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A waste of effort: Psychological projection as a primary mode of alienation in selected novels by Kawabata Yasunari
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A waste of effort: Psychological projection as a primary mode of alienation in selected novels by Kawabata Yasunari
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"A WASTE OF EFFORT": PSYCHOLOGICAL PROJECTION AS A PRIMARY MODE OF ALIENATION IN SELECTED NOVELS BY KAWABATA YASUNARI by Elizabeth Ann Silberman A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Comparative Literature) September 1977 Copyright 1977 by Elizabeth Ann Silberman UMI Number: DP22537 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT Dissertation Publishing UMI DP22537 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6- 1346 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA T H E G R A D U A T E S C H O O L U N IV E R S IT Y P A R K O k . T \ LO S A N G E L E S , C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7 ' V Co >~t S C: 55S2. This dissertation, w ritten by ELIZABETH ANN SILBERMAN under the direction of h .Q .D is s e r ta tio n C o m mittee, and approved by a ll its members, has been presented to and accepted by The Graduate School, in p a rtia l fu lfillm e n t o f requirements of the degree of D O o r O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y Dean DISSERTATION COMMITTEE Chairman ACKNOWLE DGMENT I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to all of the people who have given me their support during my graduate career. First of all, to all of my professors here at University of Southern j l California, I am grateful for the depth and breadth of ' their knowledge which gave me a much more extensive back- , ground than I possessed before. Next, to my employers at ! other institutions, Professors Lloyd Inui and Charles Jernigan at California State University Long Beach, Professor Franklyn Josselyn at Occidental College, Professor John Clendenning at California State University Northridge, and Professor Ben Befu at University of California at Los Angeles, all of whom gave me the oppor tunity to gain valuable teaching experience, I thank each of you. To my guidance committee for this dissertation, Professor James H. Durbin, Jr., Chairman; Dr. George A. Hayden; Dr. John P. Ctossley, Jr., my deepest gratitude for: their continual support, intellectual and moral, for with out their aid I would have had a most difficult time. I They were admirably supported on my qualifying examination committee by Dean David H. Malone, Dr. Sumako Kimizuka, and Dr. Noriko M. Lippit, whom I want to thank for their assistance. Last, sincere appreciation to my bilingual proofreader, Orin E. Serviss, and to my typist, Bill Hewitt,' both of whom came to the project close to its conclusion. Without all of these people, I would not have completed this dissertation on schedule. All Japanese names in the text have been preserved in their normal order, family name first followed by the given name, unless they have been changed in a direct quote or in the title of a book or an article. When only one name appears, it is the family name (i.e., Kawabata, instead of Kawabata Yasunari) with the exceptions being certain novelists whose given names or pen names are most common (i.e., Katai, for Tayama Katai, and Soseki, for Natsume Soseki). iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgment Prologue: Psychological Projection Defined Chapter I. KAWABATA'S SENSE OF BEAUTY: BASIC ASPECTS OF HIS FICTION The Nature of the Novel Nature of Beauty Dual Nature of Woman The Hollow Man as Narrator-Protagonist II. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL QUEST FOR IDEAL BEAUTY Snow Country The Lake III. REVENGE: INTERRUPTION OF THE QUEST Thousand Cranes Beauty and Sadness IV. CONTINUATION OF THE QUEST IN OLD AGE The House of the Sleeping Beauties The Sound of the Mountain Afterword: "One Arm." Re-evaluation of the Quest Appendix A: The Nature of the Self in Modern Japanese Fiction Appendix B: Publishing History Selected Bibliography ii i i I 16 65 ■ 1 1 3 1 6 7 : i 218: 2 3 3 2 4 4 2 5 0 i v PROLOGUE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROJECTION DEFINED I ' When Shimamura first meets- Komako in Snow Country, he i :is impressed by what he thinks of as her "amateur" ( 'shirdto %. ^ ) qualities. She appears to be an innocent girl, still uninitiated into.the seamier side of life as a [mountain geisha in a hot springs resort. During his initial conversation with her, he notices a certain freedom of expression, a lack of restraint in her manner toward him, ! [which would make her "amateur" standing a figment of his i .imagination. This apparent contradiction in her character } i [both attracts and somewhat repels him; however, at this Ipoint in their relationship, Shimamura wants to think of her .as pure and innocent. This purity, this "cleanness," is jreally the result of his fantasy involving her, but it I [exists in his mind without anyone else knowing about it. ! [He sees her as a virginal young woman with some of the 'qualities of the professional entertainer already creeping i jin, but he does not want to accept her as an experienced [woman. He then changes her in his imagination to corres pond to some master plan of his own which only he knows, iShimamura projects onto the girl an image of what he wants [and needs her to be, of what his mind tells him she should I 1 jbe. He denies what she is. He sees two Komakos, the flesh-and-blood woman whom he has observed and rejected and his unrealistic image of her. When he can no longer deceive himself -into believing that his image of her is real, he turns away from Komako as his ideal woman and repeats the same action, the same delusion, with another i I jgirl, Yoko. Shimamura lives at the apex of a romantic tri- i langle, with his sexual partner Komako at one point and his i ideal, fantasy "lover" Yoko at the other. Shimamura sees Yoko as "ideal" with complete disregard of her reality, for he indicates that she may be reaching a point in her development close to.that of Komako when he met her on his first trip to the snow country. She is already helping at parties as a maid, although it would appear unlikely that Jshe would become the kind of professional entertainer that ! jKomako is. We have, therefore, one man, the narrator- protagonist, two real women, and their two projected, •unreal counterparts.* i j Shimamura's relationship with both Komako and Yoko is (the model of a conventional formula which Kawabata uses *The narrator-protagonist is a quasi-narrator, for although ihe does not •tell the story from the first-person point of Jview, we see the action from his perspective. He acts as our interpreter and we see the action from over his 'shoulder. There are three exceptions. In.The Lake we have jtwo narrator-protagonists, Gimpei and Miyako, for the jnarrational stance moves away from Gimpei once to tell Miyako's story. In Beauty and Sadness we have an omnis- |cient narrator, and in "One Arm" we find a first-person !narrative. 2 with minor variations in at least six of his major novels. In each novel his pattern includes at least one triangular relationship. The male narrator-protagonist acts multiple roles: he stands at the pinnacle of the triangle; he is ,the interpreter of the action; and he distorts whatever reality he observes. What we know of the natfator- jprotagonist and the other characters, then, is filtered [through his consciousness. It is this fact which permits [him to distort and dissociate himself from reality. We usually have no other point of reference in the novels. The narrator-protagonist is involved in a search i for his ideal woman. To be ideal she must be the eternal virgin, innocent, pure, "clean and fresh," and untouchable. In at least two cases she is also incorporeal. The very i mature of this ideal woman implies that discovery of her (existence would lead directly to a desire to have her. | [Possession of her would destroy her ideal qualities; (therefore, the narrator-protagonist is trapped in an (unending cycle of search, discovery, destruction of the (ideal, and resumption of the search. His raison d'etre i ■is the search itself, for it can never achieve its goal; |at least, it cannot end realistically in achievement. In ! [ The House of the Sleeping Beauties, old Eguchi does succeed iin possessing his ideal woman, but the nature of his fulfillment is so perverted and distorted that one may ‘ safely say that the achievement of the ideal is a futile I 3 search, doomed by its own definition to failure before it has even begun. The other points of the triangle are the women the narrator-protagonist meets. They usually represent the female stereotypes of the virgin and the siren. The I i narrator-protagonist does not allow the stereotypes to I ;merge; he either keeps them separated in his mind or i (rejects the siren in his pursuit of the virgin. He cannot | iaccept either type of woman as he finds her. He must ! project upon each an image of something else, something ideal, which he creates out of his own consciousness, or, in some examples, out of his subconscious. narrator-protagonist projected image of projected image of purity ^ ___ V purity___. __ siren virgin* The narrator-protagonist is the creator of his ideal "non woman." She exists solely within his consciousness. This I superimposition of the ideal image over fleshly reality is what I will call psychological projection. On first analysis, psychological projection resembles the Western concept of the double. Just how and where does Kawabata's psychological projection differ from its Western counterpart? For the most part, the Western double is implies reality implies projected image aware of his counterpart to some degree. This familiar literary device involves a variety of forms of decomposi tion of character, or "an obsessive balancing or undoing of one idea or force with its opposite."-*- The emphasis falls jon "opposites," what I will call "counterparts." The : double frequently, but not always, involves classic opposi- i itions: the bad self and the guardian angel, the normal iself and the diabolical self, good and evil, active and ipassive characters. These may be represented as mirror images, shadows, or portraits, such as Oscar Wilde's The i j Picture of Dorian Grey or Guy de Maupassant's Le Horla; or as apparently real beings which are visible only to the character who is doubled, as in Joseph Conrad's The Secret 1 Sharer or Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Double; or, finally, as jsome form of real or imagined physical transformation of |one character, as in R. L. Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. j Hyde and Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf. This is subject I jdoubling where both aspects of the character represent i Conflicting drives, orientations, or attitudes about the jself without any reference to other selves.^ Subject doubling is of no concern for Kawabata. He does not permit a narrator-protagonist to meet his own male counterpart, if one does indeed exist, although in The Lake Gimpei thinks he has met his counterpart in the figure of the woman Miyako. Kawabata is far closer to Western object doubling ! which Robert Rogers defines as a representation of some inner conflict expressed in terms of antithetical or incompatible attitudes toward other selves.^ in other words, the conflict within the consciousness is projected outward onto other selves, leaving the narrator-protagonist apparently unchanged. Rogers further explains object doubling as a split which symbolizes conflicting attitudes i ion the part of the perceiver rather than any significant, i ! inherent dualities within the doubled object itself. The split or fragmentation is the result of an inability by the perceiver to tolerate the anxiety which results from the i original conflict.^ Once again using Shimamura as our example, we see his inability to establish a normal relationship with a woman, sexual or platonic, as a form of (original conflict which results in his perception of woman 1 I jas a type rather than as an individual; furthermore, this 1 I 'conflict produces the actual need to project onto these i i jtypes what he expects them to be. ! The German term Doppelganger as defined by Jean Paul Richter is "pairs of friends (in the original sense of 'fellows, two of a pair1) who together form; a unit, but I individually appear as a 'half,' dependent on the alter j ego."^ This signifies an awareness of the other half, of jthe alter ego, which is lacking in Kawabata’s projected i jcounterparts. The Doppelganger further implies "a spiritual ■affinity linking the physically identical pairs of characters. This early definition depends on the pairs having similar or identical features, on their being twins. As the theme of the double evolves with the passage of time, the emphasis replaces physical likeness with spiritual affinity, yet this still suggests an awareness by one .character of its double. It becomes a visual manifestation I of a moral abstraction^ as we see with Leggett representing i I ithe criminal element of the captain's nature in The Secret i ---------- ; Sharer. (Here it should be noted that Leggett is not only ja spiritual double but also a physical twin whom only the captain sees.) In broader terms, the use of the Doppe1ganger is a technique for heightening the unreality^ ] !of situations in a novel. As the shift from physical to t Spiritual affinity grows more pronounced, the term expands and approaches Kawabata*s psychological projection. I jjapanese critics have often commented on Kawabata's use of ! j I i jk I j bunshin ( J] J j j ) , which literally means "the division of ithe body or self," but which is more commonly translated as "the second self, the alter ego." Even this term is inade quate to define Kawabata5s projections, for it, like the double, implies that,the counterparts are able to recognize each other. t ! The general concept of the double is associated with projection as a defense mechanism which can be seen as a device for the isolation of the projector, the displacement of the self, repression of a basic conflict, or a turning against the self.Certainly, we cannot deny that Kawabata1s narrator-protagonists use psychological projec tion as a way of isolating themselves from normal human involvement and of avoiding a confrontation.with their basic inabilities to interact with other selves.' The most typical form of projection for Rogers and for Kawabata i .involves isolation of the projector as a primary defense mechanism.H i Projection as a defense mechanism, then/ works most | jclearly in the narrator-protagonist's relationship with women, although this does not mean that the mechanism can not also work between two men. Kawabata"s narrator- jprotagonists have no male friends in any of the novels. ! ! IThe search for the ideal keeps them isolated, protected by their fantasies from any outside reality. The "wide abyss between the actual behavior of women: and man’s ideal of what that behavior ought to be"^ leads to the dichotomizing ' jof women by Kawabata's narrator-protagonists, since no one can successfully possess the virgin and the siren at the jsame time. "Complete, normal, natural as some of these |individuals may seem to be at first glance," the narrator- i protagonist can only see them in terms of his own needs, as being psychologically inicomplete and dependent on some contrasting counterpart.^ Their incompleteness is a fabrication. It is really the narrator-protagonist1s own deficiencies which are controlling the action here. 8 Kawabata1s narrator-protagonists are unable to resolve the different aspects of the sexual nature of woman. There are four basic opinions a man may hold about the.sexual nature of women. He may regard woman™ kind as pure, as lecherous, as castrating, or as normal, that is, neither pure nor lecherous but as j a mixture of the two. A variation of the first I two views occurs when women are conceived as falling into two groups instead of one: nubile i maidens who are objects of worship or affection ; more than lust and sluts who are not particularly ! worthy of one's esteem but are good to go to bed i with, a view known as the sexual double standard. 4 i Rogers' categories apply to Kawabatafs narrator- jprotagonists. They are able to see only the virgin and the siren, idealizing and searching for the first while dis liking but needing the latter. Only the narrator- i protagonist sees the double nature of woman in unrealistic !terms. Kawabata does not provide the narrator-protagonist jwith a double or a counterpart, nor does he give him any sensibility of his own possible duality. On rare t ! ioccasions, Kawabata permits the narrator-protagonist a i fleeting glimpse of his primal conflict in his lack of relationships with others, but this awareness is generally i short-lived. Kawabata instead provides him with a defense j ^mechanism which projects his inner desires on to other ! people. Kawabata generally perceives the world in terms of i oppositions. Many of these-— illusion and reality, the city iand the,country, past and present, tradition and modernity, i the beautiful and the grotesque— are intimately concerned 9 with the idealization of women in the consciousness of the hollow narrator-protagonist. Lesser oppositions-— sound and silence, colors, temperature— are important in specific [works, although' not in every novel> yet they too underscore jthe use of projections which allows the narrator- I protagonist to dissociate himself from reality. The idealization of women ultimately reveals more jabout the narrator-protagonist than it does about the women themselves. Shimamura is the example for the narrator-protagonist Kawabata will use in most of his major works. He emerges as a hollow man, with little apparent reason for living outside his futile search. This hollow narrator-protagonist -is gradually revealed to us in all his lemptiness as a pathetic creature devoid of all meaningful i [contact with other selves. The Shimamura example gradually1 jages in these novels. He is in his late twenties in l j Thousand Cranes, in his thirties in Snow Country and The ' Lake, in his fifties in Beauty and Sadness, and in his i sixties in The Sound of the Mountain and The House of the Sleeping Beauties.* The aging is only chronological, for jit does not and should not imply any increased awareness *See Appendix B for the publishing history of each novel. It should be noted here that the age of the narrator- protagonist does not always coincide with the order in which the novels were written. For the purpose of my argu ment, I have taken some degree of freedom in ordering the novels according to the age of the narrator-protagonists. 10 of reality or indeed any real emotional or mental growth. Only in The Sound of the Mountain does the narrator- protagonist recognize his existential isolation and learn to accept its reality. Except Shing©, each narrator- f ’ protagonist begins and ends at the same point in his ] development. If he learns anything from his search, it is that the ideal woman is even more elusive than he imagined, ;yet this knowledge does not lead to any change in his basic I Ibehavior. The essential conflict of illusion and reality i i |as it pertains to women and to life in general remains t untouched. He begins with nothing and ends in nothingness. ( |It is ironic that the narrator-protagonist, eternally searching for the untouched virgin, himself remains untouched by the same women he attempts to love. He too is i la kind of virgin. Interpersonal relationships are doomed ito failure by the nature of the narrator-protagonist, not iby the duality he perceives in women. He is a fantasist i whose unreal, created world becomes completely real and convincing to him. Reality is not real, but the "other .world" is. I The narrator-protagonist would have the reader believe ■that he sees only beauty in life, that that is indeed the jonly reality. He gives the reader a totally subjective iform of beauty, often saying only that some woman or object is "beautiful" and leaving it up to the reader to provide ithe necessary qualities which compose its essence. Even J ! 11 this fails ultimately. The projected image, initially ! designed to enhance the beauty of the woman or object, conceals physical, spiritual or moral decay. What begins ! with beauty being projected onto the grotesque results in i • the rot becoming "real" and destroying the beauty or at least that which is imagined to be beautiful. The projec- ! tion of illusion onto reality leads to the destruction of the illusion, not of the reality. It also insulates the narrator-protagonist who, once he is forced to acknowledge the destruction of one dream, moves on to another. He appears to be incapable of learnirig from his mistakes, or even recognizing them as mistakes. The reader eventually must ask, does the psychological | projection fill up the emptiness of the hollow narrator- protagonist? Or, rather, does it leave it untouched? I will show that it does not leave the narrator-protagonist fulfilled; the insulation is his defense mechanism which leaves him hollow at the end of each-.novel. For the hollow narrator-protagonist, it is the quest itself, the endless, futile search, which is importantnot the satisfactory > fulfillment of any given projection. As a novelist Kawabata Yasunari belongs to a world wide community of writers exploring the theme of the j alienated man. He is in sympathetic harmony with inter- j national currents of thought about man’s position in 1 modern society, and should not be considered only as a ! i 12 spokesman for the uniqueness of Japanese culture which the Nobel Prize committee would have us believe. Such a distinction is too limiting. Anyone trying to "prove" that Kawabata was influenced by any particular writer, work of jart or philosophical movement anywhere in the world would find it an impossible task. That he was well educated in Japanese and European literature is accepted as fact. That 'he himself felt he drew much of his inspiration from classical Japanese literature cannot be denied. What is more important is to recognize him as a writer in harmony with the trends of thought which have achieved inter national acceptance, ideas concerning man's alienated condition, his dehumanization by society, the depersonaliza- jtion of life itself. Kawabata accepted these as truths and ; i i S 'wrote about them accordingly. His narrator-protagonist is !a universal self, not a Japanese Everyman. His is a \ t I icontribution to this vast body of literature exploring la i — — — condition humaine. If he creates a modern myth, it is in laccordance with the idea that man lives in a kind of jexistential isolation, where the time-honored retreats into i culture and nature have failed completely. Kawabata creates i ;a fictional narrator-protagonist who in turn creates a S jfictional or imagined ideal "non-woman." The narrator- i £ iprotagonist is not a spokesman for Kawabata, but is a i fliterary entity which the author uses to explore different [modes of reality. He lives in his own alienated reality which is to Joe differentiated from the mundane reality of daily life. Within his own private reality, the narrator- protagonist has one additional level of reality which exists as a counterpart of illusion. The illusion-reality jdichotomy is a defense mechanism, along with his projected .images, which isolates him within his personal sense of I ialienated reality. All modes of reality occupy the same jspace and time. The quest of the narrator-protagonist is |not Kawabata's quest, for the author uses the novel as a I ' laboratory for his exploration of variations on the theme of alienation. Throughout his long career Kawabata returns to this concept of man's alienation as an id£e fixe. The Western critic often expects to find in the continual jexamination of a single theme over an extended period of time growth and development. Kawabata is more concerned ; with the variations on a theme rather than with growth and [development within the theme. This project does not pretend to be a definitive reading of Kawabata's novels. It offers a coherent reading of one aspect of his fiction. It should complement other | interpretations. 14 NOTES 1. Robert Rogers, A Psychological Study of the Double in Literature (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970), p. 14 . 2. Ibid., p. 62. 3. Ibid., p. 5. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., p. 109 6. Ralph Tymms, Doubles in Literary Psychology (Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1949), p. 29. See this source for a concise history of the double in Western, especially German, literature. 7. Ibid., p. 16. 8. Ibid., p. 28. 9. Ibid., p. 34. 10. Rogers , Double 11. Ibid., p. 84 . 12. Ibid., p. 127. 13. Ibid., p. 129. 14. Ibid., p. 79. I I I i i i i s i .CHAPTER I KAWABATA1S SENSE OF BEAUTY j Basic Aspects of His Fiction |A . The Nature of the Novel i I The Westerner who first approaches one of Kawabata's novels or short stories often discovers that he has entered territory at once strange and fascinating, yet at the same time oddly disconcerting. The outer "form" says that what he holds in his hand is a novel, but the inner form is unfamiliar and confusing. Where is the plot? Where are i jthe beginning, middle, and end as found in the familiar (Aristotelian theories of literature? Where is the logical (development of action leading to a recognizable conclusion? |The answer to such cries of frustration is simply "with | Aristotle," not with Kawabata. The term "novel" itself is an inadequate and misleading translation from the Japanese term shosetsu ( aK ) usually rendered as novel, story, or fiction, I |which may include anything ranging from a few pages like the Western short story to what we would call a novel of :considerable length. This all-encompassing term includes ishort stories, although sometimes the Japanese will refer 16 to tampen-shSsetsu ( &&} it ) as "short stories, novellas, novels, even novels frankly autobiographical in nature. There is another term, chShen shSsetsu (•fc 'I' It ) which would be correctly translated as "long works" or "novels," but it is rarely used. I One of the more troublesome features of modern ' Japanese fiction is the tendency of novels to : seem not so much like novels as like collections j of short stories, and of short stories to seem less like short stories than like collections of vignettes. The transition from one vignette or story to another may seem haphazard, and the ending quite arbitrary, scarcely an ending at all.IX t JFor the sake of simplicity, and to avoid peppering this i study with an overabundance of Japanese terms, we will refer to Kawabata's shosetsu as novels and leave a genre argument to other critics at aidi'fferent time. Although his novels may leave the Western reader dissatisfied, Kawabata repeatedly said, "It can be said *that my novel could end at any point. . .and it can be said that it never has an end."^ To the reader who is well versed in the twentieth-century novel with its experimental i jforms, this is both logical and anticipated. To the reader t ! who appreciates the "well-made plot" of the nineteenth- I •century novel, for example, such a statement only rein- i Jforces his frustration. A quick glance at the publishing jhistory of Snow Country, for instance, underscores I Kawabata's statement about not knowing when he had completed |a work. Between 19 34 and 1937 Kawabata wrote the major 17 [sections of Snow Country, publishing it as a complete novel in 1937. Apparently, however, he was dissatisfied with it, for he attempted twice to expand it. These vignettes, entitled Setchu kaji ("Fire in the Snow," 1940) and i , Amanogawa ("The Milky Way," 19 41), were published separately in magazines only to be rewritten once again. Yukiguni sho I .("Excerpts from Snow Country, May 1946) and Zoku-Yukiguni j("Sequel to Snow Country, October 194 7) replaced Setchu I O .kaii and Amanogawa, respectively. In Kawabata1s literary j I estate there is yet another version which appears to be a jcondensation of those sections written between 1934 and |l937. Although the success of these revisions is still i [being debated, the expanded version published in 1948 is 1 [considered the standard one today. This is the edition I which was translated into English and which includes the 1946 and 1947 revisions. The piecemeal quality of his iworks may result from his episodic writing style or from the serialized format by which his best works were jpublished.^ Regardless of the reason, the unfinished quality of his greatest works remains one of the charac- 1 .teristics of his fiction. | On the surface, Kawabata's structure appears to be [related to various Western stream of consciousness tech niques. As a young man, he read and enjoyed Proust and Joyce, deciding that their experiments were extensions of i plot structure, not a negation of it. He asked four I I I 18 questions about the novel following the guidelines of 1 I E. M. Forster: Could a novel grow by itself without inter-' vention or a predesigned plan by the authorial voice? Could ' 1 the novel have an "open" ending? Could an author allow a j novel to lead him wherever it would, rather than his leading it? Finally, could prose fiction dispense with i » the Aristotelian concept of plot structure? While ! i Kawabata agreed with the Proustian idea of answering these \ 5 1 questions in the affirmative, the second question is of ( utmost concern. We will see that the majority of his < novels have "open" or "unfinished" endings. Most simply stop. Since the end of the last century, one popular literary form has been the novel with no solution i | ( mukaiketsu ) . A closer look at Robert Humphrey's description of the stream of consciousness technique shows that only limited parts of the technique are related to Kawabata's fictional i style. Humphrey defines stream of consciousness as a form concerned with levels of inchoate verbalization, with the consciousness of the narrator being the screen upon which ; the action is projected. Since much of stream of conscious-! ness literature is written on the prespeech level, it is irrational, uncensored, and not ordered logically; it is concerned with that which lies beneath the surface of j 6 i consciousness. Any sweeping generalization such as this I must be redefined by each writer to satisfy his own 1 »J requirements. The central part of the definition, the consciousness of the narrator functioning as the screen for the action, applies to Kawabata, but the remainder does not. ,In none of his major works do we find the free association f |of inchoate verbalization called for by Humphrey; however, when Humphrey gives a variety of different devices or forms jwhich contain some but not all of the stream of conscious- I 'ness techniques, we find several of these examples which i [contain techniques reminiscent of Kawabata’s. Humphrey differentiates between direct and indirect monologue interieur which he feels are related to the fully jdeveloped stream of consciousness technique. Indirect i I [ monologue interieur gives a sense of authorial presence 'controlling the structure and unity of the work. The author acts as a guide, providing intervention between the ^character's psyche and the reader. What separates this i I from a rendition by an omniscient narrator is the presenta- I I I ition of material in the character's peculiar idiom jreflecting his own psychic processes. Direct monologue i j int^rieur, in contrast, is achieved without any apparent [authorial intervention and without assuming the presence of •an audience.^ Interior monologue is, then, the technique used in fiction for representing the psychic content and processes of character, partly or entirely unuttered, just as- those processes exist at various levels of conscious control before they are formulated for deliberate speech.8 In Jojoka >[Lyric Poem!/ Kawabata uses his own version of direct monologue interieur with the narrator telling her story just as it apparently comes into her consciousness. It only appears to be just below the pre-verbal level of Iconsciousness, for a close .analysis indicates a rigidly controlled structure which does not correspond to ! ! Humphrey's definition. In brief sections in both his short jstories and novels Kawabata does use techniques closely i related to this subdivision of stream of consciousness, but he does not appear interested in a prolonged experiment, i jexcept for a brief period when he was just beginning to write. When Humphrey includes soliloquy as another form of stream of consciousness, he provides the critic sufficient j [room to "prove" that Kawabata is one of the stream of i ;consciousness writers, should he so desire. Kawabata I [experiments with soliloquy in both The Lake and The House ! of the Sleeping Beauties. Gimpei and old Eguchi speak their lines to an unseen audience with great coherence, jsince both narrator-protagonists are conveying their emotions and ideas directly to another self, the reader. Both soliloquy, which assumes the presence of an audience, and monologue interieur, which may assume the presence of an audience if it is indirect because of the authorial presence controlling the material or which does not assume that there is an audience if it is direct, are techniques 21 for the communication of various degrees of psychic identity and consciousness. With both techniques, the point of view is always that of the narrator-protagonist at a level of consciousness at or just below the surface.^ iOld Eguchi in particular tells us his story at a level at the surface of consciousness employing controlled jassociative leaps from the living girl beside whom he is flying to a memory of some other girl out of his past, j Humphrey next expands his list of specific techniques i (within the greater confines of stream of consciousness to ! 'include those novels which have an omniscient author I aligned with one character. This form has the author [completely identifying himself with a single character to ^represent the inner and outer lives of that character. His i [omniscience is confined to the actions and thoughts of this [character, just as Kawabata!s consciousness is confined i : to that of old Eguchi in order to render his memories, dreams, and associations accurately. In The House of the Sleeping Beauties, Kawabata1s technique lies somewhere [between that of the omniscient author and the narrator- ;protagonist’s own soliloquy. Regardless, the effect is the ,same: old Eguchi’s consciousness is presented directly to (the reader in an orderly, well controlled manner. Again in ■ Jojoka and The Lake we find similar techniques, in JojOka as consistent narrational point of view, but in The Lake as ;a point of view which shifts from Gimpei's perspective to ! 22 Miyako!s perspective once in order to give Miyako's reactions to Gimpei. I like to write with a flow of associations which pour out as I write. Perhaps all writers are like that, but I feel that my addiction is stronger than most. Or perhaps I am unable to select my associations. I cannot say categorically that the i new psychological literature, the so-called "stream of consciousness" literature of Joyce, Woolf, ! Proust, and even Faulkner, is a literature of ; associations and memories, but in contrast to the • solid, balanced classics, their kind of psycho- j logical fiction is a reflection of the debilities, i decadence and confusion of the present, I believe, i However, it would be correct to say that the new I literature once again reveals the hidden essence of mankind. . . . ! , H * In Rakka ryusui '[falling Blossoms and Flowing Waters,] f , Kawabata does not condemn the style of the stream of jconsciousness writers so much as he does their content. He jdislikes their emphasis on decadence in psychological i ifiction which he sees as an opportunity for the betrayal of 1 ^mankind. He would have the reader believe that such a jtechnique, in fact all of literature itself, should be used I as a paean of beauty, yet he blinds himself to the decadence i *Renso no ukabinagareru ni tsurete kaite yukitai watakushi iwa, kaku ni tsurete renso ga sasowarewaite deru. Dare jdatte so de aru.ga, jibun wa sono kuse ga tsuyoi no dewa jnai ka to omou. Aruiwa, renso wo shusha sentaku suru atama ga yowai node aro ka to omou. Atarashii shinri no bungaku, iwayuru "ishiki no nagare" no bungaku, tatoeba jyoisu, urufu, purusuto, sorekare fuokuna de sae mo, renso, kioku no bungaku to hitokuchi ni ienu koto wa nai ga,-— mottomo, kono tagui no shinri shosetsu wa, kengo seicho no koten ni taishite, kindai kara gendai no suijaku, taihai, wakuran to, watakushi wa tsune ni kangaete iru. Atarashii bungaku ga ningen no naio wo atarashiku hiraita no wa tashika da keredomo. . . . f I 23 underlying the superficial beauty in his own works. Beauty exists alongside of its antithesis, ugliness, yet the portrayal of both simultaneously leads to a deeper under standing of mankind, not to its betrayal. In "The Narrow 1 jBridge of Art," Virginia Woolf writes 1 Feelings which used to come single and separate | no longer do so. Beauty is part ugliness; , amusement part disgust, pleasure part pain.- * - 2 jshe recognizes the antithetical qualities of the new novel; jshe herself fragments experience. i It is as if the modern mind, wishing always to i verify its emotions, had lost the power of ! accepting anything simply for what it is. . . . ! In the modern mind beauty is accompanied not 1 by , its shadow but by its o p p o s i t e . 1 1 j | Kawabata prefers the Japanese associative techniques I ! which grow out of the Japanese poetic tradition, "those arts of suggestion and evocation, reversal and juxtaposi tion, so deeply rooted in the alogical, intuitive, and i !1 irrational' sensibility of the East itself,"14 for he I Ifeels that the Western stream of consciousness reflects ! man’s loss of a coherent Weitanschauung in the modern age. i jUeda Makoto quotes from Kawabata's Shosetsu no kenkyu ("A Study of the Novel"): : The Japanese have been said to be simple-minded i and unable to devise too complex a plot, so that the literary works they produce are in the main simple and natural. But, in my opinion, this feature of Japanese literature is due less to national character than to the views of Japanese writers concerning the extent to which logic and artifice may be allowed in the novel. ! To be natural— to be true to nature— this has 24 been the basic principle pervading all the arts in Japan, both past and present.1* For Kawabata, the formlessness of his fiction is natural. When it reflects not only nature but mankind and his society as well, he applies the traditional techniques of formlessness to the unstructured decadence of the present las the Western writers, the stream of consciousness I ( jnovelists, do, yet they earn his condemnation. Not only j are Kawabata's techniques of formlessness and a lack of I artifice in harmony with stream of consciousness techniques, even his content reflects similar themes of alienation, jdecadence, and decay. ! In style, too, Kawabata belongs with certain groups of Western novelists. His enthusiasm for seemingly non- Jrational associations is itself a link between Japanese ;literary tradition and the so-called "poetic" novel of the |West. Kawabata's technique of associative images develops i ■out of a "particular way of looking at life through the objects in life, and of a sensitive appreciation of the jmood those objects provoke."1® Schlieman links this to I what she calls the "poetic" novel with the result being "an !art object of universal interest. Much of stream of 'consciousness writing has the free-flowing elliptic, | jsymbolic quality1^ found in Kawabata5s most representative ( novels. Schlieman's "poetic" novelist concentrates on new areas for a novelist, areas of "the power of music, the i 25 — — : : -------------------- stimulus of sight, the effect on us of the shape of trees or the play of color,"19 areas she feels once belonged exclusively to the realm of poetry. She develops her con cept of the "poetic" novelist from theories of fiction in | Virginia Woolf, who calls for a synthesis of prose fiction and poetry which will express the feeling and ideas of the characters closely and vividly, but from a different angle. ' It will resemble poetry in this that it will give i not only or mainly people's reactions to each i other and their activities together, as the novel has hitherto done, but it will give the relation of the mind to general ideas and its soliloquy in solitude.20 j Virginia Woolf asks if the novel can also select and symbo- | Jize its materials, for we already know it can follow life i and amass details. "Can it give us an epitome as well as ; an inventory?"21 she feels that the time has passed for poetry, that the new trend is a union of poetic rhythms and sensibilities with prose fiction, for "prose perhaps is the instrument best fitted to the complexity and diffi culty of modern life."22 Prose in form and content is the best vehicle for revealing "the debilities, decadence and t confusion of the present." Virginia Woolf and Kawabata use similar techniques adapted from their respective poetic traditions to express "the obscure terrors and hatreds which come so irrationally in certain places or from ! I certain p e o p l e , "23 the oppositions of the beautiful and the : grotesque. They are alike in spirit, yet each creates a i peculiar style of prose relatively independent of.the other. Kawabata would have the reader believe that his spirit belongs to the past of his own poetic and dramatic traditions when in fact it belongs to the present of mellifluous prose which reveals both the beautiful and the grotesque and the decadence of modern society in a style * I jperhaps better suited to an older, slower time. This i jjuxtaposition*between delicacy of form and subtlety of contrasts has its origin in the sensibility of the novelist himself. Its development, into full expression is one of his primary achievements. i B. The Nature of Beauty When approaching Kawabata1s aesthetics, one is impressed by his continual emphasis on the subjective i Iquality of beauty. For something, whether it be a person lor object, to be beautiful, the reader must be willing to i Isupply his own concept of beauty. He will only be disappointed if he waits for Kawabata to describe a scene in concrete terms once he has called it "beautiful." The reader must be both willing and able to fantasize. Kikuji |in Thousand Cranes, for example, is unable to recall i Yukiko's face, but he can remember exactly the color and pattern of the furoshiki-wrapped bundle that she carried. i jHe first thinks she is "beautiful" and.that in itself is a I isufficient description of her physical features. The i 27 symbol of the thousand cranes is of itself beautiful, but its exact qualities are undefined. When Kikuji wants to remember her later, a vague image of her face and the specific image of her furoshiki blend into a symbol of both personal beauty and the virginal purity of her life. jKawabata feels that as a writer he should distill out only j jthat which is true, pure and sincere, and "then rearrange !them to produce an order of reality more beautiful than the jeveryday,kind."