Enchi Fumiko and Re - Writing Postwar Japan - Translating Classics, Women, and Nation

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ENCHI FUMIKO AND RE-WRITING POSTWAR JAPAN:
TRANSLATING CLASSICS, WOMEN, AND NATION
Seiko Yoshinaga
A DISSERTATION
in
Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Presented to the Faculties o f the University o f Pennsylvania in Partial
Fulfillment o f the Requirements for the Degree o f Doctor o f Philosophy
2001
Dr. Ayako Kano

Supervisor o f Dissertation
Dr. G. Cameron Hurst

Graduate Group Chairperson
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Copyright 2001 by
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COPYRIGHT
Seiko Yoshinaga
2001

iii
ABSTRACT
ENCHI FUMIKO AND RE-WRITING POSTWAR JAPAN:
TRANSLATING CLASSICS, WOMEN, AND NATION
Seiko Yoshinaga
Dr. Ayako Kano
In postwar Japan an essentialist image o f “Woman” was widely distributed in male-
centered literary-critical circles. Enchi Fumiko was a 20th C. Japanese women writer who
resisted this discourse imposed on women and women writers by masculinist/nationalist
critics.
In Part One I introduce three postwar literary debates that revolved around issues o f
gender, nation and literature. I show how critics used a conceptualization o f “Woman" to
construct a nationalist ideology o f a unitary “feminine" Japan victimized by the West: how
essentialist criticism of Enchi’s work marginalized the status o f women writers in the
postwar literary establishment; and what strategies Enchi used to counter this masculinist
discourse.
In Part Two I demonstrate Enchi’s critique o f these essentialist and nationalist
views of women and Japan by an examination o f the theory and practice guiding her
translation into modem Japanese o f the best-known Japanese classic. The Tale o f Genji.
After discussing the relation of translation theory to ideology and resistance, I focus on the
role of canonicity and ideology in the Genji translations o f Enchi. Yosano Akiko and

Tanizaki Jun'ichiro. I follow this with a close analysis of Enchi’s Genji translation as an
example of “transformance”--translation as a performative act. Part Two concludes with
an Appendix comparing the Japanese texts o f the translations by Enchi, Yosano and
Tanizaki, Tamagami Takuya’s scholarly edition of the classical text, and the English
translation by Edward G. Seidensticker.
In Part Three I analyze several o f Enchi’s postwar novels and short stories,
focussing on the themes of violence and gender to show that, and how, her own fictions
represent a challenge to the prevailing postwar masculinist and nationalist ideologies. In
her novels. Southern Skin, Women's Cocoon, and A House Without a Dining Table, and her
short stories. “Skeletons of Men,” “Boxcar o f Chrysanthemums,” and “Voices o f Snakes."
Enchi deals with the marriage system (wife, mistress, prostitute); paternal authority and
motherhood; victimization; wartime violence and domestic violence; revolution and
tradition--in each instance engaging in a “transformative” re-writing of women in/and
postwar Japan.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Part I. Postwar Literature and Women Writers
Chapter 1. Postwar Debates and “Woman”------------------------------------------------ 18
Chapter 2. Masculinist Critics and Enchi Fumiko--------------------------------------- 50
Chapter 3. Responses and Strategies o f Enchi--------------------------------------------- 79
Part II. Translation o f The Tale o f Genji into Modem Japanese: Yosano Akiko, Tanizaki
Jun'ichiro and Enchi Fumiko
Chapter 1. Theories o f Translation: Ideology and Resistance------------------------- 119
Chapter 2. Canonicity and Ideologies: Days o f Yosano. Tanizaki and Enchi----- 152
Chapter 3. Enchi's Genji: Translation as Transformance------------------------------ 195
Chapter 4. Appendix: Japanese Texts o f Enchi's Genji as Transformance-------- 230
Part III. Violence and Gender: Enchi's Re-Writing o f Modem Women and Japan
Chapter 1. Within and Without the Marriage System: Wife and Prostitute:
Southern Skin and Skeletons o f Men----------------------------------------------- 272
Chapter 2. Victimization and Resuscitation: War Violence and Domestic Violence:

Women’s Cocoon and Boxcar o f Chrysanthemums---------------------------- 308
Chapter 3. Revolution and Tradition: Paternal Authority and Motherhood: A House

Without A Dining Table and Voices o f Snakes----------------------------------- 342
Conclusion--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 385
Bibliography------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 388

INTRODUCTION
Why Enchi Fumiko?
Enchi Fumiko was a twentieth century Japanese writer known for her stories about
modem women, their bodies, their karma, their tenacity, their agency. She was also
famous for translating into modem Japanese that formidably long Japanese classic, Genji
monogatari [The Tale of Genji]. Her critical essays were devoted to reflections about the
Japanese classics, the modem reader, and the language and agency o f the translator.
Because of her considerable knowledge o f classical Japanese literature, she generally-
passed as a classicist using classical materials in her modem fictions. In sum. Enchi was
categorized as a writer with two dimensions: one as a writer o f "belles lettres" in line with
Tanizaki Jun'ichiro and Mishima Yukio. the other as one o f the postwar women writers
who wrote “auto-biographical” stories about their "sexuality.” However, the reason why
Enchi was renowned as a national writer and awarded the bunka kunsho [Cultural Order] in
1985 is that she was recognized to have revived Japanese classical literature in her
translations and her modem fictions. The prize was given to writers judged to be bearers
of tradition. As we will see, this classification o f Enchi originated from postwar discourses
about the nature o f literature, the nation, women, and women writers.
In Part One we will investigate what kind o f literature was regarded as ideal in
literary circles after the war, and how women and women writers in particular were viewed
in that same period. I will illustrate the tight relation between literature, nation, and gender
in postwar literary debates—first, how widely images o f "W oman” was circulated in
masculinist critical and literary narratives in the postwar period: and second, how such

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images stimulated women writers like Enchi Fumiko to exercise their agency o f resistance.
One o f the strategies of her resistance was her modem translation o f the Tale o f
Genji. As I shall argue in Part Two, the significance o f this major literary accomplishment
was not properly understood by critics, being credited simply as one o f many
reproductions of such classics. That is, their reviews focused on the value o f the Genji as
a part o f the literary canon and on Enchi’s skill as a reproducer o f the classic, but paid no
attention to her agency as a translator. Even feminist critics, who usually valued Enchi's
literature highly as acts of intervention on behalf o f women, did not realize the import of
her translation.1 They could not see how her activity as a translator o f the classics was
related to her rewriting o f women in her modem fictions. As we shall see. in translating
the Genji Enchi was not merely reproducing and re-canonizing the canonical classic, rather
she was exercising her agency as a modem woman writer. In her translation Enchi
challenged the feminine and peaceful image o f the Genji, o f Heian culture, and o f “Japan”
which critics had attempted to construct. Specifically, her translations o f the classics were
intended to counter a masculinist postwar construction o f gender and nation—first, how
Genji had been canonized as “national” literature' and second, how Genji had been
gendered and aestheticized in previous translations by translators such as Tanizaki
Jun’ichiro and Yosano Akiko. Through a detailed analysis o f representative examples
from each of these three translators it will be clear how Enchi contested such ideological
interpretations and achieved her own performative translation, her own “trans-formance” or
'Only Takenishi Hiroko made several insightful points about Enchi's translation.
See “K aisetsir [Commentary], by Takenishi Hiroko. Enchi Fumiko-yaku: Genji
monogatari. vol. 5 (Tokyo: Shinchosha. 1972). pp. 466-472.

re-writing of the classics and Japan.
Another o f Enchi’s transformative acts as a woman writer was her “translation” or
re-writing o f the lives and sexuality o f women in her own modem fictions. No one was
more conscientiously aware than Enchi o f the violence involved not only in her agency as a
translator but also in her activity as a writer. Conscious o f such violence and the dilemma
it posed, in her modem fictions she translated other w om en's lives into her own language
through the medium of her own body and experiences.2 In Part Three three of Enchi's
novels and three o f her short stories will provide evidence for this thesis.
W ho is Enchi Fum iko?3
There are several points I would like to bring to the reader's attention as important
for an understanding of Enchi's life and works. First, her career and activity as a fiction
writer spanned and covered the time from the end o f WWII through the mid-1980s. That
means she experienced the three stages o f the postwar period: 1945 through the mid-1960s,
the period of recovery from the wartime damage: the mid-1960s through the 1970s. the
period o f reconstruction and rapid economic growth; and the mid-1980s, the era o f the rise
o f consumerism. Enchi’s stories about women, as well as her modem translation o f Genji,
must be situated in this historical, socio-economic, and political context.
2Enchi employs the terms “reibai" [medium] for the language and “baitaC’
[intermediary] for her agency as a translator. Enchi Fumiko, Uen no hitobito to [With
People I Came to Know] (Tokyo: Bungei shunjusha. 1986). p. 143.
'There are a number o f biographies about Enchi. For a brief overview, see the
chronological table o f Enchi's life in Sunami Toshiko, Enchi Fumiko-ron [On Enchi
Fumiko] (Tokyo: Ofu. 1992); and the entry on Enchi in John Lewell. Modern Japanese
Novelists: A Biographical Dictionary (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1993).
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Second, Enchi was bom in 1905, the second daughter o f the noted scholar and
founder o f Japanese linguistics, Ueda Kazutoshi (1867-1937), and died in 1986.4 The rare
opportunity she had o f encountering books in multiple fields was due to the status and
financial power o f her father who had a considerable library at home. Not only did she
have a chance to read Japanese classical and modem literature, she learned to read classical
Chinese texts in the original, and studied French and English with private tutors. Every
day she also commuted to the public library to read world literature in Japanese translation.
In short, both her fictions and her modem translations o f Japanese classics came through
her contact with multiple languages and literatures.5 As we shall see. while privileged by
these many resources, she attempted to create a new language by drawing on her “body"
and “experiences," which are in the case o f Enchi not those reflecting essentialist
definitions but those o f a “ fictional body” and “ fictional experiences.”
Third. Enchi was keenly conscious o f the status o f modem women writers,
including herself. When Enchi was only six years old (1911) the first magazine established
by women and for women writers, Seito (Bluestockings) appeared in Japan.6 On the first
4Major events involving Japan when Enchi was alive range from the Russo-
Japanese War in 1904-1905, the annexation o f Korea in 1910, the entirety to WW II, to the
late stages of the Showa reign (the Showa emperor died in 1989). In other words. Enchi's
life spanned the history o f Japanese imperialism and the postwar period.
5Citing Enchi's comments on Higuchi Ichiyo’s literature, Oe Kenzaburo pointed out

that Enchi's literature too was a product springing from two conflicting factors, for
example. Rvutei Tanehiko (1783-1842) on the one hand, and Johan August Strindberg
(1849-1912) on the other, or Genji monogatari on the one hand, and so on. Enchi. Uen no
hitobito to, pp. 142-143.
6One year before, in 1910. Japan annexed Korea. The same year twelve socialists,
including Kotoku Shusui and Kanno Sugako, were executed for High Treason. Seito was

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page o f the magazine Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) contributed a poem, '‘The mountain has
finally moved." Referring by “mountain” to women, Yosano was stating that Japanese
women were finally on the rise. Enchi, realizing Yosano’s dreams and following her
footsteps, became one o f the contributors to another magazine for women, Nydnin geijuisu
[Women's Arts], the first volume o f which was issued in 1929.7 From 1934 through 1941
she wrote some essays in the magazine “Kagayaku ” [Shining].8 After recovering from
major surgery in the postwar period, she resumed writing fiction and soon was
acknowledged as a leading woman writer. She was actively supportive o f her fellow
women writers as the head o f the "Joyru bungaku-kaf [Association of Women's
Literature] until her later years.9 Noting Enchi's concern about the status o f women
writers, we too will need to be aware o f the strategies by which she attempted to survive in
the male-centered literary circle of the postwar period.10
discontinued in 1916.
7See Ogata Akiko, 'Nyonin geijutsu’ no sekai [The World o f ‘Women’s Arts']
(Tokyo: Domesu, 1980); Ogata Akiko, “Nyonin geijutsu' no hitobito [Members o f
'W om en’s Arts'] (Tokyo: Domesu shuppan, 1981).
8See Ogata Akiko, 'Kagayaku'no jid a i: Hasegawa Shigure to sono shuhen [The
Era o f ‘Shining’: Hasegawa Shigure and People Around Her] (Tokyo: Domesu shuppan.
1993).
9Setouchi Harumi recollected that, when she proposed to abolish the “Joryu
bungaku sha'' [prize for women writers], Enchi insisted that it was necessary. See Setouchi
Harumi (Jakucho). “Karei-naru bdkun’’ [Splendid Tyrant], Bungaku-kai (January' 1987):
pp. 280-281.
l0Until recently a few magazines have been published under the rubric of “ for
women,” but, unlike Seito or Nyonin geijutsu, none were issued by women writers. The
trend in the current literary world in Japan seems to be moving toward abolishing the
dichotomy between male writers and women writers. For example, in 2001 the Chuo
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Fourth, there was another significant event in her life as a writer—her encounter
with a proletarian artists group after she started her career as a playwright. Joining the
Tsukiji Theater group, she came to know Osanai Kaoru (1881-1928), a playwright,
director, and theatrical impresario who was a central figure in the creation o f the modem
theater (shingeki) in the first part o f the 20th century.11 As a member o f the literary group
“Jinmin bunko"1[People’s Library], Enchi also enjoyed the friendship o f several proletarian
writers, including Kataoka Teppei (1884-1994). Enchi's sympathy for marginalized people
in Japanese society came from her contact with those leftist intellectuals. However, her
concerns and her commitment to socio-political issues have not been discussed by critics.
Thus. Enchi's award o f the Cultural Order is stressed in her biographies, reinforcing her
image as a writer o f "tradition,” but not much analysis has been given to her involvement
with these proletarian writers or her own socio-political concerns. The aversion o f critics
to this aspect o f Enchi's interests and fictions could be due to their discomfort in discussing
anything related to the Japanese Communist Party and postwar lynching incidents which 1
will discuss in Part Three.
What is the “Postwar” Period?
Although Enchi started her career as a playwright before the war. her chief works of
koron Publishing Company abolished its famous prize for women writers, “Joryu
bungaku-sha ” for which Enchi had been the head and chief member o f the selection
committee for a number o f years. It has been resumed under a new title, "Fujin koron
bungaku-sho," for which both male and women writers can compete. Further investigation
is needed before one can conclude whether women writers no longer "need” a prize
specially devised for themselves, or whether the Chuo koron Publishing Company was
merely following an egalitarian trend in making this gesture.
11Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (Tokyo: Kodansha. 1993). pp. 1166-1167.
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fiction were written after the war. Her modem translation o f Genji monogatari, too, was
published in 1972. Therefore, her major literary activity took place during the so-called
"postwar” period. Here I have to clarify the definition o f “postwar” period. What does
"postwar” mean? When does it begin and when does it end? Some critics say that it
depends on considerations of time and associated events, while others say it is related to
the issue o f responsibility and repentance on the part o f the Japanese people. Even among
the former group there is a difference o f opinion as to what period o f time sengo actually
refers to--the end of the Occupation (1952) following the San Francisco Peace Treaty? or
the end o f the Korean war (1953)? or for the entire period o f over fifty years up until now?
As for when the “postwar” begins, there is also disagreement—from the Emperor's
declaration of surrender? or from the beginning o f the Allied Occupation? or from the
commencement o f the San Francisco Peace Treaty? Furthermore, according to Dower, a
number o f dates have been listed as marking the end o f Japan's postwar period. In 1955. a
governmental document (Keizai hakusho) declared the end o f the postwar, "basing its
premature obituary notice on the fact that the overall index o f production had finally
returned to the prewar level.” In 1960, Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato launched his "income
doubling” program, another year taken to denote the transition to a new era. In 1979. the
phrase “Japan as Number One” took off. However. Dower is o f the opinion that it is more
legitimate to mark 1989 as “the true end of the ‘long postwar' that had started the moment
the emperor's voice was first heard by his subjects.”12
l2John W. Dower. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake o f World War II (New
York: W.W. Norton. 1999). pp. 558-559.

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For the most part I follow Dower’s definition o f the postwar period in this thesis.
That is. 1 tentatively mark the broadcast o f the Showa Emperor's surrender on the radio in
1945 as the beginning o f the postwar in that the Japan militarist war state was terminated
on that date. However, the definition o f the end o f the “postwar” is more complicated.
The issue o f Japan’s compensation for its wartime victims both within and without Japan
remains unsolved, and American bases continue to be stationed in Japan. Until these
matters are solved. Japan cannot be said to have come to the end o f its postwar period. In
her consistent focussing o f our attention on issues o f gender and violence in postwar Japan.
Enchi's fiction reflects a similar understanding.
What is “Postwar Literature”?
In the world of Japanese literature too there were a number o f debates about what
the term “postwar” meant. Some critics simply called any literature written after 1945
"postwar” literature. Some proposed something beyond mere dates. For example. Eto Jun
(1933-1999) called the members o f the Modem Literature Group (kindai bungaku) the first
generation o f postwar literature (dai-ichiji sengoha).13 But for him this had a negative
connotation-he likened their literature to an “abortive flower” (adabanaJ. implying their
efforts were in vain. Eto obviously meant by “postwar” the first decade after the war.
Other critics focused on the issue o f war responsibility which the Japanese government was
still dodging. They said that the Japanese people would never be free from the yoke o f the
wartime period until the government compensated the Asian countries or individuals Japan
13This group includes Hirano Ken, Honda Shugo, Haniya Yutaka, Yamamuro
Shizuka, Ara Masato. Sasaki Motokazu. Odagiri Hideo, Noma Hiroshi, Shlna Rinzo.
Takeda Taijun, et al.

had abused. For these critics, since the Japanese government had still not officially
apologized, the term “postwar” could be applied to literature from the end o f war up to the
present.
Yoshimoto Takaaki (1924--), on the other hand, criticizing all o f these definitions
and discussions of the postwar period, called it the “literature o f recantants or o f bystanders
of the war” (tenkasha mata wa senso bokansha no bungaku). In his view most
intellectuals, proletarian and non-proletarian writers alike, recanted during wartime and
then re-recanted in the postwar period, yielding to a “feudal” tendency in Japanese society
to go along with the mass movements o f the time (previously nationalism, now
democratization), afraid o f being isolated from society rather than fearing the threat from
the state. Such writers did not deserve to be called “postwar” writers, since they did not
take responsibility for the war. For Yoshimoto debates about the tag “postwar literature”
were themselves meaningless. Karatani Kojin (1941—) and a few others also object to the
view and term “postwar literature,” claiming that most “postwar” literature had already
been written even before the war, stressing, like Yoshimoto, that postwar literature was not
totally different from that of the prewar period.
“Postwar” Writer or Not?
Disagreements about the definition o f “postwar literature” also appeared in critical
discussions of Enchi's writing--were her works “modem” (in other words, “postwar”) or
"premodem" (in other words, “non-postwar”). In keeping with the debates just mentioned,
first, most critics who talked about postwar literature seemed to agree that it should
exclude literature o f belles-lettres and traditional “I-literature” (wataknshi-shosetsu) as well
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as the proletarian or Communist literature o f Japanese Realism, all o f which were
undervalued as inappropriate for a new literature in a new age. What they had in mind as a
new “ postwar literature” was literature concerning the “public” and the “social,” topics the
literary establishment had avoided ever since the emergence of the literature o f Japanese
Naturalism. Their repeated debate about “politics and literature” (seiji to bungaku) was
itself a sign o f their concern with “public” matters, whether they were pro or con the
involvement of literature in such matters. When Tachihara Masaaki called Enchi's
literature “postwar literature.” he implied that her literature was different from prewar
literature such as "classicism” (koten shngi-ha) or "belles lettres” like that o f Tanizaki
Jun'ichiro.14 Tachihara must have seen in Enchi's writing her grappling with the social
and literary problems that occurred in the postwar period. And he is right in this sense,
because as I will attempt to show in the succeeding chapters, Enchi deals with all these
postwar issues with evident concern and sincerity. However, most critics pushed Enchi's
literature aside, labeling it “pre-modem.” “asocial” and “apolitical.”
Clearly the definition o f “postwar literature” is coupled with questions of history,
that is. how we view Japanese history after WWII. Was there discontinuity or continuity
between the prewar, wartime and postwar periods, or were both these tendencies
complexly interwoven? This issue also bears on my view o f Enchi Fumiko. In her fictions
did she stand in the Japanese “tradition,” or was she a torch-bearer o f postwar
14Tachihara Masaaki comments on Enchi's “Neko no sashi" [Fairy Tale of Cats]:

"Although Enchi liked Tanizaki's writings, I suspect she [Enchi] belongs to the postwar
generation (sengo-ha).'' Tokyo Shimbun, 1974, in Enchi F um ikozenshu\Collected Works
of Enchi Fumiko], vol. 5 (Tokyo: Shinchosha. 1978). p. 433. The label, “belles lettres.”
was used o f Enchi by most other critics.

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modernization? Were her translations o f the classics designed to build a bridge between
the past and the present (continuity), or to widen the gap between the premodemity and
modernity (discontinuity)?15
“ Discontinuity” theorists who see a gap between prewar and postwar Japan usually
overestimate the “democratic reform after the war.” Their theory is as follows. After the
oppressive social systems, that is, the feudal and emperor systems, were demolished by
postwar democratization, a new age started in Japan. If we still have problems now, it is
simply because democratization has not been completed and residues o f the past age still
remain. This residue is often label “tradition” or “ethnicity,” a black box or magic category
for explaining any mysterious or inscrutable problems that might still linger in Japan.16
In those “discontinuity” theorists we can see the paradox between the construction
of “tradition” and the construction of the “new Japan after the war.” The more they
believed in the success o f democratic reform (either due to outside pressure or domestic
spontaneous insurgence), the more such intellectuals tended to scrutinize the places where
reform had failed in Japanese society. They wondered where those negative phenomena
(imperialism, sexism, paternalism, etc) came from. Unable to find a solution or
explanation, they concluded that all the negative problems came from the residue o f the
15A similar debate about continuity vs. discontinuity in Japanese can be found in
discussions o f the wartime period in Japan. Was the wartime state a continuity from the
modem regime (established in 1868) or was it a residue o f an earlier Japanese premodem
regime in the process o f modernization? Ueno Chizuko introduces and comments on three
theories: continuity; discontinuity, and neo-continuity. See Ueno Chizuko. Nashonarizumu
to jenda [Nationalism and Gender] (Tokyo: Seidosha, 1998).
l6Ueno, Nationarizumu to je n d a . p. 16.

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past—"tradition.” Their negative attitude toward so-called “traditional literature" (belles
lettres and the I-novel) in the postwar literary world can thus be accounted for. The low
evaluation o f Enchi's translations o f classics came from the same sort o f historical theory.
The second theory is the “continuity" theory (renzoku-shikan). a strong belief in the
continuity from the prewar through the postwar period. Democratization was not
introduced by Allied pressure, it had already been inaugurated with the modernization
projects in the Meiji period through to the Taisho Democracy. The “irrationality" o f WWII
was simply an unexpected event and aberration (itsudatsu) mistakenly undertaken by
Japan, the late-comer who had attempted to catch up with Western “modernization." On
the other hand, if it was not unexpected, then there must have been some inherent variant
within the Japanese culture which caused such a distortion in modernization. Maruyama
Masao accordingly called this variant Japanese “typical” “premodemity" (zen-kindaiteki-
seikaku) or "Japanese particularity" (Nihonteki-tokushusei). According to this theory, the
family system (ie-seido), for example, was branded a residue of that premodemity which
had made Japanese women unhappy. “Japanese premodemity" as transhistorical
“Japaneseness" simultaneously alienated and attracted intellectuals both in Japan and in the
West. Thus the “shamanism,” the “female medium" in Enchi's literature, for instance, was
seen by Western critics as a symbol o f “Japanese premodemity" that explained everything
mysterious about “Japanese women" and their writing both in the past and present. And
yet. as we shall see. for Enchi shamanism is not an ahistorical magical category of
premodemity. but a theatrical performative device for expressing the agency o f historical
women.

The third theory is labeled “neo-continuity” by Narita Ryuichi (1951 In his
theory not only the Meiji period system but the “war regime” (senji-taisei) during WWII
involve the process o f modernization, a new stage o f development in the modernization
project. "Neo-continuity” theorists claim that there was continuity in the nation-state
(kokumin kokka) through the wartime and postwar period. By focusing on the power of the
nation-state, which had become so naturalized that it was taken for granted, the neo
continuity theory paradoxically overcomes national boundaries, since similar state-
sponsored “war regimes” were adopted by the Allied as well as the Axis Powers.
Adopting but going beyond Narita’s proposal, the Japanese feminist critic. Ueno
Chizuko (1948--), adds the variant o f “gender” to the nation-state concept-that is. she
points to the engendered nature o f the nation-state.17 She observes that gender studies
shed light on public areas like the nation-state which have been cleverly (un-)genderized as
"gender-neutral.” 1 would like to adopt her theory o f the engendered nature of the nation
state in analyzing w om en's literature in the postwar period, with a focus on Enchi Fumiko.
Narita argues that the power o f the nation-state was not only strengthened by
“mobilization” during the war, but has been continuously reinforced through the postwar
period to date. At the same time, according to Ueno, the “gendering” o f the nation-state,
which contributed to the state policy o f mobilization during the war, became a more
visible issue globally in relation to the power of the nation-state in the postwar period. My
analysis o f Enchi Fumiko is situated in this epistemological schema.
In short, both “ continuity” theorists and “discontinuity" theorists dismissed Enchi's
l7Ibid.. p. 24.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n prohib ited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

14
work as classicism (koten shugi-ha) and dumped into the black trash box as “premodem
residue." On the other hand, Narita’s “neo-continuity” theory, supplemented by Ueno's
claims about the gendered nature of the modem nation-state, will enable us to re-view
Enchi’s work in a new light in which nation and gender criss-cross in the
continuous/discontinuous history of modem Japan. Applying this theory in the arena o f
literature, we will be able to analyze a number o f postwar literary-critical debates assumed
to be “gender-neutral" which will actually prove to be gendered. In the venue o f postwar
literature, criticism and translation in particular have escaped this kind o f scrutiny by
scholars. My project in this thesis, therefore, is to examine the “engendered nation" of
postwar masculinist critics (Part One), to see how Enchi countered that with an
"engendered translation” o f Genji monogatari (Part Two), and to further demonstrate her
resistance to such masculinist narratives in her own fictions (Part Three).
Issues Addressed by the Dissertation
Part One. Enchi Fumiko: Historical and Critical Contexts
Historical Context. The dissertation will attempt, first, to situate Enchi and her
work in its historical context, in particular with reference to three o f the most famous
postwar literary debates in the Japanese literary establishment, the bundan, debates that
took place in the highly politicized setting o f Japan's cultural crisis after its wartime defeat.
Analysis o f the first o f these debates concerning postwar literature—its relation to politics
and to nationalism—will show how the critical meta-narrative was shaped by an
unacknowledged subtext o f gender politics which in turn shaped the critical reception of
Enchi Fumiko’s works.

15
In another postwar debate, masculinist intellectuals identified the defeated Japan
nation with “Woman” as the oppressed, while at the same time treating historical women
and women writers reductively and dismissively in their own literary criticism. This
doubling of the postwar masculinist literary-critical strategy—dominance through
representation o f the nation as powerless, as feminine versus the masculine West (outside),
while essentializing women and women writers domestically (inside)—is also important for
any attempt to place Enchi’s work in its proper historical and critical context.
Critical Context. Along with these historical background I will also analyze the
critical context, how wom en's writings in general and Enchi's in particular were viewed by
postwar critics. Though a number o f critical studies have dealt w ith Enchi as a
representative o f women writers, no extensive analysis has been done on the specific
question of how gender issues involving women writers were related to these postwar
literary debates by masculinist intellectuals. Even feminist critics who see Enchi's work as
a literature of resentment aimed at men ignore the postwar historical setting, tending to
focus rather on personal, private issues, as if invoking some transhistorical notion o f
“patriarchy” explained everything.
Part Two. E nchi as Translator o f Classical Japanese Women Writers
The second part o f the dissertation will be an analysis o f Enchi's translation o f
classical women writers, focussing on her translation o f the Genji monogatari. By
reversing the unidirectional process from “original” to “translation.” Enchi subverts this
traditional dichotomy and with it the chronological hierarchy “classic” and “modem."
Enchi’s translations are performative acts, “translations” as acts o f “trans-formance” o f the

16
literary tradition~the tradition o f Japanese women writers.
Part Three. Enchi as Translator o f Modern Japanese Women ’s Lives
The third part o f the dissertation will be an analysis o f examples of what I call
Enchi’s translations “from women to women,” that is, how in her own literary productions
Enchi “translated” the lives o f modem Japanese women. I shall argue that in her
"translations” o f modem women’s lives, as in her translations o f women’s stories in
classical Japanese literature, Enchi Fumiko was engaged in a critical and creative re
writing of gender and nation in the literary world o f postwar Japan.

PART ONE
POST WAR LITERATURE AND WOMEN WRITERS
What on earth is something Komachi-Iike, which men always slander, blame and
whip, even after it is reduced to a skull? 1 suspect it is m en's inverted hatred and
revenge towards the pure and eternal image o f Woman, which in fact they created
and adored as the best and the most beautiful in life, like a Goddess. (Enchi
Fumiko)18
l8Enchi Fumiko, “Komachi hen sd’ [Transformation o f Komachi], in Enchi Fumiko

:enshu., vol. 13 (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1978), p. 48.
Ono no Komachi (around mid-9th century) was ranked among the Six Poetic
Geniuses by Ki no Tsuryuki. A number o f both romantic and slanderous legends arose
because o f her reputation for beauty. For example, Komachi was said to have driven one
hundred lovers to death; o f Komachi was bom without a vagina; or Komachi's soul was
still in purgatory because she treated men so unfairly when she was alive.
The most important literary treatments o f the legend o f Komachi are five 14th and
I 5th century plays by the great (male) masters o f no: "Sashi arai Komachi" [Komachi
Washing a Manuscript); “Sekidera K om achi' [Komachi at Seki Temple); “ Omu Komachi"
[Komachi Answering Yukiie); “Sotoba Komachi” [Komachi at the Stupa); and “ Kayoi
K om achi' [Visiting Komachi). Mishima Yukio wrote a modem no play, “Sotoba
Komachi."

18
Chapter 1
Postwar Debates and “Woman”
Introduction
After WWII there emerged popular sayings in Japan such as “Women and socks
have become tougher” {onna to kutsushita wa tsuyoku natta) and “the era o f women” (onna
no jidai). The labels o f “tougher women” or “women’s era” implied an elevated status o f
women in the postwar period. The image of the seemingly strong “Woman” was widely
distributed as an object in the movies, theater performances, and literature. ^ Not only as
objects, women were also said to have emerged as subjects. A significant number o f
women writers appeared in the male-centered literary arena, as if to prove the popular
saying that it was now the “women’s era.” In postwar literary debates among male
intellectuals, too, the image of “ Woman” was frequently drawn upon by critics like Hirano
Ken, Takeuchi Yoshimi. Takeda Taijun and others.
However, as we shall see, the reality behind these sayings was different. As
reflected in their postwar literary debates, for these male intellectuals the image o f
“Woman” in fact served rather as a means of identification for the construction o f a
masculinist “national” “subjectivity."20 As Ayako Kano states, “the abstract term
|qMovies: numerous actresses like Tanaka Kinuyo. Takamine Hideko. Hara

Setsuko. Kyo Machiko and Kogure Michiyo were on the screen as protagonists. Theater:
the first nude performance. “Bmasu no tanjd'[The Birth o f Venus], at the Teito-za Theater
in Shinjuku on January 15th. 1947. and the sensational play, the “Nikutai no mon"[Gate o f
Flesh] by Tamura Taijiro. where several actresses showed their half-naked bodies.
Literature: a number o f works dealt with “Woman” as a protagonist. Ito Sei's translation
o f “Lady Chatterly’s Lover" by D. H. Lawrence, generated pros and cons in the media.
20For this insight I was stimulated by Rev Chow’s configuration o f “W oman" and
male intellectuals in Primitive Passion (NY: Columbia UP. 1995). pp. 21, 68. However.

19
'Woman ’ denoting a process o f feminization" and "the status o f ‘women ' as historical
agents" should be clearly distinguished.21 In other words, real women as politically and
socially active agents were passed over in these debates. In this chapter, I propose to
question this inflated masculinist discourse o f “Woman.” to bring to light the complexities
o f the socio-political and literary paradigm from which these misleading if not false images
were constructed, and in so doing clarify the relations between this abstract term and the
actual situation that confronted women writers in the postwar period in Japan. For this
purpose I would like to analyze three postwar debates by Japanese male intellectuals
centered around their motivated use o f the symbol o f “ Woman.”
Women—inside or outside?
There was an undeniable increase in the number o f women writers in Japan after
WW1I. This was usually attributed to the policy o f democratization-elevating the status o f
women—by the Supreme Commander o f the Allied Powers (SCAP). According to
while
in Chow Chinese intellectuals in the postwar context identified themselves with a
“Woman” and expressed their feelings as the colonized, the Japanese intellectuals tried to
recover their male subjectivity by feminizing the Japanese “nation” after the defeat o f the
war. The nation as a Woman for them was a source o f national-cultural revitalization. The
complexity and difference from Chinese intellectuals lie in the fact that Japanese
intellectuals experienced both Japan’s colonization o f other Asian countries in the wartime
period and occupation by the Allied powers in the postwar period.
2lFollowing Kano, by "Woman” with a capital “W” I mean the abstract term, a
signifier. for a motivated discourse on women. I reserve “women" for historical agents
with socio-political responsibility. These terms are borrowed from Kano's paper. "Japanese
Theater and Imperialism: Romance and Resistance.” U S.-Japan Women's Journal
(English Supplement) 12 (1996): pp. 17-47 (p. 24; italics hers). The Japanese version of
this article is: Ayako Kano. "Nihon engeki to teikokushugi: Romansu to teiko to " Nichibei
jo sei janaru: 23 (1998): pp. 19-48.

20
McClure, however, SCAP distinguished clearly between “occupational" groups o f workers,
whose public/political status it recognized, and other categories such as women, which it
stigmatized as private and nonpolitical. Implicitly, the Occupation tended to believe that
workers were properly constituted as groups “within the social" and therefore comprised a
legitimate political interest, whereas women were constituted as a group only by their
natural endowment or essence, outside the social, and therefore were not, as a group, seen
as legitimate political actors22 I would like to focus on this notion that SCAP constituted
women as "outside the social," since women were “natural" and "essential." while
"workers" were "within the social" and therefore were regarded as "legitimate political
actors." Such de-politicization o f women was found not only in the daily activities o f the
"workers" and Communists Party members, but also in postwar literary criticism.
Mizuta Noriko Lippit and Kyoko Selden described the situation o f Japanese women
writers in the postwar period as follows:
Despite the full participation o f women writers in the main currents o f modem
Japanese literature, literary critics still tend to treat them separately. Women in
general are considered to live outside history, outside the strenuous effort for self-
fulfillment that characterizes modem men.2j
In other words, living women were made to stand outside. unrepresented by and
unrepresentable within the dominant phallocentric system. The problem goes even further.
Women writers and their works were either enshrined or despised as “women writers"
"K irstie McClure. "On the Subject o f Rights: Pluralism and Political Identity." in
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, edited by
Ernest Lacau and Chantal Mouffe (London: Verso. 1985), pp. 115. 117 (Italics mine).
:3Noriko Mizuta Lippit and Kyoko Iriye Selden, trans. & ed„ Japanese Women
Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction (NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1991). p. xvii.

21
{joryu sakka) and “wom en's writing" (joryu bungaku), thus reflecting the ambivalence o f
the male attitude toward women: the gaze from below (the “ Madonna") or the gaze from
above (“the whore"). Not only the works but the bodies and lives o f women writers were
and are still viewed as central to their work by masculinist critics in a way that is not the
case with male writers. The result is that to this day women writers continue to be treated
separately as a group (with their own association, literary awards, and so forth) and are
evaluated according to criteria different from those applied to male writers.24 Just as
women in general were marginalized by SCAP as “private/non-political” outsiders to the
public/political world o f society, so too women writers were separated and located
“outside" the literary world to live in their own gendered ghetto.
Contradictorily, however, women were also “inside" the social in the sense that
women writers were wanted by commercial capitalism in the publishing business. Already
before the war. women's magazines (as well as women readers) were called by Ova Soichi
(1900-70) a “vast new colony” to be developed in the market.25 In the postwar period the
production of women writers was further encouraged in order to increase the number of
women readers. The propaganda o f “the women's era" compounded and reinforced this
trend. Were these women writers able to exercise their agency as socio-political subjects
just as male writers did? Unfortunately not. Exploited as a circulating commodity in the
publishing market, women writers were placed under further restrictions in their wnting
24Ibid.
25Oya Soichi. “Bundan girndo no kaitai-kf' [The Period o f Dismantling o f the

Literary Guild], Shincho 23: 12 (Dec. 1926): pp. 78-83.

about themselves. It was accepted that women were described as objects by male writers,
but as subjects they were prohibited from writing their own sexuality. They were not free
to write frankly about their sexuality and were severely criticized as indecent if they dared
to do so. Pushed “outside” their own expression and trapped “inside” this system as
“women writers.” there were no words available to women writers to integrate the
fragmented reality o f women's lives, no w ords for women to talk about themselves.26
Cognizant o f this double-bind, writers like Hirabayashi Taiko (1905-72) and Enchi Fumiko
(1905-86) noted that since most women writers were fully aware that “literature itself was
produced and criticized mostly by male standards." they had to accommodate the double
standard of this gender coding in their own writing.27 Thus, while women writers were
located on the periphery, while they were continuously circulated and consumed by
journalistic capitalism, they were also at the same time made to respond and assimilate to
the policy o f the literary guild, the so-called "BunJan." This is why. when one tries to
understand the situation o f women writers in the postwar period, the issue needs to be seen
in the context o f this centrifugal mechanism o f the literary system -w om en writers'
spontaneous shift from “outside” to “inside" as a response to the vacuuming power of the
literary guild.
26See Hirata Yumi, “ Onna no m onogatari' to yu seid o " [The System Called
‘Fiction of W om an'], Nationality no datsu-kdehiku. ed. by Sakai Naoki et al (Tokyo:
Kashiwa shobo. 1996). pp. 161-82. Although Hirata talks about the “women” scandalized
in the ‘Fiction o f Woman* by men in the Meiji Period, such a system o f ‘Woman* has not
much changed since then.
27Hirabayashi Taiko. “Kaidai: Kontachi h e n sd '" [Commentary: ‘Transformation

of Komachi*], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 13 (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1978). p. 421.

23
Stripped o f legitimate citizenship as political beings, marginalized as "outsiders” by
the literary guild, and circulated as a commodity “inside” the social, some women writers
such as Enchi Fumiko tried to challenge the system through “women writing about
women.” What is the difference between women writing about “women” and men writing
about “Woman”? As already noted, the term “women” refers to historical (and individual)
women as political/social agents, whereas the term “ Woman” refers to a system in which
men strip women o f historical/political agency by essentializing and othering them. In the
postwar period many male intellectuals discussed or wrote about "W oman" in their
writings before women started writing about women. To illustrate this point I shall show
how male intellectuals and writers in the postwar period depended on this system called
"W oman" as a source o f revitalization in their own writing, while at the same time
imposing it on women (and women writers) in a way that blocked the latter from the free
expression and construction o f their own subjectivity.
Postwar Literary Debates and the Image of “Woman”
In several postwar literary debates among male intellectuals the issue o f “Woman”
was brought up by critics such as Hirano Ken (1907-78), Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977),
and Takeda Taijun (1912-1976). It started when a proletarian writer, Nakano Shigeharu
(1902-79), criticized two members o f the Modem Literature Group (Kindai bungaku
dofin), Hirano Ken and Ara Masahito (1913-1979). as “literary reactionaries.” In return,
Hirano criticized Nakano for subordinating literature to politics. Hirano attacked the
inhumanity of proletarian literature by taking up the issue o f the "housekeeper system" in
the prewar Japanese Communist Party. He was referring to a lynching incident inside the

24
Communist Party in 1933-34 that involved a housekeeper's suicide. But specifically, he
criticized Kobayashi Takiji’s (1903-33) treatment o f a woman housekeeper in his last
work, “To-seikatsu-sha" [Life o f a Party Member]. Sasaki, the protagonist and the narrator
“1” (watashi). a party member pursued by the police for illegal political activity, needs to
find shelter.
Being unable to walk around to look for a house myself, I asked Kasahara to do so
for me. At the same time I thought o f living together with her. which would be
convenient for me to carry out my illegal jobs steadily and continuously.28
Kasahara was unhappy in her relationship with Sasaki, who was "unable to lead a private
life." He was leading a life in which “all his private relationships were cut off and all his
private desire (if unrelated to the party life) was suppressed." In Sasaki's eyes "Kasahara
only had a private life o f her own and always gauged others' lives by her own standard.":y
When she was told to become a bar-hostess for their living, she felt she was sacrificing
herself for Sasaki.
She must have thought that all that she did was a self-sacrifice for me. and could
not think otherwise. Speaking o f self-sacrifice. I have self-sacrificed almost all my
life so far [...] However, such a modest self-sacrifice is nothing in comparison with
sacrifices made by millions o f workers and peasants in their daily labor. (135-6)
In his argument Sasaki contrasts Kasahara’s “private" sacrifice for him with his “public"
sacrifice for “millions of workers and peasants" and the sacrifice of workers for the
2SKobayashi Takiji, “ Toseikatsu-sha ” [Life o f a Party Member], in Kobayashi

Takiji zen sh u .\o \. 8 (Tokyo: Shin Nihon shuppansha, 1969). pp. 109. 133. Kobayashi
Takiji (1903-33), a proletarian writer who was tortured to death in prison since he refused
to recant, was a legendary hero for the Communists in the postwar period. His works
included “Kani kdsen" [Crab Factory] and "Toseikatsu-sha" [Life o f a Party Member],
29Ibid„ pp. 135, 136. 149.

bourgeoisie. He obviously gives priority to his “public" mission over his or the woman's
“private” interest.
Taking Sasaki’s view as Kobayashi's, Hirano challenged the latter’s defense.
arguing that Kobayashi had used a woman to attain his ends, to shelter himself from the
police pretending to be married to her. Hirano argued that such inhuman treatment o f a
woman should not be affirmed under the name of the Communist movement.50 In so
doing. Hirano brought up the issue o f "personal" relationships which were being ignored in
the “public" space o f Communist Party doctrine. Also his argument led to the debate on
“politics or literature." which usually has been located outside the issue o f gender by male
critics. However. Hirano's intention was to criticize proletarian literature, not the
asymmetrical power relations between men and Women.
Nakayama Kazuko in her comments on Hirano's statement places the issue
squarely within the context of gender. She points out the “lack o f otherness" (tasha-sei no
ketsujo) on the part o f the male protagonist. Sasaki, writing as follows:
Kasahara was not a “sweet” (kawairashii) woman who just obeyed the “language o f
politics" (seiji no kotoba). She could not argue against Sasaki (watashi) but she
snapped at him, “You are so smart that I, such a fool, should self-sacrifice for you!”
This remark expressed her sarcasm and resistance as best she could. This is her
profound protest against the power o f modem knowledge—against the affirmation
o f male prerogatives who exercise the power o f knowledge in their language of
•politics.'31
Nakayama says. “(Hirano) misses seeing her (Kasahara's) resistance, her forced silence,
30Hirano Ken. "Seiji to bungaku" [Politics and Literature], in Sengo bungaku no

shisd (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo. 1969). p. 141.
5|Nakayama Kazuko. "Sengo hihydlo je n d a ' [Postwar Criticism and Gender],

Bungei kenkyu 77 (March 1997): p. 125.

26
and the unequal relationship—the lack o f a sense o f otherness on the part o f Sasaki, and
H irano's ‘male’ eyes see only ‘human contempt' in party ‘politics’."33 Women were made
to sacrifice themselves for men just as Sasaki’s mother did for him, according to
Nakayama, and such a pathology (lack o f a sense o f otherness and imposition o f a mother-
role) can be seen in many male critics in the postwar period.33 As a conclusion she points
out the stereotypical male understanding of “ Woman” deeply rooted in postwar criticism,
as well as in the male-dominated structure o f the socially acknowledged “egalitarian”
organization--the Communist Party.
Kobavashi’s essentialization o f women, as pointed out by Nakayama. should not be
overlooked, but a paraphrase of Nakayama's insightful comments might show the point
more clearly: “non-intelligent” "females” with “private” interests had no “power of
knowledge.” therefore, they were supposed to sacrifice themselves for “intelligent” “male”
activists who had "power of knowledge” and a “political” mission on behalf of the
“public.” The juxtaposition of "literature”/ "private'7“ Woman” in contrast to “politics”/
“public”/” men” by Hirano and Nakano in their debate is thus problematic. Whether
defending or criticizing “politics” or “literature,” they gendered these concepts and set up
an asymmetrical power imbalance between the two. upon which they then drew in order to
construct a “male” subjectivity.
3:Ibid.
j3Ibid.. p. 130. Nakayama points out the “Motherhood Myth” (bosei shinwa) in
male critics and writers. For example, the mother in “Letter to X” by Kobayashi Hideo is
like “a hometown” (furusato) which warmly welcomes the protagonist. "I.” She is the
m other who accepts him unconditionally, who could never be the “other” to him.

27
The second example o f “ Woman" in Hirano's criticism was the actress. Okada
Yoshiko (1903-1992). He criticized Sugimoto Ryokichi (a communist stage director,
1907-1939) for “using” Okada Yoshiko for the realization o f his own political ideals.
Afraid o f persecution by the militarist state, in 1938 Sugimito crossed the border to Soviet-
controlled Sakhalin accompanied by this actress. The escape of a famous director and an
actress from militarist Japan to the Communist block was a sensation, portrayed by the
mass media as a dramatic love-romance. Hirano. however, was critical o f Sugim ito's deed.
As he wrote:
I just could not fathom how this beautiful, vivacious actress would be intrepid
enough to run away to the Soviet Union [...] I have no way o f connecting Okada
with any philosophy or ideology. She most likely was in love with Sugimoto.
Perhaps the heart o f this sm all, aging actress was ablaze w ith a flame o f adventure
and martyrdom similar to the one that consumed the bar hostess played by Marlene
Dietrich in Morocco, who at the end o f the film kicks off her sandals and follows
her man into the desert [...] I don't know if Sugimoto also loved Okada [...] All I
know is that in order to achieve his end. Sugimoto used a lovely, middled-aged
actress. And it is this small fact that is most significant. '4
From this it is clear Hirano assumed Okada to be an innocent and ignorant woman who had
no ‘philosophy” or “ideology” o f her own. Just as “an equation between the male and
initiative, and between the female and passivity can be found in modem Western
ideology,” says Koschmann. so “ Hirano's conception o f subjective intentionality is
thoroughly male and patriarchal.”35 In Hirano's eyes both women, the bar hostess as
portrayed by Marlene Dietrich in Morocco and a Japanese actress. Okada. followed their
34J. Victor Koschmann. Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan (The

University o f Chicago, 1996). p. 71. (Italics mine.)
35Ibid.

28
men into the wilderness, the former to the desert, the latter to the Soviet Union. Neither
Hirano nor Nakano ever doubted that Sugimoto took the initiative and that Okada followed
him. Ironically, the recently discovered fact is that, according to O kada's memoir and the
secret files the Soviet released, the famous and affluent actress had been financially
supporting Sugimoto and his family before he fled from Japan with Okada, and that she
probably had encouraged him to cross the border to Sakhalin together.36 It was also found
that Okada crossed the border in search o f artistic freedom, and she was earnestly hoping to
meet in Moscow the Japanese stage directors, Yoshi Hijikata and Seki Sano, who had been
already exiled to Paris as "foreigners dangerous for Socialism." In 1939 Sugimoto was
shot and Okada was sent to the gulag for ten years forced labor. The historical Okada was
far from Hirano's fantasy. Thus, it is clear that the preconception o f a "small." "lovely."
"aging," "passive" female victim devoid o f any "ideology" or “philosophy" was a totally
romantic construction o f "Woman” by both male intellectuals.
Therefore, although Hirano sounded rather liberal and righteous in both o f these
360kada Yoshiko. "Nihon wo dcisshiitsu shite sanju-go nen" [Thirty-five Years after
Fleeing from Japan], Chudkdron (March 1973): pp. 278-290. Nagoshi Takeo, “Okada
Yoshiko: Ima akasareta kuhaku no jdnen no nazo” [Okada Yoshiko: Now The Mystery o f
The Ten Year-Blank Is Solved], Fujinkdron (November 1994): pp. 376-383. Okada and
Sugimito planned to escape militarist Japan and go to the USSR in search of artistic
freedom. They did not know the reality o f the situation in the USSR at that time. On 3rd o f
January 1938, they eluded the Japanese police and crossed the border in Sakhalin under
cover o f heavy snows. They were soon arrested by the Soviet border police by whom they
were interrogated separately and tortured. Sugimoto insisted that he was a member of the
JCP (Japan Communist Party) and was on a mission to contact the Comintern. But for the
Soviet police, all Japanese including JCP members fell under suspicion o f being "agents o f
Japanese imperialism." Sugimoto was shot on the 20th o f October 1939 and Okada was
sent to the gulag for ten years forced labor. Okada left a short memorandum on the events
just before death in Moscow in 1992. Summarized from Tetsuo Kato. "The Japanese
Victims of Stalinist Terror in The USSR."
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n o f t h e c o p yright o w ner. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n pro h ib ite d w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

29
cases in that he spoke up on behalf of women, and in that he for the first time brought up
the issue o f personal realm on the public arena, politics, what he actually did was rather
problematic. First, he categorized women's issues as purely ‘'literary" and "private”
matters, thus assimilating them to the masculinist paradigm of "W oman” as a literary
figure. By so doing, he reduced historical women to non-political beings without agency of
their own. Second, instead o f investigating the political dynamics in the asymmetrical
relationship between men and women, whether they conformed to them or not. both Hirano
and Nakano were unable to go beyond concern about the party "politics" o f the
Communists, whom they regarded as the real location o f subjectivity in postwar Japan.
Third, despite his sympathy with the housekeeper and Okada Yoshiko as victimized
"W oman.” Hirano in fact reduced women to the status o f objects, ironically just as
Kobayashi Takiji had. Thus, the real issues o f gender, and o f socio-political agency, were
undermined.'7
State/NationAVoman
In a second debate. Takeuchi Yoshimi and his group attempted to construct a
"national literature'’ and subjectivity by assimilating Japanese state/nation to the figure of
"W oman.” First. Takeuchi Yoshimi questioned the confusion o f “politics” and "literature”
in the Japanese literary guild:
Chinese writers were so mature that they would never label each writer by which
political party s/he belonged to. and they had their own vitality (in literature) and
}?As for H irano's critiques o f housekeeper issue in proletarian literature and Okada
incident, see Sato Izumi, "Seiji to bungaku, autwa hyashdno fu/kand-sei [Politics and
Literature, or Possibility/Impossibility o f Representation]. Gendai shiso (February 2000):
pp. 203-215.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n

30
did not need to borrow power from the political party [...] Chinese literature keeps
its distance from any political parties, both from the Nationalist Party and from the
Communist Party. (Similarly) no political party would use literature as a means...
Politics and literature should function independently, which is the necessary
condition for establishing a modem society, which I believe Chinese society has
already succeeded in attaining.38
Takeuchi clearly criticized Japanese writers, who always depended on ideologies from
“ outside” and who happily became hermits “inside” their feudal guild, the bundan. Taking
Chinese literature as a model, he proposed a literature which would “represent the national
feelings” (kokiimin-ieki kanjo wo daihydsunt), a national literature (kokumin bungaku). In
this debate, however, Takeuchi and his group attempted to construct a (male) national
literature and a (male) subjectivity through assimilating the Japanese state/nation to the
figure o f “Woman.”
His talk o f literature based on “national feelings” (kokumin-teki kanjo) free from
any organization (soshiki) was similar to the definition of a new nation used by his
contemporary. Shimizu Ikutaro (1907-88). in criticizing the earlier Mciji notion that:
The nation {kokumin) is a member o f the state, the subject {shinmin) belongs to the
Emperor to serve, and the people (jinmin) should be organized for fighting against
the ruling class.39
Shimizu’s new concept resulted from discarding the old Meiji concept o f a “subject”
{shinmin) organized and obedient to the emperor. It was also different from the more
recent concept of a “people” (jinmin) opposed to the ruling class and directed by their own
38Takeuchi Yoshimi, 11Seiji to bungaku no mondaC [The Problem in the Debate of

Politics and Literature], in Takeuchi Yoshimi zenshu.. vol. 4 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo.
1980). pp. 107. 110. 114.
39Shimizu Ikutaro, “Shomin” [The Common People], Tenho (January 1950): pp. 6-
16.

31
by will or ideology—the Communists. Shimizu proposed to speak instead o f the '‘common
people" (shomin), who were “cut o ff from the intelligentsia and leaders in general" and cut
o ff as well "from the public and the realm o f the state.”
On the other hand, the common people (shomin) are unorganized [...] Second, they
are private and quotidian instead o f being public and formal [...] they are tied to the
various desires of human beings [...] Third, they are the men on the street acting
based on their feelings (kanjo), not on their willpower (ishi) [...] they live by
following and fulfilling their desires [...] Fourth, the common people have a long
history. They bear Japanese history and Japanese nature—mountains and rivers...
The common people in the Tokugawa period and those in the postwar period share
a lot in common despite the many events that have occurred between these two
periods.'10
As Shimizu him self admitted, he created the idea of the “common people" in seeking some
new concept to overcome the problems o f the postwar period. He hoped that the
"anonymous philosophy" (tokumei no shiso) o f such unorganized "men on the street"
would revitalize Japanese society, which had been mined by famous philosophers who had
authority in the wartime period. It is noteworthy, however, that the concept o f the
“common people" in multiple w-ays reminds us o f the essentialized image o f ‘‘Woman":
“private," "unorganized," “emotional." "unintellectual" and “transhistorical."
Takeuchi's concept o f the nation and nationalism coincided with Shimizu's
feminization o f the nation:
I understand Modernism has been dominant in Japanese literature. Modernism

means, in other words, we would not include ethnicity in our ideology, or we would
eliminate ethnicity from our ideology [...] Since then ethnicity has been humiliated
and suppressed [...] Especially in Japan, since social revolution excluded
nationalism, this ignored nationalism had no choice except to mate with
imperialism. (As a result) it eventually became ultra-nationalism. This is why
40Ibid. (Italics mine.)

Maruyama Masao said that Japan “lost her virginity."*1
He viewed Japan as part o f the “whole Asia." which he saw as a “virgin" that had been
violated by the hegemonic Western powers. Thus, his concept was o f a Japan and Asia
that had been feminized and victimized by imperialism.
In support o f Takeuchi’s proposal, Takeda Taijun approached the issue of postwar
“nationalism” in the same way. He also used the metaphor o f "virgin” (shojo) for Japan.
For him even the world itself has a gender~a woman's body. Expressing his grief for the
ruin of Japan in its defeat, he tried to persuade himself that the fall and disappearance o f
one country in the war is for the world—the living body—a mere digestive function.
“ menstruation.” or a yawn. He talked about Japan and the Japanese people as a woman's
body in his essay. “About the Extinction" (A(etsuboni /suite).
(The Japanese) have been those who never sang songs o f the extinction, but only
listened to them. This is because the extinction o f Japan seemed to Japanese
intellectuals only partial so far. In this sense the Japanese nation still remained a
“virgin” (shojo). Or if not a virgin, they were more like a married woman whose
body was protected by her husband. Therefore, her experiences were limited only to
domestic intercourse (katei-nai ni okent seiko).*2
In comparison with Japan. Takeda praised China as a model for Japan:
China seemed to have experienced more comprehensive ruin. They may be

compared to a wom an's body which was forced to attain mature sexuality after
several divorces and several adulteries. China’s vitality for resistance without
resistance probably may come from their confidence through these rich sexual
4'Takeuchi Yoshimi. “Modanizumu to minzoku no mondai" [Modernism and the

Issue of Ethnicity], in Takeuchi Yoshimi zenshu. vol. 7 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo. 1981). pp.
32-7. (Italics and quatations mine.)
42Takeda Taijun. “Aletsuboni tsuite" [About the Extinction], in Takeda Taijun s h u .

in Shinsen gendai Nihon bungaku zen sh u . vol. 27 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo. 1960). p. 386.

33
experiences.43
Only after experiencing defeat has Japan been becoming more like China, a female body
(nyotai) which has obtained complex and mature sexuality through several divorces and
several adulteries. How to strengthen such fragile, “virgin”-like Japanese nation into
tougher and more experienced Asian intellectuals was Takeda’s concern. In his argument
Japanese nation was figured as a “Woman" who was upset from the experience o f losing
her virginity: “ With what sweetness, with what eagerness, and with what carnal shiver will
they accept such unfamiliar violence by 'm en'?"44
For both Takeuchi and Takeda. Japanese nation was a Woman who had a sensual
body, which was forced to become mature by violation—rape. Violence, in their metaphor,
certainly came from "outside," whether it was the violence o f imperialism or the violence
of ruin (war). Their identification with Woman, which they imagined as residing “inside"
them, obviously led them to nationalistic feelings. Their complex ambivalence about
Woman was displayed when they tried to objectify Woman in their writing. Takeda, for
example, wrote:
Writers are all the time thinking about Woman [...] By living with Woman male
writers come to know who they are [...] Writers write about themselves first, and
then next write about others. Both o f these are accomplished by writing about
Woman, because Woman is itself the embodiment o f all the wickedness, all the
goodness, and all the humaneness—or all that reminds us o f them.45
43Ibid.
44Ibid.
45Takeda Taijun. " Onna ni tsuite" [About Woman), in Takeda Taijun shu. in
Shinsen gendai Nihon bungaku zen sh u . vol. 27 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1960), p. 392.

34
Woman is like the “air. which surrounds men" without claiming their existence, because it
is “too overcast, mediocre, and reeky." Because o f her intangibleness like the air.
contradictorily. Woman awakes and threatens men: she can “prowl around, nuzzle, snatch
or bite men to death like wild animals.” It is undeniable, according to Takeda. that
“ Woman is the other half in this world" whom men can turn to for help and
encouragement. After all. Woman is a “salvation for writers,” since she is “an
inexhaustible human resource awaiting to be opened, and since she has uncountable keys
with which male writers can open themselves to multiple mysterious worlds." The moment
a writer discovers "something" or succeeds in stepping "inside" the essence o f life, he can
start writing. He could in an instant be transformed by that "something" (Woman) he
discovered. Such an overwhelming experience is very encouraging for the writer. Takeda
assimilates this aw aking experience to his exploration o f Woman:
Supposing (a man) trips and falls headfirst, and surfaces from the bottom through
the light blue water, while feeling short o f oxygen in the lungs, and finally comes
up to the surface. He becomes keenly conscious that he is vividly recovering the
feelings o f the shapes and weight of his limbs and belly (this is the kind o f
consciousness when he experiences Woman). (Woman) is both inside and outside
a man. Woman is at once too alien to men and too much contained in a man.
When a man swims through such multiple layers o f the water of "W oman." it will
sink into his pores, will hypnotize and revive his cerebral nerves [...] this must be
the same mysterious fulfilling experience as the transformation o f a writer.46
Woman in Takeda is at one time internalized and externalized as the source o f
revitalization for a male writer.
Takeuchi proposed his idea o f a new national literature in 1952. w hen Korea was
still in the muddy state o f war between the Soviet Union and the US. and when Japan was
46Ibid.. p. 393. (Italics mine.)
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of th e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

the crucial base for the American air force. Not only Japanese people, but Asians as well
were in a state of anxiety about the escalating Cold War between these two Western
powers. In this historical context the practice o f using a feminine metaphor for a nation
and masculine metaphor for a state was not surprising. Moreover, colonizers and colonies
have been gendered as masculine and feminine respectively. Seen in the colonial context
surrounding the Korean War, Takeuchi’s use of a feminine metaphor to construct a
national literature seems logical.
There are several problems, however. Statements like these in the context o f a
debate over the nature o f the nation/state and literature again give rise to questions.
Takeuchi says, against the dominant Westernization or Americanization of the postwar
period, that Japanese intellectuals should look to China as its model. But. is it legitimate to
erase the historical and geo-political difference between Japan and China? Further, in so
doing, the flipside is that he viewed the West similarly as a monolithic ahistorical entity.
Second, in order to attain Japan's independence from the West. Takeuchi proposed to re
capture Japanese "ethnicity” by an appeal to “national feelings.” This was similar to the
definition of a new Japanese nation used by his contemporary, Shimizu Ikutaro. as I already
observed. Shimizu's view of the nation was also gendered: it was said to be
“unorganized,” “private.” “dominated by feelings rather than by will," and “ahistorical.”
These tags were usually used for stigmas for women. In short, in their feminizing o f Asia
and the Japanese nation in contrast to the masculine West and US. we can read the sense o f
frustration and powerlessness o f Japanese intellectuals in the midst o f the postwar battle
among the Western powers for hegemony in Asia. We also see in these male intellectuals

36
their ambivalence about gender and their uncertainty about their own subjectivity. Let us
look at one final way in which the symbol o f Woman was deployed in these postwar
literary debates: the controversy over “the sexual."
“The Sexual” in Literature
Takeuchi's proposal for a new national literature based on "the raw emotions
connected to the image o f the ethnic (minzoku)" resonated, probably in a way unexpected
by him though, with the contemporary fashion o f carnal literature—the "unmediated"
materiality o f the body. Shimizu Ikutaro’s 1950 proposal for a new concept o f the
Japanese "common people" (shomin) also conformed to this fashion. He wrote in his
essay:
In any case the common people (shomin) are tied to daily life. In other words, they
are attached to various human desires. Humans can live only by satisfying their
desires [...) In the concepts o f the "nation" (kokumin), 'ksubject"(shinmin), and
"people" (jinmin) various human desires were already eliminated or ignored from
the outset [...| These organic structures were founded on neglecting to fulfill daily
desires [...] If we seriously want to promote democracy, we have to learn to satisfy
each person [,..| This person could be stupid, or that person could be vulgar.
However, where else should we put the primacy except on the concerns, hopes and
desires o f each person? These are. after all. primary (the ultimate values).47
The shomin are those u'ho. in order to live, take responsibility for satisfying their desires.
which have been denied or ignored so far. This individualistic antisocial concept o f the
"people," along with the prevalent mood of negativity and skepticism toward the
Communist Party's authority, led to a blossoming o f carnal literature (nikutai bungaku) in
the postwar period. It emphasized the flesh rather than the spirit, surface rather than
content, since “truth." "sincerity." or “meaning” were all called into question. The
47Shimizu Ikutaro. pp. 6-16.

Modem Literature Group people (Ara. Honda, and Hirano) naturally supported this trend.
while the New Japan Literature Group (proletarian writers), especially Nakano, criticized
carnal literature as one o f the ‘“three reactionary trends in literature.”''8
We should also remind ourselves of SCAP’s support for the value o f self-
determination and liberal democracy. The “individual" and “freedom" were commonly
accepted as the appropriate terms o f debate during the first years o f the Occupation.
Fukushima Shuro writes that from 1947 through 1948 when the Occupation policies in
Japan were getting sticky, the Yoshida Government, supported by SCAP. promoted the
“3S" policy (sports, screen, and sex) with the purpose o f camouflaging the problems.44
Kono Kensuke also talks about the “3S" policy as being behind the trend o f carnal
literature in the postwar period:
The five reforms for basic human rights, that is. liberation o f women, establishment
o f labor unions, democratization o f school education, abolition o f the system o f
secret judicial investigation, the democratization o f economic structure— the so-
called “distributed freedoms" by MacArthur (according to Kawakami Tetsutaro) —
permeated the country. Meanwhile, mass-control through multiple media was
attempted with the intention o f suppressing criticism against the Government and
the SCAP. Psychological disarmament and liberation o f the body (shintai no
kaihd), constructed by imaginary myths, were supposed to organize the spontaneous
desire o f the people (taishu).50
48Nakano Shigeharu, "H ihyono ningensef ’ [Humanity in Criticism], in Nakano

Shigeharu zenshu, vol. 12 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo. 1979), p. 96.
49Fukushima Shuro. Shinpan sengo zasshi hakkutsu: shodo jidai no seishin [New
Edition o f Excavation o f Postwar Magazines: The Spirit of the Ruins] (Tokyo: Yosensha.
1985).
50Kono Kensuke. "(H ihyd to jitsuzon: Sengo hihyo ni okeru Sexuality' [Criticism
and Existentialism: Sexuality in Postwar Criticism]. Kokuhungaku : Kaishaku to kydzai no
kenkyu 40: 8 (July 1995): pp. 46.

38
As Kono states, two o f the “S” policy (sports and screen) were comparatively easily
found and proved in various sources.51 What we should note here is the probability of
desires having been “organized” and manufactured.52 Kono lists the factors o f this
phenomenon as follows:
In fact, the space where men and women were able to encounter each other face to
face, was open in the postwar period. Having returned from the war somebody
writes. “To know the meaning o f the flesh is to know the meaning o f the human
being." (Tamura Taijiro. “Flesh is Human.” February, 1948) [...] The cultural
landslide caused by the defeat o f war washed away the people’s internal standard
(morality), which was supposed to protect people but actually did not help during
the war. As illustrated in the dynamic heroines in “Gate o f Flesh," even Tamura.
though an old-fashioned writer, was frustrated with the traditional viewpoint o f the
self-centered and male-centered Japanese man--the way o f despising (women’s)
"flesh" (nikutai).’3
Although K ono's statement about the influence o f 3S policies is in general reliable, some
o f his points about the emergence o f carnal literature are dubious. First. Kono says that "in
5iThe film craze started with the opening o f the first “long-run movie theater" in
Yurakucho (Subaru-za) in March 25th in 1947. Starting with the first movie. “American
Symphony." the story about George Gershwin, many American movies were introduced in
Japan, while the production of Japanese films was also encouraged. Likewise, sports
enthusiasm was fired up after Furuhashi Hironoshin and Hashizume Shiro set world
records in swimming in 1947 (unfortunately the records were not officially recognized).
See Joanne Izbicki for conflation o f screen and sex.
52See Joanne Izbicki, “The Shape o f Freedom: The Female Body in Post-Surrender
Japanese Cinema.” U.S.-Japan Women s Journal. No. 12 (1997): pp. 109-153. “The
movies made in Japan during the Occupation exhibited women’s bodies in entertainments
laden with American accouterments but staged outside the gaze o f the American eye.
These exhibitions can be seen as acts o f re-appropriation by Japanese men. who thereby
metaphorically wrest power over Japanese women away from American GIs... The
cinematic discourse o f incorporating women's nakedness into a repertoire o f visual
pleasures suggests the displacement o f a political and cultural struggle onto a sexual
theater." (p. 146)
■:'K5no. p. 47.

39
the space ot the liberation of desire publishers and writers were open to various
possibilities for writing anything except sensational stories about the relationships between
GI and Japanese women and except criticism o f the Occupation Army."54 However, as I
suggested before, not all writers enjoyed the freedom o f writing about desire; many women
writers were still outside this “space" o f free expression. Second, Kono optimistically
attributes the emergence o f new literature to the rise of postwar women, which
“transformed the micro-dynamic politics between men and women." However, the fact
that, as he points out. women had to support their family in the rear guard during the war
and. as a result, gained political subjectivity and suffrage (1946). docs not necessarily go to
demonstrate an improvement in the relationship o f men and women. Third, a “ real face-to-
face encounter o f men and women." in Kono's phrase, is not realized in the "Gate of
Flesh." Rather, as we shall see below, it is still an asymmetrical relationship between men
and women that is found in this work. The important point is that “carnal desire" was
organized through multiple media by both SCAP and the Japanese government, and that
literature dealing with such topics did not in fact promote women's status and subjectivity.
Contrary to Kono's conclusion, women never “emerged as a political subject (seiji-teki
shutai),*’ but rather were forced to remain outside the postwar intellectual space as
“unpolitical actors" even after gaining suffrage.
This brings us to a third famous debate in postwar literary criticism, one dealing
with the sexual, sexuality, and Eros. In 1947 the notion o f “carnal literature" (nikutai
bungaku) was proposed by Tamura Taijiro. and in 1951 a debate broke out over Ito Sei's
54Ibid.

40
(1905-69) translation o f “Lady Chatterley's Lover.” In his work. “Gate o f Flesh" (1947).
Tamura describes a group of young prostitutes surviving in the basement of a building in
bombed-out Tokyo. Their prostitution business is compared to the business o f a fish
retailer who sells fish to people without any go-between in the postwar black market—
“direct connection between the producer and the consumer.” The “directness" or
“unmediation” is compounded with the “wildness" and “primitiveness" in this story, where
girls' bodies are sold '‘directly” to customers without the “mediation” o f love or affection.
One day, however, the peace and solidarity among the women is broken by the intrusion of
Ibuki Shintaro. a twenty-five year old boy. who takes shelter in the basement while
escaping from the police. Maya, one o f the girl prostitutes, has crush on Shintaro and is
awakened to her sexuality. The story ends with Maya's revelation o f her physical
awakening in the midst of being lynched by the other girls.
As Koschmann and other critics have already pointed out. the emphasis on the
materiality o f the "flesh " (nikutai) in this story contrasts with the depiction o f
“philosophy” (shiso), which was totally powerless during the war period. There is one
scene where “philosophizing” is suppressed when Sen, one o f the girls, tries to figure out
the “meaning” o f life:
Beef costs 40 yen per momme. and our flesh also 40 yen—the same price [...] What
do you make o f it if I eat 40 yen per momme and sell my body at 40 yen? Sell to eat
or eat to sell? Then, what is the meaning o f our life?55
Since survival is the ultimate value and goal o f human life, the question o f meaning
55Tamura Taijiro, “Nikutai no mon" [Gate o f Flesh], in Gendai Nihon bungaku

taikei. vol. 88 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo. 1958). p. 33. (One momme weighs seventy-five
grams.)

41
inevitably comes up. Nevertheless. Sen's existential question is cut o ff by Ibuki: "Don't
think too hard. You are now living and you are now eating nice food. Isn't that enough?"
Koschmann too picks out this scene, noting that "suppression o f problems relating to
meaning is dramatized” in this scene.56 However, what needs to be stressed here is that
Sen's (a w om an's) question of meaning is “suppressed" by Ibuki. a male figure, who
“dominates four girls just as one male dog dominates four female dogs." He is also
compared to the “sun" around which other planets like the earth and the moon rotate.
Furthermore, it is not just a coincidence that the (male) narrator gives him a family name.
Ibuki. while he calls the prostitutes by their first names or nicknames. Obviously Ibuki is
given a special status in the story. He is described as the prototype of a roaming wild waif
who had to survive by instincts o f self-defense in the postwar chaos.
He knows that the human body will heal by itself from his experience, which makes
him confident of the strength and tenacity of his body. You cannot laugh at his
belief, which comes from experiences. Ibuki is able to be clearly conscious o f the
powerful v itality in his body. He has never been depressed. He constantly lives
acting on his impulse and does what his vitality orders him to do. We seldom see
such a light-hearted and optimistic guy these days.57
He is acting according to the rule o f the “survival of the fittest." Sleeping with a girl whom
he hates, he feels “the same overwhelming fulfillment of vitality as the time when the
machine gun. which he was manipulating in his fantasy, overwhelmed him with fighting
spirit and instinctive fear.” Only five minutes after intercourse he can set out to sell meat
for survival without any sentiment about what he has done to the girl. leaving the girl still
56Koschmann. p. 58.
57Tamura, p. 26.

42
reminiscing about his body in ecstasy. The boy is living in one world o f the flesh— the war
experience and survival, while the girl is left in another world o f the flesh--"sexuality.”
Although the equation between the war experience and the sexual experience is not an
unusual juxtaposition for male writers, such a gap in consciousness is not a real ‘’encounter
between a man and a woman” (in K ono's terms).
Another issue is as to whose subjectivity is realized in this story. One of the
protagonists. Sen, has a tattoo on her arm. It is the source o f her energy every time she
fights with other prostitutes for territory and for game. Koschmann says, "the flesh
generates a form of subjectivity as the will to fight,” and "the source of vitality is not in the
will per se. but in the material marks—the writing itself—the s u r f a c e . I n my view.
Tamura is trying to realize a new Japanese national subjectivity on the flesh o f a woman.
Sen. Tatooed Sen, a nineteen year-old girl, has a “boyish premature body" and has never
known the meaning o f flesh. She is witty and ready to fight, but she loses the battle with
Maya in the competition for Ibuki. As a matter o f fact, while the story starts with the
unsensual Sen. it ends with the sensual Maya who has awakened to "the first fulfilling
sensuality” and felt "as if she were newly-born in this world." Therefore, it may be not Sen
but Maya who (if anyone) has obtained "subjectivity” in the story. Being tortured by Sen
and the other girls. Maya is still “happy to be a dropout from the group”:
Maya swore to herself that she would never let go this carnal pleasure she finally
obtained, even though she would have to fall into hell. She was feeling in her
dimming consciousness that her new life was beginning. In the dark basement
M aya's body, hung in the white light, looked solemnly like the prophet on the
58Koschmann. p. 59.

43
cross. 59
In Maya carnal pleasure and awakening is elevated to spiritual revelation. In other words,
subjectivity on the surface o f the flesh (logos in the tattoo) shifts to subjectivity inside the
flesh—depth and meaning. Tamura’s gallant attempt to deny “meaning” in the flesh seems
to have failed in the story after all. Nevertheless, he brings forward an important question:
what is writing about “unmediated” flesh and desire like?
There is another issue. No matter how much Maya is seen as transcending into a
Christ figure (or martyr for the flesh), her consciousness o f the flesh is awakened by Ibuki,
a gum and male prophet. He is the intramediator in the story, who at first is the occasion
for the girls to effect a balance o f power among themselves, an unstable bonding he then
breaks up. He is also an intermediator with the outside world when he steals a cow and
cooks it for the starving girls (and o f course for himself), and when he introduces Maya to
the new world of the flesh. In short. Ibuki is a stereotypical male authority, a mediator who
dominates the girls and with his male language silences Sen's attempt to think for herself.
Thus M aya's pleasure is the reflection o f the pleasure o f Ibuki. just as her flesh is
the reflection o f the flesh of Ibuki: it is Ibuki's male subjectivity reflected in Maya. It is
neither Sen nor Maya but Ibuki, the male protagonist, who obtains subjectivity through
female flesh in the story. Contrary to the favorable critical reception o f “Gate of Flesh."
Tamura clearly reproduces patriarchal ideology, using symbolic identification with the
flesh o f his female protagonists as a reservoir for the project of masculinist revitalization in
the postwar ruin. Tamura's feminizing the mined Japanese nation is in line with Takeda
,9Tamura. p. 36.

44
Taijun’s practice in his famous critical essay. "On the Extinction." in which Takeda
assimilated defeated Japan to a woman whose body was raped by a Western hegemonic
power.
The Sexual or Eroticism
Carnal literature was abhorrent to Nakano Shigeharu and the New Japan Literature
Group to which he belonged. What they criticized were concepts of the flesh that would
fulfill individual desires rather than the welfare o f the public, and that appealed to the
instincts rather than conceptual reasoning or morality. Much later, in 1959, Oe
Kenzaburo's concept o f a “literature o f the sexual" (sei no bimgaku) was naturally
unwelcome to these proletarian critics, while strongly supported by the Modem Literature
Group (Ara, Hirano, and Honda).60 Oe drew a borderline between pornography (or carnal
literature) and his “ literature o f the sexual.*’ Instead of hypnotizing readers with the
emotional, he wanted to awaken their consciousness to be rebellious. Instead o f directly
stimulating their sexual instincts, he wanted to excite and elevate the reader conceptually
and spiritually. What Oe proposed in his arguments were two questions: What is writing
about the sexual, and what is “the sexual” anyway?
Against the fashion o f a “ literature o f the erotic" written on traditional topics in a
neo-classical style, he advocated a “literature in which a writer faces the reality o f a sexual
being in a sexual and non-decorative style.” He contrasted his “literature o f the sexual” to
a certain woman writer's “literature o f the erotic":
60Oe Kenzaburo. “ Warera no sei no sekai" [Our World o f the Sexual], in

Genshukuna isuna-wcitari (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1991). pp. 309-23.

45
(The woman writer)

1 .1 do not use indecent language for the sexual.
2 . 1 describe the sexual in an emotional atmosphere, or create sexual
emotion as such.
(Oe Kenzaburo)
1 .1 overuse indecent language o f the sexual.
2. I never describe the sexual in an emotional atmosphere, rather I eliminate
sexual emotion.61
He did not want the reader to “feel sexy” or to find “eroticism” in reading his works;
instead, he attempted rather to destroy these emotions by “overusing sexual phrases and
scenes.” He was therefore happy to hear of the comments by Mishima Yukio. who
criticized O e's work. Our Age (Warera no jid a i), as one that would stimulate "no sexual
feelings." and who therefore concluded that O e's work lacked ability (rikiryd).62 By
writing about the sexual in such unmediated language without emotional (jocho-teki)
coating. Oe said he tried to create a literature that was far removed from "sexual feelings"
as a counterargument to the so-called “carnal literature” thriving in the postwar period.
However, here too several questions arise. How can Oe make us believe that the
gaze o f the writers o f “the erotic” was “pornographic” while his gaze was not? If we look
carefully at the images in such work, we might conclude that what is labeled pornographic
is often a projection o f the author's (or reader's) own repression onto the images.6j
6lOe Kenzaburo, “Sei no kikaisa to ijd to kiken" [The Weirdness, Abnormality, and
Danger o f the Sexual], in Genshukuna tsuna-watari (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1991). pp. 326-7.
6:Ibid. Oe mentions Mishima Yukio's comments on his work. " Warera no jid a i “
[Our Age]. Mishima says. "In contrast to the eroticism which Funabashi Seiichi created in
his work, the scene in which a girl's thigh reflected the moon light. (O e's) pale students in
‘ Warera no j id a i' stimulate no sexual feelings.”
63See Rey Chow. Writing Diaspora (Indiana: Indiana UP. 1993). p. 40.

46
Further, we need to look more closely at O e's configuration o f "the sexual" and the
problematic features o f his concept. Attempting to awaken the reader, he chooses the
"most effective weapon”--the language o f the sexual. To this end. Oe selects the more
"weird, abnormal, and dangerous” aspects o f the sexual in order to raise the reader's
consciousness and understanding of the relations between humans and reality. He writes:
If I try to understand humans only from the sexual aspect, I have no choice but to
choose as objects those that are more or less sexually perverted (seiiekini henko
shita ningen). I cannot find much in those leading a normal sexual life (goku
seijdna sei-seikatsushci). Therefore, I decided to call on special people like
homosexuals, group sex practicers, or molesters (doseiaisha toka, runkdsha (oka,
chikan (oka yini. (okushuna renchu).M
Oe's choice o f certain sexual preferences as "special.” "weird." "abnormal" or "dangerous"
would seem problematic. He classifies homosexuals, for example, as representing
something extreme and abnormal. As a result, instead o f exercising "power to deconstruct
the traditional meta-narrative." as he had hoped, his literature o f the sexual, by fixating in
this instance on homophobia, ironically results in valorizing traditional heterosexual and
patriarchal binaries.65
Sexual Being/ Political Being
Another problem is that Oe. too, in his literature o f "the sexual," like the writers we
have already considered, sexualizes postwar Japan. Under the Japan-U.S. security treaty
system. Oe says, modem Japan was transformed from a "political being” into a "sexual
64Ibid.. pp. 260-61.
65James Keith Vincent points out O e's homophobia in his essay. "Oe Kenzaburo (o
Mishima Yukio no sakuhin ni okeru homo fasizum u (o sono fum an " [Homofacism and Its
Discontents in the Works of Oe Kenzaburo and Mishima Yukio], Hihyd kukan 11-16 (1998
) pp. 129-53.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n proh ibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

47
being." A “political being” (Japan) became a “sexual being” when it had to accept the
Absolute (USA), “just as the vagina accepts the penis or the female obeys the male.”
While a “political being” is always involved in conflict with an Other, a “sexual being" is
never engaged in such a confrontation, since Otherness does not exist for him, Oe says.
However, as we have noted in the case o f other Japanese postwar intellectuals, O e's
configuration of “the sexual” is a problematic one.
First, the simplistic contrast between sexual/passive/yielding/no-Othemess and
political/active/conflicting/Othemess is itself clearly gendered. While seemingly turning
his back on the masculinist project o f a “politicizing” state/nation. Oe chose to keep
writing about the feminine “sexual being” in the belief he could thereby create a new
human being via his literary work. In other words, like the abstract “Woman" for the other
male writers we have considered, O e's “sexual being” turned out to be a reservoir of
revitalization for him as well.
Second. O e’s feminine “sexual" being (the Japanese state/nation during the
Occupation period) is contrasted to a masculine “political” being (Japan in the prewar and
wartime periods). As a matter of a fact, the Japanese state inflicted “masculinist”
aggression in Asia during the wartime period. In this sense Oe's preference for feminine
“sexual” being over masculinity sounds like an ethical critique o f Japan's wartime politics.
However, by comparing the binary o f Allied Powers/Japan to male organ/female organ and
to inflictor/inflicted. symbolic identification with “Woman" in the service o f literary
rejuvenation has once again occurred. To be sure. O e's proposal o f the possibility o f
Japan becoming “sexual being." a “feminine" being which is "accepting" and "less

48
conflictual,” instead o f an aggressive "political being,” should be read as coming from his
strong historical conscience about war responsibility. Yet at the same time it reflects the
way in which experiences under the US Occupation led Japanese intellectuals to a
gendered view o f national subjectivity in the postwar period. Thus, in O e’s proposal, too,
the materiality o f women’s bodies and their agency as historical subjects were once again
passed over.
Epilogue as Prologue
As a review of these postwar debates among male intellectuals shows, their
construction o f a national subjectivity through symbolic identification with "Woman.”
whether as victim or source o f sexual renewal, was both the expression and reflection o f a
gendered politics.66 It is clear, therefore, that the abundant postwar discourse on "tougher
women” or "the era of women” did not signify an improved status o f women. Rather, as
socio-political agents in their own right, women remained outside this intellectual space,
locked up as objects in a system called "W oman” by being essentialized. primitivised. and
oversexualized.
Women writers were treated in the same way. By inscribing a gendered dichotomy
in their literary-critical projects, these postwar male intellectuals tried to construct a
În this chapter I have focussed on how the image o f "W oman,” which postwar
Japanese intellectuals employed for the Japanese nation, furthered the masculinist project
of constructing a national subjectivity. However, by "feminizing” the nation and its literary
tradition, it could also be seen as an effort, in contrast to the situation o f postwar Chinese
intellectuals, to avoid confronting the issue o f wartime responsibility for Japan's
"masculine” aggression. In other words, this use of the image o f Woman may also be
viewed, as Sato Izumi suggests, as a "nationalistic handling o f the postwar situation." See
Sato Izumi. "Kindcii bungaku-shi no kiokubdkyaku" [Memory' and Obliteration in the
History o f Modem Literature]. Gendai sh iso {March 1999): p. 177.

