Author of several major critical works, notably "Seven Types of Ambiguity" (1930) and "Some Versions of the Pastoral" (1935), William Empson (1906-1984) was also professor of English literature at Tokyo and Peking.
It has been said that Empson invented modern literary criticism in English. He certainly played a part in it, along with his such fellow mandarins as Edmund Blunden, I.A. Richards and T.S. Eliot. This first volume of a two-volume biography covers Empson's early life, up to 1940; stresses the critic's forbearers and the early life; and details the Asian travels. It is these, particularly the Tokyo years, which will perhaps most interest the local reader.
In 1931 Empson began a three-year contract as professor of English at the Tokyo University of Literature and Science but this was not his first contact with Japanese culture. That had been "The Tale of Genji" in the Arthur Waley translation. He reviewed it when still at Cambridge, noting with typical ambivalence that "it is a continual delight to read and so is liable to be rated too highly."
Rate it highly he did, however, and his later descriptions of Japan are full of references to the novel. "You remember the courtier in 'Genji' who had a genius for beating time. There is the same concentrated sense of style about [the maid's] dusting -- patter, patter, smack, smack -- done with an infantile air of charm which easily becomes loathsome."
As with so many of the foreigners who lived in Japan in the early 1930s, Empson's attitude toward both country and culture was mixed. Like Peter Quennell, who had had the job before him and turned its extension down, he could dislike what he found so different. Quennell remarked that "Japanese tongues patter as monotonously as Japanese clogs," and Empson wrote a friend that "I got rather a horror of the infantilism of the language when I was trying to pick some up."
Living in a land the language of which he did not know, Empson nonetheless had his enthusiasms. One was for the Noh which, whether he understood it or not, excited him. Another was for "understanding Japan," a subject that brought forth some of his best writing on the country.
"The Japanese have the power to seize on what is to us the least pleasant aspect of a thing as a source of charm: the willow outside the brothel where the girls had the last glimpse of their lovers; the rotten tooth which made the child emperor's face so 'piquant' in the 'Tale of Genji.' "
His remarks are more critical than not, but then Japan in 1931 was not a place beloved by foreigners. They were followed about by police agents, were suspected of being spies, were treated to displays of jingoism, and were unwilling witnesses to the death of individuality in the new enforced militarism that led to the Pacific War.
He wrote a friend, "Life here is very comfortable if you are strong-minded enough: the Japanese are really very civilised people, one only grudges their being so miserable. You have to shut out the neurotic state of the country as best you can -- I am living here like a worm in a pot."
At the same time, worm or not, Empson was a good teacher and liked by his students. They even cherished his eccentricities. He was usually disheveled and always absent-minded. When a student dropped by for tea he received his beverage in his teacher's shaving mug. Perhaps they took these spectacularly original manners as proof of an individuality now more precious that it was becoming lost in their own country.
Still, despite the "Genji," the Noh and the favorite students, Empson finally had enough. In 1934 he quit his post and returned to London, where he remained until he took up his appointment at National Peking University in 1937 -- arriving just in time to see the Japanese invade China.
Upon his return to England, Empson found himself a famous critic and a full-fledged academic. But these further adventures will be the burden of the second volume of this well researched and very interesting biographical account.
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