^5 This stands in direct opposition to his i I insistence on writing "with a flow of associations" which follow one after another Without any artificial control by the author. One must abstract a new synthesis from these ;apparently contradictory statements: that once a novelist •has isolated all which is true, pure and sincere and has rearranged them to intensify reality, then, and only then, 'does the flow of associations 'continue unchecked. It might i jbe more accurate to say that Kawabata is interested not in I Jtruth so much as in essences of what is true. "It is precisely the near truth, the sense of life as it almost is, which captivates [Kawabata's] sensibility. Somewhere in ithe slender moment between reality and unreality the jjapanese artist is apparently most comfortable."26 I i I For Kawabata absolute beauty and absolute ugliness 1 iexist in a transcendental sense. Absolute beauty is ideal; I ■•therefore, no human being can describe it in objective ;terms. It exists to be appreciated but not to be described. Yukiko in Thousand Cranes is the main example of this ideal. Her beauty is subjective, for to Kikuji it trans cends reality and exists in a realm removed from the ordinary. Beauty can also be objective. The perfection of jthe Shino water jar is presented in concrete, tangible l •terms, yet its appreciation is subjective. Ugliness too i i |is both transcendental and objective. The otherworldliness t |Of ugliness is evil, which Kawabata gives fleshly repre- i sentation in Chikako -and Keiko. It becomes tangible in jsymbols like.Chikako's mole. The extra-human evil is ! channeled through the evil characters Chikako and Keiko, I withKeiko's bewitching beauty as memorable as Chikako's ugly birthmark. While he may not dwell on the grotesque for long periods of time, he presents crystalline images : I [which startle the imagination. One does not easily forget 1 i t [the.image of Chikako trimming the whisker-like hairs Iqrowing out of the large mole on her breast in Thousand I Cranes or the insects dying in the powder on Komako’s neck 'in Snow Country. Ugliness is presented in objective terms i |so-that the reader will have no doubt of its form and i •existence. I : . Kawabata is contemptuous of the "naturalist" writers j •with their penchant for egocentric "realism": : No work of art is born from observation of sufferings along. . . . New "realism” does 1 not make good sense, whether it means a realistic representation of rural life or of ; urban life. If the new "realist" is right, 29 | it would only indicate that the writers who take that stand today are leading a deprived existence.27* Beauty must also be transitory. What could be more beautiful than a cherry blossom, the reflection of the moon Ion a still body of water, or the purity of a virgin? The {fleeting nature of beauty is sad, but that very quality is lits essence. Time is related to everything creative and i active, yet time is the chief enemy of beauty. Nothing ■remains the same. Beauty fades and perishes, but that is I what gives it value. What remains is an image of beauty which becomes rarer and more idealized with the passage of time. We will see this clearly in Shingo's memory of Yasuko's dead sister in The Sound of the Mountain. Recalling a morning when he was in Hawaii waiting to give a speech, Kawabata sees an incredibly lovely scene, a j |tray of freshly polished glasses sparkling in the sun. In :"The Existence and Discovery of Beauty" he calls the j 'novelist a seeker and discoverer of beauty, a person who 1 2 R jrecords such chance "encounters with beauty." ° The {significance of the beauty of the light on the glasses is 'two-fold: beauty exists in the most common occurrences and we only need the eyes with which to appreciate it, and it i jis transitory. The sun's position will change, causing the |light to reflect differently on the glasses or not at all; ja waiter could remove the tray; the glasses could be I i*See Appendix A. 30 broken. Anything could destroy the beauty of the moment, but nothing will destroy the crystallized essence of beauty which continues to exist in the mind of one sensitive enough to perceive it. Beauty can also be found in uncon ventional images, as in Komako1s mouth seeming like a OQ circle of leeches. Here, beauty is associated with I 'horror or revulsion. As the relationship between Komako i 'and Shimamura changes, he is both attracted to her and i i repulsed by her. The "leech" image is anticipatory of his change in attitude. Beauty is further enhanced when it is pure, for "pure" beauty . . . is also perishable, fragile. . . . !,30 it is (correlated with the search for the ideal, what Ueda calls a concern generated from the impossible longing of the roman-' . ! |tic mind. It is for the artist to depict the beauty of a ! I I person seeking some indefinable higher ideal, since such a person lives his life to the fullest. The nature of this i i i jquest gives meaning to life. He must be willing to risk jhis life in its pursuit; he may perish at any time, yet he I jlives to seek, a slave to this endless quest. For Kawabata, [beautiful people die young, while ugliness and old age seem [indestructible. Chikako and old Eguchi are around long I 31 jafter the beautiful girls have vanished. i Kawabata quotes the poet Takamura Mitsutar5 (1883-1956) iin his essay, Horobinu bi ("Unperishable Beauty"); Beauty which once appeared in this world never perishes. . . . "Although beauty changes from time to time, previous beauty does not die. ..." The destiny of a people rises and falls incon sistently, but what remains after the rising and falling is the beauty which those people possess. . . . "A people who exalt beauty are a people who exalt the spirit and life of mankind."32* The essence of beauty continues, although individual jmoments of beauty vanish. Takamura writes against the jbackdrop of the end of the American occupation. It is a itime of as yet unhealed war wounds, of the desolation, confusion and collapse following defeat. While the popula tion is recovering from the disaster, the essence of beauty continues unblemished. The poet praises the beauty of his people and its very imperishability. Like Takamura, iKawabata sees himself as a bridge between the sadness of i defeat and unending beauty. War has given him an oppor tunity to immerse himself in the Japanese classics. He is i jamazed by what he calls the "unleashed vitality of modern I * 3 * 5 literature, ** yet at the same time he is attracted to ithe national characteristics advocated in the classics. j When he plunges into Genji monogatari ‘ [The Tale of Genjit or the literature of the Muromachi period, he could forget *Ittan kono yo ni arawareta bi wa, kesshite horobinai. . . . l"Bi wa tsugi tsugi to utsurikawarinagara, mae no bi ga jshinanai," Minzoku no unmei wa kyob5 tsune nai ga, sono kyobo no ato ni nokoru mono wa, sono minzoku no motsu bi de aru. . . . "Bi wo takameru minzoku wa, ningen no tamashii to seimei wo takameru minzoku de aru." ,**Gendai bungaku no jiyu na seidS. the war momentarily. It is of particular interest that he \ reads Muromachi literature, since that is an era of civil j wars (1333-1600). He is most impressed by the preservation,' craving for and creation of the tradition of beauty which developed in Kyoto against the background of desolation, cruelty and poverty of those civil war years.^ He mentions this directly in Beauty and Sadness when Taichiro , and Keiko stand in front of Lord Sanetaka's grave. Taichiro is fascinated by the contrast between the civil war era and its cultural vitality. The parallels between the Muromachi era and his own time become even more poignant as he tries to create and preserve his own ; aesthetics of beauty against a similar background. I Kawabata believes that any peak of aesthetic excel lence is followed by a period of decline into decadence. "When a culture reaches its full maturity, it must decay. When it falls into decadence, the arts too are weakened and lose their vitality."^5* He wonders if Japanese aesthetics are not entering a period of decline which would be related to Japan's devastating defeat: . .is the present a period of literary and cultural prosperity? Is it a period : of maturity? Or perhaps is it a period of decadence? Since I am a part of the present, I cannot see its true character. That is impossible. We can do nothing but *"Bunka wa ranjuku sureba kanarazu taihai shimasu ga, taihai ni katamuite ochite kimasu to, geijutsu mo suijaku j shite seimei ryoku wo ushinatte kimasu." 33 leave it to the eyes of later h i s t o r y . ^6* Since there is nothing he could do about it, Kawabata seeks refuge in historical periods when Japanese aesthetics reached its apex and adapts familiar techniques to satisfy his own | needs. Kawabata feels only three groups of people are capable i \ |Of seeing and appreciating the kind of subjective, I [momentary beauty he admires so much, for only young chil™ ,dren, virgins and dying men have the necessary clarity of i vision. The eyes of young children and virgins are untainted by affectation, he believes. In literature, he jprefers the naive purity of first works, because only then i is a writer free from outside pressures; he can write from i I his heart. The writing of children, although unformed, is i I I only a starting point for restoring vitality to literature. 1 jone must see the world through a child's eyes and integrate I I the pure heart of a child with an adult's yearning for ipurity. This poignancy is what Kawabata feels could be i [found in works written by young women who have that combina- Jtion of purity, naivete and yearning.37 This is all well [and good on the surface, but j In all the arts a maiden is a person to be sung of rather than a person to sing. In theatrical art, *"Kyo wa geijutsu bunka no kkoryuki de aru no ka, ranjukuki |de aru no ka, moshika suru to mo taihaiki de aru no ka, ijibun jishin ga sono naka ni ima no ima tachimajitte imasu ; to, mikihameru no wa konran pa node arimasu. Mats, fukano jde arimashS. Ato no rekishi no me ni makaseru hoka wa larimasumai." 34 and in literary art in particular, a maiden's purity is delineated more capably by an adult woman or by a man than by the maiden herself. This is sad, but we will not grieve too much when we remind ourselves that all arts are a way of perfecting oneself. Here in Junsui no ko6 [A Pure Voice]\ Kawabata adds one i Imore element to his.aesthetic: purity. His continuing Imetaphor is a virgin with "a pure voice," for this voice t 1 ireflects the fragile beauty of a girl soon to be altered by time and man. , Only a man like Kawabata himself could sing I ithe praises of maidenhood, yet these praises disguise the i jmale narrator-protagonist's own weak character. The closer he gets to her physically, the farther she is from him in spirit. The virgin represents his concept of ideal love 'with a yearning both pure and.unblemished, a love impos sible to consummate. She is the symbol of one who has the i 'capacity of living life with great intensity in selfless |service to that ideal. A young girl who dedicates herself ;to the care of a man who is ill and incapable of destroying her physical purity is one manifestation of this i d e a l . ^9 A pure life, therefore, is dynamic and yearns for vitality.^ This life force, however, takes the form of purity. Kawabata in Junsui no koe expands this idea: ' If a maiden's voice is "a pure voice," then we can say that a maiden's sensuality is "a pure sensuality. ..." At any rate, if there are "a pure voice" and "a pure sensuality," then there must also be "a pure spirit. ..." Why i is a female [college] student inferior to a girl in elementary school as a poet or as a prose writer? . . . When I read a novel by a 35 young,unknown woman, no matter how unskillful she may be, her value overflows and I wonder if this is not a manifestation of "a pure spirit."41* Kawabata's narrator-protagonist yearns for something so distant that it is unattainable. He does not consider this longing a "wasted effort," because what he seeks is that jdistant ideal of pure beauty. Even the search itself is I ’ beautiful. The search is like "an object aflame," a life Which burns.until it attains its ideal or until it consumes itself. Yoko in Snow Country is the model of the "pure spirit." Her love for Yukio and for her brother Saichiro is pure and chaste. .Ueda calls Komako a variation of Y5ko, i (but this can only apply to her relationship with Yukio. i jYukio is both her surrogate brother and her chaste lover. iKomako’s love for him remains pure after she leaves for jTokyo, with the voluminous diary a written tribute to the Ipurity of her love. She begins her relationship with i I jShimamura under similar circumstances, but once she becomes l |his lover, "the moment the unattainable becomes attainable, iher love begins to lose its p u r i t y ."^2 For Kawabata’s *Shojo no koe ga "junsui no koe" de aru naraba, shojo no nikutai wa "junsui no nikutai" to iu koto ga dekiru dar5. . . . Sore wa tonikaku to shite, "junsui no koe" ga ari, "junsui no nikutai" ga aru nara, "junsui no seishin" to iu ■mono mo_aru hazu de aru. . . . Jogakusei wa shijin to jshitemo, sanbunka to shitemo, shogaku no joji ni otoru no wa naze de aru ka. . . . Wakai miamei no.onna no shosetsu iwo yomu to, heta de areba aru dake, kaette kono onna no arigatasa ga afurete iru koto ga atte, "junsui no seishin" no araware ka to kangaerareru. 36 narrator-protagonists, the beginning of a sensual relation ship brings the end of the ideal. The narrator-protagonist pursues his ideal of the "pure voice" in Kikuko and the Noh mask in The Sound of the I [Mountain, in Yoko, in Inamura Yukiko in Thousand Cranes, i jand even in the masseuse with the angelic voice in The i | Lake. Although the mask of the eternal virgin may not be |entirely desirable, the narrator-protagonists continue I their pursuit of it. The author's purpose is to not i destroy the image of purity in Yoko's fall from the burning building or in Fumiko's sudden disappearance, but to clear the way for it to exist in other realms.^ It is transcendant purity and as such can continue as an ideal i i !image long after the person has vanished. The clearest example of this is Shingo's memory of Yasuko's dead sister as the ideal beauty. Kawabata's heroines, then, begin life in a state of Yoko-like purity, yet each is destined to lose her purity through marriage or some other sexual relationship as with Komako. In "Moon in the Water," a {young woman loves her dying husband with a pure intensity I because there is no chance their love will become physical, yet when she remarries after his death, she cannot return I ithe love of her healthy husband. Inako in Dandelions (Tampopo) adores Kuno her fiance but cannot bear the idea of sex and is eventually committed to a mental hospital, I i |preserving her purity in rather a drastic fashion. In ! 37 The Sound.of the Mountain, Kikuko takes on a double role, pure maiden to Shingo and wife to Shuichi, her "purity” protected in Shingo's eyes because of his age and the incestuous quality any physical relationship would h a v e .44 For Kawabata, and in this case also for his male I narrator-protagonists, therefore, the ideal life like the I ! ;ideal work of art should be beautiful, sincere, and sad. | "Pure" beauty comes from energy wastefully spent, energy jwhich should be expended in the search for the unattainable jideal. It has a particular dream-like quality associated with freshness and naivete. It is sincere in its aesthet ically beautiful yet moral manifestation of a pure life A ^ force. Purity is synonymous with goodness. A pure and sincere life is a sad one. In Beauty and Sadness Kawabata uses the character ai ( S. ) for aware to imply a deep sense of pathos when he writes kanashimi (sadness), rather than !hi ( M: ) which would be the usual character. In itraditional aesthetics, aware has great emotional impact i which appears at a time when a person confronts immense cosmic power and becomes sadly aware of the mutability of life. One living such a beautiful and sincere life would i I !experience pathos, even if it is only that of the ! unattained and unattainable goal. One must live with !deepest intensity while being subject to frustation and disaster to a superhuman degree. Thus, beauty must be ! (fragile and perishable, for when it perishes, it leaves ; 38 sadness.^ Taichiro's story of Princess Kazu and the photograph of her lover which faded away after its exposure to light is the epitome of this union of beauty, sadness, jand transitoriness. It is an episode at once "beautiful, charming, and ephemeral."4 7 i Not everything we see in Kawabata is beautiful. Many i k jimages and scenes are distorted and grotesque. The gro- I jtesque is not necessarily beauty's antithesis, for some- ( (times both exist simultaneously in the same place. Any [attempt to define the term "grotesque" falls short of its i i goal, but here I must pause and examine some of the general qualities of it. I will explain it primarily in terms of iWestern distinctions, but I do not want to overlook the I long history in which grotesque elements have appeared in supernatural tales in the classical Japanese tradition. iWolfgang Kayser's study of the grotesque is still the ! [seminal work on the subject, and the ensuing brief discus- [sion relies heavily on him. Kayser says that the |"grotesque" applies to three different areas: to the creative process, to the work itself, and to its reception i jby the reader. His main emphasis lies on the impact, 'emotional rather than intellectual, which grotesque litera ture makes on the reader. The grotesque lies in an I "estranged world," one in which the familiar has undergone some transformation which renders it at once alien, horri- Ifying and attractive. The early Western examples of I 39 grotesque literature were permeated with apocalyptic beasts and demons which instill fear of life, not fear of death. "The grotesque is not concerned with individual actions or the destruction of moral order. . . . It is primarily the expression of our failure to orient ourselves in the I d 9 physical universe." It would appear that the grotesque i i Iwould be a ready-made technique for the later writers of alienation. Indeed, this is what happens in the twentieth icentury, for many of the images of alienation have markedly grotesque overtones. Our typical narrator- protagonist in Kawabata also seems programmed to relate to the outside world in terms of its alienating character- I iistics, all of which protect him from the necessity of i 'confronting the world in real terms. I In relation to Kawabata, Kayser's emphasis on the strangeness of the world is of the most interest, since "the grotesque is the alienated world (die entfremdete i 5 o i Welt).” This refers to the familiar, everyday world which is suddenly changed into a strange, unpleasant place. This transformation creates anxiety about life, for the trusted aspects of life are now alien and uncanny. The key lies in the world as an alienated but not an alien C I place. In collections of folk tales in Japan, in par ticular the Konjaku monogatari ( ' t' $ & ) from the eleventh century, the familiar world is transformed through !the intervention of a ghostly element. Many tales have a ; 40 standard formula of a man, long absent on a journey or at war, returning home to find his beautiful wife unchanged by the years. They sleep together, but the man awakens in the morning to find his house in ruins and full of rot and his wife just a pile of bones and long black hair. He recoils ;in horror as he realizes that he has slept with a ghost. I The familiar becomes horrible and he must flee his home if I ihe is to survive. He feels alienated, for he no longer f | [belongs to the world of his memories. It has ceased to j exist. i ! The difference between the merely unfamiliar and jthe incongruously strange, that is, between the ephemeral jstrangeness which is simply due to novelty and the jpositive, discordant strangeness which is directly opposed to 'the natural conditions of o r g a n i z a t i o n ' " ^ creates a (mood of revulsion for Kawabata's narrator-protagonist. jwhen old Eguchi lies beside a "virgin prostitute," he [thinks not of her but of the smell of baby's milk that he (remembers from the birth of his last child. The physical ! ;surroundings where he is have their grotesque overtones. I JThe dark red draperies, the incandescent lighting, the ( idrugged girls all lend 'an air of unreality to the situation ;where he finds himself both repelled and fascinated by this i |odd house of prostitution. His own world has turned upside idown, so he attempts to orient himself not in the present ibut in the past. Everything around him is absurd and he cannot find the reality of his surroundings. Kayser calls 41 for "the mixture of heterogeneous elements, the confusion, the fantastic quality, and even a kind of alienation of the world" as primary elements of the grotesque, along with "the abysmal quality, the insecurity, the terror inspired by the disintegration of the world.Many of these elements abound in The- House of the Sleeping Beauties. The grotesque may appear as a "world in the process of dissolution and estrangement."54. shimamura says he goes off to the snow country to be purified and renewed, but what he finds there is estrangement. He is forever the outsider, never belonging to Komako's or Yoko's worlds, and probably not belonging to the world of the city either. Kikuji at the end of Thousand Cranes finds his world has collapsed as a result of his own inertia. He faces a future controlled by the dark, negative element in his ! ilife, Chikako. Victor Hugo, in an early description, sees the gro tesque in the world of the ugly where it has thousands of different forms. This, he feels, is opposed to the singu larity of beauty. It is one pole of tension with the sublime at the other end. The grotesque, then, is a contrasting device which does not exist in isolation. "For I just as the sublime (in contrast with the beautiful) guides i jour view toward a loftier, supernatural world, the ridicu- i lously distorted and monstrously horrible ingredients of I !the grotesque point to an inhuman, nocturnal, and abysmal i i 42 r e a l m . "^5 The tension between the sublime and the grotesque is that which is between the purely spiritual and bete humaine. This tension plays a vital role in iKawabata’s concept of the dual nature of women, for he i i jseparates the "spiritual" from the "fleshly" in the eternal search for ideal beauty. "The alienation of familiar I i forms . . . creates that mysterious and terrifying connec- i jtion between the fantastic and the real world which is so essential for the- g r o t e s q u e . " what could be more revealing of one’s alienated feelings than Shimamura wondering what his family is doing back in the city as he disposes of a dead moth? John Ruskin says that the gro tesque gradually comes to mean anything . . . incongruous with the accepted norm, in life or art. In ordinary colloquial use, it is commonly ; associated as a pejorative with the unintentionally ridiculous or the monstrous. In critical use, it ! may be employed to describe any style of art which j deviates from conventional patterns. . . . The ' primary sense . . . is that of incongruity with ! the real or the normal. I iWhat could be more seemingly incongruous than Shimamura i |noticing how tiny insects die in the powder on the back of I jKomako's neck? Walter Scott, writing in the 1820's feels \ jthat the emotional response to the grotesque is the "feeling of helplessness and disparagement before [an] r q increasingly absurd and fantastically estranged world."0 ,The hollow narrator-protagonist of Kawabata's novels ;senses this helplessness and isolation from the world I 43 around him, but these feelings come from within himself; they are not forced on him by the outside world. The grotesque underscores the alienation, and is a result of it, not the cause of it. j In the twentieth century, we find a view of the world in Italian grotesque drama which bears striking simil- I , arities to Kawabata's view. "'The absolute conviction that 1 leverything is vain and hollow, and that man is only a puppet in the hands of f a t e " 5 9 partially applies to Kawabata. His characters are not so much controlled by some vague concept of fate as they are by their own inade quacies or by stronger, evil characters outside themselves. I It is in marriage or in sexual relationships that the grotesque elements are most frequently found. Kawabata's imetaphor is fufu seikatsu no doku ( £ ± It o ♦ ) , 1 |"the poison of married life." Although on the surface his j [characters may lead mediocre lives in the dimension of j [reality, Kawabata presents the abnormality (ij5 ^ ' I A ' ) , 'the unusual (hibon ), and the ugliness (shukai jwhich underlie reality. Within the world of marriage, [Kawabata explores the mystery of what Yoshimura.Teiji calls j ["the earth mother" (chibo-gami his metaphor for ithe passionate woman. Yoshimura's application of the term !is restricted to the sensuous nature of woman. He does not I !include the Western connotation of fertility. This woman is receptive to a man's sexuality, but she is not there to 44 breed children. The lewdness of the earth mother flows in the veins of all women and should be avoided by men who will be trapped by it. Kawabata thinks of marriage as something unusual or grotesque: I All marriages seem unusual. . . . Even when you i see two mediocre people together, the marriage becomes unusual.®^* Marriage is poisonous because a man is unaware of how much his wife can hate him. In Kekkon no m£ [The Eyes of Marriage] >( he says that "Divorce for a woman is not so great a problem as changing one's occupation is for a 61 . * man."Di A woman is fickle, yet when her passion is true, it is "a beautiful waste of effort" (utsukushii tor5 fcf ). In The Sound of the Mountain Shingo talks: about "the swamp of marriage" (fufu no numa 0 *6 ) as "an ominous swamp which swallows wickedness mutually ■without realizing it," for "only a married couple deepens !the swamp and endures each other's wickedness."62** , In I | Kakureta onna ';[The Hidden WomanT].; < he calls marriage 1 "reality suffering from palsy" (chufu wo wazuratta genjitsu ' • I 7 JH ^ ^ ) , while in Saikonsha * ' [A Remarried Person']* , he acknowledges that the ways of * • marriage include "secret paths, detours, and escape routes" ! *Kekkon wa minna hitotsu hitotsu hibon no y5 de aru wa. . | . . Heibon no hito ga futari yottemo, kekkon wa hibon na , mono ni narimasu yo. I | **Onna no rikon wa otoko ga shobaigae suru daimondai de wa nai. 45 (kakureta michi ff& >K-fi xnawarimichi jffl ' ) , nigemichi ’ j - ” ).^3 Kawabata seems to blame all women for having negative emotions. In his continual attack on the institution of marriage come some of his most grotesque !images. Although one may expect marriage to be pleasant, :warm, and close, in Kawabata it is a grotesque situation ! I where the man finds himself trapped by a strongly i passionate woman who will try to destroy him. This does |not apply only to marriage; the same concept holds true for Jany sexual relationship. i i t C. The Dual Nature of Woman Kawabata continuously portrays what he calls the ideal qualities of woman; her virginity, her purity. Although i I I j jhe places the virgin on a pedestal, he also recognizes her j ! jcounterpart, the darker, sexual aspects of her duality. If |the virgin appears in terms of cleanness, purity, coldness, I and whiteness, then her counterpart is darker, impure, I unclean, passionate, and red. The virgin is chaste and i |untouched; her counterpart is sexual and sensuous. i 'Kawabata strips away all masks a woman might wear. If he looks at an innocent virgin, he also sees the witch con cealed behind her mask.^ "Where is the secret origin in which a pure, sacred maiden suddenly disguises herself as an incestuous witch,? Are perhaps lewd and cruel women who 46 surround the virgin doubles for her?"^* £lUal nature of woman, then, is her virginal purity and her sexuality. It should be apparent to all readers that Kawabata prefers the virgin, since so many of his stories and much of his critical writing have her as a central figure. In Kagaribi [Beacon Fire], he writes about the eternal woman, taking her from beautiful purity to sexual degrada tion. When a sixteen year old girl receives a marriage proposal, she sends off a forged genealogy. The boy loves her but loses her once the deception is exposed. She becomes a woman of mystery. The boy creates an ideal of "untouchable love,"^**, and chases his childish illusion. He is torn by contradictory impulses? on the one hand, he wants to violate her, while on the other he wants to protect her purity.- Obviously, he cannot do both. The girl in turn rejects the boy. She falls rapidly into a world of animalistic passions, driving herself to despair because she feels unworthy of his love. They meet a year later, but he sees only her arrogance and impurity. Her rejection of his chaste proposal is the fatal blow which destroys her. In the depths of her despair, she runs from man to man, sinking into depravity.^7 Here is the duality *Keredomo junketsu na seishojo ga, fui ni jinshinkan no majo ni henshin suru himitsu no gen'in wa doko ni aru dard ka. Seishojo wo torimaku into musan na onnatachi ga, moshika shitara, seishojo no bunshin de wa nakaro ka? **Te wo nigiranai koi. of a woman's nature combined in the body of a single woman. This is unusual, for Kawabata would rather keep these aspects separated by creating individual representations, the Yoko and Komako examples. The ideal, woman is the sixteen year old maiden with the ■bewitching charm of a "sacred virgin" (seishojo ^ $£ jr ), ! a term which deifies virginity but which carries no ( Christian meaning. This is a private deification. She jmust have both a pure spirit and a coquettish carnality which attracts men. Even Yoko has some degree of both. In Beauty and Sadness Kawabata gives his greatest tribute in i the "Portrait of the Sacred Virgin," the painting Otoko will paint with her lesbian lover Keiko as a -model. It is the nucleus of Kawabata's beautiful women. Built into the i I painting is the nature of Keiko, the embodiment of evil i I incarnate for the ®ki family. Keiko attempts to seduce Oki |in a mock incestuous relationship; when that fails she becomes the witch who seduces and drowns his son Taichiro in the lake.^® On the surface, she has the features of a jvirgin but with the hidden spirit of a witch. She is like jKomako with her surface purity and her underlying freeness I las a professional entertainer. Again in Maihime, Kawabata Jportrays what he felt was the alter ego or duality of woman |in the character Namiko. She is married yet she has a i lover Takehara. She is torn by the desire to be unchaste I with her lover, yet she is a woman who is afraid to accept _________________________ 48' j and act out her passions. When Takehara says no one would 1 know about their affair, she replies that she would. She finally gives herself up to unchaste thoughts. "She is divided in two. She returns to her husband. The two-fold I i l construction of her psychology lies between a woman who fears her husband and one who is even ready to get used to ! his cruelty."69* Muramatsu writes, "Kawabata pursues the i dual nature of woman in every portrait of a woman and it serves to weave a unique atmosphere. Conversely, by assuming this dual nature in woman, he portrays tenacious desires which are concealed within himself."^0** We should j I remember that Muramatsu's approach to Kawabata's novels is primarily biographical, although we may still accept his i I theory of the ideal woman serving as an isolating factor for his narrator-protagonists. Muramatsu believes that 1 Kawabata and his narrator-protagonists are the same. It is- my contention in this paper that they are not the same. | I Kawabata creates his fictional narrator-protagonist in order to explore various modes of reality and alienation. *Kanojo wa futatsu ni wakarete shimatte iru. Otto no soba ni modoru. Otto wo osorete ita kanojo to, otto no reikokusa yue ni wa naretagaru kanojo to, koko ni mo futaju kozo- nb- shinri ga aru. **K5 iu futajusei wa, kare no egaku joseizo ni itsumo tsukimatotte, dokutoku na fun'iki wo oridasu no ni yakudatte kita. Tsumari gyaku ni ieba, Kawabata Yasunari wa, sono joseizS ni kSshita futaju no kage wo obisaseru koto ni yotte, jibun ni hisomu shunin meita yokubo wo, egaita no datta. 49 Yoshimura calls Kawabata's adaptation of the duality of women bunshin ( % ), that term most commonly trans lated as "double" or "alter ego." He sees the woman's spirit divided into two basic subdivisions: mother and daughter, older and younger sister, virgin and witch. He recognizes that these counterparts are different aspects !of a person of the same mind but which are related in some way. Their relationship is in spirit rather than in the flesh. Such a division can occur in more than two charac ters in one novel, as we see in the different aspects of woman in Thousand Cranes: Chikako the witch, Mrs. Ota the I temptress, Fumiko the fallen woman, Yukiko the ethereal virgin. Yoshimura also sees in some of Kawabata's woman an earth mother spirit which he defines as the image of the jsensuous woman whose own death must occur in order for her 'passion to flower. Often, death overtakes one counterpart so that the other can continue. In Sanninme [The Third Person]>, Kawabata writes about three sisters each of whom marries the same man. With the death of the first wife and oldest sister (Yoshimura's earth mother image), the way is jcleared for the husband to marry Ikuko, the middle sister. !she does not resist his attentions. Once they marry, Ikuko cannot forget that her youngest sister Shiroko looks 'like her dead sister. She fears that one day Shiroko and i :Shitada will want to marry, because he will want to pre- i !serve the memory of his first wife. Shiroko says, "We were i 50 jspeaking about my older sister; I heard that somehow or other three sisters caught the same man."71* This could be her way of hinting that she too expects to marry Shitada. The three sisters are counterparts, two of them even ^bearing a striking physical resemblance to each other. In i .order for the women to become Shitada's wives, each must \ jdie so that the younger may take her place. In Thousand I I iCranes, Mrs. Ota is the passionate earth mother who must i : !die before Kikuji can move on to Fumiko. When Fumiko t herself is no longer a virgin, and, therefore, has the potential for becoming an earth mother like Mrs. Ota, she i imust be removed so that nothing obstructs the path to I ! Yukiko. i j Kawabata also places his male narrator-protagonists in j ! the role of "virgin," although he does not find this an ! | iideal position. Shimamura and Kikuji have a kind of purity I about them, yet it is perverse. Shimamura flirts with ; i kabuki for years, but as soon as he has the opportunity to J become an active participant in the world of the theater, ;he turns away. He preserves his "purity" in his studies of J ;the Western ballet by refusing to see one performed. Kikuji maintains a kind of sexual purity towards Yukiko i (using the guise of her virginity. He is trapped by the J Isexual evils of his past, yet toward Yukiko he remains i • • • ' i *Onesama no hanashi da shi, shimai sannin kakatte, hitori no otoko ni nani ka shiteru yo ni kikoeru wa. virginal even after they marry in 1 S T am i - ch i do r i [Plovers on ■ the Waves]. Both achieve an "ideal" yet perverted mar- ! 72 riage, an asexual liaison. i D. The Hollow Man as Narrator-Protagonist j Kawabata's narrator-protagonist belongs to the univer sal concept of the twentieth-century man as an alienated : entity without any self or any social identity, although limiting man's alienated state of being to the twentieth century may be too restrictive. This is a general state of] i mankind regardless of time. He stands alone and moves j I through his personal time without any true contact with other selves. Since alienation has become the cri du coeur; i of the twentieth century, its importance should not be ! underestimated when discussing Kawabata's narrator- protagonists. Kawabata may not create an original myth of ; the modern man, but he certainly supports the general ideas of man's existential isolation. An alienated character ; evokes feelings of "emptiness, desertion and unrelatedness to the world at large." Kawabata's narrator-protagonists exist in an "existential vacuum," a void, where "there is l nothing left to talk about, nothing left to do, and nothing 7 3 left to invest in a future." Such characters have no i i functional role in society; they are superfluous, to borrowj Turgenev's adjective, to others and to themselves. They ! exist estranged from the world outside of the self which 52 Ithey distort to conform to isolating needs within them selves. Shimamura condemns Komako's way of life as a "waste of effort," yet he is unable to see that his own way of life is even more of a waste, even emptier, than hers. |shingo, too, is estranged from present reality by his I ( continual retreats into fantasies of the past and distorted memories throughout most of the novel. The Shimamura i jexample lives on the "fringes of the fleeting world, an I lobserver rather than a participant."^ The alienated man does not become an active member of the world of reality. He is a bystander on life, looking at it from without. Such isolation from the mainstream of society has long been the writer's role in Japanese society. With the iadvent of the Meiji novel around 1878, the writer assumed ithe role of commentator on society while seated on the jsidelines. He lived in small cliques which were physically I |removed from the society he observed. He did not want to |be an active member of society, nor did society invite him |to be one. Not dissimilar to other rarefied literary jcoteries in the West like Bloomsbury or the American ^expatriates in Paris, these literary circles commented on i land even criticized society without offering any solutions j jto the problems they saw. The literary intellectual was by definition isolated and alienated. It should not be lunexpected to find later writers like Kawabata reflecting similar alienated ideas in their characters. ; 53 j Kawabata1s narrator-protagonist is related to Dostoevsky's underground man who "can embrace no certitudes, no existential faith born of subjective immediacy. He is an absence, a self stripped of ontological truth. . . , He is a nothingness, a vain consciousness, a form of existence that cannot justify itself."^ Shimamura, Jcimpei, Kikuji, Ski, Shingo, and old Sguchi— all are self- I centered and empty. They are, for the most part, non productive characters whose reason for living is intimately connected with their search for the ideal woman. However, since the search is passive, and nearly subliminal for some 'of the characters, theirs is a composite "detached, introverted self, at best a spectator of the phenomenal | 76 world." Without an ontological basis for existence, the ; ! ! lalienated character is in stasis. He is part of nature and 1 I at the same time outside of and different from the nature jin which he finds himself. "He feels homeless and super- ! jfluous in an inscrutable universe of things. He can gain !no clue to his identity, nor can he appeal to any universal 77 ;law for justification of existence." Kawabata's hollow i i , narrator-protagonist does not often turn to introspection 'in a search for his identity; in fact, he does not generally care about who he is. His primary concern in life is his t search. Any self-examination would lead away from the 'search and would run the risk of rendering it meaningless. i The search will win out at the expense of the self. This absence of self-examination serves to underscore the utter emptiness of the narrator-protagonist. Such charac ters as Kikuji, Shingo and old Eguchi "experience monotony, a lack of vividness in their lives, a dead grayness from I day to day. Whatever emotions they do feel seem insignifi cant to give them much of a sense of being alive and i I involved in life.""^ Shingo and old Eguchi are the two Inarrator-protagonists who turn to introspection. From ! their vantage point of old age, they look, back over the years of their search and inward in hopes of understanding its origins. Shingo understands it; old Eguchi does not. j Kawabata's narrator-protagonist, like his fellow man, Jis at the mercy of time and events. Whether he is aware of I Jit or not, everything he has or is will eventually become I !nothingness. Even his search will become nothingness with !his death. Things happen to him in his passivity.^ 1 The problem of the twentieth-icentury writer is how to give adequate embodiment to those states of spiritual lostness which accompany the disintegration I of the lost self, the communicate his vision of j the meaningless flux and reality of life. ® (Kawabata’s continual assembling of images of hollowness [ Idemonstrates his narrator-protagonist1s "spiritual lost- jness." Not only does the narrator-protagonist have no function in society except as appreciator of and searcher I jfor ideal beauty, but he also is an empty shell which i * ^nothing can make complete. 55 One feels compelled to discuss Kawabata's hollow narrator-protagonist in terms of Camus’ Sisyphean existen tial hero who "not only endures but also finds joy in this task” of pushing his rock endlessly up the hill. In some |ways Shimamura is Sisyphean in that he endures and enjoys i his search which is as endless and futile as pushing a rock i jup a hill. However, Shimamura and the other narrator- i Jprotagonists are unaware, for the most part, of their i alienation from the universe and are unaware of the "asser tion of the existential self against the discontinuities of the human predicament."82 i I The hero of the absurd, Sisyphean victim and rebel ; in one, feels the precariousness of his position in 1 the universe. No call of conscience, no ethics of I commitment, can long blot out the truth he has • caught about the meaninglessness of his lonely pilgrimage on this spinning planet. Geologic time , as compared to historical time serves to emphasize | the fact that man is but a parvence on earth, a j forked radish that struts and rants for a fleeting i hour against a background of the eternal. It is | precisely this perception that adds an absurd j dimension to existence.83 I |And yet it is this perception which Kawabata’s hollow |narrator-protagonist rarely achieves. He does not see him- [self as he really is; therefore, he can only be the victim ^f his blind hollowness and never rebel against it. i If man faces the truth honestly, he must admit that there is no justification for his journey through time. . . . He stands naked, with no myth of redemption to console him, in the midst of Nature that recks not of his fate, alone under "an iron, godless sky. . . . Absolutely alone. . . ."84 56 Shimamura does not want to face the truth of his miserable existence. He sees briefly that his life is as empty as Komako's, but he cannot accept this knowledge. To do so would destroy his quest. For him, the eternal search is all the justification he needs for living. He like those ^narrator-protagonists who come after him ends completely | alone. j If the self can continually create its own reality, as i I jFrederick J. Hoffman says, then it can also create the (world of illusion. The shift to illusion is an evasion, j even a negation of the nature of reality itself. Many of Kawabata's narrator-protagonists treat illusion as reality's opposite without recognizing that both can exist simultane ously. The feeling of isolated superiority of man as the ! j i |creator of his reality (or nonreality) "is a cause of great 1 ianxiety, so intense that most selves prefer to have, the ■decisions made for t h e m . " ® ^ This gives us one more charac teristic of the hol'low man: passivity. Kikuji, Oki, and old Eguchi are all passive recipients of what life holds for them. We see a narrator-protagonist who has lost his concept i |of self and may not even be aware that it is missing. He t jdoes not distinguish between illusion and reality, between |the inner need to alter what he observes and the outer I 8 6 .reality itself. He has no "framework of objectivity," i i I 57 for he is unable to make that basic differentiation between the dream and the outside world. A bystander on life, then, is the image of Kawabata's hollow narrator-protagonist who lives in existential isola tion, in a state of spiritual lostness, passive and super- jfluous, whose life is a complete "waste of effort." jKawabata joins a growing list of twentieth-century writers i {who see "modern man, beneath the mask of his bustling I i i |activity and consumption of goods, as among the most abject o n in history m terms of his inner life." Shimamura does not realize the extent to which his thoughts and actions are "dominated by personal isolation and universal meaning- OQ jlessness." He exists m a vacuum, allowing no other self |to penetrate the defenses he erects, searching for an iso lating ideal, manipulated by other, stronger selves. j {Kawabata presents such a man in each of these six novels, {modifying his character whenever necessary. He is an archetype of the hollow rnan. 58 Notes 1. Edward G. Seidensticker, "Strangely Shaped Novels: A Scattering of Examples," in Studies in Japanese Culture: Tradition and Experiment, edited by Joseph Roggendorf (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1963), p. 211. | 2. Ueda Makoto, Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of i Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), p. 204. 3. Hasegawa Izumi, ed., "Kawabata Yasunari nerapu" [^Chronology of Kawabata Yasunari1], in Kawabata Yasunari sakuhin kenkyu [A Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari], edited by Hasegawa Izumi (Tokyo: Yagij. Shoten, 1969), pp. 554-561 passim. 4. Ueda, Modern Japanese Writers, p. 206. 5. Ibid., pp. 206-207. 6. Robert Humphrey, Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954), pp. 2-4. 7 . Ibid., p. 25. i | 8. Ibid., p. 24. i I 9. Ibid., pp. 35-36. 110. Ibid., p. 34. i 111. Kawabata Yasunari, "Rakka ryusui" [Falling Blossoms anc | Flowing Waters], in Kawabata Yasunari zenshu [The Complete Works of Kawabata Yasunari], vol. XII (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1970), p. 277. [Ellipsis Kawabata's.] RensC no ukabinagareru ni tsurete kaite yukitai watakushi wa, kaku ni> tsurete renso ga sasowarewaite deru. Dare datte so de aru ga, jibun wa sono kuse ga tsuyoi no dewa nai ka to omou. Aruiwa, renso wo shusha sentaku suru atama ga yowai node aro ka to omou. Atarashii shinri no bungaku, iwayuru "ishiki no nagare" no bungaku, tatoeba jyoisu, urufu, purusuto, sorekara fuokuna de sae mo, rens5, kioku no bungaku to hitokuchi ni ienu koto wa nai ga,— mottomo, kono 59 tagui no shinri shosetsu wa, kengo seicho no koten ni taishite, kindai kara gendai no suijaku, taihai, wakuran to, watakushi wa tsune ni kangaete iru. Atarashii bungaku ga ningen no naio wo atarashiku hiraita no wa tashika da keredomo. . . . 