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Gazing subjects, gazing objects. Reconfiguring the gaze in Kawabata Yasunari's novels, 1939--1962

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Gazing subjects, gazing objects. Reconfiguring the gaze in Kawabata Yasunari's novels, 1939--1962

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Content GAZING SUBJECTS, GAZING OBJECTS.
RECONFIGURING THE GAZE IN KAWABATA YASUNARI’S NOVELS,
1939-1962
Copyright 2003
by
Gloria R. Montebruno
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
(EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES)
August 2003
Gloria R. Montebruno
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UMI Number: 3116759
Copyright 2003 by
Montebruno, Gloria R.
All rights reserved.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90089-1695
This dissertation, written by
Gloria R. Montebruno
under the direction o f hp /r dissertation committee, and
approved by all its members, has been presented to and
accepted by the Director of Graduate and Professional
Programs, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Director
Date— A u g u st. . . -L2-,— 2QQ1
Dissertation Committee
Chair
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Acknowledgments
When I left home (Italy) almost ten years ago, I knew little of what was
expected of me on this side of the ocean. Over the years, I shared with my Family
(Mom, Dad, and Dr. Claudio) the ups and downs of my journey in the Graduate School.
I am here today because of their endless love and support, and because of those moral
lessons I learned from them growing up. I believe there was some southern Italian
wisdom in their teachings, and I embraced them as they made me the person I am today.
One person has never left my side throughout it all: my beloved husband Tim. It
is because of his unconditional love (which was redefined a couple of times!), support,
and patience that I was able to keep my sanity. Throughout the years, he introduced me
to the pleasures of golfing and hiking. He also attempted to make me embrace his
passion for old cars, but to no avail. However, I am thankful to him for taking me to
“Car Shows” as a way to distract me. I am also thankful to him for those long drives to
the beach in the middle of the night; for those weekends we spent away from home in
an attempt to get my mind off my work; for wiping away my many tears when I
despaired, and for celebrating with me when my dissertation was finally completed.
In school, many people offered advice, help, support, and words of wisdom.
Professor Peter Nosco made me believe from the very beginning that nothing was
impossible to achieve. Professor Nosco was always available to listen to my concerns,
and I will treasure his professional advices as I move forward with my academic career.
It was while I started writing my dissertation that Professor Nosco introduced me to
Professor Charles R. Cabell. Professor Cabell shared my enthusiasm for my research,
and in these last two years he provided me with the self-confidence I needed to bring
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my work to an end. Professor Cabell has also offered valuable feedback and the much
needed editing, most often on a very short notice. I am thankful to him for his
suggestions, and his always kind words.
I also need to thank Professor Nina Comyetz. Professor Comeytz allowed me to
read one of her unpublished paper in order to understand her approach to the study of
Kawabata Yasunari. Moreover, Professor Comyetz took time off her extremely busy
schedule to read Part One of my dissertation. Her feedback was vital as it helped me to
clarify the direction my dissertation was taking. Her suggestions and remarks allowed
me to rethink the theory and methodology I was employing in the writing of my work.
A very special thanks to Professor Dominic Cheung, the Chair of the East Asian
Languages and Cultures Department, for his availability, and for having provided much
needed advice in a very delicate moment of this process. I was honored to be hooded by
him during the Ph.D. Hooding Ceremony. I would also like to thank Professor Gordon
M. Berger and Professor David T. Bialock for their contributions, and Professor Lois
Banner for being an inspiration throughout the years. To Professor Mary Bucci Bush,
thank you for your friendship.
Along the way, I lost track of many friends. I learned the hard way how isolating
it is to write a doctoral dissertation. I always knew, though, that I could count on my
good friend Sean O’Connell. As busy as he always is, Sean always took my phone calls,
he always paid attention to my dissertation tragedies and, most importantly, he did read
on a moment notice everything I sent him by e-mail (always more than fifty pages at the
time). Sean is one of those few people that gives new meaning to the word Friendship. I
am very blessed to occupy a tiny part of his extremely big heart. Sean: Thank You.
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IV
When I started Graduate School, I remember being in a seminar with a student
who seemed to intimidate everybody in the class: students and professors alike. It has
been a privilege to share these eight years with my good friend Dr. George A. Daroza. I
owe George a huge debt of gratitude for going out of his way so many times to rescue
me. I have learned from George the meaning of dedication, scholarly behavior,
perseverance, goodwill, good faith, and self-confidence. As we walked together on that
stage to be hooded, I realized how blessed I was to have had the opportunity to be on
this incredible journey with George.
In the last critical stages of this process, I was introduced to Mrs. Mitsuko Hays.
Mrs. Hays helped me to make sense out of the complexities of the Japanese language,
and especially of Kawabata Yasunari’s writing style. I think of her today as more than
my Japanese language instructor, I think of her as my new friend. I would also like to
thank Miura Yasuhiko and William “Puck” Brecher. A warm and sincere thanks to
Betty S. and her beautiful girls, Stephanie, Morgan, and Nichole: I believe they have
been inspired to achieve higher. A special thanks to Dr. R. S. and Dr. R. R., jr.: they
both helped me not to lose sight of my goals, but especially of myself and my priorities
in life.
This is dedicated to all those people that have always believed in me, that have
never doubted my abilities to get this far, that have rejoiced with me, and that have
made the huge effort to understand the origin of my anxieties.
Mamma, Papa, Claudio: vi voglio un mondo di bene.
Tim, my love: this is dedicated to you.
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V
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements................................................................................................................ii
Abstract............................................................................................................................... viii
Introduction.......................................................................................................................... 1
Part One Toward an Aesthetic of Vision: the Politics of Gendered Gazes in
Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country.....................................................12
Introduction.......................................................................................................................... 12
Writing Snow Country: the Novel and Japanese History..................................................19
Selected Scholarship on Snow Country..............................................................................24
Chapter 1 Man at the Mirror: A Study of “Mirror of Evening Scenery”.................29
(1) Shimamura’s “kaimami” of the Landscape and Yoko: Strange
Objects of the Male Gaze
(2) Windows, Mirrors, and Screens: Issues in Re-discovery and Self-
identification
2.1. When the Window/Mirror Functions as a Screen: Jacques Lacan
2.1.1. The Mirror Stage
2.1.2. In the Realm of the Eye, the Look and the Gaze
(3) When the Window/Screen Functions as a Mirror: Film Theory
(4) Conclusion: “Woman is a Man’s Mirror”
Chapter 2 The Male Gaze: Female Objects of Shimamura’s Troubled Self and
Desire(s)......................................................................................................79
(1) An Intriguing Visual Dialogue: Shimamura and Yoko
(2) Shimamura Gazes at Yoko: Symbolic Representations of the Other
(3) Shimamura and Komako: the Making and Un-making of the Desired
Self
(4) Komako as Object of Shimamura’s Gaze: Reflecting Images of
Tainted Selves
(5) A Peculiar Sight: A White Russian Woman
Chapter 3 The Structure of the Female Gaze in Snow Country: Glimpses of
Cultural Ambiguities................................................................................130
(1) The Female Gaze: Introduction
(2) Yoko’s Gaze: the Unsettling Look of Tradition
(3) A Volatile Object of Komako’s Gaze
(4) Komako: Woman at the Mirror
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vi
(5) Resisting Visual Confrontation: Why Komako and Yoko never Look
at Each Other
(6) Conclusion
Part Two The Making and Un-making of Subjects and Objects of the Gaze. A
New Perspective of Kawabata Yasunari’s Thousand Cranes, The
Lake, and The House o f the Sleeping Beauties................................... 183
Introduction...............................................................................................183
Chapter 4 Becoming Visible Before the Gaze of Eye-less Objects, or when Images
Look Back: Re-reading Thousand Cranes..............................................194
(1) Introduction
(2) Thousand Cranes (Senbazuru): A Synopsis
(3) Feeding at the Scarred Breast: A Study of Chikako’s Birthmark as
both Object and Subject of the Gaze
(4) Displacing the Subjects’Desires: Mitani Kikuji, Mrs. Ota, and Ota
Fumiko
(5) Innocence as Illusion: Inamura Yukiko and her kerchief ( furoshiki)
(6) Conclusion
Chapter 5 Seeing Each Other, or the Workings of the Mutual Gaze: A Study of the
Reciprocity of the Gaze in The Lake......................................................235
(1) Introduction
(2) The Novel: A Synopsis
(3) The Reciprocity of the Gaze: A Theoretical Approach
(4) To Follow and Be Followed, To See and Be Seen: Gimpei and
Miyako’s Encounter
(5) Following Women as an Invitation to Be the Object of the Gaze
(6) Reflecting Images of the Desired Self: Machie and the Fantasy of
Innocence
(7) When the Pursuer Becomes the Pursued
(8) Conclusion
Chapter 6 Questioning the Predominance of the Male Gaze: Anticipating the
Female Gaze in House o f the Sleeping Beauties...................................287
(1) Introduction
(2) The Novella
(3) Scholarship on Sleeping Beauties
(4) “Musume ga me o samasu no ka,” or What if the Young Girl Were to
Open Her Eyes?
(5) He May not See Her Eyes, but Her Gaze will Haunt Him
(6) Dreams, Memories, and Distorted Desires
(7) Revisiting the Demonic Realm
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vii
(8) Conclusion
Part Three The Disruptive Female Gaze in Beauty and Sadness.......................341
Introduction........................................................................................................................341
Chapter 7 Disrupting the Predominance of the Male Gaze: The Sexual Politics of
the Female Gaze in Beauty and Sadness................................................344
(1) The Writing of Beauty and Sadness
(2) Beauty and Sadness'. A Synopsis
(3) Kawabata Yasunari, Beauty and Sadness and Fujin Koron
(4) Scholarship on Beauty and Sadness
(5) Defying Male Voices and Male Gazes: the Female Gaze
(6) Marking Gender Ambivalence: Otoko’s Gaze
6.1. Toshio as Object, Herself as Object
6.2. Keiko as Object of Otoko’s Gaze: Shaping the Other as Self
(7) The Appeal of Keiko’s Eyes and Gaze
7.1. Toshio as Object of Keiko’s Gaze
7.2. The Object of a Displaced and Troubling Desire: Taichiro as
Object of Keiko’s Gaze
7.3. Deflecting Keiko’s Eyes: Otoko as Object
(8) Fumiko’s Gaze, or when the Mother/Wife Looks
(9) Conclusion
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................411
Works Cited........................................................................................................................418
Appendix. “Lacan’s Diagrams.”....................................................................................... 436
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viii
Abstract
In my dissertation I enlarge the spectrum of investigation on Kawabata’s
literature by showing how the gaze is not a monolithic and gender-specific entity, but
rather a means to look at the world from different angles. I employ the gaze as a fluid
device of literary analysis in the stud of Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, The Lake,
House o f the Sleeping Beauties, and Beauty and Sadness.
Employing a diverse range of definitions of the gaze, I demonstrate how
Kawabata moves from portraying his male characters as apparent owners of the gaze in
novels such as Snow Country to objects of the female gaze in texts such as Beauty and
Sadness. The gaze represents the site where Kawabata’s tormented characters resist
becoming fully visible to themselves. His characters are often trapped by their obsessive
fear of being recognized in the field of vision of the Other, struggling to the utmost to
remain equally invisible to themselves. Thus, Kawabata depicts men and women on
emotional quests to understand their place in the world; the field of vision of the Other
becomes the arena in which the psychological tragedy of fractured egos is performed.
As Maurice Merleau-Ponty has shown us, we are seen from all directions. It is
on this premise that I justify my use of Jacques Lacan’s theory of the gaze, of Jean-Paul
Sartre’s ideas on vision and visuality, of Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva’s theories of
vision and abjecthood. I further draw on feminist revisions of the male gaze as a
category of literary analysis to move the investigation of Kawabata’s literature to a
different level of critical inquiry. This dissertation contributes to the application of
diverse methodological approaches to the study of Japanese literature. It provides a new
understanding of Western theories of vision and the gaze within a Japanese context.
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1
Introduction
Seeing comes before words.. . .
It is seeing that establishes our place in the surrounding world.. . .
The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.
(John Berger)1
Viewers are not merely pairs of eyes - they have minds,
bodies, genders, personalities, and histories.
(John A. Walker and Sarah Chaplin)2
We are inquisitive creatures living in a much curious world that constantly feeds
our voyeuristic appetite. There is a disturbing need to see in this place where everybody
is on display. The desire to see is overshadowed only by a need to be seen. Despite our
uneasiness as objects of the intrusive gaze, our need to be seen never seems to abate.
We learn to overcome fear and discomfort as we show ourselves to the eyes of the
world, judged by the way we look, by the way we dress and by the way we socially
interact.
In a desperate attempt to remain visible to others and escape inner visibility
which would heighten our anxieties, we adjust to this perverse world, by shaping the
self into something we see, but do not know. Before a reflecting surface, a mirror or a
window, we question the caricature of the self staring at us. How could we be the image
that is reflected back to us? Are we really the image that the world sees and judges?
Acceptance, resistance, or misrecognition: which road shall we take when confronted
by this unknown image of the self?
1 John Berger, Ways o f Seeing (London: BBC and Penguin Books, 1972), 17.
2 John A. Walker and Sarah Chaplin, Visual Culture: An Introduction (Manchester and New York:
Manchester University Press, 1997), 22.
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In the following chapters, I embark upon a journey toward the discovery of
in/visible subjectivities in selected novels by Kawabata Yasunari. This study unveils
Kawabata’s characters’ resistance to the realm of the visible. To become the object of
the Other’s gaze is to come to terms with the truth of the self seen from the field of
vision of the Other, and to accept visibility as a contested site where the understanding
of the self as perceived and constructed by the Other takes place. When Kawabata’s
novels are considered as the author’s exercise in self-analysis then his writings come
also across as the author’s steps toward self-annihilation, which was suicide in
Kawabata’s case, the ultimate self-blinding of the observer. As much as Kawabata’s
works depict the characters’ struggles toward (in)visibility, they also convey the
author’s own emotional turmoil: his need to be the seer, but not necessarily the seen.
Family tragedies marked Kawabata Yasunari’s life. Bom in 1899, by the time he
turned eight he had lost his father, his mother, his grandmother and his only sister.
Composed in 1914, in 1925 he published “Jurokusai no Nikki” or Diary o f a Sixteen-
Year Old in which he conveyed his experience of living with his blind grandfather.
From the pages of his diary, the young boys’ memories of days spent with his only
living relative tell of his tormented years as a child in charge of a sick old man. In his
diary, young Kawabata “becomes an objective ‘camera eye,’ able to record with sharp-
focused precision whatever comes into view.” 3 By being his grandfather’s eyes,
Kawabata developed a heightened sense of what it entails to be the subject of the gaze,
the one in charge of his own and the other’s field of vision. This status as the privileged
3 Roy Starrs, Soundings in Time. The Fictive Art o f Kawabata Yasunari (Richmond, Surrey: Japan
Library, 1998), 19.
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3
omnivoyeur may have marked his lack of experience as the one gazed upon and incited
his psychoses later in life when dealing with being the object of somebody else’s gaze, a
status that he always resisted.
Kawabata, in fact, developed the eccentric habit of fixedly staring at people; he
would make people uncomfortable to the point of forcing them to lower their eyes.4 He
would employ such a way of gazing objectively at people and things in Asakusa
Kurenaidan (The Crimson Gang of Asakusa, 1929-30). In this text, Kawabata provided
pictures/images of Asakusa’s culture, and “the narrative moving from image to image in
rapid succession” reminds us of the progressive clicking on the camera, as Kawabata
put on paper his somehow objective view of his world.5 This text belongs to the diverse
body of literature that Kawabata produced under the influence of Modernism, stream-
of-consciousness writings and New Sensationalism in the 1920s and 1930s. Although in
the late 1930s he somehow abandoned his experimenting with the “isms” of Western
origin, their influences lingered on in the literature he produced over the next thirty
years.
Because it played such an important role in his life, Kawabata never lost sight of
death’s uncanny attachment to his life. He wrote: “To save the human being from
personal death, it seems that the best way is to blur into vagueness the boundaries
between one individual and another, and between the human being and all other objects
in the physical world.”6 This statement also reveals the author’s attempt to blur the line
4 Matsuura Hisaki, “Mira koto no heisoku,” Shincho 6 (June 1992), 269.
5 Seiji M. Lippit, “Kawabata Yasunari’s Scarlet Gang o f Asakusa,” Topographies o f Japanese
Modernism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 126.
6 Cited in Roy Starrs, Soundings in Time, 32.
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4
between the viewer and the one viewed in order to guarantee survival of the self. By
never emphasizing the role of the one gazed upon in this world, Kawabata retreated to
the safe place that perpetuated his fantasy of the self as the only one in charge of vision.
In the end, however, death in the shape of suicide found him. The observer fatally
blinded himself; even his status as subject of the gaze could not guarantee him further
control over the world of the visible around him and over himself.
Kawabata attempted to defy the look of the Other all his life, struggling to
maintain his status as the only subject of the gaze. Thus, he projected his own phobias
about personal visibility onto his characters. Kawabata creates male and female
characters who struggle to shift from subjects to objects of the gaze as a way to become
visible to themselves, or to resist visibility in order to resist knowledge of the self. If to
see is to know, Kawabata’s characters are doomed never to settle the controversy over
who sees and who knows. They resist visibility from the field of vision of the Other as
much as they resist being turned into the object of the Other’s gaze. To be the object of
the gaze means to recognize the self as seen by the Other, a painful exercise in
acceptance of the self as different from the self perceived from within, the self
perceived by the self.
My study of vision and visuality in Kawabata Yasunari’s works represents a
new way of examining Kawabata’s characters experience with their worlds. Visual
experiences are rooted in social and historical contexts. What remains uncontested and
universal is the need of eyes to see, the need to point eyes toward a specific direction in
order to start the physical, emotional, social, and cultural experience of vision.
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5
Vision as a concept “refers to a physical/physiological process in which light
impacts upon eyes,” while visuality “refers to a social process: visuality is vision
socialized.” The notion of visuality “emerges from debates within psychoanalysis and
psychology to differentiate between vision as a biological process and the interpretation
o
of what is seen.” As Jonathan Crary further explains, “vision and its effects are always
inseparable from the possibilities of an observing subject who is both the historical
product and the site of certain practices, techniques, institutions, and procedures of
subjectification.”9
My study employs theories of vision and visuality to explore how Kawabata
manipulates the gaze as a device of literary investigation. In Western literary theory,
psychoanalytic theory, film theory, and feminist theory the concept of “the gaze” has
been defined and redefined over the last three decades. The gaze may refer to the
physical way of looking when eyes are pointed toward a specific object; in this case the
concept of the gaze coincides with the concept of “the look” as Jean-Paul Sartre defines
it in his Being and Nothingness.1 0 The gaze may also be understood as an element
7 John A. Walker and Sarah Chaplin, Visual Culture: An Introduction, 22.
8 John A. Walker and Sarah Chaplin, Visual Culture: An Introduction, 28.
9 Jonathan Crary, Techniques o f the Observer. On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), 5.
1 0 On the construction of the gaze as a physical gaze in the Western modem world see Jonathan Crary,
Techniques o f the Observer, Jonathan Crary, “Unbinding Vision,” October 68 (Spring 1994), 21-44. For
a philosophical approach to issue of vision see David Michael Levin, ed., Modernity and the Hegemony
o f Vision (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). The gaze as device o f artistic inquiry is also
employed in new approaches to the study of art history; see Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The
Logic of the Gaze (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983); Norman Bryson, Michael Ann
Holly, and Keith Moxey, eds., Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation (Middletown, Conn.:
Wesleyan University Press, 1990); Norman Bryson, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith Moxey, eds., Visual
Culture: Images and Interpretations (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1994);
Stephen Kem, Eyes o f Love. The Gaze in English and French Culture, 1840-1900 (New York: New York
University Press, 1996).
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6
impossible to see but possible to feel, as eyes of another subject/object in a field of
vision foreign to the subject that looks (Jacques Lacan). We are, after all, seen from all
directions as we become spectacles of the world (Maurice Merleau-Ponty). In addition,
the gaze may be considered as a troubling male construct from which sexual
objectification of women ensues. In this study, therefore, I rely on theories of visuality
advanced by Sartre, Lacan, Film theorists and revisionist feminists.
In Kawabata’s novels the gaze is not a monolithic and gender specific literary
tool. Rather, Kawabata’s characters, male and female, constantly shift from being
subjects of the gaze to being objects, thus calling into question the status of a privileged
male omnivoyeur. Kawabata skillfully manipulates the gaze as a literary device; it
represents the site where his tormented characters resist becoming fully visible to
themselves. Kawabata’s characters are often trapped by their obsessive fear of being
recognized in the field of vision of the Other, struggling to the utmost to remain equally
invisible to themselves. Kawabata portrays men and women on emotional quests to
understand their place in the world; the field of vision of the Other becomes the
dreadful arena in which the psychological tragedy of fractured egos is performed.1 1
Employing a diverse range of definitions of the gaze, I demonstrate how after
the 1930s Kawabata moves from depicting his male characters as apparent owners of
the gaze in novels such as Snow Country to objects of the female gaze in texts such as
111 am borrowing the concept of fractured subjectivity from Roy Boyne’s essay on Georg Baselitz’s
paintings. In Baselitz’s paintings the images of human beings are often “chopped up and partly
obscured.” In these paintings body parts are reassembled, but the image remains fractured. Human bodies
are not harmoniously whole. Moreover, it is not fragments that Baselitz portrays. Fragments are isolated
elements, and the painter does not paint fragments of human bodies. Baselitz’s paintings make us think o f
exploded human bodies that the painter has tried to re-assemble. Roy Boyne, “Fractured Subjectivity,” in
Visual Culture, Chris Jenks, ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 58-76.
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7
Beauty and Sadness. Kawabata portrays men slowly losing control over their field of
vision. These men are often caught in their struggles to see and accept themselves as
“whole” (Shimamura in Snow Country), to recognize themselves as self and not as
other-than-self (Kikuji in Thousand Cranes), to understand and resist the image of
themselves in the field of vision of the Other (Momoi Gimpei in The Lake), to abandon
themselves to the memory of former selves (Eguchi in House o f Sleeping Beauties), and
to perpetuate the fantasy of idealized selves (Toshio in Beauty and Sadness). Although
Kawabata’s male characters appear to be subjects and owners of the gaze, as the female
characters switch from being objects of the gaze to being subjects, their line of vision
challenges the male trajectory of the gaze.
Kawabata’s portraits of women are also provided in a crescendo, moving from
women confined to an asexual-dream status (Yoko in Snow Country), or who wear the
uncomfortable label of sexual objects of desire (the sleeping maidens in House o f the
Sleeping Beauties), and culminating in women who stand as subjects of the gaze,
creators of meaning and manipulators of destiny (Otoko and Keiko in Beauty and
Sadness). Yoko and Komako in Snow Country, Kuramoto Chikako, Inamura Yukiko,
Mrs. Ota and her daughter Fumiko in Thousand Cranes', Miyako, Machie and the ugly
woman in The Lake', the six nameless sleeping beauties and the lady of the inn in House
o f Sleeping Beauties', Otoko, Keiko and Fumiko in Beauty and Sadness', these women
are not weak entities; they are not appendixes to the male characters; they do not
passively bear meaning and the male gaze. Instead, from their site of gender
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8
ambivalence and contestation, they resist meaning, social and cultural labels and the
male gaze.
Although I employ theories and methodologies that may appear not to belong to
Kawabata’s literary environment, I embrace Jonathan Culler’s argument that theory
should be understood as “the discourse that results when conceptions of nature and
meaning of texts and their relations to other discourses, social practices and human
subjects become the object of general reflection.”121 use these theories as springboards,
critical tools in an analysis of vision and visuality in Kawabata’s novels that challenges
long-held assumptions about the male and female characters in his writings. Although
such theories provide the methodological framework, I do not limit my discussion
within the parameters such theories establish, but rather I build on them as I find my
way through the complexities of Kawabata’s texts.
Critics such as Hasegawa Izumi, Kosakabe Motohide and Suzuki Haruo argue
that in Kawabata’s descriptions of his male characters we should look for the author.
Kawabata, however, is present in each and every one of his characters, male and female.
My emphasis on the complexities of Kawabata’s female characters refutes the
assumption that the author lives only in the men he portrays. If as with dreams,
characters in a novel are metaphors of the self, we should look at these women closer. A
critical investigation of them will enable us to reach a much more refined understanding
of Kawabata.
1 2 Jonathan Culler, Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1988), 15.
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My dissertation is not an investigation of Kawabata’s emotional journey through
life. It is not meant to be a psychological biography of the author. However, from my
research, a psychological portrait of Kawabata begins to become visible. Through the
examination of his texts, I show how Kawabata projected onto his characters his own
phobias about mastery over one’s field of vision. Through an understanding of his
characters’ troubled subjectivities we see Kawabata come to life. He projects onto them
his insecurities as subject of the gaze, and his psychoses as the one gazed upon.
I wrote my dissertation with two specific readers in mind: the specialist in
Japanese literature, and the scholar in the field of comparative literature. As one of
Japan’s most prominent writers, Kawabata Yasunari will always remain a fascinating
subject for anyone interested in Japanese literature of the twentieth century. In my study
of Kawabata, I use theories of visuality in such a way as to challenge the traditional
parameters that have defined the study of Japanese literature.
Although numerous scholarly publications on Japanese literature have employed
vision as a category of literary analysis,1 3 few critics have drawn on methodological
1 3 Doris Bargen, A Woman’ s Weapon. Spirit Possession in the Tale o f Genji (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1997), especially section on voyeurism in the Tale o f Genji; Norma Field, The Splendor o f
Longing in the Tale o f Genji (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); in her study o f voyeurism in
the Tale o f Genji, Norma Fields draws on Shinohara Yoshihiko, “Genji monogatari ni itaru nozokimi no
keifii,” Bungaku gogaku 68 (August 1973), 56-67; Joshua S. Mostow, “Self and Landscape in Kagero
Nikki," Review o f Japanese Culture and Society 6 (December 1993), 8-19; Joshua S. Mostow, “Picturing
the Tale of Genji,” Journal o f the Association o f Teachers o f Japanese 33, no. 1 (April 1999), 1-25;
Takayuki Yokota-Murakami, Don Juan East/West. On the Problematics o f Comparative Literature
(Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1998), 117-154. In Japanese language see also
Mitamura Masako, Makura no soshi: hyogen to kozo (Tokyo: Yuseido, 1994); Nishida Kozo, “Toshi no
yokubo. Saikaku no shisen,” Nihon bungaku 32-7, no. 361 (July 1983), 1-9; Nishida Tomomi, “Kagami
no kage nimen. Sarashina nikki no hyogen to hoho,” Nihon bungaku 44-6, no. 504 (June 1995), 14-24.
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10
approaches from the field of comparative literature.1 4 This scarcity of comparative
analysis along with a widespread resistance to these new theories developing in the field
of comparative literature incited my interest in applying such a methodological
approach to Kawabata’s literature. Thus, my study should be of interest to scholars of
comparative literature because it explores the applicability of Western theories to a non-
Westem tradition and it introduces theories of gazing that developed within Japanese
literature (such as kaimami), which cannot be subsumed with Western ideas of
voyeurism. I have focused my investigation on novels by Kawabata available in English
translation to make the work as accessible as possible. The scholar of comparative
literature will find my writing and my analysis challenging as he/she adjusts to the
application of a theory that has crossed the borders and spilled into unknown territory.
By employing the gaze as a category of literary analysis, my work challenges
the scholarship on Kawabata that considers his male characters as the only creators of
meaning and in charge of the field of vision; it advances a reading of Kawabata’s
female characters’ gazes as sites that instigate crisis and repositories of male knowledge,
thus promoting women as makers of discourse; it presents the possibility that in the
gender-ambivalent female characters he portrays in his texts Kawabata comes fully to
life, thus refuting the conservative assumption that the author lives in the male
1 4 Allan G. Grapard, “Visions of Excess and Excesses of Vision. Women and Transgression in Japanese
Myth,” Japanese Journal o f Religious Studies 18, no. 1 (1991), 3-22; Joshua S. Mostow, “E no Gotoshi:
the Picture Simile and the Feminine Re-gard in Japanese Illustrated Romances,” Word & Image 11, no. 1
(January-March 1995), 37-54; Sarra Edith, “The Poetics of Voyeurism in The Pillow Book," in Fictions
o f Femininity. Literary Inventions o f Gender in Japanese Court Women’ s Memoirs (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1999), 221-264; Charles Shiro Inouye, “In the Scopic Regime of Discovery: Ishikawa
Takuboku’s Diary in Roman Script and the Gendered Premise of Self-Identity,” Positions: East Asia
Culture and Critique 2, no. 3 (Winter 1994), 542-569; Tonomura Hitomi, “Black Hair and Red Trousers:
Gendering the Flesh in Medieval Japan,” American Historical Review 99, no.l (1994), 129-154.
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11
characters he creates; it raises the issue of the appropriate place (cultural, social,
historical, political) women occupy in a male text. Because of all of the above, my study
will raise eyebrows and stimulate controversy. It is my hope that it would also
encourage a dialogue across the disciplines and promote informed responses from the
field of Japanese literature and comparative studies.
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12
Part One
Toward an Aesthetic of Vision: the Politics of Gendered Gazes
in Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country
Introduction
To study Snow Country from the perspective of a diverse range of definitions of
the gaze is to break from the problematic body of literature that sees Shimamura, the
male protagonist, as the only character in the novel entitled to see and speak. Mine is a
reading through which all the characters (from Shimamura to Komako, from Yoko to
Yukio, from the white Russian woman to the girls from the land of Chijimi) tell their
stories. These stories are told through their eyes and their mouths, as they switch from
being objects of the gaze to being its subjects, disrupting the apparent feeling of
harmony that seems to transpire from Kawabata’s text, a feeling that is revealed to be a
fantasy of an idealized world impossible to inhabit.
Over the decades, Japanese and Western scholarship has constructed Snow
Country as a text about a man journeying to a land where he hopes to find solace. Most
scholars have concerned themselves with exploring the emotional impact the trip to the
snow country has on Shimamura and inscribing cultural and spiritual meaning to his
journey.1 Snow Country has come to be accepted as a text in a male voice, a text that
posits the male gaze as the only site of power and desire.
1 Isogai Hideo, “Yukiguni no shasei,” in Kawabata Yasunari gendai no biishiki, eds. Takeda Katsuhiko
and Takahashi Shintaro (Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1978), 31-47; Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to ju n ’ ai: Kawabata
Yasunari sakuhinron (Tokyo: Tokyo shoseki, 1979); Ozawa Seimei, Kawabata Yasunari bungei no sekai
(Tokyo: Ofusha, 1981), 139-161; Tsuruta Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari no geijustu: junsui to kyiisai
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Scholarship also has focused on understanding Kawabata’s reasons for writing
Snow Country, investigating whether or not Kawabata was attempting a return to
Japanese tradition after having experimented with Modernism, questioning the degree
to which the text is autobiographical, and pondering which aspect of Japanese history
Kawabata was exploring, if any.2 Studies that make the women in the text the objects of
critical investigation have been influenced by the male perspective that permeates the
plot. Consequently, the women have emerged as male constructs without a voice or a
(Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1981), 85-90; Nakayama Shinhiko, “Yukiguni to noso bukkyaku nit suite,” Gendai
bungaku (1984): 32-64; Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu (Tokyo: Shinbisha, 1988), 64-86;
Okude Ken, Kawabata Yasunari Yukiguni o yomu (Tokyo: Miyai shoten, 1989), 118-146.
2 In English see Anthony V. Liman, “Kawabata’s Lyrical Mode in Snow Country,'' Monumenta
Nipponica 26, nos. 3-4 (1971): 267-285; Miyoshi Masao, “The Margins of Life. Kawabata Yasunari:
Snow Country and The Sound o f the Mountain," in Accomplices o f Silence (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1974), 95-121; Thomas J. Rimer, “Kawabata Yasunari: Eastern Approaches. Snow
Country," in Modern Japanese Fiction and Its Traditions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978),
162-181; Noriko Mizuta Lippit, “Kawabata’s Dilettante Heroes,” in Reality and Fiction in Modern
Japanese Literature (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1980), 120-145; Sydney DeVere Brown, “Yasunari
Kawabata (1899-1972): Tradition versus Modernity,” World Literature Today 62, no. 3 (Summer 1988):
375-379; Van C. Gessel, “A Detachment from Modernity. Kawabata Yasunari,” in Three Modem
Novelists: Soseki, Tanizaki, Kawabata (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1993), 133-194. In Japanese see
Hasegawa Izumi, Kawabata bunkagu no ajiwai kata sosho (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1973), 191-210; Isogai
Hideo, “Yukiguni no shasei,” 31-47; Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to un ’ ai: Kawabata Yasunari sakuhinron, 60-
83; Tsuruta Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari no Geijutsu: junsui to kyuusai (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1981): 49-
104; Ozawa Seimei, Kawabata Yasunari bungei no sekai, 139-161; Hyodo Masanosuke, Kawabata
Yasunari ron (Tokyo: Shun-jusha, 1988), 121-172; Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 64-86.
On how Kawabata specifically uses tradition in Snow Country see Charles Cabell, “Maiden Dreams:
Kawabata Yasunari’s Beautiful Japanese Empire, 1930-1945” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1999),
81; David Pollack, “The Ideology of Aesthetics: Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes and Snow
Country,” in Reading Against Culture. Ideology and Narrative in the Japanese Novel (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 1992), 100-120; p. 110; Noriko Mizuta Lippit, “Kawabata’s Dillettante
Heroes,” 121 and 129; Donald Keene, “Kawabata Yasunari,” in Dawn to the West. Japanese Literature in
the Modern Era (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984), 819. In Japanese, for Kawabata’s use of
tradition specifically in Yukiguni see Isogai Hideo, “Yukiguni no shasei;” Ozawa Seimei, Kawabata
Yasunari bungei no sekai; Hasegawa Izumi, Kawabata bungaku no ajiwaikata sosho; Furuya Tsunatake,
Denki Kawabata Yasunari. Sakuhin to sakka kenkyu (Tokyo: Jitsugyo no Nihonsha, 1986), 218;
Hasegawa Izumi and Tsuruta Kin’ya, eds., "Yukiguni’’ no bunseki kenkyu (Tokyo: Kyoiku Shuppan
Senta, 1985); Iwata Mitsuko, ed., Kawabata Yasunari "Yukiguni” sakuhinron shusei, 3 volumes (Tokyo:
6zorasha, 1996).
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gaze of their own. Snow Country stands as a text in which women are written and
talked about as objects of the male gaze.
In order to understand how the structure of the female gaze in Snow Country
alters the established perspective on Shimamura and his place in the text, we must first
unpack the structure of the male gaze that Kawabata constructs. Only a detailed analysis
of Shimamura’s gaze will make possible a reading of Snow Country from the
perspective of the female gaze. The arduous task of unpacking and applying the
complexities of theories of vision and the gaze is rewarded in the end by the opportunity
to see the story for the first time through the eyes of women.
In Snow Country the male gaze is a tense, contested site that offers a rich
opportunity for the study of psychological and cultural issues that concern vision and
visuality. My study starts with a discussion of the male gaze understood as kaimami. In
the opening section originally entitled “Mirror of Evening Scenery” (Yiigeshiki no
kagami), which appeared in the January 1935 issue of Bungei Shunju, the male gaze
focuses on two objects: the landscape and a young country woman Yoko. I demonstrate
how Kawabata Yasunari utilizes the tradition of kaimami and enriches it with Western
motifs of vision and visuality. I analyze the text from the perspective of Jacques
Lacan’s theory of the gaze as further developed by Film theorists.
I focus my analysis on the process whereby the window/mirror reveals the
landscape and Yoko to Shimamura’s gaze. The extensive body of literature available in
3 Ozawa Seimei, Kawabata Yasunari bungei no sekai, 139-40; Okude Ken, Kawabata Yasunari Yukiguni
o yomu, 55-117 and 147-178; Ueda Wataru, “Yukiguni ni okeru Komako no shinsei,” in "Yukiguni” no
bunseki kenkyu, Hasegawa Izumi and Tsuruta Kin’ya, eds., 185-196; Tsuruta Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari
no geijutsu, 51-52 and 63-84.
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Western philosophy, film theory and feminist criticism, which has ascribed new
meaning to the mirror or screen when used as a medium through which one sees and is
seen, allows for a new understanding of the complexities involved in Shimamura’s
kaimami of Yoko. Yoko emerges not as a passive recipient of the male gaze, but rather
as an active maker of vision. In this chapter, I further show how Shimamura struggles to
reconcile his fantasy of Yoko as an image with the reality of Yoko as a human being,
ultimately retreating to the former in an attempt to avoid confronting the truth about his
identity. As a result, in the opening passage of Snow Country, it is not Yoko as physical
entity but Yoko as an image reflected in the window that is the object of Shimamura’s
gaze. Shimamura is driven by an unspoken need to assign meaning to Yoko’s image,
which has little relation to Yoko per se.
In chapter two, I investigate the male gaze when directed at the two women in
the novel: Yoko and Komako. In film and literary theory, the male gaze has been
defined most often as that place from which sexual objectification of the female occurs.
The male gaze is further understood as the source of voyeurism and scopophilic
tensions. The male gazer, seemingly master of his field of vision, treats the female body
as an object of sexual desire. When the male gaze assigns such a limited meaning to the
female body, nothing is left to the object of the gaze, who, according to some scholars,
ends up participating in the politics of exhibitionism, subjection and passivity.4
Revisionists of this limited understanding of the male gaze have questioned the place
the female gaze occupies in the male politics of vision.
4 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6-18.
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In chapter two, I focus on how Shimamura’s gaze changes when first Yoko and
then Komako enter his field of vision. Shimamura’s gaze cannot be addressed
exclusively as a sexual/erotic gaze. In this chapter, Yoko per se is object of
Shimamura’s gaze. In contrast with the image of Yoko, which embodies the
contradictions of Lacan’s objet a (which, as I will discuss, is always sexual), as a
physical being Yoko is not an object of sexual desire. Her physical presence only
heightens Shimamura’s anxiety over his reasons for traveling to the snow country. A
fragmented body in Shimamura’s eyes, Yoko becomes whole only at the time of her
apparent death, unveiling to Shimamura the ultimate truth about his presence in the land.
Shimamura’s visual experience of Komako, another object of his gaze,
combines a variety of emotional responses that belong to different levels of
identification process and ego formation. When Shimamura looks at Komako, he sees
not only an object of sexual desire, but also his reflected anxieties. Shimamura resists
Komako as another specular image of his endangered ego by turning her into body
fragments, focusing on her lips, her eyes, her nose and her throat. By looking at her a
piece at a time, Shimamura maintains the fantasy of himself as “whole.”
In chapter three I consider the female gaze as the maker of meaning as I
introduce a reading conveyed by women’s eyes and voices. Whereas Tajima Yoko re
reads Snow Country from Komako’s point of view altering that male emotional unity
the text seems to promote, I suggest a reading from the perspective of the female gaze
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in order to provide portraits of Komako and Yoko as creators of meaning.5 1 embrace
the argument that Kawabata reduces women’s bodies to fragments to prevent them from
threatening men as whole entities,6 but maintain such fragments return the male gaze. In
other words, by positioning himself in the visual trajectory of such body fragments,
Shimamura feels himself under the gaze of what were once his objects of vision.
Shimamura feels the fragments staring back at him, making the transition from subject
of the gaze to object. Arguing against the scholarship on Snow Country that has
understood the women in the text as passive recipients of the male gaze, I show how
women have a gaze of their own, a gaze that emotionally threatens men in a place in
which men have always believed themselves to be the exclusive subjects of the gaze.
In a close textual reading of Snow Country, I reveal how Shimamura becomes
trapped in Komako and Yoko’s fields of vision, investigating what it means to
Shimamura to become an object of the female gaze. I also consider how the female gaze
affects Shimamura in his journey to self-discovery. Although the female gaze in
question lacks the “castrating” aspect that Sigmund Freud posited in his “Medusa’s
Head” treatise, it nevertheless threatens the moral and cultural values of the traditional
Japanese man.7
As the object of Yoko’s gaze, Shimamura acknowledges the reality of her
physicality and eventually embraces the truth of Yoko as specular image of his inner
5 Tajima Yoko, “A Rereading o f Snow Country from Komako’s Point of View,” U.S. - Japan’ s Women’ s
Journal 4 (January 1993): 26-48.
6 Sandra Buckley, “Kawabata Yasunari’s Poetics of Fragmentation: Now You See Her Now You Don’t,”
Discours Social/Social Discourse 1, no. 4 (Winter 1988): 441-455.
7 Sigmund Freud, “Medusa’s Head,” 1940, in The Standard Edition o f the Complete Psychological Works
o f Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. James Strachey, volume 18 (London: Hogarth, 1953-1974), 273-275..
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reality. Under Yoko’s gaze, Shimamura inevitably experiences discomfort. He avoids
her gaze in an attempt to avoid the reflected image of himself. Shimamura is an object
of desire to Yoko, a desire to feel grounded and emotionally stable. When Shimamura
fails to reflect back such an image, Yoko’s resulting despair becomes a source of his
anguish. This is one of the reasons behind Shimamura’s creation of Yoko as image
reflected in the train window: he can deal with this construct, but not with Yoko per se
when the object of her gaze.
Komako’s gaze when directed at Shimamura is inquisitive, challenging and
sexually objectifying. Shimamura, time and again, resists her gaze in an attempt to
remain in control. To become the object of Komako’s gaze marks Shimamura’s loss of
control over vision and knowledge. Shimamura believes that he is the only maker of
meaning, the only person entitled to own the gaze. To be turned into the object of the
other’s gaze affects the emotional unity that he is struggling to achieve and represents a
setback in his process toward self-discovery.
Reading Snow Country from the perspective of theories of vision and the gaze
creates new interpretations of Shimamura, Komako and Yoko as they are caught in
emotional struggles to understand their places in the world. As the field of vision of the
Other becomes the origin of their desires, their fragile selves strive to stay alive.
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Writing Snow Country: The Novel and Japanese History
In May 1934, Kawabata Yasunari visited for the first time the hot-springs of
Yuzawa. He returned in August and stayed until September.8 This location became the
setting for his novel Snow Country,9 It was during his stay at Yuzawa that Kawabata
met Matsue, the geisha who inspired him to create Komako.1 0 In November 1934,
Kawabata started working on the first two sections of Snow Country, although at the
time he seemed to be interested in writing something shorter than a novel. He managed
to complete the section known as “Mirror of the Evening Scenery” (Yugeshiki no
kagami), which was published in the January 1935 issue of Bungei Shunjii. He finished
“Mirror of the White Morning” (Shiroi asa no kagami) in time to be published in the
January 1935 issue of Kaizd.u These two works later became the opening section of
8 For an account o f Kawabata’s stay at Yuzawa, and how he was inspired to write Yukiguni, see Tanaka
Yasutaka, “Yukiguni to sono jidai,” Kokubungaku (August 1966): 60-66, reprinted in Kawabata Yasunari
“Yukiguni ” sakuhinron shusei, ed. Iwata Mitsuko, volume 1, 303-309; Nakajima Kunihiko, “Yukiguni no
haigo ni hisomu mo no. 1935 no aki no Yuzawa taizai o megutte,” Kokubungaku 32, no. 15 (December
1987): 79-85. Kawabata himself wrote about Yuzawa as inspirational to write his novel. See his
“Yukiguni” ni tsuite (1969) and “Yukiguni” no gekika (1970) in Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, ed.
Yamamoto Kenkichi, Inoue Yasushi, and Nakamura Mitsuo, volume 33, (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1980-84),
194-195 and 200-201.
9 An in-depth study o f Yuzawa as natural setting for Yukiguni is also provided in “Yukiguni ni okeru
haikei (setting) no igi ni tsuite” by Sachiku Isamu (1967), re-printed in Kawabata Yasunari “Yukiguni”
sakuhinron shusei, Iwata Mitsuko, ed., volume 1, 393-401. See also Ozawa Seimei, Kawabata Yasunari:
bungei no sekai, 141-148; Isogai Hideo, “Yukiguni no shasei,” 31-47.
1 0 Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to ju n ’ ai: Kawabata Yasunari sakuhinron, 60-64; Hyodo Masanosuke,
Kawabata Yasunari ron, 134. At Yuzawa, Kawabata would also be introduced to a blind masseuse who
would inspire him to create the character of Komako’s masseuse in Snow Country. On setting and
characters in Snow Country see also Muramatsu Sadataka, “Jinbutsu ron: modem ni tsuite no kosatsu mo
fukumete,” in Kyojitsu to himaju: Yukiguni, Kogen, Bokka, Kawabata Bungaku Kenkyuukai, ed., volume
5 of Kawabata Yasunari Kenkyu Sosho (Tokyo: Kyoiku Shuppan Senta, 1979), 59-73; Yomiuri Shinbun
Bunkabu, Jitsuroku Kawabata Yasunari (Tokyo: Yomiuri Shinbunsha, 1969), 129-141.
1 1 The genesis of Snow Country from independent stories to novel is given as an appendix in Kawabata
Yasunari Zenshu, volume 10, 501-504.
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12
Snow Country. In November and December 1935, Kawabata published respectively
“Tale” (Monogatari) and “Waste of Effort” (Toro) in the journal Nihon Hydron.
It took Kawabata longer to publish the next sections. In August 1936, he
published “Kaya Flowers” (Kaya no hand) in Chud Koron, and in October of the same
year, “Pillow of Fire” (Hi no makura) appeared in Bungei Shunju. In May 1937,
Kawabata published “Children’s Song” (Temari Uta) in Kaizo. In June 1937, Snow
Country was for the first time published as a completed novel by Sogansha.
Kawabata, however, was far from done with the novel. In December 1940, he
published “Fire in the Snow” (Yuki no naka no kaji) in Koron, and in August 1941,
“The Milky Way” (Ama no gawa) appeared in Bungei Shunju. After the war, Kawabata
rewrote these last two sections as “Snow Country Extracts” (Yukiguni shu, published in
the May 1946 issue of Gyosho), and “Continuation of Snow Country” (Yukiguni zoku,
published in the October 1947 issue of Shosetsu Shincho). As a result, “the two texts
written at the height of the Pacific war were eliminated from what became the standard
version of the book in 1948, and disappeared - along with a great deal of Kawabata’s
• 1 'K
wartime writings - from public memory.”
Charles Cabell traces the Japanese historical context at the time of the
publication of the different sections of Snow Country. The novel appeared over a long
period of time. The publication of Yugeshiki no kagami and Shiroi asa no kagami, for
12Hyodo Masanosuke, Kawabata Yasunari ron, 134; Okude Ken, Kawabata Yasunari Yukiguni o yomu,
34-36.
1 3 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 57. The original version of Yukiguni as it was published in his
serialized version, is available in the volume 24 of Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, 73-255.
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example, “both reflect the complexity characterizing issues of censorship in Japan in the
early 1930s.”1 4 Right from page one of Yugeshiki no kagami, fuseji were used:
Marks (such as Xs or Os) substituted for words that could potentially incite the
wrath of a government ministry and lead to bans, fines, suspensions or
imprisonment, fuseji were employed by publishers often with cooperation from
writers in acts of preemptory self-censorship. As their experience with such self
censorship increased, writers learned to use fuseji in such a way as to invite
readers to imagine a sexual content more erotic than what could be explicitly
expressed.1 5
Shiroi asa no kagami also contained fuseji, which fed the sensual imagination of the
readers.1 6
Kawabata voiced his own position over this so-called fuseji practice in the
December 31, 1935 issue of Bungei Jihyo.1 1 Around the same time, the government
took notice of writers’ ability to use fuseji to provoke readers’ imagination, and on
September 8, 1936, the Home Ministry requested the publishers to see that this form of
self-censorship was brought to an end.
1 4 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 27.
1 5 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 27. On issues of censorship in 1930 Japan see also Richard
Mitchell, Censorship in Imperial Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
1 6 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 28. On the specific issue of censorship as it was practiced in
Yukiguni, see Nagaoka Chiro, “Masu-komyunikeeshon ni okeru. Bungakuteki hyogen no seiritsu ni tsuite.
Kawabata Yasunari no Yukiguni o rei to shite,” Keizai (March 1953): 61-92, re-printed in Kawabata
Yasunari “Yukiguni” sakuhinron shusei, Iwata Mitsuko, ed., volume 1, 167-198, especially pp. 179-185.
See also Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 24, especially how Shiroi asa no kagami was censured, 87-
100.
1 7 “The use offuseji isn’t new. It was more prevalent when proletarian literature was at its peak. Recently,
however, it’s becoming increasingly stringent. Under the present conditions, . . . writers can’t
comfortably write anything. In magazines, journalists, of course, are the ones who use fuseji. They do it
out of fear of the cuts and publication bans ordered by the Censorship office. Fuseji will be unavoidable
as long as magazines are afraid of loss. . . . Lately, right wing forces are beginning to show signs of
wanting to further censor what the government censors, and apply additional fuseji to those used by the
magazines. This is one o f the reasons behind the current pessimism in society. . . . The use of fuseji is
growing. I strongly suspect that journalists are employing more fuseji than government censorship
requires. Writers are not submissive people by nature. Why is it then that, with regard to fuseji, almost
without exception, they do nothing but cry themselves to sleep at night? I find it very strange.” Bungei
Jihyo, December 31, 1935, Charles Cabell’s translation in Charles Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 29, from
Hyodo Masanosuke, Kawabata Yasunari ron, 123.
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While Kawabata was slowly working on Snow Country, Tanizaki Jun’ichiro
(1886-1965) started his translation into modem Japanese of the Tale o f Genji in an
attempt to recover the classic traditions of Japan. Although Tanizaki’s translation may
seem uncontroversial, he was working at the height of the tension between Japan and
China, a time when censorship was severe. In the end, the translation could not be
published in its entirety “because the chapters describing Genji’s relations with
Fujitsubo, the consort of the old emperor, were considered to be disrespectful toward
1 R
the imperial household.”
Cabell follows Kawabata’s production of Snow Country, citing in particular an
incident in 1935 in which Law Professor Minobe Tasukichi “was charged with
felonious lese majeste.”1 9 His crime was to have expressed his theory of the Emperor-
as-organ in books he wrote in the 1920s.2 0 At the time of the publication of Kaya no
hana and Hi no makura (1936), Japan was closer to war with China. In January 1937,
the government instructed local police bureaus to prohibit the publication of
anything suggesting disagreement over China policy, lack of public support, fear
of war, imperial ambitions, negative effects of the war on living standards,
radical reform, or support of leftist ideology.2 1
1 8 Donald Keene, “Kawabata Yasunari,” 773. The Genji monogatari was censured during both the Meiji
Period (1868-1912) and the years of the Pacific War (1941-1945) because thought to also have a
dangerous impact on women’s morality. See Takamure Itsue, Shoseikon no kenkyu, volume 1 (Tokyo:
Rironsha, 1977), 611-612 and volume 2, 880, cited in Hitomi Tonomura, “Sexual Violence Against
Women: Legal and Extralegal Treatment in Premodem Warrior Societies,” in Women and Class in
Japanese History, Hitomi Tonomura et als., eds. (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies at The
University of Michigan, 1999), 144.
1 9 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 31.
2 0 See also Richard Mitchell, Censorship in Imperial Japan, 275-276.
2 1 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 32-33; Richard Mitchell, Censorship in Imperial Japan, 284.
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In March, the Ministry of Education published Kokutai no Hongi (The Cardinal
Principles of the National Essence), which also called for “a new synthesis of Western
and Eastern thought, firmly based upon the indigenous tradition.”2 2
In May 1937, Kawabata published Temari Uta, and on July 7 he accepted the
Third Prize of the Literary Chat Committee {Bungei Konwa Kai)?3 Being the war was
so close, the Home Ministry repeatedly warned publishers against printing anything that
would not be in accordance with state policies and regulations. Control over publishing
companies became tighter, and four of the journals in which Kawabata had published
sections of Snow Country {Child Koron, Kaizo, Nihon Hyoron, Bungei Shunju), “were
required by the military to meet each month with the Army and Navy Information
Divisions.” 2 4 As Cabell points out, writers were directly and indirectly under the
influence of nationalism in 1930s and 1940s Japan. Those who tried to take a stand
against government ideology were strictly punished. To overcome censorship, many
authors turned to nativism.
During the war, Snow Country became one of the readings among Japanese
troops fighting overseas. Kawabata’s preferred reading at this time was the Tale o f
Genji?6 As Mizenko writes,
by connecting his nostalgic feelings upon reading Genii with the homesickness
felt by soldiers reading his fiction, Kawabata clearly reveals the escapist impulse
2 2 Richard Mitchell, Censorship in Imperial Japan, 282, cited in Charles Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 33.
2 3 This was a government sponsored literary group. For being part of this group, Kawabata was accused
of collaboration with the Nationalistic government. See Charles Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 30, and Jay
Rubin, Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1984), 251-55.
2 4 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 34; Jay Rubin, Injurious to Public Morals, 257.
2 5 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 36.
2 6 Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 27, 392-393.
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that underlies his project. This tendency is much more understandable in the
case of military personnel, who face immediate danger in a strange land, than it
is for Kawabata, who seems to be driven by a modernist agenda that seeks to
find authenticity in essentialist constructs of tradition rather than in the social
reality of his time.2 7
Snow Country tells the story of Shimamura the male protagonist, and provides
descriptions of two of his three trips to the snow country. Shimamura is described as a
Tokyo intellectual, an amateur critic of Western ballet. Back in Tokyo he has a wife and
children. His yearly trips to the snow country, however, also become reason for
enjoying the seemingly uncontaminated nature surrounding him.
During his trips, Shimamura becomes involved in a sexual relation with a local
apprentice geisha Komako. He also comes to know Yoko, a somewhat younger girl who
is in charge of taking care of an ill man Yukio. Readers later learn that Yukio may be
Komako’s former fiance. At the end of the novel, on Shimamura’s third trip to this
snow country, Yoko apparently dies when she falls from the burning roof of the village
warehouse and Shimamura considers ending his relationship with Komako.
Selected Scholarship on Snow Country
As vast and rich as the scholarship on Snow Country is, few works of criticism
in Japanese and English address the gaze as a site of emotional struggle. In his essay on
Snow Country, Kawasaki Toshihiko focuses on the mirror and its two main functions.
Kawasaki acknowledges the importance of the mirror as a means to question the self
2 7 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University,
1993), 118-119.
2 8 Kawasaki Toshihiko, “Yume ka utsutsu ka maboroshi ka. “Yukiguni” to kyozo no bigaku,” in
“Yukiguni” no bunseki kenkyu, Hasegawa Izumi and Tsuruta Kin’ya, eds., 11-26.
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and believes that the self contributes to the blurring of the lines between the reflected
images and the mirror per se. The critic identifies two functions of the mirror: first, it
reflects objects that exist in the outside world (Mirror of Reality); second, it evokes
something hidden inside humans looking at the reflected images (Magic Mirror).
Kawasaki explains how the two functions complement each other. While the reflected
image carries the meaning of “copy of the image of things from the outside world,” it
also may be seen as a “projection of things from the inner self.” 2 9 According to
Kawasaki “the reflected thing” and “the reflecting mirror” may be two different entities,
but they share an important relationship, which is a characteristic of the Magic Mirror.
The reflected image and the reflecting mirror merge, erasing the distance that exists
between image and the mirror.3 0
In relation to Snow Country, Kawasaki argues that this window over which
Shimamura draws a line with his finger functions as a Magic Mirror. Aesthetically, the
reflected eye of Yoko (the girl sitting opposite him) is at the same time the eye of the
woman he is about to meet again (Komako). Kawasaki regards Komako and Yoko as
one being, describing Yoko as Komako’s alter-ego. Kawasaki fails to identify in the
image of Yoko reflected fragments of Shimamura. Hence, his essay does not examine
what this reflected image (Yoko) does to Shimamura’s inner self. If, as Kawasaki
contends, mirror images are reflections of the inner self, which part of Shimamura is
reflected? Kawasaki does not also explore the possibility of Shimamura becoming
object of the reflected image, ignoring Yoko as potential subject of the gaze. Kawasaki
2 9 Kawasaki Toshihiko, “Yume ka utsutsu ka maboroshi ka,” 13.
3 0 Kawasaki Toshihiko, “Yume ka utsutsu ka maboroshi ka,” 15.
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thus gives a conservative reading of the text in which women are to be looked at, and
are not entitled to a gaze of their own. As much as Kawasaki acknowledges mirror
images as vital in the process of Ego and Libido formation, he does not apply it to a
study of Shimamura.
Matsuura Hisaki’s essay may be considered as a response to Kawasaki’s
suggestion that women in Kawabata’s works are not entitled to see with their own
eyes.3 2 In an essay entitled “Miru koto no heisoku” or “Blocked from Seeing,”
Matsuura argues that Kawabata prevents women from becoming subjects of the gaze in
order to ensure that they never threaten male consciousness. According to Matsuura,
this “seeing block” in Kawabata’s novels functions such that when men look at women
they do not necessarily see them. Female characters not only are prevented from seeing
with their eyes (and making men objects of the gaze), but also are not seen as selves:
even as objects of the male gaze women are denied the chance to return the gaze. In the
pages that follow I demonstrate the shortcomings of Matsuura’s argument that
Kawabata annihilates women as subjects and objects of the gaze.
In her investigation of Kawabata’s descriptions of women and his placement of
them before the male gaze, Sandra Buckley argues that Kawabata needs to reduce
women to fragments/body parts in order for them not to threaten “the totality of
male.”3 3 The fragments of Yoko and Komako are “represented not as reflections of any
mirror image of their own selves but as constructions of the fear and desire of
3 1 Kawasaki Toshihiko, “Yume ka utsutsu ka maboroshi ka,” 18-19.
3 2 Matsuura Hisaki, “Miru koto to heisoku,” 269-275.
3 3 Sandra Buckley, “Kawabata Yasunari’s Poetics of Fragmentation,” 448.
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Shimamura.”3 4 I, too, address the implications of Shimamura’s limited way of looking
at the objects of his gaze. Buckley’s argument complements Matsuura’s by emphasizing
the impossibility of women to start or return the gaze. However, as I demonstrate, each
and every female body part in Snow Country returns Shimamura’s gaze so that he feels
himself being stared back at. In my analysis, I explore multiple ways of gazing that
decenter the omnipresent male voyeur and make him the object of the female gaze, even
when the woman unconsciously stares back through eyes reflected on the surface of a
window.
This male omnivoyeur is endowed with what Tsuruta Kin’ya calls manazashi,
which he describes as Shimamura’s way of looking with his imagination.3 5 In an essay
on Snow Country reminiscent of Matsuura’s concept of men’s “seeing block,” Tsuruta
argues that Shimamura creates objects of his desire through fantasy. Even when looking
at his objects, Shimamura constantly resists their reality, seeing only what he can
comfortably accept. Shimamura distorts his visual experiences to suit his troubled self
and his limited knowledge of the world around him. In other words, even his self
gratification is imagined. As does Matsuura, Tsuruta focuses on the male subject’s
inability, or unwillingness, to see the female object of his gaze.
One way to escape the reality the object of the gaze reflects back, is through
genshi or hallucinations. Kurihara Masanao, who was for some time Kawabata’s private
doctor, writes that people with a troubled consciousness recur to hallucinations as a way
to escape surrounding reality, but hallucinations are also peculiar to a specific state of
3 4 Sandra Buckley, “Kawabata Yasunari’s Poetics of Fragmentation,” 448.
3 5 Tsuruta Kin’ya, “Yukiguni,” Kokubungaku 62, no. 4 (1997): 86-92.
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mind, especially one that has been altered by alcohol, drug abuse, or lack of sleep.3 6 As
we shall see, Kawabata most often recurs to hallucinations as literary devices that
enhance the characters’ emotional scars and resist aspects of reality the characters are
not ready to embrace. Kawabata himself was not foreign to the experience of
hallucinations.3 7 Relying on his experiences he was able to portray them in the minds of
his male characters.
In the following analysis, I enlarge the spectrum of investigation on Kawabata’s
literature by showing how the gaze is not a monolithic and gender-specific entity, but
rather a fluid means to look at the world from different angles. As Maurice Merleau-
Ponty has shown, we are seen from all directions. It is on this premise that I justify my
use of Jacques Lacan’s theory of the gaze, of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ideas on vision and
visuality, of Luce Irigaray’s theory of “Woman as a Man’s Mirror” and of a feminist
perspective on the gaze to move the study of Kawabata’s Snow Country to a different
level of critical inquiry and contribute a new dimension to the study of vision, visuality
and the gaze in the context of Japanese literature.
3 6 Kurihara Masanao, Kawabata Yasunari. Seishin igakusha ni yoru sakuhin bunseki (Tokyo: Chuo
koronsha, 1982), 226.
3 7 Kurihara Masanao, Kawabata Yasunari, 225-226.
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Chapter One
Man at the Mirror: A Study of “Mirror of Evening Scenery”
(1) Shimamura’s kaimami(s) of the landscape and Yoko: strange objects of
the male gaze
Selected scholarship in English on Snow Country contends that the first kaimami
in the text is Shimamura’s kaimami of Yoko.1 There is little doubt that this is a kaimami
moment, but I suggest that this kaimami actually follows Shimamura’s kaimami of the
landscape, of the snow country. In the following pages, I will unpack the dynamics of
the opening passage of Snow Country originally entitled “Mirror of Evening Scenery”
with an emphasis on Shimamura’s kaimami of the land followed by his kaimami of
Yoko; I will show that although Shimamura’s kaimami moments are “tradition at
work,” the contexts are different from the Heian texts from which Kawabata draws, and
need to be understood as such. In the end I demonstrate that (1) these are indeed
“modem” kaimami moments; (2) that the kaimami topos must be used to unveil
emotional tensions in Shimamura, the male protagonist in Snow Country, (3) that in
Shimamura’s kaimami of Yoko dwells also nostalgia for a time now past (tradition); (4)
that with the sight of the landscape and Yoko, Shimamura immerses himself in a
problematic process of self-identification and discovery; (5) that Kawabata not only
1 Thomas Swann, “A Study of Kawabata Yasunari’s Major Novels” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University,
1974), 27-33; Dennis C. Washburn, “A Dizzying Descent into the Self: Kawabata and the Problem of
Cultural Amnesia,” in The Dilemma o f the Modern in Japanese Fiction (New Haven & London: Yale
University Press, 1997), 249; Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 78. So far, I have not found a
reference in scholarly works in Japanese that addresses this moment as a kaimami moment.
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revisits a classical topos, but also enriches it with specific modem/Westem motifs on
vision and visuality.
The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay
white under the night sky. The trained pulled up at a signal stop. [S3/Z9]2
A tunnel projects both the protagonist and the reader into the fantasyland of an
invented tradition of a pure Japanese snow country.3 The reader and the protagonist are
presented with a view of the land that does not belong to contemporary 1930s Japan.4
At the outset, the main feeling is that the whole picture is somehow off.
2 The letter “S” followed by the page number stands for Seidensticker’s translation of Snow Country
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957). The letter “Z” followed by the page number stands for volume 10 of
Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, where we find Yukiguni. The richness and complexities of Kawabata’s
language constitute challenges to his translators. The opening sentence of this novel is one of the most
difficult and controversial to render into English. Kawamoto Koji’s translation reads: “Once out of the
long tunnel at the provincial border, we were in the snow country. The bottom of the night turned white,”
Kawamoto Koji, “At Distance I Gaze: “Love” in Snow Country,” Poetica 29/30 (1989): 157; Dennis C.
Washburn renders it like this: “Emerging through the long tunnel at the provincial border, it was the snow
country. The very depths o f the night had turned white,” Dennis C. Washburn, “A Dizzying Descent into
the Self,” 248; Charles Cabell’s translation: “A long border tunnel, and then, the snow country. The floor
of the evening had turned white,” Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 59. For an in-depth study of how
controversial Edward G. Seidensticker’s translation of Snow Country was, and still is, see Takeda
Katsuhiko & Hasegawa Izumi, “Eiyaku Yukiguni no happyo toji no shokai to hyoka” (1969), reprinted in
Iwata Mitsuko, ed., Kawabata Yasunari “Yukiguni” sakuhinron shusei, volume 2, 60-75; Meguro Saya,
“Snow Country kenkyu. Yukiguni honyaku ni atatte no kufu” (1989), reprinted in Iwata Mitsuko, ed.,
Kawabata Yasunari “Yukiguni” sakuhinron shusei, volume 3, 351-369.
3 On the concept of “invented tradition” in Japanese culture see Stephen Vlastos, ed., Mirror o f Modernity
Invented Traditions o f Modem Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Stephen Vlastos
draws on E. J. Hobsbawn and T. O. Roger’s seminal text The Invention o f Tradition (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993).
4 While in the previous decades literature may have been a means to mirror groundbreaking changes in
Japanese society (cfr. Meiji Literature), in the 1920s and 1930s it could have been a problem to use
literature to vent concerns about the road taken by Japan, a road to nationalism and militarism, (cfr. The
proletarian literature movement). Cultural changes had become obvious in the aftermath of the death of
the Meiji Emperor in 1912, and the Taisho period (1912-1924) became a prelude to the troubling political
events of the early decades of the Showa Era (1924-1989). So-called Taisho writers, such as Shiga Naoya
(1883-1971), Akutagakwa Ryuunosuke (1892-1927), Tanizaki Jun’ichiro (1886-1965), and Kawabata
Yasunari (1899-1971), tended all to produce a literature that apparently did not reflect any interest in the
state of their nation, although Kawabata’s Azakusa kurenaidan dealt with urban changes in the 1920s, and
Akutagawa’s Kappa is considered a social satire. Tanizaki’s Naomi is often considered a mirror o f Japan
in the 1920s. On issues of state censorship see Gregory Kasza, The State and the Mass Media in Japan,
1918-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Richard Mitchell, Censorship in Imperial
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The tunnel is a divider: it stands at a provincial border (kokkyo). The tunnel
represents the border between what Shimamura leaves behind (Tokyo, the big city,
experience with modernity), and what he approaches (the country village, an idealized
environment, the rediscovery of an invented tradition, and visions/illusions of things
only Shimamura seems to be able to see).5 Kawabata needs few words to render the
landscape. His language is visual. The opening of the novel reads like a haiku poem.6
Shimamura and the readers experience the cozy and comfortable atmosphere of
a recently snowed in place: the silence, the awe, serenity, a surreal aura, the peculiar
whiteness of the land. Everything seems at peace. There is an apparent feeling not of
sadness or melancholy, but of simple tranquillity. Readers seem to be at peace with the
world and with their inner selves when projected into this surreal/unreal dreamland of
uncorrupted reality.
For a fleeting moment, a moment that will recur over and over in the novel, the
gaze of the readers and the gaze of Shimamura overlap. It is not only as if the readers
experience Shimamura’s feelings, but the readers are also able to see what Shimamura
does: the reader sees through Shimamura’s eyes. On the train, the readers are sitting at
the window with Shimamura, and along with him enjoy an idealized vision of an
idealized world. This landscape is no illusion. At the same time, the train’s movement
Japan. On the specific subject of the status of both Japanese literature and Japanese writers in 1930-Japan
see Roy Starrs, “Writing the National Narrative: Changing Attitudes Toward Nation-Building Among
Japanese Writers, 1900-1930,” in Japan’ s Competing Modernities. Issues in Culture and Democracy,
1900-1930, Sharon A. Minichiello, ed. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), 206-227. See also
H. D. Harootunian and Bernard Silberman, eds., Japan in Crisis. Essays in Taisho Democracy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1974); Thomas J. Rimer, ed., Culture and Identity. Japanese Intellectuals
during the Interwar Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
5 Tsuruta Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari no geijutsu, 85-90.
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does not seem to be too bothersome. There is a peculiar coldness of the weather on the
other side of the window glass, but the warmth inside a probably dimly lighted train is
of some comfort too. And so it happens that Shimamura’s eyes wander out there and
over those mountains and that the readers’ eyes follow that vision.
Three hours before the train pulls up at a signal stop at this provincial border,
Shimamura is lost in thoughts - thoughts peculiarly his own:
In his boredom, Shimamura stared (nagamete) at his left hand as the forefinger
bent and unbent. Only this hand seemed to have a vital and immediate memory
of the woman [Komako] he was going to see. The more he tried to call up a
clear picture of her, the more his memory failed him, the farther she faded away,
leaving him nothing to catch and hold. In the midst of this uncertainty only the
one hand, and in particular the forefinger, even now seemed damp from her
touch, seemed to be pulling him back to her from afar. Taken with the
strangeness of it, he brought the hand (yubi: finger) to his face, then quickly
drew a line across the misted-over window. [S6-7/Z11-12]7
In his boredom, Shimamura may be lost in sexual thoughts over Komako, the
mountain geisha he is going to see, but his eyes are also fixed on the landscape on the
other side of the window.8 Coldness from outside, his own breath, and the warmth
inside the train, have allowed mist to form over the window. Suddenly Shimamura’s
eyes are prevented from seeing outside. In an attempt to regain control over the view of
the landscape, Shimamura tries to clear some of the mist. His forefinger, the only
physical and sexual reminder of the woman he is going to see, runs horizontally over
6 Roy Starrs, Soundings in Time. The Fictive Art o f Yasunari Kawabata (Richmond, Surrey: Japan
Library, 1998), 123-124.
7 Seidensticker has censored this passage which from the Japanese original reads as follows: “And that
finger even now damp by her touch, he brought to his nose and smelled its odor/fragrance, but suddenly
with that finger he drew a line across the glass window (kono yubi dake wa onna no shokkan de ima mo
nurete ite, hana ni tsukete nioi o kaide mitari shite ita ga, futo sono yubi de mado garasu ni se o hiku...),
Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 10, p. 12. On the sexual overtones in this passage and on how
Kawabata self-censored himself when he first published this section see Nagaoka Chiro, “Masu-
komyunikeeshon ni okeru,” 61-92. Se also Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 24, p. 73.
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this misted glass window: he draws a straight line and creates an opening in order to
keep looking outside at the scenery.
This resembles a kaimami moment from an ancient tale (monogatari). The male
protagonist finds himself more than just looking: he is peeping. In the classic tradition, a
perfect kaimami required the man’s awareness of being subject of the gaze.9 In this
instance, it is Shimamura’s unawareness of having created a unique classical site that is
at the same time stunning and intriguing. Shimamura has created an opening on the
surface of this window. His intention is to keep looking at the snow country, but at the
end he reconstructs a peculiar kaimami moment: the object of his gaze is the beautiful
snow country unfolding before his eyes. Shimamura, therefore, finds himself peeping
through a man-made gap and look at a beautiful scene, unconsciously longing for an
uncontaminated tradition in this utopian countryside.
Hiding behind a mist-covered window, peeping through a finger-made gap (just
like the Heian finger that pulls down the blinds, making a crack in order to see),
Shimamura expects to keep looking without being overwhelmed by the beautiful
landscape. More importantly, he expects to stare at the scenery without any awareness
by the landscape of being looked at, or any ability by the landscape to return his gaze.
Despite such hope, the snow country looks back at Shimamura. A woman’s eye
suddenly appears reflected in the window:
A woman’s eye floated up before him. He almost called out in his astonishment.
But he had been dreaming, and when he came to himself he saw that it was only
the reflection in the window of the girl opposite. Outside it was growing dark,
8 Kawasaki Toshihiko, “Yume ka utsutsu ka maboroshi ka,” 14.
9 Norma Field, The Splendor o f Longing in The Tale o f Genji, 123; Doris G. Bargen, A Woman’ s
Weapon: Spirit Possession in the Tale o f Genji, 1-3.
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and the lights had been turned on in the train, transforming the window into a
mirror {sore de mado-garasu ga kagami ni naru). The mirror had been clouded
over with steam until he drew that line across it. [S7/Z12]1 0
Had it not been for this woman’s eye floating in front of him, Shimamura might have
not cleared the steam off the whole window. Thus, the first kaimami in Snow Country is
not a kaimami of Yoko, as some scholars have stated," but a kaimami of a traditional
and utopian landscape.
The dynamics of gazing in this opening passage allow for a strong relation of the
novel to classical Japanese tradition, which Kawabata himself makes clear when he
writes: “Shimamura perhaps saw her [Yoko] first of all as rather like a character out of
an old, romantic tale {monogatariy [S11/Z14].1 2 This underscores the need for a study
of “kaimami” as understood in the classical Japanese tradition versus a modem version
of kaimami, which Kawabata provides us in Snow Country. The word “kaimami” never
appears in Snow Country, but the dynamics of this typical male way of looking are
spelled out throughout the first pages of the novel.1 3
1 0 Kawabata had already used this technique of having a girl’s image reflected in a mirror in the short
story “The Blind Man and the Girl” (Mekura to shojo, 1928). The implications in this short story are
different. At the end the young woman O-Kayo claims to be able to see the forest for the first time only as
it has been described to her by the blind man, Tamura. And the blind man seems to be able “to see” O-
Kayo’s beauty as reflected in the mirror her older sister O-Toyo is using to repair her make up. Not only
can the blind man “see” the reflection of the woman in the mirror by tapping at it, but he also proves his
ability “to see” by giving a perfect account of the forest as reflected in this same mirror. Is the blind
man’s sight more accurate than that of a seeing person? “She [O-Kayo] wanted to ask him whether he
knew the difference between a real forest and the forest in the mirror.” In Kawabata Yasunari, Palm-of-
the-hand-stories (Tanagokoro no shosetsu), trans. Lane Dunlop & J. Martin Holman (New York: North
Point Press, 1988), 98-99. Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 1, pp. 217-221.
1 1 Thomas Swann, “A Study o f Kawabata Yasunari’s Major Novels,” 27-33; Dennis C. Washburn, “A
Dizzying Descent into the Self,” 249; Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 78.
1 2 For the scholarship that deals with the ways Kawabata revisits the Japanese tradition in Snow Country
see footnote no. 2 on page 13-14 of this dissertation.
1 3 To peep through a gap at a woman is not exclusive to Japanese tradition. We may recall the image of
men peeping through a crack in the blind at the naked Lady Godiva riding her horse, and blinded by such
vision. See Stephen Heath, “Difference,” Screen 19, no. 3 (1978), and Jennyjoy La Belle, Herself Beheld:
The Literature o f the Looking Glass (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).
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Although Yoko may remind us of a character from an ancient monogatari, she is
not aware of being the object of the male gaze: “There was no way for Yoko to know
that she was being stared at” [S11/Z14], Her earlier counterparts (e.g. Murasaki and all
the other female characters in Genji monogatari, or Sei Shonagon in Makura no soshi),
on the other hand, knew that blinds and fences had male eyes.1 4
Because Yoko’s image is reflected on the surface of a window that functions
like a mirror, I also provide a study of the multiple functions of the “looking glass” as a
means toward identification and misrecognition. I further look into the emotional
impact this mirror experience has on Shimamura. This window becomes a “screen”
over which the image of Yoko is projected. However, the window/screen is also a
“mirror” reflecting Yoko’s image, and playing an important role in terms of
Shimamura’s self-identification.
In her study on the function of mirrors in Western literature, Jennyjoy La Belle
claims that male characters in Western literature tend to convert the mirror into a
window: they look through the reflected image as they resist representations of the
self.1 5 In Snow Country, on the other hand, Shimamura seems to embrace what LaBelle
describes as a female attitude toward the mirror, in which the window is converted into
a mirror, and women contemplate their images as a way to question the self.1 6
Shimamura, however, makes it more interesting, because not only does he not see his
own reflection, but he looks through the mirror to the view of the landscape to discover
another kind of reflected self: Yoko.
1 4 Norma Field, The Splendor o f Longing in the Tale o f Genji, 123.
1 5 Jennyjoy La Belle, Herself Beheld, 21.
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Understanding how the window functions as a motion picture screen, I
demonstrate its impact in raising issues about self-identification and self-discovery.
Kawabata had developed an interest in movies and movie production while he was a
member of the New Sensationalist Group (Shinkankaku-ha). In 1926 he wrote and
published a screenplay, “Kurutta Ichipeeji” (A Page of Madness), which was later made
into a movie by Kinugasa Teinosuke.1 7 Something of that knowledge about movies
lingers in the words of Snow Country:
In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and
the reflected figures like motion pictures (eiga) superimposed one on the other.
The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent
and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted
together into a sort of symbolic world not of this world. Particularly when a light
out in the mountains shone in the center of the girl’s face, Shimamura felt his
chest rise at the inexpressible beauty of it. [S9/Z13]
Three hours later the train arrives at the signal stop. Suddenly, the readers are
projected back to the beginning of the novel again. The window is then dark:
The charm of the mirror faded with the fading of the landscape. Yoko’s face was
still there, but for all the warmth of her ministrations, Shimamura had found in
her a transparent coldness. He did not clear the window as it clouded over again.
[S11/Z14-15]
1 6 Jennyjoy La Belle, Herself Beheld, 2.
1 7 “Kurutta Ichipeeji” (A Page of Madness): Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 2, pp. 385-418. To
understand the impact o f the movie as a genre on Kawabata in the 1920s and 1930s see Toeda Hirokazu,
“Asakusa kurenaidan no eiga-sei: 1930-nen zengo no gensetsu kuukan,” Nihon Bungaku 43, no. 11
(1994): 15-26. See also Toeda Hirokazu, “Kawabata Yasunari to eiga,” in Kawabata Bungaku no Sekai,
Tamura Mitsumasa, Baba Shigeyuki, and Hara Zen, eds., volume 4 (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 1999), 251-
264. The novel Snow Country was made into a move twice. The most popular version was produced in
1957, and the movie was directed by Toyoda Shiro. The screenwriter, Yasumi Toshio, “read Yukiguni
against the generic horizon of social realism and adapted it as such to the screen,” Richard Torrance,
“Popular Languages in Yukiguni,” in Studies in Modern Japanese Literature. Essays and Translations in
Honor o f Edwin McClellan, Dennis Washburn and Alan Tansman, eds. (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese
Studies, The University of Michigan, 1997), 255.
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Shimamura’s interest in the window that had become a mirror disappears with
the same speed as the disappearance of the landscape from his sight. This passage
strengthens the importance of the connection not only between the mirror and the
landscape, but also among the mirror, the landscape, and Shimamura. Yoko’s face does
not disappear. It is not only the image of her eye that we are given, but it is her whole
face that is now projected onto the window/mirror. Yoko’s ghostly/dreamy appeal has
vanished: physically she still sits opposite Shimamura, and attends to Yukio’s needs,
but she no longer inspires awe as before. A transformation has taken place. Her
“transparent coldness” (sunda tsumetasa) is all that is left. Unable to deal emotionally
with such coldness, Shimamura decides to put an end to his peeping activity. He does
not clear the steam that has reappeared over the window. Shimamura consciously
decides not to watch anymore but, in doing so, he also puts an end to Yoko’s unique
way of staring back at him. Shimamura resists Yoko’s image as embodiment of a
returned gaze and as reflected image of himself.
The removal of the landscape coincides with the removal of the aura that has
surrounded Yoko and defined her. At this point she crosses the border between dream
and reality, and becomes a physical being, cold and distant. I question, however,
whether or not “the fading of the landscape” and the fading of “the charm of the mirror”
do not have more to do with Shimamura’s own anxieties about losing something inside
himself. The landscape is gone. That peculiar feeling of appeal toward what Kawasaki
Toshihiko defines as the “magic mirror” is gone.1 8 The dream sensation is gone:
Shimamura is projected once again into the bitter reality of his own station in life. And
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Yoko’s “transparent coldness” stands as a troubling reminder of the impossibility of his
succeeding in his attempt “to rid himself of the Western modernity corrupting his
soul.”1 9
(2) Windows, Mirrors, and Screens: issues in re-discovery and self-
identification
In the following sections I analyze the function of the window, understood as
both screen and mirror, in “Mirror of Evening Scenery.” I approach this issue from
three different perspectives. Using Jacques Lacan’s theory of the gaze, I consider this
mirror/window as it functions as a screen. Relying on Film Theory, I read the
window/screen as being a mirror. I conclude by drawing on another reading of the
mirror provided by Luce Irigaray, when she identifies “Woman as a man’s mirror.”
Through this analysis I intend to add a new perspective to the understanding of the
relationship between Shimamura as subject of the gaze, and Yoko as his object. The
main premise is that Yoko’s reflected image is object of Shimamura’s kaimami, and not
Yoko as physical being. This distinction is necessary in order to also understand my
argument of Yoko’s image as embodiment of Lacan’s objet a. My analysis also widens
the understanding of the mirror in Snow Country as means through which Shimamura
questions the self.
1 8 Kawasaki Toshihiko, “Yume ka utsutsu ka maboroshi ka,” 13.
1 9 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 16.
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(2.1.) When the window/mirror functions as a screen: Jacques Lacan
Before delving into film theorists’ reading of Jacques Lacan’s theory of the
gaze, we must examine Lacan himself, and his perception of vision and visuality. Film
theorists have relied especially on Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the
Function of the I” to develop arguments “about the subject’s narcissistic relation to the
film and about that relationship’s dependence on “the gaze.”2 0 However, it is in Seminar
XI, in a section titled “Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a” that “Lacan reformulates his earlier
mirror phase essay and paints a picture very different from the one painted by film
theory.”2 1 Therefore, before analyzing Lacan’s theory of the gaze, it is necessary to
revisit his Mirror Stage. The subsequent discussion of “The Eye, the Look, and the
Gaze” includes a partial summary of Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s
respective positions on issues of vision and gazing. I apply all of the above to the
textual analysis of “Mirror of Evening Scenery” to reveal a picture of Shimamura in his
personal quest to accepting himself.
(2.1.1.) The Mirror Stage
In his “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I” Lacan writes:
“The child, at an age when he is for a time, however short, outdone by the chimpanzee
in instrumental intelligence, can nevertheless already recognize as such his own image
in a mirror.”2 2 In The Mirror Stage the child is introduced to issues of self-discovery
2 0 Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan,” October 49
(Summer 1989): 65-66.
2 1 Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject,” 65, Copjec’s emphasis.
2 2 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits. A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977), 1.
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and identification, and in the end the child, if all goes well, becomes master of his own
body image:
The child’s primary identification with this image promotes the structuring of
the “I” and puts an end to that singular aspect of psychic experience that Lacan
calls the fantasy o f the fragmented body. For in fact, before the mirror stage, the
child does not yet experience his body as a unified totality, but as something
disjointed.2 3
In the mirror stage, Lacan identifies three moments in the process through which
the child ends up conquering his own body image. (1) At first, the child perceives and
believes that the image of his body in the mirror is a real thing; therefore, he tries to
approach this image and take hold of it. This first experience points to the initial
confusion the child experiences between self and other. (2) In a second moment, the
child discovers on his own that the image/other in the mirror is not a real being, but just
an image. At this point the child does not approach the image or try to grab it, and his
behavior already shows how he can differentiate between the image and the reality of
the other. (3) In the third stage, the child now knows that the other reflected in the
mirror is only an image, but, more importantly, he believes that that image is his own.
Therefore,
In re-cognizing himself through the image, he [the child] is able to reassemble
the scattered, fragmented body into a unified totality, the representation of his
own body. The body image is therefore a structuring factor in the formation of
the subject’s identity, since it is through this image that he achieves his primal
identification.2 4
2 3 Joel Dor, Introduction to the Reading o f Lacan. The Unconscious Structured Like a Language, Judith
Feher Gurewich, ed. (Norvale, New Jersey & London: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1997), 95, emphasis in the
original.
2 4 Joel Dor, Introduction to the Reading o f Lacan, 96, emphasis in the original.
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This, however, is an imaginary recognition considering that between the age of
six and eighteen months “the child is not yet mature enough to have a specific cognition
of his own body.”2 5 At the end of the mirror stage, “the child has begun his
development as a subject but is still in a quasi-fusional relationship of undifferentiation
• 9 6
with the mother.” This relation is a peculiar one, which will affect the child’s
formation. This relationship, in fact,
Is the result of a particular position taken by the child toward his mother as he
seeks to identify with what he supposes to be the object o f her desire. This
identification, through which the desire o f the child becomes desire o f the desire
o f the mother, is to a great extent facilitated, even induced, by the mother’s
unmediated closeness to the child, even if only for caretaking and the
satisfaction of basic needs. In other words, the closeness of these exchanges
leads the child to take himself to be the object that the mother supposedly lacks.
• • • • 97
This object that is capable of filling in the lack in the other is the phallus.
It is important to understand the dynamics behind the child’s self discovery
when positioned in front of a mirror reflecting an image of himself which he, at first,
does not recognize, and with which, in the end, he identifies. Sigmund Freud called this
identification “primary narcissism,” while Lacan was careful to claim that during the
mirror stage it is the ego itself that is at stake.2 8 Lacan wrote that the sight of a specular
image “situates the ego, before its social determination, in a fictional direction, which
will always remain irreducible for the individual alone.”2 9 However, Lacan shared with
another French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, “a deep distrust of the spatialized self
created by the reifying look. . . . Both posited a desiring subject, whose primordial lack
2 5 Joel Dor, Introduction to the Reading o f Lacan, 97, Dor’s emphasis.
2 6 Joel Dor, Introduction to the Reading o f Lacan, 97.
2 7 Joel Dor, Introduction to the Reading o f Lacan, 98, Dor’s emphasis.
2 8 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, 6.
2 9 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, 2.
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could never be filled either by internalizing the look of the other or by accepting the
“misrecongnition” (meconnaissance) of the mirror.”3 0
Lacan writes:
The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from
insufficiency to anticipation - and which manufactures for the subject, caught up
in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends
from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I [Lacan] shall call
orthopaedic - and, lastly, to the assumption of the armor of an alienating
identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject’s entire mental
development.3 1
Film theory has understood Lacan’s Mirror Stage as that moment when the
image on the mirror/screen ignites narcissistic tensions on the side of the person/man at
the mirror. The subject takes the image reflected on the screen “as a full and sufficient
representation of itself and its world,” and embraces the problematic belief that it is this
T9
image that makes the subject fully visible to itself. In Film Theory the gaze of the
viewing subject is the place from where identification takes place: “The subject comes
T T
into being by identifying with the image’s signified.” However, this comfortable
feeling of unthreatened position as subject of the gaze is questioned when the subject is
seen by the object of the gaze, when the line of vision of the reflected image interferes
with the workings of the subject of the gaze, and this is the aspect of Lacan’s theory that
film theorists fell short of understanding.
When applied to Shimamura’s case, the above becomes an intriguing issue.
