Dawn to the POSTWAR LITERATURE 987

SHIINA RINZO (1911-1973) arrative goes on to describe the twelve sections of the paint-
much the terms that Shiina gave elsewhere in relating his
'ence, concluding, "And even now my brother always runs
Another writer who was known for his descriptions of
ever he goes by a temple."
the burned-out ruins of the postwar years was Shiina Rinzo'.
'fhe effect of the ~~hist picture was to implant in Shiina a
like Noma, a graduate of Kyoto University, Shiina was la
(, i d of_d~ath ~hat_r_e~~_lej_ itself in his every action, espec.ifl.Uyj_11
self-educated. In response to a critic who complained that Shi
I

descriptions of the life led by the lower classes lacked convict

Shiina truthfully answered that he knew little of Japan except
slums and their poverty-stricken inhabitants. He suffered ·
! acute £~Y_~JtJ_J!lOSt of his life, and despite the cheerful to
have suffered also from eh
· some of his novels, he seems to-·----~----
1 e- «e-~--~~-<0M&-,s,,_M0,<-
I depres~_!,QJl. .
···His problems in life started early. Three days after hi.s
his mother attempted to commit suicide. For a time mother
son lived with his father, until the father took up with ano
woman. The mother also acquired a lover, and Shiina, in dis
and despair, ran away from home. A profound impress.ion
also made on Shiina when, as a boy of six, he was taken to
Buddhist picture at the Tennoji in Osaka, which depicted sic
death, burial, crows pecking at a corpse and, finally, white bo
strewn over the ground.56 Shiina would refer to this incident in.
novel Eien naru Josho (The Eternal Prelude, 1948). A wont.
explains the strange behavior of her brother in these terms: ·
I'm convinced that the main reason why my brother got that waj
was my grandmother's fault. ... It happened when he was aboil!
six. He had been taken by my grandmother to worship at a tempi~!
While he was listening to the priest deliver a sermon my brotlie
suddenly turned pale and burst into tears. He simply wouldn't
crying. My grandmother had no choice but to take him home.
/
i
night my brother ran a fever, and he kept repeating in a delirium,
"I'm afraid. I'm afraid." When he got a little better my mother
sounded him out indirectly, and discovered the trouble had started
with a picture hanging on the wall of the temple.-! saw it once·
myself, when they held the funeral services for my father there. It
was an extremely unpleasant picture. In fact, the only impression it
produced on me was of unpleasantness, the color of the dead man
especially. He was painted a greenish color that made me think of a
disgusting pus.57
he wrote. The freedom_he sought was not.,_as he sometimes f
d, aJ:rt:edom from poverty but :ff~~. and his conver-
to ~h_ristianl!y, unusual among writers of his background and
ratfo_n, See1!1_S ll:l_SC>_ to. have· been-·fospfredbytfieoelief-Y}ra:t
through Christ could he-6e deliv-eredTiom death.58 A charac-
Ine°Ifo~et!s;:qJ/0lEncounter, Y<)52) se~emsto-be speaking for 0 l,.
t1._when he says to himself, "Fear, the fear of death, isn't that.< J,-:_:
ontrolliriffact:or in- this world of ours? Look, I'm the livingf,i
f. This dread has fastened itself tenaciously onto somethingH
e me. It manipulates me as if I were a puppet of some kind. I
etimes wonder if half my life hasn't been spent fighting this
, trying to conquer it." 59
The ct!ntrc.11...c!:i~racters in Shiina's works, gener~l!.Y 11!9.sleled\
himself, "endure" (taeru) and wear 2erpetuaT smiles-ontheir !
--~0-matt;~at disasters they ~-;y~~ff~·;, beci~~they are \
rumedto.surY1v.e.. ·J
Shiina, after running away from home, took such odd jobs as
could find-in a match factory, delivering take-out orders for a
urant, working as a short-order cook-but he continued to
y, and in 1926 formally achieved the requirements for en-
ce into a technical school. ~12;rn he fo~9::d a job as a crew-
with a private r~~-- com~I!Y and,faft~ co111:1>leti11g_.his
renticeshjp_, threw bimselfioto. the l a h o ~ n t , sQ.on .be-
·11g the chief of tht:)9~a[i;_~lL.QL the· Commun1st party. He
cribed, in a«,v31y.that,§ugg~sts_pers01:ialexprience, what fed the
gal c:J!ai:_a~t~r:_9[lJjs__no.veLU11gQ_{_The Canal, 1956)--to-}omtfie ·
unist party: ··
It was because he knew, as clearly as he knew that two and two
make four, what the causes of his hunger were. He was hungry
because he hadn't eaten, and he hadn't eaten because he didn't
have a job. So, he could see, the solution to his hunger would in the
end have to be social and political. This realization was linked to
the awareness he now possessed of the truth of Marxism.Go
 Dawn to the West
f,\ In 1931 Shiina got word that there was to be a rdundu;,
Communist party members in Osaka, and he fled to Tokyo
out informing the others in his cell. His guilt over. thi.s a
would inspire several works of fiction, including "Fukao Shoj{
Shuki" (Fukao Shoji's Notebooks, 1948). He was captured <!
arrested about a month later and returned: Shiina was brought
trial in 1932, found guilty of violating the Peace Preservation Lii
and sentenced to four years' imprisonment when he refused,.
commit tenko. He appealed the decision. While waitingfor a
verdict he was confined in a detention cell, where he was tortu
by the special police. Sympathizers supplied him with rea
matter including Ecce Homo by Nietzsche, which produced a
found impression. NietzsGhe made Shiina realize that bis
conception of himself had been mistaken. He wondered, '~If
' of my comrades was sentenced to death, would I be able to die
! his place?" And the answer came back, "No!" He pursued
'self-examination:
I
"Why have I continued to work for the movement?"
"For yourself, your own freedom, your own authority."
I thought to myself that I had been mistaken about the nat
of my love, and at that moment I experienced the feeling of havi.
betrayed my class. I fell into nihilism. Then, by chance, I happen
to read Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, which was being circulated by
Moppuru.61 It said that man is the will to power. That it is no
\. to be ashamed of. No, we should be proud of it. That's. what I fo
., 1 written in the book.
~··- ·-·-- After that I wrote out my declaration of tenko. 62
In April 1933 Shiina was released from prison with a sus.
pended sentence, but the special police kept close watch over h
activities. It was hard finding a job, and when he found one
was likely to lose it as soon as his employer discovered heh
been a "red." On one occasion he unsuccessfully attem ted•
~ang hi1:1:self. This was.ili~JQ~i1{poiiifofn1s esrair. His gra
1: recovery is related in The C::angl? where he descnbes how he
'/ taken into the house of a young widow who worked in a fact
··./ He lived with her and her family, accepted without question
allowed to spend his days reading, not contributing anything'
the support of the family. He read Nietzsche, Kierkegaard,
POSTWAR LITERATURE 989
, Jaspers, Heidegger, and other Existentialist philosophers
os~ works were available in Japanese translation, and began to
interested in the Bible.63
In 1938 Shiina found a job with the Tokyo office of a steel
parry, but he continued his self-education. His readings, how-
r, gradually shifted from philosophy to literature. An es- I J
written in 1948, "The Modernity of Stavrogin," opens with
se words:
I was twenty-eight when I read my first novel. It produced an over-
whelming impression on me. The book was Dostoevski's The De-
mons, and it was. the character Stavrogin who impressed me most.
Later, when I had set my heart on a literary career, this involved
grappling with the question of how to conquer the Stavrogin within
me. That is why I was not interested in the details of Stavrogin's
life, but only in the questions he raised.64
Shiina, who e_!l·~.~~i!lfil~rgg_iJJ)-J'!~;~o lead his life ex-
~ly ~s he pleased, ~as far from enjoying freedom. He began to
te m 1938, but his early stories did not find a publisher. He
came a donin of a little magazine called Shin Si5saku (New
'ting) i~ 1940 and began publishing stories in that magazine
e f~llowmg year. In the meantime he had developed a pulmon- (
mhnent that forced him to give up work, temporarily at first, '
later permanently; his sickness was abetted by his desire to
vote himself to literature. He spent his days in his room reading
d sometimes writing, while his wife peddled oden (a kind of
w) from a pushcart on the Ginza. None of his writings brot1ght_ .
any money until "Shin'ya no Shuen" (Midnight Feast) was
cepted for publication by the magazine Tembo in 1947.65
"Midnight Feast" established Shiina's reputation and set the .
e f~r the works he would later write. There are no more vivid.;# ,i /
at10n~ of postwar Tokyo than Shiina's, if only because hell/ '/
ally hved m the lower depths of society that he described.
e is h~m~r too and .his E~istentialism made his work "con- If
porary with that bemg wntten elsewhere in the world. The : ' ·
·stakable authenticity is probably even more poignant now
when "Midnight Feast" was first published. The narrator of
story, Surnaki, lives in an old warehouse, which, having mirac- '
usly escaped the bombing that destroyed every other building
 in the area, has been converted into apartments by the own
Sumaki's uncle. The dankness, the smells, and the feeble illu · ·
nation that enters Sumaki's room from a small windowhigh
on the wall are described with unerring exactness, and the at
sphere is one of unshakable gloom:
Sometimes I feel as if I am about to choke, especially when I
kept shut up indoors by an all-day rain. Even while I was in pris
was able to inhale the spray of rain coming in from the wind
and I used to watch, as if it had some deep significance; how
rain would wet the high brick walls and turn them an tigly m
color, with just a suggestion of their original red. When spring ea~
I could see, beyond the iron bars and the iron grillwork, begoni
blossoming along the edge of the wall. But all I co_uld ·do in this
room was to pace back and forth. Where was I going to look out
from? 66
The irony is that although Sumaki is free, he feels less fre!.
than when in the prison cell where he spent six months; He ha~>
also made Sartre's discovery that "hell is other people": his neig
bors in the converted warehouse are ex-convicts, petty thiev.
black marketeers, and prostitutes. Sumaki would like to bf
friendly with all of them, but his neighbors shun him after they'
discover that he was imprisoned as a Communist party member
and went berserk while·confined. Despite the appalling surround
11 ings, Sumaki retains his good humor, a quality typical of Shiinal~
heroes. · that once inspired Sumaki's actions. The uncle from whom
The form of narration, a notebook, was also typical
Shiina.67 At one point Sumaki asks himself:
What made me start keeping this notebook? Was it to record
posterity the lives and sentiments of the people living in this
ment house? Or was I trying to prove that things were just as th~f
were described in the boring old stories people used to write?
my neighbors fill me with profound despair. They engulf my
ings-such as they are-in an abyss of irredeemable despair. But,
a matter of fact, despair suits me perfectly in my present
have even begun to cherish my despair. Of course, self-indulge~t
sentiments of that kind are depressing, but depression gives me tlie
! POSTWAR LITERATURE
kind of easure you get when you crawl into bed at night.
991
I ha\re no memories. I have no shining hopes. It's simply that
the present is hard to endure. It's hard to endure, but there's no
prospect of ever improving things if you haven't got any hopes.
What would I improve anyway, and how would I do it? Desire has
a habit of coming up on the heels of reality, and all it does is to
throw its shadow ahead ofus. So, tricked by a shadow, we keep on
running until we drop. One thing I'm sure of is that I have no
intention of wearing myself out that way. That's why, and of course
1t's perfectly reasonable, people suppose I'm a nihilist. But the thing
I hate most in the world is a nihilist. If I had to make a distinction-
I hate making distinctions-I would say I am the exact opposite of a
nihilist. Of course, the opposite of a nihilist is not a romanticist. I
imagine somebody has thought up a name for it. All I mean is that I
endure the unendurable present.GS
The verb taeru, "to endure," appears so frequently in this and
er early stories by Shiina as to suggest an attitude toward life.
one point in "Midnight Feast" Sumaki, pondering how he
st endure not only cold and hunger but his neighbors, reflects,
or me, enduring is the same thing as living. Enduring liberates
from all the 'heavy' things. Besides, enduring lets me have that
xicating feeling called indifference. But, leaving an that aside,
'tit true that in this world one hasn't got much choice but to
ure? When I think of all I have had to endure even in my
ught!" 69 "Thought" (shiso) refers primarily to the Commu-
aki rents his room recalls how Sumaki had attempted to po-
. · e the uncle's company, and how he had dragged into the
vement an employee who later died in prison. Sumaki has
en up Communism and now prefers democracy
because democracy can't be defined. And history doesn't get all
involved with democracy. I mean, democracy doesn't involve any-
thing like historical determinism. That's why I like it. And under
democracy there are always choices for the individual. I like it be-
cause I am free to do whatever I please, whether I want to become a
cabinet minister or a master burglar. And I like the fact that democ- ), •
racy can be interpreted in any way you like . . . . Whatever the /:

Dawn to the West
dictionary has to say about democracy, its meaning is freedom.
if anywhere in the world there is some. scholar who can de
freedom or make it into an ideology, I'd hke to lay eyes on him
"Freedom" (jiyii) is a key word in all of Shiina's writi
Shiina, having left Marxism behind, became almost o~sessi
concerned with the problem of freedom. He was certamly n
philosopher; his essays on freedom, religious ~elief: ~nd ot
problems of fundamental im~ortance to an ~xistentiahst are
clumsily expressed and sometimes so pretent10us that the rea
may well wonder if Shiina had a clear grasp of what he was try·
to convey. The freedom of the central character in the early st
seems to consist mainly in maintaining his distance from every()ll
else, masking his e_mot~ons with an e~igmatic smil~ a~1' above
"enduring" the gnm cucumstances imposed on him.
"Omoki Nagare no naka ni" (In the Heavy Flow, 1947),
sequel to "Midnight Feast," added ano_ther wor?. to ~hiina's
cial vocabulary, omoi (heavy), the quahty preva1lmg m the.at
sphere. Sumaki now lives in a battered old tenement (na
only a small step upward from the :"arehouse_. A :usty sh.
galvanized iron is all that separates him from his ne1ghbors Ill
next room, and every time the wind ?lows the m~tal sheet mak
a peculiar groaning rtoise. Once agam he asks himself why he
keeping a notebook and answers: "For me to k:ep a notebook
~ much the same significance as for the burned uon sheet to m
• I{ that creaking noise which, for the moment, ~as stopped. S
l that's the only word for it. But I love sordidness. I canlov~
I because it makes me laugh." 72
Once agaih neighbors make up the hell in which Sum
lives. His neighbors on the other side of the tin sh~eting are
elderly couple, demented in different ways, a~d theu son,.. a
dent. The son runs away and goes to Sumaki s office (he ~s,
working for a company) to ask for a job. J:Ie tells Suma~1,
you know what's wrong with Christ's teachmg about turnmg
other cheek? Love of humankind is a mistake. Do you follow
The first important thing is to distinguish between us an~ t
And distinctions inevitably give rise to hatred. That's a stnct
ural law." 73
Sumaki's only reply is an enigmatic smile, but later, ad
ing the readers of his notebook, he declares:
/) .1 \\'~ r, ~\,
.
'
',
, s,
J,l-t,.--'.c-~
POSTWAR LITERATURE 993
"" , r
There is something I absolutely must confess. How I have searched
for God! How I have prayed from the heart that it was God who
saddled human beings with the heavy burden we call fate .... I
pray with all my heart that God exists and will show Himself before
me. And if God will only appear before me, perhaps I may be able
to kill him. There is absolutely no other way to change fate than by
killing God. Especially for an ordinary white-collar employee like
myself.74
"Fukao Shoji's Notebooks," Shiina's next work, opens with a
e stating that the notebooks were kept by a friend who died in
n after being arrested as a member of the Communist party.
first entry is cryptically dated, but it can be deduced from
· us clut!s J:h_aj_!_~e tim~ \Y~the early 1930s when Shiina him-
0
.. car1:~sJ~d. rt opens ascFukao {inen.am'in)y·w~is
d in this story) furtively peers from the street at the courtyard
e detention prison. A car, suddenly emerging, splashes mud
him, and he returns to his lodgings; But there is nothing for
to do there or anywhere else. He recalls:
At my previous lodgings I had a bout of stomach cramps. It lasted
only one night. At the time it came as a great shock when I realized · )'
1
that the materialist interpretation of history was of no help in cur- ; ( '
ing my stomach cramps. But was that the fault of the materialist
interpretation of history? It certainly couldn't have been any spir-
itual deficiency on my part, even though I am now no longer able to
recall a single phrase uttered by Marx or Lenin.75
7 :){. · . ·' ;', '·'f ·.
Fukao confesses htYcannot love the masses, a fault he shares
Stavrogin, and he attributes this to the other lodgers in the f
1
ouse. Fukao stays in his room all day long because he is in ,
g from the police. The other lodgers are strange, even loath-
people, especially one man who spends most of the day
hing flies with peculiar vehemence. The narrator fears that
cial police are on his trail, and the lodging-house is little
ent from a prison. A mysterious stranger whom he has seen
ing outside the place proves to be Sugimoto, a one-time
comrade. Sugimoto taunts Fukao about his Communism
asserts that basically Communism and Fascism are the same .. ·
 POSTWAR LITERATURE 995
Dawn to the West

.. a was left in a stupor for a time after writing "Midnight

C
h munist party is motivated by a lust t;'' and roused himself to write "In the Heavy Flow" only out
, i He declares that t [ m~:icind. This criticism of the Commu.
feelings of a hatred of "something."
JJ\
1l r1· power, not love. 0 b a character who was not an alter ego
]! J party, though vmcetf Y h f me and would not become corn
Shiina, was unusua or t. e ~hiina the reputation of having be
By the time he wrote "Fukao Shoji's Notebooks," Shiina felt
Uy incapable of doing anything. He declared, "The last free- I"
for another decade, earning left to human beings is the freedom to die, and if that is lost, 1
t freedom does a human being still have?" 78 For a time after
a prophet. S . to denounces Fukao to the police,
At the end ugimo h · H pleting this work he was unable to write anything else, and it
k getaway to Shang a1. e says: only after extensive "study" of himself that he wrote The
gives him money to ma e a
nal Prelude, his first full-length novel. Shiina attempted to 1
k f you If you and I are both still ribe in his work his Existentialist discovery that solitariness j: \ ,
I have just one favor to as o . dra . ed before a
independence did not represent a state of being cut off from 1 ) :,,
when the revolution takes placde,Iawn:n~ Ya: to t!~tify for me. I
. ·b nal to be sentence , ety. True solitariness, in fact, involved a strong sense of re- '1 i
phnary tn u hI unquestionably a traitor to my ibility and solidarity with society, and the more independentf l
you to say that alth~ug. e:a:n you that I atoned for my sins rson was, the greater the importance of action. In, this sense:! \
and t~e man wh? m~:r:e to the ;ovement, and that you wo, dded, the hero of The Eternal Prelude was Yamamoto, though
devotmg everythm~ d 1· a worker in some little comer character hardly appears in the novel.7 9
like me to be perm1tte to ive as
the new society.76 It would take an unusually perspicacious critic to recognize
amoto's importance. We first learn about him from the narra-
he runs off is "Long live the Com Anta, who formerly lived in the same tenement. Yamamoto, a
Sugimoto's final cry ask . attempt to escape. Even thou.• essed anarchist, is also a painter of obscene pictures. At the
. t ,,, But Fukao ma es no . . .
mst par Y· . has died-of disease, accident, su1c1 (the late 1930s) the police measures directed against noncon-
everyone else m ~he house endure He will wait, whether for ists like Yamamoto had become stringent, but he seemed to
or murder-he will stay ~nd " · able that will alter the co special privileges: he was free. It was Yamamoto who lent
. death , or something unioresee
po1ice, ung Anta books on anarchism by Bukharin, Kropotkin, and.
of the light in the world. . silo (The Eternal Prel s, and these books taught him the meaning of "freedom." 1
1
Shiina's next w~~:~:sze;h::t
1948), was more am 1
w:sstill asking himself,'
e from the wartime
om became an obsession with Anta. From anarchism he l ;1-
• d to Communism; but despite his advanced political opin-;')
am I alive?" but he had beg~n to ~merg k H aid of "Mid
1 d his earlier wor s. e s
riences that had so co ore . . ife when he was sutfe
Feast" that it r~flected hdis w:rum~~ill~nce of the special po
he was haunted by the fear of death, and was convinced thati W
!
could be no true social revolution unless people were freed1. 1
death. Yamamoto, learning of Anta's anguish, ironically as-.
from tuberculosis and un er t e su that once Utopia was achieved, death would no longer'
ther possibilities were e any difference.
If I had not been able to endure, two o . . nd Anta volunteered for the army at the age of nineteen and was l \, .
to me: to resist or to cooperate acti~ely with thetreg::o:nt to China. He was wounded and lost a leg. At the hospital he 1 \\ "
. . ,,, But resistance was an
"Long hve Fascism. · · · . 'th the •preva a young medical officer named Ginjiro, who acts as Anta's
. d h d cooperation w1
immediate physical eat ' an .. · ·d I couldn
wfa~:t~!t;~,g:~:~~l~
0
: ;~r:~~~ ::~ 1

endurance, to preserve my hie an my freedom .

·c d
1
:~~: t~~:~s e;o my po
77
sis throughout the book. The plot of The Eternal Prelude is
with unexplained events, but Anta, no matter how terrible
ifficulties, manages always to keep smiling. When Tomiko,

Ginjiro's sister, tells him how her broth~r violated ~er, or
reveals that GinJ·iro always keeps a vial of potassium cy.
h
se K fi. 'b
on his person, Anta smiles. The s~nten~e are ~a .uz m isho
uddenly smiles) occurs with mmor vanatlons on
(He s l. "A
every page. The last sente~ce o~ t~~ !1ove is: _nta, togeth
his smile, was laid to rest like GmJHO, but as a different prel
eternity."
A ta has few encounters with Yamamoto. The most
at a :eeting of the Communist. party, which he atte~ds in
hat Yamamoto will lend him some money. Antais fo
h opes t . . h . ·· ·
ejected because he insists on as~m_g questions t at untat~
members of the Historical Matenahsm Stu~y Group. Anta.
Yamamoto, when both ar~ outside the meetmg place:
. party mem b er.r'
"Are you a Commumst
"No, not a member of the party, but a Communist."
"I see. That makes everything clear."
Anta sighed without realizing it. Perhaps he ~oo was a Co
nist. And perhaps everybody in the world today, m some sense.
a Communist. 80
Although each scene of The Eternal Prelude _is interesf
constructed the meaning of the work as a whole 1s ~y no :r1·
easy to co~prehend. We sense that Shiina is strugglm~ with
question that had tormented him before he beg~n working o~
book: Why go on living? Perhaps he was trym? to tell us.
/ Anta's saintly endurance and his perpetual smile ~e the
i defenses any person has for surviving the horror of hfe.
who has been termed the Stavrogin of the nove1,s1 correctly
dieted that Anta would die within three months, but sud~e
everything in this novel occurs suddenly-he asks Anta to die
him. He asserts that everybody wants to die: though no o~~82
why: "The lucky ones are those who can kill themselves. .·
The freedom to choose death is surely the bleakes!. of
doms and, as we have seen, was the freedom that Shn_na
desired, but he seems to have been driven to t~at c~nc~usion
·. r as he wrote. Again and again in the novel _Anta 1~s1sts th
i.\·. desires to live, and the fe~r of death haunts him, -~ut ,mthe of
, · · Ginjiro predicted, he dies. It may be that Shuna s purp .
POSTWAR LITERATURE 997
'ting The Eternal Prelude was to reveal how Anta recovered his
in life even as it slipped from him.83
But despite this affirmative note in The Eternal Prelude
·na was close to despair. His Existentialism seems to have led
into an ideological stalemate. He RQnqered the. co11flicl he-
11fret:p5?p_ofthe individual and freedom oTs~ciety,. the)ct~als
Pl~y_ifis~ ah~l t~e rectlity of theT?Q1Il).Un.i~t party. :His per- i
cnsis was ~t i_ts worst in 1950 wh~ri lie walitle"ied 'day afte~ r
from one drmkmg place to another m the squalid back streets :
r Shinjuku ~tation, and it was fre_ely predicted that he would/r
the next maJor author (after Daza1 Osamu) to commit suicide. l
mingly at a loss where else to turn, he found comfort in Chris- :i
·ty, .and was baptized on December 22, 1950, at a Protestant,.
rch m Tokyo. The.act may have been impelled by despair, bu_tf i;_"
as by no means lightly undertaken; unlike many Meiji intel-lW'~
uals whose commitment to Christianity faded as they became ·
e active!?" involved with t~eir societf or with revolutiona..y 1
ght, Shuna not only remamed a believer for the rest of his ;Ji\~
, but contributed essays regularly to church periodicals. He h. ad'/,·~.:.i
prepared for his conversion by readings in Kierkegaard and ,/ .
his interest in the Bible. His Christianity was never orthodox i. i
someti~e~ seef!lS perverse, but it was the central pillar of his!':
from this time on. ;
Shiina's next two novels, Akai Kodokumono (The Red Loner, l
I~ and KaikiJ (Encounter, 1952), though both failures, are in-
tt~ntly of interest, especially in their descriptions of the psy-
og1cal processes that led him to reject Communism in favor of
·stianity. In _1953 h~ began, with Jiyil no kanata de (Beyond
dom~, a sei:ies of e_1ght novels and novellas in a largely auto- J1
aph1cal vem, tracmg his experiences from childhood to his if
· g refuge in the house of the woman who became his wife. If
best of the entire series is Utsukushii Onna (The Beautifuip!f:·F1
. an, 1955), the story of a motorman who is pleased and proud
s work and with his ordinariness. There is humor even in the
'ptions of the numerous mishaps in which he becomes in-
e~ because he is sustained always by his vision of a "truly
ut1ful woman." This woman is never identified, and the vision
f seems out of keeping with the unassuming hero, but there 11
s to have been a congruence between this vision and Shiina's f
 POSTWAR LITERATURE 999
Dawn to the
able to make another tenko after th
~ own vision of Jesus, giving an allegorical meaning to the nov s earlier, and it was not a tim h e one for~ed on them ten
( In 1956 Shiina serialized Watakushi no Seisho Monog; ters were closely probed Po te w l~n the wartime activities of
. · s war 1terary c ·t"
(My Bible Stories) and The Canal, his most affecting "I np ts, and they tended to e . n 1cs were largely
11 · xaggerate the import f .
eir own persuasion. One is rk 1 h ance o wnters
He had a serious heart attack in August of that year~ but af(
recovered he resumed his writing. His last works were infe ion that left-wing writers w:ree !~ erefore t~ o?tain the im-
than any of the older generation.s~h more s1gmficant at this
perhaps because of the fear of death that hung over him, per
also because of the dissolute life he led. His wife recalle The leftward shift of Japanese critic·
urse, unique to Japan Th ism after the war was not,
heavy consumption of whiskey-a bottle every three days:__ . . · e postwar Japan h
he drank along with his medicine for heart disease.85 Sher nm contact with world rt t ese aut ors, once
and discovered that ma~ e~a ~e, turned to the French first of
also that he rarely spent more than one or two nights a year i
e sympathetic to Marxis: ;~ m~ writers, headed by Sartre,
, company, and then only when drunk. She concluded that
was attracted to Amer· · l~n ose Japanese whose atten-
\ after living with him for thirty-nine years she still could n 1can 1terature w rk 1
Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis or V ~re ~ e y to turn to
him.86
I, derstand st during one important 'eriod p;on S1.ncla1T, all of whom,
' ,
1 Shiina is at once an enigmatic and attractive figure. Th
1 some of his novels are set in prewar Ja pan, his manner is no . An almost completely unf .f l f thelf careers, were left
y continued until the exp n icaf acceptance of Marxist ide-
f; typical of postwar Japan but of Existentialist writing throu osure o the er· f s ·
tl.1e world at that time. He was, in a sense, the legitimate rushchev at the Twentieth Con imes o . talm made
party in 1956 Ea 1· . .gress of the Soviet Commu-
the proletarian literature traditions of the 1930s, a badly edu. . r ier, mternal b1ckeri · h.
worker who lived constantly on the edges of outright destit1.i, unist party and d' · · ng wit m the Japanese
1v1s1ve pressure f h .
He was also a tenko writer who could never forgive his own. ened the left-wing litera rom t e Commform had
trayal of the movement. But his writings acquired a partic change of attitude towarrydm thovsem~nt, but it had not led to a
e OVIet Unio · · d d
intensity because of his concern with spiritual matters that{ any Japanese writers invited . . n, m ee ' none of
" scend the political and economic problems of postwar Japa}!:f5 in the Soviet Union expresse~o t~ar10.us htera~y conferences
so commonly accompan1·ed .. e kmd of disenchantment
was not unique in this concern, but he wrote with an urgency • a VISlt to the U ·t d s
compels respect even for works whose literary qualities ate not necessarily because th J . Ill e tates. This
. g they saw in the Sovi:t ap~nese wnters delighted in ev-
always irreproachable. ~ts of life in the United St~:tn and were repelled by all
c1sm ~f specific aspects of AmericMan~ ~ppa:entl~ felt that
LITERATURE OF THE ORTHODOX LEFT a re3ection of the whol . b h an c1V1hzat10n did not in-
ucture was mono11·th~' ut t at because the Soviet politi-
. 1c, no element ld b
The end of the war meant the removal of virtually all r ut m effect attacking all th p cou e attacked
tions on the publication of left-wing writing. Some auth here inside these writers a: i rest. .erhaps. too there lurked
perhaps very soon a . 1·mprec1se feelmg that sooner or
sponded almost immediately to the freedom to publish, and - socia 1st or Co ·
founded literary magazines, many of them Marxist in orien b~ established in Japan, and th t . mmumst government
welcomed such writings. The major figures of the proletaria discrediting themselves in th a it would do them no good
ature movement (including Kobayashi Takiji, Kuroshima an unkind guess· but 1·t . hed eyes of future leaders. This is
' IS ar otherw· t l ·
and Hayama Yoshiki) were now dead, and others, like fi ed respect expressed toward S r ise .o ex~ am the un-
Fusao, had made so decisive a tenko that it was not pos ese who had access to th f ta m an~ his regime even by
e acts. But It also should not be
reverse directions. But most former left-wing writers were,
 Dawn t.o the West 1
POSTWAR LITERATURE I00 I
forgotten that to Japanese, who had suffered through years; rature. Odagiri Hideo in the J 19 .
right-wing fanaticism, the left wing was humane by comparis ngaku, presented for tbe attenti~:eof t!6 ~sue of .Shin Nihon
and anything was better than a revival of militarism.
The writings of many authors who would later be associate
with quite different political views, or with no political vie
anese writers with the recom
e more than twenty names o:;: d . e ccupat10n a list of
a~10~ that they be purged.
komitsu Riichi, Sato Haruo and ;z hs! mc.h~ded the novelists
whatsoever, were often colored during the postwar years by kichi and Takamura Kotaro th . ~ki Shtro, the poets Saito
specifically proletarian ideology. What was more natural for an. . Katsuichiro and Ka.wakam'· 'T'etcntic~ Kobayashi Hideo, Ka-
author, when describing the burned-out slums of Tokyo, to occupation forbade the roI osed i.e sutaro Later e ·
'. sp.ec1a11y after
press bitterness about the wartime ideology that had broughLon'
such misery, or to express hope that a new and democratic Jap~
47, relations between the t p
·
. general stnke m February
terature Association became Iccupatiod? and the New Japanese
would afford equality to all? ess cor ial
On the whole, however, the tension b.
The postwar left-wing literary movement may be said to ha left-wing writers was not b' etween the Occupation
started with the meeting ,held in October 1945 of former . as itter as betwee . I
-wmg writers. Even within th C . . n nva groups of
hers of NAPF, including Kurahara Korehito, Miyamoto Yu· ated in January 1950 when th: oi_nm.umst ranks a split was
Nakano Shigeharu, Kubokawa Tsurujiro, Tsuboi Shigeji, To r a Lasting Peace and Pea les' benod1cal of the Cominform,
naga Sunao, and Fujimori Seikichi. Although most of these wri ese Communist art d 'P. emocracy, attacked the Jap-
ers had committed tenk6 before the war, and some had writt d "lovable Com:uJ~t ;~~:r~?g ~hat the "peaceful revolution"
works that openly favored the military,ss the organizers (lz time the leader of the Japay a Cvocated by N osaka Sanzo, at
kinin) of the literary association that developed from thismeeti h · . nese ommunist p t
the Shin Nihon Bungakkai (New Japanese Literature Asso
t e pnnc1ples of Marx and Lenin Tok a!. Y, _ran counter
-general, expressed anger over the C ud~ Kyu1chi.' .t~e secre-
tion), were officially restricted to authors who had refused to er party members meek! ommform cnttcism, but
operate with the authorities and had opposed the war.89 n afterward issued a staren:;~?~;d it, a~~ _Nosaka himself
Originally it had been planned to include writers of div e was involved, but before Ion t sel_f~cntic~sm. No literary
political backgrounds in the New Japanese Literature Associa y spread to literature and ~ :e political dispute within the
and this policy was in effect even after the association was or tless" go manifesto w;s issu:~ ba strac,t; exaggerated and con-
nized, but the membership in fact consisted almost entirely Japanese Literature Associatio~ ~~e Central G~oup of the
Communists and sympathizers. At the organizational meetingi tember protesting the eh the Commumst Party" in
December 30, 1945, all posts were filled by supporters of Mi . r arges that had been m d b
iorm. The newly founded Jim . . a e y the
moto Yuriko and Nakano Shigeharu. This is not to imply th ed this "anti-Party disrupt1·ve" m~nfi Bungaku m return pro-
there was absolute uniformity of outlook among the members; fq Th ' man1 esto.91
e quarrels over politics and ·
example, Tokunaga Sunao, who prided himself on being ground against which w 't ~ver nval leaders formed the
works. The death of M7 : : the 1:ft ~ing were creating
0
leader of the nonintellectuals within the left-wing literary m
ment, found himself at odds with the inteliectuals who ran sioned a display of fact' \ . oto Yunko m Feburary 1951
organization, and his efforts to make it a forum for new wor h issue of Jimmin Bun 10:a ism :ven at the funeral, and the
writers were frequently rebuffed. Other factions sprang up, cing her as a I ga u earned letters from readers de-
the history of the New Japanese Literature Association is e ass enemy whose hand
d, and her writin s as " . . s were stained with
constant disputes and only occasional reconciliations. sake" compositi~ns. thftetit br°~:geo1s, self~satisfied, art for
Initially at least, the left-wing writers were wholly in sup ggle.92 Yuriko was a aren~on n uted nothmg to the class
of the Occupation authorities and their efforts to "democra. implausible) attackfbecaus y ;adhe the targe~ of such harsh
e er usband, Miyamoto Kenji,
 Dawn to the West
was then the head of the "internationalist faction" within,
party and the behind-the-scenes "boss" of the New Japanese
erature Association.
One by one other Communist writers were criticized and
pelled from the party or left in disgust. The se:7erest clash
curred in March 1952 at the sixth general meetmg of the
Japanese Literature Association when supporters of Jbnmin
gaku unsuccessfully attempted to push through a vote of nou
fidence in Nakano and Kubokawa. In June of. that year
magazine Genzai (The Present), th_e organ of a new group ea
Genzai no Kai (The Contemporanes), first appeared. Its par
lar aim was to diffuse Communist literary principles among
tory workers and others wpo normally were untouched by lite
activity, thereby reviving one of the almost forgotten goals.
proletarian literature movement. At first the Conte?1poran
tracted various uncommitted authors, but they too withdrew
they discovered the political bent of the organizati?n.
Innumerable other factions might be mentioned, but
struggles within the left-wing literary movement are not only 0
fusing but take us well beyond the post~ar period. Mo~eove_
Communist-led literary movement mspired extremely little li
ture of importance; even writers closely associated with the
ment were rarely attracted to socialist realism, and the accla
Zone of Emptiness, which should have been the gl~ry_ of left
literature, was denounced as being "petit-bourgeois mtellect
But despite the factionalism, left-wing_ thoughts and assu .
had once again acquired their authonty of the early 19~0s
major writers of the day-Tanizaki an~ the other~-c?ntmu
write in their accustomed manner with serene md1fferen
changes in the literary world, but the_ critics. had moved ~h
to the left, and the intellectual magazmes were almost umf€>
left wing in their orientation.
The publishing firm Iwanami Shoten, known ~rom we
fore the war for the quality of its books and for J.ts P
series, the Iwanami Library, stood in the vanguard ?f
gressive" publishers. The company_ con_tinued to pubhs~ w
admirable scholarship, but a Marxist bias was evident 1?
its publications on Japanese literature. Scholars of cla~s1c~
ture, perhaps embarrassed to have been associated with
POSTWAR LITERATURE 1003
tionalism, accorde~ their highest praise to works of the past
t revea~ed ~om~thmg ~bout the lives of the common people.
~ Jr:anyoshu, which dunng the war had exemplified the "spirit"
hm) of the Japanese race, was admired now for including
etry by peasants and humble soldiers, unlike the later court
thologies. Determined efforts were lavished on proving that
ho was not of t~e samurai class, as generally supposed, but a
. . oner; and ~a~kaku's writings were reinterpreted as covert
t bitter ,de~unciattons of the Tokugawa regime. The touchstone
.a works literary. value became its "democratic" elements. Art-
became_ suspect: a crudely phrased folksong was considered
be more smcere than an exquisitely turned waka and therefore
ed higher praise.
Despite _the authority that doctrinaire left-wing critics en-
ed for a time, and the success they had in persuading many
anese readers of the overriding importance of "democratic"
_
~nts in judgi~g works of literature, they were unsuccessful in
nng_ a new literature that would embody these convictions.
n wnters who were members of the Communist party could
be expected to confine themselves to approved themes or to
. s of expression that were congenial to the masses. In the end,
If awareness of t?emselves as writers and, specifically, as writ-
.':ho _were creatmg modem literature, proved stronger than
1t1cal ideology. Their alienation from Communist party doc-
es was exacerbated by the intransigency, and often plain stu-
ty, of the Japanese Communist party, which condemned every
that s_eemed to deviate from the orthodox party line. Even
ano Sh1geharu (1902-1979), that most committed of Commu-
writers, was not only expelled from the party in 1964, but as
as 1973 was made the object of a massive attack at the Twelfth
~ress ?f the Japanese Communist party. A whole book, detail-
its gnevances against Nakano, was published by the party
year.93
It is suIJ?rising that the Communist party made no greater
ts to retam _the _allegiance of its most distinguished writer, but
constant shifts m party policy, in response to criticism from
ad: or to attacks by Japanese factions, made it difficult to
tarn a consistent literary policy. Nakano himself was intol-
of opinions other than his own, and more than one· book has
 POSTWAR LITERATURE 1005
portrayed him as a sinister figure who manipulated the lit
the literary and political rowth of .
policies of the party at will.94 But his quality as a writer is obvi . Nashi no Hana (Pear BI g an exceptional young
and his works have a complexity of attitude that is unusual : 's childhood and Ko 0 , ossHo~s, 1~57) is devoted to Na-
man who was so closely ( and for so long) associated with .. ' , ,su, ez, Tez (ABCD 1965
amb1tous novel, treats his ex eri . , ), a long
formation of Communist party literary theory. Nakano's stud ist party. Each of these work; w::~es m. the _Japanese Com-
Saito Mokichi, published in 1942, was acclaimed by SOil'le er r evidence not only of th ma3or literary award 97
as his finest work, but this was unfair to Nakano, a distingui e respect that N k '
anded i~ the literary world but of th a a.no _rer~onally
poet who wrote several fine novels; it provides evidence, howe ce of left-wmg literature Th e contmumg 1mpor-
of his ability to recognize literary merit in a poet who was po . · e 1apanese C ·
edits most distinguished l't fi ommumst party ex-
cally his enemy. 95 1 erary gure
In general the literary world of the . . d.
After the war Nakano had not only been instrumental ' and even much later was I~me iate postwar pe-
founding the New Japanese Literature Association but had··· was partly because of the o symp:t.hetic to left-wing causes.
turned to writing stories anp. novels. He published in January I artly by way f . ppro num attached to the right
'P o react10n to the O 1 ·
"Goshaku no Sake" (Five Cups of Sake), 96 a story in the fo of life among ordinary n . t II p pu anty of the American
a letter sent by a middle-school principal to a friend. There , onm e ectual Jap Th
bun (the newspaper most widel . _anese. e Asahi
few novelistic elements to this story, which consists mainly of ernment-owned radio and t I .. y rea~ by mtellectuals), the
cism of Communist party policies from the standpoint of a al magazines-all to a re et ev1s10n stations, the leading intel-
who believes that the party has not fully realized its uniqu
sponsibilities during a period when the young especially turne
it for guidance. The attack is of the kind known as "constructiv
unism; indeed, they ten::d :e~;i ttat t~
causes. This cert~inly td a e: or lesser degree, espoused left-

of the Japanese conscience a s n o. t ~mselves as the

were agents of
and could only have served to persuade good Communists, auses that were disregarded b' th;alll mmonty ~peaking up
work harder and show greater understanding of what was countrymen Perhaps th . .Y If p easure-lovmg or igno-
pected of them. The story is, however, noteworthy because of' . · eir view was c t b
nty" controlled the mo t . orrec , ut the "small
sympathy it shows for the emperor as a human being whet As late as 1954 fi s important orga ns of commumca- . ·
been forced to behave like an automaton or, worse, like a ,, - _ ' or example, three leadin "
s (sago zasshi) were virtuall . . .. g ~en~ra 1 maga-
There are touches of irony, it is true, but this was not the ted articles by the sa Y identical m ed1tonal policy
denunciation of the "emperor system." me group of "p · ,, . '
ed not to allow ev . . rogress1ve wnters and
In April 1947 Nakano was elected a member of the Holl . en a smgle "fi d r · ,, . '
1st) opinion to be heard If eu a istic (that Is, non-
Councillors, and served for three years, but failed to he re apanese society quest· · a newspaper asked a cross-section
in 1950. In the meantime, in 1949, he became secretary-ge 10ns on current ·
farthest to the right W"s issues, the person who
« genera 11y a "pr · ,,
the New Japan Literature Association, and stood at the porter of the government The b . o~res~1ve, rather than
the "democratic" literary movement. As a member of the i issue of Chao v- f h. pu hcation m the December
n.oron o t e essay by th ·.
tionalist faction within the party, he accepted the criticism uda Tsunear1·, "S ome D ou b ts Con · e cntic
h and dramatist
Cominform in 1950 and continued to wield political as w e Movement " came h cernmg t e Conduct of the
literary authority. In 1954 he published the autobiogra , as a t underbolt It
controversy over a hithert · not only aroused
novel Muragimo (The Mind), which describes his life as a stu. onopoly that the "small m~ sa~r~~anct subject, but cracked
at Tokyo University. Various literary figures, described with t. als of opinion. nonty exerted over intellectual
disguised pseudonyms, figure in the novel, including Ha Fukuda was denounced as a ri h .
Fusao, Hori Tatsuo, and Akutagawa Ryunosuke. The Mind eh( the doubts he expressed g. 11st and even as a Fascist,
were m no sense nationalistic. He
 Dawn to the· West
voiced instead commonsense irritation with· the. stereotypesr~
Japanese journalism, which saw the threat to world peace as
nating exclusively from the Americans, and which indulge
extremes of sentimentality when writing about the Chinese: e
handshake with a Chinese was always "warm," but Americ
had daggers up their sleeves.
Despite the uniform hostility of the intellectual journa
the conservative government, it continued to win elections an
spokesmen did not think it worth the trouble to answer th
cusations daily made by their opponents. They too evidently
sidered these opponents to be a "small minority." The eve
disillusion of many left-wing writers with the Communist p
and with politics in general took place not because they had
I '
come convinced of the correctness of the conservative po ·
but because of revelations about the true nature of Soviet C
munism and, much later, about Chinese Communism.
The writers who were expelled or resigned from the Com
nist party did not execute a tenk5 to the right. Some with
from political activity and devoted themselves solely to. lit
pursuits; others publicly supported "progressive" causes but
works of no obvious political content; and others still, ado
the attitudes of the New Left, were as hostile to the Comm
party as they were to the ruling conservatives.
MATINEE POETIQUE
The left wing was not restricted to Communists. Indeed
vast majority of intellectuals, no matter how radical their thi
might be on some issues, refused to submit to the orthodoxy
mantled of party members. It was from the non-Comm~nist
wing that many of the most interesting and controversial
ments of the postwar period emanated. One group, som
styled the "First Postwar Wave," included the three auth
1946: Bungakuteki Kosatsil (1946: Literary Inquiry), Kato S
(b. 1919), Nakamura Shin'ichir5 (b. 1918), and Fukunag~
hiko (1918-1979). They were members of a group formed m.
that took the stylish name of Matinee Poetique, a term borro
by Fukunaga from the morning poetry readings deliver
Jacques Copeau's troupe in Paris. The use of such a name
l POSTWAR LITERATURE 1007
of demonstrating resistance to the wartime regimentation of
ature, and especially to the enforced avoidance of foreign
ds as "unpatriotic." 98 Wartime Japan did not provide a favor-
atmosphere for the study of classical European literature,
eh th~ three men planned, but, as Nakamura pointed out, it
precisely the adverse circumstances that enabled them to be
lutely free in their choice of studies: they were cut off from
tren?s in literature abroad, and the postwar (as opposed to
wartime). orthodo.xy would. have insisted that they occupy
elves with Marxist playwnghts even if they wished to study
· e.99 The group achieved some notoriety for a peculiar rea-
the members attempted to create poetry in fixed forms with
e, a reflection of their Neo-Classicist tastes. None of this
ed poetry was successful, but the wholehearted devotion to
ture as such, especially to foreign literature, gave the Matinee
· ue group a character of its own both during and after
war.
_Nakamura and F~kunaga were both excused from military
ce because of then poor health, and Kato was enabled by
ds to avoid conscription. The three young men, plus a few
s, spent the summers of the war years in the mountains near
izawa, where they frequently met Hori Tatsuo, for whom
all ha~ gr~at ad1:1iration. It was at Hori's suggestion that they
turns m d1scussmg such works as Valery's Eupalinos, Rilke's
ese: Elegi~n, and Stefan George's Algabal, and they even
d mto He1degger's Sein und Zeit.
Nakamura remembered the end of the war in these terms:
. the evening of August 15th the lights along the platform of
ttle fogbound station in the mountains were turned on simul-
ously: Lig.hts would no longer be targets for bombing! The
urust fnend standing next to me began to whistle the tune
e 'Internationale.' " 100
The three authors of 1946 were not Communists but all had
influe~ced by_ Marxist thought and at times th;y spoke out
gly a~amst wnters who lacked social concerns. They praised
eft-wmg French writers of the 1930s, but they were by no
s doctrinaire; indeed, their book exasperated the contribu-
to ~indai Bungaku and Shin Nihon Bungaku because their
ary mterest was in such literary matters as style and tradition.
n, for example, they looked at the ruins of Tokyo, they were
 POSTWAR LITERATURE 1009

y that nothing would be left to Japanese writings if they were

. lf ity nor to indignation; their interests ped of their ornaments, the local color with which Japanese
moved neither to se -p _ h .:
h r than the present. Kato, t e most outspo ors habitually decorated their works. Even poetry, which in
the future rat e rr k which had been kno.· wn aif. .
h h declared that .10 yo, 1920s seemed the most promising genre of Japanese literature,
t e t ree, . . . the world deserved to be destroyed,>
ed in total collapse as the leading poets abandoned modern,
of the ugliest citie~f i~ th nks to the bombing.101 He preferre~t
ersal standards of poetic expression and took refuge in the
had becom~ behautki uO f t~n roofing and raw lumber to the .t. aw poetic forms, classical language or, worst of all, militarism.
er udely bmlt. s acds ·a 1 imitations of the West th at h a d t ese poets expressed satisfaction over the glorious traditions
ornamentation an P~ i u H and Nakamura, unlike
war architecture m Tokyo. e . e tanka and haiku to which they were heirs, but they lacked
pre _ . . d . through prewar Tokyo m search of talent to create new traditions; there had been no Japanese
Kafu m his wan ermgs for Tokyo's past· "It
ld E d0 had no sympathy to spare . Pushkin or Mallarme. The prose writers too still lived in the
of o , f our memories that the beauty of
d world of the Tokugawa era. They blindly accepted the doc-
be~au~e of the swee~;~~ oerished things' grew up along with
that Japanese literature was the finest in the world, and sup-
rums 1m~~ess~s us. th~refore could not occasion the
anese m1htansm and , f which bore the burden d that it was because of the peculiar difficulties of translating
regret on the part of our genera 10n, nese into other languages that its superiority was not recog-
h" 102 abroad. Many foreign novels had been translated into Jap-
accursed Y?ut . f the attacks on the legacy of Japanese
The bitterness O . . . b the harshness o e, but Japanese authors had merely read the translations and
. surpassed m mtens1ty on1Y Y not faced the question of what gave these works their world-
nsm w~s f t mporary Japanese literature. Fukunaga authority. In any case, the translations were generally poor;
evaluat10ns o c?n e h e" with these words:
his essay on "Literary 1nterc ang when accurate, they made no attempt to convey differences
1e.1o4 Nakamura claimed that it was useless to read, say,
e literature is impoverished in the e.xtrt
Contemporary J apanes Of ·ac in Japanese translation: in modern Japanese Mauriac
t ·bute this solely to the war. cou
do not by any means, a t n 1· f much the same as Dreiser.105
, fi' t ermeated every aspect of our ives
cent great con 1c P . · All three authors read foreign literature in the originals.
re d the miserable defeat of literature was pa
roots up, an . h. worthy of being called literatu e is something heartening in Fukunaga's attempts to define
the Japanese have to learn from Dante,106 Kato's close iden-
~:i;~~~~t~~t~~!tr~:~;:~the Japan~~:t ::s~::t~~~~eM tion with the poetry of Virgi1,101 or Nakamura's exposition of
Was there anythmg important enoug t. e? I seriously contemporary importance of Agamemnon.10s Some of their
k t which we are to res or . usiasms, notably for Upton Sinclair or Jean-Richard Bloch,
defeat or ban rup cy . nd I am certainly ri
Of course, there are always exceptions.' a ·t s But the intelligible in terms of the appeal to left-wing intellectuals,
tf g the names of several extraordmary wn er . . . ... r than absolute literary worth, but on the whole the three
ge m than a self-complacent, narrow
stream was never m~re . t d of works that descri tended to discuss works that had unquestionably attained the
trend. I mean, the mamstream cons1s :he lives of a special s of classics.
an extremely commonpla~e :anner ial environment called J The three men were dissimilar in minor respects, and even
called the Japanese who, m t. el spec that are known pride in these differences, as exemplifying their total com-
were surrounded by the specia customs ent to freedom of expression, but they were in accord on
anese ." 103 rtant points. All three insisted, for example, that the chief
ute of a writer was his imagination; they therefore rejected
Fukunaga denoun~ed modem Japan~se ~~::a::sePas ' novel" with contempt. Fukunaga, insisting that neither the
insufficiently universal; it was so absorbed y condition. He; nor his personal experiences should ever intrude into the
Japanese as to disregard the general human
 Dawn to the West l POSTWAR LITERATURE IOll

t they were completely in agreement in their refusal to accept

creation of literature, cited by contrast the novels o~ Stenda
. h were extensions of his personal psychology but m no s propaganda, emanating from both right and left, to the effect
w h lC d h "l I" the Japanese were totally unlike other peoples. Perhaps the
autobiographical.109 Fukunaga dismis~e .t e ~ove · a.s me
ki d of zuihitsu the miscellaneous JOttmgs of 1mpress1ons rest of the three in his criticisms of this widely held opinion
atypified
n the literature
' of the past. T h e "I 1:ovel" was pee
Japanese technique that had no currency m the marketplace
a Fukunaga, the most literarily involved. He wrote:

the world.110 . different meaning in this case than when one says of characters in
Toe fact that a literary genre was peculiarly Japanese h
enhanced its value in the eyes of wartim~ expo~ents of Jap
literature. The scholars of the Manyoshil ~n particula~ had exal
its "spirit" as being incomparably superior to ~nythmg foun
. r Western literature; but these young iconoclasts ref
ehmese o . .. · K -
to accept patriotic effusions as literary cnt1c1sm. . ato, p
ing out the folly of attempting to divorce !a panes~ hterature fro
its background in Chinese lite:ature or its later mdebtedness;
1·terature , charactenzed the efforts of .the scholars.,
Europe an 1 t- • .
Japanese literature as a "turning inside ou~. of an m1enonty co
" 111 He denied that The Tale of Genp was, as such schol
p1ex. . 1· · \
claimed, the oldest novel in the world; Nakam~ra ear 1er m .
book had awarded this distinction to the Saty~1con oLPetro
But even supposing it was the oldest, that did n_~t nee
·1 d Kato admitted that The Tale of GenJl reflected.
mak e 1 goo . . . . f:
aesthetic feelings and perceptions of the anstocrat1c socu~ty o '
Heian period, but insisted that the work ~etrayed the lack of 'l':
metaphysical logic or true religious feelmg on the part of t!
society.112
Kato believed that he and his colleagues were duty.;.b~u
make it absolutely clear that there never has been, nor is
now, any uniquely Japanese logic, religion, l~w,. or econ~
Japanese culture has been no more than a provmcial reflecU
either Chinese or European culture: "In exactly the same way
it was a mistake for our propaganda to claim that our a~m~
the strongest in the world, the superstition that the Many ~h·u·
Genji rank among the first-class literary works of the wor lS.
1 e, of his boyhood in the country, his coming to Tokyo for his
a mistake." 113 · · me ·
Nakamura was unusual among young men of his tid h
love for Japanese classical literature: Ye~rs later ~e state. t
views on the art of the novel were mspued by his war:~e
0 the abhorred "I novel," but Nakamura seems to have had
ings of A fa recherche du te"!p~ perdu and The Tale .. 1 a:
Obviously he had a higher opmion of The Tale of Genjl th
The Japanese are undoubtedly special. But the word "special" has a
The Brothers Karamazov or Oblomov that they are special. There
are many different traits mingled in our blood too, but we have
never. been able to construct a human being as a synthesis of per-
sonahty and psychology. The liberation of the Japanese that has
taken place since the Meiji Restoration has perhaps liberated peo-
ple somewhat from external conditions, but it never succeeded in
causing our human nature itself to breathe cheerfully.115
Fukunaga was convinced that the discovery of the human
· g was the special task imposed on Japanese writers of the new
eration. All three men wrote fiction that embodied this and
e.r principl~~ enunciated in 1946. Kato became known pri-
y as a cntlc not only of literature but of culture in general.
amura and Fukunaga were among the most respected novel-
.a~ the 1960s and I9?0s, and also published poetry and literary
c1sm. Although theu later work takes us beyond the domain
o~twar lite~ature, a few words on their careers as practicing
hsts may illustrate the feasibility of the views put forth in
Nakamura was the first to gain a reputation as a novelist. Shi
age no moto ni (In the Shadow of Death, 1947) appeared in
same apres-guerre creatrice series as Noma's Dark Pictures. It
a totally dissimilar mood, though both novels trace the intel-
ual and sentimental education of university students. In the
dow of f!eath is devoted mainly to recollections by the hero, Jo
le-school ed~cati~n, the death of his father, his gradually
ed sense of 1solat1on. These elements in the work strongly
est by their resemblance to what we know of Nakamura's
life the familiar first novel in an autobiographical vein, or
the outset the plan of using In the Shadow of Death as a
 Dawn to the West
prelude in the Proustian sense to the much longer work,
would unfold. For example, when Jo visits the house of his fri
Fuse, he is shown into the study of Fuse's father, an artist
casually picks up a portfolio of sketches lying on the desk a
attracted to one that bears the title Shion no Musurnera
Daughters of Zion). The sound of the name Shion melts s
on his lips like a gumdrop with a faint mint flavor, and he rec
Proust's jeunes jilles en fieurs. 116 The importance of this evenJ
not developed until the second volume of the series, titled
Daughters of Zion, in which the hero's absorption with a group
intellectual young ladies is depicted in a manner reminiscent
of Proust and of Hori Tatsuo, Nakamura's mentor. This vol
concludes on December 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack"
Pearl Harbor that precipitated the Pacific War.
The first two volumes of the series, which eventually
consolidated under the overall title of In the Shadow of Death;
related in the first person; in the third volume the form of
tion is a notebook in which the hero records his and other pe
"opinions and confessions." 117 In ~he fourth volum~, the h
no more than one of a group, all given equal attention. The
volume, which in time covers the period from January l to Au
15, 1945, was intended to depict the end of the youth of a
generation. In this volume, whose separate title is Nagai Tab
Owari (The End of a Long Journey), the author constantly
trudes to comment on the action and the relationship of ev
Nakamura established a reputation with the first volum~
the series and enhanced it with succeeding volumes, but th~;
c~ption was by no means uniformly favora?le. Even th?se: "
were impressed by a hero who read Plotmus at b~dt1.
dreamt of Avicenna and Duns Scotus 118 could not easily 1de
with him; and the description of a performance of.the N~
Tsunemasa seemed pedantic when compared to the kmds of1
that tormented the young intellectuals in Noma's novels. Th
dents in Nakamura's novels express political beliefs but see ..
lid for young idealists. Jo's friend Takaichi, born into a. prolet
family and a convinced Communist as a youth, finds hunself
ing away from Communism while in high school as he
increasingly aware how unlikely it is !hat _workers and _P\
will ever share his passion for the Kokmshu and for 8:ac1~e..
Nakamura's devotion to literature won the admiration
POSTWAR LITERATURE 1013
tively small but discerning group of readers. He wrote in a
er that appealed especially to people who shared his intel-
ual interests, \thether in the classics of Greece and Rome
tieth-century European literature, or Japanese classical writ~
He derived two novellas directly from traditional sources:
me (1955) was based on the late-Heian romance Yowa no
ame, and Koiji (The Path of Love, 1955) on the Kamakura
·od work Koiji yukashiki Taisho. His first solid success was
ed with Koi no Izumi (The Springs of Love, 1962), a novel
, th~ugh entirely modern in setting, incorporated one of the
erly1?g t~emes of ~he Tale of Genji: a man falls in love again
agam with essentially the same woman. Several studies of
·an literature also appeared in the 1950s and were much
·~e~ for the mode~n sensibility Nakamura brought to his ap-
iatl?n of t_h~ classics. For a time Nakamura suffered a slump
eative activity. He turned to a study of the kanshi of the late
gawa period, and eventually produced several impressive
of scholarship on the subject, including Rai Sanyo to sono
· (Rai Sanyo and His Age, 1971). Another spurt of creative
ity, stimulated by visits to Europe, aroused new interest in his
. The bookishness that had put off early readers had largely
peared, and Nakamura wrote with the conviction of a man
was able in maturity to realize the ideals of his youth.
Fukunaga's first story, To (The Pagoda, 1946), was published
ogen (Highlands), the literary magazine founded by Hori Ta-
. Fukunaga never swerved in his lifelong devotion to Hori's
ory.. His _first novel, which he had been writing intermittently
umversity days, Fiido (A Climate, 1951), was dedicated to
(as was indeed Nakamura's first novel), and his subsequent
s seemed like a continuation of Hori's brief career. Kaze no
mi (Tidings in the Wind, 1968) is a collection of stories set in
Heian period, rather like Nakamura's but narrated with
er skill. Fukunaga's longest and probably best work, Shi no
a (The lsla_nd of ~e~th, 1971), further revealed his special
or story-tellmg. This gift has sometimes been made light of in
, no doubt because of the prestige of the "I" novelists, who
ed fictio~ as a dilution of truth, but it is obviously essential to
s who, hke Fukunaga, insisted that a novel must be a true
n, .a creation of form, amplitude, and depth, and not merely
ttmgs of a person who is personally of interest to the readers.
 Dawn to the West l
The novels written by the Matinee Poetique group do
possess either the dramatic impact in content or startling nove
of style that distinguished other postwar writings. But their
was harder than for the other postwar writers. They were atte
ing to create a body of literature that could be judged by unive
standards, disregarding both the time-the postwar era-and
place, Japan, a country separated by many thousands of
from the main body of modem literature. Their success was
unqualified, but it commands respect.
As time passed it became apparent that the postwar writi
would not fully live up to their high promise. Works that w
acclaimed when published were forgotten before long or releg
to the pages of literary his,tory. The ideals that intoxicated many
writers after the gloom of war had lifted often proved to have
been deluding, as the writers themselves came to realize. But the
years immediately after the war ended in 1945 were mernorabl~i
The old masters came back to life again, committed writers co
publish freely for the first time in over a decade, and there
many promising new writers. At a time when not many
diversions besides reading were available, books and magaz
sold well, and great interest was displayed in whatever was p
·- lished. Writers twenty years later would remember the .post
days nostalgically, as a time when literature really mattered.
The postwar writers continued to play an importantpart
the literary world long after the postwar era had ended, but p
ably they felt a sense of letdown, regardless of their later
cesses. For a few years, while people still lived in the ruins left
the war, the possibilities of literature had seemed unboundedi
we know from works written at the time and from books of re
niscences. Writers eagerly joined literary groups and debated w
desperate urgency issues that they could not even havem.enti
during the war years. After a long period of isolation the writ
felt that they were in touch also with writers abroad, and thatt
themselves could freely become Existentialists or Commu ·
advocates of art for art's sake or of commitment, whatever .th
tastes and convictions dictated. Some writers lived in dire pave
and others were tormented by doubts concerning the kind of
ing it behooved them to pursue, but all were sure that to. be
writer was a worthy calling for men of the new Japan.
POSTWAR LITERATURE 1015
NOTES
Nakam_ura Shi~'ichiro declared that the "most brilliant event" in postwar
nese literary hfe was the "comeback" of Nagai Kafii. See Kat" sh- · h.
S · ,. · - u UlC I,
amura hm 1chuo, and Fukunaga Takehiko, 1946: Bungakuteki Kosatsu, p.
See Honda Shiigo, Monogatari Sengo Bungaku Shi, p. 757; however, the
nology attached to this volume goes down to 1955.
Takami Jun, Haisen Nikki, p. 315.
Okazaki Katsuo, quoted in Yasuda Takeshi and Fukushima Jiiro Showa
·nen Hachigatsu Jugonichi, p. 52. '
t was reported that in "a certain prefecture" women and children had been
to evacuate to places of safety. Ibid., p. 74.
Ibid., p. 69.
Takami, Haisen, p. 318.
Ibid., p. 326.
S_ee. ~atsuura Sozo, Senryo-ka no Genron Dan 'atsu, p. 21; also Tanizaki
'1ch1ro Zensha, XVI, p. 300.
Nakamura Mitsuo Zensha, VIII, p. 108.
Nakamura, p. 104.
Takami, Haisen, p. 306.
Takami, p. 327. This is in the entry for September 16.
Takami, p. 331.
Nakamura, p. 108.
Nakamura, pp. 109-10.
Many subsequent critics ~ave stressed the importance of Kindai Bungaku in
development of postwar hterary standards. Miyoshi Yukio in Nihon Kindai
gaku Daijiten, V, p. 77, compared its importance as a donin zasshi to Bun-
kai in the Meiji era and Shirakaba in the Taisho era.
, Honda, Monogatari Sengo, p. 55.
. Quoted by Haniya Yutaka, "Kindai Bungaku Seikan made," in Haniya
aka Sakuhi'n Shii, IV, p. 288.
~is _is perhaps not the best translation of the phrase, which means literally
ehef m the supremacy of art."
Haniya; "Kindai Bungaku," p. 289.
The title is normally pronounced Shiryo, but Haniya himself preferred
rei.
~en a -~fth chapter was added in 1975, the novel was published in a
fimtive edition," but it was still incomplete.
~ee ~hinoda Hajime, Nihon no Gendai Shosetsu, pp. 51-74, for a discussion
1s ~1fficult book. Not only is the novel itself hard to understand, but the
I l~t~ratu~e about the book is even more confusing. Perhaps with time the
pl~xit1es will unfold the':'1sel;es naturally, and Ghosts will be clearly seen as
~aJor w?rk of the left-wmg hterature produced in the postwar era, the claim
tn admirers have made.
I have followed my usual practice of giving the names of periodicals, after

their first appearance and ·translation, in the original Japanese, but
English for the names of organizations. It should be borne in mind, 4
that the magazine Shin Nihon Bungaku was published by the Shin Niho~
gakkai (New Japanese Literature Association).
26. Ara Masahito and Noma Hiroshi, "Dainiji Taisengo no Bungaku;'
27. Anyone interested in reading unseemly details about members of
Communist literary movement, written from an obviously anti-Co
viewpoint, will find interesting material in Shiso Undo Kenkyujo (ed.),!
Sengo Sayoku Bungaku Undo Shi.
28. See Nakamura Shin'ichiro, Sen go Bungaku no Kaiso, p. 92; also :M'ur
Takeshi, Rekishi to Erosu, p. 140.
29. Japanese translations of Sartre went back as far as 1937. Prior to
break of World War II there were Japanese translations of Le Mur, La
and La Chambre. Other works were known through references in Japan
osophical works. Sartre's great popularity in Japan was, however,·
war· the translations of Les chemlns de la liberte (l 950-1952) and of
nea~t (1956-1960) established him in the eyes of many Japanese intellect
the outstanding philosopher of the world, and a model to emulate. See
Kindai Bungaku Daijiten, IV, pp. 338-39.
30. Noma Hiroshi, p. 5.
31. The name means something like "deep-seeing progressive-helper";
ably it was not chosen at random.
32. Noma Hiroshi, pp. 7-8.
33. See Hirano Ken, Sakka Ron, pp. 351-52.
34. Ibid., p. 364.
35. Noma Hiroshi Zenshii, XIV, p. 295.
36. Ibid., p. 294.
37. Ibid., p. 296. . SRZ, XIV, p. 58. Shiina was twenty-seven by Western counting at the time.
38. Ibid., XIX, p. 175. In an essay written in 1949 he even c1tedt!ie bO'.
used for reference when describing faces. There is a translation of"A Re~
in Her Face" by Kinya Tsuruta in The Literary Review, Autumn 1962.
39. Noma Hiroshi, p. 91. _ .
40. The English translation of the title, Zone of Emptiness, was a m1str
of the French; Vacuum Zone would be closer to the original. The title re
the army post where the action occurs, an area hermetically sealed off fr
war and the rest of Japanese life.
41. Quoted in Shinoda, Nihon no Gendai, p. 534.
42. Noma stated that when writing The Cycle of Youth he was frequently
write no more than two or three manuscript pages in a day, but he coll!
fifteen or even twenty pages of Zone of Emptiness.
43. Noma Hiroshi Zenshii, XIV, p. 277.
44. Ibid., p. 278.
45. Ibid., p. 305. This work was written in 1950.
46. Ibid., p. 306.
47. Ibid., XVIII, p. 263. . _ .
48. Ibid., p. 264. The review was published in the June 1963 ~sa~1 Jan(l
article three months earlier. In the June and July issues of Kmdat Bun
POSTWAR LITERATURE 1017
ed in a zadankai called "Sobieto Bungaku to Sutarin Hihan," along with
al Japanese specialists on Russian literature, and the critics Haniya Yutaka
Ara Masahito.
· lb[d., pp. 233-34.
Ibid., pp. 236-40. The writer he met was Leonid Leonov.
Quoted by Hyodo Masanosuke, Noma Hiroshi Ron, pp. 150-51. This state-
was originally published in the Mainichi Shimbun for July 3, 1966, but does
ppear to be included in Noma's zenshii.
Quoted by ibid., p. 152. The statement is from a 1965 taidan.
_See Goto Hiroyuki, Tenko to Dento Shiso, for a discussion of the appeal of
an's thought to Japanese left-wing intellectuals.
For a discussion of this work, see Shinoda, Nihon no Gendai, pp. 493-540;
Hyodo, pp.201-325.
Noma Hiroshi Zenshii, XV. p. 294.
See Taguchi Yoshihiro, "Shiina Rinzo Ron," p. 185.
Shiina Rinzo Zensha (henceforth abbreviated SRZ), I, p. 42 l.
Ja_gµc;hL'.'.Shiina,.'.'....p.~l&&-.
SRZ, IV, pp. 210-11. See also Taguchi, "Shiina," p. 181.
Quoted in Matsugi Nobuhiko, "Kaisetsu" to Unga, p. 172.
The Japanese version of the acronym for an organization, called in Russian,
urarodnaya organizatsiya pomoshchi revolyutsioneram, established in 1924
Comintem to provide spiritual and material assistance to persons arrested
use of their revolutionary activities. The Japanese branch of the organiza-
was founded in August 1930.
Quoted in Ataka Keiko, "Kaisetsu," p. 237; see also Matsugi, p. 174.
The best account of Shiina at this time is by his wife, Otsubo Sumi, in her
Shiina Rinzo to tomo ni Yonjunen," in Unga.
A novel written during the war was accepted for publication, only for the
e manuscript to be destroyed in an air raid. See also Otsubo, "Otto Shiina
o," p. 194.
SRZ, I, p. 4.
See Taguchi, "Shiina," p. 180.
SRZ, I, p. 11.
Ibid., p. 30.
bid., pp. 27-28.
Compare the definition of "the man of decadentism-existentialism" made
berto Bobbio in 1944: "He is isolated and withdrawn into himself.
:r it is that ennui reveals to him the totality of being or anguish the abyss
thing~ess :tom _which h_is existen~e has sprung, or that every effort to escape
the s1tuat10ns mto which a ch01ce not of his own volition has set him is
d to f~il, or that disaster awaits him on the threshold of every attempted
. t, he 1s a man whose finiteness is wholly revealed and wholly accepted,
1s every decision is a self-repetition, his freedom a freedom to die." Nor-
. Bobbio, The Philosophy of Decadentism, p. 23.
SRZ, I, pp. 60-61.
Ibid., p. 91.
 Dawn to the West POSTWAR LITERATURE 1019

