A History of Modern Japanese Literary Criticism: A Play in Two Acts

By R. Shaldjian Morrison

Disclaimer: The following is for reference only. Its sole purpose is to give readers an overview of
the history of modern Japanese literary criticism. I have avoided using all features common to the
dramatic form, including plot, character development, humor, word play, Verfremdungseffekt,
involution, and any explicit or implicit references to myself, R. Shaldjian Morrison, and the narrow
world I inhabit.

Dramatis personæ, in order of appearance:

Tsubouchi Shōyō 坪内逍遥 (1859-1935)

Futabatei Shimei 二葉亭四迷 (1864-1909)
Mori Ōgai 森鴎外 (1862-1922)
Yamaji Aizan 山路愛山 (1864-1917)
Kitamura Tōkoku 北村透谷 (1868-1894)
Masaoka Shiki 正岡子規 (1867-1902)
Takayama Chogyū 高山樗牛 (1871-1902)
Tayama Katai 田山花袋 (1872-1930)
Hasegawa Tenkei 長谷川天渓 (1876-1940)
Sōma Gyofū 相馬御風 (1883-1950)
Shimamura Hōgetsu 島村抱月 (1871-1918)
Abe Jirō 阿部次郎 (1883-1959)
Natsume Sōseki 夏目漱石 (1867-1917)
Uozumi Setsuo 魚住折蘆 (1883-1910)
Ishikawa Takuboku 石川啄木 (1886-1912)
Uchida Roan 内田魯庵 (1868-1929)
Ōsugi Sakae 大杉栄 (1885-1923)

Act 1: The Meiji and Taishō Periods

Act 1, Scene 1

1885-7

Tsubouchi Shōyō: Away with the past and its frivolous traditions, its didacticism (kanzen chōaku)
and improbable romances! Like the Jacobins of the French Revolution, we shall turn back the clock
to the Year Zero and begin anew! Let the modern novel supplant our substandard genres. Young
writers, take as your model the novels of Victorian England, which through natural description and
psychological realism faithfully portray modern life and human emotions!

Futabatei Shimei: I hear you, Shōyō. However, your novel Portraits of Contemporary Students
(1885) is clearly flawed. Take a look at my new novel, Ukigumo (1887). Let it be remembered as
Japan’s first authentic novel (honkaku shōsetsu), and the first to unify the spoken and written
languages (genbun itchi)!

1891

Mori Ōgai: You were right, Shōyō, when you elsewhere warned of the dangers of a merely
subjective kind of criticism. But you were wrong to insist that criticism was not dependent upon the
idée. Empirical observation alone is not sufficient. You see, the Germans have made me an Idealist
(kyokuchishugi), while the English tradition has made you a Realist (shizenshugi). But realism does
not go far enough: we must grasp the idée that lies behind the thing. Contrary to your claims,
Shakespeare’s works abound with ideas.

Shōyō: You’re missing my point. I’m not claiming that there are no ideas in Shakespeare. I admit
they are everywhere. Shakespeare presents us with manifold ideas, in dramatized form; yet he
himself adheres to none.

Ōgai: One cannot avoid the idée! It is the foundation of all art!

Shōyō: Oy vey, I can see this is going nowhere . . .

Shōyō was right, the debate — which would become known as the botsurisō ronsō, or the
“submerged ideals debate” — was in fact going nowhere, largely due to the confusion over the new
terms myōsō, risō, shisō (idée, ideal and thought, respectively). Like most subsequent literary
debates, this one would peter out before reaching a consensus. Now it is 1893, and Yamaji Aizan
and Kitamura Tōkoku are arguing over the social role of literature.

Yamaji Aizan: Novels must enlighten the public. If they don’t, they are useless. The writer is
responsible first and foremost to his society.

Kitamura Tōkoku: Cut the crap. The sole duty of the writer is to faithfully record his internal life
(naibu no seimei). The external world — historical events, social realities, the public, other people
— exists only for his amusement.

Yamaji Aizan: Oh, my naïve Tōkoku. There are two worlds, you see, the “real world” (jitsusekai)
and the “conceptual world” (sōsekai). The task of the writer is to mediate between the two. Today
there are two kinds of writer: those like the Ken’yūsha writers who turn a blind eye to reality,
preferring instead fantasy and abstruse wordplay, and those like Hirotsu Ryūrō, Kawakami Bizan
and Izumi Kyōka who boldly confront the bitter realities of life in their “social novels” (shakai
shōsetsu), “tragic novels” (hisan shōsetsu), “profound novels” (shinkoku shōsetsu), and “conceptual
novels” (kannen shōsetsu). What with all that’s going on now — rapid industrialization, the new
Constitution, the recent Sino-Japanese War — how can we retreat into solipsism?
The debate ends inconclusively, and the individual-society problematic is to remain a major fault
line in literature for years to come. It is now 1898, and Masaoka Shiki is calling for a revolution in
poetry.

Masaoka Shiki: Tsurayuki sucks, his Kokinshū is a worthless document! The essence of our poetic
tradition is to be found instead in the unadorned language of the Manyōshū and the manful haiku of
Buson! Away with the girlish poetry of Bashō! We must reform hokku — we shall henceforth call it
haiku! — through selective realism, “sketching” (shasei), and a commitment to “sincerity” (makoto).
Three years pass. It is now late 1901, and the fervent nationalism that swept the country during the
Sino-Japanese War has produced a wave of romantic individualism. At the head of this movement
to forge a “modern self” is Takayama Chogyū, who, having abandoned the jingoistic Japonism
(Nihonshugi) in favor of a Nietzsche-inspired egoism, now expounds a philosophy based on
“instinct” (honnō).

Takayama Chogyū: The most we can hope for in this life, friends, is the satisfaction of desire.
Ethics should be replaced with aesthetics, animalism, sex, love. Away with the tradition, with
Saikaku, with Genroku haiku. Only Chikamatsu should be spared, for he espoused a kind of proto-
individualism, and his young sensuous heroines were quite vivid. Where are the great critics of our
age? Where is our Tolstoy, our Whitman, Ibsen, or Zola? We haven’t any, I’m afraid; here are only
obsequious flatterers.

Tayama Katai: I dig your egoism, Chogyū, but I still detect a romantic sensibility in your style. In
prose writing, let us have plain delineation (heimen byōsha) and scientific naturalism. (Which
means, in practice, that I get to describe in great detail my obsession with pre-nubile girls
(shōjobyō)!)

1906-7

Hasegawa Tenkei: O, ours is a spiritless age of despair and disillusionment (genmetsu jidai).
Materialism and science have made empty symbols of things: the temple, that shrine, a distant
landscape. Katai is right the only artistic method appropriate in such a time is “an unadorned art
which portrays the truth.”

Sōma Gyofū: You make it sound as if objectivity were possible, truth knowable, as if writing itself
were a passive activity. But the writer, friend, is no transparent glass through which the Real is
transmitted; rather, he must actively incorporate his own subjectivity into his work. Just look at
what’s happening in Europe, where science and its pretensions of objectivity are destroying an
entire civilization!

Two years have passed. It is now late 1909.

Shimamura Hōgetsu: It is the duty of art to bear witness to the world (sekai o kanshō). Let us have
more “conceptual novels” that address social ills! Let us embrace and cultivate our subjectivity!
Long live Naturalism!

Abe Jirō: Don’t get your hopes up, Hōgetsu. Nagai Kafū was recently attacked for his
Epicureanism (kyōrakushugi), yet a closer look reveals that Epicureanism and Naturalism (as
practiced here) are really two sides of the same coin. Japanese Naturalism in fact has little to do
with French Naturalism. It’s closer to Romanticism. Mark my words, the end of the Naturalists’
reign is nigh!

Uozumi Setsuo: Abe’s right. Japanese Naturalism was bound to fall into decline due to its
irreconcilably diverse origins, namely, scientific determinism and egocentrism.

Natsume Sōseki: Isms, isms, isms. No ism can contain the whole. Or even if it could, we wouldn’t
know it, having only half-digested western thought. Our so-called “civilization,” friends, will
forever remain a botched one so long as it’s externally motivated (gaihatsuteki).

Ishikawa Takuboku: The High Treason Incident this year has exposed the barbarity that lies just
beneath the surface of our suffocating age (jidai heisoku). Ours now is the formidable task of
resolving the contradictions inherent in the socio-economic system. Naturalism sure isn’t up to it, so
let us forge a new kind of literature, inspired by the anarcho-socialism of Russia!

1912-13

Uchida Roan: Has anyone noticed how poppy literature is getting? It’s well-nigh become a
national business. I say it’s time to get serious and start writing political novels and shed this old
notion of Shōyō’s — which I once supported — that the novel should be concerned primarily with
human emotions.

Ōsugi Sakae: The High Treason Incident has ushered us into a new wintry age (fuyu no jidai).
Resistance requires “the expansion of life” (sei no kakujū), and a subscription to Kindai Shisō
(Modern Thought), my new anarchist magazine.
(To be continued…)

*****
 Act One, Scene 2 (The Taishō Period)

Disclaimer: The following is for reference only. Its sole purpose is to give readers an overview of
the history of modern Japanese literary criticism. I have avoided using all features common to the
dramatic form, including plot, character development, word play, humor, Verfremdungseffekt,
involution, and any explicit or implicit references to myself, Ryan Morrison, and the narrow world I
inhabit.

Dramatis personæ, in order of appearance

Akagi Kōhei 赤木桁平 (1891-1949)

Ikuta Chōkō 生田長江 (1882-1936)
Orikuchi Shinobu 折口信夫 (1887-1953)
Satō Haruo 佐藤春夫 (1892-1964)
Nagai Kafū 永井荷風 (1879-1959)
Nakano Hideto 中野豪人 (1898-1966)
Arishima Takeo 有島武郎 (1878-1923)
Hirotsu Kazuo 広津和郎 (1891-1968)
Kikuchi Kan 菊池寛 (1888-1948)
Satomi Ton 里見弴 (1888-1983)
Chiba Kameo 千葉亀雄 (1878-1935)
Kume Masao 久米正雄 (1891-1952):
Edogawa Rampo 江戸川乱歩 (1894-1965)
Aono Suekichi 青野季吉 (1890-1961)

It is now 1916, and despite the portentous chill felt by Ōsugi Sakae and others, Taishō (1912-
1926) is turning out to be a rather pleasant and prosperous era. The early-Meiji spirit of
liberalism has been revived, and the Blue Stockings (Seitō, 1911-1916), Japan's first feminist
group founded by Yosano Akiko and Hiratsuka Raichō at the behest of Ikuta Chōkō, wages war
against the patriarchy and its essentialist myths. Such progressivism, however, has produced a
wave of conservative detractors, including the reactionary disciple of Sōseki, Akaki Kōhei.

Akaki Kōhei: The moral fabric of our society is unraveling! Everywhere is depravity and
corruption! I hereby call for the extirpation of all profligate literature (yūtō bungaku no bokumetsu),
including that of the whore-mongering, self-obsessed Naturalists! Those in the Aestheticist
(tanbishugi) camp shouldn't sit too comfortably, either. They too shall be eradicated!

Ikuta Chōkō: Now, now, don't be so hard on the Naturalists. They'll dig their own graves just fine
without us. To me, the worst are the “ludicrously idealistic” (medetai risōshugi) Shirakaba writers,
who write in a bloated, lofty style as if Naturalism had never happened. Even as we speak, they're
building some absurd utopian village (Atarashiki mura, 1918-present) in the hills of Kyūshū, led by
their Tolstoy-inspired guru Mushanokōji Saneatsu. What would Nietzsche (whom I was the first to
translate, mind you!) have to say about such puerility (osanago-shugi)?
 Orikuchi Shinobu: Yeah, the Shirakaba group is pretty lame. But who fares better? The
Aestheticists? They're just as out of touch with reality—look how they gush like schoolgirls over
every new exotic fad, whether it’s from Edo, China, the West, or the Southern Barbaries.

It is now 1919, and Satō Haruo, Nagai Kafū, and Nakano Hideto are discussing the various
modes of criticism.

Satō Haruo: All criticism is ultimately impressionistic, despite Kikuchi Kan's claim that subjective
criticism is the preferred method of charlatans. Criticism—regardless of what it's "about"—is
ultimately a discourse of the self. [Kobayashi Hideo, as we'll see in the next act, would later build
on this.]

Nagai Kafū: I’d much rather wander the shitamachi streets half-drunk than get lost in the labyrinth
of the self. Yet I can understand your reluctance to confront the world directly. As I explain in my
recent essay “Hanabi” (“Fireworks”), I was enraged by the High Treason Incident of 1910, which
the authorities used as an excuse to establish a surveillance state. Yet I did nothing. A coward, I am
capable only of retreating into the long-vanished world of Edo. If anyone needs me, you can find
me in one of its brothels, courtesan breast in mouth.

Nakano Hideto: Solipsistic impressionism, anti-modern escapism . . . when are we going to get
serious about confronting reality? Let this moment mark the beginning of Japan's proletarian
movement—a "people’s arts" (minshū geijutsu) for and by “the fourth class” (daiyon kaikyū)!

It is now 1922, and Arishima Takeo and Hirotsu Kazuo are discussing their role in the class
struggle, while Kikuchi Kan and Satomi Ton are engaged in their "Content
Value Controversy" (Naiyōteki kachi ronsō), which, like most literary debates, will end
without conclusion.

Arishima Takeo: As much as I’d love to keep fighting for the workers, Mr. Nakano, I’m afraid the
movement has no place for educated aristocrats like myself. [Arishima, sadly, would die in a love-
suicide (shinjū) the following year.]

Hirotsu Kazuo: Come on, people! What's all this talk about class? Art transcends class! The tent of
literature is big enough for us all . . . so long, of course, as you find your proper, class-determined
role within it.

Kikuchi Kan: You know, I've recently stopped giving a shit about “formal or aesthetic beauty”
(biteki kachi). For me, "content value" (naiyōteki kachi) is the only thing that matters. Even the
most poorly constructed story can move me to tears if its subject is powerful enough.

Satomi Ton: Horseshit, Kikuchi. Subject alone is worthless. Value is to be found only in form.

Two years have passed, and the discussion has moved to the merits of prose versus that of
poetry.
Hirotsu Kazuo: Forget about the form-content problem for now. I want to talk about prose versus
poetry. Prose, I claim, is superior to poetry, as it is that which mediates between poetry and life. Of
all the arts, prose is closest to life and cannot be disentangled from it. Hence, it is meaningless to
speak of "pure form" in works of prose. Wouldn't you all agree?

Satō Haruo, Arishima Takeo, and Kikuchi Kan (in unison): We agree.

Ikuta Chōkō: Ignorant clods! I’m entirely unconvinced. Life is contingent, subordinate—even
irrelevant—to art! Art exists for its own sake, and should be assessed by standards that are
independent of life. [With this begins the famed "Debate on the Art of Prose" (Sanbun geijutsu
ronsō), which would run out of steam before the year’s end.]

Chiba Kameo: I'm starting to notice some trends in your bickering. Since the Great Kantō
Earthquake last year, writers have split into two camps: the Proletarian camp, rallied around the
magazine Bungei Senzen, and the New Sensation School (Shinkankaku-ha, a word I coined, mind
you!), centered around the magazine Bungei Jidai. My allegiance is with the latter, which boasts
two of our greatest writers, Kawabata Yasunari and Yokomitsu Riichi.

It is now 1925, the last year of Taishō, and writers are largely unprepared for the turbulence
that would come in the first two decades of the Shōwa period (1926-1989).

Kume Masao: Nakamura Murao and Ikuta Chōkō insist that the "authentic novel" (honkaku
shōsetsu) is superior to the "I-novel" (shishōsetsu), but they are wrong. The "I-novel"—or, as I call
it, the "state-of-mind novel" (shinkyō shōsetsu)—is Japan’s only true novel. All else is vulgar,
artificial and commercial, and should be renamed "light fiction" (tsūzoku shōsetsu). [Ikuta and
Nakumura counter, and the famous "I-Novel Debate" (Watakushi shōsetsu ronsō) continues for
several more months.]

Edogawa Rampo: Kindly add to your list, Mr. Kume, the "detective novel" (tantei shōsetsu), of
which I am Japan's foremost practitioner. Yet recently I've come under attack from leftists like
Maedakō Hiroichirō, who dismiss the genre as “bourgeois” frivolity. What they fail to understand,
however, is that the "detective novel" is more than a game of cat and mouse: it is the purest
representation of the enquiry into the human psyche. It is akin to—no, it is symbolist poetry. For the
pursuit of the fantastic (gensō) is the pursuit of human knowledge itself!

Aono Suekichi: Right, right, whatever. Now help me hand out these pamphlets, which include
excerpts from my recent translation of Lenin’s What Is To be Done? Now the revolution can begin
in earnest!

(To be continued . . .)