love, or Yuichi from Forbidden Colors); the rich playboy and well-known literary critic Kusakado Ippei; and Ippei's beautiful but enigmatic wife Yuko. Koji wrongly thinks that because of her husband's philandering Yuko is a miserable, unhappy woman he has to save from her fate; and Yuko plays games with him without realizing how dangerous that is. Even when Koji attacks Ippei and turns him into a lifelong invalid, Yuko keeps up the friendship with him...
[tr. Andrew Clare]
(4) Sebuntin
("Seventeen") by Oe Kenzaburo is a novella about a lonely seventeen
year old who is in the throes of becoming a right wing activist and
assassin.
In 1960 and 1961, there had been several murder
attempts against politicians - including Japan's prime minister - by
right wing zealots; the most notable among the successful ones was the
stabbing to death of the chairman of the Socialist Party while he was
engaged in a public debate on TV. The culprit, Yamaguchi Otoya, was a
seventeen year old terrorist who hanged himself three weeks later in a
juvenile penitentiary, after scribbling a right wing slogan on the wall
of his cell. Oe modeled the protagonist of Seventeen on
Yamaguchi, and drew details of the story with oppressive sordidness. As a
result (and also because of a second novella, since withdrawn, in which
he was even more outspoken), Oe himself became a target of right-wingers. Seventeen is in fact a hyperbolic caricature of a
fanatic adolescent, who is at the same time battling his sexual urges with discomfort. The remarks in the story about the Nazi uniform and
the Imperial Way Party serve as a prophetic blueprint for Mishima's last
novels as Runaway Horses as well as his actual suicide - and a measured answer to Mishima's Patriotism.
[tr. Luk van Haute]
1962
Cuban missile crisis.
Death of popular historical novelist Yoshikawa Eiji (1892-1962).
[Film poster The Woman in the Dunes]
(1) Suna no Onna ("The Woman in the Dunes") is the greatest novel by Abe Kobo
The
Woman in the Dunes is a surrealistic and sometimes even absurdist
novel that reminds one of Sartre and Beckett. A school
teacher called Niki Junpei has taken a few days off to spend time on his
hobby, collecting insects. For that purpose he visits a dune region in a
remote part of Japan, far from Tokyo. Junpei
passes through a village where some of the houses stand in deep sand
pits. When he misses the last bus back to civilization, the locals
suggest he stay the night in their village. They send him down a rope
ladder into just such a sand pit. Here a young widow lives alone,
battling with the sand that threatens to destroy her ramshackle
dwelling. Every night she must dig away the sand that is hauled up by
the villagers and then sold to the cities. If she stops digging, not
only her house will be engulfed, but the sand will also threaten the
other houses in the village.
Junpei listens without
interest to her story - he thinks it has nothing to do with him, after
all he will be leaving the next morning. But when the next day dawns, he
discovers that the rope ladder has been removed. He has been trapped.
The villagers tell him he must help the widow, as she needs the strength
of a man to battle the ever-encroaching sand. Junpei has been caught
like an insect... The Woman in the Dunes is in all respects a perfect novel. The ideas,
the setting, the story and the way it is told, the implications for the
human condition, everything is in perfect balance. Expertly filmed by Teshigahara Hiroshi with Okada
Eiji and Kishida Keiko, and music by Takemitsu Toru.
[tr. E. Dale Saunders]
(2) The two last novels by Tanizaki Junichiro, Futen rojin nikki ("The Diary of a Mad Old Man") & Daidokoro Taiheki ("The Maids")
- Futen rojin nikki ("The Diary of a Mad Old Man")
The fictional diary of Tokusuke, a 77-year old man whose health is rapidly failing, and one of Tanizaki's most delicious books. Tokusuke has the same health problems as Tanizaki and seems to be the author's alter ego also in other respects. His chief motivation for clinging to life is his secret erotic obsession with Atsuko, his young daughter-in-law who used to be a chorus girl. She is frivolous, acquisitive, and cruelly plays with the old man like a cat with a mouse. He enjoys these games and favors her with expensive presents over his wife and daughters - who are the only ones genuinely worried about his health. Tokusuke lusts after Satsuko's feet and when he catches a glimpse of her ankle, or is allowed to touch her briefly, his blood pressure goes through the roof. The finale of this short novel is superb. Tokusuke travels with Satsuko to Kyoto to select a tombstone for his future grave. Now in Buddhism there is a tradition of honoring the Buddha's footprints, images of his foot soles supposed to have been left by him on earth to purposefully mark his passage over a particular spot. A famous footprint stone stands in Yakushiji Temple in Nara. But Tokusuke wants to have an image of Satsuko's dainty foot on his grave, trampling on him in all eternity! Their time in Kyoto is spent making the right footprint and ordering the stone. We any moment expect the old man to drop dead because of all his strenuous efforts, but on the contrary, when he returns home he starts making plans to construct a swimming pool in the garden of his Western-style home so that he will have a prime view of Satsuko's legs when she is bathing...
