Sorrowful child

Author: (Japanese) Kenzaburō ōe
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Over forty years, this "melancholy child" has traveled like a solitary knight from the forest in the geographical and cultural periphery, wielding a spear forged from the literary thoughts and humanistic ideals of writers, poets, and scholars such as Rabelais, Shakespeare, Dante, Lu Xun, Sartre, Ichio Watanabe, Blake, Bakhtin, and Maruyama Masao. With a "terrifying cry full of immense hope," he has courageously charged against the windmills along his path: the walls of post-war life that evoke futility, helplessness, and suffocation; the feudal system topped by the imperial institution and the pervasive feudal consciousness; the catastrophic humanitarian disasters of the disabled children, the victims of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and especially the victims of the Nanjing Massacre and the Auschwitz concentration camp; the shadow of nuclear weapons looming over every corner of the world; the souls of people increasingly alienated in the pursuit of consumer civilization; the right-wing political forces in Japan seeking to revise Article 9 of the Constitution to pave the way for the Japan-U.S. military alliance, thereby reviving ultranationalism and militarism; and the brutal unilateralism and preemptive strike policies of the United States, which pose a great threat to world peace and the progress of human civilization. This solitary knight is the protagonist of the novel The Melancholy Child. For the convenience of interpretation and expression, we may consider this protagonist as the author himself—Kenzaburō ōe—outside the text. The Melancholy Child is by no means an easy novel to interpret; it is the most vast and exquisite palace in the labyrinth of ōe's literature. This palace is located in the profound depths of the maze constructed through intertextuality, forming an integral whole with the preceding smaller and larger palaces. We cannot overlook or sever the intrinsic connections between these clusters of palaces while appreciating or evaluating any one of them in isolation, especially The Melancholy Child, this magnificent hall that embodies the life's work of the master architect and represents his highest achievement. However, it is also impossible for us to familiarize ourselves with the other palaces within the maze in a short time. What we can do is attempt to find a suitable entrance and proceed in a winding manner from there to the profound depths of The Melancholy Child. The forest on Shikoku Island may be the entrance we seek. In the ancient Japanese Shinto belief, there is a concept called "uchi no kami," where the Japanese ancestors believed that deities resided in evergreen trees and rocks. Thus, they regarded trees as one of their important totems, concentrating their daily fear and sense of mystery about nature onto trees, giving rise to primal and secondary myths about the forest. Some of these myths have been passed down in the form of witches' curses and ritual songs, most of which were prayers to the mysterious nature. It is no exaggeration to say that grandmother and mother successively played the role of a witch for young ōe, vividly transmitting the myths and folktales passed down through generations in the forest to the curious child. This made the stuttering, somewhat self-conscious child "receive training from his grandmother in associating the forest in the mountain village, rivers, and more specific locations with mythological significance, which later developed into his weaving new legends and attaching them to certain places or large trees." The special experiences he had in the forest as a child were emphasized to an almost instinctual degree in his adulthood, leading him to naturally (and inevitably) set the stage of his early work Raising (1958) in his hometown's forest. Later, this topographical description similar to his hometown appeared throughout his creative career and continued to appear in works such as Cutting Off the Diseased Sprouts, Killing the Harmful Seeds, The Rugby Match of the Bannermen's Year, The Forest Recluse of the Atomic Age, The Game of the Same Generation, M/T and Strange Tales in the Forest, The Burning Green Trees, Aerialsomersault, The Stolen Child, and The Child of Two Hundred Years. The difference lies in that, in works before The Game of the Same Generation, "the forest" symbolizes folk culture, history, and nature in contrast to urban civilization, modernity, and artificiality. The modern myths or folktales that take place there emphasize the spirit of healing, redemption, purification, and rebirth. However, after The Game of the Same Generation, compared to the earlier works' humanistic themes of healing, redemption, purification, and rebirth, ōe's later works increasingly reflect the spirit of Lu Xun he had absorbed since his youth—shouting terrifyingly in despair with a sliver of hope. Moreover, this evolving cry becomes increasingly active and combative. This combativeness is reflected not only in the elderly intellectual, resembling Don Quixote, in texts such as The Melancholy Child but also in the author himself outside the text. The following year after the novel's publication, at the age of 76, ōe, together with scholars such as Shūichi Kato and Hisashi Ito, formed the Nine-Ten Association, strongly opposing the Japanese government and conservative forces' attempt to amend Article 9 of the Constitution to revive ultranationalism and militarism in Japan. It is heartening that in this battle of unequal strength, the melancholy child from the forest was not alone but was accompanied by eight even older comrades in his resolute charge. What is even more heartening is that after the nine elderly men used their full strength to issue their cries, organizations such as the "Professor Nine-Ten Association," "Scientist Nine-Ten Association," "Women Nine-Ten Association," and "Religious Nine-Ten Association" sprang up like mushrooms after rain across Japan, issuing cries for peace and against war. These cries resonate with the prayers for peace and reconciliation made by ōe in The Stolen Child and The Melancholy Child, forming a polyphonic symphony that echoes in the hearts of all readers.