Self-Mockery

I

To Mr. Nakamura Murao,

This is my answer to your “On the Fashion for Essays.” Perhaps because for some time I have not been discussing the literary world with you, when I read your piece I felt an urge to strike back. Thus, though it comes about a month late, I am sending an arrow in return into your battle line. Please, as is your custom, let your hair bristle heavenward in indignation, while inwardly taking satisfaction that the arrow you loosed did indeed meet with a response.

You say, “In all the arts, there can be none that are not the product of leisure.” You also say, “From its very nature, art ought to be something produced out of leisure.” In the piece you refuted, I too said, “The essay is a product of leisure. At the very least, it is a literary form that prided itself on being, however slightly, a product of leisure.” Of course I did not mean that leisure belongs to essays alone and cannot enter elsewhere. And when I said it “prided itself on being, however slightly, a product of leisure,” I was speaking only of the facts as they stand. Indeed, leisure must be counted among the necessary conditions for the appreciation and creation of art. At the very least it must be counted among the favorable conditions. On this point I have no need whatever to object to your view. And by the same token, you ought to have no need to object to mine.

Next, Mr. Nakamura, you say this: “Mr. Akutagawa says leisure is a product of money. But ... whether one has money or not, in a social environment like the present one, leisure cannot be had. If one has money, one is busy in one way; if one has none, one is busy in another. Whether one can obtain leisure depends less on the presence or absence of money than on each person’s state of mind.” Then your position is not simply that leisure cannot be had. State of mind, after all, does provide some degree of leisure apart from money. I have no objection to that either. Even in the piece you attacked, I clearly wrote, “Before one can obtain leisure, one must first have money. Or else one must transcend money.”

But unfortunately, besides the state of mind that makes leisure possible, you acknowledge other causes that make it impossible. “More fundamentally, however,” you say, “the problem is the social environment. Hearing the noise of streetcars and automobiles and airplanes, buried in newspapers and magazines, even if one had money, there is no way one could attain the state of ‘leisure’ into which people of old immersed themselves.” This is an error older than the mountains, one heard not only from you but often from learned men. At no time, anywhere in history, has the social environment ever made leisure easy. You, Nakamura of the twentieth century, are bothered by the sound of automobiles. But Schopenhauer in the nineteenth century was bothered by the crack of the coachman’s whip. And Homer long ago must surely have been bothered by the rumbling of war chariots or something of the kind. In other words, the ancients too believed their own age the noisiest of all. Indeed, the matter goes further than that. The sounds of automobiles, streetcars, airplanes—in short, the social environment of modern times—are rather one of the necessary conditions for obtaining leisure. You and I, born into such a social environment, have no world of peace in which we can truly dwell outside it. Desolation destroys leisure in exactly the same way as uproar. If you doubt it, imagine you and me cast into the forests of Africa. Courageous fellow that you are, you might ascend the throne of some Hottentot chief. Yet it is equally plain that before a month had passed, the unfortunate chief Nakamura Murao would have gone mad.

You go on to say: “But does it follow that, from modern life, which lacks leisure, we can expect no art? I do not necessarily think so. Art, whether in content or in form, is something freely transferable, something that can arise from any age and any condition. ... It changes rapidly from age to age, and there is no harm in that at all.” Art will no doubt change whether or not Your Excellency grants permission. On that point I agree with you. But agreeing with you does not mean acknowledging all art of every age equally, simply because it is the art of its age. Leonardo da Vinci’s works are the art of fifteenth-century Italy; the works of Futurist painters are the art of twentieth-century Italy. But to respect both equally—well, without my needing to say so, I am sure you too agree that this does not follow.

