Arts, Faculty of
Asian Studies, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Zhang, Jessica Dong Ni
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
Dazai Osamu (pen name of Tsushima Shūji, 1909â1948) is one of the most celebrated writers of modern Japan. His enduring literary impact extends to the present day, as his works delve into contentious yet accessible topics like social alienation, fragmented subjectivities, and nihilism. Academic scholarship has historically situated some of his most iconic works within the shishÅsetsu (âI-novelâ) paradigm and examined them under an autobiographical lens. This thesis redirects the focus from Dazaiâs canonized, (quasi-)autobiographical works to âOsanâ (1947), one of his lesser-known works from the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945â1952). âOsanâ features a first-person female narrator-protagonist who never benefits from the ârevolutionaryâ opportunities introduced by the Occupation. In focusing on this text, my thesis offers important new insights into Dazaiâs position vis-Ã -vis the changing conditions of Japan under the Allied Occupation. Specifically, this thesis argues that Dazai rejected the dominant idea of a Japanese postwar state that had completely and successfully severed itself from its problematic past and that the nation could only recover under the reformist agenda of the occupying forces. By employing a cross-gendered voice in âOsan,â Dazai offers a critique of the political continuities of the past into the present through the highlighting of persistent gender norms. Chapter One comprises the introduction to this thesis, including a historical overview of the Occupation period, a brief biography of Dazai, and a literature review of his cross-gendered writings and related scholarship. Chapter Two focuses on Occupation-period discourse surrounding âfemale liberationâ and its effect on Japanese women, followed by a close reading analysis of âOsanâ with a focus on the temporalities within the text and their relations to prevailing ideals of female domesticity. Chapter Three considers the language and narrative structure of âOsanâ together with larger sociolinguistic discourse on âwomenâs languageâ in order to explicate how the female narrator-protagonistâs speech and interiorized thoughts are tied to her subordinated role within the household. In all, my thesis seeks to reveal the limits of âfemale liberationâ as a masculinist-gendered discourse in Occupation-period Japan and illuminate the danger of forgetting those who have been overshadowed by the complex historical processes of patriarchal nation-building.
CONTINUITIES AND DISCONTINUITIES IN DAZAI OSAMUâS âOSANâ: UNVEILING THE ILLUSIONS OF THE OCCUPATION ERA by JESSICA DONG NI ZHANG B.A., The University of British Columbia, 2021 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Asian Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2024 Ã Jessica Dong Ni Zhang, 2024 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: Continuities and Discontinuities in Dazai Osamuâs âOsanâ: Unveiling the Illusions of the Occupation Era submitted by Jessica Dong Ni Zhang in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Asian Studies Examining Committee: Christina Yi, Associate Professor, Asian Studies, UBC Supervisor Sharalyn Orbaugh, Professor, Asian Studies, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Christina Laffin, Associate Professor, Asian Studies, UBC Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract Dazai Osamu (pen name of Tsushima Shūji, 1909â1948) is one of the most celebrated writers of modern Japan. His enduring literary impact extends to the present day, as his works delve into contentious yet accessible topics like social alienation, fragmented subjectivities, and nihilism. Academic scholarship has historically situated some of his most iconic works within the shishÅsetsu (âI-novelâ) paradigm and examined them under an autobiographical lens. This thesis redirects the focus from Dazaiâs canonized, (quasi-)autobiographical works to âOsanâ (1947), one of his lesser-known works from the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945â1952). âOsanâ features a first-person female narrator-protagonist who never benefits from the ârevolutionaryâ opportunities introduced by the Occupation. In focusing on this text, my thesis offers important new insights into Dazaiâs position vis-Ã -vis the changing conditions of Japan under the Allied Occupation. Specifically, this thesis argues that Dazai rejected the dominant idea of a Japanese postwar state that had completely and successfully severed itself from its problematic past and that the nation could only recover under the reformist agenda of the occupying forces. By employing a cross-gendered voice in âOsan,â Dazai offers a critique of the political continuities of the past into the present through the highlighting of persistent gender norms. Chapter One comprises the introduction to this thesis, including a historical overview of the Occupation period, a brief biography of Dazai, and a literature review of his cross-gendered writings and related scholarship. Chapter Two focuses on Occupation-period discourse surrounding âfemale liberationâ and its effect on Japanese women, followed by a close reading analysis of âOsanâ with a focus on the temporalities within the text and their relations to prevailing ideals of female domesticity. Chapter Three considers the language and narrative iv structure of âOsanâ together with larger sociolinguistic discourse on âwomenâs languageâ in order to explicate how the female narrator-protagonistâs speech and interiorized thoughts are tied to her subordinated role within the household. In all, my thesis seeks to reveal the limits of âfemale liberationâ as a masculinist-gendered discourse in Occupation-period Japan and illuminate the danger of forgetting those who have been overshadowed by the complex historical processes of patriarchal nation-building. v Lay Summary Dazai Osamu (1909â1948) is one of Japanâs most celebrated modern Japanese writers. Some of his most iconic works deal with sensitive subjects such as social alienation, identity crisis, suicide, and nihilism. But how did Dazai perceive the changes that occurred in Japan after the Fifteen-Year War (1931â1945), and what can we understand about the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945â1952) through his writings? This thesis tackles these questions by examining one of Dazaiâs lesser-known works, âOsanâ (1947). I explore how the text portrays a woman who continues to live under an oppressive and patriarchal family structure during an era that was touted as revolutionary. In doing so, I argue that Dazaiâs perspective challenged the dominant narrative that depicted a postwar Japan that was successfully democratized and modernized by the Allied Occupation. vi Preface This thesis is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, Jessica Dong Ni Zhang. vii Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary ................................................................................................................................ v Preface ........................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... ix Dedication .................................................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 Historical Overview of the Occupation Period in Japan ............................................................. 2 Dazaiâs Background and His Cross-Gendered Writings ............................................................. 6 Chapter Summaries ................................................................................................................... 10 Chapter 2. Japanese Women Oscillating between Times ........................................................ 13 A New Chapter for Japanese Women: âFeminist Reformâ under the Allied Occupation of Japan ......................................................................................................................................... 16 Tackling Occupation Essentialism: The Husband Figure in âOsanâ ........................................ 20 The Absent Evils: Victims of the War in âOsanâ ...................................................................... 24 The Strong Woman, Not Yet Emancipated ............................................................................... 27 The Lover Figure in Chikamatsuâs Amijima and Dazaiâs âOsanâ ............................................ 34 Chapter 3. What âWomenâs Languageâ Entails: Narrative Modes, Gender, and Power Relations in âOsanâ .................................................................................................................... 39 Signifying Watashiâs Speech Level Shifts: A Historical Overview of âWomenâs Languageâ and Dazai Osamuâs Cross-Gendered Writings ................................................................................ 40 viii Literary Analysis: The Spoken and the Unspoken .................................................................... 44 Chapter 4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 56 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 60 Acknowledgements I spent close to three years writing this masterâs thesis. It has truly been a privilege to take this fulfilling journey, and I would not have come this far without the support of many, many amazing individuals. I have been interested in Dazai Osamuâs works since I was an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia, and it was a translation project that sparked my interest and paved the way for my masterâs journey. For this, I am indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Christina Yiâwho assigned me the very projectâand, most importantly, who has been one of my biggest inspirations since my undergraduate years. This project would not have been possible without her invaluable insights, constructive criticisms, and undying support. Thank you for telling me that it is normal to feel anxious about research and writing; thank you for teaching me that perfection is not attainable (or necessary, even) but that striving for it is always a step closer to excellence; thank you for noticing my critical âvoiceâ; and thank you for never trivializing my perspectivesâdespite how foolish, erratic, and reckless they sound at timesâand always taking the time to redirect me to the right path. I also would like to thank Dr. Sharalyn Orbaugh. The graduate seminar I had the pleasure of sharing with Sharalyn-sensei was truly an eye-opening experience. I learned so much from her about the complexity of gender and literature from, as well as the socio-historical context of, the postwar period in Japan. These subjects are what ground this thesis, and I would not have been able to comprehend, nevertheless write about them, without Sharalyn-senseiâs insights and expertise. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Dr. Christina Laffin, who despite her already busy schedule agreed to be a part of my supervisory committee and offered me her indispensable expertise on premodern Japanese sources. I also thank my instructors, such as Dr. Ayaka x Yoshimizu, who expressed interest in my project and supported me throughout my academic journey, also since my undergrad years; Dr. Hyung-Gu Lynn, for teaching me how to approach academic research from different, sometimes unexpected standpoints; and Ihhwa Kim-sensei and Michiko Suzuki-sensei, who had absolute faith in my Japanese language proficiency and encouraged me to take on the masterâs program. I am also grateful to Dr. Younglong Kim, Dr. Akito Sakasai, and Dr. Kaori Yoshida, whom I had the greatest pleasure of meeting at the 2024 Rethinking Global Japanese Studies symposium and who offered me their extensive knowledge and support. Of course, I would not have finished this project without the support of my dear friends, colleagues, and senpai. I am forever grateful to Chris, Anika, Ying, Lavanya, Skyler, Abigail, Anastasia, Ricky, Ruoyi, Dalia, Tianyu, Yuewei, Haruki, Lillian, Ai, and Shota. Thank you for treating me with nothing but kindness and patience, listening to my abrupt rants about life and my ânerdyâ talks, and sympathizing with my struggles with the demands of academia. It has been my absolute pleasure to have worked with each of you, and I wish you all the very best. I also must thank my friends from outside of UBC: my besties since elementary school, Angela and Abella, and Erin, Mo, and all of my Close Friends. These are the people who taught and reminded me to be human, to de-stress by having a balanced life outside of academia, and to indulge in my hobbies from time to time. I would not have survived my emotional turmoil without your enthusiasm, humour, sincerity, and support. I will also be forever grateful to my partner, William, who I always find solace in. Thank you for being so kind and patient with me despite my unsolicited and immature tantrums and always entertaining my sporadic strings of (at times incomprehensible, inconclusive, and irrelevant) academic talks. Your unconditional love and enduring support are what pushed me to xi finish this project, encouraged me to improve myself, and, most importantly, brought me joy in dark times. Finally, I am forever indebted to my family, who has always believed in me and supported my academic pursuits. Thank you, Dad, for enlightening me with your philosophies about life and giving me confidence and security. Thank you, Mom, for sympathizing with my struggles of shouldering multiple roles, including a caregiver, a daughter, a student, and a worker. I would not exist without you, and I would not have come this far without your understanding, encouragement, and wisdom. Dedication To my father, Dr. Xiao Ming Zhang, who has never doubted my capabilities. 1 Chapter 1. Introduction ãã¶ãã§ããããã¨ã¯ããã®ããã«ãã¯ã¤ããè¨ã¯ãªããã°ããããããä½ãããããªã¯ãã¾ããããã¶ãã§ããããã¦ãããããããä»ã®ãããªã²ããããæã¤ã¦ãã«ãããã¯ãããããªããã°ãªãã¬ããªã©ã¨ãã¤ããã¤ã¦ãããã¡ã¯ãã«ãããã®åºããã®é©å½ãããã¤ã¾ã§ããã§ããªãã®ã§ãã If you donât make clear what you have done, then nothing will happenânot even a revolution. And even when one does, as long as one wishes to do something else or insist that humans must do things in a certain way, true revolution that stems from the depths of humanity will never be achieved. âDazai Osamu, âKakumeiâ (âRevolution,â 1948)1 Dazai Osamu (pen name of Tsushima Shūji, 1909â1948) is one of the most celebrated writers of modern Japan. Some of his acclaimed novels, including ShayÅ (The Setting Sun, 1947) and Ningen shikkaku (No Longer Human, 1948), were translated into English within a decade of their debut in Japan. Dazaiâs enduring literary impact extends to the present day, as his works are known to delve into deeply contentious yet accessible topics like social alienation, fragmented subjectivities, and nihilism.2 Academic scholarship has historically situated his most iconic works within the shishÅsetsu (âI-novelâ) paradigm and examined them under an autobiographical lens.3 In his book Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan, for example, Alan Wolfe discusses this tendency to psychologically analyze Dazai based on his quasi-autobiographical writings.4 Wolfe contends that not only did Dazaiâs suicide provide Japan with 1 DAZAI Osamu 太宰治, âKakumei é©å½,â in Dazai Osamu zenshū 10 å¤ªå®°æ²»å ¨é ç¬¬åå·» (Tokyo: Chikuma ShobÅ ç­æ©æ¸æ¿, 1977), 332. Original text published in Romanesuku ã­ããã¹ã¯ 1, no. 1, 1948. 2 SHIMURA Kunihiro å¿ææå¼ and WATANABE Yoshinori æ¸¡é¨è³ç´, Dazai Osamu daijiten å¤ªå®°æ²»å¤§äºå ¸ (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan åèª åºç, 2005); Jaylene Laturnas, âNo Longer Dazai: The Re-Authoring and âCharacter-lficationâ of Literary Celebrity in Contemporary Japanese Popular Cultureâ (MA thesis, The University of British Columbia, 2023). 3 ODAGIRI Susumu å°ç°åé² and Nihon Kindai Bungakkan æ¥æ¬è¿ä»£æå­¦é¤¨, Nihon kindai bungaku daijiten 2 æ¥æ¬è¿ä»£æå­¦å¤§äºå ¸ ç¬¬äºå·» (Tokyo: KÅdansha è¬è«ç¤¾, 1977â1978), 52â53; Phyllis I. Lyons, The Saga of Dazai Osamu: A Critical Study with Translations (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1985). 4 Alan S. Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan: The Case of Dazai Osamu (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014). 