Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

An Interview with Nagai Kafu

It seems to be a kind of a cliche for people to put up their old essays from university on the Internet. "Who wants to read that?!" says my hypothetical representative of the general attitude about this sort of thing, whom I shall name Gerald, even though I'll probably never refer to him again. However, I am going to act according to the cliche now and post here part of my final dissertation that I wrote for my BA in Japanese Studies. I graduated in the year 2000, so this was written from, if I remember correctly, mid 1999 onwards. Perhaps I started earlier, I can't remember now.

Anyway, I hope that people (including Gerald) will actually want to read this, and that they won't find it boring. Let me explain a little about it. The title of the disseration was 'Decay - The Life and Works of Nagai Kafu.' Nagai Kafu (1879-1959) is one of my favourite writers, and numbers among the handful of things on this planet that have kept me alive and relatively sane. The word 'decay' in the title of the dissertation refers to the fact that much of his work dealt with decline of traditional Japanese culture. More than that, however, there is a definite strain in his work of finding beauty in decay, in squalor, in all that is hopeless, all that is fleeting, all that thrives like weeds in the shadowy places of the world.

I look back on some of what I have written with acute embarrassment now. I was very pleased to be told that the dissertation had received the highest mark of any dissertation in the history of the department (as you can perhaps imagine), but the lecturers surely knew I was also being self-indulgent in many ways, and told me so. And yet they indulged me. Perhaps it was because they could tell I loved my subject matter. Having been a teacher myself, I know that it's always very refreshing to find someone interesting enough to be interested in something, and not so boring that they are always bored.

I certainly don't intend to reproduce the entire dissertation on the Internet. Not ever. Because of the abovementioned embarrassment, you see. What I intend to reproduce here is one of the appendices. I was so enthusiatic about my subject that I far exceeded the word limit. The only way I could get around this was by putting some of the material I had to cut back in as appendices. The appendix in question is in the form of an interview I conducted with Nagai Kafu. Now, if you look at the birth and death dates for Kafu above, and happen to know my birth (and possibly death) dates, you'll probably be scratching your head at this point. Ah, but I didn't interview the living Kafu, you see. I interviewed his ghost.

I have a hard copy of the dissertation here with me. It is spiral bound, and, considering I'm not much one for presentation (have you noticed?), beautifully presented. The cover, in particular, is very beautiful, but I don't think I'll be able to find that image on the Internet. Maybe I'll try and scan it in later, if someone is actually interested. And now, the interview:



The Long Awaited Interview

‘Tis the day of the festival O-Bon and your reporter awaits the presence of the illustrious author Nagai Kafu in a corner of Kamiya Bar, apparently a favourite haunt of the great man when he was alive. I have ordered something called an ‘electric brandy,’ the speciality of the house and a curious concoction indeed. Drinking it is not dissimilar to licking a battery. The place is very busy and I hope that no one will recognise the great man when he arrives. I want this to be a pleasant, relaxed interview.

Kafu, as he is generally known, does not give me the opportunity to let my excitement become strained or anxious by making me wait. He arrives with commendable punctuality at the appointed time. It is rather a tall man who strides through the door, and there is about him the general impression of sturdiness, somewhat belying what I have heard of his ill health. To my surprise, however, he is dressed rather informally, dare I say, shabbily, in an old striped shirt, open at the neck, a pair of exceedingly ragged trousers with rolled up bottoms, and sandals worn down at the heel. As he takes a seat he plucks a leaf from his tousled hair.

NK: I hope I’m not late.

YR: No, not at all.

NK: You must excuse my attire. I’ve just come from the garden and haven’t had time to dress. Let me just change into something a little more appropriate.

Before I can protest Kafu turns misty and unfocused. When his outline sharpens once more he presents an entirely different figure. Now he is dressed in an immaculate, dark Western suit and tie with polished black shoes. He removes his hat and relinquishes it to a passing waiter. He reminds me of someone. After a few moments I decide that he looks like a rather large-featured, Japanese version of Harold Lloyd. Maybe it’s the glasses.