49
masculinist paradigm o f modem subjectivity. The works o f women writers were
accordingly relegated to the showcase o f the "private.” “apolitical/asocial,” or "premodem"
as not meeting the standard of what was to be taken as "modem.” In other words, women
writers too were locked up as objects in a system called "W om an" and thus blocked from
individual expression o f their own lives and sexuality, from self-realization as subjects in
their own literary productions.
In the postwar period women writers were thus faced with the task o f challenging
the complexity of women's status as “ insiders” and “outsiders” vis-a-vis the social, while
at the same time trying to free themselves from the system called "Woman" in writing
about their flesh—body and desire.

50
Chapter 2
Masculinist Critics and Enchi Fumiko
Introduction
In the previous chapter we have seen how postwar debates on Japanese literature
pushed women and women's writings outside the concept o f postwar literature. At the
same time we have pointed out these male critics’ feminizing the nation as a “Woman”
inside their writings for invigorating their loss o f confidence after the war. Their literary
act of engendering the nation and the literature was certainly problematic, because their
voices have been significantly influential not only in the literary world but also in society in
the sense that they helped to construct public opinion (yoron) on women and women's
writing, and that they established a meta-narrative o f Japanese literature and history.
A more serious crime was that by translating the Japanese nation as “Woman” they
excused themselves from the accusation o f aggression in the war and reclaimed their
victimization by Western hegemony. Furthermore, by translating “Woman” into an
apolitical/ asocial/ private/ aesthetic being “outside” the society while feminizing the
Japanese nation as an "apolitical” Woman, they escaped from taking serious responsibility
as intellectuals in postwar Japan. In this chapter, by focusing on their criticism o f Enchi’s
works and her life. I would like to show how postwar Japanese intellectuals struggled to
form a (male) modem subjectivity through this complex process o f essentializing historical
women and women writers by employing the image o f “Woman.”
I. Discourses on Women Writers
The stigma attached to “women'’ certainly affected any kind o f professions women

51
were engaged in. Writers, actresses, gidayu chanters, painters, or dancers were all reduced
to the image o f “Woman.” who very often was conflated w'ith the image o f entertaining
women or geisha.67 Such was the case with women writers. As long as women or the
sexuality o f women remained as objects o f male writing, male writers seemed comfortable
in granting position and status to women. However, once women appeared as their
colleagues, as competing writers, male writers stop flattering them. Male critics, who
were used to taking women as objects to gaze at or as entertainers to please them, were not
able to accept women writers as active agents who actually could “en-act” something
meaningful in the male-centered world. Once again, let me cite the insightful statement of
Noriko Lippit and Kyoko Selden summarizing their introduction to Japanese Women
Writers:
Despite the full participation o f women writers in the main currents o f modem
Japanese literature, literary critics still tend to treat them separately [...] Women in
general are considered to live outside history, outside the strenuous effort for self-
fulfillment that characterizes modem men. Women writers are still today treated
separately as a group (with their own associations, literary awards, and so forth) and
are evaluated according to criteria different from those applied to men writers.
They form at best a separate, unintegrated chapter in the literary history' o f Japan.68
These shrewd comments are verified by the practice o f male critics. For example,
Kawanishi Masaaki separates women writers in one chapter called “The Age o f Women
67A s for this subject there is an insightful work that can be referred to in Ayako
Kano. “Acting Like a Woman in Modem Japan: Gender, Performance, Nation, and the
Roles of Kawakami Sadayakko and Matsui Sumako.” Ph.D. dissertation (Ithaca: Cornell
University. 1995).
MNoriko Mizuta Lippit & Kyoko Iriye Selden, "Introduction," in Japanese Women
Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction, trans. & ed. by Noriko Mizuta Lippit & Ky oko
Iriye Selden (New York: M. E. Sharpe. 1991). p. xvii.

52
Writers" (Joryu no jidai) in his recent book. Fifty Years o f Postwar in Japanese Literature:
From G host' to K itchen’ (Nihon bungaku no sengo 50-nen: Shiryo ' kara kicchin ' e).
Although one step above those who totally ignore women writers. Miyoshi Masao devotes
a separate chapter in O ff Center to “Gathering Voices: Japanese Women and Women
Writers."69 As Mizuta points out, women writers have always been “outside" or just
objects for the gaze of male writers in the literary establishment.
The description o f women as “ inside" and “outside" reminds us o f Takeda Taijun's
statement in the previous chapter. Women writers have been always located “outside" and
separate in the literary world, while the image o f “Woman" was used inside male writing.
Constituting women as a group outside the social was certainly the policy of the
Occupation, which aimed at decentering power and the same time centering power in the
representative government. The postwar critics coincidentally and ironically ended up
conforming to SCAP’s policies concerning gender issues, as seen in the previous chapter.
Women •'outside" and "inside" the society were expected to be entertaining for
male intellectuals. Honda Shugo. for instance, displays his view o f women writers as a
“glow" (irodori) as follows:
Haniya Yutaka was always lamenting, “Any art circle had at least a few women
attendants who added glow (irodori wo soeru), but we have had none." We never
dreamed of the era o f talented women (saijo) coming later. With resignation we
concluded that such an idealistic movement would not fit women [...] only after the
road was paved and consolidated did women seem to appear as far as Japanese
6°Miyoshi Masao. O ff Center: Power and Culture Relations between Japan and the
United States (Cambridge: Harvard UP. 1991). pp. 189-216.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of th e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n p rohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

53
literature after WVVII was concerned."70
Whether women writers were only glow or active agents, women writers blossomed soon
after the war in the 1950's. Behind the phenomenon and activity o f women writers the
presence o f women readers cannot be ignored. Ova Soichi pointed out that women were
targeted as readers in a new market for selling women's magazines before the war. He
wrote in 1929:
What one must call the remarkable phenomenon o f the increase in women readers
in recent years has influenced popular writing in much the same way that the
discovery o f a vast new colony might influence the country. Thus the sudden
development o f women's magazines influenced Japan's bundan. much as the
growth o f the spinning industry's China market reconstituted the Japanese financial
system. Popular writers' incomes rose proportionately in relation to the
development o f women's magazines.71 (Italics mine.)
Women magazines and women readers were compared to a “vast new coIony*'-a literary
colony in the domestic sphere—supposed to bring in a lot o f money to the publishing
businesses and writers, while the Japanese government was attempting to explore new
territorial colonies “outside" Japan. Seeing this metaphor in Japan's colonial context, I
cannot but propose a few suppositions: if women readers and magazines were already
viewed as a colony, it would be possible that women writers were also targeted as a new
colony for this commercial project: three o f them (women magazines, readers, and writers)
/0Honda Shugo. Monogatari sengo bungaku-shi [ Narrative History o f Postwar

Literature vol. 3] (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. 1992). pp. 267-8.
'Oya Soichi. "'Bundan guild no kaitai k f ‘ [The Period o f Dismantling o f the

Literary Guild], quoted in “The Origin o f the Concept o f ‘Women’s Literature"' by Joan
E. Ericson in Woman's Hand, Paul Gordon Schalow and Janet A. Walker eds. (Stanford
University Press. 1996). p. 87.

54
were made into commodities in the literary commercial world. Also, the colony “outside"
Japan (namely Asia) and the colony “inside" Japan (namely Japanese women) were two
sides o f the same coin—imperialism and patriarchy. While Oya talked about the prewar
situation of journalism, the metaphor he used for women would be still valid after the war.
since those publishing businesses resumed targeting women both as consumers and
producers soon after the end of the war. Thus, such a commercial mobilization may be
another reason why the number o f women writers popped up (or were made to pop up) in
the postwar period. In summary, we should keep in mind that women writers were
produced as “glow" to male writers, pursued as a “new colony” for commercialism, and
stigmatized as non-political beings—de-politicized “others" in the postwar period.
II. Male Criticism o f Enchi’s Literature
The postwar responses to Enchi Fumiko's works are a good illustration o f the
gender politics underlying these intellectual debates. In them one can see what male
intellectuals thought about women writers or women’s writing in that period: what kind of
literature they had in mind when discussing “modem literature” (kindai shosetsu): what
they thought about “postwar literature” (sengo bungaku) in particular; and how they felt
about women’s writing about sexuality. By introducing male critics' criticism o f Enchi’s
works, I would like to show how Enchi’s image as well as that o f women writers was
constructed and reproduced in the literary market by these critics, as at the same time they
tussled to build up their (male) subjectivity and modem (masculine) literature.
This discussion is for the next chapter in which I will illustrate how women writers.
Enchi in particular, responded to this criticism and the then-current literary demand for

55
“literature." Enchi herself was aware, according to her friend and fellow writer,
Hirabayashi Taiko. that “the literature was produced, criticized and formulated for the most
part by male standards," and that as a result Enchi's own image as well as that o f other
women writers were shaped by these literary standards. Let me show what kind o f stigma
and signifier for women and women writers male critics repeatedly used in commenting on
Enchi's works. We will see later how Enchi created a different world by reversing and
inverting—translating—them in her works.
Women’s Body: Blood, Flesh, Secretion, etc.
Male criticism of w om en's writing all agrees in fusing women's writing style and
theme with their bodies, as in the following comments (some meant to be laudatory):
• W omen's w ritings, if written too "neatly," are not interesting, but Enchi's works
still leave some “loose ends": in other words, the standard is male writing, which
features more vigor despite (or because of) some loose ends.
• Writers write with their bodies; Enchi writes with her "soft flesh." and since
women have bodies with “sticky fat." the ideas coming through her body are also
"fatty" and "stick" to the page (clearly not the flowing, liquid writing o f ecriture
feminine'.).
• W omen’s writing always involves analogies drawn from their experiences;

therefore, even though Enchi repeatedly says that her works are not reflections of
her own experience but are “fiction” {kyoko), male critics continue to insist her
works are “part of the author” (sakusha no bunshin)—"'an interesting aspect o f
women writers" (Mishima).
• On the other hand, Enchi's stories are read as “universal" and “ahistorical."
depicting the suffering o f women in general; therefore, the historical and social
background in which women are situated is totally ignored.
First, let us examine the statement by Muro Saisei (1889-1962). VIP o f the literary circle at
that time, because he summarizes these points by the masculinist critique and himself

56
represents them:
Women writers with the refined technique o f sewing a kimono write fictions
without skipping even one stitch. Whereas male writers with a three-inch needle
dash like a tatami-maker [...] Fictions, if written too neatly, are not interesting [...]
Enchi Fumiko’s works have still some loose ends.73
Here we vaguely see Muro’s concept o f “fiction,” the standard o f which is male writing,
with some “ loose ends.” unlike wom en's writing with its excessive neatness and tenacity.
Since what he means by “loose ends’’ and “neatness” is so oblique, we are not sure whether
he is talking about writing style or structure. I agree with Joan Ericson that Muro's
comments on Enchi's works, in which he assigned a sewing job to women (which is
historically wrong), is emblematic o f essentialism.7’ Considering M uro's significant status
in the literary guild after the war. his remarks must have helped to construct a consensus
about women's writing in general. In the same comment Muro proposes another point--as
if there were an analogy between wom en's writing and women's appearance: "Okamoto
Kanoko (1889-1939). although she writes excellently, is poor at makeup.”74 Both stigmas
of sewing and makeup believed to belong to women, though a naive configuration from an
historical viewpoint, were publicly and officially used in his criticism o f women writers to
make his argument plausible. Muro goes on associating women's appearance and bodies
72Muro Saisei, “Ogon no hart" [Golden Needles], Chudkoron (1960) in Enchi

Fumiko zenshu. vol. 14 [Collected Works o f Enchi Fumiko: Vol. 14] (Tokyo: Shinchosha.
1978). pp. 307-15.
7:’Joan Ericson. “The Origins o f the Concept o f ‘Women's Literature'.” in The

Woman's Hand. eds. by Paul G. Schalow and Janet A. Walker (California: Stanford UP.
1996). pp. 101-2.
Îbid-

57
with their writing:
It is true that writers write with their own bodies [...] Enchi Fumiko, I thought, also
writes with her soft flesh [...] Since women, unlike men, have bodies with sticky fat,
the ideas coming through her body are also fatty and stick to a writing sheet she is
writing on [...]75
Adjectives like “pota pota shita niku " [soft flesh] and “nettori ” [gooey] are not patents o f
Muro to describe Enchi's works. Other critics too use “n itro n ' [viscous] (Okuno Takeo,
1926-1997), "betabeta-to nebaritsuita ” [sticky] (Masamune Hakucho, 1879-1962), and
“nebaneba-shita nugui-gatai ins ho “ [leaves an impression o f being so sticky that it is hard
to remove] (Kubota Keisaku. 1920-) in commenting Enchi's works. Muro also writes.
"nama-nama-shita utsukushisa go yuhi-gashira ni nichatsuku" [raw beauty that sticks to
the tips of my fingers], instead o f flowing and running like liquid, as recent feminists
describe ecriture feminine, those male critics are interestingly in one chorus of saying that
women's writing “stuck to m en's mind (or body).” What male critics implied for Enchi's
writing is rather the thick “ blood” than the transparent liquid.
If not blood, then male critics connected women's writing to “secretion” (bumpitsu)
or cosmetics (ganryo). Kusumoto Kenkichi. for instance, wrote:
After all, the sexuality o f women writers never goes beyond their experiences;
therefore, they can secrete (bunpitsu) a lot when their writing comes through their
own sexual experience. However, when they write about the sexuality o f the
opposite sex—men—they are completely incapable o f observing it abstractly.76
Kusumoto’s logic resonates to Muro’s: since women write with their “fatty flesh” or with
75Ibid.
76Kusumoto Kenkichi. “Enchi Fumiko Setouchi Hantmi.'' Kaishaku to Kansho

(June 1966): pp. 146-8.

58
"secretion." they cannot write abstractly or intellectually as men can (or as men should) do.
while they can write about their own experiences. Both male critics must have some
standard o f “m en's” literature in contrast to “women's” literature in mind: “male" literature
is supposed to be “abstract” and cut o ff from their own “experiences." especially when
dealing with sexuality in their works.
Okuno Takeo’s description o f Enchi as “muddy and thick by real nature” (doro-
doro shita honsho) also belongs to this category. “W oman's too raw emotion which
consists o f the body and the soul o f Enchi's novd''(Enchi no shasetsu no chiniku wo nasu
namagusai onna no jdnen) is found in the commentary on “A Tale o f False Fortunes"
(Namamiko monogatari) in the literary magazine Gunzo. 1965. Aono Suekichi too uses
the term, "cosmetics" (ganryo) in depicting Enchi's “What Robs Crimson" (Ake o uhau
mono). As if summarizing these criticisms. Mishima Yukio comments on women's
excessive writing style in general:
(Women) should have something excessive so that they would not be drier than
men. Women writers need excessiveness as an ultimate requirement, don't they?77
“Excessiveness” by Mishima implies not only the literary' writing style o f women writers. I
suspect, but also w om en's body itself: the muddy and fishy smell o f “menstruation,”
“bleeding from delivery.” “ fat,” “cosmetics,” or “secretion.” The reader of Mishima's
literature will agree if they read his two lesbian stories: “Haruko"(1947) and "Fruits"
(Kajitsu) (1950), in which “excessiveness” ikajo) is synthesized with woman's body and
woman's homosexuality (not men's). Therefore, for Mishima anything related to women.
^Mishima Yukio. "Sakuhin-hyo: Fnyu momijT [Commentary: ’Winter Maple'].

Gunzo. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 3. pp. 366-68.

59
including their writing style and content, looks excessive after all. Excessiveness also
suggests in other male criticism “(too much) detailed” (komakaku or kime-komakaku) and
“(over)-delicate sensibility” (sensai) in comparison with the sloppy and rough (but o f
course in a positive sense) style o f men’s writing.78 Excessiveness in women, blood, fat,
secretion, cosmetic, or whatever, was thus intermingled with something unknown, alien,
mysterious, or primitive. It was usually put aside in a black box as a negative symbol,
while it was from time to time drawn upon when male intellectuals felt short of inspiration
or vitality (after the war. for example). W omen's body for those intellectuals was like a
reservoir (unclean though) they could turn to in need, and it was not supposed to dry up
because it is always excessive. Men’s obsession with the “excessiveness" of blood and
secretion in w om an's body is certainly reflected in their essentialist criticism o f women's
writing.79
Premodernity in Women—Karma, Tenacity, Fate, etc.
Essentializing woman's writing leads to essentializing woman’s nature and life too.
Enchi’s works have been always praised (or degraded) as writing about woman's “karma"
(go), “tenacity” (shunen). “ fate” (shukumei), “physiology” (seiri), “resentment” (ikidoori),
“ sexual desire” (nikuyoku), “eeriness” (bukimisa), “dreadfulness” (kowasa), “toughness”
78See Ozaki Kazuo, in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 1, p. 568; Mishima Yukio, in
Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 12. p. 440; Tokugawa Musei, in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 1.
pp. 563-4.
^Japanese male analogy between the stickiness of blood and secretion in w om an's
body and the style o f women's writing can be contrasted to Luce Irigaray's concept o f
ecriture feminine, in which she attempted to recover w om en's voice undermined in the
phallogocentric world. Enchi also uses such Japanese male obsession as one o f her
strategies as I will discuss later.

60
(tsuyosa), and so on. Takami Jun. for example, describes a female protagonist in the
"Waiting Years" (Onnazaka) as a "prototype" o f woman in the Meiji period, and says that
through depicting such a woman Enchi established a certain "universal w om an's image."80
By constituting such a "universal" and "prototypical” woman and by putting them in an
ahistorical context male critics succeeded in freezing women in a separate black box or
category from men. This intentional scheme develops into two different (but leading to the
same goal) directions. One is to establish a dichotomy between men and women, as Okuno
Takeo tried to do in his commentary on Enchi's works: men as “extroverted" (gaikd-teki),
"logical" (ronri-teki). and "practical" (jissen-leki); women as "introverted" (naikd-teki).
"illogical" (hi-ronri-leki). "emotional" (jdshn-teki). and "unclear between self and others"
(mibunka).SI Here we see male critics' desperate efforts to draw a clear borderline
between men and women (writers) with the purpose o f ranking the latter in a lower status,
namely as primitive and premodem. Another problematic direction is the ahistoricization
and universalization of women by idolizing them as chaste wives or the Great Mother
Symbol.82 O r else they try to put women in a "femme fatale” box. Hence, from their
80Takami Jun. "Sakuhin-hyo: Onnazaka" [Commentary : 'The Waiting Years'], in

Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 6, pp. 429-33.
81Okuno Takeo, "Sakka-ron: Eien 'ni osoerareru onna: Enchi Fumiko no bunga/cu"
[Commentary on Writers: Woman Who is Feared Forever: Literature o f Enchi Fumiko], in
Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 3, pp. 375-85.
s:The mother image for Japan or the Japanese psyche has been repeatedly brought
up by male writers and critics: Kobayashi Hideo in his "Literature o f Lost Home": Eto Jun
in his “ Maturity and Loss''(5W///A'z/ to soshitsu): Yasuoka Shotaro in his "Landscape o f the
Shore" ( Umibe no kokei): Kojima Nobuo in his "Family in Hug" (Hqyokazoku) and so on.
This observation was inspired by Ueno Chizuko's article. "Collapse of'Japanese
M others.'" The U.S.-Japan Women s Journal, English Supplement, no. 10 (1996).
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e cop y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p ro d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e rm is s io n .

61
viewpoints Enchi constantly describes unhappy and unlucky women: "evil woman"
(dokufu), "shaman"' (miko), "alluring woman" (yojo). etc. These negative images of
women that male critics have in their mind were, o f course, the projection o f their own
ambivalence towards women. But another serious problem in such a dichotomy o f women
as virgins or mothers, or as femmes fatales, is that they trace the origin o f this prototype o f
women back to the ancient time, and try to establish a continuity in the history of Japanese
literature.
A certain intentional tendency o f modernization can be seen in criticism of Enchi:
that is. as Ueno Chizuko points out. the attitude in which anything off the track of
modernity in Japan is separated and boxed in the category o f "the residue of the past"—
"tradition" or "ethnicity." In other words, by creating a category o f "premodemitv" and
leaving it behind, these critics can be assured o f the progress they have made in the process
o f modernization. Moroda Kazuhiro's criticism reconfirms this tendency:
Enchi's literature has something like a shadow in our senses, in other words,
something in our mind which cannot be recognized clearly but which can touch our
unconsciousness. This is a kind o f stream o f unconsciousness, impossible to depict
but also eager for expression, deviating and surviving persistently behind the
modem devices, which covers the forms o f our consciousness or thoughts. We
could call it “Japaneseness"(m7?o/7-rc£/) or “traditional" (dentd-teki). However.
Enchi's literature has a more complex structure than these adjectives suggest [...] In
this process, what emerges in front o f Enchi was a dark territory, which Japanese
modernity had to deal with, and which never appeared and kept stubbornly silent,
rejecting any conscious attempts at analysis so far. In some cases we call it the
ideology (kan ’neri), or persistence (shunen), or historical ethics (rekishi-teki rinri)
that is flowing quietly at the bottom o f Japanese modernity.33
Moroda associates women writers like Enchi to primitiveness, a "dark territory." By
s'Moroda Kazuhiro. "Kindai jo ryu sa kka no shdzo: Enchi Fumiko'' [Portraits o f

Modem Women Writers]. Kaishaku to kansho (March 1972): pp. 117-9. (Italics are mine)
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p ro d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e rm is s io n .

62
othering women as the “dark territory.'’ and by describing it as “shadow,"
"unconsciousness.” “longing for expression,” “persisting behind the modem devices,”
“traditional.” “stubbornly silent rejecting any conscious attempts for analysis,” which are
all metaphors for women, women writers and women literature, Moroda, as a result, en
genders the Japanese “ideology” or “historical ethics,” despite his insistence on their being
gender-neutral. Tying women to an ahistorical ideology o f “tradition” brings out an
important issue for both gender and nation after the war. It is obvious that in order to
explain an inexplicable matter, namely the “premodemity” o f any incidents like the war.
the image of “Woman" is exploited. Okuno also situates one of Enchi's works as
premodem:
"Masks" (Onncimen). a novel which goes beyond the category o f short story, is
drifting away from the modem novel because her Gothic taste oozes out (mtrari) to
the surface.84
As already pointed out. Okuno was the critic who used a dichotomy for women writers:
male as extroverted, logical and practical, female as introverted, illogical, emotional and
having a self undivided from others. He even concludes that "it is useless to expect
sociality (shakaisei) in Enchi’s literature.” As a model for “modem literature” these male
critics have Western literature in mind. Yoshida Ken’ichi, for example, expresses his
admiration for Western (in this case British) short stories when commenting on Enchi's
short story. “Life o f A House” (Ie no inochi):
When reading such a story (as Enchi's) I feel that reading novels is enjoyable after
all. It has been a long time since I felt like this [...] For example, in short stories in
the British magazines I always find this kind o f balance, which I believe is the basis
84Okuno Takeo. in Enchi Fumiko zen sh u . vol. 3. p. 382.

63
of so-called short stories. But I seldom find this in contemporary Japanese works in
the monthly magazines.'15
Likewise, both Aono Suekichi and Hirano Ken situate Edo literature including joruri and
kabuki respectively as “old inhuman literature" (Aono,/u ru i hi-ningenteki na bungaku).
and as “premodem decadence” (Hirano. zen-kindaiteki na taitoshumi).*b
Experiences and Writing: Loss of Organs
Enchi writes with her "soft flesh.” and since women have bodies with “sticky fat.”
the ideas coming through her body are also “fatty" and “stick” to a writing sheet. This logic
leads to another fallacy: that is. women’s writing always involves analogies drawn from
their experiences: therefore, even though Enchi repeatedly says that her works are not
reflections o f her own experience but are "fiction” (ky oko). male critics continue to insist
her works are "part o f the author” (sakusha no bunshin. Eto Jun. Enchi Fumikn -enshii A)
According to those male critics the experiences of the female characters Enchi writes about
are always “certain actual feelings” (aru jikkan) out o f the author's experiences (Kaisetsic.
"Tsui no sumika" [Commentary: The House for the Last Days] by Haniya Yutaka. Enchi
Fumiko zenshu 6).
Especially in Enchi's trilogy, which talks about women who had their female
organs removed in surgery, male critics certainly see the female protagonist as the
reflection o f Enchi’s life. For example. Okuno represents this conventional interpretation
85Yoshida Ken’ichi. Bungakukai 1956. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 2. pp. 388-89.
S6Aono. "Kaisetsu: Ake wo ubau mono” [Commentary: ‘What Robs Crimson’].

Asahi Newspaper 1955, in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 12. p. 438; Hirano. “Kaisetsu: Kaze
no gotoki kotoba" [Commentary: ‘Words Like the W ind'], in Enchi Fumiko bunko, vol. 2.
in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 1. pp. 573-74.

64
of women's writing in commenting on the effect o f Enchi's loss o f organs: Enchi's "male
eyesight became bigger and stronger after she lost her female organs."87 Kusumoto
Kenkichi also exemplifies the speculation o f male critics on her loss and writing:
In the case o f Enchi, such a “physical” experience as a hysterectomy (“she had her
womb hollowed out” shikyuw o eguritorareta) produced a complex—feelings o f
being neither male or female, and based on this complex she has been "secreting”
(bunpitsu) several postwar controversial novels.88
From Kusumoto's viewpoint, anything in Enchi’s works come from her physical complex
about her hysterectomy, and this complex produces some kind o f "secretion”
(humpitsuhutsu) and "aggressiveness like a wounded animal at bay” (oitsumerareta
dobutsu no ydna kogeki-sei).^ Like other critics. Hasegawa Izumi concludes. "Through a
hysterectomy, an ultimate life experience for women's sexuality, she seems to become
aggressive in writing literature (hungaku-jnnn inanri) "90 Aggressiveness from loss o f
organs, secretion (creativity) from a hollow uterus (Enchi's female body), is thus defined as
the essence of her literature. The absence o f femaleness (loss o f female organ) is lauded by-
male critics, since her literature displays a lack of femaleness. Enchi herself, taking up this
topic in her works, appropriates and inverts this conventional discourse on women’s
writing and their bodies.
87Okuno Takeo, "Eien ni osorerareru onna: Enchi Fumiko no bungaku” [Women

Who Are Feared Forever: Literature of Enchi Fumiko], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 3
(Tokyo: Shinchosha. 1978). pp. 375-85.
88Kusumoto Kenkichi. Kaishaku to Kansho. p. 147.
89Ibid.
wHasegawa Izumi. Kokubungaku 14: 2 (January 1969): p. 181.

65
Similarly, when Enchi writes about resentful women in The Waiting Years and H alf
Century, they are interpreted as Enchi’s own resentment against the literary circle.91
Takami Jun. for example, insists that The Waiting Years was written from “resentment she
flings at something” [nanika ikidoori wo butsukeru ydna kimochij. In fact, when Enchi
was asked. "What is your motivation of writing?” she repeatedly and clearly answers,
"Such strong emotion, upsetting and disturbing the balance o f my mind, resentment for
example, cannot be a m otif for writing fiction.”92 However, male critics seem completely
to ignore such a statement o f her own. Thus. Enchi who lost her female organs, is viewed
by male critics as some emotional "void” and "emptiness.” She is pictured as a writer who
is thirsty for the fulfillment of her "dead physiology” (shinda seiri) or "loss of physiology”
(sashitsu no seiri).
What they saw in Enchi’s works, loss and void, could have been what they saw in
themselves in the bombed out ruins after the defeat o f the war . We find a certain
emotional commonness o f male critics over the loss when we hear Hirano Ken lamenting
as follows:
Recently, Enchi Fumiko has succeeded in transferring her general grief o f loss to a
strong literary motif. Women writers over fifty like Enchi Fumiko, Hirabayashi
Taiko or Tsuboi Sakae now all look like monsters (bakemono): is it not related to a
serious misfortune for us engaged in literature? Is it not possible that we can write
literature without feelings o f loss or lack (sashitsu toka ketsuraku tokayuu kan 'nen
nashini)?93
9lThev infer this from the fact that Enchi was not accepted by the literary
establishment for a long time after the war.
92Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 6 (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1977). p. 432.
93Hirano Ken, in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 2, pp. 393-94.

66
Postwar literature, as Hirano suggests, probably had sprung up from the feeling o f loss
among intellectuals. However, what Hirano noticed was a great difference between the
loss women writers suffered and the loss experienced by male intellectuals. Women
writers like Enchi or Hirabayashi looked like monsters (bakemono) in m en's eyes, because
they became quite active and prolific in literary activity after over fifty. Hirano obviously
implies that their monstrosity came from their unseasonal blossoming after m enopause-
after their female function had halted.94 In their eyes just because these old women are
locked outside o f circuits of exchange in the phallocentric society, because they possessed
neither youth nor reproductive capacity, they "circulated their passions on the written
page.
In Enchi's case, furthermore, in her early forties she lost female organs by-
hysterectomy and mastectomy. Male critics always assimilated Enchi's writing to her
experiences, claiming that her works were all basically autobiographical, connecting the
loss o f her female organs to her writing. Physiological loss slid into emotional loss, and as
a result Enchi was pictured as a writer who was constantly thirsting for the fulfillment of
her alleged “emotional void" and “emptiness." Enchi for her part provided a different
conceptualization o f her loss. She assimilated herself to the ancient Chinese historian.
Szuma Chi’en, who wrote The Record o f Great Historians. Enchi identified herself with
this eunuch, who had accepted violence on his body in order to escape from capital
"Each o f the three women writers Hirano listed here were already over 50 at that
time.
95Nina Comyetz. Dangerous Women, Deadly Words: Phallic Fantasy and

Modernity' in Three Japanese Writers (Palo Alto: Stanford UP. 1999). p. 113.

67
punishment and finish his writing. By so doing, Enchi replaced the metaphor o f an
emptiness which insatiably demands fulfillment with that o f a void which produces an
abundant flow o f creativity and imaginativeness. If a woman's body is already void in
Freudian theory, then Enchi's body without female organs was doubly void. But Enchi
turned this double void into a source o f inventiveness and theatrical transformation.
Gender for Enchi. therefore, is always a performance, just as the male impersonator o f a
female role at the kabuki theater is a performance. Similarly, her autobiographical writing
was also a theatrical transformation and performance, not an authentic confession o f her
life and sexuality, as her male critics wanted to believe. In Enchi's case, her “ lack" o f
female function ironically (against m en's expectation) promoted her productivity in her
writing.
The "loss'* for male critics or writers does not look the same as the "loss’’ for Enchi.
For the former the loss led to an ideology o f nationalism, missing their "home land,'’ or
“Japanese traditional psyche." which will veer towards victimization and nostalgia, while
Enchi connects her loss of sexual organs to her creativity and productivity. The nation for
men and gender for Enchi are complexly crisscrossed in this “loss” issue. The postwar
experience of the defeat of the nation, the loss or “lack o f phallus," experienced by these
masculinist critics is projected onto Enchi's “loss o f organs" as a "lack." But the
phenomenon of “lack'’ or “loss'’ leads to two very different strategies for the formation of
subjectivity in male intellectuals and Enchi Fumiko.
Male critics also like associating Enchi's literary activity with her family
background or her private life. Mishima. for example, comments on "What Robs

68
Crimson”(/l£e o ubau mono) and concludes that the relationship between wife and husband
in this story is based on Enchi's own marital life: “The fact that she cannot make objective
descriptions is an interesting aspect o f women writers."96 Other critics. like Muro Saisei,
put focus on Enchi's father and her affluent and intellectual family circumstances as the
foundation of her literature (“having a doctor of Arts and Sciences as her father, and a
scholar o f economics as her husband.” Enchi Fumikozenshu 14. p. 311). Their stress on
the primacy on family genealogy itself certainly illustrates their inclination of establishing a
transhistorical meta-narrative o f Japanese literature. Just as Enchi Fumiko was a
“daughter” of Ueda Kazutoshi (the founder o f the discipline o f Japanese linguistics).
Enchi's literature, no matter how “untraditional" it was. was viewed as a legitimate child
o f Japanese classical literature: all talented women were “daughters" o f their “father":
Enchi's classical knowledge came from her “ father.” not from other illegitimate sources:
any new phenomenon in postwar literature is the illegitimate child o f Japanese tradition,
and so on. This is the same reason why most critics tended to ignore Enchi's inclination to
socialism and her considerable immersion in foreign literature, while they always stressed
her immersion in the classics.97
The tendency o f equating Enchi as an author to a woman character in her work is
also frequently found in the commentary by male critics. Nakamura Shin’ichiro. as if
summarizing other male criticism o f Enchi, poses a rhetorical question: “Is it this
96Mishima Yukio. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 12 (Tokyo: Shinchosha. 1977). p.

440.
97Not much substantial research has been done on this topic.

69
protagonist or is it its author who still has vitality in enjoying a rich Shining Prince
(Hikaru-Genji) fantasy towards men?"98 Such an attempt to assimilate an author to the
protagonist is a technique o f the I-novel tradition. Male critics seem to interpret women’s
writing in the framework o f the I-novel style and impose it on women writers, while they
were distancing themselves from the I-novel and seeking for a new postwar “modem
literature" in men’s writing. Here again, we see the male ego that puts women writers and
the I-novel together in the black box o f premodemity, and proceeds its way to the
modernization o f literature.
War Experiences and Writings
If Enchi's writing is reduced to her experiences, what about her stories dealing with
the war? How do the male critics view Enchi's writing about the war? In fact, there have
not been many comments on this topic, since she was usually classified in the group of
"belles-lettres" due to her references and subjects from classical literature. Consequently,
neither has there been much debate as to whether Enchi is a “postwar writer” or not.99 As
one o f the few exceptions, Tachihara Masa’aki says, “Enchi was fascinated with Tanizaki
98Nakamura Shin'ichiro. “Kaisetsu: Fuyu m om iji" [Commentary: ’Winter Maple'],

Tokyo shimbun 1968, in Enchi Fumiko zen sh u , vol. 3, pp. 365-6. “The Shining Prince"
(Hikaru Genji) is a male protagonist o f The Tale o f Genji. He is described as a
promiscuous lover who attracts any woman and man.
"Kawamura Minato defines “postwar literature” as that which deals with the war
experiences, from war literature (senso bungaku--Ooka Shohei. Takeda Taijun. Hino
Ashihei. Gomikawa Jumpei). to A-bomb literature (genbaku bungaku—Ota Yoko. Hayashi
Kyoko. Toge Sankichi, Hara Tamiki). to repatriate literature (hikiagesha bungaku—V no
Koichiro. Itsuki Hiroyuki. Yamazaki Toyoko, Sawachi Hisae. Fujiw'ara Tei. Miyao
Tomiko, Abe Kobo). Kawamura Minato, Ikydno Show a bungaka [Showa Literature
Outside Japanese Islands] (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1998). However. Enchi belongs to
none o f these categories.

70
Jun'ichiro. and she (like Tanizaki) translated The Tale o f Genji. but she basically belongs
to the postwar group."100 What Tachihara means by “postwar” is ambiguous, but I assume
that it is anything but “classicist” (koten shugi-ha) or “b e lle s -le ttr e s and something
dealing with the war experiences. In this sense, yes. because Enchi wrote stories o f women
who survived the war. But whether Enchi liked this title, “postwar writer,” which
Tachihara obviously valued more than “b e lle s -le ttr e s is unclear, because she actually
merged war experiences with classicism as in "The Love in Two Lives-the Remnants"
(Nise no enishi-shui) and in “ Enchantress" ( Yo).
Kojima Nobuo also calls Enchi's Waiting Years a “postwar classic" (Sengo no
koten) but more explicitly suggests what he means by the term "postwar." He analyzes
Tomo. Koto (two female protagonists, respectively in Waiting Years and in H alf Century).
and the author as embodiments of Enchi's resentment against the literary circle (bundan)
which for a long time had rejected her works when she was writing Waiting Years—namely
during the war period. These two fictions mentioned above, according to Kojima. were
written to call back these women’s resentment and to soothe their spirits as a “requiem."
What he implies in his comments is his definition of “postwar literature” as a “requiem"
for the victims in the war.
In 1976 Kimura Toshio. through critique o f Enchi’s “A short-lived Love" (Utakata
no ki). defines the difference between “nostalgia" (kaiko) and “recollection" (kaiko).
IOOTachihara Masa'aki. "Tokyo shimbun” (1974). in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 5

(Tokyo: Shinchosha. 1978). p. 432.

7!
written in different Chinese characters with the same pronunciation.101 According to him.
recollection is an active plunging into fantasy or into an imaginary past (Jijitsu attaka Joka
fubummeina kako), whereas nostalgia is a passive attitude whose present life is eaten up by
the “factual past” [jijitsu alia kako no sei). In conclusion Kimura classifies Enchi's “A
Short-lived Love” as an example o f nostalgia. Obviously, Kimura recommends
“recollection,” not “nostalgia,” as an appropriate attitude of postwar intellectuals towards
the past.
Yamamoto Kenkichi. on the other hand, in comparing Enchi with Ariyoshi Sawako.
comments as follows: “Like Ariyoshi (Enchi) also has a lot o f contact with the classical
world, but she does not indulge in it as Ariyoshi does.” 102 Whether they show a negative
attitude (Enchi's works come from “nostalgia") or a positive attitude (Enchi does not
indulge in nostalgia) toward Enchi, it is clear that how to face the past and how to live with
the past was one o f the pivotal issues for postwar intellectuals.
In none o f the debates in the postwar period (except recently) were women writers
impeached for their responsibility in conforming with the state during the war. For
example, when the New Literature Group (Shin Nihon bungakukai) impeached the writers
who supported the state, women writers were not listed.103 One reason was that women
l0lKimura Toshio. Gunzo 1976, in Enchi Fumiko zen sh u . vol. 5, pp. 449-51.
,02Yamamoto Kenkichi. Asahi Newspaper 1956. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 2. p.

390.
l03Odagiri Hideo, “Bungaku ni okeru sensdsekinin no tsuikyu" [Impeachment of

War Responsibility in Literature], in Sengo shisono shuppatsu [The Start o f Postwar
Thought ] (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo. 1969). p. 224.

72
writers did not have an influential role, but the main reason was that women were not
regarded as political beings who had such responsibility. They were as viewed totally
outside the political world, therefore, they were exempt from responsibility. Nonetheless,
some critics did not think it was enough to list up the suspicious writers, since by imposing
all the responsibility on some writers, others could escape from it. Hashikawa Bunzo, for
instance, proposed how postwar intellectuals were supposed to understand the ‘‘war
experiences":
If we understand “war experiences" in an historical way, they only would have the
meaning of “nostalgia" and would only belong to the category o f “war experiences"
o f the mid-war generation (senchu-ha), from which only narcissism or resentment
will repeatedly come out.104
Hashikawa. replacing “nostalgia." proposes a new interpretation o f the “War as a
Transcendental Being" \Chdetsu-sha to shiteno sensd\.105 War as a "process of revelation"
(keiji no katei) is compared to Christ's crucifixion, and the death o f Jesus to defeat in the
Pacific War in Hashikawa's argument. Instead o f dissolving war responsibility into a
historical memory as “nostalgia," he attempts to freeze it as a “universal" and
contemporary concept, as something postwar intellectuals will have to carry as a cross in
each one’s literary process. He is right, because by historicizing the war contemporary
people tend to feel they are not responsible something that was over. Hashikawa’s sense o f
responsibility for the past should be appreciated, but at the same time, his sacralizing the
‘^Hashikawa Bunzo. '"Sens 6 taiken ron no im f' [The Significance o f ‘War

Experiences’ Debate), in Sengo bungaku no shiso [Thought o f Postwar Literature] (Tokyo:
Chikuma shobo. 1969). pp. 126-7.
,05Ibid.

73
war as a “transcendental being" is obviously problematic, since such universalization,
homogenization, and justification o f the war eradicates the differences and morality.106
Another way o f escaping from responsibility, by focusing on the victimization o f
the Japanese people, was also found in criticism o f Enchi's works. Ito Shinkichi. for
example, summarizes Enchi's “Lyricism in the Highlands’’ [Kogen ryojd) as the story o f a
“war victim" (sensono gisei), and a story o f the “sweet musical emotion” (kanhina
ongakuteki jdsho) in his friendly commitment with the narrator (a woman)."’7
Victimization is found also in the commentary by Komatsu Shinroku on “Women's
Cocoon" (Onnu no mayu). The story is about Hishikawa Toyoki. a military doctor who
committed vivisection and poison experiments on live human bodies in China during the
war. Instead of being executed by the Allied after the war. he had all his knowledge about
poisons sucked up by them and was sent back to Japan as a burnout. However. Toyoki was
revived by his first love. Michiko. with whom he was engaged before being sent to the war.
Komatsu concludes that both Toyoki and Michiko were miserable “war victims.” citing
Michiko’s words: “My cocoon was eaten up by a poisonous bug named war. It was
violence, against which neither I or Toyoki could fight.” Especially Toyoki. Komatsu says,
“who was engaged in vivisection, represents desperation and nihilism condensed in those
who experienced the war. and who corrupted (kuzure) and felt guilty
l06Ueno Chizuko asks a similar rhetorical question.”Is there a good war or bad
war?” Although she warns of the danger o f the dichotomy o f good or bad. essentializing
the war is also dangerous since it can lead to nationalism.
I07lto Shinkichi, “Kaisetsu: Kogen ryo jd ' [Commentary: ‘Lyricism in the

highland'], Tokyo Shimbun I960, in Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 3. pp. 373-74.

I
74
(semesainamareta)."nm Komatsu calls this “tragedy o f a [great?] man"{otoko no higeki),
expressing his regret for the unsatisfactory ending o f this story, in which Toyoki killed
himself with a bomb on the airplane: Komatsu laments, “Since I want to read this story
through my male principle (otoko no genri), this ending is unendurable.” Similarly, when
Wan, a Chinese guy who knew about Toyoki’s brutality in China and who sought to take
his life in revenge, was finally killed by Toyoki, Komatsu does not show any sympathy for
Wan’s legitimate resentment and revenge.
The term “war victim” (senso no gisei) is problematic in the sense that it multiply
covers up the obvious difference between who was a victim and who was a victimizer.
"War victim” might imply that everybody is a victim “by” virtue o f the war itself, as if
when Japanese people suffered from an inevitable natural disaster. It also erases its
historical context, generalizing and flattening all wars and victims into one meta-narrative:
“all” people were victims during the war. Thus, victimization o f the “Japanese people” and
justification o f WWII were subtly reconstructed by male critics in their commentaries on
Enchi’s works.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have seen how male critics reduced Enchi’s writing to “women’s
body, experiences, and premodemity.” In other words, male critics constantly and
consistently imposed the cultural structure o f gender difference and the master narrative o f
")SKomatsu Shinroku, “Kaisetsu: Onna no mayu” [Commentary: 'W om en’s

Cocoon’], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 9 (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten. 1967). pp. 501-5.

75
“masculinist” texts, which formed and internalized the system called ■‘Woman.”109
Trapped “ inside” the system women writers like Enchi attempted to go “outside” the
system through various strategies, which I will discuss in the next chapter. The complexity
o f women's position "inside” or “outside” needs clarification here. On the one hand,
women (and women writers) were pushed “outside” the socio-political system and stripped
o f their active agency as political beings who could participate in politics. On the other
hand, they were categorized “inside” a black box. the system called “ Woman.” which
signified the stereotypical primitive image of “Woman.” More complexly. Japanese
postwar intellectuals abducted and appropriated these images o f “Woman” to defend
themselves or escape from any accusation and responsibility, in their commentaries on
some o f Enchi's works, for example, they fabricated victimization o f the Japanese people
in the war. therefore, justification o f the war itself. They identified themselves and the
Japanese nation with Japanese women as victimized to create the image o f victimization of
the whole Japanese nation or state.
The flipside o f this victimization o f Japanese women, and then o f Japanese men.
was the primitivization o f women.110 As we have seen before, these critics categorized
Enchi’s literature as “pre-modem” and as the residue o f primitiveness in Japan, while they
found in the primitivization o f women a source o f revitalization for establishing the
modernization of postwar male literature. That is. in the domestic sphere male intellectuals
l09Mizuta Noriko Lippit. Monogcitari to Han-monogatari to f ukei: bimgaku to josei

no sdzdryokii (Tokyo: Tabata shoten, 1993), p. 8.
ll0See Rey Chow. Primitive Passions, pp. 21. 68.

76
dominated women and women writers with patriarchal authority, while they usurped
woman’s image in their works as the source of revitalization, acting as if they were male
intellectuals who had escaped from war responsibility by identifying with Japanese
“woman” and protecting themselves “inside” the system called “Woman.” The magic box
o f “Woman” was used as a reservoir o f vitality and a shelter from responsibility, so that
men could freely commute across the border from “inside" to “outside.” or the other way
around, according to their own preference. Meanwhile actual women (and women writers)
were kept all the time “inside” the system called “Woman,” which was located “outside”
society.
We have come a long way since Muro Saisei's essentialist criticism, which modem
Western critics may not even consider a "critique." However, since this kind o f
“uncritique” comes back again and again in discussing women's writing, Muro’s should
not be overlooked or ignored as just nonsense. Miyoshi Masao. a contemporary male critic
o f modem literature, for example, discussing Enchi as a representative “woman writer” in a
“separate" chapter, still insists that she is not “an intellectual speculator on social
history."'" Miyoshi's critique is not all that distant from the one made in 1959 by Okuno
Takeo, a postwar male critic:
“It is useless to demand Enchi's social perspective (shakai-sei) [...] In some of her
works there is an inclination towards socialism through the protagonists’ lover and
commitment with the New Theater Group (shingeki). but this is far distant from the
core o f her literature. From the start her literature is not based on real society."112
11'Miyoshi Masao. O ff Center: Power and Culture: Relations between Japan and
the United States (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994), p.209.
" :Okuno Takeo, pp. 384-5.

77
Enchi's works were thus labeled by male critics as ‘‘apolitical,” “asocial," "aesthetic" and
“personal." The flipside was the standard for male writings in the postwar period: they
should be “political," “social." “non-aesthetic,” “public" and “universal." Needless to say
these accounts were tainted with gender bias. Apart from the gender issue, there are a few
other points related to these terms I would like briefly to mention.
First, we have to pay attention to the point that the term “political" in the postwar
debates was used to mean (1) the subject matter o f the literature and (2) the activity o f the
writer. In short, how the writer responded to the existent political party, in this context the
Communist Party, and whether she/he dealt with this topic in their activities or in their
works, were the factors that categorized them or their works as either “political" or
“apolitical." The issue was usually discussed inside the frame o f the power relationships
among the existing political parties. The system itself, which was highly "political." was
left unquestioned. Therefore, although Enchi's literature was called "non-political" since it
did not deal with political issues around parties, her works were quite "political" in the
sense that she wrote about the dynamic politics among women and men.
The term “aesthetic" in literature reminded the postwar critics o f a rather feudalistic
“return to classical Japanese literature." Now “aesthetic," the residue of old Japan, had to
be discarded for building a new modem literature. Despite their denial o f “belles-lettres ” a
great number o f re-writings o f the classics as well as many translations into modem
Japanese emerged in the postwar period. Enchi, Mishima. and other postwar writers
published many such rewriting, while Tanizaki. Enchi and Setouchi each translated The
Tale o f Genji. On the other hand, “aesthetic" was still stigmatized with women and

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premodemitv. While attaining a modem literature, postwar intellectuals sought for their
national identity and vitality in women and primitiveness—in short, in aesthetic literature.
Enchi, responding to them, attempted to coalesce modem women and classics in her works.
The term “ personal” was unacceptable to postwar intellectuals because it went back
to the narrow world o f the I-novel in which no political participation is realized. Literature
of the “personal” did not have the power o f resistance, they thought, since it was integrated
into the regime o f a collective historical narrative. Instead, the notion o f an “individual”
who was not a subject of the nation was a key term for postwar intellectuals, since they
supposed that only the "individual” could protest against the power o f the state.113 Because
male critics viewed F.nchi’s literature as personal, not individual, they undermined Enchi's
political agency as a writer.
The concepts o f the “aesthetic.” “apolitical" (or asocial), and “personal" (or
"private"), were thus stigmas for women and women writers in postwar Japanese literature.
Male critics' essentializing o f women and women writers, together with their identifying
themselves with Woman, was an attempt to establish their masculinity and male
subjectivity in literature. Thus postwar literature and criticism were deeply tainted with
gender issues.
113As for the difference between the “individual" and a “subject o f an historical
narrative,” see Naoki Sakai. Translation & Subjectivity: On “Japan ” and Cultural
Nationalis (Minneapolis: University o f Minnesota. 1997). p. 179.

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Chapter 3
Responses and Strategies of Enchi
Introduction
The points male critics made in their commentaries on Enchi's works may be
summarized as follows:
1. Enchi’s literary style comes from her body (flesh, fat, blood, secretion,
cosmetics).
2. Enchi's experiences are reflected directly in her works (famous father, loss of
female organs, unhappy marriage)
3. Enchi’s women protagonists are her alter ego (bunshin)
4. Enchi writes about the “true nature o f women" (jealousy, resentment, tenacity,
promiscuousness).
5. Enchi writes about the victimization o f Japanese women.
Such essentialist critiques in one way or the other cast shadow on women's writing,
including Enchi's. and contributed to setting up a different standard for male literature and
female literature. Women writers naturally responded to such imposition by male critics,
and had to come up with some strategies as well. I will show in this chapter how women
writers, Enchi in particular, responding to such male expectations o f women, reversed the
stigmas o f woman’s images and used them in their critiques and fiction. First, let us view
how women critics defended Enchi against male criticism, or joined in essentialization of
Enchi’s works.
I. Critique by Women Critics
Often criticism by women critics contests the construction o f Enchi by male critics.
For example. Enchi is usually viewed by male critics, represented by Eto Jun. as being poor

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in general at creating male figures."4 Masamune Hakucho, for example, felt revolted by
Enchi's depiction o f a male character in "Starving Days" (Himojii tsukihi), commenting: “I
was forced to check m yself to see if this is an image o f men in women’s eyes. The smoke
o f ‘contempt for m en’ (<dansei besshi) is smoldering here [...] it (unpleasantly) sticks to my
mind (beta-betato watashi no kokoro ni nebaritsuita).”" 5 This kind of resentment is also
found in other male critics like Ara Masahito: “Male characters are always treated meanly
(ijiwarusa) by the author...” " 6 Mishima Yukio. although he is usually appreciative o f
Enchi’s works, also shows his uncomfortable feeling about male characters created by
Enchi in her stories:
The author treats Munakata (the husband in ‘Wings with Injury’[A7ct< aru tsubasa])
unfairly and with excessive spitefulness. His wife's meanness came from a kind o f
persecution complex (she sees her life as a tragedy). When we read her sharp
criticism o f her husband, for example, her complaints about his pushiness (kusamft.
it stings us like a thom (/oge)."7
Most male critics seem to agree that either male characters are dealt with unfairly and
meanly, or they are poorly created by Enchi. Contradicting those complaints. Tanaka
Sumie gives credit to Enchi’s ability at describing male characters in “A Wondering
Spirifi’[Yt7jtort]:
Enchi’s ability in creating male characters impressed me again. She can imagine
‘"Tanaka Sumie. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 5, p. 446. Eto Jun. in Enchi Fumiko
zenshu, vol. 6. p. 436.
'"M asam une Hakucho. Yomiurishimbun 1955. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 2. p.
394.
" 6Ara Masahito, Tokyo shimbun 1957, in Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 2, p. 396.
'"M ishim a Yukio. C hudkdron 1959. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 12. p. 440.

81
what men think by just looking at their face~or rather it is because she has an
unusual talent and fresh vitality with which she persists exploring what they have in
m ind."8
We see, as far as Enchi’s ability in writing about men is concerned, a totally opposite
perception between Tanaka and male critics. The male critics sound contradictory. As
long as Enchi writes about women, male critics praise her characterizations as a woman’s
accomplishment o f what “only women can write about” or what “men can never write
about.” However, once Enchi writes about “men.” male critics conclude that she “cannot”
create realistic male figures in her works. As we have seen, on the other hand, male writers
have been writing a great deal about women: usurping woman’s body and woman's
sexuality as their topics. Such a contradiction in the arguments o f these male critics raises
a question. Why do they think Enchi cannot write about women? Because they assume
that only male writers can construct a universal subjecticiutv by writing about both men
and w om en."9 But this “universal” subjectivity is in fact only a projection o f a male
subjectivity.
Second, male critics are not usually excited to read the story o f adultery by women.
Michiyo in “W omen's Cocoon” plans to abandon her husband and daughter to get together
with Toyoki, who was once her fiance and has now come back from the US burned out by
his responsibility for his war crimes. The critic mentioned before. Komatsu Shinroku.
expresses a strong distaste toward Michiyo’s “adventure": “Her behavior goes far beyond
ll8Tanaka Sumie, Gunzo 1972, in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 5. p. 446.
" 9See Sato Izumi. “Kindai hungaku-shi no ki ’okivbckyaku” [Memorv/Oblivion o f

the History o f Modem Japanese], Gendai shiso (January 1999): pp. 170-182.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of th e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n p roh ibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

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the judgement o f immorality (furin) or adultery (kantsu)—it is simply outrageous behavior
from a common sensical viewpoint. The author probably is appealing to us, the readers,
that women have something like a ‘karma o f unseasonal blossom’ (kuruizaki no go)."120
Terada Toru, another male critic, also complains that the adultery o f a wife is “unnatural'’
{fushizen) in the story of “The House for the Last Years” (Tsui no sumika). Against
Terada, Hirabayashi Taiko argues back, defending Enchi:
[...] when writing about the secrets o f adultery in a couple, we used to, women
writers in particular, write the husband as betrayer and the wife as victim, but here
(in “The House for the Last Years”) (Enchi) creates a symmetry (by making both a
man and a woman commit adultery), rebelling against the traditional concept o f
women's fiction. Her maturity sees further beyond the (popular) view o f the
victimization of wom en.121
Male critics, who are eager to assimilate all women to victimization and subordination, do
not seem to be able to handle the reversed sex role—women characters as active agents of
adventure. Hirabayashi challenges that non-verbal but conventional code in the literary
guild.
However, some female critics who favor Enchi often end up to essentializing her
too. For instance, when Tanaka Miyoko sees in Enchi “the willpower for rebuilding
culture in the crisis o f dissolution,” her comments reinforce the conventional view o f a
male critic who presents Enchi’s works as a “requiem for women who are on the verge of
l20Komatsu Shinroku. "Kaiseisu: Onna no mavu" [Commentary: ‘W omen's

Cocoon’], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 9 (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1967), pp. 501-3.
l2lEnchi, in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 6, p. 441.

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disappearing in a new age."122 Tanaka ends up pushing Enchi’s literature away as a
historical museum piece which modem people go to see merely for nostalgia. Writing a
“requiem" for the individual in the past is certainly one way for a writer to compromise the
past and the present. On the other hand, by so doing, the writer tends to freeze the
individual figure in the category o f the “past” and to reject mobile and two-way
communication between the past and the present.
Takenishi Hiroko. an insightful reader o f Enchi's works, challenges the traditional
view o f male critics: “Enchi’s literature is not one of naive defense o f women which
merely attempts to justify wom en's ’karma.' ’tenacity,' or ‘rancor'." and defends Enchi's
“reason” (risei) as well as “emotion" (jo) against an un-intellectual image of Enchi's
literature. Nevertheless. Takeuchi also eventually falls into essentializing and
universalizing women in Enchi's literature. Let us compare two contradictory comments on
Enchi by Takenishi:
(Although Enchi is often criticized for her argumentativeness) I think ‘argument'

(ronjiru koto) is also a form of expression to which people are entitled as is
‘feeling' (kanjiru koto). Therefore, we should not unfairly under-evaluate
‘argument' in fiction. When we follow her (Enchi's) lively and powerful
arguments in “The Journey to Winter” (Fuyu no tabi), her emotion (jo) and reason
(risei) support each other, and the combination o f these excites us intellectually. 1
was again impressed by the author’s strong reasoning, which is usually carefully
hidden in her other works.123
The implication o f the thickness and wildness o f the blood, the stickiness o f which
actually made the female protagonist stick to her job, circulating in the women’s
l22Matsumoto Tsuruo. “Enchi Fumiko" Kofcubungaku: Kaishaku to Kansho 40: 8

(1975): p. 133.
I23Takenishi Hiroko. “ Kaisetsu: Fuyu no ta b f' [Commentary: ‘Journey in Winter.'

in Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 5. p. 448.

84
body in this story, cannot be dismissed... “You should not put too much confidence
in your reason. Even in a woman who looks intelligent, once given one tiny poke,
the ugly, thick and sinful blood in circulation is always ready to gush out.” We feel
we hear the author’s inaudible voice (koe-naki koe) between the lines.124
On the one hand, Takenishi tries to stress the “reason” and “ intellectual power” o f Enchi.
which are regarded by male critics as mere accessories or coincidence, while on the other
hand, she denies that very “reason” in Enchi by essentializing women’s blood o f unreason.
This is a common mistake for an old-fashioned feminist who attempts to elevate w om en's
intellectual power to match that o f men, while also stressing women's particularity and
singularity.
Takenishi makes another familiar mistake in defending Enchi in her same
commentary.
The topic o f “Genealogy o f Love” is a metaphysical ideal, but it is more than

“w om en’s tenacity” (onna no shunen): rather it is "'human's vulnerability” (mingen
sonzai no morosa)—human weakness and unchangeable fixations which lead
humans unconsciously to lose their balance and to end up committing crime.
(Enchi). however, never imposes these ideas in a bookish mode on the reader.125
Her effort at raising Enchi's philosophy to the level of “humans” from “women" turns out
to be grounded in universalism: she summarizes Enchi’s literature as “universality” which
is gained through penetrating the depth of women’s sexuality.126 We can see one o f the
literary codings o f the critical guild: writing about “humans” is more fruitful and valuable
than writing about “women.”
l24Takenishi Hiroko. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 7. pp. 414-5.
i:*Ibid., p. 415.
I26lbid., p. 413.

85
Kumasaka Atsuko. another female critic, who has done substantial research on
Enchi, participates in essentialization using psychological interpretation. Enchi. according
to her, “keeps persistently writing about women, especially by bringing up women’s hidden
and fearful subconscious to the surface and giving embodiment to it.”i:7 Her argument is
based on her assumption that women in general have a “curse” (juso) and “grudge” (enkon)
in “women’s typical dark spot” (onna tokuyu no ambu) o f their consciousness.
As a last example of essentializing defense o f Enchi I will introduce Sunami
Toshiko’s argument. Taking up "Enchantress” ( Yd) and discussing the translation of
classical Japanese literature by the female protagonist in the story. Sunami equates the
translation to a m edium's (reihai) activity:
Excellent translator o f the classics, the medium (reibai) is the artist who is resonant
with the words o f the dead and who can inspire her own voice and life into them
[...] Translation is the coded chain of a message with strong impact [...] To a
woman like Chikako. u'ho is aging and losing the possibility o f erotic relationships,
the everlasting life of the soil (daichi no yu kyu no inochi) seems like a strong
support, and in the similar way. the long-lasting circulating chain function of
reception, representation and transmission o f words seems artificial to her but also
seems like an eternal life (jinkono yukyuna inuchi).i2%
Comparing w om en's writing to the activity o f a “medium.” and by so doing, glorifying
Enchi as a translator and a medium, is not new in masculinist criticism. It tends to put
Enchi into the black box of “premodemity” and to ignore any o f her attempts at
modernization. Sunami here repeats the same argument o f male criticism by establishing a
history of Japanese literature instead of taking up Enchi’s transformation/translation as an
i:?Kumasaka Atsuko. "Enchi Fumiko." Kokubungaku (November 1978): p. 168.
l28Sunami Toshiko. “Enchi Fumiko: Y o’-ron" [Criticism on ‘Enchantress' by Enchi

Fumiko]. in Shdwa bungaku kenkyu 33 (July 1996): pp. 52-59.

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agency o f critical intervention in the "history" of Japanese literature in the postwar period.
II. Enchi’s View of Women Writers
We have seen that Enchi’s works have been translated into essentialism and
universalism by women critics. How, then, did Enchi view other women writers including
herself? Taking Enchi’s comments on the women writers who were her contemporaries—
Okamoto Kanoko, Miyamoto Yuriko. Hirabayashi Taiko and a few others. I will
investigate whether Enchi was also trapped in the same framework o f gender ideologies.
1. Okamoto Kanoko129
Enchi wrote two works on Okamoto Kanoko: one was an essay. "Works of
Okamoto Kanoko" (Okamoto Kanoko no sakuhin). the other was a fiction.
“Transformation o f Kanoko” (Kanoko henso). In her essay she points out Kanoko's
"bewitchingly romantic literature” (yobina roman-sei no bungaku). "strong body odor"
(taishuno tsuyoi). "perfect optimism” (sokonukena rakuten-sei). "open narcissism"
(tebanashina narushishizumu), and "mixed rich images o f enchanting women: girl, whore,
and motherhood before social liberation" (noko enbina d q o , shqfu, bosei no konkosuru
joseizo). Freezing Kanoko in the image o f women as a girl, whore, and mother is not
different from male criticism, and all these adjectives for Kanoko are "excessive" in any
sense.
i:9Okamoto Kanoko (1889-39). a poet and a novelist, was bom in an affluent family
living along the Tama River in Tokyo. " Tsuru w a ya m ik i' [A Crane Sickens] and "Rogi-
s h o ' [A Story o f An Old Geisha] are famous. Wife o f Ippei (cartoonist), and mother o f
Taro (painter).

87
However, “although male critics usually have seen the characteristics o f Kanoko's
literature in the power o f family ghosts (karyd), excessiveness o f femininity (Josei no kajo),
and her attachment to rivers,” Enchi perceives the fact that what makes Kanoko’s work
enchanting is her body: her peculiar physique and sensuality, which “bewitches” male
readers in particular. “This is an unusual factor in Japanese literature, and this is what only
women can write, but, on the other hand, this is what we cannot find in other women
writers.” Enchi remarks:
Every literature is connected to the author, and especially in Kanoko’s case, without
her family, her history, her surroundings, her education, and the peculiarity o f her
spirit and physique in particular her works could have not been created.130
Then, was Enchi also trapped in the essentialization o f women writers' bodies, and in
compounding their body and their works? Was she any different from the male critic,
Muro Saisei. who reduced Enchi’s writings to her body? Let us again investigate in detail
Enchi's stance through her comments on her contemporary female writer. Kanoko's
"beauty is compared to an unnecessary accumulation o f beauty like the ceramics o f the
Ching Dynasty or Rococo-style architecture,” which will lose their charm after a while.
The “peculiarity o f her spirit and physique” were like Kanoko's “transformation” (henge)
or “incarnation” (keshin) in Enchi’s eyes. “Kanoko tried to transform herself into a beauty.
and her transformation became refined in her later years.” 131 In the beginning o f her
fiction. “Transformation of Kanoko.” Enchi situates Kanoko “in the dim borderline
1:,0Enchi Fumiko. ”Okamoto Kanoko no sakuhin' [Works o f Okamoto Kanoko]. in

Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 16. pp. 231-4.
m Enchi Fumiko. “Kanoko henso” [Transformation o f Kanoko]. in Enchi Fumiko

zenshu. vol. 2. pp. 201-11.

88
between a prostitute and a Buddha."
Her captivated readers forget reality like an opium user in Kanoko’s works, where
she becomes an omnipotent prostitute, whom she would never be able to attain with
her real body, and entertains her reader the way she wants. She established through
her literature the mystery men want in women, and the techniques to respond to
m en's insatiable desire. This is why Kanoko’s readers are mainly young men [...]
The individual self, which is forced to be diminished and transformed in the social
structure o f the modem period, expanded endlessly like cancer cells and bloomed—
Kanoko is such a big flower [...] Believing her own beauty, does Kanoko utter
confident remarks just as Ono no Komachi murmurs?132
In Enchi’s eyes male readers are suffering from (or enjoying) a hangover after drinking the
poisonous cup o f Kanoko’s self-portrait in her works. Kanoko looks like a “charismatic
figure" (kvoso-teki) or “ascetic" (gyoja) or “transformable*’ (hentsu). but Enchi sees
Kanoko for what she is. Although this essay about Kanoko (“Transformation o f Kanoko")
has been usually criticized as "too severe" or "written out o f jealousy" by male critics, by
criticizing Kanoko’s charismatic transformation, Enchi exposes her own secrets o f
transformation.133 Enchi's transformation might be a different kind from Kanoko's. but it
is the same kind o f literary transformation in that it requires a writer to have a “changing
room"(gakuya). Unlike Mishima Yukio. who was “an actor without his changing room"
(gakiiya wo motanai yakusha). both Kanoko and Enchi each had a changing room in which
132Ibid.
l33Enchi writes, “in this fiction she unmannerly exposes her own dragon tattoo"
(watashi jishin no namami no kurikara monmon no araremo nasa). “Kurikara monmon"
means a tattoo o f one dragon god—a transformation o f Fudo-myo-o in Buddhism. Its
design is a dragon on the rock in fire winds itself around the sword, which it tries to
swallow. Source: Nihongo-dai-jiten (Tokyo: Kodansha. 2000). Enchi also says. “To talk
about other women is to talk about myself." in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 3. p. 372.

89
to transform themselves in the male-centered literary world.134
2. Miyamoto Yuriko135
One girl, Enchi’s acquaintance, who was dying o f tuberculosis, after reading
Yuriko's novel, pushed it away saying, “I do not like a novel by a writer who has never
hurts herself (jihun wo kizutsukete inai hito)." Enchi says, “Those who suffer from injury
to their body or to their mind would feel repelled by Miyamoto’s literature, while those
with healthy mind and body welcomed her works." M iyamoto's literature is after all for
“healthy" people, and she was a writer who wrote about the “public road” (Jinsei no
kodo).m Enchi said that Miyamoto’s literature was similar to the biography o f an
unusually excellent woman, like Marie Curie. In comparison with Hirabayashi Taiko.
Enchi commented, "in both positive and negative senses Miyamoto's river is so clear and
neat that it will flow directly into the sea.” Unlike Kanoko, who was discussed within
personal and gendered descriptions. Miyamoto was usually talked about in relation to her
political activity as a Communist who bravely protested during the war. Miyamoto's works
together with her personality and life were seen by Enchi as an over-simple contrast o f
134Enchi Fumiko, “Fuyu no tabi" [Journey in Winter], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol.
5. p. 291.
,35Miyamoto Yuriko (1899-51) was bom in Tokyo. She joined the Birch School
(Shirakaba-ha) and became a proletarian writer. Married with Kenji. a secretary o f the
Communist Party. “Nobuko.” “ Banshu heiya” [The Banshu Plain] and “Michishirube” [A
Landmark] are famous.
136Hirabayashi Taiko said, “Miyamoto was a person who kept walking the broad
street (kodo).” “Hirabayashi-san no koto” [About Hirabayashi Taiko], in Enchi Fumiko
zenshu. vol. 15, p. 113. On the other hand, Miyamoto commented on Hirabayashi. the
latter was “a person who transforms white to black.” Ibid.. p. 113.

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black and white. Miyamoto and her works were unusually “ungendered” by male critics,
and so the absence of gender issues in Miyamoto's works is itself worthwhile to analyze.
Although paying respect to her, Enchi was obviously unexcited by her too simplistic
glorious world of novels without any complexity of gender issues. In her essay Enchi
wrote that she felt alienated from both Kanoko’s nationalist group and Yuriko's ultra-leftist
group during the war.
3. Hirabayashi Taiko137
In contrast to Miyamoto’s image o f a clear river. Enchi compares Hirabayashi’s
works as such a “muddy, chaotic, wild, and gigantic flow that we cannot predict where it
goes to or what sea it flows into." In her comments on Hirabayashi we can recognize
Enchi's own view o f ideal Japanese literature. The first issue was whether Hirabayashi's
works were I-noveis or not. Enchi loved her “dark, vigorous tlow of life as the source o f
an unusual literary charm.” 138 According to Enchi. this charm partly came from
Hirabayashi's life-experiences. which Enchi did not have in her own life.139 As for the
relationship between the writer’s experiences and her writing, Enchi remarked:
Hirabayashi depicted her own self-portrait viewed from multiple angles in two
137Hirabayashi Taiko (1905-72) was bom in Nagano. Active as a proletarian writer

since the prewar period. “Seryoshitsu nite” [In a Hospital Room] and “kovu onna” [This
Kind o f Woman] are well-known.
l38Enchi Fumiko, “Hirabayashi-san no koto” [About Hirabayashi Taiko], in Enchi

Fumiko zenshu, vol. 15, p. 110.
l39Enchi was envious with the life-experiences of Hayashi Fumiko and Hirabayashi
Taiko, and always admired their writing which came from them. In contrast to their
writing, Enchi thought her writing came from her mind, not from experiences. Enchi
Fumiko zenshu, 14 & 15 vols.

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kinds of light (social circumstances, and love between a man and a woman) in the
works mentioned. Although Hirabayashi freely makes deformations, the works in
which the author situates herself in the center o f the story are doubtlessly better
ones. Nevertheless, it is completely off the point to categorize her into an essay-type
I-novelist (zuihitsu-gata no shi-shasetsuka) who writes about the miscellaneous
matters in her private life (shimpen zakki).140
First, Enchi said that although her friend “situates herself in the center o f the story.” she is
not an “essay-type I-novelist.” What makes Hirabayashi’s works distant from the I-novel
was, according to Enchi, her “multiple viewpoints” in the light o f “social circumstances”
(shakai kankyd). It is noteworthy that Enchi valued novels written about social
circumstances rather than I-novels depicting the author’s private life.141 The intersection
between wom en's issues and social issues was all the time Enchi's standard o f the ideal
novel: women's issues were a kind of litmus paper to test if a work is a good novel or not.
In that sense Hirabayashi's fulfilled Enchi's standard. Enchi also shows her own opinion
about the I-novel, quoting Hirabayashi's statement and admiring her insightful criticism of
it:
On the whole, the I-novel requires “ I” to have a moral life almost close to one o f a
average Japanese (heikin Nihon-jin ni chikai seishin seikatsu no naiyo) [...]
Recently, the novels written by a sociable writer with common sense (jashiki
emman-na hito no shasetsu). Ozaki Kazuo for instance, tend to be popular.142
That the I-novel was about “standard Japanese” (male) mentality and morality, and that
l40Enchi Fumiko, “Hirabayashi Taiko no ‘Aijo ryoko’ ni tsuite” [On ‘The Journey
in Love’ by Hirabayashi Taiko], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 16, p. 236.
,4lOn the other hand. Enchi values Hirabayashi as having abandoned the technique
o f the nineteenth century humanistic Naturalism (social realism) for her own style, after
having learned it well.
l42Enchi Fumiko. “Sakka no toji-ito” [The Tacking Thread o f a Writer], in Enchi

Fumiko zenshu, vol. 16, p. 239.

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(male) writers' sociability was more important than their writings themselves, were
restated by Enchi through her friend's remark. Thus, women writers were naturally
situated "outside” this "standard” o f the male homosocial I-novel system.143
Second. Enchi exposes her view o f "pure literature” and the "popular novel” in her
comments on Hirabayashi's literature:
Although she (Hirabayashi) took materials from the life o f petty people, her works
are pure literature with the charm o f unrefined ore, far distant from popularity
(taishu-sei).'44
Although at this time she made herself one o f the established writers of pure
literature, her life was not easy financially. However, not only she but also other
writers o f this field, except a few popular writers (ryukosakka). lived within a
small income.14"
Enchi bashed so-called "popular novels" (taishushasetsu) in contrast to the “pure
literature" which Hirabayashi tried to stick to despite her poverty:
The reason why popular novels {taishu shosetsu) written with new techniques are
thrown away after one reading does not lie in their over-elaborateness but in the
mannerism o f the author-that is. the eyes o f the author are dead. Hirabayashi, on
the contrary, is just like a carp with too much vitality to swim in a small fish
preserve. In the constricted society o f prewar times women were not allowed to
express their wildness but hid themselves in the periphery o f the leftist social
movement, and Hirabayashi's personality, like a fish in the rough sea or like a
ferocious wild animal in the wilderness, was in the frame o f society consolidated
143As for the homosocial community o f writers and readers in the Meiji I-novel
world. lida Yuko wrote a wonderful book: Karera no monogatari: Nihon kindai bungaku
to jenda [Narrative by Men: Japanese Modem Literature and Gender] (Nagoya: Nagoya
UP. 1998).
,44Enchi Fumiko. "Hirabayashi Taiko no ‘Aijo ryoko' ni tsuite." in Enchi Fumiko

zenshu, vol. 16. p. 236.
I45lbid.. p. 235.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n pro hibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

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and condensed into her early and later short stories.146
In Enchi’s definition the jo b o f “pure literature” was “condensing the sentences” (hunsho
wo asshuku), while “popular literature” was excessive in words and description. Enchi
seemed to pride herself in cry stallizing her expression in selective words.
Third, Enchi used a gender code in commenting on her friend. One o f
Hirabayashi’s essays was entitled “The Tacking Thread o f the Writer” (Sakka no toji-ito).
Enchi says that this title is good because of its imaginative “flavor as a word." and because
it clearly shows that the author is a woman. Connecting the tacking thread (sewing) and
woman is a conventional gender code, which male critics like Muro did. Appropriating
m en's image o f women's writing, Enchi inverts it in the next sentence. “As for its content,
however, this tacking thread is not necessarily a soft colorful silk one. Despite the
mediocre-outiook o f the subtitles o f her essays, the author's own sharp viewpoints are
displayed sometimes vigorously, sometimes sweetly or humorously.” 147 Enchi. although
starting by introducing the male view o f women, subtly shifted to erasing those gendered
marks from Hirabayashi's literature.
The conflation of “prostitute” and “motherhood.” which was repeated by male
writers and critics, is also seen in Enchi’s comment on Ayame, the female protagonist in
Hirabayashi’s “Love Joumey”(.4/ydryoko): “Ayame is a woman who stirs communal
nostalgia in the dry modem age.” 148 However, when Enchi comments on its author.
|46Ibid.. pp. 236-7.
I4/Enchi Fumiko, "Sakka no toji-ito," in Enchi Famiko zenshu, vol. 16, p. 239.
I48Ibid.. p. 238.

94
Hirabayashi, she situates her not only as a “a tragic woman who kept all the contradictions
o f the Japanese women in the past,” but also as a woman who “was going to live in the
next sphere through labor pains.” 149 Enchi’s view o f Hirabayashi as a woman who
struggles to move to the future dimension, demonstrates how she herself was eager to face
the future with the same vitality as Hirabayashi.
III. Enchi’s Responses and Strategies
The prevalence o f gendered discourse in male criticism certainly affected women
writers, and it was internalized to become a self-censor for them. As Hirabayashi said,
"both the jobs o f producing and o f criticizing literature have been done mostly by men's
standard.” 1 It was likely that in order to be successful as a writer women writers had to
participate in such a gendered paradigm. In other words it must have been extremely
difficult for women writers to express their opinion against the gender coding o f the
literary community. Keeping these points in mind, let us investigate Enchi's response to
these gender politics.
1. Women W riters’ Limits: Experience and Fiction
Enchi often argues back against male attempts to confound women's experiences
with their writing. First, she comments on Orikuchi Shinobu’s speculation on the “New
Herb” chapter ( Wakana) o f The Tale o f Genji. “Orikuchi said.” Enchi begins:
that the chapters after the “New Herb” were written by a man, not by a woman [...]
149Enchi, "Hirabayashi-san no koto,” p. 110.
150Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 13. p. 421.

95
and that women could not write such a story.151
Orikuchi implies that the author o f Genji, who had limited experience, could not have
written those two chapters, “New Herb,'’ and that only a male writer could have written
them. Enchi concluded that Orikuchi made such a statement "based on his bias (toward
women).” Challenging the authorship o f women, or masculinizing and de-gendering the
texts written by women, have been popular strategies used by male critics.152 In both cases
the resistance of narratives against a master narrative has been absorbed into the master
narrative, given a minor role in it, or removed completely.153 Enchi in her works
attempted to recover women's resistance in the text from the hands o f male critics.
Orikuchi’s en-gendering association o f women's experience and their writing was
supported by other male critics. Takahashi Yoshitake joined this chorus:
Male novels, even written by young writers, have a clear perspective, and their
writing is ju st right, while novels by women always have some excessiveness or
lack, in short they are not in good balance.154
Enchi admits Takahashi's criticism o f women writers who tend to lose their balance
151Enchi Fumiko, Uen no hitobito [With People I Came to Know] (Tokyo: Bungei
Shunju, 1986), p. 86.
l52For example, Joshua Mostow speculated that “The Gossamer Years” (Kagerd
nikki) was compiled as a family collection o f poetry for Fujiwara Kaneie, the husband o f
Michitsuna's Mother, who has usually been reputed to have been the author o f this book.
See Joshua Mostow. “The Amorous Statesman and the Poetess: The Politics o f
Autobiography and the Kagero Nikki,” Japan Forum (October 1992): 4: 2.
l53Noriko M izuta Lippit. “Monogatari to Han-monogatari no fukei: hungaku to

josei no sdzd-ryoku” [The Scenery o f Narrative and Anti-Narrative: Imaginative Power o f
Literature and Woman] (Tokyo: Tabata shoten. 1993): pp. 9-10.
l54Enchi Fumiko, “Onna no kaku shosetsu" [Novels Women Write], in Enchi

Fumiko zenshu. vl. 15. pp. 87-8.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n pro hibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

96
because of their strong inclination to lyricism or idealism, and she attributes this tendency
to women’s limited experiences in social and general matters. “The Gossamer Years,” for
example, according to Enchi, “might belong to the genre of the women writers’ novel
which Takahashi mentioned, because the author pays attention to her own feelings only
from her perspective, not from a broader viewpoint to see the whole structure [...]" Enchi
concludes that The Gossamer Years is, therefore, an incomplete work which does not have
an integrated perspective-characterized in some places by thick descriptions but in other
places by thin descriptions-unevenly painted, just as Takahashi pointed out. On the other
hand. The Tale o f Genji is a complete work from which no story can be developed, while
The Gossamer Years can be used as material for developing other stories. However.
according to Enchi. the imperfection o f the stories by some women writers does not come
from the author’s limited experiences or viewpoint, but from the author’s lack o f ability in
creating her own world based on her experiences. Enchi says:
Women might have a near-sighted perspective since we always stick to our

experiences, but this does not mean that an authentic literature can never be created
from this kind o f perspective. The point is, by starting from our own experiences,
what kind o f world we are going to create.155
Whether there is a difference between women’s wTiting and m en’s writing is

discussed on works o f lower level, but not on works o f higher level. In the case o f
masterpieces, regardless o f whether written by a woman or a man, what really
matters is whether the author created an independent world or not, whether s/he
takes up the materials universal for human beings and screens them through her/his
own experience or not [...]156
Thus. Enchi stresses the power of fiction with the author’s experiences as a basis. Enchi
l55Ibid., p. 87.
I56lbid.. p. 93.

97
does not deny the close connection between these two: the relationship between fiction and
experience is like the one between the fetus and the umbilical cord, she said. Actually this
simile was first used by Takahashi. the male critic mentioned above. He criticizes
women’s novels in general: “Women's novels still keep their umbilical cord attached.” 157
The word “umbilical cord” is used for symbolizing “infantility” or “ immaturity”: for
example, when somebody points at certain person and says, “his/her umbilical cord is still
connected to the m other's womb" (heso no o ga kirenai). that means s/he is still dependent
and immature. It is clear that what Takahashi implied by this simile was certainly negative.
and Enchi responded to him by transforming its negative connotation to a positive one:
The navel {heso) in other words may be the individual characteristics (kosei) or
body odor (taishu) o f each author. The authors o f the classics of Japanese literature
seem to have made an effort to cover their umbilical cord... The authors of Genji.
Ugetsu. and Harusame. narratives and novels, all tried hard to wear masks, while
confessional literature has been called “essays” (zuihitsn) or “journals” {nikki) and
separated from those narratives....158
A masterpiece is created when the author succeeded in creating one world in her/his
novel and s/he melted in it. as it were; when the umbilical cord tied to the author is
cut off. a perfect child (a masterpiece) is delivered. I think.159
Even though it were cut off from the author, still it will exist and will not disappear.
The novels with the umbilical cord dangling and with the fetus-smell are much
better than the novels without them at all. I believe.160
Enchi’s argument against Takahashi is: first, any novel (fetus) should start from but should
l57Enchi Fumiko, “Onna n o ikiru" [To Live a Woman], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu.
vol. 15, pp. 246-7.
I58lbid.. pp. 246-7.
l59Enchi Fumiko, ''Onna no kaku shosetsu," pp. 87-93.
I60lbid.. p. 246.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e cop y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e rm is s io n .

98
depart from the author’s experiences (umbilical cord) anyway: second, therefore, women
writers are able to write about both any material “based” on and “beyond” their
experiences; third, authentic literature is created from the materials common to any human
beings regardless whether written by a woman or a man; fourth, therefore, “It is nonsense
that women’s novels only can write about limited subjects.”161 Using the motherly terms
“fetus” or “umbilical cord” which a male critic introduced, Enchi inverted the negative
connotation o f these terms while denying any idealized image o f maternity as female
vocation in the conventional ideology.
Next. Enchi proposes annihilating the difference o f fiction from essay. She argues,
for example, that in Akutagawa's journal/essay {zuihitswnikki) style works like “A List of
the Dead” (Tenkibo) or “A Cogwheel" (Haguruma) or confessional literature, more fiction
may be woven into them than in his real fictions like “The Transformation o f the Hell”
(Jigoku-hen) or “Christian” (Kirishitan) stories. Enchi herself talks about her fiction and
essays elsewhere, saying that her honest feelings might be expressed more in her fiction
than in her essays.
Enchi’s proposition leads to an argument about the ambiguous borderline between
fiction and the I-novel. It is a famous fact that Enchi always denied the title o f “I-novel”
given to her trilogy.162
They advertised “What Robs Crimson” as an “autobiographical novel.” but I would

like this to be treated equally as my other works, since I cannot write an “I-novel”
16lIbid., p. 93.
I62ln Enchi's definition all four--I-noveI. confessional literature, autobiography, and

journal/essay (zuihitswnikki) style works—are conflated.

99
and I freely mingle fiction and reality to make up the form o f a novel. I want to
reject the title “autobiography” for this work.163
In comparison with the intimate blood relationship between the author and their
female protagonists constructed in Miyamoto Yuriko’s “Nobuko” or “Landmark”
(Michishirube), or Amino Kiku’s works, my relationship with the female
protagonists was sometimes intimate, but sometimes distant (apart from literary
objectivity) [...] While driven by a strong desire o f exposing m yself to others, I am
also checked by petty bourgeois morality which always makes me conscious of
social common sense in my daily life.164
There is no need to demand fictional elements like those in Genji in every literary
work (also like the world o f Tanizaki and Kawabata), but I believe it is true that
whether I-novel or fiction, such a literary structure as novels needs some subtle
transformation in the author's mind—even the author her/himself often may not
notice [...] that is, without this “X” (transformation) her/his work will never become
a success.165
Here Enchi attempts to clarify the relationship between fiction and experience. Fiction is
for her like "costumes” or “makeup” to cover up her experiences (body).166 Again, using
gendered metaphors like “costumes” or “makeup" (for fiction) to cover the “body” (for
experiences). Enchi attempts to conceptualize the form/content in essay/fiction. Elsewhere
she mentioned her uncomfortable feelings in writing about her experiences in the form of
journals or essays. What she wrote in her “essays,” Enchi said, is “nothing but the surface
of my being.” 167 Now this is totally opposite from what has been taken for granted in
163Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 12. pp. 438-9.
I64lbid.. pp. 441-44.
l65Enchi Fumiko. “Toan no maboroshi" [Illusion o f Toan]. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu.

vol. 15. p. 95.
l66Enchi Fumiko. "'Hirabay:ashi-san no okisa" [Grandness o f Hirabayashi Taiko]. in

Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 15. p. 249.
167Ibid.. pp. 247-8.