12. Virginia Woolf, Collected Essays, vol. 2 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1967), p. 2 22. I 113. Ibid., pp. 222-23. ! [14. Miyoshi Masao, Accomplices of Silence: The Modern | Japanese Novel (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: | University of "California Press, 1974), p. 98. i j15. Ueda, Modern Japanese Writers, p. 208. 16. Dorothy S. Schlieman, "Yasunari Kawabata's 'Narrow Bridge of Art,'" Literature East and West 15-16 (December 1971, March 1972, June 1972): p. 890. j17. Ibid., p. 890. 18. Humphrey, Stream of Consciousness, p. 127. 19. Schlieman, "'Narrow Bridge,'" p. 904. 20. Woolf, Essays, p. 285. i 21. Ibid., p. 102. 22. Ibid. 23. Schlieman, "'Narrow Bridge,'" p. 904. j 24 - Ueda, Modern Japanese Writers, pp. 211-213 passim. 25. Ibid., p. 175. |26. Marleigh Ryan, "Modern Japanese Fiction: Accumulated i Truth," The Journal of Japanese Studies 2 (Summer 1976): p. 249. 27. Ueda, Modern Japanese Writers, p. 175. j 28. Ibid. I 29. Schlieman, "'Narrow Bridge,'" p. 902. 30. Ueda, Modern Japanese Writers, p. 184. 31. Ibid., pp. 183-184. | 32. Kawabata Yasunari, "Horobinu bi'! [Unperishable Beauty],' in Kawabata Yasunari zenshu [The Complete Works of j Kawabata Yasunari], vol. XV (Tokyo: Shinch5sa, 1970), ■ ' p. 195. [Ellipsis Kawabata's.] ■Ittan kono yo ni arawareta bi wa, kesshite horobinai . . . "Bi wa tsugi tsugi to utsurikawarinagara, mae no bi ga shinanai." Minzoku no unmei wa kyobo tsune nai ga, sono kyobo no ato ni nokoru mono wa, sono minzoku no motsu bi de | aru. . . "Bi wo takameru minzoku wa, ningen no j tamashii to seimei wo takameru minzoku de aru." i 33. Ibid., p. 196. Gendai bungaku no jiyu na seido. ! 34. Ibid. ! | 35. Kawabata Yasunari, "Nihon bungaku no bi" [Aesthetics ! of Japanese Literature], in Kawabata Yasunari zenshu , [The Complete Works of Kawabata Yasunari], vol. XV J r CTokyo: Shinchosa, 1970), p. 236. "Bungaku wa : ranjuku sureba kanarazu taihai shimasu ga, taihai ni katamuite ochite kimasu to, geijutsu mo suijaku shite seimei ryoku wo ushinatte kimasu." 36. Ibid. "Kyo wa geijutsu bunka no kyoryuki de aru no ka, ranjukuki de aru no ka, moshika suru to mo taihaiki de aru no ka, jibun jushin ga sono naka ni ima no ima tachimajitte imasu to, mikihameru no wa konran na node arimasu. Mata fukanS de arimasho. Ato no rekishi no me ni makaseru hoka wa arimasumai." 37. Ueda, Modern Japanese Writers, pp. 186-189 passim. 38. Ibid., p. 195. 39. Ibid., pp. 181-182. 40. Ibid., p. 177. 41. Kawabata Yasunari, "Junsui no koe" [The Pure Voice], ! in Kawabata Yasunari zenshu [The Complete Works of Kawabata Yasunari], vol. XIII (Tokyo: Shinchosa, 1970), pp. 115-116. [Ellipsis mine.] Shojo no koe ga i "junsui no koe" de aru naraba, shojo no nikutai wa ! "junsui no nikutai" to iu koto ga dekiru daro. . . . j Sore wa tonikaku to shite, "junsui no koe" ga ari, "junsui no nikutai" ga aru nara, "junsui no seishin" to iu mono mo aru hazu de aru. . . . Jogakusei wa shijin to shitemo, sanbunka to shitemo, shogaku no joji ni otoru no wa naze de aru ka. . . . Wakai mumei no onna no shSsetsu wo yomu to, heta de areba aru dake, kaette kono onna de arigatasa ga afurete iru koto ga atte, "junsui no seishin" no araware ka to kangaerareru. 42. Ueda, Modern Japanese Writers, pp. 177-179. 43. Muramatsu Takeshi, "Kawabata bungaku no joseizS" [The | Image of Women in Kawabata's Literature], in Kindai I bungaku kansho koza [A Study in Appreciation of Contemporary Literature], vol. 13: Kawabata Yasunari, i edited by Yamamoto Kenkichi (Tokyo: Kadogawa Shorten f , 1968), p. 332. 144. Ueda, Modern Japanese Writers, pp. 179-180. 45. Ibid., pp. 199-200. 46. Ibid., pp. 200-201. 147. Ibid., p. 202. 48. Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, translated by Ulrich Weisstein (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1963), pp. 180-185 passim. 49. Ibid., p. 185. 50. Arthur Clayborough, The Grotesque in English Litera- j ture (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 64. 1 51. Ibid., pp. 64-65. 52. Ibid., p. 71. 53. Kayser, Grotesque, pp. 51-52. 54. Ibid., p. 43. ,55. Ibid., pp. 57-58. '56. Ibid., p. 122. 1 ;57. Clayborough, Grotesque, p. 16. i i58. Kayser, Grotesque, p. 78. ;59. Ibid., p. 135. 1 i60. Yoshimura Teiji, Kawabata Yasunari: BL to dentd [Kawabata Yasunari: Beauty and Tradition] (Tokyo: 62 Gakkei Shorin, 1968} , p. 123. [Ellipsis mine.] I Kekkon wa minna hitotsu hitotsu hibon no yd de aru w a. . . . Heibon no hito ga futari yottemo, kekkon wa i hibon na mono ni narimasu yo. j 61. Ibid., p. 124. Onna no rikon wa otoko ga shobaigae ' suru daimondai de wa nai. 62. Ibid. Tagai ni akugyo wo hatashinaku kuikonde shimau bukimi no numa. . . . Fufu futari kiri de otagai no akugyo ni kotaete numa wo fukamete yuku. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid., p. 21. j I 65. Ibid., p. 54. Keredomo junketsu na seishojo ga, fui | ni jinshinkan no majo ni henshin suru himitsu no gen’in wa doko ni aru daro ka. Seishojo wo torimaku into musan no onnatachi ga, moshika shitara, seishojo no bunshin de wa nakaro ka.? j I 66. Ibid., p. 49. Te wo nigiranai koi. j 67. Ibid., pp. 50-51. i I 68. Ibid., p. 53. 69. Ibid., pp. 22-23. Kanojo wa futatsu ni wakarete shimatte iru. Otto no soba ni modoru. Otto wo j osorete ita kanojo to, otto no reikokusa yue ni wa naretagaru kanojo t o ' , , koko ni mo futaju kozo no : shinri ga aru. i 70. Muramatsu Takeshi, "Joseizo," p. 327. Ko iu futajusei• wa, kare no egaku joseizo ni itsumo tsukimatotte, , dokutoku na fun'iki wo oridasu no ni yakudatte kita. Tsumari gyaku ni ieba, Kawabata Yasunari wa, sono joseizo ni koshita futaju no kage wo obisaseru koto ni yotte, jibun ni hisomu shunin meita yokubo wo, egaita no datta. 71. Yoshimura, Bi to den'tS, pp. 208-209. Onesama no hanashi da shi, shimai sannin kakatte, hitori no otoko ni nani ga shiteru yo ni kikoeru wa. : 72. Ueda, Modern Japanese Writers, pp. 190-191. | 73. Geoffrey Clive, The Broken Icon: Intuitive Existen tialism in Classical Russian Fiction (New York: The i Macmillan Co.; London: Collier-Macmillan, Ltd., 1972),, p. 181, 74. George Victor, Invisible Men: ' Faces of Alienation (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973) , p. 3. 75. Charles J. Glicksberg, The Self in Modern Literature (University Park, Penna.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1963), pp. xi-xii. [Italics mine.] i76. Ibid., p. xii. 77. Ibid. I i 7 8. Victor, Invisible Men, p. 85. i ! j79. Glicksberg, Se1f, p. 73. j 80. Ibid., p. 40. i 81. William V. Spanos, "Abraham,Sisyphus, and the Furies: Some Introductory Notes on Existentialism," in A Casebook on Existentialism, edited by William V. Spanos (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1966), p. 5. 82. Ibid., p. 8. i j83. Glicksberg, Self, p. 106. ;84. Ibid. i j 85. Frederick J. Hoffman, The Mortal No: Death and the i Modern Imagination (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton • University Press, 1964), p. 435. 86. Wylie Sypher, Loss of the Self in Modern Literature and Art (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), p. 118. j 87. Victor, Invisible Men, p. 3. I 188. Ibid., pp. 3-4. I I i 64 CHAPTER II ~ t f THE PSYCHOLOGICAL QUEST FOR IDEAL BEAUTY 'A. Snow Country In establishing Shimamura as the primary example of 'the narrator-protagonist in the development of the myth of i the alienated modern man, one must continually be aware of the opposition of illusion and reality which is the predom inant isolating factor in this novel. From the frequently * quoted opening line, "The train came out of the long tunnel |into the snow country," until the equally famous closing line, "the Milky Way flowed down inside him with a roar,"^ | |we know that the physical location is a world separated j i ;from mundane reality, represented by Tokyo on the coast, by i l jthe Border Range, regardless of Tsuruta Kinya's disclaimer ‘ o jthat Kawabata does not create a "never-never land." i Shimamura travels to a world real in the sense that it 'occupies physical space and illusory in the sense that he | jconsciously distorts the reality he perceives there. He |returns to nature whenever he feels he is losing "his jhonesty with himself," going out "alone into the mountains I O : to recover something of it. He seeks purification in ;nature, but this, too, is an illusion. His attempt to return to the idyllic wilderness of his fantasy world is a failure, for he can neither recognize nor understand the reality of this world. Once he arrives in his distant world, he meets two young women who come to represent two different aspects in his quest for the ideal "non-woman," a quest at best unconscious, because he is unaware that he is 1 searching for anything. He is conscious in differing l degrees of his evasion of reality; he is even aware of what instruments he uses to jump into his fantasy world— the color red, mirrors, images of cleanness, and the Milky Way t |all serve to distort reality. What he is never completely conscious of is his own deficiency— his hollowness— which renders him incapable of engaging in any satisfactory human relationship free from distortion. I , # , I j The myth of Shimamura as the hollow man is the major jthematic statement encompassing "a sense of sorrow and loneliness, a recognition of an emotional and spiritual | i vacuity in man."^ Shimamura is capable of insight into the j ! hollowness of Komako's existence, but brief glimpses of his own existential isolation are rejected immediately. His is |not a mind equipped with the faculty of introspection, but I jrather it is one attuned to self-deception. He suffers l (from a "metaphysical ennui, a boredom that consists in a I I S •lack of reality." He feigns boredom in the only scene m i Iwhich he is nearly overwhelmed by his own emotions. On the morning when Komako practices the samisen in his room, he 66 realizes at first that "there was nothing for him to do but give himself up to the current, to the pleasure of being swept off wherever Komako would take him." However, he controls himself by silently ridiculing her extemporate performance and rolls over "as if in bored indifference."® His ennui begins as feigned but soon becomes real. He is j ■ 'left empty, with no emotion to sustain him or to bring jpleasure. For the alienated narrator-protagonist, the only jpermanent solution for any situation is total detachment. |He looks at life through the wrong end of a telescope, |allowing life itself to appear distant ‘ and distorted to his ! jaded eyes. i The hollow man may not always be conscious of the ivacuity of his existence, yet he attempts to compensate for lit with his quest for a permanent ideal in the transitori- ! jness of beauty. By defining the object of his quest as the j jideal "non-woman," virginal and unattainable, he dooms jhimself to certain failure, while at the same time making i this futile quest his raison d1etre. This contradiction rules his life. He moves through a series of tableaux |involving the two women, Komako the "mountain geisha" and I jyoko, the girl with the voice so beautiful "that it struck 7 one as sad." The tableaux unfold in a series of inter locking triangular relationships involving Shimamura, the i jtwo women, and the dying Yukio. Superimposed on them are jshimamura's projected images which distort reality, the ! 67 conscious and unconscious ways he protects himself from i coming into abrupt contact with the reality he leaves behind in Tokyo. The novel opens with one of the most famous scenes in Japanese literature, the train sequence jwith its montage effect in the steamy window. The passage I defines part of the triangular relationships, is imbued I ;with overtones of dreamlike unreality, and establishes 1 Shimamura's total, willful detachment and resultant exis- ! jtential isolation. The section in question develops in a [brief flashback from time present to a point three hours earlier. Shimamura had noticed a girl with "something in - R her manner suggest[ing] the unmarried girl" traveling with I ! ;a sick man somewhat older than herself. Without knowing ; 'anything about their relationship, Shimamura indulges in |his first conscious fantasy involving Yoko. But Shimamura in his ftiind had cut the girl off from i the man with her and decided from her general i appearance and manner that she was unmarried. And then, because he had been looking at her from a strange angle for so long, emotions peculiarly his own had perhaps colored his judgment. He has no proof of her virginity, yet he wants to imagine 'her as untouched, for she then has the first important ^quality of his ideal "non-woman." Shimamura is traveling jto the hot springs resort to meet Komako who had become his lover on his first visit several months earlier during the :spring. He tries to remember what she looks like, but the harder he tries, the vaguer his image of her becomes. Only i i 68 the forefinger he flexes, still "damp from her touch,"'*'® recalls her. This is the first hint of the dichotomy in Shimamura's mind about the nature of woman: he is attracted to the forbidden virginal quality of Yoko, yet he cannot remember what the physical woman Komako looks like. The fantasy image of Yoko here is more realistic than the I l real woman he is going to visit. Shimamura takes his fore- i finger and draws a line across the clouded train window. jHe is startled when he sees an eye float up in the cleared t jspace; then he realizes it is a reflection of Yoko's eye, j"strangely beautiful" in isolation. "Since the girl was thus diagonally opposite him, Shimamura could as well have looked directly at her, " ■ * ■ ■ * ■ but he prefers to have his reality filtered through the mirror. "Rather it was as if he were watching a tableaux in a dream— -and that was no 1 ? doubt the working of his strange mirror." He is detached and protected by watching "a symbolic world not of this world.He accumulates images of unreality until the reader has no doubt about these elements. The world in the mirror is unreal, and as such it is preferable to the real igirl and her companion sitting opposite. From the opening i jpassage onward, then, Shimamura will more or less cons- i jciously reject most modes of reality in favor of his dream iworld. I ! The major relationships are established here. \ I Shimamura sees Yoko and Yukio together, thinks of Komako, 69 and uses his forefinger to draw a symbolic link between the two women. There is a direct connection between Shimamura and Komako and between Y5ko and Yukio. The connections between Shimamura and Yoko and Komako and Yukio are less obvious and the one between Komako and Yoko the most tenuous. Shimamura jShimamura is drawn to Yoko because she represents his ! 'image of ideal, virginal beauty, and to Komako as his i i ! sexual partner. Shimamura, Komako and Yoko form one ; i jtriangle, with Yoko, Komako and Yukio forming the other. I i \ From the depths of Shimamura1s consciousness comes the i [psychological projection of what he expects the two women | ito be. The time present of the opening sequence has I Shimamura fantasizing about Yoko's state of virginity while jbeing aware of the sexual reality of Komako. We are intro- I |duced to Yoko first; we know her name immediately. We have i !only vague, half-memories of Komako whom Shimamura calls "the woman," to distinguish her from her counterpart whom he icalls "the girl." We meet Komako by name almost thirty-five j*-------represents an unknown relationship with no psycho- i logical projection. 70 pages later. She is nameless throughout the entire flash back covering their initial meeting; therefore, she serves as an anonymous counterpart to Y5ko. Shimamura's reunion with Komako is blatantly sexual. I i i j Abruptly, at the foot of the stairs, he shoved his I left fist before her eyes, with only the forefinger extended. I i "This remembered you best of all." I | "Oh?" The woman took the finger in her hand and I clung to it as though to lead him upstairs.^ Komako accepts the sexual aspect of their relationship. She is already the fallen woman in Shimamura's eyes. I ! The flashback to Shimamura's first meeting with Komako the previous spring is filled with bright, cheerful images of young green leaves, sunlight, butterflies— and a girl of nineteen who is "quasi-virginal." Shimamura has just returned from his purifying week in the mountain wilderness, i (healthy and wanting a woman. The inn sends him Komako, the girl who lives with the music teacher. The maid informs |him that while she does not entertain guests alone in their j rooms, "she could not exactly be called an amateur (shiroto I ------- I )."15 The maid's words make no impression on Shimamura when he finally meets Komako. The impression the woman gave was a wonderfully clean and fresh one. It seemed to Shimamura that i she must be clean to the hollows under her toes. ^ He has been refreshed by the purity of the mountains and projects that purity onto the girl. Warnings about her j I ! 71 i _____________________________________________________________________________ nebulous status as a semi-professional notwithstanding, he sees in Komako the virginal purity of the mountains. He wonders, however, if this purity is not an illusion. He is restrained with her and decided to treat her with kindness. .She is not going to become his sexual plaything, because he wants her to be his ideal virgin. When he asks her age, a i •subtle change in his reaction to her begins. He had | !thought her to be twenty-one or twenty-two; she is only |nineteen: "the knowledge that she had aged beyond her i jyears gave him for the first time a little of the ease he expected to feel with a geisha." As they talk about jkabuki, Komako begins "to show an ease and abandon that revealed her to be at heart a woman of the pleasure quarter after all."-^ Her transition from virgin to sexual object jcommences. He has been told and has seen that she is |hardly the pure girl he wants her to be, yet Shimamura jrejects this knowledge as long as he can. He is not ready 'to abandon his image of her ideal beauty. (It matters little if Komako is not a virgin; until Shimamura sleeps with her, she is in his eyes.) He retreats into his impres sion of her cleanness and amateur standing which add an air of unreality to her. She is not unreal to anyone but Shimamura. As long as he remakes her into his ideal image, he protects himself from the temptation of any physical affair with her. 72 On the second day he asks her to call a geisha for him, because he is beginning to feel sexual desire for j Komako. When he actually sees his proposed bed partner, he escapes quickly to the purity of nature. In the only j i ! scene of unrestrained emotion, he runs joyously down a . mountain slope, noticing butterflies and sunlight. He ! meets Komako in a cedar grove where he realizes "that he had from the start wanted only this woman, and that he had taken his usual roundabout way of saying so." This leads to a feeling of repulsion toward himself, while the "woman [becomes] all the more beautiful. This is a burgeoning but short-lived self-awareness of how unwilling he is to admit that he wants to sleep with her. He is ; I repulsive and passive. He is again impressed with her idealized beauty: "With her skin like white porcelain coated over a faint pink, and her throat still girlish, not i yet filled out, the impression she gave was above all one j of cleanness."19 As she gives herself to him, she calls him weak. He has lost his ideal "virgin," while she has S gained a semblance of love, although she cannot know that she has ruined his dream. Shimamura's images of Komako are purely physical and sensual from here on. Returning to the present, he notices the red flush on her neck, "the most sensuous skin j was as if laid naked before him."20 Naked and real— such | is Komako, although in certain brief moments Shimamura will | 73 I I try in vain to recapture that ideal image in order to pro tect himself from her physical reality. Komako's confession about keeping a diary prompts Shimamura to draw some analogies with his own life. i . jKomako's diary contains entries about her parties, her life |in the mountains and on the coast, and plot synopses of ! I jnovels she has read. When Shimamura learns that she does |not write down critiques, he says, ! "But what good does it do?" j "None at all." i "A waste of effort." "A complete waste of effort," she answered brightly. He extends this idea of a "waste of effort" (tor5 ) to Komako's life ini its entirety. He soon hears a tumor that she became a geisha to pay for Yukio's medical bills, ■but it is Yoko not Komako who cares for the dying man. Komako has sold herself for a futile cause. A complete waste of effort. For some reason Shimamura wanted to stress the point. But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet j like the voice of the rain flow.over him. He I knew well enough that for her it" was in fact ! no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it was had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence. 2 Shimamura cannot sympathize with Komako's plight. Instead, I he has to remove this awareness from reality and make it i I the tool for idealizing her position. He fails to discern the depths of her existential isolation. To do so would 74 throw his own isolation into stark relief. Shimamura does not realize that his own distant fantasy on the Occidental ballet, built up in words and photographs in foreign books, was not in its way dissimilar.23 jHe is a dilettante who wants to publish a luxury edition on •the Western ballet which he has never seen. He has studied i the dance because he cannot see it performed by Westerners. ;He refuses to see ballet performed by Japanese dancers. ; A ballet he had never seen was an art in another ; world. It was an unrivaled armchair reverie, a lyric from some paradise. He called his work research, but it was actually free, uncontrolled fantasy. . . . It was like being in love with someone he had never seen.2^ Shimamura does not embark on any serious pursuit "commen surate with his gifts' leS’ t he fail to be a brilliant success. . . . In more than one way he lives beneath his |means. In the long run this makes it necessary for him to I withdraw farther from others. . . . In order to endure ' O C •life he must now entrench himself in his fantasy world. 3 His choice of "careers," like his treatment of Komako, exists in a fantasy world. Were he to give himself quite up to that cons ciousness of wasted effort, Shimamura felt, he would be drawn into a remote emotionalism that would make his own life a waste. He is briefly aware of the futility of his existence, but jthis knowledge does not lead to a change in character. He ! istays cold and detached, protecting himself from any emotionalism. His romanticizing about chijimi is also part 75 Iof the same isolating pattern of behavior. He has read i about the process of snow bleaching chijimi "in an old book" and sends his own kimonos out for bleaching every winter. This is all part of his fantasy, for It must be added, however, that a Tokyo shop took care of the details for him, and he had no way of | knowing that the bleaching had really been done I in the old manner.^ 'Komako, the ballet, chijimi— all are devices by which IShimamura protects his existential isolation. The unreal images build to a peak of intensity when Shimamura visits Komako’s room for the first time. It once was a storehouse for silkworms, and Shimamura thinks of jKomako in terms of translucent purity. He dreams that jlight could pass through her body as it does through the ;silkworms. Shimamura feels he is "suspended in a void" I (chQ ni tsurusatte iru ’ I # ’ i- ^ 7 w 3 ) along with Komako. |It is a scene of utter emptiness. Once Shimamura leaves i ter room with a feeling of unexplained discomfort, he feels ithat "the room he had only this moment left had become part of that same distant world (toi sekai v J ^ )."28 When he is out of Komako’s presence, she does not exist for jhim. He can push her into his fantasy world only when he i jis away from her. In her presence, he is constantly aware i ;of her sensuous physicality. Komako’s samisen practice |reveals completely that the void Shimamura experienced in jKomako’s room is an outward manifestation of his inner emptiness. The notes reverberate in his chest. 76 The first notes opened a transparent emptiness deep in his entrails, and in the emptiness the sound of the samisen reverberated. Y5ko, in contrast, is never real until the end of the first half of the novel. Although we know her name from Ithe opening lines, we know nothing about her outside of Shimamura's fantasies. She is described in terms of her i"piercing gaze" and a "voice so beautiful that it was sad." i |She has no flesh, only intensity of emotion. As Yukio lies dying, she rushes to Shimamura to plead with him to release Komako so that she can visit her dying friend. Yoko grabs jShimamura's hand, the only physical contact between the two jin the novel. Although Shimamura insists that Komako go to i .Yukio's deathbed, she refuses, for she says she must see J t |her departing guest off at the station. She has chosen !Shimamura over Yukio, knowing fully that Shimamura is ■unreliable. As Shimamura leaves Komako behind in the snow { jcountry, he J abandoned himself to the fancy that he had stepped into some unreal conveyance, that he Was being borne away in emptine ss, cut off from time and ■ place. The monotonous sound of the wheels became the woman's voice. i :with the unreality of death left behind, Shimamura easily slips back into his imaginary world, once again protected in his isolation. The last visit to the hot springs resort in autumn i reveals Komako mercilessly stripped bare of any projected image. If Shimamura's first reaction to the two women is : Shimamura Komako as lover Komako as virg___ Yoko as nurse Yoko as ethereal virgin then his projected images alter considerably in autumn. He can no longer idealize his sexual partner. In his reunion with Komako after a year's absence, Shimamura sees her in glaring physical terms. She has given up all pretenses and comes to him as his lover. She \ (appears in a swarm of dying insects, berates him for being : i I an - insensitive Tokyo-ite, and talks about her physical j discomfort. A strong, grotesque description of her complete ^physical qualities replaces the idealized non-description I of "clean to the hollows under her toes." Insects smaller than moths gathered on the thick white powder at her neck. Some of them died as Shimamura watched. The flesh on her neck and shoulders was richer ! than it had been the year before. She is just twenty, he told himself.31 We need not wait for the climactic scene when Shimamura ishifts from a term of endearment to one of crass honesty to ■know that the relationship is at an end. Shimamura is I isearching for the ideal virgin. Komako, even by the Shimamura Komako as lover w physical decay (no projected image) \Yoko as ethereal virgin \ Yoko as weaver maiden (only projected images) 78 wildest flight of fancy, can no longer qualify. Shimamura only sees the rot in her. Ugliness is victorious along with a strong degree of sexuality. She had become unreal from the moment he stepped onto the train which bore him back to mundane reality. Now the ugly side of reality has destroyed .one-half of his projected ideal "non-woman." He uses her I ! sexually or not at all. "The fat on her abdomen was ■ 32 ^heavier, he had noticed." Her intense physical qualities culminate in the fire pillow sequence. She lay heavily across his chest. He found it a^ little oppressive, especially when she turned over and arched her back; but, too suddenly awakened, he fell back as he tried to get up. It was an astonishingly hot object that his head came to rest on. "You're on fire I" i "Oh? Fire for a pillow. See that you don't burn j yourself." i "I might very well." He closed his eyes and the warmth sank into his head, bringing an immediate ! sense of life. Reality came through the violent breathing and With it a sort of nostalgic remorse. He felt as though he were waiting tranquilly for some undefined revenge.33 jThe remorse he feels is for his lost dream. Reality has (vanquished fantasy; Shimamura is exposed to the very thing i he has been avoiding. He shifts his projections to Yoko for the last time. Shimamura is distressed when he learns that Yoko, now alone in the world following the deaths of Yukio and the i music teacher, works as a maid in the inn where he stays. I 79 jHe begins to feel uncomfortable having Komako visit him there, as if his own tainted sexuality could destroy Yoko's projected virginity. He was conscious of an emptiness that made him see j Komako's life as beautiful but wasted, even though i he himself was the object of her love; and yet the woman's existence, her straining to live, came touching him like naked skin. He pitied her and ! he pitied himself. I I , He was sure that Y5ko's eyes, for all their inno cence, Could send a probing light to the heart of these matters, and he somehow felt drawn to her too.34 It is:- almost as though he wants Yoko to see the depths of his decadence, but such knowledge would destroy her purity. He pampered himself with the somewhat whimsical j pleasure of sneering at himself through his work, and it may well have been from such a pleasure ' that his sad little dream sprang. . . . He spent much of his time watching insects in their death ; agonies. ;The death images accumulate until Shimamura arrives at the [grotesque juxtaposition of picking up a dead insect to dis- I jpose of it while at the same time thinking about his ' children back in Tokyo. Y5ko quickly evolves into a symbol jof death, from her initial contact with the dying Yukio to her daily visits to the cemetary, and, finally, to her fall from the balcony of the burning cocoon warehouse. "It ! iseems that at the core of Shimamura's attraction to Yoko is i a vague feeling that she, the eternal death bride, may : initiate him into the mystery of death and add another .dimension to his cool inner world." i i ! 80' Komako literally throws Shimamura and Yoko together when she forces Yoko to take drunken notes to him in his room. This leads to the only conversation between the two . land does much to weaken Shimamura's idealized image of her. i I She sits before him in trembling intensity, pleading with him to be kind to Komako. When Yoko mentions that she I jwants to go to Tokyo to work, Shimamura offers to travel [with her. But at that moment his affection for Komako welled up violently. To run off to Tokyo, as if eloping, with a nondescript woman would somehow be in the nature of an intense apology to Komako, and a penance for Shimamura himself.^7 jYoko is hardly nondescript, except in the very real sense of not being described in the novel. Shimamura protects himself from Y5ko by imagining that his feelings for Komako iare indeed strong. He protects his idealized image of her I [by calling her nondescript. He asks what she will do in [the city. Her answer, with a "delicious lilt in her voice," is that a single woman can always find a job. When she suggests that she become his maid, her voice "struck | emptily at the shell of Shimamura's heart, and fell away in I g o silence." Later in the bath, Shimamura hears Yoko 'merrily singing and wonders "if he might not have seen the ' - !earlier Yoko in a dream." He has always seen her m a ■dream. "As*long as Shimamura is after a pure woman, he i must approach her through a mirror which filters and purifies.Yoko threatens to become real here. He has 81 no mirror to protect himself, so he retreats and thinks of the serious Yoko as unreal. She cannot become real to him without his quest being destroyed. He continues to think of her as his idealized virgin, his "non-woman." j As Komako becomes less appealing in her fleshliness, ^prowling around like a "night beast" and living in a I cluttered room like a "fox's or badger's lair," Shimamura [ jfeels oppressed. He makes a brief symbolic flight down the railroad line to a chijimi town to restore his perspective on his fantasy world. As he walks about in the deep snow, he indulges in yet another fantasy about Yoko. He dreams of her as the weaver maiden, neatly tying together two important images. She, as the weaver maiden, can only meet her lover, the herd boy, which Gwenn R. Boardman thinks jcould be a pun on Shimamura's name,4' * ' once a year at the River of Heaven, the Milky Way. This fantasy at once removes Yoko from reality and anticipates her fall in the climactic Milky Way sequence. Shimamura also briefly confronts his emptiness while on his trip. He thinks back over his relationship with Komako and vaguely wonders "what was lacking in him." I Although he is not an introspective character, he is aware of his existential isolation. i | He stood gazing at his own coldness. . . . All of ■ Komako came to him, but it seemed that nothing went out from him to her. He heard in his chest, like snow piling up, the sound of Komako, an echo beating against empty walls.42 i i 82 Coldness has ceased to reflect purity, but refers directly to the vacuity of Shimamura's heart. He becomes aware of the depths of his hollowness, with the image of reverbera tion of the samisen becoming the sound of the woman herself. I His heart is empty. He cannot feel. This hollowness is borne out intensely in the feeling i of unreality in the climactic movement, the fire in the jsnow and the Milky Way segments. Just as Komako confronts !Shimamura upon his return from the chijimi country, they hear the cries of "Fire! Fire!" Shimamura's first impres sion is that the quiet belongs to a "little make-believe fire." It is not real. Even when he feels some of the .terror of it, even when he can almost (but not quite) hear l the roar of the flames, he is not involved with the reality tof the situation. He looks up at the Milky Way (unreality) 1 jand not ahead at the fire (reality). j . . . He felt himself floating into the Milky Way. Its radiance was so near that it seemed to take him up into it. . . .43 ;The unreal completely envelops Shimamura from now on, just |as the Milky Way appears to "wrap the night in its naked embrace." Shimamura feels that he is being pulled directly into the Milky Way; when he blinks his watering eyes, "the Milky Way came to fill them." Even Komako loses her physical qualities in the unreality of the moment. The shape of her slightly aquiline nose was not clear, and the color was gone from her small lips. . . . In the faint light that left no I I 83 shadows on the earth, Komako's face floated up like an old mask. It was strange that even in . the mask there should be the scent of the woman. Komako has become an object. Her womanly scent is now out of place. Shimamura feels the Milky Way pass through his I ,body to the outer limits of the world. This underscores his isolation and loneliness, while at the same time it becomes the dominant sexual metaphor of the novel. I Shimamura is thus dissociated from reality before iYoko's fall. As he stands watching in complete detachment, he sees a body fall in slow motion with a "strange, puppet like deadness." Everything freezes in suspended animation. He clearly perceives the arching line of water in contrast to the falling body. i ! The body was quite horizontal as it passed through j the air. Shimamura started back— not from fear, 1 however. He saw the figure as a phantasm from an \ unreal world. (Higenjitsu na sekai no gen'ei no j y5 datta. % U & % o fj o * ? V - * = • ) j That stiff figure, flung out into the air, became ■ soft and pliant. With a doll-like passiveness, I and the freedom of the lifeless, it seemed to hold 1 both life and death in abeyance. I_f Shimamura | felt even a flicker of uneasiness, it was lest the head drop, or a knee, or hip bend to disturb that perfectly horizontal l i n e . 45 The body is not that of Yoko falling to an unknown fate. It is a phantasm, something unreal which completely fasci nates Shimamura. His only concern is one of aesthetics. I He is entranced by "that perfectly horizontal line." 'Nothing must disturb its beauty. He does not think of Y5ko ;as dead; in fact, he does not recognize her at first. She 34 has "undergone some shift, some metamorphosis." Her trans formation in Shimamura's eyes does not necessarily involve death, but instead she transcends death. Her purity and beauty are forever preserved as an ideal image. Shimamura is left alone in the crowd when Komako runs toward Y5ko. She breaks away from the man who shuns reality I |toward the painful reality of her life's burden, Y5ko. ! Komako's humanity is revealed to all but Shimamura who, as I jhe tries to move toward her, is pushed aside. He is completely passive as he loses his footing, throws back his head, and achieves a form of sexual union with the Milky Way as it "flowed down inside him with a roar." He is freed from the real world with Komako's flight. She is jirrevocably human and, therefore, cannot exist in his junreal world. Yoko has undergone some mysterious transfor- I jmation, whether she is alive or a "living corpse" (ikeru shikabane ^ ), as Yoshimura Teiji thinks.^6 With the removal of both Komako and Y5ko from the unreal world, Shimamura too can flee, but his flight is from the real |deeper into the unreal. He rejects both women to merge 4 7 . with a symbol of absolute, erotic beauty, even though xt j means the abdication of his humanity. His only union is i Iwith the cosmos, for he has penetrated "the cold, inter- 4 8 ^stellar distances of withdrawal from human involvements." Shimamura is left in a state of existential isolation. He has lost two women he tried unsuccessfully to imagine as ideal. He begins and ends a passive individual, incapable of perceiving reality for any lengthy period of time. He isolates himself by projecting a mental image of purity onto Komako and Yoko. As long as he can pretend that they ) represent the ideal virgin he is unconsciously seeking, he is protected from any true human contact, for to touch the i jideal would bring its destruction. His fantasy world is so -powerful that, when faced with the destructive reality of i the fire, he backs away into aesthetic detachment and watches the action from the sidelines. Kawabata is not i !interested in "the eternal sorrow of the Japanese woman, as i jwell as . . . her quality of forlornness and passivity. I Komako is anything but passive and Yoko1s intensity keeps her from appearing forlorn. It is the passivity and hollow- i |ness of the narrator-protagonist which is at the heart of ^ |his novel. The various devices of unreality— mirrors, I colors, cleanness, the Milky Way— all dissociate Shimamura | from reality. He has constructed an unreal world in which ! |he alone can survive. He filters reality through the dis torting lens of his eye until he can mold it into something which he projects upon each woman he meets in turn until i 'her reality destroys the image. Then he shifts to another 'woman until reality once again intrudes. Yoko must be i removed from the novel after she asks Shimamura to take her to Tokyo with him. By removing her from the unreality of I ,the snow country, he would make her real. This he cannot * do. Before she can become real, then, she must be 1 destroyed. This will preserve her idealized image while allowing for her reality at the same time. Shimamura has transcended the physical world in his union with the jcosmos. Our last portrait of him is one of intense isola tion. Everything has failed and he is left alone and I •empty. Although the Milky Way flows down inside him, it 'will not compensate for his hollowness. It is the ultimate i !symbol of existential isolation. Only contact with humanity and not cosmic union can fulfill Shimamura as a man. He rejects humanity and reality in favor of the void. The hollow man abandons himself in nothingness with the destruction of the quest. jB. The Lake | Originally published in 1954, Kawabata1s Mizuumi EThe I i Laket. is a more advanced study of alienation and the search for the ideal beauty than Snow Country. The narrator- protagonist, Momoi Gimpei, lives in an existential hell of his own creation. He is an emotionally, physically and morally crippled character whose outer deformity is an I objective correlative of his inner twisted nature. He limps through life on grotesque, monkey-like feet. Gimpei is a teacher who has been fired after a brief affair with i jone of his high school students is discovered. He has no |friends. His main activities in the novel are following I i I 87 women along the street. With the exception of his affair, he has no other relationships with women, yet each woman he follows or speaks with brings back memories of someone out of his past. He is searching, physically and psychologic ally, for an unstated ideal which he discovers in Machie, the last girl he follows. His search is also connected to t his memories about his mother and life in her village on |the banks of an unidentified, ominous lake. These various elements reinforce Gimpei's existential isolation; his psychological projections and his memories of women out of his past are methods of protecting himself from present jreality. From the beginning of the novel, Gimpei is alone. He is fleeing Tokyo after being involved in a "crime" of an I 'undetermined nature. It is gradually revealed that he has i Ipicked up a purse containing a large sum of money after the ■woman carrying it threw it at him. The "crime" is really two-fold; not attempting to return the money and not writing down the woman's name and address. Gimpei is in flight from himself with the "crime" merely a literary device to send him on his way. "Suffering from a dimin- iished sense of self, [he] is the antihero who lives in his jhole, alienated and depressedHe hates himself and ■expects everyone around him to feel a similar degree of contempt. Gimpei is astounded when the bath attendant does not recoil in disgust when she washes his simian feet. He ; 88 feels he is corrupt and out of touch with reality. He does not realize that he is incapable of loving anyone. His attempts at love culminate in imagined scenes of violent death. He even seems to have a sense of pride in his feel™ |ings of worthlessness and inadequacy; he transforms his i (physical disability into a justification of his actions at ( imoments of intense self-loathing.^1 Most frequently he i |directs his self-loathing at his feet, while at the same jtime he realizes that these misshapen feet are his vehicle for following beautiful women. Gimpei lacks sufficient feelings of self-worth even to keep his body clean. He visits a Turkish bath in Karuizawa i :in the opening movement where he says directly that he does i I not care for his physical needs, since it has been over two jweeks since he last washed his hair. I i A person neglects his appearance; he lets himself I become untidy, sloppy, and fat. . . . These ' conditions occur whenever people are so flooded j with self-contempt and helplessness that their ; constructive forces can no longer counteract the impact of self-destructive drives. The latter then have free sway and express themselves in a | mostly unconscious determination to demoralize ! themselves actively.^2 jGimpei was born to be a victim of his own self-hatred. This leads to his inability to relate to people, the prime factor in his existential isolation. | If Shimamura's images of isolation are red, mirrors, I !and the Milky Way, then Gimpei's revolve around various ■y d" forms of hallucination, maboroshi or gen, be they visual or 89 auditory. The character for maboroshi ( %~] ) occurs repeatedly in a variety of combinations, all of which dis sociate the narrator-protagonist one step from reality. While Gimpei is at the,bath house, he hears the sound of a jpiano, "but the sound made no music. He must be hallucin- i :ating (gencho i~] Visions and hallucinations are jprotective devices, particularly when Gimpei is thinking jabout women. Where Shimamura is an emotional cripple in I his passivity, however, Gimpei feels that he is a physical cripple; therefore, he.thinks that it is the physical disa bility which isolates him. No one could love a man with toes "shriveled, just like a monkey's." More accurately, jno one could love a man with a shriveled soul. In this i i iway, Gimpei is related to an extended group of limping Igrotesques in Western literature. "His empty self, without I |a spiritual center to which it can attach itself, seeks reassurance by allying itself with the chthonic, the prim itivistic, the'bestial.Gimpei of the simian feet lives C C !m a grotesque world which is bleak, sad, and depressing. jHis physical deformity is directly related to his perverse ipastime— he uses those ugly feet to follow unknown, beauti- I Jful women on the street. Although lameness, or some Ideformity of or: injury to the legs, is often a literary jdevice which is a euphemism for malfunctions of the i 'genitals in Western literature, for Gimpei the affliction I !is symbolic of psychological rather than physical impotency. i 90 We never really see him as a sexual character in spite of his affair with Hisako. Castrated or sexually impotent man's disability, whether physical or psychological, is only the first in a series of injuries. . . . More often the maimed individual's inability to assert i himself as fully as he feels he should is meant ! to suggest man's inability to order his destiny. & 'Sexual impotence can be interpreted as symbolic of other (inabilities in dealing with the world. Gimpei lives in a [mental wasteland of troubled dreams and hallucinations. That such creatures should be deformed— that they should, in particular, limp— is an ancient notion probably derived from two sources: deformity, from the Platonic concept that a man's character is reflected in his appearance; limping, from the | tradition that the Arch Enemy of man, Satan . . . has cloven hooves which he can disguise but not entirely conceal should he take human shape.