Voices of the Past: The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse 9781501737756

Citation preview

Voices of the Past

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from The Arcadia Fund

https://archive.org/details/voicesofpaststatOOsaka

Voices of the Past The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse NAOKISAKAI

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

This book has been published with the aid of a grant from the Hull Memorial Publication Fund of Cornell University.

Copyright © 1991 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1992 by Cornell University Press.

International Standard Book Number 0-8014-2580-8 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 91-55053 Printed in the United States of America Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information appears on the last page of the book. © The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

In memory of my father, Haruyoshi Sakai

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Theoretical Preliminaries Other than Language

1

Discursive Space and Textual Materiality

2

Opening the Closure of “Us” through Defamiliarization Three Guiding Concerns 14 Hybridity of Language

11

18

The Logic of Self-Decentering

19

Part I

Silence at the Center: Ito Jinsai and the Problems of Intertextuality 1. Change in the Mode of Discursive Formation A Discursive Space and Textuality Intertextuality A Departure

23

26 30

The Notions of Sincerity and Hypocrisy The Status of Thinghood

32

36

The Invisibility of One’s Body

43

2. Ito Jinsai: The Text as the Human Body and the Human Body as the Text A Critique of Discursivity

54

Transcendentalism and “Nearness” The Emergence of Speech in Discourse

56 60

viii

Contents

Enunciation and the Heterogeneous Subjectivity and Persons

62

69

Nondisjunctive Function and Disjunctive Function The Problem of Change

76

81

3. Textuality and Sociality: The Question of Praxis, Exteriority, and the Split in Enunciation 89 Feeling and Textuality

89

The Ethicality of Social Action

95

The Inscriptional Nature of Virtue Institutions and Exteriority

Ai and the Way

98

102

108

Part II

Frame Up: The Surplus of Signification and Tokugawa Literature

113

4. The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts

115

Literary Discourse and the New Formation Seeing and Reading

115

116

Framing and Its Effect

118

Katari Narrative U9 The Absence of Historicity

121

Representing Text and Represented Text

127

Relevance and Irrelevance of the Text in a Situation Corporeal Act and Performative Situation

130

134

5. Supplement The Absence of Obsessive Concern for the Enunciation Haikai Poetry and the Openness of the Text Play scripts with Illustrations

143

Stratification of the Verbal Continuum Separation of Voice and Body Direct or Indirect Speech

The Act of Reading

144

148 150

Copresence of Other Texts Life and Death

142

153

163 166

Direct or Indirect Actions

169

Boxing, Framing, and Ideologies

171

Representational Type and Gestalt Type

172

140

Contents 6. Defamiliarization and Parody Genres, Taxonomy

177

177

Grapheme and Equivocity

178

Haikai-ka or the Double Operation Defamiliarization and Parody Plural Voices

IX

181

183

186

Perspective, or Abschattung Textual Materiality

191

197

The Enunciation and the Body

200

Perception and the Splitting of the Ego

201

Part III

Language, Body, and the Immediate: Phoneticism and the Ideology of the Identical

209

7. The Problem of Translation

211

The Outside of a Language

211

The Problematic of Wakun

214

The Interior and the Exterior

217

Interdependence of Verbal and Nonverbal in the Enunciation The Primacy of Speech

222

223

The Linearity of Speech and Wakun

225

Experiential Knowledge and Speculative Knowledge Passivity and Activity, Reading and Writing

231

237

8. Phoneticism and History

240

Representation as Distance and Delay The Status of the Classics

240

243

The Human Body and the Interior

246

Diacritical Identification of the Japanese Language

250

The Image nary Relation to the Text: Phoneticism and the Historicity of a Text

251

Anteriority of Voice

255

Denial of Transcendent Value Historical Time as Writing

258 261

Poetic versus Theoretical

263

Heterogeneity of a Language Syntax: Shi and Ji

266

267

A Text and Its Performative Situation Feeling and Temporarily Sincerity and Silence

274 277

274

Contents

X

9. The Politics of Choreography Ideological Constitution of Social Reality The Logic of Integration

280

285

Two Forms of Memory, Two Senses of History The Loom That Weaves the Subjects Song as a Locus of Contradiction Writing of the Body

299

305

The Politics of Choreography The Stillbirth of Japanese

294

308 311

Death as the Possibility of Language Exteriority

317

318

Conclusion National Language and Subjectivity Propriety in Language

320

326

Universalism and Particularism

333

Resurrection/Restoration of Japanese

Appendix. Japanese and Chinese Terms Index

335

Preface

This book presents a history—one of many possible histories—of the intellectual and literary discourses of eighteenth-century Japan. I am concerned both with the historicity of Japanese discourses of the eighteenth century and with issues con¬ cerning my relationship to that past. Any writing of history occurs in the history of the present, of which the historian can never be exhaustively conscious and which can be problematized only through his or her invention of the past. More specifically, the writing of history is constrained as well as made possible by the existing arrangement of this present, which can never be thematized as a fully constituted object, and which necessarily includes the institutions of academic discipline and knowledge. My inquiry into the historicity of Japan’s past, therefore, cannot evade the problems about the historicity of the disciplinary framework within which the validity of the questions this book raises is to be authorized, disputed, or rejected. What I have in mind in particular is the idea of Japan, for my book can be classified as belonging to the discipline of what is called Japan Studies in the United States, Britain, and other so-called Western societies and Kokushi or the national history in Japan. While the unity of Japan constitutes and legitimates the unity of the discipline “Japan Studies” in the United States, it serves in Japan to mark the primary division of academic knowledge about the familiar or domestic as against the foreign: national history, Kokushi, as distinct from world history; national literature, Kokubungaku, as opposed to foreign literatures; national ethnology, Minzokugaku, as different from anthropology, and so on. Because the disciplinary framework is set up in this way, the historian of this field is inevitably lured into posing the sorts of questions regulated by this framework and is made to desire to know according to its protocols. Although I problematize the institutional reality of the discipline in which the historian or the Japanologist in general works, I also want to draw attention to the way the discipline is constructed and reproduced. Of course, such a framework is not simply illusionary and the possibility of xi

xii

Preface

unconstrained study outside it is rather a fantasy. My book is enabled by this institutional reality, which extends far beyond the university, and I cannot ignore my subjection to it. Nevertheless, neither can I forget that the object of my research what I am lured into desiring to know—is historically contingent upon an institutional reality that is constantly changing. Here I refer not merely to changes in the social and economic circumstances surrounding the discipline. Rather, I mean the historicity of our desire to know, which typically takes the form of such questions as “What is the Japanese view of social relations?” “What is the enduring and essential character of Japanese culture?” “What is the essence of Japanese religions?” Anyone desiring to be recognized as an expert on the putative object of the field usually believes she or he is expected to pose those questions. It is important to note that, while the presence of such desire is no doubt an effect of the discipline, such questions and the framing of desire in them have also served to reproduce the social reality outside the academic context. And I am concerned with a history in which the particular form of the desire to know that those questions induced effectively instituted a certain social reality, that which is imaginary (but not illusionary) in nature. I have therefore read selectively some Confucian, National Studies, and what are today classified as “literary” (the historicity of the term literature” should indeed be noted) discourses produced between the late seventeenth century and the early nineteenth century, with a view to discerning a history in which Japan, designated by a variety of names, was made to represent not merely a polity, a ruled population, or a geographic territory but an essentialized community of shared habits, a singular language, and an organically systematized culture. I present a history that should not be confused with the history of Japanese society, a history in which the image of such a community as a whole was invented and posited in the past and which simultaneously puts into question the very concept of society as a systematic unity. Thus I historicize the particular desire embedded in those questions that motivate as well as legitimate the academic disciplines concerning Japan, in order to show how the social reality designated by “Japan” and its adjectival form Japanese” was brought into existence in the eighteenth century. And, by historicizing thus, I engage myself in the present historically, I participate in the changing of the existing reality of the disciplines in which I work. By reading the texts of the past, I engage in the general text through the originary repetition of the present. Precisely because I discuss the historical formation of the object of knowledge which serves to distinguish the experts from the nonexperts and the native from the non-native, I must address my book to those who are unfamiliar with the field. Of course, it is not for the sake of enlightening the nonexperts about Japanese history that I must do so. The fact that this book is addressed to them is essential to the entire project of its writing. I have had to argue, however, against the background of the accumulated knowledge of the field. For those readers

Preface

xiii

who are not familiar with the histories of China and Japan, I include in the footnotes conventional accounts of the terms and names basic to the study of East Asia. Translations into English from other languages are mine unless otherwise indicated. In writing this book I have become indebted to many people. The book is the result, first, of possibilities opened to me by my teachers at the University of Chicago. Perhaps because of my personal circumstances, I feel more grateful to them than many students might to their teachers. Tetsuo Najita initially encour¬ aged me to come to the United States to start the academic career I had aspired to, but had never dreamt would be realized. Through his example and his en¬ cyclopedic knowledge of Japanese history, he solicited me to think hard and daringly throughout my graduate years at Chicago and afterward. Harry Harootunian continually provided me with chances to discuss the issues on my mind. Thanks to his patience with my arrogance and his acceptance of the theoretical implications of my work, I had valuable chances to articulate and reflect upon my ideas. In him I found an amazing teacher, who made me realize that I could go further than I thought I could and who teaches, again through his own example, that without critical sensitivity to injustices, intellectual life would be nothing but self-indulgence. Masao Miyoshi often inspires me to think afresh and be suspicious of conventional views, and his own dynamic synthesis of political and intellectual commitments demonstrates practical channels for connecting academic matters to the actual problems of people treated unjustly. It is my hope that this book is such a form of practical involvement in ethico-political issues, however minor its effects may be when compared to those of his work. I also thank William Sibley, who introduced me to Tokugawa literature and helped to improve my English. William Haver read my manuscript thoroughly and made very helpful sug¬ gestions about it. I learned a lot from his constructive and rigorous critiques. Rene Arcilla helped me with my writing and corrected many obscure ex¬ pressions; I also thank him for his kind and quite ironical remarks, which often persuaded me to rethink and modify my opinions. Paul Anderer and Norman Bryson read the manuscript and encouraged me toward publication. Others who kindly read and commented on early versions were the late Maeda Ai, Matsunaga Sumio, Karatani Kojin, Kato Norihiro, and Kamei Hideo, from whose comments I learned much. J. Voctor Koschmann gave me important insights and encouragement. Brett deBary, who taught me a lot about what intellectual integ¬ rity means, and Koyasu Nobukuni carefully read later drafts and gave me valu¬ able suggestions. I would like to express my gratitude to all those friends and colleagues. The Humanities Division and the Center for Far Eastern Studies at the Univer¬ sity of Chicago, and the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation provided me with financial assistance. During my tenure of those fellowships the substantial part of

xiv

Preface

this book was written, and I am grateful to those institutions, without whose help the book would not exist. Judith Bailey copyedited the manuscript for Cornell University Press, and made useful suggestions for improving it. I received per¬ mission to reproduce Murillo’s “Self-Portrait” from the National Gallery in London, Magritte’s “Deux Mysteres” from the Artists’ Rights Society in New York, and Jiro Takamatsu’s “These Three Words” from the artist himself, to whom I express my thanks. Soroku Yamamoto of the Tokyo Gallery arranged the photography of Takamatsu’s work. Finally I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to Gail, who has not only encouraged and supported my decision to lead an academic career since 1979 but has also proofread the manuscript at each stage and has so often suggested different and certainly better ways for me to say things. Without her, I would not even have wished to write this book, and, needless to say, I could never have undertaken such a project. Under her care, the book has grown along with Haru and Andrew, who are slightly younger than it is. Naoki Sakai Ithaca, New York

Voices of the Past

INTRODUCTION

Theoretical Preliminaries

Other than Language Let me begin with an observation that, I believe, is concerned with the essential aspect of sociality. The language in which I speak and write does not belong to me. What I have actually written is separated and distanced from what I meant to say, to such an extent that my words appear to elude my control incessantly. The “I” discernible in what I have actually written seems indifferent to the “I” who was producing the discourse just a moment ago. Thus, as far as I am concerned, “my” state¬ ments, those ascribed to me, only reveal and dramatize the absence of “I” in what I have written. For there is an irredeemable distance between the “I” who writes and “myself” expressed and inscribed in language. What is the nature of this incomprehensible distance, of the delay that deprives me of ownership and sovereignty over those words that supposedly belong to me? Is it possible to imagine a language in which this rupture, distance, and delay are unheard of, in which the “I” who writes is always and already identical to the registered “I”? If such a language were indeed possible, to whom would it belong, and who would belong to it? And if it is possible to imagine such a language, what is the regime in which such imagination is possible? It goes without saying that these questions cannot be answered adequately, because they provoke a further inquietude with respect to the terms they consist of. To begin with, what, if that is the right question, is the “I”? What is meant by “belonging to a language” or by “language’s belonging to someone”? And finally, the ultimate question to which all these seem to point, What is language? Whenever language is questioned in such a fundamental way, the attempt to reply on its behalf can never be contained by any objectively defined idea of language, such as that of positivism. For we could not even begin to analyze such an idea without first defining the terms of the analysis and assessing their claim 1

2

Introduction

to meet the demand for a rigorous, coherent language. Furthermore, the question What is language? inevitably gives rise to its counterpart: What is nonlanguage? What is other than language? It is assumed that any answer to such a question must at least know how language distinguishes itself from nonlanguage, if not what either is.

Discursive Space and Textual Materiality Precisely this problem is dramatized by the concept of “text.” Insofar as a text is equated with writing in the conventional sense, it may appear clear and free from ambiguity. But when the notion of writing is more rigorously analyzed, this equation in fact reveals the inscriptural nature of textuality: a text is always inscribed in some material body. Here, the notion of writing is indeed tricky, because it designates, on the one hand, a form of presentation whose traits are diacritically discerned as opposed to those of speech, painting, or gesture and, on the other hand, the inscriptural nature of the text in general, within which the possibilities for this distinction have already been codified. Hence, a text is, as it were, the possible sum of, first, the verbal signification evoked by a certain pattern of signs inscribed in some material and, second, the coded body includ¬ ing both signification and material. Just as with the Saussurian concept of the sign, the text is necessarily composed of its material aspect and its meaning, which is dependent upon a material basis, yet is not material in itself. From a particular perspective, we can always distinguish in the text what is significative from what remains dormant, heterogeneous, accidental, and exterior with regard to meaning. In a text such as this sheet of white paper covered with black letters we differentiate between those variables that could affect meaning, for example’ a change in the shape of a letter, from “on” to “o/,” and those that stay, within a marked range of variation, indifferent to meaning, such as a change in paper color from white to yellow. In this example, the supposed identity of a text will be altered if its significative traits are changed but will not be affected if changes are confined to the textual materiality. Or let me put it differently: the sig¬ nificative aspect of the text is what is recognized as remaining identical through and independent of various changes in textual materiality. This differentiation is essential in our conception of a text, for rather than define a text in terms of ideational meaning, I shall refer to it as an inherently ambivalent materiality a dual negativity. For this reason, it would be slightly misleading to say a text is a composite of meaning and material. The differentiation itself is unstable unless institutionally determined. If it were utterly stabilized, one would never be aware of textual materiality because this materiality is precisely what is excluded from the consciousness adherent to the institutional arrangement, which I also call discursive space. But it is always possible that a text could allow for different modes of discerning articulation. That is to say, when the mode of differentiation

Theoretical Preliminaries

3

between significative factors and textual materiality changes, the same text may well be susceptible to an entirely different understanding. Certainly, a text cannot be equated with the conventional notion of writing. Speech, for instance, is also a text insofar as it overtly constitutes signification and covertly posits textual materiality as the textual surplus of signification. Time and time again, we must remind ourselves that even speech cannot be reduced to its pure meaning. It too has the same ambivalent differentiation. While in one sense speech is not writing, in another it is, and the two senses remain problematic, continually transgressing each other’s circumference. In other words, a text is simultaneously verbal and nonverbal. In this connec¬ tion, the term “textual materiality” should be elucidated to make certain that the unstable nature of this differentiation be kept in mind. Textual materiality desig¬ nates the sum of what participates in a text but does not overtly contribute to the constitution of its meaning. Basically it is a negative term that points out the surplus nature of textuality; this term presumes that a text cannot be arrested at its signification or reduced to what it says overtly.1 Moreover, certain types of texts, such as gesture, music, and visual artifacts, do not constitute “firsthand” signification. Yet insofar as we are able to talk about them, they can be read, and therefore grasped as significative. In this respect, they are texts or components of texts that can be verbalized even if not in a one-to-one correspondence. Conversely, in many instances the nonverbal seems to accompany the verbal. In singing and music, for example, gesture and a verbal act coexist and are the components that form another text: song. In song, a variety of signifying practices are intertextually integrated into a whole that expresses much more than the verbal can alone. Indeed, my primary focus is on discourse, on the complex of institutionalized verbal and other social statements. But even within this scope, I am forced to deal with the nonverbal and the nonlinguistic aspect of textuality. The question What is language? demands that I further explore the complicated and multifaced boundary between verbal and nonverbal, linguistic and nonlinguistic, sig¬ nificative and material. The idea that text harbors these asymmetrical couples may amount to the recognition that a text is not only intrinsically multilayered but also related to its “outside,” or more specifically, to its intrinsic heterogeneity which cannot be internalized in a given discursive space, in several different ways. As I will point out later in reference to many sources in both Europe and classical China, the word “text” and its etymological derivatives, “textile,” “texture,” and so on, illuminate this heterogeneity most clearly. A text is not a solid entity but a network of many threads. As the level of meaning and consequently the area of

'Particularly in regard to the problem of history and textual materiality, see Jacques Derrida, Introduction to Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., and David B. Allison (Boulder, Colo.: Great Eastern, 1978).

4

Introduction

textual materiality vary and as the “intertextual” regime2 in which a text is located changes, the function assigned to a text and its supposed identity are redefined accordingly. Yet, what is conversely implied in this comprehension is that, relative to a given historical moment and region, the regime of speaking, writing, reading, acting, and perceiving,3 in which certain significative traits are picked up and captured while textual materiality is excluded, is granted the kind of conventional stability that allows for continual reproduction of itself. At a particular moment, the regime, which actually varies all the time, is thought of as natural and universal universal in the sense of being applicable anywhere and at any time—and it forms part of “common sense.” This general acceptance, however, does not secure the regime against challenges from within and outside the group of people for whom this common sense is natural; it is constantly problematized, just as common sense is frequently defamiliarized. Necessarily involved here is the problem of power in the sense that to sustain the unques¬ tioned status ol “common sense” is to insist on the legitimacy of excluding the other possible regimes, thereby, in the long run, refusing to recognize that the world could be otherwise. What is assumed by the term “discursive space” is this conventional stability, because of which the mechanism of ascribing meaning to things in the world is accepted and in turn determines the possible forms of textual production. Of course, the space at issue is neither physical nor geographical but a field of coexistence for various conditions of textual production. It is a space defined by shared prejudices and implicit expectations, which conceal and repress the pos¬ sible shifts and changes from one regime to another; what Jean-Frangois Lyotard use the term regime in a specific sense: a regime consists of a set of protocols and rules according to which utterances and actions are directly meaningful. Like Wittgenstein’s language game, it defines the sphere of life in which an utterance or action must inhere to be meaningful Yet one can never define a regime in terms of a set of rules because it always requires another regime- it can be known only in terms of its incommensurability with other regimes. It should never be confused with either discursive space or language, just as Wittgenstein’s language game cannot be vTn Jean:Fran?ois dotard, The Dtferend: Phrases in Dispute, Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1988) Have" Yah/lfniversity

P^™8' “ N°™an ^ Vishn and

^ lng (°aaVe been USeleSS” (“La quan,il6 du silence’” Au“‘4 [February 1983]- 58) ’ Lyu'ard SayS: The Plain“ff lodSes his or her complaint before the tribunal the

like tofaTl^differend IdT ““ 7"^ °f accusation' LiliSali°n takes place. I would like to call a differend [,differend] the case where the plaintiff is divested of the means to argue and becomes tor that reason a victim. If the addressor, the addressee, and the sense of the testimony are neu ralized, everything takes place as if there were no damages. A case of differend between two parties takes place when the ’regulation’ of the conflict that opposes them is do" iTm of one ot the parties while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom” (p. 9), and “To give

Theoretical Preliminaries

5

called “the differend,” 4 the possibility of actions disclosing the otherness of the Other, is banned. And because these prejudices and expectations are not defamiliarized or thematically criticized, the production of texts in this space re¬ mains controlled and dominated by presupposed conditions. In this respect, the discursive space is also a field of power, but it lacks a controlling subject. (Or one might argue that the presence of that discursive sp^ce is the transcendental subject controlling the production of discourse.) To the extent to which those who control a given social hierarchy and those who are controlled submit themselves to the discursive space at a predeconstructive and precritical level, both are controlled and dominated, and the meaning and moral of this domination and submission are thereby ensured in this space. In this respect, both master and slave are constituted and are therefore two related subject-effects determined in their roles by the the rules of the discursive space that they continue to hold familiar. Hence, it is well known that even if the slave usurped the status of the master, he would simply discard the role of victim and put on that of victimizer; the whole business of victimization itself will continue intact unless the discur¬ sive space in which such a power relation is articulated can be changed. In this book, I discuss one of the discursive formations that I believe domi¬ nated textual production during the eighteenth century in Tokugawa Japan, and I describe the regimes of reading, writing, acting, perceiving, and so on which are accommodated within it. I also present various arguments that inaugurated, legitimated, or disrupted the discursive formation. Here, the “eighteenth cen¬ tury” will be used symbolically, not to match any definite chronological dates but to allude to the locus of a discursive space to which some documents and artifacts from the late seventeenth century until the early nineteenth century can be re¬ garded as belonging. In this discursive space, language was an object of exten¬ sive and heated discussion, and the search for “transparent” language was tirelessly pursued. In describing this space and how the image of language was articulated there, I consider neither the unity of an author nor that of a school of primary importance; I do not aspire to know the “thought” of an author or the genealogy of a school. On the contrary, possible interrelationships of various textual forms and shared regimes, according to which the object of their study was imperceptibly posited, are the focus of my attention. What I aim at is the question What is language? and those derivative problems this ultimate question is bound to call forth. In order even to pose the question What is language? we must involve our¬ selves preliminarily in another no less complicated question: Is it possible to posit language as an object? The use of language is, of course, necessarily the differend its due is to institute new addressees, new addressors, new significations, and new referents in order for the wrong to find an expression and for the plaintiff to cease being a victim” (p. 13). As I will argue, the notion of the feeling, which is closely related to the differend, as opposed to the sentimentality that is devoid of connection to the differend, explains why Ito Jinsai was so much concerned with the problem of feeling in his ethics.

6

Introduction

assumed in positing those questions and any question whatsoever. Questioning is a language affair par excellence. One may follow a hermeneutic strategy by saying that only on the basis of our implicit grasp of language can one possibly ask anything at all. Comprehension inevitably precedes questioning; so the pos¬ sibility of objectifying language should originate in the historically and culturally limited horizon of our understanding. Only by virtue of the fact that we live in language are we able to discuss language as an object. Therefore, as the argu¬ ment would go, it is pointless to seek the universal essence of language outside the context specific to a particular historical and cultural formation. Insofar as the question What is language? necessarily discloses the historical and cultural finitude of the inquirer, the hermeneutic response at least makes us aware of some aspects of the interrogation which ought not be neglected outright. I do not hesitate to admit it. Hermeneutics seems to fail to live up to our expectations, however, not because of its rather skeptical attitude toward holistic universalism but because its critique of universalism has not been pursued to the limit. By virtue of the restrictions on this critique, it is inevitably particularistic. The trouble lies with the emphasis of hermeneutics on the historical and culturalistic horizon. If the possibility of objectifying language is always preceded by our primordial habitation in it, where can we possibly find the instance of talking about, in a sense objectifying, the horizon of our understanding and our “tradi¬ tion”? As is well known, hermeneutics insists upon the anteriority of the horizon of our understanding to interpretation in general. Historical or cultural distance, informed by our encounter with documents of the past or with foreign language* marks the limit of our language and thereby reflexively teaches us about the historical and cultural finitude of our own being. That horizon is an enabling rather than a restricting finitude, which, instead of preventing us from com¬ prehending, makes it possible for us to know and guarantees our access to universality. Therefore, it should be argued that our confinement to the tradition is an opening to universality. Yet, it is not hard to detect the working of an assumption that conceals another kind of circularity than the famed hermeneutic circle in the hermeneutic vision of our historicocultural being. Some claim that an experience of distance helps manifest the unity of our language, which coincides with our world at the primordial level of pre¬ predicative judgment. But it is also presumed that such an experience arises at the periphery of that unity which is most frequently imagined as a spatial whole. On the one hand, we should recall that the hermeneutic conception of that distance was put forth in the context of a critique of an ahistorical universalism incurably embedded in scientific positivism, which audaciously assumes the possibility of a metalanguage free from any historicity of our being. It goes without saying that the metalanguage thus granted is the language of positivism itself. Then hermeneutics warns us of the danger of so-called universal scientism and asks us to doubt the very possibility of that metalanguage. On the other hand, it affirms the thesis that an appeal to, or need for, metalanguage is invoked by

Theoretical Preliminaries

7

some failure or obstacle in the course of otherwise transparent, smooth, and flaw¬ less transactions such as talk, making things, or communication. This is to say, metalanguage is a consequence of some trouble, estrangement, breakdown, or adulteration. When combined with the vision of language as a spatial whole, the formation of metalanguage and philosophical argumentation in general would take on definite connotations of hermeneutics. While such metalanguage and philo¬ sophical argumentation might undertake a critical and reflective examination of our world, it is understood that they do so from the alien sphere, from outside our world, the outside being located along either a historical or a geocultural axis. The opportunity to criticize and thereby reinstitute our—that is, collective— historical subjectivity is in fact facilitated by the insertion of the heterogeneous, of the external, in the form of a foreign language or an old, unfamiliar document. This critical impulse accompanied by an acute sense of historicity must not be overlooked. But I also want to draw attention to the other, more implicit side of the thesis. At the same time that hermeneutics reveals our historicity, it installs an economy that regulates the distribution of the heterogeneous. Our world is pre¬ sented as if its language were completely merged with it, as if the need for “theorizing” metalanguage would never arise there since there could be no historical or cultural distance: immediacy and homosociality would reign. Just as we are normally occupied with the purpose of our dealings and not aware of the tools by means of which we try to accomplish them, and just as the tool, a hammer, for example, becomes conspicuous in its unusability when it is broken, so language does not announce itself as such and remains transparent with respect to our theorizing gaze.5 In this regard, to say that the encounter with the alien or the external gives rise to critical instances is to say that it is at least possible to imagine as a point of contrast a state in which language is completely free from estrangement and the possibility of problematizing language, of gener¬ ating distance between language and the world, is null and void. Obviously our world is posited as an idealized sphere in which our language is immediately our world, in which we are allowed to live our language, that is, our world, in its original plenitude, and in return, this plenitude gives content to the phrase “owr world.” Needless to say, language could never be objectified in this sphere, and 5See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962): “When we concern ourselves with something, the entities which are most closely ready-to-hand may be met as something unusable, not properly adapted for the use we have decided upon. The tool turns out be damaged, or the material unsuitable. In each of these cases equipment is here, ready-to-hand. We discover its unusability, however, not by looking at it and establishing its properties, but rather by the circumspection of the dealings in which we use it. When its unusability is thus discovered, equipment becomes conspicuous” (p. 102), and “If, in our every¬ day concern with the ‘environment,’ it is to be possible for equipment ready-to-hand to be encoun¬ tered in its ‘Being-in-itself,’ then those assignments and referential totalities in which our circum¬ spection ‘is absorbed’ cannot become a theme for that circumspection any more than they can for grasping things ‘thematically’ but non-circumspectively. If it is to be possible for the ready-to-hand not to emerge from its inconspicuousness, the world must not announce itself ’ (p. 106). I shall return to this problem in my critique of Tokieda Motoki.

8

Introduction

as I argue in this book, such homogeneity is impossible; language always re¬ mains “broken,” even without intrusion from outside, and no-body is ex¬ haustively at home in language. So, to the question Is it possible to posit language as an object? I must reply with two negative propositions. First, I do not think I can presuppose a meta¬ language completely independent of the specific traits of an object-language it talks about. Second, I do not think there is a language completely free from the self-reflexivity that necessarily generates a desire for metalanguage either. In other words, I entertain neither the notion of the complete separation between the world and language, of two autonomous entities, nor the vision of the harmo¬ nious unity of the world and language. Hence, to the question What is language? we cannot expect a general and universal answer, for the reason stated in the first proposition. Implicit in my approach is the belief that this question can be formulated only in historical terms. To ask what language is is to ask how language was understood at a specific historical moment. Furthermore, we must remind ourselves that even if we could circumscribe what was conceived of as language, we could develop no mono¬ lithic conception, as the extensive debates about the nature of language in the eighteenth century clearly testify. As a specific object of discourse in the discur¬ sive space at issue, “language” became a telltale locus of contradiction, rupture, and disagreement within language. Accordingly, I do not seek to establish a universal definition or explanatory theory of language among the texts of the eighteenth century; rather I look for various differentiations and oppositions and their interactions, which, when put together, circumscribe an area in human activities called language. What is I ? What is meant by “belonging to a language” or “a language’s belonging to someone”? These questions, too, are posed here, together with other derivative queries. Indeed, they are asked repeatedly in the course of this book. By making these questions traverse the texts of the eighteenth century, I attempt to expose prejudices in the discourse within which we think language and thereby to transform the resistance of these texts to reading, to our customary process of investing the texts with meaning, into an occasion to defamiliarize our own prejudices, according to which we normally conduct our transference to the past. It is, of course, a way—probably one among many—to respect the past in its otherness. In As We Saw Them, Masao Miyoshi tried to use geographical and cultural distance to defamiliarize our own conception of the other and the same, although one might detect some tendency in his book to essentialize those unities of us and “them.”6 As there cannot be in our case the same kind of reciprocity 6Masao Miyoshi, As We Saw Them (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979) In this book °n hrst Japanese ambassadorial mission to the United States, Miyoshi describes the voyage over e Pacific Ocean as a defamihanzation that engendered an unexpected encounter of the same and the other. The metaphorical use of the sea, which occasions the intrusion of the other into the same.

Theoretical Preliminaries

9

that we find in Miyoshi’s intercultural study, the historical distance that neces¬ sarily generates defamiliarizing effects can be incorporated into my research not to affirm the unities of “us” and “them” but to draw attention to what is excluded in the formation of these unities. It is true that we cannot take up the viewpoint of a historical or cultural other as Miyoshi attempted to do, but insofar as the object of study itself brings about an occasion to rethink the image of the other, historical inquiry could serve the same purpose, disclosing the fundamen¬ tal asymmetry in any relationship of the same to the other as well as the funda¬ mental inadequacy of the image of the other to the Other. Hence, historical inquiry can be an occasion to interfere with the workings of transference, and in that very sense, it can be a historical praxis. To deal with texts of the past is to defamiliarize the discursive space in which the putative unities of “us” and “them” (historical or cultural) are taken for granted. But too often historiography has served to conceal and suppress this potential defamiliarizing moment inher¬ ent in any historical research, so that the present and the same may be recon¬ firmed and authenticated as eternal verities. What must be challenged in histor¬ ical projects such as this is a totalizing tendency that the ideology of the identical, overtly or covertly, serves to legitimate. To historicize the present—that is, to defamiliarize “us”—will be the motto in this book. Now, this does not mean seeking ways in which to assimilate us to the other. Rather, I examine the use of the shifter “we,” which frequently silences and excludes some people unjustly in its pretense of integrating them. After all, the other we face is primarily a historical one and ultimately beyond conceptualization. Through the encounter with the historical other, I search for some coherent way to go beyond ourselves and the present. I search as well for some way to go beyond eighteenth-century discourse, as Amazawa Taijiro once tried to go “beyond Miyazawa Kenji” in his critical account.* * * * * * 7 Such an approach may provoke understandable reservations: Despite the pro¬ claimed tendency toward defamiliarization, it might be argued, my method would only imperialize the past by imposing questions upon it which, after all, originate from our own contemporary concerns. Is this not simply one more way of imposing our prejudices on the historical other and thereby extending our sovereignty over it? Since I can no longer stake any claim to objectivity that might refute this challenge or adopt any hermeneutic stance that might accommo¬ date it, it is imperative that I stick to a set of rules that sustain self-critical examination. reminds us of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, which, as Mikhail Bakhtin repeatedly asserted, very suc¬ cessfully exemplifies the polyphonic novel in Europe. Although Miyoshi seems to take the difference between two identities, represented by the sea, as substantial rather than ideological on occasion, he introduces polyphonic structure into his book to problematize the mode of knowledge dominant in area studies, where specialists have tirelessly continued to reproduce the same old monologic dis¬ course. 7Amazawa Taijiro, Miyazawa Kenji no kanata e (Beyond Miyazawa Kenji) (Tokyo: Shicho-sha, 1968).

10

Introduction

First, I must be attentive to the double articulation of differences between the present and the past. I have already introduced the concept of a discursive space to illustrate the gap between the present and the past as that between two different discursive formations. By means of this concept, I should be able to establish a standpoint that permits me to view any assumption, no matter how general and self-evident it seems, as historically determined and specific. If I strive to adhere to this standpoint, I will be able to point out conspicuous instances in which the estranging effects of the past would otherwise be concealed. One should be able to disclose contradictions at the very locus where the ideology of the identical conceals them. In this respect, it should be remembered that mine is an attempt not to internalize texts of the past but rather to retrace an itinerary of discursive economy according to which the heterogeneous was excluded in discourse. The second rule is based on a critical evaluation of the first. If historical difference were simply apprehended as a difference between two discursive spaces on the same plane, I would merely be affirming another relativism; to do so would be nonsensical unless I presupposed some third and transcendent view¬ point from which the two discourses could be observed equally. But is this exactly the effect of being confined in a discursive space? Does this confinement presume that the other in history can be reduced to an image at which a transhistorical “1” stares without being affected by it? Is this the typical relativism that necessitates holistic universalism in its gesture of paying respect to the singular and the specific? Insofar as history is thought of as it is articulated in discourse, the endless oscillation between relativism and universalism is inevitable. But I will also be attentive to those differences between the present and the past which can never be posited as symmetrical opposites. The past, in this instance, must be com¬ prehended as the loss that could not be recuperated in discourse. Thus, the relationship between the present and the past is, at the same time, that between two images and that between what can be brought about in an image and what can never be reduced to images.8 8Cf. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), pp. 226-47 in particular. Michel de Certeau, in The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), discusses the problem of history as recounted story (Historie) and the work of history (Geschichte) in relation to psychoanalysis: “Psychoanalysis does not institute a new sequence within the progress of a lure that the capacity to demystify, and lucidity itself, are forever expanding. Psychoanalysis would like to establish an epistemological rupture within this infinite process. It would be the means of thinking and practicing a new kind of elucidation, worthy (gtiltig) in general, which ultimately intends to account for a double, structural relation that excludes the possibility of closure. This would be, on the one hand, the relation of every analytical process (which fragments the representation while driving deeper what is represented) with what it intends to demonstrate but succeeds in displacing; and on the other hand, the relation of each Aufklarung with the elucidations that either precede or are contiguous to it in time, insofar as a clearer focus on what had been represented is at once a scientific necessity, and a new way of being deceived without knowing it” (p. 299), and “Nothing can guarantee the difference between these two figures of history or of praxis—the one, which repeats, and the other, which initiates. They bring us back to the ambiguity of the word ‘history,’ an unstable word that fluctuates between a ‘legend’ (a received

Theoretical Preliminaries

11

Opening the Closure of “Us” through Defamiliarization In this project, I deal with the text in its exteriority.* * * * * * * * 9 My description is focused, as it were, on the surface of the texts, whose depth and solidity should never be taken to be the hidden presence of some transcendent signified but should be understood to designate that which is surplus and heterogeneous to discourse, that is, to designate a certain resistance I have called “textual mate¬ riality.” Nor do I view the text in its supposed rapport with the original utterance that is no longer present. Nor do I endeavor to comprehend the past or lay hold of the plenitude that must have been present at the moment of the text’s enunciation. My task is not to return the texts of the past to their original meaningfulness. Instead, I attempt to disclose the conditions in which statements were produced; whether or not their authors or actors were conscious of these conditions is in fact beyond my concern. If a historian’s task is to understand the text better than its author did, then this is certainly not a historical study. If the purpose of histo¬ riography is to recover the reality of the past as the people of those times lived it,

text, a law that must be read, a society’s profit) and a ‘becoming other’ (a taking of the risk of selfaffirmation, through ourselves assuring our own existences). The analyst himself does not escape this ambivalence. As soon as his science becomes a ‘deceptive aid’; as soon as he ‘keeps only the deposit but not the drive’; as soon as he turns a teaching, a clientele, even a society into the exalted ersatz of the father, into the congregation or the devil of the former times, he conceals from himself what he believes he is clarifying. Freud draws a line of demarcation between these two sides of psychoanalytic practice when he speaks of the protean principle that he will use like a razor to cut through the signifiers on the surface of a discourse or a text. He will express the criterion that saves him from accepting his own science as a nurturing law. And with the wink of an eye he explains to us the imperialism of his diagnoses and, quite a surprise for us, his way of imposing an interpretation by insisting on a patient’s word: ‘There it is.’ In his practice he establishes the scientist’s act as what is beyond a necessary knowledge. In effect, a casual ease curiously inhabits the minutiae of his analysis. He legitimizes his work as an author by taking risks. He refers to a stylish ‘fair’ that can be only loosely defined because it is simply his own. From his point of view, analytical practice is always an act of risk. It never eliminates a surprise. It cannot be identified with the accomplishment of a norm. The ambiguity of a set of words could never be brought forward solely by the ‘application’ of a law. Knowledge never guarantees this ‘benefit.’ The Aufklarung remains an affair of tact—eine Sache des Takts” (pp. 303-4). 9For the notion of exteriority, see Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Tavistock, 1972): “The analysis of statements operates therefore without reference to a cogito. It does not pose the question of the speaking subject, who reveals or who conceals himself in what he says, who, in speaking, exercises his sovereign freedom, or who, without realizing it, subjects himself to constraints of which he is only dimly aware. In fact, it is situated at the level of ‘it is said’—and we must not understand by this a sort of communal opinion, a collective representation that is imposed on every individual; we must not understand by it a great, anonymous voice that must, of necessity, speak through the discourse of everyone; but we must understand by it the totality of things said, the relations, the regularities, and the transformations that may be observed in them, the domain of which certain figures, certain intersections indicate the unique place of a speaking subject and may be given the name of author. ‘Anyone who speaks,’ but what he says is not said from anywhere. It is necessarily caught up in the play of exteriority” (p. 122). The issues I discuss later in this book, which are very clearly stated here, include (1) two definitions of the term “discourse,” depending upon how the status of the subject of enunciation is understood; (2) the relationship between discursive analysis and Lacanian psychoanalysis; and (3) Foucauldian exteriority and phenomenological reduction.

12

Introduction

then I do not pretend to be a historiographer in this book. What is in demand here is the defamiliarization that a sort of phenomenological reduction necessarily engenders in our discursive space.10 It is a reduction by which to disqualify and objectify assumptions about what is natural. The phenomenological reduction I adhere to, however, does not imply a reduction of the text either to its eidetic signification or to transcendental subjectivity. On the contrary, it is a decision to reduce subjectivity to discourse. A basic premise of this book is that the formal locus of subjectivity is constituted discursively: discourse precedes subjectivity. But at this juncture, I find the terms “subject” and “subjectivity” far from satisfactory in articulating the complex and interwoven aspects of their many different uses. In order to distinguish among many different conceptualities, including the subjectivity that is not appropriated in discourse, I introduce a rather technical vocabulary (shugo, shukan, shudai, shutai, etc.), which contains many contradictions and ambiguities but helps elucidate the problematics in¬ volved in the phrase “historical subject.” That is, I continue to draw attention to the impossibility of comprehending the past and, thereby, affirm the thesis that the historical other always remains the Other. But at the same time, I emphasize that “we” are also the other, insofar as we are able to talk about ourselves, and that much of what is natural and selfevident for “us” is, after all, a historical positivity, a positivity of a historically limited construct. Surely it is too easy to say that what was considered natural and self-evident in the past was historically restricted. What a work of historiography is expected to show is that the same applies to the present; it is to remind us of the historically limited validity of our discourse. Historiography can be historical only through self-decentering and self-criticism, only if the tension between the present and the past is maintained and utilized to the fullest extent so as to ensure the possibility of defamiliarizing a given discourse. And provided that the term “historical” is apprehended in terms of this tension, my project claims to be historical. “History” must be considered as a problematic rather than as a name for an established discipline with fixed procedures and protocols. It indicates an area where discourse fails to reproduce itself, a locus where the same encounters the Other. Eighteenth-century discursive space, for instance, was continually haunt¬ ed by its past and could not construct the discourse of the identical without establishing ways to accommodate the past in its present. The languages of the other—the historical and the cultural other—were repeatedly referred to in order, first, to mold the radical Other into the other and, then, to situate the language of the same in that discursive space.

10 Jacques Derrida talks about a sort of reduction that suspends, neutralizes, and puts in paren¬ theses the word s relation to its sense or thing, a reduction that is the reverse of phenomenology’s eidetic reduction. See Schibboleth (Paris: Galilee, 1986), p. 44.

Theoretical Preliminaries

13

It is precisely in this context that I want to point again to the necessity of considering the relationship between language and the world through two nega¬ tive propositions: first, language cannot be autonomous, is always dependent upon the world, and second, language cannot be the world, always remains other than the world. If it is impossible to envisage a language independent of the world, a language that is valid transhistorically, then we must talk of any existent language in terms that remind us of its historical individuality. Our way of thinking is definitely different from their way of thinking, but as the second proposition asserts, there is no warranty that our thinking is either adequate to our world or immediate to us. Surely it is true that we do not easily understand those who lived in a different era in a remote country; yet it must also be kept in mind that the world we inhabit can never be the world as we think about it in our language because language is always either inadequate or excessive to the world. Here, as I have hinted a few times, I must tentatively distinguish between the two related terms the “other” and the “Other”—the “other” being the different insofar as it is posited in thinking and appropriated in discourse, and the “Other” being the different that evades being posited in thinking. To put it differently, the “Other” requires linkage to different and new regimes, thereby always disclos¬ ing “the differend” that has been suppressed, whereas the “other” is already appropriated and positioned and presents itself as self-evident within the same regime. This distinction, which will play a significant role in my discussion, may appear rather confusing. For instance, I would simultaneously insist that “we” are historically different from “them” and that “we” are originarily different from “us.” On the one hand, I use such unities as “our language” and “their language” to render explicit an economy sustaining positivities in a certain discursive space, but on the other hand, I refuse these unities any ontological grounding and criticize the imagined closure of a discursive space extensively. At this level, the major question for which this book attempts to provide a historical reply lends itself to another equally fundamental question: What is a language (langue)? As a matter of fact, these two questions, What is language? and What is a language? are indistinguishable in some contexts since differences between languages (langues) encompass not only syntax and phonetics but also the articulation of the linguistic and the nonlinguistic. Intertextuality, understood in terms of the regime of possible channels between verbal and nonverbal texts, varies from one discursive space to another. Accordingly, in the discursive space of the eighteenth century, where differences are all ascribed to the difference of languages (langues), inquiry into the language of the other inevitably leads to the recognition that the other perceives and lives the world differently. This recogni¬ tion is what writers of the eighteenth century were forced to face. Consequently, their discourse on language was guided by their concern about the identity of a language rather than about language in general. Implied in this cognition is that intertextuality is institutionally maintained, part and parcel of the discursive formation.

14

Introduction

Three Guiding Concerns Thus, from its initial formulation,11 this book was guided by three main and constant concerns: “What is the historicality of theoretical investigation in histo¬ ry writing?”, “What kinds of discursive formation can one delineate when the identities of language and culture are perceived to be empirically given beyond dispute?” and “Is a conception of sociality that is not closed to the Other possible?” These three questions were intertwined with the main problems about language and the “I,” and they generated many corollary questions against the background of which I tried to read a selection of documents written and drawn during the eighteenth century. What is the historicality of theoretical investigation in history writing? Whether or not one wishes to avoid theories, one cannot write about the past without generalization; to use language is already to generalize. Yet, there must be ways to put into question and critically construe the very relationship between theory and historical materials. If theory is taken to be a set of principles formu¬ lated in universal terms and if its application to a specific historical environment is understood to be its concretization, such an understanding of theory should be blind to its own historicity. The assumed universality of theory must be delim¬ ited, historically. But this is not to determine a particular body of theory in its historical particularity, since to do so would require another set of universals in terms of which the particularity is predicated. What I want to start from and arrive at is neither the particularity of my position nor the generality of some universal essences: I want to indicate, if not signify, that dimension which is not reducible to either, which is “outside” the metaphysical opposition of universalism and particularism. I can achieve this only by historicizing my reading in terms of the text I am to read, not by the more common practice of historicizing through my reading the text to be read: that is, by reversing the hierarchy of the universal and the particular, of metalanguage and object language. In other words, my argument about the eighteenth century has to be organized in such a manner that an object language is allowed to speak back to a metalanguage. It goes without saying that one can never be sure of one’s success in such a project. There can be no publicly ascertainable standard by which to tell if an object language has in fact spoken back. The issue of historicality is closely connected here with that of historical praxis. It is not a matter of how to know in advance that such a success in letting the past speak back can be guaranteed; it is primarily a matter of execution. In this connection I found some shared ground among my concerns for the historicality of theoretical investigation, the exami¬ nation of the ethical by Ito Jinsai, a Confucian scholar of the Tokugawa period, and the subsequent transformations of the Confucian discussion on the ethical by

11 “Voices of the Past: Discourse on Language in Eighteenth-Century Japan” (Ph.D. diss., Univer¬ sity of Chicago, 1983).

Theoretical Preliminaries

15

Ogyu Sorai and others. For Ito, the issues of historicality and sociality were so intimately related that he could not conceive of the ethical without reference to social change. In his thorough critique of the essentialization of human nature in Song rationalism, he was able to propose an understanding of the ethical which respected the otherness of the Other rather than falling into essentialist universalism or particularistic relativism, both of which necessarily suppress the Other. In Ogyu’s reaction to Ito’s critique, however, the sociality had already become divorced from ethics with the stress on the mimesis of habitual bodily action. Whereas Ito pointed out that the Song rationalist conception of ethics ignored the executionary and material aspect of the ethical by equating ethical action with its ideational meaning, Ogyu reduced the ethical to the mimetic and the habitual and brought forth the notion of the “interior” as a form of communality on the basis of mimetic identification with, and return to, the idealized and aestheticized commune of ancient China. With Ogyu, the rejection of universalism ended in an endorsement of particularism, which meant the return to that same opposition of universalism versus particularism. In seeking to reverse the relationship of theory and its object, and thereby indicate the dimension of a prescriptive universalism without essentialism, I try to read those philosophical and pedagogic writings of eighteenth-century Japan as a challenge and resistance to the assumed ubiquitous validity of the theoretical assumptions on which my reading would otherwise proceed. What kinds of discursive formation can one delineate when the identities of language and culture are perceived to be given beyond dispute? This shift away from Ito’s critique of Song rationalism to Ogyu’s endorsement of the cultural and linguistic “interior” marked the formation of discourses in which those unities of language and the cultural sphere were formed into what might be referred to as constituting positivities, or some sort of regulative Ideas. They enabled the selection and organization of empirical categories and led to the formation of protocols according to which the perceived heterogeneities were fixed into sym¬ metrical divisions between identities. I make use of Michel Foucault’s term “discourse” (with its particular critical import, which cannot be equated with that intended by other users of the term such as Emile Benveniste) primarily because I want to stress the historical nature of the regulative Ideas: these discur¬ sive positivities should never be taken as transhistorical essences. But, at the same time, adoption of the term “discourse” causes me certain problems because it implies a positivistic comprehension of history and, correlatively, the assumed positing of something like transcendental subjectivity. It seems to me that, in spite of Foucault’s repeated disclaimers, his approach can entail that the historian must lay out the rules of discursive formation from some “outside”, and that this separation between the “outside” and the discourse under examination might easily induce me to operate on the basis of the theory-object opposition. If this “outside,” which Foucault insisted is not an outside of some inside, were under¬ stood as the site from which a discursive formation can be grasped as an objec-

16

Introduction

tified totality, I would fall into the same theoretical trap that I mentioned above: I would simply be repeating the anthropological scheme of the empirico-transcendental double. In my case, the empirical object posited by the transcendental gaze would be the discourse of eighteenth-century Japan. Although, in the thoughts of Foucault, who rigorously pursued Nietzsche and Heidegger’s path toward the Overman, this outside never coincides with tran¬ scendental subjectivity, one could easily be tempted to assume that the sort of historical analysis Foucault proposed is a method that can be “applied” in its generality to the particular data of specific historical periods and areas. In that event, the historian would end up speaking from the position of transcendental subjectivity and his reading of historical materials would be no different from that of the positivist. Time and time again I have had to resist this temptation; and I have done so by focusing on the asymmetrical relationship between what is accommodated in discourse and what is not captured by it. The latter, what is not captured by discourse, is indicated by the difference between discursivity and textuality; it has to be indicated because it could never be signified or identified. By maintaining the sense of rupture between discourse and text, I seek to find a way out of the determinism often ascribed to Foucault’s discursive formation. Discourse reproduces itself by repressing textuality. But, by the same token, it should always be possible to detect sites where discourse is threatened and eroded. Left to itself, any discursive formation will deteriorate or, to use Ito Jinsai’s expression, “decompose.” In that respect, the stability of discursive formation must imply the work of power that silences different ways of format¬ ting, addressing, and linking issues and prevents people from otherwise seeing and living the world. So, for me, a discursive space is never given: the historian has, I think, to admit that it is his choice, his limit, and also sometimes his inability that draw the contours of a given discursive space. Only when a histo¬ rian pretends to speak from a transcendent position do social and cultural forma¬ tions appear objectively determined and simply there. Yet, at the same time, I do not claim that discursive formation is arbitrary and totally dependent upon the historian’s “intention” either. What is in the past that resists the imposition of our images is the interweaving of various texts within the general text, an inter¬ weaving that disrupts the complicity between the determinism on the part of the object of study and the assumed transcendent and transhistorical stance on the part of the subject who studies. As a gesture of respect for the particularities of a given culture and tradition, and out of a certain diplomatic modesty (which is becoming more and more fashionable), the historian tries to speak from a position delimited by his own cultural particularism about a particular cultural and social formation that is foreign to him. He tries to speak as if his culture or language could be opposed to another, as if he could know in advance how culturally and linguistically his world view is delimited and prejudiced. But, in assuming that his own culture and a foreign culture can be placed on the same plane and compared, he cannot

Theoretical Preliminaries

17

but speak from the position of some invisible and transcendent universalism. His diplomatic modesty is in fact his totalizing hubris in disguise. In spite of the seeming contradiction between them, these stances are both possible with the complicity of particularism and universalism. I argue that in the eighteenth century several positivities came into being, thanks to which a rigid partition between the inside of the “interior” and its exterior was formed. This separation resulted in a homogenization of the interior, which in turn entailed the positing of absolute incommensurability between the interior and the “exterior.” This was the moment when the Japanese as a linguistic and cultural unity was bom. But the birth of Japanese was a loss because the imagining of the homogeneous “interior” became possible only when historical time was constructed through the new reading of the clas¬ sics. Thus the issue of textuality in the reading of classic writings was directly connected to the formation of the interior, of a social imaginary that opened up new possibilities of social praxis. Is a conception of sociality that is not closed to the Other possible? With the formation of the interior, an incommensurability was assumed between the inte¬ rior and the exterior; it became possible to believe that, while belonging in the interior warranted one’s immediate comprehension of things happening there, anyone not belonging was unable to have immediate access to them. Belief that one inhabits the interior enabled one to assume both the sense of homogeneous communality based upon immediate comprehension and the outsider’s inability to participate in such a sense of communality. Thus, it closed off the social to heterogeneities both within and without a given collectivity: it made one blind to misunderstanding, conflicts, and disorder within a collectivity, even while it legitimated resignation to communality by concealing the fact that every form of incommensurability, misunderstanding, and even indifference to the other had to take place within sociality. In other words, by conceding to the interior, one would forget that the recognition of incommensurability could happen only in the process of learning and reaching out toward the Other. Concurrently one would forget that one encounters disruption on the inside all the time. A collectivity that is imagined as a homogenized and monolithic sphere does not exist. For this reason Ogyu Sorai, Motoori Norinaga, and other eighteenth-century writers had to posit the interior as an “arche,” an idealized communality of ancient origin. And they had to critique their contemporary social reality by contrasting it with the “archaic” commune and to view the former primarily as a loss of immediate communality. Moreover, the newly emerging discourse neglected and repressed the possibility of an aleatory venture toward the otherness of the Other, of a social attempt to link the heterogeneous regimes of utterance and behavior which would otherwise remain incommensurate. I recognize a fundamental transformation between Ito Jinsai and other writers of the eighteenth century in this regard. In launching a rigorous critique of Song rationalism, which reduced the prescriptive universal of ethical action to the

18

Introduction

cognition of descriptive universals, thereby ontologizing the ethical, Ito drew attention to the possibility of ethical action, to a sociality different from any guaranteed by epistemological universalism, and above all different from what he called Ai, or compassion toward others. Ito was adamantly opposed to ethical relativism. But, at the same time, he stressed the aspect of social action which could never be reduced to “knowing.” An ethical action always requires the agent’s body—or what I call “shutai,” as distinct from the subject—which necessarily deconstructs its putative intention; of necessity, an ethical action exceeds the closure of the agent’s consciousness so that its actuality consists in its exteriority to the intended meaning. Ito clearly saw that a prescription could never be deduced from a description. That is, in his thinking of ethics through the reading of Confucian classics, he focused on the materiality of social action, materiality of praxis toward and with the otherness of the Other which gave rise to virtues. What is evident in his ethics is that the ethical and textuality were inseparably related: for Ito Jinsai, the problem of the ethical was immediately that of textuality. Thus, in spite of his frequent references to Confucian classics, he did not need to sail back to the “arche”—to the original communality of Kamo Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga, and to the original creators or ancient sage kings of Ogyu Sorai—in order to ascertain ethical principles.

Hybridity of Language I am presenting this transformation of discourse in terms of the formation of a new closure, of silencing the otherness of the Other. Unlike the culturalism of modem Japan after the nineteenth century, the eighteenth-century discourse on interiority undeniably carried critical momentum with it. Nevertheless, because of its obsessive concern for origin, its critique was directed toward the consolida¬ tion of the immediate. Hence, it could easily lead to anti-intellectualism and the worship of naivete. I find that the transformation of discourse involved a wide variety of changes, including the rearrangement of genres, a new articulation of enunciative modes, a new kind of intertextuality, and new regimes of writing and reading. I seek the causes of the changes not only in “thought,” but in “discourse” and its asym¬ metrical relationship with textuality. For this reason, I draw attention to the graphic, verbal, and performative aspects of eighteenth-century popular liter¬ ature, puppet theater scripts, and linguistic pedagogy, and seek to understand the problems of the “subject” in terms of their framing. Even when I read those nontheoretical documents, my analysis is always motivated by my three ques¬ tions. My reading is conducted with special concern for the formation of the vernacular or “ordinary” language in eighteenth-century Japan. In response to these questions, however, I see the formation of an ordinary language as the site of hybridity. Yet, I must hasten to add that it is not the significance of some

Theoretical Preliminaries

19

hybrid language (as against pure language) or hybridity (as against pure blood) that I want to favor. On the contrary, there is no such thing as the original unity of language with which hybridity can be contrasted. (On that score, can we really say that language is a countable? Can we ascribe singularity and plurality to language?) Only in narrowly defined contexts could one still appeal to the dis¬ tinction between an indigenous and pure language and a hybrid language. But ultimately, I insist, there is no way to distinguish a pure language from its hybrid or Creole. My position, which I maintain throughout this book, is that language is essentially a site of hybridity and that any notion of a pure language is some fabricated and dogmatic deviation from the correct view of language. And hybridity is also the fundamental relationship between the body as the agent of action and language: no-body can be exhaustively at home in language. This is not a book about either the history of linguistic theory or the development of Japanese language. Nonetheless, its main theme is language and its other: this is a book devoted to the examination of the status of language in discourse.

The Logic of Self-Decentering I believe that historiography can be confined neither to a narrative account of past experience or of the experience of the dead nor to an imposition, uncon¬ scious in the best of cases and intentional in the worst, of our expectations onto the historical past; it results rather from an effort to articulate the problems arising from the defects and the limits of the present. Therefore, it defamiliarizes us. In short, in historiography, there is always some chance of having our own problems traverse texts of the past as if the past would speak back to us, as if the texts of the past would deflect our transference.12 We thereby loosen the grip of reified epistemic institutions on us by problematizing the very positivities on which our knowledge has been constructed. Indeed, in this book I seek a historiography that would do justice to the otherness of the Other, that respects the historicity of the social, and that will serve the logic of self-decentering.13 I attempt to make history a locus where our nihilism is continually challenged in order to reconsider the assumed image of “us” that is a universalized “me,” of “me” that is a particularized “us.” 12See Dominick LaCapra, “Is Everyone a Mentalite Case? Transference and the ‘Culture’ Con¬ cept” in History and Criticism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 71-94. ,3The logic of self-decentering concerns itself with a form of social and political critique that recognizes the mutually constitutive and transferential relationship between the criticizing subject and the criticized subject and which, therefore, does not justify itself merely by ascribing negative traits to the subject to be criticized. It is a logic that interrupts the scapegoating inherent in the symmetry of binary opposition by disclosing the site of the differend, which exists even in desire for identity. It focuses on the shared terms in which both subjects are constituted as such and because of which the necessity for critique arises. In other words, this critique itself is a new manifestation of the social in which the subjects are released from the constraints of symmetry and reciprocity and are opened up toward the Other in the other.

CHAPTER

1

Change in the Mode of Discursive Formation

A Discursive Space and Textuality Toward the end of the seventeenth century, a radical change took place in the mode of discursive formation in Japan. I do not claim that there ever was a historical period when so-called Japanese society was entirely dominated by a single discursive formation. Nevertheless, it can be maintained that seventeenthcentury Japan had its own dominant mode by which discourses were integrated. In any society or culture, there is always a multiplicity of discursive formations. (The conventional unities and self-evidence associated with the terms “society” and “culture” will be placed under thorough examination in the rest of this book, but let us allow ourselves to use them meanwhile, with a view to disclosing and critiquing the effects of their use.) Yet, it is axiomatic that the heterogeneities of one discourse to another are suppressed so long as a society maintains a high de¬ gree of integration. By the same token, unlike the modem nation-state, in which an oppressively homogeneous cultural sphere is imagined and thereby con¬ structed, a society may accommodate many heterogeneous discourses so long as it lacks or fails to achieve a high degree of integration. Tokugawa society was no exception in this regard. Heterogeneity emerged within the dominant discursive formation in the late seventeenth century, and I think the writings of Ito Jinsai (1627-1705) testify to this sudden eruption of new conceptual possibilities.1 ]Ito was a Confucian scholar and a founder of the Kogigaku school. He was bom in Kyoto to a merchant family well connected to cultural elites there, and he later married a cousin of perhaps the most famous painter of that time, Ogata Korin. From adolescence, he immersed himself in the study of the works of the Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi, and in his late twenties he abandoned his family business and devoted himself to Buddhist practice. In his thirties, however, he became critical of Song rationalism and Buddhism and began questioning them philosophically. Through the new reading of Confucian classics, he wrote many works which criticized Song rationalism and its philosophical and ethical implications. The Kogido, a private Confucian academy he established in 1662, continued to educate students for more than two hundred years, and his eldest son, Ito Togai, was also a renowned Confucian scholar. His major works include Dojimon (A child questions),

23

24

Silence at the Center

Nevertheless, I do not intend to view this event, this change, as indicating a historical break in something like the Japanese psyche, hidden beneath the sur¬ face of texts. Nor do I mean that an epistemological framework that had domi¬ nated Japan prior to that time was suddenly replaced by a new one. For— following an early Michel Foucault—to identify the systematicity of discourse on which the discursive space as a whole was constructed, I would first have to appeal to the concept of totality.* 2 But we should remind ourselves that a totality is always constructed historically and discursively and in each period of history has to be defined and articulated in terms of the contemporary discursive apparat¬ us. The conception of totality in one historical time can be drastically different from that in another. As circumstances change, totality also changes. Furthermore, we should be wary of any presumption that the contour of a discursive formation coincides with the whole of a society. Totality is always, by definition, a discursive scheme functional only within a given discursive space that can never be closed off. Certainly one can discuss the differences among many discursive spaces, yet it does not follow that each discursive space must have a definite boundary. Indeed, the concept of totality, without which closure would be impossible, is itself the product of an ideological and discursive con¬ struct based on and incorporated into a given discursive space. That is why the concept of totality has been extensively discussed in the philosophy of history even as conventional historiography has continued to rely on it without realizing how problematic it is. This is to say, totality is one of the historical transcenden¬ tal that both constitute and are constituted by the economies of particular discur¬ sive formations. Is it justifiable, then, to introduce this term into the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Japan? Obviously it is impossible to give a definition of totality that could be applied indiscriminately across historical time. Therefore, admitting that it is a historical transcendental, I will continue to use it even as I question the universal validity that has imperceptibly been ascribed to it in most historiographical research and, indeed, the validity of any such universality in general. What I propose is to turn the problem of totality into a conducting thread, an inquiring voice to be projected onto writings produced during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. How did they constitute totality? How did they imagine it? I must begin by evaluating the eruption of new discursive possibilities in the seventeenth century. My starting point is the philosophical writings of Ito Jinsai, whose intervention in the dominant discourse gave rise to these possi¬ bilities.

Rongo-kogi (The ancient meaning of the Analects), Moshi-kogi (The ancient meaning of the Men¬ cius), and Gomojigi (The words and meanings in the Analects and Mencius). 2Note that Foucault deliberately avoids equating the unity of discourse to that of “national” culture or a national language. See The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, 1973).

The Mode of Discursive Formation

25

Ito’s writings are concerned with changes occurring in the mode of discursive formation. By criticizing the established forms of philosophical and exegetic argument in his time, he attempted to reformulate the intertextual relationship between written texts and the reality for acting agents. The shift in intertextuality, indeed, entailed the destruction of the dominant conception of language, and through that destruction, Ito engaged himself in the inauguration of a new one. In this instance, by the conception of language I mean various differentiations, relations, and hierarchizations of philosophemes. So we will be able to analyze this shift only when we recognize those differentiations and other constituents of the shift and pay careful attention to how their interrelationships and the status of language in discourse were altered. It is particularly important in this regard that most of Ito’s writings criticized readings of the Chinese classics and the commen¬ taries of other Confucian scholars. As a Confucian, Ito articulated his own philosophical position through in¬ terpretation of the Chinese classics and his attempts to refute heretical doctrines, including Buddhism, Taoism, and Song rationalism. Without doubt, Song ra¬ tionalism was his major ideological enemy since he could not have put forth his own readings of the Chinese classics until he had first undermined the authen¬ ticity of the commentaries produced by the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, and other Confucian scholars of the so-called Zhu Xi school of thought, or Shushigaku (see 1-1 in the Appendix). What I regard as the coherent body of Ito’s “thought” or “philosophy,” cannot be discussed without reference to his approval and disapproval of theses or statements he quoted from the writings of those scholars. Ito’s “thought,” therefore, has to be sought, first of all, in a consideration of his statements about statements of others. He managed to express his own the¬ oretical position only against a background of others’ voices, and he wrote in constant dialogue with others. Only by identifying his affirmations and denials of others’ discourse can I possibly circumscribe a form of coherence in Ito Jinsai’s discourse. And I cannot assume that this coherence embodies a system that can be reduced to a set of mutually noncontradictory propositions. We must keep in mind that a statement quoted by him could function in his discourse differently from the way it does in the original. In addition, Ito made many statements about theses held by others which do not seem to be based upon any specific reference. For instance, he challenges Zhu Xi and the Cheng brothers extensively and argues emphatically against Zhu’s conception of the principle li. But the validity of his criticism is sometimes questionable since the many writings of Zhu Xi and the Cheng brothers offer a wide variety of reading possibilities—as the history of Confucianism in China from Song onward has shown. The problem of how and why Ito formulated his critique of Song rationalism cannot be attacked by reference to the Analects, the Mencius, or the Five Clas¬ sics; nor can it be dismissed by saying that, given the vast difference in social and historical background between China and Japan, Japanese Confucians at that

26

Silence at the Center

time simply could not understand what Zhu Xi originally meant. It encountered Chinese writings that were already covered with a thick sediment of interpreta¬ tion, and the accuracy of his critique is not at issue here. I am concerned to see how Ito presented Song rationalism in his writings and to locate the ruptures in the discursive space with which much of his argument seems to have been concerned. I want, that is, to see what sort of intertextual transmutation was at work in Ito’s critique of Song rationalism.

Intertextuality But before moving into a detailed reading of Ito’s writings, let me elucidate the term “intertextuality," which I use mainly in two ways. The primary understand¬ ing of this term derives from the awareness that no utterance takes place in a cultural vacuum. Besides linguistic and other institutional constraints that pene¬ trate and saturate the occasion of an utterance, the texts and words of others form an environment within which a text is produced. The accumulation of those texts and words into which an utterance is thrown is called the general text, and to produce a text is to implant a new utterance so as to effectuate a new arrangement of the general text. Thus, analysis of a text is a procedure of unbinding, through which the interaction of texts is revealed. Obviously, at this stage I limit myself to dealing with the interrelationships of various verbal texts, as did Mikhail Bakhtin, for instance, in his analysis of Dostoevsky’s poetics. Bakhtin’s approach led him to postulate the idea of the polyphonic novel, as opposed to the monologic novel in which the speeches of all the characters are reduced to objects of the single consciousness and in which the author’s sov¬ ereignty is affirmed. This idea of polyphony can be traced back to such early works as Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, but Bakhtin gave it the most explicit expression in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. “Dostoevsky’s novel,’’ he maintained, “is dialogical. It is not constructed as the entirety of a single consciousness which absorbs other consciousnesses as objects, but rather as the entirety of the interaction of several consciousnesses, of which no one fully becomes the object of any other one. This interaction does not assist the viewer to objectify the entire event in accordance with the ordinary monological pattern (thematically, lyrically, or cognitively), and as a consequence makes him a par¬ ticipant.”3 The idea of polyphony already sketches my perspective, in which history is understood as a locus where “we” meet, first, the other and, ultimately, the Other and where our discursive formation is questioned and put in jeopardy rather than affirmed in its exclusion of the Other. Bakhtin opened up the possibilities of seeing

3Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor Ardis 1973), p. 14.

The Mode of Discursive Formation

27

a text as an interaction of multiple voices. He did not conceive consciousness as an independent subject, as is clear from his characteristic conception of monologue as a variation of dialogue. What was disclosed by his juxtaposition of monologism and dialogism is the ideological implication of the monologic discursive forma¬ tion, in which a speaker is impelled to integrate speeches of the others without being affected by them. In monologism, the heterogeneous is repressed, with the consequence of reducing the Other to the other. What takes place concurrently in this formula is the elimination of the Other from the “us,” thereby rendering the “us” a pure ability to objectify, an ability never to be dislocated. The author’s consciousness is thus made sovereign, and through monologic discourse it is equated to a transcendental subject and insists upon the objectification of other consciousnesses. Always, subjective identity is stressed in defiance of the con¬ stant opportunity, bestowed by the others and in the Other, to decenter itself. Because of its pervasiveness, monologic discourse may appear neutral and inno¬ cent; in fact, however, it is a historical construct that generates a certain power relationship. More precisely, monologism is less a reflection of a power rela¬ tionship than a form in which a power is effectuated. It is by acknowledging this effect that the term “intertextuality” has been brought forward. Through the dramatization of the ambiguous status of writing in various historical stages, Julia Kristeva develops the notion of an intertextual relationship out of polyphony.4 The notion of intertextuality further articulates the dialogical structure of a text to the extent that plurality, not only of different voices but also of different modes of utterance, is taken into account in the analysis of a text. This is to say that a text is viewed as containing texts. In addition to direct citations of other texts, the intertextual analysis of the text in question reveals the degree to which the production of meaning depends on the transcription of others’ phonetic utterances. From this viewpoint, Kristeva ana¬ lyzes historical texts and tries to define the historical specificity of textual pro¬ duction. Underlying this approach would seem to be the premise that the text is always situated within history and society, but the notion of “history and society” as an environment that is supposed to have existed at the time of the text’s enunciation 4For example, Kristeva describes the emergence of the novel in Le texte du roman (The Hague: Mouton, 1970): “Therefore, the extreme valorization of writing is accompanied by censure: when one writes, one presents oneself as speaking; when one has finished writing, one is able to say ‘it has been done.’ The verb ‘write’ could belong only to the past: it marks a terminated production, a finished work. One does not write, one can only have written. To contemplate the written is to contemplate death. Once again, the kinship of writing with the tomb is manifested in a striking manner” (p. 141), and “The novel, which will impose the notion of ‘literature’ on modernity to the extent that it takes it over,, will borrow the fetishization of the finished object, of the explained truth, and of composition from the medieval concept of writing. It will mix vocal discourse (profane literature), on the one hand, and curbed space (volume against line), on the other, and attempt by these two methods to combat the linearity and univocity of the epic (of the symbol) in the interior of expressivity (of the book as the double of the idea, of writing as representation)” (pp. 145— 46). Historiography as 1 engage in it here is not free from this historicity of modem “literature.”

28

Silence at the Center

remains undefinably abstract and open to arbitrariness. Thus, following Bakhtin, Kristeva instead postulates history and society as texts against which a new text is produced. “The only way a writer can participate in history is by transgressing this abstraction (linear history) through a process of reading-writing, that is, through the practice of a signifying structure in relation or opposition to another structure. History and morality are written and read within the infrastructure of texts.”5 The position of a text is thus defined in history, but the production of a text in history does not mean harmonious juxtaposition of a text with other texts. A verbal text always exists within a given situation; a text of any sort is inscribed in a materiality. As a materiality, it coexists with the heterogeneous that would variously be articulated as the text is further determined in signification. In talking about intertextuality, however, I do not refer to the kind of materiality that has often been ascribed to matter or material objects. If textual materiality is simply taken to denote an old and conventional concept of matter, a text’s relationship to other materials and other texts would be extrinsic and charac¬ terized only as “part outside part.” It would give the somewhat misleading idea that materiality could be isolated from the text, as the material body is fantasized as separable from the existence of a person. It is impossible to analyze a text’s intertextual dependence upon other texts at this level, however, since “part outside part” signifies the absence of such an intertextual rapport. One thing should be clear: textual materiality is not an animated being in any sense, but it is not stasis either. We assume certain mobility in textual materiality from our inability to conceive of a text outside such acts as speaking, listening, writing, reading, seeing, drawing, and so on. Yet, textual materiality is not that which preserves, maintains, and registers the identity of the text even when it is not spoken, listened to, written, read, and so on—that is, when it is not being actualized. Must I then appeal to the presence of some constituting consciousness or some transcendental ego for which the text is posited as such? Must I resort to the presence of some consciousness to make sense of a text devoid of the scene of addressing, devoid of the addresser and addressee? In other words, must I ground the textuality of the text on some constituting subjectivity, which, of ontological necessity, is a priori to the text? One of the reasons for introducing the terms “text” and “intertextuality” is to reverse the order of subjectivity and various inscriptions so as to question our persistent obsession, whose most elaborate expression can be found in what is often referred to as the ideology of constructive subjectivity. “Text” and “inter-

5Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 65. I have a strong reservation about Kristeva’s notion of transgression, which seems to be based on a rather reified notion of the norm and which might easily be recuperated. It is much like the institution of confession, which depicts transgression in order to authorize the norm that is transgressed. As to materiality, see her article Matiere, sens, dialectique, in Polylogue (Paris: Seuil, 1977), pp. 263-86.

