Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations Arts & Sciences Spring 5-2016 Autobiography in Disarray: Setouchi Jakuchō’s Use of Biography as Self-Expression in Beauty in Disarray Sara M. Newsome Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds Part of the Japanese Studies Commons Recommended Citation Newsome, Sara M., "Autobiography in Disarray: Setouchi Jakuchō’s Use of Biography as Self-Expression in Beauty in Disarray" (2016). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 700. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/700 This Thesis 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 & Cultures Autobiography in Disarray: Setouchi Jakuchō’s Use of Biography as Self-Expression in Beauty in Disarray by Sara Newsome A thesis presented to the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May 2016 St. Louis, Missouri © 2016, Sara Newsome Table of Contents Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... iii Autobiography in Disarray ............................................................................................................. 1 Works Cited .................................................................................................................................. 49 ii Acknowledgments I would like to thank the wonderful Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures for all of their support and assistance. I would especially like to thank my advisor, Dr. Rebecca Copeland, as well as Dr. Marvin Marcus, Dr. Jamie Newhard, and Dr. Beata Grant. Sara Newsome Washington University in St. Louis May 2016 iii Autobiography in Disarray: Setouchi Jakuchō’s Use of Biography as Self-Expression in Beauty in Disarray It may be surprising that a Buddhist nun would be so captivated by the murder of a young anarchist writer. But to anyone who knows Setouchi Jakuchō (born May 15, 1922), such a fascination is not unexpected. Renowned in Japan for her political activism, Setouchi is well known for peacefully expressing her beliefs through acts such as hunger strikes, political rallies and protests, even attending and giving speeches well into her early nineties. Before taking the tonsure, Setouchi’s personal life of marriage, divorce and her subsequent affairs, whether rumored or true, filled gossip mills. Although an accomplished and award-winning author, her literary craft has always come second to her personal life in the eye of the public. It was during a time of ostracization and heavy public criticism that she discovered the young anarchist, Itō Noe (1895 –1923.) A writer, Itō was perhaps better known for her various affairs, especially her long relationship with the anarchist Ōsugi Sakae (1885 – 1923), as well as for her untimely murder. Itō’s life bears similarities to Setouchi’s own torrid one in the years before taking the tonsure, when she was still known to the world as “Setouchi Harumi.” With her biographical novel Beauty in Disarray (Bi wa ranchō ni ari), published in 1966, Setouchi tells the life story of Itō Noe from her early adolescence until the Hikage Tea House incident of 1916.1 Itō Noe was a young Japanese woman writer, who wrote vibrant essays on the Japanese New Women and feminism, and later, socialism and anarchism in the early twentieth 1 On November 8, 1916, Kamichika Ichiko, another Seitō contributor, and who had also been in a romantic relationship with Ōsugi, stabbed him in the throat at the Higake Teahouse. He survived and she was sentenced to four years in prison. The event was known as the Hikage Teahouse Incident. (Thomas A. Stanley, Ō sugi Sakae, Anarchist in Taishō Japan: The Creativity of the Ego (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1982), 104-106.) 1 century. Although she once took over as editor of the influential feminist literary magazine Seitō, she is perhaps best known for her relationships with the dadaist Tsuji Jun (1884 –1944) and the anarchist Ōsugi Sakae, as well as her friendship with the former Seitō editor, Hiratsuka Raichō (1886 – 1971), who was herself an accomplished and widely regarded woman writer. By using not only the voice of Itō Noe, but also the many important historical writers who surrounded Itō, Setouchi seeks to change this perception of Itō by highlighting her accomplishments and her vibrant personality. Through writing and chronicling Itō’s dramatic life and relationships, Setouchi is able to explore themes of political activism, feminism, family, and romance in a manner that protected her from the criticism she had become accustomed to prior to her decision to take tonsure. Setouchi Jakuchō uses the genre of biographical fiction in Beauty in Disarray to express both her own anti-establishment political views, as well as to express her