Lost Leaves

Chapter Two Through Thickets of Imitation: Miyake Kaho and the First Song of Spring

Chapter Two Through Thickets of Imitation Miyake Kaho and the First Song of Spring She didn’t write it. She wrote it, but she shouldn’t have. She wrote it, but look what she wrote about. She wrote it, but “she” isn’t really an artist and “it” isn’t really serious, of the right genre—i.e., really art. She wrote it, but she wrote only one of it. She wrote it, but it’s only interesting/included in the canon for one, limited reason. She wrote it, but there are very few of her. —Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women’s Writing, 1983 To suggest that women are discouraged from writing is too simple. Thus Joanna Russ argues in her humorous though revealing look at the role literary criticism has played in silencing, obscuring, and ignoring female authors. They are not discouraged—not directly. But by holding them to gender-determined criteria that set them apart from the mainstream, women are subtly shelved or silenced.1 In many respects, Miyake Kaho has received such treatment. Some contemporary critics believed her debut piece Warbler in the Grove was covertly written by Tsubouchi Shōyō. More recent critics have charged that Shōyō, though not actually authoring the work, heavily edited it. (She didn’t write it.) If Kaho did indeed write the work, then contemporary critics took her to task for including vulgar subject matter—conversations between menservants and the machinations of a fallen woman. (She wrote it, but she shouldn’t have.) Then there were those who minimized the importance of her accomplishment by reading Warbler as a female version of Shōyō’s The Character of Modern-Day Students—a mere imitation and hardly worthy of serious review. (She wrote 52 it . . . but it isn’t really art.) Finally, Kaho has been castigated for writing about subjects only women would (or should) enjoy—fancy dress balls, a girls’ school, and marriage. (She wrote it, but look what she wrote about.) Miyake Kaho has long been associated with “women’s writing” or joryū bungaku. She is acknowledged as the first woman to have written in the modern period. And it is for this reason and this reason alone that her name is recorded in literary histories. (She wrote it, but it’s only included in the canon for one, limited reason.) Few scholars bother actually to read her work—so convinced are they by previous criticism that it is not worth the effort—and therefore dismiss her with a summary footnote or two. Since Kaho is deemed unworthy of serious consideration, she often receives no consideration at all. Much of the information available on her is largely secondhand and the product of speculation. That is to say, one critic or literary historian will repeat what another has said without investigating whether or Miyake Kaho 53 Figure 6 Miyake Kaho in Western attire. (Courtesy of Nihon Kindai Bungakkan) not the previous assertion is valid. These speculations have become cited so often that they have made their way into the literary record as undisputed fact. Most of the references to Kaho cite her motivation for writing, her privileged upbringing, and the effect it had on opening doors for her in the publishing world. These descriptions generally situate Kaho alongside her famous contemporary, Higuchi Ichiyō. Kaho is commended for having introduced Ichiyō to the people who would help launch her career. But then she is positioned as representive of everything that Ichiyō was not—thus making Ichiyō’s debut and short career all the more poignant and spectacular. Ichiyō was not privileged. She had to push and pull at the doors of the publishing world with her own frail hands, and she died just as she was discovering her true abilities. While the comparison between these women romanticizes Ichiyō, it denigrates Kaho . . . and unfairly so. Kaho was a vibrant and imaginative writer—attributes that reflect her own character and personality. Though certainly inspired by Tsubouchi Shōyō’s The Character of Modern-Day Students, her Warbler in the Grove is not a mere imitation. It is delightfully inventive, humorous as well as socially engaging, and has a surprisingly fresh and modern feel despite the classical style of the narrative. In this chapter I elucidate my findings by examining Warbler in the Grove against the background of contemporary Meiji literature. Because the text is generally unavailable to modern readers of...