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pasek 1 japan and death postwar perspectives of mishima and oe bernadette pasek english 405 english honors thesis professor damien keane may 8 2006

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pasek 2 dedicated to kathleen mcclure on the occasion of her 22nd birthday and in thanks for getting rid of the dotted lines

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pasek 3 introduction mishima and oe are arguably the two most famous japanese writers in the west today mishima was considered for the nobel prize in literature three times and oe was awarded it in 1994 moreover mishima was extremely influential on oe s work as a writer and the two shared a bond as novelists and thinkers however their views on traditional japanese culture post wwii japan and death remain different though complexly so their literature reflects their ideals of the direction japan should take after the war during his life mishima wanted to perpetuate an idealized vision of traditional japan free of foreign influence while oe continues to want to create a new japan where self and individuality are valued over group conformity and tradition mishima is concerned with the traditional values of japan while oe concerns himself with contemporary japanese people mishima reveres the emperor and considers him the ultimate authority while oe considers the emperor to be more human moreover oe feels mishima s ideals were a performance and a façade rather than the true japan mishima was twenty when the atomic bombs were dropped on japan while oe was only ten years old while this is a relatively small age difference it was enough to create a distance between their views of japan and their understanding of post-wwii influences on japan while mishima had largely completed his public education oe continued to go to public schooling after the war which was now influenced largely by american ideals and pedagogy while mishima wanted to keep japan pure of foreign influences and was particularly interested in following the way of samurai and bushido oe studied french philosophers like sartre at university and they largely influenced his writing even though both were largely influenced by western culture after wwii and had some proficiency in english both mishima and oe and the differences between them remain difficult for western non-japanese speaking audiences to understand although all the works in this

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pasek 4 thesis have been translated into english what cannot be translated is the great difference between mishima and oe s writing styles oe s work in japanese makes for incredibly complex reading as he purposely eschews the vagueness inherent in the japanese language and rearranges the standard format of japanese sentences mishima s style on the other hand is much more traditional moreover mishima and oe competed not just as japanese writers but also as japanese writers whose works were being translated abroad almost immediately following japanese publication john nathan one of mishima s biographers and translator of the sailor who fell from grace with the sea states that he eventually chose not to become mishima s official english language translator because in part he was more interested in translating one of oe s works a personal matter according to nathan i had hurt him badly it was not only that i had rejected him from his point of view i had rejected him for kenzaburo oe the one younger writer in japan whom he recognized as a rival 209 so while politically very different mishima and oe appeared to respect each other as writers stylistically if not exactly for the content of what they were writing additionally mishima and oe are both difficult to understand as japanese writers because some of their values are not typically seen as important or have the same significance in the west as they do in the japan for example when i write `traditional japanese culture i am referring to artistic practices such as haiku poetry tea ceremony flower arrangement and samurai yet i also write about the traditional japanese hierarchy and ie which will be discussed later in this paper and perhaps most complex are the concepts of uchi and soto or inside and outside uchi and soto are in one sense concepts of cleanliness and uncleanliness anything inside is clean while anything outside is automatically dirty however more importantly uchi groups establish who is an `insider and who is an `outsider a person s uchi

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pasek 5 group can be a small unit like their family or coworkers but depending on context may be as large as a person s race or nationality typically foreigners always remain soto or outsiders yet while difficulties with translation of both language and culture most readers can clearly see that both writers seem to speak incessantly about death mishima with seppuku and murder and oe with deformity and illness how they employ death in their writing often represents their political ideologies concerning japan still perhaps because of their dramatic differences neither mishima nor oe really represents the average japanese person s political belief perhaps mishima is too japanese while oe is too western to stand for the average japanese ideology however by understanding each of them trough their fiction and non-fiction writings readers can obtain a sense of the wide range of issues japan faced after wwii and how many different beliefs were represented youth death coming of age with death watching mishima and oe each wrote a fictional novel examining how massive amounts of death and western influence as a result of wwii might have affected children children are often seen as an embodiment of the future how they develop into adults shapes the future that they will create therefore children and adolescents in japan during and after the war are a particularly important group to consider it is important to understand how they the those who were defeated in war will interpret the western ideas that were brought into japan during the post war allied occupation this should be considered particularly important since these drastic changes effect children not only as private individuals but as members of society at large additionally since many of them lost one or more parents and other figures of authority to war it is important to consider how western authority acts as a substitute for japanese authority for that reason the