The Mode of Discursive Formation

29

textuality” are conceptual devices by which to deal with the problems of subjec¬ tivity without totally succumbing to this ideology. With a view to relating the shift of a system of signs to another system and to understanding the transformation of subjectivity, Kristeva reasserts the Lacanian thesis that every enunciation generates a rupture and posits the subject and its object. This rupture that produces the position of signification is called a thetic {shudai-teki) phase, and every enunciation is thetic, requiring the separation of the subject and the object.6 Within the scope of the terminology I have adopted, the shift of a system of signs to another system can be described as a transformation of the thetic posi¬ tion, that is, the destruction of the old system and the formation of a new one. Kristeva argues: A new signifying system can be produced in the same signifying material [materiau signifiant]: for example, in language, a shift can occur from narration to text; but it can be adopted from a different signifying material: for example, a shift can occur from the camivalesque scene to the written text. In this respect, we have studied the formation of the romanesque signifying system as a result of the redistribution of many systems of different signs: carnival, poesie courtoise, and scholastic dis¬ course. The term intertextuality designates this transposition of a (or many) sys¬ tem^) of signs onto another; but since this term has often been understood in the banal sense of “critique of sources” of a text, we rather prefer the term “transposi¬ tion,” which has the advantage of expressing precisely that the shift of a signifying system to another requires a new articulation of the thetic—of enunciative and denotative positionality. If one admits that every signifying practice is a field of transposition of various systems (intertextuality), one understands that its “place” of enunciation and its denoted “object” are never unique, full, and identical unto themselves but rather that they are always plural, tom apart, and susceptible to tabular models.7

The term “intertextuality,” therefore, helps discover the modes in which the subject is constituted. As a matter of fact, it implies that the new position of the

6See Julia Kristeva, La revolution du langage poetique (Paris: Seuil, 1974), pp. 41-42. Shudaiteki employs one of the Japanese terms for “subject”. In modem Japanese intellectual discourse the term “subject” is translated as shugo for the grammatical or the propositional subject; shukan for the epistemological subject; shudai for the thematic or thetic subject; and shutai for the subject of acting, sometimes implying the body that initiates or leads the action. These differentiations, however, are not stable and defining the interrelations among those four “subjects” leads to linguistically and philosophically complicated problems about subjectivity. I attempt to delineate the economy of the “subjects” in this book by paying special attention to the ways these subjects have been operative in modem Japanese philosophy. This, however, does not mean that I am particularly interested in the analysis of “Japanese ways of thinking,” because the problems of subjectivity posed by Japanese philosophers are not specifically Japanese. It goes without saying that one of the purposes of this book is to show on theoretical grounds the fragility of culturalistic categorization. 7Ibid., pp. 59-60.

30

Silence at the Center

subject is always rendered possible intertextually and, therefore, that retro¬ spective analysis illustrates the discursive formation against which the new sub¬ ject is brought into being, that is, into effect. At the risk of redundancy, I say that the term “text” embraces much more than the written document. The text is an ensemble of inscriptions governed by signifying systems. Here I would like to introduce the second major notion of intertextuality used in this book. The distinction between the first and the second, which is problematic at the very least, I shall dwell on later. The term “intertextuality” can, I believe, relieve us of the constraints imposed by the reflection theory. In past historical studies, the scheme of reflection has been utilized loosely; often theories based on reflection were put forth as positive proposals, and even more often, in one form or another, this scheme impercepti¬ bly seeped into the tissue of historiography. It seems to me that in almost all these cases the necessity for this scheme arose from the inability of historians to explicate possible relationships between those aspects of the general text that can be construed firsthand in terms of signification (such as legal documents, folktales, and classic books) and the other aspects of it (such as paintings, tools, and architecture), which are illegible unless they are first denoted. Because of the narrowness of the conventional notion of the text and also because the text is presumed to be related to what is outside it by reflection, both conscious and unconscious adherents of the reflection scheme have no option but to see a verbal text as reflecting what is outside it. But reflection is merely one of many different ways or regimes by which a text is related to the exterior. There is no universal and singular way in which a text relates itself to its others. Instead, as is indicated by changes in intertextuality, a text’s possible relationship to what is outside it varies. Reflection appears universal only in a historically specific discourse that I think we are moving away from. Thus the term “intertextuality” can be instru¬ mental in historicizing discursive formations and in comprehending, for in¬ stance, Ito’s struggles to open up different ways of utterance and action in the reading of the classics.

A Departure I must seek to understand the intertextual conditions that enabled Ito Jinsai to adopt certain interpretations of the Chinese writings and to reject others, and I must also assess how this choice of a reading strategy accorded with the forma¬ tion of the philosophemes he put forth. Ito’s critique of Song rationalism cannot be understood as merely the further elaboration of a thought system called Confucianism. Ito made no attempt to improve the already established understanding of Confucianism by means of minor changes and emendations. Instead, he posited a gap between himself and the Song Confucians; he declared the falsity of what they considered the most

The Mode of Discursive Formation

31

authentic reading of the classics; he proposed a fundamental change in the way Confucian canonical writings should be read. He himself believed his rereading of the classics was revolutionary, not reformist. If we accept the view that any theoretical criticism of established ideas must be based upon a certain sphere of evidence, namely, the source of truth to which all appeals for legitimacy must ultimately be made, then it is obvious that Ito’s critique did not share the same sphere of evidence as that used by the rationalists (rigaku-sha, 1-2). Ito’s attempt to revolutionize Confucianism was accompanied by and accorded with a general shift in the economy of discursive formation. It is noteworthy that his refusal of the Cheng-Zhu conception of li (1—3), was coordinated with an appeal to a new sphere of evidence. It is not surprising in the context of exegetic strategies that this shift amounted to an alteration of the canon: from the Four Books and the Five Classics to the Three Books (Daxue was dropped) and the Five or Six Classics.8 This may not appear to be so drastic a change as that carried out by Ogyu Sorai, but it is significant in the sense that the mode of reading changed as authenticity was removed from one set of writings and placed on another. Of course, Ito’s alteration of the canon was hardly an isolated event. As we shall see, the writers of the eighteenth century repeatedly altered the canon in order to advance their own theoretical positions, and the choice of canon provided the focus for an articulation of their philosophical discourse. Ito’s alteration of the canon was an essential part of his effort to open up new universes of utterance and perception, to escape the discursive space in which he had been trapped. Yet what, then, is the significance of this discontinuity he posited between his own discourse and Song rationalism? What kind of relation is there between the discontinuity thus posed and the choice of canonical writings? According to Ito, “Song Confucians ... do not know that the Way of Yao, Shun, and Confucius lies entirely in ordinary life and everyday conduct.”9 This statement can also be found in writings dated to Ito’s later years. Because Ito Jinsai reviewed and reformulated his treatises many times in the course of his career, Japanese scholars have found it extremely difficult to identify the most “mature” and, therefore, “final” version of his philosophy.10 Be that as it may, one thing is certain: like many Confucian scholars of the time, he experienced a radical rupture between his early and later “thought,” and the statement I have

8These are references to the basic texts of Confucianism. The Four Books are Daxue (The great learning), Zhong yong (The doctrine of the mean), Lun yu {Analects) and Mengzu (Mencius). The Five Classics are Yi jing (The book of changes), Li ji (The book of rites), Shi jing (The book of odes), Shujing (The book of documents), and Chun qiu (The spring and autumn annals). Together with The book of music, which is not extant, these books are sometimes called the Six Classics. The Five Classics were the basic texts of Confucianism in China until the time of Zhu Xi, who placed the utmost importance on the Four Books. These were treated as the basic textbooks for the civil service examination in China. 9Ito Jinsai, Jinsai nissatsu, in Nihon rinri ihen, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Ikuseikai, 1908), p. 177. l0See Miyake.Masahiko, “Jinsai-gaku no keisei,” Shirin 48, no. 5 (1965); and Noguchi Takehiko, “Kugigaku teki hoho no seiritsu,” Bungaku 23, nos. 7, 8, and 9 (1968): 1-11, 62-76, 96-113.

32

Silence at the Center

quoted is, indeed, characteristic of his so-called later thought. He repeatedly declared that Song Confucians knew only abstract ideas and sophisticated discus¬ sion; they manipulated complex and refined arguments, but they did not realize how empty their words were. According to Ito, Song Confucians knew how to investigate books in order to discover principle, how to be reverent (kei, jing, 14)11 and righteous (gi, yi, 1-5), and how to discipline themselves, but their teachings lacked what he perceived to be essential: the quality that made learning real (jitsu, shi, 1-6). However theologically profound and religiously solemn one might be, nothing would be accomplished if all those ideas that were so highly respected could not be put into practice. The final arena where philosophy is to be judged is not some remote and exclusive realm that ordinary people cannot reach but everyday life, an arena saturated with quotidian trivialities. Thus Ito attempted to locate the sphere of “nearness” in the center of his philoso¬ phy.

The Notions of Sincerity and Hypocrisy Ito’s argument could be summarized as a critique of hypocrisy and the emptiness of the abstract theological system. The discordance between the words of the Song rationalists and the reality Ito perceived is clearly revealed by his argument: “Those rationalists preached to people about what to do while they had no hope of practicing it themselves. Or even if they had practiced it, nobody could have failed to recognize the oddity and inhumaneness of their conduct.”12 Does this statement imply that his critique was directed at a certain class or group of people who actually practiced Song rationalism? Was Song rationalism widely practiced in Tokugawa polity at that time? Would the rationalists indeed have looked odd if they had actually put Zhu Xi’s teachings into action? It seems likely that the followers of Shushigaku (Zhu Xi’s school of thought) were rather rare at the time.13 Song rationalism was neither the official ideology of the dominant political authority nor the practice of any significant social group. For this reason alone, it would seem that no attempt to read Ito’s critique merely as a covert attack on the contemporary establishment can approach an 1 'The first term in parentheses is Japanese, the second Chinese. The number refers to the ideogram given in the Appendix. I2Ito, Jinsai nissatsu, p. 177. 13As recent scholarship has demonstrated, it is very doubtful that Cheng-Zhu rationalism was adopted as the orthodox ideology by the Tokugawa shogunate. See Bito Masahide, Nihon hoken shiso-shi kenkyu (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1961), and Herman Ooms Tokugawa Ideology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). All the problems concerning Shushigaku as the shogunate ide¬ ology seem to stem from the mishandling of the intertextual distance, which has been automatically translated into either historical distance or the distance between social groups. I do not claim that orthodox ideology and ideological distance between social classes or social groups are not involved, but I simply cannot reduce textual formation to social and economic formation. The power rela¬ tionship in the society is constituted in the text, and not vice versa.

The Mode of Discursive Formation

33

understanding of the social and political implications of Ito’s study of Confucian classics. But I also believe that no text should be read as a reflection of extratextual reality. Strictly speaking, the very question of how a written text might have been pre-determined by the economic and social formation of society must be disallowed if we admit—as I believe we must—that what has been perceived as extratextual reality consists entirely of a set of texts. Of course, reality is posited as if it were somewhere outside the text, independent of all signifiers, or a meaning without inscription. In the final analysis, however, this kind of common sense must be considered an idealist fancy, the very sort of idealism Ito crit¬ icized. I maintain that texts generate reality, but not the reverse—provided, of course, that the word “text” is read with theoretical understanding that the text necessarily encompasses “the referents”: the relationship to the referents is inter¬ nal to the text. Ito’s critique of Song rationalism opened up a field of perception in which the rationalists, who had previously seemed normal and respectable, came to appear as Ito described them, abnormal and odd. Ito talks about this very process in his description of some followers of Song rationalism who finally came to Kyoto to attend his lecture and reached a sudden realization that “transcendentalism” inherent in Zhu Xi’s teaching would only lead people to stubbornness and social isolation. But is this an account proper to Zhu Xi’s teaching? If it is, in what sense is it so? If not, in what sense is it not? Can we possibly maintain that Zhu’s discourses show no concern for life’s mundane trivia. (This is intertextuality of the first kind, namely, among written texts.) By analyzing the mode of dependence of Ito’s discourse on others, I hope to trace the intertextuality present in his critique of the discursive space from which he fled.14 I simply cannot agree with Ito that Zhu Xi neglected mundane things and concrete social relations with others. Zhu constantly emphasized the importance of everyday life; one of the books he edited is titled Reflections on Things at FI and. Moreover, Zen Buddhism, which Ito also bitterly criticized, was no

,4It is first of all intertextual distance that enabled Ito to criticize the Cheng-Zhu formation of discourse. This distance is not necessarily historical since the presence of Cheng-Zhu writings in Ito’s time generated the necessity for such a critique. Neither is it primarily a distance between one social group and another, although it could function as a means by which one social group identified itself in opposition to another. Perhaps, the use of the term “intertextuality” might be emphasized once again. La langue precedes le parole. But the mode of this precedence cannot be confused with temporal ordering. As has been formulated by Kant, this problem is essentially that of de jure not de facto. If we still maintain that historical knowledge belongs to the de facto sphere, the relationship between parole and langue certainly defies any discussion of the truth of fact. Jonathan Culler writes: “Intertextuality thus becomes less a name for a work’s relation to particular prior texts than a designation of its participation in the discursive space of a culture: the relationship between a text and the various languages or signifying practices of a culture and its relation to those texts which articulate for it the possibilities of that culture” (The Pursuit of Signs [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980], p. 103). It is important to stress that intertextuality can never be reduced to a rela¬ tionship between one book and another.

34

Silence at the Center

different from Song rationalism in this regard. Both of these teachings held paramount the notion that philosophical ideas should never be uprooted from the sphere of “nearness,” where one encounters things and people in everyday life. As a matter of fact, crude transcendentalism had never been accepted as a form of discourse either in Confucianism or Zen Buddhism. It is likely, therefore, that what had once been new and mundane for Zhu Xi and some Buddhists whose works Ito read was so no longer: their sphere of nearness had been replaced by a new perception of nearness. Things and human activities that had never been present in discourse prior (prior in the intertextual order) to the late seventeenth century now demanded inclusion in the presentation of basic Confucian values. Ito pointed to an encounter of different regimes of action and perception. This is the significance of Ito’s critique of rationalism: not only is the rela¬ tionship of Ito Jinsai to Zhu Xi and other Song Confucians discontinuous, but also his critique of Zhu Xi was actually a way to articulate what had hitherto been inexpressible in his time. Many of the basic philosophemes were so organized as to indicate the location of the negative pole, which he associated with Zhu Xi or Song rationalism. In this respect, Zhu’s writings played an essential role; without them it would have been impossible for Ito to construct his argument. So, in view of the shift of the sphere of nearness, how am I to evaluate the discontinuity he dramatized by distancing himself from the hypocrisy of “rationalists”? For a term to play an important role in a supposedly unified field of discourse (a book, a work, a set of works, a group of works belonging to the putative unity of an author), it must be well incorporated into the network of differentiations that govern the field of discourse. What endows such a term with a function and makes it effective in organizing a series of arguments is its relatedness to the economy of a discursive space. “Term,” in this context, does not necessarily mean a work or a morphological unit whose identity depends on the structure of language (langue). It should rather be described as a complex, a discursive unit, which consists of interchangeable sets of words or expressions. In other words, it belongs not to the order of language but to that of discourse. Hypocrisy, as it appears in Ito’s writings, is a complex of this kind, and analysis of it should lead us to an overview of the intertextual relationship between his and Zhu Xi’s discourses. The term “hypocrisy” as repeatedly evoked in Ito’s discourse neces¬ sarily involves a discourse outside Ito’s own, as is obvious from its connotation; its function is to separate, to distance his discourse from what it criticizes and reproaches. It differentiates one form of life from another, elevates one as sincere and degrades another as false or, more precisely, hypocritical. Yet by emphasiz¬ ing this distinction, it nonetheless relates one to the other; it is an intertextual device, a sort of one-sided linkage bridging one form of life and another. In the meantime, we must be aware that the term “hypocrisy” cannot denote the divided consciousness we would customarily associate with it today. This denotation is even less plausible if we recognize that Ito generated a new struc¬ ture of thought in which, for the first time, hypocrisy as divided consciousness

The Mode of Discursive Formation

35

was endowed with its own voice and space for legitimate expression. Of course, the expression of hypocrisy became detectable as the result of a discursive transformation, and the critique of the “rationalists” was, after all, a discursive event. Ironically enough, the critique of hypocrisy also played an important role in Zhu Xi’s philosophy. Zhu Xi seemed to offer a much clearer definition of it than Ito, partly because of the dualistic formation of his arguments. Remnants of Zhu Xi’s binary system can be detected in one of the essays normally attributed to Ito Jinsai’s earlier years, when he was still operating in the language of Song ra¬ tionalism: In the Way of students, nothing precedes the establishment of sincerity [sei, cheng, 1-7] [in oneself], nothing is more essential than sincerity. Unless one is sincere, one would never be able to exhaust one’s own nature in following the Way. Hence the teaching of Confucius regards loyalty and trust [chushin, zhong xin] as the central issue and the establishment of sincerity as the root of ascetic practice. . . .The Doctrine of the Mean says, “Sincerity is the Way of heaven. To make [it] sincere15 is the Way of men. Sincerity is that which is real without vacuity [kyo, xu, 1-8], is that which is true without fabrication [ka, jia,]. This is what makes the sages as they are.” “To make it sincere” is to be entirely real by getting rid of vacuity and to seek truth by abandoning fabrication. This is what students should do. Once students have successfully achieved this, they are identical to the sages. When this is talked about from the viewpoint of students, however, one cannot acquire sincerity unless one maintains it through reverence.16

It is not difficult to see that this argument is constructed on the basis of the binary oppositions real/vacuous and true/fabricated, in which the real and the true are associated with nature (sei, xing, 1-10) and the vacuous and the fabri¬ cated are veils that prevent nature from manifesting itself clearly and ex¬ haustively. At this stage, Ito defined sincerity as one’s relatedness without any obstruction to the world in which nature was revealed. Those who constantly maintained such relatedness were called sages, and those who could realize it only momentarily were called students. Thus in regard to nature a student and a sage were not different, but in regard to the endurance of nature they were. Of

15Literally translated, this phrase means “to render what can be sincere sincere.” “What can be sincere” is not specified, and I rather avoid substituting “the self” or “one’s mind” because the separation of the self from the world is nothing but what Ito called fabrication, or an absence of sincerity. The entire passage in Zhong yong from which Ito’s quotation is drawn is as follows: “Sincerity is the Way of heaven. The realization of sincerity is the Way of men. He who is sincere is he who, without an effort, hits what is right and apprehends without the exercise of thought; —he is the sage who naturally and easily practices the right way. He who realizes sincerity is he who chooses what is good, and firmly holds it fast.” Zhong yong, Shinshaku kanbun taikei (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1967), 2:275. 16Ito Jinsai, “Risshijikei no setsu,” Kogaku sensei bunshu, in Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 33 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1971), p. 211.

36

Silence at the Center

course, the theme running through the entirety of this article was the doctrine of inherently good human nature (seizensetsu, xingshan-shuo, 1-11) as it was interpreted in Song rationalism. If we were to define the term “hypocrisy” within this system of binary oppositions, the only form its theoretical specifica¬ tion could take would be the deviation from one’s own nature or, more specifical¬ ly, from the universal human nature innate in oneself. That is, when one deviated from one’s own nature, one would be called a hypocrite. But as Ito underwent a radical change, the theoretical significance of the term would be altered and the doctrine of inherently good human nature, accordingly, would take on a different theoretical articulation.

The Status of Thinghood In order to comprehend the significance of the discontinuity and the radical change Ito underwent, we must first analyze how that binary system was related to other philosophemes in Song rationalism. How were these binary divisions an obstacle in articulating the sphere of nearness when the supposed authority of discursive space was challenged? There are some important but ambiguous words in Zhu Xi’s writings. Wu (mono, 1-12) is one that plays an important yet extremely problematical role not only in Zhu Xi’s discourse but also in Ogyu Sorai’s (although Ogyu’s use of it is vastly different). For both, the ambiguity of this term tends to designate the boundary between what could be explicitly demonstrated in language and what could not. According to Zhu Xi’s primary explication, wu is the locus where further conceptual articulation could be pursued. For instance, it is in relation to wu that the differentiation between li and qi (ki, 1-13) was posited. Interestingly enough, this explication implies that it is impossible to pinpoint the signifier and its unity in the form of “what it is.” Hence, “thing” (wu) is primarily a place of differentiation, not of identity. The only possible way we could tackle this term is to describe it with a diacritical definition, as a part of philosophemes related to what is necessarily excluded, that is, of the heterogeneous. Zhu talked about the two principal terms, li and qi, as distinctively different. At the same time, the two are supposedly present within things when they are seen from the viewpoint of their participation in wu. Moreover, as far as li’s participation in things is concerned, it is impossible to determine which of the two, li or wu, precedes the other. Li should be immanent in things, and it seems that the presence of li is dependent on the presence of things, but Zhu Xi also affirmed that li exists prior to the moment when the things in which li is to manifest itself are made to exist: “What exists before physical form [and is therefore without it] constitutes the Way. What exists after physical form [and is therefore with it] constitutes concrete things.” Although the differentiation be¬ tween “above-form” (keijijo, xing er shang, 1-14), and “under-form” (keijika,

The Mode of Discursive Formation

37

xing er xia, 1-15), is associated in this translation with temporal ordering, before and after, it also has a non-temporal dimension, for at the end of the same paragraph we find the following statement: “So long as the Way obtains, it does not matter whether it is present or future or whether it is the self or others.”17 In one aspect, li precedes things, but in another, it does not. The relationship between li and wu is discussed in terms of temporal precedence as well as in terms that are basically atemporal. What is at issue is the nature of the differentia¬ tions by which li is constitutively identified. In fact, one passage in Reflections on Things at Hand illustrates the principle of differentiation according to which li is articulated in opposition to other terms: “According to the principle of heaven and earth and all things, nothing exists in isolation but everything necessarily has its opposite. All this is naturally so and is not arranged or manipulated. I often think of this at midnight and feel as happy as if I were dancing with my hands and feet.”18 Zhu himself claimed that this statement by Cheng Yi, which he incorporated into the system of his philosophy, was to be based on differences. Once viewed from this standpoint, the seeming contradictions that we have encountered in his writings soon dissolve. Li and qi are not two principles that constitute reality in the same way as forma and materia. What has to be acknowledged is that any datum can be construed in terms of its meaning and the surplus of its meaning. In any thing there can be a distinction between what linguistic explication can identify in it and what lan¬ guage as narrowly defined cannot exhaust. In the case of a physical object, a chair for example, the word “chair” certainly identifies this or that physical entity, but its individual existence can never be fully absorbed into the linguistic explication. One may describe this particular chair in more detail, but doing so leads only to the discovery of its more detailed individual characteristics. This is an essential aspect of referential signification-objectification, which posits the relationship of adequacy between the subject in judgment and the individual as an object for the subject. Yet, as can be seen, the subject can never be identical with the individual, for the individual always transcends the subject: the actual presence of an individual thing necessarily exceeds its meaning so that it can never be exhaustively subsumed under the subject. Perhaps, this problem can be clarified by introducing a term for a specific kind of subject. Tentatively, the subject is shugo insofar as it signifies the subject of a proposition or statement. This shugo-subject is a word, a nominal phrase, or even a nominal clause, and it can also be a proper noun. Distinct from this shugosubject is the individual thing the shugo-subject designates. In response to the question What is that thing? posed by someone who points to a thing, one might 17Zhu Xi, Kinshiroku, in Shushigaku taikei (Tokyo: Meitoku Shuppan-sha, 1974), 9:35. Part of the English translation was adapted from Reflections on Things at Hand, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967). 18Ibid., p. 38.

38

Silence at the Center

Figure A. Rene Magritte, Les Deux Mysteres, 1966. Copyright 1991 Charly Herscovici/ARS, N.Y.

answer, “That is . . . Here, the object pointed out is the individual thing, and the word “that” in the answer, which takes the form of statement, is a shugosubject. Obviously the shugo-subject indicates the individual thing. Yet, as this example shows, we cannot overlook that the shugo-subject belongs to the regis¬ ter of words, whereas the individual thing belongs to the register of things. Except in cases where these two registers are confused (See figure A, Les Deux Mysteres), the shugo-subject and the individual thing it indicates are infinitely separated; the individual thing is infinitely transcendent with respect to the shugo-subject. There seems no way to exhaustively subsume an individual thing under a shugo-subject. In other words, to say a subject adequately expresses an individual is to repress what cannot be designated in that individual, to repress its surplus. Hence, necessarily, to find a meaning in some datum is to introduce the differentiation between what the meaning can denote and what escapes the mean¬ ing. Li could then be associated with an aspect of things which linguistic explica¬ tion is capable of identifying, and qi with the residue or surplus beyond this linguistic explication.

The Mode of Discursive Formation

39

Then it may appear that the differentiation li/wu corresponds to that between the signified and the signifier. Before adopting such interpretative terminology, however, I should circumscribe the area in which its use is justified. Otherwise, its application would generate unnecessary and irrelevant problems in the course of my analysis. First, the li/wu differentiation is not limited to the area of linguistic signs. In Zhu’s discourse it is impossible to find any criterion by which to distinguish between areas of linguistic and nonlinguistic phenomena. Although Ferdinand de Saussure seems to suggest that the pair, signifier and signified, should be incor¬ porated into a much wider field of study than linguistics, the primary definition he gives these concepts is linguistic. By contrast, Zhu Xi’s differentiation is ontie, in the sense that it should be valid for any phenomenon in the world. It is “the principle of heaven and earth and all things.” The ontie character of this differentiation is of particular significance for us since it implies that the status of language in Zhu’s universe is fundamentally different from that in modem lin¬ guistics. Especially important in this regard is that the absence of a distinction between the linguistic and the nonlinguistic suggests that li is not only the meaning of things but also the meaning of manner and behavior. Zhu Xi talks about dressing, eating, and behavior as event-things.19 As a thing is the location for li, so an event-thing accommodates li, and li thus incarnated in the eventthing is also called the Way. It is not only a basic unit of meaning that is morphologically defined but also a semantic unity constituted syntagmatically. So, in order to explicate how language, things, and texts are mutually related and sometimes fused and how they differ from one another (or they do not differ) in his discourse, I must inquire into the concepts li and qi in relation to the question of signification. With regard to the mode of presence, it could be claimed the li and qi are simultaneous. Only when qi is present is li also present. Likewise qi manifests itself in the present only if li does. Therefore, li and qi are mutually dependent. But there is an aspect in which li precedes qi. Since qi is identified in terms of what escapes the meaning of a thing, qi cannot determine itself. It is always defined as the residue or surplus of meaning. In this particular sense, qi is dependent on li. Only when a thing is associated with li does qi gain its on¬ tological status. Li is not prior to qi temporally but precedes qi logically. In addition, li’s immanence in a thing as its meaning indicates that it is impossible to talk about the “when” of li. As it transcends the individuality of things, li also transcends the act of presenting. We may easily be drawn into the view that li is, after all, that which consciousness projects onto a thing and, therefore, that li is constituted by the synthetic function of epistemological consciousness, but this is certainly not the case here. Li cannot be reduced to the act of presenting con¬ sciousness. Nonetheless, li maintains its transcendent character. Just as one l9For instance, Zhu Xi, Yu lei, vol. 62 (no modem edition available).

40

Silence at the Center

cannot in destroying a chair also annihilate its meaning, li seems to be indifferent to accidental change that occurs in things. It is simply impossible to say when li emerges or disappears. Obviously the li/qi differentiation is, at the same time, the differentiation between the atemporal and the temporal. What is meant by the statement just quoted—“it does not matter whether it is present or future”—is not that li is the eternal presence of the principle. It should rather indicate that li is the ideational and atemporal aspect of reality, realitas. This understanding of li, in turn, enables us to define qi as the presence of what in fact can never be objectified or identified. For this reason, Zhu Xi attributed the existence of actual things to qi. Also for this reason, qi is always viewed as the cause of deviation from the ideational intentionality, from li toward wu. Zhu Xi stated: “Where there is no thing, there is no li. Similarly, li can only exist in the middle of qi. Without qi, li would have no residence.”20 Insofar as qi is equated with the horizon for li, qi can never be identified explicitly. As soon as it received a definite meaning, it would lose its ontological status as qi. The fate of qi is to reside only in the periphery of li’s ideational intentionality, but this same fate makes it possible for qi to become a fertile material realm for individuation, the contingency of the present, and the deviation from essences. Hence, li and qi are in a dialectical relationship in which li functions as a principle of universaliza¬ tion, whereas qi seems to designate that which slides away from the effect of universalization. (Nevertheless, it should be remembered that qi is not the princi¬ ple of particularization since the particular is possible only as a type of the universal: individuation and particularization should never be confused with each other.) Essentially, qi must be grasped as the principle of individuality. According to Zhu Xi, the ideational intentionality of li is something that has to be initiated by the self, or one’s mind (jikashin, zi jia xin, 1-16), and this self belongs to qi. Although the self’s capacity, or mind (shin, xin, 1-17), to give rise to the ideational intentionality, does not necessarily belong to qi, the ideational intentionality itself must be initiated in qi.21 Where it fuses with the inten20Ibid., vol. 1. 2'Edmund Husserl explains the term ideation = essential insight in Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. F. Kersten, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983): “At first “essence” designates what is to be found in the very own being of an individuum as the What of an individuum. Any such What can, however, be ‘put into an idea.' Experiencing, intuition of something individual can become transmuted into eidetic seeing (‘ide¬ ation)’ a possibility which is itself to be understood not as empirical, but as eidetic. What is seen when that occurs is the corresponding pure essence, or Eidos, whether it be the highest category or a particularization thereof—down to full concretion” (p. 8). And he says: “The essence (Eidos) is a new sort of object. Just as the datum of individual or experiencing intuition is an individual object, so the datum of eidetic intuition is a pure essence” (p. 11). Husserl talks about the ideality of language in general in Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978): “Let us note concerning the topic speech a certain distinction that we must not overlook. The uttered word, the actually spoken locution, taken as a sensuous, specifically an acoustic, phenomenon, is something that we distinguish from the word itself or the declarative sentence itself, or the sentence-sequence itself that makes up a more extensive locution. Not without reason—in cases where we have not been understood and we reiterate—do we

The Mode of Discursive Formation

41

tionality of action is in fact the central locus of his theoretical construction. Since, as we have already noted, there is no distinction between the linguistic and the nonlinguistic in Zhu’s discourse, there is no conceptual device by which to differentiate the temporalities of action and thinking. The aim of an action is posited on the same level as the meaning of a thing; the intentionality of knowing as the mind’s act is incorporated into the intentionality of signification. Zhu Xi recommends that his students repeat their reading of the classics until the mean¬ ing inherent in them becomes completely obvious. The textuality of the classics would then be transparent, so that the meaning would be revealed without a veil. The differentiation between transparence and opacity is thus related to that be¬ tween li and wu. The transition from opacity to transparence is now viewed as a learning process in which one gradually casts aside qi and reveals li. In this regard, the li/qi differentiation provides learning with its goal and starting point. What had originally been posited as an atemporal diacritical division is now deployed through the temporal duration of learning in which one gradually proceeds toward the complete revelation of li. Learning, therefore, is a move¬ ment toward an approximation of li, whose duration is sustained by repetitive action.22 Since learning is accomplished through the repetition of patterned behavior, through habit formation, what has been characterized as the ideational and atem¬ poral aspect of li is translated into the possibility that li could be repeatedly presented without losing its identity. At first, li is covered with qi, and li does not manifest itself. In the same way, when a mirror is covered with impurities, an image cannot be reflected; the vision is blurred and opaque. One has to submit

speak precisely of a reiteration of the same words and sentences. In a treatise or a novel every word, every sentence, is a one-time affair, which does not become multiplied by a reiterated vocal or silent reading. Nor does it matter who does the reading; though each reader has his own voice, his own timbre, and so forth. The treatise itself (taken now only in its lingual aspect, as composed of words or language) is something that we distinguish, not only from the multiplicities of vocal reproduction, but also, and in the same manner, from the multiplicities of its permanent documentations by paper and print, parchment and handwriting, or the like. The one unique language-composition is reproduced a thousand times, perhaps in book form: We speak simply of the same book with the same story, the same treatise. And this self-sameness obtains even with respect to the purely lingual composition: while, in another manner, it obtains also with respect to the sharply distinguishable significational contents, which we shall shortly take into account. “As a system of habitual signs, which, within an ethnic community, arises, undergoes transforma¬ tion, and persists in the manner characteristic of tradition—a system of signs by means of which, in contrast to signs of other sorts, an expressing of thoughts comes to pass—language presents al¬ together its own problems. One of them is the just-encountered ideality of language, which is usually quite overlooked. We may characterize it also in this fashion: Language has the Objectivity proper to the objectivities making up the so-called spiritual (geistige) or cultural world, not the Objectivity proper to bare physical Nature. As an objective product of minds, language has the same properties as other mental products: Thus we also distinguish from the thousand reproductions of an engraving, the engraving itself; and this engraving, the engraved picture itself, is visually abstracted from each reproduction, being given in each, in the same manner as an identical object” (pp. 19-20). 22Yasuda Jiro, “Shushi ni okeru shukan no mondai,” in Chugoku kinseishiso kenkyu (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1948), pp. 98-121.

42

Silence at the Center

oneself to a patterned action repeatedly to achieve the Way.23 In each repetition, li is immanent, yet not fully revealed. But finally one should be able to reach the stage where one is identical with the sages and all impurities have been removed, so that li is clearly and exhaustively manifested. Underlying this argument is an assumption that li remains identical throughout the process of learning: learning gradually unveils the li that is immanent in things. On the other hand, learning is also the formation of habit, that is a gradual process in which the learner’s body assimilates li in the patterned action. Zhu Xi puts it this way: Question: Do the observation of things and the examination of the self mean that, upon seeing things, one should reflectively return to one’s own body and seek the principle? Answer: You do not necessarily have to talk in this way. Things and the self are governed by the same principle. If you illuminate one, you understand the other. This is the way to make the inside and the outside coincide.24

It is noteworthy that Zhu’s concept of the self never loses contact with the body. Furthermore, since the human body is always already engaged in the actual world, there cannot be a radical rupture between the self and things. Like many writers in both Confucianism and Buddhism, Zhu was also sensitive to the ontological rupture between the self and things or between ideas and things which certain formations of discourse tend to generate. In addition, he seems to have taken great precautions to prevent transcendentalism from sneaking into his discourse. As a matter of fact, the private “I” (shi, 1-19) as Zhu discussed it is never entirely deprived of its materiality. A human body is a thing among other things, a part outside other parts. It is not a field of presentation where copies of things, not things themselves, are represented. For this reason, the self as Zhu discussed it would never gain the transparence with which consciousness is endowed. Rather, it remains opaque as long as it is an “I.” Only when it is devoid of the ontological character as the “I” and when things and the self are identical in li can it become completely transparent. Here I postulate the parallelism of the three binary oppositions: Li/Qi Transparent/Opaque Approximation/Deviation According to this schema, the private self, as opposed to the public one, is an area circumscribed by means of qi and the opaque and the deviation from es23Therefore, there should be a close connection between li and rite (rei, li, 1-18). See Tu Weiming, “Li as Process of Humanization,” in Humanity and Self-Cultivation (Berkeley, Calif.: Asian Humanities Press, 1979), pp. 17-34. It goes without saying that Ito’s critique is directed toward this complicity of li and rite, and later we shall see Ogyu Sorai’s attempt to reinstitute this complicity against Ito Jinsai’s critique of it. 24Zhu Xi, Reflections on Things at Hand, p. 304.

The Mode of Discursive Formation

43

sences. This characterization implies that, like qi in relation to li, the “self,” or private “I” (shi), is that which escapes linguistic explanation or determination. Since the self is in the element of individuation, it can be talked about only in negative terms: it is impossible to identify the self in and of itself. If language is a medium of universalization, this kind of self could be posited only as a resistance to language use. In short, the private self is equivalent to the individual thing, as opposed to the public self, which is supposedly adequate to the subject. From our standpoint, the public “I” is an imaginary state in which one believes his or her self is exhaustively identical with what he or she as a subject should be. The sense of disparity between the individual thing and the subject is totally lost in the public “I”: the field of universals within which the subject is constituted is perceived to coincide exhaustively with the entire world. Not just ethically but also epistemologically, the private self in Zhu Xi’s discourse is an indescribable obstacle, which eventually has to be eliminated in the course of learning. One should not forget that the final stage, when the “I” is fully assimilated into li, is also the completion of the formation of a certain habit through repetitive action in one’s own body. The faculties of knowing and acting are united in a habit incarnated in the human whereby the shift from qi, opacity and deviation, toward li, transparence and approximation, is ensured. Zhu Xi notes: The two characters used in the phrase “investigation of things” are the most rele¬ vant. “Things” in this phrase means event-things. When the ultimate meaning of an event-thing is revealed, there will necessarily be one positive aspect to it. You must do the positive and you must not do the negative. These positive and negative aspects have to be experienced through your own body. When you study written texts and are in contact with event-things, the area of experience you acquire through your own body gradually widens and becomes spontaneous and easy.25

Without the concept of the primordial relatedness between the human body and things in the world, the investigation of things as Zhu Xi described it here would never have had such an important role in his philosophy. To be sure, the intentionality incarnated in the human body synthesizes the two: the ideational and practical intentionalities.

The Invisibility of One’s Body The fundamental difference in temporal structure of these intentionalities is concealed by means of the ambiguous ontological status of the human body in Zhu’s discourse. The human body and its work as the agent of action are con¬ stantly suppressed and pushed toward the periphery in his argument, so that the order and the world may be presented as if they were already and permanently

25Zhu Xi, Yu lei, vol. 15, section 2.

44

Silence at the Center

there. It is undeniable that his philosophy is a kind of positivism in which one is forced to adhere to the values in the world, and their validity is beyond question. The ideational intentionality from the temporal presence of wu toward the meaning, li, is also a mode of transcendence from the present toward the atemporal presence of the meaning. In other words, wu and li are related to each other in a mediatory structure between the atemporal and the temporal. By contrast, the intentionality of praxis is from the present toward the future. Since it is founded on the motor function of the human body, the practical intentionality is also grounded on the ec-static transcendence of the human body toward the aim of its action. When Zhu Xi occasionally talks about the opposition of inside and outside, it should be understood in terms of intention behind action and the aim of action. This opposition cannot be a stable and fixed rupture comparable to the epistemological dichotomy of subject and object. At each moment in each ac¬ tion, this opposition is constituted and resolved. What is to be established sub¬ stantially through repetitive practice is not such an opposition: rather, it is the affirmation of the continuity of things and the subject (public “I,” ware, wo, 120) of the intention and the consequence of an action. As patterned action becomes more and more spontaneous, the private “I” gradually dissolves into the public subject, into a fuller participation of its body in the world. Concur¬ rently the “I” becomes increasingly invisible until a complete transparency prevails, which is, as a matter of fact, the presence of li, the state described as clear virtue (meitoko, ming de, 1-21). In perception, according to phenomenologists, what is visible is always ac¬ companied by the horizon, which is itself invisible. Yet this invisible horizon determines the presence of the present and the meaningfulness of visible things. One perceives and acts only through one’s own body, although one does not perceive one’s body thematically. Compared to the abstractness of ideational intentionality, this differentiation between the visible and the invisible, which is embodied in practical intentionality, manifests its theoretical importance to the fullest extent when we take into consideration the concreteness and the imme¬ diacy of praxis. For whereas the division of the above-form and the under-form simultaneously marks the invisibility of li and the visibility of wu, it is impossi¬ ble to expect a similar parallelism in the practical intentionality with wu as the invisible and shen (shin, human body, 1-22) as the visible. Perhaps the follow¬ ing schema will explain more clearly: Ideational Intentionality li (meaning) v— A? X: v§>
't k

u*

j daiji no mamori o. Uchi no tansu ni oite kita kore ga hoshii to iikereba.

U> i: 8tHf *Uf. Hate kakaru akuji o shidashite., ikana mamori no chikara nimo kono toga

L, 16

ga nogaryo ka. Tokaku shinimi to gaten shite ware wa sonata no eko sen.

k

Sonata wa kono Chubei ga eko o tanomu to byobu no ue. Kao o idaseba

P)HO±. BfcBflttf. Haa kanashiya ima ima shi, chatto oite kudanse iyana. Mono ni

M, 18

yo nita to, byobu ni hishito idaki tsuki muse kaeri te zo nageki keru.15

(“Don’t be relaxed now. You must straighten up your clothes before we leave here. Oh, your outfit looks loose. Why don’t you tighten up the sash?” Chubei urges Umekawa impatiently. “What is the matter with you? This is the event of my life. Can’t you let me take time? Before my departure, of course, I want to exchange cups of sake with my old colleagues and say farewell to them.” Not knowing the situa¬ tion, Umekawa is ecstatic. Then, Chubei bursts into tears, confessing, “Oh, my poor love. You know nothing. The gold coins I have just paid to redeem you are the emergency money belonging to a Samurai mansion in Doshima. As I have spent the money, surely something grave will happen to me. I tried very hard to control myself. But, I was humiliated among your fellow courtesans, and I as your lover so much wanted to avenge your chagrin. Without much thought I embezzled the mon¬ ey. As a man, I cannot beg it back. Please accept this as your destiny. When I gave the money, Hachiemon looked rather suspicious, so he will soon get in touch with my mother. It is a matter of time before the Eighteen House Guild will send out an inquiry about me. Please jump over the abyss of hell with me. Please run away with me.” Holding on to Umekawa, Chubei murmurs in tears, “Haa.” Umekawa begins to tremble and bursts into tears, too. “Now look at me. This is what I have always promised—how can I be afraid of losing my life at this stage? It is my long l5I consulted the following editions: Nihon Koter Bungalen Zenshu (Tokyo: Shogalculcan, 1975), 44:55-56; Nihon Koten Bungala Zensho, Chikamatsu Monzaemon, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbur 1952), 80-82.

Supplement

161

cherished desire to die together with you. I can die right now if you wish. Please be firm in your determination.” “How can we possibly accomplish such a difficult task [as running away without being prosecuted: Translator] if we are afraid of losing our lives? As long as we are alive, I will try to live; as long as we are together, I will try to be with you. After all, we are going to die, so please do not evade our fate.” “Yes, of course, I will be with you in this world as long as we live. Someone may come at any moment, so you should hide here.” Umekawa pushes Chubei behind the screen. “I left my precious amulet for good fortune behind in a drawer at home. I want it,” says Umekawa. Upon hearing Umekawa, Chubei says “I have committed such a grave crime. However miraculous your amulet may be, it cannot save me from the charge. Granting that we are going to die, I will pray for your redemption. Please pray for my redemption in turn.” Speaking thus, Chubei’s head appears just above the screen, “Oh, how sad, how cursed. Stop it, will you. You just look like that damned thing” [possibly referring to the decapitated head of a criminal normally exhibited on a high platform: Translator]. Umekawa holds tightly to the screen and chokes with tears.)

As is obvious from the plot composition of the script, italicized parts are supposed to be quoted speeches, which should be attributed to particular charac¬ ters. As Table 2 shows, however, these are accompanied by other, nonverbal, markers. Time and again it should be emphasized that the opposition of direct and indirect speech does not correspond to any dichotomy between colloquial and literary languages. So-called stylistic characteristics also do not determine whether an utterance is direct or indirect. As I have argued, whether speech is direct or not is determined by means of coordination with other texts. Among the many markers designated in the script or left to various conven¬ tions among chanters and puppeteers, which direct the forms of performance, I have selected and tabulated the deployment of two in order to illustrate how their variations are coordinated to constitute the Text of ningyo joruri. Column 1 in Table 2 deals with the stratification of verbal texts. The value (quoted speech or descriptive narration) can be decided without reference to factors other than the verbal text itself. The opposition of shi and ji in column 2 is concerned with the presence of the musical element in the oral presentation of a verbal text. Shi indicates the absence of the musical element; whereas ji indicates its presence, as well as chanting that is to be conducted. Since the musical text is mainly led by the samisen, the synchronization of the two texts requires that the verbal text incorporate elements that serve to mediate both texts. It is amazing in this respect that the relatedness of the verbal and musical texts varies so as to accommodate many different intensities and is integrated into the signifiance of the Text. Thus, narration can be strongly rhymed to ensure that it keeps time with the samisen, or it can progress almost independently of the background music. Fushi and ji both indicate this correspondence with the musical text. Iro and ji’iro indicate lower levels of correspondence with the music. I use the term “melodic” to mean the degree of musicality, but indeed, it has very little to do with the number of

162

Frame Up

Table 2. Nonverbal markers

7-8 E 7-8 a-8 8-9 F 8-9 c-d 8-9 G 9-10 G 9-10 e-10 10-11 11-12 11-f 11-12 f-12 12-13 H 13-14 14-15 I 15-16 J 15-16 h-i 15-16 K 15-16 j—16 16-17 L 16-17 17—k 17-18 k— 18 18-19 M 18-19 1-19 19-

1 narration ( —) speech ( + )

2 shi (+)

+

_

ji(-)

3 melodic high ( + ) low (—)

—

—

___

+

—

_

—

—

_

—

_

+ +

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

+ + + +

—

—

_ _

_ + + + _

+

4-

—

—

_

+

_

—

—

+ +

4 direct (+) indirect (-)

+

4-

—

—

_

+

_

—

_

—

—

—

Note: Capital letters designate quoted speech; numerals indicate points at which intonation, melodic chanting, etc., change; and small letters indicate positions within narrative continuity The original script does not have any of these marks.

syllables in a line or the pitch of the chanter’s voice. According to plot develop¬ ment, the chanter introduces nuances and intonations that suggest a descriptive touch or a hint of speech. (According to the kind of script used, the stage of historical development, and the school to which chanters belong, the terms for graphic markers specifying the degree of musicality vary so much that discussion about specific ways of chanting has to be omitted here.) In addition to this kind of musicality, scripts often indicate pitch and tone (melodic intonation, fushi). Uses of melody and musical sound are doubtless much more complicated in actual performances. For the sake of simplification, however, these elements are not indicated in Table 2.16 What is striking in this table is that only two sections, 14-15 and 16-17, are presented as if they were directly quoted from actual speech. Other quoted speeches are accompanied by ji, ji’iro, or iro intonation in such a way as to make it appear that the utterances are mediated and distanced from the actors or, more ^,6KF°rtao^ailed 3nalySiS’ 866 Chikaishi Yasuaki’ Zoku ayotsuri joruri no kenkyu (Tokyo: Kazama

Supplement

163

precisely, from the puppets’ bodies. Even though these are supposedly utterances of characters whose roles are played by puppets, they are narrated and recited somewhat objectively. Presented in the modalities of ji, ji’iro, and iro, they are encased in the narrative voice of the third person, whose viewpoint does not coincide with that of the character-speaker.

Life and Death The inclusion of musicality affects verbalization in two ways. It is often said that musicality enhances the emotional aspect of utterance and adds a lyrical element to it. Through lyricism, an utterance that would otherwise be mundane and ordinary attains to a higher dimension of meaning, where the sentiment expressed is to be shared by others: others approach the utterance not as an object of understanding but as a mediation through which empathy is acquired. It engenders a feeling of communality into which the individuality of the utterance is ultimately resolved. But on the other hand, musicality has the effect of estrang¬ ing speaker in a very obvious manner. For one thing, musicality transforms the temporality of utterance. In ordinary speech, an utterance is always made simul¬ taneously with other gestural and emotive-affective features. One utters words while doing something else. The act of utterance is always accompanied by facial expressions, movements of the speaker’s body, and so forth. One never says, for example, “How much is this book?” while standing in a frozen posture like a soldier at attention. One may be handing a book to a clerk behind a cash register or pointing to a book on the shelf. In any case, a relevant gesture occurs when such an utterance is made. The naturalness of such a statement lies in the accordance of the enunciation with other bodily movements and the performative situation. The time of an utterance is synchronized with the time of the bodily action. This temporal accord, however, is destroyed by the inclusion of musi¬ cality. Musicality generates a rupture between the time of speech and the time of action. Only in an artificial situation would one try to utter the query How much is this book? recitatively. Under ordinary circumstances such behavior would be odd or grotesque, and its very oddity consists in the violation of the underlying premise that an enunciation always corresponds with the time of its performative situation. What musicality accomplishes is the severance of the coordination between the time of speech and the time of action. Hence, one would be at a loss if one were asked to make an utterance recitatively and at the same time to behave with complete indifference to the content of the utterance. Nonetheless, this is exactly what happens in the Text of ningyo joruri: the separation of voice and body manifests itself most distinctively here. In this respect, I can claim that ji, iro, and ji’iro, which suggest the musicality of the verbal text, detach and distance the enunciated for the actor-speaker whose speech act supposedly generated that utterance. These thereby create the differ-

164

Frame Up

entiation between direct and indirect speech. This is to say that the radical rupture between the enunciated and the enunciation is thematized and fully exploited in the Text of Japanese puppet theater. But does this not seem contrary to what has to be accomplished in order to unify and synthesize various texts in representing fictional dramatic reality? Did Chikamatsu Monzaemon not say, “Unlike Kabuki, where live human bodies act . . . joruri [the script of ningyo joruri] should be composed so that it may exert feelings on puppets, which, in fact, do not have souls, and thus provoke an emotional response from the au¬ dience.”17 The physical setting of the stage, the site at which the Text is com¬ posed, necessarily assumes the separation of body and voice, the enunciation and the enunciated, gestural text and verbal text. Neither puppets nor puppeteers utter a word throughout the play. From the outset, as I have shown, there is no possibility that the body could be the locus of the voice. Why, then, exaggerate and expose that rupture, rather than attempt to mediate and conceal it? In order to see the nature of this problem more clearly, let me examine the script in detail. How do the sections of direct speech that are not marked by distancing devices, musical factors, relate themselves to the development of the plot? The first of the two sections (point 14 to point 15) states: “How could I have committed such a grave deed if I had wished to keep on living! I will live as long as 1 can. I will be with you as long as I can. You see, anyway, I will be punished by death! This passage is preceded by Umekawa s confession, in which she declares her willingness to die with Chubei. At point 14, the tone changes from ji to iro and finally to shi (here iro is a transitional intonation), and while Umekawa’s confession is narrated more formally and indirectly, Chubei’s utterance is presented as realistically as possible. It seems that dramatic reality manifests itself in the most condensed form here and that the body of the puppet, the voice, and the subject of the enunciation seem to be directly synthesized. Reality is presented as if there were no mediation and distance between the enunciation and the enunciated. Here, the utterance should be a direct speech by Chubei himself, mediated by no third person, with the presence of chanter being almost transparent. Nonetheless, we should remember that this elfect of di¬ rectness and unity of utterance can be achieved only because this section in the script is preceded by more indirect speech: the directness of direct speech can be evoked only when the speech is contrasted with more indirect forms of speech. The elfect of the real is sustained by the paradigmatic possibility that this same section could be narrated in a less direct way. As narration proceeds after this section, the tone again changes to ji’iro at point 17In Naniwa miyage (Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 50 [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1959]), p. 563, Chikamatsu says, “Puppets were perceived as being without souls when they had to compete with kabuki theater, where live human actors played. Seen from a different viewpoint, the puppet theater had developed and modernized that far, but at that stage of development, the puppets were perceived as being without souls. As a result, it was necessary to invent words by which puppets could be made soulful. No doubt, this was an extremely difficult task: puppets had become soulless [pieces of wood]; so souls had to be introduced into them again.”

Supplement

165

15. According to the plot development, an utterance that follows Chubei’s should be ascribed to Umekawa and should also be direct speech, but instead, the utter¬ ance shifts into a more distant and indirect mode. The immediate unity between the puppet’s body and the voice, previously achieved in Chubei’s speech, dissolves; the source of the voice or the soul located in Chubei’s body then slips away to somewhere remote from the scene. Thus, the voice loses the sense of immediate presence and, concomitantly, the subject of enunciation is lost. One cannot help but sense that Umekawa’s speech is already a reported one, viewed by a detached and sober eye. As it unfolds in verselike form, it transforms itself into a song, or uta, in which the individuality of the subject of enunciation is replaced by ano¬ nymity. No longer does it matter who is speaking in this utterance, even though it is obvious that the speaker is supposed to be a low-ranking courtesan who had been euphoric just a moment before, when redeemed by her love. The narration is now a step closer to that of the epic. Accordingly, the story is recited in a mode that keeps two temporalities distinct from each other: the time of narration and the time of the narrated event. The “now” of speech is no longer the “now” of what is spoken about. Hence, the actual performance of puppets on the stage appears to be dyed with a tint of the past and takes on characteristics of representation. It appears to be an act that has happened once and is now being replayed. In the following section (h—16), the third-person narrative emerges on the surface of the Text, and Um¬ ekawa’s speech, which this narrative reports, is, as a matter of fact, a box within a box, or framed speech, an equivalent to what Volosinov called indirect discourse. But once again, the tone changes to shi (16-17). As if awakening from a daydream, Chubei reaffirms the irredeemability and the gravity of the deed he has done once and for all. “I have committed such a grave crime. However miraculous your amulet may be, it cannot save me from the charge.” This time, the realness direct speech projects and the irredeemability of the deed are superimposed on each other. An acute recognition of the real, that an action, once done, can be neither repeated nor undone, is stated here. It is an oblique reference to the fundamental feature of the enunciation and the enunciated. Like an action, an enunciation cannot be repeated; the enunciated, which it produces, is autonomous and independent of the one who has done it. Chubei is alienated in the result of his deed, and irrespective of his intention, his deed now punishes him and imposes constraints on his future. The constant oscillation between direct speech and indirect forms of verbal presentation thus generates multiple dimensions of a real in which binary opposi¬ tions—immediate/mediate, present/absent, nonreported/reported, and so on— are superimposed on one another, thereby creating a wealth of narrative pos¬ sibilities. Noteworthy in this connection is that these oppositions ultimately lead to a dialectic of life and death. Not only is it imperative that puppets be animated and made to look alive in the Text of ningyo joruri, it is equally necessary that puppets be able to die. Life and death must be dramatically articulated in this spatiotemporal continuum.

166

Frame Up

In this respect, it should be acknowledged that we are dealing with two dimensions of discourse. As I remarked in regard to Ito Jinsai’s notion of death, two semes are involved here: the seme of animated (life) versus inanimate (death) and that of life versus death. As he pointed out, it is possible to argue that one cannot die unless one is alive. An inanimate being neither lives nor dies. A puppet cannot portray a death unless it is already animated: death cannot happen to the dead. This duality of death is of course of particular importance in shinju mono (double-suicide drama, 5-11). Through gradual stratification, various viewpoints are introduced into the Text. One of these viewpoints is that of the character. At this level, the voice, adorned with intonation, rhythm, and musical sound, projects a field based on a spectrum stretching between two poles: ultimate death and the presence of life. Here the presence of life suggests the formation of an utterance in which the enunciated is entirely absorbed into the enunciation, whereas ultimate death implies a formation in which the enunciation is completely erased. In ultimate death, the utterance is without its own author or subject of enunciation. Presum¬ ably the utterance could be pronounced by anybody or could, alternatively, take the form of universal anonymity. In contrast, ningyo joruri of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was faced with a new discursive formation that could no longer avoid the presence of life. As the radical rupture between enunciation and enunciated intruded into the dramaturgical discourse, the pres¬ ence of life, as a constituting positivity, invaded and, as a result, transformed the discursive space of the time. From this perspective, it is possible to see how the treatment of death and suicide in some literary works took on a special signifi¬ cance. In fact, dramatic death as depicted in the Text of ningyo joruri represents a transition from the supposed presence of life toward an anonymous utterance, from the singularity of the speaker toward the universality of the subject. A character, by committing suicide, ceases to perform the role of speaker, of proprietor of the utterance; rather, the character enters an imaginary space where he or she is only spoken of. In this regard, it is rather easy to uncover the meaning of death in the Text of the Japanese puppet theater; it is a one-way itinerary (michiyuki, 5-12) leading from a realm where a character is permitted to speak into another where the character can no longer speak but only be spoken of. In death the character is deprived of the ability to enunciate, is an existent completely frozen in language. Although language produces the character from time to time, the character cannot produce language. Death, that is, is the condition for the possibility of language in general. The Act of Reading When one takes into consideration that many ningyo joruri scripts were actu¬ ally published in woodblock print, questions regarding the status of the written

Supplement

167

text inevitably arise. It is said that these printed scripts were intended not for stage direction but for individual reading and that they were circulated among the readership of Tokugawa society. As I have emphasized, the Text of ningyo joruri contains texts other than the verbal one. Hence, insofar as the written text is always incomplete within the discursive space at issue, the question should be posed in reverse: How was its incompleteness as a written text supplemented to make it more widely readable? What is the structure of a supplement whereby a written text anticipated and was related to other texts that were absent from the written one? At the very least, these scripts possess a structure of stratification. Despite the continuity of the narrative voice, the text is stratified in order to accommodate the distinction between descriptive narration and reported speech. Descriptive narra¬ tion supplies information necessary to locate the quoted speech in relation to the situation in which it was uttered. Moreover, the descriptive narration presup¬ poses that speech is generated within a highly stable situation and that therefore it is only on exceptional occasions that the time of the narration deviates widely from the time of the narrated events.18 In an epic narrative, by contrast, narration can sometimes condense time so that events that would take several days or several years in actuality are narrated within the scope of a few lines. What is interesting about ningyo joruri is that the time of its narration is not endowed with such freedom: narrative temporality in this genre is bound by the condition of theatrical presentation.19 Time can elapse between scenes, but during the scene, the time of narration must faithfully follow the time of action and perfor¬ mance. Because of the stratification in its verbal continuum, however, descrip¬ tive narration is spatialized and serves as a verbal equivalent to the situation. Obviously when the chanter’s voice is providing descriptive narration, the voice will correspond to no actor on the stage. Unless a character on the stage reports somebody else’s speech, reported speech always corresponds to the presence of a puppet. As I have argued, there is not always complete correspondence between the time of performance and the time of narration, but there exists at least a parallelism between voice and the movements of the puppet to indicate to the audience who is supposed to be speaking on the stage. Yet quite evidently this structure does not apply to descriptive narration. In descriptive narration the

18As I have said, a complete correspondence of narrative time and time of narrated events sup¬ posedly occurs only in shi. Even when there is a rupture between the two, it cannot be wide since descriptive narration follows the stage performance. In principle, the scene is always present to the narrator. In this case, however, it must be stressed that only a representation of the complete correspondence of the two temporalities occurs. This is to say, according to our theoretical position, these can never be identical to each other. Every form of narration, whether speech or writing, description or reportage, necessarily generates a difference or distance between the two temporalities. Time is inconceivable without this disparity. 19In no plays, for instance, narrative temporality constantly deviates from the time of narrated events. Time is far from linear. Particularly in what modem scholars call mugen-no temporal stratifi¬ cation is so complex that it is very often impossible to determine the time of a narrated event.

168

Frame Up

voice has no body, has no anchorage in the dramaturgical space. It speaks from nowhere; there is no moment of presence with which it could be synchronized. Instead, it describes the context and environment in which reported speech takes place and the relationship of the characters whose speech is reported. The tem¬ porality of descriptive narration corresponds to the time of the situation, which is by no means necessarily linear. Although it is linearly presented at the level of the syntagm, the relationship of descriptive narration and reported speech is spatial insofar as the mode of signifiance is concerned. Thus, discourse begins to include a radical difference between the temporal and the spatial. It is finally a differance: no kind of text could ever be either exclusively temporal or exclusively spatial. By articulating the verbal continuum in terms pertaining to the economy of this differance, discourse incorporates a Gestalt whereby the narrative continuum is divided into figure and background. As I shall discuss later, this mode of differance dominated literary production in the eighteenth century, and even if a literary text was not concerned with the¬ atrical performance, it seems to have adhered to this mode of presentation. The structure of both writing and reading in the discursive space of the eighteenth century was in fact organized on the basis of this very differance. Within this structure, the act of reading inserts writing into the scheme of figure and back¬ ground and discovers one of the possible relationships of interdependence be¬ tween figure and background. First, writing is seen as correlated to the back¬ ground; its signification is equated to the figure. Because writing does not retain its background when it is perceived as the enunciated, it needs to be supple¬ mented with a relevant background. This supplementation in fact returns writing to the original scene of the enunciation, where figure and background are sup¬ posedly synthesized through the corporeal act. Thus, in the eighteenth century the question of reading was posed in this form: How could the reading act possibly be equated either to a sort of prepredicative/preverbal experience or to bodily cognition? When we consider nonverbal devices by means of which the binary opposition of direct and indirect speech is to be postulated, it is noteworthy that the cumulative use of this opposition further bifurcates the verbal continuum into direct-direct, direct-indirect, indirect-direct, and indirect-indirect speeches. By thus generating a variety of levels, the text projects dramatic effects at multiple degrees of intensity. Moreover, it should be stressed in this connection that the coordination of these nonverbal devices can articulate a text such as bodily action in such a way that it is possible to talk about direct/indirect actions. As I have suggested, the involvement of musicality in narration engenders a rift between natural and spontaneous gesture, on the one hand, and the verbal utterance accompanying the gesture, on the other. It is nevertheless still possible to sustain the coordination of bodily action with verbal utterance even when musicality is involved in verbalization.

Supplement

169

Direct or Indirect Actions It is possible to transform bodily action in such a way that it may be syn¬ chronized with a verbal utterance adorned by rhythm, melody, and other musical features. When one sings, one’s body normally sways or moves in time with the rhythm of the song. This movement can no longer be considered either “natural” or “spontaneous,” as it would be if there were no accompanying music. In dance, primarily a form of bodily movement, the verbal utterance (if it is sung), bodily movement, and music are synchronized and coordinated, thus preventing a schism from erupting between bodily action and the verbal text. Yet the action cannot be considered natural and spontaneous: it is regulated, formalized, and ritualized. Thus, I should be able to talk about indirect action. In direct action, on the contrary, there is supposedly no rift between the bodily action and the performative situation. The wholeness that characterizes direct speech is partially missing as the performative situation deviates from the syn¬ chronized and coordinated bundle of other texts. So, tentatively, I might argue that corporeal action can be classified into two categories: direct and indirect action. Direct action involves synchronization and coordination among all par¬ ticipating elements—bodily action, verbal utterance, and performative situation. It is further characterized by the absence of musicality and other formalizing agents. Indirect action calls for synchronization and coordination among all the participating elements except the performative situation. Indirect action is a form of corporeal behavior detached from a given per¬ formative situation. Not only a mutation of temporality but also a shift of view¬ point and a disappearance of the subject of the enunciation are involved in this form of action. By following formal, ritualized patterns in accordance with musicality in narration, the body of the actor loses its adherence to the per¬ formative situation and thereby its putative individualistic originality and spon¬ taneity. Two essential features are that the action can be repeated and that it can be performed by another person. From the outset, one is presented as a third person, or anybody. As in indirect speech, indirect action is autonomous, inde¬ pendent of a given performative situation. Its repeatability implies this relative autonomy and independence of indirect, formalized action. That is, it loses the specificity of now and here. The same bodily movement can be performed in the past, the present, and the future. This transhistoricity is the necessary condition of possibility for indirect, formalized, or ritualized action. By formalizing and ritualizing bodily action, the performer transcends the erosion of historical time in which nothing remains identical. (I inquire more thoroughly into the problem of transhistoricity in ritualized action in subsequent chapters.) Likewise, indirect action is another form of the individual’s death. This feature is most particularly manifest in instances when bodily movement is accompanied by music. No matter whether it is performed by one person or a group, ritualized

170

Frame Up

behavior adheres to a mode in which, in principle, a performer transforms his own body into an already coded pattern. What distinguishes ritualized behavior from “natural” gesture is that in ritualized behavior the performer consciously suppresses her own “spontaneous” initiatives and encases the movement of her own body within a given framework. Ritualized or formalized behavior such as dance often requires a long process of discipline and repeated practice through which the actor finally acquires an ability to conform to a pregiven code of behavior whereby the individual self, as taken in its imagined unredeemable uniqueness, is abolished. Through formalized behavior, one’s individuality, imagined in its own self-misrecognition, is shed: the original self of the person is replaced by the image of the self that is demanded of him. That is to say, one erases the enunciation in dance or formalized behavior, where there is, in fact, no possibility of immediately equating the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the enunciated. The performer opens up possibilities for others to join the text through the synchronization of music, bodily action, and verbal utterance. Simultaneously, the subject who might otherwise imagine herself able to enjoy the status of proprietor of her own action is disqualified and degraded to a rank where her “individuality” is totally dispensable. Promises in a song carry no respon¬ sibilities, for it is assumed that the message and the performance are ascribed to completely different agents and that therefore the performer cannot be held culpable for the message. It is not the singer herself but an anonymous voice, not he or she but “it” that sings in the song. The same argument can be applied to dance, where there is a separation between the performer’s self and the per¬ formed character’s person. It is worth remembering that the word “person” comes from “persona,” which means the mask. A particular gesture—a glance, the lifting of an arm—does not express the performer’s emotion: her individual emotion is redirected and thereby masked in dance. Regardless of whether the actual performance involves only one person or several, synchronization of music with bodily movement or verbal utterance or both leads to the genesis of an anonymous speaker. Anybody can join this text as long as she synchronizes her bodily movement with music, rhythm, and pat¬ terned motion. Thus the synchronization of music and verbal utterance amounts to a firsthand constitution of collectivity. The term “collectivity” implies not an assemblage of multiple subjects but a form of the individual’s death, a form in which the imagined originality of the subject of the enunciation is erased. Hence, “collec¬ tivity” is a certain mode of systematic organization of the Text. Remembering that the ritualization of the gestural text and the formation of indirect speech can be characterized only insofar as they are contrasted to nonritualized, “natural” behavior and direct and ordinary speech, one should not overlook that notions of “natural” action and “ordinary” speech are not them¬ selves given but constituted in opposition to these categories concerning texts.

Supplement

171

Only differences exist, differences that give rise to oppositions without which neither “natural” behavior nor ritualized gesture would exist. There is no such thing as natural behavior in itself or direct speech in itself. Therefore “natural” behavior and direct speech are possible only when ritualized and formalized action and speech have been introduced as their opposites. There could be neither direct speech nor nonformal behavior without these oppositions. Thus indirect action, as opposed to “natural” and “spontaneous” action, transforms the individual into a subject: the individual who could not be placed within the circulatory network of exchange is now turned into a subject whose identity is determined. Since identification always involves subsumption under universals, it is only with the loss of those singular traits that can never be subsumed under universals that the individual becomes identifiable. In this re¬ spect, paradoxical though it may sound, only through anonymity can one gain one’s subjective identity, a subjective identity that is necessarily constituted in universals. As I shall discuss later, individual subjectivity, regarded in certain discursive formations as the origin of “natural” and “spontaneous” action, is an ideological fiction precisely because there can be no genuinely natural or spon¬ taneous action. Precisely because any action aims at a meaning, it is comprehensible. What one does is inseparable from what one tries to achieve. But as I discussed in Chapter 3 with regard to the anteriority of a norm that an action realizes, the meaning of an action always presupposes meaning for the third viewpoint. This third viewpoint does not coincide with a specific person who happens to observe my action. Although I cannot discuss this topic in detail here, I must simply note that the comprehensibility of one’s action is, in fact, its visibility from this anonymous viewpoint. I act with a view to this viewpoint. As the word “act” clearly illustrates, I always act in a double sense: I act in the sense of doing, and in the sense of pretending. But obviously, pretending necessarily presupposes some spectator for whom I act. What I have referred to as the “collectivity” is this anonymous and always absent viewpoint for which I pretend to be a subject. At the same time that I emphasize the “collectivity” inherent in the very comprehensibility of an action, the anteriority of this “collectivity” never implies its existence in objective time. This is a point crucial in my ensuing argument in the following chapters, for the central problem I probe is the essentialization and reification of this “collec¬ tivity” in the eighteenth century. Just as I realize the ethical norm, I create this “collectivity” in my action as anterior to my action. This is why action, which is, in the final analysis, always already indirect, is poietic and poetic. Boxing, Framing, and Ideologies It is essential to note in this connection that what has been termed “direct speech” in the Text of ningyo joruri is constituted in terms of various oppositions

172

Frame Up

generated by the introduction of musicality into the Text. Since every word, every act, and even every situation is “set up” and therefore fabricated, no element in the Text is immediately “natural.” After all, it is only within the Text, a spatiotemporal continuum, that what these oppositions generate may appear to be ordinary speech or natural rather than artificial behavior. Because this spa¬ tiotemporal continuum functions as a privileged topos, which a variety of dif¬ ferences articulates into a drama only when it is framed and detached from the context of everyday life, no word and no action deployed within it can be natural or immediate. The presentation of naturalness and immediacy is impossible without this mechanism of framing. The “real” can be presented only through the medium of the “unreal.” That is to say, the presence of “ordinary speech” assumes and requires the circumscription of a spatial realm whose existence itself is artificially fabricated. Here we encounter a paradox: the direct is possible only within the indirect, the immediate within the mediated, the natural within the artificial. This is undoubtedly an inevitable aspect of the significative contradic¬ tion also inherent in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. It has been argued that descriptive narration serves as an equivalent to a pictorial text surrounding a reported speech. The stratification of the verbal continuum can lead to the most elementary form of spatialization in which parts of the verbal continuum, assigned to the role of descriptive narration, explain and depict the contextual conditions in which reported speech occurs. Using the Text of the Japanese puppet theater, I have demonstrated that whether an utterance is qualified as direct or not, it cannot be determined in terms of internal characteristics such as phonetic and syntactical features. On the con¬ trary, an utterance receives such a qualification only through its relationship to the outside or to other texts juxtaposed to it. Spatialization, based on the stratification of the verbal continuum and the direct/indirect differentiation, calls forth what I have termed the framing effect, in which reported speech and its situation are, at the same time, clearly divided and related to each other. According to the terms of this framing effect, a reported speech is “boxed” within the general flow of the Text. But the privi¬ leged topos of the spatiotemporal continuum, the Text of ningyo joruri, is also positioned within the much wider context of ordinary life, so that the reported speech is in fact a box within a box.20

Representational Type and Gestalt Type It is possible to argue that a structural relationship between a boxed utterance, or reported speech, and other texts outside this box determines the status of the 20Undeniably this formulation has an affinity with the box-in-box formula that Tokieda Motoki postulated as the fundamental syntactical and ontological structure of Japanese. As I understand the terms of the box-in-box formula (irekogata kozo), however, Tokieda also intended to explicate both the possible relationship between the enunciation and the enunciated and the framing effect. See his kokugogaku genron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1941). I shall return later to the problematic of the boxin-box formula and the parergonal split.

