This is, I think, the first translation into English of a novel by a writer that Japanese think is one of their finest. Tokuda Shusei (1871-1943) was thought by Kawabata Yasunari to be the most Japanese of all modern novelists; Nakamura Murao stated that, after Saikaku, only Shusei portrayed the true characteristics of the Japanese people.
One of the reasons for this adulation may have been that Shusei was among the earliest modern writers to concern himself with "lower-class" characters, to abandon upper-class Meiji aspirations and to reflect the actual life, the "true characteristics," of Taisho/Showa people.
At the same time, this was the audience for whom he was writing -- a popular audience for whom he adhered to generic conventions. As translator Richard Torrance has explained, he "punished the rich and powerful and sympathetically portrayed the weak and oppressed."
Shusei is thus usually classed as a "naturalist," though he was sometimes denied the literary standing of his almost exact contemporary, Shimazaki Toson. Perhaps it was this "lower-class" identification that disputed his literary status. Natsume Soseki complained that "Rough Living" contained (in Donald Keene's paraphrase) "nothing that was ennobling, nothing that could bring comfort or relief, nothing to suggest the joy of life."
Perhaps such descriptions have discouraged would-be translators. There have been several in French, but until now there has been only one English translation of Shusei's work: the story "Kunsho," rendered as "The Order of the White Paulownia" by Ivan Morris. The appearance of "Rough Living" (a translation of the 1915 novel "Arakure") offers an opportunity to make the acquaintance of this naturalistic author.
In "Rough Living," probably his most famous novel, Shusei was explicit in his intentions. "I was trying to write about a modern person who is constantly in action, never revealing a flicker of interest in such concepts as 'giri' and 'ninjo,' extremely coarse-grained and unable to understand the feelings of others."
Oshima is thus a person who refuses the role that society has allotted her. Determined to get ahead in the world, she fights and struggles, attaching herself to one man after another, clawing her way to success. During her various trials she displays no insight into herself and, though she may weep at her plight, she then pulls herself together and does something about it. She is, indeed, the opposite of that social fiction, the demure, helpless maiden who becomes the good wife and wise mother.
We may now see her as a variation on the "modern woman," one who will no longer put up with the discrimination hitherto forced upon her. Oshima's determination, like that of the class from which she springs, is that of a healthy human being demanding his or her rights.
Organized society does not often approve of such behavior. Indeed, a literary descendant of Oshima's went on to become the heroine of "Shukuzu" ("Miniature," 1941) and land her author in trouble. Though this rebellious geisha was, as Robert Rolf has written, "treated in depth and with sympathy," the publication was halted by wartime authorities, the work was consequently never completed and two years later the disappointed Shusei was dead.
"Rough Living" (a title Donald Keene translated as "The Wild One" and which I rendered as "Untamed" when the novel was filmed) was written for serial publication. It is consequently highly episodic and, as is common with some Japanese popular literature, tells much more often than it shows.
Also we are, to an extent, dealing with known types. No matter how often they appear, the characters wear their tags. Oshima's father, for example, is on most appearances called her "stern, old-fashioned father." There is also an amount of melodrama: people slashing about with straight razors, cutting off hair, leaping into wells.
One is not then surprised to encounter the problems the translator writes of. What does he do with "she felt anger constricting her chest" or "her subdued heart sprang to life"? These are, I am sure, perfectly adequate translations. The problem is that in English the thought itself seems inadequate -- or at least adequate only in careless, popular publications.
Maybe that is the reason that I feel the novel was adequately presented in its 1957 film version, written by Yoko Mizuki, directed by Mikio Naruse and with Hideko Takamine radiant as the untamed heroine. The melodramatics were toned down and the stereotypical tags were not possible. Also nothing could be told us because (this being the nature of film) we had to be shown.
Reading the novel, I was in the fortunate position of being able to visualize Takamine as Oshimo and could understand her partners through such actors as Masayuki Mori, Daisuke Kato and Ken Uehara. For those who do not know the film, this novel, though of major historical importance, is perhaps of more sociological than literary interest.
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