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literature. Usually “fiction'' is believed to be “made-up stories." therefore untrue, and
•essays" or “journals" are taken to be true to the author's “authentic" feelings. However.
Enchi shuffles these two stereotypical concepts while also shuffling the reader’s
expectation o f reading her trilogy as her "autobiography" or her “tme experiences.” Since
“the novelists’ mind is full o f the camouflage of fiction and reality (kyojitsu no meisai ni
michite iru)," as Enchi commented, they “faithfully tell the truth by writing fiction, and
change facts into colorful fiction by our imagination while depicting the truth (kusoga
sono jijitsu wo nanairo no kyoge ni tsukurikaete shiman)." At the same time Enchi
attempts to deconstruct the stereotypical connection between wom en's writing and their
experiences.
Not only there is no limited subjects for women' writing, but also there might be
some subjects which only women can write better, Enchi said. For example, when writing
The Waiting Years, she stated that “there must be a slight difference between what I. a
woman writer, can write about the situation o f a wife and concubines co-living in the same
house, and what male writers can write about such a life—especially when I write about the
Meiji period when there was a strict border between male morality and female morality,
there must be a difference between male writers and women writers as far as sharing
emotion, suffering and insights with the female protagonist is concerned.'’168 Thus, Enchi
reminds the reader o f the advantage for women writers, “a woman writing about a
woman.” not because o f biological identity politics, but because of social/political identity
politics. Nevertheless such identity politics is obviously problematic from a recent feminist
168Enchi Fumiko. “Onna no hisohiso-banashr [W omen's Gossip], p. 98.

101
point of view. Whether it is possible for a woman writer to “write about a woman" without
any hierarchical pressure will be investigated in Part III of this dissertation.
2. Women Writers and Sexuality
For women writers including Enchi the postwar atmosphere seemed favorable for
their writing-especially writing about sexuality. Enchi talks about her optimistic view o f
this issue:
As one o f the postwar revolutionary phenomena women were liberated from the
taboo o f sex. Strip shows, which were prohibited before the war. were now open to
people, and we were now allowed to write about sexuality, which we wanted to
write, but could not before the war, in literature. As a result, a new field was open
to women writers, and in fact, a literature o f sexuality from women's viewpoint was
certainly emerging now .l6g
As we saw in the previous chapter, there did appear a carnal literature (nikutai bungaku)
represented by Tamura Taijiro. or a literature o f sexuality (sei no bungaku) as Oe
Kenzaburo proposed, after the war. However, whether this "new field" was practically
open to "women writers" was questionable, because obviously there was still a double
standard about discourse on sexuality prevalent among male critics. Let me cite Muro
Saisei’s statement on this issue:
Setouchi Harumi [...] writes about extremely shameful matters for a woman without
any hesitancy, and I paid respect for her prostituting herself to writing (bungaku ni
mi wo utta) [...] Fictions should be always educational [...] Male writers cannot
write about women’s defecating (as Hirabayashi Taiko did) [...] because we want to
avoid writing something embarrassing for women [...] We write only one percent
about the women. If we start writing about women, we have to keep writing about
l6,Enchi Fumiko. un Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 15, p. 133.

102
them as our life work for the rest o f our lives and can never finish
In the eyes of such male critics women's confessional novels look like the “prostitution”
o f their body and sexuality to the male reader. However, while condescending to women
writers, Muro confides that men can write only “one percent” of women, and that writing
about women will need a major commitment of energy and time. Probably it is not too
much to see here a reflection o f male critics' lack o f confidence or ambivalence about their
ability to represent the opposite sex in their own writing.
For Enchi. however, women’s writing about their own sexuality does not mean
“prostituting” themselves in their writing. Rather. Enchi maintains, women should write
about their sexuality, even it costs them pain and shame, because women too thirst for love
and sex. However. Enchi observes, women need to keep in mind certain conditions when
writing about their sexuality:
When male writers write about sexuality ju st for provoking and excitement, the
reader will simply enjoy the content, but when women write the same thing, and
especially when their writing is not sublimated to literature. Otherwise, between
the lines only curiosity about the author is excited in the reader, and s/he will be
sick of it after all. Such a reading may be the reader’s fault, not the author's. But in
a society where prostitution has survived for so long, this reading of women’s
literature is certainly possible. Therefore, women writers suffer much more serious
abuse than male writers [...] When women write about sexuality, we should be
ready for being labeled as an obscene woman [...] While it may be pleasure for men
to write about sexuality, it is definitely painful and shameful for women to do so
[...] Women should have more strategies (teiko) than men when voluntarily writing
about sexuality [...] Without such strategies women's writing will be read far more
obscene than men’s .171
Enchi talks about the pressure for women when writing about sexuality, and suggests her
l70Muro Saisei. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 14. pp. 308-9.
171Ibid., p. 133.

103
counter-strategies. First, women have to “sublimate” (shoka) when writing about
sexuality; second, unless sublimated, such a literature by women will meet abuse from
male critics and readers just as “prostitutes” are abused in public; third, to write about
sexuality is not easy for women writers for both reasons: one for possibility o f abuse and
the other for their own emotional reason. “Sublimation” and “ resistance” are Enchi's
strategy to survive in the literary jungle where the usurpation o f women's image, a sexual
double standard, and gender coding were cornering women writers.
3. Translation of Women and W omen’s Sexuality: Enchi’s Strategies
Spirits as Male Projection
What are Enchi’s actual strategies to counterattack male discourse? In short, she
uses male fantasy about women and women's sexuality. For example, many critics so far
have paid a lot o f attention to the shamanistic power described in her works, as if Enchi
herself believed in her power as a medium. However, it is a reasonable speculation that
Enchi used “spirits” as the symbol o f wom en's hidden power, when we are reminded that
Murasaki Shikibu used “spiritual power" as a device to represent women's power.
Introducing Murasaki’s statement that “Rokujo’s spirit may be the reflection of Genji's
guilt and fear,” Enchi commented as follows:
Murasaki Shikibu herself did not seem to have believed in spirits (based on her
family collection o f poetry). Nevertheless, it is worthwhile analyzing the reason
why she gave spiritual power to only one woman character named Rokujo [...]” 172
Just as she used the shamanistic power o f women as the reflection o f male guilt and fear, so
l72Enchi Fumiko, “Genji monogatari shiken” [My Private View o f The Tale o f
Genji]. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 16. p. 290.

104
Enchi writes about women characters as seen from a male viewpoint. For example, as
Comyetz also points out, in The Waiting Years the young concubine Suga’s body and
kimonos are described through Tomo’s “husband’s insatiably wandering eyes.” Then,
where do her male eyes come from? Okuno Takeo, for example, mentions Enchi’s “male
eyes (otoko no me) which suddenly grew bigger in her after having lost her female organs.”
He characterizes Enchi’s literature as “having both a woman inside a woman, and a man
inside a woman.” 173 Placing primacy on Enchi’s surgery as her motive for writing, as seen
in Okuno’s comment, is prevalent in male criticism. In general Enchi’s hysterectomy and
mastectomy are viewed by male critics as a fatal blow for a woman, which drove the
woman writer. Enchi. to write the literature of women’s rancor, loss, attachment, etc.
Moreover, regarding Enchi’s mention o f the episode o f Szuma C hi’en, Okuno praises her
strong artist spirit (Geijutsuka-damashii), which encouraged her in her hospital bed and
kept her writing for the rest of her life.174 By equating a Chinese male historian with a
Japanese female writer. Okuno erases the sexual difference between the two. and translates
Enchi's private experience into the great biographical narrative o f “true” motivation for
“becoming a writer.”
However, this assimilation between Szuma C hi’en and Enchi was actually initiated
and mentioned by herself in one o f her works, “What Robs Crimson” (Ake o ubau mono).
l7:'Okuno Takeo. in Enchi Fumikozenshu. vl. 3, p. 384.
i74Szuma C hi'en (around BCE 146-B.C.E. 86) succeeded his father's profession as
historian ( Taishi-rei) and started writing a history o f China. In B.C.E. 99 he offended the
Han Emperor, Butei, by defending his friend. He was made a eunuch and finished writing
the Records o f Great Historians.

105
Enchi's assimilation and Okuno's equation between the two are obviously different.
Enchi’s attempt to write women’s sexuality from a male viewpoint is more complex than
such a simple speculation about a great biographical narrative. Rather she seems to use her
dramatic autobiographical experience to make up a uniquely independent fictional world.
Let us look at one o f her so-called “autobiographical” fictions, “What Robs Crimson”:
It seemed uncanny to Shigeko that both operations she suffered were related to the
sexual organ. It was not so threatening when she had a mastectomy, but when she
had a hysterectomy from cancer she was so scared that she would lose her woman's
sexuality, and its loss would take away her vitality. What encouraged Shigeko at
that time was a weird association though, the episode o f Szuma Chi'en who wrote
the Great Analects. Because o f his excessive ambition for politics he was made a
eunuch. The Great Analects was a non-sentimental history written after his
physical transformation (nikutcii no henka).m
The recently discovered historical fact is that Szuma Chi'en had already started writing a
Chinese history even before he lost his organs, because his father left a will in which he
told Szuma Chi'en to complete the history. Meanwhile. Szuma Chi'en offended the
Emperor for defending Szum a's friend, and he was sentenced to death. Just before the
execution he voluntarily chose to become an eunuch, which was the only escape from
capital death. Whether Enchi knew about this historical fact or not is unclear, but it is
certain that she used this episode in her work as a strategy o f making the association
between her motivation for writing and loss o f organs look quite “truthful” and “plausible”
to the reader.176 Shigeko, the protagonist o f this story, goes on to say that:
v '"Ake wo ubu mono” [What Robs Crimson], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 12. p.
8.
176Enchi used the same strategy in other works such as “Namamiko m onogatan' [A
Tale of False Fortunes]. “Neko no s o s h r [Fairy Tale o f Cats], “Saimu" [Colored Mist], and
so on.

106
It seemed funny to her that she did not take the loss o f female function as sadness or
remorse, and that her thought glided back to sympathy for the Chinese historian o f
thousands years ago.177
Just as Szuma Chi'en started writing a non-sentimental Chinese history, in Enchi's fiction
Shigeko also started writing a new literature after losing her organs. However, we should
remind ourselves of the fact that this is a “fiction” written by Enchi, who tries to make the
reader believe the association between her writing and her surgery. Okuno Takeo. who
sees through a bit of her strategy, comments as follows:
If we reduce the source o f her literature to her experiences o f loss o f female organs
or of aging, we probably will miss something important in her literature. Her
attachment to women, eeriness, and fearfulness did not come from incidents like
her surgery or aging. Neither from thirst, desperation, or tenacity o f a woman who
is no longer a woman. It came from something different and something more
persistent in herself that was already there.178
Just as Szuma Chi'en had already started writing before his possible execution, so Enchi
also seemed to have already '‘something persistent” to keep her writing even before her
surgery. Appropriating Szuma C hi’en's famous episode about the loss o f his male organ
and his writing, Enchi created her own fiction from her experiences o f loss and related it to
her writing.
If Enchi succeeded in wearing the mask o f a desexualized writer owning both male
eyes and female eyes, this image was certainly advantageous for her as a writer. As a
result, the eroticism described in her stories is more complex than that written by other
writers. As another strategy Enchi introduced theatrical images to her writing in addition
w “Ake wo ubau m ono" pp. 8-9.
l78Okuno Takeo. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 3. p. 380.

107
to her medical and physiological images. At a round table discussion on “Sexuality and
Literature" (Sei to bungaku) Setouchi Jakucho and Enchi talked about the concept o f
“eroticism”:
Setouchi\ But when women write (about sexuality), when Ms. Enchi, for example,
writes about it in novels, they (male critics) make a sensational noise calling
them “erotic,” which never happens when men write about it. This is what
generally happens in the (literary) world [...] However, the real eroticism o f
women is actually written far better by men than by women.
Enchi: True. That is why an oyama (a male actor personify ing a female role) is
more erotic on the stage than an actress [...]'79
It is clear that there are multiple definitions o f “eroticism” cris-crossing in this argument.
The first “erotic” Setouchi used in her remark meant rather “obscene." which was generally
used in pair with the term, “grotesque” (“Grotesque" and "erotic" [ero-guro \ meant “kinky
taste" in the postwar period). The second "real eroticism" (hontdno erochikku-na mono)
was more abstract: the image of woman’s sexuality constructed by men and women. This
eroticism that Setouchi mentioned is close to what Oe categorized as the aesthetic but
powerless “ literature of eroticism” (Erochishizumu no bungaku)." Oe proposed, by
contrast, a revolutionary and powerful “literature o f sexuality" (Sei no bungaku) which
would become an actual agency of intervention in the great meta-narrative o f Japanese
literature. But because o f the double standard in the literary guild, women writers o f
course had no opportunity to write such a literature as one o f resistance. Enchi's literature
on sexuality was one of the few attempts by women writers to realize that power of
intervention.
Another interesting issue in this dialogue is Enchi's hint about the theatrical
l79Kusumoto Kenkichi. Kaishaku to kanshd(June 1966): p. 146.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n prohib ited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

108
performance o f a writer. She compares a male writer who succeeds in reproducing the
sexuality o f women to an oyama, “a biological man performing a woman through recourse
to a ritualized imitation o f culturally sanctioned gestures, postures, and utterances meant to
evoke ‘the female’.”180 Now here are the complex issues presented:
1. Setouchi simply states that w om en’s sexuality described by male writers is

better than that written by women writers.
2. Or Setouchi implies that male writers' writings about wom en's sexuality are
more obscene (erotic) than women’s writings on this subject.
3. Enchi remarks that an oyama is more erotic than the actress on the stage for
this reason.
Overlooking the sloppy logic in this dialogue, we should pay attention to Enchi's equation
of writing to theatrical performance, and to gender complexity when talking about writing
sexuality. What Enchi suggests is that w om en's sexuality is not so erotic (both obscene
and aesthetic) as men expect and view, and that such “eroticism" or “femaleness" are
constructions by men just as oyama construct their “femaleness" on the stage.
This male-constructed femaleness can be clearly observed in kabuki. noh and
Nihon buyo in Japan. Taking Nihon buyo for instance, most schools were originally
established by male dancers or kabuki stars, and later finally shared with female dancers.
Women spectators learned femaleness from those dances by males, and internalized them
by practicing and imitating male dancers' postures in their daily lives. Enchi, who was
familiar with such a history o f Japanese theaters, says elsewhere, “Nihon buyo is a hybrid
,80Comyetz. p. 14.

109
art made by both male and female dancers."181 “Japanese femaleness" after all was
construed by oyama and male performers.
Discourse o f Female Organs
Another male critic. Kawakami Tetsutaro, describes Enchi’s “Shishijima-kidan” as
a “ novel which reminds us o f an ancient symbolic stone o f genital organs.” 182 Kawakami is
probably talking about the end of the story, in which the female protagonist’s genital organ
is observed by her rival with ecstasy, just before they start fighting in the water. Is this
association o f genital organs an obsession o f Enchi or o f male critics?
Enchi was quite aware of m en's "conclusion that women are after all genital
organs," or that "women ( ‘s genital organs) are the basic object o f literature."183 Such a
male obsession is obviously demonstrated in the male critics. For example, in the
commentary on Enchi's “Transformation o f Komachi” (Komachi henso), male critics talk
about whether writers should write about “genital organs" in literature or not. Takeda
Taijun casts the following question:
Which is the beauty and tradition o f Japanese literature, the spirit o f staring at the
genital organ directly, or avoiding staring at it?184
l8,Enchi Fumiko. “Onna no himitsu" [Women’s Secrets], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu.

vol. 15, p. 84.
l82Kawakami Tetsutaro. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu vol. 9. p. 507.
m '’Sakuhin-h\6: Komachi hen so ' [Commentary: Transformation o f Komachi],

Gunzo (1964), in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 13. pp. 415-21.
I84lbid.. p. 418.

110
Hirabayashi, answering his question, said. "In the Japanese literary tradition we tried to
cover it, but in modem literature we try to expose it." While Takeda says that he prefers
keeping "tradition" by avoiding staring at it. Haniya remarks that "all literature is aiming
for exposing anything covered or hidden, including genital organs."185 Both male critics,
Takeda and Haniya, are eager to know why Enchi introduced such a sensational metaphor
as a waterfall for a woman’s genital organ in her work, "Transformation o f Komachi."
Hirabayashi tries to explain for Enchi. who was absent from that discussion:
[...] since both the jobs o f producing and o f criticizing literature have been done
mostly by m en's standard, Enchi tries to see (women’s genital organs) with "m en’s
eyes” although she pretends to deal with women from women's viewpoint.
Therefore, this (Enchi's description o f waterfall as a woman's genital organs) is not
so shocking or provoking in wom en's eyes as in m en's eves.186
Comparing the waterfall to a female genital organ is not sensational in women's eyes.
Hirabayashi says, but it certainly was shocking in m en's eyes. Enchi. knowing the effect
on male readers, deliberately used this strategy and got the response she expected from
them. Similarly, the famous phrase in "Love in Two Lives--The Remnant" (Nise no
enishi—shui), “My womb throbbed” (shikyuga dokirito natta). may not be so shocking for
women readers as for male readers. As Hirabayashi states. Enchi must have utilized as a
strategy the popular male concept that "women are after all reduced to their genital
organs."
Women writers including Enchi did not deny that they were affected by the
discourses o f male hegemony in the literary circle. Rather, they used various strategies to
I85Haniya Yutaka. ibid.. p. 420.
186Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 13. p. 421.

Ill
adjust to their circumstances. However, the “ women Enchi writes about are not ‘pandering
to men' (otoko no me wo ishiki-shita onna dewa nai),” as Okuno analyses, since “they are
not feminine women whom men fantasize about.” 187 While they were under the pressure
of the male gaze, the site o f threat from male critics also became the site o f the power of
resistance against them. Eroticism, sexuality, and Woman were, as we saw in the first
chapter, discourses constructed in the postwar socio-political and literary context. Enchi,
by taking advantage o f postwar male fantasy about women, manipulated “eroticism" in
writing her works. Thus, it is not only unfair but also illegitimate to reduce Enchi to a
writer who took “refuge in erotic daydreaming" in this context.'88
Translation o f Classics
Borrowing materials from the classics is also one o f Enchi's strategies in her
writing. Usually those original classic stories are mingled with mythic, fantastic and erotic
daydreams in the present narratives. Karatani Kojin comments on the phenomenon o f the
emergence of so-called “classic" writers in the modem period:
[...] a group of twentieth-century Japanese writers [...] turned away from the bright-
lit spaces o f modernity—with its roots in the code of sincerity and truth—toward a
mythical past, fantastic visions, and the pursuit o f erotic and psychopathic forms o f
ecstasy.189
This is the prevalent orthodox view o f Tanizaki, Kawabata, Mishima and Enchi in the
l87Okuno. p. 377.
l8SMasao Miyoshi, O ff Center: Power and Culture/Relations between Japan and

the United States (Cambridge: Harvard UP. 1994). p. 210.
l89Karatani Kojin. "Reading Premodem Texts in Modernity." in the Abstract for

AAS Annual Meeting (March 1998).

112
postwar period too. and their stories are categorized as examples o f “premodemity," which
turned away from the enlightening “modernity.’' They are situated as the opposite o f the
“sincerity and truth” o f modem writing. However, Karatani himself proposes a question:
“ What are the political and historical implications o f reading texts specifically as artifacts
o f the premodem?” 190 Since the category of the premodem did not exist prior to the
advent o f modernity, we are compelled to question how it is possible to read “premodem"
texts in the modem period. Reading or translating classics in the modem period itself
could have a socio-political agency to intervene in the meta-narrative. If so, what kind of
intervention does Enchi bring by reading o f the classics?
First, Enchi shuffles the border between the original (the classics) and the
translation (modem reading) by letting one affect the other: the original transforms the
modem reading, and the modem reading transforms the original. For example, we read
Chikamatsu's “ Love Suicide at Amijima” (Shinju Ten no Amijimci) at the same time as
reading “Sanjo bakkara" by Enchi, the “Nonomiya" chapter in The Tale o f Genji with
“Masks.” and Ueda Akinari’s story with “Love in Two Lives—the Remnants.” It is just
like “double folded mirrors reflecting” a classical woman “as a main character and the
author who narrates in contrast.” 191 By inviting the reader to go back and forth between
the two different fictional worlds. Enchi creates the illusion o f trespassing the borderline
between reality and fiction, original and copy. Does this mean that she creates a continuity
|90Karatani Kojin, ibid.
,9|Maruya uses this phrase to comment on Enchi’s short story. "Seko no sashi”
[Fairy Tale o f Cats], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 5. p. 433.

113
and homogeneity between ancient text and modem reader? Although she deals with
historical facts in some works like “The Tale o f a False Medium” (Namamiko monogatari)
or “Life o f Princess Sen” (Senhime shunjuki), she states that she cannot write historical
novels, and that she writes her stories (even o f classical material) “ from the perspective of
the 1970s.” 192 Enchi’s attitude towards the past and the classics is clearly stated in the
following: “I never want to hang on to the past, nor do I want to create a future by dwelling
in the past.” l9:> If we compare Enchi’s works based on classics with M ishima's “Five
Modem Noh Plays,” the difference between the two writers is clear. Although Mishima
rewrites the five noh plays for a modem setting, his characterizations remain classical,
whereas in Enchi even the classical stories are often transformed by modem
characterizations. Original and copy are reverse-rewritten and reverse-translated in Enchi’s
works.
Second. Enchi creates a free traffic among women characters beyond the time/space
difference in her stories. For example, the narrator (usually a professional translator) is
reading a piece of the classics, and then she becomes the female protagonist in that classic.
In “Sanjo bakkara” the translator/ the narrator is translating Chikamatsu’s “Love Suicide in
Amijima.” In the process o f translating she finds herself playing the role o f Koharu in her
own triangular love- relationship. In other words, Koharu. who is objectified by
Chikamatsu, becomes now a narrator/translator o f her own story. Another example is
19:Enchi. L'en no hitobito to [With People I Came to Know], p. 126: Enchi

Fumiko. "Jo: Genji monogatari'' [Preface to The Tale o f Genji] (Tokyo: Shinchosha.
1980), p. 5.
193Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 5. pp. 447-9.

114
“ Love in Two Lives—the Remnant." While the female translator is translating Ueda
Akinari's famous story, a lecherous widow who gets together with Josuke in the story
translates herself and comes into the life o f the translator. By so doing, at the same time,
the reader is translating and transforming a famous classical story written by a man. Such a
shift and transformation from a woman objectified in the story to a woman as an agent with
subjectivity is a typical strategy used by Enchi. It may be that she further invites the reader
to shift and transform from a position o f passive reader to the position of the active
translator o f classics written and canonized by male writers and critics.
Third. Enchi challenges the conventional canonization o f the classics. For
example, she says that The Tale o f Genji has been canonized as a story o f "mono no
aware" [pathos] by Motoori Norinaga. but that since its framework was taken from the
famous historical narrative, The Record o f Great Historians by Szuma Chien (145-ca. 86
B.C. E.). it certainly has a lot more than mere “mono no aware."194 Furthermore. Enchi
remarks that the image o f the Rokujo Lady in the Genji as a jealous woman was in fact
instituted only “since the story o f her spirit was dramatized in the noh play. ‘Lady Aoi'
(Aoi no ue)."'95 Rather than attempting to return to the original. Enchi was cautiously
watching how classics have been transformed and translated by the critics or writers.
She also questions the male canonization o f the classics. As Haruo Shirane points
out, “while The Tale o f Genji was written by a woman and initially appreciated by women,
it was. significantly, canonized by male poets and scholars who regarded it as a repository
194Enchi Fumiko, Uen no hitobito to, p. 133.
m Rokujo miyasudokoro" [Rokujo Lady], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 16. p. 344.

115
o f poetic diction, poetic sensibility, and court culture."'96 Shirane is quite right in that the
classics have been tossed, turned and formed to meet the socio-political need in each
period. However, he makes a simplification in taking the authorship o f Genji as a woman.
for it is well-known that there are pros and cons about the issue these days: whether it was
written by a woman or a man. by a single author or by multiple authors.197 Obviously
responding to such skepticism o f the authorship o f Genji among scholars of classical
literature. Enchi concludes. “It does not matter whether it was written by several authors
or a single author, whether it was a collective noun called ‘Murasaki Shikibu'." she said,
“as long as I can recognize a woman as gender in her constructing a male figure. Hikaru
G enji."19S As clearly stated in her remarks. Enchi attempts to recover the authorship o f
Murasaki. “a woman as gender." from several (probably male) authors. At the same time
she succeeds to bring back resistance in Genji to modem readers by her translation. Mizuta
Noriko Lippit explains the agency o f resistance in classics written by women:
[...] the resistance o f monogatari (The Tale o f Genji. for example) or waka against
the master narrative of Myths or History (shinwaya rekishi). and the resistance o f
nikki (The Gossamer Years. for example) against fictional monogatari, which have
been absorbed into the master narrative, given a minor role in it. or removed
I96Haruo Shirane, “Scco sareta koten: kanon keisei no paradaimu to hihyd-teki

te n b a ’ [Constructed Canon: Paradigm and Critical Views o f Formation of Canon];
“Karikyuramu no resiki-teki hensen to kydgdsuru kanon" [Historical Transition o f
Curriculum and Competing Canon] (Tokyo: Shinyo-sha. 1999), pp. 13-36; pp. 394-422.
197Denying the authorship o f women writers is another serious issue to discuss later.
It is quite interesting to see an opposite trend in the recognition o f authorship o f women:
while they hail the court literature as a “wom an's hand."
,98Enchi Fumiko. "San nin no onna-shujinko' [Three female protagonist], in Enchi

Fumikozenshu, vol. 16. p. 353.

116
completely.1<w
Conclusion
Let us hear Enchi’s comments on the translation o f the classics:
Translating a classic to modem Japanese is obviously different from the creative

job o f directly talking to the reader in my own words.
(Therefore.) this is a translation for myself, and by myself (in other words, this is
nobody's fault). This is The Tale o f Genji I read in my own way.
When reading the original, the real meaning o f some sentences is quite difficult to
figure out unless we get a medium to call back the author’s spirit.200
First, she points out the difference between fiction and translation: the latter is "mediated"
and "indirect" while the former is "direct" and unmediated in talking to the reader.
Second, the purpose of translation o f classics is for Enchi to present her own reading, not to
reinforce the authority o f the status o f classics. Therefore, rather than trying to be faithful
to the original, as Tanizaki did. she is more interested in creative transformation o f classics.
She knows, after all. about the intransparency and unaccountability o f classics (meanings
of words, phrases, intention of the author, etc.), unless we can time-shift and ask the author
or call her back by a medium. In short, reading "premodem” texts in the modem period is
not just “returning to the origin” but a quite “modem” project, which attempts both
modernity and premodemity and the clear distinction between the two.
'"M izuta Noriko, Monogatari to Han-monogatari no fukei: bungaku to josei no

sdzdryoku [The Scenery o f Narrative and Anti-Narrative: Creativity o f Literature and
Women] (Tokyo: Tabata shoten. 1993). pp. 9-10.
200"Kana-bun no buntai nado" [The Style o f Kana]. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol.
16. p. 362.

117
In Part II. I will demonstrate how much Enchi has done through translation of the
classics by taking up her modem translation o f The Tale o f Genji in contrast to the ones by
Yosano Akiko and by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro. Through an analysis o f Enchi's translations,
which are usually put as a sideline from the main stream o f her work, I would like to prove
the “ modernity” rather than “premodemity” of her project, and resistance rather than
complicity with the great narratives.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e cop y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n p rohib ited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

PART TWO
TRANSLATION OF THE TALE O F GENJI INTO MODERN JAPANESE:
YOSANO AKIKO, TANIZAKI JUN’ICHIRO AND ENCHI FUMIKO
In my translation o f the classic, in my own ‘reading,’ I broke in and violated

the text o f the Genji, as some might call my act a rape or a burglary o f the
original. (Enchi Fumiko)201
:olEnchi Fumiko, in Enchi Fumiko zenshu; vol. 13. p. 129.

Chapter I
Theory o f Translation: Ideology and Resistance
Introduction
Masculinist intellectuals in the postwar period identified themselves with
"Woman." They did so as a way, unconsciously or consciously, to dissolve their memory
o f Japan's wartime suffering or loss o f the war by taking refuge in the figure o f Woman’s
body, or to occlude their guilt about Japan's wartime aggression by appealing to the image
o f Woman’s victimization. In either case, they had to do so in order to rescue themselves
from a crisis of masculinity after Japan's wartime defeat. For these critics. “Woman"
should be a univocal, universal, and ahistorical symbol. It was their critical need to pin
down, like butterflies in a collector's box. and stabilize an image o f Woman in order to
secure their “masculinity.”
Thus several issues occupied these critics: their guilt, their excuse, the crisis o f their
masculinity. On the one hand, they admitted the aggressive aspect o f Japan during the war:
on the other hand, they saw themselves as victimized by the Western and American threat
before the war and control after the war. These aspects o f Japan as colonizer o f Asia and
as colonized (occupied) by Western hegemonic power are thus complex and intersecting.
But all o f them were figured over the image and body o f “Woman." and all led to the
annihilation of memories of the war and the erasure o f historical women. Why did all o f
these issues flow together into one metaphoric stream, that o f W oman's body and image?
Was it an issue o f “women." or was it something other than a women's issue? While the
efforts o f these masculinist critics were spent on reconstructing and stabilizing the memory
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n o f t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n proh ibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

120
o f the war. history, and masculinity by a freezing o f W oman's body and image, what was it
actually possible for women writers to do?
In Part I we saw how much influence and power masculinist literary critics
exercised in their critiques o f Enchi, especially in their use o f an essentialized image o f
“Woman.” We have seen how Enchi’s works and Enchi’s body were “translated” and
interpreted by these critics. Such “translation” worked as a weapon to belittle women
writers. Conscious o f the construction placed upon her. the “translated being is someone
who is seen, and sees herself through the lenses o f the colonizing dominant culture.'002
In Part II I will look at the historical situations o f three translators o f the Genji
monogatari. Yosano Akiko. Tanizaki Jun'ichiro. and Enchi Fumiko. In particular I will
discuss what ideologies lay behind the modem translation (kogo-yaku) o f a Japanese
classical canonical work, the Genji monogatari. The most serious ideology was the
feminization o f this Heian classic, and consequently the comprehensive feminization and
pacification o f the new Japan and Japanese culture in the postwar period. Against this kind
o f ideology I will introduce what sort o f resistance was possible for women writers in their
performative agency o f translation. In Chapter Two. I will demonstrate how translation can
function as one o f the strategies by which women writers could counter-attack nationalist
masculinist critics. In Chapter Three I will discuss Enchi’s translation o f the Genji in
detail. In Chapter Four, as an Appendix, I will compare the Japanese translations o f
selected passages in the Enchi. Yosano. and Tanizaki translations and the Tamagami
202Doris Y. Kadish & Francoise Massardier-Kennov. Translating Slavery': Gender

and Race in French Women s Writing, I~83-I823 (Ohio: The Kent UP. 1994). p. 12.

121
edition of the original text and provide my own commentary in English on the these
comparisons.203 In the present chapter, however, I shall begin with some theoretical
considerations about what kind o f processes and functions lie behind and within the
'‘translation,” and in particular Enchi's translation, o f this Japanese classic in the postwar
period.
Why is translation so important? Is there any difference between “translation” from
one national language to another national language, and, in Enchi's case, “translation” from
a classical to a modern version o f a national language? In the postwar period in Japan, due
to having obtained rights for translating foreign literatures, a great number o f translations
o f Western literary works appeared in Japan around the year 1950. For example: 1984 by
George Orwell. Dirty Hands and Path to Freedom by Jean-Paul Sartre. The Plague by
Albert Camus. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. etc. Honda Shugo called it “the peak
period of translation" and attributed this phenomenon both to the Cominform's criticism of
the Japanese Communist Party, and the outbreak of the Korean War. Anxiety about the
Cold War. according to Honda, could be one reason why suddenly translations became
popular in the Japanese market. Although Honda focused too much on the movement of
the Communist Party and the political events that resulted, he at least made the point that
;o3Tamagami Takuya translated and annotated the text in modem Japanese. Genji
monogatari. 10 vols. (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten. 1964-1975). Tamagami used the three
existing prints of the Genji text, some of which were chapters owned by Fujiwara no Teika
(1162-1241) and others o f which were chapters owned by his descendants, members o f the
Reizei and Asukai families. I am using Tamagami's compilation as the “original” text of
the Genji monogatari, the edition which Enchi herself primarily used.

translation became in demand on the occasion o f a Japanese identity crisis.204
Another possible factor in the surge o f translations was the re-enhancement of the
Unification o f Speech and Writing movement after World War II, the re-establishment o f
standard Japanese (hycgun-go), which I will discuss in the next chapter. Another possible
reason was commercialism responding to the worldwide desire for communication.
Globally it was the age of the rise o f mass communications, o f multi-media experiences, a
world where simultaneously across cultures audiences demanded to share the latest text, be
it film. song, or book.205 Doubtlessly, there must have been an ‘‘obsession and desire for
translation" in the global world at that tim e.206 Our focus is the postwar period in Japan,
and what kind o f “obsession” or “desire” created this demand for translation. Was it a
quest and thirst for the “knowledge" and "power" of the West on the part o f Japan after the
defeat o f war? Or did it symbolize an identity crisis for Japanese intellectuals, as Honda in
part maintained?
2<wHonda Shugo, Monogatari sengo bungaku-shi [Narrative History o f Postwar

Literature], vol. 2, p. 158. Honda analyzes the identity crisis o f Japanese intellectuals in
the postwar period. Having observed the division of Korea and Germany in 1948 and
1949, and the establishment o f Communist China in 1949, these intellectuals became
concerned that Japan might follow the same fate as these two countries which became
involved in an anti-communist block by the US. This was also the time when the Japanese
Communist Party was criticized by the Cominform. Between the two Western hegemonies
their national identity was on the verge o f being split.
205Roman Alvarez & M. Carmen-Africa Vidal. Translation Power Subversion

(Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters. 1996). p. 1.
206Tejaswini Niranjana, “Introduction." in Siting Translation: History. Post-

Structuralism. and the Colonial Context (California: U o f California P. 1992). p. 9.

123
1. Desire for “Japanese” Language/Desire for “Foreign” Language
Both desire of foreign (mostly Western) knowledge and literature and a quest for
national identity usually occurred at the same time among Japanese intellectuals. For
example, members of the Japanese Romantic School loved the English Lake District poets,
while at the same time they insisted on revaluing the Japanese classical arts. Before Enchi
there were Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Kawabata Yasunari and Mishima
Yukio, all o f whom were familiar with Western literature and all o f whom also translated
many works o f classical Japanese literature into modem Japanese fiction. They were so-
called “Modernists." Explaining this inevitable double aspect o f desire among these
intellectuals. Sakai says:
Consequently, the figure o f one's own language as a systematic unity is a correlate

in this schema o f configuration to its twin partner, the figure o f a foreign language.
O ne's own language neither precedes nor succeeds a foreign language; both come
into being at the same tim e-that is, one's own language is always a foreign
language for a foreign language, and the self-referential relationship to one’s own
language always assumes the schema o f configuration. This is why the self-
referentiality to one's own language necessarily comprises the desire to be seen
from the viewpoint o f a foreign language. The reason for which self-referentiality in
fact can never free itself from the transferential desire to see from another's position
is. thus, already outlined in the schema o f configuration. Our desire to know what
we have supposedly known in our own language thus arrives by way o f our desire
for the figure o f a foreign language."107
After World War II there again arose a proposal and strong advocacy for a “literature of the
nation” among Japanese intellectuals. At the same time, there was great demand for
translations from Western literature. Enchi was not an exception to this trend among
intellectuals.
:o7Sakai Naoki. Translation & Subjectivity: On “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism

(Minneapolis: U o f Minnesota P. 1997), p. 59.

124
For Enchi Fumiko. having a father. Ueda Kazutoshi (1867-1937), who had studied
in Europe and brought a Western life-style and atmosphere back home, and herself having
been granted an opportunity to study European literature, her inevitable attraction to
Western culture was not skin deep but cut across her bone and flesh. Besides, Western
cultural hegemony, temporarily halted during the war, was resumed and reinforced by the
American Occupation in the postwar period. Against the current o f translation of foreign
literature and despite her familiarity with Western and Chinese literature, however. Enchi
did not translate any Western works. Instead she chose to ‘'translate” classical Japanese
literature into modem Japanese. And yet. Enchi's translation of classical literature was the
other side of her desire for Western literature, as we have noted above. In other words, her
desire for Japanese language was arrived at by way of the figure of a foreign language.
2. Translation of Japanese Classics
In traditional theories, translation has been viewed as an act o f transferring the
meaning from the source language to a target language. Usually one is a “mother" language
and the other is a “foreign” language. However, this traditional notion o f “translation”
needs to be challenged. To begin with, it is too simplistic to think that translation takes
place only from a single “mother” language to a single “foreign” language, since multiple
languages may be found at either end o f the transaction. Further, sometimes one speaker
has more than one “mother" language, for example if they are bilingual or multilingual.
Again, what about the other kind of “translation.” namely, from a classical text to a modem
language? Sakai Naoki points out the gap between modem languages and classical
languages, quoting Tsuda Sokichi:

12 5
[...] one is often forgetful o f such an elementary historical sense as the fact that,
“paradoxical as it may appear, the old ideas that existed in Japan in the past should
sound very foreign from the viewpoint o f present-day Japanese life." [...] Most o f
the pre-twentieth-century historical documents are in languages that are foreign by
today’s standard, and the linguistic diversion o f early modem and premodem
documents is just striking in comparison to the relative similarity o f medieval
English and modem English. As a result, they are illegible for the majority o f the
present-day Japanese population. In other words, as far as those documents are
concerned, most Japanese who are alive today are foreigners to them; the notions
and sentiments expressed in the documents are. in turn, undeniably alien to the
contemporary Japanese. Nonetheless, the presumptive continuity o f "the Japanese”
does not allow contemporary Japanese to view Japanese thought o f the past
essentially as “foreigners"' thought.208
In other words, in Japan there are many classical works that are already “foreign” to the
modem reader. Who can read Genji monogatari without detailed annotations, even though
s/he is a Japanese native speaker? And yet, they still pay special tribute to Genji as a
"canonical” work o f Japanese “national literature.” In order to understand this “foreign”
text the m odem reader needs a translator who can bridge the temporal-linguistics space
between classical times and modem times. In this hermeneutic activity o f "translation" the
translator exercises power. Especially when the text is viewed as part o f a canonical
classic, like a sacred oracle, the translator "transmits" and "mediates" what was supposed to
be existent in the past to the modem reader, usually by reproducing knowledge about the
ancient practices and usages at court (yusoku kojitsu) in a large number o f footnotes.
However, in her translation o f Genji monogatari Enchi eliminated all the footnotes from
the orthodox annotated text, and mixed them into the main body o f the story. Instead of
:o8Sakai. Translation & Subjectivity, p. 46. The statement o f Tsuda Sokichi which
Sakai quotes is in: Tsuda Sokichi (1837-1961), Nihon Shiso Keisei no Katei (The process
o f the formation o f Japanese thought), in Tsuda Sokichi Zenshu. vol. 21 (Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten. 1965). p. 157 (original in 1934).

126
following and repeating the canonical text, she attempted to remove the scholarly
"mediation” between the ancient author and modem reader. In short. Enchi did not play
the traditional role o f an academic medium who faithfully transmits a "sacred oracle”~a
canonized text~to the modem reader.
Enchi’s agenda is clear if we contrast her translation to that o f Edward G.
Seidensticker. who translated Genji in English. He talked about his concept o f translation
in a dialogue with Enchi:
The translation by Waley is not reliable...Omitting may be OK as long as he made

an excuse saying that "I omitted this or that." and that "this is not a whole
translation." But he did not do so. He is to blame in this point.209
He criticized Arthur W aley's translation o f Genji for not being faithful to the original in
omitting some chapters. As he wrote in the introduction to his own translation,
Seidensticker made tremendous efforts to reproduce rhythms similar to those o f the
original, and to keep a smooth and fluent style in his translation. Although he found
Waley's translation wonderful, he states that Waley's "rhythms are rather different from
those of the original: W aley’s are brisker and more laconic, more economical o f words and
less elaboration.210 He wrote, "If it should be the aim o f a translation to imitate the original
in all important matters.” referring to the matter o f rhythm, “then it may be said that the
translation offered” by him self "has set a fuller set o f aims than did that o f Waley.”211
209Edward G. Seidensticker. in Uen no hitobito to. pp. 36-38.
210 "Introduction." in Murasaki Shikibu : The Tale o f Genji. translated with an

Introduction by Edward G. Seidensticker (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, INC, 1976), p. xiv.
21‘Ibid.. p. xv.

12 7
Against Seidensticker. Enchi defended Waley’s transformation o f the text, which
was anything but a ‘‘translation” in Seidensticker’s view. Enchi said that a translation is
totally different from the original regardless whether it was from the original Japanese to
English, or from the original Japanese to modem Japanese:
In any case it will become totally different from the original once translated into
English. I think this is permissible. The same goes with the translation into modem
Japanese. It will turn out very different from the original.212
According to Enchi. it is impossible for any translator, either into English or into modem
Japanese, to reproduce exactly the same style and rhythms o f the Heian literature, since
s/he lived in the modem period, far removed from the Heian period. What matters is not
only the difference in time but the difference in geographical space between the world in
which the translator lives and the one in which the author lived. Thus, it is permissible.
even if Waley draws on the British king and court to portray the Heian emperors and their
court, as long as that helps the foreigners' understanding o f Genji. "There is no translation
word for word,” Enchi concluded, because the translator needs to accommodate the
changes of words in each period; otherwise "some Japanese words well-understood in one
period could become Greek to the reader in other period.”213 In her translation o f Genji.
Enchi gave up trying to transfer a streamlined beauty, “endowed with both power and
delicacy” (tsiiyosa to yawarakasa wo kaneta ryusenkei no bi), into modem Japanese
language, finding it impossible. While translating she found it impossible to go back to the
Heian kana world, since modem people had become so used to the kanji style in the Edo
2I2Enchi, Uen no hitobito to. p. 38.
213Ibid.. p. 41.

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and Meiji periods.214 As a solution she decided to cut the long sentences o f the original
into short ones, and make the best possible use of kanji along with the softer kana style.
As we see in his remark Seidensticker’s concept o f translation was based on the
traditional theory o f translation. The earlier definition o f translation was one of merely
transferring a message from a source language (SL) to a target language (TL). It started
with the translation of bibles from Greek to Latin or from Latin to other languages, and
continued with missionaries circulating translated bibles in colonized countries.
Translation was marginalized, however, by an essentially romantic conception of
authorship: the 'original' is eternal, the translation dates. The ‘original’ is an unchanging
monument o f the human imagination or ‘genius.’ transcending the linguistic, cultural, and
social changes o f which the translation is a determinate effect.215
On this view, translation is an “invisible practice,” its “shadowy existence” rarely
acknowledged. Translation can be no more than a “copy o f the original”: its originality lies
rather in “self-effacement, a vanishing act”: “anonymity can be a real achievement.”216
There is “good” translation or “bad” translation, depending on whether the translation is
thought to be “faithful” or a “betrayer.” “Good” translation is written in a language that is
“smooth and fluent.” that keeps the reader from noticing that they are reading a work of an
“other culture.” In fact, the strategy o f fluent translation “aims to efface the translator’s
2l4Enchi. Uen no hitobito to. pp. 72-73.
2l5Lawrence Venuti. “Introduction.” in Rethinking Translation: Discourse/

Swtyecrivity/Ideology (New York: Routledge. 1992), p. 3.
2l6Ibid.

129
crucial intervention in the foreign text." erasing the “ linguistic and cultural difference o f
the foreign text." The fluency strategy leaves us unnoticing o f the "labor o f acculturation"
or “domestication” in translation.217 In short, a “good” translation “canonizes" and
“freezes” an “original” text, validating its fame by enabling its survival in a way we do not
otherwise notice. Thus, Seidensticker’s effort to reproduce the same rhythms and the same
style as the Heian original text, as well as his attempt to produce a “smooth and fluent"
language in his translation is problematic. He ends up reinforcing the notion o f a
“Japanese tradition” in “Japanese literature.” and reproducing the Japanese classical
canonicity. His translation can be located in a traditional theory of translation, which
authorizes and sacralizes "the original” and which situates the translator as a faithful and
therefore authoritative medium o f a divine oracle.
3. T ra n sla to r as M edium
One o f the unique aspects o f Enchi's theory o f translation is her alternative concept
o f the “medium” as applied both to the translator and to the language as well, a concept
which radically differs from Seidensticker. In a dialogue with Oe Kenzaburo. Enchi
mentioned this aspect o f her mission as a “medium.” as one who writes in her own
language (jibun ga hitotsu no baitai ni natte.jibim no kotoba de kaite iku).
Come to think of it, language seems to me a kind o f medium (reibai) [...] I mean,
only language can trespass the barrier o f the time. (The classics) are talking to us.
modem people, through a medium, a language. O f course it is best that we let
people read the original o f Genji. But we would like those who never read the
original to read the story o f Genji. Therefore, I too become a medium (baitai).
write it in my own language (to present it to the modem reader). This in truth is
2,7Ibid.

1 30
how I feel about translation.218
For her ‘‘the job o f translating a work” was totally different from the jo b o f creating a work
o f her own and talking directly to the reader. It is different, too, from scholarly
commentaries, because it is her “own reading."2'9 As she said, “the classics themselves
talk to the reader through a language that comes forth from the translator’s ‘body’."220
What does it mean “to translate in her own language and through her own body”?
In order to explain better this aspect o f Enchi’s mission as a medium, let me expand on the
theory o f translation referred to earlier. Translation o f a classical work is usually
understood as a unidirectional activity o f translation from a classical language (a source
language) to a modem language (a target language). This theory is based on a belief in the
existence o f a transparent and self-evident “target language.” The translator’s job is in this
case merely to be the deliverer of the sacred oracle o f the original to the receiving audience.
Enchi's understanding o f her mission as a medium is different. For her. translation is not
that transparent, nor is there a singular and straightforwardly accessible target language. It
must be constructed as an imagined and alternative language.221 She attempts to produce,
rather than reproduce, the polyphonic and two-way dialogue between the classic language
and her own language, deploying what Banting terms an “ interlanguage” in her
2ISIbid.. p. 143.
2l9Enchi. Genji monogatari shiken, p. 363.
::oEnchi. Uen no hitobito to. pp. 143. 164. 165.
221We will look at the example o f a constructed language in the case o f modem
Japan, that is. the “Unification Movement” (genbun icchi undo), in the next chapter.

131
translation.222 As a medium she uses an “interlanguage” which comes into existence only
in the process o f “foreign’Manguage learning.
In other words, if we follow Sakai, Enchi’s desire for translation arrives by way o f
her “desire for the figure o f a foreign language.”223 However, a “foreign language” does
not necessarily signify a language o f a different country, but implies any language which
feels unfamiliar to the translator: an adult’s language is foreign to children; professional
jargon to the amateur; classical language to the modem reader; a dialect o f a rural area to
city people, etc. Here, we are reminded o f Enchi’s comments on Higuchi Ichiyo.224 Enchi
observed that Ichiyo moved intoYoshiwara. the licensed quarter, and encountered a totally
different kind o f life and people, from which she received a new stimulus o f creativity and
wrote a new work.225 Referring to Enchi's analysis of Ichiyo. Oe pointed out that Enchi
herself had multiple ambivalence, and that in the midst o f confronting those ambivalence
she found the sources o f her creativity.226 Enchi agreed with Oe. saying that she played the
222Enchi’s concept o f the translator as a “medium" reminds us o f that o f

“interlanguage” which Pamela Banting proposes in her article, “S(M)other Tongue?:
Feminism, Academic Discourse, Translation,” in Collaboration in the Feminine: Writing
on Women and Culture fro m Tessera, Barbara Godard ed. (Toronto: Second Story, 1994),
p. 175.
223Sakai, Translation & Subjectivity, p. 59.
224Bom in 1872 and died in 1896. A woman author o f “ Takekurabe” [Child’s

Play].
225Enchi. Uen no hitobito to, pp. 142-3.
2260 e Kenzaburo's analysis o f Enchi in Uen no hitobito. pp. 142-3.

Though it is needless to list them here, Enchi's own resources were many: Chinese
classical literature and Japanese classics in the original: French. German. Russian and
English literature in translation. There was also a traffic between the plays she used to be

role o f a “medium” who transferred the text o f the Heian to the modern reader in “her own
language,” and that her language came out o f her own “body” to reach the reader.
Concepts o f newer theories o f translation such as interlanguages, system interference, and
translation as production rather than reproduction, clarify how and why Enchi’s practice as
a translator between women in two different worlds made possible a dialogue that did not
reduce them to instances o f an abstraction called “Woman.”” 7
Enchi was quite aware that her role as a “medium" and her “interlanguage" skill
when translating were clearly gendered. It was common for critics to conclude that women
writers like Enchi fell back on their fantasmatic power as "mediums" in their quest for a
"feminine voice" and "feminine ecriture" absent in a phallo-logo-centric society. However,
as such concepts as “interlanguage" and “system interference" suggest. Enchi's concept of
a “medium” has more complex dimensions than simply those o f a mere superstitional or
phantasmatic sort.
As a medium, as Enchi herself boasted to one male critic, she “ added what in the
original the author. Murasaki Shikibu, lacked ability to do.” Such an impulse came up from
inside:
While reading Genji and coming to these parts, I always felt inside some emotion
boiling up, flooding, pervading and returning to the texts. I had to transfer this
emotion into language and mix it into the original text.228
engaged writing in her twenties, and the novels she took up writing after the war.
:27Pamela Banting. “S(m)other Tongue?: Feminism. Academic Discourse.

Translatin." in Barbara Godard. Collaboration in the Feminine: Writing on Women and
Culture from Terresa (Toronto: Second Story. 1994), p. 178.
228Enchi, “Introduction” (Jo), in her Translation o f Genji monogatari, p. 6.

133
In between her desire for communicating with the “modem" reader and her desire for
understanding the “classicaforiginal, Enchi as translator became a medium who
transcended the time and space of the original through her own "body" in its time and
place. She thereby challenged the authority o f the "original.” As the embodiment o f her
theory, Enchi transformed the original text by both by cutting it and even more so by
expanding it. As we have seen, recent translation theory follows Enchi’s challenge.
Bassnett. for example, says "the key word in the 90s is 'visibility': the role o f the translator
is ‘very visible indeed'.”229 Enchi's translation of Genji is called the "Enchi Genji": in
other words, the translator is "visible," not "invisible" as in traditional translation theory.
According to current theory Enchi as "author" may be effaced, but as "translator" Enchi
becomes ever more visible.
4. Gendering Translation
Enchi was quite aware of her power as a translator, but also o f the stigma as a
woman translator engaged in transforming the original text. What is it that translators and
women have in common? Traditionally, both have been seen as derivative and subsidiary,
the “weak" terms in their respective hierarchies, literary and sexual.230 And yet. translation
theory and feminist theory provide tools for a critical understanding o f language. Can this
help us to see. and at the same time re-evaluate, why it is taken for granted that women
make good translators?
229Roman Alvarez & M. Carmen-Africa Vidal. Translation Power Subversion, pp.

6-7.
230David Homel & Sherry Simon. Mapping Literature: The Art and Political
Tradition (Montreal: Vehicle U., 1988) p. 52.

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There are many metaphors that reflect the sexualization o f translation. For
example, there is the famous trope o f authorship as male and translation as female: the
“original text” is “production,” the translation is “reproduction.” The act o f translating is
viewed as qualitatively different from the original act o f writing. Translations can be
echoes, copies or portraits, or borrowed or ill-fitting clothing. The original abides in what
is natural, truthful, and lawful, the copy resides in what is artificial, false, and treasonous.
Like women, translation should be either beautiful or faithful. Fidelity in translation is like
that in marriage: fidelity between translation (as woman) and original (as husband, father,
or author). The ‘unfaithful* wife/translation is publicly tried for crimes that the
husband/original is by law incapable o f committing. Thus translation mimics the
patrilineal kinship system where paternity, not maternity. legitimizes the offspring.231
On the other hand, the sexualization of translation can also work the other way
around. When the translator is figured as a “male.” the text is then figured as a “female*’
whose chastity must be protected. The text, that blank page bearing the author's imprint, is
impossibly twice virgin, once for the original author, and again for the translator who has
taken “her” place.232 Thomas Francklin in the eighteenth century also “translates” the
creative role o f the author into the passive role o f the text, rendering the author relatively
powerless in relation to the translator. Cowper, on the other hand, feminizes the text and
makes “her” reputation—that is, her “ fidelity”~the responsibility o f the “male”
23lLori Chamberlain. "Gender and the Metaphoric of Translation." Signs 13: 3

(Spring 1988): pp. 455-6.
232Ibid.. p. 457.

13 5
translator/author.233
Enchi also sexualized her translation, but in a dramatically different way—the
translator as a violator and the original text as the victim:
1 think I am exercising a violent challenge toward the original. 1 recklessly cut off
the parts, if not worse, and I do what the experts o f Japanese literature would never
do. Those experts usually talk about semantic issues {goshakii) and meaning. As
long as I can grab the feeling, I will eliminate the rest. Sometimes I will add to the
original. I know I will be severely criticized by the experts, but while reading I
come to find some parts need to be expanded and enriched [...] In the sense o f
traditional translation I should not do it [...] Speaking o f my own "reading," it may
be called marriage by plunder or an act o f theft, and actually I do break into the
story and inflict an act of rape on it. I think, however, this is my affection towards
the original. There are various kinds o f love, and mine may be a kind of struggle.
Anyway this is the kind o f love with which I face the original.234
Enchi said her translation was different from "rewriting." but at the same time it was not
simply translation word for word (chikugo-yaku). She was not even sure if it should be
called "translation," since she did not believe in “pure" (junsuina) translation. She
repeatedly used the phrase, "rape o f the original" (honbun wo okasu), for her additions. To
her. invading the interior world o f the characters, for example, was actually an act o f
violence, as if the translator had raped the original text. However, she stated, this kind of
violence is permitted as long as the translator had affection for the text. Thus, insofar as
for Enchi the practice o f translation could be compared to an act o f sexual transgression,
the relationship between the original and the translator was gendered. But since the
violence was inflicted with "affection." Enchi said, it was not totally forced, because she
was following an invitation from the original (honbun ni sotte znibun tachiitte haitte
233Ibid.. p. 458.
234Enchi. Uen no hitobito to, p. 129.

136
yukerit). These metaphors for translation that Enchi employs might appear rather troubling
to feminist theory. First, they appear to reproduce a gender dichotomy, and second, they
seem to justify forced “violence” on women.
Enchi’s radical concept o f translation also originated from her “strong desire for
communication” with the modem reader. She said, if the translator o f classics into modem
Japanese is to throw the Genji monogatari into a changed culture in which the life of
Japanese has been drastically altered, s/he must have a strong desire for communication
with the modem reader: it was not enough only to have affection for the original.235 As
George Steiner states, such “desire for communication" is itself strongly sexual:
Translation, as an act o f interpretation, is a special case o f communication, and

communication is a sexual act. Eros and language mesh at every point. Intercourse
and discourse, copula and copulation, are sub-classes o f the dominant fact of
communication [...] Sex is a profoundly semantic act.2-6
As desire for communication too. sexuality inhabits the act o f translation. Enchi's concept
of translation is thus doubly gendered. From desire for communication/translation, the
translator cannot avoid “deforming” (or raping) the original text in her/his translation.
Desire exists not only in the direction o f communication to the reader, for Enchi desire also
exists in the other direction: desire for the text, desire to build a “smooth bridge to the
original.” We should remind ourselves that the text Enchi “deforms” is a classical one.
Here a classical text is gendered as feminine and reached by Enchi through
“communication." This added metaphor for translation might appear rather troubling to
235Enchi. “ Genji monogatari kiko' [The Journey to The Tale o f Genji], p. 369.
Enchi Fumikozenshu 16.
2j6George Steiner. After Babel (London: Oxford UP. 1975). pp. 296. 298. 300. 302.

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post-colonial theory as well. Enchi’s theory and practice o f translation also seem trapped
in a “colonial” desire on the part o f the translator to conquer the classical world with
modem hands. However, here as in relation to feminst theory, Enchi's observations about
translation are a bit more complex. What Enchi points to in both instances is the important
and very real fact o f the existence o f violence in literary work, including translation.
Translation involves affection and desire, sexuality and the exercise o f power. This fact
needs to be recognized, and so far as I know, no one in Japan ever pointed this out before
Enchi.
The question. “Who is the real father o f the text?” seems to motivate the concern of
traditional translation theory about fidelity o f translation and purity o f language. The
metaphoric o f translation reveals both “anxiety" about the myth o f paternity (of authorship
and authority) and profound “ambivalence" about the role o f maternity, both o f which may
be figured in a triangular Oedipal structure: translator as child, creator as father, and text as
the object o f desire.237 The pious translator is involved in a repressed incestuous relation
with the text, a secondary aspect being concern for the purity of “mother” (Madonna)
tongue.
The other side o f the Oedipal triangle may be seen in the desire to kill the symbolic
father/author: the cannibalistic aggressive translator who seizes possession o f the “original”
and liberates translators from servility to “cultural and ideological restrictions.” The
metaphoric o f translation, as the preceding discussion suggests, is a symptom o f larger
issues o f Western culture: o f the power relations as they divide in terms o f gender: of
237Ibid.. pp. 461-3.

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persistent desire to equate language or language use with morality; of a quest for originality
or unity, and a consequent intolerance o f duplicity, o f what cannot be decided.238
Chamberlain concludes that the reason translation is so overcoded, so overregulated, is that
it threatens to erase the difference between production and reproduction essential to the
establishment o f patriarchal power. It threatens the sign o f the father’s authority, the
paternity o f the child—power to claim the child as legitimate progeny related to the owning
and bequeathal o f property.
Adopting Freudian theory to characterize Enchi's situation as a translator permits
an even more complex picture to appear. In Enchi’s translation o f the Genji monogatari, a
work itself written by a woman (as Enchi believed), the author is female, the text is female,
and the translator (Enchi) is a “male" who has violated the text. On the other hand, since
the text has been monopolized by multiple male translators (critics) so far. Enchi’s act o f
translating can also be seen as was recovering the female text from male hegemony. The
authorship o f Genji has been repeatedly challenged by male critics contending that it was
written by a male author or authors. Thus. Enchi (female translator) can be seen as
repossessing both the female text and female authorship (authority) from male claims. If
so, the question, “who is the real father o f the text?” should be changed to “who is the real
mother o f the text?”
5. Translating Japan
Translating Japan into a nation/state of peaceful and therefore feminine and refined
culture was an urgent task for postwar masculinist intellectuals engaged in trying to wash
238ChamberIain. pp. 465-6.

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away the memory and image o f an aggressive wartime Japan. Translation o f the Heian
classics, especially Genji monogatari, fulfilled such a demand beautifully, since it was part
o f the “w orld’s literary heritage," not only a Japanese heritage. In this context, the issue of
the difference between “original" and “copy" can be seen through the lens o f postcolonial
theory. The colonial subject is constituted through a process o f “othering" that involves a
teleological notion o f history, one which views the knowledge and way o f life in the colony
as a distorted or immature version o f what can be found in “normal" or Western society.
Hence the Western orientalist appropriates “the power to represent the Oriental, to translate
and explain his (and her) thoughts and acts not only to Europeans and Americans but also
to the Orientals themselves.239 Such Orientalism, internalized by Japanese intellectuals
(reverse-Orientalism). has been a major issue since the hegemony o f Western translation of
the Orient begun in the modem period. Japanese intellectuals saw their own self-image of
Japan in the mirror of the knowledge and language o f the West.
However, translation can also serve as a “seizure o f power" on the part of the copy
to replace the author, the original. Japan translated many works o f Western literature into
Japanese in order to catch up with “modem" countries. Western countries were the
“original" model which Japan, the “copy," had to follow. But by copying the West. Japan
tried to take the place o f the “original." Translation, in this case, becomes one o f the
means by which a new nation “proves" itself, shows that its language is capable o f
rendering what is rendered in more prestigious languages.290 Paradoxically, however, it is
239Niranjana. p. 11.
240Andre Lefevere & Susan Bassnett. “Introduction." p. 8.

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this very resistance o f the colonized against translation by the West which reinforces
hegemonic versions o f the colonized, helping them acquire the status o f what Edward Said
calls representations, or objects without history. For the Romans, Nietzsche says,
“translation was a form o f conquest.” This has been the case in the modem period. The
sexual violence alluded to in some descriptions o f translation “provides an analogue to the
political and economic rapes implicit in a colonizing metaphor.”241
The counter-reaction on the part o f the copy/colonized is not only one o f trying to
take the place o f the “origin” (the West), it is also an attempt to search, or rather create,
their own “origin” in the past, and thus to compete against Western claims to "originality."
Nativists and nationalists in Japan may be seen as having made an effort to establish the
“origin" o f the literature of their country through a process of “reverse translation." What
results, however, is the construction o f a postcolonial subject, homogenized and deprived
of all kinds of difference.242
6. T ran slatin g W omen
In the midst o f the nation-scale project of the feminization o f Japan and Japanese
culture, what kind o f resistance was possible for women writers in the postwar period?
Was it possible for them to translate women differently from the image o f “Woman" that
masculinist nationalist writers employed? One strategy was to break up the homogeneous
24lGodard. “Translating and Sexual Difference." pp. 460-1.
242Rev Chow effectively explains this kind o f complexity in the case o f modem
Chinese Americans who persist in their claims for a homogenized "national identity" as
“Chinese." See Rey Chow. Women and Chinese Modernity (Minneapolis: U o f
Minnesota P). 1991.

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concept o f “Woman." which had been frozen in the male gaze, into women with
differences. To understand this, we can draw on the resource o f postcolonial theory.
Specifically, we can use the term “postcolonial literature” in looking at the
phenomenon o f "translating women.” Ward Churchill, for example, takes this approach.
He calls the situation o f Native Americans “internal colonialism.” and sees their literature
as engaged in the specific practice o f “anti-imperial translation.”2'13 Following Churchill,
wherever such power struggles exist, a complex “post-colonial” situation appears: between
an affluent woman and a poor woman (class difference), between an intellectual and an
unintellectual woman (education, career), etc. Enchi’s quest for “others" was an encounter
with women whom she had met or heard of. whether her family, relatives, acquaintances,
or strangers. As a "female version o f Chikamatsu" (Onna Chikamatsu), a title applied to
her, suggests. Enchi was quick to take up newspaper gossip and make it into interesting
stories. Enchi’s mission o f translation stretched to include the "translation" o f the lives of
other women in the modem period. While neither Western culture nor Japanese classical
literature were alien to Enchi, other Japanese women were more like “others” in Enchi's
eyes, because o f class or educational difference, for example. This raises the question
whether, in her translating of other women’s lives, there were power relationships between
Enchi, the author or the translator, and the women she presented in her works.
Translation is no longer innocent, but culture bound, and can lead to a labor o f
“acculturation.” Translation is an issue o f the relationship between the "production” of
■Ârnold Krupt. “Postcoloniality and Native American Literature." The Yale

Journal o f Criticism: Interpretation in the Humanities 7:1 (Spring 1994): p. 169.

142
knowledge in a given culture and its •‘transmission." "relocation." and “reinterpretation” in
the target culture. The romantic myth, which believed in a perfect assimilation o f the
linguistic content and the experience of the other culture without the pressures o f one
superior culture over another, is contested by contemporary theorists. Enchi's agency in
translating other women should, therefore, be carefully examined to see whether her
translation erases the multiple differences among women and creates hierarchial power
relations between the representor and the represented.
Since the translator's conduct will never be innocent and can lead to a labor of
acculturation, we should realize how important it is to be conscious o f the ideology that
underlies a translation.244 Translation can become a form o f control, particularly if there
are already a series o f preconceived stereotypes about a given culture.:4<; Translators aie
constrained in many ways: for example, by what the dominant institutions and ideology
expect o f them, and by the public for whom the translation is intended. By responding to
the demands of the public, translation also influences the construction o f a literary canon.
Masculinist critics who “translated” Enchi from their essentialist viewpoints, and those
who constructed the canonicity o f classics were. thus, also constrained. Women writers
were part o f the response to the demands o f the public, in this case via the translation o f
244Translating Western literature into Japanese is also an act o f acculturation. For

example, many translations for children appeared just after the war: Little Lord Fauntleroy,
Little Princess, Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924); Sans fam ille by
Hector Malot Henri (1830-1907), etc. Who chose them and in what kind o f context are
critical points to be discussed. This is a reverse o f “the Oriental orientalized." rather “the
West westernized” by the Oriental.
245Edward Said already explained this series of preconceived “stereotypes” in

Orientalism.

1 43
women writers' works and body by masculinist literary circles. One of Enchi's
accomplishments was to point out the multiple ideologies underlying those masculinist
translations. For example, Enchi pointed out a series o f preconceived stereotypes about the
Heian culture on which most o f the previous translations were based. As we will see in the
next chapter, Enchi criticized modem scholars’ “acculturation” o f the Heian culture: that
monogatari were “always” read aloud by ladies-in waiting; that the Heian upper-class
ladies “always” moved around on their knees; that Heian aristocrats were effeminate and
weak, and so on. Those tags helped to construct postwar ideologies built on the conflation
of W oman's image and the canonicity o f Heian culture and literature.
Spivak provides a useful cautionary note against such nationalistic discourse that
arrogates to itself the position o f proxy (representative and speaking for) after constructing
for itself a self-portrait (representative and speaking as), erasing thereby the heterogeneity
of the postcolonial subject.246 We also have to remind ourselves o f Spivak's critical
question, whether indeed a text (a subaltern text) can speak or not. Since the author is not
within the same history of style as the postcolonial translators, there is always a danger of
making the text “culturally fluent” or making it fit our own contemporary expectations.
Spivak again suggests to the postcolonial translator:
The translator must be able to confront the idea that what seems resistant in the
space of English may be reactionary in the space o f the original language.247
The reverse is also true:
24tNiranjana, p. 169.
247Doris Y. Kadish & Francoise Massardier-fCennoy. Translating Slavery, p. 15.

144
What may appear compliant in English might have been resistant in the original
language, and the translator-reader needs to decide how to handle the discrepancy
between the two cultures.248
However, Spivak’s warning against easy translation from one culture to another
also casts an insightful shadow on optimistic views o f feminist translation theories which
claim that translation by feminists can succeed in challenging male hegemony and thereby
free the voices o f women. Here we too must seriously question Enchi's desire and status as
a translator o f women in a post-colonial context. Sakai Naoki in his recent work asks, “By
studying ‘Japanese thought' what do scholars of'Japanese thought' intend to do?”249 We
must ask ourselves a similar question. “By translating other w om en's lives and experiences
what did Enchi Fumiko intend to do?"
7. Strategies in Translation
A. Womanhandled Translation
If a blurred borderline between translation (reproduction) and original (production)
can threaten male authority, there must be a lot of work for feminist translators to do. For
example, one strategy for feminists involves language. As for the linguistic similarity
between women and translators mentioned above, both are supposed to be bilingual and
bicultural. In feminist theory a translator not only gives voice to unheard women, but also
stands out herself, making the feminine subject “visible’’ in language.250 However, this
248Ibid.
249Sakai Naoki, Nihon shiso to y u mondai: Hon 'yakn to shutai [Problem o f

'Japanese Thought': Translation and Subjectivity] (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. 1997). p. 42.
250How Enchi gives voice and presence to a female protagonist as a professional

translator o f Japanese classical literature in her several works will be developed in the

145
work o f translation does not mean to search for '‘sameness" with the “original" text.
Instead, a translator “womanhandles" the text by rewriting and creating “difference" at the
same time.251 A “womanhandled” text, a woman-centered focus, brings forth the second
woman in the mother-relation dyad, the most invisible relationship in the male symbolic
order, which male translators have erased in their works. Feminist translators give voice to
the bonding between women, be it mother-daughter, sisters, friends, or lovers, the
relationships most threatening to patriarchy, and which therefore have been suppressed and
erased from consciousness.252
Enchi's search for the "subject" or "subjectivity" of women is realized in her
"woman-defined woman" mode o f "translation." Enchi wrote:
When I came to read these parts (describing female characters) in Cenji, I always
felt inside some emotion boiling, flooding, pervading and returning to the original.
I had to transfer this emotion into language and mix it into the original.253
She goes freely back and forth between a female narrator and female protagonists. As in
the nikki literature by Heian women, Enchi translates and transfers between a female self
and a narrator in her autobiographical trilogy. Lastly, Enchi commutes between one female
character and another female character in portraying female homosociality: sometimes in
triangular love relationships, other times in mother-daughter relationships. This fluidity of
following chapters.
25lDavid Homel & Sherry Simon. Mapping Literature: The Art and Politics o f
Translation, p. 44.
252Ibid., p. 46.
253Enchi. “Introduction" (Jo), in her Translation of Genji monogatari. p. 6.

146
female identities and translatable relations in female homosociality is a fundamental issue
present in her works.
B. Gossip
Gossip (Enchi refers to her stories as “women's gossip”), as Godard mentions, is a
specific type o f wom en's language arising from the solidarity and identity o f women as
members o f a social group that share a pool o f common experience, and a language that
circulates orally, outside the circle o f male experience, uncoded and savage.254 Evelyne
Voldeng also points out that translations made by women appeal to the senses o f touch,
smell and sight (color), placing emphasis on the sexual bo d y ,255 whereas male translators
have subverted, undermined, or transformed women's writing, particularly references to
women's subjectivity, bodies, and bodily functions.256 A woman translating women can
certainly exercise power to invert male discourse. Enchi used this technique o f gossip to
create a relationship o f intimacy between the narrator and the reader. In her stories the
narrator, usually an aging woman, talks to each reader privately just as her own
grandmother or mother narrated stories to her when she was young. The stories they
confided sometimes disclosed the skeletons in their family closet. They were handed down
from generation to generation—grandmothers to mothers to daughters in whispers. At the
254Barbara Godard. “Translating and Sexual Difference,” Resources fo r Feminine

Research 13:3 (November 1984): p. 13. It is worthwhile to point out that Enchi's works
were often written based on women’s gossip (onna no hiso hiso banashi), and that the
narrator o f The Tale o/G enji also has a gossiping tone.
255Ibid. p. 14.
256David Homel & Sherry Simon. Mapping Literature, p. 47.

147
peripheral site of the story the narrator exercises her power.
C. Intertextuality
Another strategy for women translators is the theory o f intertextuality, which makes
it difficult to determine the precise boundaries o f a text and, as a consequence, disperses
the notion o f “origins.” No longer simply the product o f an autonomous (male?)
individual, the text rather finds its sources in history, that is, within social and literary
codes, as articulated by an author.257 Chamberlain proposes an analogy between translation
and interpretation, which might also be profitably examined in terms o f gender, for its use
in these discourses involves similar issues concerning authority, violence, and power. By
intertextualizing classical works written by male authors into her own texts. Enchi
attempted to erase the notion of “origins.”
D. Fiction/Facts—Representation/Original
Another point is that the "women” Enchi described were neither transparent nor
original (true). The traditional dichotomy o f text as “original” and translation as "copy” is
challenged by the claim that all (re)writing is after all copy or representation, that the
concept o f a transparent “original” text itself is quite dubious. Enchi’s representation of
women may not be based on original (real) historical women in the world; the “historical”
women she described are possibly the embodiment o f an intertexuality that consisted of
multiple images. Enchi purposely eradicated the borderline between fiction
(representation) and facts (original). I will illustrate this aspect o f her practice in detail in
Part III.
257ChamberIain. p. 468.

1 48
Conclusion
What Enchi contributed to the theory o f translation was: 1) to transform the
traditional triangular Oedipal relationship of the author (father) /the translator (child) /the
text (object o f desire); 2) to create a mother-daughter triangle o f the author (mother) / the
translator (daughter) /the text (object o f desire); 3) to contest the whole state/nation scheme
o f the feminization o f the Heian classics and o f Japan. Enchi demonstrated a rich
jouissance in her transformance o f the text.
Usually, as we have noted, "translation' is viewed in the context o f two languages:
from one language to another language. If some piece o f literature is "translated" from the
language of a colonized country to the language o f the colonizing country (or vice versa),
the issue of postcolonialism will be introduced into the discussion. The colonial subject is
not constructed merely through the coercive machinery o f the imperial state, but also
through the discourses o f philosophy, history, anthropology, philology, linguistics, and
literary interpretation. The colonial subject, constructed through technologies or practices
o f power/knowledge, is brought into being within multiple discourses and on multiple
sites. One such site is translation.258
As Godard says, if “each language classifies and organizes the world," then it
would be the translator's job to creatively intervene in such instances. Enchi's translation
o f classical Japanese literature and her translation o f women's “gossip" (hiso hiso-banashi)
can be situated in this line o f “intervention" in the context o f feminist theory.
Moreover, the concept o f translation can be enlarged to include imitation.
:5SNiranjana pp. 1-2.

149
adaptation, quotation, pastiche, parody-all different modes o f rewriting: all forms of
interpreting.259 The definition o f translators can also be stretched to include "interpreters”
and “rewriters” : not only translators, but also critics, historians, professors, journalists, etc.,
whose power should be analyzed, as well as the various ways in which they tend to
exercise it.
For instance, facts, experiences, memories, episodes or stories concerning the war
have been rewritten and reinterpreted repeatedly by those rewriters. If "postwar literature”
has something to do with remembering the past war, the act o f remembering, as Homi
Bhabha points out. "is never a quiet act o f introspection or retrospection." Rather, it is "a
painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense o f the
trauma o f the present.”260 Clearly the task o f re-mcmbering and translating the past should
not rely on, but rather requires a critique of. an older concept o f translation based on the
desire to sacralize and reconfirm an “original" text and author.
What Enchi did in her practice o f translation was neither moralistic introspection
nor nostalgic retrospection. Nor did she try to call back the "rancor" o f women in the past,
as most male critics alleged. What I am contesting here is the tendency to "universalize”
the feminine in Enchi’s work as, for example, an expression o f “women's tenacity” or
“women’s sexuality” that represses the differences among women and erases the historical
and political context. Recent theories o f translation call into radical question this poetics
25QBarbara Godard. ‘Theorizing Feminist Discourse/Translation." Translation,

History and Culture. Susan Bassnett & Andre Lefevere eds. (New York: Printer
Publishers. 1990), p. 93.
:60Bhabha. foreword to Fanon's Black Skin. White Masks, p. xxiii.

1 50
(or politics) o f false universalizing.
On the other hand, Enchi’s translation of classics into modem language (kogo)
provokes controversial issues. First, in so doing she joined the state ideology o f a modem
standard language that would replace the rich multiplicity and heterogeneity o f the ancient
language. Second, she attempted to fabricate an “imagined, alternative, accessible, target
language into which academic (or theoretical) language is supposed to be transferred.”261
It is quite ironic that her proposal for a unitary language went in a totally opposite direction
from the one that feminists were aiming at. By fabricating a fictional singular accessible
language in which the classical texts and modem reader could communicate with each
other freely and easily. Enchi more or less helped revive a previously successful
(patriarchal/phallogocentric) fiction. By so doing she joined in privileging and preserving
the traditional hierarchies between expert and amateur, academic and popular, theory and
practice.
To be sure, we cannot ignore Enchi's critical role as a negative signifier in the
midst o f male critics who were all-too-readv to “translate” and shelve her as a “woman
writer” (joryusakka). She had no choice but to accommodate and respond to such
translation o f her works and body. But on the other hand, we should remind ourselves that
Enchi was also in danger when “translating” other women from her position o f privilege
and power. And so we are faced with the question: Is there any kind o f equitable
translation practice that can dissolve this power issue? If there is such a possibility or exit
261Banting. “S(m)other Tongue?: Feminism, Academic Discourse. Translation." p.

172.

151
from this complex traffic in power relationships, a hint might lie in the issue o f the
“(m)other tongue.” Again, citing Banting:
The (m)other tongue is an “interlanguage.” a language which comes into existence

only in the process o f a second-language learning.263
In other words, real “women” can emerge only in a mutual dialogue that does not reduce
each one to an instance of an abstraction called “women.” Likewise, encountering the
“other” o f the past (classical literature, previous women's lives), might make possible the
emergence o f a new “reality" in the present.
“Translating women." classical and modem, is not only a textual performance thnt
rewrites one's “(m)other culture." it is an "interlanguage” that transforms the reality o f
women's lives and experiences as well. For Enchi. translation was transformance. It was
an attempt to transform an image o f “Japan” and “Japanese culture." one that had been
conveniently effeminized and aculturalized by masculinist nationalist intellectuals.
262Ibid..p. 175.

152
Chapter 2
Canonicity and Ideologies: Days of Yosano, Tanizaki, and Enchi
Introduction
In this chapter I will attempt to illustrate the socio-historical circumstances relating
to three translators of the Genji monogatari into modem Japanese language: Yosano Akiko
(1878-1942), Tanizaki Jun’ichiro (1886-1965), and Enchi Fumiko (1906-1988). The task
of translating the classical canon into colloquial language (kogo) was closely linked to
current state ideologies and academic discourse in each period. By surveying the historical
and ideological setting o f each translator’s work and their attitudes toward translation, I
hope to illuminate the significance o f translation in each period.
1. Canonicity of the Genji monogatari
At one conference one scholar of Anthropology (Japan) commented. "Somehow,
for Japanese writers, translating Genji monogatari has been a lifework. like the goal of
their career.263 She is right in the sense that, in the modem period, several famous writers
translated the entirety o f this work into modem Japanese—Kubota Utsubo, Yosano Akiko.
Tanizaki Jun'ichiro. Enchi Fumiko, and Setouchi Jakucho.264 Nowadays when thousands
of copies of Setouchi Jakucho’s translation o f Genji are selling, the status o f Genji as a
canonical work in Japanese literature seems firmly established. However, in attempting to
understand why Enchi chose to translate the Genji monogatari, the significance o f her
translation, we need to ask whether Genji has always been canonical from the time it was
263MAR/AAS annual conference at Gettysburg College in 1999.
264Tanizaki. above all. translated three times between wartime through postwar
period.

153
written, and whether the reading o f Genji has been always uni vocal or multiple. First,
therefore, let us make a brief review o f the transformations in the status and reading o f
Genji.
In the Heian period Genji monogatari was used for models o f good waka.
Fujiwara Shunzei and his son. Teika, chose Genji monogatari as well as Kokin waka shu,
Gosen waka shu, Shui shu, Ise monogatari and other collections of Chinese poems as
providing materials and examples for making waka.265 As a genre poetry was ranked
higher than monogatari, and Genji first gained its reputation precisely because it had many
poems.266 Genji was also valued because it was viewed as "history” or "biography.” which
was the best genre in writing next to poetry and Buddhist scriptures. Furthermore, the
Heian period during the reign o f the Ichijo Emperor (986-1011). when the Genji
monogatari was written, has been regarded by the the critics as the “Golden Age” o f
Japanese culture. The value of Genji as the symbol o f a "Golden Age” was cited
repeatedly by intellectuals in each period up to the nineteenth century.
In the Kamakura period Genji did not have much chance to be canonized, since the
warrior class preferred war stories like the Heike monogatari to the former. By the end o f
the fifteenth century, however, Genji was again taken up by the samurai elite. While they
studied Chinese writings (kangaku) and Confucius at school, in the Ashikaga school for
example they also pursued Japanese writings (wagaku), the ‘"tradition o f the Heian palace”
:65Fujiwara Shunzei wrote. "Genjiyomanu utayom i wa [...] ” [Those who do not

read Genji are not real poets],
:66However. except a few. the poems in Genji did not have a good reputation.
Murasaki herself frequently made excuses about the poor quality o f the poems in her story.

154
in particular, and became patrons o f various arts such as waka or renga. The Heian
classics were read by daim yd mostly as models for good waka, but Genji in particular was
made into scrolls, for patronage o f Genji signified a close relationship to the culture o f the
palace, thus the emperor, which they were eager to monopolize. Until the end of the Edo
period, as a matter of a fact, some schools o f classic studies (Ddjoryuha) exercised power
and authority by claiming a bond with the Emperor and the Palace. Since the time such
classical studies were made into a genre and canonized in the Muromachi period, Kokinshu
and Genji monogatari were viewed as representations o f the Heian period, and the images
o f the Heian aristocrats were fixed as effeminate and weak, as we see in the Genji
monogatari scrolls.267 We should also note the noh dramas in the Muromachi period.
There are a lot of allusions to the Genji story and Genji characters in noh plays, most o f
which were written by Zeami.268 According to Matsuoka Shimpei. Zeami created a new
style o f noh in order to attract patrons of the samurai class. For example, he described the
tragedy of Taira no Tadanori in an elegant aristocratic allusion to the Genji monogatari.
instead of presenting the old-fashioned demon-figure suffering in purgatory.269 Meanwhile,
267Kurozumi Makoto, “Kangaku: sono shoki/seisei/ken Y [Chinese Studies: Its

Writing/Formation/Authority], in Sazdsareta koten, p. 234.
268Adaptations o f Genji are: Yugao, Hajitomi, Tamakaznra, (Jkihune, Suma-Genji,

Sumiyoshi-mode, Nonomiya, Aoi no ue. Matsukaze is not the adaptation, but borrows the
phrases from the Suma Chapter from Genji. Genji-kuyd chants the names o f all the chapters
o f Genji. starting from “somo somo Kiritsubo " and finishing with “ Yume no ukihashi"
Enchi Fumiko and Shirasu Masako, Koten Yobanashi [Night Chats on Classics] (Tokyo:
Heibonsha. 1975), p. 45.
269David Bialock, "Kokumin-teki jojishi no hakken—kindai no koten to shiteno

Heike m onogatarf' [Discovery of National Epic—Heike monogatari as Modem Classic] in
Sdzo sareta koten. p. 149.