[tr. Howard Hibbett]
- Daidokoro Taiheiki ("The Maids," lit. "The Chronicle of Great Peace of the Kitchen")
The Taiheiki is a famous 14th c. historical epic, and "daidokoro" means "kitchen." So we could paraphrase the title as "epic battles in the kitchen," an ironic title for reminiscences about the successive (young) maids who served in the Tanizaki home (here called Chikura Raikishi, but nobody is fooled). The book was first published in serialized form, and it feels more like a loose collection of scenes-from-a-life rather than a fully developed novel. It starts in 1937 and continues to the early 1960s, through the various houses where Tanizaki himself lived in those years. It is almost a sociological study that shows how the institution of "maids in the household" changed over time. The Tanizaki home teemed with young maids, especially in the pre-war years, and Tanizaki gives us individual character portraits and sometimes a bit of a story (some of the maids have interesting quirks), but the result is only mildly interesting from a literary point of view: a nicely laid-back series of anecdotes, but also a decidedly minor work. (In some reviews of the recent translation, it is compared to Tanizaki's magnum opus The Makioka Sisters, but that is rather misleading - the two books have nothing in common.)
[tr. Michael P. Cronin]
(3) Hideyoshi to Rikyu ("Hideyoshi and Rikyu") by Nogami Yaeko explores the mystery of the forced suicide of tea master Sen no Rikyu.
Nogami Yaeko almost became a hundred years of age and left an immense body of work, of which very little has been translated into English. Happily, that was not the fate of her greatest novel, published when she was 77, a historical tale focusing on the complex relationship between tea master Sen no Rikyu and 16th c. warlord and finally de facto ruler of Japan, Hideyoshi. Toyotomi Hideyoshi rose through the ranks from a common foot soldier to
become the military ruler of Japan but struggled to win respect among
the cultured nobility. Sen no Rikyu was a wealthy merchant from trade center Sakai, who not only had become the country's most accomplished tea master, but who also functioned as political advisor to Hideyoshi. Nogami contrasts Hideyoshi's love of ostentatious display with the ideals of simplicity and rusticity
emphasized by Rikyu. The intertwined lives of these two iconic historical figures ended in disaster for one of them: as is well known, the tea master was forced to commit suicide. Nogami is very knowledgeable both about the tea ceremony and the No theater, adding to the interest of this historical novel. But above all it is a psychological portrait of two powerful men. Nogami's novel won the Woman's Literature Prize in 1964 and was beautifully adapted into the film Rikyu by Teshigahara Hiroshi.
[tr. by Mariko Nishi LaFleur and Morgan Beard]
Nogami Yaeko (1885-1985) wrote her first story in the Meiji period and was praised by Natsume Soseki. She developed from impressionistic realism to a plainer style used in her novels of social analysis. Her greatest work in that respect was the huge novel Meiro (Labyrinth, 1956), which describes the pre-war Marxist movement in inexhaustible detail. Influenced by 19th c. English literature, Nogami held enlightened, humanist views. She was married to a famous scholar of the No theater. Her last work was a long autobiographical novel Mori (The Forest, 1971). It is a pity so little has been translated of this "grand old lady" of modern Japanese literature.
(4) Ryoma ga yuku ("Ryoma Goes His Way") by Shiba Ryotaro starts being serialized (until 1966).
