Voices of the PastThe Status of Language in

Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse

NAOKI SAKAI

Cornell University Press

Ithaca and London

This book has been published with the aid of a grant fromthe Hull Memorial Publication Fund of Cornell University.

Copyright © 1991 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, orparts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form withoutpermission in writing from the publisher. For information, addressCornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 1992 by Cornell University Press.

International Standard Book Number 0-8014-2580-8Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 91-55053Printed in the United States of AmericaLibrarians: Library of Congress cataloging informationappears on the last page of the book.

§ The paper in this book meets the minimum requirementsof the American National Standard for Information Sciences­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

In memory of my father,

Haruyoshi Sakai

. PART ISilence at the Center: Ito Jinsai and the Problems of Intertextuality 21

1. Change in the Mode of Discursive Formation 23

A Discursive Space and Textuality 23Intertextuality 26A Departure 30The Notions of Sincerity and Hypocrisy 32The Status of Thinghood 36The Invisibility of One's Body 43

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Theoretical Preliminaries

Other than Language 1Discursive Space and Textual Materiality 2Opening the Closure of "Us" through Defamiliarization 1JThree Guiding Concerns 14Hybridity of Language 18The Logic of Self-Decentering 19

2. Ito Jinsai: The Text as the Human Body and the Human Body

as the Text

A Critique of Discursivity 54Transcendentalism and "Nearness" 56The Emergence of Speech in Discourse 60

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54

vii

3. Textuality and Sociality: The Question of Praxis, Exteriority, and the Splitin Enunciation 89

Feeling and Textuality 89The Ethicality of Social Action 95The Inscriptional Nature of Virtue 98

Institutions and Exteriority 102

Ai and the Way 108

Enunciation .and the Heterogeneous 62

Subjectivity and Persons 69Nondisjunctive Function and Disjunctive Function 76

The Problem of Change 81

PART IIFrame Up: The Surplus of Signification and Tokugawa Literature

4. The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts

Literary Discourse and the New Formation 115

Seeing and Reading 116Framing and Its Effect 118

Katari Narrative 119The Absence of Historicity 121Representing Text and Represented Text 127Relevance and Irrelevance of the Text in a Situation 130

Corporeal Act and Perfonnative Situation 134

ix

177

209

211

240

222

Contents

6. Defamiliarization and Parody

Genres. Taxonomy 177Grapheme and Equivocity 178Haikai-ka or the Double Operation 181

, Defamiliarization and Parody 183

Plural Voices 186

Perspective, or Abschattung 191

Textual Materiality 197The Enunci~tion and the Body 200

Perception and the Splitting of the Ego 201

8. Phoneticism and History

Representation as Distance and Delay 240.The Status of the Classics 243The Human Body and the Interior 246Diacritical Identification of the Japanese Language 250

The lmagenary Relation to the Text: Phoneticism and the Historicityof a Text 251

Anteriority of Voice 255Denial of Transcendent Value 258Historical Time as Writing 261Poetic versus Theoretical 263Heterogeneity of a Language 266Syntax: Shi and Ji 267

A Text and Its Performative Situation 274Feeling and Temporarity 274Sincerity and Silence 277

PART IIILanguage, Body, and the Immediate: Phoneticism and the Ideology

of the Identical

7. The Problem of Translation

The Outside of a Language 211The Problematic of Wakun 214The Interior and the Exterior 217Interdependence of Verbal and Nonverbal in the EnunciationThe Primacy of Speech 223The Linearity of Speech and Wakun 225Experiential Knowledge and Speculative Knowledge 231Passivity and Activity, Reading and Writing 237

140

113

115

140

Contents

5. Supplement

The Absence of Obsessive Concern for the Enunciation

Haikai Poetry and the Openness of the Text 142

Playscripts with Illustrations 143Stratification of the Verbal Continuum 144

Separation of Voice and Body 148

Direct or Indirect Speech 150Copresence of Other Texts 153

Life and Death 163The Act of Reading 166Direct or Indirect Actions 169Boxing, Framing, and Ideologies 171Representational Type and Gestalt Type 172

viii

x Contents

9. The Politics of Choreography

Ideological Constitution of Social Reality 280

The Logic of Integration 285Two Fonns of Memory, Two Senses of History 293

The Loom That Weaves the Subjects 294Song as a Locus of Contradiction 299

Writing of the Body 305The Politics of Choreography 308The Stillbirth of Japanese 311Death as the Possibility of Language 317

Exteriority 318

Conclusion

National Language and Subjectivity 320

Propriety in Language 326Universalism and Particularism 333Resurrection/Restoration of Japanese 335

Appendix. Japanese and Chinese Tenns

Index

280

320

337

341

Preface

This book presents a history-one of many possible histories-of the intellectualand literary discourses of eighteenth-century Japan ./1 am concerned both with thehistoricity of Japanese discourses of the eighteenth century and with issues con­cerning my relationship to that past.r 'Any writing of history occurs in the historyof the present, of which the historian can never be exh~ustively conscious andwhich can be problematized only through his or her invention of the past. Morespecifically, the writing of history is constrained as well as made possible by theexisting arrangement of this present, which can never be thematized as a fullyconstituted object, and which necessarily includes the institutions of academicdiscipline and knowledge.

My inquiry into the historicity of Japan's past, therefore, cannot evade theproblems about the historicity of the disciplinary framework within which thevalidity of the questions this book raises is to be authorized, disputed, or rejected.What I have in mind in particular is the idea ofJapan, for my book can be classifiedas belonging to the discipline of what is called Japan Studies in the United States,Britain, and other so-called Western societies and Kokushi or the national historyin Japan. While the unity of Japan constitutes and legitimates the unity of tnediscipline "Japan Studies" in the United States, it serves in Japan to mark theprimary division of academic knowledge about the familiar or domestic as againstthe foreign: national history, Kokushi, as distinct from. world history~ nationalliterature, Kokubungaku, as opposed to foreign literatures; national ethnology,Minzokugaku. as different from anthropology, and so on. Because the disciplinaryframework is set up in this way, the historian of this field is inevitably lured intoposing the sorts of questions regulated by this framework and is made to de~ire toknow according to its protocols. Although I problematize the institutional realityof the discipline in which the historian or the Japanologist in general works, I alsowant to draw attention to the way the discipline is I£Qll§tru9J~9_ and reproduced.

Of course, such a framework is not simply illusionary and the possibiii-ty of

xi

unconstrained. study outside it is rather a fantasy. My book is enabled ~y thisinstitutional reality, which extends far beyond the university, and I cannot Ignoremy subjection to it. Nevertheless, neither can I forg~t t?at t~e object ~f myresearch-what I am lured into. desiring to know-Is hlstoncally contIngentupon an institutional reality that is constantly changing. Here ~ refer n~t ~e~elyto changes in the social and economic circumstances surroundIng the dlsclphne.Rather I mean the historicity of our desire to know, which typically takes thefonn ~fsuch·questions as "What is the Japanese view of social relations?""What is the enduring and essential character ofJapanese culture?" "What is the

essence of Japanese religions?"~ Anyone desiring to be recognized as an expert on the putative object of thefield usually believes she or he is expected to pose those questions.~to note that, while the presence of such desire is no doubt an effect of thediscipline, such questions and the framing of desire in them have also served toreproduce the social reality outside the academi~ cOlltex~. And I am concernedwith a history in which the particular fonn of the desue to know that thosequestions induced effectively instituted a certain social reality, tha~ which isimaginary (~ut not illusionary) in nature. I have therefor~ read se!;~tIvelY"someConfucian, National Studies, and what are today claSSIfied as hterary (thehistoricity of the tenn "literature" should indeed be noted) discourses producedbetween the late seventeenth century and the early nineteenth century, with aview to discerning a history in which Japan, designated by a variety of names,was made to represent not merely a polity, a ruled population, or a geographicterritory but an essentialized community of shared habits, a singular language,

,and an organically systematized culture. I present' a history that should not beconfused with the history of Japane~e societY'i\a.hist~ryi~ which the image. ofsuch a community as a whole was Invented and pOSIted In the past and whIchsimultaneously puts into question the very concept of society as a systematicunity. Thus I historicize the particular desire embedded in those questions th~tmotivate as well as legitimate the academic disciplines concerning Japan, morder to show how the social reality designate<;l by ~'Japan" and its adjectivalform "Japanese" was brought into existence in the eighteenth century. And, byhistoricizing thus, I engage myself in the present historically, I participate. in thechanging of the existing reality of the disciplines in which I work. By readIng thetexts of the past, I engage in the general text through the originary repetition of

the present.Precisely because I discuss the historical formation of the object of knowledge

which serves to distinguish the experts from the nonexperts and the native fromthe non-native, I must address my book to those who are unfamiliar with thefield. Of course, it is not for the sake of enlightening the nonexperts aboutJapanese history that I must do so. The fact that this book is addressed to the~ isessential to the entire project of its writing. I have had to argue, however, agaInstthe background of the accumulated knowledge of the field. For those readers

who are not familiar with the histories of China and Japan, I include in thefootnotes conventional accounts of the teqns and names basic to the study of EastAsia. Translations into English from other languages are mine unless otherwiseindicated.

In writing this book I have become indebted to many people. The book is theresult, first, of possibilities opened to me by my teachers at the University ofChicago. Perhaps because of my personal circumstances, I feel more grateful tothem than many students might to their teachers. Tetsuo Najita initially encour­aged me to coine to the United States to start the academic career I had aspiredto, but had never dreamt would be realized. Through his example and his en­cyclopedic knowledge of Japanese history, he solicited me to think hard anddaringly throughout my graduate years at Chicago and afterward. Harry Harootu­nian continually provided me with chances to discuss the issues on my mind.Thanks to his patience with my arrogance and his acceptance of the theoreticalimplications of my work, I had valuable chances to articulate and reflect uponmy ideas. In him I found an amazing teacher, who made me realize that I couldgo further than I thought I could and who teaches, again through his ownexample, that without critical sensitivity to injustices, intellectual life would benothing but self-indulgence. Masao Miyoshi often inspires me to think afresh andbe suspicious of conventional views, and his own dynamic synthesis of politicaland intellectual commitments demonstrates practical channels for connectingacademic matters to the actual problems of people treated unjustly. It is my hopethat this book is such a form of practical involvement in ethico-political issues,however minor its effects may be when compared to those of his work. I alsothank William Sibley, who introduced me to Tokugawa literature and helped toimprove my English.

William Haver read my manuscript thoroughly and made very helpful sug­gestions about it. I learned a lot from his constructive and rigorous critiques.Rene Arcilla helped me with my writing and corrected many obscure ex­pressions; I also thank him for his kind and quite ironical remarks, which oftenpersuaded me to rethink and modify my opinions. Paul Anderer and NonnanBryson read the manuscript and encouraged me toward publication. Others whokindly read and commented on early versions were the late Maeda Ai, Mat­sunaga Sumio, Karatani Kojin, Kato Norihiro, and Kamei Hideo, from whosecomments I learned much. J. Voetor Koschmann gave me important insights andencouragement. Brett deBary, who taught me a lot about what intellectual integ­rity means, and Koyasu Nobukuni carefully read later drafts and gave me valu­able suggestions. I would like t6 express my gratitude to all those friends andcolleagues.

The Humanities Division and the Center for Far Eastern Studies at the Univer­sity of Chicago, and the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation provided me withfinancial assistance. During my tenure of those fellowships the substantial part of

xiiiPrefacePrefacexii

xiv Preface

this book was written, and I am grateful to those institutions, without whose helpthe book would not exist. Judith Bailey copyedited the manuscript for CornellUniversity Press, and made useful suggestions for improving it. I received per­mission to reproduce Murillo's "Self-Portrait" from the National Gallery inLondon, Magritte's "Deux Mysteres" from the Artists' Rights Society in NewYork, and liro Takamatsu's "These Three Words" from the artist himself, towhom I express my thanks. Soroku Yamamoto of the Tokyo Gallery arranged thephotography of Takamatsu's work.

Finally I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to Gail, who has not onlyencouraged and supported my decision to lead an academic career since 1979 buthas also proofread the manuscript at each stage and has so often suggesteddifferent and certainly better ways for me to say things. Without her, I would noteven have wished to write this book, and, needless to say, I could never haveundertaken such a project. Under her care, the book has grown along with Hamand Andrew, who are slightly younger than it is.

NAOKI SAKAI

Ithaca. New York

Voices of the Past

NTRODUCTION

Theoretical Preliminaries

Other than Language

Let me begin with an observation that, I believe, is concerned with the essentialaspect of sociality.

The language in which I speak: and write does not belong to me. What I haveactually written is separated and distanced from what I meant to say, to such anextent that my words appear to elude my control incessantly. The "I" discerniblein what I have actually written seefUs indifferent to the "I" who was producingthe discourse just a moment ago. /Thus~ as far as I am concerned, "my" state­ments, those ascribed to me, only reveal and dramatize the absence of "I" inwhat I have written. For there is an irredeemable distance between the "I" whowrites and "myselr~ expressed and inscribed in language.

What is the nature of this incomprehensible distance, of the delay that deprivesme of ownership and sovereignty over those words that supposedly belong tome? Is it possible to imagine a language in which this rupture, distance, anddelay are unheard of, in which the "I" who writes is always and already identicalto the registered "I"? If such a language were indeed possible, to whom would itbelong, and who would belong to it? And if it is possible to imagine such alanguage, what is the regime in which such imagination is possible? ·

It goes without saying that these questions cannot be answered adequately"because they provoke a further inquietude with respect to the terms they consist! .of. To begin with, What, if that is the right question, is the "I"? What is meant by:"belonging to a language" or by "language's belonging to someone"? Andfinally, the ultimate question to which all these seem to point, What is language?

Whenever language is questioned in such a fundamental way, the attempt toreply on its behalf can never be contained by any objectively defined idea oflanguage, such as that of positivism. For we could not even begin to analyze suchan idea without first defining the terms of the analysis and assessing their claim

Discursive Space and Textual Materiality

to meet the demand for a rigorous, coherent language. Furthennore, the questionWhat is language? inevitably gives rise to its counterpart: What is nonlanguage?What is other than language? It is assumed that any answer to such a questionmust at least know how language distinguishes itself from nonlanguage, if notwhat either is.