155
according to Enchi, the negative image o f Rokujo miyasndokoro was stabilized in these
same noh dramas. This is an example o f the construction o f the canonicity o f Genji. It was
against such canonization that Enchi attempted to construct a positive image o f Rokujo
unlike the one in noh dramas.
In the early modem period the status o f Genji was both degraded and elevated in
comparison with Chinese literature by Kamono Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga: the former
valued Chinese as masculine (masuraohuri) over Japanese as feminine (taoyameburi),
while for the latter it was the other way around.270 However, regardless o f the given
canonical status of Genji. it also enjoyed an un-canonieal popularity.2 ' Among women in
the late Edo Bunka-Bunsei period, for example. Genji was circulated in a popular version
(knsazdshi) entitled "An Imposter Murasaki and a Rustic Genji" (Nise-Murasaki Inaka-
Genji. 1829-42), written by Ryutei Tanehiko (1783-1842). Not only among common
women but also among those in the rear palace ( Ooka) it became tremendously popular, to
the extent that buying or reading a copy was finally prohibited by the government.272 It
270According to Haruo Shirane, the School o f National Studies movement can be

viewed partly as rebellion by merchants against the dominant scholars such as aristocrat
poets (D dfd kajin) and Chinese and Confucius scholars. Haruo Shirane, "Karikyuramu no
rekishi-teki hensen to kydgdsuru kanori’ [The Historical Transition o f Curriculum and
Canon in Competition], in Sazdsareta koten.
27lHaruo Shirane distinguished two canons in literature: a canon closely knitted to

the power, and a canon in the common people. Haruo Shirane, “Sosetsu: Sazdsareta koten-
-kanon keisei noparadaim u to hihyoteki ten b o “ [Introduction: Constructed Canon-
Paradigm and Critical View o f Canonicity"]. in Sdzosareta koten.
272Enchi Fumiko. " Genji monogatari to iratashi" [Genji monogatari and I] in Genji
monogatari no heroin-tachi: taidan [The Heroines o f Genji monogatari: Dialogues with
other Women Writers) (Tokyo: Kodansha. 1994). p. 11. Enchi's grandmother’s memory
supplements the scant "evidence o f specifically female readership o f The Tale o f Genji."
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n o f t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

15 6
was a copy o f this version, which was owned by Enchi's grandmother, that was shown to
Enchi in her childhood: a parody o f the original Genji with many colorful pictures. Despite
its parodic title and despite the different story-setting (transformed from Heian to
Ashikaga), Nise-Murasaki was pretty much a faithful adaptation o f the original story.
While canonized as a model o f waka or viewed since the middle ages by the authorities as
an educational model for young women, Genji also gained popularity as a parody.373
In the modem period there was a change in the status and value of Genji. since both
classical Japanese writing (kobun) and Chinese writing (kanbun) were put together and
called “‘classic" {koten). It was also separated from modem Japanese writing (gendaibun)
in the name o f the “Unification o f Writing and Speech" (Genbun itchi undo) movement.274
The purposes o f these ideologies were: to distinguish “Japanese language" from Chinese,
and to establish an independent modem national language to catch up with the Western
countries. Ueda Kazutoshi (1867-1937). a prominent leader in establishing a “Japanese
language" and also the father o f Enchi Fumiko. wrote in an essay in 1894. “the ‘Japanese
soul o f faith and love o f country' {chukun aikoku no Yamato-damashi) and 'Japanese
language'(/V/7?o«-go) are the two critical powers which will unite Japan as a nation," and
(G. G. Rowley, Yosano Akiko and The Tale o f Genji, Ann Arbor: University o f Michigan
Press, p. 27.)
273Haruo Shirane. "'Karikyuramu no rekishi-teki hensen to kydgdsuru kanon." in

Sazdsareta koten, p. 410.
274There is a widely-accepted consensus that Genbun icchi had nothing to do with

the unification between writing and speech, but that the Meiji government was in need o f a
“modern"1'Japanese language" in order to catch up with the Western powers.

157
"the 'National polity' (kokutai) is embodied in the ‘Japanese language.’”275 Constructing a
‘‘modem Japanese language” and separating it from the classics, Ueda gave a new value
and ideology both to modem Japanese and to the classics. It was in these circumstances
that he edited the collection o f "Japanese classics” (Nihon no koten), Yuhodo bunko, which
included the Genji monogatari. His daughter, Fumiko, had a chance to read Genji in this
collection, since she saw it at home.
After the Meiji Restoration the status o f Genji was elevated as a reflection of the
‘‘Restoration.” o f "returning to an Imperial reign.” since it described the ideal reign of the
Emperor Daigo and Emperor Uda in the Heian period. Soon, however, responding to
global nationalism and the high-speed Westernization o f Japan, Genji was praised as the
"first realistic novel” (sekai saisho no shajitsu shasetsu) and was translated into English by
Arthur Waley, so that it could join "world literature” (sekai bungaku). Tsubouchi Shoyo
also commented positively on Genji in his literary theory, Shasetsu shinzui.276
On the other hand, according to Shirane, Genji played a small role in modem
school textbooks, probably because it was not the right material for moral, political, and
historical education under the military imperialist Meiji government.277 In the first
“ History of Japanese Literature” (Nihon bungaku-shi), published in i 890. Mikami Sanji
275Ueda Kazutoshi. "Kokugo to kokka to'' [Japanese Language and Nation] 1894, in
“Ochiai Naobumi/Ueda Kazutoshi/Haga Yaichi/Fujioka Sakutaro.” in Meiji bungaku
zenshu, vol. 44 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1968). p. 110.
:7hPublished in 1885-86. Proposing a realistic novel by ridding o f didactic fiction,

Tsubouchi was called a pionner o f “modem literature.”
277Haruo Shirane. "Karikyuramu no hensen to kydgdsuru kanon." in Sazdsareta

koten. p. 429.

158
and Takatsu Shuzaburo contrasted “decadent and feminine” pseudo-Chinese Heian
aristocratic society with “masculine” modem industrial society.278 The Heian period
became a symbol of “Others," a “dark continent” for Japanese intellectuals who wanted to
promote the “modernization of Japan.”279 These efforts at separation between “feminine”
and “masculine,” "modem” and “premodem,” Chinese and Japanese, certainly resonated
with the government’s military propaganda. The label o f a “modem Western” novel earlier
given to Genji was peeled off. and Genji was again reduced to a lesser kind o f writing
targeted for powerless aristocrat readers in contrast to a modem “novel” for the newly
arising bourgeois class. Since the time when Japan was marching in the direction o f
militarism in the Taisho period. Genji appeared only once in textbooks.
With this brief survey of the historical and ideological background, we may now
turn to the days when Yosano Akiko and Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, and Enchi Fumiko lived and
translated the Genji monogatari.
2. Yosano’s Days
1 would like to make four points about Yosano's translation o f Genji into modem
Japanese. First, hers was a de-academized translation. She did not include any footnotes
referring to old waka or footnotes explaining practices and usages at court (yusoku kojitsu)
in Heian times. It was as if she had modified this classic into a modem novel, as G.G.
278Reina Lewis. Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity, and Representation

(London: Routledge, 1996). ch. 2: Mikami Sanji & Takatsu Shuzaburo. Sihon bungaku-
shi [History of Japanese Literature] (Tokyo: Kinkodo. 1890).
279Joshua Mostow. "'M iyabi ’ to je n d a : kindai ni okeru jse monogatari' “

['M iyabi' and Gender: ‘Ise Story’ in the Modem Period], in Sazdsareru koten, p. 328.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n o f th e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n proh ibited w ithout p e r m is s io n .

159
Rowley observed.280 Second, by so doing she also recovered the authorship of Genji from
male critics and scholars. Third, by de-academizing Genji she also bridged the separation
between writers and scholars. Fourth, she joined in the invention o f a modem colloquial
language (kogo) to span the divide between classics experts and amateur readers. Keeping
these points in mind, let us look at the historical and ideological setting o f Yosano A kiko's
translation o f the Genji monogatari.
New Language/New Nation
Yosano Akiko (1878-1942), a Myojo school poet, started translating Genji into
modem Japanese in the last year o f the Meiji period. Her first translation o f Genji
monogatari (Shin yaku) was completed in 1912-13 at the beginning o f the Taisho period.
It was a time when Japan was already marching on the road to militarism and imperialism.
As for the status o f Genji. the Taisho period was the time when Genji received the least
acknowledgement as a canonical work from the government, probably because its contents
(love romance) and style (Heian femininity and aestheticism) did not fit the demands o f an
authority that needed a masculine and aggressive appearance. Nevertheless, Yosano's
translation was welcomed with praise. There were several reasons why Yosano's ambition
to translate was promoted by a publishing company (Kanao Bun'endo) and supported by
two prominent figures o f the literary establishment, Mori Rintaro (Ogai) and Ueda Bin, in
the pre-war period.281 Since the Meiji Restoration. Japanese intellectuals were eager to
2S0G. G. Rowley. Yosano Akiko and The Tale o f Genji (Ann Arbor: University o f
Michigan Press, 1999).
281Rowley, p. 189.

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construct a new literature and language—the modem novel (shasetsu), new theater
(shingeki), new style poetry (shintaishi). and colloquial language (kogo)—for the purpose o f
building a new nation/state. Yosano’s translation of Genji, written in colloquial language
(kogo), was part o f this trend. In the premodem period the colloquial language was called
“vernacular” (zokugo) and was ranked lower than Chinese writings or mixed
Chinese/Japanese (wakan konkobun). Therefore, before Yosano's translation appeared,
translators o f classics were always apologetic about their translations into the vernacular.
Yosano's translation o f Genji was the first accomplished without any apologies or excuses
for its use o f the colloquial language. On the contrary. Yosano was proud o f having
translating Genji into the vernacular.282 As subsequently happened, this language for the
"common people" (kogo) turned out to be a rather artificial and awkward language. It was
an “ imagined, alternative, accessible” language fabricated for the national purpose of
annexing Chinese writing to Japanese writing, and monograph to oralitv. all in the name o f
narrowing the gap between the academic and the popular, between elites and amateurs.
Japanese Language/History o f Japanese Literature
The status o f kanbun suddenly declined around the time o f World War I, and
yamato language was promoted as an expression o f the “Japanese spirit” (Nihon seishin) or
“National classics” (kokumin koten).2*3 The Man ydshu was canonized as a “collection of
282Rowlev. p. 91.
:83There was an uprise o f national pride and feeling of superiority over China after
Japan's victory in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95). on the one hand. Japanese
intellectuals no longer saw the need o f learning from China. On the other hand, after the
victory over Russia in the Japan-Russo War (1904-5) there were efforts to promote the
establishment o f a national language which would be unique and distinct from European

161
national poems” (kokumin kashu), while the Kojiki and Nihon shoki were labeled national
epics, both o f which were thought necessary for an independent state/nation. The issue o f
the “Japanese language” in a modem state/nation came up already in the 1890s. Ueda
Kazutoshi (1867-1937), Enchi’s father, gave a famous lecture, "National language and
Nation” in 1894, in which he stated that “the unification o f language and unification of race
should be achieved as well as the history o f Imperial Japan,” adding that “emotionally we
should love our language, and rationally we should preserve and improve it. so that we can
build a national education.”284 He proposed a race/state/nation built on the foundation o f a
standard unified language. In keeping with his proposal, a history o f Japanese literature
(bungakushi) was required. Citing Haga Yaichi's statement in his work. Ten Lecturer, on
the History o f National Literature (Kokubungakushi ju kko . 1899). Konoshi Takamitsu
observes, “it is clear that the history o f Japanese literature, written in a Japanese language,
was required as historical evidence o f the Japanese state/nation.” and “the history of
Japanese literature was historical evidence for the assumption that we have been speaking a
Japanese language for years through many generations, and have preserved a unique unity
o f the state/nation with ‘Japanese language.’”285 In order to establish the history of
languages.
284Hisamatsu Sen’ichi, ed., Ochiai NaobumvUeda Kazutoshi/ Haga YaichvFujioka

Sakutardshu [The Collected Works by Ochiai Naobumi, Ueda Kazutoshi, Haga Yaichi,
and Fujioka Sakutaro], in Meiji bungaku zenshu, vol. 44 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo. 1968),
pp. 108-30.
285Konoshi Takamitsu. "Nihon shinwa to shiteno raireki: koten ’ to shiteno K ojiki'

to Nihon sh o k i' no rekishi to genzai" [The Origin o f the ‘Japanese Myth': The History
and the Presence o f ‘Kojiki’ and ‘Nihon shoki’ as ‘Classics'], in Sazdsareta koten. p.
205.

162
Japanese literature, the “classics” were summoned to line up.286 The canonization o f the
Kojiki and Nihon shoki was thus established to support the divine state/nation (shinkoku
Nihon). Especially after the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), when anti-Japan discourse was
prevalent elsewhere in the world, the image o f a peaceful and feminine Japan was
constructed through literature. The Genji monogatari was again seen as representative of
mono no aware, the model o f an ideal peaceful and elegant time o f the Imperial reign.287
The Heike monogatari was also canonized as a national epic (kokumin-teki jojishi) by
eliminating the war factor and coloring it with an “aesthetic, religious and lyrical”
interpretation. By dehistoricizing these works o f literature, an image o f “the eternal
Japan" (yukyuno Nihon) based on a "standard Japanese language” (hyojun-go) was
implanted in the colonized areas.
As seen in Ueda Kazutoshi's lectures, the issue o f race/ethnic identity was closely
bound with the establishment of the Japanese language. Instead o f simply propagating the
Emperor system and divine nation (kokoku-ron), the nationalists shifted to a more subtle
direction, stressing the ethnic/common people (minzoku/minshu), and spotlighting the
lyrical aspect o f Japanese literature. Concerning the first shift, Yanagita Kunio and
Orikuchi Shinobu supported a nationalist view in their folklore studies (minzokugaku),
which was initially directed against “government studies” (kangakn). By creating an
2SftIt was not surprising to find that Ueda Kazutoshi was one o f the editors for the
Collections o f Japanese Classics published by Yuhodo.
2S7The concept of mono no aware during this period was different from that which
Motoori Norinaga proposed in contrast to Chinese masculinity. It was an ideology for the
purpose of erasing the image of Japanese masculinity and aggressiveness.

163
imagined “common people" (rydmin) Yanagita and his school displayed the mask of a
peaceful and sensible self-image o f the Japanese state/nation, while marking the identity
and difference o f the Japanese minzoku from other peoples and nations.288 Even in the
postwar period, folklore studies, which searched for Japanese origins in the periphery/past,
were popular among intellectuals.
Rise o f waka
Another possible reason for the enhancement o f colloquial language was the revival
o f poetry {waka) as a “national heritage." This sentiment was widely distributed and shared
by people in Japan and in the Japanese colonies, especially after 1910. As Murai Osamu
maintains, this phenomenon o f the return o f waka. and o f New Style Poetry (shintaishi),
functioned as part o f the ideology o f nation/state building in the Taisho area.289 The initial
proponent was Masaoka Shiki who brought up in 1889 the “Thesis on tanka's Fall" while
modernizing haiku and tanka. About a decade later he proposed a “revolution" in tanka by
criticizing the old rhetoric o f the Heian waka (such as kokin-shu) and lauding Man 'ydshu.
Murai says that Shiki's proposal was based on the movement for “the unification o f
Speech and Writ\ng"(Genbun-itchi). Shiki and his epigones were searching for an aural
tradition represented by Man 'ydshu as the imagined origin o f the Japanese nation and
288Another term, shomin. for “common people" proposed by Shimizu Ikutaro.

which was discussed in the first chapter in Part I. has a concept similar to Yanagita's.
289Murai Osamu, "M etsubono gensetsu kukan: minzokwkokkakdsho-sei"

[Discursive Space o f ‘Fall’: Ethnics/State/Oral Tradition], in Sazdsareta koten. pp. 275-
82.

16 4
state, thereby discarding any "foreign influences.” Chinese or Western.290 Murai points out
that the year 1910, about a decade after the proposal by Shiki, was a landmark for Japan’s
advance on the road to nation/state building: the annexation o f Korea and a case o f high
treason. In the latter incident Kotoku Shusui (1871-1911) was charged with treason against
the imperial power. However, Murai remarks, interestingly even this anti-govemmental
hero enjoyed writing tanka, although he was a famous poet o f Chinese writing. This is a
good example o f how waka was prevalent among Japanese intellectuals. The old-
fashioned writing system based on Chinese writing and Kokinshu style poetry was thus
deconstructed by the “modem” aural system of tanka represented by the Araragi school.
Saito Mokichi. one o f the representatives o f this school, stated that in the future the
Japanese tanka-maker did not need to be a “genius” and proposed a “popularization” and
“nationalization” oUankar'’' With the construction o f the concept o f nation in the ancient
times, the status o f Man 'ydshu was established as the “national poetry” (kokumin kashu).
It is not coincidental that Kubota Utsubo (1877-1967). a classics scholar and translator o f
Genji monogatari into modem Japanese, also followed the trend o f modem tanka and
presided over the magazine “National Literature” (Kokumin bungaku). Although his group
originated from the M y q o school, which was the counter group to Saito’s Araragi school,
neither were that different in that both loved to refer to M anydshu. Thus, it is not
surprising that when Yosano. a poet, freely added her own modem waka to each chapter of
290The Araragi school originated from Masaoka Shiki but did not follow his "Fall
of tanka" thesis. They focused on realistic description (shasei), which they tried to embody
in their poems.
291Murai. in Sazdsareta koten, p. 278.

1 65
Genji monogatari, her additions were welcomed by readers. It was a time when every
“Japanese" was encouraged to make waka regardless o f which class or wing o f politics-
upper or lower class, left or right-they belonged to. Waka helped the nation and the state
to be integrated and united as an imagined “Japan" and “Japanese." Yosano's translation
o f Genji was accomplished in the discursive space o f this project o f modernizing waka.
Women’s Writings
In the Taisho period for the first time the concept o f “women's writings" {joryu
bungaku) appeared in literary circles.292 It was part o f the romanticization and
feminization o f Heian literature prevalent among classics scholars and writers. These
ideologies were aimed at correcting the war-like image o f Japan after the v ictory o f the
Russo-Japanese War o f 1904-5, and transforming it into the feminine image of a lyrical,
refined, and pacifist Heian courtier.293 Ikeda Kikan, who commented on Yosano. “stressed
only Yosano's sex as a woman and role as a housewife/mother, placing both Yosano and
Murasaki Shikibu side by side as “the two greatest genius housewife/mother writers from
the middle-class in Japanese literature.'’ who “saw women's mind through a woman's
292See Joan E. Ericson, “The Origins o f the Concept o f 'W om en's Literature',” in
The Woman s Hand, edited by Paul Gordon Schalow and Janet A. Walker (California:
Stanford UP. 1996).
293Shinada Yoshikazu speculates that Japan needed to wear a self-image of a

“peaceful nation,” since they had to counteract the Japan bashing by European countries,
namely, the image o f the “Yellow Peril” [Oka-ron], which spread after Japan's victory over
China and Russia. He also maintains that by creating a peaceful image. Japanese
intellectuals tried to minimize Japan's expansion in Asia after 1905. See Shinada
Yoshikazu, '‘‘Kokumin kashu to shite no Man yo-shu" [Man’yo-shu as the National
Selection o f Poetry], in Sazdsareta koten, p. 60.

166
mind,” and who struggled to juggle their role as women with their passion for writing.244
Ikeda assumed that if a translator was a woman, her translation would be characterized by
“woman’s writing” and “w om an’s insight.” Ikeda was not the only critic who liked to
stress the genealogy o f women writers in “Japanese literary history.” He openly
complimented Murasaki Shikibu as well as Yosano Akiko as the greatest writers both in
Japanese history and in world literature. Let us investigate in more detail the
contradictions in his comments on Murasaki. Yosano, and Genji First, he described Genji
as one o f the “oldest realistic novels in the world,” comparing it with Dante. Shakespeare,
and Goethe’s works. Second, this Japanese masterpiece was written by a "middle-class
widow who had to struggle for her life and support her daughter." He equated Murasaki’s
difficult life with that of Yosano Akiko. who translated the former's work. "G enji's story
was inspired in the midst o f a hard life, and was written serially, little by little,” while
Yosano's translation o f Genji into modem Japanese was accomplished by ”a housewife
and mother who had many children.” Murasaki. according to Ikeda. must have been a
“quiet, thoughtful and intelligent woman” with “Oriental virtues o f mellowness, obedience
and modesty,” “like the Akashi lady in Genji. ” Similarly. Ikeda says, Yosano struggled
with multiple problems in her life and “ventured upon the project o f translation with
serious resolution.” Joining two women writers o f different eras and circumstances. Ikeda
concluded that both women writers “saw women’s mind through women’s viewpoints”
204Ikeda Kikan, “Genji monogatari to Akiko-Genji" [Genji monogatari and Akiko-

GenjiJ. in Zenyaku: Genji monogatari vol. 1. Yosano Akiko trans. (Tokyo: Kadokawa.
1998), pp. 657-8.

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(nyonin no koknrn wo mntte nyonin no kokoro wo mile iru).29S Idealizing Murasaki. a
woman author, and exaggerating her circumstances as a "housewife” and “mother" writer,
Ikeda viewed her as Other, and as lesser. Lastly. Ikeda encouraged modem women readers
to learn from these two women writers and make them models o f “mothers from the
middle-class."296 At the same time his propaganda was designed to encourage Japanese
intellectuals who felt inferior to Western intellectuals:
While Genji was undervalued unfairly in our country (around wartime), the true
value of this novel was recognized and its translation into English was done beyond
the sea. We have to admit the high standard o f culture in foreign countries (...) It is
a pity that Japanese people were made by outstanding foreign people to discover the
value o f the classics o f our own country. It was partly due to the incompetencv of
classics scholars—us. Such an error should not be repeated from now on.297
Ikeda’s attempt was both to educate Japanese women to be good mothers (like Yosano)
and Japanese intellectuals to overcome their inferiority complex vis-a-vis the West.
Clearly. Ikeda used Genji as the counterpart of modem Western novels in order to compete
with and surpass them. The authorship o f women writers such as Murasaki and Yosano
was appropriated without hesitation for the purpose o f representing something “Japanese"
or “Oriental” as unique. Thus, both denial and positive appraisal o f the authorship of
Murasaki ends up displaying the ambivalence and competitiveness which male critics
harbored toward women and toward Western countries.
295Tamagami Takuya too defined Genji monogatari as “the story o f women written
by a woman for women" (onna no tameni onna ga kaita onna no sekai no monogatari) in
his comments for his own translation o f Genji monogatari (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten.
1964).
296Ikeda, pp. 652-8.
297Ikeda. p. 655.

168
Sasaki Nobutsuna (1872-1963) also equated Yosano and Higuchi Ichiyo in his
article, “Akiko to Ichiyo wa Meiji no Sei-Shf' (Akiko and Ichiyo Are Sei Shonagon and
Murasaki Shikibu o f the Meiji period).298 His article suggested that there was a “period
when women dominated the literary scene, and so, because o f the work of such writers as
Ichiyo and Akiko, the present age was similarly glorious.”299 Yosano's translation o f Genji
fit perfectly the demand for this feminine image o f the Japanese nation/state. Had Yosano
not been a “woman” writer, would her translation project have been promoted by the
publishing company? We will never know, but certainly the conflation o f “ Heian
literature” (Ochobungakit) and “w om en's writings" {joryubungaku) must have helped.300
3. T an izak i’s Days
Tanizaki Jun'ichiro (1886-1965) translated Genji three times in his life: the first
(kyuyakii) was published in 1939-41; the second (Shin’y aku ) in 1951-54; the third
(Shinshin yakit) in 1964-65. Literary critics praised Tanizaki's translations.
The Shin shin 'yakn: Tanizaki Genji revived the Genji monogatari. a masterpiece all
Japanese can be proud of and a treasure that people everywhere in the world can
love, as the most popular book in the modem period. (Kawabata Yasunari)
The third translation o f Genji by Tanizaki is easier to read, but still maintains an
elegant and leisurely dignity. Yet it is faithful to the original text. I rank it as the
best among the modem translations of the classic. (Yoshida Seiichi)
This translation o f Genji by Jun'ichiro seems to me the best translation, and it
:98Chuo koron 27: 6 (June 1912): pp. 141-42.
299Rowley. p. 81.
300Tomi Suzuki, "Janru, jenda, bungakushi-kijutsu—joryu nikki bungaku' no

kochiku wo chushin ni" [Genre, Gender. Literary History—on the Construction o f ‘Journal
Literature by Women], in Sozosareta koten. pp. 87-127.

169
seems almost impossible to expect a better one to come out. Although faithful to
the original text, it is translated perfectly into modem language, in a fluent style,
which makes us feel as if we are reading Tanizaki’s novels. I just cannot but
admire it. (Fukunaga Tankehiko)
By that time Genji monogatari had been sleeping peacefully in the history of
Japanese literature [...] When Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, a representative modem writer,
translated (Genji), it attracted the attention o f general readers because it was not a
translation by scholars of Japanese literature. For the first time, Genji monogatari
became modem literature [...] Once Tanizaki Genji came out, we felt as close to
Utsusemi/Yugao/Ukifune as w e feel to Anna Kalenina or Madame Bovary.
(Nakamura Shin’ichiro)
Shin-shin yaku Genji monogatari published by Chuo koronsha can be called Shin
Genji monogatari emaki (The New Genji monogatari Scroll). Starting from the
Kiritsubo chapter through the Yume no ukihashi chapter, each chapter gives out a
refined Heian fragrance so that the modem reader can feel at ease with the fluent
and beautiful style o f Tanizaki Genji. (Takahashi Seiichiro)j01
To summarize the above remarks, Tanizaki revived this classic in the modem period,
reestablishing the status o f Genji monogatari as a canonical work, and by so doing he
strengthened his own status as a canonical writer. Focusing on the canon and canonicity of
Genji. let us surv ey the changing situation of his three translations.
Military Censorship
Tanizaki accepted an eager proposal from the President o f Chuo koronsha,
Nagashima Nakao. to publish the translation, and received support from Dr.Yamada
Yoshio to proof-read his first modem translation.302 I would like to draw attention to the
fact that 1938, the year when Tanizaki's first translation o f Genji (Kyuyaku) was published.
301The comments above are taken from the cover pages o f Jun ichiroyaku: Genji
monogatari. 5 vols. (Tokyo: Chuo-koronsha. 1998).
302Enchi. " Genji monogatari ni kaketa hashf' [The Bridge over the Genji
monogatari]. in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 16 (Tokyo: Shinchosha. 1978). p. 21.

170
was also the year Yosano’s second translation (Shin-shin yakn) o f Genji came out in print
With strong financial support from the major publishing company. Chuo koronsha.
Tanizaki's translation overwhelmed Yosano’s. According to Rowley. Yosano saw
Tanizaki's effort as detracting from her own accomplishment, but she was confident that
the recognition she felt was her due would come with time.303 However, what interests me
more is Tanizaki's attitude toward publication, which contrasts with that o f Enchi.
Tanizaki seemed not to have any hesitation about publishing his translation in the same
year Yosano did. Enchi. on the other hand, did not want to publish a new translation o f her
own while Tanizaki was alive, and waited to start working on it until after Tanizaki died.
Was it because Yosano and Enchi felt marginalized by a male canonical writer. Tanizaki?
Did Tanizaki's status as a canonical (male) writer threaten these women writers?
Certainly. Yosano's publication did not seem to have threatened Tanizaki. though
apparently military censorship did. Since it was wartime. Tanizaki's translation had to pass
censorship. During the wartime Genji was marginalized mainly because the protagonist.
Hikaru Genji, committed adultery with the Em peror's concubine, Fujitsubo. As is well
known, Tanizaki’s first translation did not include the following parts: the Hana no en
chapter (the sections describing Genji’s adventure with Oborozukuyo): the Sakaki chapter
(G enji's relationship with Fujitsubo): and the Wakamurasaki chapter (Fujitsubo's worry
about the pregnancy). It was said Tanizaki him self withdrew those portions w'hich might
303Rowley. p. 153.

171
offend the military government by insulting the royal family.304 Enchi recalled instances of
military censorship during the war: Bando Minosuke (Mitsugoro after the war) planned to
stage Genji monogatari. but it was stopped just before the curtain rose; Kokugakuin
University set up an open lecture on Genji monogatari, but it too was banned by the
government.305 Enchi explained Tanizaki’s partial cuts in his first translation by the fact
that 1939 was three years after the outbreak o f the Sino-Japanese War and two years before
the Pacific War. when most young Japanese men were being sent to China. The adultery
between Genji and Fujitsubo, as a result o f which Fujitsubo bore G enji's child, doubtlessly
would have been the object o f censorship by the authorities. Enchi suggested. However.
Rowley notes that in Yosano's second translation in 1938. which did not eliminate any o f
these parts on adultery, the entire chapters passed without any censorship.306 How is this to
be explained? To answer we would need to re-examine the content o f wartime censorship,
what was censured and what were the rules.
Furthermore. Tanizaki’s Light Snowfall (Sasame-yuki) was picked out and its
printing prohibited by the PR Department o f the Army in 1944 because o f its
inappropriateness under the emergency conditions o f wartime. Enchi pointed out that
Tanizaki’s Light Snowfall was inspired by the Hotara [Firefly] chapter in the Genji
304Ikeda Yasaburo. "‘Comments” (Kaisetsu). in Shin-shin 'yaku Genji monogatari

[Recent Translation o f the Tale o f Genji] (Tokyo: Chuo koronsha. 1998), pp. 492-3.
However. Rowley mentioned another possibility, that Yamada Yoshio. Tanizaki’s
scholarly advisor, suggested he cut those parts from his translation (Rowley, p. 154).
305Enchi. "Genji monogatari ni kaketa hashi.'' in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 16. pp.
22-3.
306Rowley. p. 154.

172
monogatari. and was expanded by Tanizaki into a novel about the Makioka sisters.307
Tanizaki's story, about the relationship between the third daughter o f the Makioka family
and her brother-in-law, is based on Genji's longing for his adopted daughter, Tamakazura.
But I doubt that the authorities were able to figure out that Genji was a source of Tanizaki’s
Light Snowfall, unless they were truly literary experts. Then, why was Yosano's
translation o f Genji not censored at all and why was Tanizaki’s “adaptation” o f Genji
banned? My speculation is that they were more concerned about the influence of Tanizaki,
a famous male writer, than about the influence o f Yosano. a woman poet. Second, they
probably viewed modem adaptations o f incestous adultery as more dangerous than that o f
the classical original, since contemporary settings would be read more realistically than
classics.
Femininity in Translation
Contrary to the situation in wartime, the femininity o f Heian culture and romantic
love between Genji and women was revalued in the postwar period. Ikeda Kikan (1896-
1956), for example, focused on the private and feminine aspects o f the rear court (kofcyu),
ignoring the public, professional, and formal aspect o f the court.308 Mostow says “any
‘masculinity’ was erased from the Heian period.”309 The feminization o f the Heian period
and culture is also seen in the Marxist critic, Saigo Nobutsuna (1916-), who published
307Enchi. "'Genji monogatari ni kaketa hashi.“ p. 24.
’n8Ikeda Kikan, "Heian-jidai no hungaku to seikatsu' [The Literature and the Life
o f the Heian Period] (Tokyo: Shibundo, 1967).
309Mostow, p. 349.

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‘issues o f Court Ladies' Literature” ( Kyutei joryu bungoku no mondai, 1949) and The
History o f Classical Japanese Literature (Nihon kodai bungaku-shi, 1951). Saigo stated
that the role o f Heian women’s literature was as a medium which transferred the “tradition
o f Japanese soul and ethnicity” from ancient times til now. For Saigo, "Japanese tradition”
was in the hands o f Heian women, and that was the flower which “male” intellectuals were
obligated to grow and help bloom. Heian wom en's literature obviously served as a
metaphor in the service of the “resistance o f ethnicity” in the postwar period, when "male"
intellectuals hoped to recover the “tradition of ethnic identity” in the period o f adversity
after the defeat in war.310 The feminization o f Genji monogatari and erasure o f all
masculinity from this classic work has continued up to now. Thus. Tanizaki's feminine
style o f translation (in comparison with Yosano's. according to Enchi) was welcomed by
postwar readers.3"
Anti-M odernization and Modernization
There are two main characteristics that change in Tanizaki's succeeding
translations. One is a transition in the style: in the first translation he used simple endings.
“de aru ” or “d a t t a while in the second he adopted a polite style, “gozaimasu ” and
“gozaimashita .” In his third translation he shifted to a more polite and honorific form, “de
arimasu'’ or “oraremashita. ” The question whether the endings are polite or not relate to
the issue o f the position of the narrator: whether she is within the story or outside the story.
’i0Saigo Nobutsuna. Nihon kodai bungaku-shi [The History o f Ancient Japanese

Literature] (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1963), pp. 161. 176-85.
31‘Enchi compared Tanizaki’s style with Yosano's. stating that the former was more
“feminine" and more “ faithful to the original’s style” than the latter.

174
In Tanizaki's case, the narrator employs a polite and honorific form when narrating the
story, therefore we can assume that she is situated within the story as one o f the ladies-in-
waiting.312 This is in contrast to the narrators in Yosano and Enchi, who do not use the
honorific or polite forms. Rowley pointed out that Yosano's paring away o f honorifics
"marks her narrator as someone ‘outside’ the world o f the text, distant from both the
characters and the events."313 The position o f a narrator outside the world o f the text was
precisely a factor in the Westem-style modem novel (shosetsu ). As Noguchi Takehiko
maintains, Tanizaki appears “unhappy about the ‘Unification’ (genbun icchi) style,” and he
was more inclined to go back to classical Japanese (koten Nihon-go)/u We see in this
transition in the style o f word endings Tanizaki's attempt to move from modernization to
classicism.
A similar transition was seen in Yosano. Rowley states:
On the one hand, her first translation extricated Murasaki's fiction from the realm
of the classics and their guardians, the scholars o f National Literature. Akiko
rewrote Genji in the colloquial style o f the Meiji novelist, transforming it from a
classic that had to be studied with the aid of commentary into a novel that could be
read cover to cover without interruption. Her subsequent work, on the other hand,
showed a steadily stronger scholarly bent. In the course of composing her own
commentary on Genji, editing a series o f canonical texts, and documenting the
biographical details o f Murasaki Shikibu’s life. Akiko herself became a recognized
3l2Nagai Kazuko too points out a transition in Tanizaki’s narrative style: from “ de
ciru" in the earlier translation to “ desu” in the later version. See Nagai Kazuko. Genji
monogatari to oi [Genji monogatari and Aging] (Tokyo: Kasama. 1995). p. 352.
•,|3RowIey. p. 96.
3,4Noguchi Takehiko. Kindai Nihon Hihyono Angidu [Angle o f Modem Japanese

Criticism] (Tokyo: Seidosha. 1992). pp. 163-4.

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member of that community o f classicists from whom she once wrested the Genfi.1'-
Yosano also shifts from an easy-to-read style to a more academic style.
On the other hand. Tanazaki’s third translation involves a shift back and forth
between classicim and modernization. We see his effort at modernization in his adoption
o f a new use o f kana (Shin-shin 'yakii kana zukai), abolishing an older use. Consequently,
Tanizaki made another change in his translations, eliminating many honorific words from
the second translation and even more from the third. In his preface Tanizaki himself wrote
about the situation which led him to change to a new use o f kana.iu He said that he did so
because he wanted his translation to be read by young readers, since others had used
modem translations too. ’17 In so doing, nontheless. Tanizaki was complicit with the
current o f state ideology, creating a new national language which is based on a fantasy of
an imaginary “nation.”
Lyricism
As advisors and helpers in translating from the original text Tanizaki listed the
names o f prominent Genji scholars such as Yamada Yoshio (first and second translations)
and Tamagami Takuya (third translation).318 Yamada Yoshio (1873-1958) was a
particularly interesting choice. He had studied the multiple sources, edited them, and
3l5RowIey. p. 157.
3l0Tanizaki. “J o ” [Preface], in Junichiro yaku: Genji monogatari. vol. 1. p. 3.
317Yosano had already modernized her translations by the use o f the new kana.
318See Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Jun ichirdyaka: Genji monogatari, p. 5: Enchi Fumiko.

“Genji monogatari ni kaketa hashi, p. 21.

176
published a two volume book, Heike monogatari (Tokyo: Iwanami bunko, 1929).
According to Bialock, Yamada in his “Introduction” emphasized the lyricism o f the work.
describing with sympathy Taira no Tadanori, Tsunemasa. and Atsumori, all o f whom were
viewed as heroes in Heike monogatari. Yamada also depicted Taira no Shigemori,
Kiyomori’s first son, as a filial son who tried to preach to his father the virtues o f
Confiician ethics and idealistic behavior. Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Kiso Yoshinaka
too were models for brave warriors in Yamada's view.319 Yamada's emphasis on the
combination of lyricism, aesthetics, and warrior's ethics in Japanese literature became the
standard for the interpretation o f Japanese literature, including The Heike Story. It is not
too much to speculate that Tanizaki shared his view of “ lyricism'’ with Yamada when they
worked together on Tanizaki's translation o f Genji.
4. Enchi’s Days
Translation Project
First, before examining the originality of Enchi's translation, let us see how Enchi
came to undertake the project o f a modem translation o f Genji in the postwar period.
Looking back over the five years (1967-1972) she spent on the translation o f Genji into
modem Japanese, she reflected on why she was able to keep working on it so long.
It was not because I loved Genji monogatari most, but rather, being caught in its
irresistible charm, I was gravitated to it and was enticed to go with it almost
319David Bialock, “Kokuminteki jojishi no hakken: kindai no koten to shiteno Heike

m o n o g a ta r i[Discovery o f National Epic: Heike Story as a Modem Classic], in Sdzd
sareta koten. pp. 142-3.

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unnoticing up to this point.320
Citing a Mount Everest alpinist's phrase. “Because the mountain is there. (I climb it),''
Enchi called her brave act “involuntary” ( tado-teki). As a matter o f a fact, the project of
translation was proposed and arranged by the president o f Shincho-sha, a famous
publishing company, and was promoted to such extent that they even rented an apartment
for Enchi to work in, and sent an editor there to take care o f miscellaneous jobs relating to
the translation.321 In that apartment in Mejiro scholars o f Genji (Tamagami Takuya,
Hisamatsu Sen'ichi. Shimizu Yoshiko, Inukai Kiyoshi. Abe Mitsuko), writers (Kawabata
Yasunari, Niwa Fumio, Takenishi Hiroko), and critics (Yoshida Seiichi. Akiyama Ken.
Kawamori Yoshi/o. Ozaki Kazuo). occasionally got together for discussion and exchange
o f views, comparing the original text o f Genji in classical Japanese with the manuscript of
Enchi’s translation in modem Japanese.322 While such a study group was certainly
impossible without Enchi's active consent and her personal connections, it might not have
been possible either without Shinchosha's wholescale support. As Enchi stated, for the
first time she had to learn how to write a “contract” and how to negotiate with a publishing
company. In that contract she was made to promise not to write even one serialized
“ novel” in the newspapers for the next six years until she had finished the translation, so
320Enchi Fumiko, “J o ” : Enchi Fumiko yaku: Genji monogatari ["Introduction":

Translated by Enchi Fumiko: The Tale o f Genji], vol. 1 (Tokyo: Shinchosha. 1993), p. 3.
321Enchi Fumiko, Uso makoto nanaju-yonen [Seventy Years or More o f Fiction and
Non-fiction] (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shimbunsha. 1984). p. 144.
322Enchi, Genji monogatari, vol. 1. p. 4. Also Takenishi Hiroko describes in detail

the process o f translation in Enchi’s apartment/workplace in her “ Kaisetsu ' [Commentary]
in Genji monogatari. vol. 5. pp. 466-72.

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that she would be able to focus entirely on the translation o f Genji. It was certainly an
“enterprise” (jigyd) and a total commitment both for Shinchosha and for Enchi.323
The late 1960s and early 1970s, when Enchi embarked on the project o f translating
and publishing her version o f Genji, was also a time when women’s literature (joryu
bungakii) and Heian literature (ocho bungakn) had entered the sales market, and when the
Japanese economy was booming: domestically, consumerism; overseas, investing and
expanding markets. It is possible to view Enchi's translation project o f Genji as a product
o f expanding economic demand and cultural interest in that period. The rise o f women’s
literature and Heian literature in the 1970s was once again related to the feminization of
Heian culture and literature and its canonization as the epitome o f "Japanese" uniqueness.
Doubtless. Enchi's view o f Genji was contingent on the interpretation o f Genji in her time.
For instance, she used the translation and annotation o f Genji by Tamagami Takuya, a
prominent scholar o f Genji. as a basis for her own translation into modern Japanese
language.324 In this sense Enchi's translation, too, was one o f the products o f her time.
Genji as Canon
Why did Enchi choose to translate Genji monogatari? There is no need to mention
Enchi’s physical and psychological readiness to be a translator o f Genji. but she had
another, more personal reason for accepting this project in 1967. Since Tanizaki
323Enchi. (Jso makoto nanj u-yonen. ibid.
j24Enchi Fumiko. Genji monogatari to watashi [Genji monogatari and I], in Genji
monogatari no heroin-tachi: taidan [Heroines o f Genji monogatari: Dialogues with Other
Women Writers] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1994), p. 13; Genji monogatari. 10 vols.. translated
and annotated by Tamagami Takuya (Tokyo: Kadokavva Nihon koten bunko, 1992).

179
Jun'ichiro, the previous translator o f Genji, had finally passed away, she now felt free to
embark upon a new translation.” 5 It might be due to Enchi's respect for Tanizaki, her
senior and one of the greatest writers at the time that she avoided publishing another
translation to compete with his while he was alive, or respect for Genji itself, “the greatest
canonical work in Japanese literature" in her opinion and that o f her contemporaries that
she avoided two translations of Genji, appearing in the same period. In either case we see
in her hesitation the significance o f canonical writers (Tanizaki) and o f the canon in
Japanese literature ( Genji).
Enchi says that she had enjoyed reading Genji monogatari since her childhood, and
that her relationship with this classical work was as intimate as the one with her family
(nikushin-jimita tsukiai).'2h Enchi was also familiar with popular Edo writings such as
kusazdshi. Her first encounter with Genji. as we have seen, was actually through the Edo
version. Fake Murasaki Rustic Genji. by Ryutei Tanehiko. She was also an eager reader o f
Takizawa Bakin's popular story. NansoSatomi Hakkenden (The Story o f Eight Dogs),
which in her childhood was considered a low-culture book, in contrast to Ueda Akinari’s
The Story o f Rain and Moon (Ugetsu monogatari) or The Story o f Spring Rain (Harusame
monogatari). She could not mention Bakin's The Story o f Eight Dogs as one o f her
favorite books, while she was able proudly to list Genji monogatari and The Ten Foot
Square Hut (Hofoki) by Kamo no Chomei. She wrote:
3:5Enchi. ibid.. p. 141. T did not feel like embarking on the project while he was
alive. I was interested in translating it. but I thought I should decline the proposal out of
politeness to him.
3:6Enchi Fumiko. “Jo" [Preface], in Genji monogatari, vol.l. p. 3.

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I felt ashamed (of reading Eight Dogs) as if I were wearing an old-fashioned faded
kimono with heavy hems in the midst o f other girls wearing brand new kimonos.
Of course I never told my friends at school (that I could recite passages from Eight
Dogs), but I always felt ashamed o f it and tended to turn my back on it.327
She also said that she tried in vain to distance herself from Edo classics when she was
writing plays before the war, and deliberately made efforts to adopt an English language
structure in her writing style.328 Before the war she favored Western over Japanese
literature. Only after the war did she throw away her “shame’’ and “hesitation” about her
familiarity with popular Edo writings. In her dialogue with Oe Kenzaburo and Kiyooka
Takuya in 1986. she candidly admitted that she was in some way “an author o f popular
stories” of the Edo period (gesakusha-tekina yaso). As a result, we find many instances of
Edo vocabulary in her translation o f Genji, as she herself admitted in her essay.
Here we see the rank and canonicity of works o f Japanese literature at the end of
Meiji and the beginning o f the Taisho: Genji monogatari. Kamo no Chomei. Ueda Akinari
over Takizawa Bakin. That means in Taisho and early Showa. when Enchi was growing
up, Edo period popular writings were ranked lower than “serious writings” (by Ueda
Akinari or Kamo no Chomei), and that Western literature was situated as the opposite of
Edo popular works. Now we return to our earlier questions: was Genji regarded as
canonical from the time it was written, and has the reading o f Genji always been univocal
or multiple?
327Enchi Fumiko. “Genji monogatari no sakusha" [The Author o f Genji

monogatari), in Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 16 (Tokyo: Shinchosha. 1978). p. 395.
328Kumasaka Atsuko. “In ta b yu E n ch i Fumiko-sensei ni kiku" [Interview: Enchi

Fumiko], Kokubungaku 2 1 :9 (July 1976): p. 31.

181
The fact that one piece o f work has invited so many readings in the short period of
modem Japan suggests that the value and canonicity o f the text has been constructed in
each historical and ideological context, that it is not inherent in the text itself.329 For what
reason was a certain text endowed with special value? Why did a certain analysis and
interpretation o f a certain text come up at a certain period? Why was a certain
interpretation o f the text passed as authoritative? As Guillory states, canonicity is not
inherent in a text itself, but rather in the delivery o f the text.330 Enchi partly agreed with
this non-fundamentalist view o f classics, as can be seen in her discussion o f the canonicity
of works by Higuchi Ichiyo. She stated that Ichiyo’s ‘lyrical" Takekurabe (Child's Play)
achieved canonicity over Hirotsu Ryuro's realistic Imado shinju (Double suicide in
Imado). though both describe the women in the licenced quarters in Yoshiwara:
1 do not object to the value of Ichiyo’s “Child's Plav" as a masterpiece. However. 1

do not think Hirotsu Ryuro's “ Double Suicide in Imado" has less value than
“C hild's Play." The difference is: while Ichiyo discovered a purely lyrical poem
about the children in Yoshiwara. Ryuro watched the reality o f Yoshiwara
courtesans through gloomy eyes. Comparing these two works, anyone will notice
that Ichiyo's view is romantic, whereas Ryuro describes Yoshiwara realistically.
Both are certainly noble masterpieces. But now very few people except scholars
read “Double Suicide in Imado," while on the other hand, more and more people do
read “Child’s Play." [...] It seems that some classics are loved by people, and others
are not. It is not only the case with Ichiyo.331
After this Enchi talked about Akutagawa Ryunosuke. attributing his popularity and
329Shinada Yoshikazu, ''Kokumin kayo to shiteno 'Man 'yoshu'" [‘Man'yoshu’ as a

Collection o f the Nation], in Sozosareta koten, pp. 58-59.
330John Guillory. Cultural Capital: The Problem o f Literary Canon Formation

(Chicago: U o f Chicago P. 1993). p. 55.
33lEnchi. "'Onna no himitsu" [Women’s Secrets], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu. vol. 15.
pp. 106-7.

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canonicity in part to his suicide:
[...] some percentage of his charm is merged with the fact that he commited suicide
after writing these works. In that sense his suicide could be said to be his last
masterpiece in life. Just as flowers and beauties are loved in real life, some
classical works have been loved because they fit the preferences or intelligence o f
people as models of “beauty.”332
In other words, Enchi seems to suggest that the “preference" o f the reader had
nothing to do w ith the value inherent in a work. Rather, the reader creates the canonicity.
When we compare Genji with Sagoromu monogatari, which was also quite popular in the
middle ages but soon disappeared, we cannot help admitting that Genji has had some
charm and attraction for readers in each period, and for that reason it has survived up to the
modem period. Enchi stressed the significance o f the reading by readers in each period.
Even though we read the original Genji in Heian kana copy, since we live in the
world o f 1970s Japan, everything coming through reality such as the light, the
sound and other mechanisms is certainly different from that o f the time when the
Heian reader read Genji. Classics, in other words, should be something like a
phoenix, which survives through drastically changing times, and yet constantly
sucks new blood and rejuvenates itself.333
I think each person makes a different reading in each period. And therein lies the
secret o f classics that have survived so far.334
However, as far as Genji monogatari is concerned. Enchi finds value inherent in it:
What unfathomable depth and charm does Genji monogatari have? Like the ruins
o f Pompeii Genji monogatari must be excavated again and again. It is a classic
which has survived through one thousand years o f wind and snow, and I am happy
and proud to be one o f the Japanese who have handed it down from generation to
^j2Enchi Fumiko. "Onna no himitsu," p. 107.
JJ'Enchi. “Jo ,” in Genji monogatari, p. 6.
j34Enchi. Uen no hitobito to, pp. 100-101.

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generation.335
Moreover, like other classical studies scholars, Enchi too discussed the influence o f Genji
on the works of “ Japanese literature.”
Tanizaki Jun’ichiro divided the styles in Japanese literature into two kinds: Genji
style and non -Genji style. I remember after Meiji literature he grouped Ozaki
Koyo’s and his own works in the former, while Shiga Naoya and Akutagawa
Ryunosuke in the latter.336
Yokyoku in the Muromachi period and Jdniri in the Edo period may have a Genji-
like style, complicated, beating about the bush, frustrating and yet convincing in
tone [...] On the other hand, Saikaku's The Life o f a Great Amorous Man, which
was said to be written based on Genji monogatari, is a totally different erotic
story.337
Although showing some skepticism about canonicity in Higuchi Ichiyo and Akutagawa
Ryunosuke. Enchi does not deny completely the value inherent in such works of literature.
Obviously, she was referring to the “non-cancnical” canon which readers in each period
have handed down from generation to generation. This is not the canon constructed by
state ideology. And yet, in the case o f Genji these two kinds o f canon-making processes
came into the same stream and became one big river o f canonicity.
If we compare her statement with those o f a nationalist critic. Ikeda Kikan, it is
clear that Enchi was not an advocate o f political propaganda. Ikeda Kikan was one o f the
Genji scholars who lauded Genji as the most “unusual masterpiece o f the classics,”
claiming it was written in a “modem" “realistic” style. This combination o f the classics
j35Enchi. “ Genji monogatari shiken." p. 353.
336Ibid.. p. 365.
337Ibid., p. 366.

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and “modern," according to Ikeda, represented the value o f Genji. He also talked about the
“Japanese uniqueness” of Genji. which has dominated “Japanese literature” ever since.
Genji monogatari had a great impact on Japanese literature afterwards. First, it

bestowed a Japanese uniqueness, which it was impossible to change, on various
forms o f novels in each period from the Heian, Kamakura, Muromachi. through
Edo [...] On the art o f Chikamatsu and Saikaku, for example, it bequeathed great
influence. In the waka field, ever since Fujiwara Shunzei recommended Genji as a
must-read book for poets, it became quite influential, to the extent that classicism
{koten shugi) was established with Genji as a model [...] It also exerted tremendous
influence on renga and haikai...in this way Genji monogatari completely
dominated all other literary works in Japan. The impact o f Genji was not only on
literary works, but also on entire aspects o f Japanese culture and life, and this
influence, in both a good or bad sense, penetrated the life and mind of each class o f
society.338
Singling out one work of literature in particular, and discussing its “influence” in the
“history o f Japanese literature,” or elaborating the “genealogy" o f Japanese literature based
upon it. reflected the effort and attempt to integrate the nation and state o f “Japan." which
“all Japanese people" shared in their pride at owning such a canonical work. Enchi's views
should be differentiated from such nationalist propaganda.
As we have seen, the canonicity o f Genji as a classic was repeatedly called for by
the state authorities. Depending on the needs o f the state, Genji was either praised or
devalued under the ideological label o f “masculine” or “ feminine.” On the other hand, we
should not forget the other kind o f canonicity (or popularity) o f Genji which survived
despite censorship by the state in some periods. It was translated into lyrical noh dramas to
pander to the taste o f patrons in Muromachi, and adapted into a popular story (kusazashi)
in Edo. It has been published in the form o f modernizing translations. Tanizaki's first
3-’8Ikeda, p. 655.

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translation during wartime had missing parts in order to pass the censors o f the military
government. But. as Enchi observed, the classic revived in each period like a phoenix. Let
us investigate the ideologies that were around in Enchi’s times.
O ral Language Ideology (Onset chushin-shugi)
I have discussed how state ideologies influenced the issue o f the canonicity o f the
classics in the modem period. Enchi’s modem translation o f classics in the postwar period
has often been explained and simplified as a "return to old Japan” and a search for
"Japanese identity” or “Japanese uniqueness” in classical literature. Rejecting this
simplification. I want to look at the complexity we can find in her translation project. In
what context did her modem translation (kogo-yaku) appear at that time? Was it new or
not? This issue is related to that o f “colloquial language” (kdgo ), "oral language" (onsei)
and “Japanese language” (yamato kotoba /kokugo). However, as we will see. Enchi
resisted such state ideologies.
Enchi questioned the famous “orality" (reading aloud) theory o f Genji. and
challenged the conventional theory that lay behind it. As one such traditional theorist.
Tamagami Takuya, contended in his “Comments.” monogatari were usually “read aloud”
by ladies-in-attendance to the princesses or daughters o f aristocratic lineage?39 Enchi
countered:
Professor Tamagami Takuya in Kyoto said that (Genji) was probably written for
reading aloud. He said, “monogatari” were originally read aloud by the women-in-
attendance (nyobo) for daughters or wives o f aristocrats and that Genji was one of
these monogatari. It may be so. Nevertheless, initially they had to be written down
before being read aioud. or had to be copied if they were to become popular. When
339Tamagami. pp. 11-4.

186
copied, without being read aloud, they had to be written down from one to another.
Therefore, my theory is that they were sometimes written down and sometimes read
aloud.340
Tamagami's theory belonged to the “oral language” ideology (onsei chushin shugi), which
had already appeared in a different context in the Tokugawa period. Motoori Norinaga
stated that he preferred Kojiki, which was written in classical “colloquial” Japanese
language (yamato kotoba), to Nihon shoki, written in Chinese characters. According to
Motoori, Chinese thought ("kara #o&oro”)~ethics, rationalism, reason—was based on
Chinese characters, and therefore was less significant than Japanese thought. Chinese
characters and letters were viewed as lesser by Norinaga, who wanted to construct a Shinto
Japan reigned over by the emperor, a nation o f descendants o f God. The ideology o f “oral
language" thus arose as resistance to the predominance o f Chinese culture and writing in
the Edo period.341
The second wave of the ideology o f “oral language" occurred as part o f the
propaganda of the “Movement of Unification o f Speech and Writing” ( Genbun itchi undo).
Maejima Hisoka submitted a thesis in 1866 “On the abolition o f Chinese Characters”
(Kanji on-haishi no gi). This movement was similar to the one in the Tokugawa period in
that both aimed at denying Chinese characters. The difference, however, was that the one
in the Meiji period promoted modernization in competition with Western countries.
340Enchi, “Koten yobanashi" [Night Chats about Classics] (Tokyo: Heibonsha.

1975), pp. 89-90.
541As for “oral language” ideology, see Murai Osamu, "Metsub6 no gensetsu kukan:
Minzoku/Kokka/Kashd-sef' [The Discursive Space o f Extinction: Ethnicity/ Nation/
Orality], in Sdzosareta koten. pp. 258-300.

187
whereas the former was aimed against Chinese culture. Murai Osamu points out that the
modem “Unification” movement, coupled with the Darwinian theory o f “the survival o f the
fittest,”’ justified Japan's annexation o f Korea and its invasion o f Asian countries. Murai
also sees a parallel between this movement and Yanagita Kunio’s “folklore” studies
(minzokii-gaku). According to Murai, Yanagita talked about the need to record and
preserve the culture o f mountain people (sanjin) who had lacked a writing system (mumoji)
and had gone extinct. His theory provided a good excuse for ruling over the Others and
Outsiders under the pretense o f their rescue and protection. Murai says:
(Yanagita’s) image o f the extinction (metsubo) o f the mountain people (sanjin—

ancient aborigines) caused by yamato' s assimilation (doka) was equivalent to the
extinction of the peripheral people colonized by Japanese imperialism. It was
internalized and projected onto the past. Such historical regression might be
parallel to that o f the Unification between Speech and Writing—written language
should be subservient to oral language (colloquial yamato kotoba) and should be
assimilated to the latter. This is exactly equivalent to the ideology of “Unification”
in that other tribes (written language) were supposed to assimilate to the Yamato
tribe (oral language—the imagined community—the nation).342
Yanagita attempted to construct an homogeneous “folk” (and ethnicity) which shared the
same ancient “oral” language o f the yamato kotoba (Japanese language). Similarly.
Orikuchi Shinobu's theory o f “a family o f professional narrators ” ( kataribe) also
reinforced the state ideology o f “Divine Japan” (shinkoku Nihon) and “eternal Japan”
(yukyuno Nihon) by constructing and absolutizing the oral period before the period of
written record. ’43
j42Murai. in Sozd sareta koten. pp. 268-9.
j430 f course we are reminded o f Takeda Taijun's article. “Xfetsuboni tsuite”

[About the Extinction] discussed in chapter one o f Part I.

188
There were some intellectuals other than Enchi who questioned the credibility o f
“oral tradition” in Japan. Tsuda Sokichi, for example, stated that “there was no evidence
for such a hypothesis that there was a family o f professional narrators called kataribe who
had been handing down the tradition.”3'14 “ Kataribe ’ and worship of the ancestors were the
two necessary key beliefs o f Japanese “folklore” studies ( minzokugaku), Murai says.345 As
long as modem intellectuals keep internalizing the ideology—the ancient yamato tribe as
the “original Japanese,” they will continue to alienate and marginalize Others. Seeing
Enchi's question about the “oral tradition” in this context, she not only shuddered at claims
for the uniqueness o f Japanese classics but also challenged the superiority o f the “Japanese
nation/state.”
However, whether Enchi contributed to the state ideology of “oral tradition"
(colloquial language) through her translation o f Genji or not remains a complex issue.
Translating classics originally written in kana into a mixture o f Chinese and Japanese
(wakan konkobnn) goes in a direction opposite to replacing the Chinese by the Japanese.
Yet, converting kana writings o f ancient times into a standard Japanese (hyqjun-go) in the
modem period is a centripetal and unidirectional project. Enchi's translation o f the classics
is located at the intersection between state ideology and resistance. The dichotomy o f a
written practice (foreign) and another, primarily oral tradition (imagined, native, original,
ancient, feminine) will lead us into the issue o f the bipolarity o f theory (written text) and
344Murai. p. 290. Tsuda was eventually criticized by the right wing and banished
from Waseda University.
345Ibid.

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action (oral text in the meetings, demonstrations, symbolic gestures, consciousness-raising
groups) in feminist thought.346
K angaku/kanbun/kanji [Chinese Studies/C hinese L iterature/C hinese C haracters]
Despite the persistence o f nationalist intellectuals, Yamato kotoba (Japanese
language) was used only in some groups and only in some periods. It was in no way a
dominant language in the history o f Japanese linguistics. Even in the Heian period, which
was usually called the period o f kana literature, the Chinese writing style and Chinese
characters were still much used in the public aspects of court life. The widely-believed
notion that the main stream of “Heian literature” was hiragana writing, in other words, is
historically not entirely true. Furthermore, even though hiragana writing used to be called
“onnade.” that did not mean it belonged only to women. Rather it was used by men as well
on “un-official" occasions, in contrast to the kanbun used on official and public occasions
usually by men. Kurozumi Makoto addressed this issue in an essay:
Since we were used to focusing on hiragana literature such as the collection o f

waka (Kokinshu), women's diaries, and monogatari, we were under the wrong
impression that Heian Japanese language was mostly hiragana. However, this is a
distorted image o f Heian language. As Tsukishima Hiroshi says, despite the
appearance of hiragana masterpieces, “hiragana was not dominant in the overall
picture o f the linguistic system, rather Chinese poetry and Chinese writing
continued to be the main stream.”347
Kurozumi also noted that the centralized administration system in the Nara and
Heian periods (ritsuryo seido), based on Chinese words and writings, continued to survive
346Banting. “S(M)other Tongue?: Feminism. Academic Discourse, Translation." in

Collaboration in the Feminine: Writing on Women and Culture from Tessera. Barbara
Godard ed. (Toronto: Second Story, 1994), p. 175.
347Kurozumi. in Sozosareta koten, p. 215.

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until the Edo period, and was reinforced from the end o f Edo through the Meiji period.348
Although after the Sino-Japanese war (1894-95) Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834-1901) and other
intellectuals proposed the restriction and abolition o f kanji as well as the discouragement of
Confucian studies, nevertheless, kango was revived primarily as a means o f marginalizing
rural dialects and perspectives and distributing the public discourse o f the bureacratic
authorities.349 Nakamura Masanao (1832-91), a scholar o f Chinese and Western studies,
even encouraged those who wanted to study Western knowledge to learn Chinese studies
first. The interesting combination o f Chinese knowledge and Western knowledge found
among Meiji intellectuals may be explained in this way. Like other intellectuals in those
days Enchi's Western knowledge and ideas were introduced and constructed through the
intermediary o f knowledge of Chinese studies. That Enchi learned both Chinese poetry
and Western languages (French and English) from tutors in her childhood was not unusual
for a girl bom in 1905.
Wartime and postwar Japan bureaucrats still used a Chinese writing system. All
military and governmental documents until wartime were written in kanji and katakana,
which has closer links to Chinese writing than hiragana, and even after the war we still
find official or legal documents full o f kanji and kango.m In fact, we still find many traces
348Ibid., p. 216.
349For example, “kamidoko” (barbers) became “ r ih a ts u -te n “furo ni hairu ” (take a

bath) became “ n y u t o and apologies were expressed by saying “shikkei" instead of
“gom ennasar or “sumimasen,” ibid., p. 246.
350Kurozumi discusses the the difference between katakana and hiragana. Around
the mid-ninth century katakana and hiragana were formed: the former as simplified
phonetic symbols taken from parts o f kanji and used simply for deciphering Chinese texts;

191
o f Chinese culture and writing even now. Kurozumi mentioned the geographical division
o f regions and the state, concepts o f time such as the Chinese sexagenary cycle (eto), or
orders o f cultural symbolical value such as official ranks (kan 7) in modem Japan. When
the Showa Emperor died, all scholars o f Chinese were summoned to choose the name o f a
new imperial era, and chose “ Heisei " in Chinese characters. They could have chosen
typical yamato but, to modem Japanese ears, archaic-sounding expressions such as
"Miyabi ichinen" or “Aware ichinen" instead o f "Heisei ichinen " if Japanese language
were more dominant in Japan/51 Another example is the way in which Enchi’s modem
work drawing on Heian literature was classified under the category o f "imperial-reign
literature” (ocho bungakn). But this term actually referred in the first instance to literature
in the Nara and Heian periods when the Chinese system was being used.
Thus, although the notion o f ’’Heian w omen's literature in hiragana" played a
large role in the formation o f the ideology of a national Japanese literature, from a
linguistic and historical point o f view hiragana literature was absorbed into the current o f
the dominant Chinese writing system. Enchi mentioned this fact, pointing out that it was
impossible for her to reproduce the hiragana writing o f Genji in her modem translation,
since from the Kamakura period through the modem period the Chinese style had been
dominant in Japanese literature. As Enchi recognized, because the Japanese writing system
the latter as phonetic symbols which are simplified versions o f whole kanji and used to
write Japanese sounds, names and waka. To put it another way. katakana keeps the
“tension” and “encounter” between a Chinese text and Japanese reader [later, katakana will
also be used to transcribe words from other foreign languages], while hiragana shows
more free and spontaneous independence from Chinese texts. Kurozumi. pp. 219-20.
351Kurozumi. p. 216.

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had been dependent on Chinese vocabulary (kango), she had to include a lot o f kango in
her translation o f hiragana literature.352
The style o f mixed Chinese and Japanese vocabulary (wakan konkobun), which
Enchi used to translate Genji, had been promoted by Meiji intellectuals, who thought they
had already overcome Chinese influence and were attempting to construct a broad canon of
“Japanese literature” (kokuhungaku) that included both literature o f aristocrats in the
ancient times and literature of common people in the mid-Edo period.353 Enchi's style o f
translation, too, was a mixture o f the vocabulary o f Heian. Edo. and modem Japanese. For
example, her characteristic vocabulary included phrases such as 'Wta-niknrashT' or “ata-
kaw airashf (descriptions of Kumoi no kari). which were slang expressions used by Edo
women injdruri.3iA As she admitted, her translation was partly an Edo-ite style (Edokko-
fu ). not surprising for a writer who loved reading Edo writers such as Chikamatsu
Monzaemon. Ihara Saikaku. Takizawa Bakin, popular works (kibyashi). and jdrnri.
Conclusion
The project and task o f translating the Genji monogatari into modem colloquial
Japanese clearly involves quite a few issues. It was a mirror to reflect state ideologies that
were dominant in the days of each translator. These ideologies, one after another, often
352We find pages full o f kango. especially when dealing with court and military
practices and knowledge of Chinese origin in the story o f Genji. Cf. Enchi, Genji
monogatari. vol. 1. p. 195. for examples.
353This is also implausible when we consider the great number o f Chinese writings
by Japanese aristocrats and the large number of Chinese. Dutch, and other foreign loan
words in the Edo period.
j54Enchi. "Genji monogatari shiken." p. 368.

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overlapped, regressed or revived or reinforced, and gathered into a river that flows on in
modem Japanese life to this day.
The most recent example is Setouchi Jakucho's translation of Genji. Setouchi has
made a large-scale campaign o f her publication o f a “translation o f Genji monogaiari into
modem colloquial language. ” With the all-out support o f the publishing company, her
translation sold more than 2.5 million copies in the first year o f publication. Setouchi said
in an interview with the Asahi newspaper:
Every Japanese knows o f the “Tale o f Genji"—it's part o f the world's literary
heritage. But almost no one has read it all the way through. I feel this is an
embarrassment. So I tried to put it into the simplest words possible, so that even a
grade school child could understand.
We need to observe several things here. First, Setouchi states. “ Every Japanese.” “even a
grade school child,” should read “The Tale of Genji.” Why9 Recause it is part o f the
“world’s literary heritage.” not only a part of the Japanese heritage. It re-establishes the
status o f Japanese national literature among other national literatures. It is something every
Japanese should be proud of.
Further, as she notes, she translated it into “the simplest words possible” in modem
colloquial Japanese language. Translating it into the simplest language possible means she
is also trying to construct a modem colloquial Japanese which everybody can understand,
that is, an imaginary unitary modem national language. By attempting to bridge the
distance between classical and modem language with this strategy, she ironically widens
the gap between the two and at the same time impoverishes the richness and diversity o f
the language itself.

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Setouchi's use o f her status as a woman translator to re-present a difficult and
complex text by a Heian woman author as a simple guidebook in an easy language that any
woman, even a girl-child, can understand is precisely what a feminist theory of translation
must contest. Setouchi in effect presents herself as an authority who can close the gap
between scholarly expertise and ordinary women who are supposedly unable to understand
such difficult texts.
Finally. Setouchi maintains that, for women today, her translation can serve as a
“good lesson in what men like and don’t like,” while “for men it’s still a good primer in
how to seduce women.” since “relations between the sexes haven’t changed all that much”
since the book was written 1000 years ago.
Genji was once a text seen as providing models o f poetry. In the year 2000 it is
now revived as a guidebook for relations between the sexes, consumer advice featuring
strategies for “pleasing” men and techniques for “courting” women. We must ask, as
Enchi does: under these sugar-coatings of “refinement” or “love.” what lies beneath? What
are translators in fact doing when they translate Genji into the “simple” language of
modem colloquial Japanese? In her days, in her translation, Enchi was trying, at least in
part, to problematize such efforts to use the translation o f Japanese classics to legitimate
the nationalist ideology o f the modem nation-state.

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Chapter 3
Enchi’s Genji: Translation as Transformance
Introduction
I have attempted to theorize the significance o f the translation o f Japanese classics
into modem Japanese language (kogo) in the postwar period. I dealt with three issues
concerning translation: one. as construction o f canonicity and nationalism; two. as
commercialism and means o f global communication; three, as performative resistance by
woman translators. I have also analyzed the construction o f the canonicity o f Genji
monogatari in several of its translation into modem Japanese (kogo vaku) by three
prominent writers in the modem period. Specifically. I considered the issue o f canonicity
in relation to the nationalist state ideologies and situations o f the translators in their
respective times: Taisho (Yosano). during/after World War II (Tanizaki). and the 1970s
(Enchi).
In the present chapter. I will show how Enchi read and transformed Genji
monogatari. and how she challenged the orthodox and canonical interpretation o f the text.
In the following Appendix I will further detail and comment upon the differences in
Japanese o f the translations by Yosano, Tanizaki, and Enchi, along with the original
Japanese text o f Genji monogatari (the edition of the Fujiwara Teika jihitsu-bon, Aobyoshi,
annotated by Tamagami Takuya), and Seidensticker’s English translation.
1. Enchi’s Contestation
Authority o f the Authorship?
Enchi tried to protect the authorship o f Genji from male claims, as did Yosano

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Akiko. Yosano defended Genji from male critics who would claim it as the work o f male
author(s).
Bi wo mezuru onna ni shikazu Genji oba

otoko tsukurazu hashi no kakazu (5: 562)
(Genji was not made by a man; nor was it written by a monk;
it was made by none but a woman who loves beauty)
Yosano’s protest was clearly directed against the multiple discourses that denied the
authorship o f Murasaki Shikibu. Already in earlier times the female authorship o f Genji
stirred great ambivalence among masculinist critics. There were numerous theories
denying the authorship of Murasaki Shikibu. starting from the assumption that most of
Genji was written or revised by Murasaki's father. Fujiwara Tametoki (fl. C. 1000). or by
Fujiwara Michinaga (966-1027). her patron, to the assumption that multiple authors wrote
each part.355 We can find similar masculinist theories in the modem period too.356
Orikuchi Shinobu (1887-1953). for example, insisted that the chapters after “Wakana”
were written by a male writer because they were ‘lo o well-written to be a woman's
writing.”357
Even critics who recognized Murasaki Shikibu's authorship, generally did so for
355Ikeda Kikan. “Genji monogatari to Akiko-Genji," pp. 648-9. See also li Haruki,
Genji monogatari no densetsu [Legend o f Genji monogatari] (Tokyo: Showa Shuppan.
1976), pp. 69-90.
356Yosano Akiko mentioned that Kume Kunitake (1839-1931) wrote in a noh

journal that Genji appeared to have been written by several people. Kume was a “first-rate
scholar o f history, but “no scholar o f literature,"’ according to Yosano. See Yosano Akiko,
“Shin-shin’yaku Genji monogatari atogaki.” translated from a reprint in Akiko koten
kansho, pp. 37-39.
357Enchi. Koten yobanashi. p. 92.

1 97
reasons other than defending female authorship. Ikeda Kikan. for instance, certainly
praised the great accomplishment o f Murasaki, but he was not eager to believe that such a
large-scale panorama was pre-planned and organized from the beginning by a single
woman writer. He said, “(just like each chapter o f Ise monogatari) possibly there were
many similar stories, each of which independently had a heroine, and they were probably
adopted and combined into the great novel o f Gen//."358 Ikeda implied that Genji was
possibly compiled by multiple authors.
Enchi, pointing out Orikuchi’s bias (sexism) regarding the issue o f the authorship
of Genji, attempted to counter this view. She compared Genji monogatari with The Life o f
a Great Amorous Man by Ihara Saikaku. a male author, and argued there was a clear
difference in representation of the opposite sex in the two works:
Comparing Genji and Amorous Mam the former describes an ideal man for a
woman, the latter a Woman in a m an's dream. It is surprising to find that a
woman's dream is very romantic, while a man's dream is so down-to-earth/59
Enchi's defense is not too different from stereotypical gender dichotomy that Orikuchi
draws on when challenging the female authorship o f Genji. Nonetheless, she protested
against traditional critics who tried to make an historical woman writer (the author of
Genji) invisible.
While defending the woman authorship o f Genji, Enchi distanced herself from any
358Ikeda. pp. 648-9. Rowley says. “Ikeda Kikan developed his thesis o f a tripartite
Genji and his hypothetical reconstruction o f the order in which the component chapters
were composed." building upon Yosano Akiko's theory o f the designation o f a sharp
structural break following “ Fuji no Uraba." He borrowed Yosano's theory, but did not
adopt her theory o f the two female authorship of Genji.
359Enchi Fumiko, “Genji monogatari ni kaketa has hi." pp. 20-1.

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romanticizing or mythologization o f the author. Murasaki Shikibu. Enchi, casting doubt on
the romantic legend about Murasaki at Ishiyama Temple, identifies herself with Genji s
author. She notes the large gap between the ideal romantic image, which people expected
o f women writers, and the reality o f a living woman writer.360 The mythologizing o f
women writers is one of the strategies for de-historicizing female authorship, and Enchi
rejected it.
Denying female authorship o f Genji suggests possible ambivalence in male critics
toward this classic. Even though they failed to recover G enji's authorship in their hands,
there was another way to retrieve it. Thus, Genji has been translated, annotated, analyzed,
and commented upon repeatedly only by male critics until the time o f Yosano Akiko. As a
result, before Yosano the great scholarly works and commentaries on Genji. from the
premodem through the modem periods, have been entirely in the hands o f male scholars.
In other words, the history o f interpretation o f Genji has been the history of the usurpation
o f Genji by male critics and scholars. As a good example o f comments by male critics is
one by Tamagami Takuya. Although he gave credit to Murasaki as the author o f Genji, he
minimized its value, describing Genji as “a story by a woman, for women, and of a
woman's world.'’361 This is o f course not at all a laudatory remark about this classical
360Murasaki’s inspiration for writing the Suma/Akashi chapter allegedly occurred

when she saw the moon reflected in the lake at Ishiyama-dera. As for Murasaki's
frustration as a woman writer, see Richard Bowring trans. Murasaki Shikibu: Her Diary
and Poetic Memoirs (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1982).
36'Reprinted in Tamagami Takuya, "Onna no tame ni onna ga kaita onna no sekai

no monogatari," in Genji monogatari kenkyu (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten. 1966), pp. 432-
40.

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masterpiece, since he meant that Genji was circulated only in a limited circle o f ladies-in-
waiting at court in the Heian period, and that Genji depicted the ideal image o f men for
those court women. While undervaluing Genji, paradoxically the same masculinist critics
can claim before the world that this “minimalist” story about women, for women, by a
woman was the “first modem novel in the world.” Enchi’s job was to recover not only the
authorship o f Genji from men, but also to recover the text itself from the hands o f male
critics and scholars, who fall into such contradiction.
Before Enchi, Yosano Akiko had already launched a challenge against the male
hegemony o f interpretation of Genji. She purposely eliminated all the footnotes
traditionally attached to the text by orthodox male Genji scholars, claiming that the author.
Shikibu. and Yosano herself “faced one another with no intermediary, just the two o f
them.” She felt she “had Genji from the very mouth of this great woman o f letters.’”0' By
stressing her facing Genji “with no intermediary,” Yosano rejected the “ intermediation” o f
male scholars between herself and Genji. Enchi, too, totally cut the footnotes about yusoku
kojitsn (knowledge about the practices and usages at ancient court) from her translation.
The difference from Yosano is that Enchi called herself a “medium," inserting herself as an
“ intermediary” between the text o f Genji and the modem reader. I shall return to Enchi’s
concept o f a medium later.
To Enchi, as I have shown, as long as the female authorship was secured it did not
matter whether all fifty-four chapters o f Genji were written by a single author or by
36:Yosano Akiko, Teihon Yosano Akiko zenshu. Kimata Osamu ed.. 20 vols.
(Tokyo: Kodansha, 1979-81), Vol. 19: p. 258.

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multiple authors. However, it absolutely mattered to masculinist scholars and critics.
because, if had not been written by a single author, Genji would have lost its status and
integrity as '‘the first lengthy realistic modem "novel in the world. Ironically and
contradictorily, if all the chapters were written by a woman, they could be even more proud
o f it. since it would then be a "world property” written by a “woman” already by the year
1000, something that had not happened in any other (for example. Western) country. In
that way, by protecting the female authorship o f Genji, these critics could further the
nationalist ideology—the mythological origin o f Japan as established by a female deity.
Amaterasti [Sun Goddess]—prevalent in the postwar period. Thus the debate among
masculinist scholars about the female authorship drifted back and forth between denial and
affirmations because their pride in the female authorship o f Genji as world literature
conflicted with their ambivalence that this work was written by a woman.
Enchi. however, attempted to question such nationalistic theory. She held that the
story about Genji from the Kiritsubo through the Kumogakure chapter (Genji dies) was the
main story in which Genji is a protagonist, and that the last ten chapters ( Uji juccho) were a
sub-story, probably written by a different author.363
After having spent considerable time with Genji translating it into modem
language, I can confidently assert that the main story with Genji was certainly
written by one author. But were the subsequent three chapters (Niou no miya,
Kobai, and Takekawa) and the ten chapters o f Uji. which have been credited and
loved as a masterpiece superior to the main story, written by the same author? I
have too many doubts about this theory.J<w
363Enchi, "Genji monogatari no hiroin-tachi [Heroines in Genji monogatari].

(Tokyo: Kodansha. 1994). p. 137; Enchi, “Genji monogatari shiken, p. 358.
364Enchi, Genji monogatari shiken, p. 354.

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She did not say whether those last chapters were written by a woman or a man. But how
difficult it was for a woman writer to challenge the traditional theory o f authorship is
shown in Enchi's self-deprecating comment:
As I wrote before, I am a mere amateur as far as Japanese linguistics (kokugo-gakii)

or Japanese literature (kokubun-gaku) is concerned, although I translated Genji into
modem language. Therefore, what I am expressing now is just my personal
question or answer to it which spontaneously arose in my mind while translating.
This issue may have been already proposed and discussed by many experts o f each
field. If so, I would be like a fool who complains about the darkness in a room
while cloistering m yself in daytime, but anyway I will keep writing my honest
views like (Yoshida) Kenko, who says, “you will be frustrated if you bottle up your
feelings."365
The special status and authority of Japanese linguistics and Japanese literature, as I
discussed in the second chapter, obviously shadowed her challenge. Not surprisingly.
Enchi's question did not seem to be taken up or discussed seriously by other scholars, as
far as I know.
On the other hand, when Yosano. Enchi’s predecessor in this regard, claimed that
Genji was written by two authors, her view provoked and influenced the scholarly
authorities. Yosano said that it was some years before she began work on the Shin-
shin ’y akn that she realized that there were two authors o f Genji:
The Tale o f Genji can be divided into two large parts: the part in which Hikaru [sic]
and Murasaki are the main characters, and the part in which Kaoru and Ukifune are
the main characters. When we reach the ten Uji chapters in the second part, the
extreme glitter and refinement o f the exquisite narrative of the first part give way to
simpler descriptive
365Ibid.. p. 354.

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p a ssa g e s/66
Rowley said. "A kiko's opinion is still valued as a pioneering work o f modem scholarship
on Murasaki Shikibu, in which several o f the critical approaches o f twentieth-century Genji
studies are foreshadowed.”367 Mitani Kuniaki also praised it. saying, “as regards critical
methodology, all o f the critical approaches that we now term modem—the empiricist, the
socio-historical method; the cultural-historical method; the aesthetic method and so on—are
found in germinal form.”368 Modem studies o f the structure o f Genji. according to
Teramoto Naohiko, began with Yosano’s designation o f a sharp structural break following
“Fuji no Uraba.” Ikeda Kikan. building his argument on Yosano's observation, developed
his thesis o f a tripartite Genji and his hypothetical reconstruction o f the order in which the
component chapters were composed.369 As Rowley pointed out. Yosano successfully
moved from the status o f a mere romance-reader o f Genji (usually women) to the status of
a scholar o f the classic (mostly men), Genji.
Genji as the Center o f a Mandala
366Yosano Akiko, "Shin ’y aku Genji monogatari no nochi m ' [After New
Translation o f Genji monogatari], in Shin 'yaku Genji monogatari (Kanao Bun'endo. 1912-
13), Vol. 4: pp. 1-7.
367Rowlev. p. 149.
368Mitani Kuniaki, “Kaisetsu” [Commentary], Genji monogatari I: Nihon bungaku

kenkyushiryosdsho series (Tokyo: Yuseido, 1969), pp. 329-30
369Rowley. pp. 149-50. Akiko's “writings also touch upon many other subjects such
as classical poetry. Heian period literary salons, the Heian period wom an's ‘education.* and
Japanese w om en's writing in general. The sources upon w’hich she bases her consideration
o f these matters range not only over the entire corpus o f Heian writing in Japanese
(wabun), but also a considerable body o f writing in Chinese, such as the M ido kanpaku ki,
Shdyuki, and Honchdreiso(c. 1010).”
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m is s io n o f t h e cop y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n p rohib ited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

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As we saw, Tamagami Takuya’s characterization o f Genji as a story about the
world o f “women,” written for “women,” and by a “woman” reflected the general
understanding o f this story as “ feminine.” For example, masculinist critics in general
focussed on the women with whom Genji had a relationship and pushed Genji aside into a
comer. Similarly, even some feminist critics have promoted the significance o f the women
characters over against the protagonist, Hikaru Genji. Enchi clearly dismissed such
“feminine” or “feminist” readings o f Genji and the Genji story.
Hikaru Genji was, for Enchi, a superstar. She saw the story as a mandala (a
Buddhist cosmic tapestry) woven by the author. Hikaru Genji. the superstar male
protagonist endowed with beauty, intelligence, good lineage and generosity, was the
shining center o f the mandala. surrounded by multiple flower petal-like women each with
her own background and personality. The author was probably hoping, when she started
writing the story, that w om en's souls would be saved and enlightened by Hikaru Genji (a
Buddha figure), by experiencing and overcoming each of their own tragedies or conflicts.
However, according to Enchi. contrary to the author’s initial desire, no women were saved.
Enchi viewed Genji as a kind o f bildungsroman o f a superstar, a novel concerned
with the intellectual or spiritual unfolding o f the main character, Genji. Like a
hero/heroine in older narratives (mukashi monogatari), Genji was a character who started
out with stigmas: the tragic union o f his parents (the Emperor and his concubine), and the
adventurous aspect of his personality (ayanikunite). These two fatal stigmas led to further
handicaps in G enji's situation. First, he was bom from a mother who came from a non
royal family; second, from the start he had an enemy, the Kokiden Empress, and a rival. To

204
no Chujo; third, he was exiled to a rural area (Akashi/Suma) to avoid accusations about his
involvement with Oborozukiyo, Kokiden's sister and a concubine o f the Suzaku Emperor.
To add further blows to Genji, Enchi said, the author gave him the additional burden in his
later years o f being the cuckolded husband o f the Third Princess.370 Instead o f finding love
and fortune at the end of the story, like a hero o f earlier narratives (mukashi monogatari),
Genji lost both love and pride. The oddly woven mandala Enchi saw in the story was the
result partly o f G enji's adventurous personality. The notion o f tragedy stemming from the
personality o f a great hero was a fashionable reading o f Greek tragedy and Shakespearean
tragedy in the postwar period. From Enchi's viewpoint, therefore. Genji was not a mere
romantic figure like in the older narratives, but the complex mature man of desire, violence
and guilt o f a Western tragedy or modem novel. As a result, in Enchi's view this splendid
mandala with Genji at the center turned out to be a totally different tapestry in the last
moments o f G enji's life. The wounds he had inflicted on Fujitsubo. Utsusemi. or Rokujo
in his youth returned to him as a deeper wound: Genji’s young wife, the Third Princess,
cuckolded him and bore the child o f Kashiwagi. The magnificent mandala. Enchi says,
was suddenly transformed into a picture o f hell (jigoku-zu).371 Genji, the superstar, became
a falling star because o f his own flaws.
Such a critical view o f Genji stands in contrast to Yosano's view o f Genji in her
translation. Pointing out the missing parts in Yosano's first translation (Shin yaku).
370Enchi. "Genji monogatari shiken." pp. 359-60.
37IEnchi supposed that Murasaki Shikibu had read Genshin Sozu's Q oyashu.
which depicted several aspects o f hell in detail.