Originally serialized in the national newspaper Sankei Shinbun, this epic of the life and times of Sakamoto Ryoma is one of Shiba Ryotaro's most interesting novels. Sakamoto Ryoma - a low ranking samurai of the Tosa domain (now Kochi Prefecture) - is a historic figure who today is widely known as one of the main architects leading Japan into the 1868 Meiji Restoration. Shiba depicts the life of Sakamoto Ryoma on a large scale, as he played major roles in such events as the 1866 formation of a military alliance between the two powerful domains, Satsuma and Choshu, which led to the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the formation of the new Meiji government the next year. But more than that, Ryoma Goes His Way is a riveting and vivid story about the life of a brilliant young man in turbulent times. Ryoma realized that Japan was almost powerless in the face of the technology and well-developed industry of the Western powers, and he was convinced that it needed to adopt elements of Western culture to develop into a strong country. Although now considered as a romantic hero and great leader, Sakamoto Ryoma was not well known in Japan prior to the publication of Shiba's novel, which became a great bestseller and sold 21,250,000 copies. Ryoma has been heavily romanticized in Japanese popular culture, something which was helped by the fact that he died a tragic death at a very young age: in 1867 he was assassinated in Kyoto.
[tr. Paul McCarthy & Juliet Winters Carpenter]
Shiba Ryotaro (1923-1996) started writing historical novels after World War II. The pen name "Shiba" he selected is suggestive: it is the name of the famous Chinese historian Sima Qian, who lived 2,000 years ago. Shiba won the prestigious Naoki Prize for his 1959 novel, Fukuro no Shiro (Owl Castle). Better known are his long novels Ryoma ga Yuku ("Ryoma Goes His Way," translated as "Ryoma!"), about the life of Sakamoto Ryoma, and Sakanoue no Kumo (“Clouds Above the Hill”), a novel centering on the war between Japan and Russia. Another series that won him fame were his travel essays, 1,146 installments in all, printed first in the Shukan Asahi magazine and then issued as a series of books called Kaido wo Yuku (“Going along the Highways”). These were made into a documentary series by NHK. In fact, many of Shiba's 500 books were filmed or made into TV dramas, especially the NHK historical “Taiga” dramas broadcast on Sunday evening. Even in his novels, many parts read like essays - the story leans on the historical sources and Shiba's interpretation of them. There is an interesting Shiba Ryotaro Museum in Osaka (see article on my website).
1963
Mitsui Miike Coal Mine disaster kills 458 by carbon monoxide explosion.
(1) Kono Taeko writes her creepy, early short stories, including Akutagawa Prize-winning "Kani" ("The Crabs").
- "Yojigari" ("Toddler Hunting," 1961)
The protagonist, a childless woman called Hayashi Akiko, loathes young girls, but is obsessed with young boys: she compulsively buys expensive clothes for strange boys. She has also masochistic fantasies about the boys being cruelly punished. The relation with her adult partner is based on sadomasochism as well. An extremely weird story in which motherhood is turned on its head.
- "Kani" ("The Crabs," 1963)
A story about a woman, Yuko, in a marriage based on SM. She suffers from tuberculosis and during the summer stays at the seaside to recover. There she is visited by her brother-in-law with his wife and little boy. Yuko's infatuation with her young nephew borders on perversion. She manages to keep him at her side by promising to find little crabs with red pincers "that the children like to play with," but they never find any.
- "Yoru wo yuku" ("Night Journey," 1963)
A married couple have invited their friends - a couple (there is a hint of partner switching here) - for dinner, but when they don't show up, they travel to their friend's house at night - a trip which becomes a bewitching journey into the forbidden.
- "Ari takaru" ("Ants Swarm," 1964)
A woman who might be pregnant idly imagines what it would be like to have a child. Where many women would be excited at the prospect, she’s rather less enthusiastic, and the ideas she reveals of how to raise the child, especially if it’s a girl, are disturbing to say the least.
[All stories mentioned above included in Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories, tr. by Lucy North, New Directions]
[Kono Taeko]
Kono Taeko (1926-2015) was born in Osaka as the fourth of five children of a wholesale merchant. She was often ailing in her youth and at that time developed an interest in the works of Izumi Kyoka and Tanizaki Junichiro. After finishing her economics degree at Women's University in 1947, she decided to make a career for herself as a writer and she moved to Tokyo. There she joined a literary group led by Niwa Fumio, and threw herself into writing, at the same time working full-time. After nearly a decade of trying, during which she suffered several setbacks in her health, including two bouts of tuberculosis, in 1962 she was awarded Shinchosha's "Dojin zasshi" Award for her story "Yojigari." In 1963 her short story "Kani" won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. After this Kono began to produce a stream of remarkable short fiction. Since then she has published a book every year and won many literary prizes.