Precisely this problem is dramatized by the concept of "text." Insofar as a textis equated with writing in the conventional sense, it may appear clear and freefrom ambiguity. But when the notion of writing is more rigorously analyzed, thisequation in fact reveals the inscriptural nature of textuality: a text is alwaysinscribed in some material body. Here, the notion of writing is indeed tricky,because it designates, on the one hand, a fonn of presentation whose traits arediacritically discerned as opposed to those of speech, painting, or gesture and, onthe other hand, the inscriptural nature of the text in general, within which thepossibilities for this distinction have already been codified. Hence, a text is, as itwere, the possible sum of, first, the verbal significafJon evoked by a certainpattern of signs inscribed in some material and, second, the coded body includ­ing both signification and material. Just as with the Saussurian concept of thesign, the text is necessarily composed of its material aspect and its meaning,which is dependent upon a material basis, yet is not material in itself. From aparticular perspective, we can always distinguish in the text what is significativefrom what remains dormant, heterogeneous, accidental, and exterior with regardto meaning. In a text such as this sheet of white paper covered with black letters,we differentiate between those variables that could affect meaning, for example,a change in the shape of a letter, from "on" to "of," and those that stay, within amarked range of variation, indifferent to meaning, such as a change in papercolor from white to yellow. In this example, the supposed identity of a text willbe altered if its significative traits are changed but will not be affected if changesare confined to the textual materiality. Or let me put it differently: the sig­nificative aspect of the text is what is recognized as remaining identical throughand independent of various changes in textual materiality. This differentiation isessential in our conception of a text, for rather than define a text in terms ofideational meaning, I shall refer to it as an inherently ambivalent materiality, adual negativity. For this reason, it would be slightly misleading to say a text is acomposite of meaning and material. The differentiation itself is unstable unlessinstitutionally determined. If it were utterly stabilized, one would never be awareof textual materiality because this materiality is precisely what is excluded fromthe consciousness adherent to the institutional arrangement, which I also calldiscursive space. But it is always possible that a text could allow for differentmodes of discerning articulation. That is to say, when the mode of differentiation

3Theoretical Preliminaries

lparticularly in regard to the problem of history and textual materiality, see Jacques Derrida,Introduction to Edmund HusserI's Origin of Geometry, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., and David B.Allison (Boulder, Colo.: Great Eastern, 1978).

between significative factors and textual materiality changes, the same text maywell be susceptible to an entirely different understanding.

Certainly, a text cannot be equated with the conventional notion of writing.Speech, for instance, is also a text insofar as it overtly constitutes significationand covertly posits textual materiality as the textual surplus of signification.Time and time again, we must remind ourselves that even speech cannot bereduced to its pure meaning. It too has the same ambivalent differentiation.While in one sense speech is not writing, in another it is, and the two sensesremain problematic, continually transgressing each other's circumference.

In other words, a text is simultaneously verbal and nonverbal. In this connec­tion, the term ·'textual materiality" should be elucidated to make certain that theunstable nature of this differentiation be kept in mind. Textual materiality desig­nates the sum of what participates in a text but does not overtly contribute to theconstitution of its meaning. Basically it is a negative tenn that points out thesurplus nature of textuality; this term presumes that a text cannot be arrested at itssignification or reduced to what it says overtly. 1

Moreover, certain types of texts, such as gesture, music, and visual artifacts,do not constitute "firsthand" signification. Yet insofar as we are able to talkabout them, they can be read, and therefore grasped as significative. In thisrespect, they are texts or components of texts that can be verbalized even if not ina one-to-one correspondence. Conversely, in many instances the nonverbalseems to accompany the verbal. In singing and music, for example, gesture and averbal act coexist and are the components that form another text: song. In song, avariety of signifying practices are intertextually integrated into a whole thatexpresses much more than the verbal can alone.

Indeed, my primary focus is on discourse, on the complex of institutionalizedverbal and other social statements. But even within this scope, I am forced todeal with the nonverbal and the nonlinguistic aspect of textuality. The questionWhat is language? demands that I further explore the complicated and multifacedboundary between verbal and nonverbal, linguistic and nonlinguistic, sig­nificative and material.

The idea that text harbors these asymmetrical couples may amount to therecognition that a text is not only intrinsically multilayered but also related to its"outside," or more specifically, to its intrinsic heterogeneity which cannot beinternalized in a given discursive space, in several different ways. As I will pointout later in reference to many sources in both Europe and classical China, theword "text" and its etymological derivatives, "textile," "texture," and so on,illuminate this heterogeneity most clearly. A text is not a solid entity but anetwork of many threads. As the level of meaning and consequently the area of

Introduction2

21 use the term "regime" in a specific sense: a regime consists of a set of protocols and rulesaccording to which utterances and actions are directly meaningful. Like Wittgenstein's languagegame, it defines the sphere of life in which an utterance or action must inhere to be meaningful. Yet,one can never define a regime in terms of a set of rules because it always requires another regime; itcan be known only in terms of its incommensurability with other regimes. It should never beconfused with either discursive space or language, just as Wittgenstein's language game cannot beequated to a langue. See Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. GeorgeVan Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

3For the regimes of painting and perceiving, see Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1983).

4According to Lyotard, "The differend is the unstable state and instant of language whereinsomething that must be able to put into phrases cannot be yet. This state includes silence, which is anegative phrase, but it also calls upon phrases that are possible in principle. What is ordinarily calleda feeling signals this state: 'one cannot find words,' etc. One must search hard to find new rules forthe forming and linking [enchainement] of phrases that are able to express the differend exposed bythe feeling, unless one wants this differend to be choked right way in a litigation and for the alarmsounded by the feeling to have been useless" ("La quantite du silence," Atea 4 [February 1983]: 58).In The Differend, Lyotard says: "The plaintiff lodges his or her complaint before the tribunal, theaccused.argues in such a way as to show the inanity of the accusation. Litigation takes place. I wouldlike to call a differend [differend] the case where the plaintiff is divested of the means to argue andbecomes for that reason a victim. If the addressor, the addressee, and the sense of the testimony areneutralized, everything takes place as if there were no damages. A case of differend between twoparties takes place when the 'regulation' of the conflict that opposes them is done in the idiom of oneof the parties while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom" (p. 9), and "To give

textual materiality vary and as the "intertextual" regime2 in which a text islocated changes, the function assigned to a text and its supposed identity areredefined accordingly. Yet, what is conversely implied in this comprehension isthat, relative to a given historical moment and region, the regime of speaking,writing, reading, acting, and perceiving,3 in which certain significative traits arepicked up and captured while textual materiality is excluded, is granted the kindof conventional stability that allows for continual reproduction of itself. At aparticular moment, the regime, which actually varies all the time, is thought of asnatural and universal-universal in the sense of being applicable anywhere andat any time-and it fonns part of "common sense." This general acceptance,however, does not secure the regime against challenges from within and outsidethe group of people for whom this common sense is natural; it is constantlyproblematized, just as common sense is frequently defamiliarized. Necessarilyinvolved here is the problem of power in the sense that to sustain the unques­tioned status of "common sense" is to insist on the legitimacy of excluding theother possible regimes, thereby, in the long run, refusing to recognize that theworld could be otherwise.

What is assumed by the term "discursive space'.!.. is this conventional stability,because of which the mechanism of ascribing meaning to things in the world isaccepted and in turn detennines the possible forms of textual production. Ofcourse, the space at issue is neither physical nor geographical but a field ofcoexistence for various conditions of textual production. It is a space defined byshared prejudices and implicit expectations, which conceal and repress the pos­sible shifts and changes from one regime to another; what Jean-Fran«;ois Lyotard

the differend its due is to institute new addressees, new addressors, new significations. and newreferents in order for the wrong to find an expression and for the plaintiff to cease being a victim" (p.13). As I will argue, the notion of the feeling, which is closely related to the differend, as opposed tothe sentimentality that is devoid of connection to the differend, explains why Ito Jinsai was so muchconcerned with the problem of feeling in his ethics.

5Theoretical Preliminaries

called "the differend," 4 the possibility of actions disclosing the otherness of theOther, is banned. And because these pr~udices and expectations are not de­familiarized or thematically criticized, the production of texts in this space re­mains controlled and dominated by presupposed conditions. In this respect, thediscursive space is also a field of power, but it lacks a controlling subject. (Or

might argue that the presence of that discursive sp1.ce is the transcendentalsubject controlling the production of discourse.) To the extent to which those whocontrol a given social hierarchy and those who are controlled submit themselvesto the discursive space at a predeconstructive and precritical level, both arecontrolled and dominated, and the meaning and moral of this domination andsubmission are thereby ensured in this space. In this respect, both master and_slave are constituted and are therefore two related subject-effects determined intheir roles by the the rules of the discursive space that they continue to holdfamiliar. Hence, it is well known that even if the slave usurped the status of themaster, he would simply discard the role of victim and put on that of victimizer;the whole business of victimization itself will continue intact unless the discur­sive space in which such a power relation is articulated can be changed.

In this book, I discuss one of the discursive formations that I believe domi­nated textual production during the eighteenth century in Tokugawa Japan, and Idescribe the regimes of reading, writing, acting, perceiving, and so on which areaccommodated within it. I also present various arguments that inaugurated,legitimated, or disrupted the discursive formation. Here, the "eighteenth cen­turyn will be used symbolically, not to match any definite chronological dates butto allude to the locus of a discursive space to which some documents and artifactsfrom the late seventeenth century until the early nineteenth century can be re­garded as belonging. In this discursive space, language was an object of exten­sive and heated discussion, and the s~arch for "transparent" language wastirelessly pursued. In describing this space and how the image of language wasarticulated there, I consider neither the unity of an author nor that of a school ofprimary importance; I do not aspire to know the 44thought" of an author or thegenealogy of a school. On the contrary, possible interrelationships of varioustextual forms and shared regimes, according to which the object of their studywas imperceptibly posited, are the focus of my attention. What I aim at is thequestion What is language? and those derivative problems this ultimate questionis bound to call forth.

In order even to pose the question What is language? we must involve our­selves preliminarily in another no less complicated question: Is it possible toposit language as an object? The use of language is, of course, necessarily

Introduction4

assumed in positing those questions and any question whatsoever. Questioning isa language affair par excellence. One may follow a hermeneutic strategy bysaying that only on the basis of our implicit grasp of language can one possiblyask anything at all. Comprehension inevitably precedes questioning; so the pos­sibility of objectifying language should originate in the historically and culturallylimited horizon of our understanding. Only by virtue of the fact that we live inlanguage are we able to discuss language as an object. Therefore, as the argu­ment would go, it is pointless to seek the universal essence of language outsidethe context specific to a particular historical and cultural formation.

Insofar as the question What is language? necessarily discloses the historicaland cultural finitude of the inquirer, the hermeneutic response at least makes usaware of some aspects of the interrogation which ought not be neglected outright.I do not hesitate to admit it. Hermeneutics seems to fail to live up to ourexpectations, however, not because of its rather skeptical attitude toward holisticuniversalism but because its critique of universalism has not been pursued to thelimit. By virtue of the restrictions on this critique, it is inevitably particularistic.The trouble lies with the emphasis of hermeneutics on the historical and cultur­alistic horizon. If the possibility of objectifying language is always preceded byour primordial habitation in it, where can we possibly find the instance of talkingabout, in a sense objectifying, the horizon of our understanding and our "tradi­tion"? As is well known, hermeneutics insists upon the anteriority of the horizonof our understanding to interpretation in general. Historical or cultural distance,informed by our encounter with documents of the past or with foreign language,marks the limit of our language and thereby reflexively teaches us about thehistorical and cultural finitude of our own being. That horizon is an enablingrather than a restricting finitude, which, instead of preventing us from com­prehending, makes it possible for us to know and guarantees our access touniversality. Therefore, it should be argued that our confinement to the traditionis an opening to universality. Yet, it is not hard to detect the working of anassumption that conceals another kind of circularity than the famed hermeneuticcircle in the hermeneutic vision of our historicocultural being.

Some claim that an experience of distance helps manifest the unity of ourlanguage, which coincides with our world at the primordial level of pre­predicative judgment. But it is also presumed that such an experience arises atthe periphery of that unity which is most frequently imagined as a spatial whole.On the one hand, we should recall that the hermeneutic conception of thatdistance was put forth in the context of a critique of an ahistorical universalismincurably embedded in scientific positivism, which audaciously assumes thepossibility of a metalanguage free from any historicity of our being. It goeswithout saying that the metalanguage thus granted is the language of positivismitself. Then hermeneutics warns us of the danger of so-called universal scientismand asks us to doubt the very possibility of that metalanguage. On the other hand,it affirms the thesis that an appeal to, or need for, metalanguage is invoked by

7Theoretical Preliminaries

5See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (NewYork: Harper and Row, 1962): "When we concern ourselves with something, the entities which are!post closely ready-lo-hand may be met as something unusable, not properly adapted for the use wehave decided upon. The tool turns out be damaged, or the material unsuitable. In each of these casesequipment is here, ready-to-hand. We discover its unusability, however, not by looking at it andestablishing its properties, but rather by the circumspection of the dealings in which we use it. Whenits unusability is thus discovered, equipment becomes conspicuous" (p. 102), and "If, in our every­day concern with the 'environment,' it is to be possible for equipment ready-to-hand to be encoun­tered in its 'Being-in-itself; then those assignments and referential totalities in which our circum­spection 'is absorbed' cannot become a theme for that circumspection any more than they can forgrasping things 'thematically' but non-circumspectively. If it is to be possible for the ready-to-handnot to emerge from its inconspicuousness, the world must not announce itself" (p. 106). I shall returnto this problem in my critique of Tokieda Motoki,

:'(SQme failure or obstacle in the course ofotherwise transparent, smooth, and flaw­,~less' transactions such as talk, making things, or communication. This is to say,';¥fpetalanguage is a consequence of some trouble, estrangement, breakdown, or~(~dulteration. When combined with the vision of language as a spatial whole, the~nnationof metalanguage and philosophical argumentation in general would'take~i:definite connotations of hermeneutics. While such metalanguage and philo­

:phical argumentation might undertake a critical and reflective examination of",world, it is understood that they do so from the alien sphere, from outside ourrld, the outside being located along either a historical or a geocultural axis.

e opportunity to criticize and thereby reinstitute our-that is, collective-orical subjectivity is in fact facilitated by the insertion of the heterogeneous,e external, in the form of a foreign language or an old, unfamiliar document.

s, critical impulse accompanied by an acute sense of historicity must not beoverlooked. But I also want to draw attention to the other, more implicit side of

>the thesis. At the same time that hermeneutics reveals our historicity, it installs an'>~onomy that regulates the distribution of the heterogeneous. Our world is pre­"isented as if its language were completely merged with it, as if the need for!~'~theorizing" metalanguage would never arise there since there could be nobistorical or cultural distance: immediacy and homosociality would reign. Just as

;,,1"'~it~i~~£;~,·"re are normally occupied with the purpose of our dealings and not aware of theby means of which we try to accomplish them, and just as the tool, a

··~).·i\~i.1?./':"''i.;-';: IUILJlI][IlCl. for example, becomes conspicuous in its unusability when it is broken,-so- language does not announce itself as such and remains transparent with'tespect to our theorizing gaze. 5 In this regard, to say that the encounter with the

or the external gives rise to critical instances is to say that it is at least.C,'.-. Ul}~~IUn::; to imagine as a point of contrast a state in which language is completely

:;~~·~',.c.<:~i,Ji<: free from estrangement and the possibility of problematizing language, of gener-ating distance between language and the world, is null and void. Obviously ourworld is posited as an idealized sphere in which our language is immediately ourworld, in which we are allowed to live our language, that is, our world, in its

:·()niunal plenitude, and in return, this plenitude gives content to the phrase ~. ourworld." Needless to say, language could never be objectified in this sphere, and

.J

Introduction6

6Masao Miyoshi, As We Saw Them (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1979). In this bookon the first Japanese ambassadorial mission to the United States. Miyoshi describes the voyage overthe Pacific Ocean as a defamiliarization that engendered an unexpected encounter of the same and theother. The metaphorical use of the sea. which occasions the intrusion of the other into the same,

as I argue in this book, such homogeneity is impossible; language always re­mains "broken," even without intrusion from outside, and no-body is ex­haustively at home in language.