74. Ibid., p. 98.
75. Ibid., p. 194.
76. Ibid., p. 258.
77. "Eien naru Josho ni tsui.te," in SRZ, XIV, pp. 34-35.
78. Ibid., p: 36.
79. Ibid., p. 37.
80. SRZ, I, p. 449.
81. Honda, Monogatari Sengo, p. 169.
82. SRZ, I, p. 41 l.
83. Taguchi, "Shiina," p. 186.
84. See ibid., pp. 191-92.
85. Otsubo, "Otto Shiina Rinzo," p. 189.
86. Ibid., p. 190.
87. Honda Shiigo, in his widely read Monogatari Sengo Bungaku Shi, hardly
refers to the existence of Nagai Kafii, Tanizaki, or Kawabata in the 831 pages
his book, though there are close to eighty references to Noma Hiroshi.
88. For example, Kubokawa Tsurujiro not only glorified the war (see his
Bungaku Ron, pp. 545-73) but expressed apprehension about the danger
the Soviet Union (see Donald Keene, Landscapes and Portraits, p. 308.) He
his wartime books according to the Imperial Chronology (koki); Fuji
tanka in praise of the war ideals are said to have been particularly admired
Prime Minister Tojo. See S.hiso Undo Kenkyiijo, Jimbutsu Sengo, pp. 17, 81
89. Sato Shizuo, Sengo Minshushugi Bungaku Undo Shi, I, p. 14.
90. Honda, Monogatari Sengo, p. 415.
91. The circumstances leading up to the founding of Jimmin Bungaku :w
given by Fujimori Seikichi in his story "Bumpa" (Fac~ion), publish~d in
January 1951 issue of Jimmin Bungaku. Honda summanzes the storym
gatari Sengo, pp. 422-23. The members of the Jimmin Bungaku group bel
that the Communist party represented the summit of human wisdom.and
was infallible; anyone who questioned the authority of the party mainstrea
therefore a deviationist who was plotting to destroy the party. The actual
of conflict between the New Japanese Literature group and the Jimmin Bu
group are not easy to grasp. Honda attempted, p. 432, to summarize the di
ences, but he is not quite convincing.
92. See ibid., p. 427.
93. Nakano Shigeharu Hihan states on the first page that the sinis~er slan_der
the party carried out by Nakano and others, who take shelter behmd their.
literary achievements, has been rebuffed by counterattacks that must conti
The book contains over 230 pages of criticism of Nakano by the Comm
party.
94. See, for example, Honda, Monogatari Sengo, p. 453, where Nakano casts
deciding vote that elects himself as editor of Shin Nihon Bungaku. Honda
on p. 434 the statement by Ema Takashi, given in Bungaku no Taishii Rosen,
Nakano had betrayed the Communist party and was now branded as a tool;
Fascist reaction.
95. See Keene, Landscapes, pp. 316-17, for some of Saito Mokichi's wart
opinions.
Translation by Brett de Bary in Three Works by Nakano Shigeharu.
Muragimo won the Mainichi Shuppan Bunka Prize; Nashi no Hana the
'uri Bungaku Prize; and Ko, Otsu, Hei, Tei the Noma Bungei Prize.
See Nakamura Shin'ichiro, Sengo Bungaku no Kaiso, p. 29.
Ibid., p. 30.
Ibid., p. 43.
Kato, Nakamura, and Fukunaga, 1946, pp. 84-86.
Ibid., p. 88.
Ibid., p. 23.
Ibid., p. 26.
Ibid., p. 78.
Ibid., p. 47.
Ibid., p. 70.
Ibid., pp. 91ff.
Ibid., p. 138.
Ibid., p. 212.
Ibid., pp. 130-31.
Ibid., pp. 131-32.
Ibid., p. 132.
Nakamura Shin'ichiro, Sengo, pp. 150-51.
Kato, Nakamura, and Fukunaga, 1946, p. 213.
Nakamura Shin'ichiro Chohen Zenshii, I, p. 64.
Ibid., p; 367.
Ibid., p. 194. Okuno Takeo's dislike of the academic pretensions of the three ,,I
writers is stated in Okuno Takeo Bungaku Ron Shii, II, pp. 227-28.
Nakamura Shin'ichiro Chohen Zenshii, I, p. 124.
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 Dawn to the West POSTWAR LITERATURE 1021

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hon Bungaku Shi, Nempyo. Kodansha, 1979. Takeshi and Fukushima Jiiro (eds.). Showa Nijiinen Hachigatsu Jiigo-
Matsugi Nobuhiko. "Kaisetsu/' in Shiina Rinzo, Unga. nichi. Shin Jimbutsu Orai Sha, 1973.
Matsumoto Ken'ichi. Dosutoefuskii to Nihonjin. Asahi Shimbunsh1t,c 1975.
Matsuura Sozo. Senryo-ka no Genron Dan'atsu. Gendai Janarizumu Shtt
pankai, 1974.
Miyoshi Yukio and Takemori Ten'yii (eds.). Kindai Bungaku, Vil Yiihik
1977.
Muramatsu Takeshi. Rekishi to Erosu. Shinchosha, 1970.
Nakajima Kenzo. Kaiso no Sengo Bungaku. Heibonsha, 1979.
Nakamura Mitsuo Zenshii, VII. Chikuma Shobo, 1972.
Nakamura Shin'ichiro Chohen Zenshii, 3 vols. Kawade Sµobo Shinsha, 1970.
Nakamura Shin'ichiro. Sengo Bungaku no Kaiso. Chikuma Shobo, 1963.
- - . Showa Sakka Ron. Kososha, 1979.
Nakano Shigeharu, in Nihon no Bungaku series. Chiio Koron Sha, 1973.
Nakano Shigeharu Hihan. Nihon Kyosanto Chiio Iinkai Shuppankyoku,
Nihon Kindai Bungaku Daijiten, 6 vols. Kodansha, 1978.
Noma Hiroshi, in Nihon no Bungaku series. Chiio Koron Sha, 1973.
Noma Hiroshi Zenshii, 22 vols. Chikuma Shobo, 1969-71.
Odagiri Hideo. Gendai Bungakushi, 2 vols. Shiieisha, 1975.
Okubo Tsuneo. Tenko to Roman Shugi. Shimbisha, 1967.
Okuno Takeo. Joryu Sakka Ron. Daisan Bummei Sha, 1974.
Okuno Takeo Bungaku Ron Sha, II. Tairyiisha, 1976.
Otsubo Sumi. "Otto Shiina Rinzo to tomo ni Yonjiinen," in Shiina Rinzo, U,
Saigusa Yasutaka. Nihon Roman-ha no Gunzo. Yiishindo, 1967.
- - . Shiso toshite no Senso Taiken. Ofiisha, 1962.
Sasaki Kiichi. Sengo Bungaku no uchi to soto. Miraisha, 1970.
Sato Masaru. Sengo Bungaku, in Shimpojiumu Nihon Bungaku
seisha, 1977.
Sato Shizuo. Sengo Minshushugi Bungaku Undo Shi. Keiryiikaku, 1968.

ey had become .disi,ll~si_o!]:~d, not so much with Marxist theory ~
·ection of the present often foci them to dispTay an interest in the
st, whether the Edo of the gesaku writers or more distant his-
25 2.:/
DAZA! OSAMU AN]ji.
THE BURAI-H~
SOON AFTER THE WAR ended in 1945 agroupofwriters,
whom had acquired something of a reputation before the
began to publish works of fiction that set them off from o
postwar writers and gave them an identity of their own. The~
bership of this group was never clearly defined. Three wnte~
Dazai Osamu, Sakaguchi Ango, and Oda Sakunosuke-undQn
edly belonged to the group, and others, including Q~z~i'~d_!
pie" Tanaka_H\cl~JAitsµ, Isliikawa Jun, and ~ve~ ltC> Sei~-
Modemisf-were at various t,imes identified with 1t. At first
group was known as the ' ~ u " or "new gesaku" write:s, P
sumably because of their reseni6lances_ to ~~e. gesaku w:1ter~
the Tokugawa period who presented theucnt1c1sms of society
deli~!"_aj~ly_co.ll!i.C, ey~g farcj£~Ln.:i,~nnet. The self-moc~ery. ?f
foew gesaku" writers implied a rejection of the self-.sapsfact10n
lhe Shirakaba writers, who were convinced of the importance
!their every act, and of the proletarian writers, who were s~re
/they could explain all human activities in terms of Marxist
Jtrine. The "new gesaku" writers usually came from well-t
0AZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1023
ilies, though they made a point of associating with the lower
sses-not factory wo.rkers or farmers, but city derelicts. Their
vy drinking and sometimes disorderly behavlor werenotori-
. Although most were at ()ne time attracted_ to Communism,
with the gaye'rcf-day activities of party members. An implicit
. Their existential ~espait:.WJlS noL:easil)'. consol~d: several of
group, including Dazai Osamu, the most important member,
mitted suicide, and others deJ' rate ruined their constitu-
""~<Cr-- - -,r- ' _ -;:- " - - -
ns. The combination of in tens depressio usually brought on
·the loss of hope and a disgust wit es a lished values, tended \
be expressecCiioi in terms ofburning inctignition but of farce,
d gave the group its most distinctive characteristic.
Before long the group was being called the burai-ha (the dec-
nts), a term that Dazai himself equated with the Fr~nch liber-
' especially Fran~ois,Vill<2!1 whose dissolute life provided him
the materials for brilliant literary compositions.1 The erratic
s led by most members of the burai-ha and their lack of any
ained political philosophy may account for the relatively mea-
interest shown in them by critics of postwar Japanese litera-l
, who prefer to treat the politically "committed" writers.2 But
group is of greater significance in terms of popularity and
uence on readers.
The term "burai" has been painstakingly traced back to the I·
I
tory,S~ih Chi, of Ssu-ma Ch'ien, written in the second century
. In a pissage·describing the ceremonies that mark.ed the corn-
ion of the Wei "X_aI1g_Pa.la..ce. of Emperortlan..Xao,,.Tsu, the
eror related that as a youth he had been burai-that is, he had
n incolllpetent to deal with family business and had shown
selfto befar less diligent than his brothers. 1 Lack (or seeming
.ofp!.11:_pose and a t~!)._d~ncyJQ_<:lrink when they should have
n writinfsimilarly characterized this postwar group of writers
burai; but a ~pirit_ of - l ~ against the prevailing
ds both in society and in the literary establishment was an-
er essential attribute of the burai-ha writer.3
The first use of the term "burai-ha" may have been in the
er Dazai published in May 1946 in response to one he had
ived from Kishi Yamaji (1899-1973), a former proletarian au-

thor who, following a period of enforced silence, had returned
writing after the war. Dazai, answering the criticism Kishi
made of his novel Sekibetsu (Regretful Parting) from a Marxist
standpoint, agreed that hehad i11_~ee_d .s.t1pp<J_r:te,<1 ~11~. war. Be sup:-;
posed Kishi had also supported 1t, regardless of the degree; afte:t.
all, he argued, even if one's parents are stupid or wicked, on~•·
cannot help wanting to save them if they are in trouble. Some of
his works had been banned by the militarists and orders for new
manuscripts had dwindled to almost nothing. Twice he had been:
burned out of his house. Nevertheless he had devoted his effor~
to Japan because he (like Kishi, presumably) loved Japan. Japari
had beenJ.iefeated. Perhaps he wouJ_cLnothi!Y..~heen...ahle..1Q
his· country if it had been vi~torious; but the d~Je.aLhad made hi
love Japan more than ever.' But, he continued, he could not help
becoming aware of a new and deplorable tendency in Japanesti
journalism. During the war he had made it his policy not to read.
any newspapers or magazines, and now he was beginning to feel
the same way again. The lies of the wartime press had beeil.;t
turned inside out, but they were still lies. "A country that for
its sense of shame is not a civilized country. What would you
about the Soviet Union today? And what about the Japa
Communist party?" 4 Dazai went on, "I wonder if ideologi
novels are again going to be popular? They won't be as appalli
as the right-wing novels that were published during the war, .but
\ they will be quite as irritating. I am a libertin. I reject restraints/1~
;\ mock people who look pleased with themselves. That's why<I
·cl\ seem fated never to be a success, no matter how long lwait" c,i
5
''' ~
Dazai gave the Chinese characters burai-ha the pronuncia~'.
tion of libertin. The previous year (in 1945, shortly after the w~
had ended), he described in his novel Pandora no Hako (P
dora's Box) the libertins of three hundred years earlier who,. .
prnqLoJth.~Jiherty ofJheiF--thtrnght, had flaunted their disregar(i
of social conventions. Dazai cited <;:yrano de Bergerac as an
ample of a French member of the burai-ha, and he also fou
Japanese examplesinEctoliteraiure:s6ne character in Pan
Box in order to demonstrate how a libertin should now beha
dra;s himself erect in formal sitting posture and cries, "Long 1
the emperor!" This cry, which not long before had been the neg
tion of freedom, now represented
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1025
the newest liberal thought. The liberty of ten years ago and the
liberty of today are different in content. That cry is no longer mysti-
fication. It stands for an innate love of humankind. The true be-
liever in freedom today should die with that cry on his lips. I am
told that America is the land of liberty. I am sure the Americans
will recognize this Japanese cry of freedom for what it is. If I wasn't
sick, I would stand in front of the Double Bridge and shout. "Long
live the emperor!" 7 1 ,'
e,;-,·1/·-A./ ~~£"'._.:)_ ~~',//
Of course, Dazai is being p a r ~ ~ not fac~tious, and He
d not_acrnally-mise this cry h}mself; but ~9.ing giga:mst the tide,
atever it might be, whether the authority of the wartime mili:
, or of the postwar antimilitary, was typical of Dazai and the
ers in the burai-ha.
A rebel against conventions and against the morality imposed
those above is likely to be popular with the young, and it is
efore not surprising that the burai-ha has been especially pop-
with those who refuse to admit the wisdom of the past.
· aguchi Ango, whose most celebrated work is an essay in praise
decadence, has not enjoyed as wide a following as Dazai, but
peals to a similar audience. Oda Sakunosuke, a lesser writer, is
em be red more for his short, chaotic life than for .his works,
ugh a few stories that describe life in the lower classes of
ka are still read. I~~iJcaw1:1Ju,n, an important writer and latter-
bunjin~Q.Lfit..easily..iut.qJfa:_groupjf 9nl)'. gec:ause he led
ng life, but there is enough of the mood of the burai-ha in his
rks, especially those of the immediate postwar period, to justify
inclusion in the group.
Although these men (plus a few others) are often described as
they formed a closely knit group, few ties bound the members.
y did not even publish a little magazine (donin zasshi) in the
nner customary with other Japanese literary groups. Occasion-
a few of the burai-ha were rounded up by some enterprising
azine for a round-table discussion (z_aci(JJJk.gi), but the conver-
ons that ensued were usually to_o_clJJ.Inke~ and incoherent Jo be
lishable.8 The burai-ha was less a -g-rou-f Iinked--by common
kgrounds or aims than a n~J.,ei:-2L!!1dependent writers who ,J
pened to possess similar tastes, and who were regarded by thef
of the literary world as being somehow related. ft
 Dawn to the West
DAZAI OSAMU (1909-1948)
Dazai was unquestionably the most popular of the burai
writers. His books have remained favorites, and each June 19 .
anniversary both of his birth and of the discovery of his drow'
corpse, the faithful regularly gather to celebrate the memory
figure unique in modern Japanese literature.
Dazai was born in the northernmost part of Honshu,
tent~hild of his parents. The household' included not only
parents and the surviving children but many relatives, ran
down from Dazai's great-grandmother to small cousins, and
fourteen or fifteen cooks, maids, manservants, and otherdo
ties, who swelled the total q.umber of people living under the
roof to more than thirty. The Tsushima family (Dazai's real na
was Tsushima Shoji) was one of the richest in that partof Jap
The wealth was not of long standing: the founder of the fam
fortune was Dazai's great~grandfather who, shortly after the M
Restoration, had established a trading company that had p
pered. He used the profits to increase the family property hold
by buying up the fields abandoned by the samurai, who were
after 1871 to sell their land. The great-grandfather's business
men enabled him to rank among the dozen highest taxpayer
Aomori Prefecture and he eventually obtained political office.
grandson, Dazai's father, increased the family fortune and b
the imposing house in which Dazai was born. Dazai often refer
to himself as a farmer's son, but this no doubt was by way
apology to the world for the privileges he had enjoyed as a chi
Wherever he went in the vicinity he was treated with the
ence due to a "young master." Dazai's mother, perhaps exha
by repeated childbirths, was unable to look after him, andhe
left in the care of an aunt whom he supposed for years to be
mother. A feeling that he had been rejected by his mother
account for his unhappy disposition. 9
v 1 Dazai's reactions toward his family were ambivalent. Ev
\ !hing in his writings sug~ests he had great respect for his :l
\prother, but the brother 1s not always portrayed sympathet1
in works that deal with Dazai's childhood and adolescence.
various times Dazai insisted on the s ~ h of the ties .. ~i1lt
family, but his erratic behavior-hit indujg.~e~~' his
peated suicide attempts, and even his -interest' in -c-ommunis
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1027
been attributed to a ~ e s i r e to cause the. family ~m-
assment.10 After the death of Dazai's father in 1923, Dazai's
esrbrother ~ad assumed leadership of the family. When Dazai
nt to Tokyo m_ 1930 the brother sent him a monthly allowance
h the expe~t~hon that he would eventually receive a university
ee. Daza1 m fact rarely attended classes and from the first
1~ have en_tertained little hope of graduating. Instead, he spent
tlffi~ ca~mg out such errands for the illegal Communist party
pa···stmg_ b1!ls o~ lamp-p?sts; he would later describe these "dan 11(·
ous m1ss1ons as havmg been of "stupefying inconsequenlt
'ty." 11 ij
Dazai returned again and again to incidents in his life, espe-
y those that occurred during the period when he was nomi-
y in t~e Frenc~ Lit~r~ture Department of Tokyo University,
materials for his wntmgs. His descriptions of such incidents
induced some critics to treat h~s an "I':RQYelist, but he was
q sense flfai!~f'!l ~1!.!2.1li£t~LQfJ}i,~.9W!Llife. For example, his
attempt at a love suicide on November 26, 1930, while he was
iversity student, was described in at least five different ways in
·es written between 1932 and 1948: 12
A woman at a bar behind the Ginza fell in love with me. There is a
period in everyone's life when people fall in love with you, an
unclean time. I induced the woman to leap into the sea with me at
Kamakura.13
She lay down beside me. Towards dawn she pronounced for the first
time the word "death." ... r consented easily to the suggestion ....
We threw ourselves into the sea at Kamakura that night. She
untied her sash, saying she had borrowed it from a friend at the
~a~e, and left it folded neatly on a rock. I removed my cape and put
It m the same spot. We entered the water together.14
I planned to c~mmit suicide with a married woman. I was twenty-
two, she was mneteen. Late one bitterly cold night in December the
woman, still wearing her coat, and I in my cape, entered the water.
The woman died.15
Presently the woman undid her sash. "I borrowed this sash with the
poppy~flower pattern from my friend, so I'll leave it hanging here,"
she said calmly. She folded the sash neatly and hung it from a
 Dawn to the West l DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE 8URAI-HA
branch of the tree behind us. We talked together quietly, very t
derly, with composed feelings, and then we w~tche~ the light bli
ing in the lighthouse somewhere off toward Jogashima.1 6
It's a boring story. The woman killed herself becaus~ of the trou
she had in making a living. Until the very last mmute when,
jumped in we seem to have been thinking about entirely differe
things.17
Still other examples could be cited, but the foregoi~g sho:uf
suffice to indicate how often Dazai changed the details of .·
double suicide in order to suit a particular stor~. No"II1.atterJ1,§":
straightforwardly Dazai might seem to be narratmg actual even~t
1
· an· t!lement. of ~cthm. wa~ gl:n~ri!HY-nI~.s,_e.n t. He seems to h~
'be~n ~nable,ever sincehe was a c~ild, to tell the unado,rne_d_trn
Probably in the case of tliis pathetic attempt at a lovers smc1de
felt embarrassed that he had survived even though _th_e wo
died. Jn other instances he altered the truth because 1t mter£
with the persona he had created for himself or because the trl!
was not stranger than fiction. . .
Apart from juvenilia, which appeare? m school mag~m
Dazai's earliest work was in the collect10n Bannen (Declm
Years), published in 1936. Declining Years consists_ of fifteen s
ries written between 1933 and 1935, not arranged m the order
composition. Shortly before the book was published Dazai wro
in these terms about Declining Years:
I sacrificed ten years of my life for this one volume of s~o~t sto
For ten full years I did not know what it was to eat the mv1gora
breakfast of the good citizen. Because of this one boo~ I lost
place in the world, was constantly wounded in my self-esteem a
buffeted by the cold winds o,f the world, and I wandered aro~nd
a daze. I squandered tens of thousands of yen. I could not lift
head before my eldest brother, knowing the hardships I was ea
him. I burnt my tongue, singed my breast, and deliberately
my body beyond any possibility of recovery. I tore up and
carded over a hundred stories. Five thousand sheets of manus
paper. And all that remained, just barely, was this one vole
Nothing else. The manuscript comes to about 600 pages, but th
is altogether a little over sixty yen.
1029
But I believe in it. I believe that Declining Years will take on
deeper and deeper colors with the passing years, that it will surely
penetrate ever more profoundly into your eyes, your heart. I was
born only to write this one volume. From today on I am a corpse,
through and through. I am merely living out my remaining days.is
The stories in Declining Years are not all equally good, in
ite of the constant revisions that Dazai described, and some are
·nctly inferior works. But the best stories rank among Dazai's
est achievements. The earliest, in terms of content though not
order of composition, was "Omoide" (Memories), first pub-
bed separately in 1933. Dazai later stated that he had originally
nded "Memories" to be his testament to the world.19 He wrote
story not long after his attempted love suicide. His eldest
ther, supposing that a wife would help the erratic Dazai to
e down, suggested that he marry a young geisha named
ama Hatsuyo with whom Dazai had been intimate for some
e. The marriage could not officially be recognized by the
shima family because Dazai's grandmother refused to allow a
· ha's name to appear in the family register, but otherwise Ha-
would be considered as Dazai's wife. At first the arrange-
t worked reasonably well, only for Dazai to discover to his
ish that Hatsuyo, despite her airs of youthful innocence, had
previous lovers. Even at the height of his involvement with
ical politics Dazai never questioned the double standard of
rals; no less than Shiga Naoya, an author he professedly de-
ed, Dazai considered a wife's obligation of chastity to be abso-
' regardless of the profligacy of her husband.
Dazai and Hatsuyo lived for a time in a cottage set in the
unds of a big, deserted house. Dazai recalled that as he stared
at the overgrown, abandoned garden from his window in the
age he was mulling over plans for another attempt at sui-
.20 Somehow he managed to rouse himself from his apathy
began to set down his memories. The act of writing this "tes-
nt" to the world had the paradoxical effect of providing him
a reason to go on living.
"Memories" opens with Dazai's earliest remembrances:
It was dusk and I was standing beside my aunt at the front gate. She
was wearing a neneko 21 and seemed to be carrying a small child on
 Dawn to the West
her back. I cannot forget the stillness of the twilit street.My a
told me, "The son of Heaven has passed away," then added, "
living god." I seem to recall I was intrigued and murmured
words "the living god" myself. Then I added something disres
ful. My aunt scolded me. "You mustn't say such things. Say,
passed on.'" Then, though I had a good idea where he had "pa ...
on," I recall deliberately asking where, making my aunt laugh.22 \\
This early memory dovetails with all that Dazai would reve
about himself in later works. His fascination with words, even .
child of three, is suggested by his curiosity concerning euphe~
rnisms used for the death of the emperor, and his habitual "sei::?
vice" to others, which oftFn consisted of playi~g the clownt~
make people laugh, can also be traced back ~o this fi.rst memo~;,
Dazai stated that he could not recall a smgle thmg about hJS
parents at the time. Their place was taken first by his aunt,
later by a maid named Take, who came to the household wh
Dazai was five or six. Take left to get married when Dazai was s.
a boy, but he never forgot her; one of the most at:ectin~yage
all of Dazai's writings describes how he met Take agam 1Il 1
after thirty years of separation. Dazai never felt much intima;cy[
with his mother and his few recollections of her are all unplelfs,.
ant: how she spanked him for wearing his brother's clothes,
she often commented that he was the worst-looking of her m
children.23
Dazai excelled at school. He was first in lris class at b
elementary and middle schools and, initially at least, did well
high school, but he was not happy. He reca~led: "Un~ble ~o
satisfaction with anything, I was constantly mvolved m porn
struggles. Ten or twenty layers of masks clung to my face, ~nd
could not even tell how much pam . eac h cost me. "24 D azai a·.
some high school friends formed a little magazine in :'hie
published a story every month. His eldest brother, worned a
Dazai's future, pointed out that only a very few people evers
ceed as writers, but Dazai was confident that he was one of
elect.
Dazai's stories in Declining Years can be read as au
biographical documents, but whatever amount of literal truth W
present, it should not be forgotten that he worked over these st
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1031
with greater care than he devoted to any later works, and
bably departed further and further from the facts with each
ision. Some stories in Declining Years are in fact difficult to
ncile with what we know about Dazai's life at the time, and
e probably the products of his readings rather than his
erience.
Perhaps the most affecting story in the collection is the first,
a" (Leaves), a kaleidoscope of bits and pieces culled from his
ly practice works. It opens:
I was thinking of killing myself. Somebody sent me a bolt of
kimono material as a New Year's gift. The material was linen, with
a fine gray stripe. No doubt it was meant to be worn in the summer.
I decided I would go on living until summer.
Nora also reconsidered. When she went out into the hall, slam-
ming the door behind her, she thought, "I wonder if I should go
back?"
Whenever I came back home without having done anything
bad my wife would greet me with a smile on her face.
All he was doing was to drag out his existence from day to day.
In his lodgings he drank all alone, got drunk all alone. It was hard-
est of all at night when he furtively spread out his bedding and lay
· down. He didn't even dream. He was completely exhausted. He felt
listless, no matter what he did. Once he even bought a book called
How Should Privies Be Improved? and seriously studied it. At the
time he was fairly stymied by the traditional methods of disposing
of human excrement.
On the pavement at Shinjuku h.e saw a stone as big as his fist
slowly stroll past him. "That stone is crawling" was his only reac-
tion. But it did not take long for him to become aware that the stone
was being dragged along on a string by the dirty-looking child
walking ahead of him.
He did not feel depressed over having been taken in by a child.
He was depressed by his own state of desperation, so profound he
could calmly accept even such a prodigy.25
Some passages from "Leaves" are memorable both as vi-
es and as expressions of Dazai's literary and philosophical
victions:
 Dawn to the West 10
My brother said, "I don't think novels are worthless. They just seeJ
to me to be a little long-winded. They build up an atmosphere for
hundred pages simply so that they can say one line of truth.''. r It is not clear whether or not Dazai actually performed this
answered hesitantly, as if I had trouble finding the words. "That'~
right. The fewer the words the better. Providing you can convince,
the reader with nothing more than that."
My brother was also opposed to suicide. He thought it was self.
indulgent. I was taken aback at his words because they camejustat
a time when I was considering suicide as a calculated act, rather
the lines of knowing how to get along in the world. 26
Sections of "Leaves" are uproariously funny and demon~
strate Dazai's uncanny giftJor parody of literary styles, but others
seem to echo the political discussions he had with friends during
his period of involvement with the Communist party.
The significance of Dazai's Communism has been much de"
bated. Okuno Takeo, the author of an important study ofDazai,
declared, "The more I read in his works, the more I become aware
of the depth of the influence of Communism, which permeated
the basic nature of Dazai's writings. I am convinced that all of.
Dazai's writings, indeed his whole life, can be measured in terms
of his awareness of his having been a dropout from Communism
and the guilty conscience this gave him." 27 Okuno believed tha\
even Dazai's avoidance of the subject of Communism in his ma:.. ,
ture writings offered negative evidence of how strong a hold Com,··
munist influence had exerted.
There is little doubt about the strength of Dazai's feelings of:
guilt over his affluent family. Even as a boy in elementary school
he had been so impressed by what one of his brothers told h~
about democracy that he insisted on helping the servants with
their chores.28 His deepest commitment to Communism was dis;
played while he was at high school in Hirosaki. The novel
Gakuseigun (The Students), written at this time, describes a stu-:
dent strike. We are told about the character Aoi, clearly an alte~
ego for Dazai himself, who "from the time he first entered htglf
school kept the works of Bukharin and Stalin hidden a_t ~he bot';
tom of his trunk." 29 Another passage describes how Am, m orcler
to surmount the sexual desire that kept him from devoting his
attention to the class struggle, drank water from the ditch out
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1033
con~agion ward of a local hospital in the hopes of contracting
e disease that would render him impotent.30
azy gesture. 31 Even if the story was a fabrication, his first at-
mpt at suicide, made while he was a high school student, was
parently occasioned by ideological anguish. Dazai in 1946 de-
'bed this event in the following terms:
Dictatorship of the proletariat. That, without a doubt, was a new
concept. Not cooperation, but dictatorship. Indiscriminately knock-
ing down the opposition. The rich are all wicked. The aristocrats are
all wicked. Only. the impoverished poor are good. I was in favor of
an armed uprising. A revolution without a guillotine doesn't make
sense. But I did not belong to the lower classes. I was one of those
destined to end up on the guillotine. I was a nineteen-year-old high
school student, the only member of my class whose school uniform
was noticeably well-made. I became increasingly convinced that I
was fated to kill myself. I swallowed a good deal of calmotin. It did
not kill me.32
Honda Shuga, a critic with Marxist leanings, denied Okuno's
esis that Dazai was deeply influenced by Communism. He at-
uted Dazai's interest mainly to an accident of the times: most
ung intellectuals of Dazai's generation professed Marxism in
elate 1920s. Honda continued:
Dazai was a man without a will, with no ability to plan or to exer-
cise self-discipline. He lacked the ability a person must have merely
to live; he excelled only in talents that are not necessary to life.
Communism is the philosophy of people who, even if they lack
everything else, are able to live and have a particularly strong desire
to live. Dazai tended always to be suicidal. He would have been
happiest if he could simply have disappeared.33
paza~'s works were harshly criticized also by Miyamoto
ellJ1, a literary critic who later became secretary-general of the
panese Communist party. 34 Honda Shugo concluded his inves-
ation into Dazai's Communism with the opinion that Dazai was
mpletely unsuited to Communist society, not only in prewar
 Dawn to the West l
Japan, when the Communist party was illegal, but at any time.
in any place; conversely, Dazai was an undesirable person as,,
as Communism was concerned. 35
Dazai's first taste of party activities came in 1930, soon
he entered Tokyo University. A friend from Hirosaki who live
the same lodging house was a party sympathizer, and through
Dazai met Kudo Eizo, who at the time was officially a ]
University student but was chiefly engaged in attempts to revi
the Communist party after the setbacks it had suffered duringt
previous two years of governmental persecution. Kudo urge
Dazai to join the movement, and he accepted, on condition t ..
he not be required to take part in overt activity and that his famil
not be informed. In later years Dazai would recall his party work
in terms of the foolish erra:ids he performed or else in terms
the money he was expected to contribute for the food and lodg~
ings of his comrades.36 The following description from the nov
Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human, 1948) is typical:
More pressing causes of grief to me were my lack of money and the
jobs required of me by the movement, which had become so fr~.'"'
quent and frenetic that I could no longer perform them halfin.th
spirit of fun. I had been chosen leader of all the Marxist stud
action groups of central Tokyo. I raced about here and there'-'m
taining liaison." In my raincoat pocket I carried a little knife I ha,
bought for use in the event of an armed uprising. (I remember rro\V.
that it had a delicate blade hardly strong enough to sharpen a pen-
cil.) ... Requests for my services came from the Party so frequeritlt
that I scarcely had time to catch my breath. A sickly body like mine.
wasn't up to such frantic activity. My only reason all along
helping the group had been my fascination with its irrationality,
and to become so horribly involved was a quite unforeseen conse~•
quence of myjoke.37 ·
Although Dazai was convinced that his "missions" served
useful purpose, his comrades maintained a state of excitem~n~lif'
incessantly reminding themselves how dangerous these m1ss10n:s
were. It is not clear how accurately Dazai's postwar
membrances reflected his actual attitudes when engaged in pru:
activities, but there is little doubt that his literary tastes stood
the way of his accepting party doctrines. Aoi in The Students
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1035
nvinced that artistic activity is no more than an escape from the
ss struggle, and for this reason proletarian literature can never
successful. Rather than renounce the class struggle in order to
·te, he renounces literature and becomes "purely" a politician.
zai for a time adopted the same attitude.38 In Kuno no Nenkan
arbook of Suffering, 1946), he recalled his distaste for the kind
literature of which the party approved:
There was at this time something known as "proletarian literature."
Reading it was enough to give me gooseflesh and to cause the hot
tears to come. Whenever I am brought face-to-face with an un-
natural, ugly style, I always get gooseflesh and the corners of my
eyes become hot, for no accountable reason. A comrade suggested
to me that, considering my literary talent, I should write proletarian
literature and contribute the fees I would receive to the Party funds.
I tried writing some under a pseudonym, but even as I wrote I felt
the tears coming. Nothing resulted from this attempt.39
These recollections were included in a work written sixteen
ars after the events described, a time when many left-wing writ-
who had been forced to commit tenko during the 1930s were,
der the aegis of the American Occupation, free to espouse their
causes, and it was politic to relate instances of covert re-
ance in the past. Dazai's memories of his prewar encounters·
h the police were inglorious. On one occasion, when he was
en into custody under suspicion of being a Communist, "The
mining officer, baffled by my excessively deferential attitude,
ed, 'Do you suppose a young gentleman of the bourgeois class
yourself is going to make a revolution? We're the ones who'll
ke the real revolution.' " 40 ·
The police do not seem to have taken Dazai seriously,
ether because of his family connections or because they de-
ed a lack of wholehearted commitment to the cause. He cer-
. ly had things on his mind other than the success of the class
ggle. It was at the very height of his party activities that he met
bar hostess with whom he attempted a double suicide in Ka-
akura. Dazai's recovery from the effects of the overdose of
ee~ing pill_s tha~ he and the woman took before leaping into the
a 1s descnbed m the story "Doke no Hana" (The Flowers of
ffoonery, 1935). The special feature of this story, which on the
 Dawn to the West 1 DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA
whole is a straightforward ~ccount of his stay in the hospital,
in the manner of the narration. Dazai constantly shifts wit
warning from third-person narration of the acts and thoughts
one Oba Y6z6 (the name by which Dazai called himself also
No Longer Human) to first-person comments addressed to
reader. Dazai stated early in the story that he had decided to
the central character a name because the hero of his previ
story had been known merely as "I," and he was embarrassed
resort to the same manner of narration twice in succession.
apparently he was unable to maintain the objectivity ofthe thi
person narration very long; he shifts to "I" whenever he fe
obliged to explain why he is writing this story:
I'll put my cards on the dble. The fact is, I had ratherquestiona
motives for having the person called "I" put in an appearanc
between episodes of this story, and for having him describe va ·
matters that might just as well have been left unrecorded: I w
to impart to this work a particular nuance by surreptitiously in
ducing this "I" without the reader even noticing it. I was v
enough to suppose that this was an exotic, foreign stylistic man
that had never before been attempted in Japan. But I failed. N
surely must have included even a confession of failure in my
for this story. But I wanted, if possible, to make the confessi
little later. No, I have the feeling that I prepared even these W
from the very beginning. Ah, don't believe me. Don't belieV;(!i\
single thing I say.
Why am I writing this story? It is because I want the glory
being recognized as a new literary talent? Or perhaps beca
want money? Answer without any theatricality. I want both. I
both so much I can't stand it. Ah, I am still coming out wi
barefaced lies. Some people will be taken in by such lies and n
realize it. And even among lies, these lies are particularly
down. Why am I writing this story? You've certainly starte
annoying line of questions. Well, there's no helping it. I don't Ii
indulge in mystification, but I'll try answering with just one W.
Vengeance.41
Dazai did not explain the nature of the "vengeance''.
sought. Presumably it was directed against his family o~, l
broader sense, against the whole world he had grown up in.:
1037
attempting to arouse a maximum of embarrassment by re-
aling in his writings the worst side of himself. A similar motiva-
n lingered with Dazai until the end of his career. His
losures were not specifically directed against his oldest
other, but in fact it was this brother who had to rescue Dazai
er each unpleasantness caused by his suicide attempts or by his
t-wing activities.
News of D~zai's suicide. attempt in Kamakura was promi-
ntly featured m the Aomon press, causing his family consider-
le embarrassment. ~arly in 1931 Dazai's oldest brother drew up
con.tract between himself and Dazai in which he agreed to pay
zai 120 yen a month for living expenses until April 1933,
viding he remained with Koyama Hatsuyo. However, it was
ulated that the co~trac~ wou~d be nullified if Dazai was repri-
nded by Tokyo Umversity, withdrew from the university with-
just cause, was investigated by the police for a criminal
nse, ~illful!y failed to attend classes, spent money recklessly,
aved m a disorderly manner, or became involved in the social-
inovement.42 Needless to say, Dazai violated virtually every
e of these interdictions.
In May 1932 the police visited Dazai's family, and the oldest
ther learned officially about Dazai's activities. He at once
pped the monthly remittances, but he urged Dazai to come to
mori secretly and formally swear before the police his renun-
tion of the left-wing movement. He promised to resume remit-
ces until Dazai's graduation from the university if he complied.
eral days after receiving this letter Dazai went to Aomori and,
o~panied by his brother, appeared before the police. He was
med for two days during which he swore to break all ties with
Communist movement. This tenk6 was accomplished with the
~st secrecy. 43 Dazai was summoned again by the Aomori po-
m December 1932 and repeated his vow to have no further
tions with the left-wing movement. He in fact carried out this
mise.
On the surface at least Dazai seems to have experienced little
culty_ i~ making his tenko. He never again took part in left-
g activity ~ven when: after the war, it had become not only
I but fash10nable. His tenk6, unlike that of most other left-
g sympathizers of the 1930s, was probably what he most
ted to do; he had come to live in fear of the Communist party

and its demands.44 Above all, he wanted to write, and this w
incompatible with party activity for a man who had only scorn£
proletarian literature.
In the summer of 1930 Dazai visited Ibuse Masuji with
manuscripts of two stories. lbuse recalled twenty-five years 1
that Dazai wrote him saying he would kill himself if Ibuse refused
to meet him. Ibuse naturally consented, and Dazai soon afterwatd
appeared at the publishing company where Ibuse worked. He in.:
sisted that lbuse read the stories on the spot. Ibuse read ·thetn,
recognized the influence of one of his own stories, and blu
told Dazai that the stories were no good. He urged Dazai to rean
the classics, rather than worthless fiction, if he intended to become
a writer. 45
Dazai had chosen Ibdse as his mentor because he had en1l'
joyed lbuse's writings ever since he was a boy of fourteen. He
later even induced Ibuse to contribute a story to his high school
magazine. After the first meeting in 1930 Dazai continuedto senct'
Ibuse stories, and when three or four had accumulated would pa~
a visit. He probably hoped that lbuse would recommend publicai
tion to a literary magazine, but lbuse never vouchsafed aword
criticism.46 Instead, he once again recommended that Dazai read
Pushkin, Chekhov, Proust, and other major European writers{
Dazai's reading of Evgeni Onegin provided direct inspiration fof
writing "Memories." Perhaps in the hope of strengthening th
ties, Dazai initially urged lbuse to become a left-wing writ
Ibuse, refusing, urged Dazai in return not to become one.47 ...
It was shortly after swearing his tenko before the Aomoi'i:
police that Dazai began to write "Memories." Dazai later d~~
scribed his state of mind at that time in the following terms: "B"
by bit I managed somehow to rouse myself from a state ofapath
I drew up my last will and testament. It was called 'Memories'
was 100 pages long.48 'Memories' is now considered to be
maiden work. I thought I would set down on paper, without
least ornamentation, every bad thing I had done since I wa
child. I was twenty-four at the time." 49
"Memories" may have been intended
Tsushima Shoji, sometime university student and Commurti
party sympathizer, but it marked the birth of Dazai Osamu.
apparently decided to use this pseudonym after a meeting ·
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1039
se in January 1933.50 He also decided at this time the title of
first collection of short stories, Declining Years.
"Memories" was the first work by Dazai to elicit praise from
use, who wrote:
I was much impressed by your most recent manuscript. It represents
a marked change from the previous ones. It is written with an ob-
jective, critical eye. In any case, "Memories" is first-rate in execu-
tion. From now on you should be able to attend the university in
good spirits and at the same time continue to write stories with
sufficient self-confidence. If you have time enough to visit me, it
would be much, much better spent in reading one page or even half
a page of Tolstoy or Chekhov. Write as much as you can, and so as
not to get exhausted by writing, attend school every day.51
lbuse's praise undoubtedly encouraged Dazai, but he did not
e the advice about faithfully attending the university. "Memo-
" was published in three successive issues of the recently
nded literary magazine Kaihyo (Sea Lion), which had pub-
ed Dazai's story "Gyofukuki" 52 in its inaugural issue in
arch 1933.
"Memories," one of Dazai's most affecting works, contains its
o!
re m~sochistic details, but there is also a note of hope in his
ermrnat10n to become a writer: "In the end I discovered a
ety valve, a miserable little safety valve-writing. In this, there
e many like me, I could sense, all concentrating like myself on
ir crazy p~lpitations. I prayed secretly, again and again, 'May I
ome a wnter! May I become a writer!'" 53
The very act of writing "Memories" served, as Dazai recalled
ew years later, to "cast a faint light into the darkness of my
ilism." 54 Moreover, having written his remembrances up until
h school days, he now felt compelled to write the rest, every-
g he had experienced up until the previous day. As the stories
umulated, he put them one by one into a large manila en-
pe on which he had written the title Declining Years, which
.. acquired the meaning of being his last work.55 He finished
tmg the fourteen stories of Declining Years in November
34.56
In the meantime, Dazai's stories, published in little maga-
es, had begun to attract attention. In April 1934 a new literary
 Dawn to the West
magazine, Ban (The Moorhen), was founded by a group of yoli
writers. One of them, Dan Kazuo (1912-1976), was so impr
by "Memories" that he promised in the editorial he wrote for
first issue that each subsequent issue would carry a work by D ..
Ban lasted only four issues, but it carried works of fiction, poet
and criticism by such distinguished authors as Sato Haruo, M
Saisei, and Ito Sei, and Dazai's reputation was enhanced by
association with them. In December 1934, when another lit
magazine, Aoi Hana (The Blue Flower), was first publis
Dazai's story "Romanesuku" (Romanesque) appeared at the h
of the issue. In 1935 three of the four sections of "Gya
(Against the Current) were published in Bungei, marking Daza
first appearance in a commercial magazine. Gradually he was a
acquiring valuable acquaintances in the literary world, b_ut th
activities served as further excuses for not attendmg
university.
"Against the Current" carries forward the story of Dazai'sl
from where it stopped in "Memories." It opens in a manner t
anticipates his late works, notably No Longer Human:
He was not an old man. He had barely passed his twenty-ii
birthday. Yet "old man" might be the best designation for hi,
after all. He had lived each year that an ordinary man lives, three
four times over. Twice he had unsuccessfully attempted suic
One of those occasions was a lovers' suicide. Three times he
been thrown into a detention cell. It was as a "thought crimin
He had written over a hundred stories but had not sold one.57
The second episode of "Against the Current," called "
Thief," describes Dazai's experiences at Tokyo University, ~he
he pretended for years to be studying French literature witho.
attending a class or learning anything of the French langu
This episode opens with the words, "It was clear that I was g~
to flunk out of the university this year. But I took the e~a .
tions anyway." He gives an account of the French examma
The professor (Tatsuno Takashi, a distinguished scholar of Fr
literature) scrawls the examination question on the bla~kb
and comments to the class, "With this kind of question
couldn't fail the exam even if you tried." 58 But Dazai manag.ed
fail all the same. He wrote a bare seven or eight sentences m
DAZA! 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1041
horistic vein, contrasting Flaubert, whom he characterized as a
e boy, with Maupassant, whom he treated as an adult. After he
ves the examination room he sees a long line of students wait-
g before the university cafeteria where they can get a filling
eal for fifteen sen, and contrasts himself with such serious stu-
nts in these terms: "I am a thief. A notorious malcontent. Art-
ts never used to kill people. Artists never used to steal. Swine!
u and your paltry, smart-alecky friends." 59
After being forced to leave the university Dazai took the ex-
·nation for a job at a newspaper and failed that too. After
n~ing. the night of March 15, 1935, drinking with a friend, he
him i~ Yok~hama Station with the ominous remark, "I may
te possibly kill myself," then disappeared into the crowd. He
nt to Kamakura and on the following night attempted suicide
hanging. The noo.se br~ke and he gave up the attempt. He
urned home that mght with a red welt around his neck.60 Like
ai's o~her traumatic experiences, this one provided him with
e matenals for a story, "Kyogen no Kami" (The God of Farce
36). As. in the. case of "The Flowers of Buffoonery," the manne;
narrat10n shifts abruptly in mid-course. "The God of Farce"
errs with a description in the laconic style of Mori Ogai of the
~~mstances ~urrounding the suicide by hanging of one Kasai
~Ime. The b10graphical data given for this man correspond ex-
ly to Dazai'~, but bit by bit Kasai disappears altogether; the
ntrol~ed Mon Ogai style also gives way to a jagged, sometimes
ost mcoherent narrative, as Dazai relates in farcical tones why
. ~ecided on hanging, and what happened when he attempted
icide. Pro baby that was the only way he could treat the incident.
.. Early in .April 1935, a bare two weeks after his attempted
cide, Dazai had an attack of acute appendicitis that was com-
ated by his slowness in calling a doctor. The operation was
~ult and (according to Dazai) the doctors despaired of saving
61
~fe. He. dev.eloped peritonitis and was in such agony that
":al, a pa~n-killer, was administered. Dazai came to depend
this narcotic after he left the hospital and steadily increased the
age. He .was an ~ddict.for ~bout a year and a half, perhaps the
kest peno? of his entire hfe. He was able in one way or an-
er to obtam the drug, but the cost was considerable, and he
n ran up debts not only with pharmacists but with every friend
every publisher from whom he could borrow money. He sold

one by one all the manuscripts he had in the big manila envelo
and forced himself to write more. The stories of this period
harrowing to read, suggesting the desperation of a man writin
misery. "Mesu ni tsuite" (<?n Wome~, 1936),}he bes_t.'. desc:i
double suicide. It opens with the epigraph: The F1Jians, 1f ev
they are in the slightest annoyed with e_v~n their most de~rly lov
wife kill her at once and eat her flesh, 1t is reported. Agam, we
told'ihat the Tasmanians, when their wives die, quite calmly b
her children with her. Other tribes, like certain Australian abo
ines, carry the body of a dead wife into the fields where they
62
away the fat, for use as bait.when fishing." . .
This epigraph, though 1t sets the tone smtably for a partic
larly morbid story, hardly invites the casual reader. "Of Worn .·
appeared in a magazine called J#J~akusa (Yo~n~, Grass),
Dazai was of course aware of the irony of this old, decrepit;\
anr
story" appearing in a periodical aimed at youthful readers. But, aS
he concluded at the end of the first paragraph, he was conyincel'.l:
that the young readers of today are actually old, and will accep.t
such a story without difficulty. "This is a story to be read
people who have lost hope." 63 . ._ . . ...
In 1935 the publishing firm of Bungei Shun3u Sha_establishe~
the Akutagawa Prize, which was intended to ~ecogmze unusual
merit in writers who had hitherto not been widely known. Th~
prize itself consisted of a substant~al s_um of m~ney a~~ the pr?rrk
ise of publication of future stones m Bunger Shu_n1u. Th_e JUIJ.
consisted of some of the most distinguished men m the lltera:ey:
world, including Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Kawabata_ Yas~nari, Sat()~
Haruo Yokomitsu Riichi, and Kume Masao. K1kuch1 Kan, th~/
editor ~f Bungei Shunji7 and the command~ng figure i~ the literar,y
world, naturally was also a member of the Jury. Daza1 was de~p.er~
ately anxious to win the prize, not only because of the recogmtlOit
it would bring but because he needed the money to pa~ fo~ drugsi:
Five works remained as final contenders for the first pnze, mclucl",,
ing Dazai's "Against the Current." He pinned his hop_es"on th~
support of Sato Haruo, whom he knew to be favor~bly llilpresse«i.
by his work. Sato in fact strongly supported Dazai, eve_n thougl1\
he regretted that "Against the Current" had been SU bstituted for
"The Flowers of Buffoonery" as the work by Dazai that was to l;l~
considered for the prize.64 Despite Sato's s~pport, how~v:1",
prize was awarded to Ishikawa Tatsuzo for his novella Sobo (
DAZA! 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1043
,JJ1111on People), largely because of Kawabata's strong opposi-
. n to the unhealthy nature of Dazai's work. The disappointed
d enraged Dazai wrote an open letter to Kawabata which he
on afterward published. 65 After describing the circumstances of
e composition of "The Flowers of Buffoonery" (which he sup-
ed was the work judged for the prize) and the praise that it had
n from various friends in the literary world, he relates what a
ck it was to read in Bungei Shunji7 Kawabata's reasons for
ecting his work. Kawabata had written that something like a
ister cloud hung over Dazai's works. Dazai did not deny this,
tasked how could it be otherwise in view of his recent serious
ess and his debts. He continued:
Does keeping small birds and watching dancers perform constitute
such an admirable life? I thought, "I'll get even. He's a scoundrel
through and through." But suddenly I felt, deep in my vitals, the
perverse, hot, strong, flannellike affection you have for me. You
shake your head. You say I am mistaken. But under the coldness
you feign, you warm my body just perceptibly with your fierce,
demented, Dostoevskian affection. And you have not the least idea
you are doing so.66
This is by ho means the only peculiar passage in the letter. It
difficult even to obtain a coherent idea of what Dazai is trying
say. No doubt his addiction accounts for the confused expres-
·on not only in this letter but in the stories of this period. Sato
aruo strongly urged him to enter a hospital where he could be
red of his addiction, and Dazai agreed. He was duly admitted to
. hospital where Sato's younger brother, a physician, treated him,
t left after a few days to go on a drunken spree with Dan
azuo.
Dazai continued to write even during this period. The chaot-
ally composed "The God of Farce" was followed by "Kyoko no
aru" (The Fictitious Spring), which consists entirely of letters
dressed to Dazai during the month of December 1935. The
uthors of the letters include well-known writers like Ibuse Ma-
gi, Dan Kazuo, and Tanaka Hidemitsu, but others of the letters
em to have been composed by Dazai himself. Although this
rk, by its very nature, lacks a coherent structure, it is curiously
ecting in its portrayal of Dazai through others' eyes. Immedi-

ately after publication Dazai received protests from all quarters
for his unauthorized use of letters, but they seem to have mad:et
little impression on him in his exhausted, nearly demented stater
He begged Sato to help him find a publisher for "The God of
Farce" and Sato complied, only for Dazai to withdraw the storJ
and offer it to another publisher. Sato was enraged, but the worst
in his relations with Dazai was yet to come.
Dazai, convinced that Sato alone could obtain for him the
Akutagawa Prize, bombarded him with letters day and night, beg..
ging for his support. The prize jury decided not to make an awartl
of the second semiannual prize, which made Dazai all the more
hysterically anxious to win the third prize. Once again, however1
Dazai was unsuccessful, this time because the jury decided not to
consider works by anyone who had previously been a candidate,
When Dazai learned this news he went to Sato's house and threw
stones at the roof. Not content with this expression of annoyance,·
Dazai published the story "Soseiki" (Genesis), a wildly confused;
though curiously moving work in which (among other things) he
described what the prize would have meant to him, and his disap.
pointment in Sato. Sato, who was well known for his irascible.
temper, was quick to reply. In an article entitled "Akutagawa
Sha" (The Akutagawa Prize, published in November 1936), he
declared: "I have conceived a peculiar loathing for DazaiOsamu.
At the same time, however, I admire his incomparable talent. This
contradiction has been the motivation for the present work. If
had been simply a matter of aversion, I should probably hav-.e
laughed and spat on it. If only things had been that simple!" 67<
The publication of Declining Years in June 1936 ha.d en•
hanced Dazai's reputation, and he began at this time to find
friends among the tenk6 writers who welcomed him as one
their number, but his drug addiction grew only more serious. His
common-law wife, Hatsuyo, turned to lb use for help, and he went
to Sato who, despite his profound annoyance with Dazai, agreed.
to enlist his brother's support once more. This time Dazai was not
consulted. He was bundled off to a mental hospital without his
realizing where he was going, and was kept in confinement. Even
at this time he still went on writing. The story "Human Lost" (the
title is in English),68 published in April 1937, described his experi-.
ences. The story opens with a series of diary entries that consistof
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1045
ate follow~d by the single stark word "Nothing" (nashi). Grad-
y the entnes grow longer:
Fourth day. Went on a speaking tour. Iron window grilles, metal
screens and the clanking of keys every time the heavy door is
opened or shut. The all-night watchmen loitering around. I ad-
dressed every single one of the twenty-odd patients in this human
warehouse, throwing myself physically into it. I used all my strength
to shake by the shoulders a roly-poly, handsome young man, and
snarled, "Lazybones!" at him. And to the student who had been
driven crazy by exams and who kept a textbook of commercial law
~y his bedside w?ich he read aloud at every waking moment, inton-
mg th_e ~ords as 1f they were a collection of poetry, I shouted, "Stop
studymg. Exams have been abolished!" For a moment he looked
relieved.69
Dazai was kept under surveillance and not allowed visitors
_r fear that he might try either to kill himself or to escape. The
thdrawal symptoms were extreme. He tore his clothes broke
d~ws, kept scri?blin~ ince~santly on the walls, on the shoji, on
bits ~f p~per m which his medicine was wrapped. Some of
. e scnbblmgs are apparently included in "Human Lost." A
1cal example is: "(On the wall.) What Napoleon wanted was
th~ whole world. He only wanted to be trusted by a single
dehon." 10
·.· Sections o~ "Human Lost" are in divided lines, suggesting
at they were mtended to be poetry; others have titles such as
urses o~ My Wife" (i~ which he relates his anger that his un-
ateful wif~ ha~ had him confined to an insane asylum); still
ers d~scnbe his fear and suspicions of the hospital. References
the ~ib!,e, already con~picuous in earlier works of that period,
ur i~ Human Lost, though their meaning for Dazai is
gmatic:
The history of Japanese literature, thanks to the Bible, is now more
clearl~ divided_ than ever before into two parts. It took three years
to fimsh readmg the twenty-eight chapters of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, John-ah, when will I obtain the wings of John? 11
 Dawn to the West
Other sections approach lucidity:
People all talk about "real." I ask, "What do you mean by r
When a lotus blooms, does or does it not make a popping sound?.
. "N o. " "Even N ap
big question. Is that what you mean by rea l ?"
leon caught colds. Even General Nogi enjoyed the pleasures of
bedchamber. Even Cleopatra defecated. I suppose these facts
what you mean when you talk about real." T~ey laugh and do
answer. "One more question. Dazai begs you m tears to please
his manuscript. Chekhov took his manuscripts to the publishers
often that he wore down their thresholds in his attempts to s~.
them. Gorki was so completely under Lenin's thumb that he be.
came a yes-man. Proust sent letters in which he crawled befi
1
publishers. Is this what you mean by real?" They nod ;,111~ul1v;.:
cautious grin still on their lips. 72
Dazai mentions that he has read Sato Haruo's "Akutaga
Prize" and comments;
I thought it was a sloppy piece of writing. For th~t r~aso~ I a
thought it was incomparably impressive. True affect10n 1s bhnd. It
a madness, an expression of disgust. 73
"Human Lost" concludes with the flat statement, "I left
hospital at half-past one that afternoon," a_nd ,;"ith a. ~uota
from the Bible that begins, "Love thy enemies. Allusion~ to
Bible became even more frequent in his writings, suggestmg ..
Dazai had come to depend on its help when all else had faile~
Dazai left the hospital cured of his addiction. However,
had accidentally learned that his wife had had se~ual rela
with one of his close friends, and that thought weighed on
even after his release from confinement. As so often when fa
with an emotional crisis, Dazai's solution was suicide. He
Hatsuyo went together to Minakami Hot Springs, where
planned to commit a double suic!de by ta~ing a~ overd?
barbiturates. He later described this event bnefly: That mg
the mountains we went through with our planned suicide.
determined not to kill H and took some trouble to make sure;
this. H survived. But I also botched my suicide, brilliant!('
Dazai and Hatsuyo separated after this abortive smc1de
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1047
pt. At Ibuse's suggestion, Dazai went to live at an inn near
aka Pass in Yamanashi Prefecture. Not long afterward Ibuse
oduced him to a well-educated woman of good family who
teaching school in the same prefecture, and they were mar-
early in 1939. In his collection of stories Fugaku Hyakkei
e Hundred Views of Fuji, 1939), the fruits of his labors since
ing the asylum, Dazai for the first time portrayed himself not
self-destroying monster, but as a recognizable human being,
ndly to the young writers who gather round him, appreciative
the kindness of the maid at the inn, sensitive to the beauty of
'i, and capable of a happy marriage that bears no relation to
acts of desperation described in earlier stories. These relatively
nquil writings show Dazai at his most attractive, but he must
e sensed that his forte lay elsewhere. The persona of the <le-
d, attentive husband and father did not suit the Dazai of
on.1s
Dazai in fact seemed to be running out of materials. He at-
pted to enlarge his canvas by adapting stories that were de-
ed from Western sources, including "Kakekomi Uttae" (Direct
peal, 1940), on the betrayal of Jesus by Judas; "Hashire Me-
" (Run, Melos!, 1940), about a young Greek who demon-
ates his loyalty to a friend at great personal sacrifice; and
nna no Ketto" (Duel of Women, 1940), based on a German
I')'.' by ~er?ert Eulenberg, which was originally translated by
_n Oga1. Fmally, Dazai published a novel in the form of a play,
n Hamuretto (The New Hamlet). These are among the most
cult of Dazai's works for a Western reader to evaluate. Dazai's
ative skill is evident in the breathless relation of the events of
irect.A~peal," and the reader may well be moved by the sunny
d edify.mg) tale of M_elos, especially after so many nihilistically
k stones, but there 1s also something unconvincing in Dazai's
atment of foreign materials. His characters seem uneasily posed
tween two worlds, as if Dazai was unwilling to make them
oily Japanese but was unable to create believable non-
anese. According to the prefatory note he wrote for The New
let, Dazai had borrowed from Shakespeare only the names of
characters and the general outlines of the plot; the rest repre-
ted the free play of his imagination in treating the lives of an
appy family. Although Dazai originally relied on Tsubouchi
yo's translation of Hamlet he occasionally parodied the Ka-
 Dawn to the West
buki language of that translation; his ow~ language was high
colloquial. The parting injunctions of Polonms to Laertesare t
cal of Dazai's humor. Laertes objects that he has already he
these injunctions four times, but Polonius replies:
I don't care how many times you've heard them. Ten time.s
still not be enough. First of all, you are not to worry about yo
school record. If there are fifty in your class at the university, fi
tieth is about the ideal rank. Never, no matter what you do, try:
be first. No son of Polonius is likely to be gifted with such bra
Know your own limitations, be resigned to them, and don't be
ambitious in your studies. That's the first thing. The next thing.1is
that you must not fail. You absolutely must avoid that. It doesn:ll
matter if you cheat on th~ examinations. Failure leaves a perm11
nent scar, but when you're older and attain a suitably import
position, nobody will remember about your cheating. But th
won't forget it if you fail. ... Cheating is no dishonor, but failure
the foundation of ruin.7 6
Not long afterward Horatio arrives from Witte~berg witht
rumor that the late king's ghost has been seen at Elsmore. Ham
expresses his dismay that the scientific ~pirit for which Wittenb
University was celebrated has so detenorated that people be
in ghosts. He adds, "I gather that the study of dra~a has·beco.
popular at universities these days. No doubt some silly studenth
thought up a play with that kind of stupid plot .. B~t ~ ghost! II
must have a very feeble imagination!" 77 Horatl~ ms1sts t~at th
ghost is indignant because Claudius has fallen m love with
queen. Hamlet retorts: "Fallen for my mother? Why, every t
in her head is false!" 78
At the end of the play Claudius tells Hamlet about the o
break of war with Norway and the death of Laertes at sea. H
says he is sorry, though he never cared much for ~aert~s. "All
same, father, he was quite a guy .... " The king 1s delighted
Hamlet has called him father and encourages him to become
outstanding soldier. Hamlet says he intends to become a V
weak, very ordinary soldier. Claudius is informed of the dea
Gertrude but declares that he will live on, for Denmark's
Many passages in The New Hamlet are funny, parti
DAZA£ 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1049
ause of Dazai's adroit use of different styles of Japanese. But
·sis not so much a new Hamlet as a farcical version of the old
ory, given appeal by Dazai's mordant humor. It suggests that
azai was searching desperately for something to say that would
e salable.
Dazai's most important work of 1940 was Tokyo Hakkei
ight Views of Tokyo, 1941), which is largely in the gloomy vein
Declining Years, though some sections are extremely funny.
en when he describes for a second or third time incidents famil-
from earlier stories, he is able to impart new intensity in this
elling. Dazai by this time, thanks largely to his publications of
e previous three or four years, had become recognized as an
portant literary figure. He not only attended meetings of the
rary establishment but even mended his quarrel with Sato
ruo in 1940. He acquired disciples of his own, notably Tanaka
emitsu (1913-1949), whom he helped with the writing of
iposu no Kajutsu (The Fruits of Olympus, 1940), the novel
at brought Tanaka fame.
In November 1941 Dazai was summoned for an army physi-
examination, but was rejected for service because of a chest
ent. The outbreak of war in the following month was a se-
us blow to Dazai's development as a writer, or at least he so
imed when in 1946 he wrote the autobiographical Jagonenkan
fteen Years). He stated:
1942, 1943, 1944, 1945-those were terrible years for us. I was called
up three times and each time underwent intensive training in at-
tacks with bamboo spears. In the intervals between dawn muster-
ings and heaven knows what else, I managed to write and publish
stories, only for the rumor to spread that this activity was frowned
on by the Intelligence Service. In 1943 I published a novel three
hundred pages long called Udaijin Sanetomo [Minister of the Right
Sanetomo], only for this to be given the absurd interpretation of
Yudayajin Sanetomo [The Jew Sanetomo]. "Loyal Japanese sub-
jects" declared that Dazai had portrayed Sanetomo as a Jew. These
idiotic "loyal subjects," out of sheer perversity, treated me as un-
patriotic, and did their best in various ways to abuse me to the
authorities. One short story of mine was suppressed in entirety im-
mediately after publication. Permission to publish another new