Supplement

173

utterance within the Text. As the Text of Japanese puppet theater illustrates, there are many sorts of phonetic and musical markers and graphic arrangements by which an utterance can be boxed and detached from its outside. No doubt the boxing or framing effect itself creates both outside and inside. Thus there are almost innumerable kinds of boxing, depending upon possible combinations of texts. Two types of boxing are essential in the context of this book, however, and must be mentioned to clarify the mode of textual formation in the eighteenth century. Important within the scope of my concern are two texts: verbal and pictorial. One can easily recognize a great deal of difference in the mode of interaction of verbal and pictorial texts according to whether they are the repre¬ sentational type or the gestalt type. In the representational type, both verbal and pictorial texts maintain a relative autonomy, such that one text can signify or designate without the aid of another. Even if the verbal text is withdrawn from the whole, the pictorial text remains identical in respect of its designation, and its visual message does not greatly change. Indeed, it is possible to transform its mode of designation by substituting a different statement, as Rene Magritte does in Les Deux Mysteres (figure A). But then, of course, it is no longer classified as a representational type. Let us remember that this sort of typology does not apply to the internal structure of each constituent text. Here I am dealing with a mode of coexistence among multiple texts that together constitute a new text. In the representational type, the verbal text functions as a metastatement with respect to the pictorial text. The relative autonomy of texts in this type suggests that either the pictorial or the verbal text can be presented as if it did not require its counterpart. Their relationship is most often that of representation, the pic¬ torial text being that which is represented and the verbal text being that which represents. By implication an order of subordination usually obtains between the two texts: the pictorial text is assigned to the role of the main text and the verbal text is subordinate. Or one might view the relationship in terms of a translation from visual to verbal signifying systems, the verbal being a translation of the pictorial. This relationship can also be compared to the traditional apprehension of the subject and the predicate, the visual being the subject (as both shugo and shudai), and the verbal the predicate. The verbal is linked to the visual as an answer to the type of question What is this? in which “this” of course indicates the visual. For example, a picture depicting a mountain is linked through a copula to the verbal “Mount Saint-Victoire,” which forms an answer: “This is ‘Mount Saint-Victoire.’ ” Despite the heterogeneity of the visual to the verbal, the representational type operates on the assumption that both can be linked in the medium of propositional judgment. Here, the judgment in which the subject (shugo) is synthesized with the predicate, as it were, imitates the indication in which the referent is linked to the subject (shudai). Therefore, in this mode predicative judgment is equated to thematization (shudaika). In the gestalt type of relationship, by contrast, texts are mutually dependent

Figure E. From Osugi otamafutami no adauchi (Double vengeance by Osugi and Otama) by Santo Kyoden, 1807, illustrations by Utagawa Toyokuni. These pages show the relationships among illustration, descriptive narration, and direct speech. While the narra¬ tion explains the illustration, relating it to previous plot developments, direct speeches are inserted, independent of the narration, at the lower margins and linked to the illustrations nonverbally. The most common nonverbal relation is that of proximity: the words of speeches appear on the page near the illustrated figures. The Chinese characters on the sleeves of two women (righthand page, upper right), which indicate the two main charac¬ ters, Otama and Osugi, embody another means of linking speech to the image of the character’s (or the speaking subject’s) body. In contrast to the relationship of narration to illustration that of direct speech to illustration seems to follow what I call the Gestalt type, in which reading consists primarily of situating speeches in a scene.

Supplement

175

(see figure E). Withdrawing the verbal text would completely distort the meaning of the text as a whole. It is impossible to extract the meaning of the whole text from either the pictorial or the verbal text alone, since their copresence creates a surplus of signification that does not exist in either text alone. In addition, the relationship between the two resembles the relationship between figure and back¬ ground. The pictorial text functions as the background for the verbal text; we perceive that the verbal text is activated and animated by the pictorial text. The recognition of the gestalt type as such, however, requires the double articulation of the viewpoint. Primarily it is a juxtaposition of what is thematized, that is, posited as a subject (shudai), and what cannot be thematized. Emotive-affective features that animate the figure, therefore, cannot be made present precisely because they are not thematized. But to be aware of the effects of the background on the figure, of the emotive-affective effects on the speech, is possibly only on condition that the background has been grasped thematically. In the first in¬ stance, the background is not pointed out: it is not determined, in contrast to the figure, which is determined. But in the second instance, the background is determined as such, as that which is excluded from this delineation. Unlike the representational type, in which the equation between propositional judgment and indication is guaranteed, the gestalt type does not allow for omission of the moment of self-reflexivity. The moment of thematic positing (shudaika) and the moment of grasping this thematic positing as distinguishing between the figure and the background must coexist: these two moments must be folded upon each other, as if they were simultaneous.21 It is in this way that a verbal text is made to pertain to the situation of its utterance: it generates an effect as if the primordial liveliness of the verbal were recovered. Even though both texts are in inscriptional form, the verbal text seems to take on the emotive-affective features of speech. Of course, not all such emotive-affective features can be reproduced in this configuration, but it is at least possible to suggest that words are uttered within a given situation. It is worth noting that this mode of coexistence is a procedure by which a linear text is related to a nonlinear text. This delinearization of the background, together with linearization of the figure, occurs also in the case of the written text without illustration. This is exactly what the presence of descriptive narration and the spatialization of the verbal continuum in the script of ningyo joruri allude to. Although both descrip¬ tive narration and reported speech are linear insofar as they are verbal, they

2'The body of the enunciation (shutai) cannot be construed in the gestalt type. It is not the background that animates the figure and endows the perceived object with an emotive-affective atmosphere. Above all, it is the split itself between figure and background. Hence, it is, rather, parergonal, not something that can be brought into presence to some transcendental gaze. As I have argued repeatedly, it cannot be arrested in signification or discourse, nor can it be captured in visibility as an image. It eludes the monopoly of either reading or seeing. In this sense, it is always calligraphic.

176

Frame Up

interact with each other in such a way that descriptive narration constitutes the background, and reported speech the figure. Adhering to Boris Uspensky’s argu¬ ment, I claim that structural isomorphism not only exists among various texts but also exists in various combinations of texts.22 Hence, one can reasonably argue that it is possible to identify the same mode of intertextuality in written texts whether or not they appear with pictorial illustrations. Thus far I have treated texts as if they were entities, as if they could be differentiated from other texts. By no means can this treatment be sustained, for the very notion of textual materiality I have adopted in this book protests against this use of the term “text.” Yet we must also take into account that a text can exist as such only when it is traversed, transcended, or related to others. That is to say, a text is a moment in a wider signifying practice, which I have termed intertextuality. It is only in this context that I could possibly be justified in using the term text to indicate a factor mobilized in this practice. Precisely because of the heterogeneous nature of this practice, it has been necessary to use the term in such a way that its difference from other factors may be shown. And yet, throughout this book I have stressed that the text is not an entity with an identifi¬ able core. The emergence of a dramaturgical situation in discourse in the eighteenth century was possible, of course, only on the ground that literary discourse incor¬ porates the mode of intertextuality characterized as the gestalt type. By means of this discursive apparatus, verbal and nonverbal texts were mediated and inte¬ grated into a specific form of presentation. And through this apparatus, I main¬ tain, the discursive space in question integrates those texts that are, in the first place, not discursive. Both the representational and the gestalt types are part of the apparatus by means of which discourse renders its other intelligible to itself and regulates it. This gestalt type of intertextuality reached its fullest development in those literary works now called gesaku (5-13), to which my attention now turns. 22Uspensky, A Poetics of Composition, pp. 130-72.

CHAPTER

6

Defamiliarization and Parody

Genres, Taxonomy In the eighteenth century literary utterances were classified and evaluated in terms of their genres. Any single genre maintained itself at a certain distance from other genres by means of its specific features, characteristics that other genres presumably did not possess. This system of generic distancing sustained a dominant taxonomy in which all literary production was controlled by that power which organized the variety of social relations as an imagined whole. A literary work, then, was produced in a social and historical milieu, indeed, but this does not mean that a work merely reflected the control imposed upon its author by the authority of existing social and political institutions. For one thing, a social and historical milieu consists of texts. A work, therefore, does not merely reflect an extratextual reality. Rather, what I call “power” is a rule or a set of rules that regulate how a text can be related to other texts. As a matter of fact, power in this context cannot be ascribed merely to an authority such as a political organization or a social group: it is equivalent to the sum of the constraints and regulations at work in a particular literary productivity. In other words, such power is equiv¬ alent to the set of the conditions of possibility for literary and textual production. I shall call this set of conditions the space of generic discontinuity, within which both the possibilities and the impossibilities of a literary form are given. In general, the space of generic discontinuity and the languages attached to it are perceived by members of the readership(s) as pregiven and natural. The putative transparency of such a space is entirely consonant with the effectiveness of the power that establishes it: hence, the more transparent such a space appears to be, the more effective is the power. The historical and cultural distance that separates us from the eighteenth century endows us with a certain privilege by virtue of which literary discourse of that time appears obscure, even opaque, to our perception. The powers that were effective then are unable to manipulate us 177

178

Frame Up

in most cases. But by the same token, our own textual products are subject to the control of the powers among “us.” What is implied here is that this blindness to the constraints and regulations inherited and internalized within “us” is precisely the locus where “we” are manipulated by such powers. The emergence of parodist literature in the eighteenth century seems not only to testify to the presence of a specific power in Tokugawa Japan but could also perhaps be characterized as an effort to dislocate the junctures of the economy of generic discontinuity. It should also be noted that this effort was appropriated by that very economy when parodist literature became institutionalized into specific genres through the repeated use of the same strategies. Parody was quickly transformed into a “cliche.” Here I am not concerned with the motives and intentions of writers of popular novellas or parodist poetry. It is undeniable that these writers sometimes created such an unbearable discordance in Tokugawa Japan that the shogunate had to impose censorship and ordinances intended to eliminate the sources of disorder and “excessive” and “illegitimate” pleasures from a social environment that was otherwise supposed to be balanced and harmonious. The history of literature in the eighteenth century, as has been well documented, is marked by frequent censorship and by the varied tactics writers used to evade that censorship. Nevertheless, one should never oversimplify the relationship between literary production and power, should never reduce it to a relationship between the author and the shogunate. According to my tentative definition, the term “power” also bears something of the sense of “censorship” as this term is used in psychoanalysis. As the account of the dream is screened by censorship, so too is literary production controlled and initiated by the system, that is, power. It is at this level of censorship that parodist literature seems to violate the fabric of Tokugawa authority. But this violation, I must also note, was in turn easily accommodated by the new discursive space of generic discon¬ tinuity.

Grapheme and Equivocity Already in an early work such as Ryohashigen (6-1), I can recognize a discur¬ sive apparatus by means of which the authority implicit in generic hierarchy is displaced and thereby ridiculed.1 The title contains a ploygrapheme (ha 6-2), which could refer to sensation in general (iro 6-3), but in this case the allusion to eroticism is obvious, and to town or quarter (6-4). It should be read as something like “Words on sake cups in the pleasure quarters.” Here, the play of equivocity is obvious. This book is in the kanbun style, literary Chinese with kunten, or Japanese annotations; thus it appears to belong to the general class of written

1Ryohashigen (1728?), reprint in Sharehon taisei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Chu’okoron-sha, 1978), pp. 1532.

Defamiliarization and Parody

179

documents that were perceived as didactic in one way or another during the eighteenth century. Works in Chinese were not exclusively about Confucianism, Buddhism, or other intellectual subjects. They could also be about Chinese history or poetry. It is particularly significant, however, that it was not the content of a work but rather its stylistic—or, more precisely, its graphic_ arrangement that was considered to be the distinguishing mark according to which it would be classified. In the space of generic discontinuity, various discourses were classified not only on the basis of what they said and how they said it but also according to their visual appearance. As I have previously argued, the discursive space of the eighteenth century is extremely complex as far as visual and verbal aspects of texts and their various interrelationships are con¬ cerned. The case of Ryohashigen demonstrates the complexity of such interre¬ lationships most vividly. Notwithstanding that it is written in kanbun, a close examination reveals characteristics that were generated by constantly ignoring or violating grammatical stipulations governing literary Chinese annotated in Japa¬ nese. Some phrases that look like authentic Chinese are, in fact, direct quotations from what was then called the “language of villagers.” After the first page or two, a reader would become aware that this entire work is organized in such a way as to produce the effective recognition that the notion of a genre and certain assumed conditions to which a work belonging to this genre supposedly adheres are being relativized and ridiculed. The same can be said as well with regard to Byakusofuken kyo (Byakusofuken sutra, 6-5) and its revised edition, Tosei kagai dangi (Treatise on today s pleasure quarter).2 The former assumes the outlook of a Buddhist sutra, in which the narrative form is itself borrowed from the most commonly acknowledged image of Buddhist discourse. It begins with a phrase that can be found in identical form in many Buddhist sutras: “Thus I have heard.” Yet, already in the second line, Chinese characters that sound like Sanskrit but connote completely different things are to be found. Polysemy is constantly utilized to incorporate double discourse; this pseudosutra, in the guise of a Buddhist sermon, preaches about techniques for handling women in the pleasure quarters. Such words as nyorai (tatagatha) (6-6) are deliberately mis¬ spelled to foster multivocity of graphic signs (in this case, nyorai becomes women coming,” 6-7). Even at the level of phonetics, polysemy is obvious, but the essence of the humor actually lies in the linkage of phonetic polysemy to the displacement of graphemes. Jodo, or the Pure Land (6-8), for instance, is given a completely different combination of Chinese characters (6-9), whereby the word is almost abruptly associated with an impure, sinful, yet joyous image of the land of sensuality. The narration, which pretends to be that of a Buddhist sutra, reverses its message and relativizes the authority behind the official voices, which would otherwise exercise a tremendous didactic pressure on the readers.5 Kakai Juro, Byakusofuken kyo (1744?), reprint in Sharehon Taisei, vol. 1 (Tokyo- Chu’okoronsha, 1978), pp. 161-90.

180

Frame Up

The humor of such a practice thus resides in this duality of narration, according to which the surface voice is constantly betrayed by the graphic arrangement of the booklet. A written text and its “voice” do not speak in unison. Instead, they often designate opposites. This is a text in which rigid moralism is thoroughly defeated. Furthermore, as Tosei kagai dangi demonstrates, the structure of reasoning itself is parodied: stereotyped metaphors, enumerations, and categorizations— all features typical of Buddhist and some Confucian sermons—are incorporated into the booklet in such a way that the absurdity of official discourse is exposed to the fullest degree. A depraved monk, Shizoken or Shidoken (6-10), who appears in a number of the parodist works is an actant whose function is of great importance. In Tosei kagai dangi, Shizoken functions as a “deviation effect” of the double discourse. In opposition to Honmu Dojin, another character (who is supposed to be a street lecturer on popular ethics), Shizoken’s arguments effec¬ tively parody and disqualify those assumptions without which official discourse could not claim its validity as the truth. It should be noted that the main objective of his argument is not to disprove what Honmu Dojin puts forth as true and normal. Rather, by disturbing the mechanism of signification through which a statement is evaluated as true or false, Shizoken demonstrates the conven¬ tionality of what has hitherto been regarded as true, natural, and normal. His utterances are filled with puns, abuses of metaphors, and mistaken categories, all of which tend to destroy the possibility of normal communication. For this reason, I can say that Shizoken is an actant who represents the duality of dis¬ course. He calls forth a discursive possibility, the possibility of generating the sort of discursive field wherein binary oppositions such as true/false, good/bad, and normal /abnormal are always reversed and rotated so that notions of truth, good, and norm are ultimately proved nonsensical. As a consequence, one can¬ not even say that Shizoken or his claim is insincere, because sincerity (without which the notions of insincerity would be unintelligible) does not itself make sense. The presence of this actant in these literary works no doubt testifies to the strength of literature vis-a-vis reified transcendent values. If power generates and regenerates what are to be perceived as transcendent values by means of a set of discursive apparatuses, the discursive possibility represented by this actant never¬ theless continues to relativize and disqualify such values. Shizoken intervenes in the official argument by interjecting unexpected combinations of images and by disrupting the assumed isotopy, the established association, of words. At the very least, it was possible in this work to illustrate that the legitimate existing institu¬ tions could be parodied and thereby deprived of their presumed authority even though what was perceived to be social and institutional reality at that time could not be transformed merely by defamiliarizing the assumed isotopy. It is essential in this connection that in spite of the disguise Shizoken appears to assume in debate, he nonetheless makes the very idea of debate nonsensical. He seems to attest to the notion that even if one does not subscribe to an ideological position

Defamiliarization and Parody

181

outside the space of generic discontinuity and its languages, it is possible to disclose the implicit assumptions underlying that space by creating nonsense, by generating within that space fissures that force the sense-making mechanisms particular to that space to malfunction. What is being achieved by the presence of this actant, I suspect, is a defamiliarization of the space of literary conventions. Nonetheless, it is doubtful that the parodist literature of the eighteenth century actually carried out the defamiliarization to the extent that I have suggested, for it seems that it failed to defamiliarize the very conditions of its genesis. Despite its radical gesture, such parody did not actually succeed in striking the discursive formation in which power was couched, which probably explains why the par¬ odist literature could be institutionalized so soon and so easily. Instead of being an effective critique, parodist literature became a form of flirtation. Precisely because of the lack of what Ito Jinsai called ai, which does not necessarily exclude parody as an attempt to reach others, the playfulness of its own parodist strategies ended up institutionalized: in a sense, it forgot to parody “seriously.” In that case, what was it that prevented it from being a penetrating critique of contemporary common sense? From this perspective, my analysis must be ori¬ ented, first, toward that aspect of parodist literature within which the prevalent image of power was effectively disqualified and, second, toward that literature’s integration by a new discursive space within which parody merely reinforced rather than debunked the new arrangement of power.

Haikai-ka or the Double Operation Naturally, defamiliarization extended into other genres of official discourse. Classic Japanese poetry was widely parodied to create another popular genre, kyoka (6-4), or comic tanka (6-12); similarly, Chinese poetry was transformed into kyoshi (6-13), or comic Chinese poems. It is not difficult to see that because of the nature of defamiliarization, as soon as any genre receives recognition as such and is contained within the space of generic discontinuity, it can be defamiliarized and parodied. Those works belonging to authorized genres—notably classic poetry, Bud¬ dhist sutras, and Confucian treatises—were constantly parodied. Ishikawa Jun conceptualizes this defamiliarization and parody as haikai-ka (6-14), or the re¬ organization of discourse by haikai principle.3 Using the example of comic verse, he demonstrates how a work belonging to classic literature is vulgarized by associating the renowned image in the no play Eguchi with a maid employed in a trading house, who sleeps around indiscriminately. Let me reproduce the verse he cites and briefly explain its phrases. 3Ishikawa Jun, Edojin no hassoho ni tsuite, in Ishikawa Jun zenshu, vol. 7 (Tokyo- Chikuma Shobo, 1962), pp. 252-63.

182

Frame Up

Sakuma no gejo wa hakutsuki no chijire garni, ura ni kite kikeba ototsui zo ni nori.

“Sakuma no gejo”: a maid employed by Sakuma. “Sakuma” probably de¬ notes a trading house owned by the Sakuma family. “Hakutsuki”: Haku is a metal leaf; here it refers to golden leaves attached (■tsuki) to the head of a Buddha image. Hakutsuki also means notorious or renowned. “Chijire garni”: frizzled hair. Normally the head of Buddha image is covered with many buds, which are, in fact, constructed from curled hair with metal leaves on top. However, frizzled hair also evokes the image of pubic hair. Therefore, “being notorious or renowned for her pubic hair” (“Hakutsuki no chijire garni”) implies that every man in the neighborhood knows what her pubic hair looks like. "Ura ni kite kikeba”: “Coming to the back door to ask for/about her.” Indeed this should mean that somebody came to the Sakuma household with a view to arranging a date with her. One would not come to the front door to see her for such a purpose. Ishikawa then points out in the verse the dual structure in which the image of Dainichi Nyorai is superimposed on this young employee Otake: “In the Otake legend, we recognize a dual operation. It consists of a mechanism of mutation according to which the same image, while referring to a historical figure, Eguchi, also designates a symbol of an everyday affair. Here, we are talking about a mechanism of transformation within which one sees Otake with one’s eyes open, but also see Dainichi Nyorai with one’s eyes closed.”4 5 The underlying rule of what Ishikawa refers to as the reorganization of dis¬ course by the haikai principle operates on the basis of two assumptions. First, the general readership must be familiar with both classic literature and the space of generic discontinuity. Words quoted from classics and forms of narrative con¬ struction must not only be immediately understood as pertaining to a position defined within that space but also be associated with specific isotopies and groups of images. As is the case with literature in general, an utterance does not take place in a cultural vacuum but is produced against and for certain texts already existing in the archive of the classics. Even a single word, such as “elephant” in the verse I just quoted, should automatically evoke the whole imagery associated with the classics: in our case, it is the no play Eguchi, in which a courtesan in a small village called Eguchi, riding an elephant, transforms herself into Fugen Bosatsu, or Samantabhadra. In this respect, every word or phrase is already sedimented with textual associations. It is only in terms of intertextual relationships, therefore, that words serve to project meanings accord¬ ing to the specific expectations installed in a work’s readership by past works. Without covert reference to other texts, a work does not make sense. 4Ibid., p. 252. 5Ibid., p. 254.

Defamiliarization and Parody

183

Second, the space composed and constituted by the classics is distanced from the field of everyday speech. It is assumed that one lives in a reality that the language of classic literature is unable to describe legitimately and exhaustively. There is an implicit consensus that the words and vocabulary of the classics are foreign and that they therefore do not have direct appeal to those engaged in the everyday mundane world. That the field of everyday language is separated and distanced from the languages of official and authorized discourse does not mean, however, that there exists a distinct presumptive unity of classical and official language within which one might adequately express activities, sentiments, and perceptions that would otherwise not be accessible to a general audience. One should never be so naive as to presume that a certain experience can be ver¬ balized in one language but not in another, as if experience could be identified independently of language. There is simply no way to unequivocally distinguish language from experience; conversely, there is no experience independent of language. Any argument based on the implicit assumption that language and experience are two autonomous entities is suspect. In this connection, it is important to stress that what is called “colloquialism” is not an explicit kind of language. Certain phraseology that often appears in written and authorized texts can be used in ordinary conversation and hence rendered colloquial. Neither vocabulary, phraseology, nor even syntax is an adequate means by which to define the putative colloquial language, for as I have suggested with regard to the status of direct speech in the script of ningyo joruri, ordinary speech and its languages are constituted in terms of a variety of differentiations including those dividing verbal and nonverbal texts.

Defamiliarization and Parody By means of the reorganization of discourse according to the haikai principle (or dual operation), an authentic classic is related to a new text/con-text that had not been associated with the original. The sense of discontinuity is, in fact, produced by that very unexpectedness. An unexpected juxtaposition of words adds a new meaning to the original text to which reference is being made, and thereby transforms it. In short, such an operation is motivated by the will to distort the originality of the text and trivialize its authority, rather than to secure and restore the original. What is even more striking is that the writers of parodist literature were interested in the authenticity of original texts only in order to integrate them into the world of “nearness.” That is, they respected the authen¬ ticity of the original texts in order to laugh at them. It is for precisely this reason that defamiliarization is also a form of familiarization. The iconoclasm of parodic literature is always accompanied by a certain sense of vulgarization. Stripped of the authority and remoteness usually associated with them, pres¬ tigious texts are boldly inserted into the scene of the everyday, mundane, and vulgar world. Santo Kyoden’s Nishiki no ura, for example, presents one of the

184

Frame Up

most successful applications of this dual operation.6 This novella parodies many previous texts, including Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s. But for the sake of my argument, let me concentrate on a thread that connects this work to Japanese classic poetry. Toward the end of this novella, a courtesan, Yugiri, and her lover, Isaemon, are exchanging amorous words while the next room shinzo (apprentice courte¬ sans) are enjoying themselves playing with hyakunin isshu (6-15) or waka poem cards of one hundred poems by one hundred poets. The lovers’ words and those of classic poetry intersect and generate a peculiar field of polyphony. This coex¬ istence of two different genres of discourse in a synchronized field projects the style of humor particular to the dual operation as postulated by Ishikawa. It is impossible to make the interactions of the various voices and isotopies of Nishiki no ura available in English, for translation would require reorganization of syntagmatic word order which would destroy the synchronic effects. I will, therefore, present a few selections in Japanese and try to explain how equivocity generates hilarious consequences. Edo: Izumi Shikibu. Arazaramu kono yo no hoka no omoide ni, Isaemon. Ima hitotabi no kando no wabi mo sumi, kono nikai e mo harete kite, awaruru yo ni naritai monoja. Yugiri: Hon ni, maiban awarenshita toki wa, takusan so ni omoishita ga, konogoro wa konoyona hakanaio koto sae, taitei no kokoro zukai ja ozansen. Isaemon: Sosano. Edo: Ushi to mishi yo zo imawa koishiki.7

Edo, one of the apprentice courtesans, recites one of the one hundred poems. First, the name of the poet and the kami no ku, the first stanza of the poem, are pronounced. Edo’s voice is then interrupted by the conversation going on be¬ tween Isaemon and Yugiri, which happens to coincide with the beginning of the shimo no ku, that is, the second stanza of the poem, “ima hitotabi no” (once again). The series of words in the lovers dialogue shifts away from the words of the poem, and loses its parallelism with the poem. Yet the dual operation is at work here too, as the end of Isaemon’s utterance refers to the poem again. This utterance and the poem end with the same syntactical construction, which ex¬ presses hope or expectation in the subjunctive mood: 6Santo Kyoden, Nishiki no ura, in Koten nihon bungaku taikei, vol. 59 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1958), pp. 415-40. A writer of gesaku fiction in the late eighteenth century, Santo Kyoden (17611816) was also a ukiyo-e illustrator, poet, and shopkeeper. In addition to illustrating many kibyoshi (yellow cover) booklets, he wrote in a wide range of popular genres, excelling in satire and the vivid portrayal of city life. For the publication of his satirical book, he was arrested by the Bakufu authority. The titles of his major works—including Edo umare uwaki no kabayaki, Tsugen somagaki, Shikake bunko, and Tsuzoku daiseiden—contain so many phonetic and graphic puns that they are not translatable. 7Santo Kyoden, Nishiki no ura, in Koten nihon bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1958), 59.415*~40 *

Defamiliarization and Parody Edo:. . . Arazaramu kono yo no hoko no omoide ni, [Ima hitotabi no au koto mo gana.]

185 (A) (B)

Ima hitotabi no kando no wabi mo sumi,

(A*)

kono nikai e mo harete kite, awaruru yo ni naritai monoja.)

(B*)

The second stanza (B), indeed, does not get pronounced; rather, it is implicit as an other text to which this text refers. This implicit reference is assumed by the syntactical isomorphism between this stanza and the actual utterance of Isaemon (A*). Both texts in fact express a wish for an impossible rendezvous. In this sense, Isaemon’s utterance is almost a semantic equivalent to the lower stanza, except that additional information is included here which does not appear in the poem. That is, Izumi Shikibu, a renowned poet of the Heian period, did not mention how to apologize to the family and ask them to redeem the hero from disinheritance, nor did she specifically mention the second floor of a brothel where the rendezvous was to take place. The apparent similarity between the text referred to and the actual utterance generates a hilarious contrast. Moreover, we see how the poem is deprived of its aristocratic and other¬ worldly connotations when its entire message is compared with the context within which it is inserted in Nishiki no ura. This poem, by a poet famous for her straightforward expression of sensual affection, could roughly be rendered into English as follows: “I will soon cease to be in the world [that is, I will soon be somewhere outside this world]. As a precious memory [to take with me], I wish I could have another encounter with you.” “Arazaram” in this context does not mean “I” am going to die soon. Rather, the Buddhist cosmology that might lead us to believe that the poem is essentially valedictory, in which this world is one of mahy worlds, is merely stated and used as a framework. As is often the case in Heian literature, the division between this real world and imaginary worlds is constantly reversed, in the sense that the realness of this world is perceived as a sign of its unrealness. In addition, the shift of viewpoints in this poem is the main thrust, without which the whole semantic construction would be unintelligible. First, the world in which “I” cease to exist is marked as this world; yet my own death in this world would only lead to my presence outside this world. Here the first shift of viewpoint is indicated by “kono yo no hoka no omoide ni” (for the sake of the memory “I” would have about this world when “I” am outside this world). The actual rendezvous that “I” wish for should take place in this real world, however, and the “I” who wishes for another encounter with her lover is the one who is still in this world in flesh and blood. In Isaemon’s utterance, what had been a metaphysical reference to another world in the original is flattened out so thoroughly that no anguish expressing spiritual bondage can be found. Isaemon’s wish is, from beginning to end, both earthly and earthy, concerned only with sensuality and everyday trivialities. Moreover, because of the isomorphism in semantic construction, the contrast

186

Frame Up

between classic language and the contemporary language of the townspeople is even more clearly illuminated. What strikes the reader is the marked irrelevance of the classic poem within the context of the described situation. No doubt this sense of irrelevance is intrinsic to the humor in this work and is constituted by means of narrative devices. Were there no such isomorphism in semantic con¬ struction, even the sense of humor based on such an irrelevance would be lost. In a similar manner, Yugiri’s succeeding utterance is skillfully parodied in order to call forth an effect, namely, that the second stanza (“Ushi to mishi yo zo ima wa koishiki”) of another hyakunin isshu poem by Fujiwara Kiyosuke, obliquely sums up the emotion the lovers share with each other.8 Again, a sense of irrelevance evoked by the juxtaposition of the classic poem and the mundane conversation is evident. The lovers lament the passing of time. When Isaemon used to pay frequent visits to Yugiri, they did not realize how precious time was, but since they are no longer allowed to see each other, their feelings are inten¬ sified. Yet, the metaphysical anguish expressed in the classic poem is totally absent in the lovers’ conversation. The poem depicts the fear of death and the transitory nature of life, but neither Isaemon nor Yugiri attempts to relate their situation to any otherworldly speculations. The obvious similarity between the situation in the poem and in the lovers’ fate enhances the irrelevance, making it all the more clear and striking. Thus, the worlds of classic literature and contemporary mun¬ dane life are superimposed upon each other. This strategy is exactly what is suggested by Ishikawa’s notion of double operations: it is effective not only because classic texts are defamiliarized and deprived of their authenticity but also because what would otherwise be remote and transcendent is reduced to the earthly and earthy world. The grandiose statements in the classic texts are trivialized and thereby introduced into the world of “nearness,” the familiar sphere of “actual life” in which the people of eighteenth-century Tokugawa Japan dealt with everyday necessities. We should remember at the same time, however, that although a classic text thus parodied is removed from its designated position within the space of generic discontinuity and defamiliarized, the double operation also familiarizes the classic text because it gives a new readership uninhibited access to classic writings that had once been beyond their reach. Fragments of the classics are absorbed into mundane life and find their way into everyday activities. As has often been remarked, it is during the Tokugawa period that classic literature was introduced to the common au¬ dience at large and became part of mass literature. Plural Voices The notion of genre poses many difficulties, particularly with regard to liter¬ ature in the eighteenth century, not because many works of parodist literature 8The poem in its entirety: “Nagaraeba, mata konogoroya shinobaremu, usito mishiyo zo, ima wa koishiki.”

Defamiliarization and Parody

187

incorporate forms and vocabulary that normally belong to other genres but be¬ cause these works, intentionally or not, objectify and relativize the very interre¬ lationship according to which the style and vocabulary of any specific genre are evaluated and implicitly used to distinguish it from other genres. Certainly, every text is produced against the background of other texts, but even more apparently so in the case of Tokugawa parodist literature. This particular kind of literature can be located within the given space of generic discontinuity, but at the same time it is a metagenre, for it problematizes and exposes the rules generating and regenerating the given taxonomy of genres. In this sense, it could be argued that parodist literature not only was co-opted by and incorporated into the space of generic discontinuity but also that it simultaneously gave rise to the possibility that a text could be liberated from constraints that determined the mode within which it supposedly signified. This dual position leads to an apparently contra¬ dictory evaluation of parodist literature: it is at once the most vulgar form of literature (positioned at the bottom of the generic hierarchy), and at the same time, because of its parasitic relations to whatever genre is to be parodied, it functions as the metalanguage for the parodied genre. Hence, it is outside the determination of the generic hierarchy. The term gesaku (works of play or jokes, 5-11), widely used to designate this genre of Tokugawa literature today, ex¬ presses the ambivalence of parody very well. It does not simply signify selfdeprecation on the part of the parodist; it also means that, by being “insincere,” such writers are capable of objectifying, distancing, and relativizing conven¬ tional modes of presentation. It demonstrates that one need not speak in a given style, language, and voice, that multiplicity itself can be the principle of discur¬ sive activities. Even though gesaku may not convince the readership that the conventional mode of presentation is inadequate, at least it suggests discursive possibilities other than those accepted by contemporary institutions. Nevertheless, it must also be emphasized that this form of insincerity and parody was itself institutionalized. I must ask, therefore, to what extent the conventional mode of presentation was actually objectified, distanced, and rela¬ tivized in this kind of literary practice. Or the question should probably be asked differently. Was there some silent site, constituted in this discursive space, which enabled this practice but to which this practice was completely blind? But before I elucidate this question, it seems necessary to analyze the structure of parodist literature further. The radical plurality of voices one finds in kokkeibon (comic books, 5-7) testifies to the intersection and collision of a variety of voices at the expense of plot coherence. Many kokkeibon and sharebon (5-6) seem to lack coherent narrative structure; their narrative unities may appear dependent on a mere suc¬ cession of scenes, partly because of the structure of this plurality in which it is not an event but a scene that determines how various voices are integrated into a linear succession of words. In such works, one can hardly avoid the impression that words uttered in a given situation at a given time are collected and recorded without being synthesized into a drama. As I have mentioned with regard to

188

Frame Up

pictorial and spatial presentation, it is a scene, rather than a linear organization of various actions, which is the determinant rule in these works. No wonder writers faced such tremendous difficulties in tying one scene to another, for in order to accommodate this plurality, they had to generate a scene or a situation in which various voices were presented as they were uttered. It is important to note in this respect that the sphere of ordinary language, “nearness,” and mundane life is nothing but a space in which innumerable voices, none dominant, intersect and collide with one another without explicit order. Such spaces may appear chaotic, but they escape from any synthesizing mechanism that could screen utterances and put them in order so as to form a coherent message. Therefore, this kind of sphere, filled with heterogeneous words, possesses no telos according to which narrative time arranges utterances in a linear order. Here, time is a mere successivity that loosely connects one speech to another; there is only change, no overarching continuity. Certain things happen at one moment; at another, other things happen. There is no particular connection except for some very simple plot. What endows actions and happenings with signification in these texts is not the context (if by “context” we mean a narrative linearity by which utterances are organized in successive order). Instead, signification is produced within a situational con-text that surrounds and animates the words and behavior of char¬ acters. Although words are necessarily organized linearly in a verbal text, the structure of semantic order horizontally redistributes utterances in such a way that a statement representing speech is juxtaposed to other quoted speeches through what I have called the gestalt type of intertextual construction. Of course, this form of presentation is problematic to the extent that within such a juxtaposition the time of narration does not proceed as it does in other narratives. That is, it appears that the time of narration is glued to the time of the action and that the space represented by the verbal text is confined within the space of action. Consequently, the same constraints to which action adheres determine and limit narrative possibilities. Restricted by the principle that to read such a text is both to retrace utterances contained in it and to repeat speech acts that produced these utterances, the time of narration cannot “skip” or “leap over” the temporality of the speech act. Here, just as in scripts for theatrical perfor¬ mance, no deployment of words ever overcomes the restraints imposed by the scene: unless the scene changes, the time of narration must continue to be enclosed within a given scene. And when the scene does change, there cannot be temporal continuity between scenes. The narrative continuity ends abruptly as the scene ends; just as on a stage the theatrical space that establishes itself within the stage setting, as well as its imagined world, disappears when the curtain falls, so the continuity of narrative time must come to a sudden halt. In this case the time of these novellas is fragmented and detached from the overarching time of chronology; these parodist novellas not only defamiliarize classic literature, dis¬ qualifying the authority of generic hierarchy, but also disseminate encompassing historical time. Instead of one authentic history based on narrative continuity,

Defamiliarization and Parody

189

these generate innumerable histories disseminated and distributed within the space of ordinary language. No longer are they histories of heroes; we are told that there is no prestigious viewpoint from which events of the past can be synthesized into a singular line of narration and thus integrated into the unity of the whole. By offering a different form of presentation and a new epistemological choice, such texts destroy and dissemble the myth of linear history in a subtle way. At the same time, it is worth noting that these parodist novellas represent a sense of ahistoricity. Immersed in the reality of the mundane world, the writers could not see how the present was related to and determined by the past. Thus, above all they seem to have lost a valuable means by which to defamiliarize what was perceived to be near, immediate, and familiar. History was recognized in its instantiation in the present, just as fragmented and disseminated quotations from the classic writings were incorporated into the language of the townspeople. Only insofar as the traces of the past were scattered on the surface of contempo¬ rary discourse did history “mean” something to the readers of parodist literature in the eighteenth century. Their concern was exclusively with the here and now, and this strong adherence to the present required the double operation through which texts of the past were subjected to general consumption. Two issues relate to the question of parodist literature and historicity. First, as Ishikawa’s notion of the reorganization of discourse by the haikai principle suggests, parody and defamiliarization would be impossible without positing some kind of distance or discontinuity. What, then, is the nature of this distance, this discontinuity that sustains the double operation? Violating assumptions un¬ derlying literary production produces an effect in which what has been accepted is suddenly estranged and resituated within an irrelevant context. Seen from a political stance that is eager to affirm the existing discursive arrangement, the reorganization of discourse by the haikai principle would appear rather grotesque and destructive. Yet it is in fact a creative attempt to liberate one from the restricted economy power imposes. What this practice discloses is the conven¬ tionality and historicity of positivity; that is to say, what the majority of a social group believes is given and real. In this context, what is at stake is not a specific institutional form such as the shogunate but the legitimacy of power itself. For this reason I have argued that authors of parodist literature, albeit unconsciously, had proposed not another form of power but rather the dislocation of the existing power, which had regulated their discourse. This argument, however, can be maintained only on condition that the object of defamilarization and parody is recognized as integral to a power that presents itself as a transparency, a neu¬ trality, a set of commonsensical presuppositions. In other words, the same double operation cannot be repeated once such a transparency has been objectified and defamiliarized. Its critical effect is lost if parody is institutionalized. I think that this is why Tokugawa parodist literature degenerated into a “playful” skepticism that tamed the radical historical difference of the past by familiarizing it, into an

190

Frame Up

easygoing liberal relativism that accorded every political stance its merits and demerits and deemed all to be deserving of equal respect. Instead of facing the intrusion of the otherness of the Other in the sphere of nearness, the parodists often seem to have ended up clinging to a homosocial world where they were securely at home, engaging in an endless series of chats about how to handle the women of the pleasure quarters, continually indulging themselves in mutual selfpity and rivalry over women. Their skepticism turned out to be an excuse for not risking themselves in the encounter with the Other in everyday life and a legit¬ imation of their inability in ai to go out of their homosocial world. Second, in eighteenth-century parodist literature, specific uses of polysemy helped visualize and thematize what had been presumed to be normal and natural and had thus been reduced to transparency. It was believed that polysemy ren¬ dered the invisible visible and that systematic constraints on the production of knowledge and speech had to be exposed. By engendering abnormalities in the perspective of reception and situating it in apparently queer angles with respect to an epistemological framework, presumptively transparent assumptions could be rendered opaque; precisely in this way the omnipresence of the epistemological framework could be illustrated. That is, polysemy, when validly applied, could create a particular angle of refraction, which could make the hitherto invisible emerge as an obstacle in vision. But by the same token, there would be no point in repeating the same procedure in order to make visible what had already been rendered visible. Parodists might have continued to crack and fissure the invisi¬ ble network of criteria according to which a work was evaluated and classified, but without a continuing effort to defamiliarize, the presence of the system of implicit assumptions could not be recognized, just as we do not realize the presence of clear glass except when it is cracked. This is, of course, one of the most important recurring themes in this book: if there are no cracks in the glass, strike it so that cracks will appear. Then it will be not a reality beyond the glass but the glass itself that will be visible. The problem of historicity is closely related to this critical effort. Moreover, historicity and polysemy are interdependent. We should remember that the crit¬ ical function cannot in itself be ascribed to polysemy in general. Nevertheless, a specific use of polysemy in a specific discursive formation is able to perform a critical function. In this sense, too, the problem of parody is historically specific. The obsessive concern of parodist literature with the here and now effectively eliminated any possibility for critical self-evaluation. In addition, the ahistoricity of these texts could be securely contained within a discursive space to which, as I will elucidate, polysemy was no threat. (But here too I must hasten to repeat that the discursive space at issue does not coincide either with so-called Japanese society as a whole or with Japanese culture as an all-encompassing system).9

9For this reason, such overgeneralizations as “Japanese society is not logocentric.” “Japanese culture is feminine,” etc. are simply pointless.

Defamiliarization and Parody

191

Thus far we have seen how a new discursive space emerged in Tokugawa literature and some problems its emergence engendered. It is possible to point out, of course, that a schism existed within eighteenth-century Tokugawa society as to how history was to be conceived, since there were also other genres of discourse in which the continuity of historical narrative was maintained. (Of course, we must never assume that what I mean by eighteenth-century discursive space ever coincides with the whole of eighteenth-century Japanese society.) We can conclude that the notion of history was extremely problematic at that time and, possibly, that I should talk about plural senses of history in the eighteenth century. Of course, I have by no means presented a comprehensive account of the literary scene; nevertheless, I have identified certain basic features of this discur¬ sive space. In the remainder of this chapter, I shall review some of the issues already discussed in Part Two and evaluate their theoretical significance within the scope of this entire book.

Perspective, or Abschattung In Nihongo wa do iu gengo ka (What sort of language is Japanese? 6-16), Miura Tsutomu discusses differences between pictorial expression (kaigateki hyogen, 6-17) and verbal expression (gengoteki hyogen, 6-18). He contends that in pictorial expression the depiction of an object inevitably involves expression of the subject’s perspective. An object can be described, identified, and determined as such only if it is seen from the position of a specific viewer. A thing seen from nowhere is merely an impossibility. Like phenomenologists, Miura acknowl¬ edges in pictorial expression some of the conditions of perspective, ox Abschat¬ tung, pertaining to the perception of things in general. Thus he regards pictorial expression, in contrast to verbal expression, as an imitation of objects in the sensory aspect, which “implies that pictorial or cinematographic expression is restricted by the position of the author’s sensory organs and by his particular way of grasping by means of the senses.”10 In pictorial expression, therefore, subjective and objective expressions always coexist as already synthesized. The pictorial expression of an object is first and foremost an expression of the subject’s attitude and position. But Miura also points out that the viewpoint and subject’s attitude that are registered in pictorial presentation cannot be immediately identical to the position and attitude of the viewer. Rather, the subject’s imagined position is preserved in pictorial presenta¬ tion. 10Miura Tsutomu, Nihongo wa douiu gengo ka (Tokyo: Kisetsu-sha, 1971), p. 70. Miura does not seem aware of the theoretical implications of his attempt (as explicitly announced in the title of this book) to define the characteristics of the Japanese language. Perhaps, this explains why his argument on occasions sounds rather parochial.

192

Frame Up

On the other hand, this kind of immediate synthesis of the subjective and the objective does not exist in verbal expression. Referring to the language process theory (gengo kateisetsu, 6-19) of Tokieda Motoki, Miura defines the nature of verbal expression, noting: “One of the main characteristics of language is that there is no direct relationship between the sensory mode of an object and the sensory mode of the form of its expression.”11 Later he remarks: [The fact] that language is free from the constraints inherent in the sensory aspects of an object leads, on the one hand, to the fact that it requires social convention for its expression and, on the other hand, to the fact that objective and subjective ex¬ pressions are separated [in language]. One must seek an essential feature of language here. Duality in expression exists in the form of synthesis in the case of pictures and movies, but in the case of language, duality is divided, with another duality of linguistic and nonlinguistic expression being generated as a result.12

This is, indeed, an attempt to classify various forms of presentation in terms of their structures. Elsewhere Miura attributes the specificity of linguistic ex¬ pression to duality in expression: There are many ways to grasp an object. But in linguistic expression, various specificities of the sensory mode in which an object is presented and sometimes the characteristic of the sensory mode itself are omitted, or the nonsensory object can be presented. In any case, an object is always presented through generalization or universalization. That is to say, language expresses an object either by generalizing it into a presentation and thereby conceptualizing it or by directly grasping it as a universal aspect of the concept. Therefore, differences that a particular object entails in the sensory mode of its perception prior to conceptualization cannot be expressed in linguistic form. And listeners and readers do not have direct access to an object in linguistic expression.13

He then maintains that the enunciation is therefore an act by which the division between immediate sensory perception and conceptualization is generated. It follows with regard to the speaking subject that the enunciation is always a doubling of the subject. What he refers to as “splitting in the linguistic ex¬ pression of ego” is related. To express an object through linguistic media is to posit a subject other than the one already existing in the world.14 A subject thus generated is no longer subjugated to the constraints of Abschattung. It is in this context that Maurice Merleau-Ponty once said, “Language is not a being-in-theworld”: the subject posited in linguistic expression does not have its place within 11Ibid., p. 45. 12Ibid., p. 71. l 3Miura Tsutomu, Ninshiki to gengo no riron (Theory of cognition and language) 2 (Tokyo- Keiso Shobo, 1967), 2:381. l4Miura’s use of the phrase “Genjitsu ni sonzai suru jiko” to refer to the ego already existing in the world does not mean that he simply assumes the identity of the “real” ego.

Defamiliarization and Parody

193

the world of perception. In other words, through verbalization one becomes an anonymous other who is at the same time both nowhere and everywhere; that is, one becomes universalized. If the nonverbal text is characterized by the subject’s positionality in the world, then the verbal text is certainly defined by its subject’s freedom from perspectival constraints. In other words, language is the field of the other, and enunciation is a transition from the state in which one has not yet experienced the splitting and therefore has not been transformed into a subject, to the realm where the subject has been split and has thereby lost its direct rapport with the world. Such is Miura’s argument. Perhaps I should point out a fundamental problem in Miura’s approach similar to the one I found in Benveniste’s ideas. By emphasizing the difference between sensory expression and linguistic expression, or the visible and the articulatory, Miura tends to ascribe an immediacy to the visual in contrast to the mediated nature of the linguistic, as if the visual were more directly affiliated with the primordial experience of perception. He posits, in fact, a real ego (shutai teki na jiko, 6-20) as opposed to the ideational ego (kannen teki najiko, 6-21).15 In spite of his insight into the importance of the “mirror stage” in social formation, which he draws from his reading of Marx, he seems to posit the real ego without any qualification: The material mirror used in the idealistic split of ego is not exclusively a glass mirror. Already Marx pointed out the existence of “other men” as one of those material mirrors. “Since he comes into the world neither with a looking glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtean philosopher, to whom ‘I am I’ is sufficient, man first sees and recognizes himself in other men. Peter only establishes his own identity as a man by first comparing himself with Paul as being of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he stands in his Pauline personality, becomes to Peter the type of the genus homo.” This is Marx’s critique of the idealism of Fichtean type. As I have mentioned, Fichte’s “ego” is, in fact, an ideational self, [Kannen teki na jiko], but Fichte insists that such “ego” exists from the outset. In contrast, Marx argues that the ideational self does not exist with birth, but through the encounter with “the mirror called other men,” the real self [genjitsu teki na jiko, 6-22] is split to generate the ideational self.16

Hence, Miura’s notion of shutai is blind to many questions that necessarily arise when the shutai is substantialized and subjectified. This blindness is, in fact, shared not only by Benveniste (most evidently, as I said, in his notions of discourse and person) but also by Tokieda Motoki, as I shall indicate in my discussion of his linguistics later. Though they do so in different ways, Ben¬ veniste, Tokieda, and Miura all reduce the shutai to the subject of enunciation, despite the fact that, particularly in Miura’s work, the specular image of the self is clearly distinguished from the agent who speaks.17 It sometimes seems that eighteenth-century parodist literature was haunted, obsessively attempting to deny the nonpositionality of verbal expression. By spatialization and the denial of narrative linearity, it showed a coherent tendency l5Miura, Ninshiki to gengo no riron 1:22-39, 149-69, 230-40, 2:354-401, 510-26. 16Ibid., p. 29. The quotation is from Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (New York: International, 1967), p. 52. 17See esp. Miura, Ninshiki to gengo no riron 2:519-26.

194

Frame Up

toward that which Miura identified as characteristic of nonlinguistic expression. Insofar as it is an expression at all, a non-linguistic expression does not immedi¬ ately project the position of the viewer in the world. Yet it is true that parodist literature favored textual configurations that alternatively adhere to the scene and the performative situation. Instead of constituting what Roman Ingarden called “represented space” by organizing “represented objectivities,” it created the field of many perspectives, directly tying the visual and verbal.18 Narrative time, if I can still speak in terms of narrativity, was almost congruent with the time of action that flowed within the scene. By dispersing the unity of the narrative voice into many utterances by multiple speakers, the time of narration was disrupted and deployed horizontally. The impression that one would normally have about the works of Santo Kyoden or Jippensha Ikku19 affirms the thesis that these works present a space where various voices intersect and contradict one another, rather than a story or definite plot that connects various utterances in linear l8In The Literary Work of Art, trans. George G. Grabowicz (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univer¬ sity Press, 1973), Roman Ingarden defines “represented objectivities” (or objects) and “represented space”: “I would especially like to emphasize that the expression ‘represented object’ (or objectivity) that I am using is to be understood in a very broad sense, encompassing, above all, everything that is nominally projected regardless of the objectivity category and material essence. Thus it refers to things as well as persons, but also to all possible occurrences, states, acts performed by persons, etc. At the same time, however, the stratum of what is represented can also contain the nonnominally projected, as, in particular, what is intended purely verbally. For the purpose of simplifying termi¬ nology, the expression ‘represented object’ is meant to encompass—in the absence of express restrictions on this usage—everything that is represented as such. At the same time, it must be noted that ‘objectified’ objects need not necessarily find themselves in the stratum of ‘represented objects.’ And this is true in various senses. In the first place, it is not necessarily a question of the particular form of the objective givenness in which the object remains distinctly ‘distanced’ with respect to the observer (although in the great majority of instances this is exactly the case). Second, what is represented does not necessarily have to possess ‘objective’ properties, i.e., those that are intended as being free of every existential relativity” (219-20). He continues: “‘Represented space does not allow itself to be incorporated either into real space or into the various kinds of perceptible orienta¬ tional space, even when the represented objects are expressly represented as ‘finding’ themselves in a specific location in real space, e.g., ‘in Munich.’ This represented Munich, and in particular the space within which this city—as one that is represented—‘lies’, cannot be identified with the corresponding segment of space in which the real city of Munich actually lies. If it could be, then it would have to be possible to walk out, as it were, from represented space into real space and vice versa, which is patently absurd. Moreover, nothing can change the fact that the segment of space in which the real city of Munich is constantly and invariably situated has a pronounced existential relativity with respect to cognitive subjects (even though it does not yet coincide with the orienta¬ tional space that is existentially relative to a particular cognitive subject), since this real city quite evidently constantly changes its position in the one, objective, homogeneous cosmic space—if that at all exists and therefore, in this latter sense, there is actually no segment of space in which it could constantly and invariably be found. The segment of space represented in the literary work is not to be identified even with the ‘always the same’ existentially relative segment of space in which the real city of Munich lies. They are entirely separate kinds of space, between which there is no spatial crossing” (224-25). 19Jippensha Ikku (1765-1831), fiction writer and playwright of the later Tokugawa period, was a low-ranking samurai who left feudal service and began writing joruri scripts and kibyoshi. His talent extended over many genres, including gokan (bound volume), yomihon (reading book), kyoka (comic waka poetry), and senryu (comic haiku poetry). Perhaps he is best known for his very successful kokkeibon series Tokaidochu hizakurige (Shanks’ mare).

Defamiliarization and Parody

195

succession. What is manifested here is a deeply rooted desire to return to the enunciation, to the imagined primordial and immediate synthesis of subjective and objective in perception, a return from the splitting of the subject in language and from the out-of-the-world-ness of linguistic expression to a direct rapport with the world through lived experience. Furthermore, since many parodist works do not have an explicit plot structure according to which the unity of a work might be construed in terms of a begin¬ ning and an end, they create the impression that speeches of ordinary people were directly transcribed into writing, although such transcription is doubtless impossible, a fantasy projected by phonocentrism. Thus depicted, the events of everyday life do not exhibit an overarching meaning. There is the suggestion that life simply does not have a transcendent essence, only immediate, concrete, and “near” reality (which is, after all, a transcendent value nonetheless). It is also for this reason that parodist literature could be an effective critique of those contem¬ porary ideologies that in one way or another seduced people into belief in a transcendent order and found a moral implication immanent in every possible event, even though those who were not ethically cultivated might not be able to see it. This is how the parodists told the audience that the world was, after all, as it was, and possibly this is the fundamental reason why the shogunate feared this kind of discourse and censored it many times. That is, regardless of what classic, authorized documents said to the readership, nothing was hidden under the surface of everyday phenomena, and therefore, the sphere of nearness, of vulgar, mundane, and trivial everyday deeds, was, as a matter of fact, where the ultimate authority lay. Parodist literature helped remove from the minds of the audience various ideological constraints, the main function of which was to posit the existence of a univocal “truth” beyond the reach of commoners and thus to justify the existence of authorized commentaries on classic writings. It is pre¬ cisely in this context that eighteenth-century parody was at one and the same time both defamiliarization and familiarization. It defamiliarized the orthodoxy and authenticity associated with those writings, but it also gave direct access to those writings to those who were supposedly not properly educated. Parodist literature taught its readership that one did not need to know the original meaning of a classic, that the reader should place it in the contemporary scene and see how it worked when surrounded by other texts of the time. In this respect, the way Ito Jinsai treated the canonical writings adumbrated the emergence of parodist literature. Instead of generating a metalanguage based on canonical writings, he reversed the order of the original ancient writings and their commentaries. He attempted to determine the dimension within which canonical writings were to speak to his contemporaries; the authentic voice of the writings should come from the site where they encounter nonverbal texts, that is, what I identified as'the performative situation. Although the performative situation functions as the background for the writings (which in turn function as the figure), it contributes as much to the constitution of meaning as the writings

196

Frame Up

themselves. Implicit in Ito’s approach is the awareness that whatever the per¬ formative situation may have been when the ancient writings were originally produced, it has been permanently lost; there is no way to authenticate one’s reading by recourse to the origin. His notion of kogi (ancient meaning, 6-23) is neither the original intention of the author nor the plentitude of the scene of the originary utterance. Rather it points toward the cognition that the meaning of the character should not be taken to be transcendent nature but should be com¬ prehended within the specific discourse in which it is used. Hence, the validity of Confucian teaching had to be judged in relation to the contemporary per¬ formative situation in which Jinsai was involved. This relevance of the contem¬ porary situation in reading Chinese classics was further affirmed in his discussion of nearness. Validity is primarily concerned with ethicality; that is, it is ap¬ proached from the viewpoint of the establishment of virtues in action in the contemporary situation. The double operation that characterized Edo literature in general, according to Ishikawa Jun, invalidated the authority of the classics and further articulated the manner in which the classic writings were introduced into the present. In the eighteenth-century discursive space, the act of reading was also defined by this double operation; obviously the status of writing (written text) in general thus had to undergo a radical change. The rules of the discursive formation were transformed so that the relationships between verbal and nonverbal texts, and writing and speech, were necessarily changed. The problematic that thinkers faced in the eighteenth century was no doubt in accordance with this transformation of discursive space. In addition to the reduc¬ tion of the verbal text to the performative situation, the sense of nearness and immediacy was continually emphasized. Following Miura Tsutomu’s termi¬ nology, the sensory aspect of perception was directly incorporated into the non¬ verbal and, especially, into the visible. What defines the positionality of the viewer-speaker in such texts is the presence of the subject’s body, according to which perspective, nows and heres were determined. Hence, the overwhelming tendency toward spatialization and pictorial presentation in eighteenth-century parodist literature implied an effort on the part of the writers to include the body of the subject in discourse. The plurality of voices one often encounters in parodist novellas of this time is certainly related to the problematic of the pres¬ ence of the subject’s body in discursive space. Voices are uttered by a plurality of speakers without a single, monophonic center, a center that would often be invisible and hidden but would give an “objective” tone to the entire work. Instead, the writers of eighteenth-century Tokugawa Japan let various voices speak, thereby creating a heterogeneous literary space where the center was constantly shifted by means of parody or the double operation. Needless to say, this method was possible only on the grounds that direct speech and spatialized discourse were articulated as distinct forms: without the spatialization of dis¬ course, the multiplicity of speaking voices would have been impossible; without

Defamiliarization and Parody

197

the articulation of direct speech, the presence of the speaking subject could not have been postulated.

Textual Materiality Now I must turn to the problem that was posed at the beginning of Part Two: the text that is simultaneously seen and read. As has been mentioned, texts such as calligraphy always pose an irreconcilable contradiction between these two modes of perception. In a text produced solely to be read, it is possible to identify the level at which it is determined, as a text, to be read. For instance, a book not only contains its message but is also, and at the same time, a bound set of compiled sheets of paper on which letters have been printed in black ink. When we talk about a specific book, however, we feel entitled to ignore the kind of paper and print used. Only when we exclude various aspects of textual mate¬ riality from our consideration and concentrate exclusively on its enunciated or its message is it possible to define and determine the unity of that book as “thought.” Much the same can be said about speech as an enunciated, for other accompanying phenomena such as the facial expression of the speaker, the situation of the enunciation, and the tone of voice necessarily have to be excluded and ignored in order for a speech to be identified as such. The very act of reading, when viewed in this context, denotes the distinction of various levels immanent in textuality, whereby one level is the thematized focus of attention while other levels are reduced to being part of the privileged level’s undifferenti¬ ated background. Hence, reading is a structured procedure by means of which a certain aspect of textuality is differentiated from others; factors within that cer¬ tain aspect are thematically posited as constituting the signification of the text in question. Seeing is also a structured procedure whereby a different aspect of the textual materiality is the thematic focus of attention while other aspects remain un¬ differentiated. Reading, indeed, is a form of seeing, but different aspects are thematized in reading and seeing. It is possible to see or look at a book instead of reading it. Even if it is the same book as one that we read, it manifests itself as a different text when it is seen. In this respect as well, a text is always texts; a text is already other texts. Texts such as calligraphy call into question the presumed division between seeing and reading, which is normally taken for granted. Faced with a work of calligraphy, it appears, one should constantly shift the focus of one’s attention between reading and seeing. That which is normally ignored and cast into the undifferentiated background in reading, surfaces into prominence in the constitu¬ tion of a calligraphic work as text. A calligraphic work cannot be classified as either purely visual text or purely verbal text. Because of the inherent hetero¬ geneity characteristic of this genre of text, a work of calligraphy casts light on the

198

Frame Up

textual materiality that would otherwise be ignored and reduced to transparency. Similarly, literature of the eighteenth century, parody in particular, continually renders the very notion of reading problematic. Its emphasis on the visual aspect of textual materiality continually disrupts and intervenes in the constitution of representational space. When the focus of attention is fixed on one aspect and the structuring procedure of such reading is stratified, various other aspects of textual materiality pass unnoticed. Provided that the structuring procedure is stable, a text is able to project an imaginary space independent of the actual unidentified space in which it exists as material, in which case one no longer follows black patterns on white sheets. Instead, one lives with the heroes and the heroines in that imaginary space a book projects; one becomes blind to the book as material; one does not remember when one turned the page or what kind of print was used. In order for a literary text to be capable of constituting such an imagined repre¬ sentational space, the other aspects of textual materiality must be suppressed. If those other aspects could not be rendered transparent, one would frequently encounter the merger of representational space with excesses that make the text opaque. Indeed, it is feasible to argue that this is the fundamental problem of eigh¬ teenth-century Tokugawa literature, for this literature cannot be analyzed solely in terms of its content or in terms of what it means to say. Rather, any under¬ standing of eighteenth-century literature must inevitably involve a concern for its forms, for the question of how it means to say, as well as for the spatial arrange¬ ment of words, prints, and illustrations. Therefore, what I postulated as spatialization with regard to ningyo joruri, parodist literature, and so on is not exclusively concerned with the space of representation. Of course, any literary text projects an imagined space to a certain extent, despite the fact that the actual narrative itself must be deployed linearly; yet it is on the surface of narrative that spatialization takes place in those cases I have so far considered. It is true that parts of these works consist of linear verbal presentations; nevertheless, the way utterances are constructed, juxtaposed, and related to one another encompasses a nonlinear formation. As a result, such a representational space can neither be circumscribed nor form a closure. Indeed, it is always open to the performative situation. The reader’s involvement in the imagined space the work represents is continually interrupted and spoiled by the opacity of the text. The text does not form a self-sufficient whole: it must necessarily be supplemented and folded within a certain arrangement of its “outside.” The signification of such a text cannot be determined independently of the various loci of its writing, reading, or utterance. Haikai poetry provides perhaps the best example of this interdepen¬ dence, for in itself it has no fixed meaning; rather, its meaning must be deter¬ mined by the readership on each occasion of its production. The reader must actively and productively intervene in the text in reading haikai no renga. It is intentionally produced in such a way that a stanza of haikai no renga generates new effects according to the differing scenes within which it is read. In other

Defamiliarization and Parody

199

words, a scene or performative situation that is in some sense accidental with respect to the stanza and the series of stanzas is included within the signifiance of haikai poetry as a correlative. Correspondingly, insofar as the process of its signifiance is projected as an interrelationship of the performative situation and the actual words of haikai, its signification does not remain identical when the situation changes. Or more specifically, since the identity and the sameness of the situation depend on the identity of meaning and the identity of meaning is systematically jeopardized, we can justifiably go so far as to say that it is impossible to tell whether or not the situation actually remains the same or changes. Let us now take up the question of the two sides of the relationship, the situation and the verbal text. Although the situation is not merely a sum of various texts (because it is not a composite of texts), the haikai text does serve to reorganize the performative situation. In a two-way process the haikai text helps to structure the situation while the situation reciprocally places a definite mean¬ ing within the verbal text of haikai of which we hitherto had been unaware. In this specific sense, haikai poetry is a performative art. The verbal text of haikai communicates with its so-called outside in terms of the gestalt-type relationship. The determination of signification in the gestalt type of intertextuality is a determination neither of causality nor of expression. The performative situation does not determine the conditions of possibility for what a verbal text says, for the verbal text also determines what aspects of the situation can be mobilized and manifested. Similarly, a verbal text is not a mere reflection of a situation. It is signifiance, not signification, that is generated as a surplus when a text encoun¬ ters a given situation. In other words, in this encounter of different texts the identity of the verbal text as a discrete, singular “work” is always subverted by unexpected factors, by chance. Thus, as I have argued, we need to recognize two different levels in the conception of intertextuality. When the notion of the text is taken to mean simply a written text, we are able to postulate a field of significa¬ tion wherein a verbal text constantly refers to other absent writings. However, it has been widely recognized that the opposition between verbal and nonverbal texts is far from clear and stable. If my notion of text includes nonverbal texts such as bodily action, visual presentation, and music, I am not justified in using the term “intertextuality” to indicate merely a stable relationship between a given, putatively autonomous text and other texts. The two different uses of “intertextuality” are of immediate concern to any characterization of the general features of eighteenth-century Tokugawa liter¬ ature. Like calligraphy, many literary works of the period constantly vacillate between representational and situational spaces, as I have repeatedly noted. Yet these works attempt to project imaginary worlds in which events are posited as referents of the narrative. The polysemy, parody, and spatial arrangements of these texts always interfere with the possible constitution of such a world of imagination and thereby direct the attention of readers away from what is de-

200

Frame Up

scribed, discussed, and represented toward the how of these descriptions and representations. The reader cannot remain securely within the time of narrated events in these works but is very often drawn back into the time of narration. In short, textual materiality cannot be suppressed enough to render the text com¬ pletely transparent; consequently these works appear extremely self-reflective. The framing effect that separates the space of representation from the space of the performative situation is so fragile that the reader’s gaze is disrupted from time to time and shifts from the content toward its form. Innumerable plays of signifiers on the textual surface prevent the text from appearing transparent and thereby force readers to be aware of the presence of the text as a material artifact within the space of mundane everyday living. Lived space, thus posited, is the world of nearness that Ito Jinsai tried to articulate. Supposedly it is a space that exists in front of, rather than beyond, a text. It is the world of everyday life, nearness, and immediacy consisting of various nonverbal texts.

The Enunciation and the Body This concern for immediacy dominated not only the literary production but also the general intellectual discourse of Tokugawa Japan. We have observed that the notion of immediacy is related to the thematic emergence of the human body in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. After all, it is the human body that defines here and now, that anchors the world of immediacy as the desire for perceptual primordiality applies to it. One must also remember that the enuncia¬ tion, as opposed to the enunciated, is that mode of utterance in which posi¬ tionality and perspective, lost in the enunciated, play major roles. Therefore, to comprehend a verbal text as an enunciation is, supposedly, to see the verbal text as a bodily act that takes place in a given situation. Phenomenologists have long since demonstrated that the imagined world pro¬ jected by linguistic expression does not necessarily obey the principle of perspec¬ tive. Using this insight as the criterion, they have defined the mode in which objects of imagination, memory, and dream are given to consciousness, as op¬ posed to the way in which objects are perceived. (For the time being, let me postpone asking whether or not the very conceptualization of the present, accord¬ ing to which the “realness” of perception in the here and now is discerned from the “unrealness” of imagination, is imaginary in itself.) It seems that the “split¬ ting of the ego,” as postulated by Miura Tsutomu, confirms this dichotomy between perceptions and other modes of consciousness. As Boris A. Uspensky, Roman Ingarden, and others have claimed, however, representational space that cannot be given in perception can be articulated according to viewpoints. Never¬ theless, if perception is granted the status of the origin of realness, the introduc¬ tion of viewpoints would not necessarily mean that the space projected by the

Defamiliarization and Parody

201

verbal text accommodates the notion of perspective, because, according to the phenomenological approach, a viewpoint constituted by various discursive prac¬ tices (indirect speech, stylistic variation, and so on) is not directly or immediate¬ ly linked to the positionality of the viewer’s body. In the case of literary works in which representational and “real” spaces are definitively distinguished (that is, as in the case of the “transparent” text), we should be clearly able to recognize the unrealness” of the discursive perspective and the “realness” of the sensory perspective. But in the case of eighteenth-century Tokugawa literature, this dis¬ tinction is rather problematic: the two spaces are often merged. This is one of the reasons why speech played a prestigious role in eighteenthcentury literary and intellectual discourse. Speech, taken as enunciation, occupies a rather ambiguous position in this discursive space because it can be simul¬ taneously both a bodily act taking place within a given performative situation and an enunciated, detached from the situation (and thereby deprived of the posi¬ tionality of its enunciation). In ningyo joruri speech was considered to be the direct utterance of a character in which the gesture of the puppet, the voice of the chanter, and the scene itself were synchronized to form a whole. In this whole, the separa¬ tion of voice from body, which is the principal mechanism of puppet theater, appears to be overcome. The representational space projected by the chanter’s narration and the actual scene merge together, with the effect that the “realness” of the voice supplements the “unrealness” of the puppet’s body. Thus a puppet ceases to be a piece of wood and begins to take on life. On the other hand, many eighteenth-century popular novellas depict direct speech without providing “ade¬ quate” plots. Instead, pictorial illustrations of the situation are supplied, creating the impression that a verbal utterance is made in the midst of a given situation. In works without illustrations, which were also common, readers were required to supplement the vision of the scene, just as one has to do when reading a playscript. In either case, one thing is evident: a verbal text or writing is perceived as incomplete; it must be supplemented by the copresence of other texts and a performative situation. In other words, the representational space these works project is not closed. It requires the support of “real” space. In that space, to understand a verbal text is to integrate it into the space constituted around one’s own body. Hence, without the mimetic participation of one’s body, the text is taken to be unintelligible and meaningless. Doubtless as a result of this in¬ completeness of the verbal or written text, works of this kind are characterized by concern for the present, for immediacy and other attributes that are normally associated with the primordial experience lived—or imagined—by one’s own body.

