Modern Japanese Fiction by Year (7): The Years of the Quiet Generation (1951-1955)
Within a decade of the defeat, an astonishing array of new literary talent starts producing memorable works of art: Mishima Yukio, Abe Kobo, Oe Kenzaburo, Enchi Fumiko, Endo Shusaku, Oka Shohei, Inoue Yasushi, etc., while several older writers with established reputations, such as Tanizaki and Kawabata, entered new productive phases of their career.
"The Third Generation of Postwar Writers" (Daisan no shinjin) is a classification used to group writers who appeared on the postwar literary scene between 1953 and 1955. They include Endo Shusaku, Yoshioka Shotaro, Yoshiyuki Junnosuke, Shono Junzo, Miura Shumon, Sono Ayako, Agawa Hiroyuki and Kojima Nobuo. Where writers of the first and second postwar generation turned towards Europe and wrote long novels, the third generation authors returned to the Shishosetsu and to the short story form which had been dominant in Japan before the war. Qua content, in contrast to the (anti-)war fiction of the first and second generations (and although they all had military experience), the third generation writers often concentrate on "the ordinariness of daily life." The early writings of these authors can be characterized as dark, sometimes humorous, sometimes surrealistic, but always expressing a sense of disempowerment and degradation - it is sometimes known as the "literature of humiliation." Kojima Nobuo and Yasuoka Shotaro explicitly address the psychological stress of life under foreign occupation, particularly the loss of masculine authority (father, emperor). Their stories are exaggerated, absurdistic and surrealistic.
1951
San Francisco Peace Treaty and the first of the United States-Japan Security Treaties signed. Death of Hayashi Fumiko (1903-1951).
Considered one of the most important novels of the postwar period and based loosely on the author's own wartime experiences in the Philippines, Nobi explores the meaning of human existence through the struggle for survival of men who are driven by starvation to cannibalism. The novel is set in Leyte, where the Japanese army is disintegrating under the blows of the American landings. Military organization has crumbled and the soldiers are left to their individual fate. Within this larger disintegration, there is another: the disintegration of a single man, Private Tamura. One by one, each of his ties to human society is destroyed (especially after he kills an innocent woman in a village), until he, a sensitive and intelligent man, becomes an outcast on the verge of cannibalism. Mad with hunger, the Japanese abandoned soldiers have started killing and eating each other. Subsequently made into a great prize-winning film by Ichikawa Kon in 1959. Also filmed as a sort of zombie-film by Tsukamoto Shinya in 2014.
[tr. by Ivan Morris]
- S. Karuma-shi no hanzai ("The Crime of Mr. S. Karma," 1951)
Only part of "The Crime of Mr. S. Karma" (1951) has been translated - which is a pity as it is quite interesting: the "crime" is that Mr S. Karma lets his name cards (meishi) get away from him and take over his personality! Without cards he has no name or identity, no self, he is hollow inside - a predicament that shows how much Japanese businessmen rely on their business cards.
[Juliet Winters Carpenter, Beyond the Curve]
- "Dendorokakariya" ("Dendrocacalia," 1949)
A bewildered man called "Common" discovers he is turning into a rare plant; he eventually ends up in a botanical garden. The director of the Botanical Garden is called K. so it is clear we are in Kafkaen territory here!
[Juliet Winters Carpenter, Beyond the Curve]
- "Akai mayu" ("The Red Cocoon," 1950)
"Red Cocoon" is one of Abe's earliest stories which already contains the idea of alienated man that we find in his later fiction. A homeless man is wondering why he has no home. Or does he have a home and has he forgotten it? He happens to pull on a bit of silk thread hanging from his shoe and ends up unraveling his leg, then his whole body. The thread forms a cocoon around him, until his body has completely been unraveled. "I have a house now," says the man, "but there is no one left to come home to it." Alienated man seeking for a place in society has lost himself in the process. This can also be linked to Abe's own rootlessness. He was born in Tokyo, but grew up in Manchuria, while his family came originally from Hokkaido. Abe always felt he had no real place of origin. That could also be the reason his fiction has such an international quality: it is mostly devoid of typical Japaneseness, and not linked to any specific cultural location. In that respect Abe Kobo resembles Murakami Haruki.