Dawn to the West I
story over two hundred pages long was refused. But I did nots
writing. I thought that unless I kept on writing doggedly, to the
end, come what may, I would prove myself to be a fake. It
longer a matter of logic. It was the dumb pride of the pe
However, I have no intention of claiming here, as others have
that I opposed the war from the outset, that I was an enemy of
Japanese military clique, a liberal. I have no wish to speak il
Tojo all of a sudden, now that the war is over, nor to raise a
and cry over who was responsible for starting the war and so
nor of making displays of the new-style opportunism. Even
ism has now degenerated into being a salon philosophy. I ea
straddle this new trend any better than I did the old one.
... During the war I thought that if, under the circumstan
1
Japan won the war, it would no longer be the land of the gods
of the devil. But I declared my confidence in a Japanese victo
was on Japan's side.79
Dazai's short story "Junigatsu Yoka" (December Eig
published in 1942, described the reactions of a housewife tone.
of the outbreak of war. This story has been cited by some critics
prove that Dazai acquiesced before the trend of the times, b
others has been included in collections of "resistance lit
ture." so Be that as it may, the rather cheerful, lighthearted tq
distinguished it from the mass of works inspired by the decl
tion of war. During the war a few of Dazai's stories were ban
by the censors, as he mentioned, but his chief works of t~e w
time period appeared like shining stars over the sunken honzo
literature. Dazai was the writer whose wartime publicatio11s m
tained the highest literary excellence, though not all of the wo
are equally good. . rful mood, but they are infinitely superior as literature. The
Two of Dazai's least satisfying novels were wntten 1
during the war, and both were based on materi~ls provid
diaries kept by other people. Seigi to Bish6 (Justice. and S
1942) is in the form of a diary kept by a young man with th
ambitions. It is prevailingly cheerful and optimistic in tone;
only rarely shows the characteristic Dazai darkn~ss. Perhaps
most striking feature of this unmemorable work 1_s the fr~que
of reference to the Bible. This was certainly not m keepmg
the mystique of the "holy war" that had started; perhaps
- - )'
DAZA! 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1051
yant atmosphere engendered by the early Japanese victories
e war induced the censors to be tolerant.
Pandora no Hako (Pandora's Box, 1945-1946), a novel in the
of let~ers, was less fortunate with the censors. It was origi-
ly submitted for publication in 1943 under a different title
y to be rejected. It is baffling what could have upset the censor;
)his inoffensive work; indeed, they later changed their minds
• in 1944 gave permission for publication. Perhaps it had first
ed that the setting, a tuberculosis sanitorium, was too nega-
for a country in the midst of a great war. The book was
.ted in. 1944, but almost all copies were destroyed in an air
. Daza1 rewrote the ?ovel after the end of the war, modifying
mewhat to accord with the changed political situation, but the
spher~ is still_that of wartime. The story of a young man with
erculos1s who 1s sent to a hospital in the country is unremit-
y cheerful. The hospital is called a "health school," the pa-
ts are "students," and the nurses are "assistants." There are
e romances between the patients and nurses, pleasant little
els among the patients, and many unmemorable incidents.
ai himself clearly grew bored with the work and terminated it
er abruptly. The most interesting part, a few pages long, con-
of a reported conversation among the patients concerning
the end of the war has affected the way the Japanese think. It
here that Dazai expounded his theory of the libertin, the eter-
rebel against orthodoxy and conformism.s1 One character, no
bt speaking for Dazai, states that the Japanese defeat was due
ts failure to borrow the Bible and the spiritual heritage of the
t along with its material culture.s2
Dazai's major wartime works were also in a prevailingly
·ster of the Right Sanetomo was based on the account in the
eenth-century chronicle Azuma Kagami of the life of
oto Sanetomo (1192-1219), the third Kamakura shogun.
etomo_ was a popular subject of study during the war, perhaps
us~ his dual ~areer as soldier and poet inspired literary figures
rtlffie: Dazai used his materials freely to create a portrait of
eal anstocrat; Sanetomo, at least during the early part of his
er as shogun, stood for all that Dazai had come most to ad-
e; Not infrequently we seem to hear Dazai's voice, as when
 Dawn to the West
Sanetomo says, "Liquor is for getting drunk. It has no
merit." 83 More often, however, Sanetomo represents ideals
Dazai never even attempted to imitate. The narrator informs
The shogun's heart was always as fresh and clear as an early s
mer sky. He seemed to have absolutely no conception of what
meant to hate or bear ill will toward another person. He was ne
even angry, but would settle matters quite dispassionately,
the least perturbation. He loved everyone, never to the
of forming deep attachments but lightly and naturally, like fi
ing water. 84
Dazai's method was to suote in the original a passage fr<Y
Azuma Kagami, then give his own, considerably expanded a
count of the events described. For example, the visit Kamoiij
Chomei paid Sanetomo in the tenth month of 1211, mentioned<j
a bare two lines of Azuma Kagami, was developed into an eigli
page account of Chomei's appearance, the questions .Sanet
asked him and Chomei's answers, a statement of what Cho
admired in Sanetomo's poetry and his warning against being
duly influenced by the court poets, musings of t_he narrato: on:
possibility that Chomei's visit to Sanetomo might have msp
An Account of My Hut (Chomei's most famous work), and fin
what effects Chomei's advice had on Sanetomo. 85
The narrator declares that the height of Sanetomo's ea
was the period of his twentieth and twenty-first years. Soon.
ward there were rebellions that brought the first threat to his
thority. Sanetomo was generous in victory and ready to for
even rebels, but one disorder led to another, and Sanetomo, ev
tually losing interest in state affairs, began to drink heavil~, e
when fighting was actually in progress nearby. Yet despite,
deepening apathy he always maintained his immense :espe_ct
the imperial family and the gods. Dazai insists on thi~ p01~t
strongly that one cannot help suspecting that, at least m this,
spect, he had been affected by wartime ideology.
The Minister of the Right Sanetomo is a curious but not U
terestirrg work. Dazai's identification with his subje~t even
the work an autobiographical flavor, rather in the mann~r _of.
Ogai's shiden. His admiration for Sanetomo's aristocratic md1
DAZA! 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1053
ce to conventions and worldly gossip would be given a fuller
tement in The Setting Sun.
Dazai's wartime literary works also included modern versions
stories from classical literature and Japanese folklore. Shin'-
ku Saikaku Shokokubanashi (New Translation of Saikaku's
ales of the Provinces), published in 1945, consists of twelve dif-
rent stories drawn from eleven books by Saikaku.s6 Dazai may
11 have felt kinship between himself and the hard-pressed he-
~ of Sa~ka~u's stories who frantically try to think of ways of
ymg thelf bills. But even more interesting than his retellings of
ikaku are his a?aptations of traditional children's stories, pub-
ed ~nder the title Oto?i Zoshi after the war, though composed
wartime. The four stones of the collection were originally com-
sed_ to amuse hi~ little daughter while they took refuge in an
-raid s~e!ter durmg the bombing. Dazai managed to impart a
ara~t~nStic flavor to these stories without violating the spirit of
e ongmals. One of the delights of the collection is to find famil-
rfigur~s from other Dazai stories-the heartless man who passes
r a samt, the impractical artist, the scheming woman, and so
-drawn with even greater perception than in stories that di-
ctly involved Dazai. His humor here was the more captivating
cause untouched by self-pity or self-hatred.87
In between these two adaptations of the classics Dazai wrote
ugaru, a seemingly factual account of the journey he made to
·ous scenes in the north of Japan, which he associated with his
ildhood. The work begins in a deliberately restrained manner:
In the spring of a certain year I made a circuit tour of the northern
end of Honshu, for the first time in my life. This trip around the
Tsugaru Peninsula, which took three weeks, was one of the more
important events of my thirty-odd years. I was born in Tsugaru and
spent the first twenty years of my life in Tsugaru, but the only towns
I had ever seen were Kanagi, Goshogawara, Aomori, Hirosaki,
Asamushi, and Owani, and I had absolutely no acquaintance with
any of the other towns and villages of the area.ss
D~za~ made the journey at the request of a publisher who
~. bnng~ng out a series of books describing the return to their
1ve regions of various authors. The experience was especially
 Dawn to the West
poignant for Dazai becaus~ he ~ad not ~or years r~v·
Tsugaru, mainly because of his ambivalent feelmgs _abQ~t his
ily. His reflections on the nature of the Tsugaru region, its sc
and inhabitants, are interrupted often by comments about hi
and his background:
I have said a good many unfriendly things about Hirosaki, but
is not so much an expression of dislike for Hirosaki as of
criticism on the part of the author. I am from Tsugaru. My a
tors for generations were Tsugaru farmers. One might say o
that I am a pure-bred Tsugaru man. That is why I feel no hesita
about speaking ill of Tsugaru. I am sure that I would be .u
anyone from another part of Japan adopted an attitude of comp
superiority toward Tsugaru because of my harsh words. There is
escaping it: I love Tsugaru. 89 •
Dazai's awareness of himself as the descendant of many
erations of peasants· contrasted with h_i~ more freq u:nt refe~e
to belonging to one of the richest families of the. reg10n. This s
recognition gives Tsugaru a specially warm quality. Even the.
sages that suggest, for example, the tensio~ between ~im and
elder brothers, are softened by his realizat10n that he is liome,.
Tsugaru is mainly the narration of Dazai_'s travels. W~ere
he went sake was scarce, and he was determmed not to give
impression of being a beggar from ~okyo wh? has r~turned to
country looking for food. He descnbes reumons with old _scb
friends, drunken parties, recollections of the pa~~- O~cas10
there is a reference to the special conditions prevailmgm Japa
1944: "From Mimaya we walked northward for three hours~
a depressingly narrow path over which the waves ~roke until
at last reached the hamlet of Tappi. This is, quite literally, "'.h
the road comes to an end. The cape is the northernmost trf:
Honshu. I must avoid giving details concerning distances _and s.
ilar facts because of the extremely grave matter of national
fense that has recently arisen." 90 Surely Dazai could n~t ha
been serious in expressing reluctance to disclose info~~t1on
was readily available in any book of geography! But this 1s not
ortly instance of such seeming caution. , .
The return to Kanagi, the town where he was born, is on
the highlights qf the journey:
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1055
l went upstairs, still in my lumberjacket. My brothers were quietly
drinking sake in the best Japanese-style room, the one with the
golden sliding-doors. I thumped my way in.
"I'm Shuji. I'm glad to meet you," I said by way of greeting to
my sister-in-law, then apologized to my brothers for not having
kept in touch. My eldest and second eldest brother said, "Ah," and
nodded slightly. That was all. That is the style of my family. No,
perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is the Tsugaru style.91
c~ passages perf~ctly convey the inarticulate nature of family
m an old-fash10ned Japanese house, but somehow Dazai
nages also to communicate both his admiration for his eldest
ther and his realization that he has never been forgiven for his
t misbehavior. .
The most affecting part of Tsugaru relates to Take, the maid
o took care of him when he was a small boy: "There was one
son above all I wanted to meet on this trip to Tsugaru. I think
her as my mother. I haven't seen her in close to thirty years, but
ave not forgotten her face. I think it might be said that she
termined my whole life." 92
Dazai quotes his own account of Take in "Memories," and
~ declares that seeing her was his ultimate objective in making
Journey.to Tsugaru. When he at last reaches the distant village
ere she hves, he at first has no success in finding her. She has
e .t? an athletic. meet in which her children are participating.
.. ai 1s about to give up the search when one of Take's children
ms from the meet and guides Dazai to her.
Take looked at me with hollow eyes.
"I'm Shoji,'' I said with a smile, removing my hat.
"Goodness!" she said, and that was all. She did not even smile.
Her expression was serious. But soon she relaxed, and then in a
casual, almost resigned, weak little voice she said, "Come inside
an~ watch the meet." She led me into her booth and suggested I sit
beside her. She did not say another word, but sat there in a formal
posture, her hands firmly placed on the round swellings of her
knees inside her mompe, 93 and intently watched the running chil-
.
dren. I was not in the least disappointed. I felt completely at ease, at
last. I stretched out my legs and casually watched the athletic meet,
not a thought on my mind. I felt completely serene and calm, and I

did not care what happened now. This was the first time in my
whole life that I have ever experienced such peace of mind. My
mother who died a few years ago, was a dignified, self-possessed,
excelle~t mother, but she never gave me this strange sense ofsecu-
rity. I wonder if all the mothers of the world give their children
Take's feeling of sweet, peaceful repose: If so, the ~hildren ob-
viously would not wish ever to be anythmg except filial. I can~ot
understand how anyone with such a wonderful moth.er can get sick
or become lazy. Filial piety is a natural emotion. It 1s not a matter
of ethics.94
Although much of Tsugaru !s in_ the nature o~ a .travel diary
or consists of citations from h1stoncal sources, it 1s generally
treated as a novel (shosetsu) by Japanese critics. _N?~ only are
there transpositions in the order of the places Daza1 v1S1ted, ~spe-
cially toward the end of the book, but the climax of the work, his
·on with Take has been shown to contain fictitious elements:
reuru , · d b ·
Dazai did indeed meet Take, but he was accompame Y ~n ac;
quairttance, and he and Take were never .a!one.95 Perhaps this was
only one more example of Da~ai's inab1hty to tell the. truth, but
perhaps also he actually expenenced the peace ~f mrnd he .~e-
scribed, though his actions in no way su.~gest~d 1t. Some cntlcs
even rate Tsugaru at the summit of Daza1 s entue oeuvre, or fi~d
in its central theme, the search for the lost mother, a key to the
understanding of Dazai's aberrant life.96 . ~ino, under whom ne··sfodied medicine while in Sendai, has
One final wartime work, Sekibetsu (Regretful Pa~tmg),. wa.~
completed at the end of February 1945, but not published ~ntil
three weeks after the war ended. In,..~ ov~~b~_tJJ43 the/~~o~
Bungaku Hokokukai (Japanese Literature Patriotic Ass~crntmnl
decided to sponsor the writing of five novels that wguJd ~co~o-
rate the five principles enunciated in t~J:,re.<!~er ~is,~ia ~2;~dt
Declaration. Dazai was one of some fifty wnters who apph.
eilrly the next year for a commission. He was formally. as¥ed ~.
January 1944 to write a work that would embodyJhe t>_nnc1ple ~r.
''111dependerice·-and Amity." In or~er to be awarded this co11:m1S . . ••
sion he had submitted a plan for his proposed no:el, on the life 0
the Chinese writer Lu Hsun while a student m Japan. Dazai ·..
r plished philosophers of the Occident have occasionally man-
stated:
The author is not interested in the literary views of Lu Hsi.in d~rin~
his later years, and he will not touch on Lu Hsi.in's life at that tlllle,
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1057
he intends instead to describe him simply as a sincere and sensitive
young Chinese who studied in Japan where he was known as "Shii-
san." He plans to write a work that will not look down on the
Chinese, and will certainly not irresponsibly agitate them, but will
describe with affection the young Chou Shu-jen from a standpoint
of Independence and Amity, pure and simple. He believes that if
this work is read by young Chinese intellectuals today and con-
vinces them that there are people in Japan who understand them, it
will be more effective in bringing about general peace between
Japan and China than a hundred rounds of shells.97
When the manuscript was completed Dazai appended a note
which he stated that even if he had not been commissioned to
·te a book on the subject of Lu Hsun's life in Japan, he would
ve wanted to write one sooner or later anyway. He insisted that
had been given absolute freedom to write what he chose by the
panese Literature Patriotic Association, and expressed his grati-
e to the association for having entrusted so important a task to
almost unknown writer." 98
Regretful Parting, however much it may have meant to
1 'i-1
azai,, is not a successful novel. it is in the form of a journal kept ' '
an old doctor wnorecaUs student days in Sendai when he was
friend of the young Lu Hsun. He is inspired to w;ite this account
a reporter wlfo, having read Lu Hslin's account of Professor
uested an essay that will suggest the friendship between Japan
d China.
The story goes back to 1904, when the narrator first entered
hoku University. He accidentally meets another student who,
himself, has trouble speaking with the proper Tokyo accent,
discoyers}le i~ ~hf11ese. From the first Lu Hsun expresses
b!:rnnd~~.~~mir~fi9n_f9~Jgp,an, and for oriental civilization in
eral: "The Orient has always displayed incomparably more
fundity in spiriJualmattern than th.e Q<::cide!\t. The most ac-
d to comprehend a small portion of oriental wisdom, and have
intensely impressed, I hear, but the Occident has always
pted to make up with its sci~I1ce for 1ts_1x1vert.):'..JnJliJ,_spi~-
J_regJill." 99
Shu-san (as Lu Hstin is called throughout) has lost patience
 Dawn to the West I DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA
with traditional Chinese medicine after witnessing how powe
it was to alleviate his own father's long illness. At first he inten
to study medicine in Germany, but he was advised that it won
be more efficient to study in Japan because it was closerto Chin"1<
shared the same system of writing, and had a cCJmmon onentai
heritage of decorum.100 He is deeply impressed from the morn
he lands at Yokohama. The cleanliness and order of a· Japan
city, quite unlike anything he has ever seen in China, hn
him especially; and when he sees a young woman dusting
he feels as if he has understood the trlle nat11r.e. ofJ!!eJ<t]Jj. Qf
gods.101 Disillusioned by the Chinese students he sees in Tok
who spend their time practicing ballroom dancing, he decides{
go to distant Sendai. 102 , ~d e~sure acc~pt~nce of his manuscript. In any case, Regretful
Shu-san is treated well in Sendai, especially by Professorp·
jino, but for a time he is suspected by some zealots among t
students of being a Russian spy. In fact, the Japanese victory
the Russo-Japanese War only serves to move him to greater ad
ration for Japan. He discovers in the end the ultimate source
Japanese strength, J25, unbroken line of emperors from Jimmu'
the way to Meiji. s./
Shu-san has much else to say in praise of Japan,and wh
the narrator suggests that the Japanese virtues of loyalty and fi
piety originated in China, he emphatically denies ,it: the frequ
change of dynasties is proof of how little loyalty the Chinese
sess, and filial piety in China is typified by the foolish story of
man who at the age of seventy played with toys like a childJ
order to make his ninety-year-old parents feel young.
Although Shu-san is happy in Sendai, he realizes one ·
when he sees a magic-lantern show of scenes of the Ru
Japanese War and notices the apathy of the Chinese when a
low Chinese is being executed as a spy, that he must retur
China to help his countrymen gain the spiritual strength of
Japanese.
Regretful Parting was a strange subject for Daz~i to
treated, despite his claim to have long been interested in Lu
He prepared himself by spending time in Sendai, and consc1
tiously tried to evoke an authentic atmosphere of 190~. By
time the novel was published, however, the Japanese ideals
had put into Shu-san's mouth had been d~~credited by the de
1059
1945, and when the book was reprinted in 1947 he deleted
ny of the ideological phrases.103
. D~zai ha~ been prnised fen·_ hj~-r~fu~.ctLgu:.ooperate.. withJhe
1t~sts d~nng the 'Yaf, ~nq he himself (as we have seen) in-
ed on this, bu~ the views he expressed in Regretful Parting
dly sugges~ ~es1stance to the war. Perhaps Dazai was sincere;
refusal to Jorn the postwar rush to build democracy in Japan
.es_ts that whatever doubts he had about the militarists, he was
Jlhng tQ ?lame them ~nd their ideals for everything that had
e wrong m Japan. It is also possible that when Dazai wrote
retf~l Parting he ~a~ly need~d ~he money offered by the Jap-
e Literature Patriotic Association, and wrote in a way that
mg is H.1.1f(211Y!!lWlg, and anyone who knows about Lu Hsiin's
eq~e~t role in the _struggle ~gainst Japanese aggression in
a _is hk~ly t.o fi~d ?is pr~fess10ns .ofaclmii;ation for the Jap-
impenal.,mstitutio~fam!ly)u~{~-~~ But even in this
st of Daza1 s longer woffcs, there are pages that reveal the
h of a major writer.
Dazai and his family suffered considerably during the war.
c_e they were b~mbed o.ut of their house, and the nightmarish
ty of these disasters 1s conveyed in several stories written
.after the war, such as "Hf!.kuwei" ,(TwHight, 1946), which
bes the. escape ofth~family from the bombing oIKofu at a
when ~1s daugh~er was suffering from temporary blindn~ss.
h~rro~mg ~xpenences Dazai underwent are effectively con-
· ed m ~Is stones; at the same time, however, it is difficult not to
the. i~pression that this ~as the happiest time of Dazai's life.
was hvil}g wi_th his_,.yife and children, and his concern for their
.Y:~ncLcomfort ~_y_e[!9d~i~,1:!.~~al narcissistic..2£eoccupation
his•. own
·---·-
unhannmess
·---.t'..i'C--- •
H e h a d become, wit
· hout mtendmg
· -···:-- ··-,·-·-
It, a
.husband and father for the one time in his life.
The immedi~te p.ostwar days were chronicled by Dazai in
Y short stones, mcluding the wryly humorous "Shin'yu
~11"Jf!::S2!1rt~sy.f=c1}!,_J246}. 105 The visitor who calls upon
at his house in Ka~agi, ':here he has taken refuge during
last d~ys of the war, 1s t~e mc~~a_tion. of th_~__()c!:~-~11 p~a,sant,
ppos1te.poJ~Jrom the anstocrat_for whom Dazai had come to
the greatest admirat:Ion. The visitor, pretending to be an old
 Dawn to the West 1 DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA
friend, insults Dazai and his wife, drinks up their precious wh
key, then staggers off with a final burst of abuse. "KyooFuji
(The Hospitable Lady, 1948), in a similar vein, tells the story 0
war\Yidow whose sympathies are aroused by the classmate ofh
fa'te h~sband, who has lost his house in an air raid; before long
and his cronies drink her out of the house and destroy her hea
Dazai's most effective evocation of postwar Japan is the
vella Bion no Tsuma(Yillon's Wife, 1947). The story opens wit
bang as the drunken poet Ota?-i b~rsts into h!s hou.se late o
night. His wife, hearing the noise, is not surpns~d, smce he
frequently returned home in this manner; but he is followed by
man and a woman who run the bar where the husband has been
steady customer since wartime days. They say that Otani grab
a handful of money from th~ cash register, and demand that i
returned. Otani by this time is no longer in the house, but his
(who is known by the dimunitive of Satchan) agrees to wor
the bar as a waitress until she has paid back the stolen money.
comes to enjoy the work, and even though she is struck by a se
of disasters-she is even raped by a customer-she manages
remain cheerful, determined to survive. 106 Daza,i's_M..s:~Lg[ c
fulI1ess, expresAedin_ such_ d_i~~i_tEi]~_:__c._haract~rs ~s Sanetomo
-Satchan, no doubt reflects his own lack of this Vlft~
The title, Vi/Ion's Wife, seems to have been based on Da
misapprehension about the character of Fran~ois Villon, who
.supposed to have been a tormente? s~ul, ~uc~ l~ke himse
The wife of the Villon of the story is his chief victim, and,
doxically, it is on the rare occasion when Villon tries to pleas
that he hurts her most deeply. The story, narr~ted entirely
Satchan's point of view, is constructed ~~riat.i111cJ rather !han b
on one temporal point of departure; each of Satcha~ s obse
tions succeeds a previous one without any attempt bemg ma~
coordinate them. The success of this story depends less on the -
) Athan on the evocations of the dark days after the war and
V/oazai's skill in bringing the work to its ~ o n c l u
when Satchan reassures her husband, "There's nothmg
with being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay ali~~.'
_Sbayo(The Setting Sun, 1947) 10s was not only Dazai s
popular novel, but the title passed into common spee~h as a
designating at first members of the artistocracy who (hke the h.
1061
e of the novel) are victims of the postwar changes, an~)ater (by.
1!:!l)P~ople_who lived well on company expenses: The story is
rgely narrated by Kazuko, a young woman who describes her
ewith her mother during the war, their move from the family
me in Tokyo to a place in the country when their money threat-
to run out, the return of her brother Naoji from the South
cific, and finally, her decision to bear the child of a novelist she
~res. One section of the book, entitled "Moo~flower Diary,"
ns1sts of a notebook kept by Naoji while he was under the
u-;gce oLdrugs; ITiore than occasionally it recalls Dazai's own
itings _µnder similar conditions. --·------ - -
While reading The Setting Sun one may easily form the im-
ession that although the characters of Kazuko, Naoji, and the
velist Uehara are distinctly drawn, they are all transmutations
Dazai himself. The !1ihilism of Naoji, Kazuko's determination
·upset the--focial -con'venttons, and the drµ-E,ken despair of
h~ra were all farriiliar aspects of I)azai's own pe-rsona.Iitj Even
. title of the novel, metapliorically alluding to an old family
mg under, seems to have had a special meaning for Dazai; in a
tter written to Ibuse in January 12.,{6 he compared his family's
se in_:!{.aru1giJnIJze...Che1:1:y.,Orcha,:d..!Q.9 However, much of the
terial in The Setting Sun was borrowed directly from the diary·
t by the m~del for Kazuko, a young woman of the aristocracy
!Tied Ota Shizuko. Not long after the war ended, Dazai's stable
ily li~e was once 11:ore upset by hjs drinking and his liaisons
thvanous women. Ota Shizuko became Dazai's mistress and
re his child under circumstances much like those of Kazuko in
novel. Her own account of the events of the story, beginning
Ii. her mother's illness, so closely resembles passages. in The
tmg Sun that there can hardly be any doubt as to where Dazai
ined his information.no But much in the novel has no ante-
dents in the diary and was presumably invented by Dazai.111
D~zai's portrait of Kazuko's mother, "the last lady in Japan,"
ll!~~IH-ID-~';Yn, even though writers like Shiga Naoya and
1ma Yukio, whowete familiar from childhood with the
eh of members of the- a!istocracy, d!ti§.~<;lJ2azai's p9rtrayal of
man of_that class. Though the country-bred Dazai may have
n faulty m the language he put in the mouth of a member of
Tokyo aristocracy, the portrait of the mother is completely
 Dawn to the West
convincing as an t::rnbodiment of all that was worthwhile in
Jap~nof the past, and is Dazai's most effective presentation of th
aristocratic ideal of his Sanetomo.
The novel is given ~"!;<;Rl.b.)Y the contrastin&.ill~!~2Lnar.~}\,
rative, especially by the use of J,s~!at.~~. flashbacks !1:!!.?.E!il.iantlt·
capture moments of special importance:··mnor happenings arei:'
used to foreshadow tragedy, and seemingly irrational occurrenc.est
such as the repeated appearance of snakes in Kazuko's life, lend.
an almost supernatural element to the otherwise realis ·
narrative. ..
Dazai's preoccupation with the supernatural paralleled his;;
increasing a,bsorpti9n.with Christianity. The Setting Sun ,:.;ontains.
many quotatloiis from theJ'.·~·~wTesfament. Some Western reade:r:S,.'
may find that these passages add depth to the story, but otherS:.'.
may be puzzled or even irritated, much as a Japanese, reading:~\
European novel embellished with quotations from the Zen mas,l.'
ters, might doubt the genuineness of the author's beliefs.
The Setting Sun is memorable especially for the character
Kazuko, who is determined to MJyJ]l_e,,s9c.i~l.~.2~~ions an
push back the old morality by her bold gesture of bearing
\ilkgitimc!te child. She believes that both she and Uehara, thou
,)hey belong to different classes, are eq~ally victims: "Victims ?f
;l transitional perio.<;I.QfJ11grality. That 1s what we both certaurl
' are." 112 ·
In some of the short stories written about the same time, th
victim is the narrator, in others he is the victimizer. "Gto" (Ch~.
ries, 1947)·i13 opens with the declaration, "I like to think
parenj§_are-moi:e..,.Ll!l:P..Q!lat!lJha!,i_<;~," an goes on to
scribe how the narrator has indulged his taste for expensive
cacies even when his children are hungry. "~~ichi" (The Fat
1947) has for its epigraph a passage from.Q~ri~sis describing ho •..
Abraham readied himself to Rill his son Isaac at the comman~p{i'
God. The father is willing to sacrifice his only son t().P:'_Ove he is;
righteous; Dazai sacrifices his family, to his pleas~res ~ith
ther t,hejllusion of being righteous pr even any Joy; md~e .. ·.·•··
i~sists that he detests pleasure t~t is unac~ompallit:.<i_by pam. The,.
pleasures iie'has so1.1ght and paid for with inoney that he should.
have spent on his family have brought him only the torments
hell. For him there can never be the quiet happiness of the fa.
gathered around the fireplace of an evening. In the sardonic
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1063
i no Kofoku" (f,he Happiness of the Family, 1948) the central
aracter is a model husband who is also a monster devoid of
tpnan feelings. When a shabbily dressed woman rushes up to his
sk in the government office where he works, he refuses to listen
her desperate request, calmly informing her that it is closing
. The woman commits suicide, but that is no concern of the
cial, who returns home promptly, exactly fulfilling his.role.of a
del s?n ~nd father. Dazai's conclusion was, "T.he happiness of
family 1s. the. root of alJ evil.''
'bazai's family life. bee;~; increasingly erratic toward the
d qf his life. fie rn~gki;Je<i his \Vif~ and children for' prolonged
riods,. an.d. squandere.d...wha.teYer .money his writings brought
. His .Jast".nov:el, Ningen Shilf.kaku (No Longer Human,
8), 114 which some critics have acclaimed as the supreme work
his career, is unquestionably a most moving account, a mix.ture
personal experiences and fiction, but the writing betrays ~he
gular, chaotic life. that he was leading.
No Longer Humanwas the one book that Dazai had to write
final ~tt~~pt t?.el~~~d,<1te.!1trns~lfand his unhappiness. It is a~
~k. o.nJhe he_£.i_!~.~Ed trad~tiQIJS.of)<,1pa,n.~5-~_.s.2{[ety;· out above
It is a record of his alienation from society. Oba Y6z6, the i
e Dazai again called himself, is constantly "performing" for
. er people in the hopes ?f ~.SE~i~!!EK himself and concealing
true nature. The book IS not factual, and Dazai undoubtedly
ggerated his misfortunes, not in order to make the reader feel
pathy (in the manner of an "I novel"), but to make the hero
m even more contemptible. The reader may well be revolted
en die narrator confesse~ for example, that he.. cctnnot r~call
e name of the woman. with whom he first . attempted a love
icide. His insistence that he is unlike..uther.hum,a..ri, beings, and
even been disqualified as a human being, leads up to the
laration, made when he is confined in a m~ntal hospital, "I
d now ceased utterly to be a human being." No doubt such
ections actually occurred to Dazai, but perhaps he was also
uenc~A_.QY_such work,.~-as Dostoevski'~.-~£'.~~..J,:0111.. Qnde~-
und.115 If so; such borrowmg not only enriched the work but
abled Dazai to ·give his port;ait ·oFa .failed ··hero a-t~uch of
·versality. . .::.c:.c--··-··--.... · ..
Y6z6 was disqualified as a human being because, unlike most
an beings, he was sensitive to insincerity, to the conflicting
~oc''C,:-".''C.--,'._"'--'"'.,_';:"'.._---;::_::=;.;_'_--_•<,.,., __-.,,

motives of others, to the. dullness of the world and its pleas
A This awareness brought Yo_zo unhappiness, butfr:a,s. a yi~u
~) a vice. Yo~o, far frolll bemg nonhumap, car~i~s- c~.f!am ~. .
\1 virtues to intolerable extremes. In the end we m~y agree wt
bar hostess who says of Yozo, "When human bemgs get that
they're no good for anything." But this is not the whole
about Yozo. Although he records in his notebooks with de
ing honesty his every transgression of the code of conduct
posed by human society, the cowardly acts and moment~ ofa.
collapse are only one side of the truth. In a superb ;Inlo
only objective witness. t~stifies, ".He was an a11gel," a~ _;1
suddenly made to realize the mcom~leteness o~ Yozos:
portrait. In the way that most !?eople fail t~ see th~ir own er
Yozo had nQt noticed his gentleness.and llis c.<:J.pa1;;1ty foi
, Whatwas·DaZaifo write after No Longer Human? He
last spewed outthe poi§on that had accumulated within his
from chilq.b.QQd, and was presumably no longer 1;1nder !11
pulsion''to ~rite still another version of his autobiographJ
would have to start anew. It was possible now to wnte a
without the narcissism that Dazai's self-analysis had illlB
Goodbye (the title is in English), left unfinished ~t the timeo.
suicide in June 1948, might have developed mto a gem11
comic novel. It is do~e Jo..far.i;;.e in its descriptions of how the
ingeniously rids himself of a series of unwant~cl ~}.;m,le~, a .
brilliance of the di_al9~ue is remarkable even for Daza1. Iti§
possibl~ to guess how this novel would have developed, •:P
Sllgg~sts.the work of a man who has.made a fr.es~.~;art. Th_e
many theories as to why he committed _a love_ smcide with.
1 d_le school m ~ugata after striking a teacher. His father put
particular woman-successfully after , his vanous botchedl
tempts-and probably we shall never know the truth. He and
woman threw themselves into the waters of the TaJllag
voir on June 13. His body was discovered on June_ 19, 1948,
would have been his thirty-ninth birthday,
SAKAGUCHI ANGO (1906-1955)
Sakaguchi Ango has been called the "nucleus" _of the
ha writers,116 an appellation he received ~e~~u~e his wo
ified the sometimes [a~giL,. sometimes ~ manner
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1065
up; and b_ecause his life itself seemed to be a series of acts of
10n ~gamst the e~tablis?ed moral~ty ~nd intellectual assump-
o_f h1s age. He gamed his ~opulanty mthe years i111m~diately
. ing the_ end _of the wa: m 1945, but even during his rela-
y short hfe this populanty waned, and it was not until the
g>70s that a new generation of Japanese readers discovered
books anc}Jound. them congenial.
Ango,11 7 like Da~ai, was born to a well-to-do family in the
he~st of Japan. _His father was a politician, a figure of consid-
le ~port~nce m Ango's native city of Niigata. Ango's rela-
w1t~ his parents ':ere unsa~isfactory from his early
hood. the father was, m the boys eyes, a "disagreeable old
" with whom he had almost no contact,118 and the .mother a
w~man who had n~ affection to spare for her fifth son. Ango
discovered that his mother-his father's second wife-was
Y treated by her stepchildren, two of whom even plotted to
? her, 119 _but as a child he could not understand his mother's
ng aversion to him. Despite the oppressively gloomy atmo-
re of the household, Ango's parents were by no means un-
red: the f~ther was not only active in politics and the director
e local gram exchange but an accomplished writer of Chinese
120 who probably fostered his son's interest in books.
As a boy, especially after he entered middle school, Ango
n plared truant. He later attributed this to his mother's refusal
uy him glasses even though he was so nearsighted he could
read what the teacher wrote on the blackboard.121 But he
s also to have misbehaved and even to have failed deliber-
in order t? ma~e his mother suffer. Ango was expelled from
m a Tokyo middle school where Ango displayed interest in
ture_fo~ the first time. He read Tanizaki's works again and
, eilJoymg them but aware at the same time that he would
r?e able to write as well. 122 He also became interested in
. h1~m and regularly visited a Zen temple where he sat in
tation.
go was graduated from middle school at the late age of
een. For a year he worked as a substitute teacher at an ele-
ary school in Tokyo. 123 His interest in literature continued to
, an_d h~ submitt~d a manuscript for a prize for a best first
I. His failure to wm deflected his interest from literature, and
,Ii,
1
• I
 Dawn to the West
he persuaded himself that he really wanted to become a Bud,
priest. In 1926 he entered the ~ndian ~~ilosophy Departllle
Toyo University, where he studied so d1hgently that he slept
four hours a night. He lived in accordance with §tri~t-W:'?
rules, which he imposed on himself in the hope ofobtain·
lightenment. Excessive study led to a n~r:ous_ breakd?wn,
the time he recovered he had become d1s11lus1oned with B
philosophy,124 although he continued his studi~s. ~he suici
Akutagawa in 1927 came as a shock t? Ango, as 1t d_1d to eve
seriously interested in literature, but 1t prompted him to cons
a literary career again.
In 1928 Ango began to study French at the Athenee Fran
in Tokyo, in the belief that an ability to read French_ would u
1
the treasures of European literature. In the followmg year,
he graduated from Toyo University, he ~nd some acq_uaint
from the Athenee Frans:ais founded the literary magazme K
(Words), which included bot~ original stories and tra~sl
from the French. The magazme, no doubt because of its
conception, sold surprisingly well. Ango published a translatfo
the first issue and an original story, his first, in the secon,d. 125 1
success of the magazine went to the head of ont!/of the edi.
Kuzumaki Yoshitoshi, the nephew and literary executor:.
Akutagawa Ryiinosuke: at the time t_he di~t~nguished publish,
firm of Iwanami was bringing out its edition of the comp
works of Akutagawa, and Kuzumaki threatened to with~ra
mission to publish the remaining volumes of the sen~s u
Iwanami agreed to sponsor his little magazine. Iwanam1 ea
lated, but changed its name to Aoi Uma (The Blue Horse).
first issue of the new magazine featured a story by Ango ~°'·
essay "Piero Dendosha" (An Apostle of Pierrot), the earhe
pression of his absorption with farce. He also translated an>
by Valery on Mallarme and a lecture by Jean Cocteau on.
Satie. For a time Ango was strongly attracted to the p~rs~n~li
Satie, and even compared himself to his fellow rate, g1vmg
French word characters that meant a "dropout" (rakugoslt
term he would frequently use of himself. Ango published ·
second issue of Aoi Uma a free translation of the first chapt
the novel Connaissance de la mart (1926) by the Surrealist
Vitrac (1899-1952). These translations, all made within.the
of a few months, were the only ones Ango ever published.
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1067
In spite of his activity as a translator and some "rather in ten-··
" reading~ in Me~m~e, Stendahl, and Dostoevski, Ango's
ks reveal httle specific mfluence from foreign authors. He dis-
ed being compared to other writers, and even claimed to have
'berately avoided reading many major authors for fear of im-
'ng them.1 27 No doubt there were influences, both from Jap-
e and from Western literature, but they are not immediately
parent.
Ango's talents were quickly recognized. His second story was
ised by Makino Shin'ichi, then an important figure in the liter-
world,128 and his third story earned him an invitation from the
tors of Bungei Shunjil to contribute to a special issue devoted
ew writers. It was predicted in the January 1932 issue of the
.gazine that Ango. would prove to be one of the major new
12
ters. ~ On the basis of three short stories Ango had established
reputation, and when Makino founded the magazine Bunka
'ternry Department), Angowas invited to join the contributors,
g with such well-known novelists, poets, and critics as Ibuse
uji, Kamura Isota, Miyoshi Tatsuji, and Kobayashi Hideo.
go seria~i:ed his first novel in Bunka. No writer has enjoyed a
re ausp1c10us start, but Ango quickly dropped back into an
. urity from which he would not emerge until April 1946, when
~ublishe~ his celebrated essay "Daraku Ron" (Decadence).
nng the m-between years he published stories and articles ir-
larly, usually two or three a year. A first collection of stories,
odani Mura (Kurodani Village), appeared in 1935, and his first
~ovel, Fubuki Monogatari {Tale of a Snowstorm), in 1938,
neither work created a stir, perhaps because his personality as
author had changed; his early reputation was established with
comic writi~gs, but Tale of a Snowstorm is almost unrelievedly
my, reflectmg the unhappy love affair with the minor novelist
a Tsuseko that colored Ango's life during this period.
~go was introduced to Tsuseko in 1932, and they were so
n m each other's company that the mothers of both expected
to marry. Ango himself was sure that Tsuseko would marry
, but could not muster the courage to ask her. In the mean-
, she h~d an affair with another man. Ango was wounded to
ver this, but all the more determined not to allow his image
r as an ideal woman to be destroyed. He was aware that
eko was by no means chaste, but it was essential to him that
 Dawn to the West
their relationship remain pure. 130 He turned to bar girls and.
titutes for company and for several years saw no more
Tsuseko.131 She reappeared unexpectedly, late in 1935, but a
several meetings that depressed them both, they separated
never met again. He wrote several moving stories about Tsu
(calling her by her real name) after her death in 1944, but.lo
before these stories Ango's love had inspired Tale of a Snowsto.
In 1947, when this novel was reissued, Ango appended a n
explaining what had inspired him to write it:
I conceived of this novel in terms of unfolding a story that w.o
consume in fire everything I had ever thought before, in ord
put a full stop to half a lifetime, to bury it in the past; the end o
completed story would marR: the starting point for the second
of my life. In other words, I intended to cast away my despair, 4i
grave for my despair, and then be reborn from my tomb.132
Ango's writings suffered from his indecision during the,
riod of his involvement with Tsuseko. His turbulent state. of
kept him from recapturing the lightness of tone _that had made
first stories so appealing, ~nd he became convmced that he •
nothing to say. All he felt was a craving for fame, which, beca,
it was unfulfilled, brought him despair and a sense ofdefeat
In 1934 his closest friend, the brilliant but unstable N<1gasl-i'
Atsumi, after many attempts, committed suicide. N agashima
begged Ango to die with him, but he refused, ooly to be thr
into such a state of depression by Nagashima's death that he
self began to contemplate suicide. To distract himself
thoughts of death he applied unsuccessfully _for a j?~ ast~e J
ager of a drinking establishment and even tned to JOlil a. circu_s.
Other young writers of the day found a refuge from _despaIT"
political activity, especially of the left, but Ango knew ~1s_o~n
too well to suppose he could adapt himself to the d1sc1phne
being a Communist:
The springtime of my life was dark. I might have fantasies _a
joining a circus and consecrating my life to this work, b_ut1t
become quite impossible for me to entertain such fantasies a
Communism.
At any rate, I was clearly staking everything on human be
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1069
I disliked Communism because the Communists were con-
vinced of their own absolute rightness, of their eternity, of their
truth ....
I dislike revolutions and the use of armed might. There is only
one thing that justifies a revolution-securing liberty.
What I needed was not politics but to make of myself a free
man.135
final separation from Yada Tsuseko in November
Ango moved to Kyoto. He went there not out of any special
est in the ancient capital, but because he wanted to be alone
city of a million people. 136 In his wartime essay "Nihon
a Shikan" (A Personal View of Japanese Culture, 1942) he
ted rather cheerfully how he had spent his first few weeks in
to. There are descriptions of the old temples and the first
ndings of the generalizations about the nature of Japanese
ure that he would formulate a few years later. But his story
to" (The Ancient Capital, 1942) is in a quite different vein. He
"bed his year in sordid lodgings on the second floor of a
restaurant, a building at the end of a dank, sunless alley.
the riffraff of the city ever made their way to the place.
n Ango left Tokyo he took with him one thousand pages of
~script paper, intending to write a major work, but the "light"
him flickered out among the gloomy surroundings. He
t his time playing Go and drinking.
Ango did not mention in this story that while in Kyoto, prob-
before May I 937, he in fact completed the seven hundred
of_Tale of a Snowstorm. He struggled over every page of the
uscnpt, unable to express his thoughts to his own satisfaction.
ound his own work to be pretentious, affected, and even in-
~e,_ th~ugh_ he had hoped above all to "bury" his past by
1bmg 1t with utter truth. When the novel was finished he
• For a full year he left it lying on his desk, gathering dust.
s later he asked himself,
Why, I wonder, didn't I have the courage to destroy the manu-
script? If I was going to make a book out of it, I should have done
so a year earlier. I was desperately poor. I was living on about thirty
~en a month, and I kept getting dunning letters from the publisher
in Tokyo demanding the completed manuscript. But for a whole
 Dawn to the West
year I lacked the strength even to glance at .the manuscript
which the dust piled higher every day, a helpless rage swelling ltl·
my heart. Why couldn't I destroy the 'manuscript? I find it strange,
though not incomprehensible.
At the time I thought of killing myself, I don't remember how
many times. I had despaired of my talent. I asked myself, "Is .tqis
the best I can write? These lies? These insincerities?" It would have
been easier for me to kill myself than destroy my novel.137
Eventually Ango realized that he had in fact achieved
first purpose of the novel, to bury his past, and the discovery gave
him the strength to live. In the summer of 1938 he returned to
Tokyo and delivered the manuscript to the publisher. Iii Kyoto he
1
had struck bottom. His next three years were wasted in drinking
and purposeless wandering, but he was slowly recovering. The
grave he _had built for himself with Tale of a Snowstorm did
hold him forever.
Tale of a Snowstorm has few admirers. Ango was ready lo
jettison it and all his early fiction as being "childish, deceitfn
contemptible." Indeed, even if he had actually destroyed all
prewar writings, his reputation would not be much _affected.
hind the successful works, however, were the experiences of
prewar and the wartime years, and the unc~nventio~al vie~:
which he startled readers in 1946 had thelf roots m the lo
depths" of his Kyoto years.
The few works composed during the war are of int1ere~m
"Shinju" (The Pearls, 1942) is in the form of an invocation to,t
nine members of a suicide squadron of miniature submarines t.
attacked Pearl Harbor. Unlike other Japanese military men wh
though they firmly declared that they did not expect to retu
alive, secretly" feared they might not possess the courage to
out this resolution, these men were absolutely certain they
not return. Death had become as much a part of them as
,hands or feet. Ango, by way of ironic contrast, recalls how he
spending his time while these heroes were preparing for t?e
tack. He was drinking with friends, so heavily that he did
know even the next day that war had broken out. He first be
aware that something unusual had occurred when he saw
hanging along the streets:
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1071
I finally found a barber shop with a radio. The news would be
broadcast at any minute. I was the only customer. Just as the barber
starte~ to shave my cheeks, there was a reading of the Imperial
Rescnpt, followed by Prime Minister Tojo's solemn words. The
tears flowed. A time had come when words were superfluous. I
would have to offer my life too, if the occasion arose.138
ter the war Ango, recalling what he had felt but could not write
1942, stated:
I could not for a moment suppose that Japan would win the war.
Japan would lose. Worse, it would cease to exist. And I was resigned
to the fact that I would perish along with my country. So I was
completely optimistic.139
. ~go's mo_st 11:oving statement on how he interpreted the
1t10n of a wnter m wartime appeared in a brief essay published
July 1:43. He denie_d that literature could serve a useful pur-
se dunng the war; if the object was to arouse martial senti-
nts, patriotic marches were a good deal more effective than
rature. If 11:ore planes were needed to win the war, they would I I
I'
ve_ to be built, whatever the cost, and it might be better for him
WI~ld a hammer and help build them. But as long as he was
ldmg a ~en, ~e wanted the freedom to write calmly and unhur-
dly. Puttmg literature on a wartime basis was bound to be not
ly ineffectual but contradictory.Ho
~go declare? after the war that nobody had spent the war
s m a more disreputable manner than himself. He remained
Tokyo even during the worst of the. bombings, when almost
ryone else fled. His experiences at the time would supply him
materials for his best-known story, "Hakuchi" (The Idiot,
6). But th~ outbreak of war induced him to consider seriously,
the first. time, the nature of Japanese tradition. His essay "A
sonal View of Japanese Culture" opened with the blunt
wal, "I know almost nothing about the Japanese culture of the
·"141 H e con fiesse d that he had never seen the Katsura De-
ed Palace, which the German architect Bruno Taut 142 had so
-~ly pra~sed, nor was he familiar with the paintings of the
mga artists. He had hardly traveled anywhere in Japan, and

he had had the misfortune to be born in Niigata, the city that
had branded as the most vulgar in all Japan. He liked even
neon signs at Ueno and on the Ginza, though Taut had deplo
them. He knew nothing about the tea ceremony. The only ar
had mastered was that of getting completely soused. Worst of.
he did not feel spiritually impoverished because his life had be
empty of the glorious traditions of Japanese culture.
Ango mentioned how Cocteau, when he visited Japan, as
why the Japanese no longer wore kimonos, and lamented the
gerness of the Japanese to jettison their own traditions in favor.
Western ways. Cocteau's opinions irritated Ango:
Just because something has been done for a long time in Japan
not prove that it is indigen'ous. Some foreign practices that have
been adopted by the Japanese might in fact be more suitable
the present ones. This is not a matter of imitation but ofclisco
Goethe was inspired to write his masterpieces through h.ints he
covered in the works of Shakespeare; and even in arts that plac1s
premium on originality, imitation has frequently led to discove
Inspiration often begins in the spirit of imitation and ends
discovery. 143
Ango recalled that when the wooden bridge over the Shi
River at Niigata was replaced by an iron bridge he had
distressed to think that the longest wooden bridge in Japan
vanished, but as he grew older the sense of loss had faded, a
now seemed quite proper that wooden bridges should give w
iron ones.
I am not the only one who has changed. Most Japanese feel
not sad, when they discover that the appearance of their
places has been completely altered by the presence of Weste
buildings. New transport facilities are needed and elevators are
a necessity. A more convenient life is more important to the
anese than the beauty of tradition or of the native Japanese i:ip
ance. Nobody would be discomforted if all the temples in
and Buddhist statues in Nara were completely destroyed,
would certainly be inconvenienced if the street cars stop
ning. What matters to us are the "necessities of life," and even
old culture disappeared in entirety, life would not come to an .
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1073
And as long as there is life, there is no need to worry about our
individuality.144
Ango supposed that he was typical of Japanese intellectuals
not knowing abou~ the traditional culture, but that was nothing
be ashamed of. It 1s true that Taut made many discoveries, but
t was because he was not a Japanese:
Taut had to discover Japan, but we can do withol!t discovering
Japan ~ecause we are in fact Japanese. We may have lost sight of
our ancient culture, but we have not lost sight of Japan ....
. It is v~stly amusing to European eyes to see how the Japanese
encase thelf short, bowed legs in trousers, wear Western clothes,
bustle along the streets, dance, throw away the tatami in their
houses in order to fornish them pretentiously with cheap tables and
chairs; but _we are pleased with the convenience. There is absolutely
no connect10n between their viewpoint and ours.145
Ango opened the second section of this essay, entitled "On
lgarity," with a description of his visits to temples and gardens
Kyoto. He came. to rea~i~e t_hat loneliness and perishability
re the two essential qualities m both the architecture and the
dens; the eternal, unchanging traditions admired by Taut and
teau wer~ ~o more than a misconception. The Japanese
ded to be md1fferent to worldly things because they knew that
the ?1ost beautiful object of art could not be absolute. Ango
ractenzed the Japanese attitude as "rejecting anything half-
y, they have chosen the purity of 'the best is nothing' (naki ni
146
kazaru)." Viewed in this light, the noble simplicity of the
ts~ra_Detached Pala~e and_ the gaudy vulgarity of the Toshogii
ikko are both marnfestations of passing tastes. Ango himself
ed to prefer vulgarity to the boredom of what passed for good
essay concluded with a defense of functionalism ex-
~ed in the la~guage o~ paradox. He described three things that
impressed him as bemg especially beautiful: a prison, a dry-
plan~, and a _destroyer. Each was built for a specific purpose
achieved this purpose without artificial ornamentation. He
erred this kind of beauty to the temples of Nara. Art for its
sake was empty and superfluous: "If it seems necessary, the
,I,

Horyuji should be tom down to ma~~ room_for a park~ng lot.
people's glorious culture and traditions will not pensh on tha,t
account." 147 ....
"A Personal View of Japanese Culture" is unsystematicallj'
presented, and not all the arguments are lucid, but A~go's pointf
are hardly less surprising to readers today than to their first rea~:-
ers. However, this is not a case of paradox for the sake of parar:
dox: his rebelliousness is clearly genuine, and from these first.
thoughts on the nature of Japanese culture would emerge his
celebrated work, "Daraku Ron" (Decadence).
148
Ango had published collections of stories and essays and
novel before "Decadence" appeared in the April 1946 issue of the,
literary magazine Shincho, but his name_ was known to ~elativel!
few readers and editors seldbm asked him for manuscnpts. ThlS
essay, together with the story "T?e Idiot," which ap~eared tw9
months later in the same magazme, made Ango nationally .fa~
mous and the editors of the many new magazines that appeared
149
in 1946 badgered him incessantly to write :or them. These :wo
works established Ango as an important literary figure, but m Il
sense they also destroyed him as a writer. Although he re:us~g.
some orders for manuscripts, he wrote many others, averagmg m
July 1947 (to cite one instance) thirty to forty pages a_day, qui:~·
apart from the story "Nyotai''. (A Woman's Body), which was b.1~
principal concern.150 The stones are ~~r the most part unmemo
ble and the articles are wordy, repet1t10us, and badly construct
Du,ring his last five years he wrote mainly detecti~e novels, hist ...
ical fiction, travel accounts, and other lightweight works that
added little to his stature. But a handful of works, most of theit1
written just after the war, made Ango a hero in the eyes of ma·
Japanese. . , " .,
r- It is not hard to guess what m Ango s essay Decadence
" captured the imaginations of the Japanese. There was, first of
the appeal of the unexpected, the setting of accepted values
their head. In "A Personal View of Japanese Culture" Ango
J seriously, but in farcical tones, insJsted ?!1_!~~--desirability of
g,gj!}' and bad ta~t~; in "Decaden~~ preac~ed-the-gosp
. fallingJioniinoral standards,. an.s:yil agamst which_Jap<:11:se
long been warned by Confucian teachers, and which durmg;
~r especially haq be,~n anathema to the lead~rs of a consec
Japan. Not only were Ango's idea~-Il:~on~~~1-~n.'1l~ but they
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1075
brased_with skill and wit. The essay opens, for example, with a
agraph that ironically combines colloquial Japanese with the
chaic poetry of the Manyoshit, obviously poking fun at wartime
opagandists who had embellished their slogans with Manyoshit
ases. ~ome young men have indeed fallen like the ch_erry bl?s-1 ;IA
ms, as m the old poetry, but many others have remamed ahveV '!
dare now black-market operators. The woman who saw off her
sband with ~'such admirable courage now bows only per-
nctorily before her husband's funerary tablet, and soon another
an will take the husband's place. Other moralists have lamented
·s decadence, but Ango approves: the heroes whose conduct was
. humanly noble have now become human again.
People tend to become decadent. The righteous warrior and the
saintly woman both slip from their pedestals. It is impossible to
prevent this, and even if one could, that would not help to save
human beings. Human beings live and decline. There is no conve-
nient short cut for saving people that exists outside this truth. We
have become decadent not because we lost the war but because we
are human; we become decadent because we are alive, that is alJ.151
was not merely that Ango recognized the human foibles that
mpel people to fall from virtue into vice, but he insisted that the
cess was necessary, that a person must fall as far as possible
ore one can discover and save oneself. What was true of each
ividual Japanese was also true for Japan.
"Decadence" was given immediacy by Ango's relation of
sonal experiences during the war. His observations at times
m cynical, as when he expresses doubts that there were ever in
pan loyal vassals or filial sons who carried out acts of vengeance
the manner prescribed by the warrior's code of bushido, but in
6 there was real cause for him to observe:
Of all peoples the Japanese basically muster up the least hatred and
maintain it for the shortest time. Yesterday's enemy is today's
friend; this easygoing optimism is a reality and not a counterfeited
emotion. To cooperate with yesterday's enemy-no, tp become
bosom friends-is an everyday occurrence, and the more bitter the
enemy, •the more intimate we become. We want to serve a second\1,1
master JUSt as soon as the first one is out of the way, and we even/i
r
 Dawn to the West I DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE Bt!RAI-HA
,'like to serve yesterday's enemy. If there had been no prohibition
being taken alive and suffering the shame of becoming prisoner ·
would have been impossible to stir the Japanese into going
battle, so we submitted to the prohibition; but our real feeli
were precisely the opposite. 152
l It is easy to imagine what a powerful effect such words h
( on Japanese in 1946 when the. c.ordiality. of their relat. ion.. s with th~
( Americans, their recent enemies, threw mto doubt the value of
) the sacrifices they had made during the war. Of course,
exaggerated in his portrayal oft~~ J~panese character, but unl
there was an underlying truth m his comments they would .n
have found s~'d-iareaarres·ponse.
Ango also dealt in this essay with a matter of special impor
tance to Japanese in considering their f~.11!~~e, the fate of the "em,.
peror system":
The "emperor system" seems to me to be an extremely Japanes~
(and, consequently, perhaps original) political creation. The systcm,l:
was not started by any emperor. It is true that the emperors th
selves sometimes instigated conspiracies, but normally they
nothing at all, and none of their conspiracies ever s~cceede~;
stead, they were banished to islands or took refuge 1r. the dis
mountains. In the final analysis, it was always for political r
that their existence was tolerated. Even when Japanese societ
got about them, they would be dragged forth for political r
detected by what may be called the politicians' sense of s;11ell;
politicians sized up the proclivities of the Japanese and d1scov
that the "emperor system" suited them. It didn't have to be.
imperial family. If they could have found a sub~titute, a Confu.
nist, a Buddhist, or a Leninist would have done JUSt as well. But;
fact was, there wasn't any substitute.153
At a time when many intellectuals, reverting to their pre
Marxist beliefs, had turned against the "emperor systelll," A
not only insisted on its peculiar historical significance for Ja
but declared that if the emperor had not ordered the Japan
surrender, they would have charged with bamboo spear
... American tanks and have been knocked off like clay dolls, re
1077
of how much they disliked the war and the thought of
ath.154 But as long as the system continued to exist, it would
ays be taken advantage of by politicians. He continued:
People of Japan! I call on you to achieve a degeneration (daraku) of
the Japanese and of Japan itself.... As long as the "emperor
system" continues to exist and this historical mechanism is inter-
twined with the conception of Japan, we cannot hope there will
ever be a true flowering of humanity and human life in Japan .... I
have been calling for the degeneration of Japan, but my true mean-
ing is the reverse: today, Japan and Japanese ways of thinking are
sunk in a vast morass of degeneration. We must plunge down from
the "healthy morality" permeated by the mechanism of our feudal
heritage and, stripping off our clothes, step down onto real ground.
We must, by a degeneration from "healthy morality" once more
become real human beings.155
Ango's argumentation is not logical, and some statements
m to contradict others. Probably he intended each paradox as a
ust of the sword into the old morality, rather than as a building
k in a new morality. Even his use of the word daraku, the
e of the essay, is puzzling: at one point he calls for a daraku,
ailing off, from the old morality, at another insists that Japan
in fact sunk in daraku.The act of daraku (whether translated as
cadence, dissoluteness, degeneration, or falling off) must be
sitive, an act of facing up to the least attractive, the dirtiest of
ths, thus passing through the gates of hell before one begins the
inful ascent to heaven.156 The man who commits daraku is al-
ys an outsider, but his loneliness is a path that leads to God. 157
"Decadence" makes absorbing reading not only because of
creed of daraku but because of the vivid glimpses of the bomb-
g of Tokyo. Ango described people just after a raid, indifferent
the bodies lying in the streets, not noticing pools of blood, or if
ey noticed showing no more interest than in a bit of scrap paper,
e saw people warming their hands before a burning house even
the owner frantically attempted to extinguish the flames. Yet,
insists, there was no daraku; that began after the end of the
_158
Ango recalled rather nostalgically a Tokyo that was pitch-
 Dawn to the West l DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA
black at night but where there was no danger of thieves. The
turned Tokyo into an "unbelievably beautiful paradise" where
endlessly absorbing spectacle was daily reenacted for the benefiJ
of the spectators. One old lady in his neighborhood complained of
how boring it was on days without raids. 159 Of course, Ango was.
not entirely serious in this attitude, but unlike most other people'
who wrote of Tokyo during the bombings, he was actually<there,
During the war Ango, hoping to escape military servicei
joined a film company that made propaganda films that were
intended to boost morale. He lived in an air-raid shelter in the
garden of Oi Hirosuke, the writer, refusing to be evacuated, prob-
ably because of the insights into human nature that Tokyo pro-
vided. He himself seems to have been passing through hell as
necessary, condition of going' to heaven. It is not clear to what
degree his story "The Idiot" is based on his experiences at this;
time. The hero of the story, like Ango, works for a film company;
and the descriptions of the fires are so vivid that they surelyreflecf
· actual observation: there are few comparable accounts of what it
meant both physically and spiritually to live through the born{)~
ings of Tokyo in 1945. The story opens on a sardonic note: "Vari'::
ous species lived in the house: human beings, a pig, a dog, a he~\
a duck. But actually there was hardly any difference in their styl~
of lodging or in the food they ate." 160 . ,,,i
The neighbors include prostitutes, a brother and sister whQ:
have lived as man and wife, and a madman whose wife is a11 idi9"t;.
Most live in squalor and survive by theft, or even murder. Izaw~i'
a scenario writer, supposes that the degenerate state of the neig!i~
borhood has been caused by the war, but his landlord,,atailQJ;~
says that things have always been much the same. One n(ght.wh
Izawa returns from work he finds the idiot woman crouchmg
the cupboard among the bedding. He cannot underst~d he~ · ,,
coherent mumblings, but decides to let her spend the mght, sine~;
she is obviously frightened to return home. Eventually he underr
stands that the woman, who has been injured by her mad h
band, has come to his room supposing he loves and will she
her. At first he is dumfounded, but gradually becomes aware t
even an idiot woman could give some meaning to a life wh
only pleasure has been the fear and excitement of each da~'s
Izawa refuses to evacuate even when the raids come ommou
1079
close to his neighborhood, but when the bombs actually start fall-
ing, he and the woman flee. As they run the woman suddenly
tops and starts to go back. Izawa shouts at her, saying she must
ust him, and she nods, her first human reaction. She follows him
utely. "It was so touching that Izawa felt quite dizzy. Now at last
e was embracing a human being, and he was filled with immea-
rable pride about that human being." 161 That night, as she
eeps in the fields, he plans to go with her to "the most distant
ssible railway station in search of a roost."
Izawa's decision to remain in Tokyo recalls Ango's life in the
wer depths of Kyoto. A craving to know the worst, the living
ell and the hell of death, kept him there. The woman is more like
whimpering animal than a human being, but she needs him, and
er mute nod restores not only her human dignity but his. They
'11 stay alive and find a place to live together.
The story created a sensation from the first. Eventually Ango
me to be irritated by the praise accorded to this one work and
sisted that others of his stories were even better. However, his
·end Ishikawa Jun was sure, whatever Ango himself might say,
at "The Idiot" was a masterpiece; more, it was "Ango's
tirety." 162
None of Ango's other stories enjoyed the fame of "The
diot," though several are of exceptional interest. The most strik-
g is "Sakura no Mori no Mankai.no Shita" (Under the Forest of
herry Trees in Full Bloom, 1947), a combination of folktale and
rror story. It opens with the declaration that it has only been
ce the Edo period that Japanese have flocked under the cherry
lossoms to drink, to vomit, and to have fights by way of express-
g their joy over the spring; in the past people were afraid to
alk under the cherry blossoms and nobody thought they were
eautiful. Ango cited instances from literature and history of peo-
e who went mad as the result of walking under the cherry blos-
ms or who took circuitous routes in order to avoid them.
The story itself is of a mountain bandit who robs and kills
ssing travelers. Even this brutal, bloodthirsty man had felt
raid when he passed under the blossoms; he felt as if his soul
as scattering with the petals drifting down from the trees,163
No doubt Ango felt greater pride over having written this
ory than in any derived from personal experiences. He was at-

tempting to touch the very wellsprings of literature, as he had .
defined them in the essay "Bungaku no Furusato" (The Home of ·
Literature, 1941), where he had traced the origins of literature to
elements found in three works, the fairy tale "Red Riding Hood;'.'
an obscure Kyogen play called Onigawara, and an episode in The
Tales of Ise. What these disparate stories have in common is n.ot
having a moral and keeping the reader always at a distance; they
possessed "something like the coldness of a precious stone, a ~:ind
of absolute loneliness, an absolute loneliness engendered by life
itself." 164 This existential loneliness was for Ango the ''home.
land'' of literature, a cruel and salvationless homeland. Works of
literature that are more suitable for adults, embodying moral or
social values,
.
were a superstructure
l
elevated above these
foundations.
Ango wrote a few other stories with the mythic qualities of
"Under the Forest of Cherry Trees," but he seemed to have lost
the strength to confront the loneliness of human existence .. He
dra~ heavily and, as he became more and more desperately
pressed to keep up the quantity demanded of him, he took .tQ
using drugs. He often took more than a lethal dose of barbiturates
at night, washing it down with raw alcohol. Eventually he broke
down, and in 1949 he was confined as a mental patient. Even after
he was released, he still suffered from what he called acute loneli.~
ness. It was not that he was alone-by this time he had a devoted •
wife and a child to whom he was passionately attached-'but he
could not write the kind of literature he himself admired. He
wrote historical fiction, gossip about members of the Diet, criti-
cism of the Communist party, accounts of bicycle races-the kinds
of articles that were welcomed by the mass audience of the weekly
magazines. But he was finished as a writer.
· Ango seemed fated to be remembered as a minor· though
unusually interesting writer when he was "rediscovered" in the
early 1970s. He was subsequently given the kind of critical atten:-
tion that only a handful of postwar writers have received. It may
be that young people, disillusioned after their activism of tR~,
1960s, found Ango's writings, with their insistence on stripping
away all pretenses and dogmatism, especially relevant. Future
generations of readers are likely to share their aclmiration, an1;
Ango seems assured of a niche in the Japanese literature of th.~
twentieth century.
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE 8URAI-HA 1081
ODA SAKUNOSUKE (1913-1947)
Oda Sakunosuke was closely associated with the burai-ha,
especially during the last ye~rs of his brief !ife. He would i:neet
Dazai Osamu and Sakaguchi Ango at bars m Tokyo, sometimes
for the ostensible purpose of having their conversations recorded
in a magazine, 165 and he drank heavily, in the manner ~xpecte_d of
a believer in the burai ideals. Oda died of tuberculosis at thi~ty-
[our, his premature death having been hastened not only by_ d~mk
but by drugs: a widely publicized photograph showed O~a mJect-
ing philopon into his arm with a hypodermic needle.1 66 Like other
members of the group, he admired French literature, "'.as ple~sed
to think of himself as an outsider constantly at odds with society,
arid expressed strong dislike of the writings of Shiga_ Naoy~ and
his followers. For a time, especially during the years immediately
after the war, his writings enjoyed considerable popularity, and he
wrote prolifically in response to the demand for manuscripts, but
most of his hastily composed manuscripts have been forgotten,
and it seems unlikely that he will be rediscovered by a new
generation. . , .
Like other members of the burai group, Oda s literary career
began before the war. Indeed, his most successful works, "Meoto
Zenzai" (Hurrah for the Happy Couple!) 167 and "Horo" (Foot-
loose) both appeared in 1940.
Oda was first recognized by Takeda Rintaro, no doubt be-
cause they shared a common background as memb~rs of the
Osaka chonin class. Oda's devotion to Osaka and its culture
stayed with him throughout his life. Even during the war his chief
publications were descriptions of Osaka: "Ki no Miyako" (The
City of Trees, 1944) was in a vein reminiscent of Nagai Kafu's
evocations of the old Tokyo; but Oda was not only an Osaka man
through and through, but insisted on his descent from the gesaku
writers of his native city.1ss He also translated into modern Jap-
anese works by Saikaku and identified himself with more recent
Osaka writers like Uno Koji.
Oda's writings recognizably belong to the burai group be-
cause they most frequently treat the dropouts from society, fail-
ures who are unable or unwilling to accommodate themselves to
the behavior expected of them by society. Sometimes even such
people manage to end up happily. Choko, the heroine of "Hurrah
 Dawn to the West 10
for the Happy Couple!" becomes a geisha. She falls in love with'
Ryukichi, a married man who is an extreme case of the spoiledt
son of a rich Osaka family. Ryukichi occasionally attempts to earn
a livfog, but his efforts are sporadic and inevitably end in failure,
Again and again Choko uses her savings to set R yukichi up in}
business,, but Ryukichi usually squanders the money in a fewi
nights of dissipation. After many failures, an old friend lends
them money to open a cafe, which is surprisingly successful. Just<
at this time Ryukichi's father dies, but Ryukichi, embarrassed to
have a geisha as his common-law wife, forbids Choko to attend· •
the funeral. Annoyed, she turns on the gas, but is saved, only to >
receive a coldly formal letter from Ryukichi announcing the end
of their relationship. Ten days 1later he reappears, this time cheer,.
fully informing her that the letter was a ruse to induce his brother.,
in-law to divide the father's estate. Choko and Ryukichi, reunited,,
go to a restaurant to eat "husband and wife zenzai." The story is
only mildly interesting, but the deft touches oflanguage and char-'
acterization mark this as a work in the tradition of Saikakt:1, the
first master of Osaka fiction.
Other stories by Oda are in a more somber idiom, but the.
attitude-the wry amusement of the observer of the human com-
edy-remains the same. His heroes are usually failures, though
sometimes (in the manner of Saikaku) Oda supplies an unexpect.;
edly cheerful ending to a story, as in "Footloose," where the char~
acter Jumpei, after innumerable setbacks, most of them due to his
fecklessness, has the sudden revelation that his hands will always
keep him alive. This unexpectedly positive conclusion to a story of'
repeated failures harkens back to the never-say-die world
gesaku.
Oda's stories vary in mood and in the degree of skill
hibited in the narration, but he was often able to capture the
reader's interest with an intriguing first paragraph, as in this
example:
Narao as a child was naturally stupid. He was nearsighted an~
clumsy at performing whatever he was asked to do. But he excelled•
at one thing, catching flies, and he would catch them whenever he ·
felt lonely. 169
The story of Narao and his disagreeable elder brother ShOi--',
chi, the children of a doctor and his mistress, is not remarkable{
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1083
ut the conclusion-Narao decides to work as a medical assistant
t a leprosarium-is at once affecting and believable, and the final
aragraph, where Narao refuses to see his brother again, except to
lay one final chess game, suggests the dignity of even the rate.
Oda's stories, regardless of the incidents related or the effec-
ve details, tend to lack structure or shape. One incident is related
after another, sometimes with only a word or two to indicate that
several years have elapsed, and there is seldom a cumulative effect
.to the successive anecdotes. The stories start and stop more or less
arbitrarily. Oda had the gifts of a gesaku writer, and his evoca-
tions of the plebeian, commercial city of Osaka are adroit, but it
dom happens that the reader becomes aware of anything
eeper than surface interest.
Probably Oda did not claim much more for his writings. His
essay "Kanosei no Bungaku" (The Literature of Possibility, 1946)
develops the argument that although hidebound orthodoxy domi-
nates the Japanese literary world, foreign literature, which recog-
nizes no such artificial restraints, is a "literature of possibility."
he orthodoxy that Oda deplored is that of the "I novel," as
eroplified particularly by Kambayashi Akatsuki, who had
arshly criticized Oda's debut story. Oda declares that he had
ever thought of becoming a novelist before reading Stendahl at
the age of twenty-six; 11o he had earlier written plays, if only be-
.cause Japanese drama was not hamstrung by rigidly prescribed
standards. The "I" novelists had dismissed Stendahl and Balzac as
mere "fabricators" of stories, and insisted that the "I novel," as
practiced in Japan, was pure literature uncorrupted by falsehoods.
Oda, perhaps because of his love of gesaku literature, came to
detest stories of personal experiences, mental attitude novels, and
other varieties of autobiographical fiction. It seemed to him that
because modern Japanese literature was not a literature of possi-
bility but of limitations, he had no choice but to strike out on his
own.
At first Oda tested the intelligence of the potential audience
for fiction by including absurdities in his lectures on literature; he
discovered that most people in the audience took him quite seri-
ously, not realizing that "the novelist is as big a liar as the theolo-
gian, the educator, the politician or the swindler." 111 Critics of
literature assume that there is a "model" for every character, that
;the novelist, out of a sense of professional duty, invariably in-
 Dawn to the West 1084
spects the scenes where his stories are set, and that the novelist
never describes women unless he has extensive experience of
them. Oda was sure that the critics were mistaken. He mentioned
that in his story "Seso" (The State of the Times, 1946) he had
described reading court records of the trial of the notorious Abe
Sada; 112 the critics believed him, but he had actually invented the
"records" and had never read any evidence concerning the trial.
Despite Oda's insistence on the fictitious nature of his stories,
. the critics have indeed come up with a "model" for Choko in
"Hurrah for the Happy Couple!"; 173 his friends were at pains to
avoid Oda while he was writing a novel, for fear he would portray
them in some thin disguise; 174 and his description of the abortion
undergone by a certain actres~ adhered so closely to the facts that
publication of his novel Seishun no Gyakusetsu (The Paradox of
Youth, 1941) was banned by the authorities.175
The story "The State of the Times," perhaps the best of Oda's
postwar writings, revealed how frequently he relied for hismate-
rials on personal experiences or the experiences of people he
knew despite his insistence to the contrary. "The State of the
Times," however, is in no sense an "I novel." Oda transcended the
limitations of the autobiographical materials by introducing anec-
dotes and reminiscences that are only casually related to the nar-
rated facts, and by arranging the materials in nonlinear time. The
"present" of the story is Osaka in December 1945.
The story opens with an account of the visit of an old school-
. master who is attempting to make some money on the black mar.;
ket. Oda pities the old man, but at the same time he is irritated by
the intrusion, which interrupts the composition of a story. He had
written only the opening lines before realizing that the intended
story oflife in 1935 no longer had the same meaning as it did ten
years before. All the established values have been perverted: a
respectable old man who in the past would have lectured his stu-
dents on morality now scrounges for a few yen, and a Kyoto
geisha can earn one hundred thousand yen in a month:. "Th~
country has fallen, and those who prosper are the black-market
operators and the women; but even among the black-market op-
erators some are as miserable as this old schoolmaster, and some
women sell their youth for a handful of rice." 176 . •·
The ironic reference to Tu Fu's famous poem about what ts
left after a kingdom has fallen leads into recollections of 1941.17?
DAZA! 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1085
Oda's book The Paradox of Youth had just been banned as being
injurious to public morality. He is extremely depressed because he
realizes that for the time being he will be unable to write about
the way of life of the common people of Osaka in his chosen
manner. He goes to a bar in the hopes of distraction. The madam
remarks that she has never slept with an author, and makes her-
selfreadily available, but Oda, distressed by her brazen approach,
tries to leave. Fortunately for him, another customer enters, a
man whom Oda recognizes as a former leftist who is now a re-
porter with literary ambitions. They talk about the banned book,
and Oda tells the other man:
We entered high school after you and your friends had come a
cropper with the left-wing intellectual movement. The left-wingers
renounced their faith (tenko) right before our eyes, and in extreme
cases even went over to the right wing. But we could not go along
either with the left or the right. We felt distrust-it was the most
passive kind of distrust, but it was still distrust-for any form of
ideology or system. But this doesn't mean that we had fallen into a
state of profound anxiety. We spent our youth aimlessly, a vague
expression on our faces that suggested we might or might not have
obtained enlightenment, that we might be either young or old. It
was a kind of decadence, I suppose. You were passionately enthusi-
astic about your ideology, but we, the generation now in our twen-
ties, were not passionate about anything.178
Oda, leaving the reporter with the madam, makes his escape.
As he walks he recalls bits of his conversation with the madam
that might be worked up into a story. No doubt such a story
would be banned by the police on moral grounds; but had not the
gesaku writers of the Edo period been put in manacles for similar
olfenses? He had been stigmatized as a decadent; very well, he
would act the part, and not attempt to accommodate himself to
the times.
The story shifts to the present again. We are told that Oda's
wife is embarrassed by his dissipated burai stories. His daughter
~hrinks whenever her classmates mention his name. But Oda can-
not give up his accustomed materials. He recalls how once he had
wanted to write about Abe Sada, a story that perfectly suited his
particular nature as a gesaku writer with a taste for the grotesque.

