THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY FACULTY OF ARTS SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES AND CULTURES DEPARTMENT OF JAPANESE AND KOREAN STUDIES DISSERTATION: Autonomy In Modern Japanese Literature Submitted by: Masahito Takayashiki In Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D). DECEMBER 2007 PhD Dissertation: Autonomy in Modern Japanese Literature ABSTRACT This dissertation aims to examine the manner in which the concept of autonomy (jiritsu) is treated in modern and contemporary Japanese literature. This examination will be performed by analysing the autonomous attitude of a contemporary Japanese writer Nakagami Kenji (1946–1992). This dissertation focuses on examining Nakagami Kenji’s ambivalent attitude towards his act of writing. We will explore the manner in which his act of writing appears to be a paradox between self-identification and the integration into the collective. Then, we will observe the possibility in which Nakagami’s ambivalent attitude is extended to cover Maruyama Masao’s relative definition of autonomy and Karatani Kōjin’s interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s notion of freedom and responsibility. Nakagami’s attempt is certainly not confined to only his works. The notion of autonomy may be applied to perceive a similar thought that was represented by previous writers. We will also examine various never-ending autonomous attempts expressed by Sakaguchi Ango, Miyazawa Kenji and Nakahara Chūya. Moreover, we will analyse how Nakagami’s distrust of the modern Japanese language and his admiration of the body as an undeniable object are reflected in his major novels in detail and attempt to extend this observation into the works of the theatrical artists in the 1960s such as Betsuyaku Minoru, Kara Jūrō, Hijikata Tatsumi and Terayama Shūji and contemporary women writers such as Tsushima Yūko, Takamura Kaoru, Tawada Yōko and Yoshimoto Banana. These writers and artists struggled to establish their autonomous freedom as they encountered the conflict between their individual bodies that personifies their personal autonomy and the modern Japanese language that confines them in the fixed and submissive roles in present-day Japan. In this dissertation, I would like to conclude that Nakagami Kenji’s ambivalent attitude towards his act of writing can be an eternal self-legislation, that is, his endless attempt to establish autonomous freedom, which evolves from the paradox between the individual (body) and the collective (language). だれもひとつの島ではない。だれもそれ自体で完全なものではない。す べての人間は大陸のひとかけら、全体の一部分、もし海によって土が洗 い流されれば、欧州は小さくなる。あるいは岬も、あるいは汝の友人た ちや汝自身の土地も同じこと。あらゆる人の死は私を削り落とす、なぜ なら、私は人類の一部なのだから。ゆえに、決して誰がために鐘は鳴る と問うなかれ、それは汝のために鳴っているのだから。 No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. In memory of my father CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i INTRODUCTION 1 Why is autonomy to be examined in the field of contemporary Japanese literature? 14 The end of grand narrative 16 Brief summary of each chapter 28 Notes 31 CHAPTER I AN EXAMINATION OF THE CONCEPT OF AUTONOMY THROUGH THE ANALYSIS OF AN AUTONOMOUS ATTITUDE IN THE LITERATURE OF NAKAGAMI KENJI 32 Writing as mutually exclusive dichotomy: Two ambivalent attitudes of Nakagami Kenji in writing novels 33 Writing in perpetuity: writing for aspiring to the Avici Hell 38 Paradox in the literature of Nakagami Kenji 42 Maruyama Masao’s two autonomies: Personal autonomy and social autonomy 49 Autonomy and responsibility: Karatani Kōjin’s interpretation of Kantian autonomy 59 CHAPTER II SEARCH FOR THE AUTONOMY THAT GROWS OUT OF THE INDIVIDUAL/COLLECTIVE DICHOTOMY IN THE FICTION OF NAKAGAMI KENJI 67 Nakagami Kenji’s attempt to break the archetype of monogatari through the Akiyuki trilogy 69 Breaking the spell of monogatari: Shōsetsu, shishōsetsu and monogatari 89 Breaking the spell of monogatari: Repetition of archetype in Akiyuki trilogy 91 CHAPTER III NAKAGAMI KENJI’S AUTONOMY AS A STANDPOINT ELICITING A NEW PERSPECTIVE OF MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE 99 Postwar existentialist writers: Intersubjectivity, configurations, and simultaneous presence of freedom and responsibility 100 Sakaguchi Ango’s paradox: The theory of farce 108 Sakaguchi Ango’s decadence and the home of literature 115 Miyazawa Kenji’s paradox: Writing as four dimensional-art 120 Nakahara Chūya: The Voice of the Living 129 Towards the unexplored perspective of literary autonomy in the field of modern Japanese literature 138 CHAPTER IV ONGOING CANON FORMATION: AN IDEOLOGY OF JAPAN’S NATIONAL LANGUAGE AND THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE BOOM 140 The Japanese language boom and ‘petit-nationalism’ 154 CHAPTER V SCEPTICAL ATTITUDE TOWARDS KOTOBA (LANGUAGE) IN MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE 173 Nakagami Kenji’s sceptical attitudes towards kotoba 176 Ferdinand de Saussure’s paradox between langue and parole 180 Scepticism towards the modern language: Betsuyaku Minoru and the small theatre movement (shōgekijō undō) in the 1960s 185 The