Volume 5 | Issue 12 | Article ID 2592 | Dec 01, 2007 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Focus

The Question of the Other: Kara Juro and Letters from Sagawa

Mark Morris

The Question of the Other: Kara Juro and look at the literary field of the early 1980s. Letters from Sagawa A third and related matter, which the very Mark Morris strangeness of Letters from Sagawa might help to comprehend, has to do with a certain sense This essay proposes looking back at a story of strangeness itself. The print and online which is one of the most unusual winners of media have, not so long ago, reported on Japan’s best-known literary award, thesomething called “The Syndrome” which Akutagawa Prize. Kara Juro’sLetters from seems to affect young Japanese visitors to and Sagawa (Sagawa-kun kara no tegami) first short-term residents of Paris. Veteran BBC appeared in November 1982 in the journal Paris correspondent Caroline Wyatt has Bungei; it was announced co-winner of the 88th recounted, via other reports in the French Akutagawa Prize in January 1983, andpress and Reuters, that a ‘dozen or so Japanese subsequently reprinted that March in the tourists a year have to be repatriated from the official prize-confirmation section of the quality French capital, after falling prey to what’s monthly which hosts the award, Bungei Shunju. become known as “Paris syndrome”. . . . This is Kara’s publisher Kawade Shobo Shinsha had what some polite Japanese tourists suffer when already published a slim single-volume version they discover that Parisians can be rude or that the preceding January. the city does not meet their expectations’ (Wyatt 2006). I want however briefly to I want to go back to Letters from Sagawa for consider a rather more serious, historically several reasons. One is that the author, Kara shaped sense of estrangement and alienation Juro, has had something of a come-back in experienced by Japanese and other visitors to recent years, not that he had ever really gone the West from East Asia since early in the way. For example, his short story "Glass twentieth century. This is a kind of alienation, a Messenger" ("Garasu no tsukai") was adapted sense of aporia (psychical, intellectual or by him into the screenplay of the 2005 film of ideological blockage) or dysphoria (psychical, the same title, a film directed by the zainichi existential malaise) before the lived fact of Korean director Kim Sujin, and Kara himself one’s otherness, often experienced most plays one of the lead roles in it. Kara is not well acutely on the level of language. In language, known outside Japan, so I will try to supply or in language thwarted, may reside a painful some basic information about this colourful, disaggregation of identity, which formulations contrary person. about a Paris syndrome inevitably threaten to trivialize. A second reason has to do with the cultural atmospherics of the earlier story. It seems to be Kara Juro, the Japanese literary field of the closely, if eccentrically, linked to political and 1980s, estrangement in and by language — cultural themes of Japan in the 1980s which these are complex topics that can only be might be worth revisiting from the distance of sketched out all too briefly. It is their several decades. This will also involve a cursory conjuncture within Kara’s Letters from Sagawa,

1 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF the conditions of the story’s production and the as worthy of description as an “incident” debates surrounding this intractable text, (jiken): Shinjuku Nishi-Guchi Koen Jiken.[1] which provide the focus of this essay.

Kara Juro

Kara is perhaps best known as one of the key figures of Japan’s “underground” –angura – theatre movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He was born in in 1940 and graduated from Meiji University with a degree in theatre arts in 1963. That same year he helped found a drama troupe that would become one of the most colourful participants in the underground/avant-garde movement during these volatile decades: the Situation Theatre Troupe (Gekidan Jokyo Gekijo). The energy of his Situation Theatre at times spilled out onto the Tokyo streets from its signature Red Tent, leading to confrontations with Tokyo city Posters made by Angura bureaucrats, the police, and even his artistic ally and competitor Terayama Shuji (Goodman As noted above, Kara has been involved in film 1988: 227-82). as well as drama. His film career goes back to Consider, for example, “The Shinjuku West-Exit the end of the 1960s and roles in Oshima Park Incident” of 1969. By the beginning of Nagisa’s Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Shinjuku that year, having been forced out of its dorobo nikki 1968) and Matsumoto Yoshio’s temporary home at the Hanazono Shrine due to Pandemonium (Shura 1971). His most recent the criticisms of shrine officials and local re-engagement with cinema has come in two business people, and having been banned by films directed by Kim Sujin, mentioned above, the Tokyo municipal government fromhimself formerly an actor in the Situation performing anywhere else in the city, the Theatre Troupe: Wagering the Night (Yoru o Situation Theatre turned to direct action. Kara kakete 1999) and Glass Messenger (Gurasu no and his comrades responded by setting up their tsukai 2005). The arts in general, and the Red Tent in a small park near Shinjuku Station. avant-garde theatre in particular, have shown a As they proceeded with a performance, several greater openness to outsiders, to others, than hundred riot police kidotai( ) – a familiar many social and cultural institutions in Japan. presence in the Tokyo streets of the time – This is especially the case with surrounded the tent. Afterwards Kara, his zainichi/resident Korean artists. Kara’s working female lead and partner Ri Reisen, and three life has been bound up with an alternative other members of the troupe were arrested. cultural sphere supportive of zainichi artists This example of bravado, a bringing together of such as his ex-partner, and co-founder of the art and political action typical of angura Situation Theatre, Ri Reisen (I Yeo-Seon), theatre, earned Kara and his troupe their own character actor Rokudaira Naomasa and actor- niche in the popular social history of the time, director Kim Sujin, one of the most significant since the 3 January 1969 event wascontemporary figures in the considerable immediately classified by the Japanese media zainichi artistic community.

