Child of Darkness: Yoko and Other Stories

107 Pages·1997·36.44 MB·English

by  Yoshikichi Furui

Child of Darkness
''t36
FU:J
Child of Darkness
Yoko and Other Stories
by Furui Yoshikichi
Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, Number 18
Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan
Translated with an Introduction
and Critical Commentaries
by
Donna George Storey
Ann Arbor, Michigan 1997
Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan
© 1997 The Regents of the University of Michigan
All rights reserved
Yoko Copyright © 1970 by Yoshikichi Furui
"Aihara" Copyright© 1976 by Yoshikichi Furui
"Ningyo" Copyright© 1976 by Yoshikichi Furui
CONTENTS
Published by the Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 108 Lane Hall, 204
S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1290
Preface vii
Introduction 1
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Division
TRANSLATIONS
Furui, Yoshikichi, 1937-
Child of darkness : Yoko and other stories I by Furui Yoshikichi ; translated with an Yoko 11
introduction and critical commentaries by Donna George Storey.
viii, 204 p. em.-(Michigan monograph series in Japanese studies; no. 18) The Plain of Sorrows 99
Contents: Yoko-Aihara (Plain of sorrows) - Ningyo (Doll). The Doll 119
ISBN 0-939512-78-5 (cloth: alk. paper).-ISBN 0-939512-79-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Furui, Yoshikichi, 1937- -Translations into English. 2. Furui, Yoshikichi, 1937-
-Criticism and interpretation. I. Storey, Donna IT. Title. ill. Series. CRITICAL COMMENTARIES
PL850.R74A26 1997
895.6'35--dc21 97-10204
OP Yoko: The Self in Process 137
"The Plain of Sorrows": The Lmdscape of Death 177
"The Doll": The Power of the Pcist 191
.·· -·
Jacket and cover illustration: Michele Oka Doner (American), Descending Torsos (detail), 1975.
Collection of Elizabeth M. Katz. Photo: Dirk Bakker.
Jacket and cover design: Elisabeth Paymal
This publication meets the ANSI/NISO Standards for Permanence of Paper for Publications
and Documents in Libraries and Archives (239.48-1992).
Printed in the United States of America
PREFACE
I was first introduced to the work of Furui Yoshikichi through Howard
:Hibbett's translation of "Wedlock" in his anthology, Contemporary Japa
nese Literature. To date, this has been Furui's only story widely available
in English. This excellent translation captured the richness and subtlety
of Furui's literary world and inspired me to spend a good part of the last
ten years reading, translating, and analyzing Furui's works. During that
time numerous people have given me assistance, but I owe my greatest
thanks to my dissertation advisor, Makoto Ueda, for his invaluable guid
ance throughout all of my years at Stanford University and beyond. He
was extremely generous with his advice and encouragement at every stage
of this project. Susan Matisoff and Thomas Hare provided many insight
ful recommendations on the critical commentaries. I am also indebted to
Harumi Befu for his help in exploring the anthropological background
of images of madness in Japanese literature. Special thanks are due to
Yoko Yoshikawa for her kind assistance in working out confusing pas
sages in "The Doll." James Hynes's suggestions for polishing the rough
spots of my translation greatly improved the manuscript. The editor of
this series, Bruce Willoughby, was tireless in his support of this project,
and he deserves many thanks for helping make this book a reality. I would
also like to acknowledge the support of Monica George, Elaine Shaw,
and Andrea Shaw. Finally, I owe my deepest gratitude to my husband,
James, who cheerfully served as my chief editor and technical consult
ant. His encouragement and wise counsel enabled me to see this project
through to completion, and it is to him that I dedicate this book.
INTRODUCTION
Yoshikichi and the "Introverted Generation"
Furui Yoshikichi is generally regarded as the most representative writer
of the "introverted generation" (naiko no sedai), a group of Japanese nov
~lists who made their debut in the early 1970s. The label is particularly
for Furui's work, because it does indeed focus inward, delving
the complacent facade of the lives of ordinary city-dwellers to
the dark, irrational forces within, impulses that link them to
traditional agrarian past. Likewise, beneath the artistry of Furui's
prose, likened by some critics to an oil painting with its dense texture,
lies an implicit critique of contemporary Japanese society and the role of
the individual within it. This critique is no less political for its subtlety.