Perception and the Splitting of the Ego As has been demonstrated, the literature of Tokugawa Japan underwent a radical transformation toward the end of the seventeenth century. Eighteenth-

202

Frame Up

century literature, particularly parody, is implicated in various problems intrinsic to the new rules of formation which governed discursive space. In early Tokugawa literature, no discontinuity existed in the field of presentation; the authors maintained a sense of continuity between their own discourse and classic writings. Certainly, they were unaware that the reality in which they thought they lived could not be adequately expressed in the language of what they considered to be classic, and therefore authentic, writings. They did not see any fundamental rupture between their own literary language and the world they inhabited. Hence, polysemy, which of course is not only characteristic of certain genres of eigh¬ teenth-century literature but also had dominated premodem Japanese literature, did not create a disparity between immediate and verbalized experience. Thus, authors of early Tokugawa literature never witnessed the irreconcilable opposi¬ tion of enunciation, as a bodily performance, and the enunciated. As discursive space transformed itself, the presumptive authority accorded to classics was challenged and constantly called into question. No longer were writers satisfied with the putatively stable relationship that had existed between the production of new writings and the corpus of already existing texts. It would seem that they were increasingly aware of the sphere of nearness, for which the established forms of presentation were not adequate. At the same time, classics that had long been regarded as transparent and intelligible became problematic when it was realized that historical distance had indeed separated people from antiquity. Yet it must be noted that such awareness was not due merely to the historical changes that had occurred as time had passed. More specifically, the loss of a viewpoint from which both old and new texts could be equally ap¬ prehended problematized the relation to the classic texts of antiquity. This trans¬ formation gave rise to a fundamental mutation in the relationship among lan¬ guage, human beings, and the world. The very differentiation of language from nonlinguistic phenomena, or of the articulatory from the visible, changed, and as a result, the notion of language had to encompass what had hitherto been ex¬ cluded from the field of specifically linguistic phenomena. In this respect, there¬ fore, the sphere of nearness was not simply a new territory of discourse, a new field of discursive objects. Rather, it was a new dimension in linguistic ex¬ pression, which came into being when the dichotomy between enunciation as bodily performance and the enunciated was made explicit. It was by means of the double operation that this sphere of nearness was identified as such. Writers could no longer locate this sphere on a continuous plane encompassing the world of classic writings. The sphere of nearness was generated by discontinuity, without which the double operation would have been meaningless. Classics belonged to a certain 44world,” but it was perceived that everyday speech, feeling, and desire formed a constituency beyond the scope of the classical world. Many came to view the language of the classics as com¬ pletely alien to their own experience. To speak about their ordinary life in classic language was thus to parody and defamiliarize words and phrases borrowed from

Defamiliarization and Parody

203

the classics. In ukiyozoshi, it was still possible to glorify and authenticate imme¬ diate experience by using classic style, terminology and syntax, but popular literature of the eighteenth century used the classics only to exaggerate and promote a comic effect. The continuity between classic literature and the parodist works was shattered; the discontinuity that emerged became one of the principles of literary production. Because of this emerging discontinuity, polysemy in parodist literature oper¬ ated in a quite specific manner: semes were superimposed upon each other in an equivocal word, one seme belonging to the sphere of classic language and the other to the sphere of nearness, as we have seen in the example of the comic poem depicting both the no play Eguchi and the maid. When more than two semes were involved, at least one of them belonged to the network of semes that generates the dimension of nearness, that is, the mundane and familiar world. Concomitantly, the superimposition of semes generates an effect of unexpected¬ ness because semes from completely different spheres meet in the multivocal word. Indeed, the unity of such a sphere is defined in terms of isotopy, an analytical concept according to which words are discerned as members of the same class and as belonging to the same homogeneous world of meaning. What creates the effect of unexpectedness is the encounter of two irreconcilable isotopies, which also suggests an unexpected encounter between different regimes of reading. Thus, to return to my example, it was possible to combine a classic Heian poem, which was supposedly refined and aristocratic, with the lovers’ talk in an ordinary chamber in the brothel. Hence, what distinguishes early Tokugawa literature from eighteenth-century parody is not the presence of polysemy but how polysemy is organized: continu¬ ously or discontinuously. When discontinuity is the principle, polysemy not only combines many written texts within a single corpus but also engenders de¬ familiarization. Relating what is normally regarded as authentic and refined to mundane and vulgar objects and the events one commonly encounters in every¬ day life, the parodist s work discredits, disqualifies, and thereby defamiliarizes the set of presumed values by which the very authenticity and refinement of texts of certain genres are sustained. As Mikhail Bakhtin demonstrated in Rabelais and His World, parody could deprive the established and assumed order in which power resides of its authority and legitimacy.20 In one of the most penetrating critiques of humanism as monologism, he illustrated the possibility of a parody that effectively dislocates the existing institution. Laughter, in this context, is an instrument by means of which to disclose, objectify, and disqualify the system of presumed values, a system that, after all, is most powerful when it is concealed. We must also remember, however, that whereas parodist literature knows how to defamiliarize what was perceived to be solemn and authoritative, it was not

20Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge: MIT Press 1968).

204

Frame Up

aware that the sphere of immediacy, familiarity, and nearness itself had become exempt from defamiliarization; it refused to recognize that what is perceived as near constitutes itself as such discursively and that therefore the perception of nearness itself is also imaginary. Perhaps this explains why it was so easily institutionalized and lost its critical momentum. (In the next part, I shall return to the appropriation of parodist literature with reference to a particular form of phonocentrism.) Of course, not all discourse of the eighteenth century accommodated discon¬ tinuity. As I have repeatedly insisted, the discursive space should never be taken to coincide with a society, nation, culture, tradition, or even mentality as a homogeneous whole, partly because it is impossible to determine the totality of discursive space as a totality of referents and also because many genres do not seem to have been affected by the emergence of discontinuity. (For instance, I have not dealt with the legal and administrative discourses of eighteenth-century Japan.) Even so, parodist literature occupied a prestigious position and cannot be discussed on the same plane as other genres. First, it is true that parodist liter¬ ature was one of many genres and was characterized and differentiated from works of other genres by its specific features. Second, because it was parody, it did not have any specific object other than works of other genres. In this sense, it was parasitic and could never circumscribe a domain of its own proper discursive objects. Nonetheless, this characteristic parasitism seems to have endowed it with a special force no other genre could acquire. In order for a work to be identified as a parody of another work, it had to objectify the rules of generic discontinuity according to which various works were classified into genres and evaluated within the existing generic hierarchy. In other words, parodist literature could function as a sort of metalanguage, although only to a limited extent; it had to be composed on the basis of an acute awareness of its position in relation to other genres and to the determination of generic differences. Parodists had to be sensitive to the manner in which texts of various discrete origins were circulated among readers, and what status was attributed to those texts—all without being trapped themselves within the accepted system of presumed values. In fact, this sensitivity gave them the outlook of skeptics. It was not by protesting against power but rather by defamiliarizing it that they attempted to reveal the inner mechanism of social control. After all, one may say that their critique was easily appropriated, but not because they doubted too much; rather, they did not doubt radically enough: they did not doubt the limitation of their own defamiliarizing tactics and naively believed that one could doubt everything. They thereby al¬ lowed their own conception of nearness and immediacy to subsist uncriticized. Consequently, the sphere of nearness and immediacy emerged as the new locus of authority and ground of their homosociality. True, authority no longer came from on high, from a remote and sophisticated place; it was in the here and now, where things were primordially grasped in relation to the body. The here and the present associated with one’s body, however, always escaped the grasp of verbal

Defamiliarization and Parody

205

texts because, bereft of the positionality and perspective that were supposedly characteristic of sensory rather than linguistic expression, lived experience of the body could not be verbalized. Here lies the significative contradiction that con¬ tinued to motivate the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Because of the sensory nature of this sphere of nearness, it could be cited, yet could not be thematically discussed. The sphere of nearness was supposedly a topos of enun¬ ciation, but it ceased to be so in the enunciated. Only as a highly charged silence could it be vaguely suggested to accompany an enunciated. Jacques Lacan has described a similar phenomenon with regard to the subject “I.” The “I” as signifier, he notes, designates the subject of the enunciation, but it does not signify it. This is apparent from the fact that every signifier of the subject of the enunciation may be lacking in the enunciated, not to mention the fact that there are those that differ from the I, and not only what is inadequately called the case of the first person singular, even if one added its accommodation in the plural invocation, or even in the Self [Soi] of auto¬ suggestion.21

Like Lacan’s subject of enunciation, the sphere of nearness, which is lived by the subject’s body, can be only designated, never posited within the enunciated. One can talk about the image of the body, but it is impossible to identify the body itself as part of the enunciated, because a body within the enunciated is unavoida¬ bly universalized and detached from its specific position within the performative situation, once it has been brought into verbalization. Neither as a specular image nor as an instance of discourse can it be arrested. The topos from which words are issued remains transcendent with respect to visibility and verbal articulation; it is the shutai that flees whenever an attempt is made to arrest it. After all, it is the locus not of the same but of the Other, although it is very near to me: it is, as it were, the Other in me. This is why the verbal text, and writing in particular, had to remain incomplete within the discursive space of the eighteenth century. When primacy is accorded to the enunciation, the enunciated can only be regarded as a trace of its enuncia¬ tion, the function of which is to suggest and designate the enunciative mode of its originary repetition. Yet the dominant desire in eighteenth-century discursive space was specifically to determine what the enunciation was. As one can see, this is an impossible task. As soon as the enunciation is specifically determined in the verbal text, it will have been transformed into the enunciated. I shall show in the following chapters how this significative contradiction generated and regenerated itself in eighteenth-century discourse. In general, the dichotomy between the enunciation and the enunciated is 21 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), p. 298, or Ecrits II (Paris: Seuil, 1966), p. 159. I have slightly altered Sheridan’s translation in order to maintain a consistency of terminology with the rest of this book.

206

Frame Up

limited to the verbal text. In a nonverbal text, as Miura maintains apropos of nonlinguistic expression,” the final product of expression gives us the impres¬ sion that it somehow better preserves the sensory conditions at the act of ex¬ pression. My analysis of ningyo joruri has demonstrated, however, that there are many intermediary stages between direct speech (within which disparity between enunciation and the enunciated supposedly does not appear) and the enunciated (within which the subject of the enunciation is completely erased). Through the synchronization of various texts such as music, the chanter’s voice, and the puppets gestures, the Text of ningyo joruri managed to articulate the “intensity of subjectivity” with many different degrees of subtlety. In deleting stylized intonation, music, and rhythm, the utterance of the chanter came closest to an actor s raw voice, and this utterance was integrated with the movement of the puppet s body to project the illusion that it was an enunciation by the puppet itself. From time to time, the Text reached that highest intensity of subjectivity, in which an actor played by a puppet appeared to be speaking in a given situation. By contrast, the voice often “lost” the subject of its enunciation and became anonymous. Particularly when the voice was regulated by set intonation, music, and rhythm, it was detached from the body that was supposed to utter it. Like¬ wise, the movement of the body itself could be regulated by formal rules. In dance, for instance, the body of the dancer was controlled not by its supposed individual initiative (which is of course suspect) but by general rules that any¬ body at all could follow. In such regulated bodily movement the dancer’s loss of individuality and integration with collectivity are pronounced. The body be¬ comes an instrument of the collectivity, and its movement falls outside the category of the “putatively natural gesture.” At this point, the problem of language and the verbal text encounters that of ritual, for how could we understand the notion of ritual if it were not defined by formalized behavior, a synchronization of various texts and music? The essence of ritual lies in its constitution from nonverbal texts of an enunciated whereby the individual subjectivity, or the image thereof, dissolves into the collectivity: it posits the Other as an anonymous addressee to whom action in general (because all actions are indirect insofar as they mean) is addressed. But precisely because this Other, this collectivity,” is established as anterior to the execution of an action, it carries political significance. When the Other is reified and identified with the existing collectivity, ’ it affirms the existing power relations. By con¬ trast, when the Other and its anteriority are understood otherwise, they could project a collectivity” that does not exist, an impossible collectivity that does not conform to the existing institutions. Nevertheless, the dominant tendency to see verbal texts from the aspect of the enunciation raised an extremely difficult problem both for those outside the establishment and for those who were in the position of governing the society, and the philosophical discourse of Ogyu Sorai was one of the first attempts to confront this problem. The question of the social institution was caught up with

Defamiliarization and Parody

207

the problematics of the enunciation, ritual, and history in discourse, and eigh¬ teenth-century discourse on poetry harbored all these issues as well. It is no accident, therefore, that the National Studies (kokugaku, 6-24) (a large and heterogeneous group of hermeneutic studies which newly constructed as the authentic objects of learning Japanese classics, customs, and language and which flourished with an increasing number of students from the late seventeenth cen¬ tury until the end of the Tokugawa period) were much concerned with the problems of textuality, immediacy, and the enunciation, for at the center of all of these issues lies the significative contradiction of the human body and language.

CHAPTER

7

The Problem of Translation

The Outside of a Language A discursive space always contains a system of generic discontinuity within it: it is composed of a variety of utterances and of the relationships among classes of utterances. I have already identified the level at which utterances are referred to as essential components in the space of discourse. At the same time that a literary text presupposes and includes verbal texts of the past in order for it to direct itself—to make the kind of sense according to which the utterance of that text is aimed toward its contemporaneity as distinguished from the pastness of the past texts—it relates itself to nonverbal texts. Thus, intertextuality designated two axes of the text, in which other texts participate through the formation of various framings from which the identity of the work is constituted. Only as long as both axes of intertextuality are invoked can the putative identity of a verbal text and its place vis-a-vis other texts within a given discourse be construed. To sum up, although a document may be located in a particular discursive space, its location does not entail its production in a certain reality. The space I have been discuss¬ ing is not a spatiotemporal continuum, marked by a chronology, but a possible sum of verbal utterances whose mode of meaning accords with systems that exclude and repress the materiality of the text, on the one hand, and accommo¬ date it within the propriety of what is representable and eligible, on the other. Hence, the notion of discursive space is necessary in order to discern a seemingly confusionistic shift between the text in its textuality (including the general text) and the conventional and fetishized notion of the text—a notion, after all, not much different from that of the “book.” Nonetheless, I allow this shift to occur, and I do not try to cleanse from my discussion the many assumptions that the conventional notion of the text carries, which would prove unacceptable under rigorous examination. We should rather move along this shift and reiterate the procedure by which the textuality of the text is repressed in a given discursive 211

212

Language, Body, and the Immediate

formation. Following the slippage of this shift is in fact intended to substitute for what is often called contextual analysis, as a new approach of decipherment. The notion of the context is encompassed by that of intertextuality, and this concep¬ tion of a discursive space, despite the attribute “discursive,” includes nonverbal texts insofar as these are posited as a text’s referential and exterior limit. Here, let us not be confused about the status of the nonverbal text as a referent and an outside point to which the text refers. The nonverbal texts in question are not the exteriority of the text; they are constituted as an outside within a given discourse; the very reference to the nonverbal texts means that it does not point to the exteriority of the text. In this sense, the exteriority of the text can never be located on the outside of the text, for exteriority is incompatible with an economy that upholds the dichotomy of inside and outside. Instead, my analysis attempts to illustrate the set of relations according to which a text’s reference to other texts is determined in a given discursive space. There is scarcely any verbal text that does not relate itself to verbal texts. Furthermore, there is scarcely any verbal text that does not relate to itself as a nonverbal text, either. A text may relate to other nonverbal texts by indication, denotation, allegory, representation, what I called the gestalt type, and so on. In examining those relations governing a discursive space, then, I encounter this ambiguous boundary between verbal and nonverbal. We have observed that the emergence of the enunciation dramatized the roles of nonverbal texts in the signifiance of a verbal text. In my analysis, this kind of intertextual relationship seemed to be one of the most urgent issues to be examined in order to reach some apprehension of eighteenth-century discourse. As a matter of fact, this was one of the problems extensively discussed by eighteenth-century writers, albeit not in identical terms to mine. And this is the area where a particular notion of language is most explicitly postulated. Perhaps it is unnecessary to note that it is in contrast to nonverbal and nonlinguistic phenomena that the question What is language? is best answered. Yet this question was, I think, pursued by the writers of the eighteenth century with a view to identifying the object of their inquiry. The constant difficulty encountered in examining the notion of language in a given discursive space is paradoxical: one can talk about language, but the medium of inquiry collapses in upon its supposed object. In order to talk about language as a whole, one is required to establish an economy whereby to gain some notion of inside and outside. Figuratively speaking, the inside could be circumscribed only in relation to its outside. In eighteenth-century discourse, the outside of a language was posited along two differentiae: historical and geopolitical. It is noteworthy that instead of posing a general question, the theorists were first concerned with a more specific question: What is a language of the other? or What is the other language? In this connection, Harry D. Harootunian points out the general intellectual climate in which interest in language was generated in the eighteenth century. The theorists’

The Problem of Translation

213

“recovery of antique words,” he says, “was prompted by a conviction that contemporary language had lost its translucent character; opacity prevailed over clarity and this revealed the degree to which things, and meaning itself, no longer conformed to received categories of similitude.”1 In stressing the opacity of language(s), they sought a transparent language, but it is through the wish for a transparent language that they formulated the notion of opaque language. Need¬ less to say, neither transparency nor opacity is an attribute intrinsic to a particular language. Certain styles of languages available in Japan around that time may have been incomprehensible to those not cultivated in them; in many countries, the very incomprehensibility of some texts is celebrated and regarded as an manifestation of the sacred. Such texts may well be perceived as opaque, but they do not necessarily give rise to a desire for more transparent ones. Neverthe¬ less, it is certain that unless there are discursive apparatuses relevant to the formation of the discourse in which language(s) is identified as opaque, extensive discussion of linguistic transparency is never generated, and what may appear to cause opacity is categorized differently. Perhaps the question must be posed differently. So I will ask how one was solicited to desire the transparency of language, rather than how language became opaque. In eighteenth-century discourse, there is a decided sense of crisis in language, centering around the dichotomy opaque/transparent, which was dramatized in a great number of intellectual debates. It is not easy, however, to determine what the theorists were actually alluding to with the term “opacity.” How was it articulated, and rendered conspicuous? What were the conditions in which this crisis in language was highlighted and expressed? Of course, these have been the thematic questions since the beginning of this book. But here I want to focus on the sort of treatises that nowadays would be classified as “theoretical.” As I will demonstrate, the terms resembling our “theory” (which still maintains too much familial resemblance to Aristotelian theoria) were definitively denounced by many in the eighteenth century. None¬ theless, the fact remains that a sizable portion of eighteenth-century publication was devoted to studies of language, which were inevitably theoretically inclined. Any denunciation of “theories” is invariably theoretical, and the writers of the eighteenth century could not exempt themselves from this rule any more than can those of the present day. Opacity was first located at the point where these writers encountered the language of the other. As is always the case, the language of the same, or our language, was defined only after the languages of the other were postulated and recognized. Thus, the formation of discourse on language(s) in the eighteenth century is twofold: first, language was viewed against nonlanguage; second, the language of the same was viewed against the languages of the other. Although •Harry D. Harootunian, “The Consciousness of Archaic Form in the New Realism of Kokugaku” in Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period, ed. Tetsuo Najita and Irwin Scheiner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 85.

Language, Body, and the Immediate

these two issues are of different types, they are intertwined in the discursive space. For example, the problem of translation was of necessity posed in relation to both questions.

The Problematic of Wakun Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728) started his career as a Confucian lecturer in Edo, introducing a new method of reading Chinese classics, which he called kiyo no gaku (the learning of Nagasaki translators, 7-1).2 It included an extensive critique of the established reading method that was widely accepted in the early eigh¬ teenth century. Specifically, his method concerned the manner of reciting Chi¬ nese books, but in Tokugawa society to propose such a new way of reading was to initiate a radical change in the regime according to which Chinese canonical writings had been interpreted. Moreover, the introduction of a new reading method, it seems, abided by the general shift in verbal- nonverbal relations, which I have described. As a matter of fact, kiyo no gaku can be apprehended as a reaction to the emergence of the instance of discourse in the domain of intellec¬ tual discussion. At first sight, the idea of translation may appear devoid of all the traits of an issue that invites painstaking reflection and, on some occasions, deadly aporia. All those who have studied a foreign language presumably understand what is meant by translation itself, the procedures it prompts and what is desired from it. Some may simply take it as a transference of meaning from one language to another. As is always the case with a commonsensical comprehension of a concept whose currency is generally accepted, however, the notion of translation as fundamentally unproblematic does not withstand rigorous examination. When one is not asked about translation, one knows, but when one is asked, one does not know. Perhaps this phenomenon illuminates the unnoticed discrepancy be¬ tween what we know and what we actually do, a discrepancy thanks to which the critique of ideology is possible. So, what is translation after all? Our common sense tells us that through translation we rewrite or reformulate a text, spoken or written in one language, into its equivalent in another; that is, both the original and its translation denote the same event, judgment, or state of affairs. Although there are instances in which the term “translation” is used to describe a transformation or rephrasing of a text within what is supposedly the t .In hls earl'er career Ogyu devoted himself to the study of Song Confucianism and its commen¬ taries on the Confucian classics. He was later influenced by two Chinese writers of the sixteenth century, L, Paulong and Wang Shizhen, whose philological method he developed into his own philological and philosophical enterprise, kobunjigaku (the learning of ancient texts and words). The many works of this adviser to two Tokugawa shoguns include Benmei (Distinguishing names) R°"g< '°t (C™mentanes on the Analects), Gakusoku (Rules of study), and Seidau (Discourse on politics), together with many language instruction books.

The Problem of Translation

215

same language (of course, the idea of the sameness of the same language has to be and will be submitted to a careful scrutiny), it is generally assumed that translation can take place only between two different languages, say, between English and French or Chinese and Japanese. Ideally, reciprocity should exist between the original in one language and its translation in another, so that the translation of the translation could return to or coincide with the original. But it is widely agreed that such translation, producing no surplus meaning, is impossible and that the divergence of a translation from the original is unavoidable. Hence, translation is taken to be a process of approximation: approximation to the meaning of the original. Here, however, I must also note that in assenting to these notions of translation, we have also imperceptibly posit the existence of two linguistic unities, one from which we translate and one into which we translate. If sentences A and B exist in the same language, they are taken to be different sentences and are therefore recognized as embodying two different significa¬ tions.3 On the other hand, if two sentences a and b are both said to be translations of the original sentence C, they can be considered identical insofar as they are conceived of as translations. Because of the postulate that A and B belong to the same language unit, one is compelled to discern the differences between the two sentences, but compatibility is allowed for when they are related to C since both sentences can lay claim to a referent that is, by definition, in another language. Suppose sentences A, B, a, and b, are as follows. A - “Fine’ a = “Fine”

B = “That goes” b = “That goes”

And suppose: C = “£a va” Whether or not a and b are admissible translations of C depends, to a large extent and in a variety of ways, on coexisting sentences and non-verbal dispositions to which C might relate. Consequently, the accuracy and appropriateness of a translation must be decided on the basis of the given conditions of each specific text at issue. Nonetheless, it can be inferred that we accept both as compatible 3The term “sentence” is obviously as problematic as “translation.” Yet, for lack of a suitable word, I have used this word as if it were innocent. I do not know to what extent one could in fact exempt oneself from the responsibility for the ideological effects engendered by the adoption of certain terms, but it may not be utterly pointless to issue a disclaimer here. By the use of the word “sentence,” I do not imply that eighteenth-century discourse necessarily contained the notion of completion at the elementary level of signification. Therefore, completion of signification cannot be equated to the formation of a grammatical unit “sentence” in the discourse at issue here. Cf. Mikhail Bakhtin, “The Problem of Speech Genre,” in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vem W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), pp. 10-59; and also Jean-Claude Chevalier, Histoire de la syntaxe (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1968).

216

Language, Body, and the Immediate

variations simply because a and b are supposed to refer to C. Furthermore, this compatibility requires that C never emerge on the same plane as a and b, or A and B; C must be ascribed to the outside of the language unity to which A, B, a, and b all belong. Otherwise, the following kind of confusion will ensue: Person 1: “Paul replied, ‘Fine,’” Person 2: “Oh, no! He said, ‘£a va.’ ” Let us consider the question of translation in reverse. Suppose, we simply do not understand the notion of language unity and have no idea of a foreign language or a native one. We can even imagine a linguistic medium in which “Fine” and “fa va” are allowed to coexist. In such a case, A and C are incompatible not because they belong to different language unities but because they are supposed to point to different denotata and to embody different significa¬ tions from A and B. This problematic may be best illustrated by asking such question as How can one translate a work that contains phrases and idioms from the two different unities of language into either of these languages? How can one translate the whole of an utterance implicating the multiplicity of languages into the medium of one language? And ultimately, how can one translate the coexis¬ tence of languages into the putative homogeneity of one language which exiles and purges the other languages? This is nothing but an issue forcefully an¬ nounced by the presence of wakun, the Japanese way of reading Chinese. I have suggested that the notion of translation in the narrow sense of the word also posits language unities. Translation implicitly requires that two language unities be clearly delineated; where it is impossible to demarcate them, transla¬ tion is also impossible. It is for this reason that the introduction of translation into the discursive space of the eighteenth century gave rise to the discussion of what a language was, whereby the unity of a language as opposed to that of another language was thematically pursued. I am not launching an extensive analysis here, but I suggest that a similar argument can be made about the text’s relation to itself as a nonverbal text.4 As we shall see, this problem further reveals the complications of the extremely unstable differentiation between the verbal and the nonverbal when we ask, Is it possible to think about translating a nonverbal text into a verbal one or into another nonverbal one? This question may sound utterly irrelevant, but it was certainly relevant in eighteenth-century discourse, for a reason I shall elucidate. Before going into detail about the formation of an ethnic unity of language, however, I should explore the topic of wakun (the Japanese way of reading Although this idea applies to translation in a broader sense, that is, translation as reading in general, the positing of the sphere of compatibility is correlative to the determination of the possible intertextual relations of a text to itself. Whether or not the difference between “Fine” and “Fine,” for instance, is discerned in the register of reading is totally dependent on the way the sphere of compatibility is predicted.

The Problem of Translation

217

Chinese, 7-2) and Ogyu Sorai’s extensive criticism of this peculiar writing and reading system, in which language unities were constantly eroded and put into question. Wakun confuses those categories we take for granted today: it cannot be thought of as either Japanese or Chinese, either verbal or nonverbal. The visibility of Wakun scripts ceaselessly interferes with the possible determination of a text as purely verbal. Ogyu’s critique of wakun was based on his observation of many students of Confucianism. Time after time, he urged the readers of his treatises to be atten¬ tive to what he called the “disease of the times,” the students’ inability to confront Chinese writings head-on. Despite their claim that they actually read Chinese canonical writings, they could read them only with the Japanese annota¬ tions of the wakun system: “When they encounter originals without wakun, they would rather avoid reading them. This means that they do not actually read Chinese texts.”5 Wakun prevents readers from directly facing the original Chi¬ nese writings because the Japanese annotations partially translate and interpret these writings. As long as the reader encounters Chinese writings in Japanese annotation, the foreignness of the Chinese language is disguised by being famil¬ iarized into the already established mode of conceptualization. In the majority of cases, reliance on wakun creates the illusion that the Chinese language as used in Japan can be synthesized into one without the estrangement to be experienced when one tries to understand a foreign culture.

The Interior and the Exterior In Ogyu’s treatises, however, the unity of the Japanese language and Japanese culture had yet to be circumscribed; it had to be given, yet was absent. Diverse dialects were spoken and written around that time, and it was impossible to formulate the single unity of a national language. In eighteenth-century Japan, compartmentalized into many social classes, social groups, and regions, there was no single standardized language to which the majority of the population had immediate access. Instead, there were many language styles, ranging from kanbun (literary Chinese) to native vernacular forms, which the same individual had to employ according to the occasion. In informal everyday situations, if the addresser-addressee relationship allowed, one had to use what was then called the language of village people, or rigen (the local dialect of the region, 7-3); formal occasions, one used another style of language; in writing a letter, one wrote in sorobun (7-4), a style that excluded certain colloquial vocabulary; and for official and intellectual treatises, one used kanbun or its derivative. These are but examples of many possible variations that created immense linguistic diver¬ sity in the eighteenth century. 5Ogyu Sorai, Shibun kokujitoku, in Ogyu Sorai zenshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1977), p. 632.

218

Language, Body, and the Immediate

But I do not base my claim that the unity of the Japanese language was absent solely on the grounds of what may be called historical facts. As 1 shall substanti¬ ate later, the unity of a language never emerges simply as an empirical fact, an observable positivity; its element is always discourse. For this reason, Ogyu had to take pains to identify the specific linguistic milieu into which Chinese written scripts, which he believed had originated from an explicitly foreign environment, were to be translated. Let us note that Ogyu was unmistakably aware that the unity he was postulating was absent in his contem¬ porary world. Concomitant with this postulation of an ideal linguistic milieu is the introduction of a regime equipped with set protocols and a translation scheme, which required the formation of two linguistic unities; a language from which a text is translated and another into which it is translated. It was essential that these two language unities be exterior to each other, that there be no merger between the two. Wakun had to be turned down because it violated the require¬ ment of radical mutual exteriority. It merged two languages and allowed students to conceive of them in the mode of continuity. Underlying Ogyu’s conception of translation is the assumption that within the unity thus identified of either the translating or the translated language, anyone belonging to that unity is to have immediate and intimate comprehension of a message expressed in that language. In other words, Ogyu’s extensive queries about language instruction would have been impossible without presuming some notion of a native tongue that should appear completely transparent to the native speaker. In theory, at least, in pos¬ tulating the unity of a native language he imperceptibly introduced the notion of the native speaker. In contrast to the radical foreignness supposedly perceived in reading or hearing utterances in other languages, one’s own language was thought to allow for direct and intimate comprehension of verbal expression. Hence, whereas other language appeared exterior in relation to one’s own lan¬ guage, utterances in the language of one’s propriety should be immediately comprehended by those who shared it. What is at issue in this conception of an idealized linguistic milieu and its relationship with other languages is the formation of a linguistic interior, posited as opposite to an exterior, that is, the exterior to which the Chinese classics adhered. By emphasizing that students must experience difference in dealing with writings from China, Ogyu purported to circumscribe the area of the identi¬ cal. Only through the determination of the other linguistic milieu as exterior could the interior, the realm of the identical, be demarcated. Where there was neither a standard national language nor even its image, it was not easy to associate the interior, the realm of the identical, with existing linguistic and cultural institutions. Ogyu had to discern from a mixture of alien ingredients and components what was immediately familiar to “us” that genu¬ inely belonged to the interior. It was imperative to expose a set of criteria by which to disqualify those linguistic forms that obscured the boundary between interior and exterior.

The Problem of Translation

219

Ito Jinsai’s conception of nearness, or more specifically his conception of the impossibility in conceptualizing it, is transformed and appropriated by Ogyu into a discursive device, somewhat akin to the horizon of understanding in modem hermeneutics, to be used to discern experiences that manifested traits of the interior: “Books consist of characters, and characters are the spoken words of the Chinese people [which have been transcribed].... Despite the fact that the Way is extremely high and deep, the Six Classics transmit [from antiquity down to the present day] only ordinary speech that was directly transcribed into characters. So, after all, what they contain is ordinary speech.”6 Even though the Six Classics seemed complex and abstruse to those whose command of classical Chinese was inadequate, their profundity did not consist in linguistic sophistica¬ tion. They were originally written in such language that at the time they were uttered any modestly cultured person should have been able to apprehend them easily. The language used was that of the commoners, but because of the histor¬ ical distance and cultural differences that separated Chinese antiquity from Tokugawa Japan, it had become hard to decipher and comprehend. Its apparent reconditeness would disappear once an eighteenth-century Japanese student had acquired sufficient knowledge of Chinese antiquity and its language; then the student would comprehend these writings easily, just as peasants of Chinese antiquity must have understood one another in their daily verbal intercourse. What Ogyu’s contemporaries perceived as obsolete and abstmse was not intrinsic to the books themselves.7 Thus Ogyu postulated and projected an imagined language unity that sup¬ posedly allowed for a realm of intimate and immediate communion, an interior, and he tentatively associated the already existing ordinary and colloquial lan¬ guage with the possibility of an absolute interior where no trace of disruption or alienation could be detected. He tacitly assumed that the state of society in which he lived was far from identical to the idealized realm he depicted in terms of the interior. The world under the Tokugawa shogunate, as he saw it, was in the process of decomposition, and everywhere he witnessed indications of social and cultural decay. Instead of an interior that sustained holistic and harmonious social cohesion, disruption, discommunication, and desolation seemed to characterize historical reality as perceived. Thus, his language instruction method set forth how his diagnosis of the social ills in Tokugawa society was to be organized and then the probable remedies to be prescribed. By positing an idealized interior opposed to the existing state of affairs, Ogyu highlighted the decayed and decom¬ posed aspects of the Tokugawa world. As is all the more evident, the introduction 6Ogyu Sorai, Kunyaku jimo, in Ogyu Sorai zenshu 5:369. 7Ogyu did not identify ancient Chinese with the ordinary language of antiquity from the outset of his career. During his so-called rationalist phase, when Ogyu thought of himself as follower of Zhu Xi, he believed that the language in which ideas were to be properly expressed was the literary style of the written treatise. See Ogyu, Kunyaku jimo, p. 371. At this stage he gave preference to the written text over the oral and had yet to recognize the primary importance of ordinary spoken words. It is noteworthy that the denunciation of Zhu Xi came as his emphasis shifted from writing to speech.

Language, Body, and the Immediate

of a new notion of translation was full of political implications and enabled him to specify what in his contemporary world engendered such a sense of crisis in him. Whereas Ito Jinsai associated decomposition and decay with the generation and regeneration of life, Ogyu met them with some dread. In postulating the notion of translation and establishing the new regime of reading, Ogyu Sorai introduced a symmetrical structure of the interior and the exterior by which to explicate the procedure of reading Chinese writings. But because the relationship between the exterior and the interior was imagined to be symmetrical and reciprocal in essence, it could be construed as the relationship between the two interiors. I can mention at least two prerequisites for this symmetrical structure: first, the interior and the exterior must not overlap at all; they must be external to each other; there must be no common factor belonging to both at the same time. Second, both the interior and the exterior must form a closure, so that each can be talked about as a totality, a unity; however complicated or vast it may be, its totality must be conceivable. And probably I ought to consider a third prerequi¬ site without which the reciprocal structure itself would be impossible. I shall touch on it later in discussing the problem of transcendence. Meanwhile, let me elicit the possible theoretical consequences of this structure. Translation is understood as the transference of speech from one interior to another. Since the unity of an interior is defined in terms of immediate and direct comprehension, the kind of verbal expression that seemingly belongs to the interior but does not facilitate easy and straightforward communication is to be rejected and denounced. Hence, the social decay and disease that Ogyu repeat¬ edly deplored were ascribed to the absence of the interior he believed any healthy social formation needed. Of course, it is at this juncture that the opposition of transparency and opacity in language acquired its highest political charge. Ogyu accounts for the genesis of textual obscurity and opacity in two ways. First, when a text is written or spoken in a foreign language, it naturally appears indecipherable and therefore opaque. (Naturally? Yes, “naturally,” that is, only in a certain discursive space.) As I have said, a text originating in the other interior cannot meet the requirements interior texts are expected to fulfill. A geocultural differentiation is applied so as to determine and categorize causes of textual opacity. Ogyu also identified how what once was transparent was made obscure. At this locus he outlined the primary apprehension of historical time, which does not merely generate events and change institutions and customs but also distorts and obscures texts. By the famous statement that language changes as time changes, he meant that what had once been immediately and directly approached has become contaminated and overshadowed. In eroding and obscuring texts, histor¬ ical time creates a distance because of which what was once immediate now seems unavailable to “us.” If there is enough distance between one historical era and the present, it should

The Problem of Translation

221

be possible to conceive of the past as another interior, which is external and alien to the present era just as the ancient Chinese community was to Ogyu’s contem¬ porary Japanese community. In this respect, textual obscurity is translated into evidence of the boundary between the inside and the outside. It seems that this symmetrical model was adopted to account for the historical and cultural aspects of textual production. But more important, by introducing translation, Ogyu posited the very possibility of the realm of interiority. The interior, just like modem subjective interiority, is a historical and social construct. Indeed, Ogyu covertly invented a criterion by which to judge the validity of a given reading, and he stipulated terms in which the authentic mode of reading was to be diacritically discerned from other already existing but inauthentic ones. It is in regard to how to reorganize and comprehend textual production that he aimed to assert cultural and historical differentiations and pursued a new articula¬ tion of the world. It is through a transformation of the regime of reading that a new way of viewing the world and the possibility of imagining a new “collec¬ tivity” were introduced. Therefore, even when Ogyu argued against philosophical positions of other writers, he had to resort to the question of reading. For example, “Ito Jinsai . . . interpreted ancient texts with the light of modem language, so that, in the end, his position remained similar to the Cheng brothers’. ... He still had read these classics in a Japanese manner.”8 Ogyu assumes that the historical differentiation between ancient text (#7-5) and modem text (#7-6) is structurally isomorphic to the geocultural differentiation between Chinese and Japanese. These oppositions, ancient/modem and Chinese/Japanese, are seen as two ho¬ mologous relations.9 The underlying premise for the adoption of these differ¬ entiations is that the mono (things or reality, social reality in the sense of realitas, 1-12) of ancient China can be understood only through the medium of ancient Chinese. Since the reality of ancient China constitutes an interior, it has to be viewed and understood from within. This premise implies a more general thesis, namely, that both things and language belong to a unity of reality or interiority which is geoculturally and historically identifiable, and without reference to this interiority, neither things nor texts produced in it could be grasped properly. This premise also alludes to the point that one who stands outside the interior would never be able to comprehend things belonging to it. Even though interiority as Ogyu conceived it encompasses nonlinguistic phenomena as well, he clearly states that the images of the interior and the exterior are envisaged through differences associated with aspects of linguistic experience. More precisely, the interiority of the interior thus defined seems to designate a certain primordial 8Ogyu Sorai, Bendo, Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 36 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1973), p. 11. The translation is that of Tetsuo Najita, unpublished. ^he symmetry of Ogyu’s model can be seen in many of his treatises on language. See Kunyaku jimo, where it is evident that he understood Japanese culture in a symmetrical analogy to Chinese culture.

222

Language, Body, and the Immediate

experience where things and language are not separated, where language inhabits things, where language is the world.

Interdependence of Verbal and Nonverbal in the Enunciation What now confronts us is a paradox, around which the discourse of Ogyu Sorai and his contemporaries seems to linger. In order to comprehend the things and nonlinguistic reality of the past or the other culture, Ogyu insists, one must experience its language uses. But at the same time, a language of the past cannot be acquired without references to the mono that activates and substantiates the uses of such a language. Hence, language occupies a rather ambiguous position, for in order to comprehend the things and nonlinguistic reality of the past, it is essential to envisage the past through the language of that time, but the language cannot be acquired without the knowledge of its historical reality, which by definition falls outside mere linguistic mastery. As Ogyu emphasizes the necessity to know the historical reality that sup¬ posedly surrounds language use, the boundary between verbal and nonverbal expression becomes all the more problematic. Here, I should note Ito’s concep¬ tion of a writing as always incomplete. Ito claimed that the proper account of a written document involved inserting that document into its own relevant discur¬ sive context (ketsumyaku, 7-7).10 Thus, Ito hinted at the conception of a text as practice and of reading as a dialogic decentering that never comes to its own prefigured end. In his understanding of reading, the textuality of the text was, as it were, respected rather than repressed, so that the reading of a text could never reach absolute saturation. The text could never be exhaustively known, not because of human finitude but because of the materiality of the text. Ogyu reconceptualizes Ito s textual strategy by reducing the discursive context to the instance of discourse. It seems that, for Ogyu, to read and comprehend an ancient writing necessarily required the supplement of the scene of the enuncia¬ tion; to read and comprehend was to track the intertextual relations beyond the contour of a fetishized text, thereby relating it to its performative outside. Ogyu also saw the problematic of reading in terms of the incompleteness of a text and the supplementary nature of the reading act. He saw that an ancient book that had been handed down to the present time was essentially incomplete. But he fancied the possibility that reading could recover the initial plenitude that he believed had existed at the moment of its originary production and enunciation. It goes with¬ out saying that the postulation of such a possibility is correlative to the postula¬ tion of the interior. Whether or not such a perfect reading is realizable is beside the point: in the discursive space of the eighteenth century, it was assumed to be possible, and it seems to me, the wish for the transparent reading of the text and *°See, for instance, Ito Jinsai, Soron (General Introduction) to Rongo Kogi, Hayashi edition, Kogido Collection, Tenri University General Library.

The Problem of Translation

223

for the reading of a transparent text continued to be generated and regenerated. But for this wish, the prolifigacy of discourse on language would have been impossible. Even though Ogyu regarded a text as incomplete, he presumed that at the moment of its enunciation, it was full, complete, and integrated into the per¬ formative situation, where disparity could not exist between verbal and nonver¬ bal texts. It is noteworthy that once such an image of plenitude has been brought into being, language uses cannot be isolated and identified as such but must be thought of as integrated parts of a coherent action that involves various texts, among which verbal expression is but one. Enunciation suggests an act taking place in a specific situation that is simultaneously corporeal and verbal. Such a situation would necessarily accommodate various cultural and natural objects, as well as human bodies that responded to the speaker’s act. According to this conception of verbal utterance, an act cannot be reduced to what it says. It is also a corporeal movement, a movement of the speaker’s body toward an object, among other objects, and it relates the body of the speaker to other things nonverbally. Although the nonverbal aspects of an enunciation do not give rise to signification, they prepare, activate, and modify it. Hence, it was imperative for writers of the eighteenth century to seek the lost connection between what a text said and the putative plenitude in which the original enunciation as a whole took place. What underlies the incompleteness of written texts is this recognition that the enunciated and, therefore, the signification of an utterance are necessarily to be supplemented and do not represent the enunciation that supposedly pro¬ duced it. In this connection, I understand why Ogyu’s conception of language is ambig¬ uous: in order to return a text to the plenitude of its enunciation, one must recover the objects and possibly the sociocultural milieu that surrounded and permeated that text at the instance of its enunciation. At the same time, though, these objects and sociocultural milieu would never be apprehended without the proper understanding of the text, since they reveal their historical significance only in relation to the text itself. Here I note an implicit acknowledgment that a text and its outside relate to each other in the mode of interdependence. And I believe this is the way Ogyu understood language and historical reality. Thus, he postulated a realm of plenitude where an enunciation as a whole was generated and where a text and its outside were fully integrated. There is no doubt that the interiority of the interior found its most concrete expression in this sense of plenitude. Hence¬ forth, to read a text was to recover, resurrect, and rerealize such a plenitude.

The Primacy of Speech In this conception of language, text, and history, it is essential that a text be apprehended primarily as speech. Speech is conceptualized as maintaining the

224

Language, Body, and the Immediate

primordial adherence to its outside and to the objects and human beings present in the performative situation. Whereas writing solidifies and fixes the detach¬ ment of a text from its outside and brings about its autonomy, speech thoroughly adheres to the scene of the enunciation. Whether or not such a view of speech as opposed to writing can be upheld has yet to be examined, but Ogyu introduced a radial dichotomy between speech and writing and, from this perspective, re¬ viewed the contemporary academic conventions according to which Chinese books were read and commented on. This extreme dichotomy made the denun¬ ciation of wakun absolutely necessary not only for Ogyu but also for the discur¬ sive formation of the eighteenth century, those notions of historical time, histor¬ ical reality, and the other that we consider specific to eighteenth-century discourse. Insofar as a text is fixed in writing, it loses the historical milieu proper to itself, where it could speak in its proper voice. In other words, writing confuses a text and relates it to an irrelevant situation precisely because it uproots and frees the text from its proper environment. Moreover, written language tends to tran¬ scend historical time because of the characteristic ascribed to writing: writing preserves, whereas speech does not. On these premises, Ogyu accused Zhu Xi and the Cheng brothers of reading ancient texts in modem language, and he criticized Japanese Confucianism for both historical confusion and cultural mixing. Because it lacked the idea of interiority, he believed, Japanese Confucianism constantly obliterated the boundary between the Chinese and Japanese lan¬ guages. Ogyu Sorai committed himself to the task of eradicating this almost incurable defect of Japanese Confucianism. If reading is ultimately a means by which to recover the originary plenitude associated with speech, the understanding of ancient texts should mean an entry into such a plenitude, such an interior. If a verbal utterance is integrated into some sphere of immediate action, then lan¬ guage ceases to exist as an object independent of the historical reality in which it is uttered. But this state of ultimate harmony cannot be realized unless the reader is immersed in it, that is, situated within that interior. Of course, this notion of involvement in the situation requires more than physical presence in it: one must be able to use the language as if it were one’s own proper mother tongue and should acquire and internalize the knowledge of the situation to such an extent that one is unaware of knowing it. This may be an ideal and imagined state of achievement to which one can only aspire. For Ogyu, however, it was much more concrete than we are inclined to assume, and he envisaged the possibility of its achievement by repeatedly appealing to the idea of the ancient reign of the sage-kings. What he observed in his contemporary world was far from this ideal. Chinese books were read and deciphered in a manner that was completely indifferent and even hostile to it: Scholars on this side read writings in a dialect and call such a

The Problem of Translation

225

way of reading wakun, which they claim is recitation of the writings. In fact, it is nothing but translation. Nonetheless people do not realize that it is transla¬ tion.”11 The dialect Ogyu mentions is a method in which a distinctly Chinese writing is appropriated into Japanese syntax. This kind of transformation, be¬ cause it fails to recognize two different language unities, is ineffective. The status of the language into which a Chinese text is transformed is obviously ambiguous and unstable. Because it is formed by putting markers and Japanese particles in the margin of Chinese characters, the major portion of this transformation has to be undertaken visually, or at least with reference to visual signs. Certainly it is possible to gain a high fluency in this “dialect,” but it is almost impossible to use it as a spoken language in everyday transactions. Wakun is never felt to be a form of direct linguistic expression. It is a form of Japanese language, but a Japanese person must translate the text into a more familiar language in order to grasp it. Thus wakun is also a rather parasitic and foreign language within Japanese and constantly disturbs the possible constitution of an interior. Instead of allowing for the experience of an interior in which language and things are not separated, wakun seems to provide an example of an alienated and ruptured verbal act in which language is detached from things and people.

The Linearity of Speech and Wakun Trying to reach this originary intention of the Chinese book through wakun was, to Ogyu Sorai, like “an attempt to scratch one’s itchy feet with shoes on.” He regarded wakun as an obstacle that stood between the originary speech and the readers, and he implicitly assumed that authentic reading should give readers immediate and direct access to the original, as if the readers were insiders within the interior from which the text originated. Suffice it to say that the primary conception of translation is given in terms of the transformation of a speech from one language into another speech in a different language. Therefore, the mediation of writing and visual signs is addi¬ tional and excessive. On this basis Ogyu taught his students to approach Chinese books not as visual but as aural. It is not difficult to understand why this new method, which called for transforming Chinese writings into colloquial Japanese, caught the intellectual world of the times by surprise, for scarcely any Confucian scholars in Japan could actually speak Chinese then. The ability to speak Chinese was considered unnecessary. Confucian scholars were exposed to Chinese books, and only a few had had any experience of communicating with the Chinese orally. As Yoshikawa Kojiro pointed out, a prominent Confucian scholar at that time did not know what the word womien meant in vernacular Chinese, although nOgyu Sorai, Yakubun sentei, in Ogyu Sorai zenshu 5:24.

Language, Body, and the Immediate

this does not mean there were not people who could converse with visitors from the continent.12 It was simply beyond their scope to imagine that Chinese clas¬ sics could be studied without referring to the visual text. Thus, the introduction of Ogyu’s concept of translation marks the emergence of the dichotomy between speech and writing in the discursive space of eigh¬ teenth-century Japan. To postulate actual speech behind writing, to regard writ¬ ing as the transcription of speech, is by no means a superior or natural approach to texts, and it does not necessarily facilitate a truer understanding of them by any means, but its consequences were unquestionably extensive and fundamen¬ tal. For the new mode of reading redefined and reformulated the very notion of truth and the purpose of study. At the core of this transformation of the discursive space was the reformulation of the differentiation between verbal and nonverbal texts. Ogyu s attempt to disqualify the Japanese way of reading Chinese was initiated by the necessity to exclude what had hitherto been categorized as verbal, but now fell into the class of the nonverbal as a result of this change. We can schematize the two different modes of reading as follows: 1. Wakun Writing (Visual) —transformation I

I Wakun (Yomikudashi)

Vocalization —transformation II

l (Commentary)—Vocalization

2. Ogyu’s Method (Voice->) transcription)

(Understanding) Written Text-» Vocalization (Understanding) -transformation

l Translated Text —> Vocalization (Understanding)

In the first schema, there must be two stages of transformation or translation before the understanding of the text is attained. The original is given as a visual text, which Japanese readers, for whom wakun is prepared, are normally incapadescriDlion o7rw, '?i ' , Normag° (Toky°: Iwanami sh0te». 1975). One finds a brilliant description of Ogyu s language-learning problematic in this collection of essays. Yoshikawa main¬ tains, however, that phonetic reading is superior to wakun. Moreover, he assumes thaT ogyi s hkJonVan V‘eW

SPOke" Ch‘neSe 15 lranshis,orical|y valid. There is no such thing as a trans-

me that he IZTnT'T ^ u Simp'y different reg,raes of reading “*«• " seems to e that he fails to notice how such a view as his functions as a protocol for the professional slnology- Pn°r to lhe eighteenth century, the phrase "the ability to speak Chinese" mean bv "Chinas ”9 nSC Unle“ one specified which Chinese waa a< issue. After all, what does one centuryc 9 ' ** Understand French” if we ca" read «he French language of the sixth

The Problem of Translation

227

ble of vocalizing. Thus the first stage of transformation is concerned with re¬ organizing the syntactical order and supplementing the text with the Japanese particles te, ni, o ha. Since this process entails transforming the linear order of words and ascribing voice to ideographs, the visual and oral aspects of the text cannot be treated independently. Yomikudashi (vocalized wakun text, 7-8) makes sense only as an operation on the graphic text. It is impossible to deny that the reorganization of syntax, which Ogyu called circular reading (mawashi yomi), could be accomplished only if two different texts, the Chinese original and yomikudashi, are juxtaposed to each other. At the level of the Chinese original, ideographs are ordered linearly, and this linear order is, indeed, essential in Chinese syntax. Yet once appropriate wakun marks and particles (kaeriten, 7-9, and okurigana, 7-10) have been added to these ideographs, the focal point of reading has to shift back and forth among ideographs to follow the directions provided by the marks, and thus, the given linear order of the original is de¬ stroyed. One should note, however, that the text resulting from this transforma¬ tion is also linear if it is vocalized. For instance, a passage from Ogyu’s Yakubun sentei provides a good example of what Ogyu tried to do in urging his students to write as if they were Chinese of antiquity:

:s#hj3ahs.

A.

According to present-day standard Beijing pronunciation, this passage should be vocalized in Chinese as follows: B. Yi zhi yizi, wei dushu zhenju, gai shu jie wenzi, wenzi ji huaren yuyan.

Instead of reciting the ideographs in Chinese, however, Japanese scholars added wakun marks and particles and transformed the original as follows:

c. sss-n i

,| ss#'

" m*

'“• -MfstiK' awC*

The transformed passage is vocalized as D. Yaku no ichiji, dokusho no shinketsu tari, kedashi sho wa mina monji ni shite, monji wa sunawachi kajin no gogen nari.

The yomikudashi text is vocalized according to some sort of Japanese gram¬ matical order. Both B and D are, in fact, linear and do not seem to disturb the linearity rule of a verbal text when they are recited, but text D is far from immediately comprehensible, since such words as shinketsu or gogen are phonet¬ ic imitations of the Chinese original and can not be understood by the general readership unless the visual text A or C is referred to. As I have said, the yomikudashi text occupies an extremely ambiguous position, and for this reason, the second, transformation is necessary: D must be translated into the more familiar dialect. In the early eighteenth century, it was a general rule not to vocalize the original

228

Language, Body, and the Immediate

Chinese, so text B of this example was excluded from the process of reading Chinese books. The original text was given primarily as something to look at. Only if it were transformed could it be vocalized according to the Japanese way of reading Chinese. Thus, before Ogyu introduced his new method, visual and aural aspects of the text were merged, and no obsessive discrimination between the two was made. Voice always referred to vision, and speech was merely a by¬ product of writing. Ogyu’s method, therefore, signifies a twofold endeavor, first, to identify the level of voice as distinct from the graphic inscription in the process of reading and, then, to eliminate the visual factor from it. In comparing Ogyu’s mode with that of wakun, it becomes evident that Ogyu postulates a parallel between the sequence “written text to vocalization to under¬ standing” and the sequence “translated text to vocalization to understanding. In addition, he regarded the written text as a mediation between the two vocaliza¬ tion phases, voice is transcribed into graphic inscription and then recovered from that inscription. to write

to read

voice-graphic inscription-voice (written text) Underlying this mode is an assumption that the ideal transfer of the verbal message is accomplished without the mediation of graphic inscription. Ideally, one should be able to communicate with another in a face-to-face situation, and the understanding of the message should be acquired in the immediacy of the voice. The sense of interiority is also constructed in this mode since such a vocal and immediate understanding without the mediation of writing circumscribes and postulates an area of experience free from alienation and separation. In other words, the interior is a cultural space where this ideal verbal communion is possible and guaranteed. When the essential of the text is equated to the immediacy of the voice, the visual presence of the writing has to be secondary, if not entirely negative, and is not to play a conspicuous role in the text’s signification: the sole purpose of a writing is to transcribe the original voice. Insofar as one aims at reaching the original, the writing is only an obstacle, a disturbance that tends to obscure the meaning of the text. It follows from this premise that the less visible is the presence of writing, the more transparent the text ought to be. Also decisive in Ogyu’s method of reading is that the same structure is im¬ posed on the translated text. The translated text is supposed to be in a language that facilitates immediate and direct understanding. Hence, Ogyu tried to trans¬ late a Chinese classic into the “language of villagers,” which ordinary people used to communicate with one another, without appealing to any written inscrip¬ tion. The language utilized should ensure that no more commentary or translation is required for the translated. No doubt, the notion of translation as he understood it was fashioned after the transparency of language in everyday intercourse, in

The Problem of Translation

229

everyday speech. Thus, the primacy of speech over writing seems to mark the basic condition without which Ogyu’s “thought” could not have been formed. Therefore, what he called kiyo no gaku (the learning of Nagasaki translators), occupies a highly significant locus in the new discursive space. As we shall see, translation as postulated in kiyo no gaku was adopted by an increasing number of writers in the eighteenth century, and it expanded the possibility of disseminating ancient writings. First, I have established kiyo no gaku, according to which I now teach my students in colloquial language and recite the texts following Chinese phonology. When I translate, I always translate the texts into the language of our villagers and never accept wakun and the circular way of reading. At the beginning, I use small pieces, and teach phrases consisting of a few ideographs. Then I urge my students to read entire books. Only when they have mastered kiyo no gaku will they have trans¬ formed themselves into real Chinese people.13

By eliminating the ambiguous mediation of wakun, Ogyu offered a definite conception of translation, and by so articulating the scheme of “translation” he circumscribed the area of experience I have designated by the term “interiority.” But it is essential to note that the translation of Chinese books was not the final goal of his scholarly project: it was but one of many pedagogical steps for his students to follow. As a matter of fact, he emphasized the acquisition of Chinese phonology, repeatedly asserting that authentic and true understanding could be achieved only when the reader took on the interiority of a Chinese person, lived in the interior from which the text in question originated. What Ogyu’s entire pedagogical project intends is a transformation of his students into the Chinese of antiquity, a collective and united subject who Ogyu believed had produced all those canonical writings. The core of his new teaching method consisted of mimetic identification with the imagined subject of enunciation who produced the text in its originary plenitude in ancient China. A particular historical world is always equipped with social customs, lan¬ guage, and institutions. If one did not know those practices and how to live with and in them, one could not begin the game of reading. “When there is no board for Chinese chess,” one might argue, “how could you ever speculate a move?” Acts of reading, of comprehension, are possible only when the rules of the game are understood. Accordingly, to enter the interior was to acquire and internalize the knowledge of social and cultural institutions of which the historical world consisted. Nevertheless, it is not a speculative kind of knowledge that one must be acquainted with but the kind of knowledge that enables a player to perform. Mere knowledge of the rules is not enough: to own the rule book, or even to learn every article in it by heart, would not make one competent in the game. The rules have 13Ogyu, Yakubun sentei, p. 28.

230

Language, Body, am/ //*£ Immediate

to be internalized to an almost unconscious extent, so that the player can attend to their strategic manipulation. Indeed, the acquisition of language plays the central role in Ogyu s project, in the sense that language fully mastered provides the savoir faire crucial to a particular culture. Yet the question of how and where language is located in relation to social and cultural formation, or mono, and the knowledge about it ineluctably arises. Insofar as it is determined in his philoso¬ phy, the mono, cultural formation of a given interior, is not something that can be explained away, even though it is understood to be linguistic in nature; it cannot be exhaustively construed in terms of a limited number of statements; neither can it be reconstructed from a limited number of rules. Certainly Ogyu did not believe that the words of ancient Chinese books set norms for his contemporaries to follow: imperative statements could not be discovered in those books which were, after all, not applicable to his present-day social reality. In no case, then, were the Chinese classics believed to provide eighteenth-century readers with any universal principles on which to erect an ideal society? Ogyu refused to seek in them the representation of an ideal social order. He did not conceive of ancient classics as conveying an image of reality; he saw them as part of such a reality rather than its representation: “When the world had not really changed since the ‘ancient age,’ its language similarly had not changed. Therefore, Jian Zi, Chun qiu of Yan Zi, Lao Zi, and Lie Zi all shared the same language. Why do you worry that all books represent different ways? We must learn not what they represent but the language in which they were written.”14 According to Ogyu, one must focus on how a text speaks, rather than what it says. Even if those ancient books call forth different ways, one can learn and benefit equally from them, provided that they belong to the same interior, that is, that they share the same language and the same social and cultural formation. What has to be recognized is how a text is incorporated into its outside, its environment or context. Let us recall the gestalt type of intertextuality, according to which a verbal utterance is placed in a nonverbal situation, whereby the locus of signifiance, not signification, is identified in terms of the utterance’s relationship to other nonver¬ bal texts. It constitutes a topos where the surplus of signification is generated. Examples from eighteenth-century literature illuminate an obsessive concern for the instance of discourse in which an utterance as enunciation, not as enunciated, is conceived as the primordial adherence of a verbal expression to its per¬ formative situation. There, it is assumed, an utterance designates the mode of its adherence, rather than represents its content. Indeed, even in the gestalt type of intertextuality, an utterance could have its signification and be viewed as an enunciated, and therefore, a text could be read with regard to its content, or what it says. But the transformation of the discursive space engendered a different focus of attention, because of which a text was now read primarily within the scope set by the gestalt type. 14Ogyu Sorai, Gakusoku, in Nihon Shiso Taikei 36:191.

The Problem of Translation

231

Experiential Knowledge and Speculative Knowledge Ogyu proposed this new mode of intertextuality. He was no longer taken up with the dimension of the text in which a writing is equated to its enunciated. By reducing a written text to speech, he attempted to inaugurate a new conception of comprehension and to open a field in which a text is grasped primarily as an enunciation. The ambivalence in his conception of language can be construed in this light too, since the enunciation always has a reciprocal and ambiguous rapport with its outside. To grasp an enunciation is to refer it to its other nonverbal texts, but these nonverbal texts, in their turn, cannot be identified as such without referring back to the enunciation; neither verbal nor nonverbal texts located in a given situation, from which the verbal text is produced, can be grasped independently of each other. As a consequence, I have proposed, the locus of signifiance in fact resides in this mutual referential relationship between the two types of texts in the performative situation. Because of this mutual referentiality, neither language nor social and cultural institutions that are nonverbal in themselves, can constitute a self-sufficient object of inquiry. (And for this reason, the conventional contextualist reading of historical materials is doomed to infinite regression when its reified notion of the text is scrutinized.) But if an eighteenth-century student, who was, of course, outside the interior of Chinese antiquity, had wished to transform himself mimetically into a Chinese of antiquity, how could he ever have had access to the possibility of such a transformation? For him, neither the language nor the institutions of Chinese antiquity were given and accessible. How then could Ogyu still uphold the possibility that a Tokyoite—or perhaps I should say Edoite—of a later age could enter the interior? This contradiction discloses that as the discursive formation radically changed, a different kind of knowledge was called for. Already I have sketched the view that the sort of knowledge with which Ogyu was occupied is mainly concerned with the ability to regenerate certain patterns of behavior. Basically it is practical and experiential knowledge. This is to say that one’s knowledge is to be esti¬ mated according to whether or not one can act in a certain way when a relevant situation occurs. What matters is not whether one can describe, explain, justify, or represent a thing but whether one can behave and perform in such a way as to make something happen. The metaphor of Chinese chess, which Ogyu cites in order to explain the nature of knowledge, makes this very point: what he seeks is the kind of knowledge necessary to perform successfully. Language ability, in this instance, is not the ability to get hold of what a text says; rather, it concerns itself with generating utterances, with the rules by which to produce the text in a similar manner, regardless of what these utterances signify. To acquire such an ability is to become capable of generating an indefinite number of statements, the contents of which are less important than this generative capability: this kind of learning seems to require total concentration on the “performative of action at

Language, Body, and the Immediate the expense of the constative”, with the adjective “performative” characteriz¬ ing the act of saying in its aspect of instituting a reality by stating it as opposed to the “constative” in which the descriptive adequacy of the statement is thematized.15 But knowledge thus specified can never be construed in merely formal terms. Although it is an ability to generate an indefinite number of statements, it is also an ability to generate mutual referentiality between an utterance and non¬ verbal texts in the situation, thereby making or creating the situation relevant to a statement. Once again, I should take up the quotation in which Ogyu juxtaposes ancient books of different doctrinal traditions. As Tetsuo Najita has remarked, it is extraordinary for a Confucian scholar to say that it does not matter which book one learns.16 Lao Zi, for instance, was very rarely included among the classics for students of Confucianism to learn. But for Ogyu, a heretical text could serve as well as other Confucian classics, provided that it was written in genuine ancient Chinese. Such an attitude toward the authenticity of the classics could be justified only on the ground that the primary goal was a practical and experiential knowledge that could repeatedly generate a certain reality—what I have called interior. Accordingly, the kind of knowledge fixed in writing must be of secondary importance since what needs to be acquired is not what the writing says but what initiates and regulates its production, or the enunciation of which it is a remnant. It is only to the extent that the writing preserves the original enunciation that it is thought to retain whatever little authority may be left to it, and one is urged to extract from the writing some coherence that regulates and governs the enunciation. “The world changes, carrying language with it and language changes, carrying the Way with it-Once written, however,’ dis¬ course lasts forever, and its written text remains unchanged.”17 It is the act of producing utterance that is significant. Through vocalization, Ogyu believed, one could return from the writing to the original scene of the enunciation. What p

■ uee Austln’ HOW W Do ThingS with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University ess, 1962). Here with certain hesitation, I have adopted the term “performative” instead of the

™I?T°nary” °r “PerIocut,onary” mainly because the sort of performative locution tCa ed ,1Iocutl°nary and “perlocutionary” at the same time. It installs and refers to he reality of its own location (see Figure C). Since what this act does is the instauration of the locimonary capacity itself and, by extension, of the capacity to behave in meaningful but socially delimited ways (accordingly, those ways are talked about in terms of rites), the relationship between saying and doing in this speech act appears doubly complicated in the vocabulary of speech act theory. Perhaps, one of the problems with speech act theory is that it always assumes the “interior” of a given speech community-of the English language in the case of Austin-as the stage where a speech act takes place. The speech act of learning a language or entering the interior as in the case of Ogyu is excluded from the outset. Or it is believed possible to make unequivocal distinctions between statements proper to the intenor of a language and those improper to it, and to exclude the latter One cannot deny that in Ogyu’s Kobunjigaku the speaking of archaic Chinese was a mimetic act to return to Arche, on the one hand, and, a poietic performative to install a certain social reality through the performer s body, on the other. I would like to use “performative” in the sense of the poietic aspect of the archaic restoratiomsm of Kobunjigaku. thelTlt™

16Tetsuo Najita, “Secular Philosophy of Ogyu Sorai,” unpublished 7Ogyu, Gakusoku, pp. 190-91.

The Problem of Translation

233

was implied by his emphasis on the oral aspect of language learning, as well as the writing practice in ancient language (kubunji gaku, the learning of ancient texts and words, 7-11), was the acquisition of the regularities of both verbal and nonverbal expressions. Nonetheless, this notion of regularities is obviously vague and has yet to be clarified. Surely Ogyu conceived of language as a set of such regularities, but this kind of regularity reveals itself only when it is embodied in performance: it has to be lived in a concrete manner—concrete in the sense that it is internalized and consolidated into habit. Hence, the regularity of language could manifest itself as enunciation, and the enunciation was regarded as one sort of bodily action. That is, language was equated to a form of habit. The anteriority of norms to social action that establishes them is now taken to be anteriority in real time. Social action creates norms in “future anterion,” in the mode of “will have been,” that is, it establishes norms as anterior to the action. What is lost here is the theoretical rigor that prevents confusion between anteriority in the sense of future anterior and anteriority in chronological time, as well as the subsequent reification of this anteriority into enduring constancy. It was assumed that social and cultural institutions, of which the interior supposedly consisted, were regularities of a similar nature. Rites and the legal system were among them, as were poetry and music. Yet, none of these held overall supremacy. Together, they constituted a whole, and only in reference to that whole could each of them function as it ought. To use the terminology of Jurij M. Lotman, the interior thus portrayed should be equivalent to the concept of “culture,” which is defined as comprising many cultural systems.18 Of course, we cannot expect Ogyu to be as scientific as Lotman. It is highly doubtful that Ogyu conceived of the systematicity of language, whose conceptualization would be impossible without the collapse of “simultaneity” into “synchrony,” and then left the task of examining the regularity of language to other writers of the eighteenth century.19 Nevertheless, without doubt he recognized regularities 18Unlike Lotman’s concept of culture, Ogyu’s mono (social and cultural reality) seems to lack the primary modeling system on which other cultural systems—the secondary modeling systems—are to be constructed. Since Lotman identifies the primary modeling system with natural language, it is possible to say, “Culture is built on natural language, and its relation to this natural language is one of its most essential parameters.” See “Primary and Secondary Communication—Modeling Systems,” in Soviet Semiotics, ed. D. P. Lucid (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 95-98. According to Lotman, the possibility of a semiotics of culture consists in the premise that there must be a certain structural homogeneity between natural language and other cultural systems. In this respect, it is interesting to note that Lotman’s basic apprehension of culture and his semiotic approach to it seem to have changed considerably, as is manifested in an essay published a few years later, “The Structure of the Narrative Text” (ibid., pp. 193-97). There, he asks: “Can the bearer of meaning be some message in which we cannot distinguish signs in the sense intended by classical definitions, which refer mainly to the word of natural language?” Here, I think, the scope of the semiotic study of culture is widened, and it becomes possible to take into account the notion of culture implicitly developed in Ogyu’s philosophy. His view of culture might be summarized as follows: one cannot talk about it; one can only live it. 19It has often been argued that the systematic nature of language surpasses the grasp of con¬ sciousness and that the structural analysis of language provides evidence for the objective presence of

Language, Body, and the Immediate

in ritual, musical, linguistic, and other institutions. Yet he rejected the claim that natural language could be the metalanguage of other systems. For no cultural system could manifest itself as it should when isolated from the mono, what modem ethnographers might call the totality of “unconscious conditions of social life.”20 Thus, Ogyu remarks: “Six Classics are the reality [mono],” and “The reality [mono] is the essential condition for learning. Ancient people wished to learn so that they could assimilate themselves to virtue. Therefore, those who taught [virtue] presented their learners with the essential condition for learning [instead of directly teaching them virtue].”21 While the major part of Ogyu’s kobunji gaku (learning of ancient texts and words) is directed toward the acquisition of linguistic ability that is supposedly relevant to life in ancient China, the final goal is to know the Way of ancient social and cultural institutions against the onslaught of subjectivist philosophy. Such a claim that the systematic nature of language or the thought of it goes beyond consciousness is highly dubious. Far rom exemplifying “le pense du dehors,” it simply is ignorant that the systematicity itself is con¬ stituted by consciousness and that when that which is outside consciousness is pursued, systematicity in the mode of synchrony cannot be equated to simultaneity. The critique of consciousness must be attentive to disparity between synchrony and simultaneity precisely because that disparity is the locus where one could envisage the outside of consciousness. Very often, the lack of awareness about the distinction between synchrony and simultaneity has led to a thesis that phenomenological consciousness has been criticized by the structuralist notion of structure and the priority of structure over consciousness. The sort of linguistic systematicity which structuralist analysis uncovers is, in fact, not much different from the object of analysis which is brought into being through eidetic reduction in phenomenology. What is handled in structural analy¬ sis is a phenomenon that is present to the transcendental ego. Some structuralists, who are not generally perceptive about the nature of transcendental analysis, seem to believe that it is fairly easy to escape from the confines of consciousness. They tend to assume that, whenever consciousness is mentioned, it is immediately taken to be an individual consciousness, as if the individual con¬ sciousness were not mediated by language. This critique of consciousness was put forth by Nishida Kiataro. See Hyogen sayo,” in Hataraku mono kara mirumono e, vol. 4 of Nishida Kitaro zenshu Tokyo. Iwanami Shoten, 1965), pp. 135-72. More recently a similar critique, which focuses on ranscendental subjectivity, was formulated by Julia Kristeva, Karatani Kojin, and William Haver am°.ng°thersoSee.Julia Kristeva, La revolution du langage poetique: L’avant -garde a la fin duXIXe 19?4); Karatani K°Jin’ Naisei to ™kou (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1985), pp. 122-68T^aver’ “The Body of Thls Death; Alterity in Nishida-Philosophy and Post Marxism”’ (Ph D. diss. University of Chicago, 1987). -°Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 18, 25 Michel de Certeau, for instance, addresses the issue of historical writing in relation to “unconscious condiPre? “TK “ Th? WrWng °fHistory> trans- Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press 1988). The question to be asked of ethnological research—what does this writing presuppose about orality?—is to be asked also of what it makes me bring forth, which reaches back and returns from much further than I. My analysis comes and goes between these two variants of a single structural relation, between the texts that it studies and the text that it produces. Through this double location it upholds the problem without resolving it—that is to say, without being able to move outside of circum-scnption. ’ At least in this way appears one of the rules of the system which was established as being Occidental and modem: the scriptural operation which produces, preserves and cultivates imperishable ‘truths’ is connected to a rumor of words that vanish no sooner than they are uttered and which are therefore lost forever. An irreparable loss is the trace of these spoken words in he naXtS’Wh°oei^ haVC become- Hence through writing is formed our relation with the other, me past (p. 212). The constitution of ethnographic interest is invariably connected to the emergence of orality as a discursive object. 5 2’Ogyu, Gakusoku in Nihon shiso taikei 36:167; Benmei in same, p. 179.

The Problem of Translation

235

sage-kings in the most concrete form, and the concretization of the Way is synonymous with the interior of Chinese antiquity. In this particular sense, language is viewed as instrumental, but only insofar as it is an issue for those who are still at the learning stage. Once they have reached the final stage, language should be neither an instrument nor a goal: it should be actually lived. As long as one speculates on language as an object, one cannot be said to be performing in the milieu of that language. Native speakers, Ogyu would surely claim, would never pose their language thematically as an object of inquiry. They simply live it and do things with it. Objectification of language, therefore, implies the subject’s estrangement from it or lack of proficiency. Only when one is not thoroughly at home in a language can the language appear to be a means. Such notions of the native speaker’s relationship to his or her native language are theoretically and ethically highly dubious, I think, but Ogyu posited an ideal stage in learning, when other cultural regularities were all harmoniously inte¬ grated into performance. Hence, he strongly opposed any objectification of these regularities. Instead of fixing them in the form of speculative knowledge, he proposed to acquire them through practice and to use these skills in concrete performance. Thus the agenda in kobunji gaku is organized with a view to leading his students to the stage at which the object of study would no longer be posited as an entity separate from the learning and acting body, at which language would be completely trans¬ parent. At the same time that the denial of objectification implicitly posits an ideal realm of interiority, it is a measure of one’s position in relation to that interior. To the extent that the language and the regularities of Chinese antiquity are familiarized and internalized, the subject can be said to be in the interior. It is on this theoretical ground that Ogyu criticized Song rationalism. He claimed that the followers of Zhu Xi ignored the fundamental condition without which ancient Chinese writings would not speak to contemporary readers who could not recognize the historical and geocultural limitations of ancient China. Moreover, they presumed that it was possible to appeal to a metalanguage valid both in the interior and the exterior. But the interior could never be described or represented adequately because there was no language to enable an observer standing outside to apprehend what was actually there. On this point Ogyu differs from his contemporary Confucian scholar Arai Hakuseki.22 Arai’s extensive 22Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725) was bom to a samurai family in the domain of Kazusa (now in Chiba prefecture). His father became masterless when Arai was nineteen. The young man studied Confucianism and entered feudal service as a Confucian tutor, becoming personal tutor to Tokugawa Ienobu, who later ruled as the shogun. From 1709 until 1716, he served as a key adviser to the two consecutive shoguns. As a scholar, Arai is known for the encyclopedic scope of his interests. He studied the histories of the Daimyo houses, of the myths, and of Japan from the Heian period to the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. He also studied military affairs, languages, geography. Western civilization (based on his interrogations of the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Sidotti), and Chinese poetry. All these studies are in one way or another connected to his knowledge of Song rationalism. His main works are Tokushiyoron (On reading Japanese history), Seiyokibun (Recorded accounts of the countries of the western ocean), and his autobiography, Oritaku shibanoki (Told round a brush¬ wood fire).