[Tr. Lane Dunlop, A Late Chrysanthemum]
- "Maho no choku" ("The Magic Chalk," 1950)
About a penniless artist whose crayon drawings come to life. When he draws a meal on his bedroom wall with a newly found piece of red chalk, the food really comes into being - but falls off the wall until he draws a table beneath it. Also sunlight interferes with the magic, so he boards up his windows. For a few weeks, the painter eats every delicacy he can draw...but in the end, he will be swallowed himself by the wall in his room.
[Tr. Alison Kibrick, in The Showa Anthology I]
- "Yuwakusha" ("Beguiled," 1957)
A very clever story. Two men confront each other in the waiting room of a small station, one the pursuer, the other the pursued... but which is which? In the end, one of them is led back to the lunatic asylum from which he escaped.
[Juliet Winters Carpenter, Beyond the Curve]
- "Mukankei na shi" ("An Irrelevant Death," 1961)
A man returns home from work to find a murdered man he doesn't know in his apartment. He contemplates ways how to get rid of the unexplained and unpleasant body without incurring suspicion, but everything he does seems to implicate him more and more in the crime.
[Juliet Winters Carpenter, Beyond the Curve]
- "Kabu no muko" ("Beyond the Curve," 1966)
A man with amnesia tries to remember his past, which exists just beyond the curve of his mind - and is symbolized by the fact that he can't remember what is beyond the curve of the road he is walking on. He has no identity, he even has no business cards in his wallet. When a woman working in a coffee restaurant recognizes him, he still fails to remember who he is and he can only try to cover up his ignorance while waiting for his memory to come back.
[Juliet Winters Carpenter, Beyond the Curve]
(3) Short stories about failing "heroes" by Yasuoka Shotaro.
- "Garasu no kutsu" ("The Glass Slipper," 1951)
The narrator, a clerk at a shop selling hunting rifles, is sent to the home of a U.S. military doctor to deliver a purchase. The doctor and his wife are out, and in their place a teenage maid, Etsuko, answers the door and welcomes the narrator in with great warmth. The narrator develops fervent feelings for the naive Etsuko whose strange, playful ways move him and torment him. He visits her every day, but when the doctor and his wife return home, things come to an end. Etsuko is like Cinderella's glass slipper that disappears at the stroke of midnight. A story which has earned high praise from Murakami Haruki.
[tr. Royall Tyler, Dalkey Archive Press]
- "Aigan" ("Prized Possessions," 1952)
In the meager years after the war, a family (father, mother and son) decides to start breeding rabbits to supplement their income, but that is not so easy as it seems. A grotesque story, in which the indignities of living in the immediate postwar years are covered in a cloak of self-mockery. But the comic weakness of the protagonists is also very human. Arguably Yasuoka's best story.
[tr. Edwin McClellan in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, Volume 2]
- "Warui nakama" ("Bad Company," 1953)
Won, together with another story by Yasuoka, "Gloomy Pleasures," the 29th Akutagawa prize in 1953. Another funny story about characters who are a complete disaster as human beings. A new boy in the class teaches the protagonist to steal and visit a prostitute, and together they corrupt a third friend.
[tr. Karen Wigen Lewis in The Showa Anthology I; also in A View by the Sea]
- “Hausu gado” (“The House Guard,” 1953)
The narrator has the leisurely job of guarding houses requisitioned by the Occupation. He spoils a nascent love affair with the maid from next door through sheer ineffectuality.
[tr. Royall Tyler, Dalkey Archive Press]
- "Inki no tanoshimi" ("Gloomy Pleasures," 1953)
The other Akutagawa Prize winning story. Failure is second nature to the narrator of this story. Wounded in the war, he feels guilty about receiving the veteran's unemployment compensation for which he qualifies, but travels unnecessarily every month in person to Yokohama to cash it, where unpleasantness awaits him on all fronts. This humiliating experience has become one of his "gloomy pleasures."
[tr. Karen Wigen in A View by the Sea]
[Yasuoka Shotaro]
(4) The greatest novel by Hayashi Fumiko appears: Ukigumo ("Drifting Clouds").
