Letter Troubles: Rereading Futon in Conversation with Japan’s Epistolary Discourse
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Crafting Sincerity
Kyōka adopts a pragmatic mindset, arguing that because letters are primarily a communicative medium, it matters little whether the writing itself is skillful so long as one writes from the heart. The importance of sincerity in Kyōka’s formulation is indicated and emphasized by his iteration on the term, as he cycles through the synonyms 至誠 (shisei), 誠心 (seishin), 誠意 (seii), and 真情 (shinjō). In a separate article, Itō Gingetsu extends this formulation by yoking sincerity and letters to the physical body. Claiming to have little interest in the mechanics of diary entries and letter writing, Itō nevertheless prefers letters that avoid stock greetings and speak from the heart:何も自分で発明した言葉ではないが、「至誠は人を動かす」で、凡そ文章に尊しとするところは誠心、誠意、自己の真情を吐露することである。殊に手紙の文にあっては、たとえ言葉は整はずとも、文章は拙劣であろうとも、もと実用を主とするものであるから、其人の真情さえ籠って居たらば差支えないと信ずる。The quote is not my own, but I’ve heard it said that “Sincerity moves people.” The suggestion is that generally, what renders writing noble is sincerity, is expressing one’s true feelings. Particularly when it comes to letters, since they’re mainly for practical use, it doesn’t matter if the words are jumbled or if the phrasing is clumsy so long as they come from the heart.
Itō differentiates those letters brimming with trite greetings and clichéd niceties on the one hand from those letters whose straightforward style denotes a sincerity and earnestness on the other, with a clear preference for the latter. Elsewhere, Yoda Gakkai brings together the two threads of body and soul, further developing the link between letters, sincerity, and interiority. Relating his impressions upon encountering a reproduction of Kyokutei Bakin’s (1767–1848) personal letters in the Hōchi Shimbun, Yoda notes:[…] これから手紙を書く人は、どうかキマリ文句をヌキにして、自分の胸から湧き出た真摯の言をつらねて呉れ給へ、古木のやうな手紙でなく、血と呼吸との通ふ手紙を貰ひたい、死んだ手紙の百尋よりは、生きた手紙の一寸が有難い[…]If you’re going to write a letter, please, toss out those hackneyed set phrases, and enumerate instead those sincere expressions that gush forth from your heart. I want letters teeming with the breath and blood of life, not stale like dead wood. I’d take a single, living letter over a hundred lifeless ones any day.
What distinguishes well-written letters for Yoda is thus not phrasing or rhetoric but the ability to write as one thinks, to portray one’s thoughts and feelings in full (morenaku), and to put one’s heart and soul (shinjō) on the page. Bakin’s letters so powerfully fit this bill, Yoda claims, that the man himself appears before his very eyes, giving corporeal form to the two threads of body and soul outlined in Kyōka and Itō’s writing.元来手紙は思ふ事を洩れなく述べるのが肝要であるが、それが中々に出来ぬ。思ふ様に書けぬから従って真情が現われない。しかるに馬琴の手紙を見ると、実に何から何まで行き届いて、現在其人を見る様な気がする。手紙ならば彼書きたいのだ。In writing letters, it is of vital importance to express one’s thoughts freely and without omission, but I can’t seem to do so. I can’t write as I think, and it follows that my true thoughts and emotions (shinjō) fail to materialize on the page. And yet, when I look upon Bakin’s letters, it is though I am gazing upon the man himself. If I’m writing a letter, that’s how I want to write.
