A Brief History of Masochism; Thoroughly Modern Emmu; Consort, Lover, Mistress, Mother; Masochism in the Post Pacific War Period; Phantasy/Fantasy; Desire
As noted in the introduction, this thesis will investigate the use of masochistic imagery in print and visual media by Japanese writers and artists with an emphasis on the works of Kōno Taeko, Yamada Eimi, Kanehara Hitomi, and ladies’ comic mangaka, Watanabe Yayoi. Attention will also be given to a number of writers producing material contemporaneously with these artists and to other forms of media dealing with similar themes. In examining what for many is a controversial or even abhorrent subject I aim to retrieve the subjugated voices of women masochists. We will see that masochism in Japanese women’s writing is more than a simple ‘perversion’ or anomaly. Before proceeding with a close reading of the work of the authors noted above it is necessary to investigate what is meant by the term ‘masochism’ in order to be familiar with the aesthetics, constructs and strict rules by which this principle is governed. In the discussion that follows, regular reference will also be made to theories of desire and phantasy/fantasy, two ideas that are heavily intertwined with theories of masochism. These theories will be explored through the application of psychoanalytic theory and literary theory from both Japan and the west before briefly engaging with the concepts of masochistic desire and phantasy/fantasy in the context of the texts under consideration.
In order to discuss masochism it is necessary to first provide a definition of this term – as far as is possible with a notion that shifts and metamorphoses in terms of the texts to be discussed. In doing so, I will present the origins of the word ‘masochism’ in medical and quasi-medical discourses – including that of psychoanalysis – of terms such as ‘masochistic,’ ‘masochist,’ ‘mazohisuto,’ ‘M’ and ‘emmu’ and also discuss the current common usage of these expressions in both Japanese and English language contexts. Since the protagonists of the texts to be examined
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are predominately women, I will also explore the implications of women engaging in masochism given that masochistic theories developed with reference only to men.1
A Brief History of Masochism
This section will provide a brief outline of the ways in which theories and definitions of masochism have changed over time. In popular discourse the term masochism is often used interchangeably with, and therefore confused or mistaken for, sadism and/or sadomasochism. Using the work of Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995),2 I will demonstrate that the conventions of sadism and masochism, especially as manifest in the one person, are essentially incompatible.3 While a relationship between a person with masochistic tendencies and one with sadistic tendencies is never wholly ruled out in Deleuze’s theories, we will see, especially in Chapter 4 in relation to Kanehara’s text, these encounters are never completely successful for all those involved. While I have attempted to introduce those theories that are most relevant to the discussion that follows, it would be impossible to cover every aspect of masochism that has ever been proposed. To trace not only past theories of masochism but also new theories of this form of activity, which continually emerge in accordance with global and local changes, would require a work of many volumes.
The term, ‘masochism’ (German masochismus), was first coined by Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) in Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) after the work of author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
1
Noyes 1997, p. 9. The issue of ‘feminine masochism’ – the theory that women are natural masochists due to their passivity – will be explored later in this chapter.
2
In particular “Le Froid et le Cruel” (1967) which will be referred to as “Coldness and Cruelty” throughout this thesis, as per McNeil’s 1987 English language translation. See Deleuze 1991, pp. 9-138.
3 Theimplications of the usage of the terms ‘sadism’ and ‘masochism’ in the context of ‘S/M play’ within the
BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism) community are discussed below.
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(1836-1895), particularly Venus in Furs.4 Venus in Furs tells the story of the archetypal masochistic hero, Severin, and his devotion to and education of Wanda, who becomes his chosen
masochistic consort. Sacher-Masoch not only created masochistic characters such as Severin and Wanda, the principle characters of Venus in Furs, but also lived a masochistic lifestyle. Of
particular note are Sacher-Masoch’s relationships with both Fanny Pistor, on whom the figure of Wanda is based, and his wife Aurora von Rümelin, who changed her name to Wanda after marrying Sacher-Masoch. Wanda von Sacher-Masoch later published details of the couple’s masochistic interactions and contracts, ‘ruthlessly’ exploiting her husband’s reputation to further her own literary career after his death.5
Venus in Furs opens with a dream sequence in which a primary narrator has a conversation with Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty and sex.6 This narrator then visits Mr Severin, an aged eccentric. Upon hearing of the dream, Severin gives the narrator a manuscript to read. This manuscript, in which Severin looks back at an affair during his youth with a woman called Wanda, forms the bulk of the Venus in Furs narrative. Severin describes how he was able to persuade Wanda to take on the role of mistress, lover and torturer. As the story progresses and Wanda grows more comfortable in her role as Severin’s cruel, fur-clad goddess – we have already noted that the style and panache associated with costume are integral elements of the
masochistic experience – the relationship between the two shifts subtly. By the close of the narrative Severin finds that Wanda has become the perfect woman he had always longed for – regal, aloof and powerful. However, once she becomes his feminine ideal, Wanda loses all interest in Severin and eventually leaves him for another man. Embittered and broken by his
4
Sacher-Masoch 1991, pp. 143-271.
