Lit 231:
Morrison
Tanizaki Jun’ichirō谷崎潤一郎 (1886-1965): Edokko; born to wealthy chōnin father (owner of publishing
company) in Nihonbashi; a botchan in
early years, but family fortunes soon declined; had to drop out of 帝大
in 1911; literary career begins in 1909; married in 1915, but soon bores of
her; encourages her to have affair with Satō Haruo (Odawara jiken); obsession
with West, aestheticism; moves to cosmopolitan Yokohama in 1922: lives bohemian
lifestyle; dabbles in film industry, script writing, 純映画劇運動 (pure film movement); reputation really takes off after 1923
Kantō daishinsai quake (old Tokyo
disappears, never to return; his attention moves from West to Kansai); between
1924 and 1934, writes Chijin no ai, In’ei raisan, Manji, Tade kū mushi, Yoshino kuzu, Ashikari, Shunkinshō; this
period corresponds to the general trend of Nihon
kaiki (yet maintains modernist inclinations); during war: Genji monogatari gendaiyaku and Sasame yuki (portrait of four daughters
of a wealthy family slowing slipping in stature); awarded bunka kunshō (order of culture) in 1949; continues to pursue his
favorite themes in later novels: longing for mother/ideal woman; male
masochism; sexuality/perversion; fantasy in old age; his eternal ideal female
archetypes: Western-ish femme fatale throughout early period, then the traditional
ningyō-like woman, then the lost
mother, then the noblewoman behind screen . . .
Terms/Particularities
of Culture
1.
Horimono/irezumi: traditional Japanese tattooing;
can be traced back to Jōmon period for religious purposes, then as punishment
in Kofun period (300-600AD); began to develop as art form during mid-Edo period,
influenced by popularity of Japanese translation of Suikoden (Water Margin;
14th century; one of four great classical novels of Chinese
literature), which features heroes who have their deeds inscribed into their
bodies; flourished among merchant class, wealthy merchants; horimono artists included many ukiyo-e
artists; outlawed at beginning of Meiji, thus outlaw associations of tattoos; legalized
again in 1948.
2.
“Cruel Empress Chou of Shang Dynasty” (1600-1047 BC): reference to the sadistic
and depraved King Zhou 商紂王 and Daji 妲己,
who reigned from 1075-1046 BC and brought Shang dynasty to ruin. The empress is
an archetype in Chinese history of selfish, sadistic consort who controls emperor
through her charms, and leads the country to ruin.
3. Aestheticism, or “the Aesthetic Movement” (definition provided by Professor Yiu): A European
phenomenon during the latter nineteenth century that had its chief
philosophical headquarters in France.
Its roots lie in the German theory, proposed by Kant (1790), that the
pure aesthetic experience consists of a “disinterested” contemplation of an
aesthetic object without reference to its reality, or to the “external” ends of
its utility or morality. Rallying cries
included “poem per se”—a “poem written solely for the poem’s sake,” (Edgar Allan
Poe) and “art for art’s sake.” This
movement also stresses the “autonomy” and “all-importance” of art (M.H. Abrams,
A Glossary of Literary Terms).
Tanizaki’s
story paved the way for other literary works that celebrated art for art’s sake
and the artist’s unwavering devotion to his craft. [This story] and Akutagawa’s “Hell Screen” (Jigokuhen 地獄変, 1918) are often grouped
together as works of the Aesthetic School (tanbi-ha
耽美派) and are seen not only as harbingers of modernism in
prose but also as the beginnings of opposition to the literary school of
Naturalism (shizen-shugi 自然主義) and the narrative style of the I-novel, which
emphasized flat, unvarnished, and sincere depiction in contrast to the new,
spectacle-driven narrative style of the modernists (William Tyler, Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan
1913-1938, University of Hawaii Press, 2008, p. 25.).
More on aestheticism: sensibility/philosophy
of life and of art; English literary and artistic movement culminating in 1890s
(Oscar Wilde/Walter Pater most extravagant proponent); a stage in development
of Romanticism; related to symbolism; reaction to Naturalism; generally anti-commercial,
anti-didactic, anti-democratic, anti-bourgeois, anti-“religion of progress”
tone, anti-bunmeikaika; tends to emphasize
hedonism, occult, and prefer spiritual, transcendental over material.
Aestheticism has its roots in Kant’s postulate from Critique of Judgment (1790) of the “disinterestedness” (no personal
interest) of aesthetical judgment, and the irrelevance of concepts to the
intuitions of the imagination (i.e. emphasizes intuition/sense/imagination over
rational intellect). Music is the ideal
art form, as it is most immaterial, removed from quotidian; “to become like
music is aspiration of all arts” says Schopenhauer, then Walter Pater)It holds
that the pursuit of beauty the main task in life; l’art pour l’art (love of art
for its own sake). Aestheticist writers usually regard themselves as an alienated
minority, scornful of masses (Seikichi is no exception).
4.
Aesthetic Movement in Japan (tanbiha
耽美派): Poe, Baudelaire influences; fin-de-siècle;
diabolism (akumashugi); Tanizaki, Akutagawa,
Satō Haruo, Kajii Motojirō, Nagai Kafū, Edogawa Rampo; centered around Keiō
(Mitabungaku) vs. Waseda bungaku (Naturalists); urban, cosmopolitan,
sophisticated.