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Kara Juro is the stage name of the man born Paris police had arrested a man identified as a Otsuru Yoshihide. There have been a number of Japanese student in front of his residence in the famous artistic “Juro’s.” One whose career has Sixteenth Arrondissement. He was held under suggestive parallels with Kara’s was Hayashida suspicion of having brutally murdered a young Juro (1900-67), best-known for his role in the Dutch woman, like himself a student enrolled at postwar revival of Kamigata manzai (comic the Centre Censier of the . dialogues associated with western Japan). Police had earlier been attempting to trace a ‘Kara’ is written with the character otherwise suspicious-looking young Asian male who had read as To, as in the To – in Chinese, Tang – jettisoned two suitcases by a pond in the Bois Dynasty. But the noun kara has meanings only de Boulogne. The suitcases were discovered to loosely tied to any specific history orcontain human remains. Police had had little geography, general connotations of the foreign, difficulty locating the cab driver who had exotic, the other. Kara Juro is a name which unwittingly helped suspect Sagawa Issei carry signals in the man a kind of playfulthe cases from his flat and take them to the extroversion that one might not expect from nearby park (Le Monde 17/6/81:15).[3] News of the bearer of the elegant Japanese moniker he the arrest reached Japan in time for evening was born with.[2] I will return to Kara and his newscasts the following day, and was then cultural sphere’s zainichi connections at the picked up by the major dailies on the end of the essay, if only to indicate the seventeenth. Following standard journalistic exceptional nature of Letters from Sagawa and practice, the suspect Sagawa Issei was at first its postmodern, rather 1980s-specific nervous only know as “A” in the Japanese media, playfulness about, if not downright rejection of, although from its first reports Le Monde and alterity. other European media referred to both Sagawa and his victim, René Hartvelt, by name. The One other Kara is the writer of prose fiction. first, and what would prove to be one of the This is the Kara focussed on below. During his longest articles devoted to the “Sagawa jiken” years of acting, agitating and directing, he by a broadsheet newspaper, was headed: “In gained a reputation as a first-rate writer of Paris, Female Student Dismembered” (“Pari de funny, fantastic and often macabre short jogakusei barabara”: Asahi 17/6/81: M 23). The stories. One collection of tales won the Izumi article accompanying the header maintained a Kyoka Prize for fantasy-genre fiction in 1978 sober tone, but the header itself suggested the (The Starfish, The Sprite [Hitode, Kappa]). Ten lurid imagery which would accompany volumes of stories had appeared by 1982, discussion of this “incident” on its way to before he had won the Akutagawa Prize. Kara’s literary recasting.[4] Letters from Sagawa may not be much more fantastic or macabre than some of his other According to his own thinly fictionalized tales, but it did take on a curious life of its own, account written well after the crime, Sagawa both in its creation and its reception. Issei had used his acquaintance Hartvelt’s multi-lingual skills as an excuse to invite her to L’Affaire Sagawa his flat. He claimed that a Japanese professor staying in Paris had asked him to find someone Letters from Sagawa owes much of its notoriety who could provide good oral renditions of some to the scandal surrounding its origins. It came particular German expressionist lyrics; he into being when Kara’s penchant for the would pay Sagawa and a reader for a tape- fantastic and grotesque connected to an recording. Hartvelt admitted to some ability in ‘incident’ which occurred in the summer of German but still found the request odd. Still, 1981. On the evening of 15 June that year, she agreed to help (Sagawa 1983: 100-01). For

3 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF his part, Sagawa was only too aware that in the title Mon Oncle/ Monnonkuru(familiar six months the young Dutch woman had studied wordplay about uncles and monocles). He and in Paris, she had acquired a fluency in French associates put together a special ‘l’affaire far in advance of what he had gained in four Sagawa’ issue in October 1981. It brought lonely years of residency and study. After his together a wide spectrum of French reporting, arrest, concierges would surface attesting to painstakingly translated into Japanese, his clumsiness and Harvelt’s skill with the headers, subheads and photo captions language; when questioning Ph.D. candidate included; it also gave a fairly representative Sagawa, the police called upon the services of sample of Japanese journalists and intellectuals an interpreter (Asahi 17/6/81: M 23; Asahi the forum of several extensive discussions 23/6/81: E 13). (zadankai) to sum up reactions to a scandal that had echoed loudly in the tabloids and She came to Sagawa’s flat and he sat her down weeklies (shukanshi) in previous months. Yet before a tape-recorder. He handed her a even here, what the rival journalists really volume of German poems and turning on the wanted to talk about was whether or not recorder, asked her to read an enigmatic lyric, Sagawa had actually tasted his victim’s flesh; “Abend” (“Evening”) by Johannes Becker. He the intellectuals and writers rehearsed various meanwhile went and fetched a 22-caliber theories about the social and psychological carbine fitted with a silencer. Several days implications of cannibalism (Itami 1981: 82-89, before, Sagawa had invited his friend over for a 91-107). meal, and while her back was turned, aimed the gun at her but it had failed to go off. This Letters from Sagawa time it went off (Sagawa 1983: 58-71). After his transferral from police custody into the charge The contact between Sagawa Issei and Kara – of the investigating magistrate, Sagawa was the actual exchange of letters denoted by the immediately committed for medical andtitle of his story – began in a round about psychiatric assessment. The case seemed to be fashion. In October 1981 an acquaintance of in the hands of the doctors (Asahi 19/6/81: E the incarcerated Sagawa sent him a newspaper 15). clipping. It was taken from the tabloid Sports News (Supotsu Nyusu). Kara Juro was to direct In , reporting of “l’affaire Sagawa” the film Boulogne, a cinematic transformation followed fairly predictable patterns, from the of the Sagawa incident; shooting was to begin sober, sociological if ponderous approach of Le in June 1982. With a budget of some Monde to the scandal mongering of Photo (a 300,000,000 yen and Paris locations, the film lowbrow member of the Paris-Match syndicate), was to be a rare exploration of the darker which found its editor in court for having passions (Kara 1983: 146-47). “Please forgive reproduced photos taken of the dead victim by me for writing to you so suddenly,” began Sagawa (Le Monde 26/1/84: 10). Nor did Sagawa’s first letter to Kara on 12 November Japanese journalists prove immune to1981. “I am the person who this June killed the sensationalization and an emphasis on the young Dutch woman . . . and was arrested by grotesque aspects of the brutal aftermath of the Paris police.” He mentioned having learned the killing, rather than the crime itself or any of Kara’s plans for a film and noted that for sympathy for its victim. some time he himself had been contemplating a similar project. “Entitled Akogare [Yearning], it During the beginning of the 1980s, the late is a film in which a Western (or rather, Itami Juzo was, alongside his film work, editing Japanese) man yearns for a Western woman, an offbeat journal with the punning bilingual and as the very consequence of his yearning, he