Language, Body, and the Immediate

study of comparative linguistics is based on the assumption that languages could be objectified, juxtaposed, and compared to one another.23 In his treatise on languages, there seems to be no trace of doubt about the existence of a meta¬ language that made it possible for him to describe various languages without assimilating himself to mono. By contrast, in Ogyu’s view, the Way of the ancient kings is universally valid only to the extent that the present reality, whose historic and geocultural limita¬ tions he acknowledged, can be transformed into the interior from which the sagekings, if they had been alive, would possibly speak. Although the issue is not to return the world to the interior of ancient China, language learning is a measure by which to change the world and, therefore, is a political program too. Ogyu, however, would also caution that one cannot change the world merely by chang¬ ing things in it. The task must include the reorganization of people’s behavior. It must concern itself with how things should be viewed and ordered in reference to the whole. Yet this whole, the interior, is not a sum of parts; it is a whole consisting of regularities. And what Ogyu ascribed to the ancient sage-kings is precisely this wholeness of the social and cultural formation, which he believed was absent from his contemporary Tokugawa society. The ancient sage-kings were, according to Ogyu, sakusha (authors or makers, 7-12), who could see the totality of the interior and organize a collectivity into an interior.24 The viewpoint of the sage-kings, in fact, coincides in theory with the possibility of conceiving of the whole of the social as a cultural and political closure in which perfect and transparent communication is guaranteed and every member fully integrated—that is, every nonmember perfectly excluded. And the existence of the sage-kings signifies the universal possibility of turning a social and cultural formation into a community of transparent communication and complete compassion. Potentially, any collectivity could be transformed into an interior with a definite sense of its whole. For this reason, the sage-kings were said to be impartial, for they always dealt with things from the viewpoint of the society as a whole. As Ogyu read the history of Chinese thought, the notion of the whole represented by the sage-kings worked as a guiding principle, and when he construed the history of Chinese thought since antiquity in terms of a series of disputes among conflicting schools, he perceived the development of thought in China as caused by the loss of the sense of a whole and the decomposition of the interior in historical time.25 In this sense, it was necessary to posit the sage-kings 23Aral Hakuseki, Toga in Nihon shisotaikei, 35:101-44. For Aral Hakuseki, see Kate Nakai, Arai Hakusekiand the Premises of Tokugawa Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies Harvard University, 1988). -4F°r more detailed explication of the significance of this term in Ogyu Sorai’s work see Maruyama Masao Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Mikiso Hane (TokyoUniversity of Tokyo Press, 1974), pp. 76-134, 206-73. y f°fr, inftaDnCu artiule 15 in Bendo' pp- 25“26- lt is wel1 known that ™ny adopted this of Buddhk f t^PS Mem°lfam°US CaSC iS Tominaga Nakamoto’s critical study of the history of Buddhism. See Tetsuo Najita, The Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan (Chicago: University of

The Problem of Translation

237

of antiquity to legitimate the idea that a thought should be judged according to whether or not its fundamental concern began with the totality. Ogyu postulated that a thought about the society which posits its totality may not always be true, but a thought that does not posit the totality is invariably false.26 Thus, although Ogyu insisted that the content of the interior could not be talked about but should be lived, he also taught that its totality could and should be thought and imagined whenever social and political issues were to be touched upon. The positing of the sage-kings coincides with the articulation of a certain enunciative position in which one could speak impartially, as a representative of the whole. Needless to say, this scheme serves to differentiate those who speak on behalf of the whole from those who put forth partial and biased views, but it also legitimates those who are supposed to speak for the whole as opposed to those who argue from their “egoistic” position of personal interest. When Ogyu saw the universal essence of Confucianism in the Way of the ancient kings, he was trying to establish the universal validity of such an enunciative position. There is no doubt that in the eighteenth century the claim to the universality of such an enunciative position was available only to the samurai class.

Passivity and Activity, Reading and Writing As the focal point of language learning shifted from what writing said and did to how it spoke, from the “constative” to the “performative,” so the Way no longer dictated what one should do but, instead, governed how one should respond to and behave in a given situation. To put it another way, what had to be learned was how to manipulate intrinsic regularities that governed various kinds of practice, rather than consequences and representations of that practice. It is in performance that Ogyu saw the locus of the whole, the nucleus where the whole was generatively constituted. In this context, I can outline how and why writing, not as the enunciated but as the enunciation, has to be incorporated into this theory of language. Writing as Ogyu talked about it within the scope of kobunji gaku, is an act, a form of practice and performance. When he repeatedly accused his contemporaries of Chicago Press, 1987). The best-known works of Tominaga Nakamoto, who was known for his critical views on Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto, are Shutsujo kogo (Buddha’s comments after his meditation) and Okina no fumi (Writings of an old man). Tominaga was bom in 1715 to a wealthy Osaka merchant family that helped to found the Kaitokudo, an academy of Osaka townsmen. He focused on the historical development of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto and showed that those teachings were based on ideological conflicts. He then argued that the religious dogmas should never be taken as they themselves claimed to be and that to understand them it was necessary to assess what they tried to promote against their opponents within and outside of their respective traditions. He died at the age of thirty-one. 26See Ogyu Sorai, Benmei, in Nihon shiso taikei 36:53-58, and Taiheisaku, “Thus the Way of the sage-kings does not make any sense at all if it is separated from the totality of the kings’ reign” (ibid., p. 467).

Language, Body, and the Immediate

inability to write in ancient Chinese, or kobunji (7-13) he did not mean simply that they did not know ancient Chinese well enough. Here too, what is at issue is the distinction between speculative and practical knowledge. Knowledge about ancient China, accordingly, should not be limited to the student’s ability to read the writings in an authentic manner, or to extensive memorization of facts about antiquity. Both language and nonverbal institutions must be comprehended as acts, as regularities that are intrinsic in performance. No matter how renowned a scholar of Confucianism might be, Ogyu declared, if he could not perform properly, he should be disqualified as a Confucian. Time and time again Ogyu emphasized that all knowledge has to be founded on practice, and he made the act of writing an essential component in kobunji gaku. Normally the act of writing is conceived in the active mode, as an expression or projection, as opposed to the act of reading, which is a passive practice in which a message is received. Thus, we tend to regard reading and writing as two sorts of linguistic practice that are specifically associated with written texts, differentiated by the voice distinction and by passivity and activity. The case, however, is not so simple in Ogyu’s philosophy. In kobunji gaku writing is equivalent to composition practice in a present-day language course, but it is accorded much greater significance. Kobunji gaku does not merely consist of reading. It requires that a learner reproduce ancient language with his own hand and fingers. Only when he has acquired the ability to reproduce language this way can ancient texts be as if they were coming out of his mouth. Then it would be as though he were together with ancient people, directly conversing with them. No formality would be required, and he would be able to socialize with them without any inhibition.27

In this paragraph too, it is possible to point out that the written text is subjected to voice, which is ‘coming out of his mouth.” Furthermore, two issues are worth examining. First, although writing is grasped in the mode of activity_“to reproduce ancient language” (the literal translation should be “to push or throw out ancient words”)—the goal is “to be accepted by the ancient people.” That is to say, writing is supposed to initiate a certain action that the learner views as passive. Even though the ancient people could not be present in the scene of this utterance, the words were in fact understood to be addressed to them. We have already encountered such a dual conception of action in the act of reading. By associating the voice with the text through vocalization, Ogyu attempted to transform reading into a (re-)productive act, whose mode is indeed active. Now, he tried to do the reverse with writing. Second, kobunji gaku is perceived to be a device by means of which one enters a certain community, in this case the community of the ancient Chinese. Ogyu thus acknowledged that action is always addressed to the “collectivity.” But 27Ogyu Sorai, “Kutsu keisan ni kotau” Soraishu, in Nihon Shiso Taikei 36:529.

The Problem of Translation

239

unlike Ito, he equated “collectivity” to an ancient China that had existed in the present of the past. His was not a “collectivity” that would be in the future anterior, and hence, it would not simply coincide with an already existing polity. A learner, he claimed, could participate in an informal and frank conversation with people of ancient China through the mastery of writing in ancient Chinese. The interior, therefore, has a communal dimension and Ogyu ascribed to this imagined reality all the favorable attributes—intimacy, frankness, absence of alienation, and compassion, to mention but a few. Through these attributes, he projected an image of a society that completely coincided with its institutions, without any surplus or deficit, a society entirely covered by the infinitely homo¬ geneous texture of sociocultural institutions. In this ideal society, there is no disparity between doing and knowing, between the instituting and the instituted. Such a society constitutes a perfectly sealed totality, where what I have referred to as textual materiality—and, therefore, historicity as well—is completely eliminated; nobody is aleatory in such a society. Complete compassion is pos¬ sible because there is absolutely no room for the otherness of the Other. There is absolutely no need and no room for ethical action, for the “collectivity” to which a social action is addressed coincides with the whole that is there. It is a society in which sociality is completely eliminated.28 In addition, Ogyu claims that through kobunji gaku one can enter the interior where language ceases to be distinct from other beings and events, where lan¬ guage is fused with the situation and the events happening in it. It seems that the ji (ci, 7-14) in kobunji means language fused in this way with the situation and the events (ji, shi, 2-28). I find the same kind of reciprocal duality of reading and writing, as well as the same conception of language fused with the world, in the writings of Kamo Mabuchi and others. Obviously this notion of the verbal act was not an invention of one author but rather an indication of a general trend in this new discursive formation. 28See Jean-Luc Nancy, “La communaute desoeuvree,” Alea (1983): 11-49.

CHAPTER

8

Phoneticism and History

Representation as Distance and Delay Both writing and reading are legitimate only insofar as they are grasped as modes of practice in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. We tend to presume that what distinguishes these two from the other modes of practice—notably, nonverbal texts—is ascribed to the work of language: the superiority of linguistic practice over others lies in the self-reflective function with which linguistic practice is endowed. Statements can represent phenomena that are not of lin¬ guistic origin, but they are also capable of representing linguistic phenomena. It has often been asserted that only language is able to talk about language itself. In the eighteenth century, however, this function of language was severely questioned, and a typically phonocentric view of language developed. Of defini¬ tive importance in this connection is the dichotomy writing/speech, which is primarily concerned with the material support of the two forms: writing is medi¬ ated by durable matter, whereas speech has no durable hold. Here, the different aspects of utterance are called forth and diacritically distinguished, speech being the production of words itself and writing its product. Hence, to define writing as a transcription of speech, the content of writing, not as the writing act but as a written text, is already to prefigure the temporal structure in which these two aspects are incorporated. Temporally, the written text is taken to be the presence of a verbal utterance in the perfect tense, whereas speech is present in the progressive present tense. These temporal and modal characterizations seem to play important roles since re-presentation necessarily implies the sense of delay between that which is present and represents, and that which is present but represented. No matter whether the two items are actually copresent or not, the relationship called representation necessitates that the represented be in the per¬ fect tense while the representing be in progressive present tense. The modal differentiation of the representing and the represented derives from the fact that

240

Phoneticism and History

241

the represented can be arrived at only though the representing: unless the repre¬ senting is given, the represented is never known. As a matter of fact, representa¬ tion inevitably generates this disparity between the two terms, whereby the represented and the representing are posited as such. As we have seen, eighteenth-century discursive space indicated a strong ten¬ dency toward the progressive present tense, which gave rise to overwhelming insistence on performative aspects of various social and cultural formations. In this respect, it is natural that the representational function of language was ceaselessly problematized. Yet we must not forget that there is more to it. Insofar as an utterance is viewed in relation to the context re-presented in it, that is, in relation to what the context implicitly portrays, it addresses itself only as an enunciated, not as an enuncia¬ tion. Deprived of the aspects of performance and enunciation, this utterance loses its adherence to its originary scene. Words that make up an utterance may be thrown out in the midst of some ongoing events, in a situation, but once an utterance has been produced, it no longer preserves the environment of the originary enunciation. As I have already discussed, the fundamental charac¬ teristic of verbal expression, or the discursivity of verbal expression, is depriva¬ tion of the sensory perspective: the represented transcends the horizon of its enunciation. On the other hand, seeing an utterance at the moment of enuncia¬ tion, one is led to postulate that other things and events must also be present in the situation in which the representing takes place.1 Despite the fact that these will support and animate the signification of the utterance, they will never be represented in the utterance itself. This mode of copresence should be dis¬ tinguished from that of representation because it certainly does not abide by the temporal structure characteristic of representation. I have suggested that this copresence could be construed in terms of the gestalt type of intertextuality, in which an utterance is perceived as a figure, circumscribed by a certain framing, and things that are copresent with it are excluded from it and drawn into the background. •Perhaps, a distinction has to be introduced among the three possible uses of the term “present.” The first is a well-known phenomenological definition that the present is the mode of the primordial datum, that is, the mode of things being given originally in perception. It is always given to, and so, the present is necessarily “present to.” The second is the present articulated in transcendental analysis, which can often be equated to the temporal moment of synchrony. This present is the condition of the possibility for thinking or the thinkable, and it is defined in terms of a copossibility that presupposes the presence of the system. This sort of present is understood when we say “B must be present in order for A to be.” Synchrony can be defined by a series of relays of the present of this kind. The third, and most significant in my discussion here, is the present in which the situation is present in enunciation. As the situation cannot be “present to” the utterance specularly unless it is thematically presented in the utterance, the situation is neither primordially given to phenomenologi¬ cal consciousness nor synchronous with the utterance. In order for the situation, things, the ad¬ dressee, or even the addresser to be present in enunciation, it must be excluded from the circuit of specularity. Therefore, this present can never be objectified or made present. In this sense, this present cannot be talked about in terms of onthotheological being or nothingness as the negation of being. It goes without saying that the body of the enunciation, or shutai, is present in this sort of present. Therefore, the shutai neither is nor is not.

242

Language, Body, and the Immediate

To see an utterance not as the enunciated but as the enunciation, not as a product but as an action producing it, is to transform the paradigm of representa¬ tion into that of copresence. It necessarily leads to the view that an utterance is an act embodied in a performative situation. The reduction of writing to speech can then be understood differently. If an utterance is an event taking place in a situation, it can be seen as similar to nonlinguistic practice, can and should be equated to nonverbal behavior. It should be evident that what is supposedly the product of behavior, a written text, for instance, does not maintain its immediate adherence to the performative situation. Therefore, it could be argued that only when a text is isolated from its immediate environment can it be possible to transcend the horizon of the text’s enunciation. Concurrently, the distance perceived between the text and things it represents would give rise to the temporal structure without which representation would be impossible. If we believe that such a mode of copresence really guaran¬ tees the proclaimed immediate adherence to the performative situation, we could easily be persuaded that writing, as opposed to speech, indicates distance and separation: a form of estrangement. If immediacy is to be the sole ultimate ontological premise on which the ideal society could possibly be imagined, then representation, and writing as a form of concretized representation, should mean decomposition and dissemination of the ideal order since writing constantly disturbs and disqualifies the legitimacy of any claim to immediacy. The social praxis would then be dominated by concern to overcome the estrangement and alienation. Implicit in this denial of representation is the assumption that without the distance essential for representation, it should be impossible to posit the opposi¬ tions activity/passivity and subject/object. In other words, a linguistic practice could be apprehended as active or passive only insofar as distance is presup¬ posed. Moreover, this distance is a pivotal issue in terms of which activity and passivity in linguistic practice are defined: a linguistic practice could be active when it expresses or externalizes something, thereby generating distance; it could be passive when it acts to overcome such a distance. Therefore, the act of writing is active, for it certainly distances, delays, and differs. By contrast, the act of reading signifies a passive reception of something conceived from afar. In both cases, some distance is always presupposed to make expression or reception intelligible. What then does the reciprocal duality according to which Ogyu Sorai stressed the passive nature of writing and the active nature of reading mean? What the reciprocal duality denies is the condition that makes the opposition ac¬ tivity/passivity possible, namely, representational distance. As far as the ques¬ tion of language is concerned, Ogyu’s philosophical enterprise can be interpreted in terms of his endeavor to overcome the distance thus generated and thereby to annul the representational function of language. I must also note, however, that his overzealous attempt to overcome representational distance not only concealed but also excluded the kind of distance always generated in textuality, which

Phoneticism and History

243

cannot be accommodated within the activity/passivity opposition. He refused to acknowledge the ethical-practical possibility, probably most explicitly an¬ nounced by Ito Jinsai, that there is a distance without which the ethical action, as Ito understands the term “ethics,” would be unintelligible. What initiated Ogyu’s enterprise is the perception that language had become opaque, had lost its integrity, but that it ought originarily and properly to be immediate and transparent. His rhetorical strategies seem to have been deployed in this direction (we will witness the same direction in Kamo Mabuchi’s dis¬ course on poetry). Thus the reciprocal duality in writing and reading is a means by which to eliminate distance so as to ensure transparent language. By depriving writing of activity and reading of passivity, he reduces the two modes of verbal practice to another mode akin to performative practice. This reduction is brought about by means of various theoretical projects, all of which aim at abolishing the representational function of language. It goes without saying that the most pres¬ tigious aspect particular to linguistic practice, namely, the possibility of meta¬ language, is no longer acceptable in that conception of language. It is in its similarity to the nonlinguistic act that the representational aspect of language is given ontological significance. Although the extreme glorification of immediacy cannot be found in Ogyu’s works, his conception of language, when fully devel¬ oped, would recognize exclamation as the most authentic form of linguistic practice because it does not have any representational function at all. It is purely vociferous, and in its vociferousness, it is effectively illocutional. It does not talk about anything; it lacks the distance that characterizes other verbal practice. Of course, it adheres to the performative situation, for if it were detached from it, the exclamation would hardly signify anything: it is totally empty of significa¬ tion, but full of prelinguistic articulation in signifiance.

The Status of the Classics It is in this context that kiyo no gaku (the learning of Nagasaki translators) and kobunji gaku (the learning of ancient texts and words) can be recognized as essential components of this philosophical enterprise. Kiyo no gaku was strate¬ gically constructed so that reading might be subordinated to speech in an attempt to eliminate the opacity of language. Similarly, kobunji gaku gears itself toward the stage of learning in which a student achieves the ultimate fluency in a language, so that to him verbal practice is just like other modes of perfectly acquired nonverbal practice. Ultimately, fluency in ancient language, just like other skills, would be obtained in the body.2 Therefore, the interior that both kinds of learning aspire to attain is modeled after the kind of performative 2Ogyu wrote, “Therefore, when the Way is in the body, one’s words are naturally orderly; one’s deed is correct; one serves one’s master royally; one serves one’s father piously; one socializes with others trustfully; and one controls things naturally” (Benmei, in Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 36 [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1973], p. 44).

Language, Body, and the Immediate

situation in which an utterance is made as naturally, sincerely, and spontaneously as possible. This is the realm where language is supposed to be completely transparent. As I have remarked, the interior thus conceived is also dyed with the communal atmosphere of frankness, intimacy, and lack of artificial formality. In it, the distance of both representational language and interpersonal relationship presumably ceases to exist. The idealization of communal spirit and the absence of the representational uses of language also characterize the interior we recognize in the treatises of Kamo Mabuchi.3 Ogyu projects interiority onto ancient China; Kamo identifies it with Japanese antiquity instead. Kamo posited an ideal era in antiquity when the minds of the Japanese were frank and straight. Since those people were enthusi¬ astically and spontaneously engaged in nonverbal practice, he believed, they did not need many words. Kamo assumed that the representational function of lan¬ guage interfered with interpersonal compassion, and he argued that the distur¬ bance of compassion in his own time was caused by the dominance of representa¬ tional uses of language. The remedy he proposed for the decomposed social order was almost identical in structure to Ogyu’s. First, the central mode of linguistic practice has to be shifted to speech, and since writing and reading endanger the immediacy of practice, they have to be condemned. Only as a medium through which the original voice is recovered could written texts be given some recognition. In antiquity, Kamo believed, “people could freely ma¬ nipulate written words because the spoken word was thought of as the master and the written word as the slave. But as time passed, it was as if the master had died and his position had been usurped by his slave.”4 Two binary oppositions are to be noted here. The first is the one I have noted in Ogyu, speech/writing. The second is phoneticism/ideography. I shall begin with the first and return to the second later. Just as Ogyu denied the possibility that one could learn the Way through explanation, so Kamo rejected the thesis that a human being could and should follow the principle set by any teaching. “Those who believe that people are to follow what the teaching says do not understand the mind of heaven and earth.”5 Only the acquisition of practical knowledge enables people to learn in the proper sense. Like kobunji gaku, Kamo’s pedagogical project specifies: “First one should learn ancient poems and learn how to compose poems in the ancient

Bom to a family of Shinto priests in the domain of Totomi (now in Shimizu prefecture), Kamo Mabuchi (1697-1769) was trained from an early age in waka composition and Japanese classics and became a National Studies scholar and waka poet. By combining the comparative philological techniques of Keichu (1640-1701) with the theological system of Kada Azumaro (1669-1736), he established a new scholarship on classical Japanese literature and language. His poetry stressed'the masculine style of the Man'yoshu, on which he wrote an extensive commentary, Mariyoko. He also wrote Kaiko (Thesis on waka poetry), Niimanabi (New learning), Genjimonogatari shinshaku (New commentary on the Tale of Genji), and others. 4Kamo Mabuchi, Kokuiko, in Nihon shiso taikei 39*381 5Ibid., p. 387.

Phoneticism and History

245

fashion, and then one should learn the writings of antiquity and write in the ancient fashion.”6 Obviously Kamo’s argument is dominated by the orientation toward speech and performance in the same way as Ogyu’s. It has often been argued that this similarity is due to Ogyu’s influence on Kamo, and a substantial amount of research has been devoted to the biographical connection between the two au¬ thors. I have no inclination to disprove a possible influence of kobunji gaku on Kamo’s poetics or to discover the similarity between the two sets of works and to reinforce it by quoting biographical evidence concerning the authors. I would rather concern myself with the positivities that constituted other positivities in the discursive space of the eighteenth century and with the articulation of differences that therefore formed that similarity.7 In this regard, the question of influence is excluded from my scope not only because the concept of influence is ill defined and arbitrary but also because I should first elucidate the conditions without which so-called influence itself would make no sense. My attention is drawn toward whether or not some regularities in the texts of the eighteenth century sustain various differentiations. In order to talk about differences and similarities between Ogyu and Kamo— and also between their affiliations with schools of thought, Confucianism and National Studies—I should identify the level of discourse at which writings were distinguished from one another and, then, despite these differences, demonstrate their similarity. Most obviously, whereas Ogyu insisted that the ultimate goal of learning was the acquisition of ancient Chinese, for Kamo it was ancient Japa¬ nese that was to be acquired. Accordingly, Ogyu wrote in the Chinese of antiq¬ uity, and Kamo in ancient Japanese, although neither could be totally free of the convention of his time.8 In addition, Ogyu’s writings, because they were Confucian, were expected to follow rules of generic taxonomy according to which the space of generic discon¬ tinuity was constituted and discourse was classified into genres, schools, and so on. I by no means imply that certain dogmatic theses persisted in Japanese Confucianism and that it was distinguished from other schools of thought by its proclaimed ideals. Genealogy does not necessarily explain how unities of genre and school were constituted within a given discursive space. The rules that fashioned the identity of Confucianism in the eighteenth century might be very different from those of the sixteenth or the nineteenth century. 6Kamo Mabuchi, Niimanabi, in Nihon shiso takei 39:363. 7Here, I assume the possibility of distinguishing constituting positivities from constituted positivities. As is obvious this possibility is extremely hard to prove without falling into a series of tautologies. Nevertheless, one’s analysis could not even start without dealing with this question, unless one is completely unable to question what is given as reality. 8For instance, Ogyu published many of his works in yomikudashibun, and most of his treatises in Chinese were annotated with the wakun he so vehemently denounced. Likewise, Kamo wrote in a kind of pseudoarchaic Japanese style, or gikobun, which differed a great deal from ancient Japanese. The style of language was one of many traits by which a school of thought was identified, but one should be aware that that alone does not define its identity.

246

Language, Body, and the Immediate

One of these rules dealt with the intertextual relationships according to which texts were incorporated into other already existing ones. To be recognized as Confucian, a written text had to justify what it advocated through reference to certain Confucian classics. The classical reference was not particular to Confu¬ cian discourse; the National Studies, too, used classical references to legitimate its validity. When the classics regarded as the source of authority were associated with the Confucian tradition, a discourse was diacritically identified as Confu¬ cian. Furthermore, this generic distinction extended to the inner articulation of Confucianism itself, and works were identified with a specific school of Confu¬ cianism according to which classics were cited. In this sense, the relationship of Ogyu’s philosophical treatises to Confucian classics was twofold. I pointed out earlier that Confucian classics no longer held the authority to confirm Confucian ethical and epistemic principles. Ito Jinsai had challenged the application of Confucian norms to praxis, and Ogyu Sorai flatly refused to see those norms as conceptually represented in the classics. At the same time, the emphasis shifted from the Four Books to the Six Classics. This shift agreed with the radical shift of attention from representational language to performance, for the Four Books were rather theoretical and said to be written in representational language, whereas the Six Classics were considered more practical, recording emotional and institutional practices of ancient people. Thus, I can at least point out the level at which the differences among schools of thought were constituted: the different classics referred to as the source of legitimation. Likewise, I have identified the level of discourse at which the similarity was posited, the intertextuality by which eighteenth-century texts were related to ancient texts. Although writers affiliated with different schools at¬ tempted to legitimate different theses, the structure by which they related their own discourse to the classics remained unchanged, at least insofar as the authors in question are concerned. History thus played an important role in eighteenthcentury discourse because it delineated the particular intertextual structure that regulated the production of texts. Suffice it to say that this history has nothing to do with a kind of historiography based on the seriality of events. It is instead a condition of legitimation; legitimation and history were indiscemibly inter¬ twined. History was not an asset or an object of discourse for a specific genre or school of thought; it was an essential component of the general rule of discursive formation which permeated the entire discursive space. Thus, without appealing to the notion of influence, it is possible to analyze and construe the network of difference and identity in the discursive space.

The Human Body and the Interior It is at this locus of discourse, namely, of intertextual structure, that the question of practice becomes decisive. Performance certainly occupies the center

Phoneticism and History

247

of the discursive space to which Ogyu’s argument was confined. As I have discussed, the axis along which a variety of positivities in this space were organized was oriented toward an idealized conception of practice. I must also note that this conception dramatized the discontinuity between Ogyu and his predecessors in the Confucian tradition. He claimed that practice preceded spec¬ ulative knowledge and that Zhu Xi’s theory of knowledge and practice failed to grasp the primordial rapport between these two terms: “To know something is to know it truly. To practice something is to practice it enthusiastically. Only after one has thoroughly acquired the skill by practicing enthusiastically many times over can one know it truly. Therefore, knowledge does not necessarily precede practice and practice does not necessarily succeed knowledge.”9 Ogyu forcefully states that the realness and meaningfulness of knowledge can be found only when knowledge is subordinated to practice and grasped as a moment of practice. Here the immediate and transparent nature of the mastered skill is associated with realness and meaningfulness. This conceptualization of practice could be de¬ scribed as sustained by a desire for lively togetherness, that supreme mode of immediacy. Ogyu claims that the source of this possibility for lively togetherness is located in the human body: People understand a person if he speaks. People do not understand him if he does not speak.10 Why is it possible that rites and music can be superior to language in teaching people? Because people assimilate rites and music. When one has learned and attained proficiency by learning, even if he still does not understand it, his body as intentionality [shinshi shintai, xinzhi shenti, 8-1] has already implicitly assimi¬ lated it.11

The human body holds a privileged status and also acquires an exceptional prestige in the world. It is the locus of anchorage in this world according to 9Ogyu Sorai, Benmei, p. 167. 10I encountered some difficulty in translating these sentences, attributable perhaps to the common problem of translating Japanese or Chinese into European languages: that there is no equivalent in Japanese or Chinese to the pronominal system of European languages. In this case the difficulty also seems to be related to the systematic constitution of Ogyu’s philosophic enterprise. Translated literally, the statements read: “Men (man) understand(s) if said/talked/spoken. Men (man) do(es) not understand if not said/talked/spoken.” The object of understanding and the subject and the object of saying are all unspecified. Normally the context determines unspecified terms in translation. One should not confuse philosophical with linguistic problems and should not yield to a rather naive cultural-essentialist argument that a certain structure of language produces a certain type of philo¬ sophical system. In this case, however, I have reason to draw attention to the lack of specificity of these terms; first, whether or not understanding is a transitive act that takes an object is rather problematical in Ogyu. Second, the unspecificity of the subject of linguistic practice seems to be an important issue and cannot be overlooked. We should keep in mind Ogyu’s claim that by vocalizing an ancient text one does not reach the inner experience of the individual author but the interior, which definitely has a communal implication. Vocalization was thought of as an act by which to integrate an individual subject into the community. nOgyu Sorai, Benmei, p. 70.

Language, Body, and the Immediate

which here and now are primordially given, although the body is not what is present to consciousness but that to which something is present. Hence, when associated with the human body, knowledge is supposed to be revealed here and in the present. This is another implication of the practical terms in which Ogyu conceives knowledge. Then he attempts to provide his own interpretation of “investigation of things” and “extension of knowledge” from the Daxue: One who learns actual things at length and preserves what he has acquired by learning can achieve virtue. This process [of learning] is called “investigation of things” [which Ogyu reads as “arrival of mono” (mono kitaru, wuke, 8-2)]. When you first start to learn, mono is not in you. This state could be described as though mono were still there and had not come here. When you achieve virtue, mono will be in you. This state could be described as though mono had left there and arrived here. This means that you no longer needed conscious elfort [because mono is here]. This is why we say mono kitaru [mono has arrived]. This Chinese character ke is, in fact, lai. Once the conditions of learning [mono] are in you, knowledge is spon¬ taneously manifest. This is called “extension of knowledge” [which he reads as “knowledge arrives”].12

In this conception of mono, the duality of direction in learning is of principal importance. As we have seen, the interior is an area one is to enter through learning. That is to say, one moves away from the present position and arrives at the interior, which is located there. In this respect, learning can be explicated as transcendence or pro-ject. Learning can also be described in terms of imma¬ nence, however, because from the viewpoint installed in the human body the interior moves from there to here. Mono gradually penetrates and inhabits the body. The relationship between the human body and the interior is also dual. It is no contradiction to say that the interior is in one’s body and the body is in the interior, provided that one has already achieved virtue. Yet it is also important to note that the conceptualization of reciprocity between activity and passivity in fact requires a certain objectification in the imagination of the body: this concep¬ tualization is dependent on the possibility of taking up the other’s viewpoint, an imaginary possibility that Jacques Lacan and Miura Tsutomu explain in terms of the “mirror.” Already in Ogyu, the radical otherness of the shutai has been reduced to the specular image of the body. Since the interior, or mono, is not merely an area in a geographical sense but also a prepredicative horizon for specific practices, it could be associated with some image of the performative situation. One cannot perceive an acting human body without referring to the performative situation in which it is acting. In this sense too, the human body I am talking about cannot be directly equated to the organic unity in physiology. A bodily act never takes place in a vacuum. It is ,2Ibid.

Phoneticism and History

249

always surrounded by many objects and other human bodies in relation to which it takes on signifiance if not signification, particularly when we deal with an ethical or social action that presupposes the potential articulation of a given situation. Although its mode of articulation is the supplementary relationship of correlation, it cannot be reduced to even the patterned behavior of a human body. For this reason, the physiological description of an action does not tell us any¬ thing about its ethical or social implication. (Compare these two statements, which are said to describe the same occurrence: “A swung his fist” and “A beat B.”) It requires that the situation will have been institutionally and culturally articulated and that only as a correlate of the situation thus semanticized can a movement of the human body assume its ethical and social determination. Like¬ wise, it is impossible to define a performative situation without referring to the human body in action within it. Thus, what we perceive as practice and its meaning are properties inherent neither in the situation nor in the human body. Had we been allowed to postulate the ontological status of practice in terms similar to those in which I talked about verbal texts, practice would be nothing but signifiance. Ogyu’s conception of learning valorizes not signification or the enunciated but signifiance and enunciation. Accordingly, Ogyu demands that his student be equipped with practical knowledge concerning the relationship be¬ tween the performative situation and his body. Certainly what Maurice MerleauPonty called the ambiguity of the human body is prescribed in the framework within which Ogyu deploys his argument. What is meant by ambiguity is the mode of existence in which various dichotomies that I have already identified are accommodated without being synthesized. In this perspective, dichotomies such as transcendence/immanence and activity/passivity cease to be asymmetrical. They are governed by the symmetrical transference so that a constant shift transforms transcendence into immanence, activity into passivity. But Ito Jinsai’s perception of the human body as the center of decentering no longer plays a major role in Ogyu’s thought. The body is seen instead as the center of recenter¬ ing, so that for Ogyu it is primarily the topos of empathy, on empathy guarantee¬ ing the sense of togetherness, which consists of the reciprocity of transference. In Ogyu’s political philosophy, I think, empathy is primarily transference, and the human body a synthesizing locus that guarantees the preestablished harmony of intersubjective communality through its intercorporeity. Whereas Ito tries to demonstrate the ethicality of a social action in reference to the human body as a locus of otherness which can never be entirely subsumed under intention, Ogyu posits the human body as the medium of habit formation. Above all he emphasizes the aspect of the human body that assimilates and integrates a person into the community. Hence, his conception of the human body is oriented toward conformity and stability. Unlike Ito’s, which stresses the dynamic and changing nature of the social, Ogyu’s conception of the body is strikingly hostile to change and disintegration. And it should be added that his

Language, Body, and the Immediate

body is always taken up from the viewpoint of the whole. For Ogyu the perspec¬ tive coinciding with the viewpoint of the whole designates the benevolent and virtuous presence of authentic Confucianism. Nevertheless the problematic of the human body dominates eighteenth-century discourse in the sense that the conceptualization of political and social formation is dependent on the conception of the body. A slight difference in this conception is greatly amplified in specific visions of the social.

Diacritical Identification of the Japanese Language It seems that Kamo Mabuchi relied on the same set of discursive devices as Ogyu to project the idealized image of ancient Japan. The primary difference between Kamo and Ogyu lay in Kamo’s rejection of China. Ogyu attributed the representational use of language mainly to Song rationalism and its followers but Kamo held China at large responsible for it. The term kara (China) had been used extensively to identify and glorify what was originally pure and ought to be resurrected but Kamo argued that China was a vicious country.13 He believed that things of Chinese origin had contaminated Japanese life, which otherwise would be straight and stainless. Whereas for Ogyu it was historical time that gave rise to changes and decomposed the presumed integrity of the interior, for Kamo it was China or Chinese civilization. Yet, although he does not share the cosmo¬ politanism characteristic of Ogyu’s treatises, the directionality that governs his discourse resembles Ogyu’s in the sense that the interior thus conceived of is ascribed first to voices and then to practice. Voice, as in Ogyu’s vocalization of t e ancient texts, is supposed to ensure interpersonal intimacy and transparent language. Kamo believed that by properly vocalizing ancient poems one could become copresent with poets of a thousand years before. Moreover, since the ancient people were straight and direct, their minds would be present to the reader without any mediation once such a state was actualized.14 For Kamo also the learning of ancient language was of primary importance, a necessary step toward the intenor, which he posited in Japanese antiquity. Without a practical nowledge of ancient Japanese, one could never properly vocalize the ancient poems preserved in written form. In this connection, I must attend to the status of poetics in eighteenth-century discourse. Around that time, many publications appeared about the proper usage of kana the etymology of ancient Japanese, and Japanese syntax and phonology Most of these publications, if not all, were m one way or another related to poetics. Kamo himself published etymological studies of the Man’yoshu,'5 as H^am° Kokuiko. p. 179. Similar statements can be found in his other articles 14Kamo Mabuchi, Niimanabi, p. 362. cies* '5Man’yoshu, the earliest extant collection of Japanese poetrv contains 4Sih ™ earliest dated to the fourth centuty and the last to 759. Most of Jpoems are wnttenTn ^ Chinese ideographs used phonetically, with extended headnotes, footnotes, prose settings, letters!

Phoneticism and History

251

well as his theory of Japanese syntax, to foster a better understanding of ancient poetry and to teach students to compose poems in the ancient fashion. Of course the Japanese had a long tradition of poetic discourse, perhaps even outdating the introduction to the Kokinshu,16 but a concern for poetics had never been as widespread as in the eighteenth century. Why did interest in poetics suddenly increase, and what kind of rules governed the voluminous discussion of poetry and language? Kamo’s studies of language are motivated by the desire to reach transparency. Underlying this tendency is the structural parallelism among the oppositions: transparent/opaque, speech/writing, and phoneticism/ideography. I have at¬ tempted to uncover the rules governing the differentiations in both Ogyu’s and Kamo’s treatises. Thus far, voice, practice, and the human body have been identified in relation to the modes of reading and the conceptualization of lan¬ guage. Ogyu and Kamo share the first two oppositions and deploy them along the same axis, but the opposition between phoneticism and ideography has yet to be examined. Next I want to consider how that opposition accords with the general discursive formation.

The Image nary Relation to the Text: Phoneticism and the Historicity of a Text Since some people in the region now called Japan adopted the Chinese writing system, the dichotomy phoneticism/ideography may be said to be immanent in “Japanese culture.” As the “Japanese” way of reading Chinese, or wakun, best reveals, Chinese ideography and its relationship to vocalization had always dra¬ matized heterogeneity in a writing system in which two different principles coexisted and violated each other. It has been argued that the Chinese writing and other compositions—all in Chinese, not Man yo-gana—and a few Chinese poems. Of the three Japanese poetic forms represented in the anthology the great majority are tanka (short songs), but there are also about 260 choka (long songs) and 60 sedoka (head-repeated songs). The Man yoshu is the culmination of a tradition of anthology making at least several decades old. Those most exten¬ sively involved in its compilation were the poet Otomo no Yakamochi (7187—785) and perhaps Yamanoue no Okura (660-ca. 733). X6 Kokinshu, or Kokin Wakashu (Collection of Japanese waka poems from ancient and modem times), was officially commissioned under Emperor Daigo (reign 897—930) in 905. Although the compilers of the Kokinshu thought that the Man yoshu had already been royally commissioned, the Kokinshu was in fact the first in a series of anthologies of Japanese verse commissioned by imperial order. The four compilers of the Kokinshu were Ki no Tsurayuki, Ki no Tomonori, Oshikochi no Mitsune, and Mibu no Tadamine. The Kokinshu set the rules according to which its 1,111 poems were arranged by topics, and twenty ensuing imperial collections use the same taxonomy. The first six books were dedicated to seasonal poems—two to spring, one to summer, two to autumn, and one to winter—followed by one book each on the themes of congratulatory gifts, parting, travel, and acrostic. Next come five books of love poems, followed by a book of laments, two books on miscellaneous matters, one book of miscellaneous poetic forms, and one of poems from the Bureau of Poetry at court. The Kokinshu begins the taxonomy of Japanese poetic imagery which would form the background for much of the ensuing waka tradition.

Language, Body, and the Immediate

system thus assimilated and accepted was the only way for people to articulate and preserve their words since they did not know any other means of verbal inscription. Yet, interestingly enough, not until the eighteenth century did the total rejection of ideography and the adoption of “pure” phoneticism arise as a major intellectual concern. The two principles had been somewhat reconciled and had continued to allow for the production of texts. Neither purely ide¬ ographic nor purely phonetic inscription dominated the production of intellec¬ tual, literary, and legal discourse. In other words, the radical dichotomy phonet¬ icism/ideography had been unheard of until then. As the Kojiki17 shows, phoneticism existed as soon as the Chinese writing system was known to those inhabiting today’s Kinki area. During a period of one thousand years, phoneticism was assimilated into systems of inscription fairly widely used in the region now called Japan. During this time, kana, the Japanese phonetic writing system, was invented as a supplement to Chinese ideographs. We must remind ourselves, however, that kana (or what might be rendered makeshift names [ka-na]) does not designate the specific sign system we now know as katakana or hiragana. Rather, it signifies a certain use of inscriptions to maintain the identity of graphic unity in relation to the phonemes they provoke. In other words, even Chinese ideographs can be viewed as kana if their verbal function is limited to a correspondence to sounds, as witnessed in manyo-gana (Chinese ideographs used phonetically). A writing is in kana if and only if it is viewed solely from the aspect of sound generation. On the other hand, ideography is a principle by which a graphic inscription participates in the constitution of signification only insofar as that inscription cannot be linearly related to the singular series of phonemes. An ideograph is not necessarily a sign that does not evoke a sound; instead, it is a sign that evokes more than one sound or no sound at all and therefore relates itself to sounds multivocally. Phoneticism postulates that a text can be reduced to a series of sounds and that the text’s signification is identical to that constituted by the sounds alone. Hence, phoneticism requires that a graphic inscription be related to the sounds univocally. In this connection, we should be aware of an important thesis: once ideography and phoneticism have been defined this way, a text can he both ideographic and phonetic or neither wholly ideographic nor wholly phonetic, unless the text must be voiced Kojiki (Record of ancient matters) is Japan’s oldest extant chronicle, recording events from the mythical age of the gods up to the time of Empress Suiko (reign 593-628). The compiler O no Yasumaro, states in the preface that it was presented to Empress Gemmei (reign 707-715) on March p’ ^cording to O no Yasumaro’s preface, sometime during the latter half of the seventh century Emperor Temmu (reign 673-686) ordered the court attendant Hieda no Are to commit to memory the records of the imperial family, myths, and legends. The Kojiki is divided into three parts Th^first part records the creation of heaven and earth and myths concerning the founding of Japan. It describes e descent from heaven of Ninigi no Mikoto, grandson of Amaterasu Omikami, original figure of the

V°

m(Ttain

fmmnth f Takachlho Mine in Kyushu. The second part deals with die period from the first emperor, Jimmu, through the reign of Emperor Ojin at the beginning of the fifth early'seventh centu^

fF°m ^

°f Emperor Nintoku until the rule of Suiko in the

Phoneticism and History

253

As long as one regards a writing as visual, these two categories do not apply: painting is not phonetic, ideographic, or hieroglyphic unless one is constrained to see it as a verbal text; a writing, likewise, is not phonetic, ideographic, or hieroglyphic as long as it is seen solely visual. Such categories as phoneticism and ideography are matters of ideology par excellence in the sense (not entirely unrelated to Louis Althusser’s rather well known definition of ideology) that each of them is a specific mode of the human being’s imaginary and practical rela¬ tionship to the text and that one’s investment of desire in the perception of texts is regulated by a set of rules. These categories are always related to the implicit imperatives under which a writing is read, recited, or merely seen and according to which the mode of investing desire for meaning in inscription is determined. In other words, these categories designate the regimes of praxis according to which one invests and practices one’s relationship to the text and lives that imaginary relationship. For this reason, it is pointless to talk about the ide¬ ographic nature of the system of Chinese characters or the phonetic nature of Japanese kana or even of alphabetical signs, except in relation to the accompany¬ ing ideology. Already, through Mallarme’s and Apollinaire’s experiments, which jeopardized its accompanying ideology, have we not been obliged to acknowl¬ edge that even the system of alphabetical signs could work against its phono¬ centric ideology? A writing system cannot be ideographic, phonetic, or hiero¬ glyphic in itself, independently of ideology. Any sign system has to be evaluated in discourse. V.N. Volosinov gives a precise account of this problematic: Any ideological product is not only itself a part of a reality (natural or social), just as is any physical body, any instrument of production, or any product for consumption, it also, in contradiction to these other phenomena, reflects and refracts another reality outside itself. Everything ideological possesses meaning, it represents, de¬ picts, or stands for something lying outside itself. In other words, it is a sign. Without signs, there is no ideology. A physical body equals itself, so to speak; it does not signify anything but wholly coincides with its particular, given nature. In this case there is no question of ideology. However, any physical body may be perceived as an image; for instance, the image of natural inertia and necessity embodied in that particular thing. Any such artistic-symbolic image to which a particular physical object gives rise is already an ideological product. The physical object is converted into a sign. Without ceasing to be a part of material reality, such an object, to some degree, reflects and refracts another reality.18

The so-called writing system, of course, is a system of such signs; it is impossi¬ ble to identify it at the level of physical body. The Chinese writing system, for instance, cannot be characterized as such unless it is related to a specific ide18V.N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I.R. Titunik (New York: Seminar Press, 1973), p. 9.

254

Language, Body, and the Immediate

ology. Therefore, the Chinese writing system is not innately ideographic: it is only in relation to a regime that it is so. To see a writing system independently of its ideological nature is to refuse to see it as a system of signs. Furthermore, there is a problem about how to identify the unity of the so-called Chinese writing system, not to mention the unities of Chinese language and tradition. In pointing out a certain naivete in Jacques Derrida’s understanding of nonWestem writings in an article on the Chinese character Way, but without paying due attention to Derrida’s critique of conventional categories such as phonetic, ideographic, hieroglyphic, and so on, Zhang Longxi fails to take this ideological nature of signs into consideration and constructs his argument on the assumption that the Chinese language is nonphonetic and ideographic in itself.19 But on what ground can one claim that Chinese writing is inherently nonphonetic and ide¬ ographic, to use “conventional categories”? As we have seen, Ogyu Sorai clear¬ ly understood Chinese writing to be phonetic, and he succeeded in treating it in that mode, though not fully. He succeeded only partially not because Ogyu tried to use Chinese writing against its innately ideographic nature but because, as I will argue, no writing—or speech for that matter—can be made to conform completely to an ideology. What is at stake here is the impossibility of a writing system that can be exhaustively contained in a regime of praxis. Because of its textual materiality, any inscription generates a surplus that betrays the economy of that regime: there is always a gap between the text and what the imaginary relation to the text claims it to be. It is this irreducibility of the text to the imaginary relation to it, differance in and of writing, that marks textuality as distinct from discourse. And textuahty always harbors the possibility of criticizing the ideology, no matter how overwhelming and dominant that ideology may happen to be. In fact, phonocentrism’s hostility to writing stems from the acknowledgment of this critical possibility. This is the reason why the dichotomy phoneticism/ideography did not arise as a constituting positivity in discourse preceding the seventeenth century. I do not mean that writings were not vocalized before then. Indeed, people tried to recite writings such as the Buddhist sutras, and the vocalization of writings was a common practice, but these attempts were regional and lacked coherence be¬ cause the primacy of voice and radical reduction to the voice were absent in the discursive space at that time. Writings were linked to a different set of ideologies. What is implied by this characterization of the pre-seventeenth-century discur¬ sive spaces is that an obsessive concern with separating the text to see from the text to hear had not yet developed, and so visual inscriptions were constantly contaminated by and merged with the aural. These discursive spaces were marked by perpetual hybridization, but in the absence of a separatist insistence on rigid partition between writing and speech, communication among different l9Zhang Longxi, “The Tao and the Logos: Notes on Derrida’s critique of logocentrism,” Critical Inquiry 11 (March 1985): 385-98.

Phoneticism and History

255

modes of inscription was not perceived as abnormal. In a sense, the world was conceived as consisting of writings and words, and things and words were perceived as continuous—that is, they coexisted more or less on the same level. Once the dichotomies transparent/opaque, speech/writing, and phoneticism/ ideography emerged, the division between verbal and nonverbal texts was newly formed according to them. Before the eighteenth-century discursive space was formed, the voice did not hold such primacy, such as in the eighteenth century. Once these conditions had been set, the dichotomy phoneticism/ideography was dramatized to such an extent that the Japanese language was circumscribed as the source of that which constantly deviated from ideography. At first, Japa¬ nese was demarcated in terms of that which did not appear in the written Chinese texts but which had, nonetheless, to be added in order to vocalize it. Wakun was an essential apparatus by which to reveal the dimension of Japanese interference in writings. Let us recall that wakun was a measure invented by those who handled Chinese documents in places such as Buddhist monasteries in order to transform a Chinese writing, which was not recitable, into a form they could vocalize. As I explained in the previous chapter, this transformation consists of two different operations, one being the reorganization of syntactical order (socalled kaeriten) and another the addition of Japanese particles and verbal end¬ ings. Very often the second operation was dropped because the annotators felt they were adding to the Chinese original something that was not Chinese. Tradi¬ tionally, studies of te ni o ha (Japanese particles) were concerned with this second operation, for these grammatical units could not be found in Chinese books, but they nevertheless made these texts recitable. Such traits were absent in the visual text but evident in the aural one. As long as the dichotomies speech/writing and transparent/opaque did not play the roles of constituting positivities in the discur¬ sive space, Japanese particles were not problematical. But once those dichot¬ omies were erected as regularities according to which the wish to read, to know, was constituted, intellectual attention was naturally drawn to the ambiguity of those particles and verbal endings. In due course, many writers of the eighteenth century considered Japanese particles the identificatory feature of the Japanese language.

Anteriority of Voice In the works of Kamo Mabuchi, Motoori Norinaga, and Fujitani Nariakira, we find further development of this theme.20 Like Kamo, Motoori elaborated on 20Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), scholar of Japanese classics, is often regarded as the most important National Studies writer. A merchant’s son bom in Matsusaka in the province of Ise (now Mie prefecture), he studied Chinese classics and Japanese classical poetry with his mother. He began working in the paper trade but soon abandoned his career in business and went to Kyoto for medical study. While preparing himself for his future medical career in Kyoto, he studied Chinese classics under the tutelage of Hori Katsunan (1688-1757) and began to write about Japanese classical poetry.

256

Language, Body, and the Immediate

these dichotomies, using them, it seems, to shape the motifs orienting his her¬ meneutic enterprise. He insisted that the more phonetically oriented language of the Kojiki made it a more authentic revelation of antiquity than the Nihonshoki: One must consider ancient words to be most authentic and endeavor not to lose sight of the true reality of antiquity. . . . People of today generally value only the Ni¬ honshoki, and even the name of Kojiki is known by few, for Chinese studies are so fashionable and everybody wants to imitate the things of China. . . . The Kojiki is superior to the Nihonshoki, for written words did not exist in antiquity, and what people of antiquity actually spoke cannot be similar in style to the words of the Nihonshoki. They must have spoken according to the words reported in the Kojiki.21

The Kojiki has been widely accepted as one of the oldest and most important written documents produced in Japan. Consequently, it has been endowed with a privileged position in the vast storehouse of Japanese classics. As we are able to guess from Motoori’s words, however, only in the late seventeenth century did the Kojiki gain the prestige due to the first and most authentic historiographical account of the empire of Japan. Even in the late eighteenth century, when Motoori compiled Kojiki-den, the Kojiki was not widely read. Recorded refer¬ ences to this document during the Heian, Kamakura, and Muromachi periods reveal that the Kojiki, though regarded as one of the ancient writings, was not accorded the consistent reverence felt for the Nihonshoki, the Man’yoshu, and other documents.22 It was never considered a sacred text. Motoori returned to Matsusaka in 1757 to start practicing medicine, and he also began to hold classes on Japanese classical literature, including the Tale of Genji, the Man’yoshu, and the Kokinshu. Later, primarily under the influence of Kamo Mabuchi, he turned to the Kojiki. For thirty-four years, from 1764, he devoted himself to the study of antiquity in order to complete the forty-four volumes of the Kojiki-den, perhaps the most important book in the entire National Studies movement during the Tokugawa period. His other major works include Ashiwara obune, Tamakushige, Shibun yoryo, and Tamakatsuma. Fujitani Nariakira (1738-1779), literary theorist and grammarian, was bom in Kyoto, younger brother of the Confucian and grammarian Minagawa Kien (1734—1807), and was adopted into the Fujitani family. He developed a new morphological theory of classical poetry, which was expanded by his son Fujitani Mitsue (1768—1823). His most famous works are the Kazashi-sho and the A\uisho. 2‘Motoori Norinaga, Kojiki-den in Motoori Norinaga zenshu, (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1968) 9.3—6. The Nihonshoki (Chronicle of Japan) is the oldest official history of Japan, covering the mythical age of the gods up to the reign of Empress Jito (686-697). A later imperial historiography Shoku nihongi (797) says that the Nihonshoki was completed on July 1, 720. The Shoku nihongi also recounts that Prince Toneri, a son of Emperor Temmu, was ordered to compile the Nihonshoki and that upon its completion he presented thirty volumes plus one volume of genealogical charts (which is missing today). Of the thirty volumes in the Nihonshoki, the first and second deal with mythical times, and volumes 3 to 30 depict events from the reign of Emperor Jimmu until that of Jito in chronological order. Unlike the earlier Kojiki, Nihonshoki contains quotations from the Chinese (Wei zhi) and Korean ( Paekche ki, Paekche pon’gi, and Paeckche sinch’an) historiographies. Its style also differs from that of the Kojiki, as does its stress on recent events as opposed to the detailed treatment of myths in the Kojiki. 22See Hisamatsu Sen’ichi, Kojiki kenkyu-shi josetsu, in Kojiki Taisei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Heibonsha

1962), pp. 1-24.

Phoneticism and History

257

Toward the end of the seventeenth century this attitude gradually changed. Once the Kojiki was printed, commentaries on it began to be published in increasing numbers. Just as the choice of canonical books shifted from the Four Books to the Six Classics in the Confucian camp, attention was drawn to the Kojiki rather than the Nihonshoki, among National Studies scholars. Notwithstanding the impressive amount of scholarly labor devoted to the Ko¬ jiki, the opacity of this text remained problematical: its readability was always a nagging issue. Like Ogyu’s kobunji gaku, which taught students to read and write obscure ancient Chinese, this effort to decipher archaic Japanese was prompted by the cognition that one could envisage Japanese antiquity through its language. In a sense, all the preceding efforts to read the Kojiki culminated in the fortyfour-volume Kojiki-den. In this monumental study, Motoori reduced the writing of the Kojiki to a series of phonetic kana. What he achieved is a transformation of unreadable writing into a “readable” (meaning pronounceable) inscription of the original voice, thereby subordinating writing to voice. In fact, one of the uses of the verb yomu (to read), which appears in Kojiki-den, designates the act of pronunciation. Motoori “read” the Kojiki in this specific manner and thereby produced a new text, which was also called the Kojiki and which was entirely in phonetic kana. In order to accomplish this task, Motoori faced theoretical difficulties, many of which originated in the heterogeneity of the writing system. His orientation toward voice necessitated a rigorous distinction between phoneticism, and the ideography he wished to eliminate. To add voice to the Kojiki, Motoori had to transform thousands of ideographs, all with many possible pronunciations. De¬ spite occasional directions for the pronunciation of certain ideographs, the rela¬ tionship between the aural and the written texts of the Kojiki seemed largely arbitrary. Wakun was one possible way of determining this relationship, but Motoori rejected it because it would only have enhanced the confusion between the visual and aural texts. In addition, as we have discussed with Ogyu’s kiyo no gaku, annotations that would reorganize the linear order of words on a page would not permit the kind of reading Motoori desired, in which comprehensibility would be based on pronounceability. Motoori held it to be an irrefutable principle that it was the linearity of oral verbalization that produced immediate comprehen¬ sibility. Wakun violates this principle and spatializes the text, thereby disrupting the linear unity of its oral presentation. The dominance of voice in the Kojiki-den is meant to eliminate the spatializing factors that always serve to disseminate the supposed singular unity of voice. As a matter of fact, the entire project of the Kojiki-den is dictated by this obsessive concern for univocity and phoneticism. But why should the singularity of voice have to be secured at all costs? To pose this question is to concern ourselves with historicity in textual production, not the chronological history in which a text is supposedly located but the historical time

Language, Body, and the Immediate

being generated within textuaiity. This notion of a history immanent in textual production provides us with an insight into Ogyu’s conception of entry into an interior that belongs to the historical past. At issue are the notion of historical time within textual production and the significance of the speech/writing dichotomy in this regard. At the level of reading, whereby we act upon an existing writing, the voice is undeniably posterior to the material existence of the writing itself. First there is a writing and then the reader adds his or her voice to it in reading it. If a writing is multivocal, as the Kojiki is, then it is always possible to ascribe more than one voice to it. No doubt in the reading act, as Motoori understood it, the addition of voice to writing has to be the return to the original voice of which the writing is a transcription: Since letters are provisional substitutes adopted at a later time [for spoken words], what kind of significance can there ever be in deeply inquiring into them? The essence of learning [monomanabi] should consist in examining ancient words many times over, so as to get well acquainted with the ancient use of language [inishie no tebun, literally, the hand’s gesture of antiquity], for only through the way she speaks Imonon no sama] can we possibly guess the personality and the attitude [kokorobael of the speaker.23 1

Motoori asserted that letters were mere substitutes for spoken words, and he directed his inquiry accordingly. He used this conception of writing as a provi¬ sional substitute for speech to screen out from the wide variety of ancient docu¬ ments those legitimate ones through which he believed he could envisage the spoken language of antiquity. His denunciation of the Nihonshoki was certainly related to this method of evaluating ancient documents. Those that preserved ancient pronunciation he considered authentic. Of course, all the ancient writings available m the eighteenth century were in Chinese ideographs, simply because these were the only method of writing then available. Yet although many of them also adhered to Chinese syntax, some merely recorded the sounds of actual speech. Motoon argued that the author of the Nihonshoki, because he followed Chinese syntax, viewed the historical reality of Japan from the Chinese perspec¬ tive On the other hand, Motoori saw the Kojiki as an effort to preserve the spoken language of ancient Japan, which was rapidly disappearing under the increasing influence of continental civilization.

Denial of Transcendent Value Within the interpretative scheme of Motoori Norinaga, it is evident that the posteriority of voice in the reading act has to be suppressed and concealed. For 23Motoori Norinaga, Kojiki-den 9:33.

Phoneticism and History

259

should writing precede its aural reading, it would be impossible to claim that the voice he ascribes to the writing, through strenuous efforts involving extensive research on ancient etymology, syntax, phonetics, and mythology, was actually the one for which the written version of the Kojiki was a provisional substitute. However obvious the posteriority of voice may have been, the anteriority of voice had to be maintained and enforced so as to secure the legitimacy of his studies. It would have been meaningless to pursue such a project as the Kojikiden but for the premise that the voice added to the writing could be and had to be the original voice preceding the writing itself. In other words, Motoori believed that by formulating a systematic way to ascribe voice to the Kojiki he could overcome the historical time separating the written presence of the Kojiki in his contemporary world from antiquity, when the original voice was uttered. Thus, Motoori’s hermeneutics is twofold. It pretends to seek a mimetic corre¬ spondence between the original voice to be transcribed in the document and the reader’s voice generated by the reading of it. Yet from the outset it acknowledges that it is utterly impossible to secure such a correspondence. What is at stake in his hermeneutics is not whether the original voice can in fact be reached but how such a problematic of historical distance can be annihilated. By dealing thema¬ tically with the problems of historicity, Motoori sought the way to escape from historical time and move to the issue of belief in ancient Japan, which was “beyond history.” Here is a strange scheme in which the temporal posteriority of voice is re¬ versed to anteriority. Reading, accordingly, is not an innocent act but full of political implication, a strategic move by which to return to the original time, the virginity present at the founding of Japan. Thus, historical time is redefined as that which causes this separation of the anterior and the posterior voices, leaving Motoori to find a specific form of reading by which to overcome this estrange¬ ment or separation, to overcome historical time. It is not difficult to explain the role writing plays in this scheme. The written text of Kojiki is the agent that causes the separation. That is to say, the presence of writing as an inscription of the original voice distances the readership of the eighteenth century from antiquity and generates both a barrier and a mediation between the readership and the original voice. Writing prevents voice from being immediately present to the readership: the original voice cannot be present to readers because it has to be mediated by writing. Writing puts both spatial and temporal distance between voice and reader in an effect similar to the distancing and separating effect of representational language which Ogyu sensed. On the other hand, the voice would have been lost irredeemably had its trace not been secured and fixed in writing. Had ancient writing not been preserved, the speech of ancient Japan could not have been transmitted to the readers of the eighteenth century. Writing, therefore, occupied an extremely ambiguous position in the discourse of Motoori Norinaga and in eighteenth-century discourse in general. From this apprehension of historical time derives the exclusive prestige of the

260

Language, Body, and the Immediate

Kojiki. The assessment that it is the oldest existing Japanese document written in

Japanese rather than Chinese makes it into a watershed between a pure and homogeneous realm and one already contaminated by writing. Some National Studies scholars adopted an interpretative scheme that allowed them to project the voice-writing-reading sequence onto a historical axis. In conceiving the process of understanding a writing in terms of the inscription of voice and the recovery of voice from the inscription, they disqualified certain other ways to read. And this is the point where Motoori’s condemnation of the karagokoro, the Chinese mind—a pejorative he often used to refute philosophical naivete in certain idealisms—offers theoretical significance: Whereas books of foreign lands such as those dogmatic [or didactic (oshiegoto)] Confucian and Buddhist treatises are essentially concerned solely with transcendent meanings [kotowari],24 not with actual words, the ancient writings of the Great Land [Japan] never seek to refute dogmas or the reason for things [mono no kotowari]: these writings simply inscribe ancient words and have no hidden intention or reason under the surface of words.25

Here, the “word” is related to a text’s surface, a set of signifiers, and is not seen as the signified that the surface denotes. By introducing a new definition of “word,” Motoori simultaneously points out a level of signification that, in prin¬ ciple, precedes all other interpretations and commentary. All that an unbiased and sincere reading could possibly disclose, he declares, is already manifest at the level of signifiers thus identified. The words should, in this sense, suggest a field of apriority, whereas the intention or reason that a reader tends to postulate behind a text is a posteriori, a simulacrum. He insists on rigorous observation of logical precedence, and insofar as intention and reason are posterior to “words,” they must be reduced and put into parentheses. Readers are urged to apply a certain phenomenological epoche in reading the Kojiki. We must remember, however, that these words, so privileged and sanctified, are not written down on paper or fixed in durable substance: they are not the letters. In contrast to words, what Motoori calls “reason for things” or “intention” designates the presence of meaning in the modality of transcendent necessity. By “transcendent,” I mean the way in which the signification of an utterance is confused with the constancy of a physical object and is taken as ideally identical to itself independently of the occasion of its instance of discourse. Meaning here appears atemporal and, hence, ahistorical. Indeed, the utterance that signifies it has to be produced or executed by some individual or individuals on a specific ^Corresponding to this Japanese pronunciation “kotowari” is, indeed, a Chinese character // which in the context of Song rationalism can be translated as “reason” or “principle.” Here I render this term “transcendent meanings,” with an emphasis on the use of “transcendent” as distinct from “transcendental.” Often Motoori’s critique of karagokoro comes close to the Kantian or Husserlian critique of the transcendent in transcendental analysis, though. 25Motoori Norinaga, Kojiki-den, 9:33.

Phoneticism and History

261

occasion and at a specific historical moment, but the meaning as it is signified is not limited to a specific occasion. Its meaningfulness lies in the modality in which it is constituted, and therefore, it should be valid anywhere at any time: the meaning as it is grasped in this modality constitutes itself as a universal. But this conception does not imply that it is factually valid anywhere at any time, at any historical moment. It is not a general universal. Its atemporality and ahistoricality simply suggest that it is impossible to ascribe the temporal and historical determinations to its universality, just as it is utterly irrelevant to ask when and where about the validity of a mathematical equation. Therefore, it is supposed that the meaning transcends the historical specifications that necessarily accom¬ pany the occasion of its utterance: if the utterance informs us of a truth, then this truth should be a universal one. Nevertheless, in the “transcendent” the irreducibility of universality to historical and temporal specifications is confused with the omnipresence of its factual validity at every historical moment. This substitution of its omnipresence for the irreducibility of universality to spatiotemporal topoi was most evident in rationalism, as Ito clearly saw, and is still detectable in present-day humanistic universalism: both stem from this fetishistic confusion. In his reading of the Kojiki Motoori rejected the inclusion of this “transcen¬ dent” meaning; any truth contained in the text of the Kojiki must by all means be of the historical kind, provided that “historical” means adherence to the enuncia¬ tion, to the original and historically specific scene of utterance. He insisted that the Kojiki never related a truth that could be valid in any time and any place, and he ascribed the claim of “transcendent” universality to human hubris or to karagokoro, Chinese mind. He himself sought to uncover the dimension of the words by suspending all fetishistic temptations to read eternal truth into the text. He would have maintained that there is no such thing as the true meaning of a text. Yet he would have hastened to add that there is nonetheless the true voice of that text. In this specific mode of reading, Motoori aspired to transform a set of sig¬ nifies into another set of signifiers without involving a transcendent meaning, to transform a writing as a set of signifiers into voice, which is also a set of signifiers. Whether or not he could do so without encountering the transcendent meaning is another question yet to be examined, but unquestionably his the¬ oretical orientation kept his hermeneutic enterprise intact.

Historical Time as Writing It is in this connection that I ought to examine the significance of the dichoto¬ my speech/writing, again. In the scope of this dichotomy writing was seen as a mode that allows for the genesis of “transcendent” universality. According to Motoori, the transcendence of meaning is possible only when an inscription

262

Language, Body, and the Immediate

denotes meaning without the mediation of voice. Insofar as writing is a faithful reflection of words actually voiced, it should not lead to an ahistorical, gener¬ alized truth. There are cases, however, in which writing does not correspond to a definite series of sounds, and many different series of sounds can equally be ascribed to it. In such cases of multivocity, the unity of the grapheme or the ideograph cannot be related to a phonetic unit in linear correspondence. A reader who tries to avert multi vocity, Motoori concludes, must resort to the premise that the writing contains a unified meaning regardless of the variety of possible pronunciations attributed to it. In other words, “transcendent” meaning results when silence is forced on enunciation. The kind of reading that relies on the transcendence of meaning is created and necessitated in order to overcome the problems posed by multivocity. Therefore, if multivocity could be eliminated, the silent reading bearing transcendent meaning could also be avoided. Since the reading act is conceived of as a transformation of visual signs into oral/aural signs, the central issue in Motoori’s hermeneutic project is concerned with methods by which to eliminate those aspects of the writing which resist reduction to voice, that is, which resist the exhaustive reduction to the regime of phonocentric ideology. Thus, Motoori opposed any reading of the Kojiki in which its meaning was arrived at without provoking voice, and he saw in writing itself the cause of dissemination that necessitated the transcendence of meaning and made the return to the original, singular voice impossible. For instance, many paragraphs in the Kojiki are written in kanbun. Although it was customary to read these in yomikudashi (a Chinese document rewritten in Japanese with wakun), Motoori refused to do so, even though it was impossible to conform such sentences to Japanese pronunciation in any other way. Rather than use wakun, he rewrote or recomposed them in what he judged to be the authentic Japanese of antiquity and in so doing opened a path to the Kojiki as a spoken text. Just as Ogyu consistently rejected the Japanese way of reading Chinese and postulated a scheme of reading in which translation was construed as a symmetrical procedure, so Motoori executed the same kind of translation of these Chinese sentences in the Kojiki. It must be admitted that Motoori’s enter¬ prise is faithful to the prerequisites of the discursive space, and within that space it is justifiable to claim, as he in fact did, that his translated version preempted what his contemporaries knew as the text of the Kojiki. Probably all these efforts to vocalize the Kojiki amounted to the problem of the apprehension of the verbal, an apprehension in which a written text is thought of primarily as a lost voice. In the final analysis, the entire project of his Kojiki-den can be summarized as an attempt to reclaim the text from the realm of seeing and restore it to the realm of speaking/hearing. In many respects, this attempt coin¬ cides with the shift from representational language, where distance is inevitable (seeing also requires distance), to practice. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that this shift also indicates the transfer of the focus of attention from one level of language to another, that is, from the

Phoneticism and History

263

enunciated to the enunciation and from signified to signifies We should be aware that the differentiation signifier/signified cannot be substantiated. It is a relative differentiation: how the signified is determined depends on how the signifier is identified. Although Motoori rejected “transcendent” meanings, he still relied on the meaning of sentences in order to translate ancient texts. In addition, this regression from the signified to the signifier seems to imply a topos beyond the signifier, a topos anterior to the very division of signifier from signified, a division that is the sign. Thus, this shift from seeing to speaking/hearing includes not only the refusal of distance inherent in vision but also a strong impulse toward the annihilation of separation between signifier and signified. The shift is repeatedly displaced, but through displacement it forms a series of relays: seeing —> speaking/hearing—signified —> signifier—sign —» “before the sign”—sig¬ nification —» signifiance—enunciated —> enunciation. What is at issue here is how Motoori ultimately identifies the locus where his claim to immediacy is justified. In this sense, practice and the body’s adherence to the performative situation are decisive in that they circumscribe an area of experience, in the sense of Erlebnis, where distance and therefore disparity between speech and its mean¬ ing are supposedly absent. For this reason, to the writers of the eighteenth century history meant dis¬ semination caused by writing. Historical time was conceived of as a process in which the primordial unity of the original utterance was disseminated and dis¬ sected. Thus, written inscription was made to represent the image of estrange¬ ment in general. Motoori and others appealed to the dichotomy phonet¬ icism/ideography to dramatize their notion of historical time. As Kamo noted, “People of later times had forgotten the original words; so they tried to under¬ stand texts according to the characters used. Although the shapes of characters have been persistent [through history], they cannot reflect the original reality.”26 Here, too, the historical distance separating the present from the past is translated into the difference of graphic images from voice. Consequently, transcending historical distance is equated to overcoming ideography. Kamo insists that the phonetic mode is the only authentic mode for the writing system as if phonetic signs were utterly free of the negative traits he and Motoori and others attributed to writing in general. We are witnessing the displacement of the opposition speech!writing by the opposition phoneticism!ideography. Since ideography poses a rupture between speech as a mode of practice and the content of speech, Motoori argues, Chinese ideographs are inferior to Japanese kana.