Once again, the story shifts, this time to 1<:>44, when Oda was
shown the court records of Abe Sada's trial. He wanted desper:..
ately to use this material for a story, but there was absolutely no
chance of publishing such a story as long as the war emergency
lasted.
Returning to the present, Oda describes how one night, as he
was trying to remember what he could of the trial, someone
knocks on his door. It is an elementary school classmate named
Yokobori. The man's face is bruised and swollen, and his clothes
are in rags. Oda, even as he invites Yokobori in, recalls the various
occasions when he has been victimized by his old classmate, who
always turns to Oda when he needs money. As lie listens to
Yokobori's account of his pres<rnt misfortunes, Oda thinks of writ-:
ing a story about him; it would fit quite naturally into his charac-
teristic manner:
Ever since those long ago days when I wrote my first story, my
works, of whatever description, have been smeared from one end to
the other with the same coloration, a wanderlust that reflects the
vagrant life I led when I was growing up. I realize now that life for
me has been a perpetual motion .... Only the vertiginous changes
of time and place, like a revolving lantern, have provided an aim
for the unchanging drone of my attempts to protect a sensibility
that is fortified by neither system nor ideology from the wounds of
settling down in one place. That is why, even though I intended to
describe the state of the times, I would only be using it as a pretext
for portraying Yokobori's wanderings. Yokobori would be~ome a
mere puppet who had borrowed my sensibility in order to wander
over the stage of "the state of the times." I felt miserable at the
thought that such a story would not differ in the least from the
stories I wrote years ago.
"No, it's just that the state of the times today is imitating your
old stories." 119
"The State of the Times" concludes with an account of Oda's
meeting with the man who had lent him the court records of Abe
Sada's trial. He says that the records were destroyed during the
war, then mentions that Sada was once his mistress. Oda turns his
attention to the girl who has just served tea. Perhaps he could
DAZA! 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1087
write about her. The windowpanes rattle in the wind blowing over
the burned-out ruins.
"The State of the Times" is not only an absorbing story but
presents a convincing picture of Oda at work as a writer. Unwit-
tingly perhaps, he made it quite clear that he used models for his
characters and included material that was directly based on per-
sonal experiences.iso He did not explain in "The Literature of
Possibility" this inconsistency between principles and practice, but
the essay is, in any case, unsystematic and even confused. It is
easy to believe that it was written in one night. For all his inter-
mittent brilliance, Oda never explains precisely what he meant by
a "literature of possibility." Did he intend to say no more than
that the novelist should be allowed the privilege of inventing? No
doubt the insistence of the "I" novelists on the unadorned truth
placed a serious limitation on the possibilities of the novel, but
Oda seems to be groping not toward a novel of the future, but
toward nineteenth-century European fiction. His novel Doyo Fu-
Jin (The Saturday Wife), a newspaper serial that was left un-
finished in 1946, is popular fiction, intended for a mass audience,
but perhaps it was intended as an embodiment of his theory of the
"literature of possibility." 1s1 The large cast of characters, each
With a striking personality, permits various intriguing combina-
tions and permutations, and Oda seems to be emphasizing not the
inevitability of causes and effects but the importance of chance as
the motivating force of human actions.
The Saturday Wife, for all Oda's devotion to the craft of the
storyteller and his considerable novelistic skill, was a failure, and
he himself ranks as no more than an interesting minor writer. The
later stories are not without evidence that, had he lived longer and
in a less conspicuously burai manner, he might well have devel-
oped into a novelist of true distinction, but it is perhaps more for
his chaotic life than for his works that he will be remembered.
ISHIKAWA JUN (b. 1899)
Ishikawa Jun is often treated as a burai-ha author even
though his works as a whole are by no means typical of the group.
It is true that his writings, especially those published immediately
 Dawn to the West
after the war, shared the nihilism of the other burai-ha writers
and his lifelong record of opposition to authority further attested
to spiritual links with the group. His excursions into fantasy and
his sardonic reinterpretations of the classics also have parallels i°'
the works of Dazai Osamu and Sakaguchi Ango. However, Ishi.:
kawa during his long life-the other burai-ha authors died rela-
tively young-produced a distinct body of literature. Perhaps th.e
most striking difference between Ishikawa and the others was that
his writings were very rarely based on personal experiences. It
would be possible to compile a biography of Dazai or Ango from
materials in their stories, but Ishikawa maintained his privacy. He
declared in a 1950 essay: "I have forbidden myself ever to intro.,
duce personal matters into n;iy works. I have no desire to write
about them, and I even tend to avoid mentioning them to oth,.
ers." 182 He occasionally broke this rule, but such lapses did not
reveal any departure from his disdain for self-portrayal; when he
described incidents that had actually occurred, it was usually in an
essay, rather than in a work of fiction.183
Ishikawa was born in the Asakusa district, the part of Tokyo
most intimately associated with the old Edo. From the age of six
he was given instruction in the Analects by his grandfather, and he
eventually acquired a competence in classical Chinese that per~
mitted him to read not only the standard Confucian writingscbut
the kanshi and kambun composed by the scholars and eccentrics
of Edo period Japan. The traditional orientation of his education
was emphasized at school. At the middle school he entered in
1912 the boys were encouraged to write kambun, but compqsi-
tions in modern Japanese were frowned on as effete, and a fond-
ness for novels was interpreted as an indication of potential
delinquency. Ishikawa was nevertheless attracted to modem liter-
ature, without losing his taste for kambun. The most conspicuous
feature of his writings, his disdain for any form of vulgarity, un.:
doubtedly owed much to his early training; but, as in the case of
Edo writers, a knowledge of the Confucian classics did not pre-
clude a taste for "play" (asobi).
It was while at middle school that Ishikawa formed his at-
tachment to the writings of Mori Ogai. His admiration for Ogai
extended to the works of Chinese and European literature that
Ogai had translated or adapted, especially Improvisatoren, but it
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE 8URAI-HA 1089
seems to have been chiefly the influence of a middle-school
teacher that induced Ishikawa to enter the French department of
.the Foreign Language School after his graduation from middle
.school in 1917.
Ishikawa, like the other burai-ha writers, found French litera-
ture congenial, both because of its intrinsic qualities and because
he hoped that he would learn from the French how to write nov-
els of his own. In 1920, the year that Ishikawa graduated from the
Foreign Languages School, Nagai Kafii published the essay
"Shosetsu Sakuho" (How to Write a Novel), which declared that
the first thing a would-be novelist must do was to learn to read
French, at least with the aid of a dictionary; every day spent
without reading Andre Gide was a day wasted. Aspiring drama-
tists were similarly urged to direct their attention to the works of
Paul Claudel.1 84 Ishikawa's' special interest in these two writers,
apparently awakened by Kafii, was further stimulated in 1921
when Claudel arrived in Japan to take up his post as French
ambassador. The presence of so distinguished a literary figure in
their midst naturally excited the Japanese writers, and they tend-
ered Claude! a welcome party on January 15, 1922, at the famous
Restaurant Seiyoken in Ueno. Claude! delivered an address, and
.the Japanese responded with greetings, recitations of Claudel's
poetry in the original and in Japanese translations, and a perform-
ance of Claudel's play La Nuit de Noel de 1914.185 It is not clear
whether or not Ishikawa attended this celebration, but he defi-
·tely met Claudel in the summer of 1923 at a party in honor of
the publication of a book of translations of French poetry by
Yamanouchi Yoshio. It was probably through Yamanouchi, an ac-
quaintance, that Ishikawa became a contributor to Nihon Shijin
(Le Poete Japonais).1 86 Ishikawa's first published work, an essay
on the novelist Charles-Louis Philippe, appeared in the December
1922 issue of the magazine.187 The essay opens:
The following passage is found in Charles-Louis Philippe's Lettres
de jeunesse: "Anatole France is delightful, he knows everything, he
expresses everything, he is even erudite; that is why he belongs to
a dying race of writers, and why he represents the conclusion of
the literature of the nineteenth century. Now we must have bar-
barians." 1ss

Ishikawa quoted Philippe's opinion that Anatole France was no
more than a popular writer, not to be ranked higher than second-
rate when compared to a master like Claudel. It was not easy for
Ishikawa to assent to this opinion. He had been greatly impressed
by his readings in Anatole France, and in the following year
would publish a translation of Le lys rouge. The erudition of
France also appealed to Ishikawa's taste for pedantry, and he was
impressed by the social involvement displayed in such works as
Les opinions de M. Jerome Coignard. But it was even easier for
Ishikawa to identify with Philippe, who was not yet twenty-
four,189 and who yearned for a wife and child: "Je ne puis plus
rester seul."
Philippe is remembered today, if at all, for novels that de-
scribe the resignation of the downtrodden poor, but this was not
what attracted Ishikawa to his works; he was struck by Philippe's
phrase "Maintenant il faut des barbares" and shared Philippe's
conviction that these young barbarians would belong not to the
tired old race of Anatole France but to "the race about to be
born." Throughout his writings Ishikawa would emphasize the
mysterious life-force or energy that is opposed to the dead weight
of the past. Yet, paradoxically, no one loved the past more than
he. He described in his first article his attempts to become a bar-
barian, to cast off his learning, but he suspected that no matter
how successful he might be in other respects, he would never be
able to trample on his knowledge. He wrote: "This is the gate I
must pass through. I must encourage the growth of the 'barbarian'
within me. In other words, in order to give life to the Philippe in
me, I must steel myself to kill the Anatole France." 190 Ishikawa
obviously could not become a barbarian, but his identification
with the burai-ha group may perhaps be traced to his youthful
decision to break the shell of conventions in which he was encased
and to emerge into the light with the insolence of the young
barbarian.
In the meantime Ishikawa had fallen under the influence of
Gide and Claudel. In May 1923 he wrote the afterword to
Yamanouchi's translation of La porte etroite, a piece of criticism
that has been referred to as the first detailed presentation of Gide
to the Japanese public.191 In the same year he began the transla-
tion of L'immoraliste, which he published in 1924. He read Les
faux-monnayeurs while it was still being serialized in the NRF,
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1091
and subsequently published translations of Les caves du Vatican
and two short works by Gide. Ishikawa was attracted to Gide as a
master of the modern novel, but the idea of an "immoralist," like
Philippe's "barbarians," appealed to him so much that he re-
solved to lead his life in the manner of the hero of the book.192 Yet
when Ishikawa in 1951 recalled his period of infatuation with
Gide he professed to have lost interest in all Gide's works except
the correspondence with Claude!, and that only because Claude!
still interested him.193
It is difficult to trace the influence of Claude! on Ishikawa.
Indeed, at one time Ishikawa even asserted that Claudel's influ-
ence on the Japanese had been absolutely nil.194 The stumbling
block for Japanese readers of Claudel's poetry and plays was his
Catholicism, a kind of religious commitment that was alien to
most o~ t~em. Ishikawa, however, was by no means incapable of
appreciatmg Claudel. He published the essay "Kurooderu no Ta-
chiba" (Situation litteraire de P. Claudel) in the May 1923 issue of
Niho~ Shijin, a special number devoted to Claudel. The magazine
contamed messages by Claude! to the Japanese poets,195 and vari-
ous articles relating to the production in Tokyo of Claudel's short
play La femme et son ombre, which he wrote expressly for the
Japanese stage.
Ishikawa's essay on Claude! is brief and immature, but it
impresses not only because of the extent of his readings in
Claudel's works and in criticism of Claudel by contemporary
French writers but because he seems personally involved with the
issues he discusses. Ishikawa was dealing with an author who was
considered difficult even by the French, but he curtly dismissed
people who failed to appreciate Claudel's excellences as unfortu-
nates who were condemned never to be able to understand poetry
through all eternity. 196 He quoted with admiration the remark
. Claudel had made during a lecture delivered in Tokyo in 1922
that he did not write "for the people" but "in place of the peo-
ple." 197 He recognized that Claudel's Catholicism was the con-
sta~~ formative element in his works. This acceptance of the
rehg1ous aspect of Claude! was difficult, but Ishikawa, finding the
presence of God in every work by Claude!, believed that the cor-
pus of his works was one Magnificat. He concluded, "Claude! or
nihilism?-That is the question left us." 19s
In later years Ishikawa would be known for his nihilism, but

there is evidence that suggests he seriously considered the alterna-
tive-Claude! or, in other words, Catholicism. In 1924 Ishikawa
left Tokyo to take up a post as a French teacher at the Fukuoka
High School in Kyushu. He remained there less than two years;
until he was fired at the end of 1925, apparently because he had
participated in left-wing student activities. One of his rare essays
on this period of his life is devoted to the French priest Emile
Raguet, with whom he had been friendly. Although Ishikawa in-
sisted in this essay, written fifteen years later, that he was rrot a
Christian, it is clear that he often visited the local Catholic
church,199 and he apparently received instruction in the essential
doctrines of Catholicism.zoo
The period from 1926i when Ishikawa returned from
Fukuoka to Tokyo, until 1935, when he published his first work of
fiction, is an almost total blank. He made translations of Moliere,
read Dostoevski, seems to have had contacts with anarchists. It is
strange that so little is known about his activities, but apart from
Ishikawa's usual aversion to self-disclosure there may have been a
special reason for his reluctance to discuss this period of his life:
one critic wondered if this was not the time when Ishikawa at-
tempted to find relief from his existential loneliness irt Clauder.201
In the end he chose nihilism, and his earlier interest in Catholi-
cism may have embarrassed him.
Ishikawa's first story, 202 "Kajin" (The Beautiful Woman), ap-
peared in 1935. Ishikawa was thirty-five at the time, unusually late
for a Japanese author to make his debut. The story, related in the
first person, concerns a man who is living with his mistress in an
unfashionable, even dreary outskirts of Tokyo. He does nothing to
earn a living, it would seem, and his eccentric behavior-his ex-
citement over some sight of nature or his occasional fits of anger-
gives him the local reputation of being a madman. He is painfully
conscious of a terrible emptiness within himself, which seems to
be his totality. He reflects:
I had been thinking for some time about stigmatization-how Fran-
cis of Assisi meditated so intently on Jesus that the marks of the
nails that had been driven into the hands of his Lord on the Cross
appeared on his own palms. The conviction that I was hollow inside
had developed into an article of faith, but it-was exasperating all the
same to have others with smug looks on their faces casually dismiss
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1093
this belief as another instance of my madness. It was not so much a
matter of fanatic devotion to a faith that could move mountains as
of manifesting a godhead from which I could not possibly with-
draw. I was a shaman dragged about at the will of a supernatural
possession; and the nothingness (mu) that I could imagine was not
the creative nothingness that Lao Tsu described-"We make a ves-
sel from a lump of clay; it is the empty space within the vessel that
makes it useful"-but an utterly useless nothingness, like a crack,in
the ground, a split in a tree, a cavern ... yes, a cavern was the form
in which the god I worshiped chose to display himself, and my
stigmatization was a mere slipping of the hollow body that was
myself into an empty frame in the sky.203
This passage, though somewhat confusing, is of particular
interest because of the reference to the stigmatization of St. Fran-
cis, suggesting a familiarity with Catholic literature. But the writ-
ing-and this would be true of all lshikawa's future works-bears
no trace of foreign influence. In the original of the quoted passage
everything after the words "The conviction that" forms one long
sentence; this was the "garrulous" (jozetsu) style that was typical
not only of Ishikawa but of various other authors of the 1930s.
The conversations, on the other hand, reveal Ishikawa's mar-
velously accurate ear for the many varieties of Japanese speech;
far from elegant clarity, which he might have learned from
French literature, his style suggests the meanderings of gesaku
writings. There is humor, touched with bitterness, in this story, but
the effect of the whole is a portrayal of a man in the throes of
anomie, a man who has lost all connection with the world. He
attempts to commit suicide by walking over a railway bridge just
before a freight train normally passes, but that night the train fails
to come. He accidentally discovers that his mistress is unfaithful,
and sleeps with her sister instead. In the end, a final mark of his
ineffectuality, he realizes that he has not related the story prom-
jsed in the first paragraph.
It is not clear how much of Ishikawa's life found its way into
"The Beautiful Woman." Clearly, it is not an "I novel," but much
accords with the little we know of his life during the years before
he wrote this story. Publication led to a spate of other stories in
1935~ 1936. "F~gen" (th_e Japanese name of the Buddhist divinity
who 1s known m Sansknt as Samantabhadra), published like most

of his early stories in the magazine. Sakuhin, was a_warded the
fourth Ak:utagawa Prize in 1937, and is generally considered to be
his first major work. .
"Fu gen" is also in the "garrulous" style. It opens with a long,
involved sentence that seems to evoke the confusion in the narra-
tor's mind as he recalls the turbulent events of his recent life. Such
passages alternate with colloquial dial~gu.e and t~e straightfor-
ward exposition of the narrator's descnpt10n of his attempts to
write a biography of Christine de Pisan (1363-1430), an obscure
French poet who in her old age celebrated the deeds of the youth-
ful Jeanne d'Arc. Abrupt contrasts in style heighten the ka-
leidoscopic effects of the various acti:ities describe~ .. For
example, a passage in an invoJved, rather high-flown style 1s ~nter-
rupted by the landlady calling to the narrator; she wants anmtro-
duction to a man from whom she would like to buy scrap iron.
The incongruousness of a Japanese. writing ?n so remote a subject
as Christine de Pisan in dingy lodgmgs presided over by a woman
who is trying to make money out of scrap iron is one of the
counterpoint effects at which Ishikawa aimed. The narrator com-
pares Christine de Pisan and Jeanne d'Arc to ~he c~elebrat:d Zen
masters Kanzan and Jittoku (Han Shan and Shih Te), who i~ tum
are likened to the bodhisattvas Monju and Fugen, each pair rep-
resenting the contemplative and active natures. ~he narrator, de~
spite his literary aspirations, identifies ?imself wit? Fugen, rather
than with Monju, the bodhisattva of wisdom and mtellect: Some-
times he invokes Fugen's guidance in a world of c~rrupt1on and
confusion. The preference for the active and energetic, rathertha~
the intellectual, was ( as we have seen) typical of Ishikawa from his
earliest writings.
The narrator of "Fu gen" has his own Jeanne d' Arc, a woman
named Yukari who is the sister of his friend Bunzo. She has gon_e
underground with a man wanted by ~he police because of h~s
involvement with the forbidden left-wmg movement. In the cli-
mactic scene the narrator goes to Shinjuku Station, in res~onse to
a letter from Yukari asking him to meet her there. He discovers
that the police have intercepted the lette~ and feels sure that they
will be waiting at the station for Yukan and her lover. He sees
their taxi approach and rushes forward to :Varn them awat He
catches a glimpse of Yukari inside the taxi, enough for him to
realize that in the ten years since he last saw her she has not only
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1095
lost her good looks but has acquired a fierce and even cruel ex-
pression. The taxi safely escapes, and the narrator manages with
difficulty to evade the police.
The atmosphere is similar to that of tenko fiction: the narra-
tor and his friends waste their time in fruitless pursuits and be-
come involved in dreary love affairs because the police have
broken up the movement that gave meaning to their lives. At the
end of the story the narrator discovers the body of his friend
Bonzo, who has taken poison. The suicide is not explained, but it
.fits in with the times and the hollowness the narrator feels inside
· himself. The description of Bunzo just before his suicide is strik-
ingly like the face of Akutagawa in his last photographs.
Ishikawa's political views could not be plainly stated at the
time because of the pressure applied by the government against
any expression of left-wing thought. We can infer from his ac-
tivities in earlier days-for example, in 1923, when he read
Bukh~rin in the French translation 2 04-that he was attracted by
Marxism, but he never showed any interest in the proletarian
literature movement. His left-wing beliefs were not doctrinaire
b~t. te~ded to be expressed in terms of his dislike of Japanese
m1htansm and other aspects of authoritarianism.
His next important work, the short story "Marusu no Uta"
(The Song of Mars, 1938), opens:
A song has become audible . . . . But how am I to explain my
reactions? I am talking about the popular song "Mars," which
comes beating through the windowpanes from the manic streets to
my ears as I sit in my twilit room.
"The gods are asleep under the heavens,
"And wisdom of every sort holds its tongue,
"Arise, Mars, and boldly ... "
The smoky tempest of singing voices turns to pitch-black soot
and blows against the corners of houses, dries up the city trees, even
suffocates chickens and dogs; the gaping wound of our times has
split wide open .... 20s
The speaker is a novelist who cannot write because of the
onstant dinning of the war song. Needless to say, no "Song of
ars" existed at the time, but similar patriotic songs were almost I
,I
I
 Dawn to the West
as oppressive in 1938 and later. The narrator shouts "No!" at the
song, and tries to master his feelings of disgust, but he cann<>t
escape the martial frenzy. When, in despair over not being a,ble to
write, he goes to a movie theater, hoping at least to be able to
sleep there, he sees on the screen a great warship with rifles belch-
ing fire.
The narrator's musings on the war hysteria are interrupted by
a visitor and we soon learn about her, but the story is of less
importance than the atmosphere-the people waving little flags,
the draft notices in the mail, and above all, the endless repetitions
of the "Song of Mars." The narrator, afraid that he may suffocate
in this atmosphere, turns for solace to old books of comic poetry
(kyoshi), and to drink. At the,end, as he sits in a restaurant, plan-
ning to drink a quiet beer, the proprietor puts a record on theold-
fashioned gramophone. Inevitably, it is the "Song of Mars." "Stop
it!" he shouts, hatred in his voice. Everyone stares at him, and he
leaves, aware of the abuse that is being leveled at his back.
It is not surprising that the magazine that printed "The Song
of Mars" was banned by the censors: the antimilitarism is so plain
that one marvels instead that the editor risked publishing such a
story. In any case, the lesson was brought home to Ishikawa that
not even the most artistically phrased criticism of state policies
would be tolerated by the .censors. Until the end of the war in
1945 he accordingly wrote nothing that revealed his political in-
clinations. Like the narrator of "The Song of Mars," Ishikawa
took refuge in reading Edo literature. He later described his life
during the war in these terms: "During the war there was not
much chance of escaping abroad, so for the duration I sustained
myself with domestically manufactured wares: I did my study
abroad in Edo." 206
Unable to travel in space, Ishikawa traveled in time, back to
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in particular.
Ishikawa's interest in the old Japanese literature was by no means
confined to the Edo period, but he was especially attracted by the
bunjin, the gentlemen-scholars whose dilettante tastes were so
much like his own. He enjoyed reading their books, even those
that had been forgotten by everyone else, and in his own works he
displayed their taste for recondite words and allusions.
Ishikawa's writings quickly reflected his new interests. 111
May 1938, four months after the disaster with "The Song
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1097
Mars," he published "Sorori Banashi" (A Tale of Sorori), about
the legendary wit of the sixteenth century, Sorori Shizaemon. The
.story tells of ghosts and prodigies, but it is memorable chiefly for
·its style: it co°:sists of ~ne long paragraph and the only full stop is
at the conclusion. Ishikawa used rare Chinese characters and ar-
chaic expressions but also startlingly modern dialogue to create an
effect that is at once in the tradition of the old literature and
a sardonic comment on its peculiarities. lshikawa's use of lan-
guage was not merely a tour de force; few modern authors have
achieved the beauty and melodiousness of his style in this and
similar stories.
"Cho Hakutan" (Chang Pai-tuan, 1941), about a Sung "im-
mortal," is in a more broadly comic vein but belongs to the same
quasi-historical mode as "A Tale of Sorori." As often in Ishi-
kawa's works of this nature, the present suddenly intrudes into his
descriptio~ of long-ago, even supernatural events. For example,
af~er relat~ng how ~he s~?es of the "immortal" are stolen by a Zen
pnest env10us of his ability to fly, he introduces an account of the
calamity he had himself suffered when his only pair of shoes was
stolen from his Tokyo apartment. Such anachronisms make the
people ~f the ~ast seem close and even familiar, and suggest also
how easily Ishikawa could identify himself with the Japanese of
long ago. The style of "Chang Pai-tuan," a lively colloquial dotted
~ith obscure bits of Chinese lore, would be followed by Ishikawa
m the volumes of zuihitsu he published after the war.
· During t~~ war years. Ishikawa wrote almost nothing in sup-
port of the military or theu id_:als. His main works of this period
mclude a lengthy study Mori Ogai (1941), his tribute to an author
.with whom he shared antiquarian interests and a disinclination to
· indulge in openly emotional writing. After expressing his con-
,tempt for The Wild Goose, "Sansho the Bailiff," and the other
wo:ks of. Ogai that are popular with the general public, he de-
scn~e~ his profound admiration for the shiden, especially Shibue
~husaz and Hojo Katei. 207 His praise seems entirely sincere, but it
IS hard not to suspect it contains a streak of snobbishness.
Other wartime works included two biographies (one for
dults and one for children) of the nineteenth-century patriot
Watanabe Kazan (1941), and a biography of the fourteenth-
century patriot Nitta Yoshisada, entitled Yoshisada Ki (1944).zos
uch accounts could be published with impunity even during a
 Dawn to the West
national emergency, but it was not solely because they were.
"safe" that Ishikawa chose to write them. He seems to have been'.
genuinely interested in these "failed heroes," and he Used the
sources freely, even admixing fiction, in order to bring out the
artistic possibilities of their stories. 209 After the war Ishikawa
wrote that he had been attracted less by the materials than by the
medieval war tales, and it had comforted him during the dark
days of the war to write new works in this old form, not for the
sake of glorifying the military but in order to convey the pathos
and tragic sense of destiny that the old chronicles had found in the
deeds of war. 210
Ishikawa also wrote a few short stories and essays during the
war. In 1960, when the first ~'complete edition" of his works was
published, he included two wartime essays that later caused hi1;11
some embarrassment. The first, written in conjunction with
exhibition of national treasures of the puppet state of Man-
chukuo, included the startling claim that "it was a simple and
evident truth, which could be established with certainty, that lap".'.
anese culture was the 'king' of all related cultures." 211 Ishikawa
later disavowed such sentiments because they reflected wartime
hysteria; but they were in fact not unl~ke the opinio~s of th~
eighteenth-century dilettantes whom lsh1ka~~ so adn::11red: _One
other essay, not included in any collected ed1t10n of his wntmg$,
went even further: Ishikawa declared that, as far as Germany was
concerned, Hitler was unquestionably a wonderful leader, .and
that even if by some mischance he should not succeed in his plan~,
his would surely be a beautiful failure. 212 Ishikawa continued to ..
write even during the period of greatest pressure to c~nform to the·
military, but had little about which to feel embarrassed after the
defeat inverted all values.2 13
In March 1946 Ishikawa published his first postwar stof)',
"Ogon Densetsu" (The Golden Legend). It is a seriocomic set of•.
vignettes of Japan just after the war. The narr_ato: has t~re~
wishes: to find a competent jeweler who can repair his watchi t~,
find a hat that a gentleman can wear; and to find out what h~
happened to the woman he loved. His first two wishes are grante~
rather easily, and one day in Yokohama he sees the woma~. Sh:
greets him with evident pleasure. During the course of their coll-::
versation she bas occasion to open her handbag and he. catc
glimpse of foreign cigarettes, chocolate, and other costly .d .
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1099
cacies. They leave the cafe where they have been chatting and
walk to the railway station. Suddenly the woman breaks into a
run and throws herself into the arms of a tall black soldier who
identl~ has been expecting her. The narrator, overcome by feel-
ings of disgust and shame, leaves the station and plunges into the
•swirling_ crowd. As he disappears into the mass of Japanese his
cap, which had_ so~ehow become twisted, snaps back into shape,
and the watch m his breast pocket begins to tick merrily.
_"Th~ Golden ~egend" is not an especially well-written story,
but 1t ~amed notonety later that year: when Ishikawa attempted
to pubhsh a collection of stories with that name, the title story was
. nned by the. O~cupation authorities, and the book appeared
ithout the prmc1pal story. Apparently the Occupation censors
ere unhappy over the portrayal of an American soldier as a
. rveyor of black-market items to his Japanese girl friend. Ishi-
!kawa had the distinction of being banned by both the Japanese
d the Americans.
Despite this setback, Ishikawa began to write more pro-
. . cally than ever before. In 1946 he published in addition to "The
Golden Legend" several stories that brought him his first recogni-
tion from the general reading public. "Yakeato no Iesu" (The
esus of the Burned-out Site), perhaps his most moving story,
stensibly relates various events that took place on July 31, 1946.
ere can be little doubt but that Ishikawa actually observed the
.·serabl~ l~ttle shops e~ected on the site of burned-out buildings:
is descnpt10ns of the sights and smells-half-rotting food, fish oil,
uman sweat-have a vividness that could not be counterfeited.
e narrator describes how he saw a boy dressed in filthy rags,
. ose skin is ~overed with pustulent sores. The boy buys a greasy
e-ball that is covered with flies, and gobbles it down, flies and
: S_uddenly the boy makes a grab for the leg of the woman
dmg the shop and clings to it. During the ensuing scuffle the
rrator accidentally burns a hole in the woman's dress with his
:garette. He runs from the scene, but in retrospect it occurs to
that there was something godlike about that hideous boy:
e was the first of the kind of human being who in the future
uld proliferate in the land opened on the burned-out site. I
ean, he may have been assigned the role of the 'son of man.' It
as not clear whether or not the boy was the Christ, but that he
as Jesus was probably a safe assumption.'' 214
 Dawn to the West 11
As so often in works by Ishikawa, the narration is interrupt~q
by a sudden shift to a rather pedantic digression: we learn that the'
narrator was in the open-air market because he was on his wayitC2>
the temple where he had planned to make a rubbing of the
scription on the gravestone of the Confucian scholar ~azai Shun--;
dai. He resumes his walk, and notices that the boy is following\
him. This time the boy looks like a wolf famished for blood,
the narrator feels apprehensive as he walks the deserted summet
streets. The boy suddenly pounces on him, digging in his nails an(:):
teeth, and they struggle in a desperate embrace. The narrato:t . .
eventually overpowers the boy, but as he looks down into th.e
filthy, pustulent face, now twisted in pain, he experiences a mo~ ~
ment of ecstasy:
I saw before my eyes not the face of a boy, nor of a wolf, nor of a11)1
ordinary human being. It was undoubtedly the living face of Jesui
of Nazareth, filled with grief, just as it had been caught in Vet:-
onica's handkerchief. I became sharply aware that the boy was in-
deed Jesus and the Christ as well. If that was so, surely he ha!:t.
brought some message of deliverance for me. 215
The narrator relaxes his grip momentarily and the bqy
squirms free, taking the contents of the narrator's bundle as h~
flees. The story concludes with the unemotional statementthattlle
open-air market on the bomb-site was closed the next day,. as th~
authorities had warned, and he never again saw either theJesQsoi;:
the woman who sold him the rice-ball.
"Jesus of the Burned-out Site" is deeply affecting, though it
describes events that could hardly have occurred in reality. Islli;.,.
kawa does not state what in the boy's face recalled that of Jesus
but, like Flaubert's leper, the boy is a loathsome manifestation pf
the divine spirit. The story has been interpr~ted alle~orically, b:qt
it is probably less allegorical than symbolic, evokmg states ~f
mind rather than describing under the guise of a personal expeo,.,
ence the state of life in postwar Japan. The same might be said
many of Ishikawa's best works of the following years. Often_the
reader is puzzled as to the meaning of an act or an observation,
and he may be hard put to explain the story to someone whoi
insists that it makes no sense, but as with Symbolist poetry;:li
simple explanation is not always possible. Ishikawa's best wor~,:
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1101
reate emotio~al states that defy easy analysis. Conversely, the
works by Ishikawa that require little explanation are often
unsuccessful.
Ha.kuti5gin (The White-haired Song, 1957), one of his longest
works, 1s almost unrecognizable as a product of the same man
who created the brilliant short stories and novellas. Ishikawa's
special brand of fantasy, which often skirts the borders of surreal-
. , could not easily be expanded to the length of a full-sized
ovel. The White-haired Song is notable for its implausible coinci-
;dences and artificial turns of plot, but it is surprisingly poor in the
pvertones that are a feature of Ishikawa's writing at its best. It is
nonetheless of interest to admirers of Ishikawa if only because
Obana Shin'ichi, the central character, seems to have been mod-
e_d on t~e auth?r, a rare instance of self-portrayal that provides
ruque glimpses mto the "blank" period of his life. But, of course,
e novel is fiction and the occasional bits of biographical data do
ot compensate for the pedestrian manner of the whole.
Ishikawa came to be recognized after the war as one of the
urai-ha group. A work like "Jesus of the Burned-out Site" inter-
·ttently recalls the squalid ruins depicted in the works of Dazai,
go, or Oda, but the symbolic overtones are unique. "Taka"
he Hawk, 1953), one of Ishikawa's most brilliant stories, opens
ith t~e. description of the shabby wasteland of postwar Tokyo,
ut this 1s only the prelude to the strange, even surrealistic events.
unisuke, the hero, has been fired from his job at a state-run
bacco factory as part of the "red purge" of undesirable ele-
ents. His only crime has been that he wanted to improve the
s~e of the cigarettes. Something vaguely political colors the nar-
t10~ of the va~ious extraordinary events that begin after
ums~ke ~as applied elsewhere for another job, and perhaps an
eg~ncal mterpretation is in this case justified. At the end the
rome soars off into the sky like a hawk and Kunisuke follows
r shadow into the water of a canal. With this work Ishikawa
abl~shed himself as the leading avant-garde writer of Japan,
d his work soon influenced various other avant-garde writers,
ta~ly Abe ~?bo, who also mingled in his stories methodically
scnbed realities with leaps into the fantastic.
"Shion Monogatari" (Asters, 1956) and "Shura" (Warring
emons, 1958) represent Ishikawa at the height of his powers.
'Asters" won him the prize of the Minister of Education for liter-
 DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1103

ary achievement, but "Warring Demons" is even more ace DOZ, VIII, p. 91.
plished. Both works are set in the past, "Asters" in tb.e • Ibid., p. 95.
period and "Warring Demons" in the period of warfare of th , . Two zadankai in which Dazai, Sakaguc~i, and Oda participated are given in
d.,X, PP· 501-30. The second, a transcript of a zadankai held in Novemb
fifteenth century. Both are filled with killings, prodigies, and
, was not published in Kaizo, ~he magazine that sponsored it, presumab;;
of magic, but no matter how violent and terrible the deeds cause the contents are not only fnvolous but at times incompreh 'bi
scribed, Ishikawa was able, thanks to his mastery of Japanes See Tsutsumi· Sh'igeh1sa,.
Koi to Kakumei, pp. 16-23.
ens1 e.
make them seem poetic. Both works also suggest allegory; Ibid., pp. 40-4 I.
example, each describes two realms divided by mountains . See Dazai, No Longer Human, p. 69.
seem to represent two ways of life on earth, but Ishikawa giv . '.'Doke n? Hana," the earliest, was originally written in 1932, though not
bh~h~d until 1935. The final version incorporated many changes, accordin to
explanations of his intent, and it is probably safest to accept ..11zai himself. See DOZ, I, p. 459. g
he presents without searching for specific allegorical signific 3. Ibid., IV,. p. 54.
Once again, as so often in Ishikawa's writings, energyand . Dazai, No Longer Human, p. 87 .
forces are exalted, but the su1ccess of these stories depends 1 . DOZ, I, p. 437.
. Ibid., p. 393.
these themes than on the mysterious, yet compelling atmosphe . Ibid., p. 147.
Ishikawa was able to create.21s
Ibid., X, p. 5 I; see also Keene, Landscapes and Portraits, p. 196.
Unfriendly critics have sometimes denounced Ishikawa's . DOZ, IV, p. 58.
ries in this vein as mere mystification, but deeper meanings . Ibid
surely involved. By setting these and similar stories in a past f!eneko is an o_uter garment like a jacket, which provides space within it for
is distanced from readers and yet close, he tapped the resoum~s rrymg a small child on one's back.
. DOZ, I, p. 22.
Japanese tradition in a manner only possible to someone who . Ibid., pp. 30-3 I.
deeply familiar with European literature. The two streams in I . Ibid., p. 48.
kawa's literary ancestry meet in such works. . Ibid., pp. 5-6.
"Asters," "Warring Demons" and others of Ishikawa's late~ . Ibid., p. 7.
works are a far cry from the burai-ha. Perhaps other burai-J( , Okuno Takeo, Dazai Osamu, p. 57.
. DOZ, I, pp. 44-45.
writers, Sakaguchi Ango, for example, might have evolved alo
similar lines if they had lived longer, but each writer of the sch · Qu~ted by Honda Shugo, Senji Sengo no Senkoshatachi, p. 288. Passages
m this novel were later included in "Ha."
was so distinctive that it is risky to predict how he might ha . Quoted by ibid., p. 290.
developed. The burai-ha writers, including the lesser members One friend insisted that it actually happened. See ibid 290
the group, were not exponents of any single philosophy, but th . DOZ, VIII, p. 208. ., p. ·
formed the most memorable of the postwar literary schools. , Honda, Senji Sengo, p. 298.
· See ibid., pp. 299-300, for an excerpt of Miyamoto's criticism
· Ibid.: pp. 300-301, quoting the same passage from "Kyoko ~o Haru" that
uno Cite~ to prove that Dazai never renounced his belief in Communis
NOTES ted th~t it actually meant Dazai was then as far removed as possible fro~
~umsm. See Ok_uno,_ f!azai, pp. 68-69. There is a whole volume of anti-
l. Dazai Osamu Zensha (henceforth abbreviated as DOZ), X, p. 307. See a: ~ssays by Mar~ist cntics, Dazai Osamu Bungaku Hihan Sha edited b th
DOZ, IX, p. 91. , mon Bungaku Kai. ' Y e
2. Saigusa Yasutaka, Dazai Osµmu to Buraiha no Sakkatachi, p. 16. , DOZ, VIII, p. 208.
3. Kubota Yoshitaro, "Sengo ni okeru Burai-ha Bungaku," in Burai Bung · Dazai, No Longer Human, pp. 72-73.
Kenkyiikai, Burai-ha no Bungaku, pp. 4-5. · Honda, Senji Sengo, p. 293.
4. DOZ, X, p. 307. · DOZ, VIII, pp. 208-09.
5. Ibid. · Ibid., p. 209.
 Dawn to the West DAZA! 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1105

41. Ibid., I, pp. 127-28. 76. DOZ, IV, p. 209.

77, Ibid., p. 222.
42. Ibid.
43. Soma Shoichi, Dazai Osamu to Ibuse Masuji, p. 194. 78. Ibid., p. 227.
44. It has sometimes been stated that Dazai revealed his continued support of 79. Ibid., VIII, pp. 223-27.
Communism by attending a party meeting held in Aomori after the war, but SO. Keene, Landscapes, p. 87.
Soma Shoichi demonstrated that Dazai's attendance did not have that signifi- . 81. DOZ, VIII, p. 92. See also previous text, p. 1024.
cance. Ibid., pp. 194-95; for a contrary view see Saigusa Yasutaka, Shiso toshfie . 82. Ibid., p. 93.
no Senso Taiken, p. 5 l. 83. Ibid., VI, p. 36.
45. Quoted by Soma, Dazai Osamu, p. 13. 84. Ibid., p. 37.
85. Ibid., pp. 51-59.
46. Ibid., p. 18.
47. Ibid., p. 19. 86. See Okubo Tsuneo, Showa Bungaku no Shukumei, pp. 135-36 for refer-
48. A mai is a page of Japanese manuscript paper that has either 200 or 400 ences to all the Saikaku works adapted. See also James O'Brien, Da;ai Osamu,
boxes in which to write kanji or kana. Manuscripts are paid for in terms of the pp. 91-106, for summaries of Dazai's reworkings of Saikaku.
number of mai written. 87. For summaries, see O'Brien, Dazai Osamu, pp. 110-18.
88. DOZ, VII, p. 5.
49. DOZ, IV, p. 58. .
50. See Soma, Dazai Osamu, p. 25, for one explanation of the origin of the 89. Ibid., pp. 20-21.
name. Dazai, because of his heavy Tsugaru accent, could not pronounce his own 90. Ibid., p. 34.
name, Tsushima, in a manner intelligible elsewhere; people thought he 91. Ibid., p. 109.
saying Chishima. Another version has it that a friend said that he looked like 92. Ibid., p. 148.
someone named Dazai. See Dazai Osamu Kenkya (henceforth abbreviated as 93. Mompe were baggy trousers of Japanese material, worn by women espe-
cially during the war.
DOK), p. 349.
51. Quoted by Soma, Dazai Osamu, p. 22. 94. DOZ, VII, pp. 162-63.
52. This untranslatable title was borrowed by Dazai from a Chinese work. 95. See Soma Shoichi, "Tsugaru ni tsuite," pp. 223-26.
53. DOZ, I, p. 48. 96. See, for example Tsutsumi, Kai to Kakumei, pp. 16-24.
97. DOZ, X. p. 288.
54. Ibid., IV, p. 58.
98. Ibid., VII, pp. 293-94.
55. Ibid., p. 59.
56. The story "Mekura Soshi" was added later. 99. Ibid., p. 193.
100. Ibid., pp. 20 l-02.
57. DOZ, I, p. 184.
Ol. Ibid., p. 203.
58. Ibid., p. 188.
102. Ibid., pp. 206-11.
59. Ibid., p. 189.
60. Ibid., IV, p. 62. 1~3. See ibid., VII, pp. 419-23, for a list of changes.
61. Ibid., p. 62. 104. Takeuchi Yoshimi, the scholar of modern Chinese literature in an article
62. Ibid., I, p. 345. The story, under the title "Of Women," was translated by published in 194~ severely attacked Dazai's portrayal of Lu Hs~n, which he
Edward Seidensticker and published in Encounter, I, No. I (1953). _eled as a creat10n of Dazai's imagination that was entirely at variance with
63. Ibid. 1tudes that Lu Hsun had actually expressed. For an account of criticism made
64. DOK, p. 130. f Se~ib~tsu, see Kamiya Tadataka, "Sekibetsu," in Togo Katsumi and Watanabe
65. DOZ, X, pp. 35-38. oshmon, Dazai Osamu, pp. 249-52.
66. Ibid., p. 37. 105. Translat!on by Ivan Morris, in his Modern Japanese Stories, pp. 465-80.
67. DOK, p. 129. ~: Translat10n by Donald Keene, in his Modern Japanese Literature, pp. 398-
68. The title seems to have been what Dazai later meant by Ningen Shikkaku.
69. DOZ, II, p. 94. 07. Dazai read a Japanese translation ofVillon's Grand Testament in 1940 and
70. Ibid., p. 111. ud~d to it occasionally in later works, but his Villon was a far cry from the
71. Ibid., p. 106. it. o~cal cha~acter. Se.e Yamashiki Kazuo, "Vion no Tsuma Ron," in Bungaku
72. Ibid., p. 108. yo no Kai (ed.), H1hyo to Kenkya: Dazai Osamu, pp. 296-99.
08. Translation by Donald Keene.
73. Ibid., p. 113.
09. DOZ, XI, p. 358.
74. Ibid., IV, p. 66.
75. See Keene, Landscapes, p. 197. IO. Ota Shizuko had herself intended to use her diary as material for a novel,
 Dawn to the West DAZA! 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1107

but turned the diary over to Dazai instead. Shayo appeared in the magazi!le 129. The prediction was made by the critic Nakatogawa Kichiji (1896-1942).
Shincho between July and October 1947, but Shizuko did not publish. her Shayo Quoted by Kuroda Takeshi, "Sakaguchi Ango to Farusu to Gesaku," in Ishikawa
Nikki until October 1948, after Dazai's death. A letter from Dazai to Shizuko Jun, Sakaguchi Ango, p. 219.
written in January 1947 plainly states that he had possession of her diary and 130. Hyodo felt sure, on the basis of letters sent by Ango to Tsuseko, that Ango
intended to begin work on a novel for which the diary had supplied "hints,'' had deliberately altered the facts of their relationship for artistic reasons. See
(DOZ, XI, p. 425.) Many pages of the diary were used in Dazai's novel, but llis also Okuno Takeo, "Kaisetsu," to TSAZ, XIII, pp. 473-77.
stylistic and novelistic skill is nowhere more apparent than in the changes he JJl. The story "Nijiishichisai" describes this period. See ibid., III, pp. 316-33.
made to her text. See Donarudo Kin, Nihon Bungaku wo yomu, pp. 182-84, for a ]32. "Fubuki Monogatari saihan ni saishite," in ibid., VIII, pp. 550-54.
comparison of Shayo and Shayo Nikki. 133. "Kurai Seishin," in ibid., III, p. 370.
111. Torii Kunio, "Shayo," p. 336, in Togo and Watanabe, Dazai Osamu, made 134. ]bid., pp. 374- 77.
the interesting suggestion that the diary owed much to Dazai's novel. 135. Ibid., pp. 378-79.
112. Dazai Osamu, The Setting Sun, p. 187. 136. "Fubuki Monogatari saihan ni shishite," p. 551. Ango actually had one
113. Translation by Edward Seidensticker, in Encounter, l, No. I (1953). friend in Kyoto with whom he spent his first few weeks in that city.
114. Translated by Donald Keene. 137. Ibid., p. 352.
115. For evidence of Dazai's interest in Dostoevski, see DOZ, I, p. 459; also, No 138. TSAZ, II, p. 389.
Longer Human, p. 147. ' 139. Ibid., III, p. 108.
116. Hasegawa Izumi, "Sakaguchi Ango Ron," in Burai Bungaku Kenkyiikai 140. Ibid., XIII, pp. 90-91.
(ed.), Burai-ha no Bungaku, p. 50. 141. Ibid., VII, p. 122.
117. Ango, the name by which he would later be known, was a memento of his 142. Bruno Taut (1880-1938) was in Japan from 1933 to 1936. His writings on
unhappy years at middle school. His name at birth was Heigo, hei meaning Japanese architecture and art influenced a whole generation of Japanese, espe-
"bright," but his teacher of Chinese classics, annoyed by the boy's lack of inter, cially because of his "discoveries" of the Katsura Detached Palace in Kyoto and
est in his studies, substituted an, meaning "dull," for hei. Ango later used the the chalet-like old farmhouses in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture.
homonym an, meaning "peaceful." See Hyodo Masanosuke, Sakuguchi Ango, p. 143. TSAZ, VII, p. 124.
31. He was known always as Ango, rather than as Sakaguchi, his surname. 144. Ibid.
118. Teihon Sakaguchi Ango Zenshii (henceforth abbreviated as TSAZ), III,.p. 145. Ibid., p. 125.
146. Ibid., pp. 133-34.
93.
119. See TSAZ, I, p. 324, and TSAZ, III, p. 95. 147. Ibid., p. 141.
[20. Hyodo, Sakaguchi Ango, p. 30. Ishikawa Jun in 1952 wrote a biog_raphical 148. See Oi Hirosuke, "Senjichii no Sakaguchi," in Bungei Tokuhon: Sakaguchi
essay on Ango's father entitled "Sakaguchi Goho." Ishikawa was espei::ially im- Ango, p. 162, where he asserts that "Nihon Bunka Shikan" was the "prototype"
pressed by the father's poetry in Chinese. See Ishikawa Jun Zenshii, VIII, pp. for "Daraku Ron."
149. Ango's essay "Gesakusha Bungaku Ron" (1947), in TSAZ, VII, pp. 246-
541-63.
121. TSAZ, III, p. 100. 61, is the diary he kept while writing the story "Nyotai." It is dotted with refer-
122. He also read Masamune Hakucho, Sato Haruo, and Akutagawa ences to requests for manuscripts, most of which he refused.
Ryiinosuke, each author contributing to Ango's despair over his lack of talent. 150. TSAZ, VII, p. 247.
See TSAZ, VII, p. 192. . . 151. Ibid., pp. 203-04.
123. His experiences at this time are described in the story "Kaze to H1kan to 152. Ibid., p. 198.
Niju no Watakushi to," in TSAZ, III. 153. Ibid., p. 199.
124. Ibid., p. 193. . . 154. This is in the sequel essay, "Zoku Daraku Ron," in ibid., VII, p. 242.
125. For the first issue Ango translated an essay on Proust by Mane Schetk- 155. Ibid., p. 243.
evitch. See Eguchi Kiyoshi, "Sakuguchi Ango to Gaikoku Bungaku," in lshi• 156. Ibid.
kawa Jun,. Sakaguchi Ango, p. 210. The original story, published in the second 157. Ango illustrated this point by reference to Shinran's statement in Tannisho
issue, was "Kogarashi no Sakagura" (A Sake Cellar. in the Wintry ~ind), that even the good man can be saved, and by a reference to Christ bowing before
126. A translation of a detective story by Roy Vickers was pub~hed un~er a prostitute.
Ango's name in the June 1951 issue of Shosetsu Asahi, but it seems most 1m~ 158. TSAZ, VII, p. 201.
probable that it was Ango's work. See TSAZ, XIII, p. 492. ".159. Ibid., p. 245.
127. TSAZ, VII, p. 197. 60. Translated by George Saito as "The Idiot," in Ivan Morris (ed.), Modern
128. Makino Shin'ichi, "Kaze Hakase," in Sakaguchi Ango Kenkyii, I, P· 15. apanese Stories, p. 368.
 Dawn to the West
161. Ibid., p. 398.
162 Ishikawa Jun Zenshii, X, p. 151.
163. For a summary of this story, see Appendix.
164. TSAZ, VII, p. 115.
165. Sakaguchi Ango recalled one zadankai involving himself, Dazai, Oda, alld
Hirano Ken. Oda arrived two hours late, and by this time both Ango and Dazai
were so drunk that it became a very peculiar zadankai indeed. See ibid., p. 302,
166. The photograph is reproduced, for example, in Kawahara Yoshio, Oda
Sakunosuke Kenkyt7.
167. Another meaning, given in the text, is a double portion of the sweetened,
thick bean porridge called zenzai, a quantity appropriate for a husband and wife
to share.
168. Oda's wartime works include Osaka no Kao (1943) and Osaka no Shidosha
(1943). Another work, Godai Yiiko ( 1942) also describes various famous men of
Osaka. Bunraku no Hito (1946), published shortly after the war, concerns two of
the leading Bunraku puppeteers. i
169. Oda Sakunosuke Zenshii (henceforth abbreviated OSZ), V, p. 259. This is
the opening paragraph of the story "Roppyaku Kinsei" (The Six Hundred
Venus), a story whose title is a technical term of astrology.
170. Ibid., VIII, p. 118. Ikushima Ryoichi, the scholar of French literature, co11-
ceding that Oda had been influenced by Stendahl, declared that Oda had created
in his works not a Julien Sorel but characters who were no better than the dirt
under Julien's fingernails. Ikushima Ryoichi, "Oda Sakunosuke no koto," p. 313.
Ikushima believed that Saikaku was closer than Stendahl to Oda.
171. OSZ, VIII, p. 119. Oda played the hoax on his audience of pretending that
he had discovered the Arabic origin of a common Japanese word. Not only did
he persuade the audience that this fabr_icati~n was t~ue, but_ even convi~ce~
Professor Ikushima Ryoichi of Kyoto Umvers1ty. Ikush1ma demed thatJhe mc1-
dent had ever occurred. (See Ikushima, "Oda Sakunosuke," p. 311.) Ikushima's
denial only strengthens Oda's claim to being a creator of fiction, rather than a
truth-teller.
172. OSZ, VIII, p. 120. Abe Sada gained notoriety in 1936 by killing and muti-
lating her lover. . .
173. A photogragh of the "model" (who is so identified) is found m Sakaguchi
Ango, Oda Sakunosuke, Dan Kazuo, p. 532.
174. Ikushima, "Oda Sakunosuke," p. 311.
175. Jo lchiro, Hakkin-bon, pp. 85-87.
176. OSZ, VI, p. 339.
177. Ibid., p. 340. Oda mistakenly dated these recollections as events of 1940.
178. Ibid., V, p. 344.
179. Ibid., pp. 361-62.
180. But see ibid., p. 20, where Oda states that the restaurant t.,ner who ~ent
a copy of the court record of Abe Sada's trial, the man~scnpt on which O a
i
h.
himself was working, the story of his classmate Yokobon, the character o~ the
madam of the bar and even the "I" of the story were all fictitious. There is no
' · · rfi For
reason to question Oda's statement, but he also used facts from his own, I e...
example, he mentioned under its correct title the book that was banned by th!
DAZA! 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1109
authorities, and his descriptions of how he constantly mulled over daily experi-
ences to see if they might be developed into stories also ring true.
JSL See Aoyama Koji, "Sakuhin Kaidai," in ibid., VII, p. 385.
!82. Ishikawa Jun Zensht7 (henceforth abbreviated as IJZ), X, p. 52.
183. For example, in the essay "Nisemono Ki" (Account of an Impostor), from
hich the quotation above is taken, he specifically denied any interest in writing
n "I novel." He related how a total stranger had pretended to be himself, but he
ade no attempt to sublimate this personal experience into a work of literature.
84. Kafii Zenshii, XIV, p. 408.
!85. For the complete program of the occasion, see Paul Claude!, Journal, I, pp.
1325-26 .
.186. Early issues of this magazine were provided with a title and table of con-
tents in French. I have used these translations for their interest.
JS7. The essay, called "Sharum Rui Firippu no Ichigo," is not in the collected
edition of Ishikawa's works.
188. Ishikawa Jun, "Sharum Rui Firippu no lchigo," p. 36. I have followed the
punctuation and wording of Philippe's original text rather than that of Ishi-
kawa's translation. See Charles-Louis Philippe, Lettres de jeunesse, NRF (1911),
p. 63. See also IJZ, VII, p. 352, where Ishikawa repeats this opinion.
189. In Ishikawa's translation the age is rendered as twenty-five, in accordance
with Japanese usage. See Philippe, p. 76.
190. Ishikawa, "Sharum Rui," p. 37.
191. Aoyagi Tatsuo, Ishikawa Jun no Bungaku, p. 251.
92. IJZ, IX, p 155. The statement is found in the essay "Jiido Mukashiba-
ashi" (1951).
93. Ibid., p. 159. This essay is the source of our information not only concern-
g Ishikawa's translations of Gide but also his meeting with Claude!.
194. Ibid.
195. The message is reproduced photographically on pp. 2-5 of the magazine,
lid is translated into Japanese by Yamanouchi Yoshio on pp. 8-10. A second
essage relates Claudel's impressions on learning that his poem Sainte Gen-
vieve is to be published in Japan.
96. Ishikawa Jun, "Kurooderu no Tachiba," p. 71.
197. Ibid. The original French text is given in Nihon Shijin, III, No. 1, p. 5.
198. Ibid., p. 73.
9. See IJZ, VII, p. 300. The essay is called in Japanese "Ragee Shimpu."
. Aoyagi, Ishikawa Jun, p. 252. Aoyagi states that Raguel urged Ishikawa to
d Claude! and Peguy.
1. Ibid., pp. 49-71.
. Ishikawa in fact wrote several "practice pieces" that were published in
2 in various little magazines. None of them is included in collections of
· awa's writings and I have not seen them. See Aoyagi, Ishikawa Jun, pp.
0-51, for the names of these stories.
3. IJZ, I, p. 24.
. Ishikawa Jun, "Yomaresokonai no Hon," in Ishikawa Jun, Sakaguchi Ango
ii, p. 210.
5. IJZ, I, p. 283.
 Dawn to the West
206. Ibid., IX, p. 165.
207. Ibid., VII, p. ll.
208. For an extended study of this work, see Aoyagi, /shigawa Jun, pp. 103-45.
209. Ibid., p. 105.
210. Ibid., p 141.
211. IJZ, X, p. 19.
212. Ishikawa Jun, Bungaku Taikan, p. 139. Ishikawa also expressed admiration
over Thomas Mann's (supposed) refusal to speak ill of the Nazis even afterfoaving
Germany. The essay "Bungaku no Konnichi" (The Present State ofLiterature)/from
which these passages are cited, was published in August 1942 by Shogakukan irihis
collection Bungaku Taikan. When this volume was reprinted after the war "Btingaku
no Konnichi" was omitted.
213. Ishikawa's wartime experiences form the background for the story "Mu-
jinto" (Perpetual Lantern, 1946). See Okamoto Takuji, "Scnsoki no Ishikawa
Jun," in Ishikawa Jun, Sakaguchi Ango.
214. IJZ, II, pp.189-90. ' Press, 1961.
215. Ibid., p. 194.
216. There is a translation of"Asters" by Donald Keene in The Old Woman, the
Wife and the Archer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Note: All Japanese books, except as otherwise noted, were published in'Tokyo.
Abe Kobo. "Kaisetsu," in Ishikawa Jun.
Aeba Takao. Dazai Osamu Ron. Kodansha, 1976.
- - . Showa Bungaku Shiron. Ozawa Shoten, 1976.
Aomori Bungaku Kai (ed.). Dazai Osamu Bungaku Hihan Shii. Shimbisha.,1968.
Aoyagi Tatsuo Ishikawa Jun no Bungaku. Kasama Shoin, 1978.
Bungaku Hihyo no Kai (ed.). Hihyo to Kenkyii Dazai Osamu. Haga Shoten,
1972.
Bungei Tokuhon: Dazai Osamu. Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1975.
Bungei Tokuhon: Sakaguchi Ango. Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1978.
Burai Bungaku Kenkyiikai (ed.). Burai-ha no Bungaku. Kyoiku Shuppan Senti,
1974.
Claude!, Paul. Journal, 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1968.
Dan Kazuo. Dazai to Ango. Torami Shobo, 1968,
Dazai Osamu. No Longer Human, trans. Donald Keene. New York: New Direc-
tions, 1958.
- - . The Setting Sun, trans. Donald Keene, New York: New Directions, 1956.
Dazai Osamu Kenkyii, II, ed. Katsura Hidezumi. Chikuma Si9>bo, 1978.
Dazai Osamu Zenshii, 12 vols. Chikuma Shobo, 1957-58.
Furubayashi Takashi and Sato Masaru. Sengo no Bungaku. Yiihikaku, 1978.
Hashikawa Bunso. (Zoho) Nihon Roman-ha Hihan Josetsu. Miraisha, 1965.
Honda Shiigo. Senji Sengo no Senkoshatachi. Shobunsha, 1963.
Hyodo Masanosuke, Sakaguchi Ango. Kodansha, 1976.
- - . Sakaguchi Ango Ron. Tojusha, 1972.
DAZAI 0SAMU AND THE BURAI-HA 1111
Jkushima Ryoichi. "Oda Sakunosuke no koto," in Kawahara Yoshio, Oda
Sakunosuke Kenkya.
Ishikawa Jun, in Nihon no Bungaku series. Chuo Karon Sha, 1967.
Ishikawa Jun, Sakaguchi Ango, in Nihon Bungaku Kenkyii Shiryo Sosho series.
Yiiseido, 1978.
Ishikawa Jun, Sakaguchi Ango Sha, in Nihon Gendai Bungaku Zenshii series.
Kodansha, 1967.
Ishikawa Jun Zenshii, 10 vols. Chikuma Shobo, 1960-61.
Jzawa Yoshio. Ishikawa Jun. Yayoi Shobo, 1961.
Jo Ichiro. Hakkin-bon. Togensha, 1965.
Kafa Zenshii, 29 vols. lwanami Shoten, 1962-74.
Kamei Katsuichiro. Burai-ha no /nori. Shimbisha, 1964.
Kawahara Yoshio. Oda Sakunosuke Kenkya. Osaka: Minazukisha Shobo, 1971.
Keene, Donald. Landscapes and Portraits. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1971.
- (trans.). The Old Woman, the Wife and the Archer. New York: Viking
Kikuta Yoshitaka. Ningen Dasshutsu. Yayoi Shobo, 1979.
Kin Donarudo. Nihon Bungaku wo yomu. Shinchosha, 1977.
Matsuda Osamu. Shisei Sei Shi. Heibonsha, 1972.
Miyoshi Yukio and Takemori Ten'yii. Kindai Bungaku, VII. Yuhikaku, 1977.
Moriyasu Masafumi. Sakka-ron no Hokai. Yubun Shoin, 1971.
- - (ed.). Burai Bungaku Kenkya. Miyai Shoten, 1972.
Morris, Ivan (ed.). Modern Japanese Stories. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode,
1961.
Noguchi Takehiko. Ishikawa Jun Ron. Chikuma Shobo, 1969.
O'Brien, James A. Dazai Osamu. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975.
Oda Sakunosuke Zensha, 8 vols. Kodansha, 1970.
Ogawa Tom. Daraku Ron no Hatten. San'ichi Shobo, 1969.
Okubo Tsuneo. Showa Bungaku no Shukumei. Tojusha, 1975.
Okuno Takeo. Burai to /tan. Kokubunsha, 1973.
- - . Dazai Osamu. Bungei Shunjii, 1973.
-·- - . Sakaguchi Ango. Bungei Shunjii, 1972.
Ota Shizuko. Shayo Nikki. Ishikari Shobo, 1948.
Saigusa Yasutaka. Dazai Osamu to Burai-ha no Sakkatachi. Nambokusha, 1968.
- - . Nihon Roman-ha no Gunzo. Yiishindo, 1967.
- - . Shiso toshite no Senso Taiken. Ofiisha, 1962.
Sakaguchi Ango Kenkyii, 2 vols. Tojusha, 1972-73.
Sakaguchi Ango, Oda Sakunosuke, Dan· Kazuo, in Nihon no Bungaku series.
Chuo Kornn Sha, 1969.
Sako Jun'ichir6. Dazai Osamu Ron. Shimbisha, 1963.
Sasaki Kiichi. Ishikawa Jun. Sojusha, 1972.
Sekii Mitsuo. Sakaguchi Ango no Sekai. Tojusha, 1976.
Soma Shoichi. Dazai Osamu to /buse Masuji. Hirosaki: Tsugaru Shobo, 1972. ·
- - . Korokiamu Dazai Osamu Ron. Hirosaki: Tsugaru Shobo, 1977.
- - . "Tsugaru ni tsuite," in Dazai Osamu, Tsugaru. Hirosaki: Tsugaru Shobo,
1976.
 Dawn to the West

Takahashi Hideo. Genso toshite no "U0.takushi." Kodansha, 1976.

Takeuchi Yoshimi (trans.). Rojin Zenshii, II. Iwanami Shoten, 1964.
Teihon Sakaguchi Ango Zensht7, 13 vols. Tojusha, 1968-71.
Togo Katsumi and Watanabe Yoshinori. Dazai Osamu. Sobunsha, 1974.
Tsushima Michiko. Kaisi5 no Dazai Osamu. Jimbun Shoin, 1978.
Tsutsumi Shigehisa. Koi to Kakumei. Kodansha, 1973.
Yamagishi Gaishi. Dazai Osamu Oboegaki. Shimbisha, 1963.
Yamamoto Kenkichi. U0.takushi Shosetsu Sakka Ron. Shimbisha, 1966.

26
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY
WOMEN

THE APPEARANCE OF Higuchi Ichiyo on the literary scene of

the 1890s marked the end of many centuries of silence on the part
of prospective women writers, but her success did not immedi-
ately precipitate a flood of literature by women. It is true that a
few women of the early twentieth century are remembered for a
story or a translation, and Yosano Akiko emerged as a poet of
exceptional intensity and appeal; but it was not until the 1930s
that women began to produce works that both attracted wide pub-
lic attention and are still read today. This change was due mainly
to the effectiveness of the individual writers, but also to the en-
hanced position of women in Japanese society. A lone woman
writer, even one of the obvious talent of Tamura Toshiko (1894-
1945), could not singlehandedly combat the "feudalistic" men-
tality prevalent in the literary world of the late Meiji era; eventu-
ally, after several novels of serious intent, Tamura gave up the
struggle and turned into a writer of pulp romances. Only after a
dozen or more talented women writers achieved success with the
public were their claims for attention heeded by the critics.

1113
 Dawn to the West I l 14
The women writers of the 1930s and later, _though strikingly
different in their interests and modes of express10n, shared many
frustrations. Regardless of the nature of their books, these women
were often known more for their love-life than for their criticisms
of society or the beauty of their prose styles. This was largely due
to the social restrictions on a woman's activities, which prevented
these writers from gaining a personal knowledge of most n:onama-
tory aspects of life in Japan. Even during the Meiji era women
banded together to publish journals of writing by women, but
they could not hope to rival the magazines of mass circulation,
which only occasionally published stories by one of their number.
There was no question of women being admitted to the places
where men seriously discuss1rd literature.
Nogami Yaeko was sometimes described as "the last author
to have come from Soseki's studio," 1 but she herself de-
nied that she was ever Soseki's disciple; women were simplynot
admitted to the privileged circle that gathered on Thursday after-
noons at the feet of the master. She was inspired to write fiction
by hearing about these sessions from her husband, who was a
disciple. Perhaps the most striking aspect of Nogami's career was
that her best works were completea"while she was in her seventies.
Nogami was by no means the only woman writer to publish her
best works at an advanced age. Even women who had established
a name for themselves before the war felt inspired to write in a:
different and genererally more effective vein after the reforms
promulgated by the Occupation, such as giving women the vote,
opening all governmental universities to women, and making
women the equals of men before the law. Left-wing women writ"7
ers, a surprisingly high proportion of the whole group, only after
the war were able to publish freely their views on the position of
women in Japanese society. The result was that many women,
regardless of their age, published their best stories after 1945.
For a few women writers, who were unconcerned with poli..:
ties and who never doubted their superiority to men, it may have
been only accidental that their best works appeared during the
postwar years. This was true notably of Uno Chiyo (b. 1897) and
would probably also have been· true of Okamoto Kanoko (1889~
1939) if she had not died, relatively young, before the war. But it
was no accident that the representative works of the next genera"7
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1115
tion of women writers, including Hayashi Fumiko (1903-1951),
Sata Ineko (b. 1904), and Hirabayashi Taiko (1905-1972) were all
published after the war.
NOGAMI YAEKO (1885-1985)
First in seniority and probably in overall importance as a
writer was Nogami Yaeko. He,start occurred in 1907 when her
husband, Nogami Toyoichiro, read one of her stories before
Soseki and his assembled disciples at a Thursday session. Soseki
wrote Yaeko his impressions in a letter that was five meters long;
he recognized her talent, but had faults to find with this particular
story. 2 The story was not published, but her next was printed at
the head of the February 1909 issue of the magazine Hototogisu
on Soseki's recommendation. A later story, which appeared in the
June issue, bore the postscript: "Soseki's evaluation: a great mas-
terpiece." 3 Few readers today would agree with such praise, but
these words from Soseki launched Nogami Yaeko on her literary
career.
After this auspicious start Nogami continued to publish sto-
ries in literary magazines as well as a serialized novel in a news-
paper. In 1911 she joined the members of Seito (Bluestocking),
the magazine founded that year by Hiratsuka Raicho (1886-
1971), an important figure in women's movements. Nogami con-
tinued, however, to place most of her work in such general
magazines as Hototogisu and Chuo Karon. In 1913 she published
a translation of Bulfinch's Mythology to which Soseki contrib-
uted a preface, and in the same year a work called Sonya
Kovalevskaya, a translation of sections from Kovalevskaya's auto-
biographical novel The Sisters Rajevski, and from the biography
by Anna Leffler of the distinguished Russian woman who was one
of the first of her sex to gain distinction as a mathematician.
Nogami was attracted to Kovalevskaya because of the resem-
blances she saw between the struggles of the Russian women in
the 1860s and 1870s to achieve intellectual equality with men and
the similar attempts that were even then being carried out by
women of the Bluestocking group. N ogami wrote three prefaces
for her book, the first in 1924 when her full translation was pub-
 Dawn to the West 111 6
lished; the second in 1933 when it was included in the Iwanami
Library; and the third in 1978, over sixty years after thefirst ap:.:
pearance of the translation. The prefaces reveal Nogami's evolv-
ing attitudes not only with respect to the work but to society.
In the first preface Nogami described with particular warmth
Kovalevskaya's achievements as a woman scientist; her outstand-
ing work had compelled male scientists, despite their prejudices,
to recognize her ability. Nogami was perhaps even more deeply
moved by the discovery that Kovalevskaya was sensitive and eas-
ily shed tears, a "womanly woman." 4
In the preface written for the 1933 edition Nogami, after ex-
pressing the opinion that Kovalevskaya's readiness to deny her
advantages of birth, and her u,nconventional, free spirit were typi-
cal of Russian women, went on:
If she had been born in the Soviet Russia of today, surely she would
be leading an active life. She would be the ideal Komsomolka; this
Communist society is precisely what she so often dreamed of in her
Fourier-like fantasies.
This makes me reflect on how long the preparations were un-
derway before Russia could become the assembly plant for the
model of the new social system. At the same time, I am once-more
intrigued by the rather similar features shared by the movement for
liberation, which was directed toward a brighter future and gaining
knowledge-the whirlwind that swept the Russian intelligentsia of
1860-70 and marked a turning point in the youth of this pioneering
woman-and the movement among the new women of Japan, cen-
tered at the time around Bluestocking, the magazine in which I first
published parts of her autobiography.5
The third preface, written when Nogami was ninety-three,
provided new information on how she made the translation (she
worked from English versions of the originals). Rereading,her
own translation, she was struck this time by Kovalevskaya's de-
sire, even after the highest decoration of the French Academy was
bestowed on her, to be loved as a woman. Kovalevskaya had to
make difficult choices: between her work and her love, between
society as a whole and her own family. She eventually became an
outstanding mathematician and, as her autobiography attests, an
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1117
equally impressive writer. Nogami was particularly interested in
the details of the lives of the great landlords, aristocrats, and other
classes in old Russia, and by the curious meeting between Kova-
Ievskaya, a girl of ten at the time, and Dostoevski, who stirred in
her the first pangs of love.6 /
The three prefaces seem to typify the stages of liberation in
the lives of many modern Japanese women writers. First, there
was the attempt to achieve recognition in a world dominated by
men who, often unconsciously, discriminated against women writ-
ers. Next, there followed a period when Marxism, especially the
Communism of the Soviet Union, seemed an ideal for the Jap-
anese to emulate. Finally, many women discovered late in life the
importance of the past, in both its unchanging aspects and its
differences with the present.
Nogami kept up a steady flow of short stories, children's fic-
tion, plays, translations, and essays, but her first important novel,
Machiko, did not appear until 1928-1930, when it was serialized
in the intellectual magazine Kaizo (Reconstruction). The pro-
letarian literature movement was at its height and Nogami, always
sensitive to social and political issues, absorbed its influence. She
herself could not write proletarian literature that was based on
personal experience because she had grown up in an upper-
middle-dass household, had received an excellent education, and
was happily married to a professor. The heroine of her novel,
Sone Machiko, accordingly resembles Nogami in personality but
not in experience. Machiko frets over the restrictions her class has
imposed on her, and attempts to break through them by par-
ticipating in revolutionary activities. She desires to be loved by
Seki, a young revolutionary of peasant stock. In a scene that antic-
ipates the one in Dazai's The Setting Sun in which Kazuko, a
member of the aristocracy, throws herself at the plebeian writer
Uehara, Machiko confesses her love to Seki. They agree to marry,
but during the few days before the planned wedding, she dis-
covers how sincerely she is loved by Kawai, an upper-class factory
owner whom she has hitherto scorned for that reason. But Kawai
nonetheless proves his true worth by turning over his factory to
the workers, whereas Seki, as she learns, already has a wife. Ma-
.· chiko realizes that she has never really loved Seki, only his ideol-
ogy, and now that she knows she has been deceived, she is no
 Dawn to the West 1 THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN
longer sure she believes in Seki's ideology. Seki, admitting thath~ i
is married, tells her, "You were in love with me. And you tried
using me as a stepping stone to help you leap over the confi_nes of
the bourgeoisie. I loved you too. And I was lending you a ·hand;
when you made the leap. That's all there was to it." MachikQ;
disillusioned, turns to Kawai, aware for the first time that she
loves him too.
To present the plot of Machiko in summary form is.:t.mfairto
Nogami, who was an accomplished writer, but it illustnites the
difficulties that she and other women writers encountered when
trying to deal with political or social issues. For all her sympathy
for the workers and her hopes that there was in the Soviet Union,
a better society than elsewherei Nogami lacked the personal expe..:
rience needed to give authenticity to the work. The characters are
like puppets manipulated by an author who is unsure what she
wants them to do.7 The ending seems hopelessly contrived, but
perhaps Nogami was unable to visualize the logical conclusion:.
Machiko, the gentle idealist, unhappily married to a revolutionary
who is a brute.
Nogami continued to write during the 1930s, but her htH
manistic-the word has often been used by recent critics though
"socialistic" might be more accurate-convictions and her anti':
militarism sometimes made it difficult to get works published, and
works that appeared were marred by the censor's deletions. In
1936 she began to publish serially her major novel Meiro (The
Labyrinth), but found it impossible to continue in the atmosphere
prevailing at that time. She did not return to The Labyrinth until
after the war, when she completely rewrote the existing episodes
and added extensively until the novel was finished in 1956. In.a
postscript, Nogami explained the long time it had taken her in
these terms:
It was not procrastination on my part. It was because they did not
permit me to portray honestly the political situation in Japan, which
enabled them to do what they pleased-in other words, I could not
portray them as they really were. If I had been willing to compro-
mise with their policies, as typified by those of the military cliqu.e;
this book would surely have been completed much sooner. But"l
could not do that. As the result of the liberation that was brougb.ti
about by the defeat, our pens are no longer chained. 8
1119
The story of this roman jfeuve covers the period from 1936 to
1944, from the February 26 uprising of the young army officers to
the eve of the defeat, the disaster that the militarists set in motion.
The principal character is Sugano Shozo, a young man who a few
years earlier had become involved in the left-wing movement, but
who later committed tenko. Although he formally renounced his
left-wing beliefs, he was fired from his post at the university and
shunned by many former acquaintances, even some who had
been as close as members of his own family. One person who did
not tum her back on Sh5z5 was Tammi Tatsue, a friend since
childhood days. She is rather flighty and only occasionally evinces
interest in\ the intellectual problems that absorb Shozo, but she
Temains a faithful friend. When she marries, however, she chooses
not Shozo but a man who can provide the luxuries that she con-
siders to be essential to a civilized life.
The cast of characters of The Labyrinth is very large, and
even persons who hardly figure in the action are drawn with an
attention to physical descriptions that is rare in modern Japanese
literature. Most of the characters belong to the upper class; even
Shozo is a member of an old, established family of sake brewers,
and he moves easily in aristocratic circles. Nogami was more com-
fortable treating such characters than the middle- or lower-class
persons of Machiko; there is an authenticity to her descriptions of
the possessions of the upper class, the food they eat, the shops
they patronize, that reveals unmistakable familiarity.9
Perhaps the most successfully drawn character in The Laby-
rinth is one who has almost nothing to do with the plot, the elderly
aiistocrat Ejima Munemichi, who lives in self-imposed isolation
from the world. He tends to consider everything that has hap-
pened in Japan since 1860, the year when his grandfather, a coun-
tilor of the shogunate, was cut down by assassins, as vulgar and
unworthy of his attention. When at the No theater Ejima sees the
.heir of the Tokugawa family greet in rather too affable a manner a
member of the imperial family who has come to see the perform-
ance, he sneeringly mutters, "That clown!"
· Every moment of Ejima's life, from the time he wakes until
goes to bed, is carefully regulated. He rarely leaves his house
ept to attend No; more commonly, he himself performs on a
ge attached to his house, or his boyhood friend, the great actor
mewaka Manzaburo, performs for him alone. Ejima's way of