2 a âhuman symbolâ reflecting feelings of despair amidst the traumatic postwar era,5 but also that Dazaiâs writings formulated the image of an âalienated writerâ who resisted engaging with postwar Japanâs reconstruction process.6 This thesis seeks to redirect the focus from Dazaiâs canonized works to âOsanâ (1947), one of his lesser-known narratives from the immediate postwar period (1945â1948). The short story was published in the October issue of the general magazine KaizÅ, five months after the Constitution of Japan came into effect, and two years after the Allied Forces set foot in Japan.7 In focusing on this text, which has received relatively little attention due to the above-mentioned mode of autobiographical reading, my thesis will offer important new insights into Dazaiâs position vis-Ã -vis the changing conditions of modern Japan. Specifically, I argue that Dazai rejected the dominant idea of a Japanese postwar state that had completely and successfully severed itself from its problematic past and that the nation could only recover under the reformist agenda of the occupying forces. By employing a cross-gendered voice in âOsan,â8 Dazai offers a critique of the political continuities of the past into the present through the highlighting of persistent gender norms. Historical Overview of the Occupation Period in Japan The U.S.-led Allied Occupation of Japan (1945â1952) is often characterized as introducing a number of major epistemological and political changes.9 These changes, as perhaps 5 Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan, 12. 6 Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan, 13. 7 âThe Constitution of Japan,â Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, Prime Ministerâs Office of Japan, accessed July 4, 2024, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html. 8 The term âcross-gendered voice,â here, refers to âthe construction and deployment of [a] [...] female voice by a male writer.â See Rina Kim and Claire Westall, Cross-Gendered Literary Voices: Appropriating, Resisting, and Embracing (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2012), 2. 9 Douglas Slaymaker, The Body in Postwar Japanese Fiction (New York: Routledge, 2004), 6. 3 most emblemized by Japanâs demobilization, demilitarization, and democratization imposed by the American occupying forces led by SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers), has been characterized in previous scholarship to beâboth positively and negativelyâJapanâs âAmerican interludeâ and âforced Americanization.â10 While the occupiers brought with them practical gifts, such as the lifting of wartime censorship, penicillin, blood banks, public libraries, and so forth, which were seen as crucial to Japanâs survival and the nationâs eventual reconstruction, in doing so they situated themselves as conquerors vis-Ã -vis a subordinated Japan.11 In his seminal monograph Embracing Defeat, historian John Dower describes the Allied Occupation as a far more complex process than has been conventionally understood. Dower argues that although the occupiers indeed played a significant role in Japanâs social and cultural transformation, both the occupiers and occupied held diverse and sometimes competing interests, motivations, goals, and positionalities. Dower further insists on the importance of â[learning] from the world as viewed through the eyes of the defeated,â12 that is, to capture a full image of the Occupation period as a lived Japanese experience. To do so, we must thus understand what it meant for the Japanese people to recover themselves from postwar ruin. For Japanese intellectuals who had opposed the war (a group to which Dazai belonged),13 SCAPâs purported purge of militarists and ultranationalists and advocacy of democratic values signalled an opportunity to resume political and academic activities that had been proscribed by Japanâs 10 John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 24. 11 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 207. 12 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 25. 13 Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan, 11. Due to his poor health, Dazai was rejected from enlistment, but he was active on the home front during the war. Wolfe notes that he was unwilling to write war propaganda but also did not actively protest the government-imposed censorship policies of the time. As a more oblique way of negotiating such restraints, Dazai turned instead to writing historical pieces, retelling fairy tales, and reinterpreting Western stories and legends. 4 wartime government.14 However, confronted by the realities of a new censorship regime, intractable debates on war responsibility, and the so-called âReverse Courseâ starting in 1947, many of these individuals came to hold a more pessimistic view of the Occupation and its legacies. This thesis argues that Dazaiâs âOsanâ offers a valuable critique of the so-called âdemocratic revolutionâ touted by the occupying forces.15 Although SCAP espoused equality, it itself occupied a privileged position and actively worked to essentialize âthe Japaneseâ as a nation in need of saving.16 This thesis will examine the above-mentioned power structure specifically through a gendered lens. SCAP drew upon gender tropes in justifying its interventions, portraying Japanese men as chauvinistic promoters of feudalistic values and Japanese women as these menâs subordinated victims.17 This view of gender differences in Japan did have some historical truth to it. In pre-war times, Japanese women were legally subjected to the patrilineal ie seido (âhousehold systemâ), which was mandated by the Civil Code of 1896; through this system, women had scarcely any legal rights: [The woman] had no right to choose a husband without the approval of the patriarch of her natal family; [and] once registered in her new (husbandâs) family, she had no right to divorce or recourse if the head of the family wanted to dissolve the marriage; no right to the children if her husband (or husbandâs family) divorced her; no right to oppose the introduction of concubines into the household or his establishment of a secondary family; no right to inherit the main bulk of the familyâs money and property from her father or husband, and so on.18 14 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 233. 15 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 206. 16 Dower, Embracing Defeat, 210. 17 Mire Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy: Feminism and the Cold War in the U.S. Occupation of Japan (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 2008), 40. 18 Sharalyn Orbaugh, âGender Studies and Modern Japanese Literature,â in Teaching Postwar Japanese Fiction, ed. Alex Bates (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2023), 77. 5 Wives were primarily valued for their ability to reproduce male heirs that would ensure the continuance of the vertical, multigenerational ie.19 It is also during the 1890s when the Ministry of Education began promoting the slogan ryÅsai kenbo (âgood wife, wise motherâ) and enforcing strict censorship and punishment of those advocating radical possibilities for women outside the family structure.20 As early as the First Sino-Japanese War (1894â1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904â1905), Japanese women were urged to actively contribute to the war effortâbut primarily through the roles of mother and nurse. In her book Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation, Sharalyn Orbaugh points out that both roles assumed âfeminine qualitiesâ where women should be âsubordinate and tend/support/nurture the more important figureâthe son or the wounded soldier.â21 Although labour shortages did eventually lead to the recruitment and conscription of women as factory workers during the Fifteen-Year War (1931â1945), the gender ideology that dictated that a womanâs rightful place was within the household continued to persist through the end of the war. One of the lasting reforms introduced by the U.S.-led Allied Occupation was the enfranchisement of Japanese women. Even when âliberated,â however, women were encouraged to exercise their newfound voting power for the exclusive purpose of bettering the condition of their families.22 In other words, the newly enfranchised Japanese women were encouraged to emulate an American ideal of domesticity that did not challenge but in fact reinforced the persistent subordination of women within the family unit. Additionally, while postwar legal reforms abolished most strictures of the ie system, its remnants brought new but familiar forms 19 Orbaugh, âGender Studies and Modern Japanese Literature,â 77. 20 Sharalyn Orbaugh, Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation: Vision, Embodiment, Identity (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007), 336. 21 Orbaugh, Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation, 254. 22 Mire Koikari, âExporting Democracy?: American Women, âFeminist Reforms,â and Politics of Imperialism in the U.S. Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952,â Frontiers: A Journal of Womenâs Studies 23, no.1 (2002): 35. 6 of challenges and inequalities to women. In 1947âthe same year âOsanâ was publishedâthe Family Law was established with the enactment of the new Constitution of Japan. Under the law, women would no longer enter their husbandsâ pre-existing, multigenerational ie-system household, and instead, the husband and wife would establish a new, independent household at the time of their marriage. While women did gain key legal rights, such as control of assets, equal grounds for divorce, and constituting an independent family, Brian Dowdle warns against viewing these changes through a simplistic binary: While womenâs rights activists initially celebrated improvements in the status of women under the new family structure, new forms of inequalities appeared as women lost the legal right to financial support and found themselves relying on the goodwill of their former family members. One form of patriarchy replaced another: the patriarch as father of the extended family was replaced by the husband in the conjugal family.23 In sum, although the Occupation gender reforms were significant in their function of implementing practical changes, they did not completely end women's subordination in the household or extricate them from larger social structures that restrained and discriminated against them. Dazaiâs Background and His Cross-Gendered Writings It is amidst such a turbulent social climate that Dazai wrote and published âOsan.â Born to a wealthy landowning family in Aomori Prefecture, Dazai would grapple with the privileges of his family for his entire life. In 1917, the Russian Revolution had a profound impact on the world. By the time Dazai was in high school in the late 1920s, he and his contemporaries had been exposed to the currents of Marxist thought and the class conflicts that were occurring 23 Brian Dowdle, âReading Family in Postwar Japanese Literature,â in Teaching Postwar Japanese Fiction, ed. Alex Bates (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2023), 119. 7 within Japan. As a child of what the Marxists and proletariats referred to as an exploitative class, Dazai lamented in his early works that his own leftist political commitment was âtarnished by his aristocratic background.â24 This internal conflict would lead to his first suicide attempt in 1929. In the next decade, he would attempt suicide an additional three times amidst a string of personal and political crises that included estrangement from his family for his marriage to a geisha named Oyama Hatsuyo in 1930 as well as his involvement with the leftist politics during the same period.25 From 1938 until the end of the war in 1945, Dazai appeared to have regained a certain stability in his life: he married again in 1939, had three children with his new wife Ishihara Michiko, and flourished as a writer whose âcheerfulâ and âoptimisticâ writings reflected a contrast to those of the preceding period, as characterized by Wolfe.26 After the war, however, he came to see the resemblance between Japanâs demolished state and his own turmoil-filled life and declared the renunciation of his good citizen and family man image.27 Still married, he became involved with another woman named Åta Shizukoâan affair he had initiated years before and resumed in February of 1947.28 This affair led to the production of one of his now-canonized novels ShayÅ (The Setting Sun, 1947), as well as the birth of an illegitimate daughter. He then became involved with yet another woman named Yamazaki Tomie; completed Ningen shikkaku (No Longer Human, 1948) while suffering from poor health, alcoholism, and anomie; and then committed suicide with this last woman in 1948. 24 Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan, 6. 25 Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan, 9. 26 Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan, 11. 27 Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan, 11. 28 Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan, 12. 8 Rebellion, (self-)destruction, loss, and inertia are common topics in Dazaiâs fiction, but in Dazaiâs cross-gendered works, they become linked to a state of ambivalent (dis)continuity. For instance, âTÅrÅâ (âLantern,â 1937), the first story in which Dazai employs a first-person female narrator, centers on a woman from an impoverished family who experiences class conflict firsthand when her attempts to please a man much more privileged than she are demonized, sensationalized, and finally politicized as a left-wing gesture. Other examples include the wartime piece Joseito (Schoolgirl, 1939), which features a bourgeois schoolgirl who struggles with the loss of her father and the expectations placed on her to marry and have children; and the aforementioned ShayÅ, told from the perspective of a woman from an aristocratic family living in postwar Tokyo who attempts to dispose of old morality and traditions by embracing a new, revolutionary way of life symbolized by love and vitality. Despite their struggles, hardly any of Dazaiâs female narrators are able to gain any closure or achieve any lasting impact on society. What the texts emphasize instead are the overarching patriarchal structures that diminish these womenâs values, experiences, and aspirations. In Dazaiâs postwar writings, this attention to the continuities of patriarchal oppression is strongly linked to a broader skepticism towards Japanâs so-called recovery and modernization under the lead of the occupying forces. In his 1948 short essay âKakumeiâ (Revolution), for example, Dazai points to the difficulties of true revolution and any kind of radical change at the level of humanity rather than the individual. Wolfe emphasizes this point in his monograph, showing how Dazai was highly critical of the postwar âmetanarrativeâ that touted Japanâs successful modernization under the aegis of Allied Forces and the nationâs epistemological rupture from its prewar and wartime past.29 Wolfe argues that the tendency of intellectuals to 29 Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan, 14. 9 promote such a metanarrative and their attempts to find the âturning pointâ (tenki) that led Japan to change for the better is what Dazai attacked with his suicidal narratives, which emphasized fragmentation, lack of closure, and individual choice over national reform or conformity.30 While offering valuable insights on the discourse of revolution and (non-)change in Dazaiâs writings, Wolfeâs study is primarily concerned with Dazaiâs (quasi-)autobiographical texts and in framing those texts in relation to the writerâs suicide and the âI-novelâ paradigm. My thesis, on the other hand, seeks to demonstrate how Dazaiâs postwar writing disrupted and subverted the hegemonic Occupation narrative of a successfully democratizing, harmonizing, and unifying postwar Japan from a gender perspective. In contrast to Wolfe, who focuses on the will of Dazaiâs male characters, that is, their choice for death, I focus on the will of women suppressed by a system that persisted into an era that was promised to be revolutionary. Although this topic has not received much attention in English-language scholarship, two important works in Japanese have addressed Dazaiâs cross-gendered writings. In her monograph Dazai bungaku no joseizÅ (Images of Women in Dazaiâs Literature), Aoki KyÅko represents Dazai as a writer who drew upon historical facts, existing literary works, and other materials to ârealistically reflectâ each era in his fiction.31 Aoki focuses in particular on Dazaiâs characterizations of women, or more specifically, âstrong women who defy social conventions and approach life with fortitude.â32 Kim Kyung-sook similarly focuses on the consistency of Dazaiâs female characterizations in his earlier works, arguing that his female characters may be seen as voicing both ironic awareness and critique of Dazaiâs own privileged social position.33 30 Wolfe, Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan, 183. 