The Kiso Road: The Life and Times of Shimazaki Tōson (review)

William Naff (1929-2005) dedicated himself to the study of a single literary figure—Shimazaki Tōson (1872-1943)—and to the translation of Tōson's work, most notably Yoake mae (Chūō Kōron 1929-1935), known in English as the award-winning Before the Dawn (University of Hawai'i Press, 1987). The volume under review represents the culmination of a distinguished literary career, and it stands as both an homage to its subject and an altogether exemplary work of humanistic scholarship.

The Kiso Road is a model literary biography, the fruit of an intellectual journey spanning well over four decades. What began as a 1965 dissertation entitled "Shimazaki Tōson: A Critical Biography" has in effect achieved its final form. Naff's obvious affinity with his subject animates both the style and substance of this book, which engaged him during the final ten years of his life and was left incomplete at the time of his passing. Its publication owes much to J. Thomas Rimer, who took on the task of editing the manuscript. To cite Rimer's prefatory remarks: "No Japanese writer is more deserving of a lengthy biographical study, and none has been better served than by William Naff, who . . . has given us one of the fullest and most thoughtful accounts of a Japanese writer ever written in English" (p. x). I heartily concur with Rimer's assessment, and this review will essentially expand upon it. I should note as well the impressive foreword by Janet Walker, herself a noteworthy Tōson ?? scholar, which synopsizes the career of Shimazaki Tōson and provides a welcome gateway to Naff's magisterial study.

This book presents many things in a single package. Not only is it a penetrating study of a great Japanese writer; it is at the same time a compelling and lively kindai bunkashi (modern cultural history), with Tōson as its representative figure. Indeed, Tōson's life span almost perfectly overlaps the kindai (modern prewar) era—1868-1945. And as presented by Naff, this was a life of remarkable intensity and depth—a modal kindai literary life, one is tempted to say. As such, The Kiso Road parallels Tōson's masterwork, Yoake mae—itself celebrated as a history of the epochal bakumatsu/ishin period told through the figure of its protagonist, Aoyama Hanzo, modeled upon Tōson's father Masaki. Likewise, Naff can be said to emulate Tōson as the dedicated and inspired creator. Akin to Yoake mae as a trove of social and historical detail, Naff's coverage of Meiji education, gender relations, Tokugawa intellectual currents, and the inner workings of the bundan contributes substantially to our understanding of Meiji cultural history.

Following an introductory chapter that establishes the Meiji literary context, the book pursues a chronological account of Tōson's life and career in fourteen chapters, an account that places its subject at the center of intellectual and cultural developments spanning the 1880s to the 1940s. Each chapter contains an ample selection of illustrative excerpts from Tōson's work and other documentary evidence.

Chapter 1 provides a detailed survey of the family's roots as honjin (official innkeepers and members of the local gentry) in Kiso/Magome, and of the family's economic vicissitudes; the focus here is on Masaki and his support of the Hirata Atsutane school of kokugaku (Nativist study). Chapter 2 concerns Tōson's childhood and youth (1872-1892)—the rural upbringing and the subsequent move to Tokyo in 1880, and his years of study at Meiji Gakuin. Chapter 3 centers on Tōson's teaching stint at Meiji Jogakkō (1892-1893), a thwarted romantic interlude, and the founding of the Bungakkai romanticist coterie. Chapter 4 takes up Tōson's involvement with the Bungakkai group (1893-1896) and his emergence as one of the pioneering poets in the shintaishi (New Style) movement. Chapter 5, which covers the years 1896...