^ |The Platonic concept certainly is justified with Gimpei. j jHis feet take him on his search, yet his "overpowering i desire for beautiful women will never be fulfilled because of the ugliness of his feet."^® The search, then, is the central movement of this inovel, as it is in Snow Country. The time line moves with ■a flexibility only suggested in Snow Country. Each memory I ;of a girl is the stimulus for memories of other girls out iof Gimpei's past. The first girl, the bath attendant, is i !a combination of the basic elements of Komako and Yoko. When Gimpei tries to engage this simple girl in conversa tion, her few words lead him into a reverie reminiscent of Shimamura's fascination with Yoko's voice. i i 91 "It lingers on even when you stop speaking. . . . It feels as though something gentle and delicate were sinking through my inner ear into the core of my brain. . . . It's incredibly sweet. It's got something sad and something tender, and at the same time it's fresh and open.59 J I Like Yoko's voice, it has a hauntingly beautiful quality l !about it, tinged with sadness. i "I never thought I'd ever meet anyone whose voice : could sound so like an angel's."^ » " i !Gimpei asks himself, "Was this the voice of the eternal woman, or the compassionate mother?This is the first hint that Gimpei's search originates in a mother fixation. But the bath attendant is not ideal, for although she ("seemed part of another world," she has "dark marks in the jhollows behind her knees.Her fair beauty is already I tainted; she is not "clean to the hollows under her toes." i [She is too physical to be the ideal, she is a combination jof Yoko's disembodied voice and Komako's decaying flesh. (Gimpei is caught in a fantasy (genkaku j s f ) ) that he was chasing this girl down a street in Tokyo, a premonition of the first associative leap from the bath attendant to another woman, Mizuki Miyako. While the attendant massages |him, Gimpei fears that if his hand should casually touch i |her body, she would slap him. This imagined slap becomes a remembered slap and sends Gimpei into a dream of his I ( !"crime." i I He had been unconsciously following a woman in Tokyo I when she suddenly turned and hurled her purse at his face. 92 She ran off, leaving the bag lying at his feet. "Only the blue handbag remained in the center of the road as if to offer tangible evidence of his crime.The only "crime" here is following the woman. The setting itself is unreal. Gimpei remembers only portions of the street and later j wonders if the stores were not hallucinations (genshi £] |or optical illusions (sakkaku " 1=^ ) . j Gimpei's associative leap involves a two-fold psycho logical projection: Gimpei sees the bath attendant but thinks of her "angelic voice," not her tainted body, and associates her with Miyako, who becomes his soulmate, a woman with a spirit almost as twisted as Gimpei's. Gimpei i Bath attendant /________ ^ Miyako "angelic voice" f \"soulmate" Miyako has a strange appeal for Gimpei. . . . the dark depths of his heart [were] lit suddenly by a lurid flame. Perhaps he has followed the woman because something inside her made her susceptible to being chased by him. They might be inhabitants of the same infernal world. . . . He rejoiced at the thought that Miyako Mizuki might be like him, and bitterly regretted not having copied down her address. Miyako must certainly have been frightened while she was being followed by Gimpei, but she might also have experienced a tingling pleasure, without recognizing its presence. Can an entirely one-sided pleasure really exist in the human world?^4 93 It cannot. Miyako is accustomed to men following her. It gives her the same degree of pleasure that Gimpei derives from following her. They are indeed soulmates, yet for jGimpei this remains a psychological projection. He knows jnothing about her except her name. He thinks she is akin to him in spirit, but he never knows that this is indeed the case. Miyako is the mistress of Arita, an old man who :is searching for a mother surrogate. He sees Miyako as a Jmother and she in turn "sometimes had the illusion i (sakkaku < i j ^ ) )tthat she really was a mother.The money Miyako throws at Gimpei is payment for the loss of |her youth. Like Gimpei, she is hollow. She cannot feel i I I any emotion except a kind of thrill when she is followed by I strangers. Later, as Miyako lies beside Arita late one jnight, she confirms Gimpei1s intuition that she is his I i soulmate. I ! j Floating m the darkness, the face of the man who | had picked up her handbag appeared, a face which j had seemed to weep the moment he decided to follow j her. "Ah. . ."he must have groaned. Though barely j audible, Miyako was sure she heard it. I j And in her mind's eye she saw him stop to look I back after passing her; and in a flash the luster j of her hair, the color of her flesh at the ears and neck had struck him with a piercing sorrow ! and, fainting, drawn that stifled cry from his heart. . . . He looked sad, lost in his own world. Miyako felt as if the darkness in him had escaped and passed on into her. . . . [She could not] remember his appearance. She still saw, floating in the darkness, only the blurred 94 distortion of his face as he struggled with his tears.6 6 Miyako's dream about their meeting echoes Gimpei's own fantasy. She is drawn to him as he is to her and for the same reasons, yet his distorted face does not exist in !reality either. Her memory of him is blurred and unreal. jHowever, Miyako cannot fulfill Gimpei's fantasy of the I [ideal "non-woman." She is his twin, not his ideal. Arita calls Miyako wicked and a devil. She too is a diabolic counterpart to the angelic bath attendant. She is .proud of her beauty, but wonders "if there might be some i 6 7 evil spxrxt xn her struggling to get out." The mxsogynxst Arita's accusation that Miyako is a devil leads to her response, "Perhaps there's a race of devils living among I i [men but quite different from them, and perhaps they have a I /r o 'separate world of their own." She and Gimpei live in jtheir own separate spheres. Their paths touch and cross, they recognize their spiritual counterparts, and they part, i ■never to meet again. They inhabit to same existential hell of isolation. Gimpei's memories of meeting Miyako recall a more jintense memory of his love affair with his student, Hisako. Gimpei "soulmate"1 '---------sa- lover 95 It begins with Gimpei following her home from school. When she confronts him at her gate, he blurts out a weak request for medicine for athlete's foot, because he had overheard her talking about the medicine with her friend. On the isurface, this is ridiculous, but it reveals the depths to t I 'which Gimpei's obsession with his crippled feet has perme- f iated his consciousness. When Hisako goes into the house to !get the medicine, Gimpei flees, "pursued by his own hideous f e e t , "69 to a nearby amusement quarter, where, overcome by dizziness, he sits down in the middle of the street. A [prostitute comes along and Gimpei accuses her of following I him. She pinches him to make him return to his senses, but he plunges deeper into the past. He imagines he is refreshed by a breeze blowing off the lake by his mother's village. He remembers a desire he had to drown his first j jlove, his cousin Yayoi, by tricking her into walking on the Jfrozen lake. He would push her through the ice to her death. He is afraid his mother will leave the village after- his father's death. Since he does not want to lose his I imother, he transfers his love to Yayoi. Later when Yayoi rejects him, it will be as if his mother had rejected him. 'In a short dreamlike segment, Gimpei jumps from Miyako to Hisako, from Hisako to the prostitute, from the prostitute j to Yayoi, and from Yayoi to his mother. At the core of the matter are his fears of being abandoned by his mother. IThis primal fear influences his entire life and leads him | 96 into more complicated leaps of association and away from any true relationships. Gimpei Miyako prostitute Yayoi mother Much of the novel centers around the affair with Hisako who, like the bath attendant, is a composite of !Komako and Yoko. If the bath attendant has Y5ko's angelic i voice, Hisako has inherited her eyes. Gimpei is trans fixed by them and in his first impressions of her, her eyes play the most important role. She stares at him "with angry eyes," with a "clear, level look" that does not waver, and later in anger she "glares" at him. Repeatedly, I !Gimpei will think of her eyes as her main feature. She i H 'only has this in common with Yoko, for she lacks her virginal purity. She soon becomes Gimpei's lover, like Komako with Shimamura. Eventually this fall from the ideal jstate will lead Gimpei into death fantasies wherein he will i |dream of murdering her as he did of Yayoi. Gimpei projects jonto Hisako an image of a kind of "virgin seductress," an |undeveloped precursor of the "virgin prostitutes" of The : House of the Sleeping Beauties. Gimpei is lured on by i |Hisako's charms, much as he is with Miyako. Gimpei is ■almost unconscious of her attraction, yet he finds himself 70 "intensely stirred by this intriguing, mysterious girl." !lf Miyako is a narcissistic counterpart for part of i ! 97 Gimpei's ego, then Hisako is her soulmate, since she also < r I possesses a mysterious, sexual magnetism, almost diabolic j in nature. Gimpei is attracted to the dark side of her | i nature in much the same way as Kikuji is with Chikako, and [ I Oki and Taichiro are with Keiko. One should not, however, follow through with a deductive syllogism and suggest j that Hisako is also Gimpei's soulmate. She is not. She is ■ a way-station in his search for the ideal "non-woman.". He finds his mysterious virgin, falls victim to her sexual charms and to his own desires, destroys her virginity, and then loses her when the affair is discovered. This opens the way for the meeting later with Machie, the manifesta tion of the ideal. i At the outset of the affair, Gimpei warns Hisako about taking Miss Onda into her confidence. Aside from the fact that Gimpei's suspicions about her general untrustworthi ness come true, his warning functions as a direct thematic statement on the serious lack of communication in the novel.{ He warns her that attempts at communication are doomed to failure. ' "Perfect awareness might exist in heaven or hell, but not in the human world. If you have no secrets from Miss Onda it means that you don't exist, that you're not living your own life. . . . Friend ship is impossible without secrets. Not only friendship, but no other human emotion can survive without them."71 j Gimpei cannot really communicate with anyone, so he expects j ! everyone else to suffer from the same inadequacy. i His affair with Hisako ends abruptly when her father discovers him hiding in her room. Gimpei has to escape out of a second-story window. Before he flees, with his panic mounting, he escapes reality into a grotesque fantasy I involving a murder. If he had had a pistol with him he would have shot I Hisako from behind. He could see the scene: the i bullet passed through her breast and hit her mother j behind the door. Both women, standing with the door between them, threw themselves backward, but i Hisako turned, arching her body in a graceful curve, and clutched at Gimpeirs legs as she fell. Blood gushed from her wound and, flowing down his legs, soaked the inside of his feet. In an instant, | the coarse, blackish skin had become soft and pure as rose-petals, his wrinkled arches as smooth as mother-of-pearl. And bathed in Hisako's warm blood, even his crooked, gnarled and shriveled toes, which were as long as a monkey's, became as graceful as a mannequin's. The sudden thought that so much blood could never have come from Hisako alone made Gimpei aware of the wound in his own chest. . . This exquisite fantasy (kofuku no kyoso ^ o }3_ $£• ) lasted only an instant. . . . | But he was ha 1 1 ucihating (gencho K] 33L ) a g a i n . 7 2 t !Gimpei's escape into his purifying dream echoes Shimamura's I 'aesthetic appreciation of Yoko's fall. Gimpei's fantasy dissociates the murder from reality by transforming it into a scene of slow motion. The twin deaths of mother and idaughter arching away from each other has a surrealistic quality. Gimpei is uninvolved with the horror of his !fantasy; rather, he sees this as a means of eradicating the i 1 ugliness of his deformed feet. Hisako's sacrificial blood would erase his shame as it removed the ugly skin on his feet, Gimpei's "wound" represents the hollowness of his 99 spirit; he lacks the heart to love Hisako, so he imagines her destruction. The Japanese expression kofuku no kyos5 indicates that this is no simple fantasy. It carries strong connotations of insanity or madness; therefore, Gimpei's unconscious thoughts seem to recognize the madness i which lies close to the surface of this dream. The affair which began with the questions 1 . . . was his habit of chasing after women related ' to his ugliness, since it was his feet that did the chasing? . . ? Was the ugliness of a part of his body crying out, longing for beauty? Was it part of the divine plan that ugly feet chased beautiful women?^3 |ends with the blood fantasy of purifying those feet. It remains, however, a fantasy, with Gimpei escaping the trap. He meets Hisako once again before losing her forever. What jis more important is her necessary removal. She no longer 'qualifies as the ideal "non-woman" and, therefore, no 'longer belongs in Gimpei's quest. i j Gimpei eventually sees his ideal "non-woman" in the figure of Machie, who first appears in the section with Miyako. Miyako is attracted to Machie's purity and inten sity, as well as to her beauty. This anticipates Gimpei's !own reaction. We can expect Miyako and Gimpei to react in similar ways to the same stimuli because they are soul mates. Gimpei follows Machie up an empty slope. ! No— there was one other person, Gimpei Momoi, , following her, but it1s doubtful whether he could I be counted as a whole person, for Gimpei was utterly lost in the girl. 100 Gimpei loses his self in his absorption with the girl. He is transfixed by her "dreamlike beauty" and by her "heavenly fragrance." He decided to act at last and speak to her. His pretense of liking her dog is an indulgence, for as he jpats the animal he longs to throw his arm around her legs. She moves away in lack of interest to meet her lover, I Mizuno, a friend of Miyako's brother. Gimpei turns aside 'with the knowledge that her eyes are shining with love. i ! ! The sudden discovery numbed his brain, and her eyes ! became a black lake. He wanted to swim in her pure ! eyes, to bathe naked in the black lake, but he also | felt a deep d e s p a i r . ^5 jHer eyes become the lake of his childhood where his father drowned and where he thought of drowning Yayoi. As Gimpei watches Machie he has a vision (maboroshi ) that her jhappiness is transitory. She becomes confused with Yayoi { |and continues as Yayoi's counterpart throughout the rest of jthe novel. The remembered lake "lay like a wide mirror, ■without a ripple on its surface. Gimpei closed his eyes jand remembered his mother's face."^ The associative leaps lhave come full circle. Gimpei moves now from Machie back !to Yayoi and once again to his mother. Gimpei "ideal beauty" Machie will remain the image of ideal beauty but she will ialways have projected images of Gimpei's mother and Yayoi ! 101 attached. She will not be an individual but a composite character in Gimpei1s mind. As such she will have no reality for Gimpei. Machie and Mizuno are almost ghostly I as they move through the tall grass with their feet hidden.* I I Gimpei of the simian feet dissociates Machie and .Mizuno from reality when he imagines them as footless I jghosts. While his feet exist in ugly reality, theirs do not exist at all. Gimpei lies down in the grass on the slope and watches Machie intently. This behavioral pat tern, along with his chasing of beautiful women, is long standing. When Gimpei was young, his father was drowned in the lake. Afterwards, whenever a person walked past the spot where he drowned, he would hear footsteps pursuing Ihim. The villagers thought that this was Gimpei's father's i I |ghost trying to find his murderer. Unfortunately, the [footsteps faded away since the ghost was unable to catch up I with the people walking by. Gimpei has the same difficulty catching up with Machie on the slope. In her eagerness to * 'see Mizuno, she easily outdistances Gimpei who has not even | iseen her face clearly, in the same way that the ghost does ,not know the identity of the murderer. Gimpei assumes the i irole of vindicator of his father and hides in a thicket by I the lake, leaping out and glaring as passers-by in a vain ■effort to frighten the murderer into revealing his identity. ,*Japanese ghosts have no feet. ! I j 102 He also hides in the tall grass or in drainage ditches to watch Machie. Both the watching and the hiding are passive actions which have no satisfactory culmination. Gimpei's psychological projection reaches a climax in i I the firefly scene. Gimpei has read that fireflies will be i released at a festival close to Machie's house and knows I iintuitively that she will be there. On his way to the i i festival, he dreams, In my next life I shall be born with beautiful feet. You will be just as you are now, and we'll dance together in a ballet of white.77 i [This is a direct corollary with Shimamura and the ballet. JGimpei buys a cage of fireflies to give to Machie. This I |brings yet another memory to the surface of his mind. As a [child, he and Yayoi had caught fireflies and then released j !them under their mosquito nets in bed. The lake serves as ' ■the link. Yayoi jumps around on the bedding, counting the fireflies. She looked "like a ghost (obake ) with a blue mosquito net over her head."78 Gimpei focuses on the 1 fireflies themselves and wonders if the fireflies on the I lake were identified with the spirit of his dead father. j j The festival is a scene of emotional intensity with [the crowd surging forward every time a few fireflies are released. Gimpei achieves a symbolic fulfillment of his 'quest when he hangs his cage of fireflies on Machie's belt. I ;He slips back into the anonymity of the crowd like a |criminal. His guilt makes him wonder, "After all, it | 103 wasn't as if he had slashed the girl's back with a razor blade, so why should he behave like a criminal?His blood fantasy about Hisako has been transferred to Machie. As he walks away he hears her name for the first time. He feels there is now an invisible bond between them. The spirit (maboroshi ) of the girl whom he ! had left was under the trees. . . . He felt that 1 he had hung up his own glowing heart on the girl's body.80 'He imagines her as a vision in white floating up the slope ahead of him in the "ghostly rain" (maboroshi no ame o \ 7 p ] ) . He senses her presence with him on the slope. There is no rain. It is an imaginary projection of the despair jhe feels in his heart. He has met, loved, and lost his jideal "non-woman," but she has not been destroyed. Gimpei i |feels utterly alone as he stumbles and falls. As he crawls [along, "a baby crawled in the earth beneath him, matching jits palms against his as if across a mirror. They were the 81 I cold hands of the dead." He had fathered a child years iearlier by a prostitute and wonders if that child is alive |or dead. He is constantly tormented by a sexless appari- !tion (maboroshi ) of a dead child, although when he feels normal he thinks that it survived. He dreams that once his child struck him on the head. This refers back to i an unexplained passage at the opening of the novel. When the bath attendant slaps him during the massage, He remembered his own child slapping him on the i forehead with all the force of its round palm and i i 1 0 4 | continuing to beat him on the head when he lowered his face. When had that been? . . . (Sore Wa itsu no maboroshi de atta ka? Y v , j -o <9 i" fr) But the hands of the little child were now beating wildly at the bottom of a grave against a wall of earth that weighed down on it.82 Gimpei's reverie moves from the bath attendant's slap to f ^Miyako's purse to the dead child's fist. Everything sur- 1 rounding the child is unreal. As Gimpei tries to escape jit, "the child assumed the monstrous features of a noseless, j mouthless dummy."83 1 The child only exists in Gimpei's mind, but it is an autoscopic image, a visual hallucination of the physical self. **4 The child represents Gimpei's mirror image of his Jown twisted psyche. Gimpei is apprehensive and yet excited jby the image of the child crawling along with him. The 'child, like Gimpei's simian feet, is an outward manifests” Ition of his crippled soul. It is also the ultimate Image I i of alienation in this novel for it lacks a mouth with which to speak and, therefore, is forever mute. Gimpei himself is a mute. j Where Shimamura's isolation is represented by hollow I images, Gimpei's is manifested in images of claustrophobic I jentrapment. "From all directions the dark walls of a jprison closed in on Gimpei."85 when he leaves the Turkish Jbath, he sees insects trapped in a spider's web. Gimpei ! !himself is trapped in a web of self-deception. He cannot jescape into the void; he can only plunge deeper into i 105 distorted fantasies of the past which keep him in his state of existential isolation. Gimpei leaves behind the beautiful vision of Machie and the grotesque apparition in the bank, only to meet a very jreal, rather ugly woman who invites him to sleep with her. ! .He is jolted back to reality by her physical ugliness: i !"Yet drinking with this 'reality' seemed at the same time la way to reach the girl in the dream. The uglier the i woman, the better the vision (mugen ^ i ~ j )."®^ Like Shimamura with Komako, Gimpei cannot remember what Machie looks like when he is away from her. Physical features are :unimportant for the ideal beauty. When he leaves the |restaurant with the drunken woman, legs all tangled ! together, the idea of lying beside her with her "toes mis- ! jshapen, with thick, brownish skin" nauseates him and he ileaves. Obviously, he has only projected an image of a I jphysical counterpart in the woman with the ugly feet. She Iflings stones at him, striking him on the ankle. As he j I ilimps off, he is a living grotesque with his outward jappearance as twisted as his mind. [ Gimpei has always been so ashamed of his feet that he has exaggerated their ugly deformity, yet with all of this humiliation he never wants to get rid of them. He dreams jonce that they will be purified by Hisako's sacrificial blood and again he imagines that they will be beautiful in a different life so that he can dance a ballet with Machie. 106 Above all else, these simian feet are the most realistic thing about Gimpei- They are more than reflections of his tortured psyche; they are his soul itself. The lake is the dominant image of psychological alien- jation, for it functions as a mirror into the past. It distorts reality much as Shimamura1s train window does by I 1 |transporting Gimpei out of the present. It is dark, 'ominous, lonely and cold, associated with images of death and abandonment. For Gimpei it is a place of his earliest i jmemories of humiliation by women. It is a place where a i murder occurred, that of his father, and where one was planned, that of Yayoi. It protects Gimpei from reality |by providing a place for him to escape psychologically [whenever reality becomes too intense. Gimpei moves through , ! I i | ja series of encounters with women, but all are linked with his mother fixation. He meets, recognizes, and loses his soulmate in Miyako at the instant when she too recognizes him as her spiritual counterpart. He has his angelic/ diabolic counterparts in the bath attendant and Hisako whom ihe accuses of being a devil. He has in the fantasy image ^of Machie a composite of her, his mother and Yayoi. Yet !with all these imagined relationships, he has nothing. He i Jean feel no more than Shimamura can. He ends alone in an existential hell of his own creation. He cannot even 'transcend the world of human relationships for a sexual i t 107 union with the cosmos. He limps off, a solitary figure with a twisted mind. NOTES !1. Kawabata Yasunari, Snow Country, translated by Edward ! G. Seidensticker (New York; Berkley Publishing Co., 1956), pp. 11, 142. All quotations are from this ' edition, unless specifically indicated in the text. j2. Tsuruta Kinya, "The Flow-Dynamics in Kawabata Yasunari's Snow Country," Monumenta Nipponica 26 ! a ' 9 . 7 ; l ) ; p. 251. < 3. Kawabata, Snow Country, p. 21. 4. James T. Araki, "Kawabata: Achievements of the Nobel Laureate," Books Abroad 43 r (19.69). : p. 3 20. 5. Charles J. Glicksberg, The Self in Modern Literature (University Park, Penn.; The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1963), p. xiii. | 6. Kawabata, Snow Country, 1 7* Ibid., p. 12. ! 8. i Ibid., p. 13. 1 9. Ibid. [Italics mine.] 10. Ibid., p. 14. 11. Ibid. 12. i Ibid., p. 15. •• C O 1 —I Ibid. 14. Ibid., p. 20. 15. Ibid., p. 22. 16. Ibid. [Italics mine.] 17. Ibid., p. 23. [Italics H 00 • Ibid., p. 33. 109 19. Ibid. [Italics mine.] 20. Ibid. , p. 38. 21. Ibid., p. 40. 22. Ibid. | 23. Ibid. , p. 41. ; 24. Ibid., p. 27. I s 25. Bernard J. Paris, A Psychological Approach to Fiction: ; Studies in Thackeray, Stendhal, George Eliot, s Dostoevsky, and Conrad (Bloomington, Ind. and London: ! Indiana University Press, 1974), p. 193. 26 . Kawabata, Snow Country, p. 41 [Italics mine.] 27. Ibid., P* 125. 28. Ibid., P- 50. 29. Ibid., P- 62. [Italics mine. ] 30. Ibid., P- 74. [Italics mine. ] 31. Ibid., P- 82. 32. Ibid., P- 88. 33. Ibid., pp. 102-103. [Italics mine.] 34. Ibid., P- 106. [Italics mine .] 35. Ibid., PP- 108-109. [Italics mine.] 36. Anthony V. Liman, "Kawabata1s Lyrical Mode in Snow Country," Monumenta Nipponica 26 (1971): p. 281. i37. Kawabata, Snow Country, p. 112. 38. Ibid., p. 113. [Italics mine.] 1 39. Ibid., p. 115. i ■40. Tsuruta Kinya, "Flow-Dynamics," p. 254. I j41. Gwenn R. Boardman, "Kawabata Yasunari: Snow in the I Mirror," Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction 11 : (1969): pp. 14-15. 42. Kawabata, Snow Country, p. 127. [Italics mine.] 43. Ibid., p. 134 . 44. Ibid., p. 136. 45. Ibid., p. 140. [Italics mine.] 46. Yoshimura Teiji, Kawabata Yasunari; Bi to dento [Kawabata Yasunari: Beauty and Tradition] (Tokyo: Gakkei Shorin, 1968), p. 210. A 1 . Richard C. Buckstead, "The Search for a Symbol in ' Kawabata1s Snow Country," Asian Profile 1 (August 1973); pp. 166-168. I ! 48. Howard S. Hibbett, "Tradition and Trauma in the Contemporary Japanese Novel," Daedalus 95 (Fall 1966): p. 939. 49. James T. Araki, "Nobel Laureate," p. 321. ,50. Glicksberg, Self, p. 42. | 51. Paris, Psychological Approach, p. 205. i ■52. Ibid., p. 298. 53. Kawabata Yasunari, The Lake, translated by Reiko ! Tsukimura (Tokyo and Palo Alto: Kodansha Inter- i national Ltd., 1974), p. 9. All quotations are from ! this text. I |54. Glicksberg, Self, p. 47. j 155. Peter L. Hays, The Limping Hero; Grotesques in ' Literature (New York: New York University Press, | 1971), pp. 105-106. j 56. Ibid., p. 4. j 5 7. Ibid., pp. 106-107. i :58. Araki, "Nobel Laureate," p. 322. |59. Kawabata, The Lake, p. 7. [Ellipsis and italics \ mine.] 60. Ibid., p. 8. [Italics mine.] | 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid., P- 10. 63. Ibid., P. 16. 64. Ibid., P- 21. 65. Ibid., p. 63 . i 66. 1 I Ibid., P- 66. [Italics mine. : 67. i Ibid., P- 68. 1 i 68 * i Ibid., P- 69. 69. i Ibid., P- 23. 70. f Ibid., P- 33. 71. Ibid., P- 31, 72. Ibid., PP . 120-121. [Italics 73. Ibid.-, P- 36. 74 . Ibid., P- 80. [Italics mine. 75. Ibid., P- 87. 76. Ibid., P- 96 . 77. Ibid., P- 132. 78. Ibid., P- 116. 79. Ibid., P- 141. • © 00 Ibid., PP . 142-143. 81. Ibid., P- 143. 82. Ibid., PP . 12-13. [Ellipsis 83. Ibid., P- 149. 00 • Rogers , Double, p. 15. 85. Kawabata, The Lake, p. 13. 86 . Ibid., P- 157. CHAPTER III REVENGE: THE INTERRUPTION OF THE QUEST ! In varying degrees at different points in their lives, i jboth Shimamura and Gimpei are aware of the fact that they I !are searching for the ideal woman, although part of the time this awareness is unconscious. Both undertake physical and symbolic journeys during their searches. Shimamura travels physically by train to the mountain J resort to meet Komako and symbolically to search for his 1 — 'ideal in the virginal purity of Yoko. Gimpei's physical 'journey includes his habitual following of beautiful women ion the street and his flight to Karuizawa after he commits jhis "crime" of keeping Miyako1s money. His symbolic [journey is related to his flight from himself as he I iimmerses himself in memories of past encounters with women. t He probes the hidden recesses of his mind to explore both !his search and his isolation during it. Where he is i jintrospective and ensnared by his twisted psyche, Shimamura |is hollow. During both narrator-protagonists' journeys I |through time and space on their guests, they reveal the extent of their existential isolation in their inabilities i to form any lasting relationships with other selves. 113 Revenge, in contrast, is an all-encompassing theme which interrupts the quest on a more or less permanent t basis. Those characters who seek revenge are arch manipulators who control all other characters through the jintensity of their hatred. Such characters, Kurimoto ^hikako in Thousand Cranes and Sakami Keiko in Beauty and iSadness, have personalities which are distorted by continu- ;ally dwelling on past injuries and slights, real or jimagined. The men who are in turn controlled by these women are totally passive. Rather than being consciously involved in a quest for anything, they are in a static jstate. Action occurs around and to them but does not touch ■them. They are seduced by sensuous women but they are I never the initiators of a seduction. Their passivity makes : ;them prime candidates for control by other individuals and i t I by forces out of their pasts, most often from within the ! |depths of their minds. They differ markedly from Shimamura! and Gimpei because their passivity renders them helpless in 'the presence of characters with dominant wills and strong i | 'senses of self. I i I I A. Thousand Cranes J | ! i In Thousand Cranes, we have a passive narrator- I ---------------- .protagonist, Mitani Kikuji, who exists in a state of inart- !iculate inertia. Written over a two-year period from 1949 |to 1951, chronologically it falls between Snow Country and 114 The Lake, simultaneously with the beginning of The Sound of the Mountain, and roughly ten years before the beginning of The House of the Sleeping Beauties and Beauty and Sadness. In Thousand Cranes Kawabata explores one specific aspect of jman's existential isolation, his passivity, which leaves him incapable of escaping from entanglements coming from I I the past. The action of the novel always takes place in i relation to the tea ceremony, but it is not a sentimental longing for a dying tradition which the author stresses. Kawabata uses the ritualized institution of the tea cere- I i jmony to reflect the sterility of Kikuji's life. Indirectly, jhe comments on the bastardization of this institution of beauty in the chaotic period following Japan's defeat in World War II. Against the background of tea and its 'implements characters are differentiated in terms of the i i objects they use and the clothing they wear. We see the dichotomy between the otherworldly qualities of idealized i jbeauty which is both subjective and transitory and the ;physical manifestation of evil in the ugly mark on jChikako's body. As the past encroaches on the present, iKikuji finds himself entangled in a web of relationships i |which he does not necessarily invite, much like Gimpei's i :symbolic recognition of his own degree of entrapment when he sees the insects caught in the spider's web outside the Turkish bath house. Kikuji dissociates himself from ireality by reacting to objects instead of to people, and * through his continual escape into psychologically projected I . images onto the women he tries to love. Kikuji's character is clearly delineated in the opening movement when he is invited to Chik ako' s public tea' ceremony at the Engakuji in Kamakura. He had always been I invited as a matter of form by Chikako, but until this time i he has never attended a ceremony. Although he has not i ipracticed the ceremony since his father's death four years t jearlier, and has in fact never been a true devotee of tea, jhe is lured into attending this ceremony when Chikako adds ja note indicating that she would like to introduce him to a jyoung lady. This constitutes a more or less formal indica- f t Ition that she considers this an omiai, the meeting of two eligible young people for the purpose of arranging a marriage. What brings him to this ceremony is his curi- I osity about the unseen girl. That Kikuji later will try to \ de-emphasize the importance of the tea ceremony as an omiai jwhen he is with Mrs. Ota indicates his insensitivity toward expected patterns of behavior where his own actions are jconcerned. He prefers not to follow ritualized conduct in ;life, whether at the tea ceremony or at an omiai, while at the same time he is instantly critical of anyone else's disregard for convention and other selves' sensitivities. Kikuji's attendance at this particular tea ceremony is the first indication we have of Chikako's control over him. He is somehow fascinated by Chikako and wonders if she will 116 introduce him to her opposite. Can anyone so potentially evil as Chikako produce a symbol of absolute beauty? It would be a breach of etiquette not to attend, but Kikuji is not all that concerned with etiquette, since he had always refused to attend previously. This tea ceremony, however, is different. When Chikako tells him that the omiai is I complicated by Mrs. Ota's presence, Kikuji wants to tell iChikako that he has no intention of making this an omiai, although he has already accepted this fact by his very presence at the Engakuji, but "somehow the words would not come. His throat muscles stiffened."1 Kikuji cannot speak jand is overpowered by Chikako. Through most of the novel he will be mute, ready to accept Chikako's persuasive words even though in his heart he often knows them to be full of ! [deceit. Even when he tells Chikako the truth, she refuses jto believe him. At these times, Kikuji does not assert ihimself. Chikako is too strong and will believe what she wants. It does not seem worth the effort to Kikuji. With the introduction of all of the major characters at the Engakuji tea ceremony, Kikuji is immediately caught I :in a network of past associations. Not only are the jcharacters themselves and their relationships with one ianother presented, but also featured are the major devices which protect Kikuji's sense of isolation. Chikako, the mistress of tea, is the chief manipulator of all the other characters. Her role as puppeteer is to pull the strings ! 117 to make each character move according to her desires- On the way to the tea cottage, Kikuji's memory leaps away from the upcoming meeting with his prospective bride back to his childhood when his father took him to visit his mistress i i ;Chikako when he was ten years old. Kikuji's impressionable i ;young mind becomes obsessed with a large, dark birthmark on I .her breast. i i She was cutting the hair on her birthmark with a { small pair of scissors. It covered half the left i breast and ran down into the hollow between the breasts, as large as the palm of one's hand. Hair seemed to be growing on the purple-black mark, and Chikako was in process of cutting it.^ This birthmark scars not only Chikako's life but Kikuji's las well. Similar to Gimpei's simian feet, Chikako's birth- |mark is a visual representation of the evil inside her ' soul. Kikuji notices the "hairs like whiskers" which lay i !on the paper. Later, he thinks that "Chikako had somehow turned masculine in manner. Now she was quite sexless."^ :Kikuji thinks of her as a neuter whose lack of sexuality is threatening and somehow connected with her evil nature. I | Just as the mark itself represents Chikako , so too does I jdarkness. Kiku3i recalls his childhood obsession that if j Chikako had borne a child "who sucked at that breast, with , its birthmark and its hair, [it would] be a monster."4 i • Chikako herself possesses the attributes of a monster in ' Kikuji's eyes. David V. Harrington calls this externaliz- 1 ing of psychological attributes a "curious folk belief, I 118 which underestimates its importance. The mark also has a strong erotic character. Had his father occasionally squeezed the birthmark between his fingers? Had he even bitten at it?6 As a child Kikuji had overheard his father discussing the j I * 'birthmark with his mother when he -indicated that the mark jcould be a private source of sensuous delight for the lover jof a woman like Chikako. Kikuji's fantasy, then, is a [direct extension of his father's own eroticism. Much later, Kikuji will undergo a confusion of identities in his father's tea cottage. Inamura Yukiko, the thousand-cranes girl, visits at Chikako's express demand. Kikuji feels a sudden spasm of horror at Chikako's having introduced him to Yukiko. I j He could see his father biting at [Chikako's] ! birthmark with dirty teeth. The figure of his father became the figure of Kikuji himself.7 Here Kikuji's psychological projection involves himself and the spirit of his dead father. This is not the only instance when Kikuji's weak sense of self becomes merged Iwith his father's. t { Chikako is always a concrete entity in the novel, possessing ugly marks on her body and "flesh on her arms jdisproportionately white and full, and the muscle at the [inside of the elbow was like cord .... The flesh seemed ' hard and heavy."^ Chikako is a well developed, physical jwoman full of rot and poison. She is described in greater jphysical detail than Komako with the bugs dying on her neck I 119 or the Turkish bath attendant with dark hollows under her knees. Chikako does not undergo a transformation from the ; ideal to the physical; she does not change in any way. She j | appears with all her malice showing. It is simply a matter i ! of time before the narrator-protagonist comes to realize how deadly it can be. I In direct contrast to Chikako's physicality is i Yukiko's ephemerality. Before Kikuji sees her, he wonders : if her skin will be perfect, since she will be introduced ; l by Chikako whose skin is so blemished. He sees her walking ; toward the Engakuji tea cottage and thinks j i One of the girls was beautiful. She carried a I bundle wrapped in a kerchief, the thousand-crane ' pattern in white on a pink crape background.9 | I Once Kawabata has described a woman as beautiful, that in t itself is a sufficient description. His subjective concept of beauty is most clearly revealed in Yukiko. We know noth- . ing of her physical features, as we know nothing of what ' Yoko looks like. Kikuji leaps from her subjective beauty to one of her symbols, a thousand-crane furoshiki which she I carries in her hand. Although T.E. Swann passes off the sym bol too quickly in an early article by terming it "a symbol of happiness and long life,"-*-® it is a symbol of the ideal ; I which Kikuji cannot achieve. Chikako also calls Yukiko j I "the pretty one" when she tries to add meaning to Kikuji's | I ! arrival just after Yukiko. Even her name, Yukiko, child of j the snow, suggests purity. She is pretty but featureless. 120 She is also the light against Chikako's darkness. When i Chikako asks her to prepare tea for Kikuji using a bowl fraught with past associations, she does so in a blaze of light too intense for the subdued atmosphere normally found |in a tea cottage. This, however, is in keeping with one jaspect of the novel, the bastardization of the tea ceremony ; itself. The light was really too bright for a tea cottage, but it made theggirlIsyouth glow. The tea napkin, as became a young girl, was red, and it impressed one less with its softness than with its freshness, as if the girl’^s hand were bringing a red flower into bloom. And one saw a thousand cranes, small and white, start up in flight around her.ii Once again beauty is clean and fresh for Kawabata. Kikuji will always remember her symbols but will forget her face. jHe is not unlike Shimamura who cannot remember what Komako ilooks like when they are apart, but can recall the dampness j jof her touch. At Kikuji's second and last meeting with tYukiko, he is attracted to her obi with its pattern of Siberian irises. As he looks through the deep shade of the garden he thinks of Chikako's birthmark again before he ,sees Yukiko and "her brightness seemed to light the far corners of the large, dusky room."^ She is his "vein of jlight" against Chikako's dark presence, but her ideal jquality renders her virtually helpless to free Kikuji from i ^Chikako's influence. The next day Kikuji returns to the tea cottage "in search of the fragrance of the Inamura i girl."- * - 3 What could be more ephemeral than scent left over 121 from the evening before? Kikuji realizes that "she will always be far away."^ She must remain out of reach if she is to continue to be his ideal virgin. Her ideal qualities have been created out of the mind of the narrator- jprotagonist. She is not and never can be seen to be a real ;Woman. The first contrast is complete. Chikako Yukiko arch-manipulator ethereal virgin Neither image will change: one will always be disgustingly real; the other will be ideal and ephemeral. Two other women are at the opening tea ceremony. They are also counterparts for Chikako and Yukiko as well as for each other. Mrs. Ota and her daughter Fumiko both are as [trapped by the past as the others are. None is free, not I [even Yukiko, whose father had had some vague connection with Kikuji's father. The initial description of the Ota 'women is in terms of their physical features and their jpsychological characters. At first Kikuji does not dis tinguish one woman from another in the sea of brightly colored kimonos; then he recognizes Mrs. Ota. When she speaks to him, her voice is "frankly affectionate. . . . 'She seemed wholly warm, tender, overcome with pleasure at i Ian unexpected meeting.While Mrs. Ota is friendly, Fumiko sits "stiffly" and blushes at her mother's t j ' 122 intemperate conduct. Mrs. Ota, physical and warm, is a human counterpart to Chikako's malicious nature. The one is a sensuous woman; the other is a sexless monster. We are expected to like and pity Mrs. Ota and to hate and ireject Chikako. Kikuji remembered a story about Fumiko on i :the way to the tea cottage. Chikako ingratiated herself iwith Kikuji's mother after his father rejected her in favor i jof Mrs. Ota. She assumed the role of Kikuji's mother's protector in order to wreck her own revenge on her rival Mrs. Ota. She confronted Mrs. Ota and all but ordered her to leave the Mitani family alone. While she was berating I jMrs. Ota, "didn't I all of a sudden hear sniffling in the I ;next room?"16 was Fumiko. The crying, unhappy child I ^becomes a guilt-ridden, unhappy young woman whose dominant j 17 | jcharacteristic is shame. She attempts to atone for her ' mother's sins, constantly begging Kikuji to forgive her i !mother. In reality, she asks the forgiveness for herself, although she does not realize this, in order to relieve her 'own guilt, not her mother's. Not only are the personalities of the mother and daughter clearly different, so too are 'their physical features. i j [Mrs, Ota's] white neck, rather long, was as it j had been, and the full shoulders that strangely j matched the slender neck— it was a figure young j for her years. The mouth and nose were small in 1 - proportion to the eyes. The little nose, if one I bothered to notice, was cleanly modeled and most engaging. When she spoke, her lower lip was thrust forward a little, as if in a pout. 123 The daughter had inherited the long neck and the full shoulders. Her mouth was larger, however, and tightly closed. There was something almost funny about the mother's tiny lips beside the daughter1s. . Sadness clouded the girl's eyes , darker than her mother's.