Anne Helene Thelle

Iaponia Insula

NegotiatingIdentityNakagami Kenji’s Kiseki and the Power of the Tale

ANNE HELENE THELLE

Negotiating Identity

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IAPONIA INSULA

STUDIEN ZU KULTUR UND GESELLSCHAFT JAPANS

Herausgegeben vonIRMELA HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT

BAND 23

2010IUDICIUM VERLAG · MÜNCHEN

ANNE HELENE THELLE

Negotiating Identity

Nakagami Kenji’s Kisekiand the Power of the Tale

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The publication of this book has been supported by the ResearchCouncil of Norway

Die Vignette aus dem klassischen japanischen Repertoire der Heral-dik nach Naturerscheinungen stellt kawari tsui-nami, einander ent-gegenschlagende Wellen, dar und soll hier eines der Hauptthemender Reihe, die Begegnung der Kulturen, symbolisieren.

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Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface 7

Introduction 10

1. The “miraculous” Story of Taichi – A Short Summary 13

2. Nakagami Kenji – A Burakumin Writer 15Literature and the Burakumin 18

3. Critical Reception 21From Nostalgic Returns to Innovative Rebellion 24Towards a More Nuanced Approach 30

4. The Monogatari and the Novel 33The Classical Monogatari Tale 34The Monogatari in Nakagami Criticism 35

5. The Dialogic Nature of the Novel 39Parody, the Novel, and Kiseki 39Polyglossia and Polyglot Texts 44

6. Theoretical Considerations 517. Outline of Study 53

One: The Making of Myth 55

1. Taichi – An Ordinary Hero? 55

2. The Roji – A Mythic Landscape? 59Originary Myths, a Definition 60The Lotus Pond 63Nature and the Myth of “Japan” 74The Roji as an Imagined Community 88

3. Kiseki – A Tale of Nostalgic Origins? 91The Monogatari and Nostalgic Yearning 93Evocations of the Monogatari in the Text’s Oral Features 95Evocations of the Monogatari in the Text’s Formal Features 107Thematic Evocations of the Monogatari 113

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Table of Contents

Two: The Dismantling of Myth 117

1. The Narrative Perspective 117Between Sanity and Insanity 118Who Speaks? Who Sees? 129

2. Narrative Time and Narrative Space 138Memory and Narrative Time 138Narrative Place, the Significance of the Asylum 141

3. Mythic Imagery Falls Apart 145Oryū and Reijo, Disbelieving Believers 145Taichi – The Mythic Hero Dismantled 149Nature and National Origins: Another Construct Exposed 155

4. Akiyuki Intrudes: The “Ikuo Gaiden” 159The Story of Ikuo 160How the Ikuo Chapter Stands Out 161Ikuo and the Akiyuki Trilogy 166Consequences of the Crossing of Tales 172

Three: The Results of the Telling, Or:

The Power of the Tale 177

1. Literary Construct and the Perpetuation of Discrimination 178Historical Shaping Forces – Myth and Reality 180Literary Markers of the Other in Kiseki 187Kiseki and Buraku Myths of Origin 194

2. Inversion of Power Structures: The Emperor andthe Burakumin 199Emperor = Burakumin 200Resistance Through Language 206On Death and Endings 210

3. Oryū’s Celebratory Voice 217Oryū’s Story – Her-story or His-story? 219The Violence of the Tale 225The Ikuo-chapter Revisited 228

Conclusion 232

Bibliography 237

Index 243

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Preface

PREFACE

When I first read Nakagami Kenji’s novel Kiseki, I was mesmerized.The novel presents a complex structure expressed through a beauti-ful language, and the narrative voice of the old friends Oryū andTomo invokes a moving sense of nostalgia. I nodded in agreement atall the critics who hailed Nakagami as one of Japan’s greatest post-war writers, and plunged with great enthusiasm into a second care-ful reading. This time admiration was replaced by a growing sense ofsubtle horror, as I realized just how much brutality was hidden be-hind those beautifully structured paragraphs. And I thought to my-self: How did I let him get away with this? How could a novel sobeautiful at the same time be so brutal, almost disgusting? How is itpossible for a writer who upon first reading can be classified as a re-visionary avant-garde minority writer, also at the same time comeacross as a reactionary, male-chauvinist bigot? This question hasbeen the driving force behind my book. On the one hand I havewished to uncover the narrative strategies that set Kiseki up as a novelwith an enthralling potential for innovation and change, and on theother hand I have wanted to reveal some of the traps that Nakagamisteps into, that allow his text to fall short of this aim. This process, inturn, puts Nakagami’s own identity as a minority writer in Japanmore sharply into focus, while at the same time offering importantlessons on the negotiation of identity through literature. In short,when creating tales of identity, how strong is the force of the tale it-self?

