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The Society for Japanese Studies
Review
Author(s): Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit
Review by: Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit
Source:
Journal of Japanese Studies,
Vol. 22, No. 1 (Winter, 1996), pp. 177-182
Published by: The Society for Japanese Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/133061
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ReviewSection
177
Osaku, Osho, Ogin, Omasu, and Oshima finally emerge from the literary
critical, and historical, obscurity into which they have been unjustly cast.
As he intimatesin the title of his book and assertshere and therewithin
believes thatthe shominand shomincultureaboutwhich Shusei
it, Torrance
wrote so revealinglyare closely relatedto the "new middle class" of post-
warJapan.I supposethis is plausiblein an abstractor archetypic,as opposed
to an actual,sense. Thatis, it wasn'tthe same people who createdthe urban
sarariimancultureof more recent vintage but a similar wave of migration
from the provincesand a similarunleashingof energy and ambition.Formy
part,as a social historian,I wish he had stuck with the more literally accu-
rate, albeit less eye-catching title of the dissertationfrom which his book
derives, "TokudaShuiseiand the Representationof Shomin Life," merely
adding a chronological tag of some sort. This is, however, a fairly minor
criticism of a book I found extremelyinterestingand edifying.
Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence and Nihilism in the Worldof YukioMi-
shima. By Roy Starrs.Universityof Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 1994. ii,
252 pages. $30.00, cloth; $17.95, paper.
Reviewedby
IRMELAHIJIYA-KIRSCHNEREIT
Free University,Berlin
In a questionnairefeatured in the magazine Bungei in December 1963,
presumablymodeled after Marcel Proust's famous salon game, Mishima
answers "Wagner"when asked for his favorite composer and "Thomas
Mann" for his favorite novelist. When asked who he would like to be, he
respondswith "Elvis Presley."
I
Which answershouldwe take at face value,
or should we dismiss them altogether as a masquerade,to use a well-
establishednotion in Mishimacriticism?
To the authorof the presentstudy, this question hardlyarises, first, be-
cause he seems to have made up his mind never to question a statementby
Mishima, and second, because he generally chooses to make his argument
without resortingto any discursivetext by Mishima himself. But how can
this possibly work, the irritatedreaderwill surely ask. It works by the au-
thor's basing his argumentalmost completely on the conventional under-
standing of Mishima and his works as it developed in the late 1960s and
1. The questionnaireis reprintedin Mishima Yukiozenshu hokan I (Tokyo: Shinchosha,
1976), pp. 723-24.
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178
Journalof Japanese Studies
22:1 (1996)
1970s, and,whereunavoidable, quotingMishimamainlyfrom secondary
by
sources in English such as John Nathan,Henry Scott Stokes, and Donald
Keene.
Starrswould, however, undoubtedlywelcome Mishima's first two an-
swers as further
proof for his centralthesis:it is his aim to show the Japanese
author'sindebtednessto Nietzsche's philosophy and to a special type of
novel he sees embodiedmainlyin the Germantradition,i.e., the philosophic
novel
ai
la Goethe and Mann. "Mishima'smost original contributionto
modernJapaneseliterature," writes in his Conclusion, "was to introduce
he
into it a genre of novel which seemed antitheticalto Japanese aesthetic
tastes:the German-stylephilosophicnovel, a novel structured
upon the in-
terplayof dialecticallyopposed ideas" (p. 191).
in
Mishimamay not have producedoutstandingliterature its own right,
Starrs contends, although he repeatedly speaks of Mishima's "masterful
quality of prose style" (p. 10). Curiously,what accounts for the interna-
tional prominenceand popularityof this authorwhom Starrscalls, at the
outset of his Introduction,"the first modern Japanese novelist to have
(p.
