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Sophia University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Monumenta
Nipponica
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The Darkness at the Foot
of the Lighthouse
by IRMELA HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT
By Edward Fowler.
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338 Monumenta Nipponica, 44:3
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HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT: Darkness 339
ration. But the absence of these two features in the case of Japanese provides
a linguistic explanation for its tendency in narration to be one-dimensional,
seemingly 'unmediated', and devoid of demarcations between the 'framing'
discourse and the 'framed' story, factors that apply most of all to the shisho-
setsu.3 The third chapter deals with 'Shishosetsu Criticism and the Myth of
Sincerity' by offering an overview of the contemporary discussion accompany-
ing the rise of the genre.
Part 2 highlights the more immediate literary, historical, and social factors
giving rise to the genre. The discussion focuses on Tokoku, Doppo, and Hoge-
tsu, and assesses the role of Katai and Homei in its formation. The most
original contribution in this part appears to be Chapter 6, 'The Bundan:
Readers, Writers, Critics', which describes the peculiar literary subculture c
nected so inseparably with shishosetsu writing. By way of delineating the
widening access of shishosetsu authors to newspapers and literary journals,
Fowler provides a vivid impression of the sociological aspects in the develop-
ment of the genre.
Part 3 of the book examines in detail three writers who are seen 'as particu-
larly instrumental figures in the shishosetsu's development' (pp. 149-50). The
author selects Chikamatsu Shuiko, Shiga Naoya, and Kasai Zenzo as examples
to demonstrate, by way of analyzing several works of each, the shishosetsu
author's way of 'transforming experience into art'. This is achieved by
situating the works in the context of the author's vita, and, in particular, by
scrutinizing the construction of the text; this includes intertextual relations and
their particular narrational features that refer to the central thesis, according
to which 'the narrating voice merges most easily with that of the narrated sub-
ject' (p. x). The discussion is concluded by a short Epilogue sketching 'The
Shishosetsu Today', for although Fowler maintains, 'Kasai's death [in 1928]
did coincide with the end of the shishosetsu's heyday' (p. 290), the genre is,
nevertheless, still going strong. He sums it up by observing that 'the shisho-
setsu is very much at home with "modern" life in Japan and will continue to
be as long as its epistemological base remains intact' (p. 297).
Fowler's study offers an intelligent and well-informed introduction to this
important subject. Each part and chapter is headed by well-selected quotations
that relate nicely to the topics discussed. The author presents us with an im-
pressive amount of materials well organized into the overall scheme of the
book. The text reads pleasantly, and one senses the author's delight in vivid
wording, even though it tends to be slightly repetitious in places, such as when
he explains again and again the epistemological identity of first- and third-per-
son narration in Japanese. But this point is linked to Fowler's central thesis,
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340 Monumenta Nipponica, 44:3
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HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT: Darkness 341
4 Needless to say, the implied equation bloBungsrituale: Zur Theorie und Geschichte
'omniscient narrator = (Western) novel' vs. der autobiographischen Gattung 'Shishosetsu'
'single point of view=shosetsu' is seriously in der modernen japanischen Literatur, Franz
misleading. Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1981, pp. 190ff & 132ff.
5 See Phyllis I. Lyons, 'Art Is Me': Dazai The quotations of Japanese critics' remarks
Osamu's Narrative Voice as a Permeable on the shishosetsu given at the beginning of
Self', in HJAS 41 (1981), p. 106. the present article can also be found in this
book.
6 See Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Selbstent-
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342 Monumenta Nipponica, 44:3
a whole, and where does it depart from preceding scholarship and offer new
insights? Let us first take a quick look at the field in general.
Since the early eighties, there has been what could almost be called a boom
in shishosetsu studies in as well as outside Japan. This stands in startling con-
trast to former decades when shishosetsu research seemed to have suffered
from the stigmatization of the genre itself. The reasons for this sudden
flourishing are manifold and can only be hinted at very roughly here. First, in
keeping with a changed intellectual climate, a reevaluation and reappraisal
of the shishosetsu on the part of writers as well as a renewed interest in the
phenomenon on the part of a younger generation of critics can be observed
around the beginning of the eighties. This is illustrated, for example, by the
publication of a shishosetsu anthology7 and a valuable collection of secondary
materials,8 as well as by a number of monographs9 and countless statements of
authors and critics in literary journals and the like.10
In the West, two main tendencies support, as I see it, this new interest
in shishosetsu research. One is the tendency to challenge conventional
japanology by turning to those notoriously 'Japanese' authors and works with
the reputation of being difficult of access on account of their very
'Japaneseness', and of which shishosetsu literature formed the core. The late
seventies and early eighties, therefore, saw the publication of many studies and
translations into a Western language, from Edwin McClellan's translation of
Shiga's An 'ya Koro as A Dark Night's Passing (Kodansha International, 1976),
and William F. Sibley's The Shiga Hero (University of Chicago Press, 1979),
to Phyllis I. Lyons, The Saga of Dazai Osamu (Stanford University Press,
1985), studies and translations of Ozaki Kazuo,1" Kajii Motojiro,12 and
Shimao Toshio,13 to name only a few. My study of the theory and history of
the shishosetsu, completed in early 1979 and published in 1981, also belongs to
this group.