-*-® Kikuji very clearly notices details in their features which will blend later into a composite woman, neither Fumiko nor Mrs. Ota. Some time after the affair begins between Kikuji and Mrs. Ota, Fumiko visits his house to ask him to stop seeing her mother. The transformation begins. Kikuji sees "the image of the mother in the daughter."19 Kikuji notices "the small mouth and the lower lip, thrust out as if in a pout. The softly rounded face reminded him of her mother."^0 He projects onto Fumiko, whose mouth is larger and tightly closed at first, the sensuous pout of the earth mother. He tries to see Mrs. Ota in her daughter and manages to deceive himself into believing that he can do so even though their physical features are quite different. Not only does Fumiko have Mrs. Ota's face, but after Mrs. Ota's death, Kikuji imagines that Fumiko also has inherited her body. In Fumiko's round soft face he saw her mother. If Mrs. Ota has made her mistake when she saw Kikuji's father in Kikuji, then there was some thing frightening, a bond like a curse, in the fact that, to Kikuji, Fumiko resembled her mother; but Kikuji, unprotesting, gave himself up to the drift. 124 Looking at the uncared-for little mouth, the lower lip thrust forward as if in a pout, he felt that there was no fighting the girl . Kikuji's unprotesting passivity offers him the protection he needs. He cannot love either woman in mundane reality, i iso he projects onto Fumiko what he wants to preserve of her mother. He can only love Mrs. Ota once she is dead. She jwill survive through her daughter. Kikuji's impressions of I ;the two Ota women begin as Kiku j i Mrs. Ota Fumiko father's mistress crying child but are quickly transformed into i Kikuji Mrs. Ota/Fumiko They become the same person in Kikuji's mind. The opening 1 i tea ceremony, then, establishes the major relationships and Kikuji's reactions to each woman. Kikuji Fumiko Yukiko evil father's wronged ethereal i manipulator lover child maiden ' The recent history of the Oribe tea bowl which Yukiko |uses to prepare tea for Kikuji and for Mrs. Ota serves as a jsymbolic microcosm for the complexity of the web of human I Relationships. ! 125 It had passed from Ota to his wife, from the wife to Kikuji's father, from Kikuji's father to Chikako; and the two men, Ota and Kikuji's father, were dead, and here were the two women. There was something almost weird about the bowl's career.22 When Kikuji looks at the Shino water jar in which he sees I Jthe perfection of Mrs. Ota, he realizes that A jar that had been Mrs. Ota's was now being used | by Chikako. After Mrs. Ota's death, it had passed ; to her daughter, and from Fumiko it had come to j Kikuji.23 I 'Everything "comes to Kikuji" who in his passivity never has to seek out anything. He has inherited his father's house, tea cottage, tea implements and mistresses. From Mrs. Ota he inherits her projected mirror image in Fumiko. Kikuji i jonly has to wait for people and things to come his way, but I this act of waiting renders him completely vulnerable to .domination by Chikako. An inactive person like Kikuji is a j 1 |prime candidate for manipulation by a stronger self. J Although Kikuji sees Mrs. Ota's image incarnated in I I jFumiko, the confusion of identities and the psychological (projections between himself and Mrs. Ota are complex and (shifting. Kikuji is seduced by Mrs. Ota after he leaves I the omiai. At the ceremony itself, he had reacted favorably to her warm reception, but immediately afterward he rejects I |her when talking to Chikako about Yukiko. Kikuji realizes intuitively that he will never be able to think of Yukiko ,without overtones of the rankling hostilities of the past icoming into play. "And she wo.uld have seemed even nicer if I'd met her without the rest of you hovering around, you and Mrs. Ota and Father's g h o s t . "24 Mrs. Ota belongs to the past, but she, like the Oribe bowl and the Shino water jar, will be inherited by Kikuji in the present. Mrs. Ota is obviously dissociated from reality as , she tries to recapture her past happiness through Kikuji. He is not his father, but she projects onto him an image of | |the spirit of his dead father; "in its final implications I the plea did not seem to make a distinction between o r Kikuji's father and Kikuji himself." If Kikuji wants to see Mrs. Ota living on in Fumiko, then Mrs. Ota does the same thing with Kikuji and his father. Neither one wants to accept the reality that each person has his own identity. [Furthermore, Kikuji's own weak sense of self allows him to ifall into a delusion that he might indeed hs his father. jHe recognizes the danger inherent in a relationship with jhis father's mistress, "He even feared that unless he was I jcareful he might find in himself the father loved by Mrs. Ota. He was tempted to imagine that he had known this i r \ / * jwoman's body long ago.1 i Kikuji suddenly becomes aware of how extensively Mrs. Ota distorts reality when they make love a second time the night of her suicide. She is enslaved by the past. "Can't you see the difference between my father and me? " "You mustn't say that. ..." 127 She was not yet ready to return from the other world. (betsu no sekai ${ ] o ^ 3^- ) Kikuji had spoken less to her than to his own dis quieted heart. He had been led easily into the other world. He could only think of it as another world, in which ; there was no distinction between his father and himself. So strong was the sense of the other world that afterward this disquietude came over j him. i j He could ask himself if she was human. If she i was pre-human, or again if she was the last woman I in the human race. He could imagine her in this other world, making no distinction between her dead husband and Kikuji's father and Kikuji. "You think of my father, don't you, and my father and I become one p e r s o n ."27 This other world is dissociated from reality. In it the i psychological projections become true when Kikuji assumes j I i |the identity of his father which results in a loss of his jsense of self. In becoming his father he ceases to exist— i I momentarily at least— as Kikuji. With Mrs. Ota, too, Kikuji projects onto her attributes |he wishes to see in her, or at least ones he imagines she possesses. She is, first of all, his physical lover, Muramatsu Takeshi's earth mother. She is the sexual counterpart of Chikako's asexuality. As such, she initiates Kikuji into the world of humanity. She is also Kikuji's archetypal woman. She is not an individual but a represen tation of everything womanly. Kikuji is her toy. 128 It was an extraordinary awakening, He had not guessed that a woman could be so wholly pliant and receptive, the receptive one who followed after and at the same time lured him on, the receptive one who engulfed him in her own warm scent. He drifts on the "wave of woman," content to be swept along wherever she leads, in much the same way as Shimamura was willing to be carried away by Komako * s samisen practice. She is both maternal and sexual, the composite of Muramatsu Takeshi’s earth mother. When Mrs. Ota is overcome with guilj: over her seduction of Kikuji, he is struck by the contrast of her real, weeping figure and his mental image of the thousand-crane furoshiki. Kikuji draws away from the sexual reality of Mrs. Ota into the fantasy of Yukiko*s purity without even being aware of it. He becomes the fantasist whose created world', is totally real and convinc ing to him. This "real" fantasy increases in direct pro portion to the physicality of the world of human emotions. He is subconsciously attracted to Yukiko*s purity and repelled by Mrs. Ota's sexuality. Kikuji's projection of the archetype of the earth mother is an isolating device to protect him from the full realization of his actions. Using a poisonous tongue, Chikako tried to destroy Kikuji's fantasy about Mrs. Ota. She suggests that her suicide is her foolish attempt to join his father in death. This would seem to be her rejection of both the reality of her affair with Kikuji and the created unreality 129 of her desire to recapture the happiness of the past. Chikako’s malice is in vain. She cannot destroy Kikuji's image of Mrs. Ota as the sensual woman. David Harrington calls the relationship between Kikuji 29 land Mrs. Ota one "perilously close to incest." Actually, ^ ’the relationship between Fumiko and Kikuji is closer to :incest on the symbolic level. Fumiko seems to have wanted ! jKikuji's father to be her surrogate father. She could easily fill the role of the child that Kikuji had imagined in the opening flashback. He had fantasized a child born away from home but to Chikako, not to Mrs. Ota. Fumiko is jnot Kikuji's half-sister, but the symbolic relationship jcould be that of a surrogate brother and sister. Kikuji I longs to be able to talk about his father and Mrs. Ota with j i Fumiko, a dream longstanding but now impossible to fulfill. I i jHe cannot reminisce about his lover with her daughter who is ashamed of her mother's behavior. All the same, when Fumiko telephones him, he feels "washed clean" just by |talking with her. | . Kikuji subconsciously falls into Gimpei's habit of :fo1lowing women. ] I Sometimes he would be drawn to a middle-aged woman i in the street. Catching himself, he would frown and mutter: "I'm behaving like a criminal." i He would look again and see that the woman did not , resemble Mrs. Ota after all. . . . | The longing at such moments would almost make him tremble; and yet intoxication and fear would meet, as at the moment of awakening from a crime. 0 130 For Kawabata, following women is a crime in itself. Since the male narrator-protagonists follow women in order to escape from reality, perhaps this is the crime. The purpose of the action here is more significant than the action |itself. Yukiko has two counterparts, Fumiko and Chikako. She is not, as Schlieman says, "a minor character, off to the I -3 1 jside."-3- 1 - She is the untouched virgin, the counterpart of |Fumiko who becomes the fallen woman. She is also the image Jof purity and beauty in contrast to Chikako's dark evil. i i Although she might be tainted because of her association :with Chikako, she is nevertheless the ideal for which i |Kikuji is unconsciously searching. She is woman as wish- I ifulfillment. Kikuji is the creator of the ideal "non- : j | ;woman." I The tea ceremony is both structure and metaphor in the I ■novel. All of the major action occurs before, during, or iimmediately after a formal or informal ceremony. Six times j [Kikuji participates in the ceremony, but each time it is a I :corruption rather than an invocation of a beautiful but dying tradition. The ceremony itself is supposed to bring j peace and tranquility to the minds of the participants and i j appreciation of the antique implements and the skill of the |performers. It is a time of serenity and quietude. It is I :also completely ritualized. Every motion by the person who :prepares tea and by the guests has been handed down from a I 131 long tradition. All of this is lacking in Thousand Cranes. The opening ceremony at the Engakuji is full of chatter and rankling hostilities which keep all but Yukiko, who is oblivious to the complexity of emotions, on edge. With all of the conversation, however, there is practically no communication. People speak in fragments of conversation i .with incomplete communication resulting. The implements themselves are not admired for their own inherent beauty but symbolize the interlocking relationships of all those iin attendance. t The second "ceremony" reunites Yukiko and Kikuji through the intervention of Chikako. She invites Yukiko to jKikuji's house with an authority that implies, correctly, ■complete control over him. This "ceremony" is preceded by ithe most striking image of Kikuji's hollowness. Passivity :normally takes precedence over hollowness, with this one exception. Chikako comes to clean the mildewed tea cottage in Kikuji's garden, its decay being a further symbol of the corruption of the ceremony. i j The sound of her broom became the sound of a broom 1 sweeping the contents from his skull, and her cloth | polishing the veranda a cloth rubbing at his skull. 2 |Shimamura's hollow chest involves himself only; he recog nizes his hollowness, but does not want to do anything about lit. Kikuji, however, does not realize how hollow he is i Juntil this moment, but by this time he is incapable of 132 changing it. It is Chikako who makes him aware of his emptiness. The second and last time Kikuji sleeps with Mrs. Ota I is in the cottage in the garden. Mrs. Ota indicates several ( j implements which had belonged to her husband and which now ■belong to Kikuji. He relates to her symbolically through i 'the tea bowls which he had used the night before with i Yukiko. Mrs. Ota's fate is now connected with Yukiko. i |Instead of the expected serenity, however, the scene is fraught with guilt feelings, remorse, sexual desire and a sense of foreboding. Mrs. Ota's farewell both to Kikuji f ■and to tea occurs in his father's cottage. It is a fare well to life itself, for that night she commits suicide. ! The last three "ceremonies" involve Fumiko; one on the ! i ■eighth day after her mother's suicide and twice at Kikuji's.- In each the bowls, whether the "husband and wife" raku i ■bowls or the Shino bowls, represent the relationship i i Jbetween Kikuji and Mrs. Ota or Kikuji and Fumiko. Fumiko ;serves Kikuji common tea in the raku bowls which Kikuji f I 1 thinks of as "husband and wife" bowls used by his father I and Mrs. Ota. They are not of the highest quality, but i {Kikuji is touched by Fumiko's "grotesque sentimentality" in i ;using these particular bowls. They reinforce the strange I irelationships between the Mitani and Ota families. I At the second ceremony in Kikuji's cottage Fumiko {presents him with her mother's Shino which she used daily. 133 This Shino bowl comes to represent Mrs. Ota's sensual qualities, for the red underglaze floats up through the thick white outer glaze. As Kikuji holds the bowl, he is swept by a series of conflicting emotions. The rim might have been stained by tea, and it might have been stained by lips. Kikuji looked at the faint brown, and felt that there was a touch of red in it. Where her mother's lipstick had sunk in? There was a red-black in the crackle too. The color of faded lipstick, the color of a wilted red rose, the color of old, dry blood— Kikuji began to feel queasy. A nauseating sense of uncleanness and an over powering fascination came simultaneously.3 3 Kikuji is both attracted and repulsed by the bowl, much as jhe is with its former owner herself. Chikako invades i jKikuji's house after Mrs. Ota's death when Fumiko comes to i |visit and insists on making tea. As the mistress of tea i jshe is supposed to practice all the conventions of the i ceremony, but she delivers tea "like a waitress filling an order.Even she has corrupted the elegant ceremony. The final time Kikuji drinks tea with Fumiko symbol- ;izes the end of their relationship. It occurs just after : Kikuji learns that Fumiko is still unmarried. Fumiko tries !to use her mother's Shino bowl, but she feels she is pre- !vented by her mother. The bowl represents Mrs. Ota's spirit, the web of the past and also Fumiko's virginity. 134 I Kikuji takes Fumiko in the cottage with no resistance on her part, exactly as her mother had seduced him earlier. Afterwards, Fumiko breaks the Shino bowl. She has tried to act out her mother's role with Kikuji, but with the break- I jing of the Shino bowl she frees herself from the past and i .asserts her right to be independent of her mother. She |lacks her mother's intense love of life and her warm sexu- 'ality. Fumiko is too bound by guilt to love. The past is [destroyed when they sleep together, but Kikuji cannot inter act with Fumiko as a real individual. The transference is complete and he cannot escape. Kikuji realizes that he I icares for Fumiko but he does not realize that he is incap able of having a normal relationship with her. He too can- (not love. Besides, she falls short of his unconscious jideal in Yukiko and, therefore, must vanish from his life, jbike Yoko, it does not matter if she is alive or dead. For i jFo'r Kikuji, she cannot exist for she now belongs to the (world of fleshly reality which he still rejects. He would |have to step out of his passive role if he were to marry iFumiko. This he cannot do. She must leave him alone. I i Chikako gains complete control over Kikuji when she .sits in his darkened house late in summer after he has returned from a vacation and tells him that he has lost not i only Yukiko but also Fumiko to marriage through his inde cision. The darkness is symbolic for it is Chikako's milieu for spreading her poison. It also provides Kikuji with protection so that the extent of his shock is not fully revealed to Chikako. Although Kikuji has continually refused to marry Yukiko, Chikako is convinced that his real desires lay in the opposite direction. She will not believe him because it runs contrary to her own desires. "At least on the surface you [refused]. So you | wanted it to seem. You weren't interested, you j wanted it to seem, and a meddlesome old woman ; came bustling in, and pushed and pushed. Very | annoying. But the girl herself was all right." Kikuji realizes that he has lost his ideal through his passivity. Yet he felt a stabbing at the heart, and, as if with a violent thrust, he struggled to draw the girl's face in his mind. I O f . He had met her only twice. i I |All he can remember are her symbols-— the thousand-crane 'furoshiki and the obi with its iris pattern, "but her face |eluded him." Perhaps clear memories came easily in proportion ' as they were ugly. i i Yukiko's eyes and cheeks were abstract memories, I like impressions of Tight? and the memory of that I birthmark on Chikako's breast was concrete as a j toad.37 I jThe beautiful girl is an abstract memory, but the ugly, ievil woman is real. Chikako presses her advantage by i \ 'trying to instill guilt in Kikuji. She says that if Yukiko's marriage is unhappy, it will be his fault. This is a credible argument for Chikako to use, since she does make sense part of the time. Her deception is a major part i j i 136 of her wit. He almost believes her. To drive home her advantage, she tells him that Fumiko too has suddenly married. Again, it is all Kikuji's fault; his indecisive ness has driven Fumiko away as well. Kikuji dissociates ihimself from the reality of Chikako's lies by thinking of i one of the symbols of Mrs. Ota, the Shino water jar. ! i I The white and the pale pink [of the flowers] J seemed to melt into a mist with the Shino. i The figure of Fumiko, weeping alone in her house, ! came to him.38 f I He escapes from Chikako's presence into a symbolic linking i jof Fumiko and Mrs. Ota in the image of the water jar. I The only one who remains close to Kikuji in his | jindecisiveness is Chikako. Both of the marriages are lies Jwhich Chikako use's to control Kikuji. She shifts all j |responsibility for the failed marriage proposal to Mrs. Ota' i |when in fact Chikako herself has destroyed the prospects. i I She wants him completely at her mercy and achieves this j |goal. Kikuji is filled with self-loathing at being her jpuppet, but he feels powerless to resist her. Even the ;knowledge that Chikako's poison drove Mrs. Ota to her death ! icannot release him from Chikako's spell. i i Chikako destroys Kikuji's unconscious search for the I jideal in Yukiko in order to revenge herself on Kikuji and i ion his father for humiliations she feels she suffered in | ithe past. Kikuji knows that Chikako has vowed to get rid I of Mrs. Ota, ostensibly to gain revenge for Kikuji's 137 mother; in reality, it is her own personal revenge on a rival. The revenge continues. Lies about Fumiko and Yukiko are designed to bring Kikuji completely under her icontrol, in retaliation for her lack of control over his I |father. She has not and cannot foresee a call from Fumiko i which will tell Kikuji the truth. No one marries in summer, i ;according to Fumiko, because it is simply too hot and humid. ;Kikuji is reluctant to accept the fact that he has been 'duped, but he cannot deny it. The two young people are i Ihaunted by memories of the past, but they are both freed I jfrom it when they make love. [Fumiko] had become absolute, beyond comparison. She had become decision and fate. Always before, she had been Mrs. Ota's daughter. Now, he had forgotten. The idea had quite left him that the mother's body was in a subtle way transferred to the daughter, to lure him into strange fantasies. ! He had at length made his way outside the dark, I ugly curtain. . . - He had escaped the curse and the paralysis. 9 Sex with Fumiko frees him from "the dark, ugly curtain" of jthe past and especially from Mrs. Ota. This is the only 'time when Kikuji feels completely free. He has tried to relive "in essence and actuality"^® his father's life. Now |he is free from external control to live his own life. Such freedom is short-lived, unfortunately. Kikuji tries to find Fumiko the next day, only to discover that she has ;vanished. "And only Kurimoto is left." As if spitting out all the accumulated venom on the woman he took for his enemy, Kikuji hurried into the shade of the park.41 At the end of the novel, Kikuji is not certain that Chikako is his enemy. He only takes her for his enemy (Kikuji wa kasoteki ni mukatte f t ? ^ j ^ , z ) . The term Ikasoteki carries with it connotations of an imaginary or jpotential enemy, but not necessarily a proven enemy. To the reader, however, Chikako's negative position is much I clearer. Darkness is Chikako's milieu and Kikuji hurries into it. His freedom has disappeared along with Fumiko. He is once more under Chikako's control. Her revenge is now complete., ! Chikako arch-manipulator i ! Kikuji's ! father Kikuj i Fumiko rival Yukiko Mrs. Ota rival destroyed destroyed ;T. E. Swann has missed the point when he says that "only I A J [Chikako— -common-sense— remains." Chikako calls herself common-sense, but she is the incarnation of evil, even though part of the time she does appear to make sense. i I Revenge is the interrupter of the quest, albeit here |an unconscious quest. Kikuji has been tempted by a created image of ideal beauty, only to have it snatched away before 139 jhe can possess it.* Kikuji, in his inability to relate,\to real women, reduces them to created images. He thinks of both Yukiko and Mrs. Ota in terms of the objects they use. Yukiko is the unconsciously created ideal "non-woman," while Mrs. Ota is woman as artifact. Kikuji holds the Shino bowl in his hand and thinks I As he looked at the masterpiece it was, he felt ■ all the more strongly the masterpiece Mrs. Ota ! had been.43 ;Only the concrete representation of Chikako's evil destroys his protection and renders him helpless. He is passive and inarticulate, too easily controlled by other stronger selves. The revenge is finished, although Kikuji himself ]is only partially aware of its extent. It destroys his i 'dream of beauty which had not been articulated and leaves him with the reality of ugliness. I 'B. Beauty and Sadness i ' The opening scene of Beauty and Sadness is an echo of ; the opening of Snow Country with Oki Toshio, a famous ! novelist, traveling south to Kyoto by train to recapture a i [portion of his past. Twenty years earlier he had had an i jaffair with Ueno Otoko who was fifteen at the time. He had I __________________________ i l*Kawabata has written a continuation of Thousand Cranes icalled Nami-chidori in which Chikako retracts her lies jabout Yukiko and raanuevers Kikuji into a marriage with his [ideal woman. Kikuji never consummates the marriage, how ever, so he is able to be "married" to his ideal virgin jwithout destroying her purity. The perversion of human [relationships continues. 140 L ................ —....................._........ —— not seen her after she attempted to commit suicide follow ing the birth of their stillborn baby. Now, over twenty years later he is attacked by a nostalgic wish to listen to the ancient temple bells in Kyoto announcing the New Year. He decides he suddenly wants to spend the end of the year ! jin Kyoto with Otoko instead of with his family in Kamakura. jHis train journey is a sentimental pilgrimage into the jpast. He wonders if Otoko will see him and if she to still cares for him. He knows almost nothing about her life since they were separated by her mother except that she has become a famous artist. Oki sits alone in the observation ■ car; we later realize that he is almost always alone with jhis memories. He sits idly watching a row of swivel chairs Jvibrate with the train's motion. Only the end chair I j j |revolves in a manner out of synchronization with the others.1 i This chair fascinates him, as he sits transfixed, unable to "take his eyes from it."44 The chair moves by itself in a I i strange fashion, but if one were to approach it symbolic- i ally, as Kosakabe Motohide does, then each of the five chairs represents one character in the novel. The chair in A ^ jcontinual motion is Sakami Keiko, the evil manipulator 'whose revenge will destroy not only Oki1s sentimental attachment to his memories but also his son Taichir5, who belongs to the world of present reality. After Oki checks I into his hotel, he once again thinks about the swivel jchair. "That revolving chair in the observation car, 141 turning by itself, came before him. It was as if he saw his own loneliness silently turning round and round within his heart."4® The chair represents not only Keiko but also Oki's state of mind. From the opening scenes onward we see a solitary man protecting himself from present reality by escaping into his lonely memories of the past. | Oki's journey to Kyoto is a physical and symbolic jquest to regain a degree of idealized love and beauty which he feels he is losing. He has seen a photograph of Otoko ;in a magazine before making his trip, so he knows what she looks like. He wonders how much she has changed toward him since he took her virginity at fifteen. His memories take him back to the time of their passionate love affair. Oki was twice Otoko1s age. He was fascinated by her "fresh, poignant beauty"4^ even after they became lovers. This would seem to destroy the previous concept of ideal beauty |being virginal and ethereal, but the fact that Otoko was so i jyoung, coupled with the distillation of the passage of time, protects Oki1s image of her. Not only is her beauty fresh, but it also has that quality of sadness which is jessential in Kawabata's aesthetic. The ugly realities of 'childbirth and Otoko's illness following her suicide I jattempt also are purified by time and are transformed into la sentimental portrait of a young girl who is denied the i joys of marriage and children by a lecherous older man. t |Oki does not want to leave his memories behind. He lives 142 in them, and as a result they encroach upon the present and supplant it. After leaving the hotel, Oki decides to go to Arashiyama on the outskirts of Kyoto for a solitary lunch. jWinter is the off-season for resorts such as Arashiyama; I therefore, Oki is practically assured that he will be i alone. He eats at a restaurant where an azalea blooming I lout of season lends an air of unreality to the place. While he waits for his food, he hears the "plaintive, lingering whistle of a train entering or leaving a tunnel. 4 8 jHe was reminded of the thin cry of a newborn baby." The i image of the premature baby born over twenty years earlier reappears to Oki at Arashiyama, flickering "in the wintry groves of trees, and in the depths of the green pool."^ The baby and the train both belong to the past. Oki calls Otoko and is both relieved and slightly i j apprehensive when she agrees to meet him. Her consent Jresults in an orgy of memories. He plunges deeper into those memories, which dissociate him from present reality. The Otoko of his memories had come to life again. . . . So the last day of the old year was filled with memories of Otoko. As the same memories ! kept recurring to his mind, they become increasingly i vivid. Events of over twenty years ago were more j alive to him than those of yesterday. . . . What were memories? What was the past that he remem bered so clearly? When Otoko moved to Kyoto with her mother, Ski was sure they had parted. Yet had they, really? . . . The Otoko of his memories was the most passionate woman he had ever known. And did not the vividness even now of those memories mean that she was not separated from him?50 143 He spends the day of the reunion in nervous anticipation, reliving all the events of their love affair. He is jolted out of his memories when Otoko's student, Keiko, calls for him in place of Otoko. Keiko belongs to the world of present reality. Oki is quickly attracted to Keiko's i disturbing beauty, but he is not ready to leave his I [memories yet. At the restaurant he is again taken aback |when he finally meets the calm Otoko flanked by two young igeisha. His dismay grows as he suddenly realizes that he i J can neither indulge in his sentimental longing to reminisce I nor can he attempt to revive the old affair. Otoko does inot want to see him alone. Oki protects himself with the comforting thought that "he felt he was still living within her."51 He interprets the presence of others as Otoko's * |attempt to calm her own emotions. No other explanation ( |occurs to him. Otoko presents Keiko formally as a student jwith an insanely passionate style of abstract painting. i I _ joki's memories, Keiko's startlingly beautiful presence and I Otoko's apparent detachment combine to give the meeting an j ;aura of unreality which is reinforced by the booming of the I I IChionm bell that produces "a sound that seemed to roar {forth with all the latent power of a distant w o r l d . " 52 I iThis is the first time Oki had heard the bells in person. [previously, he had listened to them over the radio. This i 'time, however, the bell is not what he had expected, for he i I is too close to hear its splendor fully. 144 Oki's reunion is brief, lasting only one night. Otoko does not see him off at the station the next day, but she once again sends Keiko in her stead. To be polite, Oki asks to see some of Keiko's paintings one day, thereby providing an opportunity for Keiko to begin to plot her i revenge on him and his family. As Oki sits beside the I |train window, he looks out at Keiko. As he saw her there framed in the window it occurred to him that, in her whole life, this might be the time when she was at her most beautiful. He had not known Otoko in the full flower of her youthful beauty.53 The window acts as a purifying agent for Oki. The portrait of Keiko's face framed by the window will live on in Oki1s mind as an image of youthful beauty. This device of using the train window to frame a woman's beautiful face calls toj i j I mind a similar scene in Snow Country. j- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - J Komako stood inside the closed window of the ! waiting-room. From the train window it was as I ; though one strange piece of fruit had been left i behind in the grimy glass case of a shabby moun tain grocery. The window of the waiting-room was clear for an i instant as the train started to move. Komako's i face glowed forth, and as quickly disappeared. 1 It was the bright red it had been in the mirror that snowy morning, and for Shimamura that color | again seemed to be the point at which he departed ] with reality.54 !On the way back to Kamakura 5ki thinks about the novel that made him famous. In A Girl of Sixteen, using "abstract, symbolic language to cultivate a concrete, realistic mode iof expression, he idealizes Otoko's youthful beauty i I 145 while immortalizing their love. The story of their love and loss, and of his wife's jealousy, has brought him fame and fortune. At the same time it brings Otoko continuing of Sixteen remains unchanged throughout time and it is this image of sixteen-year-old lover jealous/sympathetic wife Oki is not alone in his desire to recapture the past. In the spring following the New Year's reunion, Otoko decides to paint a tea plantation at the time when the new leaves sprout. She remembers seeing these same fields from j jthe train as she fled Oki with her mother. She and Keiko |sketch the fields, but Keiko does not realize that the tea fields represent Otoko's own pilgrimage into the past where the sadness of the old love lingers on. Otoko feels nos- Italgic when she gazes at the "melancholy green" of the ;slopes under advancing "melancholy evening shadows. Beauty and sadness— the title of the novel represents a major element of Kawabata's aesthetic. Beauty vanishes and !leaves behind a residue of wistful sadness as its legacy. ,If Otoko is somewhat dissociated from present reality in Jher visit to the tea plantation, then Keiko too is out of pain. As Oki's wife Fumiko was typing his manuscript, she I shad become sympathetic toward Otoko. The Otoko of A Girl ivision that Oki loves. 5k i umiko 146 touch with reality. Her sketches are violent and abstract. Her finished painting is a mass of swirling purples and reds, in contrast to Otoko's study in shades of green. When Otoko recalls something her mother told her-- "Waiting for Mr. Oki is like waiting for the past— time and the river won’t flow backward"^7--it is a direct thematic ! !statement: living in the past is a "waste of effort." iOtoko's memories too keep the old love alive. "Her past love had come back to life. . . . She felt that Oki had also remembered her. . . . As time passed, the memory of their embrace was gradually becoming purified within Otoko, changing from physical to spiritual. This is a reversal of Kawabata's normal pattern. Here the physical or real aspect of their love becomes idealized and spiritualized with the passage of time. "That memory— herself and not jherself, unreal and yet real— was a sacred vision sublimated from the memory of their mutual embrace."^ It is at once dissociated from and in touch with reality, because nothing can destroy her vision of an idealized love. Were Otoko to I love or be loved by another man, then this vision would be idestroyed. It would also be destroyed were she to become I _ IOki's lover again. i t ! Perhaps the lovers of old were no more. But she had the nostalgic consolation, in the midst of her sadness, that their love was forever enshrined in I a work of art.^ t i i i I I 147 Art, in A Girl of Sixteen, becomes a substitute for reality,! for Oki, where Otoko is concerned, is living in the past, protected from reality by those idealized memories. The jsame is true for Otoko. I _ . . I When Okx first meets Keiko and thinks of her as "dis- » ^turbingly beautiful," he is too wrapped up in his fantasies jto think about her probable relationship with Otoko. He I assumes, erroneously as it turns out, that she is simply I !Otoko's student. Oki Otoko Keiko i former lover art student *He gives her little other thought. Even his request for one of her paintings is in the nature of a polite but dis interested formula of parting. He is unprepared for her I 'visit to his home and for her gift of two of her best I _ jpaintings. Fumiko, Oki's wife, is instantly repelled by !the violent passion of the paintings. She is apprehensive about this "frighteningly pretty" girl going off with their son Taichiro. When she sees the pictures, intuitively she | jdislikes and fears Keiko's power. Oki's and Fumiko's jreactions are indicative of their relationship with reality. I Both think the pictures represent "an image of Keiko's own feeling.Where Funiko feels that the passion she sees ,in the paintings is for Otoko, her premonition is true i jinsight. Oki, on the other hand, sees the paintings as a I 148 representation of Otoko's love for him, not of Keiko's love for Otoko. He distorts the true meaning of the pictures to correspond with his fantasy. This is an unconscious dis sociation from reality. Fumiko becomes uneasy when Taichiro does not return immediately from the station where ;he has seen Keiko off. "I suppose he's the one being :seduced this time. A girl that pretty, with an evil fascination. . . ."62 tries to pass the intensity of the pictures off as "a young girl's narcissism"; then he attempts to silence his wife by suggesting that Otoko and Keiko are lesbian lovers, because both of them are |"insanely passionate." Oki is correct, but he uses lesbian- I ism as an excuse to calm Fumiko1s jealous apprehension. Oki Otoko ! former lover lesbian lover of Otoko ’ Kawabata explores various aspects of sexual love in [this novel. For the most part, he explores unrealistic love (higen jitsuteki ha ai ^ ^ ) between one homosexual and three heterosexual couples. He idealizes a maiden's love in the remembered passion of Oki and Otoko; he depicts homosexual love between Otoko and Keiko. He also delves into a completely perverted set of relation ships between Oki and Keiko and between Keiko and Taichiro. I jThese last two have no connection with "love," but are i 149 brought about for the purpose of revenge. Kawabata is I uninterested in sexual love between husband and wife (fufu no seiai A&f' o ) . Instead he explores what Kosakabe jMotohide terms "the sexual love of humanity" (ningen no i j seiai A* o ) ,64 or the sexual nature of human beings. ! While both Otoko and Oki are involved in an attempt to i :recapture their idealized memories of the past, Keiko, the I 'spurned lover, is driven by jealous rage to seek revenge on I i ;the Oki family. After she delivers the "requested" pictures, she announces, "Otoko, I want to get revenge for you. . . . Because you still love him--because you can't stop loving him, as long as you live." Keiko is jealous I Jof the intensity of the youthful love Otoko felt for Oki. i She is also jealous because that love remains strong. She ;cannot replace Oki, nor can she accept the existence of a ( I I different kind of love which excludes her. She tells Otoko iabout visiting Oki's house and about having dinner with Taichiro, Otoko asks, "Is that your revenge, seducing that jboy?"66 What begins as a seduction will result in TaichirS's death. Keiko is fully aware of the evil side of |her nature. While she lacks a physical symbol, she does jexhibit openly her jealousy and anger. She knows she can |"be wicked, a real devil." Keiko says she would have no I difficulty seducing either Oki or Taichiro. She was disil lusioned when she met 5ki. Instead of a paragon of virtue worthy of Otoko's love, she saw him as an ordinaryrman 150 worthy only of her hatred. Otoko tells Keiko that even if / * 7 she has her revenge, "that wouldn't destroy my love. Otoko is frightened of Keiko and calls her "predatory." The adjective is justified. j Keiko's character is one-dimensional. She harbors i :only hatred and jealousy for the Oki family and will get I I her revenge any way she can. Whatever tricks she has she jwill use. The two men in the novel are more or less con trolled by Keiko, as is Otoko. From their introduction onward, Otoko is caught in the dark, corrupt fascination of Keiko (kurai akutoku no miwaku ' f i f e - < 0 ^ . 68 g^g fears that Keiko will succeed in her revenge, but she is Jpowerless to stop her. Keiko visits Oki's home twice. The first time she leaves two paintings and meets TaichirS. ; i iThe second time she delivers the picture of the tea planta-^ !tion when Oki is alone. She entices him with the sugges- ! tion that she become the model for a new novel, but Oki at ifirst can only think of borrowing her physical beauty. He ! I laughs at her suggestion, "but as he looked at her, the i strange, seductive charm of her eyes stilled his laugh- ter." Y5ko's penetrating gaze has strong overtones of i j sexual wickedness now. Oki turns his attention from Keiko to her painting. When he says he sees her heart in it, she agrees, but it is a heart of evil, destructive darkness, not of love. Keiko returns relentlessly to her request to become his model. She has read A Girl of Sixteen and knows 151 that it is based on fact. If she were to become Oki's lover, she could replace Otoko both in his heart and in his novels. She issues a direct challenge: "I'm sorry I can't equal the girl of your imagination, that's all."^® Her coy !words make Oki bolder and he falls into her trap. Were she to pose for him, that alone would be unsatisfactory. He |must know her in the biblical sense if he were to write a i !brilliant novel about her. ! Oki tried to dispel the feeling that Keiko had come to seduce him; perhaps she was not such a designing woman. In any event, she might be quite an inter esting model for a character. Yet it did not seem unlikely that a love affair followed by a separation would drive her, as it had Otoko, into a psychiatric hospital.71 |Oki is her first victim. All she has to do is wait a few (hours to enjoy the culmination of this stage of her ven geance. 5ki and Keiko spend the night in a seaside hotel. i !Their first kiss nearly suffocates him and earns him i Keiko's scorn. When he discovers that she is not a virgin, his passion increases. Just then Keiko cried out plaintively from beneath | him: "Oh! . . . Otoko, Otoko!” 1 "What?" I i I Oki had thought she was calling out to him, but his strength ebbed when he realized she was actually calling Otoko. "What did you say? Otoko?" His voice was sober. Keiko pushed him i away without a n s w e r i n g . 72 Keiko's revenge is complete.* She could be the model for a *The translation here is misleading. Keiko calls out 152 castrating bitch, for her revenge robs Oki of the very man hood which had made him Otoko's lover. Keiko has nothing to fear from an emasculated man. He hesitates, he is impo tent, and he is destroyed. Now all Keiko has to do is try ito destroy Otoko's memory of him. She sets out to accom plish this on a sketching trip to Kokedera, the famous Moss I I Temple in Kyoto. With Keiko following Otoko "like a shadow," she effectively becomes Otoko's bunshin ( y jT‘ Jj ) I or alter ego. She will attribute her revenge to an i unstated desire by Otoko. Otoko should want to take revenge on Oki for destroying her life, so Keiko will assume the role of a vengeful spirit and act as her lover's |alter ego. This is entirely a distortion on Keiko's part, i 'but it absolves her of any possible guilt. Until this I visit to the temple, Otoko had been unaware that Keiko had ■seduced Oki. i I "He seemed awfully depraved, but when I called ! your name it quieted him down immediately. He I still loves you, and he has a guilty conscience. ! . . . I want to break up his family, to get ■ revenge for you. . . . It was a marvelous i feeling, to know I could strangle him there."73 jKeiko speaks lies and distorted half-truths to convince I i jOtoko that she was victimized by Oki. Keiko moves away * jfrom a specific situation and discusses her actions in i __________________________ I "Sensei" ( 7b 4- ) not "Otoko." Sensei is an all-inclusive ;title of respect which is usually translated as "teacher." 'Oki's misunderstanding occurs because the title could apply to either himself or Otoko. 153 archetypal terms: "Women are such fools— that's what I hate."7^ She toys with the idea of having Oki's baby since Otoko no longer can. Otoko is afraid of Keiko but still cannot do anything about it. Keiko ultimately reveals the depth of her hatred for men in general and for Oki in i particular. j ' "Otoko, women are pitiful creatures, aren't they? j A young man would never love a sixty-year-old woman, but sometimes even teen-aged girls fall in ' love with a man in his fifties or sixties. Not j just because they want to get anything out of it. : . . . Really, a man like Mr. Oki is a hopeless | case. He thought I was just a slut . . . and then J at the critical moment I heard myself calling your name— and he couldn't do another thing! . . . It was as if I'd been insulted as a woman because of you."75 I I As the full gravity of Keiko's actions penetrates Otoko's i consciousness, she is "unable to protest" and stands "as if 'paralyzed."7^ She is as ineffective as Kikuji is before ;Chikako. She is powerless; her vulnerability and passivity i 'make her Keiko's second victim. For years Otoko had been discovering almost daily what a strange young girl Keiko was. No doubt she herself had helped intensify that strangeness. It | could not be said that Otoko was entirely respon- ; sible, but certainly she had fanned the flames within her.77 iOtoko tries to bear the responsibility for Keiko's strange f 'behavior, but she has no reason to do so. She is not I 'responsible. This evil is fundamental to Keiko's psycho logical make-up. It existed before she and Otoko met; it ihas intensified and found a focus with the intrusion of Oki into their lives. 