Realism and Other: Japanese Fantastic and Magical Realist Writings and ‘Reality’
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Speaker: Midori Atkins
The terms, ‘Real’, ‘true’, ‘fact’, ‘realism’ and ‘fiction’, together or each on its own, have been elusive and hard to distinguish from each other even before post-structural discourses dissolved the relevance of their meanings. In case of Japanese modern literature, with the western import of realism and naturalism around the end of the 19th century, but without long tradition of looking to God for absolute truth, a pursuit of authentic representation of interiority eventually led authors to a formation of Shishosetsu/Watakushi-shosetsu (I-Novel). Since its inception in the early 20th century, I-Novel genre, an apolitical confessional narrative of author’s personal episodes (reality) that is often told truthfully with brutal honesty and aesthetics of realism, is said to be a pillar of modern Japanese literature. This high-level of honest representation of interiority, however, is limited in its message and does not sit at the top of hierarchy of real/true representations in the secular literary landscape of Japan. Rather, modern Japanese literature demonstrates multiple facets of real and truth. They are searched, grappled with in non-I-Novel realism, aestheticism, modernism, and in many more writings of genres, sometimes through an encounter with mythical figures or in an episode of a historical tale, often by transcending boarders of time and space. In these non-real spheres, exclusivity of real and non-real is denied. I introduce a brief history of Japanese realism/I-Novel, the theories and thoughts concerning elusive relationship between reality and the non-real, and their manifestations in fantastic and magical realism writings. I will also touch upon the ways in which they are burdened with the national memories, thoughts and the aesthetics, against the Japanese realism/I-Novel’s representation of subjective, individual’s reality. By revealing these inherent collective memories and by juxtaposing them and our current (neo-modern) cultural conditions, I hope this paper to be a part of an inquiry into the perception and acceptance of reality, realism/non-realism in the realm of world literature.