So, to the question Is it possible to posit language as an object? I must replywith two negative propositions. First, I do not think I can presuppose a meta­language completely independent of the specific traits of an object-language ittalks about. Second, I do not think there is a language completely free from theself-reflexivity that necessarily generates a desire for metalanguage either. Inother words, I entertain neither the notion of the complete separation between theworld and language, of two autonomous entities, nor the vision of the harmo­nious unity of the world and language.

Hence, to the question What is language? we cannot expect a general anduniversal answer, for the reason stated in the first proposition. Implicit in myapproach is the belief that this question can be formulated only in historicalterms.

To ask what language is is to ask how language was understood at a specifichistorical moment. Furthermore, we must remind ourselves that even if we couldcircumscribe what was conceived of as language, we could develop no mono­lithic conception, as the extensive debates about the nature of language in theeighteenth century clearly testify. As a specific object of discourse in the discur­sive space at issue, "language" became a telltale locus of contradiction, rupture,and disagreem~nt within language. Accordingly, I do not seek to establish auniversal definition or explanatory theory of language among the texts of theeighteenth century; rather I look for various differentiations and oppositions andtheir interactions, which, when put together, circumscribe an area in humanactivities called language.

What is "I"? What is meant by "belonging to a language" or "a language'sbelonging to someone"? These questions, too, are posed here, together withother derivative queries. Indeed, they are asked repeatedly in the course of thisbook. By making these questions traverse the texts of the eighteenth century, Iattempt to expose prejudices in the discourse within which we think language andthereby to transform the resistance of these texts to reading, to our customaryprocess of investing the texts with meaning, into an occasion to defamiliarize ourown prejudices, according to which we normally conduct our transference to thepast. It is, of course, a way-probably one among many-to respect the past inits othemess. In As- We Saw Them, Masao Miyoshi tried to use geographical andcultural distance to defamiliarize our own conception of the other and the same,although one might detect some tendency in his book to essentialize those unitiesof u us" and "them."6 As there cannot be in our case the same kind of reciprocity

reminds us of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, which. as Mikhail Bakhtin repeatedly asserted, very suc­cessfully exemplifies the polyphonic novel in Europe. Although Miyoshi seems to take the differencebetween two identities, represented by the sea, as substantial rather than ideological on occasion. heintroduces polyphonic structure into his book to problematize the mode of knowledge dominant inarea studies, where specialists have tirelessly continued to reproduce the same old monologic dis­course.

7Amazawa Taijiro, Miyazawa Ken}i no kanata e (Beyond Miyazawa Kenji) (Tokyo: Shicho-sha.1968).

9Theoretical Preliminaries

that we find in Miyoshi's intercultural study, the historical distance that neces­sarily generates defamiliarizing effects can. be incorporated into my research notto affirm the unities of "us" and "them" but to draw attention to what isexcluded in the fonnation of these unities. It is true that we cannot take up theviewpoint of a historical or cultural other as Miyoshi attempted to do, but insofaras the object of study itself brings about an occasion to rethink the image of theother, historical inquiry could serve the same purpose, disclosing the fundamen­tal asymmetry in any relationship of the same to the other as well as the funda­mental inadequacy of the image of the other to the Other. Hence, historicalinquiry can be an occasion to interfere with the workings of transference, and inthat very sense, it can be a historical praxis. To deal with texts of the past is todefamiliarize the discursive space in which the putative unities of "us" and"them" (historical or cultural) are taken for granted. But too often historiographyhas served to conceal and suppress this potential defamiliarizing moment inher­ent in any historical research, so that the present and the same may be recon­firmed and authenticated as etemal verities. What must be challenged in histor­ical projects such as this is a totalizing tendency that the ideology of the identical,overtly or covertly, serves to legitimate. To historicize the present-that is, todefamiliarize "us"-will be the motto in this book. Now, this does not meanseeking ways in which to assimilate us to the other. Rather, I examine the use ofthe shifter "we," which frequently silences and excludes some people unjustly inits pretense of integrating them. After all, the other we face is primarily ahistorical one and ultimately beyond conceptualization. Through the encounterwith the historical other, I search for some coherent way to go beyond ourselvesand the present. I search as well for some way to go beyond eighteenth-centurydiscourse, as Amazawa Taijiro once tried to go "beyond Miyazawa Kenji" in hiscritical account.7

Such an approach may provoke understandable reservations: Despite the pro­claimed tendency toward defamiliarization, it might be argued, my methodwould only imperialize the past by imposing questions upon it which, after all,originate from our own contemporary concerns. Is this not simply one more wayof imposing our prejudices on the historical other and thereby extending oursovereignty over it? Since I can no longer stake any claim to objectivity thatmight refute this challenge or adopt any hermeneutic stance that might accommo­date it, it is imperative that I stick to a set of rules that sustain self-criticalexamination.

Jntroduction8

SCf. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1979), pp. 226-47 in particular. Michel de Certeau, in The Writing of History, trans. TomConley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), discusses the problem of history as recountedstory (Hislorie) and the work of history (Geschichte) in relation to psychoanalysis: "Psychoanalysisdoes not institute a new sequence within the progress of a lure that the capacity to demystify, andlucidity itself, are forever expanding. Psychoanalysis would like to establish an epistemologicalrupture within this infinite process. It would be the means of thinking and practicing a new kind ofelucidation, worthy (galtig) in general, which ultimately intends to account for a double, structuralrelation that excludes the possibility of closure. This would be, on the one hand, the relation of everyanalytical process (which fragments the representation while driving deeper what is represented) withwhat it intends to demonstrate but succeeds in displacing; and on the other hand, the relation of eachAUfkliirung with the elucidations that either precede or are contiguous to it in time, insofar as a clearerfocus on what had been represented is at once a scientific necessity, and a new way of being deceivedwithout knowing it" (p. 299), and "Nothing can guarantee the difference between these two figuresof history or of praxis-the one, which repeats, and the other, which initiates. They bring us back tothe ambiguity of the word 'history,' an unstable word that fluctuates between a 'legend' (a received

First, I must be attentive to the double articulation of differences between thepresent and the past. I have already introduced the concept of a discursive spaceto illustrate the gap between the present and the past as that between two differentdiscursive formations. By means of this concept, I should be able to establish astandpoint that Permits me to view any assumption, no matter how general andself-evident it seems, as historically determined and specific. If I strive to adhereto this standpoint, I will be able to point out conspicuous instances in which theestranging effects of the past would otherwise be concealed. One should be ableto disclose contradictions at the very locus where the ideology of the identicalconceals them. In this resPect, it should be remembered that mine is an attemptnot to internalize texts of the past but rather to retrace an itinerary of discursiveeconomy according to which the heterogeneous was excluded in discourse.

The second rule is based on a critical evaluation of the first. If historicaldifference were simply apprehended as a difference between two discursivespaces on the same plane, I would merely be affirming another relativism; to doso would be nonsensical unless I presupposed some third and transcendent view­point from which the two discourses could be observed equally. But is thisexactly the effect of being confined in a discursive space? Does this confinementpresume that the other in history can be reduced to an image at which a trans­historical "I" stares without being affected by it? Is this the typical relativismthat necessitates holistic universalism in its gesture of paying respect to thesingular and the specific?

Insofar as history is thought of as it is articulated in discourse, the endlessoscillation between relativism and universalism is inevitable. But I will also beattentive to those differences between the present and the past which can never beposited as symmetrical opposites. The past, in this instance, must be com­prehended as the loss that could not be recuPerated in discourse. Thus, therelationship between the present and the past is, at the same time, that betweentwo images and that between what can be brought about in an image and whatcan never be reduced to images. 8

In this project, I deal with the text in its exteriority.9 My description isfocused, as it were, on the surface of the texts, whose depth and solidity shouldnever be taken to be the hidden presence of some transcendent signified butshould be understood to designate that which is surplus and heterogeneous todiscourse, that is, to designate a certain resistance I have called "textual mate­riality." Nor do I view the text in its supposed rapport with the original utterancethat is no longer present. Nor do I endeavor to comprehend the past or lay hold ofthe plenitude that must have been present at the moment of the text's enunciation.My task is not to return the texts of the past to their original meaningfulness.Instead, I attempt to disclose the conditions in which statements were produced;whether or not their authors or actors were conscious of these conditions is in factbeyond my concern. If a historian's task is to understand the text better than itsauthor did, then this is certainly not a historical study. If the purpose of histo­riography is to recover the reality of the past as the people of those times lived it,

11Theoretical Preliminaries

text, a law that must be read, a society's profit) and a 'becoming other' (a taking of the risk of self­affinnation, through ourselves assuring our own existences). The analyst himself does not escape thisambivalence. As soon as his science becomes a •deceptive aid'; as soon as he 'keeps only the depositbut not the drive'; as soon as he turns a teaching, a clientele, even a society into the exalted ersatz ofthe father, into the congregation or the devil of the fonner times, he conceals from himself what hebelieves he is clarifying_

Freud draws a line of demarcation between these two sides of psychoanalytic practice when hespeaks of the protean principle that he will use like a razor to cut through the signifiers on the surfaceof a discourse or a text. He will express the criterion that saves him from accepting his own science asa nurturing law. And with the wink of an eye he explains to us the imperialism of his diagnoses and,quite a smprise for us, his way of imposing an interpretation by insisting on a patient's word: 'Thereit is.' In his practice he establishes the scientist's act as what is beyond a necessary knowledge. Ineffect, a casual ease curiously inhabits the minutiae of his analysis. He legitimizes his work as anauthor by taking risks. He refers to a stylish 'fair' that can be only loosely defined because it is simplyhis own. From his point of view, analytical practice is always an act of risk. It never eliminates asurprise. It cannot be identified with the accomplishment of a norm. The ambiguity of a set of wordscould never be brought forward solely by the 'application' of a law. Knowledge never guarantees this'benefit.' The Aufklarung remains an affair of tact-eine Sache des Takts" (pp. 303-4).

9For the notion of exteriority, see Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M.Sheridan Smith (London: Tavistock, 1972): "The analysis of statements operates therefore withoutreference to a cogito. It does not pose the question of the speaking subject, who reveals or whoconceals himself in what he says, who, in speaking, exercises his sovereign freedom, or who,without realizing it, subjects himself to constraints of which he is only dimly aware. In fact, it issituated at the level of 'it is said' -and we must not understand by this a sort of communal opinion, acollective representation that is imposed on every individual; we must not understand by it a great,anonymous voice that must, of necessity, speak through the discourse of everyone; but we mustunderstand by it the totality of things said, the relations, the regularities, and the transformations thatmay be observed in them, the domain of which certain figures, certain intersections indicate theunique place of a speaking subject and may be given the name of author. 'Anyone who speaks,' butwhat he says is not said from anywhere. It is necessarily caught up in the play of exteriority" (p.122). The issues I discuss later in this book, which are very clearly stated here, include (1) twodefinitions of tpe term ..discourse," depending upon how the status of the subject of enunciation isunderstood; (2) the relationship between discursive analysis and Lacanian psychoanalysis; and (3)Foucauldian exteriority and phenomenological reduction.

Opening the Closure of "Us" through Defamiliarization

...

Introduction10

10 Jacques Derrida talks about a sort of reduction that suspends, neutralizes, and puts in paren­theses the word's relation to its sense or thing, a reduction that is the reverse of phenomenology'seidetic reduction. See Schibboleth (Paris: Galilee, 1986), p. 44.

then I do nQt pretend to be a historiographer in this book. What is in demand hereis the defamiliarization that a sort of phenomenological reduction necessarilyengenders in our discursive space. to It is a reduction by which to disqualify andobjectify assumptions about what is natural. The phenomenological reduction Iadhere to, however, does not imply a reduction of the text either to its eideticsignification or to transcendental subjectivity. On the contrary, it is a decision toreduce subjectivity to discourse. A basic premise of this book is that the fonnallocus of subjectivity is constituted discursively: discourse precedes subjectivity.But at this juncture, I find the terms "subject" and "subjectivity" far fromsatisfactory in articulating the complex and interwoven aspects of their manydifferent uses. In order to distinguish among many different conceptualities,including the subjectivity that is not appropriated in discourse, I introduce arather technical vocabulary (shugo, shukan, shudai, shutai, etc.), which containsmany contradictions and ambiguities but helps elucidate the problematics in­volved in the phrase "historical subject."