These questions that rose from my first readings of the novel laidthe groundwork for my PhD thesis, which also is the starting pointfor this book. My thesis was carried out at the Department of CultureStudies and Oriental Languages at the Faculty of Humanities, Uni-versity of Oslo in the period 2001–2006. The doctoral work was madepossible through a doctoral research fellowship from The Universityof Oslo, for which I am very grateful. A generous travel grant fromthe Faculty of Humanities allowed me a month long stay to conductresearch in Japan in the summer of 2005, and yearly travel-stipendsfrom the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages

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Preface

have allowed me to participate in several conferences, both in Amer-ica and in Europe.

Upon my completion of my PhD, a post-doctorate at the Universi-ty of Oslo has enabled me to pursue my studies, and polish and editmy thesis for publication. I am grateful to Professor Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit for showing an interest in my work, and recommendingmy manuscript to Iudicium Verlag for publication, a publicationwhich has been supported by a generous grant from the NorwegianResearch Council. The PhD committee members, Dr. Linda Flores,Professor Hans Skei, and Professor Alan Tansman provided valuablefeed back to my thesis, which have guided my revision process.

Thanks are due to many more people for supporting and assistingme with this present project, from its very beginnings to its comple-tion. First of all I would like to thank my principal advisor ProfessorReiko Abe Auestad. Without her words of encouragement when Ifirst approached her with the idea of reorienting my academic en-deavors towards the language of my Japanese childhood, I may nev-er have ventured into the field of Japanology. Over the years, as I pre-pared for, applied for grants, and finally conducted my research,Professor Auestad has gracefully balanced her multiple roles of men-tor, supervisor, colleague, and dear friend. Thanks are also due to myco-supervisor Professor Jakob Lothe, who has conscientiously readand reread drafts of the thesis, and provided me with valuable andinsightful comments. In the academic year 2005–2006 ProfessorLothe lead a research project at the Centre for Advanced Study inNarrative Theory and Analysis, where I had the privilege of being in-cluded among the team members, and I am grateful for the experi-ence. And finally, a word of thanks to Reidar Skaug, dean of the Nor-wegian Military Academy and my present employer, for generouslyallowing me to take time away from teaching in order to pursue myresearch as a post-doctorate fellow at the University of Oslo.

Many friends across the world have played important roles and as-sisted me along the way, and I am grateful to each and every one ofthem. Words of thanks are in particular due to Tracey Gannon andDavid Bonnitcha for sharing with me the ups and downs of Japaneseuniversity life, and for always providing me a place to stay in Japan;to Anette Storeide for being such a good friend and office mate, toAnn Kristin Kjærnli Hanssen for friendship and fellowship; and to

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Preface

Heidi Østbakk Bratlie for always being there. I am grateful also to myfriends and colleagues at the Department of Culture Studies and Ori-ental Languages, and my fellow team mates at the Centre for Ad-vanced Study for support and encouragement.

Finally a word of thanks to my family: my parents for their neverending love and support, my brothers and sisters for helping me outin so many ways, and for being my very best friends. Most of all,thanks to my three children, Maria, Martin and Jonas, who simplywith their playful distractions and enrapturing presence have alwayskept me grounded, and never allowed me to forget what my real pri-orities in life are.

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Introduction

INTRODUCTION

The burakumin1 minority writer Nakagami Kenji is a novelist whothrough a constant negotiation of the constrictive framework of Jap-anese national literature and literary history, demonstrates a greatpotential for innovation and change. The reception of his literature inJapan has placed him simultaneously both at the avant-garde ofmodern Japanese literature, and near the nostalgic roots of Japan’s lit-erary origins. His narrative devices – language, imagery setting, andhis allusion to the Japanese traditional narrative, the monogatari – doindeed often seem to bring him disturbingly close to an almost reac-tionary nostalgia, a nostalgia that in turn establishes his landscape,the alleys of the burakumin ghetto – the roji – as a site for collectiveoriginary memories. However, fissures in his narrative, both in voice,structure, and theme, serve at the same time to collapse this nostalgicreturn, a collapsing which brings Nakagami’s position as a buraku-min2 minority writer sharply into focus. This book uses the exampleof one novel, Kiseki (Miracles, 1989), to demonstrate the many waysin which originary myths are evoked and dismantled, and to furtherdiscuss the extent to which the innovative potential harbored in thiscomplex narrative structure is realized, particularly with regards tohis representation of minority and gender.