About the tortured relationship between Koda Yukiko, the novel's heroine, and a minor official, Tomioka. During the war they begin their affair in lush Indo-China. After the war, Tomioka returns to his wife and family; when Yukiko follows him, he appears a completely changed man (of course, circumstances are completely different). The novel is set in the poverty and degradation of bombed-out Tokyo, where everybody suffers the pangs of hunger. Still, Tomioka hesitates to break off their relationship and they unsuccessfully attempt a double suicide. Finally, Yukiko - who has to find a new life in the desolation and chaos of postwar Japan – desperately follows him all the way to the remote southern island of Yakushima, where he is transferred for his job. A masterwork with a nihilistic perspective on human nature. Filmed in 1955 by Naruse Mikio, with Takamine Hideko. After finishing this novel, Hayashi started on Meshi, about a housewife who feels trapped in a marriage that only consists of daily drudgery, but before she could complete this novel, she died from a heart attack on June 28, 1951. Since her first book, Horoki in 1930, she had published 270 books and written some 30,000 pages, working always at a frantic pace, as if she wanted to ward off the poverty that had haunted her in her youth.
[tr. Lane Dunlop]
(5) Kawabata Yasunari writes his novel about an aging Go-master, Meijin ("The Master of Go," lit. "The Master," 1951-54).
A semi-fictional account of the lengthy 1938 "retirement game" of Go by the respected real-life master Honinbo Shusai, against the up-and-coming Westernized and modern player Kitani Minoru (although the latter's name is changed to Otake in the book). It was the last game of the master Shusai's career, a lengthy struggle which took almost six months to complete (at that time, each player was given forty hours against today's ten to make his moves); he narrowly lost to his younger challenger, to die a little over a year thereafter. Kawabata at the time followed the game for a newspaper. The novel contrasts tradition and the new pragmatism, old Japan and the new, and life and death. The novel has also been interpreted as a lament about Japan’s loss in the war. The game is described in detail in the novel and illustrated with diagrams. Interestingly, when Mishima Yukio met Kawabata for the first time, he received an indelible impression from Kawabata's eyes, which he called "the eyes of a go player." (Inose & Sato, Persona, p. 150)
[tr. Edward Seidensticker]
(6) Mishima Yukio delves into the world of Tokyo's homosexuals in Kinjiki ("Forbidden Colors").
A story about rather complex sexual vengeance. A cynical aging author, Hinoki Shunsuke, has suffered three unhappy marriages and had many bad experiences with women. His third wife, for example, who was prone to adultery, committed double suicide with a young lover. Now Yasuko, his tenth love affair, wants to marry a beautiful boy, Minami Yuichi. Shunsuke decides that will be his perfect opportunity for an exquisitely artistic creation. Yuichi shall be his work of art, and through him Shunsuke will achieve vengeance against the women who have humiliated him. His plot begins with the marriage of his characters, Yuichi and Yasuko. Yasuko is a conventional young woman from a well-to-do family; while Yuichi needs the marriage for financial reasons, he has confided to the older man that he feels no physical desire for his bride, or for any woman. The crafty Shunsuke advises him to go through with the marriage and gain financial security, but he also plans the involvement of Yuichi with the women who have rejected him... and with the boys for whom Yuichi has until now merely yearned. Of course, things don't go as smoothly as planned, for life is messier than the plot of a novel, and Yuichi has a will of his own. In the end, Shunsuke commits suicide, bequeathing his fortune to Yuichi to provide him with a "nameless freedom."
[tr. Alfred H. Marks]
1952
The Allied Occupation of Japan ends as the San Francisco Peace Treaty goes into effect.
(1) Short stories by Mishima Yukio written in the mid-1950s.
- "Manatsu no shi" ("Death in Midsummer," 1952)
A woman loses two of her three children and her sister-in-law to an accident, all at once (the children drown and the aunt has a heart attack), while at a beach resort at the Izu Peninsula. The mother then has to face her husband who is at work in Tokyo. For the reader, the businesslike attitude of the bereaved father comes as a surprise.
[Edward Seidensticker in Death in Midsummer and Other Stories]
- "Shigadera Shonin no koi" ("The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love," 1954).