Shimamura does not see the image of himself in the mirror, although he is a man at the
3 0 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes. The Denigration o f Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 347.
3 1 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, 4.
3 2 Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject,” 59.
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mirror. What he sees is somebody else’s fragmented body part or, in Lacan’s words, “a
fragmented body image;” in other words, a woman’s eye: “the one eye by itself was
strangely beautiful” (S7/Z12). If we embrace Film Theory’s mis-reading of Lacan’s
Mirror Stage, at this point identification is already taking place on Shimamura’s side,
although Yoko’s eye already stands for an inverted gaze.
What happens next is a recreation of a strikingly maternal moment. Kawabata’s
experimentation with movie production is in full swing when he describes Shimamura
watching “the couple” reflected on the mirror/screen. The fragmented female body part,
the eye, suddenly becomes whole (“the succession of phantasies that extends from a
fragmented body-image to a form of its totality,” Jacques Lacan), and a man also
appears:
The girl leaned attentively forward, looking down at the man before her.
Shimamura could see from the way her strength was gathered in her shoulders
that the suggestion of fierceness in her eyes was but a sign of an intentness that
did not permit her to blink. The man lay with his head pillowed at the window
and his legs bent so that his feet were on the seat facing, beside the girl. It was a
third-class coach. The pair were not directly opposite Shimamura but rather one
seat forward, and the man’s head showed in the window-mirror only as far as
the ear. [S7-8/Z12]
Suddenly there is a man in the mirror.3 4 Shimamura finds himself peeping at a
man as well, recreating another kaimami moment, with a man as object of the gaze.
Only this man brings out the maternal in Yoko: she attends to his needs as a mother to
3 3 Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject,” 59.
3 4 Tsuruta Kin’ya has addressed the issue of what this trip means in Shimamura’s and Yukio’s lives. To
Shimamura this is a trip toward life, toward a rediscovery of what it means to be alive in this modem
corrupting world. To Yukio, however, his trip to the snow country is a trip toward death. Yukio comes
home to die after having been physically affected by an imported Western disease (Tsuruta Kin’ya,
Kawabata Yasunari no geijutsu, 95). Tsuruta also puts more emphasis on Yukio as he describes the
young man as the shadow lingering in this snow country, and it is his living within Komako and Yoko’s
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her child. The man is obviously not well, but the narrator indicates that he feels
protected by the physical closeness of this woman who looks after him:
The man’s face in the mirror suggested the feeling of security and repose it
gave him to be able to rest his eyes on the girl’s breast. His very weakness lent a
certain soft balance and harmony to the two figures. . . . For Shimamura there
was none of the pain that the sight of something truly sad can bring. Rather it
was as if he were watching (nagamete) a tableau in a dream - and that was no
doubt the working of his strange mirror. [S8-9/Z12-13]
Yoko assumes the role of the protective Mother. At this point Shimamura also
sees his fragmented ego. He sees this Mother/tradition with which he wants to identify
(one of the reasons of this trip is the rediscovery of the Mother/tradition), but which, at
the beginning, is “fragmented.” His own ego is fragmented at the outset of the trip. “The
eye,” the body part that he spots first on “his” mirror is Yoko’s eye that is seen without
being seen. It is the eye that sees, but does not know itself to be seen. This is also part of
Shimamura’s fragmented ego. Completeness, at this point, belongs only to the
landscape.
When Shimamura finally sees the image of Yoko in her entirety, she shares the
scene with a man. The man’s body, however, is also fragmented: the man’s ear, the
man’s face. His body rests in a fetal position on the woman’s breast. This is not the
image of the primal scene, of the child catching his/her parents in sexual intercourse;
this is the image of a time long past even from memory. All that matters is the “soft
balance and harmony of the two figures” [S8-9/Z12-13].
Gazing at the mirror, Shimamura deals with images that stir his inner emotions
and lead him to question the “reality” or “unreality” of what is taking place before his
consciousnesses that makes these two women more vivid (Tsuruta Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari no
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eyes. If we understand Yoko as a sort of alter-ego of Shimamura, the fact that in this
passage she is not a fragmented body part, but rather “whole” must signify
Shimamura’s coming to terms with his own issue of identification. To see the image of
Yoko as a “whole body” ignites awareness on his part about the reality of his self. In
other words, Yoko is indeed looking back at him asking for “recognition.” The problem,
however, is complicated by the image of a fragmented male body on the trajectory of
Shimamura’s gaze. As soon as the protagonist attempts recognition and identification
and claims victory in his quest to overcome incompleteness and imperfection, he is
thrust back into the abyss of his troubled and confused self by the image of a
“fragmented man” in the mirror. This last image leads him to question not only the
structure of his “ego” but also his sanity: “it was as if he were watching a tableau in a
dream - and that was no doubt the working of his strange mirror” [S9/Z12-13].
Shimamura plunges back into the First Phase of Lacan’s Mirror Stage, and once again
experiences confusion between “self’ and “other.” Shimamura never breaks from the
three phases of the Mirror Stage because, at a time when he is ready to recognize
Yoko’s image as his own (Stage Three), he is once again unable to recognize the image
of the “fragmented man” in the mirror (Stage One). Shimamura does not, and cannot
accept the “misrecognition” of the mirror; at least not yet.
Although Yukio, the “fragmented man,” does not look back, Shimamura cannot
help but feel under the male gaze. Shimamura may initially feel safe in his little spot on
the train thinking that he will never become the object of somebody else’s gaze. The
landscape, Yoko, and Yukio, however, do look back. Shimamura is then caught under
geijutsu, 104).
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the spell of a unique Gaze, trying hard to reject “the Look of the Other,” but in the end
succumbing to it. Aware of what Yoko’s image and the image of Yukio’s fragmented
body reflect back, Shimamura does not clear the mist that accumulates on the surface of
the window again. To identify with Yoko and Yukio’s images could mean to identify
with two different dimensions of death. Yukio is a dying man, and Shimamura must
resist the reality of such image, because his trip is about the recovery of life. Yoko’s
image embodies also elements of a tradition already disappeared from human sight,
already extinguished. Therefore, Shimamura resists identifying with her image in an
attempt to strive toward a continuation of his life. Shimamura remains a man at the
mirror, unwilling to look at any image this mirror could reflect, as he allows a barrier
(mist) to stand between his gaze and the line of vision of the reflected objects.
Kawabata sets the stage to portray alienation, displacement, and anxiety in a
world that was supposed to be uncontaminated by the threat of modernity. But after all,
the train is bringing to the snow country a confused and troubled man who has
experienced modernity. What does the snow country do to Shimamura when it returns
the gaze? What happens to his anxieties? How is Yoko looking back?
(2.1.2.) In the realm of the Eye, the Look, and the Gaze
As Martin Jay has pointed out in his study of “vision” in twentieth-century
French thought, Lacan formed his ideas on vision and gazing in a specific French
cultural and intellectual environment. According to Jay, Lacan’s theory of the gaze
rested on the premises of other French intellectuals’ ideas, and Lacan owes a debt of
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gratitude especially to Jean-Paul Sartre and his concept of “The Look.”3 5 In the
following pages, I relate Sartre, Lacan, and Merleau-Ponty’s definitions of The Gaze to
the opening passage of Kawabata’s Snow Country. This will help illustrate how
Kawabata appropriates Western ideas in his literary production.
In Being and Nothingness (1956), Sartre relates his concept of the look (le
regard) of the other in a story of the gazer/watcher in the park. Sartre identifies two
moments: (1) the viewer enters the park, (2) another person enters the park. When the
viewer enters the park, he is by himself. He is master of his own visual domain. He has
visual access to everything that is in the park. He occupies a privileged position from
which all of the park becomes visible to him. This viewer is not threatened in this place
from where he masters the view. However, the element of threat suddenly presents
itself. Somebody else enters the park, and in this way he also invades the field of vision
of the former lone watcher. The former subject of the gaze becomes object of the gaze:
he becomes spectacle to the intruder’s sight. Everything is suddenly inverted, and the
intruder seemingly takes visual control over both the park and the lone watcher. As
Bryson comments on Sartre’s story,
The watcher self is now a tangent, not a center, a vanishing point, an opacity on
the other’s distant horizon. Everything re-converges on this intrusive center
where the watcher self is not: the intruder becomes a kind of drain which sucks
in all of the former plenitude, a black hole pulling the scene away from the
watcher self into an engulfing void.3 6
The concept of shame starts taking shape. In Sartre’s theory of the Look, the intruder
does not necessarily need to be seen by the subject of the gaze. In fact, a noise of
3 5 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 346 & ff.
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rustling leaves, or a movement in the bushes may alert the subject about somebody
else’s presence. In other words, the subject of the look does not need to see the object
physically to realize that somebody has invaded his field of vision. It is in the potential
look of the other that the subject’s feeling of shame originates.
Sartre emphasizes the troubling implications of becoming and being “the victim
of the look.” Sartre demonizes the gaze:
My apprehension of the Other in the world as probably being a man refers to my
permanent possibility of being-seen-by-him; that is, to the permanent possibility
that a subject who sees me may be substituted for the object seen by me. ‘Being-
seen-by-the-Other” is the truth of “Seeing-the-Other.’3 7
The self is tom between these two ways of relating to the other.
However, “what most often manifests a look is the convergence of two ocular
-JQ
globes in my direction.” In other words, it is when these eyes rest on me and I am
being looked at that I am incapable of returning the gaze. From here emerges Sartre’s
distinction between “the eye” as object of the look, and “the look” itself.3 9 Sartre writes:
It is never when eyes are looking at you that you can find them beautiful or ugly,
that you can remark on their color, the Other’s look hides his eyes; he seems to
go in front o f them. . . . To perceive is to look at, and to apprehend a look is not
to apprehend a look-as-object in the world (unless the look is not directed upon
us); it is to be conscious of being looked a t4 0
3 6 Norman Bryson, “The Gaze in the Expanded Field,” in Vision and Visuality, Hal Foster, ed. (Seattle:
Bay Press, 1988), 89, emphasis in the original.
3 7 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being & Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E.
Barnes (New York: Pocket Books, 1956), 345.
3 8 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being & Nothingness, 346.
3 9 As Martin Jay points out, Lacan will also take up this distinction in his own works. Martin Jay,
Downcast Eyes, 288.
4 0 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being & Nothingness, 346-47.
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As Jay comments, “now, perception is understood as an act in the sense that it
transforms the object of the gaze, whereas imagination is identified . . . with the
paralyzing internalization of the other’s gaze.”4 1 Jay continues,
The non reciprocity between look and eye, between being the subject and
object of the gaze, is in fact related to a fundamental struggle for power. For the
one who casts the look is always subject and the one who is its target is always
turned into an object. Or at least, objectification is the telos of the look, even if it
comes up against the ultimate barrier of the “for-itself s” constitutive
nothingness. The fundamental property of the subject is, however, threatened
when the self identifies with the other’s look.4 2
Sartre’s argument points to the sense of shame at becoming object of the other’s
gaze, and the limitations of my possibilities: “I see myselfbecavLse somebody sees m e.. .
. Shame is the recognition of the fact that I am indeed that object which the Other is
looking at and judging.”4 3 Sartre points out that one loses the power of mastery over
one’s own field of vision when a foreign element, an intruder, invades it. Consequently,
not only does this field of vision become object of his gaze, but also the original still
point who enjoyed the privileged site of subject of the gaze becomes part of the
intruder’s gaze. The watcher is thus defined by the intruder’s look: “It is shame or pride
which reveals to me the Other’s look and myself at the end of that look.”4 4 The watcher
gains a sense of shame, and repositions himself according to the intruder’s gaze. The
gaze makes the watcher’s self, the intruder’s gaze makes him; therefore, the watcher is
and becomes what he is. The watcher can now be seen from all directions: from the still
point that now belongs to the intruder, and from the still point of the landscape/park.
4 1 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 288.
4 2 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 288.
4 3 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being & Nothingness, 349-50, emphasis in the original.
4 4 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being & Nothingness, 350.
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Points of vision converge on the watcher: the watcher is exposed to the gaze of the
world, he becomes part of the spectacle of the world.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty further explores this aspect of vision through his
insistence on mingling the viewer with the world on view, which Martin Jay
understands as “an ecstatic decentering of the subject, an acknowledgement that
however active perception may be, it also meant a kind of surrender of the strong
ego.”4 5 Merleau-Ponty, however, embraces Lacan’s idea of the Mirror Stage as he
asserts that the mirror stage could be the place where alienated selves are formed and
traumas among visually constituted selves ensue.4 6
Sartre’s theory of the look presents us with challenging possibilities when used
in the context of Kawabata’s Snow Country. At the beginning of the novel, Shimamura
is master of his field of vision. He dominates the sight of the landscape. When Yoko
enters this field of vision, however, she does not see him (and she never will). If the self
is constituted by the gaze of the other, Shimamura’s self is troubled by the fact of not
being acknowledged, of not being seen. Although he feels uneasy, he recognizes the
impropriety of staring at Yoko. Such awareness on his part may also hide his fear of
Yoko returning the gaze, and him being caught in the field of vision of the other. In this
way, Kawabata constructs a powerful female character, invested with the ability to
create unsettling tension on the part of the subject of the gaze even when she does not
look back. Yoko stands as a representation of Sartre’s intruder in the park.
4 5 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 309. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology o f Perception, trans. Colin
Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962); Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible,
trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1968).
4 6 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, 129.
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However, being a very troubled self - even without the other’s gaze
participation into it - Shimamura is able to internalize his fear of being seen. He still is
master of his field of vision, but he is also very aware of the intruder’s eye, an eye that
attempts to make him whole again, but still a fragmented and displaced self. Therefore,
only the landscape can look back at him. Only the scenery reconfigures Shimamura’s
confused self. Shimamura surrenders only to the beauty of this utopian land of tradition,
another form of his split ego. The protagonist, though, also surrenders to the feeling of
being caught in the Other’s field of vision. In other words, Shimamura catches himself
looking.
In his way of looking and thinking about himself looking, Shimamura
anticipates the agony of becoming the object of Yoko’s gaze, and he internalizes the
paralyzing fear of the Other/Yoko’s gaze. Yoko’s returned look would be a threat to
that wholeness he is striving to achieve.4 7 Unlike the lone watcher in Sartre’s theory of
the gaze, Shimamura does not become spectacle to Yoko’s sight, but he plays with the
possibility. Thus, Shimamura invests Yoko with the power “to look back,” even if she
never does so. The idea of the unlikely event of being caught in Yoko’s field of vision,
and thereby undergoing a transformation from subject to object of the gaze, already
overwhelms him with shame.
Moroever, to anticipate Yoko’s returned gaze increases Shimamura’s anxiety
over “Being-seen-by-the-Other” and the truth of “Seeing-the-Other.” Only Yoko’s
returned gaze would allow Shimamura a thorough introspection and recognition of his
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ego. “Seeing-the-Other,” or seeing Yoko, is the first step toward a completion of his
process of self-recognition. Shimamura needs to anticipate Yoko’s returned gaze in
order to come to terms with his tainted self. Shimamura subconsciously buys into the
dynamics of being made by the intruder/Yoko’s gaze. Only at that point, by becoming
object of the Other/Yoko’s gaze, could he also surrender to the truth of “Seeing-the-
Other”: the Other/Yoko makes him surrender. The lack of the Other’s gaze leaves him
incomplete and unable to relinquish his questionable ego to the spectacle of the world.
This apparent need to identify with the Other/Yoko’s look hides the potential
“threat” of such a gaze toward the subject per se who is troubled over the meaning of
recognizing himself in the Look of the Other: I am what the Other sees. In Shimamura’s
case, Yoko’s gaze would reflect back the image of a man striving to achieve a purity as
pure and uncontaminated as the classical tradition. However, his is a tainted tradition.
This is the dilemma that haunts his puzzled self. To recognize himself in Yoko’s Look
and Eye becomes one of the many purposes of his journey to the snow country.
As previously explored, Sartre’s position is that we are what we are because we
are under the constant gaze of the Other. A sense of shame arises when we catch
ourselves being-seen-by-the-Other, but that is also the moment when we become
somehow visible to ourselves. Shimamura falls obviously short of becoming fully
visible to himself. He catches himself seeing, but to anticipate Yoko’s returned gaze is
not to become object of her gaze; it is only to play with the possibility of finally
becoming visible to himself. Shimamura remains haunted by the possibility of never
4 7 Kawabata will explore this issue again in the House o f the Sleeping Beauties, when the male
protagonist Eguchi plays with the possibility the sleeping girl may open her eyes and return the gaze, and
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becoming object of the Other’s gaze, and never achieving subjective recognition of
himself.
Shimamura’s view is in sharp contrast with his earlier counterparts, such as
Prince Genji in the Genji monogatari. In the Heian tradition, men needed to be caught
in their act of peeping in order to start a sexual relationship with the object of their gaze.
In other words, to look also meant to possess sexually, and the returned female gaze
was an invitation to come back later on in the night. No sense of shame resided on the
side of either subjects or objects of kaimami activities. Shimamura’s kaimami of Yoko
is invested with features that are foreign to the classical Japanese tradition of kaimami
activity. Shimamura’s sense of shame at the possibility of being caught peeping is the
troubling element of a Western descent that Kawabata brings to the novel. Kawabata
has, in this way, enriched the classical kaimami topos, and he has thus allowed for an
intriguing study of the dynamics of gazing in his works.
Kawabata’s female characters are not powerless gazing entities, and at this stage
in the author’s literary production they already make a meaningful difference in the
making of male subjects’ consciousness, even when they do not physically gaze back.
My view of this issue of female, gazing opposes Matsuura Hisaki’s argument that
Kawabata denies women in his novels the power to look back. Matsuura asserts that
by representing women as dead bodies {Sore o mita hitotachi), or by placing their
fragmented body parts on the other side of a train window {Snow Country), or by
emphasizing their voices on the other side of the phone {Thousand Cranes), Kawabata
threaten that wholeness he is desperately trying to preserve.
4 8 Matsuura Hisaki, “Miru koto no heisoku,” 269-275.
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constructs a physical and emotional distance between the subject and object of the gaze.
Matsuura, however, has not considered sufficiently that the female gaze is so
overwhelming that Kawabata needs to find a literary device to build distance between
men and women in his novels, but that in the end men always feel under the female
gaze. The lingering question of what would happen if these women were to look back
(so apparent in House o f Sleeping Beauties) becomes the common motif in Kawabata’s
novels after the 1930s, to the point that, in the end, and exactly in Beauty and Sadness,
women finally do look back.
Sartre’s argument about The Look rests mainly on the sense of shame of
potentially becoming object of the Other’s look, and on the implications of internalizing
the paralyzing gaze of the Other. Lacan expands this theory of vision, bringing in issues
concerning desires to identify with the object of the Gaze, desires to become object of
the Gaze, and the ability to see and create objects of desire. However, Lacan’s concept
of the Gaze is different from Sartre’s concept of the Look. Showing influences from
both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, Lacan goes on to formulate ideas peculiarly his own.
Like Sartre, in Lacan’s analysis of vision
The viewing subject does not stand at the center of a perceptual horizon, and
cannot command the chains and series of signifiers passing across the visual
domain. Vision unfolds to the side of, in tangent to, the field of the other.4 9
Lacan names this specific form of seeing, as “seeing on the field of the other, seeing
under the Gaze.”5 0 It is in “Of the Gaze as Objet Petit a” that Lacan gives an account of
what he means by “the gaze.”
4 9 Norman Bryson, “The Gaze in the Expanded Field,” 94.
5 0 Norman Bryson, “The Gaze in the Expanded Field,” 94.
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According to Lacan, the subject overcomes its sense of incompleteness through
identification, and specifically through identification with the object of its desire:
The interest the subject takes in his own split is bound up with that which
determines it — namely, a privileged object, which has emerged from some
primal separation, from self-mutilation induced by the very approach of the real,
whose name, in our algebra, is the objet a 5 1
This objet a is “Lacan’s term for the object of lack or the missing object that will
seemingly satisfy the drive for plenitude.”5 2 This objet a is nothing less than “the
phallus which the child (of whatever sex, according to Lacan) wishes to be in order to
c - i
make up for the mother’s alleged lack, her apparent castration.” This objet a can also
be transformed “into the Symbolic register as the metonymic object of desire which
motivates the split subject’s interminable search for a unity it can never achieve.”5 4
However, it also works in the so-called realm of the Imaginary, where
The object on which depends the phantasy from which the subject is suspended
in an essential vacillation is the gaze. . . . From the moment that this gaze
appears, the subject tries to adapt himself to it, he becomes that punctiform
object, that point of vanishing being with which the subject confuses his own
failure.5 5
In Lacan’s theory, “The Gaze” does not belong to the subject that casts the look,
but it originates on the field of vision of the object of the look. The main property of the
object of the look is to be the point of origin for The Gaze, a Gaze to which the viewing
subject will perpetually try to adapt.
5 1 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psycho-Analysis, trans. Alan Sheridan, ed. Jacques-
Alain Miller (New York: Norton, 1978), 83.
5 2 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 361.
5 3 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 361.
5 4 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 361.
5 5 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psycho-Analysis, 83.
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Under Shimamura’s look, Yoko as reflected image is (1) objet a, or object of
desire, and (2) mistress of The Gaze. Although Kawabata never uses language that
could lead us to believe that Shimamura had a physical/sexual interest in Yoko, as
embodiment of objet a, Yoko’s image cannot escape the sexual connotation Lacan
inscribes on objects of desire. Yoko’s image is an object of desire of a different kind,
created by Shimamura’s fantasy to have and behold something that will help him to
overcome his sense of incompleteness and achieve “unity.” But according to Lacan’s
argument, the viewing subject is doomed to remain in the limbo of his own
incompleteness, stuck in the Mirror Stage, and this is Shimamura’s predicament, at least
at the beginning of the novel.
The origin of the Gaze on the field of vision of the Other/Yoko increases the
sense of instability and uncertainty that Shimamura seems to experience at the outset of
the novel. Shimamura does not own the Lacanian Gaze, but the Gaze is thrust upon him
from the field of vision of the object of his look. He feels this Gaze constantly while at
the window/mirror. Before examining the features of this type of Gaze in the context of
“Mirror of Evening Scenery,” it is necessary to return to Lacan’s own explanation of
The Gaze when it functions as object of desire.
To explain how “in scopic relations the gaze functions as the objet a” Lacan
refers to specific passages in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, and questions Sartre’s
position when he states that in Sartre’s argument about the look “the gaze I encounter ..
. is, not a seen gaze, but a gaze imagined by me in the field of the Other.”5 6 Although in
this way Lacan challenged Sartre’s claim “that the eyes cannot see the eye that looks at
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it,” he could not but agree “that the gaze had the quality of being unseen.”5 7 As Jay
further explains,
The unseen character of the gaze meant it was not necessarily that of another
subject looking threateningly at the original subject, but might rather be
understood as a function of the desire of the original subject, the desire for the
objet a, or perhaps even for the large “A” that subtends such desire.5 8
To explain this relationship, Lacan turns to Hans Holbein’s painting, The Ambassadors'.
“What is this strange, suspended, oblique object in the foreground in front of these two
figures?”5 9 Martin Jay provides an answer to Lacan’s question:
In The Ambassadors this phallic gaze, that of the dominant Cartesian
perspectivalist scopic regime, was challenged by another, which was expressed
by the distorted skull at the bottom of the canvas, a skull whose natural shape
could be restored only by an oblique glance from the painting’s edge. Such an
object . . . expressed another kind of desire than that which seeks phallic
plenitude. Instead, it suggested the desire of the Symbolic realm in which the
subject is decentered, split, and comes to terms with its own incompleteness.6 0
In other words, whereas the eye must be understood as that of a desiring subject who
believes he can find in a mirror image of himself specular plenitude and phallic
wholeness, “the gaze is that of an objective other in a field of pure monstrance.”6 1
Because of features peculiarly its own - features that both Sartre and Lacan
acknowledge - the Gaze cannot be seen. Shimamura, therefore, does not see the Gaze,
but he can feel its presence. At this point we have a conflation of “objet a” and “The
Gaze.” Shimamura’s phallic gaze (that gaze belonging to that subject desiring to obtain
wholeness by looking at a mirror image of itself) has, since the beginning, different
5 6 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psycho-Analysis, 84.
5 7 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 362.
5 8 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 362.
5 9 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psycho-Analysis, 88.
6 0 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 363.
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issues to deal with: (1) Shimamura never sees an image of himself reflected in/on the
mirror; (2) Shimamura struggles to come to terms with the image of the Other reflected
on the mirror; (3) Shimamura feels under The Gaze. It is Kawabata himself who
constructs Shimamura’s phallic gaze as problematic. By denying Shimamura’s phallic
gaze the ability to achieve “phallic wholeness,” Kawabata switches the focus on to the
field of vision of the Other/Yoko, and presents a male protagonist already defeated
under The Gaze.
Shimamura’s phallic gaze (or, specular gaze) is indeed problematic, and it was
never meant to be the real focus of attention of “Mirror of Evening Scenery.” By its
own nature, this phallic gaze only helps to enhance Shimamura’s shortcomings in
recognizing himself as a representation of both tainted tradition and questionable
modernity.6 2 The power of “identification” and “wholeness” belongs to the field of
vision of the Other. When this Other is understood as both “objet a” and as creator of
“The Gaze,” we can finally come to terms with the harmonious conflation of these two
elements. This is also the time when we can accept The Gaze as the function of the
subject/Shimamura’s desire for the objet a/Yoko.
6 1 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 363-64.
6 2 On the specific issue of phallic recognition and mirror mis-recognition see Teresa Brennan, ed.,
Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1989); Nancy J. Chodorow, Feminism
and Psychoanalytic Theory (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1989); Jane Gallop, Reading
Lacan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); Jane Gallop, The Daughter’ s Seduction. Feminism and
Psychoanalysis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982); Elizabeth Grosz, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist
Introduction (London: Routledge, 1990); Stephen Heath, “Difference,” 51-112; Martin Jay, Downcast
Eyes, 493-542; Juliet Mitchell & Jacqueline Rose, eds., Feminine Sexuality. Jacques Lacan and the Ecole
Freudienne, trans. Jacqueline Rose (New York & London: Norton & Company, 1982); Toril Moi,
Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (London & New York: Routledge, 1985); Toril Moi,
ed., The Kristeva Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in
the Field o f Vision (London & New York: Verso, 1986), 49-103; Margaret Whitford, ed., The Irigaray
Reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991).
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Lacan also embraces Sartre’s argument about issues of shame and fear when
under the gaze, but he then moves toward an exploration of the “function of desire.” He
writes:
A gaze surprises him in the function of the voyeur, disturbs him, overwhelms
him and reduces him to a feeling of shame. The gaze in question is certainly the
presence of others as such. But does this mean that originally it is in the relation
of subject to subject, in the function of the existence of others as looking at me,
that we apprehend what the gaze really is? It is not clear that the gaze intervenes
here only in as much as it is not the annihilating subject, correlative of the world
of objectivity, who feels himself surprised, but the subject sustaining himself in
a function of desire?6 3
To The Look and The Gaze dichotomy, Lacan has added a third element: desire.
It is in an attempt “to disentangle the gaze from the economies of desire, to
reimpose the boundary of interiority/exteriority in order spatially to orient the relations
between the look and the gaze”, that Lacan uses three diagrams.6 4 Diagram 1, is the
Diagram of The Eye/Look. The watcher is positioned at the apex of the triangle. The
object is at the far end, and the image is between the apex and the object on the wall of
the triangle. This is the Cartesian perspective, or the diagram of “the phallic gaze.” In
Diagram 2, the Diagram of the Gaze, there is a point of light at the apex of the triangle,
the picture is at the wall, and a screen is halfway between the picture and the screen. In
this diagram the subject is at the midpoint “as if it were an image on a screen in a
generalized perceptual field, not a seeing eye.”6 5 The subject “is caught, manipulated,
6 3 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psycho-Analysis, 84-85.
6 4 Peter de Bolla, “The Visibility of Visuality,” in Vision in Context. Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives on Sight, Teresa Brennan and Martin Jay, eds. (New York and London: Routledge, 1996),
67. Lacan provides the diagrams in The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psycho-Analysis, 91 and 106. See
The Appendix to this dissertation, “Lacan’s Diagrams,” p. 436.
6 5 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 364.
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captured in the field of vision.”6 6 Diagram 3 is the Diagram of the Divided Subject: “the
chiasmic interpolation of the two planes created a new figure in which the middle
sections of both triangles, the image in that of the eye, the screen in that of the gaze,
coincided in the form of a divided subject.”6 7 As de Bolla explains, by conflating the
previous two, through this third diagram Lacan makes his point stronger “that it is only
through what is called the “image” or the “screen” that subjectivity is constituted.”6 8
Moreover,
The gaze is now explicitly in the position of the object looked at in [diagram 1]
so that the location for the activity of seeing is constantly shuttling back and
forth between the thing made object in the visual field and the thing making it
object. . . . The subject is unable to occupy either of these positions with any
stability. In this way the third figure pictures to us a schematization of the
“spectacle of the world,” and it is that world, appearing to us as spectacle, that
provides the location for the subject-seeing, or subject-in-sight.6 9
Lacan attempts to make his argument more accessible by offering the anecdote
of his experience with some fisherman: when one of them spotted a sardine can on the
water’s surface, he turned to Lacan and said: “You see that can? Do you see it? Well, it
10
doesn’ t seeyou\” Martin Jay explains how Lacan
Felt that he was indeed in the center of a conflictual visual field, at once the eye
looking at the can and the screen in an impersonal field of pure monstrance. His
subjectivity was thus split between the apex at the end of the triangle of the eye
and the line in the middle of the triangle of the gaze. He was both the viewer of
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Holbein’s painting and the smeared skull in its visual field.
6 6 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psycho-Analysis, 115.
6 7 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 365.
6 8 Peter de Bolla, “The Visibility of Visuality,” 68.
6 9 Peter de Bolla, “The Visibility of Visuality,” 68.
7 0 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psycho-Analysis, 95, emphasis in the original.
7 1 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 366. Stephen Melville argues that the gaze is “not that of another person: it
is outside: outside not only Lacan but outside the fisherman as well, there, in the glinting of light off the
sardine can. This gaze belongs not to the (small o) other but to the Other - language, world, the fact of a
movement of signification beyond human meaning. The opposed points of the double dihedron Lacan
puts on the board are thus not two opposed eyes, but represent more nearly an opposition of the eye to
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And this is what happens to Shimamura: he must come to terms with his split
subjectivity.
In the realm of the look/the eye (Diagram 1), Shimamura is at the apex of the
triangle and master of his own field of vision. At the far end there is a beautiful scenery,
and in between there is the image of the scenery. In the realm of the gaze (Diagram 2), a
point of light is at the apex, the picture is at the far end, a screen/window is in between.
Shimamura is the image on this screen, caught in the field of vision. In the context of
the Divided Subject (Diagram 3), Shimamura’s subjectivity is constructed through an
“image” (landscape, Yoko) or a “screen” (window/mirror). Shimamura is object and is
made object in the realm of the Gaze originating on the field of Yoko’s vision.
Shimamura is “spectacle of the world.”
When applied to the opening passage of Snow Country, Lacan’s theory of the
Eye/I and the Gaze is enriched by peculiar tones that belong exclusively to Kawabata’s
ability to portray such an impressive and challenging picture. This man, Shimamura,
can be seen as a man/child at the mirror, who overcomes his incompleteness by
recreating a desire for the Other. Moreover, the image of the subject, which is never
reflected on the window-mirror, is constituted by the subject’s physical eye: Yoko
becomes Shimamura’s alter ego. Yoko’s eye is a representation of a divided subject, of
a decentered and fragmented Shimamura. However, Shimamura will never succumb to
the threat of the gaze (Sartre), not even to the function of the desire of the Other
(Lacan).
itself, of the visual to itself.” Stephen Melville, “In the Light of the Other,” Whitewalls 23 (Fall 1989):
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There was no way for Yoko to know that she was being stared at (mirarete
iru). Her attention was concentrated on the sick man, and even had she looked
toward Shimamura, she would probably not have seen her reflection (jibun no
sugata wa miezu), and she would have paid no attention to the man looking
(nagameru otoko) out the window. [SI 1/Z14]
Shimamura is seemingly in a safe place: he believes he can see without being
seen, and even if the girl were to look back, she would not notice either his phallic gaze
or her own image. Obviously, the dynamics of vision in this passage go well beyond an
understanding of who is looking at whom, and who is seeing what, and who owns the
gaze, and who is the victim of the gaze. Shimamura perceives himself as a man at the
peephole, which is why he acknowledges the impropriety of looking. This specific
aspect of Shimamura’s look goes against the Japanese tradition, especially the tradition
of gazing that did not conceive it as improper for a man to look at a woman. Kawabata,
therefore, invests Shimamura with a heightened sense of perception that has more to do
with the Western than with the Japanese tradition of gazing at women.
We have seen Shimamura as a man at the mirror entangled in the field of vision
of the Other, but what he is really doing is revisiting a traditional space of vision which
Japanese male characters have enjoyed for centuries in the pages of classical literature,
and he is adding a peculiar dimension to this action which has Western/modem
influences. Shimamura is trying to merge with the modem, but his quest for such
balanced communion is still in the making, and mostly problematic.
There is much more to this issue of Look/Gaze/Desire. It is not only the
intmsion of another’s eye that is troublesome. Rather it is the intmsion, in such a visual
field, of the Signifier:
20.
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For human beings collectively to orchestrate their visual experience together it is
required that each submit his or her retinal experience to the socially agreed
description(s) of an intelligible world. Vision is socialized, and thereafter
deviation from this social construction of visual reality can be measured and
named, variously, as hallucination, misrecognition, or ‘visual disturbance.’
Between the subject and the world is inserted the entire sum of discourses which
make up visuality, that cultural construct, and make visuality different from
vision, the notion of unmediated visual experience. Between retina and the
world is inserted a screen of signs, a screen consisting of all the multiple
discourses on vision built into the social arena.7 2
Therefore, “this screen casts a shadow. . . . For when we look through the screen, what
we see is caught up in a network that comes to us from the outside.”7 3 The insertion of
the screen displaces the subject, who is not at the center of the visual experience
anymore, “when I see, what I see is formed by paths or networks laid down in advance
of my seeing.”7 4
The introduction of the concept of vision as a cultural construct can also help to
disentangle and assign more meaning to Shimamura’s kaimami(s) of the landscape and
Yoko. As we have already seen, Kawabata depicts Shimamura as a man at a mirror
attempting to come to terms with issues of identification and wholeness. To revisit the
kaimami topos becomes an exercise in tightening together the classical and the modem
according to the displaced vision of a problematic ego in its constant process of making
and un-making.
Shimamura’s kaimami of the snowy landscape may remind us of poems from
the Kokinshu that had “snow” as a motif, and may enlighten us on the image of the
7 2 Norman Bryson, “The Gaze in the Expanded Field,” 91-92.
7 3 Norman Bryson, “The Gaze in the Expanded Field,” 92, emphasis in the original.
7 4 Norman Bryson, “The Gaze in the Expanded Field,” 93.
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64
“snow” as Signifier, or on the image of the “mountain” as Signifier.7 5 But there is then
no place for the image of the “train” as Signifier in the classic tradition. From here also
comes my working definition and usage of tainted tradition when referring to both
Shimamura and the representation of the landscape that unfolds before his eyes.
We are then presented with the image of Yoko. Japanese scholars have indeed
addressed her image as visual illusion, visual hallucination, and visual disturbance,
opening this issue up to debate from a psychoanalytic perspective.7 6 What I believe is
important, however, is the image of Yoko as Signifier of pure Japanese tradition.
Shimamura’s kaimami of Yoko itself becomes a further attempt to rediscover the
classical tradition in light of the modem. This kaimami becomes a modernized version
of its classical counterpart in terms of both dynamic and issues. The feeling of
impropriety of looking at Yoko, the feeling of shame at eventually becoming object of
the returned gaze, to feel emotionally displaced by the inability to recognize the image
of himself on the mirror/window: these are Western constmcts and motifs alien to the
classical Japanese tradition. But such motifs are entering the realm of the formation of a
modem Japanese society. And Shimamura wears these uncomfortable clothes, and takes
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them on his trip to the snow country.
7 5 “At the mountain house/where all is overwhelmed by/masses of white snow/might even he who dwells
there/feel overwhelmed by misery?” [Mibu no Tadamine, Kokinshu 328]; “However I turn/and turn it
over again/(like Returning Mountain/when white snow covers the ground)/I have sunk into old age”
[Ariwara Muneyama, Kokinshu 902], These poems are from Brocade by Night. “Kokin Wakashii” and
the Court Style in Japanese Classic Poetry, by Helen Craig McCullough (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1985), 222 and 250.
7 6 Kurihara Masanao, Kawabata Yasunari, 225-235. See also Kawasaki Toshihiko, “Yume ka utsutsu ka
maboroshi ka,” 11-26.
7 7 Shimamura will eventually try to have these pieces of clothing “bleached” during his trip to the Land of
Chijimi.
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I believe that this is how Kawabata succeeds in combining elements of the
classical tradition with elements of galloping modernity, especially with modem
discourses of alienation and displacement with which he was familiar thanks to his
1920s experiments with Modernism.7 8 Kawabata had already explored the cultural
networks that characterized the construction of vision, and Snow Country becomes a
text in which he attempts a conflation of the old and the new in a quest to balance them
and have them emerge in complete harmony.
One may wonder over the necessity of achieving such balance, which will be
hard to obtain as there will always be a desire for vision. Jacques Lacan concludes his
remarks over The Eye/The Gaze/Desire by pondering the intriguing connection that he
perceives between desire and vision, in what he addresses as “the appetite for the eye.”
He writes:
Modifying the formula I have of desire as unconscious - man’ s desire is the
desire o f the Other - I would say that it is a question of a sort of desire on the
7Q
part o f the Other, at the end of which is the showing.
This also means that “the gaze can be thought of as brought about by the other’s desire
R fl
to show itself, a desire that is matched only by the eye’s desire to see.”
This statement opens the door to the possibility of Yoko’s unconscious desire to
show herself as a representation of pure tradition to Shimamura’s phallic gaze’s desire
to see such tradition once again before its extinction. Yoko’s image becomes a further
7 8 “Shinshinsakka no shinkeiko kaisetsu” [New Tendencies of the Avant-Garde Writers], in Kawabata
Yasunari Zenshii, volume 30, pp. 172-183. For a discussion of this manifesto see Matthew Mizenko, “The
Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 16-27; Miyoshi Masao, “The Margins of Life,” 96-99. For a
discussion of Kawabata’s Modernist years, see Roy Starrs, Soundings in Time, 68-117.
7 9 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psycho-Analysis, 115, emphasis in the original.
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direct tool in the context of the making not only of the implication of the male gaze
when understood as “non-erotic,” but also in the realm of the making of Shimamura’s
subjectivity. Shimamura’s appetite of the eye becomes a desire for the Other/Yoko’s
unconscious desire to show itself/herself.
When we explore such possibility, we clearly see Lacan moving beyond the
Mirror Stage. As Martin Jay explains:
Whereas in the mirror-stage argument, vision was involved in an imaginary
identification with a gestalt of corporeal wholeness, an identification due to a
specular projection of narcissistic sameness, now it was connected as well with
desire for the other. . . . The objet a Lacan called the gaze is not a mirror image
of the subject, it is chiasmically crossed with the subject’s eye. The dyad of
specular projection is replaced by a dual and inverted triangulation, even more
complicated than the triadic introjection of the father’s name associated with the
resolution of the Oedipus complex.8 1
Desire assumes a noteworthy place in the politics of vision, because at the end it is (1)
the desire of representation and (2) the desire as function that institute the subject in the
field of vision.8 2
Copjec has summarized the points at which film theory and Lacan differ over
this issue of the gaze:
In film theory the subject identifies with the gaze as the signified of the image
and comes into existence as the realization of a possibility. In Lacan, the subject
identifies with the gaze as the signifier of the lack that causes the image to
languish. The subject comes into existence, then, through a desire which is still
considered to be the effect of the law, but not its realization. Desire cannot be a
realization because it fulfills no possibility and has no content; it is, rather,
8 0 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 366-67. This argument seems to point to issues in exhibitionism and the
desire to be seen. See Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial
Context (London & New York: Routledge, 1995), 157-58.
8 1 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 367-68.
8 2 Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject,” 70.
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occasioned by impossibility, the impossibility of the subject’s ever coinciding
with the real being from which representation cuts it off.8 3
Shimamura is more of a Lacanian object of analysis. To approach a study of
Shimamura’s phallic gaze and desire from the perspective of Lacan’s theory of the
Eye/The Gaze/Desire has helped me to delve into the darkest places of his divided
subjectivity. I have in this way also unveiled how he becomes a site of tension and
contestation in the discourse on vision in the Japanese tradition. Shimamura reflects
both modernity and tradition, but he is also a reflected site of intellectual anxiety. As
reflected image, Yoko, on the other hand, has emerged as a much more intriguing
female protagonist, not only as a passive recipient of a phallic gaze, but also as an
effective and dynamic maker and marker of vision even when her sight is not directly
involved. As representation of Shimamura’s symbolic phallic desire, Yoko stands as
that site where Shimamura’s sexual tension originates on the occasion of his second trip
to the snow country.
(3) When The Window/Screen Functions as a Mirror: Film Theory
According to Film Theory, the screen is conceived as a mirror, therefore the
84
subject/spectator ends up accepting those images projected on to the screen as its own.
On the train that is taking Shimamura to the snow country, the window/screen the male
protagonist is sitting at has suddenly become a mirror (mado-garasu ga kagami ni naru,
S7/Z12). If we accept film theory’s concept that the subject of the gaze tends to identify
8 3 Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject,” 70.
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with the object of his gaze, the images (of the landscape and of Yoko) that are given
back to Shimamura are the ones with which he should identify.
Joan Copjec has focused on highlighting how Film theorists’ misinterpreted
Lacan’s Mirror Stage and his theory of the gaze, and on how they accordingly mis
applied them. The fundamental position of film theory (as it was developed in the
1970s) is that the screen is a mirror: “the representations produced by the institution
cinema, the images presented on the screen, are accepted by the subject as its own.”8 5
The spectator watches the movie and identify with the images on the screen. Copjec
sees the problem in the fact that in Lacan’s Mirror Stage the child recognizes the image
projected on the mirror as his own, while in the context of film theory there is not an
image of the watcher’s self projected on the screen. Being the spectator absent from the
screen, film theory argues for the subject’s tendency to locate his own image in another.
Copjec points out, though, that Lacan’s fundamental concern was with the fact that “one
oz:
always locates the other in one’s own image.” Copjec writes:
There is, admittedly, an ambiguity in the notion of the subject’s “own image;” it
can refer either to an image o f the subject or an image belonging to the subject.
Both references are intended by film theory. Whether that which is represented
is specularized as an image of the subject’s own body or as the subject’s image
of someone or something else, what remains crucial is the attribution to the
image of what Lacan (not film theory, which has never, it seems to me,
adequately accounted for the ambiguity) calls “that belong to me aspect so
reminiscent of property.” It is this aspect that allows the subject to see in any
representation not only a reflection of itself, but a reflection of itself as master of
all it surveys. The imaginary relation produces the subject as mater of the image.
This insight led to film theory’s reconception of film’s characteristic
8 4 Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982); Christian
Metz, “From the Imaginary Signifier,” in Film Theory and Criticism, Gerald Mast et als., eds. (New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 730-745.
8 5 Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject,” 58.
8 6 Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject,” 58, footnote no. 12.
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“impression of reality.” No longer conceived as dependent upon a relation of
verisimilitude between the image and the real referent, this impression was
henceforth attributed to a relation of adequation between the image and the
spectator. In other words, the impression of reality results from the fact that the
subject takes the image as a full and sufficient representation of itself and its
world; the subject is satisfied that it has been adequately reflected on the screen.
The “reality effect” and the “subject effect” both name the same constructed
impression: that the image makes the subject fully visible to itself.8 7
This is understood in film theory as a relation of recognition. It remains to be explored
as to what is “the gaze” in this relation. In Film theory,
The subject sees itself as supplying the image with sense. . . . The gaze is always
the point from which identification is conceived by film theory to take place.
And because the gaze is always conceptualized as an analogue of that geometral
point of Renaissance perspective at which the picture becomes fully,
undistortedly visible, the gaze always retains within film theory the sense of
being that point at which sense and being coincide. The subject comes into being
by identifying with image’s signified. Sense founds the subject - that is the
ultimate point of the film theoretical concept of the gaze.8 8
The Lacanian gaze differs from the concept of the gaze formulated in film
theory in that it does not, and cannot, suggest mastery of what it surveys. Moreover,
whereas in film theory it is the subject’s identification with the image’s signified that
founds the subject, in Lacan’s theory it is exactly what the subject does not see that
founds it.
Therefore, when I read “Mirror of Evening Scenery” from the perspective of
Lacan’s theory of the gaze, it was my intention to point out how Shimamura was not
master of his field of vision, as he was caught in the line of vision of the images
reflected on the window. Moreover, Shimamura tended to resist identification with
those images by limiting his act of seeing as well as by fragmenting those images. And
8 7 Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject,” 58-59, emphasis in the original.
8 8 Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject,” 59, emphasis in the original.
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because it was in what escaped sight that he could find himself, he never cleared the
mist that re-accumulated on the surface of the window.
When I read “Mirror of Evening Scenery” from the perspective of film theory’s
understanding of the concept of the gaze, I argue that the image of the landscape and the
image of Yoko allow for both Shimamura’s introspection and self-identification. Both
these images will force Shimamura to take a better look at his inner self.
There are many things that are wrong with Kawabata’s snow country. As
Charles Cabell has pointed out, this was not the reality of 1930s Japan.8 9 The issue
remains with the landscape as object of Shimamura’s gaze, and the ensuing questions
cannot but challenge this idealized view of a place created by the narrator’s
imagination, and presented to Shimamura as the alternative to the corrupting modem
world he has left in the city. Thus, according to Karatani Kojin landscape is not always
and only what is outside, or what the subject sees unfolding before his eyes. A specific
perceiving mode is necessary in order for the landscape to emerge.9 0 Karatani claims
that “It is only within the “inner man,” who appears to be indifferent to his external
8 9 “Kawabata published the texts that constitute Snow Country during the height of Japan’s nationalism,
concluding the first edition o f the work in 1937, the same year that Japan entered into full-scale war with
China. The collapse of world trade contributed to the spread of ultra-nationalist movements in existence
at the time of his writing. Between the years 1934 and 1937 when Kawabata wrote and re-wrote the texts,
Japan was protected from Socialism by the Greater Japan National Essence Society (Dai Nihon Kokusai
Kai), the country was shaken by the February 26 incident, Kita Ikki was executed for attempting a coup
d’etat by which he hoped to “re-establish” the direct rule of the emperor over the people, and agrarian
fundamentalists clamored for a nationalist revival made possible by a return to the sacred soil of Japan. In
the years when the various sections were being written, anti-Western, anti-capitalist sentiments spread in
right-wing groups throughout Japan, creating a climate of terror and assassination; the Japanese army
spread across the Pacific; and the authoritarian regime effectively crushed political opposition through the
use of intimidation, torture and murder. . . . Kawabata and others created cultural works that invoked a
nostalgic, rural image of Japan impervious to the changing world of the 1930s and ‘40s.” Charles R.
Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 125-130.
9 0 Karatani Kojin, Origins o f Modern Japanese Literature, forward by Frederic Jameson, trans. ed. Brett
de Bary (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1993), 24.
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surroundings, that landscape is discovered. It is perceived by those who do not look
“outside.””9 1 Shimamura never comes across as being indifferent to his surroundings,
but it is clear that the image of the landscape becomes a further incentive to also start
this journey to the inner-depths of his own being. This is how he first discovers himself:
the landscape guides him “inside.”9 2
Kawabata uses specific words to give us the concept and the idea of the snow
country: the snow country that Shimamura sees becomes, to him, the signified image. It
makes sense to him. His gaze (understood as the gaze in film theory) becomes the point
from which identification takes place.9 3 Shimamura gazes at the landscape and he
identifies with the scenery because it has meaning to him. The landscape is not
necessarily a distorted view of reality, because, after all, it is already Shimamura’s
reality in the snow country. The image of the snow country becomes the image of
Shimamura’s perfection. The landscape represents what Shimamura would like to be,
and what he is striving to become. Shimamura is trying very hard to identify with the
image of his ideal self, a self on a quest to discovery.
Shimamura has difficulty giving meaning to the images unfolding before his
eyes, images that he creates. He is entering the realm of a traditional landscape, but he
is also brought here by a train: he is projected into the landscape through a tool of
9 1 Karatani Kojin, Origins o f Modem Japanese Literature, 25.
9 2 Tsuruta Kin’ya has read Shimamura’s journey to the snow country as a purification process, which will
come to full circle once Shimamura goes to the land of Chijimi to bleach his clothes, and symbolically
purify his soul. Tsuruta Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari no geijutsu, 85-90.
9 3 This cinematic gaze is also the origin of the pleasure in looking, which leads to issues of voyeurism,
fetishism, and objectification. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 6-18; Norman K.
Denzin, The Cinematic Society. The Voyeur’ s Gaze (London: Sage Publication, 1995), 42-63; Effat
Tseelon and Susan B. Kaiser, “A Dialogue with Feminist Theory: Multiple Readings of the Gaze,”
Studies in Symbolic Interaction 13 (1992): 120.
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modernity.9 4 There is at this point a sudden realization that the landscape is not a
representation of pure tradition as he would want it to be. This is already tainted
tradition. This is also the moment when Shimamura sees himself as a “tainted
modem/traditional man,” and the dilemma of how to deal with such an ambiguous and
painful discovery remains. In other words, Shimamura blurs and blends the modem vs.
tradition dichotomy, and in this process he loses sight of his real self.
As we have seen, the landscape has its peculiar way of looking back at
Shimamura, and Shimamura succumbs to the realization of himself as an incomplete
and imperfect being, culturally and emotionally displaced in the reality of 1930s Japan:
social reality is thus filtered through Kawabata/Shimamura’s aesthetic imagination 9 5
Shimamura never clearly attempts to resist the image of the landscape and the haunting
image of his troubled inner self, but the fact that he abandons himself to apparent
daydreaming and to the creation of visual illusions may tell us a different story.
Shimamura is on a quest to locate himself in the image of the other.
In fact, the next image that Shimamura sees on this window that has become a
mirror (S7/Z12) is the image of Yoko. Had Shimamura seen himself reflected in the
mirror it may have meant “to plunge into the depths of an abyss,” for Shimamura an
abyss darker and deeper than that suggested by Sartre: “Not only would looking in the
mirror disabuse one of the mistake of identifying with the other’s gaze, but it would also
provide evidence of the meaningless of one’s own corporeal existence.”9 6
9 4 Sydney DeVere Brown, “Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972),” 376.
9 5 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 126.
9 6 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 280-81. In Sartre’s novel Nausea, the protagonist Roquetin examines his
face; commenting on this scene Alain Buisine in his Laideurs de Sartre (1981) writes that for Sartre
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To see the image of himself and identify with it may have meant to Shimamura
to start facing the reality of modernity, and this is the abyss with which Shimamura is
not yet able to deal. But the purpose of his trip is to escape modernity and, as a
consequence, to escape himself as well.9 7 To see his own reflection is “to see himself
seeing himself’ and question his own identity. What we have, instead, is a process of
recognition of The Other as Self, which is Lacan’s concern.
It is not by chance that the image given back to him is Yoko’s. Shimamura sees
Yoko and rediscovers traditional beauty, purity, aesthetic, and ethics. Identification may
at the end occur also with what the image of Yoko stands for: pure tradition. What we
have so far, though, are two levels of tradition. I have called one level “tainted
tradition,” and it applies to the image of the landscape. The second level I have named
“pure tradition,” and it corresponds to the image of Yoko. Shimamura need to identify
with both.
The image of Yoko and the image of the landscape keep overlapping in the
opening passage of Snow Country:
The mountain sky still carried traces of evening red. Individual shapes were
clear far into the distance, but the monotonous mountain landscape,
undistinguished for mile after mile, seemed more undistinguished for having lost
its last traces of color. There was nothing in it to catch the eye, and it seemed to
flow along in a wide, unformed emotion. That was of course because the girl’s
face was floating over it. Cut off by the face, the evening landscape moved
steadily around its outlines. The face too seemed transparent - but was it really
“regarding oneself for a long time in the glass, the petrified subject assists in the obscene return of a flesh
which is beyond sense, a literally insignificant return of the organic and even the inorganic, of the
geological, of the primitive, of an upsurge of the acquatic in the reflection of the face. . . . To regard
oneself in the mirror in Sartre’s milieu is a periscopic immersion. . . . To see myself in a mirror is to
plunge into the depths of an abyss.” Cited in Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 281.
7 We will recall that according to Tsuruta Kin’ya’s study, Shimamura’s trip is a “purification” ritual. He
goes to this snow country to cleanse himself from the corrupted life-style he has in the city. Tsuruta
Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari no geijutsu, 85-90.
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transparent? Shimamura had the illusion that the evening landscape was actually
passing over the face, and the flow did not stop to let him be sure it was not.
[S9-10/Z13]
The fact that the image of Yoko’s face floats over the image of the mountain
landscape tells us more about Shimamura’s inner struggle to finally find the perfect
image with which to identify. The “tainted landscape” has become “monotonous,”
while Yoko’s face seems “transparent.” Shimamura is left debating over which way to
go: plunge into recognition of a monotonous self, or delve into the depths of a
transparent self. He is both, and he belongs to both. He contributes to both, but both the
image of the landscape and Yoko’s image are his as well. In his attempt to find a
definite balance between “tainted tradition” and “pure tradition,” Shimamura falls
deeper, and harder, into the truth of the abyss of the “dilemma of the modem,” and he
will be left for a while hanging amid the disarray of his confused self. The images of
Yoko and the landscape have finally made the subject (Shimamura) visible to himself.
This is a source of anguish that will accompany Shimamura on his journey, and in order
to curb this anxiety he prevents his eyes from seeing further, and retreats on that seat by
the window where the gaze of the Other cannot reach.
Yoko is a very ambiguous character in this novel, and there is a reason why
Kawabata has Shimamura meet with her as he does. The journey to the snow country
stands also for a journey back to the lost classical tradition, a tradition Kawabata
portrays as feminine. Mita Hideaki argues that in Snow Country Kawabata perpetuates
the josei genri discourse, or the discourse about the feminine quality that pervades the
myth of Japan’s origins, and it is always this josei genri that Kawabata will enhance in
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• 08
his texts. Cabell also writes that “During the Pacific War, Kawabata engenders the
“sacred land” of Japan as female, describing the homeland as The Mother that is
Japan.”9 9 We know of Kawabata’s participation in canon formation because of his
translations into modem Japanese of Taketori monogatari and Torikaebaya
monogatari.1 0 ° As a literary scholar Kawabata must have been familiar with those
issues in canon formation and the label of femininity to Japanese tradition which had
been discussed in the Meiji period.1 0 1
It is no coincidence that Kawabata places Yoko, symbol of tradition par
excellence, directly in front of Shimamura’s eyes. Shimamura, the modem man in crisis,
needs to reposition himself socially and historically: such a sight becomes a troubling
one. He is the man at the mirror, but instead of seeing his own reflection, he sees an
ambiguous image of tradition staring back at him; he sees femininity, he sees the
maternal, and he also sees death.
(4) Conclusion: “Woman is a Man’s Mirror”
Shimamura’s gaze is a contested site of male power of vision and desire, and I
have used a methodological approach that has led me to question the ways in which
Kawabata uses vision in inscribing cultural meanings onto his male characters.
9 8 Mita Hideaki, Hankindai no bungaku: Izumi Kyoka, Kawabata Yasunari (Tokyo: Ofu, 1999), 333-34.
9 9 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 129.
1 0 0 The Tale o f the Bamboo Cutter. Taketori monogatari, modem rewriting by Kawabata Yasunari, trans.
Donald Keene (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1998); Rosette Willig, trans., The Changelings: A
Classical Japanese Court Tale (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983).
1 0 1 Tomi Suzuki, “Gender and Genre: Modem Literary Histories and Women’s Diary Literature,” in
Inventing the Classics. Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature, Hamo Shirane and Tomi
Suzuki, eds. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 94-95.
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I have already pointed out in my analysis of Shimamura’s kaimami of Yoko
how such kaimami serves to acknowledge a certain visual power on the side of Yoko as
object of the male gaze. In other words, I have not presented Yoko as a passive receiver
of the male gaze. While it has been argued that Kawabata seemingly deprives his
female characters of the power to look back and to threaten the wholeness of men, I
have supported my conviction that Yoko plays a more important role in the opening
passage of Snow Country because Shimamura anticipates the returned female gaze even
though Yoko does not look back.1 0 2 Here, however, what is under investigation is the
meaning of Yoko’s image as it is reflected on this window/mirror, and its symbolic
message.
In the context of “Mirror of Evening Scenery,” Yoko is a reflected image on this
glass-window that has become a mirror, and over which Shimamura sees the reality of
both the landscape and Yoko. Shimamura is a man at the mirror. French feminist Luce
Irigaray revisits the issue of ego formation in Lacan’s theory of the Mirror Stage. She is
critical of Lacan’s approach, and she offers some challenging solutions.
On the specific topic of the formation of the ego when reflected in the mirror,
she points out how the mirror stage experience is different in boys and girls, and how
the identification process that follows the mirror stage will lead to two different
Imaginary (and not one, as Lacan envisioned it): a male one, and a female one. Irigaray
writes: “If this ego is to be valuable some ‘mirror’ is needed to reassure it and re-insure
1 0 2 Matsuura Hisaki, “Mira koto no heisoku.”
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it of its value. Woman will be the foundation for this specular duplication, giving back
man ‘his’ image and repeating it as the ‘same.’1 0 3
The issue here is the formation of the male ego, and what happens when the man
looks in the mirror and sees a female other. According to Tyler’s reading of Irigaray, in
patriarchy
woman is constructed as a man’s mirror, returning to him an image of his
imaginary wholeness by representing the lack in his being that he has denied and
projected on to her. . . . [Tjherefore woman cannot represent lack for itself, since
she must represent it for man by becoming, through identification, the lost
object(s) of desire, principally the mother, in order to ensure his wholeness.1 0 4
As we have seen, when Shimamura looks in the mirror, he is given back the
image of Yoko. If we accept Yoko as Shimamura’s specular image, then we need to
delve deeper into the essence of that image. Therefore, if one were to shatter the mirror
(window), and go through the looking glass, one would find that “on the other side of
the mirror, behind the screen of male representations, is an underground world hidden
from the surveyor’s categorizing gaze, a world where women might whirl and dance out
of the glare of the sun.”1 0 5 According to Irigaray, thus, what resists infinite reflection is
“the mystery (hysteria?) that will always remain modesty behind every mirror, and that
will spark the desire to see and know more about it.”1 0 6
Irigaray’s understanding of Woman as a Man’s Mirror helps us to embrace the
dynamic and politics of vision from a perspective that challenges the male gaze and its
1 0 3 Luce Irigaray, Speculum o f the Other Woman, trans. Gillian G. Gill (Ithaca, New York: Cornell
University Press, 1985), 54.
l04Carole-Anne Tyler, “The Feminine Look,” in Theory Between the Disciplines.
Authority/Vision/Politics, Martin Kreiswirth and Mark A. Cheetham, eds. (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 1990), 194.
1 0 5 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 533.
1 0 6 Luce Irigaray, Speculum o f the Other Woman, 103.
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objects, and that inscribes noteworthy meaning on the side of such objects, usually
female. As already discussed, the issue here is not the act of gazing per se, as much as
“the image” reflected. This image becomes object of the male gaze. More than a
physical female object, Yoko’s image is constructed and perceived by male sight. This
female image does not necessarily stand for who or what Yoko really is, but it is a
representation of her. Whether Shimamura accepts or denies the creation of his sight
and desire, it has to do more with the meaning he assigns to Yoko’s image more than to
Yoko per se.
Yoko’s fragmented mirror-image becomes, to Shimamura, the signifier of his
fragmented self: the signified image. Yoko is not a fragmented self, she is “whole.” The
image of her given back to Shimamura is “incomplete” because that is what he is
willing to see. To deal with the truth of the whole image of Yoko is premature at this
point in the novel, although the time will come for Shimamura to come to terms with
both knowledge and truth of Yoko, and not just with her fragmented reflected image.
To Shimamura, the Eye behind the window/mirror is a mystery never fully
revealed. At this point, a fragmented image is given back to Shimamura, a specular
image of his fragmented ego. Both the Other’s image and the mirror become sites/sights
of anxiety and crisis for Shimamura - the former because it is not “whole,” and the
latter because it reflects a haunting symbol of incompleteness: a body part. In his quest
to see and to know more about this image, Shimamura will keep looking.
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Chapter Two
The Male Gaze: Female Objects of Shimamura’s Troubled Self and Desire(s)
(1) An Intriguing Visual Dialogue: Shimamura and Yoko
From the analytical study of “Mirror of Evening Scenery,” Yoko comes across
as mystery and male representation of an ambiguous, culturally and historically loaded
desire. Yoko is the Mother, Yoko is tradition, Yoko is tragedy. Spectacle seems already
to be a life-dream matter. The image given back to Shimamura is a mixture of all of the
above, which contributes to the anguish he experiences.
At the beginning of the novel, Yoko’s mystery seems to be safe with her.
Shimamura sees what he wants to see: a symbol of ethereal and eternal beauty, an
image of a character from an old ancient tale, a nursing mother attending to her child’s
needs. He creates the object of his desire as he ascribes meaning to her body. We are
left wondering if her mystery will ever be revealed. We are given the following clues:
Shimamura is a man who has been brought into the discourse of the modem; Yoko is a
representation of traditional high culture. These two worlds rest on two extreme sides of
the intellectual arena. They may unite only through somebody/something who has
experienced these two worlds, somebody who dwells in both realms on a daily basis,
somebody who is uncertain of his/her place in life, and maybe in history. And this
somebody has a name in Snow Country: Komako.1
1 Tsuruta Kin’ya develops some of these ideas in his essay “Yukiguni” in Kokubungaku 56, no. 9 (1991):
86-90. I return to some of the points that Tsuruta develops over the issue of modernity and tradition later
in this chapter.
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“Identity” and “completeness” (“completeness” as a Japanese man) are key
elements in the process of the formation of Shimamura’s new ego. Eventually, he will
go through the whole process of the Mirror Stage, but initially the train experience
becomes for Shimamura the first step in the Lacanian mirror stage: identification is at
stake. According to Lacan, ‘identity’ and ‘wholeness’ remain at the level of fantasy.
Jacqueline Rose explains:
Subjects in language persist in their belief that somewhere there is a point of
certainty, of knowledge, and of truth. When the subject addresses its demand
outside itself to another, this other becomes the fantasized place of just such a
knowledge or certainty. Lacan calls this the Other - the site of language to
which the speaking subject necessarily refers. The Other appears to hold the
‘truth’ of the subject and the power to make good its loss. But this is the ultimate
fantasy. . . . Woman becomes a total object of fantasy (or an object of total
fantasy), elevated to the place of the Other and made to stand for its truth.” 2
If Yoko holds the truth, if Yoko is the ultimate fantasy, if Yoko has knowledge
of who he is, to reveal Yoko’s mystery may placate Shimamura’s demons about who he
is, and what he is doing in this world. The question of why he needs to be attached to
her remains. She is elusive, unaware of her power, but Shimamura is drawn to the
image reflected on the mirror. Shimamura has made of her “the fantasized place of
certainty.”
I have dealt with the image of Yoko, but the time has come to reveal more about
who she is, and for what she stands. To understand the character Yoko means to know
as well why Shimamura looks at her the way he does, and the implications at work
whenever his eyes fall on her figure, or on parts of her body.
2 Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in the Field o f Vision, 55-56, and 74.
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Yoko is a very complex character in Snow Country. This does not mean that
Shimamura and Komako are less intriguing, but the daily battles that Yoko fights are
internal turmoil that Kawabata renders through descriptions of her eyes. Yoko, as we
have seen, first appears to Shimamura as if in a dream or vision,3 but she also blends
perfectly with the landscape outside the window that has become a mirror:
The light inside the train was not particularly strong, and the reflection was
not as clear as it would have been in a mirror. Since there was no glare,
Shimamura came to forget that it was a mirror he was looking at. The girl’s face
seemed to be out in the flow of the evening mountains.
It was then that a light shone in the face. The reflection in the mirror was not
strong enough to blot out the light outside, nor was the light strong enough to
dim the reflection. The light moved across the face, though not to light it up. It
was a distant, cold light. As it sent its small ray through the pupil of the girl’s
eye, as the eye and the light were superimposed one on the other, the eye
became a weirdly beautiful bit of phosphorescence (yakochu: phosphorescent
animalcule) on the sea of the evening mountains. [S10/Z14]
Yoko first appears as “the eye” associated with a distant and cold light. But her
eye blends with the image of the evening mountains in the background.4 Yoko is a
mountain girl, untouched by the modem city. She is in charge of a sick man, Yukio, and
we will also leam that she attends to Komako’s needs at times as well. Yoko seems to
be a very passive character when interacting with Shimamura. To Shimamura, she is
mysterious, unable to be read. Since the beginning of the novel, however, Shimamura
feels that there is a connection between Yoko and the woman he is going to see
(Komako):
3 Kawasaki Toshihiko, “Yume ka utsutsu ka maboroshi ka,” 11-26.
4 As Hara Zen has pointed out in his study of the opening passage of Snow Country, we end up with a
description o f the world based on a quite distorted law of perspective, considering that the evening
scenery reflected on the glass-mirror (the background), and both Yoko’s face and eyes (the foreground),
merge together. Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari: sono enkinho (Tokyo: Taishukan shoten, 1999), 95.
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Somewhere in his heart Shimamura saw a question, as clearly as if it were
standing there before him: was there something, what would happen, between
the woman his hand remembered and the woman in whose eye that mountain
light had glowed? Or had he not yet shaken off the spell of the evening
landscape in that mirror? He wondered whether the flowing landscape was not
perhaps symbolic of the passage of time. [S14/Z17]
The fact that Shimamura perceives a connection between these two women is
indicative of his state of mind. He believes that such a connection, once unveiled, will
prove vital to his own coming to terms with the significance of his trip. Moreover, the
fact that Yoko’s image overlaps again and again with the image of the landscape, leads
us to accept her also as representation of “the passage of time.” The image of the
landscape and the image of Yoko never coincide; they do not merge as one. They are
two separate entities sharing common traits, standing for different implications in
Shimamura’s process of understanding the depth of the symbolism unfolding before his
eyes.
Yoko does not belong to the landscape only. If we were to accept her
exclusively as specular image of the landscape, she would be nothing more than a
dream, a product of Shimamura’s visual imagination/hallucination, and his inner
desires, desires that also reveal themselves through the image of Yoko’s Eye. We also
know that Yoko is beautiful because of the “weird” beauty of her eye, an Eye that
makes Shimamura intensely uncomfortable.
Yoko does not become “whole” until the end of the novel. Throughout the novel
she is a fragmented body. She is most often an Eye. This may be the only way that
Shimamura can emotionally deal with her: one piece at a time. The question to be asked
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is: how does Shimamura see and perceive Yoko’s eyes, and what kind of power does he
have (if any) over her?
Yoko represents all that Shimamura is longing for. Yoko represents tradition at
its best. She is perceived as a character out of an old romantic tale. One wonders who
Kawabata had in mind when he conceived of Yoko: Kaguyahime in Taketori
monogatari? One of the two princesses Ariwara no Narihira stumbles upon during his
journey in Ise monogatari? Or Murasaki, Yugao, or Ukifune in Genji monogataril
Kawabata never makes clear the referent, but in comparing Yoko with a specific
tradition (that of monogatari), Kawabata makes her represent tradition at a time in
Japanese history when tradition was threatened by the evils of modernity.5 This is an
important issue because Yoko stands in sharp contrast with all that Shimamura stands
for: modernity. I question, however, how “Modem” Shimamura is. Is he not only
flirting with the idea of being the perfect modem man?
Kawabata opens his novel with a furtive and unusual encounter between two
people far away from each other. The anxiety of the encounter is felt by Shimamura.
Seemingly deprived of the physical power to look back at modernity, Yoko stares from
a different perspective:
The mountain sky still carried traces of evening red. Individual shapes were
clear far into the distance, but the monotonous mountain landscape,
undistinguished for mile after mile, seemed all the more undistinguished for
having lost its last traces of color. There was nothing in it to catch the eye, and it
seemed to flow along in a wide, unformed emotion. That was, of course,
because the girl’s face was floating over it. Cut off by the face, the evening
landscape moved steadily by around its outlines. The face too seemed
transparent - but was it really transparent? Shimamura had the illusion that the
5 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 120-130.
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evening landscape was actually passing over the face, and the flow did not stop
to let him be sure it was not. [S9-10/Z13]
Yoko is a symbol of a dying tradition, an agonizing tradition that has been
dismantled and is now blending with the new outside world. It is a tradition that has
boarded a train, to some the physical symbol of modernity at its best, taking it to its
final destination.6 Yoko’s beauty, reflected in the depth of the mystery of her own eye,
becomes a source of anxiety and discomfort for Shimamura’s gaze.
This male gaze is not the traditional kaimami gaze. The man does not look in
order to possess physically, nor for sexual gratification only. Shimamura does not fit
comfortably in the clothing of a perfect Peeping Tom. His gaze is a site of longing,
yearning for what he fears will soon disappear. If tradition is created through longing,
then Japanese tradition is beautiful, and it is a source of anguish for Shimamura to see it
disappear, like a fleeting image on a misted window.7 This modem man on a journey to
“inner” rediscovery and ego reconsideration finds himself faced with a vanished past,
and all he can do is admire its beauty, its mystery, its depth, happy to know that his gaze
will not be returned, or so he would like to believe. Shimamura is hiding from a “one-
on-one” encounter. Uneasiness rests on the side of the subject of the gaze.
Anxiety characterizes both the subject and object of the gaze. Kawabata,
however, is a master in reducing objects of the gaze to blind characters or unaware
women scrutinized by the male gaze. Kawabata explained his fixation with staring at
6 Sydney DeVere Brown, “Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972),” 376.
7 This is another way of describing the concept of “nostalgia.” As Peter Nosco demonstrates, “Nostalgia”
is a concept necessary to establish tradition. Peter Nosco, Remembering Paradise. Nativism and
Nostalgia in Eighteenth-Century Japan (Cambridge & London: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard
University, 1990), 3-14.
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people in A Sunny Place (Hinata, 1923). This is a short story about a boy/Kawabata
used to stare at people:
I have long had a habit of staring at people who sit beside me. I had often
thought to cure myself of this habit, but I found it painful not to look into the
faces of those around me. I felt an intense self-hatred every time I realized I was
doing it. Maybe this habit came from having spent all my time reading other’s
faces once I had lost my parents and my home when I was a child and gone to
live with others.8
In this story, the boy is staring at a girl, who tries to hide behind the sleeve of
her kimono. The boy then acknowledges to have developed this habit while taking care
of his blind grandfather. The old man would only sit facing south. The boy would sit for
hours staring at his grandfather, hoping that the old man would turn and face north. The
boy believes that his grandfather only faced the south because to the south there was a
sunny place: “It gave me a sad feeling. It seemed uncanny. . . . I wondered if the south
felt ever so slightly lighter even to a blind person.”9 Kawabata seems to have developed
a fascination with people’s eyes. In his Matsugo no me {Eyes o f a Dying Man, 1933), he
attempts to reconstruct Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s confession of experiencing intense
beauty before his suicide, that is, through the eyes of a dying man.1 0
Tradition, therefore, is an inquisitive eye peering into Shimamura from an
imprecise place in the landscape of history. Under this Eye, Shimamura becomes his
own spectacle. The man gazes back at himself; he is forced to do so. The Eye is a force
that presents him with questions about who he is, and where he is going. Throughout
8 Kawabata Yasunari, Palm-of-the-Hand-Stories (Tanagokoro no shosetsu), 3; Kawabata Yasunari
Zenshu, volume 1, pp. 23-24.
9 Kawabata Yasunari, Palm-of-the-Hand-Stories (Tanagokoro no shosetsu), 4; Kawabata Yasunari
Zenshu, volume 1, p. 24.
1 0 Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 26.
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the novel, Shimamura will internalize the Eye and its power. This Eye will become his
silent but tangible companion in a journey toward discovery of an attainable balance
between what he knows and strives to reject (the pitfalls and drawbacks of modernity)
and what he longs for and attempts to embrace (the beautiful Japanese tradition).
The way Shimamura gazes at Yoko and its implications elucidates the dynamics
behind this unusual dialogue of vision which often seems to be Shimamura’s
monologue.
(2) Shimamura Gazes at Yoko: Symbolic Representations of the Other
After his second trip to the snow country, the time arrives for Shimamura to go
back to Tokyo. Komako accompanies him to the train station. Yoko suddenly shows up
to inform Komako that Yukio’s condition has gotten worse, and that he is asking for
her. Komako refuses to leave until she has seen Shimamura off. While this heated
exchange takes place between the two women, Shimamura has his gaze fixed upon
Yoko, at the same time that Yoko is gazing at Komako. We do not know who or what
Komako is looking at, but we know that her eyes are moist [S82/Z68], Shimamura takes
his time in subjecting Yoko to his inquisitive look:
Yoko stood rigid, gazing at Komako. Her face, like a mask, wore an
expression of such utter earnestness that it was impossible to tell whether she
was angry or surprised or grieved. It seemed an extraordinarily pure and simple
face to Shimamura. [S82/Z68]
Shimamura has the chance to study Yoko’s face. We witness a transition. Little
by little Yoko loses her “fragmented body,” and appears to us in a more complete way.
In the instant that Shimamura focuses on Yoko’s face, he cannot decode her visual
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expression. Shimamura attaches to her mask-like face three different emotional
responses: anger, surprise, and grief. Most probably, these three emotions have blended
in the girl’s heart already, and the fact that Shimamura is at least able to acknowledge
features of these emotions tells us about his inner desire to try to understand not only
Yoko, but also himself.
We know that Shimamura must feel anger at his wasted life and, surprised by
such recognition, he starts his grieving process for a past that will never be again. To
project his emotions onto Yoko’s face, or to accept his reading of such emotions as
incentive to acknowledge his inner feelings, introduces us to a process that makes us
question who is reading what, and what is one seeing reflected onto the Other. Is this
process, in other words, from Shimamura to Yoko, or from Yoko to Shimamura?
This is a dialogue in which Yoko is an unaware participant: but Shimamura
clearly recognizes her power to stir his interior self to reflect. Once again anxiety is on
the side of the subject of the gaze who is left deciphering the masked meaning the
object of his troubled gaze carries within itself. This object speaks a language that
Shimamura is attempting to make sense of. If Eyes are a mirror of the soul, it is only in
Yoko’s Eyes, in the Other’s Eyes, that he can really see and find himself.
Shimamura’s fascination with Yoko’s eyes, as discussed previously, is not
limited to the opening passages, but it repeats itself. When, Shimamura spots Yoko by
the hearth in the office of the inn where he is a guest, for reasons that are not clear to
him, he feels uncomfortable at the idea that Yoko works in the same place where he
entertains Komako. Shimamura has been lost in thoughts re-evaluating his feelings for
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Komako, whose life he describes as “beautiful but wasted” (utsukushii toro)
[S127/Z102], when he sees Yoko: “He was sure that Yoko’s eyes, for all their
innocence, could send a probing light to the heart of these matters, and he somehow felt
drawn to her too” [S128/Z103].
Shimamura believes in the power of Yoko’s eyes, and in so doing he makes of
her somebody through whom truth can be revealed. She remains the fantasized place
from which knowledge and certainty originate. Her working in a place where he does
most of his daily activities is somehow unsettling. His discomfort originates from the
“impure” character of his relationship with Komako, and he feels that such blending
cannot be successful; that it can only negatively affect Yoko’s life. Pure tradition would
be contaminated by the working values of modernity.
The fact that such a sight makes him also think about his relationship with
Komako tells us about the ambiguous feelings that he nurtures toward the two women.
Discovered in a humble position (working), and object of the male gaze (once again
unaware of it), Yoko becomes a source of anxiety also over the place that Komako
occupies in Shimamura’s life. In other words, Yoko becomes Komako’s surrogate
because Shimamura’s desire is, in reality, the desire for Komako. Yoko, the Other,
Shimamura’s fragmented specular image, also reflects back the mental image of
Komako: a blend of corrupted tradition and enticing modernity. Shimamura believes
that only a light in Yoko’s eyes can reveal the essence of these trying matters to him,
just like that light that shone in Yoko’s face in “Mirror of Evening Scenery” [S10/Z14],
The light possesses power to make clear to the male gazer the reasons behind his station
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in life, his trip to the snow country, his conflicting feelings toward Komako, and his
inexplicable attraction to Yoko.
Yoko is also given the power to enlighten in order to understand. Shimamura
looks at her, thinks of Komako, but knows that his secret (the origin of his internal
turmoil) could only be revealed if Yoko were to offer her advice, if she were to consider
these matters only once. Shimamura feels emotionally drawn to her for the keys she
holds to unlock the door to the ultimate truth of his being in his world of confusion.
Some scholars have argued that from the opening of the novel Yoko is equated
to death, an incoming death, a symbol of death.1 1 Yoko is the madwoman destined to
take her own life in order to make a statement about life, and about history. She walks
through the novel surrounded by a masterfully constructed halo of aloofness and
mystery. It is never very clear what she does, where she is going, who she is with, what
she is saying, where she is looking. Shimamura is intrigued by her eyes: their “weird”
beauty, their “probing” light, their uncanny power to see and to know. Yoko can
obviously see what other people’s eyes cannot. She is almost given the power of
holding the light of a Supreme Being, with the power to annihilate or to bring
enlightenment, discovery of one’s own true identity. But one who is so pure in this
world, and invested with such a goal in life, cannot walk this earth for very long.
The reader cannot discern with absolute certainty whether Yoko really dies at
the end of the novel. The key words here are “death” and “end.” Snow Country belongs
1 1 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 95-97; Tsuruta Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari no geijutsu, 75.
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to a group of novels Kawabata left incomplete.1 2 If Snow Country is an open-ended
novel, then we can question Yoko’s destiny as it unfolds in the last pages of the novel.
When Yoko’s body falls from the burning warehouse roof, Komako brings her hands to
her eyes (to avoid the face of death once again, or just to avoid the face of reality),
while Shimamura applies a very peculiar aesthetic look to the scene developing in front
of his eyes:
A line of water from one of the pumps arched down on the smoldering fire,
and a woman’s body suddenly floated up before it: such had been the fall. The
body was quite horizontal as it passed through the air. Shimamura started back -
not from fear, however. He saw the figure as a phantasm from an unreal world.
That stiff figure, flung out into the air, became soft and pliant. With a doll-like
passiveness, and the freedom of the lifeless, it seemed to hold both life and death
in abeyance. If Shimamura felt even a flicker of uneasiness, it was lest the head
drop, or a knee or a hip bend to disturb that perfectly horizontal line. Something
of the sort must surely happen; but the body was still horizontal when it struck
the ground. .. . Shimamura gazed (mite ita) at the still form. [S173/Z139]
At this point, to Shimamura this is just a woman’s body. His eyes follow the
body’s descent to the ground and admire the graceful way it lands. His emotions are not
stirred by the sight: he is enjoying a sight of incredible beauty. There is beauty in death.
Shimamura gazes at her, but does not recognize her. Even at the moment of her
approaching death, Shimamura still does not know who she is. Yoko is the complete
Other: he does not recognize her, he does not understand her, he does not know her.
The visual dynamics of this passage remind us of “Mirror of Evening Scenery,”
when Yoko’s Eye floated over the landscape, when Shimamura almost called out - but
not in fear - and then thought that everything was happening as if in a dream [S7/Z12].
Here everything is very similar, to the point that it becomes almost haunting. Back then
1 2 Works that Kawabata left incomplete include Suisho Genso (Crystal Fantasies, 1931), Snow Country,
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it was a woman’s eye floating; now it is a woman’s body floating. Then it was the
image of Yoko’s eye that surprised him; now it is this woman’s body descending to the
ground. The feeling of visual illusion or dream-like state of mind remains. What once
was a fragmented body part, an Eye, has now become a complete body. Fragmentation
belongs to the past.
When the time comes for Shimamura to deal with his demons, he retreats into a
semi-conscious state of mind, where reality and dream blend, and where it is more
comfortable for him to deal with a dream than with the reality of a piercing eye or of a
falling body. Something is going awry in this process of identification and recognition,
and in a desperate attempt to avoid accepting the reality of his own being, Shimamura
recovers in the safety of his visual hallucinations. At the end he has no choice but to
accept the reality of Yoko’s body falling suspended in the air.
When did he realize that it was Yoko? The gasp from the crowd and
Komako’s scream seemed to come at the same instant; and that instant too there
was a suggestion of a spasm in the calf of Yoko’s leg, stretched out on the
ground.
The scream stabbed him through. At the spasm of Yoko’s leg, a chill passed
down his spine to his very feet. His heart was pounding in an indefinable
anguish. [S173/Z139]
The woman is a fragmented body again; only a spasm in her calf reveals signs of
her life. Recognition occurs at the sight of the spasm. He realizes not only that she
might still be alive, but also that she might open her eyes and call for recognition: once
again he anticipates her gaze. This is the origin of his anguish: what if she were to open
her eyes? Shimamura must ponder the meaning of the image unfolding before his eyes,
and must question his inner self which is in need of knowledge. Shimamura is troubled
The Lake, Beauty and Sadness, and Tanpopo.
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and cannot accept the truth of “death” as the only answer to the troubles of the Modem
Man. He cannot come to terms with “death” as the secret that Yoko was keeping from
the corrupted world of Modernity. He cannot accept “death” as the only answer to his
quest to overcome his anxiety over his place in the modem world. If Shimamura has to
witness the tragic and unexplained death of pure tradition in order to cope with his own
transition to a world to which he still feels he does not belong, then something is still
missing from the picture. We do not know if Yoko is dead. Shimamura does not know.
Komako does not know. We will never know. We can only speculate and, by so doing,
delve deeper into the later developments of this moment:
Even before the spasm passed, Shimamura was looking at the face and the
kimono, an arrow figure against a red ground. Yoko had fallen face up. The skirt
of her kimono was pulled just over one knee. There was but that slight
movement in her leg after she struck the earth. She lay unconscious. For some
reason Shimamura did not see death in the still form. He felt rather that Yoko
had undergone some shift, some metamorphosis. [S174/Z139-140]
Shimamura is tom; he does not see death. Or maybe he is denying himself the
power to see death in the image before him. He is looking at Yoko’s face as if he is
anticipating something that may come from her. He may be hoping, or fearing, that she
might open her eyes. The answer that can come only from Yoko’s eyes, this time, does
not present itself in the form of a darting light because “The beautiful eyes that so
pieced their object were closed. Her jaw was thrust slightly out, and her throat was
arched. The fire flickered over the white face.” [S174/Z140]
Suddenly Yoko has become “whole” again. Shimamura seems able only at this
point to deal with Yoko as a full person, probably because her eyes are closed. Her calf,
her jaw, her throat, her face: slowly, she is losing the fragmented-body ascribed to her
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since the beginning of the novel; and under Shimamura’ s gaze she is finally “whole.”
Shimamura remains uncertain over what to expect from the body that rests motionless
on the ground. Shimamura looks at her face hoping, and at the same time dreading, to
see her eyes open. Shimamura has lost that mirror in which to reflect the image of his
confused self. But this is also the time for him to acknowledge that every time he saw
himself reflected in Yoko’s eyes it was a source of pain and fear over his future life,
over his destiny. Now that her eyes are shut for good, he needs to move on to
investigate the meaning of his life. Nobody else can do it for him.
Something is happening in Shimamura; denied the power of Yoko’s Eye that
could help him to see and to know, or to grasp the meaning of his life, Shimamura is left
with anguish:
Shimamura felt a rising in his chest again as the memory came to him of the
night he had been on his way to visit Komako, and he had seen the mountain
light shine in Yoko’s face. The years and months with Komako seemed to be
lighted up in that instant: and there, he knew, was the anguish. [S174/Z140]
Shimamura is finally able to see with his own eyes: Yoko’s eyes will not open
this time. At the death bed of “tradition,” Shimamura is invested with the power to see,
and the power to know, with the anguish that he belongs to modem time. The anguish
that what is past is forever lost. The anguish is over his displacement in a world that he
now has to make his own. The anguish is over belonging to a place in space and in time
that he has tried to deny throughout his stay in the snow country. The anguish is over
accepting his life as a wasted effort.
Yoko’s face is left hanging vacantly while embraced by Komako. We can still
question Yoko’s apparent death. Tradition never dies. It rises from the ashes like a
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phoenix, and recreates itself again and again to please the taste of modem men.
Tradition is not a still form. It is shaped and re-invented by those modem men who
invest much of themselves into finding the truths that tradition may hold. If Yoko were
to die, Kawabata himself must have then denied pure tradition the power to survive.
And we know that this was not the case, because Kawabata firmly believed in such
power. If Yoko were dead at the end of Snow Country, Kawabata himself would have
lost part of his identity as a Japanese man and artist writing in 1940s Japan. Kawabata
may have avoided bringing an end to Snow Country on purpose, in order to come to
terms with the reality of what it means when pessimism prevails. By leaving it as an
open-ended novel, Kawabata invites us to offer our own interpretations.
(3) Shimamura and Komako: The Making and Un-making of the Self
Many scholars have been tempted to find in Shimamura Kawabata’s alter-ego.
Shimamura embarks on a journey to rediscover himself and the ways to deal with
modernity and tradition. Kawabata himself in the 1930s abandoned his experimenting
with Modernism, and re-discovered the Japanese classics. Scholars of Kawabata are still
trying to unveil how successful Kawabata was in combining tradition and modernity in
his writings.1 3
To find an acceptable balance between tradition and modernity, Kawabata had
to go back to the Japanese classics, and his reading of the Genji monogatari during
1 3 Roy Starrs, Soundings in Time, 118-139; Dennis C. Washburn, “A Dizzying Descent into the Self,”
247-49; Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 78; Sydney DeVere Brown, “Yasunari Kawabata (1899-
1972),” 376.
