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Japan Forum
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Rethinking Sseki's theory

Karatani Kjin Published online: 11 Feb 2008.

To cite this article: Karatani Kjin (2008) Rethinking Sseki's theory, Japan Forum, 20:1, 9-15, DOI: 10.1080/09555800701796826 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09555800701796826

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Rethinking Sosekis theory

IN K A R ATA N I K OJ
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Abstract: This paper builds on the discussion of Bungakuron in Origins of Modern Japanese Literature (1993). It focuses on Sosekis collaboration with Masaoka Shiki to revive haiku and the links that Soseki found between the haiku-related genre of shaseibun (literary sketches) and the grotesque, loosely plotted realism of Laurence Sterne. Like Bakhtin, Soseki recognizes something in early novelistic forms that would later be disciplined out. Furthermore, this paper argues that in the preface to Bungakuron Soseki provides both an encomium to his dead friend Masaoka and a prescient announcement of the end of literature, perceived 100 years early from his vantage point as a non-Western subject witnessing the end of empire in London. Keywords: Natsume Soseki, Masaoka Shiki, shaseibun, haikai, realism, Sterne

It was in 1975 when I was teaching at Yale University that I began to envision the work Origins of Modern Japanese Literature (Karatani 1993 [1980]).1 At the time, Meiji literary history was usually taught from the perspective of how modern literature as established in the West had been accepted or failed to be accepted in Japan. This perspective assumed that modern literature was natural and selfevident and there were very few who problematized the form, either in the West or in Japan. My book was an attempt to show that modern literature in the West can in fact be interpreted as a historical system established in the middle of the nineteenth century, especially in France. As I was teaching Meiji literature to American students, I came to realize that Soseki is one of the few who had problematized modern literature and that his Theory of Literature (Bungakuron, 1907) was precisely a project to demonstrate this. I was 34 years old at the time. One day, I noticed that Soseki was the same age when he began tackling his Theory of Literature in London. I remember the quiet excitement I felt then. This is why I referred to Soseki and his Theory of Literature from the beginning in Origins of Modern Japanese Literature. However, Soseki as a theorist was belittled at the time. His theory was considered a mere prelude to his novels. Needless to say, no one paid attention to
Japan Forum 20(1) 2008: 915 Copyright C 2008 BAJS ISSN: 09555803 print/1469932X online DOI: 10.1080/09555800701796826

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it in America. When I think of it in this light, it is remarkable that I am now participating in a project to reconsider Sosekis Theory of Literature together with American scholars. This is, or should be, cause for celebration and yet my happiness is tempered. I will discuss the reasons for this later, but to sum them up briey here, the position of literature has entirely changed over the past thirty years. I stated in Origins of Modern Japanese Literature that Sosekis project was an isolated case, not only in Britain, but even in Japan. However, his theoretical aims and methodology were in fact similar to those of his long-time friend Masaoka Shiki (18671902), who died of tuberculosis at the age of 35 while Soseki was in London. The two writers shared a passionate interest in both literary theory and creative writing and collaborated on a project to revive haiku poetry in which they aimed to provide a theoretical basis for haiku and shaseibun (literary sketches, a form of prose derived from haiku). While shaseibun may appear to be akin to realism, it is in fact a critique of realist writing, characterized as it is by lack of plot and a form of satire that is peculiar to haikai-renga (comic linked verse). Sosekis I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru, 19056), rst published in the haiku journal Hototogisu launched by Shiki, is perhaps his most representative work in the shaseibun form. Masaoka Shiki gave haiku poetry a theoretical foundation in his General Principles of Haikai (Haikai taiy o, 1895). He did not begin with the fact that haiku stemmed from a long history of haikai-renga, but started instead with its very form. He writes: Haiku is part of literature. Literature is part of art. Therefore, the criterion of art is the criterion of literature. The criterion of literature is the criterion of haiku (Shiki 1930: 246, cited in Karatani 1993: 74-5). What he meant to say is that the traditional haiku should be considered from a universal viewpoint as part of art, no matter how subtle and idiosyncratic it may seem. The extremely short poetic form of haiku links with Edgar Allan Poes ideas in The Poetic Principle (1849) in which he locates the denitive nature of poetry in its brevity (Eliot 1912). Both Shiki and Poe imply that what makes poems poetic should be sought in their form, not in their content. In many respects, it may be said that Sosekis Theory of Literature inherited the essence of Masaoka Shikis theory and developed it on a larger scale. Incidentally, some of Sosekis eccentric behavior can be attributed to his relationship with his dead friend. For example, the fact that Soseki quit Tokyo Imperial University to work for the Asahi Shinbun newspaper startled people at the time, but it is understandable in view of the fact that Shiki had worked for the newspaper Nihon Shinbunsha. It is certain that this dead person was alive in Sosekis mind. In his Theory of Literature, Soseki asked what literature is, in both general and comprehensive terms. Clearly, however, his goal was to supply a universal basis to specic genres of literature, that is, haiku and shaseibun, the genres that he shared with Masaoka Shiki. Soseki sought the basis of shaseibun in a certain attitude toward the world and oneself:

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In narrating human affairs, the attitude of the writer of shaseibun is not like that of a nobleman surveying the lowly. It is not that of the wise man regarding the fools. Nor is it that of a man regarding a woman or a woman regarding a man. The writer of shaseibun, that is to say, is not an adult looking at children. It is that of a parent toward a child. (SZ 1907, 16: 4856; cited in Karatani 1993: 1801) This is not an attitude peculiar to haikai-renga. For instance, Freud used the same metaphor to explain humor. According to Freud, humor is generated when the superego (adult) encourages the suffering ego (child) by urging it to ignore its pain, as if that pain were petty and negligible. Soseki states that shaseibun is a Japanese product derived from haiku. He writes: This mental disposition is in every way that of haiku, transposed. It is not a Western import that arrived in Yokohama after drifting across the seas. Within the limits of my own rather shallow knowledge, there appears to be nothing written with this kind of mental disposition among the works which have been hailed as Western masterpieces throughout the world. (SZ 1907, 16: 55) However, he then goes on to cite Dickenss Pickwick Papers, Fieldings Tom Jones and Cervantes Don Quixote as examples of works in which this attitude is evident to a certain degree (ibid.: 55). Here, we should add Laurence Sternes Tristram Shandy and Sentimental Journey as outstanding examples of shaseibun, although Soseki for some reason does not mention them here. It is noteworthy that Soseki found in Sterne the attitude of shaseibun. From the perspective of the literary canon established in the nineteenth century, Sternes novels were aberrations. He would later be highly evaluated by the twentiethcentury modernist movement, but this did not take place until after Sosekis stay in London. It is not mere conceit for Soseki to have found parallels between Sternes novels, which deconstruct the British novel that was taking shape in the late eighteenth century, and plot-less shaseibun derived from haiku in Meiji Japan. In this regard, Bakhtins remarks on Laurence Sterne deserve attention. In Rabelais Gargantua et Pantagruel, Bakhtin found a grotesque realism, a carnivalesque sense of the world in which the hierarchy of the social order is reversed through the laughter of the populace. He also argued that this popular carnivalesque sense of the world found in Renaissance literature subsequently withered, but that it was revived in the pre-romantic period, albeit in a subjective form that is, with Sternes Tristam Shandy. It was hard to revive grotesque realism in a Western Europe where the agrarian community had already been dissolved by the market economy. Bakhtin maintains that Sternes Tristam Shandy was a peculiar transposition of Rabelais and Cervantes world concept into the subjective language of the new age, one in which the folk laughter of the Renaissance was reduced to the forms of humor, irony and sarcasm (Bakhtin 1968: 367). Consequently, Sternes

