Authors: Ogai Mori
Ogai had no intention of imitating his predecessors and contemporaries, especially in relation to the
watakushi-shosetsu
confessionals. Still, it is quite obvious that
in part
Ogai was writing about his own sexual life as we follow in
Vita Sexualis
the development of his youthful hero, Shizuka Kanai. And this too is of further interest to the Western reader, indeed to any reader, as to why Ogai went off into a personal direction in this work. One might easily tick off a succession of similarities between Kanai's life and Ogai's: At the age of eleven the young Shizuka Kanai lived in the home of Professor Azuma on Ogawacho in Kanda. Ogai was referring to Amane Nishi, the famous man of learning who introduced into Japan European philosophy and a number of fields of science. Nishi lived at this very address, and Ogai himself boarded in the learned professor's house in a room between the entrance hall and the drawing room. Tsurudo Kako, Ogai's dear classmate with whom he graduated from Tokyo University, we have already cited as Koga in
Vita.
Like Ogai, Shizuka graduated at nineteen from the university, went abroad for four years to Germany, returned, and married. Interestingly enough, Ogai's record at the university was not as brilliant as his hero's, Ogai having graduated eighth in a class of twenty-eight. Further parallels could of course be cited: Ogai's going up to Tokyo to live with his father at Mukojima, his mother remaining in a castle town; Ogai's study of German at Ikizaka in Hongo when he was ten; Ogai's pursuit of Chinese literature at fourteen under a famous scholar; Ogai's leaving for Germany on August 24 (1884) and boarding his ship at Yokohama. Even the hero's surname Kanai was presumably taken from the husband of Ogai's sister, Yoshikiyo Koganei, the last two Chinese characters in "Koganei" the same as those in "Kanai" In spite of the fact that the parallels cited are of a non-sexual nature, we must conclude that Ogai, scientist-doctor that he was, was attempting to discover something about his own sexuality, that he was conscious of the autobiographical flavor of current Japanese novels, that for young men growing up in Meiji, sex and sex education remained a problem.
We must keep in mind, however, that for the most part Ogai was writing a novel, the first of its kind in Japanese literature, and we ought not to forget the serious implications behind the novel which Haruo Sato alluded to. It is no accident that Ogai, the medical doctor, made his hero-narrator a philosopher.
To answer a number of the questions raised, we must first investigate Ogai's attitude toward the naturalistic movement in his country. As the translators of Ogai's
The Wild Geese
(Tuttle, 1959) have pointed out, one might have expected Ogai to join the new school, "but along with the gifted writer Soseki Natsume (1867-1916), Ogai objected to the subordinate role of reason, of intelligence, in the deterministic philosophy of the naturalists." In Ogai's novel
A young Man
(1910-1911), his hero reflects on the impact of naturalism in Japan: "Naturalism has real and true materials, has minutely delineated each part with an equally rich and sensitive language, and these are really the merits of naturalism. Naturalism, however, should try to put more emphasis upon the spiritual values of human beings. Miracles should not be explained in terms of sensualism. Man has two parts, body and soul, which are delicately fused into one, are rather huddled together. If possible, the novel should treat Man from these two aspects. And writers should address themselves to the reaction, struggle, and harmony of the two parts. In short, it is desirable that while the writer treads the path along which Zola has been walking, he should also build another path high in the air, parallel to Zola's. . . . We should erect a spiritual naturalism. Realize it and it will be another glory, another perfection, another power."