4 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF kills the woman and devours her flesh” (Kara a kind of story, it seems rather an anti-story or 1983: 149-50). Sagawa stated his willingness to pre-story about a writer gathering material for make, even to star in a film about “my a more straightforward account which never incident;” he hoped to be of assistance to Kara, gets written, one that would presumably have answering questions or contributing to the been about visiting Sagawa and finding out scenario. He wrote as well that he hoped by some of the same sorts of things which December to be transferred to a psychiatric preoccupied certain sections of the Japanese hospital, and that from there he might be media. allowed out once a week to work on the film project (Kara 1983: 27). The narrator had found himself engaged in correspondence with Sagawa Issei; he goes to Kara was busier with his theatre troupe and Paris and tries to contact the imprisoned fiction writing than with film in the late 1970s. Sagawa via the law firm defending him, but is He had had a small role in Shinoda Masahiro’s cold-shouldered in best Gallic fashion. The Demon Pond (Yashagaike) in 1979; in 1983 he writer-narrator then resorts to a broken stream adapted another writer’s novel for Kuroki of messages and questions hastily scribbled in Kazuo’s Bridge of Tears (Namidabashi). Where letters, on postcards or serviettes, supposedly a sports reporter picked up the notion of a to be dispatched to the incarcerated Sagawa. major film project based on the Sagawa is hard Meanwhile, he has found a room in a Left Bank to know — though the report bares all the hotel which by co-incidence is close to the marks of Kara’s own bravado. It is unlikely to apartment building where Sagawa’s victim had have been based on anything of substance. But lived; the co-incidence provides scenes of after he had been contacted by Sagawa, Kara parodic gothic humour in which the narrator does seem to have aimed to stir up media skulks his way to the landing outside the door interest in what had already become the draft of the dead woman’s flat in order to leave a of a long story. In July 1982 he travelled to bouquet of white roses (this being a story that Paris with an editor friend. He gave himself one makes much play on “whiteness”) in the arms week to soak up local colour and to make an of a statue — of Isis — incongruously planted attempt to visit Sagawa; he intended also to there. Another coincidence: he easily locates keep his eye out for a possible model for a the bookshop, a German bookshop on the Rue Japanese female character he was planning to de Rennes; and there it is, a copy of those very introduce into Sagawa’s “incident.” Within German expressionist lyrics Sagawa had Letters from Sagawa, as well in an article about handed to his victim. Paris itself seems fairly him which appeared in the Asahi Shinbun the littered with barbaric, teasing signifiers. No month before the story’s publication, Kara more deterred by his lack of any knowledge of portrayed his Paris trip as in addition the quest German than on forays into the city of signs by for a mysterious text – the anthology of poems his minimal French, the Kara-narrator returns from which the murdered woman had been to his room and, with a newly purchased reading aloud in her final moments (Asahi German-Japanese dictionary in hand, attempts Shinbun 8/10/82: E 5). to translate the poem Sagawa had chosen, “Abend.” The text which Kara eventually produced, Letters from Sagawa, is a strange exercise in There may be distant echoes in this disjointed, the postmodern picaresque: a meandering ironic text of earlier Japanese works. In the hybrid of docu-fiction (imagine a short version nineteenth century, during the first era of the of In Cold Blood written by a slapstick kicking-open of doors and imposed comedian), fiction and travelogue. Not so much internationalization/kokusaika, parodies had

5 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF appeared such as Kanagaki Robun’smaid in a “ketotaku”; the sign for a Kichijoji Shanksmare to the West (Seiyo dochu coffee shop called New Roxy seems, even in hizakurige, 1870-76). Robun had sent his katakana script, to be “batakusai”; a phantom bumbling but canny Japanese rustics careering character describes Sagawa as having been through Western societies and nations“keto ni yowai” (Kara 1983: 20, 36, 99). The experienced as grotesque versions of the ideal most likely first reaction of most readers and idealistic embodiments of modernity coming across these musty old-fashioned terms depicted by the Meiji enlightenment. Kara’s of abuse is laughter. Ketotaku, in crude literal narrator follows in their footsteps. His, too, is translation, is ‘house of a hairy foreigner’; an eminently caricaturable West. The exotic batakusai, “butter/milk-smelling”;keto ni French decompose into grotesque clichéd yowai, “to have a weakness for hairy images: “faint beads of sweat appear on the foreigners.” The tone is teasing, consciously tips of blond noses passing by;” women’s anachronistic, as Kara erodes the borders of blouses reveal “on approaching breasts,ordinarily accepted terms and images transparent blue veins akin to what were once regarding race and foreignness. The words do called the Martian Canals (Kara 1983: 9).” accumulate as Kara’s text wanders on its way. Early on the story sets up a variety of parodic The result for a non-Japanese reader may conceits via the classic Anglo-Irish fantasy unavoidably be akin to encountering the travelogue, Gulliver’s Travels: political and racial gaffes of certain Japanese politicians of the time: this does not seem to be a message intended for any but a Japanese “That ‘yearning’ for the skin of audience. ‘white’ people which for long years tormented and drove Kokusaika, postmodernity you on is not something that I, who have myself been Debates concerningkokusaika , looked-down upon by internationaliztion, were part of the cultural women of foreign parts, cannot and political debates of Japan in the 1980s. The understand. But as it slogan was perhaps most closely associated seems the others you insinuated with Nakasone Yasuhiro, prime minister from yourself close to were 1982 until 1987. During the decade, what always ‘white’ people, as though Thatcher had become to Britain and Reagan to you had eyes for no-one America, Nakasone seemed to be for Japan: a else, one can only consider you a radical conservative leader out to privatize or strange sort of Gulliver scale back social welfare and/or state . . . . Reading your letter now, I end infrastructural institutions, discredit liberal up convincing myself political ideals, and pursue an aggressive that Gulliver, it may be, has foreign policy as geo-political strategy and pointed to the land of the white domestic electoral tactic. giants and made me a chart for the voyage” (Kara 1983: 9). There is no doubt that things were changing in both the political and cultural landscapes before and during his years as prime minister. The racial picaresque tone of the work is more Hindsight suggests that commentators were often relayed through minor touches: Kara- right to emphasize how “Nakasone’s election narrator’s grandmother, in one of several came at an opportune moment in terms of the textual non-sequiturs, is said to have served as popular mood. A new nationalism was palpable