His stories portray in microcosm the crises of identity and change con
fronting all of Japanese society during the decades of rapid economic
. growth and affluence.
Furui was born in 1937 in Tokyo. He received a bachelor's de
gree in German literature from Tokyo University in 1960, and stayed on
to complete a master's degree in 1962 with a thesis on Hermann Brach.
He then taught German literature at Kanazawa University for three years
before taking a job at Rikkyo University in Tokyo in 1965. During his
years as an academic, he published several translations of the novels of
the Austrian writers Hermann Broch and Robert Musil, as well as sev-
eral scholarly articles on Musil, Broch, Navalis, and Nietzsche. Furui him
self admits the influence of his study of German literature on his own
works/ particularly in his richly textured style and in his concern with
the fragmentation of the self in modern society. In 1966, Furui joined the
.literary coterie known as The Plain Sketch Club (Hakubyo no Kai) and
published his first story, "On Thursday" (Mokuyobi ni), in the coterie's
magazine Hakubyo in 1968. As the number of his stories in major literary
1. Furui Yoshikichi and Ian Levy, "Taidan," Honyaku no sekai 10 (June 1985): 39.
INTRODUCTION • 2 Introduction • 3
magazines increased, Furui decided to resign from his teaching post to the term naiki5 no sedai as nothing more than a convenient cat
devote himself full time to writing. 2 '·'I.LFJ.«'-'Lf.~or a group of writers who have little in common,6 most agree that
In 1971 Furui's novella Yoko (Yoko, 1970), the title story of this :,Furui Yoshikichi's work above all embodies qualities that may be de
collection, was awarded the sixty-fourth Akutagawa Prize, an honor con .· ,,;~cribed as "introverted."7 This does not necessarily preclude broader_ s.~-
ferred upon new writers of great promise as an official welcome into the b:ial significance, however. Karatani Kojin has taken exceptio~ to Odagi~I _s
0
ranks of the literary establishment. The novella's main competition for :rt;dticism from a different angle, arguing that all manifestatwns 0~ poh~I­
the prize was another Furui story, "Wedlock" (Tsumagomi, 1970; trans., ctal protest in Japan are based on the same instability and gna"':,mg ~~~­
1979), one of the few Furui works available in English translation. Ac i~atisfaction within contemporary life as that portrayed by the apohh-
cording to Kawabata Yasunari, the senior member of the award commit cal" introverts.8 •
0
tee, the choice of author was unusually easy; the members were almost Akiyama's outline of the chief characteristics of t~e '_"'nters of
evenly split, however, on which of his two nominated stories to desig .• the "introverted generation" provides a very accurate descnph~n of Fu
nate as the winner. Yoko, favored by Kawabata himself, won by a single ~rui's work. First is the mistrust of the intellectual approach to soc1al prob
vote. This skillful portrayal of a mentally disturbed young woman was : lems, including the self-conscious use of "intellectual'; language. These
generally acknowledged to mark a new stage in Furui's maturation as a writers prefer to capture ordinary lives in ordinary language, or ~t least
writer.3 ~"language that is not burdened with overt political reference. This does
Akiyama Shun, a literary critic and contemporary of Furui, , not necessarily mean that the work is accessible, however, fo~ one oft
chooses in retrospect the year 1970 (not coincidentally the year of Yoko's cited drawback of this type of literature is its difficulty (nankat). Se~ond
publication) as the beginning of a new kind of literature that seriously is the search for the extraordinary, the "unreal" (higenjitsu), and the Irra
questioned those assumptions and perceptions that constitute the "real tional that lurk beneath the surface of ordinary life. Third is the focus on
ity" of everyday life.4 The authors who practiced this new kind of litera ;characters who dwell in the city, cut off from the traditional family struc
ture, the naiko no sedai include, besides Furui Yoshikichi, Got6 Meisei, tures associated with rurallife.9 As we shall see, all of these features are
Ogawa Kunio, Kuroi Senji, Abe Akira, and Kashiwabara Hy6z6. The lit evident in the three works translated in this collection. Chosen from the
erary critic Odagiri Hideo originally coined the term in his essay, "Manshu first decade of his published works, these stories provide an introd~c­
no jiken kara yonjunen no bungaku no mondai" (Issues in literature forty tion to Furui's literary cosmos that explores the intersectio~ of_ r~ahty
years after the Manchurian incident) (Tokyo shinbun, March 23-24, 1971). and fantasy, tradition and modernity, and the collective and the m~Ividual.