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Rowley notes that all o f them, like the suppressed climactic scene, diminished the image o f
Genji as the perfect lover, and are omitted in Akiko's translation o f "Hahakigi." It is as if
Yosano “is protecting her hero from the possibility that the readers might think ill of
him."372 Going further, Rowley speculates that by “obscuring G enji's fictional flaws,”
Yosano is actually “shielding herself from the very real flaws in her (by then) husband."
Rowley’s conflation o f Yosano’s private love life with her husband, and the resulting
interpretation of Yosano’s translation, are problematic. As argued in Part One. masculinist
critics o f women writers tend to search in the lives o f women writers for the sources of
fiction written by women. It was not Yosano. but such critics, here including Rowley, who
conflate the world of fiction and fact. This point is made clear by Enchi in her essays. 7’
Miyabi in Genji: Refinement and Cruelty
Enchi gave a new meaning to the term “miyabi" [refinement] when she used it to
describe Genji. Before investigating Enchi's configuration, let us look at this term miyabi.
It has an interesting history in the modem period. Mostow states that from the 1930/40s
through 1970 the concept o f miyabi was attached to Japanese classics such as Ise
monogatari and was elevated to an aesthetic category referring to “the beauty o f Japan."374
0 ka2aki too, a critic in the prewar period, for example, stated in an essay that miyabi
originated in China, that a similar concept was seen in Man yashu, and that it finally
372RowIey, pp. 112, 116. In Yosano's second translation o f Genji (Shin-shin yaku)
such defensiveness disappears.
373See chapter three in Part One o f the present study.
374Mostow. pp. 357-8.

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became typically “Japanese” in Ise monogatari.™ However, for Okazaki miyabi referred
to something “romantic,” or “romantic love.” that implied an “interactive and equal”
relationship between a man and a woman.376
In the postwar period the concept of miyabi, as suggesting an equal relationship o f
romantic love, seemed to have shifted back to something more aesthetic. Enchi too was
not against such a trend o f aestheticization, and in characterizing Genji used miyabi in its
more aesthetic and aristocratic sense as equivalent to “royal descendent,” “refinement”
(senren sareta) or “sophistication” (shumi noyosa).377 The significance o f royal blood in
Genji was already pointed out by such Genji scholars as Ikeda Kikan and Tamagami
Takuya.378 But in Enchi's new use o f the term miyabi was specifically connected not only
37<iOkazaki Yoshie, “ 'Miyabi ’ no dento' [Tradition o f ‘M iyabi'], in Bungaku:

miyabi ' no dento [Literature: Tradition o f ‘Refinement'] (November 1943): pp. 354-5.
376Ibid. Such a redefinition o f the relationship o f a woman as an equal partner with

a man came from Christians like Iwamoto Zenji in the 1880s and the Japanese Romantic
School (roman shugi). It reflected efforts among Meiji intellectuals who wanted to catch
up with the West by constructing an instant image o f a modem Japan that had liberated
women by giving women subjectivity and autonomy. The status o f women was a show-
window to display to the world the degree of development and liberation o f a modem
country.
Adopting this modem notion o f love-romanticism, Enchi too viewed the Kiritsubo
emperor and his concubine. Genji’s mother, as having an “interactive and equal” love
relationship. As a result, she challenged the traditional interpretation o f the asymmetrical
hierarchical relationship o f that couple-em peror as master and his lover as passive servant
-based on the Chinese counterparts.
377Enchi. “Gen// monogatari no hiroin-tachi,” p. 96.
378Ikeda stated that the Genji story consisted o f three parts: the life o f Hikaru Genji.
the life of Kashiwagi, and the life o f Kaoru. He described G enji's life in the first part as a
“bright and lyrical life under the Emperors’ reign” (tenno-tochika no akaniijojdtekina
jinsei) in contrast to the sad and tragic life of Kashiwagi under the reign o f the regency in
the second part, or the dark and stoic life o f Kaoru. who was also o f royal blood, in the last

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to G enji’s aesthetic refinement and literary talent but also to the shamanistic power of
emperors that ran in his veins.
Enchi further ties miyabi to cruelty in the Genji character, a feature which had also
been noted by several critics. For instance, Tamagami saw Genji as the story o f the cruelty
o f Genji, who “tried to hold power.”379 Seidensticker concluded that Genji was a “cruel”
(zankokuna) story, because Genji forced women, especially Fujitsubo, to have a
relationship with him.380 Maruya Saichi, too. remarked upon the cruelty o f Genji, who. in
the Wakana chapter, psychologically tortured his young wife, the Third Princess, and her
lover. Kashiwagi.381 According to Enchi, G enji's “wildness” (takedakeshisa) [no one other
than Enchi used this term o f Genji] destroyed his magnificent gi fts—his beauty, talents and
good lineage: the dangerous aspect o f personality drove him to tragedy and self-
destruction. ail o f which made the story deeper and more complex. '82 However, unlike any
o f these scholars, Enchi was the only one to link the aspects o f refinement or cultural
superiority and shamanistic power or cruelty in her concept o f the miyabi o f the Genji
character.
part. We should note that Ikeda connected Genji’s royal blood to “lyricism” {jojo) in his
remarks. Similarly, Tamagami Takuya, another postwar expert on Genji, saw Genji as the
story of Hikaru and Kaoru—both “members of the Imperial family” or “descendants o f the
Imperial family” (kozoku oyobi kozoku shusshinsha).
379Tamagami. ibid.
380Seidensticker’s comments in Uen no hitobito to, p. 56.
381Maruya Saiichi’s comments in Uen no hitobito to, p. 86.
382Enchi. “Genji monogatari shiken, pp. 336. 342.

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Enchi talked not only about the cruelty in Genji himself but also about the cruelty
o f the whole structure of Genji'.
The main story o f Genji (until the chapter o f Kumogakure) appears elegantly
covered in softly layered clothes, exempt from murder, suicide, or natural disaster.
Beneath the clothes, however, a robust historical structure is hidden. This is the
cruel viewpoint, I think, which the author learned from Chinese classics such as
“The Record o f Great Historians.”383
She repeated the same view in her dialogue with Oe Kenzaburo:
They often say that Genji embodies “ephemeralness” (mono no aware), but I do not
think so [...] it has something cruel but covered up by refined garments
(miyabiyakana isho) [...] I feel it is a scary novel [...] I have a kind o f fear o f it.384
For Enchi cruelty (zankokusa) and refinement (miyabi) were wonderfully intertwined in the
story o f Genji and in G enji's personality: the former as the core and the latter as sugar-
coating covering over the cruelty. Enchi thus rejected the view o f Nogami Yaoko. a
Marxist writer, who reduced Genji to an “emotional” (joshotekina) novel. Nogami said in
a conversation with Enchi:
I would like to tell you, Enchi-san, that it is high time you shook off Murasaki
Shikibu and went beyond her. I am not saying you should not have any relations
with her. [But] Murasaki Shikibu was not very aware o f the age she lived in. That is
not surprising. You, Enchi-san, however, are not Murasaki. You will have to shake
off Genji monogatari so that you can get out o f the emotion-centeredness o f
Japanese literature, don’t you think?385
Enchi simply replied, “ Is that so? I do not think that Genji monogatari is an emotional
383Ibid.. p. 360.
384Enchi, Uen no hitobito to. p. 133.
385Nogami Yaoko's comments in Uen no hitobito to, pp. 110-11.

209
(jashotekina) work."386
While Nogami Yaoko saw Genji as emotional in a critical and negative sense, other
Genji scholars elevated its status precisely because they saw it as “emotional," “lyrical,” or
the embodiment of mono no aware. Tamagami Takuya was one o f them:
Emotion rather than intelligence or will-power was the world o f this story, in which
the world o f the aesthetic in that period was sublimated. This was the embodiment
of “ mono no aware," which later Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) called the
aesthetic life as the supreme ideology o f ethics. In this story the concept o f
classical literature was realized.387
Just as Nogami Yaoko contrasted Genji with Western literature, which he viewed as “non-
emotional" and “conscientious." and devalued the former as lagging behind. Tamagami
lauded the description of Genji's “aesthetic life" and the lyricism o f its waka in contrast to
the “bony" coarseness of the Chinese literary work. The Record o f Great Historians, by
Szuma Chien.388 This ranking of Chinese literature at the bottom. Japanese literature as
second, and Western literature as first is. paradoxically, shared by both critics.389 For a
nationalist critic like Tamagami, Genji was a wonderful emblem for the peaceful image of
the Japanese nation and its culture, which should be different from Western culture and
superior to Chinese culture. This ideology o f the “particularity of Heian literature"—the
386Ibid.
387Tamagami. “Comments," p. 19.
388Ibid., p. 16. We should remind ourselves that Enchi sees the same structure of
The Record o f Great Historians in the story o f Genji, and further that she identifies her loss
o f sexual organs with Szuma Chien's loss o f his male organ. For Enchi Chinese literature
was a model and resource for her own literature.
389The lowered status o f Chinese literature followed Japan’s victory over China in
Sino-Japanese War (1894-95).

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feminization and aestheticization o f Genji—was. as we have seen, challenged by Enchi.
who saw, beneath the sugar coating o f miyabi, femininity and romance, rather the
“cruelty,” “wildness” and “violence” o f both the protagonist and the story.
The story that Marxist writers like Nogami interpreted as one o f class struggle was
not the story Enchi saw. She deliberately avoided a hermeneutic o f class-struggle in her
reading o f Genji.390 In one sense, Enchi’s reinterpretation o f miyabi. of both cultural
refinement and shamanistic power coursing together in the veins o f royal blood,
reproduced and reinforced the symbolic power o f the royal family as an aristocratic class,
the owners o f cultural superiority. But at the same time, by exposing the cruelty of miyabi
beneath G enji's shining surface, she unmasked the cultural violence o f a nationalist
ideology o f Japanese “aesthetics.”
Miyabi in Rokujo: Aesthetic Skills and Strong Ego
Enchi also presented a new interpretation o f Rokujo miyasudokoro, seeing her as in
effect Genji’s double, thereby reinforcing her re-reading o f the Genji character. Enchi
views the Rokujo lady as one o f the leading characters in Genji. She is the ex-prince’s
widow, who became the lover of the young Genji. She is reputed to have killed Genji’s
lover and wife out o f jealousy through the projection o f her shamanistic powers. After the
Rokujo lady’s death, to appease her departed soul Genji builds his house in Rokujo, where
the Rokujo lady used to live, and takes responsibility for many o f the women with whom
he had been involved. He also supports the Rokujo lady’s daughter. Akikonomu. to
become an empress.
390Enchi. Uen no hitobito to, p. 108.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n o f th e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n proh ibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

211
In Enchi's characterization the Rokujo lady too. like Genji. is described as the
embodiment of miyabi (refinement).391 In Rokujo’s case miyabi is connected to “literary
ability” (bungakusei) and “lyricism” (jojasei). As a member of the royalty she presides
over a stylish household attended by highly cultivated ladies-in-waiting, she herself is
skilled in the literary art o f waka and the fashionable arts o f fragrance and dying o f clothes,
and she frequently invites cultured male courtiers to her house for literary and aesthetic
gatherings.392
However, for Enchi the term miyabi as applied to Rokujo also implies, as with
Genji. a more complex set o f features. In describing her as a woman o f miyabi. Enchi
characterizes Rokujo positively not only as a woman with literary skills and aesthetic
sensibilities, but also as an intelligent woman with a strong sense of agency, what Enchi
refers to as a “strong ego." The Rokujo lady held a high position as widow o f the ex
prince. she was financially powerful, she taught love to Genji. she later left him o f her own
accord, and. finally, she persuaded Genji not to make her daughter one o f his lovers but to
take care of her. Thus, unlike traditional representations o f Rokujo as a crazy, jealous
ghost-figure and as mere side-character in the story, Enchi’s portrayal situates Rokujo near
391 Miyabi is also used for Akikonomu, the daughter o f Rokujo miyasudokoro
(.Akikonomu no miyabiyakana joshu). Enchi contrasted Akikonomu, who was an
aristocratic woman with lyrical literary skills but without any shamanistic power, to the
Akashi lady, who was a practical woman who suppressed her ego because o f her lower-
class lineage. However, both women shared something in common that resembled Rokujo,
according to Enchi.
39:Ibid.. p. 96. Enchi said. “(Rokujo) seems something. We are not sure about her
background, but she must be a really refined (miyabina) woman. We can tell that from the
smart court ladies she was keeping and from the elegant tasteful lifestyle (yugana shumi no
aru) she led.”

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the center of the mandala as one o f the most influential women throughout Genji's life.
But there is more. As noted, Enchi viewed Rokujo as Genji’s double, but with a
twist. For Enchi also claims that the dark side o f Genji’s personality, his cruelty, is
reflected as shamanistic power in the Rokujo lady.393 In other words, the cruelty and
violence o f Rokujo’s spirit was rather the projection o f Genji’s own evil mind:
The following poem and its preface are from the collected poetry o f Murasaki
Shikibu, author o f The Tale o f Genji: "On seeing a painting wherein the vengeful
ghost of the first wife, having seized the second, is exorcised by prayers":
Suffering from the rancor o f the dead—
Or might it be the devil in one’s own heart?
Murasaki Shikibu's modernism is evident here in the skeptical view she takes o f the
medium’s powers (although exorcism was in her day an established practice), and
in her perception that what is taken for seizure by a malign spirit might in fact be
the working o f the victim's own conscience. One cannot help wondering why she
chose to write so vividly in her novel about a phenomenon in which she herself
seemed to have little faith: in doing so. however, she was able to combine women's
extreme ego suppression and ancient female shamanism, showing both in
opposition to men.394
Enchi concluded: “It (the spirit) could be the projection o f male evil."395 Thus, Enchi
challenged the orthodox understanding o f Rokujo as the embodiment o f a jealous wife who
haunted other women. When did such a negative image o f Rokujo arise? It was when
Rokujo’s spirit was staged in the noh theater, Enchi said, that the negative image of Rokujo
was solidified.396 As we have seen, Enchi refused to accede to any such negative
393Enchi, “Genji monogatari shilcen," p. 346.
394Enchi Fumiko, Masks, pp. 56-7 (New York: Vintage, 1983).
395Ibid.
396Enchi. “Genji monogatari shiken,” p. 344. In Enchi’s view, interpreters have

stressed Rokujo's negative aspects ever since noh scenarios constructed a spooky and
jealous character for her. This negative image o f Rokujo in noh plays might be a reflection

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descriptions o f Rokujo in the text.
Genji as a fiction
Masculinist critics have happily agreed to conspire in creating such femme fatale as
Rokujo. For example, Ikeda Kikan saw in Genji the “truthfulness” (shinjitsusei) and
“interiority” (naimen) o f women which “a woman writer skillfully represented.”397 That
means he supposed that the women characters in Genji (including Rokujo) were
representations o f living women. Enchi did not find the story a “real” representation o f
Heian period culture and society, as some anthropologists and traditional Genji scholars
like Ikeda did.
Unlike Tanizaki. who saw Genji as a “realistic novel." Enchi did not find in the
same story the realistic description of, say. a class struggle by middle-class provincial
governors. The world o f Genji and the characterization o f Genji was a pure fiction, but
soon it became a symbol o f the Heian period, Enchi said.398 Recent scholarship about the
Heian period, too. has corrected the traditional stereotypical understanding o f Heian
aristocrats and their life. “The aristocrats were not merely effeminate,” and while “some
rose up in rebellion,” “some were practical enough to manage and finance their land and
o f the change in status o f women in the medieval period. After the ritsuryo (equal
allotment o f land) system was replaced by the shoen (privatization of the land) system in
the classical period, women were active in Heian public life. However, later as the
patriarchal system became firmly established in the medieval period, women’s status was
degraded. See Amino Yoshihiko. “Nihon no rekishi wo yomi-naosu" [Re-reading Japanese
History] vol. 1. Tokyo: Chikuma. 1996, pp. 186-89.
397Ikeda. “Genji monogatari to Akiko-Genji, pp. 648-54.
398Enchi, Masks, p. 74.

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property," and "'some were strong enough to settle down in the rural area as warriors."31”
Likewise, according to recent historians, ladies-in-waiting at court (nyobo). who have been
taken as symbols o f a feminine court culture, actually were rather active in the political and
financial arenas o f the court.400 Enchi also pointed out that the heroines o f nikki literature
often walked long distances to visit temples, and that court women, instead o f inching
along on their knees, probably stood up and walked around more often than was believed.
If so. when and why did the effeminization o f the Heian aristocrats begin? Kurozumi
suspects that, when the samurai class took the initiative and when poetry/monogatari
learning was reduced to merely a genre of classicism in the Kamakura period, Kokinshu
and Genji monogatari came to be viewed as representative o f Heian culture and effeminate
aristocrats as portrayed in the Genji scroll.401
“Heian Court Literature” and Feminization
Another problem lies in constructing the “Heian Court Literature” as a symbol of
the “Golden Age.” For example, Tamagami labeled Genji as the embodiment of mono no
aware. “the concept o f Heian Court literature.”402 Lumping together various kinds o f Heian
literature and labeling them equally as mono no aware or “feminine" was itself
problematic, since such a generalization erases the diversity o f the literature in that period.
399Kurozumi, “ Kangaku: sono shoki, seisei, ken 7," in Sozdsareta koten, p. 234.
400Yoshikawa Shinji, “Heian jid a i ni okent nyobo no sonzai keitaf ’ [Ladies in

waiting in Heian Period] in Jenda no Nihon-shi [The History o f Gender], vol. 2. Wakita
Haruko & S. B. Hanley eds. (Tokyo: Tokyo UP). 1995.
40llbid.
402Tamagami, p. 19.

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Besides, viewing the Heian period and culture as the “Golden Age" leads to hailing the
domination by the royal family and aristocrats.'103 Most nationalist scholars attempted to
fabricate the “Golden Age” o f “Japanese culture,” by choosing Genji as the best example.
Enchi objected to such labeling o f Genji as the representative of a unitary Heian literature
o f mono no aware. She claimed that there was a difference, for example, between Genji
and KagerdDiary, the former was a fiction, the latter was a memoir which includes a lot of
“facts” from the author’s private life. By pointing out the differences among works written
by women writers in the Heian period, Enchi challenged the nationalist scheme for
construing a monolithic and singular concept o f “Heian literature” as the prime period of
“Japanese culture.” As we have seen before, there have been nationalist schemes of
labeling “Heian literature" as "feminine." on which to base the image o f Japan as a
peaceful nation grounded in a “feminine” tradition. Tamagami Takuya’s characterization of
Genji as a story about the world o f “women,” written for “women," and by a “woman”
reflected such discourse about this story as “feminine."
Where Is the Narrator?
Enchi’s concept of spirit (mono no ke) was related to the narrative structure o f the
Genji. Where is the narrator positioned in the original context o f Genji. inside or outside
the story? And how does Enchi change the position o f the narrator? Rowley states that
“Murasaki made the narrator both a participant in and an observer o f the world o f the text
J03The definition o f “Golden Age” [Ogon jidai] varies according to the scholars.
Usually it means the periods reigned by the Emperors Daigo (897-929), Murakami (946-
966), and Ichijo (986-1010) Emperors.

through the use of deferential and humble language."404 According to Nagai Kazuko,
Tanizaki basically follows the text as far as the narrator's position is concerned. Nagai saw
a hierarchical relationship between the narrator (lower social status) and the audience
(higher social status) in the story. In the enacting o f the narrative (katari) the humble but
proud narrator shows the superior but passive audience around a strange world {mono). In
this regard, Tanizaki was “a writer who re-introduced the narrative function {katari no
kind) o f older narratives into a modem novel.’'405 It is well-known that Tanizaki's
translation follows the orthodox theory o f Tamagami Takuya, who categorizes Genji as
nyobo bungaku (narrative by Iadies-in-waiting), and who sees a Iady-in- waiting as the
narrator o f the story.4"6 Thus. Tanizaki's narrator is located inside the story as in the older
narratives (monogatari). According to Rowley, on the other hand. Yosano’s paring away
o f honorific words (keigo) “marks the narrator as someone ‘outside’ the world o f the text,
distant from both the characters and the events.”407
Then, where is Enchi's narrator located? The status o f the narrator in Enchi's story
is similar to that of Nagai. Let us look further at Nagai's theory o f the narrator:
I might go too far in saying so, but supposing Genji is a story about the whole Genji
clan who has had both glamor and skeletons in their closets, it is possible that an
404Rowley, p. 96.
405Noguchi Takehiko. “ 'Katarite ' sozo—Genji monogatari, hohoto shite no katari'

[Construction o f ‘the Narrator’—Genji monogatari: the narrative as a method] in
Koknbungakn (October 1982).
406Tamagami Takuya. “Genji monogatari hydshaku bekkan I." in Genji monogatari

kenkyu (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten. 1966).
40?Rowley. p. 56.

217
aged narrator is telling the story to a particular younger member of the Genji c lan /08
Placing stress on the power o f the aged narrator, Nagai suspects that Genji is more a
personal story confided to one “person” than a story told to an undesignated multiple
audience. The narrator hovers around the periphery, moving back and forth from within to
without the story with the mysterious power o f the aged. She lives within in that she
knows the secrets o f the clan, but at the same time she lives without in that she tells the
story objectively in the third person. As Nagai says:
There is a great untranscendable gap between the narrator and the narrated in Genji.
The nobie never confide to other people, keep silent, and hold serious secrets, [...]
while ladies-in-waiting and the aged are petty, alien, and peripheral, tell everything
about people, speak up beyond the time and occasion, and open a new development
within the story.409
The narrator o f Genji possesses the distinctive powers o f the aged which grants her the
ability to weave the story. In other words, the narrator's marginal status gives her the
special mission of narrating.
Enchi's concept o f the narrator in Genji is similar to Nagai's understanding o f the
Genji story. The narrator in her translation o f Genji does use honorific words, but at the
same time stands rather aloof from sympathy for Genji and his people, except for some
characters like the Utsusemi or Rokujo ladies. She seems to move freely within and
without the story. Repeatedly mentioning the structure o f “The Record o f Great
Historians” by Szuma Chien as a model for Genji. Enchi speculates that the cruel but
408Nagai Kazuko, Genji monogatari to oi [Genji monogatari and Aging] (Tokyo:

Kasama, 1995). p. 19.
409Ibid„ pp. 230-31.

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realistic viewpoint o f the narrator o f Gertji came from the historical viewpoint of the great
Chinese historian. Focusing on Szuma Chien’s social stigma as a eunuch, Enchi sees him,
too, as an agent exercising his peripheral, alien power in the story.410 The eunuch’s
stigmatized corporeality (de-sexualized) and his (paradoxical) power as the narrator
coincidentally match Nagai's concept o f the stigmatized aged narrator.
On the other hand, Enchi’s narrator goes beyond Nagai’s conceptualization. Her
view o f the narrator in Gertji came up in her conversation with Nakagami Kenji about the
narrator of a story written by Ueda Akinari (1734-1809). Contrasting it with the position
of the narrator in works o f Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724), they agreed that
Chikamatsu's narrator appealed to the contemporary reader's sympathy and compassion,
while Ueda Akinari's narrator was completely isolated and was not aimed at appealing to
the sympathy o f the audience.411 The narrator in Akinari’s stories spoke as an alien from
outside the community, while Chikamatsu's narrator was immersed in the community,
weeping together with the audience.412 Enchi and Nakagami acknowledged that Gertji s
narrator was similar to Akinari’s.413 Enchi’s narrator in Gertji is situated outside the
4l0Eunuchs were despised because it was believed that the human body was granted
by their parents and ancestors, and the act o f damaging it went against their filial love and
ethics. On the other hand, eunuchs lived at the center o f the court serving women and
exercising power on court politics through women. See Kaizuka Shigeki, ed.. Shiba-Sert.
Tokyo: Chuo koronsha, 1994.
4"Nakagami (Cenji’s comments in Uert no hitobito to, pp. 184-88.
4 i: A s for the narrator in Chikamatsu's double suicide plays, see Sakai Naoki. "'Jo to
kcmsho: seiai no jasho to kydkan to shntai-teki gijutsu wo megntte." in Jenda no Nihon-shi.
vol. 2.
4I3Enchi. Gen no hitobito to. p. 188.

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communal emotional oneness o f the characters in the story and of the readers.
2. Comparison of Enchi’s Translation with Translations by Yosano and by Tanizaki
1 should now like to consider some stylistic features that exhibit differences
between what Enchi was trying to do in her translation and what, despite some similarities,
Yosano and Tanizaki were trying to do. The very first phrase in the first chapter, the
Kiritsubo chapter, o f each translation reflects different decisions about the issue o f the
sounds and rhythms o f the Genji text:
\zure no ohontoki nika.......................... (Teika text. 1162-1241)

Its*/ no jidai de atta ka.......................... (Yosano. first translation. 1912-13).
Do no tenno-samci no miyo de attaka...{ Yosano, second translation. 1938-39).
Itsugoro no miyo no koto de attcika (Tanizaki. first translation, 1939-41).
I/si/ no miyo no koto deshitaka (Tanizaki. second translation. 1951-54 ).
N anto y u mikado no miyo no koto deshitaka...(Tanizaki. third translation. 1964-65).
Itsu no miyo no koto de attaka.............(Enchi, 1972-73).
In a certain period..................................(Scidcnstickcr, 1976).
Most o f the Japanese translations, and Seidensticker's in English, began with the sound “I"
except Tanizaki who used “na” in his last translation, and Yosano who used “do" in her
last translation. Enchi noted that Kawabata Yasunari in a lecture on Genji criticized a
certain translation (not the one by Yosano) because it began with “do”: “Dono jid a i no koto
de attaka.”414 He did not think “do ” was an appropriate sound for the original sound. “I”
(izure no ohontoki nika...). It is worthy to note that Enchi clearly remembered Kawabata's
criticism about the phonetic difference between the original and the translation. Enchi
seems to have followed Kawabata’s theory-faithful to the original sound—by beginning
with the sound “I. ” On the other hand, both Yosano and Tanizaki gave up adopting the
4l4Ibid„ pp. 44-5.

220
original sound in their second and third translation respectively.
Whether they believe the theory o f an “oral” tradition or not, most translators
obviously tried to maintain the similar sounds and rhythms o f the Teika text. Tanizaki said
he tried “not to destroy the spirit of Heian court culture by transforming the original at
will.”415 As for waka, Tanizaki was eager to reproduce in his translation the “rhythms” and
“sounds” of the original text. On the whole, except for his Kyoto dialect, his translation (at
least its intent) turned out to be quite close to the scholarly annotated edition with its many
footnotes.
Enchi’s General Comments on Yosano and Tanizaki’s Translations
Enchi mostly followed the style o f Yosano. using Tanizaki as her counter-example.
saying that she and Yosano had a similar attachment to Genji monogcitari in their girlhood.
Consequently, she attributed the difference o f style in translation between Yosano and
Tanizaki primarily to each one’s personal relationships with the classic. On the whole,
although Enchi had a positive view of Yosano’s work as a creative translation, she
concluded that Yosano’s poetic gift was not adequate for writing prose.416 As for
Tanizaki’s translation, Enchi pointed to his more formal and “square” commitment to the
translation in contrast to Yosano:
Tanizaki’s translation is more serious. On the other hand, the translation by

Yosano, since her commitment to Genji started in her childhood, showed she was
more attached to it, that she had befriended the story. That is why she felt free even
to change poems in Genji\ feeling quite comfortable and confident, therefore, she
could do anything with the story. The relationship between Genji and Tanizaki,
4l5Ibid.. pp. 4-5.
4I6Ibid.. pp. 12-4.

221
however, was more stiff and formal. He thought that this was a very precious
Japanese classic, that the reader should sit and read it in a way that paid formal
respect to it, and so he felt he “had an obligation” to translate it himself.”417
Enchi concluded that Tanizaki’s translation was “too difficult for young people to read and
enjoy,” although his writing was an example o f “good Japanese” (Nihongo no bunsho
toshite ii bunsho no hitotsu).M%
Overview o f Differences in Style o f Translation
Let us take a more detailed look at the differences in style o f three o f the
translations: Enchi's, Yosano's Shin-shin 'yciku. and Tanizaki’s Shin-shin yaku. The chart
provides an initial overview.
Enchi Tanizaki (third) Yosano (second)
copula de aru, de alia gozaimasu de aru, de atta

gozaimashita
speech direct indirect direct
honorific expressions many many few except for

imperial family
subjects inserted omitted or elided inserted
notes none (submerged many none (submerged

inside the body) inside the body)
conventional names few used few used used

o f the characters
4l7Enchi. Uen no hitobito to, pp. 127. 42. Similar statements are seen in “Genji
monogatari no hiroin-tachi'' p. 14.
418Enchi, Uen no hitobito to, p. 42.

222
slang Edo slang Kyoto vocabulary Taisho slang (bi,

(itoshirashf, (eraku) hinarumono, fujin,
nasakerashi ala- mibdjin. nyoo, kijo)
nikurashi ata-
kawairasi)
additions many none Yosano’s own waka
omissions precedent waka, none most honorific words

notes for Yusoku
kojitsu
changes past to present aspect none some

present to past aspect
woman’s language
for young Genji
Copula—Feminine or Masculine
One interesting contrast is that both women translators (Enchi and Yosano) use a
plain copula. “de a r u ’ or "de a tta " while the male translator (Tanizaki) uses a polite form,
“de arimasu" or "de gozaimashita." As noted above. Tanizaki's first translation uses "de
aru” or "de a tta " but he shifts in his second and third translations to a more polite form.
Not only in the copula but elsewhere Tanizaki deliberately uses Kyoto and Yamanote
(upper-middle class residential area in Tokyo) style, "irurashugozaimashita" or
"mdshiagetogozaimashite." It was Enchi who pointed out his “feminine” style in contrast
to the “manly” (otoko-ppoi) and “brisk and laconic” (paki-pakitto sita) style in Yosano's
translation. Enchi was especially critical of Tanizaki’s polite forms (gozaimasu,
gozaimashita), because she thought he used them for creating a “ feminine” atmosphere in
the original story. Despite Enchi's usual stereotypical dichotomy of gender, she obviously
tries to avoid deliberate feminization in her translation.

223
Direct Speech or Indirect Speech
Another difference is that while only Tanizaki used indirect speech, which he
adopted from the Teika text, both Yosano and Enchi for the most part used direct speech
except for a few cases in Enchi.'"9 Enchi argued that Tanizaki’s use o f indirect speech
submerged in the prose was rather difficult for modem readers to read. As she admitted,
her own frequent use and primary emphasis on direct speech in her translation came from
her experiences as a playwright.'*20 The movement for a new language (kogo), a new poetry
(shintaishi), a new theater (shingeki) was prevalent in Enchi’s days. Therefore, it is not
surprising to see that the translation o f classics by Yosano and Enchi was colored by the
techniques o f the modem novel. Tanizaki, on the other hand, stayed with the indirect
speech of the older narrative style.
Honorific Words
According to Enchi. a characteristic difference between Yosano’s and the other
translations was that Yosano eliminated most honorific words except those directed toward
the imperial family. She did not use them even for Genji until he became the Great
Emperor (dajdtenno). In this regard, Yosano’s is the most modem and colloquial
■*l9One reason why Enchi preferred the direct speech may be that in each lines a
subject can emerge, instead o f letting the narrator telling everything as an intermediary.
420It was well-known that Enchi belonged to the Tsukiji Theater led by Osanai
Kaoru (1881-1928), who attempted to adopt Western theories into the Japanese theater.
The status o f Japanese theater arts such as noh. kydgen.joniri, kabuki. etc. suddenly rose in
the Meiji period. It was certainly related to the influx o f European theater—Greek
tragedies, Shakespeare, operas, and so on. The theater was elevated from “entertainment”
(geino) to “arts” (geijutsu) as the embodiment o f “national literature." See Haruo Shirane,
“Introduction," in Scfcdsareta koten, p. 23.

224
translation among the three. Both the translations by Tanizaki and Enchi are equipped with
a considerable amount of honorific words, although they claim to have cut them to a
minimum. Takenishi Hiroko lauds Enchi’s use o f honorific expressions as a guide for
modem people who are often at a loss how to use them properly. As mentioned earlier, the
narrator’s position in Genji may be determined by whether or not she uses honorific words
in telling the story.
Footnotes
Both Tanizaki and Seidensticker follow the traditional commentaries on Genji by
having a large amount of footnotes. Neither Yosano nor Enchi's translation have footnotes
on yusoku kojitsu (knowledge about court practices and usages). As discussed earlier, re
introducing the knowledge about the ancient practices in the translation reproduced and
reinforced the “tradition” o f Japanese history. It is also the case with the re-introduction of
earlier source waka (honka) in modem translation. Enchi eliminates these practices and
puts only short and simple translations o f waka at the bottom o f the page. We see here
Enchi’s resistance to the authority o f waka. as well as her preference for direct access to the
original without any intermediary scholarly annotations.
Slang
Yosano used Taisho period terms such as “Mrs. Murasaki” (Murasaki fnjin) for
Murasaki, and “the Widow” (mibcjin) for the Kiritsubo lady’s mother, something that
might amuse the Showa/Heisei reader. Terms like “beauty” (bi) or “something beautiful"
(bi-naru mono) were also a reflection of Taisho Romanticism. Enchi was critical o f
Yosano's use of the popular vocabulary o f the Taisho period as well as o f Tanizaki's use of

225
Kyoto slang. She objected to Tanizaki’s frequent use o f the western area (Kansai) dialect
in his translation. For example, she told him she wished he had not used the word “eraku”
(very) so often. Enchi pointed out Tanizaki’s deliberate effort to use many words from
Kyoto dialect in particular, for example, terms such as “utsukushff’ instead of
“utsukushiku” (beautiful) in Tokyo dialect.421 The interesting question his stylistic
preference raises is whether his adoration for Kansai culture and language originated only
from his personal preference or stemmed from a general tendency among writers and
intellectuals at that time. In any case, “Kyoto dialect." “Heian culture," and “the feminine”
were combined into one in Tanizaki's mind.
Enchi was cautious in using modem slang in her translation. For example, she did
not allow herself to use modem slang such as “sngoC' or “sugoku .” although they appeared
in the Teika text. For example, in the Hahakigi chapter there is a “sugokumo” in the
original:
Nani gokoro naki sorct no keshiki mo, tada m ini hito kara. en nimo, sugokumo.
miyitni nari.
(The sky, without heart itself, can at these times be friendly or sad, as the beholder
sees it. Seidensticker, p. 45.)
“Sugoku” or “mono-sugoi” are used by modem young people with almost the same
meaning and on occasions similar to those in the Heian text. Enchi said she deliberately
42lEnchi speculated that Tanizaki consciously or unconsciously used Kansai dialect

after he remarried a woman from Kansai and moved there with her. Every time Tanizaki
talked about Kansai, he always praised and ranked Kansai culture at the top o f all others. It
is certainly true that Tanizaki started using Kansai dialect after he moved there. The
Whirlpool (Manji). for example, was written in a confessional style in which the woman
protagonist used Kansai dialect. Despite Tanizaki’s use of many Kansai terms, however,
Kawabata Yasunari still labeled his translation as “Genji narrated by a merchant” (chonin
no Genji monogatari).

226
avoided them in her translation just because “sugoi" was so popular in modem Japan.
Instead she used “sabishigeni kodokuna" (sad and lonely) for "sugokumo."
On the other hand, while criticizing Tanizaki and Yosano's use of dialect or
contemporary slang, she herself used the slang o f the merchants in the Edo period.
“Itoshirair appeared often in her translation o f descriptions o f women:
[Emperor K iritsubo's description o f his lady]
natsukashu rotagenarishiwo oboshi izuruni (Tamagami. p. ).

aikydno koboreru yode itoshirashikatta naki hito (Enchi. Kiritsubo, p. 34).
koi no motta yawarakai bi, enna shitai wo (Yosano, Kiritsubo, p. 19-20).
miyasudokoro no natsukashikumo airashikatta nowo (Tanizaki. Kiritsubo, p. 36).
[Genji's description o f the Yugao ladv|
hitaburuni shitago kokoro wa. ito awaregenaru hito (Tamagami, p. 119).

otoko no y u to o ri ni shitagatte kuru kishitsu wa makotoni itoshirashf (Enchi,
Yugao, p. 155).
kore hodo ju n n a onna wo aisezuniwa irarenaidewa naika to (Yosano, Yugao, p.
1 0 1 ).
hidoku ito'oshiku okanji n in a ru ni tsuketemo (Tanizaki. Yugao. p. 153).
Her vocabulary' came, according to Enchi. from joruri plays.
Subjects/Conventional Names
Yosano and Seidensticker, following the convention, use for each character a name
taken from a related waka (e.g. Yugao or Hanachirusato). names which were not there in
the original text, except for a few personal names like Koremitsu. Tanizaki almost never
inserts the subjects or conventional names at all, saying that he tried to be faithful to the
original, since “it had been (Japanese) tradition to suggest a name in an indirect way. not to
state it directly." Enchi occasionally inserts the subjects when necessary, feeling that
otherwise it is too difficult for the reader to speculate who is acting: for example. Suzaku-in

227
wa/Fujilsubo no miya wa, etc. Instead of using Yugao or Utsusemi. she refers to them as
"onna” [woman], while using “o n n a -g im f [official wife] for Lady Aoi, and "himegimi”
[young mistress] for Wakamurasaki. For Genji she uses “Hikaru kim i' or "kimi"
[minister], while for Fujitsubo she uses “miya” or "Chug u ' [Empress]. The Rokujo lady is
mostly called “miyasudokoro” [prince’s wife]. Unlike Tanizaki who followed the original
text and did not insert the subjects at all, Enchi certainly intervened in the original by
articulating “who” speaks and “who” acts in her translation. By so doing, she clarified the
speaking position of each character. Similarly, she challenged the conventions o f orthodox
Gertji translations, which with exception used the names from the waka for women
characters. Instead o f limiting each character’s personality to the conventional implications
in each waka, she attempted to build her own original characterization o f these women.
Additions
It is well known that Yosano added her own waka at the beginning o f each chapter.
The waka gives the reader Yosano’s summary o f each chapter or conveys an impression o f
some incident in the chapter. Tanizaki did not make such additions to the text, translating
it word for word (chikugo-yaku). Yosano (in her first translation) and Enchi from the start
gave up such “faithful” translation. Enchi in particular expanded the descriptions and
monologues o f some o f the characters: the Kiritsubo, Utsusemi, Fujitsubo, and Rokujo
ladies, and Genji. Takenishi Hiroko, a woman literary critic and a scholar o f the classics,
introduced Enchi’s translation:
I have never seen such an assertive translation as that by Enchi. For example, the
Kiritsubo lady’s self-conscious love for the Emperor [the Kiritsubo chapter], the
complexity of the married Utsusemi’s attachment to Genji and her guilt toward her

228
husband [the Hahakigi chapter, the Yugao chapter], the fear o f Fujitsubo who loved
her stepson, and her self-consciousness as his lover [the Wakamurasaki chapter],
the resentment and hatred o f Rokujo who was slighted by the Aoi lady, Genji’s
formal wife, and her attendants at the Aoi Festival [the Aoi chapter], the conviction
o f Genji who finally came to accept the Akashi lady's dignity and pride as the same
kind of charms as Rokujo’s. etc.'122
She observed, “ Enchi digested the original so well that she felt free to depart from the
original." As a result, the whole translation turned out to be “easy to be read as an
independent piece," not as a commentary on the original. In order to avoid misleading the
reader, Takenishi noted that she did not mean to say that Enchi “has her own way of
changing or cutting without any policy." However, as a warning to the reader who expects
a "faithful" reading o f Genji from Enchi. Takenishi added:
I have to add a few more words about what 1 mean by “ faithfulness to the original."
If you take the term o f "faithful translation" at face value~as a matter o f merely
transferring from words to words, you will be shocked at her expansions and
additions.423
As Enchi herself admits in the preface, hers may not be called “translation" in a traditional
term. On the other hand. Enchi challenged the traditional understanding o f “translation” in
her re-writing o f Genji.
C onclusion: T ranslation by Enchi Fumiko
Enchi's translation was advertised on the cover o f each volume as follows:
Genji monogatari—which has been handed down and read for over one thousand
years. This is the most attractive modem translation, whose refined fragrance
(miyabiyakana koki) and emotion are now delivered to the reader by the
422Takenishi Hiroko. "Kaisetsu" [Commentary], in Enchi Fumiko-yciku: Genji

monogatari. pp. 468-9.
423Takenishi Hiroko. “K a i s e t s u pp. 468-9.

229
imagination and mature, ripe writing typical of a woman writer.424
This is the last volume o f the “Enchi Genji," for which a woman writer spent the
passion o f half her life, and in which she revived all its charm in her beautiful
modem Japanese.425
Obviously the contributors o f the above statements stressed the conflation o f a “classic of
one thousand years ago,” “refinement” (miyabi), “a woman writer,” and “her dedication o f
her half life.” All o f these were “revived” in “her beautiful modem Japanese” (kogo). and
made the catch-words for selling the translation around 1972. “Translation o f classics into
modem language,” Genji monogatari in particular, has multiple political agency as we
have seen. We cannot deny that Enchi's translation was accomplished within such
historical and critical contexts. We cannot dismiss either, however, what Enchi did in her
transformance o f the classics.
424Enchi. G enji monogatari, vol. 1.
425Enchi, G enji monogatari, vol. 5.

Chapter 4.
Appendix: Japanese Texts o f Enchi's Genji as Transformance
Introduction
As Enchi wrote in the Preface to her translation, she added her own interpretations to some
o f the leading characters: the Kiritsubo lady, Hikaru Genji, Fujitsubo, Utsusemi, Yugao, and
Rokujo. By examining passages that illustrate what she added to the portrayal o f these figures,
and analyzing her divergence from translations o f Yosano and Tanizaki, the Teika text edited by
Tamagami, and Seidensticker’s English version, I will show how for Enchi the translation of
Genji was a performative act, a “transformance.”
The Kiritsubo Lady
I will begin by comparing translations o f passages featuring the Kiritsubo lady. As I have
previously argued, Enchi obviously attempted to structure the story as one about an unusual
superhero, Genji, who was promised to be superb owing to his birth from a star-crossed couple
bound by a strong love-relationship. In this sense, she followed the precedent o f the story o f the
ancient T'ang emperor, Hsuan Tsung and his concubine, Yang Kuei-fei (&|fr£E),
in The Song o f Everlasting Sorrow by Po ChQ‘-i ( 0 f r -Mi). Enchi wrote in one o f her essays:
c .< n m z m < t n t L x .j t m e z < D m t i r > z

<
T>n
t<
r>t><nt wzmfr u 'ztt>\ MSfcfrWfc $ fix b
i
(It is not surprising th a t as one b o m from the love between a couple so deeply attached. H ikaru
G enji w as already promised to have unearthly shining charm .)
426 Enchi Fumiko, "G enji m onogatarishiken,” E nchiF um iko zenshu, vol. 16 (Tbkyo:
Shinchosha, 1978), p. 285.

231
According to Enchi, this was not a relationship between an emperor who bestowed his love and
a concubine who received his love, rather this was the drama o f a gorgeous but horrible struggle
between a couple in love and people who, like a thick wall dividing the lovers, tried to hinder
their tryst.427 The original text with Tamagami’s annotation was:
TGI
Enchi expanded the phrase, f * ?£& t><7),©T>j(“she was in constant torment,”
Seidensticker), into a long paragraph, going into the interiority of the Kiritsubo lady.
— -xomt, L T ^ & I H r - C l f t ' S i e O t / ) , L o t ) ' > 9 L tzW&icnte

V'<7)Sr£5-CBB#«0,fc9 0 t . £H 'f f i T t S o -Cl'
• 5 S - 5 L-1 >9 A H ' J; n
[ L 'o -e * ^ C :A /^ IC * L T T £ b
fc fro fc fc t . i f i S o - c ^ - c # i c * y f t f c t t o J 'f t - e t f t t,
* 0 5 - £ £ t *f c*t f . - {- f t | : : L- C*. 1&©f c y t A < D i* > t,il# A f t#
S l'A 6 f t f c * © l i i > £ l l * l : : r a : a i * £ l '- • • 1 1 '5 j: y t , - o t < D I = M
f t t f f c f c < I g t f f t T L l o fc « « © * < * * i » % L $ lc, f p * j J r t t A » f t i b 1 l l B l M - * ' # < f t *
O 'C fc o fc o ]
(Rift JHSS19-21)
(Bold lines: The parts in brackets are added by E n ch i: She som etim es w ondered if the E m peror had not
loved her so much. But she knew that it would be im possible for her to reverse tim e and go back to the old
days. S he grieved over her son, her m other, her household, and so on. N evertheless, she could not slight
the love and devotion o f the Em peror, w h o w as so attached to her that he strongly resisted any criticism or
adm onition by people. She w as privately despondent about the strangeness o f her karm a by which they
had becom e so strongly joined.)
While Enchi gave the Kiritsubo lady a complex personality, the text did not give any hint o f
these traits. Yosano, Tanizaki and Seidensticker follow the text.
( n ^ c o ^ '* £ f f * b k , f f i a H D f c j & S r f l l L th* ot -*-*#!*»' 'O
427 Ib id .. p . 2 8 3 .

232
-5^ 9 - ? f c o f c 0 ($m¥F ® & 8)
^ t t i ^ i - f X t a‘W * * t 'S B L ffe g - t S r S H lc S i \

I M & tt LttJ* o t i - 5 A 1 z h t f & 'tf > lc ,* > i4 « # H :d » .f c 'i& g '& c o - t- , ri'jto T V '
^lr'£fc**#«r£*l<50>T ?L fc. (& * « ® 2 l - 2 2 )
^ T h o u g h the m other o f the new son had the em p ero r’s love, her detractors w ere num erous and alert to
the slightest inadvertency. She was in continuous torm ent, feeling that she had now here to turn.
(Seidensticker, “T he Paulow nia Court,” p. 4.)
As Enchi wrote, she wanted to realize a mutual love-trust relationship between the Kiritsubo
Emperor and his love, not a just an asymmetrical master-servant hierarchy. In order to keep
such a relationship with the Emperor in the midst o f the jealousy and hatred o f other concubines,
the Kiritsubo lady’s personality should be stronger and less naive than the one suggested by
traditional interpretations. The phrase, (C L T t>, *9 & Acoilfc#) A tlr fe io
C \—iklC giK ' (Nevertheless, she could not
slight the love and devotion of the Emperor, who was so attached to her that he strongly resisted
any criticism or admonition by people.), shows us the lady’s willpower—that is, she was herself
willing to respond to his love. At the same time, Enchi suggested the fate o f the star-crossed
couple by adding the phrase, — o L £ o tzls$!.< D i£g
■5 L £ < tl'5<>OTr$)o7fc (She was secretly despondent
about the strangeness o f her karma by which they became so strongly joined.) This is the couple
and setting in which a superstar, Genji, was created, Enchi is saying. The fatal attachment o f the

233
Emperor to his lady was repeated in Genji, who had become attached to his stepmother,
Fujitsubo. Both the Kiritsubo lady and Fujitsubo were far from weak-willed women in Enchi’s
translation. The Kiritsubo lady had to survive through the jealousy and antagonism o f the other
concubines. Enchi added a description o f the jealousy o f these ladies in order to indicate how
much toughness and will-power were required for the Kiritsubo lady to survive among them.
fiS fc if < 9 iio -o 'ib o L * 3 c < t tfte*<

»ct ox-b'ix tf, i*o>\tmnnmnmzm
ot **>. 4 A f c ^ © 8 o T l ' * * 5 fc«lM R ® £lcW jf><iM ,fcl::£L
< 5 i f e i c i x i o r I 'f e * . * < l -c i i S f c l f t k frfiifc
EOi a * I ' M * # , f t I ' J l « l c r n f ) p,*t, W z UAj X a/vts. fdftHUcK < 5 cT*> I 'T I'fc ]S
h kStotetfteCDitx, (Rlfi f a s 20)
(Bold lines: W hen the E m peror walked to his lo v e r’s room, how many w om en w ere w atching him,
hiding and holding their breath behind the blinds? H ow their eyes— their pupils in the depth o f their
sleepy slanted eyes— w ere burning in m ultiple colors o f jealousy! H ow in the dim light th eir brocaded
clothes o f various colors (reddish purple, dark red, light green, etc.) were soaked w ith tears and w ere
bound with long dark hair, m oving restlessly and uncannily!)
None o f the translations by Yosano, Tanizaki, Seidensticker, nor Tamagami’s text, have such
descriptions.
i l l '££(C L -CfJfdS U f L If-£ - '■sfcl '-C-ICft 9 .feac4r-f5 9 TA* •) LT
m tn b to iite b fa '. p s 8)
£ib:i l 9 ( z t c i-tfV f f l g. 22)
fr m lW o iffa if# 9 o i f * 9 , * i f c < o » A » f c i s f e 4 > a 9 ic.

Ac of f ll - S. L f& ^ tJflc - tio*) kg.z.tz'Q* (£ ± P I 6 27)

234
$2j She lived in the P aulow nia Court. The em peror had to pass th e apartm ents o f other ladies to reach
hers, and it m ust be adm itted that their resentm ent a t his constant com ings and goings was not
unreasonable. (Seidensticker, p. 4 . T h e P a u lo w n ia C o u r t)
Enchi depicts the hero. Genji, as a blessed child in that he was bom from parents joined in
mutual but fatal love. That is why all of his charms and beauty were already promised before he
was bom, Enchi is saying. Enchi also stressed the Kiritsubo lady’s inferior lineage, and
counted it as one o f Genji’s disadvantages and therefore hardships by which the author
deliberately tested him. Enchi especially added an account o f his mother’s lesser lineage
through the description o f Utsusemi:
IT JccO ^tfB IJoo'ft &f£<D|6| z ') ic . 19 L tsm L ft

"Cl '■S'J&RFf b L l / ' i t i i . S . l 'l w & '5 0
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5 ic M 5 JKD± £ * * L < . fifrfcA/T? T*fc h o fc if tU'tlZ'Dl+ T t , . *>A<t
f c * * * 4 at JE ^ <0A 1 4 ' I t n t i f c 4 fc o fc d t fc if til T? fc *iX, f r *
<Dft<Dm<DtKD±ififoX*t 4 l a
fc .]
L f -5 . t 4 f c i 4 1 “lC .$te*!l©
T «c0^5 L T , ( Ri f e **94)
(Bold tines: I f she went to court for service, sh e m ight have had the good tuck to becom e a concubine for
the E m peror and to be called “so-and-so.” B ut since she lost her father, she had to becom e the second
w ife o f a provincial governor, who w as m uch older than she, and not an aristocrat. G enji could im agine
how she w as grieving about her life, w hich could have been totally different. Rem em bering his late
mother, w hose parents’ class w as not so different from this w om an’s, Genji was not ab le to be indifferent
to her situation.)
The description o f Genji’s mother is Enchi’s addition. Neither Yosano, Tanizaki,
Seidensticker, nor Tamagami have such an addition.

235
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lir i^ ji.f ilM l'i: ^ f c T ,^ £ A g # T ,£ f c M # i l 6 - '- t f . (£_h ^ A 8 2 )
[S3) He sensed that there was someone in the room to the north. It would be the lady of whom they had
spoken. Holding his breath, he went to the door and listened. (Seidensticker, “The Broom Tree,” p. 41.)
The stress on the lower rank of Genji’s mother, as well as Utsusemi’s class, is not found in the
other texts. Enchi added it for the purpose o f attracting the reader’s attention to Genji’s peculiar
birth from a woman o f a lesser class, and to his attachment to women of that class.
Genji
Other than his mother’s lineage, Enchi listed another drawback in the male protagonist’s life.
She wrote: As is described in the Hahakigi chapter, he was characterized as a dangerous person
< iC T ) who sometimes attempted to risk an impossible love .428
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<fc5£SLi'*A '£.i'o£-efctti+tti-rci© ai3iEfci,'fl!>j6'ofZ0 (Rife ^ A 51—52)
(Bold lines: Instead occasionally, despite knowing that he was opposing the tide, he had a tendency o f
trapping h im self in an im possible love that would torture both h is m ind and body. As a resuii, he wuulu
sometim es go so far to be reckless and unforgivable.)
428 Enchi, "G en jim onogatarishiken,” p. 359.

236
As usual Yosano. Tanizaki, Tamagami and Seidensticker do not explain so much as Enchi does
in her translation.
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0 T hough in fact he had an instinctive dislike for the prom iscuity he saw ail around him. he had a way
o f som etim es turning against his ow n better inclinations and causing unhappiness. (Seidensticker. “The
Broom T ree.” p. 20.)
One o f the examples for Genji's adventures was his approach to the Utsusemi lady, the wife of a
provincial governor. Fortunately, he was not caught or punished for his adventure by anybody,
including her husband, since Utsusemi persistently escaped from his approach. However,
another adventure and adultery with his own stepmother, Fujitsubo, made him feel guilty and
saddened him for the rest o f his life.
Genji (and Fujitsubo)
The Fujitsubo lady is one o f the two female protagonists in the story, Enchi says. However, she
is always described through Genji’s eyes. Enchi detailed his sentiments toward h er
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237
(Ri fe **86)
(Bold lines: Thinking it sham eful to show o f f her abundant talents, she behaved modestly, which m ade
her appear even m ore elegant and attractive. Probably that is w hy we alw ays feel w orshipful as though
she had a rainbow and an aura abo u t her body, G enji th o u g h t H e had to struggle to calm his yearning,
which would fly like a little bird and throb through his soft garm ents.)
The other translations and text do not describe Genji’s feelings so much.
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(3Z± **77)
[S5] Through all the talk G en ji's thoughts w ere on a single lady. His heart w as tilled w ith her. She
answ ered every requirem ent, he thought. She had none o f the defects, was guilty o f none o f the excesses,
that had em erged from the discussion. (Seidensticker, “The Broom T ree,” p. 38.)
Enchi depicts eloquently how much emotion Genji held until he finally was able to see
Fujitsubo.
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(Bold lines: AH the sentim ent he had held and all th e desire he had suppressed now at once slipped dow n
like an avalanche, and he felt his body w ould disappear in a m om entous evanescence. T he next m om ent
he felt he w as leaping up to the sky o n open w ings. H e w as wondering i f that w as his ow n body or not.
and if h er face and her skin, which he had m issed for so long, w ere real or all but a dream .)

238
While Enchi’s translation is full of description of his ecstasy, the others only suggested the
momentous meeting.
% 164—5)
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($ « ^#?226)
TG6 (I ±
« f « t 173)
|S6| How she did it I do not know : but she contrived a meeting. It is sad to have to say that his earlier
attentions, so unw elcom e, no longer seem ed real, and the mere thought that they had been successful was
for Fujitsubo a torment. (Seidensticker. “Lavender.” p. 98.)
In Enchi’s translation the reader is convinced of Genji’s desperate yearning for Fujitsubo, which
would lead him to tragedy and guilt for the rest of his life.
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© m t'^ W jc te l 'T L '
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(Rift U*453)
(Bold lines: she tried hard to suppress the flow o f her affectionate sentim ent tow ard him . At the sight o f
the beautiful and pitiful man w rithing in his pleading and asking for her love, her noble firm ness cracked
like the ice, which finally caused a pain in her c h e s t)
In other translations the reader will be puzzled at why Fujitsubo had a sudden pain in her chest.
o v ' i c i i i i j n o a r ^ s i g - o - c ^ - (#»»
W 330)

239
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{S7j T he words with which he sought to com fort her were so subtle and clever that I am unable to
transcribe them , but she w as unm oved. A fter a tim e she was seized w ith sharp chest pains. (Seidensticker,
“T he Sacred T ree,” p. 196.)
AH the other translations and the text agree on the descriptions o f Genji who. with tears,
appealed to her sympathy in vain, as if he had forgotten his status or pride.
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KRhfi r *45 5
—56)
(Bold lines: T he man, stam m ering and crying, p o u red all his long-held resentm ent as if he had discarded
all his senses, w hich he had held in for the sake o f social propriety for so long. But thinking his behavior
truly inconsiderate, she gave no response.)
Y8
(* » » f i t 332)
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154)
^ D eliriously, G enji poured forth all the resentm ent he had kept to him self; but it only revolted her.
(Seidensticker, “The Sacred T ree,” p. 197.)

240
Genji Again
The adventurous (db-^l*! < (CC) aspect of Genji’s personality drove him to involvement in
another dangerous affair with one of the concubines o f the Emperor, the Oborozukuyo lady,
which led to accusations and the persecution of Genji. As the old proverb says, in his later years
he had to pay the price for all that he had done in the past: his young wife, the Third Princess,
cuckolded him. When he found out that Kashiwagi, the son o f his old rival, had made love to
his wife and she had borne a child, he could not help torturing Kashiwagi.
§ S lw oft-C .
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(R ift £3£T469)
(B old lines: Although Genji appeared in good spirits, in his eyes th e desperation and hatred o f a m an
w hose shining pride was sm ashed into pieces flashed like a blue flam e at the back o f a cave. At the sam e
tim e it pierced through th e heart o f Em on no kam i (K ashiw agi) w ith a fathom less sorrow th at only aging
people could know.)
Yosano and the others only mention that Genji “looked at Kashiwagi’s face.”
I—I tsrf *♦>/v«r5a*A

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241
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» » 448)
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r ^ t > 4 r L o ^ '< t S ', (£ ± # * 'f 199—
200 )
[s^ “An old m an does find it harder and harder to hold back drunken tears," said G enji. He looked at
Kashiwagi. “A nd ju st see our young guradsm an here, sm iling a superior smile to m ake us feel
uncom fortable. Well, he has only to wait a little longer. T h e current o f the years runs only in one
direction, and old age lies dow nstream .”

Pretending to be drunker than he w as, G enji had singled out the soberest o f his guests. Kashiwagi was
genuinely ill an d quite indifferent to th e festivities. T hough G en ji’s m anner was jo cu lar each o f his w ords
seem ed to K ashiw agi a sharper blow than the one before. H is head was aching. (Seidensticker. “N ew
H erbs," p. 634.)
It was quite ironic that Kashiwagi, who gave bitterness to Genji, far from being such an
adventurous IC T ) person like Genji, was rather a serious and square fo tz h )
young man. Enchi not only granted a complex personality to Genji, but also gave him a kind o f
spiritual power (IfeM t i f L fc ) which drove Kashiwagi to
illness and death, just as the living spirit o f the Rokujo lady had done to Yugao and the Aoi lady.

242
The other translators merely suggest that Kashiwagi fell sick due to his own guilt and fear o f
Genji. As we have seen earlier, obviously Enchi was here suggesting Genji’s shamanistic power,
which only the royal family had in their veins.
Utsusemi
Enchi made Genji compare the family o f his mother and that o f the Utsusemi lady: both
were o f a lesser rank. In her expansion o f the character o f the Utsusemi lady she emphasized
three issues. One was the stress on Genji’s superhero status and the complexity o f his love
towards women. Second, the complexity o f Utsusemi’s sexuality—resentment and/or pleasure
-•was described in detail. Third, relating to the issue o f rape versus consensual intercourse,
Enchi’s theory of translation comes up as a subject. To begin with, let us look at the description
o f Genji as a superhero.
froiol - Z f f r O f e f U J
( £ _ t 3**83)
In the text Genji’s being a superhero was described in the phrase, T It
Yosano’s and Tanizaki’s translation were similar:
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b bncnt zz t \ xt£bt^'<nx-&>Z>a (3-HtS* 3**62)
. Ttv 5 L ff# (2?
«F * * 100)

243
feSlOl His manner was so gently persuasive that devils and demons could not have gainsaid him. The
lady would have liked to announce to the w orld that a strange m an had invaded her boudoir.
(Seidensticker, “T he Broom Tree,” p. 42.)
Since Genji was such a beautiful superhero with charm and “power,” Utsusemi did not dare call
her servants or resist him. However, as Enchi acutely pointed out in her essay, Genji’s
“gentleness” was mere sugar-coating to cover his violence. In fact his acts toward women could
be considered “rape,” including his kidnapping o f Murasaki:
t i I' tz i. \ gi f t (c fc o % * o t z *> £ , as f t tz b te o t , * o m
J ^ t z h i p. 160)
(Usually such an act is called a “rap e,” but it is not, because the activator is G enji. Rather G enji’s
act is transform ed into consensual intercourse [• • •] that is why he is characterized as a superm an.)
Whether Genji was a rapist or not, whether he actually had intercourse with women or not. has
been a topic scholars have debated.429 As Enchi herself confessed, she had no idea, when
reading the part concerning in her girlhood, about what happened between the lines—whether
the Utsusemi lady was actually forced or not We do not have any idea either when we read
Yosano or Tanizaki’s translations:
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- c « i r 'A a s » £ £ L i r 'T o i t
X V' 5 <r> 0 X. £ i-fciztit 6 z t i t X £ t£tz. h *> £ i L I ' c i: tz t .So
429 On whether Genji’s acts were a rape (“non-consensual intercourse”) or “limited aggression,”
or “seduction,” or “sexual coercion,” see the essay by Margaret H. Childs, “The Value of
Vulnerability: Sexual Coercion and the Nature of Love in Japanese Court Literature,” The
Journal o f A sia n S tu d ie s 58-4 (November 1999): 1059-79. However, my concern does not lie with
this issue, but rather on how Enchi views Genji’s behavior.

24 4
fFITIfefc L\,'Affi?£< nt^% it> X8L£\zm x.$. L t z W . t e i L f t m L t e L t e L X ^ Z S :

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(£«f # * 102-3)
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^ i ± i i f c 9 , , 'C .'^L < fifcio,if. r E ^ i b i L A 'ii< Lj t f c t f i " . ( ^
± # * 85)
|S ll| N aturally soft and pliant, she w as suddenly firm . It was as with the young bam boo: she bent but was
not to be broken. She was w eeping. He had his hands full but would not for the w orld have m issed the
experience. (Seidensticker, “T he Broom T ree," p. 43.)
These versions. ^ £ |2*Cc? f z r J(he could not break her. Yosano). T#f
tiifoV) i-tir/u j (she would never break. Tanizaki),r$Jf ■?>'<< #j>£> fo-Tj (the text,
Tamagami), or “she bent but was not to be broken” (Seidensticker) do not suggest any concrete
evidence for intercourse, rather completely the opposite—Genji could not make it. But then the
next line in each translation says that she was weeping. What happened in between the
description o f the bamboo and her weeping? Enchi had to fill the gap. Therefore, in her
translation she elaborated Genji’s sugary manner, 1/' <h-‘sr’f i lb7WCll[T>'C(persuading her in a
very sweet manner):
| I o ] b * $ L < & O L * o X [ L o t y * y a * > * t S b , £ * x ts Iftz tz L l ' * 3 t ' £ C * tz Xttz

o m o i * ICT*^m t 51 * . £ - e<ot t £ ICMe, fc 5 1 L T
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r- £ <ob x . f x b f t t j m z m f r - r . b z t . i:
# - b bg-x.li.mt. L< T. (RJfi #*96)
(Bold lines: H e being nestled close to her body, she felt as i f she w ere buried in a whirlpool o f cool

245
fragrant flower petals, and she tried to resist such a pleasure in her h alf unconscious state.)
Unlike other translators Enchi makes it clear that Genji had come close to her, and that the
woman had tried to resist his charm in vain. Then came the critical moment at issue:
fcil '■£><£>-?. fbJ: o ir'ft£Yr<nm*

& 'fc d * b . K fi'tefrV rtiZ o I - fc fcv '© £ HI IS J: 9 T?, [S T ^ fc L < & -6 U CO
f l L t l i o f c . ]
9 * < fc i* * » L < .B o - c ,S 0 ct4< $
.S f c f t 5 . (Rift # * 9 9 )
(She w as ju st like a soft bam boo bending at th e mercy o f the wind but not breaking. [The m ore frustrated,
the m ore aroused Genji was, so that his desire to violate her increased in every m om ent, and he finally
found it hard to resist and lost his com posure.])
Enchi’s addition clearly assures the reader not only that something "did” happen between Genji
and Utsusemi, but also that Genji had made an aggressive approach toward the woman. The
first part, ~ (DX>t C O P T I C 9 £!J*S L " 0 'o"C(his desire
to violate her increased moment by moment) obviously suggests the gradual increase of Genji’s
*
desire and the aggressive movement of his sexual act. The second part, o v '{ C jifS # k£>&
7 t< I& i9 i§ L L 'C L i£ o fc(he finally found it hard to resist and lost his composure) describes
an unexpected and uncontrollable climax that occurred. Genji lost his control because the
woman was as unyielding and unconquerable as bamboo, soft and bending but unbreakable
despite being at the mercy of the wind (<b J: 0 i f k <b,
'# ) k |nl C =fc 0 ~C). His troublesome < ^■5) personality drove him

246
to this difficult and dangerous love for a married woman.
In describing Genji’s sexual advance, Enchi is saying that any violent act done by such a
superhero could be an expression of love. Here we hear some resonance between her
interpretation of Genji’s act and her theory o f interpretation. Enchi says:
f a t z t i Z £ > tl L tl 'It 0 1/' 0 -S' 0 i^fPaa(D'pllZ A ,0 &

A ,- e v 'o - c , i # - c * 3 G ^ - c f c 9 f c f T & £ L - 0 ' 5 f c i t T ? i \
"C, — }£fc. =t •? &Sff>flg-e0>|fiij&M» '-g'l

^ L T V ' i 1 - 0 ( T ^ c D A * <bj 129.)
(A s for m y own “ reading" it m ight be called a kind o f m arriage by plunder or by kidnapping, and I
adm it that I do enact a rape in invading the text. I think, nevertheless, this is still my love toward
the text. T here are many kinds o f love, and mine may be a sort o f struggle. I face the text with this
kind o f love.)
Enchi says that “translation” is a “reading” (jS?<A) o f the text in each one’s way, and she does
not hesitate to say that her modem translation of Genji, including her expansion of the text was
an expression of her pure love for the text >11
tsbtZcS In short, Enchi enriched the text and gave complexity to it with
h er own reading, violating the interior world of each character.
Second. Enchi enriched the text by adding complexity to the description of the Utsusemi
lady. By virtue o f her lesser lineage, marriage, status, appearance, intelligence and temperament,
she seemed to Enchi a self-portrait of the author of the story. Enchi added a sentence to explain
what happened between Genji and the woman the night before:

247
*sm 1 1 l . is # l *> ♦ v fc n © k < d * * l i ' 5 i ££■s y **l*<f= < f=*>

■ b o T L 'fc.]
^fc£ * « i< 0 > -t?,& i4 l'* > fc> fc£ :L < T , ( Ri f e 3 ? * 100 - 101)
(B old lines: Lying there, the woman w as hesitant to shake h erse lf free from the young m an’s arms, w hose
vigorous pow er she felt abounding in her body with pleasure.)
The woman's hesitation suggests that she already felt intimate with the man after one night.
She could not let herself free from his arms because she loved the power of the young man’s
arms around her body ( # L £ ) b t l t z % (Dâ<D^ L V £ ) in comparison with those of
her aged husband. In other translations the descriptions o f sensuality, unlike Enchi’s, belonged
to Genji, who had satisfied his desire (fcV '•£ i &■£ t b / ) ' L t ' t &]£ #># t z *9 ). No
suggestion of the woman's sexuality is found in them.
713 {BTKfc&sttfti'fc. ( $ • » » #*66)
\ n 2 ] t s ^ x .tffiL Z iz tc u s t+ ib i jz i i'- z y te ttb fr L i'iD - e - t ,

f z X S t z V mf i ' mZ Z - t n X - . t o ' L ' i j ^ WL K A & n t 104)
[TG12 \t x . •) hut $ . I ' > A? t afr f tz <0„ a i t L lf L lfft< ^ L< T , (T.

_h 86)
S 12| H e w as in tears, which m ade him y et handsom er. T he cocks w ere now crow ing insistently.
(Seidensticker, “T he Broom T ree,” p. 44.)
It is clear that Enchi stressed the woman’s sexuality in her translation, giving the character a
subjectivity, while the other translations only depicted Genji’s stream of thought.
Nature is described as the reflection of Genji’s mind. Neutral scenery becomes a mirror of
the mind of each person: sensual for one person and horribly lonely for another. In Enchi’s
translation she contrasts Genji, who had to leave the woman after one night, to carefree young

248
ladies-in-waiting who simply adored the gorgeous look o f Genji. Just like the cloud-covered
moon in the morning sky he looked up, so the woman’s mind cast a “sad and lonely” (f# L l f (C
5E31&&) shadow on him. It is hard to tell whether the woman was sad and lonely, or whether it
was a projection of the dark aspect of Genji’s mind on the moon and on the woman. This issue
is related to another: who are the primary protagonists in the story: Genji or his women?
Enchi displayed her views about the distribution of significance in the story between the male
protagonist and his women:
[•••]£>#< a * ,—o — 9 >£££#£
x o x m 'X \i ' 5 <n x \ g # 1- & 3 ^ t (± § ii,' a e

p. 360.)
(The w om en in Genii all look like flowers, each shining w ith its own color and fragrance, but they
are merely reflections from the source o f light, G enji. There is no doubt about the fact that the
center o f the story w as Genji himself, not his women.) 430
If we adopt Enchi’s view, the sadness and loneliness of Utsusemi were the reflections of some
part of Genji’s personality. Inside he must have had some bitterness, totally different from his
sugar-coated appearance which young court ladies adored. Enchi continued to show her
understanding o f the story as the following:
jE m m & t o m i s , « a -* \ g m m
rs&IEJl < n # i
I * o T t i l L V £ f t - O' 3, (m B & m %
H j p. 3 6 0 .)
(A lthough in the m ain part o f Genji from The Paulow nia Court to T he Wizard chapters the story,
elim inating murder, suicide or natural disaster, w as clad in elegant soft clothes, hidden under the
430 Enchi, “G enji m onogatari s h i k e n p. 360.

249
cover o f the appearances, I think, lies the tough fram ew ork o f a cruel view o f history w hich the
author learned from the Records o f the Great Historians.)^'
Therefore, just as the story and its protagonist were characterized as double-layered—sugary and
bitter-, so the women around Genji such as the Utsusemi lady were also as complex as their
reflections. Let us look at the description of Utsusemi in Enchi's translation:
E13 A toklz «fco-c,

tz*, l - l i , Z < D ± f c < f c * L 1M>mk © a t * £ 6 4 h « » l C , » L I ' — * < D
Z<Dt> £ U P , l t< D 3 f e © f c l 'f l < * > « * ,, * < D
u fc ? icj» l i f i= a n fc ^ » ur« A <ot ?fc o fco [•••] fs^<D -a<D ta
© » * t, <di= * *ifc * f t t a< &, n m e a » « * , * l to x t ' * -e & 5 1 a t '- e 4 1*
£ . M E 0 * & L I ' 5 % l c a i t ' M l ' S » o r I ' T . J l < t f * C t dDtflfcfcra'ofcfc L & L ' £ £ £
t'ta l ic js o r , y 1 fc y a t '± ^ o f c * - c f c o f c [• • •] l * ' l , 5iL 'i< *'y t*j5: < , «
£ » L T l 'S £ r i A - « M l '* r f c o f c £ , - « £ j 3 % * . i : : £ * l i : i f J LT*h
i A i* ( c o ( tT E I ? L < <k ” 6
XfoZ>o* (Rift U f * 102— 3)
(The sky looked different from each viewpoint. [F or y o ung wom en-in-w aiting, who were fascinated with
G enji’s gorgeous appearance, it may have looked quite sensual, w hile for G enji, w ho ju st had left the
w om an reluctantly after one night, this lightless m oon at dawn looked sad and lonely, as if reflecting her
m i n d . [ " ‘ ] Probably she grieved in m ortification and at the sam e time despised Genji, w ho had
hum iliated her for a one-night fling. R em em bering her behavior and treatm ent, firm but bending, w hich
he could not underestim ate, he concluded that she was as proud as her reputation [• • •] however, she was
sensitive in understanding men, as well as firm; he kept fondling the m em ories o f the woman [• • •]]
Thus, Enchi’s woman was not merely sad and lonely, but was a “proud” (&V o tz)
woman in Genji’s eyes. She probably “despised Genji” 1>^. L ^ T V '<5"C
h^> o ), who had humiliated her for a one-night fling of caprice (—
& t l t z h. & Genji speculated. Remembering her behavior, bending but firm in
sweetness (-^c* L t ' 9 '). he concluded that she was sensitive and responsive to
«* I b id .

250
men, as well as being firm. The complexity was illustrated in the sets of contrasting terms: sad
and lonely/proud, sweet/tough, sensitive/tough used to describe the woman. Yosano,
Tanizaki, and the others do not provide such descriptions of the woman or Genji either
htlfSn
i'lX— ' - c i ± & i '7 5 ' i . S . o T J g ^ 7 > ' * b l ; : £ o

t z. ( $ m m 67)
kW U < f c J ix .S tO -C L f c . ■■•&t zt z
'c d i . : , £ L t i > i 7 ) A l i , T ' i S ^ i t£¥kis%
x t £ ^ h X j £ ^ t L i ' t ^SriaiaL lc/jrO £•*-„
A » - f i>X t£ L X l ' tz 8 T ? /£ >* l± , £ COpan £ - f -< # r* & ^ 9 A \ ( & « f * 105— 6)
r c i 3 ^ a s , k i c f e .- r r < t,.& 4 > 3 4 '0 ( t o , A ^ n * a i'i:

( i , i i M e >fc < . r - £ ^f c*i c/ j: §r * j <b. A** 0 &fiit,nx. BiX&Ufoo [• • ■]
rx*> t> & '5'< £ LT,^'«oAw.S-5*<btr«C*co? i: , 'C.' £ L < S L K 3

■JJ&-5*. r^ < * * ltc3 -* l± & itft,Y .iri^ < t - C o l t T t & O o S t H c O n ^ t t , (E_fc # * 8 7 )
I The sky, w ithout heart itself, can at these things be friendly or sad, as the beholder sees it. Genji was
in anguish. He knew that there w ould be no way even to exchange notes. H e cast many a glance
backward as he left. (Seidensticker, “T he Broom T ree,” p. 45.)
The complexity in Utsusemi, who received a letter from Genji, was not described in the other
translations.
b h 'itz * i fc< R 'C B i* * o T , L iV 'lctefsii& tfjft

<* 0 ■C, * L t \g a 'cofr L < /JO* F>Jxfc®fe£Se
# * 68 - 9 )
— 3 j0 fc > o fc # & * U o ^ ( tT ,ff < 3 R L -O '£ -* \

251
m< s t Lt~<DX\
» * # A S 1 - 0 (& « ff*l08)
[rci4|if a s ^ /i? ttn r f j ? £ fc, # y -fcfca* o T X ^ r t t f t 't i a <aS&~y

£fc<00 ,4 4 * 0 L fc ;fc l* # S £ T . » i I 9 flU*, CE-fc W
* 88- 9 )
Sl4j “T here are no nights o f sleep.”

The hand was splendid, but she could only w eep at the yet stranger turn her life taken.
(Seidensticker, “The Broom T ree,” p. 45-6.)
f < *
0 0 I t £>#£r®LNi5SiltT(she could only weep at the yet stranger turn her
life had taken. Seidensticker, p. 46) is translated by Tanizaki as “she kept weeping at her fate to
f *»
which another unwelcome karma was added.” Enchi expanded this part ('L'X-i&TiftM: i
0 It 5 # £ S t> iB S ilt'C ) to a long two-page monologue of the woman:
Efilli / u t 9 ic
< \>r>x*toi>&Zf-£]nt£\,'<ntZ'3lz«
[BfcB £-C, L '^ , OL'Ô!)^ L ^T *fca> aa)3fc*S fl) n t £ fclctf V ' D ' l l f X l \
nmy a><s:i'<D m*mxzti * » * © £ © < * a 1c « a l <, *>*<*£*> 1; l < m it# < « o
■CL'fc©T»fcof:©lc. C 5
£ # 5 a t i§& t't'it t, L a o -c < * u « © fc y l <. tt*
^ y n * m ^ - r a a ic f c s o - c f c * . * © * < n l ic t a *
y y - r « f e A t f » y -ca&*> a * . i ' * . *
9 - c i if c i '. ■ e* v f= itt= o fc?> ,a» * < * A /^y ^c« )T » 4 f» y # ti< p t't£ 5 3 . fc<D ;i£© fci'
»T*fcofc b , «kl». t z t z t t l t n + n Z t V t. B » € * « i i l = L T -€-< D «lce?E ir*S * Lfefr
t L t l f c l '. 1 ? ^ O l M i J i © « » o T L t o f c . C © *lcf*,C © «):3lctllL < ,ft-t*4f»
y * (c fj « L l 'B * * * *«£0>M<DXB
Ltztao) j: a f tttt'iitfB i: W < d a * 1=, jfrfct'^tf& tD aoD îcB â l .
y 3&'it*»t;ic^'3 l s 6 ^ # » x * * i * * s b ; * *<*?> a t 1*, * © a ^ - e a ^ s t ' t , a i+fc
5 a*'.
f t l i , fkfzfc©,*: a £ fc B a > * ® K * £ /M ± T T ;* o f c f c © * £ 91 b*M c« LI* L A T I '
£ • • •* L T l'* a 'S n -t, fctDÔfcb L * *«fc a fc-p-f

252
t o f c tlT fc T L U o tz Z .
1 t» *& s *•*<K ct y t, <fc < a o r ia * • • •m \ ^ l i 'fei£ © * *>##
J; £& (,' ' I ' i l i X . t o X Z m i z m '/•-£ £ & lif3 tlw /£ o T f c t i -**<bR*5
105-6)
(Bold lines: Up to yesterday, no, up to now she had been thinking about H ikaru that night, since she had
not heard from him. feeling sad and hum iliated by his inattention as if sh e had been a m ediocre flower
nipped and throw n away. N ow she received a letter from him, an aggressive approach, going through her
brother and appealing to see her again. Frightened by his persistent desire, she becam e defensive,
shutting him o ff from her life. Yet, she w ondered w ith sadness w hy she could not be beside herself,
happily imm ersed in joy, as a w om an w ho w as loved, even i f not seriously, by such a dazziingly beautiful
young noble m an. Was it ju s t because she w as scared o f her husband or o f a scandal? N o, it was not that.
If it were, she would feel m ore hum iliated and m iserable. I f only I had never slept with him . I could hide
and protect m yself, using these excuses as a shield to defend m yself. N ow I cannot, because I already
know his body. Who ever w ould have thought before that night that th ere was in this world such a
gorgeous, fragrant, and shining mystery, in w hich som etim es even hatred o r painful struggles could be
replaced by pleasure, feeling dizzy in a whirlpool o f cool flow er petals and eventually calm ing dow n in a
sensual ecstasy and paralysis like the clim ax o f music. I am for certain falling in love with th e m an who
invited me to such dizziness in a flow er whirlpool [ .. .j that is why I cannot easily do as he requests. I
know m y se lf very well that I have com e too far away from m y old se lf as the w ife o f Iyonosuke, to a
place from which I will never be able to go back [ ...])
Repeated phrases such as “cool flower petals’' suggested Utsusemi's ecstasy, both physically
and emotional, in her intercourse with Genji. This pleasure in forced sex is controversial from a
feminist point of view. Enchi maintained, however, in talking about her translation of Genji,
that there was a kind of love even in a “marriage by plunder” or in a “marriage by robbery.” She
said that Genji was such a “superman” as to be able to transform a “rape” into a “consensual
intercourse.” Adopting and combining Enchi’s statements above, the translator (Genji*) would
be allowed to “rape” the text (the Utsusemi lady), if the translator was a superman/woman.
“This is the way I love and come face to face with the text even though it may sound like a
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n p ro hibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

253
kind of struggle.”432 The struggle the Utsusemi lady had experienced with Genji or with herself
was the dilemma between her desire and her reservations about accepting his love. Enchi added
the description of her interior struggle (S t> S L -5):
m*. . -tffliwic *, fc<D«o Ltztoxftil * i = * y r
¥ B * fc * y J fa i: L T k ^ l i ' 9 0 T if f itl# *
(Rift flf* ill)
(Bold lines: Biting her lip and with her body stiffened, she saw her dazzling pleasure, sunk in flow er
petals th at night, transform into agony that tortured her body as if she had been in hell. A fter w rithing in
agony and sweating in g rief for a while, [ • • • ] )
Yosano and the other translators did not explain or expand the phrase of the text
£L-5 as Enchi did.
Y15 L 1/ 'T ffc* - 6O&7& $ £ , m s z lt t'/ut£izfr&4HBab-r<»-kti 1 mc *a -5 c t tz 9 t

lo t. 5K3-t-jJSK.g*3ftfc„ ¥ 7 L t t : 9
L-C t> A * ifw L"C*
(^ W iP f l f * 72)
ili&mvtzteZ-chZo . $ ^ ( c . f . i 't l 9 c o - e i - 0 -e i.fs T i L t t ,

■XAit
^ l i ^ 7 ic fcfc 6 -5 *»<b, f t *n 6 L 7 t . JfclSfc # * T 1 '-5
cO-eLfe, (S*ft # * 1 1 2 )
TG15 | L t> T .e p to P > te fly g lc a tto * )^ a » U :fiL lb ifr« fc 0 b & l k . ‘L'tefi'b

tz<, $ i-asic.st> si5 o f i t W K t t * *) 1t n i f , .¥ & ic h x s # *
(£ ± #*91)
S 1S| S he had done w hat she thought best, and she w as in anguish. Well, it all was hard fact, about which
she had no choice. She m ust continue to play th e cold and insensitive woman. (Seidensticker. “The
432 Enchi, Uen no hitobito to, p. 129.