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World War II seemingly affected his literary production of the years to come.1 4 But it
was not an easy task for him to part from Modernism, such a significant part of his life
as a writer. It was through experimenting with Modernism that Kawabata first explored
the emotional implications and contradictions of displaced selves in Japanese society.1 5
Psychological portraits abound in his writings dating back to the 1920s, but when he
decided to turn back to the Japanese canon, he carried with him this Modernist baggage,
which he incorporated in his new writings.
It would be almost too simplistic to try to identify Shimamura with Kawabata.
Although Kawabata may have felt inner conflicts in trying to understand his place in
1940s Japan, he may have attempted to resolve this dilemma in those novels that belong
to the post-war period. And the acknowledged fact that most of these writings are open-
ended (or incomplete) tells us more about Kawabata’s struggles in coming to terms with
1 4 Kawabata commented on his rediscovery of the classics of the Japanese tradition in “Aishu” (Sadness),
Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 27, pp. 388-396, and in “Haisen koro” (At the time of the defeat),
Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 28, pp. 7-9. In “Aishu” he writes: “After the defeat [in a defeated
Japan], I can only return to the sadness (kanashimi) of ancient Japan [of Japan of ancient times], I do not
believe in the social conditions or manners [morals] of postwar Japan. I do not even believe in such
reality,” KYZ 27, p. 391. In “Haisen koro” Kawabata wrote that it was his intention to reproduce the
motifs of Japan’s defeat in a work that would probably recall the Heike monogatari of the Taiheiki
{Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 28, p. 7). Mizenko writes that from Kawabata’s words, and from
the content o f “Haisen koro” it is clear “that Kawabata chose to understand Japan’s defeat through the
lens of what he saw as Japan’s traditional culture - indeed, what was for him its cultural essence,”
Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 103. In 1957, Kawabata reflected
upon his approach to the classics throughout the years. In “Koten o yomu hitobito e,” he writes that when
he was a younger boy, he read both the classics and their commentaries in their classical original versions
from the beginning to the end without stopping to look up a word or a sentence the he could not readily
understand. It was only later in life that he went back to his earlier readings, and that he discovered that a
more accurate reading of these classics as well as a closer study of the language used to write them,
brought the Japanese feelings closer to him {Nihon no jokan wa kayotte kuru); thus, it was a good thing to
go back to the Japanese language of the past through the study of classical literature, because it brought
him closer to both the native literature and feelings of Japan {Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 33, p.
269).
1 5 Suisho Genso (Crystal Fantasies, 1931), for example, represents Kawabata’s early attempt “at
presenting a woman’s psychology, especially as that psychology reveals itself in response to the
problematic nature of male/female relations,” Roy Starrs, Soundings in Time, 95.
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his displaced self in a very ambiguous Japan.1 6 In other words, we do not have the
feeling that Kawabata looked at his life as a waste of effort. Moreover, Kawabata knew
exactly the issues he was dealing with, and his knowledge did not originate from visual
illusions, nor was it limited. Kawabata resolved his inner turmoil about the issue of
modernity versus tradition in his life by transposing this dialogue in his novels, by
having his characters deal with it.
If Shimamura is not a representation of Kawabata, and if there is a need to
identify or discover Kawabata’s alter-ego in Snow Country, we may need to turn our
focus to another character, Komako. It is Komako who better embodies Kawabata’s
conflicting attitude toward tradition and modernity. Kawabata himself acknowledged it:
Of course, I am not Shimamura. He is, in the end, little more than a device to
enhance Komako. I suppose this is the source of the novel’s failure but also its
success. The author was intent on entering only Komako’s world and brusquely
turned his back on Shimamura. So, in this sense, I am probably Komako rather
than Shimamura. I consciously wrote Shimamura distancing him from myself as
much as possible.1 7
Therefore, who is Komako? Komako is a country geisha.1 8 The first time that
Shimamura and Komako meet, she is still a geisha in training. The second and third
time they meet, she is a full geisha. Komako seems to be trapped in a secular profession
that belongs to the Edo Period (1600-1867).1 9 What sets her apart from her earlier
1 6 On the “incomplete” nature o f some of Kawabata’s works see Hasegawa Izumi, “Kawabata Yasunari
bungaku no miryoku,” Kokubungaku 56, no. 9 (1991): 10-14.
1 7 Kawabata Yasunari’s postscript to the Sogensha edition of Yukiguni (1948), cited in Richard Torrance,
“Popular Languages in Yukiguni," 247.
1 8 During his stay at Yuzawa, Kawabata met Matsue, a country geisha. She would inspire Kawabata to
create Komako. Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to ju n ’ ai, 60-64; Hyodo Masanosuke, Kawabata Yasunari ron,
134.
1 9 Lesley Downer, Women o f the Pleasure Quarters. The Secret History o f the Geisha (New York:
Broadway Books, 2001). For a historical account of the life of the geisha in the Tokugawa period, see
Sone Hiromi, “Prostitution and Public Authority in Early Modem Japan,” trans. Terashima Akiko and
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counterparts is the fact that she is fully in charge of her finances. To be financially
independent, and even to be involved in money transactions, makes her a modem
woman. Obviously, she is not the “modem girl” who showed up on the Tokyo scene in
the 1920s and 1930s, but she is a woman in charge of her life.2 0
Komako is familiar with life in Tokyo: she was trained there as a geisha.
However, she goes back to the countryside. Komako has had her experience with the
modem, she has been exposed to it, but she retreats to the snow country, although “her
longing for the city had become an undemanding dream” [S43/Z38]. In this place she
attempts to bargain between expectations of a modem woman and traditional ethics. We
know that she is also trapped in a traditional setting because she keeps a diary
[S40/Z35]. She started writing it when in Tokyo at the age of sixteen: “I write my diary
when I’m home from a party and ready for bed, and when I read it over I can see places
where I’ve gone to sleep writing” [S41/Z36].
To keep a diary, or a journal, is one of the most private experiences in a
woman’s life. A journal becomes the confidant, the friend for life, the trustworthy one.
To a diary a woman can express her feelings: joy, sorrow, happiness, sadness,
disappointment, frustration, hope, anger, grief, the pains of a broken heart. A woman’s
journal becomes the depository of her dreams, and of her future.
Anne Walthall, in Women and Class in Japanese History, Hitomi Tonomura et als., eds. (Ann Arbor:
Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1999), 169-185.
2 0 Komako shows she is in charge of her finances when she settles the bill with the innkeeper after
spending the whole night with Shimamura (S79). On the issue of the Modem Girl or moga see Miriam
Silverberg’s scholarship: Miriam Silverberg, “The Modem Girl as Militant,” in Recreating Japanese
Women, 1600-1945, Gail Lee Bernstein, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 239-266;
Miriam Silverberg, “The Cafe Waitress Serving Modem Japan,” in Mirror o f Modernity. Invented
Traditions o f Modern Japan, Stephen Vlastos, ed., 208-225.
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More than knowing that she keeps a diary, Shimamura is amazed at the news
that “she had carefully catalogued every novel and short story she had read since she
was fifteen or sixteen” [S41/Z36], and that she has already filled ten notebooks.
Shimamura questions the need for such an endeavor, and calls it “a waste of effort”
(ilord, S41/Z37).
Here, I am interested in bringing to light the similarities between Shimamura’s
attitude toward Komako’s readings and writings, and Prince Genji’s discovery of
Tamakazura reading monogatari (“Hotaru,” or “Fireflies” chapter).2 1 Genji launches
himself into delivering the famous monogatari-ron. We are actually presented with
Murasaki Shikibu’s position on the need of such readings and writings. Through Genji,
Murasaki Shikibu states that works of fiction (monogatari) have a very specific didactic
function: to keep the memory of life experience. The historical records of the past (e.g.
Kojiki, Nihon shoki) tell one aspect of the story: they are concerned with recording
historical events. These historical accounts do not provide insights into the real lives of
people or details of people’s emotions. The goal of the monogatari becomes to record
these emotions and become guardian of these memories. Unlike Genji, however,
Shimamura does not voice aloud his concerns, because
He 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. [S42/Z37]
Shimamura recognizes the inner need that motivates Komako to write, and to
keep a record of her daily routine, as well as to keep track of those heroines she reads
2 1 Edward G. Seidensticker, trans., The Tale o f Genji (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 430-440, 436-
439.
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about in some novels. We do not know if Komako compares her life to those of the
women that she reads about; it makes us wonder what Komako is trying to accomplish
by keeping such a peculiar journal. To mingle her daily affairs with the destiny of
characters out of a novel makes us question the unique way through which she is trying
to overcome her despair of becoming a geisha. Of course she would never accept
Shimamura’s label of her writing activity as a “waste of effort.” Moreover, had
Shimamura acknowledged aloud her “waste of effort,” he may have needed to come to
terms with his own shortcomings:
There was something lonely, something sad in it, something that rather
suggested a beggar who has lost all desire. It occurred to Shimamura that his
own distant fantasy on the occidental ballet, built up from words and
photographs in foreign books, was not in its way dissimilar. [S42/Z37]
It was in the 1920s that Heian women’s diaries (nikki bungaku) were canonized.
Especially active was the scholar Doi Koichi (1886-1979), who emphasized the “self
reflection” motif that these diaries tended to promote. For Doi, this “self-reflective
attitude, which expressed the heightened lyrical moments of one’s life, naturally
developed into an attitude that sought to represent life by giving fuller play to one’s
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imagination.” It was Kaito Matsuzo (1878-1952) who “elevated the status of nikki
bungaku by developing the notion of jisho bungaku (literature of self-reflection).”2 3
Kawabata must have been very familiar with the discourse on classical Japanese
literature that was taking place in Japan from the 1920s all the way through the 1950s
and beyond. I believe that, by having Komako keep a diary, he inscribes her in a much
wider picture that includes more than just conflicts with the Modem. Komako is the
2 2 Doi Koichi cited in Tomi Suzuki’s “Gender and Genre,” 84.
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ambiguous character in this novel who sees elements from both the classical tradition
and modernity converging upon her. Komako’s cultural and historical trap is more
uncomfortable than Yoko’s or Shimamura’s.
She is the displaced one in this environment. She is the one in desperate need to
come to terms with a conflicting self. She is the one on whom Shimamura also mirrors
himself, and resists what he sees. Komako has complied with one aspect of a specific
tradition by accepting to become a geisha. By choosing to entangle herself in the
profession, she has enriched her choice with modem overtones. She chooses to go to
Tokyo to train as a geisha, and she later chooses to return to the snow country to work.
The fact that she makes such decisions tells us about the modem side of her. What sets
her apart from her Edo counterparts is that she does not have a patron to rely on, and
that she handles the money she earns. In this way, Komako is shown to us in her quest
to find a balance between tradition and modernity. Whereas Yoko is a representation of
“pure tradition,” and Shimamura is a symbol of “tainted tradition” (tradition that has
already met with the Modem), Komako comes across as a little bit of both and more.
Komako is the most tom character in Snow Country, emotionally entangled in
an inner and outer turmoil that she is only able to write about in her diary. To go back to
diaries of previous years becomes an exercise in retrieving the memory of important
moments, joyful as well as sad ones. And to read novels (shosetsu) seems to project her
into a world far from her own, where she can lose herself for a while, where she can
escape her troubled destiny.
2 3 Tomi Suzuki, “Gender and Genre,” 85.
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By reading shosetsu (modem fiction) rather than monogatari, and by keeping her
own diary {nikki) along with her catalogues of authors and characters, Komako shows
another independent side of herself, a self tom between interests in literature and
literary writings per se, and a self that can only live from her being a geisha. Shimamura
does not prostitute himself to support his life of writing and researching from the
comfort of his Tokyo home. Nevertheless, he feels entitled to judge and label from that
problematic space to which he has retreated.
Komako is a different kind of mirror on which Shimamura rests his gaze on
several occasions. But the images that he is given back are not images that he
particularly enjoys. When Shimamura looks at Komako, he sees his own complexities,
his vacillating identity, his restless soul trying to compromise between tradition and
modernity. But Komako is not a dream, she is not a ghost. She is flesh, flesh that he
physically experiences. This physical/camal knowledge sets the tone for the type of
self-destructive relationship that the two share, and the torments that originate from it.
(4) Komako as Object of Shimamura’s Gaze: Reflecting Images of Tainted
Selves
On the occasion of their first encounter, on his first trip to the snow country,
Shimamura investigates Komako’s life. He wants to know who she is. Komako tells
him that she is from the snow country, and that for some time she worked as a geisha in
training in Tokyo. She then found a patron who paid her debts and promised to help her
in becoming a dancing teacher. Her patron suddenly died, and she never became a
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dancing teacher. She tells Shimamura she is nineteen, and Shimamura already feels that
life has added years to her appearance: he thought she was twenty-one or twenty-two.
At this point, Komako is not yet a full-trained geisha. Komako is also very
knowledgeable about Kabuki and talks about it in a very excited manner. Shimamura is
surprised by such knowledge, and calls her “amateur,” but he also has ambiguous
feelings toward this young woman:
Shimamura, however, had labelled her an amateur (shiroto) and, after a week in
the mountains during which he had spoken almost to no one, he found himself
longing for a companion. It was therefore friendship more than anything else
that he felt for the woman. His response to the mountains had extended itself to
cover her. [S19/Z20]
At the beginning Shimamura is intrigued by Komako, a young country geisha
somehow knowledgeable about literature and the arts in general. His interest in her
seems to be dictated more by boredom in being in such an isolated place, than by
sincere desire to really get to know her. But things change fast, and their relationship
becomes more complicated.
The following day, in fact, Shimamura asks Komako to call in a real geisha. She
becomes very defensive, and she is probably hurt. She even denies the presence of such
women in the mountain village. Shimamura is acting boldly, and obviously takes
pleasure in embarrassing her by sharing his need for a sexual encounter:
The woman was silent, her eyes on the floor. Shimamura had come to a point
where he knew he was only parading his masculine shamelessness, and yet it
seemed likely enough that the woman was familiar with the failing and need not
to be shocked by it. He looked at her (mite iru). Perhaps it was the rich lashes of
the downcast eyes (fushime) that made her face seem warm and sensuous. She
shook her head very slightly, and again a faint blush spread over her face.
[S21/Z21]
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Komako becomes the object of Shimamura’s gaze. Shimamura wants her aware
of being under his visual investigation. He wants to embarrass her not only by sharing
with her his physical need for a woman, but also by looking for an emotional response
from her body language. He is already looking at her in a sensual way. By
acknowledging the warm and sensuous features of her face, he is anticipating the
pleasure of a future intimate encounter between them.
Komako is aware of being gazed at (nagamete iru uchi ni, S21/Z21), therefore
she blushes under the man’s gaze. She avoids his eyes, and she avoids that eye contact
that will make her feel more uncomfortable than she already feels. Her response to
Shimamura’s request, however, is very ambiguous. She may be blushing under his
provocative gaze, but she also makes it clear to him that she would not oppose an affair
with him. In other words, she is also offering herself to him to placate his sexual
desires. Shimamura, on the other hand, keeps rejecting her. He wants to have her as a
friend, somebody he can talk to, somebody who can even become his wife’s companion
if he ever decides to bring his family to the snow country. His gaze, however, seems to
contradict such need solely for friendship. He is aware of her sensuality, and he also
knows that she is a geisha, ready to sell her body. However,
His desire for a woman was not of a sort to make him want this particular
woman - it was something to be taken care of lightly and with no sense of guilt.
This woman was too clean (seiketsu). From the moment he saw her, he had
separated this woman and the other in his mind. [S23/Z23]
To have Komako sexually may mean to contaminate the cleanliness that he
perceives in her persona. However, it is not clear at this point what it is that he wants
from her. He looks at her and, almost as if in foreplay, he embarrasses her. But he still
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wants to be sure to keep the distance (at least physical) between the two of them. He
looks at her and, although he may have a physical need for her, he attempts to placate
his need, or to divert it, by asking for somebody else. At the moment that he is rejecting
her, a thought comes to his mind: Yoko. We are left wondering over the need he has to
separate in his mind Komako from Yoko:
He said he felt only friendship for the woman [Komako], but he had his reasons
for thus stepping into shallow water without taking the final plunge.
And something like that evening mirror was no doubt at work here too. He
disliked the thought of drawn out complications from an affair with a woman
whose position was so ambiguous; but beyond that he saw her as somehow
unreal (higenjitsuteki na), like the woman’s face in that evening mirror. [S23-
24/Z23]
Komako is sitting right in front of him. No window or mirror is reflecting her
image. She is not the image of a woman, she is a woman whose identity and sexuality
are clearly before his eyes. Komako is not a fragmented body part, she has a body of
which Shimamura is very much aware. However, Shimamura perceives her as
“somehow unreal,” and compares his feeling to that same feeling he had when he
spotted the image of Yoko’s face reflected in the evening mirror.
Shimamura is attempting to connect the two women. He contradicts himself
when he first tries to separate in his mind Komako from the image of Yoko, and when
he later struggles to come to terms with his perception of Komako as “unreal,” just like
the image of Yoko’s face. Shimamura is in this way launching himself into a struggle
that will see him entangled in a physical relationship with Komako that will prove both
disruptive and destructive.
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We still need to address the reason why Shimamura perceives Komako as
“unreal.” As I have already pointed out, Komako is not a reflected image or a visual
illusion. The issue of Shimamura’s perception of Komako rests on the level of
emotional response. By this I mean that it is more than a visual experience, it is an
emotional one that is at work. Komako is not “unreal;” his perception of her is. She is
perceived as “unreal” because Shimamura is struck by her “cleanliness,” but also
because he already sees in her something he eventually needs to face: the reality of a
tradition in the process of merging with modernity.
Komako is an entertainer, and a woman with knowledge. She is “clean,” but also
tainted by the Modem she has experienced while in Tokyo. Shimamura needs to
balance his sexual desire for her against his desire to keep their relationship on a
friendship level. She becomes then “unreal” for the type of emotions she is able to stir
in/from him by being so very physically present before him. Therefore, Shimamura
does not need to turn to creations of his visual imagination to question his troubled self.
Komako’s physical presence helps to do exactly the same. “Unreal,” not of this world,
connotes both reality and a dream-like state of mind. It rests at the level of perception,
and not necessarily of vision.
When Shimamura gazes at Komako, he is asked to reconcile his displaced self
with what he sees and what he perceives. Whereas his visual experience of Yoko may
rest most of the time on the level of dreamery/visual hallucination, Shimamura’s visual
experience of Komako becomes an exercise in combining mixed emotional responses
belonging to different levels of identification process and ego formation.
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At this point in the novel, after he has rejected Komako a couple of times,
Shimamura launches into a long description of how he became interested in Western
dancing. This tells us more about who he is and what he does. In his essay on Yukiguni,
Tsuruta Kin’ya stresses the peculiar vision with which Shimamura is endowed, which
Tsumta calls manazashi.2 4 Shimamura studied Western dancing, and even wrote about
it. In reality, he never paid much attention to Western dancers or Western style dancing.
Only Western books and pictures had fed his need to know about Western dancing: “He
preferred not to savor the ballet in the flesh; rather he savored the phantasm of his own
dancing imagination (kuso ga odoru)” [S25/Z24], The eyes of his imagination only saw
the dancing as represented in books, and he never experienced the Western dancing
with dancers. Such a sight may have changed Shimamura’s perception of Western
dancing completely. Shimamura, however, seems rather content with the limited view
he has of Western dancing, because in this way he maintains control of its ability to
gratify him. In other words, his imagination supercedes the real, and gratification is thus
imagined.
Tsuruta calls such a vision manazashi, a bad representation of Shimamura’s own
imagination. Tsuruta also claims that this is the same way that Shimamura perceives
beauty when applied to both Komako and Yoko. Shimamura looks at them in the same
way he looks at Western dancing: with his imagination only. In other words, he
creates objects of his own desire through fantasy and imagination.
2 4 Tsuruta Kin’ya, “Yukiguni” (1997): 88.
2 5 Tsuruta Kin’ya, “Yukiguni” (1997): 88.
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In the same way that he perceived/imagined a distance between himself and
Yoko, he now wants to distance himself from Komako, wrongly assuming that only that
kind of distance will allow him to completely understand this woman. This issue,
however, is much more problematic. His physical distance from Western dancing does
not allow his full understanding of it, although he thinks he has succeeded in achieving
such knowledge:
It might be said that his knowledge was not for the first time in a very great
while being put to use, since talk of the dance helped bring the woman nearer to
him; and yet it was also possible that, hardly knowing it, he was treating the
woman exactly as he treated the occidental dance. [S25/Z24]
If he perceives Komako as either “unreal” or as manazashi, his knowledge of
Western dancing is also “unreal” or the product of what his imagination wants to see. If
he is treating Komako exactly as he treats his knowledge of Western dancing, then he
cannot really believe that he knows Komako. He thinks he knows her because she has
shared some of her life events with him, but in order to really know her he would need
to have physical contact with her. Therefore, just as he has shielded himself from a
more accurate knowledge of Western dancing by retreating to pictures and books, he
feels content with the knowledge he has of Komako by relying on pieces of information
he has been able to gather from her. But such knowledge is not only limited, it is also
flawed. To see does not always mean to know. In order to know, much deeper visual
and emotional experiences are required. Shimamura is, however, safer in imagining to
know than in pushing himself to pursue such knowledge in person, and to the fullest.
Shimamura’s knowledge of women, of Western dancing, and of himself is
superficial. For reasons that mainly concern his coming to terms with ego formation and
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identification, Shimamura denies himself the power to research thoroughly, to go
deeper, and to get to the core of his knowledge. Shimamura protects himself from the
real. The “unreal” or manazashi is the only place in where he can find comfort. Pictures
of distorted realities and distorted visions become his favorite companions.
Tsuruta addresses another moment in the novel as exemplification of
Shimamura’s manazashi. On the occasion of his second trip to the snow country, when
on the train Shimamura is fascinated by the scenery in the evening mirror, Shimamura
and Komako spent the night together. The morning after, Shimamura spots Komako
among a group of girls. His gaze rests on her. She feels it as she fixes her eyes on the
floor “in acute discomfort” [S51/Z43]. But she finds the strength to stand up and follow
him, and reprimands him about his behavior. At this point Komako invites him over to
her house, and he hesitates, acknowledging the presence of a sick man there. Komako is
very surprised about Shimamura’s knowledge of such a man, and asks him how he
came to know about it. He tells her about having seen the sick man accompanied by a
gentle woman [S52/Z44] on the train that took him here, and about having recognized
Komako at the train station, even in her dark-blue cape. Komako is very upset about
this, and her words are not kind toward Shimamura.
Shimamura did not like this sharpness. Nothing he had done and nothing that
had happened seemed to call for it, and he wondered if something basic in the
woman’s nature might not be coming to the surface. Still, when she came at him
the second time, he had to admit that he was being hit in a vulnerable spot. This
morning, as he glanced at Komako (mita) in that mirror reflecting the mountain
snow, he had of course thought of the girl in the evening train window. [S52-
53/Z45]
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This passage belongs to the section in the novel originally published as “Mirror
of White Morning” (Shiroi Asa no Kagami). To Tsuruta Kin’ya this moment is also
manazashi, Shimamura’s peculiar way of seeing with his imagination.2 6 At this point,
however, Shimamura has had a physical encounter with Komako, and the situation has
been complicated by this carnal knowledge that the two now share. I question whether
this can still be manazashi. It could, but only if Shimamura would claim at this point
that he is an expert on women, that, by physically knowing Komako, he knows all
women. It is obvious that he does not know her: he thinks he does, but when he gazes at
her all that he is given back is an imaginary construction of his own desire. After all,
Komako is still as distant as Yoko. His knowledge of Komako is limited, and it is as
flawed as is his knowledge of Western dancing. What Shimamura has, is an imagined
positive sense of self.
Komako’s image is reflected back in a mirror that is also reflecting the mountain
snow [S52-53/Z45]. However, Shimamura is not interested in her image as much as he
is interested in the mirror reflecting the mountain snow. This tells us that Shimamura
prefers to deal with the image of something he knows about (the mountain snow), and
sets aside the image of Komako reflected back to him from the mirror. He is, in other
words, avoiding the returned female gaze: the woman does not look, but her image
given back to him is something to avoid. Shimamura would rather use his thought to
recall Yoko. Komako then becomes, once again, a device to bring Yoko back to his
mind. While he previously could not deal with the image of Yoko’s Eye reflected on the
mirror/window, now he can. And he is able to do so because he does not feel the gaze of
2 6 Tsuruta Kin’ya, “Yukiguni” (1997): 88.
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the Other, and because he is denying Komako’s image the power to look back. He
avoids Komako’s apparent returned gaze from the mirror by retreating in his creative
visual imagination again. It is not Komako per se that reminds him of Yoko, but rather
the setting: the mirror, the mountain snow, and a female body reflected into this mirror.
Tsuruta points out that Shimamura describes Komako as “clean” (seiketsu), and
her activities as a “waste of effort” (toro) throughout the novel. I suggest reading the
adjective “clean” as a metaphor for the way Kawabata/Shimamura envisioned
traditional Japanese culture, and “waste of effort” as a metaphor for modem Japanese
society. In other words, Shimamura/Kawabata’s understanding of Japanese tradition is
romanticized. Such tradition will always be pure, uncontaminated, as clean as the
whitest snow piling up on top of the mountains. Modernity, on the other hand, is a
waste of effort. One can spend a lifetime attempting to decode its ambiguities, but at the
end one will end up trapped in its complexities. Full knowledge and understanding of
“modernity” does not belong to that man in pursuit of recognition and acceptance of the
self, which is an irony when we consider that the notion of the self is a modem
construct. Therefore, Yoko and Shimamura rest on the extremities of this dichotomy,
and cannot come closer to each other solely through their own efforts. Only Komako,
who has in herself elements of both traditional and modem culture, can mediate
between these two extremities. Accordingly, it is almost as if, through Shimamura,
Kawabata offers a different understanding of traditional Japanese culture, while,
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through Yoko’s vision, he addresses problematic issues in modem Japanese culture.
2 7 Tsuruta Kin’ya, “Yukiguni” (1997): 88.
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I agree that Komako stands at the crossroad of tradition and modernity, and that
for Shimamura to look at her becomes an exercise in both discovery and reformation of
the self. The gaze that Shimamura reserves for Komako, in the examples provided so
far, is a mixture of unreal perceived images and of a sexual being. Shimamura seems to
be distraught over the way to balance himself over the mixed images he has of Komako.
Komako, however, will be, in the end, the only one helping him to understand his
troubled self.
We are still left dealing with how involved Shimamura gets with the object of
his gaze. We know that he looks at Western dancing through books and pictures, and
that he is distant from it. He looks at Yoko from his seat on the train, but he still cannot
capture the full meaning of such an image. He looks at Komako reflected in that
morning mirror, and does not see her. To be far (at least emotionally) from the object of
his gaze seems to be giving him the power of knowledge. And we also know that this is
not the case.
Kawamoto Koji tries to answer the question of what it is that may possibly
intrigue Shimamura’s eyes so much when he looks at Komako. He writes:
I think it is her vigorous, palpitating life force, the earnest and pure way in
which she “strains to live” despite her lonely and unhappy circumstances. The
ardent passion with which she lives is something he craves but can never attain.
He feels and often declares that everything about her is a “complete waste of
effort” - her love for him, the diary she keeps, her vague longing for the city.
But then so is his life, for, lacking any real occupation, he spends his time in idle
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speculation about the ballet he has never seen.
2 8 Kawamoto Koji, “At Distance I Gaze,” 170.
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As Charles Cabell has pointed out, “for a Japanese man to engage in Western art is to be
reminded continually of his marginal status within modernity.”2 9 Shimamura is then left
dealing with both Western arts and Japanese arts, and with coming to terms with his
place at the margins of modernity.
The mirror plays an important role also in the case of Shimamura’s visual
experience of Komako. More than once Shimamura spots Komako reflected in the
mirror, and in all the cases the contrast is with the whiteness of the landscape reflected
in this mirror as well. Back from a bath they took together, Komako asks Shimamura to
look at her [S47/Z40-41]. At first, he is unable to see her because of the darkness in the
room. Then it is suddenly very bright. The colors dominating in this passage are white
30
and red. Shimamura’s eyes are taken by the extraordinary red of her cheeks
[S47/Z41]. Komako kneels at the mirror by the bed:
Shimamura glanced up at her (sono kata o mite), and immediately lowered
his head. The white in the depths of the mirror was the snow, and floating in the
middle of it were the woman’s bright red cheeks. There was an indescribably
fresh (seiketsuna) beauty in the contrast. [S48/Z41]
The mirror again seems to put a distance between the two of them. It seems safer
for Shimamura to gaze at Komako’s reflection in the mirror than at her directly. There
is a moment of hesitation. He tries to avoid gazing at her face. All he can bear to look
at, and in this way becoming master of his field of vision, are images reflected in the
mirror. And the image that is given back is one of “clean beauty” (seiketsuna
utsukushisa). In other words, this mirror experience provides Shimamura with the
2 9 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 72.
3 0 On color symbolism and its meaning see Dennis C. Washburn, “A Dizzying Descent into the Self,”
249; Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 83-86.
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fantasy of being the subject of the gaze. In reality, the intensity existing between the
white snow and Komako’s red cheeks is too much for him to bear. The woman is a
fragmented body (she is red cheeks only), but it is that beauty that comes out from the
overlapping of the landscape and the woman that looks back at Shimamura. Shimamura
succumbs to the power of the beauty transposed on to the mirror. His inquisitive gaze is
petrified in his process of admiring beauty. The image reflected on the mirror surface, a
mixture of tradition and modernity is finally looking back. Unable to bear the returned
gaze of such a haunting image, Shimamura retreats into his inner self, overcome by the
feeling of being caught peeping, and by the feeling of having finally seen beauty in the
making.
Vision becomes part of the real world, it does not belong to the workings of the
unconscious. Imagination is not at work here. There are no ghosts, no dreams, no
hallucinations, no tricks fed by Shimamura’s peculiar way of looking. The object of his
gaze looks back at him, and he shrinks into the reality of his incomplete being as a
Japanese man, as a connoisseur of Western dancing, and as an expert on women.
Modernity is climbing the hill of his soul, and it will eventually reach the top of a
troubled being. For now, it looks back disguised in a woman’s clothes and in the shape
of a female body.
There is a moment in the novel when Shimamura gazes undisturbed at Komako.
The occasion is that of the girl playing the samisen for him. She is so focussed on her
activity that she is unaware of being scrutinized by Shimamura’s gaze. As Kawamoto
Koji has pointed out in his study of Snow Country, it seems that at times Shimamura’s
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T 1
gaze gets so sharp and cold that it seems he is conducting a biological experiment. The
following description of Komako, however, although very detailed, does not come
across as cold:
Shimamura, relaxed and warm, was gazing into Komako’s face. A feeling of
intense physical nearness came over him.
The high, thin nose was usually a little lonely, a little sad, but today, with the
healthy, vital flush on her cheeks, it was rather whispering: I am here too. The
smooth lips seemed to reflect back a dancing light even when they were drawn
into a tight bud; and when for a moment they were stretched wide, as the singing
demanded, they were quick to contract again into that engaging little bud. Their
charm was exactly like the charm of her body itself. Her eyes, moist and
shining, made her look like a very young girl. She wore no powder, and the
polish of the city geisha had over it a layer of mountain color. Her skin,
suggesting the newness of a freshly peeled onion or perhaps a lily bulb, was
flushed faintly, even to the throat. More than anything, it was clean. [S73/Z60-
61]
Komako is nose, lips, eyes, skin, throat, and then body: she is mostly a
fragmented body, not quite whole in his eyes. To Tsuruta Kin’ya this too is a form of
manazashi, a desperate attempt on Shimamura’s side to find a connection, or to relate
her lips, her eyes, her voice. She is cut off, fragmented, and “dancing imagination”
only.3 2 Except for her beauty, everything else is a waste of effort. Even her playing the
samisen, her life in the mountain, and her training as a geisha are wasted. This image of
Komako’s fragmented body seems to help Shimamura to hold power and control over
the woman and over himself. We know that he does not want to be overwhelmed by her
life, by her conflicts, by their relationship. To look at her in such a way makes her easier
to accept. This male gaze is a site of desire, of sexual desire. By now Shimamura is
familiar with the details of her body, her more intimate parts, but he focuses on the
3 1 Kawamoto Koji, “At Distance I Gaze,” 168.
3 2 Tsuruta Kin’ya, “Yukiguni” (1997): 89.
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exterior, and his description assumes at the same time overtly sexual overtones. The
parting of her lips, her moist and shining eyes, her flushed skin up to her throat. At her
samisen, Komako is described as almost on the verge of sexual jouissance. What
Shimamura really sees is Komako giving herself pleasure, engaged in a masturbatory
relationship with the samisen, to the point that at the end she “let herself fall into an
easier posture” [S74/Z61]. Although these are Shimamura’s sexual overtones, never do
we feel or read more of Shimamura’s pleasure than when he is taking pleasure in
looking. This specific episode also tells us that Shimamura may have looked at Komako
during intercourse, to know how every part of her body reacted to sexual pleasure. This
may be the closest Shimamura and Komako ever get, and Komako is unaware of it.
The samisen episode occurs on the occasion of Shimamura’s second trip to the
snow country. When he returns to the snow country for the third time, what he sees is
not as beautiful as what we have seen in the above passage [S95-96/Z76-77]. Unable to
welcome him at the train station (disguised in a dark blue-cape to receive Yoko and
Yukio), Komako meets Shimamura at the inn later in the day. Komako is not feeling
well, having partied the night before on the occasion of the older geisha Kikuyu’s
farewell party. Once in Shimamura’s room, Komako shakes her head probably in an
attempt to get rid of thoughts, or buzzing. To Shimamura it seems as if insects are
falling off her head. Her head must feel very heavy, and she is very tired. She puts her
forehead on Shimamura’s knee. Her head on his knee feels damp and warm, not a
pleasant feeling:
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Insect smaller than moths (ka: mosquitoes) gathered on the thick white
powder at her neck. Some of them died there as Shimamura watched.3 3
The flesh on her neck and shoulders was richer than it had been the year
before. [S96/Z77]
The nape of a woman’s neck was the sexiest and most beautiful sight a man
could enjoy in the classical Japanese tradition. Being allowed a glance of a woman’s
neck meant much to a man who intended to pursue an intimate relation with the woman
who had so allowed herself to be seen. Now, however, such a sight is not quite so
attractive, and it becomes repulsive. Shimamura is more interested in the insects dying
in a place of traditional sensual beauty than in the neck itself. We perceive him as
distant and cold, and we wonder what has happened to both him and Komako in the
year that has gone by.
Tradition has been corrupted while Shimamura was gone: the sight of Komako’s
neck is an example of such corruption. And this corruption comes in the shape of
revolting dying insects: in this passage the image of insects stands as a metaphor for the
disgusting sight of modernity, eating tradition, and contaminating it. Shimamura feels
something different about Komako. Not only have her looks changed, but so have her
manners, and he peers into her face (majikani nagameta) to understand what has
happened [S101/Z81].
It is changes in her body that he perceives first: thick eyelashes that do not allow
the eyes to be seen; a fat abdomen; one breast bigger than the other [S104/Z84].3 4 In
this instance, Shimamura’s gaze rests on some more intimate parts of her body as their
3 3 Seidensticker mistakes the character for mosquito (ka) for the character for moth (ga).
3 4 The motif of the one breast bigger than the other will recur in Beauty and Sadness as well, with the
young Keiko.
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conversation moves on to practical matters in Komako’s life. Shimamura now sees her
as a working woman (geisha), as entertaining other guests, making money, dreaming of
having her own house, and possibly her own kids. She shares intimate details of her
doctor’s visits, and she talks about the man she has had a relationship with for five
years. This man has paid most of her debts, and he still supports her financially. She
does not see much of him and, although she has thought about leaving him she has
never found the power to do so.
Shimamura, who has escaped the city to find solace and relaxation in these
mountains, finds a troubled and confused Komako, a somehow visibly corrupted
Komako. However, this vision/sight comes to him now because he is really trying to see
the real Komako, to know her, and probably to break up with her. He also sees his
corrupted self, and feels badly about it. He is close to realizing that it does not matter
how far one can go, modernity will always catch up. Komako has been corrupted by
modernity for a long time, but only now is Shimamura able to see this. The year apart
from each other must have fueled his need to really know and understand, and improve
his skills to see not only with the eyes of his imagination (manazashi), but also with the
powerful vision of his inner soul. Shimamura is approaching the truth. It will not take
long before he finally becomes fully visible to himself.
Later in the novel, Shimamura shares a private moment with Yoko. At this
moment, Yoko asks Shimamura to hire her as his maid and take her to Tokyo with him
[S137/Z110]. Although Shimamura is actually trying to investigate the relationship
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between Yoko and Komako, all he gets is Yoko’s pleading to him to be good to
Komako [S138/Z111]:
As he opened the window to throw out the moth [that Yoko had killed in a fit
of anger], he caught a glimpse (mieta) of the drunken Komako playing parlor
games with a guest. She leaned forward, half from her seat, as though to push
her advantage home by force. The sky had clouded over. [S138-39/Z112]
Not only has the sky clouded over, but Shimamura’s spirit has as well. He feels
suddenly in need to cleanse himself, and goes for a bath. He is upset with both Yoko’s
words and with the sight of Komako entertaining a customer. He is very annoyed, but
still does not know what bothers him most. The answer will come to him later that
evening.
Komako is very drunk after partying with her male guests and, on her way back
home, she literally bumps into Shimamura. After stepping into her house, Shimamura
decides to take her back to the inn where he attends to her needs overnight, and where,
on several occasions, he stares at her. The morning after, Shimamura wakes up at the
sound of a voice reciting a Noh play, and from the mirror Komako is smiling at him
[S149/Z121]:
From the gray sky, framed by the window, the snow floated toward them in
great flakes, like white peonies. There was something quietly unreal about it
(nandaka shizukana uso no yd datta); Shimamura stared with the vacantness that
comes from lack of sleep... .
He remembered the snowy morning toward the end of the year before, and
glanced at the mirror. The cold peonies floated up yet larger, cutting a white
outline around Komako. Her kimono was open at the neck, and she was wiping
at her throat with a towel.
Her skin was as clean as if it had just been laundered. [S149-50/Z121-22]3 5
3 5 “Peony” symbolism will appear again in Beauty and Sadness, where Otoko (the female leading
character) makes a painting of a white peony.
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The frame of the window becomes a peculiar frame for the landscape outside:
from his bed Shimamura looks outside, and sees something that he perceives as “quietly
untrue” (shizukana uso no), and which reminds him of the scenery in the evening mirror
of the year before. Right now, however, his sight of the landscape is not reflected in a
window nor in a mirror: the landscape is opening right before his eyes. Nothing
mediates between his eyes and the landscape. This is still a moment of non-recognition.
Although the landscape presents itself to him, Shimamura cannot acknowledge the
overwhelming reality of it, and he confides his feeling of making of such landscape
something false or untrue (uso no). Shimamura is not ready yet to take in, to absorb, the
reality of the landscape as part of his being. To avoid recognition and identification, he
looks toward the mirror hoping to have a dream-like experience, reflecting back to him
an “image” that he can deal with, just as he did in the past.
This time it is the image of white peonies that overlaps with Komako’s image
reflected in the mirror, and peony petals become aesthetic reminders of snowflakes. It
seems as if Shimamura is being projected once again back in time to that peculiar
moment a year before when, on the train that was taking him to the snow country, the
window became a mirror. Now, however, Komako is the image that is returned. She is
the object of his sexual/sensual desire, she is the object of his imagination, she is a
creation of his peculiar imaginative vision (manazashi). She is reflected in the mirror,
and she is clean: clean and white like snowflakes, like peony petals. Shimamura needs
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to see something “clean” in her, and her skin is “clean” now, but it was not when insects
were dying on her neck.3 6
Shimamura’s anxiety over his objects of the gaze appears in a sort of crescendo.
He is struggling to understand what is unfolding before his eyes, and he is attempting to
compromise with the many images that are given back to him. He fails to see the white
mountain landscape for what it really is: another part of his ego in the making. He falls
short of acknowledging the place he occupies in the landscape: he is part of it, and
could not be otherwise. He attempts to escape the last stage in the identification process
by investing the reality of the landscape with features that have to do with falsehood,
and unreality. In other words, he desperately tries to create a landscape that is different
from the one that is shown to him from the window. To perceive the landscape as false
means for him to postpone, once again, coming to terms with the reality of the
landscape, and averting his gaze from delving deeper into the meaning of that reality.
His gaze still needs to rest on an object more tangible, more raw, and more real.
When he turns his eyes toward the mirror, what he is given back is a
romanticized reflection of Komako. Whereas not long ago she was described as a
physically corrupted woman, now he sees her again as “clean.” The color white adds
overtones of purity to her reflection. He avoids the reality of the landscape by creating a
peculiar object of his gaze and desire: he constructs Komako’s reflection in the mirror,
but that reflection is as untrue as the landscape outside the window.
3 6 Tsuruta Kin’ya also discusses this issue of Shimamura’s obsession with Komako’s cleanliness and
relates it to the “mukogawa no kukan” (the other side of space) in where the dissolution of the self
becomes complete.Tsuruta Kin’ya, “Yukiguni” (1991): 89 and ff.
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Komako’s reflection replaces the image of the landscape, and for a moment they
merge into a communion of whiteness and unreality. Specular images of each other, the
landscape and Komako become ambivalent objects of Shimamura’s gaze, a male gaze
still tom distinguishing the real from the unreal, between what is true and what is false,
between what is tangible and what is a creation of the subject/Shimamura’s
imagination. At some point Shimamura will have to stop escaping his world of
confusion and displacement, and Komako will still be the one helping him to break free.
When she starts talking about her life, Komako becomes a modem woman to
Shimamura’s eyes. When she settles her bill with the innkeeper (S79), she is perceived
as a modem woman in charge of her finances. I question how appealing such modernity
in a woman can be to Shimamura. If the modem follows him wherever he goes, his
journey’s goal to “cleanse himself’ from the corruptive and disruptive elements of the
- i n
modem becomes more difficult to accomplish.
Komako may be the means to self-discovery for Shimamura, but the modem
elements of corruption that she accumulates throughout the novel also allow Shimamura
to look at his old self again and again, and attempt to cleanse himself of modernity and
unite with nature. If nature is not the answer, or the tool to his conquest, despair and
anguish are all that are left for Shimamura. He still needs to overcome his feeling of
“incompleteness” as both a modem man, and as a Japanese man. But he still hangs in
the limbo of his imperfect and troubled ego.
Shimamura questions his station in life, his relationship with Komako, and the
reasons behind his prolonged stay in the snow country:
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He had stayed not because he could not leave Komako nor because he did not
want to. He had simply fallen into the habit of waiting for those frequent visits.
And the more continuous the assault became, the more he began to wonder what
was lacking in him, what kept him from living as completely. He could not
understand how she had lost herself. 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. And he knew
that he could not go on pampering himself forever. . . . The time had come to
leave. [S154-155/Z124-25]
Shimamura goes to the Land of Chijimi to bleach his kimonos and purify his
soul.3 8 When he returns to the village, he realizes that Komako does not fit in his life
anymore. The time has come to put an end to their destructive relationship.
The last time that Shimamura gazes at Komako, is under the light of the Milky
Way. This is a very eventful moment in the novel, when truths are spoken, and hearts
-5Q
are broken. Komako feels that Shimamura is ready to break up with her. Shimamura
allows his eyes to wander from the Milky Way on to Komako’s face:
The Milky Way. . . . seemed to bathe Komako’s head in its light.
The shape of her slightly aquiline nose was not clear, and the color was gone
from her small lips. Was it so dim, then, the light that cut across the sky and
overflowed it? Shimamura found that hard to believe. The light was dimmer
even than on the night of the new moon, and yet the Milky Way was brighter
than the brightest full moon. In the faint light that left no shadows on the earth,
Komako’s face floated up like an old mask (furui men). It was strange that even
in the mask there should be the scent of the woman. [S167-68/Z135]
Shimamura seems to have come to terms with his own realization that all this
time Komako has done nothing more than wear a “mask.” Perhaps, he realizes that he
3 7 Tsuruta Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari no geijutsu, 85-90.
3 8 “The thought of the white linen, spread out on the deep snow, the cloth and the snow glowing scarlet in
the rising sun, was enough to make him feel that the dirt of the summer had been washed away, even that
he himself had been bleached clean.” [S152/Z123]
3 9 To Hara Zen, this is the moment when after 14 years of writing, Kawabata’s novel finally comes full
circle. Hara Zen argues that this section, “Fire in the Snow” is nothing more that a variation of “Mirror of
Evening Scenery.” While in the latter Yoko’s face and eyes merged with the landscape, in the former
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does not know Komako as well as he thought, and that he has never tried to know her
better. All this time Komako has performed her geisha role, as well as her “woman”
role. Shimamura has never been able to go beyond “the mask,” and the “mask” is not
Komako’s true self.
Bathed in the light of the Milky Way (ama no kawa), Komako is perceived by
Shimamura’s gaze as not of this world. His visual imagination, his dream-like state of
mind, his creative eyes keep playing with the images that he has trouble recognizing. In
order to avoid the reality of the woman close to him, whose scent is strong enough to
make her more real than ever, he chooses to perceive her dim-lighted face as a mask. A
mask usually hides the real face of a person. A mask prevents the subject of the gaze
from seeing its object as it really is. A mask allows for stirring the imagination of the
gazer, and opens the door to speculation about identity issues. A mask also protects the
object of the gaze from the subject’s intrusive eyes. A mask is a barrier to knowledge.
By perceiving and seeing Komako’s face as a mask, Shimamura denies himself
the power of knowledge and to acknowledge. The woman does not really wear a mask.
He creates the image of a mask. It becomes more convenient to him to deal with the
falsehood of his modem life, and deny himself the chance to embrace modernity and
merge with it. Komako’s apparent mask puzzles Shimamura, and freezes him in his
mediocrity as a modem man, and in his inability to accept reality.
Shimamura’s gaze may rest on Komako as an attempt to sexually objectify her.
But she defies both the process and the label, and she defeats him in his unrelenting
Hara Zen perceives the merging of the background (The Milky Way) with the foreground (Komako’s
head bathed in the light of the Milky Way). Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari: sono enkinho, 96.
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struggle to mis-recognize her in order to avoid the image of his displaced and anxious
self. Under Shimamura’s gaze Komako is an object of his sexual desire. She is
furthermore a cultural object under the intellectual scrutiny of this hypocritical male
gaze which, in order to overcome its own pitfalls, also tries to inscribe meaning onto
Komako’s body. The truth is that this male gaze does not make her, does not identify
her, does not recognize her, does not construct her, does not weaken her, does not
endanger her, and does not deconstruct her. Just like its owner, this male gaze fails to
see the reality of the woman, and as a consequence meconnaissance ends up being
exclusively on the side of the male subject of the gaze. Shimamura does not recognize
Komako as another specular image of his endangered ego. To see himself in her image
would prove, once again, too unsettling.
(5) A Peculiar Sight: A White Russian Woman
On the occasion of his third and last trip to the snow country, the novel opens
with Shimamura already at the inn. Shimamura is gazing steadily at a probably dead
moth. This image of the dead moth overlaps with the image of the landscape. We are
told it is autumn, and the images of this fall landscape merge at times with the image of
a still moth hanging on one of the window’s screens:
Its feelers stood out like delicate wool, the color of cedar bark, and its wings, the
length of a woman’s finger, were a pale, almost diaphanous green. The ranges of
mountains beyond were already autumn-red in the evening sun. That one spot of
pale green struck him as oddly like the color of death. The fore and after wings
overlapped to make a deeper green, and the wings fluttered like thin pieces of
paper in the autumn wind. [S89-90/Z72]
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Shimamura’s inquisitive gaze rests on the moth whose wings remind him of the
length, and probably shape, of a woman’s fingers. Shimamura then shifts his gaze to the
mountains in the far landscape. Then once again his eyes rest on this moth, whose color
reminds him of death. He reconciles his vision of the apparently dead moth with the
image of the autumn wind. The main symbolism in this passage has to do with different
levels of visual perception. The landscape is, at this point, a somehow familiar one. The
image of the moth will become familiar, as Yoko will kill one later on. Shimamura sees
death in the pale green of the moth’s wings. Thus the passage becomes ominous for all
that it anticipates, especially for death and for the knowledge of the ephemeral nature of
life. Shimamura is cheating his eyesight by aestheticizing the image of a dead moth, by
seeing beauty in death. But this is an anticipatory for all that will be developed later on
in the novel.
Shimamura is once again taken by the beauty of the landscape. It is that time of
the year when vegetation takes on peculiar and brilliant colors that range from the gold
of ginko leaves to that bright red and maroon of maple leaves. Before his eyes,
The river seemed to flow from the tips of the cedar branches.
He thought he would never tire of looking at the autumn flowers that spread a
blanket of silver up the side of the mountain. [S90/Z73]
This landscape is inundated with colors: the river (a blue, or probably dark green
stream of water), the cedar branches (that brown-redish of the cedar tree, along with its
so peculiar smell), the autumn flowers (subdued hues of moderate overtones at sunset),
a blanket of silver, when nature’s colors unify under the light of the setting sun. There is
fragile beauty in this sight, delicately conveyed by words that Kawabata employs to
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render this passage. The magnificent colors of the landscape capture Shimamura’s eyes.
He is left speechless, and only his gaze is allowed to float over the sight of seemingly
uncontaminated beauty. Nothing and nobody could really succeed in spoiling such a
picture, a balm for Shimamura’s restless soul.
As in the opening of the novel, however, Shimamura’s sight of the landscape is
interrupted by a sudden and unexpected presence. While in “Mirror of Evening
Scenery” the reflected image of Yoko was the figure that emerged from his view of the
landscape, providing us and Shimamura with the feeling that she was part of that snowy
scenery, this time the figure that is projected onto Shimamura’s field of vision is a
haunting one, one that has nothing to do with the landscape. This figure does not belong
to the view, and it becomes a peculiar distortion of Shimamura’s creative imagination:
A White-Russian woman, a peddler, was sitting in the hallway when he came
out of the bath. So you find them even in these mountains - He went for a closer
look ( < mi ni itta).
She appeared to be in her forties. Her face was wrinkled and dirty, but her
skin, where it showed at the full throat and beyond, was a pure, glowing w hite..
Her skirt, like a dirty sheet wrapped around her, had quite lost the feel of
occidental dress, and had taken on instead something of the air of Japan. She
carried her wares on her back in a large Japanese-style kerchief. But for all that,
she still wore foreign shoes. [S90-91/Z73]
This second part of the novel opens with an overwhelming feeling of death in
the air. The appearance of the Russian woman spoils the pure image of the landscape,
and contributes to the awkward atmosphere in which Shimamura already feels himself
engulfed. The Russian woman is a representation of filth and decay that modem/foreign
elements carry with and within themselves when they enter Japan. To Shimamura, it is
an unsettling sight: the corrupting image of modernity that he has left behind in Tokyo
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127
has turned into a physical being, and it is before his eyes as a White-Russian woman’s
body.
When accepting the snow country as an idyllic place of uncontaminated beauty,
the Russian woman comes across as displaced: she is the “Intrusive Other.” Her
presence, however, is needed as a further reminder to Shimamura that the modem Other
will always be waiting for him, in different sizes, forms, shapes, or colors. Although we
do not have a clear perception of Shimamura being intimidated by such a sight (as a
matter of fact, he moves closer to the woman to get a better look), we do feel a sort of
disappointment, or maybe disillusion, on Shimamura’s part, for having to bear the
consequences of such an encounter. The emotions her sight stirs in him are not pleasant
ones. This Russian woman is everything that both Yoko and Komako are not. She is
much older than the two girls. Her face bears signs of aging and labor, in sharp contrast,
for example, to Komako’s overly emphasized description as “pure and clean” (seiketsu).
A closer look at the Russian woman also reveals a fat, white oily neck [S91/Z73],
Seidensticker’s translation conveys a meaning quite different from the original. The
woman’s neck, in other words, is not such a pretty sight as Seidensticker would like us
to believe through his rendering of this passage. The sight of her neck, in fact, becomes
a site of corruption, and that image is also troubling. What looks back at Shimamura is
physical corruption, a symbol of civil decadence, emotional disruption, cultural and
social pollution, and moral degradation. As a consequence, Shimamura feels threatened
by all that the sight stands for.
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The woman is described as having forgotten where she is from, and even if she
tries very hard to blend with locals, she is, and she will always be, a foreigner in this
land (both Japan, and this countryside). As Cabell points out,
The appearance of the filthy aging Russian between a scene of dead moths and a
scene of a once-popular geisha bidding farewell at the end of her contract,
contributes to the overwhelming sense of decay with which the second part of
the work opens. Even in the beautiful, pristine, sacred land of the snow country,
one can come across a decrepit, dirty Russian. As she leaves, her Western shoes,
emphasized in the text, again point up her essential incongruity in a land whose
beauty is soiled only by her presence.4 0
Tradition is in the process of being corrupted by these foreign elements constantly
entering Japan, the beautiful.
In this specific instance, Shimamura never enters the Russian woman’s field of
vision. Therefore, he is somehow spared the feeling of shame associated with becoming
the object of the Other’s look. Although he succumbs to the feeling of being unable to
respond to the sight, Shimamura’s look is as detached as his knowledge of Western
dancing, and of the Western world. Had the Russian woman returned the male gaze, he
would have found himself entangled in her look, which would have forced him to
recognize himself with what the woman saw: the Other is looking at me, therefore I am
that specific object the Other is looking at. Or, as Sartre wrote, “I am indeed that object
which the Other is looking at and judging.”4 1
In other words, Shimamura may have been forced to look at his self and
acknowledge the corrupting elements of modernity that he has embraced, and of which
he is now trying to rid himself. To become the object of her gaze and be judged by her
4 0 Charles R. Cabell, “Maiden Dreams,” 73.
4 1 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being & Nothingness, 320.
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also means to accept the reality of his transformed ego and his displaced person from an
amateur of the West to a connoisseur of the West (but never part of the West), and also
acknowledge the process that led him to give in to the overwhelming power of
modernity. Shimamura is more modem than he can handle. His denial will assume
different forms. His dismissal of the White Russian woman becomes a further step in
his process of denying himself full recognition as a modem Japanese man.
The Russian woman appears here for a reason. She may not be threatening
Shimamura with her gaze, but her body-presence, her being the Intrusive Other,
reminds both Shimamura and Kawabata, that the beauty of the land is ephemeral and
impermanent, and that the dirty, filthy modem is lurking in the background, disguised
this time in a White-Russian woman’s clothing. The time has come for Shimamura to
deal with the problematic nature of the modem, and attempt to come to term with the
tragedy of modernity. The female castrating gaze of modernity is always there, even
when the man does not perceive it.
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Chapter Three
The Structure of the Female Gaze in Snow Country:
Glimpses of Cultural Ambiguities
(1) The Female Gaze: Introduction
In this chapter, I focus on the discussion of the female gaze and its numerous
implications for the male object of such a gaze. Feminist film theorists and critics have
devoted an exceptional amount of scholarship toward deconstructing the biased
assumption that the gaze is only male.1 In other words, these scholars have attempted to
unveil the psychological, emotional, and cultural consequences that emerge when this
pattern of gazing is inverted and men become objects of female gazes and desires.
Although this argument cannot solely rest on the assumption of “the pleasure of
looking,” as did Laura Mulvey’s groundbreaking essay addressing the male gaze, I do
take up questions related to female scopophilia. The issue ultimately concerns whether
women’s pleasure of looking at men is the same as men’s, and if men, just like women,
become sexual objects of the female desire. Consequently, I discuss the dynamics
behind a probable sexual objectification of men when they are objects of the female
1 Ann Brooks, Postfeminism: Feminism, Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms (London & New York:
Routledge, 1997); Elizabeth Cowie, Representing the Woman: Cinema and Psychoanalysis (Minneapolis:
University o f Minnesota Press, 1997); Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the
Female Spectator,” Screen 23, no. 3-4 (1982): 74-87; Lorraine Gamman & Margaret Marchment, eds.,
The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers o f Popular Culture (London: The Women’s Press, 1988); Maggie
Humm, Feminism and Film (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997); E. Ann
Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides o f the Camera (New York: Methuen, 1983); Griselda Pollock,
Vision and Difference. Femininity, Feminism and the Histories o f Art (London & New York: Routledge,
1988); Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in the Field o f Vision-, Kaja Silverman, Male Subjectivity at the
Margins (New York & London: Routledge, 1992); Jackie Stacie, Star Gazing. Hollywood Cinema and
Female Spectatorship (New York: Routledge, 1994); Linda Williams, “When the Woman Looks,” in Re-
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131
gaze. What remains at the foundation of such rich investigation is a need to come to
terms with the reality of what it means for a woman to own the gaze, to be on the other
side of fences and blinds, and to become a female spectator.2
To study what is at stake for men when they become objects of the female gaze
will also help us to understand the sexual implications of what owning the
gaze/power/desire entails. Scholarly works, not always feminist texts, also focus on the
importance of the study of the cultural implications of the female gaze “in order to
insert women in a historical discourse that has hitherto been male dominated and has
excluded women.” The woman’s gaze, then, can be seen, addressed, and read as a
reaction, as a site of resistance to purely passive desire.4 This indeed is one of the
premises of my investigation of the organization of the female gaze in Snow Country.
I will explore what women see when they gaze at Shimamura. And, more
important, I will unveil Shimamura’s feelings when he is the object of the female gaze.
It will be interesting to see how he responds to women’s eyes, and how he positions
himself under the female gaze. I will also delve into the meaning of the female gaze as
it affects Shimamura in his quest to self-discovery. I also intend to point out how and if
these female gazes continue motifs developed in the classical tradition, as with
Shimamura’s kaimami of Yoko. I will also approach the study of the female gaze in
Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism, Mary Ann Doane et als., eds. (Los Angeles: University
Publications of America Inc., 1984), 83-99.
2 Ann E. Kaplan, Women and Film, 23-25.
3 Ann E. Kaplan, Women and Film, 25.
4 Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press), 151.
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order to understand how the gaze inscribes both Yoko and Komako in the context of
discourses on vision in the Japanese historical context.
I intend to rely on the above assumptions to prove that women are aware of the
roles they play, such as embodiments of traditional Japanese beauty and values. It is in
this way that they invite the male gaze. This male gaze is still a gaze of desire, although
a desire which is not always sexual. In the study of female gazes in Kawabata’s novels,
I will face a problematic issue when I compare typologies of women (traditional vs.
modem) to typologies of gazes and desires. For example, when the so-called “modem
woman” looks back, there is a threat in her gaze. This threat is not necessarily the
understood “castration anxiety” that Sigmund Freud writes about in his “Medusa’s
Head;” it is different.5 1 read it as a threat to the purity of the traditional Japanese man.
Men in Kawabata’s novels may play with, or manipulate modernity, but they never
seem to buy completely into its perverse ideology.
Those women whom Kawabata portrays as more modemized/Westemized
become a type of threat for this kind of man. Such women do invite the male gazes:
these women are something new in Japanese history and society, a forbidden and
“exotic” territory to be discovered, a polluted and corrupted environment, but still
charming and attractive, and astonishingly dangerous. We will see what these men
finally represent in the eyes of their Japanese temptresses, and why there is a need in
these women to violate the values of the traditional Japanese man. I will question if
these men end up being objects of female desires when they are object of the female
5 Sigmund Freud, “Medusa’s Head,” 273-275. See also Stephen Heath, “Difference,” 51-112.
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gaze. Consequently, I will have to approach the issue of male sexual objectification
when men become objects of the female gaze.
Before approaching the study of the implications of Yoko and Komako’s gazes
when directed to Shimamura, I would like to step back in time and see how women in
the classical tradition manipulated the male space of vision for their own purposes and
pleasure. This will allows us to see how Kawabata addresses the issue of female power
of vision, and how he revisits a classical topos, and enriches it with modem overtones.
In their studies of male kaimami scenes in the Genji monogatari, Norma Field
and Doris Bargen assume different positions. Field stresses the fact that women had to
be unaware of being looked at, because “for a woman to allow her face to be seen by a
man was tantamount to accepting him as a lover.”6 Doris Bargen, on the other hand,
argues that “while men pretended that women were unaware of their secretive activity
[kaimami], women knew that fences and wall, screens and curtains had eyes.”7
Neither critic considers that men constructed a space from which women could
look as well. This male constructed space may have justified and somehow
strengthened the male ideology of a submissive position of women behind fences, walls,
curtains, and screens. Thomas Lamarre writes:
Men quite literally secured daughters, concubines, and wives within the wings
and recesses of residences, constricting their movements with weighty attire and
custom. Yet, it was not a matter of purity and chastity but of strategic visibility
and sexual alliance: the cloistered woman and her family could control how she
was seen, and her future worth depended not only on the degree of her
6 Norma Field, op. cit., p. 123.
7 Doris G. Bargen, A Woman’ s Weapon: Spirit Possession in the Tale o f Genji, xix.
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invisibility to male eyes but also on the quality of her poems that emerged from
the darkness.8
If vision has to do with power, then we must also question the reality of who
owns the visual power in male kaimami scenes. Is it possible that wom en played a much
more active role in these dialogues of vision? What if we were to read kaimami
moments not necessarily as sites of women’s oppression, but as sites of women’s
resistance? My understanding of these questions is based on the assumption that “if a
female gaze exists, it does not simply replicate a monolithic and masculinised stare, but
instead involves a whole variety of looks and glances - an interplay of possibilities.”9
Moreover, I agree with Malek Alloula when he suggests that for women to look at men
from behind a screen or veil can be a powerful exercise:
It must be believed that the feminine gaze that filters through the veil is a gaze
of a particular kind: concentrated by the tiny orifice for the eye, this womanly
gaze is a little like the eye of a camera, like the photographic lens that takes aim
at everything. The photographer makes no mistake about it: he knows this gaze
well; it resembles his own when it is extended by the dark chamber of the
viewfinder. Thrust in the presence of a veiled woman, the photographer feels
photographed; having himself become an object-to-be-seen, he loses initiative:
he is dispossessed o f his own gaze.1 0
Reading passages from the Genji Monogatari allows me to enter the realm of
what I address as female kaimami scenes, and suggests that female kaimami not only
replicate male ones, but also add a new perspective of vision. In these instances, as we
8 Thomas Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan. An Archeology o f Sensation and Inscription (Durham and
London: Duke University Press, 2000), 111.
9 Suzanne Moore, “Here’s Looking at You, Kid!” in The Female Gaze. Women as Viewers o f Popular
Culture, Lorraine Gamman & Margaret Marshment, eds., 59.
1 0 Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem, trans. Myma Godzich and Wlad Godzich, intr. Barbara Harolw
(University of Minnesota Press: 1986), 14, cited in Joshua S. Mostow, “E no Gotoshi: the Picture Simile
and the Feminine Re-gard in Japanese Illustrated Romances,” 47. Here, I am not concerned with “the
colonial gaze,” as much as I am with the “veil” as a means to prevent from seeing and be seen; this veil
functions like the blinds: it is a barrier.
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shall see, men are dispossessed of their gaze, and of their power to see. Murasaki
Shikibu does not provide us with many examples of female kaimami, but those few that
she does provide are important in establishing patterns of female vision and their
implications.1 1
The most famous examples of reversed kaimami in the Genji Monogatari
belongs to Ukifune's mother: the governor's wife. Ukifune's mother's gazes tend to
reduce men "to their material contours as potential sons-in-law."1 2 In the chapter "The
Eastern Cottage" (Azumaya) Ukifune and her mother are at Nakanokimi's residence.
Ukifune's mother hears of Niou's visit to Nakanokimi, so she decides to take a look at
him:
Overcome with curiosity, the governor’s wife looked out through a crack
between two doors, and thought him radiant as a cherry in full blossom. . . .
What glory, she thought; and what happiness to be near him! . . . The elegance
of each small detail quite dazzled the governor’s wife. She had thought herself
dedicated to the pursuit of good taste, and she saw now that there was a certain
point beyond which ordinary people could not go. But she had one daughter, at
least, who could mix with the best of them. The governor’s wife gazed on and
on until he finally made his departure, and when he was gone she was somehow
lonely.1 3
In the Japanese text the term kaimami is not used.1 4 However, this is clearly an
example of female kaimami. The woman is catching a glimpse of a man whose sight
leaves her yearning for more. The woman's desire to see is expressed in the same form
as men's (by looking/peeping through a crack between two doors), but its content is
1 1 It is important already to point out that in both the Japanese classical version and in its modem
translation, we never find in the Genji monogatari the word kaimami used to refer to a way of looking by
women. “Kaimami” was a male activity par exellance.
1 2 Norma Field., The Splendor o f Longing in the Tale o f Genji, 267.
1 3 Edward Seidensticker, trans., The Tale o f Genji, 946-947.
1 4 The Japanese version reads: "yukashikute mono no hasama yori mireba. . . ." Abe Akio, Akiyama Ken,
and Imai Gen'e, Genji Monogatari-Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshu, volume 5 (Shogakkan, 1976), 36.
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somehow different. Niou's beauty and elegance impress her, but hers is a desire for all
that Niou represents materially, for all that the aristocratic people around her have, and
she does not. Her desire is neither a reflection nor a replica of men's desires.
Ukifune's mother is also portrayed in the role of female voyeur when, on the
very same day she gazes at Kaoru, she compares Niou and Kaoru, and she catches a
glimpse of the lieutenant, Ukifune's former fiance.1 5 This type of female kaimami can
also be read as a site of enjoyment of beauty and desire to possess, although this is a
displaced desire: she is looking in order to benefit her daughter Ukifune.
These examples from the Genji Monogatari have to do with the gendered
politics of voyeurism that Murasaki Shikibu successfully develops in her novel.
Voyeurism, in other words, does not belong exclusively to the male realm of visual and
sexual desire, but it can be re-appropriated quite successfully by women as well, and
employed by women for their own needs. In these instances, moreover, the male objects
of the female gaze are not threatened. Men and women in the Genji Monogatari
manipulated the dynamics of voyeurism, and of gazing per se, to suit their aesthetic
thirst for the beautiful and the erotic. And, in the case of the governor’s wife, it is a
thirst for the material. Kaoru, Niou, and the lieutenant are objectified for what their
wealth and status could do to Ukifune’s life. Their physical attributes, their peculiar
smells, their rich attires may be somehow relevant in this process of objectification, but
in the end it is their political prestige and financial well being that makes them
intriguing sights to the female voyeur.
1 5 Edward Seidensticker, trans., The Tale o f Genji, 950-51, 947, 961.
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In the context of another Japanese classic, Makura no Soshi, Mitamura Masako
has argued that to women male mirareru (when men are subject of the gaze) is a site of
pain and suffering (kutsu), humiliation (bujoku), tension (kincho), and a threat
0 obiyae).1 6 The male gaze emotionally and psychologically threatens women. Does the
female gaze threaten men? Does the "threat" element of the gaze belong to the Japanese
tradition at all?
The Western feminist reading of the male gaze understands it as a threat to the
extent that the male gaze tends exclusively to sexually objectify the female body. In her
“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), Laura Mulvey uses some aspects of
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory to discuss male voyeurism and the pleasures associated
with it.1 7 Her theory rests on the premise that
women in classic Hollywood cinema are treated as objects of male voyeuristic
and sadistic impulses. Women exist to fulfil the desires of the male spectator.
Women spectators can only have a masochist relationship to classic cinema
which offers the basic pleasure of scopophilia (pleasure in looking); a pleasure
which takes other people as objects of a controlling and curious gaze. Women
are at last in the classic role of exhibitionist; they are looked at and displayed as
sexual objects.1 8
Denzin masterfully summarizes the main points over which Mulvey’s theory has
been criticized and the scholarship in which such criticism develops. He points out that
her theory was attacked because of
its uncritical use of the psychoanalytic model (de Lauretis, 1984: 45; Tseelon
and Kaiser, 1992); its simplistic conception of the female spectatorship position
(Hansen, 1986); its failure to adequately deal with masochism and voyeurism
(Deluze, 1971; Studlar, 1985); its use of the male sexual pervert as its model of
the gaze (Tseelon and Kaiser, 1992); its conflation of spectacle and narrative,
1 6 Mitamura Masako, Makura no soshi: hyogen to kozo (Tokyo: Yuseido, 1994).
1 7 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 6-18.
1 8 Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic Society. The Voyeur’ s Gaze, 2-3.
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138
and its unquestioning acceptance of the “screen” as a fixed ground where
narrative and spectacle are played out (Mayne 1990: 38-40); its biased reading
of the Hitchcock’s films as support for the theory (Modleski, 1988: 2; Lurie,
1981-82; Wood, 1989; Rose, 1976-77/1988); its over-emphasis on a binary
opposition (Hansen, 1986; de Lauretis, 1984: 145; Kaplan, 1988: 5; Mayne,
1990: 45; Gledhill, 1978; Penley, 1989: 11; Cowie, 1979/1988; Bergstrom,
1979/1988); its inability to interpret those films where the categories of the gaze
collapse and male and female figures interchangeably identify with and gaze
upon one another (Tseelon and Kaiser, 1992); and its conflation and potential
confusion of the textual and empirical spectator (Stacey, 1994: 24-31).1 9
We need to question how this reading can be applied to the Japanese context. In other
words, if the male gaze in classical Japanese literature is only a site of sexual desire for
the female body, we must then unveil the kind of "threat" that such a male gaze
inscribes on the representations of women. I have previously discussed how for a man
9 f l
to see a woman meant to sexually possess her. Therefore, even in the classical
Japanese context, the male gaze tends to be a site of sexual objectification and female
1 9 Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic Society. The Voyeur’ s Gaze, 3. Denzin’s references are as follows:
Teresa de Lauretis, Alice D oesn’ t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema; Efrat Tseelon & Susan B. Kaiser, “A
Dialogue with Feminist Film Theory: Multiple Readings of the Gaze,” 119-37; Miriam Hansen,
“Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship,” Cinema Journal 25
(Summber 1986): 6-32; Giles Deluze, Masochism: An Interpretation o f Coldness and Cruelty (New
York: George Braziller, 1971); Gaylyn Studlar, “Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the Cinema,”
in Movies and Methods: Volume II, Bill Nichols, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985),
602-622; Judith Mayne, The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women’ s Cinema (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1990); Tania Modleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and
Feminist Theory (New York: Methuen, 1988); Susan Lurie, “The Construction o f the Castrated Woman
in Psychoanalysis and Cinema,” Discourse 4 (Winter 1981-82): 52-74; Robin Wood, Hitchcock’ s Films
Revisited (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); Jacqueline Rose, “Paranoia and the Film
System,” in The Future o f Illusion: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis, Constance Penley, ed.
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1976-77/1988), 141-58; E. Ann Kaplan, ed., Postmodernism
and Its Discontents (New York: Verso, 1988); Christine Gledhill, “Klute 1: Contemporary Film Noir and
Feminist Criticism,” in Women in Film Noir, E. Ann Kaplan, ed. (London: British Film Institute, 1978),
6-21; Constance Penley, “A Certain Refusal of Difference: Feminism and Film Theory,” in The Future of
Illusion: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis, Constance Penley, ed. (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1989), 41-56; Elizabeth Cowie, “The Popular Film as a Progressive Text: A Discussion
of Coma,” in The Future o f Illusion: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis, Constance Penley, ed.
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979/1988), 104-40; Janet Bergstrom, “Alternation,
Segmentation, Hypnosis: Interview With Raymond Bellour - An Excerpt,” in Feminism and Film
Theory, Constance Penley, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1988), 186-95; Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing:
Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship.
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139
oppression. But here, the focus is on the female gaze, and on the discovery of how, if at
all, the female gaze threatens its male object of vision.
In the Western literary tradition it has been suggested that when the woman
gazes back at a man (the returned female gaze), an element of threat is, in this case, on
the side of the male "seen." Freud suggests that this threat must be understood as
castration anxiety, while Lacan claims that the woman is entering into the Symbolic (a
male construct) and she is in this way disrupting maleness and decentering men.2 1 In the
Japanese context, things are more complicated.
We have seen how, in the Japanese literary tradition, women claimed for
themselves the male construct of vision, kaimami, and used it to gaze back at men. Both
Makura no Soshi and Genji Monogatari have examples of women catching glimpses of
men, and of woman revisiting this space of vision that men are thought to exclusively
own. I would like at this point, however, to approach issues of vision and its
implications from the perspective of a different reading of voyeurism. The premise is
the following: kaimami is a form of voyeurism, and women, when gazed at, are not
passive entities in this act. I would argue that women do end up participating in this
voyeuristic act. My analysis is based on the assumption that voyeurism is not an
exclusive one-way gaze (the voyeur gazes at the object), but that the object of the gaze
may look back, and even if this returned gaze does not take place, we are dealing with
two subjects. As Norman K. Denzin writes: "The voyeuristic look has its own aesthetic.
2 0 Thomas Lamarre, Uncovering Heian Japan-, Norma Field, The Splendor o f Longing in the Tale of
Genji.
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This aesthetic turns always on the fact that the look produces a double subjectivity, an
awareness of self both for the person who looks and for the person who is looked
upon."2 2 Furthermore, Anne McClintock argues that "power through being the spectacle
of another's gaze is an ambiguous power. It allows one to internalize the gaze of the
voyeur and participate in the vicarious enjoyment of their power."2 3 McClintock's
reading of male voyeurism, and women's participation in male politics of pleasure and
desire suggests a useful approach to the issues of women's oppression and vision in
Japanese literature.
In Imperial Leather, Anne McClintock argues that women are not necessarily
representations of oppression/subordination when they become objects of the male gaze
and desire. McClintock claims that women can appropriate the space of the male gaze
and use it for their own pleasure. In this way McClintock subverts/inverts a main point
in the theory of the voyeuristic male gaze.
The voyeuristic male gaze has always been addressed as that site which sexually
objectifies the woman's body, and accordingly as a site of women's oppression and
subordination. The woman's body becomes, when gazed upon, a site of male sexual
desire. The male gaze oppresses the woman, and inscribes the female body in the
inferior position of sexual object. A further example of inferior (woman)-superior (man)
relationship in the context of representations of women is established in this way.
2 1 Sigmund Freud, "Medusa's Head," 273-275; Jane Gallop, Reading Lacan; Stephen Heath, "Difference,"
51-112; Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis.', Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality
in the Field o f Vision.
2 2 Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur's Gaze, 46.
2 3 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather, 157.
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Women do not passively accept this type of male gaze, and they become subject
of the gaze when they return the gaze, and threaten and freeze men in their privileged
site of vision. Moreover, I would argue that the female object of the voyeuristic male
gaze also succeeds in manipulating the gazer’s monopoly of vision and thus participates
in the process of ascribing “meaning” to the gaze of the male subject.2 4
Anne McClintock questions the privileged position of power that the voyeur
believes he enjoys. In other words, she argues that the male voyeur is not always alone
in his acts of looking/peeping. McClintock suggests that an awareness of being gazed
becomes the reason for the object of the gaze to threaten the gazer's monopoly of visual
power. McClintock, however, does not only offer an interpretation of threat that is
different form Freud's and Lacan's. She also claims an active role for the object of the
gaze when the latter uses the subject's gaze for its own pleasure and desire. In light of
this position one is left wondering how much the gazer contributes to the construction
of an aesthetic of the gazed upon. What stands out clearly is recognition on the gazer’s
side of feeling under the gaze of the Other/object. There is, in other words, anticipation
on the side of the voyeur/subject. Accordingly, the voyeur/subject already needs to
adjust to the feeling and the idea of being under the gaze of the Other/object of the gaze.
In the Japanese literary tradition kaimami seems to be a site of women's
subordination, while men enjoyed privileged positions in their spaces of vision.
2 4 Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema; Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic
Society: The Voyeur’ s Gaze; Mary Ann Doane, "Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female
Spectator," 74-87; Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire. The Woman's Film o f the 1940s (Bloomington
and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987); E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides o f the
Camera; Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in the Field o f Vision; Efrat Tseelon and Susan B. Kaiser, "A
Dialogue with Feminist Film Theory; Multiple Readings of the Gaze," 119-137.
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McClintock's thesis, however, calls into question the monopoly of vision that Japanese
men seemed to have enjoyed, and raises the possibility that there was a female
awareness of being gazed at, and that these women responded to the male gaze. As
Mitamura Masako has argued in her essay, it is possible to say that women "performed"
(miseru) for these male voyeurs.2 5
McClintock's argument that women can appropriate the space of the male gaze
and use it for their own pleasure and desire allows for the possibility that the male gaze
was not necessarily a site of/for Japanese women's oppression and subordination.
Japanese men did not have the exclusive monopoly of vision, but whether this female
gaze can be addressed as a threat to maleness (castration anxiety) is a problematic issue.
The female gaze did not emerge as threat in classical Japanese literature. I
would argue because Japanese men also wanted to be gazed back at by women. By this
I mean that although men started the gaze, this act of gazing became more exciting and
transgressive when the women gazed back. In this type of returned female gaze,
however, I see not a threat, but rather an accomplishment on the part of the male gazer
who has succeeded in letting the woman know about his desire for her. To be
discovered in his act of peeping was also an invitation to come back at night, and start a
sexual relationship. As Margaret H. Childs argues in her essay on Japanese court
literature, in the game of courtship, which was mostly based on wit and wordplay,
“women actually seem to have had the upper hand.”2 6
2 5 Mitamura Masako, Makura no soshi.
2 6 Margaret H. Childs, “The Value of Vulnerability,” Journal o f Asian Studies 58, no. 4 (1999): 1064.
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The study of the politics of vision from this perspective challenges the classic
position that reads the kaimami topos as a site of male power and female oppression and
resistance. The question arises as to how and to what extent Japanese women were, in
the literary tradition, oppressed by/subordinated to the male gaze. Moreover, this
approach suggests an aesthetic of vision in the Japanese literary tradition that lacks the
feature of threat. In the Western tradition, the gaze is conceived as a "threat," a
condition menacing both subjects and objects of the gaze. This paranoid understanding
of the gaze, as we have addressed it so far, does not seem to belong to the Japanese
77
tradition. Heian women were, in fact, able to play an active role in appropriating the
male space of vision and using it for their own aesthetic, and sometimes sexual
pleasure. However, male and female gazes can be read more as invitations to be gazed
at, rather than threats.
When we accept the theory that the female gaze replicates the male and its
implications, women seem to buy into what Luce Irigaray addresses as the ideology of
“mimicry.” Irigaray writes that the mimic
must assume the feminine role deliberately. Which means already to convert a
form of subordination into an affirmation. . . . To play with mimesis is thus, for
a woman, to try to recover the place of her exploitation by discourse, without
allowing herself to be simply reduced to it. It means to resubmit herself . . . to
ideas about herself, that are elaborated in/by a masculine logic, but so as to make
‘visible,’ by an effect of playful repetition, what was supposed to remain
invisible: the cover-up of a possible operation of the feminine in language.2 8
According to Carole-Anne Tyler, Irigaray seems to embrace Lacan’s notion “that
woman masquerades as the phallus, the signifier of lack,” although Irigaray emphasizes
2 7 Norman Bryson, "The Gaze in the Expanded Field," 87-113.
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that woman does so “in order to sustain man’s identity, serving as his complement and
supplement, an inverse or negative alter ego he ‘needs’ to feel complete.”2 9
If, as we have seen, woman is a man’s mirror “possessing the magic and
delicious power of reflecting the figure of man twice its natural size”3 0 and “returning to
him an image of his imaginary wholeness,”3 1 we also need to uncover the cultural and
emotional implications in the process of the woman gazing at the man from this male
constructed space of vision. She is not only recreating a male dynamic of seeing, but
she is also enriching it with female overtones peculiar to a feminine sensibility.
“Mimicry” is not the only response to the sexually objectifying male gaze: it is one
response. The female gaze may be articulated in the male space of vision (e.g.
patriarchy); accordingly, we need to discuss such problematic contexts. We may also
talk about an independent way of seeing on the side of the female gazer that does not
necessarily reproduce the ambiguities of the politics of male gazing. A female voyeur
may embrace pleasure and scopophilia as much as a male voyeur, and we may even
wonder how much the male object of her gaze passively accepts such sexual
objectification. Men do respond to these female gazes. Men overcome their fears, and
they return the female look. However, there is always discomfort at being the object of
the female gaze, or of the returned female gaze.
What has been said so far about the female gaze is based largely on a Western
theory of the gaze whose implications are rooted in Western culture, civilization and
2 8 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1985), 76.
2 9 Carole-Anne Tyler, “The Feminine Look,” 193-194.
3 0 Virginia Wolf, A Room o f O ne’ s Own (New York: Harvest Book, 1929/1957/1989), 35.
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history. It may be problematic to apply these theories to the Japanese context, but
“when one brings together elements from heterogeneous cultures, each one will offer up
a new context for the possible critical reappraisal of the other. Distance might thus
actually prove to be an opportunity as much as an obstacle.”3 2
(2) Yoko’s Gaze: The Unsettling Look of Tradition
One aspect of gazing that we have not seen in the analysis of the male gaze is
the female response to it. Kawabata does not seem to allow women to clearly position
and define themselves under Shimamura’s gaze. In Snow Country, we do not have
examples of “returned female gazes,” and we are never given an idea of the feelings
women (both Yoko and Komako) experience when they become objects of
Shimamura’s scrutinizing gaze. On the other hand, Shimamura’s reactions to being the
'j - j
object of the female gaze are often explored in the text.
At two important moments in the novel Shimamura becomes the object of
Yoko’s gaze, and on both occasions he feels very uncomfortable under its power,
specifically under the beauty of her eyes. On the same day that Shimamura gazes at
Komako in the mirror reflecting the mountain snow and thinks about Yoko [“Mirror of
White Morning,” S53/Z45], and on the same day that Shimamura reveals to Komako
how he saw her at the train station covered up in a dark blue cape to pick up Yoko and
Yukio (the day after his arrival to the snow country), Komako invites Shimamura to her
3 1 Carole-Anne Tyler, “The Feminine Look,” 194.
3 2 Carl Cassegard, “Shock and Modernity in Walter Benjamin and Kawabata Yasunari,” Japanese Studies
19, no. 3 (1999): 237.
3 3 In Kawabata’s novel The Lake, the male perception of female gazes enters the paranoid stage.
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house. Komako shares the house with Yoko and Yukio. Shimamura is projected into a
different reality, and he experiences another aspect of Komako’s life.
He investigates the surroundings, and Komako does not hesitate to share with
him details of her life and that of the dying Yukio. We finally learn that Yukio, the son
of the dancing teacher, is a twenty-five year old man who went to Tokyo for some time
to gain experience with some kind of machinery. What strikes Shimamura as unusual is
the fact that Komako never mentions Yoko, or the reasons why Yoko shares this place
with both Komako and Yukio. As Shimamura admires the quite unusual shape of a
samisen box, he also hears Yoko’s voice, “so beautiful that it was almost sad”
[S56/Z47]. But Yoko spots him as well:
Yoko darted one quick, piercing glance at Shimamura and went silently out
over the earthen floor.
Even when he had left the house, Shimamura was haunted by that glance,
burning in front of his forehead.3 4 It was cold as a very distant light, for the
inexpressible beauty of it had made his heart rise when, the night before, that
light off in the mountains had passed across the girl’s face in the train window
and lighted her eye for a moment. The impression came back to Shimamura, and
with it the memory of the mirror filled with snow, and Komako’s red cheeks,
floating in the middle of it. [S57/Z48]
It comes out clearly from this passage Shimamura’s uneasiness under Yoko’s
gaze. As we recall, when Shimamura first sees Yoko’s eye reflected in the
mirror/window, he also knows that there is no way for the Eye and its owner, Yoko, to
return his gaze. Therefore, Shimamura enjoys considerable power over this moment,
and over this sight. Shimamura, however, already starts feeling under the influence of
Yoko’s Eye. Things change considerably when Shimamura becomes the object of
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Yoko’s gaze. He is not allowed to anticipate a visual response from her and emotionally
adjust himself to such possibility because, this time, Yoko’s eyes are fixed onto him.
In his explanation of Lacan’s mirror stage, Malcom Bowie writes:
Man must break the charm of his reflected image by accepting the reality of its
unreality. If he is to make progress toward truth, he must pass beyond the
‘mirror without radiance which offers him a surface where nothing is
reflected.’3 5
When Yoko looks back at him, when her eyes find him in her field of vision,
Shimamura must start the process of coming to terms with not only the truth of the
reality surrounding him, but also with the truth about himself. Yoko is not part of the
unreal/dream world anymore. She is flesh and blood: she is a sight that shrinks
Shimamura back to his pathetic state as a human being. Neither a mirror nor a reflection
comes to the rescue. There is only Reality. Now, by becoming the object of Yoko’s
gaze, Shimamura experiences that discomfort which he avoided on the train. However,
being uncomfortable under Yoko’s gaze carries a meaning that has to do with Freud’s
Medusa’s Head theory.
Of course, there is castration anxiety on the side of the gazed upon
(Shimamura). There is threat in Yoko’s glance, an intimidating invitation to Shimamura
to look back at himself. There is discomfort, uneasiness, and anxiety for Shimamura. He
now has to accept “reality.” Yoko stands for one aspect of Shimamura’s alter ego and
Reality, that aspect that he hopes to revive and embrace during his journey to the snow
3 4 “Yoko darted one haunting (chiratto from chiratsuku, be haunted) piercing glance at Shimamura, and
without saying a word went out over the earthen floor. Even when Shimamura had left the house, Yoko’s
expression in her eyes (metsuki) kept burning in front of his forehead” [Z48/My translation],
3 5 Malcom Bowie, Lacan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 23; Bowie cites from Lacan’s
Ecrits, 188.
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country. Yoko represents a dying tradition that cannot be saved. Shimamura’s original
sight of Yoko becomes an inversion of the myth of Narcissus.3 6 Instead of seeing
himself reflected in the mirror, Shimamura sees Yoko. Self-destruction, the physical
one, is therefore on the side of Yoko. Tragedy belongs to her life. But if Shimamura
creates the object of his desire through Yoko’s image, then to be face to face with her
becomes unsettling, because self-destruction may, in the end, be the response for which
he is looking. Yoko returns back to him the feelings he experienced on the train the
previous night, but under her gaze he becomes aware of his anxiety as a displaced
modem Japanese man in 1930s Japan, a man at the margins of modernity.