YR: It’s very good of you to agree to this interview.

NK: Yes. It runs entirely contrary to my usual habits, of course. I’m somewhat distrustful of those who ply the pen, and I can see you’re one of them.

YR: Then, if it’s not too impertinent, might I ask why you did agree?

NK: To be quite frank I was surprised that anyone was interested. I’ve been laid to rest for forty years this very year, and I was quite out of fashion even towards the end of my own lifetime.

YR: Nonetheless, you are remembered. Your work has been translated into English as recently as five years ago. Works like Sumidagawa and Bokuto Kidan have even been translated into your beloved French. You say that you are distrustful of writers, but it is as a writer you are remembered.

NK: Yes. A disgraceful set of circumstances.

YR: Yet you yourself specified that you wanted your epitaph to read, “The Grave of Nagai Kafu the Scribbler.” [1]

NK: That would be the English translation, I suppose? I also stated I should like to be buried among the courtesans of Yoshiwara, but it seems that particular wish was not to be granted. [2]



YR: What I’m trying to get at is that you seem excessively self-deprecating, to the extent of being paradoxical. For instance, your proclamation that you should be taken no more seriously than an Edo gesakusha, what was behind that?

NK: Well, I believe I largely covered that question in a little essay called, ‘Hanabi,’ but since you ask, and it would be very tedious of me to refer you constantly to my writings, quite simply, I never considered myself that talented. I’m not sure that today’s people will understand the distinction, but I see myself more as a Saikaku than a Chikamatsu. [3] Besides, I actually have a boundless admiration for the Edo gesakusha. Should I have the fortune to be considered a genuine gesakusha I would esteem it a great accolade. Let’s put it another way. I believe it was in the fifth year of Taisho – that’s 1916 to you – that I renounced the literature of affirmation for the literature of ‘shumi.’ [4] Which is to say, I was writing more for my own sake, as an amateur – and you know the French word designates someone with a real love for their work - rather than trying to set any examples or fight any literary battles. That way one feels a greater freedom. It does not matter so much if one’s works are a little irregular, or not in step with the issues of the day. In short, one does not have to be the slave of others’ expectations. It’s an enviable position. No matter what authorities may be in power, they cannot stop you from thinking and dreaming what you wish. And similarly, they cannot stop you from writing what you wish, even if they make sure it is not published.

YR: You say you lack talent, and yet according to the Japanese I have spoken to, some in this very bar, your works are considered classics. They tell me your style is difficult, lyrical, finely polished. Of course, it seems all those things to me too, but in their comments I find my own views vindicated. I must say that I’m fascinated by the whole ambiguity of your position, as a latter-day gesakusha, as someone whose works are considered flawed by the likes of Edward Seidensticker, and yet as someone who, in the very fact of attracting such criticism, is evidently considered worthy of the attention.

NK: That’s not really a question.

YR: No, I suppose not. In which case let us proceed to another ambiguity. You seem distinctly individualist in philosophical bent and general temperament, and yet you appear to hanker after the Edo period, which was probably even more authoritarian than the Meiji period and all that it ushered in.

NK: Well, this is true. But perhaps that is the fault of my fatalistic nature. I do not admire authoritarianism, by any means. But the problem is one of aesthetics. The arts of Edo, not to mention the architecture and the manners, were far superior to the arts of our ill-considered 20th century. [5] The thing about the tyranny of the past, I suppose, is that it has been an oppressive cloud casting a great shadow, and I’m sure you are aware how fond I am of shadows and what is to be found among them. The ukiyo-e, for instance, for which I harbour almost religious feeling, is just such a product of this tyrannical shadow, the art of the oppressed plebeian, expressing in part resignation and in part defiance. Please note it is not the tyranny, but the resistance to that tyranny with which I am in especial sympathy.

