Mori Ōgai: Three Plays and the Problem of Identity

MORl OGAI: THREE PLAYS AND THE PROBLEM OF IDENTITY EVERY MAJOR WRITER IN JAPAN SINCE 1868 has written with one overwhelming fact impinging upon his consciousness: the shattering impact of the West upon traditional values and the concomitant necessity for making an adjustment to this situation. (Even when the works of certain writers like Higuchi Ichiyo, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, and Kawabata Yasunari reflect little or nothing of this dislocation, there is implied in their activity within areas free of this confrontation . the choice of rejecting, for whatever reason, the alien part of the new hybrid culture.) For Japan, only the defeat in World War II was more traumatic than the reopening of the country after its withdrawal into isolation in 1639 with only a minimal contact with the rest of the world. When the importunities of the Western powers could no longer be put off and the Tokugawa shogunate entered into unilateral treaties with foreign nations, its opponents, rallying around the emperor, quickly established a battle line that brought down the house that had been the political ruler for 265 years. The rallying cry of the anti-shogunate forces had been "Revere the emperor and expel the barbarians," but it was ironically under the new emperor Meiji (r. 1868-1912) that Japan turned to the West for assistance in modernization when the new leaders realized with a sense of urgency the need for overcoming the backwardness of their nation . Convulsive political, economic, and social reforms delivered Japan painfully into the modern world. Scores of Japanese fanned out on official missions into the advanced countries of the West to study, observe, absorb, and, later, to transmit information that was useful to Japan. In 1884, Mori Ogai (18621922 ), who was to become one of the leading literary figures of the new Japan, went to Germany as an army officer assigned the task of studying medicine and sanitation in the German army.l Two days after his arrival in Berlin, Ogai recorded in his diary that he called on the Japanese minister to Germany who, on learning what the young man had been sent abroad to study, said, "It is fine to study sanitation, but I feel that you will probably find it difficult to put into practice in Japan right now what you will learn here. What 1 It is interesting to note that three great contemporaries of Ogai also went abroad: Futabatei Shimei (1864-19°9) went to Russia; Natsume SOseki (18671916 ) to England; and Shimazaki Toson (187lH943) to France. 412 1967 PRo,DLEM o,F IoENTITY 413 use will theo,ries on sanitation be to,· apeo,ple who, walk aroa.il gripping the thongs of their clogs between their toes? Learning does not mean only reading boo,ks. What are the. ideas of the Euro,peans? How do, they live? What are their rules of conduct in society? If these are the o,nly points that you study carefully. you will have discharged your obligations fully."2 The juxtaposition of theories and thongs is an earthy and vivid commentary on the Japanese view of japan's position in relation to the West; but there was also the point. which could not have been lost on Ogai, that not all Western knowledge was going to be immediately applicable in Japan, and that mere form superimposed for its own sake was of little use. In his diary ogai faithfully recorded the activities that took him from the laboratory to the salon and to the coffee houses. The picture the entries provide is that of a sensitive and impressionable young man revelling in the pursuit of scientific knowledge and new experiences in an exotic milieu, undergoing, in the process, a kind of spiritual liberation. This is not to say, however, that he was blindly adulatory of the West. In an extraordinarily lengthy and heated entry for March 6, 1886, he showed himself to be clearly on the defensive about Japan, especially about japan's progress in westernization . He had attended a meeting of a scientific society at which the speaker, a German3 who had been invited by the Japanese government to conduct geological surveys and to teach at Tokyo University , made the statement...