Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1868-1965)

- Edokko

- Produzione in due fasi:

• influenza letteratura occidentale (art pour l’art)

• (dopo il 1923) mito della classicità giapponese

Prima fase: Diabolisme

- Ispirata al decadentismo europeo

- Cerca di portare alla luce le pulsioni dell’uomo

- Opere più rappresentative

• Shisei (Il tatuaggio, 1912)

• Ave Maria (1923)

• Aoi hana (Il fiore blu, 1922)

• Chijin no ai (L’amore di uno sciocco, 1924)

- Tematiche

• Esplorazione istinti umani, soprattutto sessuali

• Femme fatale

• Analisi della psiche finalizzata a una ricerca estetica

• Annullamento del proprio io per completarsi e raggiungere l’ideale di bellezza

Chijin no ai (1924)

- Analisi dell’amore masochistico di Kawai Jōji per Naomi

- ʺOccidenteʺ come spazio esotico in cui realizzare i desideri nascosti

- Parodia del Giappone post-modernizzazione

- Parodia dello shishōsetsu

“I’m going to try to relate the facts of our relationship as man and wife just as they happened, as honestly and frankly as I can. […] At the same time, I’m sure my readers will also find it instructive. As Japan grows

increasingly cosmopolitan, Japanese and foreigners will eagerly mingle with each other; all sorts of new doctrines and philosophies will be introduced; and both men and

women will adopt up-to-date Western fashions. No doubt, the times being what they are, the sort of marital relationship that we’ve had, unheard of until now, will

begin to appear everywhere.”

Seconda fase

- Conflitto fra modernità e tradizione risolto nel tentativo di ricreare l’estetica giapponese classica (interesse per epoca Heian, tre traduzioni del Genji monogatari)

- Fine anni ‘20/inizio anni ‘30: saggistica:

• In’ei raisan (Elogio della penombra, 1933)

• Shunkinshō kōgo (Postscriptum alla Storia di Shunkin, 1933)

• Gendai kōgobun no ketten ni tsuite (Sui difetti della moderna lingua scritta colloquiale, 1929), e Bunshō tokuhon (Manuale di composizione, 1934)

In’ei raisan (1933)

- Sensibilità ed estetica giapponese: antitetica a quella del moderno Occidente

- Almeno la letteratura giapponese deve abbracciare l’estetica classica e preservare il ʺmondo dell’ombraʺ

• Intertestualità

• Allusività e ambiguità (strutture del mistery; confessione con narratore inattendibile)

• Uso dell’ironia

Shunkinshō kōgo (1933)

- Modello di stile: monogatari, più adeguata versione giapponese del romanzo realista

- Richiamo a una trama ben strutturata

Gendai kōgobun no ketten ni tsuite (1929)

Bunshō tokuhon (1934)

- Genbun’itchi che rispecchi davvero il giapponese

- No all’eccessivo allargamento del lessico e all’eccessivo uso di parole nella prosa moderna

• Richiamo a un ritorno al vocabolario del giapponese classico

Sasame yuki (Neve sottile, 1948)

- La censura ne vieta il proseguimento

- Definito ʺil personale Genjiʺ di Tanizaki

Yume no ukihashi (Il ponte dei sogni, 1959)

- Fulcro: vita familiare di Otokumi Tadasu • Figura della madre morta che si identifica con la

matrigna

• Tema dell’incesto

- Strutturato come una confessione di Tadasu (narratore inattendibile): la confessione è mirata a nascondere più che a svelare

- Intertestualità: richiamo al Genji monogatari

On reading the last chapter of The Tale of Genji: Today when the summer thrush/Came to sing at Heron's Nest/I crossed the Bridge of Dreams. This poem was written by my mother. But I have had two mothers — the second was a stepmother — and although I am inclined to think my real mother wrote it, I cannot be sure. The reasons for this uncertainty will become clear later: one of them is that both women went by the name of Chinu. I remember hearing as a child that Mother was named after the Bay of Chinu, since she was born nearby at Hamadera, where her family, who were Kyoto people, had a seaside villa. She is listed as Chinu in the official city records. My second mother was also called Chinu from the time she came to our house. She never used her real name, Tsuneko, again. Even my father's letters to her were invariably addressed to “Chinu”; you can't tell by the name which of the two he meant. And the “Bridge of Dreams” poem is simply signed “Chinu.”

