I remember last semester someone (Whose name I have now forgotten! Please don't kill me!) said they wanted to know more about Shishosetsu, and I used it as my research essay topic for the Modern Japanese Fiction paper.
The paper is now LONG over and done with, so I can post up my essay without being hit with blunt objects for PLAGIARIZING MYSELF ZOMG!1!!!
You can tell I haven't being doing much worth posting about lately. Its fucking FREEZING!!! All I seem to do is shiver and eat -.-; Housework would warm me up, but I seem to conveniently forget that fact when faced with a bucket of soapy lukewarm water.
So, here is my essay, WITH references! I was talking out my ass for the entirety of this. Don't expect it to sound intelligent or make sense. I don't know what mark I ended up getting D:
Prepare for WALL OF TEXT!
Introduction
For the purpose of this essay I have chosen to make a study of the Japanese literary genre known was the “Shishosetsu”, or “I-Novel”. Different methods of communication have always fascinated me, and this genre was something I had never heard of before. I set out to find what it was, how it developed and whether or not it had a counterpart in Western literature.
The first section of this essay comprises some of what I have come to understand are the stylistic and literary characteristics the make up the genre of the Shishosetsu. I found that it was at once simpler and more complex than I had thought, with contradictions in both style and content that seem to be uniquely Japanese.
The second part will contain an attempt at a brief sketch of the history and evolution of the genre with the help of some of the works of Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki. Their combined skills were very useful in helping to create a clear picture of where and how this particular style of writing came to be.
Finally, I will explore the reactions of Westerners to the genre, based on a comprehensive essay by ---Delacour and my first reaction to a novel of this type. (Said reaction being indelibly etched on my memory for the thoroughly unexpected experience it was) I have attempted to compare the Western reaction to the novel with that of the Japanese readership the novels are intended for, and pose some tentative theories as to why the opinions of the two groups differ.
What is Shishosetsu?
The Shisosetsu, or “I-Novel” is a form of writing unique to the Japanese literary tradition that has its earliest roots in the diaries of the ladies of the Heian court. This genre has provided the backbone for, and comprises the bulk of the Japanese literary tradition since those times.(
1996, Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Rituals of Self-Revelation: Shishosetsu as Literary Genre and Socio-Cultural Phenomenon.p.170)
As this genre evolved in Japan, which kept itself isolated from foreign cultural influences for centuries, it is both useless and impossible to define it properly based on Western literary conventions. To define something by terms it grew independently of is a futile endeavour; however they are still useful when describing it to someone familiar with the Western literary style. For the Shishosetsu, we must rely on what the Japanese literati say defines the genre in order to understand it. (
Hijiya-Kirschnereit p.171)
The Shishosetsu is characterised as a semi-autobiographical work of fiction, with the Author using a blend of fiction and non-fiction writing techniques to relate events from their life in a semi-imaginary framework. The product of this blending of literary techniques is a novel that is more reflective and confessional than anything produced by Western fiction writers. Sometimes, however, the sense of reflection can be hard to discover at the shock of having a disembodied narrator mercilessly tell you a story without introducing themselves at all.(
Hijiya-Kirschnereit p.175)
Due to Japanese literature evolving in isolation from its Western counterpart, the Shishosetsu Genre contains some unique and interesting combinations of writing techniques that are considered stylistic mix-ups from the Western point of view. While writing a Shishosetsu an author can draw on many different non-fiction forms of expression to create what is, in actual fact, a fiction novel. The Japanese readership understands that while the text and reality may not have much in common, the narrative it contains “reproduces the reality experienced by the author.”(
Hijiya-Kirschnereit p.174) What they are reading is an author’s interpretation of events as they happened, and they are reassured by the solid fact behind the fiction.
