A Dissertation Entitled Yoshimoto Taka’aki’s Karl Marx: Translation and Commentary By Manuel Yang Submitted as partial fulfillment for the requirements for The Doctor of Philosophy in History ________________________ Adviser: Dr. Peter Linebaugh ________________________ Dr. Alfred Cave ________________________ Dr. Harry Cleaver ________________________ Dr. Michael Jakobson ________________________ Graduate School The University of Toledo August 2008 An Abstract of Yoshimoto Taka’aki’s Karl Marx: Translation and Commentary Manuel Yang Submitted as partial fulfillment for the requirements for The Doctor of Philosophy in History The University of Toledo August 2008 In 1966 the Japanese New Left thinker Yoshimoto Taka’aki published his seminal book on Karl Marx. The originality of this overview of Marx’s ideas and life lay in Yoshimoto’s stress on the young Marx’s theory of alienation as an outgrowth of a unique philosophy of nature, whose roots went back to the latter’s doctoral dissertation. It echoed Yoshimoto’s own reformulation of “alienation” (and Marx’s labor theory of value) as key concept in his theory of literary language (What is Beauty in Language), which he had just completed in 1965, and extended his argument -- ongoing from the mid-1950s -- with Japanese Marxism over questions of literature, politics, and culture. His extraction of the theme of “communal illusion” from the early Marx foregrounds his second major theoretical work of the decade, Communal Illusion, which he started to serialize in 1966 and completed in 1968, and outlines an important theoretical closure to the existential, political, and intellectual struggles he had waged since the end of the ii Pacific War. Karl Marx thus offers a powerful microcosmic glimpse of Yoshimoto’s achievements at the height of his seminal influence on the Japanese New Left. Presented here are the complete translation of Karl Marx and a selection of related materials relevant to Yoshimoto’s reading of Marx, along with a commentary that situates this text in the context of his life, with some suggestions as to its significance within the comparative context of contemporary Western Marxism. What emerges is Yoshimoto’s existentially committed, conceptually bold rereading of Karl Marx that refuses trucking with all Marxist traditions and that is firmly grounded in the actuality of popular experience that Yoshimoto learned viscerally from the three major defeats of his life: Japanese defeat in World War II in 1945, defeat of labor union struggle on the shop floor in 1953-54, and defeat of the anti-Anpo (U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty) movement in 1960. iii Acknowledgments Although I never met the man and may never do so in the flesh, I suppose it is only natural that I should first offer my thanks to Yoshimoto Taka’aki, who has supplied me with the materials for my work and whose writings will remain an essential lodestar in my intellectual peregrination. Above all, I express my heartfelt gratitude to all the members of my dissertation committee who have given me undreamed-of freedom in pursuing my studies and were infinitely patient with my painfully slow progress and innumerably self-indulgent digressions: Profs. Alfred Cave, Harry Cleaver, William D. Hoover, Michael Jakobson, and Peter Linebaugh. Prof. Linebaugh must be marked out for particular thanks for the regular meetings he has had with me over the course of my work and his always deeply resonant words of encouragement and criticism. Also, a bow of riconoscenza to Prof. Harry Cleaver, my outsider reader without whom I would not have dared knock on the door of Marx’s work or decide to make my journey from Austin to Toledo. Although they will never read it, I know that my father and mother -- Shih-Lin and Mitsuko Yang -- are happier than anybody else for the completion of the following work. Since my birth they have supported me emotionally, financially, and unconditionally in every sense of the word. I am truly blessed in having such parents and iv no word of gratitude would be sufficient to express that. This dissertation is dedicated to them. To them and all those who have helped me along the way: Dōmo arigatō gozaimashita! v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments iii Table of Contents vi Translator’s Note vii I. Yoshimoto Taka’aki’s Karl Marx Preface for the Paperback Edition: Marx in the Twenty-First Century 1 Part 1: Travel in Marx 4 Part 2: Marx Biography 44 Chronological Notes 115 One Afterthought 124 II. Genius and the Taishu: Commentary on Yoshimoto Taka’aki’s Karl Marx 126 III. Appendix A Little Shade of Marx 183 A Few Notes concerning the Methods of Rimbaud and Karl Marx 185 Contemporary Times and Marx 198 Foundation of the Theory of Communal Illusion: Language as Philosophy 220 Bibliography 244 vi Translator’s Note I have consulted two editions of Yoshimoto Taka’aki’s Karl Marx for my translation. The first is the one contained in Volume 12 of Yoshimoto’s