View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by DSpace at Waseda University Anywhere Out of the World Translating Décadence in Japanese Literature, 1885-1925 Isabelle Lavelle 5615D011-9 January 24, 2018 A doctoral dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies Waseda University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Professor Adrian Pinnington for the continuous support, for his patience, motivation, and immense knowledge. His guidance and passion helped me in all the steps of this research. I would like to thank my sub-advisors, Professor Graham Law and Professor Morita Norimasa, for their insightful comments and encouragement, which incentivized me to widen my research from various perspectives. I am also grateful to Professor Asō Takashi for his careful reading and numerous helpful comments. This research was made possible thanks to the generous funding of the Japanese Ministry of Education. I also thank my fellow Ph.D. candidates Paula Martínez and Hayakawa Yumiko for the stimulating discussions and for the friendship we have had in the last three years. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Dr. Tarek Katramiz, for proofreading and formatting the thesis, and for contributing to my foray into Decadence. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS INTRODUCTION------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 PART ONE. THE DECADENT MILIEU --------------------------------------------------23 CHAPTER ONE TRANSLATION AS A CREATIVE ART. THE LANGUAGE OF DECADENCE ----------------28 1. Introducing Symbolism: Ueda Bin’s Linguistic Revolution --------------------29 2. Kaichōon’s Legacy: the Poet-Translator -------------------------------------------43 3. The Japanese Language of Decadence ---------------------------------------------55 CHAPTER TWO TRANSLATING ART AND LIFE: JAPANESE AESTHETICISM AND DECADENCE----------66 1. Against Naturalism? Decadent Individualism -------------------------------------68 2. Worshipping Pan: Aestheticism as a Lifestyle ------------------------------------81 3. The Past Revisited. Edo/Tokyo as the Capital of Decadence -------------------92 PART TWO. A PERMANENT EXILE --------------------------------------------------- 101 CHAPTER THREE ‘THE DECADENT IS ANOTHER’: THE AESTHETICS OF NOT BELONGING ------------- 103 1. The Eternal Foreigner --------------------------------------------------------------- 104 2. France: the Promised Land --------------------------------------------------------- 111 3. Domesticating the Foreign: An Aesthetic of Hybridity ------------------------ 117 CHAPTER FOUR THE DECADENT DISCOURSE OF OTHERNESS-------------------------------------------- 137 1. Objectifying Otherness: Japan and Orientalism--------------------------------- 138 2. Anti-modern Japonism: Through the Lens of Pierre Loti---------------------- 152 CONCLUSION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 168 BIBLIOGRAPHY ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 173 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS HDZ - Horiguchi Daigaku zenshū (The Complete Works of Horiguchi Daigaku). 9 vols. Tokyo: Ozawa, 1983. KMZ - Kinoshita Mokutarō zenshū (The Complete Works of Kinoshita Mokutarō). 24 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1981. KHSS - Kitahara Hakushū sakuhin shū (Anthology of Works of Kitahara Hakushū). 6 vols. Tokyo: Kawade, 1952. OZ - Ōgai zenshū (The Complete Works of Ōgai). 38 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1972. KZ - Kafū zenshū (The Complete Works of Kafū). 30 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1992. SHZ - Satō Haruo zenshū (The Complete Works of Satō Haruo). 12 vols. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1969. UBZ - Ueda Bin zenshū (The Complete Works of Ueda Bin). 10 vols. Tokyo: Kyōiku shuppan sentā, 1980. INTRODUCTION In a 1911 essay, Nagai Kafū wonders: ‘What will be left on this Japanese land [...] when the beauty of the landscape will have been unsparingly destroyed for the “progress” of civilisation”?’ (KZ, vol. 9, p. 133)1 The individualist and Francophile Kafū (Katō Shūichi, 2004, p. 171), the hedonist aesthete famously censored for speaking up against his countrymen’s increasing militarism following the Russo- Japanese War (Rubin, 1984, pp. 117-125), also developed in his works a consistent critique of modernity. In the short story Dentsūin (The Dentsū Temple, 1911), he deplores how ‘the trend of Démocratie and Positivisme is erasing day by day the last beautiful colours of history, relentlessly killing the dream of the anachronistic poet’ (KZ, vol. 7, p. 206).2 ‘Démocratie’ and ‘Positivisme’, written in Roman letters, jar with the surrounding Japanese text. Does Kafū use the French words rather than their Japanese equivalent to better denounce democracy and positivism as foreign bodies, or is he hinting towards a shared intellectual distaste that goes beyond the Japanese borders, thus including his discourse within a larger transcultural and translinguistic context? In these two hypotheses, which are not necessarily antithetical, lies the founding ambiguity of Japanese Decadence; inheriting its pessimistic vision from Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and others, while the very ills being denounced are born out of the philosophical and technological advances that make intercontinental exchanges — of both body and mind — easier than ever been before. Kafū justifying his self-proclaimed aversion to democracy and positivism by favouring aesthetics over practicality and rationality positions the Japanese writer as a direct heir to Baudelaire, and in his writings Kafū oftentimes proclaims his allegiance to the French poet, designating Les Fleurs du mal as his ‘gospel (fukuinsho)’ (Sasabuchi, 1976, p. 17). Baudelaire’s attacks on progress as the main reason for modern societies’ disregard of beauty had unfolded as early as 1855 in a violent essay on contemporary art. ‘The idea of progress (l’idée de progrès)’ is described as an ‘obscure beacon, invented by the present philosophism’, ‘a modern lantern [that] casts 1 「将来に於て日本の風景美が文明の「進化」の為めに惜し気もなく破壊されてしまつたなら、[...] 日本の国土に何が残るであろう。」On the essay from which this quote is taken, see Chapter 4-2. 2 「Démocratie と Positivisme の時勢は日一日に最後の美しい歴史的色彩を抹殺して、時代後れの詩人 の夢を覚さねば止むまいとする。」 1 darkness on all objects of knowledge (ce fanal obscure, invention du philosophisme actuel, [...] cette lanterne moderne [qui] jette des ténèbres sur tous les objets de la connaissance)’ (Baudelaire, 1962, p. 217).3 With progress, freedom vanishes [...]. This grotesque idea, which has flourished on the rotten terrain of modern fatuity, has discharged us all from our duty, has released every soul from its responsibility, has unburdened the will from all the bounds that the love of beauty had imposed on it; and the diminished races, if this dreadful madness endures, will fall asleep on the pillow of fatality in the dotard sleep of decay. This infatuation is the symptom of a decadence that is already too visible (Baudelaire, 1962, pp. 217-218).4 Believing in the idea of progress hinders men’s intellectual evolution, as they passively expect the objective movement of history to shape their destiny, thus surrendering their claim to a superior existential status transcending the blind laws of materiality. This is how ‘freedom’ comes from the awareness of men’s ‘duty’ and ‘responsibility’ as spiritual beings, the core value around which this superior human existence revolves being, according to Baudelaire, ‘the love of beauty’. This denunciation of progress is part of a wider reflection on modernity that Baudelaire develops in his essays on art. 5 For Baudelaire, ‘modernity is what is transitory, fleeting, contingent; it is half of what art is, the other half is the eternal and the immutable (la modernité, c’est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitié de 3 ‘Philosophism’ refers to the rationalist thought of the eighteenth century that led to nineteenth century positivism. Baudelaire consistently denounces the Enlightenment, writing for instance in Mon cœur mis à nu: ‘I am bored in France, especially because everyone there resembles Voltaire. [...] Voltaire, or the anti-poet, the king of the idle onlookers, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist [...]. Voltaire, like all lazy people, hated mystery (Je m’ennuie en France, surtout parce que tout le monde y ressemble à Voltaire. […] Voltaire, ou l’anti-poète, le roi des badauds, le prince des superficiels, l’anti-artiste […]. Voltaire, comme tous les paresseux, haïssait le mystère)’ (Mon cœur mis à nu, ch. 29). 4 ‘la liberté s’évanouit […]. Cette grotesque idée, qui a fleuri sur le terrain pourri de la fatuité moderne, a déchargé chacun de son devoir, délivré toute âme de sa responsabilité, dégagé la volonté de tous les liens que lui imposait l’amour du beau : et les races amoindries, si cette navrante folie dure longtemps, s’endormiront sur l’oreiller de la fatalité dans le sommeil radoteur de la décrépitude. Cette infatuation est le diagnostic d’une décadence déjà trop visible)’. Exposition universelle 1855, “Beaux-Arts”. 5 The French word modernité appeared precisely around that time. In 1853, Théophile Gautier wrote: ‘the character of English painting is, as we have said, modernity. Does this noun actually exist? The feeling it expresses is so recent that the word could well not be in the dictionary (le caractère de la peinture anglaise est, comme nous l’avons dit, la modernité.