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pasek 6 groups of children in mishima and oe s novels can be considered as representatives of how western influence affected japan as a whole mishima was twenty years old when the war ended while oe was only ten consequently we may conclude that while mishima was affected by the end of the war1 and japan s defeat he had already come-of-age and the basis of his personality was already largely formed oe alternatively was still coming of age when the war ended his personality was still being shaped and influenced the authors own coming-of-age experiences affected the way each of them wrote about coming of age during the war2 both mishima s the sailor who fell from grace with the sea published in 1963 and oe s nip the buds shoot the kids published in 1958 consider sets of children influenced by war both groups come of age affected by death yet each group is influenced quite differently while western influence makes of the boys of the sailor who fell from grace with the sea barbaric and unfeeling it is the traditional japanese hierarchy that crushes the boys of nip the buds shoot the kids so while oe s text predates mishima s both by setting and publication date it will be considered second in this thesis because it appears to be more influenced by later western thought as opposed to traditional japanese ideologies that mishima explores the commonness and cruelty of death influence the way the boys of the sailor understand the world mishima s group of children is living in a post wwii japan and live with their relatively affluent families death for them takes place outside of their field of vision nevertheless they are influenced by it the japan their parents knew before the events of wwii world war ii ended officially on september 2 1945 it should be noted that while their own experiences and political beliefs affected the way they wrote about the boys in these stories neither of these novels should really be considered autobiographical after all mishima was already a legal adult twenty is the age of legal adulthood in japan when the war ended and oe was not an adolescent yet 2 1

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pasek 7 is gone and they have been left in a western-influenced japan that does not seem to suit their needs the boys create their own version of the japanese hierarchy with a single chief who gives meaning to all the other boys to replace the emperor however this hierarchy becomes perverted because it is merely their own creation and not a complete imitation of the japanese model adult authority fails to enforce the traditional japanese hierarchy because it has been too influenced by western culture it is the death of japanese culture that peers over these boys as well as the deaths of those japanese who have died as a result of wwii these deaths in turn make the boys monstrous in the absence of the hierarchy created by japan s emperor system the boys of the sailor create their own hierarchy the emperor system in japan had created a hierarchy with the emperor at the top place in the hierarchy was largely determined by class age and gender according to understanding japanese society by joy hendry the samurai warriors were at the top followed by farmers artisans and merchants in that order 105 above the samurai were those born into the imperial family beneath the merchants were the burakumin people or those that were considered untouchable because of their jobs dealing with corpses which are typically considered filthy and impure in the buddhist religion popular in japan furthermore while this hierarchy was legally abolished at the beginning of the meiji restoration 1866-1869 it was forcibly in effect until the end of wwii it is the emperor who gave all meaning to this hierarchy without him the system was incomplete the dropping of the atomic bombs japan s unconditional surrender to the united states and the emperor s renouncement of divinity destroyed the basis of japan s government and societal structure though the divisions based class age and gender remained in the place the emperor did not have the authority to give meaning to it the boys hierarchy in the sailor is a repetition of japan s emperor system.

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pasek 8 although the novel does not clearly establish how the boys determine their rank in the hierarchy it is clear that the chief of the group is the one who assigns value to each member the chief s given name is unknown similarly each member of the group is known by number their rank in the hierarchy and not by name noboru the main adolescent character is known as number three the chief is the emperor he gives meaning to the group s members however because this group is focused on the western ideas of reason and logic they become a perversion of the emperor system and not an actual representation of it the ideas of objectivity reason and science were all western ideas not largely wellregarded in japan until after wwii in his essay for a lousy battery kenzaburo oe writes about his experiences in school before and after the defeat of japan in wwii after the war our teachers had persisted in asking us why we thought japan had been defeated there was only one correct answer to this question because we were not scientific enough oe 123 before america influence after wwii japanese ideals emphasized dedication to the emperor and tradition japan had literally been destroyed by science in the form of the atomic bombs dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki after the war japan embraced and educated its youth about science which emphasizes objectivity and rationality over subjectivity and emotion additionally according to the japanese mind understanding contemporary japanese culture the japanese sense of beauty is based on a concept known as mono no aware a kind of aesthetic value that comes from feelings while in western art people try to construct something of beauty with a logic of what is beautiful in contrast japanese art focuses not on what is logically considered beautiful but on what people feel is beautiful davis and ikeno 37

