Literature, politics and Kenzaburo Oe

By June Tsai

Japanese Nobel laureate in literature Kenzaburo Oe visited Taiwan, where he is a household name among literary aficionados, for the first time Oct. 5-10. He took part in an academic conference on his works, an exhibition and other activities.

Dubbed “Japan’s social conscience,” the prolific author of 74 is a resolute opponent of Japanese militarism and a highly critical mind. He caused quite a stir in Taiwanese media not only with his mere presence but also because of a political controversy surrounding the organization of the symposium, put together by Taiwan’s Academia Sinica and the mainland’s Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

To gain a more in-depth perspective on the significance of Oe’s visit, Taiwan Today Oct. 13 interviewed Wu Rwei-ren, an assistant research fellow at the Academia Sinica’s Institute of Taiwan History. Wu, whose Oct. 6 conference paper was lauded by Oe as one of the best ever done on his work, said judging from Oe’s worldview as evidenced in his writing, he “was not surprised at all when Oe deemed this visit a journey of redemption—redeeming the wrongs Japan committed by colonizing Taiwan.”

Wu’s paper argues that Oe’s “Hiroshima Notes” and “Okinawa Notes,” two reportage-essays written in 1963-65 and 1969-70, respectively, reveal their author’s attempts to identify with a morally good Japan, as opposed to the sinful one which had committed injustices against other nations and peoples. In the paper, Wu argues that Okinawa serves as a necessary “other” for Oe to remind Japan of its wartime crimes, from which only a remorseful Japan can salvage itself. Wu suggests the search for a clean, good Japan tends to obscure the moral complexity of the victim and the question of victims becoming oppressors of still others.

In the interview, Wu, who once taught at Japan’s Waseda University, analyzed the origins of Oe’s famously “pro-China” stance, his literature and worldview, the implications for Taiwan of the controversy surrounding his visit, as well as how the people in Taiwan could better understand Japan by reading Oe’s works.

Taiwan Today: We know that Oe is one of the few Japanese writers officially honored by China and he has maintained friendly relations with CASS. The academy played an important role in helping bring Oe to Taiwan. What are the origin and consequences of this relationship?

Wu Rwei-ren: First, we should see Oe first and foremost as a novelist, an author. Just reading his works you would never puzzle out his views on East Asian politics. He came to Taiwan with a mission in mind—he believed he was to help representatives of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have a friendly talk, and it pleased him that the discussion would center on his oeuvre.

We must understand Oe’s pro-China stance in the Japanese context, in the geneology of post-war Japanese liberal-left intellectuals. There was among this line of intellectuals a self-reflection, a soul searching regarding Japan, accompanied by a sense of guilt for countries which suffered under Japan’s military imperialism. In addition, during the post-war era, the liberalist intellectuals, such as Maruyama Masao, held high esteem for China’s socialist revolution. They believed the revolution was a success in comparison to Japan’s failed Meiji Restoration, which led to war. They turned their sense of guilt into a more positive evaluation of China. On the other hand, Taiwan was for a very long time equivalent in their minds to what they saw as the reactionary Chiang Kai-shek regime, and the actual people here had no place in their conception of Taiwan. Oe shares the attitude of this line of intellectuals.

The third reason for Oe’s bias in favor of China may be traced to his grandfather, who was a well-known sinologist. Young Oe admired the Chinese classics. His pen reveals both Asian and Western influences. Grasping this “prehistory,” we can understand his unfamiliarity with Taiwan’s history of asserting independence from China.

Q: What’s baffling is how an artist exhibiting strong self-reflection and humanitarian ideals has failed to look at the people of Taiwan, Japan’s former colonial subjects, directly in the face rather than through the prisms of either Chiang’s rule or the Chinese Communist perspective.

A: Why hasn’t Oe really seen the people of Taiwan? We don’t know about his personal motives. But for Oe, China was the paramount victim of Japan’s wartime crimes. He enlarged this image to such an extent that China as a victim was idealized. China’s role is similar to that of Okinawa in his “Okinawa Notes,” a reminder of Japan’s crimes and a reason to be better. Yet once you absolutize China, you overlook China’s own victims, such as the even more marginalized Tibetans or Uighurs. For instance, Oe has never directly criticized China’s human rights record, only mentioning Zheng Yi, an exiled Chinese writer, in an aside in his Nobel Prize lecture, indirectly expressing his support for those who speak up against abuses of power.