As Tsuruta Kin’ya has pointed out in his essay on Snow Country (1991), Yoko
and Shimamura are far from each other, and only Komako can bring them closer. Here
Komako, by chance, allows for these two to look into each other’s eyes for the very first
time. Yoko does not seem to be bothered by this vision: she starts the gaze. She is not
happy to have Shimamura around, but uneasiness is not on her side. She is confronted
by a foreign element, Modernity, of which she knows only the devastating effects
(Yukio is dying because of a Modem/Western disease he got while in Tokyo). She may
despise Shimamura for what he stands for. She may be afraid of him, and the only way
to keep him far from her is to make him uncomfortable under her gaze. She may be
aware of the power of her gaze and its unsettling connotation, but she keeps using it
quite freely throughout the novel. To ascribe such visual awareness to Yoko also means
to play with the possibility of this woman consciously wanting to make Shimamura
uncomfortable. Yoko may have discovered the power of her gaze on Shimamura. Her
3 6 Malcom Bowie, Lacan, 34.
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gaze becomes thus not only a tool of Shimamura’s self-discovery, but also a woman’s
weapon to fend off the devastating disease that Modernity carries with it. Yoko, as we
know, will not succeed in keeping Modernity at bay, because as a symbol of “pure
tradition” she will succumb to the perverse power of her own tragic destiny.
In this passage [S57/Z48], Shimamura does not have the time to avoid her gaze.
She walks away from him faster than he can lower his head, and avoid her eyes. He is
intimidated by her gaze: it carries implications that force Shimamura to look inside
himself and re-evaluate the meaning of the effects of “that strange mirror” as well as its
impact on his feelings and emotions, and on his psychological well-being. Shimamura is
bothered by such a glance, but there is also a tacit acceptance on his side that eventually
he may need to come to terms with the Reality of his disillusioned self in this seemingly
uncontaminated world. He is not ashamed by her gaze. After all, he was not caught at
the peephole! He might have experienced a feeling of “shame” had she caught him
staring at her on the train.
For the first time in the novel Shimamura is confronted with the reality of Yoko,
the snow country (the landscape), and Komako. He knows he needs to find a way to
position himself in the world of tradition where modernity will eventually arrive to spoil
the view and to spoil the moment. In the meantime,
He [Shimamura] walked faster. His legs were round and plump, but he was
seized with a certain abandon and he walked along gazing at the mountains he
was so fond of, and his pace quickened, though he hardly knew it. Always ready
to give himself up to reverie, he could not believe that the mirror floating over
the evening scenery and the other snowy mirror were really works of man. They
were part of nature, and part of some distant world.
And the room he had only this moment left had become part of that same distant
world. [S57-58/Z48]
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Shimamura has problems accepting the fact that he is responsible for the
creation of his fantasy world. He needs to see people not for what they are (Reality), but
for what he wants them to be (Unreality). To cope with the truth o f the unreal world
seems to be easier and more convenient than coping with the truth of the real world.
This is the truth of Shimamura’s gaze. But he must go through this looking glass, and
uncover a reality of disillusioned selves and displaced beings. Every single being he
comes in contact with has a different story to tell. Shimamura, however, does not allow
them to talk, and he does not really listen to what they have to say. It seems as if both
Komako and Yoko’s words are always too unsettling to his persona. We have already
seen that Komako’s activities, most often described as “waste of effort,” resemble his
own research of “Occidental ballet.” If Komako reflects back his own “waste of efforts”
in life, we must then explore what it is that Yoko reflects back to him.
This becomes clearer from the passage in the novel where once again
Shimamura has to deal with Yoko’s gaze. One day Yoko brings a note from Komako to
Shimamura in his room. He thanks her, but he feels somehow uncomfortable:
She darted a glance at him with those beautiful eyes, so bright that he felt
impaled on them. His discomfort was growing.3 7
The girl left a deep impression each time he saw her, and now she was sitting
before him - a strange uneasiness swept over him. Her too-serious manner made
her seem always at the very center of some remarkable occurrence. [S134/Z108]
Yoko, once again, starts the gaze, and Shimamura acknowledges the beauty of
her eyes (which leads us to believe that he looked back at her). He then must have
lowered his gaze, unable to confront the light and the truth coming from both Yoko’s
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eyes and her gaze. We are in the presence of the reality of Shimamura’s discomfort
under Yoko’s gaze, and only now may we get to know the reasons for it. Every time
Shimamura is in Yoko’s presence, he feels as if something eventful is going to take
place. And this is also true. In “Mirror of Evening Scenery” her presence was associated
with the strange working of the window that had become a mirror. Her Eye was then the
unreal occurrence. In the context of the passage under study here [SI34/Z108],
however, she is also anticipating something that Shimamura perceives as extremely
important. And this is the case.
The occasion is Yoko’s asking Shimamura to take her to Tokyo as his maid. At
Yoko’s request to be good to Komako, “Shimamura looked away {me o sorasete),
fearful that a dangerous light would be breaking out on the too-eamest face”
[S135/Z109]. Shimamura looks away because he recognizes that deep in her heart Yoko
understands his real feelings toward Komako. He gets caught in his hypocrisy. This is
the moment when Shimamura not only cannot look at Yoko, and then looks away, but
this is also the moment when Shimamura cannot honestly look at himself. By diverting
his eyes from Yoko’s inquisitive gaze, Shimamura avoids looking at his naked self.
Yoko is now accepted as his alter-ego, but not as his accomplice. Yoko is the specular
image of his inner reality. Yoko is the embodiment of his truth. In his contradictory
attempt to both reject and recover his real self, Shimamura must learn to look at
himself, and accept the image given back to him. Now, it is still too early.
3 7 “She glanced at Shimamura with those piercing beautiful eyes. For some reason Shimamura was
thrown into confusion.’ [Z108/My translation]
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Shimamura is aware of not having been good to Komako throughout their
relationship. Yoko’s words stab him in his questionable integrity as both a man and a
companion. He anticipates seeing that probing light that only Yoko’s eyes seem to be
endowed with, able in this way to shed the light of the truth on Shimamura’s life
matters. That light may have brought clarification and common sense back into
Shimamura’s confused life. He needs to avoid that light coming from her eyes, and
therefore all he can do is look away, or look somewhere else, and lose himself in the
self-made truth of his Unreality.
In order to move the conversation away from him, Shimamura becomes more
inquisitive, asking the reasons why Yoko wants to go to Tokyo, and if she had
discussed this matter with Komako. Yoko voices her dislike for Komako, and then,
She looked up at him with moist eyes - a sign perhaps that her defenses were
breaking down - and he found in them an uncanny sort of beauty (kikaina
miryoku o kanjiru, he felt a strange appeal/charm). 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 to Shimamura himself. [S136/Z109]
Once again Shimamura acknowledges his discomfort not only in Yoko’s
presence, but also when he is the object of those beautiful eyes. Shimamura had already
pointed out the beauty of, and in those eyes in the opening passage of the novel. This
beauty, so unreal, so far and untouchable at the beginning, is now displayed right in
front of him. But in such company he feels very uneasy. Now, Yoko’s physical
presence is reason for more discomfort. Shimamura has no choice but to face his own
demons, and accept the reality of all Yoko stands for: the tragedy of a beautiful dying
tradition. He is uncomfortable because he does not know how to stop this move toward
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self-destruction. To go to Tokyo, to remove tradition from its original environment,
may not be the only and right answer. He is troubled over attempting to explain such a
world to a creature that he perceives as pure, unearthly beautiful, untouched by
corruption of both the body and the soul. But he also needs to negotiate an encounter
between two worlds far apart from each other. He has to come to terms with this
problem himself, before presenting it to Yoko.
Yoko’s request to go to Tokyo may represent Kawabata’s intent to stir
Shimamura’s inner self to open his eyes to the truth of the matter: the need to handle
this beautiful tradition doomed to annihilate itself. This is Shimamura’s dilemma. There
must be a balance between these two worlds and, once again, Komako comes to the
rescue. As much as Shimamura is intrigued by Yoko, the affection he has for Komako
does not even compare. Once again, under Yoko’s gaze, Shimamura feels a need to
retreat in the thought of Komako and what she represents in his life. And this happens at
a moment when Yoko’s eyes are not so intimidating anymore. Tears have welled up in
her eyes, and Shimamura reads this as her first and only transformation into a being of
this world. The beauty of her eyes, however, remains, according to Seidensticker’s
translation, “uncanny.”
Seidensticker uses the term “uncanny” to convey the meaning of the Japanese
adjective kikaina. Kawabata’s words, when referring to Yoko’s eyes, are kikaina
miryoku, which can also be translated into a strange appeal, a strange charm.3 8
381 am reluctant to employ the term “uncanny” on the basis that Poststructuralists and literary critics have
appropriated Freud’s definition of “The Uncanny” and turned it into a problematic category o f literary
analysis. In Freudian psychoanalytic interpretation “the uncanny” stands as that which stirs dread and
horror, or even as the place from where dread and horror originates. Feminist theorists, for example, have
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Shimamura is always fascinated by these eyes, and the fact that in this instance she is
easing up, that she is letting her defenses down, allows Shimamura to return her gaze
and so get lost in that strange charm that those eyes project. That strange charm is the
charm of tradition, opening the door to discovery, allowing Shimamura into a world that
once was not far away. After all, Yoko’s place in this world needs to be redefined. Her
desire to know the unexplored and mysterious modem city of Tokyo, tells us more
about her conflicting self, and how being referred to as “tradition” has only become an
uncomfortable dress to wear. Yoko needs to reach out, and she must let Shimamura into
her world. By entering her world, Shimamura also enters the world of his desired self.
Her wish to go to Tokyo will go unfulfilled, and apparent death, in the end, will be the
only solution to her ambiguous self. But whether her “death” brings peace, comfort, and
answers to Shimamura is another issue.
(3) A Volatile Object of Komako’s Gaze
We have seen how Shimamura responds to Yoko’s gaze. It is now the time to
consider how Shimamura positions himself when he is the object of Komako’s gaze. In
the following pages I will consider passages from the novel where Komako starts the
gaze, and Shimamura becomes the object of her gaze. In Komako’s case we have more
instances of the woman gazing at Shimamura. Moreover, while Shimamura experiences
delved into the gender implications o f Freud’s definition. Julia Kristeva, moreover, uses Freud’s theory of
The Uncanny to develop her theory of the Abject, conceiving of the maternal body as the representation
of women’s power of horror. Shimamura does not perceive Yoko’s eyes as the place from where dread
and horror originates. Fie is rather attracted by them. I will return to Julia Kristeva’s theory of the Abject
in chapter 4.
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only extreme discomfort under Yoko’s eyes, with Komako the implications in the
dynamics of gazing are different.
Shimamura first becomes the object of Komako’s gaze on the occasion of the
woman telling him about her cataloguing of books and characters in the novels she
reads. Shimamura coldly remarks that what she does is nothing more than a “waste of
effort” {toro).
“A complete waste of effort,” she answered brightly, as though the admission
meant little to her. She gazed solemnly at Shimamura (jitto Shimamura o
mitsumete ita). [S41/Z37]
From this passage, we do not know Shimamura’s reaction to being stared at
intently (jitto), and not “solemnly,” according to Seidensticker’s translation. I
understand this as Komako fixing her eyes unwaveringly on Shimamura’s face trying to
capture the real meaning of the word toro (waste of effort). The woman seems too
content with her accomplishments (keeping personal diaries, and notebooks) to delve
into the somehow meaningful and distorted implications of Shimamura’s comment. His
comment, as we may perceive it today, is more of an insult, but Komako is not touched
by it. Her gaze may be read as an inquisitive attempt to make sense of this intellectually
troubled man who is making fun of her spare-time activities. However, we know that
after addressing Komako’s leisure time as “waste of effort,” he suddenly feels drawn to
her. He feels drawn to that feeling of acknowledging a “waste of effort,” a feeling that
can be easily applied to his own way of dealing with the knowledge he has of Western
dancing. Komako reflects back to him the image of himself engaged in a wasteful
activity just to soothe his dubious aesthetic taste in something foreign/Modem. With her
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eyes fixed on him, Shimamura must feel under the presence of his dishonest self, of his
untrue self. While there is sincerity in what Komako does with her activity of keeping
and writing a diary, in Shimamura’s case there is only denial in recognizing his own
“waste of effort.” This leads me to argue that because of how Shimamura understands
tord, a “waste of effort” kind of understanding of life matters resides more on his side
than on Komako’s.
When Komako gazes at Shimamura, her gaze is not yet a site of contestation.
Komako is trying to read this man’s eyes, and get to know him. The truth of the matter,
however, is that the power of vision and knowledge is not on her side. Shimamura
controls her gaze, and he still is the only one who knows about his troubled self. In her
gaze, Shimamura sees another side of himself reflected. Her gaze becomes a mirror of
his soul. Her gaze helps him to unveil the meaning of his wasted time over a topic that
he does not really know, and that he will never know completely. For the first time in
the novel, Komako has helped Shimamura to move a step closer to realizing the
meaning of his life, a step closer to the truth. So far, therefore, he can be content with
his journey to the snow country.
This specific dynamic of Komako’s gaze as a means by which Shimamura
acquires knowledge about himself, is repeated later on in the novel. Komako is getting
ready to play the samisen in front of Shimamura:
She looked a little bashful for a moment, then brought herself up and glanced at
Shimamura (Shimamura no kao o mitsumeta) as though signaling that she was
ready for him to begin.
He was embarrassed (hatto hi osareta). He was unfortunately no singer.
[S70/Z59]3 9
3 9 The sentences underlined in Seidensticker’s translation, do not appear in the original.
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This is another problematic intellectual confrontation that Komako and
Shimamura embark upon. Shimamura is not a samisen expert, nor does he pretend to
be, at least in this case. He is not familiar with the music, and he does not know the
words of the song Komako is about to perform. When we look at Seidensticker’s
translation of this passage, we realize that the translator has added considerably to the
original version. The Japanese original, in fact, simply tells us that Komako stares at
Shimamura’s face, and that he is not comfortable. Seidensticker, on the other hand, has
Komako staring at Shimamura to let him know she is ready to start playing. I read
Komako’s gaze, instead, more as an invitation to be looked at. Komako, in other words,
uses her gaze to get Shimamura’s attention, an unconscious way of challenging him on
this front as well, to see what he thinks this time about her ability to play the samisen.
Shimamura’s uneasiness rests on the fact that he has already made up his mind about
everything refined and intellectual that Komako does. At the end, even if extremely
enticed by both the music coming from the instrument, and by her skillful art of playing
the samisen, he still addresses it as a “waste of effort.” He is uncomfortable because he
perceives the meaning behind Komako’s gaze, because he knows that this is another
important moment in his journey toward self-discovery. It does not matter where life
and destiny will take him, but all that he has done or accomplished so far is nothing
more than a “waste of effort.” As hard as it is to digest this truth, he once again attempts
to project these failures of life only onto Komako, hoping that they will not bounce
back:
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To Shimamura it was wasted effort (toro), this way of living. He sensed in it
too a longing that called out to him for sympathy. But the life and way of living
no doubt flowed thus grandly from the samisen with a new worth for Komako
herself. [S72-73/Z60]
In the way Komako plays the samisen, Shimamura also reads an attempt on her
side to get some kind of sympathy. This is another example of reversed psychology in
which Shimamura sees in Komako what it is actually taking place in his life. He needs
somebody’s sympathy. He needs somebody to make him feel good in what he does,
somebody who makes it feel as if his studying Western dancing is a worthy activity.
Shimamura needs reassurance in order to emotionally support his wasted intellectual
enterprise. Komako is not asking for sympathy. Komako has accepted her way of life.
Shimamura, on the other hand, is still struggling with his way of living and thinking.
Under Komako’s gaze, Shimamura is presented with the chance to recognize himself, to
see himself, but he falls short on more than one occasion.
Komako is given the chance to look at this man undisturbed at least twice in the
novel. One morning, after spending the night together, Komako happens to wake up
before Shimamura. She sits by his side, and gazes at his face noticing his somehow
fatter face when he sleeps, his white skin, and no mustache [SI 13/Z91]. When he wakes
up, Shimamura is not happy about her behavior:
“You were staring at me, then? (iya da ne.jirojiro miteta n da ne) I’m not
sure I like having people stare at me when I’m asleep.” [S113-14/Z91]4 0
Komako smiled and nodded. Then, like a glow that breaks into a flame, the
smile became a laugh. There was strength in the fingers that took his.
[S114/Z91]
4 0 “I don’t like it. You were staring at me” [Z91/My translation]. The underlined sentence is not in the
original.
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Once again Seidensticker’s translation does not seem to convey the meaning that
we find in the Japanese version of the novel. It is clear from this passage, when read in
Japanese, that Komako has the chance to stare at Shimamura when he is asleep. When
Shimamura learns about it (he guesses it), he is resentful, and says that he does not like
it. The original version leaves more room for debate over the meaning of Shimamura’s
phobia when he is the object of the female gaze. In fact, he replies: “I don’t like it. You
were staring at me.” In other words, nowhere in the Japanese version do we read of
Shimamura being uncomfortable under the woman’s gaze, because he only points out
how he does not like to be stared. His remark may well implied that not only does he
not like when women look at him, but also that he does not like to be object of the male
gaze.
Shimamura’s phrase reveals his awareness of being somebody’s object of the
gaze. In other words, even when he is the object of the female gaze, Shimamura wants
to remain in control. It is acceptable to become uncomfortable under the female gaze
when aware of it, but he does not accept being stared at and not being able to respond
emotionally to such a gaze. He needs to adjust to the idea of becoming the object of the
female gaze. Therefore, it is fine when he looks at Yoko on the train and feels safe
knowing that she will not look back. According to his line of thought, Yoko should
accept her role of being gazed upon without any emotional response. However, when
Komako takes the liberty to let her gaze wander over his face not expecting an
emotional response, he gets upset. A double standard is obviously at work on
Shimamura’s side. He needs to know that he is the object of the female look, and he is
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bothered by the fact that he was seen without being given the chance to look back. In
the novel, he really never returns the gaze, but there is a need to be in visual control
even when he is the object of somebody else’s sight.
Komako’s gaze rests on his face only. We are not introduced to the full picture
of his body. What she does see, however, she portrays as a somehow comic person. She
has been waiting for too long to pay him back. His constant criticism of her life as
wasted effort must have got to her, and she is balancing it with her inquisitive look. We
know that Komako is a woman of deep feelings and emotions, but her geisha role does
not allow for these to come out, at least not with her clients. Accordingly only the
entertaining side of her needs to come out with her customers, as well as with
Shimamura. Under the geisha-mask there is a woman. Whether she is able to make a
distinction between the two personae that inhabit her spirit is another issue. In the
context of her gaze directed to Shimamura while he is asleep, this is just a way for her
to make fun of him when he wakes up. As a matter of fact, she will not even be
bothered by his remarks about what he likes and what he does not. What remains is the
fact that for a while (and not a fleeting moment!), Komako is in charge of her field of
vision. She could have had thoughts of her own about this man sleeping right before her
eyes, defenseless and comic at the same time. She could have insulted him in her
thoughts just as he did aloud several times, or she could have had an inspiration over a
previous relationship, and the memory that comes with it. Instead, Kawabata prefers not
to let Komako’s thoughts wander. Once again, Komako’s gaze is the excuse for
Shimamura’s process of self-acknowledgment. This time he has finally voiced that he
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does not like it when he is not fully in control of his field of vision. What this also
means is that Shimamura does not like to be assigned and ascribed meaning unless he
participates in the process. To have somebody else ascribe meaning to him without his
being aware of it, is too unsettling. And since this journey is also a journey toward self-
discovery, Shimamura realizes once again that he needs Komako to successfully bring
his journey to an end.
Komako’s gaze is not always an undisturbed site for Shimamura to reflect
himself. Komako is a very passionate woman, and Kawabata is careful in portraying her
as such. Komako is free to show her feelings, from joy to anger, from sadness to
happiness. Her eyes, mirror of Shimamura’s untrue self, are the most sincere in this
novel to the extent that they convey the true and real feelings of the subject of the gaze.
Shimamura may see something else in there, he may offer a different reading to them to
suit his troubled ego. And this is because he has not reached the point of completely
recognizing himself in Komako.
Shimamura enjoys provoking Komako. As a matter of fact, he is very attentive
to those emotional responses that he gets from her. He provokes her when he calls her
“a good woman” {ii onna). Shimamura had had a little bit too much to drink one night,
and Komako was this time attending to his needs. Shimamura seems to be talking non
sense, while Komako is once again unveiling some truths. She tells him, for example,
how much she disliked him the first time they met. Suddenly, Shimamura says: “You
are a good woman” [S147/Z120]:
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Her face was hidden from him, as though she were rubbing her jaw against an
itching shoulder. Then suddenly, Shimamura had no idea why, she raised herself
angrily to an elbow.
“A good woman - what do you mean by that? What do you mean?”
He only stared at her (Shimamura wa odoroite Komako o mita).
“Admit it. That’s why you came to see me. You were laughing at me. You
were laughing at me after all.”
She glared at him scarlet with anger. Her shoulders were shaking. But the
flush receded as quickly as it had come, and tears were falling over her blanched
face. [S147-148/Z120]
Shimamura responds to Komako by lying silently in bed, with his eyes closed.
Komako has problems coming to terms with what it means to be “a good
woman.” She interprets Shimamura’s words as being sexual remarks. Therefore, she
resists the label of “sensually” good woman, a good lover. Shimamura, however, uses
the label “good woman” in a moral sense. Shimamura acknowledges having made a
mistake in letting those words out of his mouth. Those words belonged more to himself,
a whisper in his soul, and did not need to find their way out. But this is the only moment
when Shimamura’s feelings toward Komako are clearly portrayed. He feels, deep in his
heart, that she is a good person, even if trapped in a questionable profession. He
believes she is “a good woman” because her feelings are sincere, her emotions are
sincere, because she is true to herself. As Tajima Yoko explains, those words came out
spontaneously from Shimamura’s lips because Komako “has subverted the brazen
impression of the professional and fully displays that “good girl” side of the ordinary,
honest woman.”4 1 Nobody may have ever voiced such truth to Komako. If we accept
Komako as another specular image of Shimamura (the one tom between tradition and
modernity), this truth spoken by Shimamura can also be understood as Komako’s
4 1 Tajima Yoko, “A Rereading of Snow Country," 34.
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subconscious speaking a truth about her life. Komako’s inner self is coming to the
surface in a complete fashion. Komako has never hidden her insecurities, her
frustrations, her hopes, and her dreams. But, shocked in her realization that she is
indeed a morally good woman, she reacts to it with anger. If she is a good woman, she
may well question what she is doing in the snow country working as a mountain geisha,
providing solace to a middle-aged, emotionally troubled man who takes pleasure in
hurting her.
Komako reacts to the “good woman” label with rage. She darts a piercing glance
to Shimamura’s heart, and to the heart of this very matter. Shimamura avoids her gaze;
he has to. He is unable to bear this look originating in her field of vision. Her enraged
gaze petrifies him, and freezes him in his only attempt at having spoken his truth.
Shimamura closes his eyes in order to avoid recognition once again. After all, in his
twisted way of looking at things, he is “a good man” too. By projecting on to Komako a
label loaded with moral overtones, Shimamura is leaving enough space for himself to
adjust to the idea of being “a good man.” We are once again presented with
Shimamura’s imagined positive sense of the self as further exercise in self-deception.
Nobody emerges the winner from this visual and verbal confrontation. Both
Komako and Shimamura are scarred and hurt. But Komako has succeeded not only in
silencing this man, but also in invading his problematic field of vision, and making it
her own. By forcing him to shut his eyes and avoid her gaze, Komako has reduced him
to a miniscule image of his true and troubled ego. This man who lies silently in bed,
who avoids the rage that comes from this female gaze, shrinks in his fear of being
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overcome by the devastating effects of an enraged modernity, calling out for
recognition. For the first time, we have a glimpse of the true Shimamura, and it is not a
pretty picture.
Komako has the opportunity to gaze at him undisturbed one more time. One
afternoon, Shimamura goes to the land of Chijimi. Komako sees him off, but
Shimamura is not aware of it. When he comes back, Komako brings to his attention that
she saw him leaving, and that he did not even bother to look back (ushiro o minakatta)
when she tried to stop the car that was taking him to the train station [S161-62/Z129-
30]. In what clearly resembles a purification ritual, Shimamura has gone to the land of
Chijimi, and he has gone without Komako. To take her along would have spoiled the
meaning of his journey which has now come almost full circle. He has tried to purify
himself by bleaching his kimonos, and by immersing himself in the depths of the snow
country.4 2
Komako’s gaze, fixed upon him when he takes off for the land of Chijimi,
cannot be referred to as a female kaimami. However, it is interesting to focus on the fact
that Shimamura seemed to be unaware of being seen. Komako made every effort to be
noticed by him when he left, and he pretended not to notice her. Even when he gets
back from Chijimi he tries to avoid her, but at the end he has to deal with her.
Shimamura may try hard to avoid the truth that comes from Komako’s gaze, but the
time has finally come to face the truth of his journey to the snow country.
The dynamics of gazing at work in this passage must be understood in the
context of the approach end of the novel. At this point, the plot is moving at enormous
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speed compared to the previous pages. To dwell upon the meaning of Komako’s sight
of Shimamura taking off without her can only bring us closer to the reasons behind
Shimamura’s behavior, reasons that he was seemingly ready to reveal to her himself
(the time had come for Shimamura to leave, SI 55), if it were not for a sudden fire-alarm
ringing; a fire has broken out somewhere in the village. Our line of thoughts, like the
one in the novel, reaches an unexpected stop. Komako cannot investigate any further,
and Shimamura is somehow relieved by the fact that Komako’s attention is being
diverted toward something else. This is another easy way out for Shimamura, who is
growing tired of Komako’s gaze and all that it reflects back, and that he does not enjoy.
Shimamura is ready to move on with his life, and Komako is not part of it anymore,
although she helped him toward such a move.
One last time Komako will gaze at Shimamura. A fire breaks out in the cocoon
warehouse. This is the reason for the fire-alarm ringing and interrupting their
conversation. They both run to the site of the fire, and the contrast of the raging flames
against the clear sky is too beautiful for the two of them to ignore. They both look up
and lose themselves at the sight of the Milky Way (Ama no Kawa). To Komako it is a
beautiful (kireine e) sight; to Shimamura it brings back memory of a poem by Basho
(S165/Z133). But the moment is much more meaningful, not only because of Yoko’s
body falling from the warehouse roof, but because in this very moment Komako
realizes that Shimamura is about to leave her, to break up with her:
She peered into his face (Shimamura no kao o nozokikomu) and abruptly shook
her head. . . .
4 2 Tsuruta Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari no geijutsu, 85-90.
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“You said I was a good woman (ii onna), didn’t you? You’re going away. Why
did you have to say that to me? [S166/Z134]
We feel that Shimamura is keeping his gaze on her as well. It is as if Komako
and Shimamura are now staring at each other, and Shimamura is finally looking at
himself. Only after his trip to the land of Chijimi is he able to face himself, his
emotional insecurities, his demons, his reality of being in this world, his anxiety as a
modem man. Komako’s eyes reflect everything back to him, and only now is he able to
take them all in. Only now is he able to deal with them. Only now is he able to deal with
the reality of his true self.
There is no misunderstanding on Komako’s side: Shimamura is ready to leave
both the snow country and Komako for good. His trip to the land of Chijimi has made
clear to him the purpose of his journey: this is why he could not bring Komako along.
Even if she has helped him in his journey to self-discovery, his trip to the land of
Chijimi has given him a different perspective about his relationship with Komako. He
acknowledges potentials for destructive behavior on her side and, having realized that
everything she reflects back is also part of himself, he cannot accept it anymore. He
fully understands her role in his life, and she has now exhausted her position in his life
as the Eyes of his tme self. He is now ready to back off. Komako may keep peering into
Shimamura’s face to find the true meaning of his words, but she will never be able to
really see his new self. He has made progress toward self-understanding; she has not,
and there was probably never a need on her side. Komako and Shimamura now distance
themselves from each other, and they emerge as separate entities.
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Shimamura has never completely abandoned himself to Komako, nor has he
opened as she has. He cared for her, and he still does. He was drawn to her, but is not
anymore. She may feel he belongs to her, but she does not have a place in his life
anymore: she has never belonged to him. Just as Yoko does not belong to this world of
corruption and emotional distress, so does Shimamura realize that he may have finally
found the way to deal with what he has left behind in the city, and what he has learned
from his three trips to the snow country. The modem world with all its ambiguities,
complexities, and anxieties will follow him wherever he may go. There is no way to
escape reality. There is no snow country, or tradition, pure enough, or distant enough, to
embrace a lost soul on a search for himself. Modernity will await him. The only way out
is to find a compromise.
Yoko has helped him to unveil the beauty and the meaning of a dying tradition
and its impact on his life. Komako has helped him to deal with his confused self, and
clarify issues related to the way he faces life. By projecting on to her elements of both
tradition and modernity, Kawabata makes of Komako the most tragic character in the
novel. Yoko will seemingly move on to higher grounds. We must assume that
Shimamura will return to Tokyo. Komako’s tragedy rests on the unsolved mystery of
the meaning of being a “good woman.” She has helped Shimamura to understand the
tragedy of the modem, but nobody will help her in her straggle toward self-acceptance.
Kawabata will eventually resolve the issue of a character literally stuck at such an
uncomfortable crossroad. Kawabata will explore this theme in some of the novels that
followed Snow Country.
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(4) Komako: Woman at the Mirror
After his conversation with Yoko, in which Yoko asks Shimamura to take her to
Tokyo, Shimamura goes for a bath. Yoko does the same. Shimamura can hear her voice,
and he enjoys it. It must be evening, the time when the geishas in the village join parties
held at various inns. Komako, however, does not seem to be part of any on that day.
Komako notices Shimamura, and asks why he is looking at Yoko. Neither Komako’s
feelings toward Yoko nor their relationship will ever be clear.
Komako is intoxicated with alcohol, but she manages to ask Shimamura to take
her home. He does, but he is not very comfortable where people are asleep everywhere.
Komako and Shimamura go to the girl’s room, and he lets his gaze wander around the
room, while
Komako sat down solidly in the slightly raised alcove and offered him the
only cushion.
“Bright red.” She peered into the mirror (kagami o nozoita). “Am I really so
drunk?” She fumbled through the top drawer of the dresser. [S143/Z116]
I read this passage as anticipatory of further and important developments in the
novel. We have the feeling that Komako’s glance at herself is momentary, fleeting, and
we may wonder if she does it more for herself, or for Shimamura. The answer, I believe,
is for Shimamura.
In her study of women at the mirror in Western literature, J. LaBelle writes:
At those times in the lives of female characters when they are most
concerned with their self-identities, or when crises in their lives throw them
back on their sole selves, they turn with remarkable frequency to the
contemplation of their images in the glass. Such literary events suggest that
often, for a woman, the mirror is an important tool . . . for analyzing and even
creating the self in its self-representations to itself.4 3
4 3 Jennyjoy LaBelle, Herself Beheld, 2.
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For Komako, this is not a moment of crisis yet, but crisis is on the horizon. Kawabata
seems to prepare the terrain for the confrontation Shimamura and Komako will have,
when Shimamura w ill call her “a good woman.”
Another way to approach the issue of the woman at the mirror is suggested by
M. A. Doane, when she writes that the mirror may take on for the woman “the aspect of
a trap whereby her subjectivity becomes synonymous with her objectification.”4 4 For
Komako, to see her image reflected in the mirror, raises the question of whether she is
really drunk. I believe that she is more interested in knowing if Shimamura sees her as
drunk as well. I do not think there is an issue in “objectification,” at least not in the
Western sense of the term. Komako, after all, is trapped in a profession that makes her
historically and culturally the object of male desire and fantasy on a daily basis.
Therefore, to be objectified by the male gaze is not devastating or unsettling to her. It
seems to be worse to be “emotionally” objectified, or be given labels she is not
comfortable with, such as being called “a good woman.” This passage, therefore, may
shed light on Komako’s perception of herself when she is the object of desire: a role
that she accepts without problems.
Another question that may be asked is whether, when at the mirror, Komako
perceives or sees herself as true self or as desired self.4 5 As Martin Jay remarks,
This mirror is, however, flat and thus replicates the image as if it were merely a
precise duplicate of the self. To the extent that women identify with the
narcissistic subject created by such flat mirrors, they are imprisoned in a male
4 4 Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire, 33.
4 5 Luce Irigaray, Speculum o f the Other Woman, 54.
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specular economy in which they are always devalued as inferior versions of the
male subject.4 6
Komako’s profession requires her to spend a lot of time in front of the mirror to create
the geisha character that she performs for her customer. Therefore, when she looks at
herself in the mirror, Komako sees the Komako of her true self (or the Komako true to
her self), and the Komako/geisha her customers are expected to see. Her narcissistic
relationship with the mirror is also a way to enhance her imprisonment in the male field
of vision which makes her the object of a desire that is most often sexual.
By calling her “a good woman,” Shimamura has ascribed meaning to Komako’s
true self, that same Komako who cared for the sick Yukio, or that Komako who in her
own way cared for Yoko, that same Komako who kept a diary since her early days as a
geisha in Tokyo. Komako, however, is not ready to let him define this true self, or at
least Shimamura’s perception of her true self. Shimamura may be trying to return the
favor in this way. In other words, Komako has been helping him since his first trip to
this snow country to bring to light parts of his true self that he has hidden for a long
time (he has not been true to himself back in Tokyo). Now, before leaving her for good,
he is trying to do the same with her by pointing out her morally “good woman” features.
The fleeting image of her drunk self in the mirror also serves as a literary device to
question Komako’s self. From where he stands, or sits, Shimamura may not see her
reflected image in the mirror (like he has in the past), but he sees what to him seems the
real drunk Komako. This is the same Komako who confessed to him she kept a diary.
This is the same Komako who played the samisen for him. But this particular moment
4 6 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, 532-33.
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stands out more brightly, because it is more important to Komako, and not as much to
Shimamura. For Shimamura this is another step toward re-inventing his new self; for
Komako it is the daily routine of accepting her image as her true self. There is no need
on her side to re-invent herself and her life.
As LaBelle writes,
through the mirror, we can gain insight into the reciprocal interchanges between
interiority and exteriority as these create what a woman is to herself and to her
culture. The reflection in the glass is at once both the self and a radical
otherness, an image privileged with a truth beyond the subjective and at the
same time taken to be the very essence of that subjectivity.4 7
When Komako inquires to herself if that person reflected in the mirror is really so
drunk, she seems to have difficulty coming to terms with her true self, and with the
drunk Other reflected in the mirror. Komako, however, does not have problems in
recognizing herself reflected in the mirror. This is not necessarily an identification
moment gone awry. Komako knows and accepts the image given back to her from the
other side of the mirror. She questions, however, her state of mind, and her body
features when she is intoxicated by alcohol. She asks herself, “Am I really that drunk?”
but she never loses touch with her reality, with who she is. She does not question the
identity of the image in the mirror and, more important, she does not see somebody else
reflected in that mirror. Unlike Shimamura, Komako does not speak truths when she is
intoxicated. She is still very coherent, very much in charge of her surroundings. To look
in the mirror at a recognized image of herself becomes a further exercise in
“acceptance” on Shimamura’s side. When Shimamura looks in the mirror that formerly
was a window (in “Mirror of Evening Scenerey”), he sees the Other as Self (Yoko). He
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now witnesses Komako looking at herself, and having no problems in accepting the
image given back to her. Komako uses this mirror as a tool to take in another aspect of
her true self: in this case, the drunk side of her. Shimamura witnesses the dynamics
behind accepting one’s own reflected image in the mirror as true self. He is, after all,
still in the Lacanian Mirror Stage.
The mirror is a tool not only for Shimamura. To focus exclusively on this
relation between the mirror and Shimamura is limiting, and does not fully convey the
potential of the dynamics of vision at work. It is only by adding the effect of mirror
images on the side of the objects/subject reflected (besides Shimamura) that we attain a
better understanding of Kawabata’s use of visual devices to enrich the plot of his
novels.
Previously, we have looked at passages where Komako is by a mirror, or at the
mirror attending to her make-up or her hair. In those instances Shimamura was the one
empowered with the ability to see the woman at the mirror, as well as her reflected
image. Then, we were not given any subjective perception of Komako herself for being
at the mirror. Kawabata, in other words, had seemingly deprived Komako of her
subjectivity when at the mirror. In the passage under study in this section, however,
Komako’s activity is not directly mediated through Shimamura’s gaze. Here Komako
looks for herself, and she tries to decide whether she is drunk or not. Also noteworthy is
the fact that it is not a pretty image that is given back to Komako here. Shimamura’s
previous spottings of her at the mirror can be considered as highly aestheticized
moments. In this specific instance, there is nothing very “beautiful” to look at, although
4 7 Jennyjoy LaBelle, Herself Beheld, 9.
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the image is intriguing. In fact, it raises questions about the ability of Komako to
perceive her whole self in the mirror. Komako never questions her image, and she does
not perceive herself as a “fragmented body.” This is, of course, in sharp contrast with
Shimamura when he looks at Komako, even when reflected in a mirror (like in “Mirror
of White Morning”), and she is always “a body part”: cheeks, nose, lips. Komako does
not need to doubt her integrity as a geisha, and she can fully accept the body image
reflected back to her.
As Elizabeth Grosz points out,
all of us, men as much as women, are caught up in modes of self-production and
self-observation; these modes may entwine us in various networks of power, but
never do they render us merely passive and compliant. They are constitutive of
both bodies and subjects. It is not as if a subject outside these regimes is in any
sense more free of constraint, less amenable to social power relations, or any
closer to a state of nature. At best such a subject remains indeterminate, non
functional, as incapable of social resistance as of social compliance. Its
enmeshment in disciplinary regimes is the condition of the subject’s social
effectivity, as whether conformist or subversive.4 8
Komako does not succumb to the inquisitive power of her gaze. Her gaze does not make
her a representation of a passive identity. Shimamura’s gaze does not make her either.
Komako refuses labels, and avoids limited and distorted representations of herself. She
does not accept outside judgements, and she fends off criticism. She may have complied
with that social aspect of life that has led her to accept herself as a geisha, but she is
ready to fight any characterization that makes her merely an object of male sexual
desire. Her identity as a woman is not under question, and had we been given the
chance to re-write this novel from her perspective, we would have found ourselves with
4 8 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies. Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington & Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1994), 144.
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a different perception of issues such as discovery, acceptance, identification, or
resistance of the self.
E. Grosz’s statement also raises the issue of the making of women’s bodies and
sexualities in 1930s-40s Japan4 9 The cultural implications are diverse, and the
discourse has to do with women conforming to male created laws peculiar to this period
in history. One question that comes to mind, therefore, is whether Komako complied
successfully with such laws:
Becoming-woman involves a series of processes and movements beyond the
fixity of subjectivity and the structure of stable unities. It is an escape from the
systems of binary polarization of unities that privilege men at the expense of
women. It gradually becomes clear that what becoming-woman means or entails
for men is different than for women.5 0
I would take this a step further, and recall the implications of becoming “a good
woman” in Shimamura’s eyes, and question the reasons behind Komako’s rejection of
that label. The answer, I believe, lies in this passage where Komako sees her image
reflected in the mirror. For the first time in the novel, she is on her own visually.
Shimaura’s gaze does not make her, and it never will.
Komako has always been a woman at the mirror, and she will always be. She
has accepted herself with her geisha make-up, and without it. The mirror becomes a
companion, a partner in crime. While her diaries are repositories of her dreams and her
hopes, the mirror experience is always the time for full recognition and acceptance. We
may, of course, delve deeper into the consequences and meanings of being at the mirror
because of her profession. But unfortunately we are never given the possibility, or the
4 9 For an account of the construction of a politicized sexual discourse in modem Japan see Gail Lee
Bernstein, ed., Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
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chance, to surprise her in her attempt to question her true self when at the mirror
attending to her geisha rituals. We can only speculate that as a woman she may have
also used this tool to search her soul, and to recognize herself in time of crisis. The fact
that Kawabata does not explore this aspect of her life, but that he would rather use other
literary devices to question her true self, tells us more about the male discomfort with
mirrors and those overpowering images they reflect back.
Alone at the mirror, with only her image reflected back, Komako appears very
lonely and emotionally isolated. Shimamura looks over this eventful moment. Although
already spectacle to herself, Komako also becomes spectacle to Shimamura’s gaze and
soul. Shimamura is learning the full meaning of accepting the reflected other as self,
and of accepting one’s own reflected image as definite self. Had Komako seen
Shimamura reflected in her mirror, and had Shimamura seen his image along with
Komako’s in that same mirror, it might have spared both the hurtful confrontation of a
break-up, and it would have saved Shimamura from taking that trip to the land of
Chijimi. Kawabata, obviously, had other plans for both his male character and the plot
of his novel.
(5) Resisting Visual Confrontation: Why Komako and Yoko Never Look at
Each Other
I have pointed out in the previous pages how the relationship between Komako
and Yoko is problematic, because it is never clear. Throughout the novel we are
presented with an ingenuous, pure, and asexual image of Yoko, who is in sharp contrast
5 0 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies, 177.
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with the utterly material, practical, and sexual image of Komako. Yoko comments about
Komako to Shimamura when she goes to his room and asks to be taken to Tokyo
[S137]. This is the only instance in which we hear from Yoko of the relationship
between Yoko and Komako. Yoko lives in the same house with Komako. We do not
know if they knew each other before Komako went to Tokyo to train as a geisha. We
know that Yoko has a brother whom she is very concerned for. However, she is the one
taking care of Yukio, Komako’s former fiance. Yoko also helps Komako from time to
time with her geisha business: she brings Komako’s notes to Shimamura on more than
one occasion. Yoko does not seem to have hard feelings toward Komako. She asks
Shimamura to be good to Komako, but she then adds that Komako often teases her
when she tells her she will end up insane [S138/Z111]. From the picture that Yoko
depicts, although she does not use harsh words, Komako does not come out in a positive
light. We do not know why Komako is so mean to Yoko, nor why she wants to hurt this
young girl. More importantly, we can only speculate on why Komako is always
uncomfortable when Yoko is present.
Komako seems to keep Yoko at a distance. She is bothered by her behavior. She
is annoyed when Yoko shows up. But she uses the young girl when in need: like taking
care of her former fiance on his deathbed. It is questionable whether Komako cares
about Yoko. If she does, she never shows, nor does she ever tell. Through an analysis of
the passages where these two women interact, it is possible to shed some light on the
meaning of their relationship, and possibly understand why Kawabata needed to portray
two women so different from each other. Snow Country is one of the many texts where
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Kawabata explores the human relation between women.5 1 These women are usually
inscribed in a context that sees them interacting with a male protagonist. Kawabata will
use this pattern over and over again, and the relationship between the women in his
novels, especially their visual confrontations, will become more and more interesting.
The first time in Snow Country that we are allowed a peek at the two women
interacting is when Komako (on the occasion of Shimamura’s second trip) is with
Shimamura at the train station to see him off. Yoko also shows up. She is very excited,
and she starts begging Komako to hurry back home with her because Yukio’s condition
has suddenly worsened [S82/Z68], I have already explored the dynamics of gazing in
this passage from Shimamura’s perspective. Now, it is Yoko’s gaze fixed on Komako
that is under investigation. After Komako stubbornly refuses to follow Yoko, and asks
to be left alone, tears form in her eyes. Right at this point, almost if noticing them,
Yoko stood rigid, gazing at Komako (mitsumete ita). Her face, like a mask,
wore an expression of such utter earnestness that it was impossible to tell
whether she was angry or surprised or grieved. [S82/Z68]
Komako’s gaze is lost somewhere else, and we do not know where. Komako is
receiving the full emotional impact of Yoko’s gaze. Yoko’s feelings toward Komako,
and toward the whole situation as it develops at the train station, are awkward. Yoko is
both angry and disappointed with Komako. This is also why Komako avoids Yoko’s
gaze. Yoko is described as surprised by Komako’s irrational and childish response, and
she is actually hoping to look into her eyes to find out what is really happening in
Komako’s heart. Yoko is saddened by Komako’s refusal to follow her and support her
5 1 Other works where Kawabata explores relationship among women include Tokyo no hito, Thousand
Cranes (Senbazuru), The Old Capital (Koto), Onna de aru koto, Beauty and Sadness (Utsukushisa to
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through the last hours of Yukio’s life. But Komako does not return Yoko’s gaze.
Kawabata describes Komako’s eyes as watery because they are filled with tears, but he
does not allow for these two women to face each other. Komako is the one avoiding
visual confrontation. Yoko’s eyes also reflect back to Komako what Komako is not.
Komako is a corrupted being and, under Yoko’s gaze, she feels judged, and morally
attacked. Yoko is a representation of purity at its best, and at its highest. Komako
cannot face such reality. She is intimidated by it.
Yoko may be questioning Komako’s attitude, but what is left is a confrontation
like moment from which Yoko emerges a winner. At the end, Komako reluctantly goes
home. To Shimamura, and to the reader, it is still not clear why Komako is so
uncomfortable with the idea of seeing a man dying. It could be that she is afraid of the
look she could be given by Yukio, a resentful gaze from the field of vision of a dying
man. She is also concerned about staring into the eyes of a dying man, and seeing
herself reflected in those eyes, or at least seeing her life gone awry, having taken a
morally questionable road, and having given up her relationship with him. I also believe
that the issue is more with Komako’s concern of seeing her own reflection in the man’s
eyes, and suddenly realizing that “modernity” can be an infecting disease, from which
one can perish both emotionally and physically. To avoid Yukio’s death is also a way
for Komako to deny responsibility for his ending life. Komako knows she is somehow
responsible for his death. Therefore, Komako does not return Yoko’s gaze in an attempt
to escape from the harsh reality of seeing herself reflected in the eyes of tradition. To
gaze at Yoko could have also meant to recognize and accept the tragedy that Yoko
kanashimi to).
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seems to embrace just by being alive. And what does Komako see when she looks at
Yoko?
“Whenever I look at her (ano ko o miteru to), I feel as though I have a heavy
load (tsurai nimotsu) and can’t get rid o f it. Som ehow I always feel that way.”
[S141/Z 114]
Komako is consciously denying herself power over her field of vision. By
refusing to look at Yoko, however, she is also refusing to look at her own life. As much
as Yoko stands for Shimamura’s desired self, so does Yoko stand for Komako’s, for all
that Komako has rejected (not always by choice) in her life. Yoko is the essence of
chastity and purity; Komako is a geisha. Yoko has maternal instincts (in the ways she
attends to Yukio, but also in the ways she cares for Komako); Komako has carnal
• • S9 ■ •
instincts. Yoko is a caring person; Komako is selfish. Yoko has never left the village;
Komako was in Tokyo for some time. Yoko is aware of her tragic life and attempts to
run away to Tokyo to run away from her despair; Komako denies her life is tragic and
has returned to the village. Yoko knows she will die a mad person; Komako knows that
all she does in her life is an attempt to postpone dealing with her own irrationality and
insanity. Yoko is everything Komako fears the most in life: this is the source of
Komako’s idea of Yoko as a heavy load. And Komako is also in denial when she says
that she would like to get rid of such load. For example, she refuses the idea of
Shimamura taking Yoko to Tokyo. She believes that Shimamura may drive her crazy,
5 2 Okude Ken has described Komako as a “surrogate mother” to Shimamura. This approach seems to be
very problematic, considering that more than “maternal instincts,” Komako is most often described as
very sexual, arousing “sexual instincts” in Shimamura. Surrogate-mothers, however, also allow to revisit
the Mother-complex. Okude Ken, Kawabata Yasunari: Yukiguni oyomu, 58-59.
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because Shimamura is already driving Komako insane. It is arguable whether Komako
is really trying to protect Yoko, or to protect her own self.
The eventful night when the Milky Way shed light over Shimamura’s soul and
Komako’s mask [S167-68/Z135] is also the same night when Komako has to deal with
a tragedy bigger than Shimamura’s break-up: the fall and apparent death of Yoko.
Komako cannot bring herself to look at Yoko’s body falling from the burning
warehouse roof. The realization that it is Yoko’s body leads her to cover her eyes with
her hands {me o osaeta) [S173/Z139]: once again she is avoiding her own fears.
Komako put her hands to her eyes and screamed, and even as the crowd held
its breath in that first gasp she broke away form Shimamura and ran toward the
fire.
The long geisha’s skirts trailing behind her, she staggered through the pools
of water and the charred bits of wood that lay scattered over the ground. She
turned and struggled back with Yoko at her breast. Her face was strained and
desperate {hisshi), and beneath it Yoko’s face hung vacantly, as at the moment
of the soul’s flight. Komako struggled forward as if she bore her sacrifice
( ,gisei), or her punishment {keibatsu). [S174-75/Z140]
Even when holding the unconscious (or almost dead) Yoko, Komako does not
look at her directly. Komako’s sudden realization finally comes to her and to
Shimamura as well. Yoko’s apparent death is more of a sacrifice on Komako’s side.
Komako sacrificed herself when she became a geisha in order to pay Yukio’s medical
bills. But Yoko’s apparent death comes as a punishment for having not helped the
young girl to recover from the moments of despair and confusion that her life had
turned into. Komako’s punishment will be to deal with reality and, more important, with
a past that she will never be able to change. Komako is also being punished for her life
choices. Yoko’s inert body in her arms speaks to her as it has never done before - or
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probably Komako is, for the first time, really listening. However, she still does not look.
We do not know where Komako’s eyes are fixed. We do not know what she is staring
at. Afraid to cope with death, she allows her Gaze/Eye to turn inward, and stare at her
lived life as sacrifice, and at her future existence as punishment.
(6) Conclusion
Tradition has been sacrificed in the name of a galloping modernity. Modernity is
understood as a punishment. The confusion, disarray, emotional distress, and
psychological anxiety that the modem condition brings with itself are punishments for
having rejected tradition: the beautiful Japanese tradition. The modem tragedy of
tradition rests on the assumption that it is doomed to be annihilated. But tradition can
rise from the ashes and re-invent itself as a modem concept of a time now past. The
conflicts between these two will endure. And Kawabata will keep exploring them in his
following novels.
Yoko is able and ready for a visual confrontation with Komako, but Komako
always avoids it. Kawabata does not allow for pure tradition and confused modernity to
stare at each other. If he did, there would only be mis-recognition, non-acceptance,
rejection, and further emotional distress. It is too early for Kawabata to have modernity
and tradition look into each other’s eyes, and resolve their cultural and historical issues.
That being the case, we must accept Yoko and Komako for more than merely a
mountain girl and a mountain geisha. They are metaphors of two very important aspects
of the Japanese condition in the 1930s: pure tradition and confused modernity. Yoko
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and Komako cannot look at each other yet, because it is historically too early for a face
off between these two. With Yoko’s body in her arms, Komako still cannot get herself
to rest her eyes on the young girl’s face, lest Yoko open her eyes, and beg for
acceptance and recognition. Komako remains trapped in her dubious status of modem
woman at the crossroad of history; the dilemma of the modem is not solved by her
tragic destiny. Kawabata will need more time before having his female characters in his
novels come to a final understanding and acceptance of life as a harmonious blend of
tradition and modernity. His literary production was, at this point, still a work in
progress.
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Part Two
The Making and Un-making of Subjects and Objects of the Gaze:
A New Perspective on Kawabata Yasunari’s
Thousand Cranes, The Lake, and House of the Sleeping Beauties
Introduction
The psychology of Kawabata’s characters presents a vision of unstable souls.
Kawabata’s representations of objects of the gendered gaze are not always tangible nor
present. Subjects of the gaze are often confused as to the meaning of their visual
experiences. Vision becomes blurred, including not only what the physical but also
what the mind’s eyes see. Relying on theories put forward by Lacan, Kristeva and
others, I analyze the visual experiences of Kawabata’s characters, an approach that
explores the characters’ unconscious motivations, and which leads to conclusions
different from the majority of the author’s critics.
I address images as dreams, memories, ideas, and fantasmata. W. J. T. Mitchell
defines fantasmata as “versions of those impressions called up by the imagination in the
absence of the objects that originally stimulated them.”1 But what is an image?
A believable image is the product of a negotiation with an unverifiable real. As a
representation of the real the image is always, partially, phantasmatic. In
doubting the authenticity of the image, one questions as well the veracity of she
who makes and describes it. To doubt the subject seized by the eye is to doubt
the subjectivity of the seeing ‘I.’ These words work both to overcome and to
deepen the provocation of that doubt.2
1 W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology. Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago
Press, 1986), 10. On the structure of the Mental Image see pp. 14-19.
2 Peggy Phelan, “Broken Symmetries: Memory, Sight, Love,” in Feminisms, Sandra Kemp and Judith
Squires, eds. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 446.
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An investigation of the subject that gazes becomes as problematic as an analysis of the
object/image at which he gazes as in Lacan’s theory of the gaze where the subject and
object can interchange. It is Lacan’s premise that a subject may, through subjective
perception, turn an object into a subject of the gaze that makes this study of gazing
subjects and objects in Kawabata’s texts problematic.
After World War II, Kawabata embarked on a journey to the inner depths of
humanity, bringing to the fore issues that would accompany him for the rest of his life.
From the perspective of vision and its aesthetics, Kawabata’s novels of the 1950s and
1960s are imbued with the characters’ own distorted perceptions of reality, distortions
dictated by phobias and idiosyncrasies. Kawabata’s characters see unfolding before
their eyes a mixture of hallucinations, fantasies, illusions, and daydreams.3 Kawabata’s
depiction of the real approaches Lacan’s definition of the Real.
In this section I focus on the notion of the Real, understood as the Lacanian
Real.4 As I pointed out in previous chapters, Lacan’s theory of the psyche revolves
around the interconnection of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. The Imaginary
is the realm of images; the Symbolic is the domain of language; and the Real is that
which is impossible to say or imagine.5 In The Columbia Dictionary o f Modern Literary
3 Definitions of “hallucination,” “fantasy,” “illusion,” and “daydream” can be found in Arthur S. Reber
and Emily Reber, The Penguin Dictionary o f Psychology (New York: Penguin Group, 2001), 313, 268-69,
340, 175.
4 Whenever referring to Lacan’s Real, the word will be capitalized.
5 Jane Gallop, Reading Lacan; Elizabeth Grosz, Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction; Jacques Lacan,
Ecrits\ Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis; Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in
the Field o f Vision; Craig Saper, “A Nervous Theory: the Troubling Gaze of Psychoanalysis in Media
Studies,” Diacritics 21, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 33-52; Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry. An Introduction to
Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1992).
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and Cultural Criticism, the Lacanian Real is described as the most elusive of the three
orders:
For Lacan, objective perception or description is impossible, since our access to
the external world is always mediated by Imaginary investments and the symbol
systems through which it is apprehended. The Real is thus a kind of residue,
which must remain outside of speech and language. Yet the Real is also present
in the unconscious and is felt in dreams, symptoms, and the hallucinations of
psychotics.6
In his study of the Lacanian subject, Bruce Fink writes that
Lacan’s real is without zones, subdivisions, localized highs and lows, or gaps
and plenitudes: the real is a sort of unrent, undifferentiated fabric, woven in such
a way as to be full everywhere, there being no space between the threads that are
its ‘stuff.’ . . . The division of the real into separate zones, distinct features, and
contrasting structures is a result of the symbolic order, which, in a manner of
speaking, cuts into the smooth fa?ade of the real, creating divisions, gaps, and
distinguishable entities and laying the real to rest, that is, drawing or sucking it
into the symbols used to describe it, and thereby annihilating it.7
With Kawabata’s literary production of the 1950s and 1960s, we enter a new
world, not only the overly investigated makai (or demonic world) which seems to
monopolize the analysis of Kawabata’s novels, but also a world of images and sights, of
O t
symbols and representations, of troubled men and desirable women. This world
projects us into the inner chambers of the unconscious and its making to reveal an
opposition between threatening sights and coveted fantasies, both ambiguous objects of
human sight and desires.
6 Joseph Childers and Gary Hentzi, eds., The Columbia Dictionary o f Modem Literary and Cultural
Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 254.
7 Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject. Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1995), 24.
8 In English Matthew Mizenko has addressed the issue of how Kawabata constructs this demonic realm in
some of his novels. Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 151-190.
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The relationship between subject and object of the gaze must also be understood
as a relation between self and other, a relationship that is unequal: “the always already
unequal encounter nonetheless summons the hope of reciprocity and equality; the
failure of this hope then produces violence, aggressivity, dissent.” 9 For the male
characters in these novels, identity is also at stake. As Peggy Phelan writes,
Identity is perceptible only through a relation to an other - which is to say, it is a
form of both resisting and claiming the other, declaring the boundary where the
self diverges from and merges with the other. In that declaration of identity and
identification, there is always loss, the loss of not-being the other and yet
remaining dependent on that other for self-seeing, self-being.1 0
The novels under study in this section, Thousand Cranes, The Lake, and House
o f the Sleeping Beauties have also been chosen due to the similarities in the
representation(s) of the Lacanian Real, and to the depiction of mothers, or mother
figures, as belonging to the realm of abjection.1 1 I refer to Julia Kristeva’s theory of
abjection which:
offers a psychoanalytic understanding of the process by which the norms of
embodied identity are disrupted. It gives an account of the construction of
desiring subjectivity which stresses the fault lines, tensions and difficulties of
achieving a stable identity as the embodied subject of an unproblematic
9 Peggy Phelan, “Broken Symmetries,” 449.
1 0 Peggy Phelan, “Broken Symmetries,” 451.
1 1 Along with the short story “Kata Ude” (One Arm), and the novel Tampopo (Dandelions) they form
what Japanese scholars have most often addressed as Kawabata Yasunari’s representation of makai
(demonic world). An in-depth study of makai is not the purpose of this chapter or dissertation, although I
will return occasionally to its discussion because makai does contribute to the construction of vision and
visuality, whose features overwhelm Kawabata’s literary production of the time. On makai see Hara Zen,
Kawabata Yasunari no makai (Tokyo: Yuseido, 1987); Morimoto Osamu, Makai yuko: Kawabata
Yasunari no sengo (Saitama-ken Omiya-shi: Rindosha, 1987); Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari
Kenkyu, 165-181, 200; Hatori Tetsuya, “Mizuumi ni okeru makai,” Kokubungaku 35, no. 15 (December
1987): 38-44; Togo Katsumi, “Makai no kanata e. ‘Futari de hitori, hitori de futari’ no maboroshi,”
Kokubungaku 35, no. 15 (December 1987): 24-31; Yamada Yoshiro, “Kawabata Yasunari no makai
shosetsu no keifu to sono tokucho,” Kokubungaku 62, no. 4 (April 1997): 68-73. See also Kawabata
Bungaku Kenkyukai, ed., Makai no hokd: Mizuumi Nemureru Bijo Kataude Tanpopo (Tokyo: Kyoiku
Shuppan Senta, 1981).
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desire. . . . The key themes in abjection are the construction of subjectivity over
and against the desires and feared maternal body, which can never be fully
repressed, but always returns to haunt the fragile, vulnerable subject; and the
subject’s experience, consequent on this inadequately achieved repression, of
those liminal states in which the boundaries of the body, of the self, are blurred,
transgressed, and refigured. The experience of abjection is also evoked by
phenomena which inspire disgust or horror because of the threat which
liminality poses to the attempt to stabilize - and thereby control - the categories
we use to interpret meaning.1 2
In these three novels the male gaze seems to dominate. In Thousand Cranes,
Kikuji Mitani’s objects of vision are (1) Kurimoto Chikako’s ugly birthmark on her left
breast, (2) Inamura Yukiko’s thousand-crane pattern printed on her kerchief (furoshiki),
(3) Mrs. Ota and (4) her daughter Fumiko. However, Kikuji experiences women’s
returned gaze. Chikako looks back at Kikuji through his mental image of her ugly
birthmark; the Inamura girl looks back through the recurring image of the thousand-
crane pattern on her kerchief on his mind; Mrs. Ota looks at Kikuji from the place of her
womanhood for the first time revealed to the young Kikuji; and Fumiko looks back
through the physical features that remind Kikuji of her mother. These images are
distortions and representations of the Real unfolding before Kikuji’s eyes, a Real made
visible through illusions and hallucinations.
In The Lake, Gimpei’s ambiguous world is dominated by his constant pursuit of
beauty to compensate for the ugliness in his life (his father’s somehow mysterious
death) and of his body (his ugly feet). Gimpei is obsessed by a need to follow only
beautiful women (Miyako and Machie), and to relate to beautiful women (Yayoi and
1 2 Kate Chedgzoy, “Frida Kahlo’s ‘Grotesque’ Bodies,” in Feminisms, Sandra Kemp and Judith Squires,
eds., 459-60. See also Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 460.
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Hisako). The mother-motif runs through the plot as Gimpei attempts to find in other
women the beautiful features that belonged to his mother. These women look back at
him, in particular one woman, his mother. Gimpei feels his mother is looking at him
from the lake of her native village. Kawabata embraces a Freudian interpretation of the
lake as a symbol of the maternal.1 3 Gimpei also feels as if the other women in the novel
look back at him with their beauty. However, their beauty can also be understood as an
invitation to others to follow them. This is especially true with Miyako (reciprocity of
the gaze). The recurring maternal image presents us with the possibility of
understanding Gimpei as trapped in the realm of the Imaginary, unwilling to step into
the Symbolic and detach from the Mother in order to accept the Law of the Father.
Gimpei’s Real is accordingly much more problematic, and the concept of the abject
Mother becomes a contested site of resistance.
In House o f the Sleeping Beauties, Eguchi’s gaze seems to be the only site of
power and knowledge. The young women’s naked bodies are exposed to the old man’s
inquisitive gaze, but it is from their site of unconsciousness, from their place of deep
artificial sleep that Eguchi feels as if these women look back to reveal to him a world
that he had forgotten. As Hara Zen has described them, these young women are
“catalysts,” bringing together worlds once inhabited by Eguchi.1 4 The images making
up his dreams embody the Lacanian Real: they are impossible to describe, and even
harder to imagine. These sleeping beauties may be seen as problematic embodiments of
the Lacanian concept of objet a.
1 3 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation o f Dreams, 435-439.
1 4 Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari: sono enkinho, 255-60.
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Chikako’s birthmark, the lake of Gimpei’s mother’s village and the young
women lying by Eguchi’s old body are threatening sights because they stir the male
characters’ unconsciousness, and force them to look inside themselves. They are sights
that freeze the men in their inability, or unwillingness, to become fully visible to
themselves. Therefore, to dwell in the realm of the Real becomes an exercise in solving
riddles of the incomplete self.
The Inamura girl’s beauty, Machie’s beauty and the ambiguous “mother” the
sleeping beauties embody are sites of desire and fantasy. They are fantasies because
they are male projections of a constructed world of artifacts and images visible only to
the male characters in the novels. The men’s visual experiences are not shared. These
visual experiences become distorted representations of reality, but acceptable in the
realm of the Lacanian Real.
Vision is a troubling experience because what Kawabata’s characters see before
their eyes is not always what they expect: the male characters alter their objects of
vision, perceiving them as specular representations of their questionable unconscious,
understanding them as sites of danger/fear and desire. In Thousand Cranes, the image
of Chikako’s birthmark haunts Kikuji throughout the novel and at the end is all that is
left in his life. In The Lake, the sight of his ugly feet is all that remains for Gimpei after
his relentless pursuit of beauty. In House o f the Sleeping Beauties, likewise, old age,
demons and death are all that are left in Eguchi’s life on a cold winter night.
Even though the male gaze seems to drive the plots of these novels, women per
se are endowed with a much stronger power: the power to stimulate vision, the power to
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create sights, the power to stand in for male fantasies, desires and fears. It is through the
ways the women look back at them that the male protagonists in Kawabata’s novels
struggle to become visible to themselves, though they most often shrink deeper and
deeper into the convoluted dynamics of their peculiar ways to experience vision.
Women seem to be the sole inhabitants of the realm of the Lacanian Real.
In the three novels Freud’s Oedipus complex manifests itself through the male
characters’ troubled relationships with their mothers or their maternal substitutes. In
Thousand Cranes, Kurimoto Chikako is a pseudo-mother to Kikuji, whose Oedipal
complex is much more complicated than Gimpei’s and Eguchi’s. Gimpei and Eguchi’s
love for their mothers has ruled their lives. Whereas Gimpei’s pursuit of beauty
represents an attempt to rediscover the beauty that once belonged to his mother,
Eguchi’s love for his mother somehow has been forgotten until the young sleeping
beauties bring it back to him. Freudian themes abound. The maternal breast, which
Freud describes as a child’s first love, is scarred in Thousand Cranes. Freudian
narcissism is revisited in Gimpei’s social interactions. Dream interpretation is explored
and distorted in House o f the Sleeping Beauties.
The Japanese tradition is once again well represented in these novels. In
Thousand Cranes the tea ceremony, a symbol of Japanese tradition par excellence, is
abused to suit the material taste of the greedy Kurimoto Chikako. Chikako sells the
secrets of an indigenous tradition to foreigners for monetary gain. Tradition is thus
spoiled by a modernity that prospers at tradition’s expense. In The Lake, kaimami-Wke
moments and Gimpei’s grotesque irogonomi-like pursuits can be considered tradition
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revisited, as Kawabata enriches these motifs with innovative features.1 5 In addition,
whereas Inamura Yukiko in Thousand Cranes, and Machie in The Lake come across as
idealized symbols of a time now past, the young women in House o f the Sleeping
Beauties are seen as ambiguous tradition, as young maidens selling the illusion of
innocence for profit. These women are all sights/sites of male fantasy, male illusions of
a perfect world, problematic objects of the male gaze and desire.
We are projected into a world that blends and blurs tradition and modernity, a
world that Kawabata was able to create. All the characters in these three novels have
stories to tell. In investigating the ways they gaze at each other, in analyzing the
complexities of their scopic fields and drives, I intend to shed light over the progression
in Kawabata’s novels through which Kawabata portrays his female characters as they
transition from the position of the gazed upon and emerge as subjects of the gaze. My
study of Kawabata’s novels indicates that Kawabata and Lacan share the view that the
subject that gazes does not control the one being gazed upon, and that through
subjective perception the subject of the gaze has the ability to turn its objects of vision
into gazing subjects.
In Thousand Cranes, Chikako’s birthmark stands as an ambiguous
representation of the female gaze. By portraying Kikuji as he falls under the spell of
Chikako’s birthmark, and by describing how Kikuji perceives himself going from
subject to object of the gaze, Kawabata depicts the woman as she returns the male gaze.
1 5 In Heian times, irogonomi were “matters concerned with love, or persons who understand its nature.”
The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature. Earl Miner, Hiroko Odagiri, and Robert E.
Morrell (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 278.
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However, the female gaze thus represented is not understood as a pair of eyes looking
into the direction of the male protagonist, but rather as a dubious gaze, as Kawabata
hides Chikako’s physical gaze in her birthmark. Kawabata may have not been ready at
this point in his literary career to describe women in charge of their fields of vision, but
by conveying a male perception of the female gaze, Kawabata constructs a world where
women can see for themselves, and where men must face the possibility of being the
gazed upon.
In The Lake, Kawabata portrays women as subjects of the gaze. Although the
male protagonist perceives himself as the object of the lake/the mother’s gaze, Gimpei
also becomes the tangible object of Miyako and the ugly woman’s gazes. However this
female gaze does not emerge with a specific gender identity, as Kawabata portrays the
female gaze as it mimicks the male. In other words, when Miyako looks at Gimpei, she
is described as behaving exactly as Gimpei does when he gazes at the women he
follows. When Miyako gazes at Machie, her gaze is described as ambivalent, as prone
to embrace features of the male gaze. Moreover, the ugly woman that stares at Gimpei
at the end of the novel is portrayed as resembling a man, thus gazing at Gimpei from her
place of sexual ambivalence. In The Lake, Kawabata manipulates the gender ambivalent
gaze of women in an effort not to further enhance the personal drama that already
torments Gimpei’s soul. The male protagonist is not ready to embrace the image of the
self the female gaze could reflect. Thus, Gimpei perpetuates the fantasy of the self as
imagined from the field of vision of the gender ambivalent female other. As Kikuji in
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Thousand Cranes, Gimpei also resists the ambivalent female gaze as a site of
knowledge.
In House o f the Sleeping Beauties, we see the male subject of the gaze as he
perceives himself to be in the trajectory of the female objects of vision when he
anticipates the agony of becoming the object of the female gaze. By portraying Eguchi
to play with the possibility of these sleeping maidens to open their eyes, Kawabata
experiments with the implications of being turned into the object of the female gaze and
delves deeper into exploring the emotional impact of such possibility. In other words, in
Sleeping Beauties Kawabata considers the possibility of women staring back at men
without reproducing a gaze that necessarily mimics men’s.
My study of these novels also reveals how Kawabata’s female characters are not
the victims they appear to be. Thus, to employ the gaze as a category of literary analysis
helps to challenge the critics’ readings’ of Kawabata’s texts that have emphasized the
victim-status of the women in Kawabata’s writings.
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Chapter Four
Becoming Visible before the Gaze of Eye-less Objects, or
When Images Look Back: Re-reading Thousand Cranes
(1) Introduction
In my study of Thousand Cranes I promote a reading of the text that emphasizes
a typology of the female gaze as a repository of knowledge, a site of threat, a space
from where an ambiguous desire may originate. Such an approach also furthers the
argument in the direction of the presence of a female dimension of the gaze in a male
text from where it was not supposed to emerge either as instigator of personal crisis or
as a site of knowledge, threat, and desire. To uncover the female gaze in Thousand
Cranes also means to credit Kawabata for creating female characters that do not
passively succumb to the male laws of the gazed upon, but that return a gaze that
petrifies and illuminates at the same time.
Thousand Cranes is about a man resisting the painful discovery of the self from
the field of vision of the female others as he also struggles with coming to terms with
the truth about his morally corrupted adult life. The many women in his life become
mirrors reflecting back aspects of that ugliness that characterizes his moral life as well
as dubious images of innocence to which to aspire. Although the male gaze seems to
dominate in the novel, Kawabata portrays the male protagonist as he constantly
perceives himself as the gazed upon, thus emphasizing subjectivity as a means through
which the subject of the gaze may empower his objects with a gaze of their own.
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Although the returned female gaze in this novel is mostly imagined as it lives
mainly in the memory of the male protagonist, it still allows for introspection as the
male character desperately attempts to adjust to the truth about himself he sees reflected
in the women’s eyes. However, far from embracing a tmth that would catapult him
deeper into the meanders of his troubled emotional development, the male protagonist
tries again and again to hide from the eyes of the world as he takes shelter in the shade
of his ambiguous existence where he lives his life in the shadow of the ghosts of his
father’s past. The women in the novel reflect back the paternal image, and to the male
protagonist such an image is as haunting as the sight of the scarred breast he
experienced early in life, and the image of white cranes printed on a beautiful girl’s
kerchief.
(2) Thousand Cranes (Senbazuru): A Synopsis
Kawabata published Thousand Cranes in different literary magazines between
May 1949 and October 1951.1 The novel revolves around the solitary life of the male
protagonist Mitani Kikuji, who is described as a young man in his mid-twenties living
in his parents’ house and working at an unidentified company. His parents are deceased.
The one person who always seems to be around him is Kurimoto Chikako, his father’s
former mistress. The novel opens with Kikuji headed to a tea ceremony arranged by
Chikako at Enkakuji in Kamakura. The ceremony is, in reality, an excuse to have Kikuji
1 Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 12, pp. 543-44. In citing passages from Thousand Cranes, I will
use “Z” to stand for where the citation is from the Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu volume 12, and “S” for E.
Seidensticker’s translation of Senbazuru (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959).
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meet Inamura Yukiko in an o-miai. Yukiko is a young girl with a thousand-crane
pattern on her kerchief whose image captivates Kikuji’s eyes.
While attending the tea ceremonyI o-miai, Kikuji finds himself in the presence of
another of his father’s mistresses, Mrs. Ota. Mrs. Ota shows up unannounced and brings
along her daughter Fumiko. Kikuji’s father was a connoisseur of the tea ceremony, and
a collector of tea utensils. He shared this interest with Mr. Ota. After Mr. Ota’s death,
Mitani’s father took care of Mrs. Ota by purchasing some of the tea utensils owned by
her deceased husband. Eventually Mitani senior and Mrs. Ota became lovers, and
because of this affair, Mitani senior broke off his relationship with Chikako.
Chikako survived her abandonment by becoming a teacher of the tea ceremony.
After separating from Mitani senior, she also physically changed, turning first somehow
“masculine in manners” (dansei), and then “neuter” (chusei). Chikako’s life seems to
have been ruled by the ugly birthmark (minikui aza) on her breast, the sight of which, at
a very early age, will haunt Kikuji for the rest of his life.
After the tea ceremony at Enkakuji, Mrs. Ota waits for Kikuji, and they end up
at an inn where they spend the night. This is the beginning of a destructive sexual
relationship for Mrs. Ota. Fumiko, Mrs. Ota’s daughter, is not pleased with her mother’s
inappropriate conduct and voices her disappointment to Kikuji. Chikako learns of the
relationship and, in retaliation, informs Mrs. Ota of Kikuji’s engagement to Yukiko.
Overwhelmed by guilt, Mrs. Ota commits suicide. Fumiko asks Kikuji for help to cover
up her mother’s suicide. Fumiko becomes Kikuji’s new love interest, while in the
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background Chikako continues to try to manipulate Kikuji and Yukiko into marrying,
but to no avail.
Just as Mrs. Ota, in her involvement with Kikuji, searches for the father in the
son, so does Kikuji look for the mother in Fumiko. Kikuji and Fumiko’s relationship
revolves symbolically around the tea utensils that they exchange as gifts.
Returning from a trip to the seaside to visit some friends, Kikuji is led by
Chikako to believe that both Yukiko and Fumiko have married. Kikuji reacts to the
news ambiguously. He is especially saddened by the thought of having lost Fumiko.
The truth, however, is that Chikako has lied about both girls.2 Kikuji later learns from
Fumiko herself that she did not get married, but after they meet one last time, they both
realize the impossibility of a relationship under the curse of the ghosts of the past.
Kikuji is once again left alone with Chikako and the ugliness of her life which reflects
upon him.
(3) Feeding at the Scarred Breast: A Study of Chikako’s Birthmark as Both
Object and Subject of the Gaze
In Freudian psychology the maternal breast is the child’s first love object: the
•5
breast and the mother are one and the same. The child’s relationship with the breast is
one of gratification. The maternal breast keeps the child alive; it nourishes. In what is
called the Oral Phase, the first of seven stages of Psychosexual Development (the Oral
2 In Nami Chidori, the sequel to Senbazuru, Kikuji marries Inamura Yukiko. Nami Chidori can be found
in Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 12.
3 W. W. Meissner, Freud and Psychoanalysis (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press,
2000), 89.
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Stage, the Anal Stage, the Urethral Stage, the Phallic Stage, the Latency Stage, and the
Genital Stage), the child eventually learns the difference between self and object (at
eighteen months).
The child’s relationship to the maternal breast not only provides gratification
and nourishment, but also serves as a model for future relationships.4 Nowhere in
Freudian psychoanalysis do we read of the child’s reactions to the sight of the breast in
the Oral Stage, because in this stage “perceptions, and modes of expression are
primarily centered in the mouth, lips, tongue, and other organs related to the oral
zone.”5 Although the child’s first experience of the maternal breast seems to belong to
the oral world, oral and visual worlds are connected through desire. It is the visual
recognition of the site of gratification that leads to the child’s oral gratification. Thus, a
child’s early visual experience includes the memory of the maternal breast as sight of
gratification.
In Thousand Cranes, the reading of the ugly birthmark on Chikako’s breast by
Kikuji and his mother becomes one of the dominant motifs. Whereas Kikuji’s mother’s
experience of the birthmark is based upon her husband’s description, Kikuji’s
experience is visual. In this section I explore the impact that the sight of both Chikako’s
birthmark and her “gender transformation” has on Kikuji as a child first, and as an adult
later. Although my emphasis seems to be on the male gaze only, the male and the
female gaze intertwine in the study of Kikuji and Chikako’s interaction with each
another.
4 W. W. Meissner, Freud and Psychoanalysis, 89-90.
5 W. W. Meissner, Freud and Psychoanalysis, 250.
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It is quite difficult to draw a precise line between Kikuji’s gaze and Chikako’s
gaze: both become objects of each other’s gaze at different times in the novels.
Therefore, I attempt to unveil how these two gendered gazes (Chikako’s gaze being a
mixture of female and male genders) manipulate each other, how they get entangled,
how they belong to each other, how they create distance between each other, and how
they impact each other. Chikako possesses a “double gaze,” seeing with her eyes and
her birthmark. Her gaze embodies both masculine and feminine features. As the object
of her “masculine gaze,” Kikuji feels threatened; as the object of her feminine gaze, he
becomes petrified by this Japanese Medusa, whose castrating gaze prevents him from
functioning with other women.
On his way to the tea ceremony at Enkakuji, Kikuji remembers his first and only
visual experience of Chikako’s birthmark. The sight of the woman’s breast had been
f\ n
unsettling to the young boy, who was eight or nine at the time.
He had been taken by his father to visit Chikako, and they had found her in the
breakfast room. Her kimono was open. She was cutting the hair on her
birthmark with a small pair of scissors. It covered half the left 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. [S4/Z9]
It is important to understand Kikuji’s state of psychological development when he first
sees Chikako’s scarred breast. The Latency Period is
6 In previous novels, Kawabata never describes women’s bodies as ugly. The White Russian woman in
Snow Country is dirty rather than ugly. Her “oily skin” is not as ugly as Chikako’s birthmark. Chikako
becomes then symbol of a “scarred” Japanese tradition which she is also trying to preserve through the
teaching o f the tea ceremony.
7 Kikuji is in what is called the Latency Stage of Psychosexual Development, “The stage of relative
quiescence or inactivity of the sexual drive during the period from the resolution of the Oedipus complex
until pubescence (from about 5-6 years until about 11-13 years)” W. W. Meissner, Freud and
Psychoanalysis, 254.
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a period of integrating and consolidating previous attainments in psychosexual
development and of establishing decisive patterns of adaptive functioning. The
child can develop a sense of industry and a capacity for mastery of objects and
concepts that allows autonomous function and with a sense of initiative without
running the risk of failure or defeat or a sense of inferiority. These are all
important attainments that need to be further integrated, ultimately as the
essential basis for a mature adult life of satisfaction in word and love.8
The sight of Chikako’s birthmark becomes troubling to young Kikuji, the memory of
which will turn into a lifetime curse. From this point in the novel, we feel that Chikako
is not so much a person per se, as a birthmark. We are led to believe that her physical
ugliness affects who she is and what she does.
Kikuji recalls how his parents talked about Chikako’s birthmark [S5/Z10-
S7/Z12]. It was his mother who brought up the potential problems a child would face
when nursing at this breast:
From the day it was bom it would drink there; and from the day it began to see
(ime ga miehajimeta hi kara miru), it would see that ugly mark (minikui aza) on
its mother’s breast. Its first impression of the world, its first impression of its
mother, would be that ugly birthmark, and there the impression would be
through the child’s whole life. [S7/Z12]
Kikuji’s mother’s use of the word impression (insho) emphasizes the impact of
such a sight. The image of the ugly mark and the sight of the breast marred by it will
create a troubling impression in the baby’s mind. Not only does Kikuji’s mother
interpret the psychological impact of the child’s visual experience, but she also attempts
to construct the child’s view of the world. She offers a maternal perspective questioning
how a mother would feel about having her own baby nurse at such a scarred breast.
Kikuji’s mother tries to be sympathetic; even though Chikako is her husband’s mistress,
8 W. W. Meissner, Freud and Psychoanalysis, 255.
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his mother feels for Chikako’s condition as a scarred woman. Kikuji overhears the
conversation of his parents and, as a young boy, remembers vividly his first sight.
Kikuji is so affected by the sight [S8/Z12], that he even fears the idea of a half-
brother or sister nursing at such a breast and turning into some kind of a monster. In
other words, he fantasizes about the possibility of a step-brother or sister bom out of his
father’s relationship with Chikako. From these first pages of the novel, we are led to
believe that the theme of the novel is about a birthmark. However, this birthmark
physically appears only once, and it is its memory that often becomes a threat to
Kikuji.9 As “a child symbolically fed by the breast with the ugly mark,”1 0 Kikuji often
feels himself to be the object of the birthmark’s gaze. As “a symbol of the ugliness of
the body and of human desire, of demoniac frustration and of man’s obsession with
life,”1 1 Chikako’s birthmark gazes back at Kikuji, making him question his identity as
Kikuji or as Mitani senior’s son.
After walking down memory lane, Kikuji comes to his senses. At the idea of
Chikako introducing him to a young lady, Kikuji’s first reaction is to wonder whether
this young lady’s skin is perfect, pure, and free of ugly birthmarks [S8-9/Z13]. The
image of Chikako’s birthmark floats before his eyes again (ano aza ga Kikuji no me ni
ukande) [S9/Z13], He does not really see the birthmark, but looks for it in his mind,
9 Ueda Makoto, “Mienai aza ni majinawarete: shosetsu Senbazuru no ikkaishaku,” in Kawabata
Yasunari: gendai no biishiki, Takeda Katsuhiko and Takahashi Shintaro, eds. (Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1978),
51. A different reading of “the birthmark” is provided by Takahashi Maki. Takahashi Maki argues that
Chikako’s birthmark is a literary device that Kawabata uses to unite the plot of Senbazuru to the plot of
its sequel, Nami Chidori. Both novels, in fact, open with Kikuji’s memory of Chikako’s birthmark.
Takahashi Maki, “Senbazuru ron - Kikuji no ‘aza,’” in Kawabata Bungaku no sekai, volume 2, Tamura
Mitsumasa, Baba Shigeyuki, and Hara Zen, eds. (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 1994), 179-202, especially
194-201.
1 0 Noriko Mizuta Lippit, “Kawabata’s Dilettante Heroes,” 130.
1 1 Noriko Mizuta Lippit, “Kawabata’s Dilettante Heroes,” 130.
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recreating a mental picture of it. This is not “hallucination” (genshi); it is a different
kind of vision; it is a fantasmata.
We are never given Chikako’s direct take on her own birthmark. It is the male
protagonist that empowers this sight. Chikako is seen at the beginning of the novel as
cutting some hair that has grown around it and covering it up when she realizes that the
young Kikuji, who has accompanied his father, is looking at it [S4/Z9]. In her sudden
act, we can read embarrassment, although any Japanese woman would cover herself,
out of simple modesty. The questions become: what does Kikuji see when he gazes at
her? What are the visual dynamics at work when Kikuji, first as a child and later as an
adult, looks at her? What emotional process causes him to see her as “sexless”?
Chikako’s scarred body perhaps accounts for the gender transformation she
undergoes before the eyes of a young Kikuji. A couple of years after Kikuji sees the
birthmark, to his eyes Chikako turns somehow masculine in manners (danseika shite).
On the occasion of this tea ceremony, however, many years after that incident, Kikuji
feels that she has become a perfectly sexless woman (kanzen na chusei ni natte iru).
Mizuta Lippit argues that Chikako’s birthmark is responsible for “her lack of essential
femininity, her lack of sexuality as well as of maternal tenderness.” 1 2 While her
birthmark may remain as a non-gendered site of sexual ambiguity, it is in Kikuji’s
imagination that Chikako moves through the feminine, masculine, and neuter position.
Kawabata portrays Chikako as if she has unconsciously rejected the dichotomy
between masculine and feminine for the purpose of knowledge. In collapsing Chikako’s
1 2 Noriko Mizuta Lippit, “Kawabata’s Dilettante Heroes,” 130.
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gender, by blurring its line, Kawabata’s depiction resembles Kristeva’s take on
women’s rejection of the masculine/feminine dichotomy as a “metaphysical” construct:
“the very dichotomy man/woman as an opposition between two rival entities may be
understood as belonging to metaphysics. What can “identity,” even “sexual identity,”
mean in a new theoretical and scientific space where the very notion of identity is
challenged?”1 3
In her work on Takarazuka, Jennifer Robertson examines the language of sex
and gender in Japanese language.1 4 Robertson also addresses the vocabulary of
androgyny in the Japanese language, which I make use of in my study of Chikako’s
chusei. In Japanese ryosei and chusei, terms both coined at the beginning of the
twentieth century, refer to androgyny: both terms were first used in articles on
homosexuality and “abnormal sexual desire.”1 5 Ryosei was, and still is, used
to label either someone with both female and male genitalia or someone with
both feminine and masculine characteristics. Consequently, ryosei has been used
to refer to intersexed bodies as well as to persons who behave as if they were at
once masculine and feminine.1 6
As for chusei, it generally means “neutral,” “in between,” neither male nor
female, neither man nor woman:
Whereas ryosei emphasizes the juxtaposition or combination of sex or gender
differences, chusei emphasizes the erasure or nullification of differences. . . . A
1 3 Julia Kristeva, “Women’s Times,” Signs 7 (1981): 13-15, cited in Toril Moi, “Feminist, Female,
Feminine,” in Feminisms, Sandra Kemp and Judith Squires, eds., 249.
1 4 Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka. Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998), 17-19.
1 5 Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka, 50. Robertson also cites Kabeshima Tadao, Hida Yoshifumi, and
Yonekawa Akihiko, eds., Meiji Taisho shingo zokugo jiten (Tokyo: Tokyodo Shuppan, 1984), 185.
1 6 Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka, 50. Robertson cites Hyuga Akiko, “Sei no henshin ganbo,” Dento to
Gendai 2/6 (1971): 26-37; Komine Shimoe and Minami Takao, Doseiai to dosei shinju no kenkyu
(Tokyo: Komine Kenkyujo, 1985), 296-301.
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“neutral” body . . . is one whose surface appearance (costume, hairstyle,
intonations, speech patterns, gestures, movements, deportment, and so on)
confounds the conventional alignment of sex with gender and scrambles
received gender markers. The normalizing principle at work here posits that, say,
masculinity is a “natural” attribute of male bodies. However, masculinity is not a
product of nature . . . but a sociohistorical representation of male bodies, a
representation that is subject to manipulation and change. Gender, in other
words, names an ultimately unstable “amalgam of signifiers.” Despite the
workings of this normalizing principle, it remains the case that in Japan
historically . . . neither femininity nor masculinity has been deemed the
exclusive province of either female or male bodies.1 7
From Kawabata’s text, we understand that Chikako is not “performing” gender.
