Rethinking Sōseki theory

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Rethinking Sseki's theoryKaratani Kjin

Published online: 11 Feb 2008.

To cite this article: Karatani Kjin (2008) Rethinking Sseki's theory, Japan Forum, 20:1, 9-15, DOI:

10.1080/09555800701796826

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Rethinking Sosekis theory

K A R A TA N I K O J I N

Abstract: This paper builds on the discussion ofBungakuron in Origins of Mod-ern Japanese Literature (1993). It focuses on Sosekis collaboration with MasaokaShiki to revive haiku and the links that Soseki found between the haiku-relatedgenre ofshaseibun (literary sketches) and the grotesque, loosely plotted realism ofLaurence Sterne. Like Bakhtin, Soseki recognizes something in early novelisticforms that would later be disciplined out. Furthermore, this paper argues that inthe preface to Bungakuron Soseki provides both an encomium to his dead friendMasaoka and a prescient announcement of the end of literature, perceived 100years early from his vantage point as a non-Western subject witnessing the endof empire in London.

Keywords: Natsume Soseki, Masaoka Shiki, shaseibun, haikai, realism, Sterne

It was in 1975 when I was teaching at Yale University that I began to envision

the work Origins of Modern Japanese Literature (Karatani 1993 [1980]).1 At the

time, Meiji literary history was usually taught from the perspective of how modern

literature as established in the West had been accepted or failed to be accepted

in Japan. This perspective assumed that modern literature was natural and self-

evident and there were very few who problematized the form, either in the West

or in Japan. My book was an attempt to show that modern literature in the West

can in fact be interpreted as a historical system established in the middle of the

nineteenth century, especially in France.As I was teaching Meiji literature to American students, I came to realize that

Soseki is one of the few who had problematized modern literature and that his

Theory of Literature (Bungakuron, 1907) was precisely a project to demonstrate

this. I was 34 years old at the time. One day, I noticed that Soseki was the same

age when he began tackling his Theory of Literature in London. I remember the

quiet excitement I felt then. This is why I referred to Soseki and his Theory of

Literature from the beginning in Origins of Modern Japanese Literature.

However, Soseki as a theorist was belittled at the time. His theory was con-

sidered a mere prelude to his novels. Needless to say, no one paid attention to

Japan Forum 20(1) 2008: 915 ISSN: 09555803 print/1469932X online

CopyrightC

2008 BAJS DOI: 10.1080/09555800701796826


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10 Rethinking Sosekis theory

it in America. When I think of it in this light, it is remarkable that I am nowparticipating in a project to reconsider Sosekis Theory of Literature together with

American scholars. This is, or should be, cause for celebration and yet my hap-

piness is tempered. I will discuss the reasons for this later, but to sum them up

briefly here, the position of literature has entirely changed over the past thirty

years.

I stated in Origins of Modern Japanese Literature that Sosekis project was an

isolated case, not only in Britain, but even in Japan. However, his theoretical aims

and methodology were in fact similar to those of his long-time friend Masaoka

Shiki (18671902), who died of tuberculosis at the age of 35 while Soseki was in

London. The two writers shared a passionate interest in both literary theory and

creative writing and collaborated on a project to revive haiku poetry in which theyaimed to provide a theoretical basis for haiku and shaseibun (literary sketches,

a form of prose derived from haiku). While shaseibun may appear to be akin to

realism, it is in fact a critique of realist writing, characterized as it is by lack of

plot and a form of satire that is peculiar to haikai-renga (comic linked verse).

Sosekis I Am a Cat(Wagahai wa neko de aru, 19056), first published in the haiku

journal Hototogisu launched by Shiki, is perhaps his most representative work in

the shaseibun form.

Masaoka Shiki gave haiku poetry a theoretical foundation in his General Prin-

ciples of Haikai (Haikai taiyo, 1895). He did not begin with the fact that haiku

stemmed from a long history of haikai-renga, but started instead with its very

form. He writes: Haiku is part of literature. Literature is part of art. Therefore,

the criterion of art is the criterion of literature. The criterion of literature is the

criterion ofhaiku (Shiki 1930: 246, cited in Karatani 1993: 74-5). What he meant

to say is that the traditional haiku should be considered from a universal view-

point as part of art, no matter how subtle and idiosyncratic it may seem. The

extremely short poetic form of haiku links with Edgar Allan Poes ideas in The

Poetic Principle (1849) in which he locates the definitive nature of poetry in its

brevity (Eliot 1912). Both Shiki and Poe imply that what makes poems poetic

should be sought in their form, not in their content.

In many respects, it may be said that Sosekis Theory of Literature inherited the

essence of Masaoka Shikis theory and developed it on a larger scale. Incidentally,

some of Sosekis eccentric behavior can be attributed to his relationship with his

dead friend. For example, the fact that Soseki quit Tokyo Imperial Universityto work for the Asahi Shinbun newspaper startled people at the time, but it is

understandable in view of the fact that Shiki had worked for the newspaper Nihon

Shinbunsha. It is certain that this dead person was alive in Sosekis mind.

In his Theory of Literature, Soseki asked what literature is, in both general and

comprehensive terms. Clearly, however, his goal was to supply a universal basis to

specific genres of literature, that is, haiku and shaseibun, the genres that he shared

with Masaoka Shiki. Soseki sought the basis of shaseibun in a certain attitude

toward the world and oneself:


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Karatani Kojin 11

In narrating human affairs, the attitude of the writer ofshaseibun is not like thatof a nobleman surveying the lowly. It is not that of the wise man regarding the

fools. Nor is it that of a man regarding a woman or a woman regarding a man.

The writer of shaseibun, that is to say, is not an adult looking at children. It is

that of a parent toward a child.

(SZ 1907, 16: 4856; cited in Karatani 1993: 1801)

This is not an attitude peculiar to haikai-renga. For instance, Freud used the

same metaphor to explain humor. According to Freud, humor is generated when

the superego (adult) encourages the suffering ego (child) by urging it to ignore its

pain, as if that pain were petty and negligible.

Soseki states that shaseibun is a Japanese product derived from haiku. He writes:

This mental disposition is in every way that of haiku, transposed. It is not a

Western import that arrived in Yokohama after drifting across the seas. Within

the limits of my own rather shallow knowledge, there appears to be nothing

written with this kind of mental disposition among the works which have been

hailed as Western masterpieces throughout the world.

(SZ 1907, 16: 55)

However, he then goes on to cite Dickenss Pickwick Papers, Fieldings Tom Jones

and Cervantes Don Quixote as examples of works in which this attitude is evident

to a certain degree (ibid.: 55). Here, we should add Laurence Sternes Tristram

Shandy and Sentimental Journey as outstanding examples of shaseibun, although

Soseki for some reason does not mention them here.

It is noteworthy that Soseki found in Sterne the attitude ofshaseibun. From the

perspective of the literary canon established in the nineteenth century, Sternes

novels were aberrations. He would later be highly evaluated by the twentieth-

century modernist movement, but this did not take place until after Sosekis stay

in London. It is not mere conceit for Soseki to have found parallels between

Sternes novels, which deconstruct the British novel that was taking shape in the

late eighteenth century, and plot-less shaseibun derived from haiku in Meiji Japan.

In this regard, Bakhtins remarks on Laurence Sterne deserve attention. In Ra-

belais Gargantua et Pantagruel, Bakhtin found a grotesque realism, a carnivalesque

sense of the world in which the hierarchy of the social order is reversed through

the laughter of the populace. He also argued that this popular carnivalesque senseof the world found in Renaissance literature subsequently withered, but that it

was revived in the pre-romantic period, albeit in a subjective form that is, with

Sternes Tristam Shandy. It was hard to revive grotesque realism in a Western

Europe where the agrarian community had already been dissolved by the market

economy. Bakhtin maintains that Sternes Tristam Shandy was a peculiar transpo-

sition of Rabelais and Cervantes world concept into the subjective language of

the new age, one in which the folk laughter of the Renaissance was reduced to the

forms of humor, irony and sarcasm (Bakhtin 1968: 367). Consequently, Sternes


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works are deemed an expression of a subjective sense of the world, or ratheran expression of an overly acute self-consciousness. But Bakhtin acknowledges

that the Renaissance sense of the world is retrieved here, though in a subjective

form.

While such works were not part of the literary mainstream in Europe,

grotesque realism was revived in nineteenth-century Russia by Gogol, and then

by Dostoevsky who, to borrow his own metaphor, came out from under Gogols

Overcoat. According to Bakhtin, Dostoevskys works are essentially different

from the subjective and psychological type of modern novel, because they retain

the carnivalesque sense of the world. Gogols works are often labeled as precur-

sors to surrealism. However, it is important to note that surrealism is a product

of modernism. Grotesque realism, whether we are looking at Gogol in Russia,Lu Xun in China or Gabriel Garca Marquez in Colombia resulted from the per-

sistence of a feudal agrarian community. The same thing can be said of Sosekis

writing; yet, unlike Lu Xun or Garcia Marquez whose works appeared after the

acceptance of modernism, he needed to justify his ideas theoretically.

Soseki argues that shaseibun is derived from haiku. This does not mean simply

that it was started by haiku poets such as Masaoka Shiki and himself. Shaseibun

has its origin not just in early modern haiku, but in the haikai-renga of the fifteenth

century. If shaseibun retains a carnivalesque sense of the world, this is because it

stemmed from haikai-renga.

To be more specific, renga (linked verse) has a long history stretching back to

ancient times. It was initially an aristocratic genre that saw increasing refinement

and gentrification. In the fifteenth century, however, as the feudal system fell

into decline, it gained power among the populace in the form of haikai-renga.

Haikai implies something humorous and obscene, as well as something that is

frequently subversive of social hierarchies. Haikai-renga was popular among the

rising bourgeois class (manufacturers), but it withered when the Tokugawa regime

was established in the sixteenth century.

Bakhtin writes, The sixteenth century represents the summit in the history of

laughter, and the high point of this summit is Rabelais novel. After this, though,

a rather sharp descent starts and it loses its essential link with a universal out-

look. . . .Limited to the area of the private, eighteenth-century humor is deprived

of its historical color (Bakhtin 1968: 101). The same is true of haikai-renga.

It may be said that Basho (164494) tried to restore the haikai-esque spirit ofhaiku by splitting offhaiku into a distinct genre of its own and rejecting the guild

structure of renga. However, Bashos innovations, the so-called Basho-school

style, became just another mannerism, with haikai becoming gentrified and the

free association of renga being transformed into yet another feudal guild.

It is Masaoka Shiki who attempted to reform haiku radically in the Meiji period.

In many ways, he was an innovator just like Basho, but by Shikis time the Basho-

school style had decayed into closed-off guilds governed by masters and a spirit

that sought above all preordained harmony. It goes without saying that Shiki


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Karatani Kojin 13

rejected this sort of guild and sought once again the haikai-esque, thus rejectingBashos authority. Shikis reforms extended into tanka poetry as well as prose

writing that is, shaseibun. What he sought was not shaseibun as realism, but

shaseibun as grotesque realism, so to speak. But when Shiki died and Takahama

Kyoshi (18741959) succeeded him, as with Bashos death, shaseibun once again

became flat realism associated with a feudal guild.

The truly haikai-esque remained not with these disciples, but rather with

Sosekis writings. Furthermore, as a scholar of English literature, Soseki argued

that eighteenth-century English literature was the Western counterpart of shasei-

bun, thus expanding the concept to a more universal phenomenon than seeing it

as something unique to Japanese literature. Sosekis Theory of Literature was writ-

ten in order properly to evaluate and recover what had been laid aside from themainstream of modern literature.

Having said this, there is something else I must mention. Generally we notice

the origin of something only when it is about to end. Thirty years ago, when I was

writing Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, I was aware of the end of modern

literature. However, this was not so much the end of modern literature as it was

indicative of the emergence of a new kind of literature, one that had been repressed

by the established literary canons. In fact, a variety of genres of novels appeared,

including those by writers such as Nakagami Kenji (194692), Murakami Ryu

(1952), Murakami Haruki (1949) and Takahashi Genichiro (1951). These

authors are defined as postmodern, but for me, they seem to be harking back

to an earlier kind of literature the Renaissance literature for which Soseki had

sought a theoretical basis. This was a genuine renaissance of literature and I had

my eyes on it as I wrote my Origins of Modern Japanese Literature.

However, this renaissance did not last long and by the 1990s it began to lose its

social and intellectual impact. The death of Nakagami Kenji in 1992 was possibly

symbolic of the death of modern literature in Japan. This was a death that harbored

no future possibilities, an ending that was nothing more than an ending. In fact,

something called literature may last and even prosper, but it will be of a kind

alien to the literature I have an interest in. Actually I have gotten divorced from

literature. I may be wrong, but I dont care. I dont like to do what I am not

interested in. I have other things I want to do.

However, last year I had to re-visit my book Origins of Modern Japanese Literature

to edit it for a new edition of my works. While I revised it with considerable interest,I felt none of the excitement that I had had before: it was more like writing my

own last will and testament. Re-reading Sosekis preface to the Theory of Literature,

however, I noticed that, although I had quoted a passage from it, I had previously

overlooked his use of certain words. Let me quote it again.

I was determined, in this work, to solve the problem of defining the nature of

literature. I resolved to devote a year or more to the first stage of my research

on this problem.


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I shut myself up in my room in my boarding house and packed all the worksof literature I owned away in my wicker trunk. For I believed that reading

literature in order to understand the nature of literature was like washing blood

with blood. I vowed to probe the psychological origins of literature: what led

to its appearance, development and decline. And I vowed to explore the social

factors that brought literature into this world and caused it to flourish or wither.

(SZ 1907, 15: 9; cited in Karatani 1993: 12)

This time, words like decline and wither drew my attention, altering my view

of Sosekis theoretical attempt. I suspect that Soseki may have sensed the end of

literature.

Sosekis words reminded me of Masaoka Shikis belief that haiku and tanka were

doomed to extinction in the near future. It seems a bit odd that Shiki, who afterall launched a new haiku moment, would at the same time proclaim the inevitable

extinction of haiku. Shiki explained this from the fact that haiku are so short that

the total number of possible permutations and combinations of words that they

can contain is limited. Of course, his theory was wrong, because the number of

potential permutations and combinations is astronomical and virtually infinite in

terms of human history. But I think Shiki wanted to say that haiku would decline

and wither because of psychological or social factors, to use Sosekis words. It

may be said that Soseki shared this stance with Shiki. Unlike other writers of their

own or of later generations, they did not believe in the eternity of literature. In

any event, as I noted above, I have divorced myself from literature. But when

I re-read Sosekis Preface, I came to think that I should reconsider the end ofmodern literature as my last obligation to literature. That is why I have written this

essay.

Note

1. The chapters ofOrigins of Modern Japanese Literature first appeared in installments in the literary

journals Kikan Geijutsu and Gunzo between 1978 and 1980 and were published in book form in

1980 (Karatani 1993 [1980]).

References

Bakhtin, Mikhail (1968) Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky, Bloomington, IN: Indiana

University Press.

Eliot, Charles, W. (1912) Essays: English and American: Vol. XXVIII. The Harvard Classics. New

York: P.F. Collier & Son.

Karatani, Kojin (1980) Nihon kindai bungaku no kigen, Kodansha.

(1993 [1980]) Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, trans. Brett de Bary, Durham, NC: Duke

University Press.

Natsume, Soseki (1907) Shaseibun, reprinted in Soseki zenshu 16, Iwanami Shoten.

(1907) Preface (Jo) to Bungakuron, reprinted in Soseki zenshu 15, Iwanami Shoten.

Shiki, Masaoka (1930) Haikai taiyo (General principles of haikai), reprinted in Shiki zenshu 4,

Kaizosha.


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Karatani Kojin 15

Karatani Kojin is a critic and activist in Japan and founding editor ofCritical Space, one of Japans

most influential intellectual venues throughout the 1990s. He has spent time as visiting Professor

of Japanese Literature at both Yale and Columbia Universities. He retired from teaching at Hosei

University Japan in 2006, but remains a prolific critic and activist. Work available in English includes

Origins of Modern Japanese Literature (1993) Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money

(1995) and Transcritique: On Kant and Marx (2003).

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Rethinking Sōseki theory