Odagiri expressed dismay that these young writers were turning away Since the publication of Yoko, Furui has continued to publish nov
from the overt social and political commentary of the works of the previ els, stories, and essays of increa~ing complexity and dep~h, a~d has re~pe~
ous postwar decades and instead focusing on the apparently unremark his share of Japan's literary pnzes. The two short stones, The P~am 0
able dramas of everyday life. He lamented their preference for self-ab Sorrows" (Aihara, 1976) and "The Doll" (Ningyo, 1976),1° show ev1denc_e
sorption and a frivolous nihilism over a treatment of social reality.5 His ·of this maturation of Furui's literary craft, both in theme and style. Typi
label caught on, primarily because of a penchant for categorization in cal of works from this later period of his career, both show a greater em
Japanese literary circles. While other critics, such as Ohkubo Norio, rightly phasis on coming to terms with aging and death, thus shifting. the focus
from the crises of young adulthood to those of approaching middle age.
2. Several sources provided similar accounts of the particulars of Furui's life: Iwamoto Yet, as he did in his early novella Yoko, Furui continues to explore a range
Yoshio, "Yoshikichi Furui: Exemplar of the 'Introverted Generation,"' World Litera
of human experiences on the borderline, not only the boundary between
ture Today 62.3 (Summer 1988): 386; Kamiya Tadataka, "Furui Yoshikichi,"
Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kansh/5 38, suppl. (June 1973): 280; and Kawamura Jiro, "Furui
Yoshikichi," in Odagiri Susumu, ed., Nihon bungaku daijiten, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Kodansha, 6. Nakaishi Takashi, "Yoko-Furui Yoshikichi," Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kanshO 38 (May
1977). 1973): 82.
3. Kamiya Tadataka, "Yoko," Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kanshii 42, suppl. (January 1977): 7. Iwamoto, "Yoshikichi Furui," 385. . _
154. Also see individual comments by the committee members in Akutagawasho zenshil, 8. Ohkubo Norio, "Shosetsu no 1970 nendai," Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kyozaz no kenkyu
vol. 8 (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjii, 1982), 544-52. 17, suppl. (June 1972): 66.
4. Akiyama Shun, "Nichijoteki genjitsu to bungaku no hatten, 1961-1977," in Matsubara 9. Akiyama, "Nichijoteki genjitsu," 376-77. , A'h ,
Shin'ichi et al., eds., Sengo Nihon bungakushi-nenpyo (Gendai no bungaku bekkan) (To 10. Both stories can be found in Furui Yoshikichi, Aihara (Bungei shunjii, 1977). 1 ara
kyo: Kodansha, 1978), 374-76. was first published in the October 1976 issue of Bunga kk az·, "Nm' gyo- "in the Novem-
5. Ibid., 376. ber 1976 issue of Taiyo.
INTRODUCTION • 4 Introduction • 5
sanity and madness, but also between life and death. Other major works The "mad" characters are never so irrational as to lose a certain
include the novel Hijiri (The Sage, 1976), which further explores the am awareness of their position of difference. In this way, Furui
biguous realm where the Japanese past and present collide. An injured employ his characters in subtle social critique. The figure of the mad-
mountain climber temporarily takes on the role of the holy man who . •. or madwoman has traditionally been relegated to the margins of
disposes of the dead in a remote village, and finds himself drawn into • :. • ~apanese society; he or she has been ostracized, hidden away, or ignored.11
rituals of defilement and purification that harken back to Japan's most Although attitudes have been slowly changing in recent years, even to
ancient myths. In the companion novel Sumika (The Dwelling, 1977), the day mental illness is a secret to be guarded from the outside world.
