Naoya Shiga
Hideo Kobayashi
To the young and new of the world
1.
It is my respect for this writer that compels me to write this essay, but it is also my distaste for today's new-age propagandists who are making such a fuss.
I do not believe in the slightest when people say that Naoya Shiga is already an established writer. Or perhaps he is an established writer, as people say. However, no matter what century it is, the official language that people impose on the best writers of our time is always shabby and indecent. The amount of praise that has been devoted to him by critics and others to date has been enormous, but who has tried to cross the trajectory of this unique personality? I do not know at all.
2.
What people call logic is not logic itself, but the various symbols and images used to drive it. Among these, there are humble and clean symbols, such as numbers, which do not first of all cause confusion, but they are all symbols used by human beings and used in an unrestrained manner. Logic, in general, has no traces of man. By the very nature of this logic, if you will, logic can permeate every aspect of existence, until it ceases to be the fundamental rule of existence. To respect logic is as meaningless as to despise it. Why, then, is the world filled with those who respect logic and those who despise it? This terribly complex looking problem is an infinitely complex problem.
What is at stake is the richest and most obscene signifier of language, which is the fruit of an infinitely miscellaneous environment. Therefore, it can be said that what the world calls logic actually refers to argument rather than logic itself. And for an argument to be entirely correct, it is necessary to make the extremely trivial assumption that a word clearly expresses a concept.
This incomparable person, at least from the current Japanese literary world, was only entertained by the rise of a magician, and has already disappeared as a writer of strange tales who has criticised his role. I would not now go so far as to bemoan his misfortune, but I can still feel the essence of his brain in my heart and soul. This is why both the graceless face that says, "Argument, I won't lose in an argument,'' and the humble face that says, "Argument won't get me anywhere,'' can equally exist in this world.
The problem of logic and its images, in other words, criticism, cannot be thought of without considering the "real" world. Even now, Shiga's poetic style, like the orbits of a planet, and the magic of the psychological landscape in its extremes, capture me like the modulations of Le Blanc. He was the first person to realise most strongly that artistic activity must be the most exquisitely conscious activity, and to put this into practice. He believed that every effect of the work to be realised could be checked without limit. For him, therefore, the most difficult and most important aspect of the creation of poetry lay in the relationship between the poem and its readers. At this moment, a living being, a human being of far greater sophistication, with all kinds of desires, challenges the exquisite dead thing called poetry, which has finished its expression on paper.
At what point in the middle of these two, do they break with each other in order to produce pure beauty? His lifelong passion was consumed by the calculation of the aesthetic magnetic field, as it were, between his work and man. In simpler terms, he was the first to calculate the social nature of art most seriously, without losing his artistic vocation. In the mental calculations that gave birth to this poem, he did not calculate psychologically or logically. All regulations were unnecessary. He did not calculate by any measure. To calculate with a certain scale was to exercise only one part of his brain. His calculations involved all his faculties of reason, sensitivity, and imagination. The mind that produces poetry is, so to speak, calculated by the same mind that produces time. Words appear in the world of his theory without losing their endless shadows. The images of the theory do not now follow the meagre threads of cause and effect, but one proposition appears as a total response to the preceding one. They are like creatures with their own desires. Sometimes they are like rushing water, flowing so fast that they appear to be stationary, and at other times, like an acrobat on a rope, it takes advantage of infinite unevenness to remain still. In the face of such a logical landscape, frivolous words such as "logical" and "intuitive" are meaningless.
I do not believe in his entire system, and my brain is sufficiently stupid to not believe in it. Nor do I claim to have mastered his architectural technique of logical images. For proof of this, just look at the haphazard progress of this essay. I can only say that he has mastered the art of logical visual architecture in his own magnificent way. I believe only in my own dreams, just as he believed only in his own magnificent dreams. I do not have the courage to trust any measure of criticism as clear or obscure as elementary arithmetic. I dare not, in any case, disregard the quality of words.
3.
