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Generational Conflicts and the Crossing of Socio-Cultural Barriers: The Meiji Works of Shiga Naoya

Frank JACOB (Nord University, Norway)

Shiga Naoya wrote several short stories, which often present autobiographic traits. Born in 1883 he was only 29 when the Meiji period, ended, but his early works present generational conflicts that could be claimed common in that period of Japanese history. Shiga’s personal life and his interests did not reflect the values of his parents’ generation anymore, why conflict seemed to have been inevitable. In multiple ways, the author crossed borders that were initially created through the opening of Japan in 1853 and the Meiji Restoration since 1868. The young mind was obviously open for a different life, expressed by the figures within Shiga’s early short stories.

This corpus of Shiga’s Meiji writings will be taken into consideration for a presentation that will highlight the different generational conflict lines as they had been created by Japan’s confrontation with Western modernity. The different concepts of life and living shall be condensed from the texts to show, which social and cultural barriers existed and which of them the author or his protagonists were willing to cross.

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“Why Not Just Stay in Bed?”: Literary Characters Between Personal Fulfillment and Social Expectations in the Early Writings of Nagai Kafû

Martin THOMAS (University of Cologne, Germany)

Nagai Kafû (1879–1959) is often considered to be an author who has not paid much attention to the portrayal of his fictional characters. Therefore, studies on his literary writings tend to revolve around other aspects like the description of urban landscapes, the expressed nostalgia for Edo culture or the literary influences that formed his prose. However, by taking a closer look at the characters of his early writings, the importance of their actions and thoughts in the formulation of fundamental criticism of the Meiji society becomes clear.

In this paper I will focus on the fictional characters of Kafû’s early texts and the dilemma most of the protagonists find themselves in: being caught between one’s own wishes for the future and other people’s expectations. This dilemma, which is frequently connected to the decision between following one’s own feelings ( 情) or walking on a path of reason (ri 理), can be seen as a central characteristic of Kafû’s early writings as well as a general motif of Meiji literature. It arose from an inner strife felt by a lot of young men and women who were struggling to find their place in a society of change and transition.

The literary analysis will primarily focus on short stories which are part of the compilations Amerika monogatari (1908), Furansu monogatari (1909) and Kanraku (1909). The aim is to highlight some of the main social discourses that are present in these texts and to show how they are related to specific individualized and typified characters.

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The Sanctuary of Art in a Modern World of Despair: Nagata Mikihiko and his Autofictional Novel Reiraku (“Downfall”, 1912)

Martha-Christine MENZEL (Braunschweig, Germany)

In the last year of Meiji Nagata Mikihiko 長田幹彦 (1887–1964) achieved the recognition of the literary establishment (bundan 文壇) with his autofictional novel Reiraku 零落 (“Downfall”). The story tells the tale of a sensitive young man from Tōkyō who finds himself stranded in a small town in Hokkaidō after a headless flight to the north. In this gloomy peripheral otherworld of misshaped colonialism the protagonist, who is troubled by feelings of depression, finds comfort and emotional stability in his fascination for a rundown group of traveling Kabuki actors, until he finally decides to join the troupe despite his clear realization that this lifestyle is uncompromisingly ruinous. The text implies a critical view on the Japanese modernization and Meiji society by propagating a deviant concept of life based on individual freedom rather than on social expectations. While the main character seeks salvation in premodern Japanese culture, a look on the artistic perspective of the novel reveals it to be clearly modern in its combination of western literary styles such as aestheticism, fin the siècle and decadence. 

The provocative potential of Nagata Mikihikos texts can be seen in the debate on so called literature of debauchery (yūtō bungaku 遊蕩文学), which caused his exclusion from the bundan in 1916. While he is mostly forgotten today, this did not stop him to become the commercially most successful writer of the following Taishō era. The essay will rediscover this important voice of late Meiji literate and perform a close reading of Reiraku with special focus on the critical implications of this novel.

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The Isolation of Mushakōji Saneatsu’s Early Characters

Hiroshi TAKITA (Nishogakusha University, Japan)

Mushakôji Saneatsu (1885-1976) created characters who lived in Japan’s modernization as well as in Western culture. My presentation will show a detailed analysis of their meaning from a broader perspective.

Mushakôji started his activities at the end of the Meiji era and he created new characters. One feature of his early characters was their isolation from society. The protagonist “Jibun” (literally meaning “myself”) in his early masterpiece Omedetaki hito (1911) continues to talk about his longing for the heroine “Tsuru” and never mentions real-world problems. 