écriture of the Emperor (tennō no kakikotoba) as an invented modern écriture 196 The Anpo protesters and their scepticism toward the Japanese language 205 Miyazawa Kenji’s Ashura who lost the true words 209 Nakahara Chūya: The world of objects that have not been named yet 214 CHAPTER VI THE BODY (NIKUTAI) IN MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE 222 Nakagami Kenji: Body as mono (an object) 224 The Body explored by Sakaguchi Ango and the postwar existentialist writers 230 Body explored by the contemporary playwrights in the 1960s and the 1970s 241 Kara Jūrō: The ‘theory of the privileged body’ 246 Body perceived by Hijikata Tatsumi and Terayama Shūji 254 CHAPTER VII AUTONOMY OF WOMEN WRITERS IN CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE LITERATURE 261 Tsushima Yūko 264 Takamura Kaoru 279 Tawada Yōko 284 Yoshimoto Banana 290 CONCLUSION 296 To become burakumin to become free 300 Nakagami Kenji’s permanent attempt 305 BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary sources 313 General bibliography: English sources 317 Japanese sources 325 APPENDIX: FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS IN THE AKIYUKI TRILOGY 348 Acknowledgement I wish to express my special thanks to my supervisor Dr. Yasuko Claremont for providing critical comments in writing this dissertation and also for her valuable advice on the first draft. I appreciate her continuous encouragement that not only determined the fundamental direction of my thought but also helped in not diverting from it when writing this dissertation. Further, I extend my special gratitude to my sub-supervisor Dr. Mats Karlsson for reading the draft and providing many helpful suggestions. I could not have been able to complete this study without the understanding and time provided by the members of the Japanese Studies Department. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Associate Professor Elise Tipton, Professor Hugh Clark, Dr. Roman Rosenbaum and many staff members in the Japanese Studies department for their helpful critical comments, guidance and kindness. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Agnes Syrokomla-Stefanowska who spent many hours in proofreading the final draft. I am also extremely grateful for the intelligent advice, encouragement and friendship offered by Barry Claremont. I thank Dr. Ōkita Taketoshi of Osaka University for his assistance in collecting books and materials. In addition, I particularly thank him for immeasurably helpful discussions on the Kantian philosophy and Nakagami Kenji’s literature. My special thanks are for Paul Arkell and Shinji Kakizaki for their hospitality shown when I visited Sydney in the past five years; without their help, I might have never been able to achieve this. I also thank Higashi Teruhiko who provided me an opportunity to contribute several papers to their annual magazine Goō; further, I thank many staff members in the Kumano JK Project for their generous support and friendship. I need to also thank Dean Hajime Yamamoto and my colleagues at Kansai Gaidai University for their assistance and support that helped me to write this dissertation. Finally, I would like to thank my mother and sister for their long-standing support, which made it possible for me to study in Sydney. i INTRODUCTION In this dissertation, I would like to examine the manner in which the concept of autonomy (jiritsu 自律) is treated in modern and contemporary Japanese literature. This will be done through an analysis of the autonomous attitude of a contemporary Japanese writer, Nakagami Kenji ( 中上健次 1946–1992). Nakagami was an illegitimate child, born in the burakumin (Japanese outcast) ghetto of Shingū City in Wakayama prefecture (known by the old name of the province, Kishū) one year after the end of World War II. His complex ancestry and the burakumin neighbourhood provided the background for the gravity of his thought-provoking works. Nakagami won the Akutagawa Prize for his story Misaki (岬 The Cape) in 1976, which ushered him into the Japanese bundan (the literary circle) as a promising writer. His own harsh experiences provided the themes and motifs that were consistently manifest in his works—especially, Karekinada (枯木灘 Sea of Dead Trees, 1977) and Chi no hate shijō no toki (地の果て至上の時 The Sublime Time at the End of the Earth, 1984), which are the sequels to Misaki. The three stories are known as Akiyuki sanbusaku (秋 幸三部作), the trilogy of Akiyuki. His other works include Keshō (化粧 Makeup), which was written between 1974 and 1977; Sennen no yuraku (千年の愉楽 A Thousand Years of Pleasure, 1982), a story that treated outcast young men as semi-divine entities; Nichirin no tsubasa (日輪の翼 The Wings of the Sun, 1984); Kumano-shū (熊野集 A Kumano Collection, 1984); Kiseki (奇蹟 Miracle, 1989); Sanka (讃歌 Hymn, 1990); Keibetsu (軽蔑 Scorn, 1992); and Izoku (異族 The Different Tribe, 1993), which was one of his posthumous, unfinished works. These 1 works have recurring themes. Many of Nakagami’s works including the Akiyuki trilogy are set in Kumano,1 and are known as the ‘Kumano saga’.