著者

山口 俊雄 山口 俊雄 狩野 啓子

出版者

愛知県立大学

雑誌

愛知県立大学文学部論集. 国文学科編 (ISSN:13425501)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.56, pp.135-152, 2007

著者

狩野 啓子

出版者

昭和文学会

雑誌

昭和文学研究 (ISSN:03883884)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.76, pp.222-224, 2018 (Released:2021-07-01)

著者

狩野 啓子

出版者

国文学研究資料館

雑誌

国際日本文学研究集会会議録 = PROCEEDINGS OF INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON JAPANESE LITERATURE (ISSN:03877280)

巻号頁・発行日

no.9, pp.58-69, 1986-03-01

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Ishikawa Jun made his debut as a novelist in 1935 with "The Beauty", having already forged his own literary methods from the works of such writers as Valéry, Alain and Gide. Ever since, he has been known for his acute explorations at the frontiers of modern literature. An outline of Ishikawa's literary views and methodologies can be found in his 1942 Notes on Literature. In 1941 he published the study Mori Ogai, another representative work of the prewar years. In fiction, his "Fugen" of 1937 won the fourth Akutagawa Prize, establishing his fame as a novelist.It was around this time that Ishikawa developed a strong interest in Ota Nampo, and devised his own original interpretation to the "Temmei (1781-1789) kyōka Movement."Nampo's name comes up first in "The Song of Mars"of 1938. In this short story, famous for having been banned on account of its warweary tone, Ishikawa has the "I" narrator relate his intense feelings of envy for Neboke Sensei (Nampo), who was able to cloak his public capacities while engaging in elegant pursuits. In his 1943 essay "Styles of Thought of the Edoite," Ishikawa places the Temmei Kyōka Movement in the context of so-called "haikai-ization," to him the most significant literary process of the entire Edo period. He interprets kyōka ("mad waka"), the most typical example of this process, as a "haikai-ization"of the Kokin Wakashū. And on the other hand, if kyōka represents a "haikai-ized" Kokinshū, he writes, kyōshi ("mad" Chinese verse) makes up a "haikai-ized, T'ang Shih-hsuan. In both cases he claims Ota Nampo to be at the center of the "movement."Excellent studies by Noguchi Takehiko, Yoshida Seiichi and others have appeared on the connection between Temmei kyōka and Ishikawa Jun around the time of "The Song of Mars". Here I would suggest that external circumstances alone did not bring Ishikawa to Nampo, but that he possessed within him from the start, as a firm cultural grounding, the literatus (bunjin) consciousness of "madness" (kyō).We can find manifestations of this spirit of "madness" already in his statements from the late Taishō period. In the context of the transition from early-modern to modern literature, Ishikawa's sense of "madness" beCáme melted with the imported movements of Anarchism and Dadaism.How might we consider his strong interest in Temmei kyōka through the second decade of Shōwa ? One finds repeated in the early works, from Fugen, efforts to maintain a lofty perspective from within one's position in the vulgar world, rather acrobatic attempts of the spirit to fly at low levels just above the ground. These experiments in exploration set out to perform the heavenly progress of Fugen, moving freely between the vulgar world and the sublime one, in words. I have suggested elsewhere that Ishikawa aimed at an unemotive, anti-lyrical prose style, erasing the "I" ness within him. I would point out here, however, that the problem of the elimination of "I"-ness is related to his appreciation of the posed anonymity of the Temmei kyōka movement. Beyond this, Ishikawa may have been drawn to Nampo as the creator of a fictional topos joining the lofty and the popular; Ishikawa stood firmly on a tradition of literatus spirit supported by "kyō. " As the writing of gesaku passed from the hands of bushi authors down to townsmen, the "popular" gradually shaded into the vulgar. Temmei kyōka established a fictional world, located in a separate dimension from real life, just one step before this "vulgarness". Certainly it is no surprise that Ishikawa should have befriended Ota Nampo.The most pressing problem for Ishikawa Jun at the end of Taishō, when he had revealed his penchant for absolute freedom, was the "movement of the spirit". Hence he declined to consider Nampo, or specific works of Temmei kyōka, individually, proposing rather a "movement" in toto. Nampo, close in cultural grounding to Ishikawa, was to be discoverd as part of the active process of "realising a yearning for the past." "Kyo",which worked as an opportunity to fix the direction of the self in the late Taishō years, came to surface dynamically in this period, as a movement or literary function.