31 AOKI KyÅko éæ¨äº¬å­, Dazai bungaku no joseizÅ å¤ªå®°æå­¦ã®å¥³æ§å (KyÅto: Shibunkaku Shuppan ææé£åºç, 2006), i. 32 Aoki, Dazai bungaku no joseizÅ, i. 33 KIM Kyung-sook éäº¬æ·(ê¹ê²½ì), âDazai bungaku ni okeru joseizÅ o megutte å¤ªå®°æå­¦ã«ãããå¥³æ§åãããã£ã¦,â Nihon bunka kenkyū æ¥æ¬æåç 究 ì¼ë³¸ë¬¸íì°êµ¬ 40 (2011). 10 When Dazaiâs cross-gendered narratives are examined together, a pattern of internalization, opposition, and reversion can be observed. That is, his first-person female narrators tend to begin by addressing contemporary gender issues, such as their experience with gender differentiation, their position within the patriarchal family structure, and opposition to their perceived gender roles; they then voice their dissatisfaction or frustration with the established norms; ultimately, however, they fail to enact any lasting change to their lives or society. I argue that we can see this same pattern in âOsan,â as the story introduces a female narrator-protagonist who never benefits from the ârevolutionaryâ opportunities introduced by the Occupation. While it is set in the postwar present, âOsanâ oscillates between the narrator-protagonistâs memories of the past and her material and emotional struggles in the here and now; the story then concludes in an ambiguous manner that problematizes the very idea of closure or a postwar âbreakâ in the narrator-protagonistâs life. The narrator-protagonist is also explicitly positioned within gendered power structures (namely, that of the patriarchal family) and subjugated by her adulterer husband. I argue that the impermanence and ineffectiveness of the narrator-protagonistâs defiance are precisely how Dazai points to the lack of female liberation and how, in doing so, offers a narrative of political and gendered (dis)continuities that expose the myth of Japanâs postwar renewal. Chapter Summaries In Chapter Two, I begin by providing a historical overview of the Occupation era and the role of the occupying forces in enfranchising Japanese women. I discuss what âfemale liberationâ34 meant to both the occupiers and the occupied, as well as the contradictory nature of 34 In my thesis, the term âfemale/feminist liberationâ refers to an anglophone, Occupation-period discourse that is linked to a larger narrative about postwar Japanâs gender reforms. 11 such an ideal and how many women continued to struggle with societal constraints. I then engage with Dazaiâs text through close-reading analysis. My analysis in this chapter focuses on the contrasting temporalities of âOsanâ and how they ironically underscore her unchanging position within the structure of a family. These temporalities include not only the wartime past and postwar present but also references to a long ago (but still culturally relevant) early modern history, as represented by intertextual allusions to Chikamatsu Monzaemonâs (1623â1724) Shinjū ten no Amijima (âThe Love Suicides at Amijima,â 1721). I therefore conclude the chapter with a comparative reading of Dazaiâs text and Chikamatsuâs play, focusing on the gendered symbolism that links both texts, including their depictions of wifehood and motherhood, adultery, and shinjū (âloversâ suicideâ). In doing so, I shed light on the continuities that are emphasized in Dazaiâs text, that is, his narrator-protagonistâs struggles with prevailing ideals of female domesticity in a supposedly revolutionized postwar society. In Chapter Three, I turn my attention to the narrative mode of âOsan,â as it is the key mechanism through which Dazai exposes the hypocrisies and continuities illuminated in Chapter Two. More specifically, I elaborate on how the narrator-protagonist narrativizes her struggles by switching between the desu/masu and da/dearu forms. The chapter begins with another historical overview, this time discussing discourses on âwomenâs languageâ constructed and normalized by Japanese male intellectuals and the implication behind Dazaiâs narrator-protagonistâs use of literary forms that are coded masculine. I then move to a close reading analysis of âOsanâ that focuses on the unspoken and spokenâthat is, the ways in which the narrator-protagonistâs thoughts and emotions are verbalized, internalized, and/or concealed from the husband and the reader at different junctures of the narrative. Through my close reading, I aim to underscore how 12 Dazaiâs text subverts the notion of revolution through its portrait of a woman who continues to be subordinated by a persistent patriarchal system. My thesis then concludes with a summary of âOsanâsâ significance and an overview of research limitations. In all, I hope to reveal the limits of âliberationâ as a masculinist-gendered discourse in Occupation-period Japan and illuminate the danger of forgetting those who have been overshadowed by the complex historical processes of patriarchal nation-building. 13 Chapter 2. Japanese Women Oscillating between Times Introduction On August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohitoâs voice echoed on the Japanese national radio, effectively ending the nationâs Fifteen-Year War (jūgonen sensÅ, 1931â1945).35 The speech, which the emperor delivered in a tremulous manner, urged his national subjects to âendure the unendurable,â suggesting a pessimistic attitude toward the approaching Allied Forces. Historians such as Carol Gluck have warned against the notion of a clean rupture or over-emphasis on substantive change between Japanâs prewar and postwar periods, despite the immediate postwar period being cast as the pivotal point of Japanâs ârevolution.â At the same time, both Carol Gluck and Sharalyn Orbaugh have also argued that for the residents of Japan in 1945, âit certainly appeared that everything had changed.â36 The population in question was forced to accept the unconditional surrender and demands from the Allied forces without knowing the duration and nature of the Occupation.37 When General Douglas MacArthur landed in Japan two weeks after the emperorâs broadcast speech, Japanâs position in an Occupation context was made clear.38 The nation, which had once been a belligerent in the eyes of the Allies, was now its subject to be âreorientedâ and ârehabilitatedâ through demobilization, demilitarization, and democratization.39 This binary between the victor and the defeated, the occupier and the occupied, and the educator and the re-educated helped produce a narrative that emphasized progressive change. 35 I will be using the historical marker âThe Fifteen-Year Warâ (1931â1945) throughout my thesis to remind the reader about how long the Japanese people were at war (and how much they were exhausted by the war) by the time the Occupation began. 36 Orbaugh, Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation, 7. 37 Orbaugh, Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation, 28. 38 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 2. 39 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 2. 14 In her article discussing the Allied Forcesâ role in the enfranchisement of Japanese women, Lisa Yoneyama argues that this transformative process has been highly gendered. She points toward how the occupying forces posited Japanese women as âvictimsâ of Japanâs male-dominant militarism and traditional gender norms and that the women were to be âliberatedâ from such limitations.40 The Occupation was thus promoted as an improvement to a Japan that had not yet fully modernized itself, with Japanese women playing a significant part in validating the emancipatory interventions of the West. For a text published in a social context where positive and radical change was promulgated, Dazai Osamuâs short story âOsanâ (1947) seems inconsistent with its paratextual background. Given the dates when the text was published and the revised constitution was enacted, Dazai (and his protagonists), like all the occupied Japanese, would have been exposed to discussions about and anticipation of the legal and social changes brought forth by the Occupation. âOsan,â however, focuses on the private affairs of a Japanese family, with no explicit reference to the Allied forces or their interventions. Here, I must note that the text was produced in a sociohistorical context where instances that evoked memories of Japanâs wartime ultra-nationalism, direct references to America and other occupying forces, and most importantly, âthe suggestion that the intention of the Allies (the promotion of democracy, the liberation of the people of Japan, and so on) are not entirely honourable, were taboo.â41 It was thus a period where Japanese writersâincluding Dazaiâhad to navigate a sociolinguistic space where the new regime had to be acknowledged and reinforced, while the vestiges of the old were to be deemphasized and suppressed. 40 Lisa Yoneyama, âLiberation under Siege: U.S. Military Occupation and Japanese Womenâs Enfranchisement,â American Quarterly 57, no. 3 (2005): 892. 41 Jonathan E. Abel, âIntroduction: Archiving Censors,â in Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2012), 119â20. 15 This thesis proposes âOsanâ to be a crucial instance where Dazai negotiated with the social limitations and boundaries between the speakable and the unspeakable by making oblique references to the idea of ârevolutionâ (kakumei). To elaborate, the idea of revolution in âOsanâ is presented as a futile concept with little connection to the narrator-protagonist or her concerns. The storyline of âOsanâ thus does not resonate with the rhetoric of feminist liberation in the era in which the text was produced and published. In examining the role of the female narrator of âOsan,â this chapter argues that the text critically exposes the gaps and inconsistencies of the hegemonic discourse of positive change being promulgated in Occupied Japan, especially in terms of gender relations. In âOsan,â the female narrator-protagonist, whom I will be referring to as Watashi (âIâ), oscillates between her diegetic present of postwar Japan and memories of the wartime past from a first-person perspective. This oscillation between two temporal contexts creates a contrasting effect that emphasizes not only Watashiâs present-day sufferings but also her unchanging position within the structure of a family. Watashi can be seen as an anomaly to the idea of the âliberated Japanese woman,â for she never leaves the confines of her home while continuing to struggle with supporting a family that is based on male privilege and patrilineality. Her struggle is further complicated by the idea of ârevolution,â which both Watashi and her husband suggest at the end of the story to be impractical and useless. In âOsan,â changeâor rather, the lack thereofâaligns with the Occupation rhetoric of female autonomy and social transformation yet simultaneously underscores a situation where Japanese women continue to be bound to the notion of domesticity. The element of change manifests in âOsanâ not only as a juxtaposition between the postwar present and the wartime past but also through another layer of temporality, which is first 16 introduced in the text when Watashi quotes Osan, a major character from Chikamatsu Monzaemonâs Shinjū ten no Amijima (âThe Love Suicides at Amijima,â 1721). By calling the Edo perspectives on women and its âmoral principlesâ (dÅtoku) into question, Watashi distances herself from a doctrine of wifehood that historian Donald Shively argues to be based on âservice and obedience to men,â42 and underscores the negative consequences of adhering to a female gender norm that has persisted into a supposedly progressive postwar period. While one may argue that Watashiâs critical distancing is a form of female autonomy, I must stress that it is an impermanent, silent process that ultimately fails to benefit her. Benefit, in Watashiâs case, would embody the image envisioned by the Allied Forces, that is, the idealistic image of a Japanese woman extricated from the values persisting from the Edo period and instead bestowed with the possibility of revolutionary change. A New Chapter for Japanese Women: âFeminist Reformâ under the Allied Occupation of Japan To the occupying forces, Japanese women formed a category in need of radical liberation. As Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), General Douglas MacArthur listed the enfranchisement of Japanese women at the top of his so-called âFive Great Reforms.â43 The problem that lies with this concern for Japanese women is not limited to a power structure that rendered said women âfortunate recipients of American-initiated reformed effortsâ but is also a tell-tale tendency of categorizing women as an inferior and oppressed whole that could only be 42 Donald H. Shively, âIntroduction to The Love Suicide at Amijima: A Study of Japanese Domestic Tragedy by Chikamatsu Monzaemon,â Literary Criticism from 1400 to 1800 66, ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau (Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale, 2001), 25. 43 Yoneyama, âLiberation under Siege,â 893. 17 liberated âby their beneficent occupiers.â44 Feminist reform under the Allied Occupation of Japan, in other words, was an essentialist and universalist campaign that assumed Western and Japanese women shared the same gendered position and political agendaâmore specifically, â[to] fight against patriarchal domination.â45 Such generalization is problematic as it fails to consider the category of âJapanese womenâ as heterogeneous possessors of diverse backgrounds and experiences impacted by varying contexts such as class, geography, and time periods. The sourcebook used to train Occupation personnel, for instance, reveals this essentializing tendency. The Civil Affairs Handbook, Japan describes the Japanese as a population circumscribed by a âfeudal legacy,â in which the population âexists as units of a family, as objects of [a paternalistic] stateâ where the emperor is revered as the nationâs father, and as âparts of a group to which they are always subordinated.â46 The Handbook further invokes the image of Japanese women as âvictims without agencyâ of a chauvinistic culture that persists within the home and larger society.47 In this way, the occupiers revealed ignorance and indifference to Japanese womenâs problematic roles in empire-building and wartime mobilization.48 The manual further conveys a Western belief that patriarchal oppression is a fundamental and continuous component of Japanese culture and traditionâsomething that the nation cannot navigate or refashion on its own without the Occupationâs intervention. Suffrage for Japanese women was indeed granted after the Occupationâs arrival, through the renewed Constitution of Japan. The fact that Japanese women did not have the power to vote up to that pivotal point was touted by Occupation authorities as proof of the oppressive nature of 44 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 34. 45 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 14â15. 46 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 38. 47 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 40. 48 Noriko J. Horiguchi, Women Adrift: The Literature of Japanâs Imperial Body (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 18 the prewar Japanese state as well as the Westâs superiority. The said suffrage, though, when examined closely, unveils the limiting nature of the so-called liberation. Womenâs enfranchisement was debated by the Japanese Diet after the war for fear that womenâs newfound suffrage would jeopardize Japanâs existing patriarchal family system and, by extension, the continuation of the nation and its customs and traditions.49 Newly elected women in the Diet, such as feminist KatÅ Shizue (1897â2001), advocated in a session on July 6, 1946 that âfamily as a moral institution [would remain] vital to the nation and its tradition.â50 Despite being a sympathizer of the Occupationâs call for equality of sex in the institution of marriage, KatÅ nevertheless insisted on gender-differentiated treatment, more specifically, the constitutional protection of mothers and war widows with children given these womenâs reproductive role.51 In emphasizing the reproductive and familial roles of women, KatÅ took part in conserving Japanâs nationalist construct of good wives and wise mothers. This gendered interest is problematized by scholars like Mire Koikari, who argues that perspectives like KatÅâs cast Japanese women primarily as said wives and mothers victimized by war and the patriarchal family institution.52 Meanwhile, the position of SCAP was that Japanese women were to contribute to postwar Japan by âexert[ing] the noble influence of womanhood and the home.