Season 13, Episode 21: An Age of Letters - BONUS
In spite of the Tokugawa Bakufu’s best efforts, many foreign ideas managed to find Japanese audiences during the Edo Period. These audiences were generally small niche groups of enthusiasts and scholars. The Bakumatsu Period saw this influx increase but anti-foreign sentiment, fueled in part by Emperor Komei, meant that foreign novelties found only limited reach. The advent of the Meiji Period saw a dramatic reversal to the pre-existing xenophobic exclusion policies as the government not only allowed a massive influx of foreign goods, but even encouraged the populace to learn everything they could about the colonial powers and the wider world around them.
Along with the newfound demand for translations of written foreign works, Japanese readers also wanted interpretations and commentaries from Japanese writers. One writer who was instrumental in the field of introducing foreign ideas and helping explain them in plain terms accessible to his readers was Fukuzawa Yukichi.
We discussed some of Yukichi’s work in episode 3, “The View From Below.” He was one of the founding members of the Meiroku Six and his contributions to its magazine helped inspire the formation of the early liberal parties. The one political value which he elevated above everything was independence. His own oft-repeated personal motto was, “national independence through personal independence.”
To this end, he tirelessly promoted higher learning as a path to personal independence and worked very hard to ensure that Japanese people had access to so-called “western” concepts. He authored a Japanese-English dictionary in 1860 and in 1869 he wrote “Sekai Kunizukushi,” a book intended to teach children world geography written in a playful sing-song verse. It was the first book of its kind in Japan. It quickly became a best-seller and was used as a textbook in many elementary schools.
Because of his political advocacy and the massive body of written work he left behind, Fukuzawa Yukichi is often compared with the United States founding father Benjamin Franklin. He died in 1901 but his legacy of scholarly pursuit lives on today.
While Yukichi and his peers worked primarily to help promote greater political understanding, many Japanese fiction authors opted to adopt foreign modes of storytelling and craft, incorporating broader literary concepts into their work and introducing their audience to innovative forms of prose. Before we dive into their lives and works, we need to familiarize ourselves with a few twenty-dollar terms regarding literary philosophy in the late 1800s.
There were, of course, many schools of thought bouncing around the literary world at the time, but the two main schools which we’re focusing on today are Romanticism and Naturalism. Works labeled as Romanticist were not, as its name seems to imply, necessarily stories about love. Romanticism was a movement which emerged around the close of the 1700s in which stories contained supernatural elements, emotion was elevated above reason, and imagination and subjectivity were held in high esteem. Romanticism was, itself, partially driven by a reaction against the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, and its works often feature an appreciation of nature and an individualistic focus. Walter Scott and Jane Austen were two prominent authors whose works lean toward Romanticism, though the field is vast and includes visual arts as well as written.
In contrast with Romanticism was Naturalism, which arose as a branch of Realism, which emerged in diametric opposition to Romanticism. Naturalism’s relationship to nature was quite different than Romanticism, which tended to use natural imagery as an idyllic backdrop. Naturalism was much more concerned with larger natural trends, usually understood with a certain measure of hard-nosed semi-darwinistic cynicism.
Japanese fiction writers thus had many foreign elements with which they were free to experiment, remix, and reinvent for their home audience. With the growth of periodical publications like newspapers and magazines, many authors got their start penning serialized stories for local and national audiences. Among these new fiction authors was Ozaki Tokutaro, who went by several pen names including Enzan and Tochimando. The name by which he is best known, however, is Ozaki Koyo, the surname Koyo being taken from Mount Koyo which was near his grandparents’ home, where he lived after his mother died when he was very young.
Born in 1868, he began attending primary school right around the time when compulsory public education was still being introduced. He traveled along a scholarly path for a while, though later dropped out of high school, attended an English school for a few years, then enrolled at Tokyo Imperial University where he and his friends founded a writer’s group called “Ken’yusha,” meaning “Society of Inkstone Friends.” In 1885 they began publishing Garakuta Bunko, Japan’s first literary magazine.
Ozaki Koyo’s career lasted far beyond his work in Garakuta Bunko, which published its final issue in 1889. His most famous work was Konjiki Yasha, which means “The Golden Demon,” which began to be serialized in 1897 and would later be adapted to film over a dozen times. The novel revolves around a poor young man named Kanichi who is in love with an equally poor young woman named Omiya, who is being pursued by a wealthy suitor. She marries the wealthy suitor but soon regrets her decision and begs Kanichi’s forgiveness, only to be violently rejected by him in a famous scene in which he actually kicks her away. All three characters end up fairly miserable, though the ending that Koyo intended is not known; he passed away in the fall of 1903 before the tragic story was finished.