A venerable priest of Pure Land Buddhism falls in love with the Imperial Concubine after a single glance and loses his grip on Enlightenment. The story gives a catalog of the joys of the Pure Land, which the priest confuses with the Imperial Concubine, while she is convinced that the priest, by giving up the Pure Land for her, has made a larger sacrifice than all her previous lovers...
[Ivan Morris in Death in Midsummer and Other Stories]
- "Umi to yuyake" ("Sea and Sunset," 1955)
The thoughts of Anri (Henri), in the year 1272 on a hill at the back of Kenchoji in Kamakura. As a French boy Henri was leader of the legendary "children's crusade" to the Holy Land in 1212. Through a series of portents and miracles he gathered 30,000 children at the Mediterranean Sea, in the belief that the sea would part so that they could walk to Jerusalem. But the sea did not split and many children were tricked by hypocritical ship owners to board their vessels and sold into slavery. Henri ended up in India, where he met the Chinese monk Daolong (Doryu) who eventually took him to Japan. Now, an old priest, he still thinks about that critical turning point in his life: why didn't the sea split but instead spread out silently as if burned in the evening glow?
[John Bester in Acts of Worship]
- "Hashizukushi" ("The seven Bridges," lit. "Crossing All Bridges," 1956)
On the night of the September full moon, three geisha, Koyumi, Masako, and Kanako, and their maid, set out to pray in silence under the moon, observing a ritual of "double seven," praying at either end of each bridge in the hope that their wishes will be granted. But their project is doomed in the modern world: Kanako drops out because of stomach ache, Koyumi is accosted by an old friend and does not preserve her silence, Masako is pounced on by a policeman who thinks she is contemplating suicide. Only Mina, the unthinking maid sent along as their chaperone, plods on and completes the round, but for her this aesthetic tradition has no meaning.
[Donald Keene in Death in Midsummer and Other Stories]
- "Onnagata" ("Onnagata," 1957)
Masuyama, a young graduate in classical Japanese literature, enters the esoteric backstage world of Kabuki. He sees in the onnagata Mangiku a rare figure of "aloof beauty," who substitutes art for life by living offstage as the woman he portrays in the theater. But then Mangiku falls in love with a newly imported "modern play" director...
[Donald Keene in Death in Midsummer and Other Stories]
(2) The first novel by Kita Morio, Yurei ("Ghosts"), is a quest for a lost childhood.
A brilliant novel about the quest for a lost childhood, of which only fragments remain. Inspired by Kita's reading of the novels of Thomas Mann. Kita himself had to finance publication of this novel.
[tr. Dennis Keene]
Kita Morio (1927-2011) was the second son of Saito Mokichi, the famous traditional poet. He graduated as a neurologist from Tohoku University. His great example was Thomas Mann. Ghosts,
originally conceived as a short story, was his first novel. In 1953
Kita passed the state's qualifying medical exam and in 1958 he made a
6-month voyage to Europe as a ship's doctor. This trip became the basis
for his comic bestselling novel Doctor Manbo at Sea (1960). His greatest novel was The House of Nire (1961-63), inspired by Mann's Buddenbrooks, which won the Mainichi Prize in 1964.
(3) Haru no shiro (“Citadel in Spring”) by Agawa Hiroyuki is an autobiographical novel which won the Yomiuri Prize in 1952. The title is based on the poem "Spring View" by Du Fu about the destruction of Changan during a devastating mid-eight century rebellion. It refers here to the annihilation of Hiroshima by the atomic bomb. The novel relates the life of the author in the person of Hiroshima-born college student Obata Koji. We meet him first while he is at Tokyo University where he studies literature hoping someday to become a writer. When the war intensifies, he volunteers and becomes a naval cryptographer; lucky for him, he is first stationed at the intelligence service in Tokyo, and later in Hangzhou in occupied China, and not on a warship with a fat chance of ending up at the bottom of the ocean. We follow both his code breaking activities and his romantic flirtations, as well as the contacts with his increasingly dispersed friends. Most of the time, he has little interest in his job and the same is true for his comrades - they just want to get through a war of which they are soon convinced that Japan must loose it. Little of interest happens to the rather self-absorbed Obata and that is probably also what war was like for many participants. It all sounds very realistic. The focus on Obata is only released in two cases: an episode about a sea battle in which a friend dies, and finally the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in which a former teacher and would-be girlfriend die. Hiroshima's destruction is indeed told in harrowing detail, but as this part of the novel is not about Obata it feels a bit out of place - suddenly the experiences of others are dramatized here. In other words, the structure of the book is a bit loose, but that perhaps is fitting for a book of reminiscences.
