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