On occasion the narrative can be quite hard to follow, as the diary-writing style of the Shishosetsu means the Author relates the events as they would for themselves or for a childhood friend who knows intimately everything that has happened to the author over the course of their life.(
Hijiya-Kirschnereit p.175) Sometimes extremely important events are only hinted at or referred to in passing, never actually being mentioned or described. I can imagine this may be a little frustrating for a Japanese reader who has only just picked up a novel of a given author, and has not yet had a chance to find out about their life and the background of the particular work. I can only compare this habit of the authors of Shishosetsu to finding the second book of a really good new trilogy. You are constantly being given tantalising allusions and references to the events of the first book, which you must then go and find to understand what is going on. This situation being replicated in a stand-alone Shishosetsu work is no doubt less frustrating for a Japanese reader than it would be for a Western one, as they would have more information regarding the author readily available to them.
This ease with which the general public could verify the truth of events behind the novel they were reading, even in the early stages of the genre, became part of a driving force for factual accuracy and honesty in the Shishosetsu genre.(
Hijiya-Kirschnereit p178) If the author attempted to deviate from the historical chain of events, or even ventured to put a spin on them that differentiated from the publically accepted version was met with outrage and intense criticism from both the readers and the Japanese Literati, who literally held the publishing life of the author in their hands. This created a strong incentive for early Shishosetsu authors to stay faithfully true to the reality of the events they were depicting, despite the fact that they were in actual fact writing fiction novels. The authors developed the voice of sincerity that now a hallmark of the genre almost out of self-defence.
A Short History of Shishosetsu
The earliest roots of the Japanese Shishosetsu genre are in the Heian women’s diaries, the “Kana Nikki” which were produced during the Heian court rule of Japan during the years spanning 794 through to 1185. At this time the literate noblemen of the Heian court disdained the native alphabet in favour of learning and writing in Chinese, which they perceived as being more sophisticated. Thus it was the ladies of the Heian-era court who created the first works of literature to be written in the Japanese tongue. The Kana diaries which were produced by the literate ladies of the Heian court were autobiographies arranged to be read as novels, in that they followed a central theme and left out details irrelevant to the progression of the narrative.(
2000, Haruno Shirane and Tomi Suzuki, Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature, Chapter 3 Pages 71-95, p82) So one could almost say that the practise of writing an autobiography disguised as fiction has been a genre in the Japanese literary tradition since its earliest beginnings.
The Kana Diaries of the Heian women finally achieved canon status as part of the Japanese literary tradition in the 1920s as “Nikki Bungaku”, or Diary Literature, came into vogue once again in Japan.(
Shirane and Suzuki, p71) At this time Doi Koichi, a noted Japanese scholar of English Literature, wrote a history of Japanese literature that categorised the Heian Kana Nikki and other Nikki Bungaku writings as being halfway between lyrical and narrative fiction. (
Shirane and Suzuki , p84) In his work Doi also highlighted a key characteristic of Shishosetsu and Nikki Bungaku writings, which is the strong sense of self-reflection on the part of the Author contained within the narratives.
The next person of note in the history of the Shishosetsu genre is a man named Ikeda Kikan, who was the first person to do an extensive, in-depth study of the Kana Nikki. His study lead him to develop a theory of a “Literature of Self-Reflection”(
Shirane and Suzuki, p85) based around the diary style of the Heian diaries. In this category he placed everything from diaries and letters to critical essays. He felt that for a piece of Diary Literature to be a good example of its type, it had to be past-oriented, spontaneous, contemplative and sincere.(Shirane and Suzuki , p85) He took a great dislike to the only Kana Nikki that was ever written by a man, as he felt that “it’s creative mode and self-reflection could not be regarded as genuine.”( Shirane and Suzuki , p85)
It wasn’t until the mid-1920s that the terms “Watakushi Shosetsu” (I-Novel) and “Shishosetsu” (Also ‘I-Novel’, a different reading of the same characters.) came into use. (
Shirane and Suzuki, p89) It was at this time that international and national debate began over how to define the genre. The Japanese literati attempted to make it clear that this was a continuation of a well-established, authentic Japanese literary Genre. The Western literati placed high value on pure fiction, and found it somewhat difficult to accept a literary form that recounted factual events from the author’s life and experience.(
Shirane and Suzuki, p89)
After the end of World War Two, the Shishosetsu genre and the collection of Heian Kana Nikki again came under scrutiny, and were labelled as a product of Japan’s “underdeveloped modernity”.(
Shirane and Suzuki, P91) It was also devalued as a genre because the narrative relied so closely on the Author’s own experience, as it was difficult for the Western literati to tell where fiction left off and recounting of real events from the Author’s own life began. The new Western-born readers of Shishosetsu considered it to be a fatal flaw if a novel could not stand independent of its Author.
