Invoking affect in Kawakami Mieko's Chihi to ran (Breasts and Eggs, 2008): Higuchi Ichiyô, playful words and ludic gestures

Abstract

A slim and yet powerful novella, Chichi to ran (Breasts and Eggs, 2008) helped the author, Kawakami Mieko, launch her career in the Japanese literary establishment by winning her the Akutagawa prize. The novella revolves around a middle-aged single-mother, struggling to eke out a living for herself and her teenage daughter as a bar hostess in Osaka. The bond between them is severely tested under the pressure of the precarious living conditions in the post-bubble, neo-liberalist Japan of the 2000s. This essay explores the absorbing and affective aspect of the novella by drawing on Rita Felski's ‘positive aesthetics’ and Bruno Latour's concept of ‘nonhuman actors’. With a focus on the movement of affect/feelings, the analysis traces how ‘non-human actors’ of all kinds and shapes in the novella, from the female characters, chatty style of speech in Osaka dialect, the kanji used in them, the protagonist's obsession with breasts, images of Higuchi Ichiyô, to a carton of eggs, interact and connect in a way that make a difference, facilitating innovative life-adjustments as the narrative unfolds – the reading which should, in turn, enhance our understanding and appreciation of the text.

Keywords:

• Kawakami Mieko
• Chichi to ran
• Higuchi Ichiyô
• non-human actors
• affect

Acknowledgments

An earlier and shorter version of this essay was presented as part of the panel on ‘Negative Feelings’ organized by David Holloway and chaired by J. Keith Vincent at the 2015 AAS (Association for Asian Studies) conference in Chicago, both of whom deserve a special note of thanks. Thanks are also due to Alan Tansman, Linda Aas, Ika Kaminka, Grace Ting and Rebecca Copeland for their comments at various stages of writing. Thanks, also, to Christophe Thouny for recommending Brian Massumi.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Kawakami has also won the Takami Jun Prize for her poetry collection Mizugame (Water Jar, 2013), and the Tanizaki Jun'ichirō Prize for her short story collection Ai no yume toka (Dreams of Love), from which the two aforementioned novellas have been translated. Since Chichi to ran (Breasts and Eggs), she has firmly established her reputation as a writer by winning the Murasaki Shikibu Literary Prize and the MEXT Award for New Artists for her critically acclaimed novel, Hevun (Heaven, 2010), which takes up with great sensibility the current issue of ijime (bullying) at school.

2. ‘Dai hyakusanjû hakkai akutagawa shô: Senpyô no gaiyô’ (2008) and Ôtake (2008). If you ‘Google’ the title, you find positive reviews and blogs by numerous readers.

3. In Japan, the term, precariat, is used synonymously with ‘the working poor’ which emerged in the 1990s, typically represented by so called ‘freeters’ who lack full-time employment and social benefits that go with it. See Standing 2011, p. 9.

4. See Felski (2011, p. 582). Her ‘positive aesthetics’ can be seen as part of the trend in literary studies to shift a focus away from the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ or ‘symptomatic reading’ in what some have identified as an ‘affective’ or ‘emotional’ turn.

5. As Rita Felski notes, however, this sort of affective reading is a mode of engagement that requires an attitudinal and affective disposition on the part of the reader. It is ultimately up to the reader whether or not to respond to the ‘call’ of the text (Felski 2011, p. 575).

6. Heather Love also refers to Bruno Latour's ANT as giving useful insight in reading literature ‘Close but not Deep Reading’ (Love 2010).

7. One of Latour's rather absurd example includes a brute physical relation that obtains, however fleetingly, between ‘your remote control’ which permits you to become a ‘couch potato’ and yourself, that has an impact on your life as part of the network (Latour 2005, p. 77).

8. Fujita Hiroshi, a famous Lacanian psychoanalyst, argues that not only the female protagonist's obsession with breast augmentation, but also her never-ending talk, late menstruation, and egg smeared face are all symptoms of the author's repressed castration complex (Fujita 2008).