[tr. Lawrence Rogers]
Agawa Hiroyuki (1920-2015) served as information officer in the Japanese navy during WWII. He had studied literature at university (he was a fan of Shiga Naoya) and began writing soon after his repatriation. In 1946 he wrote his first story "Nennen saisai" (From age to age) about the demolishment of his hometown Hiroshima by the atomic bomb. Most of Agawa’s work, from his autobiographical stories and novels (such as Grave Marker in the Clouds, 1955, about a kamikaze pilot), to his interpretative biographies of three admirals who had argued against the war with the U.S., the foremost of whom was Yamamoto Isoroku, has WWII as its theme. As a witness to WWII, Agawa reminds his readers of the real costs of war.
(4) Shinku chitai ("Zone of Emptiness") by Noma Hiroshi
One
of the best anti-war novels produced after World War II, about the
cruel drills in a military barracks in Osaka during the Pacific War.
Filmed by Yamamoto Satsuo.
[tr. Bernard Frechtman from the French version, no longer available]
1953
Television broadcasting begins in Japan.
Death of Hori Tatsuo (1904-1953) leads to renewed popularity of his stories (see previous post).
(1) Taka ("The Raptor") by Ishikawa Jun A
surreal and grim vision containing typically dystopian elements as an
underground revolutionary movement. A young man, Kunisuke, becomes
involved in the clandestine distribution of a new contraband cigarette
called "Peace." The cigarettes endow their smokers with the mysterious
power to read “futurese” (ashita-go), "the language of tomorrow."
The authorities eventually apprehend Kunisuke and his fellow
visionaries, but he is saved by a giant raptor which transports him to
freedom.
[tr. William J. Tyler in The Legend of Gold and Other Stories by Ishikawa Jun, Hawaii U.P.]
Serialized in 1953 just after the end of the occupation, when there was a big surge of samurai films and novels which had been forbidden as "feudal" by the Occupation during previous years. The title refers to the war banner of Takeda Shingen (1521-1573), one of the most famous generals of Japan's Warring Sates period. It contained four Chinese characters that signified: “Silent as a forest. Swift as the wind. Rapacious as fire. Immovable as a mountain.” These qualities summarized the art of war in the ancient Chinese strategy handbook, the Sunzi, and were deemed necessary for military success during the civil wars that ravaged Japan in the 16th c. Takeda Shingen's noble failure is among the most popular Japanese historical chronicles. There have been numerous film and television adaptations of his story, such as Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (1980) or Inagaki’s Furin Kazan (1969) with Toshiro Mifune as the hero. In Inoue's version not Takeda Shingen, but Yamamoto Kansuke, his wily advisor and master plotter is the main hero, but interestingly, Kansuke meets his equal in the shrewd Princess Yuu. Inoue's novel formed the basis for the 2007 NHK taiga drama of the same title.
[Tr. Yoko Riley]
1954
A typhoon in the Tsugaru Strait sinks the ferry Toya Maru, killing over 1,100 passengers and crew.
Akutagawa prizes this year go to Yoshiyuki Junnosuke, Kojima Nobuo and Shono Junzo, three excellent new writers.
(1) Short stories about the postwar Tokyo "water-trade" by Yoshiyuki Junnosuke.
- "Shuu" ("A Rain Shower"), winner of the 31st Akutagawa Prize.
A young salaryman thinks love is a bother and prefers to visit the red light district. But then he falls in love with a prostitute and is annoyed at his jealousy over her. A sensitive, bittersweet story.
[tr. Geoffrey Bownas, now unavailable]
- "Shofu no heya" ("Akiko's Room," lit. "A Prostitute's Room," 1958)
The narrator is reporter for a small scandal magazine and often feels like a beaten dog, but the room of the prostitute Akiko has become his refuge, where he can recover his mental equilibrium. But when Akiko gets a new sponsor, she disappears from the quarter...