It is no coincidence that I have in my study chosen to focus onKiseki, as this is a novel which provides a good vantage point fromwhich to discuss major issues regarding Nakagami’s literature. Com-pleted late in his career, the novel brings together many of the mainthemes that repeat themselves throughout his fiction. It is as suchcounted among the author’s major pieces, and has even by some beencoined his “masterpiece.”3 The reading of the novel will show how itis the ambiguities surrounding Nakagami’s literature that make histexts viable as novels, and that it is in turn precisely his struggle with

1 More detailed information about the burakumin will be provided later in thischapter.

2 Japanese words are rendered in italics, except for words that appear often, suchas roji, monogatari, and burakumin.

3 Watanabe Naomi in “Itamashisa ni tsuite – Nakagami Kenji ‘Kiseki’-ron,” Gunzō9 (1994): 224.

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Introduction

national literatures, with the monogatari, and with totalizing sys-tems, that validates the importance of his work. For, in the words ofMikhail Bakhtin, the “novelistic word arose and developed not as theresult of a narrowly literary struggle among tendencies, styles, ab-stract world views – but rather in a complex and centuries-longstruggle of cultures and languages.”4 Nowhere is this struggle morevisible and palpable than in Nakagami Kenji’s novel Kiseki.

There are two major storylines that repeat themselves through anumber of Nakagami’s fictional works, and these two come togetherin Kiseki. The first is the story of Akiyuki, the second the story of theNakamoto men. Akiyuki was first introduced in Nakagami’s award-winning Misaki (The Cape, 1975), which in fact is the first novel of atrilogy, often referred to as the Akiyuki-trilogy. In this trilogy, the lifeof the main character in many ways corresponds to, and overlapswith, events in Nakagami’s own life. The other two novels complet-ing the trilogy are: Karekinada (Withered Tree Straits, 1977) and Chi nohate, chijō no toki (End of earth, supreme time, 1983). The trilogy tellsthe story of a young construction worker, Akiyuki, born in the bura-kumin ghetto, the roji, into a family marked by complex relation-ships. The family structure is, in fact, so complicated that the paper-back version of Karekinada provides a family tree to help the readerkeep track of all the characters.5

There are in particular two elements that deeply affect Akiyuki,and that bind the three volumes of the trilogy together. One is themain character’s constant struggle to come to terms with the suicideof his older half-brother Ikuo. This happened when Akiyuki wastwelve, and his brother twenty-four. The other is a deep feeling of re-sentment, even hatred that Akiyuki bears towards his biological fa-ther.6 These are both elements that Akiyuki shares with the writer

4 The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holquist,trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (1981; Austin: University of TexasPress, 2000), 83.

5 Akiyuki has four older siblings by his mother (including his dead brother Ikuo),one step-brother (son of the man his mother is currently married to, whom helives with), and four siblings by his father, albeit by two different mothers. Oneis the daughter of a prostitute with whom his father had a relationship.

6 A short summary of the trilogy is as follows: Akiyuki’s father, an influential manin the lumber trade, has previously served time in prison for atrocious crimes –

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Introduction

himself, and the death of Ikuo is an event that haunts much of Naka-gami’s writing, and appears repeatedly throughout his fiction. Be-cause of the close affinity between the main character and importantevent’s in Nakagami’s own life, the Akiyuki trilogy is often read in anautobiographical light.