Dawn to the West 1120
life is eccentric but strangely impressive; it would seem that for
Nogami he embodied the aristocratic virtues. Ejima's love for No,
which contrasts so conspicuously with his seeming lack of love for
anything else, is conveyed with great conviction-perhaps because
Nogami's husband was a distinguished scholar of No and she
herself practiced singing the texts for many years. Unlike many
other characters in The Labyrinth, Ejima is interestingly complex:
though he seems utterly remote from the world, he keeps in touch
with political developments through his younger brother, to
whom he has yielded his title but not his estates. The effect of the
ambiguities and contradictions in his personality makes him more
believable than other characters (even Sh6z6), who tend to·be
schematically portrayed. 1
Shinoda Hajime, whose study of The Labyrinth published in
1964 was the first attempt to consider the work in literary, rather
than in ideological terms, said that (like Vanity Fair) it was a novel
without a hero; instead, Nogami was portraying a whole civiliza-
tion.10 The civilization of Japan during the decade covered by the
book included admirable elements, but also much that was mer-
etricious or even evil. The steady movement of Japan toward the
war, propelled forward by the military, munitions makers, and
others who expected to profit by a large-scale war, is depicted not
abstractly, in the manner of a proletarian novel exposing the
wickedness of the rich, but in concrete details that enable readers
to feel that they ate participating in the life described. The Laby-
rinth has often been treated as a political novel, either as a tenko
work (by the Kindai Bungaku critics) ot as a novel that, despite its
antiwar sentiments, is hamstrung by Nogami's unconscious accep-
tance of the values of the upper class, which she is ostensibly
rejecting. One study of Nogami's writings devoted about half the
space given to The Labyrinth to an indictment of the charac.ter
Tatsue for her willingness to lead the life of an upper-class ma-
tron, despite her professed sympathy for Shoz6 and victims of
social injustice.a Tatsue undoubtedly has a mercenary streak and
she is sometimes cruel, but this does not alter the reality of her
generous impulses. We may not know to the end (she dies in an
airplane accident) whether or not we like Tatsue, but this is a
virtue of the novel-unlike the cartoons of people in proletarian
literature.
This long novel (it runs to over a thousand pages) concludes
/
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1121
as Ejima, who has hitherto stood aloof from the war, realizes that
the bombings will alter if not destroy Japanese civilization. He
urges Manzaburo to take refuge in some safe place in the country,
comparing the situation to the world just before the Flood. He
wants Manzaburo and others who perpetuate the arts of Japan to
board the ark that will enable them to survive until the war has
ended, but he refuses to give Manzaburo his collection of No
masks and robes for safekeeping. Ejima declares that the robes
and masks are worthless without actors, but as long as the art
survives, new robes and masks will always be created. After Man-
zabur6 has departed, Ejima calls his common-law wife, Tomi, and
suggests that she also leave Tokyo. He intends to stay, regardless
of the danger:
There's such a thing as what, in vulgar parlance, is known as
"chickens coming home to roost." That expression suits my feelings
perfectly. I have always been aware, of course, that this war was not
going to end in any perfunctory manner, but in the past I merely
observed from on high what the military clique, my brother Hide-
michi, and the others were doing, and dismissed the whole business
as rank stupidity. It was exactly as if I had been watching a fire.
Supposing I were to run away now, when things have reached the
present state-wouldn't it be the same as if a bystander, who has not
so much as thrown a bucket of water on the fire, were to fly into a
panic when the flames reached him? That would be not so much
cowardly as ignominious. Surely, Tomi, you wouldn't want me to do
such a thing.12
Tomi begs permission to remain with Ejima in Tokyo, and he
feels, perhaps for the first time, love for this woman who has been
his willing slave for so many years. He asks about Shozo, who has
been conscripted and sent to fight in China. Rumor has it that he
has been killed fighting in China, but Tomi has heard from
Sh6zo's former mistress that it is uncertain what has happened to
him. The reader knows, however, that Shozo was felled by a Jap-
anese bullet when he attempted to desert to the Chinese. Ejima
muses over the possibility that after the war men like Sugano
Shozo may take over Japan, as the low-ranking samurai seized
P?.wer after the Meiji Restoration. That night, as they lie together,
~rma admits that he wanted all along to die with his No masks
 Dawn to the West 1122
and robes, and with Tomi. The book concludes with the statement
that they would try to live as "a real husband and wife for the first
time in the brief time before the rain of fire from the bombs
'
exploding all over Japan engulfed them." 13
When The Labyrinth was included in the Iwanami Library in
1958 Nogami added a postscript in which she answered various
questions that had been asked about her book:
In the first place, there were almost no special models for The Laby-
rinth.14 If something might be said to have provided a model, it was
the whole generation caught up in the Sturm und Drang ofleft~wing
thought in Japan in 1932 and 1933. The so-called student move-
ment had its roots in the m&terialist view of history, but I am still of
the opinion that intrinsically the movement was spiritual in nature.
Of course, a fair number of young people became Marxists in the
true sense, as the result of an intellectual development that tr1m-
scended the circumstances; but although the mind of the hero of
this novel is resolved to remain in the ranks, his feet are unabl~ to
follow. This marks his first step into the labyrinth. I should be
grateful if readers bear this in mind as they read my book. I make
this request because Sugano Shozo has frequently been criticized in
terms of his behaving improperly as a Marxist or for actions that
are inappropriate in a man who has committed tenko. I should
prefer that he not be shut up inside a schematic framework, but that
he be considered instead as merely a sensitive, decent, though timid
and easily wounded young man who happened by chance to have
been a student during a time of historic upheaval. 15
The Labyrinth is an impressive, but by no means flawless,
novel. Some episodes might have been written for a popular
woman's magazine, rather than the forbidding Sekai (The World),
in which it was actually serialized, and even so devoted a reader
as Shinoda expressed disappointment over the diminution of the
scale of the later parts of the work.16 The Labyrinth nevertheless
commands attention if only because it is conceived on lines so
unlike those of most modern Japanese novels; instead of being
the account of an "I" or some surrogate of the author, or else a
treatment of relations among members of a family or a similar
small group, The Labyrinth from the start deals with many people,
some only distantly related to the principal figures, and the author
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1123
is as close to those characters as to Sugano Shozo or Tarumi Ta-
tsue. The style ~s also distinctive in that it is resolutely prosaic, and
does n~t rely, m the manner of many Japanese novels, on poetic
suggestion or understatement to achieve its effects. This is not to
say that Nogami was insensitive to the traditional beauties of Jap-
anese p~ose, but her work is constructed along massive lines, and
she realized that the style appropriate to such a work could not be
one of poetic allusiveness. The results have not pleased all critics,
but Nogami's style was an important element in the success of this
work.
. Noga~i wrote_ another important novel, Hideyoshi to Rikya
(Hideyosh1 and R1kyii, 1964), which first appeared serially in
1962-1963, when she was already in her mid-seventies. This novel
is based l~gely on Nogami's researches into Japanese history of
the late sixteenth century, but she did not hesitate to invent.
Although Hideyoshi and Rikyu has been acclaimed as Nogami's
finest11.
novel, and even as one of the masterpieces of postwar litera-
. .
ture, it reqmres a pnor knowledge of people and incidents that
few Western readers are likely to possess; however, the central
theme, the conflict between the artist (Rikyii, the celebrated tea
master) and his patron, the tyrant Hideyoshi, is of universal valid-
io/. Hideyoshi, who had admired and favored Rikyii, turned on
him for _unknown reasons (though Nogami supplies a plausible
explanation) and ordered him to commit suicide. The love-hate
7elationship between ,patron and artist is a familiar phenomenon
m every country, but here it is given special complexity because
the tyrant is passionately devoted to art-not only the tea cere-
m_ony but No-and the artist is politically involved with both
fnend~ and e~emies of his master. Nogami is naturally more sym-
pathetic to Rikyu than to Hideyoshi, but she invents a son of
Rikyii, Kisabur6, who as a member of the new generation has
doµbts about his father and his art.
H~dey?shi and Rikyu is a more accomplished, yet ultimately
less sat1_sfy1~g novel than The Labyrinth. Nogami's re-creation of
tile penod 1s successful, but the piling up of exotic words and
details tends to distract the reader from the main themes-a fault
.that is obviously true not only of this work but of most historical
~ction. Yet the fact that N ogami turned to the past for her mate-
nals sugg~sts an awakened interest in discovering what had lin-
gered on m Japan of the traditions of 350 years before.
 Dawn to the West 1124
Nogami profited by her long life and by the changes that
Japan experienced, especially after 1945, to develop from a tal-
ented into an important writer. Although her works extended over
a period of some seventy years, the best ones belong to the post-
war period, the first time they could freely be published; in her
words, the defeat had brought a liberation.
OKAMOTO KANOKO (1889-1939)
Okamoto was born four years after Nogami, but she seems to
be of an earlier period, no doubt because her important works
were all composed between \936 and 1939. She obviously was
in no sense a postwar writer, but she belongs with other women
of her generation who first found their voices in the postwar
years.
Okamoto's first noteworthy story, "Tsuru wa yamiki" (The
Crane Falls Sick), was published in the June 1936 issue of Bun-
gakkai together with a recommendation by Kawabata Yasunari,
who remained an admirer of her writings to the end of his life.is
The story takes place in Kamakura during the summer of 1923, at
the resort hotel where Okamoto and her husband have gone to
escape the Tokyo heat. By chance, Akutagawa Ryiinosuke, whose
works she greatly esteems, is staying at the same hotel. The story
describes their casual meetings and conversations, her observa-
tions on his character and, finally, how startled she was to see him
four years later, when he had come to look like a sick crane~still a
majestic bird, but ravaged by illness. Soon after this last meeting
Okamoto learns of Akutagawa's suicide, and is informed by
someone who has seen his diary that he praised her as being
dearer to him and more intelligent than any other woman he has
known. She reproaches herself for not having kept her promise
to call on him again; perhaps she might have saved him from
his fate.
~ In the story Akutagawa is called Asakawa Shonosuke. Ifthis
pseudonym does not give him away, he is further identified as the
author of Rashomon and Gate of Hell. Among the other characters
is an actress named Okawa Kakuko, the younger sister of the w.ife
of Okawa Shuzaburo, a writer celebrated for his hedonism and
Diabolism. It does not require a detective to guess that Okawa is
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1125
Tanizaki Jun'ichiro and that the actress is the sister-in-law for
whom he wrote two film scripts. The heroine (Okamoto calls her-
self Yoko) finds Kakuko's profile rather coarse, and when she sees
her disrobe before going swimming, Kakuko's skin is a dead
white, like a peeled potato. Yoko is at first intrigued by Kakuko's
stylish clothes and her flapperlike "modern-girl" manner, but she
soon discovers that this is only a mask; Kakuko is basically quite
an ordinary young woman. Asakawa, on the other hand, attracts
Yoko, and she feels certain that she has perceived aspects of his
personality that no one has ever noticed before. She mentions his
foibles-for example, how he sometimes makes faces before a mir-
ror-and the care with which he preserves the secrecy of his real
feelings. In reporting their conversations she does not omit ex-
pressions that suggest how much Asakawa admires her.
Okamoto's husband, the cartoonist and writer Okamoto Ip-
pei, recalled her behavior while she was writing "The Crane Falls
Sick." She wept when she described Akutagawa, but before de-
scribing herself in the story, she applied fresh makeup. She kept
on her desk pens of different thicknesses and colors, and changed
the pen according to the nature of the materiaJ.19
Surely no two authors could have been less alike than
Nogami Yaeko and Okamoto Kanoko. Nogami's understanding
of the political situation may at times have been inadequate, but
she was an intellectual, concerned with the state of the world.
Okamoto seems to have been interested mainly in herself. She
was convinced that she was incomparably attractive; in fact, two
or more men constantly served as her slaves. She was equally
confident about her writing. When certain critics questioned the
assertion in "The Crane Falls Sick" that she could have cured
Akutagawa of his melancholy, she serenely replied that if he had
only read her books of popular Buddhism (for which she had
acquired something of a reputation), he would surely have been
helped. On learning that Chilo Karon had accepted "The Crane
Falls Sick}' Okamoto suggested that the editor show the story to
Tanizaki. It may easily be imagined how Tanizaki reacted to
Okamoto's portrait of his sister-in-law, but she did not doubt that
he would praise it. Needless to say, Tanizaki was not pleased, and
he wielded enough influence with Chilo Karon to prevent the
story from appearing; it had to be published elsewhere. Not long
afterward it won the annual prize offered by Bungakkai, which
 Dawn to the West ll26
was established with money that Okamoto herself had con:..
tributed.
Okamoto scored her first important success with the story
"Boshi Jojo" (Mother and Son, a Lyric, 1937). The story is clearly
autobiographical, as we can tell from the closeness of the names
of the characters to those of their prototypes. Kanoko became
Kanojo; her husband Ippei became lssaku; and their son Taro
became Ichiro. If any readers nevertheless believed that this was a
work of fiction, Okamoto quickly disabused them of the notion;
she provided innumerable details that could refer only to herself
and her family. Kanojo and her husband take Ichiro to Paris
where he is to study art. Much as it grieves her, Kanojo must leave
him there alone, but even in Tokyo her thoughts constantly fly to
her son and to Paris. As she rides in the bus she recalls how
delighted she had been to discover marronier trees in Tokyo; just
like those in Paris, their white blossoms resembling dusters of
little candles. She muses:
Paris is a provocative city. It transforms even grief and sorrow into
popular songs, and in this way washes clean the wounds of the
heart. Against the deep blue of the clear, early summer sky of Cen-
tral Europe, that numbs like an aphrodisiac, marronier blossoms
gush forth from trees here and there like tricklings of dreams. She
had arrived in Paris just at the time of their flowering. Kanojo had
shut her eyes once, then suddenly opened them and stared, un-
blinking, at the flowers among the leaves. Without a word, she had
pointed out the blossoms to her son, and he too, just like Kanojo,
shut his eyes, opened them all at once and gazed at the blossoms. A
communality of feeling, so intense as to make them shudder, flowed
between them. The son said in a strong, vibrant voice, "Mother,
we've come at last to Paris, haven't we?" 2o
This passage is unfortunately typical of Okamoto's .over:.
blown style with its improbable similes and glittering neologisms.
She insisted on the peculiar bond between herself and her son,
but we may suspect that it is because the son serves as a mirror
reflecting the exquisite, sensitive qualities she. detects in herself;
Surely there can be few more narcissistic works of literature.
The boy's mention of their having at last come to Paris refers)
to the many times when his father had failed to come home
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1127
night, and his mother had comforted him in a tearful voice with
the promise that one day the two of them would go to Paris and
ride down the Champs-Elysees in a horse-carriage. "The name
Paris, so often on her lips in those days, did not necessarily refer
to the city of Paris. It had the meaning of Paradise." 21 This re-
mark by the son is repeated several times, as evidence that their
dream has been realized. But alas, now she is back in Tokyo.
One day, out for a walk with her husband, she notices a
young man who from behind resembles her beloved son. She in-
sists on following him, remembering how fast her son walked,
how she always had to run a little to keep up with him. "Thin
tears" veil her eyes at this recollection. As she ( and her unwilling
husband) follow the youth, once more half-running, she has a
"cheerful, lonely, happy feeling." She moves like a somnambulist,
hardly aware of what she does, but when finally she catches a
glimpse of the young man's face she discovers that he does not in
the least resemble her son. However, his face suggests in the bud
Napoleon on St. Helena, and there is a trace of blue, a suggestive
dew, in his eyes, like the dew in the eyes of a Murillo picture of a
young girl. She is about to give up the pursuit, sorry for her hus-
band, who has been tagging along, but the young man wheels
around and demands what business she has with him. She takes
refuge in her husband's arms.
Two days later a letter from the young man arrives. He re-
ports that he was so stunned that the celebrated Mrs. 0. K. should
have been following him that he failed to take advantage of the
opportunity to speak with her. He begs the favor of an interview
and eventually, after he has bombarded her with letters, she con-
sents. She receives him in her sitting room, which has a large gas
stove covered (not being in use) with a cloth embroidered in co-
balt blue. The velvet sofa, which she bought in London, has gold
tassels on the armrests. The young man sits back on the cushions
with their deep springs. Kanojo's bobbed hair has not a strand out
of place, and she wears a cobalt-blue coat of silk crepe, apparently
'to match the stove-cover.22
It is really not necessary to relate the rest of the story, though
some of Okamoto's descriptions of herself are filled with a frank
awareness of her beauty and charms that deserves quotation.
Toward the end of the story, as the reader easily foresees, the
rrogate son steps out of his role and makes amorous advances,
 Dawn to the West 1128
which Kanojo rejects, sure that to yield would be to betray her
son. The story concludes, after many excerpts from letters written
by Ichiro in Paris, with the account of a show of avant-garde art
held in Tokyo by a French friend of Ichiro. One picture painted
by Ichiro was included in the show and the purchaser was-none
other than the young man Kanojo once followed, who bought it
as a memento of a "miraculously fortunate son" who had Kanojo
for his mother.
"Mother and Son" is not a good story. The author is so full of
admiration for herself and her maternal love that she shows little
interest in the other characters, even her son. It created a sensa-
tion, all the same, and led to Okamoto receiving orders for stories
from the leading magazines. ~he apparently accepted every one of
the orders and began publishing at a furious rate.
Of the many works Okamoto produced during the last four
years of her life, only one is especially distinguished, "Rogisho"
(The Story of an Old Geisha, 1938), probably her finest achieve-
ment. An old geisha is attracted to the young man who comes to
repair the electrical equipment in her house. He complains of the
dullness of his work and tells of his dreams of doing research. On
a sudden impulse the geisha offers to take him into her house and
provide him with funds for his research. He gladly accepts, reas-
suring himself that her conscience is no doubt bothering her be-
cause of all the customers she has cheated over the years.
At first the man throws himself into research with enthusi-
asm, but all his inventions prove to have been patented already,
and gradually he loses interest. He is bored with his free time and
thinks nostalgically about the electrical shop that had once
seemed so uninteresting. He tries to break away from the old
geisha, but his youthful presence is necessary to he~, a~d she m,an-
ages always to retrieve him. The curious but convmcmg relation..:
ship between the man and the old woman, who draws strength
from the man she sustains but unmans, is beautifully evoked by
Okamoto in a manner that indicates that Kawabata and other
admirers had reason for their praise.
Okamoto Kanoko through most of her brief career was a
peculiarly flamboyant "I" novelist, but in "The Story of an Old
Geisha" she seems to have surmounted her fascination with her-
self and to have taken a firm step in the direction of becoming .a
writer of substance. She reportedly told her husband after the
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1129
success of this story that she no longer had any worries about her
writing. 23 Although nothing she wrote during the last six months
of her life equaled "The Story of an Old Geisha," every work
represented an effort directed at artistic excellence. The last stories
are set for the most part in the old quarters of Tokyo and the
characters are ordinary, plebeian shopkeepers and owners of eat-
ing places who have never seen a marronier or dreamed of Paris.
Perhaps as Maruya Saiichi, the distinguished novelist and
critic, suggested, Okamoto Kanoko's real forte was in the full-
length novel, though she never wrote one; her short stories, with a
few notable exceptions, seem the wrong form for the materials.24
ff she had lived into the postwar period, perhaps the novels would
have been written, but of course this is mere speculation. On the
basis of her oeuvre one can only say that she was a minor, but
unforgettable writer.
UNO CHIYO (b. 1897)
Before Uno Chiyo resumed her active career as a novelist in
1957 she was known in literary circles mainly for one novel, writ-
ten over twenty years before, and a memoir in the form of the
monologue of a master carver of puppets for the Bunraku theater.
She was otherwise known for her beauty, for her marriages to and
liaisons with a number of well-known authors and a painter, and
for her career as a publisher of fashion magazines. Even after her
novella Ohan was awarded two major literary prizes in 1957, Uno
published little, generally no more than a chapter or two a year of
an unfinished novel. Not until she had turned seventy did she step
up the pace of her writing somewhat; but even then her books
Were generally printed with unusually wide margins, copious illus-
trations, and any other device the publishers could think of for
making a short manuscript look like a full-length book.
Uno was a minor writer in all respects but the most crucial,
the quality of what she wrote, and on that basis she deserves a
place among the three or four most important women writers of
modem Japanese literature.
The autobiographical works that Uno published at various
stages of her career permit us to trace almost every' significant
vent in her life from the time she was a small child until the
 THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1131
Dawn to the West l

Tsuyu_ko dec~d~d to commit a lovers' suicide. Yuasa gives a

breakup of her last marriage in 1964. These writings on the surt
graphic descnp_t10n of what took place in a passage that, for all its
face seem to belong to the category of the "I novel," but the
grues~mem~ss, 1s also. comic, _thanks to his objectivity in recording
manner is totally dissimilar: Uno never feels sorry for herself an:d
met1mes mappropnate actions:
never uses the novel as a medium of confession. She describes her
life with candor, objectively analyzing even her least admirable
The sun had sunk in the sky, and it was already so dark that we
traits and impulses without shame or apologies. She discloses her
could hardly see each other's face in the faint light coming in
faults not with masochistic pleasure in her own wickedness but
throu~h gaps in the curtains. Tsuyuko must have picked up a scal-
with a kind of surprise that someone like herself exists. In the ,
pel w1thou~ m~ ~?ticing it. No sooner did I ask, "Well, shall we go
novel Sasu (To Sting, 1966) sh; related a fable with self-mockery;.
through with it? than I felt something like hot water suddenly
sp~rt out and soak through my thin shirt. Tsuyuko had beaten me
It is the fable of the scorpion and the turtle. Once upon a time a
to tt. She had stabbed herself in the throat. I moaned, seeing the
scorpion, noticing that a turtle was preparing to swim out to sea,
blood spurting from the wound. Hardly aware of what I did, I took
asked to be taken on his bac\c, explaining that he himself could not
Tsuyuko's limp body in my arms and laid her on the bed. I sup-
swim. The turtle was not willing. He said, "Once ;Ve're outat sea,
posed that I was acting calmly, but in fact I seem to have com-
you'll want to sting me." To this the scorpion replied, "What non•
pletely lost my head. "I can't die in a dirty shirt," I thought,
sense is this? If I sting you, we'll both sink, won't we? If I sting you,
absolutely serious. Getting off my bed, I took a brand-new shirt
I'll drown!" So, in the end, the turtle agreed and, taking the scor-
from a dresser drawer and hurriedly removed the shirt that had
pion on his back, set out to sea. But the scorpion did _not keep his
been sprayed with Tsuyuko's blood. I must have been in such a
promise. No sooner were they out at sea than the scorpion stung the
state of confusion that it never occurred to me that if I stabbed
turtle so hard that his pincers seemed to go all the way through the
myself as planned my shirt would be stained with a lot more blood.
turtle's shell to his belly. "So, you've stung me, after alt have you?
I carefully buttoned the shirt, rushed back to Tsuyuko, and picked
Well, you're going to drown with me," said the turtle, to which the
up the other scalpel.27
scorpion replied in a sad voice, "I know it. But stingingis in my.
25
nature. I can't help stinging. Don't hold it against me."
Yuasa also stabs his throat and is bathed in blood, but he is
This was precisely the attitude that Uno adopted toward herself o desperately afraid he might survive Tsuyuko that, with im-
ense effort, he crawls over to the gas outlet and turns on the gas.
when recounting the disasters she had brought about thanks to a
temperament that was as much a part of her as stinging is of e two ~re rescued, iro~i~ally, because the smell of the gas gives
ay thelf attempted smc1de .. Yuasa does not explain what hap-
scorpions. ed to Tsu?'uko afterward; mstead, the story ends on a note of
Not all of Uno's works are autobiographical. She excelled
especially at narrative monologue-the stories of their lives as told ~ce. He accidentally meets the mother of his runaway wife and
26 m~ormed that she is now living with an Indian. But the mother
to her by various men, presented in their own words. Her fir~t
rdially invites him to visit her all the same.
major work, the novel fro Zange (Confessions of Love, 19~5), 1s
. The model for the character Yuasa was the well-known
the narration by a painter named Yuasa of how, a~ter re~urnmg to
nter Togo Seiji ( 1897-1978), and the events described in the
Japan from study in France, he became involved m rapid succes- · · •·
ok were closely based on his experiences, even to the abortive
sion with three young women of the upper cl~ss. He ~eU mQ.&t
ers' suicide, whi~h made headlines in the 1929 newspapers.
deeply in love with Tsuyuko, the daughter of~ high-rankmg naval
no, who had marned the novelist Ozaki Shiro in 1926, had re-
officer, who unfortunately h~d ?the~ marnag: plans ~or h7~:
Yuasa, resigning himself to this situation, married the third gird ntly separated _from him and, most unusually for her, was living
ne. 28 At the time she was quite a prolific writer, not at all like
only for her to run away with another man. In the end he l:ln.
 Dawn to the West I 132
the painstaking artist she became in later years, and visited Togo a
month after his attempted suicide in the hope of gaining_ some
first-hand knowledge for use in a novel she was writing of what it
was like to commit suicide by gas inhalation. Togo suggested that
she spend the night, and she readily agreed. The next morning
Uno was astonished to see that the bedclothes were still covered
with bloodstains from the attempted suicide, but far from being
revolted, she stated, "If I had not seen the bloodstains, I imagine 1
would not have stayed very long with Seiji." 29 Their liaison lasted
five years. There was nothing secretive about the arrangement; in
1930, for example, Uno published the essay "Togo Seiji and My-
self." That year they built a house that was destined to keep them
in debt for the rest of their life together. The most important
result of their relationship wa\ Confessions of Love. Togo at one
point accused Uno of living with him solely in order to make a
novel out of his story.3o She denied it, but later admitted that the
reputation of the book owed more to Togo's skill as a storyteller
than to her own ability as a novelist. Be that as it may, she suc-
ceeded remarkably not only in presenting a believable picture of
Yuasa and the three women, but in making the narrator convinc-
ingly male.31 Confessions of Love has been praised as one of the
finest love stories in modem Japanese literature.32
By the time Uno had completed Confessions of Love the af-
fair between her and Togo was foundering. In order to pay for
their extravagances, beginning with the house, Uno traveled to
Osaka to sell Togo's paintings, sometimes promoting business by
having little romances with prospective buyers. Naturally this up-
set Togo, but before long he was involved in a more serious affair:
the prototype of Tsuyuko reappeared, and the two resumed their
old love. The circumstances of the breakup of Uno's relations
with Togo are related in two short stories she wrote at the time,
"Wakare mo tanoshi" (Parting Is Also Pleasurable, 1935) and
"Miren" (Lingering Attachment, 1936). The former ends with
Uno's alter ego learning from her faithless husband that he has
not found happiness; the latter describes how, after she had long
craved to be free of Togo, she discovered that she could not shake
off her attachment to this unattractive yet somehow lovable man.
In later years Uno recalled these stories in terms of what a wQn-
derful thing it was for a woman to be a novelist: no sooner did she
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1133
separate from a man than she could describe their affair without
shame or worry about what others might think! 33
In 1937 Kitahara Takeo (1907-1973), then a reporter for the
Miyako Shimbun, visited Uno to interview her for an article he
was writing for the Home Section of the newspaper. A few days
later he sent her a copy of a little magazine that contained a story
he had written. She instantly dashed off a note saying, "I have
read your work and am deeply impressed. I believe you have
extraordinary talent, a combination of Tanizaki Jun'ichiro and
Balzac." 34 The letter, not too surprisingly, led to a close relation-
ship being formed between the two. Uno recalled that almost
every day, after finishing work at Sutairu (Style), the magazine
and publishing company she had founded in 1936, she would call
for Kitahara in her car. Kitahara was a full ten years younger than
Uno, but his wife had died earlier that year and he was ready to
be consoled. In April 1939 he and Uno were formally married at a
splendid ceremony held at the Imperial Hotel to which many ce-
lebrities in the literary world were invited. The go-betweens were
the painter Fujita Tsuguharu and the novelist Yoshiya Nobuko.
Kitahara, who had in the meantime left the newspaper to become
an editor of Style, eventually developed into a novelist of consid-
. erable distinction.35
In 1941 Uno and Kitahara traveled to Manchukuo and
China, the first of her visits abroad. In September of that year
they and the poet Miyoshi Tatsuji founded the magazine Buntai
(Literary Style), but at the end of the year, with the outbreak of .
war, Kitahara was conscripted and sent to Java to do propaganda
work. Uno suffered no special hardships during the war, but her I
kind of writing was frowned on by the authorities, who consideredi
it as no more than erotic foolishness. I
One day in 1942 Uno saw at the house of her publisher a
puppet head that so deeply impressed her that she left the next
day by train for Tokushima on the island of Shikoku in order to
meet the carver. 36 Her conversations with the carver, who was
over eighty at the time, resulted in the book Ningyoshi Tenguya
Hisakichi (The Doll-Maker Tenguya Hisakichi), published serially
in Chuo Karon the same year. The story is told entirely in Ten-
guya's own words. Obviously Uno did not use a tape recorder-
this convenient device had not yet been invented-and she knew

no shorthand, but Tenguya's dialect was close to the one she had
spoken as a child in lwakuni, and she had a remarkable ml.'!mory
for conversations. The book was· not a mere transcription of Ten-
guya's words but a re-creation, through a mosaic of his reminis-
cences, of his sixty years as a carver of puppet heads. Once again,
as in Confessions of Love, she was reporting a man's recollections,
but the style was quite dissimilar. The use of dialect rootecl•the
story in a particular place and gave authenticity to Tenguya's re-
marks. The Doll-Maker Tenguya Hisakichi marked Uno's second
debut as a writer, this time not as a daring, liberated woman, but
as the painstaking chronicler of a way of life that still lurked
beneath the modern surface of Japan. In 1943 she published an~
other work in the same form, Nichiro no Tatakai Oboegaki
(Memoir of the Russo-Japanese War), the reminiscences of her
father-in-law, Kitahara Nobuaki, of his service as a medical of-
ficer with the Imperial Guards Division. The work is less interest-
ing in every respect than Tenguya's story. Uno ~o doubt ha.d
greater trouble empathizing with her subject, and 1t may well be
that she recorded the conversations of a former military man be-
cause she thought the resulting book would be suitable for war-
time publication.
Uno wrote almost nothing during the next few years, but in
1947, when she revived the magazine Buntai, she contributed sev-
eral brief episodes of an unfinished work called Ohan. She con'"
tinued writing this story, a few pages at a time, until she finished it
in 1957. Ohan had its origins in Uno's trip to Shikoku to meet
Tenguya Hisakichi. As was her custom, she poked around the
local secondhand shops, hoping to find a bargain, and at one shop
became so friendly with the owner. that he told her his life story.
She took notes, even to the exact phrases he had used and, birby
bit, expanding these notes, developed them into the novella that
fifteen years later would be acclaimed as her finest work.
In the meanwhile she and Kitahara were busy making
money. After Kitahara returned from Java, they had been forced
to give up the magazine Style because of the paper shortage and
official disapproval of the extravagance implied by the word
"style." They lived for a time in Atami, in such agreeable sur-
roundings that it seemed less like a wartime evacuation than aresJ
cure. Later they moved to Kitahara's home town in Tochigi Pre~
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1135
fecture, where they heard the emperor's broadcast announcing the
end of the war. A week or two later they returned to Tokyo,37 their
only baggage being a small desk on which to write manuscripts.
They found lodgings in a tiny room, a part of their former house.
One day an acquaintance appeared and offered to provide them
with capital and paper to start a new magazine. They joyfully
accepted. A small advertisement placed in the newspapers an-
nounced the rebirth of Style and solicited subscriptions. It pro-
duced an enormous response, no doubt because style, after years
of austerity, seemed so seductive. So much money poured in that
.Uno and Kitahara were able to publish the magazine without
borrowing from their benefactor. When the first issue was ready
in February 1946, the building was surrounded not only by eager
subscribers and Tokyo booksellers but by people from the country
with bundles of radishes and leeks on their backs, hoping that
presents of food would enable them to buy additional copies.
Everyone was delighted to have a cheerful magazine with colored
pictures, and the money kept rolling in. The assets of people
whose fortunes had been made before the war were frozen, but
Uno and Kitahara were earning new money and they enjoyed the
delights of the nouveaux riches. They bought property in Tsukiji,
a district of fashionable restaurants, and erected a luxurious
house. They also bought a villa in Atami, which they called their
workshop. Readers who wonder how the other half lived while
Shiina Rinzo and his fellows were scrounging for meals should
consult Uno's memoirs.
Although Uno and Kitahara thoroughly enjoyed their new
life, they suffered occasional twinges of conscience and remem-
oered that they were writers. That was why they once again
started up Buntai, this time as a quarterly, late in 1947. Buntai
attracted some extraordinary writers, incuding Ooka Shohei, who
· serialized Fires on the Plain in its pages, Miyoshi Tatsuji, the out-
standing poet of the day, and the critics Kobayashi Hideo, Ka-
wakami Tetsutaro, and Kawamori Yoshizo. At its height Style sold
over one hundred thousand copies, but Buntai, despite its quality,
}anguished. Uno had in the meantime begun to study the art of
designing kimonos, and before long established a reputation. She
traveled abroad, to Paris in 1951 and to Seattle and New York in
1957, mainly to publicize her kimonos. Her journeys abroad

hastened the collapse of her marriage to Kitahara, who found
distraction elsewhere. They were not divorced until 1964, but their
union had long since been broken.
Uno's reputation as a novelist, though established with Con-
fessions of Love, owes most to three or four books written after the
war. Ohan, completed in 1957, could not have appeared at a.bet-
ter time: Style was on its last legs, and in two years would go out
of business. Ohan enabled Uno to survive this disappointment
and brought her a kind of acclaim that she had never enjoyed
before. The blurb on the dust-jacket of Ohan compared it toTani•
,zaki's Portrait of Shunkin and Nagai Kafu's A Strange Talefrom
East of the River. This may have been overpraise, but many critics
agreed. Kobayashi Hideo, for example, wrote, "It is enjoyable
because it gives off the kind of flavor one gets from a reading of
Chikamatsu .... The author has created an extraordinarily com-
pelling narrative style and, disregarding conventions of time and
place, invented a kind of novelistic fantasy world in which the
words themselves seem to live by their own strength. This is rare
in the contemporary novel, which has abjectly surrendered to
facts." 38
Ohan is narrated in the form of a monologue by a shop-
keeper in a small city in western Japan. 39 The place names he
mentions are those of Iwakuni, the city where Uno grew up, but
the narrator's dialect is closer to that of Tokushima, where she met
the model for her shopkeeper, as described above.40 There are
three main characters: Kanoya, the narrator; his wife Ohan,
whom he has deserted; and his mistress, the geisha Okayo, with
whom he has been living for seven years. Kanoya seems at the
opening to be happy in his role of a kept man who merely pre~
tends to be running a shop, but one evening he accidentally en-
counters Ohan again. They speak, and she tells him a~out th~ir
son, Satoru. Gradually he becomes obsessed with the desire to hve
once more with his wife and child, but Okayo has no intention of
giving him up. At the end the boy dies in a fall, Okayo .takes
undisputed possession of her man, and Ohan departs for a distant
place. .
Uno said of the main characters in Ohan that she herself had
served as the model for all three.41 It is easy to imagine why she
should have identified herself with the impetuous, passionate
Okayo, but there was also a good deal of Ohan in her too: in her
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1137
account of the new house that she and Kitahara had built, she
wrote, "Now I knew for the first time why such care had been
devoted to building this new house. It was so that I could Wc!.it
here alone for my husband to return." 42 Uno hardly seems like
the typical, inarticulate wife of a Joruri play, waiting forlornly for
her absent husband, but she recognized that element in her na-
ture. Finally, she was also Kanoya, unable to resist temptation
and easily manipulated by others. Even supposing that the story
of Ohan faithfully followed what the dealer in Tokushima told
Uno, we would have to say that she made it entirely her own,
thanks to the style and the convincing characterization.
The style of Ohan is suggested by the opening paragraphs,
where Kanoya replies to the question of an unnamed interlocutor,
no doubt Uno herself:
It's kind of you to ask. Yes, I grew up as the son and heir of a dyer's
shop in Kawara Street, the Kanoya it was called. But my family lost
its money long ago, and now I run this small business, a sec-
ondhand shop. It's only a rented room in the front of somebody
else's house, as you can see. Sometimes I wonder what makes me
put myself to this trouble when I have all the money I need. I really
can't help smiling at my own foolishness.
No, the woman I'm living with is actually not my wife. She's a
local geisha, the first one I ever became friendly with. That was
about seven years ago. She's thirty-two, a year older than I, and her
name is Okayo. I wonder if you might happen to know her? She
used to be at the Half Moon House, but now she runs a small place
of her own behind Blacksmiths' Lane, a geisha house with just a
couple of women. I sleep there, but I come here every day with my
lunch.
As a matter of fact, this secondhand store is a business in name
only. I make tea for the customers and arrange flowers to suit my-
self, but as for income, I don't earn enough to keep myself in pocket
money. I might as well admit it-I'm a poor devil living off a
woman. 43
Uno wrote relatively little after Ohan until 1966, when she
was sixty-nine. In that year she published the last chapter of To
Sting, which soon afterward appeared in book form. From 1969
on she produced an average of one book a year, mainly auto-
 Dawn to the J,J,esr 1138
biographical, whether avowedly so or given a veneer of fiction.
These books are all beautifully written, and Kaze no Oto (The
Sound of the Wind, 1969) is particularly memorable.
Uno's works were not on the monumental scale of Nogami
Yaeko's The Labyrinth. Her stories tended to be brief but, begin,..
ning with Ohan, they ~ere flawlessly fashioned. She totally Jgcked
the social concerns of the left-wing women writers; although her
early life was not free of hardship and even humiliation, she chose
not to dwell on these experiences even in autobiographicaLwrit-
ings, and she never sought to indict society for what she per-
sonally had suffered. Confessions of Love and a few early stories
are affecting and have retained a readership, but Uno's fame as a
writer came late in life, when she not only discovered her distinc-
tive idiom but used it with greit artistry.44
HAYASHI FUMIKO (1903-1951)
Few writers have had to struggle against greater odds than
Hayashi Fumiko, the illegitimate child of itinerant peddlers,
whose early years were spent moving from one cheap lodging
house to another and who knew only abrasive poverty until she
was close to thirty. Her father abandoned her mother and herself,
and his place was taken by a foster-father, also a peddler, aman
some twenty years younger than her mother. As a child Hayashi
changed elementary school thirteen times, sometimes several
times in the course of one year, and naturally had no friends. Her
closest companions were the other denizens of the flophouses that
she called home: a coal miner who had gone off his head but
nevertheless kindly picked lice from little Fumiko's hair; a pros-
titute with a missing thumb who showed Fumiko the curious tat-
too of a snake on her belly; a ballad singer with a glass eye; a
couple who sold sake flavored with vipers (an invigorating tonic).
Hayashi declared that her companions were more fun than a
circus.45
After graduating from the equivalent of a modem ~~gh
school, where she received good marks in Japanese compos1~10n
and drawing but in little else, she decided to go to Tokyo-ma11:11Y
because the first person she ever met who shared her literary m-
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1139
terests, a young man studying at a university in Tokyo, invited her.
They lived together until his graduation, when his family sternly
ordered him to return home. This was the first of Hayashi's many
love affairs that had an unhappy ending.
Hayashi remained in Tokyo, earning a living mainly as a
waitress in cheap cafes, where she was pawed at by men until she
was so exhausted each night she could scarcely make her way
home. She tried other work, like painting celluloid toys in a base-
ment factory. Later she looked after the children of several fa-
mous men including Chikamatsu Shiiko, who paid her two yen
for a full. week's work, and Tokuda Shiisei, who loaned her some
money. Again and again Hayashi returned to the road as an itin-
erant peddler. She described these experiences with irony and
sometimes amusement, and with no suggestion that she regretted
having had them. Sometimes she was so hard pressed for money
that she slept in public toilets or in deserted houses. Even when
she found a man to live with, she generally shouldered the burden
of providing the necessary money. After the faithless student left
her there was an actor whom she supported for several months
until one day she discovered in a suitcase, to which he attached
great importance, a bankbook listing deposits of two thousand
yen and some love letters from another woman. She dropped him
and went to live with a left-wing poet named Nomura Yoshiya,
who not only constantly screamed and beat her but on one occa-
sion kicked her to the earthen floor, stuffed her into a burlap bag,
and pushed her under the kitchen floorboards.46
These and innumerable other details of Hayashi's life are
presented in her first book, Hi5ri5ki (A Vagabond's Story), pub-
lished in 1930. She wrote that she had been inspired to write this
book after reading Knut Hamsun's Hunger; 47 but apart from the
poverty she describes there is little similarity between the two
books. A Vagabond's Story, though it might be called an "I novel"
because of the many details drawn directly from the author's per-
' sonal experiences, was written in an idiom quite unlike that of the
..usual "I novel." Sometimes it recalls the New Sensationalists in
the jumps and seeming non sequiturs; but it is noteworthy espe-
cially for its lively narration. Almost any episode would do
equally well to illustrate this point: the following passage, which
,occurs early in the book, is typical:
 Dawn to the West 1140
People were still noisily coming in or going out even after it got late.
"Excuse me," said a woman with her hair done up in the gin-
gko-leaf style. She clattered open the shoji anµ unceremoniously
pushed herself inside my thin bedding. The next minute I heard a
loud sound of footsteps, and a greasy-looking man, who. wasn't
even wearing a hat, opened the shoji a crack. He called, "Hey, you!
Get up!"
The woman, muttering something under her breath, got up
and went out into the hall. I could hear the sound of somebody
being slapped in the face, over and over. Then it became quiet
outside, an eerie, cloudy silence, like dirty water. The atmosphere in
my room, which the woman had disturbed, still had not reverted to
normal. 1
"What've you been doing up to now? Address? Destination?
Age? Parents? ... "
The greasy-looking man came into my room again and stood
by my pillow, licking his pencil.
"Do you know that woman?"
"No, she burst in without a word of explanation."
I'm sure not even Knut Hamsun ever got into such a predica-
ment. After the detective left, I stretched out my arms and legs. I
tried touching the wallet stuck inside the pillow. My remaining
money: one yen, sixty-five sen. The moon looked as if it were being
blown around by the wind, and I could see through the crooked
window high up on the wall a rainbow, in all colors of light.48
The woman who without warning crawls into the narrator's
bed, the sinister man, the strange image of silence like dirty water,
and the unexplained reference to Knut Hamsun all suggest the
influence of Modernism, but the success of the book with the
general public was due not to Hayashi's use of new literary tech-
niques but to the absolute frankness with which she described :her
relations with men and her struggles to earn money. She wrote of
herself, "The only ideal I ever had was to get rich quick." 49 Her
detached, rather humorous way of looking at herself is the most
attractive feature of A Vagabond's Story. She conveyed to her
readers the love of life that had enabled her to triumph over the
misery that seemed to be her destiny.
The writing in A Vagabond's Story is lively, at times even
brilliant, and full of variety. Most of the book is in the form of a
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1141
diary, no doubt because the materials were derived from the ex-
tensive diary that Hayashi had kept since 1922, the year of her
arrival in Tokyo. But although the months of the entries are given,
the years and days are not, and the effect is kaleidoscopic. Sec-
tions are in poetry, both Hayashi's own and other people's, but
whatever the style or content, the whole is unified by the immense
verve of her personality.
A Vagabond's Story first appeared serially in the magazine
Nyonin Geijutsu (Women and the Arts), which had been started in
1928 by the woman playwright Hasegawa Shigure (1879-1941).
Originally the magazine had been intended to promote writing by
women and to advance the intellectual level of women readers,
but after a half-dozen installments of A Vagabond's Story had
been published there was an editorial shift: Nyonin Geijutsu be-/
came an organ of the left wing. Publication of Hayashi's novel/
was discontinued, though it had been popular with readers, be-
cause her politics were not clearly enough those of the left. She
was nevertheless picked up by the police in July 1933 and thrown
into a detention cell for nine days as an alleged Communist sym-
pathizer, mainly because she had subscribed to a Communist
newspaper, though in fact she had almost no interest in politics.
She sometimes described herself as an anarchist, by which she
meant not that she was a follower of Kropotkin (though for a time
she associated with anarchist poets), but that she resented any
interference in her private life. If one had to judge from her pub-
lications, one would conclude that her chief concern was libera-
tion from financial worries, brutal men, and bothersome gossips.
A Vagabond's Story was published in book form in July 1930
as a volume in a series devoted to new writers, which the firm of
Kaizosha had initiated. More than six hundred thousand copies
were sold. Hayashi, delighted by this recognition, gave herself a
present that was in keeping with the subject of her book: she
bought a third-class ticket for Paris on the Trans-Siberian Rail-
way. She left early in November 1931 and remained in Europe
until May 1932, spending most of the time in Paris, though she
also had a month in London. While in Paris she constantly com-
plained that a lack of money kept her from fully appreciating the
cultural life of the city. Even a best-seller had not produced
enough income to enable her to live comfortably in Paris. No
doubt Hayashi was improvident, but at one point malnutrition
 Dawn to the West I 142
temporarily induced nightblindness, and it was thanks mainly to
admirers in the Japanese community that she was able to remain
in Paris so long. Her days were occupied with visits to museums
and the theater, and she kept up a steady flow of travel aceounts
and impressions, which she placed in the leading Japanese maga-
zines. When she finally had her fill of travel she sent a cable to
Kaizosha begging for the return fare. They sent it, and this time
she traveled by ship (from Marseilles), third class once again.
Hayashi found after her return that she was in great demand.
Indeed, it is probably no exaggeration to say that she was the most
popular writer in the country. Her determination to become rich
stayed with her even after she had in fact become very rich, and
that no doubt was why she alrpost never refused a request for a
manuscript. Virtually all of her early works were directly based on
personal experiences; she had enough to provide materials for
many, many books. By the time of her death in 1951 at the early
age of forty-eight 50 she had published over 270 books, most of
them autobiographical. But Hayashi was resolved to prove that
she could create stories even without specific models. In 1934 she
published the novel Nakimushi KoziJ (Cry Baby), the account of a
boy who is unwanted by his widowed mother and shunted from
one relative to another while the mother amuses herself with a
lover. No doubt Hayashi's experiences as a child were projected
onto her portrayal of the boy, but the story is not autobiographical
in any other sense. A somewhat later work, Kaki (The Oyster,
1935), was not only free of autobiographical elements but remark-
ably successful as the depiction of an inarticulate, retarded man
who is driven into a shell of madness that seals him off from the
world~ Hayashi was so pleased with the reception accorded to The
Oyster that she gave an elaborate party to celebrate the publica-
tion.51 She had arrived as an author; no longer would her works
be read mainly for what they told about a woman who had fought
with tooth and nail and her whole body to gain a foothold in a
world dominated by men. She was now a full-fledged author, and
although she continued to publish a prodigious outpo1.:1ring ofar-
ticles, essays, stories, poems, anything she was asked to write, she
was capable of producing works that startled the literary world
into remembering her ability.
In 1937, with the outbreak of the China Incident, Hayashi
threw herself into the war effort. She traveled to China in Decem-
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN l 143
ber as a correspondent for the Mainichi Shimbun, and was proud
to be the first Japanese woman inside Nanking after its fall that
month.52 In the following year she again visited the front, but
under different auspices: she was so irritated that the Mainichi
bad chosen her rival, Yoshiya Nobuko, to cover the fall of Han-
kow that she leaped aboard the first Asahi Shimbun truck she saw
in the fighting zone, and thus had the added distinction of being
the first Japanese woman to set foot inside that city after its fall. V
During the Pacific War Hayashi was sent to Southeast Asia as /' ·
a member of an information unit whose objective was to raise V
morale at home by writing stirring accounts of Japanese victories. '!
She observed the fighting in French Indo-China, Java, and
Borneo, always making a point of living with local civilians in
order to gain an understanding of what their lives were really like.
Her stay in Dalat, a highland city in what later became known as
Vietnam, was particularly important because it provided materials
for her most impressive novel, Ukigumo (Drifting Clouds, 1951 ).
Hayashi returned to Japan in the early summer of 1943.
Later that year she adopted a child and lived with him for the
remainder of the war at various hot springs in central Japan. She
returned to Tokyo soon after the war ended and resumed her
literary activity. Some of her novels, notably A Vagabond's Story,
had been banned during the war by the authorities because the
content did not accord with the selfless consecration that was ex-
pected of wartime Japanese, and she had written nothing while
living in the mountains. But she was far from being forgotten. A
story appeared in the inaugural issue of the magazine Ningen
(Humanity) in January 1946, and this was followed by many oth-
ers.In 1947 she began serializing the novel Uzushio (Swirling Cur-
rents) in the Mainichi Shimbun, the first such serial published in
the press after the war. This novel, though not one of Hayashi's
best, is of interest because it treats the problem of war widows,
some of whom were hardly married before their husbands were
sent overseas and killed in the fighting. The novel is in this sense
antiwar, but Hayashi tended to see the tragedy of war in terms of
the particular, rather than (in the manner of Miyamoto Yuriko) in
terms of the evil inherent in war.
Hayashi's most accomplished writing was done after the war.
The stories "Bangiku" (Late Chrysanthemum, 1948). and "Daun-
taun" (Downtown, 1949), and the novel Drifting Clouds demon
 Dawn to the West 1 THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN
strated her firmness of artistic purpose even when she seemed to
be squandering her talents most heedlessly. 53 (She published nine
full-length novels and innumerable shorter works between 1949
and 1951.)
"Late Chrysanthemum" was acclaimed as soon as it was pubs
lished, and established Hayashi's credentials as a specifically post~
war writer. The story opens as Kin, a geisha who is remarkably
well preserved for a woman in her late fifties, has a telephone call
from Tabe, a man with whom she had a passionate affair four or
five years earlier, before he was sent to Burma as a young officer.
Kin, nostalgically recalling his charm and youthful body, care;
fully prepares herself to look as attractive and young as possible.
But when Tabe appears she see;, that he has lost all his charm. He
asks her to lend him some desperately needed money, but she
fends off the request with a transparent lie that she is penniless.
Her love turns to contempt: a man without money is no man at
all. Tabe, for his part, feels no lingering attachment for Kin and,
as he gradually becomes drunk on the whiskey he has brought as
a present, he feels tempted to kill her for her money. She shows
him a photograph of himself in bygone days. The contrast is all
too painful; when he goes to the toilet she burns the picture. Tabe
is too drunk to leave, so Kin has bedding laid out for him in the
guest room. She will make sure that he leaves the next day.
Of the innumerable stories about geishas, written by both
women and men, none rings truer than "Late Chrysanthemum,"
The details of Kin's life, of her constant concern for her beauty
and her skill at handling men, and each thought that flashes
through her mind as she converses with Tabe have incontrovert-
ible authority. The relationship between Kin and her former love
.
is beautifully communicated in such a passage as:
Exposure to the years had engraved a complex and different pattern
of emotions on both their hearts. They had gradually grown older,
he in his way, she in hers, and the old fondness was gone beyond
recall. Plunged in a sense of disillusion, they took silent stock of
each other as they were now. They were weary with a host of differ-
ent emotions. Nothing could be less like the storybook meeting with
its charming fictions than this reality. It would all, without doubt,
have been made much prettier in a novel-the truth about life was
1145
too subtle. To reject each other-this had been the only purpose of
their coming together today.54
0
"Late Chrysanthemum" alone, even if Hayashi had written noth-
ing else, would have earned her a reputation. "Downtown" makes
a greater appeal to the reader's sympathy and is specifically linked
to the landscapes of postwar Tokyo, but it lacks the psychological
insights that make "Late Chrysanthemum" so memorable.
Drifting Clouds is usually treated as Hayashi's finest work. It
is not so finely wrought as "Late Chrysanthemum," but the bril-
liance of a short story naturally could not be sustained through a
full-length novel. This is the story of lovers who are drawn to-
gether at first by physical passion but at the end by a kind of
resignation. The book opens as Yukiko returns to Japan from
French Indo-China after the war, where she has worked as a typ-
ist for a Japanese forestry survey. She meets Tomioka in the hill
station of Dalat, and they fall in love, she more strongly than he;
Tomioka not only has a wife in Japan but a Vietnamese mistress
with whom he has had a child. Tomioka is repatriated to Japan
before Yukiko, but to her great disappointment he does not an-
swer her telegram announcing her arrival. It is a bad omen for
their future. When eventually she visits his house, she sees how
sadly he has changed: the assured and urbane man she knew in
Dalat now looks haggard. He is desperately trying to earn enough
money in wintry Ja pan to support his parents and wife. They meet
occasionally and resume their physical relations, but nothing is
the same. Memories of Dalat, where it was warm and they en-
joyed the amenities of colonial masters, contrast with the gloom of
defeated Japan and keep them apart. Tomioka's business fails, his
wife dies, and at a loss where to tum, he decides to take Yukiko
with him to a hot spring where he will kill her and then himself.
.But he does not go through with the plan because he finds another
• woman who arouses his passion, the young wife of a local bar-
keeper. His happiness with the woman does not last long: she is
killed by her enraged husband.
Tomioka finally takes a position with the forestry service on
Yaku Island, at the time the southernmost point administered by
the Japanese government. Yukiko- insists on going with him,
though she is still recovering from an abortion. It rains almost
 Dawn to the West 1146
uninterruptedly on Yaku, and as Yukiko lies on her sickbed, lis-
tening to the rain, her thoughts wander to Dalat and evento the
American soldier with whom she sometimes slept in her little
apartment. She dies and Tomioka feels a surge of affection for
her, which is mingled with relief that he no longer has to bear a
heavy burden. He is free, but there is nowhere to go. He will live
like a drifting cloud, the traditional metaphor for an aimless life.
Drifting Clouds is not only an effective novel buta moving
evocation of postwar Japan. Tomioka is drawn particularly well.
In a sense he is another Tabe, but the greater amplitude of the
novel permitted Hayashi to develop his character more compel-
lingly. Hirabayashi Taiko, who knew Hayashi from the time she
was living with the irascible proletarian poet, wrote of Drifting
Clouds, "The novel deserves its ieputation as a novel of the defeat
in which it is attempted to find some refuge for the collapsed
morale of a vanquished Japan. To write this novel alone was suffi-
cient reason for Hayashi to have been born." 55
Hayashi died while still writing her most ambitious novel,
Meshi (Food). At the time she was simultaneously publishing one
newspaper and three monthly magazine serials, as well as many
articles for popular consumption. She had driven herself mer-
cilessly, in her last years no less than in the ~ys of her vaga-
bondage.
MIYAMOTO YURIKO (1899-1951)
The most compelling novels written immediately after the
war ended were by Miyamoto Yuriko.56 She had grown up under
comfortable circumstances as the daughter of a noted architect,
and received a good education. In 1918, at the age of nineteen, ~he
accompanied her father to New York, and in the following year
audited classes at Columbia University. She met a Japanese stu-
dent in the Department oflndo-Iranian Languages. Although the
man was considerably older than herself, an unimpressive figure
who seemed to be an eternal student with no prospects of ever
establishing a scholarly reputation, she fell in love with him, and
they were eventually married. Yuriko's life at this time isde-
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1147
scribed in the novel Nobuko (1924-1926), a wonderfully effective
picture of herself and New York. Her account of the celebrations
at the time of the false armistice in November 1918 is particularly
impressive:
When they emerged from the crowd they were at the corner of Wall
Street and Broadway. An immense throng, surging like the tide,
swirled from three sides into the square where the dusty statue of
Washington stands, then could not move another step in any direc-
tion. A man was delivering a speech before a building whose col-
umns were black with grime, as one might expect here downtown,
the battlefield of fierce commercial competition. Nobuko could not
catch one word of what the man was saying, separated from him as
she was by ranks of people. She barely caught glimpses of his fran-
tically gesticulating hands and his forehead with its receding hair-
line. The sight seemed to typify the abnormal excitement that
engulfed heaven and earth, and produced a strangely sad impres-
sion on Nobuko. On this side of the square a beggar, his arm
around a barrel organ, was grinding out a waltz that set her teeth on
edge. Young, bareheaded couples were wildly dancing to the music.
Every face in sight was overwrought and ugly. She could not
see even one person, man or woman, whose face had the kind of
cheerful, serious, or beautiful expression appropriate in someone
celebrating the joyous news of peace. They were all like animals.
Their eyes were set in a glitter, a faintly drunken smile played over
their lips, and their faces quivered incessantly with a greedy craving
for ever more powerful stimulation. It no longer made any differ-
ence whether the cause of their excitement was an armistice or a
declaration of war. What they wanted was a frenzy that would tum
their daily routines upside down, to get drunk on self-oblivion!-So
forward! forward! In a state of delirium they pushed with their
bellies and shoved with their shoulders. The waves of humanity
which for a while had been immobile, slowly started to move again.
A savage force, which blasted all civilization to pieces, came crowd-
ing in on them with naked fury. Nobuko felt afraid. 57
Nobuko, however, is above all the story of a woman who
achieves liberation in a world utterly unlike that of traditional,
upper-class Japan. Her decision to marry the student was a mis-
 Dawn to the West 11 48
take, as she soon realized, but she had established the point that
she had the right to marry whomever she chose.
Little in Nobuko suggests that Miyamoto Yuriko (known at
the time by her maiden name, Chujo Yuriko) was actively con-
cerned. abou~ th~ lives of her poverty-stricken countrymen; per-
sonal hberation 1s the theme of the book. After their return to
Japan the conflict between the personalities of the idealistic
Yuriko and her pedantic husband became acute, and theywere
divorced in 1924. Yuriko became friends with Yuasa Yoshiko
(1896-1982), a student of Russian literature, and the two women
traveled together to Moscow in 1927. Yuriko's stay converted her
to Communism. Her alarmed parents, who were then in Western
Europe, invited her there, but t~e visit failed to change her opin-
ions, and she returned to Moscdw, more convinced than everthat
it was her mission to help achieve a proletarian revolution in
Japan. She returned to Japan in 1930, where she soon became
acquainted with the principal figures in the left-1.ring movement.
In 1931 she joined the Japanese Communist party, and in the
following year married Miyamoto Kenji (b. 1908), a~ sometime
literary critic who later became secretary-general of the Commu-
nist party. When governmental pressure against the Communists
grew more intense Yuriko was arrested and her husband went
underground. During the following years she was arrested about
ten times before finally being sentenced to three years' imprison-
ment for having violated the Peace Preservation Law. She was
released from prison twice during this time, first because of the
death of a parent, later because of her seriously weakened physi-
cal condition.58 During the war she was forbidden to write for
publication. Her husband, who was caught and imprisoned in
1933, remained in the prison at Abashiri in Hokkaido until h.e was
released, by order of the Army of Occupation, in October 1945.
Yuriko's two most important works were published in 1946:
Banshu Heiya (The Banshu Plain) and Fuchiso (The Weathervane
Plant). The former opens on August 15, 1945, and describes a
seemingly ordinary day that acquired unique importance. Yuriko
(called Hiroko in the novel), learning that the war has ended, is
torn between the desire to go to her husband in Hokkaido and the
duty she feels to visit her husband's family in the Hiroshima area;
her husband's younger brother has not been heard from since the
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1149
explosion of the atomic bomb. She finally decides that duty takes
precedence, and she makes the long journey to the west. Her de-
scription of the train and her fellow passengers is superbly evoca-
tive of the mood of defeated Japan, perhaps the best account of
those traumatic days. In the village where her in-laws live she
discovers what suffering has been caused by the Japanese army,
which drove a road through the place without taking into account
the flooding this would cause. Her hatred for the arrogance and
the inhumanity of the military is especially effective because it is
stated without hysteria; and she makes it quite clear that, no less
than the peoples of Southeast Asia, the Japanese have been the
victims of military aggression. Many young people died for the
sake of ideals that, in retrospect, now seemed unworthy or even
wicked, and everywhere there were "widows' towns." The follow-
ing passage describes Hiroko's thoughts as she lies sleepless in her
husband's village, recalling the journey:
As the train moved westward along the Tokaid6 and San'yo lines,
Hiroko had thought with emotion of what deep wounds had been
suffered by people burned out of all their possessions. But which
people felt the most intense bitterness over the war? She had seen it
in the eyes of the one-legged man in a white hospital smock, who
asked her uneasily if he should hide the book on National Polity.
And it was here, in the "widows' towns." It was in the bankruptcy
of life, in the mute days of "widows' towns" in hundreds of thou-
sands of places all over Japan.
Cold, bitter, astringent tears slid down Hiroko's temples onto
her little wickerwork pillow. Until she read the words "war crimi-
nal" in the text of the Potsdam Declaration she had not realized
that such an expression could strike so responsive a chord within
her and fill her heart with such emotion. Hiroko wanted world
justice to call the guilty to task for this crime with true stringency
and with true unforgivingness.59
Some Japanese critics later reproached Miyamoto for not
having stressed the inhumanity o( the atomic bomb;· but had she
done so, it might have shifted attention from the ultimate source
of the disaster, the ruthless actions of the militarists.
The Weathervane Plant, a slighter though important work,

