Nagai Kafu's Occidentalism

Rachael Hutchinson

Description

Nagai Kafū (1879–1959) spent more time abroad than any other writer of his generation, firing the Japanese imagination with his visions of America and France. Applying the theoretical framework of Occidentalism to Japanese literature, Rachael Hutchinson explores Kafū's construction of the Western Other, an integral part of his critique of Meiji civilization. Through contrast with the Western Other, Kafū was able to solve the dilemma that so plagued Japanese intellectuals—how to modernize and yet retain an authentic Japanese identity in the modern world. Kafū's flexible positioning of imagined spaces like the "West" and the "Orient" ultimately led him to a definition of the Japanese Self. Hutchinson analyzes the wide range of Kafū's work, particularly those novels and stories reflecting Kafū's time in the West and the return to Japan, most unknown to Western readers and a number unavailable in English, along with his better-known depictions of Edo's demimonde. Kafū's place in Japan's intellectual history and his influence on other writers are also discussed.
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Constructing the “West”: Binarism and Complexity in Kafū’s America

2. Imagining Authenticity: Literature and Civilization in Kafū’s France

3. Positioning the Observer: Kafū’s ‘Orient’ and Orientalism

4. Occidentalism: Contrast and Critique in the Returnee Stories

5. Resistance: Defining and Preserving the Japanese Self

Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• History of Asia
• Japan
• Asia

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781438439082
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Nagai Kafū's Occidentalism
Defining the Japanese Self
RACHAEL HUTCHINSON

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2011 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hutchinson, Rachael.
Nagai Kafu's occidentalism : defining the Japanese self / Rachael Hutchinson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3907-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Nagai, Kafu, 1879–1959—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Civilization, Western, in literature. 3. East and West in literature. 4. Japan—In literature. I. Title.
PL812.A4Z6565 2011
895.6'344—dc22
2011003126
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Acknowledgments
The bulk of this volume was completed on a sabbatical supported by a Picker Research Fellowship, granted by the Colgate University Research Council. I owe sincere thanks to Julie Nelson Davis and Cappy Hurst of the University of Pennsylvania Center for East Asian Studies for hosting me as visiting researcher for 2006–2007. The original research project was carried out at the University of Oxford, with the generous support of the Kobe Steel Postgraduate Scholarship at St. Catherine's College, in conjunction with an Overseas Research Students' Award. The dissertation was completed with the assistance of the TEPCO Senior Studentship at Pembroke College. I would like to express my sincere thanks to my dissertation supervisor, Brian Powell, for his confidence in my approach and his continued support. I am grateful to many people for their insightful comments on various stages of the manuscript, including Roger Goodman, Arthur Stockwin, Ann Waswo, Phillip Harries, Keiko Tanaka, Stephen Dodd, Peter Kornicki, and Ivo Smits. I thank Mark Morris, Atsuko Sakaki, Susan Napier, Stephen Snyder, and Charles Shirō Inouye for their useful questions at conferences and workshops. For their encouragement I must thank Mark Williams, Michael Bourdaghs, Faye Yuan Kleeman, Hiroshi Nara, Caroline Rose, Frances Weightman, Nicky Bray, and Jacqui Langford. I must also acknowledge the support and encouragement given to me by Henry Chan and Leith Morton, who saw this project grow from its very beginnings in my Honours thesis at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Leith challenged me to find my own response to Kafū's material, and gave me the confidence to carry through with it, while Henry's teaching on national and cultural identity has shaped all my work to the present day.
For funding that enabled me to present my work at a number of conferences, I would like to thank the British Academy, the British Association of Japanese Studies Council, Gakushūin Women's University, the University of Leeds School of Modern Languages and Cultures, the Colgate University Faculty Development Council, and the University of Delaware College of Arts and Sciences. Many thanks are due to Hiroshi Nara, Amy Dooling and Fred Dickinson for inviting me to present on my research at the University of Pittsburgh, Connecticut College, and the University of Pennsylvania. I would like to thank Jeffrey Angles for his warm welcome in Kalamazoo, especially for showing me Kafū's boarding houses and introducing me to so many people interested in the local history. Many thanks go to the Soga Japan Center for supporting my talk at the University of Western Michigan, where discussion and questions were very helpful.
Some material in Chapter 1 appeared originally in a somewhat different form in Monumenta Nipponica 62.3 (Autumn 2007), pp. 323–345. Chapter 1 also includes some material revised from the essay ‘Who Holds the Whip? Power and Critique in Nagai Kafū's Tales of America ,’ in Rachael Hutchinson and Mark Williams (eds.), Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature: A Critical Approach , Routledge, British Association of Japanese Studies Series, 2006, pp. 57–74. Some parts of Chapter 4 are revised from my article “Occidentalism and Critique of Meiji: The West in the Returnee Stories of Nagai Kafū,” Japan Forum , 13.2 (2001) pp. 195–213.
I am grateful to the University of Delaware College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures for granting a publication subvention for this book, and to Nancy Ellegate at SUNY Press for her guidance in manuscript preparation. I thank the two anonymous readers of my text whose questions and comments helped me refine my approach and express it more clearly. Thanks go to Carrie Lorensen for her help in retyping sections of the manuscript. I am extremely grateful to Izumi Tytler and her staff at the Bodleian Japanese Library for all their help and advice, as well as the helpful people at the East Asian Library at Princeton University. I would like to thank all my students at the University of Leeds, Colgate University, and the University of Delaware for listening to my ideas on Nagai Kafū during our literature courses, regardless of whether he was included in the original syllabus.
Finally, I thank my family, who have supported all my efforts with unceasing good humor and encouragement. I am sorry that my Mum is not around to see the final product of a project that took so long in the making, but thank her and my Dad for their unfailing support through the years. My sister Ruth has long put up with my ramblings on Orientalism, while the Bohm family provided a cheerful environment in which many early drafts of chapters were first completed. Thanks especially to my wonderful husband Chris and daughter Natalie, who help me every day to do my work and be a Mum as well.