â53 This view must be understood in relation to the American landscape: historian Sonya Michel points out that in the wartime United States the structure of the familyâin which women had acted as reproducers and preservers of the nationâs culture, tradition, and valuesâwas similarly regarded 49 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 69. 50 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 69â70. 51 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 70. 52 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 71â72. 53 Koikari, Pedagogy of Democracy, 50. 19 as essential to the nationâs fortification.54 In other words, in the eyes of SCAP, women continued to be signified by their domestic roles as wives and mothers. This attitude was also true among many women occupiers who were âzealous in presenting the American womenâs organizations as models for Japanese women to emulate.â55 These women occupiers urged Japanese women to âuse their [newfound] voting powerâ to âbetterâ the condition of their children and families.56 Japanese women were thus encouraged to emulate American domesticity, which ultimately continued to subordinate them within structures of patriarchal domination, familial institutions, and gender roles. Lastly, we must address Japanese women, who themselves played a crucial part in the Occupation discourse of feminist reform. As historian Meghan Mettler points out, Japanese women had been politically active even before the Occupationâs arrival.57 Although active dissent and political activism were rendered extremely difficult during the wartime period due to heavy censorship and surveillance, in the postwar era, the women activists resumed their endeavours and were observed by contemporary Red Cross workers like Lucy Herndon Crockett to be hardly âsubmissive and gracious recipients of American democracy,â with some even criticizing the dissatisfying limitation of SCAP feminist campaigns.58 Meanwhile, many other women who were not politically active dismissed the abstract idea of emancipation and instead expressed an interest in solving immediate postwar concerns like housing and food shortages.59 54 Sonya Michel, âAmerican Women and the Discourse of the Democratic Family in World War II,â in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, ed. Margaret Higonnet et al. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 154â55. 55 Koikari, âExporting Democracy,â 35. 56 Koikari, âExporting Democracy,â 35. See original record Answers to Questions from Japanese Women, released by the CI&E, SCAP Records, box 8495, file: Publicity, 5. 57 Meghan W. Mettler, âModern Butterfly: American Perceptions of Japanese Women and their Role in International Relations, 1945-1960,â Journal of Womenâs History 26, no. 4 (2014), 75. 58 Mettler, âModern Butterfly,â 75. See original text by Lucy H. Crocket, Popcorn on The Ginza: An Informal Portrait of Postwar Japan (New York: William Sloane Association Inc., 1949), 166. 59 Mettler, âModern Butterfly,â 75. 20 This dismissal, or rather, priority for more urgent and relevant matters, highlights two more flaws of the Occupationâs emancipatory narrative. First, (women) occupiers and the occupied Japanese women were not equal, and this inequality in power revealed the superficiality of gender-based reforms that ignored the history of Japanâs prewar feminist movement and reinforced gendered and nationalistic stereotypes. Second, the reactions from Japanese women confirm my argument about the impossibility of categorizing the said women into a uniform collective. The ideals of female emancipation touted by the Occupation forces failed to encompass and apply to all Japanese women and their complex intersectional positionalities. And, as a story like âOsanâ reveals, what many women ultimately had to wrestle with was a world that continued to bind them to roles of domesticity, effectively signalling that lasting social change had never, or at least not yet, occurred. Tackling Occupation Essentialism: The Husband Figure in âOsanâ As this thesis has stated earlier, reforms were imposed upon a Japan which, in the eyes of the occupying forces, had not yet modernized itself in the postwar era. âOsanâ was published in such a social climate, in which Japanese people were encouraged to dissociate themselves entirely from the dark wartime years and move on to a better future envisioned and sanctioned by their occupiers.60 The text in question, however, provides a stark juxtaposition to its surrounding sociopolitical context. Absent of celebration or hope, âOsanâ features a husband who, financially and spiritually devasted by the preceding Fifteen-Year War, commits suicide, leaving behind his betrayed wife and the mother to his three children, who has to deal with the repercussionsâmore 60 DAZAI Osamu 太宰治, âOsan ããã,â in Dazai Osamu zenshū 9 å¤ªå®°æ²»å ¨é ç¬¬ä¹å·» (Tokyo: Chikuma ShobÅ ç­æ©æ¸æ¿, 1976), 267â84. Originally published in KaizÅ æ¹é , 1947, October issue. 21 specifically, a broken household which is now devoid of a male head and income source. The narrator of the text, especially when scrutinized with our contemporary notions of what âfemale liberationâ should look like, can be viewed as an antithesis of the Occupation notion of an emancipated woman, as she is characterized as a woman who fails to discover feminist self-agency and autonomy, unable to articulate her needs or desires or step outside the patriarchal structure of the home. As Watashi oscillates between her memories of the past and her present-day sufferings, she informs the reader that her married life used to be pleasant. In contrast to the gender trope about husbands tyrannizing their wives that was propagated by the Occupation to justify Japanese womenâs submissive positions,61 the husband in âOsanâ is consistently highlighted for his âkindnessâ (yasashisa). In Section 1, Watashi describes her husbandâs behaviour in the following way and, in doing, ironically suggests how the patriarchal system normalizes power and abuse: ããå¤«ãããããå¤«ã§ããããé ã¯ãæ¥æ¬é ãªãä¸åããã¤ã«ãªãä¸æ¬ãã¤ã¨ãããã®ã¨ããã§ãç èã¯å¸ã²ã¾ããããããé çµ¦ã®ç èã§éã«åãµç¨åº¦ã§ãçµå©ãã¦ããåå¹´ã¡ãããªãã®ã«ããã®éãã¡ã©ãç§ãã¶ã¤ãããã¾ãå£æ±ãã®ã®ãã¤ãããªãã¤ãäºã¯ããã¾ããã§ããã62 He was a good husband. A kind husband. When it comes to alcohol, he would only, at most, drink a cup of Japanese rice wine or a can of beer, and even though he also smokes, he would only smoke what the ration offered. Although we had been married for close to ten years, he had never beaten or chastised me.63 As Watashi suggests, her husbandâs âkindnessâ is contrasted against an expectation of material indulgence and violence. Instead, the husband was a man who was gentle with his family, and his 61 Yoneyama, âLiberation under Siege,â 891. See Yoneyamaâs notes on âSlave Women of Japan,â in Womenâs Home Companion (1943). 62 Dazai, âOsan,â 271. 63 All English translations are mine unless stated otherwise. 22 proximity to his family is elaborated further through his relationship with his eldest daughter, Masako. The close relationship between the father and daughter is first illuminated by Watashi, who, upon being questioned by Masako about her fatherâs whereabouts, notes her daughterâs âexcessive affectionâ towards her father to be so profound that âit surpasses [Masakoâs] bond with [Watashi]â (haha yori mo chichi no hÅ o yokei ni shitatteite).64 What is also intriguing about this statement from Watashi is that while it separates the husband from the tyrannical male gender trope, it also poses a deterministic attitude toward the female gender role. This brief comment is comparative in nature, as Watashi compares herself to her husband vis-a-vis Masako. By depicting the relationship between her husband and Masako as âexcessiveâ and beyond the one between the mother and her child, Watashi reveals an assumption that children should bond more with the mother or, in other words, the woman in the family who is bound to gender roles associated with parenting and domesticity. Masakoâs affection for her father is further emphasized through Watashiâs recollection of the familyâs private crop field: the small field embodies another instance of the husbandâs âkindness,â as Watashi recalls that he had helped her tend the field in consideration of her struggles taking care of three young children.65 The field produces beans that are particularly important to Masako, whom Watashi refers to as a less-than-privileged child who is incapable of fully participating in the upcoming Obon Festival. To Masako, a child who has lost all her possessions to the fires of war, a single bean she herself succeeds in cultivating is something in 64 Dazai, âOsan,â 268. 65 In Japanese, âçéã®ããã«ãååªãããã®çå°ããã¤ã¦ãä»¥åã¯ç§ãããã¸ããããéèãæ¤ãã¦ããã®ã ããã©ããå­ä¾ãä¸äººã«ãªã¤ã¦ãã¨ã¦ãçã®ã¯ãã«ã¾ã§æãã¾ã¯ãããã¾ãå¤«ããæã¯ç§ã®çä»äºã«ã¨ãã©ãæå³ã¤ã¦ä¸ãã£ããã®ãªã®ã«[...]â Dazai, âOsan,â 269. 23 which she takes great pride.66 The husband was thus a man who supported his wife in her domestic duties, and this involvement later comforted his family in a postwar era when everything was lost. Watashi substantiates the significance of the comfort provided by her husband at the end of Section 1: [...]ãã®ãã³ã®æ¦äºã®ããã«ç§ãããããäººä¸¦ã®è¦å´ã¯è´ãã¾ããããã©ããããã§ããå¤«ã®åªãããæã¸ã°ããã®å «å¹´éãç§ã¯ä»åããè ã§ãã¤ãã¨è¨ã²ãããªãã®ã§ãã67 [...] Although I, like the others, suffered during the war, when I think about my husbandâs gentleness, I would like to say that I was rather happy for those eight years. Despite the above statements by Watashi, the husbandâs kindnessâor the lack thereofâis problematized by the text as it traverses different temporal contexts. We must note that the vivid image of Watashiâs gentle husband is a part of her distant memories about the past, and that the man has changed since the war. The crop field, which once symbolized the husbandâs caring nature, for instance, is now overgrown with weeds and embarrassingly desolate when compared with a neighbourâs garden overflowing with a variety of vegetables, ironically one that is tended by the patriarch of the household.68 The tenacious patriarch of the neighbouring household is thus another instance that not only challenges the essentialized image of an oppressive and violent Japanese man who dominates his household but also poses as the polar opposite of Watashiâs husband, who has detached himself from the family. Furthermore, the unconditional love between father and child is sharply contrasted by Watashiâs oblique critiques of him as a 66 In Japanese, â[...]ããµå­ãé çµ¦ã®ãè±ãä¸ç²ãåã«ãã¥ãã¦æ°´ãããããããã²ããã¨è½ãåºãã¦ãããã¡ããä½ãæã¤ã¦ããªãããµå­ã«ã¨ã¤ã¦ããããå¯ä¸ã®ãèªæ ¢ã®è²¡ç£ã§ããé£ã¸éã³ã«è¡ã¤ã¦ãããã¡ã®ãè±ããã¡ã®ãè±ãã¨ã¯ã«ãã¾ãã«å¹è½ãã¦ããæ§å­ãªã®ã§ããâ Dazai, âOsan,â 269. 67 Dazai, âOsan,â 272. 68 In Japanese, âãé£ãã®çãªã©ã¯æ¦é£ãã¾ããããã«æå ¥ããªãã¤ã¦ããã¾ãã¾ã®ãéèãããããè¦äºã«åºæ¥ã¦ãã¦ããã¡ã®çã¯ããã«è¼ã¹ãã¨ã¯ããªãæ¥ããããã éèã°ããçãããã¤ã¦[...]â Dazai, âOsan,â 269. 24 negligent husband. Although Masakoâs self-sufficiency in cultivating beans highlights briefly a moment of happiness for both the child and her mother, it simultaneously exposes a father figure who has taken no part in alleviating his daughterâs impoverished state. The husband's characterization is thus a significant textual element to consider. First, he is a paradoxical character, one who defies the gender trope of an oppressive patriarch propagated by the Occupation. Japanese men, in other words, thus consist of another social category that cannot be essentialized. Second, the husband is also the villain of the story, for he is identified by Watashi as the individual responsible for disrupting a once-happy family with his unannounced, unexplained, and unjustified estrangements. The Absent Evils: Victims of the War in âOsanâ War is a significant event that repeatedly appears in Watashiâs recollections. It is also a major component of âOsanâsâ plot, as it contributes to the husbandâs suffering and thus to Watashiâs present-day struggles. Notably, the husband had never been mobilized for the battlefront. In Section 1, Watashi weaves another strand of recollection about the wartime years: å¤«ã¯ããã ãå¼±ãã®ã§ãå¬éãããå¾´ç¨ãããã®ãããç¡äºã«æ¯æ¥ãéèªç¤¾ã«éå¤ãã¦ããã®ã§ãããæ¦äºãã¯ããããªã¤ã¦ãç§ãã¡ã®ä½ãã§ãããã®éå¤ã®è¡ã«ãé£è¡æ©ã®è£½ä½å·¥å ´ãªã©ããããããã§ãå®¶ã®ããè¿ãã«ãã²ãã´ãã¨çå¼¾ãéã¤ã¦æ¥ã¦ãããã¨ãæãå¤ãè£ã®ç«¹èªã«ä¸å¼¾ãè½ã¡ã¦ããã®ããã«ãåæã¨ãä¾¿æã¨ä¸ç³éãæ» è¶ã ã ã«ãªããã¨ã¦ãè¦ªå­åäºº[...]ãã®åå£ã®å®¶ã«ä½ã¿ã¤ã¥ããäºãåºæ¥ãªããªãã¾ããã®ã§ãç§ã¨äºäººã®å­ä¾ã¯ãç§ã®éã®éæ£®å¸ã¸çéããäºã«ãªããå¤«ã¯ã²ã¨ãåå£ã®å®¶ã®å ­ç³éã«å¯èµ·ããã¦ãç¸è®ãããéèªç¤¾ã«éå¤ãçºããäºã«ãã¾ããã69 Because my husband was physically weak, he managed to escape from both the military enlistment and labour draft and worked unharmed at a magazine company instead. However, the war intensified, and because of the airplane factories and the like located near our suburbs, a large numbers of bombs fell near our home. One night, a bomb finally landed in the bamboo thicket behind our house: the force wrecked the kitchen, the toilet, 69 Dazai, âOsan,â 269â70. 25 and our three-tatami-mat room. The four of us couldnât live in a half-destroyed home [...], so I took my two children and evacuated to my old home in Aomori. My husband, on the other hand, remained in the six-tatami-mat room of our half-destroyed house [in Tokyo], and continued to work for the magazine company. This short passage provides an overview of the husband and glimpses of Watashiâs anti-war sentiments. To begin, Watashi notes that her husband is so âphysically weakâ to the extent that he âescaped from being enlisted and drafted.â70 The husbandâs inability to contribute to the war as a soldier or factory labourer means that he would not have fit the ideal of healthy adult male bodies from the period. Sharalyn Orbaugh details in her monograph Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation that âthe figure of soldier [was] a sort of iconic representation of all Japanese people and of the Japanese spiritâ during the war years.71 Japanese men were expected to be âfearless, gallant, and loyal, and to leave home prepared to die violently but beautifully for the sake of the emperor and the nation.â72 In contrast, this passage from âOsanâ does not aestheticize death or promote a fighting spirit; instead, Watashi underscores her husbandâs fortune, for he was able to survive on the home front not as a labourer associated with war but as an ordinary magazine publisher. It was not until Japanâs unconditional surrender, however, that Watashi finally experienced relief: ããã©ããç§ãã¡ãéæ£®å¸ã«çéãã¦ãåç®æãç¶ãã¬ãã¡ã«ããã¸ã¤ã¦éæ£®å¸ãç©ºè¥²ãåãã¦å ¨ç¼ããç§ãã¡ãããã¸ããªè¦åããã¦éæ£®å¸ã«æã¡éãã è·ç©å ¨é¨ãçå¤±ãã¦ãã¾ã²ãããããçã®ã¿çã®ã¾ã¾ã®ã¿ãããªå§¿ã§ãéæ£®å¸ã®çãæ®ã¤ãç¥åã²ã®å®¶ã¸è¡ã¤ã¦ãå°çã®å¤¢ãè¦ã¦ããæã²ã§ãã ã¾ãã¤ãã¦ãåæ¥ã»ã©ããããã«ãªã¤ã¦ãããã¡ã«ãæ¥æ¬ã®ç¡æ¡ä»¶éä¼ã«ããµäºã«ãªã[...]73 But it had not even been four months when the air raids also destroyed Aomori. The belongings we had so laboriously moved to Aomori was destroyed. We only had what we 70 Dazai, âOsan,â 269. 71 Orbaugh, Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation, 225. 72 Orbaugh, Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation, 226. 73 Dazai, âOsan,â 270. 26 were wearing left, and in that pitiful state, we were able to stay with a friend whose house had escaped the fires. Stunned and as if suffering a hellish nightmare, we depended on my friend for about ten daysâuntil we heard the news about Japanâs surrender [...] Watashiâs account of destruction and trauma points toward how nowhere and no one was safe during the war. Her negative impression of the war is evident here, particularly in her imageries of the âhellish nightmareâ (jigoku no yume)74 and the ways her description contrasts with war propaganda that aestheticized death and sacrifice. The husband, who had remained in Tokyo, had also suffered multiple losses that changed him significantly and permanently: éèªï©ã¯ç½¹ç½ãããã®ä¸ãï©ã®éå½¹ã®éã«è³æ¬ã®äºã§ãããããèµ·ã¤ãã¨ããã§ãï©ã¯è§£æ£ã«ãªããå¤«ã¯ãã¡ã¾ã¡å¤±æ¥­è ã¨ããµäºã«ãªãã¾ããããããããæ°¸å¹´éèªï©ã«å¤ãã¦ããã®æ¹é¢ã§ç¥åã²ã®ãæ¹ãã¡ããããããããã¾ãã®ã§ããã®ãã¡ã®æåããããæ¹ãã¡ã¨è³æ¬ãåºãåã²ããããããåºçï©ãèµ·ãã¦ãäºãä¸ç¨®é¡ã®æ¬ãåºçããæ§å­ã§ãããããã©ãããã®åºçã®ä»äºããç´ã®è²·å ¥ãæ¹ããããã¤ãã¨ãã§ãããªãã®ç¼ºæã«ãªããå¤«ãå¤é¡ã®åéãèè² ã²ããã®å¾å§æ«ã®ããã«ãã¼ãããæ¯æ¥ãå®¶ãåºã¦ãå¤æ¹ããã³ãåã¤ããããªå§¿ã§æ­¸å® ããä»¥åããç¡å£ã®ãæ¹ã§ããã¾ãããããã®ãããããã¤ããããã¤ã¤ãæ¼ãé»ã¤ã¦[...]ããããã¯ããä½ã®ä»äºãããæ°£åãå¤±ã¤ã¦ãã¾ã¤ãããã§[...]