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pasek 9 a japanese sense of beauty mono no aware cannot be trained into the viewer with education but it must come from feeling the boys of mishima s group demonstrate a preference for intellect and science over emotion and feeling in fact more than anything the boys of the sailor place their faith in intelligence rationality and objectivity early in the novel mishima explains noboru s focus on intellect at thirteen noboru was convinced of his own genius each of the others in the gang felt the same way and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions that death took root at the moment of birth and man s only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it the sailor 8 noboru does not plan on dying in the name of the emperor as many young japanese men have done before him but his death comes about from genius or the intellect death is not something you do or seek but something you think about thinking about death as opposed to living or seeking death would be considered especially damning by mishima his later works like sun and steel which will be explored later in this paper highlight the importance of developing the body as well as the mind mishima would have considered it weak to merely think about death as opposed to living it oneself yet noboru s thoughts are not solely his own the chief of his group directs him in his thoughts when mishima tells the audience how the chief manages to control the boys he has placed beneath him he states ordinarily a boy with merely a physical edge on his classmates presides at lessons such as these but the chief s case was altogether different he appealed directly to the intellect the sailor 54-55 they group s dedication is not a result of their affection for their chief but a result of the chief s apparent control of and authority over the intellect this may be mishima s way of criticizing the intellect especially when one considers the boys insistence on a rational intellect as opposed to a feeling intellect mishima wants to reject much of western thought so if he puts western ideas into the minds of his characters it is

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pasek 10 a way for him to criticize and reject his own characters beliefs the chief acts as emperor by giving meaning to his group through rationality and intellect in other words science favoring logical and rational thought the chief opposes emotional or moral responses to situations according to mishima s standards this symbolic recreation of japan s hierarchy has been perverted by western ideas of science the group s goal is to destroy taboo and create their own society they want to be free from the authority adults impose on them soon the shirts would be flapping in the wind and then they would be killing breaking the endless chain of society s loathsome taboos mishima the sailor 57 rather than obey japan s ideal of social conformity and group consensus they want to break apart the basic mores of japanese culture with logic while breaking away from social conformity using logic may initially be perceived as a good idea in reality the boys merely create a separate type of social conformity it remains group rather than individual thought additionally the boys use their new hierarchy to be destructive rather than productive soon enough the group begins to kill noboru demonstrates his dedication to the chief s perverse replication of the japanese hierarchy by brutally killing a kitten mishima calls it at last the test of noboru s hard cold heart the sailor 57 noboru s destruction of the kitten is an exercise of controlled emotion one thing the chief emphasizes to his group is the need to act solely on intellect as opposed to emotion the chief s philosophy is described in this way the chief always insisted it would take acts such as this to fill the world s great hollows though nothing else could do it he said murder would fill those gaping caves in much the same way that a crack along its face will fill a mirror then they would achieve real power over existence mishima the sailor 57 when one looks into a mirror the mirror itself cannot be seen only reflections are seen however if the mirror is cracked one `sees the mirror opposed to the reflection in order to see the mirror

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pasek 11 itself the mirror must be broken for the boys this is similar to life the essence of life or life itself cannot be seen until it is cracked or broken in death by killing the chief and the rest of the boys imagine they will be able to capture life itself they will be able to live through others death noboru becomes enthralled with his own power when he takes the kitten s life however the purpose of the japanese hierarchy is not one in which you use your high position to suppress those beneath you but one in which you use your position to be benevolent towards those who do not have your high status according to the japanese today change and continuity there is an overtone here of the old concept of on or benevolence by the superior and giri the reciprocal sense of loyalty and duty from the inferior person reischauer and jansen 156 while there is a strict hierarchy in place power should not be exercised without good reason abuse of power such as killing something defenseless would actually transgress the rule that those with a high status should remain benevolent if not kind since the boys hierarchy is merely a perversion of the traditional japanese hierarchy they do not know how to exercise on and therefore abuse their positions what noboru lifted between two fingers now was no longer a kitten a resplendent power was urging through him to the tips of his fingers and he had only to lift the dazzling arc seared into the air by this power and hurl it again and again at the log he felt like a giant of a man just once at the second impact the kitten raised a short gurgling cry mishima the sailor 58 kittens represent youth and innocence they are defenseless similarly these children were defenseless against the impact the damage wwii had on them and without the emperor to give meaning to the rest of japan they are without their symbolic representation dedication to the emperor is not about being dedicated because you have worked it out scientifically or rationally,

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pasek 12 but because you have an emotional tie to the meaning the emperor gives you it is a patriotic duty they have tried to replicate this system but their replication has ended up perverse due the western influence of science and logic the boys conclude that death had transfigured the kitten into a perfect autonomous world mishima the sailor 61 if death separates one being from another then we can say that the japanese were symbolically made separate individuals at the end of the war when the emperor renounced his divinity rather than be connected through the hierarchy all japanese people were rendered individuals without the same connections they had before and throughout the war this is a particularly significant loss for japan as traditionally japan has valued group consciousness over individuality when comparing american and japanese ideals reischauer and jansen say as americans we have so idealized the concept of the independent individual alone before god the law and society that we see ourselves as free and isolated individual far more than the facts warrant prevailing japanese attitudes have tended to make the japanese do the reverse 128 so while generally speaking it can be said that americans have placed importance on individuality typically the japanese have stressed group consensus the boys are reenacting japan s destruction the kitten becomes a symbol of japan defenseless against the devastating power of the atomic bombs japanese individuals have been made into their own perfect autonomous world the boys of the sailor are replicating the traditional japanese hierarchy while simultaneously breaking away from it the chief becomes the group s symbolic emperor but the group also destroys the idea of the ie or house and family unit the ie can be considered an extension of the japanese hierarchy place in the ie is largely determined by age and gender the hierarchy and the ie privileges senior male members in other words fathers and