[tr. Howard Hibbett in Contemporary Japanese Literature]
- "Kigi wa midori ka" ("Are the Trees Green?," 1958)
A teacher at a night school is in love with the much younger Asako, one of his pupils. He even gets a boyish hair-cut to look younger. But Akiko works in a bar and it takes the persuasion of a friend before the teacher dares visit her in that environment. He is surprised at the change in her personality as well as her thick make-up... but decides to come more often.
[tr. Adam Kabat in The Showa Anthology, Volume I]
Okayama-born Yoshiyuki Junnosuke (1924-1994) is the most famous writer about Tokyo’s postwar water trade. Yoshiyuki
entered Tokyo University in 1945 to major in English literature. He had
been exempted from military service because of his asthma. After the
war, he worked six years for a small scandal magazine, and despite his
weak health, he led a life of both hard work and hard play. His novel Genshoku no Machi,
about prostitutes and their clients, and set in the garish neon-lit
night world of postwar Tokyo, was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize in
1952. Other work includes "Shuu" (“Sudden rain,” which actually won the
Akutagawa Prize) and "Shofu no heya" (“Akiko’s Room”). Anshitsu
(“The Dark Room,” 1970) was a claustrophobic novel about a man’s attempt
to escape depression through sex; it received the prestigious Tanizaki
Prize. Noma Prize winning Yugure made (“Until Dusk”) was a
novella about a middle-aged man who seeks obsessively for an emotional
rather than physical virginity in his young mistress. Like Kafu and Tanizaki
(and the tradition of Edo-period Gesaku fiction), Yoshiyuki writes of
the world of outcast women both as a refuge from the hypocrisies of
ordinary society and as an alluring setting for romantic
self-degradation. Although sometimes classified as a Shishosetsu writer,
Yoshiyuki’s aim is different: not sincerity, but clarity. Yoshiyuki
writes in a cool and polished style, without any overt emotion, but
instead infused by sparkling wit.
The 32nd Akutagawa Prize is shared by "Amerikan sukuru" ("American School") by Kojima Nobuo and "Purusaido shokei" ("A Poolside Scene") by Shono Junzo.
(2) Ironical stories by Kojima Nobuo.
- "Amerikan sukuru" ("American School")
Satirical depiction of the visit of a group of Japanese English-language teachers to an international school for the children of Americans in Occupied Japan. The reactions of the educators as they walk eight miles to the school and come into contact with transplanted American culture for the first time are both touching and comical. There are several interesting types: one English teacher, Isa, is unable (or basically unwilling) to speak any English – in fact, he loathes the English language because he thinks it undermines his identity as a Japanese; another one, Yamada, a former army commander, likes to show off his ability but he also brags about the killings he made during the war; and a third one, Michiko, a woman teacher, is planning to make an unexplained “mysterious request” of Isa, while they walk the long route to the school... until it appears she just wants to borrow his chopsticks to eat her bento.
[tr. Lawrence Rogers in Long Belts and Thin Men, the Postwar Stories of Kojima Nobuo, Kurodahan Press]
- "Shoju” ("The Rifle,” 1952)
The debut story of Kojima, a tale about a young soldier fighting in China, whose almost erotic passion for his rifle gives rise to a bewildering sequence of associations. Shin, a soldier, becomes so disillusioned by the war that he looses his grip on reality. Before leaving for the front he had fallen in love with a married woman who, pregnant by her husband, did not allow Shin to make love to her. As if in compensation, Shin transfers his affections to his army rifle, treating it with all the care one would normally lavish an a valued mistress. Later, during the war, Shin is ordered to shoot a Chinese woman who reminds him of his love – using the same rifle.
[tr. Lawrence Rogers in Long Belts and Thin Men, the Postwar Stories of Kojima Nobuo, Kurodahan Press; also in The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories]
- “Bisho” (“The Smile,” 1954)
A portrayal of the psychological burdens of a war veteran. A father returns home after four years at war to discover that his infant son is handicapped. Unable to accept it, he turns his anger against the boy, only to be ashamed when a photographer asks him to smile and a falsely cheerful picture of father and son appears next morning in the newspaper.
