SFU English 380: Mutilation and Foreign Relations in the Japanese Novel

More on Wiki Dangers

2005-12-06T16:37:00.000-08:00

Contra the use of Wikipedia for scholarly research, read this NYT article on "Rewriting History: Snared in the Web of a Wikipedia Liar."

Course Reflection

2005-12-02T02:36:00.000-08:00

Now that the lecture series is over you are occupied writing your term papers: these will reflect your engagement with the ideas that the texts and the lectures have introduced you, and hopefully been an intellectual benefit, to.

Because you have compleated your course evaluations, I am free to say how much I have enjoyed this term: I honestly looked forward to every class and I'm sure I will remember all your contributions for many, many years.

I hope to teach this course again, and so I would love to know how I can improve. If you have opinions in that regard which you could not give full enough expression to on the evaluation forms, please take a moment or two, once your papers are compleated, to remember us and return here and add your analysis, suggestions, complaints, &c (anonymously, of course), to this post.

Again, my sincere thanks: I hope you all stay in touch:

Mina-san, Sayonara - anata-tachi wa totemo subarashii desu. Arigato gozaimasita!"

Group Blog Project

2005-12-02T02:32:00.000-08:00

I've now taken an electronic snapshot of each of your group blogs. Please keep them running: I will be analying the live version and checking your links, reading your profiles, &c. You are welcome to keep posting past the due date -- to keep in contact, add interesting items, etc.

Can you believe I get paid for this?

The "Noh Mask Effect"

2005-11-30T22:17:00.000-08:00

I found this web page showing an effective moving three-dimensional graphic of the noh mask effect - the capability of a fixed mask representing different emotions in the control of a skilled actor.

Civilisation Fundamentals

2005-11-28T22:40:00.000-08:00

The course thesis that civilisations each have their unique identity -- essentially, a set of assumptions, virtues and traditions -- which is accepted unconsciously by its members and is absolutely untranslatable, receives incidental support from a CNN article, here, treating the aftermath of the recent Al Qaeda bombings of hotels in Jordan.
The article reports that:

Family members of Jordanian-born al Qaeda in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have renounced the terror leader, telling King Abdullah II on Sunday that they would "sever links with him until doomsday."

Setting aside here any matters of content relative to Islamic terrorism, the relevant point for our course is the reason why al-Zarqawi has been cut off by his tribal family now and not for any of his previous acts of terror. In a phrase, al-Zarqawi has in this case violated a value fundamental to the identity of the wider tribal culture whichto which he belongs by birth. The article gives a specific quotation from his family group which states the violation in its own cultural terms:

"A Jordanian doesn't stab himself with his own spear," they wrote. "We sever links with him until doomsday."

"Geisha" & Cultural Translation

2005-11-28T19:11:00.000-08:00

Regarding the motion picture that Tina linked us to as part of her presentation on geisha, one review after its recent release is headlined "Geisha' loses Japanese nuances on big screen" -- which, after our current course, we could have predicted ....

Group Blogs

2005-11-24T14:26:00.000-08:00

We'll use this post as a place to broadcast our class' group blog URLs. Now that everyone is confident about what they are doing, no-one will mind others scoping their blog.

When you do visit another group's blog, why not leave them a comment to say you've been, and any compliments and suggestions that you may have. That would be blogosphere synergy: an aggregate of individuals improving the quality of the larger system.

Bleg

2005-11-19T09:59:00.000-08:00

I remember saying in the hurly-burly of Thursday's seminar discussion that I would blog a couple of passing points. I cannot, alas, bring to mind what they were. Can any one of you recall?

Group Project Workshop

2005-11-19T00:15:00.000-08:00

In our second hour this coming Tuesday we will move to the Assignment Lab in the W.A.C. Bennett Library, room 2105, for a workshop on your Group Project and on related library research methods. I will be available to answer questions, give advice on blogging, and examine and critique your progress to date.

Here is a link or three to some blogging of mine on How to Blog Effectively.

Final Paper Criteria

2005-11-17T14:20:00.000-08:00

The term paper, thirty-five hundred words long independent of footnotes, has an open topic based on your literary analysis of any two or more of our required or recommended Course texts. Your collective engagement with the course material is strong and varied and would be emasculated or emammalated by pre-set topics. In order to ensure that your individual topic is strong, concise and workable, everyone must have his or her thesis statement validated by me, in writing, on or before Thursday November 24th at the conclusion of my Office Hours.
You can consult with me in my office (AQ6095) both during regular Office Hours or by appointment, where I will also willingly go over your thesis paragraph with you. I am also available by e-mail right up to the deadline on specific points of refinement.

Update: Remember to send me e-mail from your SFU account only.
Update II: I have decided to extend the deadline four days until midnight December 5th. The arrangement agreed upon to balance the effects of the CUPE job action on the mid-term paper deadline is in effect. Please verify with me individually your status in this regard.