3. Letters and Linguistic Style
From the “fond” vernacular to the “courteous” epistolary style: much has been made of this transition for what it reveals about the relationship between language, gender, and power. Indra Levy, for example, has argued that in contrast to the final letter’s deployment of sōrōbun, which “entrusts the relationship between strangers to a set of established conventions”, Yoshiko’s letters in the vernacular abandon such conventions “in favor of a style of communication that could imitate face-to-face contact” (Levy 2006, p. 187). In such a reading, the vernacular embodies Tokio’s image of the frank, outgoing atarashii onna, an image developed in translation as Tokio ingested 19th century European literature. Even more radically, Fujimori argues that in contradistinction to sōrōbun, genbun’itchi produced and sustained the illusion of Yoshiko’s interiority (Fujimori 1993, p. 27). Yet, while there is little doubt that genbun’itchi possessed the cachet of the new and foreign in the eyes of Meiji writers, contemporary articles typically demurred on the question of whether it was the only—or even the best—linguistic style for directly transmitting one’s thoughts (or expressing one’s interiority).18 Certainly, articles espousing genbun’itchi’s frankness did exist. The forerunner of Japanese children’s literature, Iwaya Sazanami (1870–1933), argues:いつもの人懐かしい言文一致ではなく、礼儀正しい候文で […]Rather than the genbun’itchi he had grown so fond of, it was penned using the courteous sōrōbun […].
In a slightly transposed version of the bundan’s proclamations above, for Iwaya it is not the mechanism of form but that of linguistic style—specifically the vernacular—that possesses and transmits the “true feelings” and “emotions” of the writer. While this is the narrative most familiar to modern scholars, other writers in fact averred that sōrōbun possessed an equal capacity for clear expression. Examining the historical use sōrōbun, Takeda Ōtō (1871–1935) suggests that the character sōrō itself facilitated communication among members of different social class categories prior to the advent of genbun’itchi:[…] 勿論言文一致は此方の心や情を明かに通ずる利益あることはいう迄もなかろう、独逸にいた頃殊に感じた、左様然らばと寒暖の御挨拶を儀式的に列べられた手紙は最一つ有り難くないね、言文一致で思う儘にいうてくれると遠くにいる人と直接に遭う気がして何様に嬉しいか知れぬ、手紙は言文一致に限る、その人の真情が表われておもしろい、[…]Of course, it goes without saying that genbun’itchi has the benefit of transmitting one’s feelings or emotions clearly. When I was living in Germany, it was even more apparent to me how unwanted those letters chock full of formal, seasonal greetings really were. You can’t imagine how happy I was to receive letters written in genbun’itchi; when they wrote just as they thought, even my friends in distant lands felt close by. When it comes to letters, genbun’itchi is the best, for it has the power to make the writer’s true feelings come alive on the page.
Researching the character sōrō, Takeda argues that even before the development of genbun’itchi the character sōrō provided even the most uneducated of individuals the capacity for free expression. Takeda’s argument refutes the simplistic link between genbun’itchi and interiority (omou mama wo benzuru koto), effectively accusing those who would draw this association of a failure to properly historicize.近来は専ら言文一致という文体が行われて書簡文もまた此体に書かれるようになったが、全体書簡文に此候という文字を使用し始めたのは、これも古えの言文一致を文章体にした一つの句切れに用いたのであって、この文体に倣えば、いかなる僻遠の地の人でも、些の渋滞なく思うままを弁ずることが出来る[…]These days the writing style of genbun’itchi is in vogue, and even letters have come to be written using this style. However, all letters began to use the sōrō character as a sentence-ending period in what we might call premodern genbun’ichi in written form. No matter how much of a country bumpkin you might be, if you imitated this style, you would have no problem communicating as you think […].
Although the vernacular is typically glossed with a veneer of novelty by Meiji writers and intellectuals, Miyagawa adopts the position of the luddite, arguing that sōrōbun is more elegant than the new kid on the block. In doing so, however, he avers that the ability to put one’s true feelings into words is unrelated to the specific linguistic style deployed; rather, this ability is a function of the writer’s deftness of prose. Insofar as frank expression is concerned then, Miyagawa’s stance renders all linguistic styles equal in the domain of the letter.それから手紙の文体は、言文一致の手紙も、近来盛んに行わるるようであるが、それは近親の間柄や、或は刎頸の交友などには適切でもあろうが、文品の点からいうと、候文の方が遥かに優っている。併し言文一致にも真情の流露余蘊なく、なかなか優美に書き為したのもあるけれど、それは寧ろ筆者の技巧に属することで、形式に於いて本来賤しいように思う。As for the linguistic style of letters, it seems that it has become popular to write letters in genbun’itchi these days. This style is likely appropriate for immediate relatives or close friends, but insofar as the felicity of the prose is concerned, sōrōbun is a far superior style. While there are well composed letters written in genbun’itchi that fully express the true feelings of their writers, this is a product of the writer’s skill, for the style of genbun’itchi itself is really quite vulgar.