6 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF in the early 1980s. . . . Asahi Shinbun reported intuitive Japanese approach can that a majority of Japanese now regarded only invite themselves as superior to Westerners” (Pyle misunderstanding” (Nakasone 1987: 251). Nakasone may have had less real 1983: 14). executive authority than Reagan or Thatcher, and his aggressive stance towards foreign policy often added up to little more than anti- To domestic audiences, Nakasone was willing Soviet rhetoric. But the agenda of a neo- to say the sort of things nationalists and nationalist revisioning of Japan’s pastconservatives may have always said to one aggression in East Asia, which became an overt another in private but were increasingly programme of right-wing intellectuals pursued declaring out loud, if not always for the record. ever since, matched by conservative political Speaking to a seminar of members of his party demands for increases in the military budget in 1986, he could express other aspects of his and for rewriting Article 9 of the Japanese agenda. Japan, the world’s number two constitution, the renunciation of warfare economy and gaining fast, was preparing to clause, has provoked neighbours such as Korea engage fully in the international scene and and China ever since. When, on 15 August gearing up to become the dominant information 1985, the fortieth anniversary of Japan’s society; the American century was ending, surrender — and Korea’s Liberation —Japan’s about to begin. Nakasone became the first postwar prime minister to make an official visit to Yasukuni Shrine, the reaction from Korea and China was “And there is no country which immediate and angry. Nakasone did not repeat puts such diverse the gesture thereafter. He did not need to information so accurately into the worry about letting down conservative voters; ears of its people. It he had been re-elected already by a huge has become a very intelligent majority. society. . . . In America there are many blacks, Puerto Nakasone spoke eloquently about Japan’s need Ricans and Mexicans, to engage more widely with the world, certainly and seen on average, America’s when he spoke for the record and for foreign per capita level of consumption. The significance of language and intelligence, as gained through communication was a key theme of kokusaika: education and mass media is still extremely low. Because Japan is such “It is imperative if [Japanese a dense, vibrant society, a high- leaders] are to solve level information vexatious international questions society, a highly educated society, and remove sources a society in which of friction, that they discourse people are so vibrant, unless of eloquently and convincingly party’s policies with people who speak different continually progress to suit the tongues and have people’s appetite for different cultures, traditions and knowledge/information/ customs. To try to deal intelligence, our party will with people of other nations via the falter” (Nakasone cited in Pyle traditional taciturn and 1987: 265).

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word postmodern may be used today (Storey Some well-educated translator with access to 2005: 268-72). high-information technology provided an English version of Nakasone’s comments which For the limited purposes of understanding what winged its way into the American press the is going on in Letters from Sagawa, I will take very next day. The reaction was immediate and the shortcut of referring to a useful inventory angry, though the friction caused had less of cultural traits assembled by Masao Miyoshi serious consequences, as time progressed, than and Harry Harootunian in their 1989 landmark a new counter-nationalistic discourse beginning Postmodernism and Japan: ‘playfullness, to take shape in both China and Japan. gaming, spectacle, tentativeness, alterity, reproduction and pastiche’ (Miyoshi and Nakasone operated in this case as though no Harootunian 1989: vii). Perhaps the only one of one but Japanese people could possiblythese notional traits not enacted by Letters understand comments made in Japanese. Not from Sagawa with any positive force is alterity. ordinarily a problem for ordinary people. Yet a statesman calling for internationalization could Throughout the tale, the language of others be expected to have recognized that in “the seems impossible. Nowhere is this enacted with wake of globalization, whether one is drawn more panache than in the narrator’s rather along or remains resistant, one is translated perverse treatment of a German poem: the ever more into translation” (Sallis 2002: 4). The famously difficult expressionist lyric “Abend,” uneasiness experienced by Americans reading by Johannes Becher. Kara-narrator requests Nakasone’s stray comments above is hard to further information from Sagawa about the avoid when reading the sort of racialpoem his victim had been reading. The latter, vocabulary deployed by Kara in Letters from in his written response, at first can recall a title Sagawa. Although he wrote with a far different of sorts and details of the cover of the comic intent, the language may still seem anthology, but is uncertain about the author or offensive. And given the light-hearted attitude precise title of the German poem in question. the text displays towards violence, fairly The name was something like “Jonathan”, repellent. When a French translation of Kara’s writes Sagawa, and the title might be “Aben” story appeared, a Le Monde reviewer gave a (Kara 1983: 31), neither very German- balanced account of both the story and the sounding. While a Japanese acquaintance will crime from which Kara had spun it. His eventually set the narrator straight about the conclusion made an ethical point often absent German pronunciation of Johannes and from the initial reporting of “l’affaire Sagawa” “Abend,” he first tries out his own theory: in either France or Japan: “Kara . . . explores “There may even have been an American fantasies of an insane love,” yet ends up Jonathan who dashed off to join the German participating in “the lucrative exploitation of an Expressionist movement, and 'Aben' may be atrocious drama” (Le Monde 26/1/84: 10). neither German nor English but a kind of cypher. Yet such fantasies may be no more than One other theme circulating in the cultural the delusions of someone with practically no atmosphere of the 1980s — one actually more gift at all for languages” (Kara 1983: 36). international than internationalization — not only in Japan but in cultural and intellectual The book version ofLetters from Sagawa discourse in , North America and reproduces in the appendix a photo of the cover elsewhere, was postmodernism. Debates over of the anthology in question:Lyrik des postmodernity were complex and have had far- Expressionistischen Jahrzehnts (Kara 1983: reaching consequences, however casually the 152-53). Next to the photo runs a portion of the

