1999 June 26 conference
Room 201
2.Changing Boundaries of
Imagination in Early Twentieth Century Japan
Chair: Michiko Suzuki, Tokyo University
Panel abstract:
From Meiji to Showa, early 20th century Japan witnessed a wide range of sociohistorical
and cultural shifts, prompting the Japanese to radically change and reassess the way they
saw and understood their world.A varied range of responses to modernity were particularly
observed in the realm of imagination and cultural imaginary, where changes in aesthetics,
belief systems, and concepts of the self and Other(s) led to a re-drawing of previously
set boundaries.
Our panel looks at such shifts that occurred in the boundaries of imagination from a
variety of perspectives and materials.Cuccio's paper examines the little magazine Housun
(Square Sun, 1907-1911) and Ishii Hakutei's criticism as part of the early development of
modernism.Foster's research looks at Yanagita Kunio's Youkai dangi (Discussions of
Monsters), written between 1910 and 1938, as providing a new way of understanding the
"premodern" belief/imagination surrounding youkai (supernatural creatures).
Suzuki's paper presents Yaneura no nishojo (1920), a novel by Yoshiya Nobuko, as a work
that views imagination and the exploration of language as integral to the coming-of-age of
a modern female subject.Finally, Tierney's work focuses on Kanshoo (The Atolls, 1942),
travel sketches by Nakajima Atsushi based on his experiences in Micronesia, in order to
see how the Other is being imagined in the context of imperialism.
From these presentations, we hope to explore the various ways in which the boundaries of
imagination were redrawn, faced with the realities of modernity in early 20th century
Japan.
1) Claire Cuccio, Stanford
University. "The Art of National Boundaries:
Ishii Hakutei's Contradictory Criticism in the Visual Arts Magazine Housun"
Little magazines emerging in the world's urban centers during the early twentieth century
were harbingers of modernism.These characteristically noncommercial and hand-designed
magazines offered private, self-ministered spaces for timely discourse on literature and
the visual arts.Besides acting as forums for new works of art and literature, the little
magazines typically lionized the evolution of modern art in Europe while disdaining
indigenous mainstream culture and bourgeois values through criticism intended to challenge
the status quo of the arts.Like Henry Harland's The Yellow Book (1894-1897) in London or
Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work (1903-1917) out of New York, the little magazine Housun
(1907-1911) in Tokyo viewed the explosion of modern art emanating from the European
continent, and in retrospect, has become a vital repository of the development of this
movement in Japan. Published as an offshoot of Yosano Tekkan's literary arts magazine
Myoujou (Morning star, 1900-1908),Housun is best remembered for its creative hanga and its
trademark art nouveau borders of newts, flora and Grecian scenes.But the magazine's
creators, Ishii Hakutei (1882-1958), Yamamoto Kanae (1882-1946) and Morita Tsunetomo
(1851-1933), promised a new vision of the arts on every page of their hand-printed
magazine.This paper marks an effort to revisit Ishii Hakutei's construction of a modern
aesthetic within the boundaries of Japan's emergent status as a nation.
2) Michael Dylan Foster, Stanford University. "Yanagita Kunio's Youkai dangi
and the Morphology of the Mysterious"
Youkai are the supernatural creatures and monsters of Japan: tengu, kappa, tanuki,
yamamba, to name just a few.In one form or another, these mysterious creatures are found
throughout the Japanese archipelago, infesting local folklore, and infiltrating literature
from all periods. Not surprisingly, scholars of folklore in Japan (minzokugaku) have
treated youkai as a rich subject of academic inquiry. The first modern scholarly discourse
on youkai was started by educator Inoue Enryou (1858-1919), whose objectives were to
remove youkai from the realm of mystery and explain supernatural phenomena through the
empirical lens of "science."Inoue equated youkai with "superstition,"
and the eradication of superstition, he claimed, was imperative for the education of the
masses and the construction of a modern nation.
In contrast, Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962) did
not seek to annihilate youkai belief; rather he adopted their study as a subfield of his
own burgeoning discipline of minzokugaku. is was an attempt to create a new
"science" that would accept the mysterious itself as an object of empirical
study. Yanagita focused on collecting and classifying youkai beliefs and analyzing them in
relation to concepts of yuurei (ghosts) and kami (deities). This paper will examine
Yanagita's Youkai dangi (Discussions of Monsters), a collection of essays on youkai
written between the years of 1910 and 1938. These essays span a critical period in the
development of minzokugaku, and also demonstrate how Yanagita was attempting to classify
the mysterious, and develop a way of studying the "real" meanings of the
"imaginary."
3) Michiko Suzuki, Tokyo University. "Imagination and the Girl:
Yoshiya
Nobuko's Yaneura no nishojo as Female Bildungsroman"
As a writer, Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973) is perhaps best known for her early works for
young girls (shoujo shousetsu), and post-war historical fiction. Yaneura no nishojo (Two
Virgins in the Attic; 1920), her first full-length novel to be published, is rarely
examined fully, and is often simply referred to as a shishousetsu (I-novel) or a lesbian
novel.In order to fully appreciate this work, it is important to view it as a female
Bildungsroman, a novel that explores the female protagonist's self-development and
growth.Here, the outcome is not marriage, but a young woman's attainment of sexual and
spiritual self-knowledge.
In this novel, imagination and language play a central role in depicting the shoujo (young
girl)'s growth and change, and this in turn leads to an exploration of her position as a
modern subject.During the Taisho and early Showa periods, sexologists and educators
published many tracts about the shoujo, most of them construing her as being fundamentally
"ill" due to physical and emotional development, as well as the unhealthy"
environment of modernity.In particular, the young girl's imaginative nature and her
inability to use language properly are criticized as negative factors, often contributing
to various "sicknesses".
In this paper, I will demonstrate how Yaneura no nishojo actively challenges this paradigm
by presenting the shoujo's imagination and exploration of language as a vital part of her
coming-of-age in a modern world.
4) Robert Tierney, Stanford
University. "The Colonial Imagination of
Nakajima Atsushi"
Born into a family with a long tradition of
kangaku, Nakajima Atsushi is generally viewed as an apolitical, erudite and highly
imaginative author of a small corpus of exquisitely crafted tales set in ancient China.In
1941, however, Nakajima traveled to Micronesia to become an editor of Japanese language
textbooks for use in the Japanese colony.After nine months in Palau, he discovered that
the climate aggravated his severe asthma and returned to Japan where he devoted the
remainder of his life to writing. In particular, he wrote a series of often overlooked
tales set in Micronesia, Nantootan (Tales of the Southern Islands, 1942), and a group of
travel sketches, Kanshoo (The Atolls, 1942) dealing with places, people and customs of
Micronesia.In these works, he relies not only on his own direct observations but also on
the assistance from his colleague, Hijikata Hisakatsu, an ethnologist whose diaries became
a source for some of Nakajima's tales.
After placing Nakajima's Micronesian work in their biographical and historical context, I
will examine his travel sketches, Kanshoo, to explore the links between his work as a
writer and colonial realities on Micronesia.By comparing his works with contemporary
ethnographic writings, I will study the relationship between literature and discourses of
knowledge, both in point of view and choice of subjects.I will also consider how Nakajima
represents Japan's colonial project in his fiction, particularly the hierarchy of power
and races on which it is based, by constructing the colonial other as primitive child in
need of Japan's tutelage.
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