Japan and Modernity

The Root of Ambivalence

This is the first article of a series, Akutagawa, which is a subcategory of Japan and Modernity. This series focuses on the life and the work of a Japanese author, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Akutagawa is still considered the first champion of modern Japanese literature and a representative figure of the pre-WWII Japanese intelligentsia, with a wide-ranging and profound influence on modern Japanese literature. And thus, the study of his achievement and the challenges he faced arguably illuminates the idiosyncrasy of Japan's modernity and helps us to examine the tension, ambivalence, and dilemma which arose from the way in which Japanese met the challenges of modernisation. Prior to undertaking this project, it is necessary to perform a quick overview of Japan’s modernisation by revisiting some key historic events. Thus, in this article, I shall provide a historic overview of Japan’s encounter with modernity in order to clarify the context in which the rest of the series, Japan and Modernity, should be situated. I hope that readers are able to obtain a general sense of what ‘modernity’ means for Japanese by the end of this article.

Whilst Japan made contact with the West and established trade relations with Europe in the 16th century, and some, like Akira Kurosawa, have suggested that the 16th century marks Japan’s first encounter with modernity, I shall side with the view that the fateful event happened in 1854 when Americans forced the Japanese government to open ports for free trade. (The 16th century Portuguese accompanied by Jesuits can be hardly called ‘modern’. Yet, Kurosawa’s point is interesting, and thus, I shall take it up later in a separate article for a different section of this project.) Prior to this event, the Japanese were secluded from the rest of the world for some 'three hundred years' under the rule of the Shogunate, which kept the sole point of contact to the rest of the world via Dejima, an island off Nagasaki, as a trade centre.

Prior to the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan was in a state of civil war for some fifty years, and Japanese had no cohesive national identity during the decades of extreme violence; in the period of constant war, suffering, and death, and established social contract, and the concept of social contract itself, broke down; fathers killed sons, sons murdered fathers, and subordinates sought to replace their masters by brutal and underhanded means. As the central government was rendered non-consequential, each feudal domain strove to maximise its own power and territorial influence. This prolonged period of violence, cruelty, and death ended with the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate after the fall of Osaka castle, the seat of power of the Toyotomi clan who briefly united Japan. Whilst the Tokugawa Shogunate enforced '300 years of peace' in Japan by establishing a totalitarian police state, it also purged foreign influence in Japan and cut itself off from the rest of the world. There is a consensus in Japan that this period of seclusion created Japan’s unique cultural and social identity; regardless of whether one is for or against this isolationism and how one evaluates the historical significance of the Tokugawa period, it is difficult to argue against the view that nearly three centuries of isolation played a decisive role in the formation of Japanese national identity.

That being acknowledged, no identity can be adequately defined without the point of contact with the Other. And thus, the forced abandonment of seclusion by the military threat of Americans equipped with a modern navy was just as important as a lengthy period of isolation in regard to the formation of Japan’s national identity. After carelessly dismissing Westerners as ‘hairy barbarians’ for centuries, suddenly, the Japanese found themselves under the threat of Western military superiority. Whilst some Japanese knew about the ruthlessness with which the West exploited the rest of the world, they were slow to respond effectively by introducing a comprehensive reform of Japanese society. This lack of response from the Shogunate prompted the Meiji Restoration, a military coup d’êtat led by samurais who realised the urgent need to modernise Japanese society, especially its military and industry, in order to secure its sovereignty and independence in the face of the Western aggression.

Despite bringing back the Emperor as the formal head of state, this upheaval is far from a comprehensive political reform or a revolution; it was staged by the ruling samurai class whose main concern was to establish and modernise a Japanese national army, and to introduce modern industrialisation. Despite the magnitude of transformation it introduced to Japanese society and its political system, the Meiji Restoration was not driven by philosophical concepts and did not produce a modern manifesto such as the Declaration of Human Rights. Whilst the end of this massive social upheaval was to secure the national sovereignty of Japan, there were a few who saw an opportunity to fundamentally transform Japanese society during this period of uncertainty. For example, one of the leading figures of this period, Ryōma Sakamoto, who helped establish the unified front against the Shogunate by successfully negotiating a truce between warring anti-Shogunate domains, embraced the modern ideal of creating a democratic and egalitarian society in Japan. Yet, these thinkers were few and far between, and, against the background of what seems to be an imminent existential threat from Western imperial powers, philosophical aspirations never had a chance to take centre stage. In the end, the Meiji Restoration as a movement was nationalist and survivalist in its nature.

Amazement, Resentment, and Alienation

It is important to note that modernisation was represented to Japanese as a foreign, more specifically Western, paradigm. Whilst Japanese elites embraced modernity, such as its culture, philosophy, and political thoughts, with varying enthusiasm and curiosity, the effect of the initial encounter remains today. For Japanese, modernity remains something fundamentally foreign, something to which they had to adopt primarily in order to survive. The initial experience of modernity as a foreign threat set the tone for the Japanese attitude toward it: it is an ambiguous mixture of admiration, curiosity, suspicion, and fear. The curious blend of amazement and resentment toward modernity in Japan explains many phenomena, such as: Imperial Japan’s embracing colonialism; the lethal mixture of modern weaponry and the myth of the Japanese warrior as an effective propaganda too during the WWI and the WWII; Japan’s peculiar mixture of national pride and an inferiority complex toward the West; Japan’s ambivalent attitude toward its traditional culture (traditional culture is romanticised in popular culture whilst it is cold-bloodedly discarded in order to satisfy the demand of liberal capitalism); and the recent revival of nationalism amongst the political elite.

