Emil Hoelter

Dr. Richard

Practicum II

Term Report

Feb. 23rd, 2003

 

But Are They Really Japanese?

Edogawa Rampo and Nakahara Chuya:

Popular Literature of the Taisho Period

 

              In reading the literature of the Taisho period (1912-26), one has a sense of a Japan quite different from any other period.  Though the reign of Emperor Taisho was very brief, it saw the widespread incorporation of Western technology and culture, the rise of national pride, and the acknowledgement of Japan as a world power.  However, it was also a period where political assassinations, colonialism, nationalism, an increase in the cost of rice, and legislature designed to abort the new democratic and socialist movements gave people a sense of moral ambiguity.  Here we will look briefly at two different representations of the Taisho era, one a mystery and horror novel writer, the other a young poet.

 

Edogawa Rampo: Thrilling Taisho

 

              In addition to the now well-known novelists of Taisho--Natsume Soseki and Mori Ogai, for example--there were many writers specializing in popular genres.  In addition to the popularization of samurai novels, Western styles of mystery and thriller stories were created, especially by a man named Edogawa Rampo.

              Or rather, by a man named Hirai Taro, who took as his pen name an approximation of "Edgar Allen Poe", Edogawa Rampo (江戸川乱歩).  His name itself, often dismissed as simply convenient for phonetic reasons, could be translated as something like "A violent walk along the Edo River"--not too different from the titles of his novels.  Rampo's work would eventually be seen as part of the "ero-guro-nansensu" genre of Japanese popular fiction: an abbreviation of the words eroticism, grotesqueness and nonsense.

The labeling of Edogawa Rampo's work as "ero-guro" indicates something important about its role in Japanese culture.  Rampo was one of the first writers to try to present a perceptively "Western" style of story, one which thrilled Taisho-era audiences with its depictions of shadowy worlds neither explicitly Japanese nor Western, and the word with which such stories were identified was itself borrowed English.  This probably did not affect Rampo too much, as he was fond of using foreign words in katakana in his stories, and of giving audiences details that felt very modern and exotic.  For example, in Kurotokage (黒蜥蜴, "The Black Lizard"), he begins with a description of a Christmas Eve party set in an apparently-boarded-up building along "this capital's dark avenue":

ナイトクラブの広々としたフロアに、数十人の男女が、或る者は　をあげてブラボーを呼ぶ、或る者はだんだら染めの尖り帽子を横っちょにして踊りくるい、或る者は逃げまどう少女をゴリラの恰好で追いまわし、或る者は泣きわめき、或る者は怒りくるっている上を、五色の粉紙が雪と舞い、五色のテープが滝と落ち、数知らぬ真赤の風船玉が、むせかえる煙草のけむりの雲の中を、とまどいをして乱れ飛んでいた。  (On the wide nightclub floor were about ten couples; one person raised his glass and shouted "Bravo," one person in a flopping party hat danced, one person chased a group of fleeing girls while acting like a gorilla, one person sobbed loudly, one person was beginning to become angry, multi-colored confetti danced like snow, multi-colored tape streamed down like waterfalls, and an unknown number of bright red balloons, in the middle of a suffocating cloud of tobacco smoke, drifted aimlessly like boats lost at sea.--11.)

              As engaging as the world of Kurotokage is, the title character herself is what gives the story its lasting appeal.  Kurotokage is a master thief, but in addition to stealing priceless jewels, it is revealed that she also collects humans, who she pickles and transforms into exhibits in her island fortress, a weird obsession with youthful beauty.  In order to accomplish her daring robberies, she has to disguise herself as both men and women, and employ her gruff bodyguard Jun, one of the partygoers in the prior description.  While Jun comes to understand the real nature of his boss, initially he seems only to be familiar with her in her other guise, as the "Dark Angel".  The benefactress of the elaborate Christmas party, Kurotokage is described as the "queen of the dark avenue".  We are told she excels in manners, poise, costume, and that "even if you took just one of these, it would more than qualify her to be a queen, but she further possessed an even more excellent charm.  She was a bold and daring exhibitionist" (12-3).  In this guise as a seductress, Kurotokage even delves into a bit of Orientalism, performing her "Jeweled Dance", in which she strips off all of her clothes and gyrates "like at the Egyptian Court", making the tattoo of a black lizard on her shoulder appear to crawl all over her body.