[tr. Lawrence Rogers in Long Belts and Thin Men, the Postwar Stories of Kojima Nobuo, Kurodahan Press]
(3) Quiet domestic stories by Shono Junzo.
- "Purusaido shokei" ("A Poolside Scene")
The best of Shono's short stories about crises in newly married lives. Aoki's existence seems all happiness: every evening he has his sons practice swimming in the school pool, after which his wife with the dog comes to fetch them and they return home for the happy family dinner. But in reality the family is in danger: Mr Aoki has embezzled company funds and been summarily discharged. Mrs Aoki knew her husband was somewhat fun and drink loving, but she now manages to pull the true story out of him: he has spent the stolen money on another woman, a bar hostess. For Mrs Aoki, after fifteen years of marriage, everything around her seems to collapse... Winner of the 32nd Akutagawa Prize.
[tr. Wayne P. Lammers in Still Life and Other Stories; also in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, Vol. 2]
- “Seibutsu” (“Still Life”)
A quiet tale about the normal, daily happenings in a family of five, one of a series that focuses on the small events and non-events of domestic life. Shono's artful layering of commonplace happenings, images, and conversations can be compared to an Ozu film. Seibutsu is almost more a picture than a story.
[tr. Wayne P. Lammers in Still Life and Other Stories; also in The Showa Anthology Vol. 1]
(4) Kusa no hana ("Flowers of Grass") by Fukunaga Takehiko
A novel of lost youth, as the author himself called it, with some autobiographical elements. The novel is set in a tuberculosis sanatorium just outside Tokyo. The narrator becomes acquainted with another patient, a student of linguistics and budding writer named Shiomi. After Shiomi insists on undergoing a dangerous surgical procedure and dies in the process, the narrator discovers two notebooks written by him. Flowers of Grass unfolds as the narrator reads them, wondering whether Shiomi's death was perhaps a sort of suicide, as he learns the details of his late friend’'s two great loves for a brother and sister, both of whom reject him.
[tr. Royall Tyler, Dalkey Archive Press]
Fukunaga Takehiko (1918-1979), who belonged to the so-called "first generation of postwar writers," was born in Fukuoka and studied French literature at Tokyo University. Because of ill health (tuberculosis), he was excused from military service and after the war he spent six years in a sanatorium in Kiyose. Fukunaga was active as novelist and poet, as well as translator of Sartre and Baudelaire. Besides Flowers of Grass, his best-known work, a strong novel is Shi no shima ("The Island of Death," 1971), evoking the last 24 hours of a man's life before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Fukunaga was married to the poetess Harajo Akiko and they were the parents of the well-known author Ikezawa Natsuki.
(5) Mizuumi ("The Lake") by Kawabata Yasunari.
A dark and tortured story, which has even been called "a sordid tale" - probably by a disappointed admirer of Kawabata's perceived "Japanese beauty." But the point is that Kawabata is not the haiku-like writer about the Japanese seasons he is often mistakenly made out to be - Kawabata is a modernist author who finds beauty in ugly places, or even sees beauty in ugliness. The main character of The Lake, Gimpei, is a disgusting and twisted figure, a teacher who has been fired for seducing a female student, and who compulsively stalks women and girls on the street. In his past lie several disturbing events. He suffers from self-loathing epitomized by a curious hatred of his misshapen feet. I don't consider this novel as minor Kawabata, but rather as an important book that helps us get a better and more realistic view of the author. By providing a reasonably sympathetic study of a psychopathic mind, Kawabata probes the negative aspects of his own sexual psychology. An instance of unexpected beauty in this book consists of a cage with fireflies the protagonist secretly attaches to the back of a girl he was stalking.
[tr. Reiko Tsukimura]
[Kami Island in the Bay of Ise where Mishima's novel is set]
Written after Mishima's world tour which also included a visit to Greece and inspired him to base a novel on the ancient Greek romantic tale of Daphnis and Chloe. Mishima used a small island in the Bay of Ise as setting. A poor young fisherman, Shinji, is in love with Hatsue, the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man on the island, ship owner Terukichi. They face many obstacles: a young man with a higher status than Shinji tries to rape Hatsue (she is saved by a hornet) and Hatsue's father is an irascible bully. Despite the usual youthful temptations - even when they are together naked in a cave, drying their clothes - they remain chaste. After Shinji proves his mettle on a stormy night by saving the ship of Terukichi, Hatsue's father agrees to the marriage of the two lovers. With seventy printings in just three months, Shiosai became a solid bestseller and was immediately adapted for film. In fact, it helped initiate the deluge of youth films that would roll over Japan in the second half of the decade. Despite all that, Shiosai is too simple and cute to be called great literature and one can only imagine Mishima wrote it tongue-in-cheek (or with one eye at his bank account).
