Tayama Katai and His Novel Entitled Futon/Chapter 1

by Motoko Reece

Chapter 1

Introduction

Historians of modern literature have generally used the year 1885 to mark the inception of western style fiction in Japan. For it was in that year that one of the pioneers of Meiji literature, Tsubouchi Shōyō, published Shōsetsu Shinzui, or The Essence of the Novel, which contained the first literary theory that set forth the basic ideals of modern literature.^[1]

Shōyō, deploring the poor quality of Japanese literature of his time, sought to improve this situation by adopting realistic approaches to the western point of view by abandoning gesaku, or the demi-novel, as an instrument of didactic intent.

The contribution of Shōsetsu Shinzui to the development of modern Japanese literature was profound. Shōyō enhanced the status of the novel as one aspect of the fine arts, and by rejecting any didactic purposes utilized by the Tokugawa regime, paved the way for his fellow writers. His introduction of the literary techniques of Scott, Lytton, Smollet, Fielding, and others is well taken for illustrating his theory of "mosha," or "copying" of human behavior. Shōyō put into practice his theory of realism by writing his own novel Tōsei Shosei Katagi, or The Character of Modern Students, but "the material was still of the old gesaku genre, and his literary expression on many points resembled Bakin's style."^[2]

The shortcomings of Shōyō, pointed out in the above quotation by Dr. Okazaki, were refined by Futabatei's Ukigumo, or The Drifting Clouds. In 1886, Futabatei wrote this story in the colloquial language adopting both Shōyō's and Russian literary theories. In order to understand the scope of Futabatei's theory, let us read how Shōyō recalls Futabatei in his autobiography:

When I first met him in January of 1886, he was perhaps our leading authority of Russian literature. Among critics, he favored Belinsky, and among authors, he was fond of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, and Goncharov. Of these, he esteemed Turgenev and Goncharov most highly....His very personality was markedly influenced by Russian literature.

I myself was quite inexperienced at the time. I had been made to read the standard classics at the university, but my own favorites were primarily from English nineteenth-century fiction. I was just beginning to read the great popular writers from Scott, Lytton, and Dickens to Dumas and Marryat. When I encountered Futabatei, I heard completely new literary theories and saw a completely new type of personality.^[3]

Shōyō's reminiscence of Futabatei elucidates the stature of Futabatei and outlines his Russian literary theory. Futabatei's knowledge of Belinsky and Kalkov imprinted so striking an impression on Shōyō that he encouraged Futabatei to publish his theory.^[4] Futabatei's explanation of "idea" and "forms" will permit us a glimpse into his theory which inspired Shōyō.

. . . the idea is present in all material objects and abstract concepts, and that it expresses the true nature of those things. The Idea is eternal and immutable and would exist even without any Form. The outward Form assumed by objects or concepts, in fact, tends to disguise the Idea and prevents our being clearly aware of its universality. Man is compelled by his nature to search out the unchanging factor among all the changing Forms of the world; scientists and scholars do this with the aid of their intellect, artists with their emotions or instincts. Both methods are necessary for complete understanding, but it is the great gift of Art that it can make the existence of the universal Idea, buried as it is in an infinite amount of Forms, clearly apparent to the most ordinary human being. . . . Its function is rather to perceive the Idea in all the numberless Forms in the world directly, instantaneously, and to transmit this perception to mankind. Realism, the only technique which can achieve this, should be adopted.^[5]

In "Shōsetsu Sōron" Futabatei theorized on the realism advocated by Shōyō through the adoption of the concepts of "idea" and "forms" of the Russian realists, who in their turn were inspired by Hegelian philosophy. Futabatei's Ukigumo was his experimental novel using this new theory. His purpose in writing Ukigumo was, therefore, not merely to describe characters, as was the case in Shōyō's Tōsei Shosei Katagi. On the contrary, Futabatei was trying to find an eternal "idea" which was manifested in his characters. He analyzed in Ukigumo the social effects of the Meiji Restoration on the lives of ordinary people. The main character, Utsumi Bunzō, a son of a former warrior, finds a civil service appointment after graduating from a college where he had been sent on a scholarship. For the sake of convenience Bunzō decides to leave his widowed mother in their home in Shizuoka Province and take up temporary lodgings in his uncle's home in Tokyo until such time as he finds a suitable home to which he can bring his mother. Most of the time his uncle, who is a brother of Bunzō's father, is away from home managing a business in Yokohama, leaving his wife O-Masa and their daughter O-Sei at home. Soon Bunzō and O-Sei are attracted to each other; this situation pleases both the uncle and aunt as they hope to marry their daughter in the not too distant future to their educated and filial nephew. But this desire for their daughter's marriage to Bunzō cools after the aunt hears that Bunzō has been discharged from his position. She now thinks that Honda, a co-worker of Bunzō, a man of pleasing manners and practical outlook, might perhaps be a better suitor for O-Sei.