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German text of “Abend,” each stanzawriters judged the work on the way to interpellated by Kara’s Japanese translation, according it Japan’s top literary award. Their one studded with parenthetical hunches and judgements give some insight into the question marks. Kara manages both tocontentious climate within a literary sphere translate and simultaneously call into question surrounded by more amorphous discourses of the very possibility or value of translation. His kokusaika or postmodernity. narrator comments in the body of the work on the chores of dealing with all these foreign The panel of judges for the 88th Akutagawa words: Prize included some of the best known male writers in the literary field: from a generation who started their careers before the war, Inoue “This is probably a horrible Yasushi (1907-91); an intellectual who had translation. All I can feel helped lay the groundwork for postwar confident about is the bit about criticism, Nakamura Mitsuo (1911-88); and how bleak the future others then in late middle-age such as Yasuoka looks. With the rest I just sort of Shotaro (b.1920), Maruya Saiichi (b. 1925), strung together a Yoshiyuki Junnosuke (1923-94) and Oe literal translation as the mood took Kenzaburo (b. 1935). Kaiko Takeshi (1930-89), me. I didn’t pick better known by his pen name Kaiko Ken, who German at university, and I’m like Oe had emerged as a short story writer by hopeless at bluffing, the end of the 1950s, was also a member. yet here I am in a cheap foreign hotel and, on top of Kaiko’s career had taken him in more that, nitpicking through a foreign journalistic than purely literary directions than language — the most of the others, but his was still a respected very fact is a huge farce” (Kara critical voice. His battlefield reporting for the 1983: 63). Asahi Shinbun, collected inVietnam War Chronicle (Betonamu senki 1965), is perhaps more memorable than the war-theme fiction he It seems almost as if one form of theproduced later in the decade. He had accrued postmodern sublime was, for Kara at least, a extra cultural and political capital through his playful fending off of alterity, the pleasure of participation during the 1970s in the Beiheiren staying lost in translation. movement and its protests against the American invasion of Vietnam. At the end of the The Akutagawa Prize 1970s, Kaiko had published an open letter to Japanese writers in the journalSubaru . The It is difficult at this distance in time to judge title – “Ishoku tarite, bungaku wa wasureta!” – how ordinary Japanese readers of fiction loosely translates as “Food in our bellies, reacted to Letters from Sagawa when it first clothes on our backs – Have we forgotten all appeared. Prime Minister Nakasone himself about literature!?” It was a short, humorous declared Letters from Sagawa a botched piece broadside directed at his peers. “Let me pose a of work and the Akutagawa Prize devalued by question in between the yawns of my midday association with it (Le Monde 13-14/3/83: 8). It nap. Our literature nowadays, creative, seems safe to assume that this was acriticism, short works, anonymous columns, judgement based on the scandal surrounding correspondence — is it because I’ve grown old Sagawa rather than a reading of Kara’s text. Of that I can only feel the lot of it is just so much greater relevance is how Kara’s senior fellow cold soup? Pure literature, impure literature,

9 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF old, young, male, female — nothing but crude have attracted the most attention fakery, enough to make you lament that anyone among young could, with a straight face, make money like people in the 1980s is Murakami this” (Kaiko 1979:136). When throughout the Haruki, born in 1980s literary scholars came to write about the 1949 and reared during the period growing sense of a crisis in fiction and the of Japan’s rapid literary marketplace, Kaiko’s impromptu open growth. . . . Murakami’s literature letter was often singled out as a genuine is characterized by premonition of the waning of serious literature his determination not to take an as a significant cultural presence. active posture toward society or even toward the Kara Juro’s most eloquent supporter among milieu what seems to have been a bitterly divided immediately surrounding him. His prize jury was Oe Kenzaburo. Oe found “Kara’s method is to design sustained by a thorough theatricality; passively submit to the influence of taking a real event as trigger, he displays a popular culture, high level of intellectual, sensual fantasy.” Oe spinning out his inner imaginary as also noted that on the previous two occasions if listening to when the Akutagawa selectors had met, they background music” (Oe 1986: 3). had decided not to award the prize at all (Bungei Shunju March 1983: 395). Critic Nakamura Mitsuo thought that while During the decade of the 1980s the continued Letters from Sagawa seemed a writerly tour de viability of this literary and commercialforce, it was hard to call it literary. Maruya institution had at times seemed in doubt. The Saiichi had no idea what Kara was going on twice-yearly prize was only awarded on nine of about: “the plot has no logic, the characters twenty occasions: the most dramatic gap since lack any sense of reality. As for the style, there the fractious years of the immediate postwar are many strange expressions and the choice of era. This time around, the second-half of 1982, language is oddly distorted” Bungei( Shunju with seven promising authors on the short list, March 1983: 394-95). Perhaps any reader- Oe thought the outlook for Japanese fiction writer of Maruya’s vintage may be forgiven for seemed optimistic (Ibid). This may seem a not being ready to reckon with Kara’s style in remarkably up-beat assessment from a writer general or Letters from Sagawa in particular. who by the middle of the 1980s would be Yet what was a constellation of narrative and openly concerned about the hollowing out of stylistic features by way of becoming part of the cultural and political energies associated postmodern literary normality was a part of with postwar fiction. In an essay published just Kara’s storytelling as well. Murakami Haruki’s three years after the above comments, Oe Wild Sheep Chase was one of the most would comment dismissively about a writer of successful literary works of 1982, and its fiction far more significant than Kara Juro, one combination of playfulness with language, arguably the first major winner of therambling narrative form, fantasy, hapless modernity versus postmodernity literary stakes, narrator, lack of high-cultural seriousness — all Murakami Haruki. have much more in common with Kara’s way of writing than mainstream engaged realism. One rather straightforward example of the latter “Among the Japanese writers of would be the other winner of the 88th pure literature who Akutagawa Prize, Kato Yoshiko’sWall of