Blog Use in Academia

2005-11-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

An excellent & concise blog entry from EdTechPost detailing "some uses of blogs in education" here. I recommend it highly as an excellent introduction to the ways in which blogging will, to a virtual certainty, become integrated into university practice to the same degree as e-mail, on-line registration, and digitised databases are now.
Click the diagramme below for a full-size version of the author's matrix of some of the possible uses of blogs in education.

Sunday Funnies Out: Manga In

2005-11-08T09:02:00.000-08:00

From AOL News:

TOKYO (Nov. 7) - "Doonesbury" and "Peanuts," make way for "manga." Come January, the Sunday funnies of several major North American newspapers will have doe-eyed women in frilly outfits, effeminate long-haired heroes and other trademark images of the Japanese comic style. The reason? Newspaper editors want to attract more young readers. A study released earlier this year by the Carnegie Corporation put the age of newspaper readers at 53 and climbing - hardly a recipe for circulation growth. More here >>.

Will Japan Accept a Female Monarch?

2005-11-03T14:47:00.000-08:00

TOKYO AP Oct 25, 2005 — An advisory panel on Japan's monarchy will propose allowing women to ascend the throne, the chairman said Tuesday, in a boost to a measure that has broad support in Japan and could relieve pressure on the imperial family to produce a male heir.

Full story here.
The inability of the Japanese Royal family to produce a male heir -- also, a robust male heir -- is an unspoken anxiety among the Japanese nationalist cults.

Update: Nope! Looks like the Japanese Royal establishment is clamping down on the side of absolute andrarchy

TOKYO (Reuters) - A cousin of Japan's Emperor Akihito has questioned proposals to allow a woman to ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne, urging that other options such as reviving pre-war princely houses and the practice of royal concubines, should be onsidered first to maintain the male imperial line.

Ultra-Tradition - Sumo - & Blondes?

2005-11-03T10:09:00.000-08:00

I introduced in lecture Tuesday, regarding the work of our present author Banana Yoshimoto, the nihonjinron group - an intellectual and literary movement which claims that Japanese people and culture are not just unique in relation to the world but "uniquely unique."
To help explain, I gave by way of analogy some examples of Japanese justifying their economic policy of protectionism in regard to international balance of trade: "Canadian beef cannot be digested by Japanese stomachs," for instance. An article in today's Washington Post, here, includes a wonderfully pertinent case of Japanese reacting to foreigners joining their Sumo wrestling leagues. Read the whole article, but one quotation is perfect:

But in a nation where outsiders are still regarded with unease, the stream of foreigners invading the most Japanese of sports -- and one whose rituals are strongly tied to the domestic Shinto religion -- has generated both controversy and backlash. Critics contend that the new European stars have longer arms and legs and allege that this gives them an unfair advantage. The huge growth in foreign-born pros led officials in 2002 to impose a limit of only one foreign wrestler per sumo stable. Some stables, all of which are permitted to be owned and operated only by Japanese citizens, maintain private policies barring foreigners.

Guest Speaker Tuesday, Nov 8th

2005-11-03T00:20:00.000-08:00

Our next guest speaker is scheduled for next Tuesday, November the 8th. Robert Mustard will speak to us on the differences in fundamental assumptions between the anglosphere and Japan, and on the history and spirit of Japan as it is reflected in the uniquely pacifist Japanese martial art Aikido.
Mustard is the world aikido master; having spend over twelve years in Japan as sensei at the main Yoshinkan Dojo in Tokyo. As presented in lecture, Mustard is an important character in Newdigate Prize winner Robert Twigger's essential book on the the relationship between Japan and the anglosphere, Angry White Pyjamas: A Scrawny Oxford Poet Takes Lessons From The Tokyo Riot Police.

"Literally" in Translation

2005-11-02T14:25:00.000-08:00

Last lecture I put strong emphasis on precise speech. One of the greatest challenges to translation, & perhaps the most widely convincing evidence for indeterminacy in translation, is vague or loose speech or writing.
Umberto Eco is a writer, theorist, critic and translator of renown. He has this to say about translation:

The job of translation is a trial and error process, very similar to what happens in an Oriental bazaar when you are buying a carpet. The
merchant asks 100, you offer 10 and after an hour of bargaining you agree on 50.

Given the essential instability of the tokens of exchange in the translation market, the more crucial the integrity of their original minting - i.e. the need to choose the word that most closely matches your specific thought.

Translation, in fact, takes place at its original stage entirely within the individual. The process is this. The individual has a thought and wants to express it. Both in oral and written expression, there is a process that the individual goes through -- in its extreme form, experienced when writing as writer's block and in speech as stage fright -- which involves a negotiation between the idea and one's store of words & phrases. In other words, translation occurs between idea and word. This can also be described as a translation between inner and outer: between one's ideas & intentions and then the one's interloctor(s)' s understanding.

In this also, the specificity of the word is vital. The challenges are great: as indicated in this article -- or, perhaps better, this audio essay - by Jesse Sheidlower, an Editor-at-Large for the Oxford English Dictionary, in which he argues that "literally" is not to be used literally. (For what [little] it is worth, I think the argument is misguided, though cogent and erudite.)