And again you say: “In just the same way, essays too—works like The Pillow Book and Essays in Idleness, in the age when Sei Shonagon and the monk Kenko lived, such essays were born; and in the present age, the appearance of essays suited to the present age is unavoidable. (I say: of course.) Natsume Soseki’s Within the Glass Doors too, I think, is as an artistic sketch one of the higher forms of the essay. (I say: I quite agree.) But works like that are not something we can readily hope for. Let Kanchoro, Danchotei, and Soseki remain unique in their own way; and as for the essays of Mr. Oka Eiichiro and Mr. Sasaki Mitsuzo, those too are perfectly good as essays of a new age.” To agree with you here, one would first have to make the difference between Within the Glass Doors and the essays of Oka and Sasaki a difference of era alone. Well, since I esteem both gentlemen in everyday life, there would be no harm in leaving it at a difference of era. But where principle is at stake, if one does not shrink from sacrificing even one’s own kin, it seems one cannot quite say that. Still less can I, however much you press me, offer praise to essays that do not even approach the level of those two men’s work. By the way, let me add in passing that you seem to identify the excellence of old essays with what you call “the charm of antiquity.” But when I love The Pillow Book, it is not because I love “the charm of antiquity.” At least, it is certainly not for that alone.

Finally, you say, “After all, it is only the essay. It is better not to think too hard about it. Of course too much nonsense will not do, but it need not necessarily be lofty in style, need not necessarily be fine prose, need not necessarily be learned, need not be labored. If, simply and with natural innocence, one writes according to one’s own gifts what one has seen, felt, and thought, that is enough.” No doubt that is enough. But the real issue lies hidden in your phrase, “too much nonsense.” I too, like you, am troubled by “too much nonsense.” Only, you are richer than I in the virtue of tolerance.

And while I am at it, to stray a little into side issues: you say, “Now that the vogue for essays is gradually becoming vigorous, those who discuss essays always tend on the one hand to praise Mr. Nagai Kafu and Mr. Chikamatsu Shuko, and on the other to mock the efforts of younger people. ... To jump on the bandwagon of what the world has long since recognized, and pile roof upon roof on top of it, is no achievement at all.” Here too I can only say I agree. And if among those “younger people” you would be so good as to include me, then I agree all the more.

But when you say, “I think what first made people clearly conscious of the vogue for essays was the publication of the magazine Essays, founded by Mr. Nakatogawa Kichi. ... But if essays are as difficult a thing as Mr. Akutagawa and others define them to be, ... then the publication of a magazine specializing in essays would never even have been conceived,” that is somewhat overstated. The magazine Essays need not print only ideal essays. Just take a look at New Current, the magazine you yourself preside over. It is a fact that from time to time it also publishes a little of the old current.

Mr. Nakamura Murao,

I believe I have, in broad outline, answered your article. But to add one more word: the piece in which I discussed essays was not, after all, perfectly orderly in logic. I said, “Before one can obtain leisure, one must first have money. Or else one must transcend money. Both are hopeless.” But why are both hopeless? My pessimism made me state as fact what should perhaps have been phrased only as a possibility. Perhaps out of pity for me, you unfortunately failed to strike at this weak point. You ought to know already how unpleasant it is to be pitied by one’s opponent in argument. If there was any point in our controversy where I felt even the least hostility, it was precisely here that I was truly offended. That is all.

II

According to an article by Mr. Fujimori Junzo in the February issue of Shincho, concerning the work and character of Mr. Uno Koji, Uno at first despised Mr. Satomi and Ryunosuke Akutagawa, but later began to cast sheep’s eyes at them. As for Satomi, I shall leave him aside; but insofar as the matter concerns me, Fujimori’s words are not accurate. Uno may indeed have made eyes at me, but I too made eyes at him with great energy. Indeed, if I speak according to my own feeling, it almost seems to me that I was the only one doing the flirting.

Fujimori’s article will probably cause not the slightest itch or pain to the great man Uno himself. Therefore I see no need to write this for Uno’s sake.

But to make eyes neither at new ideas nor at new people is proof of nothing so much as boredom itself. At the same time, that is something of which I am ashamed. If so, then the fact that one has cast such glances—the proof of an ever-lively vitality—should not be left to Uno’s exclusive possession. I too ought to have my share of it. Or perhaps it ought to be granted to me alone. Yet the partial Fujimori has bestowed this honor only upon Uno. That is why even I, detached though I may be, cannot help feeling jealous.

At any rate, finding myself with a little leisure, I have taken up my brush to defend these flirtatious glances.

(April, 1924)