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Dreams. In October 2006, a Reuters report relaying an article in the French press sent the term “Paris Kaiko Ken thought that while some of the panel syndrome” into international media circulation. members had been too harsh in judging Kara’s The term itself was coined by the Japanese work, he still found it little more than a psychiatrist Ota Hiroaki who, as noted by the fragment from a writer’s notebook Bungei( BBC report cited above, had identified a Shunju March 1983: 398). What makes Kaiko’s complex group of emotional and psychological comments more than anecdotally interesting is crises among a small number of Japanese that he was the only one of the panel to devote visitors to Paris some years before. A long-term most of his comments to the other co-winner of Paris resident, consultant at the Hôpital Sainte- the prize, Kato Yoshiko. Her storyWall of Anne and advisor to the Japanese Embassy, Dr. Dreams (Yume no kabe) is about as far in form Ota had been regularly called on by the and content from Kara’s postmodernEmbassy to evaluate Japanese individuals gamesmanship as one could imagine. The first brought in by emergency services or who have section is set in the west of China, and narrates sought help at hospitals, and to oversee their in straightforward fashion the experiences of a initial treatment (Viala, Ota 2004: 32). He had young Chinese boy, family and neighbours published a popular treatment in Japanese caught between Chinese and Japanese armies concerning his experience treating Japanese visitors to Paris in 1991 (Ota 1991); the source during the war; the second part is told from the of the recent journalistic interest in his work point of view of a Japanese girl whose family seems largely derived from a co-authored finds itself in Beijing at war’s end. The stories article in the psychiatric journalNERVURE of the two young people are interwoven rather (Viala, Ota: 2004). It is worth noting that clumsily, but overall the work conveys real among the general categories of difficulties freshness and warmth. Oe rather patronizingly encountered by those Japanese referred for described Kato as a “writer who had lived medical assessment, such as breakdown in almost thirty years all through the postwar, interpersonal relations, behavioural bearing with her the eyes and spirit of the girl incomprehension, or of that past, solely to write this”Bungei ( disillusionment/depression, the first factor Shunju March 1983: 396). cited is “the language barrier . . . difficulties Kaiko saw something more significant in Wall which can quite quickly create an incapacity for of Dreams. “Whether veteran or newcomer, one communication or be a source of serious is part of a literary tradition, one peculiar to [social] mistakes, leading to a sense of our country, which is extremely inept at estrangement, anguish, isolation” (Viala, Ota depicting foreigners who really seem like 2004: 31-2). foreigners. She has managed remarkably to capture the speech and behaviour of Chinese The reports of Dr. Ota and colleagues make people who really seem Chinese” Bungei( clear that what is at issue has nothing to do Shunju March 1983: 398). Putting aside the with rude Parisians and bad hotels, as some challenge of defining what “really Chinese-like sections of the media might have it (see, for Chinese people” Chugokujin( rashii instance, the Japan Times editorial “Japanese Chugokujin) may mean, the message is clear: and the 'Paris Syndrome'”: 2006); it concerns, Japanese literature should have room for, even rather, a minuscule number of the annual one- a need for, writing that allows a space for million Japanese visitors to the capital who others, alterity, the foreign. undergo emotional trauma and psychic malaise due to prior deep-seated problems, or an even Voyages pathologiques smaller number for whom travel to Paris is

11 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF itself part of an abiding delusional pattern of racialist discourses and practices. For East behaviour. It is also clear that otherAsian and other non-European writers and psychiatrists working with the emergency intellectuals this meant making a long, services in Paris recognize nothing especially expensive voyage at a time when “racial Japanese about a link between travel to Paris classifications between different population and psychopathological incidents (Xaillé 2002). groups were so important that they often French doctors have themselves coined the preceded and shaped real social encounters” term “Syndrome d’Inde” for the occasionally (Dikötter 1997: 22). Frank Dikötter has severe disturbances experienced by French described the experience of Chinese writers travellers to South and South East Asia (Caro travelling to the US and Europe in the decades 2005: 44-5). [5] before the Second World War:

It is an inevitable and understandable limitation of most psychotherapeutic accounts “It is understandable that some concerning voyages pathologiques — one Chinese students common term for both travel which results in genuinely suffered from racial mental disturbance and for travel itself as a discrimination abroad, manifestation of psychological disorder — is although undoubtedly an element that emphasis is placed on the suffering of of self- individual travellers. We need a certain amount victimisation ad self-humiliation of historical distance perhaps to recognize how entered into the for some Japanese visitors to Europe, certainly composition of such feelings. More in the past, travel might be experienced as a important, moment in the pathology of the West’s however, they often interpreted relationship with East Asia as well as a their social troubling individual event. encounters abroad from a cultural repertoire which An established, middle-aged artist like Kara reinforced the racialization of Juro may have seemed at ease playing with Others. Even social rather than engaging with alterity and the experiences that had the potential languages of others throughout the planning to destabilise and writing which producedLetters from their sense of identity were Sagawa; this is obviously not a stance likely to appropriated and be taken by many young Japanese Francophile integrated into a racial frame of travellers, certainly not by Japanese students — reference” or writers, artists, scholars — now or ever, (Dikötter 1997: 22-3). given their serious personal investment in French language and culture. Even less so did Japanese and other non-Western students, As is well known, Natsume Soseki, spent some intellectuals and writers in earlier decades miserable months in London a little over a have the freedom or sang-froid to treat lightly century ago. Passages in his memoirs of the any rare opportunity to travel and study in time vividly recall Franz Fanon’s dictum: “In Europe. One obvious difference between the white world the man of colour encounters travellers then and tourists now is that in the difficulties in the development of his bodily late nineteenth or early twentieth century, the schema” (Fanon 1970: 78). “Everyone I see on former moved through a geopolitical space the street is tall and good-looking,” wrote marked out by imperialist, colonialist and Soseki. “That, first of all intimidates me,

12 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF embarrasses me. Sometimes I see an unusually of desperation. . . . Suddenly I short man, but he is still two inches taller than looked at the glass front I am . . . Then I see a dwarf coming, a man with door of the café and reflected there an unpleasant complexion — and he happens to were the five of us. be my own reflection in the shop window. I A small Oriental in a charcoal don’t know how many times I have laughed at blazer was submerged my own ugly appearance right in front of amid large white-skinned men and myself. . . . And every time that happened, I women. was impressed by the appropriateness of the Instinctively I looked away” term ‘yellow race”’ (cited in Miyoshi 1974: (Sagawa 1983: 32-3). 56-7).