Kono
Taeko freely
admitted the influence of Tanizaki on her stories. In his
novels, Tanizaki explored the taboo of perverted desire, and similarly
Kono’s female protagonists seethe with neuroses and masochistic sexual
desires. The stories Kono wrote, however, are
more shocking than anything Tanizaki ever penned because shocking motifs are combined with the detailed description of small incidents from everyday life - underneath the seemingly normal routines of daily life, one may find hidden desires for abnormal behavior. There is a strong sense that these desires arise because the
characters are forced to live under psychologically oppressive cultural
constraints; the heroines in her stories seem to feel that something is missing in their relationships with the world. Kono Taeko also established a reputation for herself as an acerbic essayist, a playwright and a literary critic. By the end of her life she was a leading presence in Japan's literary establishment, one of the first women writers to serve on the Akutagawa Literary Prize committee.
(2) Erogotoshitachi ("The Pornographers") by Nosaka Akiyuki.
The first novel by then 33-year old Nosaka Akiyuki, highly praised by Mishima Yukio and Yoshiyuki Junnosuke. The absurd antics of two down-at-heel pornographers active in the Osaka area are not only wonderful inventions but perfectly express the author's peculiar brand of warm-hearted cynicism. Subuyan considers it as his mission in life to provide all possible kinds of erotic enjoyment to the male half of the population, and various customs from the early 1960s such as blue film, Turkish baths, and erotic photography are woven into the work. The grotesque and obscene reality is spelled out with an underlying feeling of melancholy, but also fierce humor - and the idea of eroticism is drawn ironically. On a more serious note Nosaka also includes reminisences by Subuyan of how his mother died in the Kobe air raid, elements based on Nosaka's own war experience (he lost his adoptive father in the raid). Imamura Shohei's 1966 free film adaptation is just as famous as the novel.
[tr. Michael Gallagher]
Nosaka Akiyuki (1930-2015) grew up in Kobe as one of the "generation of the ashes," like Oe Kenzaburo. He was not only active as a novelist, but also as singer, lyricist, and (since 1983) member of the House of Councillors. His wartime experiences which included the deaths of a sister from malnutrition and of his adoptive father from the 1945 bombing of Kobe, formed the material for his masterful short
story Grave of the Fireflies. Grave of the Fireflies and American
Hijiki won the Naoki Prize in 1967 - both these novellas are in my view far superior to The Pornographers.
(3)
Setouchi Harumi writes "Natsu no owari" ("The End of Summer," published
as full set in 1966), a series of linked short stories about the
conflicting emotions of a woman breaking away from her bonds.
A collection of linked stories insipred by the writer's own adulterous affair. Tomoko, the lover of two men (one married), must summon the courage to free herself from the chains of conventional Japanese society, and find inner peace.
[tr. Janine Beichman with Alan Brender]
Setouchi Jakucho (Harumi, b. 1922) is a Japanese nun of the Tendai school of Buddhism and a writer. She was born in Tokushima to a family that dealt in religious goods. In 1943, at the age fo 21, while attending Tokyo Women's Christian University, she got married and gave birth to a girl the following year. After that, she accompanied her husband to Beijing. She returned to Japan in 1946, where she had an affair, which motivated her to leave her marriage and go to Tokyo to become a full-fledged novelist. Much of her work has been semi-autobiographical, while she also wrote biographical novels about famous feminists such as Ito Noe. In 1972 she became a Buddhist nun in the Tendai school of Buddhism, but continued her writing activity, now under the name Setouchi Jakucho. Setouchi's vernacular translation of The Tale of Genji was published in 1998. The translation is rather too free (more an adaptation) and not as good as those by Tanizaki Junichiro or Yasano Akiko, but all the same it became a best seller which sold 2.1 million copies.