When Anton Chekhov became as popular as a photograph in Japan, Mr Shiga was often compared to Chekhov. I now believe that we must disregard all the offhand criticism of Mr Shiga that deviates from his essence, such as saying to an elephant, "You look like a giraffe," so to speak, but I believe that we should not be so hard on him. The bitter wine compared to Chekhov is convenient to use in that it is so bitterly wrong. One critic said, "The bridge of 'The Morning of the Dead' is like that of Chekhov's work."
Chekhov is a humourist. Chekhov's worldview was fixed when he wrote 'A Boring Story' at the age of twenty-seven. From then on, until his death, his songs were reminiscences and elegies. His oeuvre has not escaped the spell of the worldview of regression that he has acquired. His heart was warm to ridicule, and his ideal role was too strong to fulfill, and he smiled. The laughter of this most cosmically self-aware of composers was always twofold. It was born missing the intersection between the great and the small of man. His tone twisted as he laughed. This is why the laughter that permeates of all his work is always rational and ethical.
The problem with Naoya Shiga, however, is a kind of ultra-egoist problem, so to speak. This writer's magic lies in the most individual actions of the most individual self-consciousness. What is important for him is not the acquisition of a worldview, but the acquisition of an action. What he sings is always the present, always an omen, and never, in the least essential sense, a reminiscence. His works, like Chekhov's, are never tinged with the air of constantly alluding to scenes of the human world other than those depicted in his works. Imbued with the sensuousness and gravity of a powerful individual, it appears isolated, like a fine still life painting. The laughter expressed by such an artist is necessarily singular and aesthetic. When people see 'Sukeroku,' they laugh when the geta are placed on Ikyu's head. Even if the ridicule that the author of 'Sukeroku' once concealed in this action has no meaning today, the expression is still a very important one. People will laugh because there is a kind of a priori laughter in this expression. The laughter of Shiga's work is the laughter of this world. It is laughter as a form of beauty.
His heart was pounding.
"What's so vague about this?" Kaname asked.
"You're a boy, I'll leave it to Jukan," he replied.
He gasped.
"Then, please don't sell it to the snake. I'll bring you the money right away."
Soon after, he came running back, red-faced and panting, accepting the money and running home again.
The laughter in 'Seibei to hyôshô' does not arise from the interaction between Seibei and the world, but is captured by the author's clear eyes as an expression of beauty, which we can only crudely summarise with the word "laughter." Seibei runs through the city in curves like gourds. Seibei is an expert, and when his father takes away his beloved gourd, he turns as green as a gourd and becomes silent.
4.
There is a luxurious wisdom in the world that resonates with all forms of thought. Its desire is how to tune out the noise of scepticism. "It also has a heart that bleeds on the primordial thorns and watches the muddy waters." I wish all of you would read Verlaine. This is the first time that modern literature has been so much more than just a book of the same name.
These are the two forms of human character that modern literature has fully expressed through its greatest passions, scepticism and contrition. Rarely has a modern writer been so far removed from these qualities as Shiga.
"Classical," a vague word, but if this word means a precise harmony between intellect and lust, then Shiga is truly a classical figure. Indeed, his transparent reason and wisdom reveal the paradoxical landscape of the blackened world, just like the 'Diary of Glorias,' just like the "justice faction." However, he has never let his own intellect go unchecked. In other words, he has never made the manipulation of his reason the object of his passion.
Whatever the consequences of killing, that is not the issue now. You might end up in prison. And who knows how much better life in prison will be than your current life. That time will come. Whatever happens, you just have to break it anyway. You may break it, but you may not be able to break it. But if you try to break it until you die, that will be your true life.
This is the fundamental form of his thought. This is not so much a form of contemplation as a regulation of action. He is not conscious of the space between thought and action. Even if he is aware of this gap, it means that at that time his thoughts are not yet heated up, or his lust will eventually build up on it without a trace of resentment. For him, to contemplate is to act, and to act is to contemplate, and for these qualities, doubt is folly and contrition is folly. But I have never heard him described as classical, nor have I ever heard him emphasised his primitiveness. Perhaps this is because all of his works are decorated with a nerve that is unparalleled in its subtlety. I must reveal the reason for the uniqueness of his nerves.