As Katai continues, he does concede that bibun may be useful if it helps one achieve his or her goal in letter writing. Ultimately, however, linguistic style is subordinated to purpose: so long as one gets what one wants, Katai argues, the language of the letter matters not.書簡文は全く実用文に属する。美文と謂うことに余り関係が無いと言いても差支ない。即ち書簡文は文章などは何うでも用が弁じさえすれば好い、解りさえすれば好いということになる。一歩を進めて、書簡文は余り多く美文の特色を帯びて来ると、其目的を失うことがある。The language of letters belongs to the realm of the practical, and one could reasonably say that it has little relation to bibun. In other words, so long as you get your message across, the language of the letter doesn’t matter. To go one step farther, if a letter takes on too many characteristics of bibun, it risks losing the plot.
4. The Subject of the Letter
As is well known, the genbun’itchi movement that sought to unify spoken and written Japanese was predicated on “the belief in the immediacy and directness of the voice or in the idea that speech more directly reflects one’s thoughts than the written language” (Suzuki 1996, p. 178). Striking in Emi’s formulation, however, is how the importance of linguistic style for directly communicating one’s thoughts is superseded by the form of the letter itself. By arguing that he views letters as a stand-in for speech, and by further suggesting that any linguistic style—or their admixture—is equally appropriate for letters, Emi does more than challenge the view of genbun’itchi as the most direct or transparent linguistic style. He imbues the letter form itself with the capacity to directly transmit one’s thoughts. Importantly, this reversal of the typical formula that genbun’itchi is equated with frankness or clarity does nothing to challenge the notion of a transcendental subject behind the pen, and in fact only further substantiates it.で、自分は手紙を文章として書かうというふ考へはない、唯だ思うていることを、しゃべる代わりに知らせる考へである。従って、自分の手紙は始めが候文で、終いが言文一致、おまけに、所々に文章的の処も混じろうという、極く〴〵鵺的のものである。故にもしこれを文章として見るひには、殆ど価値はないかも知れぬが、自己の感情を充分に現わすことは出来ると思う。I don’t think of writing letters as writing (bunshō) per se, but I rather think of them as expressing my thoughts in written instead of spoken form. It only follows that my letters are rather chimerical: they sometimes begin in sōrōbun, end in genbun’itchi, and even mix in some literary language (bunshōteki na tokoro) at times. That being the case, my letters don’t have any value as writing, but they are able to competently express my emotions.
山北辺より雪降り候うて、湛井よりの山道十五里、悲しきことのみ思い出で、かの一茶が『これがまアつひの住家か雪五尺』の名句痛切に身にしみ申候、Snow has fallen from the mountains to the north, and along the some 60 mountainous kilometers from Tatai, I had nothing but sad memories to sustain me. I cannot help but think of Issa’s poem, “Is this my old home/to be my final dwelling/in snow five feet high”.
5. The Clarity of Hermeneutics
In the process of shilling his new, “modern” letter writing manual, Ōmachi Keigestu (1869–1925) declares that what hamstrings contemporary epistles is their verbosity. The cure, he suggests, is more concision, but he was hardly the only one to hold this view. As Tokutomi Sohō (1863–1957) succinctly states:人より案内をうけたる場合に、口の上なら「有難うございます参上いたします」にてよきに、手紙かく場合となれば、それでは、餘り花がなさすぎるとて前文を添え、後文を添え、先方の言をくりかえし、長々と少なくとも十行くらいかかねばならぬと思いて、とかく文が冗漫になり、手紙かくことが面倒になるものなるが、簡勁にしたきものに候。When receiving an invitation face to face, one can simply reply, “Thank you, I will see you then.” When it comes to writing a letter, though, you have to gussy things up a little bit, so you add some greetings to beginning of the letter, you wish them goodbye at the end, you repeat their request back to them, and before you know it you’ve already written ten lines. Such letters are so tedious, and such a pain to write. I want to make letters concise.