(4) "Kataude" ("One Arm") by Kawabata Yasunari
An unsettling short story by Kawabata. A
young woman removes her right arm and gives it to the narrator to keep
for the night. He talks with it and caresses it, and then decides to replace his
own arm with it. The "relationship" the man has with the detached arm
serves as a portal into a landscape of memory and emotions. One of Kawabata's weirdest stories.
[tr. Edward Seidensticker in The House of Sleeping Beauties]
(5) Gogo no eiko
("The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea," lit. "A Tugboat in the
Afternoon," with "eiko, tugboat" homonym with "eiko, glory") by Mishima
Yukio.
An expression of Mishima's love of glorious heroes in uniform, be they sailors or soldiers, and also a tale that like Musil's Young Torless shows how susceptible young people can be to fascist thought. A sailor, on
shore in Yokohama, falls in love with a young widow and is initially
admired by that widow's son Noboru for his strong adventure tales. But
the boy - who is a member of a group of precocious, but also fascistic and
nihilistic boys - is disappointed when the sailor decides to marry his
mother and start a peaceful life on land. The group, whose members have
practiced by vivisecting a cat (a disgusting scene, in reality watched by Mishima
to be able to vividly describe it), decide to kill him because to them
he has lost his "purity," and one afternoon lure him to an isolated
spot...The story is well told and has a strong focus. In contrast to Musil, Mishima is on the side of the
ideology of the boy gang, or better, he uses the boy gang to give expression to his own ideology. The sailor must be punished by the boys because he gives up his "destiny" and "glory" and bows to convention. He is on the verge of becoming an ordinary husband and father, without heroism, and therefore deserves to die. But the punishment is also a form of love, as it protects the punished from himself.
[tr. John Nathan]
(6) Kiga Kaikyo ("Hunger Straits") by Mizukami Tsutomu is a dark thriller and Matsumoto Seicho-style critique of Japanese society.
The
long novel consists of two interlocking stories, of a prostitute and a
police detective, who are searching for the same fugitive. Three robbers escape with loot from a heist. During the escape, one of them kills both his comrades. Their dead bodies wash up on the shore after a maritime disaster, but a policeman, Yumisaka, becomes suspicious because they are not listed as passengers. The surviving robber Inukai is sheltered by a prostitute, Yae. In return, the robber gives her a large sum of money, and she is able to start a new life. Many years later, Yae sees the man who had given her the money in a newspaper article. She tries to thank him, but because he has now become a respectable citizen, living under a false name, he kills her so that his secret will be safe. Yumisaka, who was forced to resign from the police force because of his obsession with this case, is back chasing the murderer... Filmed in
1965 by Uchida Tomu, with Mikuni Rentaro, Hidari Sachiko and Takakura Ken.
[No translation]
1964
A
seminal year. The Tokyo Olympics (the first Olympic Games held in an
Asian city) and the start of operation of high-speed Shinkansen trains
between Tokyo and Osaka reflect a society-wide sense that post-war
reconstruction is over and that Japan has rejoined the international
family of nations. Individuals born beginning around this date were often
subsequently identified as "shinjinrui" (or "new people") because they
had not experienced the suffering older generations had during WWII and
the postwar period, but grew up in material plenty.
Diplomatic
negotiations underway this year between South Korea and Japan result in
a formal normalization of relations the following year.
(1) A novel and a story about the birth of a mentally challenged son by Oe Kenzaburo.
- Kojinteki na taiken ("A Personal Matter"), written when Oe was only 29, is often considered as his best novel.
