Transformations of Sensibility: The Phenomenology of Meiji Literature by Kamei Hideo & Michael Bourdaghs

Author:Kamei Hideo & Michael Bourdaghs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Shinjū as Misdeed: Love Suicides in Higuchi Ichiyō and Chikamatsu Monzaemon

TRANSLATED BY LEWIS HARRINGTON

In this chapter, Kamei traces through literary portrayals of suicide, from the passion-driven double suicides of Edo-period theater to the suicides of modern, alienated individuals in late Meiji fiction such as Shimazaki Tōson’s Spring and Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro. Kamei argues that these novels arose out of a critical reaction to a wave of earlier fiction that narrated love suicides, including Higuchi Ichiyō’s “Troubled Waters” and Hirotsu Ryūrō’s The Love Suicides at Imado. In examining the “philosophy of suicide “ harbored by Ichiyō’s story, Kamei argues that the key lies in its mobilization of a second-person narrator. The flow of narration moves seamlessly between various characters ‘ voices (especially since no punctuation is used to distinguish between speakers), weaving their distinct tones into the narration, yet also at the same time maintaining a distanced, effaced position. A dynamic tension between ground (narrative description) and figure (spoken dialogue) is maintained throughout, a technique whose origin Kamei traces to the Edo-period jōrun puppet plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Further ties to Edo-period theatrical genres are brought out through a comparison of Ichiyō’s appropriation of the different modes for relating body to voice that characterized jōruri and kabuki. Kamei concludes that what emerges in Ichiyō’s heroine is an embodied sensibility that perceives itself as an offense against the social order, but that nonetheless commits itself wholly to that offense, finally to the point of self-destruction.

Most likely, Genshichi asked Oriki to die with him and Oriki was unable to refuse. At least, Higuchi Ichiyō’s “Troubled Waters” (“Nigorie,” 1895) is written in a manner to allow such a reading.1 As Maeda Ai has vividly analyzed, this is because in Oriki’s feeling of ostracization, as if she had been completely cut off from this world, there is certainly “already the portent of a wretched death.”2

In the case of Hirotsu Ryūrō’s The Love Suicides at Imado (Imado shinjū, 1896), on the other hand, it is most likely the courtesan Yoshizato who proposes the double suicide.3 With the man she loves having returned to his hometown, Yoshizato lies crying in a room when Zenkichi enters. Zenkichi is a customer whom Yoshizato has repeatedly rejected. Zenkichi says he is visiting her for the last time; even if he wanted to, he will not be able to visit her again; and that being the case, he pleads, will she not be with him for just one night?4 Most likely Yoshizato intuits a certain resolve in Zenkichi’s words and allows him to stay in the brothel. She sells her clothes, borrows as much as money as she can from her friends in order to pay off Zenkichi’s bills, and finally throws herself into the Sumida River together with him.

What a truly miserable way to die!

Death is the only way for the man, Zenkichi, to transcend his oafishness. For the woman, however, the point is not that she loves this man, but rather that she is reduced to such dire

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