Another major storyline in Nakagami’s literature is the one narrat-ed by the old ghetto midwife, Oryū no oba.7 Oryū is first introducedin a collection of six short stories entitled Sennen no yuraku (One thou-sand years of pleasure, 1982), where she gives an account of sixyoung men of the Nakamoto family, who all share the fate of leadinglives tarred with hardship and crime, lives that are all cut short by vi-olent deaths. Oryū spins a mythical tale out of these young men’slives, elevating them to almost god-like beings, continuing her taleeven after she herself is dead. In Kiseki the tale of the Nakamoto menis developed into a full-fledged novel, narrated again by Oryū, orrather, her ghost, this time joined by the former gangster Tomo no oji.Together they piece together the life of young Nakamoto Taichi8,from his birth to his death.

As with the Akiyuki trilogy, the setting for the tales of the Nakamo-to men is the roji, the fictional landscape inspired by Nakagami’s ownchildhood’s buraku ghetto. However, as a fictional space, the roji isno static entity. Rather, there seems to be a kind of progression in hisdepiction of the roji, culminating in the novel Kiseki. Alan Tansmanpoints out how Misaki and Karekinada first introduced the roji, Chi nohate chijō no toki destroyed it, and Sennen no yuraku mythified it. In

7 murder, assault, and arson. Akiyuki tries to get back at his father by sleepingwith his half sister, an act which does not have the desired effect on his father.All the while, Akiyuki fears that “that man’s” blood, which flows through hisveins, will somehow force him into repeating his father’s crimes. Like a self-ful-filling prophesy, Akiyuki does end up serving a three year prison term for mur-der. Once out of prison, he joins his father, who is then in the process of tearingdown the roji to make way for building development. Akiyuki is obsessed withgetting back at his father, but ultimately fails even at this, when the father takeshis own life, with his son as a witness. Akiyuki subsequently sets fire to what isleft of the roji. For a more thorough summary, see Yomota Inuhiko, Kishū to ten-sei: Nakagami Kenji (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2001), 183–184.

7 Literally “old woman Oryū,” henceforth to be referred to as simply Oryū.8 All names in Kiseki are rendered in phonetic katakana, and not in kanji characters.

I therefore choose to transcribe the name as Taichi, rather than Ta’ichi, whichwould most likely be the reading had the name been written in kanji.

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1. The “miraculous” Story of Taichi – A Short Summary

Kiseki, however, “rumors of Oryū no oba’s reappearance revive thelife of the tale and the tale of the alley, which seemed dead and bur-ied.”9 It is vital, then, in the reading and analysis of Kiseki, to bear inmind the history comprised of the tales that precede it.10

1. THE “MIRACULOUS” STORY OF TAICHI – A SHORT SUMMARY

The story of Taichi, as remembered by the two old roji members Oryūand Tomo, is first and foremost a story of power play between rival-ing gangs in the underworld of organized crime11 in the roji. Taichi,born with a “fighting spirit,” starts already as a young boy to plot hisfather’s revenge, and it is the many steps he takes in this pursuit, thatin the end leads to his death. The plot is long and complex, with end-less twists and turns, but a basic summary is as follows.

Tomo no oji, his gang name being Shamo no Tomoki (henceforth tobe referred to as Tomo), has together with Ibara no Tome (Ibara) andŌwashi no Hide (Hide) formed the gang Sanhōhai. At the time of Tai-chi’s birth (1937), these three control the streets of the roji. Tomo isalso a good friend of Ikunosuke, Taichi’s father, and acts as guardianfor Taichi after his father dies following the attack from a rival gang-ster, Kadota no Masaru (Kadota), when Taichi is seven years of age.The death of Taichi’s father coincides with the end of World War II.Taichi can never forget who caused his father’s death, and is intent onrevenging him.

Following the war, the Sanhōhai gradually loses power to Kadota,and another gang leader Higashi no Kii (Higashi). Taichi forms hisown group together with three older friends, Ikuo, Katsu, and Shin-go. In an attempt to attack Kadota, Taichi mistakenly stabs the son ofone of Kadota’s men, blinding him. He thus establishes his positionas a contender for Kadota, one to be taken seriously. However, de-

9 Alan Tansman, “History, Repetition, and Freedom in the Narratives of Naka-gami Kenji,” Journal of Japanese Studies 24, no. 2 (1998): 277.

10 Nakagami was a very productive writer, and in addition to the texts men-tioned above, he has written a number of short stories, essays, criticisms, andplays. One recurring theme in both his short stories and his essays is his fasci-nation for the tales from Japanese literature’s classical canon, the monogatari.

11 The Japanese term would be yakuza, the Japanese equivalent of mafia, that re-cruits many members among burakumin and Korean groups.