Although I have thus far written “mother” without specifying which of the two I meant, my intention has been to relate only memories of my true mother. Yet it occurs to me that these recollections seem a little too detailed for a child of three or four. Seeing her dangle her feet in the pond, or hearing her talk about nenunawa, for instance — would such things, if they had really happened when I was a child of that age, have left any impression whatever? Possibly impressions of the first mother were overlaid by those of the second, confusing my memory. […] I cannot recall my first mother's features distinctly. According to Okane, she was very beautiful, but all that I can summon to my mind's eye is the vague image of a full, round face. […] Here too I am perhaps being misled by the superimposed image of my second mother.

I mean the impression she makes, the way she talks, the way she carries herself, her quiet, easygoing personality, sweet and gentle, and yet deep — that's why I say she's like your mother. If I hadn't met her I'd never have wanted to marry again. It's only because there is such a person that I've come to feel this way. Maybe your mother saw to it that I happened to find this lady, for your sake as well as mine. […]What do you think, Tadasu? You understand what I've been telling you, don't you?” Curiously enough, I had already given my consent long before he finished what he intended to say. Seeing my face light up, he added: “There's one thing more I'd like you to remember. When she comes you mustn't think of her as your second mother. Think that your mother has been away somewhere for a while and has just come home. Even if I didn't tell you so, you'd soon begin to look at it that way. Your two mothers will become one, with no distinction between them. Your first mother's name was Chinu, and your new mother's name is Chinu too. And in everything she says and does, your new mother will behave the way the first one did.

But what was the meaning of her behavior that afternoon? […] she had seemed far too cool to be playing such a mischievous trick: she had acted as if this were nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe she would have been just as calm even if someone had come upon us. Maybe, in spite of my having grown up, she still thought of me as a child. Mother's state of mind was a mystery to me, but my own actions had been equally abnormal. The moment I saw her breasts there before me, so unexpectedly revealed, I was back in the dream world that I had longed for, back in the power of the old memories that had haunted me for so many years. Then, because she lured me into it by having me drink her milk, I ended by doing the crazy thing I did. In an agony of shame, wondering how I could have harbored such insane feelings, I paced back and forth around the pond alone. But at the same time that I regretted my behavior, and tortured myself for it, I felt that I wanted to do it again — not once, but over and over.

Mother and I were the objects of their criticism, more than the match with Kajikawa's daughter. To put it bluntly, they believed that we were committing incest. According to them, Okane said, Mother and I began carrying on that way while Father was still alive, and Father himself, once he knew he wouldn't recover, had tolerated it — even encouraged it. Some went so far as to ask whose baby had been smuggled out to Tamba, suggesting that Takeshi was my own child, not my father's. […] Okane explained that everyone in our neighborhood had been gossiping this way about us for a long time. […] My relatives thought that my dying father arranged for me to marry Sawako because only a girl with her disadvantages would accept such a match. Most scandalous of all, his reason for wanting me to keep up appearances by taking a wife was presumably to have me continue my immoral relationship with Mother. Kajikawa was well aware of these circumstances in giving his daughter, and Sawako was going to marry out of respect for her father's wishes — needless to say, they had their eyes on our property.

