For the Eyes Only: The Sensory Politics of Japanese Modernism
Identifier (Artikel)
Identifier (Dateien)
Abstract
Japan's modernization entailed, amongst other things, a new distribution of the sensible and the privileging of visuality by the state’s regimes of power and knowledge. Larger historical and technological forces demanded the specialization and commodification of the senses: photography and film froze sight and detached it from the totality of experience, while the radio, the phonograph and the telephone separated hearing from seeing.
It is tempting to see literature and especially the modernist movement of Yokomitsu Riichi, Kawabata Yasunari and Kataoka Teppei from the 1920s as a site of resistance against these historical processes and the gradual specularization of experience: after all, they called themselves “shinkankaku-ha”, “New Perceptionists”. Close readings of their fictional and critical texts, however, reveal a much more ambiguous stance. Kankaku (“sensation”, “perception”, “sense impression”) emerges as purified from the fleshy materiality of the body and reduced to the visual only. Regardless of whether they wrote on literature or on film, the modernists emphasized a new sensation that was free from the mediations of the writer’s psyche, in the case of literature, and purged from intertitles and the narration of the benshi, as far as cinema was concerned. Their ideas about sensation and perception resonated with the so-called “pure film movement” (jun’eigageki undō) from the 1910s and with later debates on “absolute cinema” (zettai eiga), which argued for a disembodied, intensely absorbed spectatorship that focused on the visual. The fragmented syntax, distorted temporalities and deinteriorized characters of Kawabata and Yokomitsu owe a lot to technologized visuality. This alienation of the self and its split into pure consciousness and objectified body, motifs that we find in both writers, could be ideologically problematic.
Statistiken
Literaturhinweise
Abbreviations
GNBR Gendai Nihon bungaku ronsōshi 現代日本文学論争史. 3 vols. Tōkyō: Miraisha, 1956.
KYZ Kawabata Yasunari zenshū 川端康成全集. 35 vols. Tōkyō: Shinchōsha, 1980–84.
KBHT Kindai bungaku hyōron taikei 近代文学評論体系. 10 vols. Tōkyō: Kadokawa shoten, 1971–75.
TYRZ Teihon Yokomitsu Riichi zenshū 定本横光利一全集. 16 vols. Tōkyō: Kawade shobō shinsha, 1981–1983.
Primary sources
CHIBA, Kameo 千葉龜雄 (1956 [1924]): “Shinkankaku-ha no tanjō 新感覚派の誕生”. In: GNBR. Vol. 1: 193–196.
FUJIMORI, Seikichi 藤森成吉 (1926): “‘Kurutta ippēji’ o miru 「狂った一頁」を見る”. In: Eiga jidai 映画時代. Vol. 1, No. 3: 14–15.
HIROTSU, Kazuo 廣津和郎 (1956 [1924]): “Shinkankakushugi ni tsuite 新感覚主義について”. In: GNBR. Vol. 1: 202–207.
IKUTA, Chōkō 生田長江 (1956 [1925]): “Bundan no shinjidai ni atau 文壇の新時代に與ふ“. In: GNBR. Vol. 1: 214–222.
KATAOKA, Teppei 片岡鐵兵 (1926): “Furasshu bakku フラッシュ・バック”. In: Engeki eiga 演劇映画. Vol. 1, No. 4: 8–12.
KATAOKA, Teppei 片岡鐵兵 [1926a]: “Bundan hadōchō 文壇波動調”. In: Bungei jidai. Vol. 1, No. 4: 86–87.
KATAOKA, Teppei 片岡鐵兵 [1926b]: “‘Kurutta ippēji’ ni tsuite 「狂った一頁」について”. In: Engeki eiga 演劇映画. Vol. 1, No. 7: 30–34.
KATAOKA, Teppei 片岡鐵兵 (1956a [1924]): “Wakaki dokusha ni uttau 若き読者に訴ふ”. In: GNBR. Vol. 1: 197–201.
KATAOKA, Teppei 片岡鐵兵 (1956b [1925]): “Shinkankaku-ha wa kaku shuchō su 新感覚派はかく主張す”. In: GNBR. Vol. 1: 241–246.