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works are deemed an expression of a subjective sense of the world, or rather an expression of an overly acute self-consciousness. But Bakhtin acknowledges that the Renaissance sense of the world is retrieved here, though in a subjective form. While such works were not part of the literary mainstream in Europe, grotesque realism was revived in nineteenth-century Russia by Gogol, and then by Dostoevsky who, to borrow his own metaphor, came out from under Gogols Overcoat. According to Bakhtin, Dostoevskys works are essentially different from the subjective and psychological type of modern novel, because they retain the carnivalesque sense of the world. Gogols works are often labeled as precursors to surrealism. However, it is important to note that surrealism is a product of modernism. Grotesque realism, whether we are looking at Gogol in Russia, Lu Xun in China or Gabriel Garc a M arquez in Colombia resulted from the persistence of a feudal agrarian community. The same thing can be said of Sosekis writing; yet, unlike Lu Xun or Garcia Marquez whose works appeared after the acceptance of modernism, he needed to justify his ideas theoretically. Soseki argues that shaseibun is derived from haiku. This does not mean simply that it was started by haiku poets such as Masaoka Shiki and himself. Shaseibun has its origin not just in early modern haiku, but in the haikai-renga of the fteenth century. If shaseibun retains a carnivalesque sense of the world, this is because it stemmed from haikai-renga. To be more specic, renga (linked verse) has a long history stretching back to ancient times. It was initially an aristocratic genre that saw increasing renement and gentrication. In the fteenth century, however, as the feudal system fell into decline, it gained power among the populace in the form of haikai-renga. Haikai implies something humorous and obscene, as well as something that is frequently subversive of social hierarchies. Haikai-renga was popular among the rising bourgeois class (manufacturers), but it withered when the Tokugawa regime was established in the sixteenth century. Bakhtin writes, The sixteenth century represents the summit in the history of laughter, and the high point of this summit is Rabelais novel. After this, though, a rather sharp descent starts and it loses its essential link with a universal outlook. . . .Limited to the area of the private, eighteenth-century humor is deprived of its historical color (Bakhtin 1968: 101). The same is true of haikai-renga. It may be said that Basho (164494) tried to restore the haikai-esque spirit of haiku by splitting off haiku into a distinct genre of its own and rejecting the guild structure of renga. However, Bashos innovations, the so-called Basho-school style, became just another mannerism, with haikai becoming gentried and the free association of renga being transformed into yet another feudal guild. It is Masaoka Shiki who attempted to reform haiku radically in the Meiji period. In many ways, he was an innovator just like Basho, but by Shikis time the Basho school style had decayed into closed-off guilds governed by masters and a spirit that sought above all preordained harmony. It goes without saying that Shiki

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rejected this sort of guild and sought once again the haikai-esque, thus rejecting Bashos authority. Shikis reforms extended into tanka poetry as well as prose writing that is, shaseibun. What he sought was not shaseibun as realism, but shaseibun as grotesque realism, so to speak. But when Shiki died and Takahama Kyoshi (18741959) succeeded him, as with Bashos death, shaseibun once again became at realism associated with a feudal guild. The truly haikai-esque remained not with these disciples, but rather with Sosekis writings. Furthermore, as a scholar of English literature, Soseki argued that eighteenth-century English literature was the Western counterpart of shaseibun, thus expanding the concept to a more universal phenomenon than seeing it as something unique to Japanese literature. Sosekis Theory of Literature was written in order properly to evaluate and recover what had been laid aside from the mainstream of modern literature. Having said this, there is something else I must mention. Generally we notice the origin of something only when it is about to end. Thirty years ago, when I was writing Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, I was aware of the end of modern literature. However, this was not so much the end of modern literature as it was indicative of the emergence of a new kind of literature, one that had been repressed by the established literary canons. In fact, a variety of genres of novels appeared, including those by writers such as Nakagami Kenji (194692), Murakami Ryu (1952), Murakami Haruki (1949) and Takahashi Genichiro (1951). These authors are dened as postmodern, but for me, they seem to be harking back to an earlier kind of literature the Renaissance literature for which Soseki had sought a theoretical basis. This was a genuine renaissance of literature and I had my eyes on it as I wrote my Origins of Modern Japanese Literature. However, this renaissance did not last long and by the 1990s it began to lose its social and intellectual impact. The death of Nakagami Kenji in 1992 was possibly symbolic of the death of modern literature in Japan. This was a death that harbored no future possibilities, an ending that was nothing more than an ending. In fact, something called literature may last and even prosper, but it will be of a kind alien to the literature I have an interest in. Actually I have gotten divorced from literature. I may be wrong, but I dont care. I dont like to do what I am not interested in. I have other things I want to do. However, last year I had to re-visit my book Origins of Modern Japanese Literature to edit it for a new edition of my works. While I revised it with considerable interest, I felt none of the excitement that I had had before: it was more like writing my own last will and testament. Re-reading Sosekis preface to the Theory of Literature, however, I noticed that, although I had quoted a passage from it, I had previously overlooked his use of certain words. Let me quote it again. I was determined, in this work, to solve the problem of dening the nature of literature. I resolved to devote a year or more to the rst stage of my research on this problem.