The nerves of modern man are pathological. People say that the nerves of modern man are morbid and acute. Indeed, the nerves of modern man may not be healthy. But they are not sensitive at all. The ancient man's hearing was perhaps incomparably more acute than ours. We are simply the result of complex divisions and complications that the ancients could not have imagined. Nervous complexity may not be indicative of nervous slowness, but it is also not indicative of nervous acuity. Today there are a great many writers who possess a varied and diverse programme of nerves. But sensitive writers are cautious. The writers with the keenest nerves are few and far between. Perhaps what destroys our nervous system is not an unhealthy physiology, but an excess of ideas. The inflating of the cerebrum has encroached upon the cerebellum. In other words, our nerves have moved from the physiological acuteness of the ancients to the conceptual complexity.
Mr Shiga's nerves are truly acute. He has not lost the sensitivity of his iris to light rays, nor has he lost his sensitivity to all sensitivities. The problem is a little more complicated.
If the speed of the propeller increases abnormally, perhaps the propeller is no more a propeller at all; if the speed of reason and wisdom increases abnormally quickly, reason and wisdom are transformed into an ideology that has nothing to do with the body; the nerve, too, is so sensitive that it is separated from human behaviour and undergoes a unique movement, like a kind of dross. The nerve, in its independent movement to build its world, is allowed the freest use of its material, its skeleton, its ideas, which are the freest to be used from the dictates of the body. The reason why Gérald Nerval was able to construct the imaginary world of "dreams and life" on the basis of his incredibly sensitive nerves was because he also had a terrifyingly rapid conceptual mind. His detached nerves felt no shortage of infinite images of ideas to use.
Shiga's nerves, too, are so acute that they try to free themselves from the body.
When I came to the end of the line, I saw a white dove walking along the track, its head moving. I stood there and watched it idly. I was thinking something like, "The train is coming, it's dangerous.'' I wasn't sure whether it was because the place was dangerous, or because I was dangerous. I realized that there was nothing wrong with that. I was also outside the tracks, so there was no danger. Then I walked over the crossing towards town. "I'm not going to kill myself," I thought to myself. ('The Story of Stealing a Child')
His nerves try to detach themselves from his body, but his body catches them and won't let go. His nerves are free of his body, but reason and wisdom do not provide it with any conceptual images, so the nerves have to painfully descend and lay down their images in the context of real life. The reason he was able to build the most realistic world of 'The Story of Stealing a Child' on the independent movement of the theosophical system is that his heart was terribly full of the lust of life. The protagonist is trying to steal a child and thinks about the child's future education. He steals a look and listens to the snoring of "a little girl with smelly hair on the same floor." This is why this short story has its own charm. This is why it is a masterpiece, unparalleled, if not unique, among the many novels I know of that deal with the so-called morbid nerves of the world.
I do not know whether I would call his nerves classical or not, but it is clear that the word "nervousness" has a far more important meaning for him than for the average modern person. No matter how peripheral his nerves may seem, they always have a kind of stickiness, just as Chopin's most modest grace notes have a vivid effect, like a toothache that reaches down to the marrow. It is also because of the clarity and seriousness of his sensibility that his feelings determine his tastes, and his tastes do not fail to determine his conscience.
5.
No matter what author I am trying to talk about, I do not wish for the ease of trying to abstract some form of that writer's thought from that work, but no matter how much I try to speak of his true heart, there is no place to talk. Since it is a critique, the problem becomes extremely difficult if abstraction is not allowed at all. Mr Shiga is the writer who does not allow such abstraction at all. This is the difficulty in evaluating Shiga's work. Instead of seeing an extraordinary work of art in front of me, I naturally see an extraordinary person. This is not because I am acquainted with Shiga, but because his works are his own flesh and blood. To speak of his work is to speak of his forehead, which reveals his bloodline, his distinctive eyebrows, and his elegant lips.