5 Phillips 1998, p. 19. For an example of one Sacher-Masoch’s extant contracts see “Appendix II: “Two
contracts of von Sacher-Masoch” in Masochism, pp. 277-279.
6
More sinisterly, Venus (Greek Aphrodite) is referred to as the ‘The Goddess of Death-in-Life’ and given titles that can be translated as ‘man-slayer’ and ‘of the tombs.’ See Graves 1955, pp. 67-72. Each of these titles hint at the tyrannical nature of love, reinforcing Sacher-Masoch’s selection of the goddess of love as a pivotal figure in his masochistic narrative.
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experience, Severin renounces masochism forever. He spends his days alone, remembering what might have been.
Based on the exploits described in Sacher-Masoch’s narratives and extant masochistic contracts between the author and Fanny, and the author and Wanda,7 Krafft-Ebing defines masochism as:
[a] peculiar perversion of the psychical vita sexualis in which the individual affected, in sexual feeling and thought, is controlled by the idea of being completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex; of being treated by this person as by a master, humiliated and abused. This idea is coloured by lustful feeling; the masochist lives in fantasies, in which he creates situations of this kind and often attempts to realise them. By this perversion his sexual instinct is often made more or less insensible to the normal charms of the opposite sex.8
In other words, the masochist is defined by Krafft-Ebing as a person who finds sexual pleasure in being dominated, controlled and/or hurt by a person of the opposite sex to the degree that she or he can no longer experience sexual satisfaction and/or fulfilment by any other means. For the masochist it matters not if these sexual pleasures are realised physically or remain solely in the realm of fantasy – we have already seen, in fact, that fantasy plays an integral role in any and all masochistic scenarios. A masochist’s pleasure in the idea of being dominated can be so complete that it becomes the sole criterion for mate selection, excluding concerns such as age, physical appearance, social status and personal wealth. Krafft-Ebing’s classifications of
masochism as perversion, paraphilia, or as sexual deviation, places – in that writer’s mind at least – a social judgement on masochistic acts and practices. It is important to note that the focus of my project is masochism as this appears in the fictional world of the texts to be examined rather than in the context of Japanese society as a whole. Nevertheless, given that the text is the
7 ‘I feel justified in calling this sexual anomaly “Masochism” because the author Sacher-Masoch frequently
made this perversion […] the substratum of his writings.’ Krafft-Ebing 1886, p. 132.
8
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product of a socio-economic context, some reference will be made in the discussion that follows to masochism as a social phenomenon. Unlike Krafft-Ebbing, however, I make no judgment on this form of sexual activity.
In constructing a working definition – or understanding – of masochism upon which to base the discussion that follows, there are a number of points that need to be profiled relating to Krafft- Ebing’s comment cited above. Firstly, this is a very heteronormative statement which gives no space to anything other than a conventional male/female coupling. Secondly, Krafft-Ebing accords the right to the masochistic experience to males only. Women, it would appear, lack the capacity or the entitlement to choose the masochistic experience, an assumption which, like heteronormativity, was undoubtedly typical of attitudes of the time. Finally, we might note the writer’s reference to ‘the normal charms of the opposite sex.’ When we consider the other claims made about women in Psychopathia Sexualis, such as Krafft-Ebing’s ‘observation’ that the
‘physically and mentally normal, and properly educated’ woman has ‘but little sensual desire,’ or his assertion that women who actively seek men are ‘sheer anomalies,’ it becomes clear these charms are those of the non-threatening and non-controlling woman whose only desire is to submit to the ‘superior’ will of the male.9 This confirms the exclusion of women, as well as same- sex masochistic couples, from that group of subjects who direct their own masochistic fantasies. At this point, for Krafft-Ebing, masochism-as-perversion referred only to male masochism. In the imperialist, paternalistic social environment of the late 1800s, the feminised, submissive male was an aberration that was contrary to the perceived nature of male sexuality.10 Equally as perverse was the dominating, masculine, woman who was necessary to fulfil the male’s
9 Ibid., p. 14. 10
This is a view shared by Ivan Bloch (1872-1922) and Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) in their work on the science of sexology. For more see Bloch 1974; Hirschfeld 1956.