              Thus in Kurotokage we find a character who is decidedly female, but carries masculine traits (she refers to herself with the masculine pronoun "boku", she disguises herself as a man several times), who is theoretically Japanese but seems to possess an exotic charm (which is described in relation to Egypt, but in the label "dark angel"--ﾀﾞｰｸｴﾝｼﾞｪﾙ--is also Westernized), who is at once a master hostess and a terrifying criminal.

              In particular, she is a terror towards young people, as her victims are invariably youth from around the world, but in the story the focus is on her pursuit of Sanaye, a young Japanese woman who Kurotokage wants as her next human statue.  This is not at all uncommon of Rampo villains; frequently his stories feature older adults who prey on youth, as in "Hito de nai koi" (人で無い恋, Inhuman Love), in which a young girl who marries an older aristocratic man is sealed up in an underground storehouse, where she becomes a sort of "mononoke", a vengeful female spirit.  If there is a message to Taisho audiences, it is a terrific warning to young people: your elders are out to get you!  Despite the fantasy of horror fiction, it is always involved in the very real fears of its creator and, if it is popular, in the fears of its readers.  The fact that so many of Rampo's novels were bestsellers suggests that this theme of "youth in peril" struck a chord with Taisho and Showa audiences.

Kurotokage's foil, the detective Akechi Kogoro (Edogawa Rampo's perennial detective hero) is presented as being her equal, but he is almost entirely Western in his detection methods.  Subsequently, when Kurotokage is at last caught (and takes poison rather than allow herself to be arrested), it is to Detective Akechi that she reveals her more feminine side.  In a rare glimpse of warmth, she returns Sanaye, still alive, to the police, and gives Detective Akechi a glimpse of vulnerability that an audience would expect from a female character, but in this case, not entirely:

“あたし、あなたの胸を抱かれていますのね……嬉しいわ……あたし、こんな仕合わせな死に方ができようとは、想像もしていませんでしたわ”.明智はその意味をさとらないではなっかた。一種不思議な感情を味わわないではなっかた。しかしそれは口に出して答えるすべのない感情であった。  ("You're hugging me to your chest, aren't you…I'm so glad…I never could have imagined such a fortunate way to die".  It wasn't that Akechi didn't grasp the meaning of this.  It didn't strike him as particularly odd.  But he felt that there was no reply he could give. Rampo,240)

              Like Poe in 19th century American fiction, Edogawa Rampo is credited with creating one of the first detective characters to appear in a series of stories.  Also like Poe, he created a series of memorably shocking stories in which elements of ancient and modern Japan intermixed, thrilling Taisho- and Showa-era audiences with an image of a shadowy Japan that could be lurking down any "dark avenue".

 

Nakahara Chuya: Japan's Wartime Angst?

 

              A contemporary of Edogawa Rampo, the young poet Nakahara Chuya seems almost like a distillation of the image of the troubled modern Japanese youth.  Best known for his collection Arishihi no uta (在りし日の歌, "Poems of Bygone Days"), Nakahara Chuya lived from the close of the Meiji era to the beginning of the Showa, but died at the age of thirty.  His love for an older woman (a silent screen actress who did not return his affection) was a major influence on his writing, as was his affiliation with the Taisho-era Dadaist movement.  It was through this influence that Chuya wrote poems regarding life in Europe during World War I, despite having no personal knowledge of it.

              Nakahara's sense of romance in his poetry is one of longing and yet a sense that his loneliness was itself a good thing.  For example, his poem "Fuyu no yoru" (冬の夜, A Winter's Night) begins:

              みなさん今夜は静かです                         Everyone, tonight is quiet

              薬鐶の音がしてゐます                            You know the sound of the kettle

              僕は女を想つてる                                          I'm imagining a woman

              僕には女がないのです                            Because I don't have a woman

 

              それで苦労もないのです                            But I also don't have any suffering

              えもいはれない弾力の                            An indescribable flexibility

              空気のやうな空想に                                          In an airy fantasy

              女を描いてみてゐるのです                         Because I am trying to imagine a woman

              In what could almost be read as "anti-romance", Nakahara praises the virtue of being single, and free to imagine any woman one wants, over having an actual relationship.  While it is probable that there is some self-delusion in this poem (In reality, Nakahara was relentlessly depressed over his unattainable love), there is also a declaration of individualism present here, not unlike the poetry of Emily Dickinson, for example, that seems completely at home in the Taisho age, a celebration of one's solitude--later described by Nakahara as "an indescribable cocktail" (えもいはれないカクテールです)--that would not have been as resonant with pre-Meiji audiences, nor would it seem as convincing after World War II.