That is, I continue to draw attention to the impossibility of comprehending thepast and, thereby, affirm the thesis that the historical other always remains the .Other. But at the same time, I emphasize that "we" are also the other, insofar aswe are able to talk about ourselves, and that much of what is natural and self­evident for "us" is, after all, a historical positivity, a positivity of a historicallylimited construct.

Surely it is too easy to say that what was considered natural and self-evident inthe past was historically restricted. What a work of historiography is expected toshow is that the same applies to the present; it is to remind us of the historicallylimited validity of our discourse. Historiography can be historical only throughself-decentering and self-criticism, only if the tension between the present andthe past is maintained and utilized to the fullest extent so as to ensure thepossibility of defamiliarizing a given discourse. And provided that the term"historical" is apprehended in terms of this tension, my project claims to behistorical.

"History" must be considered as a problematic rather than as a name for anestablished discipline with fixed procedures and protocols. It indicates an areawhere discourse fails to reproduce itself, a locus where the same encounters theOther. Eighteenth-century discursive space, for instance, was continually haunt­ed by its past and could not construct the discourse of the identical withoutestablishing ways to accommodate the past in its present. The languages of theother-the historical and the cultural other-were repeatedly referred to inorder, first, to mold the radical Other into the other and, then, to situate thelanguage of the same in that discursive space.

It is precisely in this context that I· want to point again to the. necessity ofconsidering the relationship between lang~age and the world through two nega­tive propositions: first, language cannot be autonomous, is always dePendentupon the world, and second, language cannot be the world, always remains Qtherthtln the world. If it is impossible to envisage a language independent of theworld, a language that is valid transhistopcally, then we must talk of any existentlanguage in terms that remind us of its historical individuality. Our way ofthinking is definitely different from their way of thinking, but as the secondproposition asserts, there is no warranty that our thinking is either adequate toour world or immediate to us. Surely it is true that we do not easily understandthose who lived in a different era in a remote country; yet it must also be kept inmind that the world we inhabit can never be the world as we think about it in ourlanguage because language is always either inadequate or excessive to the world.Here, as I have hinted a few times, I must tentatively distinguish between the tworelated terms the "other" and the "Other"-the "other" being the differentinsofar as it is posited in thinking and appropriated in discourse, and the "Other"being the different that evades being posited in thinking. To put it differently, the"Other" requires linkage to different and new regimes, thereby always disclos­ing "the differend" that has been suppressed, whereas the "other" is alreadyappropriated and positioned and presents itself as self-evident within the sameregime. This distinction, which will playa significant role in my discussion, mayapPear rather confusing. For instance, I would simultaneously insist that "we"are historically different from "them" and that "we" are originarily differentfrom "us." On the one hand, I use such unities as 4lour language" and "theirlanguage" to render explicit an economy sustaining positivities in a certaindiscursive space, but on the other hand, I refuse these unities any ontologicalgrounding and criticize the imagined closure of a discursive space extensively.

At this level, the major question for which this book attempts to provide ahistorical reply lends itself to another equally fundamental question: What is alanguage (langue)? As a matter of fact, these two questions, What is language?and What is a language? are indistinguishable in some contexts since differencesbetween languages (langues) encompass not only syntax and phonetics but alsothe articulation of the linguistic and the nonlinguistic. Intertextuality, understoodin tenns of the regime of possible channels between verbal and nonverbal textsvaries from one discursive space to another. Accordingly, in the discursive spac;of the eighteenth century, where differences are all ascribed to the difference oflanguages (langues), inquiry into the language of the other inevitably leads to therecognition that the other perceives and lives the world differently. This recogni­tion is what writers of the eighteenth century were forced to face. Consequently,their discourse on language was guided by their concern about the identity of alanguage rather than about language in general.

Implied in this cognition is that intertextuality is institutionally maintained,part and parcel of the discursive formation.

13Theoretical PreliminariesJntroduction12

Three Guiding Concerns

11"Voices of the Past: Discourse on Language in Eighteenth-Century Japan" (Ph.D. diss., Univer­sity of Chicago, 1983).

Thus, from its initial formulation,11 this book was guided by three main andconstant concerns: "What is the historicality of theoretical investigation in histo­ry writing?", "What kinds of discursive formation can one delineate when theidentities of language and culture are perceived to be empirically given beyonddispute?" and "Is a conception of sociality that is not closed to the Otherpossible?" These three questions were intertwined with the main problems aboutlanguage and the "I," and they generated many corollary questions against thebackground of which I tried to read a selection of documents written and drawnduring the eighteenth century.

What is the historicality of theoretical investigation in history writing?Whether or not one wishes to avoid theories, one cannot write about the pastwithout generalization; to use language is already to generalize. Yet, there mustbe ways to put into question and critically construe the very relationship betweentheory and historical materials. If theory is taken to be a set of principles formu­lated in universal terms and if its application to a specific historical environmentis understood to be its concretization, such an understanding of theory should beblind to its own historicity. The assumed universality of theory must be delim­ited, historically. But this is not to determine a particular body of theory in itshistorical particularity, since to do so would require another set of universals interms of which the particularity is predicated. What I want to start from andarrive at is neither the particularity of my position nor the generality of someuniversal essences: I want to indicate, if not signify, that dimension which is notreducible to either, which is "outside" the metaphysical opposition of univer­salism and particularism. I can achieve this only by historicizing my reading interms of the text I am to read, not by the more common practice of historicizingthrough my reading the text to be read: that is, by reversing the hierarchy of theuniversal and the particular, of metalanguage and object language. In otherwords, my argument about the eighteenth century has to be organized in such amanner that an object language is allowed to speak back to a metalanguage.

It goes without saying that one can never be sure of one's success in such aproject. There can be no publicly ascertainable standard by which to tell if anobject language has in fact spoken back. The issue of historicality is closelyconnected here with that of historical praxis. It is not a matter of how to know inadvance that such a success in letting the past speak back can be guaranteed; it isprimarily a matter of execution. In this connection I found some shared groundamong my concerns for the historicality of theoretical investigation, the exami­nation of the ethical by Ito Jinsai, a Confucian scholar of the Tokugawa period,and the subsequent transformations of the Confucian discussion on the ethical by

15Theoretical Preliminaries

Ogyu Sorai and others. For Ito, the issues of historicality and sociality were sointimately related that he could not conceive of the ethical without reference tosocial change. In his thorough critique of the essentialization of human nature inSong rationalism, he was able to propose an understanding of the ethical whichrespected the otherness of the Other rather than falling into essentialist univer­salism or particularistic relativism, both ~f which necessarily suppress the Other.In Ogyu's reaction to Ito's critique, however, the sociality had already becomedivorced from ethics with the stress on the mimesis of habitual bodily action.Wh~reas Ito pointed out that the Song rationalist conception of ethics ignored theexecutionary and material aspect of the ethical by equating ethical action with itsideational meaning, Ogyu reduced the ethical to the mimetic and the habitual andbrought forth the notion of the "interiorn as a form of communality on the basisof mimetic identification with, and return to, the idealized and aestheticizedcommune of ancient China. With Ogyu, the rejection of universalism ended in anendorsement of particularism, which meant the return to that same opposition ofuniversalism versus particularism.

In seeking to reverse the relationship of theory and its object, and therebyindicate the dimension of a prescriptive universalism without essentialism, I tryto read those philosophical and pedagogic writings of eighteenth-century Japanas a challenge and resistance to the assumed ubiquitous validity of the theoreticalassumptions on which my reading would otherwise proceed.

What kinds of discursive formation can one delineate when the identities of.language and culture are perceived to be given beyond dispute? This shift away

;ti1,:;':{t~)~;:~;f7' ; from Ito's critique of Song rationalism to Ogyu's endorsement of the cultural andlinguistic "interior" marked the formation of discourses in which those unities oflanguage and the cultural sphere were fonned into what might be referred to asconstituting positivities, or some sort of regulative Ideas. They enabled theselection and organization of empirical categories and led to the formation ofprotocols according to which the perceived heterogeneities were fixed into sym­metrical divisions between identities. I make use of Michel Foucault's term"discourse" (with its particular critical import, which cannot be equated withthat intended by other users of the term such as Emile Benveniste) primarilybecause I want to stress the historical nature of the regulative Ideas: these discur­sive positivities should never be taken as transhistorical essences. But, at thesame time, adoption of the term "discourse" causes me certain problems becauseit implies a positivistic comprehension of history and, correlatively, the assumedpositing of something like transcendental subjectivity. It seems to me that, inspite of Foucault's repeated disclaimers, his approach can entail that the historianmust layout the rules of discursive formation from some "outside", and that thisseparation between the "outside" and the discourse under examination mighteasily induce me to operate on the basis of the theory-object opposition. If this"outside," which Foucault insisted is not an outside of some inside, were under­stood as the site from which a discursive formation can be grasped as an objec-

Introduction14

tified totality, I would fall into the same theoretical trap that I mentioned above: Iwould simply be repeating the anthropological scheme of the empirico-transcen­dental double. In my case, the empirical object posited by the transcendentalgaze would be the discourse of eighteenth-century Japan.

Although, in the thoughts of Foucault, who rigorously pursued Nietzsche and.Heidegger's path toward the Overman, this outside never coincides with tran­scendental subjectivity, one could easily be tempted to assume that the sort ofhistorical analysis Foucault proposed is a method that can be H applied" in itsgenerality to the particular data of specific historical periods and areas. In thatevent, the historian would end up speaking from the position of transcendentalsubjectivity and his reading of historical materials would be no different fromthat of the positivist. Time and time again I have had to resist this temptation; andI have done so by focusing on the asymmetrical relationship between what isaccommodated in discourse and what is not captured by it. The latter, what is notcaptured by discourse, is indicated by the difference between discursivity andtextuality; it has to be indicated because it could never be signified or identified.By maintaining the sense of rupture between discourse and text, I seek to find away out of the determinism often ascribed to Foucault's discursive formation.Discourse reproduces itself by repressing textuality. But, by the same token, itshould always be possible to detect sites where discourse is threatened anderoded. Left to itself, any discursive formation will deteriorate or, to use ItoJinsai's expression, "decompose." In that respect, the stability of discursiveformation must imply the work of power that silences different ways of fonnat­ting, addressing, and linking'issues and prevents people from otherwise seeingand living the world. So, for me, a discursive space is never given: the historianhas, I think, to admit that it is his choice, his limit, and also sometimes hisinability that draw the contours of a given discursive space. Only when a histo­rian pretends to speak from a transcendent position do social and cultural fonna­tions appear objectively determined and simply there. Yet, at the same time, I donot claim that discursive formation is arbitrary and totally dependent upon thehistorian's "intentionn either. What is in the past that resists the imposition ofour images is the interweaving of various texts within the general text, an inter­weaving that disrupts the complicity between the determinism on the part of theobject of study and the assumed transcendent and transhistorical stance on thepart of the subject who studies.

As a gesture of respect for the particularities of a given culture and tradition,and out of a certain diplomatic modesty (which is becoming more and morefashionable), the historian tri~s to speak from a position delimited by his owncultural particularism about a particular cultural and social formation that isforeign to him. He tries to speak as if his culture or language could be opposed toanother, as if he could know in advance how culturally and linguistically hisworld view is delimited and prejudiced. But, in assuming that his own cultureand a foreign culture can be placed on the same plane and compared, he cannot

17Theoretical Preliminaries

but speak from the position of some invisible and transcendent universalism. Hisdiplomatic modesty is in fact his totaliziJ;lg hubris in disguise. In spite of theseeming contradiction between them, these stances are both possible with thecomplicity of particularism and universalism.

I, argue that in the eighteenth century several positivities came into being,thanks to which a rigid partition between the inside of the "interior'" and its"exterior" was formed. This separation resulted in a homogenization of the"interior," which in turn entailed the positing of absolute incommensurabilitybetw~en the "interior" and the "exterior." This was the moment when theJapanese as a linguistic and cultural unity was born. But the birth of Japanese wasa loss because the imagining of the homogeneous "interior" became possibleonly when historical time was constructed through the new reading of the clas­sics. Thus the issue of textuality in the reading of classic writings was directlyconnected to the formation of the interior, of a social imaginary that opened upnew possibilities of social praxis.

Is a conception of sociality that is not closed to the Other possible? With theformation of the interior, an incommensurability was assumed between the inte­rior and the exterior; it became possible to believe that, while belonging in theinterior warranted one's immediate comprehension of things happening there,anyone not belonging was unable to have immediate access to them. Belief thatone inhabits the interior enabled one to assume both the sense of homogeneouscommunality based upon immediate comprehension and the outsider's inability

. to participate in such a sense of communality. Thus, it closed off the social to" heterogeneities both within and without a given collectivity: it made one blind to

, misunderstanding, conflicts, and disorder within a collectivity, even while it?,legitimated resignation to communality by concealing the fact that every form of

incommensurability, misunderstanding, and even indifference to the other had to:: take place within sociality. In other words, by conceding to the interior, one

forget that the recognition of incommensurability could happen only in the'·'.VI.V\o.''''',:),:) of learning and reaching out toward the Other. Concurrently one would

that one encounters disruption on the inside all the time. A collectivity thatimagined as a homogenized and monolithic sphere does not exist. For this

'~'itea~;on Ogyu Sorai, Motoori Norinaga, and other eighteenth-century writers hadJ. LOCO the interior as an "arche," an idealized communality of ancient origin.

they had to critique their contemporary social reality by contrasting it with"archaic" commune and to view the fonner primarily as a loss of immediate

,;,~:~;?]~c)m:munaljtv. Moreover, the newly emerging discourse neglected and repressed........ , ..... '. ,--- possibility of an al~atory venture toward the otherness of the Other, of a

attempt to link the heterogeneous regimes of utterance and behavior whichotherwise remain incommensurate.

