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The Portrait of the Artist in Japanese Fiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Howard S. Hibbett
Howard S. Hibbett
Affiliation:
University of California at Los Angeles
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Extract

In Japan, as in the West, the novelist has become his own favorite character. But the Japanese novelist (or short-story writer) seems less anxious to conceal his predilection than to flaunt it, so many frank self-portraits are there in the gallery of sbōsetsu. He appears in his fiction as a writer. We see him at work—pressed to meet a deadline, interrupted by the visits of literary friends, smoking and sipping tea over a hibachi, or at a desk cluttered with books, papers, pens and pencils, brushes and inkstone. We go with him on a holiday or to a rendezvous; we follow, in quotidian detail, his ordinary monotonous routine. Novels, stories, and sketches elaborate this rather seedy character, which the reader is allowed—sometimes encouraged—to accept as autobiographical.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , May 1955 , pp. 347 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1955

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References

1 Dec. 11, 1953, 802.

2 Bungei yōgo jiten (Dictionary of the terms jor literature) (Tokyo: Kagaku Hyōronsha, 1951), 82; Myōhei, Sugiura, “Kiseisha no bungaku,” Bungaku, 21 (Dec. 1953), 56.Google Scholar

3 Isao, Katsuyama, “Shoki shi-shōsetsuron ni tsuite” (Early shi-shōsetsu criticism), Kokugo to kokubungaku, 30 (Dec. 1953), 46–55Google Scholar; Yoshimi, Usui, “Shinkyō-shōsetsu ronsō” (The shinkyō-shōsetsu controversy), Bungakkai, 8 (Nov. 1954), 152–59.Google Scholar

4 Introduced in the early 1920's under the alternative (and still common) reading watakushi-shōsetsu. Inagaki Tatsuro, “Shi-shōsetsu to shōsetsu janru” (The shi-shōsetsu and the sbōsetsu genre), Bungaku, 21 (Dec. 1953), 38. On its nuances of meaning, see Tadamichi, Dōke, “Shi-shōsetsu no kiso” (The basis of the shi-shōsetsu), Bungaku, 21 (Dec. 1953), 49–52.Google Scholar One thinks also of the Japanese reluctance to use any of their large assortment of first-person pronouns.

5 The term shi-shōsetsu is sometimes applied specifically to the confessional type. But it is often interchangeable with shinkyō-shōsetsu (“fiction of mental life”), which particularly refers to the contemplative type. Kume Masao, who gives himself credit for naming the sbinkyō-shōsetsu, says that the word shikyō (“mental state”) was used by poets in his circle to indicate their state of mind when composing haiku (quoted in Usui, 153).

6 Inagaki, 38–39.

7 The Western World and Japan (New York: Knopf, 1950), 410.

8 Nakamura Mitsuo has argued—with the aid of Valety's remark on sincerity as a role the writer plays toward himself—that confession for the sake of literature cannot be sincere, and hence cannot be of value. “Kokuhaku no mondai” (The problem of confession), Bungakkai, 6 (Sept. 1952), 6–15.

9 Levin, Harry, James Joyce (Norfolk, Conn: New Directions, 1941), 41.Google Scholar

10 Mediocrity, tr. by Shaw, Glenn W. (Tokyo: Hokuseidō, 1927).Google Scholar

11 On Futon's pernicious influence, see Mitsuo, Nakamura, Fūzoku sbōsetsuron (The novel of manners) (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō, 1950).Google ScholarFuton has been tr. by Benl, Oscar, Flüchtiges leben (Berlin: Landsmann, 1942), 185–283.Google Scholar

12 See, for example, Dazai's Ōtō (Cherries), tr. by Seidensticker, Edward G., Encounter, 1 (Oct. 1953), 26–28.Google Scholar

13 Cf. Masando, Ara, “Shi-shōsetsuron,” Bungakkai, 6 (Sept. 1952), 27–30.Google Scholar

14 Bessatsu bungei shunjū, No. 40 (June 1954), 87.

15 Tr. into German by Benl, Oscar, In Kinosaki (Wolfenbüttel: Kallmeyer, 1951), 14–23.Google Scholar

16 Tr. by Hiroo, Mukai, Pacific spectator 5 (Autumn 1951), 426–34.Google Scholar

17 By Jōsō (1661–1704).

18 Yamashina no kioku (Yamashina memories), Cbijō (Infatuation), Saji (A trivial matter), and Banshū (Late autumn); written 1925–26. Cf. Mitsuo, Nakamwa, “Shiga Naoya ton,” Bungakkai, 7 (Nov. 1953), 135–51.Google Scholar

19 Tr. by Elisséev, Serge in Kafū, Nagai, Le jardin des pivoines…(Paris: Au Sans Pareil, 1927), 47–64.Google Scholar

20 Messages (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927), 109.