Ames, Catherine (2018) A Festival of Mysticism : Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Narrative Form and the Politics of Subject Formation. PhD thesis. SOAS University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/32461 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. A Festival of Mysticism: Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Narrative Form and the Politics of Subject Formation Catherine Ames Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD 2018 Department of the Languages and Cultures of Japan and Korea SOAS, University of London Contents Acknowledgements 5 Abstract 7 Introduction to the Thesis: “A Festival of Mysticism” 9 Key Terms: Realism versus Modernism 13 Genesis of the Thesis and Literature Review 19 Methodology 32 Choice of Texts 33 Akutagawa: A Writer Steeped in Western Literature 40 Theoretical Situatedness 50 Guide for Chapters to Follow 56 Chapter 1: Critical and Historical Context 62 Taish ō “Culture” as an Index of Modernity 62 From Meiji Civilisation to Taish ō Culture 65 Language and Literary Representation: a Centralising Cultural 71 Apparatus The Mobilisation of Narrative: Historiography and Canon Formation 83 The Changing Political Landscape of the 1910s 89 Taish ō Culture: the Middle Classes and Normativity 96 Realism as an Affirmative Mode 99 Ambivalence towards Proletarian Writing 108 From Realism to Pure Literature: Culture to Culturalism 111 From History to Myth: Mythologisation and the Will to Knowledge 121 Chapter 2: But ōkai (The Ball , 1920): Romance and Cultural 129 Narcissism Romanticising History 130 Life Imitating Art 134 Orientalism and Counter-Orientalism? 140 A Politics of Identification 142 2 The Realist Mode Undone: The Unreliable Narrator 146 Parodying Parodies: A Puppet-Show of Stereotypes 155 Women and Meiji Civilisation 160 The Lure of Paris 162 The Triumph of Stereotype and the Solipsistic Circumvention of 168 Reality Conclusions: The Deliberate Blurring of Fictional and National 174 Narratives Chapter 3: Momotar ō (The Peach Boy, 1924): Militarism 184 Demystified Momotar ō, Parody and Folklore 185 Useful and Inspiring Fictions: Epic or History? 189 Nation-state Mythology 191 ‘The General’: A Pendant to ‘The Peach Boy’ 195 ‘The Peach Boy’: Parodying a Modern Nationalist Mythology 202 ‘The Peach Boy’: a mukashi banashi 1? 206 Temporal Chaos and the Dubious Narrator 215 ‘The Peach Boy’: A Conflation of Tales and Incorporated Genres 223 Postscript: How not to Conclude 237 Chapter 4: Uma no ashi (Horse Legs , 1925): Delusion and 240 Modernity “Culture” and the Popular Press 241 Realism and Science: Creating the Truth Effect 244 An Everyday Tragedy of Modern Life 248 Fuan (Anxiety) 251 Unconscious Memory and Delusional Narratives: A Crisis of 256 Perception Mental Health and National Hygiene 266 Narratorial Dereliction 271 Modernity, Coercion and the Popular Press 275 1 Mukashi banashi can be variously translated as folk tales, legends of long ago or folklore. 3 Normality and Deviance 284 Conclusions 289 Chapter 5: Seih ō no hito (The Man from the West , 1927): An 291 Unorthodox Evangel Suicide, Spirituality and the Scholarly Context 295 History, Faith and Narrative Form 302 Papini, Barbusse and Renan: Other Stories of Christ 306 Desacralising the Historical Will to Knowledge 310 Romance as Conversion 316 The Gospels as Hack Journalism 322 Bohemianism as a Product of Modernity 328 The Journalist as Social Critic 331 Narrative Appropriation, Sentimentalism and Delusion 335 Conclusions 350 Bibliography 357 4 Acknowledgements I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to Professor Stephen Dodd without whose wisdom, patient stewardship and good-humoured forbearance this study would not have been possible. Indulging my stubborn insistence on working full time and the erratic and often untamed nature of my submissions, Professor Dodd has always received my work with a critical positivity and frankness which has spurred me on towards completion, even when such an eventuality seemed out of reach. His energy and enthusiasm have never waned and I am truly grateful for his unfailing belief in my work. I would also like to offer deep thanks to Doctor Nicola Liscutin whose thoughtful and intelligent supervision helped to engender this study and launch it on the path it would eventually take. It is with tremendous gratitude for her sharp and considerate guidance, her commitment and her friendship, then as now, that I submit this work. Many thanks to Chiba Sensei who entertained my presence with consummate good grace at his postgraduate seminars at Waseda University and at which I made some doleful but well-intentioned contributions. To this end I am