Indeterminacy of Translation Revisited

2005-11-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

Today's lecture built on last Tuesday's introduction to translation theorist Naoki Sakai. Last week detailed the individual problem of the translator's necessarily paradoxical subject status - an addressor but not the addressee's addressor, and an addressee but not the addressor's addressee - which Sakai incorporates into his larger thesis of the fundamental problematic of radical subjectivity in translation. Today, the subjectivity problematic was applied on the larger, national, level. Sakai's theoretics, which have similarities to Michel Foucault insistence that bureaucratic departments create rather than serve systems of knowledge, develop the argument that the nation of Japan and the Japanese ethnos are both constructs of scholars and bureaucrats who initiated projects to translate the set of dialects, languages and cultures clustered on the "Japan" archipelago between China (in the Heian era) and between England and America (in the Meiji era.)

For Sakai, "Japan" is defined as that unity which stands in a translational relationship to another linguitically-identified unity. Likewise, "Japanese History" is entirely "that which arises from the activity in Departments of Japanese Studies." Accordingly, Japanese nationalism is explained as a reaction to the insecurity engendered by the inescapable indeterminacy in translation -- i.e. in the very genesis of "Japan" -- that affirms an (artifically) strong nation-hood with a degree of strength that matches, and thus cancels, the degree of insecurity-indeterminacy.

The individual student will evaluate this metaphyic according to his or her own lights. My position is that, for an instance, it is indeed true that the category or the concept of "English Language and Literature" was created when Oxford University began that programme and that faculty early in the past Century. However, the elements of English Literature -- the books, authors, readers and bibliographia -- and the English language had definite ontological status before they were conceptualised. So, it is false, not to say peurile, to argue, for instance, that English Language and Literature were created in Georgian Oxford, though it is true to say that "English Language and Literature" was.

This in the end is simply to say that we are here re-visiting the Scholastics' debate between nominalism and realism -- the age-old problem of universals.

Pictures from Nitobe (to Music.)

2005-10-31T02:59:00.000-08:00

Classfellow Raymond has uploaded pictures he took during our field trip to Nitobe Gardens here. You will also find audio clips of traditional Japanese music on his file list. They are all very well done, and some of them are absolutely stunning. Click on this sample picture for the full effect.

Arigato Gozaimashita, Raymond-san.

More Nitobe Photography

2005-10-30T14:58:00.000-08:00

The SFU Librarian who accompanied us on our Nitobe tour also took pictures and send us this as her most evocative shot of Nitobe Garden's Japanese aesthetic.

Cha-no-yu

2005-10-26T00:09:00.000-07:00

Amanda has kindly posted the visuals from her presentation on the cha-no-yu, here.

Group Project Update

2005-10-25T14:59:00.000-07:00

You should have your group blog well up and running at this point in the term.

All group members should have two or three preliminary posts each and a growing level of familiarity with blogger.com

Blog posts do not have to be long, nor need they be discursive. At a rough estimate, three posts per week per person is a good average, and only one of these every two weeks need be significantly lengthy - that is, an extended reflection on some aspect of your blog focus. Shorter posts can be done in an idle five, ten or fifteen minute break among regular computer time.

You will be graded on the variety, frequency, even distribution among group members, relevancy, and imagination of your posts. Simply make a note when an idea or connection arises related to your theme and them make a quick blog entry.

In five years or so, students will be blogging frustrations, excitements, and requests for collaborative assistance while writing course assignments ....

Less Wiki more Encyclo

2005-10-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

(Even more) problems with wiki-(grimace)-pedia detailed here. The Encyclopedia Brittanica was good enough for Sherlock Holmes .....

Field Trip This Week

2005-10-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

A reminder that we have our Field Trip to Nitobe Gardens this week, on Thursday. The class treasurer asks me to remind you to bring your five dollar contribution to our feast to Tuesday's lecture.
I will be leaving for the Gardens at 11:20 precisely from the "L" lot, behind the W.A.C. Bennett Library, and can take five more people.

Good news: Instructor Wrong

2005-10-21T01:08:00.000-07:00

I'm glad to report that I spoke wrongly in lecture today: I was not wrong in the Japanese title of Silence: it is Chinmoku.

So, it is right that I was wrong that was wrong so I was right.

Milton's Satan & Mizoguchi's Hell

2005-10-20T14:41:00.000-07:00

These lines from Book I of Milton's Paradise Lost express Satan's idea that Hell is a state of mind:

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

What matter where, if I be still the same ....
This is what Mishima surely has in mind with Kashiwagi's remark that "Beautiful scenery is Hell, ins't it?" and elsewhere.

Mid-Term Deadline Change

2005-10-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

The Department's position on Friday's planned political protest around issues of the Public School teachers' present illegal strike supports an extension of our mid-term essay deadline until Monday midnight: i.e. October 25th, 00:05.