It is only Kikuji that perceives this gender transformation. Chikako is not attempting “to
pass” as a man, but she is described as somehow distancing herself gradually from
1R • •
feminine attributes. Chikako, therefore, occupies an ambiguous place in Kikuji’s
psychological and sexual development. Kawabata collapses Chikako’s gender and
sexual identities. She merges as “the middle sex” {chusei), whose purpose is to
understand human nature better. Kawabata makes this process appear as voluntary on
the part of Chikako while it is imagined by Kikuji. Interestingly, Japanese scholars have
paid little attention to Chikako’s sexual/gender transformation, while they have attached
a diverse array of meanings to Chikako’s ugly birthmark.
According to Hara Zen, Kikuji understands Chikako’s birthmark as a symbol of
bad karma, which he contrasts with the image of the thousand cranes on Yukiko’s
kerchief.1 9 Hara also suggests that the birthmark may stand for the ugliness of
1 7 Jennifer Robertson, Takarazuka, 50-51. “Amalgam of Signifers” is borrowed from Francette Pacteau,
“The Impossible Referent: Representations of the Androgyne,” in Formulations o f Fantasy, Victor
Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan, eds. (New York: Methuen, 1986), 62-84.
1 8 On performing gender see Judith Butler, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion o f Identity
(London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 134-41.
1 9 Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari: sono enkinho, 184.
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Chikako’s human nature.2 0 Hara further argues that Kikuji has also been so affected by
the sight of the birthmark, that he tries to recreate it in his fantasy again and again. In
other words, Kikuji looks for such a “sight” even when there is nothing before his
eyes.2 1
While at the beginning Kikuji feels threatened by the birthmark, as an adult he
seems to have less hatred toward it, having embraced the ugliness of the world. Rather
than hatred, he seems to have developed a fascination for it.2 2 Ueda argues that Kikuji
has grown accustomed to the sordid nature of the adult world. If Chikako’s birthmark
once stood as symbol of a corrupt, ugly world that threatened the young Kikuji, now
Kikuji has learned about such a world and become part of it. How? By constructing a
world of corruption in his inappropriate relationship with Mrs. Ota and revisiting his
father’s sin. Ueda also concludes that the memory of Chikako’s birthmark will never
fade from Kikuji’s mind. Chikako may appear and disappear from the novel, as does her
birthmark, but the memory of it will afflict Kikuji without respite.
If Chikako is a pseudo-mother to Kikuji, what kind of a mother is she? I would
23
argue that she is the embodiment of what Kristeva calls “The Abject Mother.”
Chikako has distanced herself from motherhood completely, even before becoming a
mother. Kikuji’s potential desire for Chikako has been annihilated from the beginning.
Chikako rejects motherhood and children. She may act like a protecting mother toward
Kikuji, but she remains ambiguous. Becoming “degendered” emphasizes her status as
2 0 Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari: sono enkinho, 185.
2 1 Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari: sono enkinho, 185.
2 2 Ueda Makoto, “Mienai aza ni majinawarete,” 52-53.
2 3 Julia Kristeva, Powers o f Horror, 1-31; 52-55; 56-58; 127-128.
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an abject: “The abject does not negate. Rather, the abject excludes.”2 4 Chikako does not
negate her gender; she excludes it from her identity.
Kristeva defines abjection as:
an extremely strong feeling which is at once somatic and symbolic, and which is
above all a revolt of the person against an external menace from which one
wants to keep oneself at a distance, but of which one has the impression that it is
not only an external menace but that it may menace us from inside. So it is a
desire for separation, for becoming autonomous and also the feeling of an
impossibility of doing so.2 5
Kristeva applies her concept of abjection to the process that leads to separation between
the child and the body of the mother, a process that, according to her, takes place before
the Mirror Stage. Kelly Oliver’s explanation of Kristeva’s complex concept of the
Abject Mother is most probably the easiest to comprehend:
the child tries to separate but feels that separation is impossible. The mother is
made abject in order to facilitate the separation from her. At this point the
mother is not-yet-object and the child is not-yet-subject. The abject takes the
place of the Other that will be occupied by the mother once the mirror stage is
traversed. The child cannot tell if the abject is itself (the alter-ego deceives) or
its other (the mother’s body is still immediate). The Other, says Kristeva, dwells
in the abject as the child’s alter-ego. Or, the mother’s Other, the child, dwells in
her as alter-ego; in either case, the abject is in between the self and the other.
The mother cannot tell whether this other in her is her or not; and either
alternative seems equally impossible. The child in this abject relation to its
mother is not yet separated from her but is no longer identical with her. . . . It
[abjection] is the beginning of separation prior to the mirror stage. . . . For
Kristeva, it is the separation before the beginning.2 6
2 4 Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva, 58.
2 5 “Interview with Julia Kristeva,” in Women Analyze Women, Elaine Baruch and Lucienne Serrano, eds.
(New York: New York University Press, 1988), 135-36, cited in Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva, 55.
2 5 Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva, 56-57.
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Chikako becomes the Abject Mother even without becoming a biological mother.
Chikako, as abject per se, is “ambiguous,” “in-between,” “composite.”2 7 As Oliver
explains,
The abject is not a ‘quality in itself.’ Rather, it is a relationship to a boundary
and represents what has been ‘ jettisoned out of that boundary, its other side, a
margin.’ The abject is what threatens identity. It is neither good nor evil, subject
nor object, ego nor unconscious, but something that threatens the distinctions
themselves. The abject is not an object that corresponds to an ego; rather, it is
what is excluded by the superego. . . . The abject threatens the unity/identity of
both society and the subject. It calls into question the boundaries upon which
they are constructed.
Chikako, therefore, comes across as (1) the Abject per se, and as (2) the Abject
Mother. Being Abject she threatens gender identity by blurring the line between what is
male, female, and neuter. By being “neuter,” “in the middle,” she remains at the
margins, undefined, unable or unwilling to step into any direction. She challenges social
constructs about gender and sexuality, but it is a role that she is willing to play. More
than ugliness, she embodies fear and horror. As a child (as the object of the abject-
subject), Kikuji is panic stricken at the thought of a step-sibling nursing at that breast.
Chikako terrorizes just with her presence. She is “horror” to whoever sees her or her
birthmark. As an adult, Kikuji fears such a sight, although he searches constantly for its
memory. Thus, separation from Chikako (the subject-abject) has not taken place yet.
Chikako was Kikuji’s father’s mistress, his mother’s unusual friend, and, as an
adult, she has become his caretaker. Chikako tries to separate from Kikuji (by having
him married), but she also is protective of him (when involved with Mrs. Ota). Her role
2 7 Julia Kristeva, Powers o f Horror, 4.
2 8 Kelly Oliver, Reading Kristeva, 56; Oliver also cites from the French version of Kristeva’s Powers o f
Horror. Pouvoirs de I’ horreur (Paris: Seuil, 1980), 69.
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as “mother” is as ambiguous as her gender. She seems unable to let go of her role as
subject-abject, as much as Kikuji seems to be perversely clinging to his role of object of
the subject-abject. All this takes place before Kikuji’s eyes as he perceives all
Chikako’s features looking back at him.
Chikako comments on her gender identity on one eventful occasion. She is
aware of Kikuji’s perception and she plays with it by returning the gaze from such an
ambiguous place. Kikuji accuses her of doing unpleasant things in her attempt to
arrange a marriage for him with Yukiko. He states that he does not like Chikako, but
she is not offended by his remark. Instead, she talks about having developed “a good
common sense” from her past experience [S96]. She says:
“When a person is too much of a man or too much of a woman, the common
sense generally isn’t there.”
“Oh? Common sense goes with neuters, then?” [Kikuji replies]
“Don’t be sarcastic. But neuters, as you call them, have no trouble
understanding men and women too. Have you thought how remarkable it is that
Mrs. Ota was able to die and leave an only daughter? It seems just possible that
she had something to fall back on. If she died, mightn’t Kikuji look after the
daughter?” [S96/Z99]
This exchange between Kikuji and Chikako sheds light on Kikuji’s first
impression of Chikako as being “sexless,” or somehow masculine in manners. Chikako
reveals that it was the end of her affair with Kikuji’s father that taught her to develop a
common sense that would allow her to stand right in the middle of decision making: not
as passionate as a woman, not as cold as a man. She does not lightly accept the label of
“neuter/sexless,” however. If having “common sense” is a feature of “sexless” people, it
means only that Chikako is endowed with the gift of understanding both men and
women, more than they can understand themselves. In other words, she accepts her
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transformation into a “sexless” being for the sole purpose of bringing knowledge to
confused people such as Kikuji. In this way, she makes Kikuji visible to himself. She
opens his eyes to the possibility that Mrs. Ota considered a possible marriage between
Kikuji and Fumiko. Kikuji finally discovers that it was from Chikako’s mouth that Mrs.
Ota learned of the marriage arrangement. Kikuji perceives Chikako’s behavior as an
attempt to get even with the dead woman [S97]. When Kikuji accuses her of having
caused Mrs. Ota’s death, Chikako does not get angry. Instead she replies: “Well, I’m
used to being the villain. When your father needed a villain, he found me quite ideal.
It’s not exactly that I’m returning an old favor, but I’m here to play the villain today”
[S97/Z100-101]. Chikako’s remark about Mrs. Ota’s wanting to have him marry
Fumiko is hard to accept. He cannot stand Chikako talking anymore:
Kikuji’s eyes met hers.
Her small eyes rolled up at him.
Unable to shake them off, Kikuji looked away.
He withdrew into himself and let her talk on. His position had been weak from
the start, and that strange remark had shaken him. [S98/Z101-102]
Kikuji is unable to stand the visual confrontation with Chikako. He cannot bear
her gaze because he knows that in her eyes he may see the truth. He realizes what he
has never wanted to admit to himself, that he has an ambiguous desire for Fumiko. The
truth unveiled by Chikako makes him numb.
In this confrontation we are finally given Chikako’s own perspective on her
“sexless-ness.” Rather than resist Kikuji’s label, she embraces it. “Sexless-ness” makes
her powerful in that it allows her to develop the type of common sense necessary to
understand men and women in this world. Through Chikako, Kawabata throws doubt
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upon questionable concepts of knowledge and gender identity. If in Snow Country
Shimamura, the male protagonist, claimed to know women, here a “degendered” being
claims to know both men and women. Kawabata does not hint that Chikako’s gender
identity be seen as a type of Masculinity Complex, but he does suggest an
understanding of Chikako’s persona as “identity at the margins.”2 9
Her gender identity is not in the making, and she is not described as leaning
toward lesbianism. Is she really as “asexual” as Kikuji perceives her? She is not
described as having sexual desires or special attachments in her private life. Chikako
also embodies an alien concept of tradition, a tradition contaminated by the modem. By
making a profit from teaching the tea ceremony, Chikako pollutes Japanese tradition. In
selling the secrets of her culture, Chikako contaminates it. Only a “defective” woman, a
person with an ugly human nature, a person “in-between” genders could give away
herself and her culture in name of a materialistic need. Chikako looks back at Kikuji
from the place of her morally and physically corrupted existence, and makes him realize
that he is not that different from her.
Kikuji cannot bring himself to look at her and accept the truth coming from her
mouth because he knows that Chikako’s physical ugliness is his own moral ugliness. As
much as he tries to distance himself from this woman, he recognizes that she is the
mirror upon which his flawed life is reflected. His inappropriate relationship with Mrs.
Ota and his tormented relationship with Fumiko are symbolic of that ugliness that he
2 9 For the Masculinity Complex, see Diane Hamer, “Significant Others: Lesbianism and Psychoanalytic
Theory,” Feminist Review 34 (Spring 1990). See also Sigmund Freud’s “Female Sexuality” (1931), in
volume 21 of The Standard Edition, 223-43, and “Femininity” (1932), in volume 22 of The Standard
Edition, 112-35.
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feels spreading on himself and that permeates his destiny. Chikako’s “mirror” reflects
the mistakes of his father, which Kikuji has embraced fully. Kikuji may pretend that his
interest in Fumiko is dictated by the tea utensils she still owns, yet that, too, resembles
what is father did after Mr. Ota passed away. Kikuji is not trying to preserve tradition in
his tea-cottage by collecting tea utensils as his father did. Just as in the case of his father,
the tea utensils provide an excuse to get closer as to who owns them. Kikuji wishes he
could do just as his father, who shut Chikako out of his life once he became involved
with Mrs. Ota, but the truth is that Chikako will always be there.
Chikako’s birthmark is Kikuji’s curse. We may read Kikuji’s inability to commit
to Yukiko as dictated by Chikako’s involvement with her. Threatened by the memory of
Chikako’s birthmark, Kikuji takes shelter in the memory of the image of the Inamura
girl [S34/Z46]. He is not always successful, however, in wiping the ugly sight from his
mind. Kikuji’s feelings toward Yukiko are mixed, and Chikako’s manipulations do
nothing to help him overcome his uneasiness. Because of the association of Yukiko
with Chikako, Kikuji cannot bring himself to enjoy Yukiko’s company to the utmost.
He feels dirty [S54/Z57]:
The dirtiness was not only in Chikako, who had introduced them. It was in
Kikuji too.
He could see his father biting at her birthmark with dirty teeth. The figure of
his father became the figure of Kikuji himself. [S54-55/Z57]
The mental picture of Chikako’s birthmark makes once again Kikuji visible to
himself, and he is repelled by the sight: he has turned into his father. He is disgusted by
his own compliance with Chikako’s arrangements. His deception of Yukiko revolts him.
He is disgusted by the kind of life he is living and by his relationship with Mrs. Ota.
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Everything about him presents an awkward picture of a false reality. He is living
Chikako’s lies, and the only thing that is real, even if covered by layers of fabric, is
Chikako’s birthmark. Chikako’s birthmark is always there, putting things in perspective,
an ugly reminder of the deceit and ugliness of his life.
At the end of the novel, after being informed that Yukiko and Fumiko have
married, Kikuji tries to recall the image of Yukiko’s face but is unable to do so:
Yukiko’s eyes and cheeks were abstract memories, like impressions of light;
and the memory of that birthmark on Chikako’s breast was concrete as a toad.
Although the veranda was now dark, Kikuji could see that Chikako was
wearing a white crape singlet under her kimono. Even if it had been daylight he
could not have seen through to the birthmark; but it was there before him, all the
more distinct for the darkness. [SI 19/Z122]
The wedding to Inamura Yukiko does not take place. Kikuji also realizes that he
has lost Fumiko for ever. Although Fumiko has not married, contrary to what Chikako
has suggested, Kikuji and Fumiko agree on the unlikelihood of a relationship between
them, a relationship that would only be haunted by the ghosts of their past. Angry,
frustrated and defeated, Kikuji realizes that all that remains in his life is Chikako: “As if
spitting out all the accumulated venom on the woman he took for his enemy, Kikuji
hurried into the shade of the park” [S147/Z151]. Kikuji takes shelter in the shade to hide
from the eyes of the world that he imagines lurking in the park. He does not want to
make a spectacle of himself.
Kawabata never gives readers an account of Chikako’s ways of perceiving
Kikuji. We can only extrapolate what or whom Chikako sees when Kikuji becomes the
object of her gaze. Chikako’s personality is ruled by her birthmark, her third eye, the
eye that knows. Chikako is fully aware of Kikuji’s emotional background. She accepts
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his hatred, but persists in her quest to have him married to a woman of her choice, a
woman who does not belong to the Ota clan. When Chikako learns of Kikuji and Mrs.
Ota’s relationship, she perceives herself as having twice been ridiculed by Mrs. Ota and
a man of the Mitani household. Kikuji is, to Chikako’s eyes, the personification of his
father, the image of his former lover. Kikuji is not an object of sexual desire, which is
never associated with Chikako. Kikuji embodies a desire of a different kind.
Chikako attempts to own not only material things in the Mitani household (from
tea utensils, to the house itself), but also Kikuji’s soul. She is fully aware that Kikuji
sees her not as a person, but that he perceives her through her birthmark. Conscious of
her status as a defective woman, Chikako uses her gaze to threaten and petrify. She
perceives Kikuji’s relation to Mrs. Ota as her renewed demise at the hand of a Mitani
man. If in the past Chikako found an ally in Mrs. Mitani, Kikuji’s mother, Chikako now
attempts to construct the perfect wife for Kikuji, a young woman who would be her ally
in her quest to eliminate the Ota women from Mitani’s life.
Chikako’s gaze is reason for inner turmoil for Kikuji. Under it he shrinks. He
avoids visual confrontation. Her gaze dominates when Kikuji and she are together.
Masked by her birthmark, her gaze is the most powerful in the novel.
(4) Displacing the Subjects’ Desires: Mitani Kikuji, Mrs. Ota, and Ota
Fumiko
The relationship between Kikuji and the Ota women is one of displaced desires,
most often evident in the ways the three of them gaze at one another. Mrs. Ota looks at
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Kikuji in order to find his father in him. Kikuji looks at Fumiko to find her mother in
her. Even the tea utensils that Kikuji and Fumiko exchange remind them of the ghosts
of their parents. As Mizenko writes,
The ghosts of the owners and users reside in the tea utensils of Senbazuru, and
their presence can be a blessing (evocative of dreamlike recollections or a curse
(evoking feelings of guilt, remorse, and sorrow). The ghosts . . . bind the living
to the dead, blocking the path to a realization of selfhood in the future.3 0
Fumiko embodies a young Japanese woman at the crossroad of tradition and
modernity. When Kikuji and her mother are objects of her gaze, Fumiko repositions
herself. Kikuji may be object of her desire, but she is aware of who she is in his eyes.
When she looks at her mother, Fumiko’s gaze is at once protective and judgmental.
At the tea ceremony that Kikuji attends, in reality an excuse for an o-miai
between Kikuji and the Inamura girl, Mrs. Ota, Kikuji’s father’s former mistress, and
her daughter suddenly arrive [S17/Z21]. Kikuji is uncomfortable at the idea of his
father’s mistress and her daughter being in the same room with him, but he does not
voice his concerns to Chikako who would love to send the two women away. Mrs. Ota
seems pleased by Kikuji’s presence [S17/Z21], whereas her daughter is uncomfortable.
Under Kikuji’s gaze Mrs. Ota becomes the physical opposite of Chikako. The
description of Mrs. Ota’s daughter reflects a younger version of the mother, reminding
Kikuji of the reasons that his father was interested in Mrs. Ota:
Kikuji had not seen her [Mrs. Ota] since his father’s funeral.
She had hardly changed in four years.
The white neck, rather long, was as it had been, and the full shoulders that
strangely matched the slender neck - it was a figure young for her years. The
mouth and the nose were small in proportion to the eyes. The little nose, if one
3 0 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project o f Kawabata Yasunari,” 143-44.
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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.
The daughter had inherited the long neck and the full shoulders. Her mouth
was larger, however, and tightly closed... .
Sadness clouded the girl’s eyes, darker than her mother’s. [S17-18/Z21]
Kikuji’s gaze is descriptive. He attempts to grasp why his father got involved
with Mrs. Ota. In Fumiko, a younger version of her mother, Kikuji feels that he can see
what attracted his father. Kikuji finds himself in a more awkward position among his
father’s lovers. All the people in the tea cottage are connected. As Yamada Yoshino
argues, it is makai, or the demonic world, that intertwines the lives of the characters.3 1
We cannot anticipate from Kikuji’s description of Mrs. Ota and Fumiko the
relationship he will embark upon with the two of them. However, the women make a
small part of Kikuji visible to himself. With the exception of Inamura Yukiko, they
have all shared the company of his father. They knew him, fought for him, and were
protective of him. Could Kikuji be on his way to making the same mistakes his father
made?
Kikuji and Mrs. Ota become lovers [S28-29/Z31 ]. On the occasion of the first
night they spend together, the same day they meet at the tea ceremony, Kikuji is
exposed for the first time to the sight of a woman’s orgasm (“He had not until then seen
how the wave of woman followed after. Giving his body to the wave, he even felt a
satisfaction as if drowsing off in triumph, the conqueror whose feet were being washed
by a slave” [S29/Z31]). Kikuji gains new knowledge of others and of himself. The
sexual intercourse with Mrs. Ota makes him feel “as if he had for the first time known
3 1 Yamada Yoshiro, “Kawabata Yasunari no makai,” 68-73.
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woman, and as if for the first time he had known himself as a man. It was an
extraordinary awakening” [S28-29/Z31].
Kikuji perceives that “there was a feeling of the maternal about her” [S29/Z31].
To reiterate, Kikuji perceives (1) himself, (2) womanhood, and (3) the maternal.
However, he feels the need to spoil these taming sights with the memory of Chikako’s
birthmark: “without forethought, he had introduced the unpleasant” [S29/Z31]. By
bringing up Chikako’s ugly physical feature, he soils himself, the woman who is with
him, and the maternal feeling which apparently was giving him comfort.
Mrs. Ota is horrified by Kikuji’s recollection of Chikako’s birthmark. Feeling
Kikuji’s gaze on her breast, as if Kikuji were attempting to find such a mark on her
breast, she covers up and prevents him from looking more [S30/Z32]. Realizing that
Chikako’s birthmark has shaken Mrs. Ota, Kikuji imposes more pain on the woman by
confessing to her that their meeting at Chikako’s tea cottage happened during a miai
with the Inamura girl [S32], While Kikuji recalls the image of Yukiko and the thousand
cranes in his mind, Mrs. Ota starts crying: “The figure of the weeping woman had
become ugly (shuakuna yd ni)” [S32/Z34].
What is “ugly” about the woman’s suffering? Is this “ugliness” the same as the
one that characterizes Chikako’s birthmark? In his mind, Kikuji has an image of Yukiko,
while before his eyes, Mrs. Ota’s pain and desperation become ugly. Kikuji recalls how
they ended up together. He feels that his father must have been happy with this woman
[S33], He is confused and has mixed feelings for the woman. Something inside has
pushed him to talk about Chikako and Yukiko with Mrs. Ota, but he regrets it [S33-34].
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Kikuji, however, feels as if Mrs. Ota is at the same time thinking about his father. When
he stares at her, she asks him to stop because he may realize how old she is [S34/Z36].
They have intercourse again and fall asleep. But he wakes up:
Mrs. Ota was sleeping with her back to him. He wondered when she had
turned away. Raising himself to an elbow, he looked into her face (kao o
nozokikonda) in the semi-darkness. [S34-35/Z36]
Sleeping women and men are described as vulnerable before the eyes of the one
who is awake and gazing. In Snow Country, it is Komako who gazes at Shimamura
while he is asleep, and when he finds out he voices his dislike. Here, Kikuji stares at
Mrs. Ota. Women have become objects of the male gaze while asleep. Kawabata had
explored the possibility of having a woman looking at a sleeping man, and the angry
reaction he ascribed to Shimamura, made him somehow switch his experimenting with
this pattern into one where the men do the gazing. This appears as a trend toward the
setting of House o f the Sleeping Beauties, when the old man will gaze undisturbed at the
sleeping maidens knowing that these women will not open their eyes while with him.
Whereas Mrs. Ota is with Kikuji because he reminds her of his father, Kikuji
looks at Mrs. Ota in an attempt to find his father and himself. Before Kikuji’s eyes, Mrs.
Ota embodies Kikuji’s present as well as his past. She is an object of desire. She is
sexual. She incarnates womanhood. But is she really giving herself to Kikuj? Hers is,
without doubt, a displaced desire, a desire for Kikuji’s father. The unhappy Kikuji longs
for the happiness of his father, and he is allowed a glimpse of it. The sight of the
woman’s orgasm enables him to distance himself, even if for a short moment, from the
unhappiness and ugliness in his life. Mrs. Ota’s orgasm is a vision of total abandonment
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of the senses. To Kikuji it stands as a reminder of what beauty and happiness can be. He
spoils the moment and the night by bringing up sullied issues, especially the memory of
Chikako’s birthmark, which infects anything it touches. As stated at the beginning of
the novel, “Kikuji never forgot the birthmark. He could sometimes imagine even that
his own destinies were enmeshed in it” [S8/Z13].
Two weeks after Kikuji’s romantic rendez-vous with Mrs. Ota, Fumiko goes to
see Kikuji at his house and he is stunned at “seeing the image of the mother in the
daughter” [S35/Z37]. Fumiko has come to his house to apologize for her mother’s
behavior. As much as he looks at her, she does not return his gaze (kao wa
awaserarenakatta) [S36/Z38]. The girl pleads with him not to meet her mother
anymore:
She raised her head and looked at him, as if in an effort to master the shyness.
There were tears in the wide, near-black eyes, and there was no trace of malice.
The eyes were submitting a desperate petition. . . . As the shyness deepened, the
flush spread to her long, white throat. She was in European dress, and a necklace
set off the beauty of her throat. . ..
Below the well-shaped nose he could see the small mouth and the lower lip,
thrust out as if in a pout. The softly rounded face reminded him of her mother.
[S37-38/Z39-41]
This first visual confrontation between Kikuji and Fumiko sets the tone for the
relationship they will share in the future. First of all, Kikuji is taken by Fumiko’s
resemblance to her mother, something he had already noticed at Engakuji. Now before
his eyes, Fumiko has difficulty staring back at him. Under Kikuji’s gaze, Fumiko’s
identity is in question. Kikuji is confused between the two women, and one may wonder
if he is ever able to separate one from the other. The truth is that Kikuji’s gaze displaces
the subject’s desire for the other. Kikuji looks at Fumiko, but his desire is for her
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mother. He also notices that under his gaze, Fumiko does not look back. The question is
whether or not he wants to become object of her gaze.
Fumiko does look at him, and in her eyes Kikuji sees desperation. Kikuji’s gaze
makes Fumiko uncomfortable, but Fumiko’s gaze, in contrast to that of Chikako, does
not threaten Kikuji. While the object of his gaze, he notices the way Fumiko is dressed.
It seems, however, that Kikuji will never be able to look at Fumiko and see her.
Before Kikuji’s eyes, Fumiko becomes the image of her mother. Kikuji’s gaze
objectifies and inscribes meaning onto Fumiko’s body and persona. Fumiko’s gaze, on
the other hand, does little to Kikuji’s consciousness. Kikuji’s emotions are stirred when,
on her way out, Fumiko acknowledges his imminent wedding to Yukiko [S39/Z42],
Although he denies it, “the image of the girl with the thousand-crane kerchief came to
him” [S39/Z42], At this point it is quite difficult to make out how Kikuji is positioning
himself between the mother and the daughter.
One day an emotionally distraught Mrs. Ota shows up unannounced at Kikuji’s
house. Kikuji’s gaze settles on the crying woman:
The tears fell steadily, and Kikuji again wondered if they might be raindrops.
Mrs. Ota did not turn her eyes from him. The gaze seemed to keep her from
falling. Kikuji too felt that she would be in danger if her eyes were to leave him.
There were hollows and small wrinkles around the eyes, and dark spots below.
The fold of the eyelids was emphasized in a strangely morbid way, and the
pleading eyes glowed with tears. He felt an indescribable softness in them. . ..
There was softness in the figure too.
She was so thin that he could hardly have borne to look at her if it had not
been for the softness.
Her suffering pierced him through. Although he was the cause of the suffering,
he had the illusion (sakkaku) that in the softness his own suffering was lighted.
[S56-57/Z58-59]
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Mrs. Ota and Kikuji look into each other’s eyes. She finds support in his gaze. In
his eyes she seeks forgiveness. Her eyes show suffering and guilt. Their mutual gaze
becomes the site of turbulent emotions. By acknowledging her suffering and accepting
himself as the cause, Kikuji sees his own pain. Mrs. Ota is to him a part of his father’s
past. When he looks at her, he has no choice but to think of his father, if only on an
unconscious level. When Mrs. Ota looks at Kikuji, she too sees his father. In other
words, it is a triangular relationship, in which the ghost of Mitani senior plays an
important role.
Kikuji manifests an Oedipus complex of a different kind. Starrs points out how
Kikuji comes to recognize that “in rejecting his father he is rejecting himself,” since too
much of his father is in him; thus Kikuji “is drawn irresistibly to his father’s old world -
to Kurimoto’s tea ceremonies and to Mrs. Ota and her daughter - in an effort, one might
say, to ‘lay’ his father’s ghost.”3 2 By knowing Mrs. Ota physically, “Kikuji is able to
achieve an identification with his father which frees him from his emasculating
father/self-hatred.” 3 3 His knowledge of the women who gravitated to his father
accentuates Kikuji’s need to overcome his hate for the paternal and embrace the
pseudo-mother figures, Chikako and Mrs. Ota.
While holding Mrs. Ota in his arms, Kikuji asks her to acknowledge the
difference between him and his father, but her eyes remain closed [S62/Z64-65]. Kikuji
is asking for recognition that she is unable to provide. He wants to confirm that Mrs.
Ota is with him, and not with the ghost of his father. Mrs. Ota, however, embraces the
3 2 Roy Starrs, Soundings in Time, 145.
3 3 Roy Starrs, Soundings in Time, 145.
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ghost in him. Kikuji is not comfortable being a replacement for his dead father, which is
why Kikuji feels no distinction between the world of the dead and his own world.
Kikuji is concerned about Mrs. Ota’s precarious health. She knows she will not
last long. When she asks him to take care of Fumiko, he replies “If she is like you”
[S63/Z66]. He is surprised at his own words, although he knows that in the daughter he
can see the mother. The next morning, at about two o’clock, he receives a phone call
from Fumiko informing him that her mother is dead. Mrs. Ota has killed herself. When
he hangs up,
Kikuji sat by the telephone with his eyes closed.
He saw the evening sun as he had seen it after the night with Mrs. Ota: the
evening sun through the train window, behind the grove of the Hommonji
Temple.
The red sun seemed about to flow down over the branches.
The grove stood dark against it.
The sun flowing over the branches sank into his tired eyes, and he closed them.
The white cranes from the Inamura girl’s kerchief flew across the evening sun,
which was still in his eyes. [Z65-66/Z68]
With his eyes closed, Kikuji sees in the remoteness of his memory images of a
recent past that tamed his soul. Kikuji tries to find refuge in the sweet memory of the
night spent with Mrs. Ota as the full strength of her womanhood comes back to him.
Sensuous emotions overcome him, and in order also to counter the feeling of sadness
that has taken him, he pairs his morbid recollections with the soothing image of the
white cranes on Yukiko’s kerchief.
His father is dead. Mrs. Ota is dead. Something dies in Kikuji as well. How can
he overcome the suffering of a life lived in the shadow of his father’s ghost? How can
he subdue his untamed feelings of guilt for having walked into the steps of his father?
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How can his destiny be different from his father’s? These issues torment him. Rather
than bring closure, his closeness to Fumiko enhances the troubling feeling that he is his
father’s son, and that his father’s mistakes are his.
One week after Mrs. Ota’s memorial, Kikuji visits Fumiko. During the week,
Kikuji has been restless, consumed by questions over Mrs. Ota’s decision to take her
life. At Fumiko’s house, Kikuji kneels before the urn to light incense:
Now, as he knelt with closed eyes before the ashes, her image failed to come
to him; but the warmth of her touch enfolded him, making him drunk with its
smell. A strange fact, but, because of the woman, a fact that seemed in no way
unnatural. And although her touch was upon him, the sensation was less tactile
than auditory, musical.
Unable to sleep since her death, Kikuji had been taking sedatives with sake.
He had been quick to awaken, however, and he had had many dreams.
They had not been nightmares. On awakening, he would be drowsy and sweetly
drunk.
That a dead woman could make her embrace felt in one’s dreams seemed eerie
to Kikuji. He was young and unprepared for such an experience. [S70/Z71-72]
The mixture of drugs and alcohol that causes Kikuji’s hallucinations, represent a
further step toward the understanding of vision as a troubling experience. Mrs. Ota calls
back from the other world and makes her presence known through what he perceives as
her embrace. Kikuji needs to recreate the embrace, to relive the experience with her.
Along with guilt, she brought something unknown into his life, and he is unable to let
go that feeling that only in her he can see the image of his true self reflected.
Fumiko leaves the room and comes back with a couple of Raku bowls. In the
meantime, Kikuji ponders how well Fumiko knows her own mother: probably not much.
Kikuji, however, needs forgiveness. The following passage reveals the confused state of
Kikuji’s mind:
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To forgive or to be forgiven was for Kikuji a matter of being rocked in that
wave, the dreaminess of the woman’s body.. . .
Fumiko did not know her mother thus.
It was strange and subtle, the fact that the child should not know the body
from which she had come; and, subtly, the body itself had been passed on to the
daughter.
From the moment she had greeted him in the doorway, Kikuji had felt
something soft and gentle. In Fumiko’s round, soft face he saw her mother.
If Mrs. Ota had made the mistake when she saw Kikuji’s father in Kikuji, then
there was something frightening, a bond like a curse, in the fact that, to Kikuji,
Fumiko resembled her mother; but Kikuji, unprotesting, gave himself to the drift.
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.
What could one do to make her resist? [S78-79/Z80]
Kikuji projects onto Fumiko his feelings for her mother, in the same way that
Mrs. Ota has projected onto Kikuji her feelings for his father. They seem entangled in a
perverse circle of life. Fumiko voices her disapproval of her mother’s involvement with
Mitani senior, and later with Kikuji. Death, however, has made Mrs. Ota beautiful and
wiped away the ugliness she may have done in her life. Mrs. Ota and Kikuji construct
the objects of their sensual desire and displace such desire onto others aware of the pain
it causes.
Kikuji is uncomfortable at the idea that he is falling in love with a dead woman,
and that such love has been brought to his attention by Fumiko [S82]. He loses himself
in thoughts over the Shino jar, a gift from Fumiko, which he has filled with rose and
carnations [S90]:
He sat for along time looking at the flowers.
The white and the pale pink seemed to melt into a mist with the Shino.
The figure of Fumiko, weeping alone in her house, came to him. [S86/Z89]
This jar becomes a material reminder of Fumiko. Mrs. Ota’s death troubles
Kikuji. He seems unable to function and his life is filled with hallucinations. In a
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passage that anticipates Momoi Gimpei’s favorite pastime in The Lake, Kikuji reflects
upon his inexplicable attraction to women in the street:
Sometimes he [Kikuji] would be drawn to a middle-aged woman in the street.
Catching himself, he would frown and mutter: “I am behaving like a criminal.”
He would look again and see that the woman did not resemble Mrs. Ota after
all.
There was only that swelling at the hips.
The longing at such moment would almost make him tremble; and yet
intoxication and fear would meet, as at the moment of awakening from a crime.
“And what has turned me into a criminal?” The question should have shaken
him loose from whatever it was; but instead of an answer there came only
intense longing.
He felt that he could not be saved unless he fled those moments when the
touch of the dead woman’s skin came to him warm and naked.[S90-91/Z93]
Kikuji finds himself following women in a desperate attempt to see Mrs. Ota
again. Her warm embrace comes to him only at night, and in the morning he needs that
same physical contact, which he cannot recreate. Even touching the Shino jar, which
once belonged to Mrs. Ota, gives him sensual feelings [S90]. Kikuji borders on insanity.
He misses the woman as much as he misses the true image of himself she reflected back.
He may miss the physical experience as much as he may need the memory of her
sensual pleasure in order to enjoy his own. However, what he is really longing for is
himself. It was with her that for the first time he perceived his identity as true self, and
he knows he must have that back in order to survive the devastating impact of that
moral ugliness that is dangerously invading every aspect of his life.
In a desperate attempt to recreate the feeling he only shared with Mrs. Ota, and
reclaim the illusion of his true self, Kikuji uses drugs and alcohol. He also believes that
he can escape his obsessions only by pursuing the relationship with Fumiko. Kikuji
needs Fumiko as a substitute. Fumiko, though, remains elusive, when Kikuji attempts to
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develop his relationship with her. He tells her on the phone, “The Shino jar you gave me.
When I look at it I want to see you.” [S92/Z95] The truth is that Kikuji needs to see
himself.
When Fumiko informs him that she has another one, but that she did not give it
to him because it has her mother’s lipstick on it [S93], Kikuji feels happy: “And it was
strange that his guilt in the Ota affair seemed to disappear when he heard the daughter’s
voice. Did it make him feel that the mother was still living?” [S93]. This is Kikuji’s
hope. Fumiko drops by Kikuji’s house to give him the other Shino jar, the one with her
mother’s lipstick on it. The sight of Fumiko soothes Kikuji’s heart [S99/Z103], and
when handed the Shino piece, “the woman in Fumiko’s mother came to him again,
warm and naked” [S104/Z108]:
Kikuji had said over the telephone that when he looked at this Shino he
wanted to see Fumiko. In the white skin of her mother, had he sensed the depths
(tsuyoi fukami) of woman? [S108/Z112]
Kikuji is not on a quest to know women as Shimamura was, because he is on a
journey to discover himself. Kikuji does not believe that by having known Mrs. Ota, he
knows all women. Instead, he thinks that something has been unveiled to him through
the affair with Mrs. Ota: the illusionary image of his true self. The face of Mrs. Ota’s
orgasm may have changed his life and his emotional response to the world around him.
It was beautiful, and he needs it back if he wants to triumph over the corruption that
soils his life.
Some time goes by before Kikuji and Fumiko meet again. Returning from a
summer vacation, Chikako informs Kikuji that Fumiko and Yukiko have married. One
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evening, however, Kikuji receives Fumiko’s phone call. When Kikuji congratulates her
on her recent marriage, she is startled [SI26]. She denies having married and asks
Kikuji if they can meet at his house:
“It’s good to see you.” There was nostalgia in his voice as he came up to her.
[S127/Z131] {Kikuji wa shitashige ni chikazuita; my translation: he approached
her in a friendly manner)
Fumiko has come to Kikuji’s house to deny that she is married and to state her
surprise to learn that Kikuji believed Chikako [S131]. Kikuji receives at the same time a
letter that Fumiko sent to him earlier. She pleads with him not to read it. A struggle
ensues, and Fumiko ends up in Kikuji’s arms: “He had stiffened abruptly as she threw
herself upon him; and now he wanted to cry out at the astonishing suppleness. He was
intensely conscious of the woman. He was conscious of Fumiko’s mother, Mrs. Ota”
[S132/Z137]. Her body smells of a woman in summertime, too hard to resist. It is the
smell of Mrs. Ota’s embrace [S133/Z137]. Kikuji once again confuses the two women.
Over dinner, Fumiko tells him that she is aware that the Shino bowl she gave him
reminds him of her mother: “The bowl reminds you of another, and the other is better”
[SI34], Kikuji then attaches meaning to the water jar and the Shino bowl:
The desire, the plea, that only the finest be left to recall her mother came
across to Kikuji. It came as the finest emotions, and the water jar was its witness.
The very face of the Shino, glowing warmly cool, made him think of Mrs. Ota.
Possibly because the piece was so fine, the memory was without the darkness
and ugliness of guilt.
As he looked at the masterpiece it was, he felt all the more strongly the
masterpiece Mrs. Ota had been. In a masterpiece there is nothing unclean.
He looked at the jar and he wanted to see Fumiko, he had said over the
telephone that stormy day. He had been able to say it only because the telephone
stood between. Fumiko had answered that she had another Shino piece, and
brought him the bowl.
It was probably true that the bowl was weaker than the jar. [S136-137/Z141]
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Kikuji realizes that his desire for Mrs. Ota was doomed since the beginning. In
this unusual relationship that Kikuji, Mrs. Ota and Fumiko share, it is Fumiko who
comes across as the strongest by forcefully rejecting to mime Kikuji’s behavior when he
timidly hints at the possibility of a relationship between the two of them. Kikuji fails to
see reflected in Fumiko the strength necessary to stand as his own man. He prefers to
dwell between the realm of the dead and the living as someone other than self. Although
an uncomfortable position, this position allows for postponing the painful discovery of
the self, and the troubling visual experience of seeing the self as self and not as illusion.
Kikuji’s memories and desires overlap. As Fumiko takes out a Karatsu tea bowl
that she has brought, a bowl that Kikuji’s father was very fond of, Kikuji looks at her
[S139/Z143]. The Karatsu bowl is a reminder of Kikuji’s father, as the Shino bowl is a
reminder of Mrs. Ota: “the two bowls before them were like the souls of his father and
her mother” [S140/Z145]:
Seeing his father and Fumiko’s mother in the bowls, Kikuji felt that they had
raised two beautiful ghosts and placed them side by side.
The tea bowls were here, present, and the present reality of Kikuji and Fumiko,
facing across the bowls, seemed immaculate too. [S140/Z145]
Although the question about their future lingers, they do not approach it. Kikuji
and Fumiko are getting closer. Although Fumiko tries to resist Kikuji, she knows she
cannot.
The night after Fumiko’s visit, Kikuji tries to reassemble the Shino piece that
she has smashed, but to not avail:
He raised his eyes. A large star was shining through the trees to the east.
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It was some years since he had last seen the morning star. He stood looking at
it, and the sky clouded over.
The star was even larger, shining through the haze. The light was as if blurred
by water.
It seemed dreary in contrast to the fresh glimmer of the star, to be hunting a
broken bowl and trying to put it together. [S143/Z147]
The morning star disappears by the time he raises his eyes to the sky again,
having tried to gather all the pieces of the Shino bowl [S144/Z148]: “He gazed at the
eastern sky for a time, as if to retrieve something stolen” [S144/Z148], He keeps
thinking about Fumiko, who now emerges in his fantasies as her own self [S145/Z149].
Her mother’s body may have been passed on to her, but it is Fumiko for whom he now
seems to yearn. He has been unable to find her, however, since the night before. She has
vanished, gone somewhere with a friend, he is told [SI46]. He is afraid she may take
her life, but realizes that she has no reason to die.
Fumiko has accepted the reality of Kikuji’s ambiguous feelings. She will never
know whether he is in love with her or her mother. The impossibility of a lasting love
between the two of them causes her to put a physical distance between Kikuji and
herself. The ghosts of their mutual past are too intrusive. She recognizes how that past
will always be brought up anytime she and Kikuji are together. Fumiko loves Kikuji,
the man that he himself is unable to recognize. She understands well that she will
always be the recipient of a displaced desire. Unwilling to make her mother’s moral
faults her own, she breaks free from the perverse circle of other people’s destiny. She
breaks free from makai.
Kikuji is abandoned once again. His father is gone. All he has left of him are
memories, tea utensils, and a reflected destiny. Mrs. Ota is gone too. He has only the
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memory of her warm embrace and the soothing feeling of her touch. Fumiko is also lost.
Now that he thinks he can see her for who she really is, she has vanished. On the
horizon of Kikuji’s consciousness survives only the image of Chikako’s ugliness as
image of his corrupted life.
(5) Innocence as Illusion: Inamura Yukiko and her kerchief (furoshiki)
The study of Kikuji’s relationship with Inamura Yukiko projects us into the
realm of illusions as safe haven to Kikuji’s restless soul. As Mizuta Lippit points out,
Yukiko’s “unstained beauty, innocence and cleanness evoke his longing for something
which is lacking in his life; he is reminded of his alienation from feminine tenderness.
She makes him aware of his present corruption, the ugliness of Chikako and the
frustration of his father.”3 4 Throughout the novel, Inamura Yukiko comes across not so
much as her own person, but as the embodiment of the thousand-crane pattern on her
kerchief.3 5 Accordingly, Yukiko is “body-less”: whenever Kikuji thinks about her, it is
not her face that floats before his eyes, but the image of the thousand white cranes on
her kerchief.3 6 Although the novel abruptly ends before this thousand-crane symbol is
fully revealed it could be read, as it has been suggested, as “an illusion of purity”
(mabororshi no yd ni seijun).
Kikuji and Inamura Yukiko meet only twice. The first meeting occurs at
Engakuji, on the occasion of the tea ceremony that Chikako has arranged as an o-miai.
3 4 Noriko Mizuta Lippit, “Kawabata’s Dilettante Heroes,” 131.
3 5 Hasegawa Izumi, Kawabata bungaku no ajiwai kata sosho, 25.
3 6 Ueda Makoto, “Mienai aza ni majinawarete,” 53.
3 7 Yomiuri Shinbun Bukabu, Jitsuroku Kawabata Yasunari, 183.
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In contrast to his ugly thoughts and images of Chikako, Kikuji notices how beautiful the
Inamura girl is [S10/Z14], When the tea ceremony becomes an occasion for the women
in his father’s life to gather, Kikuji needs to escape the oppressive feeling in his heart,
especially after Mrs. Ota and Fumiko have joined them. Kikuji, therefore, loses himself
in observing Inamura Yukiko performing the tea ceremony:
It was a straightforward performance, quite without personal quirks. Her
bearing, from shoulders to knees, suggested breeding and refinement.
The shadow of young leaves fell on the paper-paneled door. One noted a soft
reflection from the shoulders and the long sleeves of the gay kimono. The hair
seemed luminous.
The light was really too bright for a tea cottage, but it made the young girl’s
youth 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.
[S20-21/Z24]
The Inamura girl blends with her surrounding, and the natural setting enhances
her beauty. Under Kikuji’s gaze she becomes the quintessence of elegance, freshness,
and purity. She is not turned into an object of sexual desire before his eyes, but she is an
object of desire. He wishes he could forget about the other women and lose himself in
the innocent breeze that comes from Yukiko’s persona. His desire for her is a desire for
innocence. In contrast, Chikako and Mrs. Ota are corrupted beings in his eyes.
The Inamura girl embodies Japanese tradition. She is taught the art of the tea
ceremony, allowing her to preserve the culture of the past. She seems to be passive,
compliant to Chikako. Kikuji has been suspicious of the encounter:
When he received the note saying that Chikako meant to make the tea ceremony
her excuse for introducing him to a young lady, the birthmark once more floated
before him; and, since the introduction would be made by Chikako, he wondered
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if the young lady herself would have a perfect skin, a skin unmarred by so much
as a dot [S8-9/Z13].
The second time Kikuji and Yukiko meet is at Kikuji’s tea cottage. Chikako has
arranged for a tea ceremony again and has invited Yukiko as well [S40-43]. Kikuji is
upset by Chikako’s manipulations:
He thought of the birthmark that covered half her breast. The sound of her
broom became the sound of a broom sweeping the contents from his skull, and
her cloth polishing the veranda a cloth rubbing at his skull.
Revulsion came first. . ..
Into his revulsion flashed the image of the Inamura girl, a vein of light.
[S43/Z46]
These two episodes explain Kikuji’s distorted visions. When Kikuji lays his eyes
on Yukiko, he does not see her, but he sees the white cranes. The visual memory of
Yukiko is linked to the pattern on her kerchief. Moreover, Yukiko is the only woman
who has had no connection with his father (although, according to Chikako, Mr.
Inamura and Mitani senior knew each other [Sll]). Yukiko stands for all that the other
characters in the novel lack: integrity, innocence, purity. In this way, however, she loses
her identity as a person. If Kikuji attempted to look at Yukiko as object of sexual desire,
he would associate her inevitably with Chikako and her ugliness, which spoils anything
it touches. Kikuji, therefore, makes Yukiko into illusion of purity, elevating her to a
non-human status.
Yukiko is an object of desire in so far as she has no “body,” in so far as she is
not part of that demonic world that everybody else inhabits.3 8 Kikuji denies himself the
3 8 The issue of women’s corporality is addressed by Ueda Makoto. Makoto argues that throughout the
novel Yukiko is “fleshless/bodyless.” Chikako, on the other hand, is not only “flesh,” but she is also
polluted flesh. Mrs. Ota embodies “womanhood” and stands in sharp contrast with Chikako’s
“sexlessness” and Yukiko’s “fleshlessness.” Moreover, although Fumiko has seemingly inherited her
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chance to break free from the demonic realm he is entangled to, by rejecting her. In the
meantime, the image of the thousand cranes has the power to temporarily cleanse his
soul:
He had the illusion that the Inamura girl was walking in the shade of the trees,
the pink kerchief and its thousand cranes under her arm. He could see the cranes
and the kerchief vividly.
He sensed something fresh and clean, (my translation: Kikuji thought that it
was as if he could see the Inamura girl walking in the trees’ shades, and carrying
under her arm a pink silk kerchief of white thousand cranes. He had a feeling of
freshness.) [S45/Z47]
Kikuji seems to use the “illusion” of Yukiko as a way to escape reality. About to
meet Yukiko, who waits for him in the tea cottage, Kikuji is still unable to rid himself
of the association between Yukiko and Chikako:
He looked into the deep shadow of the pomegranate, he thought again of
Chikako’s birthmark. He shook his head. The last of the evening sunlight shone
on the garden stones below the parlor.
The doors were open, and the girl [Yukiko] was near the veranda.
Her brightness seemed to light the far comers of the large, dusky room”
[S48/Z50],
Although innocence is an illusion, it is also a bright light with the power to illuminate
the most remote and the darkest comers of Kikuji’s troubled existence. Therefore, when
Kikuji learns from Chikako that Yukiko has married, he feels:
a stabbing at the heart, and, as if with a violent thirst, he struggled to draw the
girl’s face in his mind.
He had met her only twice.
To put her on display, Chikako had had her make tea in the Engakuji Temple.
Her performance had been simple and elegant, and the impression was still vivid
of the shoulders and the long kimono sleeves, and the hair too, radiant in light
through paper doors. The shadows of leaves on the paper, the bright red tea
mother’s bodily features, she never comes across as “sexual” as her mother. Rather she represents a
morally and intellectually balanced person, which Ueda describes as her original nature. Ueda Makoto,
“Mienai aza ni majinawarete,” 53-60.
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napkin, the pink crape handkerchief under her arm as she walked through the
temple grounds to the tea cottage, the thousand white cranes - all of these
floated freshly into his mind.
The second time, she had come here, and Chikako had made tea. Kikuji had
felt the next day that the girl’s perfume lingered on, and even now he could see
her obi with its Siberian irises; but her faces eluded him. [SI 18/Z121-122]
Kikuji can recall everything, all the details of her attire, the way she moved
while making tea. But her face he cannot make out: “Yukiko’s eyes and cheeks were
abstract memories, like impressions of light; and the memory of that birthmark on
Chikako’s breast was concrete as a toad.” [SI 19/Z122]
If it is true that “the Inamura girl and her handkerchief motif of a thousand
cranes become a symbol of his [Kikuji’s] dream world of innocence and purity where
the power of the grotesque birthmark cannot reach,” it is also true that Kikuji willingly
denies himself access to such a world by distancing himself from Yukiko. Not ready to
embrace a world of innocence and purity, Kikuji dwells in the ambiguous realm
Chikako also inhabits, where her presence as moral and physical ugliness permeates his
life.
As object of Kikuji’s gaze, Yukiko reflects back an image of a world for which
to long, an image of qualities to which to aspire. Overwhelmed by the image of the
scarred breast he symbolically suckled throughout his adult life, Kikuji remains
petrified in his place of guilt-filled existence. Unable to break free from makai, he can
only attempt to hide from the returned gaze of the birthmark and question the visibility
of his naked self as true self or constructed fantasy of paternal identity. We are left
wondering whether Kikuji will ever stand up as his true self.
3 9 Noriko Mizuta Lippit, “Kawabata’s Dilettante Heroes,” 132.
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(6) Conclusion
In my study of Thousand Cranes I have shown how the returned female gaze
becomes an instigator of personal dramas even when a pair of eyes is not directly
pointed in the direction of the male viewer. Perceived as it is masked in a birthmark, or
in a thousand-crane pattern on a kerchief, this type of female gaze stands as a powerful
tool as it forces the male protagonist to start the process of recognition, acceptance, and
resistance of the self. In Thousand Cranes, however, the imagined female gaze most
often triumphs as a curse, as Kikuji rejects self-knowledge, visibility, and desire from
the field of vision of the female other.
In Thousand Cranes Kawabata portrays a female gaze that the male protagonist
most often imagines. This type of female gaze also has its place in the novel The Lake.
However, in The Lake we witness a noteworthy transformation, as women are also
described as starting and returning the gaze. Although in The Lake the motif of the
imagined female gaze is still present, Kawabata also portrays women as subjects of the
gaze, and as they appropriate the male space of vision to submit the male subject turned
into object to the uncomfortable laws of the gazed upon. Can man resist visibility,
knowledge, and desire when confronted by a pair of female eyes dangerously staring at
him? And is the identity of the female gaze still a site of gender ambiguity?
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Chapter Five
Seeing Each Other, or the Workings of the Mutual Gaze:
A Study of the Reciprocity of the Gaze in The Lake
(1) Introduction
In The Lake the aesthetic of vision is also a site of tension and progression
toward self-discovery, recognition, and acceptance. Kawabata endows the male
protagonist with a heightened sense of the in/visible in order to uncover the essence of a
troubled persona on a quest to recognition and acceptance. Kawabata introduces in this
novel a new dimension of gazing: the viewer’s need to be seen, to be discovered in his
act of gazing. Whereas in Snow Country Shimamura feared a visual confrontation with
Komako or Yoko, and whereas in Thousand Cranes the emphasis is more on the
symbolic representation of inanimate objects of Kikuji’s gaze and their perceived
returned gaze (Chikako’s birthmark and Inamura Yukiko’s thousand cranes pattern), in
The Lake Kawabata explores the theme of the reciprocity of the gaze.
My study of The Lake rests on the premises that the male protagonist is obsessed
with a desire to see and be seen and his pleasure of looking parallels his female objects’
pleasure of being looked at. Whereas in Thousand Cranes the female gaze is most often
imagined, in The Lake the female gaze is as real as a pair of women’s eyes staring at
men. Aware of their status as objects of the male gaze, women in The Lake return the
male gaze, marking the male protagonist’s physical and emotional transition from
subject to object of the gaze. The type of vision at work in this context is the so-called
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mutual gaze: the characters stare at each other, and these visual confrontations become
exercises in discovery and acceptance of the self. These confrontations are also imbued
with the viewer’s and the gazed upon’s narcissistic need to be seen. The subject and
object’s quest for visibility marks their desire to be recognized from the field of vision
of the other.
To be seen by the female other ensures the male subject his status as a person.
However, in The Lake the male protagonist also resists the image given back to him
from the field of vision of the female other. As in Thousand Cranes, in The Lake the
many women that gravitate around the male protagonist reflect back fragments of his
troubled self, and the reciprocity of the gaze lives in the ways the women stare back at
the male protagonist, forcing him to acknowledge (but not necessarily to accept) the
reality of his fragmented and disturbed self.
Women in The Lake are described as they share the male protagonist’s need to
be seen. Thus, the man’s quest for self-knowledge parallels his female objects’, as the
women also look for/at themselves through looking at him. Even though Kawabata
portrays women as they gaze for themselves and disrupt the male field of vision with
their gazes, the identity of this female gaze remains under question. In fact, the two
women that return to the male protagonist an image of his true self are portrayed as
having ambivalent feelings toward women and as physically resembling men. As in
Thousand Cranes, Kawabata blurs the gender of the perceived female gaze as if in an
effort to facilitate the male protagonist’s acceptance of the image of his self from the
field of vision of the gender ambivalent other. Because this female gaze remains
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ambiguous, not fully engendered as male or female, the male protagonist remains
confused over the meaning of his visual experiences. In the novel, knowledge of the self
is denied to both men and women.
The Lake is not only about the male protagonist’s journey toward knowledge of
the self, but it is also about women’s struggles to know themselves as subjects and not
necessarily as objects of the gaze and desire. Their pleasure of being looked at stands as
a troubling reminder of the impossibility to fully grasp the emotional contradictions the
gazed upon experiences when it attempts to become visible to the world.
(2) The Novel: A Synopsis
The Lake was serialized in the literary magazine Shincho between January and
December 1954. In 1955 the novel was published in a single volume.1 Like so many
other Kawabata’s novels, this one is incomplete. Its vast array of characters all dwell in
the realm of makai, or the demonic world. As has been overly emphasized in Japanese
scholarship, The Lake may be considered the first work in which Kawabata’s makai
comes fully to life.
This novel features the perverse hallucinations of Momoi Gimpei, an
emotionally scarred man. Gimpei’s father was found dead in the lake of Gimpei’s
mother’s native village when Gimpei was still a boy. Some people in the village thought
1 Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 18, p. 579.
2 Tamura Yoshikatsu, “Mizuumi kenkyushi,” in Kawabata Yasunari sengo sakuhin kenkyushi, bunken
mokuroku, Hayashi Takeshi, ed. (Tokyo: Kyoiku Shuppan Senta, 1984), 77-81, cited in Matthew
Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 169. See also Hatori Tetsuya, “Mizuumi ni
okeru makai,” 38-44; Togo Katsumi, “Makai no kanata e,” 24-31; Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari
Kenkyu, 165-66; Hyodo Masanosuke, Kawabata Yasunari ron, 328.
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that Gimpei’s father was murdered. Gimpei’s mother refused to go back to her
hometown after her husband’s death. Throughout the years, this lake becomes to
Gimpei a repository of good and bad memories. Gimpei, for example, often recalls the
time spent on the banks of the lake with his beautiful and cruel cousin Yayoi. These
memories come to Gimpei as he accidentally embarks on a strange journey.
The novel opens with Gimpei at a massage parlor, a Turkish bath in the city of
Karuizawa. Here, he is taken by the beauty of the young masseuse. During the treatment
he sees visions of his past. He starts by recalling the events that led him earlier on the
same day to a purse full of money. He had found himself following a young woman,
Mizuki Miyako. Miyako felt that somebody was following her and thinking that Gimpei
was after her money, threw her purse at him and ran away. Miyako is also a problematic
character. Young, but with an old patron in his seventies, Arita Otoji, she shares this
man’s favors with his maid Umeko. Aware of her beauty, Miyako not only seems to
enjoy being followed by men, but also makes her pleasure known.
Gimpei justifies his habit of following women by asserting that his ugly feet
need to follow something beautiful. He recalls following one of his former students
Hisako Tamaki, and how she confessed to him that she enjoyed being followed. Gimpei
will also follow the young Machie, Miyako’s brother’s friend, in what can be described
as a revisiting of kaimami moments and irogonomi-like pursuits. Gimpei is at the end
confronted by an ugly woman who is following him. He follows the “beautiful” (Hisako,
Miyako, and Machie), which seemingly wants to be followed; but only “ugliness”
follows and threatens him.
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In this novel, the problem of vision develops amid the ambiguities of conscious
vision, daydreaming, and hallucinations. Sensory awareness (touch and smell) and
visual experiences become occasions for Gimpei’s remembering.
Gimpei seems to fit the mold for what Juliet Mitchell addresses as a hysteria or
“histrionic personality disorder.” Traits of hysterical character include “excessive
display of emotion, self-dramatization, emotional lability, ingratiation, need for
attention, unlikeability, insincerity and self-deception.”3 In her study of Don Juan as a
case of male hysteria, Mitchell focuses on the so-called linguistic performance of the
hysteric, especially the lying pattern. She provides a description of the male hysteric
that closely resembles Gimpei:
shocked by something, the hysteric has no position from which he can see
himself. His antics are a performance to get the other’s attention, but he has no
idea how they look to others; transposed to speech, he talks to get what he wants,
but has no idea of how what he says is perceived by others - he cannot see
himself from another’ s perspective. Through intent on an effect, he has no
concern with that effect. Sometimes his moods are a discharge of an emotion
that he finds impossible to contain; sometimes his moods aim to kill - to get the
other, who has impinged, out of the way. Alternatively, feeling insufficiently
existent, the words of the hysteric can be acts of verbal seduction, reflecting his
need to take over the other in order to fill his own inner void. The shock, the
breach in his defences, that has precipitated his hysteria has been experienced as
violent. This is repeated every time his ego feels threatened; that received
violence is then verbalized and sent out into the world in order to annihilate the
other as the hysteric himself has felt annihilated.4
Gimpei is all of the above and more.
Kawabata revisits themes from classical Japanese tradition through Gimpei’s
irogonomi-like romantic pursuits and kaimami-like moments. The latter intrigues me.
3 Juliet Mitchell, Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 14,
referring to P. Slavney, Perspectives o f 'Hysteria,' (Baltimore 1990), 190.
4 Juliet Mitchell, Mad Men and Medusas, 268, my emphasis.
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Gimpei is not Prince Genji in disguise, in that he is not a typical Peeping Tom. A
Peeping Tom would hide from sight, afraid of being discovered in his act of peeping,
and, from his place of secrecy, would enjoy scopophilic pleasure.5 Gimpei, on the other
hand, wants to be seen; he wants to be caught in his activity because he needs
recognition. This is one of the reasons he wants women to know that he is following
them. As Mizenko writes, “recognition by the pursued confirms his existence, which is
otherwise tenuous. Exposure is both feared and needed.”6
The image of the lake occupies an important place in the novel. Its surface
reflects back images that tend to substitute for the real. The lake, the Freudian maternal
womb, has sucked in Gimpei’s father. Gimpei returns to the lake again and again, but
never sees himself reflected on its surface: Gimpei will never see himself. Hirayama
Mitsuo argues that Gimpei’s existence is filled with beautiful women and hallucinations,
which the surface of the lake reflects back; the opposite of this ideal world is the reality
of his ugly feet.7 Unlike his predecessors, Snow Country's Shimamura and Thousand
Cranes' Kikuji,
Gimpei dwells in a personal hell, a demonic realm that is not defined by
abstracted desire or dominated by the shadow of a father. There are few
moments of transcendence available to Gimpei, and those that he has tend to be
hallucinatory and dubious. He lives in a karmic hell that is of his own making.8
The pursuit of beauty turns into a pursuit for self-knowledge. The sight of these
beautiful women accentuates his status as an emotionally scarred man. His pursuit of
5 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 6-18
6 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 184-85.
7 Hirayama Mitsuo, “Mizuumi - Gimpei no na no imi sum mono,” Kokubungaku 56, no. 9 (September
1991): 111.
8 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 176.
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241
the beautiful seems to be driven by a need to compensate for the physical and moral
ugliness that he embodies. He is ashamed of his life, his father’s death, his feet, and of
his failure as a teacher, a lover, and a father.
At the end of the novel, his meeting with an ugly woman represents a moment of
awakened consciousness. Gimpei for the first time sees himself reflected in the ugliness
(both physical and moral) that the woman embodies. An unfit mother in his eyes, she
fits into his life landscape more than any other woman he has encountered.
Whereas for Shimamura in Snow Country a probable return to Tokyo may have
started the process of self-acceptance, and whereas for Kikuji in Thousand Cranes life’s
moral and physical ugliness remains as the truth of his world, Gimpei’s world is a place
where the aesthetic of a time now past, and a fantasized beauty in a modem context
blend unsuccessfully. The failure results in emotional despair and longing.
(3) The Reciprocity of the Gaze: A Theoretical Approach
Lacan’s theory of vision, especially his understanding of the mutual gaze
provides the theoretical framework to my study of Gimpei’s gaze. According to Lacan,
the mutual gaze enhances the relationship between a desire to see and a desire for the
Real. Lacan argues that the subject’s desire for the Real is almost impossible to realize,
although it is that impossibility that fuels the subject’s desire. In this novel, Gimpei is
the one who gazes, but his gaze by itself does not ensure plenitude or recognition.
Within Lacan’s theory of the gaze, the position of the observer “is known in relation to
the position of the image seen and vice versa.” Thus, it is not accurate to speak of “the
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242
gaze(r)” exclusively, as “the looker is always also regarded by the image seen and
through this regard discovers and continually reaffirms that s/he is the one who looks.”9
In The Lake, therefore, Gimpei’s gaze is as important as the perceived and physical gaze
of his objects of vision: the image of the lake, Yayoi, Miyako, Machie, the image of his
baby, the ugly woman. He feels as if his objects of vision look back at him, making him
aware of his status as subject of the gaze. The perception of these objects’ gazes also
marks his need to be acknowledged by the external world.
When Lacan writes that “I am unable to see myself from the place where the
Other is looking at me,”1 0 it also means that “one needs always the eye of the other to
recognize (and name) oneself. In other words, the gaze guarantees the failure of self-
seeing.” 1 1 Therefore, it is the failure of the subject to turn into “a fully observable
being” that “propels the desire to see the other - the external gaze is a compensatory
way of returning a failed inward gaze.”1 2 Unable to delve into the remoteness of his
troubled persona, unable to gaze at himself (failure of the inward gaze), Gimpei moves
on to gaze at the world in a desperate attempt to find himself through the image of the
other. His external gaze may guarantee plenitude, recognition, and ultimately
acceptance. Further explaining this Lacanian concept, Phelan argues that:
All seeing is hooded with loss - the loss of self-seeing. In looking at the other
(animate or inanimate) the subject seeks to see itself. Seeing is an exchange of
gazes between a mirror (the image seen which reflects the looker looking) and a
screen (the laws of the Symbolic which define subject and object positions
within language). Looking, then, both obscures and reveals the looker. For
Lacan, seeing is fundamentally social because it relies on an exchange of gazes:
9 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked. The Politics o f Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 15.
1 0 Lacan, Scilicet 2-3 (1970): 120, cited in Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 15.
1 1 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 15.
1 2 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 15, also citing Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject,” 70.
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one looks and one is seen. The potential for a responding eye . . . informs the
desire to see the self through the image of the other.. . . To take the humility and
blindness inscribed within the gaze seriously, one must accept the radical
impotency of the gaze. This impotency underscores the broken and incomplete
symmetry between the self and the image of the other.1 3
Gimpei’s life is marked by failure and ugliness. Lost in a world he cannot
understand, Gimpei loses himself as well. By following women and gazing at them,
Gimpei hopes to find/see the image of himself in the “responding eye” of his objects of
vision. Gimpei may, for a fleeting moment, indulge “himself in the scopophilic pleasure
of unobserved voyeurism,”1 4 but I would argue that he is also asking for recognition,
asking to be seen, which happens only when the object’s eyes are directed at him. Only
then does he realize his status as both subject and object of the gaze.
Extensive investigation of the Lacanian gaze, especially the mutual gaze, is
important in establishing a psychological profile of Momoi Gimpei and his gazing
experiences. Although he “follows” women, he looks at them as well. Gimpei’s feet do
the “following,” but his eyes accompany such “following.” Gimpei’s eyes never lose
sight of the object to follow, and in a perverse, but Lacanian way, Gimpei expects to be
caught following/gazing. As Joan Copjec and Jacqueline Rose have suggested, “the
fertility of Lacanian psychoanalysis resides in this psychic paradox: one always locates
one’s own image in an image of the other and, one always locates the other in one’s
own image.”1 5 Therefore, how do we get to a communion between the subject’s gaze
and the subject’s desire for the real? One’s desire to see reflects one’s desire to be seen.
1 3 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 16, 18.
1 4 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 184.
1 5 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 18; Joan Copjec, “The Orthopsychic Subject,” 70; Jacqueline Rose,
Sexuality in the Field o f Vision, 167-96.
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All visual experiences are imbued with fear and hope for a response. To see, then,
equals nothing if there is no reply “confirmed by recourse to another image, and/or
another’s eye. This confirmation is negotiated through representation - which is to say
through distortion,. . . through the distortions produced by the desire for the real.”1 6
Gimpei’s quest seems to become visible to the world and to himself. As much as
he fears being a spectacle of the world, only his visibility in the world guarantees him
status as a person. The eyes of the world make him visible in the place from where he
looks. However, since this is a process of exchange, Gimpei not only locates himself in
the image of the other, but he also recognizes the other in his own image (this will
happen especially in the exchange of gazes with the ugly woman at the end of the
novel). This means that Gimpei’s desire to be seen is as strong as his desire to see
himself from the place where the other looks back at him.1 7 Hoping and fearing for the
Other’s response, for another’s eye, Gimpei’s desire for the Real is manifested.
In The Lake, Gimpei is tormented by his desire for the Real, understood as the
• 18 • •
Lacanian Real. Hallucinations may guarantee him access to such a realm. But the
world of hallucinations is also a creation dictated by his inner desire to see himself.
Gimpei tries to find himself in the images that inhabit his conscious and unconscious,
1 6 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 18.
1 7 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 268.
181 have defined the Lacanian Real in my introductory remarks to Chapter 4. In his translation of Jacques
Lacan’s Ecrits, Alan Sheridan writes about the “real” as the third term in Lacan’s theory of the psyches:
“The ‘real’ emerges as a third term, linked to the symbolic and the imaginary: it stands for what is neither
symbolic nor imaginary, and remains foreclosed from the analytic experience, which is an experience of
speech. What is prior to the assumption of the symbolic, the real in its ‘raw’ state (in the case of the
subject, for instance, the organism and its biological needs), may only be supposed, it is an algebric x. this
Lacanian concept of the ‘real’ is not to be confused with reality, which is perfectly knowable: the subject
of desire knows no more than that, since for it reality is entirely phantasmatic.” Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, ix-
x.
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but such images have physical referents in the world around him. Gimpei is trapped in a
vicious circle: he spins in circles in an attempt to catch himself, to know himself, but all
he sees, tries to see, or thinks he sees, is himself from the place of the other. For
example, Hyodo Masanosuke has understood Miyako and Hisako’s need to be followed,
or seen, as a feature of their inhabiting makai,1 9 I prefer to understand it as a need to
affirm one another in the gaze of the other. In other words, Gimpei is not alone in his
quest “to see” himself through the image of the other. The same holds true for Miyako
and Hisako. Their need to be followed/to be seen without starting the gaze, marks their
status as women in need of recognition. To Miyako it is a need to compensate for her
“inferiority complex” (rettokan) as companion of an old man; to Hisako it is a need to
affirm her premature sexuality.
Gimpei and Miyako fail in their attempts to secure the reciprocity of the gaze for
the purpose of self-knowledge. Lacan writes that “seeing” only reaffirms the fact that
“you never look at me from the place I see you,”2 0 which also means that
the failure to secure self-seeing leads again to the imagination of annihilation
and castration. The scopic drive returns us to the failure of representation, the
inability of the gaze to secure symmetry and reciprocity. . . . The (failed) desire
for a reciprocal gaze keeps the looker looking.2 1
What is at stake is also the looker’s need to hold on to himself as whole.
The demonic world {makai) may have brought Gimpei and Miyako to meet, but
in mis-reading the reasons behind their fortuitous encounter they fall short of seeing
their own selves. Gimpei and Miyako do not clearly exchange gazes; accordingly they
1 9 Hyodo Masanosuke, Kawabata Yasunari ron, 328.
2 0 Jacques Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 9.
2 1 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 20-21.
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remain inhabitants of the Imaginary. They pretend to be whole by denying themselves
access to the Symbolic, and to the Real.
Because the focus is on the subject of the gaze and his desire for recognition, it
becomes necessary to investigate what the exchange of gazes between subject and
object of the gaze does in terms of loss, considering that the subject’s eyes always fail
to see his self:
The exchange of gaze marks the split within the subject (the loss of the
Specular I of the Imaginary) and between subjects (the entry into the Social I of
the Symbolic). The “here/there” articulated with Lacan’s story of the sardine-
can, and also elaborated in his commentary on Freud’s fort/da game, reflects the
linguistic distinction between the positions of “I” and “it.” Just as that
distinction casts speech as an inscription of suffering, so too does visual distance
measure the eye’s rupture from the Imaginary. The impossibility of fulfilling the
desire of the Specular I for unity makes the desiring gaze and its return the
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guarantee of lack and loss.
In other words, the subject is doomed to not seeing himself.
In a world marked by inability to see oneself as self, and not as Other, the Other
becomes the mirror upon which to reflect the self. The image of the Other becomes the
image of the self: “The subject presents itself as other than what it is, and what it is
given to see is not what it wants to see.”2 3 Unable to gaze at himself because the eyes
only look outside the self, the subject must go through the other in order to see himself:
In order to get the other to reflect her, she has to look for/at the other. (She sees
herself through looking at the other). And that other is forever looking for/at
himself through looking at her. (Trying to hold that gaze, each looker makes
herself into the image she believes the other wants to see).2 4
2 2 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 22-23.
2 3 Jacques Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 104.
2 4 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 23.
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Gimpei sees parts of himself only when he is confronted by the women he
follows. When Miyako throws her purse at him, he also sees the criminal he has become.
When Hisako confronts him by the gate of her house, all that Gimpei is able to see is
the mental image of his ugly feet. When Machie dismisses him on a hill not far from her
house, he sees the image of his pathetic self entangled in a worthless life. When he is
approached by the ugly woman following him at the end of the novel, not only does
Gimpei see himself as the pursuer become pursued, but he also feels what his victims
have experienced when followed by him. This moment of recognition makes him pale.
In order to get these women (the Other) to reflect his image, he has to look for/at them:
eventually, he will see himself through looking at them. But these women are forever
looking for/at themselves through looking at him. Gimpei’s quest for self-knowledge
parallels his victims’. It is a vicious circle in which they are all entangled.
Gimpei is thus caught in the trap of the visual which promises to show all. In
reality, it falls short of showing the gazing subject. The visual field fails to make visible
to the looker what he wants to see: “The looker is the “not all” which is left out of the
promise of visual plenitude. Seeing is a (false) assertion that the world can be mastered
by the gaze and a recognition of the world without oneself.”2 5 Phelan writes:
the visible image of the other necessarily becomes a cipher for the looking self.
To overturn these economies the failure of the inward gaze to produce self-
seeing needs to be acknowledged. If one could confront the internal/external
other as always already lost one would not have to rely so heavily on the image
of the external other to produce what the looker lacks. This suggestion is . . . a
way to isolate the impotency of the inward gaze as a fundamental aspect of
representational economies. . . . What is needed to challenge the pessimism of
Lacan’s belief that there is nothing beyond the gaze on the one hand, and the
2 5 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 25.
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bleak poverty of our access to identity on the other, is a different relation
between the looking subject and the image of the other. Arguing for ever more
specific identity-quotients within the content of the image of the other will not
upset representational economies. This new relation between the looker and the
image of the other requires more attention to communicating non visible,
rhetorically unmarked aspects o f identity, and a greater w illingness to accept the
impotency of the inward gaze. If we could accept that impotency and loss, we
would not have to press quite so hard on the visible configurations of the other.
We might be able to give up - or at least to lessen our enthrallment with - the
particular configurations of power and desire which inform and infect our
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external gaze.
By agreeing with Lacan, Phelan calls for an emphasis on the image of the other,
and for an investigation of the content of that image in order to understand what it does
to the looker. Certain images as objects of Gimpei’s gaze mark his status as looker and
one looked upon. The image of the lake, for example, reflects back to Gimpei his
troubled relationship with his parents, his endless affection for his mother and his hatred
for his father. The mental image of his cousin Yayoi will reflect back to him the
tormented years of his youth when his father died and his mother despaired. The
memory of Hisako will reflect back his status as predator of innocence, the picture of a
physically and morally ugly man in pursuit of beauty.
However, we may still question the need for the Other to fill the void of our
inward gaze: can the Other really complete the concept of plenitude of the self?
With every mark, the unmarked summons the other eye to see what the mark
is blind to - what the given to be seen fails to show, what the other cannot offer.
The dramas of concealment, disguise, secrets, lies, are endemic to visual
representation, exactly because visual representation is “not all.” The myth of
Oedipus is a central psychoanalytic myth because it makes knowledge itself
productive of blindness. Oedipus’ self blinding is less a symptom of his regretful
desire, and more a marking of the impossible desire to see oneself. By declaring
our eyes blind and impotent we may be able to resist the smooth reproduction of
2 6 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 26, 26-27.
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the self-same. We may begin to be able to inhabit the blank without forcing the
other to fill it.2 7
I question whether Gimpei could ever inhabit such a blank without imposing on
the other (as image) to fill it. Gimpei’s need to fill such an emptiness is a need to see
himself through the image of the other. Unable to see himself as he really is, he needs to
see himself reflected through the other, and in this way be given a false pretense of self-
recognition. We are thus left wondering whether Gimpei can accept himself as such an
image reflected through the objects of his gaze, or whether he will embrace mis-
recognition as a way to flee the truth about the self. Objects of the gaze may reflect back
an unacceptable image of the self, and Gimpei struggles to grasp the meaning of his
visual experiences.
(4) To Follow and Be Followed, To See and Be Seen: Gimpei and Miyako’s
Encounter
Miyako and Gimpei have much in common. They both have loaded emotional
pasts. Thus, to follow, or to be the one followed, become escapist activities that only
those who have lived in their world can comprehend. Lacking self-confidence, they use
their physical imperfections (ugly feet for Gimpei, and deteriorating looks for Miyako),
as excuses to justify their acts of following and being followed, of seeing and being
seen. Pleasure exists on both sides of the subject and object of the gaze. The subject,
though, needs the object’s gaze to ensure plenitude. The object of the gaze is thus
empowered by the subject’s need to be acknowledged. In the instance of Gimpei and
2 7 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked, 32-33.
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Miyako, the subject’s pleasure differs little from the object, blurring the lines between
the subject and the object, the follower and the followed. In the text, Gimpei and
Miyako provide separate recollections of the eventful day they met, and to focus on
their individual accounts enables us to delve deeper into the emotional impact of their
fleeting visual confrontation.
It is in the opening scene of Gimpei at a massage parlor, under the care of a
young masseuse, that Gimpei abandons himself to reminisce about Miyako and the
other women in his life, but only after he takes a good look at the masseuse. Taken by
the beauty of her body features, he loses himself at the sight of the nape of her neck
[RT6-7/Z10]. He is also mesmerized by the sound of her voice, and he wonders whether
her voice belongs to the “eternal woman” (eien no josei) or to the “compassionate
mother” (jihi no haha) [RT8/Z11-12].2 8
After the massage, the masseuse leads Gimpei to the steam bath. Although he is
uncomfortable and frightened at being “trapped in the hole” [RT9/Z12], Gimpei
attempts not to show his fear and weakness. From there he keeps looking at the young
masseuse, whose image seems to belong more and more to another world:
Half naked against the window, lit dimly with a greenish light, the fair-skinned
girl seemed part of another world (shinjirarenu sekai no yd). Her feet were bare
2 8 In his study of The Lake, Tsuruta Kin’ya describes the “space” of Part One of this novel as being a sort
of pseudo-heaven. His conclusion is dictated by Gimpei’s perception of the young masseuse’s voice as
possibly being from heaven. Gimpei seems to dwell in a space of apparent well-being although, as
Tsuruta rightly argues, this may be one of his first fantasies. While discussing the next three parts of the
novel, Tsuruta addresses Part Two as a pseudo-hell, Part Three as an ambivalent space, a mix of both
heaven and hell, and Part Four as the space where Gimpei recovers his innocence. Tsuruta Kin’ya,
Kawabata Yasunari no geijutsu, 200, 212.
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251
against the pale pink, tiled floor. Her legs were certainly youthful, but there were
dark marks in the hollows behind her knees. [RT9-10/Z13]2 9
This young girl has already been described as the eternal woman (eien no josei),
the compassionate mother {jihi no haha), and now as if part of another world (or the
unbelievable world, shinjirarenu sekai no yo). What is mostly relevant from the
perspective of the study of the narrative of the gaze, is the fact that this woman is on the
same side of the window as the viewer, Gimpei. Unlike the image of Yoko given back
to Shimamura in the opening passage of Snow Country, the young masseuse is not a
reflected image on the window’s surface. However, like Yoko, this young masseuse
seems to belong to another world, a world the male protagonist is forbidden from
inhabiting.3 0
As we recall, in the opening passage of Snow Country Shimamura clears away
the steam covering the train window in order to gaze at the landscape and Yoko. In The
Lake, on the other hand, the steam is all over Gimpei, and he feels lost in it. Therefore,
the steam that prevents Shimamura from looking outside the window in Snow Country,
now prevents Gimpei not only from looking, but also from being looked at. In a way,
Gimpei is content with the realization, because “he could now imagine how silly he
must look (tabun kokkei daro) with only his solemn face sticking out of the wooden
29 standS for Reiko Tsukimura’s translation of The Lake (1974), and “Z” stands for Kawabata
Yasunari Zens hit, volume 18.
3 0 Both Imamura Junko and Hyodo Masanosuke describe the young masseuse as not one of the
inhabitants of makai or demonic realm. Imamura argues that because the young masseuse is described as
not troubled by carnal desire she does not inhabit makai (Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu,
169): Gimpei and Miyako, on the other hand, are overly troubled by carnal desires, therefore they inhabit
makai. Hyodo Masanosuke argues that Gimpei, Hisako, and Miyako seem to be on a quest to deceive
people, and because some strange evil spirit seems to govern their lives, they all are inhabitants of the
same demonic realm, they all live in the same demonic world; accordingly the young masseuse does not
fit the mold of who is fit to dwell in the demonic realm (Hyodo Masanosuke, Kawabata Yasunari ron,
328).
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box. . . . He closed his eyes {me o tsubutta)” [RT10/Z14], Gimpei is described as he
fears not only the trap of the steam bath, but also the gaze of the world directed at him.
After he closes his eyes, while trapped in the steam bath, Gimpei is seized by a
fantasy (genkaku): “He was chasing this girl with the sweet voice along a street where
streetcars ran, somewhere in Tokyo. For a while he saw only the ginkgo trees that lined
the sidewalk” [RT11/Z14].3 1 This illusion may be caused by dizziness, brought about by
excessive heat and perspiration. This comes across more as an hallucination. Beautiful
to his eyes, Gimpei wishes he had had the chance to follow the young girl unnoticed,
and in this way make her part of that group of women he has enjoyed following. And he
would follow her not because of her looks, but because of her “sweet voice,” because of
her dual nature (eternal woman/compassionate mother), in an attempt to make his the
world she inhabits (shinjirarenu sekai).
The sight of the young masseuse allows Gimpei to lose himself in a world where
the line between the real and the unreal blurs. Gimpei seems to dwell on the border
between conscious thinking and unconscious desires. He manipulates the sight of his
objects of vision to fit into the troubled world that is of his own making. In other words,
the young masseuse is made by Gimpei’s gaze. His gaze inscribes meaning onto her,
providing us with an image that is the result of a distorted/disturbed vision. And his
fantasizing about her seems to be never ending.
3 1 My translation: Gimpei was caught by the illusion (genkaku) that he was following the girl with the
nice voice. *
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Gimpei keeps making assumptions about this young masseuse. The physical
features of the girl seem to suggest to him that she is still a virgin (shojo).3 2 It becomes
clear that Gimpei belongs to the “voyeur” category as we are introduced to his way of
paying particular attention to the details of a woman’s body. Gimpei does not seem to
have had enough of the young masseuse:
Standing with her body pressed against the narrow couch, the girl rubbed
Gimpei’s arms. Her breasts were above his face. Though her bra did not seem to
be very tightly fastened, her flesh was slightly constricted along the edge of the
white cloth. The way her breasts were set off from her body, however, showed
that they had not yet developed into full maturity. She had rather a classical,
oval face (yuna wa yaya kotentekina omonaga de). Her forehead was not broad,
but perhaps because her hair was pulled straight back and not fluffed out, it
looked high and made her wide eyes even brighter. The flesh between her neck
and shoulders was not full, and her upper arms were youthful and round. The
sheen of her skin was so close to him that Gimpei shut his eyes. Behind his
eyelids he saw a box, like a carpenter’s nail box, full of tiny nails all glinting in
the light. Gimpei opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. It was white.
[RT14/Z16-17]
Gimpei conflates images he sees with his eyes open with images he creates with
his eyes closed. A Freudian reading of the symbolism in this passage would suggest that
Gimpei has just had inappropriate thoughts about the girl being possessed by several
men (box=uterus/nails=tiny phallic symbolism). This also marks the beginning of
Gimpei’s recounting of his hallucinations and memories of events that really happened.
Under the skilled hands of the masseuse, Gimpei blends recent events in his life
with the memory of events belonging to a more distant past. He recalls being hit by a
handbag. In the middle of the recollection, he opens his eyes wide [RT18/Z20], but
3 2 “She must still be under twenty, he thought. Her shoulders, belly and legs suggested she was still a
virgin. Her cheeks were fresh and rosy, with only a trace of rouge on them” [RT12/Z15],
3 3 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation o f Dreams, trans. James Strachey (New York: Avon Books, 1965),
389.
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afraid that the young masseuse will find out about his secret he closes them again.
Gimpei speculates about his reasons for having followed the woman who hit him with
the handbag.
Perhaps he had followed the woman because something inside her made her
susceptible to being chased by him. They might be inhabitants of the same
infernal world {makai). . . .
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? [RT21-22/Z22]
This passage projects us into the core of the novel, bringing to the fore the main
themes. From the above passage, we can conclude that both the gazer (Gimpei) and the
gazed upon (Miyako) receive pleasure, the pleasure of looking and of being looked at.
The gazer looks because its object has invited the gaze. Gimpei acknowledges
“something” from Miyako that invites him to follow her. Miyako knows that she is the
object of the male gaze. Gimpei feels that both he and the object of his gaze inhabit the
demonic world (makai); we later leam of Miyako’s maryoku or demonic charm
[RT68/Z59], which seems to cause men to follow her. In other words, Gimpei reads her
message correctly: she wants to be followed. Gimpei is caught in a web of perverse
“visions” where reality and fantasies dance together. Gimpei and Miyako are
unconscious accomplices. The gazer and its object become partners in crime. This
makes us question who is subject and object of the gaze. In a reciprocal process, the
gazer cannot do without a response from its object, and the object (actively) provokes
the subject’s gaze.
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It is Miyako’s account of her eventful encounter with Gimpei that provides more
details in terms of who followed whom, and who started the gaze. Miyako questions
whether she dropped the purse on purpose, because the man following her, Gimpei,
tried to return it [RT43]. In the purse are hundred thousand yen, money that her patron,
old Arita, has given her over the years. Miyako has planned to use this money to finance
her younger brother’s education, but she acknowledges a certain feeling of pleasure in
having lost it. She attempts to reconstruct the dynamics of the events that led to her
losing the handbag and the money:
Of course Miyako knew she hadn’t dropped her handbag. Just as it had been
unclear to Gimpei whether the bag had been used to hit him or had been thrown
at him, so Miyako found it hard to remember if she had struck the man or hurled
the thing at him. But she had certainly reacted strongly. Her hand had suddenly
become numb, and the numbness had spread to her arm and chest until her
whole body was quivering with painful ecstasy. It was as if some vague
sensation, smoldering within her while she was being followed by the man, had
suddenly caught fire - almost as though her youth, lost in old Arita’s shadow,
had suddenly been restored to life and had taken its revenge. If this were true,
Miyako, at that precise moment, received compensation for all the shame
(rettdkan: inferiority complex) she had endured through the long days and
months it had taken to accumulate the two hundred thousand yen. And so the
money was probably not lost in vain [RT49-50/Z44]
Like Gimpei, Miyako also has an inferiority complex. She is ashamed of the life
she is leading and of having sold her body to an old man. Imamura Junko argues that
just as Gimpei compensates for the ugliness in his life by following women, Miyako
compensates for the ugliness of her life by developing a narcissistic pleasure in
becoming an object to be followed.3 4 Imamura also argues that what makes both Gimpei
3 4 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyii, 168-69.