9. Bruno Latour argues for taking ‘candidates for the accusation of antifetishism’ seriously as a non-human actor, because they ‘too act, they too do things, they too make you do things’ and suggests seeing them as matters of ‘concern’ rather of ‘debunking’ (Latour 2004, pp. 232-233).

10. I borrow the notion of ‘nonhuman actor’ as is presented in Rita Felski's works based on her interpretation of Latour's ANT (Felski 2011 and 2015).

11. I use the term, affect, to mean a feeling or intensity that affects one's body and is not yet connected to something meaningful, distinguishing it from emotion, which suggests something that has been interpreted and given a meaningful content. My focus in this essay will be on the side of affect rather than emotion. The definition of affect and emotion varies depending on the discipline and critic, and my use of affect relies on Jonathan Flatley (2008).

12. The fluid social is a metaphor Latour (2005, p. 79) uses to emphasize the fleeting nature of the social realm made visible only when new associations are being made.

13. See her introduction (pp. 1–21). She analyzes affective and aesthetic responses in literature and films to the dramas of life-adjustment that unfold ‘amid talk of precarity, contingency, and crisis’ with a focus on what she calls ‘cruel optimism’ – a form of ‘good life’ fantasy in which something you desire is in fact an ‘obstacle to your flourishing’. Her point about ordinary people's continuous struggle to develop skills for life-adjustment finds a fruitful parallel in the ‘good life’ fantasy that takes a center stage in Breasts and Eggs.

14. Ichiyô was her pen name, and her real first name was Natsu. After the death of her father, she had to make ends meet with the help of her sister and the mother in a poor neighborhood near Yoshiwara, which provided a backdrop for many of her stories, including Child's Play. A self-avowed fan of Higuchi Ichiyô, Kawakami Mieko translated Child's Play into modern Japanese. See Ikezawa (2015).

15. Higuchi (1981, p. 285), slightly adjusted. I have used the first person pronoun and the present tense instead of the third person and the past. See Higuchi (1895–1896).

16. Midoriko uses this kanji, 厭 iya, repeatedly in her notes (pp. 10, 23, 32, 46, 79, and 99). It should also be noted that Kawakami adds the same kanji, 厭, in the opening passage of her modern Japanese translation of Child's Play even though it is not in the original. See Kawakami (2015). See also ‘Kawakami Mieko san, Ichiyô chôyaku’ (13 March 2015), Yomiuri Shimbun. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/book/news/20150303-OYT8T50178.html

17. The title, ‘Takekurabe’, is taken from the waka exchange between childhood sweethearts in ‘Izutsu’ of Tales of Ise.

18. Timothy J. Van Compernolle has an insightful analysis of the kaimami scene with reference to The Tale of Genji. See Compernolle (2006, pp. 170–173).

19. Kawakami (2010). All translations from Breasts and Eggs are mine. I provide some of the original Japanese texts to illustrate how Kawakami's long, run-on sentences echo Higuchi Ichiyô. I have also included large chunks of translated texts because the novella has not been translated into English in its entirety. Parts of it have been translated by Louise Heal Kawai in 'from Breasts and Eggs, for the online magazine, Words Without Borders (Italics), August 2012. http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/from-breasts-and-eggs [Accessed 25.5.2016].

Makiko wa yu ni tsukatteiru aida, furoba o ikiki suru onna no karada o nameru yô ni kansatsu shi, sore wa tonari no watashi ga ki o tsukau hodo buenryo ni shisen o uchi tsuzukeru node, chotto Maki chan, misugi, to omowazu kogoe de chûisuru mo…sono me wa haittekuru karada, yuni tsukaru karada, deru karada, awa ni kurumareru karada o jikkuri to sewashinaku ounode atta… toku ni shaberu kotomo naku tada yuge no naka o idôsuru on'na no karada o damatte mitsumete irunode…kono hadaka no genba ni oite wa, fudan nara kanari no wariai de shikibetsu no omomi o motsu kao toiu bui ga tonto usure, koko de wa karada jitai ga aruki, karada jitai ga shaberi, karada jitai ga ishi wo mochi, hitotsu hitotsu no dôsa no chûô ni wa karada shika naiyôni miete kuruno yatta. (pp. 51–52)