5. The Edo
Period (1603-1868), particularly the decades of Bunka and Bunsei (1804-1829):Tanizaki
presents this as a time when wit and pleasure were highly esteemed—as were
women who were depicted on stage, for example, in heroic roles in plays like The Female Sadakurō (Onna Sadakurō), The Female Jiraiya, and The Woman Thunder. It was an age of liberalism, affluence, and
urbanity worthy of being reclaimed not in xenophobic retreat to the past but
through rediscovery of a modernity latent and detectable within pre-Meiji
history. Like many novelists writing in
the years following Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905,
Tanizaki was disenchanted with the economic and human costs that accrued to an
imperial power intent on building an international empire. In looking to the past for a different model
of the future, he presents the townsman culture of the Edo period as an
artistic and societal alternative to the policies of the Meiji
establishment. Needless to say, in
presenting his view of Edo as far nobler, he erases any vestige of the
feudalistic authoritarianism historically associated with the samurai class,
Neo-Confucianism, and the Tokugawa shogunate (Tyler 2008, p.25).
Bunka/Bunsei (1804-1829):
the last great era before crisis decades of Tokugawa era; Edo period’s second flourishing
of urban cultural scene, the first being Genroku (1688-1704) (a view contested
by recent Tenmei-focused literary historians); painters Shiba Kōkan, Sharaku;
writers Takizawa Bakin, Shikitei Sanba, Jippensha Ikku; arts of this period
characterized by down to earth, vernacular style; popular appeal; common
everyday themes; lavish habits of Tokugawa shogun Ienari spread to public (post
Matsudaira Sadanobu).
6. Fetish/ Fetishism: A fetish is something,
such as a material object or an often nonsexual part of the body that arouses
or gratifies sexual desire. A fetishism
is the displacement of sexual arousal or gratification to a fetish. (1) broad
definition in psychoanalysis: any activity that deviates from heterosexual intercourse;
(2) a non-sexual part of body or thing that is highly charged with libido/sex
drive (foot, pillow, ear, etc.). According to Freud a fetish is a substitute
for mother’s penis that boy/girl once believed in (i.e. she lost it, got to
find it, before I lose it too). Fetishism is usually found in men, often
accompanied by aversion to real female genitals. In Shisei, Seikichi finds replacement for mother’s penis in girl’s
foot.
7. Archetype: Applied to narrative designs, character types, or
images which are said to be identifiable in a wide variety of works of
literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even ritualized modes of social
behavior. (Abrams, pp.11-12). A central term
in Carl Jung’s analytical psychology, introduced in his 1919 work. Based on
idea that there are “primordial and universal images that make up the contents
of the collective consciousness.”
8. Ero-guro-nansensu (Erotic-grotesque-nonsense): A spontaneous
artistic and narrative style, strategy and movement that came in vogue in the
1910s-1930s as a new form of expression in defiance of the introspective nature
and unadorned language of the Naturalist movement. Playful, evocative, at times vulgar and
absurd, it aims at entertaining and shocking the reader and the viewer in an
age of nouveau art and literary forms. Literary and artistic movement in 1920s
and 1930s Japan; “prewar, bourgeois cultural phenomenon that devoted itself to
explorations of the deviant, the bizarre, and the ridiculous” (Reichart); focus
on eroticism, sexual corruption, decadence; Taisho popular culture (roots in ukiyoe, shunga). Challenged state
ideology, bourgeois conservative values; Edogawa Rampo; traces today in manga,
anime, etc.
9.
Femme Fatale (lit, “deadly woman”): Mysterious, charming, seductive,
often dangerous even deadly female archetype. Examples from history/literature:
Eve, Lilith, Delilah, Cleopatra, other “dark ladies” from antiquity; film noir
females.
10.
Mimetic theory of art: Views/evaluates art in relation to real world; the
value of art is determined by the extent to which it accurately mirrors
reality.
11.
Masochism/sadism: Tanizaki’s great theme; Krafft-Ebing first to provide
detailed account of masochism in Psychopathia
Sexualis (1886). Word itself comes from Sacher-Masoch’s book Venus in Furs. Krafft-Ebing’s classic
study of sexual perversion was introduced to Japan in 1914, translated as 『変態性慾心理』 and immediately banned. The modern use of the word hentai began around this time. (An
earlier translation had appeared in 1894, under the title Shikijōkyōhen.) What does masochist want?→satisfaction
through unpleasantness/pain). Freud’s gives three types of masochist:
erotogenic (sexual pleasure linked with pain), feminine masochism (acting the
subservient “bitch”), and moral masochism (desire to experience guilt). Seikichi
seems to be erotogenic (he wants her to stomp on his face). Tanizaki’s great insight
into human relations: romantic relations are always negotiated in terms of
power.
Study Questions (Provided by Professor A. Yiu)
Answer all of the following.
1. Identify the age (time period) and place (setting) of
the narrative. How does Tanizaki comment on the Meiji period through evoking a
different time period?
2. What is the atmosphere of that specific age and place?
How is that atmosphere evoked or
depicted?
3. Discuss elements of decadence, eroticism, exoticism,
fetishism, and sensuality in the text.
In what sense does this work precipitate and embody elements of ero-guro-nansense movement?
4. Discuss the image of the woman as a literary
archetype. How is that archetype constructed in the text? How does it serve as
a generic archetype as well as a Tanizaki archetype?
5. “Just as the ancient Egyptians had embellished their
magnificent land with pyramids
and sphinxes, he was about to embellish the pure skin
of this girl” (p. 167). What is the nature of this comparison? Discuss the
relationship between art (man-made/tattooing) and nature (not man-made/the
woman’s skin) in the text.
6. In insisting on inscribing (tattooing) on nature (the
woman’s skin) to create art, how does Tanizaki challenge the mimetic theory
(art imitates nature) of art?
7. What happens to the tattooer when his work is
complete? Discuss the relationship between
the artist and the work of art. In what
sense is this work representative of the tanbi-ha
(Aesthetic School)?
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