From
Genbaku Bungaku
to
Fukushima Bungaku
The final approach to a critic review of the
genbaku bungaku
literary genre is
conceived following Tachibana Reiko’s
Narrative As Counter-Memory
22
as the main
source of criticism.
As sum up by Tachibana, the
genbaku bungaku
genre can be considered by the point
of view of the strict form, as suggested by Hijiya-Kirschnereit; in these case works
concerning Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic bombings can be divided into:
1)
jun bungaku
純文学
;
2)
taish
ū
bungaku
大衆文学
;
3)
private accounts (diaries, letters…);
4) scientific data (reports, inquiries…),
the last of which is nowadays labeled as non-
fiction. It must be added, for the sake of completeness, that even though many
academics like Takahashi Toshio and Jonathan Dil share the opinion that a
jun
bungaku
/
taish
ū
bungaku
distinction
is no more a necessary discourse,
23
the influent
critic Harold Bloom still defends the position of the superiority of “the classics”.
24
Although the aim of this study is not headed to classify the authorial literary responses
to catastrophe as products of “high” or “low” literature, this division can not be lapsed
while dealing with the revaluation of the genre. This article takes then the stance of
Sartre in considering every literary expression as a potential
ouvrage de l’esprit
.
25
As
regarding Japanese non-fictional production however, a further division can be
figured out in regards to the literary form assumed by the piece of work in question,
as to say:
-
kiroku bungaku
記 録 文 学
(“literature of the recording”): journals,
autobiographical notes,
mémorial
: private accounts with the aim of registering
facts;
22
Tachibana, R. (1998).
Narrative As Counter-Memory: A Half-Century of Postwar Writing in
Germany and Japan.
New York: State University of New York Press.
23
According to a private conversation with Dottor Dil, assistant professor at the Department of Foreign
Languages and Liberal Arts of Keio University in occasion of this IAFOR conference. Takahashi
Toshio, professor of Late Showa and Contemporary Japanese Literature at Waseda University, shared
his thought-provoking stance about this topic during his course about non-fictional production at
Waseda University, May 2016.
24
Farkas, A. (2015).
Che cosa resta della letteratura? Intervista con Harold Bloom.
Luxembourg City:
Amazon Media EU SARL (Kindle format only).
25
Benoît, (2000) (p. 141).
-
ruporutaajy
ū
ルポルタージュ
(“reportage”): articles and journalistic inquiries
with journalistic purposes (often politically compromised);
-
jiken sh
ō
setsu
事件小説
or
nyuusu sutoorii
ニュース・ストーリー
(derived from
English terms): fictional paraphrase of an historical event, merely an accident;
-
jijitsu sh
ō
setsu
事実小説
: autobiographies (also in the form of
shish
ō
setsu
私小
説
)
26
and biographies of notable people or novels based on events claimed as
true.
27
According to Treat however, the
genbaku bungaku
genre can also be observed by the
authors’ point of view, as to say, the “post-nuclear generation” approach:
28
in
the
first
case
the
author
is
also
the
witness
and
identifies
problems
in
depicting
his
experience;
Treat
individuates
Hara
Tamiki,
Ō
ta
Y
ō
ko, Kurihara Sadako as the main
representative examples. The second an
d
third
cases
concern
authors
not
directly
involved
in
the
atomic
bombings
which
is
considered
as
a
personal
(
Ō
e
Kenzabur
ō
,
Ibuse Masuji, Hotta Yoshie) or social problem respectively (Oda Makoto).
Tachibana
herself distinguished the literary production on the theme in two categories: one,
derived from the German
Trümmerliteratur
and translated as
“rubble literature”
consists in works written and published soon after the World War II; the other, called
“long-distance literature” regards works of art published after decades.
29
These three
categories can be applied to the literary responses to 11th March 2011 too, with the
only difference that the focus is not on the nuclear atomic bombings but on the three-
fold catastrophe of earthquake, tsunamis and nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima
Daiichi Power Plant instead. By the way, a link between the two tragedies has just be
underlined, as many authors remarked soon after 3/11 (one for all, the nobel prize
Ō
e
Kenzabur
ō
in his
New Yorker
’s article).
30
In this regards the debate around the
different but similar nature of genbaku
原爆
(Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic
bombings)
/genpatsu
原発
(Fukushima nuclear accident)
31
broke out among scholars
after 11th March must be kept in mind too. Although the literary works belonging to
the
genbaku bungaku
genre can not be found so easily in bookstores’s shelves, so do
not the post-Fukushima literature, as highlighted also in Kimura Saeko’s first work of
literary criticism about this topic. A critical note can be raised in regards to the title
chosen,
Shinsai bungaku ron
『震災文学論』
(“A theory of the literature of the
catastrophe): it is more likely to refer to the "literary of the catastrophe” as a canon in
itself, since the term
shinsai
震災
often translated as “disaster” implies a seismic
event; as noticed before anyway, 11th March catastrophe was a double-nature crisis
that involved a human mismanagement at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant too. In
these light the label
shinsai-jinsai bungaku
震災・人災文学
is thought as more
appropriated. Moreover, for these reasons the s
hinsai-jinsai bungaku
can be
26
shish
ō
setsu
or
watakushi
sh
ō
setsu
私小説
means, literally, “I-Novel” and represents the Japanese
version of the German confessional literature known as
Bildungsroman,
introduced in Japan in the
Meiji period.
27
The main source of inspiration for this scheme was professor Takahashi’s course.
28
Tachibana refers to Treat’s
Ground Zero
here. For further information see Treat, J. W. (1996).
Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb
, Chicago: University Of Chicago
Press.
29
Always refer to Tachibana (1998).
30
Ō
e, K. (2011). History Repeats. In
New Yorker
, March 28.
31
Kimura, S. (2013)
Shinsai bungaku ron. Atarashii nihon bungaku no tameni
. T
ō
ky
ō
: Seidosha.
considered as a possible translation for the “literature of the catastrophe” as a canon,
while the literary responses to 3/11 disaster can be addressed simply as
Fukushima
bungaku
フクシマ文学
written in
katakana
to emulate Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
the sense of cities exposed to nuclear radiation. Both
genbaku bungaku
and
Fukushima bungaku
are to be considered as a part of the
shinsai-jinsai bungaku
canon.
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