Frontier Within by Kobo Abe; Calichman Richard;

Author:Kobo, Abe; Calichman, Richard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LCO004000, Literary Collections/Asian, LIT008030, Literary Criticism/Asian/Japanese
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2013-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

III

In response to my novel Enomoto Buyō, people commented that “Abe Kōbō has now converted to historical fiction.” Of course such comments were made from the perspective of a negation of tradition, but the very notion of posing the traditional and nontraditional in oppositional terms is still non-sense, for this represents a mere reversal of traditionalism. Enomoto Buyō spent the turbulent years of the Meiji Restoration in Europe, which was then experiencing its own turbulence, and there he witnessed the final stages of the defeat of feudalism at the hands of the bourgeoisie. In Meiji Japan, Enomoto saw no opposition between the forces loyal to the Tokugawa and those who wished to restore power to the imperial court. The very notion that these forces were oppositional would likely have been incomprehensible to him. Enomoto had witnessed the process in which the collapse of the feudal system in Europe had given way to the formation and achievement of the modern state. He thus recognized the need to return to Japan and destroy the notion of loyalty, which is akin to the desire to climb a mountain simply because it is there. Such was my hypothesis when writing this novel. I tried to show through this hypothesis that the notion of loyalty is extremely relative, and that it might be possible for us to form organizations even without the mediation of loyalty. In other words, I sought to criticize the notion of loyalty that is brought forth as the all-purpose adhesive required for solidarity. I wondered if it were possible for organizations to exist that could incorporate antiloyalty, betrayal, and even ideological conversion—or even that negated and incapacitated the notion of ideological conversion itself.

As I wrote in my novel Tanin no kao [The Face of Another], the notions of “other” and “neighbor” coexist within us. We regard those people within the community as “neighbors” and those outside as “others.” The “other” is the enemy and the “neighbor” an ally. In declaring that “the other is also a neighbor,” Christianity allows the notion of the “neighbor” to impact the “other,” destroying its barriers. This is quite similar to the techniques employed by the Meiji emperor and government following the upheaval. In other words, what one sees here is the attitude of “Well done, my enemy. I’ve got to congratulate you.” The notion of loyalty to emperor and state came into being during the Meiji period, for until that time loyalty was restricted to one’s feudal lord. In the journal Shisō no kagaku [The Science of Thought], I found a fascinating account of something that had been over-heard. Apparently there were still people in the Kyushu countryside who not only had never heard of the emperor but even could not imagine the existence of anyone in Japan more illustrious than the feudal lord of Shimazu. According to this view, “The great lord of Tokugawa also exists, but he rules over an area that is quite far away. Around here, of course, the lord of Shimazu is still the most illustrious.

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