collected works: Yoshimoto Taka’aki zenchosakushū, vol. 12 (Tokyo: Keisō-shobō, 1969). And the other one is the 2006 pocketbook paperback edition: Kāru Marukusu (Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 2006). All other translations from Japanese are mine unless otherwise noted. When Japanese proper names appear in the text, the family name is placed before the given name, as it is customary in Japanese. It is customary in a note such as this to elaborate on the most hazardous twists and turns in the translation liable to cause confusion in the reader. Allow me to mention only one because it is the most symptomatic and the most basic. It is the word shisō, which Yoshimoto uses time and again throughout the text (in fact, in virtually all his writings). The term corresponds most closely to the English word “thought”, not as in mere thinking but as in the totality of a person’s ideas. The trouble is that, without knowing the context in the original Japanese, the English reader will often not be able to distinguish this latter meaning from the former. I have therefore resorted more often than not to the term “philosophy” despite a train of misunderstanding that this might also invite. This is not “philosophy” in the disciplinary or academic sense of the word (for which the Japanese has the word tetsugaku -- which Yoshimoto uses only a few times in his book) but in the broader sense of Weltanschauung, intellectual system, method of vii thinking and understanding the world. Thus, when the reader sees the word “philosophy” in the text, he or she should keep in mind that Yoshimoto is not talking about philosophy in the narrow academic sense or making a bid to establish a chair of Marxist philosophy in the universities. The reader would find that I have tried to retain as much as possible Yoshimoto’s stylistic peculiarities, not least of all his use of angle brackets (“<>”) in lieu of quotation marks. The reason I did not turn these into quotation marks, as it would be standard practice in English writing, was because in other places Yoshimoto uses the Japanese block-quote equivalent of quotation marks (i.e., “「」”) as well as round brackets (“( )”) for parenthetical purpose and, had I done so, it would not have been possible for English readers to distinguish the two. The significance of the angle brackets lie in their coding function, that is, they indicate that they are keywords in Yoshimoto’s text. This was my first attempt in translating a full-length book and what I have gained from the process has been incalculable. First, it taught me that there is no better, more fundamental way of reading a book than translating it. Far from it being a mechanical procedure in which the translator simply rearranges a set of words in one language to another, it is a procedure that tests your understanding word for word, every step of the way, to say nothing of your own linguistic command -- or its lack thereof -- in the act of writing. This is why mistranslations abound in the world and there is a need of multiple translations, perhaps every generation, of truly great writings. Another personally significant yield of doing this translation was that it became a vehicle for fundamentally reorganizing the structure of my daily life and clarifying the orientation of my future work. I will not dwell on this latter point, for it has no relevance to the work that follows, viii but allow me to simply say that it has given me the necessary stamina and expunction of illusions to take my struggle with myself to the next level, with unceasing, focused determination. Although I have been reading and studying the work of Yoshimoto Taka’aki on and off for over ten years -- I first encountered his writing as an undergraduate -- I do not claim to know Yoshimoto’s entire oeuvre (which easily numbers over hundred books and still ongoing) in all its painstaking detail. I am not a Yoshimotologist, just as Yoshimoto is not a Marxiologist. My only hope is that I have not prevaricated too much in conveying Yoshimoto’s ideas to an English-speaking public. Needless to say, if there are infelicities of expression and confusing passages that obscure more than clarify, no blame ought to be placed at Yoshimoto’s feet; they are entirely my own. Since delving into Yoshimoto’s writings I have wished on many occasions that the finest Anglophone translators of Japanese language working today would take them on and discharge what Michel Foucault had told Yoshimoto at the end of their dialogue in 1978: “I strongly hope that Mr. Yoshimoto's books will be introduced into French or English…Because, for us Westerners, to be able to hear what you have to say is an extremely valuable experience and also absolutely necessary”.1 There is no small irony in the fact that it is his daughter Yoshimoto Banana’s best-selling novels -- which have induced what is known as “Banana phenomenon” in Japan during the 1990s -- have been blessed with a plethora of international translators.