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and Miyako inhabitants of makai (the demonic world) is their carnal desires (bonno).3 5
It is due to bonno that Gimpei follows women, and that Miyako is followed by men.
Ishikawa sees similarities in Miyako’s relationship with Arita, and Gimpei’s
mother’s relationship with his father, suggesting that Gimpei’s mother had the “devil”
in her just like Miyako. Ishikawa seems to suggest that Miyako could very well be a
double of Gimpei’s mother. Perhaps Gimpei’s mother had an inferiority complex
caused by the shame brought upon her by her husband’s mysterious death, just as
Miyako has an inferiority complex dictated by the ugliness of her status as lover of an
old man. Miyako, in other words, reflects back to Gimpei the image of his Mother, an
image that he may have unconsciously perceived and that may have led him to follow
her. Thus, Gimpei’s Mother was also an inhabitant of makai. The ugliness of their
moral lives also causes Gimpei and Miyako to meet.3 6
In the above passage [RT 49-50/Z44], Miyako’s losing the money seems to
equal having lost part of the ugliness in her life. Miyako has been followed before. It
happened at one time while she was with Arita [RT52/Z46]. On that occasion Miyako
did not deny her pleasure in being followed, in becoming the object of somebody else’s
desire. To invite the gaze of the other, or to invite somebody to follow her strengthens
her self-confidence. The gaze of the other becomes a pleasurable site for an ego that
lacks self-esteem, a woman who has lost confidence in her looks [RT68/Z59].
3 5 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyii, 169.
3 6 Ishikawa Takumi, “Tsuiseki no irytl. Mizuumi ron,” in Kawabata bungaku no sekai, volume 3, Tamura
Mitsumasa, Baba Shigeyuki, andHara Zen, eds. (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 1999), 25-26.
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On the night of the day she lost her handbag, Miyako is with Arita and has no
choice but to confess to him that she was followed again [RT65-66/Z57], While lying in
bed, she hallucinates. She recalls Gimpei’s face, to whom she unconsciously paid
attention: “Floating in the darkness the face of the man who had picked up her handbag
appeared, a face which had seemed to weep the moment he decided to follow her”
[RT66/Z57]. Miyako feels as if she invited the man to follow her:
In her mind’s eye she saw him stop to look back after passing her; and in a flash
the luster of her hair, the color of her flash at the ears and neck had struck him
with a piercing sorrow and, fainting, drawn that stifled cry from his heart.
Hearing him groan, Miyako glanced back at his broken face (Miyako ga otoko
no nakisona kao o chiratto furikaetta), and at that precise moment the decision
was made that he would follow her. He looked sad, lost in his own world.
Miyako felt as if the darkness in him had escaped and passed on into her.
Miyako had only glanced back once at the beginning and did not look around
again {Miyako wa hajime ni chiratto furikaetta dake de, ato wa ushiro o
minakatta shi). Nor could she remember his appearance. She still saw, floating
in the darkness, only the blurred distortion (yugami) of his face as he struggled
with his tears. [RT66/Z57]
Miyako seems to see Gimpei’s face floating in the darkness of her bedroom. She
has noticed Gimpei’s teary eyes. “To glance back at his broken face” has become an
invitation to be followed. Gimpei is aware of Miyako’s gaze, and he reads the message
in her eyes right way. Two desperate souls in the world of makai have found each other.
His sadness becomes her sadness. His confusion is hers. Although she saw him for a
fleeting moment, Miyako saw herself reflected in the image of the stranger. It is a
moment of recognition for both, a moment of truth in their distraught lives. Confronted
by the emotional and physical ugliness that they share, the two attempt to part from
each other even while being inexplicably attracted. Miyako wants him to follow her, but
she is at the same time afraid. Gimpei wants to follow her, but for a fleeting moment he
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hesitates. In the uncertainty of their emotions, in the play of a fleeting visual
confrontation lies the truth of their lives. To look each other directly in the eyes would
have brought total recognition: I see you, therefore you are what I see; You see me,
therefore I am that image reflected. The lines between object and subject of the gaze are
intentionally blurred. Recognition is resisted.
This is the highest moment in the workings of the reciprocal gaze. If Gimpei
follows women to escape his ugly life, Miyako’s “returned gaze” can only reassert the
ugly truth. She is, after all, his female specular image. If Miyako enjoys being followed
as a way to escape the ugliness or her life, in Gimpei’s gaze she may well have
recognized the frightening sight. By limiting their visual confrontation, by detouring
through each other, Gimpei and Miyako postpone drinking at the fountain of knowledge.
As specular images of each other, they have to avoid each other’s gaze in order to avoid
the truth about themselves.
(5) Following Women as An Invitation to Be Object of the Gaze
Gimpei’s world is filled with women, and ruled by his obsession to follow them.
Abandoning his recollection of the incident with Miyako, Gimpei switches to the
memory of the first woman he ever followed, Hisako Tamaki, a young student of his
[RT22/Z22], Gimpei used to be a teacher. At the beginning Hisako is not happy about
being followed [RT23/Z23]. Gimpei started his relationship with Hisako by asking her
3 7 Later in the novel we learn that Hisako was pretending at not being happy about being followed, but
that in reality she was very pleased by her teacher’s attention [RT111-112/Z93-94].
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if her father knows of a medicine to cure athlete’s foot. This marks the beginning of his
lying:3 8
Just as Gimpei followed women, so his lies trailed behind him. Perhaps it is the
same with crime. A crime, once committed, pursues a person until he repeats it.
Bad habits are like that. The first time Gimpei followed a woman led to the
second, and so on... The need to follow women is as persistent as athlete’s foot;
it doesn’t clear up, it spreads. . . . Why had he ever compared the ecstasy of
following a woman to a disgusting thing like athlete’s foot? Had the first lie
forced him to make the association?
But now a sudden thought flashed across Gimpei’s mind: was it, perhaps, the
sense of shame (rettokan, inferiority complex) he felt about his ugly feet that
had made him suddenly mention this fictitious infection in front of Hisako’s
house? And if so, was his habit of chasing after women related to this ugliness,
since it was his feet that did the chasing? He was surprised at the thought. 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? [RT35-36/Z33]
Gimpei was not bom a liar, he learned to be one. His ugly feet have produced an
inferiority complex {rettokan). Gimpei justifies his following women by saying that his
ugly feet long for beauty, and that it is his feet that do the following. Somebody,
however, must guide his feet. He shows his ugly feet to the young masseuse
[RT37/Z34]. Gimpei reveals to her his reason for following beautiful women, although
his explanation sounds like a monologue to justify his actions to himself. He talks about
a need not to separate from something beautiful that has been so close to him, not even
for a moment: “I want to follow them to the ends of the earth, but I can’t. The only way
to chase a person that way is to kill him” [RT37-38/Z35]. The act of “chasing after
somebody” seems to involve visually possessing somebody. Gimpei attempts to make
women his own, although the disturbing thought that the only way to possess someone
3 8 In her study of the male hysteric, Juliet Mitchell defines the lying pattern as belonging to the hysteric
personality who uses it whenever his ego feels threatened. Juliet Mitchell, Mad Men and Medusas, 268.
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is by killing him/her remains. Gimpei is frightened by the sound of his words, and he
questions whether murder is indeed “the ultimate end of a chase” [RT38/Z36], but he
then recalls all the women in his life as “With amazing vividness the faces of Hisako
and Yayoi appeared before his eyes, and Gimpei compared their faces with that of the
bath girl’s” [RT39/Z36].
The memories come to Gimpei as he receives his massage. He interrupts his
recollection of his childhood to go back to the memory of his young student Hisako
Tamaki. Gimpei recalls how on the day after having followed her, he had put her on the
spot in front of her classmates. When he had asked her to stay behind after class, the girl
had “raised her eyes and stared at him (Gimpei o niranda). He felt he was being glared
at (niramareta yd ni Gimpei wa kanjita)” [RT29/Z28]. Hisako stares back at Gimpei.
He feels but does not acknowledge the girl’s gaze. Later Gimpei still feels Hisako’s
eyes: “Hisako looked at Gimpei with her tearful, piercing eyes” [RT32/Z31]. Much is
still left unsaid about Gimpei and Hisako’s relationship. Being put on the spot in front
of her classmates is not a comfortable experience for Hisako, who attempts to make
Gimpei uncomfortable by staring at him, but to no avail. While we are not given a clear
description of how Gimpei positions himself under Hisako’s gaze, we know that he is
quite disturbed by her friend’s stare.
The threatening gaze of the Other shows up as Hisako’s classmate, Onda
Nobuko. Nobuko watches Gimpei and Hisako as they talk, and Gimpei feels himself
observed: “he found Nobuko Onda standing at the end of the hall watching them”
[RT33/Z31]. Gimpei never hides his dislike for Nobuko, under whose eyes he feels
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threatened. Gimpei is, after all, trying to take advantage of Hisako’s inexperience in the
corrupted world of adulthood. Nobuko apparently knows how to read Gimpei’s
inappropriate behavior, without ever realizing how much Hisako willingly participates.
Gimpei will later recall being in a taxi with Hisako and seeing the world through
the glass window [RT99/Z84], “Of course, the world looks cleaner through glass. . . .”
[RT100/Z84]. He remembers having a conversation with Hisako in which he warned
her not to tell anyone about their relationship. Hisako had already confided in her friend,
Miss Onda. Gimpei asks to see her eyes:
Hisako meekly turned up her eyes. But she was not looking at him. Her gaze
suggested that she wanted Gimpei to look into her eyes {sono me de Gimpei o
miru to iu yori mo, sono me o Gimpei ni mite morau to iu meiro datta). He
lapsed into silence as he became aware of her body. [RT102/Z86]
Hisako asks to be looked at. She invites the male gaze, wanting Gimpei to look
into her eyes and to understand who she really is. She asks him to see her as a young
schoolgirl, not as a grown-up with secrets that cannot be revealed. The text suggests that
she avoids visual confrontation as if she is not interested in the truth that may come
from his eyes. All she wants is for him to look into her eyes and find her real self.
After Gimpei was dismissed from school, and Hisako was forbidden from seeing
him again, they would meet at a dilapidated house that Hisako’s father had bought after
the war: “Hisako liked to meet Gimpei behind this wall, safe from the eyes of the world
(Hitome ga kowai Hisako wa sono hei no naka de Gimpei to au no wo kononda”
[RT106/Z89]. The Japanese suggests that fear of the public gaze leads Hisako to prefer
to meet with Gimpei behind the wall. Their relationship must be hidden. Their secret
relationship, however, never returns to the way it used to be before Gimpei’s dismissal.
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Hisako’s fear of the public gaze comes from the recognition of how inappropriate her
relationship with her teacher is. However, she needs to enjoy the sensations that arise
from such a forbidden relationship. The first woman that Gimpei follows, Hisako is
also the first woman who confesses to Gimpei her pleasure in being followed, in
becoming the object of a man’s desire.
While discussing their memories, Hisako shares a wish with Gimpei:
“[Hisako]: I wish you would follow me again. Follow me without my knowing.
I want you to do that once more on my way home from school. My new school
is farther away, you know.”
“[Gimpei]: And you’ll pretend to notice me for the first time in front of that
splendid gate, won’t you! You’ll stare at me and blush from the other side of the
iron gate!”
“[Hisako]: No. I’ll ask you to come in! My house is so big that you won’t be
found. I’m certain of it. Even my room has enough space to hide you in.”
Gimpei felt a flame of happiness rise in him. And not long afterward he put
her idea into practice, only to be discovered by Hisako’s family. [RT 111-
112/Z93-94]
There is a morbid desire in Hisako to be followed. She is physically more
mature than her actual age. She anticipates Miyako’s desire to be followed by men.
Hisako needs the thrill of danger, to be followed by a stranger, but Gimpei is no
stranger. From the beginning, Gimpei has read her body language right: she wants to be
followed. She has invited Gimpei to follow her, and to look at her repeatedly. Is Gimpei
really guilty of misbehavior? Are his misadventures brought about by the confused
behavior of a teenage girl experimenting with her sexuality?
The dynamics of the mutual gaze come into play. Both Hisako and Gimpei need
to find recognition in the other’s gaze. Hisako needs to be followed. Gimpei needs to
know that she is aware of being followed. Hisako acknowledges being followed,
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returning to Gimpei the recognition he needs. It is an ambiguous and dangerous game, a
game doomed to destroy Gimpei’s career and separate Hisako form Gimpei forever.
On that same day that he follows Hisako for the first time, Gimpei finds himself
wandering around the amusement quarters after having been discouraged by Hisako’s
behavior. While in the amusement quarters, he realizes that a woman is following him
[RT24-26/Z24-25], and he catches the image of this woman’s figure reflected on the
surface of a florist’s window:
The woman’s figure was reflected in the window. She seemed to be standing
among the flowers beyond the glass.. ..
Gimpei was watching her face reflected in the flowers when another woman’s
face [the shop owner] appeared amid the flowers beyond the glass. . . . As
though reaching out to seize a bunch of white dahlias on the other side of the
window, he thrust his right hand against the glass and stood up. The proprietress
of the shop glared at him from beneath thin, knitted eyebrows. Afraid that he
might plunge his arm through the big glass window and cut himself, he shifted
his weight toward the woman. She managed to keep her balance. [RT 25-
26/Z25]
Gimpei is reminded of the lake by his mother’s village:
It must have been the cool breeze of late spring, yet an ice-covered lake
appeared before his eyes - perhaps because he had been afraid his arm might
crash through the florist’s window, which was as broad as a lake. It was the lake
by his mother’s village. . . . The lake lay in a shroud of mist, and all beyond the
ice near the shore looked infinitely remote. [RT26/Z26]
In the above passages a question arises over who is chasing whom. Gimpei
seems to be the one followed, which may lead us to apply to him the rules of the gazed
upon that he himself suggested previously (“Can an entirely one-sided pleasure exist in
the real world?” [RT21]). Moreover, there are two women “reflected” on the surface of
the window. The first woman’s figure is admired by Gimpei: this is the figure of the
woman following him. Then the figure of the florist herself is presented to him. She
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seems to him a reflected image, but in reality she is not. This particular juxtaposition is
important, considering Gimpei’s state of mind. Gimpei is caught between the window
and the two women. One is standing behind him, her figure reflected in the window.
The other woman is on the other side of the window, and only the window separates her
from Gimpei. The window reflects images that are both real and unreal, and Gimpei is
seen from all directions.
The window is a mirror and a divider. It reflects the image of the woman
following him, but separates him from the physical presence of the florist owner.
Gimpei looks at both women, but is also caught in their line of vision. The lines
separating who is subject and who is object of the gaze are blurred. As for Gimpei, he is
trapped in a visual field that has only female eyes: the woman following him looks at
him from behind, and from her image reflected in the window; the florist gazes straight
at him from the other side of the window. He is the one followed, he is the one gazed
upon. Troubled by his status as object of the gaze and by his inability to see himself
from the place of the Other (or fearing to see himself as the Other sees him), Gimpei
breaks free from this moment of awakened consciousness by creating a visual fantasy.
Gimpei distorts the width of the florist’s window to stand in for the width of the lake of
his mother’s village. We are in this way projected into a different place in space and
time in the life of Gimpei.
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The lake stands in as a reminder of Gimpei’s mother and his young cousin
39
Yayoi. Gimpei recalls how one day he tried to get Yayoi to walk on thin ice, hoping
that the ice would crack, and that she would go under [RT26-27/Z26]. Gimpei was
attracted to Yayoi because she belonged to his mother’s side of the family. Having
already lost his father, Gimpei was afraid to lose also his mother, and developed a need
to become attached to somebody from his mother’s side:
As a boy, it had been his greatest joy to walk with Yayoi along the shore of the
lake, watching their reflection linked in the water beside them. As he walked
and looked down at the lake, he felt that their figures would move together on
the water forever. [RT27/Z26]
To watch their images reflected on the surface of the lake gives him a sense of
stability at a time in his life when his family has been tom apart. Gimpei’s father was
found dead in the lake. Gimpei needs to relate to it in a way that is beneficial to his
development as an adult. The symbolism of the lake is rich. In this case Gimpei’s
relationship with the lake goes through stages. It is also a love-hate relationship, an
ambivalent positioning of his feelings toward all that for which the lake stands.
Why are all these women (the young masseuse, Hisako, Yayoi, the woman from
the amusement quarter, the florist) chasing one other, or chasing him in Gimpei’s
hallucinations? Although Gimpei does not catch the image of himself reflected on a
window surface, in a mirror, or on the surface of the lake, he reflects himself in the
image of the women in his life. These women reflect back “parts” of his un/structured
3 9 Imamura Junko agues that even though the lake is repository of maternal beauty (Yayoi can also be
seen as a pseudo-Mother to Gimpei), it also contains Gimpei’s emotional despair over the contamination
of this lake caused by his father’s death: his father drowned in this lake. The lake reflects back both
concepts of beauty and ugliness as Gimpei stares at it in a desperate attempt to get answers. Imamura
Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 176.
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and fragmented self: his need for the maternal (Yayoi/pseudo-mother; the young
masseuse/compassionate mother); and his sexual desires (Miyako/sexuality;
Hisako/sexuality in the making; the female prostitute in the amusement quarters/the
physicality of sex). The workings of the mutual gaze emerge in the ways the women
return his gaze, forcing him to acknowledge (but not necessarily to embrace) the reality
of his fragmented and disturbed self. Gimpei reflects about the fact that he chases even
people he knows:
Yayoi and Hisako were not casual passers-by. He not only knew their names
and addresses, but had a relationship with them and could meet them at any time.
Yet he had still chased them and, worse, he had been forced to part from them.
[RT40/Z37]
Separation brings further despair in a life already tormented by separation.
Gimpei has been forced to separate from what he knows, from what would bring
emotional stability to his soul. Separation means a further descent into his troubled self,
and hallucinations become escapist means to overcome the trauma of separation.
Gimpei’s pursuits embody his need for recognition, his need to be seen from the
place of the Other. Having felt invisible at the time of his father’s death (after all his
father did not think about young Gimpei’s feelings or trauma caused by such an
incident) and during his mother’s shame-filled life, Gimpei is now on a quest to regain
visibility: visibility to himself and to the Other. If the gaze of the Other can only return
the experience of feelings from his emotionally scarred past, one way out is the
construction of fantasies meant to cover up the pain and despair. Such hallucinations
catapult him further into a state of denial. To become visible can only guarantee the
failure to accept the truth of the self in an emotionally unstable being. Gimpei’s longing
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267
for the gaze of the Other will always be an exercise in conscious mis-recognition.
Unable and unwilling to embrace the image of himself from the place where the Other
gazes, Gimpei retreats to fantasy, irogonomi-like pursuits, and troubling kaimami
moments.
(6) Reflecting Images of Desired Self: Machie and the Fantasy of Innocence
Miyako and Gimpei belong to the same world (makai) and their paths cross
again as a consequence of their shared emotional attachment to young Machie. It is a
glance into Miyako’s ambivalent feelings toward Machie that reveals to us how Miyako
is not that different from Gimpei when it comes to the pleasure of following or being
followed, of seeing and being seen. In fact, although Miyako anticipates in her mind
Gimpei’s chase of Machie, she also confesses that she would herself follow the young
girl. Miyako’s ambivalent desires toward women are thus revealed. It is such
ambivalence that also marks Miyako’s gaze as not fully female as she seemingly
appropriates what it appears as a male way of looking at women. Miyako gazes at
Machie in an attempt to see the image of herself as a young innocent girl. However,
Miyako knows she never was either innocent or young. In the end, Miyako and
Gimpei’s chase of Machie parallels their perverse way of perpetuating the fantasy of
lives never had and it also marks their youth as a most painful rite of passage filled with
despair. To their eyes, Machie embodies the beauty of life, and they never seem to
question their distorted visions of this girl.
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Miyako’s brother, Keisuke, has a friend Mizuno whose girlfriend is Machie.
Keisuke describes her to Miyako as “innocent beauty” (kiyorakana shojo: innocent girl,
virgin) [RT 72/Z62], Miyako questions her brother’s understanding of “innocent
beauty,” which she says one cannot see just by looking at it [RT73/Z62], Keisuke tries
to convince her otherwise and tells her that the moment she sees Machie, she will
understand why he thinks the way he does. Miyako arranges to meet Machie and
Mizuno at Miyako’s mother’s house. Keisuke will be there too [RT73]. Miyako takes
them to a Chinese restaurant, and they then go strolling to see the cherry blossoms.
Machie and Mizuno’s relationship is not accepted fully by Machie’s family. Therefore,
when Machie sees some neighbors walking by, she tries to hide behind Miyako:
As she looked around, she [Miyako] took Machie’s hand and held onto it while
they walked along. Though they were both women, Miyako almost gave a little
cry of joy when she touched Machie’s hand, so pleasant was the sensation. She
felt it lying soft and moist in hers, and was deeply moved by the young girl’s
beauty. [RT76/Z65]
Machie confesses to Miyako that she is not happy, and Miyako wonders how
somebody so young could already know unhappiness:
Her [Miyako’s] attention that night was focused entirely on Machie, and while
she was looking at the girl {Machie o mite iru to), a great sadness welled up in
her that made her wish she were alone and far away. If she ever passed Machie
in the street, she knew she would turn and stare at her retreating figure {ushiro
sugata o nagaku furikaette iru). Did men follow Miyako because they were
drawn by a similar yet far more powerful feeling? [RT76/Z65-66]
In an attempt to discover Machie’s “innocent beauty,” Miyako stares attentively
at the young girl. Miyako believes that it is that feeling of “innocent beauty” emanating
from Machie that makes men follow her. Miyako plays with the possibility that she
herself may have such “innocent beauty” and that this is the reason that men follow her.
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However, in fact, Miyako has maryoku, an evil charm having nothing to do with
innocence. In the passages above, we are presented with the possibility that Miyako
could follow Machie because of the latter’s beauty. This suggests that Miyako may be a
female version of Gimpei. The presentation of Miyako as a specular representation of
Gimpei anticipates Gimpei’s act of following Machie. Moreover, Miyako experiences
pleasure in holding Machie’s hand, but her pleasure with women is ambivalent.
Ishikawa Takumi points out how two remarks made by Miyako inscribe her in
the context of “same sex love” or lesbianism. On one occasion Miyako praises her
maid’s daughter’s (Sachiko) beautiful feet [RT61/Z53]. On another, she acknowledges
Machie’s beauty [RT61/Z63]. According to Ishikawa, both of Miyako’s remarks reveal
a sexual interest in women. According to Ishikawa, Miyako’s comment about Sachiko’s
beautiful feet functions as an escape from the sight of Arita’s ugly feet, and Miyako’s
attention to Machie’s beauty sheds light on to the ugliness of her own life.4 0
By portraying Miyako’s ambivalence toward Sachiko and Machie, Kawabata
anticipates the theme of same-sex love between women, which he will develop in
Beauty and Sadness. In The Lake women are portrayed mutually looking and touching,
and sharing intimate feelings. Machie’s beauty reflects back to Miyako all that she has
always wanted but could never be.
Although such “innocent beauty” inevitably becomes an object of male desire,
that Gimpei is the person who bumps into Machie is not surprising. Gimpei follows
Machie while the young girl walks her dog on a slope by her house:
4 0 Ishikawa Takumi, “Tsuiseki no iryu. Mizuumi ron,” 25-27.
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Gimpei was lost in her dreamlike beauty (kono josei no kiseki no yd na iroke ga
Gimpei o toraete wa nasanakatta), and even the color of the skin which showed
between the red cheeks and her white shoes weighed so heavily on his heart that
he felt like dying or killing her. He remembered Yayoi in his home village and
Hisako Tamaki, his student, but they were no match for this girl. Yayoi was fair,
but her skin had no luster. Hisako’s was dark and shiny, but the color was not
clear, nor did it have the heavenly fragrance of this girl’s skin. Gimpei felt
shattered, heartbroken. . . . Weak and numb below the knees, he could not catch
up with the girl. He had not seen her face yet. [RT81/Z69]
Gimpei is attracted by her “dreamlike beauty” even though he has not seen her
face yet. Gimpei is troubled by the feelings this young girl arouses in him. Imamura
Junko argues that Gimpei’s desire/drive to kill the woman he is following reveals self-
awareness of evil carnal desires toward her.4 1 In this instance, however, Machie stands
out not as an object not of carnal desire, but of a desire for innocence and purity, like
Inamura Yukiko in Thousand Cranes. Just as Inamura Yukiko does not inhabit makai
neither does Machie.4 2 Gimpei’s pursuit may be read as a pursuit of beauty, innocence
and purity. According to Hatori Tetsuya, Gimpei’s world provides no place for all that
the beautiful Machie incarnates. Gimpei may be pursuing a world that ultimately does
not exist.4 3
What Miyako has anticipated, has come true. Gimpei follows Machie. Somehow
he has met her, recognized the somehow mysterious coloring of her skin, and felt a need
to follow her, and to talk to her. When Machie frees the dog from his collar, it
approaches Gimpei who acts frightened to get Machie’s attention. In reality he is angry
4 1 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 170.
4 2 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 172.
4 3 Hatori Tetsuya, “Mizuumi ni okem makai,” 43; Ishikawa Takumi, “Tsuiseki no iryu. Mizuumi ron,” 32.
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and humiliated: “He thought the dog must have sniffed at his shoes because it knew
how ugly his feet were” [RT85/Z72]. Gimpei gets closer to Machie:
When the girl turned around, moving only her head, the ponytail swung out to
reveal the beautiful nape of her neck (unaji no utsukushisa). Gimpei’s pale face
blazed (Gimpei no masaona kao wa moeta). [RT85/Z72]
Gimpei has not yet seen the young girl’s face. He understands, though, that the
girl is not interested in him. She does not even look at him when he starts talking to her
[RT86/Z73]. Gimpei, however, is thrilled at the thought that he could peep at this young
girl every night without being noticed. Kawabata revisits the kaimami topos through
Gimpei’s excitement at the idea of seeing without being seen:
The sudden realization that, every evening, she would walk here with her dog
beneath the shade of the ginkgo trees and that he could watch her from a hiding
place on top of the bank came to him like a ray of hope. It was like lying naked
in the new grass, so cool and fresh was his sense of relief. Yes, he would watch
her from the top of the bank, and she would come up to the slope toward him
forever.. . . His happiness knew no bounds. [RT86/Z73]
As I have already pointed out in my study of Snow Country, a classical kaimami
taken from the Japanese literary tradition would require the object’s knowledge of being
seen, of being the object of the male desiring gaze. Gimpei’s gaze can be inscribed as
belonging to the kaimami topos as it is filled with longing for his object. However, the
unawareness of the seen object represents and innovation of Kawabata. From the
literary Heian tradition we know that women were aware of being objects of the male
gaze: they knew that men would hide behind walls and fences to catch a glimpse of
them. Gimpei’s gazing activity is a kaimami-like moment because (1) he looks from a
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distance (he peeps); (2) his gaze is imbued with longing; (3) his desire for the object of
the gaze is ambiguous, and not necessarily sexual.4 4
Gimpei savors the idea of looking forever at Machie, enjoying her beauty even if
she does not acknowledge his presence. He seems content to spy on her forever, just to
enjoy the sight of her dreamlike beauty. However, if Gimpei is on a quest to affirm his
troubled ego in this world, he needs recognition, which could only come from the
returned gaze of Machie. Gimpei, though, is not concerned with not being seen. He
thinks only of enjoying an unobstructed view of Machie without being discovered in his
“peeping” activity. This reveals Gimpei’s ambivalent relationship with the female
objects he follows and sees.
When we rely on Hyodo Masanosuke’s reading, Gimpei follows Hisako and
Miyako because the three of them are on a quest to deceive people, because some
strange evil spirit governs their lives, which makes them inhabitants of makai.4 5
However, whereas Gimpei needs the gazes of Hisako and Miyako to affirm his troubled
self, to recognize himself in the gaze of the other, he knows that he could never find
himself in Machie’s gaze. If Hisako and Miyako reflect back parts of his fragmented
ego, Machie would reflect back a world Gimpei would be unable to embrace because he
has never been part of it. Whereas Miyako is able to read the image Machie reflects
back as the fantasy of that to which to aspire, Gimpei cannot read what that same image
441 have explored the contradictions of kaimami in Chapter 3.
4 5 Hyodo Masanosuke, Kawabata Yasunari ron, 328. Hyodo’s reading o f Hisako’s character opposes
Imamura Junko’s reading. Imamura identifies in rettdkan or inferiority complex one of the features that
makes one inhabit makai. Therefore, Hisako has maryoku or an evil/demonic charm that forces Gimpei to
follow her, but unlike Gimpei, Miyako, and old Arita, Hisako does not have an inferiority complex.
Accordingly, Imamura Junko argues that Hisako cannot be considered an inhabitant o f makai. Imamura
Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 176.
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stand for. Miyako sees the image of her desired self, while Gimpei resists knowledge of
the self.
Gimpei realizes that there are other people in Machie’s world, and that Mizuno
is one of them. Gimpei feels that there is somebody in Machie’s heart not only when he
sees Machie and Mizuno shaking hands, but also when he recalls the girl’s eyes, and the
light he saw shining in them:
It dawned on Gimpei that the girl’s dark eyes were liquid and shining with love.
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 despair (kimyo na dokei to zetsubo to wo Gimpei wa issho ni kanjita:
Gimpei felt both a strange longing and despair). He walked on sadly up the bank
and lay down in the new grass, staring up at the sky. [RT87/Z74]
This passage strengthens the evidence that Gimpei inhabits a world of fantasies
and nightmares, of reality and hallucination, whose lines constantly blur, leaving him
unsure of that for which to long, and that for which to despair. That light of love from
Machie’s eyes becomes reason for both. In the end, as Miyako, he longs for what the
girl is: purity, beauty, and innocence. He despairs at what he will never share with her -
love - and for what he has never been - innocent.
Tsuruta Kin’ya’s claims that in this passage the lake becomes a pure place and
to envision bathing in such a good place ascribes new meaning to Gimpei. The image of
the lake is presented as an eternal part of the land. The eternal lake also symbolizes a
Mother; it is beautiful and purifying. It also has elements of paradise, although it is a
strange heaven. This could be the origin of Gimpei’s longing. Gimpei’s despair, on the
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other hand, originates at the thought that in this purifying beautiful lake his father found
death.4 6
Tsuruta’s analysis of “purification” in this instance parallels his explanation of
Shimamura’s trip to the Land of Chijimi as an act of purification.4 7 Tsuruta’s rich
investigation concludes that, although Gimpei will always wish to bathe in the lake, the
reality will always be otherwise. Gimpei will never bathe in the lake, nor will he ever
catch a glimpse of his reflected image on its surface. He may have enjoyed in the past
the reflected image of Yayoi and him while walking on the lake’s banks, but Gimpei’s
pleasure lay in what Yayoi stood for in his life: a pseudo-Mother.
Even when caught between the prostitute and the florist, Gimpei does not see his
image reflected in the window/the wide lake. He does not see himself, which explains
why he needs the gaze of the other to ensure plenitude. Gimpei reportedly positions
himself before what he perceives as the returned gaze of the lake. He feels as if the lake,
an ambiguous place of longing and despair, constantly looks at him. Gimpei decides to
ignore the look, however, because of the pain the lake has caused in his life. Gimpei
may therefore be on a quest to reunite with the lake, to reunite with his mother and his
father; the lake, as image and symbol, comes to the rescue every time Gimpei is
confronted with the reality of his troubled self.
Imamura Junko argues that in the lake lies the secret of the demonic world, and
48 *
that the lake is a repository of desires. A symbol of the human world, the lake is more
4 6 Tsuruta Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari no geijutsu, 215-216.
4 7 Tsuruta Kin’ya, Kawabata Yasunari no geijutsu, 85-90.
4 8 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 178-79.
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than a signifier of the maternal, more than a cold cemetery, more than a source of
anguish, more than a repository of secrets. The lake is Gimpei’s unwilling companion,
his partner in crime. It is Gimpei’s curse in his quest for knowledge. It inhabits
Gimpei’s soul. If the solution to the riddle of his life lies at the bottom of the lake, all he
needs to do is look inside his heart to unveil his troubled secrets. When standing by the
lake or imagining it, Gimpei realizes how fragmented his ego is. The lake stands for
parts of himself that he needs to accept.
After embracing the idea of looking at Machie forever, Gimpei looks at Machie
and her boyfriend Mizuno:
Machie didn’t tell Mizuno about Gimpei. Indeed, she had already forgotten the
fact that a strange man had spoken to her. She could have seen Gimpei lying in
the new grass if she had looked hard enough, but even then she would probably
not have recognized him as the man who had spoken to her a little while before.
Gimpei, however, couldn’t help watching them both. . . . He rolled over on his
side so that he faced Machie and Mizuno. He cursed their happiness more than
he envied it. When he shut his eyes he saw the lovers drifting, engulfed in
flames, on waves that could not cool them. He took the vision as a sign that their
happiness would not last. [RT91-92/Z78]
Gimpei’s sight of Machie and Mizuno becomes reason for further despair. Such
despair may be caused by Gimpei’s realization that he is not part of Machie’s world,
and that he never will be. It may also stem from Gimpei’s sudden realization that
Machie is not as innocent as he would like her to be. Miyako and Gimpei may have
constructed the feelings of innocence that Machie exudes. They may have seen what
wanted to see, mis-reading the content of the object of their gaze. After all, does not
Machie deceive her family by seeing a boy of whom her parents do not approve? Does
she not have desires as well? She is in love with Mizuno, and she is developing carnal
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desires. On the other hand, she has neither maryoku/evil charm nor rettokan/mfehority
complex. She may be on her way to become an inhabitant of makai, but for now she
does not belong there; she does not belong to Gimpei’s or Miyako’s world. Gimpei’s
wish to see Machie and Mizuno’s relationship disintegrate may be dictated by an
unconscious desire to never count her among those who inhabit makai.
Gimpei’s kaimami of Machie and Mizuno becomes reason for another
hallucination. It starts with his hearing Yayoi’s voice commenting about his mother’s
beauty. At this point we learn about the death of Gimpei’s father whose body was found
in the lake. Yayoi, who belongs to Gimpei’s mother’s side of the family, has always
hated the way Gimpei’s father killed himself. According to Yayoi, his death brought
shame to their family. Gimpei thought about getting revenge for his father’s death, but
never did: “Gimpei felt there wasn’t much difference between lying in the new grass
after following Machie and hiding in the thicket by the lake in Yayoi’s village. The
same sadness flowed through his body” [RT95/Z81]. This sadness comes from realizing
of how much pain is in his life. It is the sad awareness of the ugliness that will always
follow him.
The reflection of wild cherry blossoms in the lake floated across his mind. The
lake lay like a wide mirror, without a ripple on its surface. Gimpei closed his
eyes and remembered his mother’s face. [RT96/Z81]
The lake is a mirror, but only in his mind. There are no reflections or ripples.
The surface is undisturbed. Gimpei’s mind is, for a fleeting moment, at peace too. That
lake in which he wanted to swim is peaceful, reflecting nothing. It helps him to recall
again his mother’s beautiful face.
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Gimpei’s attachment to his mother is no mystery. Yayoi always reminded him
of his mother, but as his pseudo-Mother she was also cruel. Gimpei’s mother was never
cruel. She was, to his eyes, as beautiful as Machie. With his eyes closed, Gimpei enjoys
the sight of his mother. For a moment his restless soul contemplates the goodness that
can arise from peace, but his tranquility is short lived. When Gimpei opens his eyes, he
realizes that Machie is gone, and that only Mizuno remains.
Gimpei returns to his apartment. The next day, however, he goes back to the
slope. Something inside him wants to see Machie again:
She had been almost undisturbed by his pursuit; how could he possibly harm her,
Gimpei thought to himself sorrowfully. It was like grieving after the flight of a
wild goose through the sky .... or watching the shining stream of time flow
past. His own life might end tomorrow, and even the girl would not be beautiful
forever. [RT112/Z94]
Gimpei hides in a ditch, knowing that passers-by will not see him.
The girl appeared at the foot of the slope with her dog. Spreading out his arms
and gripping the edges of the stones, Gimpei gradually raised his head. He felt
that the wall was about to crumble; his hands were trembling and his heart
thumped against the stones.
The girl was in the white sweater she had worn the day before, but she was
wearing a dark red skirt instead of jeans and her shoes were better too. The
white and ruby colors approached, floating amid the fresh green trees. When she
passed just above Gimpei’s head her hand was in front of his eyes. The skin was
fair, and on her arm more delicate still. Staring up at her lovely chin, Gimpei
closed his eyes with a cry of admiration. Then, seeing the boy, he muttered
aloud, “Ah, there he is.”
The student was waiting for her at the top of the bank. As Gimpei watched
from the bottom of the ditch about halfway down the slope, the two walked
away across the bank, seeming to glide over the green grass that hid their knees.
Gimpei waited until dark for the girl to return, but she did not come down the
slope. Perhaps the student had talked to her about the strange man he had seen
yesterday and they had avoided the road. [RT113-14/Z95]
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Once again, Gimpei is in a kaimami-mode. This time he is so close that he
almost feels her hand on his face. In this kaimami, her sight leaves him longing for
more. It is a kaimami that goes unfulfilled because the object of the gaze never
acknowledges the subject’s desire. The inappropriateness of Gimpei’s act of looking
makes the peeping less aestheticized. He remains at the top of that hill disillusioned at
having been deprived of the object of his gaze, a voyeur at the keyhole caught in
longing and despair: a voyeur only in/visible to himself. Robbed of his object of desire,
Gimpei goes to look for it.
Gimpei’s kaimami of Machie reveals a different side of this man on a quest for
self-knowledge. His attraction to her disturbingly emphasizes the ugliness of his life.
The sight of her leaves him longing for more. His longing goes unfulfilled, not only
because Machie will not return his gaze and acknowledge his dubious desire, but also
because the lack of visual confrontation brings about the sad realization that Gimpei
cannot inhabit her dreamlike world. Allowing him to escape the truth of his sad life, the
lake comes once again to the rescue to reveal an ego in despair struggling to become
visible.
(7) When the Pursuer Becomes the Pursued
Gimpei reads about a firefly catching party to be held not far from where he
gazes at Machie. On the eventful night of the Fireflies Festival, Gimpei is motivated to
find Machie again, to enjoy her beauty one more time. After the fireflies have been
released, Gimpei finally spots Machie:
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She was in a white cotton dress and was looking down at the moat with her
arms resting on the railing. Though the rows of people behind her allowed
Gimpei only a glimpse of her cheek and shoulders, he knew that he was not
mistaken. He took a few steps back, then slowly crept up behind her. The girl’s
attention was focussed on the tower, and there was little chance that she would
look round.
She wouldn’t have come alone, he thought, but the shock of seeing a boy
standing on her left struck him like a knife in the heart. It was a different boy.. . .
Her inconstancy startled him as much as if he had accidentally crushed a flower
underfoot. [RT138-39/Z115]
Machie’s description is once again highly aestheticized. To Gimpei’s eyes she
seems to be surrounded by an aura that makes her inaccessible to human beings,
especially him. Seeing her with a different boy troubles him. Gimpei must come to
terms with the reality of her being human, and of this world. Upon seeing her with
Keisuke, he feels that her heart is not trustworthy, that after all she is like other women.
Still, Gimpei needs to cling to the idea that Machie is a perfect, pure, and innocent
young girl. His longing for her, for all that she symbolizes, tames his rebellious ego.
Her beauty is the certainty for which he longs.
When he spots her in the crowd, he enjoys the sight of her profile from the
distance:
Her hair was tied up high in a loop and hung in beautiful, soft waves from the
knot. It had been arranged more casually when he had seen her on the slope
beneath the ginkgo trees. [RT139/Z115-116]
Gimpei learns that Mizuno is sick, which is why Machie is accompanied by
Keisuke, Miyako’s brother. He follows them and listens to their conversation. Gimpei
manages to attach a firefly cage to her belt:
Gimpei wondered what she would do when she discovered the cage hooked
onto her belt, and he thought of returning to the middle of the bridge to watch
her, hidden by the crowd. After all, it wasn’t as if he had slashed the girl’s back
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with a razor blade, so why should he behave like a criminal? Yet he started to
walk away from the bridge, aware that Machie had made him discover this
timidity in himself, or rather, rediscover it. Convinced in this essay in self-
defense, he moved dejectedly toward the ginkgo trees on the slope.
[RT141/Z117]
Gimpei remains attached to the object of his gaze. He only walks away from her
in order to admire her from the distance. Machie has made him rediscover his timidity,
his shyness in approaching women. The passage represents an attempt by Gimpei to
reclaim a small part of himself. He does not need Machie’s gaze to know that she
reflects back to him parts of his conflicted self that he had thought were forever lost.
Machie’s timidity becomes his own. Gimpei’s attempt to identify with parts of his
object of desire shows a tendency in his ego to re-adjust to the goodness and propriety
of social decorum. He enjoys the feeling that dances in his timid heart.
Gimpei walks to the slope away from Machie. He describes hanging the firefly
cage to her belt as if hanging his heart to her body [RT143/Z119]. For some
unexplained reason, he is attracted to the slope:
When Gimpei reached the foot of the bank, he tried to climb it up, but got
cramp in his leg and clung to the green grass. The grass was slightly damp. His
leg did not hurt so much that he had to drag it, but he crawled up on his hands
and knees. And as he moved, a baby crawled in the earth beneath him, matching
its palms against his as if across a mirror. They were the cold hands of the dead.
Bewildered, he remembered a brothel at some hot-spring resort... a mirror at the
bottom of the bathtub. [RT143/Z119]
The baby Gimpei sees in his hallucination is his own. Unsure whether the baby is dead
or alive, he believes “It was one reason why his life had been so uncertain” [RT144].
Gimpei recalls how the child was abandoned in front of the house where he stayed as a
student. He knew it was the child of a prostitute with whom he had had an affair, and he
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returned it to her. At one time, he “found himself staring into the child’s face”
[RT146/Z121], Gimpei is hallucinating:
The abandoned baby had been a girl, but strangely enough the sex of the
apparition that troubled Gimpei was uncertain. It was usually a dead child, but
when he was more normal he felt it was alive.
He thought his little girl had once hit him as hard as she could on the forehead
with her plump fist, and when he lowered his head, she had gone on pummeling
him. He wondered when it had happened, and decided that it must have been his
imagination. Even if the girl were still alive, she would never be as small as he
imagined, and nothing like that could occur now.
But the ghostly child that moved underground as Gimpei walked along the
road below the bank on the firefly-catching night was still a baby, and its sex
was indefinite; indeed, it had never been known. And as this thought sank in, the
child assumed the monstrous features of a noseless, mouthless dummy. [RT148-
49/Z123]
The hallucination presents us with an array of symbols, which are again parts of
Gimpei’s fragmented life. As a university student, Gimpei has had a relationship with a
prostitute that produced a baby. He has rejected his paternity and denied himself the
role of father. In doing so, he has mirrored his father’s behavior, whose death also
stands as rejection of his son Gimpei. The mirror in the bathtub reflects Gimpei’s image
from somewhere down below. The bathtub is meant to be filled with water, turning into
a miniature lake with a mirror lying on its bottom. Even in his vision, Gimpei falls short
of seeing himself reflected. Though Gimpei’s baby was a girl, the baby that dances in
his imagination is a sexless, noseless, and mouthless dummy. Gimpei seems to plunge
into the despair of uncertainty.
Gimpei blurs the present with the past, reality with fantasy. All that he has left
are hallucinations, creations of his troubled mind. He has few certainties in life, all
negative. Gimpei must acknowledge his failure as a father: he returned a baby who may
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have been his daughter. Gimpei has made the same mistake as his father: he has
abandoned his child. Gimpei feels that he has failed as a teacher. The impropriety of his
relationship with Hisako has made him lose his job. He feels a failure as a son. He was
unable to prevent his father’s death and he never got revenge for it. As for his beautiful
mother, he feels that he was never able to fill the place in her heart that his father left
vacant.
In order to overcome these feelings of failure Gimpei creates hallucinations to
which he retreats any time reality becomes unbearable. These hallucinations reflect
back fragmented images of who he is, or who he used to be. Although never provided
with a glimpse of his future, how could it be different from his present or past?
Gimpei is a master at distorting reality. He is haunted by the images of his
mother’s beauty, his father’s ugliness, the deformity of his feet, and the beauty of
Yayoi’s feet [RT150/Z123-24]. Gimpei feels that “It was his feet, as ugly as beast’s,
that had made the baby follow him, crawling underneath the bank” [RT150/Z124]. He
believes that he should have looked at the feet of the baby once abandoned on his
doorstep: if they were ugly it would mean that it was his baby. Baby’s feet are always
lovely and soft, he reflects, and they harden “as they cross the swamps and rocks and
thombushes of this world” [RT150-51/Z124].
Gimpei decides to abandon his fantasies and to refocus on Machie and his
longing for her. Somehow, he finds himself in passages below Ueno Station, in that
same place where Hisako had told him she would look for him [RT151]. Gimpei meets
a male prostitute:
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The prostitute (dansho) made eyes at him as they silently exchanged glances
(kao o miawasete mo, dansho wa nan to mo iwanaide irome wo tsukatta).
[RT152/Z125]
The male prostitute’s gaze is an invitation (irome o tsukau). Gimpei, however,
ignores it. He could follow the male prostitute, but he does not. As Gimpei leaves Ueno
Station, he walks in the backstreet:
He was thinking about the double nature of homosexuals (dansho no seibetsu)
when he noticed a woman wearing rubber boots, dressed rather like a man in
faded black pants and a filthy white blouse that seemed shrunk from washing.
Her breasts were flat, her yellowish face was sunburned, and she wore no
makeup. Gimpei glanced round. The woman seemed up to something and,
coming closer, began following him (surechigau toki kara imi arigeta onna wa
Gimpei ni yottekita. Ato o tsukete kita). Gimpei, whose experience in chasing
women had made him unusually acute in the matter, found himself unable to
discover why she was following him (ushiro me ga ikiiki to shite kita. Shikashi,
onna ga nan no tame ni ato o tsukete kuru no ka wa, Gimpei no ushiro no me o
wakarikaneta). [RT153/Z126]
Gimpei suddenly turns into the followed one, into the object of an ugly woman’s
gaze. Although he has given himself time to look at her and realizes that she is at best
Machie’s antithesis, he has inadvertently put in motion the dynamics of the chase with
which he is so familiar. His look has been misread, and the ugly woman has taken it as
an invitation to follow/to gaze. Gimpei and the woman exchange words questioning
who started their interaction. She accuses him of looking at her, thereby causing her to
follow him. 4 9 He replies by saying that he just looked, a disinterested look
[RT154/Z126-27]. Gimpei once again looks at her:
Her lips were unhealthily dark, without a trace of lipstick, and one gold-capped
tooth was showing. It was difficult to say how old she was, but she was probably
a little under forty. Her slit eyes were watchful, dry, like a man’s, and glinted
with cunning; one eye, moreover, was smaller than the other. The skin of her
4 9 Just as when Miyako looked at Gimpei first, he decided to follow her.
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sunburned face was hard. Gimpei sensed a certain danger about her. [RT154-
55/Z127]
Dressed like a man, her eyes also resemble men’s eyes. Her presence pollutes
the beautiful image of M achie that lingers in his mind. The color white, M achie’s color,
is turned into a filthy white. Machie’s perfect skin is forgotten at the sight of the
woman’s sunburned face. The woman, her ugliness and her sexual ambivalence, follow
Gimpei. In need of beauty, Gimpei recognizes that he would never follow a woman so
ugly, so filthy:
He found it hard to believe that in one single night he had seen Machie at the
firefly-catching, been pursued by the vision of the baby on the bank, and was
now drinking with a woman he had met entirely by chance. Perhaps it was her
ugliness that made it possible. To have seen Machie by the moat was a beautiful
dream, but this ugly woman in a cheap restaurant was real. Yet drinking with
this “reality” seemed at the same time a way to reach the girl in the dream. The
uglier the woman, the better the vision. Her ugliness brought Machie’s face into
view. [RT157/Z129]
The reality of this woman’s ugliness accentuates the fantasy of Machie’s beauty.
Gimpei retreats to the fantasy of Machie’s innocence and purity in order to escape the
physical closeness of the real. He has a desperate need to see the woman’s feet
[RT157/Z130]. If they are ugly feet, he knows he has found his match. Gimpei and the
woman leave the bar together. They are headed to her place. The image of being with
her in bed makes him feel like vomiting [RT159/Z131]. Although he follows her to a
cheap hotel, he runs away. She hits him in the ankle with a stone [RT160/Z131-132].
For the first time Gimpei has seen himself. He has caught a glimpse of his moral
and physical ugliness in the woman by his side. Had he learned that she really had ugly
feet, it would have heightened his recognition. Afraid of uncovering the ugliness of her
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285
feet, which would complete her physical degradation, Gimpei runs away. He knows that
he is similar to her. She knows the dynamics of the chase. She is ugly. She is real. To
run away from her means to run away from himself.
(7) Conclusion
In the gaze of the Other/the ugly woman Gimpei finally sees the image of
himself. Emotionally unable to confront himself, he runs away from the woman. The
mutual gaze has accomplished one of its premises: the subject has seen himself from the
place of the other. Too afraid to embrace the image that the other reflects back, Gimpei
escapes. Made visible by the outward gender ambivalent look of the other, Gimpei
denies his inward gaze the chance to embrace his true image. Comfortable with his
status as man at the margins of in/visibility, Gimpei retreats to the secret world of his
hallucinations. Only the lake, or its image as fantasmata, can further reinforce his
conflicting need to become fully visible to himself. Gimpei is visible to the world; he
has achieved his goal of being seen by the Other, but he cannot become visible to
himself. The reciprocal/mutual gaze may have strengthened Gimpei’s motivation to
consciously use his inward gaze, but he will postpone the moment of self-knowledge.
As spectacle of the world, Gimpei resists becoming a spectacle to himself, to see
himself from all directions, and to gaze at his visibility.
By denying himself a look inside himself (by shutting off his inward gaze),
Gimpei allows only his outward gaze to be active. His outward gaze needs to look for/at
the Other (women), which can only guarantee mis-recognition and further pain. The
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self-knowledge promised by the mutual gaze only strengthens the reality of one’s own
invisibility. As much as Gimpei struggles “to be seen,” he will never become fully
visible to himself.
The female gaze in this text is a site of resistance to knowledge. Moreover,
whenever this type of gaze reflects back images of the true self Kawabata manipulates
its gender and presents us with women resembling men or as looking at objects the way
men do. Kawabata still describes men as unable to fully see themselves from the field of
vision of the female other and perpetuate the fantasy of the self in the images reflected
to them.
This novel stands as a further remainder of the male agony to be caught in the
line of vision of women as they also struggle to resist the true image of the self a pair of
female eyes may reflect. In order to facilitate the process of being seen by the female
gaze, in Sleeping Beauties Kawabata creates a somehow comfortable space from where
his male protagonists can stare undisturbed at their female objects as they also
anticipate the fear of becoming the objects of the female gaze. In Sleeping Beauties the
female gaze is a troubling site of contestation as women’s eyes are shut to prevent
returning the gaze. However, it is the sleeping beauties’ lacanian gaze that challenges
the male protagonist to recognize his status as object of the gaze.
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Chapter Six
Questioning the Predominance of the Male Gaze.
Anticipating the Female Gaze in House o f the Sleeping Beauties
(1) Introduction
The structure of the male and female gaze in Sleeping Beauties is the most
intriguing among Kawabata’s novels. Although the male gaze appears dominant, as if
women have been denied the power to respond to the passive objectification of the male
gaze, I question such characterization. Although Kawabata may have structured the
story in such a way as to make the male characters “comfortable” at the idea of not
being seen by these young women, the truth is that the women look back at the men.
In their quest for self-knowledge (narcissistic endeavor), the men may see only
what they can emotionally accept. By shutting the women’s eyes, Kawabata may seem
to be gender-biased. By allowing these women to speak in a voice that belongs to
memories of people and times now past, however, Kawabata enriches vision as topos of
literary investigation. He thus allows us a peek into distraught old men’s souls and the
unconscious maidens lying by their side. In Sleeping Beauties Kawabata constructs a
fantasy of vision, once again masterfully blurring the line between objects and subjects
of the gendered gaze.
In Sleeping Beauties old men visit the house of forbidden pleasures because the
young maidens assigned to them by the lady of the inn are asleep, physically unable to
look at them, unable to recognize them as men sleeping by their side. The young naked
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girls’ eyes are artificially shut to ensure the old men’s ultimate fantasy: the pleasure of
the physical presence and closeness of beauty. Behind the women’s eyelids rests an
intimate world that the old men are prevented from inhabiting. Not only are the men
stopped by nature from physically penetrating the women’s bodies, but they are also
denied a look into the depths of the young women’s souls through their eyes.
Whereas in The Lake Gimpei needs the eyes of his objects directed to him in
order to acknowledge his own presence in the world, in Sleeping Beauties the old men
consciously avoid visual confrontation, renouncing the emotional implications of the
mutual gaze. The old men have no apparent need to reflect their aged and decayed
selves in the eyes of the young girls. By shutting their eyes, Kawabata seemingly makes
of the young virgins objects to be seen (musume ga sukkari nagamerareru, S20-
21/Z143).1
The physical gaze of the sleeping beauties never appears in the text. These
young girls never open their eyes and challenge the male gaze. However, as
embodiments of objet a it is their lacanian gaze that mostly unsettles the male
protagonist’s consciousness. Although their eyes are shut, the young girls stare back at
their customers with their beauty. Under the male gaze, the girls reinvent the desire they
embody, and from such site they return the male gaze.
1 “S” stands for E. Seidensticker’s translation of Sleeping Beauties (1969) followed by the page number,
and “Z” stands for Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 18, followed by the page number.
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(2) The Novella
Published in seventeen installments in the literary magazine Shincho between
January 1960 and November 1961,2 Sleeping Beauties tells the story of an old man
Eguchi, and his five visits to an inn by the seaside. In this “brothel,” or “secret house of
assignment,” old men who have lost the ability to perform sexually spend their nights
lying by sleeping young naked girls who have been heavily drugged. The girls do not
get to know their clients, which is one of the main concepts behind the enterprise. Old
men get to enjoy the physical presence of virgins without the girls ever knowing them.
Eguchi does not fit the mold of the model client because he has not lost his
ability to perform sexually yet. During his five visits, Eguchi spends the night with a
total of six girls. On the occasion of his fifth visit, he is presented with two sleeping
beauties. In the middle of the night, Eguchi wakes up to realize that one of them has
died: “He heard an automobile pulling away, probably with the dark girl’s body. Was
she being taken to the dubious inn to which old Fukura had been taken?” [S99/Z228]4
As Donald Keen writes,
The naked girls cannot be distinguished one from the other by dress, jewelry,
speech, or the other external features that normally allow us to form opinions
about a person’s background and character, yet they all remain distinct in the
readers’ memory, partly because of the memories each woman arouses in
Eguchi.5
2 Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu volume 18, pp. 586-87.
3 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 181; Donald Keene, “Kawabata
Yasunari,” 835.
4 The serialized version of the novel ended with the sentence “He heard an automobile pulling away,
probably with the dark girl’s body.” In its book form, Kawabata added the last sentence. Kawabata
Yasunari Zenshu, volume 18, pp. 586-87.
5 Donald Keene, “Kawabata Yasunari,” 836.
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Each girl stirs Eguchi’s consciousness and his memories. Each girl embodies one of his
desires. Each girl will come across as a representation of Eguchi’s inner self.
(3) Scholarship on Sleeping Beauties
Although the text may be read as an exercise in the strengthening of narcissistic
egos (“what draws Eguchi back to his strange ‘relationship’ with the sleeping girls,
unsatisfactory as it is in other respects, is the attraction of self-knowledge - always an
irresistible attraction for the narcissistic”),6 the attraction of this dubious inn for the men
has much to do with what they see when they look at the women, and with what the
women reflect back.7 To state that the women “fulfill their roles as mirrors,” though, is
to unveil only one side of the story,8 especially considering how alienating it can be to
see one’s own image reflected in a mirror and not recognize it.9 Previous scholarship in
Japanese and English has focused mostly on assigning meaning to the symbolic
representations of the sleeping beauties. The sleeping beauties remain ambivalent, being
6 Roy Starrs, Soundings in Time, 198-99.
7 “For the old man’s series of visit to the house of sleeping beauties is a series o f confrontations with
himself, a set of experiments in self-analysis in which his identity is very much at issue. What could force
one to be more intensely introspective than a meeting at which the other person is only a presence, a body,
and where one’s musings, questions, charges are met only with silence of the slight movement of a hand?
At such a time any “dialogue” is self-generated, self-sustained, and ultimately self-directed. And what,
for an old man, could more intensify the confrontation than to have that other person be a kind of
polarizing opposite, a soft, beautiful, and silent young woman? Such a meeting would heighten memories,
call forth old sensations, and force a measurement of oneself in relation to their presence and the present
moment.” Arthur G. Kimball, “The Last Extremity,” in Crisis in Identity and Contemporary Japanese
Novels (Rutland and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1973), 98-99.
8 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 187.
9 This marks a return to The Mirror Stage: “The imaginary identification of the mirror stage is formative
and enabling but also deeply alienating. Paradoxically, the subject is estranged from itself in the very
moment in which it achieves a measure of self-representation. Alienation is not merely an effect of by
product of the imaginary identification, it is its very essence.” Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher,
141.
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at once virgins and prostitutes.1 0 Accordingly, to the old men’s eyes they are (1) objects
of desire (although not necessarily sexual desire); (2) compassionate Buddhas; (3)
occasions to remember the past; and (4) Mother-figures.1 1
Mizenko argues that, to the old customers visiting this inn, the women assume
different roles. These men ascribe to them meaning according to what they want to see.
Eguchi, for example,
Create(s) personal lives for these living beings, and what ensues is a kind of
catalog of cliches of the representation of women, of what is connoted by
qualities of skin - lightness or darkness, smoothness or roughness, dryness or
oiliness - or hair, scent, taste (salty, sweet), size, etc. There is virtually no clue
as to whether Eguchi’s constructions can be confirmed independently. What
Eguchi is creating is as much a self-representation as anything else.1 2
Mizuta Lippit points out how Eguchi’s presence at the inn projects him into the
realm of eros and death:
He [Eguchi] finds lying down next to sleeping virgin girls like sleeping with
dolls. They are like dead bodies, but are curiously the essence of life as well.
Eguchi feels that sleep is, paradoxically, life itself. Furthermore, he thinks that
sleeping with the sleeping beauties is like sleeping with a secret Buddha. The
girls are ominously silent, devoid of human feeling and traces of life, but
mysteriously suggest a secret knowledge which he faintly feels he had in the
past. Through the girls, Eguchi is led into the world of memory and oblivion
buried deep in his subconscious, there to regain the secret truth of life; yet this
1 ^
world of oblivion and memory, the world of dream, is also the world of death.
The emphasis remains on the women as unconscious beings whose lives are constructed
by old men’s fantasies. These girls’ body parts are “detached from the whole and
1 0 Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari: sono enkinho, 240.
1 1 Shigematsu Yasuo, “Nemureru Bijo no genshi no erosu,” Kokubungaku 32, no. 15 (December 1987):
88; Imamura Junko, “Nemureru Bijo - ningen no kongen e no sokyu,” Kokubungaku 62, no. 4 (1997):
122; Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari: sono enkinho, 259-60; Mita Hideaki, Hankindai no bungaku, 392-93.
1 2 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project o f Kawabata Yasunari,” 186-87.
1 3 Noriko Mizuta Lippit, “Kawabata’s Dilettante Heroes,” 141.
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fetishized. Rendered into pieces, the female body poses no threat to the totality of the
male.”1 4
In the specific case of Eguchi, Hara reads these women as “catalysts,” whose
function is to bring together different aspects of Eguchi’s past: they evoke feelings
toward the maternal, and memories of women in his past, especially women he knew
before he got married. 1 5 These women stimulate hallucinations which are then
permeated by Eguchi’s reflections.1 6
Roy Starrs argues that
The girls confront him [Eguchi] like blank walls; the experience which seemed
pleasant on a physical level begins to torment him on a psychological level. The
‘blank surface’ of the girls soon becomes another of those dangerous ‘mirrors of
the heart’ . . . . , reflecting back to old Eguchi all that troubles him now and in
the past. In particular, the girl lying asleep beside him, being an ‘absent
presence’ herself, and so incapable of engaging him in a present relationship,
has the effect of ‘reawakening’ his past relationships with other women.1 7
These girls speak only words that the old men want to hear, in a language that is of the
old men’s making. As Sandra Buckley also points out,
The constant lingering of the male gaze repeatedly disrupts the story to the point
where there is almost no progression. . . . As [EJguchi’s own impotency grows
increasingly imminent, his scopophilic practice disrupts and freezes the
progression of the narrative. The power of the male to inscribe the life of the
female is failing at both the level of discourse and diegesis.1 8
What remains at the core of such investigation is also the problem of the
sleeping beauties’ apparent eroticism which, according to Shigematsu Yasuo, is a
1 4 Sandra Buckley, “Kawabata Yasunari’s Poetics of Fragmentation,” 448.
1 5 Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari: sono enkinho, 255-60.
1 6 Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari: sono enkinho, 256.
1 7 Roy Starrs, Soundings in Time, 196-97.
1 8 Sandra Buckley, “Kawabata Yasunari’s Poetics of Fragmentation,” 449.
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hallucination (genshi).1 9 To account for the girls’ eroticism as hallucination, we are
projected once again into the realms of fantasy and desire, and in particular into the
questioning of what the men really see. Why does Eguchi experience “sadness” when
lying by somebody with closed eyes who does not acknowledge his presence?2 0
Because the sleeping beauties embody the fantasy of eros, of a time now past when the
old men could still live up to their masculinity.
Kawamura Masatoshi argues that just as Snow Country opens with a tunnel and
the sad voice of a woman, Sleeping Beauties opens with Eguchi going through “the
cedar door, some three feet wide,” and “behind the crimson velvet curtains,” where
91
there is an illusionary world of ambivalent pleasures and beautiful women. It is a
world, however, where darkness and silence prevail: women do not have a voice. As
Mizuta Lippit writes,
Cut off from the outside world, the house is a suitable entryway to man’s inner
world; it is buried in the darkness of the outer world, yet inside, one always
hears the sound of the sea. The dark, closed, “secret” room buried in the
universal darkness of the outer world is a place for experiencing directly the
essence of life itself, the essence of eros. The house suggests man’s
subconscious existing in the midst of primordial nothingness, of the primordial
sea, the source of life-giving force and of death.2 2
The old men are physically prevented from penetrating these women, but their physical
entry into the secret room of this inn can be compared to the sexual act. The old men,
shadows of their past selves, are in this way sucked into a feminine world that is a male
construct.
1 9 Shigematsu Yasuo, “Nemureru bijo no genshi no erosu,” 86-87.
2 0 Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari: sono enkinho, 257-58.
2 1 Kawamura Masatoshi, “Nemureru Bijo,” Kokubungaku 56, no. 9 (1991): 112.
2 2 Noriko Mizuta Lippit, “Kawabata’s Dilettante Heroes,” 141.
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Voicing her dislike of Kawabata’s literature, Sandra Buckley argues that in
Sleeping Beauties Kawabata provides us with a further example of a narrative device
meant to neutralize the threat posed by the female: the male author will “dismember”
the female body, and will scatter the dismembered female throughout the narrative:
The fetishized and dismembered female does not speak for herself. She is
spoken into a fragmentary existence. She remains always the bearer of meaning
not the maker of meaning. She is reduced to the signifier of the male other in a
symbolic order which supports the fantasies, obsessions and desires of the
male.2 3
In contrast to previous readings, my interpretation of the sleeping beauties as
embodiments of objet a leads to a different conclusion. My premise is that Eguchi feels
as if each and every body part of these sleeping beauties looks back at him, returning a
gaze that he fails to acknowledge. As objet a, as embodiments of the lacanian gaze, as
elements of the Real, as object-cause of desire, the sleeping beauties come across as
more than body parts scattered throughout a novel written by a man. As markers of
meaning, as active participants in the construction of an unorthodox aesthetic of vision,
the sleeping beauties as subjects of the lacanian gaze challenge the conclusion of those
critics who see in Kawabata’s text nothing more than a survey of the male scopophilic
gaze and the male narcissistic desire.
2 3 Sandra Buckley, “Kawabata Yasunari’s Poetics of Fragmentation,” 446.
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(4) “Musume ga me o samasu no ka: What If The Young Girl Were To
Open Her Eyes?”2 4
In this study of Sleeping Beauties I highlight (1) how the sleeping beauties
embody objet a, and (2) the implications of Eguchi’s anticipation of the female gaze.
What makes the sleeping beauties most intriguing is their embodiment of all the
contradictions of objet a, or object of desire. In order to understand Lacan’s equation of
objet a to the gaze, we must examine Lacan’s challenging account of what objet a is
• 9 S •
and is not. This m turn will allow us to address the issue of Eguchi’s need to anticipate
the female gaze.
Considering that objet a is related to the concept of desire, we must start with a
definition of the lacanian concept of desire, and move then to an explanation of objet a
in the context of Sleeping Beauties. For this purpose, I rely on The Columbia Dictionary
o f Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism, which under the entry “Desire” provides the
following definition:
Lacanians distinguish between need, which can be satisfied by the acquisition of
a specific object, and demand, which is addressed to another and seeks
reciprocity. The former is ultimately biological, whereas the latter is derived
from phenomenological and Hegelian thought. Although desire involves both of
these simpler concepts, it cannot be reduced to either, but is directed toward the
fantasy constructions that govern endless search for a satisfactory object in the
world, a search that begins with the castration complex.
2 4 S23/Z145
2 5 “The gaze may contain itself the objet a of the Lacanian algebra where the subject falls, and what
specifies the scopic field and engenders the satisfaction proper to it is the fact that, for structural reasons,
the fall of the subject always remains unperceived, for it is reduced to zero. In so far as the gaze, qua
objet a, may come to symbolize this central lack expressed in the phenomenon of castration, and in so far
as it is an objet a reduced, of its nature, to a punctiform, evanescent function, it leaves the subject in
ignorance as to what there is beyond the appearance.” Jacques Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts o f
Psychoanalysis, 76-77.
2 6 Joseph Childers & Gary Hentzi, eds., The Columbia Dictionary, 77-78.
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The search, however, relates also to objet a:
The French word objet means ‘object,’ and the petit a is the ‘small a’ in the
word autre (other), which is distinguished from autre written with a capital A.
This lesser other refers to the object o f desire or, more precisely, to
representations of those primordial forms that offer the subject an image
inseparable from his or her desire. Thus, the objet petit a is not the object itself
(such as the breast) but an image of that object detached from the whole form of
the mother’s body, which had fully occupied the infant’s world in the earliest
stages of life. After the Mirror Stage, however, these signifiers are repressed and
become unconscious fantasies that seem to promise a return to that lost world of
wholeness and union. . . . Therefore, since the objet petit a is a signifier without
a signified, Lacan claimed that it should be given no fixed definition. Instead,
like any other signifier, it must be understood by its context, where it functions
as an emblem of the absence that desire seeks perpetually to fill.2 7
When we look at Lacan’s writings, we see that Lacan offers the following as
emblems of objet a: “the mamilla, faeces, the phallus (imaginary object), the urinary
flow. (An unthinkable list, if one adds, as I do, the phoneme, the gaze, the voice - the
nothing.)”2 8 Although objet a is part of the subject and belongs to the subject, it is also
elusive to the subject. Objet a always presents itself somewhere outside the subject, and
the subject fails to catch it, or recognize it. Richard Boothby points to the liminality of
objet a when he writes that objet a “is strangely suspended between the subject and the
other, belonging to both and neither. It simultaneously designates what is most other in
the Other, yet is intimately bound up with the subject itself.”2 9
Lacan writes that objet a “is a small part of the subject that detaches itself from
him while still remaining his, still retained.”3 0 He also writes that
2 7 Joseph Childers & Gary Hentzi, eds., The Columbia Dictionary, 213.
2 8 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, 315.
2 9 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 243.
3 0 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis 62.
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The objet a is something from which the subject, in order to constitute itself, has
separated itself off as organ. This serves as a symbol of the lack, that is to say, of
the phallus, not as such, but in so far as it is lacking. It must, therefore, be an
object that is, firstly, separable and, secondly, that has some relation to the
lack.3 1
Boothby also points at how objet a is liminal in a second sense: “it participates
in all three of Lacan’s fundamental categories of imaginary, symbolic, and real, yet
belongs exclusively to none of them. It is an object that finds its most primitive
representatives in the imaginary, as clearly imaged parts of the body (the breast, the
feces...), and yet is intended by Lacan to mark the limit of what is imaginable.”3 2 As
Lacan writes, objet a “is non-specular, it is not graspable in the image.” As much as
objet a, just like the Real, is the impossible to say and defies any kind of representation,
in the specific case of Sleeping Beauties, objet a could be located in Eguchi’s memories
as they are stirred by the sight of the young girls’ lips, breasts, or hair. In this
convoluted lacanian formula, the girls’ body parts defy the image of Eguchi’s desires.
These fragmented females are symbols of Eguchi’s “lack,” and they embody
“something” from which Eguchi has separated in order to constitute himself as subject.
Eguchi’s desire is not necessarily for the girls’ breasts per se, as much as it is for that
detached memory of the “breast” as lack. Such desire is also meant to fill the void left
by these women when they walked out of his life.
Lacan describes objet a as the “object-cause” of desire, a process which may
endanger the constitution of the subject itself. In other words, in this lacanian concept
3 1 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 103.
3 2 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 243.
3 3 Jacques Lacan, “Le Seminaire, Livre X, L’Angoisse,” Unpublished translation by Cormac Gallagher:
Session 5-22-63, cited in Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 243.
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the object of desire is present even before there is a subject who desires. For example,
the Mother as object of the child’s desire exists even before the subject/her baby is
bom: “By virtue of its paradoxical constitution the objet a can only be described
topologically as the perpetually absent locus around which the drives revolve.”3 4 As far
as the scopic drive is concerned, we are at the level of desire, “of the desire of the
•5 c
Other.” Eguchi’s sexual and scopic drives/desires, for example, may revolve around
the sleeping beauties as objet a. As embodiments of objet a, however, the young
sleeping beauties in Sleeping Beauties stand also for the fantasy of what Eguchi never
had and never will have, the reality of what he lost before he could ever obtain. Because
it is impossible to imagine, objet a “functions to keep the phantasy open to its ultimate
destination in the real of desire.”3 6
Objet a embodies a perfect contradiction; it is
at once impossible to possess and impossible to live without. . . . Both inner and
outer, subjective and objective, it is at every point both/and and neither/nor. . . .
The objet a is the point at which the subject assumes a certain paradoxical
consistency precisely by virtues of marking the impossibility of coincidence of
the subject with itself.3 7
The genesis of desire, however, is strictly related to the negative feature of objet
a, a negativity linked to objet a as incarnation of lack. Lacan explained this concept in
his seminar on “Anxiety,” where he addressed the dilemma of a “cedable object” in
each stage of the child’s sexual development. Lacan writes that in each of these stages,
the child “cedes” something (e.g. the breast, or the feces). To Lacan the focus must be
3 4 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 244.
3 5 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 104.
3 6 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 275. See also Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental
Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 263-276.
3 7 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 245.
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on this act of “ceding” per se, because it is in the “ceding” that the subject and its desire
originate. Lacan offers a twist on his discussion of the weaning process, which in
Freudian theory is seen as the child separating from the body of the mother under the
threat of castration. In Lacan’s theory, “it is not essentially true that the child is weaned:
he weans himself, he detaches himself from the breast, he plays . . . at detaching himself
•3 0
from this breast and taking it up again.” Therefore, according to Boothby’s
explanation of Lacan’s “ceding”, weaning can be compared to
a primordial act of sacrifice in which the child in some sense offers the breast to
the mother. Indeed, in the light of Lacan’s notion of the cedable object, we are
led to suppose that the entirety of the world has its origin in an activity of
subjective ceding or yielding. Ultimately, the world itself is an object of
sacrifice.3 9
In Sleeping Beauties, Eguchi’s desire for the mother reveals his inability to
completely “cede” her, and explains the genesis of Eguchi’s desire as an interrupted
process never brought to an end. Unable to fulfill his role as object of his mother’s
desire, but made subject by his mother’s desire for him, Eguchi struggles to
acknowledge the content and depth of his desire, and constantly blurs the line between
himself as subject and as Other, between himself as subject and as object of the Other’s
desire.
From Lacan’s writings, we understand that it is in order to avoid anxiety that the
object is ceded: “The function of anxiety is prior to this ceding of the object.”4 0 What
this means is that Lacan’s argument is an in/subversion of the psychoanalytical concept
3 8 Jacques Lacan, “L’Angoisse”: 7-3-63, cited in Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 245.
3 9 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 246.
4 0 Jacques Lacan, “L’Angoisse,” 7-3-63, cited in Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 246.
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300
that explains loss as the cause of anxiety. In the lacanian formula the subject’s anxiety
precedes the loss of the object, and it is the subject’s anxiety over the loss of the object
that leads him to cede the object; to avoid anxiety, the object is given up. Therefore, the
object is ceded in order to suppress anxiety, because according to Lacan anxiety “is
linked to the fact that I do not know what object I am for the desire of the Other.”4 1
Lacan explains the function of the cedable object “as a separable fragment carrying in a
way primitively something of the identity of the body which antecedes the body itself as
regards the constitution of the subject.”4 2 In other words, the child does not “detach the
breast from its own body, as if amputating one part in order to preserve the whole, but
rather comes to experience itself as a body for the first time with the separation or
ceding of the breast.”4 3 It is in that very moment the object is ceded/given up that the
subject emerges:
This primitive mythical subject who is posed at the beginning as having to
constitute himself in the confrontation, [is] that [which] we never grasp - and for
good reason - because the [little] a has preceded him, and because it is in a way
itself marked by this primitive substitution, that it has to re-emerge beyond.4 4
In Sleeping Beauties Eguchi goes through this process twice; the first time when
he “cedes” his mother’s breast, and the second time when he “cedes” his mother totally
to death. Eguchi, in other words, constructs his subjectivity twice. In his formative stage
and when his mother dies he is a desiring subject without a definite desiring object,
questioning his status as desired object of the subject/Other’s desire. “Giving up” the
object of his subjective desire, Eguchi spends his life trying to reposition himself
4 1 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 246.
4 2 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 246.
4 3 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 246.
4 4 Jacques Lacan, “L’Angoisse,” 6-26-63, cited in Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 247.
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according to those losses (both the breast and the Mother), and coping with the lack of
both. Eguchi pursues the shape and content of the object of his desire, an objet a
without boundaries, without certainties, and impossible to see, to say, or to imagine.
It is in this “ceding” that desires originate. The object is given up so that the
subject can develop a desire for it. As Lacan writes,
The first developmental form of desire is thus and as such akin to the order of
inhibition. When desire appears for the first time, it opposes itself to the very act
through which its originality as desire is introduced.4 5
In other words, the subject comes to being as a sort of remainder, as “an effect of the
negative space hollowed out in the ceding of the object. As objet a, this object is not
identical with the subject, but is a kind of negative stand-in for it.”4 6 Thus, “to say that
the objet a is a substitute for the subject is also to insist on some separation between
them.. . . The subject must cede the object in order not to cede on its desire.”4 7
The old men embrace the idea that the women will not look at them, but reality
proves otherwise, as Eguchi realizes. The sleeping beauties as objects to be seen can be
compared to the sardine-can that Lacan spotted floating on the water’s surface while
with some fishermen. When one fisherman pointed out to Lacan that although Lacan
could see the sardine-can, the sardine-can did not see him, Lacan argued that that
sardine-can
was looking at me, all the same. It was looking at me at the level of the point of
light, the point at which everything that looks at me is situated.. . . That which is
light looks at me, and by means of that light in the depths of my eye, something
is painted - something that is not simply a constructed relation, the object on
4 5 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 247.
4 6 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 248.
4 7 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 248.
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which the philosopher lingers - but something that is an impression, the
shimmering of a surface that is not, in advance, situated for me in its distance.
This is something that introduces what was elided in the geometrical relation -
the depth of the field, with all its ambiguity and variability, which is in no way
mastered by me. It is rather it that grasps me, solicits me at every moment.4 8
Eguchi does not need the open eyes of the young girls in order to feel under
the/their gaze 4 9 When we embrace Lacan’s theory that objet a is the gaze, we dismiss
the Sartrean dichotomy that draws a border between passive objects and active subjects
of the gaze. From a Sartrian perspective, were the girls to open their eyes, their look
would threaten the subject’s consciousness, just as the subject would feel threatened
simply by seeing the girl’s body move, or by perceiving a movement of her eyelids. A
movement of her hand, a deep sigh, and words from her mouth: all of these could
anticipate her gaze. The Sartrean gaze, in fact, has less to do with sight than with “the
sound of rustling leaves, suddenly heard while out hunting, to a footstep heard in a
corridor,” announcing that somebody is out there.5 0 Lacan explains this Sartrean
concept when he writes that
The gaze in question must on no account be confused with the fact, for example,
of seeing his eyes. I can feel myself under the gaze of someone whose eyes I do
not even see, not even discern. All that is necessary is for something to signify
to me that there may be others there. This window, if it gets a bit dark, and if I
have reasons for thinking that there is someone behind it, is straightway a
gaze.5 1
Whereas for Sartre his theory of the look is “dual” in that we have (1) the gazing
subject and (2) the object of the gaze, Lacan’s theory of the gaze is “triadic:”
4 8 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 95-96.
491 have discussed the Lacanian difference between the Eye and the Gaze in Chapter 1.
5 0 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 84.
5 1 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar o f Jacques Lacan, Book I, Freud’ s Papers on Technique, 1953-1954,
Jacques-Alain Miller, ed., trans. John Forrester (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1988), 215.
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303
There is never a simple duplicity of terms. It is not only that I see the other, I see
him seeing me, which implicates the third term, namely that he knows that I see
him. The circle is closed. There are always three terms in the structure, even if
these three terms are not explicitly present.5 2
Therefore, Lacan’s theory o f the gaze includes (1) the seeing subject, (2) the seen object,
and (3) the gaze. As Boothby explains, by assigning the act of seeing to a third position
off the axis of seer and seen, “Lacan succeeds in revealing the internal complexity of
the scopic drive. The third position, itself invisible yet functioning continually to
reenergize the subject’s investment in the object of sight, is none other that the objet
a.”5 3 Just as Lacan writes,
Generally speaking, the relation between the gaze and what one wishes to see
involves a lure. The subject is presented as other than he is, and what one shows
him is not what he wishes to see. It is in this way that the eye may function as
objet a, that is to say, at the level of the lack.5 4
Boothby offers the example of the voyeur, who aroused by the scopic drive “is most
completely reclaimed by the force of the drive precisely when he fails to see what he is
looking for.” This means that as a search for objet a, an object that by its own definition
cannot be given, “the scopic drive is . . . reinforced and recreated at the moment when it
appears to draw closest to its objective, yet fails to grasp it. It is as if this very failure is
the evidence that the objet a is there.”5 5 In Sleeping Beauties, the young girls embody
objet a and the lacanian gaze, while the issues of anticipating the gaze remain dominant.
Boothby writes that
By identifying the gaze with objet a, Lacan describes a structure that in principle
cannot be mapped in a linear fashion but can be described only by recourse to
5 2 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar o f Jacques Lacan, 218.
5 3 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 256.
5 4 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 104.
5 5 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 256.
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304
topology. What, then, is the gaze as objet petit a! . . . The objet a must be
located in the dispositional field. What distinguishes this object from all others
is the fact that it cannot occupy the positional focus of attention. Yet it remains
active in the invisible framing that produces all positional awareness. This, then,
is what it means that the objet a is not the aim or object of desire but its object-
cause. The objet a is a dispositional object. It is the dispositional character of the
gaze that accounts for what Lacan calls its ‘inside-out structure.’. . . The gaze is
the very condition of consciousness . . . , the horizon within which the realm of
the visible is established.5 6
When Lacan writes that “There is something that looks before there is a view for it to
57 • •
see,” it means that it is not from a pair of eyes pointed at me that the gaze originates.
This lacanian gaze, in fact, “precedes and possibilizes the field of the visible altogether.
It is an all-encompassing survey that simultaneously takes in the position occupied by
the other human being who looks at me and also my own position.”5 8 In this way, Lacan
embraces Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s position on the gaze when he writes that “What we
have to circumscribe . . . is the pre-existence of a gaze - I see only from one point, but
in my existence I am looked at from all sides.”5 9
5 6 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 258.
5 7 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 273.
5 8 Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 259, italic in the original.
5 9 Jacques Lacan, The Four fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 72. Richard Boothby offers another
explanation of the function of the Lacanian gaze. He writes: “The Lacanian gaze is thus understandable
only in the triadic structure of desire, the Oedipal structure in which the subject is faced with the question
of the Other’s desire. In the actual experience of the Oedipal stage, the experience o f the gaze begins to
unfold when the mother no longer simply presents an image to the child but is seen to be looking for
something herself, the moment when the suspicion dawns that the mother’s desire is directed beyond the
child itself to some third position. Said otherwise, the gaze is one of the prime figures in which the
imaginary relation opens out upon a symbolic horizon. It is by virtue of its capacity to excite an
experience of this dimension o f the gaze, precisely through preventing the analysand from seeing the eyes
of the analyst, that psychoanalysis sets up the special force field of the transference. Its place will come to
be occupied by the entirety of the symbolic order. In the place of the gaze, the subject will come to
experience the call of the signifier. Correlatively, it is a certain suspension or avoidance of the gaze that
founds the entirety of the imaginary register, both the ego and its objects. This elision of the gaze is the
very essence of imaginary meconnaissance. Lacan therefore asks o f narcissism and of the “satisfaction,
not to say self-satisfaction, that diffuses from it, which gives the subject a pretext for such a profound
meconnaissance... — can we not also grasp that which has been eluded, namely, the function of the
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When Eguchi fearfully contemplates the possibility of the young girl opening
her eyes [S23/Z145], and catching him exploring her intimate parts, he anticipates his
own response in the event he is caught in the girl’s line of vision. This would be the
Sartrian gaze. In her sleep the girl moves, talks and dreams. She suddenly turns toward
him. Eguchi struggles with the possibility that she may open her eyes. By anticipating
her gaze he attempts to position himself emotionally. Were the girl to open her eyes,
Eguchi would, like the Peeping Tom caught at the peephole, be overcome with shame.
The truth, however, is that Eguchi is already seen by the girl’s lacanian gaze. He does
not need her physical eyes to gain consciousness of himself; her presence and her
lacanian gaze, are already testimonials to his decaying life. Her opened eyes would only
reinforce that shame that already dwells in his soul. Eguchi, therefore, can anticipate the
female gaze as eyes directed to him, but he can neither define nor defy the girls’
lacanian gaze. Although he fails to acknowledge the lacanian gaze as the reason for his
introspection while at the inn, Eguchi slowly becomes visible to himself because he is
seen from all directions.
In this novel, there are three types of gazes that I analyze.6 0 The first, (1) the
gaze of the woman of the inn, is ambiguous in that not only does she look at Eguchi and
cause him to feel himself the object of her gaze, but Eguchi also feels her
intimidating/pseudo-lacanian gaze even when her eyes are not directed at him. The
woman seems to have control over male vision behind the walls of the inn. By
gaze?” Richard Boothby, Freud as Philosopher, 260, citing Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis, 74. See also Craig Saper, “A Nervous Theory,” 42-51.
6 0 My theoretical approach, however, does not account for the gaze of the writer, and the gaze of the
reader.
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arranging how the beautiful girls’ bodies are exposed, she manipulates the ways the old
men look at them. She knows what male eyes want to see and complies with the
unspoken requests of her customers.
The second, (2) Eguchi’s gaze, differs from the gaze of the other men. Eguchi is
still sexually active. To him, the young girls are also objects of sexual desire. Eguchi
may feel in control of what he sees, but in reality his sight is limited and manipulated.
Eguchi is aware that the gaze of the woman of the inn is the only omnivoyeur. Before
Eguchi’s eyes the young girls’ bodies also become the sites/sights of longing, reasons to
remember women from his past. Only when frustrated over the non-responsiveness of
the young girls does Eguchi’s desire for them turn into a sexual and violent desire to
violate them. Eguchi’s gaze is caught between the gaze of the woman of the inn and the
young girls’ lacanian gaze; he is seen from all directions. Just as Gimpei, in order to
free himself from the gaze of the woman who follows him, and from the gaze of the
florist on the other side of the window, attempts to retreat to the image of the lake,6 1
Eguchi attempts to break free from the walls and the faces that lack apparent eyes by
recalling the memory of women from his past. However, on more than one occasion,
Eguchi anticipates the young girls’ physical gaze, considering his status as subject of
the gaze were the young girls to open their eyes.
The third, (3) the gaze of the sleeping beauties, I address as the physical gaze
and the lacanian gaze. The reality is that the young girls never open their eyes; their
physical gaze never appears in the novel as a tangible construct. Eguchi may play with
6 1 Kawabata Yasunari, The Lake, 25-26; Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 18, pp. 25-26.
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the possibility of their eyes directed to him, he may anticipate their physical gaze and
attempt to reposition himself accordingly, but the truth is that the young girls have been
denied the power to see with their eyes open. However, as embodiments of objet a, their
lacanian gaze unsettles Eguchi’s consciousness. When Lacan cites the Gospel “they
have eyes that they might not see,” he stresses the subject’s inability to understand that
• • f i ' )
things are looking at him. In the context of Sleeping Beauties, Eguchi’s eyes may be
wide-open, but he does not recognize that the young women’s bodies are looking at him.