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pasek 13 grandfathers moreover the ultimate head of all the ie3 is the emperor who in this respect can be considered the father of japan according to hendry the head [of the ie was legally responsible for all the members who were subordinate to him 27 additionally the emperor can be seen as responsible for all of his citizens yet emperor hirohito is known to have chafed at the actions of the military in his early years and to have attempted to get reconsideration of the steps leading to war jansen and reischauer 240 while in theory the emperor ruled by divine right in reality even before the end of wwii japan was largely ruled by the military elite as opposed to the emperor even so the emperor was greatly revered and respected particularly before the end of wwii the boys of the sailor hate and revile their own fathers and the idea of the father itself the audience can read hating fathers as an extension of hating the emperor noboru s father is dead so the group must explain to him why they believe fathers are awful all of japan like noboru himself is without a father because the divinity of the emperor japan s symbolic father has been dissolved moreover noboru must be educated as the citizens of japan are told why the father or emperor system is wrong both are influenced by western sources noboru is influenced by his westernized group and japan is influenced by the allied occupation the chief tells his group `they stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes and their unrealized aspirations and their resentments and their ideals and the weaknesses they ve never told anyone about their consciences hurt them because they ve never paid any attention to their children and they want the kids to understand just how bad the pain is to sympathize the sailor 136-37 3 japanese words do not have a plural form.

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pasek 14 the chief thinks about progress in terms of personal progress or a sense of self-actualization he states that the views and visions of the father are a burden upon the son s sense of self that each member of their group is unable add to their own accomplishments because the father imposes his own goals and aspirations upon his son however slightly rephrased this can be seen as what western influences are now telling japan after the war the newly westernized japan now believes because it has been told so by westerners that the symbolic father and emperor of japan in addition to the hierarchy system has impeded the progress of japan without the emperor and with western help japan has been able to make significant technological and scientific advancement or progress the characters of this novel reinforce the idea that japan s progress has been impeded by the traditional japanese government and hierarchy and that western ways need to be embraced for example noboru s mother fusako is not the traditional mother that stays at home and cares for her child fusako runs her own successful clothing and accessories shop but more importantly it is a shop that sells western goods exclusively so not only does fusako embrace and accept western culture but she promotes and sells it nevertheless although the characters of this novel endorse a western ideology the novel itself does not the characters and the japan of the sailor may make or believe in the idea of progress but the progress the novel demonstrates is actually primitive and barbaric at the end it results in the death of ryuji the sailor himself when noboru makes his own personal progress by killing the kitten he states i killed it all by myself a distant hand reached into noboru s dream and awarded him a snow-white certificate of merit i can do anything no matter how awful mishima the sailor 61 his sense of progress does not actually enable him to do anything productive rather he becomes destructive similarly with its advanced technology the united

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pasek 15 states managed create a bomb that instantly wiped out over half of hiroshima s population not including those who died at a later date principally from leukemia treat 5 in this way mishima questions the western idea of progress since science and so-called progress have only destroyed things it seems that science is making society regress rather than progress however it is not only the westernized children who are at fault for their actions under western influence ryuji also abandons his ideals and traditional japan as noboru s replacement father it is his job enforce the ideals of traditional japan on noboru but he restrains himself ryuji has failed to take on his role as emperor of the household and has also become the type of person that noboru hates a father while it may seem contradictory that ryuji has managed to both become a father and has failed to become the emperor of his household this apparent contradiction demonstrates japan s situation perfectly japan s father the emperor is present but he has lost all his authority similarly ryuji manages to become a father without gaining any authority he does not have the traditional hierarchy to back him up so rather than try to become noboru s parent he tries to become his friend instead while a parent would be an authority figure someone who could punish and reward him a friend is an equal ryuji does not need a friend but an authority in fact when he proves his unworthiness to be an authority by refusing to punish ryuji his lack of authority is demonstrated in the same way the emperor demonstrates his lack of authority by descending from the divine to merely human correspondingly the emperor s extended family has become a part of the common people rather than part of an imperial line the emperor becomes as human as everyone else is his presence remains but his authority has vanished in kenzaburo oe s personal essay a portrait of a postwar generation he states not one of us knew exactly what had happened we were most intrigued by the strange and somewhat disappointing fact that the emperor had spoken in a human voice no different from any ordinary

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