æºã®å¼åºãããè²¡å¸ãåã¤ã¦æã«ããããããã¦ããã®ããã¾ãã²ã®æããã²ã¨ã¿ãããªãè¶³é³ã®ç¡ãæ­©ãæ¹ã§ããã¤ã¨çéããåºã¦è¡ã¤ã¦ããã®æ©ã¯ããã¦ããæ­¸ãã«ãªãã¾ããã75 The magazine company had also suffered from the raids. On top of that, there had been a dispute among the executives over the companyâs funds, and the company ultimately dissolved. My husband became unemployed as a result, but since he had been in the business for a long time, he had many acquaintances. And with the acquaintances he thought he could rely upon, they organized a new publishing company with their joint capital. The company published two or three books but then made some blunders with the paper buying. The losses were heavy, and my husband found himself deeply in debt. Every day he would leave the house to deal with the aftermath and return exhausted at night. He had always been a quiet, taciturn manâand ever since, he became completely silent[...] He seemed spiritless, unable to do anything else [...] He would take his wallet from the desk drawer and tuck it into his sleeve. Then, he would depart the house soundlessly, like a figure devoid of a soul, and usually, he would not return that night. 74 Dazai, âOsan,â 270. 75 Dazai, âOsan,â 270â71. 27 As Watashi recounts, her husband had undergone what seemed to be an endless string of unfortunate events. Even on the home front, the husband is noted to have not been productiveâinstead, the company he had been previously employed at suffered from the effects of war. Although the husbandâs unemployment was short-lived, the company he established with his colleaguesâan establishment that symbolized promising changeâsoon faced the adversity of a paper shortage in a nation still debilitated by the war. The strenuous work the husband took to pay off his debt had evidently taken a toll on him: the man is described to have lost all âwillpowerâ (kiryoku) as well as his voice.76 Without communicating his intentions to his family, he would leave home with moneyâleaving his impoverished and confused family behind. Nevertheless, these passages highlight the fact that propaganda has limits. âOsanâ offers a perspective where not all Japanese people engaged or aligned themselves with the militaristic agenda of imperial Japan. Instead, both Watashi and the husband are depicted as direct victims of warâa war in which they did not actively take partâwho embody and are unable to recover from its devastating consequences, including material losses and spiritual trauma. These individual examples of the warâs detrimental effects are then extended to the listless state of the general Japanese populace, as Dazai illustrates multiple âhellishâ landscapes: cities flattened and incinerated by bombs, companies dissolving due to the collapsing economy, and, most importantly, families disintegrating due to physical distance and emotional estrangement. The Strong Woman, Not Yet Emancipated As this thesis has discussed in the previous sections, the Allied Forces trumpeted a rhetoric of positive change and transformation, particularly when it came to the social position of 76 Dazai, âOsan,â 271. 28 Japanese women. However, this rhetoric is subverted not only by the husband in âOsanâ but also challenged by Watashi, who questions the gender constraints that persistently bind the woman to her family even into the postwar period. In Section 1, for instance, Watashi begins by reflecting upon the countryâs defeated state: ãã¡ã¶ãããã³ãããããããããã¯ããããã¾ã®æ¥æ¬ã§ã¯ãç§ãã¡ã«éã¤ãäºã§ãªããæ®ã«ãã®æ±äº¬ã«ä½ãã§ããäººãã¡ã¯ãã©ã¡ããè¦ã¦ããå æ°£ãç¡ããã¡ã¶ããæãã§ãã²ã©ãå¤§åããã«ã®ãã®ãã¨åãå»»ã¤ã¦ãã¦ãç§ãã¡ãæç©å ¨é¨çãã¦ãã¾ã¤ã¦ãäºæ¯ã«èº«ã®ãã¡ã¶ããæããããã©ãããããããã¾è¦ããã®ã¯ããããªäºããããããã«ããè¿«ã¤ãããã®ä¸ã®ã²ã¨ã®å¦»ã¨ãã¦ãä½ãããã¤ããæãäºãªã®ã§ãã77 Ruin, bleakness. No, it wasnât limited to us; the feelings extended to the entirety of Japan, especially to the people of Tokyo. No matter where you look, everyone has been drained of life, moving about sluggishly as if it were a strenuous effort. We, too, had lost everything to the fires, and we could feel ourselves sinking into ruinâbut there was something even worse, something pressing, and for me, a wife of this world, it was the heaviest burden to bear. This passage is marked by imagery that was often invoked in media at the time, such as devitalized individuals âmoving around sluggishlyâ (hidoku taigi sÅ ni noronoro to ugoki mawatteite)78 and properties consumed by fires. Yet, this common imagery of a war-weary Japan is soon undercut by Watashiâs emphasis on her own distinct position as a troubled wife. Here, she also laments her husbandâs estrangement and her neglected state as a matter that to her is more devastating and urgent than the immediate aftermaths of the war. Watashiâs response to Japanâs unconditional surrender further exemplifies her dismissive attitude towards the challenges the war had imposed upon the collective Japanese populace. The momentous announcement is mentioned only as a throw-away line in âOsan,â and in the context of Watashiâs personal yearning to leave Aomori and return to the city of Tokyo where her 77 Dazai, âOsan,â 269. 78 Dazai, âOsan,â 269. 29 husband was residing. Watashiâs eagerness to return to her husband is significant, for it points toward two drastically different social realities. First, by expressing this wish, Watashi prompts the reader to redirect their attention from the destabilized state of the country to the intimate space of her home. This transition not only highlights her distinctive point of view as a wife but also problematizes the notion of a single, unified Japanese collective. According to Brian Dowdle, the 1890s ie seido (âhousehold systemâ), which persisted until the postwar constitutional reform in 1947, promoted the notion that the emperor was to be regarded as the head of the ânational family.â79 This notion of a singular Japanese body subordinated under the emperor was especially prominent during the years of the Fifteen-Year War, as Sharalyn Orbaugh observes that Japanese citizenry was mobilized as âone entity, one family, the ichioku (hundred million)â that pledged themselves to the emperor.80 This paradigmatic image of a unified collective is destabilized in Watashiâs narrative, however, as the setting and the conflict of the story are predominantly kept within the bounds of her home. In âOsan,â the juxtaposition between the collective and the individual creates a tension that urges the reader to prioritize the narratorâs identity as âa wife of this worldâ (kono yo no hito no tsuma toshite)81 and recognize the force of her gendered standpoint that does not identify with the notion of national conformity. Paradoxically, Watashiâs standpoint signals another reality: she has nowhere else to go but to her family. Details in Section 2 further underscore Watashiâs confinement to the structure of the home, as she briefly mentions her deceased father and then determinedly rejects the idea of a potential divorce for the sake of her children. These two facts highlight an enduring patriarchal family system: without a maternal family to where she may return, Watashi is forced 79 Dowdle, âReading Family in Postwar Japanese Literature,â 117. 80 Orbaugh, Japanese Fiction of the Allied Occupation, 219. 81 Dazai, âOsan,â 269. 30 to remain with her husband who, as the patriarch in a system of primogeniture, still had the legal ability to decide the prospects of both her and her children even into the immediate postwar period where the revised Constitution of Japan emphasized the equal rights of the husband and wife from the standpoint of individual dignity.82 It may be argued that in this instance, Watashiâs decision to return to Tokyo does align with the Occupation narrative of the subordinated Japanese woman within the domestic sphere. As I have detailed in previous sections, the U.S.-led Allied Occupation forces promoted the idea that Japanese women could learn from their American counterparts. In other words, Japanese women were promised a positive, revolutionary change, where they, under Western feminist tutelage and democratic influences, would be emancipated through new political and social opportunities. The idea of ârevolutionâ (kakumei) in âOsan,â however, has a much bleaker outlook. Despite the narrative of âOsanâ indicating change at both an individual and historical level, it more often foregrounds a pessimistic sense of continuity in the form of gendered power dynamics. One paradigmatic example can be found in Section 2, after the husband returns from his unannounced stroll. The family shares a table while listening to the French anthem, broadcast to memorialize the Fête nationale française, otherwise known as Bastille Day. This is the first instance in âOsanâ where the couple engages with the idea of ârevolutionâ (kakumei). The husband offers a dramatic and romanticized perspective on the perspective on the destructive yet irresistible nature of a revolution: ããã¹ãã¼ã¦ã®ã­ãç¢çãæ»æãã¦ã­ãæ°è¡ãã­ããã¡ãããããã¡ããããç«ã¡ä¸ã¤ã¦ãããä»¥æ¥ããã©ã³ã¹ã®ãæ¥ããããã®è±ã®å®´ãæ°¸é ã«ãæ°¸é ã«ã ããæ°¸é ã«å¤±ã¯ããäºã«ãªã¤ãã®ã ãã©ã­ãã§ããç ´å£ããªããã°ãããªãã¤ããã ãæ°¸é ã«æ°ç§©åºã®ãæ°éå¾³ã®åå»ºãåºæ¥ãªãäºãããã¤ã¦ããªããããããã§ããç ´å£ããªããã°ãããªãã¤ããã ãé©å½ãã¾ã æãããã¨å­«æãè¨ã¤ã¦æ­»ã 82 See Dowdle, âReading Family in Postwar Japanese Literature,â 117â18; âThe Constitution of Japan,â Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet. 31 ã ããã ããã©ããé©å½ã®å®æã¨ããµãã®ã¯ãæ°¸é ã«åºæ¥ãªãäºããç¥ããªããããããããã§ãé©å½ãèµ·ããªããã°ãããªããã ãé©å½ã®æ¬è³ªã¨ããµãã®ã¯ãããªå ·åã«ãããªããã¦ãç¾ãããã®ãªãã [...]ã83 âThe prison, at Bastille, the people attacked it; they gathered from left and right to attack it. And since then, the garden parties in France ended forever. Forever, okay? They were lost forever. But it had to be destroyed. The people knew it would be impossible to reconstruct a new order and a new moral mode, but they had to destroy it. âThe revolution is not over yet,â Sun Yat-sen said when he died. The completion of a revolution may be impossible to achieve, but we must start revolutions. That is the true nature of a revolution, sad and beautiful [...]â Here, the husband insists that revolutions are necessary even as he also acknowledges that they are forever incomplete. The text shows him swept up by his own emotions and with the âsad and beautifulâ idealization of change through destruction. Watashiâs perspective on revolution, on the other hand, differs from the husbandâs impression, which emphasizes the mindset of the âcommon peopleâ (minshū, a word linked to the ideology of political democracy). Her reaction accentuates her suffering as a wronged wife instead: [...]ãã©ã³ã¹ã«æ¼ããé©å½ã¯ãå®¶åº­ã«æ¼ããæã¨ãããä¼¼ã¦ããã®ããç¥ãã¾ãããããªããã¦ç¾ãããã®ã®ç²ã«ããã©ã³ã¹ã®ã­ãã³ããã¯ãªçæãããã¾ãå¹³åãªå®¶åº­ãããç ´å£ããªããã°ãªããªãã¤ããããã®å¤«ã®ã¤ããã¯ããããããããã©ããããããç§ã ã¤ã¦å¤«ã«æãã¦ããã®ã ããã®ãæã®ç´æ²»ã®ãããã§ã¯ãªãããã©ãã å¥³æ¿ã®ãµã¨ããã«ã¯ é¬¼ãæ£²ãã ããã èãæ£²ãã ã¨ãããµãããªæ²æ­¡ã«ã¯ãé©å½ææ³ãç ´å£ææ³ãããªãã®ç·£ãããããç¡ããããªé¡ã§ç´ éããã¦ããããã¦å¥³æ¿ã²ã¨ãã¯åãæ®ããããã¤ã¾ã§ãåãå ´æã§åãå§¿ã§ãã³ããæºæ¯ã°ããã¤ãã¦ãã¦ããã¤ãããããã¯ã©ããªãäºãªã®ã§ãã 83 Dazai, âOsan,â 275. 32 ããéãå¤©ã«ãã ã­ããã å¤«ã®æã®é¢¨ã®åãã®è®ãã®ãï©ã¤ã¦ãå¿å¾ãã¦ããªããã°ãªãã¬äºãªã®ã§ãããã84 Perhaps the revolution that occurred in France and the love felt in a family are very similar. The pain of having to destroy both for the sake of something sad and beautifulâI understand my husbandâs pain. But I, too, love my husband. I am not Kamijiâs Osan, butâ Who creeps into my bosom at night? Is it a demon or a snake? I let it pass, as if ideologies of revolution and destruction had no connection to that lament of hers. And so the wife is left alone, left always in the same house, dressed in the same attire, heaving the same heavy sighs. What is going to happen? Am I to resign myself to my fate, pray that the winds of his affection will change direction someday, and simply endure everything?85 The quoted line comes from Chikamatsu Monazaemonâs Shinjū ten no Amijima (âThe Love Suicides at Amijima,â 1721). In Chikamatsuâs play, the lament encapsulates the complicated feelings of pain, jealousy, and betrayal Osan holds towards her husband Jihei, who she notes to have shared tender moments with her in the distant past but who is now deeply enamoured with another woman. In âOsan,â the reference serves to emphasize the temporal continuity between Watashi and Osan while still putting ironic distance between them, as Watashi questions the passive position a wife is expected to take while her husband strays from his family. The iconic lament resurfaces when Watashi and her husband settle in for the night. Towards the end of Section 2, it is revealed that the couple does not actually share a room. Rather, they sleep in separate rooms with their children, with the husband in charge of Masako and Watashi in charge of the younger siblings. In this section, the narrator goes into detail about how each parent treats their children. While Watashi highlights her husbandâwho has significantly changed since the warâas an inadequate parent as he tends to Masako in a forceful and rushed manner, she depicts herself otherwise. She meticulously details how she does 84 Dazai, âOsan,â 275â76. 85 I will address the significance of Osan, as well as Watashiâs self-comparison to her, in the next subsection. 33 needlework until late and how she always nestles herself in between her two other children. The three of them, cramped in a room smaller than her husbandâs, form a distinctive shape that resembles not the Japanese kanji sinograph âå·,â but âå°.â86 These specific details are significant for interpreting the repeated lament, as it re-emerges after Watashi hears her husband sighing audibly in the other room. Here, the lament foregrounds the inaccessibility of the husbandâs interiority, as it is impossible for the narrator or the reader to determine the cause of his despondency. Instead, what is privileged is the intense emotions of Watashi and her devotion to her family. What is intriguing here is the extent to which Watashiâs proximity to her children resembles Osan to hers. In Chikamatsuâs play, the mother threatens to beat one of the caretakers to death for letting her son, KantarÅ, wander home alone and failing to bring back her daughter, Osue, in time for milk.87 While she scrambles to nurse her children, her husband, Jihei, is shown dozing instead of managing his business. Historian Donald Shively argues that the family, according to the ethical teachings of the Edo period, was meant to centre the parent-child relationship instead of the husband-wife relationship.88 In this context, the wife is primarily tasked to be a mother to her husbandâs children, whereas the husband concentrates on perpetuating the familyâs business and ensuring the continuation of the family.89 Hence, Watashiâs dedication to her family and her role as a full-time housewifeâand correspondingly, 86 In Japanese, âãã¡ã§å¯¢ãæã¯ãå¤«ã¯ãå «æé ã«ãããå ­çéã«ãèªåã®è²åã¨ããµå­ã®è²åãæ·ãã¦èå¸³ãåãããããããç¶æ§ã¨éãã§ããããããããµå­ã®æãç¡çã«ã¬ããã¦ãå¯¢å·»ãã«çæãããã¦ãã¤ã¦å¯¢ããããèªåããããã¿ã«ãªã¤ã¦é»çãæ¶ããããã¤ãããªã®ã§ããç§ã¯é£ã®åçåã«é·ç·ã¨æ¬¡å¥³ãå¯¢ãããããããåä¸æé ã¾ã§éä»äºããã¦ãããããèå¸³ãåã¤ã¦é·ç·ã¨æ¬¡å¥³ã®éã«ãå·ãã®å­ã§ã¯ãªããå°ãã®å­ã«ãªã¤ã¦ããã¿ã¾ããâ Dazai, âOsan,â 277. 87 Donald Keene, Major Plays of Chikamatsu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 403. 88 Shively, âIntroduction to The Love Suicide at Amijima,â 24. 89 Shively, âIntroduction to The Love Suicide at Amijima,â 24. 34 the husbandâs role as the sole labourer of the familyâalso demonstrates the persistence of old gender roles within the home. Both instances of Watashiâs explicit reference to Chikamatsuâs Osan thus serve the purpose of accentuating her struggles with her husbandâs infidelity. Although Watashi does attempt to distance herself from gender norms that tell her to patiently resign herself to her fate, the narratorâs attempts are momentary and unsuccessful, for her attempt is overshadowed by gendered power dynamics that have persisted since the Edo period. The Lover Figure in Chikamatsuâs Amijima and Dazaiâs âOsanâ Although âOsanâ emphasizes continuity in the ways outlined above, it also introduces a key difference in its attitude towards both the eponymous wife and the husbandâs lover. In Chikamatsu Monzaemonâs Shinjū ten no Amijima (âThe Love Suicides at Amijima,â 1721), the lover figure is thoroughly explored as Koharuâs personal history is detailed to the audience early on. Koharu, it is revealed, had been indentured to the Kinokuni House by her severely impoverished and widowed mother. Her lack of personal liberty is further manifested in her relationship with Jihei: despite being deeply in love, she is incapable of opposing her commodified status and is forced to grapple with the possibility of being redeemed by another customer. These tragic details about Koharu are then intertwined with Osan in the playâs second act. As Osan confronts a resentful Jihei, who relentlessly defames Koharu for betraying their oath in order to ensure herself better prospects, she proclaims Koharu to be a ânoble-hearted womanâ rather than a âfaithless creatureâ90 and expresses sympathy for the other womanâs multiple 90 Keene, Major Plays of Chikamatsu, 409. 