mountain climber returns to the city with the woman he married from Nonetheless, what makes the mad character such an economical
the village, only to discover that this new environment leads his wife to ijtlage in literature is the complex relationship he or she maintains with
madness. ~odety as both outsider and essential symbol. Relegated to the periph-
Furui's later stories have a flexible, flowing structure reminis ~ry, the mad character gains a fuller perspective on the center and serves
cent of the traditional Japanese essay, a tendency that is further devel • :as an instructive mirror rather than a passive one by bringing the contra
oped in his more recent collections. In Yoru wa ima (Now Is Night,1987) ~. dictions of the system into clear focus.12 Many Japanese writers have also
temporality is fluid, and the line between fiction and personal essay is . ~mployed the voice of the mad (or at least neurotic) outsider to expose
blurred as Furui explores his perennial subjects of the nature of conscious · the hypocrisies of sane society, including Natsume Soseki, Yokomitsu
ness and the flux of identity. Kari ojo denshibun (A Tentative Attempt at a Riichi, Tanizaki Jun'ichir6, and Akutagawa Ryunosuke, whose Kappa
Tale of Salvation, 1989) juxtaposes elaborate versions of stories from the (1927), is perhaps the best example of the use of the madman's delusions
Heian period, of the death and rebirth of Buddhist monks in paradise, as social criticism. Indeed, in literature the mad are sometimes philoso
with vignettes of modern experience that reveal the irrationality and phers in disguise.13 Thus, madness can be a form of "superior sanity"
humor lurking quietly in everyday life. He continues to explore the ways because it signifies the ability to perceive and reject the general illness
in which the literature and culture of premodern Japan inform the con inherent in "normal" life.14 By creating a character who transgresses the
temporary world. Furui has now taken his place as one of the established limits of socially acceptable behavior, Furui broadens the range of possi
members of the bundan and serves on the committee that awards the bility for what the character can do and think and say, and at the same
Akutagawa Prize to the current generation of talented young writers. time endows that person with a different, and potentially subversive,
perspective on what constitutes the socially acceptable.
Furui' s Literary World: The View from the Margins Furui always expresses his characters' perspectives in spatial
terms by means of his contrasts between the city and the countryside,
As the term "introverted generation" suggests, a common thread runs particularly the mountains, and his focus on newly built housing devel
through all of Furui's work, and these three stories in particular: a con opments that encroach upon nature. As such, these settings conform to
cern with the inner workings of the human mind, the very mechanics of anthropologist Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's schema of Japanese society,
perception, cognition, and memory through which we create our subjec which is based on the Shinto dichotomy of purity and impurity. The con
tive reality. Typically, the mental processes of Furui's characters are some crete manifestations of the pure and impure are expressed in the spatial
how distorted by fatigue or illness, calling attention to the smooth and idioms of inside and outside, above and below. However, there are two
otherwise invisible means by which the ordinary person derives her iden types of" outside": the clear-cut region of untamed nature or foreign lands,
tity and makes sense of the world. The female protagonist in Yi5ko of course for example, and the area on the margins of what is pure or "inside." The
suffers from a mental illness, but her boyfriend is not exactly in a normal outside beyond the margins may be threatening or neutral, but the sym-
state of mind himself, which may account in part for his attraction to her.
11. Emiko Ohnuki;Tierney, Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan (Cambridge: Cam
The dying man in "The Plain of Sorrows" takes his mistress along on his
bridge University Press, 1984), 60.
one-week vacation from the "sane" behavior of an upstanding husband 12. Roy Porter, A Social History of Madness: The World Through the Eyes of the Insane (New
and father, which allows him to attain a final peace. The career woman York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), 3.
13. Shoshana Felman, Writing and Madness (Literature/Philosophy/Psychoanalysis), trans. Mar
in "The Doll" finds that her attempt to establish her independence from
tha Noel Evans and Shoshana Felman (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 37.
her family results in a loss of her own sense of identity. In fact, at the
14. Barbara Hill Rigney, Madness and Sexual Politics in the Feminist Novel: Studies in Bronte,
heart of each story lies a period of madness for its main characters. Woolf, Lessing and Atwood (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 8-9.