I recognize a fundamental transformation between Ito Jinsai and other writers;of the eighteenth century in this regard. In launching a rigorous critique of Songrationalism, which reduced the prescriptive universals of ethical action to the

Introduction16

Hybridity of Language

cognition of descriptive universals, thereby ontologizing the ethical, Ito drewattention to' the possibility of ethical action, to a sociality different from anyguaranteed by epistemological universalism, and above all different from ~hathe called Ai, or compassion toward others. Ito .was adamantly opposed to ethIcalrelativism. But, at the same time, he stressed the aspect of social action which.could never be reduced to 4'knowing." An ethical action always requires theagenfs body-or what I call "shutai," as distinct fro~ the sUbje~t-wh~chnecessarily deconstructs its putative intention; of neceSSIty, an ethIcal actIonexceeds the closure of the agent's consciousness so that its actuality consists in itsexteriority to the intended meaning. Ito clearly saw that a prescription couldnever be deduced from a description. That is, in his thinking of ethics through thereading of Confucian classics, he focused on the materiality of s~ial acti~n,materiality of praxis toward and with the otherness of th~ Other WhICh ~ave nseto virtues. What is evident in his ethics is that the ethIcal and textualtty wereinseparably related: for Ito Jinsai, the problem of the ethical was i.mmedia~elythat of textuality. Thus, in spite of his frequent references to ConfUCIan classIcs,he did not need to sail back to the "arche"-to the original communality ofKamo Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga, and to the original creators or ancientsage kings of Ogyu 50rai-in order to ascertain ethical principles.

I am presenting this transformation of discourse in term~ of the formati~n of anew closure, of silencing the otherness of the Other. Unhke the culturahsm ofmodem Japan after the nineteenth century, the eighteenth-century discourse oninteriority undeniably carried critical momentum with it. Nevertheless, bec~useof its obsessive concern for origin, its critique was directed toward the consobda­tion of the immediate. Hence, it could easily lead to anti-intellectualism and the

worship of naIvete.I find that the transformation of discourse involved a wide variety of changes,

including the rearrangement of genres, a new articulation of enunciative modes,a new kind of intertextuality, and new regimes of writing and reading. I seek thecauses of the changes not only in "thought," but in "discourse" and its asym­metrical relationship with textuality. For this reason, I draw attention to thegraphic, verbal, and performative aspects of eighteenth-century popular liter­ature, puppet theater scripts, and linguistic pedagogy, and seek to understand theproblems of the ~4subject" in terms of their framing. Even when I read thosenontheoretical documents, my analysis is always motivated by my three ques­tions. My reading is conducted with special concern for the formation of thevernacular or "ordinary" language in eighteenth-century Japan. In response tothese questions, however, I see the formation of an ordinary language as the siteof hybridity. Yet, I must hasten to add that it is not the significance of some

19

,

Theoretical Preliminaries

The Logic of Self-Decentering

hybrid language (as against pure language) or hybridity (as against pure blood)that I want to favor. On the contrary, there is no such thing as the original unity oflanguage with which hybridity can be contrasted. (On that score, can we reallysay that language is a countable? Can we ascribe singularity and plurality tolanguage?) Only in narrowly defined contexts could one still appeal to the dis­tinction between an indigenous and pure language and· a hybrid language. Butultimately, I insist, there is no way to distinguish a pure language from its hybridor Creole. My position, which I maintain throughout this book, is that languageis essentially a site of hybridity and that any notion of a pure language is somefabricated and -dogmatic deviation from the correct view of language. Andhybridity is also the fundamental relationship between the body as the agent ofaction and language: no-body can be exhaustively at home in language. This isnot a book about either the history of linguistic theory or the development ofJapanese language. Nonetheless, its main theme is language and its other: this isa book devoted to the examination of the status of language in discourse.

I believe that historiography can be confined neither to a narrative account ofpast experience or of the experience of the dead nor to an imposition, uncon­scious in the best of cases and intentional in the worst, of our expectations ontothe historical past; it results rather from an effort to articulate the problemsarising from the defects and the limits of the present. Therefore, it defamiliarizesus. In short, in historiography, there is always some chance of having our ownproblems traverse texts of the past as if the past would speak back to us, as if thetexts of the past would deflect our transference. 12 We thereby loosen the grip ofreified epistemic institutions on us by problematizing the very positivities onwhich our knowledge has been constructed.

Indeed, in this book I seek a historiography that would do justice to theotherness of the Other, that respects the historicity of the social, and that willserve the logic of self-decentering. 13 I attempt to make history a locus where ournihilism is continually challenged in order to reconsider the assumed image of44 US" that is a universalized "me," of "men that is a particularized "us."

12See Dominick LaCapra, "Is Everyone a Mentalite Case? Transference and the 'Culture' Con­cept" in History and Criticism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 71-94.

lJThe logic of self-decentering concerns itself with a fonn of social and political critique thatrecognizes the mutually constitutive and transferential relationship between the criticizing subject andthe criticized subject and which, therefore, does not justify itself merely by ascribing negative traitst~ the subject to be criticized. It is a logic that interntpts the scapegoating inherent in the symmetry ofbmary opposition by disclosing the site of the differend, which exists even in desire for identity. Itfocuses on the shared tenns in which both subjects are constituted as such and because of which thenecessity for cptique arises. In other words, this critique itself is a new manifestation of the social inwhich the subjects are released from the constraints of symmetry and reciprocity and are opened uptoward the Other in the other.

Introduction18

-Lu Xun

Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like ways across theearth. For actually the earth had no ways to begin with, but when many men pass in onedirection, a way is made.

SILENCE AT THE CENTER:

ITO JINSAI AND

THE PROBLEMS

OF INTERTEXTUALITY

IPART<0.

A Discursive Space and Textuality

Change in the Mode

of Discursive Formation

23

1

lIto was a Confucian scholar and a founder of the Kogigaku school. He was born in Kyoto to amerchant family well connected to cultural elites there. and he later married a cousin of perhaps themost famous painter ofthat time, Ogata Korin. From adolescence. he immersed himself in the study

the works of the Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi, and in his late twenties he abandoned his familybusiness and devoted himself to Buddhist practice. In his thirties, however, he became critical of

rationalism and Buddhism and began questioning them philosophically. Through the newof Confucian classics, he wrote many works which criticized Song rationalism and its

philosophical and ethical implications. The Kogido, a private Confucian academy he established in1662, continued to educate students for more than two hundred years, and his eldest son, Ito Togai.was also a renowned Confucian scholar. His major works include Dojimon (A child questions).

CHAPTER

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, a radical change took place in themode of discursive formation in Japan. I do not c;laim that there ever was ahistorical period when so-called Japanese society was entirely dominated by asingle discursive formation. Nevertheless, it can be maintained that seventeenth­century Japan had its own dominant mode by which discourses were integrated.In any society or culture, there is always a multiplicity of discursive formations.(The conventional unities and self-evidence associated with the terms .. society"and "culture" will be placed under thorough examination in the rest of this book,but let us allow ourselves to use them meanwhile, with a view to disclosing andcritiquing the effects of their use.) Yet, it is axiomatic that the heterogeneities ofone discourse to another are suppressed so long as a society maintains a high de­gree of integration. By the same token, unlike the modern nation-state, in whichan oppressively homogeneous cultural sphere is imagined and thereby con­structed, a society may accommodate many heterogeneous discourses so long as

. it lacks or fails to achieve a high degree of integration. Tokugawa society was noexception in this regard. Heterogeneity emerged within the dominant discursiveformation in the late seventeenth century, and I think the writings of Ito Jinsai(1627-1705) testify to this sudden eruption of new conceptual possibilities.}

Rongo·kogi (The ancient meaning of the Analects), Moshi-kogi (The ancient meaning of the Men·cius), and Gomojigi (The words and meanings in the Analects and Mencius).

2Note that Foucault deliberately avoids equating the unity of discourse to that of "national" cultureor a national language. See The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, 1973).

Nevertheless, I do not intend to view this event, this change, as indicating ahistorical break in something like the Japanese psyche, hidden beneath the sur­face of texts. Nor do I mean that an epistemological framework that had domi­nated Japan prior to that time was suddenly replaced by a new one. For­following an early Michel Foucault-to identify the systematicity of discourseon which the discursive space as a whole was constructed, I would first have toappeal to the concept of totality.2 But we should remind ourselves that a totalityis always constructed historically and discursively and in each period of historyhas to be defined and articulated in terms of the contemporary discursive apparat..us. The conception of totality in one historical time can be drastically differentfrom that in another. As circumstances change, totality also changes.

Furthermore, we should be wary of any presumption that the contour of adiscursive formation coincides with the whole of a society. Totality is always, bydefinition, a discursive scheme functional only within a given discursive spacethat can never be closed off. Certainly one can discuss the differences amongmany discursive spaces, yet it does not follow that each discursive space musthave a definite boundary. Indeed, the concept of totality, without which closurewould be impossible, is itself the product of an ideological and discursive con..struct based on and incorporated into a given discursive space. That is why theconcept of totality has been extensively discussed in the philosophy of historyeven as conventional historiography has continued to rely on it without realizinghow problematic it is. This is to say, totality is one of the historical transcenden..tals that both constitute and are constituted by the economies of particular discur­sive formations.

Is it justifiable, then, to introduce this term into the study of seventeenth- andeighteenth-century Japan? Obviously it is impossible to give a definition oftotality that could be applied indiscriminately across historical time. Therefore,admitting that it is a historical transcendental, I will continue to use it even as Iquestion the universal validity that has imperceptibly been ascribed to it in mosthistoriographical research and, indeed, the validity of any such universality ingeneral. What I propose is to tum the problem of totality into a conductingthread, an inquiring voice to be projected onto writings produced during theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries. How did they constitute totality? How didthey imagine it?

I must begin by evaluating the eruption of new discursive possibilities inthe seventeenth century. My starting point is the philosophical writings of Ito·Jinsai, whose intervention in the dominant discourse gave rise to these possi­bilities.

24 Silence at the Center The Mode of Discursive Formation

Ito's writings are concerned with changes occurring in the mode of discursiveformation. By criticizing the established. forms of philosophical and exegeticargument in his time, he attempted to reformulate the intertextual relationshipbetween written texts and the reality for acting agents. The shift in intertextuality"indeed, entailed the destruction of the dominant conception of language, and

'; through that destruction, Ito engaged himself in the inauguration of a new one. Inthis instance, by the conception of language I mean various differentiations"relations, and hierarchizations of philosophemes. So we will be able to analyzethis .shift only when we recognize those differentiations and other constituents ofthe shift and pay careful attention to how their interrelationships and the status of.language in discourse were altered. It is particularly important in this regard thatmost of Ito's writings criticized readings of the Chinese classics and the commen­taries of other Confucian scholars.

As a Confucian, Ito articulated his own philosophical position through in­"terpretation of the Chinese classics and his attempts to refute heretical doctrines"including Buddhism, Taoism, and Song rationalism. Without doubt, Song ra­tionalism was his major ideological enemy since he could not have put forth hisQwn readings of the Chinese classics until he had first undermined the authen­

. ticity of the commentaries produced by the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, and otherConfucian scholars of the so-called Zhu Xi school of thought, or Shushigaku

1-1 in the Appendix). What I regard as the coherent body of Ito's "thought"or "philosophy," cannot be discussed without reference to his approvaland disapproval of theses or statements he quoted from the writings of thosescholars.

Ito's "thought," therefore, has to be sought, first of all, in a consideration ofhis statements about statements of others. He managed to express his own the­oretical position only against a background of others' voices, and he wrote inconstant dialogue with others. Only by identifying his affirmations and denials ofothers' discourse can I possibly circumscribe a form of coherence in Ito Jinsai'sdiscourse. And I cannot assume that this coherence embodies a system that canbe reduced to a set of mutually noncontradictory propositions. We must keep inmind that a statement quoted by him could function in his discourse differently

the way it does in the original. In addition, Ito made many statements abouttheses held by others which do not seem to be based upon any specific reference.For instance, he challenges Zhu Xi and the Cheng brothers extensively andargues emphatically against Zhu's conception of the principle Ii. But the validityof his criticism is sometimes questionable since the many writings of Zhu Xi andthe Cheng brothers offer a wide variety of reading possibilities-as the history ofConfucianism in China from Song onward has shown.

The problem of how and why Ito fonnulated his critique of Song rationalismcannot be attacked by reference to the Analects, the Mencius, or the Five Clas­sics; nor can it be dismissed by saying that, given the vast difference in social andhistorical background between China and Japan, Japanese Confucians at that

26 Silence at the Center The Mode of Discursive Formation 27

time simply could not understand what Zhu Xi originally meant. It encounteredChinese writings that were already covered with a thick sediment of interpreta­tion, and the accuracy of his critique is not at issue here. I am concerned to seehow Ito presented Song rationalism in his writings and to locate the ruptures inthe discursive space with which much of his argument seems to have beenconcerned. I want, that is, to see what sort of intertextual transmutation was atwork in Ito's critique of Song rationalism.

Intertextuality

But before moving into a detailed reading of Ito's writings, let me elucidate theterm "intertextuality," which I use mainly in two ways. The primary understand­ing of this term derives from the awareness that no utterance takes place in acultural vacuum. Besides linguistic and other institutional constraints that pene­trate and saturate the occasion of an utterance, the texts and words of others forman environment within which a text is produced. The accumulation of those textsand words into which an utterance is thrown is called the general text, and toproduce a text is to implant a new utterance so as to effectuate a new arrangementof the general text. Thus, analysis of a text is a procedure of unbinding, throughwhich the interaction of texts is revealed. Obviously, at this stage I limit myselfto dealing with the interrelationships of various verbal texts, as did MikhailBakhtin, for instance, in his analysis of Dostoevsky's poetics.