I have tentatively given this narrative the title of The Bridge of Dreams, and have written it, however amateurishly, in the form of a novel. But everything that I have set forth actually happened — there is not one falsehood in it. Still, if I were asked why I took it into my head to write at all, I should be unable to reply. I am not writing out of any desire to have others read this. At least, I don't intend to let anyone see it as long as I am alive. If someone happens across it after my death, there will be no harm in that; but even if it is lost in oblivion, if no one ever reads it, I shall have no regret. I write for the sake of writing, simply because I enjoy looking back at the events of the past and trying to remember them one by one. Of course, all that I record here is true: I do not allow myself the slightest falsehood or distortion. But there are limits even to telling the truth; there is a line one ought not to cross. And so, although I certainly never write anything untrue, neither do I write the whole of the truth. Perhaps I leave part of it unwritten out of consideration for my father, for my mother, for myself. . . If anyone says that not to tell the whole truth is in fact to lie, that is his own interpretation. I shall not venture to deny it.

Shōsetsu no suji ronsō (La controversia sulla trama del romanzo, febbraio-giugno 1927)

- Dibattito fra Akutagawa e Tanizaki • Cos’è e di cosa deve occuparsi lo shōsetsu?

• Contrapposizione fiction (makoto) e non-fiction (uso)

• Junbungaku vs taishūbungaku

- Suji vs hanashi (homoshiroi vs geijutsutekina)

- Tanizaki: «sia quando compongo le mie opere, sia quando leggo quelle degli altri, ciò che non è finzione non mi interessa»

• Idea che la verità può essere evocata più facilmente attraverso l’artificio

• Ciò che conta è una trama interessante

- Akutagawa: «la frammentarietà non è altro che purezza»

• Supremazia della verità sulla finzione

Modanizumu モダニズム

- Produzione di opere letterarie databili fra il 1912 e il 1937

- Richiamo al modernismo europeo, ma con specificità proprie

- Caratteristiche:

• opposizione a naturalismo e shishōsetsu

• rifiuto canoni linguistici e formali, avanguardia

• centralità tematica del disorientamento culturale legato alla modernità

• ambientazione urbana

Shinkankakuha (Scuola della nuova sensibilità)

- Gruppo di giovani scrittori che nel 1924 fonda la rivista Bungei jidai (chiusa nel 1937)

- Spirito ribelle nei confronti del bundan

- Si ispira ai movimenti d’avanguardia europei

- Uso non convenzionale della lingua e delle strutture grammaticali

- Dissoluzione dell’io

- Esperienza cinematografica: Shinkankakuha eiga renme

• Kurutta ippeiji, 1926

Yokomitsu Riichi

- Shinkankakuron (Sulla nuova sensibilità, 1925)

- Shanhai (1928-1929)

• atteggiamento ambivalente verso la modernità

• punto centrale è la città, Shanghai

Kawabata Yasunari

- Asakusa kurenaidan (La banda di Asakusa, 1929-1930)

• filo conduttore: colore rosso

• susseguirsi di immagini

• nodo centrale: terremoto del ‘23

• frasi brevi, spezzate

Puroretaria bungaku プロレタリア文学

- Introduzione marxismo negli anni ‘30: idea di una letteratura di impegno sociale

- 1921: rivista Tanemaku hito (Il seminatore)

• scrittori interessati alla letteratura russa

• Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke

• chiusa nel 1923

- 1924: rivista Bungei sensen (Fronte letterario)

• fulcro della Nihon Puroretaria Bungei Renmei, che nel 1928 diventa NAPF (Nippona Artista Proletaria Federacio)

- Movimento fermato dalla politica repressiva del governo

- Amplia le tematiche della letteratura

Kobayashi Takiji (1903-1933)

- Kani kōsen (Il peschereccio dei granchi, 1929)

• opera centrata sulla collettività

• censurata e pubblicata nel dopoguerra

• denuncia del sistema imperiale, degli interessi delle potenze industriali

Miyamoto Yuriko (1899-1951)

- Fūchisō (1947)

• unione di letteratura proletaria e letteratura ʺfemminileʺ

• narrato in prima persona

• l’unica risposta al vuoto lasciato dal dopoguerra è l’impegno sociale

Anni ‘30

• repressione

• Tenkō bungaku (letteratura di conversione)