Epitaphs to Empire: On Abe Kōbō and the (Un)Making of the Repatriation Narrative

Authors

  • Christina Yi University of British Columbia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/jll.2023.333

Keywords:

Abe Kōbō, repatriation, repatriation literature, Japanese imperialism

Abstract

This article considers some of the dynamics of movement and non-movement in the context of East Asia through an examination of the repatriation narrative. By “repatriation narrative,” I refer to a postwar Japanese form of testimonial interlocution which features a first-person returnee narrator/author who explicitly or implicitly addresses a national audience that does not share the experience of repatriation; and which temporalizes repatriation as a memory reconstructed in the present, marked on one end by the end of the war and on the other by the returnee’s “homecoming” to Japan. This article considers the discursive limits of the repatriation narrative by reading Abe Kōbō’s 1948 debut work Owarishi michi no shirube ni (The Signpost at the End of the Road) and 1957 novella Kemonotachi wa kokyō o mezasu (The Beasts Head for Home) in relation to Fujiwara Tei’s 1949 paradigmatic repatriation narrative Nagareru hoshi wa nagarete iru (The Shooting Stars are Alive), focusing in particular on the various literary and geopolitical displacements in all three texts. In reading Abe's works against the larger discursive history of the repatriation narrative, I aim to show how both texts evince a preoccupation with narrative form that is itself a critique.

References

Abe Kōbō. Abe Kōbō zenshū. 30 vols. Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1997-2009.

–––––. Beasts Head for Home: A Novel. Translated by Richard Calichman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017.

–––––. Kemonotachi wa kokyō o mezasu, part 1. Gunzō 12.1 (January 1957): 14–44.

–––––. Kemonotachi wa kokyō o mezasu, part 2. Gunzō 12.2 (February 1957): 53–82.

–––––. Kemonotachi wa kokyō o mezasu, part 3. Gunzō 12.3 (March 1957): 97–130.

–––––. Kemonotachi wa kokyō o mezasu, part 4. Gunzō 12.1 (January 1957): 140–169.

–––––. Owarishi michi no shirube ni. Tokyo: Shinzenbisha, 1948.

–––––. Owarishi michi no shirube ni (Shinzenbisha-ban). Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1995.

Bachem, Nadeschda. “Ambivalent Encounters: Colonial Memory in the Literature of Two Japanese Returnees from Korea.” Japan Forum 34.4: 469–492.

Fujiwara Tei. Nagareru hoshi wa ikite iru. Tokyo: Hibiya shuppansha, 1949.

–––––. Nagareru hoshi wa ikite iru. Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1976.

–––––. Tei: A Memoir of the End of War and the Beginning of Peace. Translated by Nanako V. Mizushima. Boulder: Tonnbo Books, 2014.

Gotō Aya. “Abe Kōbō kenkyū: ‘mono’ to ‘hito’ no honshitsu o megutte.” Nihon bungaku nōto 48 (July 2013): 69–96.

Iles, Timothy. Abe Kobo: An Exploration of his Prose, Drama and Theatre. Fucecchio, Italy: European Press Academic Publishing, 2002.

Imaizumi Yoshiko et al, eds. Nihon teikoku hōkaiki hikiage no hikaku kenkyū. Tokyo: Nihon keizai hyōronsha, 2016.

Katō Kiyofumi. Kaigai hikiage no kenkyū. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2020.

Keen, Suzanne. Narrative Form. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Key, Margaret. Truth from a Lie: Documentary, Detection, and Self-Reflexivity in Abe Kōbō’s Realist Project. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2011.

Koga, Yukiko. Inheritance of Loss: China, Japan, and the Political Economy of Redemption after Empire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Lambrecht, Nicholas. “New Arrivals: Returnee Identity and the Memory of Repatriation in Japanese Literature.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2019.

Liang, Jiajun. “Impossible to Return: Abe Kōbō, Repatriation, and Postwar Japan.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 48.2 (Summer 2022): 327–353.

Lippit, Seiji. “Spaces of Occupation in the Postwar Fiction of Hotta Yoshie.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 36.2 (Summer 2010): 289–312.

Narita Ryūichi. “‘Hikiage’ ni kansuru joshō.” Shisō 955 (November 2003): 149–174

–––––. “Sensō keiken” no sengoshi. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2020.

–––––. Sensō no keiken o tou: “Sensō keiken” no sengoshi. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2010.

Oguma Eiji. A Genealogy of “Japanese” Self-Images. Translated by David Ashew. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2002.

–––––. Tan’itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen. Tokyo: Shin’yōsha, 1995.

Oh Mijung. Abe Kōbō no “sengo”: shokuminchi keiken to shoki tekusuto o megutte. Tokyo: Kurein, 2009.

Pak Yuha. Hikiage bungakuron josetsu: Arata-na posutokoroniaru e. Kyoto: Jinbun shoin, 2016.

Saka Kenta. Abe Kōbō to “Nihon”: Shokuminchi/senryō keiken to nashonarizumu. Tokyo: Izumi shoin, 2016.

Satō Izumi. “50nendai dokyumentarii undō: seikatsu o tsuzuru.” Shōwa bungaku kenkyū 44 (March 2003): 13–26.

Seino Hiroshi. “Genmetsu sareru kokyō: Abe Kōbō Kemonotachi wa kokyō o mezasu ron.” Kokubungku 17 (March 2001): 42–55.

Spivak, Gayatri. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Suematsu Tomohiro. “Fujiwara Tei Nagareru hoshi wa ikite iru / Haiiro no oka o meguru ‘hikiage’ no kioku.” Chiba daigaku daigakuin jinbun kōkyōgaku gakufu kenkyū purojekuto hōkokusho 330 (February 2018): 20–42.

Takemae Eiji. Inside GHQ. Translated by Robert Ricketts and Sebastian Swann. New York: Continuum, 2002.

Thornber, Karen Laura. Empire of Texts in Motion. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Toba Kōji. Abe Kōbō—media no ekkyōsha. Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2013.

–––––. 1950 nendai—kiroku no jidai. Tokyo: Kawade shobō shinsha, 2010.

–––––. Undōtai, Abe Kōbō. Tokyo: Ichiyōsha, 2007.

Wakatsuki Yasuo. Sengo hikiage no kiroku. Tokyo: Jiji tsūshinsha, 1991.

Watt, Lori. When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009.

Xie Fang. “Abe Kōbō Owarishi michi no shirube ni ron: tekusuto no kaitei to ‘hikiage’ o megutte.” Nihongo, Nihon bungaku kenkyū 11: 77–94.

Xie, Miya Qiong. Territorializing Manchuria: The Transnational Frontier and Literatures of East Asia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2023.

Yamada Hiromitsu. “Owarishi michi no shirube ni.” Kokubungaku: kaishaku to kanshō 36.1 (January 1971): 76–80.

Yi, Christina. Colonizing Language: Cultural Production and Language Politics in Modern Japan and Korea. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

Additional Files

Published

2023-10-18

Issue

Vol. 57 No. 2 (2023): Japanese Language and Literature

Section

ARTICLES

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Christina Yi

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
  2. Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
  3. The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licenseor its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
    1. Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
    with the understanding that the above condition can be waived with permission from the Author and that where the Work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
  4. The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  5. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a pre-publication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
  6. Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
  7. The Author represents and warrants that:
    1. the Work is the Author’s original work;
    2. the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
    3. the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
    4. the Work has not previously been published;
    5. the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
    6. the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
  8. The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
  9. The Author agrees to digitally sign the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work.