Higuchi Ichiyo (1872-1896) was one of the most famous writers in Modern Japanese Literature. She was so famous that she was immortalized at the back of 5000-yen notes and has her own Ichiyo Memorial in Taito City. Despite writing only a few short stories, all of them made significant impacts in the literary world in terms of the language used, as well as the revolutionary way in which she tells her story. One of my favorites is Thirteenth Night, and that story truly reveals Ichiyo's prowess as a writer and how she can "visualize" her novels.
As a writer in the Meiji Period, Ichiyo's story contains elements that are characteristic of Meiji-style family melodramas. In Thirteenth Night, the protagonist Oseki's "fictional family" does not totally follow the traditional ie family system as Oseki's mother actually stood up for her when she complained about her unhappy marriage to Harada Isamu. Oseki's father also supported her decision, but urged her to reconsider. Both arguments forces Oseki to make a moral decision on whether or not she should leave Harada. Such acts actually empowers women as it shows that they face the same moral pressures as their male counterparts and the second part of the short story also tells us what happens after she makes that decision.
Despite being a melodramatic story, I was shocked to find no traces of melodramatic cliches in Thirteenth Night. The story seemed to have a life of its own, as compared to other melodramas where the story is alive due to the author constantly feeding the reader with information. The words had an almost "visual" feel to it. Take the opening of Thirteenth Night, for example:
"Ordinarily, Oseki rode in a handsome black rickshaw, and, when her parents head the sound of it...they would run out to greet her. Tonight...she had hired a rickshaw on the street corner...paid the driver, sent him away, and stood dejectedly at the door".
The opening of the story sounds just as sudden as Oseki's visit. The words itself seem representative of the emotion that Ichiyo wanted the audience to feel: unprepared and shameful. Throughout the story, each character had a life of its own, and the rhythm was just nice so that it flowed like a running stream. Nothing was too deliberately planned but at the end of the story, everything managed to be addressed. Higuchi Ichiyo was the first writer that I saw accomplish so much with so little words, and I would definitely recommend her works to any lover of Japanese literature.
No comments:
Post a Comment