At this point in the story Futabatei clearly shows the characteristic differences between Bunzō and his fellow worker Honda. Honda, while appearing to be a good fellow, has in reality an underhanded disposition, as he is shown to be constantly praising his superior and placing him on a pedestal. Sometimes Honda will even overpraise his superior for the most trivial matters. This attitude enables Honda to improve his position; he receives a promotion. Futabatei, while criticizing Honda, brings out the good points of Bunzō who, like a good descendant of the warrior class, refuses to praise anyone for the sake of promotion. His attitude costs him his position on which the livelihood of his old mother and his own future depend. Bunzō, in despair, believes it might be better for him to seek new living quarters; however, he can not tear himself away as he still has faint hopes of his uncle's faith in him as well as continued personal feelings for O-Sei.

The story of Ukigumo, after the setting and atmosphere are introduced, can hardly be said to have a plot. The efforts of Futabatei, as a writer who had studied Russian literature, seem to be placed on his observations and externalizations of the various psychological aspects of his characters as they react to constantly changing daily situations. The feelings of these people are well expressed by his use of colloquial language, as well as by his close observations of their behavior; consequently, the images of his characters take their own shapes organically as time progresses. These characters, in turn, realistically reflect life in the early Meiji era, progressively changing from a feudalistic to a capitalistic society, and its effects on their ideas of integrity, regarded as one of the virtues of the warrior in a feudalistic society. It would appear that Futabatei conveyed in his Ukigumo conditions as they existed by skillfully capturing man's fundamental problem, which was manifested in his characters: the struggle to maintain one's integrity despite the trend towards materialism of that time.

The significance of Ukigumo was recognized by intellectuals, but the story was left unfinished. Futabatei's aspiration to become a novelist faltered when he saw a dim future after four years of serious attempts. He did not give the necessary finishing touches to Ukigumo in spite of the popularity it had achieved. He finally accepted a position in the civil service in August, 1889. It was about this time that Shōyō also gave up his aspirations to become a novelist and turned his efforts to education and the translation of the works of Shakespeare. The meetings between Shōyō and Futabatei gradually became less frequent as each man followed his own interests.

The leading role in the westernization of Japanese literature was taken up by the writers of the Kenyūsha, who followed in the footsteps of Shōyō, but they, like Futabatei, failed in their endeavors. Their failure was partly due to their following too closely Shōyō's theory of realism.

As previously noted, Shōyō's ideals concerning modern literature were sound, but unfortunately, his literary theory contained many inarticulate ambiguities. This evaluation is further confirmed by Dr. Kawazoe Kunimoto.

. . . the ambiguity of the content of Shōsetsu Shinzui can be surmised from the fact that the persons who were inspired by this book included Futabatei Shimei and Ozaki Kōyō [a founder of the Kenyūsha] who were diametrically opposite in their literary attitudes. Had Shōyō been more thorough in implementing his theory of realism, he could have written in a manner of orthodox realism similar to that of Futabatei's Ukigumo. But some pre-modern commonplace elements to be seen in Shōsetsu Shinzui, which he had not been able completely to eradicate, were accountable for Shōyō's [later] unsuccessful semi-drama-like Shosei Katagi, and its simplistic comprehension of realism accounts for the production of neo-Genroku literature of superficial description by the Kenyūsha.^[6]

As Dr. Kawazoe states, the Kenyūsha showed respect for the demi-novel genre and they seemed to be working towards its restoration, although, at first, their attitude was a reaction against the awkward style of foreign literary translations. Nevertheless,the failure of the Kenyūsha resulted from their misconception of what Futabatei really tried to accomplish--the creation of a new form of narrative. There is no doubt that the Kenyūsha used a more plausible plot, discarding supernatural elements in their stories, and that they sought to renovate their writing by traditional rhetoric; however, these efforts could not meet the demands of modern literature. As a matter of fact, these new techniques were acquired as a result of having been in contact with western literature. Therefore, the writings of the Kenyūsha were ridiculed for containing such a term as "Yōsō Bungaku"^[7] by a group of writers who had been striving on their own accord to assimilate western concepts into their writings so as to liberate themselves from conventionalism. Tayama Katai was one of those writers who had accepted ideas from western literature as a means of awakening his mind.

In the preface of No no Hana, or Flowers of the Field, written in 1901, Katai points out that the literati of his day were "too romantic," emphasizing that "Nature is offered as a sacrifice for the sake of an author's trivial subjectivism," and he praises the writings of Maupassant and Flaubert, advocating his ideas in the following statement:

I wish Meiji literature would become a little less romantic and write more freely even of the secrets of human life and even of the whisperings of the devil. If they do, I think the outlook of nature will become visible, even though vaguely, among Meiji literary circles.^[8]

The expression, "too romantic," which Katai used in this preface, boils down to "excessive embellishments" or "employing too much artifice," and his protest was directed against the leading novelists of his time, Kōyō and others of the Kenyūsha, without stating their names.