Accordingly, to ensure fairness, for those classmembers who have already handed their mid-term essays in, I will extend for them them deadline for the Final Paper commensurately.

I'm looking forward to reading all your papers: I am eager to see and learn from your responses to, and scholarly developments of, our course themes and issues.

Clint Eastwood on the Course Thesis

2005-10-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

Via Sydney Morning Herald:

The movie legend Clint Eastwood is making two new films about the World War II battle for the island of Iwo Jima, one from the US point of view and the other from the Japanese side .... In a rare move in Hollywood, the counter-balanced movies will be released simultaneously late next year.

More here.

Mid-Term Essay Revised Deadline

2005-10-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

A reminder for you that the extended deadline for your mid-term essay is 00:05, Saturday October 22nd -- i.e. five minutes past midnight on Friday night -- in my mailbox at the Department.

Willard Van Orman Quine

2005-10-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

A good presentation of Quine's "gavagai" thought experiment is here.

The argument is in Quine's Word & Object, on Course Reserve.

Update: Thomas Nagel's article is on-line here (as well as being on Course Reserve.)

Japan's PM War Memorial Controversy

2005-10-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

On Japan, its history & Shintoism.
Via cnn.com:

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi prayed on Monday at a Tokyo war shrine that Asian critics say glorifies Japan's past militarism, in a visit likely to anger the country's neighbors. Japan's 2.5 million war dead are worshipped as deities at Yasukuni Shrine, which belongs to Japan's native Shinto religion. They include convicted war criminals executed by the Allies after World War II, such as wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.

Japanese court rules the visit is illegal. And South Korea protests.

Mid-term Paper

2005-10-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

I am, of course, available for consultation on your mid-term paper in my scheduled Office Hours, or by appointment. For instance, I will read and rigorously edit your thesis paragraph and read and make suggestions on your second paragraph, in person.

Guest Speaker

2005-10-11T14:27:00.000-07:00

We have our first guest speaker during Thursday's class: Toshimi Ono, the Director of SFU's Japanese Culture & Communication Program.
Ms. Ono is an excellent person to whom you can address any questions about Japanese culture following her talk which will give an overview to Japan as the Japanese see it.

Presentations

2005-10-11T14:24:00.000-07:00

The individual presentations so far have been admirably informative: successfully increasing our knowledge of some vertical aspects of Japanese culture past & present. Moreover, each of them has done some aspect of presentation technique very well. As mentioned in the assignment post, one doesn't go too far in one's future career, amateur or professional, without needing to give a short, sharp, pointed presentation.

- Melani included video footage that perfectly demonstrated her argument.
- Louise put an actual flower arrangement front & centre throughout her presentation on ikebana, providing a vivid yet unobtrusive visual anchor.
- Tina wisely selected a singular focus on geisha for its specific appeal to a contemporary Western audience: to wit, the popular misconception that geisha are prostitutes.
- Barb pirouetted with flair at the conclusion of a technical presentation on modern Japanese politics by her canny and engaging connection to the central theme of the current course text.
- Karen found a visual for perhaps the most salient feature of her topic -- manga -- and projected images of four distinct types of modern Japanese in the ubiquitous custom of reading manga on public transit.
- Grace designed her presentation on hikikomori with admirable academic form around her own thesis on the cause of the disturbing cultural phenomenon among young males in modern Japan.

I know that equally effective presentations are upcoming from our superlative class ....

Nitobe Gardens

2005-10-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

Follow this link to the Nitobe Gardens: I will have a date shortly for our field trip and Japanese-food feast.
For those who are not close enough to UBC to make a direct trip efficient, a carpool would seem to be the preferred option of travel. I can take six people: please add your vehicle capacity in the comments section. Perhaps carpool drivers (me excepted) could be made exempt from the collection of funds (a fiver each?) for our feast on the day?
A volunteer treasurer is needed for this event .....

Mid-Term Assignment

2005-10-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Write two thousand words on one of the following:

1.] In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Yukio Mishima portrays the absolute alienation of the acolyte Zen monk Mizoguchi. In an important passage Mizoguchi, the book’s narrator, describes his fellow acolyte Tsurukawa as his “translator”. Explain fully, first, what Mizoguchi means by this in the context of the story; and, second, how Mishima’s use of the concept illuminates the impossibility of radical translation (in Quine's and Nagel's sense) between Japanese and Western civilisations.

2.] Shusaku Endo’s imaginative retelling in Chinmoku of the violent persecution of early Japanese Christians and foreign missionaries states the conclusion that all Western ideas will eventually be sucked under and engulfed by the “swamp of Japan”. Discuss how that phrase integrates with the novel as a whole. Concentrate your discussion on Endo’s skillfully ambiguous portrayal of the dialectic between Rodrigues and Inoue, presenting in detail your analysis of how the novelist’s own voice speaks in one or both of the characters.