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Introduction

spite Taichi’s strong feelings of resentment towards Kadota, he can-not help also admiring him for his cunning, power, and style. As theSanhōhai loses more and more power, Taichi decides to join forceswith Kadota. Taichi has not forgotten Kadota’s role in his father’sdeath, however, and after a while it becomes clear that he is planningto get rid of both Kadota and Higashi. Joining forces with them isonly a way to get close enough to kill them. As this rumor spreads,Taichi’s life is in danger. On March 3rd (girls’ day), in Taichi’s 36th year,on the morning he has planned a big picnic for everyone in the roji,he goes missing. He turns up a few days later dead in the bottom ofa stream, gagged and bound hands and legs. Although it is never re-vealed who killed him, circumstantial evidence all points towardsKadota. With his death, Taichi fulfils the prophecy that according toOryū follows all the Nakamoto men: the prophecy of a violent, pre-mature death.

Of the many subplots in the novel, the longest and most importantis no doubt the story of Ikuo, Taichi’s senior, and member of his gang.As the fight for power hardens, Ikuo loses interest. Instead he growsmore and more introverted, using drugs, listening to music, and rais-ing fighter cocks. He does not take good care of his cocks, however,and soon his house is littered with feathers and bird droppings. As aresult of the drugs, he starts hearing voices, voices who tell him to killhis mother. His mother abandoned him and his sisters for her thirdhusband, bringing along only her youngest son Akiyuki, son ofIbara. For those familiar with the Akiyuki saga, it becomes clear thatthe character of Taichi’s friend Ikuo corresponds to Akiyuki’s olderbrother in the trilogy. It therefore comes as no surprise when Ikuokills himself. The connection to the trilogy is strengthened by the factthat Ibara turns his back to his former friends, leaves the roji, andtakes the name of Hamamura Ryūzō, the name of Akiyuki’s father inthe trilogy.

When the novel opens, the retired gangster Tomoki, now known asTomo no oji – quite literally “old man Tomo” – is in a sanatorium,worn down by alcoholism, where he suffers from the delusion thathe is a giant fish. Shortly after receiving the news of Taichi’s deathfrom a young member of the roji, he is visited by the ghost of Oryū,who at this time has already been dead for quite some time. Tomo issurprised that the deeply religious Oryū would visit such a lowly

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2. Nakagami Kenji – A Burakumin Writer

gambler, drunk, and criminal as himself. For whereas Tomo hasspent his life in the criminal underworld of the roji, Oryū’s role in so-ciety has been more constructive. Oryū was until her death the entireroji’s midwife. Married to the community lay priest, Reijo, the two to-gether were responsible for the roji’s welfare, from birth to death.Each morning the two would sit together in front of their house altar,and chant prayers for those born on that particular date. And sinceOryū cannot read or write, the birth and death dates of every mem-ber of the community are committed to her memory.

The life of Taichi, as it is pieced together by these two old commu-nity members, therefore takes on very different flavors, dependingon whose perspective it borrows. For the two have very different ex-periences of Taichi. Tomo remembers Taichi first and foremost due tohis role as Taichi’s guardian and advisor in the world of organizedcrime. His memories of Taichi are of the cunning, brutal, and conniv-ing gangster that he grew up to be. Oryū, on the other hand, remem-bers the baby that she delivered, and seems to turn a blind eye to hisviolent crimes. The material of Kiseki is spun from these two very dif-ferent perspectives.

2. NAKAGAMI KENJI – A BURAKUMIN WRITER

Nakagami Kenji is in Japan today regarded as one of the most impor-tant post-war writers. Born in 1946 in the burakumin ghetto of thesmall coastal town of Shingu in southern Wakayama prefecture, hisbackground sets him somewhat aside from his contemporaries. Aftergraduating from his local high school in 1965, he relocated to Tokyowith the intention to take his university entrance exams. He neverwent through with these plans however, and instead took up a drift-er’s life, going to jazz-digs and writing poetry. Over the next fewyears he had a number of poetry collections and short stories pub-lished in literary magazines. In 1970 Nakagami married YamaguchiKasumi, and took a job as a cargo handler at Haneda InternationalAirport, all the while continuing to write and publish literature. Bythe time he left this job to devote himself full time to writing 1974, hehad been nominated once for the Akutagawa Prize, and establisheda solid reputation as a writer. He was nominated again twice in thefollowing year, before he finally won this prestigious literary prize in1976 for his novel Misaki (The Cape). Nakagami Kenji was a prolific

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Introduction

writer, and in the course of his short literary career he wrote not onlynovels and short stories, but also numerous essays and pieces of lit-erary criticism.