Three years later in an essay "Rokotsu naru Byōsha," or "A straightforward description," Katai reaffirmed his previous statement in the preface to No no Hana and advocated rejection of "mekki bungaku," or "belle-lettres," and the adoption of non-embellishment for the purpose of writing freely about one's feelings.^[9] This essay was Katai's second challenge to some leading novelists of the Kenyūsha who withheld their true feelings for the sake of imitation. Katai urged these writers to follow the European exemplars "Ibsen, Tolstoy, Zola, Dostoevsky, D'Annunzio, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Halbe, and Holz," whose descriptions were frank, true, and natural.^[10]

This "straightforward description" illustrates Katai's determination to depart from the traditional prose forms of his predecessors and to adopt European authors' techniques in order to westernize Japanese literature and reflect the true feelings of the author. Katai executed this literary theory in Futon, or The Quilt, as mentioned in his essay "My Anna Mahr;" he conceived the idea after reading Gerhart Hauptmann's Einsame Menschen, or Lonely Lives.^[11]

Despite the evidence of Katai's essay suggesting that Futon was patterned after Hauptmann's Einsame Menschen, scholars and critics had given relatively little attention to the comparative aspects of this work. Up to now the attention received by Futon has dealt mainly with its biographical allusions and historical meanings relating to other authors. With the appearance of Fūzoku Shōsetsu, or the Criticism on Modern Realism, by the critic Nakamura Mitsuo, it became evident what Katai had adopted from Einsame Menschen in Futon. Dr. Nakamura states:

First of all what becomes clear after reading Futon and from Katai's above cited statement^[12] is that he was inspired by and imitated Johannes who was portrayed in the drama, but it was not Hauptmann who wrote this drama.^[13]

But Dr. Nakamura's criticism of Futon fails to show the relationship between Futon and Einsame Menschen, despite the fact that he stresses the importance of this comparative study "in order to comprehend the characteristics of the Japanese modern novel in its initial formation."^[14]

The purpose of this thesis, therefore, will be to study what Katai could have learned from Einsame Menschen and to discover to what extent he applied this new knowledge when writing Futon.

In view of the fact that most of the Japanese books which will be used in this study are not available in English translations, quotations cited in this text will be translated by the writer unless otherwise noted. My translation of Futon from the Japanese book Futon is attached in Appendix A for reference. An English version of Einsame Menschen translated from the German by Mary Morrison will also be used for this comparative study.

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1. All Japanese names are given according to national custom in the order of surname first. The second time and thereafter that an author's name is mentioned I have used only the pen name, e.g., Shōyō. A list of Japanese persons mentioned in this text appears in Appendix B.
2. Okazaki Yoshie, ed., Japanese Literature in the Meiji Era, trans. by V. H. Viglielmo (Tokyo: Ōbunsha, 1955), p. 119.

   Bakin was a novelist who, before he died, was the accepted leader of Edo literature. His favorite genre was the moralistic novel.

3. Tsubouchi Shōyō, "Futabatei no Koto," translated by Marleigh Grayer Ryan in Ukigumo of Futabatei Shimei (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 74–75.
4. Futabatei translated Vissarion G. Belinsky's "The Idea of Art," and an essay by Mikhail N. Kalkov's "A popular Explanation of the Art of Kalkov" before his own theory of the novel "Shōsetsu Sōron" was written in 1886. These Russian critics' literary theories were the backbone of Futabatei's "Shōsetsu Sōron," as well as his Ukigumo.
5. Futabatei Shimei, "Shōsetsu Sōron," translated by Marleigh Grayer Ryan in Ukigumo of Futabatei Shimei, op.cit., pp. 156–67.
6. Kawazoe Kunimoto, Nihon Shizenshugi no Bungaku ("Japanese Naturalism in Literature") (Tokyo: Seishin Shobō, 1957), p. 4.
7. Yōsō Bungaku is a derogatory term used for Japanese writers who imitate western diction in their semi-classical style of writing, just as men of the Meiji era imitated western clothing.
8. Tayama Katai, "No no Hana Jo," in Shizenshugi to Han-Shizenshugi, ed. by Nakamura Mitsuo and Yoshida Seiichi, Vol. II of Gendai Bungakuron Taikei (8 vols.; Tokyo: Kawade Shobō, 1953), pp. 10–11.
9. It is significant to note that Katai's essay "Rokotsu naru Byōsha" was written in 1904, one year after the death of Kōyō to whom Katai owed allegiance.
10. Tayama Katai, "Rokotsu naru Byōsha," in Shizenshugi to Han-Shizenshugi, Vol. II of Gendai Bungakuron Taikei, op. cit., pp. 12–15.
11. Gerhart Hauptmann's third drama, Einsame Menschen, spread his fame beyond the boundaries of his own country. In Japan the name of Einsame Menschen was mentioned in a December issue of a literary magazine Mesamashisō by Mori Ōgai in 1899. (See, Ōgai Zenshū: Chosaku Hen. Vol. XX. pp. 323–26.)
12. Nakamura is referring to Katai's statement that Futon was directly patterned after Sabishiki Hitobito [Einsame Menschen] by modeling Katai's principal character after Hauptmann's Johannes and his heroine after Anna Mahr.
13. Nakamura Mitsuo, Fūzoku Shōseteu Ron (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1967).
14. Nakamura Mitsuo, Fūzoku Shōsetsu Ron, op. cit., p. 39.