Similarly, if you idealize China, you look at things in the world from China’s perspective, as how the victim sees it. From China’s point of view, China had been a whole, and Japan split it. Oe put Taiwan within this frame. Given this way of looking at things, Taiwan has no story independent of China’s. But this contradicts Taiwan’s own perception of itself as somehow historically detached from the mainland, with a very different sense of the past, a different memory, from that of China.

Oe believes Taiwan’s current struggle against China is a result of Japan’s past invasions. He feels guilty and tried to make amends at the conference. In this respect, I believe in his sincerity. It is just that his view is missing one reference point, which is Taiwan’s.

In addition, there is an interesting psychoanalytic aspect to it. Taiwan has never appeared in Oe’s writing. Yet in interviews with “Yomiuri Shimbun,” Oe revealed an episode that has to do with Taiwan. Oe took an entrance exam at the University of Toyko, which had started to receive Taiwanese students at the time. An examiner mistook him for a Taiwanese because of his Shikoku village accent. Oe did not deny he was Taiwanese, nor did he explain the misunderstanding to the official. Instead, he secretly assumed a Taiwanese identity for quite some time. He said he got the feeling of being an exile because of this mistake, and resolved ever since to remain marginal and speak for the weak and disadvantaged.

Since Taiwan gave him consciousness of the feelings of an exile, and afforded him a precious moment of moral enlightenment, why didn’t Oe feel curious about the “mask of the subaltern” that he wore and try to find out more about it? I can only say it’s a mystery. Though he seemed to be enthusiastic about the questions I raise about this incident in the paper, Oe did not respond to them in the conference, but promised to think about the issue. Taiwan seems to have been subsumed within an inflated, greater victim that has preoccupied Oe’s moral consciousness.

Q: Your paper stands out in the conference because it articulates the political consequences in Oe’s literary world, whereas most studies, and Taiwan’s media alike, treat literature and politics separately when they are actually intertwined.

A: Oe’s literary works are obvious subjects for comparative study as they have all the characteristics of “intertextuality.” He makes frequent allusions to Western literature and builds it into his own texts and contexts. In addition, Oe’s works overlap personal life with national life. He employs signs and metaphors which beg for textual research. Studies which focus on his use of Western literary allusions or on his metaphors are largely de-politicized readings.

Yet for me as a historian of political thought, there is something in him that I could not shun, namely, the political implications of his art. I read his works as texts of political thought. And we should not forget that in recent years, the Nobel Prize for Literature has put emphasis on a candidate’s political participation and his or her moral message.

Rather than reportage, “Hiroshima Notes” and “Okinawa Notes” read more like poetic litanies. Oe exposes his innermost moral feelings in musical repetition, sometimes to the extent of moving away from the objects he should have been gazing at.

Q: Your own way of writing the paper also verges on poetry.

A: Yes, I have been struggling to work out a suitable way of addressing Oe’s work. It was not possible to make a systematic analysis of his large and difficult body of work. I eventually settled on an epigrammatic form. I put my thoughts down in a heuristic rather than systematic manner, which is also my way of paying homage to Oe.

Q: Before the conference began, politicians accused the Academia Sinica of kowtowing to mainland China by downgrading a trilateral symposium involving Japan, Taiwan and China to a “cross-strait event,” and by replacing the Taiwanese novelist who was to act as Oe’s interlocutor with another one more acceptable to China. What is your take on this?

A: Some people complained that Oe’s visit was manipulated so that he could only learn about half of Taiwan’s literary scene—the half that China gave the nod to. Let’s have some respect for a brilliant mind. I believe Oe is not ignorant of the local voices of support for a stronger Taiwan identity. Yet when we meet a personality of such literary and moral heights, we should challenge him with his works, rather than fussing over organizational matters, on the one hand, or thinking to cultivate a relationship with a celebrity, on the other.

For me, emphasis should be put on how to present Taiwan to Oe in a way that befits his stature. In writing this paper, I do not intend to be an admirer, but to engage with Oe on an equal footing. Too much resentment does not help with communication.

Q: What do you think is the significance of Oe’s historic visit to the island?

A: It is a pity that we do not have a major cultural magazine to really dig deep into Oe’s lifelong literary output. Most articles never get past the introductory level, let alone going into any interpretation or criticism from Taiwan’s perspective.