              But there is also a sense of exoticism, not unlike Edogawa Rampo's fiction, in Nakahara's more Dadaist poems.  Here he deals with the rather distant war in Europe, but also anticipates some of the militarism that was developing in Japan as well.  In "Shujitsu kyoran" (秋日狂乱, Fall Madness), he drags the war in Europe into his quiet day in the park, as if it were a mad daydream:

              それにしても今日は好いお天気で  And the weather's nice today

              さつきから沢山の飛行機が飛んでゐる              A lot of airplanes are flying by

　　　　　―欧羅巴は戦争を起すのか起さないのか              --Is the war in Europe going on or not

              誰がそんなこと分かるものか                      Does anyone even know?

 

              今日はほんとに好いお天気で                      The weather is truly nice today

              空の青も涙にうるんでゐる                          The blue in the sky is shining like tears

              ポプラがヒラヒラヒラヒラしてゐる                 The leaves of the poplar are fluttering

              子供等は先刻昇天した                    All the children went up to Heaven just a

moment ago.

              While Nakahara has no personal knowledge of the war, he is able to evoke it as something that is casually on the minds of Japanese youth, a "fall madness".  At the same time, the war was not completely removed from the Japanese people, since it was through their alliance against Germany that Japan was able to acquire German colonies in China, and begin to construct the military regime that would mark the beginning of the Showa era.  The children Nakahara sees "flying up to Heaven" may very soon be Japanese (or Chinese, or Korean) children, and especially from the perspective of a post-war reader, it seems like Nakahara saw some of what was in store for his own country in the war in the Europe.  Thus when he urges us, in "Shunjitsu kyoran" (春日狂乱, Spring Madness) to shake hands "with a proper tempo" in the absence of honest emotion, one has a certain image of the militarism Nakahara would have seen beginning in Japan:

              ではみなさん、                                Well then, everybody,

              喜び過ぎず悲しみ過ぎず                         Not too happy, not too sad,

              テンポ正しく、握手をしませう。                     With a proper tempo, let's shake hands.

 

            つまり、我等に欠けてるものは、      After all, these are the things we lack:

              実直なんぞと、心得まして。                       Sincerity, and even more so, meaning.

 

              ﾊｲ、ではみなさん、ﾊｲ、御一緒に―              Ok, well then, everyone, ok, all together--

              テンポを正しく、握手をしませう。     With a proper tempo, let's shake hands.

 

              Despite the differences in writing styles, both Edogawa Rampo and Nakahara Chuya reflect the fundamental duality of the Taisho era: an age enlivened by modernization and the exoticism of the West, and yet an age living in fear of government repression.  The timeliness of Rampo's thriller novels might be expressed in this way: he saw in both Japan and the West a new sort of dynamic monster, the master thief who steals young beauties, or any of the several traditional Japanese men and women who seal away young people in attics and caves, as in the short story "Hito de nai koi" (人で無い恋, Inhuman Love).  His was a world the dangers of both Japan and the West were immanently present, waiting to capture unsuspecting youth.  Similarly, Nakahara Chuya wrote of young people who were antagonized not from the outside, but from within, by fears of meaninglessness in the face of the European war.  He wrote of the substitution of routine for emotion, and praised solitude over physical relationships.  There is a powerful anxiety in Nakahara's poetry, but unlike Rampo's stories were young people are the passive victims of predatory adults, for Nakahara they are the active participants in the contemporary dialogue between vibrancy and repression, both celebrating and denouncing the two.

              If there is any trend in these two authors that connects them to subsequent popular literature in Japan, it is perhaps their orientation towards youth culture, and their flexible, "Japanese-but-not-Japanese" feel.  Edogawa Rampo continues to thrill audiences (Kurotokage has been filmed twice, and produced on TV, as have many of his other stories), and Nakahara Chuya's poems are popular especially with young men, but in both cases, they can be as easily enjoyed by Western audiences, removed from the specifics of the Taisho period.  Like much of modern anime, manga, and popular novels, what is "Japanese" about these men is very real, but can be translated into what is "American" about an American audience, making them borderless, despite the rather tight borders that produced them.