Shishosetsu through Eastern and Western Eyes.
The Shishosetsu is a style of literature that is unique to Japan. However, that means it is the product of a unique cultural outlook and way of looking at the world that does not immediately or easily mesh with that of the West. The introduction of translated Shishosetsu works into the Western literature market has produced mixed reviews of both the individual texts and the genre itself. These reviews are the product of the culture and personal understanding of the reviewer, so naturally some are good, but these have almost been entirely outweighed by the initial reception and the circumstances under which the West was introduced to this particular product of Japan’s literary tradition.
Westerners love autobiographies. The juicer the scandal contained within its pages, or the more horrific the tragedy the author was involved in, the more we like them and the better they sell. One could therefore assume that if such a novel has been fine-tuned to provide really good scandal or tales of survival in the face of adversity it would be even MORE popular than such stories left with messy loose threads and a lack of closure. (When one writes the tale of one’s own life, one must still be alive and so the story is not yet actually finished.) However, this is not the case. Upon first picking up a Shishosetsu novel, many Westerners don’t know what kind of creature they have in their hands. It comes as a bit of a shock to them, then, to find that what they may have assumed was a bit of light romance or well-played period drama is actually something a lot closer to reality than they bargained for. They can feel cheated by the ‘Fiction’ label attached to such works, as the general confessional tone of the work is of something that should reside in the Non-Fiction section.
When a Japanese literary critic praises a Shishosetsu, what they praise is how closely it follows the actual events of the author’s life.(
Jonathon Delacour, 23rd April 2003, Shishosetsu and the Myth of Sincerity, http://weblog.delacour.net/archives/2003/04/shishosetsu_and_the_myth_of_sincerity.php) Japanese readers and critics treat the Shishosetsu as a Non-fiction work, despite the understood intent on the part of the Author that the text is to be classified as Non-Fiction.(
Delacour) A good Shishosetsu is supposed to narrate some portion of the author’s life, in the mode of a well-told confession. The Japanese literati consider any Shishosetsu novel that doesn’t provide some sort of honest glimpse into the author’s life to be substandard literature, or mere ‘popular entertainment’.(
Delacour) What you have, with a Shishosetsu, is a work of literature that uses a combination of fiction and non-fiction methods of storytelling to tell a story that is only fictional on the surface.
Within a Shishosetsu novel, methods of writing that have been traditionally considered separate in Western literary traditions are combined. An author of such a work draws from diary and essay forms as well as non-fiction forms to create a fictional retelling of an event the author actually experienced. (
Delacour) Because Japanese literature evolved in isolation from the rest of the world, nobody told them they couldn’t use fiction writing to confess events of their life or to create a work of fiction using methods of writing that are usually used to record factual happenings. Since Japanese authors weren’t told that it was an impossibility to mix genres like this, they went ahead and did so, creating in the process a genre unique to their country and culture.
The combination of literary contradictions contained within a Shishosetsu text can almost give a Westerner reading one the sense of being lied to in that the novel was labelled as fiction. This is interesting, as honesty of expression is considered a key component of a true Shishosetsu novel. Honesty is a prized character trait in Japan, originating in the Samurai code of Bushido which expected it’s adherents to be honest in all their dealing with their fellow man. While the events or theme of the text must stay true to life, it is honesty of expression that is considered the most important aspect of the work.
