Resultados

I will start my reading of Fūryū Mutan by treating it textually, and not begin with the actual violence that followed its publication.¹⁶⁹ It is written as a first-person narrative (I will use “Watashi” to indicate the narrator) of a chaotic dream sequence bookended by a description of a “broken” watch. The watch only operates when on his wrist, stopping when it’s not. The watch is thus “awake” when he’s awake, asleep when he’s asleep, making him feel close to it. Watashi takes his watch, on the advice

169 This is unlike John Whittier Treat, who provides an interesting and important analysis of the text, but also sets up his interpretation by describing the assassination that would follow in the wake of its publication. In fact, he interprets the events surrounding the text as part of its “carnivalesque” nature. While certainly important in the overall context of the period, we cannot judge the work merely because of what ensued after its publication, including the critical response to it. Readings that do this also tend to make Fukazawa responsible for the inability to depict the person of the emperor in literature after 1960. See: Treat, John Whittier. “Beheaded

Emperors and the Absent Figure in Contemporary Japanese Literature.” PMLA, Vol.

109, No. 1 (Jan., 1994), pg. 100-115. Watanabe Naomi points out how responses to Fūryū Mutan suppressed the text by focusing on the event. Watanabe, Naomi. Fukei bungakuron josetsu. Hihyō K kan Sōsho, 17. Tōkyō: ta Shuppan, 1999, pg. 186.

of his nephew, to a watchmaker to have it examined. It turns out that it is in fact a very fine watch in working order, something given to a friend by an American who had to leave Japan in haste.¹⁷⁰ That night, he returns home late and goes to bed.

Watashi enters into his dream: he is on a packed commuter train near

Shibuya when he hears news that violence has broken out in center Tokyo. When he gets off the train to transfer to a bus, he hears that actually a revolution is taking place. Someone in line tells him, “It's not revolution, but the overthrowing of the government to make a better Japan.” Watashi is bothered by the word “Japan,” a nasty country, he says. “Well, that’s what we’ll call it for now,” the man says in response.

All sides are heavily armed, he’s told, because the international community—

Korea, America, and the Soviet Union—have contributed boats and machine guns to

“put it to the devil Japan.”¹⁷¹ The soldiers from the Jieitai, too, are on the side of the people, but no one had “decided” to take sides. “It just is that way,” he is told. Some buses head to Ginza to join the Jieitai fight “reactionary elements” (handō bunshi), but Watashi takes the bus to the Imperial Palace, which has been occupied. A packed car with a flag that says “Women’s Independence” drives by, and a reporter

announces that they’re on their way to take pictures of the massacre of “Mitchii.” He takes the bus through the Sakurada Gate and all the way to the front of the Imperial

170 Fuzakawa Shichirō. Fūryū Mutan [Story of a Dream of Courtly Elegance]. Ch ō Kōron, 75.13, 1960, pg. 329.

171 Ibid, 331.

Palace. The grounds had been set up like a festival, with stalls selling Oden, ramen, candy, and toys.

The Crown Prince and Michiko are on their backs, awaiting their execution with, what Watashi surmises, is his own ax. When the ax comes down on their necks, their heads roll like the sound of metal, (sutten korokoro karakara—we might

translate it as “clangity clang”). Afterward, their headless bodies lay nicely (gyōgi yoku), the Crown Prince in tuxedo, Michiko in a splendid kimono.

Watashi encounters an “old gentleman” (rōshinshi), a long-time employee of the Imperial Palace, who informs him that Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako have also been killed, and they proceed through to crowd toward them. The beheaded emperor was in a suit, the Empress in a blouse and skirt with a tag that said “Made in England.” He spots a card with illegible handwriting that resembles crawling worms. The old gentleman tells him that it is the emperor’s death poem (jisei no on-uta). As he searches and finds the death poem of the Empress as well, the crowd parts, making way for the Dowager Empress Shōken (the wife of Meiji who died in 1914), which Watashi does not find strange. She has a refined countenance and is dressed elegantly, also in an English-made dress, and has a serpentine black neck.

A confrontation ensues between the Watashi and the Dowager Empress. He calls her a “shitty old hag” (kuso tare baa), which she matches by calling Watashi a

“shitty brat” (kuzo kozō) in a regional dialect. Watashi assaults her, twisting her arms,

putting her into a full nelson. Meanwhile, the old gentleman continues to recite the death poem and interpret them with Watashi, who cannot engage too deeply in interpretation for fear of releasing the Dowager Empress. The old gentleman emphasizes the intentional ambiguity and indirectness (tōmawashi) of the death poem, which prompts Watashi to ask whether the point of waka poetry isn’t merely to confuse with riddles (nazo nazo). The Empress Dowager then shouts that Watashi (and the rest of the protesters) are only alive thanks to the Imperial Family and the Emperor who saved the nation by ending the war, to which Watashi retorts that the Imperial Family, conversely, live off the people’s earnings, like blood-sucking

vampires.¹⁷² Watashi experiences a brief moment of sympathy with her when noticing her bald spot, a vulnerability that he shares.

A marching band comes through, and sacred symbols of the Imperial House like the medals given for cultural achievement (bunka kunshō, the Order of Cultural Merit) and the three Imperial Regalia, which resemble souvenir shop toys (a child’s mirror, a jewel that belongs on a toy ring, a wooden sword), are tossed onto the ground. The old gentlemen recites the death poems of the Crown Prince and

Princess, and Watashi provides a rather profane interpretation which the gentleman rejects for a reading that suggests that the poems contain more subtlety, depth, and refinement (omomuki no aru).

172 Ibid, pg. 336.

Festival entertainment booths for comics and performances go up, and a military parade comes through with music featuring tubas, trumpets, and taiko drums. It is a celebration that marks the end of the battle in Ginza (in which the Jieitai joined the people to defeat reactionaries). Fireworks light the sky in rapid succession. Feeling a sense that he had left nothing in this world, Watashi composes his own death poem, which the old gentleman points out was ripped off from Manyōshū. At that, Watashi shoots himself in the head and visualizes his brain matter as maggots crawling around.

Watashi is woken by his nephew, who heard him screaming some haiku, which Watashi concludes must have been his own original death poem.¹⁷³ He was actually still dreaming. Then, he wakes up completely, and his watch, which reads 2am (only ten minutes after he had set it down), is in sync with the other clocks. He hugs the watch, thinking, “It stayed awake while I was dreaming!”