254
Broom Tree, p. 48.)
The woman continued to wander between her memory o f ecstasy and her resignation.
i . A I fcT* <bJb
T L £ 5 © :& < -# « fc l'a fc A © fc i& i::iia i'* l* t,© < D ,fc l'l::< l = £ » © ‘t> l:: * # & £ ii T
• I ' & E t t r i '< <* 5 t*. t e c M A *
t l f c J : o l c 5 o € , 5 o ^ a ! t f A ' y « | « ) T t ' * - t ^ ^ L ' © - C f c o f = . ] (Rift £ * 1 1 8 )
(Bold lines: A lthough she knew w hen she cab n ed dow n that it w ould be best both for her and him to
forget this encounter, she felt as i f she would be draw n into a w hirlpool o f flow ers and be sucked into th e
borderline o f dazzling and paralyzing m om entous ecstasy beside herself. She spent most o f her day
gazing vacantly at the sky like a possessed person.)
The phrase in the text T tb fr X tP ]
&)7}''ht£ 9 (It would be as well to have an end o f the affair. Yet she went on grieving.
Seidensticker, p. 49) apparently gave Enchi a hint for further expansion. Tanizaki’s £ b t '1/'
m m z . , z < n g j£ - e tt 9 £ o ( t f c b ' t I S ! /M il- * 9 t z t z t e ib & to S k '£fcfc
t?X>X L / i was close to the one by Seidensticker, and did not give an explanation about the
complexity of the dilemma o f the woman. Likewise, Yosano’s Chinese words, “ending” (fcnjfc),
“reason’X S ti) , “admit”(Jj|i8) were far from reflecting the complex agony o f Utsusemi.
IntTlfefit9 1c f t Ptz< n tit g i 1 1 t i c ,

f r l t z 0 Z H A 't^'^xm m t£& & L ','X h <n j}A m ?>:? t t e & i z h<nm<
t S t e T * l i J S t B L '£ L
r v 'f c 0 (4SHfF £*#76)
|l6 ] $ T MZ fcgt 9 1Cti o tz <Dtz t & 91C ■

O i f X t , i <D£ £ St*-* & b &SL i: L‘C£3 L i t 'l C
AjSMI- '- 4 ^ XL/* I '<75 fc aiiS t? #5 5 L ,
S * i'i'A n K i;, ~ c o g ^ - e tt 9 ^ o i t f e V 't l H i f 'l i + 5 b fcfc'&ibJfc&.g.i'icit
tf© T ?L fc0 ( £ * £*#116)
TG16 f:feN £L .i9lcit3j£S ^ icfc,rW T oft/jr< T ^ *l& t> fc± L a»tf, ■Si'ibiU, L

25 5
U 'T t'f c liL fc. -jfe-C fcS -sU <fc £ g i;T ,7 ) '< X f b f r X & l t
& & b < n t) 'b .tif z k t3-rter'it> tfhte'0„ (5 ± . $ ^ 9 4 )
S I6| It seemed that he had had enough o f her. She w ould not be happy i f he had in fact given her up, but
w ith h alf her m ind she dreaded another visit. It would be as well to have an end o f the affair. Yet she
w ent on grieving. (Seidensticker, “T h e Shell o f the Locust,” p. 49.)
Enchi’s addition continued the explanation about the woman’s dilemma: the gap in status
and gap in age between her and Genji.
$ b ' t o - ? . $ 5 * f ± J t Z M f c t f fc v ' i c h L X H L i t ' l i f t o tz<nt>\ - e n t - l 2<L'/45

-f i &t & •) o h k . %a* - k, o ic miu iwt£ o x i ' -s t . h < ii a . $
T . * f t < 0 « £ < 0 3 R * * * L l '» * £ « i c i i ; b * l f c

^ < D f c * > l c t,J B L 'J * « r > T l '4 t,< D < D .f c < D c :i: < J ! > f c o - C t* .f l » * < Z > * H ::# £ L T * 5 B * © * £ .
m L 5*I*.
< 4 » r 3 6 ' L ^ . t > t C $ i L T . I K ^ ^ o u t f * - r i c l i L ^ A x o f = 0 Z * u 6 < f c a > * * > L l 'f c t ;
e » < o * i c # # i i * * i - c B i E k i k L f c M i i < D U 'i : t *

1»I=* L, * iLXT t , -41.*: y ttijbM ctt** £ I'fr
t * t t s o -c. a ^ H - f r r M t i e » t i A M t o i i * ' * $ £ i * A '- f i - f * t '
-otz O ]
t'-o -c, $ i '& f- <nm i±* *>* v' tz * iw# b *vt ^ o r l i i ', ft t a»t>S it -c l m& o £ s
V'^JOfctcOCO.ôfiO 5) CO-?. o >9 j s s n i c * o T V' 5 if 9 * ' « L 1C£ S o
■ C X SriL ilffc. (RJfi 192)
(B old lines: She w as resigned and concluded that after all she w as too old and low -status to leave her
ag e d husband, and to becom e the object for am orous adventure w ith G enji. H ow ever, when she
rem em bered her pain and sadness at seeing lyonosuke as his w ife, the nicer, m ore m iserable and helpless
h e was, her sham e and hunger all rebounded to her and tortured her. I f it w ere th e punishm ent she
received for that m om entous dazzling ecstasy draw n into the w hirlpool o f those erotic flow er petals, it
w ould be bener for h er to have a bad reputation as a loose w om an, she thought. In any case sh e could not
help grieving about h er personality-unable to give up drowning h erself in her own desire.)
Other translations do not have such descriptions.
i I i 'Xtx
[Y17| g f t £ iZ & <0 X J3 L £ 1/' (Ct i o tz <nA' £ m O T , li-C.' £ L A»•o tz ti«, ffi.Sz <T>m%

256
< S c o fc 'C .'iU K T . a » S : . e n T * » * L ± i - ' { c / j : o f c d » t K ^ o a - C ' , ( 4 i l i * F 6>m 130)
h * t '<r>v, Mrtf t&-kt i t .©o x h # <b&r *s L i t ' Ic * o tz <dtz t . S 9 1c ■o 1■t x fc «SFi * i '
<t 0 l i i-1 » t c' 9 *£Mir '-c, s - r <•>■*-<&-? l fc, if <
£1 -5 ^< 7 > # ^,$ ^;4 i|o ib # |il< l,* S (D t? .* s S n jc :/« c o fc i'^ 9 7 S » « ri^ L T a
f c < , («M* *® !86-7)
T G l7 |a ^ ^ < O g ( Q /J ^ # 5 g f 9 f e n g , ^ t ICth*J L*S<±faif, b L iriJ

tf L ttT { C J tS * ,V 't( S L t.lL W C ^ » < S - r W ^ M t t l f J . iS<
¥ 9 t t f c ‘ f c i- 3 £ ,£ 1 - ;6 t|o L ji!m ttU :E ,i3 l£ L S fta & £ ^ < t,- ^ * > * ic . (S i 145)
S l7 She w as sorry that he seem ed angry w ith her and sorry to hear o f his illness. The prospect o f
accom panying her husband to his distant province w as a dreary one. She sen t o ff a note to see w hether
Genji had forgotten her. (Seidensticker. “Evening Faces.” p. 8 I )
YAgao
Yugao, a woman o f middle rank ( ‘I3 CO o n ), was contrasted to Utsusemi and the
Rokujo lady, both o f whom were proud and firm.
!«[]£■*>$ L < * 5 o £ .£ tt* ia fc 3 i[i'T ,£ « D fc * o L * S iS » } i c f e o t t i i ' t S i l *

f-T'& So & £ <0 ~ <!: T* k .U c O # ? a b (C j^ o T < 5 - t IC
C'<fc L ib L C ' A f i i i f o . S . t ' I C & S l c o i t T L .C R t f e 155)
(W on over by his gentle w arm th, she w as indeed inclined to let him have his way. She seem ed such a
pliant little creature, likely to subm it absolutely to the m ost outrageous dem ands. (Seidensticker,
“Evening F aces,” p. 67.)
Enchi stressed Yugao’s agreeable temperament and her soft, delicate, and slender body.
6 v' ir ^ jilcoSSiliL 5rS t i r , l i > l c ^ o r v' 7k 1,' §g2)! b

«k5 l=*l=t i i *4WMHcii* L <* * * 0 if- 1 L'oT.fftfc*
mt t ' 5 1 * 1 5 ^ - t y Lfc#<So#A<fcJ:fcJ: t** L < ifc/'CJtjl.fffr&i: *>©£
l '5 « E ? - l4 ,f t f tl'C P .U t'i :,f c f £ ;b 5 t ' i : L ir>b*£<nihZb
ib t i t , StfcUiisSi, *iztc *) 6 1.,-^14 H o t i t * < WSfe^fci' > *>Mi'
iC/£o"C (Rfffi 9f&k 157)
(Bold lines: S he looked so pretty in a sim ple, w ell-w orn light-purple robe o ver a white lined kimono, and
fragile as a delicate flow er petal at the mercy o f th e w ind. There w as nothing special about her
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e rm is s io n .

257
appearance, but her slender body looked so softly flexible, and her way o f speaking w as so childish, that
Genji was driven to adore and pet her. H e wished that she had had a little m ore firm ness, but that did not
discourage his desire to becom e m ore intim ate with her.)
!_19j She was pretty and fragile in a soft, modest cloak o f lavender and a lined w hite robe. She had no
single feature that struck him as especially beautiful, and yet, slender and fragile, she seemed so
delicately beautiful that he was alm ost afraid to hear her voice. H e m ight have w ished her to be a little
more assertive, but he w anted only to be near her, and yet nearer. (Seidensticker, “ Evening Faces,” p.
67-9.)
Genji wished that she had had a little more firmness ( w tl'C 'L 9 £> £ o £: ,<’!><£>£> 3 £ Z .b
tMhnfz. b I f t > '{C.& 0 fei* b £>), which the Rokujo lady certainly had, and
which annoyed him so much. In contrast to Rokujo’s ■‘firmness," Enchi stresses Yugao’s
“streaming” long black hair in particular, as if to represent her personality-agreeable and
responsive to men’s love.
j a o t o 1 1' 9 -km# . £ -nH t i \ t j f L _ tlf T , d a *) iBlUt 1 1' 9 M Zfrb L < ,
* t nz e i ' ± o r vtfx m# © * © &? ic n ^ -s ic a tu * :].
Cn f f l m w , l i A / i : 9 IC , tt A ^ O fc T c * S. (R fft
148)
(Bold lines: A s she got up, her black hair folded in layers in the bedside box started silently rising up and
flowing all over her back like a black lacquer waterfall.)
I I *i L HAS* h $ C * ** 1A
I M T lc H U v , ($ ■ » » *SS96)
T20 i' 9 r . n & r , - c t s t i f f i m t i : i ' 9 -ca* v m J i& ir z i #

i iif iL ^ c o T * ,* a ttM ^ = f e f c if T e t .r ( D ^ r ^ * u tic < E y ^ - r o t v f
9 ICP£* £UvX l ' 6 Jim £ . JUS r LA»fc'X W A,T't ><bo L *? -5»« ? ■ & . ± < 0 i -\t
(£«f 145 - 46)

258
frG2014»#cofe i>b , bt bl f Xj &m' Og' O 1 U S L < , fpJi«t> t ^ >9ftft if ,

» C L £ f c i f T j i t i b L i f t ^ y . iw # ( Z ) f e ^ a ix f c s * .i8 # '^ r { w « c p > t> * & ^ s $ i,if ir f c c
t> ftU ($ ± £0114)
jS20j Chfljo, one o f her w om en, raised a shutter and pulled a curtain as id e as i f urging her lady to com e
forw ard and see him off. The lady lifted her head from her pillow. H e w as an incom parably handsom e
figure as he paused to adm ire the profusion o f flowers below the veranda. (Seidensticker, "Evening Faces,
p. 63.)
None of the other translations had such a description o f her black hair. Instead they focused on
the beauty o f the flowers and the beauty o f Genji. In Enchi’s translation Yugao’s black hair was
important. Thus later, Enchi once again brought up “the black hair” of Yugao, who was this
time a corpse. “The black hair streamed forth from the wrapping.”
( D E i t z c n 5 ts f e r t u t L*> -5co-c.fif t #
ZtA/X&Jfc-lt't S„ II A c > le-J'fFl'CÊAft i f c v *v fifti L v 'S S l- (j-tri* ‘b u t/ '’tiirT-Xh
S , a x f t V 'J : o i e L o r t 'i 9 if t if li& t f ) f t i'< o t \a * < D r t ^ w lf ; h t t iT l'S ( D j& « : J y B g le A S
i c o i t - c t . B w r n m iz te m b n 'o < b n x , m x . b M n } ' & L < t t * ) sa sffa a i
•9CO it * a s ft «fc o irfc.gi,'lefts cO£. (Rite £ 0 174)
Other translations mentioned just “hair.”
Im Twfi: a m izm -tt s 2 1 iz m m b L; 5»of cri»<b, f c £ i e # i ,

'H ffftA ^ J E ttA ^ filW ttS ltft^ -C tfcA rilL V 'tW fcS ^ n fc. B B ieS fctfiS <fc 9
f tf t <,' # £ i i * L T . «M»ie fc # A>ftA <b, H * © * * L C If f t r I 'f c . s -ti & a
fcB ftttB a K & tf,fc9 * iB L * fcltitT S ie ftS * * ± -C fca 5 W S o i,'-0 'fc ir'£ :i,'9 « (e
ftofttO T**S2)5,(^fF £ 0 1 1 5 — 6)
fr2 T lm t2 (O A £ X 9 f c & t i e f t *) £ ^ A c O T \ ± ! l £ i e ; f c L ,a A T \ti3 fe ;fls * s * -fr * L * Xa tz

i'*9'J'M?.l!HMfefti: e 6 k f t < ,*r*ib L <£*.*■*% L oi»9 irStffcttie
f t 5 j; o X \ t z £ h t £
< HBL < is ft >9ft $ n-C, -ti:*>■
-CHS $ £ 4ra i: if (t ft t ' b *>\®t 'left S co -c*-£itft if fc, («f
«f £ 0 170)

259
^ & -X M 3fc*dMt<5.
d'KT, 9 t t Uf *>4< Zj Mft eO' L/h^75'{wLtx-frfe«,#l4^«*lL>T*fc-6;fe.a<
L ?iB L £;fcl£tftf,fc9l2T tf$££jM *,£i3H :-e:iM £± 132—
3)
S21 [It w as not yet full daylight. K orem itsu had the carriage brought up. S ince G enji seem ed incapable o f
the task, he (Korem itsu) w rapped th e body in a covering and lifted it into the carriage. It w as very tiny
and very pretty, and not a t all repellent. The w rapping was loose and the hair streamed forth, as if to
darken the world before G en ji's eyes.
H e wanted to see the last rites through to the end, but [ ...] (Seidensticker, “Evening Faces,” p. 74.)
In Enchi’s translation Yugao’s “black” hair was the embodiment o f her sexuality and charm.
Even when she was dead, it still streamed forth from the wrappings like black lacquer or a live
black snake, driving Genji to tears. Her long black hair streaming forth from her dead body was
contrasted to the short hair o f Rokujo, who gave up her sexuality by taking the tonsure. As
Yugao was contrasted with Rokujo, the sexuality o f Yugao’s streaming long black hair was
contrasted with Rokujo’s short cut hair, her resignation o f her sexuality.
The Rokujo Lady
In her translation Enchi challenged the conventional interpretations o f Rokujo
miyasudokoro as a symbol of jealousy and possession. To begin with, Enchi did not translate
the text phrase ( o b ft <fc> *9 £ ;£), instead she replaced it with a more positive
expression.
§22jte5 %<n&m 'ic 4 o - a ' b O L* 3 ^(7)db*Wli,1fear *94 * it h K<nl&* <fc< ttx.

4' L tnnmm t 9 <nt z 6 1 -C, < v' £ T ffft
■th'itz* 5 * > iz.m 'in n < D - a * t it= U t a e f e f t M t ?

260
V & o tz t 5 f t ? frtl i fllift f i f c l '£> l£, £ L -C. 3fc*8a>

*) <d z <fc&<fc'.®U't±i£;H J; i li-fli& i,'< o -c fc o
fc . (R J f i 142)
(Bold lines: H er refined but m odest life-style with its unfathom able sentim ent w as full o f dignity as befit
the w ife o f the late prince who had died young, and as a would-be-em press.)
Yosano and others all focused on the literary meaning o f the phrase V'h t tflfaWfc) *9 £ S .
V 2 2 K f t O S B A £ > f c o jEV 'H U o T .^ w ^ iifcilS <

îlibL'Cfcofc. M ath * «Afe*&k\lT*fl|ftlhJt£&«
( 4 » iF * ® 93)
T22
o t J S l CKj>o/i9 £ * i$ a » L < '■?!£* 9 £ 1 \ 1 + 5 * 5 ft.
f tttf c 5 J 3 ^ * * f t£ « U J f c ^ 5 f c d 3 f c /j^ 'I S £ f t< 0 - C ,3 o f £>Jg«d> ’ i f t i f t t S l r 't i J S f t
o j b i + k f c y i-tir**, (& «f 140)
(a bit too formal and dignified)
TG22 C'gL<nffiiztt. ' tzh f f i W L t t i f . \ > ' h <n t ' M z , -ildi< < L£
-'•?<. 5 % £ 1 + iC l^ f c y £ ^ f t £ * © . i: f t o ic . <fo v f a , i c > i>i5 u r n C>b ® ^ 
(£ ± 110)
$2 2 | At the Rokujo house, the trees and the plantings had a quiet dignity.
T he lady herself w as s tra n g e ly cold a n d w ith d ra w n . Thoughts o f the “evening faces” quite left him.
(Seidensticker, “Evening Faces," p. 61.)
Yosano’s t S f r i + f t V \ :frr'<bfl?l+3k),Tanizaki’s (f"T <t f t < ^CD
K ft •5=t 0 &>£>$$&> 0 £ S ), and Seidensticker’s “strangely cold and withdrawn”
were taken from the text and give a negative impression on the reader. Enchi did not interprete
Rokujo’s traits of despondency (1/ 0 f t £ £"C:fe>l3f L L tf);fc-59îl'£’Sl>I"C) in a
negative sense as the other translators did.
0 | [ * S l i i M ^ * © l i £ T * f c # i l t o # f c f t 5 » f t i r e . - A © W £ « W T ? A f t « l 'f c f t e > l i .
* * > a iv * - r c ^ £ * > L < f c i'£ « 5 T ? f c ? > 5 u s f e . f r y * * & & f e i i '« i J M K f r & * o T

261
ZbT!*>*> 5 t a u t J z<ni. 0 iz%m<r>}5m\<'\ztj:Zz ti« IH liS { c * 5 { c o » t-c ,t'o
o f c „ (R ife ^ 0 147)
(Bold lines: G iven to thinking things through carefully, she reflected. I f this affair leaked, people would
gossip about the difference o f their ages, her w ell-born lineage, and her thoughtlessness o f her having
fallen prey to young G enji’s lust, [ • • •])
Y23 « ft£ !m A * 8 ± 0 > -+ £ -C * > o fc a »
(4 W » ^ 0 96)
K> - ir-e ttfc S L,

tSIWw A is a H iM t ' f c * ib rf t , ^ *9
L & L k A , ! ^ <fc L -C lfc S l.' *9 id f c * I . t i f t JS*£l* ' < n v t , ( $ 0
145)
f T G 2 3 > l i . v*t £ 9 4'5 £ T*:fcI? L L*>4 5 » £ ' £ * K T . X ttlNOg fc Mif 4 < . AcOzfc
v 3B/5>ifi-A 'i: > ,/j»< of> £i®cfc;o;n^>«S ab$»jca6,-fetf L L&6 ^ '£ 5 i 5 £ 4 rJ0
(S ± ^ 0 113)
S23| She was subject to fits o f despondency, m ore intense on sleepless nights w hen sh e awaited him in
vain. She feared that i f rum ors were to spread the gossips would m ake m uch o f the difference in their
ages. (Seidensticker, “Evening Faces,” p. 63.)
Enchi: lZ te Z W % i± V
Yosano: £. 9 \Z i < 0 £ . S ^ ' i £ t r t £ ! f t i n tz
Tanizaki: £ § l i , t ><&&&>$. *) ■ S lf lttft-f tc O - e
Seidensticker: She was subject to fits o f despondency
In Enchi’s view Rokujo’s pride and despondency (fT % t *9 £ l£ / \ ' i *9 4
-5 "C (3: L L lib tz 6 'C.' £ M iZ X ) were contrasted with the responsiveness and
agreeableness o f Yugao (M U L lZ S tl'X /^ tD M o ill *9 fC Lfc;$5o T < Again in

262
contrast to Yugao’s streaming long black hair both when she was alive and dead, thus, her
sexuality, Rokujo’s shortcut hair represented her giving up the secular world. At Rokujo’s
deathbed Genji had a glimpse o f her hair:
E 24jfl-0>IS5l±fc om <
H ' l i k L ^ t jb \ S t U h & riW iz te 5 1 . d a if 't if f g lc .
l f e l c f t v ' f c J : 9 l c l | L < , S / j : < * f c > i t f l l < l l » e > i x 5 . (HUH M 149)

(It was already dark outside. T h e inside lights dimly shone through. H oping to catch a glim pse o f her,
Genji looked through a break in the curtain. H e saw in a dim light the R okujo lady, w ho was leaning on
an arm rest, looking beautiful w ith her shortcut hair. She w as as pretty as an object in a painting, and
looked unusually elegant.)
«<012^*>UU: 0 £ ft i r t i ' L l f i Z f t t e W ' t z - Z & ' C . IF

9 3„ ( s ± w« 127)
S24| It was dark outside her curtains, through which cam e suggestions o f lam plight. Was it ju st possible?
He slid forward and looked through an opening in the curtain. He saw her dimly, leaning against an
arm rest so beautiful with her hair cut short that he wished he might ask som eone to do her likeness.
Seidensticker. “Channel Buoys.” p. 285-6.)
Unlike the Yugao lady’s agreeable personality and sensual body, Rokujo’s pride and dignity
came from her royal lineage, Enchi said. As noted in the previous chapter, the noble blood
running in Rokujo at one and the same time both scared and fascinated Genji, who had the same
blood running in his veins. Since she was so proud of her blood, it was understandable that she
felt much insulted by the Aoi lady, a woman o f a non-royal family:
|E25 l&i<D-r>A'ZLttM ? 0 Z<T>±.t£
-c. <btt, l= *,i*.jb< fc < S S - r < D t* * o f = .]

263
A * f t I f i r U T L t I ' S T? f c % o * © * * * ® ! . ' * * * t . □ « L £ l i » l J h ~ » y * I t * * t *
l= ^< * U :^-C < 6 it* i£ t.-e ttt;:* ifc A S lc li£ fc * .j;3 i::fllf& < £ 1 0 0 * ? . ] -
« c {sr r o fc * {i* fc (o -e # > o fc ^ 5 A » t.S o r ^ r L i 9 t^ ^ tz ^ ft. (w n a
Hi 3 7 4 — 5 )
(Bold lines: lt w as unendurable for such a w ell-born refined w om an, w ho paid especially careful
attention to elegance and sentim ent, w ho tried to keep things in harm ony...w hen she thought about the
w om an inside the w agon w ho m ust be trium phantly looking dow n through the other w agons at the scene
o f hum iliation, anger surged up in her body. N evertheless, she hided her feelings so that nobody would
notice [ ...] )
Other translations do not have much description of Rokujo’s resentment or bruised ego.
% z b&* n ' t i L < x t e b t e f i ' o f c . m n W & m z-Z>-£}tet‘ i > m t & V T b t i X L £ 'D X j z t ) '( n
3 L < n m ~ 9 c i:$ \Z 'fo rtX £ o J$ > < 'P 'L '$ :i% fz-£ X b Z (n X '3 h 'b fi'b ,fr& < n m £ b litiittzL
bo LXZAsteffi'^ti‘lt)'tiXMtz(nfrbffl&mii&;y<f)XbZfc'$-&C6 Lfi'fz hfa'tnx-
* 3 . (4 » * P H i270)
ff2 5 ~|^ tQ jS ^ ${j:j:{ca > £\, *
I L J l i f i 'J : ? M fcbbW W LiFrbtiX^W ir-ZtnjStD tiK bibM iD fcsizlrr
tjfi'rtxh *) $.1-<ntf£tzb f t < .M l < xftcotzftiz&xMtz zb fi't& 'o X h,
bo L i 9 i-a -A , $ 361)
TG25\‘L>JP £ l £ $ : t £ £ 6 t }(D lZ X ,A '/)'5 J^ t i £ * : i l b t o i b t l l h Z j 5 \ t '' % - C j m £ z b m 9

ft L 0 $teb'b%X£W L 0 r & f t T , 1 ^ 3 f t 3 * © j i l f c 3 t > j W t f c i x i i . £ f c f t 9 A f c 5 < ,IS L
^ J < S T (C 3 tE o lb trji:.iL W C ,^ t> * L . (£ ± 31 92)
$25) Quite aside from her natural distress at th e insult, she w as filled with th e bitterest chagrin that,
having refrained from display, she had been recognized. T he stools for her carriage shafts had been
broken and the shafts propped on the hubs o f perfectly strange carriages, a m ost undignified sight. It was
no good asking h erse lf why she had come. (Seidensticker, “H eartvine,” p. 160)
Rokujo’s possession has been the subject of much scholarly discussion. Were the spirits
who killed Yugao and Aoi and the ones that possessed Murasaki and the Third Princess those of

264
Rokujo’s spirit or not? While admitting that what killed Yugao and Aoi was Rokujo’s living
spirit Enchi gave a new interpretation to this spirit.433 She said that it was a symbolic metaphor
for the ego o f intelligent women like Rokujo who had no outlet in the society. If Rokujo had
been a woman like Yugao, and a woman of no ego, then she would not have been transformed
into a spirit. Enchi had a different interpretation o f the spirits who appeared before Murasaki
and the Third Princess. Citing the poem by the author, Murasaki Shikibu, Enchi assumed that
these were the projections of Genji’s guilt.
t.m < s t t i t z w m n b com, u c

y fifclilw l?L ff 3 C< D± f c <
y* o t 1 1 *?, t
mL*tzitt<3*> y ic 5 *» y , » ^ i= a l < * * y t'o t £ < z * * t'tur l
£ - 5 all*, \t.E 5 i c t m t) * a ] iia , cd'P n o rfl. ? f t i t & z t e £
O ^ c o tp lc k . (R ifi 31 387 —88)
(B old lines: her pride at being the w ife o f the late prince and th e m other o f the Ise Virgin Princess w as
crushed m ercilessly, and under her gorgeous and refined silk robes the trem endous rancor and hatred, that
she w as looked dow n upon as sim ply one o f G en ji's conquests by a m ere daughter o f the m inister o f th e
le ft-le s s talented an d less b ea u tifu l-ra g ed m ore an d m ore to th e extent they finally left her body out o f
her control.)
f-----1 *-A**1'
Y26>g.ga 'coigî: v'O X <fcl 'S >k V lii* 3= L < l o t z 1 1
tza mm<n a (OB* » * ' * i x i ofcflWMi S » t* t, * 5 »*a>t* # * I'*lefc o x U* o tz
tB .z > X l'Z W & m t.h kX-hSRZ ( - ^ W t F H 280)
riRftJ cof^#iir^ggjco#co!fecogt,, rgfjco#t [ s i t ; t t s ^ i r v ' S ^ f t r t

f i o - C t ‘5 , L 7 ) 'L , ^ f t £ ( i o §
[I believe the author of G enji characterizes the living ghost in the Yugao chapter and that in A o i
chapter as that of the Rokujo lady. However, the Rokujo lady herself does not know that it is her
own living ghost, nor does Genji.] Enchi, “Genji m o n o g a ta ta rish iken ," p. 345.

265
< Sf e ML- CJf e f c «f c 3 ft fc </*/>. i f c ' z i f U i t'U.g.v'

£Untz~k Mb 'O 'irA rt'io ‘jlT ^ M $ '
J: 9 s - i f f=**& t 8 3 y i c & i j f o s i c t t o r . f t i <o
*&9 ct 9 L f t d ' o f c - t t l ' T K t , J; O f C t i 9 (^ « f n 3 7 5 -6 )
TG26|¥tS. i: 3>- 3 * f t < iiiC L o t l g . a >9 L iflH tib S r.Iija* * # *W)0rlC. AcO&
f c l* i* 3 a r tK ^ ,:J > L 3 ^ a ^ S * i|& - H P f c tt, ( 5 J : *102)
S26| She had, over the years, known the full range o f sorrow s, but never before had she felt so utterly
m iserable. There had been no release from th e anger since the other lady had so insulted her, indeed
behaved as if she did not exist. More than on ce she had the sam e dream . (Seidensticker, “H eartvine,” p.
167.)
In Enchi’s view the possession/ego and possession/lyricism in the Rokujo lady are two sides of
the same coin. She gave half a page to the description o f Rokujo’s possession of Yugao in her
essay.
L fi 'L .W & m n & t g # T fe£ [
c fc o T f? # ,
m* g # £ n , £ ^ jj ^ (c 9 h z h x \ ' s -k&e 11 m l b-r s 0
$ L T R i:S T * t > 5 c <

^ r^ rH L V v h ft$ 7 £ > cfc 3 L & t V I f H i a 5
T 5 T 5 £ « £ £ f 2 L 0 tti5 ,|s jB # (-J & # £ > o T 3 *>(KL TV'S£fc>iHllir
S T S -- - 3 -€ :ix * :ltT ^ r tt.& ^ itL
s ct 3 t , s i r
r £ T 3 r i n 6 t f L £ L fc ri'j
*■fin
£ ' S + & < n m ib im jim < n & Z h t f X Z n h 3 3„
rf5T3'jtlr L <b, f f { - f c x .T j

266
fti> L * ? B£
W j ^ 'o f c o f z f z m f r l Z & t i > t l - a , 'Z b < n r \ & f r & 7 'D % l Z L , M f z , & ft(D O
- t b [ z m ' i x * z & :& L & { z f ? & f f i L t z ( D x * f o z > 0 ( r m & v o m & f i } p. 345 . )
(H ow ever, at the bottom of her despondency and persistence, th e Rokujo lady had a subconscious
psychic power, which haunted G enji and eventually found the w om an he lost his head over.
There is a w om an w ho is responding to G enji’s love w ithout m uch reservation~agreeably and
flexibly—behind a few folding screens and curtains in a room o f a grand deserted m ansion. A nd there
is a m an who devotes all his attention to loving such a w om an as h e loves a pretty pet [ ...] W hen she
saw m ore than she should have seen, th e w ords ran out o f her throat, and reaching out for the delicate
neck o f the w om an w ho was lying w ith th e man. she pressed her cold hands on both sides o f the
bones [ ...] That was enough to make the woman p an t breathlessly and sweat.
Inside the bedroom , suddenly feeling choked by som ebody, R okujo tried to push it away, and w oke
up with pain in her chest.
She thought she was being strangled, and gave a long sigh.
“W hat happened to you?”
Chujd no kimi. who w as lying close to her, folded up the screens and quietly looked in.
“ I w onder if I had a nightm are, because I am soaking in sw eat.”
R okujo said softly. That mansion, the w o m an ’s delicate features, and the beautiful features o f H ikaru
G enji, w ho was em bracing the woman so lovingly, did not leave even a trace in R okujd’s mind. She
w as ju st in a sweat because som e obsession had em ptied her mind and come back again to her.)434
In her other works Enchi included similar experiences of possession where the woman
protagonist goes back and forth between her self as a writer and the other selves of the
characters she is writing about.435 The Rokujo lady that Enchi created in her translation is not
the spooky and weirdly crazy woman most critics and writers have interpreted her to be, but is
rather a well-educated woman with intelligence and refinement. Enchi lets her positive view of
Rokujo speak through her description o f the Akashi lady, whose pride and firmness remind
434 Enchi, “G enji m onogatari shiken,” p. 345.

435 See other works by Enchi such as H ebi no koe [Voices of the Snakes], N ise no en- S b u i [Love
in Two Lives: The Remnant], Yd [Enchantress], Sa im u [The Mist], etc.

267
Genji of the Rokujo lady. Other translations only briefly mention the resemblance between
Rokujo and the Akashi lady.
* < © A « £ i# o i+ T # > <* * £ a t l t . * * i = * i + *

*^ti< tiJ3 (E fc(D T ffco fc.]
$6lif5Tkfe]<b-f It < o^V 'TV 'fccO I,:. - Ayfr.g.V'zWtikZ. i r l t& o T L io fc c O T .-^ c o R
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H .'a t# /j:w c # > o f c 0 ’ o iX L x m m iz & titif c J : i *£ x.k< r> W & ztnVtKbto)* t f c ®
i r 'I t f c S l t o J t T .k 'i : L £ fcthi: LJsiSK . ' ( c 4' oTf £. i ££ $ 0 fc
5 o fc» « -7 --C * -5 , (Flllfi W597-8)
(Bold lines: Her resem blance seem ed to have taken G enji's breath aw«y. But that did not at all
discourage his desire for her Rather, the m om ent he discovered her resem blance to the Rokujo lady, he
cam e to understand the A kashi lady’s excessive pride and her overly strong self-control in facing him, as
well as her refined taste, m ultiple talents, and charm s to attract people.)
m l j c 7 ) ; W c # 9 ^ l ± f N £ c o « i S ^ l c ^ o < * l0 fc O i:-C # )o t., c.

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S27| The alm ost inaudible w hisper rem inded him strongly o f the R okujo lady. T his lady had not been
prepared for an incursion and could not co p e with i t She fled to an inner room. How she could have
contrived to bar it he could not tell, but it w as very firmly barred indeed. Though he did not exactly force
his way through, it is not to be imagined that he left m atters as they w ere. Delicate, slender— she was
alm ost too beautiful. Pleasure w as m ingled w ith pity at the thought th at he was im posing him self upon
her. She was even more pleasing than reports from afar had had her. (Seidensticker, “A kashi," p. 263)
Enchi explains in her addition that Genji came to cope with the Akashi lady's pride and
self-control by reminding himself o f Rokujo. The fact that the Akashi lady resembled Rokujo
did not turn off his desire. Rather, her resemblance and his memory helped him to feel close to
her, because he was still attached to Rokujo even after they had parted. There is no such
interpretation o f Genji’s deep attachment to Rokujo in the other translations.
Conclusion: Enchi’s Translation as Transformance
As Enchi’s additions to these passages describing the Kiritsubo, Fujitsubo, Utsusemi, Yugao,
and Rokujo ladies and Hikaru Genji illustrate, she saw her translation o f Genji as a
transformative act. On the one hand, it was a “rape,” an act o f fierce love bom out of a modem
woman’s passaionate struggle with a classical text as seductive and “wild” as Genji himself. On
the other hand, it was a “woman-handling” o f the classical text by a “woman writer,” an act o f

269
hermeneutic violence aimed at taking it back from masculinist critics and interpreters who
appropriated it to support a nationalist ideology.
But her translation o f Genji into modem Japanese was not entirely innocent. Like Yosano
and Tanizaki, she contributed to the modem Japanese state ideology o f a standard Japanese
language designed to replace the rich multiplicity and heterogeneity o f the ancient language. In
so doing, she in effect supported a patriarchai/phallogocentric construction o f canonicity.
Moreover, she performed her activity o f translation from a position o f social and cultural
privilege and power, thereby reinforcing the privileging and preserving of the traditional
hierarchy between expert and amateur, academic and popular.
And so, as we turn to the final part o f this study, we are faced with a question: Is there any
kind o f equitable translation practice that can dissolve these issues o f power and privilege? If
there is, it can only emerge from a literary practice that does not reduce women to an instance
o f an abstraction called “Woman.” In Part Threee we shall see how Enchi’s approach to
translation as “transformance” carried over into her own writing in the form o f a “translation”
o f the lives and experiences of women in modem Japan. Here too Enchi was engaged in a
re-writing o f “Japan.”

270
Cited Texts
The texts I used in the Appendix are the following:
Tamagami, Takuya, trans. and annotated. Genji monogatari. 10 vols. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten,
1992.
Yosano, Akiko, trans. Zen ’yaku: Genji monogatari. 3 vols. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1998.
Tanizaki, Jun'ichiro, trans. Jun 'ichiro yaku: Genji monogatari. 5 vols. Tokyo: Chuo koronsha,
1998.
Enchi, Fumiko, trans. Enchi Fumiko yaku: Genji monogatari. 5 vols. Tokyo: Shinchdsha,
1993.
Seidensticker, Edward G., trans. with an introduction. Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale o f Genji.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1994.
E 1-27 (modern Japanese translation by Enchi Fumiko)

Yl-27 (modern Japanese translation by Yosano Akiko)
T l-27 (modern Japanese translation by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro)
TGl-27 (text annotated by Tamagami Takuya)
S T 27 (English translation by Edward G. Seidensticker)

PART THREE
VIOLENCE AND GENDER:
ENCHI’S RE-WRITING OF MODERN WOMEN AND JAPAN
The more I become aware o f the privileged class I belong to, the more I feel
obligated to express in my own language that woman’s simple trust towards the
state and society and her crying flowing from her disappointment. I must measure
and calculate with precision her abundant sweetness, gentleness and warmth like
subterranean heat with my own selfish and cold-blooded ruler. (Enchi Fum iko)436
436Enchi Fumiko. "Niji to shurcT [Rainbows and Demons], in Enchi Fumiko

:enshu, vol. 12, p. 328.

272
C h a p te r O ne
Within and Without the Marriage System: Wife and Prostitute
Southern Skin and Skeletons o f Men
Introduction
In Part One I discussed the feminization o f the Japanese nation and the related
essentialization of women writers such as Enchi Fumiko (body, life and works) by postwar
masculinist critics and writers. In Part Two, to illustrate Enchi’s protest and resistance, I
introduced her modem translation o f The Tale o f Genji and compared it to preceding
modem translations by Yosano Akiko and Tanizaki Jun’ichiro. Here in Part Three I would
like to put three of Enchi’s novels and three o f her short stories into conversation with the
topics discussed in Part One and Part Two. To do this I will look at how Enchi deals with
socio-political issues which, according to critics, were said to be non-existent in her fiction.
In particular. I want to show how she resists that juxtaposing o f the Japanese nation with
the image of “ Woman'’ which led critics to portraying Japan as Woman or victim.
The three novels I will deal with in Part Three were based on historical incidents:
the prostitution of young girls during the period o f Japanese imperialism in Asia; medical
experiments by the Japanese army on POWs during WWII; and the lynching o f fellow
members of the Japanese Red Army at Asama Mountain in 1972. They are included in
Enchi’s collected works and were initially serialized in daily newspapers. Nevertheless,
they are not as well-known or well-regarded as those viewed by some male critics as more
“representative” of Enchi’s work. None o f them received insightful reviews from such
critics when these works were published. For example, either Enchi was criticized for her
usual strategy of resorting to the shamanistic legacy for modem novels (A House Without a

273
Dining Table), or for killing the male protagonist at the end of the story and making the
female protagonist, a married woman, commit adultery for no convincing reason ( Women's
Cocoon), or her novel was simply ignored (Southern Skin).437 However, my own
speculation about the reasons for their unpopularity with these critics may be that these
novels deal with uncomfortable subjects for the postwar Japanese reader: prostitution o f
Japanese women; experiments on the human body; lynching o f students, etc.
In these works Enchi focuses on the relationship between the nation and women as
reflected in multiple mirrors. The reader will find how mistaken were criticisms o f Enchi
as an “asocial/ahistorical/ apolitical” writer. As supporting evidence for my reading of
these novels I have chosen to pair one relatively well-known short story with each
unpopular novel so that the reader can see a common thread in both fictions. Often the
theme the reader tend to overlook in a short story are better illustrated in a novel. Thus, for
example, in this chapter I discuss the construction o f women's bodies as prostitutes or
wives in the novel Southern Skin, and in the short story Skeletons o f Men. These stories
show Enchi's picture o f the modem state project o f producing imperial subjects. In the
second chapter, discussing the novel Women s Cocoon, and the short story Boxcar o f
Chrysanthemums, I analyze violence on women's bodies in relation to violence on m en's
bodies in fictions set in the historical context o f WWII and the postwar period. In the third
437For a review o f Women s Cocoon, see Komatsu Shinroku, “Onna no mayu:

sakuhin-hyo' [W omen's Cocoon: Review], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 9. pp. 501-505.
For a review o f A House Without A Dining Table, see Sakai Satoshi. "'Shokutaku' no nai
ie ': Enchi Fumiko Shokutaku no nai ie ' kara" ['House* Without ‘A Dining Table": A
House W ithout A Dining Table' by Enchi Fumiko], Chukyd bungaku, 9 (March 1994): 1-9;
Kawamura Minato, “Saka no uba": Enchi Fumiko-ron [Old Lady at Hill: Thesis on Enchi
Fumiko], Kaien (August 1987): pp. 230-244.

274
chapter I deal with the ideological division of sex roles-m en as bearers o f
revolution/change, women as bearers o f tradition— in a comparison o f the novel A House
Without a Dining Table, and the story The Voices o f Snakes. As we shall see, unlike for
her male critics, writing about women is for Enchi the translation and transformance o f
their subjectivity, their historical agency, in relation to their bodies and experiences.
M inam i no hada (Southern Skin) [1961f ' %
Desire in the “South” and for the “South”
In the title o f this fiction. Southern Skin, Enchi is referring to karayuki-scm from the
southern part o f Japan such as Shimabara or Amakusa, a place from which many girls were
sent to other parts o f Asia as prostitutes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century.4' 1’ Kumamoto prefecture (including Amakusa island) is also the birthplace o f the
female protagonist. Ritsu. in Enchi's story Skeletons o f Men. characterized as a model o f
the good wife and wise mother ideology in the same period. In short, Enchi presents two
different roles for women as serving the state/ nation in the Meiji period: the wife/mother
who maintains the family and the prostitute who supports her hometown and country by
sending money to them.
Enchi's novel shows how karayuki-san were produced in this specific historical
438Text: Enchi Fumiko. “Minami no hada" [Southern Skin], in Enchi Fumiko

lenshu. vol. 8 (Tokyo: Shinchosha. 1978).
439The term karayuki-san (san is an honorific suffix) came from "kara-hitoyukf' or

“karan-kuni yuki." which meant prostitutes who went overseas, that is. who. from the end
o f the Edo period until after WWI, left Japan and went to Siberia, China, Southeast Asia,
India and Africa. (The term kara originally meant China.) Source: Yamazaki Tomoko.
Sandakan Hachibankan (Tokyo: Bungei shunju. 1998). p. 9.

275
socio-economic context. In the novel, poverty is discovered and desire is created in
Amakusa girls through contact with the money economy in Nagasaki. Shimabara and
Amakusa are viewed from the center o f Japan. Tokyo, as being on the periphery, while
South Asia is viewed as even more peripheral and even more to the south than the south of
Japan.4'’0 But for Otei, the female protagonist in the story who migrates from Amakusa to
Nagasaki and to South Asia, it is the money economy that draws her from rural areas to
urban areas in Japan and in the British colonies in South Asia.
First, therefore, we have to pay attention to the main geo-political factor o f
Amakusa island: its proximity to Nagasaki. The story o f Southern Skin begins with a
description o f the local festival (okunchi matsuri) in Nagasaki in the southern part o f Japan
around the time of the Russo-Japanese War.441 The lively town o f Nagasaki and its local
440Shimabara and Amakusa had a noteworthy history in Japan. Peasant uprising

broke out in 1637 in the overtaxed Shimabara domain (now part o f Nagasaki Prefecture)
and immediately spread to the Amakusa island (now part o f Kumamoto Prefecture). Both
areas had been christianized before the Tokugavva shogunate (1603-1867) began its general
persecution o f the faith in 1614. The shogunate viewed the rebellion as christian-inspired, a
critical factor in its final decision to cut off all contact with Catholic lands. The rebels
were put under siege at Hara Castle on the Shimabara Peninsula by a huge army mobilized
by the shogunate. When it fell in 1638, Amakusa Shiro and 37,000 o f his followers,
women and children included, are said to have perished in the slaughter. (Source: Japan:
An Illustrated Encyclopedia, p. 1368.) Probably because o f this incident, both Amakusa
and Shimabara have been viewed as exotic and foreign by the Japan proper. It is possible
that such a preception produced another discourse o f “Amakusa Karayuki-san.” (In fact,
Karayuki-san came from other parts o f Japan too, according to Morikuri Shigekazu. I will
introduce his article later in this chapter.) Enchi also talks about the unusual history o f
these two sites in Japan, and the connection between its history and production o f
Karayuki-san.
441Okunchi comes from okunichi. which can signify either o-kunichi (the ninth day),
or o-kunichi (the shrine day), or o-kunichi (the day o f dedication). In Nagasaki it is a fall
festival celebrated on the ninth o f September according to the lunar calendar, perhaps
reflecting an origin in Chinese custom.

276
festival are depicted by the narrator as seen through the eyes o f Otei, a girl from rural
Amakusa island, as “gorgeous” (hanayaka) and “luxurious” (zeitaku). Contact with
Nagasaki's affluence while working as a maid leads Otei to recognize the poverty o f her
hometown, Amakusa. Enchi makes it clear that it is not because Otei is from a poor family
that Otei goes to the south as a karayuki-san, for she is used to working from early morning
till night since her girlhood in Amakusa. Rather, she discovers the poverty o f her life after
seeing a better life in Nagasaki:
It was almost one o ’clock in the morning when she finished filling the bathtub with
water, came up to her small room upstairs, and lay down on a hard thin futon. The
beautiful colors o f costumes she saw at the festival, the exotic stories about Hong
Kong and Singapore she heard from Toramatsu. like a Dragon's Palace Tale, kept
her awake, flashing across her mind all night. (336)
Holding in her hand a 50 cent silver coin she received from Toramatsu (a trafficker), she
dreams o f her future self walking with a “soft white-snow shawl" over her shoulder and a
“foreign-style umbrella” in her hand just as a rich merchant's daughter does. Otei's desire
is not created until she is exposed to the socio-economic difference between her hometown
and a city. Nagasaki. In short, industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century
created a socio-economic gap between Nagasaki and Amakusa. Values from the money
economy which leaked from Nagasaki flooded into rural areas such as Amakusa, creating
in girls like Otei desire, dreams, and ambition for a better life. Thus, the very first scene o f
the local festival o f Nagasaki is set to display how one rural girl’s desires and ambition are
fabricated at the urban economic center.
Nagasaki is also a rest station for outlaws. Like other immigrants to Nagasaki, in
the story Chokichi (a man from Tokyo) comes to this city to find a second chance.

277
Nagasaki in the late nineteenth century was the shelter for the bankrupt, the homeless, and
criminals, most of whom, like Chokichi. became engaged in the prostitution or gambling
business in Nagasaki. As a result, Nagasaki was the site o f frauds, tricks, and deception. A
fifteen year-old Otei, who fantasizes about a better life, is a fish inevitably caught in the net
of these swindlers seeking for a good fortune. In the midst o f the gorgeous displays o f the
festival she is priced as a commodity. In the traffickers’s estimation, young Japanese girls
like Otei are quite valuable as an exchange commodity for trade. Due to the history of
Nagasaki as a port open to foreign countries--China and the Western countries-
transactions were conducted mainly with foreigners who passed through or stayed in
Nagasaki. Consequently. Japanese girls were ranked higher in comparison with foreign
women. Chokichi. for example, says that Japanese women's skin is better than Western
women’s skin (333). One trafficker boss also confirms. “Japanese girls are always a good
buy for French and British men in South Asia, who praise Japanese girls as more being
responsive than Chinese or Vietnamese girls” (332). Thus, the discourse o f “Japanese
women as ideal sex objects” became prevalent in the meat market in competition with
“Western” or “Chinese” or “Vietnamese” women. In Enchi's fiction the desire of
traffickers for money and the desire o f foreigners for Japanese girls are compounded and
reproduced in a form o f discourse in Nagasaki.
To Be a Japanese Nation
Often the people on the periphery strive to be more patriotic than the people at the
center o f the state. In other words, the more peripherilv they are located, the more eagerly
they try to be an agent o f the state. Karayuki-san are no exception. The scenery Otei sees

278
changes from the one o f the beautiful, colorful festival in Nagasaki to that o f the dark,
filthy, suffocating bottom of the coal smuggler, where the girls were hidden from the police
on the way to Hong Kong. Most girls become sick due to hunger, thirst, seasickness, and
fear o f getting caught by the police. Finally Otei is persuaded to offer herself to a British
official as a bribe so that he would overlook and send the rest o f the illegal immigrants
safely to Hong Kong. Education for karayuki-san already starts from this moment--to
sacrifice themselves to foreigners to save other Japanese. It is ironic that while women in
Japan proper, like Ritsu in The Skeletons o f Men, were educated to be chaste and faithful to
their husbands, karayuki-san were trained to be open to foreigners to save or support other
Japanese.
On the other hand, karayuki-san were trained to be faithful to their hometown and
the home country-chastity towards the state. Katsunuma Kantaro, a trafficker in the story.
naively believes in his mission as a contributor to the Japanese state:
He does not think his job as an international trafficker is unrespectable. Rather his
view is that if karayuki-san make money through their bodies and send it to their
home towns, they can serve the Japanese state by enriching the nation and their
families or relatives. It is a vice for Japanese women to offer their bodies to
foreigners. In this sense they have to apologize to the Emperor and the state for
their ugly act. Therefore, they send money to their hometowns in order to make up
for their ugliness and shame. Sending money is their atonement and also the only
thing one can encourage them to do. Katsunuma does not think he agitates or
threatens those girls, but he believes this completely. He turns what he believes
into practice. He had relationships with most o f karayuki-san and gave them a
lecture: “You are my wife. You are allowed to sell your body to foreigners, but not
to other Japanese men. You will die if you do so.” (376)
Katsunuma's logic that "Karayuki-san can sell their bodies to foreigners, but not to other
Japanese m en” represents racism against foreigners. Since he does not regard foreigners as

279
human, he allows the women to do business with them. But if the women sell their bodies
to his fellow Japanese men, that would be a betrayal to him self and to the Japanese state.
His distorted argument somehow convinces most karayuki-san.44- Hundreds o f karayuki-
san who become his “wife” keep sending him love letters from the South Sea islands or
India where they were sold and sent by Katsunuma’s hand (376). Just before the Russo-
Japanese War, a large number of karayuki-san willingly donate their scarce money and
jew els to Katsunuma hoping that these sacrifices will be turned into weapons to help the
Japanese state to beat Russia. (410) They believed Katsunuma's laughable argument that,
"you understand you owe a lot to the state where your families live now. Should the
Japanese state lose in this big war. your houses and families will be under Russia's
control." (410)
44-The primary source for Enchi is probably “The Autobiography o f Muraoka Iheiji"
(Aturaoka Iheijijiden) published by Nanposha in 1960. Iheiji may have been the first
trafficker who organized a large-scale business o f prostitution in Asia, although in the early
modem period some women had already gone overseas to engage in prostitution. Iheiji
him self was bom in Shimabara (Nagasaki) in 1867 and was responsible for supporting
eighteen members o f his family after his father died. After he left his poor family and
home town with a dream o f making money in Hong Kong, he happened to rescue a number
o f karayuki-san in the remote areas of China. In Enchi's story Katsunuma Kantaro is based
on Muraoka Iheiji. Katsunuma gives his subordinates the following instruction in choosing
girls: they must be from poor families: have no education; be in good health; be from
families who cannot argue back with the trafficker. These points are taken from Iheiji's
autobiography. Other sources for Enchi could be a report. “/kite iru Karayuki-san ” [A
Survival o f Karayuki-san], “NijusseikC [Twentieth Century] (October 1967) by Shima
Kazuharu, who was bom and brought up in Amakusa. At the beginning o f “Southern
Skin," the story o f how Otei, a girl who was in servitude as a maid in Nagasaki, is seduced
and fooled by a trafficker is based on Shima’s report. A critique o f the karayuki-san issue
was already written by Hosoi Kogai in his report, "Shakai Ankokumen no kenkyu: mikkqfh
yukai" [Studies on the Dark Side o f the Society: Kidnaps by Traffickers]. It appeared in
“Sekai Fujin" [World Women], vol. 11. 1907. This magazine was published by Fukuda
Hideko (1865-1927).

280
Let us decipher his arguments about Japanese women and the state again: 11)
karayuki-san send money to their home towns and to the state, since they have to
compensate for their ugly and shameful business; (2) karayuki-san sell their bodies to
foreigners and make money while they are faithful and chaste wives to the Japanese man
(namely, Katsunuma) and to the state (Emperor); (3) karayuki-san as the embodiment of
the Japanese “nation” owe a great debt to the Japanese “state,” they should be willing to
donate money and jewels to the “state” to support the “state” in its war with Russia. The
patriotism, chastity, and shame Katsunuma imposes on karayuki-san sufficiently convince
most karayuki-san. except Otei, Yuki, and Mitsuyo. He further persuades them to spy on
foreign customers in bed to get valuable information for Japan, because “not even any
respectable man can make such a contribution to the state.” Obviously there is a forced
and crooked logic in women's offering their bodies to foreigners while preserving their
chastity to the Japanese men and the state.
Karayuki-san’s chastity to the state originates in their sentiments for their home
towns:
For those who have come far away from their hometown. “Japan” or “Kyushu”
(where Amakusa and Shimabara are located) are more than just their “hometown.”
It is rather engraved in their minds as an imaginary paradise. None o f them had
sufficient food or clothes, none o f them had been treated warmly by their family.
Nevertheless, in the days and nights with uncountable numbers o f men in the
British colony near the equator they think o f the place where flowers blossom each
season, the scenic sites and kind people. Japan is there as a dream hometown. If
Japan disappears, their paradise will disappear too, they sadly believe. They will
donate everything they own to Japan. They will send money or whatever, praying
for Japan's survival (409-10).
Sending money to their family means being chaste to their hometown and to the state.

281
Therefore, a karayuki-san like Yuki who does not send money to her family is ill spoken o f
as a woman “with a crooked conscience” (kokoro mo magacchotta) by the people in the
home town, while those who pay their family debts are praised as living up to "filial piety”
(oya-koko). Success stories about karayuki-san, who come back to their hometown with
money and jewelry, are reflected in a Shimabara lullaby:
The woman in that house even has two

The woman in that house even has two
Golden rings on the fingers
Where was the money from?
Where was the money from?
From China.
Is that so? (427)443
Filial piety is translated into money, and patriotism is also translated into money. In the
money economy in the nineteenth century the money-making machine karayuki-san are
rather viewed with admiration and awe by their hometown people.444
Transition and T ranslation
But as time went on, the value o f karayuki-san as patriots declined. Those who
came back to their hometown penniless after WWI met with an unwelcome reception.
Even though they were able with luck to bring back money they saved in South Asia, they
lost it by being cheated or swindled by their relatives. In that case, despite their advanced
years, they had to work, burning the candle at both ends as daily workers weeding/farming
443Japanese original: Asukon hito wa futachi mo, Asukon hito wa futachi mo, j unkin
yubiwa hametorasu. kane wa dokon ’neke, kane wa dokon 'neke, karakin genabai, shogaina,
ororon ororon ororonbai.
^ T h e promotion o f armament in Japan and the flourishing o f Japanese prostitution

in South Asia both occurred just after the victory in the war with Russia in 1905.

282
or babysitting for other affluent families. The hometown karayuki-san dreamt o f in foreign
countries did not welcome them the way they expected.445 In the story karayuki-san are
compared by Michiyo to “a moth that keeps flying around the light without rest at night,
but is found dead on the floor in the daytime" (426). This metaphor also suggests the
changed value o f karayuki-san in history. In the early modem period karayuki-san were
viewed as pioneers who explored South Asia, which had been colonized by Western
hegemonic powers. They worked hard as migrant settlers and helped Japanese
expansionism in South Asia until the new faces o f developers o f financial combines like
Mitsui and Mitsubishi started to control the influx of Japanese prostitutes in order to
enhance their international reputations.446
The same change has an impact on Katsunuma. the trafficker who was responsible
for selling Otei. Okin, Yuki, Michiyo and other girls to South Asia. After WWI
Katsunuma's romantic caricature o f a mission is overpowered by the much larger scale of
445In 1926 (Taisho 15) Enchi published a play. “Furusato" [Hometown], in which
she depicts Kobayashi Issa's return to his hometown and his disappointment with the
unwelcome reception by his family. In Southern Skin the concept o f “hometown" is more
complex, since Japanese militarism is involved. Since karayuki-san, whether they were
naively brainwashed by Katsunuma or not, believed in their mission on the frontier o f
Japanese expansionism, their disillusionment is double-disillusionm ent o f both personal
nostalgia and constructed nostalgia—when they come back and find themselves unwelcome
by the people.
U6Zaibatsu [industrial and financial combines] attained a dominant position in the

Japanese economy between the Meiji period (1868-1912) and World War II. It was in the
early Meiji period that so-called Big Four zaibatsu (Mitsui. Mitsubishi. Sumitomo, and
Yasuda) were granted government favors that put them on the path to achieving an
exceptional position in the Japanese financial and industrial world. They started to expand
their business overseas as cogs in the state machine o f imperial expansionism in South
Asia, and replaced small scale businessmen such as Katsunuma portrayed in Enchi's story.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e cop y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n proh ibited w ith o u t p e rm is s io n .

283
state policies of Japanese expansionism:
I believed I was devoted to the state and the Emperor when I took poor girls from
Amakusa and Shimabara to the South, helped their family, made them send money
they earned with their own bodies [...] I believed in the Japanese state like the
Buddha or a Shinto Goddess. But now it is trying to kick me out. Those who
naively believed their mission as developers or pioneers in the South like myself are
now pushed to the comer, while those “gentlemen or businessmen" who came later
without pride or concern for other countries are now feeding only their own
interest. They call me a shameful broker o f the flesh trade. (465)
Both Katsunuma and karayuki-san were pushed aside as the imperial militarist state and
financial powers made an advance into the Asian countries. He was “devoted to the state
as he was to his girlfriend, but before his knowing it, the state had already walked away
leaving him behind.” “What he is granted now is not the glorious title o f a pioneer o f the
South, but simply the insulting label of a trafficker who kidnaped girls in his home country
and sold them abroad” (465). The state appropriates Katsunuma's naive but passionate
romanticism for Japanese women and nation, translating it into a state project for the
mobilization o f imperialism.
Meanwhile, after the Maria Luz incident there emerged social movements for
abolishing prostitution in and out o f Japan.447 Aware o f the change in society, Katsunuma
too joins the abolition movement and plans to look after prostitutes after abolition with
money Yuki had entrusted to him. In the midst o f his abolition lecture, however, he is
447The Peruvian ship, Maria Luz, bound for Pern carrying 220 Chinese coolies,
sailed into Yokohama for repairs in 1872. Two coolies escaped to a British warship,
complaining o f inhuman conditions on the Maria Luz. British minister R.G. Watson asked
Foreign Minister Soejima Taneomi to look into the matter. The case became a dispute
under international law, and the Peruvian government criticized prostitution in Japan. It
ended up driving Japan to abolish the slave trade in order to preserve their face in the
international arena.

stabbed to death by a member o f the audience, a prostitute who was listening to Katsunuma
and had become desperate about her life after abolition. His tragic and ironic end reflects
the transition of Japanese expansionism from the early crude stage in which Katsunuma
had been active to the more organized and mobilized stage o f a state project. Karayuki-
san's value to the Japanese state also diminished and was eventually replaced by “comfort
women” (sex slaves), a mixture o f women from Korea, China, and other Asian countries
who serviced the Japanese army during WWII.
Lullaby and Resistance
The narrator introduces a Shimabara lullaby with the following excuse. “I do not
want to tell the story o f karayuki-san with such sentimentality as this lullaby." (350)
Where is my sis gone?

Where is my sis gone?
To Battanfool with blue chimneys
Where is China?
Where is China?
Must be beyond the Sea
No way to see my s is .448
While copying the song, despite her efforts to rid herself o f naive sentimentality and
lyricism, tears start rolling down. This song must be sung by kids who missed their sisters
shipped overseas with coal in a foreign fleet o f ships with blue chimneys. The narrator can
visualize little boys and girls carrying babies on their backs, standing and watching the
golden sun setting in the sea. The narrator also reflects upon the sentiments o f those
karayuki-san sent to the South, who keep mailing money to hometowns to support their
■^Japanese original: Neshan na doko itaro kai, Neshan na doko itaro kai; Ao-
entotsu no Battanfool.; Kara wa dokon 'neke. Kara wa dokon neke: Umi no hate hayo;
shogaina (350).

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poor parents and siblings. Is this sentimentality? The narrator says no. This sentiment
should not be reduced by snobbish criticism to being “jdruri-like” or “ naniwabushi-like,”
the narrator says; rather it should be acknowledged as “family bonding" (kazoku ishiki) or
“nostalgia” (kyashu) smeared with the smell o f milk.44* “Such nostalgia could sometimes
be a heartwarming comfort for those helpless karayuki-san" (351). The third stanza o f this
lullaby describes how karayuki-san are packed and hidden in the dark, filthy, stifling
bottom o f the ship without sufficient food and water on the way to South Asia. When Otei,
Yuki, and Mitsuyo sing this lullaby at a reunion many years later, the three characters try to
resist tears and sentimentality, as the narrator also tried to do:
Between the melody and lines o f the lullaby the recollection o f each girl's hungry
and humiliating infancy and girlhood, despite the differences in each case, gets
mixed in a whirlpool o f their common experiences on the smuggler, sharing the
same fate in the midst o f the waves and seamen. Their experiences and sentiments
were beyond description, but when they are singing the melody o f the lullaby, all
their sentiments—joy. anger, sorrow and happiness—become expressible, articulate,
filling the unspeakable space and flowing over. (428)
There is a therapeutic function in singing the lullaby together. The lullaby which the three
karayuki-san sing brings them back to a past that had never been sweet, only one o f bitter
experiences. By repeatedly singing this sad song, they keep resuscitating their memories.
But as Tamanoi states, the karayuki-san’s act o f “remembering their experiences" could
449This kind of nostalgia has been criticized by intellectuals as being “jdruri-like" or

“naniwabushi-like.” as if it was a residue o f “premodem” Japan. Sakai Naoki. for
example, as I will discuss in the last chapter in Part Three, problematizes this kind o f
maudlin expression as illustrating a “system o f sentimentality” in Japan to which people
can assimilate and identify themselves.

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itself be a resistance."450 If so, this is not a song o f sentimentality, but a song o f resistance
and sisterhood.
One o f the three girls who sing this lullaby is Mitsuyo. Her childhood is. like other
karayuki-san, a history of rape by her stepfather and a son o f the landowner, and
exploitation by her family and her parents-in-law. She gets kicked out by her parents-in-
law after her husband dies o f tuberculosis. She negotiates with a trafficker and decides the
price herself. She says to Otei and Yuki, “I had a hard life since I was a kid in Amakusa.
When I got on board, I thought how sailors feel that just below the ship's bottom is hell. 1
made up my mind to work as hard as I can in the South where no family—no parents or
siblings—live" (352, 394). Now Mitsuyo looks full o f vitality and hope—totally different
from her old self oppressed by her parents-in-law in Amakusa. Mitsuyo's decision shows
that not all karayuki-san are so naive and gullible as to be deceived by the trafficker.
Mitsuyo is one of those girls who are determined to take a chance for herself, not for her
“family." In her eyes the heroic and patriotic Katsunuma is a sheer caricature. After she
parts from Otei. she goes to work at Katsunuma's brothel and re-contracts tuberculosis.
Since she knows she will not live longer, she strongly wishes that "at least Otei and Yuki
become tough enough to survive in the South, and return to their hometown with glory.”
In the body and soul of these two girls Mitsuyo believes that her own “experiences are
engraved and will live together with them," since all three shared a hard fate at the bottom
of the smuggler (430). For Mitsuyo the Shimabara lullaby is a reminder o f and
450Tamanoi Mariko, “Teikoto shite no komori-uta" [Lullaby as Resistance], in

Jenda no Nihon-shi [Japanese History o f Gender], vol. 2 (Tokyo: Tokyo UP, 1995), p. 357.

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confirmation o f their sisterhood.
That night after the reunion Yuki makes an entry in her journal:
Three unlucky Amakusa women get together for supper in Singapore.

We sing a lullaby o f our hometown and all cry.
Under the Southern Cross
In the islands right under the Equator
Hundreds and thousands o f unhappy Japanese girls are selling their bodies.
This misfortune is not only in the South islands.
It is also located in Japanese society.
The night may be still dark and long, but I strongly believe the dawn will come.
(428)451
Yuki never forgives Katsunuma for reducing her and other girls to the fate o f prostitutes
and exploiting them, even after she becomes better-off as the concubine o f a rich Chinese
merchant One day, however, she entnists money to Otei and Katsunuma and asks them to
look after other karayuki-san who will lose their jobs after the impending abolition of
prostitution. She herself may be. Yuki says to Katsunuma, "one o f the ghosts, soaked in
blood and tears, o f hundreds of Japanese women who were sent from Japan as a
commodity”(458). After a short while, Yuki joins the Chinese socialist revolution and gets
tortured to death together with her Chinese lover. For Yuki the Shimabara lullaby is a
painful private memory, yet it is also a historical testimony and record o f oppressed women
sharing the same fate in the world as herself.
Okin as a Promiscuous Woman of the South
Otei regards the lullaby as part o f Yuki’s will when Yuki asked Otei to take care o f
other karayuki-san. Otei’s one concern is about Okin. her cousin, whom Otei brought with
451Yuki may be patterned after Yamada Waka, bom in 1879, who was engaged in
sex work in Seattle, Washington from around 1897 to 1903. She escaped and sought
shelter in a Presbyterian church. She was baptized and became a socialist.

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her to the South. Okin loses contact and is found dead of syphilis in a cheap brothel in the
remote areas o f the island o f Sumatra (today's Indonesia). Otei and Mitsuyo. who arrive
too late to see Okin alive, bum the corpse:
When a coolie inserts a stick underneath O kin's body and kindles the fire, the
corpse suddenly rises up as if it were alive. Her hair is in flames, her skin is alight
with fire. It was as if a twisting Fudo deity were transformed into the white naked
body o f a woman. It was so horrible that Mitsuyo gasped and covered her face with
her hands. Otei. however, throwing a can o f oil onto Okin’s body, called her:
Okin-shan!
With an exploding noise Okin’s corpse suddenly stopped fire-dancing. Her body
was now in flames. The awful smell fell heavily on the air like lead while the
organs were burning. Both Otei and Mitsuyo threw up again and again, crawling
around on the ground. (434-5)
Otei picks up O kin's dry white bones and puts them in the ceramic urn. Holding it tightly
to her chest, she returns to Amakusa. “Showing O kin's ashes to her parents, who did not
love their daughter so much, giving them money, and burying the ashes in the grave. Otei
feels she has finally come to terms with Okin—she now understands Okin's life” (440).
Okin was portrayed in strong contrast to Otei. Then how is it that Otei can “understand"
this girl with such a different personality? Let us see how Okin is depicted. Her “loose
clothes and hair around her fleshy neck arouse men” (349). Even after being raped by one
trafficker on the ship, she “slowly got up and adjusted her clothes without showing any
emotion” (375). “ Her loose, unguarded and defenseless body is cut out for this sex
business, and soon sells cheap due to her lameness” (394). Otei asks Mitsuyo. who will go
with Okin to Singapore, to take care o f her since “she is sweet but has no guts to fight or
resist”(394). In short. Okin is the right girl for meeting the four conditions for becoming a
karayuki-san: poor, almost no education, healthy, no family or relatives who will complain

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to the trafficker (338). O kin’s family are poor, she does not go to school, therefore she is
illiterate and ignorant. Her parents do not love her, therefore they have no objection to
their daughter going overseas unless she becomes a burden for them.452 Last but not least
o f the four conditions, Okin has a healthy mature body. Poor daughters o f farmers or
fishermen like Okin “live on the south islands breathing in fresh air in the sun all the year
around.” As a result, they are far “healthier than girls living closed up in the snow half a
year in the north o f Japan, especially in the area on the Japan Sea.” “ With their reddish
skin and hair, full breasts and hips, when they reach puberty they look perfectly healthy and
tough enough for any physical work” (339).
The narrator lists another characteristic that makes Amakusa girls suitable for
prostitution. Because o f their history and the weather most girls in Amakusa are brought
up without certain aspects oC'hdken dotoku" [feudalistic morality], such as "teiso kart nen”
[ideology o f chastity], or without “bakuzen to shita ifu" [vague fear] o f men. Among youth
in Amakusa there is a custom called “sara wo waru" [to break a plate], in which young
men and women freely make love; also, a custom o f offering o n e's wife or daughter to a
traveler along with food and a bath (338, 340). With their adventurous spirit theses girls
are unconsciously waiting for a chance to get out o f their hometown and jum p into new
water as fresh fish do. Therefore, the narrator concludes, the traffickers had only to
skillfully scoop those girls' hopes and dreams into their nets. It was far from the case that
they kidnaped “happy” girls and transformed them into “unhappy” prostitutes. “Karayuki-
452According to the statistics, most families in Amakusa sent their daughters or

sisters overseas either as prostitutes or workers.

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san bom in Amakusa are gifted with optimistic vitality, by which they turn their cruel, sad.
and indignant experiences into positive ones for coping with a new life." In summarizing
the narrator’s description o f Amakusa girls, Katsunuma, the head trafficker, praises the
girls as being like the immortal phoenix full o f vitality:
Amakusa women’s skin is never dead. No matter how many men they have to
sleep with, their skin will recover its freshness after one night just as a rubber
pillow bounces back soon after it is crushed. (468)
"Amakusa women seem gifted with the ability o f sexually pleasing men, and in so doing
they revive and resuscitate themselves rather than wearing out.” (468) Therefore, “there are
many women in Amakusa who cannoi spend a night without a man”(468). However, such
descriptions of Amakusa women are all from the viewpoint o f men or male traffickers.
Even the narrator seems to repeat this male discourse in which women are viewed as
promiscuous. Ideological notions such as “chastity” or “promiscuity” do not accurately
describe Amakusa girls, since they were after all terms fabricated for a double-standard
asymmetrical relationship between men and women. In these discourses Okin’s life and
sexuality are undermined and silenced.
Otei’s Sexuality
On die other hand, the narrator lets Otei narrate her own sexuality. Although Otei
becomes a prostitute too, she is not depicted as “promiscuous.” She has a “brilliant vitality
which never becomes obscure like a diamond in the filth” (diamondo no yd n i donna
yogore no naka ni attemo yogore kiru koto no nai kagayakasii inochi) (480). She
persistently waits for her first love. Egmond, a British businessman who loses contact with
her after he promises to come back. Meanwhile, however, she has to support herself by

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engaging in the sex business. She believes her contact with many men changes her body,
so that anybody can tell from her body that she has been engaged in prostitution. Mitsuyo
admits that she can tell, but she says that “men cannot tell [...] even a man like Katsunuma
who has known many women cannot tell unless he knows about your past. Because you
look like a girl who has had sex only once or twice”(430). Otei anxiously wonders if
Egmond will notice the difference from what he used to know once he sees her body.
O tei's worry is based on a popular saying about women’s body: you can tell a virgin’s body
from a non-virgin's body.
In the meat market in the nineteenth century a virgin’s body was valued more than
a non-virgin’s. Ritsu, in The Skeletons o f Men, is valued by her husband because she
comes to him at puberty as a virgin, and Shiga in the same story is bought as mistress at a
high price because she is a virgin. Ritsu and Shiga know only one man, Yoshimitsu, which
is the ideal for a woman in that period. In comparison with “chaste” Ritsu and Shiga,
O tei's life is far from an ideal example o f state ideology, since she is after all a prostitute.
However, Otei comes to know, through contact with many men, about “their cries and
moans, hunger and sorrow, which were totally unknown to her when she was a girl.”
“Through several years o f sex life with hundreds o f men she comes to know all the desires
and sentiments their bodies emit” (440). Therefore. Otei cannot agree with Yuki, who has
experienced only one man, the man who had purchased her, and who ideologically
criticizes men in general. Otei cannot think o f the men. who sometimes “devoured her
body as animals in heat” and who sometimes “happily satisfied their thirst as if they found
the oasis they seeked”(440), without feeling deep pity and warm sympathy towards human

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beings. “Although she believes her love is only for Egmond, her first love,” she
unexpectedly conies to discover her sexuality in the midst o f pity and sympathy towards
those men with whom she slept. By situating Otei as a protagonist, Enchi suggests that
Otei’s subjectivity comes through her experience of her contact with many men, not from
being “ faithful” to only one man.
O tei’s sympathy for human beings leads to her act o f supporting ex-prostitutes in
the South who lose jobs after the abolition law. thus fulfilling her promise to Yuki and
Katsunuma who had both died. With Egm ond's help Otei accepts these women in a room
of a storehouse in order to train them in skills o f embroidering or handicrafts, so that they
can be financially independent some day.453 Despite rebellion from some o f the women,
despite slander, jealousy and envy, and despite Egmond's pleas. Otei keeps trying to
establish this helping institution for these women.454
O tei's first love and husband. Egmond. is described by the narrator as a feminist
who treats Otei with affection and respect. But his humanism is dedicated only to beautiful
women like Otei, not to “aged street sellers stirring dark-colored thick soup containing
453Afler the Prohibition o f Slave Trade Law in 1872, the Meiji Government set up
an institution, Y qo onna k q d (Factory for Prostitutes) in Gion and Shimabara in Kyoto.
They provided these women with some basic education and skills to allow them to become
independent. However, in all but a few cases most women went back to their former
business. It was not at all a serious policy on the part o f the government, merely a gesture
for keeping face to the world. (Yamazaki, History o f Interaction o f Asian Women, p. 22)
454Some part o f Otei's life may have been taken from Oda Miki and her British
husband. Kenneth John Mackin. He used to be a police officer in Shanghai, and married
Miki. They lived in M iki’s hometown, Ushibuka, in Amakusa since 1927. There is still a
bridge named after Mackin. However, Oda Miki was not a karayuki-san. but a migrant
worker in Shanghai.

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pig’s intestines or livers” nor to “filthy street kids playing games in the street” (370). He
comes from a good family addressed as aristocrats (Sir), mayors, diplomats, and so forth.
He himself is assigned an important job in the intelligence service in Shanghai. Thus, he is
the embodiment o f the imperialism o f the British Empire, which had colonized most o f
Asia through the East India Company for more than one hundred years. Even such a proud
member o f the colonialist elite is convinced by Otei's sincerity and devotion to prostitutes
and comes to support her project. Later he decides to abandon his British nationality and
comes to Otei’s hometown to avoid the confusion in Shanghai in WWII. Egmond says,
“After all nationality exists only for our convenience and means nothing for two people
who trust each other.” They come to live in Amakusa until the war is over, but for Otei
"any place she lives with Egmond becomes her hometown, no other place” (485).
Loyalty to state and hometown were connected and programmed in the minds o f
karayuki-san as the foundation o f their civic responsibility. As Narita Ryuichi maintains,
this coupling was a device o f nation-building in modem Japan.455 In Enchi's story another
issue, “virginity,” that is, a gendered notion o f “chastity” vis-a-vis the state and hometown
figured as a man, is added to the two aforementioned. Such national and colonial
narratives educate karayuki-san to be “faithful” to the state and their hometown, and to
sacrifice their bodies and sexuality for them. In this novel Enchi attempts to let prostitutes
overcome these hurdles. When we read this story now, it may not sound very new. But it
455A s for the coupling o f nation and hometown, see Narita Ryuichi. “Neshon to
'kokyd"’ [Nation and ‘Hometown’], in Chapter Three: Kasei sareru ko kyo ’ [Constructed
‘Hometown’], in 'Kokyd' toyum onogatari: toshi kukan no rekishi-gaku [Narratives of
‘Hometown’: The History o f Urban Space] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 1998), pp. 96-
100 .

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is quite remarkable if we read it in the context o f the postwar period, especially in 1961
when the work was published. That was when multiple discourses on women/ femininity/
state/nation/ nationalism appeared. Enchi tries to depict the vitality and resistance of
karayuki-san against these discourses in which women’s bodies, sentiments, and sexuality
were appropriated and vacuumed up.
Yuki’s Sexuality and Socialism
Tobe Yuki is another example o f an ill-fitting karayuki-san.456 Yuki is a proud,
beautiful and smart Amakusa girl who voluntarily chooses to migrate to the South, since
her family is bankrupt. After being tortured cruelly, she is transformed into a sex doll who
can please men without feeling her own pleasure: “Prostitutes are never awakened to their
own sexuality, they only allow men to steal their pleasure from them." Thus, although she
is given a Western education by her patron, she feels fragmented and alienated from her
own body and from her sexuality. She also feels no attachment to her hometown where her
brother and other relatives live, that is, she does not send money to them. The word
“hometown," which is familiar to every karayuki-san, does not kindle any emotion in Yuki.
Nor does the abstract term “Japan" stimulate her nostalgia at all. The schism between her
mind and body/sexuality leads her to cut the umbilical cord between herself and Japan.
Otei admires but cannot accept Yuki’s subsequent socialist ideals, because in her
sexual contacts Otei learns wisdom through her sympathy for men:
While Yuki infers general principles o f an inequality between men and women
456The characterization of Tobe Yuki is probably based on the life o f Yamada

Waka, who became a socialist after she spent years o f prostitution in Seattle. Japan: An
Illustrated Encyclopedia (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1993), p. 1725.

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from her own experiences o f her life with Yan, her patron, Otei cannot but feel
deep sympathy towards men. Yuki says that it is society which creates prostitutes,
and that only social revolution can liberate women and workers. Uneducated Otei
cannot understand Yuki’s theory, but rather than relying on revolution or war in
which people kill each other in bloody fights, she cannot live without the warmth
for people she learned in her unusual life. Yuki does not send any money to her
family in her hometown, which saddens Otei when she finds it out. (440-41)
In contrast to Otei, whose scars are healing, Yuki's body/sexuality are severed. Yuki's
“coldness” chills herself, and she knows that her socialist ideals come from this coldness
and hatred towards human beings. Warming her coldness with revolutionary passion and
love for her lover, Yuki plunges herself into a tragic ending. Her coldness is contrasted to
Katsunuma’s “animalistic warmth.” Everything about Katsunuma—his job. appearance,
and behavior—are all vulgar and pushy, far from elegant. But both Yuki and Otei know
they can count on “a kind of warmth like that o f an animal that is always in him, which she
can never find in a person with a cold heart” (466). Katsunuma's romantic idealism and
heroism may be far better than the arrogant ideology o f the military people or Japanologists
of prewar/wartime Japan (376). Although his contradictory principles lead him to an ironic
death—murdered by one o f the prostitutes whom he had always tried to help—the narrator
does not characterize him as a monolithic exploiter o f young women.
Conclusion
There have been quite a few studies o f karayuki-san, but most are similar in the
sense that they define these women as victims o f historical oppression and socio-
economical poverty.457 For example, Yamazaki Tomoko, a chronicler o f karayuki-san
457Morikuri Shigekazu, “Bai-baishun rodosha no hassei: Amakusa-mono no

Jiimsato kara" [The Emergence o f Sex Workers: From Hometowns for Amakusa People],
in Jendano Nihon-shi [Japanese History o f Gender], vol. 1 (Tokyo: Tokyo UP, 1994), p.

296
writes:
They were unlucky women who had to leave their hometowns, go overseas, and sell
their bodies to foreigners [...] We can easily imagine what a sad life many Japanese
women had to lead as karayuki-san far away from their home country [...] The most
pathetic cases were karayuki-san who were bought either as wives or concubines by
the indigenous, were themselves totally indigenized too, and lived in jungle remote
areass with no chance to see any Japanese [...] It is not going too far if I describe
their lives as pathetic, since they had to lead an uncivilized, unhygienic and
prim itive life forgetting their mother tongue.458
Commenting on karayuki-san’s “relatively healthy mental condition despite their hard life,”
Yamazaki concludes that those girls were “not even allowed to have the freedom to feel
self-destructive or hopeless.” since their desperation was channeled and molded into a
singular outlet—nostalgia and patriotism. On the other hand, Enchi's karayuki-san are
described as resisting agents with vitality, women who were incompletely constructed
colonizing subjects. They are portrayed as women ill-fitting the role o f patriotic servants
of imperial state policy o r nationalism. In comparison with perfectly educated subjects like
Ritsu or Shiga in Enchi's next story. Skeletons o f Men, we will re-discover how resistant
Enchi's “women from/in the South” are.
493.
458[Italics are minejYamazaki Tomoko. '“Karayuki-san e no a itd n o uta" (Requiem

for Karayuki-san), in A jia josei koryu-shi [History o f Interaction among Asian Women]
(Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1995), pp. 17-40. Yamazaki also wrote a book based on her
interviews and reportage of karayuki-san. Sandakan Hachiban Shdkan [Sandakan Brothel
No. 8: an episode in the history o f lower-class Japanese women]. The original was
published by Chikuma shobo in 1975. It was translated by Karen Colligan-Taylor and
published by M.E.Sharpe in 1999.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e cop y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohib ited w ith o u t p e rm is s io n .

297
Skeletons o f Men [1956f*i9
The female protagonist, Ritsu, is characterized as a counterpart to karayuki-san.
First, she is from a wealthy patriarchal family in Satsuma (today's Kumamoto) and ends
her life as the wife o f a high-ranked police official, while, as we have seen, karayuki-san
are from impoverished families in a rural area. Second, as the name “Ritsu” (discipline)
suggests, she is the model o f a well-disciplined good wife and wise mother. On the other
hand, karayuki-san in Enchi's fiction are described as historical agents with vitality and
resistance. Third, women o f three generations--Ritsu (grandmother), Mother, and Shizuko-
-are the bearer o f “tradition,'' while Enchi's karayuki-san are ill-fitted to represent the
“Japanese tradition.”
Nevertheless, these two works by Enchi have a common thread. Both o f the stories
are set in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japan, when Japan was attempting to
establish a neo-Western state system and join the Western hegemonic powers in Asia.
Both Ritsu and karayuki-san are migrants from their birthplace, although Ritsu moves to
the center of Japan, Tokyo, while karayuki-san migrate to South Asia, regarded as barbaric
and primitive from the center in those days. It is also crucial to see the common thread of
the imperial policy o f the Meiji government in which both Ritsu and Karayuki-san have to
live as colonizing subjects. Yet resistance by women in each story should not be dismissed
either. Here in this short story I would like to locate the resistance shown by Ritsu and her
granddaughter, Shizuko.
45,Text: Enchi Fumiko. “Skeletons o f Men” trans by Van C. Gessel in Japan

Quarterly 35: 4 (October-December 1988): pp. 417-426.

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Woman From the South
As in Enchi’s novel, Southern Skin, it is not just coincidental that Ritsu's
hometown is the Hosokawa han (clan/feudal domain), present-day Kumamoto prefecture,
which also governed Amakusa island. The same domain in the same historical setting
produces SaganoYoshimitsu, an elite governmental official in one story, and karayuki-san
in the other. Yoshimitsu moves to Tokyo to settle down on a huge estate where he makes
both his wife and his two mistresses co-habitate. In Southern Skin girls from Kumamoto
(Amakusa) go overseas to work as prostitutes. The popular image o f Southern women
from Kyushu is reproduced in both stories: Ritsu and Otei are both depicted as strong,
honest and passionate women. Ritsu's toughness and honesty is proved by her competency
as a manager of the Sagano household, while her passionate personality is hidden in her
secret act o f keeping a letter o f Chise. her rival in competition for Yoshimitsu's love.
There is another similarity in both fictions: the age o f the female protagonists. Just as Otei
is only fifteen years old when sent to South Asia. Ritsu is married o ff to Yoshimitsu at the
age of fourteen. Young Shiga, a mistress, is also bought at a young age and is then
carefully and elaborately molded by Yoshimitsu. Shiga is described as an “inactive old
cat,” as if she is half-dead, even though she is young. The same goes for Ritsu, who
marries Yoshimitsu at fourteen, and consumes her life in the “smoldering fire o f jealousy
and unrequited love,” but has no chance to cultivate her sexuality. Shizuko, Ritsu's
granddaughter, also tries to discover her own desire and sexuality in reading the fading
blood history of another woman. In this sense, this is the story of undoing and
disentangling the stitches o f women's desire.