Another reason for such a seemingly odd form of fiction (From a Western Perspective) is that the traditional Japanese literati perceived a Western-style form of pure fiction to be essentially a pack of lies. Naturally, with the national passion for honesty there was intense stigma against pure fiction until Japan opened to the West. The Shishosetsu form of writing seems to have been a way the Japanese have created over the centuries to provide a form of light entertainment that, while superficially fictional, is still honest in the events and the recollections of such that the Author recounts.
A major problem with Western reception of the Shishosetsu has its roots in the long period of time in which Japan shut itself off from the world, and the circumstances under which it re-joined the international community. Throughout its history, Japan has looked up to more developed countries and freely imported what aspects of culture and technology they liked in order to increase their living standards at home. The most easily traceable example of this is borrowing the Chinese alphabet and adapting it to writing the Japanese language over the course of centuries.
At the end of the Second World War, when Japan was forced to lay down arms and re-join the global community in a peaceful and productive capacity, the most technologically advanced countries and societies were Westernised ones; chiefly America and Britain. In order to catch up with the rest of the world, Japan therefore had to import technology from Western countries. Along with the technology, the Japanese also imported a lot of Western culture. Along with their cultural importations came a variety of new methods of painting and writing as well as cinema, which they readily adopted and instantly began the process of making them their own. This massive importation of both technology and culture had the unfortunate side-effect of pushing Japan’s own literature and art aside, as they were stigmatized by being associated with Japan’s feudal era.
Many in the West then drew the conclusion from this that Japan’s own artistic scene was underdeveloped, unrefined or naturally inferior in comparison with that of the West. They assumed that if Japan’s own literature and art had been modern and sophisticated, they would not have been so easily pushed aside in favour of those from the West. This assumption ignores the fact that the world’s first novel was written by a lady of Japan’s Heian era, and that forms of artistic expression in Japan that had been perfected over centuries. Until the resurgence of interest in the Shishosetsu in the 1920s, Western literary critics perceived it to be merely a failed attempt at copying Western-style novel writing,(Delacour) and not a well-developed style of writing that had been around for centuries.
Conclusion
The Shishosetsu, in some form or another, has been a part of Japan’s literary tradition from its earliest inception. It has grown from the Kana diaries of the noblewomen of the Heian Court to become the essential core of literature for the entire Japanese nation.
A Shishosetsu text is far more complex than it seems on the surface, being a recounting of actual events as experienced by the author placed in a fictional setting. The combination of what Western literati may call ‘disparate’ writing styles contained within such a work creates an interesting and unique form of written entertainment.
Due to the different evolutions of literature and culture in Japan and the West and the circumstances of the two meeting, the Shishosetsu has not been given the merit it deserves on the Western stage. It may be that for a Westerner to come to read a Shishosetsu text as comfortably as someone born in Japan, they must first investigate the author and history of the work as would a Japanese fan of a given novel.
Bibliography
Hideyuki Tanabe, February 28th 2011, Mainichi Shinbun, http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/newsnavigator/archive/news/2011/02/20110218p2a00m0na019000c.html
Jonathon Delacour, 23rd April 2003, Shishosetsu and the Myth of Sincerity, http://weblog.delacour.net/archives/2003/04/shishosetsu_and_the_myth_of_sincerity.php
2000, Haruno Shirane and Tomi Suzuki, Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature, Chapter 3 Pages 71-95
1993, Karatani Kojin, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, Chapter 3 Pages 76-96
1996, Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Rituals of Self-Revelation: Shishosetsu as Literary Genre and Socio-Cultural Phenomenon.
/Wall of Text
Who feels educated? Confused? o.O;
If you now actually want to READ a Shishostesu, go to your library and pillage:
1)
Some Prefer Nettles, Junichiro Tanizaki
2)
The Sound of the Mountain, Yasunari Kawabata
That is about all I can remember off the top of my head as being referred to as Shishosetsu in class. Not that I went very often. . .
Ok, gonna go hang my washing out and start sorting out my tax return, since
Amaris Starshine was awesome enough to remind me! I should be owed a fair wee bit by now. . .
~Peri