equally indebted to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for granting me the invaluable opportunity to conduct research in Japan through the gift of their generous Short-Term Award and to the Anglo-European School for allowing me to take sabbatical leave, unheard of in the state sector, and testimony to their support of my endeavours. Profound thanks also to Birkbeck College, University of London, who generously awarded me a studentship for the initial stages of the study and to Noriko Inagaki who read so patiently with 5 me in Japanese at the beginning of the study and who gave me the confidence to go it alone. I am very grateful to my examiners Professor Wen-chin Ouyang and Doctor Irena Hayter for their constructive observations and penetrating questions which I hope have helped temper the study and bring it into clearer focus. Finally I would like to thank my family and friends who have put up with this project, mostly without sarcasm, for longer than they care to remember and to our mirthful son Keir, born towards the end of the study, who has taught me the true meaning of patience. 6 Abstract My research is based on the premise that, in form and content, Akutagawa Ry ūnosuke’s short stories should be read as a challenge to Taish ō (1912–26) conceptions of cultural modernity and nationhood. As artistic and political culture in the Taish ō period seemed to polarise into a nativistic Culturalism (ky ōyōshugi ) on the one hand and a strident Proletarianism on the other, Akutagawa was increasingly viewed as an apolitical aesthete, a vision further entrenched after his totemic suicide in 1927. I aim to rescind this view of Akutagawa and, by focusing on the narrative and ideological connections which give coherence to his works between 1920 and 1927, I focus on those aspects of Akutagawa’s work which, far from being outwith the political domain, may be seen to be fiercely critical of the Taish ō ideological settlement as it was taking shape. I argue that Akutagawa was a writer who was acutely aware of the tensions which existed within Taish ō society, of the burgeoning state and the development of an increasingly national subjectivity. I argue that Akutagawa was keenly interested in those narratives being produced, disseminated and naturalised in the 1910s and 20s and in their power to conscript the newly formed reading public to an ever narrower range of behaviours. Moreover, I aim to reveal Akutagawa’s preoccupation with the complicity which existed between seemingly incongruous types of narrative form and the politics of subject formation. In particular we will explore Akutagawa’s collision of the Realist mode with the impulse to mythologise in order to reveal a powerful narrative strategy which was able not only to define subjectivities but was also the means by which hegemonic values were embedded and become unopposable. The study 7 engages with four seminal texts: ‘But ōkai’ (‘The Ball’, 1920), ‘Momotar ō’ (‘The Peach Boy, 1924), ‘Uma no ashi’ (‘Horselegs’, 1925) and ‘Seih ō no hito’ (The Man from the West’, 1927) to explore the role of literature in the nation-building process. 8 Introduction to the Thesis “A Festival of Mysticism” Ancient people believed that their ancestor was Adam. That is to say, they believed in the Book of Genesis. People nowadays, even Junior High School students, believe that their ancestor is actually the monkey. That is to say, they believe in the Book of Darwin. In other words, it remains the case that ancient people and people nowadays believe in books. (‘Shuju no kotoba’ (‘A Dwarf’s Words’ 1923–25, ARZ13:34–35 2) This quotation neatly articulates Akutagawa’s enduring fascination with the power of narrative and the transformative effect he believed it had on the way people interact with the world. Its ability to circumnavigate “reality”, whatever that might be, to create alternative truths and present them with authority was a function, the political application of which, was not lost on Akutagawa. Indeed, Akutagawa’s was a view which understood the relationship between power and language long before such ideas came into common parlance. The notion that people are interpellated to different subject positions through the often oblique narratives with which they interact is the recurring idea which underpins the main premise of this thesis. I will argue that Akutagawa, unlike many of his literary peers, was not interested in ideas of truth or its representation but rather in the power of the written word to make people do things. An ironist who played with language and narrative expectations to undermine any belief in an 2 All quotations from Japanese are mine unless otherwise indicated.