KAWABATA, Yasunari 川端康成 (1980): KYZ. Vol. 3.
KAWABATA, Yasunari 川端康成 et al. (1973 [1924]): “Atarashiki seikatsu to atarashiki bungei 新しき生活と新しき文藝”. In: KNBT. Vol. 6: 419–29.
KAWABATA, Yasunari 川端康成 (1982a [1925]): “Shinshin sakka no shinkeikō kaisetsu 新進作家の新傾向解説”. In: KYZ vol. 30: 172–182.
KAWABATA, Yasunari 川端康成 (1982b [1925]): “Tanpen shōsetsu no shinkeikō 短編小説の新傾向”. In: KYZ vol. 30: 198–203.
KAWABATA, Yasunari 川端康成 (1982c [1925]): “Nonkina kūsō のんきな空想”. In: KYZ. Vol. 30: 29–36.
KAWABATA, Yasunari 川端康成 (1982d [1926]): “Shinkankaku-ha eiga renmei ni tsuite 新感覚派映画連盟について”. In KYZ. Vol. 32: 511–515.
KAWABATA, Yasunari 川端康成 (1988): Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. By Yasunari Kawabata. Transl. Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman. San Francisco: North Point Press.
KINUGASA, Teinosuke 衣笠貞之助 et al. (1926): “‘Kurutta ippēji’ gappyōkai sokkiroku 「狂った一頁」合評会速記録”. In: Eiga jidai 映画時代. Vol. 1, No. 2: 59–63.
MIYAMORI, Kikujirō 宮森菊二郎 (1926): “‘Kurutta ippēji’ no chiiteki kachi 「狂った一頁」の地位的価値”. In: Eiga ōrai 映画往来. No. 24: 54–55.
MOTORA, Yūjirō 元良勇次郎 (1907): Shinrigaku kōyō 心理学綱要. Tōkyō: Kōdōkan.
TATEISHI, Seifū 立石成孚 (1926): “Watashi wa hajimete ‘Nihon eiga’ no yoi mono o mita 私は初めて「日本映画」の良いものを観た”. In: Eiga ōrai 映画往来. No. 23: 43–47.
YANAGISAWA, Takeshi 柳澤健 et al. (1919): “Shinjidai ryūkō no shōchō to shite mitaru ‘jidōsha’ to ‘katsudō shashin’ to ‘kafē’ no inshō 新時代流行の象徴として観たる「自動車」と「活動寫眞」と「カフェー」の印象”. In: Chūō kōron 中央公論. Vol. 33, No. 10: 67–96.
YOKOMITSU, Riichi 横光利一 et al. (1929): “Kakujin kakudai mandankai 各人各題漫談会”. In: Shinchō 新潮. Vol. 26, No. 5: 125–146.
YOKOMITSU, RIICHI 横光利一 (1981): TYRZ. Vol. 3.
YOKOMITSU, RIICHI 横光利一 (1982): “Shinkankakuron 新感覚論”. In: TYRZ. Vol. 13: 75–82.
Secondary sources
BENJAMIN, Walter (1999 [1936]): “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. In: Illuminations. London: Pimlico: 211–244.
BUCK-MORSS, Susan (1992): “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay Reconsidered”. In: October 62: 3–41.
BUCK-MORSS, Susan (1994): “The Cinema Screen as Prosthesis of Perception: A Historical Account”. In: SEREMETAKIS, C. Nadia (ed.): The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity. Chicago: Chicago University Press: 45–62.
BUCK-MORSS, Susan (2002): Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
CHIBA, Senʼichi 千葉宣一 (1978): Gendai bungaku no hikaku bungakuteki kenkyū: modānizumu no shiteki dōtai 現代日本文学の比較文学的硏究: モダーニズムの史的動態. Tōkyō: Yagi shoten.
CRARY, Jonathan (1992): Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
CRARY, Jonathan (1995): “Unbinding Vision: Manet and the Attentive Observer in the Late Nineteenth Century”. In:
CHARNEY, Leo and Vanessa SCHWARTZ (eds.): Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life. Berkeley: University of California Press: 46–71.
GARDNER, William (2004): “New Perceptions: Kinugasa Teinosuke’s Films and Japanese Modernism”. In: Cinema Journal. Vol. 43, No. 3: 59–78.