154 Otoko recalls what had attracted Keiko to her origin ally. Otoko had painted a picture of two young geisha facing each other playing a game. The faces of the geisha were the same. "She wanted to give an uneasy feeling that !the one girl was two, the two one, or perhaps neither one I nor two."^ This is an echo of the bunshin image with i ;Keiko acting as Otoko’s shadowy counterpart. Keiko saw I !herself as Otoko's double from the beginning of their Jrelationship. Perhaps such a relationship was suggested by jthe picture; perhaps it was already part of Keiko's charac- i ter. Otoko wonders if she has not taught Keiko to inflict pain on others, but she has not., "The Keiko who seemed to be under her control had turned into some strange creature j :attacking her. Keiko had said she would take revenge on j ' - . I Oki for her sake, but to Otoko it seemed Keiko was taking 7 n revenge on her."Keiko had only let Otoko believe that she was under her control. Again, this is one of her imanipulative tricks. Keiko takes revenge on Otoko as well j i _ I jas on Oki. She will "get even" with Otoko for continuing j I to love Oki. Otoko retreats once again into the past where she and I _ ,Oki live. "Rather than more recollections, they were her } ;reality."80 Otoko decides to paint two portraits, one to ! honor her dead child and one of Keiko. She will call i ; Keiko's portrait Portrait of a Holy Virgin, a title replete with ironic overtones. Otoko is not a portrait painter, 155 i j_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - . i yet she has already painted her mother's portrait from memory following her death. That portrait resembles Otoko more than it does her mother. The portrait is a mirror reflecting a doubled image: "For the mother, her daughter seemed to be a mirror reflecting Oki, and for the daughter her mother was another such mirror. Could one not I ;extend this to mean that it is a portrait of Oki himself because of the multiple mirrors? It is little wonder that the mother's portrait should immortalize the features of two women as well as the love of Otoko and Oki. The third i Jportrait will immortalize the result of their love, the I jstillborn child. Ascension of an Infant in the Buddhist tradition would be an idealized symbol of her yearning. It I would also be a symbol of Otoko's desire to live and of the ,"beauty and sadness of her love for Oki." The face would i |be vague and dreamlike, "a haloed spirit neither of this O 9 _ world nor of the world beyond."0 Just as Oki immortalized their love in A Girl of Sixteen, so too will Otoko immor talize it in Ascension of an Infant. "Her mother, her lost j I baby, and Keiko-— were they not her three loves?"^3 ‘ Art can only provide so much.protection for Oki and Otoko. When both learn that Taichiro has gone to Kyoto to j meet Keiko, their fears intensify. Oki escapes on the rainy hillside to try to decide what to do about Taichiro i and Keiko. He is quickly distracted by a vision of Keiko's nipple "like a flower bud against her creamy breast." ^4 i i 156 I jHe gradually realizes that he cannot let Taichiro go to Kyoto, but his decision comes too late. He ultimately does nothing, exactly like Kikuji when faced with Chikako's lies. Otoko too is powerless. She is inarticulate in ;front of Keiko's dominant personality. She begs Keiko to I leave the family alone, but "Otoko could not bring herself l ;to utter the names 'Oki' and 'Taichiro85 Keiko's hatred i i lof men in general is apparent. Otoko warns Keiko that she I i |need not return if she carries out her revenge. j What was Keiko going to do to Oki's son? What | would become of them, and what should she herself j do, after all these years as a captive of her love j for Oki? Otoko felt that she could not sit and ! wait.86 She can do nothing to stop the onslaught of Keiko's hatred. From the moment that Taichiro arrives in Kyoto, his j |fate is sealed. He is completely bewitched by Keiko. She i itests him during the taxi ride to the hotel, preparing him ! ;to become her victim. When she suggests a boat ride on I jbake Biwa, the stage is set. She taunts him with ideas of jrescuing her should the boat capsize. She is planning for t this to happen. Keiko says it would make her happy if both ! ^Oki and Otoko knew about their liaison, for it would be her ! ;revenge. She suggests "innocently" that she might take |revenge by falling in love with Taichiro, but this too is a 'ploy. ! ' "A girl who thinks like that is haunted by ghosts j from the past. Maybe that's why your neck is so slender and wraithlike."87 157 When Keiko says that Taichiro resembles his father, she is not deluding herself as Mrs. Ota does. She is calculating just exactly what she has to say to intensify her control over Taichiro. She succeeds in deceiving and confusing jhim. After Taichiro sleeps with Keiko he is lulled into a i brief, false sense of security. "Now Keiko belonged to < him. There was nothing baffling about her.Keiko is j taking revenge for something that happened before she met Otoko, but Taichiro has childhood memories of his mother's grief. Keiko tells him that she has been thrown out by Otoko, but her "love" for Taichiro knows no bounds. This creates the desired guilt in TaichirS. "I seem to be taking revenge on Miss Ueno for my ; mother. . . ." | "I never dreamed of that kind of revenge. What a j curious thing to say. j o q "This time it's my turn to spoil Miss Ueno's life."°^ ■Taichiro lives in the present and is sufficiently sensitive toward other people's feelings to sympathize with the suf fering Otoko will endure. He does not seek revenge. That is all in the past. He lives in the present but in a state ;of delusion concerning Keiko's love for him. Together they 1visit the tomb of Lord Sanetaka. As they both stoop down i jin front of the tomb, Keiko suddenly falls across 1Taichiro's lap and turns her face toward him. This is .reminiscent of Mrs. Ota throwing herself on Kikuji after I ithe Engakuji tea ceremony and again on the night of her I I 158 suicide. When he tries to kiss her, she rejects him. This i is a continuation of her seduction. The temptation of her body is designed to make him lose control. If she teases him and then withdraws the bait, she thinks this will make him desire her all the more. It does. She completes the :seduction farther along the trail. 1 The final movement takes place at-the Lake Biwa Hotel. !Keiko's sensuality reaches its apex before they go out onto jthe lake. She asks for some tea but she wants to drink it j from Taichiro's mouth. I ' "I could die now. If only it had been poison. . . . I'm done for. Done for. And so are you."90 While Taichiro takes a bath, Keiko calls his mother to finish her revenge. She tells an hysterical Fumiko that i she and Taichiro are going to get married. Fumiko pleads in vain for Taichiro to come to his senses and leave Keiko. Her initial premonition about Keiko is coming true. "She's a dreadful person— I know! I can't stand being tortured again. This time it would kill me! . . . It's because she's spiteful! . . . I think she tried to seduce your father too! . . . It's an evil woman's scheme. At least she's evil as far as we're concerned."^ Keiko leaves Taichiro talking to his mother and changes into a dramatically revealing white swimming suit. (One is tempted here to draw a symbolic meaning to the color of the !suit. White represents purity and ideal beauty for Kawabata, but here that meaning is ironic. White is also i jthe color of mourning in Japan. Both interpretations, I ! 159 superimposed upon each other, make the swimming suit a symbol of Taichiro's death which follows immediately.) Although it is late, Keiko urges Taichiro to keep his promise of the boat ride. ! "I don't know about tomorrow. Isn't that so? Any- ' way, just keep this one promise. We'll come right back. For a little while I want to be out on the ' water with you. I want us to cut through our fate and drift along on the waves. Tomorrow always j escapes us. Let's go today."92 I Tomorrow does not come for Taichiro. He is drowned in an i I accident; Keiko's revenge is finished. i Keiko arch-manipulator Oki Fumiko Taichiro Otoko !rival destroyed rival destroyed rival destroyed i jOnly Otoko is left. She meets Fumiko and Oki beside j iKeiko's bed. Fumiko attacks Otoko— "So you're the one who ihad my son k i l l e d . t h e okis leave, Otoko glances 'down at "Keiko1s pure, innocent sleeping face" and sees I " j |tears on her cheeks. Keiko awakens and looks at her t" jthrough tears of joy, accomplishment and sorrow because she 'is afraid she will lose Otoko. Keiko has her revenge; like Chikako, she still is in control of the one she wants the 'most. She will not lose Otoko. She has won. Beauty and" Sadness is usually criticized as being a i I popular novel because it was published in women's raaga- i ' ;zines, yet its style resembles a Western novel with a 160 fairly linear chronology broken by brief flashbacks. It re-explores the theme of escape into the past which was begun in Snow Country and Thousand Cranes and which will culminate in The Sound of the Mountain and The House of the Sleeping Beauties. For Otoko and Oki, time has not I advanced since their affair ceased. t I As Otoko approached forty she wondered if the fact 'that Oki remained within her heart meant that this stream of time was stagnant, rather than flowing. Or had her image of him flowed along with her through time, like a flower drifting down a i river? How he drifted along in his stream of I time she did not know. Although he could not have forgotten her, time would at least have flowed differently for him. Even if two people were lovers, their streams of time would never be the same. . . .94 I ! lOtoko and Oki find that only their memories are living. As | i i ,they get older, they will turn into living corpses (ikeru | shikabane M. ) like Shingo of The Sound of the Mountain and old Eguchi of The House of the Sleeping Beauties♦ This is the last stage of the quest. It is unfulfilled as are all other stages. Escape into memories Jor into fantasies does not allow for living in the present. I i Each of these characters protects himself from reality by f jan impenetrable mechanism, the privacy of memory. 161 NOTES 1. Kawabata Yasunari, Thousand Cranes, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker (New York: Berkley Publishing Co., 1958), p. 18. All quotations in English are from this edition. 2. •'Ibid. , P- 10. 3. Ibid., P- 15. 4. Ibid., P- 14. 5. David V. Kawabata' p. 87. Harrington, "The Quality of Feeling in s Thousand Cranes," Bucknell Review 18 (1970): 6 . Kawabata, Thousand Cranes, p. 14. 7. Ibid., P* 57. 8. Ibid., P- 50. 9. Ibid., P- 15. 10. T. E. Swann, "On Kawabata1s Sembazuru (Thousand Cranes)," East-West Review, 3 (Summer 1967): p. 166 . 11. Kawabata, Thousand Cranes, p. 26. [Italics mine.] 12. Ibid., P- 51. 13. Ibid., P- 52. 14. Ibid., p. 53. 15. Ibid., P- 22 . 16. Ibid., P- 19. 17. Swann, "Sembazuru," p. 165. 18. Kawabata, Thousand Cranes, p. 23. [Italics mine.1 162 19. Ibid., p. u> ' J D • 20. Ibid., p. 42 . [Italics mine. ] 21. Ibid., p. 80. [Italics mine. ] 22. Ibid., p. 25. 23. Ibid., p. 107. 24 . Ibid., p. 28. 25. Ibid., p. 32. 26. Ibid. [Italics mine.] 27. Ibid., pp . 64-65. 28. Ibid., p. 33. 29. Harrington, "Quality of Feeling, 30. Kawabata, Thousand Cranes, p. 91 31. Schlieman, "'Narrow Bridge,'" P- 32. Kawabata, Thousand Cranes, p. 47 33. Ibid., pp. 103-104 . 34 . Ibid., p. 109. 35. Ibid., p. 116 . [Italics mine .] 36. Ibid., p. 117. 37. Ibid. [Italics mine.] 38. Ibid., p. 87. 39. Ibid., p. 142. 40. Alyce Hisae Kawazoe Morishige, The Theme of the Self in Modern Japanese Fiction: Studies on Dazai, Mishima, Abe and Kawabata"(Bh.D. Dissertation, I Michigan State University, 1970), p. 183. j 41. Kawabata, Thousand Cranes, p. 144. [Italics mine.] ; I 42. Swann, "Sembazuru," p. 168. ; i i 163 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. .52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. Kawabata, Thousand Cranes, p. 137. j I Kawabata Yasunari, Beauty and Sadness, translated by 1 Howard Hibbett (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), p. 3. All quotations in English are from this edition. Kosakabe Motohide, "Utsukushisa to Kanashimi to wo megutte" [In Connection with Beauty and Sadness], in Kawabata Yasunari sakuhin kenkyu [A Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari], edited by Hasegawa Izumi j (Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 1969), p. 292. i Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness, p. 7. Ibid. P- H O • Ibid. P- 12. Ibid. P- 14. Ibid. PP . 17-18. Ibid. P- 20. Ibid. P- 23. Ibid. P- 27. Kawabata, Snow Country, p. 73. Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness, p. 30. Ibid., p. 55. Ibid., p. 121. Ibid., p. 122. [Italics translator's.] Ibid., pp. 122-123. Ibid., p. 126. Ibid., p. 47. ; Ibid., p. 48. [Ellipsis translator's. Italics mine.] Kosakabe, Utsukushisa to Kanashimi to," p. 29 3. Ibid., pp. 290-291. i Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness, pp. 57-58. j 164 j 66. Ibid., p. 58. 67. Ibid., P- 62. 68. Kosakabe, "Utsukushisa to Kanashiini to," p. 299. 69. Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness, p. 75. [Italics mine.] 70. Ibid., P* 78. 71. Ibid., PP . 80-81. [Italics mine.] 72. Ibid., P- 85. 73. Ibid., p. 88. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid., P- 95. 76. Ibid., PP . 96-97. 77. Ibid., p. 100. [Italics mine.] 78. Ibid., p. 107. 79. Ibid., PP . 114-115. [Italics mine.] CO o • Ibid., P- 119. 81. Ibid., P- 160 . 82 . Ibid., P- 165. 83. Ibid., P. 64 . 84. Ibid., P- 142. 85. Ibid., P- 172. • CO Ibid., P- 176. 87. Ibid., p. 157. [Italics mine.] 88. Ibid., P- 178. 89. Ibid., P* 182 . 90. Ibid., P- 196. [Ellipsis translator's.] 91. Ibid., PP . 199-200. i 1 6 5 i 92. Ibid., p. 203. 93. Ibid., P- 205. 94. Ibid., P- 164. 164. [Ellipsis translator's.] I 166 ! CHAPTER IV I I THE CONTINUATION OF THE QUEST IN OLD AGE j i The relentless progress of old age and the approach of ; death mark the narrator-protagonists of the last two novels.: Old Eguchi in The House of the Sleeping Beauties, at sixty- seven, feels that his life is rapidly drawing to a close, i but he is not willing to give up without a fight. In a j desperate attempt to regain a semblance of his lost youth ! old Eguchi becomes a patron of a strange house of prostitu tion which caters to the fantasies of impotent old men. In ' The Sound of the Mountain Shingo, sixty-two, feels the advance of senility in lapses of memory. He tries to con vince himself that the woman he loved over thirty years before has been incarnated in the figure of his daughter-in- law. For both of the old men time moves in two directions simultaneously: on the one hand, physical time, measured by clocks and calendars, moves them forward toward death, while, on the other, personal or psychological time moves them backward into memories. Both narrator-protagonists i ! are concerned with le temps humaine. Physical time belongs j to the world of everyday reality, but it can be ignored or 1 at least pushed aside in favor of escape.into psychological j time. Kawabata is not interested in physical time particu- ' larly, but in the personal aspects of the subjective quali- ! ties of psychological time as an escape from mundane ' reality.-'- In continuing his exploration of man's prefer^:- j ence of illusion over reality, he takes his two narrator- protagonists on a journey back through psychological time I where they recall and attempt to relive the most important I of their experiences with all of the women in their lives, j The fictional method is a variation of psychological projec-j i tion. Women from the present are employed to bring forth j memories of women out of their pasts. For old Eguchi the j sleeping beauties are much less real than his memories, 1 since they are drugged into a state of total unawareness. | Shingo, in contrast, faces a major conflict: he wants desperately to recapture the woman he had loved in his youth, but he cannot because she is dead. He projects onto his daughter-in-law an image of his long dead love, but this brings him into conflict with reality. Can either narrator-protagonist voluntarily give up his illusions and accept the inevitability of his hollowness and death? Must' they continue to escape into memories? Both old Eguchi and Shingo do not realize that every thing happens in the present. For them, the past is not merely a remembered experience of something which occurred before time present.2 The past is the only reality; it is ; I safe and comforting to the old men who confront death. For j I i 168 the two narrator-protagonists, vain attempts to make the past live again in the present serve to deny the future. It is both a childish and a desperate attempt to dissociate ; themselves from reality. i A. The House of the Sleeping Beauties j When Kiga, a friend of old Eguchi, tells him about a strange house which provides special prostitutes for old men who are impotent, old Eguchi is immediately interested in the house, alltthe while proclaiming vehemently, to him self at least, that he is still a man, and, therefore, does , I not really belong in this kind of house. His initial visit,' the first of five, sets the tone of the book. There is i something sinister and ominous about the place. It is a small house apparently located at the edge of a high cliff overlooking the sea. It is only "open for business" late at night. It is operated by a "small woman perhaps in her forties" with a "youthful voice." The house, inside and out, is cloaked in silence, with the exception of the roar of wind and the pounding of waves. The house had peculiar rules: He was not to do anything in bad taste, the woman of the inn warned old. Eguchi. He was not to put his finger into the mouth of the sleeping girl, or try anything else of that sort.3 The reception room downstairs is quite ordinary; in fact, its furnishings and decorations are in excellent taste. This is incongruous, given the nature of the house, but it | I 169 i is not a room which suggests that the house conceals f "unusual secrets." The woman, who does not look at old I Eguchi when she speaks to him, explains the services the i house provides. He will sleep all night beside a pretty girl who has been drugged. She will know nothing about her customer and he will know nothing about her except her | physical features. Old Eguchi is not to try to awaken her.j The woman adds, "I only take guests I can trust (anshin ; dekiru okyakusama 3 &'&?£) . ”4 This is our first J indication that old Eguchi might be physically incapable of: i breaking the rules. ; t The woman herself is fairly ominous, although old ! Eguchi cannot decide what it is about her that makes him uneasy. She used her left hand. There was nothing remark able about the act, but Eguchi held his breath as he watched her. . . . There was nothing unusual about the back turned toward Eguchi. Yet it seemed strange. There was a large, strange bird on the knot of her obi. . . . Why should such realistic eyes and feet have been put on such a stylized bird? . . . If the disquiet was to be tied to the woman's back, it was there in the bird. The stylization and partial distortion of reality in the design of the bird (of prey?) produces discomfort in old Eguchi. The design on the obi and the woman's left- handedness combine to create the illusion of a sinister ! i i nature in the house. Or is it an illusion? Old Eguchi ' feels that the circumstances in which he finds himself are unnatural and vaguely threatening, but he is curious. 170 I I After all, at his age he is always seeking more thrills, i I even though they may be perverse. He is not really young j i enough, or potent enough, to seek his erotic pleasure in ! normal ways. The combination of reality and unreality in general fascinates him, especially here where it is accom panied by vague feelings of danger. He wants to experience the pleasures of sleeping beside a drugged girl. j Old Eguchi is finally left by himself. His prostitute i i lies asleep in the next room. Rather than going in to see her immediately, he hesitates and feels "an unpleasant j emptiness" at what he is about to experience. He sips tea ! and wonders if the girl will resemble "a corpse from a ! i drowning." He does not know if it is a kind of medicine or j i mild poison that has been used on her, but she would in any case be in an unnatural stupor, not conscious of events around her, and so she might have the muddy, leaden skin of one racked by drugs. There might be dark circles under her eyes, her ribs might show through a dry, shriveled skin. Or she might be cold, bloated, puffy. . . .^ i With a clinical accuracy closely resembling Tanizaki Jun'ichirS’s catalogue of physical descriptions in The Key and Diary of a Mad Old Man, old Eguchi imagines the worst possible partner. She is indeed Iin an unnatural stupor," but all of the events of the novel are equally unnatural. His reverie takes him from a fantasy about the girl looking as if she were dead to the ugly, "imagined reality" of a drug addict. The girl turns out to be beautiful. His fantasy turns to a general memory of past affairs. In his sixty-seven years, old Eguchi has passed ugly nights with women. . . . The ugliness had had to do not with the appearance of the women but with their tragedies, their warped lives. . . . But could there be anything uglier than an old man lying the night through beside a girl put to sleep, unwaking? Had he not come to this house seeking the ultimate in the ugliness of old age? (sono oi no minikusa no kiwami % < q > o ft u < $ 9 3+ ) ^ Old Eguchi, more introspective than any other narrator- protagonist except Shingo, slowly begins to recognize just how wretched he is. His denial of his impotency becomes pathetic as his visits to this house increase in frequency. The house provides a haven for self-examination. Arthur Kimball calls the room a heart: "It is heart, where an old man living a death-in-life confronts his paradoxical oppo site, a young woman who is life-in-death.”^ It is the place where old Eguchi probes deeply into the center of his consciousness. Kimball is perhaps drawn astray by the redness of the room, but it is indeed a place where old Eguchi searches his soul. (Some additional confusion may arise if one were to use the Japanese term kokoro ( ) here. Kokoro is usually translated as "heart," but it also carries with it connotations of "spirit" and "soul.") Each subsequent visit intensifies the sinister aspects of the house. Old Eguchi is invited to return by the woman who runs the inn. When she telephones him, her voice "sounded more like a cold whisper from a silent place" than like that of a warm-blooded woman. She has a death-like 172 coldness about her, or rather, she has a deadly coldness. ! i She destroys what she touches. The telephone call was | i i unexpected. "Might it be called the surprise of suddenly , being pulled away from the everyday world?" ^ Old Eguchi j has a subliminal awareness that the house is cut off from mundane reality, and, therefore, it functions as a trans ition between the commonplace and the unknown. The strange i I woman with the unreal bird on her obi acts as a female j Charon, escorting her senile patrons upstairs to a night- ! I mare world of impotency where they seek the illusion of ; i I life by lying next to drugged prostitutes who offer the i illusion of love.^-^ The room with the sleeping prostitutes is completely decorated in red velvet, the color which signals Shimamura's departure from reality. For Kawabata1s narrator-protagonists, red is a standard symbol for enter ing the world of unreality. The room is not in the Japanese style, for its walls are hung with the crimson velvet. Even the door has a velvet drape obscuring it. Soft, diffused light comes indirectly from the ceiling without a switch to turn it off. The strangeness of the room reinforces old Eguchi1s disquiet, for it is "as if he were stepping into a phantasm (maboroshi ) ." The red from the draperies reflects on the skin of the girl i "like a beautiful phantom (maboroshi ij )."H He is immediately attracted to her delicate hand which is lying j I 173 on the edge of the bedding. He examines it in almost j * I clinical detail, as he will do with each of the girls. She I i is beautiful, with a maidenly scent. She is real and not real, but the fantasy of a grotesque drug addict has been j i i replaced by the reality of an idealized beauty. He looks J at her hand again and thinks, ! As if it Were alive, he muttered to himself. It was of course alive, and he meant only to say how very pretty it was; but once he had uttered them the words took on an ominous ring.I2 Old Eguchi's slip of the tongue is prophetic. This girl is sleeping as if she were dead, and he is living as though he ; were dead. The first girl survives her night with old Eguchi, but the last one dies, with each girl losing part of her life in the oblivion of her drugged stupor. One last aspect of the house and its surroundings underscores the unreality and adds a strong overtone of death. The house is situated close to the sea. All of old Eguchi's visits take place in autumn and winter. Both the sea and the seasons signal his approaching death. On his : first visit, the last words spoken to him by the sinister woman are "Listen to the waves. And the wind." She is warning him that his death, and death in general, is not far off. It was as the woman had said: the sound.of the waves was violent. It was as if they were beating j against a high cliff, and as if this little house were at its very edge. The wind carried the sound of approaching winter, perhaps because of the house itself, perhaps because of something in old Eguchi.13 ; Just before old Eguchi is ready to go to sleep on his first i \ .visit, he touches the girl's pulse while listening to the j wind. He hears something different in it this time. His ! physical grasp on life in the wrist of the girl gives him strength. The wind continues blowing but no longer carries the sound of approaching winter. The sound coming from the ! j ocean is now "as music sounding in the girl's body, the j beating in her breast, and the pulse at her wrist added to ; t it."^ The sound is no longer ominous but musical. Old j Eguchi has found some of the transitory peace for which he j is searching, found it for the moment at any rate. Old Eguchi realizes that death is near at hand for him, but he tries desperately to deceive himself into believing that sexually he is still a man. The ominous woman sees through his deception; she knows that he would not be a patron of her house were this not the case. Sex, or the simulation of a sexual relationship, at this house — r is unclean (fuketsu ), Kawabata's standard antonym for beauty. Uncleanness is directly related to "ugliness" (minikusa ) , "immorality" (haitoku H ) , and "sin" i Ctsumi ). All three are a profanity against life | which ideally should be beautiful. Old Eguchi is reduced j to seeking his erotic stimulation in a manner which is the j ! "epitome of ugliness (minikusa ho kiwami). He and the other old men are "gruesome ruins" (seisan na suib5 ^ ^ ^ j ^ t ),15 or one of "life's spare parts" in Shingo's ; .terminology. ! I Still able to enjoy himself, he was not yet a guest to be trusted; but it was possible to make himself ! one, because of his feelings at that moment, because of the place, because of his companion. . . . For him, too, he thought, the dreary circumstances of the other guests were not far off. The fact that he was here surely indicated as much. And so he had no intention of breaking the ugly res- j trictions, the sad restrictions imposed upon old men.16 He is reluctant to accept the truth, that he is old and cannot function sexually any longer. His excuse is his voluntary control of himself; he has the physical capabili-: ties to break the rules but he willingly chooses to comply j ( with them. ; It is not until his second visit that old Eguchi suddenly realizes the reason the girls do what they are doing; they need money, while he and the rest of the "gruesome ruins" need something else. This transcends the I folk belief that if an old man sleeps beside a girl he can ; drain off some of her youth and thus be rejuvenated. For I f these old men, "sleeping beside such a girl was a happiness' not of this world. . . . [They] were quite free to indulge! in unlimited dreams and memories of women."l^ This is all they have left. The knowledge seems to old Eguchi to be "a strange light at the bottom of a deep darkness."-*-® Sleeping girls provide happiness in two distinctly different- I ways; they are the stimuli for a series of erotic memories,.; and they are in an unnatural stupor which renders them I incapable of witnessing the old men's humiliating physical ■ decline. In sleep they share their painful secrets yet j lack all knowledge of them. "There could be for an old man ! worn to the point of death no time of greater oblivion than ! when he lay enveloped in the skin of a young g i r l . "-*-9 jjot j touching, not lying beside, but "enveloped in"— there must j be some kind of union for men incapable of sex. It is a I merging of two selves with the female self not knowing j i about the merger and with the male self knowing nothing ! about his counterpart. The third visit evokes a strong response to death. Eguchi, on his third visit, knew that to sleep with such a girl was a fleeting consolation, the pursuit of a vanished happiness in being alive. . . . There seemed to be a sadness in a young girl's body that called up in an old man a longing for death. . . . How would it be to sleep as of the dead? He was much taken with the thought of sleeping a deathlike sleep beside a girl put into a sleep like death Old Eguchi can no longer deny his failing abilities, nor can he deny that the thought of death is very attractive. Where everything else has been a temporary delusion, death ■ will be a permanent reality. As a man approaching death, he is becoming physically inactive; while his desires are normal, he lacks the capacity to satisfy them. He is best qualified to dream an impossible dream of rejuvenation.^^ Old Eguchi's final visit follows the death of an old friend in the house. On a night in the middle of winter, the woman offers to steady old Eguchi as he walks along sleet-covered flagstones, but he roughly shakes her off and : 1 7 7 i petulantly denies that he is so feeble that he needs her assistance, even though he calls himself "an old man next door to death." This becomes more than a mere figure of speech. He complains of a draft in the reception room and wonders if a ghost might be at large. The house is doomed since the old man's death. On this night one of the girls dies. Old Eguchi will never return. Each of the five visits prompts a series of memories, most of which deal with blood, baby's milk or sex. After old Eguchi has carefully examined the hand of the first girl through the bleary eyes of a far-sighted man who has removed his glasses, he thinks that he smells milk in her scent. At first he is startled; he thinks she is a virgin and, therefore, it would be impossible for her to be a nursing mother. He sniffs again. "In fact it was a womanish scent. And yet it was very certain that old Eguchi had this very moment smelled a nursing baby. A passing specter?"23 He becomes aware of the emptiness of his heart and ''the bleakness of old age." He looks at the crimson walls which are soft and still. He feels as if he and the girl were in a womb. He lies quietly thinking about the milky scent. It had come from one of his daugh ters. He had visited a geisha whom he had patronized regularly not long after the birth of a daughter. She had become angry and jealous over the smell of his coat. His mind jumps next to his first lover on whose breast he had 178 left a bloody mark at the height of passion. He had run away with the girl with the bloody breast, because the cleanness of the girl's secret parts came before him and would not leave. . . . So struck had he been by the cleanness that he had held his breath and felt tears welling up. He had not seen such cleanness in the women of all the decades since; and he had come to think that he understood all cleanness, that cleanness in secret places was the girl's own property. . . . Probably there was no one in the world besides Eguchi who knew of that incomparable cleanness, and with his death, not far away now, it would quite disappear from the world.^4 Old Eguchi had been the last to see her virginal purity. The girl had eventually married someone else, borne chil dren and died, but his memory had frozen her perfection in time. He uses the drugged girl to call up memories of other lovers. Eguchi first sleeping beauty-=s* jealous geisha- girl with bloody breast He did not think, somehow, that one distinguished near memories from distant memories so that they were new or old. . . . He could travel back over memories of women with whom he had had affairs. An old love had come back tonight because the sleeping beauty had given the illusion that he smelled milk. Perhaps the blood on the breast of that girl from long ago had made him sense in the girl tonight an odor that did not exist. . . . Perhaps it was a melancholy comfort for an old man to be sunk in memories of women who would not come back from the far past, even while he fondled a beauty who would not awaken.^5 Both the women from the past and the sleeping girl are equally unattainable. Old Eguchi awakens from the first 179 visit cleansed by what he feels to be a childlike innocence • in the encounter. He pretends that the girl loves him too. ' When he touches her breast, "there was in the touch a ! I strange flicker of something, as if this were the breast of Eguchi1s own mother before she had him inside her."26 The sleeping girl becomes old Eguchi1s virgin mother. Images proliferate from now on concerning Eguchi and his longings i for his mother. 1 Eguchi first sleeping beauty- s^Eguchi's virginal mother ■ If the first girl is a virgin, the second is a witch. This also underscores the mysterious qualities of the ! house. As with the first girl, old Eguchi examines this i "witch-girl," paying attention to minute details as if she were a specimen under a microscope. She has a strong ' i erotic attraction for him; if he were to break the rules of i the house, he feels he could blame her. She would have "seduced" him. Here old Eguchi fancies himself in the role ; of Everyman, or, more accurately. Every Old Man. | He would now have revenge upon this slave maiden, drugged into sleep, for all the contempt and derision endured by the old men who frequented the house.27 j J ! He stops abruptly when he discovers that she is a "virgin j J prostitute (shofu no kimusume hz? ° ^ ) . " | * Led astray by the witchlike face, Eguchi had set ; out upon the forbidden path; and now he knew that ; > i s o i the old men who were guests here came with a happi- ! ness more melancholy, a craving far stronger, a - | sadness deeper than he had imagined. . . . That j the "experienced" witch tonight was still a virgin I was less the mark of the old men's respect for : their promises than the grim mark of their decline. i The purity of the girl was like the ugliness of i the old m e n .28 J Old Eguchi sees this girl as more alive than the first one. j She lacks any individuality, however, as they all do, ; I because their features blur when he removes his glasses. ! This girl is a witch, a slave maiden, tempting men to dream of what they can no longer accomplish. This is the only : girl who speaks to old Eguchi. In a dream she appears to I be responding to his caresses and words, but eventually he l realizes that they are responses within the dream itself, I not to him in particular: "any 'dialogue' is self- ! 2 9 generated, self-sustained, and ultimately self-directed*. , She is "not the witch but the bewitched. . . . She had become a woman's body, without mind."^ She is partly human, partly woman, but she lacks a consciousness. She is also as much a victim as old Eguchi is. As he lies beside I the "witch-girl," he thinks about a four hundred year old camellia tree. He had taken his youngest daughter Kyoto to, i see the tree to help her forget the recent loss of her : i virginity. She had been the object of competition by two suitors, one of whom had had intercourse with her. She j I immediately decided to marry the other suitor. Old Eguchi i was shocked and angry at the deflowering of this particular: daughter, for she was like a jewel who had been scarred. i At the thought of her unsightliness in the act, i Eguchi was assailed by strong feelings of shame } and degradation. 3 - * - : i The daughter becomes a woman and is even more beautiful j i following her marriage, but old Eguchi finds that thinking about his daughter engaged in intercourse is repulsive. ! His daughter and the "witch-girl" are both sexual entities, i i but only the latter is not repulsive. 1 What flowed deep behind his eyelids from the girl's arm [lying across his face] was the current of life, the melody of life, the lure of life, : and, for an old man, the recovery of life.32 j Old Eguchi has used the "witch-girl's" sexuality to enhance the contrast with his daughter's "virginity." i Eguchi U witch-girl -=s» youngest daughter When old Eguchi hears that the third girl is "still in training," "a chilly emptiness came over h i m . "33 she is childlike against the "witch-girl's" experience. Lying beside her, he recalls "the Kobe woman,” a married woman with whom he had had an affair three years earlier. She enjoys their affair, but must rush home each morning to | care for her children. Old Eguchi thinks that this is his last affair with a young woman, so he transforms her into j "an unforgettable woman." He thinks that her smooth, firm body is "like a symbol of young womanhood."^ She is a symbol, an archetype, but not an individual. He all but forgets the sleeping girl even though she has made him remember the Kobe woman. "There had been nothing in her of O C , the whore or the profligate." If the Kobe woman xs the symbol of womanhood, then the girl "still in training" is woman as a Buddha. He almost thought that, as in old legends, she was the incarnation of a Buddha. Were there not old stories in which prostitutes and courtesans were Buddhas incarnate?^ In her he seeks repentance for his misdeeds, but he is unwilling and unable to put his memories aside. He dehum anizes her until she is a divine being. He takes two realities, the girl and the Kob6 woman, and projects on them the archetypal qualities he wants them to possess. Eguchi girl "still in training"--------- Kobe woman Buddha incarnatejt-— . — 'symbol of womanhood The fourth and fifth visits continue the trends already established. In the fourth visit, old Eguchi's girl is "warm." Each has a physical attribute in place of a name. Unable to decide if she is "a toy, a sacrifice" for old men, he feels "a new numbness inside him." He is becoming more and more insensitive to the inhumanity of the j situation in general and to his acceptance and support of ! that inhumanity. His patronage keeps the girls as drugged ( toys. He is struck with the sudden awareness that "the aged have wealth, the young have love, and death comes once, and love comes over and over again."37 Somehow old ! 1 I Eguchi realizes that he will have to break the spell of the i house and the illusion of rejuvenation, but he lacks the j will power to do so, for this "warm" girl has "the body of j 3 R woman that invited man into the lower circles of hell." I i The Charon-woman has been joined by a "virgin prostitute" who will lead old Eguchi into the depths of hell. In point; of fact, this is a distortion. The drugged girl can do j nothing to old Eguchi but provide him with sufficient mental stimulation for his dreams to take him to hell. There is a| hell of an existential isolation in which he must confront | "the brittleness of his existence, the subtlety of self- j deceit."39 The last visit provides a complete surprise. There are two girls, one wild and rough, the other voluptuous and gentle; one dark, one fair. Kimball devotes much attention to these two opposites, seeing in them Hawthorne’s familiar counterparts.^ They are clearly what Leslie Fiedler calls the Fair Maid and the Femme Fatale. The dark girl is active in sleep, restless, with a face that old Eguchi calls "Life itself." Ironically, she dies that night. Looking at her, he realizes sadly that the vigor to take such a girl by force-was no longer i in Eguchi— or he had long forgotten it. He approached ! her with a soft passion, a gentle affirmation, a ; feeling of numbness to woman. The adventure, the fight that set one to breathing harder, had gone. « "I am old. . . ."41 He has joined the not-so-select club of "life's spare parts." His acceptance of his impotence signals a resigna- j i tion to his approaching death. As long as he could \ convince himself that he was sexually potent, he was still alive. I The impulse left him, and an emptiness, dark at I its depths, spread over him.4 2 I He has learned the lesson that Shimamura avoided through j his union with the cosmos. Old age forces him to accept a : "feeling of inevitability, a gloomy sense that something is J coming to an end, and that at the end death waits."4^ He i turns to the fair maid who is quite like a corpse except i "that she breathed and had warm blood." He begins to yearn' for the "dangerous" drug used on the girls. He feels more and more frequently "a lonely emptiness, a cold despon dency" which causes him to long for death beside these two beautiful girls. This is his ultimate wish. He drifts off into sleep holding one breast from each girl and dreams. This dream unifies many of the elements in the novel, for it concerns the first girl in his life, his mother: "a new truth came from deep inside him. Was it blasphemy, was it yearning?"44 Eguchi dark girl— "life itself’ fair girl mother 185 iAs a boy old Eguchi had watched his mother die of tubercu- 1 losis. He had sat stroking her withered breasts the day j I she hemorrhaged. The bloody breasts, the redness of the ! room seeming like a womb, the intensive attention to the j sleeping girls' hands (his mother's were bony but strong)— all are explained with this dream. Old Eguchi has been i trying to return to his youth, to his mother. The nights [ he spends in the house are moments out of time during which! he seeks his dead mother in vain. He awakens from his J dream to find that the dark girl, "life itself," is dead. I In an instant he is reduced to a panic-stricken child. He i watches the sinister woman carry off the body "in a state of catatonic immobility, until the woman turns and looks at him. "Go back to sleep. There is the other girl." There was another girl— no remark had ever struck him more sharply.46 Like the child he has become he returns to the room, to the womb. Instead of warmth and protection he has found death : i and his own hollowness. If old Eguchi has regressed to childhood at the end, what about the continual dehumanization of the girls through out the novel? None possesses a personal identity; none is j i a real person in that she has freedom to function according j I to her will. They are reduced to being playthings for the ; I impotent old men. Earlier we discussed the archetypal ' 186 j _____ I aspects of the Kobe woman (the symbol of womanhood) and the ; I girl "still in training" who is Buddha incarnate. The. j I first girl., however, sets the general tone for most of the ; subsequent dehumanizing images. Old Eguchi first imagines that she will look like a drowned corpse— ^all of the girls j are in that deathlike stupor. ■ She was not a living doll, for there could be no living doll; but so as not to shame an old man no longer a man, she had been made into a living toy. No, not a toy: for.the old men, she could be life itself.47 She is a living toy, yet paradoxically she is not quite i alive. Old Eguchi wishes that she could restore his life, , indeed that she could be "life itself," but he learns that j that is impossible when he applies the same term to the ; "dark girl" who is life's counterpart, death. All the girls are sleeping in "suspended animation" and old Eguchi touches each "as if he were handling a breakable object."48 He cannot talk to them for they are unable to respond. To enjoy their beauty he transforms them into objects which are not human in order to be able ,to relate to them at all. I Is this so dissimilar to Kikuji's relating to "the master- ' piece that was Mrs. Ota?" Shingo, in contrast, will try to | reach out to the world of humanity by transforming an obj et ' d1 art into a woman. ! That old Eguchi cannot communicate with the sleeping : girls is reflected in his inabilities to be honest with j himself at the beginning of the novel. He lives in a world 1 8 7 i ■of self-deceit, for he lies to himself about his sexual potency. With no one to talk with, he turns to introspec- , tion, gradually becoming more honest with himself. He not only recognizes and resigns himself to his impotency, but he also accepts his need to find his mother, if only in his | memories. On his second visit, he discusses "promiscuity" ! with the ominous woman. When she tells him that he had a different girl this time, he wonders if he is not being promiscuous. She assures him that that is not an issue since the girls are unaware of his presence or of his identity. His feelings are- unimportant. He recognizes an important truth: "I see. It's not a human r e l a t i o n s h i p . "49 He is human, but his feelings no longer matter. He cannot explain that for an old man who was no longer a man, to keep company with a girl who had been put to sleep was "not a human relationship."50 A human relationship must be reciprocal? it cannot be one sided. The half-alive toys are all that remain. B. The Sound of the Mountain Ogata Shingo, the narrator-protagonist, is sixty-two and thinks of himself as "old." He has reached a point where he feels he wants to reassess the important events of . I his life to see what value, if any, it has had. He has > married, fathered two children, has two granddaughters, and has seen his son return from the war. He has a good job and his son works for the same company. Ordinarily, such ; t i an account would make a.,man content with his life, at i least, if not happy with it. Shingo, however, is neither content nor happy. He feels his age much more strongly 1 than his years would warrant, with his greatest difficulty being his failing memory. The novel opens with Shingo, brow furrowed, trying to remember the name of a maid who had recently left his employment. Events of the recent j past do not come easily to mind, but his family has learned j j to cope with these bouts of forgetfulness. "The son served, i as sort of a prompter for the father. There were other j prompters too, [his wife] Yasuko and Kikuko, [his son] Shuichi's wife. The three of them worked together, a team J supplementing Shingo's powers of memory.If the recent past is out of focus, the distant past is quite vivid. He can recall feelings and events which happened over thirty years ago with an ease and intensity as though they had occurred yesterday. The past is attractive, for time has stopped and frozen everything exactly as it was. In sharp contrast is the present which Shingo finds decidedly unpleasant. When Shingo reassesses his life, he thinks first about his marriage. It has been comfortable, no more. Shingo is j married to Yasuko who is a year older than he, but she was not his first choice for a bride. Shingo had been in love with her older sister, who was already married to another 189 man. When the sister died at an early age, Shingo married Yasuko to keep the memory of her sister alive. He did not I | particularly love Yasuko, for she was the homely sister of ; his life-long love; marriage to her might help him preserve j I the memory of the dead woman's beauty. Shingo is not alone in wanting Yasuko to become the dead sister, who remains a I nameless symbol of the ideal, unattainable beauty through- ; out the novel. Her anonymity allows us to believe that • • Shingo idealizes her as the perfect woman. Shingo had as a boy been strongly attracted to the j sister. After her death Yasuko had gone to take j care of the children. Yasuko had quite immersed herself in the work, as if wanting to supplant her : sister. It was true that she had been fond of her brother-in-law, a handsome man, but she had been in love with her sister, so beautiful a woman as to make it difficult to believe that the two could have had the same mother.52 Yasuko is as homely as her sister was beautiful. She too is caught up in the mystique of beauty outshining every- j thing else. She tries to take her sister's place but the I attempt fails. : To Yasuko her sister and brother-in-law had been j like inhabitants of a dream world. / She had worked hard for her brother-in-law and the children, but the man behaved as if he were quite indifferent to her feelings. He lost himself in pleasure, and for Yasuko self-immolation became a career. And so Shingo had married her. . . . Yet the image of the sister remained with both of them. Neither spoke of her, and neither had for gotten her.53 1 9 0 j / Shingo's reason for marrying Yasuko is to preserve a dream. ! The brother-in-law attends their wedding and outshines the bride. He is part of that dream world from which Shingo i and Yasuko will forever be excluded. Only beautiful people j inhabit it.54 The most Shingo can hope for is to keep his memories alive. Now after many years of marriage, Shingo realizes that his marriage has not produced the happiness i I he had sought. i On nights when he was not in good spirits he would I be repelled by the sight of the aged flesh with j which he had lived for so long. ; I i Tonight he was not in good spirits. Turning on | the light, he looked at her profile and took her ! by the throat. She was a little sweaty. I Only when she snored did he reach out to touch her. | The fact seemed to him infinitely saddening.