When Nakagami received the Akutagawa prize in 1976, he wasnoted to be the first writer to have been born after World War II toever receive this prize. When he a while later openly spoke of hisbackground as a member of the burakumin outcast community, it be-came clear that he was also the first writer of this background to everreceive wide literary acclaim and recognition from critics and fromthe literary establishment. Both of these facts reveal quite a dealabout Nakagami’s contemporary literary environment. Born in theyear following the end of the Second World War, Nakagami repre-sents the first generation of writers born in the “democratic” era, awriter unburdened by the history of Japan’s wartime aggression.Writers born before the war, who had experienced Japan’s rule anddefeat first hand, would inevitably incorporate this experience intotheir writings. Many critics and members of the Japanese literary cir-cles would allege that the dimension that such wartime experiencesadded to the literature of this generation was lacking in the next gen-eration, a generation who had known only the rise of a value-empty,capitalistic and commercialized Japan. And yet, as a child of theburakumin ghetto, Nakagami certainly has felt the weight of Japan’shistory. His literature, both in theme, style, and language, displays aconstant resistance – similar and at the same time different in char-acter to the resistance and reappraisal represented by authors bornbefore the war – to what had, in the words of Karatani Kōjin, estab-lished itself as a “system” of literature in pre-war Japan.12 When Na-kagami died in 1992 of kidney cancer, at the age of 46, he left behinda legacy of a strong innovative writer of fiction, and an outspokencritic of discrimination against the burakumin.13

Nakagami Kenji’s openness about his background and his embraceof his home town Shingu helped to put the burakumin ghetto on themap. For many, Nakagami represented a hope for a burakumin liter-

12 Karatani Kōjin, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, trans. Brett de Bary (Lon-don: Duke University Press, 1993) 162.

13 For biographical data, see Takematsu Yoshiaki, “Nakagami Kenji nenpyō,” inKoku-bungaku kaishaku to kanshō bessatsu: Nakagami Kenji, ed. Sekii Mitsuo, Sep-tember 1993 (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1993), 243–249.

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ature voiced with an insider’s perspective.14 As one man from his na-tive Shingu put it, “Nakagami made me proud to be burakumin forthe first time in my life.”15 With vivid and realistic accounts of roji life,Nakagami was certainly adding a new dimension to the existing lit-erature depicting burakumin.

The burakumin, correctly termed hisabetsu-burakumin, being ethni-cally and racially no different from mainstream Japanese, are official-ly not counted among the country’s minorities. The origin of the dis-crimination is usually placed with Tokugawa Japan, and theimplementation of a highly stratified, feudal regime. Modern dis-crimination of the burakumin, however, must be understood in rela-tion to the rise of Japan as a modern state. For in the shift from thefragmented regime of the Tokugawa era to a modern nation state, Ja-pan needed to be redefined, and reinvented. In this process, an ide-alized racial and cultural homogeneity emerged as the foundingprinciple in the definition of Japan as a nation-state. Historical eventswere given new, reinterpreted significance, and placed on a teleolog-ical historical ladder which would culminate in the birth of the Japa-nese kazoku kokka, literally “family state,” with the emperor repre-senting the family’s father figure.16

With the new nation state came the liberation of the burakumin in1871, and the subsequent banning of discrimination against thisgroup of people. Ironically, this “liberation” contributed to their con-tinued oppression. In fact, it was due to the liberation of the outcastcommunities that these many diverse groups of people were definedand identified as one unified group. For the liberation edict deemedany discrimination against people living in settlements unlawful,and thus gave rise to the term hi (victim of) – sabetsu (discrimination)– buraku (settlement) – min (people), which is the official term for the

14 It is important to note that Nakagami is by no means the first writer of bura-kumin background, previous names include Saikō Mankichi and HijikataTetsu. Nakagami is, however, the first writer of this origin to receive wide crit-ical acclaim, and a wide readership among a mainstream Japanese audience.