Mr Shiga is neither a thinker nor a feeler; he is above all a man of action. His soul is the soul of a doer. All the abilities he possesses have no meaning apart from his practical life. For Mr Shiga, creating is a part of real life, and it is natural for him to become immersed in it. It is only natural that art does not emerge through a division of real life, but as a summary of real life. The division between art and life was lamented by Maupassant.
The fact that he had learnt the art of observing life from his young age, lamenting the misery of having to be an actor and a spectator at the same time, when he had no idea what it was like to live in the world, from a master teacher named Flaubert, was probably just an endearing comment for Shiga. The fact that he had studied life observation under the famous teacher Flaubert from a young age, when he could not possibly understand it, is probably nothing more than a loving comment.
The problem, however, is that a person of his caliber, in which the problems of art and the problems of real life are deeply intertwined, has achieved an unparalleled expression. He tells of his real life with such vigour that it becomes neither a confession, the result of his real life, nor a hope, the cause of his real life, but a perfect expression as an independent signifier of human passion. Here, in the most essential sense, the question of his method of production emerges.
6.
As one can see, Shiga's style is direct and precise, but it is only direct and precise in the same way as the best expression of its kind, so it would probably be a mistake to try to turn to his love of fine bone chiseling and to listen to the sound of his hair being clipped.
His impressions are very direct. They are as direct as the serpent that flutters at the sound of a flute, or as direct as the wings of a thunderbird that turn white with the onset of winter. The immediacy of the impression leaves no room for hesitation in choosing what words to use to express an impression. The ripples on the water are caught before they spread down. The charm of his writing style lies in the wonderful sense of flesh that runs through it. In 'Manazuru,' we smell the sea breeze's permeating lust of a big-headed fisherman's child, and in 'At Kinosaki,' we feel the touch of a mountain stream bathed in lily pads.
In the short piece 'Dreams,' for example, three different texts written at different times are juxtaposed without any artistry, but are tightly bound together. In 'A Man, His Sister's Death,' we follow the protagonist's irritated eyes and are suddenly shown her death in the silence of a remote village. The two landscapes are linked together in a very clumsy way with surprising decisiveness, but also as naturally as a crystal is linked to a rock. The brilliant arrangement of the chapters of 'Reconciliation' is not so much an orderly architecture as a flow of landscapes that most naturally take turns in the author's mind. The charm of his style lies in its mass, not in inlaying, and in its sum, not in composition.
Here is the most unique passage.
I have written about the unpleasant things that actually happen between my father and myself, and by writing about them explicitly, I have tried to prevent them from actually happening. I thought that I would not be able to go as far as it was written. (omitted) But I did not decide to write that long first chapter, 'Catastrophe.' I thought it was something I couldn't decide on. I thought that I would not know how it would turn out until I had actually written it. But I thought how pleasant it would be if it turned out that way after I had written it. ('Reconciliaton')
What is clearly shown here is that artistic activity, which is so closely bound up with real life that it sometimes appears to him as a pure means of living, requires a level of chance and adventure in its realisation as a work of art, as well as real action in real life.
This is a method that is almost the opposite of that of Edgar Poe. I am not talking about writing according to mood or reason. I am talking about qualities such as Poe's, who knew how hopelessly precise his mind needed to be to be clearly aware of the entire process of creation, but was compelled to do so, and Shiga's, who must see creating as an action that must be learned by fighting a battle, just like moving one's hands and feet.
So, why was this approach neither accidental nor adventurous for Mr Shiga?
7.
I am not afraid of the so-called "discerning eye." Where some eyes can only see things from one side, there are eyes that can see them from many different angles, and people call such an eye the discerning eye, or in other words, eyes that are horribly understanding.
If it is the easiest human ability to understand, I have it too. I have never been confused when I was looked at by the keen eye. At best, such an eye can see through my lies. What is frightening to me is the eye that sees without ever trying to see. It is an eye that does not need to know from which angle it can see things, an eye in which we cannot determine the degree of freedom of its viewpoint. The eye that shines at the bottom of all of Shiga's work is such an eye.