Since the Japanese have always been ruthless in their modernisation of society, the speed and aggressiveness with which they transformed their society created a deep angst and uncertainty over their national and cultural identity, not dissimilar to the manner in which Germans and Russians reacted to their own modernisation of their respective societies. This historic similarity in the context of modernisation at least partially explains why both German and Russian culture exerted formative influence in Japan before the end of WWII. Reactions to the modernisation by the likes of Kleist, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky resonated with the pre-WWII Japanese intelligentsia. Like their German and Russian counterparts, the Japanese intelligentsia of the early 20th century interrogated their national and cultural identity against the backdrop of the modern militarism and industrialisation. And thus they asked questions such as: What makes them distinct from Westerners when they adopt a foreign form of life?; Is modernity superior to Japanese tradition?; Why did the Japanese fail to accomplish what their European counterparts achieved, such as the industrial revolution and the advancement of science?; What does it mean to be Japanese in a modern world?

These questions have been asked time and again from the very beginning of the modernisation of Japan. For example, Sōseki Natsume, who was sent to England by the Japanese government in order to become one of the first experts in the English language, and credited as one of the founders of modern Japanese literature, struggled with these questions throughout his career. In his novel, I Am A Cat, Natsume offers a biting satire of the confused process with which Japan’s modernisation advanced through the perspective of a cat adopted by a Japanese intellectual. Generally, his view of modernity and Western civilisation is critical, and he expresses his alienation from Japan's modernisation process in his autobiographical novel, The Towers of London. During his study in England to become a vanguard of modernity in Japan, the protagonist's physical and mental health quickly deteriorate. He ends the novel with a confession of his wish not to ever return to England. Natsume’s sense of alienation from modernity, specifically from the process of Japan’s modernisation, is fundamental to understanding Japan’s reaction to modernity. It not only represents the general attitude of his contemporaries; this attitude survives the WWII and the Americanisation of the post-WWII Japan.

To fully understand the extent to which the Japanese intelligentsia went in order to meet the demand of modernity, I wish to refer to the fact that Japanese literature had to rebuild itself to the point where they had to reinvent the Japanese literary style as they abandoned centuries old literary and linguistic conventions. For example, the Genbun Icchi Movement (Colloquialist Movement) was the first significant shift in Japanese literary tradition in the wake of the Meiji Restoration. It advocated writing in ordinary spoken language and abolishing the traditional literary style, first established in antiquity. It is, however, an attempt which has never been fully realised; instead of using spoken language for literature, the proponents of this movement ended up creating a new literary style, a new formality which replaced its predecessor. Furthermore, it was as artificial as the old style, yet close enough to spoken language to make the matter more confusing, and contemporary Japanese writing, whether written for literature, cinema, or TV, still carries some of this legacy. The distinction between spoken language and literary language is observed in most language, and that is not a problem in and of itself. Yet, in the case of Japanese, this fact carries a sense of alienation and dislocation that cuts deep. This is due to the fact that the break from the past was a part of Japan's reaction to the modernity forced upon them by the Other.

Akutagawa, And His Legacy

However, it is critical to remind ourselves that this ambivalence toward modernity, and the resulting sense of alienation, are not unique to the Japanese intelligentsia. They took cues from European and Russian literature, mostly from the 19th century: these authors interrogated their personal confrontation with the modern human condition. Since I have articulated the way in which their alienation arose in my review of Bertolucci’s The Conformist, I shall refrain from repeating myself. However, reading some of the prominent figures from modern Japanese literature, especially the work of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, illuminates the unique characteristics of, and perhaps the limit of, Japan’s modernity. He is best known as the author of In a Glove, which was adopted by Kurosawa under the title, Rashōmon, which in turn is a different story written by the same author.

Akutagawa’s impact on modern Japanese literature and culture is decisive, and thus, his eventual suicide haunted the post WWII Japanese intelligentsia as the symbol of modern Japan’s failure. As the giants of post-WWII Japanese literature, such as Kawabata and Mishima, are defined by the way each of them reacted to Akutagawa’s work and his legacy, the author of Rashōmon, Hell Screen and Cogwheels is arguably the most important writer of the twentieth century Japanese literature. This assessment remains true today, for the fundamental nature of Japanese relation to modernity remains unchanged. Thus, what I am going to present with this series is the legacy of this tragic character by means of examining his work, not so much in the context of his personal temperament and life, but with the focus on his thought as an exceptionally gifted writer from the High-Modernist period, a contemporary of the likes of Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Bruno Schulz, and T.S. Eliot amongst others. Reading Akutagawa as a High-Modernist writer in a global context should illuminate Japan's modernism's limit in the historic context, and yet, the perceived 'failure' also points to the exceptional achievements of Akutagawa as well as the possibilities for us at this historic juncture. If the readers find this series interesting enough to pick up his writing for close reading, there is no better outcome from my effort.