Yet translations of several of Oe’s works were published on the occasion of his visit, and they are important in reading Oe as a novelist, which he is. His works, though starting from personal matters, deal with universal themes. Most local readers are unaware of his political position in Japan’s context or his relationship with China. Reading his books without the intervention of ideology is the first and essential step to building a connection with this literary mind. Many young people took part in Oe’s book-signing event. This pure love for literature is a good thing, and we should guard against its disappearance.

Now, Oe has also caused controversies in Japan with his remarks outside of literature, for example regarding his insistence on the pacificist clause, Article Nine of the Consitution of Japan, and his repeated apologies to China on behalf of Japan. So starting from an innocent reading of Oe’s pure Shikoku village world or of the story of his brain-damaged but musically-talented son, Hikari, we could then move to his more sophisticated inner world. Reading his novels in this way, we come to appreciate his moral, historical and political consciousness, how he sees Japan in its ambiguity and how he views East Asian politics from a Japanese perspective. When we learn to understand his politics on the basis of his literature, we give priority to the independence of literary aesthetics, and at the same time learn to accept a person in all his complexity.

Furthermore, if we proceed from this reading to Japan’s cultural and intellectual world, the various political positions found there, their background and how they are represented in Japanese literature, our knowledge of Japan can make tremendous progress. No political position grows from a vacuum; it develops within a complex context. Thus we will learn to see a political position, whether it be pro-Taiwan or pro-China, in Japan’s context and will not interpret it superficially.

With such understanding, we will know how to engage with all sectors in Japan and make real friends. We won’t become close only with those who say good things about Taiwan. Taiwan was traditionally close to right-wingers within the Liberal Democratic Party, which had a strategic alliance with the old Kuomintang against communism. In fact, since Taiwan’s democratization, many traditional liberal leftists in Japan have recognized Taiwan’s struggle for an independent identity. To make friends is not to please friends. We need to have more sophisticated discourse, for example, on Japan’s colonization of Taiwan and its positive and negative legacies, to engage with friends of different political affliations.

We can also learn something from a comparison of conditions in Japan and Taiwan. During the post-war era when Oe started to write, forced democratization provided an environment for critical examination of Japan’s imperial system. The atmosphere supported independent, free thinking, which was favorable to literary creation. Were it not for that liberating atmosphere, it would have been difficult for Japan to move on from its highly introspective pre-war literature.

In comparison, the rule of Japan and later of the Chinese Nationalist government in Taiwan did great harm to the growth of a healthy cultural sector by forcing language changes on the Taiwanese people. In the decades of martial law it was impossible for a philosophical sort of literature to develop. Whether more deep-thinking works will be written in the future, I dare not say. All one can do, as an artist or an intellectual, is to try to produce valuable works. Once you achieve good results, you are sure to win respect and recognition.

This interview is published in Taiwan Today Oct. 23, 2009

Rebuilding Xiaolin with a view to tradition

Night sacrifice in Xiaolin. (Courtesy of Alan Tsai)

By June Tsai

Once a relatively anonymous village nestled between the plains and mountains of southern Taiwan, Xiaolin was thrust into the international spotlight Aug. 9 after being virtually wiped off the map by Typhoon Morakot, the worst tropical storm to strike the island in 50 years.

Already reeling from the loss of close to 500 residents, many of whom were buried under tons of mud and rubble, the small community now faces an even more dangerous threat: a government-initiated relocation plan that could potentially wipe their plains aboriginal lifestyle off the face of Taiwan’s cultural map.

Under the well-meaning proposal, disaster-affected households in Kaohsiung County’s Namaxia, Taoyuan and Xiaolin townships are to be resettled in new homes constructed on 59 hectares of national land in Shanlin Township. The site was intended for state-run Taiwan Sugar Co., which planned to use it for farming.

The joint project between the government, the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation and Hon Hai Group—Taiwan’s top electronics manufacturing outfit—will see new homes, activity centers and schools constructed for 806 households. The government’s contribution to the project is land, with Tzu Chi responsible for the construction of buildings. Hon Hai is tasked with giving villagers a means to earn a living through establishing organic farms and guaranteeing the purchase of future harvests.

On paper, the idea seems flawless, combining villagers’ needs with a healthy respect for the environment. But as the fog of loss begins to clear from the minds of the victims, many are now thinking clearly and question the plan’s merits. Some have even gone so far as to brand it a hastily patched together hodgepodge that runs roughshod over the ethnicities of survivors and their unique cultural needs.