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masochistic desires.11 Since the woman was expected to adopt a submissive role the ‘masochistic’ woman was viewed not as a perversion but as the expected (accepted) social norm.
In addition to coining the term ‘masochism’ in Psychopathia Sexualis, Krafft-Ebing also created the term ‘sadism’, thus setting the precedent of associating masochism with sadism. Whereas the masochistic male exhibits a feminine passivity the sadistic male is ‘universally active.’12 As with ‘masochism,’ Krafft-Ebing named ‘sadism’ for the literary works of a particular author, in this case the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), whose texts exhibited the specific qualities Krafft-Ebing sought to catalogue in his collection of case studies. Sade’s narratives are renowned for the often repeated depiction of cruel, sexual revels such as those found in Justine (1791), Juliette (1797) and The 120 Days of Sodom (published posthumously in 1905).13 Krafft-Ebing states that ‘masochism is the counterpart of sadism in so far as it derives the acme of pleasure from reckless acts of
violence at the hands of a consort.’14
Western psychopathologic terms, such as masochism and sadism, were introduced to Japan in the early twentieth-century in the work of authors such as novelist and Imperial Army Surgeon- General, Mori Ōgai (1862-1922). Of particular note is his “Seiyoku zatsuwa” (Miscellaneous Conversation on Desire, 1902-03), which, in spite of the fact that Ōgai did not always agree with Judeo-Christian ideas on sexuality,15 introduced the term ‘seiyoku,’ or sexual desire, with reference to nineteenth-century western discourses of sexology.16 Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis was first translated into Japanese in 1884 by the Nihon Haigakkai (Japan Forensics Association) as
11 Krafft-Ebing 1886, p. 241; Noyes 1997, p. 65. 12
Krafft-Ebing 1886, p. 196;Noyes 1997, p. 65.
13
Juliette was translated into Japanese in 1959, sparking an obscenity trial that became known as the ‘Sade trial’ and involved notable authors Ōe Kenzaburō, Endō Shūsaku, and Ōka Shōhei among others, who defended Shibusawa’s work. See for example Iwaya Kunio, 1990 and Buruma 2001.
14
Krafft-Ebing 1886, p. 53.
15 Driscoll 2005, pp. 197-207. Here, Driscoll discusses Ōgai’s rejection of the obsessive western denunciation of
masturbation.
16
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Shikijō-kyō hen (Book on Eromantics). However, sales of this text were prohibited and so Krafft- Ebing remained in relative obscurity. In 1913 the Dai Nihon Bunmei Kyōkai (Great Japan Cultural Association) released a second, much more successful, translation of Krafft-Ebing’s work as Hentai seiyoku shinri (The Psychology of Perverted Sexual Desire). This new translation was released a year after the 1912 introduction to Japan of the translated works of both Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Carl Jung (1875-1961).17 This being said, many Japanese academics and thinkers of the time, with backgrounds as diverse as military man, Ōgai, and feminist members of the ‘Seitōsha’ (Bluestocking Society), would most likely have read these works in the original German.18 In 1909 Ōgai published a semi-autobiographical ‘erotic’ novel the title of which, Vita Sexualis, can be seen as referencing Krafft-Ebing’s work introduced above. However, as Jay Rubin and Stephen Snyder both conclude, no part of Ōgai’s text is pornographic and, given the obsessive censorship regime of the time, its banning was probably merely due to its title.19
In his early essays on masochism Sigmund Freud continued Krafft-Ebing’s practice of allying masochism with sadism, defining masochism in terms of what sadism is not. It was Freud who coined the term ‘sadomasochism,’ combining masochism and sadism into a single concept, after concluding that both conditions often occurred in the same individual: ‘a sadist is always at the same time a masochist.’20 This term also came to be popularly used to describe both masochistic and sadistic acts. Over the span of his career, Freud was to reinterpret and re-write his theories of masochism multiple times in successive works such as Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), “A Child is Being Beaten” (1919) and “The Economic Problem of Masochism” (1924). Despite extensive revision, certain key elements remain present throughout Freud’s theorising,
17
Ibid.