Poetic versus Theoretical An implicit consensus shared by many writers, including Motoori and Fujitani Nariakira, is that Chinese books are theoretical. The Chinese text was thought of 26Kamo Mabuchi, Shoi, in Nihon shiso taikei 39:444.

Language, Body, and the Immediate as a vehicle by which the meaning was conveyed beyond historical time, and the Chinese ideographs were regarded as independent graphic units that remained identical throughout history. Evidently these Japanese theorists attributed ide¬ ational constancy to Chinese ideographs. I have claimed that Motoori’s rejection of the “transcendent” meaning originated from this assumption. A corollary was the view that Chinese texts could represent theories in the modality of necessity but, for that very reason, could not describe the living present, which is by nature temporary and actual. Thus linguistic studies, which ascribed the overwhelming sense of estrangement to Chinese ideographs, were dominated by the search for a language that could capture the truth of the lived, actual, temporary moment. However culturally and historically limited the present moment might be, the linguists emphasized that its actuality should be as valid as the universal truth presumably inherent in the canonical books of the Central Kingdom. Likewise, for Japanese classics to hold any authenticity at all, they must be decoded in the midst of the present moment, so that the temporary truth embodied in them could be made present with original intensity. Like Ogyu, Motoori and Fujitani tried to make classics present and immediate to contemporary readers by translating them into colloquialisms—what Ogyu called rigen, the language of villagers. Translation became a discursive device by which to hint at the intense intimacy and emotiveness in the original, which they believed theoretical language was incapable of rendering. In Kokinshu tokagami, Motoori translated poems of the Kokinshu into a much more colloquial and dialectical style than what has been called kogobun (statecontrolled standard colloquial style) in modem Japan.27 His attempt was a reac¬ tion to the tie between what was written and what was not written. The autonomy of a written text was no longer accepted: it had to be secondary, a temporary substitute. Only by recovering the lost voice and the bodily action that must have accompanied it at the originary scene of its enunciation could a text be resur¬ rected in its original plenitude; a text had to be integrated into the relevant whole, so that it might speak with its original voice. A similar operation is performed in Fujitani’s linguistic studies. In Ayuisho, for example, he extensively employs translation as a linguistic method. Transla¬ tion was not merely a pedagogical means to help students. As Tokieda Motoki noted of the linguistic studies of Tokugawa Japan: Translation into colloquialism was not primarily a means by which to understand ancient words. It was rather a hermeneutic method by which to explicate what had already been comprehended. Prior to this sort of explication, however, there must be Ot course there was no national language equivalent to today’s hyojun kogo (standard spoken Japanese, or NHK Japanese). Motoon translated the Kokinshu into a dialect probably unintelligible to Japanese living in other remote regions. State intervention in everyday culture since the Meiji period is just astounding—and probably an inescapable aspect of the modem nation-state—and it has been c anging the cultural features of Japan fundamentally. We must constantly remind ourselves that what now seems natural ’ is a very recent historical construct. “Always historicize!”

Phoneticism and History

265

an experiential comprehension; not only a conceptual and intellectual understanding but also a concrete comprehension based upon one’s own experience was required. Translation into colloquialism did not mean a mechanical replacing of ancient words with their contemporary ones but rather an attitude through which linguists tried to be really involved in the depth of words.28

Involvement facilitated by practice was placed at the center of linguistic stud¬ ies. Fujitani Nariakira, like many grammarians of his time, recognized this nucleus of linguistic studies since the essential feature of language was thought to manifest itself in colloquialism and the linguistic consciousness attached to it. In colloquialism as in everyday practice, it was thought, one could take what Tokieda called the participational stance, an attitude in which one involved oneself in verbal performance as a speaker or listener and in which an utterance was perceived as part of one’s lived experience.29 This claim presupposes that the observation of verbal phenomenon to be acquired in the observational stance is necessarily preceded by a concrete experience one gains in the participational stance. Translation into colloquialism is a measure adopted to recover or, in my opinion, to reflectively and retrospectively reconstitute the original experience that supposedly had once been lived in the participational stance. In the observa¬ tional stance, an utterance is split into many morphological categories and con¬ strued in its syntactical functions; yet language thus treated is no longer alive or evocative of the intensity of the original experience. By reliving the intensity of the original, Fujitani wanted to relate his linguistic analysis to the immediacy and intimacy with which language was originally used and to avoid the disparity between the lived experience and the utterance which characterized the observa¬ tional stance. What Tokieda called involvement in “the depth of words” was apparently sought as a way to relive the verbal experience of the past. Interestingly enough, it is through the theme of lived experience that prose and poetry were distinguished. The criterion was not primarily the style or content of the verbal presentation but whether a verbal work speaks in the representational mode. When the mode of expression was judged to be analytical, suggesting the detachment of the agent from the performative situation, it was usually consid¬ ered theoretical prose and correspondingly devalued, as happened in the shift from the Four Books to the Six Classics in Ogyu’s philosophical enterprise. Since intimacy and emotion were thought to be best conveyed in poems, poetry came to be seen as the most privileged genre. Ogyu’s emphasis on poetry in kobunji gaku and his disciples’ extensive practice in the imitation of Chinese poetry were not unrelated to the general shift in the choice of cannonical books. In the National Studies, the differentiation Chinese mind/Japanese mind was related to 28Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogakushi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1940), p. 101. 29For the exposition of this term and its pair term, “observational stance,” refer to Tokieda’s Kokugogaku genron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1941), pp. 17-38. These terms in Japanese are respectively shutaiteki-tachiba and kansatsuteki-tachiba. So, the participational stance could also be rendered “shutai stance.”

266

Language, Body, and the Immediate

another differentiation: theoretical/poetic. Motoori rejected all the Chinese books except Shi jing (the book of odes), and Fujitani titled his treatises on language Sho, which was said to mean commentaries on poetry. The concept of poetry thus gained a special political function according to which various intellectual ac¬ tivities were evaluated. In the discursive space of the eighteenth century, poetry became a privileged topic in reference to which writers were able to define their own language unity and, consequently, their own cultural identity. By contrasting poetic to representational language, they further articulated the image of the interior and ascribed to it another predicate: Japanese. As a matter of fact, the interior thus defined meant for Fujitani as well as Motoori an area of transparent language where the so-called native speakers are completely at home, an area of language comparable to the “unbroken hammer.”

Heterogeneity of a Language The very construction that made it possible to differentiate the Chinese from the Japanese mind presented an obstacle in idealizing the language of Japan. Here I should consider the radical nature of the denunciation of the Japanese way of reading Chinese. First, linguists were attacking a specific mode of reading the Chinese text. Yet, Chinese texts reorganized by wakun represented the general structure of current language use. Since the introduction of the Chinese writing system, the so-called Japanese language had so extensively assimilated Chinese elements that to reject wakun as an amalgam of two different languages was of necessity to abandon all the Japanese writings then available. Both phoneticsm and ideography had been integrated into the very structure of Japanese, and the elimination of ideographic elements, if such a thing were even possible, would have ruined the whole writing system. By the eighteenth century, this coexistence of two inscriptional principles had penetrated the language right down to the phonetic level. Even colloquialism could not escape from what Kamo called Chinese contamination. The style almost intentionally adopted in both Kamo’s and Motoori’s works is testimony to the desperation of their attempt to render the language transparent by excluding syllables of Chinese origin: on. Obviously the task was doomed to fail. Paradoxically, the distinctive trait of the Japanese language is its capacity to absorb foreign elements so thoroughly as to obliterate the distinction between itself and Chinese; heterogeneity—the absence of a coherent writing system and the copresence of different inscriptional prin¬ ciples—defined the identity of the Japanese language. Of course, every writing system is in one way or another “contaminated” by heterogeneity just as Japa¬ nese has been. Every language originates essentially as a creole. A purely pho¬ netic writing system is no doubt an irresponsible political fancy not only because no such writing system actually exists but also because such a system simply would not work. We must caution ourselves against the commonsensical notion

Phoneticism and History

267

that writings systems like the Japanese are abnormal; as a matter of fact, the Japanese system is perhaps a very accurate representation of the nature of writing itself. In this regard, homogeneity—the exclusion of ideography and the absence of dissemination—to which the National Studies aspired, went against the very grain of language in general and of Japanese cultural formations in particular. The Japanese language was and still is, despite constant state intervention to make it homogeneous, a disseminated and decomposed language par excellence.30 As I have repeatedly stressed, the unity of the Japanese language is neither given nor self-evident. One can hardly imagine that those in the region now called Japan had any coherent notion of their own national language prior to the seventeenth century. The concept of a national language, which now seems selfexplanatory, would have been incomprehensible. At most, people may have had a vague notion of foreign languages, but the distinction was not sharp enough to permit a definitive demarcation. Surely, there was some cognition of differences, but the resemblances between Japanese dialects did not converge into the identi¬ cal. As is always the case, the identity of one’s own language and culture, or ethnos, has to be posited diacritically and discursively. Only when a given discursive space accommodates the discursive apparatus by which to acknowl¬ edge the alienness of foreign languages and to appropriate it into the economy of the dominant discourse (of course, this means the elimination of the otherness of the Other, since this otherness is exactly what cannot be appropriated), can one possibly identify the identity of one’s own. The constitution of the identical, therefore, never precedes the recognition of the other, and since the identical is posterior to the other logically as well as temporally, the definition of the identi¬ cal varies as the other is perceived differently. This was the case with eighteenthcentury discourse on Japan. All the dichotomies—speech/writing, Japanese mind/Chinese mind, and phoneticism/ideography—functioned as constituting positivities in terms of which the other was diacritically posited and appropriated. I must note in this instance that the identical was not merely the Japanese and their culture: the identical was posited in the historical past of China or Japan. By circumscribing the interior in antiquity linguists postulated the identical outside the present society of the eighteenth century. The identical was, in fact, a utopia, or arche just as it is always an Idea.

Syntax: Shi and Ji Studies of syntax during the period disclose a similar formation of the identi¬ cal. Realizing that a Chinese written text had to be transformed to be pronoun30Cf. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri C. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).

268

Language, Body, and the Immediate

ceable, eighteenth-century grammarians saw the essential difference between Japanese and Chinese in this very fact that Chinese writing could not be pro¬ nounced in Japanese unless it was reorganized and supplemented with nonChinese particles and verbal endings. This trait had already been observed in the Heian period, but not until the eighteenth century was it fully explored. The Japaneseness of the Japanese language was first recognized as that which was absent in Chinese. Therefore, the primary determination of the Japanese lan¬ guage was that its grammatical construction was different from and could not be explained by Chinese. One of the issues that distinguished eighteenth-century language studies from earlier ones was the way in which morphological units, particularly verbs and particles, were analyzed. Both Motoori and Fujitani inherited some concepts and methods from their predecessors but rejected the atomistic approach to language structure which characterized Kaibara Ekken’s Nippon shakumei, for instance.31 Such studies were based on the assumption that words were composed of small¬ er, more basic units and that the proper understanding of words could be facili¬ tated by understanding the original meanings of these units. This etymological atomism also implied that the historical change of words could be measured in terms of the deviation of the current meaning from the original meaning of the basic units. More complicated morphological units, such as phrase, could not be analyzed by this method; they were viewed as sums of the meanings of words. This linguistic atomism was mainly concerned with nouns, not verbs, because immobile and fixable units were considered the most significant aspect of lan¬ guage. Grammatical rules by which units were syntactically combined remained outside the scope of inquiry. Motoori’s and Fujitani’s language studies made a sharp contrast to Kaibara’s. No longer was analysis of the noun central to linguistics. Fujitani saw the noun as merely a substantive to which adverbials, adjectivals, particles, and verbs were attached. He argued that linguistic activity occurred only when a noun was combined with nonnominal units: it was no longer a stable and fixable unit in which meaning was encapsulated. Fujitani likened a noun to the immobile part of the human body, the thorax. Signification could occur only when this immobile part was provided with legs, hat, and clothes and started to walk. His simile was far-reaching. First, Fujitani perceived that language decomposed into fixable elements 3'Kaibara Ekken (1630-1714) was a Confucian scholar, bom into the family of a retainer of the Fukuoka domain (now in Fukuoka prefecture). He served the domanial lord but was forced to leave his feudal service. Then he traveled to Nagasaki to study medicine and botany. His stipend was restored by the new domanial lord, who sent him to study in Kyoto, where his teachers were Kinoshita Jun’an (1621-98), Confucian scholar, and Mukai Gensho (1609-77), a scholar of medici¬ nal herbs. At first he was a follower of Song Confucianism, but in his later years he deviated from Zhu Xi s philosophy to claim the monism of qi. The scope of his scholarship encompassed history, medicine, education, and others. Among his major works are Yamato honzo (Japanese medical herbs), Daigiroku (The records of great doubt), Yojokun (For health diet), and Onna daigaku (The great learning for women).

Phoneticism and History

269

ceases to work as language. Just as a dissected body is not a human being, so a decomposed utterance cannot be an occasion for signification. Second, language can best be understood in the mode of movement; that is, language is primarily a temporary phenomenon that by nature resists fixation and etemalization. Here too, we can recognize the superiority Fujitani accorded to voice over the graphic inscription, but voice in this instance must mean bodily practice, a movement and a living present. Motoori goes even farther. “Generally speaking,” he wrote, “you must make the intention of ancient people’s usage of the word evident rather than seek for its original meaning. Once you understand the intention of its use, you can do without understanding the original meaning.”32 Not only does he denounce constructivism based on etymological atomism; he locates the sig¬ nificative function of language at the level of how a word is used syntactically. Motoori continues: It may sound reasonable that you must first inquire into the core of a thing [moto] and, only after this one should talk of its tip [sue]. This approach does not work with everything, however. In some cases, you should start with the tip and later try to inquire into the core. Usually it is difficult to grasp the original meaning of an ancient word. What you regard as the original meaning is often not right, and your guess in most cases fails to get the correct answer. Therefore, in studies of language, the search for the original meaning must be put aside. Instead, you should concen¬ trate on knowing how certain words were used, even if you have no knowledge of their original meaning.33

“Core” normally designates substance, and “tip” its derivative, but here I might as well read these words as “fixed center” and “flexible periphery.” Then it will be obvious that the opposition core/tip corresponds to a grammatical opposition nominal/nonnominal. Motoori’s emphasis on the usage of words rather than their meaning suggests the shift of attention from isolated grammatical units toward rules governing the combination of these units. Moreover, syntax is closely associated with the mode of practice. This association explains why Motoori so often talked about kotodama (spirit of language, 8-3) in reference to kakari musubi (8-4), a traditional term denoting syntactical rules that govern the rela¬ tionship between the conjugation of a verb, an adjectival or an adverbial, and particles located in the preposition. Possibly the obsolescence of these rules by the eighteenth century encouraged Motoori to attribute the spirit of language to this grammatical trait of old Japanese. Motoori believed these rules demonstrated that the spirit of language did not reside in words: the mystery of language was posited not in morphological units themselves but in the syntagm, which could not be reduced to the function of isolated words. The grammatical opposition nominal/nonnominal was analogous 32Motoori Norinaga, Tamakatsuma, in Nihon shiso taikei 40:241. 33Ibid.

270

Language, Body, and the Immediate

to that between what could be written in Chinese ideographs and what could not be. Although the nominal is not identical with what can be written in Chinese ideographs since the nominal could also be in phonetic kana, grammarians of the eighteenth century believed they had discovered the way to explicate the funda¬ mental structure of Japanese syntax by handling these similar oppositions: speech/writing practice/theory poetic/representational Japanese mind/Chinese mind phoneticism/ideography nonnominal/nominal The predominant principle in the study of syntax was formulated in terms of fixable grammatical units and the context, which activated these units and was meaningless in itself. The traditional study of te ni o ha was connected to the mainstream of inquiry into Japanese syntax at this point because these Japanese particles are preeminently syntactical morphological units: they function only to combine other words and are meaningless in themselves. Although I have used the terms adjectival, adverbial and verb, these are inventions of modem Japanese linguistics. Eighteenth-century writers did not employ them. They construed utterances into the aforementioned cores (moto) and tips (sue).34 Even what are now called verbs were dissected into stems and conjugational suffixes, and then the opposition nominal/nonnominal was applied to them. Moreover, context and what activates nominals were further articulated by appealing to the image of the human body in practice. Therefore, Fujitani’s human-body model, in which various functions of morphemes are associated with various parts of the human body, is not simply an ad hoc scheme by which to explain the rules of language. Rather, it points out the practical nature of language, which was believed to reside in the temporary movement of the body but not in objectifiable things. In this sense, we must never view Motoori’s language study entirely in the light of linguistics: his scheme also considered the possibility of morphology itself and of linguistics as systematic knowledge. Ironically, though, the language studies of Motoori and Fujitani, which after all were attempts to objectify language, were sustained by the awareness that language could be understood only in immediate experience preceding any ob34I say utterance rather than “sentence” for the reason I have already mentioned, namely, that I cannot find any discursive positivity equivalent to the sentence in eighteenth-century discourse on language. No doubt, an institution called the sentence belongs to a historically and culturally specific discursive formation and carries with it restrictive assumptions about subjectivity which are by no means self-evident. Nonetheless, for the sake of simplicity, I have used and will use this term by which I mean a grammatical unit larger than a phrase and smaller than, say, a paragraph. Of course, such concepts as sentence, syntax, subject, and judgment have played important roles in modem European thought. It is absolutely necessary to delineate the historical scope of these constituting positivities and to deconstruct them. See Julia Kristeva, “Objet ou complement,” in Polylosue (ParisSeuil, 1977), pp. 225-62.

Phoneticism and History

271

jectification. Yet, although they flatly denied the instrumental view of language, the instrumental or rhetorical character of their studies is clear: their knowledge had to be completely instrumental. Like Ogyu’s methods, their studies were primarily a vehicle by which a student was to acquire immediate comprehension of the whole from which texts were produced; once this immediate comprehen¬ sion was achieved, detailed and scholastic knowledge of language should be cast aside. What can be characterized as the intellectual tendency to seek encyclo¬ pedic knowledge about archaic cultures, on the one hand, and the antiintellectual tendency toward instantaneous actualization of the enunciation, on the other, were mutually complementary in many language studies of the eighteenth cen¬ tury. This analysis of language, so widely prevalent then, was destined to serve poetics, whose theme was, indeed, how to read, write in the fashion of, and relive ancient poetry. Underlying all these intellectual pursuits is an acute sense of the incomplete¬ ness of written texts. The thesis that a written text cannot be understood in itself and has to be supplemented led to an assumption concerning the relationship between what is inscribable and what is not. But as I have maintained from the outset, voice as well as writing and drawing is inscriptive, speech is incomplete, another form of inscription. For the time being, however, let us concern our¬ selves with the aspects of language in which eighteenth-century theorists located this notion of incompleteness so as to identify the Japaneseness as the outside of the writing. First, Japanese particles and conjugational suffixes were added to the original Chinese writing to enable vocalization. The Japanese language was thereby identified with what was absent on the surface of the Chinese text, yet necessary for vocalization. This pairing of absence and presence extended to the analysis of the basic structure of the Japanese language in terms of the opposition nominal/nonnominal. At this stage, the text’s outside was appropriated into a gram¬ matical opposition and translated into a positivity in the discourse, thereby avert¬ ing more radical and fundamental problems about the outside. Needless to say, neither the question whether the text’s outside can be posited as an identifiable object nor the less specific issue of general text was posited straightforwardly. Second, the outside of a text was ontologized in terms of the speech/writing dichotomy. Here, the issue was no longer purely grammatical but inevitably involved another problem concerning the relationship between verbal and non¬ verbal texts. It had been postulated that speech is simultaneously verbal and nonverbal but that writing does not have such transformability. Speech could also be a corporeal act taking place in the midst of a performative situation. In contrast, writing was seen as a form of verbal text that had been detached from such a situation. Thus, compared to writing, which is marked by its physical limits and thus separated from its outside, speech has no outside, no extratextual reality, because the speech is such an extratexual reality in its apophantic aspect. I repeat that the characterization of speech as the plenitude of verbalization and of writing as the absence of verbalization is extremely dubious. Nevertheless, I

272

Language, Body, and the Immediate

think that the speech/writing dichotomy was part and parcel of the discursive space in which linguistic studies were conducted. Eighteenth-century discourse on language did not clearly discriminate between these two aspects, as Motoori’s study of punctuation demonstrates. In every use of words, Motoori claims, there are rules as to where one should punctuate and where one should not.35 He demonstrates how the meaning of an entire waka poem changes according to where it is divided. From this observation, he derives the concept of o (8-5). O originally signifies the cord of a necklace and tama (8-6) a gem on it: o is that which puts together different nominal units, tama is the isolated units; the whole utterance is the entire necklace. Here I must dis¬ tinguish two axes: the first is the axis along which the opposition nominal/nonnominal is constituted; the second is the one along which the opposition of isolated words and the relationship among words is thought. Syntagm is not encompassed within the scope of the nominal/nonnominal opposition. It ad¬ dresses itself to the differences in function among various morphological catego¬ ries of words. To determine the function of a word, however, one has to consider the position of that word in the whole utterance and its rapport with other words. As Fujitani also maintained, the opposition nominal/nonnominal relates itself to the distinction between the immobile and the mobile. Thus, at one level, o means nonnominal factors in the utterance, but at another, it is the syntagm, or the thread combining the gems, by which a whole utterance becomes alive, just as a human body is in practice. It is with this concept of o that Motoori identifies the level of syntax, which is concerned not with isolated words but with syntagmatic rapports that cannot be reduced to individual words. The best explanation for this dual conception can be found in Tokieda Motoki’s language process theory. Tokieda introduces a pair of syntactical cate¬ gories, shi and ji. At the most elementary level, shi is the stem, and ji the conjugational suffix of a verb, adjectival or adverbial. In that sense, they corre¬ spond to nominal and nonnominal, but this differentiation cannot be limited to the morphological categorization of words. Shi and ji are conceived as the most elementary syntactical units and are postulated to discern the level of syntagm from that of words. Through this pair of concepts, Tokieda differentiates the contained, words synthesized by syntactical rules, from the container, syntactical rules that synthesize words. Referring to an eighteenth-century linguist, Tokieda remarks: “Suzuki Akira has already said that the things shi and ji respectively designate belong to different dimensions. Suzuki’s idea derived from Motoori Norinaga, and according to Motoori, shi is tama, ji is o. Or shi is a dish and ji is a hand to manipulate it.”36 When a hand is added to an inanimate dish, the dish 35Motoori Norinaga, Isonokami sasamegoto, in Motoori Norinaga zenshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1968), pp. 85-198. 36Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogaku genron, p. 28. Suzuki Akira (1764-1837), son of a medical doctor in the service of the Owari domain (now in Aichi prefecture), was interested in Japanese grammar and became a student of Motoori Norinaga. In many respects, his work represented an attempt to

Phoneticism and History

273

can move and become integrated into an action. Thus, ji is not only a category of morphemes but also a principle by which the minimum unity of an utterance is constituted: an utterance must contain at least a pair of shi and ji. Shi alone never generates an utterance; only when it is accompanied by ji does it serve as a word in an utterance. Therefore ji generates the layer of syntax as opposed to the layer of morphology. It is, however, important to note that this pair allows for the generation of an indefinite number of layers: (Shi) Conta “ J

(Ji) '

Tokieda calls this multilayered construction the “box-in-box structure” (irekogata kozo, 8-7). Ji serves to transform whatever may precede it, accom¬ panying it into shi. Regardless of whether shi consists of a morpheme or a whole utterance, ji can contain its antecedent and ascribe to it a determination (gentei, 8-8) of shi. For this reason, Tokieda also calls the box-in-box structure the furoshiki structure. A furoshiki is a wrapping cloth once widely used in Japan as a substitute for a bag or case. Because of its flexibility, it can contain things of any shape. Like the furoshiki, ji does not have its own determined shape; it assumes the shape of whatever is contained in it and keeps what is contained together as a synthesized whole. Suffice it to say that a furoshiki containing things can also be wrapped up by another furoshiki, and therefore, the synthesized whole, or an utterance, can contain many sheets of furoshiki in it. At this level, shi and ji no longer denote nominal and nonnominal: the shi-ji relationship, Tokieda claims, is the fundamental pattern of Japanese syntax. It is far from clear how Tokieda can attribute Japaneseness to the shi-ji struc¬ ture, however. Tokieda himself rigorously criticized the positivistic conception of the unity of a language, or langue, and I believe that his argument in spite of itself, amounts to denial of the direct connection between the shi-ji structure and the Japaneseness of the Japanese language. I shall discuss this and other problems inherent in Tokieda linguistics later, but meanwhile, let me note that what are highlighted by Tokieda’s shi-ji structure—the oppositions nominal/nonnominal and “isolated words”/“relationship between words”—were continuously dis¬ cussed in eighteenth-century discourse without explicating a difference of levels. It was not a confusion easy to rectify, for it was inherent in the conception of

synthesize the grammatical studies of the Chinese language by Ogyu Sorai and Minagawa Kien with Fujitani Nariakira’s and Motoori’s. He developed theories of the morphology and syntax of Japanese in such works as Gengyo shitsu ron (Thesis on Japanese morphology) and Katsugo danzoku fu (The table of inflectional paradigms).

274

Language, Body, and the Immediate

language itself: language and nonlanguage are not entirely external to each other; their difference is strangely implicated in their complicity.

A Text and Its Performative Situation Significant in this analysis of the “Japanese” language is that the shi/ji differ¬ entiation can be extended to explain the text’s adherence to its extratextual reality. Or another interpretation is feasible: if shi is taken to be what is fixed and framed in enunciation, ji would simultaneously mean what fixes and frames and what flees from fixation within the frame. Thus the box-in-box structure could implic¬ itly or perhaps unknowingly designate the manner in which some unity of utter¬ ance, verbal in nature, is differentiated from its performative situation through framing mechanism. As Fujitani sensed, what gives unity to an utterance or any linguistic activity is not the inner transcendental synthesis of the speaking subject. Rather, its unity is comparable to that of a human body in practice within a certain performative situation. When language is understood in this way, it follows that the identity of a poem, for example, necessarily includes some apprehension of the situation in which it happens to be recited. Its signification might transcend the contingency of a particular reading, but what matters is signifiance, and eighteenth-century grammarians all seem to have agreed that a poem’s worth lies in signifiance, not in signification. Hence, the meaning of a text can be absolute only on condition that it is conceived within the immediacy of practice. And if one really wishes to reach the absolute meaning of a text, one should create a situation identical to that in which the text was originally uttered and then assimilate oneself into the pattern of practice through which the text was produced. To be sure, such a venture should prove impossible. The only trace of the act producing a text is the text itself, and neither situation nor practice can be posited independently of the text, so that the very notion of situation and practice as extratextual makes both situation and practice antinomical. Therefore, to keep this venture viable it is necessary to posit a state prior to the separation of shi and ji, a prelinguistic state where supposedly the preservation, fixation, and inscription of the text has not yet been completed. That is to say, the modality of existence for a performative situation and practice is taken to be actuality in an instantaneous and temporary moment, or Augenblick.

Feeling and Temporality The desire for transparent language, therefore, reflects the tendency in eigh¬ teenth-century discourse to reduce any text to actuality in an instantaneous and temporary moment. No doubt, within the framework of the dichotomies I have mentioned, the “meaningfulness of mono” (mono no aware), which Motoori

Phoneticism and History

275

thought of as the essence of literature, should signify the ultimate state of textual comprehension in which a text is completely reduced to the level of performative situation and practice. What I see in his explanation of the meaningfulness of mono is that when one grasps the world in its instantaneous immediacy, the being of the world thus grasped is absolute in itself and requires no further justification. The feeling with which one encounters the world, however immoral it may be by conventional standards, is to be affirmed because it is absolute in its immediacy. The introduction in Chinese to the Kokinshu says, “Thought changes, and sorrow and joy also change.” This, too, explains what is meant by “knowing the mean¬ ingfulness of mono” [mono no aware o shiru]. I think that what is meant by “knowing the meaningfulness of mono” refers to the fact that every living creature in this world has feeling and that, insofar as it has feeling, it should necessarily think [omou], whenever it is in contact with mono. Therefore, every living creature possesses poetry [uta]. . . . Every time a man is in contact with an event, [his] feeling is stirred and never remains calm. What is meant by “feeling being stirred” is that man becomes sad, angry, happy, or pleased. . . . Because man “knows the meaningfulness of mono,” [his] feeling is stirred. For instance, man thinks [omou] he is pleased when he comes across a pleasing event. It is because he knows [wakimae shiru] the essence [kokoro] of what is pleasing in this said event that he is pleased.37

Feeling is not a state of mind independent of mono; it is a movement that takes place only in contact with Mono. The term “feeling” denotes an instantaneous moment of encounter and change, or the passive aspect of the incessantly chang¬ ing relationship between the human body and the world. Likewise, omou (think¬ ing, 8-9) and shiru (knowing, 8-10) have a meaning exactly opposite to that accorded them by modem philosophy. Neither is an act by which objects are posited in front of the thinking or knowing subject. Surely, insofar as both verbs—omou and shiru—can take complements that are in this case shudaisubjects, objects (those which are posited thematically as shudai for some act) are thetically posited in thinking and knowing. Yet objects are never fully con¬ stituted and determined as correlates of the likewise fully constituted subject. Thus, omou and shim, so to speak, drag embryonic codes that connect the utterance to its prelinguistic or primordial symbiosis with the world.38 In the quoted passage, these terms refer to modes of assimilation to mono and of immediate contact with it. So, as a matter of fact, “thinking” and “knowing” 37Motoori Norinaga, Isonokami sasamegoto, pp. 85-198. There are two introductions to the Kokinshu, one in Japanese (kana-jo) and another in Chinese (mana-jo). Here, Motoori refers to the latter. 38In this regard, the meaningfulness of mono necessarily implies a sense of transgression since it designates the state of instability for the subject. It is the state in which “I” is not sure of who “I” is and where “I” stands in relation to other subjective positions. Thus, Motoori refers to the wellknown case of a Buddhist monk who falls in love with a woman as the best example of mono no aware. Motoori’s notion of “femininity,” or taoyame buri, which he sometimes claimed to be the essence of Japaneseness, seems to be closely related to the instability of the subject. Two centuries later Nishida Kitaro addresses a similar problematic of “femininity.” In spite of his stylistic features,

276

Language, Body, and the Immediate

were made to indicate the dissolution of the distance between subject and object, and the existence of what Motoori alluded to in the notion of feeling seems to testify to the legitimacy of using omou and shiru in that manner. Just as Ito Jinsai had extensively discussed feeling without any nostalgia for primordial together¬ ness, so Motoori, too, rejected any objectification and substantiation of it but with a great deal of nostalgia. Feeling must be comprehended in its tran¬ sitoriness. It is not a phenomenon ascribable to an entity that itself does not change but remains identical in the process of movement; instead, it is the changing aspect of movement itself. Hence the transitoriness of the meaningfulness of mono is only too evident; mono can be meaningful only because it does not last. It is destined to disappear. Since it does not have the constancy of a thing, mono is always eroded by time. Without doubt, Motoori’s thesis of the meaningfulness of mono contains the affirmation of the present. Yet in the same thesis is there not also the desperate recognition of the irredeemability of the past? Is the present most glaring when surrounded by the darkness of the past? If to affirm the present is to affirm life, the irredeemability of the past then implies the irredeemability of past life. Because we know that this instantaneous moment, this present overwhelming joy or acute sorrow, will never come back and will be lost forever, do we not try to immerse ourselves in this moment? Because the past is irredeemably lost, is the present, which will be the past in the next instant, so valuable to us? Or put yet another way, to the extent that the loss of the past is acutely felt, is the present intense and glorified, or is it expected to be? In this respect, I claim that the discursive space in question was secretly but decisively governed by a concern for death. As a dead body has to be resurrected in order to revive past life, so a written text has to be reactivated for it to speak with its originary meaningfulness. But the very way the past is imagined as irredeemable makes it impossible to truly recover its originary meaningfulness. The past is synonymous with what has been irrevocably lost. However much one may try to grasp the writing in its transparency, it will never be returned to the status of its original practice. Ironically enough, Motoori’s conception of moto/sue (nominal/nonnominal) clearly depicts this fundamental contradiction immanent in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Since immobility and mobility are attributed to nomi¬ nal and nonnominal, this opposition inevitably relates itself to a temporal differ¬ entiation durable/temporary. Yet if the nominal is taken to be atemporal, and the which do not suggest any “femininity” at all, Nishida’s philosophical enterprise put the question of “femininity” radically. In this sense, Nishida was a philosopher of “feminism.” A half century after Nishida, Julia Kristeva produced a philosophical critique of the phallocentric West, the basic the¬ oretical premises of which are astonishingly similar to Nishida’s. Both attempted to examine the constitution of the subject and its instability—legitimate problems indeed—starting from Platonic chora which Nishida called basho. It is important to note, however, that Nishida’s philosophy ended up serving assimilationism during the 1930s and early 1940s as a universalistic ideology. That it did suggests to me a danger of talking about “femininity” in aesthetic and philosophical terms without due attention to its socio-political consequences.

Phoneticism and History

277

nonnominal to be transitory and temporal, then the past can never be excluded from the present. Every utterance necessarily comprises the two. To use the terminology of Kamo and Motoori, their language had already been contami¬ nated by ideography, which fixed the enunciation and made it atemporal. Hence, in order to render transparent the language they thought of in terms of those oppositions, they had to emphasize the positive term of each opposition, thereby decreasing the importance of the negative terms or eliminating them, treating them as if they had not existed. The oppositions were organized according to the positive-negative polarity and presented with a certain directionality clearly dis¬ cernible here: Positive Speech Phoneticism (Japanese mind) Temporary Poetic Practice Nonnominal Voice: Univocity

Negative Writing Ideography (Chinese mind) Durable Representational Theory Nominal Plurality of voices: Multivocity

In the discursive space of the eighteenth century, it was imperative to generate the image of a language free from all these negative terms and consisting of only the positive ones. For this purpose, discourse was generated and regenerated to eliminate whatever obstacles writers of the times perceived as hindering the actualization of that image. But the notion of a language that is totally devoid of multivocity, of a language whose traits include none of those negative terms, is self-contradictory because the positive terms are posterior to and dependent on the oppositions and also because exclusion of the negative terms amounts to elimination of the oppositions themselves. Once these have been negated, then the positive terms equally cease to exist. In other words, the realization of an ideal language is, in fact, its annihilation. Nonetheless, it is this contradiction that sustained the production and reproduction of discourse in the eighteenth century, indeed, was the fundamental condition of possibility for the discursive space of eighteenth-century Japan. It was a wish embedded there, a wish that would never be fulfilled.

Sincerity and Silence An explicit manifestation of this wish can be discerned in the poetics of Kagawa Kageki.39 Kagawa placed an overwhelming emphasis on the present,

278

Language, Body, and the Immediate

for he was determined to eliminate any factor that escapes the present. Even social conventions and traditions that ensure continuity between past and present in waka poetry were challenged. Kagawa believed that the vulgar language of the past had become the classical language of his day, and therefore, the vulgar language of his day would be the classical language of the future. One does not speak classical language but studies it. By contrast the vulgar language of one’s own time should be spoken but never studied. From this point of view, Kagawa denied the authenticity of classical language in waka composition. Since only the present is significant, its ultimate expression must be the vulgar speech of the day, not writing: “To say that only classical language is refined and elegant, and today’s language vulgar is just like loathing yourself because your own body stinks. . . . Poesie should exist only in the vulgarity of the actual world.”40 The immediate present and the sphere of nearness are associated with one’s own body. The human body is the locus where the present, immediacy, and the meaningfulness of mono (which Kagawa terms “correspondence,” or kanno) are to be discovered. For him too, voice is the source of poetry. It is the very form in which sincerity is expressed: “Because [a poem of sincerity] is the voice uttered when one is in contact with mono and moved by it, there should never be the slightest rupture as fine as a hair between the excitement [kan] and the tone [shirabe] [of a poem]. Such a poem comes directly out of the immediate stirred mind.”41 Sincerity, then, is a state comparable to the meaningfulness of mono. Kagawa’s idea of sincerity seems to suggest total adherence to the performative situation. Thus, the rupture between the present and the past, the temporary and the durable, is erased by eliminating from his poetry what has been associated with the past and the durable. The distance between the excitement and the tone, therefore, is supposed to be generated by the disparity between what cannot be written and what can be written, between what, as a horizon of utterance, activates a text but is never presented in it and what the text explicitly says. If such a poem as Kagawa sought is possible, it should consist entirely of either what can be written or what cannot be written at all. Any coexistence of the two is rejected. The whole performative situation should be captured exhaustively in a poem, or a poem should be equated to the wholeness of the performative situation and should cease to be a verbal text, so as to become a non-verbal practice. From both of these possibilities the result would be identical: the total renunciation of writing. Usually poets transfer already composed poems into written form. When you trans¬ fer poems into written form, you use your eyes. When you use your eyes, you school, from which he was later excluded, he advocated simplicity, intelligibility, and the use of vernacular language in poetry. Gradually, his poetics attracted followers all over Japan, who formed the Keien school of waka poetry. His works include Keien isshi (Kagawa Kagei’s waka anthology), Niimanabi iken (A Heretical view, new learning), Kagaku teiyo (Summa poetica), and others. 40Kagawa Kageki, Kagaku Teiyo, in Koten nihon bungaku taikei, vol. 94 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1964), pp. 144-45. 41 Ibid., p. 146.

Phoneticism and History

279

inevitably rely on the signification of language [giri]. When you rely on the sig¬ nification of language, you alienate yourself from the tone of voice. When you are alienated from the tone, there will be no feeling to be expressed, and a poem will lose its essential function.42

In short, all his argument seems to amount to is the identification of poetry with exclamation, for in exclamation, there cannot be any distance or rupture between the utterance and the adherence to the performative situation. The real feeling, as Kagawa understood it, could thus be interpreted as similar to mean¬ ingfulness (aware), and a poem’s essential function was to express the mean¬ ingfulness of mono (if I am allowed to use Motoori’s terminology even though Kagawa’s poetics was quite distinct from Motoori’s). The difference between voice and writing, according to Kagawa’s view, caused a rupture between the excitation and the tone. His fear of rupture extends even into spoken language, and Kagawa placed importance on the nonrepresentational aspect of voice. In every phase of Kagawa’s poetics a tendency to reorganize the view of language is detectable. By authorizing the supremacy of exclamation and the nonrepresenta¬ tional aspect of voice, his conception of language reveals its dominant image as a cry—a cry that refuses to signify anything outside itself. What is manifest in Kagawa’s rejection of writing as well as his inclination toward exclamatory poetry is an obsessive wish to be perfectly at home in a language and an equally obsessive dread of being excluded from some primordial symbiosis with lan¬ guage. It seems to me that Kagawa’s poetics and, more generally, the internal struc¬ ture of the discursive space point to an extremity where language is completely liberated from signification. But I must also note that when language is liberated from writing, it is deprived of sociality and ethicality; when one rejects the fundamental insight that no body is at home in language, the annihilation of language results; when language is stripped of Otherness, it ceases to enable people to encounter each other. Sociality, which was the inalienable moment in Ito’s sincerity, has evaporated. Instead, it seems, Kagawa’s sincerity manifests an inclination toward homosociality. Even though this extremity cannot be char¬ acterized by the absence of sound, we should still be able to say that it is a form of silence. 42Ibid., p. 150.

CHAPTER

9

The Politics of Choreography

Ideological Constitution of Social Reality In spite of its seeming indifference to power and domination, under the guise of innocent neutrality, poetics became the arena where the severest ideological battles were fought. It occupied the central locus in eighteenth-century intellec¬ tual and literary discourse, even though no specific conception of poetry could serve as an incentive for social reforms, political programs, or revolutionary change. No one, then or now, could believe that the production of a good poem could actually result in a more justifiable social order. Nevertheless, this appar¬ ent apoliticality was far from free of ideological maneuvering. I am saying not that the discourse on poetry was necessarily motivated by a wish for domination but that its very production generated and regenerated particular forms of desire. Moreover, the ideological concerns embedded in the discourse on poetry and language were directed not toward a choice of political programs but toward the conditions by which such a choice could be made. In this sense, these concerns directly related to the discursive formation within which politics could be articu¬ lated. It is in this light that the ideological nature of kiyo no gaku and kobunji gaku is best illustrated. Not only did Ogyu Sorai posit an ideal social and cultural order from which to criticize the reality of his contemporary world, but he also outlined a conceptual framework that explained how the institution was to regulate the behavior of individuals in the social environment. His notion of institutional reality was closely connected to language. Ogyu was talking not about social institutions extrinsic to members of the community but institutions as inter¬ nalized by the members. Institutions could not exercise infallible power over the subjects, he reasoned, unless they were completely internalized and conse¬ quently rendered invisible and transparent. Any form or imperative that appears extrinsic to one’s spontaneity can direct and regulate one’s deeds only extrin280

The Politics of Choreography

281

sically and, as a consequence, would have to appeal to authoritarian measures. When a power reveals itself as an authority, it cannot have maximum efficiency. Any power, if it is to control and direct a community successfully, must effectu¬ ate itself so that the motivation for social action appears to originate in the spontaneous participation of each subject. Power must not be naked; it must not reveal itself; it must reside not somewhere high above ordinary people but in the midst of their everyday deeds, where it can imperceptibly regulate their mundane conduct from within. Perhaps Ogyu’s accurate awareness of the nature of political control explains why he conceived of institutions as posterior to language. Language is the most explicit form of social control that is supposedly imperceptible to the person controlled, that is, to the putatively “native” speaker of that language. Language is not perceived as a set of rules extrinsic to the speech acts; speaking and acting in a given language medium presuppose the internalization of the language. Likewise, Ogyu suggested, effective institutions are always internalized, so that they should not be noticed. We must remember, though, that internalization is a stage of learning. Only through repetitive practice can one acquire language ability or the knowledge to act in certain ways. This is to say, language and institutions have to be registered in the body as a pattern (li, li, 1-3) or a sort of tattoo (bun, wen, 9-1).1 Thus the transition from the exterior to the interior was equated to the pedagogic process by which a student followed gradual steps leading to the ultimate acquisition of ancient Chinese and its institutions. Of course, the language and institutionalized behavior patterns thus acquired are not preserved in the form of speculative knowledge but rather in habit, or practice and experiential knowledge; the locus of the interior is not in the mind but in the body, where language and institutions are internalized preconsciously. This is the point that is in need of theoretical elucidation, for it is in the mode of existence of the human body that language and institutions experientially acquired by a person were believed to have a communal dimension. Yet if a conscientious individual student learned the language and institutions of antiq¬ uity, would his achievement not be limited to the student himself? Would it not manifest the interior to him alone? On what grounds could Ogyu claim that the realization of the interior goes beyond an individual person toward collectivity at large? It is hard to imagine that he and other writers of the eighteenth century believed it possible to transform the society of Tokugawa Japan into that of antiquity merely by teaching a few students ancient texts and languages. What was at stake was not a political program whose viability could be measured by short-term observation. 'The character bun in Japanese (wen in Chinese) is very important in this context. Let us recall that this character was used in Ogyu’s learning of ancient texts and words, kobunji gaku. Bun can be rendered as figure, embroidery, coloring, brilliance, appearance, surface pattern, beauty, ornament, tattoo, regularity, rhythm, manners, grain, individual culture obtained through the mastery of rites and music, expression, writing, text, prose, document, book, etc.

282

Language, Body, and the Immediate

In this regard, we should particularly note two theses about language and the institution in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. First, that the human body was taken to be the locus of language and the institution implies the impossibility of grasping an individual as an isolated entity. It is not that a social interaction takes place between two individual bodies or consciousnesses but that the image of the body is where the relation of the subject to the other subject occurs.2 What are often depicted as the invisible inner recesses of the mind inside one’s body are in fact already socially constructed. Attributes such as privacy, secrecy, and interiority are social categories. Therefore, the acquisition of lan¬ guage or an institution not only affects the way an individual agent behaves but also transforms the relationships she has with her “self” and others. Second, language and the institution are inherently in possession of the Other in the sense of a projected “collectivity.” It goes without saying that the self is always posited as an other in language. Instead of declaring the authenticity of the subject of enunciation, language use annihilates and replaces that subject with an anonymous “I.” (Of course, I do not necessarily imply that there is an authentic and nonanonymous “I” before language use.) Partly because of this fundamental character of language use, Ogyu could argue that his student had to become a Chinese of antiquity in order to speak the language fluently. The speaker who emerges out of language use belongs to the sphere defined by that language or interior, but the prelinguistic individual speaker does not. Hence, to master a language is always to subject oneself to the order of the Other. But at the same time, it could be an attempt to “apophantically” establish a “collectivity” that does not exist. The subject in language is always the one who is subject to the Other, and the same could be said of the institution. By entering the circuit of set behavior patterns, one conforms first to the rules imagined to be regulating the membership of the institution and subsequently to the image of that institu¬ tion, and one is transformed into the role expected in the given institutional setting. One is then defined as a subject according to rules that are also the rules of transference. The consequences I can draw from these theses are far-reaching. The reality of an individual man’s presence is defined in terms of his body,3 whereas his selfhood is entirely dependent upon language and the institutions he happens to adhere to. Indeed, this is another way of saying one’s identity is determined socially, but in the discursive space of the eighteenth century, it meant much more. Social reality was conceived of not as a given but as that which is 2Cf. Jacques Lacan, Le seminaire: Le moi dans la theorie de Freud et dans le technique de la psychanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1978), pp. 207-338. 3Ogyu Sorai explicitly said, “The ‘Xiangyinjiu yi’ section of the Li ji says, ‘It is in the body that the virtue is obtained.’ Zhu Xi may well have thought that the virtue was in intention; so he argued that to mention the body rather than the mind [where the virtue would reside] was superficial_a typical mistake by someone who knew no ancient language! In antiquity no one opposed the body to the mind. By the body was always meant the self. How could one conceive of the self that excludes the mind?” (Benmei, in Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 36 [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1973], p. 50).

The Politics of Choreography

283

constituted ideologically. All the discussion of antiquity and the ancient institu¬ tional order was necessarily based on the implicit recognition that what these writers called mono, or the institutional reality of the society, was an ideological construct. They assumed that the institution and even language were always constructed politically. In this respect, Maruyama Masao’s insight is still valid: surely eighteenth-century discourse conceived the social order as a convention, not as nature.4 This is not to say, though, that the construction of social reality was manipulated and controlled by individual consciousnesses. On what grounds can one possibly understand the eighteenth-century view of the ideological construction of social reality? How can one still claim that institu¬ tions were comprehended as conventions when the intention of a manipulating and controlling consciousness could not be posited as a support behind the surface of the texts called institutional realities? The emergence of the human body in the discursive space plays a decisive role in my attempt to respond to these questions, for it is in terms of the ontological determination of the human body that the working of ideology, by which social realities are generated and projected, can be elucidated. In this connection, we ought to remind ourselves that although these writers urged their disciples to learn about antiquity and thereby assimilate themselves into the interior, they never tried to convince them of the legitimacy of the ancient social order. It seems to me that their refusal to give verbal justification to what they considered the ideal order illustrates the dimension of social reality to which the ideological function was ascribed. Only as long as it is free from and beyond the scope of verbal explication and justification does ideology continue to generate and regenerate institutions and to keep them intact. Because institutions cease to be infallible when they are objec¬ tified and thematically queried, they must be invisible and transparent to those who conform to them, just as language should never be an object of questioning for its “native” speakers. (This notion is indeed rather problematic since the idea of the native speaker itself is discursively constituted. After all, I maintain that no-body is exhaustively at home in language. Nevertheless, eighteenth-century discursive space, or at least a majority of the writers who lent themselves to it, seems to have held this notion.) Similarly, institutions when they are alive and healthy are not doubted or questioned. Instead, they are familiarized and inter¬ nalized, that is, internalized in one’s body, not one’s mind. As self-reproducing regularities, institutions are registered in the human body as habit and are main¬ tained as practical and experiential knowledge. Whereas speculative knowledge dictates the representation of a past event and persuades one toward a certain praxis, practical knowledge enables one to manipulate a given situation strate¬ gically without questioning its terms reflectively. Practical knowledge endows its practitioners with the ability to perceive and articulate a given situation in terms pertinent to their effective, assumed participation. Here, the perception of a 4Maruyama Masao, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Mikiso Hane (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1974).

284

Language, Body, and the Immediate

situation and the response to it are one. For a skilled tennis player, for instance, the perception of the direction of a ball and the immediate response by which the player’s entire body begins to move toward the ball are not differentiated and do not take place independently. It was precisely this sort of knowledge, eighteenthcentury writers believed, that generated institutions. They rejected and dis¬ qualified verbal legitimation of ideal institutions because they believed that disci¬ pline and practice alone could enable people to assimilate themselves into what¬ ever social order might be proclaimed. Naturally, eighteenth-century writers, aware of this practical nature of ide¬ ology, despised those who believed in the possibility of improving the society solely by appealing to the mind, by rational persuasion or explanation in words. Furthermore, they promoted philosophical inquiry into the mechanism by which the mind and the reason were generated as symptoms of some cultural deficiency. The human body, then, became the nucleus around which a varied discourse on the ideological constitution of social realities accumulated. It is not surprising that their notions of mono, the performative situation, and language intersect and diverge around this thesis of corporeal practice. On the one hand, mono was conceived as a given, a background against which explicitly verbal texts were enunciated, but not a neutral and amorphous background. This horizon for the enunciation was implicitly articulated in relation to a specific speech act; in this regard, certain regularities were already embedded in it. Otherwise, stripped of these potential regularities, mono would have been a purely historical accident that could never repeat itself. Because it was always viewed in relation to this horizon for the enunciation, a verbal text would not have been able to repeat itself either unless it was endowed with the same horizon. It would therefore be pointless to claim that one could resurrect the past by learning the language of the past. What is affirmed here is the mediation of the human body between the verbal and its performative situation. Underlying this argument is the tendency, which was conspicuous in the discourse of the eighteenth century, to construe the verbal or nonverbal text in its generative function. What mattered was not what a text meant, what it repre¬ sented, but how it was made to signify. Hence, a writing of antiquity was studied to bring out the conditions of its enunciation, not to register it as an event of historiography. Insofar as an enunciation is seen in isolation and grasped as an event, its adherence to its performative situation only informs us of the irre¬ deemable nature of historical time, and it is utterly impossible to think of its resurrection and rerealization: with this approach, all the discussions of antiquity and its ideal order would be devoid of serious significance. Clearly, this was not the case, for the discourse was organized around an interest in performance. At the center of the continual dispute was the concern for action, a motor-sensory rapport that an actor established with the situation in which he or she performed. In addition, there was an awareness that the so-called social order belonged to the kind of reality that was constituted in accordance with the actor’s behavior. It was

The Politics of Choreography

285

not a sum of things independent of what an actor attempted to do with them, but rather the relationship to be generated between the actor and the situation. There¬ fore, it could not be comprehended as a being-in-itself, and the realness of the social reality thus conceived already encompassed the role of an active agent.

The Logic of Integration Ogyu Sorai’s politics would be unintelligible without reference to his under¬ standing of the working of social reality. He asserts repeatedly that what is usually taken to be politics is possible only when the rules of the game have been established. It is no accident that Ogyu explains the essence of the rule in terms of the game of go: “What is generally meant by the rule of the country is, so to speak, just like marking lines on the go board. However skillful a player of go you may be, you cannot play the game on a board without squares.”5 Here, two different kinds of politics are discerned: a politics that can be equated to playing the game and a politics that concerns itself with making the rules of the game. No doubt, Ogyu zealously occupied himself with the latter. As for the former, he left it to the rather arbitrary demands of each situation. As he claims, making the rules of the game is the politics in which one can be truly creative and benevolent and one can identify the genuinely political nature of Confucianism. He implies, of course, that Confucianism in its ultimate essence is a teaching of, and is based on, benevolence, as manifested by the inaugural creative act of the sage-kings. In the rule-making sense of the term “politics,” the ancient sage-kings were sakusha (authors or makers, 7-12) who inaugurated the act of inscribing the rules on behalf of the whole community and who created the institutions, or seido (9-2), through their political acts. Ogyu argues that only in the image of the sage-kings as authors can the notion of benevolence be apprehended in its proper sense. Benevolence cannot be under¬ stood except through the totality of a community. Benevolence that is not repre¬ sentative of the whole necessarily fails to be impartial and, therefore, cannot be called benevolence. In chronological time, the benevolent act of the sage-kings brought about the rules, or seido, of the whole for the sake of the whole for the first time. Yet, it must be noted that neither benevolence nor the sense of totality could exist independently of each other, for the virtue of benevolence cannot be apprehended outside of the totality, nor can the sense of the totality be felt without the mediation of this virtue. In this respect, benevolence is synonymous with the instituting of the totality. It goes without saying that the inseparability of those two seemingly heterogeneous terms directly derives from the imaginary nature of totality in general. In the strict sense, totality is not something that can be empirically perceived or experienced as an object of empirical knowledge but 5Ogyu Sorai, Seidan, in Nihon shiso Taikei 36:263.

286

Language, Body, and the Immediate

a positivity whose necessary element is discourse. Thus, benevolence is, so to speak, the emotive equivalent of the discursive positivity of totality. According¬ ly, Ogyu manages to render two distinct theses tautological and to merge them into the thesis that to be benevolent is to act on behalf of totality and that totality can be conceived of only on the basis of benevolence. This association of benevolence with totality seems to prevent the word “be¬ nevolence” from falling into what Ogyu regards as deviant or perverse uses, such as Ito Jinsai’s “ai.” What is most significant in this virtue is its absolute dedica¬ tion to the whole and its consequent impartiality: “To set people at ease” [anmin, 9-3] is benevolence. To know men is intellect. Confucians of modem times interpret “benevolence” as “ultimate sincerity and empathy,” but even if one is equipped with the mind of utmost sincerity and empa¬ thy, one is not said to be benevolent unless one is able to set people at ease. However merciful one’s mind may be, it would all be vain benevolence, women’s benevolence [if it were not the benevolence of setting people at ease]; it would be no more than the kind of benevolence with which a mother cares for her child.6

Benevolence is distinct from mercy since it is always mediated by the sense of the whole, and this mediation necessarily entails the consideration of purpose and means, or at least the differentiation of the two. Whereas mercy is bestowed immediately and without reference to the welfare of the whole, benevolence without exception incites the calculation of the maximum effectiveness of the measures taken to realize the set purpose; it takes into account that goodwill could possibly lead to evil results or evil will to good results. One might even discover in Ogyu, as Maruyama Masao did, a responsible political consciousness typical of modernity that is somewhat akin to Max Weber’s responsibility ethics.7 Thus, severed from instrumental rationality and the sense of political responsibil¬ ity, benevolence, as Ogyu understands it, is lost. Yet benevolence could remain authentic and genuine even when it means the opposite of mercy and affection: It is not because we hate their evil nature that punishment is to be inflicted on criminals. Inasmuch as those who commit crimes, after all, do so out of their own extreme stupidity, they should rather be pitied. Because they do harm to people, however, punishment is, of course, necessary. The crime of those who disrupt the “cultural discipline of people” [fuka, 9-4] is all the more grave since its ill effects spread very widely. Thus, punishment executed with a view to setting people at ease is the Way of benevolence. Benevolence does not imply that one should not kill.8

In instances when criminals disrupt and interfere with cultural institutions that keep the people at ease, one must kill them out of benevolence. Ogyu’s political 6Ogyu Sorai, Taiheisaku, in Nihon shiso taikei 36:466. 7Maruyama Masao, Studies in the Intellectual History, pp. 83-113. 8Ogyu Sorai, Taiheisaku, p. 467.

The Politics of Choreography

287

philosophy consists of a series of arguments legitimating the existing political hierarchy on the basis of the concept of social welfare. If Confucianism is to be characterized as the typical philosophy for social welfare, it is very difficult to dismiss Ogyu’s claim to the authenticity of his Confucianism. He justifies the relationship of the ruler and the ruled in terms of the ruler’s complete subjugation to the ruled. Therefore, one might as well summarize his politics by saying that the ruler acquires legitimacy to rule over the ruled by being servant, subject, servile, and subservient to the ruled. Yet we should remember that the ruler is not subject or servile to the ruled in personal relations; rather, the ruler is subject to the ruled as a totality. As a matter of fact, the mediation of totality reverses the direction of subjection and servitude. We now gain the following formula: pre¬ cisely because the ruler ought to be servile and subservient to the ruled (as a whole), the ruler should be allowed to claim that the ruled (as individuals) ought to be servile and subservient to the ruler. Such a form of legitimation is commonplace, not unusual either historically or geopolitically, as one may easily guess. What is significant, however, is that Ogyu links the notion of totality to the interior and makes it concrete in terms of the attributes that, as we have already observed, are predicated on the inferiority of the interior. The primary trait he ascribes to sage-kingship is the ability to create and install institutions thanks to which the whole of the people are able to imagine themselves to be together, to communicate with one another trans¬ parently and reciprocally, and to know the subjective position of each in relation to the whole. Thus, in a sense, Ogyu probed into the political use of nostalgia by assessing the relationship of institutions and the interior. Consequently, the be¬ nevolent act of the sage-kings simultaneously ensures the identification of each member with the whole of the community and the identification of each subjec¬ tive position within the whole: it generates the sense of belonging to the whole and the sense of being recognized by the whole. In this respect, I think, Ogyu installed at the center of his politics a conception of desire similar to Hegel’s, namely, that the desire to be recognized constitutes one’s identity. Unlike the followers of Song rationalism, who attempted to control desire without dealing with its generative mechanism and consequently ended up ap¬ pealing to extremely repressive measures, Ogyu proposed to regulate desire not by suppressing it but by encouraging and promoting it. As we have already seen with Ito Jinsai who had decisively departed from the politics of essentialism, Ogyu did not conceive of politics in terms of how feeling (jo, qing) should be adjusted to nature (sei, xing) by the mind (shin, xin). Instead, he denied the anteriority of nature to feeling and identified the domain of politics with the set of institutions according to which desire is generated. Underlying such a novel idea of politics is the insight that desire is not deviation from nature; instead, desire and nature are both effects of the configuration of institutions. Thus, desire and nature are figured. If desire seems to deviate from the existing norms, it is not because the deviant

288

Language, Body, and the Immediate

tendency is inherent in desire but because the set of institutions, in terms of which desire and norms are constituted, is not well coordinated to form an organic whole. If the institutions were organically incorporated so as to form the interior, desire would be generated within the restricted and well-organized econ¬ omy of circulation; desire would not obscure the normalcy of human relations; desire would guide people to reaffirm and return to the norms. The presence of deviant desire, then, should be understood to indicate that the circuit of institu¬ tions does not form a closure, that there is surplus or leakage in the network which would result in the transmutation of the original institutional arrangement. But there is nothing wrong with desire in itself, and desire should be nurtured. It is when desire is encouraged, and controlled in that encouragement, that the community as a whole can be best controlled and the authority of the ruler most firmly established. People then spontaneously desire to identify themselves with the whole; they spontaneously desire to be controlled. Here lies a striking con¬ trast between Ogyu and Ito Jinsai, who “followed the ideas of Mencius and did not understand the teaching of the sage-kings. . . . Feeling is not related to thought (shiryo, silu, 2-15). Music disciplines feeling because it can neither be admonished by righteousness nor applied to by thought. Therefore, nature and feeling ought to be governed by music. This is the skill of government which the sage-kings taught.”9 For Ito Jinsai, feeling is the very locus of sociality, where one encounters the other in its otherness. For Ogyu, however, it is merely a deviation that must be tamed and controlled: it should not be suppressed by overtly authoritarian measures, but it nonetheless should be governed by and subjected to authority. And since the authority of the ruler would be based on the spontaneity of the ruled, the ruler would never need to be authoritarian. The followers of Song rationalism appeared authoritarian precisely because they misunderstood the nature of desire and therefore tried to suppress it. In other words, they were authoritarian because their authoritarianism inevitably failed. Ogyu Sorai was thus aware of the nature of political control: in order to be effective, authority should never appear as such. According to Ogyu, the essence of political power consists in the ability not to prevent something from happening but to let someone desire: it is not prohibitive but positive and creative. Insofar as both the ruler and the ruled belong to the interior and are programmed to desire according to the system of institutions, there can be no basic difference between the ruler and the ruled. What decisively distinguishes the ruler from the ruled must be found in the domain of knowledge. The ruler knows, and the ruled do not. Or rather, the ruler should know, but the ruled must not. (“Yorashimu beshi, shirashimu bekarazu”). But what and how should the ruler know to ensure his or her political superiority over the ruled? In everyday life, the ruled are preoccupied with the objects of their conduct 9Ogyu Sorai, Benmei, p. 143.

The Politics of Choreography

289

and intersubjective interests; they participate in the games following the institu¬ tions, or mono; they assume and do not question the given image of the totality or the authority supposedly representing that totality. Similarly, the ruler assumes the validity of the given image of the totality and participates in the games of which his everyday life also consists, but at the same time, the ruler knows that the institutions according to which he desires and acts are conventions created sometime in history. The ruler knows that he desires and is made to desire. As long as he participates in the games and interacts with others in the given settings, he is partial, that is, he cannot claim to be benevolent, for how can he play the game without being partial? The essence of participation in the game is to pursue one’s own interest against others’ and to try to achieve certain objec¬ tives that are set up by the conventions of the game. That is to say, participation requires that one be in conflict with one’s opponent in a regulated fashion. One cannot participate in the game without being partial. Players must be “egoistic,” “selfish,” and “partial” in order for the game to be possible. Nevertheless, at the same time, the ruler concerns himself with the task of creating institutions. Ogyu located the true business of the ruler in the creation of institutions; he claimed that in the business appropriate for the ruler he could be authentically and properly benevolent and impartial. This is to say that the ruler and the ruled are basically social roles, so that the same person could be the ruler on some occasions and the ruled on others. Here, we face a series of propositions that form a tautological circuit: 1. The ruler is the one who creates seido, or institutions. 2. The ruled desire and act according to the institutions. 3. The ruler is benevolent because he represents the totality. Let me combine these propositions to see what is implied in them. 1 + 2. The ruler creates the institutions according to which the ruled desire and act. Although not directly, since it is done through the medium of the institutions, the ruler makes the ruled desire and act. But because the ruled are not directly ordered to desire and act (Commands are possible only when the terms in which an order is articulated have already been institutionalized. The possibility of the command is dependent on the existence of relevant institutions. You cannot order those who do not understand your language.), they do not know that they are made to desire and act. And precisely because they do not know, the ruled are ruled. 1 + 3. The ruler does not rule arbitrarily, however. The institutions are created with a view to providing the best possible welfare for the whole. Otherwise, the institutions would not be benevolent. Hence, it should be possible to make an objective judgment as to whether or not an institution is benevolent, that is, legitimate, by referring to the whole. 2 + 3. The ruled are set at ease (anmin) when they can desire and act according to the institutions that are created by the ruler with a view to providing

290

Language, Body, and the Immediate

the best possible welfare for the whole. If the institutions guarantee the best possible welfare for the whole, the ruled are set at ease and do not know that they are made to desire and act. This is the reign of ultimate benevolence. In the preceding expositions we should note the assertions that are tautological but without which the propositions could not be put together. These concern the relationship between totality and benevolence. Let me explicate the folds formed by the juxtaposition of these propositions. It is stated that because the ruler is benevolent, he acts to create seido on behalf of the totality. At the same time, the totality is that which is defined and charac¬ terized by the benevolent act and by impartiality. Therefore, totality and benev¬ olence are not only copossible but also codependent on each other. Furthermore, the relationship between totality and benevolence is sustained by the mediation of the ruler, who is assumed to represent the totality. As can easily be inferred, Ogyu’s conception of proper politics and the argument legitimating it will col¬ lapse as soon as this mediation, the possibility of the ruler who can be assumed to represent the totality, is taken away. Yet, I do not mean that Ogyu did not and could not entertain a question as to whether or not a particular person in power represents the totality. In fact, such a question regarding the empirical qualifica¬ tions of the ruler is virtually irrelevant to the point I am making. Even if there have been no rulers in history who could represent totality, his argument would be as solid as ever. As a matter of fact, this is more or less what Ogyu implied by equating the ideal ruler to the ancient sage-kings, whose historical existence was certainly a matter of faith.10 Throughout his argument, one thing has to be assumed without any evidence, without any substantiation: the representability of totality. In addition, Ogyu assumes that it is possible to conceive of the totality. He simply assumes that one believes in totality, and his argument is organized in such a way that, once totality has been conceived of as that which people are induced to believe in, all the avenues are opened to a variety of political possibilities of legitimating or illegitimating the existing regime in the name of totality. As Maruyama Masao clearly saw, the positing of the sage-kings is the linchpin of Ogyu’s political philosophy, so to speak. Both the justifiable distinction be¬ tween the ruler and the ruled and the political notion of benevolence depend on the belief in totality. In this respect, I agree with Maruyama that Ogyu Sorai’s political discourse articulated the possibility of humanism during the eighteenth century. But Maruyama failed to see that this form of social imaginary, that is, the belief in totality, also closed off passage to different political possibilities. To be sure, by eliminating those other possibilities, Ogyu refused to consider the dissolution of the ruler-ruled differentiation, for instance. It was no accident that despite a great deal of similarity, Ogyu was hostile to Ito Jinsai, who tried to respect the ,0Compare this view to, for instance, J-J. Rousseau’s idea of the legislator in his “On the Social Contract,” Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, ed. C.E. Vaughan (New York: Lenox Hill, 1971), pp. 51-54.

The Politics of Choreography

291

otherness of the Other in the social and for whom sociality was simply untotalizable and unrepresentable. As I have said, to describe sociality Ito deliberately chose the trope of the roadway, which stresses openness and constant movement. So far I have isolated from Ogyu’s treatises features that rather formalistically circumscribe totality as a discursive positivity. I do not mean to imply, however, that this positivity works merely as a formal principle. It is also an imaginary construct that is linked by a series of displacements to another set of imaginary constructs. Its function is to synthesize beings that are heterogeneous to each other and to have them perceived as if they all belong indiscriminately to a homogeneous domain. Hence, totality has to be given as the interior, a homoge¬ neous domain where transparent and reciprocal communication among the insid¬ ers prevails. As totality is associated with the interior, the institutions that are supposedly established with the welfare of the whole in view also acquire the attributes of the interior. Similarly, those institutions, if they are benevolent, should also be perceived as transparent and intimate: they should be permeated by the sense of interiority. Insofar as the institutions are harmoniously incorporated into the interior, they should be internalized and lived by all the members of the community, just as the language of villagers is internalized and lived by the members of the village. The ruled should never perceive them as norms they are forced to obey, as order given in the propositional form. At this level of politics, it is no use reasoning with people to make them abide by the institutions, not because people are ignorant or incapable of apprehending persuasion but because reasoning is possible only when the terms in which it is conducted have already been institutionalized. Logically, the institution is anterior to reasoning. Ogyu would argue that those followers of Song rationalism who presuppose the universal validity of reason are naive not only because they do not know the actuality of politics but also because their reasoning about reason is faulty. Whereas Ito Jinsai criticized Song rationalists on the grounds that the followers of Zhu Xi were nonethical and that their doctrine led only to the elimination of the materiality of the social, which was the sole basis for ethics, Ogyu Sorai criticized them for their political and philosophical stupidity. It is in order to change fuzoku [culture, 9-5] that seido must be rebuilt. Fuzoku extends monolithically over the society; so it is as hard to change it by force as it is to block the sea with one’s hands. There is, however, a technique and it is called the technique of the great Way of the sage-kings. Modem followers of Song rationalism believe that they can change it by rectifying the minds of people through reasoning and persuasion. This is just like refining rice grain by grain, instead of pounding it in a mortar. . . . Fuzoku is narawashi [habit formation, 9-61. The way of scholarship is also narawashi [habit learning!. One who has habituated oneself to good is a good man; one who has habituated oneself to evil is an evil man. The way of scholarship is to leam, become skilled, and habituate oneself. There are no other techniques or means of learning than this. . . . There are old saying such as “What one has

292

Language, Body, and the Immediate

habituated oneself to becomes one’s nature,” or “Habit is like nature.” The Zhong yong says, “Sincerity is the way of men.” What this means is to acquire a habit to such an extent that one feels as if one had been bom with it. Hence, the Way of the sage-kings gives priority to learning [habit formation], while the rule of the sagekings regarded fuzoku as the most important.11

Thus, the ruler knows not only that the institutions are created and invented rather than given or natural but also that people have to become accustomed to them. To be aware of the original creation of institutions, therefore, is not enough. The ruler must also know the process of habit formation by which institutions are internalized in the body of the ruled to such an extent that the ruled take them to be natural, and immediately universal. But how could a pedagogic program that concerned itself with the control of an individual human body serve to organize and regulate the collectivity that consists of multiple bodies? Does the effectiveness of social control depend on the actual number of students disciplined in the program? Certainly this question applies to modem Japan, where national education and the modem school system have made it possible to punish and discipline the populace in great number, but no such system existed in the eighteenth century; the discourse of that day never conceived of education as a tool to be used by government to achieve the social homogeneity of the nation. Here, the significance of Ogyu’s kobunji gaku is clearly manifest. The ruler must know the process of habit formation by going through that process her or himself, for the form of knowledge that is decisive in politics is experiential knowledge internalized in the body, or mini tsuita (attached to or rooted in the body). Whereas the ruled take culturally and historically specific institutions to be natural and immediately universal, the ruler knows the difference between the exterior as I have defined it and the interior, knows that habit formation is a shift from the exterior to the interior, knows why one gets accustomed to believing in the naturalness and universality of these institutions. In an oblique way, the ruler/ruled distinction is related to the opposition of those who know both the exterior and the interior and those who do not know the exterior.12 Yet, again, the prestige accorded the ruler depends on the separability of the exterior and the interior and, ultimately, on the representability of totality. For this very reason, kobunji gaku is the scholarship of the ruler.

nOgyu Sorai, Taiheisaku, p. 473. Fuzoku consists of two characters fu, or feng in Chinese, and zoku, or su. Fu can be rendered as wind, teaching, custom, appearance, rumor, etc., zoku can be translated custom, world, secular, mundane, etc. The compound can then be: customs in a specific society or local folk songs. 12Ibid., pp. 453-54. I must emphasize that the exterior (a term not actually registered in his vocabulary) does not designate a place geographically outside the interior in Ogyu’s discourse; yet he highly valued the knowledge of foreign things.

