Hello Gentle Reader,
The Guardian recently ran an article by Blake Morrison about the memoirs dilapidated positioning within the literary field in an era dominated by new social and electronic media, which has democratised the form and flooded this new media landscape not with a torrent, but a deluge of narratives and personal anecdotes, which at one point and time would have been described as literary confessionalism. A term itself reminiscent of the intimately burning style of the mid-century modern poetry of the last century, which included practitioners of the form: Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath. Now, however, it has subsequently been cheaply redefined as ‘oversharing.’ Morrison quotes the late Martin Amis, who in turn also wrote a memoir (“Experience,”) who best sought to summarize or at least enlighten the appeal and excuse to writing a memoir: “We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the CV, the cri de coeur.” It’s not a stretch of the imagination to consider the fact that everyone in their own way, on their own terms (or as close to) is struck with main character syndrome regarding to their own life, and is in the process of mentally compiling, recording, drafting their own narrative. Though, as Morrison points out, the memoir was a reserved form with geriatric qualifications. Written (or ghostwritten) by those who were considered and defined as distinguished in life and profession; politicians, generals, starlets, celebrities; who in the process of looking back at their lives and careers, tended to their expired juvenescence, but also celebrating their accomplishments of their illustrious lives and professional careers. The battles they won; the elections they fought, the reforms and the policies they instituted; their lives of silver screen glamour and equally brilliant and beautiful personal lives, both the ones captured by the intrusive flashes of the paparazzi, but also the staged portraits elevating them from mortal to demigod; while also providing the platform to set the record straight and settle old scores. This once reserved form is now swept up in the influx of what Lorrane Adams has classified as “nobody memoirs.” Given the platform’s availability and affordability (if not outrightly free), individuals are no longer narrating their lives internally, but instead disseminating them for public consumption. What is striking regarding this cascade of personal voices and revelations entering the public sphere, is their candor. These intensely personal narratives embrace the recently revered principles of vulnerability and authenticity to new heights of unrestrained concentrated earnestness turned brutalism. Where confessionalism was ground breaking for its burlesque fire dancing qualities. Intimate narratives and poetic scopes grappling with taboo or sensitive material concerning the authors lives and their lived experience and not through allegory, persona or mythic metaphor. They were fire eating narratives of raw emotional intensity, whereby the personal is elevated through beautiful language and haunting imagery. They were rebellious exorcisms besmirching and usurping the collectively held perspective of the post-war American dream. A necessary tonic. What is on offer today, however, flagrantly reject even the sense of poeticism and instead lay bare their experiences with chisel bluntness of an austerity that is matter of fact and testimonial in nature; to the point intrapersonal inquisition.
The incursion of these unflinching candid testaments from individuals, proves to be the counterbalance to the curatorial ‘highlight,’ appeal of social media content creation, whereby individuals go to great lengths to pose, curate, stage and exhibit the supposed luxurious side of their lives. Those beach getaways. Improvised and spontaneous trips with their loved ones or their best friends. The advertised fantasy of living that life. The envy of all. Whereas the excavation and exposure of revealing personal details, satisfies another form of exhibitionism and voyeurism. The need to release and explode, coupled with the bystander’s shock at the spectacle, yet so engrossed they are powerless to turn away from it. Writers, however, have long turned to self-exploration or personal experience to mine for material. In a similar fashion to confessional poetry, the new journalism movement of Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion, sought to question the previously held principles of objectivity within reportage, by introducing subjective perspectives, incorporating multiple points of view, utilizing extensive dialogue beyond succinct quotes, all to saturate their reportage, beyond the cut and dry sharpness of traditional journalistic standards. Then there is autofiction, a paradoxical form employing fictional or literary devices to authorial or autobiographical experience to structure new ways of reviewing and understanding truth within the construct of lived experience. One of the most respected and well-known practitioners of this form is Annie Ernaux, who has described her bibliography as a form of personal ethnography. Ernaux staves off the indulgences of solipsism through her literary language, which the Swedish Academy aptly described as ‘clinical acuity.’ Ernaux’s literary language abandons the language of confession and heightened earnestness, by recording with bleached exacting sterile language the facts of the matter. This includes distilling the hardscaped life of her parents; her mother’s dissolution with dementia; the traumatic experience of a failed back-alley abortion; the infatuation and obsession of a love affair. Before any of these forms, however, there was the Japanese literary form the ‘I-novel.’ A genre which intentionally blurred and cross the line between first person narrative and authorial voice turned intervention to personal exploration. This form was a reaction to the previously held literary sensibilities, which ignored the emotional resonance and psychological acuity of the characters. As a reaction to this and from the influence of newly introduced and imported western media, the I-novel sought to explore the psychological interiority, the framework of consciousness and emotional responses in a literary perspective, one which employed previous diarist structures. Unsurprisingly, many writers soon used this particular form as confessionals and literary social critiques.