Bakhtin's approach led him to postulate the idea of the polyphonic novel, asopposed to the monologic novel in which the speeches of all the characters arereduced to objects of the single consciousness and in which the author's sov­ereignty is affirmed. This idea of polyphony can be traced back to such earlyworks as Marxism and the Philosophy ofLanguage, but Bakhtin gave it the mostexplicit expression in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. "Dostoevsky's novel,"he maintained, "is dialogical. It is not constructed as the entirety of a singleconsciousness which absorbs other consciousnesses as objects, but rather as theentirety of the interaction of several consciousnesses, of which no one fullybecomes the object of any other one. This interaction does not assist the viewerto objectify the entire event in accordance with the ordinary monological pattern(thematically, lyrically, or cognitively), and as a consequence makes him a par­ticipant. "3

The idea of polyphony already sketches my perspective, in which history islmderstood as a locus where "we" meet, first, the other and, ultimately, the Othermd where our discursive formation is questioned and put in jeopardy rather thanIffirmed in its exclusion of the Other. Bakhtin opened up the possibilities of seeing

3Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky'S Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis,[973), p. 14.

a text as an interaction of multiple voices. He did not conceive consciousness as anindependent subject, as is clear from his characteristic conception of monologue asa variation of dialogue. What was disclosed by his juxtaposition of monologismand dialogism is the ideological implication of the monologic discursive forma­tion, in which a speaker is impelled to integrate speeches of the others withoutbeing affected by them. In monologism, the heterogeneous is repressed, with theconsequence of reducing the Other to the other. What takes place concurrently inthis formula is the elimination of the Other from the "us," thereby rendering the"us" a pure ability to objectify, an ability never to be dislocated. The author'sconsciousness is thus made sovereign, and through monologic discourse it isequated to a transcendental subject and insists upon the objectification of otherconsciousnesses. Always, subjective identity is stressed in defiance of the con­stant opportunity, bestowed by the others and in the Other, to decenter itself.Because of its pervasiveness, monologic discourse may appear neutral and inno­cent; in fact, however, it is a historical construct that generates a certain powerrelationship. More precisely, monologism is less a reflection of a power rela­tionship than a form in which a power is effectuated.

It is by acknowledging this effect that the term "intertextuality" has beenbrought forward. Through the dramatization of the ambiguous status of writingin various historical stages, Julia Kristeva develops the notion of an intertextualrelationship out of polyphony. 4 The notion of intertextuality further articulatesthe dialogical structure of a text to the extent that plurality, not only of differentvoices but also of different modes of utterance, is taken into account in theanalysis of a text. This is to say that a text is viewed as containing texts. Inaddition to direct citations of other texts, the intertextual analysis of the text inquestion reveals the degree to which the production of meaning depends on thetranscription of others' phonetic utterances. From this viewpoint, Kristeva ana­lyzes historical texts and tries to define the historical specificity of textual pro­duction.

Underlying this approach would seem to be the premise that the text is alwayssituated within history and society, but the notion of "history and society" as anenvironment that is supposed to have existed at the time of the text's enunciation

4For example, Kristeva describes the emergence of the novel in Le texte du roman (The Hague:Mouton, 1970): "Therefore, the extreme valorization of writing is accompanied by censure: whenone writes, one presents oneself as speaking; when one has finished writing, one is able to say 'it hasbeen done.' The verb 'write' could belong only to the past: it marks a terminated production, afinished work. One does not WRITE, one can only HAVE WRITTEN. To contemplate the written is tocontemplate death. Once again, the kinship of writing with the tomb is manifested in a strikingmanner" (p. 141), and "The novel, which will impose the notion of 'literature' on modernity to theextent that it takes it over, will borrow the fetishization of the FINISHED OBJECT, of the EXPLAINED

TRUTH, and of COMPOSITION from the medieval concept of writing. It will mix vocal discourse(profane literalure), on the one hand, and curbed space (volume against line), on the other, andattempt by these two methods to combat the linearity and univocity of the epic (of the symbol) in theinterior of expressivity (of the book as the double of the idea, of writing as representation)" (pp. 145­46). Historiography as I engage in it here is not free from this historicity of modem "literature."

5Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez(New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 65. I have a strong reservation about Kristeva'snotion of transgression, which seems to be based on a rather reified notion of the norm and whichmight easily be recuperated. It is much like the institution of confession, which depicts transgressionin order to authorize the norm that is transgressed. As to materiality, see her article Matiere, sens,dialeclique, in Polylogue (Paris: Seuil, 1977), pp. 263-86.

remains undefinably abstract and open to arbitrariness. Thus, following Bakhtin,Kristeva instead postulates history and society as texts against which a new text isproduced. "The only way a writer can participate in history is by transgressingthis abstraction (linear history) through a process of reading-writing, that is,through the practice of a signifying structure in relation or opposition to anotherstructure. History and morality are written and read within the infrastructure oftexts."5 The position of a text is thus defined in history, but the production of atext in history does not mean harmonious juxtaposition of a text with other texts.A verbal text always exists within a given situation; a text of any sort is inscribedin a materiality. As a materiality, it coexists with the heterogeneous that wouldvariously be articulated as the text is further determined in signification. Intalking about intertextuality, however, I do not refer to the kind of materiality thathas often been ascribed to matter or material objects. If textual materiality issimply taken to denote an old and conventional concept of matter, a tex.t'srelationship to other materials and other texts would be extrinsic and charac­terized only as "part outside part." It would give the somewhat misleading ideathat materiality could be isolated from the text, as the material body is fantasizedas separable from the existence of a person. It is impossible to analyze a text'sintertextual dependence upon other texts at this level, however, since "partoutside part" signifies the absence of such an intertextual rapport.

One thing should be clear: textual materiality is not an animated being in anysense, but it is not stasis either. We assume certain mobility in textual materialityfrom our inability to conceive of a text outside such acts as speaking, listening,writing, reading, seeing, drawing, and so on. Yet, textual materiality is not thatwhich preserves, maintains, and registers the identity of the text even when it isnot spoken, listened to, written, read, and so on-that is, when it is not beingactualized. Must I then appeal to the presence of some constituting consciousnessor some transcendental ego for which the text is posited as such? Must I resort tothe presence of some consciousness to make sense of a text devoid of the scene ofaddressing, devoid of the addresser and addressee? In other words, must I groundthe textuality of the text on some constituting subjectivity, which, of ontologicalnecessity, is a priori to the text?

One of the reasons for introducing the terms '~text" and "intertextuality" is toreverse the order of subjectivity and various inscriptions so as to question ourpersistent obsession, whose most elaborate expression can be found in what isoften referred to as the ideology of constructive subjectivity. "Text" and "inter-

The term "intertextuality," therefore, helps discover the modes in which thesubject is constituted. As a matter of fact, it implies that the new position of the

29The Mode of Discursive Formation

6See Julia Kristeva, La revolution du langage poelique (Paris: Seuil, 1974), pp. 41-42. Shudai­teki employs one of the Japanese tenns for "subject". In modem Japanese intellectual discourse thetenn "subject" is translated as shugo for the grammatical or the propositional subject~ shukan for theepistemological subject; shudai for the thematic or thetic subject; and shutai for the subject of acting,sometimes implying the body that initiates or leads the action. These differentiations, however, arenot stable and defining the interrelations among those four "subjects" leads to linguistically andphilosophically complicated problems about subjectivity. I attempt to delineate the economy of the"subjects" in this book by paying special attention to the ways these subjects have been operative inmodern Japanese philosophy. This, however, does not mean that I am particularly interested in theanalysis of "Japanese ways of thinking," because the problems of subjectivity posed by Japanesephilosophers are not specifically Japanese. It goes without saying that one of the purposes of thisbook is to show on theoretical grounds the fragility of culturalistic categorization.

7Ibid., pp. 59-60.

A new signifying system can be produced in the same signifying material [matfriausignifiant]: for example, in language, a shift can occur from narration to text; but itcan be adopted from ~ different signifying material: for example, a shift can occurfrom the carnivalesque scene to the written text. In this respect, we have studied theformation of the romanesque signifying system as a result of the redistribution ofmany systems of different signs: carnival, poesie courtoise, and scholastic dis­course. The term intertextuality designates this transposition of a (or many) sys­tem(s) of signs onto another; but since this term has often been understood in thebanal sense of "critique of sources" of a text, we rather prefer the term "transposi­tion," which has the advantage of expressing precisely that the shift of a signifyingsystem to another requires a new articulation of the thetic-of enunciative anddenotative positionality. If one admits that every signifying practice is a field oftransposition of various systems (intertextuality), one understands that its "place" ofenunciation and its denoted "object" are never unique, full, and identical untothemselves but rather that they are always plural, torn apart, and susceptible totabular models. 7

textuality" are conceptual devices by which to deal with the problems of subjec­tivity without totally succumbing to this ideology.

With a view to relating the shift of a system of signs to another system and tounderstanding the transformation of subjectivity, Kristeva reasserts the Lacanianthesis that every enunciation generates a rupture and posits the subject and itsobject. This rupture that produces the position of signification is called a thetic(shudai-teki) phase, and every enunciation is thetic, requiring the separation ofthe subject and the object.6

Within the scope of the terminology I have adopted, the shift of a system ofsigns to another system can be described as a transformation of the thetic posi­tion, that is, the destruction of the old system and the formation of a new one.Kristeva argues:

Silence at the Center28

A Departure

I must seek to understand the intertextual conditions that enabled Ito Jinsai toadopt certain interpretations of the Chinese writings and to reject others, and Imust also assess how this choice of a reading strategy accorded with the forma­tion of the philosophemes he put forth.

Ito's critique of Song rationalism cannot be understood as merely the furtherelaboration of a thought system called Confucianism. Ito made no attempt toimprove the already established understanding of Confucianism by means ofminor changes and emendations. Instead, he posited a gap between himself andthe Song Confucians; he declared the falsity of what they considered the most

subject is always rendered possible intertextually and, therefore, that retro­spective analysis illustrates the discursive formation against which the new sub­ject is brought into being, that is, into effect.

At the risk of redundancy, I say that the term "text" embraces much more thanthe written document. The text is an ensemble of inscriptions governed bysignifying systems. Here I would like to introduce the second major notion ofintertextuality used in this book. The distinction between the first and the second,which is problematic at the very least, I shall dwell on later.

The term "intertextuality" can, I believe, relieve us of the constraints imposedby the reflection theory. In past historical studies, the scheme of reflection hasbeen utilized loosely; often theories based on reflection were put forth as positiveproposals, and even more often, in one form or another, this scheme impercepti­bly seeped into the tissue of historiography. It seems to me that in almost all thesecases the necessity for this scheme arose from the inability of historians toexplicate possible relationships between those aspects of the general text that canbe construed firsthand in terms of signification (such as legal documents,folktales, and classic books) and the other aspects of it (such as paintings, tools,and architecture), which are illegible unless they are first denoted. Because of thenarrowness of the conventional notion of the text and also because the text ispresumed to be related to what is outside it by reflection, both conscious andunconscious adherents of the reflection scheme have no option but to see a verbaltext as reflecting what is outside it. But reflection is merely one of many differentways or regimes by which a text is related to the exterior. There is no universaland singular way in which a text relates itself to its others. Instead, as is indicatedby changes in intertextuality, a text's possible relationship to what is outside itvaries. Reflection appears universal only in a historically specific discourse that Ithink we are moving away from. Thus the term "intertextuality" can be instru­mental in historicizing discursive formations and in comprehending, for in­stance, Ito's struggles to open up different ways of utterance and action in thereading of the classics.

31The Mode of Discursive Formation

8These are references to the basic texts of Confucianism. The Four Books are Daxue (The greatlearning), Zhong yong (The doctrine of the mean), Lun yu (Analects) and Mengzu (Mencius). TheFive Classics are Yi jing (The book of changes), Li ji (The book of rites), Shi jing (The book of odes),Shujing (The book of documents), and Chun qiu (The spring and autumn annals). Together with Thebook of music, which is not extant, these books are sometimes called the Six Classics. The FiveClassics were the basic texts of Confucianism in China until the time of Zhu Xi, who placed theutmost importance on the Four Books. These were treated as the basic textbooks for the civil serviceexamination in China.

9Ito Jinsai, Jinsai nissatsu, in Nihon rinri ihen, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Ikuseikai, 1908), p. 177.IOSee Miyake.Masahiko, "Jinsai-gaku no keisei," Shirin 48, no. 5 (I965); and Noguchi Takehiko,

"Kugigaku teki hoho no seiritsu," Bungaku 23, nos. 7, 8, and 9 (1968): 1-11,62-76,96-113.

authentic reading of the classics; he proposed a fundamental change in the wayConfucian canonical writings should be read. He himself believed his rereadingof the classics was revolutionary, not refonnist. If we accept the view that anytheoretical criticism of established ideas must be based upon a certain sphere ofevidence, namely, the source of truth to which all appeals for legitimacy mustultimately be made, then it is obvious tbat Ito's critique did not share the samesphere of evidence as that used by the rationalists (rigaku-sha, 1-2).

Ito's attempt to revolutionize Confucianism was accompanied by and accordedwith a general shift in the economy of discursive formation. It is noteworthy thathis refusal of tbe Cheng-Zhu conception of Ii (1-3), was coordinated with anappeal to a new sphere of evidence. It is not surprising in the context of exegeticstrategies that this shift amounted to an alteration of the canon: from the FourBooks and the Five Classics to the Three Books (Daxue was dropped) and theFive or Six Classics.8 This may not appear to be so drastic a change as thatcarried out by Ogyu Sorai, but it is significant in the sense that the mode ofreading changed as authenticity was removed from one set of writings and placedon another. Of course, Ito's alteration of the canon was hardly an isolated event.As we shall see, the writers of the eighteenth century repeatedly altered the canonin order to advance their own theoretical positions, and the choice of canonprovided the focus for an articulation of their philosophical discourse. Ito'salteration of the canon was an essential part of his effort to open up new universesof utterance and perception, to escape the discursive space in which he had beentrapped. Yet what, then, is the significance of this discontinuity he positedbetween his own discourse and Song rationalism? What kind of relation is therebetween the discontinuity thus posed and the choice of canonical writings?

According to Ito, "Song Confucians ... do not know that the Way of Yao,Shun, and Confucius lies entirely in ordinary life and everyday conduct."9 Thisstatement can also be found in writings dated to Ito's later years. Because ItoJinsai reviewed and reformulated his treatises many times in the course of hiscareer, Japanese scholars have found it extremely difficult to identify the most"mature" and, therefore, "final" version of his philosophy. to Be that as it may,one thing is certain: like many Confucian scholars of the time, he experienced aradical rupture between his early and later "thought." and the statement I have

Silence at the Center30

The Notions of Sincerity and Hypocrisy

I I The first term in parentheses is Japanese, the second Chinese. The number refers to the ideogramgiven in the Appendix.