Many other members of Ken’yusha would become well-regarded novelists in their own right. Yamada Bimyo, for example, was instrumental in transforming Japanese prose as he advocated reforming written Japanese so that it more closely resembled the spoken language. He borrowed styles popular with English-speaking audiences, adopting things like passive voice and other stylistic elements and his influence on his fellow writers was considerable. His personal life, however, was another story.
His marriage to fellow author Tazawa Inabune was not a happy one. Bimyo frequently pursued romantic affairs with mistresses while she stayed at home and served his mother and grandmother, who frequently chided her poor domestic skills. It is generally believed that he only married Inabune because her family was wealthy and he was broke. They divorced after only three months and then in 1896 she tragically died from complications due to tuberculosis. When a newspaper reporting her death falsely claimed that she had committed suicide because of the unhappiness caused by her marriage to Yamada Bimyo, his reputation was ruined. He later died in 1910, destitute and alone.
The authors who crafted enduring works during the Meiji Period often led lives which were just as tragic as those frequently led by their protagonists. The popularity of their stories somewhat reflects the attitudes of Japanese people during the Meiji Period, a time when, for many, noble tradition seemed to be falling away in favor of greed, exploitation, and drudgery. To be sure, tragic stories were hardly new to Japanese literature, which was rife with star-crossed lovers and doomed heroes, but the tendency of Meiji-Era authors to gravitate toward hopelessness and strife in their stories is certainly notable. Material conditions had improved for many, but economic desperation was hardly a thing of the past.
Which brings us to Natsume Soseki, one of my favorite authors of all time and arguably the most influential and notable fiction writers of the Meiji Period. He adopted the name “Soseki” later in life; an idiomatic name whose kanjis mean “stubborn.” Born in Edo in 1868, his father was a wealthy and influential village headman who was descended from a retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Soseki’s mother was forty when he was born and he had five older siblings. He experienced more than his share of tragedy and sadness during his young life, as he was initially adopted by a childless couple who then brought him back to the Natsume family after deciding to divorce when he was nine years old. His mother died a few years later, and a few years after that two of his older brothers likewise passed away.
Amid the tragedies of his teenage years, he announced to his family that it was his intention to become a writer. His family did not approve of a writing career and, under pressure from them, he entered university with the stated goal of becoming an architect. He learned English and made many friends who encouraged him to follow his true dream and become a writer. He followed the path of a teacher for some time, and in 1900 the Japanese government dispatched him to Britain as a visiting scholar of English literature. The entire trip was a fairly miserable experience for Soseki, who later wrote a short story featuring a protagonist on a long sea voyage from Japan who opted to commit suicide by jumping into the ocean.
However, not all was doom and gloom when it came to Natsume Soseki’s stories. His best known novel, or at least the novel with which my Japanese students immediately associated his name, was “Wagahai wa Neko de Aru,” which means “I am a Cat.” The satirical novel is narrated by a family’s cat who observes his human servants, sorry, I mean owners, as they go about their lives. Listeners familiar with Japanese language have probably never heard the title’s pronoun “Wagahai.” It is yet another pronoun which translates to “I” in English, but it was primarily employed by nobles and even in Soseki’s day was almost never used. If you’re not certain why he would use this high-falutin’ word, and indeed utilize archaic language employed solely by nobility throughout the book, I encourage you to interact with more housecats. You’ll soon understand.
Soseki’s second most well-known work, according to research I did with my Japanese students years ago, was “Botchan,” which is translated as “Little Master.” The protagonist of Botchan is a Japanese math teacher from Tokyo who accepts a teaching assignment at a rural school. It’s a fish-out-of-water story featuring unruly students, vindictive administrative staff, and ultimately climaxes with a fistfight. The story is clearly based, in its broad strokes, on Natsume Soseki’s own experience teaching middle school English on the island of Shikoku early in his career.
Toward the end of the Meiji Period, Soseki joined the Shirakabaha, or “White Birch Society.” A loose creative confederation of writers dedicated to adopting and spreading so-called “Western” forms of prose and composition, the Shirakabaha published its own monthly literary journal named after itself. Among its younger members were authors whose work would flourish during the Taisho Period, many of whom were mentored by Natsume Soseki.