For example, in 'Reconciliation,' when the author describes the death of a child with unusual precision and hostility, one wonders if the author's eye for observation does not wane even in such a case. It would be ridiculous to even think of observing such an incident when one's qualifications are like that. Perhaps he was just vividly remembering things he had no intention of seeing, without even trying to remember them. This is remarkable, but what is even more important is that his eye knows not only to see without trying to see, but to see in vain. His degree of freedom in terms of perspective is determined without fail by the nature of his education. For him, the landscape he sees does not appear as something that can be altered by his consciousness in order to be expressed. The landscapes he views are the expression itself.
Let me draw on his own clear words, which seem to me to imply the core of his method. 'Secret Passage' is like a diary, a fragment of a longer novel that has failed.
Although it was written faithfully to the facts, there was one place where I wrote something that was most naturally not true. I wrote that knowingly, because it came to me clearly as such. Later, my second sister, who was with me at the time, said that I remembered many things well, and that she also remembered these things well, but it was the one place where I had put something that was not true. I kept quiet, thinking that it was just a fabrication, but since there was no way my sister would be fooled by this, the things that came to me most naturally came to me as natural, so instead I thought of my sister's memory as fact. ('A Creative Digression')
For many writers, memory is most significant when it is the means to compensate for a deficiency in an impression, or, in other words, to make an impression more varied. The vividness of his impressions does not allow for any alteration by memory. The accumulated landscapes are unconsciously rectified to become independent creatures, independent expressions. This is the reason why 'Bo-no-Ko and New Mother' and 'Hayao's Sister' are so unique.
One of his most recent works is called 'Harunen-mushi.' This is perhaps one of his smallest works. I do not mean to imply that there is a master's expression in such a small work, but only a master would create such a small work. It seems to me that in this little piece the form of his soul is crystallised in the simplest way, though not in a powerful way.
What is there is a kind of fruit, but not nothingness. It is a kind of ruthlessness, but the sensual feeling of his punishment, "colour," pervades it. The main character is seen in the countryside at night, and the main character's appearance is completely related to the cityscape. He becomes a mechanism that composes the city's landscapes. He is neither happy nor unhappy, neither cheerful nor melancholy, just as nature is neither happy nor unhappy. His body is a vehicle, sharing the same density with the wheelman, the wheelman sharing the same density with the depot, and the depot sharing the same density with the insects. The protagonist lies on the floor and watches the dying of the insect, just as the insect watches him. At this moment, it is not he who possesses the eye.
8.
The "bankrupt character" is a character that appears frequently in modern literature. It must be tragic for a modern man to bankrupt his character through self-analysis due to his excessive self-consciousness, but no bankrupt character can reject his unique appearance and his unique behaviour. Nature allows man to be bankrupt of character, but not to lose it. Many people see the misery of character bankruptcy, but do not see the smoothness of this right. This is why the human personality is often referred to as human psychology, and why the personality is perceived as an object to be consumed and acquired as one pleases.
For Mr Shiga, his own character was his own face and behaviour. For him, there has never been a need to objectify and view nature, nor has there been a need to reexamine the formative qualities of one's own nature. As with the ancients, just as there was no need to look at the flow of nature in a sharpened way, there was no need to try to make up the various facets of his own mental landscape.
His soul knows no drama. His suffering is the suffering of a growing tree.
People will cry when they read 'Reconciliation.' This is because the author's strong naturalness touches their lachrymal glands. If there are people who do not cry, it is not because your heart is exhausted, but because your not-so-sophisticated brain is a little too busy. It is easy to make an idealistic person cry sentimental or nervous tears. The best art is not young to the cries of nature, but the best art captures the cries of nature without exception.
"I did not suffer with the intention of suffering anything; I simply had to respect the originality of my suffering.'' - Marcel Proust. The heart of an artist refers to nothing other than such cleanliness at all times.
('Thought' December 1929 issue)