The logic underpinning these calls for concision is variegated. Some writers point to practical concerns, arguing that modern people are too busy and receive too many letters to sort through extended greetings and other niceties. Other writers, such as Ōmachi, simply decry lengthy letters as “a pain to write.” More often than not, however, that letters should be clear is stated as though it were a widely recognized fact. In a series examining the historical transformation of the letter, we find this argument:簡潔と明確と正確とは、実に用事の手紙に於ける三要素也。Brevity, clarity, and accuracy: these are the three components of business letters.
Tracking the transformation of the form by examining letters from the Heian era forward, the article argues that so obvious and widely understood is the modern letter’s purpose—to completely and concisely transmit one’s point—that it goes without saying.書簡文の要は簡潔にして其意志を徹底疎通せしむるにあるは、謂う迄も無きことなり。It goes without saying that the crux of epistolary style is to concisely transmit one’s intentions without obstruction.
Saito Satoru has noted the resemblance between Futon and detective fiction—in particular Tokio’s embodiment of the detective figure here—and others still have recognized Futon’s emphasis on the hermeneutic process of letter reading (Saito 2012, pp. 139–55). Yet, this passage also offers a potential riposte to contemporary claims for epistolary concision and clarity—and thus rapid comprehension. Presumed to be a medium of instantaneous transmission in contemporary discourse, Yoshiko and Hideo’s letters are fittingly sped read by Tokio as he attempts to glean the facts of their relationship. What becomes apparent, however, is that their letters resist such a hermeneutic method, and he instead finds himself sorting through their lengthy saccharine tidings as he struggles to uncover the secret that refuses to reveal itself. Rather than media for rapid communication, then, letters here become extended treatises for extolling romantic sentiment that thereby resist the interpretive methods designated for “modern” letters.空想から空想、その空想はいつか長い手紙となって京都に行った。京都からも殆ど隔日のように厚い厚い封書が届いた。書いても書いても尽くされぬ二人の情――余りその文通の頻繁なのに時雄は芳子の不在を窺って、監督という口実の下にその良心を抑えて、こっそり机の抽出やら文箱やらをさがした。捜し出した二三通の男の手紙を走り読みに読んだ。恋人のするような甘ったるい言葉は到る処に満ちていた。けれど時雄はそれ以上にある秘密を捜し出そうと苦心した。接吻の痕、性慾の痕が何処かに顕われておりはせぬか。神聖なる恋以上に二人の間は進歩しておりはせぬか、けれど手紙にも解らぬのは恋のまことの消息であった。From reverie to reverie, such fancies eventually became lengthy letters that made their way to Kyoto. And from Kyoto, thick envelopes arrived nearly every other day. No matter how much they wrote, the lovers could not exhaust their feelings for one another. So frequent were their exchanges that Tokio grew suspicious. Under the pretext of supervision, Tokio, swallowing his conscience, waited until Yoshiko was absent and rummaged through her desk drawers and letter box. He flipped through two or three of the letters he found there.Their letters were positively brimming with the saccharine tidings of lovers, but Tokio struggled to uncover any further secrets hidden there. Was there nowhere the trace of a kiss, the hint of sexual desire? Had the pair not progressed beyond sacred love? But left unsaid in the letters were love’s true tidings.