It is in this context that I think we can at least Monsters understand some of what happened to Sagawa Issei in historical rather than scandal-Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein (1818) while mongering terms, because in his thinking and still in her teens. The book bristles with limited self reflection, little seems to have harbingers of the modern era just taking shape. changed from Soseki’s days. Apparently in She seemed at times able to pre-experience a fragile mental health before coming to study in certain modern sense of what it might be like France, he found himself one among thousands simultaneously to find oneself among others of foreign students in Paris; he had ended up and frighteningly alone with the realization of marking time, researching Japanese rather your otherness to them. I am thinking of early than French literature due to intellectual and in the novel, when the creature assembled from linguistic limitations. And he seems to have charnel house fragments escapes into the found the experience of others and their forest. Reborn into the mute signs of nature, he language one of threatening self-annihilation. struggles still to translate experience into the For Sagawa, anguish before the otherness of symbolic world of human language. Inside an language seemed to impact directly onEnglish book, in the setting of German- corporeal self-identity: speaking Switzerland, the creature is learning French, having settled on the unwitting De Lacey family, themselves exiled into the forest, ”To my question, how long have as his unwitting language tutors. “'I easily you studied French, perceived that, although I eagerly longed to she startled me by replying, ‘Six discover myself to the cottagers, I ought not months.’ ‘Six make the attempt until I had become master of months?!’ I had to ask again, their language . . . I had admired the perfect thinking that it must be form of my cottagers — their grace, beauty, because she was within one of the and delicate complexions; but how was I same European terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent languages (sic: onaji Yoroppa pool! At first I started back, unable to believe it gengo no naka ni iru) was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror’” that in six months she could speak, (Shelley 1985, p. 159). read and write so well. I could hardly say, I’ve been What are we to do with our monsters? studying for over ten Postmodern monsters? Barak Kushner has years, I merely gazed up into her written eloquently about what he called white face in a mood “cannibalizing Japanese media.” From

13 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF newspaper reports to magazine coverage, and the powerful actor Rokudaira Naomasa and in books by and about Sagawa and his crime, Kobiyama Yoichi, who has become one of the individual journalists, writers and media figures Ryozanpaku’s lead actors and a playwright as have set in motion a sprawling discourse about well. Kim’s team carries on not only the spirit cannibalism and the erotic, fetishism, even of the dramatic avant-garde of Kara’s about Sagawa’s “victimhood” at the hands of a generation but also its link with zainichi media which, Frankenstein-like, was his creator creative artists. (Kushner 1997). Kim himself has acted in both film and TV If there is something like a simple hard fact drama. He had a small role in the first zainichi lying there at the origin of the “Sagawa film to prove both a commercial and critical Incident,” beyond the freakish output of bad success, Sai Yoichi’s All Under the Moon (Tsuki writing and worse thinking (and Kara Juro may wa dotchi ni dete iru? 1993). In 1998 Korean be no stranger to either) described by Kushner, director Park Chul-soo made a film version of it is an act of . A young woman was Yu Miri’s Akutagawa Prize-winning story destroyed, a family devastated — two families, ”Kazoku Shinema” (“Family cinema” 1996). He since like Renée Hartvelt, Sagawa Issei, too, cast Kim as a zainichi Korean film-maker, Yu had one. To dwell further here on the aftermath Miri’s sister Eri as one of the family’s of that murder would, I believe, mean to daughters, and veteran zainichi writer Yang participate in and to extend the violence of the Sogil (whose autobiographical fiction served as crime, to aggrandize the Sagawa discursive material for All Under the Moon as well) as the marketplace, and to offer it academic cachet. bumbling patriarch — a remarkable conjunction of theatrical, cinematic and literary talent brought together in a Korean-Japanese co-production. For his debut as director, Kim Sujin adapted Yang Sogil’s Through the Night (Yoru o kakete 1999), and made ample use in this Korean-Japanese production of his Ryozanpaku colleagues, along with giving minor parts to Kara and Ri Reisen. As noted at the beginning of the essay, Kim’s more recent film Glass Messenger (Garasu no tsukai 2005) has foregrounded Kara as story-teller, scriptwriter and actor, and revived interest in his earlier career.

Sagawa Issei One significant byproduct of Kim Sujin’s film- making is a documentary film included on the Postscript DVD of his first film,Through the Night: Yorukake — The Film ‘Through the Night’ Day Kara Juro disbanded the Situation Theatre by Day (Yorukake — Eiga ‘Yoru o kakete’ no Troupe in 1988, but only to start up a new hibi: see Kim 1999). It is more interesting than drama group, the Kara-gumi (Kara Gang). The an average self-congratulatory “making-of” a preceding year, after some eight years working short. The documentary introduces Kim’s with Kara’s troupe, Kim Sujin had organized his regulars and a gaggle of fresh-faced volunteers own gekidan, the Shinjuku Ryozanpaku.[6] He who answered open advertisements recruiting took with him from the old Situation Theatre amateurs to work on the film. The main job for

14 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF the volunteers, a number of them zainichi Ryozanpaku has been synthesized from entries Koreans, seems to be construction of a ghetto in general online sources such as Amazon’s meant to represent the one where author Yang Internet Movie Database (IMDb), the Japanese Sogil had grown up in postwar Osaka. The Wikipedia, and from the following websites: the documentary follows them from the first stages Kara-gumi; the film Glass Messenger (accessed of building the entire set themselves on a bleak 29 November 2006);Shinjuku Ryozanpaku patch of land in Suwon, South Korea, through (accessed November 2006). the filming during which they have only minor roles, till the final conflagration of the fictional [2] His stage name has even more complicated ghetto. Along the way, we again encounter resonances given his family history. “His father Kara, Kim and other professionals, but the had been fascinated by the romance of the camera is also attentive to the young zainichi Manchurian 'new frontier;' his maternal Koreans who recount, among other things such grandfather had worked for the South as exhilaration and fatigue, their experience of Manchurian Railroad; and his mother . . . has feeling not exactly either Japanese or Korean as been raised in Manchuria and Korea” they get to know Korean people over the (Goodman 1988: 231). months of the shoot. There is a space of cultural activity between national identities [3] References to Le Monde are cited by date that the radical angura theatre, the literary (day/month/year), page number, and refer to field and zainichi film-making have explored final editions; Asahi Shinbun is cited similarly, since the 1960s. Kara Juro’s most significant with indication of edition (M morning, E cultural legacy exists here, I think, rather than evening). in any film role or particular literary award. [4] Early reports in theAsahi Shinbun Mark Morris is University Lecturer in East displayed a nervous glance over the shoulder Asian Cultural History, University ofthat was still common in Japanese press Cambridge. Research and teaching involve attitudes towards the country’s overseas image. mainly Japan’s minorities and Japanese and It was reported that newspapers less restrained Korean film. His most recent article is "The than Le Monde such as France Soir had given Political Economics of Patriotism: the case of the story front-page coverage and screaming 'Hanbando'", in Korea Yearbook 2007: Politics, headlines, for example: ‘Ripper of the Bois de Economics, Society (Brill). Forthcoming in 2008 Boulogne – a cannibal’, etc. Asashi( Shinbun is "Melodrama, Exorcism, Mimicry: Japan and 17/6/81: M 23). A sense of collective gloom and the Colonial Past in the New Korean Cinema", paranoia would seem to characterize the in What a Difference a Region Makes (Univ. of paper’s long commentary two days later, which Hong Kong). Current research focuses on brooded on the implications of the crime for the Korean film and film-makers during the late- 2700 Japanese students residing in France. The colonial/wartime period. piece was accompanied by a rather staged- looking photo from the AP Wire Service He wrote this article for Japan Focus. Posted on showing a young Frenchman gazing with December 1, 2007 concern at the front page of that same number of France Soir. The commentary concluded that Notes ‘now when the eyes of the world are sharply focused on Japan, one can only emphasize that [1] Here and elsewhere, unless otherwise students residing abroad must have a renewed indicated, information on Kara Juro, thesense of their responsibilities’ (Asahi Shinbun Situation Theatre, Kim Sujin and the Shinjuku 19/6/81: E 12).