Momoiro no heya (1911) is the work in which these tendencies appear most prominently. In Nihon to iu shintai (1994), Katô Norihiro highly valued the novelty of Mushakôji compared to Fukuzawa Yukichi, Tokutomi Sohô, and Kôtoku Shûsui: “I don't think I can overstate the significance of Mushakôji’s achievement. / This is the first time that Japan's modernity has a representation of a purely inner space that has no social significance and is closed to the social.”

Avoiding the confrontation with the strengthened nationalism symbolized by Taigyaku Jiken (1910) was not the only reason of Mushakôji’s above-mentioned tendency. For example, in Omedetaki hito, the picture of Max Klinger (1857-1920) is placed on the frontispiece; Maruzen, the bookstore and window of Western culture, appears at the beginning; the image of “Tsuru” is explained with references to Mary and Venus; “Jibun” was greatly influenced by Maurice Maeterlink. It is certain that the worldview of Omedetaki hito was strongly influenced by past and present Western culture.

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New Images of idealized womanhood in the early work of Miyake Kaho

Stephan KÖHN (University of Cologne, Germany)

With her debut work Yabu no uguisu (‘Warbler in the Grove’, 1888) Miyake Kaho opens a new chapter in Japanese modern literature as female literary characters with their innermost thoughts and feelings are depicted from a woman writer’s point of view for the first time. Although panned by contemporary male critics such as Ishibashi Ningetsu pointing out that both a comprehensive plot structure and an identifiable main character are missing in this work, Yabu no uguisu is, at least, highly acclaimed by its readers for its detailed and quite ironic depiction of Japanese upper class society’s lifestyle in Meiji Japan.

Miyake Kaho is a vigilant and accurate chronicler of her time as the extensive use of extra-textual references in her novels impressively shows. Especially her early work reflects insidious, but nevertheless fundamental changes within Japanese society that became more and more apparent after an initial phase of fervent enthusiasm for all the achievements of modernization in the first two decades of Meiji period. 

Admittedly, at first glance, Miyake Kaho’s literature might seem to be, as some critics have argued, nothing more than a trite literal rendering of the ‘good wife and wise mother’ (ryôsai kenbo), the new educational ideal of the Japanese government that becomes an obligatory role model in almost all novels written for young girls (shôjo shôsetsu). At a closer look, however, her literature turns out to be, as my presentation will show, a subtle and cleverly written counter-discourse to both Japan’s westernization and re-nationalization in Meiji that is worth re-examining in the context of this conference.

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Textual Subtlety in the Later Writing of Higuchi lchiyô: Interpreting Takekurabe

Kinji YAMAMOTO (Mukogawa Women's University, Japan)

Japanese literary criticism has long regarded Higuchi lchiyô’s later works as tales of face-to-face conflict between men and women. For instance, Takekurabe (Glowing Up, 1895-96) is commonly read as the story of a relationship drifting apart, specifically that between Nobuyuki (a.k.a. Shinnyo) of Ryûgeji Temple and Midori of the Daikokuya brothel, both of whom cherish mutual affection. Likewise, Nigorie (Troubled Waters, 1895) is usually interpreted as a story of emotional ambivalence, as expressed in the love and hate between Genshichi and Oriki who are both unable to forget each other after breaking up.

Another highly interesting approach would be to re-examine these novellas as tales of disjuncture. If we do so, we may come up with starkly different interpretations. Although her writing style and technique often subtly escape anyone accustomed to the narrative conventions of romantic love, we notice that her characters never really face each other, despite them sharing the same place and time. They remain stories of two people uniquely disengaged who possess an imbalanced need for caring: one fervently seeking another, the other placidly indifferent. Mainly focusing on the text of Takekurabe, I wish to freshly interpret Higuchi’s later works as stories of uniquely disengaged relationships, each subtly told in this author’s personal way.

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“Who Ever Said That…?” Higuchi Ichiyô’s Revolution as Seen Through Her Characters

Gala Maria FOLLACO (University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Italy)

Higuchi Ichiyô’s (1872-1896) portrayal of late nineteenth-century teenagers just about to cross the border between childhood and adulthood, in Takekurabe (1895), revealed her artistic talent and sensitivity towards societal change. Although she has often been essentialised as a figure of the past, still relying on traditional values and structures, Ichiyô’s writing revolves around conflicting worldviews typical of the Meiji period, that she scrutinises, and upon which she elaborates, through a very specific device: characterisation. 

While her familiarity with the classics is undeniable, it should be stressed that, in her literature, conventional motifs are systematically endowed with new meanings, a dynamic process that ultimately invites an empathetic reading of each character’s story; this particular outlook enables the reader to acknowledge them as figures embodying positions that contrast with, and are critical of the traditional structures and relations in which they are imbricated. This happens, for instance, in Yuki no hi (1893), a story underrated in mainstream scholarship but whose value lies, as I argue, in its being a transitional work and an early manifestation of Ichiyô’s concern with the paralysing effects of social relations.

My presentation focuses on two pairs of works whose characters provide a material, visible dimension to crucial notions of modernisation: Yuku kumo (1895) and Wakaremichi (1896), a sophisticated meditation on agency, and Utsusemi (1893) and Yamiyo (1894), where the motif of mental instability helps illuminate the unconscious conflicts and traumas of the modern individual.

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Women in a World of Men - Female Characters in the Fictional Writing of Kanno Suga

Chantal WEBER (University of Cologne, Germany)

Kanno Suga 菅野スガ (1881-1911), known for her involvement and eventual execution in the so-called High Treason Incident (Taigyaku jiken 大逆事件) of 1910, which brought down the anarchist movement in Japan, is also regarded as one of the first female journalists and an outrider of the women’s movement in Japan. Although her fictional writing has always played an important role in reconstructing her biography, research tends to focus on her role in the High Treason Incident and her romantic relationships with Arahata Kanson 荒畑寒村 (1887-1981) and Kôtoku Shûsui 幸徳秋水 (1871-1911). Both played an important role in the radicalization of her views on Meiji society and the position of women within after 1906, when she moved from reform to revolution. Suga’s early writings, though, are already proof of her personal interest and commitment to women’s issues like prostitution or sexual abuse in families. 

The female protagonists in two early texts, Omokage おもかげ (Memories), 1902, and Tsuyuko 露子, 1906, show how women were not in charge of shaping their own lives and had to submit themselves to the ideals of their mothers, fathers, or the male dominated society in general. By identifying the relationships of the respective main characters to various family members, this talk aims to show the fundamental critic by Kanno Suga on Meiji society and on the role of women in the process of national modernization.

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Marital relationships as reflected in Ozaki Kôyôs "Three Wives" (Sannin zuma, 1892)

Matthew Königsberg (FU Berlin, Germany)

Ozaki Kôyôs long novel "Three Wives" might more correctly have been titled "Four Wives". The protagonist, the wealthy man Yogorô, is already married to Asako and has a daughter Sueko, when at the age of sixty he begins to collect mistresses. In the end, he has three concubines. These "three wives" come from different walks of life: one is a geisha, one is a prostitute without professional geisha training, and the third is a bourgeoise woman with no connections to the "floating world." The first part of the novel shows how Yogorô "collects" these three women, and in the second part of the novel, the various conflicts between all four "wives" are depicted. This long novel is a turning point in Kôyôs Œuvre, both in terms of style and in terms of content – the stylistic aspect will not be discussed in this presentation. In terms of content, this is the first work in which Kôyô actively upholds the role of the wife, as the outcome of the story makes clear. Kôyô then goes on to further develop the topic in works such "Passions and Griefs" (Tajô takon, 1896) and in his great unfinished novel The Gold Demon (Konjiki yasha, 1897-1902).

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Writing the Visual in Meiji Literature: Paintings in the Fiction of Natsume Sôseki

Timothy J. VAN COMPERNOLLE (Amherst College, USA)

Ever since Maeda Ai observed that Mori Ôgai adapted Western perspective, with its vanishing point, for literary descriptions of Berlin in his short story “The Dancing Girl” (Maihime, 1889), the relationship between modern literature and visual culture has been a topic awaiting more extensive exploration. In this paper about the encounter of literature and art in the Meiji era (1868-1912), I will focus on the description of paintings in the fiction of Natsume Sôseki (1867-1916), drawing on and contributing to the theoretical debate about ekphrasis, the verbal description of an artwork or decorative object, or, more simply, the verbal representation of the visual.  “Tower of London” (Rondon-tô, 1905) has two such examples, both lavish meditations on paintings by Frenchman Paul Delaroche depicting scenes from English royal history.  Grass Pillow (Kusamakura, 1906) includes mention of a cosmopolitan range of historical paintings—primarily Japanese, Chinese and English—stretching across four centuries, as well as musings on ancient Greek and medieval Japanese sculpture.  Asking why so much space is devoted to descriptions of paintings in these narrative works will allow us to shed new light on perennial concerns in modern literature: tradition, modernity, internationalization, and the capacity for social critique in the arts, among others.  Connecting descriptions of real paintings in these two works to descriptions of a fictional paintings in later works, such as in the novel Sanshirô (1908), will reveal how many of these abstract concerns ultimately coalesce around the representation of the New Woman of the Meiji era.

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Love and Passion – Wagnerism among writers of the Meiji period

Ingrid FRITSCH (University of Cologne, Germany)

The turn of the 19th century saw a veritable “Wagner-mania” among young Japanese intellectuals. Novelists, poets, scholars and (to a lesser degree) musicians felt a deep admiration for Richard Wagner – not so much for his music, but for the ideas that were propagated through his operas. Authors such as Ishikawa Takuboku, Nagai Kafû, Mori Ôgai and Tsubouchi Shôyô found inspiration in his philosophy and aesthetics. 

The Wagner-boom was triggered by Anesaki Masaharu (pen name Chôfû), who wrote three public letters to his friend Takayama Chôgyû, which were published in 1902 in the journal Taiyô. Another text, about “love in Wagners dramatic plays” (ワグネルの戯曲に現れたる戀), followed in 1904 in the journal Teikoku bungaku, emphasizing the connection between love and death as the predominant literary theme in Wagner’s operas, especially the Tannhäuser.

Wagner’s works met with ideas that were circulating in Japan in the late 19th century. Three widely discussed points, which I will investigate in my presentation, were:

  1.  A new “civilized” concept of “love”, conveyed by Japanese Christian scholars such as Tamura Naoomi
  2. Ideas on folk, myth and nation
  3. The opera as a “Gesamtkunstwerk”

It seems that Japanese intellectuals, frustrated by the social and cultural stagnation at the end of the Meiji-period, hoped to find solutions in Wagner’s life-reforming visionary “Weltanschauung”. 

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“Useful” and “Useless” Intellectuals in Literary Works of the Meiji Period: Tsubouchi Shôyô’s Tôsei shosei katagi (The Character of Contemporary Students, 1885-1886) and Futabatei Shimei’s Ukigumo (The Drifting Cloud, 1887-1889)

Simone MÜLLER (University of Zurich, Switzerland)

After the Second World War, in the context of intensive discussions on wartime responsibility, the members of the Kindai Bungakukai (New Literature Association), postwar Japan’s leading modernist literary group, turned their gaze to the Meiji-period in order to seek for the roots of writer’s failure to resist state policies. They accounted for a split within the Meiji academic elite between “useful” intellectuals in the European tradition and “useless” intellectuals in the Russian tradition, which they saw prototypically represented in Tsubouchi Shôyô’s novel Tôsei shosei katagi (The Character of Contemporary Students, 1885-1886) and Futabatei Shimei’sUkigumo (The Drifting Cloud, 1887-1889). While the protagonists in Tôsei shosei katagi represented the positive, opportunistic intellectual of the Meiji period, Bunzô, the anti-hero of Ukigumo, embodied the type of the melancholic intellectual who is disillusioned with the Meiji government’s utilitarian policies and its stress on economic development. Bunzô was thus declared the first “superfluous man” in Japanese literary history. The members of the Kindai Bungakukai obviously identified useful and superfluous intellectuals in order to make a distinction between critical intellectuals who are considered superfluous for the system and opportunistic intellectuals who put their intelligence into the service of the system, by pinning their hopes on the former, granting them a leading role in the building up of a free, democratic and responsible postwar society.

In my paper I will trace different “life designs” in the two novels in order to show their author’s dealing with Japanese processes of modernizing in the Meiji period. I will argue that the literary figure of the “superfluous intellectual”, by referring to Western as well as indigenous literary models, symbolizes the inner conflict of Japanese intellectuals between the Western-inspired search for individuality and autonomy on the one hand, and traditional social expectations on the other. The literary figure of the superfluous intellectual, that may be considered the very product of Japanese Modernisation along Western lines, thus serves as a means of counter discourse and social criticism.