We feel it is in terms of this challenge that Ogai earlier set for himself the difficult task of writing
Vita Sexualis
. He challenged the restricted world outlook of the naturalists by dealing with the history of the sexual life of a single character. From the young Shizuka's first exposure to the erotic woodcuts of the Japanese
ukiyoe
artists to the hero's first encounter at the age of twenty with the professional courtesan, Ogai chose to create a sexual history that embodied the two aspects of man's nature. Earlier the naturalistic novelists of his day had proclaimed their adherence to truth, to the reality of everyday life. Having read the novels of the naturalistic school, the hero-philosopher recognizes that these authors use every occasion in daily life to represent their heroes in terms of sexual desire, but he wonders if such representations are actually true to life. He discovers that few documents exist which actually and accurately measure the steps by which sexual desire appears in human life and the ways in which it affects that human life. Thus the narrator-hero of
Vita Sexualis
declares he will endeavor to write the history of the sexual desires of one Shizuka Kanai, himself, but the result of this nineteen-year chronicle of a sexual life is that Ogai succeeds in creating that twofold path of body and spirit in all its psychologically ambivalent complexity. A further result of this investigation into a sexual life becomes for the reader an accurate depiction of the complex world of sexuality in the context of nineteenth-century Meiji Japan.
Ogai keeps his canvas from becoming a too explicit description of the sexual processes, a further reaction against the detailed outpourings of the naturalists. Ogai's anti-naturalistic method of describing his hero of fourteen when he first experiences a precious, subtle but sweet moment with Woman and Sex is made vividly effective by the symbolic technique of overlapping the intense and vigorous cries of the locusts in the hot but quiet summer garden and the excited throbbing of the hero's heart. One short sentence, "I pictured to myself a multitude of images," is quite suggestive, perhaps more effective than numerous lines of detailed naturalism. The scene occurs when the stepmother of Kanai's friend Eiichi asks Kanai to sit on the veranda with her during Eiichi's absence. The woman's body almost nestles against the youngster's:
I could smell her sweat, her face powder, the oil she used on her hair. I moved a little to the side. She smiled, though I didn't know why. . . .
She almost seemed to press her cheek against mine as she peered at me from the side. Her breath fell against my face. I felt that breath was strangely hot. And at the same time it suddenly occurred to me that Eiichi's mother was a woman. For some reason or other I became terrified. I might have even turned pale. . . .
Suddenly overcome with confusion and bowing three or four times, I broke into a run. Between the thick growth of plants in the garden of our lord's mansion was a ditch into which water from a small pond ran after passing over a small dam. On the sandy soil at the edge of this ditch where horsetails were growing, tall trees among the thick growth of vegetation were casting lingering shadows slightly to the west. Having run as far as this spot, I threw myself down on the sand and lay on my back.
Directly above me clusters of trumpet flowers were blooming as if aflame. The cries of the locusts were vigorous, energetic. There were no other sounds. It was the hour when the great god Pan still sleeps. I pictured to myself a multitude of images.
Ogai's novel does not whitewash the very real world of sexual awareness, for the book deals with the problems of autoeroticism, homosexuality, and the erotic worlds of art and literature. Eventually the hero must cope with the problem of the world of women, from the painted caricature faces of the prostitutes in the archery shops to the assistants of the
oiran,
the high-class courtesan of the Yoshiwara. At school and in the dorms he must carry a dagger to protect himself from the "queers." And during all of these possible sexual escapades, confrontations, tightrope excursions, Ogai's hero keeps his balance, observing, commenting, sometimes humorously, sometimes seriously, always self-critically.
When the anonymous reviewer in the August 1909 issue of the
Teikoku Bungaku
magazine said, "I . . . firmly believe . . . Mr. Ogai has become deranged of late," and advised Ogai "not to write this kind of worthless work and by so doing join the younger writers of our time," the critic must have been quite unaware of Ogai's intentions. For while it is true that the philosopher-protagonist of
Vita Sexualis
had misgivings about the worth of his performance, Ogai did manage to write a believably vivid portrait of boyhood and adolescence and young manhood. The mystery of sex is set forth in Ogai's clear logical style, and that he could place sex in a rational perspective in Meiji with its turbulent conflict of manners and values once more reveals Ogai's talent.
Kazuji Ninomiya
Niigata University
Sanford Goldstein
Purdue University
Niigata, Japan & Lafayette, Indiana
The translators acknowledge, with gratitude, the kind assistance of Professor Seishi Shinoda, Chairman of the Department of English, and Akira Ikari, Professor of Japanese Literature, at Niigata University, Niigata, Japan, in helping to clarify some of the complexities of language and literature in Ogai's
Vita Sexualis.