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Tradition and Family Legacy
The story goes back to the 1870s, the early Meiji period, continues through WWII,
and reaches the 1960s: the narrator tries to reconstruct the stories o f three generations o f
women over a period o f one hundred years. Along with their stories, an old sash and a
blood letter is handed down as a family legacy from grandmother to mother to daughter.
The sash (obi) in this story is not the light handy one o f these modem days, but a heavy old
fashioned one: “Tiny chrysanthemums and maples were densely embroidered on the navy
blue background and the brocade had a firm, yet pliant feel” (417). In addition to the
thickness of the material, “it had two layers o f stiff cotton padding inside [...] so heavy [...]
so heavy”(4 17).
It is not only the sash that is heavy but also the women's physical and
psychological burdens in those days. It must have been an awfully oppressive burden for
women to work and walk around wearing such a heavy sash in everyday life. The sash is a
tie to bind women’s upper body and restrict their activity, while it covers up and suppresses
the round and soft shape o f a women’s body. The sash, at the same time, is worn close to
the heart, the center o f the body. Obi are usually more valuable and therefore, because o f
their high price and durability, are handed down as family property more often than
kimono. Usually traditional designs are chosen for the sash so that anybody in the family
could wear it on many possible occasions over generations regardless of the fashion o f each
period. The heaviness o f the sash in this story resonates with the “heavily padded clothes
that rounded” the back o f Shiga, the mistress who endures many long years with Ritsu, the
legal wife. like a “heavy weight” pressing down on her head (421).

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It was a difficult job to undo ikthe stitching o f the seam in the heavy cloth” (418):
Over the years the finely stitched silk thread had become absorbed into the cloth as
if it were a part o f the brocade itself. The only way to unravel it was to lift it stitch
by stitch with the points o f scissors (418).
It is also difficult to undo and unmake women’s stories about sexuality. As Shizuko lifts
the finely stitched silk thread “stitch by stitch with the points o f scissors.” she “unravels” to
the narrator bit by bit the story o f the sash and the stories of the women. It is a job as
heavy, dark and oppressive as the weather in the story. It was a leaden afternoon in
December: rain had continued on and off since morning; the sky became even darker and
more oppressive: dusk would arrive without the day ever having become light (418). The
heaviness o f the weather and the heaviness o f the old sash are translated into the heaviness
o f the women's lives. The difficulty in unraveling the stitches is translated into the
difficulty in disclosing the women's complex stories about sexuality. The stories have
been told and handed down by the women as gossip or confidential tales. Without the
effort of reconstructing them, like the effort in unraveling the stitches o f the old sash, the
stories will be lost forever. The w omen's sexuality is woven into tradition to the extent it
becomes invisibly mixed in the colorful texture and threads.
Skeletons o f Men is a story about a grandmother’s legacy handed down to her
granddaughter—from a woman to a woman, and through a woman. The story o f Ritsu is
subtly introduced at the very beginning o f the story by way o f a scene from a noh drama.
Just like a wife who waits for her husband to come back while pounding some cloth to
smooth it in the noh play. “Kinuta.” Ritsu is living a patient and frustrating life seeking for
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e cop y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p ro d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e rm is s io n .

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the love of her husband, Yoshimitsu.460 The hidden jealousy between women is also
narrated by Ritsu to Shizuko in the story o f Kato Saemon, father o f Ishidomaru, who sees
two women's hair transforming into serpents ‘“undulating, intertwined, spitting flame-like
tongues and biting at each other” (422). Just as a heavy brocaded sash is elaborately
woven, so women's “jealousy” and “karma” are also subtly fabricated as women's fate or
women's legacy in the form o f great narratives in literature—noh drama, folktale, or oral
tradition. It is not a coincidence that Shizuko herself is a “scholar o f classical literature and
a poet.” She is the bearer o f the tradition o f these great narratives.
However, she encounters Chise's blood letter, which is an excessiveness and an
aberration in these great male narratives o f history.461 The blood letter is a love letter
written by Chise to Yoshimitsu. protesting her affection with "threatening phrases
interspersed, like stabs o f a dagger” (419):
So that my words might penetrate your icy heart, I secretly cut myself in the thigh
and squeezed out some blood, dissolved it in the ink, and wrote this letter. (419)
Chise hopes that her blood might “penetrate” the m an's icy heart. It is a more aggressive
and threatening concept than mere “ fluidity” or “mobility.” When she writes, “If you do
not answer this letter, I do not know what will become o f me,” or, “ Suppose I become even
more upset and say or do unthinkable things: that might damage your status.” she does not
460In the noh play, “Kinuta,” a woman is shown working while waiting for her
husband—pounding the cloth with a wooden hammer to make it smooth, which was a
woman’s job in the household from around the 13th through the 15th century. The heavy
noise goes on and on as the background sound until she dies in desperation, believing her
husband has abandoned her once and for all.
461Japanese classical texts such as the noh play “Kinuta” would be considered part
o f a “male narrative,” becuase noh plays was written by men and performed by men.

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want Yoshimitsu to confuse her “blood” for “rouge.” the latter usually understood as a
wom an's weapon for seduction (419).
Chise’s words have lived on for some sixty or seventy years, sewn inside Ritsu's
sash, and are transmitted to Shizuko. Now the voice o f Ritsu, “through Chise,” speaks to
Shizuko after many years. However, Shizuko happens to hear her grandmother's voice in
Chise’s letter, because in Chise’s letter Ritsu’s own words are reflected: her charge o f the
"futility o f her unquenched love.” The voices o f the two women shed light too on the life
o f the suppressed mistress, Shiga. Eventually, Shizuko comes to understand those are
voices coming from herself, because Shizuko too once played a similar role, following a
married man. like Chise, who wrote the threatening letter to Yoshimitsu one hundred years
earlier. When Shizuko bums the letter, “the attachment o f both Chise and Ritsu met their
blazing conclusion together” (425). Each woman's attachment merged together in the fire,
melting in compassion and understanding. Transmission o f sentiments from Ritsu to
Shizuko. including C hise's and Shiga's sentiments, establishes a maternal genealogy which
was buried by the paternal genealogy. The comical ending o f the story suggests that
Shizuko comes to understand the fallacy o f the patriarchal family system, which makes
women repeat the same roles o f either wife or mistress.
Bodies without Marks
The bodies o f Yoshimitsu and his two women also turned to a white ash that could
pass for asbestos. “The physical attributes o f wife or mistress, man or woman, have long
since been lost.” The ash must rustle “dryly” in a porcelain urn. When a woman's body
loses its blood and becomes a dry set o f bones, it loses its sexual difference as well as its

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class difference. Bones with no gender mark, no class mark suggest, on the other hand, the
clear gender mark o f the sexed body o f a woman when she is alive. In other words, sexual
difference is and will be a source o f problems for women until their bodies becomes dry
bones (425). Later, Shizuko visits the graveyard o f her lover, Minami, with whom she had
fallen in love though she was rejected. Now he sleeps in the graveyard without a mark o f
gender, and Shizuko makes the mistake (mitate) o f almost stopping at the grave of
someone else with the same surname. Thus, the story, which begins with a scene from a
classical noh play, ends with a parody and joke from rakiigo*b2 It is again a December as
in the first scene, but it is a “sunny afternoon” and in the broad, “clear sky" the lofty
treetops o f red pines rustle in the breeze, making a “dry” sound. The scene is “refreshing"
and the evergreen's “bright” foliage is glowing (422-3). The “dry,” “ light," “clear,"
“bright” features o f nature and bones without individual or gender marks contrast with the
“heavy,” “wet.” “dark” weather and “sexualized” “sash" and “blood letter" o f the opening
scene.
Enchi's story starts with a tragic noh play about an abandoned mortified woman.
There is the contrast too between personal and gendered clothes, and naked bones with no
gender marks. W omen’s bodies are wrapped and bound by clothes (sash), and women’s
stories and histories are “hidden” and “invisible” like the blood dissolved in ink. Chise’s
letter was written with her body (blood) and it is a writing o f the body (blood) o f a woman.
When in this story a w om an’s body is invisibly covered up in clothes, “blood” is the only
A62Rakugo means “a comic story with a witty ending.” Mitate, often employed in
rakugo, means “mistaken judgement, or confusing one thing with something else.”

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part of a wom an's body signifying a woman’s sexuality, a speaking sexed subject. Blood,
since it has the power to “penetrate” men’s cold heart, is hot and active.463 It flows on,
mixed in something else, staying there for generations and generations, changing its color
and transmitting its message from women to women. The traditional family legacy o f the
sash is no longer anomalous after Chise’s blood letter is removed and burned by Shizuko.
Yet Chise’s excessive passion will continue to be handed down, although in whispering
voices, merged together with the sentiments o f Ritsu and Shiga as well.
Conclusion
The gorgeous embroidered sash, a family legacy handed down for three generations
in the Sagano family, is far removed from the hands o f karayuki-san. Just as Otei is
impressed at the display o f luxurious costumes at the Okunchi festival in Nagasaki, only on
rare occasions might karayuki-san have a chance to look at such a luxury. Ritsu's elaborate
sash could be the same kind that Otei has a glimpse at and which gives her the idea of
becoming rich. For Otei to become rich means to be able to buy a beautiful kimono with a
gorgeous brocaded sash like the one which the Sagano family owns. It is a source of desire
and ambition for Otei. The irony is that she has no chance to wear such heavy Japanese
clothes in the tropical climate o f South Asia.
The act o f undoing and unraveling the old sash stitch by stitch, which engages
Shizuko one whole afternoon, would be itself totally alien to karayuki-san, since most of
those women had no chance to learn to cook or sew kimonos. Karayuki-san were
463A good contrast to the body o f Shiga, who is described as follows: “Shiga was
sensitive to cold and wore heavily padded clothes that rounded her back [...] Shiga always
created a tired, dull impression [...]” (421; italics mine).

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imperfectly educated women in that sense. Besides, since they were illiterate, they could
not even write a letter to their families in Japan. Most asked other literate people to write
for them when they wanted to send a letter to somebody. Therefore, Chise's traditional
archaic handwriting in her love letter not only shows her passion and audacity, but also
proves her education and social status, to which no karayuki-san would have access.
The proper anniversary o f the Sagano family after Yoshimitsu dies also stands in
contrast to the horrible Gothic scene of the cremation of Okin's body in the remote areas o f
the Sumatran jungle. In Skeletons o f Men Chise’s blood letter together with her strong
sentiments are burned by Shizuko. So are Ritsu’s sentiments, as if Shizuko finally calms
the souls o f the two women just as a monk exorcizes evil spirits in a noh play. Both Ritsu
and Shiga's ashes are now turned dry together with Yoshimitsu's in the grave. The
smoldering fires o f Ritsu, Chise, and Shiga are all quenched by now. In Southern Skin
Okin's soul is not so easily calmed, on the other hand. Her dead body suddenly rises up in
the fire and starts dancing like Fudo, the angry guardian god, as if her soul rejects being
appeased forever.464 Otei and Mitsuyo suffer from the sickly smell, crawling and vomiting
on the ground, until the corpse turns to bones and ashes. The cremation is not an ending,
but the starting point o f action for the karayuki-san, who sing a Shimabara lullaby as an
expression o f their resistance.
Shiga has a lot in common with Tobe Yuki in Southern Skin. Both are purchased as
a mistress in their girlhood by their patron and given an education in a rich household. The
464Fud6-myo-6. One c f the five guardians, transformations o f the Great Sun God in
Esoteric Buddhism.

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great difference is in their patron. Shiga is reared by Yoshimitsu, who serves the Meiji
Government as a police official, now retired in Tokyo; Yuki is educated by a rich Chinese
merchant, who supports anti-governmental activists by giving them shelter in his house. A
naive and innocent Shiga stays in the house like an “old cat,” while a cynical and smart
Yuki leaves her patron and dies in the revolution. Shiga is deflowered and molded like a
doll by Yoshimitsu. but Yuki in the end succeeds in recovering her sexuality in her love for
an activist.
Yoshimitsu’s elegance, dignity, and arrogance as an ex-police official from an
affluent family is not found in the manner and personality o f Katsunuma. a trafficker.
Similarly, Yoshimitsu's coldness, which alienates Shizuko from him in her girlhood, is
also not found in Katsunuma. who has an “animal-like warmheartedness.” The former is
an ideologue, while the latter is a character like a “chindon-yd’ (street musician) who
advertises the selling of goods (girls) wearing makeup and costumes (of patriotism and
heroism). Both male figures from the South o f Japan require o f their women virginity,
chastity, and modesty, though in different forms: as wife or as prostitute/mistress. This
morality is, o f course, a significant tool to support Japan’s imperialism in domestic and
foreign policy.465
465The slave trade in women was abolished in Japan after the Maria Luz incident in
1872. Owning a concubine or a mistress was also legally prohibited, although it was still
widely practiced in the upper class. In order to escape accusation, many mistresses were
adopted as a daughters just as was Shiga, whose ashes were buried in the family grave as
an adopted daughter. Despite the reform in regulations the status o f mistress was not
improved—the right o f inheritance was not secured until after WWII. Even in current
Japanese law illegitimate children can only inherit half as much property as legitimate
children. “Adultery” by women was not decriminalized until the end o f WWII. Still today
Japanese women are not allowed to re-marry until six months after the cancellation o f a

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Finally, the issue o f women writing about women. When a woman writer writes
about the situation o f oppressed women like karayuki-san, she will have to face a dilemma.
If she describes them only as victims, she will miss their reality as historical agents with
their own subjectivity. On the other hand, if she focuses on their will-power, their acts o f
resistance and protest, she will also miss the historical episteme in which they were
constructed in complicity with state ideology. Enchi faces this dilemma when she writes
about karayuki-san in her novel Southern Skin. Enchi's karayuki-san are not as pathetic as
Yamazaki contends, nor are they all naive or gullible. “This is not sentimentality," Enchi
writes when she introduces the Shimabara lullaby. Singing a lulluby karayuki-san share
the “sentiments” and feel bonded to each other in remembrance o f their shared experiences.
Obviously, Enchi did not want to write about karayuki-san just as victims. Furthermore.
Enchi's karayuki-san are certainly far from the promiscuity to which popular discourses
about the Amakusa women always referred. By attempting to create a complex human
character for each karayuki-san, Enchi tried to rescue their bodies and sexuality from the
stereotypical unitary discourses about karayuki-san, and return them to themselves.
marriage. Likewise, a child bom within two hundred days after a marriage, and a child
bom within three hundred days after the cancellation o f a marriage is regarded as
legitimate. This is to secure fatherhood for a child: whose child is the main issue.
Separation between legitimate children and illegitimate children, between a legally
protected wife, and a legally unprotected mistress or prostitute, is seen as indispensable for
the state, in order to assure the legitimacy and health o f the offspring needed to create a
strong nation. A clear boundary was also drawn between foreign and Japanese regarding
the difference between offspring bom overseas and offspring bom in Japan proper.
Ranking people as legitimate or illegitimate, foreign or Japanese, were both significant
policies for the modem state.

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Chapter 2
Victimization and Resuscitation: War Violence and Domestic Violence
Women’s Cocoon and Boxcar o f Chrysanthemums
Introduction
The two works by Enchi in this chapter illustrate how she views the relation o f
gender to violence in the postwar setting o f debates about individual and state
responsibility for the past war. Enchi's stories in the first chapter dealt with women from
the 1890s through the end o f WWII. The two fictions in this chapter are about women in
the wartime and postwar periods. In Enchi's novel, Women's Cocoon, the wartime practice
of experiments on human body is used as the background for the projection o f violence on
the bodies o f postwar women. Similarly, in her short story, “Boxcar o f Chrysanthemums."
violence on a w om an's body is projected onto the violence o f wartime. This does not
mean that Enchi universalizes the two kinds of violence into a singular monolithic
•‘Violence." On the contrary, by taking up invisible domestic violence against women,
Enchi attempts to problematize the understanding o f violence. She presents violence as
taking diverse forms in different situations. She demonstrates the relationships between
each kind o f violence, individual and state violence, violence involving gender. For Enchi,
violence is not ungendered: violence is closely knitted to sexism. Violence on women’s
bodies, violence on women's subjectivity and violence on women’s psyche are presented in
correlation with wartime violence--the several kinds o f violence overlap and implicate each
other.

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Women's Cocoon [1961-2f 66
The episode o f experiments on human body in Enchi’s novel is based on historical
fact.467 Except for Endo Shusaku’s The Sea and Poison, I do not know o f another fiction
on this subject.46® While Endo focuses on the experiences o f a physician who practiced
biological experiments on human bodies, Enchi deals with the same subject in conjunction
with violence on women's bodies in postwar Japan. This historical episode makes the
postwar reader uneasy in the same way the return o f the male protagonist, Hishikawa
Toyoki. to his home country drags the people around him down into the “dark depths.”
The novels opens with a postwar celebration o f the Gion Festival in Kyoto, where
Toyoki is accidentally seen by his ex-fiancee, Michiko. Festivals are “unusual” occasions
that punctuate “usual” time with special events. Upon Toyoki’s return to his home town as
a visitor on such a “special” occasion, the people around him become involved in his past
466The text: Enchi Fumiko, “Onna no mayu" [Women's Cocoon], in Enchi Fumiko
zenshu; vol. 9 (Tokyo: Shinchdsha, 1978).
467Japan launched its biological warfare program in the 1930s after Ishii Shiro, a
military physician, returned from a European information-gathering tour. The Showa
Emperor signed a decree establishing Unit 731 in occupied Manchuria. It was situated
behind multiple barbed-wire fences 20 km south o f Harbin in the village o f Pingfan. The
base was publicly known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Unit, but its true
mission was top secret. Unit 731 found a ready supply o f human guinea pigs: members o f
resistance movements, children who strayed too close to the outer perimeter, Mongolians,
Koreans, Russians—any non-Japanese was a potential victim. Twelve Japanese physicians
and military officers, former researchers at the secret facility, were accused of
manufacturing biological and chemical weapon following experiments on human subjects.
Source: “The Trial o f Unit 731.” in The Japan Times (Tuesday, June 5, 2001), p. 17.
468Endo Shusaku, The Sea and Poison (Tokyo: Tuttle. 1983); Morimura Seiichi,
Akuma no hashoku [Devil’s Satiation] (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 2000); Morimura
Seiichi, Zoktt: Akuma no hashoku [A Sequel to Devil’s Satiation] (Tokyo: Kadokawa
shoten, 2000).

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history. He practiced experiments on non-Japanese captives in China during the war.
When the war ended, the chief of the Corps, Egawa, commits suicide before he is
prosecuted as a war criminal, and the rest o f the medical doctors in the Corpse are
accidentally or purposely bombed at sea on the way back to Japan. Only Toyoki is spared
and secretly sent back to America, where he is detained until American scientists have
obtained all of his knowledge about the biological experiments. He is now engaged in the
international espionage group, but neither Michiko nor Kayo, his sister, know about it.
Kayo cannot accept her brother’s past, but his ex-fiancee, Michiko, welcomes him back in
her life and tries to re-kindle his humaneness and love. Meanwhile, O Shibun, one o f the
Chinese victims on whose body Toyoki conducted biological experiments, is constantly in
pursuit of him, threatening his life. Toyoki's criminal past and O ’s revenge disturb the
women around Toyoki. It is as if Toyoki carries an evil spirit around and conveys it to his
family and friends. In short. Toyoki plays the role o f an unexpected and unwelcome visitor
bringing bad news with him to disturb his peaceful home town.
Women as Pure and Innocent
Two women are assigned the role o f witness and bearer o f the story o f Hishikawa
Toyoki: Kayo (Toyoki’s sister) and Michiko (his ex-fiancee). They are also the ones who
mourn and pray for the soul o f Toyoki at the end o f the story. In other words, these women
are contrasted as pure and innocent vis—vis Toyoki’s impurity and guilt. In the beginning
scene the roles o f Kayo and Michiko are subtly inscribed in a song at the Gion Festival.
Several girls are sitting neatly dressed in kimono and selling sweets, talismans, and
candles, singing:

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Why don't you buy a candle if you have faith.

Why don't you buy a talisman for chasing away evils and misfortunes.
We don’t sell usually,
Only today and tomorrow.
Why don’t you buy some if you have faith /69
This song provides a hint o f what develops later. The following scene is Toyoki’s first
appearance in the story. He eventually implants misfortune in each character’s life, which
might otherwise have remained peaceful. In the last scene he finally disappears as if his
evil spirit were exorcized and appeased by the prayers o f the women.
Toyoki is a mummy resuscitated from the ruin. He is a bumt-out case who has lost
his sense of morality or conscience. The taxi driver sees in Toyoki the “persistency o f a
manic depressed person” (16). and thinks “his eyes look like the eye sockets in a skull
which never reflect any light from the outside” (21). In Kayo's eyes her brother is an
“ impersonator o f an enormous lizard or a snake,” and he has the “coldness o f a reptile
despite his human eyes and skin”(88). “Even when he smiles, only his muscles smile. He
Ô rig in al: Go-shinjin no okata-sama wa

rosoku iccho okenji nasare masho.
Yaku-yoke hi-yoke no omamori wo
ukete okaeri nasare masho.
Tsune wa demasenu.
Kyo asu bakari.
Go-shinjin no okata-sama wa
ukete okaeri nasare masho. (p. 11)
The origin o f the Gion Festival is believed to be a ritual established for soothing the soul o f
the assassinated Sawara Prince, whose vengeful spirit spread smallpox in the new capital.
Heian (present Kyoto), in 869. The sweets (chimaki) are good luck for calming the
vengeful hero's soul and for driving away the diseases it caused and spread. See Ono
Yoshiro, Seiketsu no kindai: 'eisei shoka ’ kara kokin guzzu ’ e [Modem Age o f
Cleanliness: From ‘Hygiene Songs for Schoolchildren' to ‘Antibacterial Goods’]. Tokyo:
Kodansha, 1997. pp. 32-34.

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might occasionally accept something from outside into the enormous hollow within him,
but never responds to it, making only a dry noise” (88). She wonders, *‘Why does Michiko
not see in him such disgusting rottenness?”(90)
Toyoki’s “destructive power, which corrodes his insides like a bacillus o f leprosy,
seems to come up to the surface o f his skin-such is the weirdness and obscenity you feel
about him.”(88-90) The metaphor o f “leper” for burnouts is expressed even in his own
self-image:
Any strongly organized institution such as a state or a religious sect can easily
quarantine an individual the way they do a leper. (The difference from the case o f a
leper is that) after they get what they want, they release him from the isolation
ward. (22)
The state quarantines war criminals like Toyoki until they get the necessary data from
them. When their knowledge is sucked up, they are finally released. But bv that time they
only can survive as burnt out. Graham Greene’s “Bumt-out case” is cited by Toyoki as
describing his case:
'Bum t-out case’ is one of the symptoms o f a leper, who lives like a dead tree with
all his organs rotted [...] The protagonist is a famous architect, but he loses interest
in women, honor, or any human relationship. He finally comes to a Catholic
hospital for lepers in the African outback, and takes shelter there [...] (56-57)470
470The frequent use of the metaphor o f a leper in the story reflects the existing bias
against lepers (Hansen’s disease) around 1961-62 when Enchi wrote this novel. The
Leprosy Prevention Code [Rai yobo-ho] and quarantine o f lepers, established in Japan
1907, was effective until 1996. The term “leper” is used in Enchi's work as a metaphor for
ultimate sin, filth, and obscenity. See Takeda Torn, Kakuri to yuyam ai: kindai Nihon no
iryokukan [The Disease Called “Quarantine” : the Medical Space o f Modem Japan]
(Tokyo: Kodansha, 1997).

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Another metaphor used for Toyoki is that o f a madman.471
What if a madman, who suffered from a mental problem since boyhood, were
finally released from the mental hospital after twenty or thirty years? He would
have no means for survival in society. Toyoki thinks he is like this madman. He is
doubtful if he can resume a normal life if he gives up this dangerous job of
espionage.(205)
Just as lepers were quarantined to separate them from healthy people, so were mentally
disabled persons. The practice was justified so that “normal people” (in the story, Kayo,
Mera and Michiko) could live undisturbed. Adopting discriminatory terms such as “leper"
or “madman” for war criminals like Toyoki is already problematic. But separating Toyoki.
as the source o f past war crimes, from other people is additionally troubling. By
demonizing only Toyoki it draws a clear border between past and present in postwar
Japanese history. The logic is that war violence occurred in the past, therefore, present-day
people are not responsible for the crimes committed during that war. But. can Japan go
back to being a peaceful country after the ghosts o f the past like Toyoki have disappeared?
The division o f gender roles in this story appears somewhat familiar to us: men as
aggressive protectors (intellectuals/state) and women as innocent protectees (nation). Yet.
in this story, Enchi points to another contrast: guilty men contaminated by crime versus
innocent women. Enchi makes Toyoki protect Michiko at cost o f his life, and makes him
471The comparison o f war criminals to mentally disabled people is quite

problematic. It reflects the prejudice against such people in the 1960s when Enchi’s novel
was published. The Mental Health Code [Seishin hoken-ho] was not revised until 1988.
Before that it had been called the Mental Hygiene Code [Seishin eisei-ho]. Both codes
legalized the quarantine o f those patients. See Omata Waichiro, Seishin bydin no kigen:
kindai-hen [The Origin o f the Mental Hospital: Modem Period] (Tokyo: Ota shuppan,
2000); Fujino Yutaka, Kyasei sareta ken kd Nihon fasizum u-ka no seimei to sintai [Forced
Health: Life and Body Under Japanese Fascism] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 2000).
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e c o pyright ow n er. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n proh ibited w ithout p e r m is s io n .

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disappear in order to atone for his crime.
Women as Victims of Domestic Violence
In contrast to Toyoki, at the beginning o f the story the women characters are
described as innocent. However, their innocence is infected by the violence in Toyoki’s
past. In fact, despite Shinchosha’s lyrical advertisement for this novel, “reflecting the
contrast between the tradition in Kyoto and modem life in Tokyo," there are multiple kinds
of violence on wom en's bodies in this story. One is violence on Natsuyo's body. Natsuyo
is a naive uneducated young waitress, who falls in love with Toyoki and comes to Tokyo to
live with him in a shelter-like house. She becomes attracted to Sekiya. a young official,
who visits Toyoki's house. His mission is to get all the information about experiments on
human body from Toyoki. Finding out about Toyoki's past, Natsuyo finally decides to run
away from him. But she is already pregnant with his child. Soon after while living with
Sekiya, Natsuyo has a “miscarriage”:
Natsuyo herself only remembers being given a shot for anemia by the doctor, but
she was out o f it after that. She might have had a miscarriage as they told her, but
she suspects that Sekiya and the doctor in conspiracy killed Toyoki’s seed in her
womb. (233)
Sekiya’s justification for his deed is this: If Natsuyo has a child by Toyoki, she will have to
carry Toyoki’s sin and guilt on her shoulders by rearing his child. Therefore, in order to
save Natsuyo from such a fate, he will have to sever her from Toyoki and his “seed," the
fetus (194). However, there are some problems in Sekiya’s argument. First, Sekiya’s
moral judgement about terminating the evil genes o f Toyoki is based on the infamous state

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policy, the “Eugenic Protection Act,” which was enforced until the end o f the war.472 After
hearing Sekiya’s confession about the abortion, Toyoki does not blame him and says, “it is
probably God’s will that a guy like me who toyed with the physiology o f human beings
should not produce offspring” (236). Nevertheless, while rationalizing Sekiya's deed,
Toyoki looks “ depressed.” The violence o f this eugenic practice exteminates Toyoki’s
child—his future.
Sekiya’s deed is justified by his patriotism. He has the “expression o f young
officers before defeat in war,” Toyoki reflects. It is a “face o f simple childishness and
bravery, the kind o f masculinity which men show o ff’ (53). Sekiya believes in the state
(kokka) as the extension of his home town and people, which he believes are worth fighting
for (54). He believes in “the superiority o f Japanese ethnicity” and dreams of “making
Japan a healthy and rich country” (131). Considering Sekiya's straightforward but naive
protectionist attitude toward the home country, his act o f eliminating unhealthy and lesser
genes to make a healthy life for Natsuyo is not surprising.473
Second, however, for Natsuyo to have had her fetus aborted is for part o f herself to
have been killed, since her body and her fetus feel indivisible.474 Therefore, if Natsuyo’s
472The concept o f the eugenic termination o f lesser genes will also be seen in
Enchi’s short story, “Boxcar of Chrysanthemums,” which we discuss later in this chapter.
The concept o f eugenics also supports the dominant argument for capital punishment in
holding that such evil should be exterminated.
473The same theme is repeated in two other short stories by Enchi. “K okuno
akanba ’ [Baby in the Imagination], and’‘‘Kotozume no hako” [Box for Koto Nails],
474For the complexity of women’s experiences and feelings towards a fetus, see
Ehara Yumiko, ed.. Seishoku gijutsu to jenda [Technology o f Reproduction and Gender]
(Tokyo: Keiso shobo, 1996), pp. 309-339. The fetus is experienced at one and the same

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fetus is aborted without her consent while she is drugged, it is an act o f impermissible
violence both on her body and on the fetus. Besides, by being drugged and having her
fetus aborted, not only N atsuyo's body but also her subjectivity are violated. The violation
affects her mental and emotional stability, and subsequently she becomes chronically
depressed. Thus, Sekiya not only aborts her fetus but also violates her subjectivity as an
agent. No matter how good the intention and belief he has in his deed, his act o f ignoring
her rights in decision-making is not acceptable. From a feminist viewpoint, whether a fetus
belongs to a mother or not, Sekiya’s act o f ignoring a mother’s will is problematic.
Third, violence on Natsuyo's body suggests the violence on human guinea pigs
which Toyoki practiced during the war. An operation without the consent o f the patient is
practiced in a tremendously cruel form in experiments on the bodies o f captives. Although
he is not a doctor, because o f his act o f violence on Natsuyo's vulnerable body. Sekiya's
hands are almost as bloody as Toyoki's. If Toyoki was after all nothing but one o f many
copies o f the war aggressors manufactured by the state, in his actions toward Natsuyo
Sekiya is a clumsy copier o f others’ thoughts. “Not to copy others' thoughts, not to
become a copy o f others’’--this is the bitter lesson Sekiya leams from having hurt Natsuyo.
Sekiya’s naive nationalism and trust in the state gradually changes. He decides not to
enslave him self by using Toyoki’s knowledge o f experiments on human body for the sake
o f his home country. He takes this as a personal message and will from Toyoki after the
latter's death. However, we should remind ourselves that Sekiya's revelation is realized
over Natsuyo’s scarred body and mind.
time as both part of herself and other in herself.

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Another kind o f violence is inflicted on the body of Toyoki’s sister. Kayo, a
traditional kimono designer. One day with her boss, Yozo, Kayo goes to the house o f Mr.
Yumiya who owns an old noh theater kimono. After seeing the kimono to get a hint for a
design. Kayo is drugged. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds her clothes as
well as Yozo’s watch-band lying in the room. Her body can tell that she has been raped by
either Yozo or Mr. Yumiya, or by both, while she was put to sleep. Out o f desperation she
leaves the house and gets lost in the snow. This was part of a conspiracy planned by O
Shibun, who was tortured by Toyoki in experiments on human body in China during the
war. Thus. O takes revenge on Toyoki by having his sister raped while drugged, just as his
body had been violated while he was drugged. Kayo's body is raped for the second time by
O 's gaze when she is lying unconscious in the snow and again in hospital.
Kayo hates Yozo and Mr. Yumiya as ’’burglars (rapists) who had stripped her o f her
shame and pride” (219). Not only those two and O, who all take part in the conspiracy, but
even her own brother also seems no better than these three-perhaps he is even worse. Kayo
concludes (219). The rape and gaze Kayo suffers from these men parallels the violence
and gaze on the body o f O as material for medical experiments.47<i
A third victim, Michiko, Toyoki’s ex-fiancee, is also drugged, but due to Toyoki’s
good intention of trying to protect her from his enemies. Michiko waits for Toyoki for
thirteen years after he is sent to war, but she does not hear from him at all. She finally
married her current husband and has a daughter. Now that Toyoki comes back, she decides
475Compare Enchi’s story with Endo Shusaku's “The Sea and Poison,” trans by
Michael Gallagher (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1972).

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to leave her family and go to Hong Kong with him. Since Tovoki does not want to involve
her in his dangerous job o f international espionage, he decides to leave her behind. Having
been drugged by Toyoki, Michiko is fast asleep when Kayo, Mera (Kayo’s fiance), and
Sekiya arrive. Toyoki says to them, “I didn't want anybody else to drug her except
me”(249). “ With a bitter smile he picks up her slender but gorgeous lily flower-like body
in both arms.-’ Then Toyoki carefully lays Michiko’s body in the back seat o f the car.
M ichiko's will-power and subjectivity are totally ignored and disempowered by Toyoki’s
heroic act. by his “love” and “good intentions.”
To Toyoki, Michiko is more precious than his own life. In order to protect her from
violence or rape he would kill anyone. On the other hand, the knight-like heroic hands
with which he touches M ichiko's body are the same hands with which he dissected human
bodies. The procedure-drugging a person to render them unconscious, telling people that
the body is asleep, and moving it somewhere—is similar to the procedure o f vivisection and
medical experiment.476
In this story these three kinds o f violence are not ungendered, since they are all
practiced on woman’s bodies. Violence in vivisection too is not ungendered, because the
roles in the relationship between Toyoki (physician) and 0 (guinea pig) are also described
as gendered. As if replacing Michiko, O shows up at the door right after Toyoki sends
Michiko home.
476See Endo Shusaku. The Sea and Poison [Umi to dokuyaku\. See also the
testimony by ex-doctors who engaged in vivisection and experiments on human body in
Manchuria. Hoshi Torn, '"Wasure ’enu 731-butai no kyoki: Shinozuka Yoshio-san no baaf'
[Unforgettable Madness o f the 731 Troop: The Case o f Mr. Shinozuka Yoshio], Shukan
Kin 'yobi. No. 304 (Feb. 25. 2000): pp. 48-51.

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O and Toyoki in a G endered R elationship
The relationship between victim and victimizer is presented as gendered. The
initial hierarchy of war time continues in the relationship between them: Toyoki. the
military officer, O the captive. It is not unusual to see that the one with power effeminizes
the one without power. O’s feminine voice, appearance, and obedient attitude are strongly
contrasted to Toyoki’s dominant masculine appearance and behavior when talking to O:
Toyoki is used to talking to O in an intimate manner, or rather in an impolite

manner, while O never responds to him in the same way. As a result, they look like
a boss and a subordinate, although Toyoki is not necessarily arrogant (208).
When O says. “We could have been brothers (in our previous life).” Toyoki responds,
"Could have been lovers.” Such a close and even sensual relationship between the victim
and the victimizer was established already at the time o f experiments on O ’s body. From
O ’s own mouth Toyoki's deed is told to Michiko:
1 am still alive thanks to his failure in the experiment. I was suspected as a spy
when I was in North Manchuria near Russia. 1 would have been tortured and shot
by the Japanese Army, but instead I was rescued by General Hishikawa and sent to
the hospital he belonged to. He almost killed me once and resuscitated me. My
organs were so damaged by him that I can no longer eat pork or any other meat,
even though I want to, and I am now a starving ghost [...] but I am still alive [...]
and other victims are not [...] they were vivisected, given the germs, and finally
killed. Their families hate him so much they are trying to kill him. (120)
Not only was their relationship depicted as gendered (Toyoki as masculine and O as
feminine), but the two somehow share the same atmosphere despite their different
appearance. Due to the damage from experiments on his body O looks as thin as a
mummy, his suits look too big and loose for his body, and his cheek bones and Adam's
apple protrude so noticeably that he looks like a stuffed animal, totally different from

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human beings in town (117).
0 has rescued Toyoki's life from killers twice, just because he wants to take time to
torture and kill him: to kill him instantly is not the satisfying revenge he wants. Toyoki
says to O:
1 was enjoying a masochistic pleasure. It was a source o f vitality to reduce myself

to your toy and to parade myself in a show o f being crippled for these several years.
While you have survived as an empty mummy after you were almost killed, I too
have been dancing a weird dance with my back attached to yours like a Siamese
twin. (251)
“It is because of the intimacy established between the two that they keep playing the
dangerous game o f manipulating Toyoki's fate back and forth from near-death to
resuscitation. At first. Toyoki thought he hated O. however he could not but feel some
strange attachment to him in such death matches" (208). As a result o f their long intimate
relationship, despite many differences in appearance, they come to share something similar
in their atmosphere. In M ichiko's eyes they “ look like two actors who balance each other
in perfect harmony" (210). Mera thinks that “Toyoki's maturely handsome face has
something in common with this mummy-like Chinese." “ Both have the identical dusty air
o f ruins as if they were survivors from Pompeii, the city buried two thousand years ago"
( 2 1 0 ).
“Their relationship is obviously based on malicious intention towards each other,
but they give you the impression o f a good partnership, as if they mutually rub blood
oozing from each other's scars onto the white canvas o f their lives" (213). They are
doomed to share the same fate, just like the two images reflected in a mirror. When Toyoki
shoots the mirror and breaks it into pieces, their images reflected in the mirror also

disappear. By killing O and poisoning him self on the plane to Hong Kong, Toyoki
terminates his tangled relationship with O, his victim and his partner.
This gendered union between victimizer and victim is problematic, and so is the
symmetry between the two, since the violence on the part o f a victimizer is erased in such a
configuration. However, what Enchi tries to focus on is the violence which affects a
victim’s mind and body. While O’s body is certainly damaged and his mind is distorted,
violence also fragments the aggressor’s mind and body. Toyoki’s sense o f morality and
conscience are corrupted, and his body too will yield to a self-destructive drive. Thus, in
violence nobody wins and survives.
War and Evasion o f Individual Responsibility
According to Toyoki’s understanding, “some kind o f inevitable violence assaulted
and turned us into such monsters.’’ and thus both Toyoki and O are “victims’’ o f the same
violence. Enchi does not clarify in the story why WWII was "inevitable” for Japan, though
once she permits Sekiya to point to Western expansionism in Asia as one o f the factors in
the war. Rather than discussing the causes o f the war, Enchi is more interested in the effect
and impact of the war on people, especially women. To illustrate the kind o f violence war
visits upon individual women’s bodies and psyche, she uses an analogy.
Michiko’s observation o f war represents the view o f an ordinary citizen, not o f a
military officer or intellectual. For her the war is something inevitable, something
monstrous, something that tore between her and Toyoki. Its merciless power transformed
and crushed Toyoki’s mind and personality. Even with all their will-power neither of the
two “could do anything to stop the war” (262). Like a natural disaster the war suddenly

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destroys the daily happiness o f an innocent young couple in love. As the title o f this story
suggests, Michiko’s “ ‘cocoon’ (life) was eaten away by a poisonous bug called ‘war’.”
When they were in love, they had never thought their happiness and love would be
terminated by some inevitable power.
Here Enchi draws an analogy between the violence o f war and violence on
w om en’s bodies. For example, a postwar young couple, Kayo and Mera, also believed that
their love and happiness would last forever, just as Toyoki and Michiko had believed.
Before her misfortune, Kayo is confident o f her work and o f her choice o f a life partner:
I have chosen a partner to live life hand in hand. Just as I chose to be a kimono
designer as my lifework, I have chosen him. I will love Mera forever, and that will
never change, she thought. (102)
However, her confidence and assurance about love and job are both swept away suddenly
by a malignant conspiracy beyond the power o f Kayo and Mera. Mera interprets the
misfortune that happened to Kayo as “a sort o f accident she did not expect or intend."
therefore, “it is cruel to force her to take responsibility for the accident" (211). Yozo also
reassures Kayo that it is not that he raped her, but that both Yozo and Kayo were forced to
do so by the conspiracy o f wicked people (186). Both war and misfortune occur as
inevitable disasters, and people in both cases, mesmerized, cannot avoid them.
Violence/Death/Sexuality/Creation
When people are assaulted by violence, they feel powerless. This feeling o f
powerlessness is extreme, especially when they cannot figure out what is happening to
them. For example, both Kayo and Yozo are drugged by Mr. Yumiya to have a sexual
relationship. Since they are mesmerized, neither Kayo or Yozo can tell who raped her,
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p ro d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e rm is s io n .

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whether Yozo or Mr. Yumiya or both, ‘i t is awful.” Kayo reflects, “if you know you
certainly suffered from some damage, yet you cannot figure out exactly what kind o f
damage you suffered from” (222). The reader will suspect that this was the similar
experience of people during the war. Not only the victims but also the aggressors like
Toyoki can not tell exactly what fatal damage was wrought on their conscience, morality,
and body, because he himself is not aware o f what he is doing. This lack o f awareness is
not the death o f conscience or morality, it is the death o f the body—the whole o f one’s
existence.
And yet when Kayo steps into this complex zone, she realizes a new world for her
creations. “ It is a whitish fantasy leading to death in the midst o f a deserted land, as if she
stepped into the world o f the moon, in the morning o f the snowy Takinosato”(222). It is a
mixed world of morning sun and evening moonlight. Every time she is visited by the white
fantasy. Kayo is tempted to die. It is just like the temptation when she collapsed at the
tunnel on that snowy morning. Death invites her not in the form o f a forbidding skeleton
but in the guise o f a beautiful woman, holding her hand and leading her to disappear from
the world with its elegant quietness (223). Struggling against the temptation Kayo
completes the best kimono she has ever made. The title of the design is “the beauty o f the
snow in a yard reflecting the morning light.” She translates her fantasy o f death in the
snow into early blossoming pink plum flowers on branches covered with snow.
Before the Kiyotaki incident Kayo had a firm philosophy about human vice. She
drew a clear border between those who inflict vice and those who do not. For example,
when Murase. Toyoki’s boyhood friend and a medical doctor himself, says that Adolf

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Eichmann was an ordinary citizen who merely carried out the Nazi’s orders. Kayo
counterargues that he was no longer a human being, since his conscience was already worn
out (70-71).477 She continues:
Eichmann may be like my brother. When you see your face in the mirror and find a
demon there, you are still human—you have not yet become completely a demon, so
I heard. But when you see there nothing new—only an ordinary human face, then
you finally have become a real demon (because you already lost your conscience
which could tell you o f your change). (70)
Murase claims that ordinary people can do evil against their will if they are compelled to
do so, while Kayo confidently argues that those ordinary people themselves would turn out
evil and would not notice what they are doing.478 However, Kayo's belief that “there is a
clear borderline between permissible and impermissible deeds for human beings” is
completely shattered after the Kiyotaki accident. She learns that evil often resides in
goodness, while goodness resides in evil. “Disaster comes to people in the form o f a rather
intoxicating beautiful disguise, like an exquisite kimono, rather than in the form o f a
horrible skeleton." So too death and decay exist in life and beauty, while life and beauty
inhabit death and decay. It is through this revelation that Kayo is able to create her original
art.
477AdoIf Eichmann (1906-1962) was responsible for the mass killing o f Jews.
478As for the issue, whether “ordinary people can do evil or not.” there is a
disturbing historical report on a murder in a village in Poland, Jedwabne, on July 10, 1941.
H alf o f a Polish town murdered the other half—their Jewish neighbors. Why? George F.
Will answers in his comments, “Because it was permitted. Because they could." (Italics are
mine) See Jan Thomas Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction o f the Jewish Community in
Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001).

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Conclusion
In this story several kinds o f violence are described: the violence o f war,
experiments on human body, murder, forced abortion, rape, and drugging a person. It is
impossible to hierarchize one kind o f violence over another kind o f violence, or one kind
below another, since each kind o f violence occurs in a different situation to a different
person in a different period. It is also fruitless to compare the similarity or difference
between wartime violence and violence on postwar wom en's bodies in any general terms.
Because each kind o f violence is inflicted on an individual body and psyche, they cannot be
compared. In other words, violence is always individual even though it is devised and
committed by a community or a state. In between the several kinds o f violence in this
story, however, several threads cross one another. First, violence on w om en's bodies is
described as analogous to violence in the war. Second, the women characters remain on
stage as witnesses and as narrators o f the past stories, while male characters, a victim and a
victimizer, leave and die. Third, we see the ambiguity and unaccountability o f violence for
both victim and aggressor, yet we also find the destructive power o f violence on both
victim and aggressor. That does not mean there is an interchangeability between victim
and victimizer. As Primo Levi confirms, there is still a clear border between them.47'’ In
other words, in the specific situation in which violence is perpetrated, it is not possible to
say that the victim is somehow the victimizer. This is the revelation Kayo reaches after the
accident.
479See Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Vintage. 1989).
especially chapter 2. “The Gray Zone," pp. 48-49.

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Boxcar o f Chrysanthemums [1967]**°
Introduction
This story can be read in multiple ways: as a story about a beautiful heroic wife
who sacrificed herself for her mentally disabled husband through and after WWII; as a
story o f the resistance and subjectivity rather than complete submission to her fate o f the
woman protagonist, Rie; or as a story about the complex traffic in violence among the
characters. Each o f these readings is possible, but at the intersection o f these multiple
interpretations o f R ie’s life and the narrator's reading o f her life, we find the unspoken
voice o f Rie.
Rie’s story is narrated in the first person by a woman writer. One night on the way
home by a local train, the narrator happens to see Rie and her husband on the platform o f a
small station in the mountains. She does not know them but she learns their story about
from a fellow passenger, a local farmer named Kurokawa.
Kurokawa’s story about Rie and Masatoshi brings the narrator back to an old
memory. Living in Tokyo in the prewar period, she came to know a group o f young
psychiatric interns who had taken on an extra night-time job taking turns watching over a
newly-married couple to ensure that the mentally disabled husband, Masatoshi, did not
harm his wife during sexual intercourse. Masatoshi’s father, wealthy Ichige Hanshiro. on
the advice o f a psychiatry professor, had found a wife for his son after neutering him. He
also arranged for the couple to live in a separate house so that Rie could take care o f him.
480The text: Enchi Fumiko, “Boxcar o f Chrysanthemums," in This Kind o f Women:

Ten Stories by Japanese Women Writers, 1960-1976, Yukiko Tanaka and Elizabeth
Hanson, trans. and eds. (Michigan: U o f Michigan P, 1982), pp. 69-86.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e cop y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e rm is s io n .

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After the young interns kept their watch, their vigils lasted only a year since it soon
appeared that Masatoshi would not harm Rie. But during the course o f their vigil, one of
the interns, Kashimura, fell in love with Rie and asked her to marry him. She refused,
saying that she could not leave her husband. After the war, the narrator learned that
Kashimura had died o f malaria as an army doctor in the South Pacific islands. Now,
twenty years later, the narrator has seen Rie and Masatoshi. The once-wealthy Ichige
family lost most o f their property after the war, and now Rie supports her husband by
growing fruit and chrysanthemums. Kurokawa tells the narrator that his father believes Rie
is a reincarnation o f Kan’non.481 The train finally arrives at the narrator's town. As she
walks home through the autumn night, she thinks she now understands Rie's life.
Phallic Woman/Subaltern/Bodhisattva
I would like to consider three ways o f interpreting the story o f Rie's life. "Most
villagers despised the woman for agreeing to marry a man like Masatoshi. no matter how
much money was involved” (76 trans). Therefore, they thought "there’s something wrong
with any woman who would go along with it, too.” Apparently there is a strong bias
against mentally disabled people in the villagers’ suspicions about Rie’s marriage. They
could not imagine any woman would marry a handicapped man like Masatoshi. Therefore,
one o f them said, “when they were married, Hanshiro gave Rie a lot o f stock in the
company,” as if he had seen this happen. Was Rie really such a calculating woman?
Certainly Rie had improved her social status, moving from a mere servant o f the Ichige
48lPopularly thought o f as the goddess o f mercy, a bodhisattva who renounces

nirvana in order to live among ordinary beings in order to help them attain salvation.

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family to being the wife o f the first son. In this sense she had a freedom o f mobility that
other women did not. After the war when Masatoshi’s father’s paper business went
bankrupt, and his mother and son-in-law used up what money there was, only the house
was left. Rie converted most o f Ichige’s land into apple orchards and supported her
husband and herself with this income. Growing chrysanthemums was partly for income
but partly because Masatoshi enjoyed looking at flowers. Thus, coming from a poor
family, Rie ends up establishing herself as a survivor in the postwar period.
M asatoshi’s mother is another example o f a woman whose fortunes had risen. She
had been a hostess at Koyo-kan. a famous restaurant o f the Meiji period, and had been
popular among aristocrats and wealthy merchants because o f her beauty. For both
beautiful women, Rie and her mother-in-law, marriage meant an elevation in their own
status. In this respect this story is about a woman who had successfully climbed the social
ladder in the midst o f the chaos o f the war period: from a non-family member (servant) to a
legal family member (wife), just as in Jane Eyre’s success story.482 In fact, the narrator
cannot ignore the rise in R ie's status. During the war, when she had heard Kashimura’s
confession o f love, she had tried to write a fiction based on R ie's story. But the character
of Rie ended up being a woman who murdered her husband and eloped with her young
lover. Her failed fiction had seemed more plausible than Rie’s life because the heroine had
acted on her own desire. However, according to the villagers who have interacted with Rie
since the war, Rie seems far distant from a woman who would kill her husband following
482See Gayatri Spivak. “Three W omen's Texts and a Critique o f Imperialism,”

Critical Inquiry 12:1 (1985).

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her own ego and desire. Since Rie is beyond rational comprehension, she remained a
mystery to both the narrator and the villagers.
Another image o f Rie is as a victim and human sacrifice. After they saw Rie
devoting herself to her husband for so long, the villagers concluded that there was nothing
wrong with Rie. She ‘‘always showed up for volunteer work days and air raid drills” (76
trans). Since she “works harder than anyone else and doesn’t put on the airs o f a rich
person,” even the catty local women who make fun o f Tokyo women agreed that Rie took
good care o f her husband and only pitied her. Rie becomes the object o f sympathy as a
“human sacrifice.” In fact, Rie’s situation deserved pity from people. She was bom into a
so-called subaltern space: a poor merchant’s daughter like Rie had few choices: she would
be sold to be either a prostitute, a mistress, or a factory worker. Therefore, when married.
"Rie was not promised a bright future.”
What waits ahead is married life with a mentally disabled man without any help
from other people. The newly-wed couple are excluded from any formal occasions of
family get-togethers like weddings and funerals. Furthermore, especially at the beginning
o f their marriage, Masatoshi loses control during sexual relations. Rie occasionally has to
suffer from bleeding and fainting until Masatoshi learns how to control himself. “To
secure Rie’s safety” young doctors from Medical School take turns standing by every night
in a room next to the couple’s. Is Rie a victim of scopic violence by the medical interns?
As some o f the interns in the story relate, they “got a chance to see things you can't usually
see,” and even got well paid for the opportunity. If they see Rie as an object o f erotic
stimulation, it is definitely as ’’voyeurs.” In other words, if they make fun o f the “woman

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who was the victim of this marriage,” it is impermissible “scopic violence.” The narrator
says, if “they were ridiculing her, at the same time they were acting like fools who couldn't
see the spittle on their own faces.” No matter how serious the intention o f the interns at
their vigils, it does not change the fact that Rie’s body and the “most private part o f her
life” are exposed to the male gaze. Similarly, even though Rie later comes to feel affection
for Masatoshi, she was clearly obligated to serve him this nightly labor, during which she
often suffered from the uncontrollably violent behavior o f her husband. Rie was a wife
trapped in the bed o f a violent husband until he leaned how not to harm her. In this sense
the narrator's indignant words are to the point: “why didn't his father have them castrate
him instead o f sterilizing him? I think his father is perverted.” Any woman in such a
situation no doubt must be a victim. Except for a few words. Rie is mostly silent in the
story. It is precisely this voice that Enchi tries to excavate in the story.
The final title people gave to her was that o f Kan'non and model o f a faithful wife.
Before the war ended the Ichige family has collapsed and lost their property except for the
house in which they lived. "In these times there isn't much food. Rie has a hard time
finding enough potatoes and flour to feed her husband. She supports her husband by
knitting things for the farmers and sews clothes for their kids.” One old witness says:
You can’t do that much for others if you’re a fake and just trying to make a good
impression. Sometimes I even wonder if she’s a reincarnation o f Kan'non.483 ( 76
483There have been many mythologies about Kan’non and the Buddha in Japan.
One is that when all the other animals brought food to dedicate to the Buddha, one rabbit
had nothing but his own body. When he jumped into the fire to make himself food for the
Buddha, he was rescued and enlightened by the Buddha. Another is the mythology o f
prostitutes as the reincarnation o f Kan’non, who gave their bodies to comfort poor deprived
men.

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trans)
Kurokawa says to the narrator, the villagers wanted to “purify their image of Rie and think
o f her as a reincarnated Kan’non," because they had seen enough o f ugliness during the
war. Especially “at the war’s end and in the years that followed they had seen whatever
trappings human beings find to wrap themselves up in cruelly pulled o ff to reveal their
naked, shameful parts” (77). Reflecting the villagers’ admiration and respect, she wins a
prize “ for having devoted herself to her mentally disabled husband for so many years" as
“the model of the faithful wife.” Both the image o f “Kan’non” and o f “the model o f the
faithful wife” are what people in those days wanted to see. “ It was a year or so after the
outbreak o f the China Incident, when the image o f the red draft notice calling soldiers to
the army burned like fire in young men’s minds” (78). Japanese m en's sacrifice would be
made up for if their wives and daughters are more (than men) self-sacrificing and merciful
like K an'noa Likewise, the men hoped they would be well taken care o f by their
“faithful” wives after they returned exhausted from the war. In their fantasy Rie was their
ideal wife and daughter. In short, during the wartime and in the postwar period, Rie served
the state as a good neighbor and nation.
Medical Violence
There are three kinds o f medical violence in this story. One is the sterilization of
Masatoshi under the authoritative advice o f the professor o f psychiatry. When Masatoshi
reaches physical maturity, Hanshiro, his father, decides to find a partner to meet his son's
sexual needs. He says to the doctor:
I know a woman who might become my son’s wife, but I can't imagine bringing the

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subject up to her whenever I think o f the possibility o f a child being bom. Once the
operation is finished, though, I think I can hope for a marriage. I feel sorry for the
woman who’ll be my son’s wife, but from a father’s viewpoint, I would at least like
to give him the experience o f living with a woman. (80)
Hanshiro's decision comes from the “pain and unseverable strength o f the parental bond he
felt in his very bones.” Sterilization o f mentally disabled people was a notorious practice of
violence which had a formidable history in militarist Japan. Even without Hanshiro's
suggestion. Masatoshi could have been sterilized sooner or later during the wartime period,
since he would be ranked as not deserving to reproduce good offspring--that is, good
soldiers for the nation and the state. Sterilization, the exercise o f imperialist violence upon
M asatoshi's body, reflected the bias against mentally disabled people in the 1940s.
Another disturbing discourse about mentally disabled people is reflected in this
story. Masatoshi's sexuality is referred as “bestiality” or “animalitv” repeatedly throughout
the story. In the opening scene on the platform when he smelled the odor o f the
chrysanthemums. “The old m an’s little nose was twitching like a dog's.” (73); “he would
sometimes become excited like a dog in heat;” he wanders “around the house like an
animal” (79). Kashimura, a medical intern, also uses the image o f an “animal” for
Masatoshi: he fantasizes about Rie as his mother thrown into an “animal cage,” and he
“thought he had to rescue her from that place.” Apparently, these stigmas about mentally
disabled people make this short story unusual and eccentric, and at the same time help to
construct Rie’s victimization. The narrator herself falls into the same mistake. Therefore,
when she heard that Rie had refused Kashimura’s proposal, she could not believe it.
because in her eyes Kashimura was “beyond comparison with Rie’s husband.”

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In contrast to M asatoshi’s appearance. Kashimura was “a quiet, scholar type-tall,
well-built, and handsome.” He was “popular among the nurses and patients at the hospital”
(83). The fact that Kashimura’s profession is medical doctor doubtlessly makes him shine
more in people’s eyes than his physical appearance or personality. A medical doctor has
not only scientific but also moral authority for his patients. Authority derives from the
ascribed status o f the doctor as a wise man, a person o f virtue. It has been the moral
authority o f the doctor which has constituted the foundation o f the power to cure.
Considering the power and moral authority o f a medical doctor, Kashimura’s proposal
certainly would have meant a lot more for women than other men's. Furthermore, he was
one o f the interns who kept a nightly watch on Rie and Masatoshi's sexual activity.
Obviously there was a power hierarchy between Kashimura as a doctor and
Masatoshi as a patient needing the doctor's surveillance and control. Nonetheless, Rie
chose to stay with Masatoshi rather than to go with Kashimura. Rie does not fall into the
stereotypical bias against mentally disabled people, neither does she yield to the popular
preference for medical doctors as husbands. Thus, her choice o f Masatoshi over a medical
doctor is read as testimony to her firm subjectivity. Nonetheless, as readers we should
remind ourselves that what makes Rie’s choice noble and heroic is her choice between the
stigma placed upon mentally disabled people and the social status o f a medical doctor. In
other words, if Masatoshi were not disabled, if Kashimura’s profession is not that
prestigious, Rie's choice would not be that laudable.
A third expression o f violence relates to the issue o f priorities: Masatoshi's need is
seen as more important than a woman’s welfare. Due to Hanshiro’s concern and

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arrangement, M asatoshi’s sexual ability is saved so that he can enjoy sexual pleasure with a
woman. It is not surprising that as a father he would do anything to make his son happy.
However, M asatoshi’s happiness is realized at the cost o f Rie's sacrifice. Therefore, the
narrator is furious at Hanshiro’s idea o f sacrificing a woman to meet his and his son’s need:
“why didn't Hanshiro have them castrate his son instead o f sterilizing him?" (81) If by
castration M asatoshi’s desire were terminated, he would not need to sacrifice a woman.
However, castration is also violence on Masatoshi’s body. Unfortunately, there is no
simple solution to this complicated matter.484 Hanshiro's decision reflects this complex
configuration. Nevertheless, his decision resonates with the imperial ideology o f building
a good nation/state, even if it means sacrificing a woman's life.
The Odor o f Death
One can hardly deny that the odor o f death is prevalent in this story. At the very
beginning o f the story late at night the narrator sees some strange packages being loaded
into the train at the deserted station:
The packages were all about the same size, bulging at the center like fish wrapped
in reed mats, but the station attendants were lifting them carefully in both hands, as
if they were handling something valuable, and loading them into the soot-covered
car. (72)
She is watching the scene and wondering what the packages are, when suddenly she
notices “a moist, plant-like smell floating in from somewhere” (72). The linkage between
the title word, “chrysanthemums," the strange shaped packages, the moist plant-like smell,
and the dark night setting all leads without difficulty to one suspicion: these packages
484How to deal with the sexual desire o f mentally disabled people is a serious issue
even now.

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could be dead bodies. Although the reader soon discovers that they are white
chrysanthemums, not corpses, the story ends with a report o f Kashimura’s death in the
South Pacific islands, followed by the reminder o f Rie and white chrysanthemums again.
The story thus begins and ends with the odor o f chrysanthemums, the flowers for
funerals.485
However, this is not an “aesthetic” short story. Behind the serene face o f Rie, a
faithful wife adorned with a white chrysanthemum, it is not too difficult to see the millions
of people who died in the war. This story is set a year or so after the outbreak o f the
“China Incident” (Nikka jihen).m Young psychiatric interns like Kashimura were also
threatened and intimidated by an unwelcome summons from the state. Kashimura's
fantasy o f rescuing “his mother in an animal cage” may come from the militarist
propaganda o f rescuing “Japan” from its wild enemies during the war. In the line o f the
march of jingoism Kashimura was sent to the South islands in order to rescue the Japanese
nation trapped in the cage of its animalistic foes. Gender is also inscribed in this binary:
the Japanese nation is identified with a captive “mother.” Rie.
The villagers seek their comfort and compensation in the image o f “Kan’non,” Rie.
To die in the arms and mercy o f the goddess Kan’non is their fantasy. Young intellectuals
485In Japan chrysanthemums are usually used as flowers for funerals, especially the
white kind (shiratama) which Rie and her husband grow in the story. It is a custom for the
corpse to be covered with lots of chrysanthemums in the casket at the funeral before the
cremation, primarily because the strong odor conceals the smell o f the dead body, and
secondly because chrysanthemums are believed to work as preservatives o f the corpse.
486The original Japanese term '"Nikka jihen, ” which the English phrase, “the China
Incident” correctly translates, does not reflect the historical fact. It was actually a “Chugoku
shinryaku” [Invasion o f China].

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like Kashimura also projected a maternal image on the Japanese nation/state. The fantasy
o f rescuing their captive mother from wild beasts would help them construct their
masculinity. Thus, Kashimura’s fantasy o f rescuing Rie, a woman held captive in an
animal cage, can be read in this historical context.
A Woman Writer Writing about Women
The first reaction of the narrator after she heard about the medical interns' vigil
was:
Rich people do such awful things. In fact, that woman was bought, but to have a
doctor waiting on them like that [...] It’s like some kind o f show. Even if the father
did want his son to enjoy sex, it’s too big a sacrifice. Why didn't he have them
castrate his son instead o f sterilizing him? I think that father is perverted." (81)
The narrator thought that it was a privilege o f the bourgeois class to find a wife for
Masatoshi, and that Rie was the victim o f their indulgence. Therefore, the narrator
detested not only Masatoshi’s father but also Rie for her cowardice. She did not “feel
comfortable with a situation where young, single doctors watched a young couple in bed
from beginning to end, paying diligent attention until the two fell asleep":
If one does not make a fool o f himself when doing such things, then he is making a
fool o f his charges. The doctors were too young and well educated to see
themselves as fools, and if they were making fun o f someone else, it was o f the
woman who was the victim o f this marriage. Obviously I didn't like their making
fun o f her or their seeing her as an object o f erotic stimulation. At the same time
that they were ridiculing her, they were acting like fools who couldn’t see the spittle
on their own faces. Someone had used the word “voyeur,” but I had thought at the
time that there was a basic difference between a voyeur and someone who kept such
a nightly vigil. (81)
“ Later she heard from Kashimura himself words that seemed to prove he had not been
making a fool o f either him self or Rie. She found that Kashimura proposed to Rie." She

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tried to write a fiction about Rie, but failed, because Rie was simply beyond her
imagination:
R ie's devotion to Masatoshi had seemed absurd to me. I had no reason to say she
was a fake, but I simply couldn’t accept a way o f thinking that was so different
from my own. What I mean is that I couldn't accept what she did without
imagining that some handicap was part of her devotion [...] she must have been
jilted or raped or experienced something to make her unhappy. I even wondered if
religion had motivated her, an inclination to follow an authority higher than that o f
human beings. (85)
But when, after twenty years, she saw Rie and her husband on the platform, the narrator
“wants to accept the Rie who had lived with Masatoshi as she was and to disregard her
background, any misfortunes she had before her marriage, or any religious inclinations. I
wanted to take her hand and say ‘I understand' ’ (86).
It took more than twenty years for the narrator to finally accept Rie and her life as
they were. Meanwhile her translations o f Rie swing back and forth between an enduring
woman, a wicked woman, an ambitious woman, a woman with mercy, and so on.
Wrapped up in these multiple layers o f discourse. Rie's voice goes almost unheard. “For
any society to get away with persistent systematic violence against those excluded from
power, it must impose a monologic definition o f truth, and then convince its members that
any deviation would risk chaos.”487 The dominant monologic master discourse, a “good
wife” and a Kan ’non goddess, makes Rie’s voice unheard. Yet “wherever there is a
dominant discourse there are always already numerous other voices, subverting,
487Deirdre Lashgari, “Introduction: To Speak the Unspeakable: Implications o f

Gender. “Race.' Class, and Culture,” in Violence, Silence, and Anger: Women's Writing As
Transgression, ed. Deirdre Lashgari (Charlottesville: UP o f Virginia, 1995), p.l 1.

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transgressing boundaries, working to disrupt its centripetal certainties.”488 In Rie's case too
we find her subjectivity in her determination to stay with Masatoshi and refuse
Kashimura’s proposal. What blocked the narrator from accepting Rie's life was the
conventional discourse o f masculinity which asserts that the disabled Masatoshi is
worthless in comparison with Kashimura. Her judgment is o f course supported by so-
called "common sense.” However, the narrator’s "rational comprehension'' dissolved after
she saw Rie with her husband for the first time, though only for a few minutes: human
beings have thoughts and show behaviors that seem beyond our rational comprehension.
Enchi writes about women’s experiences like chrysanthemums that were sleeping
in those dark, soot-covered boxcars in strange shapes and in different shades o f w hite,
yellow, red and purple. Enchi has to resuscitate them one experience by one experience,
since their fragrance was sealed in a boxcar. Rie is one o f those flowers.
Conclusion
Contrary to a number o f speculations about Rie, "she was the same as she had
been.” She was one of those lower class o f Japanese women who worked hard throughout
their lives to survive the wartime and postwar periods. Yet if we situate Rie on the
historical map o f the Japanese imperialist period, her position and status are rather
complex. As we have noted, her social status definitely improved from servant to wife o f a
house-owning family, even though the once-wealthy family went bankrupt after the war. In
this sense, she does not belong to the bottom o f the society, but rather ends up ascending
488M. M. Bakhtin, “Discourse and the Novel,” p. 263. cited in Lashgari. op. cit., p.
11.

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into the privileged class.
Second, Rie’s diligence and efforts in looking after her husband during wartime
were sucked into the Japanese imperialist project at that time. Not only the obvious
wartime training in air raid drills as a good neighbor and citizen but also the performance
o f her duty and her morality as a good wife were mobilized for state propaganda. We
should not forget that she was nominated as an exemplary citizen and patriotic member of
the nation, and received a prize for her dedication to her disabled husband during wartime.
Neither should we miss the point that this special honoring o f Rie’s dedication was based
on the strong bias against mentally disabled people during the prewar and wartime period.
If Rie had looked after a so-called “normal” husband, she would not have been lauded.
It would seem, therefore, that no matter how much hardship she had to go through,
Rie is not somebody other than a loyal subject o f imperialist Japan. In fact, without the
connection to war we cannot understand Rie's life. Her husband is excluded from
conscription because of his disability, while most o f the medical interns engaged in the
night vigils were sent to war. Kashimura goes to the war as a medical officer, and dies of
malaria in the South Pacific islands.
Yet, if we simply reduce Rie to a colonizing subject, we will end up ignoring Rie’s
experiences. For example, in her quiet yet firm refusal o f Kashimura’s proposal we find
her subjectivity. Kashimura says to the narrator:
She really loves her husband. But she was grateful for my having asked, and it was
more than she could have expected, after I had seen her in such unsightly
circumstances. Masatoshi couldn't go on living, and probably wouldn’t live for
very long if she left, she said, and when she thought o f this she felt sorry for him
and couldn’t possibly leave. Then, she cried and cried. I thought there was nothing

else I could do, so I gave up. (82)
Her tears tells us that is was a difficult decision for her. In her firm refusal we see her
ultimate resolution o f choosing to stay with the more vulnerable being rather than pursuing
a more secure future with Kashimura.4*9 It is an irony that the supposedly promising
Kashimura would soon die in the war. Here is a story o f the decision and experiences o f
one woman who survived the wartime period and established a family business while
supporting her disabled husband. The experiences inscribed on her body cannot be easily
captured by a postcolonial theory that would label her a domestic supporter o f colonialism.
Thus, in both o f these fictions, Enchi compels the reader to face a complex and
troubling issue: How can one retrieve the experiences o f Japanese women during wartime
and in the postwar period without resorting to the naive defense that “women in imperialist
Japan also had a hard life just as colonial subjects did”? To acquiesce in that defense is to
avoid the issue o f wartime responsibility for men and women alike. And yet. as Enchi
suggests in both stories, the violence perpetrated by wartime Japan, though it took different
forms, was not only analogous to but linked to the violence inflicted upon the bodies o f
Japanese women both during and after the war.
As noted at the beginning o f this chapter, for Enchi neither kind o f violence was
ungendered: each was linked to figures o f Woman and the reality of w om en’s lives. In
these fictions Enchi presents wartime and postwar violence on women’s bodies, pyche,
subjectivity in correlation with wartime violence—the two kinds o f violence overlapping
489Enchi deals with this topic in other stories, for example: “Hikyo ’ [Secret Box];
“Sono hi kara hajimatta koto” [What Started From That Day]; “Kogen j o j o ’ [Lyricism in
the High Land]; “Kuroi ajisaC [Black Hydrangea]; “Pandora no hako” [Pandora’s Box].

341
and implicating one another. In Women's Cocoon, Toyoki, the returning wartime
practitioner o f vivisection, brings with him an “evil spirit” that drags the women around
him down into the “dark depths.” There is no clear border between the violence o f the
wartime past and postwar “peacetime.” The demon of wartime responsibility is not so
easily exorcised. If there is a ray o f hope, it is Kayo’s prospects, despite the violence
practiced upon her, for a happy future. In Boxcar o f Chrysanthemums, the Japanese nation
at war is identified with a “captive mother,” Rie. Kashimura entertains the fantasy o f
rescuing Japan from its bestial enemy through the violence of war, thereby restoring a
threatened masculinity. And yet the woman narrator comes to understand that her earlier
attempt at a narrative o f Rie's life, portraying her alternately as a cowardly victim or an
ambitious social climber, was in fact complicit in the conventional discourse o f masculinity
heightened by wartime fever. She comes to “understand” that the story o f this woman will
require a more critical and sympathetic re-telling.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

I
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Chapter 3
Revolution and Tradition: Paternal Authority and Motherhood
A House Without A Dining Table and Voices o f Snakes
Introduction
As we saw in Part One. after the war issues about the nature o f the Japanese nation
were revived and reinterpreted in debates in literary and critical circles. In the 1960s and
1970s there appeared a new nationalism and multiple narratives about what sort o f people
Japanese men and Japanese women should be. These developments were related to
political and socio-economic contradictions that characterized the postwar period and that
are reflected in the two fictions I want to consider in this chapter. In both A House Without
A Dining Table and Voices o f Snakes Enchi's concern with relationships between gender
and violence is focused on the paternal authority o f the state and resistance by women.
Behind the rise of postwar nationalism there were several political factors. One
was the revision o f the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 and again in 1968. A second was
the signing o f unequal agreements between the US and Japanese governments concerning
the return o f Okinawa. Bills that allowed the US to continue stationing its military in
Okinawa in exchange for the return o f Okinawa were forced through the Diet. It was
against this background that student rebellions spread to more than one hundred colleges
and universities throughout Japan. The first issue I will discuss in this chapter is the
relation o f gender to the discourse o f these student rebellions. As we will see in Enchi’s
novel A House Without A Dining Table, in the narratives o f the 1960s and 1970s the
student rebellions were gendered as the protests o f a “son'’ against paternal authority,
whether a biological father, or the Japanese state, or US hegemony. The ideological gender

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dichotomy o f men as activists and women as bearers o f home/family is reproduced in the
narratives of the political activity o f students.
The second issue I would like to discuss is the way in which this discourse o f
"paternal authority" reproduced and imposed masculinity and femininity on people in the
same period. These ideological narratives o f masculinity and femininity, o f course, brought
conflicts with the reality to the historical women who lived in that period. Enchi’s short
story Voices o f Snakes illustrates a gap between the inscription and the description o f the
postwar Japan. The 1960s and 1970s were also the period of rapid economic growth in
Japan.490 Japanese male salaried workers were called "economic animals" by the rest o f the
world. People were educated how to be an economic animal and how to make good
families in order to reinvigorate national productivity.491 For the creation o f a good family,
the masculinity o f an "economic animal” had to be complemented by the femininity of a
“nurturing wife." Marriage, having children, and owning “ My home” were encouraged by
the government.492 In short, it was a state project to educate men to be "economic animals"
490These descriptions about the postwar period are taken from “Sengo josei-shi
nempyd: 1945-1994" [A Chronological Table o f the History o f Postwar Women: 1945-
1994], in Women's Data Book, Inoue Teruko and Ehara Yumiko, eds. (Tokyo: YOhikaku,
1995).
491A good example is a document published in 1966 by the Ministry o f Education

entitled “Kitai sareru ningenzcF [An Image O f The Human Beings That Are To Be Hoped
For, or What Sort o f People Should There Be?]. In 1968 "Kitai sareru katei-zo' [An
Image O f The Family That Is To Be Hoped For, or What Sort o f Family Should There Be?]
was added.
492The image o f "Tough Mom” (kimottama kasan), a character in a TV home drama

who could solve any family problem, was circulated in the media, and a novel by Anyoshi
Sawako which dealt with a self-sacrificing wife. Hanaoka Seishu no tsuma [Doctor’s
Wife], achieved great popularity.

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in the market-place and women to be good wives and wise mothers to support the
reproductive system o f the family. That is, it was state policy to revive the themes o f
gender in national identity that had been put forward in the first half o f the twentieth
century, and to re-organize them to fit the rapid growth o f the economy and the radical
transformation o f people’s lives in the extended postwar period.
The reality o f people, especially women, was far from such nationalist propaganda.
Because consumerism was encouraged to contribute to the GDP (Gross Domestic Product),
because the modernization o f life in Japan was said to be almost completed in 1967,
people’s desires were also enhanced and expanded.493 In order to keep up with this postwar
version of the “middle class’’ lifestyle. Japanese male salaried workers had to work day and
night, thus the label “economic animals." The gap between the media-promoted image o f
the modem iifestyle o f the "middle class" and the reality o f a frugal life created frustration
in men and women. Especially women, who were tied to “motherhood." had to suffer from
a gap between their desires and the reality. In A House Without A Dining Table a frustrated
wife and mother, Yumiko, is driven to commit suicide, while her son and her husband are
absorbed in a fight to obtain paternal authority. On the other hand, in Enchi’s short story.
Voices o f Snakes, mothers and daughters confront the paternal authority o f state power and
demonstrate their resistance.
493As a result, most families in Japan had come to own the consumer goods that
symbolized their arrival in the middle class, the 3C 's—Car, Cooler (air conditioner), and
Color (color TV). Purchase with credit cards was promoted and Japan entered the age o f
mass consumerism.

A House Without a Dining Table [1978f9A
Student rebellion spread to one hundred and sixteen colleges and universities in
Japan in 1968. At the annual festival of Tokyo University, the forefront o f the student
rebellion, a famous catch phrase mimicking a movie cliche read: “ Don't stop me. mom.
The ginko tattoo on my back is weeping. Where should a macho Tokyo University student
go?’' 495 As this phrase shows, there appeared multiple narratives about masculinity/
femininity and paternal authority/motherhood in relation to the student rebellions o f the
1960s and 1970s.
Enchi’s novel. A House Without a Dining Table (1978). is based on a historical
lynching incident among leftist students in Japan in 1972. In Enchi's fictional version,
after the college rebellions are ended by police power, one section o f the student groups
breaks from the legal political party (Communist Party) with which it has been affiliated. It
becomes an underground organization, “the Red Star Army,” whose aim is to bring about
“simultaneous world revolution” through guerilla tactics. They hide themselves in the
mountain armed with stolen hunting rifles, but most are arrested just before they are to
attack metropolitan Tokyo. More than thirty members avoid arrest and flee to the
494Enchi Fumiko, Shokutaku no nai ie [A House Without A Dining Table] (Tokyo:

Shinchosha, 1993).
495The Japanese original, Tomete kureruna okka-san, senaka no ichdga naite iru,
otoko Todai doko e iku, cited in Women's Data Book, Inoue Teruko and Ehara Yumiko,
eds. (Tokyo: Yuhikaku. 1995), p. 231, was composed by the writer, Hashimoto Osamu. to
be used by students as a slogan for their festival. It was a copy of the mobster's line,
“Don’t stop me, mom, the dragon tattoo on my back is weeping. Where should a macho
guy go?” [Tomete kureruna okkasan, senaka no ryu g a naite iru, otoko ippiki doko e iku] in
the movie featuring the actor, Takakura Ken. “Ginko” refers to the trees found in
abundance on the Tokyo University campus.

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mountain. But when they finally arrive at a cottage in Yatsugatake, where they take a
caretaker couple hostage, there are only five men and one woman left. It turns out that they
have lynched fifteen members or so on the way to the cottage (38).
After the male protagonist, Otohiko, is arrested, his father, Nobuyuki, rejects
apologizing for his son’s deed and gets criticized by the media. Although the two egos o f
son and father clash, they basically share the same value: while Otohiko wants to build a
new world without any political hierarchy or economic differences, Nobuyuki wants to
construct a new type o f family consisting o f independent parents and independent children.
Nevertheless, both types o f resistance come at a high price—the destruction o f their own
family. The main story is about the Kidoji family—Nobuyuki, Yumiko (his wife). Tamae
(daughter), Otohiko, and Osamu (son). The sub-stories are about Nobuyuki and Kiwa
(Yumiko’s sister). Nobuyuki and Kanae (a graduate student), and Otohiko and Miyoko (a
waitress at a student store).
Rebellion as Dependence
The sensationalist media inform its readers that what is significant about this
incident is that all o f the student criminals are children o f bourgeois intellectual families,
not from working class people whose lifelong struggle is to make ends meet. They demand
that the parents apologize for their children, the logic being that these bourgeois parents
spoilt their children and have turned them into blood-sucking monsters. The media’s
criticism in Enchi's story partly reflects one o f the popular discourses in 1970s Japan about
the student rebellions. Doi Takeo. for example, sees social pathology in the student
demonstrations o f the late 1960s and early 1970s, and tries to explain it by the concept of

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“dependence” (amae).496 According to Doi, the “self-indulgent” rebellion of 1960s youth
is the phenomenon of a society where fathers have lost their authority, and the young have
become more closely attached to their mothers than to their fathers.497 According to Doi, it
arises from a deep desire for acceptance and nurturing which originates as “an emotion felt
by the baby at the breast toward its mother” and which therefore “must necessarily begin
before the ‘Oedipus complex* o f psychoanalytical theory.”498
Doi's theory is based on the connection between homosexuality and amae:
homosexuality is believed to arise because the individual “identifies with his mother—he
becomes his mother, as it were—and thus comes to love objects similar to himself.” Doi
constructs Japanese as “males” who are “feminine” and “ dependent.” Just as Doi
pathologizes student rebellion, so he pathologizes homosexuality as the negative result of
male identification with mother. In Doi’s theory we hear a didactic sermon instructing
“men” how urgent it is to stop being dependent and rebelling against the father (state) and
instead to become “macho,” good citizens o f the nation. Above all. the ultimate message is
to encourage young men to detach themselves from their mothers, become heterosexual
and find a girl.
Doi’s theory constructs a transhistorical national identity o f Japanese men as
feminine and dependent. However, he does not explain the son's rebellion in its historical
496Doi Takeo, Amae no kdzd [The Anatomy o f Dependence], trans. John Bester,
2nd. ed. (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1973).
497Ibid., pp. 150-157.
498Ibid„ p. 20.

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context. The analogy between O tohiko's private rebellion (against his father) and his
political rebellion (world revolution) is not clearly presented in D oi's theory. In other
words, while he addresses the student’s personal and private urge to rebel, he does not
explain the relationship among mother, father, and son in the picture o f political and
revolutionary implication. It seems that Doi does not take 1970s student rebellion
seriously, nor politically, but only takes it as an example o f Japanese national identity.
Enchi. on the other hand, offers a more political and historical context for this
psychological phenomenon through the mouth o f Kawabe. a medical doctor and
Nobuyuki's friend. Kawabe translates Otohiko’s resistance into postwar Japanese m en’s
unconscious quest for paternal authority:
Modem men are bossed around and enslaved by their wife and children [...] A
young plant the American Occupation Army left as a souvenir has grown into a big
tree [...] Certainly paternal authority was lost after the war. Every defeated country
follows the same fate. Not as bad as in the case of Louis XVI or Nicolai II, but all
Japanese men were doomed to lose authority one way or the other. Nowadays
many boys look like girls, but boys are still boys after all [...] They must be
frustrated to see their father's paternal authority lost, and they long for it. But your
father is exceptional in that he has never lost his paternal authority. Therefore, it is
not surprising to see you resist but admire your father on that account. (149)
Kawabe observes that Japanese men lost paternal authority after the wartime defeat, and
that young men seek for it. But, he says, Otohiko’s father is exceptional because he still
keeps his paternal authority. It is not clear whether the fathers o f the other student
criminals all keep their paternal authority or whether only Otohiko’s father has it. Whether
they fight against or they seek for paternal authority is also not explained. In any case, the
paternal authority o f postwar Japanese men is brought up in explaining student rebellion in
the 1970s. Thus, the issue o f gender and the historical situation are introduced in Enchi’s

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portrayal o f the student rebellion.
As we saw in Part One. the issue o f gender and politics was debated by male
postwar critics such as Takeuchi Yoshimi, Takeda Taijun, Oe Kenzaburo and others-how
to re-masculinize a Japanese nation feminized by masculine Western hegemony. Enchi
takes a different approach from these critics in her analysis o f Otohiko's deed. Otohiko
admits that it could have involved a personal challenge to his father’s paternal authority,
which however seemed impossible to overcome. He tries but cannot beat his father, so
instead he “ends up beating up his sister and his mother.” Now he finds that his father,
supposedly the embodiment of tradition and the old Japanese system, is himself fighting
against the traditional notion of a family—that is, against the same state- and media-
promoted “common sense” (seken no jashiki) that O tohiko's group is fighting. After all
both son and father are resisting the same enemy, each in his own way. The rebellious son
finally identifies with the rebellious father at the end of the story, and the father too
recognizes in him self and his son the same “rebellious spirit” running in their veins.
Instead of replacing the father, the son and father hand in hand fight against the old system,
in Japan and in the world. Through a simultaneous world revolution the son believes he
can rescue a nation trapped in the old nationalism and imperialism. The father also starts a
fight against an old system—the family system in Japan.
Unlike the male postwar critics, however, in Enchi’s story neither the son nor the
father identify themselves with the state. Neither do they identify with the nation as
feminine, as mother. In the analysis o f Otohiko’s rebellion we cannot simply adopt the
Oedipal complex, in which the son (revolutionary) rebels against his father (the state/law)

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in order to rescue his mother (nation), who is the object o f his desire. Instead, we can
apply recent translation theory: the son (the translator-revolutionary) is constantly seeking
to replace his father (the author-W estern hegemony and bourgeoisie) and translate his
mother (the text-the international working class). Through Otohiko’s rebellion Enchi as
translator attempts to rebel against an author (male critics identifying with the state) and to
re-wnte or trans-form a text (Japan) into a new nation where women (not Woman) are
active as historical agents. To see this we can look at Otohiko’s vision, which Enchi partly
supports but partly critiques.
Otohiko’s Vision and Failure
“Destruction for construction” is the slogan o f Otohiko's group, mixed with
Communists and Anarchists, aiming for a Simultaneous World Revolution:
The globe is becoming smaller and smaller due to global transportation by

airplanes, and the EEC (European Economic Community) is established now. Why
does each country have to be in conflict or at war with other countries, each
persisting in its own interest? Somebody has to make a sacrifice in order to break
such a thick wall (o f nationalism), Otohiko thought. (123)
Otohiko in prison feels reassured: “unless we destroy the old order, a new society will
never be realized. For that purpose we cannot avoid scapegoats” (138). The narrator also
concludes:
Their ‘w ar’ is viewed as an act o f ‘madness’ by ordinary people...it was certainly a

time o f madness. They (the revolutionists) saw this world as a hell, which would
certainly be made possible by only madness. Their madness, however, despite their
misunderstanding or chaos stemming from confusion with their own personal
complex, was certainly acted out as a revolutionary belief by (Fidel) Castro and
(Che) Guevara. (128)
Otohiko admits that lynching their own members was a crazy act, but he “has to hurry on to

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his ideal.” He seems to believe that unless he fights he cannot come closer to the world he
wants to realize. At least, by so believing he can keep on living.
Nobuyuki supports Otohiko’s view, though with some criticism:
He does not think Otohiko’s ideal o f revolution is totally wrong, rather he assumes
that his son’s deed is now viewed as eccentric and legally offensive, but someday in
the future it might be reevaluated as legitimate and legally accepted as the past
human history. In the world o f science hundreds years ago Galileo was tried at a
religious court and sentenced to life imprisonment for insisting on the heliocentric
theory. But now nobody doubts the fact that the globe is revolving around the sun.
An astronaut already landed on the moon, and the development o f the computer
might dominate the human mind in the near future. On the other hand, we
apprehend that there is possibility o f nuclear war by which people would be
instantly slaughtered. Among youth living in such a complex time there must be
some who question the established morality and common sense, who reject
proceeding along the path prepared by society. But Otohiko should wait until he
gets enough wisdom before he turns to action. (381)
Enchi also lets Kiwa defend Otohiko: “his firm belief in his mission seems to lead him to a
new dimension o f life" (459). Kanae speculates, “such an eccentric ideal as Simultaneous
World Revolution, which Otohiko and his group dream about, although they are actually
destroying traditional social life, may not be too irrational after all. They may have to go a
long way, but such a movement does not seem to me totally surprising now” (519). This
defense o f Otohiko’s violence is based on Enchi’s view o f the student rebellion as youth’s
sincere quest for justice and fairness, rather than as their pathology. Instead o f feminizing
the student rebellion as Doi does in his theory. Enchi justifies O tohiko’s deed as well as
Nobuyuki’s as the expression o f their conscience.
The problem in Otohiko’s argument and practice is the gap between the ideals o f
Otohiko’s group and the sentiments o f the working class. The m edia are in fact correct in
pointing out that all o f the activists in the student rebellion are from the affluent bourgeois
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohib ited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

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class, not from the working class. Their ideal o f socialist revolution, abolishing class and
economic differences among people and among nations, is unfortunately not supported by
the working class, nor is their terrorism understood. Kawabe, a lawyer, comments on the
gap between Otohiko's radical act and the common people:
There are many hardworking young people in Japan. Unlike you, they never
attempt to change things instantly. They are despised as “economic animals” by the
world, but they go to the Andes mountains to sell medicine, or go to the remote
areas o f Africa to sell shoes. Without their energy we could never have had such
recent economic growth in Japan. They don't seek for honor or status, they just
keep working as one Japanese [...] They are the ones who deserve some
decorations. (147)4<w
Otohiko agrees that he also admires those hardworking people such as “engineers who help
technological development in South Asia or medical doctors who work in the places with
no medical facilities.” However, those hardworking people are not unrelated to his ideal of
revolution, he says. He believes he is fighting the same fight as those people in
constructing a socialist society. The reality is that, ironically, he ended up destroying the
everyday happiness o f those common people and his own family.
Kiwa also refers to some sentiments o f common people that Otohiko seemed to
ignore:
On the radio was the weepy and pleading voice o f a popular singer she is familiar
with. This song melts the hearts of the audience without any effort. Thinking o f
this harmony between the song and the people who listen to it, suddenly Otohiko’s
face appears in her mind. She wants to say with a fist clenched, “D on't you
understand how these innocent working people feel?” (464)
499K awabe's praise o f the Japanese economic animal sounds ironic to the reader
now, because their accomplishment and diligence were swallowed up in the chaos after the
burst of the Japanese economic bubble. Besides those hardworking people are now
criticized for complex ethical crimes such as the shoddy quality o f goods, environmental
problems, exploitation o f third world labor, etc.