121to, Jinsai nissatsu, p. 177.13As recent scholarship has demonstrated, it is very doubtful that Cheng-Zhu rationalism was

adopted as the orthodox ideology by the Tokugawa shogunate. See Bito Masahide, Nihon hokenshiso-shi kenkyu (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1961), and Herman Ooms Tokugawa Ideology (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1986). All the problems concerning Shushigaku as the shogunate ide­ology seem to stem from the mishandling of the intertextual distance, which has been automaticallytranslated into either historical distance or the distance between social groups. I do not claim thatorthodox ideology and ideological distance between social classes or social groups are not involved,but I simply cannot reduce textual formation to social and economic formation. The power rela­tionship in the society is constituted in the text, and not vice versa.

quoted is, indeed, characteristic of his so-called later thought. He repeatedlydeclared that' Song Confucians knew only abstract ideas and sophisticated discus­sion; they manipulated complex and refined arguments, but they did not realizehow empty their words were. According to Ito, Song Confucians knew how toinvestigate books in order to discover principle, how to be reverent (kei, jing, 1­4)11 and righteous (gi, yi, 1-5), and how to discipline themselves, but theirteachings lacked what he perceived to be essential: the quality that made learningreal (jitsu, shi, 1-6). However theologically profound and religiously solemnone might be, nothing would be accomplished if all those ideas that were sohighly respected could not be put into practice. The final arena where philosophyis to be judged is not some remote and exclusive realm that ordinary peoplecannot reach but everyday life, an arena saturated with quotidian trivialities.Thus Ito attempted to locate the sphere of "nearness" in the center of his philoso­phy.

33The Mode of Discursive Formation

14It is first of all intertextual distance that enabled Ito to criticize the Cheng-Zhu formation ofdiscourse. This distance is not necessarily historical since the presence of Cheng-Zhu writings in Ito'stime generated the necessity for such a critique. Neither is it primarily a distance between one socialgroup and another, although it could function as a means by which one social group identified itself inopposition to another. Perhaps, the use ofthe term "intertextuality" might be emphasized once again.La langue precedes Ie parole. But the mode of this precedence cannot be confused with temporalordering. As has been formulated by Kant, this problem is essentially that of de jure not de facto. Ifwe still maintain that historical knowledge belongs to the de facto sphere, the relationship betweenparole and langue certainly defies any discussion of the truth of fact. Jonathan Culler writes:"Intertextuality thus becomes less a name for a work's relation to particular prior texts than adesignation of its participation in the discursive space of a culture: the relationship between a text andthe various languages or signifying practices of a culture and its relation to those texts whicharticulate for it the possibilities of that culture" (The Pursuit of Signs (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1980], p. 103). It is important to stress that intertextuality can never be reduced to a rela­tionship between one book and another.

understanding of the social and political implications of Ito's study of Confucianclassics. But I also believe that no text should be read as a reflection of extratex­tual reality. Strictly speaking, the very question of how a written text might havebeen pre-determined by the economic and social formation of society must bedisallowed if we admit-as I believe we must-that what has been perceived asextratextual reality consists entirely of a set of texts. Of course, reality is positedas if it were somewhere outside the· text, independent of all signifiers, or ameaning without inscription. In the final analysis, however, this kind of commonsense must be considered an idealist fancy, the very sort of idealism Ito crit­icized. I maintain that texts generate reality, but not the reverse-provided, ofcourse, that the word "text" is read with theoretical understanding that the textnecessarily encompasses "the referents": the relationship to the referents is inter­nal to the text.

Ito's critique -of Song rationalism opened up a field of perception in which therationalists, who had previously seemed normal and respectable, came to appearas Ito described them, abnonnal and odd. Ito talks about this very process in hisdescription of some followers of Song rationalism who finally came to Kyoto toattend ·his lecture and reached a sudden realization that "transcendentalism"inherent in Zhu Xi's teaching would only lead people to stubbornness and socialisolation.

But is this an account proper to Zhu Xi's teaching? If it is, in what sense is itso? If not, in what sense is it not? Can we possibly maintain that Zhu's discoursesshow no concern for life's mundane trivia. (This is intertextuality of the firstkind, namely, among written texts.) By analyzing the mode of dependence ofIto's discourse on others, I hope to trace the intertextuality present in his critiqueof the discursive space from which he fled. 14

I simply cannot agree with Ito that Zhu Xi neglected mundane things andconcrete social relations with others. Zhu constantly emphasized the importanceof everyday life; one of the books he edited is titled Reflections on Things atHand. Moreover, Zen Buddhism, which Ito also bitterly criticized, was no

Silence at the Center32

Ito's argument could be summarized as a critique of hypocrisy and the emptinessof the abstract theological system. The discordance between the words of theSong rationalists and the reality Ito perceived is clearly revealed by his argument:"Those rationalists preached to people about what to do while they had no hopeof practicing it themselves. Or even if they had practiced it, nobody could havefailed to recognize the oddity and inhumaneness of their conduct." 12 Does thisstatement imply that his critique was directed at a certain class or group of peoplewho actually practiced Song rationalism? Was Song rationalism widely practicedin Tokugawa polity at that time? Would the rationalists indeed have looked odd ifthey had actually put Zhu Xi's teachings into action?

It seems likely that the followers of Shushigaku (Zhu Xi's school of thought)were rather rare at the time. 13 Song rationalism was neither the official ideologyof the dominant political authority nor the practice of any significant socialgroup. For this reason alone, it would seem that no attempt to read Ito's critiquemerely as a covert attack on the contemporary establishment can approach an

different from Song rationalism in this regard. Both of these teachings heldparamount the notion that philosophical ideas should never be uprooted from thesphere of "nearness," where one encounters things and people in everyday life.As a matter of fact, crude transcendentalism had never been accepted as a formof discourse either in Confucianism or Zen Buddhism. It is likely, therefore, thatwhat had once been new and mundane for Zhu Xi and some Buddhists whoseworks Ito read was so no longer: their sphere of nearness had been replaced by anew perception of nearness. Things and human activities that had never beenpresent in discourse prior (prior in the intertextual order) to the late seventeenthcentury now demanded inclusion in the presentation of basic Confucian values.Ito pointed to an encounter of different regimes of action and perception.

This is the significance of Ito's critique of rationalism: not only is the rela­tionship of Ito Jinsai to Zhu Xi and other Song Confucians discontinuous, butalso his critique of Zhu Xi was actually a way to articulate what had hitherto beeninexpressible in his time. Many of the basic philosophemes were so organized asto indicate the location of the negative pole, which he associated with Zhu Xi orSong rationalism. In this respect, Zhu's writings played an essential role; withoutthem it would have been impossible for Ito to construct his argument. So, in viewof the shift of the sphere of nearness, how am I to evaluate the discontinuity hedramatized by distancing himself from the hypocrisy of "rationalists"?

For a tenn to play an important role in a supposedly unified field of discourse(a book, a work, a set of works, a group of works belonging to the putative unityof an author), it must be well incorporated into the network of differentiationsthat govern the field of discourse. What endows such a term with a function andmakes it effective in organizing a series of arguments is its relatedness to theeconomy of a discursive space. "Term," in this context, does not necessarilymean a work or a morphological unit whose identity depends on the structure oflanguage (langue). It should rather be described as a complex, a discursive unit,which consists of interchangeable sets of words or expressions. In other words, itbelongs not to the order of language but to that of discourse. Hypocrisy, as itappears in Ito's writings, is a complex of this kind, and analysis of it should leadus to an overview of the intertextual relationship between his and Zhu Xi'sdiscourses. The term Hhypocrisy" as repeatedly evoked in Ito's discourse neces­sarily involves a discourse outside Ito's own, as is obvious from its connotatIon;its function is to separate, to distance his discourse from what it criticizes andreproaches. It differentiates one fonn of life from another, elevates one as sincereand degrades another as false or, more precisely, hypocritical. Yet by emphasiz­ing this distinction, it nonetheless relates one to the other; it is an intertextualdevice, a sort of one-sided linkage bridging one form of life and another.

In the meantime, we must be aware that the term "hypocrisy" cannot denotethe divided consciousness we would customarily associate with it today. Thisdenotation is even less plausible if we recognize that Ito generated a new struc­ture of thought in which, for the first time, hypocrisy as divided consciousness

15Literally translated, this phrase means "to render what can be sincere sincere." "What can besincere" is not specified, and I rather avoid substituting "the self" or "one's mind" because theseparation of the self from the world is nothing but what Ito called fabrication, or an absence ofsincerity. The entire passage in Zhong yong from which Ito's quotation is drawn is as follows:..Sincerity is the Way of heaven. The realization of sincerity is the Way of men. He who is sincere ishe who, without an effort, hits what is right and apprehends without the exercise of thought; -he isthe sage who naturally and easily practices the right way. He who realizes sincerity is he who chooseswhat is good, and firmly holds it fast." Zhong yong, Shinshaku kanbun taikei (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin,1967), 2:275.

16Ito Jinsai, "Risshijikei no setsu," Kogaku sensei bunshu, in Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 33 (Tokyo:Iwanami Shoten, 1971), p. 211.

It is not difficult to see that this argument is constructed on the basis of thebinary oppositions real/vacuous and true/fabricated, in which the real and thetrue are associated with nature (sei, xing, 1-10) and the vacuous and the fabri­cated are veils that prevent nature from manifesting itself clearly and ex­haustively. At this stage, Ito defined sincerity as one's relatedness without anyobstruction to the world in which nature was revealed. Those who constantlymaintained such relatedness were called sages, and those who could realize itonly momentarily were called students. Thus in regard to nature a student and asage were not different, but in regard to the endurance of nature they were. Of

35The Mode of Discursive Formation

In the Way of students, nothing precedes the establishment of sincerity [sei, cheng,1-7] [in oneself], nothing is more essential than sincerity. Unless one is sincere, onewould never be able to exhaust one's own nature in following the Way. Hence theteaching of Confucius regards loyalty and trust [chushin, zhong xin] as the centralissue and the establishment of sincerity as the root of ascetic practice.. .TheDoctrine of the Mean says, "Sincerity is the Way of heaven. To make [it] sincere15 isthe Way of men. Sincerity is that which is real without vacuity [kyo, xu, 1-8], is thatwhich is true without fabrication [ka, jia,]. This is what makes the sages as theyare." "To make it sincere" is to be entirely real by getting rid of vacuity and to seektruth by abandoning fabrication. This is what students should do. Once studentshave successfully achieved this, they are identical to the sages. When this is talkedabout from the viewpoint of students, however, one cannot acquire sincerity unlessone maintains it through reverence. 16

was endowed with its own voice and space for legitimate expression. Of course,the expression of hypocrisy became detectable as the result of a discursivetransformation, and the critique of the "rationalists" was, after all, a discursiveevent.

Ironically enough, the critique of hypocrisy also played an important role inZhu Xi's philosophy. Zhu Xi seemed to offer a much clearer definition of it thanIto, partly because of the dualistic formation of his arguments. Remnants of ZhuXi's binary system can be detected in one of the essays normally attributed to ItoJinsai's earlier years, when he was still operating in the language of Song ra-tionalism: .

Silence at the Center34

The Status of Thinghood

course, the theme running through the entirety of this article was the doctrine ofinherently good human nature (seizensetsu, xingshan-shuo, 1-11) as it wasinterpreted in Song rationalism. If we were to define the term "hypocrisy"within this system of binary oppositions, the only form its theoretical specifica­tion could take would be the deviation from one's own nature or, more specifical­ly, from the universal human nature innate in oneself. That is, when one deviatedfrom one's own nature, one would be called a hypocrite. But as Ito underwent aradical change, the theoretical significance of the term would be altered and thedoctrine of inherently good human nature, accordingly, would take on a differenttheoretical articulation.

In order to comprehend the significance of the discontinuity and the radicalchange Ito underwent, we must first analyze how that binary system was relatedto other philosophemes in Song rationalism. How were these binary divisions anobstacle in articulating the sphere of nearness when the supposed authority ofdiscursive space was challenged?

There are some important but ambiguous words in Zhu Xi's writings. Wu(mono, 1-12) is one that plays an important yet extremely problematical role notonly in Zhu Xi's discourse but also in Ogyu Sorai's (although Ogyu's use of it isvastly different). For both, the ambiguity of this term tends to designate theboundary between what could be explicitly demonstrated in language and whatcould not. According to Zhu Xi's primary explication, wu is the locus wherefurther conceptual articulation could be pursued. For instance, it is in relation towu that the differentiation between Ii and qi (ki, 1-13) was posited. Interestinglyenough, this explication implies that it is impossible to pinpoint the signifier andits unity in the form of "what it is." Hence, "thing" (wu) is primarily a place ofdifferentiation, not of identity. The only possible way we could tackle this term isto describe it with a diacritical definition, as a part of philosophemes related towhat is necessarily excluded, that is, of the heterogeneous.

Zhu talked about the two principal terms, li and qi, as distinctively different.At the same time, the two are supposedly present within things when they areseen from the viewpoint of their participation in wu. Moreover, as far as Ii'sparticipation in things is concerned, it is impossible to determine which of thetwo, Ii or wu, precedes the other. Li should be immanent in things, and it seemsthat the presence of Ii is dependent on the presence of things, but Zhu Xi alsoaffirmed that Ii exists prior to the moment when the things in which Ii is tomanifest itself are made to exist: "What exists before physical form [and istherefore without it] constitutes the Way. What exists after physical form [and istherefore with it] constitutes concrete things." Although the differentiation be­tween ·'above-form" (keijijo, xing er shang, 1-14), and "under-form" (keijika,

37The Mode of Discursive Formation

17Zhu Xi, Kinshiroku, in Shushigaku taikei (Tokyo: Meitoku Shuppan-sha, 1974), 9:35. Part of theEnglish translation was adapted from Reflections on Things at Hand, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1967).

18Ibid., p. 38.

xing er xia, 1-15), is associated in this translation with temporal ordering, beforeand after, it also has a non-temporal dimension, for at the end of the sameparagraph we find the following statement ..So long as the Way obtains, it doesnot matter whether it is present or future or whether it is the self or others." 17

In one aspect, Ii precedes things, but in another, it does not. The relationshipbetween Ii and wu is discussed in terms of temporal precedence as well as interms that are basically atemporal. What is at issue is the nature of the differentia­tions by which Ii is constitutively identified. In fact, one passage in Reflectionson Things at Hand illustrates the principle of differentiation according to which Iiis articulated in'opposition to other terms: "According to the principle of heavenand earth and all things, nothing exists in isolation but everything necessarily hasits opposite. All this is naturally so and is not arranged or manipulated. I oftenthink of this at midnight and feel as happy as if I were dancing with my hands andfeet." 18

Zhu himself claimed that this statement by Cheng Vi, which he incorporatedinto the system of his philosophy, was to be based on differences. Once viewedfrom this standpoint, the seeming contradictions that we have encountered in hiswritings soon dissolve.