describes the period immediately after Miyamoto Kenji was re-
leased from prison. Miyamoto attempted to resume a married life
that had been interrupted for twelve years by his incarceration
but sometimes there were clashes. At one point he criticized
Yuriko for having joined the Japanese Literature Patriotic Asso-
ciation during the war, but she confessed that she had not been
strong enough to bear the terrible isolation to which a refusal to
join would have condemned her. He could not forgive what he
interpreted as an act of collaboration with his enemies; and it was
only with reluctance that he agreed that the best thing she could
now do foi the workers was what she most desired, to write.Go The
nascent postwar radical movement is described in terms that cap.,.
ture perfectly the sense of release and promise that all must have
I
felt. Dohyo (Guideposts, 1947-1950), Yuriko's last novel, is de-
voted mainly to tracing the process by which the Nobuko of the
early 1920s became the ardent Marxist of a decade later. It is of
less interest than the two earlier postwar novels because it lacks
their immediacy.
The Banshii Plain and The Weathervane Plant, products of
the days immediately following the end of the war, rise above
doctrinal classification and stand as the first impressive rejections
of the fifteen-year war and all that it involved. Miyamoto Yuriko
wrote not only with unmistakable sincerity but with the assurance
of one who had resisted the order to commit tenko and govern-
mental pressure to conform. Many writers were to recall the hard-
ships, the hunger, the terror of bombing, and the fear of death
that the war had brought, but most of them (unlike Yuriko) had
exulted over the military triumphs and had derived a kind of
comfort from sharing, as Japanese, the heavy burdens of the war.
Ito Sei wrote, "I cannot believe that there is a single writer today
who can look back, now that the war has ended, and affirm that
his conscience is unwounded." 61 Miyamoto Yuriko may have
faltered when she joined the Japanese Literature Patriotic Asso-
ciation, but she experienced none of the nostalgia of some Jap-
anese for the days when people thought of their country rather
than of themselves, and her conscience was very nearly un-
wounded. Her recollections of the war years, described in The
Banshii Plain, were unsentimental, and the joy she expressed in
The Weathervane Plant over the release· of her husband and his
friends was directed toward a happier Japan of the future.
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1151
SATA INEKO (b. 1904)
Sata Ineko was born in Nagasaki, the descendant of a samu-
rai family that had long served the Nabeshima clan and had
produced several distinguished •onfucian scholars, but she en-
joyed none of the advantages of birth. The unusual circumstances
of being born when her father was eighteen and her mother only
fourteen led to her being shunted from one relative to another;
she had three different surnames even before she was married. 62
Her mother died when Sata was seven, and the father took to such
riotous living that he lost his job. The family moved to Tokyo
when Sata was eleven, and in the same year she was put to work
in a caramel factory. This marked the end of her formal school-
ing, but she seized every opportunity to read, not only books ap-
propriate for a girl her age but the major writers of the Meiji era
and such Western masters as Shakespeare and Hugo (in Japanese
translations).
In 1920, at the age of sixteen, Sata took a job at a restaurant
in Ueno where she became acquainted with such literary figures
as Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Kikuchi Kan, and Uno Koji, who were
all intrigued by the curiously intelligent serving girl. But Sata did
not like the job, despite the peripheral benefits, and was happy to
find another, at the bookstore Maruzen. She worked there from
1921 to 1924, profiting by the opportunities to study, and so im-
pressing others as a model salesclerk that an officer of the firm
decided she would make a suitable bride for his brother-in-law.
The marriage, which took place in 1924, was a disaster from the
start. Although Sata's husband came from a cultured background,
his family was bitterly divided, and the weak-willed husband, tor-
mented by his brothers, took out his frustrations on Sata. Unable
to endure his accusations and displays of brutality, she three times
attempted to commit suicide. After the last unsuccessful attempt
she returned to the house of her father and stepmother and was
later divorced.
Sata gave birth to a daughter, whom she left with her step-
mother while she herself worked in a cafe. At the cafe she met
celebrities of the literary world including the man she later mar-
ried, Kubokawa Tsurujir6 (1903-1974). Kubokawa was a Marxist,
and Sata's unhappy childhood had prepared her to join the pro-
letarian literature movement. Her first story, "Kyarameru Koba
 Dawn to the West 1152
yori" (From the Caramel Factory, 1928), was published in: the
magazine Puroretaria Geijutsu (Proletarian Art). It was based on
her childhood experiences at the caramel factory, and included
characters who were closely modeled on her father and grand-
mother. This would be true of Sata Ineko's mature works too:. the
stories and novels for which she is best known were mainly auto-
biographical, and their interest is sometimes not so much literary
as documentary. She made little attempt in "From the Caramel
Factory" to give the story structure or to impart more than rudi-
mentary coloring to the characters, but the facts themselves-
above all, that a girl of eleven was forced to work all day in a
factory-were of compelling interest. At the conclusion Hiroko,
the name Sata gave herself, recejves a letter from a schoolteacher
urging her to obtain somehow th'e small amount of money needed
for her to complete her elementary schooling. He has recognized
her unusual ability, but Hiroko, now working in a restaurant
where she peels potatoes, crouches in the dark of the toilet, the
only place where she can read in private, and weeps at his
words.63
"From the Caramel Factory" contains no overtly ideological
comment, though by implication, of course, Sata condemned a
political system that tolerated child labot. Her resentment for.the
most part was directed not at society in general but at her shiftless
father, who jovially proposes that she quit school in order to yvork
in the factory, and who teases her when he learns that she cannot
wrap enough caramels in one day to earn her tram fare.64 Her
father has no interest in Sata's education, but his thfrd wife, who
later lived with Sata, taught the girl to sew and cook, and his
brother encouraged her interest in literature.
The success of "From the Caramel Factory" led to the first
order for a story from a commercial magazine, Bungei Shunju, in
1929. Throughout Sata's career she would publish both politically
engaged works and others that were intended primarily for a pop,-
ular audience. The latter works meant less to her, but she needed
the income to support her family. She also published poetry in
Roba (Donkey), the magazine edited by Nakano Shigeharu, Hori
Tatsuo, and Kubokawa. She and Kubokawa were married as soon
as her divorce from her first husband became final, but from the
first their marriage was beset with difficulties, both temperamental
and financial. Kubokawa was frail and in constant need of his
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1153
wife's attentions, and she had to devote much of her time to writ-
ing in order to supplement his meager income.
In March 1932 Kubokawa was arrested, along with Nakano
and the poet Tsuboi Shigeji, whose wife, Tsuboi Sakae, was to
become Sata's closest friend. The next month Miyamtto Yuriko
was arrested, and Sata took her place as the editor of the maga-
zine Hataraku Fujin (The Working Woman). Sata joined the
Communist party soon afterward. She herself was arrested in Sep-
tember, accused like the others of having violated the Peace
Preservation Law, but was released the next day. Kubokawa re-
mained in prison until October 1933 when, after a recurrence of
tuberculosis, he was released on condition that he not engage in
political activity.
After his release from prison Kubokawa became more de-
manding than ever, and when Sata failed to satisfy him, he took a
mistress, a woman who worked in a cafe. They decided to sepa-
rate, only for Sata to learn by accident that her rival had another
lover. Kubokawa returned, but not for long; he took up with still
another woman, by whom he had a child. He and Sata were not
formally divorced until May 1945.
Sata Ineko's first important literary work, Kurenai (Crimson),
serialized in 1936, appeared in book form two years later, after
she had added a concluding section. The story follows closely the
details of her unhappy marriage to Kubokawa up until the point
where, having discovered that the woman from the cafe was de-
ceiving him; the couple decided not to break up the marriage.
Crimson was acclaimed, especially by left-wing critics, though the
work is not of ideological significance. It was written under the
prevailing conditions of tenko, and this adverse factor helped
the novel by eliminating the crudely political opinions that often
marred Sata's postwar writings. Crimson is her most affecting
novel: having suffered the humiliation of being deserted by her
husband, Sata had come to believe that writing was the only solu-
tion to her problems. She wrote not only for herself but for count-
less other Japanese women of her time who suffered similar
indignities. In her joy at having found a man who shared her
political convictions, Sata had failed to see that, despite his ad-
vanced ideology, her husband was still governed by old-fashioned
Japanese social attitudes, which she found repugnant. Sata's liber-
ation as a woman, the theme of Crimson, was more interesting
 Dawn to the West 11S4
than the liberation she found in the Communist party, the subject
of several postwar works.
Sata continued to publish widely during the late 1930s,
though one might have supposed that she would have encoun-
tered difficulties in publishing at all, considering the divergence
between her beliefs and those of the authorities. Perhaps unwit-
tingly, she moved closer to collaboration with the military. She
traveled in 1941 to Manchukuo as the guest of a local newspaper.
Later the same year she once again visited Manchukuo, this time
with Hayashi Fumiko and the novelist Osaragi Jiro, under the
sponsorship of the Asahi Shimbun. In May 1942 she and several
other writers traveled to various parts of China in order to "com-
fort the troops." She made a similar tour of Malaya and Sumatra
1
that August. She remained at Medan in Sumatra for aboutsix
months, not returning to Japan until the following spring. In Au-
gust 1943 she attended, as an official delegate, the Greater East
Asia Writers Decisive Victory Congress.
These wartime activities were to cast a shadow over all of
Sata Ineko's postwar activities. Again and again she felt com-
pelled to explain this part of her life. In the strangely titled
"Homatsu no Kiroku" (Account of Froth, 1948) she described her
feelings on reading an editorial in Akahata, the Communist party
newspaper, dealing with the wartime responsibilities of writers.
The editorial specifically mentioned Hayashi Fumiko,65 but Sata
had traveled together with Hayashi, and if one was guilty of col-
laboration with the military, so was the other. Sata had intended
to address a memorial meeting on the anniversary of the death of
Kobayashi Takiji, but at the last moment declined, too ashamed
to show herself after being indirectly attacked.
That evening Sata learned that Kikuchi Kan, the mostprom-
inent figure in the bundan (literary world), had died. Kikuchi, a
collaborator of the military, was purged after the war, but Sata
still felt affection for this man, whom she met when she had
worked in a cafe, and who had published her story in Bungei
Shunjii, the magazine he edited. During the war she had accepted
his invitation to participate in a Home Front Lecture Series, and
had toured Shikoku with Kikuchi, a native of the island. On hear-
ing of his death Sata foresaw that the organization to which she
belonged, the New Japanese Literature Association, would de-
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1155
nounce Kikuchi as having been no more than a reactionary. She
decided nevertheless to attend the funeral service.
At the service Sata met Hayashi Fusao, who drunkenly in-
sisted that art must be free of politics and reminded her that the
roost celebrated artists of the Soviet Union, including Shosta-
kovich, had been denounced. Sata, by way of reply, merely
showed a tolerant smile. An editor whom she had never previ-
ously met demanded to know why she never wrote for his maga-
zine, and recallea seeing her and her companions just before they
left for Southeast Asia during the war. She reflected that yesterday
she was attacked by the left, today by the right; although the
embarrassment she felt was quite different, the cause was the
same. She herself felt sure that the reason why she had gone
through with the shame of pretending to cooperate with the mili-
tary was that she felt it was her duty to witness with her own eyes
the sufferings of fellow Japanese who had been mobilized during
the war. 66
In "Kyogi" (Deception, 1948) Sata described in some detail
her shipboard journey to Singapore and her experiences in Mal-
aya and Indonesia. She explained her decision to go to Southeast
Asia in terms of having "surrendered herself to the pathos of war
or perhaps to the sentimentality evoked by the battlefield." 67 But
her journey to a part of Asia that was cut off from the fighting was
little more than a sightseeing trip. It. is true that when she stood
before the graves of Japanese soldiers who had fallen in Malaya
she felt indignant that these men had been sacrificed to satisfy the
ambitions of one element of the Japanese ruling class, but even
before she could grow angry she was weeping, and "with these
tears she thickened the armor of her intentional deceit," 68 mean-
ing apparently that the tears confirmed, in the eyes of observers,
her seeming patriotism and commitment to the war effort.
It was the function of Sata and the other writers in her group
to persuade the Japanese public that the fruits of the occupation
of Southeast Asia were in their hands. Japanese children did in-
deed receive rubber balls to commemorate the "liberation" of the
rubber-producing areas of Southeast Asia, but the fruits of the
occupation were otherwise not much in evidence. The writers, on
the other hand, lived very well in Malaya and Indonesia, much
better than the Japanese at home. Sata enjoyed the tropical opu-
 Dawn to the West l 156
lence of her villa in Kuala Lumpur, and was given a souvenir of
Singapore in the form of a baby crocodile in a little cage. But she
also met Indonesian women who expressed disappointment that
Japan's "holy war" to liberate Asia from the Europeans seemed
little different from colonialism.
After Sata had returned to Japan and the war ended, she was
reproached by old friends for having visited the war zone in an
official capacity. M (Miyamoto Yuriko?) demanded to knowher
reasons, and Sata replied simply, "I wanted to see what it was
like.'' M replied, "A writer can't just want to see something. She
can't go unless she has a point of view." This remark made Sata
feel ashamed of her error, and ashamed too to think of how she
had practiced deception on oth~rs by concealing her true feelings
about the war.69
Sata reverted to the question of her war guilt again and again
in her writings. This was not only a matter of her conscience but
of her effectiveness as an activist within the Communist party. If
ever a pretext was needed for attacking her, the wartime coopera-
tion could always be cited.70 In the novel Keiryii (Mountain Tor--
rent, 1964) she described the mistake of her wartime collaboratio.n
as something that had lodged in her breast and seemed alwaysto
be biting at her flesh.71 But, she insisted, granting that her collab-
oration was an error, even a betrayal, this made her all the more
certain that the Communist party was her "home" and refuge.
"She could not imagine what her life would be like if she left the
party. Being in the party was an article of faith in her life." 72
Sata was nevertheless expelled from the party in 1951 be-
cause of her participation in the Women's Democratic Club, an
organization that was branded as divisive by the mainstream of
the Communist party. The story "Yoru no Kioku" (Memories of a
Night, 1955) describes an unplanned stay in the city of Naoetsu
occasioned by a mistake she made when changing trains. She
debates whether or not to stay with friends who are members of
the Communist party and have always treated her as one of the
family. She is afraid of causing them trouble for ideological rea-
sons-she has been expelled from the party and is therefore on a
different footing-but decides in the end, out of affection, to pay a
visit. The wife is obviously embarrassed and hesitates to ask Sata
to come in, but the claims of hospitality prove stronger than polit-
ical considerations. Sata does not reveal why she did not go away
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1157
as soon as she discovered that she was not welcome. Perhaps she
was aware, subconsciously at least, that there wa• potentially a
story in this experience. At any rate, she stays at her friends'
house.
That night she is awakened by the sound of voices, and pres-
ently she is asked to come downstairs. She is confronted by a
young party worker who demands to know why she is staying in a
house that is used by the party to accommodate traveling mem-
bers. She is accused of being a deviationist, but is allowed to
spend the night. The next morning, as her train is about to leave,
her hosts show her genuine friendliness for the first time.73
Toward the end of "Memories of a Night" Sata recalls the
session at which she was expelled from the party. She was interro-
gated by a young man before the members of her cell. Among
other charges brought against her were irregular attendance at cell
meetings, inadequate contact with the cell, and regular appoint-
ments with literary acquaintances without prior permission. One
member of the cell even suggests that she may have embezzled
their funds. Three old friends are the only ones to vote against her
expulsion. She is ordered to leave the building at once. Over-
whelmed by shock, she crouches by the side of a dark road and
watches as a pack of dogs goes by.
The impotent rage aroused by this high-handed decision
might have stirred up antipathy for the Communist party in an-
other person, but Sata could not bear the loss of her "home.'' In
the following years, until her unconditional reinstatement in 1955
(thanks to a new policy adopted by the party at its Sixth Congress
that year), she not only continued to write prolifically in a manner
that was generally in consonance with party ideology but took an
active part in left-wing women's and literary groups. Her life at
this time is described in Mountain Torrent, a clumsily constructed
novel, which is of interest mainly to people who participated in
the conflict between the New Japanese Literary Association and
the Communist party. It is also of interest to students of the 1950s
in Japan, when every dis~aster, natural or man-made, was auto-
matically blamed on the Americans, and accusations were com-
monly exchanged of being in the pay of the American embassy.
The signing "of the peace treaty at San Francisco in 1952 was
denounced by Sata in this book, and by most "progressives," be-
cause the Soviet Union was not a signatory. The fallout of "death
 Dawn to the West I 158
ashes" from the hydrogen bomb explosion at Bikini was the occa-
sion for other demonstrations against the United States. These
and many other events are related in passing by Sata, who never
flinched in her anti-Americanism, even when her relations with
the Communist party were at their worst.
The high point of Mountain Torrent is the scene in which a
vote is taken on replacing the editor of Shin Nihon Bungaku; this
literary magazine was not completely under the control of the
Communist party at the time. The editor, Hanada Kiyoteru, was
stigmatized as a deviationist by party executives, who decided to
replace him with someone of unquestioned orthodoxy, in the
name of party unity. Sata opposed the change and supported
young members of the staff of the magazine who refused to accept
party orders. The vote resulted in a tie. Five members of the
permanent committee voted to replace Hanada with Nakano
Shigeharu, the chairman of the meeting, and five others voted
against. Nakano broke the tie by voting for the resolution and
electing himself.74 Sata used pseudonyms throughout, but we
know from other sources the persons who were involved. Nakano
(called Tamura in the novel) was an old friend, a man Sata
trusted, and his action pained her especially. Her former husband,
Kubokawa, also voted against her. Sata resigned as a member of
the permanent committee of the New Japanese Literature Asso-
ciation.
Because of this experience Sata was not especially gratified to
have been reinstated in the party. It is true that she serialized the
novel Haguruma (Cogwheels) in Akahata during 1958 and 1959,
but the doubts expressed in Mountain Torrent persisted, and in
1964 she was once more expelled from the party because ofher
criticisms of its policies. Toki ni tatsu (Standing Still in Time,
1976), a collection of reminiscences, includes several memorable
sections, such as the one describing a visit to Moscow in 1966. She
meets there the actress Okada Yoshiko, who had created asensa-
tion in 1938 by crossing the border between Japan and theSoviet
Union on the island of Sakhalin with a married man with whom
she subsequently lived in Moscow. Sata now feels sure that what-
ever hopes the man may have entertained concerning his life in
the Soviet Union had certainly been frustrated, perhaps even
from the start.75 Sata herself had experienced a change in her
interest in the Soviet Union, especially since the errors of Stalin's
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN l 159
regime had been exposed. She tried to recapture her youthful
enthusiasm for the country, remembering when she had described
the completion of a power plant on the Dnieper as "our victory,"
and when the slogan "Save the Soviet Union!" had been con-
stantly on the lips of her group. 76 She does not openly state her
disenchantment, but the impression is inescapable.
Another section of Standing Still in Time describes the death
of her former husband, Kubokawa, here called Kakimura. With
the passage of time they had grown increasingly distant, and in his
late years he was mentally debilitated. Her conclusion was bitter:
his life had been a small one; even his sins were small. 11
Sata's judgment was harsh, but one feels that it was not made
hastily, and that the implications extended beyond Kubokawa to
the movement to which both of them had devoted so much of
their lives. Almost everyone whom Sata had trusted eventually
turned against her and behaved in a manner liiat violated her
expectations. At the end of Mountain Torrent she gets drunk and,
pointing at one after another of her old party comrades, she cries,
"You're no good, and you neither, and you neither!" 1s
Sata's greatest comfort was her friend Tsuboi Sakae (1899-
1967), who is known best for her children's stories but also wrote
several important novels for adult readers. She was the wife of the
Communist poet Tsuboi Shigeji and herself spent most of her life
on the periphery of radical movements, both anarchist and Com-
munist, but never became a party member. Her best-known work
is the novel Nijiishi no Hitomi (Twenty-four Eyes, 1952), the story
of a young teacher who takes a post at a remote place and gives
her pupils inspiring guidance. The novel, which was made into a
successful film, poignantly traced the lives of twelve pupils from
their classroom until the sad day of their reunion, when they
count up the number who have died during the war. There is
something heartwarming in Tsuboi Sakae's writings, and it is not
surprising that Sata Ineko, who was perpetually battling for some
cause, turned to this friend when others had deserted her.
HIRABAYASHI TAIKO (1905-1972)
Hirabayashi Taiko came from a Nagano landowning family
with traditions of Confucian learning, but while still in her teens
 Dawn to the West 1160
she became deeply involved with socialist and other radical ideol-
ogy. After graduating from school in 1922 she went to Tokyo,
mainly it would seem, to meet Sakai Toshihiko, the anarchist
leader. She, along with many anarchists, was arrested in 1923 after
the Great Earthquake, when the authorities feared that radicals
would take advantage of the confusion caused by the disaster
to arouse dissension, but was released soon afterward on condi-
tion that she leave Tokyo. Hirabayashi and her lover, also an
anarchist, traveled around Korea and Manchuria for about a
year. Her experiences at that time provided material for the story
"Seryoshitsu ni te" (In the Chanty Ward, 1927) . .After her return
to Japan in 1924 she once again associated with anarchists and
Communists, and acquired materials for future novels by living
with a number of male comrad~s in rather rapid succession. She
and the second of her "husbands" were active in the avant-garde,
Dadaist magazine GE.GIMGIGAM.PRRR.GIMGEM, published
in 1924-1925.
In 1925, having wearied of anarchists and avant-garde artists,
all of whom were confident that one day they would be recog-
nized as geniuses, she married the proletarian novelist and critic
Kobori Jinji (1901-1959) and herself began to contribute to pro-
letarian literature magazines regularly. "In the Charity Ward,"
published in the September 1927 issue of Sensen (Battle Front),
established her reputation. Another story, "N aguru" (Beating),
published in Kaizo the next year, enhanced that reputation.
"Beating" is the story of a woman who is unhappily married and
frequently subjected to beatings by her shiftless husband. Atthe
end the husband is beaten by a work superviser at the factory, but
when she protests, the husband beats her, as if to assert that there
is at least one person he can freely humiliate. 79 Hirabayashi's
writings are marked by an irony and sometimes outli-nd-otit hu-
mor that were rare among women writers of the left.
Hirabayashi joined the Proletarian Artistic League in 1927;
only to withdraw the following year when she discovered !hat !he
league was being used by young men, fresh out of the umvers1ty,
as an implement for furthering Communist ideology. She resente~
especially their attitude that literature must be subservient to poh-
tics. In her autobiographical Sabaku no Hana (Desert Flowers,
1955-1957), she wrote:
THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1161
It wasn't that I especially disliked the Communist party. But the
party kept on producing more and more unreasonable demands
with respect to literature. We were told that authors absolutely had
to write about the lives of workers and that when describing the
struggle between workers and capitalists we must cast our stories in
such a form that the workers would always win. There were many
other "rules," and stories that did not accord with these rules were
torn apart at discussion meetings and the like. I did not trust the
Communist party, at least with respect to its views on art. And,
considering its unreasonableness when art was concerned, I could
only suppose that the party was probably just as unreasonable with
respect to every other kind of reality.so
Hirabayashi before long withdrew from all left-wing literary
organizations and went her own way. She was still resolutely op-
posed to militarism, and in the story "Sakura" (Cherry Blossoms,
1935) she voiced her fears of approaching Fascism in the portrait
of a nationalist who stands for "truly Japanese" values. Ironically,
the model for her hero, Takabatake Motoyuki (1886-1928), was
the first Japanese translator of Das Kapita/, a man who had been
associated with anarchist and Marxist causes before becoming a
prominent anti-Marxist.
In 1937 Hirabayashi and her husband were arrested as part
of the general round up of leftists after the outbreak of the China
Incident. In the following year Hirabayashi, still in detention, con-
tracted pleurisy and was released for hospital treatment. For the
next several years she fought her illness and wrote nothing even
after her gradual recovery. There is a blank in her literary career
from 1938 to 1945.
Hirabayashi's reputation as a writer is based mainly on her
postwar publications. The diary that she kept during the last
stages of the war, Shiisen Nikki, recorded her daily activities be-
tween August 13 and August 26, 1945. Her wartime experiences
were otherwise recorded in short stories published in 1946 and
1947, including "Ko iu Onna" (A Woman Like This, 1946),
"Hitori Iku" (I Go Alone, 1946), and "Watakushi wa Ikiru" (I
Mean to Live, 1947).81 These stories were all published in maga-
zines of general circulation, rather than in organs of the left. Fol-
lowing these accounts, she began to write about the yakuza, the
Iii!
 Dawn to the West THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1163

petty or large-scale gangsters who operate throughout Japan. She
seems to have been attracted by the yakuza because they really
lived at the lower depths of Japanese society, unlike the Commu-
nists who often only pretended to sympathize with the lower
classes. Chitei no Uta (Song from the Depths of the Earth, 1948)
was based on what she heard from yakuza about their careers and
crimes.
Hirabayashi shifted conspicuously away from her left-wing
position in 1949 when she published in Shincho an article sharply
attacking the Communist party. She became known as an anti-
Communist, a term of abuse at that time. Her last important work
was the novel Furno (Sterility, 1961-1962), an account of the cir-
cumstances surrounding the foq:nation of the first Socialist cabinet
in 1947. The novel combines political interest with a portrait of
her well-meaning but ineffectual husband. During the last period
of her final illness she devoted her energies to a study of her
longtime rival, Miyamoto Yuriko. The book, Miyamoto Yuriko,
was published in 1972, a few months afte4p Hirabayashi herself
died of heart failure aggravated by pneumonia.
The postwar era marked a great revival of writing by women;
at no time since the Heian period had women figured so promi-
nently in the literary world. Young women captured the coveted
literary prizes, commanded huge audiences with their best-sellers,
and were translated into various European languages. The move-
ment to promote women's writing in Japan could be seen as part
of a worldwide movement. Or, perhaps it might be more accurate
to say that the feminine tradition in Japanese literature had been
revived after a lapse of nearly a thousand years.
NOTES
l. Iwaya Daishi, Monogatari Joryii Bundan Shi, I, p. 219.
2. The title of this first story was "Meian"; it is conceivable that it inspired
Soseki to give the same title to his last novel.
3. Iwaya, Monogatari Joryii, I, p. 222; Watanabe Sumiko, Nogami Yaeko Ken·
kyii, p. 280.
4. Nogami Yaeko, Sonya Kovarefusukaya (Iwanami Bunko edition), p. 5.
5. Ibid., p. 7.
6. Ibid., p. 10.
7. Watanabe, Nogami Yaeko, p. 151.
8. Quoted by ibid., p. I 78.
9. -~e accuracy~~ Nogami's descriptions of life as led by the upper classes
ant1c1p~ted the "'.?tmgs of Mishima Yukio, though there was surely no influence.
10. Shinoda HaJ1me, Sakuhin ni /suite, p. 145.
11. Watanabe, Nogami Yaeko, pp. 182-95.
12. Nogami Yaeko, Meiro, IV, p. 319.
13. Ibid., p. 323.
14. Nogami admitted in the same postscript that there was in fact a model for
one person: Ejima Munetoshi was modeled on Count Ii, the grandson of Ii tairo
(head of the council of elders). She stated, however, that apart from the facts that
he never formally married the woman he lived with, and that he devoted himself
to No, everything about Ejima had been invented. She mentioned that she was
indebted '.or ~er desc~ipti~ns of the battlefront in China to the notebooks kept
by the arttst hda Yosh1kum. (Ibid., pp. 326-27.)
15. Ibid., pp. 325-26.
16. Shinoda, Sakuhin, p. 169.
17. Nihon Kindai Bungaku Daijiten, III, p. 28.
18. Kawabata's last manuscript, left unfinished on his desk when he committed
suicide, was about Okamoto Kanoko.
19. Fukuda Kiyoto and Hirano Mutsuko, Okamoto Kanoko, p. 112.
20. Uno Chiyo, Okamoto Kanoko, p. 298.
21. Ibid., p. 300.
22. Ibid., p. 333.
23. Fukuda and Hirano, Okamoto, p. 170.
24. Maruya Saiichi, "Kaisetsu," p. 510.
25. Uno Chiyo, Sasu, p. 55.
26. Most of her best-known works are told in the persona of a man but Kaze no
010 is narrated by a woman. '
27. Uno Chiyo, Okamoto Kanoko, p. 132.
28. She met Oza~i in 1922. A story she wrote had won first prize in a newspaper
con.test, and. Ozaki was the runner-up. They were married in 1926, but both had
vano~.s affaus af!er th:ir ma~~iag~. Uno was apparently intimate with both Kajii
Motojlr6 a~~ M~yo:h1 TatsUJI while she was in Izu writing a book. See Inagaki
Naoko, Me1p Tarsho Showa no Joryii Bungaku, pp. 183-84.
29. Uno Chiyo, Jfatakushi no Bungakuteki Kaisoki, p. 68.
30. Ibid., p. 79. Uno admitted that he might easily have formed this impression.
31. Nihon Kindai Bungaku Daijiten, I, p. 216; the article on Uno is by Saeki
Shoichi.
32. Okuno Takeo, Joryii Sakka Ron, p. 45.
33. Uno, Jfatakushi no, p. 90.
34. Ibid., p. 93.
35. There is an excellent article about Kitahara by Isoda Koichi in Nihon
Kindai Bungaku Daijiten, I, pp. 485-87.
36. Uno, Watakushi no, p. 105.
37. Some sources state that she and Kitahara did not move until November, but
see Uno, Uatakushi no, p. Il9.
38. Quoted by Okuno, Joryii Sakka, p. 39.
 Dawn to the West 1164 THE REVIVAL OF WRITING BY WOMEN 1165

~
39. Translated by Donald Keene, in The Old Woman, the Wife and the Archer. 71. SIZ, XII, pp. 115-16.
40. Uno said that it was an artificial language, primarily that ofTokushima but 72. Ibid., p. 115. In her book of essays Toki to Hilo to J#Jtakushi no koto (1979),
with elements of Iwasaki and Kansai dialects. Uno Chiyo, "Ohan ni tsuite," p. she once again took up the matter of her wartime activities. She recognized that
243. her journey to Manchukuo had enabled her to escape being classified as a "dan-
41. Ibid. gerous element" by the government, but repeats her reasons for going. See Toki
42. Uno, Sasu, p. 66. to Hilo, pp. 59-71; also, SIZ, IV, pp. 445-53.
43. Keene, The Old Woman, pp. 51-52. 73. SIZ, IX, pp. 318, 332.
44. Uno, "Ohan ni tsuite," p. 241. 74. See Honda, Monogatari, pp. 453-54. Honda himself was unable to attend
45. Hayashi Fumiko, p. 29. the meeting. If he had attended, he would have voted against the motion and
46. Fukuda Kiyoto and Endo Mitsuhiko, Hayashi Fumiko, p. 54. Hanada would not have been replaced. See also SIZ, XII, pp. 136-39.
47. Ibid., p. 57. 75. SIZ, XV, p. 303.
48. Hayashi Fumiko, pp. 35-36. 76. Ibid., p. 306.
49. Ibid., pp. 28-29. 77. Ibid., p. 318.
50. There is some dispute over exactly when Hayashi was born. See Fukuda 78. Ibid., XII, p. 161.
and Endo, pp. 9-11. 79. Hirabayashi Taiko, Ohara Tamie, p. 38.
51. Ibid., p. 77. l 80. Sugimori Hisahide, "Kaisetsu," p. 515. The official name of the organization
52. Ibid., pp. 80-81. See also Donald Keene, "The Barren Years," p. 70. she left was Nihon Puroretaria Geijutsu Remmei. It was founded in 1926 and
53. "Bangiku," translated by John Bester as "Late Chrysanthemum," is found absorbed into NAPF in 1928.
in Modern Japanese Short Stories; "Downtown," a translation by Ivan Morris, is 81. Translation by Edward Seidensticker, in Japan Quarterly, X, No. 4, 1963.
included in his Modern Japanese Stories; and The Floating Clouds (Drifting
Clouds) was translated by Yoshiyuki Koitabashi and Martin C. Collcott.
54. Modern Japanese Short Stories, p. 203.
55. Hirabayashi Taiko, "Kaisetsu," p. 496. BIBLIOGRAPHY
56. This section was originally included m Keene, "The Barren Years,"
pp. 101-04. Note: All Japanese books, except as otherwise noted, were published in Tokyo.
57. Miyamoto Yuriko Zensha, III, pp. 35-36.
58. It was suggested by Hirabayashi Taiko in Miyamoto Yuriko, p. 236, that Fukuda Kiyoto and Endo Mitsuhiko. Hayashi Fumiko. Shimizu Shoin, 1966.
Miyamoto in fact committed tenko. - - and Hirano Mutsuko. Okamoto Kanoko. Shimizu Shoin, 1966.
59. Miyamoto Yuriko Zenshti, VI, pp. 72-73. Hayashi Fumiko, in Nihon no Bungaku series. Choo Koron Sha, 1972.
60. Ibid., pp. 236-37. Hayashi Fumiko. The Floating Clouds, trans. Yoshiyuki Koitabashi and Martin
61. Honda ShOgo, Monogatari Sengo Bungaku Shi, p. 176. · C. Collcutt. Hara Shobo, 1965.
62. For biographical material, see Inagaki, pp. 25 !-63_; also, ,Sata In~ko Zenfha Hirabayashi Taiko. "Kaisetsu," in Hayashi Fumiko.
(henceforth abbreviated as SIZ), I, pp. 87-91, which 1s Sata s autob10graph1cal - - . Miyamoto Yuriko. Bungei ShunjO, 1972.
"Jiko Shokai," written in 1929. Hirabayashi Taiko, Ohara Tamie, in Nihon no Bungaku series. Choo Koron Sha,
63. Text in SIZ, I, pp. 21-31. 1974.
64. See also ibid., pp. 89-90, for a description of the harsh treatment she was Honda Shogo. Monogatari Sengo Bungaku Shi. Shinchosha, 1966.
dealt by her father when living with him in 1921. . . . Inagaki Naoko. Meiji Taisho Showa no Joryl7 Bungaku. OfOsha, 1967.
65. Sata used initials when referring to persons who figure m this story, but their Iwaya Daishi. Monogatari Jorya Bundan Shi, 2 vols. Choo Koron Sha, 1977.
identities are easily ascertained. Keene, Donald. "The Barren Years," in Monumenta Nipponica, XXXIII, No. I,
66. SIZ, IV, p. 364. 1978.
67. Ibid., p. 326. - - . Landscapes and Portraits. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1971.
68. Ibid., p. 328. - - (trans.). The Old Woman, the Wife and the Archer. New York: Viking
69. Ibid., p. 341. _ . Press, 1961.
70. See, for example, Sato Shizuo, Sengo Minshii Shugi Bungaku Undo Sh1,pp. Kubokawa Tsurujiro. Gendai Bungaku Ron. Chuo Koron Sha, 1939.
391-95, where the author himself, and Miyamoto Kenji in a citation, reluctantly Kumasaka Atsuko (ed.). Okamoto Kanoko no Sekai. Tojusha, 1976.
recognize Sata's contributions to proletarian literature, but insist on her culpa- Maruya Saiichi. "Kaisetsu," in Uno Chiyo, Okamoto Kanoko.
bility as a wartime collaborator. Miyamoto Yuriko Zensha, 27 vols. Shin Nihon Shuppansha, 1979-81.
 Dawn to the West

Modern Japanese Short Stories. Japan Publications Trading Co., 1960.

Morris, Ivan (ed.). Modern Japanese Short Stories. Tuttle, 1962.
Nihon Kindai Bungaku Daijiten, 6 vols. Kodansha, 1978.
Nogami Yaeko. Meiro, 4 vols., in Iwanami Bunko series. lwanami Shoten, 1958.
- - . Sonya Kovarefusukaya, in Iwanami Bunko series. Iwanami Shoten, 1978.
Okuno Takeo. Joryii Sakka Ron. Daisan Bummei Sha, 1974.
Sata Ineko. Toki to Hito to l#ttakushi no koto. Kodansha, 1979.
Sata Ineko Zenshii, 18 vols. Kodansha, 1977-79.
Sato Shizuo. Sengo Bungaku no Sanjlinen. Kowado, 1976.
- - . Sengo Minshii Shugi Bungaku Undo Shi. Keiryiikaku, 1968.
Shinoda Hajime. Sakuhin ni tsuite. Chikuma Shobo, 1971.
Sugimori Hisahide. "Kaisetsu," in Hirabayashi Taiko, Ohara Tamie. 27
Uno Chiyo. "Ohan ni tsuite," in Uno Chiyo Zenshii, XII. Chuo Koron Sha, 1979.
- - . Sasu. Shinchosha, 1966. MISHIMA YUKIO
- - . l#ttakushi no Bungakuteki Kaisoki. Chuo Koron Sha, 1972.
Uno Chiyo, Okamoto Kanoko, in Nihon lno Bungaku series. Chuo Koron Sha,
1974.
Watanabe Sumiko. Nogami Yaeko Kenkyii. Yagi Shoten, 1969.

THE SENSATIONAL DEATH of Mishima Yukio on November

25, 1970, brought his name to the attention of countless people all
over the world who had never previously been interested in Jap-
anese literature. Paperback translations of many of Mishima's
works into the various European languages were issued or re-
issued, the covers often ornamented by a photograph showing
him clad in a loincloth, sword in hand. The actions of the last
moments of his life created widespread concern as to a possible
revival of Japanese militarism, and even in Japan some com-
mentators suggested that Mishima's flamboyant gestures, cul-
minating in a ritual seppuku, were the first signs of a resurgence
of the ultra-nationalism of the 1930s. However, Mishima's gran-
diose appeal for the revision of the Japanese constitution seems to
have had no perceptible effect on subsequent Japanese military
preparedness; if anything, it weakened the arguments of those
who had favored constitutional revision. On anniversaries of Mi-
shima's death followers honored his memory and assured his
spirit that others were ready to carry on his efforts to restore Jap-