GARDNER, William (2006): Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the 1920s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
GEROW, Aaron (2008): A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies.
GEROW, Aaron (2010): Visions of Japanese Modernity: Articulations of Cinema, Nation and Spectatorship 1895–1925. Berkeley: University of California Press.
GOLLEY, Gregory (2008): When Our Eyes No Longer See: Realism, Science and Ecology in Japanese Literary Modernism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
HAYTER, Irena (2014): “Ishikawa Jun, the Logic of the Gaze and the Bodies of Modernism”. In: Japanese Language and literature. Vol. 48, No. 1: 129–149.
HUSSERL, Edmund (1989): Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Vol. 1. Boston: Kluver Academic Publishers.
ICHIYANAGI, Hirotaka 一柳広孝 (1994): “Kokkuri-san” to “senrigan”: Nihon kindai to shinreigaku「こっくりさん」と「千里眼」日本近代と心霊学. Tōkyō: Kōdansha sensho métier.
ISOGAI, Hideo 磯貝英夫 (1967): “Modanizumu bungakuron no kiso: shinkankakuha o chūshin ni モダニズム文学論の基礎：新感覚派を中心に”. In: Nihon kindai bungaku 日本近代文学. Vol. 7: 54–66.
JAY, Martin (1988): “Scopic Regimes of Modernity”. In: FOSTER, Hal (ed.): Vision and Visuality. New York: Bay Press: 3–23.
JÜNGER, Ernst (1987 [1932]): “Photography and the ‘Second Consciousness’”. In: PHILLIPS, Christopher (ed.): Photography in the Modern Era. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art: 207–210.
KITADA, Akihiro 北田暁大 (2004). “‘Kino gurāsu’ no seijigaku: Nihon senzen eiga ni okeru shintai, chi, kenryoku 〈キノ・グラース〉の政治学：日本戦前映画における身体・知・権力”. In: “Imi” e no aragai: mediēshon no bunka seijigaku 「意味」への抗い: メディエーションの文化政治学. Tōkyō: Serika shobō: 205–237.
KRAUSS, Rosalind (1988): “The Impulse to See”. In: FOSTER, Hal (ed.): Vision and Visuality. New York: Bay Press: 51–78.
LOWE, Donald (1982): History of Bourgeois Perception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
MARX, Karl (1978): “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”. In: TUCKER, Robert (ed.): The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: W.W. Norton & Company: 66–125.
ODAGIRI, Hideo 小田切秀雄 (1975): Gendai bungakushi 現代文学史. Vol. 3. Tōkyō: Shūeisha.
SAITŌ, Jōji 齋藤襄治, KAGAMI, Kunihiko 鏡味國彦 (1987): “Shōwa shoki no bundan to yōroppa no modanizumu bungaku: shinkanakuha kara shinshinrishugi bungaku e 昭和初期の文壇とヨーロッパのモダニズム文学: 新感覚派から新心理主義文学へ”. In: Risshō daigaku jinbunkagaku kenkyū nenpō bessatsu 立正大学人文科学研究所年報別冊. No. 6: 1–34.
TAKAMI, Jun高見順 (1967): Shōwa bungaku seisuishi 昭和文学盛衰史. Tōkyō: Kadokawa bunko.
TOEDA, Hirokazu 十重田裕一 (1992): “1930-nen zengo no Yokomitsu Riichi to eiga 1930 年前後の横光利一と映画”. In: Nihon no bungaku 日本の文学. Vol. 12: 163–183.
TOEDA, Hirokazu 十重田裕一 (2002): “Shinkankakuha no hikari to kage 新感覚派の光と影”. In: Bungaku 文学. Vol. 3, No. 6: 123–132.
YAMAMOTO, Kikuo 山本喜久男 (1983): Nihon eiga ni okeru gaikoku eiga no eikyō: hikaku eigashi kenkyū 日本映画における外国映画の研究：比較映画史研究. Tōkyō: Waseda daigaku shuppanbu.
YOSHIMI, Shun'ya 吉見俊哉 (2008): Toshi no doramaturugī 都市のドラマトゥルギー. Tōkyō: Kawade bunko.
