JAPAN FOCUS
(Translated by KYOKO SELDEN & ALISA FREEDMAN)
Still from In Search of a Lost Writer: Wanderings in the Realm of the Seventh Sense (Dainana kankai h?k?: Osaki Midori o sagashite, directed by Hamano Sachi) IMAGE/H3 Dion
Born in Tottori Prefecture (where her last name is pronounced Osaki rather than Ozaki1), Osaki Midori (1896-1971) was the fourth of seven children in a middle-class, intellectual family. Her mother was the daughter of the head priest of a Buddhist temple; her father was a teacher, who died while Osaki was a teenager. Osaki graduated from the Tottori Girls’ School (Tottori Jogakko), and, at age eighteen, became an elementary school teacher. Aspiring to a literary career, she wrote poetry, essays, and fiction and sold a novel for schoolgirls (sh?jo sh?setsu) to Sh?jo sekai (Girls’ World) magazine in 1917.
In 1919, Osaki moved to Tokyo to study at Japan Women’s University. Her three older brothers had earlier pursued higher educations, attending the naval academy, Tottori University, and University of Tokyo, respectively. Osaki’s story “From the Doldrums” (Mif?tai kara) appeared in the general interest literary magazine Shinch? (New Currents) in 1919, making her name known. However, running up against the university’s policy prohibiting students from publishing literature in commercial venues, she withdrew from school in 1920 to become a fulltime writer.
Osaki strove to make a life for herself in Tokyo and to be part of the literary world centered there, for which acceptance often required the support of established writers and editors and the sale of works to magazines and newspapers. In the 1920s and 1930s, Tokyo was the epicenter of the intensification of historical and literary trends that had begun earlier, including rapid urbanization, the rise of new social groups and changing gender roles, diversification of mass media, development of popular entertainments, as well as increasing control of the police state and imperialist ventures. Tokyo was a magnet, then as now, drawing people from other parts of Japan and throughout the empire, seeking employment, education, and excitement. But, for women, a move to the capital often meant leaving behind the protective space of the family, breaking with the patriarchal system that was the basis of society. In Wanderings in the Realm of the Seventh Sense (Dainana kankai h?k?, 1931), as in her other works, Osaki expresses the alienation that many individuals experienced in the capital. She portrays unconventional familial relationships formed among youth seeking to establish themselves in Tokyo. Her female protagonists endured difficult living conditions, as Osaki herself did.
Osaki associated with authors representing diverse ideological and aesthetic goals who sought to expand the scope of Japanese literature. Most scholars have classified Osaki with the Tokyo “modernists” (then more commonly referred to by the factions to which they belonged) who were experimenting with unorthodox techniques to respond to their modern moment, which they saw as marking a break with the past, and who sought to convey the allure and contradictions of Tokyo. Many modernist writers were critical of the proletarian literature about Tokyo being written at the time, which they saw as prioritizing politics at the expense of aesthetics and as focusing solely on despair. Yet they shared a similar concern with Marxist writers in capturing the details of daily life under capitalism as part of a larger critique. So-called modernists and Marxist writers contributed to periodicals and books sponsored by the same publishers (for example, Shinch? and Kaiz?) in the 1920s, suggesting that their rivalries might not have been as implacable as contemporary scholars believe them to be and that editors had their eyes on the market and knew both literary forms could sell.
Unskilled at social interactions and unable to find enough work, Osaki lived in abject poverty. Hayashi Fumiko, aspiring author and contributor to Nyonin geij?tsu (Women’s Arts) magazine to which Osaki sold many works, appreciated Osaki’s talent and respected her as a person, but Osaki lacked the perseverance and social skills that enabled Hayashi to overcome an impoverished, anonymous, and degrading life. She was able to continue writing thanks to financial support from her mother in Tottori to supplement income received from her part-time work, as well as assistance from author Matsushita Fumiko, whom she had met at Japan Women’s University. In 1932, Osaki—who had lost her emotional balance due to the side effects of medications used to treat migraine headaches and was perhaps suffering from the end of her brief cohabitation with Takeo Takeshi, a writer ten years her junior—was forced by her oldest brother to return to Tottori; there she was hospitalized for a mental breakdown. Although she regained her health, Midori abandoned her literary career and publically announced in 1941 that she was finished writing. Withdrawing to her remote hometown, she ceased contact with the Tokyo literary establishment, stopped publishing, and took care of her nieces and nephews amidst the social upheaval of the war. For years, her writings were overlooked by authors and critics.
Wanderings in the Realm of the Seventh Sense, often viewed as the culmination of Osaki’s modernism and her signature work, was published in two parts in the March and April 1931 issues of the literary magazine Bungaku t?in (Literary Members) and a revised complete version appeared in the June 1931 issue of Shink? geijutsu kenky? (New Arts Research). The book version was released in 1933, and Osaki attended the launch in Tottori. The story is told in a light, humorous tone by Ono Machiko, a young woman who has left behind a quiet rural life with her grandmother to live with her brothers and former childhood crush in Tokyo. The male characters’ perspectives are communicated through letters, treatises, and conversations interspersed through Machiko’s narration. All four members of this “odd household” are devoted to their studies, unusual versions of fields developing at the time and which inspired Osaki’s literature—science, psychology, music, and poetry. Machiko aspires to write poems that capture the “seventh sense” but is unable to define this elusive sense at the interface of consciousness and unconsciousness that arises from but transcends everyday reality. She perceives inklings of it through trancelike moments. The five ordinary senses are heightened to the point of discomfort—smells are disgusting, sounds discordant, tastes bitter, touches cause shivers, and sights are blurred or painful to behold. Sensory perceptions are conveyed through strange combinations of words (for example, voices grow moist). None of the characters have the intuition of the sixth sense (dairokkan).