The “I” in the Making

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Cover Illustration: The Japanese Noh mask by Bidou Yamaguchi. Photo courtesy of
Bruce Forster.

ISSN 2191-3269

ISBN 978-3-631-82919-6 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-83357-5 (E-PDF)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-83358-2 (EPUB)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-83359-9 (MOBI)

DOI 10.3726/b17490

© Peter Lang GmbH

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Berlin 2020

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About the editors

The Author
Justyna Weronika Kasza is an associate professor at Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka, Japan. She has taught courses in Japanese language, literature, and translation at universities in England and Poland. She is the recipient of the Japan Foundation Fellowships and has conducted her research at Sophia University in Tokyo. Her research interests include the works of Endo¯ Shu¯saku, life-writing narratives in Japan, world literature and translation theories.

About the book

Justyna Weronika Kasza

The “I” in the Making

The book centres around the topic of subjectivity and self-representation in contemporary Japanese literature and offers a new approach to the genre of shishōsetsu (the I-novel).
It reassesses the works of Dazai Osamu, Ōe Kenzaburō, Endō Shūsaku, Murakami Haruki, and of the translingual writers - Mizumura Minae, Hideo Levy, Tawada Yōko - to expose the wide-ranging treatment of personal experiences, and the intricate relations between the characters, the narrator, and the writing persona.
In the context of world fiction and autobiography theories, the book investigates literary and linguistic challenges in expressing the “self.” The shishōsetsu are explored as stories of constructing identities between cultures, languages, literary canons, and testimonies of untranslatability of the self.

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Abstract

This book centers around the topic of subjectivity and self-representation in contemporary Japanese fiction. It offers an evaluation of a genre known as shishōsetsu (the I-novel). The objective is to reassess the works by Dazai Osamu 太宰治, Ōe Kenzaburō大江健三郎, Endō Shūsaku 遠藤周作, Murakami Haruki村上春樹 and translingual writers (Mizumura Minae,水村美苗 Hideo Levy リービ英雄, Tawada Yōko多和田葉子) and to demonstrate flexible treatment of personal experiences and the ambiguous relations between the character, narrator and the writing persona. The project expands the scope of the existing scholarship on shishōsetsu and exposes the phenomenological dimension of post-war life-writing narratives in Japan. By making references to world fiction (Kundera, Gombrowicz, Robert Musil, Knausgaard, Orhan Pamuk), the book explores narrative and linguistic challenges in expressing the “self”. Shishōsetsu is perceived as the stories of constructing identities between cultures, languages and literary canons, and, at the same time, the testimonies of untranslatability of the self. The book brings relevant concepts drawn from theories of autobiography/life-writing narratives (as defined by the French theorist Philippe Lejeune) and studies on shishōsetsu in Japan. Therefore, it fills an important gap in existing scholarship by merging these two cognitive perspectives and offers a new insight to thoroughly selected writers. “Rethinking Japanese shishōsetsu in a Global Age” is to apply tools from literary studies as well as world literature and translation studies.

Keywords: Japanese literature, shishōsetsu, self and subjectivity, life-writing narratives, comparative/world literature, translation

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to many people and institutions whose guidance and advice supported me on this arduous road towards successful completion of this monograph.

To begin with, I would like to thank The Japan Foundation for awarding me the Fellowship for Long-Term Scholars and giving me an opportunity to conduct my research in Japan from October 2018 until May 2019.

I am grateful for the assistance given by the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University in Tokyo and for hosting me as a visiting researcher. I am particularly indebted to Professor Angela Yiu for serving as my advisor during my research activities and for offering me insightful guidance and suggestions for my project.

Special thanks should be given to Professor Mark Williams from International Christian University in Tokyo and to Professor Olga Tabachnikova from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston (United Kingdom) for their Letters of Recommendations and for endorsement of my efforts to apply for the Japan Foundation Fellowship.

I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude to the members of the Institute for World Literature at Harvard University, especially Professor David Damrosch, for inviting me to participate in the Sixth Seminars in World Literature in 2016. Most of the ideas, sources and materials were gathered at the time of my research at Harvard and the initial ideas of this project resulted from my participation in the seminars on world literature and close reading, as well as colloquia on world literature and circulation.

Special thanks to Professor Numano Mitsuyoshi from the University of Tokyo for the opportunity to participate in his seminars on world literature from Japanese perspectives. I am also grateful for insightful suggestions and comments on shishōsetsu offered by Professor Umezawa Ayumi from Taishō University in Tokyo.

I appreciate the guidance I received from Professor Suzuki Akiyoshi from Nagasaki University and Professor Cécile Sakai from Paris Diderot University.

I am grateful to Mr Chikatani Kōji from TranNet Publishing House for his unwavering support and interests in my project and for comments and suggestions I received during our talks and email exchanges.

Considerable parts of the book were first presented at various international conferences. I am indebted to the organizers of the seminar “Translating the Self: Challenges and Prospects of Intracultural Translation” organized by the American Comparative Literature Association in Utrecht in 2017, and to the The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at the University of Oxford for inviting me to present my research paper at the conference “Autofiction: Theory – practice – cultures – a comparative perspective” in 2019 and for engaging me in thought-provoking discussions.

Abstract

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Rethinking shishōsetsu in a Global Age: key research questions

Gurōbaru ka – Japan’s pathways towards globalization

From hon’yaku bungaku to sekai bungaku: locating Japanese literature on world literary map

Objectives and structure of the book

Chapter 1 The I, the self, the Other: the problem of authorship in Japanese literature

‘What does it matter who is speaking?’: methodological struggles of/for/in shishōsetsu

The self in Japan: the uniqueness of shishōsetsu?

Autobiographical and autofictional frameworks of shishōsetsu – anthropology of the self

Autofiction, biofiction, exofiction – the scope of life-writing narratives

The self in contemporary world fiction: is all literature autobiographical?

Chapter 2 The “I” confused: Dazai Osamu’s irony of the self-narration

Towards a new pattern of shishōsetsu

“Most modern version of shishōsetsu” – Dazai and modernity

Narrating the way out – the disguise and the buffoonery

Chapter 3 The “I” subverted: the self in the face of the Other in Endō Shūsaku’s French diary (1950–1953)

Nikki no kuni – in the land of diaries

Nikki and shishōsetsu: a genetic criticism approach

Sakka no nikki – Endō Shūsaku: the Japanese, the reader, the explorer, the writer

Chapter 4 The committed “I”: Ōe Kenzaburō and the vocation of writing

Self-narration and literary criticism

Correspondence with the world: Nihon no watashi kara no tegami

The world, Japan and the Japanese – prospects and perspectives for Japanese literature in the world