Mr. Shizuka Kanai is a philosopher by profession.
The notion a man is a philosopher is accompanied by the thought that he is writing a book. Philosopher by profession though he be, Mr. Kanai is not writing anything. They say that when he graduated from the College of Literature, his thesis was on the unusual topic of a comparative study of non-Buddhist Indian philosophy and pre-Socratic Greek philosophy. He hasn't written anything since.
However, because of his occupation he gives lectures. Having received a professorship in the history of philosophy, he offers lectures that deal with the history of modern philosophy. Students claim Kanai Sensei's lectures are more interesting than those of his colleagues who have written a great many books. His lectures are based on immediate perception, at times strongly illuminating some particular topic. At such moments his students gain indelible impressions. Often his listeners are startled into comprehension when he explains a certain phenomenon by applying something utterly foreign to it, something that has nothing to do with the problem under consideration. They say Schopenhauer kept in his notebooks ordinary topics, like those items of general interest found in newspapers, and used them to illustrate his philosophy, but Mr. Kanai employs everything and anything as material for explaining the history of philosophy. At times his students are surprised when in the middle of a serious lecture, he clarifies his point by quoting from some current novel popular among the younger generation.
He reads a good many novels. When he picks up a newspaper or magazine, he doesn't look at any of the controversial articles, only at the fiction. Still, if the authors of these stories knew why he was reading them, they'd be quite angry. He doesn't read them as works of art. Since he demands a very high standard for anything to qualify as a work of art, such commonplace newspaper stories fail to meet his requirements. What interests him in these stories is the psychological condition under which the authors wrote. And that is why when he discovers an author has written with the intention of creating something sad or pathetic, it strikes him as quite funny, and when the intention of the author is to be humorous, he feels instead quite sad about it.
Every once in a while it occurs to him to write something himself. Though a philosopher by profession, he has no intention of establishing his own system of philosophy, so he has no interest in writing along this line. Instead, he would like to write a novel or a play. But because of those high demands he imposes on works of art, it is not easy for him to begin.
In due course of time Soseki Natsume began writing his novels. Mr. Kanai read them with great interest. And he felt stimulated by them. But then in rivalry to Soseki's
I Am a Cat,
something came out called
I Too Am a Cat
. A book appeared entitled I
Am a Dog.
Mr. Kanai was quite disgusted on seeing these stories and ended by not writing anything himself.
In the meantime, naturalism was well under way in Japan. When Mr. Kanai read the works of this school, he was not particularly stimulated. But what he found interesting in these novels was extremely interesting. At the same time he felt them interesting, he thought there was something odd about them.
Each time he read a naturalistic novel, he discovered that the author never failed to use every occasion in daily life to represent his hero in reference to sexual desire and that the critics themselves acknowledged these novels accurately depicted life. At the same time he was wondering if such representations were actually true to life, he suspected that perhaps unlike the rest of the human race he might be indifferent to such desires, that he might have an extraordinary natural disposition which might be called
frigiditas.
Especially when he read Zola's novels could he not deny that this thought about himself was probably justified. The suspicion about himself had occurred when he came to a passage in Zola's
Germinal
in which the hero secretly observes intercourse between a man and a woman in a village of laborers living under conditions of utmost adversity. His thought at the moment was not that such a scene was probably impossible, but why the author had deliberately taken the trouble to depict it. A situation of this sort was probably true to life, but he wondered why the author had described it. That is, he wondered if the author's focusing on sexual desire itself was not abnormal. Novelists or poets probably have an extraordinary capacity for sexual desire. This problem has some connection to what Lambroso expounded in his theory about men of genius. It is also grounded in the supposition that Mobius and his school make in their sweeping criticism of famous poets and philosophers as mattoids. However, the naturalistic school so popular in Japan of late presented a quite different phenomenon. All at once a great many authors began writing on the same subject. Criticism kept acknowledging that human life involved sex. And when it seemed psychiatrists were saying that every aspect of a man's life is tinged with sexual desire, Mr. Kanai became even more suspicious.