Japanese names will be given in the Japanese order, with family name first. I follow general usage with writers' names, so that Tanizaki Jun'ichirō is referred to as Tanizaki while Natsume Sōseki is referred to as Sōseki. Where the pen name is more recognizable than the given name it is used throughout—Futabatei Shimei instead of Hasegawa Tatsunosuke; Nagai Kafū instead of Nagai Sōkichi.
Introduction
In the opening years of the twentieth century, Japanese intellectuals were faced with a pressing, seemingly unsolvable question. How could Japan modernize without losing its sense of identity, rooted in hundreds of years of aesthetic tradition? In the rapidly changing environment of the Meiji period (1868–1912), was modernization just another word for Westernization? How could Japan achieve an indigenous kind of modernity? By 1900, Japan already had overcome many of the initial, practical problems involved with rapid industrialization and the institution of a new government. The colonization of Taiwan, following victory over China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, heralded a new age of territorial expansion, to be cemented with victory over Russia in 1905 and the addition of Korea as a protectorate in the same year. The Japanese were no longer on the receiving end of Western imperialist pressure, but exploring the role of imperialist themselves. But what was the role of Japan to be on the world stage? How could Japan assert itself as a nation without becoming the clone of other modern nations? The idea of entering the modern world without sacrificing the Japanese identity seemed both impossible and crucial. Politicians, journalists, and novelists alike debated the “modern dilemma” verbally and in print. Vital to the discussion were a small number of people who brought a fresh perspective to the problem. Those who had traveled abroad and experienced the culture and power of modern nations firsthand were seen to have special insight into both the processes of modernization and the importance of indigenous culture.
One group of writers in particular was significant in the discussion. Mori Ōgai (1862–1922), Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), Nagai Kafū (1879–1959), and Shimazaki Tōson (1872–1943) all traveled in Europe and saw the countries of the West with their own eyes. Of these writers, Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki in particular have been regarded as great thinkers and critics of civilization. Their works grapple with the pressing question of Japan's changing identity in the modern world, as well as the authors' own personal positions as cultural ambassadors occupying a liminal space between the East and the West. Shimazaki Tōson most recently has been examined at length in terms of Meiji nationalism ( Bourdaghs, 2003 ), while his “pilgrimage” to France is one of the best-known journeys of that period ( Rimer, 1988 ). Of all these authors, however, it was Nagai Kafū who created the most persuasive argument for the definition and preservation of Japanese identity. In Japan, the association of Kafū with Japanese identity is a strong one. In the growing nationalism of the 1930s, it was Kafū's work that inspired a closer focus on cultural authenticity. Although the words “authentic” and “genuine” do not point to any tangible reality, they were significant ideas in early twentieth-century discourse as intellectuals strove to articulate Japan's national cultural identity. 1 Kafū's strong argument for the importance of traditional Japanese culture in Edo geijutsuron (On the Arts of Edo, 1913–1914) formed the basis for Kuki Shūzō's Iki no kōzō (The Structure of Detachm