reputation" 4)-namely, thathis novels
gained a genuinelyinternational
are "a veritablecircus of color and excitement, and well-organizedcircus
too" (p. 5) and have a "clearer structure"than other Japanese works
(p. 5)-seems to have countedlittle as a "masterfulqualityof prose style"
to Japanesereadersandcritics. Starrsflatly states:"Mishimahas neverbeen
widely acceptedas a really first-ratenovelist" (p. 61). How does he know,
not giving any evidence? (The obvious differencesin the reception,which
are, by the way, enormouseven among neighboringreading communities
such as France and Germany,could have been a worthwhiletopic in the
of
and
the
context of determining attraction [differing]reputations Mishima
literaturein Japan and other countries.) From Starrs' point of view, we
would probablyfare best in ascribingMishima'sweaknessesas a novelist to
his heavy indebtednessto novels in the Germanvein, for, as Starrsinforms
us by way of quoting a "distinguishedBritish authorityon Germanlitera-
ture," "Germany... has been notoriouslyless successful in the sphereof
the novel than France, England or Russia" (p. 17). But why should poor
Mishimahave chosen such inferiormodels?
The answer to be gained from Starrs'book is that the Germanmodel
was best suited as the means of expression for his basically nihilistic dis-
position. Mishima was a born nihilist, Starrsreads from his novel Confes-
sions of a Mask,hence his affinityfor FriedrichNietzsche. He was an arch-
conservative,hence his predilectionfor ThomasMann'sold-fashionedstyle
(p. 14), and, like all those whom Starrslabels "Nietzscheanwriters,"he
was a sadomasochist.It may not be "necessary to be a death-obsessed,
sadomasochistichomosexual to become a successful Nietzschean writer,"
Starrscontendsgenerously,"butit does seem to help" (p. 145).
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ReviewSection
179
As these few central statementsmay show, the argumentative
structure
of this book is overwhelminglycircular.And, what is worse for a study of a
and
literaryauthor,there is no distinction made between author,narrator,
Mishima'snovels are regardedas one singularoutpour-
literarycharacters.
ing of his innermostfeelings- "therecan be no doubtthatIsao's sentiments
here were also the author'sown" (p. 156) is a typical statement-and we
are again confrontedwith thatdear old commonplacein Mishimacriticism
that the characters his novels are alteregos of himself (p. 65). In a mode
in
that forms a perfect short circuit, the work is "explained"by the author's
mental disposition, while at the same time his psyche is exemplified in re-
ferringto his fiction, an observation,by the way, thatheld equally truecon-
cerning the bulk of Mishimaresearchup to the mid-1970s.2
There are certain problems with the central notions in this study, first
and foremost with the concept of nihilism, particularlybecause the book
intends to offer a "systematic study of Mishima's nihilism" (p. 8). One
might wonder why Starrsdecided to focus on works that are definitely not
centralto his centralconcern.He limits his discussionof Mishima'snihilism
and Nietzscheanismto Confessions of a Mask, The Templeof the Golden
Pavilion, and the tetralogy TheSea of Fertility.For a discussion of nihilism,
Mishima's self-declared "study in nihilism," the novel in two volumes
Kyokono ie (1958-59; Ky6ko's house) as well as the later Gogo no eiko
(1963; The Sailor WhoFellfrom Grace with the Sea) would have offered
themselves as logical choices, but both works are only mentioned in pass-
ing, without alertingthe readerto the prominentstatus they deserve in this
context. The importanceof these works was recognized as early as 1961 by
Eto Jun in his essay "MishimaYukio no ie" with respectto the former,and
most recently by Mishima Ken'ichi in his article on Mishima in the Nietz-
sche dictionaryconcerning the latter.3In a study focusing on "Mishima's
introductionof the German-stylephilosophicnovel" (p. 63), one would ex-
pect at least an outline of Mishima'sreceptionof, say, Nietzsche and Mann
who are constantlymentionedas his two main points of orientation.When
did Mishima firstget to know them, what interestedhim in which phase of
his life and career as an author,what did he have to say about them? Re-
grettably,we learn almost nothing of that sort, and what we learn is mostly
takenfrom a small numberof secondarysources.
