The true and innate attraction between Ichiro and Shizu is interrupted. Yet at the same time, Ichiro and the woman he married do share a form of happiness—if merely a “conscious” happiness, with a lack and a longing at the centre of it. The anti-naturalistic narrative recedes from objectivity, […]
Key to unlocking the piece is again the notion of individuals entangled at an unconscious level, with the result that their feelings irrationally affect each other at a distance, quantum-style (if decades in advance of the actual science). The characters are unaware of the deep nature of their […]
Cranes and turtles have a special relationship in Japanese folklore, despite being such different creatures. I became aware of this early during my fifteen-year stay in Japan, when I lived across the road from the main entrance of Atsuta Jingu, one of the three most important Shinto shrines. […]
A small group of foreign words in katakana (phonetic script) presented an initially worrying, but ultimately amusing and enlightening, knot to untie. Katakana is the means by which the Japanese writing system represents foreign words. It was first used to enable the pronunciation of imported Chinese texts (since […]
Reflecting on his yearning for the beautiful young Tsuru—and reflecting on his reflections—Jibun invokes a classic Japanese love suicide, “a tragic tale of unrestrained desire” (Brownstein). The scandalous affair of Onatsu and Seijuro occurred in the mid-seventeenth century and inspired poetry, novels, plays for bunraku puppet theatre, and […]
A Japanese character (kanji) compound, ‘mede’ (目出: “eye” + “go out”) is the basis for the expression, ‘good natured’ in Mushanokoji’s translated title Omedetaki-hito. The compound appears in the common congratulatory phrase, ‘omedetou gozaimasu’, as in, for example, ‘tanjoubi omedetou gozaimasu’ (Many happy returns of the day!) However, […]
The restoration of the emperor in 1868 heralded a period of stupendous change, during which Japan was transformed from an isolated assemblage of feudal fiefdoms under threat of colonization by the West, into a powerful modern nation. The Meiji Restoration commenced with a coup executed by a group […]
It is tongue-in-cheek, and with a measure of self-deprecation, that Jibun compares himself and Tsuru to Dante and Beatrice. At the same time, Mushanokoji subtly acknowledges Dante as a model. Like Jibun, Dante enjoyed only the most scant face-to-face encounters with his beloved Beatrice. In the Vita Nuova, […]
Jibun’s moralism, individualism and egocentrism are traits that Mushanokoji celebrates as ideal qualities. He drew his philosophy initially from Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910), whose humanism widely influenced young Japanese writers and intellectuals early in the twentieth century. For a time, Mushanokoji adopted the self-sacrificing Count Tolstoy as […]
Jibun, the I-character, attends an alumni reunion, where he is offended by some of the mildly off-colour gossip shared by his former classmates. His beloved Tsuru is not far from his thoughts at any time, an object of absolute purity. Hence, I have borrowed an anonymous erotic artwork […]
Furin Chime 