TOTTORI by Ryan Marshall First Class Honours BA, University of New Brunswick, 2008 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Arts in the Graduate Academic Unit of English Supervisor: Mark Jarman, MFA, English Examining Board: Roger Ploude, PhD, English, Chair Stephen Schryer, PhD, English, Departmental Reader Ross Leckie, PhD, English Allan Reid, PhD, Culture and Language Studies This thesis is accepted by the Dean of Graduate Studies THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK April, 2010 © Ryan Marshall, 2010 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-82611-9 Our file Notre r&Mrence ISBN: 978-0-494-82611-9 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada Dedicated to the people of Tottori Prefecture, Japan 11 ABSTRACT Silk screens, gilded fans, bright kimono and samurai; sushi bars, skyscrapers, Hello Kitty and robot-like salarymen: since the Meiji Restoration of 1868 opened Japan to the Western world, these ancient and contemporary images have become emblems of the country's society and culture. If considered exclusively, these one-dimensional fragments fetishize Japan, nourishing toxic Orientalism. This has been the effect of Western art and literature in the tradition of japonisme, a movement that continues even now with Lost in Translation and Memoirs of a Geisha. This thesis - six linked stories set in little-known, present-day Tottori Prefecture, Japan - explores selected aspects of Japanese culture from a Western perspective. Informed by extensive field research in Tottori and a wide survey of classical and modern Japanese literature and Western writings on Japan, this collection reconfigures the errors of japonisme, subverting its deployment of exoticism and probing alternate interpretations of the culture's accustomed signifiers. ill ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The perpendicular bow: a gesture of deep respect that has stayed with me long after my time in Tottori Prefecture wove into memory. I offer this sincere show of appreciation to the following: To Mark Jarman, for exceeding all my expectations of a supervisor; our partnership was the cornerstone on which this thesis took its shape. It was a sublime pleasure working with you, and your contribution to this project and my overall writing ability cannot be overstated. To Stephen Schryer, Ross Leckie, and Allan Reid, for your invaluable and incisive critiques; they have rescued my prose and preface from countless missteps. To my parents and extended family, for encouragement and longsuffering patience during my prolonged expedition in Japan. To Seiichi Hamaguchi, Kazuchika Yamada, Tatsuhiko Nagao, Michihito Tanaka and Yumiko Hirota of Tottori Prefecture for your friendship and a myriad insights and kindnesses. To Crisy Albertson, for encouragement that has sustained me through story after story, revision after revision, and for being the most enthusiastic reader that I could ever hope for. To Ii Takashi of Kyoto Prefecture, for several pleasant conversations I will not soon forget. iv Table of Contents DEDICATION ii ABSTRACT iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv Table of Contents v Preface 1 Bibliography 25 Playing House l~|«^J 27 Visitations tiftTA] 43 The Belly Dancer of Higashihama !"$.;« <P, -< ') — f > t — \ 62 Account of a Dream I -j- 5£ ) J 86 A Father's Love T X'f*. '£J 108 We, With Our Shoulders Close l"fi ?r 3p * MM J 124 Curriculum Vitae V Preface i Geisha garbed in glistering silks, piled hair pinned with precious gold; calico carp, flitting under the shadow of ornate arched bridges; dusky temple pagodas towering above rippling white seas of cherry blossoms: citing the reflections of Anglo-Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro, Ila Goody lists these images as among those most favoured by Western purveyors of Japanese art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (216). The Meiji Restoration, following the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, opened the previously closed-off Japan to foreign trade, enabling global consumers to indulge their taste for Japanese aesthetics. Western consumers of the late nineteenth century proved an especially receptive audience. Peter Conrad writes that the Victorians possessed a "treasure-house" mentality - a love of cluttered paintings, novels stuffed with miscellany (9); a "museum sense of the past and its art.. .the contents of a Victorian museum are thought of as historical specimens, disposed so as to provide information and to map the orderly progress of human evolution" (188). This peculiar appetite found nourishment in objets d'art imported from Japan, a country viewed as "an extensive warehouse full of novel and decorative trinkets" (Goody 218). The reductive consequence of this uninformed and haphazard appreciation for Japanese aesthetics - Japan's visual culture - is the forsaking of context: the various meanings that the iconographic carp, kimono, and silk screen would suggest to a Japanese perspective. 1 Appreciation quickly gave way to the stylistically innocuous yet culturally toxic art movement, japonisme. Originally a French phenomenon (Weisberg 120), japoniste artists reproduced in their work the techniques and motifs they admired - if not understood - in original Japanese art. Though the movement's technical aspect represents positive cultural exchange, Goody illustrates the damage done by japoniste art through the etchings by French artist Henry Somm. Those that feature "women...clothed in European style and airily regard[ing] or ignoring], as if in a different dimension, fans, albums, marshlands, and Oriental men" (218) are representative of the unfortunate trend amongst japoniste artists of "randomly selecting and richly scattering objects evocative of a romantic, exotic East" (217). The Meiji Restoration provided fuel for Western japonisme and its fantasy of Japan as a secretive, romantic paradise of rich lacquer and perfected nature. The imagined Japan could not be further from reality: the Meiji era meant for Japanese society a "tremendous and rapid transformation, adopting Western modes of production and political and economic organization... [yet] the idea of Japan as 'singular' and 'mysterious' persisted and was even enforced [in the West]" (Jackson 250). These notions "depended on...the almost total absence in contemporary Western culture of the Orient as a genuinely felt and experienced force" (Said 208). These folding screens, fans, pottery, paintings and sculptures so desired by Victorian consumers have been joined in modern times by film, animation, music, comics, games and literature, appearing as both original Japanese products in translation and Western work informed by the same adaptive tradition as japonisme. These new mediums bear a crucial distinction from the Japanese objets d'art of the past: whereas nineteenth century notions of 2 Japan were primarily based on visual culture (Weisberg 120), the presence of narrative in lyric, script, verse and prose confronts consumers with unprecedented exposure to the nation's cultural sensibilities. Translation has done much to render Japanese culture, mantled in texts both classic and modern, accessible to Western audiences; one need not travel to Japan or study its language to read Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale ofGenji or probe the minds of Natsume Soseki, Mori Ogai, Dazai Osamu, Kobo Abe, Mishima Yukio or Yoshimoto Banana. The problematic Victorian treasure-house mentality persists, though radically transformed. The Western desire for exotic, romantic Japan has not dissipated with the heightened awareness of the reality of modern Japan; rather, it has endured, layering a second mystical iconography over the country: Japan - secluded metropolis of perfected education and futuristic technology, powered by robotic legions of salarymen and lorded over