Tokio reveals himself to be a rather sophisticated reader. Analyzing Yoshiko’s letter, he not only clocks his own emotional response to the text, but he further proceeds to both summarize the facts available to him and to raise questions about their significance. And, just a few lines later, he even engages in (a somewhat amateurish) philology, asking:この一通の手紙を読んでいる中、さまざまの感情が時雄の胸を火のように燃えて通った。その田中という二十一の青年が現にこの東京に来ている。芳子が迎えに行った。何をしたか解らん。この間言ったこともまるで虚言かも知れぬ。この夏期の休暇に須磨で落合った時から出来ていて、京都での行為もその望を満す為め、今度も恋しさに堪え兼ねて女の後を追って上京したのかも知れん。手を握ったろう。胸と胸とが相触れたろう。Reading through the letter, a mix of emotions tore through his breastlike a flame. Tanaka, that boy of just 21 years, had actually arrived in Tokyo. Yoshiko had gone to see him. There was no telling what they had done. Yoshiko’s earlier explanations may have been nothing but lies. Maybe they had fallen in love in Suma during the summer break. Maybe the rendezvous in Kyoto was to fulfill their desire for one another that had developed during their summer break in Suma, and perhaps, unable to bear the distance any longer, Hideo had followed her to Tokyo. They must have held hands. They probably even embraced.
In combination, both the lines here and the paragraph above belie the mantra of easy communication, positing letters as documents whose significance is rarely readily apparent. Tokio’s working through of their potential implications enacts this ambiguity in real time, as he attempts to ascertain what lies beneath the surface of the text. Yoshiko’s second letter to Tokio also provokes a similar moment of reflection:私共は熱情もあるが理性がある!私共とは何だ!何故私とは書かぬ、何故複数を用いた?We are passionate about each other, but we are also thinking logically. We! What does she mean we? Why didn’t she write I? Why did she have to use the plural?
Here, the necessity of interpretation rises to the level of textual utterance, as Futon notes that Tokio must quite literally “think about Yoshiko’s letter.” Again, his hermeneutic process is enacted in full, as he scavenges for clues of how far the pair’s relationship has progressed. Again, we witness Tokio’s attempt at amateur philology, as her letter contained “bold words”, that engender anxiety in Tokio.時雄は今、芳子の手紙に対して考えた。二人の状態は最早一刻も猶予すべからざるものとなっている。時雄の監督を離れて二人一緒に暮したいという大胆な言葉、その言葉の中には警戒すべき分子の多いのを思った。いや、既に一歩を進めているかも知れぬと思った。又一面にはこれほどその為めに尽力しているのに、その好意を無にして、こういう決心をするとは義理知らず、情知らず、勝手にするが好いとまで激した。Now, Tokio considered Yoshiko’s letter.Their situation could not be put off for even a moment. The couple wanted to live together away from Tokio’s watchful eye; buried in such a bold proclamation was much to be worried of. In fact, their relationship might have already progressed even further. Once again, having given his all for the couple, Tokio found his goodwill had come to naught. Their decision smacked of ingratitude. It was cold hearted. “Do whatever you want!” he thought, flying into a rage.
Confronted with the bare truth, Tokio is stunned. And yet, while the thrust of the letter seems clear—that Yoshiko engaged in a physical relationship with Hideo, that her previous two letters were full of lies, etc.—Tokio nevertheless notes in passing the existence of interpretive work still to be done. Galloping up to her second-floor room, the thought crosses his mind that he does not have the time to make sense of the attitude that engendered Yoshiko’s confession. Or, to put it in terms recognizable here, the text once again posits interpretation, and particularly the interpretation of letters, as a slow process. The gravity or importance of this continued reference to the slow process of hermeneutics is attested to by its contrast to Tokio’s attitude early in the story, in which he believes the significance of Yoshiko’s letters to be readily apparent:時雄は今更に地の底にこの身を沈めらるるかと思った。手紙を持って立上った。その激した心には、芳子がこの懺悔を敢てした理由――総てを打明けて縋ろうとした態度を解釈する余裕が無かった。二階の階梯をけたたましく踏鳴らして上って、芳子の打伏している机の傍に厳然として坐った。Tokio felt as if the floor would swallow him up. Letter in hand, he stood up. His heart aflutter, he began to wonder what would drive Yoshiko to confess—there wasn’t time to make sense of the attitude that had driven her to finally admit everything and to implore Tokio for his help. He clamored up the stairs, gravely placing himself beside Yoshiko, whose head was face down on the desk.