1167
 Dawn to the West 1168
anese martial traditions, but such gatherings attracted steadily less
distinguished audiences. Perhaps the people most deeply affected
by Mishima's suicide were, paradoxically, non-Japanese who la-
mented the passing of Japanese traditions and who were pro-
foundly impressed that a man at the height of his career had
thrown away his life in the hopes of reminding his countrymen of
what they had lost.
Interpretations of the meaning of Mishima's final acts con-
tinue to intrigue not only his biographers but all students of
Japanese culture in the 1970s. Even critics who profess to be con-
cerned exclusively with Mishima's literary work have difficulty in
ignoring so extraordinary a climax to the life of a man who had
seemed to be devoted above all to the search for beauty. Many
succumb to the natural temptatio~ to find clues to Mishima's fimi'i
acts in schoolboy compositions or in the known facts about his
early childhood; there is hardly a figure in Japanese literary his-
tory who offers such a richness of material for the amateur
psychoanalyst.
It did not take long after Mishima's death for the first probes
into his psyche to be published. Even his parents joined in the
quest for the causes of his transformation from a frail aesthete
into the leader of an armed intrusion into a commanding gen-
eral's headquarters. The tyrannical grandmother who insisted that
the young Mishima live in her room and forbade him to play with
other boys was often blamed for Mishima's deviation from whole-
some adolescence and ultimately for his suicide; it was less fre-
quently considered how much the supposedly baleful influence of
his grandmother contributed to his precocious literary tastes and
to his interest in the theater.1 A psychoanalysis of Mishima made
on the basis of his own writings and on the recollections of those
who knew him best would make absorbing reading, but it proba-
bly would not explain how he succeeded in becoming one of the
important writers of the twentieth century. 2
Mishima himself detested psychoanalysis, as one can gather
from his only work treating the subject, a minor novel called
Ongaku (Music, 1964). His feelings were inspired not by disap-
, pointment after careful study of the discipline, but seemingly by
his reluctance to explain people's behavior in terms of subcon-
, scious motivations against which they are powerless to resist.
Mishima professed contempt for writers who (like Dazai) used the
MISHIMA YUKIO 1169
"I novel" as vehicles of self-pity and who traced their unhappiness
to childhood misfortunes. He chose to emulate instead those writ-
ers who were most remote from himself, notably Mori Ogai. It
required a considerable effort of will for Mishima to adopt Ogai's
Apollonian detachment and severity of style as his own, but
thanks to his displays of willpower, the mature Mishima became
quite a different writer from the boy prodigy Mishima, whose
sensitive, archaically phrased evocations of a world known mainly
from classical Japanese literature had suggested that he might
develop into a second Hori Tatsuo. The delicate boy who had
asked to be excused from physical training at school and who was
tormented by stronger boys made of himself a powerfully muscled
man who could thrust a dagger deep into his vitals and draw it
across his belly without flinching, exactly in the manner of a
samurai hero of one of Ogai's novels. But that was not all: this
would-be samurai had just completed a major work of modern
Japanese literature.
Mishima 3 was born in Tokyo on January 4, 1925. His father,
a government official, was the son of a one-time governor-general
of Karafuto who had been obliged to resign his post because of
the misdemeanor of a subordinate. Mishima, though proud of this
grandfather, did not mention that his ancestors had been peas-
ants; he was much more apt to refer to the family of his grand-
mother, which belonged to the samurai class. The grandmother
was a cultured but erratic woman with a tendency toward hys-
teria. Probably the unstable element in her character was the rea-
son why her parents married her to a man who was much her
social inferior.
As a boy Mishima was sent to Gakushuin (The Peers School),
perhaps at his grandmother's insistence. Boys who attended this
school did not necessarily belong to the nobility, but nonaristo-
crats were often made to feel like outsiders. The traditions of the
school were not, however, those of the Heian aristocracy. General
Nogi Maresuke, who was the president of the Peers School at the
time of his suicide in 1912, had set a pattern of Spartan education,
and the students were much more likely to develop into soldiers
than into poets. One of Mishima's early stories, "Tabako" (The
Cigarette, 1946), related with what scorn he had been treated by
members of the rugby club when he confessed that he belonged to
the literary club. His experiences at that time are so faithfully
 Dawn to the West 1170
described in this story and in "Shi wo kaku Shonen" (The Boy
Who Wrote Poetry, 1954) 4 as to suggest autobiography or an"I
novel." 5 But Mishima's reason for writing these stories had little
in common with the obsession for truth of the "I" novelists; for
Mishima the facts served mainly as points of departure for obser-
vations and analyses.
"The Boy Who Wrote Poetry" describes, for example, his
fas~ination with words: "Without the slightest emotion he used
words like 'supplication,' 'malediction,' and 'disdain.'" 6 Of
course, it is normal for literarily gifted children to relish big
words, even when not entirely sure what they mean. They are
attracted to the magic of the sounds, but Mishima went beyond
the childish fascination with unfamiliar words to a love oflan-
guage that persisted throughobt his life. He was one of the rare
writers of his generation who refused to adopt the simplified
orthography introduced after the war, and he constantly ex-
pressed irritation with authors who did not use words properly.7
His vocabulary was unusually rich, and he did not hesitate even to
write pastiches of the literary styles of the past, notably in his
Kabuki and Joruri plays. His elaborate use of metaphor and sim-
ile, perhaps the most conspicuous feature of his style, can be
traced back to boyhood compositions. He wrote almost no poetry
after reaching adolescence, but his poetic imagination often
threatened to break through the controlled emotion he practiced
in emulation of Mori Ogai. In "The Boy Who Wrote Poetry,"
written fourteen years after the events described, he parodiedhis
proclivity for metaphor:
Peaches surrounded by whirling gold bugs were lightly powdered
with makeup; the air, like an arc of flames behind a statue, swirled
and twisted around scampering people. Sunset was an omen of evil;
it ran in deep tinctures of iodine. The winter trees thrust· their
wooden legs at the sky. And a girl lay nude by a stove, her body like
a burning rose. He walked up to the window, only to find an artifi-
cial flower. Her skin, goose-pimpled in the cold, became one frayed
petal of a velvet flower.a
Mishima's metaphors did not always succeed, even in his ma-
ture writings, but he never renounced the use of ornate lang~~ge
and involuted expression. Although he was capable of wntmg
MISHIMA YUKIO 1171
realistic dialogue, which perfectly captured the inflections of ordi-
nary speech, in the works to which he devoted the greatest care he
used a deliberately artificial language, whether in the philosophi-
cal discourses of the cynical Kashiwagi in The Temple of the
Golden Pavilion or the Racinian tirades delivered by the charac-
ters in the play Madame de Sade. He mocked those who insisted
on natural, banal dialogue; his initial intoxication with language
was bolstered by a study of the novels of Thomas Mann, which
had persuaded him that conversations in a novel or play could
legitimately be used as the vehicles for the author's literary or
philosophical perceptions.9 .
Another constant feature of Mishima's writings was the insis-
tence on the sudden discovery, or epiphany, of the meaning of
experiences. Every sight, every gesture tended to arouse a flash of
understanding, implausible though this might seem at times, espe-
cially in one so young as the subject of "The Boy Who Wrote
Poetry," or so inarticulate as the subject of The Temple of the
Golden Pavilion, who recalls:
For my deed had settled like gold dust within my memory and had
begun to give off a glittering light that constantly pierced my eyes.
The glitter of evil. Yes, that was it. It may have been a very minor
evil, but I was now endowed with the vivid consciousness that I had
in fact committed evil. This consciousness hung like some decora-
tion on the inside of my breast.10
"The Boy Who Wrote Poetry" is extremely self-conscious
writing, but the author insists that although the boy was con-
vinced of his genius, he was curiously without interest in himself.
Mishima's own poems are also not only overwritten but strangely
impersonal and lacking in the lyricism one might expect of so
youthful a poet. Instead of first love or other emotional experi-
ences, the poems are observations of the outside world, as re-
fracted through the prism of his precocious intelligence. The
poems possess little interest beyond the juvenilia of an important
writer, and it is hard not to agree with Mishima's self-appraisal at
the end of "The Boy Who Wrote Poetry": "But he was yet to learn
that he had never been a poet." 11
Mishima as a boy had been particularly taken with the poetry
of Tachihara Michizo (1914-1939), one of the leading lyric poets
 Dawn to the West 1172
of the 1930s, whose influence also helped to form Mishima's .ap-
preciation of the classical waka. Mishima's collection Jojoshi Sha
(Selection of Lyrics), published in the literary magazine of the
Peers School, owed much to Tachihara,12 but his lyrics never ap-
proached Tachihara's intensity of feeling. Perhaps this was be-
cause Mishima, though extremely self-aware, lacked the concern
for other people-or at least for one other person-that lyric poetry
requires. The fair maiden who is apostrophized in his lyrics ob-
viously never existed except in his imagination, and was inspired
chiefly by readings of other poetry, but also by his friend Rojo
Toshitami, who really was in love. To the end Mishima's prose,
though often beautiful, was rarely lyric. His self-awareness kept
him from allowing himself the risk,of seeming foolish.
While still publishing these poems, Mishima began to write
his first prose work of consequence, Hanazakari no Mori (The
Forest in Full Flower). This beautifully written work, a rarity as
juvenilia because it is based so little on the writer's personal expe-
riences, abounds in metaphors, similes, and in the aphorisms that
are so prominent a feature of Mishima's later writings. It opens as
an unidentified old man, living far from home in a country where
he has neither relatives nor acquaintances, meditates on the past.
In a passage that strikingly anticipates the mature Mishima, the
man muses:
Memory is the purest evidence of "the present." Love, or for that
matter, devotion-emotions such as these which are ~oo pure to
situate in reality-cannot be divined or, in a true sense, sought ex-
cept through the memory. It is like the rivulet one has searched for,
clawing at fallen leaves, at the moment when it first reflects the blue
sky. The fallen leaves that had lain scattered over the surface of the
water could never reflect the sky.13
Mishima followed this passage with a statement of the main
theme of this work:
We have a truly vast number of ancestors. Sometiml!s it happens
that they live with us, like beautiful yearnings, but it not infre-
quently happens that they stand off at a tantalizing distance which
they rigorously maintain.
MISHIMA YUKIO 1173
Our ancestors often encounter us in strange ways. People may
doubt this perhaps. But it is true.14
The stories that follow are about ancestors who in some sense
still live within the narrator. These ancestors share with him cer-
tain tastes, including a love for the sea and for the sunny south.
The sea, a recurrent motif in Mishima's writings, became a meta-
phor for all life in his final tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility; and
Mishima's worship of the sun and the south would be associated
with his cult of the body. These preferences remained constant
despite the many changes in his style and range of interests over
the years.
The style of The Forest in Full Flower, both in the use of rare
Chinese characters and in the inclusion of archaisms in otherwise
contemporary language, also indicated a traditionalism surprising
in one so young. Mishima's mentors at the Peers School had both
encouraged his study of the Japanese classics and brought him
into contact with the Nihon Roman-ha (the Japanese Romanti-
cists), a group of intellectuals who insisted on the uniqueness of
the Japanese people and their history. Yet Mishima's devotion to
Japanese tradition, in this early work and much later, was com-
bined with a strong attachment to the West. His ancestral "memo-
ries" were not confined to the native past but included exotic
Western objects, such as a Bible encased in lacquer and mother-
of-pearl, iron gates in arabesque patterns, and high-stemmed wine
goblets.
Mishima was especially taken with the essays of Oscar Wilde.
Even though Japan was rapidly nearing an outbreak of war with
Britain and America, and the literature of these countries was
frowned on by the authorities, Mishima continued to read, usually
in Japanese translations, the works of Wilde and other writers
who had been condemned as decadents. It is not difficult to imag-
ine the effect that Wilde's paradoxes, especially those contained in
Intentions, one of Mishima's favorite books, had on the young
and totally inexperienced student. No doubt it was comforting for
Mishima to read Wilde's prediction that "the elect spirits of each
age, the critical and cultured spirits, will grow less and less inter-
ested in actual life, and will seek to gain their impressions almost
entirely from what Art has touched. For Life is terribly deficient in
 Dawn to the West 1174
form." 15 And if Mishima needed justification for describing in
The Forest in Full Flower totally imaginary, unreal people, he
could find it in such a Wildean aphorism as, "The only real peo-
ple are the people who have never existed, and if a novelist is base
enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend
that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies." 16 There
could hardly be a more explicit rejection of experience as the
prerequisite of literary activity.
Mishima's knowledge of Japanese classical literature also
took the place of experience in his early works, some of them
inspired directly by the Kojiki and The Tales of Ise. His absorption
with the Japanese classics persisted to the end of his life; the final
tetralogy was based on one Heian novel and contains oblique
references to other works of the period. Unlike most of the post-
war writers, who insisted on the break (danzetsu) between them-
selves and pre-Meiji literature, Mishima read the classics, both for
pleasure and for inspiration. He was especially attracted by medi-
eval writings: his story "Chusei" (The Middle Ages, 1945), which
describes the grief of Ashikaga Yoshimasa after the death of his
son, the youthful shogun Yoshihisa, was an early expression of his
interest in the literature and history of the Muromachi period.
Perhaps at this time Mishima, like many other Japanese, foundit
easy to identify with Japanese who had lived in ages of warfare.
Mishima's love of the No plays especially affected his writings, as
we know not only from his modern No plays but from episodes in
the novels that were modeled on situations in the old plays.17 The
catholicity of Mishima's readings even during the worst period of
the war is indicated by a postcard written in 1945 from the naval
arsenal where he was working as a student volunteer; he men-
tioned these books: Kojiki, the Izumi Shikibu Diary, a collection
of Muromachi period tales, the works of Ueda Akinari, some nov-
els by Izumi Kyoka, and a play by Yeats, which he was translating
into the language of the No plays.ls
The Forest in Full Flower was intended for the Peers School
literary magazine, but Mishima's adviser, Shimizu Fumio, was so
impressed by the manuscript that he proposed publishing it in
Bungei Bunka (Literary Culture), the little magazine that he and
three associates had been editing for three years. The othersread
the manuscript at the inn in Izu where the four men had gone for
a brief holiday. As Shimizu expected, they were all convinced that
MISHIMA YUKIO 1175
a genius had revealed himself before their eyes, and they decided
to print the story in the September 1941 issue. Bungei Bunka,
though a very slim magazine with a limited circulation, had high
literary standards and was read throughout the country. The edi-
tors therefore hesitated to publish a story by a mere middle-school
student, and they were also concerned about what the boy's par-
ents might say about so precipitous a debut in the literary world.
They accordingly decided to protect the young man's identity by
persuading him to use a pseudonym. "Mishima" was the name of
the station where the editors had changed trains on the way to Izu,
but there was apparently no special reason for choosing Yukio.rn
When Shimizu informed the boy that Bungei Bunka would print
his story he was overjoyed, but he was puzzled at the editors'
decision not to allow him to use his real name. He reasoned that
he had already established a literary reputation thanks to his pub-
lications in the school magazine. But he soon yielded to the edi-
tors and adopted the name by which he would be known for the
rest of his life.
In October 1944 The Forest in Full Flower, together with sev-
eral later stories, was published in book form. This happened not
long after a series of Japanese defeats had culminated in the inva~
sion of the Philippines by United States forces, and pessimism
about the chances of a Japanese victory was for the first time
being expressed. The paper shortage was acute, and there could
hardly have been a less propitious moment for the publication of
a collection of rather precious stories cast in a deliberately archaic
idiom. The original printing of four thousand copies sold out
within a week, no doubt because people were starved for litera-
ture that was unrelated to the war. Mishima's main concessions to
the prevailing atmosphere were in the afterword, where he re-
ferred to mentors and friends at the front 20 and expressed the
conviction that in the postwar world it would be impossible for
people anywhere in the world to discuss poetry without measuring
it against the achievement of the Kokinsha.21 Years later he re-
called that he had been obliged to justify publication in terms of
the contribution to the war effort when applying to the authorities
for the paper needed to print the book. He commented, "It would
appear that even at that time I was not a very fastidious young
man." 22
Although Mishima would one day gain notoriety by his ad-
 Dawn to the West 1176
vocacy of military training and the way of the warrior in a Japan
committed to peace, he was quite unenthusiastic about the war
while it was actually going on. When he received notice that he
had been called up for a physical examination, he took it at his
official domicile in Hyogo Prefecture, where his grandfather was
born, rather than near his home in Tokyo. Apparently his father
believed that the boy's frail constitution, which would not have
been unusual in Tokyo, would stand out in sharp contrast to strap-
ping farmers' sons in the country, and that he would be rejected.23
Mishima also had a piece of good luck: the day of his examina-
tion he ran a high fever, and the inexperienced young doctor
mistook bronchitis for pleurisy. Mishima clid nothing to correct
this misapprehension, and his de\iberately deceptive answers con-
cerning his malady induced the doctor to declare that he was unfit
for military service. The regiment he was to have entered in
Hyogo was massacred in the Philippines.24
Mishima continued writing almost to the day of the defeatin
August 1945. He began the novella Misaki nite no Monogatari(A
Story at the Cape) in July and continued writing through the
chaotic months that followed; this story about a pair oflovers who
commit suicide by jumping from a cliff into the sea was totally
unrelated to the war.
In January 1946 he visited Kawabata Yasunari in Kamakura
with the manuscripts of two stories, "The Middle Ages" and "The
Cigarette," and in June, at Kawabata's recommendation, ''The
Cigarette" was published in Ningen (Humanity), a new and im-
portant literary magazine. But Kawabata's high opinion of the
young Mishima was not shared by most people in the literary
world. Nakamura Mitsuo, for example, after reading the manu-
scripts of eight stories that Mishima submitted to the n~wly
founded magazine Tembo (Outlook) early in 1946, rated M1sh1-
ma's talent as "minus 150." 25 He considered that Mishima was a
fake, an offshoot of Hori Tatsuo who, like him, had "rediscov-
ered" Japan. Nakamura was baffled as to what Kawabata could
have admired in "The Cigarette."
"The Cigarette" is Mishima's most affecting early work. Un-
like the stories that treated an adult world he knew only from
books, here he described personal experiences in an unaffe~ted
yet artful manner. The story is about a boy who is a misfit m a
school devoted to healthy, outdoor sports and to the less healthy
MISHIMA YUKIO 1177
tradition of upperclassmen having pets among the lowerclassmen.
One day he accidentally comes upon some members of the rugby
team as they are lolling under a tree enjoying the forbidden plea-
sure of cigarettes. They offer him one and he puffs at it, somehow
attracted to the rugby players despite his aversion to sports. His
first cigarette gives him not pleasure but terrible feelings of anx-
iety and guilt. He fears the worst when he returns home, but
nobody notices the odor of tobacco, which, he supposed, was
clinging to him. Emboldened, he goes to the rugby players' room
and bravely asks for another cigarette. This one arouses an only
too evident nausea. The boy who gave him the cigarette turns
away in embarrassment, but the narrator, seeing his distress, is
overjoyed:
That night, as I lay sleepless, I thought over the various things that
are likely to occur to a boy of that age. What had happened to all
my self-pride? Had I not always insisted obstinately that I did not
wish to be anything but myself? But now, was I not desperately
hoping to become something else? Things I had vaguely considered
to be ugly suddenly seemed to have been transformed and become
beautiful. I never before had felt such disgust at being a child. 26
The transformation brought about by the cigarette is not simply a
stage in the process of growing up. The boy has for the first time
felt love, and with it a craving both to wound and to be wounded.
His sense of self has totally crumbled.
Nakamura's unfavorable opinion of this story was under-
standable. It recalled all too closely such stories as Hori Tatsuo's
''Burning Cheeks," and if Mishima's career had terminated at this
point he would surely have been forgotten. But in terms of Mishi-
ma's entire work, "The Cigarette" was a first, poignant expression
of real feelings. Mishima was probably not pleased with this de-
velopment, which ran counter to the kind of literary wisdom he
had garnered from Wilde's aphorisms, and he was unwilling to
surrender art in favor of reality. The depth of his commitment to
art is suggested by the fact that he went on writing in 1946 without
touching on the war, the postwar chaos, or any other subject re-
lated to the life around him. His resistance to reality was given
extreme form in his first full-length novel, Tozoku (The Thieves,
1946-1948), an implausible and unsuccessful portrayal of two
 Dawn to the West 1178
youthful members of the aristocracy who are irresistibly drawn to
suicide. In 1955 Mishima published a facsimile of the notes he
made while he was planning The Thieves, the only instance of his
revealing the extremely detailed outlines he always prepared be-
fore starting work on a novel. He admitted that he wrote this work
underthe influence of Raymond Radiguet, but was also at pains
to point out various respects in which he and Radiguet were dis-
similar. Naturally, he did not point out at this time (although he
did later) the most basic difference of all: Radiguet's Le baldu
comte d'Orgel is a masterpiece of style and characterization, but
The Thieves is no more than a first attempt at a novel.
The central characters in The Thieves, as in others of Mishi-
ma's early v.:orks, belong to the ,aristocracy. This was natural, in
view of his education at the Peers School, but the attention he
gave to a tiny segment of Japanese society, which had been legis-
lated out of existence during the postwar democratization, dis-
credited him in the eyes of some critics, who complained even
after his death that Mishima had never written about the common
people.2 7 This charge was untrue, as the most cursory examination
of the characters in Mishima's works reveals. As a matter of fact,
few modem writers have treated as wide a spectrum of Japanese
society as Mishima, ranging from the fishermen of The Sound of
ttiives and the farmers of Thirst for Love through the factory
workers described in Silk and Insight as well as in various short
stories, the Buddhist clergy treated in The Temple of the Golden
Pavilion, the prosperous technicians of The Sunken Waterfall, to
the affluent upper classes. Presumably what the critics object to is
not Mishima's narrowness of vision but his failure to indict cap~
italist society for its contradictions. However, it is also true that
Mishima was one of the rare twentieth-century writers to describe
the aristocracy. This did not necessarily demonstrate special admi-
ration for the class; indeed, his experiences with young aristocrats
at the Peers School were disillusioning. But Mishima found it
congenial to write about a class he knew well, to use its special
language and to refer to its special preoccupations and prejudices
when expressing his own views on the nature of the human
condition.
The Thieves, though the preface by Kawabata acclaimed
Mishima as the youngest writer in Japan and suggested that this
novel represented a step in the direction of combining the classics
MISHIMA YUKIO 1179
with modemity, 28 was not a success either artistically or (initially
at least) with the public. 29 Mishima himself in later years would
dismiss The Thieves as a mere practice piece, but it clearly belongs
in the mainstream of his writings. The epigraphs that head the
chapters include quotations from The Picture of Dorian Gray,
Hofmannsthal, Strindberg, and Baudelaire, a fashionable selec-
tion for a young Japanese writer and evidence of the kinds of
authors he admired at the time. But what is most remarkable
about The Thieves is its subtitle: "An Episode in the World of the
Upper Classes in the 1930s." It is incredible that in the immediate
postwar days, when all Japanese seemed to be turning to the fu-
ture and the creation of a new and democratic Japan, a young
man like Mishima should have looked backward to the gracious
style of life that was led by the aristocrats during the 1930s.
Nothing in The Thieves suggests even indirectly that the
country had just emerged from a terrible war; nor, for that matter,
is there any hint of the special tensions that prevailed in Japan
during 1936, the year of the February 26 armed uprising. The
world depicted in these pages exists mainly inside the author's
head, and he is apparently less interested in telling a story or
developing his characters than in asserting his presence as the
author. He underlines this attitude by the frequent questions he
addresses to the reader: "Should Mrs. Fujimura's submissiveness
be ascribed merely to her age? Does the passage of a bare year
cause one to age so rapidly? Did not her abrupt surrender of
youth contain elements of a betrayal?" 30 Sometimes the reader is
even more directly addressed: "The reader must surely have de~
tected on Mrs. Fujimura's face the first premonition of this danger
when Akihide returned from Kobe." 31 Such stylistic mannerisms
suggest foreign influence, notably Le bal du comte d'Orgel, which
Mishima read in Horiguchi Daigaku's translation. There is little
surface resemblance in either the plots or the .characters of the two
novels, but Mishima's choice of members of the aristocracy for
the persons of The Thieves, at a time when the lives of the aristo-
crats were not of special interest to most readers, probably reflects
the influence of Radiguet's novel, and Mishima's insistence on
unraveling the psychological significance of even the slightest inci-
dent undoubtedly owed much to the same source.
The plot of The Thieves is simple but unbelievable. A young
man and a young woman, both members of the nobility, have
 Dawn to the West 1180
each been bitterly disappointed in love. They independently de-
cide to commit suicide, but when, by an accident, each discovers
the other's intent, they become friends and share secrets. Eventu-
ally they marry, only to commit suicide on their wedding night.
The novel concludes with a brilliant touch worthy of the mature
Mishima. The woman and the man who had jilted the dead cou-
ple are introduced at a ball. Unaware of the strange ties that link
them, they exchange the usual greeting, but their eyes cloudover
at the first instant when their glances meet, as each discovers in
the other a terrible, indescribable desolation:
This ugly intuition spread from their eyes to their cheeks, covering
them with a glaucous hue like1 the sea at daybreak. They stood
stockstill for a moment, shackled by fear, allowing the color and the
taste of dead ashes to permeate their lips. Yoshiko was the first to
fall back, but both were simultaneously moved by the impulse to
describe to others the terrible discovery they had just made: they
now knew that clever thieves had robbed them, lock, stock and
barrel, of all that is truly beautiful and eternally young.32
The exaltation of death, which marked so much of Mishima's
later writings, is frequent even in this first novel, though not
very plausibly stated, since the necessity of death for the two
love-stricken young people is inadequately presented. Perhaps
Mishima, already intoxicated with the beauty of early death (as
typified by Radiguet's), felt no need to persuade readers of a truth
that seemed transparently obvious to himself; but, more likely, he
did not yet possess the novelistic skill to communicate this convic--
tion. The association of the sea with death, another familiar ele-
ment in Mishima's writings from A Story at the Cape, here takes
the form of the hero being mysteriously but compulsively at;
tracted to the sea at Kobe where, after he passes the spot where a
man had just been killed in a traffic accident, he has the sudden
vision of death as a liberation.
The writing in The Thieves is still largely in the vein of Mishi-
ma's early stories, and is marked by an overly rich vocabulary and
a penchant for obscure Chinese characters. Mishima never freed
himself of these stylistic mannerisms, but he was eventually able
to make them seem an integral part of his works. The Thieves was
the product of the imagination of a highly gifted young writer
MISHIMA YUKIO 1181
who was i:ot yet r~ady for a f~l_l-scale novel. Despite its failing,
however, it has enJoyed surpnsmg popularity.33 It contains the
germs of the two varieties of novels Mishima would produce: the
treatment of love in high society foreshadowed the popular fiction
he w~ote so ~asily; the aphorisms, scattered throughout the work,
especially with reference to the triumph of death and the eternal
Liebestod, were in the vein of his serious works.
The Thieves appeared in November 1948. This was one of the
~ost productive ye~rs of Mishima's career, though he was other-
wise engaged full-time as a junior officer in the Ministry of Fi-
nance. Exhausted by the strain of writing at night after a day
spent at the office, he resigned his post in September of that year,
much to the disappointment of his father, who had assumed that
Mishi~a _was, definitely committed to a career in the bureaucracy.
But M1shn~a s talent was now recognized by the sceptics of a year
or two earlier, even by those whose political views were entirely
unlike his own.
. In July 1948_ Mishima was invited to join the group that pub-
lished the magazme Kindai Bungaku (Modern Literature).34 Most
members of this group were left wing in their political sympathies,
~nd from the first Mishima was treated as an outsider. Years later,
m response to the criticism that the group had failed to under-
stand Mishima, the critic Honda Shugo retorted that if Kindai
Bungaku had been able to understand Mishima, it would have
ceased to be Kindai Bungaku.35 By this he meant that the political
awareness of the group, especially its insistence that writers must
be involved with social issues, made it impossible to accept a man
solely on the basis of his unquestioned literary talent. Mishima
, was not tempted to join the widespread switch to left-wing
thought, of whatever variety, that had become so prevalent. How-
ever, the Ma~xist literary critic Odagiri Hideo urged him to join
the Commumst party. The suggestion seemed so delightfully ab-
surd to Mishima that it gave him a pleasurable thrill, as when,
som~ years l~ter, his boxing trainer suggested that he might be
se~t 1~to the nng_to fight in earnest.36 Presumably Mishima joined
Kzndaz Bungaku m order to associate with the makers of the new-
est literature, but no influence was exerted in either direction. In
Dece~ber 1948 he became an associate (donin) of the new literary
magazme Jokyoku (Prelude). It lasted only one issue, but it
brought him into further contact with the Marxist intellectuals
 Dawn to the West 1182
who seemed about to assume control over literary criticism just as
the proletarian critics had done twenty years before.
Mishima, even toward the end of his life, when he expressed
overtly political views, remained essentially unpolitical. His right-
wing sympathies did not involve cooperation with the more or less
disreputable right-wing political parties, which he treated harshly.
in such novels as Kyoko's House and Runaway Horses. He was
caustic in his appraisal of the politicians and businessmen who
ran the country, though his criticism stemmed from other princi-
ples than those of his left-wing associates. As a boy he had shown
no special interest in the young army and navy officers who had
staged attempted coups against th~ ruling _class, bu_t i~ ~me. he
came to associate' himself with tqeu beautiful, und1scnmmatmg
patriotism, because it transce°:ded pe.rsonal ~m?itions and eve~
the instinct for self-preservation. His admuat10n for Hayashi
Fusao the most ardent of the tenko writers, increased with time;
in 1963 he published a long, laudatory essay on this author who
for years had produced nothing more im~ressive tha~, "mid-
dlebrow" fiction. He praised with superlatives Hayashi s evo-
cations of youthful Japanese idealism, but not even Hayashi
himself, no longer politically active, could assent when Mishima
proclaimed in a dialogue with Hayashi t~e infallibility ?f~heem-
peror.37 Perhaps he took Mishima too literally: for Mish1ma the
emperor was the abstract essence of Japan. itself,. and only inci-
dentally related to any particular emperor, mcludmg the present
one. Indeed, in The Voices of the Heroic Dead (1966), the most
outspoken expression of Mishima's emperor-wors~ip, t~e t'>piri:s
of the kamikaze pilots denounce the emperor for his dema.l of his
divinity; if he was not a god, their deaths were ~~amngless.
Mishima's politics grew more and more abstract until m the end
they became an extension of his aesthetics. . Confessions of a Mask was not fully understood even by read-
In January 1949 Mishima published in Kindai Bun~a~u his
first essay on the art of Kawabata Yasunari. Throughout his hfe he
professed great admiration for the older writer, and he considered
himself to be a disciple, but the two. men differed profoundly even
where they seemed most alike. Japanese tradition for Kawaba!a
was found in the painting, sculpture, and pottery of the past, m
The Tale of Genji, in the gardens and architecture of t~e ?ld tem-
ples, in the religious teachings of the Zen masters. M1sh1ma w~~
almost totally uninterested in any of these, save The Tale of Genp.
MISHIMA YUKIO 1183
He sought beauty not in the Japanese past but in the West, espe-
cially in classical Greece, and probably never once coveted a work
of Japanese art. Even when the two men's preferences actually
coincided, as in their admiration for the classical waka, they de-
rived dissimilar pleasure from them. Kawabata was moved by the
economically phrased evocations of natural beauty, Mishima by
the baroque passion he detected behind the polished surfaces
of the waka. For Kawabata the past meant above all taoayame-
buri, the feminine aspects of Japanese culture, which had eventu-
ally compelled· the allegiance of even the rough soldiers of the
Muromachi period; for Mishima the past was typified by ma-
suraoburi, the masculine traditions of the warrior (to which Ka-
wabata was indifferent). Kawabata's consolation during the war
years was The Tale of Genji, Mishima's was Hagakure, the eigh-
teenth-century book of samurai teachings. Hagakure was a
strange choice of bedside book for a frail, unmartial young poet,
but we know from Mishima's autobiographical writings that his
fascination with dying warriors goes back to early childhood. In
Confessions of a Mask he described his distress when, as a child of
four, he learned from a nurse that his favorite picture, showing a
knight on a white horse, was of a woman, Joan of Arc. The dis-
covery of a virgin girl underneath the arrnor would no doubt have
entranced Kawabata.
In July 1949 Mishima published his most self-revelatory
work, the novel Kamen no Kokuhaku (Confessions of a Maskf38
His earlier books had met mainly with critical indifference, but
,this one was respectfully reviewed and sold well from the start.
Confessions of a Mask established Mishima's reputation and con-
tinued to be rated at or near the top of his entire oeuvre, long
after he had published another thirty or more books.
ers who greatly admired it. For example, the meaning of the word
"mask" in the title was much debated, and Mishima himself chose
not to clarify his use of the word. One widely accepted view was
that the confession was a parody of an "I novel," a false auto-
biography written by a masked author.39 The critics were reluc-
tant to accept what the narrator states early in the work:
In this house it was tacitly required that I act like a boy. The reluc-
tant masquerade had begun. At about this time I was beginning to
 Dawn to the West 1184
understand vaguely the mechanism of the fact that what people
regarded as a pose on my part was actually an expression ofmy
need to assert my true nature, and that it was precisely what people
regarded as my true self which was a masquerade. 40
The homosexual proclivities of the hero, which prevent him
from feeling desire for the girl he believes he loves, were so baf-
fling to the critics that most could only suppose that the intent
must be parody, though others attributed the hero's impotence to
malnutrition.41 Mishima once remarked that Confessions of a
Mask was the first Japanese novel to deal with homosexuality
since Saikaku. Probably he was right, if one excludes obscure
works of pornography. In 1952, "'hen Mishima published a more
outspoken novel about homosexuality, Kinjiki (Forbidden Colors,
first part), even so astute a critic as Nakamura Mitsuo laughingly
complained that he (and other Japanese critics) were ignorant of
the world of homosexuals and Mishima could therefore write
whatever he pleased without subjecting himself to the kind of
criticism he might receive if he wrote about women. 42
The curious fact is that neither at this time nor later was
Confessions of a Mask read as an avowal of a guilty passion. The
American publishers who were first offered the translation of
the work rejected it, fearing that it would "brand" Mishima in the
eyes of American readers, but Japanese readers have generally
interpreted it as an exceptionally sensitive account of a boy's
gradual self-awakening. The homosexual elemen~s are pass~d
over as expressions of immature love or else are mterpr~te~ as
symbolic, reflecting the aridity of the postwar w~r.ld. ~1shima
himself at times denied the reality of his confessions and m later
43
years was at pains to insist on his sexual interest in wo~en.
Regardless of how Mishima or his critics cho~e. t~ expla~n the
homosexual elements in Confessions of a Mask, 1t 1s 1mposs1ble to
escape the impression that Mishima was truthfully co~veying.his
experiences and emotions. Clearly Mishima altered his materrals
for artistic purposes-Confessions of a Mask is not an "I novel"-
and he presented only aspects of his life that contributed to the
overall plan of the book; but this does not make of it a pa704r
nor is it an elaborate allegory devised to present M1sh1ma s
Jf/e/tanschauung.44 One has only to recall all that Mishima omit-
ted from the novel to realize that this was a very special kind of
MISHIMA YUKIO 1185
confession. For example, he nowhere mentions his scholastic bril-
liance (he graduated at the top of his class at the Peers School),
nor the poetry and prose he published during the war, nor his
• father's bitter opposition to a literary career. Mishima's intention,
rather, was to confess and thereby liberate himself from the mon-
sters inside him. 45 In the note he provided for the novel he stated:
This book is my farewell message to the realm of death in which I
have hitherto been living. Writing this book has been for me a
suicide in reverse. If the film of a man committing suicide by throw-
ing himself from a cliff is run in reverse, the man will appear to
spring up with tremendous vigor from the valley bottom to the cliff
and return to life. My attempt in writing this book was to learn the
art of recovering life in this fashion.
Although this is a confession, I have allowed "lies" to pasture
freely in my novel, and when it seemed appropriate I gave them
fodder to eat. Filling the stomachs of the lies in this way kept them
from molesting the vegetable patches of "truth."
In the same sense, only a mask which has eaten into the flesh, a
mask which has put on flesh, can make a confession. The basic
nature of a confession is that "confessions are impossible."
I am a useless, elaborate paradox. This novel is the physiologi-
cal proof. I think of myself as a poet, but perhaps I am poetry itself.
Poetry itself may be nothing more than the private parts of
humankind.
Many writers, each in his own way, have set down their "por-
trait of the artist as a young man." It was precisely the opposite
wish that led me to write this novel. In this novel I, in my capacity
as the "person who writes," have been completely abstracted. The
author does not appear in the work. However, it is in the nature of
the kind of life described here that it disintegrates in the flash of an
eye unless it is propped up by art. Therefore, even supposing every-
thing in this novel is based on the truth, it is a total fabrication,
cannot even exist, because my life as an artist has not been de-
scribed. I thought I would create a complete fiction of a confession.
That meaning is also implied in the title Confessions of a Mask. 4 6
Surely there was more than a touch of deliberate mystifica-
tion behind these aphoristic remarks, but the prevailing theme,
the recovery of life through self-recognition, corresponds closely
 Dawn to the West 1186
to the tone of the final chapters of Confessions of a Mask. Al-
though Mishima does not say so, the meaning of the mask was
probably the false front he had previously felt obliged to present
not only to Sonoko, the girl he loves, but to the entire world.47
The importance of Confessions of a Mask in temis of Mishi-
ma's development as an artist can hardly be overemphasized. To
the imagined world he had known through his readings he added
the urgency of personal experience. Of course, even in the wholly
invented Forest in Full Flower Mishima's characteristic sensibility
infuses the work, but the story itself is unrelated to anything in the
young author's life, and that may be why it seems so feeble. In
Confessions of a Mask he used materials that ran counter to every-
thing that literature had taught hii;n. Unlike the young menin the
novels he had read, he was left unmoved by his first kiss, and he
failed to win the hand of the beautiful girl he loved not because
she was betrothed to another, but because in the end he foundthe
mask, which both society and literature had pressed aga.inst his
face, unbearable. His reaction was not self-pity, an elll.otion he
despised, nor dismay that a terrible fate had been imposed on
him; instead, he recounted the process that had led to the ines-
capable recognition of his condition. This recognition was the ulti-
mate source of the book, as we can gather from the note quoted
above, and also from the epigraph, a passage from The Brothers
Karamazov, which includes these key sentences:
I cannot bear the thought that a man of noble heart and lofty mind
sets out with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of
Sodom. What's still more awful is that the man with the ideal of
Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna; and
in .the bottom of his heart he may still be on fire, sincerely on fire,
with longing for the beautiful ideal, just as in the days of his youth-
ful innocence.4 8
Mishima's recognition of the irresistible impulse that drew
him from his Madonna, Sonoko, to the rough and sweating m.an
he sees in the final episode of the novel involved neither pride nor
shame. But the knowledge that he had been presenting to the
world a mask brought the promise of self-fulfillment. As a matter
of fact, Mishima's liberation could not be complete or long-last-
ing. Perhaps the very success of Confessions of a Mask induced
MISHIMA YUKIO 1187
him to_ put his mask back on, this time so firmly that he eventually
made 1t almost one with his flesh.
Confessions of a Mask is stylistically uneven,49 the first half
being (like most autobiographies) more imaginative and poetic
than the second. The recollections of birth with which the book
begins immediately set it off from any "I novel." Again, the sights
and smells that first awakened incipient sexual desire-a nightsoil
man, the lonely conductor of a gaily decorated streetcar, the sweat
of passing soldiers-are chosen with unerring exactness, and the
boy's fascination with death, the most constant theme in Mishi-
ma's writings, is vividly conveyed in terms of the illustrations to
the fairy tales he read. By contrast, the second half, describing life
much closer to the time of the writing of the book, is straightfor-
wardly analytic and lacking poetry. Little attempt was made to
impart individuality to any character other than the narrator, who
is portrayed almost ·entirely from within, few references being
made to the framework of his ordinary, daily life. His emotional
life is narrated in a series of revelatory insights that occur inde-
pendently of other persons and are presented without a trace of
hu?1or. Yet the intensity and truth of the vision justifies the repu-
tat10n of Confessions of a Mask as one of Mishima's most impor-
tant works.
The novel has another importance apart from its literary ex-
cellence: passages clearly disclose Mishima's hidden life. Early in
the wo_rk the narrator describes how Guido Reni's painting of St.
Sebastian-the. youthful martyr who endures with melancholy
pleasure the stmg of the arrows lodged in his body-induced his
first orgasm. St. Sebastian was the subject of a middle-school
prose-poem, which Mishima quoted in Confessions of a Mask.
L_ater he discovered from his readings in psychoanalytic texts that
pictures of St. Sebastian were in the first rank of works of art that
attract the invert. Mishima never lost his obsession with St. Sebas-
tian; .towa:d the end of his life he even posed for photographs
showmg his torso penetrated by a cluster of arrows. Mishima's
fascination with St. Sebastian was sexual, but he may also have
felt. t~e identificat~on of the hero-or artist-who triumphs despite
affliction, as descnbed by Thomas Mann in Death in Venice:
The new type of hero favored by Aschenbach, and recurring many
times in his works, had early been analysed by a shrewd critic: "The
 Dawn to the West 1188
conception of an intellectual and virginal manliness, which clenches
its teeth and stands in modest defiance of the swords and spears
that pierce its side." That was beautiful, it was spiritual, it was exact,
despite the suggestion of too great passivity it held. Forbearance in
the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely pas-
sive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph; and the
figure of Sebastian is the most beautiful symbol, if not of art as a
whole, yet certainly of the art we speak of here. 50
On still another level, the fascination with St. Sebastian indicated
a sado-masochistic streak that found ultimate expression in Mish-
ima's obsession with the rite of seppuku, the most painful form of
secular martyrdom. 1 rea~ by the _cntlcs, either. The editors of the Complete Works,
Such themes would recur in Mishima's works, but never
again in the form of a confession. The book had served itKpur-
pose as "a Spartan course in self-disciplin~." 51 B~t even where
the confession came closest to literal truth, it remamed a work of
art. The combination of truth and beauty, after a series of writings
that had contained only beauty, made Confessions of a Mask the
crucial work in his development as an artist.
Mishima's writings were much sought by editors after the
success of Confessions of a Mask, and on occasion he p~blishe~as
many as three different short stories in as many magazmes dunng
a single month. In January 1950 he began serialization of :he
novel Jumpaku no Yoru (The Pure-White Night? in the rnagazme
Fiyin Karon (Women's Forum). Mishima stated m ~951, when the
novel was filmed that it was his favorite among his works of the
previous year.52 Perhaps this was no more than the kind ofpolitic
praise that the producers expected of the author, but ~e wass_ay-
ing in effect that he preferred this work of popular fict10n to Az_n~
Kawaki (Thirst for Love), published in June 1950, Ao no Jzdar
(The Blue Period), serialized from July to December of the same
year, and other works that every critic rated higher. .. ,
Before long Mishima himself came around to the critics
opinion, and he eventually would grimace when he learned_ that
someone was reading one of his popular novels. Why, then_, did he
continue to write them? Obviously the inducement was m large
part financial: the women's magazines of mass circ~lation_ could
afford to pay considerably higher fees than the established hter~ry
journals, but they would not take the risk of boring readers with
MISHIMA YUKIO 1189
the philosophical insights and elaborate expression that charac-
terized Mishima's serious writings. But quite possibly Mishima
(for all his grimaces) enjoyed thinking of himself as an author
who could please any literary taste. To divert readers with a well-
told sto~ is by no means an easy or contemptible achievement,
though m twentieth-century Japan it has tended to be denigrated
to the same degree that the "I novel," its antithesis, has been
exalted. Mishima, who never wrote an "I novel," was blessed with
an extra_ordinary imagina~ion, and could effortlessly dash off pop-
ular fiction, hardly changmg a word. Following Graham Greene,
he would later refer to these works as "entertainments," and he
never gave cop~e~ to f~iends. The entertainments are not normally
feeling that 1t would be an insult to Mishima's memory if his
"middlebrow" fiction was included in the same volumes with his
serious works, segregated them into volumes of their own. They
are neverthele~s products of the same author, and even though
they lack the literary weight of his major novels, they are by no
means of negligible value.
Whatever the reasons Mishima first consented to write an
"entertainment" for Fujin Koran-perhaps his head was turned by
attention from such an unexpected quarter-the success of The
Pure- White Night gave him the confidence that he could write for
a mass ~udience, and this was by no means a disagreeable feeling.
Confesszons of a Mask had been unusually successful, considering
that t~e author was virtually unknown and the subject matter was
puzzlmg to most readers, but Mishima seems to have craved even
wider recognition. At the same time, the fact that he could make a
living with easily written novels opened the possibility of writing
unpopular, or at any rate, eminently serious works, without
wo~ing ?v~r the lik~lihood that such books might not sell many
copies. M1sh1ma contmued until 1968 to devote about one-third of
his time each ~onth to writing popular fiction and essays in order
to?e able ~olive comfortably and to spend the remaining time on
senous fiction and plays. During the last two years of his life the
place of "middlebrow" fiction was taken by popular martial and
political writings such as Wakaki Samurai no tame no Seishin
Kawa (Talks on Spirit for Young Samurai), serialized in Pocket
Punch Ohl from June 1968 to May 1969.
Mishima's serious fiction also sold well, incredibly well, con-
 Dawn to the West 1190
sidering its often difficult content and lan~uage, and .he probably
could have lived quite comfortably even without the mcomefrom
his "middlebrow" fiction. He seems, however, to have found in
such writing an outlet for aspects of his persona!ity that were
generally obscured in his more important works. H~s sense of h~-
mor, a delight to his friends, was much more re~dil~ revealed m
his light fiction than elsewhere. Fo~ examp~e, his g1f~ for rath~r
cruel, though effective caricature is promme~tly d1splay~d. m
Yakaifuku (Evening Dress, 1966-1967), whether m the descnp:1~n
of a luncheon given in Tokyo in horror of some upper-class Bntish
ladies or in the earthier account of the antics of an American
coupl~ who entertain Japanese newlyweds in Hawaii. 53 Here is a
typical passage:
When she looked around the room, a mess after the party, at the
cigarette ends smeared with lipstick and the glasses w~th a traceof
liquor left at the bottom, she felt as if bits of the ~nghsh conversa-
tion with which the whole room had seethed until a few moments
ago still lingered here and there: behind the curtains were those
incredibly long-drawn-out exclamations of "How mah-vellous!"
af\d under the table were the frog-like responses of"Quite ... quite
... quite." 54
The "entertainments" are precisely that, and they form a dis-
tinctive though not major part of Mishima's oeuvre. _I~ is unlikely
that their humble status will be much affected by cntlc reevalua-
. 55
tion but even these lesser works deserve attent10n.
'Mishima's most important work of 1950, despite his ex-
pressed opinion, was undoubtedly _Thi~st for Love, which repre-
sented a significant development m his career. ~he succes~ of
Confessions of a Mask might well have tempted him to contmue
in this vein despite his professed aversion for the "I novel," but he
deliberately chose to write a work of ~ction that, ~n t~e surfac~ at
least, was quite unrelated to his own hfe. The setting 1s the regwn
of Osaka, a part of the country that Mishima hardly knew, and
the central character is a widow, Etsuko, who has become the
mistress of the father of her late husband. The minor characters,
especially the brothers and the sisters-in-law, are well drawn, but
the dominant theme is Etsuko's intense but unavowed love for a
handsome young gardener named Saburo. During the climactic
MISHIMA YUKIO 1191
scene of the novel Etsuko, watching as Saburo furiously cavorts at
a festival one night, gashes his back with her nails, an echo of the
sexual fantasies at the end of Confessions of a Mask. When
Saburo, at last aware of Etsuko's passion, responds, she is ter-
rified, calls for help, and uses her father-in-law's scythe to kill
Sabur6. The condition of her love was that it be unreciprocated,
another echo of the earlier novel.56
Mishima reportedly told friends that Etsuko was really a
man. 57 Although there is nothing unfeminine about her, and the
characterization rings true, it is not difficult to see what Mishima
meant. Etsuko's craving for the strong, sunbutned, unintellectual
Saburo recalls the love of the narrator of Confessions of a Mask
for Omi and his attraction to other healthy young males, and
the compulsion to wound the object of love is much the same.
Etsuko's "thirst for love" is entirely intelligible in terms of the
surface meaning, but it is given added poignance if interpreted as
the extension of the hopeless attachments of the "I" of Confes-
sions of a Mask.
But whatever personal elements may have lain hidden be-
hind the character Etsuko, Thirst for Love marks Mishima's defin-
itive break with confessional writing. He stated that he had been
influenced by Fran~ois Mauriac; such an influence is more plausi-
ble in this novel of violent emotion than in the pallid works of
Hori Tatsuo, which were also influenced by Mauriac. Mishima
understood the drama and even the terror in Mauriac's fiction
and the influence helped him to develop into a novelist who could
transcend confessions but retain a deep personal involvement
wit_h his ~aterials. 58 The choice of the path of fiction, as opposed
to mcreasmgly refined or penetrating analyses of his own psyche,
was undoubtedly the right decision for Mishima to have made,
but it may have cost him his masterpiece, a novel that would have
described how this first internationally recognized Japanese writer
had experienced the conflicting attractions of Japanese and West-
ern traditions, and how a writer who at various times was influ-
enced by Wilde, Radiguet, Mauriac, Mann, and Dostoevski had
ultimately decided to die as a samurai. Mishima had removed his
mask to make his confession, but in the end he seems to have
~onvinced even himself that the mask was his real face, and only
madvertently did the mask slip, revealing someone quite unlike
the Mishima of a powerful body and heroic laugh. Although he
 Dawn to the West 1192
liked to think of himself as a self-assured, cheerful, and manly
writer, proud of his profession, Mishima was no Mori Ogai, and
his unhappiness could never be completely concealed.59
Once Mishima had turned his back on confessions or similar
uses of personal experiences, he had to seek materials from other
sources. There was always his amazingly fertile imagination to fall
back on, of course, but he relied also on two sources of inspira-
tion: events he read about in the newspapers (or heard about
from friends) and classical literature. Mishima's other novel of
1950, The Blue Period, was modeled on actual events. It is the
story of the Tokyo University student who loaned money at usu-
rious rates of interest, was caught, and finally committed suicide.
In dealing with the objective re;\lity of a newspaper account or
materials gathered from interviews, Mishima could sometimes, as
in the case of Utage no Ato (After the Banquet, 1960), follow the
facts so closely as to expose himself to a suit for invasion of pri-
vacy; or he could use the facts so freely, as in the case of
Kinkakuji (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, 1956), that the
original incidents served mainly as a springboard for his imagina-
tion. The test of these works, needless to say, was not their factual
accuracy but the degree to which Mishima was able to infuse
them with his artistic personality. In this sense his use of the
"facts" of the burning of the Kinkakuji or the themes of classical
literature was similar: he did not invent the central irtciden.ts but
interpreted them in his characteristic manner. In the end the
sources of his works are a matter of largely academic interest;
Mishima's success in making his distinctive presence felt, despite
the disparate nature of his sources, accounted for the popularity
of both varieties of derived fiction.
In 1951, on the heels of The Blue Period, Mishima began to
publish serially in the literary magazine Gunzo (The Group), a
quite different, much more ambitious novel, Kinjiki (Forbidden
Colors), which describes the hidden world of the sodomites in
Tokyo.60 Because this subject had not previously been treated by
any other author, it suggested that Mishima was personally in-
volved, but he was careful never to visit the homosexual bars
mentioned in the novel without an escort from the magazine.
There is certainly no hint that he approved of the world he de-
scribed. The initial response of the critics was unexpectedly favor:
able. In the dialogue between Nakamura Mitsuo and Usm
MISHIMA YUKIO 1193
Yosh~i, both_m~n praised the work highly. Usui, of the opinion
that It was M1sh1ma's most solid achievement to date declared
"Forbidden Co/ors is undeniably a daring novel. Th;re's neve;
been one like it before-a novel so challenging that throws down
the gauntlet within the framework of such a solid structure. It's
ev~n more subversive than Tanizaki's early works, the ones in
which he challenged Naturalism." s1 ·
. ~sui was impressed also by the massive lines along which
M1sh1ma had created the work. It is true that Mishima was treat-
ing a very small _and spe~ial seg~ent of Japanese society, but the
work does not give that 1mpress1on. It is full of characters some
more plausibly drawn than others, but even when most o;nate-
''.b~roque" was the word that Mishima himself used-it has a so-
~d1ty that sets it apart from most other Japanese fiction of the
tune. There are inevitable resemblances between Forbidden Co/ors
and Confessio~s of a Mask because of the subject, but this work
~as no confession. Even though the relations between Yuichi, the
mcomparabl7 beautiful young man, and his wife Yasuko may sug-
gest what might ha_ve happened if the narrator of Confessions of
a _M~sk had marned Sonoko, Yuichi is not an alter ego for
Mish1ma. I~ h~s even b_een suggested that tf there is an alter ego in
the_ n~vel, 1t 1s the agmg novelist Hinoki Shunsuke,62 who uses
Ymch1 to work his private vengeance on the women who have
spurned_ him;?ut Hinoki may have been inspired by Kawabata
Yasunan, not m factual details but in the complex relationship
between ~n elderly ma~ and his brilliant young disciple.
Forbidden Co/ors 1s not a successful novel. It is overwritten
an? the characters, ;-1ith the exception of Yasuko, are portrayed in
umformly unattractive terms. It is possible to feel compassion for
the narrator of Confessions of a Mask, even though he does not
ask our sympathy, but Yuichi is a cold heartless creature whose
~ckering s~gns_ of hu~an warmth neve~ last long. His narcissism .
1s perhaps mev1table m any~n~ so repeatedly described as a para-
gon of youthful beauty, but It 1s not endearing. One wishes that he
w?u!d n~ally fall in love with somebody, even a bloated old indus-
tnahst, rnstead of accepting favors from men and women as if
they were no more than his due for being so beautiful.
There is something unpleasantly contrived about almost
every episode, ~nd _the wis~om transmitted by the twenty-six-
year-old author m his aphonsms and asides is rarely persuasive.
 Dawn to the West 1194
The xenophobia, which sometimes takes the form of blaming ho-
mosexuality in postwar Japan on foreigners,. and som~titnes
depicts foreigners as ugly, brutal creat~res who imp~se theff dis-
torted desires on Japanese, contrasts with the worship of foreign
things that Mishima often displayed in his wo~ks ..
This is not to say that Forbidden Co/ors is without passages
and even whole scenes of great literary skill. The chapter describ-
ing the birth of Yuichi and Yasuko's child is written with excep-
tional strength. But such chapters do not redeem the work as a
whole. Whatever Mishima's personal involvement in the plot may
have been, his rejection of the world he describes, if morally unex-
ceptionable, is ugly, especially in the second part, where the hid-
den desires of the narrator of c;onfessions of a Mask are fulfilled
by Yuichi in a coarse and even grotesque mann~r. Perhaps there
was no other way for Mishima to treat the subject, but perhaps
also his trip abroad, above all his stay in sunlit_ Greece, between
the two parts of Forbidden Co/ors, mduced him to attempt to
purge himself of all the "darkness" within him before making a
fresh start.
Shortly before going abroad in December 1951, Mishimase-
rialized the "entertainment" Natsuko no Boken (Natsuko's Ad-
venture) in the weekly magazine Shukan Asahi: This conne~tion
with the Asahi Shimbun proved valuable, though the novel itself
was not. Through the newspaper he was able to obtain credentials
as a special correspondent and to travel at a time when, because
of the occupation of Japan, it was diffic~lt f~~ any Ja panes~ ,to
leave the country. Mishima described his v1S1ts to the Umted
States, Brazil, France, Italy, and Greece in a series of newspaper
articles that were later collected in book form under the title
Aporon no Sakazuki (The Wine-Cup of Apollo). While in Paris,
living in dingy lodgings after his traveler's cheques ha_d bee~
stolen, Mishima completed the full-length play Yoru no Hzmawarz
(Twilight Sunflower). The high point of his jo~rney ar~und the
world was his stay in Greece, which had fascmated him from
childhood. It proved more wonderful in reality than h_e had
hoped, and made him realize that the pictures he had hitherto
painted of human life had been grossly incomplete, because they
depicted the dark side only. . .
The first product of this new insight was the no~el ~hi~saz
(The Sound of Waves), published in 1954. He drew msp1rat1on
MISHIMA YUKIO 1195
from !h~ ancient Greek romance Daphnis and Chloe, following
the ongmal plot closely but imparting a Japanese atmosphere to
th~ :"'ho~e by transforming the shepherd and shepherdess of the
ongmal mto a fisherboy and fisliergirl living on a small island off
the Ise coast. No characters could have been more remote from
Mishima hi~self or from the world he had previously described.
But h~ mam~ulated the old tale brilliantly and gave it new life by
effective details-the fruits of two visits to the island that served as
th~ ~od~l. The_choice of setting and characters puzzled many of
M~sh~ma s admuers but enchanted the general public. Probably
~1shu~1a_ thought of The Sound of Waves as essentially an exercise
m stylistics. Apart from his general desire to depict the brighter
side of human life, he wanted to prove that he could make the
most hackneyed of stories come alive through his skill as a stylist.
~e enormous po~ularity of The Sound of Waves was a great sur-
pnse and even a disappointment.63
The most important contribution made to Mishima's artistic
development by The Sound of Waves was that it demonstrated that
classical literature, whether of Japan or the West, could serve as
an_ e~ective subs~itute for personal experience. As early as 1948
M1sh~a had wntten the short story "Shishi" (The Lion), a free
rendenng of the story of Medea, and from 1950 on he turned to
the No dramas for i~spiration in writing his own plays. The one-
act Fuyo no Tsuyu Ouchi Jikki (Dew on the Hibiscus: A True
Account of_ t~e Ouchi Family, 1955) observed the linguistic and
fo~al traditions of the Joruri, but was based directly on Racine's
Phedre_; and Iwashiuri Koi no Hikizuna (The Herring-Seller and
~he Rems o_f Lov~, 1954), derived from a Muromachi period story,
1s a Kabuki play m the authentic idiom. These examples illustrate
the scope and seriousness of his borrowings. In other works motifs
from the classics were used even when writing totally unrelated
works; for example, Shizumeru Taki (The Sunken Waterfall,
1955), a novel about an engineer who works at a dam site, incor-
porate~ e~eme~ts from the Suma chapter of The Tale of Genji.64
M1sh1ma hked to think of himself as a classical writer. The
term is appropriate especially when discussing works that could
be fully appreciated only if their prototypes were recognized. The
rea~e.r finds p~easure both in Mishima's adroit handling of the
familiar matenals, and in the contrast between the moods and
themes of the new and old works. This is particularly true of
 Dawn to the West 1196
Mishima's modern No plays; though they retain the main lines of
the original plots, they twist the materials in a distinctively mod-
em way so as to intrigue or even shock contemporary audiences.
For example, in the original No play Banjo, the demented girl is
restored to her senses when her lover appears with the keepsake
she gave him, but in Mishima's Banjo the girl's madness is abso-
lute, and even when her lover at last appears she does not recog-
nize him, insisting that (despite the close resemblance to the man
she is waiting for) he is a stranger. Mishima's play ends wi.th the
mad girl still waiting, no doubt forever, ~o~ the .ma? she has 1hfact
sent away. The ending is a surprise but 1t 1s ~atlsfymg to a modern
reader or spectator, who is likely to dou.bt .mst~nt re~overy from
madness. We can more readily ac1ept Mish1ma s version than the
fifteenth-century original, just as we can accept Jean Cocteau's La
machine infernale as a more convinci~~ version of the stor?'. of
Oedipus and the Sphinx than the traditional ones. The class1c1st,
however greatly he respects the originals, inevitably imprints them
with his own tastes and those of his society.
Mishima's use of contemporary events was similar. Most crit-
ics agree that his finest work was the novel Kinkakuji (The Temple
of the Golden Pavilion, 1956),65 which relates the events leading
up to the burning of the famous Kyoto temple. The conclusion of
the novel-the conflagration-is determined from the outs~t, and
the reader's interest is held not by curiosity as to what will take
place at the end, but by the desire to find out why the ~onk
(called Mizoguchi in the novel) decides he must destroy a natio?al
treasure. Mishima attributed to the monk subtle but compellmg
reasons for his action, without worrying over how likely it was
that an indifferently educated youth from the country with a pa-
ralyzing stutter could have formulated philosophically complex
ideas. It is a measure of Mishima's success that he persuaded
readers that a deplorable event-the destruction of a priceless
work of art-was justifiable in terms of the liberation of 01:e m.an.
Although Mishima was inspired to write t~e novel by ~ histoncal
event that had occurred only six years earlier, he was m no sense
bound to report all the facts; Mishima shaped his ~aterials along
the lines of a powerful, inevitable tragedy that will doubtless be
remembered longer than the actual events.66 . .
The first chapter of Kinkakuji has been especially praised.
Hirano Ken said that it was at once a part of the whole and the
MISHIMA YUKIO l 197
whole of the novel, meaning that the first chapter presents the
structure and motifs of the entire work. The writing is seemingly
effortless, a far cry from the baroque expression of Forbidden Co/-
ors. Mizoguchi's stutter, the symptom of his alienation from the
world, is presented simply and without exaggeration; and 'the suc-
c~ss~ve incidents of Mizoguchi's boyhood are each given symbolic
sigruficance. For example, his sudden and inexplicable act of de-
facing the scabbard of the sword of a young naval officer is a first
so~n~ing o~ the theme .of the compulsive ~estruction of beauty.
M1~h1ma hlffiself descnbed the style as "Ogai plus Mann," by
which he meant a lean, analytical prose that has almost no ob-
vious charm. The ugliness of the boy and the harshness of the life
h~ led in. a. remote village on the Japan Sea coast are conveyed
with a mm1mum of words, yet Mishima establishes indelibly the
contrast between this ugliness and the beauty of the Golden Tem-
ple. He was somehow able to make himself one with the inarticu-
late .Y.o~ng priest, without sacrificing his own intelligence or his
sensitivity to beauty. Early in the novel Mizoguchi tells us:
l.t is no exaggeration to say that the first real problem I faced in my
hfe was that of beauty. My father was only a simple country priest,
deficient in vocabulary, and he taught me that "there is nothing on
earth so beautiful as the Golden Temple." At the thought that
beauty should already have come into this world unknown to me, I
could not help feeling a certain uneasiness and irritation. If beauty
really did exist there, it meant that my own existence was a thing
estranged from beauty.s1
The boy is disappointed when he first glimpses the Golden
Temple., bu~ aft~r his return to the country, the temple's image
grows m his mmd, and when he is eventually accepted as an
acolyte he addresses the building in these terms:
"Finally I have come to live beside you, Golden Temple!" I whis-
pered in my heart, and for a while I stopped sweeping the leaves.
"It doesn't have to be at once, but please make friends with me
sometime and reveal your secret to me. I feel that your beauty is
something that I am very close to seeing and yet cannot see. Please
let me see the real Golden Temple more clearly than I can see the
image of you in my mind. And furthermore, if you are indeed so
 Dawn to the West
beautiful that nothing in the world can compare with you, please
tell me why you are so beautiful, why it is necessary for you to be .so
beautiful." 68
Mi~oguchi comes to associate his attachment to the building
with his ugliness and the stuttering that chokes his expression. His
conviction that the Kinkakuji will be destroyed in the war en-
hances its beauty with poignance. He dreams of Kyoto in flames
and the phoenix at the top of the Golden Pavilion soaring off into
the sky, no longer constrained. But the war ends with the temple
unscathed. It has remained unaffected by the defeat, as if to assert
its permanence. "Never had the temple displayed so hard a
beauty-a beauty that transcende<i1 my own image, yes, that tran-
scended the entire world of reality, a beauty that bore no relation
to any form of evanescence!" 69
On the day of the defeat, August 15, 1945, everyone in the
temple is summoned to the Superior's room to hear a sermon on
the Zen koan, "Nansen Kills a Cat." This is the story of a kitten
who has become the object of contention between the East and
West halls of a temple in China. The chief priest, Nansen, catches
the kitten and says that if anyone can give reasons why he should
not kill the kitten, he will spare its life. No one answers, so Nansen
kills the kitten. Later, when his chief disciple, Choshii, returns to
the temple and learns what has happened in his absence, he re-
moves his shoes and puts them on his head. "At this Father
Nansen lamented sorely, saying, 'Oh, if you had been ~ere today,
the kitten's life could have been saved.'" 70
The Superior offers no explanation as to why he chose that
particular koan on the day of Japan's defeat, but he gives thjs
interpretation of the riddle: Nansen killed the kitten in order to
eradicate irrelevant thoughts and fantasies, whereas Choshii, by
putting his muddy shoes on his head, had demonstrated the way
of the bodhisattva. The same koan recurs twice later in the book,
each time given a different interpretation by Kashiwagi, a crip-
pled student with whom Mizoguchi has become friendly. Ka-
shiwagi first interprets the koan as meaning that N ansen killed the
kitten because beauty causes dissension; but Choshii satirized so
easy a solution by putting his shoes on his head. 71 His alternate
explanation was that Nansen killed the cat in his capacity as a
man of action, but Choshu, aware that beauty must be protected
1198
MISHIMA YUKIO 1199
~y ~owledge, wished to demonstrate that knowledge cannot be
mdividual, but is the "sea of humanity." 12
These explanations of the riddle are not easy to follow, and
the reader who is unwilling to continue until he is sure that he
knows what it means may risk losing track of the story. Mishima
was aware of this danger, inherent in a philosophical novel but
accepted it, using the burning of the temple as a kind of ko~n of
his own. The c~tica\ moment occurs w~en Mizoguchi, having lis-
tened to Kashiwagi s second explanation of the koan, replies:
''. '~eauty .. .' I said and broke off into a fit of stuttering. It was a
ln~.utless thought. The suspicion had just crossed my mind that it
might ~e my very conception of beauty that had given birth to my
stuttenng. 'Beauty, beautiful things,' I continued, 'those are now
my most deadly enemies.' " 73
~eauty, as personified by the Kinkakuji, is Mizoguchi's en-
e1:1y m another sense. Twice he has held a girl in his arms and
tned to make love, but both times he was frustrated because the
ima~e of ~he temple appeared before his eyes as absolute beauty,
makmg him tum from the transitory beauty of the woman before
him: H~s love for the Kinkakuji is now joined by hatred and the
realization that unless he liberates himself from its spell he will
never be free.
The Super_ior of the temple is another enemy, a mysterious
figure w~o mdi1:erently accepts evil as being of no importance.
When Mizoguchi, stung by a rebuke from the Superior, blurts out
t?at he knows about the Superior's affairs with geishas, the Supe-
nor responds, "And what if you do know? . . . It amounts to
nothing. It's all meaningless.'' Mizoguchi reflects: "Never before
had I seen a man who, though he sullied his hands with money
and ~omen and every other detail of material life, so thoroughly
despised the present world. I was filled with hatred as ifl were in
the presence of a corpse that was still warm and of healthy com-
plexion." 74
Eventually Mizoguchi hits on the plan of setting fire to the
temple. For a time he thinks of killing the Superior, but more
than rev~nge he desires to destroy something that seems eternal,
to commit an act that will decrease the amount of beauty in the
world.75
The la~t ch~pter, whi~h describes Mizoguchi's preparations
for arson, his bnef and ultimately fruitless talk with a priest who
 Dawn to the West 1200
seems genuinely to understand him, and the methodical steps
he takes when burning the Kinkakuji, is masterfully written.
Mishima shows that he took the risk of boring readers with Ka-
shiwagi's cynical philosophy because he knew that slowing the
pace of the book would heighten the intensity of the denouement.
One might suppose that the account of the conflagration would
lack suspense, since the reader has known all along what would
happen, but the tension is almost unbearable, and nowhere are
Mizoguchi's perceptions of beauty so vividly expressed:
Yet never did there come a time when the beauty of the Golden
Temple ceased! Its beauty was always echoing somewhere. Like a
person who suffers from ringing of the ears, I invariably heard the
1
sound of the Golden Temple's beauty wherever I might be and l
had grown accustomed to it. If one compared this beauty to a
sound, the building was like a little golden bell that has gone on
ringing for five and a half centuries, or else like a small harp. But
what if that sound should stop? 76
He wonders for a time if it is really necessary to go through
with the act of burning the building, if action is not superfluous.
But, remembering the passage from the Zen text that begins,
"When ye meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha!" 77 he finally de-
cides to go ahead with his plan. At first he intended to die with the
building, but when the flames rise around him he runs from the
temple and throws away the poison and the knife he had prepared
for his suicide: "Then I noticed the pack of cigarettes in my other
pocket. I took one out and started smoking. I felt like a man who
settles down for a smoke after finishing a job of work. I wanted to
live." 78
Kinkakuji is not an easy book. Mishima wrote dialoguethat
could hardly have issued from the mouths of the characters;, one
feels at times he was attempting to write his own Magic Mountain
but using far less plausible antagonists than Mann's. But_ Misl1i11!-a
succeeded in attaining both of his disparate goals: to wnte aph:1-
osophical novel that was without precedent in Japan, and towm
for the book a wide audience. Kinkakuji was acclaimed by. the
critics, even those generally ill-disposed toward Mishima, sold
hundreds of thousands of copies, and was made into a successful
MISHIMA YUKIO 1201
film. It is surely one of the important Japanese novels of the twen-
tieth century.
Apart from the central situation-the burning of the Kinka-
kuji by a priest who stuttered-almost everything in the novel was
wholly invented by Mishima, but the immutable fact of the con-
clu~ion was essential to the success of the novel. If, to give a
lud~crous _example, Mizoguchi had decided, after talking with the
semor pnest whom he admired, not to burn the temple, the
reader, far from experiencing relief over the preservation of a
nati_onal treasure, would have felt cheated. The tragedy is un-
avoidable not only because it actually occurred, but because the
novel expresses Mishima's own obsession with beauty and de-
struction. The Kinkakuji must be destroyed by the man who loved
it mos~. The tech_nique of combining "facts" with an entirely per-
sonal mterpretat10n was similar to Mishima's use of classical No
plays to create his own modern works, but the greater amplitude
of the novel made it possible to adumbrate far more complex
relationships between the characters and the themes.
No other work by Mishima, excepting possibly the final
tetralogy, can be compared to Kinkakuji in its combination of
insight and brilliant execution, but Mishima produced in between
these t~o m~jor works half a dozen other novels of a quality that
few wnters m Japan could match. In 1958, shortly after his mar-
riage to the daughter of a well-known painter, he began work on
Kyoko no le (Kyoko's House, 1959), a novel into which Mishima
poured enormous effort and talent but which was nevertheless a
f~ilure. Mishima intended this work to be a reckoning of his expe-
n.ences of the 1950s, as Forbidden Co/ors had been for the pre-
vious decade. The four principal characters are a successful
businessmen, an actor, a painter, and a boxer. None of these char-
acters can be said to function as an alter ego for Mishima, but
each incorporates an area of his experiences. His life in New York
in 1957, while waiting in vain for a production of his modern No
plays, provided much of the material for his account of the busi-
nessman Seiichiro in that city. Seiichiro's pleasurable anticipation
of the crackup for which the world seemed headed was certainly
mo~e characteristic of Mishima than of most successful Japanese
busmessmen, and some of his bizarre activities in New York were
clearly based on Mishima's experiences. Mishima's devotion to
 Dawn to the West 1202
body-building, which he took up in 1955, lay behind the account
of how the actor Osamu achieves a transformation of his frail
body, and his boxing practice no doubt proved helpful when de-
scribing how Shunkichi becomes a champion. His work as a writer
gave him an understanding of how the painter N atsuo would re-
spond to the people around him. But beyond these surface resem-
blances to their creator, the four men seem curiously uniform in
outlook, in no way suggesting (as Mishima had intended) that
they stand for a whole generation. The plot suffers especiallybe-
cause of the lack of organic connections among the four male
figures. Kyoko, in whose house they sometimes meet,_ should have
filled the function of uniting them, but the scenes m her. house
suggest only boredom. Mishima {evealed his conception of the
characters:
In Kyoko's House . .. I have avoided having a single hero, but have
represented various aspects through four different heroes. The
painter stands for sensitivity, the boxer action, the actor self-aware-
ness, and the businessman knowing how to get along in the world.
It was naturally to be expected that the personalities of these char-
acters should become abstract and purified. I think I can say,
strictly speaking, that I have for the time being abandoned any
attempt to create characters as single, coordinated, organic en-
tities.79
Mishima further explained the plan of the book in these terms:
The characters in the book run about in one direction or another as
their individual personalities, their professions and their sexual
tendencies command them, but in the end all roads, no matter how
devious lead back into nihilism, and each man helps to complete
'
the sketch-map of nihilism that Seiichir6 first proposed. That was
the plan I originally conceived.so
The failure of Kyoko's House was a disappointment for Mi-
shima. Expecting that it would be a major work, he had _spe~t
many months writing it, and had not serialized it in a mag~zme, m
the usual Japanese manner. To divert himself after the fa1lur~ he
took the part of a gangster in a film, sang chansons dressed m:a
sailor suit, wrote extensively for mass media. But this mood did
MISHIMA YUKIO 1203
not last long: in January 1960 he began serializing one of his most
successful works, Utage no Ato (After the Banquet). Mishima con-
tinued to express boredom with Japan, a country where nothing
ever seemed to happen, until the summer of 1960, when the out-
break of riots against the extension of the Security Treaty with the
United States came as a distinct shock, and may have occasioned
his concern over the threat to Japanese traditions. In January 1961
he published Yukoku (Patriotism),Bl the first of several novellas
and plays that were devoted to the ideals of the young officers of
the 1930s. Mishima was fascinated by the unselfish idealism of
men who gladly laid down their lives for the emperor. Before long
the emperor came to mean Japan itself for Mishima, and by the
mid-1960s he was publicly expressing views that were interpreted
by some as fascistic or, at any rate, of the far right, though Mi-
shima often seemed to say no more than that Japan's unique
traditions must be preserved. When in 1969, during a debate with
Tokyo University students, he offered to join hands with them
providing only that they would recognize the emperor as the em-
peror, he knew of course that they would refuse, but perhaps he
hoped that some spark was left of the youth consecration to coun-
try that he so admired in the rebellious officers of thirty-five years
before.
However, After the Banquet, Mishima's major publication in
1960, was in a quite different mood. It was much more closely
based on actual occurrences than Kinkakuji. The veteran politi-
cian Arita Hachir6, formerly a conservative, had become a Social-
ist after the war, and in 1959 ran for the governorship of Tokyo.
Not long before he began his campaign he married the pro-
prietress of the Hannya-en, a fashionable restaurant known for its
magnificent garden. The new Mrs. Arita, a woman in her fifties,
threw herself and her financial resources into the campaign, but
disclosures about her past were instrumental in bringing about
Arita's defeat. This background, known to most of the first readers
of the novel, lent piquance to the revelations-whether factual or
invented by Mishima-concerning the private life of a well-known
politician and his wife. Arita subsequently sued Mishima for inva-
sion of privacy and won the case. The value of the novel, however,
is not related to its savoriness as gossip about public figures. Mi-
shima used his materials to create an effective novel with his best-
realized character, Kazu, the proprietress of the restaurant. In
 Dawn to the West 1204
After the Banquet Mishima demonstrated that he was capable of
writing a novel in the manner of nineteenth-century French fic-
tion; Kazu would not be out of place in a Balzac novel. This was
no small achievement, considering how few three-dimensional
characters of this kind are found in Japanese modern literature.
Noguchi (Arita's name in the novel) was less successfully drawn,
perhaps intentionally so. His cold dignity in the end seems paper-
thin, and Kazu's impetuous vulgarity is of genuine worth. No-
guchi, unlike his cronies who talk only about the past, wants to
feel that he is still alive, and is attracted by Kazu's generous im-
pulses. She marries Noguchi less out of love than out of the desire
to be buried in his family plot-her ultimate triumph over the
poverty and humiliation she had suffered in the past. Butthe
promise of a dignified gravestone i ultimately proves to be not
enough; Kazu decides she must live, even if the future is likely to
be an untended grave, and she leaves Noguchi.
After the Banquet is also a novel about Japanese politics. The
various figures who appear in the work can be identified, despite
the pseudonyms, but again, After the Banquet is not a roman a
clef. It is a work of the imagination that employs factual material
with the freedom of a playwright who borrows the themes of a
Greek tragedy for his modern play. If one had to judge Mishima's
political views from After the Banquet, one would probably con-
clude that he (like Noguchi) was a Socialist, and was exasperated
by the ability of the conservatives to win elections thanks to their
money and unscrupulousness. Perhaps that is what Mishima actu-
ally felt when writing the novel, but it was not intended to be a
disguised political tract. Certainly Mishima's public pronounce-
ments on political issues were hardly congenial to the Socialists.
In 1962 Mishima published his most unusual novel, Utsu-
kushii Hoshi (The Beautiful Star), a combination of science fiction
and a long dialogue on whether or not man is worthy of preserva-
tion. This was the closest Mishima ever came to writing avant-
garde fiction, and its relative failure with both the critics andthe
public doubtless came as another blow. It may also have disc~ur-
aged him from being more adventurous in future works of fictio~.
Although Mishima seemed to have passed the peak of his
literary popularity, he became more of a public figure than ever.
His achievements as a ken do fencer were featured in the weekly
magazines; the film he made of Patriotism, with himself in the
MISHIMA YUKIO 1205
leading role, created something of a sensation; and he startled
people in 1967 when he secretly spent a month training with the
Self-Defense Force. In 1968 he formed a private army of one
hundred men, the Tate no Kai (Shield Society), which had for its
sworn purpose the defense of the emperor.
These activities brought him more attention than his writings,
but they did not usurp his full energies. Regardless of how he had
.spent the day, each night from midnight to six was devoted to
writing. His best full-length play, Sado Koshaku Fujin (Madame
de Sade, 1965), and its opposite number,s2 Jfa ga Toma Hittora
(My Friend Hitler, 1968), both date from this period, and several
of the novels are of importance. Gogo no Eiko (The Sailor Who
Fell from Grace with the Sea, 1963) is one of his most perfectly
crafted works. Some adolescents, fascinated by the sea and its
glory, feel betrayed when a ship's officer who had seemed to em-
body the lure of the sea, decides to settle down on land. The boys
kill the sailor to maintain his purity. The story is on a small scale
and the characters unremarkable, but the work clearly involved
Mishima himself, not only in his unchanging allegiance to the sea
but in his distrust of the old and prudent. A few years later (in
1966) Mishima was to write:
Among my incurable convictions is the belief that the old are eter-
nally ugly, the young eternally beautiful. The wisdom of the old is
eternally murky, the actions of the young eternally transparent. The
longer people live, the worse they become. Human life, in other
words, is an upside-down process of decline and fall.83
The strength of this conviction would be revealed in Mishima's
last years.
Mishima's insistence on actually observing places and events
he ~rote about took the most extreme form in his preparations for
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea: he arranged, for
example, to have a cat vivisected before his eyes so that he could
describe accurately this stage in the youthful gang's plot to kill the
sailor.
Kinu to Meisatsu (Silk and Insight, 1964) was another Mi-
shima novel that was inspired by newspaper accounts. This de-
scriptio~ ~f the strike of workers at a silk factory against the
paternahstic owner was awarded a major literary prize and con-
 Dawn to the West 1206
tained deft portrayals of the factory owner and his wife, but it
failed to enhance Mishima's reputation with either the critics or
the public. If nothing else, it served to belie the charge that Mi~
shima wrote only about the upper classes; but the young factory
workers are more likely to recall The Sound of Jtaves than pro-
letarian literature.
Mishima also published at this time the extended essay Taiyo
to Tetsu (Sun and Steel, 1968), which was mainly devoted to his
discovery of his own body. When the English translation ap-
peared in 1970 it was ornamented with a dust jacket designed by
Mishima himself, showing him naked except for a loincloth and a
towel, bearing the inscription "Seven Lives for One's Country,''
knotted around his head. He stated that this work was intended to
be a testament to the world, an accbunt of his beliefs and insights,
which he had not incorporated into his novels. The title was ex-
plained at the opening of the book in terms of his having learned
a "second language" (that of the body, as opposed to that ofthe
mind) from the sun and the steel of swords. Sun and Steel is in
places incoherent, and Mishima's exaltation of Japanese martial
traditions will not appeal to pacifists, but for Mishima the book
had a special importance in that it enunciated beliefs that he had
been formulating ever since his first attempts to improve his phy-
sique, or even earlier. Hagakure Nyiimon (Introduction to Haga-
kure, 1967) included the statement that this book of samurai
ethics, written early in the seventeenth century by Yamamoto
Jocho (1659-1719), was the "womb" of his entire literary
oeuvre,s4 and the source of his prodigious vitality as a writer. His
high praise of Hagakure was probably sincere, though it is uncon-
vincing; Hagakure is unlikely to impress many other readers as
powerfully as it did Mishima, who prized it above all for its insis-
tence on death as the true way of the samurai.
Mishima kept up a flow of activist writings related to the
military almost until he died. They were published for the most
part in nonliterary magazines of mass circulation, often in brief
installments over a period of many months. Sun and Steel ap-
peared between 1965 and 1968, even while he was writing two
major novels and several full-length plays.
Hojo no Umi (The Sea of Fertility), Mishima's final tetralogy,
began to appear in September 1965 in the literary magazine Shin-
cho. Mishima continued to produce installments at an absolutely
MISHIMA YuKIO 1207
regular pace until the day of his death, finding the pressure of
monthly deadlines a necessary stimulus to his creativity. He had
originally planned to publish The Sea of Fertility only after all
four volumes had been completed. But the total lack of critical
response to the serialized versions of the first two volumes was so
frustrating that he changed his mind, and published these vol-
umes in book form, hoping that reviewers would be compelled to
pay them some attention. Haru no Yuki (Spring Snow) and
Homba (Runaway Horses) appeared in 1969 while Mishima was
serially publishing the third part of the tetralogy, Akatsuki no Tera
(The Temple of Dawn). Probably Mishima had intended to make
revisions when the entire work was completed and he undoubt-
edly hoped that all four .volumes would be read together as a
single coherent explanation of his view of life. He was destined to
experience a second disappointment: after the first two volumes
appeared, there was still very little response from the critics, and
the publication of the third volume, The Temple of Dawn, in 1970
was almost completely ignored. Fortunately, however, the public
recognized the worth of the first two volumes, which sold many
copies. Mishima in the end became resigned to the indifference of
Japanese critics and said that he would, wait for the opinions of
foreign critics when the work was translated.85
Mishima first conceived the project of writing a multivolume
novel in 1965, but even as far back as 1950 he had exhibited
interest in writing a work on the theme of reincarnat'ion.s6 In
preparation for treating this subject he read European as well as
Buddhist works, and became especially absorbed in the yuishiki,
or "consciousness only," doctrines of the Hoss6 sect. When Spring
Snow appeared in book form Mishima acknowledged for the first
time that direct inspiration for writing a novel about transmigra-
tion and dreams had been given him by the Heiah period work,
Hamamatsu Chiinagon Monogatari (The Tale of the Middle
Counselor of Hamamatsu). The title for the tetralogy, as he re-
vealed at this time, had been taken from the Latin name for one
of the "seas" of the moon, Mare Foecunditatis.87
A clue to Mishima's purpose in writing the tetralogy is given
by the title: although the name suggests fertility, the sea is in fact
arid; this seems to have been his conclusion about life itself. The
events that preoccupy people, for which they live and die, often
prove in the end to have been not only meaningless but illusory.
 Dawn to the West 1208
But even if it was Mishima's conclusion that life is meaningless,
he acted otherwise. His fascination with death always implied an-
other self observing the one that was dead, another realm from
which the spirit could watch over this one. A belief in metem-
psychosis may have been not only congenial but necessary to
someone who lacked any other religious conviction. 88 As a writer,
Mishima could be sure of a kind of immortality, and he did what
he could to ensure that this immortality would extend beyond the
borders of Japan,s9 but he may also have wished to continue to
observe this world even after death.
The Sea of Fertility is the story of four people, each born with
the same curious birthmark that permits Honda, a man ac-
quainted with all four, to recogniz1 in each the reinca1:1ation. of
the same being. Honda is the classmate of the first manifestation
of this being, Matsugae Kiyoaki, a boy of extraordinary beal!ty
who belongs to an upper-class family. He is spoiled and willful,
and hates doing what people expect of him. For this reaso11 he
professes indifference when he is informed that Satoko, the girl to
whom he has long been attracted, is about to be engaged to a
prince; the satisfaction of demonst~ating that his elders cann~t
understand him is stronger than his love for Satoko. Or so 1t
seems until the official announcement of Satoko's engagement
cause~ Kiyoaki's love to flare up as never before. He persuades
Satoko to meet him secretly, knowing the danger if they are
caught. In face of the impending disaster, Sa~oko be~omes a nun
at a convent in Nara. Kiyoaki, though runmng a high tempera-
ture, goes repeatedly to the convent to beg for one more _gl~mpse
of Satoko, but he is refused. He dies of his illness, predictmg to
Honda that they will meet again under a waterfall. He also leaves
behind a book in which he has recorded his dreams.
Spring Snow is the supreme product of the skill that Mishi~a
had acquired as a storyteller. It contains a most moving evoc~t10n
of romantic love, and after so many other works that proclaimed
the sternly masculine Japanese ideals, Mishima her~ gave ':'en.no
his innate lyricism. In the concluding sections especially Mish1ma
attained the expression of feminine sensibility that had ch~rac-
terized the Heian novel. As Japanese prose, Spring Snow 1s re-
markably beautiful, and as a nostalgic evocation of the Meiji era
it is one of Mishima's most successful re-creations of the past.
The second volume, by contrast, is an exposition of the ideals
MISHIMA YUKIO 1209
of the warrior. Runaway Horses takes place some twenty years
later. Honda, a rising young judge, by chance attends an exhibi-
tion of swordsmanship (kendi5) held at a shrine near Nara. His
attention is caught by one young fencer who is superbly accom-
plished. Later Honda sees the same boy bathing under a waterfall
on the mountain behind the shrine and, noticing the telltale birth-
mark under the boy's arm, remembers Kiyoaki's prediction. How-
ever, Isao, the youth, in no way resembles Kiyoaki, either in his
appearance or in his ideals. He is devoted to the spiritual re-
~enera.tion of Japan, which he intends to promote by joining with
like-mmded young men in ridding the emperor of the corrupt
advisers surrounding him. They plan to blow up the Bank of
Japan as well, but they are betrayed and Isao is arrested. Honda
resigns his post oh the bench to defend Isao, and is successful in
obtaining an extremely lenient sentence. But when Isao is released
from prison he goes to kill one of the prime targets on the conspir-
ators' list, then commits seppuku while gazing into the rising sun.
The tone of Runaway Horses is established early in the work
with the description of the revolt staged in 1876 by the Shim-
p?ren, a band ~f s~murai who were violently opposed to the pol-
icies of modermzation advocated by the Meiji government. Their
hatred of foreign things was so intense that when they had to pass
under telegraph wires they shielded themselves from baleful influ-
ences by holding white fans over their heads. They fought with
swords and spears against government troops who were armed
with rifles. They were massacred, but their patriotism inspired
young Japanese like Isao, who were disgusted with the govern-
m~ntal.policies of their own day and we:i,:e convinced that compro-
mise with the corrupt leaders of the country was impossible. Isao
was one of the radical right-wing youths of the 1930s whom Mi-
shima admired because of their selfless love of country. Mishima
was not, ~owever, making a blanket apology for the right wing as
a .whole; ~n fact, the professional advocates of right-wing policies
(hke Isao s father) are portrayed as venal and even contemptible.
For ,that ~atter, the young army officer who at first supported
lsao .s danng scheme backed out when he realized what danger
was mvolved. The "eternal transparency" of the actions of youth,
rather than allegiance to a particular cause, was the ultimate test
of masuraoburi, the warrior ideal as Mishima conceived it.
The third volume, The Temple of Dawn, is the most difficult to
 Dawn to the West 1210
appreciate. Mishima was aware that the two halves of this work
did not fit together easily; the first half, set in Southeast Asia, is
devoted mainly to a presentation of Buddhist themes, both in the
sights of India and in the religious texts that Honda studies, but
the second half, set in postwar Japan, is a realistic portrayal of the
corruption of the aristocracy. Mishima believed that the fisk
he was taking was necessary, and that this was the key volume of
the four.
The incarnation of Kiyoaki in The Temple of Dawn is a Thai
princess. As a small girl she baffles everyone by insisting that she
is really Japanese. When Honda asks her questions about Kiyoaki
and Isao, she answers correctly, without hesitation. Honda next
sees her nine or ten years later, in Japan. By now she has forgotten
about her previous lives and does not even remember her meeting
with Honda when she was a child. Honda's role as the eternal
observer is electrifyingly altered in this volume to that of a voy-
eur: his newly constructed villa in the country has a peephole
through which he can observe guests in the next room. The peep-
hole enables him to confirm that the princess has the mysterious
birthmark, but also reveals that she and a Japanese woman are
lovers. At the conclusion a fire destroys the villa and soon after-
ward the princess returns to Thailand. Fifteen years later Hortda
learns that she died at the age of twenty, bitten by a cobra in her
garden.
As we read the first two volumes of The Sea of Fertility it is
not hard to be persuaded that this is indeed Mishima's master-
piece. The writing is masterfully appropriate throughout, and the
occasional philosophical o,r religious digressions give depth to the
novels without unduly slowing down the narrative flow. But when
we reach the third volume we feel at times that Mishima is unable
to control his materials. Indigestible masses of information on
transmigrations, as interpreted by Theravada and Mahayana
Buddhism, are presented, ostensibly as a record of the books that
Honda studied during the war. If we can grasp the significance of
this information, it is not because of Mishima's artistry. It is hard
to imagine another novel with the sentence: "It is pertinent to
note that Abhidharma is a Sanskrit word indicating the last ofthe
tripartite Buddhist canon comprising sutras, rules, and scholastic
treatises and is practically synonymous with scholastic trea-
MISHIMA YUKIO 1211
rises." 90 Yet it is impossible that Mishima, a master of popular as
well as serious fiction, did not realize he might be boring his read-
ers. These sections must have been so important to Mishima that
they absolutely had to be included; perhaps they were even his
main reason for writing the whole tetralogy. No doubt it is diffi-
cult for the reader to absorb pages of doctrine, but unless he
makes the effort he will not be able to accept transmigration in
The Sea of Fertility as more than an ingenious plot device, rather
in the manner of Virginia Woolf's Orlando. Perhaps the most cru-
cial passage is the following:
Mahayana Buddhism, especially the Yuishiki school, interpreted
the world as a torrential and swift rapids or a great white cascade
which never pauses. Since the world presented the form of a water-
fall, both the basic cause of that world and the basis of man's per-
ception ofit were waterfalls. It is a world that lives and dies at every
moment. There is no definite proof of existence in either past or
future, and only the present instant which one can touch with one's
hand and see with one's eye is real.91
Waterfalls are mentioned several times at critical points in
The Sea of Fertility. The first time Honda encounters the old ab-
bess of the Gesshii Temple (where Satoko eventually takes orders)
is by the cascade of the Matsugae garden in Tokyo. In Runaway
Horses Honda realizes that Isao is the reincarnation of Kiyoaki
when he sees him bathing under the waterfall at the Miwa Shrine.
And in The Temple of Dawn Honda becomes aware of the pres-
ence of Kiyoaki in the waterfalls at the Ajanta caves. Although
there is no waterfall at the GesshU Temple, the scene of the last
chapter of the entire tetralogy, the thought that pervades the place
is that expressed by the old abbess sixty years earlier: "Everything
is in constant flux, like a torrent."
The abbess's words seem to reflect Mishima's own beliefs
about life. More likely than any expressed reason he gave, such
beliefs may have induced him to commit suicide. The second half
of The Temple of Dawn, so unlike the first, gives concrete form to
Mishima's disgust with society. Everything is corrupt. The prince
to whom Satoko had been engaged, an army officer of severe
principles, now sells art treasures (including stolen ones) to mem-
 Dawn to the West 1212
bers of the American Army of Occupation. Honda himself goes to
the park at night to peer at lovers under the trees. And Japan is
overrun by noisy, ugly, obtrusive foreigners.
Mishima's xenophobia, the counterpart to his admiration
for Hagakure, became increasingly strident in later years.
Hardly a Western person appears in his works except in the gro-
tesquely distorted form of caricature, as in this description of a
garden party:
Western women, apparently unaware of the gaping zippers on their
backs, swung their broad hips and cackled with laughter. Their
sunken eyes with brown or blue pupils were focused on things he
could not locate. When pronouncifg certain words they would open
their dark mouths so wide he could see their tonsils, and they gave
themselves to the conversation with a kind of vulgar enthusiasm.
One of them, snatching up two or three thin sandwiches with red
manicured fingers, turned suddenly to Honda and announced that
she had been divorced three times and wanted to know whether the
Japanese divorced a lot too.92
Mishima's xenophobia seems to have had deep roots, but it
did not prevent him from seeking the friendship and praise of
foreigners. The Japan he loved was an abstraction; the West he
loved was what made up his daily life-the house he lived in, the
clothes he wore, the food he ate, the majority of the books he
read. His admiration for the ideals of the Japanese of the past was
genuine, but his xenophobia was suspect. He was quite capable of
cruelty when describing, say, a gathering of foreign women, but
the cruelty was almost always directed against their age, especially
their pretensions to youth when their faces and figures all too
plainly revealed the inappropriateness of the bright lipstick, the
macawlike colors of their clothes, and the braying intensity of
their voices. Mishima was no less sensitive to ugliness among the
Japanese, whether the lean, tormented face of the intellectualcfr
the uniformity of appearance of Japanese businessmen abroad:
"Their gold teeth flashed when they smiled and they all wore
glasses." 93 But elderly Japanese who ape the ways of their
youngers and betters are relatively rare, and Mishima's most bit-
ing satire tended therefore to be directed against elderly for-
MISHIMA YUKIO 1213
eigners. He regarded their presence in postwar Japan as one
element in the general decay.
The title of the last volume of the tetralogy, Tennin Gosui
(The Decay of the Angel, 1970), means literally "the five marks of
an angel's decay" and all five are present in the final description
of the last incarnation of Kiyoaki. He is a young man named
Toru, a youth of meager education who works at a harbor signal-
ing station. He is convinced that a special destiny awaits him be-
cause of the mysterious birthmark under his arm. Honda, now an
old man, happens by chance to visit the signaling station, and as
he watches Toru, lightly dressed because it is summer, he notices i
!:
the telltale birthmark. He decides to adopt Toru, sure that he has
witnessed another transmigration, and is determined this time to
link himself firmly to the mysterious being he has seen in different
guises. Surprisingly for a cautious lawyer, Honda does not take
the precaution of verifying that Toru was born after the death of
the Thai princess, and this uncertainty lingers throughout the
novel, leaving in doubt the question of whether or not Tom is a
genuine reincarnation.
Honda trains the boy in Western etiquette and arranges for
private tutoring. Toru is an apt pupil, but he shows no gratitude
for the lessons he receives. He is calculating and at times, when it
suits his convenience, viciously deceitful; he takes special pleasure
in betraying others after having once gained their confidence, and
in humiliating Honda, even molesting him physically. One day
the woman who was formerly the lover of the Thai princess but is
now a close friend of Honda decides to put Toru in his place. She
brutally analyzes his character and denies that there is anything
special about him; far from being the reincarnation of Kiyoaki,
destined to die at twenty, he is a fake and no doubt will lead a
long and uneventful life. After hearing this prediction Tom takes
poison. It does not kill but blinds him. The last Mishima shows of
Toru he does indeed seem likely to lead a meaningless life. The
flowers about him are withered; he perspires freely; his unwashed
body gives off a foul odor; his clothes are dirty; and he has lost his
place in the world. He is tended by a crazy woman who is soon to
bear his child.
The fact that Toru does not die at twenty like his three prede-
cessors suggests that, despite his birthmark, he is a false reincarna-
 Dawn to the West 1214
tion. However, it is surely not accidental that he displays all five
marks of an angel's decay. Perhaps Mishima intended for us to
realize that the semidivine being we have seen for the fourth time
has now lost his magic and will dissolve into common clay.
The last chapter of the novel, with its haunting description of
the convent in Nara where Satoko, now very old but still beauti-
ful, receives the aged Honda, is one of the most accomplished
pieces of writing of Mishima's entire career. 94 The conclusion is
. tantalizing: is it possible, when Satoko insists that she has never
even heard of Matsugae Kiyoaki, and politely suggests that he
was no more than a figment of Honda's imagination, that she is
telling the truth? Have the events described in the four volumes of
The Sea of Fertility occurred only in Honda's head? He protests,
saying that surely there are family }ecords that would prove that
Kiyoaki existed. Satoko calmly replies, "Yes, such documents
might solve problems in the other world .... Memory is like a
phantom mirror. It sometimes shows things too distant to be seen,
and sometimes it shows them as if they were here." Honda, per.;
plexed at the thought that the four reincarnations may have been
unreal, wonders if perhaps he too never existed. Satoko answers,
"That too is as it is in each heart." 95
The very end of the work describes the convent garden and
the shrilling of the cicadas:
There was no other sound. The garden was empty. He had come,
thought Honda, to a place that had rio memories, nothing.
The noontide sun of summer flowed over the still garden; 96
It is impossible to deny the brilliance of the ending, but many
readers felt cheated by this blotting out of the world that Mishima
had created. Within the walls of the convent where Satoko has
spent sixty years there is the emptiness described in the Buddhi_st
texts. Honda too recognizes that when he passes away he will
leave almost nothing in the world to prove that he not only existed
but was a person of consequence. Unreality is now acceptable to
Honda as the ultimate truth about the world. But it may not be so
for most readers: the tetralogy has been so solidly anchored in
facts and things that it takes more than a wave of the abbess's
wand to make everything disappear.
Mishima was convinced that The Sea of Fertility was the
MISHIMA YUKIO 1215
product of everything he had learned as a writer. He wryly re-
marked to friends that once he finished the work he would have
nothing left to do but to kill himself.97 His collected works, pub-
lished in thirty-six volumes, are an impressive legacy for the
world, and it is hard to imagine that one more novel or one more
play would have added much to his reputation. Perhaps he was
right in supposing that he could not go beyond The Sea of Fertil-
ity. If so, it is a judgment he passed not only on himself but on all
modern Japanese literature. More than any other writer of his
time, he had combined knowledge of both the traditional Jap-
anese literature and the entire range of Western literature. He was
moreover the Japanese writer best known to people abroad,
thanks to the many translations of his writings, articles about him
by foreign critics and journalists, and even television programs;
indeed, he was probably better known abroad than any other
Japanese, even before his suicide. it is reasonable to suppose that
with greater age and experience of the world, Mishima could have
written superior literary works, but he did not think so. His theory
that the longer people live the less admirable they become he
applied to himself no less strictly than to others.
Mishima described his depression after completing The Tem-
ple of Dawn. It was not occasioned by dissatisfaction with the
work but by what he termed the loss of a "reality"; as long as the
work remained in his head, many possibilities existed, but once it
was printed, only a single reality, the one described in the com-
pleted work, existed, and the other realities, the unrealized possi-
bilities, were consigned to the wastepaper basket. For this reason
he had tried not to determine the ending of The Sea of Fertility
until this was necessary, but had kept it fluid.98 It can easily be
imagined that Mishima foresaw an infinitely greater depression
overtaking him when he completed the final volume.
The Dec.ay of the Angel is, on the whole, written with great
skill, but it is conspicuously shorter than any of the previous three
volumes and shows signs of haste in composition. Mishima, for
reasons he did not reveal, had chosen November 25, 1970, as the
date of his death. This date was inscribed on the last page of the
manuscript, though he .had actually completed the final section
three months earlier.99 The novel was to be his penultimate ges-
ture to the world, followed by his suicide.
The details of Mishima's dramatic death-the capture of the
 Dawn to the West 1216
commanding general, the address delivered to the assembled
troops, the slitting open of his abdomen-made the front pages of
newspapers all over the world. Many people, both friends and
enemies, offered explanations of why Mishima had chosen to die
in that way. Some took him at his word and expressed their own
grief about the state of Japan, others cynically dismissed_ his sui-
cide as the act of desperation of an author who has lost his touch.
Mishima was unquestionably obsessed with death. He was deter-
mined not to die in an accident (he refused invitations to go
abroad for fear of an airplane crash) or of old age, but to achieve
death as a positive act. He had dreamed of dying before he was
twenty and idolized Radiguet, who had done just that; but even
when this dream slipped from him and he became involved in
mundane successes, he dreaded the loss of the beautiful paradise
of death. Forty-five years apparently had a special meaning for
hirrl. In The Temple of Dawn Honda, who is forty-six, sees in the
mirror the "face of a man who has lived too long." 100 The man-
ner of suicide was also important. He told friends that he did not
wish to die a "stupid" death, by which he seems to have meant
death from natural causes, or possibly from an overdose of sleep-
ing pills. Instead, he went through the elaborate ritual of a "de_ath
of remonstrance," beginning with the formal photograph of him-
self and his companions, taken in an old-fashioned studio, and
ending with the farewell poems to be found after his death. He
gave instructions that his posthumous Buddhist nai:ie incl~de the
word bu, meaning "martial." He had succeeded m makmg the
mask he first put on many years before a permanent part not only
of his face .but of his name.
Mishima was the most gifted and achieved the most of all the
writers who appeared after the war. If :"e feel on sur:'eyi~g the
massive literary production he left behmd that he still did not
attain the ranks of the undisputed masters of the century, he prob-
ably came as close as any Japanese. This opinion is not shar~d by
Japanese critics, for whom the names of Natsume Soseki and
Mori Ogai are sacred, but it is hard to think of any works by t~ese
two immensely important authors which, when translated mto
foreign languages, could be read with the kind of excitement an~
admiration that Mishima's novels and plays often aroused. This
may prove only that Mishima was more cosmopolitan, more re-
MISHIMA YUKIO 1217
spo°:sive to foreign literary currents than his great predecessors,
but it was true not only of Mishima but of his generation. The
international literary prizes that Mishima twice came close to win-
~ng ultimately eluded ~im, but his reputation, both in Japan and
m the West, has contmued to grow and now seems likely to
endure.
NOTES
I. Mishima stated that he was first taken to see Kabuki while a freshman at
mid~le school; until _then it was feared that Kabuki might have a bad influence
on him. However, his grandmother, who was fond of Kabuki, often told him
about performances, and Mishima was freely allowed to see films, even those
that might exert a bad influence. See Mishima Yukio, "Watakushi no Henreki
Jidai," in Mishim~. Yukio Zen_shii (henceforth abbreviated as MYZ), XXX, pp.
460-6 l. For a positive evaluat10n of the benefits that Mishima received from his
grand~oth~r, _see Ok~n~ Takeo, "Mishima Yukio Ron," in Nihon Bungaku
Ke~yu S~1~0 Kankoka1 (ed.), Mishima Yukio, p. 40. See also Saeki Shoichi,
Hyoden M1sh1ma Yukio, p. 155.
2. The earliest psychoanalytic study of Mishima dates from 1954. It was written
by Sawai Kiyoshi under the title "Mishima Yukio Ron" and was published in
th~ De~e~ber issue o.f Kindai Bungaku. It is included in Nihon Bungaku Ken-
ky~ Shi~o Ka~~kai (ed.), Mishima Yukio, pp. 17-30. A more recent study,
w~1ch, lik~ ~.awai s, treats_ Mis~ima as an exemplar of the Oedipus complex, is
Arim~ Shu, Katasutoroh1 tosh1te no Edeipusu Kompurekkusu" (1977).
3. __His _real nam_e was Hiraoka Kimi take, but members of his family called him
K01, usmg the Smo-Japanese pronunciation for his personal name.
4. Translated by Ian~- ~evy, in Howard Hibbett, Contemporary Japanese Liter-
ature, ~P· 283-91. C1tallons from Shi wo kaku Shonen are given in Levy's
translallon.
5._ Boj~ ~oshitami, whose book Hano no Gen'ei describes his long friendship
wJth M1sh1ma, states on p. 69 that he is the R of the story, and elsewhere con-
finns the truth of numerous details.
6. Hibbett, Contemporary Japanese Literature, p. 285.
:· For example, he spoke contemptuously of writers who said bento wo taberu
'.nstea~ of bento wo tsukau. His dislike of Dazai's writings was compounded by
1mt~t1on that Dazai could not write the language of the upper classes, even when
(as.m Th~ ~e_tting Sun) describing swch people. See MYZ, XXX, p. 444. Mishi-
ma s ~ens11Iv1ty to language may also have been a legacy from his grandmother.
8. H1bbett, Contemporary Japanese Literature, p. 284.
9. See: f~r exampl~, "Sado Koshaku Fujin no Saien," in MYZ. XXXII, p. 403_
~~: M1sh1ma, Yukio, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, trans. Ivan Morris, p.
 Dawn to the West 1218
11. Hibbett, Contemporary Japanese Literature, p. 291.
12. See article by Ogawa Kazusuke, "Jojoshi Sho, Hanazakari no Mori,'' in
Shirakawa Masayoshi (ed.), Hihyo to Kenkya Mishima Yukio, pp. 175-20.2.
13. MYZ, I, p. 134.
14. Ibid,.
15. Oscar Wilde, The Artist as Critic, p. 375.
16. Ibid., p. 297.
17. The unforgettable scene of the meeting of Honda and the old hag Tadeshina
in the ruins of Tokyo during the war was suggested by the No play Sotoba
Komachi. See Mishima, Yukio, The Temple of Dawn, trans. E. D. Saunders and
C. S. Seigle, pp. 135-41. · •
18. i\{YZ, XXX, p. 436. The postcard is photographically reproduced in
Sakurada Mitsuru, Mishima Yukio, p. 137.
19. This account is based on "Hanazakari no Mori wo megutte" by Shimizu
Fumio, in thefuroku to Vol. I of MYZ. Shimizu's explanation seems convincing,
but various others have been given for M{shima's pseudonym. John Nathan.
Mishima, pp. 38-39, presents rather a different version, apparently also derived
from Shimizu, but does not state his source.
20. One of the friends was his mentor Hasuda Zemmei, a literary critic of
extremely right-wing convictions, who killed his commanding officer andlhen
himself after the end of the war in indignation over the commanding officer's
casual acceptance of the defeat.
21. MYZ, XXV. p. 59.
22. Mishima recalled in 1958 that when the book was about to be published he
had been obliged to submit an application to the authorities for the necessary
allotment of paper, and had bluffed his way through with patriotic sentiments
that accorded with the temper of the times. See MYZ, XXVIII, p. 358.
23. Mishima related these events in various places, but most effectively in Con-
fessions of a Mask (trans. Weatherby), pp. 135-36.
24. Mishima, "Wa ga Shishunki," in MYZ, XXXVI, pp. 117-18. . ,
25. Recalled by Usui Yoshimi in his dialogue (taidan) with Nakamura, "Mi-
shima Yukio," published in the November 1955 issue of Bungakkai. Usui, then
the editor of Tembo, was more favorably impressed; although he disliked the
stories, he recognized that the author was "a kind of genius." See Nihon Bun-
gaku Kenkyu Shiryo Kankokai, Mishima Yukio, p. 269.
26. MYZ, I, pp. 516-17. . .· ..
27. For example, Honda Shugo, in Shirakawa, pp. 422-23, made this charge in
1971.
28. Kawabata Yasunari, "Mishima Yukio 'Tozoku,'" in Shirakawa, pp. 309~W.
29. However, Takeda Taijun, in the kaisetsu he wrote for the book, declared that
Tozoku was a more important novel than K,amen no Kokuhaku because it w·o-
vided clues to the art of creating a novel, and because it revealed somethmg
entirely fresh and new about the meaning of life. (In Shinch6 Bunko edition. PP·
170-71.)
30. MYZ, II, p. 139.
31. Ibid., pp. 112-13.
MISHIMA YUKIO 1219
32. Ibid., pp. 171-72.
33. It was first included in the Shincho Bunko series in 1954; by 1978 it had
gone through thirty-nine printings.
3~. ?thers wh~ joined at this time included Takeda Taijun, Abe Kobo, ~hiina
Rinzo, Umezaki Haruo, and Terada Toru.
35. Honda Shiigo, in Shirakawa, Hihyo to Kenkya, p. 419. He was responding
(he says he wanted to scream the words) to a comment by Eto Jun made during
the course of a 1959 zadankai.
36. MYZ, XXX, p. 448.
37. See Donald Keene, Landscapes and Portraits, p. 219.
38. "A Masked Confession" might seem to be a better translation, on the anal-
ogy of Kamen no Butokai for Verdi's A Masked Ball. But Mishima himself, in the
note he wrote when the novel was first published, spoke of a "mask which can
confess," suggesting that the existing translation of the title is correct. See MYZ,
XXV, p. 258.
39: _Even people who knew Mishima well, like Muramatsu Takeshi, were of this
opm10~. ~ee Nihon Bungaku Kenkyii Shiryo Kankokai, Mishima Yukio, p. 293.
40. M1sh1ma: Confessions of a Mask, p. 27. See also p. 100, where Mishima
speaks ofbegmmng t~ lead his "true life." He felt that "even if it was to be pure
masquer~de and ~ot hfe at all" he had to begin. Also, p. 153, where he debates
the meanmg of his masquerading as a normal person.
41. Mishima so informed me, but I have not traced the source.
42. Nihon Bunga~u ~enkyu Shiryo Kankokai, Mishima Yukio, p. 273.
4!. F?r example, m his account of his stay in New York in 1958 he listed among
his daily expenses, "a woman, minimum twenty dollars." See Tabi no Ehon in
MYZ, XXVIII, p. 250. · '
44. £:Ii~ love for Sonoko is related in more or less the same terms (but without
explammg why they never married) in Wa ga Shishunki (1957). See MYZ,
XXXVI, pp. 114-37.
45. MYZ, XXX, p. 459.
46. Ibid., XXV, pp. 258-59.
47. _N_o?~chi Takehiko, Mishima Yukio no Sekai, pp. 106-7, gave this and other
pos~1bil,~ttes, depending on whether Mishima was emphasizing "mask"or "con-
'.ess1on. Okuno Takeo suggested that Mishima meant a "mask of a mask"· that
1s•. u~ike the "I" n~velis~s w~o _assumed the mask of an artist when they ;rote,
M1shtma ~as maskmg his arttsttc self in order to analyze himself without refer-
ence to hts profession. This rather tortuous interpretation was used to bolster
O~uno's a_rgument (no d~ubt influenced by personal revelations made by Mi-
shima dunng the long penod when they were close friends) that Confessions of a
Mask was a rare Japanese example of a self-analytical novel. See Nihon Bun-
gaku ~e~yii Shiryo Kankokai, Mishima Yukio, p. 293.
48. M1shima, Confessions of a Mask, p. iii.
49. See MYZ, XXX, p. 458.
50. ~o~as Mann, Death in Venice, etc., p. 15.
51. M1sh1ma, Confessions of a Mask, p. 79.
52. See MYZ, XXXV, p. 71.
 Dawn to the West 1220
MISHIMA Y UKIO 1221
53. There is also some unconscious humor, especially for British readers: one 70. Ibid., p. 65.
Japanese lady informs another that when a~~ressing "Th:, Rt. Hon. the Countess 71. Ibid., p. 144.
of John Salisbury" it is proper to call her Your Grace, but that Dame Mary 72. Ibid., p. 216.
Gottflied need only be called "Dame Mary." (MYZ, XVI, pp. 241-42.) 73. Ibid., p. 217.
54. Ibid., p. 246. . . . . .. 74. Ibid., p. 176.
55. In 1977 the publishing firm of Shiieisha mc!uded m their b'.mko ~d1t10n 75. Ibid., pp. 194-95.
three of Mishima's entertainments, each with a ka1setsu by a promment literary 76. Ibid., p. 255.
critic: Shinoda Hajime, Isoda Koichi, and Tanaka Miyoko. . . 77. Ibid., p. 258.
56. Arima Shii interpreted Etsuko's killing of Saburo as a van~tion of a theme
already established in Mishima's writings, the mot~er w_ho kills her son, the 78. Ibid., p. ~62. ~he real-life ~rsoni:t tried to kill himself by swallowing one
negative picture of incest. Both positive and ne_gativ~ pictures be~ong ~o the hundred sleepmg pills and stabbmg himself. At no point did he express a deter-
mination to live.
negative variety of the Oedipus complex. See Anma. Katasutoroh1 tosh1te no
79. Keene, Landscapes, p. 216.
Edeipusu Kompurekkusu," p. 71. . . . . . . .. 80. Ibid.
57. Stated by Nakamura Mitsuo m his t~1da~ ':1th Usu~ Yoshimi m 1952. (In
Nihon Bungaku Kenkyii Shiryo Kankoka1, !if.1sh1ma Yuk10, p. 273_.) 81. The ~apa?ese wordY_tikoku is translated in dictionaries as "patriotism," but
58. See Keene, Landscapes, p. 210, for a discussion of the specific aspects of the meanmg 1s rather different from aikoku, the usual word for patriotism.
Mauriac's writing that Mishima admired. Ya~~ku means literal!~ "grieving_ o~er the country," and instead of being the
59. See MYZ, XXX, pp. 459-60. . positlve, cheerful emot10n of patnotJsm refers to the grief a man feels when he
sees his country in disorder or corruption.
. ··k · was originally the name of the first of two volumes, the second bemg
60 . K Jnjl l . d .h 82: Madame de Sade has for its characters six women; My Friend Hitler is
called Higaku (Secret Music). The two volumes were later pubhshe as one, wit
Kinjiki serving as the title for both parts. . . . . wntten for four men. The former deals with the "feminine" theme of Jove and
devotion, the latter with ambition and expedience.
61. Nihon Bungaku Kenkyii Shiryo Kankokai, M1sh1ma Yuk10, pp. 272-73.
83. Keene, Landscapes, p. 208.
62. See Sawai Kiyoshi, "Mishima Yukio Ron," p. _28, whe~e ~e st~tes th~t ~l-
though Confessions of a Mask. was a sincere confession of his expenences It dtd 84. See Yuki~ Mishi":~ on Hagure, translated by Kathryn Sparling. pp. 9-10.
not touch on his life as a writer; in Forbidden Co/ors, on the other hand, he ~5. The scarcity of cntical response to The Temple of Dawn was explained to me
portrayed himself in caricaturized form as Hinok_i S~un,suke:. m terms of the reluctance of critics to expose their ignorance of Buddhism; but I
63. Okuno Takeo, long a devoted admirer of M1sh1ma s wntmgs, d~clared ~hat "".onder if the publicity th~t Mishima was then attracting with his private army
he detested The Sound of ifaves. He considered it to be a fake, and hkened1t to did not discourage the reviewers from committing themselves about the work of
a brilliant but politically suspect writer.
the crude landscapes painted on the walls of public bat~s. (Nihon Bu~gaku
86. So stated by Mishima in 1969; see MYZ, XXXIV, p. 26.
Kenkyii Shiryo Kankyokai, p. 297.) Mishima's disgust with the popularity of
Shiosai is stated in MYZ, XXX, p. 474. . _ 87. Ibid., X':'11!, P; 394; see also ibid., XXXIV, pp. 26-28, for an interesting
64. See Konishi Jin'ichi, "Mishima Yukio to Koten," in Nihon Bungaku Kenyu account of M1shima s study of Hamamatsu Chanagon Monogatari and the quali-
ties he ascribed to the four volumes of the tetralogy.
Shiryo Kankokai, p. 201. Konishi believed that Kemono no Tawamure (The Sport
of Beasts 1961) derived themes from the No play Motomezuka. 88. It _w~s erroneously supposed by some non-Japanese who read Kinkakuji
65. Ivan' Morris, who translated the work, elsewhere referred to t~e "Gol?en ~hat Mish_1ma must be a believer in Zen; but in an essay he wrote for the Amer-
Temple." But the Japanese name Kinkakuji is familiar even to foreign toun~ts, ican pubhc he stated his total lack of interest in Buddhism. See Clifton F adiman
(ed.), Party of Twenty, pp. 206-08.
and I have referred to the temple by that name except when directly quotmg
from Morris' translation. 89. His last letters included requests to two foreign friends that they see to it
66. Minakami Tsutomu published in 1979 Kinkaku Enjo (Burning _of the th~t The Sea of Fertility was translated in entirety. He was somehow under the
K.inkaku), a factual account of the destruction of the famous bui~ding, which was rrusapprehension that his American publishers would not issue the works of a
dead foreign author.
based partly on records of the trial of Hayashi Yoken. the ~rs~mst. The ~ff:ct ~f
90. Mishima, The Temple of Dawn, p. 119.
reading Minakami's book is to arouse even greater adm1rat1on for Mish1ma s 91. Ibid., p. 124.
creative understanding of the events. 92. Ibid., pp. 270-71.
67. Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, p. 21. 93. Ibid., p. 83.
68. Ibid., p. 36.
69. Ibid .. p. 63. 94. Mishima told me in August 1970 that he had written the ending of the work
"in one breath." He put the manuscript in my hands, but I did not read it at the
 Dawn to the West 1222
time. This means, however, that the last section was completed three months
before his death, not on the previous night.
95. Mishima, The Decay of the Angel, p. 235.
96. Ibid., p. 236.
97. He said this to me in August 1970, and there are scattered remarks to the
same effect in his late taidan.
98. MYZ. XXXIII, pp. 271-74.
99. See above, note 94.
100. Mishima, The Temple of Dawn, p. 83. At the time of Mishima's suicide it
was suggested that he chose to die at forty-five in emulation ofOshio
Heihachiro, a nineteenth-century patriot whom Mishima admired, who died in a
revolt against the government while in his forty-fifth year. For a description of
Mishima's interest in Oshio, see Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure, pp. 180-'-83.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Note: All Japanese books, except as otherwise noted, were published in Tokyo.
Agata Ibuki. Mishima Yukio Ron. San'ichi Shobo, 1974.
Arima Shii. "Katasutorohi toshite no Edeipusu Kompurekkusu," in Siigaku Ka-
gaku, December 1977.
Bojo Toshitami. Hono no Gen'ei. Kadokawa Shoten, 1971.
Date Munekatsu. Saiban Kiroku Mishima Yukio liken. Kodansha, 1972.
Fadiman, Clifton (ed.). Party of Twenty. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.
Fukushima Jiiro. Shiryo Sasha Mishima Yukio. Shin Jimbutsu Oraisha, 1975.
Hayashi Fusao and Mishima Yukio. Taiwo Nihonjin Ron. Sancho Shobo, 1966.
Hibbett, Howard (ed.). Contemporary Japanese Literature. New York: Knopf,
1977.
Hiraoka Azusa. Segare Mishima Yukio. Bungei Shunjii, 1972.
Keene. Donald. Landscapes and Portraits. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1971.
Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice. trans. by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Harmondsworth.
England:. Penguin Books, 1955.
Matsumoto Toru. Mishima Yukio Ron. Asahi Shuppan Sha. 1973.
Minakami Tsutomu. Kinkaku Enjo. Shinchosha, 1979.
Mishima Yoko and Shimazaki Hiroshi. Mishima Yukio Shoshi. Bara Jiiji Sha.
1972.
Mishima Yukio Zenshii, 36 vols. Shinchosha. 1973-76.
Mishima Yukio. Gensen no Kanjo. Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1970.
- - . Sosaku Noto. Himawari Sha, 1955.
- - . After the Banquet, trans. D. Keene. New York: Alfred A. Kno~f. 1~63.
- - . Confessions of a Mask, trans. M. Weatherby. New York: New Direct10ns.
1958.
- - . Death in Midsummer. trans. E. Seidensticker. et al. New York: New
Directions. 1966.
MISHIMA YUKIO 1223
The Decay of the Angel, trans. E. Seidensticker. New York: Alfred A
Knopf, 1974.
- - . Five Modern No Plays, trans. D. Keene. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
1957.
- - . Forbidden Co/ors, trans. A. H. Marks. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968.
- - . Madame de Sade, trans. D. Keene. New York: Grove, 1967.
- - . Runaway Horses, trans. M. Gallagher. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1973. . ·
- - . The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, trans. J. Nathan. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.
- - . The Sound of Waves, trans. M. Weatherby. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1956.
- - . Spring Snow, trans. M. Gallagher. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.
- - . Sun and Steel, trans. John Bester. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1970.
- - . The Temple of Dawn, trans. E. D. Saunders and C. S. Seigle. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. ·
- - . The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, trans. Ivan Morris. New York: Alfred
H Knopf, 1959.
- - . Thirst for Love, trans. A. H. Marks. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.
- - . Yukio Mishima on Hagakure, !rans. K. Sparling. London: Souvenir
Press, I977.
Miyoshi, Masao. Accomplices of Silence. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1974.
Morris, Ivan. The Nobility of Failure. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1975.
Muramatsu Takeshi. Mishima Yukio. Bungei Shunju, 197 l.
Nagaoka Sari. Kyobi no Sono. Meicho Shuppan, 1971.
Nakamura Mitsuo and Mishima Yukio. Taidan Ningen to Bungaku. Kodansha,
1968.
Nasuda Kei. Sokatsu Mishima Yukio. Hara Shobo, 1972.
Nathan, John. Mishima. Boston: Little. Brown, 1974.
Nihon Bungaku Kenkyii Shiryo Kankokai (ed.). Mishima Yukio. Yiiseido, 1972.
Noguchi Takehiko. Mishima Yukio no Sekai. Kodansha, 1968.
Romanjin Mishima Yukio. Roman, 1973.
Saeki Shoichi. Hyoden Mishima Yukio. Shinchosha, 1978.
Sakurada Mitsuru. Mishima Yukio. Gakushii Kenkyii Sha, 1973.
Scott-Stokes, Henry. The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima. New York: Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, 1974.
Shirakawa Masayoshi (ed.). Hihyo to Kenkyii Mishima Yukio. Haga Shote'n,
1974.
Takeda Taijun. "Kaisetsu," in Mishima Yukio, Tozoku. Shinchosha, Shincho
Bunko series, 1968.
Tanaka Miyoko. Mishima Yukio. Kadokawa Shoten, 1980. "
Tokuoka Takao and Donald Keene. Toya Kiko. Chiio Kornn Sha, 1973.
Tsuruta, Kinya, and Thomas E. Swann. Approaches to the Modern Japanese
Novel. Tokyo: Sophia University, 1976.
 Dawn to the West 1224

