The Dancing Girl by Mori Ogai

After recently reading Gan I've been keen to return to Mori Ogai, one of Mori's tampen, The Dancing Girl/Maihime is a fascinating story that must count as being one of the first modern Japanese fictions set outside of the country. Set in the late 1880's, the story first appeared in 1890, opening with various brief recollections of his journey to and from Berlin, Ota Toyotaro goes further back with his recollections and recounts the path of his life, his father passing away, achieving a degree in Law at an early age, also learning French and German. After being sent to Berlin for further studies he notices with some relief that he is able to escape from the rather petty remonstartions of the head of his department. He walks Berlin through the Tiergarten and Unter den Linden, there's a sense that with his move to Berlin Toyotaro has gone through a subtle transformation of character, through shifting continents he himself has been through a subtle transformation of spirit, keeping aloof from his fellow countrymen in Berlin he is viewed with derision and suspicion by them and falls victim to slander, eventually loosing his post. At an old church at Klosterstrasse he comes across a sobbing girl, describing the girl's appearance he concedes; 'that only a poet could do her justice', through acknowledging that he is a stranger to the area, he inquires what is the matter, and learns that her father had recently passed away and that her employer is trying to coerce her into marriage with the condition that he will pay off her family's debt, the girl's mother scolds her for refusing the proposal. He learns her name, Elsie, also that she's a dancing girl, at first they form a relationship of tutor and pupil and after helping her out of her financial problems takes up lodgings in her home. Through an intermediary in Japan he gets some work writing journalistic dispatches.

As the story progresses it becomes apparent that Toyotaro is a man caught between many emotions and allegiances, although not explictly expressed, he finds himself caught in an emotional displacement, the consequences of these forces that are pulling him though are irreverisble in the end for Elsie. The story is potted with refrences to German literature, through a reading of Hackländer Toyotaro learns that the dancing profession is secondary to that of  'the lowest trade'. The arrival of Aizawa, his intermediary, in Berlin, along with that of Count Amakata forces Toyotaro's fate to turn, through translation work for the Count which takes him to Russia, Toyotaro's experiences lead him through the poorest and also the most privilged echelons of society. Though brief, the panoramic vision of intercontinental life must have made revelatory reading for its Meiji era audience, one that still transports the reader today. Although the narrative is one from a personal perspective, it could also be read that Toyotaro's actions and relationship with Elsie represent a comment in microcosm on the sensibilities of the expanding Meiji conciousness and the beginnings of Japan's presence into the wider world, Mori's portrait of this though, rather than being one of celebration ends with a beleagured sense of resignation and dissolution. The story is translated by Richard Bowring and has appeared in the first volume of The Columbia Anthology of Japanese Literature, and also in Youth and Other Stories edited by J. Thomas Rimer.

The Dancing Girl/Maihime at Chikumashobo

Above picture Unter den Linden, 1890 by the Polish artist Anna Bilinska-Bohdanowicz via wikicommons.

Kaneto Shindo

Really saddened to learn that Kaneto Shindo passed away last week.

Obituary at The New York Times

A retrospective of his films, (along with that of Kozaburo Yoshimura), is currently showing at BFI London

The Ruined Map

Whilst reading Kobo Abe's novels it's almost impossible not to visualize them being enacted out in black and white, the details of the scenery, the descriptions of roads and cityscapes, the people in them, any piece of descriptive prose one imagines in black and white. The Ruined Map/ Moyetsukita chizu is probably one of the least known adaptions of Abe's novels by Teshigahara Hiroshi, it is in fact the only adaption that was filmed in colour, although as of yet the film hasn't seen a release outside of Japan, in Japan it is included in a boxset of Teshigahara's movies that has recently been released. The novel was translated by E. Dale Saunders, beginning an Abe novel the reader at first finds themselves getting to grips in searching out the parameters of the story, and in as much as Abe's novels depict an expansive landscape of the imagination, the impression that they operate within a confined space is often difficult to shake off. After the preliminary plot line has been established the reader simply has to wait and look for the moment or clues that things are going to start to shift out of the framework Abe has set up, it's this moment that I think that always draws me back to reading his novels and writing. The Ruined Map is a detective novel in more ways than one, Nemuro Hiroshi, head of sales of a large company, (Dainen Enterprises), has been missing for six months, at his brother in-laws instigation his wife hires a detective in an attempt to track him down. The novel is presented from the perspective of the detective, and visiting Nemuro's wife he finds that since his disappearance she has slipped into alcoholism, the contents of her apartment are described in a way that turns every object into a clue worthy of the most scrupulous suspicion, a motif that appears whenever the detective returns to the wife's apartment is the lemon yellow curtains, it appears as one of the most reliable features that the detective can rely upon.

The detective's investigation is pitted against evasion, the brother in-law insists that he start the case from the beginning and refrains from proffering any of the information that he has gathered. Initially all the detective has to go on is a photograph and a box of matches with a phone number on it, which in turn leads him to the Camellia coffee house. Returning to Dainen Enterprises puts him into contact with Tashiro whom Mr Nemuro was meant to meet with the day he disappeared, Tashiro begins to lead the investigation into stranger waters which are later revealed to be not what they seem, and draws the map of where he was meant to have met Nemuro. As the case progresses the detective begins to learn that Mr Nemuro and his brother in-law are involved in what appears to be a criminal organisation called the Yamamoto Association, involving blackmail and prostitution, obviously a subtle insinuation in the name of the association. The detective wrestles with suppositions of the motives of Nemuro's disappearance, and at times the detective's circumstance resembles those of Nemuro. The novel is devoid of the metaphor seen to the extent in The Woman in the Dunes/Suna no Onna and perhaps lacks the cryptic symbolism of Secret Rendezvous/Mikkai, but themes that feature in Abe's writing are apparent here. Towards the end of the novel the detective appears to suffer an amnesiac breakdown, the demarcations of his individuality begin to slip away, but as with much of Abe's writing this does not in turn to describing the collective consciousness, but acts as a stripping away of the superfluity of the individual. The novel is dotted with instances where the detective observes the anonymous mass, people on the move each searching for their individual goals, Abe's novels carry many subtexts, and here he seems to be looking into the unconscious nature of the aspirations of the modern individual, the map that Tashiro had drawn for the detective acts as a perfect template for Abe to explore many notions of this loosing of direction, or location.

The Ruined Map at Vintage International