15 Quoted from Eve Zimmerman’s preface in Nakagami Kenji, The Cape andOther Stories from the Japanese Ghetto, trans. Eve Zimmerman. (Berkeley, Cali-fornia: Stone Bridge Press, 1999), 11.

16 Information in this paragraph is based on Michael Weiner, “The Invention ofIdentity: ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ in Pre-war Japan,” Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion ofHomogeneity (1997; London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 1–16.

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Introduction

group today. Ian Neary points out that the liberation marks the startof a new phase in buraku history, in that discrimination was not abol-ished but changed character. With the new era discrimination wassubject to social processes of a different character, and shifted fromthe institutionalized discrimination of the Tokugawa period to a socialdiscrimination, which has continued into the present age.17 Nakaga-mi Kenji grew up in a neighborhood subject to a modern discrimina-tion – in the areas of marriage, education, and job opportunities – atype of discrimination that had not been possible in the highly regu-lated feudal system of the Tokugawa government.

Literature and the Burakumin

It was not until a few years after he received the Akutagawa Prize,that Nakagami Kenji revealed his burakumin identity. The fact thatno burakumin writer previously had reached any literary heights canbe explained by the fact that the burakumin, historically, have suf-fered much discrimination in the area of education, resulting in lowliteracy rates during the first half of the twentieth century. Nakagamihimself has pointed out that he was the first in his family to “get let-ters,”18 and many of his family members could never read what hewrote. Moreover, buraku activist groups were at this early stage gen-erally more concerned with practical issues such as improving theliving and working conditions of the burakumin, and had “no time”to dabble in literature.19 The fact that he should have waited so longbefore revealing his burakumin background could be further ex-plained precisely by the discrimination practiced against them.However, considering the fact that so much of his literature providesvivid and detailed accounts of life in the burakumin ghetto, it maycome as a surprise to many that his readers had not already guessedat Nakagami’s background.

17 Ibid, 56.18 Eve Zimmerman points this out in the afterword to her translation of Naka-

gami’s award-winning Misaki. The Cape and Other Stories from the JapaneseGhetto, 177.

19 The buraku activist magazine Senmin (written 選民 – chosen people – a homo-nym of the premodern “despised people”), for example, dismissed literaturewith the reasoning that there was not time for that now. Watanabe Naomi, Ni-hon kindai-bungaku to <sabetsu> (Tokyo: Ōta Shuppan, 1994), 82.

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2. Nakagami Kenji – A Burakumin Writer

In fact, Nakagami Kenji was no pioneer in the portrayal of buraku-min through literature. On the contrary, his novels follow a long suc-cession of literature written about the burakumin, albeit authored bynon-burakumin. Shimazaki Tōson’s novel Hakai (The Broken Com-mandment) from 1906 is perhaps the most famous of this type of lit-erature, and its reputation has contributed to the mistaken concep-tion that this was the first novel of its kind.20 But althoughShimazaki’s novel is the most well known example, Watanabe Nao-mi’s study shows that at least forty or so texts depicting burakuminpredate this novel.21 The buraku were introduced as a theme in liter-ature in a variety plots (love between couples of different status, cit-izens rights movements, vice punished/virtue rewarded), serving awide range of literary or social agendas: the modern subject, Christi-anity, socialism. 22 The use of the buraku as a motif in literature, Ed-ward Fowler points out, was one of exploitation, in that the literature“at best only partially overlapped, and at worst totally ignored, theinterests of the buraku community itself.”23

Fowler’s observation is grounded in Watanabe’s study entitled“Modern Japanese literature and ‘discrimination’”, and in the mainargument that is repeated several times throughout the book, “theroots of the narrative will incessantly seek out ‘discrimination’, and‘discrimination,’ in turn, breeds narratives.”24 At the general levelthis statement is anchored in the observation that the plot of a narra-tive is propelled by the tension created through the distance and dif-ference between the characters, and that a narrative will always workto widen the gap between the characters.25

Specifically, with regard to the portrayal of burakumin in modernJapanese literature, it would seem that the narrative’s desire for dif-

20 Hakai tells the story of young Ushimatsu, who by concealing his burakuminidentity gains a position as a school teacher, a position prohibited to people ofhis background. After “coming out” and revealing his identity, he subse-quently loses his job, and relocates to Texas.

