午夜剧场

Many of us living in modern society, especially urban dwellers, likely harbor some sense of difficulty in living—a feeling of alienation, wondering, "Is this really where I belong?" I hear that many young people take the plunge and move abroad, while others spend their post-retirement years in places rich in nature. However, the working generation with families cannot do so easily. They have no choice but to face their harsh daily lives while carrying these question marks. Yet, such conflict is not unique to modern people. The reclusion seen in Japanese classical literature, such as "Hojoki" (An Account of My Hut) and "Tsurezuregusa" (Essays in Idleness), is the result of withdrawing from the city. Furthermore, there were those who were not satisfied with mere reclusion and wandered out to nowhere in particular. These are the figures defined as "wanderers" in this book: Saigyo, Basho, the outliers of the Basho school such as Izen and Rotsu, and in the modern era, free-verse haiku poets like Hosai and Santoka. Although their historical backgrounds differ, they all dreamed of some kind of freedom in their wandering, even at the cost of abandoning their homes and families.

This book attempts to interpret the nature of the freedom they dreamed of through concepts such as "hesitation" and "indecision" presented in the early work of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, "The Voluntary and the Involuntary." For example, Izen composed the verse: "Unable to crawl through the world / A snake's hole." The "world" refers to early modern Japan, which was undergoing rapid economic development. Izen could not fit in there, yet he did not feel right about confining himself to the "hole" of reclusion either. In Izen's physical wandering—simply crawling around like a snake—there is no goal like in a game of Sugoroku. The will to wander swings back and forth repeatedly from "hesitation" to "resolve," and from "resolve" back to "hesitation." Ricoeur termed this "indecision." Yet, Ricoeur argues that it is precisely in this "indecision" that human beings are free.

The above is a summary of Chapter 1. Chapter 2 examines the influence of Lao-Zhuang thought and Zen Buddhism from mainland China on Japanese wanderers. Chapter 3 references Western literature to examine the cities that wanderers sought to escape, particularly the development and maturation of the monetary economy.

This book is placed on the Japanese classical literature and phenomenology shelves in bookstores, but researchers and enthusiasts of Saigyo and Basho may not read Ricoeur, and Ricoeur scholars may have little interest in Japanese classical literature. That is why I, who am not a specialist in either, decided to write it. It is not as difficult a book as the title might suggest.

Yu Kondo

Sairyusha

336 pages, 3,300 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.