18 By 1869 the Japanese government had adopted the German system of medical education, making German
language proficiency an integral part of medical training. Adachi 2008, p. 16. Key members of the Seitōsha movement include Hiratsuka Raichō (1886-1971), Itō Noe (1895-1923), Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) and Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973). This society produced Seitō (Bluestocking) magazine from 1911-1916.
19
Rubin 1983, p. 134; Snyder 2000, p. 158 note 33.
20
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including the notion of masochism as the flip side of sadism. Significantly, Freud also theorised the notion of masochism as an expression of the death instinct, an interpretation that will become particularly important in the chapter discussing Kanehara’s texts.
Another enduring element of Freud’s masochistic theory as implied above is that of ‘feminine masochism.’ This theory takes it as given that all women are passive, and hence masochistic. This was the logical conclusion of assumptions that regarded masochism as an ‘exaggerated form of a normal feminine quality.’21 Freud’s ‘feminine masochism’ should not be confused with theories of masochism concerning women who are actively masochistic such as the protagonists of Kōno’s short stories to be examined in Chapter 2 of this thesis. Kōno’s protagonists, and women like them, will be referred to as ‘women masochists’ in order to differentiate them from the ‘feminine masochists’ posited by Freud and like-minded theorists.
Many of Freud’s students and followers would later further the practice of defining both masochistic and sadistic acts in terms of ‘sadomasochism.’ These students include Helene Deutsch (1884-1982), Karen Horney (1995-1952) and Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), as well as Theodor Reik whose work was referenced in the introduction of this thesis. Despite its title, Reik’s Masochism in Modern Man, to be examined in detail later in this chapter, contributed to the popular perception of masochism and sadism as being inherently linked. It was not until 1967 that masochism and sadism were untangled by Gilles Deleuze in his essay “Coldness and Cruelty” (written prior to his work with Felix Guattari). Here, Deleuze re-theorised masochism and
sadism as two separate entities and, in the process, sought to redefine masochism by returning to the literary works of Sacher-Masoch.22
21
Hirschfeld 1956, p. 255.
22
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In his discussion of Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs, Deleuze argues that ‘to correctly define masochism [...] as an aesthetic, its formal patterns must be recognised as indicative of a unique underlying psychoanalytic structure.’23 According to this analysis, masochism is ‘above all formal and dramatic; […] its peculiar pleasure-pain complex is determined by a peculiar kind of
formalism and its experience of guilt by a specific story.’24 In other words, each masochistic action is governed by a specific set of rules that stem from a complex balance of pleasure and pain that is tempered by feelings of guilt. Rather than buying into masochism as an expression of guilt, however, I will argue that the masochistic relationship can be seen as a resistance against social restrictions. Although, as stated above, I do not necessarily accept all aspects of Julia Bullock’s argument, I do strongly support her notion that the strongest restriction of Japanese women in the post-war era was the ideology of ryōsai kenbo (good wife/wise mother).25 However, while Bullock sees masochism as evidence of the oppressive nature of this ideology, I regard it as a subversion. I will expand upon this point later in the discussion.
A key element in Deleuze’s interpretation of masochism is the fact that activities of this nature cannot be defined purely as ‘erotogenic and sensuous,’ that is, in terms of a pleasure/pain balance, nor, as just noted, as ‘moral and sentimental,’ i.e. guilt/punishment.26 Rather than being characterised by pleasure in discomfort as is widely believed, masochism is more accurately pleasure in the expectation of discomfort which the masochist often desires to be delivered in a particular manner.27 Indeed, Freud himself argues that of the three types of masochism outlined in “The Economic Problem of Masochism,” the erotogenic, the feminine and the moral,