Describing two moments in which he believed his relationship with Yoshiko verged on moving beyond the master–disciple structure, Tokio receives a letter that he interprets as her attempt to enact that relationship. The irony of the final statement, “Tokio understood the meaning of the letter clearly”, lies with the fact that, by the end of the novel, it is clear Yoshiko never had any intentions of becoming Tokio’s lover.この機会がこの一年の間に尠くとも二度近寄ったと時雄は自分だけで思った。一度は芳子が厚い封書を寄せて、自分の不束なこと、先生の高恩に報ゆることが出来ぬから自分は故郷に帰って農夫の妻になって田舎に埋れて了おうということを涙交りに書いた時、一度は或る夜芳子が一人で留守番をしているところへゆくりなく時雄が行って訪問した時、この二度だ。初めの時は時雄はその手紙の意味を明かに了解した。Tokio himself believed that just such a chance had occurred at least twice during the past year. Once was when Yoshiko sent Tokio a lengthy letter tearfully decrying her inexperience, stating that there was no way she could ever repay Tokio for all he had done, and that she may as well return home, marry a farmer, and live out her days in the countryside. The other time was when he unexpectedly paid a visit to Yoshiko when she was home alone one day. The meaning of the letter was obvious to him.
6. Conclusions: Crafting the I-Novel
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | See: (Seki 2003), (Hirata 1999), (Kuroda 2005), and (Yamaguchi 2011). Seki and Hirata show how the development of genbun’itchi was both an obstacle to be overcome and a tool to be deployed by early women writers of fiction. For his part, Yamaguchi attempts to pinpoint the developments that led to the convergence of letters and literature, pointing to the sudden interest in interiority and the widespread adoption of moveable type as significant contributing factors. Kuroda, explicitly building on Yamaguchi’s earlier research, points to the publication of letters and diary entries in the 1902 publication of Kitamura Tōkoku’s (1868–1894) complete works (Zenshū 全集) as the watershed moment in which letters were rendered structurally isomorphic with literature. |
2 | Tayama Katai was a journalist, literary critic, magazine editor, travelogue and fiction writer active during the late Meiji, Taisho, and Showa periods. One of the most influential authors of Japanese Naturalist fiction, his major works include “The End of Juuemon”, (Juuemon no saigo 重右衛門の最後, 1902), The Quilt (Futon 蒲団, 1907), Life (Sei 生, 1908), Country Teacher (Inaka kyōshi 田舎教師, 1909), etc. His Futon is typically pegged as the progenitor of the I-novel and has often been read as perverting the course of modern Japanese realist fiction, delimiting its scope to solipsistic records of the author’s personal life that typically included more salacious and scandalous elements. |
3 | Two of the most well-argued takes on Yoshiko’s letters include Fujimori (1993) and Levy (2006, particularly pp. 147–93). |
4 | The term genbun’itchi (言文一致, literally the “reconciliation of speech and writing”), first deployed by the scholar of Dutch learning Kanda Kōhei (1830–1898), was a Meijj-era (1868–1912) language reform movement that sought to suture the spoken and written components of the Japanese language which, from the Kamakura period (1185–1333) onward, had typically been viewed as incommensurate. Motivated in part by a desire to achieve parity with their Western counterparts, Japanese language reformers sought to produce a written vernacular more direct, immediate, efficient, and impartial than the range of styles extant in early Meiji. While complete saturation of the vernacular would not be achieved until after World War II, what emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century—a phonocentric style that “gradually came to be viewed as a transcription of the living voice”—would have wide-ranging consequences for the field of Japanese literature, if not Japanese culture more broadly (Suzuki 1996, p. 45). Suzuki (1996, pp. 42–47) offers a brief overview of the movement, while Karatani (1993, pp. 11–75) offers perhaps the most sophisticated theorization of the movement’s effect on literature. |