3.] Concentrating exclusively on Sei Shonagon’s reflections on nature – the landscape, the weather, trees and plants, the ocean – interpret her Pillow Book as being a foundational text for the development of mono no aware in Japanese culture. In your analytical interpretation, incorporate an argument for the contribution of its commonplace book form to this wider aesthetic.

Memoirs of a Geisha

2005-10-05T00:23:00.000-07:00

From our informative presentation today, the link for the trailer to the upcoming movie Memoirs of a Geisha is here.

On Reserve

2005-10-01T01:30:00.000-07:00

For your personal research, I have The Japanese Today by Reischauer & Jansen. Section 3, "Society" includes chapters entitled:

The Group
Relativism
Hierarchy
Women
Religion
Mass Culture

As they say, "FYI".

Individual Presentation: Time Limit Relaxed

2005-09-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

In interests of extending one person's request fairly to all, the time limit on the individual presentation assignment is now five minutes minimum and ten minutes maximum.
There will be no effect on grading for your preference of length beyond the five minute minimum.

Burnaby Sabi

2005-09-30T22:31:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from local artistic photographer, and SFU Librarian, Norma Marier evoke the sense of accident, flaw and deep time that Japanese have refined to the aesthetic of sabi. The sabi-ness is intensified, in Marier's vision, by their place relative to urban density.

Group Project Criteria

2005-09-30T21:37:00.000-07:00

The Group project is designed to be straightforward, enjoyable, and beneficial. Each group will create and maintain a Web Log about one of the course primary texts.

You have now completed the blogger tutorial and have been assigned to a Group.

The manner of approach to, and treatment of, your text is entirely for your Group to decide. This assignment offers you the opportunity to enhance, challenge or re-invent the specific focus of both the lectures and your seminar discussions.

The grading criteria are the scope, originality, inventiveness and literary insight of the accumulated blog entries. Technical proficiency will not be graded, but of course you are free to use any mechanical technique you wish. I will publish all the Groups' blog addesses on the Course blog and you are encouraged to solicit advice & criticism from the whole class throughout the course of the semester. Open collaboration is one great strength of blogging: some scholars, for instance, post parts of articles or even books in the blogosphere for criticism and correction before publication.

Of course, I am available for expert consultation: in person during Office Hours, and online most times.

Because this is a Group project, you will find that synergy will soon animate and enlived the assignment. I offer the suggestion that each Group assign responsibilities to members based on individual proficiencies and preferences. For instance, in principle, only one member need do the mechanics of posting the collaborative entries. There will be one group grade for all members.

I will take a snapshot of your blog on the day of the last seminar of the term and use that for grading: however I will look in regularly throughout the term as a means to, shall we say, encourage you not to leave the whole enterprise until the last minute. The experience of blogging regularly for a couple of months will, I believe, be its own benefit to you down the years.

Group Project: (non-)Technology

2005-09-29T14:59:00.000-07:00

I'd just like to reiterate the fact that the Group Project requires no special technical expertise. Blogging requires the same amount of technical expertise as using MS Word and an e-mail programme.

The content of your group blog is the assignment's sole grading criteria - the amount, substance and inventiveness of it. For fun's sake, some may prefer to add bells & whistles, but these will receive no weight in grading.

The byword here, I believe, is enjoyment: it is an opportunity for you to take a creative approach to the academic understanding of one a course text.

Individual Presentations

2005-09-28T14:40:00.000-07:00

Your individual presentation assignment is deliver a five-minute presentation based on research into a specific aspect of the Japanese civilisation that interests you and which may illuminate our reading of the course texts. Your final cause is the improvement of our understanding and the increase in our appreciation of the civilisation that produced the literature we are studying. After the presentation you will hand in your research notes to the instructor for consideration in the grading of the assignment.

Update: please feel free to use any types of aid, media or format that you prefer. The only criterion in this regard is effectiveness.
Update 2: again, the specific format of your presentation is for you to decide. If I might offer a recommendation, one effective method would be to use the last minute of your presentation to state your opinion on the connection of your chosen topic to the literature of our period.
Update 3: the five minute time limit will be strictly enforced - from both sides. This is a discipline that will prove effective in many future practical applications.
Update 4: another recommendation is that you use the opportunity to develop your oral presentation skills. Design and incorporate techniques which give your presentation its greatest effectiveness. As always, of course, I am available for consultation ...

The choice of topic is entirely up to you: your only criterion in addition to that of relevancy as stated above is that you find it intriguing.