21 Nihon kindai-bungaku to <sabetsu>, 18.22 Fowler, “The Buraku in Modern Japanese Literature,” in The Journal of Japanese

Studies 26, no. 2 (2000): 5–6.23 Ibid, 5.24 Nihon kindai-bungaku to <sabetsu>, 12. (All translations, unless otherwise stated,

are my own.)25 Ibid, 26.

19

Introduction

ference has served to keep the burakumin at the periphery of society.It is the manner in which this group is represented, says Watanabe,which gives rise to the discrimination that exists against them.Buraku literature, he says, is marked by a complete lack of recogni-tion towards its objects, and reduces them to a limited image, onewhich has no purpose above its function in the plot.26 There is no at-tempt to give a true or realistic account of burakumin way of life, orto give the buraku any depth of character. The texts serve merely todefine the burakumin as “other” and ultimately reflect only back atmainstream Japanese society and culture. Edward Fowler echoes thisnotion in his observation that “the informing leitmotif in nearly allthe texts, then, is one of profound difference.”27 This bulk of burakuliterature, then, written and read by non-burakumin, operatesthrough a pattern of mastery where the objects of representation aresubject to an ideological domination. And it is this pattern of repre-sentation=domination which inevitably links literature to discrimi-nation.28

An important factor contributing to the discriminatory function ofthe literary texts is the use of what Watanabe has coined shirushi –markers – of difference. Because the burakumin are not ethnicallydifferent from mainstream Japanese, there are no physical traits todistinguish them. Literature therefore incorporated existing preju-dices and originary myths in the characterization of their burakuminobjects, in order to make the invisible difference visible. Examples ofsuch shirushi would be madness and excess beauty for the women,and deformities, sickness, or extreme wealth for the men.29 But shi-rushi were not restricted to physical traits. Edward Fowler describeshow labels such as yottsu30 also are used in literature to mark a char-acter as burakumin, calling this naming process, one that serves to

26 Ibid, 8.27 Fowler, “The Buraku in Modern Japanese Literature,” 8.28 Watanabe, Nihon kindai-bungaku to <sabetsu>, 8.29 Ibid, 24–25.30 Yottsu literally means “four”, hinting at the burakumin’s close affinity to ani-

mals, both through their occupation, and through their status as being consid-ered not quite human. This is a highly derogatory term used to signifyburakumin, and was often conveyed wordlessly, by showing four out-stretched fingers, with the thumb bent in.

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3. Critical Reception

make otherwise featureless human beings “visible,” an “act of dis-cursive violence.”31 One of the curious aspects of Nakagami’s writingis that, although he is often read as a writer who operates on the fore-front of the battle against discrimination, he himself seems to stepinto many of the pitfalls and traps of “burakumin literature” – stere-otyped descriptions, myth making, and the “marking” of buraku-min.

The focus of this study is precisely on this contradiction that Naka-gami’s literature creates. At the heart of the study is the concept of ne-gotiation – a negotiation of cultures, languages, and borders. Naka-gami is a minority writer in Japan, writing against the constraints ofa language and literature that has throughout history contributed tothe discrimination of his minority group. Facing this challenge headon, Nakagami engages the literary genres that lie at the root of thisdiscrimination, and attempts to create a new story of origins. The re-sulting novel is as fascinating as it is frustrating. For while he on theone hand creates a beautiful and enrapturing story, it seems that hecannot escape repeating the same processes of discrimination that hesets out to resist and challenge.

My goal, however, is in no way to argue that Nakagami’s literatureis a “failure,” or that the discrepancy I disclose between the potentialdisplayed at the formal level and the final results of my analysis, in-dicates that the text’s value is diminished. Rather, I believe that it isprecisely the manner in which Nakagami remains trapped in the net-work of constraints formed by language and literature despite his ex-perimental and innovative attempts at rebellion and escape that val-idate the importance of his work. The combination of enchantmentand averseness that follows with the reading of Kiseki, serves as aconstant reminder of difficulties facing anyone trying to break free ofthe bonds of culture, history, and literature when the tools availablefor this quest are defined by those very same bonds.

3. CRITICAL RECEPTION

Following his death in 1992, Nakagami Kenji’s writing, both fictionand non-fiction, was collected and published as a zenshū – a “collect-

31 “The Buraku in Modern Japanese Literature,” 30.

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