YR: I’d like to extend this theme a little further in a slightly different direction. I put it to you that your attitudes are essentially conservative, and present as further evidence your attitude towards women. Your works evince a notable sympathy towards your female characters, who usually occupy low or disreputable social positions. However, your sympathy seems to cease should they rise from their positions of subjugation. For instance, in Bokuto Kidan, when talking about redeeming women from ‘the quarters of the thickly painted,’ [6] and giving them a domestic role, you state: “Every time such a woman changed her circumstances and ceased to consider herself humble, she would undergo a complete change and either end up a hopeless slattern or an ungovernable shrew.” [7] In short, your aesthetics seem actually to demand a certain cruelty for your hikage no hana to flourish.

NK: The extract you have quoted is from a work of fiction and not necessarily autobiographical. Nonetheless, I will stick by the remark. It is simple personal observation. I have nothing against women making good in the world. But I too have my own way to make in the world and my own interests to pursue. As to being conservative, that is a matter of interpretation. If being conservative means wishing to preserve all that is good in our traditions and our arts, and having a modicum of manners and decency in one’s dealings, then I admit to it unreservedly. By the way, if you read a little further in Bokuto Kidan you will find that Oe Tadasu muses that someone other than him might be able to make such a marriage a happy one.

YR: But you don’t believe in sexual equality?

NK: I don’t believe it is a very desirable position for men. Fully emancipated women are not very attractive. [8] But that is simply a matter of taste.

YR: Seidensticker quotes your second wife as explaining why she left you by saying, “He was very fickle.” [9] I feel sure that “fickle,” is Seidensticker’s way of translating, “Uwaki shite ita,” or, “Unfaithful.”

NK: This is the kind of scandal mongering I had feared. I would be obliged if you would mind your own business and limit your questions to my work.

YR: Yes, you’re quite right. Perhaps it is irrelevant. Speaking of which, do you think your work, backward looking even at the time of writing, has any relevance for readers today? Is it even healthy to be reading something that dwells so much on a past irrecoverably lost?

NK: My immediate response is to say that I do not care whether it is relevant to ‘the reader of today,’ or not. I have had occasion to wander the streets of Asakusa, Mukojima, where I set Bokuto Kidan, Fukagawa, Nihombashi – I could go on – and I find that as the city approaches the 21st century, there remains not a shadow of the city I knew and wrote about. I cannot hope to describe the overwhelming sadness that the sight of the modern streets induces in me. There is the sense of a world lost as in the blinking of an eye, and I come to feel the true meaning of what it is to be a ghost. ‘As I witness the extinction of the city’s spirit I feel in all my being nothing but a desire to be gone with it.’ [10] You ask if my works are relevant today, but that is not for me to answer. Why trouble my ghost with these questions? Perhaps it is best to be forgotten, to be perfected by obsolescence, to rest, rather than be called back and called back like this to a present where one does not belong. Let the past be the past and the present be the present. Only one thing – perhaps you should ask yourself why you wished to ask me such a question. I have passed on and such matters do not concern me, but the living are necessarily more restless than the dead. It is the living, perhaps, who are more haunted by the past.

YR: Have you anything to say before you slip once more through the ghostly turnstile to the other side?

NK: Yes. Your last question has set me to thinking. If I might be allowed to quote myself, and whether you act on it or not it is a truth, “I say it unconditionally: Our future has no road to proceed from save that of our past.” [11]

YR: Nagai Kafu, thank you very much for your time.

NK: Thank you.

And somewhat like a Cheshire Cat, Kafu fades away, leaving behind his spectacles and his gap-toothed grin for a moment.

*************************************************************************************************

Bibliography

[1] Seidensticker, Edward. Kafu the Scribbler (The Life and Writings of Nagai Kafu 1879-1959). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965. p.176.

[2] Ibid. p.152.

[3] Ibid. p.132.

[4] Ibid. p.82.

[5] Ibid. p.27.

[6] Nagai, Kafu. Bokuto Kidan. [A Strange Tale from East of the River]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1997. (A). p.126.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Seidensticker, 1965, p.22.

[9] Ibid. p.57/58.

[10] Nagai, Kafu. Danchotei Nichijo (ge). [Dyspepsia House Days (vol.II)]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1996. (C). p.228.

[11] Seidensticker, 1965, p.49.

Labels: Nagai Kafu