Select your topic from these given below, or chose your own.
Enter your choice in the comments section of this post.

ikebana (flower arrangement)
Mito Komon: a Japanese hero
tea ceremony
Japanese gardens
sushi & sake
marriage in Japan: then & now
karoshi (death by overwork)
sumo
Rape of Nanking
geisha: the flower & willow world
the Edo period
The Heian Age
genji monogatari
teen suicides
hierarchy in Japan
seppuku
kanji & calligraphy
politics - the Jiminto
the ultra-right & ultra-left in Japan
racial purity policies
caste system: the buraku
Japanese World War II militarism
anime
manga
Kyoto
Hiroshima & Nagasaki
Ameterasu: Japan's creation myth
hanami: cherry blossom season
colour symbolism in Japan
Momotaro & Omusub Kororin: Japanese folk tales
[To be Continued]

The Rape of Nanking

2005-09-28T14:29:00.000-07:00

As you heard in lecture, our present author, Endo Shusaku, was the first major novelist in Japan to confront the wartime atrocities. His novel The Sea and the Poison is based on the vivisection of captured American airmen in World War II. This question is addressed in Silence where it is fictionally re-written into the Edo period: Endo's novels insist that his Japanese readers address the war crimes issue directly.

The issue reached Vancouver this year: in May hundreds of protesters marched to the Japanese consulate to, unsuccessfully, present a petition urging that the Japanese government stop the revision of school textbooks to eliminate mention of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.

Johns Hopkins magazine has a detailed article on Iris Chang and her study into The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (BasicBooks / HarperCollins, 1997) here.

Terribly, Chang killed herself in 2004, only 36 years of age, after suffering depression, seemingly brought on by her perpetual research into Japanese wartime atrocities: she left unfinished at her death a study into the Bataan death march.

A (grisly) slideshow is available here.

Japanese Gardens

2005-09-28T14:22:00.000-07:00

For the classfellow interested in Japanese landscaping, I found a good web page about "Creating Zen Gardens."

On puzzlement

2005-09-19T14:48:00.000-07:00

The feelings of puzzlement that many of you have expressed to me over the ideas presented in lecture is not a bug: it's a feature!
The intention is to allow you to encounter a foreign civilisation .... as a foreign civilisation. The (to me unsatisfactory) alternative is to intellectually colonise the other civilisation - to facilely experience that culture as if it were merely an exotic outpost of one's own. The following passage from C.S. Lewis, concerning the reading of old books, applies nicely, mutatis mutandis, to these two alternatives:

There are, I know, those who prefer not to go beyond the impression, however accidental, which an old work makes on a mind that brings to it a purely modern sensibility and modern conceptions: just as there are travellers who carry their resolute Englishry with them all over the Continent, mix only with other English tourists, enjoy all they see for its 'quaintness', and have no wish to realise what those ways of life, those churches, those vineyards, mean to the natives. I have no quarrel with people who approach the past in that spirit. I hope they will pick none with me. But I was writing for the other sort.

Thus, puzzlement is the necessary early consequence of giving Japanese civilisation the dignity of unique identity. Fairly quickly, however, your experiential engagement with Japanese literature will (all too quickly) provide the natural and certain effect of familiarity.

Classfellow on "no-mind"

2005-09-19T14:44:00.000-07:00

I received an intriguing email from a classfellow wrestling with the no-mind concept within the Japanese aesthetic. Here is a selection from it - the comparison with problems solved in sleep is very apposite:

When I hear the term “no mind” or “empty mind” my western mind thinks it describes the condition of being disconnected: “out” of one’s mind, lost in daydreams, illusions, or terrifying disorientation. The idea of no mind seems frightening. Yet my understanding is that “no mind” is an approximate translation of an inexpressible experience of deep connection rather than disconnection. Paradoxically “no mind” is connection of self with the world, free of the disjointed, crazed activity of one’s mind separating one from experience. In retrospect, the person describes the experience of “no mind” as without ego, because at the time of the activity there is no awareness of a separate identity. Someone who leaps into traffic to snatch a child from the path of a truck may be manifesting no mind. It is as if one’s ego based self and the activity align completely. The universal and individual merge to such an extent that the individual has a sense of disappearing as a distinct, separate entity. In sport, as you said, it is being in the “zone.” In art, the artist captures the essence of form and experience without their own constructs of how something should look or be. Even in unimpeded thought, such as when a mathematician resolves a problem in a dream. His mind is working without obstacles and free of his own concept of how it should work. Sometimes one senses it in a confidante who listens completely without distractions, judgments, or expectations. One experiences the complete attention of the other, who is not waiting to jump in with their own thoughts or directives of “shoulds,” “coulds,” and “ought to’s.” Rather than “no mind” meaning mindless disconnection it is a term that attempts to describe profound connection with the world.

Japanese Names

2005-09-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

An excellent article on Japanese personal names by a creditable scholar here.

Lectures: Translation & Japanese Aesthetic

2005-09-13T14:29:00.000-07:00

As you have hopefully noticed, I am studiously avoiding the use of Western labels in my introduction and explanation of Japanese aesthetic concepts. This is consistent with two of the course axioms I have presented in lecture and here on the blog: one, that Japan and the West are two distinct civilisations, each with its own exclusive fundamental assumptions; and two, that translation -- even radical translation -- is indeterminate.

Some of you have offered on your own very good labels for some of the concepts: "pastoral" and "symbol" are two examples. And, indeed, some of the elements of the overarching aesthetic seem to have an easy Western description. What I am detailing, with some labouriousness, as "the positive presence of absence" is very temptingly similar to the Euclidic concept of gnomon, popularised by literary scholarship of James Joyce (from "The Sisters" story in his Dubliners) as indicating absence.

