Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations Arts & Sciences Summer 8-15-2019 In Praise of the Peaks: Science, Art, and Nature in Kojima Usui’s Mountain Literature Aaron Paul Jasny Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds Part of the Asian Studies Commons, East Asian Languages and Societies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Jasny, Aaron Paul, "In Praise of the Peaks: Science, Art, and Nature in Kojima Usui’s Mountain Literature" (2019). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1914. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/1914 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts & Sciences at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures Dissertation Examination Committee: Marvin H. Marcus, Chair Nancy E. Berg Rebecca Copeland Ji-Eun Lee Jamie Lynn Newhard In Praise of the Peaks: Science, Art, and Nature in Kojima Usui’s Mountain Literature by Aaron Paul Jasny A dissertation presented to The Graduate School of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2019 St. Louis, Missouri © 2019, Aaron Paul Jasny Table of Contents List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ iv Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................... v Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Shifting views of mountains in Meiji Japan ................................................................................ 4 Premodern mountains in literature ........................................................................................................ 5 Modern mountains ................................................................................................................................ 9 Meiji mountaineers ............................................................................................................................. 11 Kojima Usui ........................................................................................................................................ 13 Sangaku bungaku ................................................................................................................................ 18 Rethinking nature in Meiji Japan .............................................................................................. 19 Monuments to nature: Mountain literature and the natural environment .................................. 24 Chapter One: “The Novelty of Nature: Kojima Usui and Hierarchies of Genre in Modern Japanese Literature” ...................................................................................................................... 28 Testing the limits of traditional kikōbun ................................................................................... 31 Into the mountains: Towards a new kikōbun ............................................................................. 37 Knowledge of nature: A defense of science in literature .......................................................... 40 Shifting literary standards: Shōsetsu vs. kikōbun ...................................................................... 48 Kikōbun’s proper place: Writing nature, writing mountains ..................................................... 56 Sangaku bungaku: A Japanese literature of the mountains ....................................................... 63 Chapter Two: “Authentic Alpine: Scientific Knowledge and Natural Description in Kojima Usui’s Mountain Writing” ............................................................................................................ 72 The “science” of Usui’s literary critique ................................................................................... 77 “Scientist” and “scientific knowledge” in Usui .................................................................................. 79 Science vs. literature: An exercise in contrast .................................................................................... 85 Science for literature: Edifying the author through scientific knowledge .......................................... 88 Literature for science: Bringing science to a wider audience ............................................................. 91 Other writers on literature and science................................................................................................ 93 The authority of science: Scientific knowledge and authentic literature ................................ 100 Modes of seeing: Observation and objectivity .................................................................................. 101 ii Authentic literature: A connection to the real ................................................................................... 109 The authority of science .................................................................................................................... 111 Chapter Three: “Visions of Nature: Scientific Gaze, Artistic Sense, and the Landscape of Modern Japan” ............................................................................................................................ 115 Sangaku bungaku and the visual arts ...................................................................................... 121 Climbing and sketching: Painters and Meiji alpinism ...................................................................... 122 Painting with words: Visuality in Usui’s literary theory .................................................................. 125 Visuality in Usui’s sangaku bungaku ..................................................................................... 132 Re-envisioning Japan’s natural spaces .................................................................................... 146 Landscape in Usui’s mountain aesthetics ......................................................................................... 148 Subject/object: Human agency in understanding the land ................................................................ 151 Configuring space through narratives of travel ................................................................................. 155 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 158 Mountains left to climb ........................................................................................................... 161 Other mountain writers ..................................................................................................................... 162 Mountaineering and the nation ......................................................................................................... 163 Mountain ecologies ........................................................................................................................... 165 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 170 iii List of Figures Figure 1: Kojima Usui memorial stone ........................................................................................... 4 Figure 2: Mountain chart .............................................................................................................. 69 Figure 3: Nezumiiro no inshō ...................................................................................................... 140 Figure 4: Mount Kita and surrounding peaks ............................................................................. 141 Figure 5: Estimated map of the Shirane Range .......................................................................... 142 iv Acknowledgments This dissertation was made possible through the guidance and support of a great number of people. First of all, I would like to thank Professor Marvin Marcus for his dedicated support and enthusiasm for my project, and Professors Rebecca Copeland and Jamie Newhard for their constant feedback and encouragement. My journey with the Japanese language began in Professor Ginger Marcus’s classroom on my first day of undergraduate school many years ago, and I owe her a special debt. Thank you to Professor Ji-Eun Lee and Professor Nancy Berg for your support of my studies and your feedback on my dissertation committee. I would also like to thank Professor Ōtake Hiroko, without whose guidance my initial struggles with the difficult language of Meiji texts would have been a much more difficult prospect. Thank you to Steve Pijut and Rob Patterson of the Washington University Writing Center, without whose support