[tr. Meredith Weatherby]
1955
First transistor radios go on sale. Liberal Democratic Party formed.
Death of Sakaguchi Ango (1906-1955).
(1) The 33th Akutagawa prize is won by Shiroi hito (“White Man”) by Endo Shusaku.
This novella was published as a set with Kiiroi hito (“Yellow Man”). The first story is set in France during the German occupation. It is a story of faith, guilt and betrayal within the French Resistance, told through the diary of a young man who collaborates with the Nazi’s by acting as an interpreter for the Gestapo. Yellow Man was written in the form of a student’s letter to his pastor, a disgraced French missionary. The Japanese student is exhausted by the war and dying from tuberculosis. He realizes the superficiality of his faith in a “white” god. In these stories, Endo already addressed one of his major themes: the difference between European and Japanese religious sensibilities. Endo had a unique inter-cultural perspective thanks to his first-hand acquaintance with Christian thought in France.
[tr. Teruyo Shimizu, Paulist Press]
(2) The 34th Akutagawa Prize is won by Taiyo no kisetsu (“Season Of Violence,” lit. "The Season of the Sun") by Ishihara Shintaro, a controversial choice.
Ishihara (1932) later became known as a populist politician and governor of Tokyo. This novel is rather crude and direct, although that quality fits its subject. Ishihara’s protagonists are pampered rich boys who are bored, cynical and highly misogynistic. They hang out at the beaches south of Tokyo and race around in expensive motor boats. Their casual acts of violence and sexual promiscuity are not in any way a rebellion against society, but expressions of their inner emptiness. In Season of Violence, the protagonist doesn't mind his girlfriend's loose behavior, but is on the contrary distressed when he realizes that she might really love him. So he abuses her in increasingly cruel ways, which perversely only serves to enhance her love. In the end, the girlfriend dies of complications after an abortion. Mishima Yukio was an influence on Ishihara and his characters make just such exhibitionistic speeches in defense of their nihilism as those in Mishima's novels. Season of Violence was immediately filmed and gave rise to the new Taiyozoku ("Sun Tribe")-genre about Japan's dissatisfied youth in rebellion against the older generation, taking its cue from the worldwide youth revolution. By the way, the best film in this genre was Kurutta Kajitsu ("Crazed Fruit") by Nakahira Ko, based on a screenplay by Ishihara. It featured a new star in Ishihara's younger brother, Yujiro, "the Japanese James Dean."
[tr. as Season of Violence by John G. Mills, Toshie Takahama & Ken Tremayne]
(3) Nagareru (“Flowing”) by Koda Aya, a novel about the decline of a geisha house on the Sumida River, which forms the apex of Koda Aya's career as a writer.
Flowing describes a failing geisha establishment through the eyes of the middle-aged maid Rika who begins to work there at the start of the book. The reader witnesses the slow dissolution of a once viable way of life in a time of economic hardship. The long-established geisha house run by Otsuta is heavily in debt, and the mistress desperately tries to save her business. In that, she is assisted by her practical daughter Katsuyo (who is not a geisha and wants a regular job), but the forces opposing her are very strong. In 1956, made into a popular film by Naruse Mikio with Tanaka Kinuyo as Rika, Yamada Isuzu as Otsuta and Takamine Hideko as Katsuyo.
[No English translation, but summarized in The Writings of Koda Aya by Alan Tansman]
[Studies: The Writings of Koda Aya, a Japanese Literary Daughter, Alan M. Tansman, Yale U.P.; Mirror: The Fiction and Essays of Koda Aya, Ann Sherif, University of Hawaii Press]
[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).]
[All author portraits public domain from Wikimedia Commons.
Photo Kami Island Ise Bay: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons]