Japanese Literature

V

Edo Period

(17th century-1868.) With the establishment, in 1603, of the Tokugawa shogunate, with its seat of government in Edo (present-day Tokyo), commerce flourished and towns developed, producing a merchant class that soon created its own literature, a bawdy, worldly fiction radically different in character from the literature of the preceding period. The most important figure of the period was Ihara Saikaku, whose Koshoku ichidai otoko (1682; Life of an Amorous Man, 1964) is a brilliant work of fiction, full of humour and wit, presenting a panoramic view of the sensual life of mercantile society. Many writers imitated Saikaku in the 18th century, but none equalled his achievements. In the theatre, the late 17th century also saw the emergence of Monzaemon Chikamatsu, the greatest exponent of both the kabuki and bunraku (puppet) dramatic genres. Chikamatsu’s versatility resulted in a corpus of plays that invites frequent comparison with Shakespeare, his reputation built on both his jidaimono (great historical dramas) and his sewamono (domestic dramas—of which Sonezaki shinjû (1703; The Love Suicides of Sonezaki, 1961) is the best known).

The 19th century brought into prominence an important, if somewhat limited, writer of fiction, Ikku Jippensha. He is the author of Tokaidochu hizakurige (1802-1822; Shank's Mare, 1929), a delightful picaresque work that relates the misadventures of two scamps. The haiku, a poem in 17 syllables with strong Zen Buddhist influences, was perfected in this period and can be described as the distilled essence of poetry. Three poets are pre-eminent for their haiku. The first is the Zen Buddhist lay-priest Bashō, who took excursions to remote regions and who, composing under the influence of Saigyō and other great itinerant poets, set his poetry within travel accounts. He is revered as the greatest of Japanese poets for his sensitivity and profundity and is particularly noted for his Oku no hosomichi (1689; Narrow Road to the Deep North, 1966). The second is Yosa Buson, whose haiku express his experience as a painter. The third is Kobayashi Issa, a poet of humble origin, who drew his material from village life. Comic poetry, in a variety of forms, also flourished during the Edo period.

VI

Modern Period

(1868 to the present.) Throughout the modern period Japanese writers were influenced by other literatures, primarily those of the West, and they refashioned many foreign literary concepts and techniques in fiction and poetry.

A

19th Century

The humorist Robun Kanagaki is a transitional figure who attempted in vain to adapt himself to the new age but basically adhered to the comic style of the Edo period. Translations from Western literature, at first primarily from the works of British authors, gave impetus to the political novel, an interesting if not highly literary genre that prevailed throughout the 1880s. Kajin no kigū (Chance Meeting with Two Beauties), by Tōkai Sanshi, is an extravagant and unintentionally humorous work tracing the travels and fortunes of a young Japanese politician. The critical work Shōsetsu shinzui (1885, The Essence of the Novel), by the writer Shōyō Tsubouchi, argues for a prose art grounded in realism, on the Western model. Tsubouchi’s argument inspired his pupil Shimei Futabatei to write Ukigumo (1887; The Drifting Cloud, 1967), traditionally cited as the first novel to take seriously the colloquial language. The Ken’yūsha (Society of the Friends of the Inkstone), a student literary society founded by the novelist and poet Kōyō Ozaki, was important in Japanese literary life in the 1880s and 1890s. The society influenced the creation of a new literature that maintained traditional aesthetic values while incorporating Western techniques. A young female writer so influenced, Ichiyō Higuchi, deftly traces the psychology of children and young lovers in a number of short stories, with “Takekurabe” (1896; Growing Up, 1956) generally considered her masterpiece. At the same time, a group of young writers, epitomized by Tôkoku Kitamura and inspired by the poetry of the European Romantics, established the literary journal, Bungakkai, in which they published stories revealing a remarkable empathy with the Christian faith. During the same period, and partly as a result of the efforts of the Bungakkai coterie, poetry too was being reassessed in the light of the Western models that were becoming increasingly accessible; one poet, Shiki Masaoka, deserves particular mention as the creator of modern forms of the tanka and haiku. His pioneering efforts gave rise to a vigorous movement for the writing of poetry in the Western style, and several prominent poets emerged in this genre during the 20th century.

B

20th Century

French Naturalistic fiction attracted young Japanese authors, who soon developed a Naturalism of their own with less social content and far greater subjectivity. One leading figure in this naturalistic style is Tōson Shimazaki, whose novel Hakai (1906; The Broken Commandment, 1974) describes the mental torment and ultimate confession of his origins as an eta (outcast) by the young protagonist, Ushimatsu. The other author often credited with the establishment of the Japanese naturalist movement is Katai Tayama, whose Futon (1905; The Quilt, 1981) is presented in the form of the candid confession of a Tokyo teacher of feelings of infatuation for his young pupil, Yoshiko. Two exceedingly important figures who stood aloof from this dominating French tradition were Ogai Mori and Sōseki Natsume. Mori drew his inspiration primarily from German literature. He was active in writing poetry, drama, novels, and historical biography. Perhaps his best work of fiction is Gan (1911-1913; The Wild Geese, 1959), which examines with remarkable acuity the feelings of a girl who is forced to be the mistress of a usurer. Natsume, by contrast, was a scholar of English literature before he turned to imaginative writing. His monumental achievement in the psychological novel makes him one of the great 20th-century Japanese writers. In his works written between 1905 and his death in 1916 he created a fictional world that constitutes a ruthless indictment of modern egoism. His incomplete last work, Meian (1916; Light and Darkness, 1981), is perhaps the only modern Japanese novel that in scope and depth resembles the achievement of the Russian masters. But it is for his earlier work, Kokoro (1912; trans. 1957), with its perceptive critique of late Meiji society, that Natsume is best remembered.

In the period 1910 to 1930, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, a disciple of Natsume, created a highly structured, polished short-story form that, in English translation, has found admirers throughout the world. He is best remembered for “Rashōmon” (1915), a short story that betrays both his fascination with tradition and his contemporary perspective. The other prominent trend in pre-war Japanese literature was the evolution of the naturalist school into the uniquely Japanese shishōsetsu (I-novel) genre of confessional literature. Exemplified in the writings of Naoya Shiga, the works born of this trend tend to be related in the guise of autobiography, but their “literary” quality derives from the extent to which the often mundane material is woven into a fictional creation.

The militarist domination of Japanese life in the 1930s largely stifled literature, although a few writers retreated into an uncontroversial aestheticism. Yasunari Kawabata, the recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature, and Junichirō Tanizaki are foremost among the authors who emerged from the Pacific War to continue perfecting their craft. Their work is known to readers of English through the excellent translations by Edward Seidensticker of Kawabata's Yukiguni (1935-1947; Snow Country, 1956) and Tanizaki's Sasameyuki (1943-1948; The Makioka Sisters, 1957). Another of Japan's most famous post-war writers, Yukio Mishima, wrote a number of novels, plays, and short stories concerning his despair over the Westernization of his country and his desire for a return to the nobler Japan of earlier times. Among his haunting works are his first novel, the partly autobiographical Kamen no kokuhaku (1948; Confessions of a Mask, 1960), and his tetralogy, Hōjō no Umi (1970; The Sea of Fertility, 1972-1975), an epic story of reincarnation. The death-obsessed Mishima died by committing ritual hara-kiri. A Japanese writer with more internationalist and pacifist inclinations, Kenzaburō Ōe, went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994 with brilliant works like Man'en gannen no tuttoboru (1967; The Silent Cry, 1974). Another from this generation of authors, born during the era of military build-up in the 1930s and who subsequently sought to address the role of the individual in post-war society is Shusaku Endo. Best known for his novel, Chinmoku (1966; Silence, 1969), Endo succeeded in deriving from his powerful Catholic faith the materials for an oeuvre of considerable appeal, both at home and abroad.

By the 1970s, the traditional distinction between “pure” and “popular” literature was under attack, and there emerged a series of authors, exemplified by Yoshikichi Furui, Yūko Tsushima, and Toshio Shimao, whose literature has often been depicted as representing a reworking of the pre-war shishōsetsu. The 1980s and 1990s saw the emergence to literary prominence of the “generation of the void”, authors born following Japan’s emergence as an economic superpower in the 1950s and who sought in their literature to articulate a new hedonism. Representative of this generation are Ryū Murakami, whose novel Kagirinaku tomei ni chikai buru (1976; Almost Transparent Blue, 1981) was seen as the first work of “popular” fiction to win the prestigious Akutagawa Prize; Haruki Murakami, who continues to achieve considerable commercial success with his analyses of contemporary Japanese society that benefit from the additional perspective derived from the years he has spent living overseas; and Banana Yoshimoto, whose novels, including Kitchen (1987) and Amrita (1994), have secured a cult following among her own generation. Finally, however, no consideration of the contemporary Japanese literary scene would be complete without mention of the growing number of non-Japanese authors currently living in Japan and writing in Japanese. Most notable in this regard are several authors of Korean origin, including Lee Hwe-Song and, more recently, Yū Miri, whose representative literature focuses on the dilemma of the marginalized.

For decades, even following the reopening of Japan to foreign influences in the late 19th century, Japanese literature continued to be marginalized. Thanks in no small measure to the careful and sympathetic appraisal it received in the post-war period from several American scholars, foremost among them Donald Keene, it has now come to be recognized as an integral element on the world literary scene.