Spiritualism and modernism in the work of Kawabata Yasunari

Abstract

Kawabata Yasunari held a deep interest in the study of spiritualism from his very youth. He demonstrates his knowledge of the field in his writing in a variety of ways, particularly in the short stories he published during the prewar period. Thus far, scholarship has considered Kawabata's relationship with spiritualism primarily in terms of his biography: there has yet to be a satisfactorily rigorous study taking into account historical context and his use of spiritualism as novelistic technique. This article analyzes Kawabata and spiritualism with respect to modernism by looking at the short stories ‘The Full White Moon’, ‘Requiem’, and ‘Lyric Poem’. This analysis will also help illuminate the diversity of Kawabata's approaches to modernism.     

创造超越死亡文学的新视点——川端康成新感觉派时期的文学主张

新感觉派运动在日本文学史上只是昙花一现,很快就消失了。但川端康成却被认为是完成新感觉主义的唯一的一位作家,获得了极高的评价。川端康成把新感觉派贯穿始终、成为新感觉派最为成功的作家的主要原因是:川端寄予新感觉派运动的期望主要是在思想方面。即在新的表现当中寻求人生新的救济、找到人类超越死亡的方法。这与新感觉派的其他成员一味地在感觉的表现当中寻求文学的意义从根本上不同。贯穿整个新感觉派时期的川端的文学理念是对人类生命的关注,是对人类超越死亡问题的关心。纵观川端的整个创作生涯,这也是川端文学的核心。     

川端康成文学中的传统文化情结

读日本作家川端康成的文学作品 ,会发现其故事情节的展开 ,往往与现实生活中某地真实的自然风貌或风土人情交织在一起。因此有些日本学者将此称之为“纪行性”表现手法。本文通过对《伊豆舞女》等几部作品中所表现出的“纪行性”因素的考察 ,尝试探讨该创作手法为作品带来的艺术效果和作家的审美情趣。     

川端康成小说创作的生态审美意识

生态审美观是20世纪70年代以后出现的新形态的审美观念。生态美学主张更为可行的“生态人文主义”与“生态整体主义”,兼顾人类发展与环境保护的和谐。川端康成虽是20世纪早期的一位作家,但在其作品中却超前性地具有“天人合一”的审美意识,在其小说创作中常以绚丽多姿的自然风光为背景,以丰富多变的季节转换为衬托,去展现无限生机的人性自然,塑造了一个个自然之子形象。同时,作者从整体主义思想出发,对现代工业文明对自然的破坏深感忧虑。他的生态审美意识既来自于对传统的继承,也是对传统的超越,对当代作家的创作及读者的审美倾向都具有启示作用。     

Kawabata's views of language and the postwar construction of a literary genealogy

Abstract

This paper shows the ways in which, in the immediate post-war period (1945–1951), Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972) reflected on his earlier, pre-war literary career and re-envisioned his postwar literary trajectory by constructing a new genealogy of the modern novel in Japan, in relationship to the intricate issues of the literary styles of the modern novel, ‘national language’ (kokugo), and the literary tradition. By examining his Shin bunshō tokuhon (New Guide to Literary Language, 1950), which presents Kawabata's past and present views of literary language, I will argue that Kawabata's changing views of language and literary style must be understood in the context of contemporary debates over national language policy and language reform movements. I will show the manner by which Kawabata formulated his views of language in dialogue with his two rival writers: Yokomitsu Riichi (1898–1947) in the prewar period and Tanizaki Junichirō (1886–1965) in the postwar period. As we shall see, the death of his close literary colleague Yokomitsu in 1947 and Tanizaki's unflagging literary exploration during and following the war prompted Kawabata to position himself in a genealogy of modern Japanese literary writers as well as in relationship to the linguistic and literary tradition of Japan.     

The collaboration of ‘ghostwriting’ and literature – the case of Kawabata Yasunari

Abstract: Kawabata Yasunari is Japan's first Nobel Prize recipient for literature and thus an emblem of the modern Japanese writer, but as this essay demonstrates, this writer's career, like that of so many throughout Japan's premodern and modern history, is spanned by the curious practice of ghostwriting. Taking up the specific case of Kawabata, the article exposes a wider conflict between the modern West's notion of the original artist, underwritten by its idea of individualized creativity, and modern Japan's persistent adherence to ghostwriting's more collaborative premodern concept of creativity. Subjecting fine-grained literary historical analysis to its far-reaching theoretical consequences for the modernness of modern literature, Japanese and otherwise, this essay shows how the spectre of Kawabata's ghostwriting haunts our contemporary, and therefore possibly anachronistic, understanding of ‘modern’ literary practice.     

Dandelions dancing in the snow

Abstract: This article is a translation of the keynote address delivered at the ‘Relire Kawabata au 21e siècle – modernisme et japonisme au-delà des mythes’ conference hosted by the Maison de la culture du Japon (Paris) and Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7 on 17–18 September 2014. It situates Kawabata Yasunari's late unfinished novel Tanpopo (Dandelions) within Japanese modernity and literary history, in particular drawing an array of connections between the work and the history of the rural northern mountain country of Japan.     

Kawabata and cinema: the ambivalence of knowledge,medium, and influence

Abstract

Many researchers have considered the involvement of Kawabata Yasunari in cinema and the medium's possible influence on his literature. Such approaches, however, tend to assume a definition of the motion pictures as visuality or montage that then influences Kawabata instead of first considering Kawabata's own conception of cinema, his own film theory. By analyzing his writings on film, including his film criticism, short stories involving cinema, and his involvement in the film A Page of Madness, this paper outlines Kawabata's conception of cinema and argues that he developed a portrait of cinema that posed it as a challenge to identity, perception and knowledge itself. Often associated with the female body, the movies became to Kawabata both an object of fascination and a threat, something ultimately to be controlled through literature and the literary subject. What influenced his literature was then perhaps this perception of cinema as posing an epistemic crisis. It is his ambivalence towards this challenge that can serve as a key for elaborating on Kawabata's complicated location within prewar modernism.     

Introduction: Kawabata Yasunari in the twenty-first century

Abstract: This introduction argues that there is a need to engage in a fresh re-reading of Kawabata Yasunari. It proposes several possible approaches, including using Kawabata as a model for understanding processes of literary canonization, a rethinking of his reception around the globe during the Cold War period, and a historicization of his work in relation to the various censorship regimes that existed in twentieth-century Japan. It also provides brief summaries of the articles contained in this special issue.