Starrsneitherconsults the more than a dozen books, essays, and inter-
views in which Mishima elaborateson themes such as nihilism and Nietz-
2. See the chapterson biographicalreductionismand psychoanalyticorientationin the
Mishimaresearchreportin my Mishima Yukios"Kyoko-noie": Versucheiner intratextuellen
Analyse (Wiesbaden:Harrassowitz,1976), pp. 17-20.
3. Cf. Gunzo, June 1961, reprintedin Eto Jun chosaku shu, Vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kodansha,
1967) and numerousreprintsin essay collections on Mishima, and Oishi Kiichir6et al., eds.,
NIchejiten (Tokyo:K6bund6, 1995).
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180
Journalof JapaneseStudies
22:1 (1996)
sche, among them well-knowntexts such as Kodogakunyumonor Watashi
no henrekijidai, nor taps readily available research on earlier stages of
Nietzsche reception in Japan,4on Mishima and Mann,5or on Mishima
and Nietzsche,6althoughall could have helped him make more informed,
less contradictory,
and more precise statements.As to the notion of nihil-
ism, Starrs alternatesbetween attributingto Mishima a genuinely West-
ern and a vaguely Japanese one, calling him a "cynic and despiser of
humanity" (p. 172) on the one hand, while contending on the other that
he was, "after all, a man of some intellectual and aesthetic refinements,
and thus could never be a total nihilist in his moraljudgments" (p. 166).
What, then, is the readerof this study to make of a notion of nihilism that
in the end more or less applies to "the whole of serious modernJapanese
literature" 64)?
(p.
A similar problem is connected with the other central concept of the
study,the genre of the philosophicnovel. Not being a technicalterm in the
mannerof Bildungsroman,psychological novel, shishosetsu,or the like-
in none of the handful of standardGermandictionariesof literaryterms
consulted could I find an entry-it turns out to be a somewhat slippery
constructfor what Starrsprefersto see as a mainly "Germanic"strain,rep-
resentedby GoetheandMannon the one andFranzKafkaon the otherhand,
althoughat times Jean-PaulSartre,Jorge Luis Borges, and Milan Kundera
(and why not othercontemporary
authors?)are included.The problemwith
this concept is that it regards "philosophy"as a kind of alien substanceto
be implantedinto the novel, the standardsof which, by the way, at least
according to Starrs,are "still basically Victorian" (p. 12). Consequently,
"philosophiccontent"alwaysrunsthe dangerof being regarded"as merely
a greatbore" (p. 11).
It goes without saying that such an infelicitous choice of a static and
centralnotion cannotproducean enlightened
fundamentally
unoperational
argument,althoughone notes that in one case, Starrssucceeds in solving
in
the aporiaof marryingphilosophy and literature an original manner.He
shifts the problemto a psychological level: it is the readers'lack of under-
standingthataccountsfor (in his view unjustified)criticism. "At any rate,"
4. E.g., Hans-JoachimBecker, Die fruhe Nietzsche-Rezeptionin Japan (1893-1903):
im
Ein Beitrag zur Individualismusproblematik Modernisierungsprozefi
(Wiesbaden:Steiner,
1983), or RandolphS. Petralia, "Nietzsche in Meiji Japan:CultureCriticism, Individualism
and Reactionin the 'AestheticLife' Debate of 1901-1903" (Ph.D. diss., WashingtonUniver-
sity, 1981).
kaishaku
5. E.g., FukudaHirotoshi, "TomasuMan to Mishima Yukio," Kokubungaku:
"ThomasMann's
to ky6zaino kenkyu,May 1970, pp. 145-49, or IrmelaHijiya-Kirschnereit,
ShortNovel Der Todin Venedigand MishimaYukio's Novel Kinjiki:A Comparison,"in Ian
Paul Norbury, 1979),
Nish and CharlesDunn, eds., European Studies on Japan (Tenterden:
pp. 312-17.
6. E.g., Seikai Ken, Mishima Yukioto NTche
(Tokyo:Seikyusha, 1992).
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