^ j In Shingo's eyes, Yasuko is merely a sweating, snoring piece of aged flesh, not a human being. He rarely if ever 1 considers her feelings. He is much more concerned about what she is not. She is not the beautiful dead sister, nor even a monument to her beauty. She is ugly reality which ■ Shingo rejects. Shingo and Yasuko have long ceased having a sexual relationship; Shingo does not even have erotic dreams on a regular basis. He dreams frequently, but often of dead people. Ironically, the dead appear full of life in his dreams, but people like Shingo are really more dead . than alive. Shingo will have to struggle to live, but he will succeed. "At sixty-two, an absence of sensual dreams would not be unusual, but what puzzled him was the positive^ insipidity of it all."56 ! ! Shingo's two children have both married, but thus far the marriages have been unsatisfactory. Shuichi, Shingo's j I only son, has returned from the war, emotionally scarred, to marry Kikuko, a girl of about twenty. Before long, how- j ever, Shuichi has found a mistress, a war widow named i i Kinuko. The affair, oddly enough, seems to make Kikuko i [ more receptive to Shuichi, and she soon finds herself i i pregnant. Unable to bear the thought of having Shuichi ' s j child under these circumstances, however, she has an J i abortion. Just after Kikuko has removed Shuichi's seed j i from her womb, Shingo learns that the mistress is also j I pregnant. Kinuko, in contrast, refuses to have an abortion and leaves for the countryside where she plans to raise her child alone. In the midst of the inner tensions caused by Shuichi's i affair, Fusako, the daughter, arrives home carrying all her belongings with her and bringing along Shingo's two grand daughters, Satoko, a strange and unattractive child, and the baby Kuniko. Shingo had married Fusako off to a wastrel who sells most of her clothing to buy drugs and i I women. Fusako is a petulant woman given to strong bouts of i I jealousy and hostility. Usually either Shingo or Kikuko is j her target. She blames Shingo for her failed marriage, but ; bears none of the responsibility herself. Fusako has j 1 9 2 i always been a disappointment to Shingo. He had hoped that ■ Yasuko would produce a living monument of the dead sister, but Fusako is even uglier than her mother. ' I Shingo had seldom spoken of what a homely baby i [Fusako] was. To speak of the matter would have ! been to bring back the image of Yasuko1s beautiful i sister. | i His hope that Fusako would change faces several i times before she grew up had not been realized, and the hope itself had faded with the years. . . . j Was he searching for the image of Yasuko's sister even in his grandchildren? The thought made Shingo dislike himself.57 I Fusako1s husband sends her a divorce notice, but Shingo delays turning it in to the ward office; while he is ! i waiting, Aihara, the drug addicted husband, attempts to ! commit shinju ( 'C/ ^ ) , or lover's suicide, with another | woman. The attempt is partially successful, for the woman dies. With Aihara alive and in a position to embarrass the family, Shingo rushes the divorce notice to the proper office and accepts Fusako and her children back into his family. He hopes that she may remarry, but deep inside he realizes that it is a futile dream. Marriage in The Sound of the Mountain is an unhappy state. Shingo delivers the strongest indictment in Kawabata's fiction against marriage when he thinks of the i swamp that all the marriages in the book are. A marriage was like a dangerous swamp, sucking in j endlessly the misdeeds of the partners. Kinu's ; love for Shuichi, Shingo's love for Kikuko— would j they disappear without trace in the swamp that ■ 19 3j was Shuichi's and Kikuko's marriage? . . . The expression "husband-wife marsh" (fufu no numa A i ' f s ^ 53 ) meant only that a husband and wife alone, putting up with each other's misdeeds, deepened the marsh with the y e a r s . ^ 8 Dissolution of relationships is the normal state in present reality. This is only one aspect of the novel which makes reality unpleasant, for Shingo is surrounded by death. At his age, one must expect that his contemporaries will begin dying off. The novel opens with its most famous passage. Shingo has been restless and unable to sleep one hot, August evening. As he gazes out of the window, listening to the night sounds, he sees Kikuko1s sweaty dress hanging on the clothesline to catch the evening dew. On this sultry evening Shingo hears the sound of the moun tain behind his house. In these mountain recesses of Kamakura the sea could sometimes be heard at night. Shingo wondered if he might have heard the sound of the sea. But no— it was the mountain. It was like wind, far away, but with a depth like a rumbling of the earth. Thinking it might be in himself, a ringing in his ears, Shingo shook his head. The sound stopped, and he was suddenly afraid. A chill passed over him, as if he had been notified that death Was approaching. . . . It was as if a demon had passed, making the moun tain sound out. . . .59 , Shingo is terrified. The mountain's roar had been a har binger of death once before, where it serves as a connec tion between Shingo and the dead sister. It roared previously, announcing her impending death. It is only natural for Shingo to assume that the second time the raoun- i taxn roars must be an announcement of his own death. : ( I Shingo tells Yasuko and Kikuko at breakfast the next morn- | I ing about his strange experience during the night.. He tries to pass off his fear lightly, but his words stimulate j Kikuko's memory. j I "Do mountains roar?" asked Kikuko. . "But you did ; say something once, Mother-— remember? You said ; that just before your sister died Father heard \ the mountain roar." Shingo was startled. , He could not forgive himself for not remembering. He had heard the sound of the mountain, and why had the memory not come to him?60 The death images multiply with more friends dying. Death touches Shingo*s family with Kikuko's abortion and Aihara’s failed shinju. The reassessment of a man!s life, which seemed so adequate on first glance, has broken down on closer inspection. Present reality is not very attrac tive. Shingo needs an alternative. It is not suicide but escape into fantasies and memories. Kawabata's narrator- ' protagonists do not commit suicide, but prefer to escape I I themselves from the pain of reality. Everything seems to be going wrong for Shingo. Throughout most of the novel, the prevailing tone is one of j despair. Although the time of the action occurs during the i American occupation, and although it was also written j i iduring that period, from 1949 to 1954, Shingo and his j family seem relatively unaffected by the magnitude of the ! I events which have turned life into chaos and have disrupted j ; familiar, pre-war social mores. Yoshimura Teiji prefers to • i read The Sound of the Mountain in terms of its greater social import, rather than as a personal story of one man's struggle with reality. t One thing which should receive special mention in j this novel is its pathetic tone which seems to talk i about the sadness of defeat everywhere. It appears naturally when the strong events and problems of the war and of the so-called post-war society are not dealt with adequately. . . . Shingo's heart ' is a symbol of Japan's sadness which lost the foundation of its own spirit together with all ; prejudice because of the defeat.61* , (In keeping with the purpose of this examination, any temp- 1 tation to discuss Shingo, or indeed any of the other narrator-protagonists as a Japanese Everyman has been avoided. They are representatives of one aspect of the i universal self. To refer to them only as a Japanese i i Everyman is too restricting. What Kawabata is treating is , .the state of man in isolation, not merely the state of mind ; of the Japanese following their defeat in World War II.) The past serves as a haven for Shingo. He retreats i into memories with little or no advance warning. Although *Ima hitotsu, kono shdsetsu de tokki subeki koto wa, zentai , wo tsujite, haisen no kanashimi to iitai yo na, aru hitsu ! na choshi ga, sens5 ya iwayuru sengo shakai no dogitsui ! ji.ji mondai nado, mattaku atsukawarete inai naka ni j onozukara arawarete iru koto. . . . Shingo no kokoro wa j haisen ni yotte issai no henken to tomo ni jibun no kokoro no yoridokoro wo ushinatta nihon no kanashimi no shochS. | 196 his memory is failing, long-forgotten items, events or ! feelings suddenly resurface. Shingo is in contact with the| l world of people, with the world of nature, and with the. ! world beyond which ’ ’deals with fantasy and involves } Yasuko's beautiful deceased sister who still lives as a young woman." Tsuruta Kinya is struck by the recurrence i of the number three. Tn an analysis bordering on numer- • ology, he concludes, : i Shingo*s world can further be divided into three j temporal sequences;■ his past which corresponds ] to his kingdom of fantasy inwwhich time is com- j pletely frozen; his present which represents his life in Tokyo and Kamakura, and includes his | sensitivity to flora, fauna, and his awareness i of cyclic time flow; lastly his future which | harbors the inevitable cessation of life, the ; end of the time flow, death. ' ■ 9 I i Bound up with Shingo's longing for the unattainable ideal sister is his equally unattainable longing for his i daughter-in-law. He yearns for both women to such an extent that their images become superimposed and they ! threaten to merge into a composite like the Mrs. Ota/Fumiko ! union or the Kikuji/father union. Shingo had been escaping , into memories until Shuichi brought Kikuko home as his | bride. "Something about the delicate figure made him 1 I think of Yasuko's sister. , . . There was nothing 1 especially unhealthy about the fact that, after Kikuko came ! I into the house, Shingo*s memories were pierced by moments ; 64 of brightness, like flashes of lightning." Kikuko ] brightens Shingo's world in the same way that Yukiko is a 197 I "vein of light" against Chikako1s darkness. In Kikuko the I image of the dead sister has a chance of finding an outlet. Shingo almost sees Kikuko as his salvation. Perhaps she can give him what he longs for in the present. ; Kikuko was for him a window looking out of a 1 gloomy house. His blood kin were not as he would | wish them to be, and if they were not able to ' live as they themselves wished to live; then the impact of the blood relation became leaden' and oppressive. His daughter-in-law brought relief. Kindness toward her was a beam lighting isolation. It was a way of pampering himself, of bringing a : touch of mellowness into his life.65 I I I Kikuko is Shingo's only positive image in present reality. She is clearly his favorite. She had been the baby of her family and is willing to be the pet of Shingo as well. She is half-child, half-woman, and always unattainable. Kikuko1 is a direct contrast to Fusako. Whenever Shingo shows Kikuko particular attention it arouses Fusako's jealousy. She has a very sharp tongue, thinking nothing of belittling her father and calling him a failure. When she returns to Shingo's house, she has .her clothing wrapped in a furoshiki. "Shingo had seen the kerchief before, but all he could remember was that it had been in the house. He did not know w h e n . "66 During a typhoon, Shingo suddenly asks Yasuko about the furoshiki. Yasuko says, "That kerchief-— I brought something wrapped in it when we were married-. . . . It's even older. It was my sister's. When she died they sent it home with a dwarf tree tied up in it. A fine maple." 198 j "Oh?" said Shingo again, softly. His head was full of the red glow of that remarkable maple. . . . In bed with the storm roaring about him, Shingo could see [Yasuko's dead sister] among the shelves of dwarf trees. . . . Was not a nostalgic syndrome working upon his imagination?67 Shingo's mind is filled with memories of red autumn leaves. Here red is again "the point at which he parted with reality." Red also provides a link with Kikuko who sews with red thread and who wears a red obi. Shingo was surprised to learn that the kerchief was a memento of Yasuko's sister. He fell silent, now that the sister had come into the conversation. . . . And in another part of his mind he asked whether, even now after he had been married to Yasuko for more than thirty years, his boyhood yearning for her sister was still with him, an old w o u n d . 68 Shingo retreats into the privacy of his memories. He can not free himself from his longing for the remote ideal of the sister. Were Shingo to be completely honest with him self, he would be forced to see the folly of such a dream. Not only is the sister long dead, but even when she was alive she was already married. Shingo had no chance of marrying her. All he can do is to preserve her memory as the perfect woman. Shingo married Yasuko because he could not have the sister. She is perhaps the most ethereal of Kawabata's idealized women. Shingo Ss» dead sister ethereal woman Yasuko ■He hopes that his marriage will produce a new "sister" in Fusako. Shingo hoped for image of dead sister Now all that is left is a desire that Kikuko will be the sister's image. Shingo Kikuko image of dead sister All of these relationships involve a strong fantasy element. Shingo’s desires for Kikuko develop along with : his fantasies about the dead sister. Kikuko is both a child and childlike when she comes to Shingo1s house. At first she spends much of her time playing records of nur- ; sery songs. Shingo watches her mature from a child into a young woman. He and Kikuko are in psychological harmony j throughout most of the novel. He tries to mediate between 1 her and her unfaithful husband, but only succeeds in coming j between them. Gradually Shingo becomes aware that his ; interest in her is not entirely fatherly. This brings about a feeling of emptiness. "Shingo felt a lonely chill | pass over him, and a yearning for human warmth. And it was [ i as if a crucial moment had come, as if a decision were j 1 forcing itself upon him."69 Kikuko provides the warmth j i 200 that is generally lacking in his life. The decision he must make involves his feelings toward her, but since he is | i only partially aware of them at this point, he procrastin- j ates. He has to call her attention to the great gingko j I tree in the garden, which is trying to put out buds in j i autumn. This unseasonal activity makes him uneasy, but he i I feels even more hollow when he realizes that she has not i noticed nature's deviation. This makes Kikuko pay more attention to things Shingo likes. She says she will do anything for him, and in turn she wants him to be more sensitive to her desires. "In all his life no one had so loved him to want him to notice everything she did."^® When such love which has been lacking finally occurs, Shingo misinterprets it and begins to fall in love with his daughter-in-law. Shuichi is apparently capable of relating to his wife as though she were a real woman, not part of some idealized "non-woman." Shingo's secretary Eiko tells him that his son has called Kikuko a child in front of his mistress. ; Shingo is furious. He jumps to the conclusion that Shuichi; had been referring to her lack of sexual experience when they married. ‘ Had he wanted to find a prostitute in his bride? ; . . . He sensed cruelty in Shuichi. And not only j in him: in Kinu and Eiko too he sensed cruelty I toward Kikuko. J 71 1 Did Shuichi not feel the cleanness in her?/x ! 201 Shingo knows that Kikuko is no longer a virgin, but since ' I he has no first-hand sexual relationship with her he can j still project onto her Kawabata's standard image of femin- i ine purity, her cleanness. Since incest taboos and Shingo's own sense of morality prohibit sexual relations , between the two, he continues to project this image on her ; if he so desires. The pale, delicate, childlike face of Kikuko, baby of her family, floated before him. It was a little abnormal, Shingo could see, for him ; to feel sensual resentment toward his son because : of his son's wife; but he could not help himself. j There was an undercurrent running through his life, : the abnormality that made Shingo, drawn to Yasuko's i sister, marry Yasuko, a year his senior, upon the ■ sister's death; was it exacerbated by Kikuko?^^ j Herein lies the major difference between Shingo and Shimamura: Shingo is aware that he distorts and dissoci ates from reality; he is aware of his futile quest and of his psychological projections. He lacks the strength, however, to break free at this point. Shingo's involvement with the image of Yasuko's dead sister and with Kikuko develops on parallel tracks until he achieves union with one and rejects the other. Shingo goes to Atami one night on company business. It is a stormy night as he lies listening to the rain and the wind. In the depths of the storm there was a roaring. A train was passing through the Tanna Tunnel. . . . A whistle blew as the train emerged. 202 i Shingo was suddenly afraid; he was now wide awake. The roaring had gone on and on. . . . He had j somehow felt the presence of the train in the ! tunnel as if it were inside his head. . . . : For a time he was unable to sleep. j I "Shingo-o-oh! Shingo-o-oh!" Half asleep and half ! awake, he heard someone calling him. | f The only person who called with that particular lilt was Yasuko's sister.73 When Shingo awakens from the dream, he discovers that he has heard a group of children playing by a brook. However, he cannot free himself from the dream. Once again a train is a vehicle to the fantasy world of the past. Shingo is 1 struggling to preserve this world. He does not want to , abandon his memories. , : If Shingo had married Yasuko’s i sister, then probably he would have had neither a daughter like Fusako nor a granddaughter like Satoko. This was hardly the proper occasion to stir in him so intense a yearning for a person long dead that he wanted to rush into ; her arms."7^ Kikuko is "a medium who leads him back to the road of 1 the past and shows him the original object of his fan tasy. "75 When the fantasy threatens to merge with the j reality, Shingo suggests that Shuichi and Kikuko move into their own house, but Kikuko says she is afraid to live ! i alone with Shuichi. She enjoys taking care of Shingo more I I than she does her husband. She would be lonely and she i would have to grow up; she is still clinging to childhood. ! 203 When Kikuko has an abortion, Shingo relates her even more i closely with the dead sister; "he was lost in fantasy; ! I would not the child Kikuko had done away with, his lost ! grandchild, have been Yasuko*s sister, reborn, was she not ! a beauty refused life in this world?"76 j Shingo Yasuko— =s-Fusako — s»Kikuko dead child dead sister After the abortion, Kikuko returns to her parents' home to recuperate. She does not return until Shingo asks her to himself. He arranges a meeting with her at Shinjuku Gardens which turns out to be a popular place for assigna tions among young lovers. Their conversation takes on sensual overtones. After she promises to return the following day, Shingo asks, "Do you have anything you want to say to me first?" "Say to you? All sorts of things, but. . . .”77 such things are best left unsaid. Once Kikuko is back in Shingo's house he has his most 7 f i explicit, sexual dream./0 He is caressing the breasts of an unidentified young woman, but they do not respond. He did not know who the woman was. It was not so much that he did not know as that he did not seek to find out. She had no face and no body; just two breasts floating in space. . . .79 She is the most advanced image of the incorporeal woman. Even after Shingo is told who she is, "she remained a dim figure." Shingo feels nothing in the dream, "neither delight, nor affection, nor even wantonness. All very stupid indeed. And a dreary way to wake up."80 The com plete realization of the importance of the dream hits him when he is fully awake. ■ i Had not the girl in the dream been an incarnation of Kikuko, a substitute for her? Had not moral I considerations after all had their way even in • his dream, had he not borrowed the figure of the > girl as a substitute Kikuko. . . . And might it not be that, if his desires- were given free rein, if he could remake his life as he wished, he would want to love the virgin Kikuko, before she was married to Shuichi?8i ] Shingo recognizes his subconscious desire for his daughter-j in-law in his dream. That he continues in that state of ' ! awareness in the waking present separates him from i I Shimamura, Kikuji and Gimpei, who all remain relatively | protected from the full meaning of their isolation. The dream has a further extension: since Kikuko is "much more ' i Shingo's living memory standing before him than a living O O ’ person,"0^ Shxngo is also seeking union with the dead sister. Fulfillment of that desire, however, is achieved i in a different dream. This dream of Kikuko leads Shingo to confront his heretofore hidden desires in the open. He canj deny them no longer. 1 The dream had been uglier than any waking adultery. 1 The ugliness of old age, might it be? . . . What i was wrong with loving Kikuko in a dream? What was j there to fear, to be ashamed of, in a dream? And I indeed what would be wrong with secretly loving j her in his waking hours? He tried this new way of thinking.83 2 0 5 J Shingo knows that common decency does not permit such thoughts. He knows that he will have to give her up. As i in Buson's haiku, Shingo will have to "try to forget this ! senile love; a chilly autumn shower."^ He decides to ; repair the damage done to her marriage and to appease his I conscience at the same time. Shingo is struck with the j irony that the wife has destroyed her child while the mis- ' tress's child will live and grow up. Shortly after Shingo's confrontation with Kinuko, he has another dream. In it he is a young man in an army uniform walking along a dangerous mountain trail with a woodcutter. He sees a swarm of mosquitoes shaped like a tree trunk and slashes at it with his sword. His uniform mysteriously catches fire i f and he flees back down the trail. The strange thing was that there were two Shingos. Another Shingo was watching the Shingo along whose , uniform flames were creeping. . . . Shingo was , finally at home. It seemed to be his childhood ■ home, in Shinshu. Yasuko's beautiful sister was there.85 Shingo has seen the duality of his own nature as one Shingo - watches an alter ego being united with the ideal "non woman." His union has been achieved at last, but only at the expense of losing Kikuko. The images of the two women are joined briefly a short time later when Shingo's memory fails one morning while tying his necktie. Fighting off panic, "it seemed to Shingo that he faced a collapse, a o c. loss of se 1 f. " It is not a loss of self so much as a loss : 206 I ____ i of the fantasy. Kikuko tries to tie the necktie but she does not know how. Yasuko finally steps in and produces a fairly respectable knot. He remembered that when he had left college and first discarded his choke-collared student's uniform for an ordinary business suit, it had been Yasuko's beautiful sister who had tied his tie for him.®7 Yasuko, Yasuko's dead sister, and Kikuko all come together in the necktie image. Only Kikuko is unable to help him out of his predicament. Her failure reduces her to the position of an ordinary woman; she no longer is perfect. Once again Shingo insists that Shuichi and Kikuko live by themselves if they are to have a successful marriage. Kikuko says she would like to leave Shuichi in order to devote herself to Shingo, thereby remaining the pampered child. Shingo detects a hint of passion in her entreaty and, sensing the underlying danger, says, "You're very diligent in looking after me, but don't you have me con fused with Shuichi?Shingo realizes that he has been confusing Kikuko and Yasuko's dead sister, just as Kikuko is beginning to confuse Shingo and Shuichi. He must stop the pattern immediately. He is one of "life's spare parts" which must be replaced by the younger generation. Shingo has gradually become aware of the physical changes in Kikuko's body. He notices that the child's body is beginning to ripen into a woman after Shuichi takes a mistress. He is concerned with her health after her abortion because she is so weak and pale. After she j returns to the house following her visit with her parents, | he notices that she is getting taller. She confirms his suspicion, whereupon he wonders if such a change is percep- ; tible to Shuichi when they make love. The last sequence I reveals Shingo's awareness of the inevitable change that will occur in Kikuko's body. She has just returned from picking some gourds on the mountain. There was an indescribable freshness about the line from her jaw to her throat. . . . Shingo had of course been aware all along of the ■ beauty of that line, and the long slender throat. j Was it that, given the considerable distance and ! the angle from which he was watching her, it stood ' out in more beauty than usual? . . . That line from jaw to throat spoke first of maidenly freshness. It was beginning to swell a little, however, and that maidenliness Would soon disappear.89 Shingo does not deny the reality of her changing body. She will age and there is nothing he can do about it. Unlike Shimamura, he does not reject her physicality in search of yet another ideal virgin. The two have begun to lose their . ability to communicate. Shingo's last words, "Your gourds , are sagging. . . . They seem to be too h e a v y , are drowned out by the clatter of Kikuko washing the dinner dishes. The sensuousness of this image also applies to Kikuko's physical development. Like the gourds, she is changing from the idealized child-woman into a real, mature woman. 208 Shingo captures the essence of the ideal "non-woman" in the sequence involving two Noh masks which he purchases from the widow of a friend. He is attracted to the jido i Z L ( JL ) mask in particular because it represents eternal youth. In a reversal of the "woman as artifact" image in Thousand Cranes where Kikuji is suddenly aware of "the masterpiece Mrs. Ota had been," Shingo tries to make an artifact into a woman. . . . The moment he could see them clearly the hair and lips of the j ido mask struck him as so beautiful that he wanted to cry out in surprise. . . . As he brought his face toward it from above, the skin, smooth and lustrous as that of a girl, softened in his aging eyes, and the mask came to life, warm and smiling. He caught his breath. Three or four inches before his eyes, a live girl was smiling at him, cleanly, beautifully. The eyes and the mouth were truly alive. In the empty sockets were black pupils. The red lips were sensuously moist. Holding his breath, he came so close as almost to touch his nose to that of the mask, and the blackish pupils came floating up at him, and the flesh of the lower lip swelled. He was on the point of kissing it. Heaving a sigh, he pulled away.91 The mask is the symbol of human warmth for which Shingo longs. It is indicative that an inanimate artifact has the most sensuous description of anything in the novel. It is a wholly alienating device in which Shingo turns to a non human substitute for the warmth he lacks. Shingo felt the secret of the maker's love in the fact that the mask, most alive when viewed at a proper distance from the No stage, should all the same be most alive when, as now, viewed from no distance at all. ; For Shingo had felt a pulsing as of heaven's own t perverse love. Yet he sought to laugh at it, i telling himself that his ancient eyes had made the skin more alluring than that of a real woman.^ 5 t Shingo asks Kikuko to try on the mask and briefly she is j transformed into the symbol of eternal youth. Shingo, in ! contrast to Shimamura and Kikuji, rejects this way of < thinking and eventually accepts the reality of a woman -whose "gourds are sagging." He frees himself from the fantasy world by sacrificing his image for reality. Once ; he recognizes what he is doing, he can then freely make a choice— -stay with an unhealthy and untenable fantasy or choose reality. Kikuko has sublimated her own desires in serving Shingo, but "the more [of his desires] she receives, Q *3 the more hollowness spreads in hxs heart." * Until Shingo takes responsibility for his actions and for his fantasies, he is indeed hollow. Insulated by dreams of a dead woman, unattainable even when she was alive, Shingo is one of "life's spare parts." He realizes just how alone he is, even though he is surrounded by his extended family. He is tired.:' One day when he returns from work alone, he meets Kikuko on the path. He has been I standing and gazincg meditatively at some giant sunflowers, I _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ j *Da ga ukeirerarereba, ukeirerareru hodo, kare wa jibun no i kokoro no naka ni, kukyo ga hirogaru no wo kanjizaru wo ' enai koto ni naru. 1 210J thinking how much they resemble human heads. He shares his thoughts with his daughter-in-law. . I "My head hasn't been very clean these last few days. ! I suppose that's why sunflowers made me think of heads. I wish mine could be as clean as they are. I I was thinking on the train— if only there were some i way to get your head cleaned and refinished. Just j chop it off--well, maybe that would be a little | violent. Just detach it and hand it over to some j university hospital as if you were handing over a | bundle of laundry. 'Do this up for me, please,' ; you'd say. And the rest of you would be quietly i asleep for three or four days or a week while the i hospital was busy cleaning your head and getting ; rid of the garbage."9« ! i Kikuji has a similar fantasy about Chikako's sweeping out ! his skull, but Shingo is the only one who can clean out the garbage; this fact he eventually comes to accept. Shingo j moves from ignorance of the effect of his fantasies, his j dissociation from reality, to acknowledgment of the quest. With awareness comes the ability to find freedom with his rejection of the quest and acceptance of reality. He is no longer alienated when he voluntarily gives up his secret fantasies about Kikuko. He understands exactly what the harm is in dreaming about her. Unlike Shimamura, he does not seek any extra-human union; unlike Gimpei he does not achieve symbolic union with his ideal. He does not hesi tate like Kikuji. He acts voluntarily and becomes a whole . man willing to accept the reality in which he lives, a j reality which includes the inevitability of his own death. | I At the close of the novel, he plans a weekend trip back to l I Yasuko's home in Shinshu to see the maples in full autumn j i 211 splendor. He wants Kikuko to see their beauty for herself. ' The trip is not a last hope of preserving his dying dream. | It exists in the world of reality. Shingo wants to return to the family home once more before he dies. He plans to take most of the family because they will enjoy the visit, j I This is his main reason. Kikuko, in particular, enjoys ! nature and will appreciate the red leaves. She will not become the dead sister, but will remain her own self with no psychological projections superimposed on her. Shingo j has become his own man living in reality. This separates ; him from the other narrator-protagonists who are afraid to j accept reality for what it is. J 212 NOTES ; i 1. Hans Meyerhoff, Time in Literature (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1955), p. 4. 2. Ibid., p. 8. i 3. Kawabata Yasunari, The House of the Sleeping Beauties I and Other Stories, translated by Edward G. j Seidensticker (New York: Ballantine Books, 1969), ■ p. 13. All quotations from the English are from this edition. 1 ! 4. Ibid., p. 14. j i 5. Ibid., pp. 14-15. [Ellipsis and italics mine.] < f 6. Ibid., p. 17. I 7. Ibid. [Ellipsis and italics mine.] 1 8. Arthur G. Kimball, "Last Extremity: Kawabata's The House of the Sleeping Beauties," Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, 13 , 1 (1970): p. 26. 9. Kawabata, The House of the Sleeping Beauties, p. 35. 10. Schlieman, "'Narrow Bridge,'" p. 899. 11. Kawabata, The House of the Sleeping Beauties, pp. 18- 19. [Italics mine.] 1 12. Ibid., p. 20, [Italics mine.] 13. Ibid., p. 16. [Italics mine.] I 14. Ibid., p. 30, 15. Yoshimura, Bi to 'dent5, pp. 235-236. 16. Kawabata, The House of the Sleeping Beauties, pp. 17- 18. [Ellipsis and italics mine.] | 17. Ibid,f p.. 46, [Ellipsis mine.] 1 213 j 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., p. 49. 20. Ibid. f P. 62. [Ellipsis and italics mine.] 21. Ueda, Modern Japanese Writers, p. 192. 22. Kawabata, The House of the Sleeping Beauties, P- 86. 23. Ibid. f P. 22. 24. Ibid. F PP . 30-31. [Ellipsis and italics mine .] 25. Ibid. F PP . 26-28 passim. [Ellipsis mine.] 26. Ibid. F P. 35. 27. Ibid. F P- 44. 28. Ibid. F P. 45. [Ellipsis mine.] 29. Kimball, "Last Extremity," p. 22. 30. Kawabata, The House of the Sleeping Beauties, P- 49. 1 31. Ibid., P. 55. [Italics mine.] 32. Ibid. F P • 56. 33. Ibid., P. 60. 34. Ibid. F P* 66. 35. Ibid. F P. 67. 36., Ibid. F P- 72 . 37. Ibid. F P- 81. 38. Ibid. 39. Kimball, "Last Extremity," p. 30. 40. The reader should consult Arthur G. Kimball, "Last Extremity; Kawabata1s The House of the Sleeping Beauties," Critique; Studies in Modern Fiction, 13 , 1 (1970): 19-30 for a more complete discussion. 41. Kawabata, The House of the Sleeping Beauties, p. 94. [Ellipsis and italics mine.] 214 42. Ibid., p. 95. [Italics mine.] 43. Kimball, "Last Extremity," p. 21. 44. Kawabata, The House of the Sleeping Beauties, p. 100. 45. Kimball, "Last Extremity," p. 28. 46. Ibid., PP . 104--105. 47. Ibid., p. 20. [Italics mine.] 48. Ibid. ,- P- 23. 49. Ibid., P- 39. 50. Ibid., P- 40. 51. Kawabata Yasunari, The Sound of the Mountain, trans lated by Edward G. Seidensticker (New York: Berkley Publishing Co., 1970), p. 14. All quotations from thei English are from this edition. 52. Ibid., p. 19. [Italics mine.] 53. Ibid. [Ellipsis and italics mine.] 54. Tsuruta Kinya, "Two Journeys in The Sound of the Mountain," in Approaches to the Modern Japanese Novel, edited by Tsuruta Kinya and Thomas E. Swann (Tokyo: Sophia University, 197 6): p. 91. 55. Kawabata, The Sound of the Mountain, p. 11. [Italics mine.] 56. Ibid., p. 31. 57. Ibid., pp. 148-149. [Ellipsis and italics mine.] 58. Ibid., pp. 107-108. [Italics mine.] 59. Ibid., pp. 12-13. [Ellipsis and italics mine.] 60. Ibid., p. 22. i 61. Yoshimura, Bi to dento, p. 11. j ( i 62. Tsuruta, "Two Journeys," p. 90. ! i 63. Ibid. j [ I 2151 64. Kawabata, The Sound of the Mountain, p. 19 and italics mine,] [Ellipsis 65. Ibid., P- 35. [Italics mine.] 66. Ibid. P- 24. 67. Ibid. P- 43. [Ellipsis mine.] 68. Ibid. P- 44. [Ellipsis mine.] 69. Ibid. P- 47. 70. Ibid. P- 49. • 1 —1 r - ' Ibid. P- : 88. [Ellipsis mine.] 72. Ibid. PP . 88-89. [ 73. Ibid. PP 1 . 90-91. [Ellipsis mine.] 74. Void. , P- 130. : 1 75. Tsuruta, 1 "Two Journeys," p. 99. \ 76. Kawabata The Sound.of the Mountain, p. 149. 1 77. Void. , P- 159. o 00 • For a complete schematic analysis of both dream and tree imagery, the reader should consult Tsuruta Kinya's "Two Journeys in The Sound of the Mountain,” in Approaches to the Modern Japanese Novel, edited by , Tsuruta Kinya and Thomas E. Swann (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1976): 89-103. 79. Kawabata, The Sound of the Mountain, p, 17 0. • o 00 Ibid. 00 H f Ibid., PP . 170-171. [Ellipsis and italics mine.] 82. Miyoshi, Accomplices, p. 115. 00 CO • Kawabata, The Sound of the Mountain, pp. 172-173. > [Ellipsis mine.] | • 00 Ibid., P- 173. ' 00 ( J 1 • Ibid., P- 194. [Italics mine.] j 2 1 6 J 86. Ibid., p. 207. [Italics mine.] • r- 00 Ibid., P- 209. • 00 00 Ibid., P- 220. 89. Ibid., P- 218. [Ellipsis and italics mine.] 90. Ibid., P- 223. 91. Ibid., PP . 73-75. [Ellipsis and italics mine 92. Ibid., P- • in [Italics mine.] 93. Muramatsu Takeshi, "JoseizS," p. 237. 94. Kawabata, The Sound of the Mountain, p. 27. mine.] -] [Italics 217 AFTERWORD "ONE ARM": RE-EVALUATION OF THE QUEST Man is in a state of existential isolation, sometimes confronting the vacuity of his soul directly, more often ignoring it entirely, always searching for perfection, constitutes Kawabata's general statement on the nature of i mankind. It is a universal statement which makes him a member of a large group of writers of many different nationalities who explore the soul of twentieth-century man. Kawabata1s narrator-protagonist is a solitary who has chosen to be isolated and as a result is incapable of forming any close or lasting relationships with other selves. He travels through time and space in his quest for something which does not and cannot exist. By creating a mental image of the idealized "non-woman" and searching for her, he alienates himself from the rest of mankind. The quest itself is insufficient to fulfill him; therefore, his spirit is empty. In each of the six novels discussed in the preceding chapters I have concentrated on the various modes of alienation which Kawabata uses. Secondary to these, for my argument, are his general aesthetic of beauty and the nature of woman which serve to underscore the methods which the narrator-protagonist uses to isolate and 218 protect himself from reality. Although it is the current, i as well as the past, practice to emphasize Kawabata's | i adoration of the virgin as an end in itself, such a criti- i cal stance neglects his overall theory about man’s hollow ness. The stance in this project has been to view this "virgin-worship" not as a glorification of woman but as the [ i primary mode of alienation for the male narrator- j protagonist. In order to re-examine these various modes of i alienation, I will use the short story "One Arm," published | between 1963 and 1964, to summarize Kawabata's principal ; i J literary techniques. This story began appearing in print ; two years after The House of the Sleeping Beauties was completed; it contains Kawabata's most definitive and | mature statements on man’s existential isolation. In brief, it is a' story of alienation, depersonaliza tion and anonymity. An unnamed man, aged thirty-three, is given an arm by a virgin for one night. Walking through a thick, purplish fog, he takes the arm back to his apartment.; ! In his bedroom he talks with the arm and attempts a symbolic union with the girl when he attaches the arm to his own shoulder. He awakens from a nightmare, tears the girl"':s.arm from his body and reattaches his own arm. On the surface, this is a bizarre tale, yet it contains Kawabata's concepts of fragmentation, the idealized "non-woman," the quest, and the disintegration and integration of the self. The only technique which it does not stress is psychological projec- , tion, although the narrator-protagonist escapes two or three times into memories prompted by the presence of the arm. Both the setting and the events of the story are imbued with overtones of unreality. When the anonymous narrator-protagonist accepts the girl's right arm, which she loans him for one night in place of herself, he holds in his hands only a portion of a self. It is fragmented symbolically and physically, for it will undergo a definite transformation during its separation from the virgin's body. The girl puts her ring on the disembodied hand so that it will bear a symbol of her identity. This is the only tangible connection with the virgin after the arm sleeps with the man. The virgin fears that it will seem artificial if it lies inertly on the man's lap, so she kisses each joint to give them life. The man is entranced by her performance and falls so completely under the spell of the situation that he asks, "Do you suppose it will speak? Will it speak to me?" "It only does what an arm does. If it talks I'll be afraid to have it back. But try anyway. It should at least listen to what you say, if you're good to it."l In the girl's words themselves lies a basic contradiction. She says that the arm cannot speak, for it only performs the functions of an arm. How, then, can it listen to the man? It does not come naturally equipped with organs for speech or hearing, yet it will do both as soon as the man 1 reaches his room. The girl herself prepares the man to 1 consider the single, detached arm as a microcosm of her whole being. He attributes to it the emotions and trans formations which would belong to the whole girl, not just i I to one appendage. She gives him the impetus so that he can | create from a part of her body a whole self, which is a different self the girl possesses. The girl touches the arm "as if to infuse it with a spirit of its own,"2 and | I suggests as she is leaving that the narrator-protagonist ! I might want to substitute it for his own arm. She implies | » also that such a union of two selves would be quite accept- , able to her. ! The man walks back to his apartment through a dense fog, hiding the arm under his raincoat. He decides to walk rather than risk having his secret discovered on a train or in a taxi. He attributes to the arm the emotions the girl might experience. "There would be a scene if the arm, now separated from the girl's body, were to cry out, or to • weep.The fog diffuses light, transforms it into vaguely! ominous colors, and softens sounds. The man passes a drug store from which a radio blares out warnings: planes can not land, animals at the zoo are restless, despondent ( people should stay in bed. The man does not listen to the conclusion of the broadcast because he is frightened by the roaring of the big cats at the zoo which comes oyer the 221 j radio. He is also afraid that it will upset the arm. He ' jumps aside as a car passes him and pauses to fantasize ' ! about the driver. A woman alone, wearing a vermillion \ dress, is out driving "for no reason. . . . And while she j drives she will simply disappear."