Hito tôri ga sunda ato, mata miruku buro ni tsukaru kotoni shite, sokode wakatta no wa Makiko wa miyô toshite miteiru toiu wake dewa naku, shizen ni me ga suwatte shimau toiu kanji de ari, tachi kawari ire kawaru mune wo sara ni gangan ni me ni ireteiru node, watashimo nantonaku sore ni naratta. (pp. 54–55)

20. You can perhaps argue, with Berlant (2011), that it is through these feelings that we are able to apprehend the conditions of ‘crisis ordinariness’, and the ethos of ‘cruel optimism’ across time and space. See also J. Keith Vincent (2016), where he identifies ‘cruel optimism’ in Ichiyô's Child's Play.

21. ‘Atashi hôkyô shujutu wo uketai nen kedomo’ toiu naiyô de atta. ‘Sore ni tsuite anta wa dô omouka’ toiu koto ga, watashi ni shinya Makiko no shigoto ga owatte kara wazawaza no chôkyori no denwa o kaketekuru mokuteki de atta hazuyanoni, sokoniwa saisho kara saigo made watashi no kansô ya iken nado o uketoru yoyû mo yôi mo nai yôsu deatte, Makiko wa ‘mune o fukuramasu’ toiu koto, aruiwa ‘sonna koto ga majide jibun ni dekiru noka’ no, sono sakaime de itaku kôfun shiteiru yôde, achira deno jikan no keika no hayasa to kochira no sore to dewa, kekkô na hagure ga aruyô ni kanjita mono yatta. (p. 13)

22. Masumi distinguishes between two registers of affect, the vitality affect which concerns the ‘how’ of the performance, and the categorical affect, which is the ‘what’ of the play. See Massumi (2014, pp. 25–26).

23. Kinsui draws on Christopher Vogler's definition of ‘trickstar’ as someone who embodies the energies of mischief and desire for change in The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structures for Writers (Michael Wiese Production, 2007).

24. Yoshimoto Takaki (2008) discusses the link between the two historical periods as the generally impoverished conditions for Japanese workers.

25. Amamiya has become a spokesman for the working poor movement: I was ‘struck by how the conditions depicted in the novel mirrored the current desperate situation of young workers’ (Amamiya and Beck 2010, p. 252). It is no coincidence that it has given rise to a generation of authors who write novels that deal with the life of furîtâ (Okada Toshiki, Kakuta Mitsuyo, Abe Kazushige, Hoshino Tomoyuki just to name a few). Also see Rosenbaum (2014) and Holloway (2014).

26. Dorothy Hale identifies ‘oscillation between immersive and reflective modes of reading’ as a necessary component in the new ethics of reading advocated by Martha Nussbaum and Judith Butler, however different as they are in other respects (Hale 2009, p. 901).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Reiko Abe Auestad

Reiko Abe Auestad received a BA in English and American literature from Sophia University, an MA in Japanese literature from the University of Wisconsin, and a PhD from the University of Oslo, where she currently works as professor. She is the author of Rereading Soseki: Three Early Twentieth Century Japanese Novels, originally published in 1998; its digital version is now available from the CEAS Reprint Series for Rare and Out of Print Publications at Yale University.  She has recently published two articles on Natsume Sôseki's Kokoro, and is editing Japanese and English anthologies of essays on Soseki with Alan Tansman and J. Keith Vincent.  Her most current research project, ‘Affect and Speech Act in Modern Japanese Literature’ (working title), examines novels by among others Natsume Sôseki, Ôe Kenzaburô, Kirino Natsuo, and Kawakami Mieko. She has also published essays on the family politics and welfare system in Japan and Norway from a comparative perspective (‘Long-Term Care Insurance, marketization and the quality of care’, Japan Forum 2010). She may be contacted at [email protected].