The Politics of Choreography

293

Two Forms of Memory, Two Senses of History Now that sociohistorical reality has been defined in this manner, it is not overly difficult to understand the notion of historical time as depicted in eighteenth-century discourse on language. The emergence of a history that was based not on the seriality of events but on the recognition pertaining to the ideological constitution of social reality can be best elucidated by a distinction Henri Bergson drew between two forms of memory. Asserting the priority of action over affection, Bergson demanded that philo¬ sophical inquiry start from action, “that is to say, from our faculty of effecting changes in things, a faculty attested to by consciousness and towards which all the powers of the organized body are seen to converge.”13 To say that action preceded affection was, of course, to challenge the basic modem epistemological framework without which even present-day positivism could not survive, and also to destabilize the fixed and sanctioned myth of naturalist objectivism, which is completely incarcerated in this framework. Perception, which has normally been attributed to affection from the “external world,” is, he said, much less objective and much more dependent on memory than has been assumed. Our perceptions are almost always interlaced with memory, and “a memory only becomes actual by borrowing the body of some perception into which it slips.”14 For Bergson, memory is the locus of action or motor mechanism. And it is in this context that he introduced the two distinct forms by which the past survives. Trying to learn a lesson by heart—a form of discipline—I read it. Then I repeat it a number of times. As Ogyu described, progress is made at each repetition until I can say the lesson has been learned by heart, imprinted on my memory. On the other hand, if I look back on the process of this discipline, I can picture for myself the successive phases of the process. Each of several readings then recurs with its own individuality and the particular circumstances that at¬ tended it then; no reading can be the same as those that preceded or followed it. “Each reading stands out before my mind as a definite event in my history.”15 Although we say we “remember” in both cases, the memory of the lesson, which is remembered in the sense of learned by heart, has all the marks of a habit. Bergson continues: Like a habit, it is acquired by the repetition of the same effort. Like a habit, it demands first a decomposition and then a recomposition of the whole action. Lastly, like every habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up in a mechanism which is set in motion as a whole body by an initial impulse, in a closed system of automatic movements which succeed each other in the same order and, together, take the same

13Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy M. Paul and W. Scott Palmer (London: George Allen ajid Unwin, 1911), p. 67. ,4Ibid., p. 72. 15Ibid., p. 89.

294

Language, Body, and the Immediate

length of time. . . . The memory of the lesson I have learnt, even if I repeat this lesson only mentally, requires a definite time, the time necessary to develop one by one, were it only in imagination, all the articulatory movements that are necessary: it is no longer a representation, it is an action. And, in fact, the lesson once learnt bears upon it no mark which betrays its origin and classes it in the past; it is part of my present, exactly like my habit of walking or of writing; it is lived and acted, rather than represented: I might believe it innate, if I did not choose to recall at the same time, as so many representations, the successive readings by means of which I learnt it.16

The memory of each reading shares none of the traits of a habit. Since it can be evoked by my spontaneous will and is sustained in the intuitive act of my imagination, it is merely a representation rather than an action. “I assign to it any duration I please; there is nothing to prevent my grasping the whole of it in¬ stantaneously, as in one picture.”17 Hence, the memory of a reading as an event deviates from the principle of the verbal expression conceived of as performance: linearity. While memory in the sense of a habit preserves the past as a “speech,” an imagined action requiring the same length of time, memory of a reading as an event cannot project the past as an action but functions just like writing, as writing was conceived in the eighteenth century. Aside from exhibiting the same kind of phonocentrism as I witnessed in Tokugawa discourse, the Bergsonian conception of memory dramatizes two dis¬ tinct senses of history. In the former sense, the past is conceived of not as an event but as a potential faculty stored in the human body which is set in motion when a situation relevant to a specific form of affection is perceived. But since, as he asserts, action precedes affection, the perception of the situation is shaped after the faculty to act. As is now evident, this sense of history and historical reality is exactly what Ogyu, Kamo, and Motoori sought to articulate: it is a reality belonging to the past, but it can also resurrect and realize itself in the present through repeated discipline: it is not a history of the seriality of events but a history inhabiting the human body. Therefore, they refused to read ancient writings as representations of the past; instead, they sought for that which acted the past in them. If they still agreed that writings of antiquity preserved memory, it was not because bygone images were conserved there but because they be¬ lieved the writings were capable of exerting their useful effect on the present. Thus they sought to recover the past as speech, enunciation, and performance, and they refused to read it as writing, enunciated, and representation.

The Loom That Weaves the Subjects Whereas Ito inherited the conceptual determinations of Song rationalism, Ogyu seems to have made a final departure from them. Ogyu rearticulated the 16Ibid., pp. 89-91. 17Ibid., p. 91.

The Politics of Choreography

295

notions of desire and feeling in a revolutionary manner, but the political effect of his rearticulation was to endorse what Song rationalism was committed to assert. Whereas Song rationalists had been hostile to the heterogeneity of desire and feeling, Ogyu accepted them insofar as they were regulated and confined within the interior of the restricted economy. Yet I must also emphasize the differences between the two conceptualizations of desire and feeling. For Ogyu, desire and feeling are not necessarily heterogeneous to li.18 He accepts the possibility that desire can be molded into the impulse toward the self, an impulse not entirely dissimilar to Hegelian desire as self-consciousness, or desire for the recognition of the self by the other. And his tolerance toward desire and feeling seems to stem from this new way of conceptualizing them. The new conception of desire is undoubtedly accompanied by his apprehension of rite and music, which in fact are to regulate desire and feeling. The sociality that is heterogeneous to the restricted economy of the interior must be controlled and eliminated. Despite his rejection of the ontologization of li as found in Song Confucianism, Ogyu acknowledges the necessity to rule and contain the heterogeneity inherent in feeling. What is most interesting in this regard is that he considered music the most effective means by which to regulate feeling, which would otherwise be untamable. There is no question that Ogyu now sees the most significant aspect of the rule and politics in music and rites. But concomitantly, his understanding of social reality is closely connected to the way he construes politics in terms of music and rites. How, then, is this concep¬ tion of politics related to his extensive interest in habits and culture as manifested in his many treatises on the customs of ancient China? In order to probe into this issue, I must first inquire into the term that Ogyu’s contemporary Confucians believed summarized the fundamental task of Confu¬ cianism: keizai (9-7). Today this compound is translated “economy,” “econom¬ ics,” or sometimes “political economy,” but as is well known, in Confucian discourse it was an abbreviation of the four-character compound: keisei saimin (9-8). Dazai Shundai, one of Ogyu Sorai’s disciples, explicates this compound at the beginning of his Keizairoku: Generally speaking, keizai is to rule all under heaven and in the state. Its meaning is to regulate the world and save the people. But the character kei [in keizai] is to arrange and spin [yam] [keirin, jinglun, 9-9]. Thus the Yi jing says “Gentlemen thereby rule [= arrange and spin],” and the Zhong yong says, “To rule [= arrange and spin] the great constancy [taikei, dajing, 9-10]19 of all under heaven.” To

18Ogyu used the character li, or principle, as a verb “to regulate.” “The master [Ito Jinsai] devotedly followed Mencius, and did not comprehend the teaching of the sage-kings about music and rites. Consequently, he may well have inferred that feeling could be left unregulated as it was. . . . Feeling is outside the reach of thought. What music teaches cannot be explained by reason [righteousness and li] or applied to by thought. Hence, [the sage-kings] adopted music to regulate feeling and nature. This is the teaching of the sage-kings” (Benmei, p. 143). 19The great constancy, or in literary usage, great warp, implies the five constancies regulating the five basic human relations.

296

Language, Body, and the Immediate

arrange and spin is to regulate yam. Kei is the warp of textile, and the character i (911) is its woof.20 One cannot overlook the etymological connections of the character kei to texture, textile, and of course text. This character was also used to designate the classics in Confucianism and particularly the Six Classics in Ogyu’s kobunji gaku. Here, I cannot help but notice the interweaving of the study of classics, economy, and politics. Or perhaps I must recognize, above all else, the ambiguity of the term “economy,” which cannot be immediately equated to the discipline of modem economics. Political economy in the sense of keizai must deal with forms of exchange that define and maintain social relations. It follows that essential issues for political economy must include rites, gift exchange, measurements, the hier¬ archy of official ranks, costumes, and names.21 For Ogyu as well as his disciples, however, the practices most significant in understanding communal life and the benevolent reign that orders the community are rites and music.22 Following Ogyu, Dazai Shundai reconfirms the impor¬ tance and usefulness of rites and music in stabilizing social relations: There are no other [institutions] that incite the hearts of people as well as rites and music. There are no other [institutions] that are closer to [the purpose of] guiding the people correctly than rites and music. Teaching in words does not penetrate the mind of people; its scope is very narrow, and its effect is slow to come out. The teaching of rites and music influences people deeply; its scope is wide; and its effect is immedi¬ ate. It is through the way of rites and music that the ancient sage-kings taught all the people without uttering a single word and united the minds of all the people under heaven.23 While the rites that consist of manners and ceremonies differentiate and maintain various social positions defined by the five constancies—the five basic relations of lord-retainer, father-son, husband-wife, elder brother-younger brother, and friend-friend—music, song, and dance harmonize those who are separated by these relations and make them feel intimate toward one another. Thus, Dazai argues that rites and music supplement each other.24 I would like to underline two points in this account. First, both rites and music

20Dazai Shundai, Keizairoku, in Bibliotheca japonica oeconomiae politicae, or Nihon keizai sosho (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Sosho Kankokwai, 1914), p. 10. The Confucian scholar and student of political institutions Dazai Shundai (1680-1747) was bom to a Samurai family in Iida in Shinano (now Nagano prefecture) and studied Confucianism in Edo. He left Edo for Kyoto and Osaka but later returned and joined Ogyu Sorai’s school. Together with Hattori Nankaku, he is regarded as Ogyu’s most brilliant disciple. Keizairoku (Discussions on keizai) is his most famous work. 2'These are topics Ogyu Sorai studied. His mono consists of these institutions in concrete forms. 22Dazai Shundai said, “As to the way to rule [keirin, jinglun] the world, there is nothing that precedes rites and music” (Keizairoku, p. 24). 23Ibid., p. 25. 24Ibid., pp. 48-49.

The Politics of Choreography

297

are grasped as institutions pertaining to bodily movement. With regard to “rites,” which is the collective name for manners and ceremonies, it is only too evident that bodily movement is indispensable in the habituation of manners and the staging of a ceremony. But why does music necessarily pertain to bodily movement? In explicating the character “music” (gaku, yue or le, 9-12), Danzai again appeals to its etymology: the character “music” also means “to enjoy.” Joy arises when a man moves his body. By moving the body (shosa, 9-13),25 a man consoles his mind. On occasions, a man encounters extraordinary feelings, such as sorrow and depression, from which he cannot be relieved just by moving his body in ordinary ways. Then he releases his voice in singing and plays a musical instrument. Therefore, music, the collective name for singing, dancing, and playing an instrument, is apprehended basically as patterned bodily movement. Second, music is understood to be a means by which to reproduce and solidify social positions defined by rites. It is a means by which subjects who are separated and distanced from one another because of the configuration of social positions are brought together and made to enjoy their communality without liquidating social relations. Politically speaking, therefore, music is considered to be a conservative means. Although it appeals to the feelings of people and moves their hearts, music serves to confine them to their assigned positions. For this reason, for instance, Ogyu Sorai, Dazai’s mentor, reintroduces the character li, which, although it no longer means a priori human nature as in Song ra¬ tionalism, regulates and regularizes the a posteriori configuration of social posi¬ tions. Thus, rites and music are conceptualized as the fundamental ways in which feeling is controlled. Feeling still remains poetic in the sense that music, particularly song, or uta, is closely associated with feeling, but it is deprived of its creative potential, of its aleatory possibility to encounter the otherness of the Other. Therefore, poetry too is now understood within the a posteriori configuration of social positions which is referred to in the metaphor of texture. And just as the ancient language has to be acquired and internalized, rites and music also have to be assimilated into one’s body. “Confucius said, ‘Habit is like naturalness.’ When odes and history have been assimilated into your mouth, and rites and music into your body, and when they have been habituated just like nature, your learning has been accom¬ plished.”26 In the context of kobunji gaku, Hattori Nankaku, another brilliant disciple of Ogyu Sorai, explicates the connection between the subject and the texture of social reality: As to poetry, it is natural that you decide on the meaning of the poem according to its theme and that you obtain words according to emotion. And some might choose 25Although the compound ideogram for shosa consists of two Chinese characters, this particular use seems to have no precedent in China except in the Buddhist context. From the beginning, Keizairoku was written in kakikudashibun, in the style of a Japanese annotation of Chinese writing. 26Dazai Shundai, Sekihifuroku, in Nihon shiso taikei 37:179. Odes, History, Rites, and Music are, of course, four of the Six Classics.

298

Language, Body, and the Immediate

words following the general tone, and the meaning following the words. Yet, unless the meaning is already set, the composition of the poem is difficult to outline. Even if you happen to have several good phrases, the whole of a poem would not be synthesized, with the meaning dispersed and the connection of stanzas disrupted. This is what the poet suffers from. Once the fruits of efforts to imitate the ancients matured, however, one would be endowed with the great vision [just as the ancients were]. Thereupon, the style and the meaning of the poem would be in harmony; the secret of naturalness would emerge all by itself. Where this learning leads you, there will be no need to worry about the dispersion of meaning or the disrupted connection of stanzas. Then, your choice of words would naturally be those used by the ancients; your meaning would be the one the ancients achieved. You would not judge the degree of your accomplishment by placing your poem in the midst of those by the ancients. That is not the way you inherit from the ancients. It is rather that the loom [of poetic text] weaves you [as the subject].27

The objective of learning poetry is depicted as a paradoxical state in which the subject is produced by the poetic text, not the other way around. Needless to say, this metaphor of the loom’s weaving the subject contains a profound insight into the social formation. Ogyu and his followers were at least aware that the “I,” or the subject, does not exist outside the text, does not belong to some extratextual reality; it is possible only within the text, is constituted by or woven into the text. Moreover, they acknowledged that social reality, or mono, was essentially tex¬ tual in nature. Accordingly, politics and the study of classics are inseparable, as Ogyu repeatedly asserted by saying, “The Six Classics are mono.” Only at the stage where the student of poetry is not inside the “interior,” can his “I” not be produced by the poetic text. I must also emphasize, however, that Ogyu and his followers eliminated surplus and heterogeneity from the textuality of social reality. In this respect, my use of the term “text” is radically different from his. If left alone, his text would continually reproduce itself and subjects and the configuration of subjective positions. Hence, the texture of social and institutional reality as mono is akin to our discourse. And what Ogyu’s kobunji gaku purported to do through the notion of the body as a storehouse of habits was to annihilate the textuality of the text, to conceive of social reality as discourse, and ultimately to rid the body of its otherness. Thus, the body was reduced to its capacity for recentering instead of decentering, to its ability to repeat patterned behaviors that have been inter¬ nalized. Concurrently, the body was defined in its historicity as a place where a historically specific set of habits was installed. What was also presumed in the historicity of the human body was the thesis that the body’s mode of existence was already intersubjective; inherent in its 27Hattori Nankaku, Nankaku sensei bunshu, in Nihon shiso taikei 37:226-27. Hattori (16831759), Confucian scholar, poet, and painter, applied Ogyu’s kobunji gaku to his poetic composition. His works include many instructions on Chinese poetry, an anthology of Tang poetry, Nanakaku sensei bunshu (Collected essays of Master Nankaku), Tokashu (Under the candlelight), and others.

The Politics of Choreography

299

mode of existence was an ability to establish a “collectivity” as the Other to whom an action was addressed. But let me note in passing that this collectivity was often directly equated to the one that existed and thereby was substan¬ tialized. As we have seen, eighteenth-century discourse repeatedly tried to rid itself of the notion of substantialized individual subjectivity and, as often as not, identified this formation of the self as a symptom of the prevailing social disease with which it thought the contemporary world was afflicted. Yet, this discourse tended to substantialize the collectivity, confusing the future anterior of the collectivity, the nonchronological anteriority of a collectivity which the social action creates as its anonymous addressee, with the historical collectivity that was imagined to have existed at one moment in historical time. To posit a social order in a body was, therefore, to determine corporeity primarily in terms of its intersubjective function and to assume that the body is the primordial site of communality but not of the social. The differentiation I have drawn between direct and indirect actions will allow the microscopic structure underlying the intersubjectivity of the human body to surface in an illuminating manner. Thus Ogyu and his disciples proposed an outline of the regime of visibility under which they believed the body was subsumed and by which the body as shutai would be stripped of its heterogeneity and transformed into a storehouse of habits. Thus, whereas for Ito the body was the site of heterogeneity and creativity (making, poiesis) without arche, for Ogyu and his disciples, the body was essentially poetic and poietic toward arche: the body was thought of solely as the moment of transformation to the original model.

Song as a Locus of Contradiction What distinguishes an indirect action from a direct one is its relative autonomy from the given performative situation in which it occurs. Whereas a direct action seems to adhere to a given situation and to be initiated by the agent’s spontaneous intention, an indirect action is detached from the situation and is capable of repeating itself infinitely irrespective of the context. There is a sense of com¬ pleteness in it, and since the degree of reliance on the outside, that is, the situational arrangement, is comparatively low, it has an internal organization of which its autonomy is made up. Correlative to the decreased reliance on the outside is its lack of designative function, so that an indirect action does not point to real objects or referents, although it is capable of indicating imagined ones. A dance, for example, given a sufficient space and a relevant social occasion, can be performed many times; within the duration of a single dance, a dancer may point a finger or hand at an object that either is or is not supposed to be located in the vicinity of her body. But it is important to note that an object so indicated is not the real one, regardless of whether there is actually a physical object or an empty space at the point being designated on the stage. Insofar as an action is

300

Language, Body, and the Immediate

indirect, of necessity the object of the designative gesture is an imagined one, in the sense of the classic definition of “imagination,” that is, the faculty to posit an object in its absence. When a dancer puts on an act of looking at the sea, his eyes focused on the distant horizon and his hand waving at a passing boat do posit these referents as correlatives of his gesture. But they are empty referents to imagined objects. Even if there is a wall painted blue at the side of the stage, it is the sea only in the imagination. The ability to posit imagined objects and to erect an imaginary relationship with a given performative situation is part and parcel of the ability of an indirect action to repeat itself infinitely, and thus constitutes the essence of its transhistoricity. In short, in an indirect action the performer is acting, so that, as I mentioned earlier, a promise made in singing is not expected to be kept; it is a promise in the imagination. Whereas a direct action teaches us what participation in a situation means, an indirect one seems to dramatize the arbitrariness of the sign, although in this case it is an arbitrariness not between signifier and signified but between the sign and its referent. More important, the indirect action informs us of the faculty inherent in corporeity, the body’s faculty to posit or produce objects imaginarily through performance. In this respect, the body is a productivity rather than an image that is produced. The objects thus posited and produced, however, are not entities in themselves but are enveloped and encompassed in the space of the corporeal text, which cannot be construed in phonetico-semantic terms such as signification, communication, subject’s inten¬ tion, or expression.28 Indirect action thus reveals the workings of the regime as an ideology in which the subject lives its imaginary relationship to the reality. In the regime that is incorporated in a given discourse, therefore, an action is always indirect. Indirect action also addresses itself to the question of the actor’s subjectivity. Another aspect of formalization and ritualization of an action is the transforma¬ tion of the action which forces an actor to perform according to extrinsic rules. If the rules to be followed are neither extrinsic to one’s inner motivation nor posited as an authority one must obey despite one’s spontaneous and natural inclination, then there would be no need for discipline. In this connection we must recall that discipline is a kind of torture because it is, by definition, imposed on one’s body against one’s will. But do formalization and ritualization demand discipline, or eliminate one’s self? The essence of indirect action consists in the way the actor’s 28Cf- Julia Kristeva, “Le geste, pratique ou communication?” in Semeiotike (Paris: Seuil, 1969), pp. 90-112. Kristeva stresses the irreducibility of the corporeal text to linguistic categories but does not deal with formalized gesture. “If all these reflections suppose the synchronic anteriority of the semiotic system in relation to the ‘real cutout’ [reel coupe], it is striking that this anteriority, contrary to what ethnologists explain, is not that of a concept in relation to a sound (signified-signifier) but that of a gesture of demonstration, of designation, of indication by action in relation to ‘consciousness,’ to idea. Prior (this anteriority is spatial and not temporal) to the sign and every problematic of signification (and therefore of signifying structure), one might think of a designation practice, a gesture that indicates not for signifying but for embracing subject, object, and practice within the same space (without the idea/word, signified/signifier dichotomy), or let us say, within the same semiotic text" (p. 95).

The Politics of Choreography

301

spontaneous and individual will is flatly ignored and does not reflect on the actual action at all. The verb “to act” explains this mechanism very well: on the one hand, to act is to behave, to initiate a movement of the body; on the other hand, it is to disguise, to hide the inner self, to imitate and take the role of another. In this respect, the indirect action demands the elimination of what is supposed to be the individual self. Hence, “actor” is a name for one who refuses to be identical to herself and continues to transform herself into an actor: an actor is a person, that is, a mask.29 This analysis shows the reason why an indirect action allows for a substitution of the acting subject. Because it is formalized and ritualized, dance can be performed by any subject who has been disciplined in it and endowed with the necessary skill to perform it. This interchangeability of the subject should imply the communality and intersubjectivity characteristic of indirect action, while indicating the mimetic identification of an individual agent with an other. Regardless of whether or not it is a collective action involving multiple subjects simultaneously, indirect action is thoroughly communal, for it illuminates the constant shift of the putative individual subjectivity to its other and shows how impossible is the naive notion of the individualistic self. If an indirect action is the case in which the arbitrariness of the sign is most evidently exemplified, a direct, natural, and spontaneous action, not mediated by disciplinary formalization, should instead affirm the nonarbitrary rapport be¬ tween a designative gesture and its referent. At first sight, this rapport may seem an unquestionable certainty since a body’s movement toward a cup on the table clearly indicates the body’s thirst for water, and the protective gesture one makes when a dangerous object is fast approaching one certainly posits a real object. The realness of this last referent can be measured by the pain one would feel if one failed to protect oneself and the object hit one’s face. One may even say that the direct action never betrays the primordial tie between the body and the performative situation. But can we really ascribe the adjectives “natural” and “direct” to an action? I think that the point elucidated in regard to the Japanese puppet theater applies here too: the direct action is a construct, a social construct, which is constituted by various oppositions and consequently is a form of media¬ tion. What I suggest is that the immediacy of a direct action, with its proclaimed absence of formalization, is in fact a result of complex mediation involving framing and the very differentiation direct/indirect itself. The directness of direct action is conceivable only within a certain social reality, within a certain discur¬ sive formation: the real is always constituted socially and, therefore, is mean¬ ingless outside a given discourse. 29See Watsuji Tetsuro, Omote to perusona, in Watsuji Tetsuor zenshu, vol. 17 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1962). It is worthwhile to note that in Watsuji’s conception of personality and sociality in general, there is little awareness about the otherness that cannot be accommodated in the network of the existing institutions. In this sense, he was apparently insensitive to what Georges Bataille called general economy, as opposed to restricted economy. This insensitivity may characterize much of Watsuji’s philosophical position. For the problem of subjectivity and mask, see Sakabe Megumi, Watsuji Tetsuro, (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1986), pp. 55-94, 264n.

302

Language, Body, and the Immediate

But this difference, this distance one perceives between direct and indirect actions, is the locus where the ideological constitution of the social order was explained in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Scholars insisted that a verbal text could be coordinated and subordinated to a project involving the entirety of the human body in the enunciation. In other words, the enunciation meant this merger, this amalgamation of verbal and corporeal texts. Hence, verbal utterance was seen as a simultaneously linguistic and corporeal act. None¬ theless, when a verbal act was coordinated with corporeal movement, the basic structural differences between the two modes were disclosed. Aside from the fact that a corporeal text is a productivity rather than a signification, the comparison of the two highlights the absence in the corporeal text of unities that would resemble morphological divisions in language. In a corporeal text, it is impossi¬ ble to identify anything comparable to phonemes or morphemes. Whereas vari¬ ous units hold relative autonomy and can be assembled to form an utterance in a verbal expression, any movement, even of a hand, involves the human body as a whole. Even if only a particular part of the body is mobilized, a gesture inevita¬ bly gives an impetus to other part of it and establishes itself as a network of relationships among various agents—face, hands, and so on—of the body. In short, a gesture is inseparable from what is called attitude and cannot be con¬ strued linearly. This is why the text of the body should never be confused with the banal notion of “body language,” in which some message already codified in propositional form in some “inner mind” is expressed through the body to the outside receiver and in which every bodily movement is construed dactylologically. Consequently, the notion of body language cannot take account of the very distinction—without which dactylology would be impossible—between ordi¬ nary gesture and dactylology. Despite all these heterogeneities, eighteenth-century discourse continued to see the verbal text as a derivative of corporeal movement. Indeed, some discur¬ sive apparatuses were fabricated in order to keep this merger of words and body viable. Particularly relevant are the studies of syntax that emerged in that era. As I have noted, grammarians constantly alluded to the attitudinal wholeness char¬ acteristic of a corporeal text. The body metaphor of Fujitani Nariakira is possibly the best example. His morphological classification of the syntactical functions of words was counterbalanced by equating the integrity of an utterance to the integrity of the attitude in a corporeal action. Instead of viewing a verbal ex¬ pression as a sum of autonomous units, he stressed that enunciation as an act partook of the traits of gesture. Similarly, Motoori Norinaga recognized in kakari musubi (conjugational rules of old Japanese) the manifestation of an integrity comparable to the bodily attitude into which a gesture of a part of the body is always coordinated and subordinated. What is at issue here is involvement in and adherence to the performative situation. We are naturally led to question the validity of such an approach, however, since sincere adherence to the performative situation is guaranteed only

The Politics of Choreography

303

for direct, not indirect, actions. Moreover, we should recall that the social order and languages applauded by eighteenth-century writers belonged to the past or foreign sources or both. At least as long as students had not acquired fluency or familiarized the institutions of antiquity within their bodies, they had to mimic the set forms of behavior and utterance, and as a consequence, their actions were indirect rather than direct. In the course of the discipline necessary for the acquisition of an ancient language or institution within the body, one had to imitate the rules of its inner organization while ignoring the actual situation. As long as the ideal order that students would supposedly have assimilated at the end of the discipline had not penetrated and accumulated in their own bodies, imme¬ diacy and transparency could not exist. The actions of the students, that is to say, would have remained indirect and detached from the situation. Nevertheless, this is exactly why grammarians argued for the validity of their pedagogic projects. They assumed that neither the ancient language nor institu¬ tions would be felt to be estranged or distanced from the body once they were acquired experientially to perfection. Then the very differentiation between di¬ rect and indirect action would be overcome and eliminated. As Bergson recog¬ nized, a habit completely internalized and familiarized cannot be distinguished from an innate faculty; an imagined object and a reality that an indirect action posits would then be indiscernible from the objective and natural world, which may appear external. When one is entirely in the interior, one acts, sees, talks, and hears just as a member of that interior should. Under this condition reality would manifest itself according to the institutional regularities from which the interior is construed as mono. But this scenario is feasible only if it is possible to master, familiarize, and internalize institutions or ideology to perfection. In other words, it is possible only on the assumption that one could eventually be completely and exhaustively at home in those institutions, including language. Let me repeat, such a scenario is feasible if and only if one could be purely and perfectly “native” to ones native language. Today, many believe that the distinction between direct and indirect actions, between spontaneous, natural behavior and formalized, ritualized behavior, is a real one. It is assumed that one can in fact tell a rite from ordinary behavior, and the assumption is rarely questioned. In eighteenth-century discourse, however, this distinction was rigorously examined. I believe this is the main reason why language was the focus of constant debate, for language is a formal and ritualized action par excellence. To speak is to adhere to formal rules that one can never change voluntarily; to speak is to erase one’s putative individuality in the face of these anonymous regularities; to speak is to cease to be oneself, to lose one’s identity. It is no surprise that the acquisition of a language carried such weight in disciplinary programs of the eighteenth century. Thus, language duly emerged as the central object of discourse around which the issue of the ideological constitution of social reality was articulated. As should be obvious by now, what are referred to by the terms “ideology” and

304

Language, Body, and the Immediate

“institution” include what are normally excluded from the categories of the political institution and of the system of values legitimating polity; that is, they encompass the predominant structure of perception in a given collectivity, habit formation, and language. The discovery of history, as Ogyu, Kamo, Motoori, and others showed in the discourse on language, was also a testimony to the discovery—or, more accurately, rediscovery—of the ideological quality of cul¬ tural institutions and the mode of perception. Extending this argument to its inevitable conclusion, I can postulate that every action is ultimately indirect since there cannot be an action not mediated by social formation. This is to say that a purely direct action is impossible, just as the individual self of modem indi¬ vidualism is a fancy. Likewise, without exception, the perception of reality includes imaginary factors.30 This is to say, every action and every perception is always subject to ideology. Hence, naturalness, spontaneity, and immediacy are in fact subordinated to ideological mediation just as language is, although it appears transparent and invisible to a speaker who is supposed to be native. However spontaneous and natural it may look, every action is already a ritual, and consequently the differentiation natural/formal is not real but constituted within a given discursive formation. Just as it is impossible to think of a private language, it is absurd to talk about a purely direct action. It is in this connection that the problem of uta, or song, was posed in a radical way. Song—or, more precisely, singing—represented the border line between verbal and nonverbal texts, on the one hand, and between direct and indirect speech, on the other. As has been explained in regard to Kamo Mabuchi, singing was seen as the most authentic form of utterance in which writing, understood in the sense of the enunciated, was supposed to be totally absent. Kamo projected an image of antiquity in which people communicated with one another in song. In other words, he believed, ordinary utterances and singing were indistinguisha¬ ble in the historical ages before the Japanese knew Chinese civilization and its writing system. Therefore, not only for Kamo but also for other writers of the eighteenth century, singing was immediately the enunciation, perhaps the purest form of it. It is not hard to understand how problematical this conception of song is, for song is a form of utterance accompanied by music, rhythm, and other nonverbal factors that establish it as overtly indirect speech. Moreover, singing always initiates nonverbal corporeal movement and is subordinated to some indirect action. Hence, it is misleading to say that song belongs to the class of verbal texts. Although Kamo claimed it to be the enunciation in its purest form, the subject who sings is detached from the performative situation and forced to act in 30That every perception includes imaginary factors is, of course, nothing new. The notion, to put it in the Kantian vocabulary, that experience would be impossible without imagination has been thor¬ oughly discussed by thinkers in Japan, China, and the West (it goes without saying that “so-called” must be added to all three names of regions). In the eighteenth century, the rediscovery of idea was made in a new way.

The Politics of Choreography

305

an imagined scene. Obviously, the reference to antiquity allowed for the coexis¬ tence of these apparently contradictory propositions; antiquity was defined as a realm in which a formal and ritualized action was, at the same time, both the purest form of enunciation and the verbal text indistinguishably merged into corporeal action. On this ground, Kamo claimed that words were hardly neces¬ sary in antiquity and that life itself was singing, with no room for individual subjectivity or the complete manifestation thereof (these two amount to the same thing). In this regard, antiquity was a utopia where contradictory claims were believed to be copossible. No doubt, the obstacle that continually prevents me from comprehending such a formation of communality as supposedly existed in antiquity is our notion of linguistic communication, not because eighteenth-century Japanese writers did not articulate this sphere well enough but because we tend to superimpose the narrowly determined conception of it onto the texts of Tokugawa Japan. Some may argue that this subconscious projection of our own epistemological limita¬ tion onto the past is inevitably, part and parcel of the hermeneutic circle that allows for the revelation of our historicality and, therefore, a creative rather than a reportive act. Yet, we should also be aware that our conception of communica¬ tion has already been seriously questioned for its heavy debt to humanistic positivism and particularly for its untenable idea of individual consciousness. Given this situation, it is nothing but intellectual conceit to say that our discourse is so determined by humanistic positivism that we cannot escape from it. One of the tasks of this study is to review and problematize the epistemological frame¬ work that sustains the commonsensical claim to universal validity, that is, to historicize our present.

Writing of the Body With the denial of individual subjectivity in the discursive space of the eigh¬ teenth century (individual subjectivity was not unknown then, but it was accused of being a symptom of a rigid, sometimes frigid authoritarian conformism that thought of itself as original) what may appear to be communication should be understood more as communion and compassion. When Kamo and others at¬ tributed the ultimate expression of feeling to song or singing, it is unlikely that they saw in it a cathartic manifestation of individual feeling that otherwise could not find an outlet from the closed inner life of an individual subject. Rather, singing was a form of communion and compassion that cured the individual of “selfish” arrogance. Nor did this absence of the self lead to irresponsibility or a lack of seriousness, as some might expect. On the contrary, sincerity was trans¬ formed and rendered synonymous with this resolution of individual subjectivity into communality. Sincerity, which had once implied the sociality toward the heterogeneous, had been captured within the logic of homosociality.

306

Language, Body, and the Immediate

It is noteworthy that the ideal society, where the verbal act necessarily entailed communion and compassion, could not be envisioned as possible in the midst of the Tokugawa reign. It was a utopia, impossible in the contemporary socio¬ political setting. In contrast to this image of a commune, the current state of affairs was seen as deprived of an atmosphere of intimate communality. Even to Kagawa Kageki, who denounced the idealization of ancient language and institu¬ tions, his contemporary world appeared dispersed, fragmented, and contami¬ nated by writing and by the lack of sincerity. This perception committed him to a pursuit of the sort of singing in which there could be no such lack. Of course, writing had to be excluded from his conception of song. For one thing, writing was understood as the agent that interfered with the adherence of the speaking agent to the given situation; writing was thought to uproot the speaking subject from the situation. If the human body was the mediatory bond between the performative situation and the verbal text, then writing liberated the utterance from the speaker’s body and, therefore, from the performative situa¬ tion. Whereas speech was both a verbal and a nonverbal text, writing did not necessarily give rise to a performance adherent to a given situation. In writing, as Kagawa conceived it, the human body did not mediate. Surely the act of writing itself is a corporeal action, but by definition, it never achieved the integrity of direct action for the body and the situation to be found in speech. Strangely enough, it is in writing that the elimination, the death, of individual spontaneity is most strongly pronounced. I argue that in singing or the corporeal gesture in general, the death of individual is also evident, but in a different sense.31 Whereas in writing the subject’s body is contradictorily absent from the discursively constituted self, the body must be present in a corporeal and spoken text. The gesture or corporeal text takes for its textual materiality the individual itself; it is a writing inscribed on the body by the body: I have my body, and at the same time, I am my body. For this reason, the singular embedded in a corporeal text is thoroughly materialistic (and calligraphic) and is utterly devoid of the individual subject, which is nothing but a discursive positivity. The human body, the ambiguous point of intertextual intersection, was also the locus of singing. Singing, then, was a text simultaneously visual and oral/aural, spatial and temporal, nonlinear and linear. As it affirmed the anonymity and communality of the subject that was constituted discursively, it revealed the presence of the body as that in which the singing was inscribed, or the textual materiality itself; the body and text were made of the same stuff in this case. And what the idealized notion of song aspired to was exactly the kind of integration of various heterogeneous texts for which the human body allowed. Seen from this perspective, the problematic role of song and poetics in the discursive space is even more evident. First, song was a specific genre in which the verbal text was 31Cf. Julia Kristeva, “Gesture is the very example of a ceaseless production of death. In its field, the individual cannot constitute itself—gesture is an impersonal mode since it is a mode of productiv¬ ity without production” (“Le geste, pratique ou communicaton?” p. 99).

The Politics of Choreography

307

taken to be an immediate concretization of feeling. But as we have observed in Motoori’s conception of mono no aware (meaningfulness of mono), feeling thus concretized was not a product or a remnant of some prior psychological occur¬ rence. Song was not a product but a process of production, not an enunciated but an enunciation. Therefore, it was supposed that direct involvement in and imme¬ diate adherence to the performative situation should be guaranteed in it. In this respect, all the traits of direct action were ascribed to it. It was claimed that, just like an exclamation, it did not represent but produced itself as an instance of active enunciation. Also, because it could repeat itself and was not confined to an event that could not be reproduced, it transcended historical time. Similarly, because it could be repeated by other actors, it addressed itself to anonymity and was addressed to a collectivity. Furthermore, it was believed that singing could project an image of a collectivity of sympathy. In this regard, many of the traits of indirect action were to be found within it. What is revealed in this characterization of song is that it marked the am¬ bivalent boundary between verbal and nonverbal texts, direct and indirect actions in the discursive formation. It was the topos of sincerity, a topos in which language and nonlanguage were supposedly synthesized and the primordial an¬ chorage of language in the world was identified. Hence, all the studies of lan¬ guage during the eighteenth century explicitly or implicitly pointed to this pres¬ tigious object of discourse. The question What is language? could not be answered without taking singing into consideration, since the fundamental coor¬ dinate defining the world of language was assumed to be located in this sphere of human activity. It is also for this reason that enunciation was conceptualized in terms of process rather than signification and that social reality was conceived to be an effect of corporeal and textual productivity. Despite its seeming apoliticality and obvious indifference to the contemporary political struggle, poetry or song held the key to debates about the issue of social control and hegemony in institutional reproduction. How the relation between the poetic and the poietic was conceived almost determined the political implications of the debates. Thus, history and poetics were closely intertwined. The ability to repeat itself, as I have elucidated with regard to the Bergsonian concept of memory, was of primary importance in the formation of the sense of history and in concerns about an ideological construction of social reality. Singing was not an event expressed by a singing subject. Through the act of singing, one assimilated oneself to the feeling of sorrow or joy that was the song. When the singer says she is sad or gesticulates sadness during the performance of singing, I would not mistake the feeling thus exposed solely for the singer’s own, partly because in singing the individual agent is absent and the feeling expressed belongs to no specific person but to anybody, including the listener. So it can be said that the feeling in song is contagious. Hence, singing is always an experience of sympathy, an experience in which one can be free from imprisonment in the atomized self. Underlying the discussion of song was an insight, which Ito Jinsai forcefully

308

Language, Body, and the Immediate

noted, that the feeling is not subjective or shukan-teki therefore cannot simply be integrated into and controlled by “consciousness”; it is an insight that the fol¬ lowers of rationalism could not appreciate, for they presumed that the feeling was a subjective phenomenon occurring within the mind and that it had to be ontologically determined as something predestined to be administered and regu¬ lated by the mind. While Ito acknowledged the social, the intervention by the otherness of the Other, in feeling, however, the writers of National Studies associated it with intersubjectivity in the discussion of song. Therefore, through the transference mechanism of intersubjectivity, the feeling in which a singer participated was understood to be both a feeling she rendered her own by assim¬ ilating herself into it and a communal feeling concretized in the song. But this is not the only reason for the absence of the individual agent in singing. The anonymity of feeling in singing is not restricted to here and now and cannot be understood as part of an event that takes place once in chronological time. It does not have a date or a place. Suffice it to say that this is another side of the fact that the feeling cannot be attributed to any specific individual. Given this account of communal feeling concretized in singing, it should be evident that singing does not tolerate such oppositions as performer/spectator, object/subject, and speaker/listener. Both the singing and the hearing of a song indicate an experience whose primary characteristic coincides with participation. This par¬ ticipation is not achieved by one’s conscious effort, however, but by the disci¬ plined and habituated human body that participates in a communal action called song or poetry, even when one’s “mind” refuses to acknowledge it. As an event, history does not repeat itself; yet, as a song and a poem, history continually resurrects itself in one’s body in the midst of the present performance. As Bergson puts it, “It is part of my present, exactly like my habit of walking or of writing; it is lived and acted, rather than represented.”32 It is through this specific determination of song that feeling, which for Ito Jinsai had been a passage to the social, to the otherness of the Other, to the exteriority that could not be exhaustively contained in discourse, was made to conform to a communality that was nothing but a reification of the anonymous collectivity.

The Politics of Choreography It is clear, then, how the issues of history, communality, and the ideological constitution of social reality converge on this topic of poetry. From an extensive discussion of the nature of poetry emerged images of the ideal social order, communal life, and politics. Feeling, intimacy, and immediacy were the ideolog¬ ical instruments by means of which the most effective social control was to be accomplished. Because of the involvement of the body, the affirmative political 32Bergson, Matter and Memory, p. 90.

The Politics of Choreography

309

process that was imagined was neither persuasion nor authoritarian coercion but choreography. In the coordinated movement of various texts, each performer was to be given a specific role—as in a dance team—and was expected to play that role in harmony with the whole. The ideal regularities that in principle kept the dance intact could then serve as a lure for endless, habitual practice and bodily inscription. Although those regularities may appear extrinsic as a still-tobe-attained standard of perfection in one’s memory of language and other institu¬ tions, supposedly, just like one’s mother tongue, they become transparent and effectively indiscernible from one’s innate nature once the internalization into bodily practice, however gradual, has been attained. This is precisely what has been portrayed as a transition from the exterior to the interior. Again, this transition to the interior should never be confused with mere mechanical mastery of a skill or memorization of foreign words. Entering the interior entails the acquisition of an ability to share sympathy, to feel naturally as the others belong¬ ing to it do. At the same time that such an ability, which determines the essence of the interior, resides in the body, the interior should never be felt within one’s body but in one’s rapport with other subjects. Hence, while it is appropriate to say that the interior arrives in you, it is not contradictory to claim that you enter it. Indeed, entry into an interior means a total alteration of the way one perceives the world, that is, a total change of the world. In the imaginary constitution of the interior, the body was thus regarded as an agent that ensured a reciprocity of feeling and institutionalized intimacy with others on the basis of transference. As if counteracting Ito’s comprehension of the body that constantly discloses its materiality and therefore its surplus over what is appropriated into transferential intersubjectivity, a notion of sociality was proposed in terms of transparent communion, the guarantee of intimacy, and the conception of the body as a storehouse of habits. What took place in the discur¬ sive space of the eighteenth century, I think, is a debate concerning the body, a debate between the conceptualization in which the body was, above all, the anchorage of social and cultural institutions in the world and another notion of the body which refused to be conceptualized, pointed to its materiality, and endorsed the body’s otherness, and its heterogeneity to individual subjectivity, consciousness, and intersubjectivity. As an integrated component of an interior rooted in corporeal motor function, language was now given its unity as representative of the interior. The unity of a language, therefore, was fashioned after the sense of interiority. Let us not forget, however, that there was no national, standard language in the eighteenth century. It was almost unanimously upheld that the contemporary world was fragmented and its language disrupted. Thus it was impossible to recognize the integrity of a language suggested by the notion of a unified interior: there was no single Japanese language, only Japanese languages. Even this may be an inade¬ quate description of the situation, for Japaneseness, implying some unity of ethnos, could not be identified without recourse to the conception of some

310

Language, Body, and the Immediate

overarching unity equivalent to the interior. Hence, the unity of a single Japanese language could hardly be founded insofar as it was sought after in the contempo¬ rary world. The only thing to be discovered there was regional diversity, an indefinitely disseminated mixture of various languages. It is in this context that history was solicited. Positing the standard language of antiquity dramatized this diversity by pointing up the absence of intrinsic unity. Because a coherent whole was assumed in the past, the present was analyzed as a lack, a negative that required a fundamental change. Projecting the idealized unity of language onto the ancient world that preceded writing inscribed the Japanese language in eigh¬ teenth-century culture as an absence, a loss. Thus historical time was taken for granted as a distance between the world as it should be and the world as it is, an instance inviting critique. History was constantly summoned to testify to the degraded and decayed reality of contempo¬ rary society. Evidently the sense of history proclaimed by kiyo no gaku, kobunji gaku, and National Studies could not be assimilated into a linear and continuous history based on the seriality of events. While linear history affirmed continuity, it was discontinuity between the present and the past, the other and the identical, that was called out in the studies of ancient languages and institutions. Now, I cannot afford to dismiss what was implied in the assumption impercep¬ tibly introduced by this notion of the interior and the unity of one Japanese language. Through these discursive apparatuses, the unity of ethnos was, possi¬ bly for the first time, constructed and confirmed.33 In Tokugawa Japan too, phonocentrism was essential in forming the ethnocentric closure. As I have demonstrated, the priority of speech was the essential condition without which the other and the exterior, which continually eroded and broke open the pro¬ claimed unity and the closure of an ethnocentric unity of a language, could not be excluded and suppressed. Because language was associated with corporeal be¬ havior and dissociated from its representational function, the unity of the lan¬ guage thus constituted pointed to a realm beyond verbal explanation and persua¬ sion, where language was reduced to a communal silence that continued to be meaningful only by excluding those who did not agree to conceal the social. Thus, the realm identified in terms of this language unity was also a community composed of the accomplices to such a silence. We should remember that the discursive formation of this ethnos was an ideological coercion, if not more oppressive than the ethnocentricity based on garrulous phonocentrism of the West, at least as powerful. That is, the formulation of this language in terms of “communal silence,” rather than “communal speech,” is a way of displacing the contradiction between the nonrepresentational, nonsensory sensation of the inte¬ rior, which such a language is supposed to generate, and the aleatoriness of the 33Cf. Jacques Derrida; for the problematic of history and ethnocentricity in Western metaphysics, see his Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An Introduction, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., and David B. Allison (Boulder, Colo.: Great Eastern, 1978); Speech and Phenomena, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973); and. Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri C. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).

The Politics of Choreography

311

social inherent in the material inscription of institutionalized practices in the body. But it is also necessary to remember that such a unity of ethnic collectivity was not directly linked to the existing social order. The world of Tokugawa Japan was perceived to be devoid of this commuanlity, and the ethnic unity was always projected into the past, into antiquity. In this sense, a certain reification of an anonymous collectivity, which social action establishes, had already taken place, but it was not directly equated to the existing order. This ethnic identity came into being primarily as a loss, as that which had existed a long time ago but was no longer available. Thus, Japanese was bom into eighteenth-century discourse long dead; Japanese was stillborn.

The Stillbirth of Japanese The birth of Japanese as a language as well as an ethnic community of an aesthetic nature was thus prompted by a phonocentric obsession generated in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Both Japanese as a language unity and Japanese as an ethnos were, at the same time, constituted positivities made up of utterances in discourse and constituting positivities regulating the production of utterances. Like all positivities, they served to fashion the social reality while claiming to be embedded in that reality. Hidden or manifest, they were assumed to be already there in the tissue of everyday deeds spontaneously initiated by ordinary people. Now, I do not imply that what positivists vaguely refer to as the Japanese language or culture did not exist prior to the eighteenth century. Indeed, people in the region now called Japan had acted and lived in a medium of languages and cultural institutions from the first human habitation of the land. But to claim that these inhabitants were Japanese speaking one language and sharing one culture necessitated an unprecedented organization of discourse in which various differentiations, which otherwise would have formed a field of differences, converged to constitute an ethnocentric closure.34 It should be noted 34As some readers are aware, the term “ethnocentricity” is usually used in an opposite sense to mine in this paragraph. Ethnocentricity is a discursive formation in which the claim of the univer¬ sality of some terms implicitly privileges the identity of a certain ethnic group and asserts its superiority over others while insisting on the indiscriminate openness of those terms. Hence, two opposing tendencies of ethnic selflessness (declared claim) and self-centeredness (displaced impetus) are accommodated in the double structure characteristic of ethnocentricity. In this regard, the discur¬ sive formation of Tokugawa Japan may not appear ethnocentric inasmuch as it lacks the aspect of declared ethnic selflessness: it does not pretend to be open. As I shall argue, however, the discursive formation of Tokugawa Japan easily forms a supplementary rapport with the authentically ethno¬ centric discourse. The National Studies documents of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen¬ turies, in addition to the books by Yamazaki Ansai in the seventeenth century, amply show that such a formation of particularistic and immature ethnocentricity could turn into universalistic and genuine ethnocentricity or vice versa. There is hardly any difference between them in the degree to which they reinforce ethnocentric closure. Yamazaki Ansai (1619-1682) was a prominent rationalist Confucian and the founder of the Suika Shinto of the early Tokugawa period. His father, an unemployed samurai in Kyoto, sent him to the

312

Language, Body, and the Immediate

that these unities meant much more than the mere sum of languages and institu¬ tions to be found in the region during the eighteenth century. If the term “Japa¬ nese” was a proper name for the languages in use there, it would have encom¬ passed even those tongues used by the Chinese, Koreans, and Ainu. Conversely, of course, many “Japanese” could not make themselves understood to other “Japanese.” As long as one pursues a rigorous unity of language, one will only prove the impossibility of defining a language and its boundary empirically. As a matter of fact, the unity of a language is one of the conditions of possibility on which empirical evidence can be constructed. In other words, it precedes em¬ pirical positivity, so that neither its presence nor its absence can be proven factually. The unity of a language cannot be given in experience: its unity cannot be an object of empirical science. Here, positivism is utterly hopeless precisely because it does not know its historicity and theoretical limitations. That is, it should be equally possible to envisage a discursive space where the unities of ethnos and language are not constituted or are viewed as historically arbitrary. What was alluded to by the eruption of the enunciation into the discursive space was this transformation, as a result of which the unities of a language and an ethnos were brought about. It is not that the emergence of the enunciation caused them to appear, but that the emergence of the enunciation was the condi¬ tion allowing for these unities. 1 have frequently stressed the discursive nature of the enunciation, namely, that the enunciation cannot be taken as a real being; it is an imaginary construct, an originary repetition, although it is posited as a real event. Hence, in the discursive space in question, it points to an event of the production of utterance, but it is posterior to the enunciated. Just as so-called extratextual reality is always an effect of the text—the text being anterior to the extratextual reality—the enunciation may be considered to be a product of the enunciated. Thus, whereas the enunciation is conventionally defined as the pro¬ duction and the enunciated is equated to a product, I must note that raising the issue of the production of the originary repetition puts this convention into question. The primacy of speech which we witnessed in the discursive space is, of course, closely related to this issue, but it was necessary in order to avoid the disclosure of the entire problematic. Above all, the notion of speech based on the opposition enunciation/enunciated supposedly enabled one to experience the

Enryakuji temple to become a Buddhist priest; later he served at a temple in Tosa province (now in Kochi prefecture) where Song rationalism had flourished. At the age of twenty-three, Yamazaki decided to abandon Buddism and to devote himself entirely to the philosophy of Zhu Xi. Returning to Kyoto, he wrote and lectured on Zhu Xi’s philosophy for the rest of his life. His Kimon school attracted many talented students, including Asami Keisai (1652-1711) and Miyake Shosai (16621741). Yamazaki’s understanding of Zhu Xi’s philosophy tended to emphasize rigorous moralism and the virtue of loyalty to one’s lord. He especially valued and acknowledged his indebtedness to a Korean Confucian, Yi T’oegye (1501-70). His major works include Kekii (Refutations of heresies), Bunkai histsuroku (Reading notes), and Suika bunshu (Collected essays on Suika).

The Politics of Choreography

313

utterance at the very moment of its birth. This notion stipulated the original scene where the addresser, the addressee, and things surrounding the act of utterance were all present, as I have detected in Benveniste’s notion of the instance of discourse. Yet such a vision is possible only in retrospect. All one could possibly say about the original scene is that all these items must have been simultaneously present there. What is decisive about the enunciation is that it cannot be thought or experienced. It is just like the primordiality of perception in phenomenology. To think or experience it is to grasp it as the enunciated, and the original scene one might posit is necessarily absent, lost, and bypassed. From the outset, it is only in its repetition that it is thought or experienced. In this sense, the text always belongs to the past. Accordingly, the absence of the addresser, the ad¬ dressee, and the things that must have animated the production of the enunciated is in fact the condition for the possibility of the text. Since the original scene is necessarily absent, one cannot think of any text that belongs to the present. The notion of its belonging to the present is altogether absurd. Therefore, even during the eighteenth century, the text was given the determination of a lost voice. But what was neglected then is that this determination applies to every text, not only to the ancient documents. Furthermore, eighteenth-century discourse ignored the contradiction this determination already indicated, the contradiction inherent in the intellectual commitment to the resurrection of the originary voice, which demanded the primacy of speech and at the same time negated every possibility of resurrecting the original scene. The point is that even if a lost voice could be returned to its originary plenitude, the voice thus recovered would still be a repetition of a past event. And insofar as it is a repetition, it would constitute a different enunciation; a repetition of the past enunciation can point to its original, but it can do so only by supplementing all those items that were supposed to be present in the original scene but are absent at the scene of the repeated enuncia¬ tion. But their presence, if it could ever be repeated, would be a representation. If a lost voice should be recovered, the voice thus recovered could coincide with itself in the very essence of its repeatability. I have already argued this thesis with regard to the anteriority of writing in Motoori Norinaga’s reading of the Kojiki. What I disclosed then was the political implication of his reading. Now I should pursue this fundamental contradiction without which discourse could not have been generated. It is evident not only that a lost voice can be resurrected only as a representation but also that the notion of enunciation itself is impossible as long as we understand it as an object of thought. Suppose there is a document; it seems obvious that in order for it to exist it must have been produced at some moment prior to this moment. Likewise, an utterance exists as an enunciated in the present in one form or another—in the form of the transcribed voice, for instance—so that it must have been produced and recorded at some time prior to this. Then one would conclude that a product presupposes the production anterior to it and that an enunciated similarly presup¬ poses the enunciation; one would be forced to postulate that because the utter-

314

Language, Body, and the Immediate

ance as an enunciated is here and now, there must have been textual production and the enunciation whose only trace is the text, narrowly comprehended as a book, document, or monument. It goes without saying that the text can be equated to a book, document, or monument only metonymically and in some very rare contexts and that the term “text” must be kept distinct from the terms “book,” “discourse,” and “work” by every means possible in order for the textuality of the text to be preserved. The simplistic positing of the temporal sequence enunciation-enunciated or production-product confuses the very notion of the text. It ignores the truism that it is impossible to postulate the signification of an utterance in the physical presence of a book, document, or monument, like a spirit inhabiting a physical body, that the reading of the text is always an enunciation and the text is not an entity like a book, whose unity is given by the physical contour of the object, but inclusive of various relationships between that materiality I called textual materiality and various items such as the addresser, the addressee, and subjects of many different kinds—speaking, reading, and so on. When it is not read or heard, a book is merely bound paper. The notion of the book is ignorant of this internal articulation of textuality. On the one hand, the book is defined as a physical entity whose unity is given as the contour of piled paper or some equivalent things, and on the other hand, the book is defined as the identity of its message. In the notion of the book, these two definitions coexist as if they were synthesized. It is obvious that the signification or the message cannot be extracted from the qualities of bound paper. The determination of the book as a physical entity does not tell anything about its socalled content. In order to recognize some message in the marks inscribed on that physical entity, one must read it, and in that reading, the content of the book is constituted as being already there, that is, as being atemporal and independent of the vicissitude of the individual reading act. As a matter of fact, the second definition of the book betrays the first one, so that the coexistence of the two is a mystery or superstition. When one takes into account the constitution of content, the notion of the book is no longer of any help; we require the notion of the text, which encompasses the subject and the act of the reading. It is not that in reading the “I” faces the text as though the “I” has stood outside the text but rather that in reading the “I” is constituted in the text just as the book, as the identity of message, is constituted in the text. It is around the problematic of the difference between the text and the book that the enunciation, as I have observed it, was assigned an important role in the organization of discourse in the eighteenth century. It was equated to an utterance enacted in the performative situation, where the speaking subject was plunged into an active communion with things and others; it was an act of anchoring words in the world.35 Nevertheless, as Jacques Derrida has elaborated, “the possibility of repeating, 35The reader might note certain similarities between the enunciation and Austin’s speech acts. See J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). See also John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

The Politics of Choreography

315

and therefore of identifying marks is implied in every code, making of it a communicable, transmittable, decipherable grid that is iter able for a third party, and thus for any possible user in general.”36 Suffice it to say that Derrida’s explication can and, in fact, did extend to the addresser, or the speaking subject, and to the performative situation: that an enunciation is repeatable is a rupture between the enunciated and the horizon of the enunciation. That is to say, if the enunciation is repeatable, it is no longer an enunciation; only as an enunciated can it repeat itself. Derrida writes, “The subtraction of all writing from the semantic or the hermeneutic horizon which, at least as a horizon of meaning, lets itself be punctured by writing” and “the disqualification or the limit of the concept of the ‘real’ or ‘linguistic’ context, whose theoretical determination or empirical saturation are, strictly speaking, rendered impossible or insufficient by writing.”37 Thus the very possibility of repeating the enunciation, which the writers of the eighteenth century desired so urgently, is denied by the enunciation itself; the possibility of the enunciation is already marked by the impossibility of returning the enunciated to its original scene. Hence, I refuse to see as real what eighteenth-century grammarians claimed to exist in antiquity and what they believed to be the originary voice behind the text, not because these claims are factually incorrect but because their act of claiming already harbored a fundamental contradiction. There is no such thing as a real enunciation or an original utterance. From the outset an utterance is a repetition preceded by no presence. In understanding their discourse I have taken it upon myself, instead, to see how such a conception of the enunciation was generated in that discursive space. That is, I started with the premise that a product pro¬ duces production, that an enunciated produces an enunciation. Enunciation is a reality of an elusive nature, a reality that cannot be arrested in concepts or identities, that betrays itself ceaselessly. It is, in principle, posterior to writing, to the textuality in which the author, the speaker, and the reader can all emerge only as the dead, as the absent. Seen in this light, it is evident why death as loss, so essential in textual production, had to be obsessively denied and renounced in eighteenth-century discourse. What was constantly rejected and excluded was the death inherent in textual formation, where death indicates the possibility of utterance itself. So the dichotomy death/life related itself closely to another predominant opposition, enunciated/enunciation. Writing, ideograph, and nominal were often equated to the symptoms of death, and speech, phoneticism, and nonnominal were associated with the body, with liveliness, move¬ ment, and action. As was illustrated by the analysis of the Japanese puppet theater, however, enunciation as a describable event was constituted in terms of those oppositions themselves and never posited as “real” independent of tex¬ tuality. If it is to be called an event, it certainly belongs to the class of phenomena

36Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chi¬ cago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 315-16. 37Ibid.

316

Language, Body, and the Immediate

registered in the text and not to extratextual reality. Solely on condition that the oppositions death/life, enunciated/enunciation, and writing/speech precede its discursive constitution can an event possibly emerge as such. That is to say, despite the proclaimed renunciation of death, the act of eliminating it always presupposes its positing, without which the entire argument would be mean¬ ingless. The process of erasing it is then never ending, for to erase it is simul¬ taneously to generate it. All these oppositions, far from establishing entities in themselves, continue to activate the play of difference and to be unresolvably tied to differance. As long as the discursive space was dominated by the oppositions I have identified, it was generated and regenerated as a necessary field of dif¬ ferences. By the economy of this discursive formation, the identical or the ethnic identi¬ ty thus composed was constantly exchanged with the other. In due course, the image of the identical, which was constantly appealed to during the eighteenth century, functioned as a discursive apparatus by means of which the identical could be posited as the other. Without the mediation of the other as a specular positing of the self, the unity of an ethnos could never have been thought or projected. But each time the identity of the ethnos was ascertained, it was posited as an other for the self, as other than the self, and as an other distant from the self. To attempt to see the other as identical to the self, that is, to see the identical (to itself), is necessarily to engender the movement of repetition, iterability, because the identical is meaningless without recourse to the process in which it returns to itself. As Derrida notes, “Iter, once again, comes from iter a, other in Sanskrit, and everything that follows may be read as the exploitation of the logic which links repetition to alterity.” Iterability, he continues, “structures the mark of writing itself, and does so moreover for no matter what type of writing [pictographic, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetic, alphabetic, to use the old categories]. A writing that was not structurally legible—iterable—beyond the death of the addressee would not be writing.”38 Derrida’s use of the word “writing,” being beyond the scope determined by the writing/speech dichotomy, reveals the economy of a restricted investment of desire which the primacy of speech in phonocentrism assumed; by the same stroke, it pronounces that it is impossible to maintain the primacy of speech. Instead of warranting the ethnic and the ethnocentric identical in the homoge¬ neous and immediate “presence to itself” of speech, it is revealed that speech itself posits the identical as an other. What was purported to be accomplished in the primacy of speech was to isolate the positive terms of main oppositions and to link them together as if there were a subject to which only these positive terms were attributed. Needless to say, that subject, or shugo, would later be called Japan. In this formation of a discursive positivity called Japan, writing was made responsible for estrangement, delay, the positing of the other, and the hetero38Ibid., p. 315. Brackets are Derrida’s.

The Politics of Choreography

317

geneity caused by historical time, but speech was apprehended as indicating a realm of interiority where immediacy, the identical, homogeneity—all believed to be beyond history—were assumed to exist as attributes of the subject Japan. That the identical had to be constituted discursively, therefore, implies the most typical form of distancing between us and ourselves. This distance is, at the same time, the condition of the possibility for the identical and also what the positing of the identical aims to conceal by every means. Only at the cost of open recognition of this iterability and alterity could ethnocentricity be called forth. It follows that ethnocentricity always necessitates the repression of heterogeneity and alterity on behalf of those who conform to it and intellectual deceit for those who legitimate it.

Death as the Possibility of Language Now I am well placed to retrace the network of concealments and displace¬ ments embedded in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Under the name of immediacy, intimacy, and directness, the possibility of death, which is inherent in every textual production and is perhaps best illustrated by such a statement as “I am telling you a lie,” was disguised, substituted, and finally hidden. The ceaseless pursuit of direct involvement in the total performative situation, despite its proclaimed intent, lent itself to a recognition that what one meant to say and what one had actually said were linked together in the element of a lie. Here, to speak was to tell a lie directly, and the possibilities of language use, the social, and the encounter with the Other (not the other, the symmetrical opposite of the self or intersubjective other, but the Other in its alterity) coin¬ cided. Ultimately, when this fundamental feature of language was rigorously eliminated, one could only resort to silence, which was also the final form of interiorized sincerity, as Kagawa Kageki’s poetics of sincerity informed us. At the extreme limit of what could be called the denial of death in language ap¬ peared the total rejection of language, the death of language in its entirety; the effort to exclude from language the rift between what I meant to say and what I have said ended by murdering language as a whole; the full presence of the enunciation became synonymous with its total absence. I believe that what eighteenth-century theorists perceived to be the fundamen¬ tal disease of the world in fact inhabited their language itself, rather than the external world they so wished to rectify. Thus the eighteenth-century discursive space suffered from its intrinsic tendency toward silence, its overwhelming ob¬ session with immediacy. We should recall, however, that it also encompassed the kind of discourse that problematized its own discursivity and thus pointed to its limits, a discourse in which the issue of textual materiality was addressed in relation to' practical, that is, ethical, problematics. There, the possibility of sociality, defamiliarization, and death in language was affirmed, so that the

318

Language, Body, and the Immediate

otherness of the Other was respected as a resistance to appropriation into dis¬ course, as the unthinkable that could never be exhaustively universalized, as a radical critique of idealist ethics, which was inevitably nonethical in reducing the Other to universals. Hence, such a possibility was diametrically opposed to the poetics of sincerity in that it continually highlighted the iterability according to which the otherness of materiality could never be entirely repressed in repetition. The absence of concern for the original enunciation and of recourse to the past in Ito Jinsai’s treatises is striking when we consider the overwhelming urge to let the enunciated and the enunciation coincide with each other in the poetics of “meaningfulness of mono” and of sincerity. It is not that enunciation was absent there but that the fleeing nature of enunciation and the unbridgeable distance between the enunciated and the enunciation were thoroughly taken into account and brought into a dialogism in which language was freed from the myth of the original enunciation, the myth of immediacy—a dialogism that never attempted to eliminate heterogeneity, polyphony, and above all the otherness of the Other.

Exteriority Surely the attentiveness to the otherness of the Other did not confine itself to the opposition exterior/interior, which played a decisive role in the discursive formation of the interior as an ethnic closure. Being distinct from the exterior, the exteriority to which defamiliarization leads us may be said to be that which disqualifies the very opposition exterior/interior itself, a difference whose func¬ tion it is to posit the opposite terms as real, as independent identities, and which allows us instead to see the opposition as a differance, a site where ethnic or cultural identities can never be completed. Without using this term “exteriority” to disclose the network of concealment and displacement, this differance may easily be reconciled with the logic of cultural identity; it may merely be made to denote the distinction between the two possible rapports a subject can have with a given cultural, linguistic, or other institutional reality; it may be accommodated in an alternative by which one either belongs to a given community or not, without disclosing the perversion of posing such a choice. As I have endeavored to show, this opposition exterior/interior is not an extratextual occurrence but takes place in the midst of discursive formation. It goes without saying that exteriority cannot be understood either within this opposition or as a geograph¬ ical outside of Japanese territory. Finally I have arrived at the cognizance that the exteriority I talked about in the Introduction is, after all, not so remote from Ito Jinsai’s concept of ai. Exteri¬ ority, or dehors, ensures the possibility of a certain kind of history writing in which we are to refuse to see the past as our past and so integrate it into our present. It serves neither as a real cultural position (because the unity of culture can be posited only discursively) nor as an inevitably consequence of the estab-

The Politics of Choreography

319

lishment of national consciousness but rather as a specific perspective from which texts are seen, read, written, and produced. Exteriority thereby enables us to cease to be accomplices in the kind of history whose main task is to legitimate whatever discursive system may be imposed upon us, and to conceal its intrinsic contradiction. In eighteenth-century discourse, the risk of falling into the dimension of interiority depicted in terms of consciousness is not as grave as it is today because of the constant resistance of texts to the imposition of the epistemological frame¬ work of which consciousness is constructed, and also because of the philosoph¬ ical argument that criticizes the concept of the “mind.”39 On the other hand, inferiority as a cultural and ethnocentric closure presents a continual threat to my approach. I have read texts of the period in question with a view to depicting the historical a priori conditions for the emergence of the interior as such. Time and time again, I had to caution that the interior must not be granted the status of the ahistorical essence. All these efforts amount to my strategic focus on the dimension of the text, which is anterior to the formation of the interior. The locus of textuality to which my reading leads is to be found in the exterior of the discursive space, where the opposition interior/exterior is perceived as real. Instead of yielding to a her¬ meneutical temptation to involve myself in a lived experience, instead of fan¬ tasizing my speech as already anchored in some horizon of a life world, I have at least attempted to base my analysis on discursive formation. That is to say, I have been seeking a position outside of ethnocentric closure, a position of impos¬ sibility from which the constitution of ethnos can be critically construed. 39The mind, xin, cannot be directly equated to “consciousness,” of course. As I have tried to illustrate, however, in certain contexts these two appear very similar. If we construe consciousness as a field of language that is misrecognized as unique to the individual subject, Tokugawa discourse is not so different from ours. Many attempts have been made to discover modem man as subjective interiority in Tokugawa intellectual discourse. Cf. Bito Masahide, Nihon hoken shiso-shi kenkyu (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1961).

Conclusion

National Language and Subjectivity In the beginning of this book, I posed several questions: What is language? What is nonlanguage? What is the “I”? What is meant by belonging to a language? and What is meant by a language’s belonging to “me”? I ventured to implicate “what,” or quiddity, in these questions as if I expected the definitive and defini¬ tional (or essential) answers to them. Yet, throughout my discussion of these questions, I have tried my best not to lose sight of the issues that positing of these questions might enable me to talk about. The first issue is the ambiguous bound¬ ary between a national, ethnic, or regional language and language in general. The second issue is concerned with the use of “I” or its equivalent in language in relation to various determinations of subject: shugo, shukan, shudai, shutai, and so on. In dealing with the first issue, I have forced myself to adhere to a principle: instead of asking how a pure, archaic, and original language was divided, contaminated, and eroded in chronological time, I have always asked how the idea of a pure and internally coherent language was generated out of hybrid languages. That is, I have consistently let my argument be regulated by the idea that language is invariably hybrid. Eighteenth-century discourse, as I have read it, posed this problem most succinctly. The unity of Japanese language was undoubtedly an invention that was called forth in order to render the encounter of differences thinkable and commensurable in discourse; it was a scheme by which what one could not accommodate within the existing discourse, such as the Kojiki, was appropriated into that discourse as an identifiable other to the consentaneous apprehension of “us.” This discursive invention can be said to have facilitated a passage to the understanding of the incommensurable as such, to the determination of the unthinkable as unthinkable. It successfully disclosed the site of what had been silenced and linked it to different regimes. Sophistic though it may seem, it 320

Conclusion

321

opened up a process in which what one encountered but could not think or understand was determined, defined, thought of, and apprehended as unthinka¬ ble. The incommensurable was identified as such and thereby rendered commen¬ surate in speculation. Here an example of a foreign language might help. For the sake of argument, let a foreign language be what we cannot understand at all, that is, take a foreign language in its most radical foreignness. When we come across a foreign lan¬ guage for the first time, we recognize this encounter with otherness in the fact that we do not understand it. We do not understand it not only in the sense that we cannot grasp signification articulated in that medium but also in the sense that we cannot discern even the difference between language and nonlanguage in that medium. The pitch, which does not play any role in “our” language, might play a decisive role in that foreign language, or some categories such as dual in number or neuter in gender might be essential in it. But the whole point about foreign language is that we do not know it, and so we cannot be attentive to these unfamiliar features. In principle, that language is foreign or alien to us not because we can identify it as a language different from ours but because we simply cannot identify it at all. By the same token, we cannot know how far our language goes, where the language we understand ceases to be intelligible. Supposedly there are many dialects in “our” language, but, as a matter of fact, there is no way to tell at what point some dialects cease to be in “our” language and begin to belong to some other language. We cannot tell where “our” lan¬ guage ends and another language begins. Perhaps, I should dwell on Wittgenstein’s well-known argument involving the field of sight and the limit of my world, to illuminate what is at stake in determin¬ ing the unthinkable as the unthinkable. Allow me to maintain a certain reserva¬ tion as to Wittgenstein’s uses of the words “language” and “logic” here in reproducing these propositions: 5.6 The limit of my language means the limit of my world. 5.6.1 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. We cannot therefore say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is not. For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world: that is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also. What we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what we cannot think. . . . 5.632 The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world. 5.633 Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted? You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But

322

Language, Body, and the Immediate

you do not really see the eye. And from nothing in the field of sight can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye.1

In its otherness, we cannot oppose a foreign language to “our” language, nor can we identify the unthinkable as opposed to the thinkable. Yet we think we know that there are many languages we do not understand. That we think so shows precisely that what we understand by foreign languages are objects imag¬ ined in discourse: what we do not understand or experience is identified in terms of the objects constituted in discourse. Therefore, it is impossible for us to experience foreign languages in their foreignness. They are imaginary, but not illusionary, for there are certain protocols by which to demonstrate the nonexis¬ tence of the referent in the case of an illusionary object, but one cannot show that the imaginary object does not exist. Precisely because we cannot identify it, the language is radically foreign. But in order to show that a referent does not exist, one must first show the connection between the name of a foreign language and its referent. Yet it is this ability of ascribing a name of language to the activity of that language that we do not possess. But we believe in imaginary objects that we can neither understand or experience, and they are part and parcel of the social reality in which we live. What the invention of the Japanese language amounts to is, first, a distinction drawn between the thinkable and the unthinkable, as if our understanding could consider this distinction “from the other side,” as if there were some transcen¬ dent viewpoint from which the incommensurability of the unthinkable could be thought; and second, an explanation that because the limits of a language (in this case the Japanese language) inhere in “our” thinking, we cannot think what falls outside that language unity. Let me note that this is where the first important displacement from language in general to a particular language occurs. And in this constitution of Japanese language, a dual operation proceeds. On the one hand, it is claimed that our thinking is predetermined by our belonging to a national language; on the other, it is assumed that some cultural or linguistic subjectivity that enables us to think and perceive in certain ways can be seen, objectified, and posited as an identity, just as if we could see our own eye. And Wittgenstein certainly did not use the word “language” in the sense of a national language. Thus, the invention of the Japanese language as an ethnic closure requires the simultaneous positing of two subjectivities that are distinct from each other. One might call one of these transcendental and the other empirical: transcendental subjectivity ensures that the unthinkable is intelligible as that which lies beyond the limit, and empirical subjectivity ascertains that the unthinkable is literally unintelligible. Thus, a nonspeaker of that language might assume a transcenden¬ tal subjectivity in relation to an empirical subjectivity that is occupied by the

‘Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1922), pp. 148-51.