^ The woman in the car i must have ascertained his secret, for by doing so her drive ! would be suddenly filled with meaning. The head and tail- lights of the car are purple and it appears as though the woman is driving in a circle of color, not in a tangible automobile. The fog is a device for dissociating the narrator-protagonist from reality. It functions in a fashion similar to that of the womb-like room in which old Eguchi must confront his hollow self. Its color, purple, t i can be seen as a variation of the red which is the point at which Shimamura continually separates himself from reality. The fog is ominous and frightening. In his rooms, the man ; still does not feel protected from its threat. He imagines how the broadcast he overheard would continue with warnings to motorists to be careful not to run over small birds j whose wings are so wet that they 'cannot fly. Some colors in the fog are also said to be noxious and, therefore, windows should be kept tightly closed. I pulled the curtain and looked out. The fog seemed to press down with an.empty weight. Was it because of the wind that a thin darkness seemed to be moving about, different from the usual black of night? The thickness of the fog seemed , infinite, and yet beyond it something fearsome ; writhed and coiled. . . . It seemed as if no one j ! 222 | else in the world would be up. To be up was terror.5 The fog hides the man's hollowness. He feels isolated, almost as if he were the only human being alive, yet he has his companion, the arm, with him. He draws the curtain to try to obliterate his fears and isolation. It does not work. The man’s arrival at his apartment does not alleviate his empty sensation. He presses the detached arm against his body to bring him into tactile contact with his own i happiness, but "was it because I went around carrying ; girls' arms that I felt so unnerved by emptiness?"^ Hollowness is his state of being and usually it does not frighten him, because he does not have to confront it. He arrives safely at the door of his apartment building, but he is surprised to see fireflies flying close to his head. It was too large and too strong for a firefly. I recoiled backwards. Several more lights like fire flies skimmed past. They disappeared even before the heavy fog could suck them in. Had a will-o'- the-wisp, or death-fire of some sort run on ahead of me, to await my return? But then I saw that it was a swarm of smalltmoths.7 In Snow Country moths are harbingers of death and decay. i They die in Shimamura's room and in the powder on Komako1s neck. For Gimpei in The Lake, moths present two distinctly i different images. When he flees to Karuizawa he buys new j t clothes and throws away his old ones. He looks back at the I trash container and sees that it is surrounded by an , I i 2 2 3 j uncanny silver glow which eventually turns out to be caused by a swarm of silvery moths. The silver glow lends an aura . of unreality to the mundane act of disposing of unwanted : I clothes. The second image involving moths is one of j I entrapment, when Gimpei sees them caught in a spider's web j outside the Turkish bath house. The moth image, then, con- : notes death, unreality and entrapment. In much the same way the firefly image has also appeared in two of the novels. In The Lake Gimpei achieves a symbolic union with Machie when he hangs his cage of fireflies, his "glowing ; heart," secretly on her belt. The insects had already i been related to a ghostly scene when Yayoi as a child had cavorted beneath mosquito nets with the dull glow of the , insects encircling her head. This too is an image divorced i from reality. Kikuji in Thousand Cranes has a cage of fireflies on the veranda the night that Chikako informs him I I that he has lost both chances of obtaining his idealized ! "non-woman." It is not the season for these insects. ! Chikako mentions that the out-of-season fireflies make her I feel uncomfortable. The blending of the moth and firefly j i images into a single image intensifies the unreality of this short story. Kawabata uses the images individually to , produce feelings of being dissociated from reality; by > 1 combining them he creates a strong image which should leave j the reader with no doubts about the unrealistic atmosphere j of this story. 224 The man has difficulty opening the door to his i apartment. ! The harder I tried the more my hand trembled— as if in terror after some crime. Something would be waiting for me inside the room, a room where I lived in solitude? and was not the solitude a presence? With the girl *s arm I was no longer alone. And so perhaps my own solitude waited j there to intimidate me.8 t His loneliness is so real that it assumes the dimensions of a living being. The narrator-protagonist is afraid to con- , ! front the vacuity of his spirit, but he hopes that he will j not feel empty now that he has the arm with him. What he 1 fears in the room and what writhes and coils in the fog are ! t his own feelings of alienation. His hand shakes as though he had committed a crime. For Kawabata"s narrator- j protagonists, any attempt at establishing a human relation ship, and conversely in failing to establish one should one have the opportunity, can be a crime. Gimpei and Kikuji are both guilty of following women on the street instead of i engaging in a friendship or love relationship with another self. The man here commits the crime of trying to join j with another self, a union which he ultimately rejects. ! The hand seems to speak to him as they enter his , apartment. It senses his fear. It also smells something J which the man assumes is his own smell. The arm is j acquiring the characteristics and abilities of a total ■ human being. Without the man being consciously aware of what is happening, he is creating a complete woman in his mind from her arm alone. He thinks that he sees his shadow^ i waiting for him to return. This is his alter ego (bunshin j /Z J ~ % ) and it is also a manifestation of his loneliness. | i The arm does not smell the man but a magnolia. This know ledge brings a sense of relief: "I was glad it was not the moldy smell of my loneliness. He is saved for a while, ; but during the night his loneliness returns. The arm rests i across his chest with its pulse blending with his heart beat. With each beat, the man loses something of himself which travels innnothingness but which returns with each subsequent heartbeat. ! I was conscious of my beating heart because of the pulsation above it. Between one beat <and the next, something sped far away and sped back again. As I j listened to the beating, the distance seemed to ! increase. And however far the something went, however infinitely far, it met nothing at its destination. The next beat summoned it back. I should have been afraid and was not.-*-® . I The detached arm is described in the same terms as the • virgin is in other works. The man is fascinated at first by its round shoulder. ■ I It was in the girl herself, a clean, elegent • roundness, like a sphere glowing with a faint, 1 fresh light. When the girl Was no longer clean that gentle roundness would fade, grow flabby. Something that lasted for a brief moment in the ' life of a beautiful girl, the roundness of the arm made me feel the roundness of her body.-*-1 Like all the rest of Kawabata's virgins she too is fresh j I and clean. As the man touches the arm, "it was like her , 1 9 , . i breasts, not yet touched by a man," but it is doomed to ; 226 jbe transformed and tainted by his touch. He puts the arm on the bed where it promises to "be beside you and not beside you" throughout the night. He looks closely at the hand. Against my own short, thick nails, hers possessed a strange beauty, as if they belonged to no human creature. With such fingertips, a woman perhaps transcended mere humanity. Or did she pursue womanhood itself?-'--^ While the attention to minute details about the hand recalls old Eguchi's fascination in The House of the Sleeping Beauties, what is more important here are the archetypal qualities which the narrator-protagonist feels the hand possesses. So many of Kawabata's women have been portrayed in archetypal terms that one wonders if he was able to see a woman as an individual. This virgin who has given her arm away is a transcendant image of womanhood. She is Every Woman who gradually changes from a virgin into a sensuous woman, only to be rejected when her transforma tion is complete. More translucent than a delicate shell, than a thin petal, [her nails] seemed to hold a dew of tragedy. Every day and night her energies were poured into the polishing of this tragic beauty. It penetrated my solitude. Perhaps my yearning, my solitude, transformed them into dew.14 Once again, the tragic quality of beauty is its transitori ness. It is also its attraction. "Dew" is one of Kawabata's terms which applies to a woman's sexuality. The man's examination of the fingers produces a sharp contrast 227 between this virginal arm and the body of another woman who had told him about the sensitivity of her fingertips. This J i I woman from the past was one "on whose body few tender spots j could be expected to remain. And on the body of the girl who had lent me the arm they would be beyond counting."15 The man, like the rest of Kawabata's narrator-protagonists, is attracted tb the virginal purity of the arm and repelled j by the sexuality of the other woman. ! The longer the man and the arm talk, the farther apart • i I he feels the arm and the girl are growing. He is afraid j I that he will betunable to return it, or that the girl will | I I not want it back. He teases the arm and is told to behave | himself. He slips into a fantasy about eating dinner with j the girl. As he concentrates on this mental picture, "I I had before me less a person at dinner than an inviting music of hands and feet and throat."1® Even this fantasy produces a disembodied woman. She is hands, face and ! throat, but not a human being, in the same way that Yoko is a disembodied eye and a sad, echoing voice. The arm says that it is perfectly all right for him to j attach it to his shoulder in place of his own arm, but the man does not do so immediately. He pauses to question himself about the reasons a woman would offer herself to a man. J Although I think I understand how a woman feels when she gives herself to a man, there is still something unexplained about the act. What is it : i 228 to her? Why should she wish to do it, why should she take the initiative? I could never really accept the surrender, even knowing that the body of every woman was made for it. Even now, old as I am, it seems strange. And the ways in which various women go about it: unalike if you wish, or similar perhaps, or even identical. Is it not strange? Perhaps the strangeness I find in it all is the curiosity of a younger man, perhaps the despair of one advanced in years. Or perhaps some spiritual debility I suffer from. . . . And were the words not the act of giving itself up, or being ready for anything, without restraint or responsibility or remorse?!^ After hesitating for quite a while, the man suddenly decides to change arms. He does not feel anything when the girl's arm is attached to his shoulder. All sensation ceases at the point of union. At first, the arm trembles slightly, then when it speaks "there was something especially womanly in the cadence. Now that the arm was fastened to my shoulder and made my own, it seemed womanly as it had not before.1 1 The union symbolizes the girl's loss of virginity. The man has destroyed the idealized "non-woman" and her whole demeanor alters. The arm acts with a volition all its own, for the man cannot control it. The fingers form a peep-hole through which the man sees a cogwheel of swirling colors. "Was it an illusion (maboroshi &J ) you wanted to show me?" "No. I came to erase it." "Of days gone by. Of longing and sadness."^ The arm cannot change anything, nor can it erase the sad ness in the man's heart; therefore, the union is doomed to 229 failure. The man’s presence is the corrupting agent which ! destroys the arm’s purity. "The clean blood of the girl j i was now, this very moment, flowing through me; but would | there not be unpleasantness when the arm was returned to \ ( I the girl, this dirty male blood flowing through it?"As the destroyer of purity, the man becomes aware of just how destructive he is. He has sought a union with another self, but has failed in the attempt. He sleeps but awakens I screaming from a nightmare. Something repulsive has j i touched him. It is his right arm. He tears the girl's arm j 1 from his shoulder and replaces it with his own. "The act j was like murder upon a sudden, diabolic impulse."21 In ! ■severing the union which was supposed to save him from j sadness, he is left with a more intense sorrow than ever before. The arm lies inert on the bed as though it were I dead. He kisses the fingers and longs to taste "the dew of | woman” on his tongue but nothing happens. The man is both J i the destroyer and the victim. He has to abandon the quest. ; By reattaching his own arm he chooses integration of the j self over some unattainable ideal. He accepts his aliena- | i tion as well as his carnality. j The arm tries to integrate the man's self, for it j recognizes in his apartment how hollow he was. When they i first enter the room, the man notices that he has not drawn the curtain. "Will anything look in?" asked the girl's arm. 230 j "Some man or woman. Nothing else." "Nothing human would see me. If anything it would be a self. Yours." "Self? (jibun ® ) What is that? Where is it?" "Far away," said the arm, as if singing in consola tion. "People walk around looking for selves, far away." "And do they come upon them?" "Far away," said the arm once more.22 Only the man can integrate his self. With the exception of Shingo, Kawabata's male narrator-protagonists lack a sense of self. It is "far away." Most do not search for a sense of self so much as for modes of alienation. If they are neither content nor happy in their existential isolation, at least they are familiar with it. They are usually too passive to try to change. They are examples of modern man rendered impotent by the vacuity of his own self, yet driven to search for perfection beyond where it conceivably might be found— -in a relationship with another human being. NOTES 1. Kawafoata, The 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., P- 114. 5. Ibid., P. 123. 6. Ibid,, P- 114. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., P- 115. 9. Ibid. • o H Ibid., p. 125. 11. Ibid., P- 111. 12. Ibid., P- 112. 13. Ibid., P- 116. 14. Ibid., PP . 116 15. Ibid., P- 118. 16. Ibid., P* 120. 17. Ibid., PP . 120 • C O r — i Ibid., P* 127. 19. Ibid., p. 129. 0 o C M Ibid., P* 130, 21. Ibid.t p. 131. 22. Ibid,, P* 118. [Italics mine.] 232 APPENDIX A i \ i i THE NATURE OF THE SELF i IN MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE j i The Japanese have long been interested in the self in j I a tradition which dates back to the Heian period (794--1185) i when the nikki ( 0 |C )r or diary, was a popular genre. The1 I i so-called art diary of the Heian court, written by women, i i was dedicated to the exploration of a single individual and | ! her role in society. There is one notable exception in Ki no Tsurayuki's Tosa nikki [The Tosa Diary] wherein he ! creates the persona of a woman ("Diaries are things written by men, I am told. Nevertheless, I am writing one, to see what a woman can do."'*') and writes in Japanese which is the woman's language instead of the official Chinese used by men in their personal journals. These diaries are not deep psychological probings into the mind and motives of the persona, but rather function as reflections of the society i which surrounds that persona. Most of these diaries are | written in the first person, although it is not uncommon to i find a third person persona. As a literary genre, the j diary has had a long life and a strong influence in I I I Japanese literary history. In spite of that, the genre j itself is less important for us here than is the emphasis j 233 on a single self, a limited portrayal of life as it per- ,tains to one individual. The emphasis is first, last, and always on the individual, not on society in general. i In the twentieth century this emphasis on a single self has resurfaced and grown into a dominant position under the influence of Japanese naturalism or shizenshugi » j , yl» * > _ ( E & -±. # ) , in the form of the I-novel, the shishosetsu j ( / ] ' - ) . * Both shizenshugi and shishosetsu are I terms whose definitions have been the source of great l debate among scholars of Japanese literature. Here I will j i use a brief definition of shizenshugi as a school of | literature which is most concerned with examining life as j O — f it is, the thing itself. Shishosetsu refers to the so- j called "I-novel" which shares certain limited character istics with the Western autobiographical novel. The name ! comes directly from the German Ich-roman, but as with so j many Western terms translated into Japanese, this too is ; misleading. The characteristics of the I-novel lie in its i i personal, subjective qualities. Although usually written j from a first-person point of view, like the Heian diary, we j o — 1 find numerous I-novels in the third person. Uno Koji says, j "the incomprehensible hero called 'I' is suddenly intro- ; duced into a novel without much description of his *An alternative reading for this character is watakushi- shosetsu. I will continue to use the shorter and more familiar form unless the longer form appears in a direct quotation. 234 ■appearance or occupation or disposition"; "the I-hero is apparently the author himself." What is important is the emphasis on the first person being the author. Gone is Ki no Tsurayuki's fictitious first-person persona who writes in Japanese to see what a woman can do with the diary form. In certain limited areas, the I-novel is similar to Western autobiographical writing, for both purport to relate factual events and to identify the protagonist with the author. In Shinkyo shosetsu to watakushi shosetsu [The Psychological Novel and the I-novel], Kume Masao in 1925 calls the I-novel "the essence of prose writing," but he warns that a candid expose by the author must remain "art, 4 not a mere record" : base literature on one's own life, but make it art somehow. Hasegawa Izumi makes a clearer differentiation between the scope of Western autobiography and the I-novel. He feels that the autobiography is a record of the process of the development of the author-hero himself within a historical perspective,, while the I-novel is "a slice of life" without any temporal restrictions. Where autobiography opens onto the past, the I-novel 5 ignores any relationship between time and events. Both the I-novel and the German Ich-roman emphasize the limited emotional depths of the artist-hero's world and his indif ference to the world outside. Ema Michisuke says "the I- novel is a depcition of one's immediate surroundings, often 'narrow, non-ideological, modest, sometimes egoistic, but more often sincere and above all artistically ultra- j sensitive.I will return to the question of the egoistic | point of view later. The I-novelist writes about himself ; i more than about others or society in general because it is I his self about which he is most sensitive. The importance | in the I-novel should fall not on what the author chooses i to write about, but on how he treats his subject, according ■ { 7 to Edward Seidensticker. Eto Jun reinforces this by I i underscoring the assertion that the author-protagonist's j sensibility and passion in the I-novel are much more important than the Western autobiographical hero's con- j frontation between his self and his social or cultural | background. "What matters is not so much the expression of | i the author's whole self as a social being as that of his private genuine sentiment which is not, at least directly, relevant to the whole social context in which he exists."® Seidensticker is critical of the arrogance of such I- novelists in assuming that anything related to the author j should be recorded,® even if it is as banal as a ride on a ‘ streetcar or a visit to the toilet. f Kobayashi Hideo in his comprehensive essay Watakushi- ■ sh5setsu-ron [Discourse on the I-novel] looks to the West ‘ for the origin of the I-novel. He feels that Rousseau's ! Confessions was the prototype for the I-novel, because j "although the heroes of the I-novels question the meaning | of their lives in some way, a definite confrontation exists \ 236 in the mind of the author between the individual on the one • lhand and nature and society on the other."10* | I i I When the naturalist novel reached its full maturity in France, the I-novel movement appeared. . . . It was with great impatience that they tried to recon- j struct human nature which was formalized for the i purpose of conforming to nineteenth-century natur- i alist thought. In this task they were not wrong in I studying the "self." It is because their "self" was the "self" which was completely socialized at ' that time. ■*•** i i i If Rousseau is the father of the I-novel, Kobayashi says ! that Andre Gide wrote the first true I-novel in Les Faux- : , I Monnayeurs where he created a scientific, or pseudo scientific, laboratory within the self to study self- consciousness. Gide stressed the key techniques of objec- ! i tivity and scientific observation, looking inward rather ■ than outward. Tayama Katai, however, looked at the "self" and "others," while Gide saw only the "self." In both Gide and Katai, the I-novel developed against a background of 12 declining feudal concepts of self and society. The late collapse of Japanese feudalism and the fact that important changes have always come from above rather than as a result of popular effort i >*Karera no watakushi-shosetsu no shujinkora ga dono yo ni onore no jitsuseikatsuteki igi wo utagatte iru no seyo, i sakushara no atama ni wa kojin to shizen ya shakai to no kakuzentaru taiketsu ga sonshita no de aru. **Furansu demo shizenshugi shosetsu ga ranjukuki ni tasshita| toki ni, watakushi-shosetsu no undo ga arawareta. . . . j Tsumari jukyu seiki ningensei wo saiken sho to suru shoso I ga atta. Karera ga kono shigoto no tame ni, "watakushi" wo J kenkyu shite ayamaranakatta no wa, karera no "watakushi" i ga sono toki sude ni jubun ni shakaika shita "watakushi" de I atta kara de aru. j 2 3 7 resulted in a peculiarly wide gulf between individ- . ual and social life, and made the Japanese far less interested in political and social questions than ■ people in most Western countries. Strong authori- j tarian traditions gave rise to a widespread feeling of indifference or resignation to outside problems and official censorship discouraged Meiji writers from voicing any criticism of current conditions. Writers who wished to present life strictly on the basis of facts concentrated on their direct personal experiences, tending to neglect the wider subjects that had been treated by Zola and other naturalists of the West.13 | i The French naturalists are concerned with the self in ! I t I society, Gide with the problem but not the shape of the self,1^ and the Japanese I-novelists with the self and others. At all times, the emphasis is on the self, which j Ivan Morris feels may be the legacy of Japanese naturalism's' stress on confessional writing. At the same time Yoshida j i Ken'ichi dismisses the I-novel as a process of learning how , _ r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i to write, but it should not be taken as the end product in ' * 1 C i itself. One begins with Gide's "self as laboratory" and 1 I progresses out of that area quickly. Kobayashi recognizes the difficulty most Japanese I-novelists have in moving I away from themselves into the outer, world. "For this ; I reason the I-novel follows the so-called psychological j novel (shinkyo-shSsetsu . The confessions and i personal narratives related to real life are opposed to the ; purification of the gradually refined ’self." This is the i origin of the theory that the I-novel is the pure novel of j 238 present-day writers."16* j The personal confession is the standard form of the I- f novel, for the I-novelist is concerned "with the 'real,' i with what life was 'really like,1 and since the life that the writer really knows about is his own, there was a ten- 1 7 dency . . . to be concerned with personal confession, which as Donald Keene reaffirms probably grew out of the Heian diary tradition. That which is real pertains to the self only. It is clear that one condemnation of this would be to call it egocentric literature, but this is more des- i criptive than derogatory. The I-novel does not reach maturity until the concept of the self is widely accepted, for "the I-novelist did not ; appear in literary history until the individual had a great meaning for mankind."^** The "I" of the I-novel is most I frequently passive, surrounded by the hostility of the | outside world which he cannot understand. This is essen- i tially the state in which Kawabata's narrator-protagonists ; j find themselves— passive and alone. Nature does not offer I i them a haven as it did the late Meiji naturalists. *Watakushi-shosetsu ga iwayuru shinkyo shosetsu ni tsuzuru yuen mo soko ni aru. Jitsueseikatsu ni kansuru kokuhaku ya keikendan wa, shidai ni seiren sare "watakushi" no junka • ni mukau. Watakushi-shosetsu to wa t5ji no bunjin no junsuij shosetsu da to itta imi mo' soko ni yurai suru. j **Watakushi-sh5setsu to iu mono wa, ningen ni totte jcojin toi iu mono ga judai na imi wo motsu ni itaru made, bungaku j shijo ni arawarenakatta. ! Shimamura cannot escape his loneliness in nature, regard- I I less of how loudly he claims he can. Invocation of nature \ , I comes to imply alienation from the society of the indus- : trialized city;^ nonetheless, the narrator-protagonist in Kawabata's novels does not find peace in nature, since he j is still isolated and hollow. The .Japanese naturalists, unlike Kawabata, are more interested in a particular self, the self of the author, rather than a universal self, i I Kawabata's hollow, alienated figure. The Japanese natural- j I ist's self, like Kawabata's narrator-protagonist, could not reconcile himself with society or with his own inner o n I impulses. u I The modern Japanese protagonist wishes to return | to the elements of culture and tradition in which ! the self was once able to come to terms with its problems through identification with nature, meditative philosophy, traditional aesthetic practices, and viable social norms, but at the same time he finds that these concerns do not suffice in themselves when he is ultimately faced with an encounter with the self. He is then forced to see himself without the intermediary of certitudes, or even of an "existential faith born of subjective immediacy," the trust which he can place in his immediate sensory perceptions of the world.21 Kawabata's narrator-protagonist generally avoids the encounter with the self; when faced with the sterility of his life, he steps aside. He is unable to change without admitting what he is in reality. : When the naturalists set out to translate the self and | life into art, this description of personal experiences 1 240 "without any subjective analysis or dissection" becomes "the basis, essence, and truth of prose l i t e r a t u r e . " ^ Such extremism must be seen in perspective. If indeed the , Japanese naturalists want to make the self the center of j i art, they overlook all other outside forces which influence j I the self. The axiom that life equals art must be expanded J to include fictionalized life, not just carbon copies of ; the trivia of daily life as it is lived by the author. The : Japanese naturalists also Seek to deprive "man of the ten- i sion between the real and the ideal, for only man's immediate situation as he experiences it has the reality of 1 ! existence. " Fortunately, later writers who were also i fascinated by the nature of the self are able to see the self in terms of the real and the unreal, and extend the range of man's experience. For the I-novelists, "the theory of daily life was the theory of creation itself."24* The major premise seems to be the blending of life and art. To some it is impossible; to others like Kawabata, the i combination takes on the form of a fictionalized narrator- j protagonist who avoids any examination of his self, but this i very denial is the essence of his self. He denies his J reality while not seeing how far removed he actually is from it. He does not recognize his own alienation, yet he is subconsciously controlled by it. i *Nichijo seikatsu no riron ga sono mama kosakujo no riron ! de aru. i 241 | NOTES | i i I 1. Donald Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1955), p. 82. 2. For a complete discussion on Japanese naturalism, the ; reader may consult William F. Sibley, "Naturalism in ! Japanese Literature," Harvard Journal of Asiatic | Studies, 28 (1968): pp. 157-169. 3. Tsuruta Kinya, "Akutagawa Ryunosuke and I-novelists," Monumenta Nipponica, 25, 1-2 (1970): p. 14. 4. Ibid., pp. 14-15. I 5. Ibid., p. 15. I 6. Ibid. I 7. Ibid., p. 16. 8. Eto Jun, "An Undercurrent in Modern Japanese Litera ture," Journal of Asian Studies, 23 ,3 (May 1964): p. 435. 9. Seidensticker, "Strangely," p. 217. 10. Kobayashi Hideo, Xeno Tegami; Watakushi-shosetsu-ron [A Letter to X; Discourse on the I-novel] (Tokyo: Shincho Bunko, 1962, p. 115. Karera no watakushi- shosetsu no shujinkora ga dono yo ni onore no jitsuseikatsuteki igi wo utagatte iru ni seyo, sakushara no atama ni wa kojin to shizen ya shakai to j no kakuzentaru taiketsu ga sonshita no de aru. 11. Ibid. [Ellipsis mine.] Furansu demo shizenshugi i shosetsu ga ranjukuki ni tasshita toki ni, watakushi- shosetsu no undo ga arawareta . . . tsumari jukyu seiki! shizenshugi shiso no tame ni keishikika shita ningensei wo saiken sho to suru shoso ga atta. Karera ga kono shigoto no tame ni, "watakushi" wo kenkyu shite ayamaranakatta no wa, karera no "watakushi" ga j sono toki sude ni jubun ni shakaika shita "watakushi" | de atta kara de aru. 242 12. 13 . 14 . 15. 16. 17. 18. IS. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. Ibid., p. 129. Ivan Morris, ed., "Introduction," Modern Japanese j Stories (Tokyo and Rutland, Vt. : Tuttle, 1961), p. 16. ; Kobayashi, Watakushi-shosetsu-ron, p. 130. I Ivan Morris, "Fiction in Japan Today: An Exchange of Views," Japan Quarterly, IV, 2 (April-June 1957): pp. 165-166. Kobayashi, Watakushi-sh5setsu-ron, p. 119. Watakushi- i shSsetsu ga iwayuru shinkyo shosetsu ni tsuzuru yuen | mo soko ni aru. Jitsuseikatsu ni kansuru kokuhaku ya | keikendan wa, shidai ni seiren sare "watakushi" no i junka ni muko. Watakushi-shosetsu to wa toji no bunjin no junsui shosetsu da to itta imi mo soko ni | yurai suru. ' Donald Keene, "Introduction, "Love"and Other Stories I by Yokomitsu Riichi.(Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1974), p. ix. Kobayashi, Watakushi-shosetsu-ron, p. 113. [Italics mine.] Watakushi-shQsetsu to iu mono wa, ningen ni totte icojin to iu mono ga judai na imi wo motsu ni ' itaru made, bungaku shijo ni arawarenakatta. Arima Tatsuo, The Failure of Freedom: A Portrait of Modern Japanese Intellectuals (Cambridge, Mass.: | Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 84-89 passim. ! Ibid., p. 78. Morishige, Theme of the Self, pp. 2-3. Arima, Failure of Freedom, p. 95. Ibid., pp. 95-96. Kobayashi, Watakushi-shosetsu-ron, p. 120. Nichijo seikatsu no riron ga sono mama kosakujo no riron de aru. 243 . j APPENDIX B 1935 January January November December 1936 August October 1938 May PUBLISHING HISTORY Snow Country; "Yukei'Shiki no kagami" [Evening Mirror] 9 %/ £, o in Bungei shunshu Snow Country: "Shiroi asa no kagami" [White Morning Mirror] & v ’ ^ 9 / ^L in Kaizo Snow Country; "Monogatari" [A Story] in Nihon hyoron Snow Country: "Toro [A Waste of Effort] 'it & in Nihon hydron Snow Country: "Kaya no hana" [Kaya flowers] ' M . A t . in Chuo koron Snow Country; "Hi no makura" [Fire pillow] in Bungei shunshu Snow Country; "Temari uta" [Handball song] in Kaizo 244 June 1940 December 1941 August 1946 May 1947 October 1948 February 1949 May August Snow Country published in a single volume which includes only the above sections Snow Country: "Setchu kaji" [Fire in the Snow] 's7 'P k. in Koron Snow Country: "Amanogawa [The Milky Way] in Bungei shunshu Snow Country; “Yukiguni-sho" [Excerpts from Snow Country] H W l P 1 /" (revision of "Setchu kaji") in Gyosho Snow Country: "Zoku-yukiguni" [Sequel to Snow Country] £,f S ( revision of "Amanogawa") in Shosetsu shincho Snow Country published in final version which includes "Yukiguni-sho" and’ !Zoku- yukiguni" Thousand Cranes; "Sembazuru" [Thousand Cranes] "f ^ ^ in Supplement #3 of Yomimono jiji Thousand Cranes: "Mori no yuhi" [The Grove in the Evening Sun] 90 in Supplement September October October December 1950 January January April May November #2 of Bungei Shunshu The Sound of the Mountain: "Yama no oto" [The Sound of the Mountain] lLi O in Kaizo bungei The Sound of the Mountain; "Semi no ha (himawari)" [The Wings of the Cikada (Sunf lowers)] o in Gunzo The Sound of the Mountain; "Kumo no hono" [A Blaze of Clouds] ^n ^ in Shincho The Sound of the Mountain; "Kuri no mi [The Chestnuts] H ° m . in Sekai shunshu Thousand Cranes; "E shino" [Figured Shino] [ in Shosetsu koen The Sound of the Mountain: "Kuri no mi tsuzuki (Onna no ie)" [The Chestnuts continued (A Woman1 s House) ] % o %.%%. (/M ^-) in Sekai shunshu The Sound of the Mountain; "Shima no yume" f t i j f e [The Island of Dreams] £] o in Kaizo The Sound of the Mountain; "Fuyu no sakura" [The Cherry in Winter] ° in Shincho Thousand Cranes; "'Haha no kuchibeni" [Her Mother rs Lipstick] 1° Q l;£ in Shosetsu koen December 1951 October October 1952 March June October December 1953 January Thousand Cranes; "Haha no kuchibeni tsuzuki" [Her Mother's Lipstick continued] ■ § ■ * > 0 hi l|j in Shdsetsu koen Thousand Cranes; "Futaju hoshi" [Double Star] — JlIL in Supplement #14 of Bungei shunshu The Sound of the Mountain; "Asa no mizu" [Water in the Morning] o 7 K in Bungakkai The Sound of the Mountain: "Yoru no koe" [The Voice in the Night] in Gunzo The Sound of the Mountain: "Haru no kane" [The Bell in Spring] 0 in Supple ment #28 of Bungei shunshu The Sound of the Mountain; "Tori no ie" [The Kite's House] 9 Jc. in Shincho The Sound of the Mountain: "Kizu no ato" [The Scar] / l1§e> in Supplement #31 of Bungei shunshu The Sound of the Mountain: "Miyako no en" [A Garden in the Capital] ° in Shincho 247 April April October 1954 April The Sound of the Mountain; "Ame no naka" [In the Rain] ^ * > 4s in Kaizo The Sound of the Mountain: "Ka no mune (Ka no yume)" [The Cluster of Mosquitoes (The Dream of Mosquitoes) ] $£ 0 0 (ti ^) in Supplement #33 of Bungei shunshu The Sound of the Mountairi s "Rebi no tamago" [The Snake's Eggs] tX 4P in Supplement #36 of Bungei shunshu The Sound of the Mountain: "Aki no sakana 1960 1961 (Hato no oto)" [Fish in Autumn (Sound of the Dove) ] kk o & 0; § ■ ) in Oru yomimono January to December The Lake in Shincho January to June The House of the Sleeping Beauties in Shincho January to November The House of the Sleeping Beauties in Shincho January to December koron Beauty and Sadness in Fuj in 1962 January to December koron Beauty and Sadness in Fuj in 248 1963 January to October Beauty and Sadness in Fujin koron August to November "Kataude" [One Arm] ft in Shincho 1964 January "Kataude" in 'Shin'cho 2'49- "1 J I SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Kawabata Yasunari. Beauty and Sadness. Translated by i Howard G. Hibbett. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. ! ________ . The House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. Tokyo and Palo Alto: Kodansha International, 1969; New York: Ballantine Books, 1970; London: Quadringa Press, 1969. ________ . The Izu Dancer. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 1964. ________ . Kawabata Yasunari zenshu [The Complete Works of Kawabata Yasunari]. 19 vols. Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1970. 1 1 1 U Mm*- ________ . The Lake. Translated by Reiko Tsukimura. Palo Alto and Tokyo: Kodansha International, Ltd., 1974. ' "One Arm." Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker Japan Quarterly 14 (January-March 1967): 60-71. _______ . Snow Country. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956; New York: Berkley Publishing Corp., 1960. _____The Sound of the Mountain. Translated by Edward G, Seidensticker. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970; New York: Berkley Publishing Corp., 1971. ________ . Thousand Cranes. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959; New York: Berkley Publishing Corp., 1965. Supplementary Sources: Japanese Akatsuka Yukio. "Mizuumi" [The Lake]. In Kawabata Yasunari! sakuhin kehkyu [A Study of the Works of Kawabata ! Yasunari], pp. 258-273. Edited by Hasegawa Izumi. Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 1969. tT££. "I t i l l 8LJ& | 1| fc' ,qa 250 Ara Masahito. "Kawabata Yasunari to ySroppa bungaku: 1 Kawabata bungaku no yoroppa de no rikai" [Kawabata j Yasunari and European Literature: Appreciation of j Kawabata's Literature in Europe]. Kokubungaku 15 ! (February 1971): 60-54. ! i 5* jF a . "I 3-a.v/s- * Igi 3 C P ,5 ( - A fj m ,); fro-** j Chiba Sen'ichi. "Kawabata Yasunari to modanisumu" [Kawabata Yasunari and Modernism]. In Kawabata | Yasunari sakuhin kenkyu [A Study of the Works of ! Kawabata Yasunari], pp. 499-522. Edited by Hasegawa Izumi. Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 1969. -f t ^ t t ^ ■ ' » aft ft/fife** ft. 4 ^ l t J £ ^ Funabashi Seiichi, Enji Fumiko, and Takeda Yasusuna. "Kawabata Yasunari no shi [The Death of Kawabata , Yasunari]. Shincho 69 (June 1973): 66-84. 4^3?-, &T M ^ W3): iL'fih Hasegawa Izumi. Kawabata bungaku no ajiwaikata [A Way to Savor Kawabata's Literature]. Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1973. “ I fl)3;S4 fit. m l _, ed. "Kawabata Yasunari nempu" [Chronology of Kawabata Yasunari]. In Kawabata Yasunari sakuhin kenkyu [A Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari], pp. 542-573. Edited by Hasegawa Izumi. Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 1969. ( I *Si ' _____ , ed. Kawabata Yasunari sakuhin kenkyu [A Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari]. Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 1969. ------------------ "I ,<b\ 'Yama no oto" [The Sound of the Mountain]. In Kawabata Yasunari sakuhin kenkyu [A Study of the Works j of Kawabata Yasunari], pp. 220-239. Edited by Hasegawa ■ Izumi, Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 1969. j ----- "oj " i ii fa ft ft™ £. I . * § • , i i kitfa. & %: nut 251 j Hatori Kazuei. "Showa junendai bungaku to Kawabata" [Ten Years of Showa Literature and Kawabata]. Kokubungaku 15 (February 1971): 109-113. 3*7 A t lg] jc fr is Hosho Masao. "Shinkankaku-ha to Kawabata [Shinkankaku-ha and Kawabata]. Kokubungaku 15 (February 1971): 105- 108. ^ . |f r ^ , '|T > S k b m ^ l§ ] t ^ 1 9 (-J3 f n-w); /os-./o*. I to Sei. Sh5setsu_no hoho [Techniques of the Novel]. Tokyo: Shincho Bunko, 1957. Kato Muneyuki. "Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country: Its Modernity Viewed in the Light of Comparative Litera ture." Kyushu American Literature 10 (1967): 87-103. Kawabata Yasunari. "Horobinu bi" [Unperishable Beauty]. In Kawabata Yasunari zerishu [The Complete Works of Kawabata Yasunari], pp. 193-198. Vol. 15. Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1970. “I f& . « 3 £ * ■ " * » ii. ^ i»l * t ( mo. ________ . "Junsui no koe" [The Pure Voice]. In Kawabata Yasunari zenshu [The Complete Works of Kawabata Yasunari], pp. 109-116. Vol. 13. 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X e no tegami; watakushi-shosetsu ron [A Letter ! to X; Discourse on the I-Novel]. Tokyo: Shincho j Bunko, 1962. I i . * - f f e i • jfuA-%% i % : | f f : M i q u - : Kosakabe Motohide. "Utsukushisa to kanashimi to wo | megutte" [In Connection with Beauty and Sadness]. In Kawabata Yasunari sakuhin kenkyu [A Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari], pp. 290-308. Edited by Hasegawa Izumi. Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 1969. 7t i* it: iqu. Mishima Yukio. "Kawabata Yasunari ni okeru seiyo to toyo" [The East and West in Kawabata Yasunari]. Kokubangaku: Kaishaku to kansho 22 (February 1958): 2-5. 2 -h * f e e t . ' ^ 1 M lg tf ■ - If if Z2M *n»): z - 5 . ________ . "Nemureru bijo ron" [Discourse on The House of the Sleeping Beauties]. Kokubungaku 15 (February 1971): 20-2i. ------------ 1 "gfciKj g £ is M f mi):zo-ii. Muramatsu Sadataka. "Nemureru bijo raondo" [Questions and Answers about The House of the Sleeping Beauties]. In Kawabata Yasunari sakuhin kenkyu [A Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari], pp. 273-290. Edited by Hasegawa Izumi. Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 1969. Pi to %_%' f t .-&%"! &l&>. n t f l . 253 Muramatsu Takeshi. "HihySka to shite no Kawabata" [Kawabata as Critic]. Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kansho 22 (February 1958): 20-24. i fa fa ® i h t if t , t1 z»i * * , & ti&t zz. ! n s tY .u - z + . 1 ________ . "Kawabata bungaku no joseizo" [The Image of ! Women in Kawabata's Literature]. In Kindai bungaku I kansho koza [A Study in Appreciation of Contemporary Literature]. Vol. 13: Kawabata Yasunari, pp. 326-336. Edited by Yamamoto. Kenkichi. Tokyo: Kadogawa Shoten, 1968. ---------------- _ Vta..i3 "I Muramatsu Sadataka. "Kawabata Yasunari no hyoka wo megutte" [In Connection with an Appraisal of Kawabata Yasunari]. Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kansho 22 (February 1958): 62-70. fafa, 1 $L%a " i t f r i $. if i® t ^ uC—s? w-70. Nakamura Mitsuo. Shosetsu nyumon [An Introduction to the Novel]. 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Tokyo: Shibundo, 1973. , $ ' & > - ft % f c 0 U. 1 S t f ( 9 7 3 , ’ j Saegusa Yasutaka. Kawabata Yasunari. Tokyo; Yushindo, 1 1969. — “I f& . f . , t ' ^ S’ , f 9 4 r t . Sasabuchi Tomoichi. "Yukiguni" [Snow>Cbuntry]. In Kawabata Yasunari sakuhin kenkyu [A Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari], pp. 154-176. Edited by Hasegawa Izumi. Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 1969. ; H i I £ "§ " i £Jft. ,i,t: /N ^ f/£, flrt j i Takada Mizuho. "Sembazuru" [Thousand Cranes]. In Kawabata Yasunari sakuhin kehkyu [A Study of the Works of Kawabata Yasunari], pp. 239-258. Edited by Hasegawa 1 Izumi. Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 1969. i * W j j f e ^ _ ‘ f " I $L 1ft f t f l f f ft. - I £ " I £ i f e . f c f c : /V* % £. n t f . Takashina Shuji. "Kawabata Yasunari no yoroppa bijutsu: Kagami no naka no sekai" [Kawabata Yasunari and European Aesthetics: The World in a Mirror]. Kokubungaku 15 (February 1971): 55-59. t 3 - a . / A - | r ^ I f ) %'-§ IS ( - % f 1 9 - J I ) : S S - - S 9 . Yamamoto Kenkichi, ed. 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Silberman, Elizabeth Ann
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A waste of effort: Psychological projection as a primary mode of alienation in selected novels by Kawabata Yasunari
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Doctor of Philosophy
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Comparative Literature
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