My general objection to this is that once this type of translation is done, then Japan disappears: it is just one more Western colony. Terms like gnomon and lacuna and pastoral have very powerful cultural -- or, better, civilisational -- history, meaning and resonance; none of which apply to Japan. There is superficial similarity but if the concept is pegged to a Western idea then the meaning in Japan is obliterated.

Better to sustain a fresh and open approach and hope for some moment of "no-nous" which will give the thrill of perceiving the literary material with a Japanese sensibility for just a flash: a precious, precious flash.

Japan Election News

2005-09-11T09:08:00.000-07:00

An informative AP report here on the current national election in Japan gives helpful information on the country's unique political situation.

Update: This article also has some insightful information on the contemporary political system in Japan. But in light of the headline - "Koizumi Win in Japan Hurts 2-Party System" - and consider what it reveals about the writer's attitude toward the people of Japan (as represented by their collective democratic decision.)

無心 or "No-nous"

2005-09-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

The positive presence of absence in the Japanese aesthetic extends to mind. In martial arts, the term used is mushin [ 無心 ]: in English "no-nous." [A strict translation of the kanji is "vacant heart" - "heart" in this sense approximating nous in English: i.e. OED: Considered as the centre of vital functions: the seat of life; the vital part or principle; hence in some phrases = life."]
The following from Albert M. Craig's The Heritage of Japanese Civilisation is an excellent precis of the larger concept.

The Arts and Zen Buddhism
Zen Buddhism in Japan developed a theory of art that influenced every department of high medieval culture. Put simply, the theory is that intuitive action is better than conscious, purposive action. The best painter is one so skilled that he no longer needs to think of technique but paints as a natural act. Substitute a sword for a brush, and the same theory applies: a warrior who has to stop to consider his next move is at a
disadvantage in battle. To this emphasis on direct, intuitive action is added the Zen distinction between the deluded mind and the "original mind." The latter is also referred to as the "no mind," or the mind in the enlightened state. The highest intuitive action proceeds from such a state of being. This theory was applied, in time, to the performance of the actor, to the skill of the potter, to archery, to flower arrangement, and to the tea ceremony. Compare the following two passages, on by Seami (1363-1443), the author of many No plays, and the other by Takuan Soho (1573-1645), a famous Zen master of the early Tokugawa era.

1. Sometimes spectators of the No say: "The moments of 'no-action' are the most enjoyable." This is an art which the actor keeps secret. Dancing and singing, movements and the diffrent types of miming are all acts performed by the body. Moments of "no-action" occur in between. When we examine why such movements without actions are enjoyable, we find that it is due to the underlying spiritual strength of the actor which unremittingly holds the attention. He does not relax the tension when the dancing or singing come to an end or at intervals between the dialogue and the different types of miming, but maintains an unwavering inner strength. This feeling of inner strength will faintly reveal itself and bring enjoyment. However, it is undesirable for the actor to permit this inner strength to become obvious to the audience. If it is obvious, it becomes and act, and is no longer “no-action." The actions before and after an interval of “no-action” must be linked by entering the state of mindlessness in which one conceals even from oneself one’s intent, This, then, is the faculty of moving audiences, by linking all the artistic powers with one mind.
2. Where should a swordsman fix his mind? If he puts his mind on the physical movement of his opponent, it will be seized by the movement; if he places it on the sword of his opponent, it will be arrested by the sword; if he focuses his mind on the thought of striking his opponent, it will be carried away by the very thought; if the mind stays on his own sword, it will be captured by his sword; if he centers it on the thought of not being killed by his opponent, his mind will be overtaken by this very thought; if he keeps his mind firmly on his own or on his opponent’s posture, likewise, it will be blocked by them. Thus the mind should not be fixed anywhere.

Course Syllabus

2005-09-09T17:18:00.000-07:00

Course Syllabus & Information

Sei Shonagon - Pillow Book
September 6th & 8th
September 13th & 15th
Endo Shusako - Silence
September 20th & 22nd
September 27th & 29th
Mishima Yukio - Temple of the Golden Pavilion
October 4th & 6th
October 11th & 13th
Yoshimoto Banana - Asleep
October 18th & 20th
October 25th & 27th
Murakami Haruki - Norwegian Wood
November 1st & 3rd
November 8th & 10th
Enchi Fumiko - Masks
November 15th & 17th
November 22nd & 24th
Review
November 29th & December 1st

The recommended texts for the course will be discussed throughout the term and should be read before and after the Mid-Term assignment.
See support material available on Library Reserve.

Assignment Deadlines: Nb. There is a 3% per day late penalty for assignments, documented medical or bereavement leave excepted.