The
protagonist, only known by the nickname "Bird," is stuck in a dead-end
job and stale marriage and unrealistically dreams of escape in the form
of a trip to Africa. While his wife is in a hospital to give birth to
their first child, he roams the city searching for maps of Africa. When
the baby is born, the doctors tell him it suffers from brain hernia and
even if it lives (for which an operation is necessary) it may never be
normal. Facing a future trapped by a handicapped child, with only a
vegetable life, Bird encourages the doctors
to let it die by substituting sugar water for milk. He then disappears
for four nightmarish guilt-ridden days into a cloud of alcohol and sex
with his ex-girlfriend, the eccentric and freewheeling Himiko (who is
running away from her own problem, the suicide of her husband). Bird
builds up such a terrific hangover that he vomits in front of the class
he is teaching and loses his cram-school job. Then the baby, the
"two-headed monster," despite the sugar water proves to be fit
enough for an operation. Bird refuses the operation and with Himiko's
help takes the child out of the hospital and brings it to an abortionist
in order to be killed. It is only at the last moment that he realizes he should
take his responsibility in life and come to terms with having a mentally
handicapped child. The novel is a tour de force, except that the
positive ending feels "tacked on," it is too sudden (but true to form,
Bird's motivation is a self-centered one, he does not express any
empathy with the baby). Something I found rather strange about the novel
is that the wife of Bird remains completely in the background - Bird
never consults her about the life and death decision he has to make,
although it is also her child. The character of Himiko has been called
Oe's most successful female portrait, but as Susan Napier writes, from a
Western feminist perspective much remains to be desired: Himiko's role
is basically a submissive one, like an all-accepting "earth mother,"
sacrificing herself for the man's good (Escape from the Wasteland,
p. 93). Although the subtext of the long love scenes in the novel is
rather violent and anti-female, Mishima Yukio called them "the best in
postwar fiction."
[tr. by John Nathan]
- "Sora no kaibutsu Agui" ("Aghwee the Sky Monster") appeared early in the same year as A Personal Matter and obviously represents the novel's alternative ending.
But
the story can stand by itself, and has an eerie sheen to it, rendered
mostly in the lead character's schizophrenia and guilt from a planned
infanticide. In the end, there is redemption, but it comes with a steep
price.
[tr. John Nathan in Contemporary Japanese Literature]
(2) Nireke no hitobito
("The House of Nire") by Kita Morio is a comic novel relating he
history of the Nire family from the end of WWI to the end of WWII.
A humerous novel about the
history of the Nire family from the end of the First World War to the
end of the Second. We meet the vain and selfish Nire Kiichiro, founder not only of the family
mental hospital but of the family itself; and his children, adopted children, grandchildren, and
any number of hangers-on, who form an interesting cast of weird characters. However, after the opening chapters full of delicious humor, when Kiichiro dies in the novel, the novel also dies, because there are no strong characters anymore. The story goes down in the gathering political storm that eventually leads to war and defeat.
[tr. Dennis Keene, 2 vols]
(3) Tanin no kao ("The Face of Another") by Abe Kobo
A
psychological novel and study of alienation in monologue style dealing with the varied
personalities and masks by which we live. An engineer, Okuyama, has his face severely burnt in a
work-related accident. His wife is so repulsed by his disfigurement that she refuses to have sexual contact with him. In an effort to regain her affection, he asks another scientist to create a prosthetic, lifelike mask for him (but different
from his original face). The scientist who has developed the mask
cautions him that it may change his behavior and personality and even
make him loose his sense of morality. And indeed, with a new face, the protagonist sees the world in a new way and
to test the mask, he proceeds
to seduce his estranged wife. In the end the question is whether the mask has taken ownership of the man or the man has taken ownership of the new face. A meditation on what a "face" is, in a
country where Face is very important. In 1966, adapted into a film directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara.
[tr. E. Dale Saunders]
(4) Two Novellas by Tachihara Masaaki.
- Takigi No ("Torchlight No", 1964)
A
story about beauty in death. The protagonist, Masako, is drawn to her
cousin Suntaro, because of her husband's unfaithfulness. The
psychological change in Masako is described in detail and with stark
realism. In addition, the experience of the beauty of the No and the
lovers' double suicide are more minutely described.
[tr. Stephen W. Kohl]
- Kengasaki ("Cliff's edge", 1965)
A story about the
problem of identity faced by a youth of mixed blood, set against the
background of the Japanese defeat in WWII and the subsequent
independence of Korea. Kenkichi opposes Taro's marriage to Shizuko, not
because the two lovers are cousins, but because of Taro's Japanese and
Korean background.
[tr. Stephen W. Kohl]
Tachihara
Masaaki (1926-1980) was born in Korea and grew up studying the arts of
medieval Japan, especially literature and the No theater, as well as traditional Japanese gardens. His family moved to Japan when he was four years old and he received a Japanese education, studying at Waseda University; in 1947 he became a naturalized Japanese. From 1950 he lived in Kamakura.