INTRODUCTION • 6 Introduction • 7
bols of this outer margin are germs, illness, and death. The realm of the :.the mountains of the physical interior of Japan becomes an expression of
in-between, in particular, forms the locus of impurity.15 Thus, although psychic interior of Yoko herself, whose psychological disorder de
we first encounter the mad Yoko crouching in a ravine deep in the moun fines the eerie landscape.
tains, it is only in the city that her behavior becomes problematic. More Back in the city, both the young man and the reader find it hard
interesting, perhaps, is Furui's creation of a marginal space of madness to. determine what exactly is wrong with Yoko. Her illness seems to defy
within the city in a garbage-strewn empty lot in "The Plain of Sorrows" a definite medical diagnosis, but instead combines the symptoms of
or on a deserted train car in "The Doll." schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive neurosis, and manic-depression,
We will find in all three stories in this collection the fundamental leading the reader to look beyond medical labels to the broader signifi
features of Furui's work. His characters are ordinary people, but their cance of Yoko's disordered interaction with her society. Her "attacks"
inner dramas take them across the border society constructs around the alternate between a hypersensitive reflection of her environment, be it
ordinary, into the realm of the irrational and the unconscious, a realm the bustle of downtown Tokyo or the exuberance of a park in spring, and
where the extinction of reason is linked to the final extinction of death. a complete withdrawal into self-absorption, as if she is again crouching
Paradoxically, Furui captures the amorphous mental state in a concrete paralyzed in the deep ravine of her illness. This shift between too little
setting, exploiting the symbolic power of natural and man-made envi sense of self and too much suggests the balance any individual must ne
ronments. In each story we also see patterns of repetition such as fits, gotiate between external demands and internal desires. Yoko's extraor
sleepwalking, and urgent obsessions that suggest a link to an ancient, dinariness may lie in the fact that she is aware of this tension and recog
·I instinctual past. Furui addresses the issue of individual identity in each nizes, in her words, that she is always trembling on the borderline, just
story by destabilizing the concept of a fixed identity. Even age and gen like a thin membrane.
der seem mutable characteristics. At points of crisis men take on female Yoko's symptoms also often manifest themselves through her
qualities and young women alternate between girlishness and voluptuous body, which sometimes appears thin and gawky, like a young girl's, and
maturity. Finally, in spite of Odagiri Hideo's accusation of apolitical in sometimes takes on the full, voluptuous quality of a mature woman. Here
troversion, all of Furui's stories implicitly comment on the costs of mod Furui situates his heroine on yet another borderline between childhood
ernization to the individual in contemporary Japanese society. Each story and adulthood. Part of Yoko's hesitation to undergo a "cure" involves
highlights these themes from a different angle, through a variety of nar her resistance to the mature woman's role as the proper housewife and
rative approaches and a range of personal crises. Taken together, how mother, a fate to which her older sister has already succumbed. Furui's
ever, the stories provide a well-rounded picture of Furui's complex vision. novella is, in fact, a story of a young woman's coming of age, a time of
Yoko is the story of the relationship between the protagonist, great change when the distinctions between male and female lovers, child
known simply as "he," and a young woman who lends her name to the and adult, the madness of the inner self and the sanity of proper social
title of the novella. Although Yoko is a common name for girls in Japan, expectations, are brought into sharpest focus.