5 | Begun in 1900 by the tanka/haiku poet Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902), the shaseibun movement advocated the “direct transcription of things as observed, without verbal embellishment or rhetorical exaggeration” (Suzuki 1996, p. 46). Leaders of the movement, which was itself related to the nature sketching (shizen no suketchi 自然のスケッチ) of the Naturalist writer Kunikida Doppo, encouraged the use of genbun’itchi because of its perceived direct transcription of reality. |
6 | As a Japanese literary movement, scholars typically divide Naturalism into two phases. The early phase, appearing in 1900 and lasting only a handful of years, is characterized by a facile and incomplete adoption and adaptation of Emile Zola’s (1840–1902) determinism, which stressed the roles genetics and environment played in shaping one’s behavior. Late Naturalism, spanning the years 1906–1910, “is characterized as a factual description of the author’s private life, without the wider social dimension found in European naturalism” (Suzuki 1996, p. 79). Suzuki significantly complicates and extends upon this description in conversation with Futon. See: Suzuki (1996, pp. 69–92). |
7 | Depending on one’s stance, the I-novel (watakushi shōsetsu or shishōsetsu 私小説) is either an indigenous and autobiographical literary form in which a single-voiced narrator objectively recounts the facts of the author’s life, or it is less a codified literary genre than a meta-narrative or discourse whose characteristics were defined post factum and projected back onto a set of pre-existing texts. In English-language scholarship, Edward Fowler and Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit adopt the former stance, while Tomi Suzuki professes the latter. |
8 | According to unpublished data provided by the Research Group on Model Writing Composition Texts (Bunhan kenkyū kai 文範研究会), the years from 1875 to 1922 saw the publication of (at least) 79 style guides on letters. Of those 79, a full 50 were published from 1900 to 1922, suggesting a considerable increase in interest in the form. |
9 | To the best of my knowledge, almost no writers consider the possibility that letters could, or should, avoid straightforward, sincere expression. Sasaki Nobutsuna is the one exception to the rule, arguing that in messages admonishing the recipient, roundabout expression may be more effective. See: (Chikuhakuen 1906). |
10 | See: (Diaries 1906). The bundan (文壇) is typically described as a loose coterie of influential writers and publishers who both dictate access to favored publishing outlets and occupy seats on prestigious literary prize committees. Though less powerful in modern times as publishing outlets and prize committees have democratized and diversified, the bundan system was a stubborn roadblock—or significant boon—for writers attempting to make a name for themselves in the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa eras. |
11 | A trend best exemplified by Katai’s publication of “Frank Expression” (Rokotsunaru byōsha 露骨なる描写), in Sun (Taiyō 太陽) in February 1904. |
12 | Suzuki indeed devotes an entire chapter to the topic. See (Suzuki 1996, pp. 48–65). |
13 | The most well-known of these arguments is: (Nakamura 1958). |
14 | This fact Katai himself would willingly assert. See: (Nagayo 1915, p. 74). |
15 | The international phenomenon of the New Woman was a feminist ideal that sought to deploy radical social change to challenge the long-entrenched patriarchal establishment. Initially emerging in England in the late 19th century, and most famously embodied in the female characters of Henry James’s (1843–1916) novels, the term began circulating in early 20th century Japan owing to the rapid translation of Western scholarship. In the Japanese context, the moniker New Woman is most closely associated with the feminist magazine Bluestockings (Seitō 青鞜, 1911–1916) and its coterie of women writers and thinkers, though in common parlance it has been used to denote any women understood as “new” in their individual eras. New Women are typically identified by such physical markers as new forms of dress and hair styles, and their visible flaunting of traditional mores, and less visibly through their high rates of education. For a detailed overview of the phenomenon in both international and Japanese contexts, see (Malony et al. 2016, pp. 224–68). |
