Made in Japan
HENRY TUBE
Footprints in the Snow Kenjiro Tokutomi, translated by Kenneth Strong (Allen and Unwin 65s) Grass on the Wayside Natsume Soseki, trans- lated by Edwin McClellan (Chicago Univer- sity Press 63s) Black Rain Masuji Ibuse, translated by John Bester (Quadriga Press 63s)
Kenjiro Tokutomi was an admirer of Tolstoy. In 1897 he published a Life of Tolstoy, regretting as he did so that his own life was so worldly compared to his subject's. Kenneth Strong's excellent introduction to his translation of Tokutomi's novel Foot- prints in the Snow (published in 1901) includes an account of the author's some- what comical visit to Yasnaya Polyana where, arriving early in the morning, he fell asleep on a bench in the garden to be woken up by Tolstoy tapping him on the shoulder. The visit seems to have been a series of such minor embarrassments, though it in no way dampened Tokutomi's enthusiasm for his host's way of life. The episode. small as it is, gains colour when one has read the novel, partly because the book's tone gives such a very clear impression of the author, partly because its subject-matter (which is semi- autobiographical) is the whole historical and social complex of which Tolstoy touched only the shoulder.
Tokutomi was born in 1868, the same year as Japan emerged from feudalism and, with the Meiji Restoration, set about catching up the advanced nations of the West. Footprints in the Snow, inspired by Tokutomi's reading of David Copperfield, follows the son of a bankrupt samurai in his efforts to re-establish the honour of his name and house but, on the principle that the journey not the arrival matters, it leaves him on the threshold of success, concentrating its three hundred odd pages on his upward-striving education in a variety of schools and universities. A parallel sub-plot shows a humble charcoal-burner blossoming forth as the enlightened owner of a mine, and it is this character who, in describing the rules by which his life has been governed, utters what may seem to the Western reader the classic Japanese maxim: 'What one man has done before, another can do after him'.
The novel's tension derives from the con- flicting claims on its characters of two mag- netic forces: the new ideas of the West and the old native traditions. The hero eagerly embraces Christianity, sea-bathing and Eng- lish literature, but he does it for the honour of 'The House of Kikuchi'. and though he conducts an idyllic love-affair quite in the Western manner, he arranges the ensuing marriage through the Japanese system of go- betweens. The crude fervour of parts of the text has dated, though the details of town and country life are fascinating in themselves to the foreign reader, who is likely to dis- cover also a quaint charm in the copious references to Oriental history and legend. particularly as expounded in Mr Strong's footnotes. Thus Tokutomi describes a scene in a schoolroom: 'Next to some fas- tidious calligrapher working at his characters, with brushes neatly stacked on his desk and bookbox to his right, a latter-day Wang Mang would be scratching himself with one hand . . .' While Mr Strong tells us that Wang Mang was: 'A Chinese recluse of the fourth century AD, remembered for the nonchalance and vigour with which he scratched himself for lice while discussing politics with a isiting warlord.' No doubt Wang Mang's views on politics were not to be sneezed at; no more is Tokutomi's picture of Meiji Japan, but it is finally less memorable than the scene at Yasnaya Polyana.
Natsume Soseki was born a year earlier than Tokutomi and like him struggled out of an unfortunate childhood to become an honoured and independent figure. He too had to pick his way between the Scylla of the West and the Charybdis of Japanese tradition. However, as anyone who has read The Three-Cornered World and especially Kokoro (both published by Peter Owen) will know, he is a writer to be judged by the highest standards. In his introduction to Crass on the Wayside, Soseki's last com- pleted novel, Edwin McClellan writes: 'One of the most curious aspects of the history of modern Japanese fiction after the turn of the century is the important place occupied by the autobiographical novel, which was made fashionable by the so-called naturalists who flourished at about the same time as SOseki. In their attempt to introduce realism into the Japanese novel, these "naturalists" were inclined to regard the novel as a means of describing their own experiences, to think 01 it more or less as an extended essay form.• And he goes on to suggest that Sciseki's pre- eminence is due to his more imaginative. more daring conception of realism.
SOseki seems to have been able to assimil- ate both his Western and his Japanese influ- ences without paying excessive dues to either. Though his stories arise out of the same reality as Tokutomi's. they create, after the fashion of all great writers, a new and com- pletely individual reality. Crass on the Way- side is, as it happens. Soseki's only auto- biographical novel, but it is not the 'facts' of this apparently slight, even trivial slice of family life which matter, but the way they are presented: the unerring instrumenta- tion of the scenes, the subtle resonance of false and true behind the immediate appear- ances, the unique timbre of every character, every one singing, but in irremediable dis- cord: 'It did her no good to love him. There was in her character something so ugly that he could never have returned her love. Un- wittingly, by trying so hard to draw him close to her, she had bared more of her ugly self than she had ever done to anyone else.'
There are few writers as sad as Soseki, per- haps because there are few who dare to treat relationships with such precision.
Masuji Ibuse was born thirty years after Tokutomi and Sciseki, at a time when the first frenzy of Western imitation was over and Japan had reverted to nationalism with
its victory over China. His documentary novel Black Ram describes in unemphatic detail the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, his own birthplace. The book, drawing extensively on eyewitness accounts, seems to belong to that Japanese fictional tradition, already noted, of sticking close to life, except of course, that the subject is so monstrous as to be scarcely recognis- able as life, but rather to be the sort of lurid nightmare one expects from surreal- ism or science fiction.
If one could think of the event as not having happened. I doubt whether the novel would be worth reading except by those who like tales of horror without much imagin- ation in the telling. As it is, imagination is the one thing which would be quite out of place and Mr Ibuse has most wisely put it to bed, leaving the appalling to speak for itself and contenting himself with the deli- cate business of arrangement and construc- tion. I would recommend Black Rain to every reader, even the squeamish, and above all to our beloved leaders, of whatever nationality, in the very forlorn hope that it might stir them to prove Tokutomi's host wrong about the law of historical necessity.
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