Alan Tsai, a Xiaolin self-help group spokesman, claims that the proposal forces the Bunun, Tsou and Siraya to live together in an artificial construct. “The Bunun and Tsou peoples traditionally inhabited Namaxia and Taoyuan, upstream of Nanzixian River,” he said. “Further downstream was Xiaolin, where 70 percent of villagers belong to the Siraya tribe.”

Tsai said the plan lumps people from different ethnic backgrounds together in a standardized collective housing complex. “No consideration was made in respect to aboriginal groups’ traditions, ways of life and patterns of social interaction. This could result in the extinction of an irreplaceable aboriginal culture.”

According to local media reports, Tzu Chi wants work on the new homes to get underway as soon as possible and is seeking carte blanche consent from the villagers even before relevant public agencies completed the necessary assessments.

“Villagers are now looking to the government for more reconstruction options and more time to consider how they want to live their lives in future,” Tsai said. “Reconstruction plans should be tailored to the different aboriginal communities and their collective knowledge needs to be solicited.”

Tsai warns that without careful deliberation and the participation of survivors in resettlement discussions, “we could miss the opportunity to preserve a unique cultural legacy, which once lost, can never be bought back."

For Xiaolin’s Siraya aboriginals, the loss of the village has serious ramifications for indigenous peoples’ cultural diversity. “There is no doubt that the tragedy dealt a major blow to the country’s Siraya culture,” said Duan Hong-kun, a Sirayan descendent and anthropologist. To fortify the Siraya culture, Duan and other scholars are committed to monitoring the reconstruction process for Xiaolin’s survivors.

The community contained within Xiaolin was considered by aboriginal researchers and scholars to be the best example of Siraya culture on the island. The Kaohsiung County Government set up Taiwan’s first Siraya museum at Xiaolin Elementary School in 1996. But that facility, along with the school, has disappeared forever. Similarly claimed by the raging muddy torrents were the temple, meeting square and a host of cultural materials.

The establishment of the temple and museum in the village saw a revival of traditional festivals, many of which were performed on an annual basis. Most notable is the ancestor spirit worshipping rites scheduled for the 15th day of the ninth month on the lunar calendar.

On the surface, the Xiaolin tragedy may seem like an isolated one, but for the Siraya, it is another sad chapter in a tale of seemingly constant displacement. Originally dwelling in the plains of Tainan, they were uprooted from their homes and used as auxiliaries to protect Japanese police and Han Chinese working in the camphor-growing industry from attacks staged by other aboriginal tribes. Following a failed anti-Japanese uprising more than 90 years ago, the Siraya were relocated to the Nanzixian River valley.

Duan said that exposure to more dominant Japanese and Han Chinese cultures forced the Siraya to suppress their cultural identity. The remote Xiaolin, being closer to the communities of mountain aborigines, became a bastion of tribal culture.

With the movement for aboriginal rights surfacing during the 1980s, the Siraya also fought to have their identity recognized. But unlike Taiwan’s 14 mountain aboriginal groups, the government has still not yet officially recognized them, despite 10 years of effort.

Having no official status means being denied the legal rights of an indigenous people. This has become a critical issue in post-typhoon reconstruction and forced the Xiaolin people to organize a self-help group to communicate with the public sector.

For the time being, 170 Xiaolin households agreed to relocate to Shanlin, while 74 would move to Wulipu, south of Xiaolin. In Wulipu, villagers worked with anthropologists and the Red Cross Society of the ROC in designing their new homes. In Shanlin, on the other hand, Xiaolin survivors are having a difficult time convincing Tzu Chi and the government to include them in the reconstruction process.

“Xiaolin’s Siraya beliefs and culture should be the center of any reconstruction plan,” Duan said. Echoing this position, Tsai added that the No. 1 priority should be preserving the architectural characteristics of Siraya homes.

“There must be separate spaces for different aboriginal groups. We also want the surviving villagers to participate in constructing their future homes rather than letting construction companies do the job.” He said that many Xiaolin villagers were experienced construction workers.

“The new community should also be named Xiaolin, not Da Ai,” Tsai said. “Da Ai,” means “big love” and is the nameTzu Chi uses for housing complexes it has built for victims of natural disasters all over the world.

Though not a Siraya, Tsai said he was raised in Xiaolin and the local aboriginal culture and tradition is a part of his life. “Reconstruction should involve more than physical construction. It is about rebuilding culture and community spirit.”

This article is published in Taiwan Today Oct. 9.