the unusual Chinese characters Furui chooses to represent his heroine's "The Plain of Sorrows" explores another kind of borderline of
name are portentous: this "Yoko" translates as "child of darkness" or human experience, that between life and death. This confrontation with
"child of indistinctness," imbuing the character with an aura of gloom death becomes a common theme in Furui's later works. Cancer, the dis
and melancholy for the Japanese reader. Indeed, the reader soon discov ease of middle age, often serves as a catalyst for this profound spiritual
ers that Yoko's actions and experiences are in keeping with her remark crisis of adulthood. In "The Plain of Sorrows," the narrator's best friend
able appellation. The couple first meets deep in the mountains when the is diagnosed with lung cancer. Although such news is usually kept from
young man happens upon Yoko crouching on a rock in a deep ravine, the terminally ill in Japan, the dying man apparently guesses his fate
paralyzed by her acute sensitivity to the fragile equilibrium of the rocks and sets about trying to repay a spiritual debt to his dead sister by help
towering above her. Each action, reaction, and misperception is pains ing another troubled young woman find a reason to go on living. Like
takingly portrayed, and this scene soon takes on a symbolic resonance Yoko's ravine, the "plain of sorrows" of the title is a psychological as
for the dynamics of their relationship as the couple seems drawn back to well as physical landscape, representing the portal through which a dy
the story of their strange encounter again and again. A ravine deep in ing man passes into the land of the dead. Furui incorporates Buddhist
elements into his story: the dying man suddenly begins to chant Bud
15. Ohnuki-Tierney, Illness and Culture, 46-48. dhist folksongs of salvation from the late Heian period collection Ryojin
INTRODUCTION • 8
hishi5 (Songs to Make the Dust Dance on the Beams, ca. 1169); Lord
Amida's paradise of salvation lies to the west, bathed in a purple glow,
much like the horizon of the grassy plain the man is drawn to every night
in his trance. However, juxtaposed with these mythic and spiritual ele
ments is the reality of urban Japan. The actual plain of sorrows that leads
to the afterlife is nothing more than a rubbish-strewn abandoned lot in
the middle of a new housing development on the outskirts of Tokyo.
Present throughout the story is an undercurrent of tension between
Japan's traditional past and the alienated existence of the city-dweller
living far from his or her ancestral home. TRANSLATIONS
"The Doll" provides yet another view of a crisis in modern life
through a woman's confrontation with madness and death. The protago
nist is a single woman in her early thirties, a time considered unlucky for
women in traditional lore, and an age when a woman is no longer young
by Japanese standards. When the woman decides to make a final break
from her family in the country by establishing her own family register in
Tokyo, her symbolic act of independence brings about a loss of mental
stability as well. Alone in the big city with only casual affairs and friend
ships to sustain her, the woman turns to a large antique doll, a gift from
her uncle, for emotional support. Typical of a Furui symbol, the doll is
both a legacy and a burden as well as a focus for the woman's anxieties
about her identity as an individual and a female. In her final breakdown,
the woman finds herself drawn back into her personal past in a conclu
sion that is both ghostly and humorous.
On one level, Furui's stories deal with nothing more than the or
dinary human dramas of growing up and growing old, but by probing
farther into the recesses of the mind and memory, he touches upon the
deepest mysteries of human existence. And, as if to balance the somber
themes of madness and death, he also shows a great sensitivity to the
dark humor inherent in everyday life. Although his stories are set in Ja
pan, the experiences of his characters as they try to make sense of their
fragmented, fast-paced, and routine existence are familiar dilemmas to
readers from any industrialized nation.
YOKO
Part One
Yoko was sitting alone at the bottom of a deep ravine.
It was almost the middle of October, and before long the first
snow would fall on the mountain peaks.
It was about one in the afternoon when he noticed the dark clouds
gathering in the western sky from his vantage point at the summit of K
Mountain. He hurried down the mountain as if something were driving
him onward and climbed down into the ravine from the ridge. At first
the path headed straight toward 0 Valley, then it continued alongside
the valley, gradually descending through thickets of dark, gloomy brush
wood. After about an hour and a half he finally reached the bottom of
the ravine. He was not far from the junction of N Valley, and the place
resounded with the heavy thunder of falling water. ,
When he looked up from the bottom of the ravine, the sky was
already shrouded in low clouds. The slopes pressing in on either side
were covered with a luxuriant growth of briars and shrubs. Their black,
thorny branches seemed poised to smother the embers of crimson foli
age still glowing here and there among the withering leaves in the dim,
enclosed ravine. In the dry riverbed, rocky debris lay in heaps along the
watercourse in hushed silence, giving off a sort of pale, grayish light,
which seeped into the bottom layer of the oppressive darkness. Yoko sat
crouched over on a flat rock illuminated by that gray light, gazing di
rectly in front of her at a low cairn of stones, which some passing hiker
had apparently built for his amusement.
He should have noticed Yoko much sooner as he made his way
slowly along a riverbed filled with nothing but rocks. In fact, since he
had not seen another human being for nearly five hours, the figure of a
woman sitting alone on a rock should have caught his attention immedi
ately, from quite a long distance away. Of course, he was rather tired
from the last descent of his three-day solo expedition. As he walked