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Kiwa views the sentiments of this song as those that the working class in Japan have
nourished and shared for generations. She thinks that the radical violence o f Otohiko’s
revolution seemed to alienate him from these common sentiments. However, the
sentiments o f common people are often replaced by collective sentimentality.500 We should
remind ourselves that this kind o f collective sentimentality in the form o f the media frenzy
is what feeds the attack on Nobuyuki and the other parents for their children’s criminal
behavior. In one sense, both Otohiko and Nobuyuki are actually fighting against these
“common sentiments.” Kawabe proposes two choices for Otohiko: either “Otohiko can
pursue his radical dream for the rest o f his life, or he can try to live with the sentiments of
the Japanese people which nobody can dissect with the theories” (148). Fighting “for”
people, or fighting “against” people, or fighting “as" people is the issue which Otohiko will
have to handle after he is released from prison.
Nobuyuki’s Rebellion: New Paternal Authority
Nobuyuki's resistance is parallel to his son's. He is depicted by Kawabe as a
dinosaur of “paternal authority” (fuken). Inside the family Nobuyuki manages to hold a
dismembered family together with his authority. As Otohiko admits, Nobuyuki has
protected his family with his quiet but firm leadership. However, Nobuyuki’s paternal
authority is based not on Confiician filial piety but on Western individualism, in which
each member is independent from the other. In other words, nobody in the family has to
500As for the relation between individual sentiments and collective sentimentality,
see Sakai Naoki, “ \7 d ’ to ‘K anshd'—seiai no jdsho to kydkan to shutai-tekigijutsu wo
megutte ’ [ ’Sentiments’ and ‘Sentimentality’--Sentiments o f Sexuality, Sympathy, and
Subjective Skills], in Jenda no Nihon-shi, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Tokyo UP, 1997).

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feel responsible for another’s deed.
As Kawabe says, Nobuyuki’s individualism is already found in the Meiji
Constitution (1868), which was based on Western law. As far as legal responsibility is
concerned, in this modem law parents and children are separately responsible for their
actions. However, the ghost o f Confucian filial piety, which was inscribed in the Meiji
Constitution, comes back when the lynching incident occurs, and the media attack the
parents and force them to “take responsibility." Most parents o f the student rebels quit
their jobs to “take responsibility for” their children’s criminal deeds. One father is even
driven to commit suicide. Only Nobuyuki, adhering to the modem law. maintains his
position, refusing to quit his job and challenging the “common sense" (sekert no jashiki)
that embodies the traditional practice. Lamenting the gap between the law he holds to and
the practice people live by, Nobuyuki confides to Kawabe:
For the first time I found it difficult to resist society. I thought it would be not too
hard [...] After graduating from college, I got a nice job, got promoted. As long as I
work hard focusing on my work, I thought I was sailing my yacht in good winds.
But since Otohiko’s incident, I feel I am swimming against the stream, if you allow
me to exaggerate. A few moments ago I thought I should do this, but the next
moment I find my body pushed in the wrong direction by the current. This is not a
new expression, but swimming against the stream is really horrible. (256)
Curiously enough, Nobuyuki’s respect for the modem law and rejection o f common
people’s practice (seken no jashiki) can be compared to his son’s standing by his radical
ideal o f world revolution and destroying common people’s life. Is Nobuyuki’s resistance
too much sacrifice? Kawabe comforts Nobuyuki:
Nevertheless, your resistance will establish a judicial precedent and will be

remembered by people [...] This is a far more meaningful accomplishment than
your developing new technology, bringing more profit to your company, and

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improving people’s lives. If a similar case happens in the future, some people will
insist that parents have a right to live separately from children [...] that parents are
neither the assailants nor the victims. (They will state that) the law should be a
contract between the state and each individual. (256)
Trying to adhere to a law based on individualism, Nobuyuki decides not to
apologize, not to hire a lawyer for his son, not to allow his wife to visit her son in prison or
to send him daily necessities. His strongly held theory ignores the “common sentiments”
o f his wife, who wants him to be like other fathers who apologize and who help their
families to recover from the shock in every way possible. Just as Otohiko pursued his
ideal, killing common people and members o f his own group alike, so Nobuyuki, by
insisting on his own philosophy, also drives his wife to commit suicide. While Otohiko
can justify his acts of murder as the necessary means for realizing his revolutionary dream.
Nobuyuki cannot forgive what he has done to his wife in the name o f his principles. Nor
can he forgive his son for taking the lives o f many individuals no matter what Otohiko's
reason. He decides to atone for killing his wife and to atone for his son’s acts o f murder;
that will be his way o f “taking responsibility.”
In Nobuyuki’s belief the law is a contract between the individual and the state, and
the Japanese people should keep this modem law as a lesson from the wartime barbarism.
However, Nobuyuki sooner or later has to witness this law, in the name o f which he
personally sacrificed his family, be easily violated by the state itself. Laws change at the
government’s convenience, and history also will be changed by the accumulation of
precedents. A Japanese airplane is hijacked by the Red Star Army and hundreds of
Japanese passengers are taken hostage. The Japanese government finally agrees to hand

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over the political prisoners to the hijackers in exchange for the lives of the Japanese
hostages. Otohiko is one o f the released prisoners. Nobuyuki wants Otohiko to abide by
the law and to stay in Japan, instead o f violating the law and escaping overseas. But
Otohiko flies against the wishes o f his father.
In Nobuyuki’s understanding the government is not supposed to release political
crim inals-especially murderers—except on the occasion o f revolution or natural disaster.
The father was proud o f modem Japanese law, which people managed to maintain as a
result of their bitter experiences o f the war. He wants to respect and abide by them,
whereas his son violates the law because o f his ideal o f world revolution. But after the
state transgresses the law by releasing the prisoners. Nobuyuki finds out that laws are not
absolute or ultimate, but can be altered. Laws change, the system changes, but the
individual’s or state’s deed will be remembered. As Kawabe says:
No individual can go against the current o f the flow o f nature, no matter how s/he
challenges it. Thus, after a defeat in war the colony will disappear. Nevertheless,
’who does what at each moment and in each place’ will be remembered. (496)
Nobuyuki after all reconfirms the same rebellious spirit running in his and his son’s veins.
This rebellious spirit is handed down from father to son—a paternal genealogy.
Yumiko as Traditional Role Model of Wife
In the late 1960s in order to couple with “economic animal” husbands, Japanese
women were re-molded to be good wives and “educational” mothers (kydiku mama).
Unlike wives in the first half of twentieth century, wives during the postwar economic
growth were supposed to be consumers who would support the GDP. Wives were to pay
more attention to the fashion of clothes and to their homes. Yumiko, Nobuyuki’s wife, is

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one o f these postwar consumer wives. She neatly decorates herself and her home: the
dining table of her house always had a flower-design table cloth. Without Otohiko’s arrest,
she could have ended her life as a happy “good wife and wise mother.”
However, her pride and status as a mother are totally bruised by her son's crime.
Her traditional role as a mother does not pay off; instead, she is criticized by the media for
pampering her son. Furthermore, since her husband stubbornly will not apologize for his
son's deed, she is doubly criticized by the media as a parent who does not repent at all. In
addition, she cannot fulfill her duty as a mother, since she is told by her husband not to
visit her son or take daily necessities to him. Finally, not only can she not get moral
support or emotional comfort from her husband, she is never consulted by him on this
matter. She finds out that she is not trusted or relied on as a wife or as a mother. Yumiko
becomes more and more emotionally uncontrollable, yelling, beating, or throwing things at
her husband. At last, after cutting her wrists in the bathtub, she is sent to a mental hospital.
Yumiko’s depression illustrates the hidden cost o f the wife/mother role o f middle
class women during the postwar economic growth. Their status and significance is
symbolized by the scene at supper. Nobuyuki reflects about Yumiko who used to be at the
center of the dining table, at the center o f the warmth o f the “family” :
(A happy family) usually has a dining table with the wife's home-cooked dishes,
parents and children each o f whom talk about the day they had. about tomorrow,
and about yesterday, laughing. Both the retrospect o f the past and hope for the
future melt in the familiar warmth o f the “family.” (29)
The femininity and sexuality o f Yumiko are molded as wife and mother to fit the
masculinity and paternal authority o f Nobuyuki, a promising engineer in an eminent
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n pro hibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

I
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electronic company. Yumiko, bearer o f tradition and family, is depicted as a woman who
will be left behind in this technological progress. Isolated from both her son's resistance in
the form o f the Simultaneous World Revolution and her husband's resistance to tradition in
the form of a challenge to the conservative media and family tradition, she can only
disappear.
Besides, Yumiko can no way compete with her own sister. Kiwa, a new career
woman. In her jealousy over Kiwa, Yumiko tries to charm her husband and the doctor at
the hospital with her sexuality, which only turns off Nobuyuki's desire. Guided by her
hallucination o f an old woman who tells her about an affair between Kiwa and her
husband, she climbs to the roof o f Kiwa's apartment house. As if pushed by the hands of
tradition, she falls to her death. While her body and emotions remained trapped in the
family system, her husband and son are trying to march forward toward a new world over
her injured mind and body.
Sexuality and Politics
Otohiko’s political rebellion is translated in Nobuyuki’s analysis in terms o f
sexuality. Otohiko finally confides to Kawabe about his girlfriend, Asano Miyoko. who is
a popular waitress among college students. She has almost no education since she is from
a poor farmer’s family. When she approaches Otohiko “with her child-like innocence,” he
accepts and loves “her child-like soft body” :
It was indeed a natural embrace. Each had nothing to resist or nothing to defend
between them. Without promising about the future, without digging up the past,
the two united as one in innocent affection. (133)
“Without any knowledge about her he was quite satisfied with the freshness o f her

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sensibility, like fruit, accepting her past, present, and future at that moment.” The union
with Miyoko with her milky smell is almost like the dreamy intimacy o f mother-and-child
at the pre-natal stage in O tohiko’s fantasies: fantasies o f wholeness and security in the
infant-mother dyad. However, Miyoko leaves him for his sake because she does not want
to spoil his future by having an illegitimate child. Blocked by the law o f society (seken no
jashiki), Otohiko's paradise is lost.
Nobuyuki speculates that Miyoko’s sudden disappearance from Otohiko's world
must have driven him to confusion about his sexuality: “After being abandoned by Miyoko
he lost his confidence in his sexuality. After that he made a radical turn to the Red Star
Army.” Nobuyuki continues to question: What if Miyoko had not left him. and what if
they had married? “Otohiko would not have become involved in such radical violence if
he had a family to support” (381). The routine o f married life might have calmed him
down and imposed on him the responsibilities o f husband and father, it might have
prevented his radical inclinations. This is Nobuyuki's speculation, although it is too late.
Let us look at Nobuyuki’s analysis more closely. In Otohiko’s fantasy Miyoko with
her milky smell is a symbol o f innocence, childhood, family, stability and peace—the
complete opposite o f politics, rebellion and violence. Yet, Miyoko is not a castrated
mother, a mother lacking or deficient, with whom the child does not wish to identify. Nor
is she a phallic mother, a terrifying figure o f omnipotence whom the child must flee to
ensure some autonomy and identity for her/himself. At least in Otohiko’s fantasy it was a
perfect union for both sides. However, all o f a sudden Miyoko disappears from Otohiko's
presence, and in fact with his child in her womb. To lose Miyoko with his child is to lose

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his childhood and his mother. The loss of his ideal union with mother Miyoko certainly
shatters Otohiko’s sexuality and masculinity, and drives him to violence—the opposite of
an innocent peaceful world. Miyoko’s disappearance is a kind o f pre-playing o f a drama
for his mother’s disappearance by losing her emotional stability and committing suicide.
For Otohiko, the relationship with mother/woman will always be unfulfilled, for his
umbilical cord with them has been cut o ff by a kind o f violence.
In place o f Miyoko. in the absence o f mother, there enters another woman, a violent
woman whom Nobuyuki does not know of. It is Aoko, the leader o f the Red Star Army,
who supervised the bloody Iynchings with her shamanistic sexual charm. In contrast to the
ephemeral femininity of weak, fresh vulnerability he found in Miyoko, Otohiko is swept
away by the stormy and powerful femininity he sees in Aoko (134). When a pregnant
woman member is lynched, Aoko is there to encourage the violence without any emotion
or sympathy:
Tied to the tree the girl was already dead, her head hanging down. Such a
miserable death! The sight in front o f his eyes shook him. She was pregnant. The
members were executed one by one just because they were poor at shooting or
because they were pregnant, which is nothing more than a joke in ordinary days.
The decision-making was usually in Aoko’s hands, not in the hands o f the male
leader, Hara Shin’ichi. She had no hesitation each time she gave an order to execute
so-called “betrayers” who violated the rules. It was irrational for her to kill her own
members since they were becoming less as some members had fled, but this logic
would not stop her. The more impossible their plans for revolution became, the
more angry and frustrated at her members she became, yelling, “Kill! Kill!” (129)
Standing frozen with sympathy for the dying girl, Otohiko is not only unable to stop the
killings, he is also completely overwhelmed by A oko's determined cruelty and beauty,
whose strong power “shook him and threw him into the pit o f hell” with ecstasy (130).

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Aoko’s strong leadership as a political activist is threatening to the conventional
image of femininity. Aoko is not a woman who belongs to family, peace, and love. The
mismatch between a woman and violence in Aoko confuses Otohiko. She is a transgressor
not only in the male territory o f politics, but also in the realm of violence and murder.
Especially, killing a pregnant woman—a fetus—is far from the image o f nurturing women
men fantasize. People's reaction to Aoko’s cruelty was: “ Women are scary. In such an
extreme situation as that usually a woman becomes the boss and kills other members. Men
just follow her just as (Nobuyuki’s) son” did (41). The male leader says to Otohiko.
“Women have a hisutoro [uterus]. Men cannot compete with them when their hisutoro
explodes" (134). Enchi too attempts to explain Aoko's death drive by the concept o f the
“possession of power” of a medium:
I here is something mysterious men cannot understand in the reckless power with
which she rushes straight forwards along the path she believes in. Is it not the
fearless possession of power o f a medium who was invited by God? It seems to
Otohiko that it was her woman’s so-called illogical power (ronri wo koeta) which
men uncomplainingly obeyed. (130)
Aoko’s image to Otohiko is sim ilar to a pre-Oedipal phallic or archaic mother, an
omnipotent and absolutely powerful figure. In the unmediated mother-child relation each
offers the other a perfect satisfaction o f desire. Otohiko’s psychotic cooperation with her
violence is realized in the fantasy o f perfect union with a phallic mother.
New Women: Kiwa, Kanae and Miyoko
There are three women, Kiwa, Kanae and Miyoko, who become involved with the
Kidoji family, yet they stand apart from the male genealogy o f Nobuyuki and Otohiko.
Nakahara Kiwa, a brilliant and unmarried high governmental official, is depicted as an

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asexual transgressor on the male territory o f the public arena-politics. Her “neutral”
charm helps her to keep her popularity among her male subordinates, and her “well-
balanced intelligence and emotion” have gained the Kidoji family’s trust and respect. After
Yumiko, her sister, is sent to a mental hospital with a nervous breakdown, Kiwa becomes
an agent o f moral support for the family. Naturally she becomes more intimate with
Nobuyuki as they try to solve family matters together. Yet she refuses to respond to
Nobuyuki’s confession of love:
I cannot throw away my ego, by which I have been able to support myself. My
pride, or my distance from others, is becoming too much for me these days, but still
I cannot throw it away. You may think I am a woman who puts her priority on her
profession and pride. Cannot be helped if you do. People might misunderstand that
you keep supporting a mentally confused woman like your wife just from your own
pride, because they don’t know you. But I do. Just as I protect my ego in my jail,
you also try to keep your belief inside yourself [...] Let each o f us follow our own
path as we have so far. under the excuse o f “for the sake o f Yumiko.” (301)
Kiwa is depicted as a new woman, one who is not carried away by emotion, who is in
control of her sexual desire. However, despite Kiwa's firm resolve, Yumiko soon commits
suicide because o f her suspicion o f a relationship between Kiwa and Nobuyuki.501 Kiwa
stays single, keeping her promise with Nobuyuki. The characterization o f Kiwa is based on
Enchi’s ideal image o f a new woman intellectual in the 1970s. She has status and power as
a high governmental official, yet she is compassionate with the plight o f working class
people and sympathetic with resistance on their behalf. Although critical o f Otohiko’s
50lThis contrast between a new woman and a traditional woman is described

through a male intermediary. Other works by Enchi deal with the same theme: “Korosu"
[To kill] in 1955, and “Matsukaze bakari' [Only Matsukaze] in 1955. The traditional-type
wife either goes crazy or kills herself. These stories are Enchi’s requiem for these old-time
women, and express her hope for a new kind o f woman in the future.

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radical violence, Kiwa perceives in him the kind o f pure devotion to an ideal which only
youth can pursue. Standing next to Nobuyuki and his family and staying within the
paternal authority o f the state, Kiwa nevertheless has her own independent views and life.
Sawaki Kanae, too, is depicted as a girl who transgresses, a tomboy who
participates in festivals, which had been regarded as a male realm.502 She is a graduate
student majoring in mountain Buddhism. Her free, uninhibited spirit is supported by her
family, working class people who live “downtown” (i.e., in the lower class district). There
is a real “dining table" in her home, one where her family bond to each other in humorous
conversation, one not found in the Kidoji family. Yet. Kanae has her own dream. When
she confesses her love. Nobuyuki refuses her and reflects:
Even though she made love with me, this woman probably will not change her life.
She is just obsessed with her own ideal, which is now represented in the form o f a
man [...] She is so idealistic that she does not notice the difference in our age and
difference in our bodies. After intercourse she would soon go back to the coldness
o f Andersen's Mermaid. (394)
After being rejected by Nobuyuki, Kanae sets out to India to study Buddhism at a
502Both Southern Skin and Women's Cocoon start with scenes of local festivals, the
Okunchi and Gion Festivals respectively. In A H om e Without A Dining Table, by contrast,
the term “festival” is used for as simile for student rebellions. For example, political
demonstrations and student rebellions are compared to initiation rituals for young men.
Otohiko says, “(Demonstrations) are like a ritual. It is as if you will not be treated as a
young adult unless you participate in such festivals” (124). Second, festivals (hare) are
special occasions, while dailyness (ke) is literally a matter o f everyday life. Otohiko’s
political struggles to realize his dream o f world revolution, which are compared to the
festivals in the story, are differentiated from ordinary people’s daily life. Third, festivals
were basically performed by men, in the same way that politics used to be the public arena
for men. Thus, a dichotomy between festivals and politics as male space, and dailyness
and family as female space is clearly presented. Kiwa, who is a governmental official, is
characterized as sexually “neutral” in the story, while Kanae, who joins the local festivals,
is described as a tomboy who transgresses on male territory.

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college. At the sight o f people’s plight, she expands her horizon o f the world. She writes
to Nobuyuki:
Starting from exploitation by the East India Company, the British kingdom’s
imperialism still affects people in India even after independence. Come to think o f
it, I want to fight for the people, giving up my studies o f Buddhist scriptures.
Unfortunately, I know myself well. I am not cut out to be a revolutionary warrior.
However, Otohiko’s ideal o f simultaneous world revolution, which might look
eccentric now, does not seem so reckless, although it sheds blood o f people and
upsets citizens' social life. Due to the historical differences among peoples, I am
sure it will take a long time to realize his ideal. But still it may not be impossible or
incredible. (519)
Kanae is a new woman who attempts to understand the world with her own eyes. She may
not become a political activist, as she admits, but she will keep her critical spirit. She also
keeps a cool distance from m en's radical acts:
(such a challenge) is like a mountain men make, not a mountain for women to
climb. Although men risk their lives in climbing the mountain and die long before
they reach the summit, that is their choice. As a woman I am very envious, but also
feel pity for them. (520)
Kanae does what men do. such as studying, climbing mountains, or participating in
festivals. She comes to understand Otohiko’s ideal for revolution now. Yet, she decides to
take a different path from the political activists. The transformation o f the rebellious spirit
in her brother, Akira, who withdraws from student activity and becomes a painter, suggests
that Kanae's future will follow an alternative course.
Miyoko, Otohiko’s ex-girlfriend, also represents a new woman, though she is not a
transgressor. Rather, she is described as a pathetic girl who “becomes pregnant but
disappears without telling about it to Otohiko.*’ However, as Nobuyuki finds out later,
Miyoko is a thoughtful and independent single mother who is rearing her son by working at

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a ranch. The ranch where she stays and works is like a utopian commune, a place where a
variety o f men, women and single mothers with their children form a pseudo-family and
live together.503 Nobuyuki visits them after Otohiko escapes from Japan, finding a new
“dining table" there. The ending o f the story suggests his meeting and discovering a new
table—a new bonding, a new relationship o f the family, with the help o f Miyoko and her
son. But the reader is not sure whether Miyoko will join the dining table o f Nobuyuki.
Nobuyuki's fantasy of playing the role o f the grandfather in “Little Lord Fauntleroy” by
Burnett might not come true, because Miyoko demonstrates the new image o f a single
mother who needs no man to support her child and herself. If so, Nobuyuki's notions of
paternal authority and masculinity will need to change if he wants to adjust to her life.
Miyoko's choice o f single motherhood proposes a new life-style for women, one that will
eventually transform masculinity and paternal authority.
Conclusion
Otohiko dreams o f a world of freedom for oppressed people beyond Japanese
nationalism, even if it means the sacrifice o f his life. It may sound like an impossible
dream and might take forever, but as Kanae writes in her letter to Nobuyuki from Calcutta,
Otohiko's ideal seems not only plausible but also urgent for solving the asymmetrical
relationship between the powerless people in the South and the imperialist powers o f the
current era. Kanae, a graduate student o f Buddhism, goes to India and obtains a new
perspective on Japan in a larger picture o f the world. Another new possibility portrayed in
503 Enchi may have gotten a hint from the ranch in Hokkaido, which Arishima
Takeo (1878-1923) inherited from his father, and gave away to the tenant farmers who
worked on it.

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this fiction is Kiwa as an independent woman who has a career as a high governmental
official. She takes care o f the problems which were caused by Otohiko’s actions by her
support o f Nobuyuki. Enchi suggests through Kiwa’s attitude a new way o f taking
responsibility for past incidents in Japanese history. Miyoko is a new woman too. Despite
her image o f weakness and vulnerability in Otohiko’s fantasy, in fact she decides to rear his
son as a single mother in a new community. The ranch she stays at in Hokkaido is a new
family composed o f many single mothers and their children. Her choice to be a single
mother proposes a new alternative for a traditional family in Japan, where paternal
authority has dominated. She rejects the interference by the Law o f the Father which
would interfere in the union with her son. Lastly, Nobuyuki’s attitude toward his son’s
criminal activity perhaps gives a hint about the issue o f war responsibility. Nobuyuki
Jecides to alone for those murdered by Otohiko’s group and for his scattered family by
joining people who are trying to build a new family. It is a community based not on the
traditional Confucian ethics o f family duty but on a Western sense o f community founded
on respect for the individual, including new understandings o f gender and responsibility.
In this sense Nobuyuki is in his own way a revolutionary like his son.
As we saw in Part One, Japanese postwar intellectuals, who identified themselves
with the “state,” viewed the Japanese “nation” as a “Woman” dominated by Western
hegemony. They felt powerless and castrated in the postwar period, because they could not
replace US Allied power. After the revision o f the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 and
again in 1968 they felt even more powerless and dependent on the US. The gendered
imagery employed by these intellectuals is similar to that o f Doi Takeo’s “dependence
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of th e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n prohib ited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

367
theory” in which a son (intellectuals/state) identifies with a mother (nation) via dependence
on the Western powers. In their identification with the mother/Woman (nation), they
cannot fight against the father or protect the mother. In their frustrated conceptualizations
o f the Japanese nation as Woman, real historical women were completely ignored.
Enchi understands and responds to these issues differently. Her approach is more
complex than, and goes beyond, this sort o f Oedipal complex theory. As a woman writer
interpreting the situation o f women and Japan in the postwar period, she dissociates herself
from the masculinist intellectual identification with the state and fetishizing o f the nation
as Woman. Instead, she re-writes (translates) the text (Japanese nation) as the site o f a new
subjectivity of women, women active as historical agents in their own right. Her resistance
resonates with O tohiko's rebellion in which he (translator) fights against the bourgeois
state (author) in order to release new energies for the working class (text) in the world. For
Enchi, her literary intervention involves a struggle for the liberation o f women. She is a
woman “translator” who fights for the subjectivity, the agency, o f historical women against
those masculinist writers and critics who would appropriate a transhistorical patriarchal
mythology o f Woman as a symbol for the postwar Japanese nation.
Revolution, violence and politics used to be an exclusively male domain, while
family, love, and peace were viewed as women’s realm. In Enchi’s story these conventions
are turned upside down. Female sexuality enters into the political realm, women characters
become involved in revolutionary violence and politics. Although the story reflects the
persistence o f a clear dichotomy between m en’s roles and women’s roles, although
masculinity and femininity are always reconstructed and reproduced so that they match

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well with the patriarchal system, women characters in Enchi’s novel transgress these
boundaries. Thus, while Enchi’s story about the student rebellion at first seems to draw on
the Oedipal complex, by the end o f the story she too has transgressed the boundaries of
Freudian (patriarchal) theory.504
Voices o f Snakes [ I 9 7 0 f m
Introduction
This fiction is one part o f a trilogy: Kitsunebi (Fox Fire), Hebi no koe (Voices o f
Snakes), and Yukon (Wandering Spirit). Again, like the other stories I have taken up, this
is a fiction based on two actual incidents o f family suicide in the newspapers in the late
1960s. At the height o f the period o f economic growth (izanagi keiki) a number o f laws
protecting and reproducing motherhood were promulgated. “Welfare o f Mothers and
Children” (boshi-fukushi-hd) appeared in 1964. “Health Care for Mothers and Children”
(boshi-hoken-hd) in 1965, and others. In the media mothers were held responsible for the
problem o f “latch-key children” (kagikko), children whose mothers work, leaving the
children alone at home. Dramatizations o f the misery o f single fathers appealed to people’s
sympathy, while single mothers were blamed for juvenile delinquency. “Coin locker-baby
incidents,” stories about mothers who abandoned babies in coin lockers, were broadcast
daily on TV. Critics commented seriously that “motherhood” (bosei) had collapsed after
the war. The three mothers in Enchi’s story demonstrate resistance to such an image o f
504The reviews o f this fiction by Sakai and Kawamura focus on paternal genealogy
from Nobuyuki to Otohiko and to his child.
50SText: “Hebi no koe” [Voices o f Snakes], in Enchi Fumiko zenshu, vol. 5.

Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1978.

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motherhood imposed by the state. Yet these mothers are not a phallic mother, *‘a terrifying
figure of omnipotence whom the daughter must flee to ensure some autonomy and identity
for herself."506 Nor are they a castrated mother, “a mother lacking or deficient with whom
the daughter does not wish to identify, and from whom she turns, in humiliation and hatred,
to the father" in the revisionary Lacanian account by Luce Irigaray.507 On the contrary,
Enchi's mothers are sexual and determined women who challenge the law o f the father-
paternal authority.
Episode One: Suicide Note/Insurance/Compensation
Three pairs o f mother-daughter relationships are introduced in the story Voices o f
Snakes. The sources o f the first two episodes are supposedly taken from articles in the
newspapers.508 In this fiction all o f the episodes are viewed from the perspective o f a
mother and writer. Shiga. She transforms herself into the “mother" in each episode while
writing about them. For example, in Episode One. when she begins to depict the sawing
machine the mother is working at, Shiga suddenly notices that her hands have become
those o f the mother. There are many overcoats in boxes placed next to the machine. The
mother is hurriedly sewing the button-holes so that she can deliver them to a major textile
company. Her job as a part-time subcontractor reflects the economic growth o f Japan in
the late 1960s when half o f the Japanese people gave up wearing traditional kimono and
506Elizabeth Wright ed., Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary

(Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers Inc.. 1992), p. 263.
507Ibid.
508Enchi was called a “female Chikamatsu" (onna Chikamatsu), because, like

Chikamatsu, she often took materials for her fiction from newspapers.

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started buying ready-made Western clothes. Along with this modernization o f lifestyle,
women were mobilized as cheap labor, and the number o f women employees surpassed ten
million by the late 1960s. However, a large percentage o f women workers were part-time
subcontractors, mostly war widows like the mother in this story. Her daughter's bright
pink flower design negligee hanging on the bare wall o f a shabby room reflects the gap
between the rapid growth o f postwar consumerism and the difficult life o f a part-time
subcontractor widow.
Enchi's story is about the tragedy o f two families driven to desperation in the
schism between economic growth and legal remedies. The story begins with the scene o f a
family committing suicide by the riverbed. The father (M) o f this family one day hits a
girl, severely injuring her. while driving a car he borrowed from a friend.'09 The wide
distribution o f this modem device, the automobile, comes to connect two strangers, who
had never met each other before, into a complex knot o f assailant and victim. The narrator
says:
Although the mother o f the victim works as a subcontractor for a textile company in
N city, where the metal company M works at is located, naturally there is no
relationship between the two. It all started that fine Sunday in autumn when M
drove his friend’s car and took his family to the zoo in N city. Like all accidents,
just one second’s difference united the two families and dragged them into a
complicated knot o f relationship. (215)
In one second this girl’s mother is brought into a link with M ’s family. The daughter’s leg
is completely damaged, one o f her eyes is lost, and her face is scarred. Since the mother’s
509In 1967 the number o f cars in Japan reached ten million, and by 1971 it became
the second largest number in the world. As the desire for cars increased, more accidents
occurred. The casualties from car accidents reached over ten thousand in 1966. and the
media talked about the “traffic war’Xkdtsu senso).

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dream o f the daughter’s getting a job after high school is now completely shattered, she
demands that M pay compensation. A petty mechanic, M cannot afford to pay, so he asks
his uncle to pay for him. His uncle is a rich farmer living in a stylishly modem house, but
he rejects his nephew's plea. Unable to get any help, M insures his family and commits
suicide, killing not only himself but his wife and two children as well. The uncle refuses to
pay the insurance money as compensation to the girl’s mother, insisting that she killed M
and his family. Thus, one car accident connects two families into a disastrous knot.
Car accidents create another new problem: how to evaluate the value o f a victim in
deciding compensation. The life o f a girl victim was worth far less than that o f a boy
victim in late 1960s Japan.510 Even before M 's suicide the mother probably knew that she
could not get much compensation for her daughter due to the low evaluation of a girl's
value. However, when M kills him self and his family, the status of assailant and victim is
reversed. Now the mother becomes the assailant and is blamed by the uncle for driving
M 's family to death.
When she goes to the uncle’s house to negotiate for compensation, she is forced to
see four white boxes with the ashes o f M’s family:
‘“It was my mistake to look at those white boxes," Mother says to herself. “No, it
was not my mistake nor a coincidence, it was their conspiracy. The police, the
lawyer, M’s boss, and o f course M’s uncle must all be allied in a conspiracy to
make me give up.” (215)
510In 1967 the Osaka Court ruled that the accused who killed a girl by car should
pay less compensation money than to a boy, since “girls will not get income after
marriage.” Although some feminists protested for “ recognition o f women's labor as
helper” (naijo no ko) around that time, the court decided not to give equal consideration to
the value o f a girl’s life.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n p roh ibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

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“Mother cannot move when she sees the whiteness o f the four boxes placed on the shelf.
Two large boxes and two small boxes are there, making a clear statement o f the human
dignity of death. Sitting next to the white boxes, Mother tries to fight back the power from
the boxes, but she cannot focus her power on the uncle. She feels as if four living beings
were staring at her, crouching in the white boxes.” Uncle takes out M’s suicide note and
shows it to her again:
Since he tried to pay compensation to you by killing his family, please accept at
least his apology. I know such an apology is not legally effective, but you should
understand, since he and his wife sacrificed even their children’s lives. (217)
Although the police and the lawyer acknowledge to the mother that she is entitled
to receive some compensation from M. her legally legitimate demand is annihilated by the
assailant's suicide. Now M ’s suicide note, although it has no legal standing, speaks more
eloquently and appeals to the people involved more than the m other’s legal rights for
compensation. A law student who helps the mother also admits that she is fighting a losing
battle. She will no longer win over people’s sentiments because o f the lost four lives.
Laws that are supposed to protect the mother are nothing to rely upon. Taking advantage
o f this situation, the uncle refuses to pay any money:
If M and his family were alive, things would be different. But since he died with
his family, I think you are the one who killed them. I will never pay even a small
amount o f compensation to such a murderer. You were threatening M and made
him guilty-and you scared him so much that he had to escape to the other world
taking his wife and his children with him. I am sure his sin o f having hit your
daughter is already atoned for and canceled by his suicide. If you are not satisfied
yet, why don’t you bring this to the court or wherever?” (219)
Since the laws are now on the side o f uncle, who will oppose her with the power o f
paternal authority and the plea for sympathy for the dead M, the mother is defeated. M ’s

I
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suicide note suddenly reverses the relation between assailant and victim. The mother
becomes the assailant. The insurance money she is supposed to receive will probably go to
M’s uncle.
However, what happens to the lives o f these two women, mother and daughter,
after this incident is suggested in the next episode featuring a different story about a mother
and daughter.
Episode Two: Social Welfare/Kindergarten
In this story too a legal issue affects two women. The eighty-two year-old mother is
lying in bed. In the next room her fifty-eight year-old daughter is sewing a gorgeous bridal
kimono. The mother also used io make kimono, but since a stroke the previous year she
has become bedridden. Now the daughter supports and takes care o f her mother by herself.
At the height of the economic boom in the 1970s, more and more gorgeous wedding
ceremonies were advertised and expensive bridal kimono were displayed in department
stores, bolstering the desires o f consumerism. The daughter in this episode is a
subcontractor making expensive kimono for these department stores. Because o f the
booming economy her other customers, geisha, are able to spend as much money as they
want on kimono. Thus a beautiful kimono, which the daughter is now busily sewing, is a
symbol o f the current economic growth.
The daughter was once married to one o f her remote relatives. After her husband
dies o f malaria in the war, mother and daughter came to live in this house on the shore,
shut out from the rest o f the world. Now, having refused to receive financial support from
the Social Welfare office, they are found lying side by side, dead, under a gorgeous bridal

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kimono the daughter had just completed. She has poisoned her mother and herself. Just
before they commit their double suicide, they had received a visit from a social worker,
who suggested they should be on welfare. The daughter reads her m other’s mind through
the latter's communication by fingers:
“I will never go on welfare. If I do, they will strip our freedom from us, I know.”
Mother’s single lifted finger communicates her disapproval to Daughter. Mother
pointed at the small fridge in the kitchen. There was a piece o f news in the paper
several years ago about a young widow on welfare who committed double suicide
with her baby. She was told by a case-worker not to use the fridge, which she and
her husband had bought on their anniversary, but she needed it to keep milk for her
baby. That was what Mother meant, since she remembered that article well. (230)
The mother and daughter had also been told by the landowner, a Buddhist priest,
that they had to leave the house since he planned to build a kindergarten there. Since in the
late 1960s the birth rate had dropped after the baby boom, many laws were introduced
encouraging people to have “more” “healthy” children.5" The priest in this story is one o f
those who run kindergartens as a side business. In the noise o f this state/nation building
chorus, aged single women's voices were unheard. In 1963 the “Welfare o f the Aged” bill
was promulgated as a gesture, but was never put in practice until much later. The daughter
in Enchi’s story tries to calm her mother:
D on't worry, mom. I will never let them move you anywhere else from this house--
this house where you can hear the sound o f the waves and the sandy wind. No
matter how much that priest begs us or how much they send authorities from the
city government to us, they cannot kick us out, since we have been paying the rent.
We are weak and helpless creatures, therefore, they can walk over us without effort,
5"A s earlier noted, in 1964 the “Welfare for Mothers and Children” bill, and in
1965 the “Health Care o f Mothers and Children” bill, were passed. As one o f its policies,
the government encouraged the formation o f kindergartens by exempting them from taxes
and giving them financial support. Temples who lost their parishioners were the best place
to build kindergartens.

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they think. But they will see. They cannot kill or crush two humans to death so
easily. They will leam o f the lives they cannot kill after all. You will see. (231)
A few days later, the daughter politely tells the social worker that her mother “lives
by her old ethics (mukashi-mono),” and that she says she “would not want to be a burden
on the government” (231). Pretending to listen to the empty and hypocritical words o f the
social worker and the priest, they must have been preparing for death by eating less, for
when their corpses are dissected, almost no food is found in their stomachs. According to
the neighbors, the daughter “seldom went shopping at the grocery store or the fishmonger,”
while “sewing kimono at incredibly low pay.” The wife o f the cigarette stand, for example,
comments: “They did not watch TV. or go to department stores, or have children to
love...Sorry to talk about the dead this way. but frankly, I wonder what a boring life they
led” (237). The wife “unconsciously weaves other topics such as kimono, trips and other
items of entertainment into her talk.” The entertainments the wife mentions in her gossip
are precisely the things people in the late 1960s Japan desired and pursued. Against the
stream of consumerism, the daughter and mother just keep working until it was no longer
possible, supplying the market demand for gorgeous kimono but declining to enjoy postwar
consumerism.
In Japan a social welfare program was instituted in 1950 with the purpose o f
helping war widows and children. What actually happened was that it led to the further
humiliation o f poor people by restricting their freedom rather than helping them raise the
level o f their lives. As we see in Enchi’s story laws which were supposed to help people
turned out to be a cruel system which took away their ability to provide even the minimal

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necessities for daily living. The mother in this episode knows about the cruel effects o f
“social welfare” and takes a firm stand against accepting government support. She does
not believe in the postwar welfare system. The modem Western concept o f social welfare
in which people can benefit as a nation does not convince these women. Rather, they
acutely and insightfully see through the trap o f this state policy, which will strip people of
their freedom and impose unwanted duties on them. Thus, the daughter and mother reject
the law—the contract between state and individual, refusing both benefits and obligation to
the state.
Episode Three: Will/Inheritance
This is the story of Shiga's relationship with her daughter Kumi and her son-in-law.
Tsuneya. In this episode, too, legal matters affect the woman protagonist. On the surface
there seems no correlation between the two working class, penniless mothers and Shiga,
whose income and status as a writer enable her to support her daughter's family. However.
one similarity to the first episode is that Shiga too was almost killed in a car accident the
previous spring. After the accident, to be prepared for another such sudden casualty, she
writes a will and sees to that all her property will go to her daughter.
Supposedly, she has no other concerns: her daughter is married to a reliable
engineer, Shiga lives in her own condominium to concentrate on her writing, her
grandchildren are lovable, etc. And yet, she is starving for love:
I need nothing now. What can I do about the desolation filling my body and mind,
no matter where I go or no matter what I own? (228)
Although Shiga lives close to her daughter, Kumi, and her family, she is always hungry,

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what other people might call a “luxurious hunger” (zeitakuna him ojisa)5'2 Especially
“people who are living from hand to mouth, she knows, would certainly view Shiga as just
a complainer.” But she “wonders if her hunger, w hich wrings her withered flesh and bites
her bones, is no less than the hunger o f a mother who snatched scarce food away from her
child’s hand during the starvation in Biafra” (228). What makes Shiga so starving?
One possible reason for Shiga’s hunger may come from her own decision and act o f
writing a will and o f “arranging her property” for her daughter, Kumi. After all the legal
procedures are finished, Shiga says to Tsuneya and the accountant, “I have seen a
bankbook or a stock certificate or insurance policy turn into trash after the war” (225). She
did not say this as a revelation or from resignation. In fact, she has seen too much. “The
only thing left is the weight of my body, but this is almost empty” (226). Shiga's will and
registration certificate for the house might suffer the same fate as those state drafts
disappearing in the fluctuations of price. Or again, even though it is safely inherited by
Kumi, Tsuneya could take it away from Kumi as easily as “he can squeeze a baby's arm,”
since Shiga would no longer be in this world to protect her daughter. After all the piece of
legal document only helps Shiga to detach herself from her materialism and from Kumi.
Like compensation and insurance money, legal documents such as wills and inheritance
have power to affect the persons involved, but they could be blown away anytime.
Women’s Sexuality as Resistance to Death
The mother in Episode One has no one to help o r support her in this matter except
5l2Enchi wrote a short story entitled “H imojItsukihi ” [Days o f Hunger] in 1953.

The “hunger” (himojisa) in this short story may be parallel to the hunger Shiga is feeling
for the lack o f love in herself.

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S. a graduate law student who lives upstairs. S is always a good listener, but he has no
power to improve the m other’s situation. While talking to him in vain, the mother finally
comes to know she is fighting a losing battle. However, even though all o f M ’s family
died, how can she give up? How can she survive with a half-blinded crippled daughter?
Something she cannot tell people swelled up inside her. Something she cannot act
out. With anger, rancor, hatred and sorrow coiling in turmoil, her body becomes
solid, transformed by a mysterious power. M other suddenly shakes off the pretense
o f a middle-aged woman. (222)
When the mother knows there is no choice, she throws herself into S 's arms. Her
shamanic power and sexuality illustrate her desperation and helplessness in a dead-locked
situation. Desperation suddenly brings her long-forgotten sexuality back to the mother.
No. Mother did not go to a man for help. In order to recapture her agony, which
she cannot confide to anybody, o f having to support her disabled daughter by
herself, she looked to her opposite sex as a catalyst. While struggling to overcome
death, she exercises an unexpectedly strong power to attract a man [...] That way S
was taken into the magic of the woman, who was half-transformed into a medium.
(223)
The mother finds herself fighting a desperate and impossible battle against M’s
uncle, the police, the lawyer, and M’s boss. She needs an intermediary to help her anger
consolidate into a fighting spirit. She does not seek power in a “law” student, knowing
nobody can help her. “W hile her accumulated, disconsolate indignation seeks for an exit
to transform into something else, its power brings her back to being a woman.” The body
o f the male law student, the embodiment o f power in the future, is used as intermediary and
catalyst for the mother to overcome paternal authority represented by the uncle. Shiga, the
author o f this story, keeps watching the mother’s metamorphosis, sometimes staring at it
with astonishment and sometimes looking away from it in embarrassment. Just as the
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of th e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n prohib ited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

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mother suddenly transforms her condensed hatred into shamanistic power and regains her
long-forgotten sexuality, so is Shiga also aware that her own body and mind could
experience the same transmutation.
In Episode Two, after having rejected any intermediary interference o f the state, the
mother and daughter close their lives. However. Shiga fantasizes another episode about
this mother/daughter. In Shiga's imagination the mother was once an intermediary
between the daughter and her husband. Her sexual body was a strong contrast to her
daughter's asexual body. While “Mother’s beauty was like a full-blossom flower which
would fall at the slightest touch,” the daughter “appears simply plain in her subdued black
kimono at the wedding.” The mother is still beautiful for her age, and the daughter “sensed
with her frozen desexualized heart a weird smell o f sexuality hovering over the deadly old
invalid body” o f the mother (231). The gorgeous kimono the daughter is sewing in the
next room brings the mother back to her old memories.
It was an unhappy marriage. Soon after the honeymoon the daughter's body is
diagnosed as inadequate for sexual intercourse or pregnancy. However, her young husband
stays with her. Instead o f divorcing her. he goes to China to start a business. He comes
back occasionally with gifts for them, but the daughter knows that her husband comes back
not for herself but for her mother. In fact, without her mother the daughter does not feel
comfortable with her husband, so everywhere the coulple goes the mother comes with
them. She admits that she come to know what a man is like “via” her mother’s sexuality.
The story is narrated both from the mother’s perspective. She knows what her
daughter is thinking without exchanging words. Here are her daughter's unspoken words:

380
It could just be that my mother pitied me or tried to kick me down to a worse hell
[...] or she was just confused and feeling helpless as a single mother. It is possible
my husband was attracted to her sexuality in her full bloom before fading [...] I
knew that neither my mom or my husband ignored me or despised me. Neither did
they mean to torture me. I came to know my husband via my mom: how a man
made advances to a woman, was aroused, got excited, and finally released and
relieved himself. Knowing what it was like is different from experiencing what
actually it was. Nevertheless, I would never hate my mom or my husband. Rather.
I am grateful to them for letting me know about what they were, what I was, and
what life was like, all o f which I had no chance to know otherwise. (234)
The mother must have been desperate to keep him for her daughter for another
reason. As the relatives warn her, if he gets an heir with his concubine in China, the
inheritance will go to them, not to her daughter, who has no heirs. It is probable that the
mother throws her body into his arms trying to attract his attention to his Japanese
legitimate wife. Or. as the daughter suspects, perhaps the helplessness o f her mother
looked irresistible to him. In either case, the mother recovers her vitality through her
sexuality. In other words, she uses a young man’s body as a catalyst to transfer her
vitality/sexuality to her daughter, who otherwise will never experience it in her own life.
Thus, “an invisible bonding between the mother and her daughter has been there ever
since, and it has never been too tight or too loose” (235). “They came so far, walking a
winding road or a narrow bridge that no one else had ever walked, sometimes hand in
hand, sometimes pushing one down from behind, or sometimes attempting to shove one
down to the river by letting a hand go” (239). “No need for a mutual agreement, no need
for a will, they die one upon another” (239). They chose a life o f their own far beyond the
law: an incestuous triangular relationship, refusal o f state support, and suicide. It may be
too self-destructive and tragic to call their choice “resistance,” but Enchi attempts to write

381
about unyielding women who lived with pride and dignity.
In fact, the mother is not unaware o f the daughter’s intention to murder her. After
all, she reflects, her daughter was once a fetus in her womb for ten months:
Now she is here on the earth with the eerie look o f a monster, but (when she was in
my womb) she must have been occasionally kicking the insides with her pinched
feet, probably with the same wrinkled frowning face as now. She was already a
monster then, so why should I be scared of her now? (239)
Besides, “no matter how spooky o r horrible her daughter’s thoughts are, they will come
back to her and she will accept them,” because the mother knows well what happened
between the two.
Shiga and Kumi in Episode Three too have walked a similar path, quarreling with
each other like the mother and daughter in the second episode. The ambivalent feeling
toward her daughter is almost like the feeling toward a fetus in her womb. Shiga knows
that her umbilical code is just as tightly as connected to Kumi. For a mother a fetus is both
part of herself and her “Other.”513
5l3This complex corporeal sense of a woman is explained by Ehara Yumiko ed,

'"Dai Kyusho: Seimei/Seishoku-gijutsu/Jiko-kettei-ken" [Chapter Nine: Life/Reproduction
Technology/Right o f Self-Decision], in Seishoku-gijutsu to jenda (Tokyo: Keiso shobo,
1996), pp. 337-9.
A woman feels it difficult to clearly define an experience o f pregnancy with such
categories as “self,” “one’s body,” and “the Other.” [...] That is, the question is
whether a “fetus” is for a woman “her body” or “Other’s body.” [...] When she is
pregnant, one part o f “her body” will suddenly be transformed (through
fertilization) into an “Other’s body.” The relation between a “s e lf ’ and “one’s
body” turns out to be a relation between a “s e lf’ and an “Other’s body.” Besides,
such transformation occurs without her consent before she is aware o f it [...] If a
fetus is one’s “self,” it is not the “Other,” or if it is the “Other,” it is not one’s
“self.” In such a rigid dichotomy a wom an's corporeal sense, “a fetus is both a part
o f me and an Other,” is totally suppressed [...] It has been basically men who have
established such a dichotomy in jurisprudence and legal philosophy. They
constructed the concept o f the relation between a self and the Other without

382
However, in this third episode when the daughter grows up and is married, in
between this ambivalent relationship o f mother and fetus there appears an intermediary—
Kumi’s husband, Tsuneya. In contrast to Kumi, who is an unsympathetic daughter,
Tsuneya is a caring son-in-law. In other words, the more unsympathetic Shiga feels toward
Kumi, the more attracted she feels to Tsuneya's “masculinity, which has tamed her wild
daughter and kept her as his wife” (226). Although Tsuneya is an ordinary man o f steady
and dependable habits who has no special charm, yet Shiga feels overpowered by his
“masculinity” (otoko). She often teases Tsuneya:
“You could not be so bossy if your father-in-law were here in this house.” Tsuneya
responds calmly, “I would be the same anywhere.”
Probably he is right. She sees in his firm attitude not only his attachment to his
children or his materialistic greed for Shiga’s property but something more. And
that scares Shiga and makes her respect him. (226)
Since Tsuneya is a reliable son-in-law, Shiga should feel happy to be able to entrust Kumi.
including the matter o f inheritance, to his capable hands. Yet for no reason Shiga feels
pushed by his “masculinity” to write a will, and when she comes to think o f “her own
defenseless and naive trust in his masculinity, she herself seems totally irrational and
unreasonable” (226). If Tsuneya were a wicked husband/hunter and Kumi a pathetic
wife/prey caught in his trap, she thinks she would know how to deal with him. But the
reality is different: Tsuneya is a wonderful husband and son-in-law who supports Kumi and
her family with enormous patience. She cannot hate him after all. When Shiga “suddenly
finds that she is in love with Tsuneya. for the first time she feels that her umbilical cord
considering a woman’s corporeal sense.

383
attached to Kumi has finally snapped with a huge noise.” (228)
The masculinity Shiga sees in Tsuneya is, in other words, the paternal authority that
she both abhors and seeks for. She becomes aware that she and her daughter are finally
separated by an intermediary—Tsuneya’s paternal authority. Free from the self-sacrificing
ideal mother role, free from daughter-centered maternal guilt, Shiga awakens to her own
sexuality and femininity. Again, in this episode too, a younger man is appropriated by an
older woman who searches for resuscitation and revitalization.
C onclusion
Although the story of A House Without A Dining Table illustrates paternal
geneology from Nobuyuki to Otohiko and the story o f Voices o f Snakes illuminates
maternal genealogy, both stories deal with the postwar construction o f masculinity,
femininity', and motherhood. These gendered narratives are closely related to the second
wave of nationalism which emerged after the revision o f US-Japan Security Treaty.
Resistance to the paternal authority, whether the US hegemon or the Japanese state, is
exhibited in the episode o f the student rebellion and the three episodes o f mother/daughter
relationships. Despite the booming economic growth and consumerism in the late 1960s
and early 1970s, reactionary discourses constrained women even more. Enchi sees a gap
between this economic growth and the situation o f women in this later postwar period. By
focusing on issues o f legality, she demonstrates what resistance is possible for women who
are helpless under the law. She also describes women who stepped out beyond the law.
In Voices o f Snakes, women’s sexuality is closely tied to their desperation in the
face o f paternal authority. As Shiga states, “there is only a very fine line between sexuality

384
and death in their competition to overcome one another” (228). W omen’s desperation in
the face o f death is triggered by their feelings o f mortality and powerlessness in a
phallogocentric society. For example, Shiga’s awakened sexuality and femininity come
from her sudden encounter with mortality in a traffic accident and the subsequent
experience o f the legal procedure o f writing a will. The sexuality o f the mother in Episode
One is awakened when she has to fight an impossible legal fight with M ’s uncle for her
daughter and herself. The mother in Episode Two attracts her son-in-law with her
awakened sexuality when she desperately attempts to protect her daughter’s status as his
legal wife. When each o f these mothers finds herself financially and socially oppressed,
her desperation draws on her rediscovered sexuality as a survival strategy for life.
Enchi subverts the usual hierarchical relationship between men and women. In
Voices o f Snakes, as in her other fictions, an older woman appropriates a younger man’s
body as a source o f revitalization, not the other way around. This is Enchi's resistance to
postwar male-centered narratives that utilize the image o f Woman’s body for their own
self-justification and revitalization. Enchi attempts to transform this paradigm radically,
and to construct a new symbolic framework that will go beyond patriarchal myth and
perceptions. This task includes a new conceptualization o f women’s sexuality, including
mother-daughter relationships, in response to the masculinists’ characterization o f the
writing o f gender and nation/state in postwar Japan.

I
385
CONCLUSION
As a woman writer bom in the early twentieth century, when a woman’s act o f
writing was still viewed, as Setouchi put it, as that o f an “outlaw,” Enchi fought for the
status o f women writers.514 She strongly supported the "Joryu bungaku-kai ” [Association
o f W omen's Literature], believing that “women should band together in this male-centered
literary society."515 This separatist feminism may seem problematic to minimalist
feminists, but Enchi saw it as necessary to protect women writers from sexism in her time.
Her effort to preserve the “Joryu bungaku-kai ” should be valued as one o f her strategies
for supporting women writers.
Again, her statement about “writing through her own body” may sound like an
essentialist view analogous to the disparagement o f women’s writing by masculinist critics:
"Women write with their uterus.” [Onna wa shikyude mono wo kaku\. Critics imply by
such a statement that “women cannot write with their minds or intelligence." It sounds as
if male writers use only their “mind” or “intelligence,” unlike women writers.516 This is
clearly absurd, since all fictions are written more or less through a writer's body and
5l4For the status o f Meiji women writers, see Seki Reiko. Ane no chikara: Higuchi
Ichiyd [The Power o f Sisters: Higuchi Ichiyo] (Tokyo: Chikuma, 1993).
515Setouchi wrote the following in her obituary for Enchi: “When she was angry at
unfair treatment from a publishing company, she said, ‘what would they do to Tanizaki or
Kawabata?' [...] She thought they slighted her because she was a woman [...] She often
used to say, ‘Unless I fight now, you will be a victim again.’” See Setouchi Jakucho,
“Karei-naru bokun," Bungakukai (January 1987): pp. 280-281.
5l6Behind this view of writing there is obviously hierarchical dichotomy between

body and mind, body and intelligence.

386
experiences, regardless o f differences in sex.517 What Enchi meant by her statements about
“writing through her own body” is distinctly different from that o f male intellectuals. Her
concept o f her woman’s “body” points not to a biologically sexed body, as critics implied,
but to a fictionalized body. Using her historical body with her female organs removed as a
metaphor, she viewed her body as the source o f her creativity. Thus, for Enchi her body
and gender were themselves a fiction and theatrical transformance, something far from
biologically self-evident.
Enchi was a firm believer in the fictional power of writing. Just as Akira in the
story o f A House Without A Dining Table transforms his political struggle into an artistic
battle in his painting, so Enchi believed in the power o f art, the power o f writing, as
something which can eventually transform the world. She was keenly aware of her special
privilege as a writer who could create other worlds through her skill in writing fictions.
Knowing that women who were not given such creative skills could hardly protect
themselves from harsh reality, she felt strongly obligated to write about those women who
had to live without any “intermediary” (sude de ikite iru onna no hito-tachi). If she
became unable to do so. she thought she would give up her privilege. What she meant by
the “intermediary” nature o f writing is precisely the concept o f translation. Through the
task o f translation she could change the original, just as she could overcome reality by
fictionalizing it.
5l7Oe Kenzaburo points to the close relationship between the body and language:
“Language is certainly related to our consciousness, but I think at the same time it is
closely connected to the body.” See the statements by Oe in Enchi. Uen no hitobito to, p.
165.

387
Writing was also a lifeline for Enchi. “Just as a hairy caterpillar lives only by
eating leaves,” so she “would dry up and die if deprived o f writing.”518 Yet it was no easy
task for her. She had to pay a high price for her pride and sense o f responsibility as a
writer. She wrote, “while writing I feel like a pathetic horse carrying a heavy load up to the
top o f the hill without making any complaint.”519 What constantly drove her to such pain
and deadly solitude lay in her attempt to alienate herself from any collective community.
To avoid being drugged by any kind o f collective sentimentality, she had her narrators tell
their stories from the outside of any community.
For Enchi nothing was self-evident, neither body nor gender nor sentiments nor
language, while abstract images and ideological narratives about them were commonly
accepted and circulated in society. In her translation o f Genji she ventured to create a new
language to give a new interpretation to the canonical classics by Japanese women writers.
Her writing about modem women, too, is totally distinctive from the writing o f the postwar
masculinist intellectuals who depended on circulating the abstract image o f Woman in their
literary-critical activity. Enchi’s women are neither madonnas nor whores, neither
castrated mothers nor phallic mothers, but agents o f their own desire and subjectivity.
To write is after all self-affirmation. (Enchi Fumiko)520
5l8Enchi, “Saimu” [Colored Mist], in Enchi Fumiko zen sh u , vol. 13. p. 238.
5l9Ibid. As Enchi aknowledged, this image o f a toiling horse to death came from
the one in Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky (1821 -81).
520Enchi Fumiko, “M/7 to shura’’' [Rainbows and Demons], in Enchi Fumiko

zenshu. vol. 12. p. 391.

388
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONTENTS
I. Primary Sources: Enchi Fumiko (RHfi^tT-)

1. In Japanese
2. Japanese Translations
3. In English
II. Secondary Sources: Enchi Fumiko (RifiifcT-)
1. In English
2. In Japanese
m. Primary Sources: Classical and Edo Period Literature
1. The Tale o f Gen ji
2. Nikki ( B E )
3. Chikamatsu (iglSP'JSiltfPj)
IV. Secondary Sources: Classical and Edo Period Literature
1. The Tale of Genji
2. Nikki (B E )
3. Chikamatsu (&&PE]£ffiPJ)
V. The Postwar Period
VI. Literary-Critical Theory
1. Feminist Theory
2. Postcolonial Theory
3. Translation Theory
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Primary Sources: Enchi Fumiko (RJ&
1. In Japanese
Enchi Fumiko(Ri&:8:T-)- Enchi Fumiko zenshu [Collected Works o f Enchi

Fumiko]. 16 vols. Tokyo: Shinch6sha(£r#l£fc), 1977.
. Genji monogarari shihen [Private Notes on The Tale o f Genji].

Tokyo: Shinchosha(0r#fltt), 1980.
. Genji monogatari no hiroin-tachi: taidan t ad : Jtlfc) [The

Heroines o f The Tale o f Genji: Talks with Other Women Writers]. Tokyo: Kodansha
(iWKtt), 1994.

389
. Koten yobanashi: Keriko to Kamoko no taidanshu : It 'O

£i) [Night Talks about Classics: A Conversation between Keriko and Kamoko].
Tokyo: Heibonsha 1975.
. Uen no hitobito to: taidan shu (-£f&tf>A* t : [With People I Came to Know:
A Collection o f Talks]. Tokyo: Bungei shunjusha (£IS##ctfc), 1986.
. Uso makoto nanaju-yonen ( o •£ z t [Lies and Truths Over Seventy

Years or More]. Tokyo: Nihon keizai shimbunsha (0 1984.
Kumasaka Atsuko “Intabyu: Enchi Fumiko-sensei ni kHoF (d V =>-— : RK&

;£T-$fc£{c:Bfl< ) [Interview: Asking Enchi Fumiko]. Kokubungaku (P S # ^ ) 21:9 (July
1976), pp. 26-38.
2. Japanese Translations
Enchi Fumiko (RiteJtT), trans. Genji monogatari (ffiiRffiM) [The Tale o f Genji]. 5 vols.
Tokyo: Shinchosha (UrSflfi:), 1993.
, trans. Imoseyama onna teikin.Yama no dan : liicogfc) [Teachings for

W'omen: Mountain Chapter], In Nihon koten ( 0 a’jft). Vol. 20. Kabuki jo ru ri shu (SB;
Tokyo: Kawade shobo (fflffi*®*), 1973, pp. 340-51.
, trans. Izumi Shikibu nikki B IE) [The Diary o f Izumi Shikibu]. Tokyo:
Chikuma shobo 1995.
, trans. Kagerd nikki (iftfcrt B IE) [The Kagero Diary, or The Gossamer Years]. Tokyo:
Chikuma shobo 1995.
, trans. Otogi zoshi ($J0idI£T-) [Fairy Tales]. Modem Version. In Koten Nihon
bungaku zenshu B ^ ^ t ^ ^ l ) . Vol. 18. Tokyo: Chikuma shobo (R MM M) , 1961,
pp. 199-269.
, trans. Ugetsu monogatari/Harusame monogatari (rfffl $0915 • #i?q$jf&) [The Tale o f

the Rain and the Moon/ The Tale o f the Spring Rain]. In Nihon koten bunko ( B
XS$). Vol. 20. Tokyo: Kawade shobo (("ItbtFM), 1976, pp. 3-111.
, trans. Yowa no nezame (Ifc^cDfiDfc) [Awake at Midnight]. In Nihon kokumin zenshu

( b ;fcpigr£3l). Vol. 6. Ocho monogatari (3£$8#j!§). Vol. 2. Tokyo: Kawade shobo (ffl
m *B I), 1958, pp. 3-158.
3. In English

390
Enchi Fumiko (Rife^Y-). “Blind Man's Buff’ (Mekura-oni sb< h &). Beth Cary, trans. In
The Mothers o f Dreams. Ueda, Makoto, ed. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1989, pp.
165-77.
. “Boxcar o f Chrysanthemums” (Kiku-guruma Tanaka Yukiko & Elizabeth

Hanson, trans. In This Kind o f Woman: Ten Stories by Japanese Women Writers.
1960-1976. Tanaka Yukiko and Elizabeth Hanson, eds. Ann Arbor: University o f
Michigan Press, 1982, pp. 71-86.
. “Enchantress” ( Y6 &). Edward. G. Seidensticker, John Baster and Ivan Morris, trans.
In M odem Japanese Short Stories. Tokyo: Japan Publications Inc, 1960, pp. 72-93.
. “The Flower-Eating Crone” (Hana-kui uba '$$■). Lucy North, trans. In The
Oxford Book o f Japanese Short Stories. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp.
172-81.
. “Love in Two Lives: The Remnant” (Nise no en—shui “ tMrco$$—ftjfi). Noriko

Mizuta Lippit & Kyoko Irie Selden, trans. In Japanese Women Writers. New York: M.
E. Sharpe, 1991, pp. 97-111.
. Masks (Onna-men Juliet Winters Carpenter, trans. New York: Vintage, 1983.
. “Skeltons o f Men” (Otoko no hone ^ co iifa ). Van C. Gessel. trans. Japan Quarterly.
Vol. 35: 4 (October-December 1988): pp. 417-26.
. A Tale o f False Fortunes (Nama miko monogatari Thomas K. Roger,

trans. Honolulu: U o f Hawaii P, 2000.
. The Waiting Years ( Onna-zaka John Bester, trans. Tokyo: Kodansha

International 1990.
II. Secondary Sources: Enchi Fumiko (RifiJt^F-)
1. In English
Bargen, Doris G. “Translation and Representation in Enchi Fumiko’s ‘A Bond for Two
Lifetimes -Gleanings’.” In The Woman’s Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese
Women's Writing. Paul G. Schaiow and Janet A. Walker, eds. Palo Alto: Stanford
University Press, 1996, pp. 165-204.
. “Twin Blossoms on a Single Branch: The Cycle o f Retribution in Onna-men.”

Monumenta Nipponica 46:2 (1991): pp. 147-71.

391
Carpenter, Juliet Winters. “Enchi Fumiko: A Writer o f Tales.” Japan Quarterly 37:3
(1990): pp. 343-55
Comyetz, Nina. “Bound by blood: Female Pollution, Divinity, and Community in Enchi
Fumiko's Masks." U.S.-Japan Women's Journal 9 (1995): pp. 29-58.
Gessel, Van C. “The ‘Medium’ o f Fiction: Fumiko Enchi as N arrator.” World Literature
Today 62:3 (1988): pp. 380-5.
. “Echos o f Feminine Sensibility in Literature.” Japan Quarterly 35:4 (1988): pp.

410-6.
Hulvey, Yumiko S. “The Intertextual Fabric o f Narratives by Enchi Fumiko.” In Japan in

Traditional and Postmodern Perspectives. Charles Wei-Hsun Fu and Steven Heine, eds.
Albany: State University o f New York Press, 1995, pp. 169-224.
Lewell, John. “Enchi Fumiko.” In M odem Japanese Novelists: A Biographical Dictionary.

Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1993, pp. 73-79.
McClain, Yoko. “Eroticism and the Writings o f Enchi Fumiko.” Journal o f the Association
o f Teachers o f Japanese 15: 1 (1980): pp. 32-46.
Mizuta Lippit, Noriko, and Kyoko Iriye Selden, trans. and eds. Japanese Women Writers:
Twentieth Century Short Fiction. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1991.
Miyoshi Masao. “Gathering Voices: Japanese Women and Women Writers.” In Off-Center:
Power and Culture—Relations Between Japan and the United States. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1994, pp. 189-216.
Mulhem, Chieko Irie. “Women Writers Past and Present: A Comparison o f Lady Murasaki
and Enchi Fumiko.” Review o f National Literature 18 (1993): pp. 137-64.
Pounds, Wayne. “Enchi Fumiko and Hidden Energy o f the Supernatural.” Journal o f the
Association o f Teachers o f Japanese 24:2 (1989): pp. 167-83.
Rieger, Naoko Alisa. Enchi Fumiko’s Literature: The Portrait o f Women in Enchi
Fumiko s Selected Works. Ph.D. Dissertation. Hamburg: Gesellschaft fuer Natur-und
Volkerkunde Ostasiens Verlag, 1986.
Schalow, Paul and Janet A. Walker, eds. The Woman's Hand: Gender and Theory in
Japanese Women 's Writing. Pao Aho: Stanford UP, 1996.
Sherif, Ann. ‘“ The Bridge o f Dreams’ and Masks: Two M odem Responses to The Tale o f

392
G enji” In Approaches to Teaching Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale o f Genji. Edward

Kamens, ed. New York: Modern Language Association, 1993, pp. 148-54.
Sodekawa Hiromi. Enchi Fumiko: A Study in the Self-Expression o f Women. M. A. Thesis.

British Columbia: U o f British Columbia, 1988.
Vernon, Victoria V. “Between Osan and Koharu: The Representation o f Women in the
Works o f Hayashi Fumiko and Enchi Fumiko.” In Daughters o f the Moon: Wish, Will,
and Social Constraint in Fiction by Modem Japanese Women. Victoria Vernon, ed.
Berkeley: U o f California P, 1988, pp. 137-69.
2. In Japanese
"‘Enchi Fumiko” (RitfilSCT-)- In Nihongo-dai-jiten ( 0 Tokyo: Kodansha (JfcSfc

tt) , 2000, p. 228.
Furuya Teruko ( Enchi Fumiko: yd no bungaku (Rf&lScT- : tfccnX^) [Enchi

Fumiko: Literature o f Enchantress]. Tokyo: Chusekisha ( f t f i # ) , 1996.
Hasegawa Izumi (Ji:£?Jl|^). “ Enchi Fumiko” (RiterSC-p). Kokubungaku ((§ 14:2

(January 1969): pp. 180-81.
Hayashi Masako (^klET-). “Enchi Fumiko, sono 'onna'gatari no bungaku” (R i& ;£ T \ 3:<n
r^cj Hi 9 <r>X^P) [Enchi Fumiko: Literature o f "Women’s” Narrative]. Gifu daigaku
kyoyo-bu kenkyu hokoku 24 (1988): pp. 1-12.
Kamei Hideo (l®.#^8£)and Ogasawara Yoshiko Enchi Fumiko no sekai (R

CTîM :#) [The World o f Enchi Fumiko]. Tokyo: Sorinsha (;|lj# tfc ), 1981.
Kawamura Minato (Jilft?#). “Saka no uba”: Enchi Fumiko-ron (JSL<Dfe,: Ri&ScTS*) [Old
Lady at Hill: Thesis on Enchi Fumiko]. Kaien (MM) (August 1987): pp. 230-244.
Kumasaka Atsuko (J!i®4!i:T-). “ Enchi Fumiko” (Ri&zSCT-). Kaishaku to Kansho (8?#l£:l£

It). (November 1978): pp. 168-69.
Kusumoto Kenkichi ( I f f i l f ^ ) . ‘‘Enchi Fum iko/Setouchi H arum r (Ri&ifcT- • rtSFRBff H ).

Kaishaku to Kansho (tffiRbMK) (June 1966): pp. 146-48.
Matsumoto Tsuruo (fe^tB S I). “Enchi Fumiko” (RitfiJCT1). Kaishaku to Kansho (fflffl. b £
I t ) 40: 8 (1975): pp. 133-34.

393
Mikals-Adachi, Eileen B. “ Enchi Fumiko ni nagareru koten-teki na mono: *Onnazaka’ wo

megutte” <r> : IT&1SJ J r f e C o t ) [Classical Elements in
Enchi’s Literature: On The Waiting Years], Ningen bunka kenkyu nenpo
^ $ 1 ) 11 (1987): pp. 55-67. Supplement.
. ''''Enchi Fumiko ni okeru ‘Komachi-teki naru mono’ no tsuikyu: ‘Komachi henso' wo

I r f t C o t ) [Pursuit
o f the ‘Komachi-like’ in Enchi’s Works: ‘Komachi Henso’]. Ochanomizu daigaku
Josei bunka kenkyu centa nenpo >7— [Journal o f
W omen’s Studies Center o f Ochanomizu Women’s College] 2: 8 (1987): pp. 39-51.
. “Enchi Fumiko ni okeru 'Rei-teiki na mono' (RitfiXT-f'ifcft 5 )

[’Spiritual Aspects’ o f Enchi Fumiko’s Literature]. Kokusai Nihon bungaku kenkyu
shukai giroku (H8* 0 [Report o f the International Conference o f
Japanese Literature] (November 1987): pp. 103-114.
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L T co g clifefS.: Pli&J:-T-<nYEnaf)'b) [Self-Expression as “Natural Medium” : In Enchi
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426
INDEX
agent.......................................................................................114, 218, 296-7, 316, 362, 367, 387

authorship......................................................... 95, 115, 128, 134. 137, 138, 159, 167, 195-201
autobiography............................................................................................................................95, 98
blood.............................................................55, 47. 59. 79, 83-4, 99, 182, 206-7, 210, 303, 320
body 3, 32-3, 36-8, 40-2, 44, 49. 55, 57-9, 63-4. 66-7, 74, 79, 81, 84, 86-9. 97,
99. 102, 104, 119-120, 125, 143, 146, 150. 206, 218, 221, 273-4, 291, 294-5. 303,
307-310, 313-9, 321, 325, 330, 332, 334-5, 340
canonicity............................................................................129, 142-3. 152, 155. 169, 180-5, 195
castrated mother 359. 369, 387
castration........................................................................................................................................342
chastity 134,280, 290, 306
colonial......................................................................... 35, 53. 122, 137. 139, 144, 148, 293, 340
colonialism............................................................................................................................. 141, 340
colonialist..................................................................................................................................... 293
colony.................................................................................................................................... 53-4. 139
colloquial language (kogo) 120, 150, 152. 159-60. 163, 185. 188. 193, 195. 223. 229
commodity........................................................................................................................ 21, 25, 277
community.............................................................................92. 94. 175. 187. 218. 324-5. 386-7
concubine 104. 170. 203-4, 206. 287
consumerism................................................................................................... 3. 178. 344. 375. 383
continuity 10-13.61. 112. 125
desire 24. 37, 39. 53. 49. 88 , 99. 122-4. 131. 133, 136-8, 144. 148-9. 203-4. 298,
328-9. 334
discontinuity............................................................................................................................... 10-11
Eros........................................................................................................................................... 39, 136
essentialism...............................................................................................................................56, 86
essentialist............................................................................................................. 4, 59, 76, 79, 152
essentialization................................................................................................... 26, 79, 85. 87. 272
expansionism................................................................................................................................. 321
experiences................... 3-4,3 2 -4 ,4 1 ,4 8 , 55, 57-8,6 3 ,6 6 , 69-70, 74, 79,90. 94. 96. 98-100,
106, 122, 144, 149,151, 223, 285-6, 290, 292, 309, 315, 338-40, 386
faithful.........................................116, 126,129. 134. 156, 168, 169, 219, 226, 292, 330-1, 335
female homosociality................................................................................................................145-6
female organ..............................................................................................................................47. 79
femininity.............................................. 87.158-9,172, 210.294, 343-5. 357. 360-1. 368. 383
feminist theory............................................................................................ 133. 136. 144. 148. 194
feminization......................................... 31, 120, 140. 148. 165, 172-3, 178,210.214, 222, 272
fetus..................................................................................................................96-7,314-6, 361,381
fiction...................... 3, 5, 7-8, 20, 51, 65, 79. 82-3, 86- 8. 94, 96, 98-100, 106. 112, 116. 123,

427
147, 150, 157, 174, 177, 205, 213, 215. 273, 309, 328, 336, 386, 384
filial piety......................................................................................................................................281
genbun icchi (unification o f speech and writing).................................................. 130, 156. 174
gender............... 1-2, 8, 13-6, 22, 25, 29, 32, 36, 51-2, 54, 62, 67, 74, 77-8, 86 , 90, 93-4. 103,
108, 115, 120, 136-7, 147, 158, 168, 197, 222,303, 3 0 8 ,3 1 3 .3 3 5 ,3 3 7 , 342, 348-9,
366, 387
good wife and wise mother............................................................................................... 344, 357
gossip...................................................................................................................141, 146.300.375
hometown............................................................................................................281-2. 284, 293-4
homosexuality........................................................................................................................58, 347
hysterectomy.......................................................................................................... 64. 66 . 104-105
identification.......................................................................................................... 18. 33 . 43 , 47-8
imperialism.............................................. 4. 11. 19, 28.31-3,54. 159. 187.272. 283.306,328
individual......................................................23. 44, 49, 78, 83, 88 , 97, 308. 312, 321, 325, 356
I-novel (shi-shasetsu) 12, 69, 78. 91-2. 98-9
intermediary............................................................. 190, 199. 223, 224. 378-379. 382-383, 386
kataribe (professional narrators).............................................................................................187-8
legacy 300-1. 304
literary circle (bundan)..........................................................................................................70. 342
lyricism............................................................................................................. 95. 175-6. 209. 340
male critics................25-6. 51. 55. 57-8, 60-9, 74, 77-84, 87-8, 90, 95. 101-4. 107. 109-111.
138. 149-150, 159, 167. 196. 198-9,272
male organ...................................................................................................................... 47. 106. 209
masculinist 1-2,8. 13-6, 1 8 -9 ,2 1 ,2 9 .4 3 ,4 7 -9 . 50.55. 67, 85. 119-120. 138. 140.
142-3. 151. 196, 199-200. 203, 205, 213. 272, 367. 384. 387
masculinity 47. 78, 119-120. 162. 1 5 5 .1 8 4 ,3 1 5 ,3 3 6 .3 3 8 .3 4 1 .3 4 2 . 345.357. 360.
365. 368, 382-3
maternal genealogy..................................................................................................................... 383
medium...........................................................................3 ,8 5 , 103, 116, 126, 129-133, 173. 199
m etsubd (extinction or fall) 32, 44, 186-7, 195, 199, 223, 229. 333
minzoku (ethnicity)......................................................................................31-2. 36, 162-3, 186-7
miyabi (refinement) 205-8, 208, 210-11, 229
mother-daughter............................................................................................... 145, 148, 369,384
motherhood....................................................................................................... 86 , 344-5, 368, 384
nation 1, 13, 15, 19, 30-1, 35, 48, 50, 67, 78, 140, 165, 184, 187, 272-3, 294, 332,
339, 367
national literature (kokumin bungaku)......................................................................................... 30
nationalism............................... 9, 14, 31, 67, 73, 157, 195, 294. 296, 316. 342. 349. 365, 383
noh................................................108, 113-4, 154-5, 184, 1 9 6 .2 1 2 .2 2 3 .3 0 0 -1 .3 0 3 .3 0 5 .3 1 7
nostalgia......................................................................................................67. 71. 83, 93. 285. 296
Oedipal relationship.....................................................................................................................148
oral language ideology..................................................................................................................185
oral tradition......................................................................................................................... 188. 301

428
paternal authority................................ 342-5, 348, 353, 357, 363, 365-6, 369, 373. 378, 383-4
paternal genealogy......................................................................................................356, 361, 383
patriarchal................................................................................. 27, 43, 46, 76, 138, 150.213. 297
patriotism...................................................................................................................................... 315
phallic mother..................................................................................................... 359, 361, 369. 387
phallus...................................
postcolonial theory.............................................................................................139, 141, 340, 340
postcolonialism............................................................................................................................. 148
postwar..................... 1-16, 18-24, 26-7, 29, 31-2, 35-41,43,45-9, 50, 52-4. 64, 66-72, 75-8,
86 , 101, 107, 111-2, 138, 140. 143, 152, 163, 172-3, 176, 185, 190. 195,200,204,
206-7, 273, 308-9, 313, 322, 325, 328, 331. 338, 340-1
premodemity.......................................................................................... 11, 12, 59. 69, 74, 78, 116
proletarian............................................................................ 6 . 9-10, 23-5, 29, 37, 44, 108, 113-4
prostitute................................................................................................................................. 88. 329
protest 25, 78. 196. 272
rape 33. 135,317-8. 325
realism.......................................................................................................................................10. 91
rebellions...........................................................................................342. 345. 347. 351. 368. 383
recollection......................................................................................................................................71
representation........................................................................................ 15, 85, 147, 158. 197. 213
resistance.............. 2. 4, 19, 25, 32. 78, 95, 107, 111, 115,117,119-120. 140, 186. 188, 195.
229, 286. 294,297, 305, 309, 326, 342, 346, 353-4, 358. 363.367. 369. 378. 381.
383-4
Reverse-Orientalism.....................................................................................................................139
revitalization..................................................................................19. 23. 34.43. 47. 75-6, 383-4
sentiment....................................................41, 163. 291, 294, 304-5, 307. 351-3, 355, 372. 387
sentimentality.......................................................................................................... 284-6. 353, 387
sexual difference 104, 140, 146, 303
sexuality...............3, 22, 32, 33, 37, 39-40,49, 51. 54, 57-8, 64, 67, 81 84, 101-8, 111, 136-
7, 290, 292-5, 298, 300, 307, 322, 332. 357-60, 367, 378, 380. 383-4
shamanism........................................................................................................................... 12, 212
shamanistic...................................................................................... 103. 207. 210-12, 360, 378-9
shomin (common people) 31,36, 155, 162-3, 192
sisterhood..................................................................................................................................... 287
state...................9, 13,30-1,71,78, 150, 161, 165, 184, 187-8, 191,294,312,315-6,331-2.
335
sterilization........................................................................................................................... 331-2
subjectivity................ 19, 23.26-7, 29-30, 36,39. 42-3.48-50, 54, 67,78. 81. 114, 123, 125,
128, 131, 145-6, 206, 292, 308.316. 318, 326,333. 338-40,367
tradition, bearer of. 17. 301. 358
transformance.............................................................................................148, 151, 195, 229, 386
transformation...........................................34, 67, 85, 87-8. 98-9, 105,109, 114,116, 127, 344
transgressor................................................................................................................................... 364

429
translation........... 204, 7, 14-5, 18,40, 78, 85, 103, 111-2, 115-6, 119-142, 144-5, 147-152,
158-160, 165-180, 185, 188-9, 191-5, 199,202, 204-5,216-7,219-29, 272,386-7
umbilical cord 96-7, 360, 381, 383
universal ism.................................................................................................................................84-6
uterus................................................................................................................................................64
victimization.......................................................................... 50, 67, 73-5, 79, 82, 119, 308, 332
violence................3, 8, 33, 67, 73, 135, 137, 140, 147, 204, 210, 212, 308-9, 313-8, 321-2.
325-6, 329-34, 337, 340, 341-2, 360-1, 363, 367
virginity 32-3. 306
waka (classical poetry) 115, 153-4, 156, 158, 163-5, 184. 189, 1 91,209.211.220, 222,
224, 226-7
war responsibility...................................................................................................... 8, 48, 71-2. 76
•Woman"........................ 1, 15, 18-9, 2 3 ,2 6 -9 ,3 1 ,3 3 ,4 7 -9 , 50, 52, 62,75-6. 119, 140, 168.
200, 203, 215, 272, 367, 384, 387
women's literature (joryu bungaku)...........................................................................................178

Enchi Fumiko and Re - Writing Postwar Japan - Translating Classics, Women, and Nation

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TRANSLATING CLASSICS, WOMEN, AND NATION

Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

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