1. Mid term paper, two thousand words: due October 20th at midnight in the Instructor's Department mailbox. Assignment sheet with suggested topics will be handed out in lecture on October 6th. Criteria will include literary analysis, engagement with course themes and writing mechanics.
2. Group e-text project: in collaboration with the Course Instructor, create a web log dedicated to a distinct topic the works from the course reading list. Groups set & assignment sheet handed out September 22nd. Seminar time will be set aside throughout the term to work with the Instructor on this project
3. Individual class presentation: schedule and assignment sheet handed out in seminar. A five minute presentation on one of a choice of topics to be blogged, with five minutes more for class response. Five minutes is a firm limit: the Instructor will blow the whistle ....
4. Final Paper, three thousand five hundred words: due December 1st at midnight in the Instructor's Department mailbox.

Course Approach

The course is working toward an understanding of and appreciation for the Japanese novel. Lectures will posit Samuel Huntingdon's "Clash of Civilisations" thesis as the basis for the relationship between Japan and the West. Strong emphasis will be given to the Japanese aesthetic and some work will be done on translation theory, based on Sakai Naoki's book, on Course Reserve.

Course requirement weighting:
10% Course participation
10% Seminar presentation
20% Group blogging project
20% Mid-term paper (approx. 2000 words)
40% Final Paper (approx. 3500 words)

Nb: “Participation requires both participation in seminar and attendance and punctuality at lecture and seminar."

Instructor Contact:

Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 13:30 – 14:20 in rm 6094. Also ogden@sfu.ca and http://japanesenovel.blogspot.com. Use campus mail accounts only for email contact, please.

Getting an "A" on an English Paper

2005-09-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

An excellent article here with practical advice from Jack Lynch at Rutgers University.

Japan and Racial Purity

2005-09-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

On the question of Japan's civilisation homogeneity, the BBC ran an important series published online here with a valuable link list of related articles. The article supports the statement from lecture this week that 99% of people in Japan are ethnically pure Japanese and non-ethnic Japanese are denied citizenship even when born in Japan.

One especially helpful edition is here. Click on the slideshow within this article for a useful sample of opinion on immigration from ordinary Japanese.

These articles are relevant to our understanding of the need for civilisation translation and the difficulty presented by the necessary indeterminacy of radical translation.

Second Lecture

2005-09-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

Thursday's lecture introduced three important concepts in the Japanese aesthetic:

mono no aware
ki sho ten ketsu
wabi sabi

You were presented with a history of Japan that laid out a framework for understanding how the country's unique characteristic came about. Additionally, you were introduced to translation theory, and specifically the need for civilisation translation and its organic integration -- strongly, in case of the Japanese civilisation -- with language translation.

The history and the theory were the background for understanding the aesthetic: recalling from the opening lecture that aesthetic in Japan extends to politics, religion, athletics, language and human relationships,

Perhaps the essential concept to ingrain in yourselves is the heavy -- almost primary - responsibility that the Japanese put on the reader in literature (as too the hearer in speech.) This is mapped on the ten -- "turning" -- in the ki sho ten ketsu method of literary construction: the reader is required to draw on common civilisation heritage to connect the seemingly (but only seemingly) discrete ten element to the ki and sho which preceded it. We saw how in haiku the ketsu is actually absent forcing the reader to complete the poem mentally and thereby create its meaning.

We will need this sensibility firmly in mind to more properly appreciate the literature experienced in our course.

Tuesday's lecture will detail wabi sabi and turn to engage the makura no soshi closely.

Pillow Book = Commonplace Book

2005-09-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

I stated in lecture that Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book was a Japanese version of what is called in the West a commonplace book. Click on this link for an excellent treatment of their history and form in the West.

First Reading

2005-09-06T19:39:00.000-07:00

As stated in lecture, the first book in the course is Makura no Soshi [ 枕草子 ] - Pillow Tales by Sei Shonagon [ 清少納言] circa 1000 AD. You should be read to section 59 by Thursdays's lecture.

Following up on my comment that "Sei Shonagon" is not the author's name as we understand people's names, "shonagaon"[ 少納言 ] is Heian Japanese for "[minor] councillor" - in other words, an honorific way to designate her court function - and "Sei" [ 清 ] is an alternative way to read the name of the clan-family into which she was born: specifically "Kiyohara" [ 清原 ].

This is similar to the name "Genji" - Gen [ 源 ] is an alternative way to read the kanji for "Minamoto" and ji [ 氏 ] is a kanji for "family." As we will hear, "Genji"'s father, the Emperor, decided for political reasons (mainly one of his mothers-in-law playing Agrippina) to make him a commoner and thus bestowed on him the honourary surname "Minamoto" customary in such occasions.

Course Outline

2005-09-06T19:35:00.000-07:00

Click on this link for the course outline off the English Department home page.

Note that the title of this post (and many future) is also a hot link to the url mentioned in the post,

Welcome to "The Japanese Novel"

2005-09-04T01:07:00.000-07:00

Welcome to English 380 at Simon Fraser University: "Mutilations & Foreign Relations: The Japanese Novel."