own personality and personal beliefs. The Complicated and Long Life of Setouchi Jakuchō When evaluating a work of biography as a form of self-expression, intimate knowledge of the biographer as well as her biographical subjects is essential. In this section I will offer an over view of Setouchi, to be followed by a similar introduction to Itō Noe. Setouchi Jakuchō was born on May 15th, 1922, just one year before Itō Noe and Ōsugi Sakae’s untimely murders at the hands of the Japanese police. Setouchi attended Tokyo Women’s Christian College beginning in 1940, and married in 1943, whereupon she left with her husband, a government worker, to live in Beijing. After Japan’s surrender in 1945, Setouchi returned with her husband 2 and child to Tokyo.2 The end of the Second World War changed the entire course of Setouchi’s life, as it did all Japanese people of the time. Setouchi has written at length about the effect that Emperor Hirohito’s declaration of surrender had on her perception of herself as a young housewife who had been raised and schooled under Imperial Japan’s militaristic society. In her essay “Memories of a White Glove” (Shiroi tebukuro no kioku, 1957) she writes that the moment she heard the emperor’s voice it destroyed the identity that had been built for her by the Japanese government and left her a “shadow.”3 Setouchi’s contemporary Ōe Kenzaburō (born January 31, 1935) wrote that in this moment, he was left speechless and in disbelief that someone he had been taught to revere had suddenly “become an ordinary human being.”4 In the post-war era, great strides were made for women. The rhetoric of “Good Wives, Wise Mothers” was removed, and women were given the right to vote.5 The Setouchi of today is a creation of the post-war Japanese period; were it not for the radical changes that took place during the Occupation, Setouchi “Jakuchō” may have never left her husband, begun her long and influential literary career, or made the decision to take tonsure and become a Buddhist nun. After returning to Japan from Beijing following the end of the war, Setouchi fell in love with one of her husband’s students and planned to elope with him, although in the end they did not follow through with these plans and decided to go their separate ways. This event is fictionalized in her I-novel The End of Summer (Natsu no owari), published in 1963, for which Setouchi won the Women’s Literature Prize in 1966.6 Although she did not elope with her 2 Sanford Goldstein and Kazuji Ninomiya, introduction to Beauty in Disarray, by Setouchi Jakuchō (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1993), 13. 3 Masayo Kaneko, Sexuality and Spirituality: Subjectivity and Resistance in the Works of Setouchi Jakuchō, dissertation (University of Pennsylvania, 2006), 51. 4 Ōe Kenzaburō, A Personal Matter, trans. John Nathan, (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964), vii. 5 Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa times to the Present, 2nd edition, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) 233-234. 6 The End of Summer also fictionalized Setouchi’s eight year relationship with Bungakusha’s editorial board member Oda Jinjiro. (Kaneko, 55 and Sachiko Shibata Schierbeck, “Setouchi Jakuchō” in East Asian Institute 3 husband’s student, she still made the decision to separate from her husband in 1948 and formally divorced him in 1950.7 While she has since admitted that such actions were deplorable on her part, she also has written that she views being a bad wife as an essential trait of any woman writer. In an essay titled “Requirements for Becoming a Woman Writer” she posits the question, “A woman who desires from the bottom of her heart to be a good wife—how can she possibly become a writer?”8 Indeed, it was not until after her divorce was finalized in 1950 that her career as a writer truly began, and she started to formally publish her works. While writing as part of the Bungakusha literary group, she published the novel Wick of a Flower (Kashin) in 1958, for which she was heavily criticized. The criticisms she received, particularly from renowned literary critic Hirano Ken (1907 – 1978), centered around her use of the word “uterus” (子宮, shikyū), which was considered unbecoming of a female writer.9 It has been suggested that the harshness of the criticism, some of which accused her of writing “pornography,” may have also stemmed from the independence of the female characters in her work, who, in owning their own bodies, broke with traditional appearances of “femininity.”10 Due to the criticism she received, she was shunned by the Bungakusha literary group, being forced to take a break from writing and was unable to have any of her works published for several years.