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I shut myself up in my room in my boarding house and packed all the works of literature I owned away in my wicker trunk. For I believed that reading literature in order to understand the nature of literature was like washing blood with blood. I vowed to probe the psychological origins of literature: what led to its appearance, development and decline. And I vowed to explore the social factors that brought literature into this world and caused it to ourish or wither. (SZ 1907, 15: 9; cited in Karatani 1993: 12) This time, words like decline and wither drew my attention, altering my view of Sosekis theoretical attempt. I suspect that Soseki may have sensed the end of literature. Sosekis words reminded me of Masaoka Shikis belief that haiku and tanka were doomed to extinction in the near future. It seems a bit odd that Shiki, who after all launched a new haiku moment, would at the same time proclaim the inevitable extinction of haiku. Shiki explained this from the fact that haiku are so short that the total number of possible permutations and combinations of words that they can contain is limited. Of course, his theory was wrong, because the number of potential permutations and combinations is astronomical and virtually innite in terms of human history. But I think Shiki wanted to say that haiku would decline and wither because of psychological or social factors, to use Sosekis words. It may be said that Soseki shared this stance with Shiki. Unlike other writers of their own or of later generations, they did not believe in the eternity of literature. In any event, as I noted above, I have divorced myself from literature. But when I re-read Sosekis Preface, I came to think that I should reconsider the end of modern literature as my last obligation to literature. That is why I have written this essay.

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Note
1. The chapters of Origins of Modern Japanese Literature rst appeared in installments in the literary journals Kikan Geijutsu and Gunz o between 1978 and 1980 and were published in book form in 1980 (Karatani 1993 [1980]).

References
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1968) Rabelais and His World, trans. H el` ene Iswolsky, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Eliot, Charles, W. (1912) Essays: English and American: Vol. XXVIII. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son. Karatani, Kojin (1980) Nihon kindai bungaku no kigen, Kodansha. (1993 [1980]) Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, trans. Brett de Bary, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Natsume, Soseki (1907) Shaseibun, reprinted in S oseki zensh u 16, Iwanami Shoten. (1907) Preface (Jo) to Bungakuron, reprinted in S oseki zensh u 15, Iwanami Shoten. Shiki, Masaoka (1930) Haikai taiy o (General principles of haikai), reprinted in Shiki zensh u 4, Kaizosha.

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Karatani Kojin is a critic and activist in Japan and founding editor of Critical Space, one of Japans most inuential intellectual venues throughout the 1990s. He has spent time as visiting Professor of Japanese Literature at both Yale and Columbia Universities. He retired from teaching at Hosei University Japan in 2006, but remains a prolic critic and activist. Work available in English includes Origins of Modern Japanese Literature (1993) Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money (1995) and Transcritique: On Kant and Marx (2003).

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