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HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT: Darkness 343
14 In contrast, Fowler readily acknowledges was also discussed in reviews by Richard Bow-
his indebtedness to non-japanologist authors ring in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
such as Walter Ong, p. 274, and Antony African Studies, 46:1 (1983), pp. 187-88; Kato
Easthope, p. 279. Shuiichi, in JJs 10:1 (1984), pp. 196-204; Bar-
15 Linguistic inaccessibility cannot excuse bara Yoshida-Krafft, in MN 39:1 (1984), pp.
these distortions, for not only does the book 94-97; Marian Galik, in Asian and African
contain a four-page English summary but it Studies, 20 (1984), p. 211-14; and others.
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344 Monumenta Nipponica, 44:3
What readers also cannot know is that Fowler did in fact not only read my
book, albeit with difficulty as he admitted in correspondence, but also went on
to ask for a copy of a paper I wrote in English concerning questions that he
treats in his Epilogue-a request that was promptly granted long before my
article appeared in print. 16 How can readers know this, as this title, too, is miss-
ing from the bibliography?
It so happens that the present book is based upon the author's doctoral
dissertation, 'Fiction and Autobiography in the Modern Japanese Novel', Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley, 1981, and a comparison of that version with
the present text of his study reveals a most thorough-going metamorphosis.
This is, of course, nothing to be astonished about. What is irritating, however,
when we compare the earlier and the present version, is the extent to which the
author has obviously benefited from my and other colleagues' work in re-orien-
tating his focus and in enriching and deepening his argument without any
acknowledgment to this fact on his part.
I find numerous traces of the stimulating effect of my Selbstent-
blol3ungsrituale, ranging from the general plan and scope of the study, on the
use of Fowler's sources-he has practically doubled the volume of his
references and might have found my research report and bibliography
helpful17_to striking correspondences in detail, be it particular argume
even phrasing.18 Instead of substantiating this impression with more indica-
tions of parallels between the two books-and the respective distance between
Fowler's two versions19-let me make it clear that I see this concrete case as
pointing to a larger problem in our profession. It is the question of how we
relate to our field of study.
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HIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT: Darkness 345
Nobody starts her or his research from zero. We are all indebted to previous
works in one way or another. One could concede, of course, that it can easily
happen with persons working in the same field and with the same materials
that they mistake for their own ideas what was actually stimulated by a col-
league's work. None of us is free from this danger, but it is exactly because we
are aware of it that we make it one of our basic professional rules to clearly
and completely state our sources. That Fowler violates this rule and forgets to
mention his sources in more than one case raises suspicion that otherwise
might not have arisen.
To my mind, the act of not acknowledging one's indebtedness to or even
knowledge of certain of one's sources is not only uncollegial and unscholarly,
but it means placing oneself outside the academic society that can only func-
tion if its basic ethical rules are observed. It is truly saddening to think that
even in our small or at least easy-to-survey field it may no longer be possible to
offer and exchange ideas and information freely because we can no longer be
sure that our partners will respect them as our intellectual property. But how
can a field flourish without the stimulation of an open discussion? Is the
pressure to publish and to appear as the first person to have considered and
discovered certain topics so strong that it must lead to such unfair behavior as
to no longer acknowledge hints, information, and ideas obtained from col-
leagues working in one's field? It seems particularly unfair as, at first sight,
there is nothing special about different people arriving at similar conclusions
when they work on the same topic and use the same materials, and as only a
handful of people, that is, those whose work is immediately concerned, may
know to what extent an author has depended on the research of others.
One will therefore come away from this study with mixed feelings, for here
we have a nicely written and well-wrought study on an important topic in
modern literary history, yet which is more deeply rooted in the context of our
field than many readers will ever realize.
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