The young girls look back with their beauty. Their shut eyelids may hold the secret of
youth, and the secret of life, but Eguchi’s failure to acknowledge that he is being looked
at by the lacanian gaze of these young sleeping beauties marks the ambiguous place he
occupies in his sixty-seven year old life. The sleeping beauties’ lacanian gaze reinforces
their status as embodiments of objet a. Under the physical male gaze, the girls reinvent
themselves and the desire they embody. It is a problematic desire that stares back at the
men, reducing them to decadent entities on a quest to unveil the sweet memory of past
experiences, a quest for redemption. If, as does the Real, objet a defies representation
and is impossible to say or imagine, we are introduced to the convergence of objet a and
the Real in Eguchi’s visits to the house of the sleeping beauties. Objet a is a piece of the
Real; by not belonging completely to the Imaginary or Symbolic, by being in-between
the Imaginary and the Symbolic, objet a becomes an element of the Real.
The sleeping beauties stand as controversial embodiments of objet a with
features that spill into the realm of objet A. These sleeping beauties are not only objects
6 2 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 109.
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to be seen, but also incarnations of the Other’s sexual desire. They redefine and refine
Kawabata’s construction of vision and visuality.
(5) He May not See Her, but Her Gaze will Haunt Him
From Eguchi’s first night at the inn, we learn that (1) Eguchi is not like the other
male guests in that he is not impotent; (2) he is troubled by the girls’ artificial sleep; (3)
Eguchi needs to be looked at; (4) although the young beauty is meant to be looked at,
Eguchi is never comfortable at the idea that she does not acknowledge him; (5) the
young girl of his first visit reminds him of two women from his past. The other five
nights spent at the inn show a similar pattern.
When Eguchi arrives at the inn, he is greeted by the woman who manages the
place. She is a small woman, in her mid-forties, with a somehow youthful voice:
She did not often look at Eguchi. There was something in the dark eyes that
lowered his defenses (kuro no koi hitomi ni keikaishin wo yurumeru iro ga aru
bakari de naku, onna no ho ni mo keikaishin no nasasona, mono nareta
otochitsuki ga atta) [S13-14/Z135].
The woman, aware of the power of her gaze, does not often look in Eguchi’s
direction. With her experience, she knows how uncomfortable her clients are. To submit
them to a scrutinizing gaze is not appropriate. Eguchi perceives the woman’s gaze as
having the power “to lower his defenses.” Under this female gaze Eguchi feels
vulnerable, emotionally exposed to a stranger. The lady of the inn, on the other hand,
must be discreet. Only a specific type of customer shows up at her door: old impotent
men. Accordingly, she must accommodate their physical and emotional needs. A visual
confrontation would only embarrass her customers, and lose her business.
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Men journey to the inn in an attempt to recover the memory, or create a fantasy,
of better days. The old men want to expose themselves to the discreet gaze of the
woman: she must acknowledge their presence and their station in life without looking
directly at them. Her gaze would only reaffirm their inadequacies in the days they have
left to live. Her gaze is not a castrating gaze because the objects of her gaze are already
“castrated.” Her gaze can be read as a compassionate gaze and as a warning gaze. She
looks at the men feeling sorry for their physical status, but her eyes also warn them to
behave like gentlemen.
The woman plays the important role of guiding clients to the room filled with
dreams. She also chooses the girls with whom her customers will spend the night and
instructs clients on the rules of the house. The most important rule is that under no
circumstances should the man threaten the sleeping girls’ virginity. She also tells her
clients about the sleeping pills by the bed that they can take whenever sleep does not
come easily. In other words, she is in control. Her lacanian gaze is present even when
the door is shut; her customers sense that she may be looking at them from somewhere
in the house.
After having been instructed, Eguchi holds his breath as he looks at the woman
opening the door to the sleeping beauty with whom he is going to spend the night. His
eyes are fixed on the woman’s back. Her eyes are hidden as she introduces him to the
secret place, but the bird’s eye on her obi stares at him. He wonders; “Why should such
realistic eyes and feet have been put on a stylized bird?” [S14/Z136]. The answer is that
the woman wants her customers to know that she looks at them even when her eyes are
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310
not staring in their direction. Afterwards, “His eyes came to rest on the door to the next
room. It was of cedar, some three feet wide” [S15/Z138].
Eguchi is at this point in-between worlds. He could turn back or he could open
the door to where the sleeping girl waits. He hesitates:
In his sixty-seven years, old Eguchi had passed ugly nights with women. Indeed
the ugly nights (minikui yoru) were the hardest ones to forget. The ugliness
{minikusa) had had to do not with the appearance of the women but with their
tragedies, their warped lives. He did not want to add another such episode, at his
age, to the record. So ran his thoughts, on the edge of the adventure. But could
there be anything uglier (minikui mono) 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 (minikusa) of old age? [S17/Z139]
In discussing the above passage, Mizenko points out that the Japanese
“minikui’' ’ (ugly) conveys the meaning of visual ugliness. In Eguchi’s case, however,
63
such ugliness has to do more with these women’s lives than with their looks. As
Mizenko explains, “these women are unsatisfactory objects of his desiring gaze, for
they have a content that disrupts the reveries of the perceiver’s pleasure.”6 4 The women
from Eguchi’s past
can serve only as distorting mirrors that, since the gaze is ultimately narcissistic
and masturbatory, usurp the viewer’s control of the situation. There was, in a
sense, a sort of resistance by the objects of the gaze, developing out of their
existences independent of their representations.6 5
The women from Eguchi’s past have failed to satisfy the male desiring gaze.
Accordingly, we are led to question the content of the subject’s desire. If in the past
Eguchi has been dissatisfied with women, why is he then going through with this
6 3 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 182.
6 4 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 182.
6 5 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project o f Kawabata Yasunari,” 183.
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311
adventure? Women from his past ceased to be “objects of desire” when their ugly lives
were revealed. Their ugly lives, which he has somehow visualized, ended up spoiling
his desire, a desire that remains unfulfilled.
Mizenko, however, does not discuss the content of the full passage. In fact, the
adjective minikui, and its derivative noun minikusa (ugliness), are used throughout.
Visual ugliness does not seem to characterize exclusively the lives of women from his
past, but it also touches Eguchi’s life: for example, he characterizes “old age” as
visually ugly. Mizenko’s approach relies on a limited understanding of the concept of
the gaze, and mostly on those earliest critical readings that perceived the male gaze as
scopophilic in content.6 6 Kawabata’s extensive use of minikui and minikusa suggests
that Eguchi’s gaze toward the women is the same gaze he dedicates to himself: he looks
at himself and sees the ugliness of his old age. His own visually ugly life has spoiled his
desire for beauty and his ability to see it. Everything originates from the problematic
place of his primal desire which is linked to his mother and her premature death.
If desire is created through “ceding,” as Lacan suggests, Eguchi’s desire had to
be bom at least twice considering that not only did he “cede” his Mother’s breast, but he
ceded her to death as well. Though this provides a limited understanding of the genesis
of Eguchi’s desire, its content remains undefined. It is no coincidence that the women
from his past have failed to satisfy his desiring gaze. After all they did not embody the
features of his troubled desire. The constitution of Eguchi’s desire remains a work-in-
progress. Eguchi is himself unsure of the stmcture and content of his desire. Afraid of
6 6 Mizenko does not cite Laura Mulvey’s essay, but his approach strongly resembles hers.
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losing objects of his distorted and unfulfilled desire, Eguchi dismisses the women as
ugly, unconsciously unveiling similarities among objects and the subject of the gaze.
It is the f/phantasy of the sleeping beauties as object of desire that will make
Eguchi question the genesis, structure, and content of his own desire:
In the phantasy, the subject is frequently unperceived, but he is always there,
whether in the dream or in any of the more or less developed forms of day
dreaming. The subject situates himself as determined by the phantasy.
The phantasy is the support of desire; it is not the object that is the support of
desire. The subject sustains himself as desiring in relation to an ever more
complex signifying ensemble. This is apparent enough in the form of the
scenario it assumes, in which the subject, more or less recognizable, is
somewhere, split, divided, generally double, in his relation to the object, which
usually does not show its true face either.6 7
At the house of the sleeping beauties, however, things are quite different. Not
only are the young women asleep, but Eguchi is prevented from knowing who they are,
what they do besides lying by old men at night, and what kind of life they lead. At this
point, before “the cedar door,” it is too late for Eguchi to turn back. He has joined the
club of guests whom the lady of the inn trusts. Of course Eguchi cannot be trusted, but
he is willing to follow the rules because “the ugliness of old age pressed down upon
him” [S17/Z139],
When Eguchi finally goes through the cedar door [S18/Z140], he enters the
room and looks at the girl:
She was not pretending. Her breathing was of the deepest sleep. He caught his
breath. She was more beautiful than he had expected. And her beauty was not
the only surprise. She was young too. She lay on her left side, her face toward
him. He could not see her body - but she would not yet be twenty. . . .
Her right hand and wrist were at the edge of the quilt. Her left arm seemed to
stretch diagonally under the quilt. Her right thumb was half hidden under her
6 7 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 185.
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cheek. The fingers of the pillow beside her face were slightly curved in the
softness of sleep, though not enough to erase the delicate hollows where they
joined the hand. The warm redness was gradually richer from the palm to the
fingertips. It was a smooth, glowing white hand. [S18/Z140-141]
Eguchi is mesmerized by the sight. He has problems accepting the reality that
surrounds him. He approaches her and asks if she is asleep. He picks up her hand and
shakes it, but:
He knew she would not open her eyes {me o samasanai). Her hand still in his, he
looked into her face {sono kao o mita). What kind of girl might she be?
[S19/Z141]
The girl is an object to be seen; or so it seems. Aware of the fact that she will not
open her eyes, Eguchi takes the time to look at her closer. The girl, however, is not so
much a sexual object to be looked at as a beautiful ornament to Eguchi’s old life. The
artificial sleep that prevents her from opening her eyes may challenge the male gaze and
throw into question her status as object of desire. Matsuura Hisaki argues that the only
way for men in Kawabata’s novels to deal with women as “whole entities,” and what
they stand for (men’s consciousness), is to put them to sleep, to shut their eyes, or
turning them into corpses.6 8 Matsuura’s argument supports Buckley’s take on these
“fragmented” sleeping beauties as body pieces who do not threaten the dominant male
position.6 9
I, however, have a different reading. In Sleeping Beauties, natural sleep is not
enough to guarantee the predominance of the male scopophilic gaze and his narcissistic
desire. The drugged young girls are prevented from opening their eyes. The man seems
6 8 Matsuura Hisaki, “Mira koto no heisoku.”
6 9 Sandra Buckley, “Kawabata Yasunari’s Poetics o f Fragmentation,” 448.
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relieved to know that he will not be challenged in his position as subject of the gaze.
Although men are made to believe that they are in control of the gaze, the truth is that
the power of vision rests in the hands not only of the lady of the inn, but of the sleeping
beauties as well. The lady of the inn manipulates every encounter. She is the one who
arranges for the girls to be put in bed with the client, and when the girls are asleep she
adjusts the way they lie in bed to make them appealing to the men. She chooses the girls
according to the men’s taste. Even in the bedroom she is the sole maker of a fantasy that
enraptures her customers. Her eyes dictate the reality with which they are presented.
She is the perfect hostess, preparing and presenting what men want to see. She
constructs the fantasy of male desires.
After looking into the girl’s face [S19/Z141], Eguchi slips under the blanket by
the naked body of the girl. He keeps staring at her: her arms, her elbows, her hands, her
earlobes, her hair, her neck, and her shoulders:
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. Such life was, perhaps, life to be
touched with confidence. . . .
She was to be looked at (musume ga sukkari nagamerareru). He knew that she
had been put to sleep for the purpose, and that there was no call for this new
surprise; but he covered her shoulder and closed his eyes. [S20-21/Z141,143]
Eguchi is led to believe that the young girl is meant to be looked at. However,
unable to take in the power of the beauty by his side, he momentarily closes his eyes, as
if to recompose himself. With his eyes closed he smells a sort of baby’s scent coming
from the girl [S21/Z143]. He opens his eyes and lets his gaze wander over her breasts
and nipples. He touches them. He is still unable to make sense of the experience:
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He felt a surge of loneliness tinged with sorrow. More than sorrow or loneliness,
it was the bleakness of old age, as if frozen to him. And it changed to pity and
tenderness for the girl who sent out the smell of young warmth. Possibly only
for purposes of turning away a cold sense of guilt, the old man seemed to feel
music in the girl’s body. It was a music of love. As if he wanted to flee, he
looked at the four walls, so covered with velvet that there might have been no
exit. The crimson velvet, taking its light from the ceiling, was soft and utterly
motionless. It shut in a girl who had been put to sleep, and an old man.
[S21/Z143-44]
As if sinking under the weight of the truth of life and old age, Eguchi suddenly
yearns for recognition. He feels more lonely than he can bear. Overwhelmed by sadness,
he feels that the walls are crushing on him. It is a suffocating feeling. Needing to bring
back a sense of life around him, he takes the girl by the shoulder and shakes her
ordering her to wake up:
A moment had come in which the old man could not bear the fact that the girl
was sleeping, that she did not speak, that she did not know his face and his
voice; that she knew nothing of what was happening, that she did not know the
man Eguchi who was with her. Not the smallest part of his existence reached her.
[S21-22/Z144]
In old age Eguchi needs to be reassured of his existence. He needs her voice, her
eyes, her life. He needs to find himself in her eyes. He needs her to know that he is
alive: or is he? Although Eguchi has come to this place because like the other men
“sleeping with a beauty who could not awaken was a temptation, an adventure, a joy
they could trust” [S22/Z144], he is not like them. To the other men, “a girl sound asleep,
saying nothing, hearing nothing, said everything to and heard everything from an old
man who, for a woman, was no longer a man” [S22/Z145]. The young girls become a
repository of the old men’s dreams and hopes. They are alive but asleep; they can hear,
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but they will not remember. They are made into living dolls whose purpose is to give
reassurance. While this may be enough for the other men, it is not enough for Eguchi.
Eguchi’s trip to the house of sleeping beauties can be seen as his attempt to see
what his life will be like at an older age, when in his seventies or eighties. To visit the
inn allows him to search deeply within himself and bring to the fore issues he will have
to confront in the future, such as becoming the shadow of a man. What he sees reflected
on the girl’s body is a distorted picture of his future self. Eguchi is visiting his future
and preparing himself emotionally to accept everything it will bring. It is not a surprise
that he questions his presence in such a place, longs for recognition, and out of
frustration, wants to assert himself as the man that he still is by violating the girl’s body.
Just as he anticipates the girl’s gaze, he anticipates a glance at his future life. If to
anticipate the girl’s gaze is to prepare himself emotionally for the reality of himself as
object of the gaze, to anticipate his future as a shadow of the man he once was, means to
understand the truth and ugliness of old age, sadness, and the pain of unfulfilled desire.
As Eguchi questions the reality of this unreal place (both the room and his soul), he
turns toward the young girl. He touches her, he explores her intimate parts.
As he withdrew his hand, her head turned gently and her shoulder with it, so
that she was lying face up. He pulled back, wondering if she might open her
eyes (musume ga me o samasu no ka). [S23/Z145]
When Eguchi, out of fear and shame, envisions himself as the object of the gaze,
he anticipates not only the physical female gaze, or eyes directed at him, but also the
returned female gaze. In such a vision, not only does Eguchi become object of the
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female gaze, but in the returned female gaze Eguchi’s position switches from subject to
object of the gaze.
To go from subject to object of the gaze implies issues in awareness of one’s
status when caught in the line of vision of the other, in this case the female other. Even
as Eguchi fails to recognize himself as object of the female lacanian gaze he is
concerned over becoming object of the female gaze per se. The anticipation of the
returned female gaze carries within it castration anxiety on the part of the male object.
Because Eguchi does not belong to the group of men unable to sexually perform, the
returned female gaze could be most unsettling. Were the young woman to open her eyes,
they would become a repository of certainties in Eguchi’s approaching life, “castration”
being one of the inevitable steps as he approaches senility. Her shut eyes invite Eguchi
to ponder what is still a certainty in his present life. Her wide open eyes would lead him
to question his status as subject of the gaze.7 0
One of Eguchi’s certainties is the reality of his memory. He once again
questions what brought him to smell milk on this young girl. The peculiar scent brings
back to mind specific memories. He recalls a violent confrontation he once had with a
geisha. The woman became upset when she smelled baby milk on him. He had held his
nursing grandchild that day, and that smell had lingered on him. The geisha reacted
violently, and their relationship ended. Eguchi also recalls a married woman with whom
he had an affair. As the night progresses, Eguchi becomes more and more anxious.
7 0 The theory behind the so-called Returned Female Gaze entails that (1) the woman starts the gaze and
man is object of the female gaze; (2) the woman returns the male gaze, marking the transition for man
from subject to object o f the gaze.
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Memories seem to overwhelm him, but the reality of the young woman’s naked body by
his side never abandons him:
He had twice tried, though gently, to arouse her. He did not himself know what
he had meant to do if by chance the girl had opened her eyes, but he had
probably made the try out of affection. No, he supposed it had rather been from
his own disquiet (osore: anxiety, fear) and emptiness (munashisa: void).
[S28/Z150]
Deep inside Eguchi wants the girl to wake up. He needs her to be aware of how
he is intruding on her body. He needs her to physically respond to the pleasure he is
giving her. His anxiety guides his hand. His emptiness leads his hand to the girl’s
intimate parts. An example of Lacanian anxiety, Eguchi’s anxiety is not triggered by the
loss of his masculinity, but by the anticipated loss of his male vigor. When the young
girl does not respond to his attentions, he projects himself into the realm of the empty
world the other old men who visit the house inhabit. The anticipation of his approaching
senile life and his status as a lesser man overwhelms Eguchi as he anxiously weighs the
meaning of his experiences during the night.
Under the spell of memory and the weight of truth, Eguchi is unable to fall
asleep. He recalls when, after graduating from college, he had a relationship with a
young girl; their families did not approve of their love, and the young girl was removed
from Tokyo and forced to marry somebody else. When Eguchi met the girl some time
later, she was carrying a baby. Eguchi believed it was his baby, although the girl
strongly denied it and ran away from him. Eguchi is amazed at how vivid his memories
are and questions whether it is the youth of the sleeping girl that keeps soliciting them
[S31/Z154].
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He finally takes one of the two sleeping pills left on the night dresser by the lady
of the inn. Sleep still does not come easy, and only bad dreams seem to dwell in his
heart [S32-33/Z155]. At the end Eguchi also takes the second pill, but before falling
asleep he turns toward the young girl: “Look this way (kocchi o muite kure yo = turn
this way).” [S33/Z155]
Although in the Japanese version of Sleeping Beauties there is no visual request
made by Eguchi, it is still clear that Eguchi will not fall asleep unless this young girl
somehow acknowledges the difference between him and the other men with whom she
has slept. She needs to reassure him that he is Eguchi. When he wakes up the morning
after, the young girl is still asleep. He once again stares at her, and she comes across
again as a “fragmented” body:
The girl had lain with her face toward him, her head very slightly forward and
her breasts back, and in the shadow of her jaw there had been a scarcely
perceptible line across the fresh, slender neck. Her long hair was spread over the
pillow behind her. Looking up from the neatly closed lips, he had gazed at her
eyebrows and eyelashes, and had not doubted that she was a virgin. She was too
near for his old eyes to make out the individual hairs of the eyelashes and
eyebrows. Her skin, on which he could not see the fuzz, glowed softly. There
was not a single mole on the face and neck. . . . There came over him too a
childlike feeling that he was loved by the girl. He felt for a breast, and held it
softly in his hand. There was in the touch a strange flicker of something, as if
this were the breast of Eguchi’s own mother before she had him inside her.
[S35-36/Z157-58]
The Mother theme so relevant in Thousand Cranes and The Lake reappears in
Sleeping Beauties. The reappearance of the maternal calls into question whether these
young girls should be studied as embodiments of objet a only. They do also embody the
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features of objet A: the mOther, or the maternal Other. This brings us M l circle,
because the maternal Other may be seen as desire = objet a.7 1
(6) Dreams, Memories, and Distorted Desires
During his second and third visits to the house of the sleeping beauties, Eguchi
appears more at ease when he goes beyond the cedar door that projects him into the
dream world of the secret room structured like the unconscious. Themes brought up on
the occasion of his first visit are revisited, and although the issues remain the same,
Eguchi’s position toward some of them becomes clearer. His questioning continues
until he doubts not only the reality before his eyes, but also the reality of his existence.
Eguchi’s excitement to return to the inn for the second time is indeed strong
[S36-37/Z159]. When the lady of the inn informs him that he will spend the night with a
more experienced girl, Eguchi tells her that he is not a promiscuous (uwaki) person. The
woman teases Eguchi over such a silly remark:
The woman’s easy way of speaking seemed to hide a faint smile of derision.
“None of my guests do anything promiscuous. They are all kind enough to be
gentlemen I can trust.” Thin-lipped the woman did not look at him as she spoke.
The note of mockery set Eguchi on edge, but he could think of nothing to say.
[S38/Z160]
The woman does not look at Eguchi because she feels confident in his inability
to perform sexually. Eguchi, on the other hand, is not ready for a visual confrontation
with this woman. He still needs to unveil most of the secrets of this house, and bring to
light the truths that dwell in his heart. He cannot allow for the woman to know his secret,
711 will return to this issue in the discussion of the Fifth Night. Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject, 49-68.
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and he is content at the thought of not being the object of her mocking gaze. As he
emotionally prepares himself for the second encounter, Eguchi ponders the ugliness of
old age and the sadness of the men visiting this house:
Were not the longing of the sad old men for the unfinished dream, the regret for
days lost without ever being had, concealed in the secret of this house? Eguchi
had thought before that girls who did not awaken were ageless freedom for old
men. Asleep and unspeaking, they spoke as the old men wished. [S39/Z162]
This passage further supports my reading of the sleeping beauties as problematic
embodiments of objet a, desires that re-invent themselves anytime a girl lies with a
different man. Girls need to be more than just asleep: they cannot be awakened. They
cannot interfere with the workings of the old men’s dreams and desires. The old men do
not need beautiful girls to look into their eyes. The girls’ eyes could only strengthen the
perception of ugliness that dwells in the old men’s souls. The men see their
“impotence” as part of the ugliness of life, which only complements the ugliness of
aging.
Eguchi has unveiled one of the secrets of the house. By “speaking” in a voice
not their own, the young beauties enable the old men to overcome their sense of
incompleteness. The old men rest undisturbed under the lacanian gaze of the sleeping
beauties. Eguchi, however, finds himself in a peculiar position. By hiding his ability to
perform sexually, he is allowed to take a peek at what his life will be once he loses his
sexual drive. He seems to understand the type of pleasures the other old men get from
lying by beautiful naked bodies, and wanting to have the experience he does not violate
the rules of the house however tempted he may be. Eguchi wants to delve into the
secrets of old men’s souls; he wants to know more about himself, and only visits to the
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house of the sleeping beauties allow him to analyze who he is at sixty-seven years old.
As objet a the girls lead him to self-knowledge, looking at him from the place of
detached desire that he cannot see, but which can see him. Eguchi becomes spectacle
of/to his desire.
When Eguchi finally enters the bedroom, the girl with whom he is presented
makes him feel as if a “witch” were before his eyes [S40/Z162], and her overt
sensuality inexplicably attracts him. Eguchi understands why the lady of the inn
described the girl as more experienced: something about her “called out to a man” [S40].
Intrigued, Eguchi submits her to a long and scrutinizing gaze, from which the girl
emerges as an ambivalent representation of sexuality and eroticism:
Both arms were exposed. The right arm was on the pillow. The right cheek
rested on it, so that Eguchi could see only the fingers. They were slightly spread,
the little finger below the eyelashes, the index finger at her lips. The thumb was
hidden under her chin. The red of her lips, inclined somewhat downwards, and
the red of the four long fingernails made a cluster along the white pillowcase.
The left arm too was bent at the elbow. The hand was almost directly under
Eguchi’s eyes. The fingers, long and slender compared to the fullness of the
cheeks, made him think of her outstretched legs. He felt for a leg with the sole of
his foot. The left hand too lay with the fingers slightly parted. He rested his head
on it. A spasm caused by his weight went all the way to her shoulder, but it was
not enough to pull the hand away. He lay unmoving for a time. Her shoulders
were slightly raised, and there was a young roundness in them. As he pulled the
blanket over them, he took the roundness gently in his hand. He moved his face
from her hand to her arm. He was drawn by the scent of the shoulder, the nape
of the neck. There was a tremor along the shoulder and the back, but it passed
immediately. The old man clung to them. [S42/Z165]
Although the girl comes across as sensual to Eguchi’s eyes, the description of
what he sees is not erotic per se. As Shigematsu Yasuo has pointed out, in fact, not only
is eroticism a hallucination, but it characterizes more the women Eguchi recalls from his
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past than the sleeping beauties.7 2 Even though Eguchi at first questions the girl’s
virginity, he is forced to reconsider his position once he has the physical proof that she
is indeed a virgin, a virgin prostitute. Her face may have given him the wrong message,
and Eguchi may well have bought into the fantasy of her being more experienced than
the first girl. Eguchi’s eyes do not see the reality of the girl:
Led astray by the witchlike face, Eguchi had set out upon the forbidden path;
and now he knew that the old men who were guests here came with a happiness
more melancholy, a craving far stronger, a sadness far deeper than he had
imagined. Though theirs was an easy sort of dalliance for old men, an easy way
to juvenescence, it had deep inside it something that would not come back
whatever the regrets, that would not be healed however strenuous the efforts.
That the “experienced” witch tonight was still a virgin was less the mark of the
old men’s respect for their promises than the grim mark of their decline. The
purity of the girl was like the ugliness of the old men. [S43/Z166]
The purity of girls is not a visual element. In other words, it does not come
across just by looking into their faces. Their purity, tested and questioned again and
again, is discovered only when Eguchi, and probably other men too, physically invade
their bodies. The ugliness of the old men’s lives leads them to question the girls’
virginity. The girls are still virgins because the old men cannot physically possess them.
The young maidens may be visually ugly as well, as they cruelly feed the old men’s
fantasies and desires for a life that they once had, but can never have again. There is no
doubt that for the old men to sleep beside the girl “was a happiness not of this world.
Because the girl would not awaken, the aged guests need not feel the shame of their
years. They were quite free to indulge in unlimited dreams and memories of women”
[S44/Z167].
7 2 Shigematsu Yasuo, “Nemurem bijo no genshi no erosu,” 88.
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Eguchi, however, once again distances himself from the other men:
But old Eguchi was not yet used to keeping company with a girl who said
nothing, a girl who did not open her eyes, who gave him no recognition. Empty
longing had not left him. He wanted to see the eyes of this witchlike girl. He
wanted to hear her voice, to talk to her. . . . The girl tonight, though asleep, was
more alive than the girl the other night. Life was there, most definitely, in her
scent, in her touch, in the way she moved. [S44-45/Z167]
Eguchi needs recognition. He needs to be reassured that he is not as senile as the
other men; he needs to be reassured in his desire. Eguchi may long for the girl to open
her eyes, but one questions whether he would accept the image of himself reflected in
them. His need to have the girl know him or acknowledge his presence is problematic.
To see himself reflected in the girl’s eyes could compare to the image of himself
reflected in the eyes of the lady of the inn. Even if the girl gave him a sympathetic look,
feelings of shame would overcome him. The girl’s physical gaze would enhance his
liminal status as a man at the crossroad of life and death. He would not be object of her
desire, but a “castrated” man unwilling to accept the ugliness of old age. The girl would
return a gaze that would make him question his identity, his life, his desire. In his quest
to understand the structure of his desire, Eguchi would only experience “lack,” and the
hard truth of his problematic self. As Lacan writes,
This [objet] a is presented precisely in the field of the mirage of the narcissistic
function of desire, as the object that cannot be swallowed, as it were, which
remains stuck in the gullet of the signifier. It is at this point of lack that the
subject has to recognize himself.7 3
As Eguchi holds the sleeping beauty’s hand, the scent of camellias reaches him,
and the image of the flower brings back memories of his three married daughters,
7 3 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 270.
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especially of his youngest, who had turned into a real beauty after having married and
having had children [S53]:
There was of course neither in the girl sleeping here nor in Eguchi’s youngest
daughter the richness o f the camellia. But the richness o f a girl’s body was not
something one knew by looking at her or by lying quietly beside her. It was not
to be compared with the richness of camellias. What flowed deep behind his
eyelids from the girl’s arm was the current of life, the melody of life, the lure of
life, and, for an old man, the recovery of life. The eyes on which the girl’s arm
rested were heavy, and he took the arm away. [S53/Z176]
The girl’s arm may prevent him from seeing, but he “sees” his memories, he sees a
world now past, as well as a troubling image of his future.
The second night at the inn turns into a voyage into the realm of Eguchi’s inner
conscience, inhabited by memories of his family. This second night becomes a mixture
of the desire to sin and the desire to embrace life. This second girl is objet a in the ways
she embodies “the current of life, the melody of life, the lure of life, the recovery of
life.” She embodies “the current of life” by reminding Eguchi of the flowing of time and
of the aging process he is experiencing. She represents “the melody of life” by
unveiling the somehow harmonious sounds of life itself. She is made to be “the lure of
life:” she invites the old men to rediscover their fascination with past experiences, and
to savor the taste of the years they have left to live. She also calls for “the recovery of
life:” she solicits the old men to find in their memories the beauty of a time now past;
she invites them to hold on to such memories, to remember the difference between
beauty and ugliness, and to opt for the former.
The old men project onto these girls their dreams, their fantasies, and their
desires. As objet a, however, the girls break the limits imposed on them by the old
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men’s desires and scopophilic gazes, and speak in a voice of their own. The old men
wake up in the morning under the illusion of having created memories and dreams,
while the reality is that the lacanian gaze of the young maidens has led them.
The physical presence of the more experienced sleeping beauty enables Eguchi
to face his memories and what they stand for in this place of ambiguous pleasures.
Eguchi’s memories allow him to question the workings of his desire. On the third visit
Eguchi comes to grasp the meaning of memories as unfulfilled desires. On the third
night, Eguchi is presented with a sleeping beauty in training:
The ‘small’ girl had a small face. Her hair, disheveled as if a braid had been
undone, lay over one cheek, and the palm of her hand lay over the other and
down to her mouth; and so probably her face looked even smaller than it was.
Childlike, she lay sleeping. Her hand lay against her face - or rather, the edge of
her relaxed hand lightly touched her cheekbone, and the bent fingers lay from
the bridge of her nose down over her lips. Her right hand lay at the edge of the
quilt, which the fingers gently grasped. She wore no cosmetics. Nor did it seem
that she had taken any off before going to sleep. [S58/Z181]
As Eguchi looks at the girl, he knows that memories will eventually come to
him. In the meantime, he ponders once again “the recovery of life” and what the house
represents in the lives of the old customers. What distinguishes Eguchi from the other
guests is not only his active sexual life, but also the way he conceives of the girls as
solicitors of memories [S58-59/Z182].
Eguchi recalls the spring of three years earlier when he had met a woman in
Kobe and brought her back to his hotel. The morning after, when he woke up, he saw
her already at the mirror brushing her hair. The woman was married to a foreigner.
Eguchi spent two nights with her; then they separated. Eguchi never heard from her
again. The girl by his side makes him remember her [S63/Z186-87].
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Eguchi’s attention to the details of the sleeping girl’s body almost brings her
back to life. His scrutinizing gaze, however, rests on the unconscious girl without
necessarily inscribing meaning onto her. Eguchi is not concerned with who she is, or
why she is with him. We come to understand the young maidens’ role of bringing
together the old men’s present lives and the memories of their past. The young girls’
function is to bridge the gap between what was and what lies ahead:
He felt his life, his troubles over the years, fade away as he gazed at the small
face. It would have been a happy night had he even now taken the tablets and
gone off to sleep; but he lay quietly, his eyes closed. He did not want to sleep -
for the girl, having made him remember the woman in Kobe, might bring other
memories too. [S64/Z187]
Memories can also be addressed as distorted embodiments of objet a, unfulfilled
desires that dwelled in the men’s hearts a long time ago. Eguchi slowly adjusts to the
peculiar house, uncovering little by little his need for memories, his need to visualize
his ambiguous desire. Eguchi timidly enters the realm that the other old men already
inhabit. The young girls, not necessarily their bodies, invite memories. However, they
are fragmented personae: the scent of their skin, a faint noise from their mouths, their
lips, a foot, a hip, their breasts, hair, neck, or throat. The girls invite the male gaze and
gaze back from the place of their fragmented beings. They look back with their lips,
their feet, and their breasts. These body parts talk in a voice that is of the old men’s
making, in a language only they can understand. These young girls turn into the makers
of meaning.
As Eguchi opens his eyes, he strokes the girl’s eyelashes:
She frowned and turned away, and her lips parted. Her tongue shrank
downwards, as if withdrawing into her lower jaw. There was a pleasing hollow
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down the precise center of the childlike tongue. He was tempted. He peered into
the open mouth (musume no aita guchi o nozoite ita). [S65/Z188]
The sleeping beauty’s tongue reminds him of a young prostitute with whom he
had spent a night. This is the first sleeping beauty that shows him her tongue: “The
impulse toward a misdeed more exciting than putting a finger to her tongue flashed
through him” [S66/Z189].7 4 Unconsciously, the young beauty allows the man to look
“inside” her, and Eguchi must restrain himself from breaking the rules of the house. The
peculiar impulse that pushes him to do the unthinkable is an energy unknown to Eguchi,
but on the wave of such an impulse Eguchi spells out his understanding of good and
evil:
What was the very worst thing a man could do to a woman? The affairs with the
Kobe woman and the fourteen-year-old prostitute, for instance, were of but a
moment in a long life, and they flowed away in a moment. To marry, to rear his
daughters, these things were on the surface good; but to have had the long years
in his power, to have controlled their lives, to have warped their natures even,
these might be evil things. Perhaps, beguiled by custom and order, one’s sense
of evil went numb.
Lying beside a girl who had been put to sleep was doubtless evil. The evil
would become clearer were he to kill her. It would be easy to strangle her, or to
cover her nose and mouth. She was asleep with her mouth open, showing her
childlike tongue. It was a tongue that seemed likely to curl around his finger,
were he to touch it, like that of a babe at its mother’s breast. He put his hand to
her jaw and upper lip and closed her mouth. When he took it away the mouth
fell open again. In the lips parted in sleep, the old man saw youth. [S66-
67/Z189-190]
Mizenko argues that the above passage strengthens the reader’s perception of
Eguchi’s active engagement in imagining the girls as “nurturing mother” or “witchlike
7 4 Frustrated over the strict rules of the house, Eguchi conceives of the girl’s mouth as a vagina-like place
for a misdeed. As Sandra Buckley writes, in Sleeping Beauties “The ‘phallacy’ of pleasure by
penetration is exposed as a male myth and new forms of pleasure become possible. . . . The girls must
remain virgins but their other lips are free to be played with.” Sandra Buckley, “Kawabata Yasunari’s
Poetics of Fragmentation,” 449.
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whores.”7 5 As much as Eguchi objectifies the girls, they keep assuming different roles,
such as “sleeping Buddhas.” The sleeping beauties become a desire of a different kind:
Buddhas bringing salvation and redemption to the old men. As Eguchi loses himself in
such thoughts, he holds the “small” girl in his arms:
He hoped that she would find happiness for having given comfort to the old men
here. 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? [S68/Z191].
As Eguchi becomes more comfortable in the house of forbidden pleasures, he no
longer seems to have a need to become object of the female gaze. He does not need to
reflect himself in the depths of the woman’s eyes. Eguchi does not ask the “small” girl
in training to open her eyes. Accustomed to the strict rules of the house, Eguchi sees his
future self without the eyes of the Other to confirm for him what his next years will be
like or to embrace the incomplete structure of his ambivalent desire, a desire that is
revealed during the fourth and fifth nights he will spend at the inn.
(7) Revisiting the Demonic Realm
On very short notice, Eguchi invites himself to the house of the sleeping
beauties for the fourth time, and for the fourth time he is presented with a new girl. As
he enters the secret room, he is engulfed by the smell of the young woman [S74]:
Her skin was so smooth that it seemed to cling to him. From its moistness came
the scent. He lay still for a time, his eyes closed. The girl too lay still, the flesh
was rich at the hips and below. . . . Her bosom was full, but the breasts seemed
low and wide, and the nipples were remarkably small. [S74/Z199]
7 5 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 188.
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Strange thoughts dwell in Eguchi’s heart. The tone of the novel suddenly
changes. Thoughts of death overcome Eguchi [S74/Z199]. He seems troubled by the
sight of the woman. As object of his gaze, this maiden forces him to look at himself and
question the reasons behind his fascination with the place. Although he justifies the
other men’s quest for purity in their ugly, decayed world, “Eguchi had not ceased to be
a man. It might therefore be said that he did not feel the sorrow and happiness, the
regrets and loneliness, as intensely as the others. It was not necessary for him that the
girl remain asleep” [S75/Z200],
This girl’s body talks a language that does not belong to a virgin. She looks back
at him in a way that makes him suspicious:
Raising his chest to her shoulder, he looked into her face (musume no kao o
nagamete ita). It was not as well put together as her body. But it was more
innocent that he would have expected. The nostrils were somewhat distended,
and the bridge of the nose was low. The cheeks were broad and round. A
widow’s peak came low over her forehead. The short eyebrows were heavy and
regular. [S75/Z200]
After this passage, Kawabata introduces the concept of demonic realm (makai).
Eguchi looks at the girl, and he is more and more overwhelmed by the urge to break the
house rules. As Mizenko has pointed out, Eguchi’s “fantasies grow more and more
violent.”7 6
She seemed like a girl who could easily be made pregnant. Although she had
been put to sleep, her physiological processes had not stopped, and she would
awaken in the course of the next day. If she were to become pregnant, it would
be quite without her knowledge. Suppose Eguchi, now sixty-seven, were to
leave a child behind. It was the body of woman that invited man into the lower
circles of hell {makai). [S76/Z201]
7 6 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 187.
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Imamura Junko argues that the dreadful thought Eguchi is having is dictated by
his inhabiting makai?1 Imamura also argues that “babies” come across in Kawabata’s
novels, especially in Sleeping Beauties and Beauty and Sadness, as a medium of makai,
bringing to the fore the subject’s distress over a bad deed.7 8
At this point Eguchi’s need to perform a bad deed makes it clear that he belongs
to makai. Taken aback by his violent thoughts, Eguchi realizes how defenseless she is,
and how easy it would be to hurt her. But how does the girl “look” at him? She looks at
him from the depth of her sleep. She looks at him with the strength of her womanly
smell. She looks at him with her provocative body. She also, inevitably, invites the male
gaze. Eguchi’s gaze becomes entangled in the fantasy of all that she reflects back.
Unable to accept the reality of being object of her lacanian gaze, Eguchi thinks of a
punishment for her. As Mizenko writes, Eguchi’s “experiences are a mixture of heaven
70
and hell; he is both cleansed and polluted by his encounters.” Even if Eguchi feels pity
for the girl, he cannot help but think that: “the aged have death, and the young have love,
and death comes once, and love comes over and over again” [S76/Z201]. However,
Lacan comments:
The point of the ego ideal is that from which the subject will see himself, as one
says, as others see him - which will enable him to support himself in a dual
situation that is satisfactory for him from the point of view of love.
As a specular image, love is essentially deception. It is situated in the field
established at the level of the pleasure reference, of that sole signifier necessary
to introduce a perspective centred on the Ideal point, capital I, placed
somewhere in the Other, from which the Other sees me, in the form I like to be
7 7 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 192.
7 8 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 192.
7 9 Matthew Mizenko, “The Modernist Project of Kawabata Yasunari,” 188.
8 0 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts o f Psychoanalysis, 268.
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Having come to grips with the meaning behind his visits to the inn of dubious
pleasures, Eguchi is ready to take in the reality of his station in life and his inhabitation
o f makai. The girl before his eyes stirs the part o f him that perversely longs for misdeed
and violence, that troubled part of his conscience that dwells in makai. Makai is a world
of dreams turned into nightmares, of temptations violently carried out, of desires
unfulfilled, of ugly memories abruptly brought to mind, of hallucinations too raw to
absorb. Makai becomes the battleground of Eguchi’s troubled soul. Although Eguchi
does not want at this point to see himself in the Other, this is exactly what takes place.
He may not like the image reflected back from the place of the Other, an image that
does not conform to the ways he would like to be seen, but slowly he becomes visible to
himself from the place from which the OtherI objet a/sleeping beauties see him.
Eguchi keeps looking at the beauty before his eyes:
Gazing at the handsome bosom, he traced the peaked hairline with his finger.
She continued to breathe quietly and slowly. What sort of teeth would be behind
the small lips? Taking the lower lip at its center he opened it slightly. Though
not small in proportion to the size of her lips, her teeth were small all the same,
and regularly ranged. He took away his hand. Her lips remained open. He could
still see the tips of her teeth. He rubbed off some of the lipstick at his fingertips
on the full earlobe, and the rest on the round neck. The scarcely visible smear of
red was pleasant against the remarkably white skin. [S77/Z201]
Projected into the demonic world, and drowning in his hallucinations as he
embarks on a dialogue with himself, Eguchi plays with the possibility of the girl
opening her eyes. One of the voices he hears threatens him:
“If by a chance in a million, a chance in a million, a girl were to open her eyes
(me o samashite) - aren’t you underestimating the shame? (hajiru koto ka
sukoshi to omowanai ka)” ....
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If the girl should awaken (moshi me o samashitara) - The thought had a
strong pull. If she were to open her eyes, even in a daze, how intense would the
shock be, of what sort would it be? She would probably not go on sleeping if,
for instance, he were to cut her arm almost off or stab her in the chest or
abdomen. [S78/Z203]
The introduction to Eguchi’s sense of shame at the idea that the girl may open
her eyes not only takes us back to Sartre’s concept of shame at becoming visible to the
world, but it also emphasizes the man’s distress at becoming object of the returned
female gaze. In the returned female gaze, Eguchi would experience: (1) a sense of
shame; (2) castration anxiety; (3) self-knowledge. To experience shame would go with
the territory of the scopic field. Eguchi would be caught not only in an act of improperly
looking at and touching the girl’s body, but also in a state of distress over why he is at
this inn in the middle of the night. It would be that same sense of shame mixed with
dangerous excitement that a man at a peephole would experience if hearing footsteps:
he would realize someone is approaching and know that he would soon be discovered in
his improper act.
As for the issue of castration anxiety, the returned female gaze carries within
itself the assumption that it castrates its objects, making them feel unable to function.
This is problematic because the men who visit the inn are already “castrated.” It is
different for Eguchi: only the returned female gaze would prevent him from functioning
as a man. However, Eguchi has experienced at the inn an intense feeling of being
recognized as a man, and his need for recognition would probably be accomplished in
the returned female gaze. As object of the female gaze, Eguchi would accept the reality
of old age, but not the reality of “castration.” Anxious over becoming object of the
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female gaze, Eguchi manipulates his fantasies and nightmares to suit his complex sense
of inadequateness.
With the fourth girl, however, Eguchi delves deeper and deeper into makai. Just
as Gimpei in The Lake considers the possibility of harming Machie, Eguchi thinks of
murdering the fourth girl and preventing her eyes from opening ever again. Eguchi
would in this way spare himself the threatening experience of becoming object of the
returned female gaze. What Eguchi fails to understand, however, is that even as a dead
body, or a cut arm, the girl’s lacanian gaze would hover over him making him
increasingly visible to himself and more aware of his status as a man between worlds,
dwelling more and more in makai. As objet a, the girl returns to Eguchi the gaze of old
age and decay, of life’s inadequacies and uncertainties. Although the girl herself may
not inhabit makai, she may be considered a medium through which he sinks deeper into
a hell of his own making.
The fourth night does not bring up memories of women of Eguchi’s past, and
the young girls appear more as sacrificial objects, offering their beautiful bodies to the
perverse dreams of decaying phantasms. Eguchi investigates his life when at the inn,
and the girls’ bodies become not only displaced objects of wicked desires, but also toys
to please the depraved taste of male shadows.
It is makai that guides Eguchi to the inn for the fifth time. As usual, he engages
in a conversation with the lady of the inn. Recently, one of her customers, Fukura, has
died in his sleep while at the inn, and the lady is defensive when Eguchi questions her
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on the subject, especially after he praises her for how good she was at covering
everything up. He remarks:
“The death of an old man is an ugly (minikui) thing. I suppose you might think
of it as a rebirth in heaven — but I’m sure he went the other way (makai ni ochite
im)r [S85/Z212]
Eguchi’s nights at the house of sleeping beauties have also been anticipations of
death. If not for their breaths, these young girls could very well be seen as unresponsive
corpses. They are, in fact, not lifeless. It is merely apparent death. When death shows up
as it did on the occasion of Fukura’s passing, Eguchi feels overwhelmed and confused.
Death is not unknown in Eguchi’s life. He is back at the inn to investigate whether or
not anything has changed, whether the atmosphere is the same, whether a feeling of
death lingers stronger than before. When the lady of the inn informs him that he will
spend the night with two girls, he is stunned.
The first girl he sees, the one closer to the door seems to him “wild and rough,”
“life itself’ (inochi sono mono ka na, S86/Z214). Eguchi is not sure she is Japanese. He
suddenly remembers a kiss about forty years earlier from a girl he never saw again:
“How many years had he forgotten her, until she was brought back by the peaked upper
lip of the girl who had been put to sleep” [S88/Z216]. Eguchi is attracted by the lips of
the sleeping beauty:
The unusual shape of these lips did arouse him. So there are such lips, he
thought, lightly touching the center of the upper lip with his little finger. It was
dry. And the skin seemed thick. The girl began licking her lip and did not stop
until it was well moistend. He took his finger away. [S88-89/Z216-17]
The girl stirs impure and violent impulses in Eguchi. But he does not act on
them, realizing that she would not fight him. He again comes to the realization that he
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should never have come to this house because he is not like the other men: “But it was
probably the girl with the darkly glowing skin who made him feel more keenly than
usual that he too had left before him not a great deal of life as a man” [S89/Z217].
Eguchi turns to the other, much gentler girl:
Toying with the girl’s fingers, he closed his eyes. The small-boned fingers were
supple, so supple that it seemed they would bend indefinitely without breaking.
He wanted to take them in his mouth. Her breasts were small but round and high.
They fitted into the palm of his hand. The roundness at her hips was similar.
Woman is infinite, thought the old man, with a touch of sadness. He opened his
eyes. She had a long neck. It too was slender and graceful. But the slenderness
was different from that of old Japan. There was a double line at the closed
eyelids, so shallow that with the eyes open it might become but a single line. Or
it might be at times single and at times double. Or perhaps a single line at one
eye and a double line at the other. Because of the light from the velvet curtains
he could not be sure of the color of her skin; but it seemed tan at the face, white
at the neck, somewhat tan again at the shoulders, and so white at the breasts that
it might have been bleached. [S90/Z218]
Although the girl with the dark glowing skin seems to be very alive, even if
asleep, Eguchi is attracted to the gentler girl:
The well-shaped nose seemed the more courtly and elegant to his farsighted old
eyes. He could not resist putting his hand under the long, slender neck and
pulling her toward him. As her head moved softly toward him there came with it
a sweet scent. It mixed with the wild, sharp scentof the dark girl behind him. He
brought the fair girl against him. Her breathing was short and rapid. But he need
not fear that she would awaken. He lay still for a time. [S91-92/Z220]
After some hesitation, Eguchi decides to take the sleeping pills. Engulfed in
thoughts of death, he turns toward the dark girl and embraces her. He closes his eyes
and thinks of her as the last woman in his life:
“The last woman in my life? Why must I think so? Even for a minute.” And
who had been the first woman in his life?
He was less sleepy than dazed.
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The thought flashed across his mind: the first woman in his life had been his
mother. “Of course. Could it be anyone except Mother?” Came the unexpected
affirmation. “But can I say that my Mother was my woman?”
Now at sixty-seven, as he lay between two naked girls, a new truth came from
deep inside him. Was it blasphemy, was it yearning? He opened his eyes and
blinked, as if to drive away a nightmare. But the drug was working. He had a
dull headache. Drowsily, he pursued the image of his mother; and then he sighed,
and took two breasts, one of each of the girls, in the palms of his hands. A
smooth one and a oily one. He closed his eyes. [S94-95/Z222]
Because his mother died before his eyes, “It was natural that when old Eguchi
thought of his mother as the first woman in his life, he thought too of her death”
[S95/Z223]. The memory of Eguchi’s mother and that of his wife, whom he
acknowledges as having been the first woman in his life, overlaps. The sleeping pills
that Eguchi takes bring hallucinations. Eguchi falls asleep after toying with the teeth of
the dark girl, and his dreams, which include his mother and wife, are overly erotic.
In the middle of the night Eguchi suddenly wakes up facing the dark girl and
realizes immediately that she is dead [S97/Z226]. He fears that he may be responsible
for her death. He rings the night bell and the lady of the inn appears. She attempts to
deny the evidence, but Eguchi is quite sure the dark girl is deceased. As he tries to get
out of bed to leave, the lady of the inn stops him. The dark girl is removed from the bed,
and he is given more sleeping pills, and left with the gentle and fair skinned girl. He
looks at this young girl as he hears a car most probably carrying away the dark girl’s
body [S99/Z228],
The fifth night is the most intriguing. Accustomed by now to the house rules,
Eguchi is tempted by two girls: one dark and wild, one fair and gentle. The two girls
embody objet a in dissimilar ways. The girl with the dark glowing skin stands in not
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only for objet a, but also for objet A or the Mother, or the Other. The dark girl stands for
a desire that Eguchi is now forced to confront. Her lacanian gaze forces him into an
introspective process unseen before. Her death opens the same vacuum into which
Eguchi fell when his Mother died. At sixty-seven, Eguchi must re-visit the genesis of
his desire.
When the dark girl dies, something in Eguchi is stirred: his mother is dead; old
Fukura died in this place; women from his past are dead. The feeling that he might be
next lingers in Eguchi. The fair girl left by his side, incarnation of the quintessential
Japanese beauty, is supposed to quench his thirst for knowledge and reality, but reality
is a dark place at this point in his life. The only reality is makai.
The two young girls put into Eguchi’s bed come across as symbols of modernity,
corruption, and the Other (the dark girl); and as symbols of tradition, purity, the essence
of Japaneseness (the fair girl). The label of corruption attached to the body of the dark
girl is ambiguous. As a virgin prostitute she stands at the crossroad of the proper and
improper, the same crossroad where Eguchi still stands. Obviously, the dark girl is not
alone, but she is in the company of all the other sleeping beauties.
(8) Conclusion
These young girls’ lacanian gaze freezes Eguchi mostly in his troubling oneiric
experiences. A haunting gaze comes from closed female eyes, from unconscious bodies,
from young girls invested with the power to shed light onto old men’s decaying lives.
Eguchi questions the content of his dubious desire as he sorts through memories of
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personal losses and gains, emotional traumas and happy endings. On the eve of his
rebirth, Eguchi is still troubled by the shape of his fantasies, by his own subjectivity as
maker and un-maker of questionable truths.
The liminality of objet a is best understood in the ways the sleeping beauties
inhabit the realm of the Real and resist the realm of makai', they are objects of desires
and subjects of an intangible physical gaze; they embody the contradictions of desires
and fantasies; they break free from bearing meaning ascribed to them by men and
participate in making meaning.
As I have shown, there is much more in the study of Sleeping Beauties than
men’s souls struggling for narcissistic endeavors by pointing a pair of eyes to women
from their privileged position of scopophilic pleasure. There is also a very active group
of women endowed with the power to speak without talking, to hear without listening,
and to see without looking. The irony is that they are male constructs, creations of
Kawabata’s unique way to allow us a peek into his women’s side of the story.
The women’s side of the story is dominant in Beauty and Sadness, the novel
where the female gaze prevails once again as a site of male knowledge. Confronted with
the truth originated from a pair of female eyes, men still resist the image of the self
reflected back. Whereas in Sleeping Beauties Kawabata anticipates the agony of men
trapped in the female field of vision, in Beauty and Sadness Kawabata reveals the full
extent of such agony as he describes the male protagonist coming to terms with his
status as object of the female gaze. Avoided in Snow Country, imagined in Thousand
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Cranes, needed in The Lake, anticipated in Sleeping Beauties, visual confrontations
with women become the painful reality of men in Beauty and Sadness.
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Part Three
The Disruptive Female Gaze in Beauty and Sadness
Introduction
In Beauty and Sadness Kawabata’s images of femininity are created not only
from the novelist’s desire to represent male fantasies, but also from the changes women
were undergoing in Japanese society in the 1960s. Kawabata Yasunari provided the
largely female readership of Fujin Koron with a novel that conformed to the moral
issues that were in vogue in 1960 Japan, and perpetuated the government ideology of
the “good wife, wise mother.”1
In his quest to know and celebrate women, Kawabata endowed women with a
gaze in Beauty and Sadness and allowed them to tell their side of the story. Whether
this story as a male construct fails to convey the dimension of women’s everyday lives
is an issue that does not concern me here. What is relevant, however, is Kawabata’s
effort to recognize women’s suffering for love, to highlight women’s choices dictated
by love and social decorum, and to acknowledge women’s strengths.
In Beauty and Sadness, Kawabata’s female characters see and speak for
themselves, unsettling the predominance of that male perspective (visual and narrative)
that has characterized the novels studied so far. If it was challenging to extrapolate a
female dimension of vision in Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, The Lake, and Sleeping
1 Kathleen S. Uno, “The Death of ‘Good Wife, Wise Mother?’” in Postwar Japan as History, Andrew
Gordon, ed., 293-322.
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Beauties, in Beauty and Sadness Kawabata develops a plot that lets women see with
their own eyes and speak their own minds.
Whereas in Snow Country Komako and Yoko are often spoken about by
Shimamura, in Beauty and Sadness Otoko and Keiko speak for themselves. Whereas in
Thousand Cranes Chikako’s birthmark disrupts male vision by creating an ambiguous
genderless gaze, in Beauty and Sadness the female physical gaze constructs and disrupts
the reality of life, love, and death. Whereas in The Lake, Miyako’s gaze duplicates
Gimpei’s to stand for a questionable female gaze, in Beauty and Sadness the content of
the female gaze is enriched with imagistic overtones. Whereas in Sleeping Beauties
women’s eyes are shut to prevent their threatening the workings of male consciousness,
in Beauty and Sadness women are awake and their gazes force the male protagonist,
around whom the novel revolves, to reconsider his role as husband, father, lover,
unfaithful husband and unfaithful lover.
In Beauty and Sadness, images as “means to regain access to the lost object”
abound.2 It is through the women’s paintings that Kawabata endows women with a gaze
and a voice of their own. To the degree that these paintings speak of one of the female
protagonist’s emotional and sexual development from a girl of sixteen to a famous
Japanese style painter, her gaze from within the painting stares back at her male viewer,
and stands as a site of personal turmoil, making visible the truth about her sad but
beautiful destiny. The paintings become symbolic representations of the self, especially
of the fragments of the self that were lost and which the artist attempts to regain.
2 Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference. Feminism and the Histories o f Art, 147.
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It is in Beauty and Sadness that the female gaze interferes most with the
workings of male consciousness. Kawabata’s ability to provide us with such a
polyphonic piece of world literature makes possible an analytical investigation of
Beauty and Sadness from the perspective of the disruptive female gaze. Theories of
vision previously encountered converge to present the gaze as harmonious ensemble
and troubling site of resistance.
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Chapter Seven
Disrupting the Predominance of the Male Gaze:
The Sexual Politics of the Female Gaze in Beauty and Sadness
(1) The Writing of Beauty and Sadness
Beauty and Sadness was published serially between January 1962 and October
1964 in the magazine Fujin Koron. In 1966 the publishing house Chuo koronsha
published it in its book form.
While writing Beauty and Sadness, Kawabata was also working on two novels
and one short story. From January 1961 until November 1962 he published serially
Sleeping Beauties in the literary magazine Shinko, while from October 8, 1962 until
January 22, 1963 he published the novel The Old Capital (Koto) in the Asahi Shinbun.
From August 1964 to January 1965 he published the short story “One Arm” (Kata Ude)
in Shinko}
Whenever discussing Beauty and Sadness, Kawabata would state that he was not
thinking about writing a novel for a women’s magazine only. However, its publication
in Fujin Koron “indicates that the author consciously wished to address a largely
1 Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 17, pp. 638-39; Suzuki Hamo, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to
kangae,” in Kawabata Yasunari gendai no biishiki, Takeda Katsuhiko and Takahashi Shintaro, eds., 229;
Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyii, 199; Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron -
‘katarareru’ joseizo,” in Kawabata bungaku no sekai, volume 3, Tamura Mitsumasa, Baba Shigeyuki, and
Hara Zen, eds., 155.
2 Suzuki Haruo, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to kangae,” 230; Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to
ron,” 171.
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345
gender-specific problem.”3 Suzuki Haruo, along with other scholars, has questioned
whether Kawabata did not really intend this novel to be a novel for women only.4 It was
Kawabata’s decision to exclude this novel from his “complete” collected works.
At first, Kawabata considered publishing the novel under the title Furui Koto or
The Old Capital because of its developing plot in the old capital of Kyoto.5 He changed
his mind as he was at the same time writing the novel Koto. While writing Beauty and
Sadness, the emphasis switched from the city of Kyoto to unveiling the deepest
implications of the concepts of beaniy/utsukushisa and sadness/kanashimi in the
characters’ lives. He then made the decision to publish it under the new title.
Japanese scholars have assigned Beauty and Sadness to the so-called “popular
romanesque,” or “melodrama” typical of the literature published in magazines for
women.6 As is the case with most of Kawabata’s novels, this one remains incomplete.7
(2) Beauty and Sadness: A Synopsis
Oki Toshio is a fifty-five year-old novelist living in Kamakura with his family.
Toshio and his wife Fumiko have two adult children, Taichiro, their son, a university
student majoring in the humanities who lives at home, and Kumiko, their married
daughter who lives abroad.
3 Doris Bargen, “Ancestral to None - Mizuko in Kawabata,” Japanese Journal o f Religious Studies 19, no.
4 (1992): 337, footnote no. 1.
4 Suzuki Haruo, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to kangae,” 230; Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu,
209; Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 171.
5 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 199-200.
6 Okuno Tateo, “Kawabata Zenshu,” Bundantaku butsushi, Yomiuri shinbunsha, July 1967; Hayashi
Fusao, “Bungei Jihyo,” Asahi Shinbun, September 28, 1963.
7 Ibuki Kazuko, Kawabata Yasunari: hitomi no densetsu (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyujo, 1997), 44-47.
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346
About twenty years earlier, the thirty-two year old Toshio had an extra-marital
affair with the sixteen-year old Ueno Otoko. Otoko became pregnant, and when her
eight-month old baby was still bom, she attempted suicide. Otoko was committed to a
psychiatric hospital for a couple of months, until she moved to Kyoto with her mother
and started a new life without Toshio. Toshio wrote about his affair with Otoko in A
Girl o f Sixteen, which became his most famous novel, the novel that brought him fame
and his family financial security.
At the time of his affair with Otoko, Toshio was already married to Fumiko, and
Taichiro was an infant. Fumiko knew of her husband’s relationship with another woman,
but never did anything to be in his way. After breaking up with Otoko, Toshio decided
to write about the affair. Needing somebody to type the manuscript of A Girl o f Sixteen,
he asked Fumiko, aware of the cruelty of his request. Fumiko accepted the task, which
was revelatory to her on different levels. From his written words, she justified Toshio’s
relationship with Otoko as having been good for his emotional well-being.
Fumiko, who was pregnant when she started typing the manuscript, had a
miscarriage while working on it. When A Girl o f Sixteen was published, Fumiko
enjoyed the new life style that the sale of the novel provided. Moreover, she was
pregnant again.
Otoko, on the other hand, was embarrassed when, after A Girl o f Sixteen was
published, people could surmise that she was the model for the female protagonist. Only
years later did the truth of her being the model become public. After breaking up with
Toshio and moving to Kyoto with her mother, Otoko studied art and became a Japanese
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347
style painter. Although her mother pushed her to get married and start a family, Otoko
always refused.
Almost twenty years later, Toshio desires to meet Otoko after coming across her
picture in an art magazine and seeing her painting of a red peony in an art gallery.
Toshio arranges for Otoko to meet him in Kyoto on New Year’s Eve to listen to the
temple bells.
Otoko lives in Kyoto in a house on the grounds of a temple with her young
apprentice Sakami Keiko. The two women are lovers. When Toshio reappears in
Otoko’s life, Keiko becomes jealous. When she sees the pain from the past resurfacing
in Otoko’s heart, she decides to get revenge.
Keiko aims at the emotional destruction of Toshio. After becoming sexually
involved with Toshio, Keiko realizes that the only way to really hurt him is to destroy
the apparent harmony of his household. She decides to start a relationship with his son
Taichiro. When Otoko discovers Keiko’s intent, she demands that Keiko put an end to it,
but Keiko refuses.
Beauty and Sadness ends with Taichiro’s death, masterfully planned by Keiko,
and presented to the world as an accident.
o
(3) Kawabata Yasunari, Beauty and Sadness and Fujin Koron
One of the many issues about the publication of this novel has to do with its
being serialized in the magazine Fujin Koron. It was not the first time that Kawabata
8 The following section is based on Kume Yoriko’s essay “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 171-176.
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348
had published in the magazine. In 1941, in fact, he had published Aisuru hitotachi in
Fujin Koron?
In her essay on Beauty and Sadness, Kume Yoriko delves into the reasons that
male novelists and essayists would choose this publication to voice their biased
opinions about women and women’s roles in the family and society.1 0 Every magazine
publication has a so-called reading code to which writers and essayists conform when
submitting material. In Japan, Fujin Koron had and retains the code of a publication for
women.1 1 When Kawabata claimed that he did not think to write Beauty and Sadness
for a woman’s magazine, he was contradicting himself, knowing very well the type of
audience he was addressing.
Since before World War II, Fujin Koron had been a renowned publication for
women. First published in 1917, from 1946 to 1956, the magazine started to approach
issues that dealt with politics, labor movement disputes and world peace.1 2 The themes
that Kawabata explores in Beauty and Sadness (immoral conduct, same-sex love,
seduction) were much in vogue after the war. Around the time of the publication of
9 Shinjo Ikuo, “Kawabata Yasunari Aisuru hitotachi ron - Fujin Koron to iu hyosho kukan,” in Kawabata
bungaku no sekai, volume 2, Tamura Mitsumasa, Baba Shigeyuki, and Hara Zen, eds., 60-85.
1 0 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 171-176.
1 1 For the history of Fujin koron see Matsuda Fumiko, Fujin koron no gojunen (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha,
1965). For an overview of Japanese women’s magazines in general see Tanaka Keiko, “Japanese
Women’s Magazines. The Language of Aspiration,” in The Worlds o f Popular Culture. Gender, Shifting
Boundaries, and Global Culture, D. P. Martinez, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 110-132.
1 2 For an account of the debates taking place in the pages o f Fujin koron when it was first published see
Laurel Rasplica Rodd, “Yosano Akiko and the Taisho Debate over the ‘New Woman,”’ in Recreating
Japanese Women, 1600-1945, Gail Lee Bernstein, ed., 175-198; Tomi Suzuki, Narrating the Self.
Fictions o f Japanese Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 167; E. Patricia Tsurumi,
“Visions o f Women and the New Society in Conflict: Yamakawa Kikue versus Takamura Itsue,” in
Japan’ s Competing Modernities. Issues in Culture and Democracy 1900-1930, Sharon A. Minichiello,
ed., 335-357.
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349
Beauty and Sadness the topic of what makes a happy marriage was being discussed in
the pages of Fujin Koron. Moreover, in the middle of 1956 Fujin Koron had started
publishing more issue-specific essays, asking such questions as “What could concretely
be one reason to marry a business man?” The magazine, in other words, actively
reflected the changes of the time.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s the so-called “housewife debate” (shufu ronso)
was carried out in the pages of Fujin koron. The debate revolved around whether
women should be wives and mothers or career-women. One intriguing aspect of the
debate was “the extent to which the general readership of Fujin koron rejected
arguments favoring women’s rights to place career over family and sided with the
proponents of a more conservative, neotraditionalist argument for the priority of
motherhood.”1 3
At the time that Kawabata was writing Beauty and Sadness, other male writers
were offering their own views on the institution of marriage in a changing Japanese
society. In an essay titled “The different dimension of married life and romantic love”
(Kekkon seikatsu to ren’ai wa betsu no jigen), published in February 1962 in Fujin
Koron, Yoshiyuki Junnosuke wrote that a wife accomplishes her goal of maintaining a
good and harmonious family life anytime she pretends she has no knowledge of her
husband’s extra-marital affairs. Men, on the other hand, tend to disregard a “peaceful
family life” as an accomplishment. Unable to feel bound to their wives, they go about
1 3 Sandra Buckley, “Altered States. The Body Politics of ‘Being-Woman’ in Postwar Japan,” in Postwar
Japan as History, Andrew Gordon, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 350.
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350
having affairs with other women.1 4 Yoshiyuki Jun’nosuke’s position is rooted in a
Japanese perception that considers “marriage” and “falling in love” as separate
experiences, and reflects the commonly-held beliefs of pre-war generations.1 5
In an essay published in this same magazine in November 1961 titled “What
financial strength and self-consciousness have brought us” (Keizai ryoku to jikoku ga
motarashita mono), conservative novelist Niwa Fumio offered a peculiar view about
married men’s affairs and the proper responses of women who discover their lovers are
married. Niwa writes that when an unmarried woman falls in love with a man who hides
from her his status as a married man, there is nothing she can possibly do or say the day
she finds out he has a wife and children. These women, in other words, cannot really
accuse these men of anything. Even if men were to feel guilty in their hearts about
hiding the truth from their lovers, they would still go on deceiving them. This being the
case, men become romanticists.1 6 In other words, Niwa Fumio not only condones extra
marital affairs, he also romanticizes the role of the unfaithful husband.
In his novel Niji (Rainbow) published in Fujin Koron between 1960 and 1961,
novelist Ito Sei has his male protagonist offer a portrait of the ideal woman. The ideal
woman/wife is one who salvages everything and everybody. She acknowledges that
men have a variety of feelings and listens even when men talk about their feelings for
other women, especially women besides their wives. The ideal woman consoles her
man, supports him, and encourages him to approach other women. In the event that the
1 4 Cited in Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 172.
1 5 Iwao Sumiko, The Japanese Woman. Traditional Image and Changing Reality (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1993), 61.
1 6 Cited in Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 173.
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351
man gets hurt by other women, he knows that the ideal woman will be waiting for him
to embrace him and his pain, that she will still console him, and that she will be wise
enough to let him know that in the end he will find eternal rest only with her.1 7
In an essay Ito Sei also published in Fujin Koron in February 1963 (“Reizoku o
shiiru genshi shodo” or The Impulse to Force Subordination), he offers the portrait of
what he perceives as the real woman, which is in apparent contrast to the one he
idealized in the pages of Nishi. Ito argues that women are driven by inner impulses to
control and enslave men by using sex. He believes that this is true for married and
unmarried women, for wives and lovers. In other words, women have a tendency
toward monogamous relationships. Men, on the other hand, tend to be freer in this
matter, taking every opportunity to approach women, and not feeling exclusively
1 Q
attached to one in particular.
The Christian novelist Miura Shumon portrayed wives in unhappy marriages, as
the victims. In his essay “A Warning to Unfaithful Wives” (Reja fujin uwaki no
imashime), published in March 1961 in Fujin Koron, Miura writes of how wives
become victims of societal codes when discovered in their extra-marital affairs. Women
are then cast away. But wives are the victims even when their husbands have affairs.
Even in this case wives are abandoned.1 9
Kume concludes that although changes were taking place in Japanese society,
women were still tied to rigorous moral codes.2 0 Women had to tolerate their husbands’
1 7 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 173.
1 8 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 173.
1 9 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 174.
2 0 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 174.
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352
unfaithful behavior and still be pleasant to them. Although some letters from women to
Fujin Koron showed the unmarried woman’s perspective and related how some women
conceived of marriage as an invitation to unhappiness, the essays, novels, and articles in
this magazine tended to glorify the Japanese woman/wife who conformed to the moral
rules offered by male writers: woman as subordinate, woman/wife as tolerant.2 1 The
decades-long ideology of “the good wife, wise mother” (rydsai kenbo) still permeated
the pages of Fujin Koron?2
Kume highlights the moral messages that Kawabata’s novels brought to Fujin
Koron’ ’s female audience. She argues that one of Kawabata’s moral lessons could be
found in the sad life Otoko is leading. As a young girl she had an affair with a married
man, and to be in an improper relationship only invites unhappiness. Otoko’s
unhappiness is marked by the fact that she has been denied the opportunity to become a
wife and a mother.2 3 Otoko, in other words, is punished for not complying with societal
rules.
Otoko’s lesbianism is also an issue. By depicting a carnal desire that goes
against conservative views of proper sexual behavior, Kawabata portrays the propriety
of heterosexual relationships.2 4 In other words, lesbianism is seen as another reason for
sadness in Otoko’s life.
On the one hand, Otoko’s portrait disrupted the harmony of the moral lesson that
Fujin Koron was conveying in its articles about what makes a happy marriage. On the
2 1 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 174.
2 2 For an history of rydsai kenbo ideology in pre-war and post-war Japan see Kathleen S. Uno’s essay
“The Death of ‘Good Wife, Wise Mother?’” 293-322.
2 3 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 174.
2 4 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 175.
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other hand, Otoko’s character was needed to emphasize the victim-status of betrayed
wives. In the Oki’s household, Fumiko tolerates her husband’s affairs in order to
preserve harmony in her family, and she welcomes him back when he breaks up with
Otoko. However, all she gains from her husband’s behavior is unhappiness. Her
husband’s improper behavior from the past also causes Taichiro’s death. When Fumiko
decided to remain in the marriage, she knew she would be the one to carry the burden of
an unhappy life.2 5 At the end, Fumiko suffers the harshest destiny.
Fujin Koron fell short of condemning husbands’ infidelities, probably because it
focused too much on promoting “the good wife, wise mother” ideology, and this novel,
as Kume argues, does come across as promoting such view.2 6 Kume also questions
Otoko and Fumiko’s conditions in life. They both face a sad destiny. Fumiko protected
and supported her husband, but this did not guarantee her happiness in life. Otoko
pursued the fantasy of her love for Toshio all her life, but that effort did not bring her
happiness either.2 7
In his essay on Beauty and Sadness, Taguchi Shigeru writes that women have a
sad destiny which they carry within themselves. It is this sad destiny that defines
femininity. Kume claims that if we were to embrace Taguchi’s argument, there would
be no further need to read through the pages of Beauty and Sadness to unveil other ideas
different from his.2 8 Kume, however, strongly suggests that there are more readings of
2 5 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 175.
2 6 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 175.
2 7 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 175.
2 8 Taguchi Shigeru, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to shiron,” in Kawabata Bungaku e no izanai, Kosakabe
Motohide, ed. (Tokyo: Miyai Shoten, 1986), cited in Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,”
179.
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354
this novel, more levels of perception, and Kawabata’s writing style leaves the door open
to further interpretations as women tell their stories.
(4) Scholarship on Beauty and Sadness
Unlike the scholarship on other novels by Kawabata, critical works on Beauty
and Sadness do not abound. Donald Keene has dismissed the text as “a disappointing
novel, only a few cuts above middlebrow fiction, and of interest chiefly because of the
attention given to the relations between the author and the model for his stories.”2 9 With
this statement, Keene falls short of fully comprehending the place this novel occupies in
Kawabata’s literature. In her 1992 essay “Ancestral to None - Mizuko in Kawabata,”
Doris Bargen gives a “reading of Beauty and Sadness that stresses the religious context
of the literary experience of child loss.”3 0 This innovative approach picks up a recurring
theme in the novel, in which Otoko and Oki lose their child, Fumiko has a miscarriage,
and at the end Fumiko and Oki’s son Taichiro dies.
Works of criticism in Japanese language on Beauty and Sadness are also scarce,
especially when compared to the rich scholarship on novels such as Snow Country or
Sleeping Beauties. Among the issues these works of criticism address there is the
argument that Oki Toshio resembles Kawabata Yasunari when he writes A Girl of
Sixteen. This has been seen as an autobiographical attempt on Kawabata’s side to revisit
2 9 Donald Keene, “Kawabata Yasunari,” 836.
3 0 Doris Bargen, “Ancestral to None,” 368. On the issue of mizuko see also William R. LaFleur, Liquid
Life. Abortion and Buddhism in Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
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The Dancing Girl o f Izu (Izu no odoriko.)3 1 In other words, an older man’s relationship
with a younger girl is revisited in the pages of A Girl o f Sixteen. Oki Toshio could then
be seen as Kawabata’s alter-ego, and some of Toshio’s feelings could be ascribed to
Kawabata when he wrote The Dancing Girl o f Izu.
Yoshimura Teiji classifies Beauty and Sadness among those novels by
Kawabata that explore relationships between women such as Thousand Cranes and
Tokyo no hito (mother-daughter relationship), The Old Capital (relationship between
sisters), and Onna de aru koto and Snow Country (new and ambiguous relationship
T9
between women).
Suzuki Haruo identifies in Beauty and Sadness the theme of the reunion of
lovers, which Kawabata had already explored in “Bungakuteki jijoden,” “Chichihaha e
no tegami,” “Haha no hatsukoi,” and “Saikai.” 3 3 Major topics addressed in the
scholarship in Japanese on Beauty and Sadness include the issue of makai, the theme of
same-sex love, the investigation of the concepts of beauty and sadness, and the
similarities between Beauty and Sadness and Snow Country,
Yoshimura argues that it is Keiko who belongs to makai the most, because of
her need to get revenge on behalf of Otoko.3 4 The critic writes that with Keiko,
Kawabata has created a girl of makai. Kawabata sees beauty in the world Keiko inhabits,
3 1 Hasegawa Izumi, “Izu no odoriko,” in Zohohan Kawabata Yasunari ronko (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1969);
Kosakabe Motohide, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to o megutte,” in Kawabata Yasunari sakuhin kenkyu,
Hasegawa Izumi, ed. (Tokyo: Yagi Shoten, 1969); Suzuki Haruo, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to kangae,”
232; Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 155.
3 2 Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to jun 'ai, 185.
3 3 Suzuki Haruo, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to kangae,” 234.
3 4 Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to jun 'ai, 190-193; Suzuki Hamo, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to kangae,” 241.
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356
and he aestheticizes it. According to Yoshimura, the beauty and sadness of Kawabata’s
title is meant to stress both the beauty and sadness of loving.3 5
Imamura Junko offers a different view. According to her, Toshio, Otoko, and
Keiko belong to a demonic realm. Imamura argues that an emblem of makai is the “ugly
discharge” (iro no warui nen’ eki) coming from Otoko after her miscarriage, which
Toshio continuously wipes away as Otoko lies unconscious.3 6 Toshio, a man of makai,
dwells in this demonic realm not only for what he has done to Otoko’s life, but also for
what he has done to his wife, by having her type a manuscript describing his affair with
another woman, and for having put on paper the experience of his extramarital affair:
“And it was this novel, reputedly the finest of his early writings, that continued to
outsell all his other works” [Z300/H40-41]. Imamura sees in this irony the workings of
I T
makai.
It is Fumiko who perceives Keiko as inhabitant of makai when she sees masho
or devilishness in this young girl, and calls her majo or a witch. Imamura also argues
-5Q
that Toshio’s relationship with Keiko furthers his descent into makai. Otoko belongs
to makai not only because she once was Toshio’s lover, but also because of her
improper relationship with Keiko.4 0
Just as Yoshimura Teiji, Imamura believes that the character most easily
associated with makai is Keiko. Since the beginning of their relationship, Otoko has
3 5 Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to jun ’ ai, 193.
3 6 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 203. The passage Imamura refers to can be found in
Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 17, p. 281, and in Hibbett’s translation on pp. 21-22.
3 7 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 205.
3 8 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 206.
3 9 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 206-207.
4 0 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 210.
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357
perceived an “uncertain evil charm” (ayashii maryoku) emanating from the girl. Yoki or
eerie feeling hovers over Keiko, and Otoko feels it provokes makai4 1 Keiko’s makai
can be seen in her revenge against Toshio, and in her attempt to curb her own excessive
love for Otoko.4 2 Imamura further argues that the gruesomeness and dreadfulness of
makai is fully revealed when Keiko calls Fumiko and forces Taichiro to tell his mother
that he is with her and that they will get married. MakaV s triumph is visible in the tears
falling from Keiko’s eyes after Taichiro has died 4 3
The scholarship on Beauty and Sadness has not ignored the issue of same-sex
love that characterizes Otoko and Keiko’s relationship.4 4 Kawabata himself was not
new to this issue, which he had approached in his novel Shonen 4 5 Yoshimura argues
that Keiko is the strongest woman in the relationship, and that she is jealous of Toshio,
for whom Otoko still has feelings.4 6
Imamura points out that the affair of Otoko and Keiko is complicated by the fact
that by the end they both have had a sexual relationship with Toshio. Imamura further
argues that the relationship the two women share is imbued not with ugliness, but
4 1 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 214.
4 2 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 216.
4 3 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 217. H206/Z490.
441 translate doseiai as same-sex love avoiding the word “homosexuality” which, as a Western construct,
is a culturally and politically loaded concept. For a discussion of the doseiai vs. “homosexuality” debate
see Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Cartographies o f Desire. Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse 1600-
1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 5.
4 5 Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 10; Suzuki Haruo, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to kangae,” 239;
Omori Ikunosuke, “Kawabata Yasunari no Lesbianism to Pederastry," Kokugo to kokubungaku 68, no. 8
(August 1991): 46-60.
4 6 Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to ju n 'ai, 184.
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beauty. Imamura also emphasizes how Otoko leads readers to accept her feelings that in
Keiko’s embrace she feels the same way she felt in Toshio’s.4 7
Kume also addresses this last argument.4 8 Although the relationship between
Otoko and Keiko could be compared to a relationship between twins, or to a
relationship between mothers and daughters, it is their same-sex love relationship that
attracts the most attention. Kume argues that Otoko is in reality using Keiko the way
Toshio used her. When Otoko decides to use Keiko for her “Portrait of a Holy Virgin,”
the artist is using Keiko as a model for a painting just as Toshio used Otoko as his
model for ^ Girl o f Sixteen.4 9
Otoko’s love for Keiko is an ambiguous love imbued with self-love and
affection.5 0 In her relationship with Keiko, Otoko comes across as “the young girl,” “the
mother,” the embodiment of “feminine modesty” and “carnal desire.”5 1 What is more
peculiar is that in her relationship with Keiko, Otoko employs love-making techniques
that Toshio used with her. Again, Otoko does to Keiko what Toshio did to her. This
may lead us to question Otoko’s feminine features, and her lack of feminine modesty. In
behaving just as Toshio did, Otoko recreates herself as Toshio. Kume argues that in this
52
type of same-sex love we can see the depths of Otoko’s love for Toshio.
The scholarship on Beauty and Sadness also deals with understanding the title
itself. The Japanese character that Kawabata uses for “sadness” is not the one associated
4 7 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 209.
4 8 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 159-163.
4 9 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 160-161.
5 0 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 161.
5 1 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 163.
5 2 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 163.
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359
with sorrow or grief, but rather the one associated with pathos, the same character used
m mono no aware. In pathos one can see beauty. Paul Varley argues that Kawabata
used mono no aware “to deal with the subtle responses of people to the natural settings
within which they lived.”5 4 Kawabata aims only at bringing to the surface the beauty
contained in this type of female “sadness.”5 5 Imamura argues that because ugliness and
wrongdoing are exposed in this novel, readers long to unveil “the purity of beauty” that
triumphs at the end.5 6
Kume argues that the chapter “Summer Losses” fully reveals Kawabata’s
understanding of concepts of beauty and sadness. According to Kume, all of Otoko’s
paintings that are discussed in the novel (her portrait of two maiko, her painting of the
peony, her mother’s portrait, the Ascension of Infant, and the Portrait of a Holy Virgin)
are self-portraits even if she does not physically appear in them. These paintings must
all be read as Otoko’s representation of her self-love.5 7 Although Otoko’s image is
missing, her sense of beauty and sadness is clearly conveyed. In the intensity of her love
for Toshio, which she reflected in her painting of the peony, and in the intensity of her
love for her baby and her mother we see her “sadness.” This sadness is Otoko’s self-
portrait of beauty. The beauty that Otoko draws in her paintings is her own sadness
5 3 “Mono no aware, or aware: The deep feelings inherent in, or felt from, the world and experience of it.
In early classical times aware might be an exclamation o f joy or other intense feelings, but later came to
designate sadder and even tragic feelings. Both the source or occasion of such feeling and the response to
the source are meant.” The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature, Earl Miner, Hiroko
Odagiri, and Robert E. Morrell (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 290; for a definition
and discussion of aware in Motoori Norinaga’s writings see Peter Nosco, Remembering Paradise.
Nativism and Nostalgia in Eighteenth-Century Japan, 178-183.
5 4 H. Paul Varley, “Culture in the Present Age,” in Japanese Aesthetics and Culture: A Reader, Nancy G.
Hume, ed. (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995), 306.
5 5 Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to jun ’ ai, 111 and 187.
5 6 Imamura Junko, Kawabata Yasunari kenkyu, 220.
5 7 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 164.
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which can be seen in the loneliness conveyed in her mother’s portrait, as well as in her
love for Keiko.5 8
In their essays on Beauty and Sadness, some Japanese scholars focus on
investigating this novel’s thematic similarities to Snow Country.5 9 Yoshimura Teiji
argues that the trip that Toshio makes from Kamakura to Kyoto can be compared to
Shimamura’s trip to the snow country. However, when the train comes out of the tunnel
into the snow country, Shimamura is projected into a world that seems to belong to a
different dimension in both space and time. To Oki Toshio, his destination, Kyoto, is
the place where Otoko’s life and death dilemmas are carried out.6 0 Kyoto is not the real
Kyoto, but rather the realm of the dead (meikai), where Otoko and Keiko dwell as alter-
egos.6 1
In one of her many interviews with Kawabata, Ibuki Kazuko questioned the
novelist on several issues about Beauty and Sadness, such as its open-ended status, and
its similarities to Snow Country. Kawabata pointed out that (1) Shimamura going
through the tunnel into the snow country can be compared to Toshio’s going to Kyoto
to listen to the temple bells; (2) Ueno Otoko and Sakemi Keiko can be compared to
Komako and Yoko; (3) Komako lives her life to the fullest, just as Otoko loves with all
her might; (4) it is through Komako that Shimamura meets Yoko, and he develops an
attraction for Yoko that goes beyond the one he has for Komako (this is duplicated in
Toshio’s leaning toward Keiko, and developing feelings totally different from the ones
5 8 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 165.
5 9 Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to ju n ’ ai, 185 and 188; Ibuki Kazuko, Kawabata Yasunari hitomi no densetsu,
48-49; Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 168-171.
6 0 Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to jun ’ ai, 188.
6 1 Yoshimura Teiji, Yobi to jun ’ ai, 192.
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he has for Otoko); and (5) in A Girl o f Sixteen a story is told about a girl of sixteen-
seventeen years old, while in Snow Country we are presented with fragments in the life
of seventeen-year old Komako.6 2
Kawabata also points out that in Beauty and Sadness, Toshio is the author of a
novel that stirs deep emotions twenty years after it was written, a novel that gave Toshio
fame and wealth. Ibuki finds similarities between Toshio and Kawabata. Kawabata,
after all, wrote The Dancing Girl o f Izu and Snow Country, two novels that still stir deep
emotions in readers, and that brought Kawabata fame and wealth.6 3
Ibuki also cites Kawabata on the fact that when compared to Snow Country, he
felt that with Beauty and Sadness “he did not do very well.”6 4 Ibuki questions the
reasons behind that remark. Kawabata states that he tried to convey in Beauty and
Sadness the same tragic feeling experienced at the end of Snow Country, making Beauty
and Sadness a sort of variation of Snow Country. Kawabata, however, felt that he did
not succeed, and that he had failed to reproduce the emotional overtones of Snow
Country's finale.
Kawabata was also not satisfied with the eroticism Beauty and Sadness
conveyed. The novelist argues that Snow Country is more erotic than Beauty and
Sadness because erotic scenes are more subtle, and they say more by showing less.
Ibuki assumes from Kawabata’s words that Beauty and Sadness is not as polished as
Snow Country, and this is why we see in Beauty and Sadness eroticism in its raw state.6 5
6 2 Ibuki Kazuko, Kawabata Yasunari hitomi no densetsu, 48-49.
6 3 Ibuki Kazuko, Kawabata Yasunari hitomi no densetsu, 49.
6 4 Ibuki Kazuko, Kawabata Yasunari hitomi no densetsu, 49.
6 5 Ibuki Kazuko, Kawabata Yasunari hitomi no densetsu, 49.
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Ibuki’s essay raises the issue of the thematic similarities Snow Country and
Beauty and Sadness share. In her essay, however, Ibuki is more concerned with sharing
with the reader her personal experiences when exposed to Kawabata’s presence,
experiences that encompass the study of these novels in particular. Ibuki’s essay, though,
suggests how Beauty and Sadness may be seen as a sequel to Snow Country, or as the
story of Shimamura and Komako’s coming of age. (1) Oki Toshio embodies the
features of an aged Shimamura; Toshio is a middle-aged man on a quest to revisit his
past, and to expose himself to the consequences of his past deeds in his present life. (2)
Otoko could be seen as an older, perhaps wiser, version of Komako. The women are
both artists, both unmarried, and both involved in a relationship with a married man.
They share a tragic destiny. (3) Assuming that Yoko died in Snow Country, we could
see her re-incarnate in Keiko. They both dwell in the realm of death, but for Yoko death
is personal, while Keiko is the cause of death. It could be controversial to argue that
Yoko dwelled in makai, but we could think of her as a soul in purgatory, between
realms. Keiko, on the other hand, must be accepted as a creature of makai. (5)
Shimamura’s wife and children went unnamed in Snow Country, while in Beauty and
Sadness the protagonist’s family plays a major role in the development of the plot.
Kume provides a different dimension to the study of the similarities and
differences between Beauty and Sadness and Snow Country. Her approach reveals
influences from feminist literary criticism, and she offers a reading that challenges
male-centered discourses on women as objects of a male novel, that redefines the place
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363
of the female characters in Kawabata’s novels, and that questions the male-narrator’s
omnipresent point of view.6 6
Kume argues that Snow Country is in a man’s voice: Shimamura talks and sees
while Komako and Yoko are described and seen. These women are seldom allowed to
speak their own minds, and when they do, their speech is filtered through Shimamura’s
consciousness. Moreover, in Snow Country we are not allowed to witness a
conversation between Komako and Yoko. As I have shown in Chapter 3, Yoko and
Komako never look at each other.