(5) Kinu to meisatsu
("Silk and Insight") is a novel by Mishima Yukio describing a strike of
workers at a silk factory against the paternalistic owner, inspired by
newspaper accounts.
By contrasting a paternalistic
Japanese-style owner of a textile company with a European-infatuated
intellectual set to destroy him, Mishima attempts to depict "Japan's
father figure," if not a sort of "emperor" figure. Komazawa Zenjiro, president
of a silk factory at the shore of Lake Biwa, considers his employees as his sons and daughters and believes he protects them with fatherly
benevolence, but he allows no privacy in the dormitories and forbids
marriage between employees. In fact, his is an absolutist and
dictatorial form of paternalism, and he sees a resultant strike in his
factory as a form of unfilial insubordination. Mishima's sympathies are
clearly with the old-fashioned style of Komazawa, so this novel is no
Japanese Germinal. The result is a rather strange book, without a
clear focus, and not surprisingly, this weak novel was not a favorite
with critics or readers in Japan. John Nathan, who had just expertly
translated A Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, refused to translate it,
causing a rift with Mishima (Nathan would go on the translate several
novels by Oe Kenzaburo, Mishima's rival), and the book had to wait many
years for the present translation by Sato Hiroaki.
[tr. Sato Hiroaki]
(6) Kawabata Yasunari starts serialization of what would become his last (unfinished) novel, Tanpopo ("Dandelions"), about a young woman who is confined to an asylum with mental illness.
Although
strongly present in the family's collective memory, Ineko may in fact
never have existed. Kawabata strings memory fragments together,
including those of Ineko's father, an officer during WWII supposedly
saved from suicide by a magical young woman - who gradually merges with
his daughter Ineko...
[tr. Michael Emmerich, New Directions]
(7) Watakushi ga suteta onna
("The Girl I Left Behind") by Endo Shusaku finds the Christian writer
in a sentimental and pious mood, somewhat like a Sunday school tale.
A
good Samaritan story about a naive country girl, Mitsu, who is a
Christian, and who after being used badly by a student whom she loves,
falls into prostitution. The student will keep meeting her or hearing
about her at crucial moments in his life as salaryman with a wife and
family, arousing feelings of guilt. Mitsu in the meantime, has been
misdiagnosed with leprosy, and afterwards stays on in the asylum as a
caretaker, until a traffic accident rips her out of this life. The blurb
on the book calls this "early Endo," but that is nonsense: when writing
this novel, Endo had already written a masterwork as The Sea and Poison, and within a few years Silence
would follow. In other words, he was at the height of his powers.
Rather than being an unripe work, this is a case of "popular literature": just like
Kawabata and Mishima, besides his serious work, Endo regularly
wrote popular novels and this is an example of such an "easy" novel
meant for a mass audience.
[tr. Mark Williams]
1965
U.S. airplanes begin bombing North Vietnam.
Death of Tanizaki Junichiro (1886-1965). Death of Edogawa Ranpo (1894-1965).
The
Tanizaki Prize is established by the publishing company Chuo Koronsha
to commemorate its 80th anniversary as a publisher. It is named in honor
of Tanizaki Junichiro, who died this year. It is awarded annually to a
full-length representative work of fiction or drama of the highest
literary merit by a professional writer.
(1) Haru no yuki ("Spring Snow," first part of the tetralogy Hojo no Umi, "The Sea of Fertility") by Mishima Yukio starts being serialized.
Mishima's
tetralogy is rather uneven in quality; this first volume is by far the
best of the four (and also among the best novels Mishima wrote). It is a romantic love story set in the early
Taisho-period, in the by Mishima so much beloved nostalgic milieu of the
aristocracy (which by 1965 did not exist anymore). Protagonists are a
Hamlet-type of indecisiveness, Matsugae Kiyoaki, the son of a rising
nouveau-riche family, and Ayakura Satoko, the daughter of an
aristocratic family fallen on hard times. Honda Shigekuni, a school-friend of Kiyoaki's and the son of a judge, is the main witness to
the novel's events. Kiyoaki is spoiled and willful and hates doing what
people expect of him. In his mood swings, he alternately rejects and
accepts Satoko's demure advances. But then the Ayakuras receive an offer
from an imperial prince, something they may not refuse, and Satoko
becomes engaged to be married into the imperial family. Only after the
situation is beyond repair, does Kiyoaki's love flare up as never
before. He begins an affair with Satoko with the help of his friend
Honda, and Satoko eventually becomes pregnant. This means Kiyoaki has
broken the taboo of violating an imperial princess, and thereby
committed "lese-majeste." Satoko retires to a nunnery in Nara, and at age
20 Kiyoaki dies a "Liebestod" in front of the gate of the temple where
she is locked up. But not to worry, for Mishima employs reincarnation to
bring him back (in different form) in the next three volumes of the
novel, an idea he based on an ancient Japanese tale, the Hamamatsu Chunagon Monogatari.