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Ways of Self-Reflection: Educated Loafers in the Work of Natsume Sôseki

Toshiaki KOBAYASHI (Leipzig University, Germany)

In Japan, educated loafers (kôtô yûmin) are unique tricksters who connect the premodern and the modern times. What kind of “premodernity” was inherited by them? What kind of “modernity” did they anticipate? How was the joining between both of them possible? This essential problem in Japanese history of ideas will be discussed by examining the literary work of Natsume Sôseki, the most popular Japanese writer since the Meiji era. Focus will lie on the texts Sore kara (“And then”, 1909), Mon (“The Gate”, 1910), Higan sugi made (“To the Spring Equinox and Beyond”, 1912), Kokoro (“The Heart”, 1914) and Michikusa (“Grass on the Wayside, 1915).

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Representations of Self-Awareness and Social Dissent: The Role of Christianity in Late Meiji Narrative

Massimiliano TOMASI (Western Washington University, USA)

The process of modernization brought about by the Meiji era ushered Japan into a period of exceptional challenges. While on the one hand the reopening to the Western world promoted a new awareness of notions of freedom and inalienable individual rights, on the other rapid industrialization caused deep inequality and social tensions that became especially severe around the turn of the century, when, on the eve of the Russo-Japanese war, calls for national unity and patriotism intensified, exacerbating the already precarious conditions of the most vulnerable sectors of society. Some authors took it upon themselves to address these tensions with fictional constructions that placing unprecedented emphasis on the notion of self and self-determination challenged the existing structures of the Meiji political and social fabrics.

Christianity played an important role in these narrative endeavors. Its spread in the late nineteenth century had led many young writers to convert, and although virtually all of them eventually relinquished their faith, such religious experience unequivocally informed their future literary undertakings. As a new system of signification, in fact, Christianity provided a rich semiotic landscape affording writers the opportunity to discuss society, modernity, and the self from a vantage point of established rhetorical coordinates. 

This paper focuses on late Meiji works by Tokutomi Roka, Kinoshita Naoe and Shimazaki Tôson, highlighting the existence of a linked discursive space in their fiction that employed Christian themes and tropes as a narrative tool to express dissent and call for change amid growing concerns about militarization and social injustice. 

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Rethinking Literary Imaginations of Naichi-Zakkyo (Domestic Mixed Residence)

Yoshitaka HIBI (Nagoya University, Japan)

In the last decades of the 19th century active discussions took place on naichi zakkyo (domestic mixed residence) in Japan. These fierce debates focused on whether and how freely foreigners would be able to travel, reside, and conduct business within Japan. Broadly speaking, these debates were divided into opponents who believed the extension of these freedoms was premature and advocates who favored the development of a new society. The debates involved not only journalists and intellectuals but also a wide range of the public. During the decades of the debates, several literary works appeared. The most famous one was Naichi zakkyo mirai no yume 内地雑居未来之夢 by Tsubouchi Shôyô, but there were some other novels, humorous writings, poems, and entertaining games such as sugoroku.

In this presentation, I will discuss Tsubouchi Shôyô’s miraiki (future forecast novel) and other works of literature and entertainment in order to analyze the problem of mixed residence in Japan. I will address how Japanese people of the time viewed foreigners, the construction of the miraiki (future forecast novel) as a literary form, and the roles of these views and forms in the construction of late-19th century Japanese nationalism.

Just recently, Japan effectively lifted the ban on the acceptance of migrant workers engaged in manual labor. And yet, the problem of naichi zakkyo was a problem of immigration at the beginning of early modern Japan. We might ask: What, if anything, really separates debates about immigration in Japan today from debates that took place one hundred years ago?

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Can the Meiji Man Laugh?

Indra LEVY (Stanford University, USA)

Echoing Fukuzawa Yukichi’s statement that “One should not be content with the present state of Western countries,” Natsume Sôseki teaches the eponymous protagonist of Sanshiro, on his way from his country home to Tokyo, that what’s bigger than Japan is not the world, but rather the inside of his own head. This paper takes a hint from Sôseki’s joke to examine how key theories of literary humor in the Meiji period were circumscribed by the intertwined Eurocentric notions of nation and civilization, and how Sôseki managed to transcend them in Wagahai wa neko de aru. How did the unprecedented deployment of a feline narrator change the Japanese literary landscape, and how did Sôseki expand the vocabulary of Japanese jokes in the character of Meitei?

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Gyûnabe (1910): Mori Ôgai and the Meat Pots of Modern Life

Beate WONDE (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Mori Ôgai Memorial Center, Germany)

t.b.a.

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