Conclusion

323

speaker of that language. But it is immediately obvious that the same argument applies to the language of the transcendental position, so that what may appear to be the predetermined limits of the object language should not be distinguishable from the reflections of the language of the transcendental observer, which must equally be predetermined. Here a typical case of linguistic and cultural solipsism ensues. Now I must ask what constitutes the unity of the Japanese language, or kokugo (10-1). To respond to this question without falling into a series of tautologies is not as easy as it might seem. Knowing that this question has frequently been confronted by Japanese linguists and philosophers, I should first follow the itinerary of an argument by Tokieda Motoki about the unity of the Japanese language, for Tokieda’s argument is exemplary in its attentiveness to the specif¬ icities of a putative Japanese language and also fairly revealing about the pitfalls in the notions of language and subjectivity. What is generally called Tokieda kokugogaku (10-2), or Tokieda linguistics, assigns an essential role to the concept of kokugo. In defining the task of linguistics as knowing about the essence of language, Tokieda proposed a lin¬ guistic study in which the existing general view of language is constantly put in question through the study of a particular language. He extended this view of linguistics to the relationship between the philosophy of language, which sup¬ posedly deals with language in general, and linguistics, which cannot avoid empirical research on particular languages. Instead of discarding the philosophy of language, he insisted that the study of a particular language is to be conceived of as an opportunity to doubt and challenge the predominant view of the essence of language in general. Implied was an obvious critique of nineteenth-century European linguistics, which he thought naively presumed the universal essence of language to be found in the familiarized conception of modem European languages. In addition, Tokieda outlined in theoretical terms a search for a study of language that is not ethnocentric, a study in which the relationship between the pursuit of the understanding of language in general and the investigation of a particular language is thought differently. Accordingly, he insisted that the phi¬ losophy of language, which supposedly deals with language in its universal features, ignoring specific differences inherent in the images of language that different communities and social groups possess, ought to be constantly ques¬ tioned by those who directly investigate particular languages. In this sense, he argued that every linguist must also be a philosopher of language and should always examine and reevaluate the view of the essence of language (gengo honshitsu-kan), which operates as a framework for the description of empirical data about a language. Thus, the linguist was required to be attentive not only to the objectivity of the empirical and objective data generated about linguistic phenomena but also to what today one might call an episteme of linguistics—the very condition of the possibility for linguistic knowledge—with which knowl¬ edge about language(s) is posited as a set of positivities. Following his argument, one would necessarily be urged to question the very

324

Language, Body, and the Immediate

opposition between the essence of language, which is inevitably articulated in universal terms, and the particularity of a particular language, kokugo,2 or one’s own national language, Japanese in his case—an opposition on which he based a different conception of linguistics. What was at issue in his discussion about the significance of kokugogaku was in fact how the agent of study or one who studies (subject in the sense of shukan) is related to the theme of his study (subject in the sense of shudai). Tokieda’s concept of kokugo, or a particular language, seems virtually empty outside the context of those problematics concerning the rela¬ tionship between one who studies language and the language itself in the forma¬ tion of linguistic knowledge in the discipline of linguistics. For Tokieda, language consists of the concrete acts of talking, reading, listen¬ ing, and writing, and it cannot be apprehended at all outside those activities. This view means that language is this kind of subjective, or shutai-teki, activities and that the factual and concrete object of language study is this shutai-teki activity itself. Yet in everyday life one does not adopt an attitude in which one takes language as an object of study. When language exists, the “I” is engaged in the linguistic acts and does not take an observational stance (kansatsu-teki tachiba) toward it. In a manner that suggests his debt to phenomenology and her¬ meneutics, Tokieda postulated the distinction between the shutai-teki stance and the observational stance and emphasized the theoretical anteriority of the former. Because language only exists in shutai-teki activities, toward which a participant primordially takes a shutai-teki stance, the observational stance has to be the¬ oretically posterior to the shutai-teki stance. In other words, shutai must be anterior to shukan, or the epistemological subject who posits language as an object of its theoretical gaze. Above all, language is given to us only insofar as I speak, listen, write, or read as an active or actional (koi-teki, 10-3) shutai, or a shutai in action. Hence, Tokieda writes: If language as it is conceived as an object [speculated on] in an observational stance is taken to be something substantial whose existence is external to and severed from shutai-teki koh’i [10-4], or the subjective action between the “I” and the other, and if language [as an independent entity] is put in contact with the shutai only when the shutai uses the language, there should then be no room for shutai-teki consciousness in the observation of language(s).3 2Literally translated, kokugo, which consists of two characters koku or kuni (country, state, nation, etc.) and go (language, word, speech, etc.) is a country’s language or national language. Koku or kuni in modem Japan invariably means the modem state or nation-state. Compare these with okuni-kotoba (Ogyu’s rigen) a country or village dialect where kuni never coincided with the modem state. It is noteworthy that in this compound kokugo, koku or kuni is used without modifier; hence it simply means the country or the nation. The compound kokugo implicitly determines the relationship between the addresser and the addressee, for it would in principle designate a different national language if it were uttered between the addresser and addressee of a different nationality, just as a similar shifting function (typical of the shifter “we”) is indicated by some personal pronouns in European languages. Furthermore, this word cannot be used if the addresser and the addressee belong to two different nations. Thus, a linguistic community is self-reflexively marked through the use of this word. 3Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogaku genron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1941), p. 27.

Conclusion

325

The insistence on the connection between shutai-teki action and language was essential in the context of the academic debate in which Tokieda participated, arguing against Saussurian linguistics, which was fast gaining prominence in the linguists’ community of Japan during the 1920s and early 1930s. His critique was directed against the Saussurian concept of langue or, more specifically from the present-day perspective, against a certain naive reading of Saussurian langue in which synchrony collapsed in upon simultaneity.4 Tokieda warned against imme¬ diately equating the unity of a language, which tends to be conceived of im¬ plicitly as a substance, to a langue, which is assumed to be a closed systematicity consisting of rules and regularities not contradicting one another. Nevertheless, Tokieda still referred to the term langue in order to elucidate his conception of kokugo, or a particular language. In this strategy to modify and reuse the Saussurian term, I cannot overlook problems that arose because he too failed to distinguish synchrony from simultaneity. It seems that his critique of the substantialized notion of language did not explicitly illustrate how the substantialization of language is complicit with the essentialization of culture, nation, and other positivities. In defining kokugo, Tokieda claimed that the Japanese language is neither a language used by the Japanese people as a nation (minzoku, 10-5) or a speech community nor a language instituted by the nation-state of Japan. As a matter of fact, he argued, the Japanese language as the object of his linguistic study must necessarily include the Japanese used by those who do not belong to the Japanese nation and by those who are outside the territories under the jurisdiction of the Japanese state.5 Therefore, as far as kokugogaku is concerned, the identity of the Japanese language can by no means be given as the identity of the nation or as the identity instituted by the state or as the unity of Japanese territory. Ethnic and national identity is irrelevant; so it must include the languages spoken by nonJapanese as well. Instead of defining the Japanese language in terms of referents external to the language itself, Tokieda proposed another definition: “Kokugo, or the Japanese language, is a collective name for all those languages which share the characteristic of Japanese language [nihongo-teki seikaku, 10-6].”6 As he noted himself, this definition is openly circular, for what characterizes the Japa¬ nese language as such can be disclosed and known only at the end of language research. If it is known at the outset, one may argue, there would be no need for the linguist to undertake lengthy study to identify it. Here, Tokieda stressed the necessity of this circularity—a version of the hermeneutic circle—which he claimed was inherent in any object particular to cultural science. This is to say that the characteristic of Japanese language is not only that which identifies the object proper to kokugogaku but also the objective for it, an objective that directs 4See note 18, Chapter 7, (p. 233). 5With regard to the historical significance of linguistic knowledge, I do not maintain that Tokieda linguistics was less political because of its openness to foreigners. Depending on the historical situation, openness of this sort could result in a variety of different and sometimes opposite political effects. 6Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogakushi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1940), p. 4.

326

Language, Body, and the Immediate

and motivates language study toward its putative goal. The unity of Japanese language is a regulative Idea and, in that sense, the Japanese language as a unity of systematicity does not exist, for this unity must continually be produced in imagination through linguistic inquiries. The study of a language is concerned with poiesis, with the performative rather than with the constative in spite of, or perhaps I should say because of, its scientific outlook. And it is obvious that what makes the study of a particular language possible is this distance between the language as it is lived and comprehended and the language as it is identified, objectified. Therefore, the study of language is an instrument by which to invent the communal self. Needless to say, this was best illuminated by eighteenthcentury studies of ancient Chinese and Japanese languages which invented the other with whom one was to identify mimetically in order to install the identity of the communal self. A cursory review of Tokieda’s definition of the Japanese language brings me back to the opposition he first erected between the shutai-teki stance and the observational stance. The characteristic of Japanese language will be identified as the ultimate objective of language study, but to identify it requires an observa¬ tional stance in which language is observed, analyzed, and known as an object, rather than lived as a shutai-teki activity. Although Tokieda is not explicit about this point, his construct seems to suggest that the subject in the sense of shutai must be clearly and definitely distinguished from the subject who knows or the shukan who posits language as an object of knowing; in fact, the shutai who participates in and lives a language should not know that language in the sense that the shukan knows it. Here, the status of the Japanese language is extremely ambivalent. Above all, it is comprehended in the shutai-teki activity from the outset, and without this comprehension one could not even begin to identify it as a particular language. Yet it is not known or given in experience in the Kantian sense but should rather be posited as an objective or something like an “idea,” which, by definition, should be absent in experience. The Japanese language is not a being that con¬ forms to the conditions of possibility for experience; it is just like the “I” as the thing in itself which does not conform to the conditions of possibility for experi¬ ence.7 Just as the “I” cannot be experienced, the unity of the Japanese language cannot be experienced either. In the final analysis, the unity of the Japanese language is a matter of metaphysics.

Propriety in Language But some might as well argue that the absence of the unity of the Japanese language in experience can be shown only insofar as it is related to the discussion of auto-affection or self-referentiality. Already here, I am discussing the second 7Here I use the term “experience” primarily in the Kantian sense: Erfahrung.

Conclusion

327

issue, concerning the status of the “I,” for it seems quite possible to draw a parallel between the procedure used to identify the “I” and another used to identify one’s own language. It is not in Benveniste’s sense of the subject’s always being constituted in language but rather in the sense of the identification of a language that I think the problems of language and subjectivity meet. If language cannot be experienced as an identifiable langue, how can one talk about one’s native language as such? I must first state that the discussion of auto¬ affection and self-referentiality is necessarily preceded by the identification of a language, since the “auto” and “self” in these terms would be meaningless unless a language were identified. In order to elucidate the process of identifica¬ tion, let me return to Tokieda Motoki’s box-in-box formula, which captures the problem of shutai and self-referentiality very succinctly despite its many the¬ oretical defects. Following the insight of Tokugawa linguistics, Tokieda construed the forma¬ tion of an utterance as the combination of shi and ji. I equate shi and ji to the theme-subject (shudai) and predicate. Unlike the conventional formula of the subject-copula-predicate, Tokieda sought the synthetic unity of the utterance in the enclosure of the theme-subject within the predicate at the moment when the content or contained (shi) was contained in the container (ji). In relation to this formula, he explains his use of the term “shutai” which is considerably different from mine: Frequently the nominative case [shukaku, 10-7] in grammar is regarded as the shutai of language, but the nominative is [identified as such] in terms of logical relations among themes [sozai, 10-8] expressed [hyogensareta, 10-9] in language and entirely different from the shutai as the agent of the action of language. . . . ... the grammatical first person is sometimes taken to be the shutai. True, the “I” who reads is identical to the agent of reading action in the expression “I read.” So one might infer that this first person designates [arawashiteiru] the shutai of language. Careful consideration shows, however, that the “I” is neither the shutai nor the direct expression by the shutai itself, because that which has been objectified and thematized [just like the “I”] is always posited externally to the shutai [by virtue of the fact that it has been objectified and thematized]. . . . The difference between [the “I” and the cat in the expression “A cat eats a mouse”] consists in the fact that whereas the “I” is an objectification of the shutai, the cat is a thematization of the third person. ... the first person, just like the second and the third persons, is a category pertaining to themes. . . . . . . the shutai of language never expresses itself at the same level, or in the same capacity, as the theme of expression. To compare this to the case of painting, the self-portrait of a painter is not the shutai of the painter but her objectification and thematization. The shutai of [the entire production of] the painting is the painter herself; the “I” in “I read” is not directly the shutai but its objectification; the shutai is the one that expresses the whole expression “I read.” The shutai does not express itself by the word [alone] but by the entire sentence “I read.”8 8Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogaku genron, p. 41-43.

328

Language, Body, and the Immediate

The shutai must be deliberately distinguished from the nominative on the grounds that the nominative is a theme-subject, which could only be an objec¬ tification of the shutai. I understand Tokieda to say that the shutai expresses itself by creating an utterance within which the shutai is thematized as one of the components of the utterance. In addition to Tokieda’s rather arbitrary usage of the term expression, one cannot help but notice some theoretical problems in this explication of the subject ot the enunciation. Does the objectification or thematization of the shutai imply that some entity so called is externalized or alienated into an object or a theme? What does Tokieda mean by “the speaker himself” to whom he compares “the painter herself.”? It seems obvious to me that he presupposes the presence of the subject of the enunciation and that he demonstrates the irreducibility of the subject of the enunciation to the themesubject. And ultimately he is forced to postulate a moment called bamen (original situation, 10-10), somewhat similar to Benveniste’s instance of discourse, in which the shutai is primordially identical to the subject of the enunciation and is internally present to both the act of utterance and the addressee.9 In reference to the bamen, Tokieda seems to believe it possible to identify the speaker herself. In his schematization of this concept, however, he neglects to mention that a view¬ point away from the position marked as the shutai is essential to comprehend the original situation of the shutai; the representation of the shutai as such requires a viewpoint other than the shutai’s. Thus, Tokieda’s shutai is equivalent to the subject of enunciation. In this respect, the split in enunciation is anterior to the original situation. In spite of his insistence, primordialness cannot be accorded to the original situation. Here too, it is obvious that the subject of the enunciation and the original situation of enunciation which the subject is supposed to live are in an imaginary register. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Tokieda clearly points out the fundamental but necessary rupture between the shutai and the subject (shudai, shugo). There¬ by, in conjunction with the box-in-box formula, he locates the shutai in the direction of the predicate (ji), the container that thematizes the content by con¬ taining it. What is at issue here is the predicative determination in which the shutai, which is never an identity, objectifies, thematizes, and frames—or frames up—a thing as a theme (shudai) by introducing the very division between that which is made present and that which is excluded from being made present. In this sense, it is impossible to establish the one-to-one relationship between the shutai that provides an utterance and a theme-subject such as “I,” which is merely one component among many in that utterance. It is the agent of the parergonal process in which the enunciation must be comprehended primarily as a split or a contradiction. But precisely because of the nature of this process, the shutai must be understood as that which flees as soon as an attempt is made to identify it. For this reason, the shutai is transcendent with respect to the proposi9F°r the concept of bamen, see Kokugogaku genron, pp. 43-50, 156-60, 434-41.

Conclusion

329

tional subject (shugo), the theme (shudai), and being in general. Hence, the shutai cannot be equated to the specular image of the proper body, a body supposedly or imaginarily proper to one who speaks: it is also transcendent with respect to any specular image. I have therefore proposed “the body of the enunciation,” as distinct from the subject of the enunciation, for an English rendering of this term. Despite his insistence on the Japaneseness of the box-in-box formula, the same problem has been encountered in modem Western philosophy. As a matter of fact, the various Japanese terms for subject I have mobilized in this study— shugo, shudai, shukan, shutai—are neither traditional nor well accepted. These are hybrids in a historical context, invented mainly in the process of translating modem European philosophical treatises, when modem Japanese philosophers encountered questions internal to the conception(s) of subjectivity, to which they needed to respond theoretically.10 Inasmuch as this issue has been probed extensively, for instance in the context of the critique of ontology, the translation of the term “subject” must have had to deal with the peculiarity of a convention in which the subject in the sense of the nominative case (shukaku) has been assumed to be identical to the subject (shugo) of a proposition. And in a proposition, the subject is linked to the predicate by the copula, thereby entering the register of being. The situation has been further complicated by the frequent use of the word “subject” to signify an 10Given this ambivalence, supposedly innate in the conception of the Japanese language, how should I understand a Japanese philosophy whose primary definition is a philosophical discourse conducted in the medium of the Japanese language? Immediately, it seems, the ambivalence of the Japanese language is transmitted to Japanese philosophy. Now, the Japaneseness of Japanese philoso¬ phy appears all the more problematic. And when one looks at the huge quantity of books and papers written under the title of philosophy in Japanese, there is scarcely anything “native” about modem Japanese philosophical discourse, the majority of which discusses European and American philoso¬ phy in terms that have been brought in from the Occident through translation. With rare exceptions, the subject matter, concepts, and questions Japanese philosophy has dealt with are no different from those in European philosophy. The term “subject” well exemplifies the case. I know of no word equivalent to “subject” that played any major role in the intellectual world of Japan prior to the importation of European philosophical discourse during the Meiji period, although the problematics later articulated in relation to “subject” had certainly been addressed in pre-Meiji Japan. Hence, with a certain degree of caution, I believe it acceptable to say that the problem of subjectivity emerged when the term “subject” was translated into Japanese. Thus, the various and varying translations into Japanese of the term “subject” have formed a discursive configuration that is seemingly regulated by a certain economy. Yet, this economy is treacherous: it should be noted that the configuration of the “subjects” shifts and slides from one philosopher to another, in the course of a single philosopher’s career, and even in a single work. I admit that its instability is more often than not due to a lack of consistency and rigor on the part of the authors, but I suggest that it also reflects the instability of the problematic of subjectivity itself. One must recall that the problematic of subjectivity had not been in the Japanese intellectual world until the discipline of philosophy was imported and that it arose in the process of reading and comprehend¬ ing modem philosophy. In this respect, this instability is in fact innate in modem philosophical discourse itself. In other words, it is simply impossible to conceive of Japanese philosophy as an entity external to modem Western philosophy despite obvious differences that made the translation of Western philosophy necessary in the first place.

330

Language, Body, and the Immediate

individual who speaks or acts. The subject is often both that which is thought, or the subject in the sense of theme (shudai), and one who thinks. For example, the same problem appears in Kant’s famous statement “It must be possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany all my representations.” He elaborates: “In all judgments I am the determining subject of that relation which constitutes the judgment. That the ‘I,’ the T’ that thinks, can be regarded always as subject, and as something which does not belong to thought as a mere predicate, must be granted.”11 In translating key words such as “subject,” “predicate,” and “judg¬ ment, or through the difficulties that must have been encountered in translating them, the philosopher-translators must have been able to disclose the appropriate moments of rather irrational decisions made for the sake of rationality, moments at which Kant decided to establish the possibility of transcendental rationality out of the lack of reason he could rely on. Here I might be witnessing the site of the abyss, which Kant recognized and went over toward the “idea” of his transcen¬ dental metaphysics. Either as consciousness in general, which accompanies all the representations, or as self-consciousness, which synthetically constitutes the judgment, the “I think is simultaneously equated to the combination and to the combining of the subject and the predicate. And these two different moves which supposedly intersect in the word “I” are connected and merged by the term subject. It seems, however, that some Japanese philosophers—like many Western and non-Western thinkers—could not ignore the difference between a term that is combined with another term and that which combines those terms, that is, judgment. Japanese translations of Kant, therefore, endlessly oscillate between the subject in the sense of the propositional subject (shugo) and the subject in the sense of the epistemological subject (shukan). And what is revealed in this oscillation seems to be that there is no inherent reason to equate the epistemological subject to the propositional one, other than Kant’s decision to do so. Although this equation has been taken for granted and conventionalized in Japan as well, using the same term for two different conceptualities remains problematic and leads to a series of questions. However innocent and natural it may seem, this equation requires certain constraints and repressions for its maintenance. First, although Kant dealt with this issue only implicitly, the dimension of enunciation had to be obliterated in order to make the equation appear natural. The subject in the sense of proposi¬ tional subject (shugo) can be identified as such only in a proposition or state¬ ment, but it is a truism that unless a statement is uttered, there would be no statement and, hence, no subject. Given the transcendental character of Kant’s argument, one cannot, of course, demand an analysis of a specific historical instance in which an individual statement is produced in the real: such a demand is irrelevant because it confuses the validity of the transcendental with that of the 1 'Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York- St Martin’s Press, 1929), pp. 152 (B 131), 369 (B 407).

Conclusion

331

empirical. My query is not about the empirically specific production of the statement. What is at stake for me can be clarified by following Kant’s claim about the “I think” in the context of the determination of a statement. The statement being a case of representation, it must be able to be accompanied by the “I think.” So if there is a statement A, then this statement should be able to be reformulated as: A I think A Here, I obtain another statement A* which is, this time, “I think A.” Therefore, this statement A* should also be able to be accompanied by the “I think.” A* I think A* = I think (I think A) It is evident that this procedure can be repeated an infinite number of times just as in Tokieda’s box-in-box formula.12 Gilles Deleuze called this “indefinite regres¬ sion as the power of reiteration.”13 I do not believe that this demonstration can immediately spoil the force of Kant’s argument, but it is, I think, adequate to disclose two assumptions without which his argument cannot be sustained. First, Kant’s claim can be sustained only insofar as the “I think” is not enunciated or mentioned in words. Correlatively, it is assumed that consciousness can be conceived irrespective of its concretization in utterance. Second, it should be postulated that the “I” in the “I think” can correspond to the word “I” through a means other than the enunciation. Precisely because it is not the speaking subject

12The only difference is that whereas the synthetic function is attributed to the subject-shugo in Kantian formation, so that the infinite regression moves “upward” in the direction of the proposi¬ tional subject, Tokieda’s formulation marshals the regression in “downward” toward the position of the predicate. Hence, Nishida Kitaro, for instance, proposed ronri-teki jutsugoshugi, or logical predicativism, as against the West’s shugoshugi, or subjectivism. Subjectivism can be illustrated with a modification of Tokieda’s scheme: \Container \ Contained ontainerX Contained Contained Container Contained Container Contained iner\ Container

£

In this regard, Nishida simply reversed the subject-predicate relationship. The reversal may be related to his later endorsement of the simplistic binary opposition of the West (being) and the East (mu, or nothingness). See Nishida Kitaro, Ronriteki jutsugoshugi, in Nishida Kitaro zenshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1965), pp. 57-97. 13Gilles Deleuze, Difference et repetition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), p. 203.

Language, Body, and the Immediate but the thinking subject, it cannot be identified as the person “I,” who, according to Emile Benveniste, is uttering in the present instance of discourse containing I. But this is another way to put the “I” of the “I think” as the transcendental subject, it is not a referent identifiable in an instance of discourse. What the addition of the “I think” to the statement reveals is the basic dif¬ ference between thinking and speaking, on the one hand, and shukan [epist¬ emological subject: one who knows] and shutai. Furthermore, this operation clarifies the status of the subject in the sense both of shukan and shutai and demonstrates that these subjects cannot be thematically posited or treated as a theme-subject (shudai): neither shukan nor shutai can be thematized (shudaika) unless in the context of transcendental dialectic. And finally, it can be ascertained that there is no necessity to associate the specific proposition “I think” with the bare consciousness which accompanies all concepts, which Kant also called the form of representation in general (and which I might call the framing of represen¬ tation in general). For with respect to enunciation, the transcendental subject that is to accompany all the representations is that which flees or cannot be arrested: it need not be I ; it is simply X. This is to say that the transcendental subject need not be called a subject at all. Undoubtedly Kant has already acknowledged this much in his argument about the subject. In other words, Kant participated in the establishment of a regime in which the agent of action (shutai) is equated to the propositional subject (shugo), admitting that there is no necessary connection between the two. This is one of the best examples of what I call the regime. And in the final analysis, it is a matter of neither linguistic nor cultural determinism but of apophansis.14 So, already for Kant the link between the shutai and the subject was du¬ bious. 15 I cannot find any grounds to say that there must be a necessary connec¬ tion between the subject and the shutai, and it is precisely the matter of ideology ^This point can hardly be overemphasized. Two of the authors I have referred to have been implicated in their own versions of culturalism. Both Nishida Kitaro and Julia Kristeva have penetrat¬ ing insight into the problems of subjectivity and have written extensively about the formation of the subjective position in modem philosophy. Although their culturalism is theoretically very sophisticated, they often appeal to a simplistic binary opposition to criticize what Nishida called subjectmsm. Nishida proposed predicativism as opposed to subjectivism, just as the Orient was opposed to the Occident. Kristeva drew the same opposition between the masculine and the feminine. It seems to me that both led to the substantialization of the West and eventually prepared the return to their respective origins (return to the East and to the West). *5Many have noted the dubious status of the subject. See, for example, Martin Heidegger On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972): “Interpreted by the rules o grammar and logic, that about which a statement is made appears as the subject: hypokeimenon— that which already lies before us, which is present in some way. What is then predicated of the subject appears as what is already present along with the present subject, the symbebekos, accidens: ‘The auditorium is illuminated.’ In the ‘It’ of ‘It gives’ speaks a presence of something that is present, that is, there speaks, in a way, a Being. If we substitute Being for It in our sentence ‘It gives Being ’ it says as much as ‘Being gives Being.’ And here we are back in the same difficulty that we mentioned at the beginning of the lecture: Being is. But Being ‘is’ just as little as time ‘is.’ We shall therefore now abandon the attempt to determine ‘It’ by itself, in isolation, so to speak. But this we must keep in

Conclusion

333

as a regime of practice that one lives and practices an imaginary relation to oneself as the subject and imagines (but not fantasizes) oneself as the subject in one’s lived (that is, imagined) experience.

Universalism and Particularism Despite Tokieda’s emphasis on the anteriority of the subjective stance, I have disclosed that only after language is grasped in the observational stance can the subjective stance be known as a lived experience of language. Strangely enough, active involvement in one’s native language is a posterior imagined construct. Moreover, it follows that the system of a language can be revealed as a set of identifiable rules by virtue of the distance between the subjective stance and the observational stance. But if one could establish a different stance, the observa¬ tional stance that a linguist assumes in order to study a particular language can be approached as a subjective stance. In relation to the object language, the ob¬ server’s attitude is that of the observational stance, but when she describes and analyzes the object of her study in her own language, which is not objectified for her and which she in fact lives in the subjective stance, her shutai-teki activities themselves can be described from another observational stance. In theory, a regression similar to that of the box-in-box formula could happen between the subjective stance and the observational stance. Every observational stance is already a shutai-teki stance, and it is impossible to conceive an instance of the shutai-teki stance like Benveniste’s instance of discourse, which contains no tinge of the observational stance, is utterly devoid of reflective consciousness, just as it is impossible to imagine a purely observational stance that is absolutely free of shutai-teki activities. Only if one is completely blind to the subjective stance hidden and implicated in the supposedly purely observational stance, can one believe it possible to mind: The It, at least in the interpretation available to us for the moment, names a presence of absence” (p. 18). In The Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), Maurice Blanchot notes: “The act of writing is the interminable, the incessant. The writer, it is said, gives up saying ‘I.’ Kafka remarks, with surprise, with enchantment, that he has entered literature as soon as he can substitute ‘He [or It].’ This is true, but the transformation is much more profound. The writer belongs to a language which no one speaks, which is addressed to no one, which has no center, which reveals nothing. He may believe that he affirms himself in this language, but what he affirms is altogether deprived of self. To the extent that, being a writer, he does justice to what requires writing, he can never again express himself, any more than he can appeal to you, or introduce another’s speech. Where he is, only being speaks,—which means that language doesn’t speak any more, but is. It devotes itself to the pure passivity of being. If to write is to surrender to the interminable, the writer who consents to sustain writing’s essence loses the power to say ‘I’ ” (pp. 26-27). Also see Maurice Blanchot, “The Narrative Voice,” in The Gaze of Orpheus, trans. Lydia Davis (Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill, 1981), pp. 133-43. The dubious relationship between the “I” and the “it” (or id in the Freudian scheme) is thus not particular to the Japanese language and has little to do with the discussion of the “absence of subject in Japanese.”

334

Language, Body, and the Immediate

observe and identify a particular language as if the attributes one discovers about that language were purely and simply in that language itself. The grammar of that language can be identified only from the position of another language. One’s own language, to which I should say one is necessarily, if not completely, blind, is always implicated in what one takes to be the features of a particular language. I do not mean that the grammar thus identified is not valid or arbitrary. On the contrary, precisely because one is blind to the medium in which a different language is explicated, a grammar can be useful and usable. What one should remember is that there is no metaposition from which a language can be identi¬ fied exhaustively as an object in itself. There can be no position of the epis¬ temological subject which is completely devoid of shutai: even observation is an action that requires the agent of action. And the positing of such a transcendent viewpoint is unnecessary in order to obtain a useful account of that language—to acquire a competence in it, for example—as Tokieda Motoki attempted to dem¬ onstrate by his critique of the substantialization of a language unity. Correlative to the postulation of the transcendent viewpoint is the essentialization of the object language. Here, linguistic or cultural essentialism arises. The image of an object language facilitated by linguistic studies (or of an object culture facilitated by cultural studies) is often equated to the entity of that lan¬ guage. The cultural essentialist claims that because of the systematic constraints imposed on the members of that language (or culture) by the grammatical rules of the language, they are predetermined in what they can express and what they cannot; they are, so to say, innately programmed by the language. Moreover, the language thus grasped is assumed to have a life of its own, to be an organism that continues to reproduce itself, albeit in not exactly the same shape. For the cultural essentialists, the language is invariably a substance that is not distinguished from the grammar of that language they happen to know. They are utterly ignorant either that many different grammars can exist or of the problems concerning the way the unity of a language is imagined. The same can be said about their reified notion of culture, which is again equated to a self-subsistent organism. Thus, cultural essentialists believe that they can define the particularity of a language, and implicitly, they assume the position of a transcendent subject (shukan) completely free from shutai-teki activity. In the gesture of respecting the particularity of a particular language and culture, they in fact assume a transcendent and omniscient position from which to intuit the substantialized and ahistorical essences of particular cultures. What are often referred to as particu¬ larism and universalism are, therefore, in complicity, and what neither particu¬ larism nor universalism can afford to acknowledge is that as a theoretical conse¬ quence of their premises and because of their inherent monologism, both inevitably lead to cultural solipsism and that no language can monopolize either a purely subjective (shukan-teki) or an observational positionality because neither would be possible without shutai-teki (subjective in the sense of actional agent)

Conclusion

335

activity.16 Particularism and universalism—two sides of the same coin—arise only when the shutai, who acts on the cultural formation and necessarily changes it, is eliminated, when the shutai is equated to the subjectivity of a national language or even to the national identity. As we saw in Ito Jinsai’s critique of Song Confucianism, the elimination of the body of the enunciation necessarily means the elimination of the encounter with the Other, within and without. Consequently, both particularism and universalism are the results of narcissism, of “a one-sided but alluring response to the anxiety of transference”: they arise out of the fear of a dialogic encounter.

Resurrection/Restoration of Japanese During the eighteenth century, this difference between the unthematized dis¬ course in which the unity of a language is imagined and the language thus objectified was acutely perceived. Therefore, the ancient Chinese, in the case of Ogyu Sorai, and the Japanese language, in the case of the scholars of the National Studies, were always posited in the past as languages that no longer existed. Although these thinkers believed that such languages once existed in the past moment, they could maintain awareness that the unity of a language could not be directly equated to the unity of their existing contemporary community. Certainly they perceived the Tokugawa polity as fragmented, disrupted, and far from internally coherent or harmonious, but there is more to their refusal to superim¬ pose the unity of an internally homogenized and coherent whole, or the status of the “interior,” on their contemporary polity. For one thing, their argument still carried a strong critical impulse, so that they posited the image of the homoge¬ nized “interior” in order to highlight the estranged and fragmented state of affairs. But more important, they still retained some sense of the “idea” of the Japanese language, even though the poietic and creative aspect of ethical action was largely repressed in their discourse; they had not completely lost the insight that the Japanese language was possible only as an “idea,” particularly a lost “idea,” and that it was necessarily u-topian: it should be nowhere. In this sense, I claim that the Japanese language and its “culture” were bom in the eighteenth century, but I also insist on some difference between the eigh¬ teenth-century conception of the Japanese and the modem conception after the Meiji period. What happened in the late nineteenth century was the collapse of l6It should be evident by now that the critique of universalism does not demand the denial of rules that ought to be valid to everyone. On the contrary, what universalism fails to acknowledge is this openness to the other, precisely because universalism assumes that what appears universally valid to “us” and to “me” is immediately valid to others. In other words, universalism cannot distinguish generality from prescriptive universality. What is implied in universality is the fundamental dialogism according to which “we” or “I” do not know what is universal, and universality is always exterior (in the sense of exteriority or otherness) to “our” or “my” consciousness. I must seek it and be taught it by the other.

336

Language, Body, a/zd z/ze Immediate

the distance that had kept the unity of the Japanese apart from the immediate us. It is because of this distance that eighteenth-century discourse did not totally degenerate into a version of cultural nationalism. But as this sense of distance and loss was erased, the unity of the Japanese and the “interior” were equated to the existing language and community without mediation. Of course, what this equation achieved was to eliminate the sites of the unthinkable, standar¬ dize cultural institutions, and homogenize the language. In this process, the concept culture, which was substantialized and made to imply the unity of homogeneous systematicity, was fully utilized. By first establishing a consensus that the “interior” was already there, the ruler was fully authorized to illegiti¬ mate any institution that might enhance the heterogeneous. The Japanese lan¬ guage and its ethnos were brought into being and made to exist in the present and were thereby transformed into unobjectionable certainties as if they were entities observable in experience. Thus the Japanese were resurrected from the dormant past and, as a nation, began to play the role of the subject (shinmin, 10-11) to and for the modem state. Concurrently, the Japanese language was constituted as a substance in the positivistic discourse of cultural essentialism. Needless to say, this was the process in which the modem nation-state of Japan was appropriated into the nineteenth-century discourse of global colonialism, cultural essentialism, and racism. Thus the invention of the Japanese language can serve to guarantee that the unthinkable always comes from outside the border, from outsiders, for the un¬ thinkable can never take place in the “interior”: the reification of Japanese “culture” can make one blind to heterogeneities within. It is essential in con¬ structing the economy of blindness without which the sense of ethnocentric “togetherness” and the concretization of the “species being” in national terms would hardly be possible. The invention of the Japanese language or national language in general partakes of an ideology in and by which one lives, an ideology of the lived experience. But such a language can never be transparent; it is always “broken,” so that one never totally belongs to it, and no body, no body of the enunciation, or shutai, is ever exhaustively at home there.

Appendix

:

Introduction

Japanese and Chinese Terms

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

-

-

Chapter 1

-

1 - 1 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 - 6 1 7 1- 8 1 9 1-10 1-11 1-12 1-13 1-14 1-15 1-16 1-17 1-18 1-19 1-20 1-2 1 1-2 2 1-23 1-24 1-2 5 1-26

-

-

-

-

-

a ©

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Jt ffi tt

-

-

-

-

ft

-

-

Jf>rT5±

-

-

-

-

?L & a 0M

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

g

-

-

-

2-

Chapter 2

2

1

2-

2

-

t» &

22-

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 1 9 20 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 26 2 7 28 29 3 0 3 1 3 2 3 3 3 5 3 6 3 7

oK

1*1 a

ISIro # Sit id ft

fta^ ill *

*

mm. mm. % m &

337

Appendix

338

2-3 2-3 2-4 2-4 2-4 2-4

8 9 0 1 2 3

3E M

'if ft

mm m

Chapter 3

3-

3-2 6 Chapter 4

444-

1 2 3

Chapter 5

1

3- 2 3- 3 3- 4 3- 5 3- 6 3- 7 3- 8 3- 9 3- 1 0 3- 1 1 3- 1 2 3-13 3-14 3- 1 5 3- 1 6 3- 1 7 3- 1 8 3- 1 9 3-2 0 3-2 1 3-2 2 3-2 3 3-2 4 3-2 5

m. A7£tf§K s

-MU

m

5- 1 5- 2 5- 3 5- 4 5- 5 5- 6 5- 7 5- 8 5- 9 5-10 5-1 1 5-12 5-13

%3t ,©s

n it ft

ftmm ilit

mt «i#ms

IeA 19 as*

iIK AJB&IgJS S55?* lift*

mmn HAA©

M±(Dmm i»T

IW*

Chapter 6

6- 1 6- 2 6- 3 6— 4 6- 5 6-6 6- 7 6-8 6- 9 6-11 6-12

WE/gs E fe

g atgtsfi

?#±

tl± 0£8fF) a®:

Japanese and Chinese Terms

666666666666-

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4

511$ HA—1

itself!

mmmm

1 1 1 1 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4

fRUKPiSB

He

mm mm mx

HX 4X MS mbTL

8-

1 2 3 4

PIS SA L&

9- 1 9- 2 9- 3 9-4 9- 5 9- 6 9-7 9- 8 9- 9 9-10 9-11 9-12 9- 1 3

X

mm JSE JIfS Ws

tm lllw

m m mm

Conclusion

ms

ft*

10-1 10-2 10-3 10-4 10-5 10-6 10-7 10-8 10-9

mu mmnrz

«i9*st;

10-10 10-11

t§ts EH

jl 19 Wi

HXS?^ HXSf Sf

Chapter 8

888-

m

Chapter 9

Chapter 7

77777777777777-

8- 5 8-6 8- 7 8- 8 8- 9 8-10

339

BAIgWffiS

Index

Words in bold italic are Japanese terms (excluding proper nouns); those in bold roman are Chinese. Numbers in parentheses refer to the Chinese/Japanese characters or compounds listed in the Appendix. Abschattung (perspective), 191-92, 200-201, 241 “achieve” (tatsu, da, 3-17), 103 actant, 180 action, 86, 96, 99, 101-2, 106-7, 163-65, 171, 233, 294, 300-301 ai, 18, 77, 108, 109-11, 180, 190, 286, 318 alea, 106-9, 239, 297, 310 alphabet, 113, 253 alterity, 85, 316-17 Althusser, Louis, 253 Amaterasu Omikami, 252 Amazawa Taijiro, 9 Analects, the, 25 ancient text (kobun, 7-5), 221, 224 anmin (to set people at ease, 9-3), 286, 289 annihilation, 79 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 253 application (ydsho, 2-25), 79 Arai, Hakuseki, 235-36 arche (or archaic), 17, 102, 110-12, 232, 267, 299, 320 Aristotle, 213 Asami Keisai, 314 Ashiwara obune, 256 Austin, J. L., 232 authenticity, 107-8 Ayui-sho, 256, 264 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 9, 26, 28, 59, 119, 141, 202, 215 bamen (original scene of utterance, 10-10), 328

Barthes, Roland, 148-49, 156 basho, 147, 276 Basho (Matsuo), 126 beginning {tan, duan, 3-10), 94, 100-101 being as it is (2-30), 80, 82 being as it should be (2-29), 80, 82 being-in-the-world, 92 being {son, 2-41), 86 Bendo (Distinguishing ways), 221 benevolence, 80, 93-94, 97-99, 112, 285-86, 289-90, 296 Benmei (Distinguishing names), 214, 234, 237, 243, 247, 282, 288, 295 Benveniste, Emile, 15, 60, 66-68, 71-73, 102, 125, 131, 193, 312, 327-28, 332-33 Bergson, Henri, 293-94, 303, 307-8 Bito Masahide, 32, 319 Blanchot, Maurice, 71, 333 blindness, 119 body (shen, 1-22), 44-45, 81-89, 93, 101-9, 130-38, 147-50, 156, 164, 168-70, 196, 200-207, 223, 235, 243, 247-51, 268-84, 292-302, 306-11, 329; of enunciation {see also shutai), 61, 75, 97-99, 105-11, 125, 133-35, 175, 241, 335; as intentionality, 247 Book of Change, the. See Yi jing box-in-box structure {irekogaia kozo 8-7), 98, 172, 273-74, 327-33 branch {matsu, mo, 2-24), 79 bricolage, 110 Bunkai hitsuroku, 312 bun (wen, 9-1), 281

341

342

Index

Burch, Noel, 148-49 Byakusd fukenkyd (Byakuso fuken sutra, 6-5), 179 calligram, 113 calligraphy, 116-17, 138, 175, 197-99, 306 category, 253 center of decentering. See decentering center of recentering. See recentering change (2-17), 87, 90, 109, 276, 280 Cheng: brothers, 25, 31-33, 108, 221, 224; yi, 37; Zhu, 54, 76, 95 Chevalier, Jean-Claude, 215 Chikaishi Yasuaki, 162 Chikamatsu Monzaemon, 144, 156-57, 164, 184 choka (long song), 251 chora, 147, 276 Chou ton-i, 108 Chun qui (The spring and autumn annals), 31, 230 Chuyd hakki, 84 cogito, 98 colloquialism, 121-22, 161, 183, 225, 264-66 communality, 88, 93, 102-4, 299-301, 3056, 311 concern for others (chujo, zhongshu 3-14),

100 Confucius, 297 constative, the, 232, 237, 326 contained/container, 272, 327 corporeity, 223, 271, 284, 299, 300-305, 309-10 Creole, 19, 266 Culler, Jonathan, 33 Daigiroku, 268 Daigo, emperor, 251 Dainichi nyorai, 182 dance, 296-300, 309 Daxue, 49, 50, 248 Dazai Shundai, 295-97 decentering, 19, 85, 108-9, 222, 249, 298 de Certeau, Michel, 10, 234 decomposition, 236, 242-44, 250 Deleuze, Gilles, 98, 331 de Man, Paul, 119 Derrida, Jacques, 3, 12, 65, 107, 118-19, 254, 267, 310, 314-16 description, 90, 96 descriptive narration, 145-47, 153, 161, 168, 172, 175-76 desire, 50, 64, 72, 87, 92-93, 202, 287-89, 295; of nature, 90 “develop” (kakujyu, kuo chong, 3-13), 100 dialogism, 26-27, 141, 222, 318, 335 dijferance, 119, 168, 316-18

differend, 4, 19 differing, the, 86 direct action, 150, 168-69, 300-306 direct speech, 121, 150-53, 161, 164-71, 183, 196-97, 206, 304 discursive economy, 84, 101 discursive formation, 14, 23-25, 55-56, 118, 171, 181, 196, 224, 246, 301, 304, 307, 310, 318-19 discursive positivity, 291, 306 discursivity, 53-55, 317 disposition, 90 dissemination, 242, 263, 267 Doctrine of inherently good human nature (seizensetsu, xingshanshuo, 1-11), 36, 65, 95 Dojimon, 23, 53, 58-59, 80, 84, 100 Dostoevsky, Feodor, 26 economy (see also discursive economy), 212, 254, 267, 288, 295-96, 316, 336 Edo umare uwakino kabayaki, 184 Eguchi, 181-82 eidetic reduction (see also phenomenological reduction), 234 eiri kydgennbon (playscripts with illustrations, 5-1), 140, 143-46 emakimono (pictorial scroll), 128 enunciated, the, 48, 60, 67-69, 83-84, 88, 97-99, 102, 115, 124, 131-33, 136, 141, 147, 156, 163-68, 172, 197, 200-202, 205-7, 223, 237, 241-42, 249, 263, 294, 304, 307, 318 enunciation, 48, 62, 66-69, 83-85, 88, 9799, 102, 106, 115, 124, 130-36, 142-43, 146-47, 152, 156, 163-68, 172, 192-97, 200-202, 205-207, 212, 222-24, 230-33, 237, 241-42, 249, 261-64, 270, 274, 277, 282-84, 294, 302-7, 312-18, 330-32 Erlebnis, 263 ethics, 78, 82, 96, 99, 102, 106-11, 196, 279, 291 ethnocentricity, 310-11, 316-19, 323, 336 etymological atomism, 268-69 event (ji, shi, 2-28), 79, 242, 294, 316; eventthing, 86 extension of knowledge (chichi, zhizhi,) 248 exterior, the, 64, 102, 218-21, 235, 292, 309-10, 318 exteriority, 56, 78, 101, 104, 107, 137, 212, 308, 318-19 feeling (jo, qing, 2-1), 5, 54, 62-66, 69, 7778, 87-96, 101, 105, 109, 112, 274-76, 287, 295-97, 305-8, 318 femininity, 275-76 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 193

Index Five Classics, 25, 31 Five Constancies, 296 fleeing, 86, 98, 147, 205, 332 fluidity, 83 Foucault, Michel, 11, 15, 17, 24, 113, 137 Four Books, 31, 246, 257, 265 frame or framing, 18, 74-75, 85-86, 98, 118-19, 124, 128, 131-33, 165, 172, 200, 211, 241, 274, 301, 332 Fugen Bosatsu (Samantabhadra), 182 Fujitani Mitsue, 256 Fujitani, Nariakira, 255-56, 263-73, 302 Fujiwara Kiyosuke, 186 fuka (Cultural discipline of people, 9-4), 286 Fukujukai, 144 function (yd, yong, 2-19), 79, 80 furoshiki structure (see also box-in-box struc¬ ture), 273 fushi, 157, 161-62 Fuyu no hi, 126 fuzoku (culture, 9-5), 291-92, 295 Gakuki (Yueji) of the Liji, 64 Gakusoku, 214, 230, 234 Gemmei, emperor, 252 general text, 106-12, 116, 211, 271 generic discontinuity, 177-83, 186-87, 204,

211 gengo katei setsu (language process theory, 6-19), 192, 272 Gengyo shitsu ron, 273 Genjimonogatari shinshaku, 244 gesaku (5-13), 186, 184, 187 Gestalt, 168, Gestalt-type, 172-73, 175-76, 188, 199, 212, 230, 241 gidayu-bushi (5-9), 156 gikobun, 245 gokan (bound volume), 153, 194 Gomojigi, 24, 64, 80, 84, 90, 99, 103, 112 grapheme, 86, 179, 262 Great Learning (Daxue), 49, 50, 248 Greimas, A. J., 86

343

Heidegger, Martin, 7, 16, 60, 71, 332 Heike monogatari (Tales of Heike), 124 hermeneutics, 6, 111, 121, 207, 259-64, 305, 315, 319, 324-25 Hieda no Are, 252 hieroglyphic, 253-54, 316 hiragana, 252 Hirose Tamotsu, 155 Hisamatsu Sen’ichi, 256 historicality, 14-15 historicity, 121-22, 131-32, 190, 239, 257, 298, 312 homosocial world, 190, 204 Hori Katsunan, 255 horizon, 85 human nature, 62-64 Husserl, Edmund, 40, 89, 137, 260 Hu Yu-feng, 78 Hyakunin isshu (6-15), 184-86 hybrid, 18-19, 254, 320, 329 Hyodo Hiromi, 123 hypokeimenon, 332 Idea, 330, 335; regulative, 326 ideational ego, 193 ideational intentionality, 40, 44, 76, 82, 96 ideography/ideogram, 81, 113, 227-29, 244, 250-55, 258, 262-67, 270, 277, 315-16 Ihara Saikaku. See Saikaku Ikku. See Jippensha Ikku imaginary, the, 98, 125, 135, 253-54, 285, 290- 91, 300, 304, 309, 312, 322, 333 incommensurability, 105, 110 indirect action, 150, 154, 165, 168, 171, 300304, 307 indirect speech, 121, 150-54, 168-70, 201, 304 individual thing. See kobutsu individuum, 125 Ingarden, Roman, 194, 200 inscription, 2, 47, 83, 98-99, 104-10, 175, 228, 252-60, 263, 266, 269-71, 274, 309-

11 habit, 233, 249, 281-83, 292-99, 303-4, 308-9 haikai-ka (reorganization of discourse by the Haikai principle or double operation, 6-14), 181-83, 189, 196, 202 Haikai no renga (5-2), 126, 142-43, 198— 99 Hane, Mikiso, 236, 283 Harootunian, Harry D., 212-13 Hattori Nankaku, 296-98; Nankaku sensei bunshu, 298 Haver, William, 85, 106, 234 Heath, Stephen, 148 Hegel, G. W. F., 50, 68, 287, 295

inside, the, 212, 221 instance of discourse, 66, 125, 131-33, 141, 154-55, 205, 214, 222, 230, 260, 312, 332-33 intensity of subjectivity, 206 intercorporeity, 85, 249 interior, the, 17, 95, 111, 218-25, 228-39, 244, 248-50, 258, 266, 281-83, 287-88, 291- 92, 295, 298, 303, 309-10, 317-19, 335-36; of the mind or subjective, 102, 108, 150, 156 intersubjectivity, 78, 84, 104, 249, 289, 298301, 308-9, 317 intertextuality, 4, 13, 25-30, 33, 88, 115-18,

344

Index

intertextuality (cont.) 127, 130, 137-38, 142, 148, 153-55, 176, 182, 188, 199, 211-12, 216, 222, 230-31, 241, 246, 306 investigation of things (kakubutsu, gewu,) 248 ippansha (universal), 95 irekogata kozo. See box-in-box structure iro, 161-63 Ishikawa Jun, 181-84, 189, 196 Isonokami sasamegoto, 272, 275 isotopy, 180-82, 202 iterability, 315-18 Ito Jinsai, 5, 14-15, 23-26, 30-33, 36, 42, 48, 53-58, 62-66, 69, 70, 76-86, 90-97, 100-12, 115, 120-22, 130, 135, 166, 181, 195-96, 200, 219-22, 239, 243, 246, 249, 261, 279, 286-91, 294, 299, 307-8, 318, 335 Ito Togai, 23, 56, 97 Izumi Shikibu, 185 ji (of chanting), 156-57, 161-64 ji (ci, of syntax, 7-14), 267, 272-74, 327 ji (shi, event, 2-28), 79, 239 ji iro, 161-64 Jian, Zi, 230 Jimmmu, emperor, 252, 256 Jinsai nissatsu, 31-32 Jippensha Ikku, 194 Jito, empress, 256 kabuki, 140, 144, 148-50, 164 Kada Azumaro, 244 kaeriten (7-9), 227, 255 Kagaku teiyd, 278 Kagawa Kageki, 277-79, 306, 317 Kaibara Ekken, 268 Kaiko, 244 Kaitokudo, 237 Kakai Juro, 179 kakari musubi, 269, 302 Kamo Mabuchi, 18, 239, 243-45, 250-51, 255-56, 263, 266, 111, 294, 304-5 kana, 118, 250-53, 263, 270 kanazoshi (kana booklet), 4-1), 119-27, 153 kanbun, 178-79, 217, 262 kannenteki na jiko (ideational ego, 6-21), 193 kansatsuteki tachiba (observational stance), 265, 324-26, 333 Kant, Immanuel, 33, 71-73, 89, 98, 260, 304, 326, 330-32 karagokoro (Chinese mind), 260-61 Karatani Kojin, 234 katakana, 252 katari, 119-26, 138, 141-44, 148-49, 152— 53 Katsugo danzokufu, 273

Kazashi-sho, 256 Keichu, 244 Keien isshi, 218 keirin (9-9), 295 keizai (9-7, or keisei saimin, 9-8), 295-96 Keizairoku, 295-97 ketsumyaku (xiemai, 7-7), 222 kibyoshi (yellow cover), 153, 184, 194 Kinoshita Jun’an, 268 Ki no Tomonori, 251 Ki no Tsurayuki, 251 Kitamura Kigin, 126 Kiyo no gaku (qiyangzhixue, learning of Nagasaki translators, 7-1), 214, 229, 243, 257, 280, 310 Kobunjigaku (guwencixue, learning of ancient text and words, 7-11), 214, 232-39, 24345, 257, 265, 280-81, 292, 296-98, 310 kobutsu (individual/singular thing, 2-6), 38, 57-58, 108 Kogaku sensei bunshu, 35 Kogido, 23, 94 Kogigaku (guyixue), 23 kogi (guyi, 6-23), 196 kogobun, 264 Kojiki, 252, 256-62, 313, 320 Kojiki-den, 256-59, 262 kokkeibon (comical books, 5-7), 153, 187, 194 Kokinshu, 251, 256, 264, 275 Kokinshu tokagami, 264 Kokon hyaku baka (A hundred fools, ancient and modem), 153 kokugo (10-1), 323-25 Kokuiko, 244, 250 Kokusen ya gas sen (The Battle of Coxinga), 144 Koshoku gonin onna (Five women who loved love), 126 Koshoku ichidai otoko (The Life of an Amo¬ rous Man), 126 kotodama (The spirit of language, 8-3), 269 Koyasu Nobukuni, 56, 59, 110 Kristeva, Julia, 27-29, 131, 234, 270, 276, 300, 306, 332 kunten, 178 Kunyaku jimo, 219, 221 kyoka (6-12), 181, 194 kyoshi (6-13), 181 Lacan, Jacques, 11, 50, 70-71, 134, 205, 248 LaCapra, Dominick, 19, 209 Laclau, Ernesto, 55, 63 language process theory. See gengo katei setsu language(s) of the other, 213 languages of villagers. See rigen langue, 13, 34-35, 273, 325-27

Index Lao zi, 230-32 Lau, D. C., 93-94 Levinas, Emmanuel, 10 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 110, 234 lexeme, 86-87 li (1-3), 25, 31, 80-86, 111-12, 281, 295 Liji, 282 linear perspective, 85 Li Paulong, 214 loss, 98 Lotman, J. M., 233 Lu Xun, 21 Lyotard, Jean-Frangois, 4, 65 Magritte, Rene, 38, 173 Makura no soshi, 124 Mallarme, Stephane, 253 man'yo-gana, 250-52 Man’ydkd, 244 Man’yoshu, 244, 250-51, 256 Maruyama Masao, 236, 283, 286, 290 Marx, Karl, 193 materiality, 96, 101-10, 119, 211, 222, 309, 314, 317 Matsuo Basho. See Basho (Matsuo) mawashi yomi, 227-29 Meido no hikyaku (A courier to Hades, 5-10), 157 memory, 98, 293-94, 307; empirical, 98; tran¬ scendental, 98 Mencius, the (Moshi, Menzi), 25, 31, 49, 6365, 94-95, 99-100, 288, 295 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 192, 249 Mibu no Tadamine, 251 michiyuki, 166 mimesis, 135, 155, 201, 231-32, 259, 303, 326; mimetic identification, 229, 301 Minagawa Kien, 256, 273 mind (xin, 1-17), 62-65, 78, 81, 95-96, 99106, 111, 281-87, 302, 308, 319 minzoku (nation or ethnos), 325 mirror stage, 193 Miura Tsutomu, 127, 191-93, 200, 206, 248 Miyake Masahio, 31 Miyake Shosai, 314 Miyoshi, Masao, 8-9 modem text (kinbun, jinwen 7-6), 221 mono (1-12), 221-22, 230, 233-34, 236, 248, 275, 283-84, 289, 298, 303 monologism, 27, 141, 203, 334 mono no aware, 274-79, 307, 318 Morris, M., 124 Moshi. See Mencius, the Moshi-kogi, 24, 94, 97 mother tongue, 224 moto (core), 269-70, 276

345

Motoori Norinaga, 17-18, 123, 255-77, 294, 302, 307, 313 Mouffe, Chantal, 55, 63 movement, 87, 276 Mozi jizhu, 94 Mukai Gensho, 268 multivocal, the, 107, 126, 142, 179, 202, 252, 258, 262, 277 Murillo, Bartolome Esteban, 74-75 music, 233-34, 247, 295-97, 304 musicality, 161-63, 168-69, 172 mutuality, 87 Najita, Tetsuo, 213, 221, 232, 236 Nakai Kate, 236 Namaei katagi (5-8), 153 naming (mei, ming, 3-11), 97—99 Nancy, Jean-Luc, 239 narawashi (9-6), 291 National Studies (Kokugaku), 207, 245-46, 255-57, 260, 267, 308-11, 335 native speaker, tongue, 218, 235, 266, 281 — 83, 303-4, 329, 333 nature as being as it should be, 90 nature (sei, xing, 1-10), 35, 54, 64, 77-78, 89-91, 94-99, 105-12, 287, 309 nearness, 32-34, 56, 60-61, 70, 76, 82, 110— 11, 122, 183, 186-90, 195-96, 200-205, 219, 278 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 16 nigyo joruri (Japanese puppet theater 5-5), 144, 148-50, 154-58, 161-66, 171-72, 175, 183, 194, 201, 206 Nihon eitaigura (The Japanese family store¬ house), 126 Nihonshoki, 256-58 Niimanabi, 244-45, 250 Niimanbai iken, 278 Nijo school of court poetry, 277 Nimigi no Mikoto, 252 Nintoku, Emperor, 252 Nippon shakumei, 268 Nishida Kitaro, 57, 71, 85, 95, 147, 234, 275-76, 331-32 Nishiki no ura, 183-85 Noguchi Takehiko, 31 nondisjunctive, the, 78, 87-89, 103 noumenon, 79, 85 o (8-5), 272 observational stance. See kansatsuteki tachiba obtaining (toku, de, 3-16), 101 Ogata Korin, 23 Ogyu Sorai, 15-17, 31, 36, 42, 70, 91-93, 109-11, 131, 206, 214, 217-39, 244-51, 254, 257-59, 262-65, 271-73, 280-82, 285-99, 304, 324, 335

346

Index

Oi no kobumi, 126 Okina no fumi, 237 Okumagawa genzaemon, 143-44 Oku no hosomichi (Narrow road to the deep

north), 126 okurigana (7-10), 227 on, 266 Onna daigaku, 268 O no Yasumaro, 252 Ooms, Herman, 32 opacity, 41-43 ordinary language, 18, 188-89 ordinary speech, 122, 156-58, 163, 170-72, 183, 219 Oshikochi no Mitsune, 251 Other, the, 12-13, 17-19, 27, 52, 57-58, 6365, 68, 96-97, 105, 108, 117, 134, 190, 205-6, 299, 317, 335; in the Lacanian sense, 133, 282 otherness of the Other, 78, 96, 108, 190, 239, 249, 267, 279, 290, 297, 298, 308, 318, 312 Otomo no Yakamochi, 251 outside, the, 212, 224 overdetermination, 108 parergon, 74, 86, 119, 133-34, 172, 175, 328

parody, 125-26, 141-43, 178-84, 187-89, 195-98, 202-4 participational stance. See shutaiteki tachiba performative (of speech acts), 232, 237, 241, 326; situation, 86, 93, 97-98, 108, 135-37, 143, 147, 153, 163, 169, 194-201, 205, 223-24, 230-31, 242-43, 248-49, 26365, 271, 274, 278, 284, 299-307, 314-17 perspective. See Abschattung phenomenological epoche, 260 phenomenological reduction, 12 phenomenology, 125, 137, 191, 200-201, 234, 241, 312, 324 phenomenon, 79, 85 phoneticism, 113, 118, 244, 251-55, 262-63, 266-67, 277, 316 phonocentrism, 111, 195, 204, 240, 253-54, 262, 294, 310-11, 315-16 pictoriography, 316 Plato, 98, 147, 276 poetry/poetics, 110, 171, 226, 233, 243-45, 250-51, 270-71, 275-80, 298-99, 306-8, 317-18 poiesis, 105-10, 171, 232, 299, 307, 326, 335 polyphony, 127, 141 . polysemy, 190, 202-3 positivity, 312; constituted, 245, 310; con¬ stituting, 166, 245, 267, 270, 310 practical, the, 235-38, 251-53, 283

practical intentionality, 82 praxis, 44, 82, 96, 108, 242, 246 prepredicative, the, 6, 117, 168, 248 prescription, 90, 96 pronoun, 69-72, 121 property, 103, 107 propriety, 103, 108, 211, 218 qi (1-13), 36-42, 81, 84, 111-12 qing. See feeling

quotation mark, 121, 140, 143 reading, 116, 131, 138-40, 175, 196-97, 202, 220-23, 238-40, 251, 259-61, 314 reality (realitas), 221-24, 230-34, 284-85, 294-303, 307-11, 322 recentering, 135, 249, 298 reflecting upon oneself (hankyu, fanqiu, 3-15), 100 Reflection on things at hand (jinsilu), 33, 37, 42, 51 regime, 4, 30, 84, 202, 214, 218-21, 253-54, 262, 299-300, 320, 332-33 reminiscence, 98 repetition, originary, 133, 205, 312 representability of totality, 290-92 representational type, 172-73, 175-76 restricted economy, 189, 295 return, 107-8, 111, 232, 236, 258, 276, 288, 313-16, 332 Ricoeur, Paul, 125 rigaku-sha (rationalist), 31 rigen (the language of village people, 7-3), 179, 217, 228, 324 righteousness (gi, yi, 1-5), 32, 80-82, 93-94, 97-99 rite, 93-94, 97-99, 232-34, 247, 295-97, 301-4 Rongocho (Commentaries on the Analects), 214 Rongo kogi, 24, 222 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 290 Ryohashigen (6-1), 178-79 ryuko (liuxing, 2-36), 79, 83, 103 Saikaku (Ihara), 126 Sakabe Megumi, 301 sakusha (author or maker, 7-12), 236, 285 Samba (Shikitei), 153 Santo Kyoden, 183 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 133 Sarumino, 126 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 39, 120 Schutz, Alfred, 136-37 sedoka (head-repeated songs), 251 seeing, 116, 128, 175, 197, 262-63 Seidan (Discourse on politics), 214, 285

Index Seiyokibun, 235 Seken munesan’yd (Worldly mental calcula¬

tions), 126 Sekihi foroku, 297

seme, 86-87, 203 senryu (comic Haikau poetry), 194 sensus communis, 93 separation, 86 setsuwa bungaku (setsuwa literature, 4-3), 123-25 sharebon (5-6), 153, 187 shen. See body shi (of chanting), 156-57, 161, 164-67 Shibun kokujitoku, 217 Shibun yoryo, 256 Shi jing (Book of Odes), 266 Shikake bunko, 183 shinju mono (double suicide drama), 166 Shinju Tenno Amijima (The love suicide at Amijima), 144 shinmin (subject subject to the state, 10-11), 336 shi (of syntax), 267, 272-74, 327 Shoi, 263 Shoku nihongi, 256 shudai (theme/thetic subject), 12, 29, 74-76, 91-93, 104, 111, 118-19, 131-33, 148, 173-75, 275, 320, 327-36 shugo (propositional subject), 12, 29, 37-38, 70-71, 77-78, 104, 131, 136, 173, 316, 320, 328-32 Shu jing (Book of Documents), 31 shukaku (nominative case, 10-7), 327-29 shukan (epistemological subject, 2-22), 12, 29, 78, 106, 308, 320, 324-26 Shushigaku. See Song rationalism Shusse Kagekiyo (Kagekiyo Victorious), 144 shutai (agent of action, 2-8), 12, 18, 29, 5861, 71-76, 83-86, 92-93, 97-99, 105-6, 125, 133-35, 147, 175, 193, 205, 241, 248, 299, 320, 324-29, 332-33, 336. See also body, of enunciation shutaitekina jiko (6-20), 193 shutaiteki tachiba (participational stance), 265, 324-26, 333 Sidotti, Giovanni, 235 signifiance, 131-35, 146-47, 155, 168, 199, 212, 230-31, 243, 249, 263, 274 simultaneity, 85-86, 233-35 singular thing. See kobutsu situation, 85, 130-35, 141, 172, 175, 188, 199, 241, 249, 294 Six Classics, 31, 219, 246, 257, 265, 296, 298 sociality, 1, 14-15, 78, 82, 93-96, 101-10, 239, 279, 288, 291, 295, 305, 309, 317 softness, 80

347

solidity, 80 solipsism, 78, 136-37 Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicide at Sonezaki), 144 Song rationalism (Song Confucianism, Rigaku, Sorigaku, or Shushigaku), 15, 25, 30, 33, 34-36, 49, 50-59, 65-69, 72, 77, 81, 85, 89-91, 94-96, 100-108, 112, 120, 136-37, 214, 235, 250, 260, 268, 287-88, 291, 294-97, 308, 335 song (uta), 3, 123, 156, 165, 168-70, 275, 295-97, 304-8 Sorai. See Ogyu Sorai sorobun (7-4), 217 spacing, 106-7 specularity, 75-76, 205, 241, 248, 329 speculative knowledge, 235, 238, 247, 281, 283 speech, 3, 88, 131, 138, 142, 145-47, 163, 175, 188, 196, 201-2, 220, 223-24, 22832, 240-45, 251, 254-55, 258, 261-63, 267, 271-72, 277-78, 284, 294, 306, 31012, 315-19 splitting, 192, 195, 200 structuralism, 233-34 subjectivity, 11-12, 18, 28-29, 60-71, 108, 135-36, 149-50, 166, 171-75, 191-92, 197, 206, 229, 234-35, 270, 274-76, 28082, 297-301, 305-9, 314, 320-23, 32930; agent of action: see shutai; epis¬ temological subject: see shukan; proposi¬ tional subject: see shugo; subject of the enunciated, 156, 170; subject of enuncia¬ tion, 11, 47, 60, 67, 70-76, 88, 98, 125, 133, 142, 147, 156, 164-66, 169-70, 193, 205-6, 229, 328; subject subject to the state: see shinmin; theme subject: see shudai

substance (tai, ti, 2-18), 79, 80 sue (tip), 269-70, 276 Suika bunshu, 314 Suika shinto, 311 Suiko, empress, 252 surplus, 104, 117, 130-32, 215, 230, 239, 254, 288, 298, 309 suture, 74 Suzuki Akira, 272 Swift, Jonathan, 9 synchrony, 85, 120, 170, 233-34, 325 Taiheisaku, 237, 286, 292 taikei (dajing, Great Constancies, 9-10), 295

Takamatsu Jiro, 128 Takemoto Gidayu, 144 Tale of Genji, 256 tama (8-6), 272 Tamakatsuma, 256, 269

348

Index

Tamakushige, 256 tanka (short songs), 181, 251 taoyameburi (femininity), 275-76 te, ni, o, ha, 227, 255, 270

Temmu, emperor, 252, 256 textual materiality, 2, 4, 28, 46, 84, 96-97, 101, 106, 109, 119, 136-37, 148-49, 176, 197-200, 239, 254, 306, 317 texture, 296-98 theme subject. See shudai theoria, 71, 106, 213 ti. See substance Timeus, 147 Titunik, I. R., 152, 253 Toga, 236 Tokaidochu hizakurige (Shank’s mare), 194 Tokaido meishoki, 126 Tokashu, 298 Tokieda Motoki, 7, 98, 192-93, 264-65, 272-73, 323-27, 331-34 Tokushiyoron, 235 Tominaga Nakamoto, 236 Toneri, prince, 256 Tosei kagai dangi (Treatise on today’s pleasure quarter), 179-80 totality, 16, 24, 95, 102-5, 220, 236-39, 285-87, 290-91 trace {seki, ji, 3-12), 99, 101, 104-6, 112, 205, 234, 259, 274, 313 transcendental, the, 78, 234, 322 transcendentalism, 56-61, 76-77, 86, 107, 136; transcendent subject, 104 transcription, 130, 141, 145-47, 195, 226, 240, 258-59, 313 transference, 19, 130, 209, 214, 220, 249, 282, 308-9; transferential recentering, 135 Tsugen somagaki, 184 Tsuyudono mongatari (Tales of Tsuyudono, 4-2), 122, 130 Tsuzoku daiseiden, 184 Tu Wei-ming, 42, 63 Ukiyo buro (The Bathhouse of the Floating World), 153 Ukiyo doko {The Barbershop of the Floating World), 153

Ukiyo-e, 184 Ukiyo mono gat ari {Tales of the Floating World), 125, 128 ukiyozdshi, 126, 203

ultimate nothingness, 80 universality, 82, 89, 105, 108, 166, 324; uni¬ versal^), 95-96, 171; universalization, 192-93 univocal, the, 252, 257, 277 Uspensky, Boris A., 127, 137, 154, 176, 200 uta. See song

vacuity, 79 verbal expression {gengoteki hyogen, 6-18), 191-92 verbal text, 116-19, 128, 130, 135-36, 144, 158, 161-64, 173-76, 179, 183, 188, 193, 196-201, 205, 212, 223, 255, 271, 278, 302 verbal, the, 86, 123-24, 127, 131, 138, 194, 214, 222, 226 vernacular language, 18 virtue {toku, de, 3-9), 94-106, 112, 196, 248, 282, 285 voice, 148-50, 156-58, 164-68, 179-80, 188, 196-97, 201, 206, 228, 238, 250-52, 257-64, 269-71, 277-79, 313 Volosinov, V. N., 152, 165, 253 wakun (Japanese way of reading Chinese,

7-2), 216-18, 224-29, 245, 251, 255-57, 266 Wang Shizhen, 214 Watsuji Tetsuro, 301 way, 86, 92, 103, 112, 235-37, 286, 292 Weber, Max, 286 Wen ji, 49 whole, 95, 233, 236-39, 250, 270, 286-90, 310, 335 wisdom, 93-94, 97-99 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 4, 105, 321-22 writing, 2, 88, 107, 111, 115-18, 130-32, 139, 145-47, 154-55, 158, 168, 195-96, 201, 205, 217, 222-24, 228-29, 232-34, 238-42, 251-54, 258-63, 267, 270-72, 277-78, 284, 294, 304-6, 310, 313-16 xin. See mind Yakubun sentei, 225-27 Yamanoue no Okura, 251 Yamato honzo, 268 Yamazaki, Ansai, 311 Yanagida Kunio, 123 Yan zi, 230 Yasuda Jiro, 41 Yi jing (the Book of Change), 50, 99, 295 yin/yang, 80, 83, 111 Yi T’oegye, 314 Yojokun, 268 yomihon (reading book), 194 yomikudashi, 226-27, 245, 262 yomu (to read), 257 yong. See function Yoshikawa Kojiro, 225-26 ydsho. See application Yotsugi Soga (The Soga heir), 144

Index Zhang Longxi, 254 Zhongyong (Doctrine of the mean), 31, 35, 63, 103, 292, 295 Zhonyong zhangju (Chuyoshoku), 50

349

Zhu Xi, 23-26, 31-54, 58-65, 69, 81, 84, 89-91, 94, 99-104, 108, 219, 235, 247, 268, 282, 291, 312; Yulei, 39, 43-45