16 | As far as I can tell, more than an appellation for existing young women, the 堕落女学生 was a media phenomenon popularized by such print media as the Mainichi Shimbun, whose 35-article series「女学生堕落物語」was apparently intended to be moral hectoring as much as it was “news.” See: (Watanabe 1992). |
17 | I owe this excellent and persuasive reading to the suggestion of an anonymous reviewer. |
18 | Of course, the development of genbun’itchi had significant practical consequences for Japanese fiction. If by deploying the neutral -ru and -ta verb endings Japanese writers had finally uncovered a method for mimicking the third-person, omniscient narrator present in so much imported Western fiction, the rapid adoption of the vernacular in fiction also meant the denigration—and ultimately the disappearance—of the myriad styles and subject positions available to premodern writers. At the turn of the 20th century, however, and as my argument seeks to make clear, the trajectory of the genbun’itchi-versus-the-rest narrative was yet to be determined. |
19 | Other writers expressed similar sentiments. Yoda Gakkai, for example, described a similar feeling when reading the letters of Rai San’yō. See: (Gakkai 1905). |
20 | Among others, Shibusawa Eiichi advanced a similar argument: “The act of writing a letter is like meeting someone face to face. In other words, it is a matter of getting one person to fully understand what another person means to express.” 「手紙を書くというふことは、猶人と対面する如きものである。要は当方の意のある所を、遺憾なく十分に、先方に会得せしむるにあると思ふ。」 See: (Shibusawa 1905, p. 4). |
21 | Fujimori and Levy continue to set the standard here. |
22 | For a discussion of Japanese modernism’s penchant for mixing high and low culture, see: (Gardner 2003). |
23 | Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) is widely recognized as the most significant writer within the canon of modern Japanese literature. |
24 | Seki Reiko even notes this narrative dominated the period. See (Seki 2003, p. 52). |
25 | Kuroda summarizes this argument thusly: 明治三十年代後半、「公衆に向かって書く」「アート」としての「手紙文学」「手紙小説」という制度がメディアによって創設され、そして明治四十年代にかけてその呼称とともに普及してゆく。この事態の背後には、〈手紙〉が未だ〈文学〉たり得ていないという「西欧」の〈文学〉に対する劣等感ともいうべき危機的認識があったと同時に、当時の文芸思潮が〈文学〉に要求した要素を〈手紙〉という言説形式が保持しているのだという共有された強固な認識があったのだといえるだろう。その要素はすなわち、書き手の「感情」「面目」「真情」などと言い換えられもする一連の心性のことで、〈手紙〉にはそうした書き手の心性が十全に表象されているという〈信仰〉にも似た〈共同幻想〉が広範に分有されているのである。 In the latter half of the Meiji 30s, the system of “Epistolary Literature and Epistolary Novels as ‘art’ ‘written for a public audience’” was established by certain media before circulating more widely in the 40s together with those appellations. Underlying these developments was the sense of crisis—or otherwise put, the sense of inferiority—vis-à-vis the West because letters had not yet attained the status of literature proper in Japan. There was also the widely shared assumption that the form of the letter contained the essential elements demanded by contemporary literary discourse. To wit, letters contained the writers’ “emotion”, “appearance”, or “sentiment”, or what otherwise might be termed their “mentality”, and the idea that letters perfectly expressed this mentality took on the character of religious creed, a kind of widely proliferated shared illusion (Kuroda 2005, p. 11). |
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Niehaus, K. Letter Troubles: Rereading Futon in Conversation with Japan’s Epistolary Discourse. Humanities 2023, 12, 57. https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040057
Niehaus K. Letter Troubles: Rereading Futon in Conversation with Japan’s Epistolary Discourse. Humanities. 2023; 12(4):57. https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040057
Chicago/Turabian StyleNiehaus, Kevin. 2023. "Letter Troubles: Rereading Futon in Conversation with Japan’s Epistolary Discourse" Humanities 12, no. 4: 57. https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040057