[tr. Michael Gallagher]
(2) Kuroi ame
("Black Rain") by Ibuse Masuji is an impressive novel about the
aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, based on diaries of
survivors.
Japan is unfortunately a culture where all to often things are turned on their head and the victims (of an illness, a kidnapping, or here the A-bomb) may be ostracized by society. The novel shows how the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
affects one family: that of a young woman, Yasuko, who lives with her aunt and
uncle. The title refers to the rain that fell soon after the explosion
and that was mixed with radioactive soot. Yasuko was caught in this
rainfall, and her family is not only worried about her health, but also
and in the first place how it may affect her socially and mentally - as unfortunately happens
in Japanese society, survivors of the bomb were heavily discriminated
against. Filmed in 1989 by Imamura Shohei.
[tr. John Bester]
(3) Hoyo kazoku ("Embracing Family") by Kojima Nobuo became the first winner of the newly created Tanizaki Prize.
A
story about the breakdown of male authority in early 1960s Japan. Miwa
Shunsuke is a university lecturer who lives with his wife
Tokiko and their two children. When a young American soldier comes to
stay with them to help the children with their English, and Tokiko
commits adultery with the GI, the family starts to disintegrate.
Communication between Shunsuke and Tokiko also breaks down. Efforts by
Shunsuke to repair the rift, although well-intended, only serve to
disgust his wife. Shunsuke next develops the plan to build a fully
air-conditioned, concrete-and-glass "American-style" dream house in the
suburbs from which to start anew, but while the house is under
construction, Tokiko falls ill and eventually dies. The house itself
falls apart. An effort by Shunsuke to remarry and to resuscitate his
family is also unsuccessful...
[tr. by Yukiko
Tanaka, Dalkey Archive Press]
(4) Ryugaku ("Foreign Studies") by Endo Shusaku.
Three
linked narratives chart the
gulf between East and West. Evoking provincial France in the post WWII
years, 17th century
Rome as well as Paris in the mid-1960s (by far the longest story), Endo
conveys
the strong sense of alienation felt by three Japanese students when
encountering European culture. Far from broadening horizons,
each challenge leads to a confrontation with the traveler's own
culturally imposed limitations. Inspired by Endo's own experiences as
a student in France in the early 1950s.
[tr. Mark Williams]
(5) Nanamiko monogatari ("A Tale of False Fortunes") by Enchi Fumiko
A historical novel with a complex, layered narrative structure, teeming with
characters who manipulate each other for personal and political reasons.
The tale purports to be a manuscript from the Heian period (794–1185) that describes the rival courts of the two consorts of Emperor Ichijo.
[tr. Roger K. Thomas]
[Reference works used: Dawn to the West by Donald Keene (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984); Modern Japanese Novelists, A Biographical Dictionary by John Lewell (New York, Tokyo and London: Kodansha International, 1993); Narrating the Self, Fictions of Japanese Modernity by Tomi Suzuki (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Oe and Beyond, Fiction in Contemporary Japan, ed. by Stephen Snyder and Philip Gabriel (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999); Origins of Modern Japanese Literature by Karatani Kojin (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993); The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, 2 vols, ed. by J. Thomas Rimer and Van C. Gessel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005 and 2007); The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature by Susan J. Napier (London and New York: Routledge, 1996); Writers & Society in Modern Japan by Irena Powell (New York, Tokyo and London: Kodansha International, 1983); Japanese Literature Reviewed by Donald Richie (ICG MuseInc 2003).]
[Author photos public domain via Wikimedia Commons]