35 obligations, even as she also later expresses concern about her own position and â[her] husbandâs reputation.â91 In the final act of Chikamatsuâs play, Koharu is shown as being more concerned about Osan than Jihei before their suicide attempt. Anticipating that Jiheiâs death will be her fault, Koharu fears that Osan will âdespise her as a false womanâ for violating their oath, and agonizes that Osanâs contempt for her would âtrump [the] slander of a thousand or ten thousand strangers.â92 Seeing Koharuâs hesitation, Jihei forcefully cuts his hair and proclaims that he has officially divorced Osan. With Jihei a monk and Osan a divorcee or, in Jiheiâs words, a âcomplete stranger,â the lovers are no longer obliged to the promises they had made in the past and thus unobstructed from committing suicide.93 What is prominent is that even at the climactic point of Chikamatsuâs play, the relationship between Osan and Koharu is privileged. While Koharu regards Osan to be the âgreat obstacle to [her] salvation,â Jihei depicts their eventual deaths as acts committed to honour their duty to Osan.94 In Chikamatsuâs play, the act of shinjū is thus never disconnected from the wife. Instead, the tragic deaths of the lovers result from concepts directly associated with the wife, such as her sympathy for the other woman and her commitment to her husband. In contrast to Chikamatsu, Dazai refuses to provide any information on the other woman in âOsan.â Furthermore, the narrator of âOsanâ had no opportunity to interact with the lover, nor does the lover ever have the chance to explain circumstances from her own standpoint. Instead, all knowledge about the lover is delivered to both the narrator and the reader in the form of hearsay at the very end of the story. The lover is said to have been a former colleague of the late 91 Keene, Major Plays of Chikamatsu, 410. 92 Keene, Major Plays of Chikamatsu, 421. 93 Keene, Major Plays of Chikamatsu, 421. 94 Keene, Major Plays of Chikamatsu, 421â22. 36 husband and a frequent visitor to the familyâs Tokyo home while Watashi was sheltering in Aomori. The lover is thus inaccessible to Watashi in all ways, in terms of both physical and narrative presence. In this way, the reader of âOsanâ is made to focus on Watashi only and commiserate with her turmoil. In the final section of âOsan,â the narrator dismisses the lover almost entirely and instead dedicates her energy to castigating her late husband. This disconnection between the women contrasts greatly with what we witnessed between Osan and Koharu. The only individual that matters in Dazaiâs text is the wife, and what the reader is urged to understand is her constrained position within the home. Ultimately, while âOsanâ does emphasize the temporal continuities between past and present through the paratextual reference to Chikamatsuâs play, it also highlights the vulnerability of Watashiâs position as the neglected wife and the hypocrisies of obligation, revolution, and sacrifice in the postwar context. Death itself is another motif that is treated very differently in Chikamatsuâs play and Dazaiâs text. In Chikamatsuâs play, for example, the steps the lovers take toward their demise are fully elaborated. In fact, the play dedicates an entire act to the loversâ final, symbolic âjourneyâ (michiyuki), as was typical of the genre at the time. While making their way to the place of suicide, the lovers reflect upon the obligations that have tormented and persecuted them. It is here where Osan is identified to be the obstruction to the two loversâ attainment of salvation. As Donald Shively observes, Chikamatsu beautifies âthe imprudent act of [the] immature coupleâ with âa religious aura,â where the illicit relations between the lovers are âjustifiedâ as salvation.95 Similarly, Daniel Poch contends in his monograph Licentious Fictions that Chikamatsuâs dramatization of ninjÅ (human emotion)âparticularly the mutual compassion of 95 Shively, âIntroduction to The Love Suicide at Amijima,â 26. 37 the two women Koharu and Osan and their active suppression of personal feelings in spite of their rivalryâis not necessarily antithetical to giri (moral duty) but âsimilar in function. Through the mediation of empathy, emotion and ethicality essentially converge.â96 At the same time, Poch also notes a certain ambivalence in the play towards excessive passion, which âfinds gratification only in the act of double suicide (shinjū), the ultimate defiance of the social order.â97 Such grandiose displays of defiance are entirely absent in Dazaiâs text; instead, the reader is clued in about the husbandâs desire to die from the very start of the story. Watashi provides visual descriptions of his ghostlike and dejected state in Section 1, followed by his knowledge about the overconsumption of sleeping pills in Section 2; then, in Section 3, we learn about his sudden decision to pawn all cherished possessions. Ultimately, the loversâ suicides are given no context from the lovers themselves but instead are understood entirely from the narrative perspective of an abandoned wife who is forced to contemplate the meaning behind the act. Unlike Jihei and Koharu, who lament their obligations to Osan and insist on their love in the face of guilt moments before their deaths, the lover in âOsanâ is given no such articulative agency, and the husband leaves behind a suicide note that denies love to be the reason behind their decisions. Instead, the husbandâs suicide note is a political statement directed toward the larger society. To reiterate, the husband makes absolutely no mention of his family in his note. Therefore, the moral conflict between obligations/giri and human feelings/ninjÅ is deliberately de-emphasized in Dazaiâs story. What is the purpose of the loversâ deaths in Dazaiâs story, then? The focus of the text is not on immortalizing the lovers but rather on foregrounding the surviving wife. Throughout the 96 Daniel Poch, Licentious Fictions: NinjÅ and the Nineteenth-Century Japanese Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 40. 97 Poch, Licentious Fictions, 40. 38 story, Watashi rejects any attempts to lionize, romanticize, or give political value to the loversâ deaths. She further expresses her disappointment in her late husband, who, despite classifying himself as a revolutionist, was incapable of coping with reality. Unlike Chikamatsuâs Osan, who fades into the background as the narrative preoccupies itself with the outcome of the lovers, Dazaiâs Watashi remains painfully prominent until the very end. While both texts are similar in terms of their emphasis on the role of the wife, Dazaiâs âOsanâ offers a markedly bleaker assessment of that role and its damaging restraints. Conclusion While âOsanâ is a story that occurs in an immediate postwar Japan, the narrative rejects the prevailing postwar discourse of positive change. Instead, we see the female narrator continuing to be confined to the domestic sphere and the husband unable to cope with the irreversible damage the war had done to his prospects and spirit. Moreover, the âhauntingly beautifulâ philosophies echoed by the late husband to justify his illicit relations and legitimize his death are dismissed and ridiculed by the female narrator, who is forced to grapple with her life as a neglected wife and then as a widow. In this way, âOsanâ highlights the discord between promises and reality. It can thus be read as a story about subversion, as it highlights a man and a woman who, unlike the essentialized images promoted by the Allied Forces, deviate from and struggle against their respective gender norms, and for the woman the societal constraints that have persisted into an era that promised revolutionary change. 39 Chapter 3. What âWomenâs Languageâ Entails: Narrative Modes, Gender, and Power Relations in âOsanâ Introduction In Chapter Two, I discussed the content of Dazai Osamuâs short story âOsan,â focusing on the characterizations of its female narrator-protagonist and her husband, the characterâs contrastive views on the idea of ârevolutionâ (kakumei), and the textâs explicit reference to its precedent from the Edo period, Shinjū ten no Amijima (âThe Love Suicides at Amijima,â 1721). Through analyzing these textualities of âOsanâ vis-a-vis its sociohistorical context, I argued that Dazaiâs postwar literary text undermines the hegemonic images of emancipated Japanese women by featuring a female narrator-protagonist who continues to struggle against gender norms and societal constraints in an era that was touted as ârevolutionary.â In Chapter Three, I will discuss the second key component of âOsan,â specifically its narrative modes. In the text, the narrator-protagonist, Watashi, oscillates between the desu/masu form and the da/dearu form. Yasuko Obana, a scholar in the field of pragmatics, has identified such switches from an honorific form to a plain form to be a âminus-level speech level shiftâ that is âclosely related to [the] âpowerâ between the interactants.â98 In her dissertation on Japanese womenâs magazines from the interwar period, Shiho Maeshima also argues that these utterance endings function not only as auxiliary verbs but also as evidential markers of an extensive 98 Yasuko Obana, âSpeech Level Shifts in Japanese: A Different Perspective: The Application of Symbolic Interactionist Role Theory,â Pragmatics: Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association 26, no. 2, (2016), https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/prag.26.2.04oba. Obana explains a minus-level speech shift is when an interactant, who typically uses polite forms due to the existing power structure, shifts to plain forms to indicate the psychological shifts that have occurred within them. For example, the said interactant may engage with a minus-level speech shift to show their familiarity and involvement with the listener; that is, when the interactant (speaker) uses the direct plain form, the interactant is prioritizing him/herself and turning the listenerâs attention to his/her emotions. 40 history of gender differentiation.99 Adopting the perspective of sociolinguistics, we can then interpret Watashiâs oscillation between the two narrative modes as a social act that indexes the socio-cultural identity of a woman and her role as a wife. Language, then, is another crucial way in which Dazai explores and subverts Occupation-period discourses of liberation and subjugation. By depicting Watashi as a woman capable of mediating with the desu/masu form and the da/dearu formâa form which I will argue in the following subsections to be an ideological construct coded as masculineâDazai points toward the performative nature of language as well as gender. The problem lies in how Watashi traverses the two narrative modes: while the reader hears Watashiâs voice and internalizes her thoughts, particularly thoughts that denote an image of a âstrong woman,â it is crucial for us to bear in mind that she never verbalizes these thoughts to the audience that exists within the text. Instead, Watashiâs radical perspectives, which she marks most often with the da/dearu form, are confined to the private territory of her mind and textually separated from the rest of the narrative through the use of parentheses. By highlighting the sociolinguistic elements of âOsan,â that is, by redirecting our focus to how Watashi narrativizes her experiences and emotions, I aim to underscore how Dazaiâs text subverts the notion of revolution through its portrait of a woman who continues to be subordinated by a persistent patriarchal system. Signifying Watashiâs Speech Level Shifts: A Historical Overview of âWomenâs Languageâ and Dazai Osamuâs Cross-Gendered Writings In this section, I provide a historical overview to illuminate the relationship between the linguistic differences and the gendered power structure they evoke. In her monograph on gender 99 Shiho Maeshima, âWomenâs Magazines and the Democratization of Print and Reading Culture in Interwar Japanâ (PhD diss., The University of British Columbia, 2016). 41 and linguistic modernity in Japan, Inoue Miyako argues that the modern concept of âwomenâs languageâ is an ideological construct derived from textual representations that have persisted through a long process of collective, cumulative, and repetitive use.100 Inoue further notes that this language emerged from a context â[where] both language and women came to be problematized as national issuesâ linked to ideologies of modernization.101 The elites of Meijiâs literary community considered language to be an instrument indispensable to the nationâs integration and thus made language reform a high priority.102 Their efforts, however, were complicated by Japanâs pre-existing linguistic diversities and many different writing registers, practices, and forms. From this came the genbunâitchi (lit. âunifying speech and writingâ) movement, which âinvolved creating a colloquial written Japanese language and developing modern narrative prose (the novel form or shÅsetsu).â103 Practitioners of genbunâitchi experimented with new utterance-ending forms, which eventually resulted in the differentiation of desu/masu and da/dearu in writing. While the polite desu/masu form, considered to âreflect the spoken word,â imagines the presence of a reader and creates an illusion where the author-narrator-protagonist and reader-listener are in close proximity, the plain da/dearu style does not, effectively creating a distance between the author-narrator-protagonist and reader-listener. By the 1910s, the plain utterance-ending (da/dearu form) had become the established literary form and was employed in general magazines that published âseriousâ and âaustereâ content for male adults.104 The polite utterance-ending (desu/masu form), on the other 100 Miyako Inoue, Vicarious Language: Gender and Linguistic Modernity in Japan (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2006), 77. 101 Inoue, Vicarious Language, 77. 102 Inoue, Vicarious Language, 81. 103 Inoue, Vicarious Language, 78. 104 Maeshima, âWomenâs Magazines,â 150. 42 hand, was relegated to womenâs and childrenâs magazines that delved into âlight content concerning private and domestic issues.â105 Maeshima writes that in the context of interwar Japanese print culture, the desu/masu form continued to be more often deployed in womenâs magazines than the da/dearu form favored by general magazines and newspapers.106 While the former form has come to be known as âsubjectiveâ or âvulgar,â the latter form is more often described as âobjective,â âneutral,â or âscientific.â107 The two forms are further differentiated by gendered demarcations in print culture itself: that is, general magazines and newspapers were deemed the ânormâ periodicals and male intellectuals their privileged readers, while womenâs magazines were marginalized and their female audience regarded as secondary to their male counterparts.108 Dazai Osamu is notable for his many texts that play with these expectations of gendered genres and literary forms. In fact, many of his canonized and widely translated writings, including Schoolgirl (Joseito, 1939) and Villonâs Wife (Viyon no tsuma, 1947), are first-person female narratives that primarily employ the desu/masu form.109 In an important essay entitled âNyonin sÅzÅâ (âThe Creation of Womenâ), Dazai offers some illuminating comments on his desire to write cross-gendered stories. In the essay, Dazai declares that the only Japanese novelist who portrays âreal womenâ (hontÅ no onna) is Chikamatsu ShÅ«kÅ (1876â1944). In Dazaiâs eyes, those portrayals are âextremely boringâ (hadahada tsumaranai) precisely because of their âaccuracyâ (seikaku) in replicating existing female gender norms through speech patterns and gestures. However, that does not mean that such literary portrayals are without value. Dazai 105 Inoue, Vicarious Language, 84; Maeshima, âWomenâs Magazines,â 41, 151. 106 Maeshima, âWomenâs Magazines,â 41. 107 Maeshima, âWomenâs Magazines,â 42. 108 Maeshima, âWomenâs Magazines,â 42. 109 âDazai Osamu å¤ªå®°æ²»,â Nihon kindai bungaku daijiten 2 â½æ¬è¿ä»£â½å­¦â¼¤è¾å ¸ ç¬¬äºå·», ed. ODAGIRI Susumu å°ç°åé² and Nihon Kindai Bungakkan æ¥æ¬è¿ä»£æå­¦é¤¨ (Tokyo: KÅdansha è¬è«ç¤¾, 1977â1978), 332â33. 43 argues that the problem with male writers is not that they are unable to write women but that they do not, due to âidealismâ (risÅ shugi) and âignoranceâ (muchi). For Dazai, the act of writing women as a man is a performative act even to the point of absurdity, as men are unable to become women themselves. At the same time, literary performativity is paradoxically a way of engaging with ârealityâ (genjitsu) and confronting existing gender norms. It is with this historical context in mind that I turn now to a close reading of the literary style of âOsan.â In the text, Watashiâs shifts between the desu/masu and da/dearu styles are significant: her capability to speak not only in a language normalized as âwomenâs languageâ but also in a language that was historically aligned with men points toward the performative nature of speech acts. Watashiâs ability to negotiate with two different narrative modes can be connected to the argument I posed in Chapter Two: that is, it is impossible to categorize Japanese women into a uniform collective that neatly conforms to gender norms. Watashiâs strategic code-switching between the desu/masu and da/dearu forms simultaneously reveals her awareness of and critical distance from the expectations of gendered literary expression, and her speech acts do not necessarily represent or reflect how Japanese women actually speak. At the same time, Watashiâs code-switching cannot be taken as straightforward evidence of agency or rebellion. Watashi deploys the desu/masu form for the majority of the narrative, particularly when describing her experiences or addressing her husband. The brief moments when she articulates more radically political or emotional thoughts in the da/dearu form, in contrast, are interiorized and only accessible as fragments to the audience who exist outside of the text or, more specifically, consumers who have no control over the plot. By committing herself to desu/masu formâwhich some male sociolinguists at the time asserted to be a âbeautiful, soft, and gracefulâ style that was the standard characteristic of the language spoken 44 by Japanese women110ânot only in front of her husband but also when speaking of her husband, Watashi plays a part in reinforcing a particular image of Japanese womanhood linked to gendered subordination, as the section that follows will reveal. Literary Analysis: The Spoken and the Unspoken As I have mentioned before, the story of âOsanâ is narrated from a first-person perspective. This perspective, when compared to a third-person perspective that deploys an omniscient, birds-eye view, is undeniably limited. The beginning excerpt of âOsan,â for instance, features the narrator-protagonist scrutinizing the silhouette of her husband from the bounds of her home: ãã¾ãã²ã®ãæããã²ã¨ã®ããã«ãè¶³é³ãç¡ãçéããåºã¦è¡ãã¾ããç§ã¯ãåæã§å¤é£ã®å¾ä»æ«ãããªããããã¤ã¨ãã®æ°£é ãèä¸­ã«æãããç¿ãåè½ãã»ã©æ·ãããæã¯ãæºæ¯ãã¤ãã¦ããããä¼¸ã³ããã¤ã¦ãåæã®æ ¼å­çªããå¤ãè¦ã¾ãã¨ããã¼ã¡ãã®èã®ãã­ããã­ã£ã¦ããã¿ã¤ãã¦ããçå£ã«æ²¿ã¤ãå°è·¯ãå¤«ããæ´ã²ãããã®ç½æµ´è¡£ã«ç´°ããå µå¤å¸¶ãããããå·»ã«ãã¦ãå¤ã®å¤éã«æµ®ãã¦ãµã¯ãµã¯ãã»ã¨ãã©å¹½éã®ãããªãã¨ã¦ããã®ä¸ã«çãã¦ãããã®ã§ã¯ãªããããªãæ ç¡ãæ²ãããããå§¿ãè¦ãã¦æ­©ãã¦è¡ãã¾ãã111 As if devoid of life, he left the house without making a single sound. While I cleaned up after our dinner, I felt the presence behind me. A sense of loneliness suddenly overwhelmed me, and I wanted to let the dishes slip from my hand. I let out a sigh despite myself and leaned forward a little, peering from the lattice windows and searching for him: there he was, in an alley lined and surrounded by twisted squash vines, wearing a white kimono faded from all the washing tied by a narrow sash. I watched his forlorn and dejected retreating form, wavering and wandering in the dusk of a summer evening, almost like a ghost, trudging on as if he did not belong to the living world. 110 See KIKUZAWA Sueo èæ²¢å­£ç, âFujin no kotoba no tokuchÅ ni tsuite å©¦äººã®è¨èã®ç¹å¾´ã«å°±ãã¦â (âOn Characteristics of Womenâs Languageâ), Kokugo kyÅiku å½èªæè² 14, no. 3 (1929): 66â75; YOSHIDA Sumio åç°æ¾å¤«, âFujin no kotoba å©¦äººã®è¨èâ (âLanguage of Womenâ), Kotoba no kÅza è¨èã®è¬åº§ 2, ed. Japan Broadcasting Corporation Publishing (Tokyo: NHK Shuppan NHKåºç, 1935), 145â56. Articles quoted by Yumiko Ohara, in âGendered Speech,â in Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics, ed. Patrick Heinrich and Yumiko Ohara (London: Routledge, 2019), 285. 111 Dazai, âOsan,â 267. 45 In this passage, Watashiâs subjectivity as a narrator-protagonist is privileged. She asserts observational power over her husband through consistently negative descriptions that emphasize his passivity. There is a limit to her observances, however, which simultaneously highlights the limit of the first-person narrative structure. Watashiâs narrative authority is confined to her own experiences and emotions that cannot penetrate the elusive nature, motives, or thoughts of the husband, who is presented as a character to be incomprehensible to the living. What power Watashi has as a narrator-protagonist is, therefore, not permanent or total; and this is a fact that is underlined by Watashiâs gendered position within the householdâliterally confined to the kitchen in this passage and literarily bound to her role as a wife/mother. Watashi then goes on to reminisce about the past, but her recollections of how the family survived the wartime period are soon cut short by a parenthetical aside. This instance, where Watashi reflects on her feelings of anxiety and suffering, is notable because the narrator-protagonist suddenly breaks away from the desu/masu form and instead employs the da/dearu form for the first time: å¤«ããæãããè¨æ¶ã¯ãæ¬ç¶ã«ããã¤ãããä¸ã¤ã ãã§ããã®ãã³ã®æ¦äºã®ããã«ç§ãããããäººä¸¦ã®è¦å´ã¯è´ãã¾ããããã©ããããã§ããå¤«ã®åªãããæã¸ã°ããã®å «å¹´éãç§ã¯ä»åããè ã§ãã¤ãã¨è¨ã²ãããªãã®ã§ãã (è®ã¤ããæ¹ã«ãªã¤ã¦ãã¾ã¤ãããã¤ããããã¤é ããããã®äºãã¯ãã¾ã¤ãã®ã ãããçéå ã®éæ£®ããå¼ãä¸ãã¦ãã¦ãåç®ææ¯ãã§å¤«ã¨é¢ã¤ãæãå¤«ã®ç¬é¡ãã©ãããåå±ã§ããããã¦ãç§ã®ï©¡ç·ãé¿ãããããªããã©ãã©ãããæ åº¦ã§ãç§ã¯ãã ããããä¸èªç±ãªã²ã¨ãæ®ãã®ããã«ãããã¤ãã«ãªã£ããã¨ã ãæãã¦ãããããããæã¤ããã®ã ããæãã¯ãã®åç®æã®éã«ããããä½ãèã¸ã¾ããèã¸ãã¨ãèã¸ãã ãè¦ãã¿ã®æ³¥æ²¼ã«æ·±ãè½ã¡è¾¼ãã°ããã ã)112 That was the only instance, a single fragment of memory of him infuriated with me. Although I, like the others, suffered during the war, when I think about my husbandâs gentleness, I would like to say that I was rather happy for those eight years. (He became a different person. Since when did he begin to change? When I returned from Aomori and reunited with him for the first time in four months, he greeted me with an 112 Dazai, âOsan,â 271â72. 46 uneasy smile, an avoidant gaze, fidgeting in a shy, furtive manner... I thought he was merely worn out from living, all alone, in that unfavourable stateâand I pitied him. But what if something did happen during those four months? No, I wonât think about any of that. The more I think, the deeper I sink into that painful swamp.) Watashiâs retrospective conclusions on her husbandâs kindness, narrated in the desu/masu form, are relativized by the parenthetical doubts she expresses in the diegetic present. Because these doubts are expressed in the da/dearu form and textually marked apart from the rest of the narrative through parentheses, we may interpret this moment as Watashi speaking/thinking to herself rather than to an assumed audience/reader. Watashiâs strenuous claims that she was happy in the past are ironically juxtaposed against the discomfort and unease she feels as she reconsiders her relationship with her husband, casting doubt not only on the truth of those claims but also exposing the performative nature of Watashiâs narrator-protagonist role. In this way, the use of the final particle da creates a critical distance between the reader and Watashi, a woman who confesses divergent thoughts and feelings in divergent literary registers. This passage also points toward the limits of Watashiâs role not only as a narrator-protagonist but also as a wife. Despite the hints the reader receives about her husbandâs questionable behaviours, the section ends with Watashi retracting all her speculations and recriminations and exiting the enclosed narrative space. What ultimately remains is once again the unknownâwhat happened during the coupleâs fourth-month separation and the husbandâs own desires or emotions. Watashiâs reluctance to âthink about any of thatâ (nani mo kangaemai),113 once again, points toward her inability or refusal to confront her husband and fill in the gaps of her knowledge that might then allow her to move forward with her life. 113 Dazai, âOsan,â 272. 47 The story then progresses into Section 2, where the husband returns from his unexplained departure. The section begins with Watashi reverting to the performative role of a solicitous wife through desu/masu narration as she notes the pitiful sight of her husband returning home surreptitiously, as if he had committed a crime.114 What is intriguing here is how Watashi ties her husbandâs self-incriminating acts to her own position as a wife, as she laments how agonizing it must feel for her husband to lower his head to someone like her.115 We then see Watashi approaching her husband and offering him rationed beer. In the dialogue that follows, Watashi employs a polite speech register, using honorific structures such as âo nomi ni narimasu kaâ (an honorific way of asking Will you drink?); the husband, on the other hand, responds in a relatively curt manner, ending his reply with the informal final particle ne.116 When the husband finally accepts Watashiâs offerâthis time deliberately referring to Watashi with the honorific prefix particle âoâ and deploying the desu/masu formâthis particular speech level shift is interpreted by the latter interactant not as an indication of respect but as âobvious, clumsy flatteryâ (miesuta, heta na oseji mitai na koto made iu no deshita).117 This brief exchange emphasizes the tensions between the two and reiterates the strategic, performative use of language, in this case by the husband to avoid undesired confrontation. As the rest of the family gathers at the dining table, Watashi describes the facade of a seemingly united household to the reader: the husband consistently avoiding his wife's gaze, the 114 In Japanese, âç¿ãæ¥ã®ãæãããåã«ãç§ãçéã®ãã°ã®äºæ¸ç«¯ã§ããã¨ãã®æ¥ã«çããæ¬¡å¥³ã®ãã·å­ã®ããã¤ãæ´æ¿¯ãã¦ããããå¤«ãã©ãã¼ãã®ãããªæ¥è­è ãããé¡ããã¦ããããããã¤ã¦æ¥ã¦ãç§ãè¦ã¦ãé»ã¤ã¦ã²ããã¨é ­ãããã¦ãã¤ã¾ã¥ãã¦ãã¤ãã®ãããªããçéã«ã¯ã²ã¤ã¦è¡ãã¾ãããâ Dazai, âOsan,â 272. 115 In Japanese, âå¦»ã®ç§ã«ãæã¯ãé ­ãããããªã©ããããå¤«ããããããã®ã ãã[...]â Dazai, âOsan,â 272. 116 In Japanese, âãæãã¤ãã§ããï¼ã¯ã ãã«ãªã¤ããï¼ããããçã®ç¹é ã§ããã¤ã«ãäºæ¬é çµ¦ã«ãªã¤ãã®ãã²ããã¦ç½®ãã¾ãããã©ããé£²ã¿ã«ãªãã¾ããï¼ãå¤«ã¯ãã©ãã©ãã¦æ°£å¼±ãç¬ã²ããããã¤ã¯ãåãã­ãã¨è²ãã¸ãããã¦[...]â Dazai, âOsan,â 272â73. 117 Dazai, âOsan,â 273. 48 wife unable to continue the conversation as she avoids topics that could upset her husband, and the young children who, upon detecting the off-putting atmosphere of the room, quietly eat their ration food.118 These descriptions abruptly break off after Watashi spots a loverâs bite on the nape of her husbandâs neck. Upset by her finding, the narrator-protagonist engages in one of the most compelling monologues of âOsanâ: [...]ãã©ã³ã¹ã«æ¼ããé©å½ã¯ãå®¶åº­ã«æ¼ããæã¨ãããä¼¼ã¦ããã®ããç¥ãã¾ãããããªããã¦ç¾ãããã®ã®ç²ã«ããã©ã³ã¹ã®ã­ãã³ããã¯ãªçæãããã¾ãå¹³åãªå®¶åº­ãããç ´å£ããªããã°ãªããªãã¤ããããã®å¤«ã®ã¤ããã¯ããããããããã©ããããããç§ã ã¤ã¦å¤«ã«æãã¦ããã®ã ããã®ãæã®ç´æ²»ã®ãããã§ã¯ãªãããã©ãã å¥³æ¿ã®ãµã¨ããã«ã¯ é¬¼ãæ£²ãã ããã èãæ£²ãã ã¨ãããµãããªæ²æ­¡ã«ã¯ãé©å½ææ³ãç ´å£ææ³ãããªãã®ç·£ãããããç¡ããããªé¡ã§ç´ éããã¦ããããã¦å¥³æ¿ã²ã¨ãã¯åãæ®ããããã¤ã¾ã§ãåãå ´æã§åãå§¿ã§ãã³ããæºæ¯ã°ããã¤ãã¦ãã¦ããã¤ãããããã¯ã©ããªãäºãªã®ã§ããããéãå¤©ã«ãã ã­ããã å¤«ã®æã®é¢¨ã®åãã®å¤ãã®ãï©ã¤ã¦ãå¿å¾ãã¦ããªããã°ãªãã¬äºãªã®ã§ãããã119 Perhaps the revolution that occurred in France and the love felt in a family are very similar. The pain of having to destroy both for the sake of something sad and beautifulâI understand my husbandâs pain. But I, too, love my husband. I am not Kamijiâs Osan, butâ Who creeps into my bosom at night? Is it a demon or a snake? I passed it by, as if ideologies of revolution and destruction had no connection to that lament of hers. And so the wife is left alone, left always in the same house, dressed in the same attire, heaving the same heavy sighs. What is going to happen? Am I to resign myself to my fate, pray that the winds of his affection will change direction someday, and simply endure everything? 118 In Japanese, â[...]ããã¹ã¯å¹³åãªä¸å®¶å£æ¬ã®åã§ãããããã¯ãæ°£ã¾ãããå¤«ã¯ç§ã®ï©¡ç·ãé¿ãã¦ã°ãããã¾ãããã¾ãç§ããå¤«ã®çãã¨ããã«ãã¯ããªããããªè©±é¡ãç´°å¿ã«é¸æããªããã°ãªãããã©ããã¦ãè©±ãã¯ãã¿ã¾ãããé·å¥³ã®ããµå­ããé·ç·ã®ç¾©å¤ªéããä½ãä¸¡è¦ªã®ãããªæ°£æã®ãã ã¯ãã«ææã«å¯ãããã®ããããã²ã©ããã¨ãªããä»£ç¨é£ã®è¸ãã³ããºã«ãã³ã®ç´ è¶ã«ã²ããã¦ãã¹ã¦ãã¾ããâ Dazai, âOsan,â 273. 119 Dazai, âOsan,â 275â76. 49 This monologue, in which the narrator-protagonist condemns her husband and questions what âwivesâ are expected to do in the face of adversities as I explored in Chapter Two, deploys both desu/masu and da/dearu forms. When Watashi focuses on herself, that is, when she stresses her lingering attachment to her husband despite him being an adulterer, the segment ends with the particle da. This emphatic statement can be understood as emerging once again from Watashiâs exclusive interiority. Watashiâs questions, on the other hand, are written in desu/masu form. This re-establishes the âI-youâ relationship between the first-person narrator and her audience and implies Watashi seeks answers and perhaps sympathy from the very same audience. Through these narrative shifts, this passage underscores the image of a wife who seeks to reject a norm that not only glamorizes destruction (of a home) and revolution (of it) but without the ability to effect change herself. The story then proceeds to Section 3, which begins with a scene of the couple completely dejected and suffocated by the summer heat. As the two banter, another parenthetical thought suddenly interrupts Watashiâs narrative: æ¯æ¥ãæ¯æ¥ãæãæ¥ãçºãã¾ãã[...]å¤«ããé£ãã¡ã¤ã¨ãããã¾ã¬æ§å­ã§ãç¼ãè½ã¡ãã¼ãã§ããããããããããå ã¤ã¦ãæãæããµãµãã¨ãèªåãããããç¬ãµãããªç¬ãæ¹ããã¦ã ããã¤ãç¼çããããæ°£ãæ¥½ã ã ã¨è¨ã²ã¾ããã ãããããããããã ãæ­£ããã²ã¨ã¯ãè¦ããç­ãç¡ããã¤ãã¥ãåã¯æå¿ããäºããããã ãã©ããã¦ãåãã¡ã¯ããããªã«ã¾ããã§ãã¾ã¤ãããªãã ããã­ãä¸ã®ä¸­ãç«æ´¾ã«çãã¨ã»ãããã«çãã¤ããäººã¨ãããã§ãªãäººã¨ãã¯ããããã¯ã¯ã¤ããåå¥ãã¤ãã¦ãããã¢ããªãããããã ãããããéæãªãã§ãã®ããããããªããã¯ããã ãâ¦â¦ã ããã ï¼ã 50 å¤«ã¯ãæ¬ç¶ã«çã¤ãã²ã¨ã®ãããªãã¸ããªç®ã¤ãã§ç§ã®é¡ãè¦ã¾ãããç§ã¯å£ãããããããè¨ã¸ãªããå ·é«çãªäºã¯ããããããã¦ãä½ãè¨ã¸ãªãã ããã ã­ãããªãããè¦ãããã ã¨ãããããè¦ããã®ãã ããªãã ãã¤ã¾ããªããã ã¨ãå¤«ã¯ãã»ã¤ã¨ããããã«å¾®ç¬ãã§ããè¨ã²ã¾ããã ãã®æããµã¤ã¨ç§ã¯ãä¹ ãæ¯ãã§ãæ¶¼ããå¹¸ï¨æãå³ã¯ã²ã¾ãããï¼ãããªã ã ãå¤«ã®æ°£æãæ¨ã«ãã¦ãããããç§ã®æ°£æãæ¨ã«ãªããã ãéå¾³ãä½ãããã ããªããæ°£æãæ¨ã«ãªãã°ãããã§ãããã ãï¼120 The summer heat continued blazing day after day. [...] Nor did my husband eat well: his eyes, now hollow, reflected a terrifying light. At times he would laugh as if ridiculing himself. âThings would be easier if I were to go mad,â he said. âFor me, too.â âOrthodox people donât suffer. I canât help but admire the lot of youâhow do you all manage to live life so honestly, so faultlessly? I wonder if we are divided from the very start, those who can pass easily through life, and those who canât.â âNo, Iâm just not very sensitive. But...â âBut?â He looked at me with a twisted expression, as if he had truly gone mad. I couldnât get the words out. Ah, I couldnât. I couldnât speak of it concretelyâit was too terrible. âItâs just, it pains me when I see you in pain.â âOh, is that all?â he said, and smiled as if in relief. At that very moment, and for the first time in a long time, I felt a cool wave of happiness washing over me. (I see, thatâs it. If I make him feel better, I can feel better too. Thereâs no point in worrying about right and wrong. Itâs enough to feel better.) Here, Watashiâs realization interrupts a dialogue on morals. The dialogue exposes the power differential between the husband and the narrator-protagonist. The former insists on a fundamental difference between the ârightâ (mattÅ), more specifically, individuals who live in an 120 Dazai, âOsan,â 278â79. 51 orthodox manner, and the âwrongâ (sÅ de nai hito), namely those who fail to;121 when Watashi tries to express her true thoughtsâthe âconcreteâ reality of her suffering, which is implied to contradict her husbandâs ideologiesâshe finds herself forced instead into silence. Her parenthetical comment in the da/dearu form reveals her struggle to reconcile her feelings through subordinating herself to her husband. Ultimately, the passage demonstrates the persistent hierarchy of the two characters, in which Watashiâs wellbeing is tied to a husband who cannot or will not understand her. These gender dynamics are further manifested during an exchange the couple shares on the same night. Watashi joins her husband in bed and attempts to comfort him, insisting that she âdoesnât mind it at allâ (nantomo omotte ya shinai wa yo).122 This brief remark is extremely ambiguous as the narrator-protagonist avoids specifying the subject âit.â Here, Watashi claims the power to determine who and what that has wronged her and whether to forgive the wrongdoer. The power, however, quickly shifts to the husband when he dismisses Watashiâs concerns: ã[...]ã ããããè¨ã¤ãã¢ããªãã®ããªãã¨ãæã¤ã¦ãããªããããã¤ã¦ãããã®ãããããã¯å©å·§ãªãã§ãããããã ã­ãæã ã¯ãã§ããã«ãã¦ãããªãã [...]ç§ããã®æãããè¨ã¤ãããå¤«ã¯ãã¯ãç¬ã²ã¾ããããããããããã«ã¾ãããªé¡ã«ãªã£ã¦ã ãå¤§äºã«ãã¦ããã¤ãããªãã ãã­ãé¢¨ã«ãç¶ã¦ããå¤§äºã«ãã¦ããã¤ãããªãã ãåã¯ãæ¬ç¶ã«ããã²ã¨ãªãã ãã¤ã¾ãããªãäºã«æ°£ã«ããããã¡ããã¨ãã©ã¤ããæã¤ã¦ãè½ã¡ã¤ãã¦ããªããããåã¯ãã¤ã§ããåã®äºã°ããæã¤ã¦ãããã ããã®é»ã«ã¤ãã¦ã¯ãåã¯ãã©ããªã«èªä¿¡ãæã¤ã¦ãã¦ããæã¡ãããã¨ããµäºã¯ç¡ããã ãã ã¨ããã«ãããã¾ã¤ãã¿ãããªãèãããäºãè¨ã²åºãã®ã§ãç§ã¯ã²ã©ãæ°å¥½ãæ¡ããªãã 121 Dazai, âOsan,â 278. 122 Dazai, âOsan,â 279. 52 ãã§ããããªãããè®ããã«ãªã£ããããã ã¨é¡ãä¼ãã¦å°è²ã§è¨ã²ã¾ããã123 â[...] I told you that I donât mind at all. Itâs fine, Iâm clever enough not to mind. But you have to treat me well at least sometimes.â [...] He laughed again this time, but then immediately turned serious. âI am indeed treating you well. Shielding you, being good to you; I mean everything I do. You are truly a good person, you know. So please donât fret yourself over trivial things, keep your pride, and stay calm. I am always thinking about you. You can trust that absolutely.â He spoke with an awful sincerity that I found terribly off-putting. I lowered my head and said softly, âBut you have changed.â The power shifts to the husband as he refuses to acknowledge Watashi and reassures her of his affection. Compared to Watashi, who has determined that her happiness derives from the elimination of morals, the husband continues to perform his role as a husband who feels obligated to protect his wife. This âsincerityâ from the husband, which the utterly frustrated narrator-protagonist identifies to be excessive and âoff-puttingâ (iya ni aratamatta mitai na, kyÅzameta koto),124 is unanticipated by Watashi and results in her loss of control over the conversation. Nonplussed by the unproductive conversation, Watashi then engages in inner monologue for the final time in âOsanâ: ï¼ç§ã¯ãããªãã«ããã¤ãæã¯ãã¦ããªãã»ãããããªãã«ããã¯ããï¨¿ã¾ãã¦ããã¯ãããããã¤ã¦æ°£æããã¤ã±ããã¦ããããã®ã§ããç§ã®äºãããã»ã©æã¤ã¦ä¸ãããªãããä»ã®ã²ã¨ãæ±ãããã¦ããããªãã®å§¿ããç§ãå°çã«ã¤ãè½ã¨ãã¦ãã¾ãµã®ã§ãã ç·ã®ã²ã¨ã¯ãå¦»ããã¤ãæã£ã¦ããäºãéå¾³çã ã¨æã¡ãããã¦ããã®ã§ã¯ãªãã§ããããä»ã«ãããªã²ã¨ãåºä¾ã¦ãããã®ãã®å¦»ãå¿ããªãã¨ããµã®ã¯ãããäºã ãè¯å¿çã ãç·ã¯ã¤ã­ã«ãã®ããã§ãªããã°ãªããªããã¨ã§ãæã²è¾¼ãã§ããã®ã§ã¯ãªãã§ãããããããã¦ãä»ã®ã²ã¨ãæãã¯ãããã¨ãå¦»ã®åã§æé¬±ãªæºæ¯ãªã©ã¤ãã¦è¦ãã¦ãéå¾³ã®ç ©æ¶ã¨ããã¯ããã¦ããããã§å¦»ã®ã¯ããããã® 123 Dazai, âOsan,â 280. 124 Dazai, âOsan,â 280. 53 å¤«ã®é°æ°£ãããã«ææãã¦ããã¤ã¡ãæºæ¯ãããå¤«ãå¹³æ°£ã§å¿«æ´»ã«ãã¦ããããå¦»ã ã¤ã¦ãå°çã®æã²ãããã«ããã®ã§ããã²ã¨ãæãããªããå¦»ãå ¨ãå¿ãã¦ããã¤ããç¡å¿ã«æãã¦ãã¤ã¦ä¸ãããï¼125 (I would rather be forgotten, be hated, be despised by you. That way, I would be relieved and released from all the pain. You say you think of me all the time; yet you embrace another woman. To me, that is as if I have been pushed into hell. Men are mistaken in thinking that itâs âmoralâ to always think of their wife. I suppose they consider they must do the right or honest thing by remembering their wife even if they fall in love with another woman. And then when they begin to love the other woman, they heave depressing sighs in front of their wife and struggle with their moral anguish. All that pain is then passed onto the wife like a contagion; and now contaminated, the wife must also sigh. If the husband were normal and be light-hearted about it, then the wife wouldnât have to suffer in hell. If you are to love someone else, please forget all about your wife. Please love the other woman without a second thought.) Here, the monologue is delivered primarily in the desu/masu form, in stark contrast to previous parenthetical asides that had used the da/dearu form. In the first part, the addressee of Watashiâs message is clearly her husband. The condemning message encapsulates the plot of âOsanâ in its entirety, more specifically, the husbandâs adultery, his insistence on concealing the truth, and the fact that those decisions have caused Watashiâs suffering. Nevertheless, the desu/masu form deployed here has a very different and ironic impact than in previous uses of the form, precisely because the specific addressee is her husband. This is the moment where Watashi finally utters a scathing indictment of her husbandâs actions, but it remains unverbalized to its intended audience. Watashi remains a passive figure whose personal liberty and happiness are contingent upon her husbandâan unequal relationship, as the husbandâs own actions towards his wife are motivated by hypocritical âmorals.â The second section, in contrast, moves to a general statement on the larger collective category of men, with the use of desu/masu similarly expanding the assumed audience from the 125 Dazai, âOsan,â 280â81. 54 husband to a larger collective that may include the reader. Watashiâs questions compel the reader to consider the pain of wives caused by hypocritical husbands who are more concerned with orthodoxy than reality, and in this way seek to legitimize and universalize her experience. The message is harsh in its condemnation, but once again we should be careful not to see it as a straightforward assertion of agency, as the narrator-protagonist positions women as a social category that is affected and not one that affects. This passivity is aggravated by the final sentence of the monologue, a request marked by the polite auxiliary verb kudasai (âpleaseâ). This request, when compared to a command (for example, the imperative nasai, meaning âdo thisâ), grants the requested, in other words, the men, the freedom to act according to their own wishes. The highlighted linguistic registers, despite their tone and intention, thus reinforce a gender hierarchy where men continue to be prioritized and women peripheralized. Conclusion It is undeniable that the first-person narrative structure of âOsanâ contributes to an immersive reading experience. This experience is achieved through the narrator-protagonistâs strategic code-switching between the desu/masu and da/dearu forms, which prompt the reader to critically examine and question Watashiâs subjective observations, experiences, and thoughts. As I have explored in my literary analysis, âOsanâ incorporates multiple instances where the narrator-protagonist distances herself from the reader through these shifts of register and ironically exposes the ways in which she continues to be bound, or rather, actively bounds herself within unequal gender dynamics of power and subordination. In many of Watashiâs monologues, her performative role as a dutiful and doting wife ruptures. While these ruptures suggest a potential for change, they are fleeting and ultimately 55 reflective of gendered ideologies that continue to shape the social unit of her family. The undercutting of Watashiâs narrative authority is manifested through her inability to verbalize to her husband her most powerful critiques and convictions to her husband, which remain confined to the territory of her private self. This silencing of Watashiâs voice is what prolongs the unfavourable state of her family, helps enable her husbandâs dereliction of parental responsibilities, and contributes to the devastating outcome of the story âOsan.â Only the reader is allowed to bear witness to both the power and the powerlessness of the narrator-protagonist. Watashi is thus a character who demonstrates the intricate connection between the performative nature of language/speech, sociocultural identity, and gender roles. Her negotiation with different linguistic registers in âOsanâ is especially significant considering the postwar context. As I discussed in detail in Chapter Two, Watashi must negotiate new discourses of liberation and revolution and the call for a new âmodernâ Japanese woman. Yet, as my analysis in both Chapter Two and Three have shown, this call is never answered. Instead, Watashiâs story of her relationship with her husband exposes the hypocrisies and persistent continuities of the postwar, and more specifically the gender ideologies that continued to subordinate women within the family structure. 56 Chapter 4. Conclusion æä»£ã¯å°ããè®ããªãã¨æãµãä¸ç¨®ã®ããã»ãããæãã§ããã [...] åæ­²ã®æ°ä¸»æ´¾ãäºåæ­²ã®å ±ç£æ´¾ãä¸åæ­²ã®ç´ç²æ´¾ãååæ­²ã®ä¿å®æ´¾ããããã¦ããã¯ãæ­·å²ã¯ç¹°ãè¿ãã®ã§ãããããç§ã¯ãæ­·å²ã¯ç¹°ãè¿ãã¦ã¯ãªãã¬ãã®ã ã¨æã¤ã¦ããã I donât think the times have changed at all. [â¦] To me, itâs rather absurd. [...] Democrat in my teens, communist in my twenties, purist in my thirties, and finally, conservative in my forties. I wonder if history repeats itself after all. I personally donât think it should. âDazai Osamu, âKunÅ no nenkan,â 1946126 âKunÅ no nenkan,â a short memoir which Dazai Osamu published a year before âOsan,â expresses his profound skepticism toward the notion of change, at least as promulgated by the different âismsâ of his era. Dazai takes a negative view of a perpetual history repeating itself; and while he ends his memoir expressing the hope for an emergence of a âcompletely new trend of thoughtâ (mattaku atarashii shichÅ) and the âcourageâ (yūki) necessary for voicing such hope,127 he also acknowledges the unlikelihood of true change in reality. As I have argued in my thesis, âOsanâ could be interpreted as a counternarrative to a dominant discourse that promulgated revolutionary change. The era in question, which is now popularly known as the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945â1952), was a turbulent time when the Japanese nation was subjected to U.S.-Allied domination. While the period is often characterized as a break or rupture from Japanâs wartime past and a progressive step towards the nationâs later democratized reconstruction and economic success, it was also a time when long-standing political, racial, and gendered hierarchies reasserted themselves. Most relevant to this thesis are 126 DAZAI Osamu 太宰治, âKunÅ no nenkan è¦æ©ã®å¹´é,â in Dazai Osamu zenshū 8 å¤ªå®°æ²»å ¨é ç¬¬å «å·» (Tokyo: Chikuma ShobÅ ç­æ©æ¸æ¿, 1976), 242â54. Original text published in Shin bungei æ°æè¸, March issue, 1946. 127 In Japanese, âã¾ã¤ããæ°ããææ½®ã®æ¡é ­ãå¾ æããããããè¨ã²åºãã«ã¯ãä½ãããã¾ã¥ããåæ°£ããè¦ãããâ Dazai, âKunÅ no nenkan,â 254. 57 the gender binaries that (re)asserted themselves as the U.S.-led occupying forces identified Japanese women simultaneously as victims of Japanâs feudalistic legacy in need of emancipation and as evidence of Western superiority. In Chapter Two, I argued that this narrative of Western feminist intervention is what âOsanâ calls into question. Instead of sympathizing with the new, foreign precepts in his text, Dazai turned to the very Japanese vestiges that the Occupation deprecated. Dazai did so by making explicit references to a play from the Edo period, including in the title of the story itself. While âOsanâ features a female narrator-protagonist who appears to align herself with the Occupation rhetoric of promising change and female liberation, the story shows how she struggles with her positionality within the patrilineal structure of the family and ultimately fails to subvert or overcome the longstanding boundaries of patriarchy. In Chapter Three, I demonstrated how the narratorâs struggles are further manifested through the textâs sociolinguistic structure. The first-person narrative style of âOsanâ draws upon historically determined ideologies of gender and language, particularly when it comes to an idealized femininity.128 But in doing so, the text ironically illuminates the narrator-protagonistâs inability to articulate herself fully when it comes to critiquing her husband and the patriarchy he represents. Through various techniques, such as the use of parenthetical asides at key junctures in the narrative, Dazai exposes both the performative and social nature of language. That is, the different linguistic registers both reflect and engage with the narratorâs established gender roles as well as the different forms of interiority formed through themâonly to reveal a woman who, 128 See KOMORI YÅichi å°æ£®é½ä¸, âBuntai to aidentitii æä½ã¨ã¢ã¤ãã³ãã£ãã£â (âStyle and Identityâ), Gekkan gengo æåè¨èª (October 1992), 48â55; Article quoted by Miyako Inoue, in Vicarious Language: Gender and Linguistic Modernity in Japan (Berkeley: California: University of California Press, 2006), 98â100. 58 despite being a member of a supposedly revolutionized society, remains powerless in the face of persistent gender ideologies. Taken together, Chapters Two and Three show how the narrator-protagonist of âOsanâ remains bound by her gendered role as the forsaken wife, subordinated within a patriarchal system from which the husband benefits, even posthumously. In all, âOsanâ is a text that reveals the hypocrisy behind the Occupationâs call for female emancipation and change. The findings of this thesis thus contribute to larger discussions about literature from the Occupation era and its gender dynamics. Although âOsanâ has received relatively little critical attention compared to Dazaiâs other, more canonized works, this thesis has demonstrated the short storyâs significance not just as an important work within Dazaiâs oeuvre but also as a text that encourages its reader to tackle fundamental questions that are often trivialized or left unanswered amid dominant political agendas. What had, or had not changed? Who initiated change and professed it, in this case, to be ârevolutionaryâ? For what purpose? And finally, which party (or parties) benefits from the âchangeâ in the end? While I have attempted to provide some answers to the above questions in my thesis, I acknowledge that there are many more directions and avenues left to explore in future research. As I have stated in Chapter One and Three, Dazai was a prolific writerâespecially when it came to writing women. My thesis only focused on one of his postwar cross-gendered narratives. Dazai, however, produced many more such stories during the same period, including but not limited to texts like âKaheiâ (âCurrency,â 1947) and âKyÅ-Å fujinâ (âThe Lady Who Serves,â 1948). I hope for this thesis to be a guidepost for those who seek to analyze these works, as I believe these texts, which illuminate the intricate relationship between the effects of war, foreign occupation, and continuities in ideologies of gender, deserve more attention in English-language 59 scholarship as well as Japanese-language scholarship. While existing Japanese-language scholarship, including Aoki KyÅkoâs monograph (discussed in Chapter One) and literary analyses of âOsanâ by scholars like Sekine Junko and Sarah Sherweedy129 provide insight into Dazaiâs oeuvre, these writings have yet to be translated into other languages. I hence hope that this thesis, which has brought together different bodies of scholarship, will encourage more consideration of Dazaiâs Occupation texts in English. Seeing how Japanese women still struggle with achieving gender equality today,130 it is reasonable to say that the reflections from Dazai, who lived, navigated, and dreamed in a now-distant immediate postwar period that was characterized as disruptive and pioneering, were anything but irrelevant and irrational. And for us to be responsible readers, perhaps what we should focus on is not the glamorized results of changeâin this case, the Occupation narrative about postwar Japanese society that had completely revolutionized itself under its wingâbut the histories, such as events, ideas, and attitudes that led up to it, and the question of who has been left out or forgotten in the process. 129 SEKINE Junko é¢æ ¹é å­, âDazai Osamu âOsanâ ronâotto o meguru katari å¤ªå®°æ²»ãããããè«âå¤«ããããèªã,â TÅyÅ daigaku daigakuin kiyÅ æ±æ´å¤§å­¦å¤§å­¦é¢ç´è¦ no. 50 (2014): 83â97; Sarah Sherweedy, âDazai Osamu no âOsanâ ni okeru fÅ«fuzÅâkakumei oyobi katei to iu kūkan o kiriguchi ni å¤ªå®°æ²»ã®ãããããã«ãããå¤«å©¦åâé©å½åã³å®¶åº­ã¨ããç©ºéãåãå£ã«,â Language, Area and Culture Studies è¨èªã»å°åç 究 29 (2023): 239â55. 130 âSystemic changes necessary to achieve gender equality in Japan,â Yuki Honda and The Public Relations Office, The University of Tokyo, January 11, 2024, accessed May 31, 2024, https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/features/z0405_00015.html. 60 Bibliography Abel, Jonathan. 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Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Asian Studies
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Yi, Christina
Continuities and discontinuities in Dazai Osamu's "Osan" : unveiling the illusions of the occupation era
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