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[5] For more concerning voyages pathologiques Historique et Diagnostiques Differentiels". (in Japanese byoteki ryoko), see Ota 1991: Available here (accessed 28 December 2007). 106-18. It is far from surprising that large-scale tourism, as well as migration fromDikötter, Frank (1997) "Racial Discourse in underdeveloped countries, should bring about China: Continuities and Permutations", in The numerous cases of dysphoric experiences that Construction of Racial Identities in China and end up requiring medical treatment. And while Japan: Historical and Contemporary the relatively affluent tourist may sufferPerspective (ed.) Dikötter, Hurst & Co, pp. psychically as keenly as the impoverished XXX. migrant worker, it does seem likely that the work of a psychiatrist such as Dr. Joseba Fanon, Frantz (1970) Black Skin White Masks, Achotegui (Achotegui 2004), who coined the (trans.) Constance Farrington, Paladin. term Ulysses syndrome, in the treatment of North African and sub-Saharan migrants may Goodman, David (1988) Japanese Drama and be of more crucial importance for the future of Culture in the 1960s, M.E. Sharpe. Europe. Dr. Achotegui and colleagues working Grinker, Roy Richard (2002) Korea and Its in the cities of southern Spain are confronting Futures: Unification and the Unfinished War, the results of a massive historical wave of Palgrave Macmillan. illegal immigration. Particularly in its symptomatological description of states of Itami, Juzo (1981) (ed.) Mon Oncle/ mourning and grief, Achotegui’s work is Monnonkuru 1:4 (October). reminiscent of accounts from another wave of migration, that of Koreans to Japan during the "Japanese and the 'Paris Syndrome'" (2006) years of the Japanese empire. It may also prove Japan Times Online, 29 October . Available relevant for understanding many expressions of here (accessed 22 January 2007). han (the deep, lacerating sense of longing and loss), long a motif of Korean cultural discourse Kaiko, Takeshi (1979) "Ishoku tarite, bungaku (see Grinker: 2002). wa wausreta!?" Subaru (July), p. 136.

[6] Shinjuku is the Tokyo neighbourhood. Kara, Juro (1983) Sagawa-kun kara no tegami: Ryozanpaku means something like “Robbers’ Butokai no techo, Kawade Shinsha Shobo. Den.” It is a witty allusion to the famous “Liangshan Marshes,” a place known from the Kim, Sujin (1999) (dir.) DVDY oru o classic Water Margin as a hideout for brigands. Kakete/Through the Night, Toei Video.

References Kushner, Barak (1997) "Cannibalizing Japanese Media: The Case of Issei Sagawa." Journal of Achotegui, Joseba (2004) "Emigrar en situación Popular Culture. 31:3 (Winter). extrema: el Síndrome del immigrante con estrés crónico y múltiple (Síndrome de Ulises)". Miyoshi, Masao (1974) Accomplices of Silence, Norte de Salud mental, no. 21, pp. 39-52. University of California Press. Available here (accessed 20 January 2007). Miyoshi, Masao and Harootunian, H.D. (1989) Bungei shunju (March 1983). Akutagawa Prize (eds.) Postmodernism and Japan. Duke section: pp. 393-503. University Press.

Caro, Federico A (2005) "Voyage Pathologique: Nakasone, Yasuhiro (1983) "Towards a Nation

16 5 | 12 | 0 APJ | JF of Dynamic Culture and Welfare." Japan Echo Indiana Press. X:1 (Spring ), pp.12-18. Shelley, Mary (1985 [1818].) Frankenstein, or Oe, Kenzaburo (1986) "Postwar Japanese The Modern Prometheus. Penguin Literature and the Contemporary Impasse: Storey, John (2005) "Postmodernism" inNew Account of a Participant Observer", inThe Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Japan Foundation Newsletter. XIV:3 (October), Society, (eds.) Tony Bennet, Lawrence pp. 1-6. [The longer original is "Sengo bungaku Grossberg and Meaghan Morris. Blackwell kara konnichi no kyujo made", Sekai (March Publishing, pp. 269-72. 1986).] Viala, A., Ota, H et al. (2004) "Les Japonais en Ota, Hiroaki (1991) Pari shokogun, Toraberu voyage pathologique à Paris: un modèle Jānaru. original de prise en charge transculturelle", NERVURE 5:5 (June), pp. 31-4. Available here Pyle, Kenneth B. (1987) "In Pursuit of a Grand (accessed 21 January 2007). Design: Nakasone Betwixt the Past and the Wyatt, Caroline (2006) "'Paris Syndrome' Future." The Journal of Japanese Studies. 13:2 Strikes at Japanese", BBC News International (Summer), Juro pp. 243-70. 20 December. Available here (accessed 24 January 2007). Sagawa, Issei (1983) Kiri no naka (In the Mists), Hanashi no Tokushu. Xaillé, Anne (2002) "Voyage pathologique: voyager rend-il fou?", Actualité: Le magazine. Sallis, John (2002) On Translation, University of Available here (accessed 28 December 2006).

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