Kume argues that in Toshio’s novel A Girl o f Sixteen Otoko, just like Komako
and Yoko, is written about in a male voice. However, in Beauty and Sadness, Otoko is
allowed to speak in her own voice. Kume argues that Otoko’s paintings embody her
voice. Moreover, whereas Komako’s point of view is not given in Snow Country, Otoko
can be seen engaging in self-criticism anytime she addresses her love for Toshio.
From a feminist perspective, most of the stereotyped male-centered discourses
about women converge in the novel. Otoko embodies the ambiguities of the prostitute
and the mother, while Keiko plays the role of the seductress and the virgin. Otoko,
Keiko, and Fumiko are, at the end, the ones hurt by Toshio’s self-centered behavior.
Otoko has a role never seen in Kawabata’s novels, but Kawabata seems on a quest to
emphasize only her weaknesses.
Kume also points out important differences between pre-war and post-war
writings by Kawabata. In Kawabata’s pre-war writings, the male gaze and voice were
6 6 The following is a summary of Kume Yoriko’s arguments. Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to
ron,” 168-171.
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predominant. In his post-war writings, the female gaze and voice seem to interfere with
the male perspective. To overcome this inconvenience, Kawabata seems to construct
male protagonists that are more cruel, and on a quest to hurt or objectify women. In
Sleeping Beauties and the short story “One Arm” (Kata Ude), for example, it seems as
if women dwell in the realm of the dead, but the truth may be that Kawabata was
looking for a literary device not to have women interfere with the workings of the male
characters’ consciousness.6 7
In Beauty and Sadness, however, Otoko’s gaze and voice give a different shape
to Toshio’s love and his perception of Otoko. Toshio’s image of Otoko is stale. He can
deal only with the idealized image of her he portrayed in A Girl o f Sixteen. On the other
hand, Otoko, who has outgrown such an image, speaks her mind through her paintings.
She tells her version of her love for Toshio, changing the tone of the novel.
Feminist literary critic Tajima Yoko has argued that in Beauty and Sadness
women are created as objects of contempt {josei besshi). Otoko is a beautiful maternal
woman with carnal desires; Keiko is a witch with a rather sad destiny; Fumiko is a
woman betrayed again and again. Tajima argues that the women are depicted on a quest
to satisfy their self-love and are ridiculed in their attempts. She concludes that
Kawabata’s literature is not as much an “adoration of women” (josei sambi), as a
“derision of women” (josei besshi).6 8
6 7 Although Kume Yoriko does not cite Matsuura Hisaki’s essay “Mira koto no heisoku,” she does share
with Matsuura the opinion on unconscious/fragmented women as literary devices unable to threaten either
the male point of view or the wholeness of manhood.
6 8 Tajima Yoko, “Komako no shiten kara yomu Yukiguni,” in Onna ga yomu Nihon kindai bungaku.
Feminizumu hihyo no kokoromi, Egusa Mitsuko, Urushida Kazuyo, Seiki Reiko et als., eds. (Tokyo:
Shin’yosha, 1992), cited in Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 170.
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Kume does not embrace Tajima’s position; she believes that, more than
“adoration of women,” Beauty and Sadness can be addressed as the frame for a vision
of women that is unknown in previous Kawabata’s texts. Beauty and Sadness becomes
the site/sight of women’s strength.6 9
In my study of Beauty and Sadness, I embrace some of the arguments Kume
puts forward in her essay. My approach to the text from the perspective of the female
gaze reveals women’s strength when surviving betrayal, abandonment and child loss,
and presents a male character forced into accepting his uncomfortable status as the one
gazed upon.
(5) Defying Male Voices and Male Gazes: the Female Gaze
Studied from the perspective of the male gaze, an investigation of Toshio’s gaze
would reveal female objects with the same features I have analyzed in previous chapters.
Toshio as subject of the gaze can be seen ascribing a sexual dimension to Otoko as his
object. Especially in A Girl o f Sixteen, Otoko comes across as an idealized object of
male desire. She is objectified, physically and visually, as she is seen by the male gaze.
When twenty years later they meet again, Otoko is the same object of desire to Toshio,
revealing a stagnant dimension of the male gaze. Refusing to see the workings of time
and the marks of suffering on Otoko, Toshio sees her exclusively as he described her in
his novel. In his eyes, Otoko is always a girl of sixteen.
6 9 Kume Yoriko, “Utsukushisa to kanashimi to ron,” 171.
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When Keiko comes under Toshio’s gaze, Toshio sees another object of sexual
desire. He is intrigued by the young girl’s beauty and her connection to Otoko. However,
after he sleeps with her, he moves on with his life. He fails to see her as an inhabitant of
makai, and thus does not recognize himself in his reflecting object. Instead, Toshio
looks only to satisfy his scopophilic desire to please his senses. He fails to embrace the
reality of his self in the place from which the other reflects a troubling image of him.
This is not mis-recognition, but unwillingness to know.
Toshio struggles to remain in charge of the gaze, to be the only subject of the
gaze in the novel. When Toshio gazes at Otoko’s paintings, for example, he misreads
their contents. Toshio fails to see Otoko’s self-representation in them. In other words,
Toshio sees what he can comfortably accept. To delve deeper in the emotions that
transpire from the paintings would mean for him to switch from subject to object of the
gaze, to be under the gaze of Otoko. In other words, Otoko looks back at him (and at
her audience in general) from the symbolism of her paintings, but Toshio is not ready to
confront the female gaze.
Reading the novel from the perspective of the male gaze highlights its limits,
dealing exclusively with representations of women as objects of sexual desire and
embodiments of male erotic fantasies. Studying Beauty and Sadness from the
perspective of the female gaze, on the other hand, opens up an array of possibilities.
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The novel depicts women as subjects of the gaze, as starting the gaze, as
returning the gaze, and as inviting the gaze.7 0 To start the gaze implies a position of
power. When the woman starts the gaze, returns the male gaze, or invites the gaze, the
dynamics of vision are altered. From a Freudian psychoanalytic perspective, “If the
woman looks, the spectacle provokes, castration is in the air, the Medusa’s head is not
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far off.” This is partly true when the object of the female gaze is a man because a
returned female gaze may be necessary to ensure plenitude on the side of the object
seen (as it was the case with Gimpei in The Lake). Especially the returned female gaze
unsettles the status of the male object as whole. The male subject of the gaze seemingly
enjoys a feeling of completeness. However, according to Lacan, wholeness is disrupted
when the gaze/look is returned from the place of the other, and the female object
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becomes the subject of the gaze. The male then-subject now-object is left dealing with
the politics of the gazed upon, an emotionally unsettling position, especially when
considering that the male subjectivity at stake is slowly reduced to fragments.
Castration anxiety as anxiety over loss of self, or parts of the self, ensues.
The female character that starts the gaze in Beauty and Sadness is Keiko. She
gazes at men, looking straight into their eyes. Her gaze, more often than not, becomes
an invitation to look back at her. Her inviting gaze may be read as a wish to become the
object of male desire. Her invitation is narcissistic. Although she starts the gaze, she
receives pleasure by becoming the object of the returned male gaze. Keiko, in other
7 0 The theoretical approach behind women as subjects of the gaze, or as women inviting the male gaze,
has been explored in Chapter 3. In this chapter I will build upon those premises to explore the
implications of having women as subjects of the gaze.
7 1 Stephen Heath, “Difference,” 92.
7 2 Jacques Lacan, Ecrit, 1-7.
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words, manipulates vision to suit her narcissistic and scopophilic pleasure. Keiko’s gaze,
therefore, as an example of female gaze, is capable of breaking fee of the limits ascribed
to the male gaze by theories of vision. Keiko’s gaze does not necessarily mimic the
male gaze, but Keiko uses it for her own satisfaction. In this way, she can show more
fluidity as she easily shifts from subject to object and from object to subject without
dismissing the emotional impact of the transition.
Toshio and Taichiro do not avoid Keiko’s gaze. Each in his own way confronts
the girl and, as a consequence, himself. They are both caught in acts of returning the
gaze, searching Keiko’s eyes for answers to her behavior and their own. Keiko
approaches becoming a Japanese version of Medusa. Men look at her, they return her
gaze, they do not always shrink into themselves, and they do not always put an end to
her gaze. Beth Newman writes:
Medusa defies the male gaze as Western culture has constructed it: as the
privilege of a male subject, a means of relegating women (or “woman”) to the
status of object (of representation, discourse, desire, etc.). Such defiance is
surely unsettling, disturbing the pleasure the male subject takes in gazing and
the hierarchical relations by which he asserts his dominance.7 3
Keiko is not a full-fledged Medusa. Her gaze does not disturb the pleasure that
male characters in Beauty and Sadness take in gazing at her. Although Keiko’s gaze
could be read as a site of domination,7 4 it does not completely defy hierarchy. Keiko at
times closes her eyes before the male gaze, but this is just another way for Keiko to
7 3 Beth Newman, “The Situation of the Looker-on. Gender, Narration, and the Gaze in Wuthering Heights
(1990),” in Feminisms. An Anthology o f Literary Theory and Criticism, Robyn R. Warhol and Diance
Price Hemdl, eds. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 451.
7 4 Norman K. Denzin, The Cinematic Society. The Voyeur’ s Gaze, 48.
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manipulate her own gaze. Keiko wants to be seen. She wants her beauty to be noticed.
She wants to be an object of male desire and to provoke male fantasies.
The anxiety of being watched “shows how highly ambiguous the role of sight
has been, especially when it includes the experience of being the object instead of the
subject of the look.”7 5 For Toshio in Beauty and Sadness, this is the case. What we have
seen so far in Kawabata’s novels is women reflecting back an apparent image of
wholeness to the male gazer. Explaining Lacan’s theory of the Phallus, Judith Butler
writes:
Women are said to “be” the Phallus in the sense that they maintain the power to
reflect or represent the “reality” of the self-grounding postures of the masculine
subject, a power which, if withdrawn, would break up the foundational illusions
of the masculine subject position. In order to “be” the Phallus, the reflector and
guarantor of an apparent masculine subject position, women must become, must
“be” (in the sense of “posture as if they were”) precisely what men are not and,
in their very lack, establish the essential function of men. Hence, “being” the
Phallus is always a “being for” a masculine subject who seeks to reconfirm and
7 ft
augment his identity through that recognition of that “being for.”
Women in Kawabata’s novels have so far reflected back to the male subject of
the gaze the fantasy of “an apparent masculine subject position.” This is the case with
Komako and Shimamura in Snow Country, with Chikako and Kikuji in Thousand
Cranes, with Miyako and Gimpei in The Lake, and with the sleeping beauties and
Eguchi in Sleeping Beauties. This pattern is questioned in Beauty and Sadness. What
does Otoko reflect back to Toshio? Otoko’s gender is not the issue, but her ambivalent
sexuality is.
7 5 Martin Jay, “In the Empire of the Gaze: Foucault and the Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-century
French Thought,” in Foucault: A Critical Reader, David Couzens Hoy, ed. (London: Basil Blackwell,
1986), 177.
7 6 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 45.
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When women in Kawabata’s novels look at their male objects, Kawabata
endows their gaze with a gender-ambivalent dimension. This is a safety device meant to
question the gender of the gaze and allow the male objects of the gaze not to feel
threatened by a gaze that has male features. In other words, to portray women in a male
position, or as having male features, should prevent men from feeling “castrated” when
under the female gaze. In Thousand Cranes, for example, Chikako looks at Kikuji, but
her gaze does not disturb Kikuji as much as when he feels seen by her birthmark,
because Chikako is a gender-ambivalent character. In The Lake, Miyako looks at
Gimpei, but Gimpei does not feel threatened by her returned gaze, a gaze that he needs.
Miyako, after all, mimics Gimpei’s gaze when she looks at Machie.
In Beauty and Sadness, Otoko, in her same-sex love relationship with Keiko,
mimes her former lover’s lovemaking techniques; Otoko looks at Keiko from the male
position in their same-sex relationship, and never uses that gaze to stare at Toshio.
Otoko threatens Toshio in the place where his memories reside. Even though Otoko
belongs to the category of sexually ambivalent women Kawabata portrays in his novels,
Otoko does not gaze at Toshio from the place of her own ambivalent sexuality of the
present, but from that place in time twenty years earlier that Toshio constantly revisits.
Otoko as a memory “castrates” Toshio by stirring his sense of guilt of having deprived
her of a chance at marriage and motherhood. Otoko unknowingly gazes at Toshio from
the past. It is this gaze as a male construct that mostly disrupts his emotional well-being.
With Otoko, Kawabata has created, once again, a woman who does not need to
be physically present in order to gaze and threaten. Although this was the case with the
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lady of the inn in the Sleeping Beauty, with Otoko, Kawabata has created a powerful
woman, whose gaze has haunted the male protagonist for over twenty years.
With this novel Kawabata participated in the debate of women’s place in the
society. The structure of the female gaze in Beauty and Sadness reveals women’s
rebellion toward such social roles as mothers, wives, and daughters, and shows
women’s desire to break free from social constraints. The portrayal does not reveal
Kawabata as an author who knows or praises women, but it shows his attempt to
understand them. Toshio’s healthy status ensures that the novel does not challenge the
questionable status as subjects of the gaze that Kawabata’s male protagonists enjoy
throughout his writings.
In this study of the female gaze in Beauty and Sadness, I draw on the theories of
vision introduced in previous chapters. Although in this novel Kawabata deflects the
emotional implications of the mutual gaze and the anticipated female gaze, he still
allows images to become repository of the characters’ dreams and fantasies. These
images, as they come to life in paintings or in the characters’ minds as fantasmata,
assume a life and a gaze of their own. As for the paintings, though their maker may hide
behind the safe fagade of her artistic works, from behind her images she peeps at her
male object. In this way, the female gaze disrupts the male subject of the gaze who is
unawaringly turned into an object.
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(6) Marking Gender Ambivalence: Otoko’s Gaze
The perspective of Otoko’s gaze introduces a world where images, as symbolic
representations of the self, convey a different view of Otoko’s life, especially her
experience as a lover of Toshio and Keiko. Otoko’s gaze lives mainly within her
paintings, from which she gazes at her two love objects as much as she gazes at herself.
If Otoko’s paintings are indeed representations of her love for Toshio, for Keiko,
for her unborn child, for her mother, and for herself, then Otoko gazes at herself and at
her multi-faceted love from those paintings.
In the following section I analyze Otoko as subject of the gaze and of her objects.
Otoko’s gaze is conveyed as a male construct when extrapolated from Toshio’s
memories of young Otoko, and as Otoko’s own construct when transposed in her
paintings. Objects of Otoko’s gaze are Toshio, Keiko, and Otoko herself. In the gaze
she reserves for Keiko we see the sexually ambivalent dimension of her gaze, especially
in her confession of having recreated herself as Toshio’s specular image in a same-sex
relationship with Keiko.
The richness and fluidity of the female gaze prevail and inscribe new overtones
in the plot. Otoko makes no attempt to comply with the dictum that she serves as object
of representation for the man’s sexual desire. She frees herself from the mold and gazes
as subject; she constructs herself as an independent being, free from male
representations of object of sexual desire. She emerges as her own person, shaped by
the choices she makes.
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(6.1.) Toshio as Object, Herself as Object
The first chapter of Beauty and Sadness “Temple Bells” introduces Otoko’s
gaze and her object Oki Toshio. The chapter is filled with Toshio’s memories of young
Otoko, the girl he idealized in his novel A Girl o f Sixteen. Twenty years after their
relationship Otoko looks at Toshio from the pages of an art magazine where she is
featured as a famous Japanese style painter: “Her figure was slender as ever. . . .He felt
a stab of guilt at having robbed her of the possibility of marriage and motherhood”
[H8/Z267-268], Although the man seemingly occupies the position of subject of the
gaze, the woman in the picture actually looks‘at him. Toshio is object of Otoko’s gaze,
under which he experiences that same guilt he felt the morning after their first sexual
encounter twenty years earlier. Otoko insisted on tying his necktie that morning;
She was looking up into his face (Otoko wa jitto miagete iru), her eyes moist
(urunde wa iru) and shining (kirameki hikaru me), but not tearful. He avoided
those eyes (Oki wa sono me o saketa). Even when he had kissed her, earlier,
Otoko had kept her eyes wide open (me o aita) until he pressed them shut with
his lips (Oki wa me ni kuchibiru o atete tojisaseta mono data). [H9/Z269]
Otoko needs visual reassurance. She needs to know that she is an object of
desire, but she also needs to know the truth about the man to whom she has given
herself. Against the woman’s need to look rests the man’s need to avoid her eyes and
gaze. Toshio must avoid such eyes that reflect back a picture of him that he is not ready
to accept. More importantly, Toshio needs to avoid visual confrontation in order to
avoid being engulfed by the enormity of his guilt, a guilt that will never abandon him.
We are presented with a woman who resists male representation of the object of
desire by peering into the man’s eyes. Otoko does not come across as passive object of
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the male gaze, but rather as a woman with her own gaze. Whereas in Snow Country,
Thousand Cranes, The Lake, and Sleeping Beauties beautiful women were supposed to
accept passively the male gaze and its representations, in Beauty and Sadness beautiful
women physically look back, forcing their objects to accept the implications of being
the ones gazed upon. By transforming male subjects into objects of the female gaze,
Kawabata revisits his own past experimenting with vision as a male prerogative.
Kawabata disrupts the dynamics of personal visual confrontation when describes
Toshio at the mirror. Even on this occasion, Toshio is not subject of the gaze, but rather
object of Otoko’s gaze. On the morning after their sexual encounter, to make it easier
for Otoko to tie his necktie, Toshio sit in a chair facing the girl (he is object of her gaze).
When she is done,
Oki got up and went to the mirror (Oki wa tatte, kagami no mae e itta). The knot
was perfect. He rubbed the palm of his hand roughly across his face, with its
faint oily film of sweat. He could hardly look at himself (jibun no kao o mite
irarenai) after having violated such a young girl. In the mirror he saw her face
approaching (kagami no naka e, shojo no kao ga aruitekita). Startled by its fresh,
poignant beauty, Oki turned round to her. She touched his shoulder, nestled her
face against his chest, and said: “I love you.” [H10/Z269]
The man stands before the mirror, but resists the reality of his reflected image.
Toshio avoids his own gaze. Otoko looks at him through the mirror, and her gaze
accentuates, once again, his guilt. While looking in the mirror, Toshio is not subject of
his own gaze and Otoko is not his object. Rather he is object of Otoko’s gaze. Toshio
resists representation as object of the other’s desire because his guilt is too
overwhelming. Otoko’s gaze is perceived as disruptive of the emotional stability of the
thirty-two year old writer. Toshio, however, will never acknowledge the content of
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Otoko’s gaze. In his self-centered behavior, he will always see himself and his guilt,
and never the emotions the female gaze conveys.
Under Otoko’s gaze, Toshio is an object of female desire. Otoko loses herself in
embracing the image of her lover. She gazes but not in order to consciously threaten her
object. Otoko looks in order to take in the emotional dimension of her first sexual
experience. However, her gaze is felt as a threat. Under her gaze, Toshio can only
attempt to measure the size of his guilt, a feeling that never leaves him. In twenty years
Otoko’s gaze never abandones Toshio completely, which is why he feels guilty again
when he feels that she is staring at him from the picture in the art magazine. Toshio’s
perception of Otoko has not changed over the years. Her gaze as a young maiden
deprived of her innocence has haunted him always.
The gaze of young Otoko only strengthens Toshio’s guilt. Her gaze forces him
to look inward, but he fails not only to see himself but also to comprehend fully the
intensity of Otoko’s love. Toshio, for example, recalls how Otoko would look at him
while making love [H160-61/Z436], and how even then he failed to accept
representation as object of desire in the woman’s eyes.
Twenty years later, while waiting to meet with Otoko again, Toshio goes for a
day trip to Mt. Arashi. He goes to a restaurant for lunch, and from where he is seated he
looks at the view:
Aoki shrubs and bamboos and the red pines blocked his view, but through the
leaves he could glimpse a deep, clear jade-green pool in the river. All of Mt.
Arashi was as still as that pool of water... .
The image of a premature baby with jet-black hair appeared before Oki, there at
Mt. Arashi over twenty years later. It flickered in the wintry groves of trees, and
in the depths of the green pool. [H12,14/Z271, 274]
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Again Toshio revisits the memory of young Otoko and the day she lost her baby.
He recalls delivering the news to her. Otoko’s gaze which was first filled with love for
him suddenly changed, and only grief and pain stared back at him [H13/Z272]. On Mt.
Arashi, twenty years after that heartbreaking episode, Toshio feels exposed to the gaze
of the world. From the site of the guilt which has haunted him for so long the image of
his baby stares back. Although he can clearly (mazamaza to) see in his mind the image
of his baby, in reality, he is seen by the image, which stands for Otoko’s gaze.
We have a two-dimensional perception of the female gaze. On the one hand we
have Otoko’s gaze as Toshio perceives it; on the other, we have Otoko’s gaze as she
makes it. Toshio distorts the content of Otoko’s gaze. Afraid to be seen from the place
of the other as object of desire, Toshio embraces the image of himself as maker of bad
deeds. Toshio, thus, ascribes meaning to Otoko’s gaze, a meaning that she does not
intend. Toshio resists the label of object of female desire by refusing to conform to the
status of object of the gaze. He will always be object of Otoko’s gaze. Misreading the
content of her gaze, condemns him to live in the demonic realm that has dictated his
past and which will dictate his future as well.
Otoko’s gaze, on the other hand, is a site of male representation. Toshio is object
of her sexual desires, her love object. She gazes in order to understand the shape of her
love for him, not to threaten him or make him feel guilty. In other words, Otoko does
not consciously structure Toshio’s guilt. His guilt is of his own making.
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Toshio, despite his constant attempt to re-instate himself as subject of the gaze,
always loses to the power of the female gaze. Around the time that he spots Otoko’s
picture Toshio comes across her study of a peony in an art gallery:
At the very top of the silk she had painted a single red peony. It was a full front
view of the flower, larger than life, with few leaves and a single white bud low
on the stem. In that unnaturally large flower he saw Otoko’s pride and
nobility. . .. That huge red peony looked like an apparition, loneliness seemed to
radiate from deep within it. [H42-43/Z302-303]
Otoko gazes at Toshio from behind the red peony. Although he is unaware of it,
Otoko’s gaze dictates the emotional impact the painting has on him no matter how
much he resists. In his selfishness, Toshio never considers the extent of Otoko’s pain
from her losses (the loss of her lover, and the loss of her baby). From seeing the
painting, however, Toshio seemingly gets closer to understanding what the years apart
from him have meant to her. In her study of a peony, Otoko does not include Toshio.
The man has been written out. Otoko puts on her canvas symbols of not only her losses,
but also her passionate love for Toshio. Her big red peony can be read as symbolic of
the intensity of her feelings for him. Toshio sees only “pride and nobility,” misreading
the message that Otoko tries to convey. In the single white bud, Otoko has painted her
feelings of purity toward her unborn baby. Toshio, however, sees “loneliness,” failing
once again to understand the depths of Otoko’s love for him.
Overcome by the depth of his guilt, by his past selfish desire for a maiden, by
the illusion of an ideal woman, Toshio still fails to see what kind of object he is for the
female subject of the gaze. He avoids visual confrontation even when Otoko gazes at
him from her painting. Whereas in the past he has shut Otoko’s inquisitive eyes, before
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her painting he shuts out her feelings. He dismisses the female gaze in order not to
question his status as object. Toshio continuously attempts to defy female representation.
He avoids seeing his true self because his story is not the only story.
Toshio’s story of his relationship with Otoko is a construct of an idealized love
with a young girl meant to strengthen a male ego and demean a young girl. Toshio tells
a selfish tale of male pursuit of pleasure. From her place as subject of the gaze, Otoko
tells us a different story. Otoko’s story of her relationship with Toshio may be seen in
her paintings. Her story tells of a woman’s pursuit of love. Even while away from him,
Otoko has indulged in the memory of her intense love for him. Even if he brought
suffering to her, Otoko has continued to embrace the feeling that she could only get
from him. She has never considered him responsible for the death of her child, for her
being unmarried, or for her never becoming a mother. Otoko chose not to have a
husband; she chose not to have more babies, just as she made a choice, when sixteen
years old, to have a relationship with a married man. She does not incite the guilt that
has mled Toshio’s life, because she has never perceived Toshio’s relationship with her
as a bad deed.
Otoko’s gaze when directed at Toshio lacks the Medusa connotation. She does
not stare in order to castrate or in order to unsettle the male self. Her gaze can be read as
a scopophilic gaze. She gazes in order to embrace the pleasure her object gives her, to
see the other side of her life, to gain fulfillment. Although an object of desire, Toshio
cannot conform to a model that does not fit his male role. He repeatedly attempts to
break free from the model and feels uncomfortable even when Otoko’s eyes are not
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directed at him, when, for example, she gazes at him from an art magazine or from the
study of a peony.
When twenty years later they meet again to listen to the temple bells, Toshio
looks at Otoko and believes that “he was still living within her” [H20/Z280]. Otoko, on
the other hand, keeps her eyes down [H21/Z281]. Toshio seems to be the subject of the
gaze, but in reality he is seen by Otoko’s lowered eyes. Otoko looks at him from the
past, from that time after she had tried to kill herself when, waking up after having been
in a coma for three days, she glared at him and ordered him to leave her room
[H22/Z282]. Otoko finally rejected him and pushed him away. Looking at her twenty
years later, he feels the object of Otoko’s angry gaze. Toshio wants to believe that she
still has feelings for him. He has misread the message of her study of a peony and her
gaze as conveying nothing more than his own guilt. Only when her eyes are not staring
at him can he embrace the truth of her feelings for him. Toshio does not need to be the
object of her physical gaze to feel threatened. The reading of Otoko’s gaze as
accusatory is a male construct and reveals the contradictory dimension of a male ego.
Otoko does not look to accuse him, but Toshio wants to feel accused of something;
therefore, he revisits his past. Though Otoko does not gaze at him, Toshio will always
feel under a gaze that has never existed.
Otoko’s lowered eyes, on the other hand, tell us that she does not need to look at
her object to know what he is for her. Her love for him has never abated. Her passion
for him has never cooled. She has lived in the fantasy of ideal love for over twenty
years, even if she was not his wife or the mother of his children. By embracing the
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illusion of love, Otoko has made her destiny, and the object of her gaze has never lost
the connotation of object of desire. Otoko’s desire has restructured itself over the years,
but never to include another man.
Otoko may appear narcissistic when she later claims to Keiko that she was
reluctant to meet Toshio, afraid that he would be disappointed at how she looked twenty
years after their relationship [H60/Z320], In spite of such claim, Otoko more likely was
afraid to put a new face to her idealized object of desire. She may have feared being
disappointed in Toshio. Were the object of her gaze to fail to conform to the perpetuated
fantasy of her desire, Otoko would have needed to reshape the structure of her love only
to find out that her object was indeed an illusion created by the passion of a sixteen-year
old girl. This is one of the reasons Otoko rejects other men’s love:
She [Otoko] feared that had her new lover been a man the visions she secretly
guarded within her - the sacred vision of her love with Oki - would have
vanished at his touch. [H125/Z393-394]
Toshio has problems differentiating between the Otoko depicted in A Girl o f
Sixteen, and Otoko the woman. He only embraces an image of Otoko that spoke to him
more that twenty years earlier, failing to acknowledge that Otoko was not what he saw,
just as she was not what he described in his novel. Had he read her gaze, had he
conformed to his status as object of her desire, he would not have liked the submissive
picture that resulted. Toshio depended on those sexual encounters with Otoko. Toshio
was under the spell of Otoko’s innocence as it was revealed to him in their rendezvous.
Toshio only fancies Otoko as a girl of sixteen. He would dismiss her were he to see her
as a woman in her mid-forties in a same-sex relationship. Whereas Toshio maintains a
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381
stagnant image of Otoko, Otoko reinvents herself as she goes through life and revisits
her past by portraying her feelings in her art. As object of Toshio’s gaze, Otoko comes
across only as a young woman with extremely passionate reactions. As subject of the
gaze, Otoko emerges as a woman in charge of her destiny.
Otoko looks at herself and the pain of the past through the paintings she draws,
such as her painting of the Uji tea plantation. The painting was inspired by her view of
the tea fields in Shizuoka when she commuted by train from Kyoto to Tokyo. It was
after breaking up with Toshio, and Otoko remembered sitting at the window and staring
at those melancholic green slopes and evening shadows that sadly reflected back the
color of her pain [H55-56/Z314-15].
Otoko is a woman at the window on a train. The landscape before her eyes
reflects back the color and shape of her sadness. She may have not seen the image of
herself reflected in the window, but she sees fragments of herself in the infinite
landscape staring back at her. Otoko’s sketches of “the tea plantation harbored the
sadness of Otoko’s old love” [H56/Z315]. Although neither she nor Toshio is physically
in her painting, her love for Toshio is represented. Otoko becomes object of her gaze.
She stares at herself and embraces her destiny. Otoko does not resist the emotional
implications those images reflect back. She does not need to be confronted by the image
of herself to accept the consequences of choices made in the past.
Otoko’s idealized love for Toshio lives in the memory/illusion of their past
embrace. As stale as Toshio’s image of Otoko is, Otoko’s image of her love for Toshio
is just as stagnant:
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As time passed, the memory of their embrace was gradually becoming purified
within Otoko, changing from physical to spiritual. She herself was not now pure;
nor was Oki, in all likelihood. Yet their long-ago embrace, as she now saw it,
seemed pure. That memory - herself and not herself, unreal and yet real - was a
sacred vision sublimated from the memory of their mutual embrace. [HI 22-
23/Z390-91]
Otoko’s love for Toshio is unreal. She gazes at herself and Toshio from the
idyllic place in her heart where she can accept the depth of her love for him and the
image of her sadness. Otoko sublimates herself as object of her gaze. She looks without
seeing herself; she gazes at her love without fully taking in the truth of how similar to
Toshio she is, how much of Toshio is in her, and how much of her former lover she
mimicks in her current affair with Keiko.
Otoko gazes at herself from the painful realization that the fact that her survival
through the many crises in her relationship with Toshio represents the beauty and the
sadness of her love for him:
Otoko still loved Oki, her baby, and her mother, but could these loves have
gone unchanged from the time when they were a tangible reality to her? Could
not something of these very loves have been subtly transformed into self-love?
Of course she would not be aware of it. She had been parted from her baby and
her mother by death, and from Oki by a final separation, and these three still
lived within her. Yet Otoko alone gave them this life. Her image of Oki flowed
along with her through time, and perhaps her memories of their love affair had
been dyed by the color of her love for herself, had even been transformed. It had
never occurred to her that bygone memories are merely phantoms and
apparitions (yokai henge ka gaki moja: ghostly apparitions or hungry ghosts).
Perhaps it was to be expected that a woman who had lived alone for two decades
without love or marriage should indulge herself in memories of a sad love, and
that her indulgence should take on the color of self-love.” [H167/Z443-44]
This is not illusion or hallucination. Otoko distorts the reality of her life.
Looking at herself, Otoko has created a fantasy-world where all that matters is the
image of the unborn child she cannot hold [H165/Z440-41] and the distorted image of
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383
her ideal love for Toshio. Otoko seems as selfish as Toshio in her persistent holding on
to that which brings only pleasure.
Otoko and Toshio do not look at each other in the latter chapters of Beauty and
Sadness. They are not allowed to peer into each other’s souls again. Toshio is under
Otoko’s gaze when staring at her paintings, or when seeing her picture in the art
magazine. She no longer stares at him the way she used to do because she must
safeguard the sacred image of her love for him. Otoko’s gaze tells of a woman who
embraces the memory of a love that probably never was. She holds on to an image of
love that is scopophilic in nature; it brings her pleasure. More troubling, Otoko re
invents herself as a female version of Toshio, which is apparent in her same-sex
relationship with Keiko.
Otoko’s gaze, when directed at Toshio and herself, presents a dimension of
female vision not found in previous literature of Kawabata. Kawabata’s writing style
demonstrates the impact of the female subject of the gaze on her male object. In
Otoko’s gaze of Toshio the implications of the mutual gaze are defied. Toshio does not
need the gaze of the other to accept who he is. He resists the mutual gaze. He has no
need to anticipate Otoko’s gaze in an attempt to reposition himself as object, because he
resists objectification by retreating to the safe haven his guilt provides. His resistance to
the female gaze exposes the limits of the male gaze.
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(6.2.) Keiko as Object of Otoko’ Gaze: Shaping the Other as Self
Otoko’s fascination with Keiko dates back to their first meeting. Keiko, a recent
high school graduate, has seen a picture of Otoko in an art magazine and a painting of
• 77 •
two maiko playing scissor-paper-stone. She decides to become Otoko’s apprentice:
So Keiko had appeared out of a pale bluish haze and begged to be taken in to
study painting with her [Otoko]. The fervor of that appeal shocked Otoko. And
then suddenly Keiko’s arms were around her, and she seemed to be in the
embrace of a young sorceress (yosei). It was like an unexpected throb of desire.
[H108/Z375]
From the beginning, Otoko describes the attachment she develops to the “young
sorceress” as uncanny. Though object of Otoko’s desire, Keiko fulfills more than just
the role of lover: “Keiko fulfills both the need for a child substitute (she is the age
Otoko’s baby girl would have been had she lived) and also Otoko’s narcissistic
needs.”7 8 Therefore, when Otoko gazes at Keiko, she projects onto the young girl
distorted representations of her own desires. In their same-sex love relationship, Otoko
invents herself in the male position. Although Otoko also desires to be the Mother, the
mother position does not shape their relationship as much as the same-sex dimension,
an ambiguous one considering that both women have been in heterosexual relationships.
Otoko’s gaze is an ambivalent site of desire. When she gazes at Keiko she wants
to see the image of her unborn child as much as a faithful and devoted lover. Otoko
inscribes meaning onto Keiko, who as object of Otoko’s desire, passively accepts this at
the beginning. As object of Otoko’s gaze, Keiko, does not resist representations because
7 7 Maiko are geisha in training. See Lesley Downer, Women o f the Pleasure Quarter. The Secret History
o f the Geisha (New York: Broadway Books, 2001), 78-94.
7 8 Doris G. Bargen, “Twin Blossoms on a Single Branch, The Cycle of Retribution in Onnamenf
Monumenta Nipponica vol 46, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 169.
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385
“her willingness to pose as a double for the child and her role as lover of Otoko also suit
her own orphan needs.”7 9
Kawabata was not new at exploring the emotional dimension of relationships
between women, but whereas in Snow Country Komako and Yoko’s relationship is
marked by Komako’s bitter anger toward Yoko; and whereas in Thousand Cranes the
relationship between Chikako and Mrs. Ota is one of rivalry; and whereas in The Lake
we are provided with Miyako’s ambivalent feelings toward Machie, feelings that she
will never be able to share with the young girl; in Beauty and Sadness Kawabata
thoroughly explores the emotional depths of a relationship between women that is
imbued with contradictions.
Such contradictions originate in Otoko’s heart. Otoko literally makes and un
makes the object of her desire. From the beginning, she has enjoyed controlling Keiko,
which Keiko allows her to do: “She [Otoko] herself had made that girl [Keiko] into the
young woman she was today” [H105/Z371]. Otoko controls Keiko the way Toshio used
to control her. She gazes at Keiko in the same way Toshio gazed at her. She makes love
to Keiko in the same way Toshio made love to her [H116-17/Z384-85]. When Otoko
rejects male love so as not to contaminate the sacred image of her love for Toshio, she
merely recreates herself as the female version of her former male lover. However, when
Otoko looks at Keiko, she has no feelings of guilt for harboring such love toward the
young girl. Otoko does not feel as if she has deprived Keiko of her chance at marriage
and motherhood.
7 9 Doris G. Bargen, “Twin Blossoms on a Single Branch,” 169.
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When Otoko gazes at Keiko, she also expects to see herself. She shapes Keiko to
resemble herself when she was in a relationship with Toshio. By blurring the line
between the self as her-self, and the self as fragments of Toshio, Otoko attempts to
preserve not only the memory of her love, but also the illusion of what kind of object of
desire she was for Toshio. By using her former male lover’s techniques to mold Keiko,
Otoko creates the object she once was, or revisits the male fantasy of the object she
never was.
Otoko and Keiko’s love is tested when Toshio reappears in Otoko’s life,
especially when Otoko confesses to Keiko that she still has feelings for Toshio
[H62/Z322], Otoko perceives the love that she and Toshio shared as “a dreamlike
flower that not even Keiko could stain” [H128/Z396-97]. This revelation, however,
fuels Keiko’s determination to get revenge on Otoko’s behalf by inflicting on Toshio
the same pain he inflicted on Otoko twenty years earlier.
Although Otoko resists Keiko’s quest for revenge, she does not prevent the
young girl from carrying out her plans. Otoko has mixed feelings toward Toshio when
he suddenly shows up in her life again. Love is still in the air. The beauty and sadness
of what they once shared have never abandoned Otoko. However, when Otoko learns
that Toshio and Keiko have spent a night together, Otoko is angry at him:
The Keiko who seemed to be under her control had turned into some strange
creature attacking her. Keiko had said she would take revenge on Oki for her
sake, but to Otoko it seemed Keiko was taking revenge on her. Also, she felt a
new horror toward Oki as a man. How dare he trifle with her protegee, when he
must have other women as well? [HI 14-15/Z382].
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387
Otoko and Keiko’s idyllic relationship is scarred. Both women harbor feelings
toward the other that they are unable, or too afraid, to voice. Otoko sees her labor of
love gone to waste; her efforts to shape the object of her desire in the same ways she
once was shaped have turned against her, and once again Toshio is causing her to suffer.
When Keiko reveals to Otoko the truth about her night with Toshio, Otoko hits
her [H96/Z363]. Otoko is not jealous of Keiko. She is afraid that she may suffer another
loss at the hand of Toshio. Later the same evening, Otoko takes a bath and invites Keiko
to join her in an attempt to apologize. Keiko is too upset, not at Otoko, but at Toshio.
She becomes more determined to get revenge. Otoko believes that Keiko’s refusal to
join her in the bathtub is due to Keiko’s being ashamed to show her naked body after
having been with Toshio [H100/Z366-67], Otoko rushes out of the bathtub to find
Keiko dressed up. Otoko invites herself to go with Keiko wherever Keiko is going:
“Do you mind?” [Otoko asks].
“Of course not.” Keiko turned away. Her face (yokogao: profile) was reflected
in the full-length mirror (sono Keiko no yokogao ga sugatami ni utsutte ita). “I’ll
be waiting for you.”
“I won’t be long. Just let me in there, please.” Otoko went past Keiko and sat
down at the dressing table. She looked at her in the mirror (kagami no naka de
Keiko to kao o miawaseta; My translation: In the mirror, Otoko and Keiko
looked at each other; or, In the mirror she met Keiko’s face). [H101/Z368].
Otoko and Keiko confront each other. Their visual confrontation, however, is
mediated by a mirror. Otoko seems concerned. She sees her object of desire (as
daughter and as lover) rebelling. In order to avoid her own fears, Otoko draws the
mirror closer to herself. By becoming object of her own gaze, Otoko hopes to
understand the shape of her new destiny. Otoko gazes at Keiko in a desperate attempt to
regain control of Keiko and herself. The object of Otoko’s desire reflects back an image
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388
to which Otoko is not accustomed. Otoko, after all, has never fought her destiny. She
never fought Toshio’s decision to break up with her. She never fought the feelings of
humiliation that engulfed her after having read A Girl o f Sixteen. Otoko may have
rebelled against social conventions by not marrying, and by being in a same-sex
relationship, but she never rebelled as a woman against the source of her pain. Instead,
she embraced her pain as part of the beauty and sadness of her love for Toshio.
By seeing reflected back the image of Keiko set on revenge, the image of a
woman rebelling against her former male lover, Otoko sees how she could have been.
Keiko is breaking free from Otoko’s representations and is taking on a life of her own.
Keiko as object stares back at Otoko from a place where Otoko never dared to go: the
site of her humiliation. By defying the representation as object of desire, Keiko allows
Otoko to see herself as she should have been when she was abandoned by her lover.
Otoko, however, resists the gaze of her object.
This three-sided mirror at which Otoko sits enables her to have a multi
dimensional view not only of herself, but also of her life as marked by somebody else’s
actions. Otoko can look at herself from three angles and question, but not necessarily
embrace, the images the mirror reflects back.
When Otoko realizes that Keiko intends to get revenge, she can do nothing to
stop Keiko. In the chapter “Summer Losses” Otoko believes that Keiko is manipulating
Taichiro, Toshio’s son. Otoko feels awkward any time her gaze rests on her lover who,
as object, resists the subject’s gaze by avoiding visual confrontation. On the morning of
the day that will end with Taichiro’s death, Otoko wakes up first and looks at Keiko’s
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389
sleeping face {Keiko no negao o chotto mioroshite, H169/Z446). Keiko then wakes up
in a hurry to get dressed as she is going to meet with Taichiro:
Keiko slipped off her night kimono and stood with her naked back to Otoko. “I
think I’ll wear a full under-kimono after all. It looks as if it’ll be hot again today,
but I wouldn’t feel right without it.”
Silently Otoko watched her dress {Otoko wa kotoba mo naku nagamete ita).
“Now to get the obi nice and tight.” Keiko put her hands behind her back and
gave a tug.
Otoko looked at Keiko’s face in the mirror as she applied some makeup, and
Keiko noticed Otoko’s reflection too {Usugesho o suru Keiko no kao o, Otoko
wa kagami no naka ni mita ga, sono kagami ni wa Otoko no kao no utsutte iru
no ga, Keiko ni wa mieru rashiku). “Don’t stare at me like that {Sonna o-kao
nasaranaide...).”
Otoko tried to soften her expression.
Peering into a wing of the dressing table mirror, Keiko toyed with a lock of
hair over one of her beautifully shaped ears, as a finishing touch. Then she
started to rise, but sat down again and picked a bottle of perfume. [H171/Z448]
Keiko and Otoko share the same mirror and are given back the same images.
Keiko knows Otoko is staring at her in the mirror. Keiko, supposedly in a female object
position, asks Otoko, in an apparent male subject position, not to look. But these are
two women at the mirror again. Otoko still resists Keiko’s reflected image. The older
woman looks but does not want to see. Though not affected by that “seeing block” that
characterizes Kawabata’s male characters, Otoko still denies herself the power to see
o n
the transformation in the object of her gaze. Keiko has turned into what Otoko has
never been. Whereas Otoko never thought of seeking revenge for what Toshio did to
her, Keiko does. Otoko resists her object’s gaze just as Toshio resists Otoko’s gaze. By
discarding the image of a transformed Keiko, Otoko does what Toshio did with her
801 borrowed “seeing block” from Matsuura Hisaki’s essay “Miru koto no heisoku” (1992).
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390
when he discarded the adult version of Otoko staring at him from the picture in the art
magazine, and from her paintings.
Otoko may retreat to a maternal-mode in order to protect her own feelings, but
her thoughts are for Taichiro, Toshio’son. Otoko realizes that not only is the memory of
her love in danger, but that her destiny is also being re-shaped. Just as in the past, when
abandoned by her lover, Otoko does not act upon that abandonment to reclaim her
emotions. The object of Otoko’s gaze, which appears frozen in time, constantly blurs
the lines of Otoko’s consciousness. Keiko, as object of Otoko’s gaze, comes across as
desire for the other and as desire for the self. Otoko looks at her in an attempt to see
herself in the past. Otoko, however, resists. Otoko’s love for Toshio and her attachment
to Keiko have created Keiko. Keiko is equally the product of Otoko’s self-love and the
memory of Otoko’s love for Toshio.
When Otoko hears of a motorboat accident on Lake Biwa that involves a girl
named Keiko, she rushes to Keiko’s bedside. Otoko looks at Keiko:
Her hair lay spread out over her pillow in a tangled mass, so black that it still
looked wet. There was a glimpse of her lovely teeth between parted lips. Both
her arms were at her side under the blanket. As she lay there, head turned
straight up, Keiko’s pure, innocent sleeping face touched Otoko deeply. Her face
seemed to be bidding farewell, to Otoko and to life. [H205/Z490]
After Toshio and Fumiko leave the room, Otoko sits on Keiko’s bed and stares
at her sleeping face:
Tears were trickling from the comers of Keiko’s eyes.
“Keiko!”
Keiko opened her eyes {Keiko wa me o aita). Tears were still sparkling in
them as she looked up at Otoko {Otoko o miageta). [H206/Z490]
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Before Otoko’s eyes, Keiko seems to declare defeat. But the tears in her eyes
stand as symbols of the triumph of makai. At this moment Otoko realizes that Keiko
could never be molded as her double, and that Keiko’s love for her will never match her
own love for Toshio. This is because Otoko does not belong fully to makai as do Keiko
and Toshio, because her purpose in life can never be to cause suffering. Otoko knows
that revenge will bring back neither her past nor her baby, and that to speculate over a
lost future would only cause further pain. It is emotionally safer to live in the fantasy of
a love that probably never was, a female construct of a questionable desire.
The object of the gaze has defied objectification and representation. By
emerging as inhabitant of makai, Keiko has brought to Otoko, as subject of the gaze, a
new awareness. Otoko gazes at Keiko in an attempt to understand what kind of desire
Keiko now embodies. Having lost the connotations of daughter and lover, Otoko will
need to reassess the place Keiko occupies in in her heart, if any.
(7) The Appeal of Keiko’s Eyes and Gaze
Keiko’s gaze is most unsettling for the male objects. Keiko starts the gaze and
returns the male gaze in an attempt to emotionally decenter the two men with whom she
is involved, Toshio and Taichiro. She perceives Toshio as her rival because of Otoko’s
feelings for him. Taichiro, Toshio’s son, will be sacrificed just as was Otoko’s son. To
allow for Keiko to threaten with her gaze, Kawabata has to add a different dimension to
her. He depicts her as a young sorceress (yosei), a witch, and as a woman having a
frightening beauty. Although the word does not appear, Keiko is a creature of makai.
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Keiko looks with her physical gaze, and her male objects are equally fascinated and
threatened. Keiko also gazes as a way to invite men to look at her, but her powerful,
beautiful eyes become such an unsettling sight/site that men turn away. Keiko always
looks for a visual confrontation with men. However, the dynamics of vision and gazing
change when Otoko is object of Keiko’s gaze in order to assert herself as the only
subject of the gaze as Otoko succeeds in deflecting Keiko’s eyes more than Toshio does.
(7.1.) Toshio as Object of Keiko’s Gaze
When Toshio arrives in Kyoto to meet Otoko, Otoko sends Keiko to welcome
him and take him to the elegant tea house where he and Otoko will listen to the temple
bells. Toshio acknowledges Keiko’s beauty [H1/Z279], which he cannot but notice
again when Keiko brings him some food to enjoy during his return trip to Kamakura
[H26-27/Z285]. Aware of her beauty, Keiko shows herself and invites not only Toshio’s
gaze but also his desire. Keiko wants to be seen.
The dynamics of Toshio and Keiko’s first meeting set the tone for what will
happen between the two of them. Keiko does not shun the male gaze. On the contrary,
she responds when Toshio invites her to visit him in Kamakura and send him one of her
pictures: “For a moment there was an odd sparkle in her eyes (Keiko no me ni wa honno
tsukanoma ayashii iro ga hikatta).” [H30/Z289]
Some time later Keiko stops at Toshio’s house to drop off two of her paintings.
One is titled “Plum Tree” and the other “Untitled.” [H44-45/Z304] Keiko’s study of the
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plum blossom is meant to show the feelings that she has for Otoko [H47/Z307], Keiko
and Otoko both look at Toshio from their same-sex relationship.
Six months pass. Keiko learns that her lover still has feelings for Toshio
[H62/Z322] and she declares to Otoko her intention to get revenge for what Toshio did
to Otoko in the past. Toshio, now the enemy, becomes, to Keiko, the object of a very
peculiar desire. On a rainy afternoon, six months after having met in Kyoto to listen to
the temple bells, Keiko shows up at Toshio’s place again. This time Toshio is home
alone to welcome her. Under Toshio’s gaze, Keiko seems to blush [H73/Z334]. While
Toshio apologizes for having missed her previous visit, Keiko looks at him straight in
his eyes (Keiko wa Oki no kao o mitsumete ita, H73/Z334) to let him know that
Taichiro was kind enough to show her around Kamakura. When Toshio remarks that
half a year has already gone by since their first meeting, Keiko’s response is described
as tsumaranai or uninterested/disdainful:
Keiko remained silent, with the same disdainful expression. Her greenish eyes
(sono kao no naka no aomi gakatta me dake ga) seemed to challenge him (Oki
ni idomi kakatte kite iru yd da). Oki became a little annoyed (My translation:
Without answering Oki’s remark, Keiko kept an uninterested expression on her
face. The green eyes of her face seemed to challenge [him], Oki was a little
irritated). [H74/Z335]
Keiko challenges him, visually and emotionally. Toshio is not accustomed to
being challenged by women’s eyes; none of Kawabata’s male characters has ever been
challenged so boldly. When, irritated and uncomfortable under Keiko’s gaze, Toshio
tries to embarrass her and force her to lower it, but she resists and keeps looking at him.
Keiko is at Toshio’s house for a reason, and visual confrontation is necessary in order to
carry out her plan. Whereas the young woman seems to gain power over the object of
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her gaze, Toshio seems to relinquish something of himself. Needing more from the
confrontation, Keiko brings up Toshio’s novel A Girl o f Sixteen. He grows more
uncomfortable and, when Keiko asks him if he would not consider her as a model for
one of his novels, becomes confused, unable to make out her reason for being there:
But as he looked at her, the strange, seductive charm of her eyes (ayashii me no
namameki ni) stilled his laughter. Her eyes were so moist that she almost
seemed to be in tears. Oki did not utter another word (Oki wa ato no kotoba ga
denakatta). [H75/Z337]
Keiko’s eyes freeze his smile and his ego, preventing him from saying anything
else. The underlined sentence in the above passage, missing from H. Hibbet’s
translation, is an important moment in the uneven visual dialogue between Toshio and
Keiko. Keiko’s gaze is so powerful as to leave the man speechless. Her gaze has
deprived Toshio of his voice. Although Toshio has tried to deflect her gaze and
extinguish her voice, Keiko’s allure silences him.
Reducing the man to silence, the female gaze castrates its object. Male voices
have been overwhelmingly dominant in Kawabata’s novels. Women are discussed by
male voices, which also convey women’s feelings. In this instance, a woman silences a
man. The threat of her gaze is partly accomplished when Toshio ceases talking and,
unable to bear her eyes, looks away in an attempt to make sense of her intentions.
Toshio averts his eyes in order to regain control over himself. He needs to feel in charge
again. Keiko is turning out to be a different kind of rival.
Keiko is on a mission to seduce him. While explaining the new painting to him,
she looks for an opportunity for physical contact. She maneuvers so that she can easily
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fall into his arms and be kissed [H77/Z339]. Toshio does not move, as she whisper his
name, “her gaze fixed on him” (Oki o mitsumeta):
“Your ears are lovely,” he said, “but there’s a kind of eerie (yoki) beauty to
your profile.”
“I’m glad you think so!” Her slender neck flushed slightly. “I’ll never forget
that, as long as I live. But how long will beauty last? A woman feels sad to think
that.”
He had no reply.
“It’s embarrassing to be stared at (mirareru no hazukashii desu), but any
woman would be delighted to seem beautiful to a man like you.” [H77-78/Z339],
Although Keiko pretends to be embarrassed under Toshio’s gaze, in reality her
gaze invites his. She wants him to look at her. Keiko starts the gaze in order to get
Toshio’s response, and she returns the male gaze in order to assert herself as the only
“love” in Otoko’s life.
Keiko’s gaze is an ambiguous site. Her gaze does not conform to the model of
female gazing. She does not lower her eyes or side-glance. She looks into the man’s
eyes. Keiko’s gaze, the place where Toshio revisits his emotional past, also becomes the
place of his torment. Though Toshio fails on different occasions to read correctly the
message in her eyes, Keiko uses her gaze to send a message as eerie as her beauty.
In the end Toshio realizes that Keiko is trying to seduce him [H80/Z343] and
willingly plays her game. As he takes her around town, they get caught in the rain and
go to a hotel. Foreplay is in the air. The two end up in bed, where Toshio realizes that
Keiko is not a virgin. When, in the middle of lovemaking, Keiko calls out Otoko’s name,
Toshio is stunned [H85/Z349].
Keiko has accomplished part of her mission. She has seduced Toshio and made
clear that she loves only Otoko just as Otoko loves only her. Toshio has fallen into her
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trap. Keiko’s gaze defines the most important moments in the novel. Her gaze is as
much a site of seduction as a site of danger. Keiko’s gaze “castrates” Toshio by
silencing him and by striking at the heart of his love for Otoko. Keiko uses her beauty to
seduce Toshio. She uses her gaze to overwhelm her object and paralyze him in his male
pride.
As a troubling site of seduction, invitation, and castration, Keiko’s gaze troubles
Toshio, but he does not resist temptation and succumbs to her power. She manipulates
her gaze to suit her seduction techniques. She feels no remorse for seducing Toshio or
hurting his manhood. She rejoices. Whereas he has been silenced, her voice has
triumphed. Toshio begins his quest to understand his past actions. Keiko is on a quest to
re-write his destiny. Just as Toshio’s past actions affected Otoko’s life, Keiko’s actions
will alter his life forcing him to experience the same pain Otoko did. A woman’s voice
is being heard. A woman’s gaze is being felt. A man is struggling to compose his
castrated self.
(7.2.) The Object of a Displaced and Troubling Desire: Taichiro as Object
of Keiko’s Gaze
Not satisfied by seducing Toshio, Keiko switches her attention to Taichiro,
Toshio’s son, to complete her revenge. As much as Toshio does not approve of Keiko’s
interest in his inexperienced son, he does nothing to prevent them from meeting. Toshio
and Otoko both fail to save Taichiro from the destiny Keiko has planned for him. In a
perverse way, they are responsible for his premature death. An infant when Toshio had
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the affair with Otoko, Taichiro has read about it in his father’s novel. Although he does
not resent his father or Otoko, he feels the pain his mother experienced.
Taichiro is the victim. Whereas Toshio may in the end understand part of the
message delivered by Keiko’s eyes, Taichiro remains oblivious to Keiko’s cruel
intentions and succumbs to the power of her beauty. He becomes object of her gaze, the
object of a displaced and wicked desire.
Keiko and Taichiro meet for the first time when Keiko brings her two paintings,
“Plum Tree” and “Untitled,” to Toshio’s house. Taichiro shows Keiko around
Kamakura before seeing her off. The two meet for a second time on the occasion of
R1
Taichiro’s visit to Sanetaka’s grave in Kyoto.
Taichiro flies to Kyoto where Keiko waits for him at the airport. Keiko sees that
Taichiro is thrilled to have her before him and, to ensure that he does not feel threatened
by her, she lowers her gaze {Keiko wa shiorashige ni me o fuseta, H147/Z419). Keiko,
however, is careful to look at Taichiro. She remarks to him:
“Just now when you were coming to the gate you looked downcast (kanashii)
and gloomy (yuutsusa). Why were you sad? I was waiting to meet you, but I
didn’t exist for you, did I?”
The fact was that he had been thinking of her, but he could not admit it.
“Even that made me unhappy. Because I’m selfish... How can I get you to
think I exist?”
“I’m always thinking of you,” he declared. “At this moment, too.”
[H150/Z423]
Under Keiko’s gaze, Taichiro turns into a mellow young man, unaware of what
destiny has in store for him. Keiko’s gaze is meant to unsettle his emotions. Taichiro is
8 1 Sanetaka was a sixteenth-century court noble who kept the arts alive while the country was at war.
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surprised to hear that she has made different arrangements for his stay in Kyoto. She
apologizes:
He was at a loss for words.
“Please, stay here. Y ou’ll only be in Kyoto two or three days, w on’t you?”
“Yes.”
Keiko glanced up at him {Keiko wa me o ageta). Her unpainted beautifully
even eyebrows seemed a shade lighter than her lashes, and gave a look of
innocence to her jet-black eyes. She had used only a touch of pale lipstick but
her lips were exquisitely shaped. She did not appear to be wearing any rouge or
powder.
“Stop it!” she said, blinking. “Why are you looking at me like that? {Nani o
sonna ni goran ni natte ru no?)”
“You have such thick lashes.”
“They’re real! Pull them and see.”
“I do feel like giving them a tug.”
“Go ahead, I don’t mind.” She shut her eyes (mabuta) and held her face closer.
“Maybe they seem so long because they’re curled.”
Keiko waited, but Taichiro did not touch her eyelashes. “Open your eyes, {me
o aite kudasai)” he said. “Look up a little, and open your eyes wide {me o motto
aite).” She did as he asked.
“Do you want me to look straight at you? {matomo ni miru n desu no, Taichiro
san o ...?) [H152-53/Z425-426]
Keiko and Taichiro blur the lines of who is gazing at whom. Keiko pretends not
to be willing to become object of the male gaze even while at the same time inviting it.
She does not have any problem looking straight into Taichiro’s eyes. She knows that he
is the object of her wicked desire. She also wants him to look into her eyes and see her
feelings for him. In other words, Keiko does not want Taichiro to feel threatened by her
gaze. She conveys to him the message that he is object of her sexual desire. She wants
him to feel comfortable with her looking at him. She needs him to conform to her gaze
in order to strike back. Taichiro, on the other hand, needs her to open her eyes to see
himself reflected, to accept being object of such a beautiful woman’s desire.
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The gaze Keiko reserves for Taichiro is different from the one she used on
Toshio. Keiko is aware of the power of her gaze and manipulates it. Therefore, Toshio
attempts to resist “castration,” whereas Taichiro willingly turns into an object of desire.
Keiko uses her gaze in the same way she uses her techniques of seduction.
Although she wants her men to feel in charge, she really controls the situation. Keiko
reframes her status as subject of the gaze again and again. Even when her objects return
her gaze, she never loses her position as subject of the gaze.
The day after his arrival in Kyoto, Keiko and Taichiro spend the day together.
When Keiko tells him that Otoko knows that they are together, he is confused and
confesses to Keiko that he feels as if he is taking “revenge on Miss Ueno for my
mother” [H182/Z461]. Keiko is taken aback by Taichiro’s statement, but does not lose
sight of her master plan. She rids herself of any subtle sense of guilt affecting her. When
she peers into Taichiro’s face, when she looks into his eyes, all she wants to see is her
plans coming true; she wants to see the workings of her revenge. When Taichiro
suddenly admits that by being with Keiko he feels as if he is taking revenge on Otoko
on behalf of his mother, Keiko knows she has partly won. She has unsettled the
harmony of the Oki’s household.
Suddenly, though, Keiko seems to lose control of her gaze. She wants to look,
but she does not want Taichiro to look at her [H183-84/Z463-64]. Her gaze is no longer
a direct gaze, but she looks at Taichiro “out of the comer of her eyes” [H188/Z468]. She
tries to regain control of her gaze by keeping her eyes wide open while Taichiro plays
with her ears {Keiko wa me o aita mama kao o ugokasanai, H188/Z468).
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Taichiro seeks for intimacy. That is the message she sent to him. Keiko is
nervous, however, and growing impatient. She takes a mirror out of her purse and looks
at herself in order to reassert herself as the only subject of the gaze:
Keiko took out a mirror and peered at her right eye (hando-baggu kara kagami o
deshite, me o utsushite minagara; My translation: she took a mirror out of her
hand bag, and looked at her reflected eye), and rubbed the eyelid. Noticing his
steady gaze (Taichiro jitto mirarete iru no ni ki ga tsuku\ My translation: feeling
Taichiro staring at her /feeling herself being stared at by Taichiro), she flushed
(hoho o somete) and looked down with bewitching shyness (namamekashii
hanikami no unda me o fuseta). For a moment she ran her fingertips over his
white shirt, where there was a trace of her lipstick. [H190/Z472]
When Taichiro kisses her, Keiko does not look at him; however, as Taichiro
starts touching her, she narrowly opens her eyes and looks at him (.Keiko wa futto
hosome o aite Taichiro o mita, H192/Z474). Throughout the duration of their intimate
moment it is as if Keiko looks even though she does not want to do so. She needs to
gaze at Taichiro in order not to lose her focus, in order not to lose sight of the object of
her revenge.
Keiko needs to carry out her plan as soon as possible. She takes Taichiro to Lake
Biwa. In the hotel room, while Taichiro takes a shower, an agitated Keiko calls his
mother Fumiko. Keiko tells Taichiro his mother wants him on the phone, and that she
has told Fumiko that she has accepted Taichiro’s marriage proposal,
Taichiro unable to breath looked at Keiko’s face (Taichiro wa iki ga tsumatte,
tada Keiko no kao o mitsumeta, Z482, my translation).
In this case, Keiko returns the male gaze. She does not blink. She returns to
Taichiro a challenging gaze. Taichiro, for his part, does not feel less before her eyes.
Refusing to listen to his mother’s advice to return home, he becomes the object of
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revenge. His body is lost in the waters of Lake Biwa embraced by the maternal womb,
but denied to his mother.
Keiko’s gaze has meant the ultimate “castration” for Taichiro, death. Toshio
also pays. Keiko hopes that Toshio now understands Otoko’s pain and embraces a
world of vanishing beauty and haunting sadness. Taichiro as object of Keiko’s gaze is
an object of displaced and wicked desire. She obtains from him the ultimate sacrifice.
Her gaze, even as returned gaze, kills her prey. Keiko gazes back at Toshio from the
waters of Lake Biwa where Taichiro’s body lies. Two inhabitants of makai are left
staring at each other. One, ffightenly beautiful, resembles Medusa!
(7.3.) Deflecting Keiko’s Eyes: Otoko as Object
Keiko is so intrigued by Otoko’s picture that she goes to see her and begs to be
taken in as an apprentice. In the same-sex relationship that ensues, Keiko is assigned the
feminine role. When Keiko looks at Otoko she sees an object of desire and adoration.
Keiko’s love for Otoko is never questioned. All that Keiko does, she does to safeguard
the love she shares with Otoko.
Otoko is seldom the object of Keiko’s gaze. In the chapter “The Festival of the
Full Moon,” however, Keiko asks Otoko to make a nude portrait of her, demonstrating
the young woman’s willingness to be a model for Otoko’s painting just as Otoko was
the model for Toshio’s novel. Keiko in this way embraces Otoko’s attempts to mold her
just as Otoko was molded by Toshio. Keiko is to Otoko what Otoko once was to Toshio,
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and Otoko is to Keiko what Toshio once was to Otoko. Otoko and Keiko, therefore, are
not always the women they seem to be.
One night Keiko wakes Otoko up from a nightmare, and Otoko is upset at the
idea that Keiko was watching her while she slept [H69/Z329]. This passage recalls a
similar scene in Snow Country when Shimamura is upset at the idea that Komako was
looking at him while he slept. Otoko resists her status as object of the gaze. If, in their
same-sex relationship Otoko is in the male position as her name suggests,8 3 her
resistance to objectification conforms to the typical pattern. In other words, the male
Otoko must be the one who gazes, not the one gazed upon. Otoko looks at Keiko and
makes of her a beautiful object of desire. She does not want to be looked at by Keiko.
Otoko has resisted objectification and representation since the time of her relationship
with Toshio. Even then she was the one gazing, the subject of the gaze.
Otoko resists the gaze of the other because she is afraid of losing her identity as
woman, as artist, and as lover. Only her wide open eyes can guarantee her wholeness
and visibility to herself. Her closed eyes or averted gaze may allow another to inscribe
meaning to her, or to give her a voice not her own. Otoko repeatedly defies
objectification and challenges anyone who attempts to become subject of the gaze.
In the chapter “A Stone Garden,” Keiko reveals to Otoko that she has begun to
take revenge on Otoko’s behalf. When Keiko further confesses that she spent a night
with Toshio, Otoko is so hurt and enraged that she hits Keiko. Otoko leaves the room to
go to the veranda while Keiko is on the floor in tears.
8 2 Kawabata Yasunari, Snow Country, 113-114; Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu volume 10, 91.
8 3 “Otoko” is a homonym of the Japanese word for man.
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Keiko’s sobbing stopped. Still half-reclining on the matted floor, propped up
by her right arm, she watched Otoko from behind (Otoko no ushiro sugata wo
ukagatta). For a time Otoko’s rigidity seemed to be making her own body rigid.
[H97/Z363]
The Japanese version reads: “Iki wo koroshite otoko no ushiro sugata wa
ukagatta''’ or “In breathless excitement, Keiko looked at Otoko’s figure from behind.”
Keiko waits for another response. Her gaze rests on Otoko’s back. Keiko is almost
spying (ukagau). She is aware of having hurt Otoko, but at the same time she longs for
a visual response from the object of her gaze. Keiko wants to know that she has Otoko’s
approval. Otoko, on the other hand, has other things on her mind. Keiko has defied her
representation of Otoko’s alter-ego by doing something Otoko has never thought of
doing.
The novel ends with Keiko gazing at Otoko. After the motorboat accident,
Otoko rushed to the bedside of Keiko, who is unconscious:
Keiko opened her eyes {me o aita). Tears were still sparkling in them as she
looked up at Otoko {Otoko o miageta). [H206/Z490]
Keiko looks at Otoko in an attempt to let her understand why she has done what
she has. Otoko resists the message coming from Keiko’s eyes. Otoko still remains
object of desire, but Keiko’s status has changed. Keiko’s love may remain as a part of
Otoko’s life while everything else adds to the haunting realm where beauty and sadness
dwell. Otoko, though, feels left alone once again.
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(8) Fumiko’s Gaze, or when the Mother/the Wife Looks
What shape would Beauty and Sadness take if told from the perspective of
Fumiko? What if the voice of the betrayed wife were heard? If Fumiko’s gaze were the
only gaze in the novel, how would the other characters appear?
As discussed previously, Fumiko’s portrayal complies with the role of the “good
wife, wise mother.” Fumiko is the betrayed wife who accepts her husband’s unfaithful
behavior without fighting back. She even offers to type the manuscript in which her
husband recounts his affair. In her role as “good wife, wise mother” she goes as far as to
justify Toshio’s affair as having been good for his emotional well-being. In exchange
for her humiliations she gets remuneration and a comfortable life style. Her husband’s
unfaithfulness has resulted in a monetary reward for her family, which has paid for her
children’s education.
Fumiko, in her role of “good wife, wise mother,” may have conveyed a certain
message from Kawabata to his female audience at the time of the original publication.
However, Fumiko also makes choices. She decides to stay in a marriage that makes her
unhappy. She decides to have sex with her husband even while he is having an affair. It
is also her decision to type her husband’s manuscript. The degree of choices available to
Fumiko is a different issue. Certainly, it is socially more appropriate to remain in an
unhappy marriage than to seek a divorce. Likewise, it is more appropriate to have
children with an unfaithful husband rather than to have no children at all. We are left
with her decision to type her husband’s manuscript, a manuscript she has been written
out of. Toshio does not write about Fumiko’s jealous outbursts or her walks in the rain
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with baby Taichiro. Deleted by her husband’s pen, Fumiko gives shape to her pain by
typing it. She needs to understand what it was that Otoko had that she did not. She
needs to delve into what made Otoko attractive to Toshio. Fumiko needs to accept that
her husband is probably a better person because of his affair with Otoko.
If Beauty and Sadness were told from Fumiko’s perspective, we would have a
different novel in which a betrayed wife unwillingly carried on her role as “good wife,
wise mother,” fighting against herself in order to conform to the social code of behavior.
Fumiko’s story would caution female readers not to marry, not to be trapped in an
institution that in the end would bring only unhappiness.
In his selfish quest to please his aesthetic and sexual desires, Toshio has
dismissed his wife completely without realizing that the suffering he has caused her
compares to the pain of Otoko. Fumiko and Otoko share a sad destiny overly shaped by
an egocentric male character. For all the guilt Toshio feels for what he has done to
Otoko, he feels almost none for what he has done to his wife. Even when realizing the
cruelty of having Fumiko type his manuscript, he never stops her. If Beauty and
Sadness were told from Fumiko’s point of view the picture we would have of Toshio
would change little. He would remain as a callous, self-centered man.
Toshio, Keiko, and Otoko on three different occasions become objects of
Fumiko’s gaze. Fumiko is the only one made uneasy by Keiko’s intrusion. When Keiko
first stops by Toshio’s house, she meets Fumiko, who later tells Toshio that the girl
“was almost frighteningly pretty (kowai yd ni kireina hito deshita wa, H44/Z303).
However, Fumiko sees much more than Keiko’s frightening beauty. In the picture
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“Plum Tree,” for example, she sees Keiko’s feelings for Otoko [H47/Z306], which
Toshio mis-represents as being “Otoko’s love for him” [H47/Z307]. Although Keiko
has meant to make clear that she commands Otoko’s emotions, Toshio misreads the
message. Fumiko, on the other hand, gets it right.
In addition to her manipulation of vision, Keiko manipulates herself as object of
the gaze. The first message she wants to convey is that of beauty that can be dangerous.
Keiko as object forces the subjects to acknowledge the alluring power coming of her
beauty and embrace the consequences of falling under her gaze. Toshio and Otoko fail
to anticipate the destructive force of Keiko’s beauty, while Fumiko is alarmed.
Keiko’s painting depicts her love for Otoko. Fumiko sees it. Toshio does not. To
Fumiko the painting is another warning sign. Because Fumiko has never met Otoko, she
projects onto Keiko her dislike for her teacher. Although Fumiko feels threatened by
Keiko, she is in no position to voice her concern yet.
While typing Toshio’s manuscript, Fumiko confessed to Toshio, “Holding on to
you was a crime. I’ll probably regret it the rest of my life” [H39/Z298-99]. Those
ominous words come to fruition twenty years later.
Toshio hides his affair with Keiko from Fumiko. When Taichiro informs them
that he is going to Kyoto to visit Sanetaka’s grave, Fumiko knows that he is going to
meet Keiko. She confronts Toshio:
“He’s going to Kyoto to meet that young lady!”
Again Oki was caught off guard. Fumiko had been squatting to set out his
clogs, but now as he slipped into them she stood up and looked him in the eye
{sono Fumiko no me wa Oki o mite iru).
“That frighteningly beautiful young lady - don’t you think she’s frightening?
(Ano kowai yd ni kireina ojosan wa, kowai hito da to omoi ni naranai?y,
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407
Oki hesitated (tossa ni kotoba ga denakatta, then and there he kept quiet). He
had kept his night with Keiko secret from her.
“I have an uneasy feeling about it.”
Fumiko’s eyes were still on him {Fumiko wa me o Oki no kao ni
muketsuzukete). [H141/Z412-13]
Fumiko’s gaze makes Toshio uncomfortable. He has yet another secret that he
refuses to share with Fumiko. As we learn later, Fumiko suspects that something has
happened between Keiko and her husband [H199/Z483]. As object of Fumiko’s gaze,
Toshio feels threatened. He is not guilty about what he has done, but he knows that
were she to find out, he would have to go through what he did twenty years earlier.
Though Fumiko is ready for a visual confrontation, Toshio avoids it because he knows
he is the one who has the most to lose. When Fumiko again and again brings up Keiko’s
frightening beauty, Toshio ignores her. Just as he dismissed her jealous outbursts twenty
years earlier to the extent of omitting her from his novel, he now dismisses her concerns
as unfounded. He does so in order to avoid a confrontation, in which he would have to
declare defeat.
At the end of the novel, Fumiko and Otoko finally meet after Taichiro
disappears in the motorboat accident. Fumiko knows Otoko through her husband’s
novel and has learned to hate her. The Otoko before her eyes, however, is not the same
woman Toshio wrote about in A Girl o f Sixteen (she never was). Still, Fumiko’s feelings
do not change. Now that her son is dead, she voices them.
Fumiko and Toshio walk in the room in which Otoko leans over Keiko, who lies
unconscious:
As soon as he [Toshio] saw Otoko he stopped.
“So you’re Miss Ueno,” said Fumiko.
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408
It was their first meeting.
“So you’re the one who had my son killed.” Her voice was quiet and
emotionless
Otoko began to m ove her lips, but no words came out. She was leaning over
K eiko’s bed, propping herself up with one arm. Fumiko came toward her. Otoko
shrank away. [H205/Z490].
Kawabata leaves this confrontation up to Fumiko. Fumiko stares at her gender
ambivalent object, and Otoko shrinks away. Fumiko speaks, and Otoko is unable to
utter a word. Even Toshio is paralyzed. Fumiko gives voice to her pain, while both
Otoko and Toshio can only accept her anger. Fumiko’s gaze castrates Toshio and Otoko.
Overwhelmed by guilt, they do not dare to look into each other’s eyes. Toshio and
Otoko know that Taichiro’s probable death is not due to Keiko’s manipulations. Otoko
and Toshio are both responsible. By avoiding each other’s gaze, they avoid the truth;
they avoid themselves, but they cannot prevent Fumiko from venting her suffering as
she walks out of the room where Keiko lies unconscious.
Fumiko’s gaze creates a new sense of guilt in Toshio and inscribes a new
dimension to Otoko’s understanding of her sad destiny. Fumiko’s gaze punishes Otoko
for the choices she has made in her life. Fumiko’s gaze is a repository for all that Otoko
never was: the wife and the mother. Even though Fumiko and Otoko may share the
experience of child loss, Fumiko’s loss is the greater. Before Fumiko’s eyes and under
Keiko’s gaze, Otoko must reconsider the place of her idealized love, and embrace a
different kind of pain. Taichiro’s death scars Otoko’s love for Toshio. Otoko is left
alone with the unconscious Keiko to reconsider the enormity of her pain. Iron bars are
not before her eyes this time as they were when she was in the psychiatric hospital
twenty years earlier, when dealing with the loss of her child and her lover’s
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409
abandonment, but it is as if from behind those iron bars she now sadly stares at herself
again.
(9) Conclusion
In this novel, the female gaze is once again site of male knowledge, but men
again resist the truth reflected back in order to cling to the fantasy of plenitude. The
male object resists the female gaze on different occasions. To resist the gaze means to
resist representation and Toshio resists the female gaze as it unveils to him a new
dimension of his past. Toshio resists the female gaze by not seeing the content of the
images looking at him from the paintings, by denying to himself the meaning of the
painter’s destiny. Toshio resists in order to live with himself, but life and the cycle of
retribution eventually catch up with him.
The study of Beauty and Sadness from the perspective of the female gaze
reveals women in their strenuous quests to affirm themselves as their own persons. The
female gaze in Beauty and Sadness is an aestheticized sight/site for women as wives
and lovers to reclaim their identity as subjects of their lives, not objects of
representations, although they fall short of breaking free completely from culture and
history. By defying male representations, women gaze at the world, their objects and
especially men and inscribe a new emotional dimension to their life experiences. The
female gaze in Beauty and Sadness is also a contested sight/site of women’s resistance
as women struggle to defy the male voice and the male gaze as exclusive makers of
discourse.
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410
It is by bringing to the fore the structure of the female gaze that women’s efforts
to survive the loss of love, children and the self is mostly unveiled. Far from concluding
that this proves Kawabata’s knowledge of women, it does allow to peek into the
author’s attempt to understand the experience of women’s sufferings, the enormity of
their agony.
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411
Conclusion
“One might say . . . that certain epiphanies consisting of objects that have
escaped the equalizing insignificance of the real are tiny peepholes through
which we are allowed to intuit - perhaps reach - the fullness of words. . ..
Authenticity must be a subterranean metropolis, discernible in the gleam of tiny
peepholes announcing it, glowing objects cut into the armored surface of the real,
blazes that are annunciation and shortcut, beacon and portal, angels.
(Alessandro Baricco)1
My investigation of vision and visuality in Kawabata’a literature has
demonstrated a progression in his works in which he moves from describing male
characters as subjects of the gaze and emotionally in charge of their fields of vision (e.g.
Snow Country), to portraying female subjects of the gaze who challenge the
predominance of an all male field of vision in which women exist only as objects (e.g.
Beauty and Sadness). Whereas in Snow Country, Thousand Cranes, The Lake and
Sleeping Beauties beautiful women conform to their status as objects of the male gaze,
in Beauty and Sadness beautiful women stare back, forcing their male objects to
confront the consequences of being gazed upon. Kawabata questions vision as a male
prerogative when he portrays men as objects of the female gaze.
In my dissertation, I have offered diverse readings of the gendered gaze in
Kawabata’s texts. My study of the male and female gaze in Snow Country shows that
women in Kawabata’s novels carry the same emotional weight as men. Such women
must be considered as makers of cultural and historical meaning. Moreover, reading
Snow Country from the perspective of the theory of the gaze has revealed the existence
of a female gaze and voice never acknowledged in the study of one of the most
1 Alessandro Baricco, City, trans. Ann Goldstein (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 41-42.
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412
recognized novels by Kawabata. In my examination of Thousand Cranes, I describe the
returned gaze of Kurimoto Chikako’s “ugly birthmark” as that site from which Mitani
Kikuji’s castration anxiety originates. In regard to The Lake, I argue that the male
protagonist Momoi Gimpei perceives himself as object of the world’s gaze; he feels that
people, objects, and images dangerously stare back at him. I show in my study of
Gimpei what it means to feel oneself a spectacle of the world, what it means to need to
become the object of the other’s gaze. My investigation of the lacanian gaze of the
sleeping maidens in Sleeping Beauties demonstrates how this gaze becomes the
repository of Eguchi’s emotional unrest. He resists the truth that the maidens stare back
at him. I make the case that these sleeping beauties see even when asleep and talk even
when silenced. I read Beauty and Sadness as the sole text in Kawabata’s literature
where female gazes and voices prevail.
In my work, I also present the dynamics of visual confrontations in Kawabata’s
texts, and I investigate how the male characters position themselves when they are
objects of the female gaze. In Snow Country, Komako and Yoko are only seen, although
a reading from the perspective of the female gaze has shown how Shimamura resists the
two women as subjects of the gaze. In Thousand Cranes, Kawabata blurs Chikako’s
gender, apparently limiting the castration anxiety that Kikuji experiences under her gaze.
In spite of such blurring, Kikuji experiences just such anxiety when under what I
describe as the birthmark’s gaze. In The Lake, Kawabata portrays the female gaze as an
ambiguous duplicate of the male gaze, eliminating the usual implications of such a gaze.
The returned female gaze is needed, however, in order to guarantee self-identity for the
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413
male subject-become-object. In Sleeping Beauties, a visual confrontation occurs despite
the women’s shut eyes. In Beauty and Sadness, men are forced to accept their status as
objects of the female gaze.
Mine has been an archeological effort to uncover through theories of vision
Kawabata’s female characters, their feelings, and especially their psychological dramas.
Digging through the layers of complexity in Kawabata’s language, I have witnessed the
birth of a new typology of female character rising from Kawabata’s novels. During this
exploration, it has been the male characters who came across, most often than not, as
secondary in Kawabata’s plots.
Contrary to the understanding of Sandra Buckley and Tajima Yoko of women as
victims in Kawabata’s texts, I have argued that his female characters should not be read
as passive entities, as sexual and emotional toys in the lives of troubled men, as sexual
objects of the male gaze, or as voiceless fragmented bodies. Rather, the visual
interactions of these female characters depict the triumph of female gazes and voices in
male texts. The female gaze in Kawabata’s novels stands as a site/sight of male self-
knowledge irregardless of whether men embrace or resist this truth.
Although some of Kawabata’s critics have led us to believe that it is in his male
characters that we should look for the author, as I have shown it is in his female
protagonists, especially those gender ambivalent women who crowd his novels, that
Kawabata mostly manifests his troubled self. In Beauty and Sadness, Ueno Otoko
2 Hasegawa Izumi, Kosakabe Motohide and Suzuki Haruo can be accounted among such scholars,
especially when they argue that Shimamura in Snow Country could be considered Kawabata in disguise.
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414
embodies the contradictions of Kawabata’s artistic and personal life in a male role that
emotionally limited him.
Kawabata’s relationship with the issue of gender ambivalence can be traced to
his translation into modem Japanese of the Heian text The Changelings (Torikaebaya
-5
monogatari, 1115-1170). The theme of gender performance in the text may have
instigated Kawabata’s own experiments with sexually ambivalent female characters in
his novels.4 Often, when women gaze at male objects, Kawabata imbues their gazes
with a dimension of gender ambivalence. I understand Kawabata’s manipulations of the
ambiguous female gaze as a safety device meant to call into question the gender of the
subject and reduce the intimidation felt by the male object. To blur the female gender,
to place women in a male position or to portray them as resembling men, prevents men
from experiencing castration anxiety when under the female gaze.
In Thousand Cranes, Kurimoto Chikako is a gender ambivalent woman who
accepts the male protagonist’s description of her as “neuter” or chusei if the term
signifies knowledge of humankind. Moreover, Chikako’s gaze does not disturb Kikuji
as much as her genderless birthmark disturbs him when he feels himself seen by it. In
The Lake, Miyako struggles to hide and keep under control her sexually ambivalent
feelings toward women. Although Miyako looks at Gimpei, her gaze is not felt as a
threat. In Beauty and Sadness, Kawabata depicts Otoko’s refusal to give herself again to
a man as the result of her life-long quest to recreate herself through a homosexual
3 Rosette Willig, trans., The Changelings: A Classical Japanese Court Tale (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1983).
4 Gregory Pflugfelder, “Strange Fates: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Torikaebaya Monogatari,”
Monumenta Nipponica 47, no. 3 (1992): 347-368.
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415
relationship with another woman as her former male lover. Otoko thus looks at Keiko
from the male position, but does not use that gaze to stare at Toshio. She stares at
Toshio from the past, and her memory castrates him.
Kawabata’s translation of The Changelings and his writing of Shonen (Boys,
1948-1952),5 which deals with his own experimenting with homosexuality in middle
school, took place at the same time (1948), suggesting that this classic from the
Japanese tradition contributed to the author’s rediscovery the troubled sexuality of his
middle school years.
Kawabata ascribes to women more than to men a dimension of sexual
ambivalence. Critics have yet to unpack the sexual tension Kawabata creates among
women in his writings or uncover the reasons behind the lack of such tension in his
male characters. Gender performance is one of the topics for further theoretical analysis
of Kawabata’s literature.
Reading Kawabata’s writings as exercises in the novelist’s self-analysis would
enable us to see the author come to life within his work. Kawabata’s texts may be
investigated as the author’s steps toward the annihilation of the self, which in
Kawabata’s case was suicide. In the last years of his life Kawabata’s troubled
relationship with the world of the visible transpires from the pages of Tanpopo
(Dandelions), his last novel.6 Kawabata’s need to disappear from the inquisitive gaze of
the world, and to prevent the world from staring back at him, is much apparent in this
incomplete text. Kawabata hides behind the female character in the novel.
5 Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 10, 143-255.
6 Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 18, 439-577.
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416
In Tanpopo, Izaki Ineko, the female protagonist, is affected by an unusual
syndrome which Kawabata describes as jintai kesshi sho or syndrome of human body
disappearance. Jintai kesshi sho is related to the demonic realm and to madness.
Tanpopo is a story about madness (kyoki) and mad people (kydjin).7 The syndrome
entails the disappearance of the object of the gaze. In Ineko’s case, her father, her lover,
and her baby have disappeared while she was looking at them. The female subject uses
her gaze to annihilate her objects by rendering them invisible, thereby preventing them
from returning her gaze. The subject of the gaze remains in apparent control of its field
of vision, but such control only marks the beginning of madness. To study Tanpopo
from the perspective of theories of vision and the gaze would take us into the realm of
vision and madness.
In my investigation of the characters’ line of vision in Kawabata’s novels, I have
striven to go beyond words and uncover how the gaze of the author manipulates the
dynamics of gazing among his characters for the purpose of self-knowledge. This study
of the gaze in Kawabata’s literature is far from exhaustive. Texts such as Suisho Genso
(Crystal Fantasies, 1931), Maihime no koyomi (The Dancer’s Calendar, 1935), Asakusa
kurenaidan (The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa, 1929-30), “Kurutta Ichipeeji” (A Page o f
Madness, 1926), and especially Tanpopo (Dandelions), to mention a few, must be
extensively studied before drawing any definite conclusion on the reconfiguration of the
1 Kawabata Yasunari Zenshu, volume 18, 450-51. For analysis o f the demonic realm or makai in
Tanpopo see Hara Zen, Kawabata Yasunari no makai; Kawabata Bungaku Kenkyukai, ed., Makai no
hokd. Mizuumi Nemureru bijo Kataude Tanpopo-, Morimoto Osamu, Makaiyuko: Kawabata Yasunari no
sengo.
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417
gaze in the author’s works. My dissertation represents one step in the direction of
revisiting Kawabata’s writings from this perspective.
This dissertation contributes to the application of diverse methodological
approaches to the study of Japanese literature. It provides a new understanding of
Western theories of vision and the gaze within a Japanese context. The challenge of
applying such theories has motivated my daily battles with Kawabata’s texts, a struggle
which has allowed me to get closer to an understanding of the man hiding behind his
characters.
I imagine Kawabata as he peeks at the world from behind his characters’
shoulders: a wrinkled face with timid and inquisitive eyes gazing from somewhere in
the depth of his existence, a place from which coming to terms with the laws of the
visible, with the truth of being the one gazed upon, was always emotionally and
physically uncomfortable.
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418
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Shoseki, 1979.
Zizek, Slavoj. Looking Awry. An Introduction to Lacan through Popular Culture.
Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1992.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Appendix One
Jacques Lacan’s Diagrams
Object
Geometral
point
image
Picture screen
The
gaze
image
screen
The subject of
representation
(1) Diagram of The Eye/Look
(2) Diagram of The Gaze
(3) Diagram of The Divided Subject
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Montebruno, Gloria R. (author)

Core Title Gazing subjects, gazing objects. Reconfiguring the gaze in Kawabata Yasunari's novels, 1939--1962

School Graduate School

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program East Asian Languages and Cultures

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag literature, Asian,OAI-PMH Harvest,women's studies

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-654833

Unique identifier UC11340148

Identifier 3116759.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-654833 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 3116759.pdf

Dmrecord 654833

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Montebruno, Gloria R.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA