On Kawabata & Oe : Japanese Postmodernism 13/02/2018 Published : 12 Feb 2018 Book Talk Existential nihilism in Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburo Oe Avik Gangopadhyay finds the conceptual dissonance in postmodern Japanese literature Avik Gangopadhyay Is postmodernism a western phenomenon? Even ideationally it cannot be exported globally. Whether ‘postmodernism and Japan’ is a cacophony of opinions or a contradiction, whether it connects individual manifestations of postmodernism or exposes dissonances between postmodernism and criticism on contemporary Japan is to be countered without oriental inhibition. If Haruki Murakami has been the most discussed bestseller writer in Japan with his work being translated into 50 languages and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nobel Prize in Literature returns to the so-called ‘main stream’ arena of postmodern literature in 2017, with great emotional force, uncovering “the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world,” then readers and critics have to examine either the features of Japanese postmodernism or, the legacy, if at all any, of the two previous Nobel Laureates in Literature from Japan, Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) and Kenzaburo Oe (1935), as their works are not framed by the conventional multifaceted pessimism that characterise postmodernism in general. Modernism in Japanese literature is not about time rather, it defines a body of literature with certain characteristics. When other authors sidestep the pivotal attitude by focusing on individual manifestations of postmodernism, Yasunari Kawabata (Nobel Prize, 1968) and Kenzaburo Oe (Nobel Prize, 1994) did attempt to explore and exhaust its potential in both novels and short stories. The shift from the modern to postmodern thematics is distinct. Modern Japanese writers covered a wide variety of subjects, one particularly Japanese approach stressed their subjects' inner lives, widening the earlier preoccupation with the narrator's consciousness. In Japanese fiction, plot development and action have often been of secondary interest to emotional issues. In keeping with the general trend toward reaffirming national characteristics, many old themes re-emerged in modern literature, and some authors turned consciously to the past. Strikingly, Buddhist attitudes about the importance of knowing oneself and the poignant impermanence of things formed an undercurrent of sharp social criticism of modern materialism. There was a growing emphasis on women's roles, the Japanese persona in the modern world, and the malaise of common people lost in the complexities of urban culture. To perceive the fictional and narrative approach of Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburo Oe, their brand of modernism, which I consider to be the 1st level of postmodernism in Japanese Literature, is to be scrutinised : it is marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition and the nation-centered and group orientation values—and this break included a strong reaction against established religious, political, and social views; feminism, individualism, internationalism, liberalism, and proletarianism emerged during this period; belief that the world is created in the act of perceiving it, that is, the world is what we say it is; there is no such thing as absolute truth; all things are relative; there is no connection with history or institutions. The seminal experience in life is that of alienation, loss, and despair; championing the individual and celebration of inner strength; life is unordered and incomplete. There is a manifest concern with the sub-conscious; emergence of new literary forms and styles, for example, the I-Novel (first-person point of view), an autobiographical confessional narratology. While awarding the prize, the first Japanese person to receive such a distinction "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind", the Nobel Committee cited three of Yasunari Kawabata’s novels: Snow Country (1948)--a stark tale of a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a provincial geisha that takes place in the remote hot spring town of Yuzawa, his most potent symbol of this "counter-Western modernity", the rural geisha, Komako, embodies Kawabata's conception of traditional Japanese beauty by taking Western influence and subverting it to traditional Japanese forms; Thousand Cranes (1952)-- a novel set in Japan after World War II but dealing with fate, legacy, inheritance sexuality of a ‘modern’ orphan; and The Old Capital (1962) –where the art of kimono takes a central role in the novel, with Kyoto — the former capital of Japan — symbolizing of everything which is traditionally Japanese. Remaining close to a Neosensualist group, that derived much of its aesthetic vision from European literary currents such as Dadaism and Expressionism, enabled him to coalesce abrupt transitions between separate brief, lyrical episodes, mixture of incongruous impressions, juxtaposition of the beautiful and the ugly, melancholic lyricism of ancient Japanese literary tradition and the modern idiom of loneliness and preoccupation with death. Through formlessness and fluid composition, Kawabata tried to beautify death and to seek harmony among man, nature, and emptiness. Be it the post-war novels or the much later works like Beauty and Sadness (1964)-- that opens on the train to Kyoto, the narrative, in characteristic Kawabata fashion, subtly brings up issues of tradition and modernity as it explores writer Oki Toshio's reunion with a young lover from his past, Otoko Ueno, who is now a famous artist and recluse, not the nuclear holocaust or an anti-nuclear activism, that several critics usually try to trace as a modern motif-- Kawabata’s aesthetics of art for art's sake leaves outside any sentimentalism, or morality, that an ending would give to any book. This was done intentionally, as Kawabata felt that vignettes of incidents along the way were far more important than conclusions. Contrarily, Kenzaburo Oe has devoted his life in taking certain subjects seriously—victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the struggles of the people of Okinawa, the challenges of the disabled and even the discipline of the scholarly life. The novels and short stories of Kenzaburo Oe, which depict "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today", are strongly influenced by French and American existential literature and literary theory, socio- political and philosophical issues including nuclear empowerment. “The writer’s job is the job of a clown,” Oe has said, “the clown who also talks about sorrow.” He describes most of his fiction as an extrapolation of the themes explored in two novels: A Personal Matter (1964), which recounts a father’s attempt to come to terms with the birth of his handicapped child; and The Silent Cry (1967), which depicts the clash between village life and modern culture in postwar Japan. The Silent Cry is widely seen as a key work in Oe's oeuvre. It is the only novel, perhaps his most successful effort to encapsulate Japanese history, society, and politics within a single tight narrative. Back in 1958, his Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids deals with fifteen adolescent boys from a reformatory in World War II Japan. The boys, including the unnamed narrator and his brother, are sent to a rural village to live and work, only to find the village afflicted by plague, with piles of rotting animal corpses dominating the atmosphere, finally seen to be chased into the forest by the villagers to an unknown fate. Apart from Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (1969), An Echo of Heaven (1989), A Healing Family (1995), Death By Water (2009) is an art-haunted book, with much discussion of T.S. Eliot (the novel is named after section four of The Waste Land), Beethoven, and Edward Said, and a reading of Fraser’s The Golden Bough. The recurrent themes of water and forest, symbolise perhaps a place where one may get eternally lost, or simply death, linked in an anecdote about Choko’s father confusing two similar kanji (logographic characters), build until very late on, when an epic storm breaks. The reader has long since been lulled into accepting the pensive, discursive ambience of the text, but then a plot erupts, into vivid sequence of scenes and Oe’s literary alter ego guides the reader through a dense forest of stories and competing recollections. The modern and postmodern facets of Japanese literature are devoid of any marked ‘western phenomenon’. It is vibrantly present in the reinterpretations of the 17th century Japanese imagery “some smoke rose noisily” penned by both Kawabata and Oe. Avik Gangopadhyay, an author, critic & columnist, writes from Kolkata, India View in Publication Site