He wrote many other novels and short stories, all of which are freely available online in their original Japanese, and many of which also have free English translations available. I put a link in the description to a website called “Soseki Project” which offers English translations of Botchan, Wagahai wa Neko de Aru, and much of his other work for free. I am of the opinion that one should never pay for digital editions of out-of-copyright work.
Natsume Soseki died in 1916 which means that some of his work belongs, technically, to the Taisho Period. However, a replica of his house stands at Meiji Mura, a Meiji Era Theme Park in Inuyama city, which I visited back in 2006. Among the many elements decorating the replica of his home was a cat, curled up near the hearth, which my students instantly understood as a reference to his beloved novel, “I Am A Cat.”
The stories which were inspired by the Meiji Period were often tragic, sometimes satiric, and energized by the innovation and change inherent in the era itself. Authors often fictionalized their own lives, sometimes revealing profound loneliness and other times displaying a dark humor which, in spite of its somewhat serious undertones, still manages to be laugh-out-loud hilarious. Many of their works, especially Natsume Soseki’s, are still read in Japanese schools today, much the way that Mark Twain is still on the curriculum for many schools in the United States.
The final author we will discuss today wrote non-fiction and yet, he is probably more widely known outside of Japan than any other Meiji-era scribe. Born in 1862 to a family of hereditary retainers to the Nanbu Clan of the Tohoku region, Nitobe Inazo’s childhood unfolded as the Meiji Revolution came into full swing. In spite of his samurai upbringing, Nitobe Inazo was a very forward-thinking man who attended the Sapporo Agricultural College and, like many of his fellow classmates, converted to Christianity under the influence of their American teacher William S. Clark.
He lived in the United States for three years, starting in 1884, attending Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, where he had his second religious conversion, this time as a member of the Religious Society of Friends, who are commonly known as Quakers. In the Quaker community in Philadelphia, he met Mary Patterson Elkinton, who would later become his wife. He studied economics and political science and, in 1887, he returned to Japan with his new bride. In Tokyo, the pair established the Friends School, a school for adolescents which operated upon Quaker principles.
Nitobe Inazo is best known, within and outside of Japan, for his seminal study of samurai ethics which he wrote in 1899 titled, “Bushido: The Soul of Japan.” Originally written in English, Inazo wrote Bushido primarily for foreign audiences. It compares the basis of Bushido to the principles of western chivalry, claiming a broadly-shared sociological origin of both in the principle of fair play in fighting. The book quickly became a bestseller and was read by many heads of state who wanted to better understand Japanese ethics and customs.
Primarily, the book Bushido claims seven cardinal virtues among Japanese people: justice, courage, benevolence, politeness, sincerity, honor, and loyalty. In the same way that chivalry trickled down to common people and continues, in many ways, to dictate proper behavior between men and women in western societies, Nitobe Inazo claimed that Bushido also began with warriors but gradually took hold of the hearts of every Japanese person.
Since its publication, the book has generated no small amount of criticism and controversy. It was translated into Japanese in 1908 and many readers at the time felt that Nitobe Inazo’s comparisons between western and eastern cultures were ill-conceived. He admits in the book’s preface that he wrote the book in part to refute the idea set forth by Dr. George Miller, who claimed that chivalry had no eastern counterpart.
Like many human beings, Nitobe Inazo also displayed his share of personal inconsistencies, some of which have muddied his scholarly and pacifist reputation. When he returned to Japan, Inazo served as part of the colonial government of Taiwan and later defended the imperialist annexation of Korea. These actions certainly seemed out-of-step with his Quaker faith, which had traditionally valued pacifism and indigenous self-determination.
Bushido continues to be widely available and widely read today, largely by people seeking to understand Japanese culture. I have read the book several times and I would say that it is not entirely devoid of value, but that its author entertained some rather romantic ideas about the samurai. As I feel we’ve already discussed the changing shape of Bushido throughout Japanese history, I see no need to go into further detail. If you’d like to read the book for yourself, it’s probably available at your local library. The good people at Project Gutenberg also have a freely available digital version which you can read online or download to your preferred reading device.
Next time, we will leave the world of letters behind for the world of food, a world which, even as a writer myself, I consider to be far superior.