The frozen soul: sin and forgiveness in Miura Ayako's Freezing Point

Abstract

Miura Ayako (1922–99) rose from obscurity to literary stardom on the basis of her first novel, Hyōten, published serially in 1964–5, and became in the process not only one of Japan's best-selling novelists but also one of its leading Christian voices. Hyōten (Freezing point), one of the best-known and most widely read novels of the past few decades, follows the travails of one family in Hokkaido as they struggle with marital infidelity, death, deception and betrayal, and was written to illustrate the Christian notion of original sin. It fails fully to address this notion, however, with the intended religious theme muted in favor of achieving success as a serialized novel. The novel thus raises interesting questions regarding the nature of so-called ‘evangelistic literature’ and the continuing debate in Japan over the relationship between ‘pure’ and ‘popular’ literature. This article argues that it is only in the sequel to Hyōten, Zoku Hyōten (serialized from 1970 to 1971), that Miura, now firmly established as a Christian novelist, returned to the characters and situations in her first novel and adequately depicted the religious themes of sin and forgiveness.

Keywords:

• Miura Ayako
• Christian literature
• original sin
• forgiveness
• popular literature

Philip Gabriel is Professor of Japanese Literature in the Department of East Asian Studies, the University of Arizona, Tucson, author of Mad Wives and Island Dreams: Shimao Toshio and the Margins of Japanese Literature and co-editor of the anthology Ōe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan. He has also translated three novels and one work of non-fiction by Murakami Haruki, as well as short stories of Murakami's in The New Yorker, Harper's and elsewhere. His translation of Kuroi Senji's novel Life in the Cul-de-sac won the 2001 Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, and in the same year he won the Sasakawa Prize for his co-translation of Murakami's Underground. His book Spirit Matters: The Transcendent in Modern Japanese Literature is forthcoming, and he has recently completed several translations for a new collection of short stories by Murakami that will appear in 2006. He may be contacted at [email protected].

Notes

1. As Asai notes, this was an enormous amount for the time, roughly equivalent to the Prime Minister's salary for two years.

2. Its popularity is reflected in sales figures. Hy[obar]ten's initial printing of 50,000 copies sold out in one week, and by a year later sales had topped 700,000 (Ozaki 1967: 36). A recent Japanese website lists Hy[obar]ten as Miura's number one best seller with 3.38 million copies sold. Zoku Hy[obar]ten is in third place with 2.84 million copies. (www.hamashon.com/miura-ayako/guide/n-ayakoguide03.htm.)

3. Freezing Point II was serialized from 12 May 1970 to 10 May 1971 in 360 installments. On a personal note, I vividly recall being given a copy of Hy[obar]ten by a student of mine soon after I first arrived in Japan in 1977 to teach English. It was the first Japanese novel I ever owned, and I recall how excited the student was, assuring me that the work was one of the best novels she had ever read. Hiromu Shimizu and John Terry, translators of Freezing Point, note that in a January 1986 poll of ordinary Japanese readers, Miura was chosen as the most popular author in Japan, beating out such competitors as Mishima and Kawabata. (Shimizu and Terry 1986: afterword).

4. The rival TV network TBS featured versions of the novel in 1971 and again in 1981, when the drama was run in short daily installments.

5. Hy[obar]ten (2000 [1965], 1: 71–2). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own and page numbers from the original will be given in the text. Here, as with references to Zoku Hy[obar]ten, I use the two-volume paperback editions published in 2000 by Kadokawa Bunko.

6. Shimizu and Terry (1986). This translation is not generally available in either US or Japanese bookstores. As far as I know, Zoku Hyōten (the sequel I translate as Freezing Point II) has not been translated into English.

7. This trilogy consists of Michi ariki (1969), Kono tsuchi no utsuwa o mo (1970) and Hikari aru uchi ni (1971). The first volume has been translated into English by Valerie Griffiths as The Wind is Howling (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 1977).

8. By familiar I mean that much of the novel, as Asai notes, incorporates and recycles familiar elements. The novel follows a long line of classical Japanese stories that depict the abused step-child, and combines the well-worked notion of retribution for previous actions (karma is another way of putting it) with three important elements of popular newspaper novels, namely a light tempo, interesting plot development and attractive characters (Asai 1998: 51–2). Asai also notes how the well-worn conventions of overhearing conversations and glancing at diaries are put to good use in the novel as devices for characters to learn certain secrets.

9. The Shimizu/Terry translation makes the obliqueness of Murai's declarations much more openly affectionate: his calling her ‘Natsue-san’ in the original becomes ‘Darling’, while the ‘feelings’ he declares for her are translated as ‘love’, in ‘You must have understood how much I love you’ (Shimizu and Terry 1986: 9). Throughout, the Shimizu/Terry translation is more interpretative, adding a certain smoothness to the text. My own translations are deliberately more literal and closer to the original.

10. This pronouncement comes at the end of volume one of the two-volume paperback edition and effectively marks an end to one part of the story. The original hardbound novel, however, was in one volume and no such indication was given, i.e. that the story should be seen as in two parts.

11. Those familiar with medical practice in Japan will note here how to this day terminally ill patients are often not told the extent of their illness and allowed to suffer in ignorance.

12. Harada (2000b, 2: 369) makes the same point.

13. Significantly, though, since Yōko is either not present or a mere infant, through much of the first half of the novel she is more a nonentity than an actual player in the drama.

14. The remark on the translation is from the final, unpaginated, page of the book.

15. The image of the lighthouse, of course, foreshadows the light that is about to be shed on Yōko's own life.

16. Nobi, the same term in the title of Ō oka Shōhei's war novel. The burning fire is reminiscent, of course, of Acts 2, where at Pentecost the Holy Spirit as ‘tongues of fire’ comes to rest on the Apostles.

17. Of course we need to take into account publishing exigencies as well when considering the relationship between the timing of publication and the content of the novel.