Ueda, Makoto. Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature. Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976.
Wilde, Oscar. The Artist as Critic,. ed. Richard Ellmann. London: W. H. Allen,
1970.
Yamanouchi, Hisaaki. The Search for Authenticity in Modern Japanese Litera-
ture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978 ..
Yourcenar, Marguerite. Mishima ou la vision du vide. Galhrnard, 1980.

APPENDIX

1. Ninin Bikuni fro Zange (Two Nuns' Confession of Love) by

Ozaki Koyo

A young nun arrives one night at the lonely hermitage of another

nun and asks to spend the night. She is warmly welcomed by the owner
of the hermitage, who lays out a bed for her and protects it from the cold
with a paper curtain. That night the young nun, awakened by the wind,
notices writing on the curtain. It is an unsigned letter addressed to one
Wakaba, written by a soldier about to go into battle. His words plainly
reveal he expects to die, and he urges Wakaba to remarry. The young
nun, staring at the letter, exclaims, "How the handwriting resembles his!
It's exactly like Koshiro's. I wonder who wrote it." The older nun, also
waking, learns that the younger nun has read the letter and admits that
she was formerly called Wakaba. The two women, exchanging words of
sympathy, agree to reveal why each became a nun.
Wakaba relates how, after leading an orphan's life in the palace of a
great lord, she fell in love with a samurai and was fortunate enough to
marry him, only for the man to be called off to war. He died, as he

1225
 Dawn to the West 1224

Ueda, Makoto. Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature. Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976.
Wilde, Oscar. The Artist as Critic,. ed. Richard Ellmann. London: W. H. Allen,
1970.
Yamanouchi, Hisaaki. The Search for Authenticity in Modern Japanese Litera-
ture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Yourcenar, Marguerite. Mishima ou la vision du vide. Gallimard, 1980.

APPENDIX

1. Ninin Bikuni fro Zange (Two Nuns' Confession of Love) by

Ozaki Kayo

A young nun arrives one night at the lonely hermitage of another

nun and asks to spend the night. She is warmly welcomed by the owner
of the hermitage, who lays out a bed for her and protects it from the cold
with a paper curtain. That night the young nun, awakened by the wind,
notices writing on the curtain. It is an unsigned letter addressed to one
Wakaba, written by a soldier about to go into battle. His words plainly
reveal he expects to die, and he urges Wakaba to remarry. The young
nun, staring at the letter, exclaims, "How the handwriting resembles his!
It's exactly like Koshiro's. I wonder who wrote it." The older nun, also
waking, learns that the younger nun has read the letter and admits that
she was formerly called Wakaba. The two women, exchanging words of
sympathy, agree to reveal why each became a nun.
Wakaba relates how, after leading an orphan's life in the palace of a
great lord, she fell in love with a samurai and was fortunate enough to
marry him, only for the man to be called off to war. He died, as he

1225
 ,·r--·

Appendix 1226 APPENDIX 1227

2. Faryii Butsu (The Buddha of Art) by Koda Rohan

predicted in his letter, and with him perished the other men of the clan.
Now, where once the palace stood, the tall weeds grow. Shu'un travels around the coun ...
In the next section the battle is des~ribed, not by the nun, but by the the sculptures they contain One ni t~y,ts1tmg ~ld temples and studying
author. The young warrior, as we have suspected, is none other than the the valley of Kiso. There .is a k g: e s~ops m the town of Subara in
Koshir6 whose name the young nun mentioned. He has been badly comes into his room at the inn~oihe at his d_oor, and a beautiful girl
wounded. An enemy warrior rides up, and Koshiro discovers to his as- flowers for which the town is celeb asks ?1m. t~ b~y the preserved
tonishment that it is his uncle, the man who reared him after his own and asks her story. She relates how ~ated. S~u un is mtngu~d by the girl,
intimate with a masterless sam . er_m_ot er, a ~yoto geisha, had been
parents died. The uncle, recognizing Koshiro, urges him to return to his
house, where the young man's wounds can be treated, but Koshir6 insists fighting in 1868, just before sh:~:s(;nm)
years later and Otatsu as sh . k
who ~1s,appeared during the
orn_. The g1rl s mother died a few
he must return to the battlefield. He can hardly walk, however, so badly
is he wounded, and after an unsuccessful attempt at suicide he finally Subara. The uncle, a dissolu:e is a:~7en, is sent to live with an uncle in
her earnings for his pleasures ~h r, puts Otatsu to work, and uses
allows himself to be taken to safety. served flowers. . e sews by day and at night sells pre-
The next section, entitled "Words of Resentment," takes place in the
uncle's house. Koshir6, recuperating from his wounds, is tended by his Shu'un cannot sleep that ni ht H h ..
cousin, the beautiful Yoshino. Gradually she broaches the subject of his guise of the bodhisattva Ka ~ . e as a v1s1on of Otatsu in the
marriage. She asks how he could have forsaken her, even though they ~rs. Unable to put her fromn;i:n~i::ssed in white and wreathed in flow-
had been pledged to each other from childhood. He explains that lie m the comb that Otatsu inadvertentl, ~e carves _ela~orate floral patterns
married Wakaba at his master's request, though drinking the wedding ing day,just after a snowstor h 1 y roppe_d m his room. The follow-
m, e eaves the mn On h"s t h
cups of sake was like swallowing molten iron and the nuptial bed seemed town he happens to pass the hovel wh O .. i_ way o t e next
to be made of needles. But, he adds, he had no choice: other members of peeps in and discovers her bo d t ere tatsu hves with her uncle. He

s:
0
his clan, knowing of his close ties to the enemy chief, had spread rumors that the uncle, enraged b/Ot ~n , ; post and gagged. (We later learn

that he had divided loyalties, and he was forced to prove his absolute punished her in this way) ~u s re usal to be sold to a rich man, had
one hundred yen in gold (.the sua un re~cue:. the girl by paying the uncle
allegiance. . me pnce ouered by the · h ) .
Yoshino does not accept his explanations, but bit by bit her indigna- up his claims on the girl. nc man to give
tion melts in nostalgic remembrances of the past. Koshiro asks her to The innkeeper urges Shu'un to m
prove her love by revealing the contents of the letter she received from refuses, declaring that no such base c a~y O~atsu, but he _indignantly
her father two days before. She reluctantly tells Koshir6 the news that rescued the girl Shu'un lea S b . ons1 erat10ns moved him when he
· · ves u ara but Otatsu's · k
his master died in battle. He at once attempts to kill himself, but he is so mg before his eyes seemin t d '. image eeps flicker-
ill. Otatsu and the' innkee ge/ h:r:w him _ba~k. Soon afterward he falls
feeble that even Yoshino can disarm him. Subara. Only after he h p y to his side and take him back to
The final section describes Koshir6's thoughts as he lies in the daTk as recovered does Shu' 1 .
that night. He recalls Wakaba with affection, remembering especially 0 tatsu, and they decide to ge t marne. d. at once Just
un at
revea
th' his. love to
their final parting. He had prayed for death in battle as the only solution ever, a messenger arrives from Otats ' 1 l . is pomt, how-
to his terrible dilemma-having to fight against those closest and dearest
to him. Now he prepares for his suicide. Though Yoshino is not with him,
in his hea.rt he promises her that in the next life they will be man and
learn, distinguished himself a; th:
abroad on a mission. A nobleman
1::;
Tokyo without even giving he th f u s ong- ost father, and takes her to
t~ s? Yes or N.o. The father, we
o t. ~ Rest_orat10n, and was sent
wife. He begs her to look after his uncle and aunt as the only funeral adopted him as his heir, and the f;t~ec~gmzmg h1_s exceptional ability,
offerings he desires. With a final cry of "Namu Amida Butsu" he stabs the press of work always ke t him er is no~ _a viscount. Even though
geisha he left behind and ~ h from wntmg, he never forgot the
himself. search for the child he' had w en e returned to Japan he instituted a
In the concluding lines the two nuns express recognition that both never seen
loved the same man. "They gaze into each other's face with cries of Shu'un feels betrayed when he le~rns f O ,
astonishment. The sunlight filtering through cracks in the wooden dooris and he all but goes out of his mind with _o tat~u s sudde~ departure,
white. The wind rustling the paper curtain is cold. The night faintly gives where he had discovered Ot t b d gnef. He lives alone m the hovel
a su oun to a post · In a frenzy of longing,
way to the dawn."
 Appendix 1228
he carves her statue in the guise of the bodhisattva Kannan, just as she
appeared in the vision. Dissatisfied with the. statu~, he chips away the
flowers and robes with which he has embellished it, to reveal Otatsu's
nude form as the Jaryii butsu, or Buddha of Art.
Soon afterward the innkeeper shows Shu'un a newspaper article
describing the forthcoming marriage of t~e viscount's d~ug~ter t~ ~ ma:-
quis. Shu'un reviles the statue, only for it to answer him m a v1s10n, m
which Otatsu reveals her love. Unable to decide whether this is dream or
reality, he raises his arm to strike the wooden statue with his hatchet, hut
the fresh, naked body looks so real he is convinced it will spout blood at
the touch of his blade. The hatchet slips from his hand, and he falls to
the floor in tears. Then-"did they reach down from heaven or rise up
from the earth?"-soft arms embrace him. He and Otatsu, hand in hand,
rise slowly into the sky, high above the c\ouds, leaving behind a perfume
of white roses. This apparition is witnessed by many people, each person
interpreting the miracle in terms appropriate to his or her station in life.
3. Chi7monchi5 (The Order Book) by Izumi Kyoka
A man from one of the Yoshiwara brothels calls at a razor-grinder's
shop and asks if the razors he left are ~eady. Gosuke, the _owner, answers
that they are, but he is reluctant to deliver razo:s on th~ nineteenth of the
month. He describes how a razor has mysteriously disappeared on the
nineteenth of each month, and always someone has died of a razor
wound. But the man, anxious to complete his errand, takes the razors
anyway. .
Gosuke remembers then a special order from Owaka, a g1rl_kept at
a private establishment outside the Yoshiwara quarter. He and hIS ~rony
Sakubei, a mirror polisher, reminisce about t~~ pa~t; these two relics or,
the old Edo feel like ghosts in the new, unfamiliar city of Tokyo. Sak~be1
relates a tragedy connected with a mirror that also occurred on the ~me-
teenth. A certain general had become so madly enamored of a prostitute
he wanted to die with her. One morning, after a night spent together, the
prostitute on an impulse reflected herse~f and the general in h~r mirror.
The man stared for a while at her reflection, only to take the mirror from
her and press it against his chest. Her face in the mirror loo~ed e~aqtly
like his mother's, and he felt ashamed to have thought of killmg himself
with a prostitute in his mother's presence. . danger he (like his uncle before him) would encounter there. Kinnosuke
The prostitute was the daughter of a samurai and had been tramed
in the use of weapons. Now, when suddenly she realized she had lost her
APPENDIX 1229
lover, she turned on him with her razor and slashed at his throat. With
her skill in weapons, she should have killed him easily, but the blade
struck the mirror he held against his lowered head, and he was saved.
The woman plunged the razor into her own throat, and the horrified
general never returned to the Yoshiwara.
Sakubei has been asked by the general's wife, now a widow, to
polish the mirror as a present for her beloved nephew, intending that it
serve as a talisman to preserve him from the dangers of the quarter.
After Sakubei finishes his tale, he says he plans to visit the prostitute's
grave that night. Gosuke, afraid to spend the night alone, begs him to
stay. Sakubei goes anyway, but promises to return. During Sakubei's
absence Gosuke discovers that the razor he had just finished honing for
Owaka has disappeared. As he searches for it, he suddenly notices a
woman in a gray kimono with a snowflake pattern standing in his room.
She calls to him, and from the bosom of her kimono takes "a razor that
glitters like the scales of a poisonous snake." She asks, "Is this what you
were looking for?" She derides the precautions he took against ghosts,
revealing as she laughs teeth that gleam a lustrous black. Just at this
moment cries of passers by in the street tell them it has begun to snow.
The scene shifts to the Kobai, the house where Owaka lives. A man
knocks on the door late at night. He says he has something to deliver to
Owaka, but before he shows it, he tells how it happened he fought his
way through the snow that night to the Kobai. He identifies himself as
Wakiya Kinnosuke, and relates how earlier that evening he had attended
a party to celebrate his forthcoming departure for Germany. Kinnosuke
drank so heavily at the party that he has no recollections of when he left.
He got into his own rickshaw and started home, but the rickshaw col-
lided with another vehicle and broke a wheel. He stopped another
rickshaw, but in his befuddled state failed to state his destination. To his
surprise, he found himself near the Yoshiwara, the rickshawman having
supposed that was where a drunken customer would wish to go. It was
snowing harder than ever, and the rickshawman refused to take Kin-
nosuke to his home.
At this point Kinnosuke interrupts his recitation to tell about an-
other incident that occurred that evening. While at the party he was
called to the door to meet a woman sent by his aunt. The woman had
brought a gift from the aunt, a newly polished mirror in a brocade bag.
The aunt was afraid that Kinnosuke's friends at the party might tempt
him into going to the Yoshiwara, and the mirror was to warn him of the
refused the mirror, partly because he was irritated by the woman, a
bluestocking and a Christian, and asked her to deliver it to his house. He
 Appendix 1230
realizes now that if only he had accepted the mirror he probably would
not have lost his way.
Kinnosuke resumes his story, describing how he attempted to avoid
entering the Yoshiwara quarter itself, aware of the danger. As he wan-
dered the unfamiliar streets, he saw a woman standing barefoot on a
bridge over the Yoshiwara moat. The woman addressed him, begging
him to deliver an urgently needed parcel to Owaka. Kinnosuke agreed,
and that was why he visited the Kobai. But when, having finished his
story, he looks for the parcel, he cannot find it. Owaka and her maid
suppose it was money sent by an acquaintance. Kinnosuke offers to
make amends by giving his own money, but it is refused.
Kinnosuke asks them to order a rickshaw, but the maid urges him to
spend the night. As they speak, Owaka seems to doze, a sign that a spirit
is taking possession of her. Her maid cal}s to her, and Ow aka says with a
smile, "I won't like it if he leaves just as soon as it gets light."
Kinnosuke changes to nightclothes. As Owaka folds his suit, she
suddenly exclaims, "Why doesn't he want to?" The sentence is ambigu-
ous; perhaps it refers to Owaka's unspoken annoyance at Kinnosuke's
reluctance to spend the night with her, or perhaps the spirit now possess-
ing her is reproaching the general for being unwilling to die. As in a
trance, Owaka stoops down and her fingers touch a razor. She trembles,
and when she lifts the·razor she pales at the sight.
At this point in the narration there is a shriek. Gosuke, having a
nightmare, cries out in terror. Kyoka, using a technique suggestive of the
cinema, has without warning shifted the scene: the shriek, which we first
assumed had come from Owaka's victim, takes us instead to the room
where Gosuke and Sakubei are sleeping. Gosuke tells Sakubei of his
dream. Owaka had killed a man with the razor he honed for her. Unable
to sleep, Gosuke goes to the Kobai and finds the two victims. Owaka had
cut Kinnosuke's throat and then her own. Although her wound was a
mere scratch, she is dying. The bloodstained razor still held in her hand,
she murmurs a final apology. Kinnosuke is badly wounded, but he lis-
tens as.Owaka's farewell note is read. He calls for a writing brush and, at
the end of her letter, under her name, he inscribes the words "the wife of
Wakiya Kinnosuke."
4. Yashin (Ambition) by Nagai Kafu
Minojima Kotar6, the hero, is the son of a wealthy shopkeeper. His
father dies, leaving a business that is so solidly established that young
APPENDIX 1231
Minojim_a might easily ~ave c~~tente~ himself with letting the shop take
care of itself. But he 1s amb1t10us; mdeed, it was to foster the son's
ambitions that Minojima's father had unstintingly devoted the money
for his education.
Our first glimpse of Minojima shows him at breakfast. Instead of
eating rice, he drinks a glass of milk, a sure sign of ruthless ambition. His
study is lined with foreign books with gold lettering on their spines.
Th~se are the books that have kept him from feeling satisfied with a
busmess that has been carried on since the days of his distant forebears.
The pain.ting in the tokonoma is not one of Daikoku-sama, bringer of
commer~ial success, but of ~aris at night. Above Minojima's desk hangs
a portrait of the man descnbed as the Iron Chancellor of the Prussian ·
busi~ess wo_rld. A q~~tatio~ in ~nglish neatly sets the tone for the young
man s vaultmg amb1t10ns: N at10ns as well as men fail in nothing which
they boldly undertake." 1
Minojir_n~'s mother proposes that the fortune left by his father
s~ould be _dlVlde~ equ~lly bet~een Minojima and his sister Omiyo, who
will then (m keepmg with family traditions) marry their retainer, Sakichi,
who has served the household since he was a boy of nine. Minojima
refuses; he says that he needs the entire fortune for a great project. The
mother summons a family conference to debate the matter.
At the conference Minojima declares that he intends to use the
entire i~heritance for his project, and if that is not enough, he will sell
the family business. "Try to stop me," he taunts them, "TM and Com-
pany will not be foiled by the likes of you." 2 When an uncle remon-
strates, saying that Minojima's ambitions may drive his mother into her
grave, h~ replies in anger, "Minojima K6tar6 is a Meiji youth! I don't
take notice of old men!" He stamps out of the room.a
. ~!'-1 and Comparty is the name of the department store founded by
MinoJ1ma and his friend Toyozato (the T of TM). Toyozato, the son of a
?1an who has made .a. fortune b~ trading in foreign currency, has inher-
ited boun~less amb1t10n _from his father, and an irresistible appeal for
th~ orpos1te sex from his mother, a former geisha. Another friend of
Mmopma, a newspaperman and pessimist named Shimada, seems to be
Kafii s porte-parole. At one time Shimada too had ambitions but now he
r~alizes his dream of becoming a great writer was no more ~han a delu-
sion. He declare~ th~t a1!1bition is a demon who relentlessly torments the
human heart. MrnoJlma s only answer is a tolerant smile.4
The department store is erected on the Ginza. The public is fasci-
nate~ to learn that Minojima has arranged for twelve geishas from Shim-
bash1 to serve as saleswomen. Shipments of merchandise arrive from
France. But Minojima's dream castle abruptly comes tumbling down
 Appendix 1232 APPENDIX 1233

greatest joy in life. It does not require any great clairvoyance on the
around him when Sakichi, foiled in his plans to marry Minojima's sister,
reader's part to surmise that the little girl will become the instrument of
sets fire to TM and Company. Minojima at the news collapses into the
Takae's revenge.
arms of a nearby geisha. · Soon _afterward a massive demonstration takes place at the factory
that supplies the paper for Okawa's printing works. The union members
Notes storm the walls, and for a time their banner floats proudly overhead. But
soon the police arrive, and the strikers suffer many casualties. The dem-
1. Kafu Zenshii, I, p. 451. onstration fails, and the union splits into left- and right-wing factions.
2. Ibid., p. 472. The company smuggles strikebreakers in, and support for the strikers
3. Ibid., p. 475. erodes. Th~ neighborhood merchants and Buddhist temples, informed
4. Ibid., p. 509. that the strikers are Communists, withdraw their support.
Oka~o is ~eleased from prison, but only after being tortured. ~he
~as a m1scarnage and dies. Takae, enraged, succeeds in poisoning
5. Taiyo no nai Machi (The Street without Sunlight) by Tokunaga
O~awa's gr~n~daughter. At the last meeting of the strikers only one-
Sunao third the ongmal number attends, but these men are determined, no
matter what happens, to defend their flag.
After the opening section describing the crown prince's visit, the
story shifts to the house on a sunless street where two siste~s, Takae _and
Okayo, live with their bedridden father. Takae, the elder, is determined
6. "Supein Inu no le" (The House of the Spanish Dog) by Sato
that Okayo must know the kind of happiness she has been denied. She is
Haruo
aware that Okayo loves Miyaji, the same man she herself loves, and
therefore sacrifices her own love. Such elements in the plot make it clear
The first paragrap~ sets the tone for the work: "Frate starts running
what Hayashi was thinking of when he deplored the "popular magazine"
all of a sudden and waits for me at the parting of the road that leads to
elements in this novel. the blacksmith's . He is a very clever dog and he has been my friend for
The scene shifts again to a gathering of the strikers. The strike has
years. I am convmced that he is far cleverer than most men let alone my
passed its fiftieth day. At first the workers had been confident that they wife." '
could secure reinstatement of the men in the printery who had been fired
The dog's name, Frate, like that of Sat5's other dog, Leo, was taken
because of union activities. They had been victorious in a previous strike,
from ~n account of St. Francis he was reading at the time. The narrator,
and they enjoyed the support of the community. But Okawa, the owner
allowmg the dog to lead him, wanders into a wood where he suddenly
of the Kyod5 Press, decides to adopt a new line of resistance. He orders
~omes upon a house that is almost invisible among the trees. The house
his underlings to withdraw from the mediation sessions between the
is vaguely Western in style, and red roses grow in front. The narrator,
company and the union, and alerts some thirty comp~nies ~ffili~ted with
sure that the owner of the house will give him tea, "tries knocking in the
his own to be ready for action. As he leaves the meetmg with his hench-
Western manner on the Western-style door." There is no answer so he
men, a man with a knife springs on him, but C>kawa is barely scratched.
peep~ into the hou~e throu~h the front window, which is framed i~ heavy
The would-be assassin escapes. curtams. He sees m the middle of the room a stone basin from which
In the meantime Takae discovers that Okayo is pregnant with
water gushes and overflows onto a stone floor. The house seems deserted,
Miyaji's child. The sisters are arrested in a. general round up of ~gitators
but the narrator notices a cigarette from which smoke still rises, proof
and thrown in jail. They are kept apart, but Takae catches a glimpse of
that someone ~as in the r?om until a few moments before. Yielding to
Okayo just as Miyaji passes by in the corridor. Miyaji has confesse~ _that
sudden temptat10n, he_ dec_1des to go in. Only then does he notice a pitch-
it was he who attempted to kill Okawa. Takae is released and vlSltS a
?la~k Spamsh dog lymg m the sun near the window. The narrator is
lawyer friendly to the strikers who agrees to help secure Okayo's r~lease.
mtngued by a c!ock decorated with the figures of a foreign lady and
As Takae is returning home, she is struck by a ball. She retrieves It, an~
gentleman standmg before a bootblack who once every second polishes
gives it to a little girl who, she learns, is Okawa's granddaughter and hts
 Appendix 1234
th e gen tl e man's left shoe. On a table are books withWh' German titles, and
l ? H .
on the wall is a picture he has seen before-is it by _ist ~r. e tnes to
imagine what kind of man owns this house, but everythmg about the
place is so unreal that he wonders. if he wi_ll not pr~sently waken and
.
discover th the has turned into a kmd of Rip van Wmkle. As he leaves
a · "W 11 h
he thinks he hears the Spanish dog say in a human v01ce, . e , t at~as
· I a strange visitor I had today." Then, after an emmently doghke
ce rt am y . · · "L · ·
yawn, he turns into a middle-aged man ma black suit. eamng agamst
the chair before the desk, he calmly opens a large book and starts turn-
. th e page,
mg s a sti'll-unlit cigarette in his mouth.". The
. story concludes,
. .
"It is a truly balmy spring afternoon. I am standmg m a field of mixed
tre~s in the silent hills."
7. Tokai no Yiiutsu (Melancholy of the City) by Sato Haruo
The novel opens after the poet's ret~rn to th~ city from his melan-
choly retreat in the wilderness. The basic materials of the story were
furnished by actual experiences, and the character~ all have m~dels. Un-
like Rural Melancholy, moreover, there is a recogmzable plot with clearly
defined incidents, and the characters are realistically draw_n. The most
interesting character is not the poet but his friend, Emo~! Shosan, an
unsuccessful writer of Naturalist fiction. Shosan's pat~et1c man~er of
living, his cadging of small sums from friends, his readmess to yield to
struggling young authors the sure-fire plots he has thought up but never
put down on paper-all make of him a me~orable figure. The ~oet, at
Shosan's urging, reads one of his rare pub_hs.hed wo~~s. The ed1to~ ac-
cepted it only out of pity for Shosan, but 1t 1s ~urpnsmgly well written
and, unlike the author, does not produce a farcical effect. But the poet,
on rereading, discovers what is wrong:
Shosan's style was mature, and his grasp of psychology had ~n.ques-
tionably attained a certain level of competence, but-t~ put i~ m. the
least sympathetic terms-it was the work of a man with ar~ifictally
cultivated literary aspirations. Shosan had absorbed everythi~g that
was to be absorbed, but in the process all traces o~ you~hf~l imma-
turity had been lost, and along with his immaturity, vitality. W~y
should this have occurred? ... There was no fault to be f~und with
the work. But how could a lack of faults be enough to .qualify~ story
as a work of art? The most pathetic feature was that m t~e .midst of
the composition of this "little Zola" there were the opm10~ one
might expect of a "little Tolstoy." And wit~ all the modermtr a~
Shosan's command, his work suggested that m the eyes of the hter
APPENDIX 1235
ary world it would be judged three years-at the very least three
years-behind the times.1
The poet is kinder toward Shosan than he is toward himself:
He suddenly recalled the house in the country where they had lived
until about two months before. It was the garden he remembered.
Or, rather, the roses in the shadows of the garden. Even a bare six
months ago the roses growing behind that house in the country
seemed somehow symbolic. That was what had made them beauti-
ful. But now there was absolutely nothing that could serve as a
vehicle for his dreams. He lived in an ash-colored city, in a house
the sun never visited; the season was winter, when even sounds
seem to be swallowed up; and he himself was a young writer with-
out talent or accomplishments-no, it would be more exact to say
that he was the husband of an actress who appeared in bit parts at a
theater on the outskirts of the city.2
Notes
L Sato Haruo, Takai no Yz~n SHZ, II, pp. 160-61.
2. Ibid., p. 126.
8. Hitotsu no Tenki (A Turning Point) by Shimaki Kensaku
In Hitotsu no Tenki Takagi, who has committed tenko while in
prison and has been released, looks for work. He meets Homma, an old
friend and former comrade in an unspecified left-wing movement.
Homma is now running a small agency that collects data on labor condi-
tions and similar economic problems. He offers to hire Takagi, but when
Takagi learns that the people who subscribe to Homma's bulletins are
capitalists, he at once loses interest, and Homma himself seems so
"greasy, corrupt, and contemptible" that Takagi averts his eyes. He feels
a chill at the thought that one day he may have no choice but to follow
the same path as Homma.
Takagi goes next to visit an old friend named Koda who lives in a
pleasant suburban house. The place stirs in Takagi a long-suppressed
yearning for the bourgeois comfort he has so long despised. Conversa-
tion is difficult because Koda is obviously reluctant to touch on their past
activities. Takagi finally asks Koda for an introduction to the XX Asso-
ciation. Koda turns pale and at first does not answer. When at last he
speaks it is to say that he has had nothing to do with the association for
 Appendix 1236 APPENDIX 1237

0:er twenty members of the party, including Kimura, are also arrested.
years. He nevertheless writes a note of intr~~uction .. Takagi thanks h~m Kim~ra does not talk, even under police pressure, but Kano does. When
and they agree to meet again, but as Takagi i~ :"'alkmg down th~ stairs, he d1~covers how much weaker he is than Kimura, he is overcome with
Koda runs after him and begs him not to visit the house agam. The
chagrm and humiliation.
major condition of his present employmen~ was that he must break off Noriko visi~s Kano every week in prison, trying to cheer him. He
all relations with his former left-wmg associates. ?o~s not seem m t_he least to appreciate her kindness. Jn the end, he
The next day Takagi goes to the XX Association, where he is given a
msi~uates that she 1s probably having affairs with other men while he is
cold reception. He attempts to explain to Yano, a woman ~embe~ of the behmd bars. In her reply, the first criticism she has ever uttered she
n·zation the background of his tenko and his present difficulties, b.ut
orga i , . · f · h. r~lates how miserable he has always made her. Kano realizes for th; first
she is unsympathetic. She says she cannot accept his c1aim_ o _wis ~ng to time how badly he has treated Noriko. He has always justified his tyran-
" ·mple soldier of the movement" unless he proves his smcenty. by
b e a s1 · · ks nical behavior in terms of the great work that he was engaged in, and he
his actions. He eagerly agrees to do whatever the XX As~oc1~t10~ as . w~ sure that women were inferior beings who were meant to satisfy his
Yano orders him to collect two hundred yen for the orgamzation m four wishes.
days. Takagi is taken aback by this unexpected assignment, but he One visitors' day Kano informs Noriko of his decision to commit
accepts. , . tenk6. She does not display any emotion. Soon afterward Kano is re-
Takagi visits old friends and former sympathizers of the movement,
leased, only to find that many old friends have turned against him. He
but he is rebuffed everywhere and manages to collect altogether only ten
hopes ~ori~o wil~ offer comfort, but she no longer has any to give. When
yen. When he shows the money to Yano s~e openly expresses her con-
he persists m askmg her whether she has had relations with other men
tempt, asserting that his failure reveals his lack of zeal for the c~ass she finally demands_ to know what he would do if she had. He says tha~
struggle. Takagi is repelled by Yano's attitude, even though he recogmzes
he woul~ at one~ divorce her. Noriko insists that if he has the right to
that under present conditions such persons are bound to be at the _heart
e~tram~ntal affam, so has she, but Kano will not even consider her
of every organization in Japan. He decides to return to the place 1n the
v1ewpomt. She denounces Kano's egoism, and declares that he should
country where he had worked before. He hopes that the people he
have discussed his tenko with her before making the decision. She re-
trained are still "guarding their flag." veals also that she and Kimura have loved each other for years, even
t~ough they have not had sexual relations. Kano, stunned by the revela-
uon, says he now respects Kimura, and that he realizes he and Noriko
9. Byakuya (White Night) by Murayama Tomoyoshi
are wandering in a long white night.
Kano and Noriko have been married seven years, but have never
derived much pleasure from each other's compan~. Kano is a l_eft-wing
10. "Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita" (Under the Forest of
writer of some reputation; Noriko edits a magazme for w?rkmg-cl~ss
Cherry Trees in Full Bloom) by Sakaguchi Ango
children. One night Kano informs Noriko that h~ has f~llen m_ love w:i.th
the actress Mizuho and wants to marry her. Mizuho is marned to an-
One day the bandit encounters some travelers. He kills the man but
other man, but Kano, believing that she really loves him, asks th~ hus-
takes the woman as his new bride. From the first she seems determined
band to give her up. In reply, he receives a_ telegram from Mizuho
to torment him. She refuses to walk any of the way to his retreat in the
ordering him never to get in touch with her agam. Kano later learns th~t
mountains, and insists not only that he carry her but that he run, even up
although Mizuho had pretended to be interested in t~e works ~f St~lm
the steepest paths. When at last they reach his den, the bandit is ex-
and Bukharin in order to please him, she was solely mterested 1~ usmg
hausted, but before he has time even to catch his breath, the new wife
him to advance her career, and never had any intention of leaving her
demands that he kill all his other wives except the ugliest, who will be
husband. Kano, dismissing his affair with Mizuho as a p~s.sing infatua-
h~r servant. He complies, but again he feels fear. Her beauty captivates
tion, makes up with Noriko and throws himselfin~o his wntmg and work
hun but causes much the same dread as he had felt while walking under
for the "organization," apparently the Comm~mst p~rty. In ~he mea°:'C
the cherry trees in full bloom.
while Kimura, the chief theorist of the party, 1s helpmg Nonko to ~d1t
The wife, dissatisfied with the primitive conditions in the mountains,
her magazine. One morning at dawn Kano is taken off by the pobce.
 Appendix 1238

next demands that the bandit take her to the capital. He attempts to put
her off, begging her to wait until after the cherry trees have blossomed,
but she mocks his fear. He passes once more through the forest of cherry
trees where he feels a terrible chill and hears the wind howl under the
blossoms. He runs, weeps, prays, struggles to escape from the forest.
When finally he emerges, it is like waking from a nightmare.
The bandit, the wife, and the ugly servant go to the capital. Each
night the bandit robs a house in order .to satisfy his wife's demands for
clothes, jewels, and especially human heads. She keeps the heads in a
room where she plays games with them, enacting fantasies about the love
of an aristocrat's head for the beautiful head of a princess. When she
tires of this innocent game, she mutilates the heads horribly as her fancy
moves her. By this time the bandit is bored with killing people and
yearns for his mountains. One night, afte;r having been ordered to bring
back the head of a dancing girl, he runs away from the capital and
GLOSSARY
wanders in the mountains. When he returns to the capital it is to inform
his wife that he is leaving her. For the first time she is strangely gentle.
She declares she will live anywhere, even in the mountains, providing it
is with him.
They set out again for the mountains. He takes the old road that
leads under the blossoms; at first he is not afraid. Presently, however, he
feels a chill, and becomes aware that the woman's hands around his neck
have grown cold. Then he understands that the woman is a devil. The
beautiful woman on his back is transformed into a hag with purple skin
and frizzy green hair. Horrified, he breaks into a run, but her hands
tighten around his throat. He musters all his strength to break her grip Akahata The oflkal -
Asahi Sh' b I newspaper of the Japanese Communist party.
and finally strangles her, only for her to resume her former appearance. . t"}. un :', newsp~per, founded in 1879, that is nationall ub-
Petals start to fall on her body. He shakes her,. embraces her, but it is A khshed, It enJoys special popularity among intellectuals y p
useless. The petals continue to pile on her body as he sits there dazed. sa usa A rather tawdry district fY. k k . .
After a while he thinks to brush the petals from his wife's face, but he Dakin Takizawa Bakin (1767-184~) o ~o, nown fo~ its entertainments.
tion of which th b k .' an important wnter of yomihon fie-
discovers there is nothing under the petals, and even as he stretches out
his hand and body to brush away the petals, he too disappears. "After-
ward there were only the petals, and a cold emptiness lay over every-
!akt,
. ' e est nown is Hakkenden (Eight Do s)
The shogunate; the government of the shogun in E3o .
bi~;d~n ~su,~/asho (l 644-!,694): the greatest of the haiku p~ets.
thing." 1 e iterary world, which consists of · fl · 1 ·

Note
Bun ;1~~i
~
who_ establish rep~tations by their prai~: ;re:~1:de:~t:;to:nd
A literary magazme, originally founded in 1893 wh· h .
JliJ~d r~at prestige in ~he Meiji period. A second serie,s, is;:ede~~
l. Teihon Sakaguchi Ango Zensha, III, p. 368. b , _n a postwar senes have maintained its reputation
ungaku Literature; a term not in use until the M ... . d .
Bungei Bunka A "little . ,, . e1J1 peno .
tional literature wh;agazmed founded m 1938 by scholars oftradi-
Bungei Jidai A "little ma;~~i:se~'
the Shinkankaku-h Th'
:i:~~:}~;~~ty
.
issues a~peared ..
and associated with
Bungez. Shunja A pop a. l
lfty-two issues appeared
. . ·
u ar magazme of wide circulation that includes

1239
 Glossary 1240 GLOSSARY 1241

order to heat a room, warm one's hands, or boil tea.

literary and nonliterary materials. Founded in 1923 by Kikuchi
hiragana. The cursive form of the kana syllabary.
Kan. hokku F1rst verse of a series of haikai linked verse. Later came to be
bunjin A "man of letters" in the old-fashioned s~nse; the dilettante ideal
considered an independent verse form, commonly known as haiku.
of writers and artists who look back nostalgically to the past.
honk~ku shi5~etsu "Authent_ic fiction"-that is, stories, generally related
bunjinga A painting by ( or in the manner of) a bu~jin. . m the th1rd person, which are not autobiographical.
burai-ha The "libertines"-a group of postwar wnters known for thelr
Hotog~gisu A haiku magazine, originally founded in 1897, which also
refusal to conform to accepted standards of behavior.
pnnted fiction of importance.
Chikamatsu Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725), the outstanding dra-
Iwanami Bunko The Iwanami Library, a collection (founded in 1927)
matist of the puppet theater. that provided the classics of both East and West to readers in an
chonin The townsmen-merchants and artisans-during the Tokugawa
inexpensive paperback format.
period. .. . . jidaimono Plays, generally based (however loosely) on historical facts,
chukan shi5setsu "Middlebrow" fiction-popular wntmgs aimed at audi-
which depict the actions of people of the past.
ences between the readers of "pure literature" and of pulp ro-
jiyii minken "Freedom and Popular Rights"-a movement of the Meiji
mances. • period.
Chao Karon A leading "general magazine," founded in 1887. Publica-
Joruri The puppet theater, known as Bunraku today. Also, the music of
tion in this magazine was the dream of many writers, especially
this theater.
from about 1910 to 1930. !umb~ngaku ''.P.ure literature"-as opposed to literature of mass appeal.
donin A member of a group that publishes a magazine (as opposed to
j!Lnsh1 The smc1de of a retainer, following his master in death.
commercially published magazines). . kagura Dances, usually performed at Shinto shrines.
Edo The name by which the city of Tokyo was known until 1868.
Kaizo A l~ading intellectual magazine, founded in 1919, that printed
Edokko A native of Edo. some important works of fiction in the 1920s and 1930s.
engo A related word; that is, a word connected to others in a poem by
kakekotoba A "pivot word"; that is, a word with a double meaning, one
means of overtones as well as meaning. . related to the preceding word, the other to what follows.
Garakuta Bunko "Rubbishheap Library"-the periodical published
kambun Prose in classical Chinese composed by Japanese.
from 1885 by the Ken'yusha. . kambun chokuyaku A style of Japanese that resembles "direct transla-
gembun itchi The principle of unifying spoken and wntt~n l~ng~ages,
tion from the Chinese."
first successfully achieved in the works of Futabatei Sh1me1 and
kana ~e Japanese syllabary, forty-eight phonetic symbols, each of
Yamada Bimyo. which represents a syllable, such as ka, ki, ku, ke, ko.
gesaku A general name for fiction composed from about 1770 to 1870.
kannen shosetsu "Novel of ideas"-used especially of certain fiction of
Originally, humorous. . . _ the 1890s.
haikai A word used originally for the comic poetry m the Kokznshu, and
Kannan A Buddhist divinity, also known as Kwannon in Japanese and
later for the comic style oflinked verse. It designated the poetry th~t
Kwan-yin in Chinese. .
grew from comic linked verse, especially the poetry of Basho and his
kanshi Poetry in classical Chinese composed by Japanese.
school. kanzen choaku "Promotion of virtue and chastisement of vice"-the os-
haikara Said to be derived from "high collar"; it describes a fondness
tensible justification of works of fiction and drama.
for exotic, Western things. kare, kanojo Pronouns meaning "he" and "she" used to translate these
haiku See hokku. words when they appeared in foreign texts.
hakama The divided skirts worn with a man's formal kimoJ,10; also worn
kata~ana T~e squarish form of kana script, used especially in transcrib-
by girl students in the Meiji period. mg foreign names.
hanashika A professional raconteur. kawara-ban Broadsheets, often detailing scandals. Popular in the early
heitai Ordinary soldiers, as opposed to officers. . . Meiji period.
hibachi A large vessel, usually of pottery, in which charcoal 1s burned Ill
 Glossary 1242 GLOSSARY 1243

Miyako ~himbun A newspaper, published 1884-1942. In its early days it

Keio Gijuku Also known as Keio University. An important private uni-
published many important writers.
versity, founded in 1858 by Fukuzawa Yukichi as a school for
monogatari The traditional Japanese romance.
Dutch learning. Myojo "Morning Star"-a poetry journal founded in 1900 by Yosano
kendi5 The traditional Japanese martial art of fencing.
Tekkan and associated with romantic poetry.
Ken'yfisha A group of young writers who gathered around Ozaki Koyo
nagauta A form of traditional singing to musical accompaniment.
in 1885 and produced much popular literature.
Nichireki A "little magazine," published 1933-1941. It was the forum
kirin A mythological beast, known in the West as the "kylin," though
for several important tenko writers.
later associated with the giraffe. It was said to appear at the time of
Nihon Shugi "Japanism"-a nationalistic ideal.
the birth of a sage. Ningen ''.~um~nity"-a literary journal founded in 1946 by various writ-
kiyomoto A form of traditional singing to the accompaniment of the
ers hvmg m Kamakura, including Kawabata Yasunari.
samisen. ninji5bon Works of gesaku fiction that emphasized romantic attachments.
koan Zen riddles intended to promote enlightenment.
rabu Sometimes given as riibu: the Japanese transcription of the English
Kokinshil The first court-sponsored anthology of Japanese poetry, com-
word "love"; often used with overtones of platonic love.
piled in A.D. 905. , Raj Sanyo An important kanshi poet (l 730-1832), also remembered for
kokkeibon "Funny books"-a variety of gesaku writings.
his patriotic fervor.
koku A measure of rice-about five bushels-by which the stipends of
Roba A literary periodical, founded in 1926, prevailingly leftist in ori-
samurai were calculated. entation.
Kokumin Shimbun A newspaper, founded by Tokutomi Soho, which ap-
Russo-Japanese War Fought in 1904-1905.
peared between 1890 and 1942. . Ryudo Club A group of literary and artistic people who met at a French
Konjaku Monogatari "Tales of Long Ago," a large collect10n of tales
from India, China, and Japan, probably compiled late in the twelfth restaurant in Tokyo called Ryudo-ken.
Ryutei Tanehiko A gesaku writer (1783-1842), known especially for his
century. long romance, Inaka Genji.
Kyobushi5 The Ministry of Religious Instruction during the early Meiji
Saikaku_ lhara Saikaku (1642-1693), the most important writer of fiction
period. dunng the Tokugawa period.
kyoka A comic variety of waka. Samba Shikitei Samba (1776-1822), gesaku writer known for his kok-
kyoshi Comic poetry in Chinese. . keibon.
magokoro "True feelings" -an ideal in the novels of Satom1 Ton.
satori Zen enlightenment.
Mainichi Shimbun A newspaper, founded in 1872. Formerly consisted of
sedoka An archaic form of poetry, written in six lines of 5, 7, 7, 5, 7, 7
the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun and the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun,
but combined in 1911. Known under the present name since 1943. It syllables.
sepp~ku Ritual disembowelment, performed by samurai to prove their
has published much serialized fiction and given awards for literary
mnocence or to express their devotion to a dead master.
excellence. sewa~ono Domestic tragedies describing events in contemporary so-
Manyi5sha The great collection of poetry compiled in the eighth century.
ciety.
Also written Man'yi5shii and Mannyoshu.
shakuhachi A vertical flute made of bamboo, which produces a breathy,
marumage The style of arranging the hair favored by married w?men.
Maruzen A large bookseller in Tokyo (and elsewhere), founded m 1894.
rather desolate sound.
It.has been the source of foreign books for generations of Japanese shasei "Portrayal of life"-an ideal of painting that was extended to po-
etry and prose.
intellectuals. shiden The historical accounts written by Mori Ogai about figures of the
masuraoburi An ideal of manliness, associated with the literature of the
Tokugawa period.
warrior class. Shigarami-zoshi A literary periodical founded by the Shinseisha in 1889.
Meiji Reign name of Emperor Mutsuhito (1867-1912). .
Miyako no Hana An important literary periodical, founded m 1888. Shiki A poetry magazine, originally founded in 1934.
 Glossary 1244
shimbun The ordinary word for newspaper.
Shimpa A form of drama, created in the 1880s, which tended to present
melodramatic incidents.
Shincho An important literary magazine, founded in 1904.
Shinkankaku-ha The "New Sensationalists"-a movement associated es-
pecially with Yokomitsu Riichi.
shinkyo shosetsu Mental attitude novels-a variety of the "I novel,"
which usually involves meditation on some aspect of nature.
Shin Nihon Bungaku A literary magazine, founded in 1946, that was
later intimately connected with the Japanese Communist party.
Shinran An important Buddhist priest (1173-1262), founder of the Shin
sect of Jodo Buddhism.
Shinseisha A poetry society founded by Mori Ogai and others in 1889;
Shinshicho "New Thought Tides"-a litei;ary magazine of Tokyo Univer-
sity, originally founded in 1907, and many times resuscitated. .
shintaishi Poetry in the modern style, the kind of poetry started i.n the
early Meiji era in imitation of European examples. . Waseda Bungaku The literary magazine of Waseda University, associ-
Shirakaba-ha The group associated with the literary magazine Shira-
kaba, founded in 1910 by Mushakoji Saneatsu, Shiga Naoya, and
others.
shite The principal actor in a No play.
Shi to Shiron A poetry quarterly, founded in 1928, that was widely read
for its advanced contents.
shoji A window (or sometimes door) consisting of a wooden grille over
which paper is pasted; traditional in a Japanese house.
shosetsu Fiction. The word is used indiscriminately for the novel, the
novella, and the short story, and even for factual accounts related in
a literary manner.
Showa Reign name of Emperor Hirohito, from 1926.
Shunsui Tamenaga Shunsui (1790-1843), a gesaku author; the leading
writer of ninjobon.
Shun'yodo A publishing company, founded in 1878, which was espe-
cially prominent during the Meiji period.
Sino-Japanese J#zr Fought 1894-1895, mainly in Korea.
sago zasshi "General magazines" that contain a comprehensive variety
of nonfiction articles, short stories, and serialized fiction.
sokuten kyoshi "Follow heaven and leave the self"-a saying of Na-
tsume Soseki that is said to epitomize his philosophy.
sorobun An old-fashioned style of Japanese, characterized by the use of
the copula verb soro; used in letters until 1945.
Subaru A literary magazine, the successor to Myojo, founded in 1909.
taidan A dialogue between two persons of approximately equal impor-
tance, sometimes prolonged to book length.
GLOSSARY 1245
Taisho The reign name of Emperor Yoshihito (1912-1926).
Taiyo A magazine of general content, first published in 1895.
tanka The classic verse form in thirty-one syllables; earlier called waka.
taoyameburi The feminine ideal in Japanese literature.
tatami The floor-covering, woven of grass, found in Japanese houses.
tenko "Conversion"-usually refers to a shift away from Marxism.
Tokaidi5 The highway between Kyoto and Edo.
tokiwazu A variety of traditional singing with accompaniment.
tokonoma The alcove in a traditional Japanese room where objects of
art and flower arrangements are displayed.
Tokyo Semmon Gakko The forerunner of Waseda University.
Tsuruya Namboku An important dramatist (1755-1829) of the Kabuki
stage.
tsuzukimono Serialized fiction.
waka The classical Japanese verse form, perfected in the Kokinshu.
waki The secondary role in a No play, often a priest.
ated especially with Naturalism.
Waseda Univer~ity An important private university in Tokyo, founded in
1882 by Okuma Shigenobu as Tokyo Semmon Gakko, renamed
Waseda in 1902.
watakushi shosetsu The "I novel"; also called shishosetsu.
Yamato-damashii "The soul of Japan"-an ideal frequently invoked by
nationalists.
Yanagibashi A section of Tokyo along the river Sumida, known for its
geisha houses and other places of entertainment. ·
yokan A kind of sweet, made of jellied bean-paste, flavored with fruit.
yomihon A serious, often didactic form of gesaku fiction.
Yomiuri Shimbun A newspaper, founded in 1874. It was of particular
importance in the development of Meiji literature.
Yoshiwara The most famous licensed quarter of Tokyo.
zadankai A group discussion, in which three or more persons partici-
pate, which is later printed in a magazine or newspaper.
zenshii Complete works-either the complete works of a particular au-
t~or, or a multivolume set on such subjects as "modern Japanese
literature" or "modem Japanese poetry."
zuihitsu "Following the brush"-a kind of essay, popular with readers,
who feel it enables them to come close to favorite authors.
 SELECTED LIST OF
TRANSLATIONS INTO
ENGLISH

Note: This list is not intended to be complete. A much fuller bibliogra-

phy of translations, not only into English but into many other languages,
is Modern Japanese Literature in Translation: A Bibliography, published
in 1979 by The International House of Japan Library in Tokyo.

Collections of Stories by Various Writers

Hibbett, Howard. Contemporary Japanese Literature. New York: Alfred

A. Knopf, 1977.
Keene, Donald. Modern Japanese Literature. New York: Grove, 1956.
McKinnon, Richard N. The Heart Is Alone. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1957.
Mishima, Yukio, and Bownas, Geoffrey. New Writing in Japan. Har-
mondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1972.
Modern Japanese Short Stories. Tokyo: Japan Publications, 1961.
Morris, Ivan. Modern Japanese Stories. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode,
1961.
Saeki, Shoichi. The Shadow of Sunrise. Tokyo: Kodansha International,
1966.

1247
 Selected List of Translations into English
Works by Individual Authors
Akutagawa Ryiinosuke. Exotic Japanese Stories, trans. Takashi Kojima
and John McVittie. New York: Liveright, 1964.
- - - . Hell Screen and Other Stories, trans. W. H. H. Norman. Tokyo:
Hokuseido, 1952.
- - . Japanese Short Stories, trans. Takashi Kojima. New York: Live-
right, 1961. ,
- - . Kappa, trans. Geoffrey Bownas. Tokyo: Tutt~e, 19.7.1.
- - . F.ashomon and Other Stories, trans. Takash1 Kojima and John
McVittie. New York: Liveright, 1964.
Arishima Takeo. A Certain Woman, trans. Kenneth Strong. Tokyo: Uni-
versity of Tokyo Press, 1978.
Dazai Osamu. No Longer Human, trans. Donald Keene. New York: New
Directions, 1958.
- - . The Setting Sun, trans. Donald Keene. New York: New Direc-
tions, 1956.
Enchi Fumiko. The Waiting Years, trans. John Bester. Tokyo: Kodansha
International, 1971.
Fukasawa Shichir6, Uno Chiyo, and Ishikawa Jun. The Old ~?man, the
Wife and the Archer, trans. Dontlld Keene. New Yor~: _:v1k1~g, _1961.
Futabatei Shimei. An Adopted Husband, trans. Buhachuo M1tsm and
Gregg M. Sinclair. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1919 .. _
- - . Mediocrity, trans. Glenn W. Shaw. Toky~: Hokus.e1d?, 1927.
- - . Ukigumo, trans. Marleigh Grayer Ryan, m Japan s First Modern
Novel: Ukigumo. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967 ..
Hayashi Fumiko. The Floating Clouds, trans. Yoshiyuki Koitabash1 and
Martin C. Collcutt. Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 1965.
Higuchi Ichiyo. Stories trans. Robert Ly?ns J?anly, in In the Shade of
Spring Leaves. New Haven: Yale Umve~s1ty Press_, 1981.
Hino Ashihei. Wheat and Soldiers, trans. Sh1dzue Ish1moto. New York.
Rinehart, 1939.
Ibuse Masuji. Black Rain, trans. John Bester. Tokyo: Kodansha Interna-
tional, 1969.
- - . Lieutenant Lookeast and Other Stories, trans. John Bester.
Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1971. . . .
Kawabata Yasunari. Beauty and Sadness, trans. Howard H1bbett. New .
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. . .
- - . The Existence and Discovery of Beauty, trans. V. H. V1ghebno.
Tokyo: The Mainichi Newspapers, 1969.
- - . The House of the Sleeping Beauties, trans. Edward G. Seiden-
sticker. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1969.
1248
SELECTED LIST OF TRANSLATIONS INTO ENGLISH 1249
- - -.. The lzu Dancer and Other Stories, trans. Edward G. Seiden-
sticker. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1974.
- - - . Japan the Beautiful and Myself, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker.
Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1969.
--.-. The Lake, trans. Reiko Tsukimura. Tokyo: Kodansha Interna-
tional. 1974.
- - . The Master of Go, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.
- - . Snow Country, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker. New York: Al-
fred A. Knopf, 1956. ·
- - . The Sound of the Mountain, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.
- - . Thousand Cranes, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1959.
Kinoshita Naoe. Pillar of Fire, trans. Kenneth Strong. London: Allen
and Unwin, 1972.
Kobayashi Takiji. "The Factory Ship" and "The Absentee Landlord"
_ trans. Frank Motofuji. Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1973. '
Koda Rohan. Leaving the Hermitage, trans. Jiro Nagura. London: Allen
and Unwin, 1925.
- - . Stories trans. Chieko Irie Mulhern, in Koda Rohan. Boston:
Twayne Publishers, 1977.
Kunikida Doppo. "Five Stories by Kunikida Doppo," trans. Jay Rubin.
Monumenta Nipponica, XVIII, No. 3. 1972.
Mishima Yukio. After the Banquet, trans. by Donald Keene. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1963.
- - . Confessions of a Mask, trans. Meredith Weatherby. New York:
New Duections, 1958.
.
- . Death in Midsummer, trans. Edward Seidensticker, et al. New
York: New Directions, 1966.
- . The Decay of the Angel, trans. Edward Seidensticker. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1974.
- . Forbidden Co/ors, trans. Alfred H. Marks. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1968.
- . Runaway Horses, trans. Michael Gallagher. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1973.
- . The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, trans. John
Nathan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.
. - . The Sound of ITTives, trans. Meredith Weatherby. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.
- - . Spring Snow, trans. Michael Gallagher. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1972.
 Selected List of Translations into English 1250
- - - . Sun and Steel, trans. John Bester. Tokyo: Kodansha Interna-
tional, 1970.
- - . The Temple of Dawn, trans. E. Dale Saunders and Cecilia
Segawa Seigle. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973.
- - . The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, trans. Ivan Morris. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959.
- - . Thirst for Love, trans. Alfred H. Marks. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1969.
- - . Yukio Mishima on Hagakure, trans. Kathryn Sparling. London:
Souvenir Press, 1977. · Tokyo: Tuttle, 1974.
Mori Ogai. The Incident at Sakai, trans. David Dilworth and J. Thomas
Rimer. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1977.
- - . Saiki Kai, trans. David Dilworth and J. Thomas Rimer. Hono-
lulu: University Press of Hawaii, 19177.
- - . Vita Sexualis, trans. Kazuji Ninomiya and Sanford Goldstein~
Tokyo: Tuttle, I 972.
- - - . The Wild Geese, !rans. Kingo Ochiari and Sanford Goldstein.
Tokyo: Tuttle, 1959.
Mushakoji Saneatsu. Friendship, trans. Ryozo Matsumoto. Tokyo: Hoku-
seido, 1958.
- - . Love and Death, trans. William F. Marquardt. New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1958.
Nagai Kafii. Geisha in Rivalry, trans. Kurt Meissner and Ralph Friede-
rich. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1963.
- - . A Strange Tale from East of the River and Other Stories, trans.
Edward Seidensticker. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1972.
Nagayo Yoshiro. The Bronze Christ, trans. Kenzoh Yada and Henry P.
Ward. New York: Taplinger, 1959.
Naka Kansuke. The Silver Spoon, trans. Etsuko Terasaki. Chicago: Chi-
cago Review Press, 1976.
Nakagawa Yoichi. Tenno Yugao, trans. Jeremy Ingalls. Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1975.
Nakajima Atsushi. Light, Wind and Dreams, trans. Akira Miwa. Tokyo:
Hokuseido, 1962.
Nakano Shigeharu. Three Works, trans. Brett de Bary. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1979.
Natsume_ ~5seki. And Then, trans. Norma Moore Field. Baton Rouge:
Loms1ana State University Press, 1978.
- - . Botchan, trans. Alan Turney. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
1972.
- - . Grass on the l#iyside, trans. Edwin McClellan. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1969.
SELECTED LIST OF TRANSLATIONS INTO ENGLISH 1251
- - - . I Am a Cat, trans. Aiko Ito and Graeme Wilson. Tokyo: Tuttle,
1975.
- - . Kokoro, trans. Edwin McClellan. Chicago: Regnery, 1957.
- - . Light and Darkness, trans. V. H. Viglielmo. London: Peter
Owen, 1971.
- - . Mon, trans. Francis Mathy. London: Peter Owen, 1972.
- - . Sanshirii, trans. Jay Rubin. Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1977.
- - . Ten Nights of Dream, trans. Aiko Ito and Graeme Wilson.
- - . The Three-cornered World, trans. Alan Turney. London: Peter
Owen, 1965.
- - . The l#iyfarer, trans. Beongcheon Yu. Detroit: Wayne State Uni-
versity Press, 1967.
- - . Within My Glass Doors, trans. Iwao Matsuhara and E. T.
Iglehart. Tokyo: Shinseido, 1928.
Noma Hiroshi. Zone of Emptiness, trans. from French by Bernard
Frechtrnan. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1956.
Ooka Shohei. Fires on the Plain, trans. Ivan Morris. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1957.
Osaragi Jiro. Homecoming, trans. Brewster Horwitz. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1954.
Ozaki Koyo. The Golden Demon, trans. A. and M. Lloyd. Tokyo: Sei-
bundo, 1917.
Shiga Naoya. A Dark Night's Passing, trans. Edwin McClellan. Tokyo:
Kodansha International, 1976.
Shirnazaki Toson. The Broken Commandment, trans. Kenneth Strong.
Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1974.
- - . The Family, trans. Cecilia Segawa Seigle. Tokyo: University of
Tokyo Press, 197 6.
Takeda Taijun. This Outcast Generation, and Luminous Moss, trans.
Yusaburo Shibuya and Sanford Goldstein. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1967.
Takeyarna Michio. The Harp of Burma, trans. Howard Hibbett. Tokyo:
Tuttle, 1966.
Tanizaki Junichiro. Diary of a Mad Old Man, trans. Howard Hibbett.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.
- - . The Key, trans. Howard Hibbett. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1961.
- - . The Makioka Sisters, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1957.
- - . The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi, trans. Anthony H.
Chambers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.
 II
i
Selected List of Translations into English 1252

r. l trans Howard Hibbett. New York: Alfred

- . Seven Japanese 1a es, ·
~-~::\>~!J;; Nettles, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker. New York:
Alfred A Knopf, 1955.
Tayama Katai. The Quilt and Other Stories, trans. Kennet
h G H h 11
. ens a .
l
Tok~o: U~~v~rs~y of!~ky_o ~~:s~n~!\rans. Kenneth Strong. New
Tokutom1 KenJlfO. rootprm s m ,

Tsub~r:~:a:~a;;;~i;~~r Eyes, trans. Akira Miura. Tokyo: Kenkyusha,

19?7 · .. .
Yokom1tsu Ri1ch1.
"L ,, d Other Stories of Yokomitsu Riichi, trans.
ove an p 1974
er k . University of Tokyo ress, ·
Dennis Keene. 1 0 yo.
- . Time and Others, trans. John Bester, e a .
t 1 Tokyo· Hara Shobo
. , INDEX
1965.

A la recherche du temps perdu (Proust), Account of My Hut, An [Hojoki]

697-98, 1010
A l'ombre des jeunes jilles en jleur
(Proust), 700
ABC Library [lroha Bunko] (Tame-
naga Shunsui; Somezaki Nobufusa),
11
ABCD [Ko, Otsu, Hei, Tei) (Nakano
Shigeharu), 1005
'"Abe Clan, The" ["Abe Ichizoku"]
(Mori Ogai), 372-75
Abe Kobo, 708, 1101, l219n34
Abe Sada, 1084, 1085-86
Abe Tomoji: Happiness [Kofuku], 675
Absentee Landlord, The [Fuzai Jinushi)
(Kobayashi Takiji), 620-21
Abstractions, 978
..Account of an Imposter" ["Nisemono
Ki"](Ishikawa Jun), ll09nl83
'"Account of Chinatown" ["Chaina-
taun no Ki'1 (Nagai Kaffi), 405-06
Account of Friendships (Masamune
lfakucho), 509,510
"Account of Froth" ["'lfomatsu no Ki-
roku") (Sata Ineko), 1154
(Kamo no Chomei), 559, 1052
Account of Non-Chalant, An [Non-
Chalant Kiroku] (Sato lfaruo), 641-
42
"Account of Spring Breezes and Au-
tumn Rain" ["Shumpii Shuu
Roku") (Tanizaki Jun'ichiro), 724-
25
Account of the Flourishing City of Edo
[Edo Hanjo Kil (Terakado Seiken),
43
Activism (kodo shugo), 662, 71 ln76
Actress Nana, The [Joya Nana] (Nagai
Kafii), 395
Actualite, 18ln40
Adaptations, 272; Dazai Osamu,
1047-48; European works, 71; Mau-
passant, 224; Western plots, 135;
Zola, 395
Adolphe (Constant), 416
Adultery, 465-66
Advocacy of art (geijutsu shugi), 971
Aesop's Fables, 51, 63
Aesthetic principles, 187-88

1253