One of the forms renowned and most recognized figures is Dazai Osamu, whose novels charted the course of what is often described as nihilistic clowns or self-stylized ‘losers,’ individuals who are often considered alienated, defeated and existing on the margins of society. Naturally these narratives reflected Dazai’s own complicated and tumultuous scandalised life, which inevitably ended in suicide. Throughout his short-lived literary career, however, Dazai Osamu developed an enfant terrible reputation. While this originally eclipsed his work, it is now a marketing feature and has cemented Dazai as one of the great and daring Japanese writers of the 20th century. Japan remains a nation that is often considered a literary powerhouse; similar to Ireland or France. Famous writers of the 20th century include but not limited to: Sōseki Natsume, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Nakahara Chūya, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Abe Kōbō and Ōe Kenzaburō; with contemporary writers being Kanai Mieko, Murakami Haruki, Ogawa Yōko, Kawakami Hiromi, Kawakami Mieko and Murata Sayaka. Japanese literature has inevitably always charted its own course and path on the international stage, with previous generations of writers (Sōseki, Akutagawa, Kawabata and Mishima) gained appeal for blending western literary traditions with Japanese aesthetic sensibilities, while contemporary writers have turned towards whimsical magical realism in the case of Murakami, or out of kilter societal critiques as in the case of Murata. While Tsushima Yūko is of the old guard, while being a seasoned practitioner of the I-novel, with “Territory of Light,” and exquisite and elegant introduction to the form and the author.
“Territory of Light,” is framed as a novel, recounting the first year of a mother navigating single motherhood. The novel was originally serialised in the late 1970s (78-79) in the Gonzu literary journal. Each segment or chapter reads as its own fragmented vignette. The sinew connecting them is the shared perspective of monitoring the situation between the mother and her three-year-old daughter as they navigate their newfound singularity. The opening chapter states factually that the father/husband wants to separate, though remains committed to finding his former family a suitable home to live, seeing as the narrator refused to move back in with her mother. Despite his drive to depart from the marriage, no rental unit meets his standards. What is startling by Tsushima Yūko’s style is its drifting and observational nature of the writing. Where Ernaux writes with flensing shortness, stripping away all artifice to its bleached clinical base elements. Tsushima writes with a lightness of touch to point of effervescent neutrality. Problems and issues are insinuated; they are never directly delineated. For instance, the former husband (Fujino) remarks about her going to listing agents on her own, will produce no results and find the rates increasing. In the end, however, the narrators locate an apartment on the fourth floor of a dilapidated office building, whose outer walls are covered in windows embracing and filling the room with light. What follows is not a regurgitated diary of events and itineraries, outlining the logistics of commuting to work while managing daycare drop offs and pick ups, or a case study in the financial hardship of what is a socially skewered sexist dive into poverty. Rather, “Territory of Light,” captures this immediate slice of life between mother and child and their unconventional lives against a society which is renowned for having a strict sense of conformity and social structure.
The lives of the narrator and the child are difficult. The disruption of the family unit has rippling consequences for both of them. For the child there is an increase in behaviour issues and developmental slips, from wetting the bed, to violent outbursts, and an attempt to maim another child at daycare. For the narrator she has become a pariah. A single mother is the epitome of female failure and as such faces repeated criticisms, slights, and insults from the world at large. The narrator, however, is no pinnacle of innocence either. She’ll hurl insults at her daughter or physically strike her. Routinely leaving her alone to go out drinking; while neglecting to clean the apartment. Yet, the work is routinely prevented from being moored in a miserable self-expose of personal squalor, by how Tsushima Yūko works with the material, capturing the texture and interplay between light and shadow as it frames the events. These scenes are juxtaposed against other tender moments. One instance is shortly after the two move into the apartment, the roof floods pouring down into a neighbour’s commercial office space. Understandably the neighbours are less then impressed with the situation, but their indignation towards the narrator is palpable, leaving one to wonder if they would have been as aggressive or outrageous if a man was present? A similar scene plays out with a nearby sweet shop owner and his wife. In the wake of the water burst, both the mother and daughter investigate the roof to find it flooded, with the daughter delighting at the new found sea. In the closing vignette, the narrator returns to the roof looking out towards the sky as a chemical factory explodes in the distance. This is where Tsushima Yūko strengths as a writer are, capturing intensity of moments through images, not by pathologizing. The prejudices and ostracisation faced by the par are recounted as a fact of life. Tsushima is cognisant about never depicting the narrator as a victim, as she frequently perpetrates and engages in questionable behaviour herself.
“Territory of Light,” will certainly be considered a I-novel tradition, for two reasons. Tsushima Yūko was indeed a singe mother raising her daughter, but was also a product of a single mother. Additionally, Tsushima Yūko is the daughter of Dazai Osamu who died when she was one year old, and makes a brief cameo via memory in “Territory of Light.” The I-novel may be considered a natural form for her to gravitate towards and inherent, but a vast amount of Tsushima’s work is yet untranslated, and the recent novel “Wildcat Dome,” is certainly not written in the subjective singular intensity the form demands. The wonder and delight of “Territory of Light,” shines through when Tsushima highlights the inconsequential gravitas mundane life and the sense of randomness of the events, with a literary language that is understated and routinely avoiding the hysterical. When the train is delayed because of a suicide, the narrator approaches the incident and recounts the scene before fleeing back. While other moments are otherwise oneiric in their delivery. “Territory of Light,” succeeds by Tsushima Yūko observing and recording the caustics of light rippling and shimmering throughout her apartment and life. It’s a strange book which never critically stakes its claim as a social critique, but retains an undercurrent solidarity pushing against the strident conservatism and conformity of the society, which fails to provide a social net for the most vulnerable. Reading “Territory of Light,” provided further context as to why it was considered a major media announcement in 2020 when the Japanese minister, Koizumi Shinjiro announced he was taking two weeks paternity leave. The goal was to break the stigma regarding men in Japan taking childcare leave. All of which comes when the country’s decreasing and aging population are becoming defining social crises for the nation. Regardless, “Territory of Light,” reads like an effervescent dreamy book, which is in stark contrast to a great deal of autofiction with its rendered and stripped-down prose.
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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