Li and qi are not two principles that constitute reality in the same way as formaand materia. What has to be acknowledged is that any datum can be construed interms of its meaning and the surplus of its meaning. In any thing there can be adistinction between what linguistic explication can identify in it and what lan­guage as narrowly defined cannot exhaust. In the case of a physical object, achair for example, the word "chair" certainly identifies this or that physicalentity, but its individual existence can never be fully absorbed into the linguisticexplication. One may describe this particular chair in more detail, but doing soleads only to the discovery of its more detailed individual characteristics. This isan essential aspect of referential signification-objectification, which posits therelationship of adequacy between the subject in judgment and the individual asan object for the subject. Yet, as can be seen, the subject can never be identicalwith the individual, for the individual always transcends the subject: the actualpresence of an individual thing necessarily exceeds its meaning so that it cannever be exhaustively subsumed under the subject.

Perhaps, this problem can be clarified by introducing a term for a specific kindof subject. Tentatively, the subject is shugo insofar as it signifies the subject of aproposition or statement. This shugo-subject is a word, a nominal phrase, oreven a nominal clause, and it can also be a proper noun. Distinct from this shugo­subject is the individual thing the shugo-subject designates, In response to thequestion What is that thing? posed by someone who points to a thing, one might

Silence at the Center36

38 Silence at the Center

r;

The Mode of Discursive Formation 39

Figure A. Rene Magritte, Les Deux Mysteres, 1966. Copyright 1991 Charly Hersco­

vici!ARS, N. Y.

19For instance, Zhu Xi, Yu lei. vol. 62 (no modem edition available).

Then it may appear that the differentiation li/wu corresponds to that betweenthe signified and th~ signifier. Before adopting such interpretative terminology,however, I should cIrcumscribe the area in which its use is justified. Otherwiseits application would generate unnecessary and irrelevant problems in the cours~of my analysis.

First, the li/wu differentiation is not limited to the area of linguistic signs. InZhu's discourse i~ is ~m?ossible to find any criterion by which to distinguishbetween areas of lIngUIStIC and nonlinguistic phenomena. Although Ferdinand deSaussure seems to suggest that the pair, signifier and signified, should be incor­pora~ed into a much wider field of study than linguistics, the primary definitionhe gIves these concepts is linguistic. By contrast, Zhu Xi's differentiation isontic, in the sense that it should be valid for any phenomenon in the world. It is"the principle of heaven and earth and all things." The ontic character of thisdifferentiation is of particular significance for us since it implies that the status oflanguage in Zhu's universe is fundamentally different from that in modem lin­guistics. Especially important in this regard is that the absence of a distinctionbetw~en the l~nguistic and the nonlinguistic suggests that li is not only themeamng of thmgs but also the meaning of manner and behavior. Zhu Xi talksabout dressing, eating, and behavior as event-things. 19 As a thing is the locationfor Ii, so an event-thing accommodates Ii, and Ii thus incarnated in the event­thing is also called the Way. It is not only a basic unit of meaning that ismo~hologically d~finea but also a semantic unity constituted syntagmatically.So, m.order to explIcate how language, things, and texts are mutually related ands~m~tImes fused and how they differ from one another (or they do not differ) inhIS dIscourse, I must inquire into the concepts Ii and qi in relation to the questionof signification .

. With regard to the mode of presence, it could be claimed the Ii and qi are~ImuI~aneous. Only when qi is present is Ii also present. Likewise qi manifestsItself m th~ present only if Ii does. Therefore, li and qi are mutually dependent.But there IS an aspect in which Ii precedes qi. Since qi is identified in terms ofwh~t escapes the meaning of a thing, qi cannot determine itself. It is alwaysdefmed as the residue or surplus of meaning. In this particular sense, qi isdepe~dent on li. Only when a thing is associated with Ii does qi gain its on­ltolo~~cal s.t~t~s. Li is no~ prior. to qi temporally but precedes qi logically. InaddItIon, II s Immanence m a thmg as its meaning indicates that it is impossibleto talk about the "when" of Ii. As it transcends the individuality of things, li alsotranscends the act of presenting. We may easily be drawn into the view that Ii is,after all, that which consciousness projects onto a thing and, therefore, that Ii isconstituted by the synthetic function of epistemological consciousness, but this isce~ainly not the case here. Li cannot be reduced to the act of presenting con­SCIOusness. Nonetheless, li maintains its transcendent character. Just as one

T1

answer, "That is ...." Here, the object pointed out is the individual thing, andthe word "that" in the answer, which takes the form of statement, is a shugo­subject. Obviously the shugo-subject indicates the individual thing. Yet, as thisexample shows, we cannot overlook that the shugo-subject belongs to the regis­ter of words, whereas the individual thing belongs to the register of things.Except in cases where these two registers are confused (See figure A, Les DeuxMysteres) , the shugo-subject and the individual thing it indicates are infinitelyseparated; the individual thing is infinitely transcendent with respect to theshugo-subject. There seems no way to exhaustively subsume an individual thingunder a shugo-subject. In other words, to say a subject adequately expresses anindividual is to repress what cannot be designated in that individual, to repress its

surplus.Hence, necessarily, to find a meaning in some datum is to introduce the

differentiation between what the meaning can denote and what escapes the mean­ing. Li could then be associated with an aspect of things which linguistic explica­tion is capable of identifying, and qi with the residue or surplus beyond this

linguistic explication.

20Ibid., vol. I.21Edmund Husserl explains the tenn ideation = essential insight in Ideas Pertaining to a Pure

Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. trans. F. Kersten, (The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1983): "At first "essence" designates what is to be found in the very own being of anindividuum as the What of an individuum. Any such What can, however, be 'put into an idea.'Experiencing, intuition of something individual can become transmuted into eidetic seeing ('ide­ation)' a possibility which is itself to be understood not as empirical, but as eidetic. What is seenwhen that occurs is the corresponding pure essence, or Eidos, whether it be the highest category or aparticularization thereof-down to full concretion" (p. 8).

And he says: "The essence (Eidos) is a new sort of object. Just as the datum of individual orexperiencing intuition is an individual object, so the datum ofeidetic intuition is a pure essence" (p.II). Husser! talks about the ideality of language in general in Formal and Transcendental Logic,trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978): "Let us note concerning the topic speecha certain distinction that we must not overlook. The uttered word, the actually spoken locution, takenas a sensuous, specifically an acoustic,. phenomenon, is something that we distinguish from the worditself or the declarative sentence itself, or the sentence-sequence itself that makes up a more extensivelocution. Not without reason~in cases where we have not been understood and we reiterate-do we

cannot in destroying a chair also annihilate its meaning, Ii seems to be indifferentto accidental change that occurs in things. It is simpiy impossible to s~y when Iiemerges or disappears. Obviously the li/qi differentiation is, at the same time,the differentiation between the atemporal and the temporal. What is meant by thestatement just quoted- "it does not matter whether it is present or future"-isnot that Ii is the eternal presence of the principle. It should rather indicate that Iiis the ideational and atemporal aspect of reality, realitas. This understanding ofIi, in turn, enables us to define qi as the presence of what in fact can never beobjectified or identified. For this reason, Zhu Xi attributed the existence of actualthings to qi. Also for this reason, qi is always viewed as the cause of deviationfrom the ideational intentionality, from Ii toward wu. Zhu Xi stated: "Wherethere is no thing, there is no Ii. Similarly, Ii can only exist in the middle of qi.Without qi, Ii would have no residence."2o Insofar as qi is equated with thehorizon for Ii, qi can never be identified explicitly. As soon as it received adefinite meaning,' it would lose its ontological status as qi. The fate of qi is toreside only in the periphery of Ii's ideational intentionality, but this same fatemakes it possible for qi to become a fertile material realm for individuation, thecontingency of the present, and the deviation from essences. Hence, Ii and qi arein a dialectical relationship in which Ii functions as a principle of universaliza­tion, whereas qi seems to designate that which slides away from the effect ofuniversalization. (Nevertheless, it should be remembered that qi is not the princi- 'pIe of particularization since the particular is possible only as a type of theuniversal: individuation and particularization should never be confused with eachother.) Essentially, qi must be grasped as the principle of individuality.

According to Zhu Xi, the ideational intentionality of Ii is something that has tobe initiated by the self, or one's mind (jikashin, zi jia xin, 1-16), and this selfbelongs to qi. Although the self's capacity, or mind (shin, xin, 1-17), to give riseto the ideational intentionality, does not necessarily belong to qi, the ideationalintentionality itself must be initiated in qi. 21 Where it fuses with the inten-

speak precisely of a reiteration of the same words and sentences. In a treatise or a novel every word,every sentence, is a one-time affair, which does not become multiplied by a reiterated vocal or silentreading. Nor does it matter who does the reading; though each reader has his own voice, his owntimbre, and so forth. The treatise itself (taken now only in its lingual aspect, as composed of words orlanguage) is something that we distinguish, not only from the multiplicities of vocal reproduction, butalso, and in the same manner, from the multiplicities of its pennanent documentations by paper andprint, parchment and handwriting, or the like. The one unique language-composition is reproduced athousand times, perhaps in book fonn: We speak simply of the same book with the same story, thesame treatise. And this self-sameness obtains even with respect to the purely lingual composition:while, in another manner, it obtains also with respect to the sharply distinguishable significationalcontents, which we shall shortly take into account.

"As a system of habitual signs, which, within an ethnic community, arises, undergoes transfonna­tion, and persists in the manner characteristic of tradition-a system of signs by means of which, incontrast to signs of other sorts, an expressing of thoughts comes to pass-language presents al­together its own problems. One of them is the just-encountered ideality of language, which is usuallyquite overlooked. We may characterize it also in this fashion: Language has the Objectivity proper tothe objectivities making up the so-called spiritual (geistige) or cultural world, not the Objectivityproper to bare physical Nature. As an objective product of minds, language has the same propertiesas other mental products: Thus we also distinguish from the thousand reproductions of an engraving,the engraving itself; and this engraving, the engraved picture itself, is visually abstracted from eachreproduction, being given in each, in the same manner as an identical object" (pp. 19-20).

22Yasuda Jiro, "Shushi ni okeru shukan no mondai," in Chugoku kinseishiso kenkyu (Tokyo:Kobundo, 1948), pp. 98-121.

41The Mode of Discursive Formation

tionality of action is in fact the central locus of his theoretical construction.Since, as we have already noted, there is. no distinction between the linguisticand the nonlinguistic in Zhu's discourse, there is no conceptual device by whichto differentiate the temporalities ofaction and thinking. The aim of an action isposited on the same level as the meaning of a thing; the intentionality of knowingas the mind's act is incorporated into the intentionality of signification. Zhu Xirecommends that his students repeat their reading of the classics until the mean­ing inherent in them becomes completely obvious. The textuality of the classicswould then be transparent, so that the meaning would be revealed without a veil.The differentiation between transparence and opacity is thus related to that be­tween Ii and wu. The transition from opacity to transparence is now viewed as alearning process in which one gradually casts aside qi and reveals Ii. In thisregard, the li/qi differentiation provides learning with its goal and starting point.What had originally been posited as an atemporal diacritical division is nowdeployed through the temporal duration of learning in which one graduallyproceeds toward the complete revelation of Ii. Learning, therefore, is a move­ment toward an approximation of Ii, whose duration is sustained by repetitiveaction. 22

Since learning is accomplished through the repetition of patterned behavior,through habit fonnation, what has been characterized as the ideational and atem-

, poral aspect of Ii is translated into the possibility that Ii could be repeatedlypresented without losing its identity. At first, Ii is covered with qi, and Ii does notmanifest itself. In the same way, when a mirror is covered with impurities, animage cannot be reflected; the vision is blurred and opaque. One has to submit

Silence at the Center40

According to this schema, the private self, as opposed to the public one, is anarea circumscribed by means of qi and the opaque and the deviation from es-

Li/QiTransparent/Opaque

Approximation/Deviation

23Therefore, there should be a close connection between Ii and rite (rei, Ii, 1-18). See Tu Wei­ming, "Li as Process of Humanization," in Humanity and Self-Cultivation (Berkeley, Calif.: AsianHumanities Press, 1979), pp. 17-34. It goes without saying that Ito's critique is directed toward thiscomplicity of Ii and rite, and later we shall see Ogyu Sorai's attempt to reinstitute this complicityagainst Ito Jinsai's critique of it.

24Zhu Xi, Reflections on Things at Hand, p. 304.

43The Mode of Discursive Formation

The two characters used in the phrase "investigation of things" are the most rele­vant. "Things" in this phrase means event-things. When the ultimate meaning of anevent-thing is revealed, there will necessarily be one positive aspect to it. You mustdo the positive and you must not do the negative. These positive and negativeaspects have to be experienced through your own body. When you study writtentexts and are in contact with event-things, the area of experience you acquire throughyour own body gradually widens and becomes spontaneous and easy. 25

25Zhu Xi, Yu lei, vol. 15, section 2.

The fundamental difference in temporal structure of these intentionalities isconcealed by means of the ambiguous ontological status of the human body inZhu's discourse. The human body and its work as the agent of action are con­stantly suppressed and pushed toward the periphery in his argument, so that theorder and the world may be presented as if they were already and permanently

The Invisibility of One's Body

Without the concept of the primordial relatedness between the human body andthings in the world, the investigation of things as Zhu Xi described it here wouldnever have had such an important role in his philosophy. To be sure, the inten­tionality incarnated in the human body synthesizes the two: the ideational andpractical intentionalities.

sences. This characterization implies that, like qi in relation to Ii, the "self," orprivate "I" (shi), is that which escapes liqguistic explanation or determination.Since the self is in the element of individuation, it can be talked about only innegative terms: it is impossible to identify the self in and of itself. If language is amedium of universalization, this kind of self could be posited only as a resistanceto language use. In short, the private self.is equivalent to the individual thing, asopposed to the public self, which is supposedly adequate to the subject. From ourstandpoint, the public "I" is an imaginary state in which one believes his or herself is exhaustively identical with what he or she as a subject should be. Thesense of disparity between the individual thing and the subject is totally lost inthe public "I": the field of universals within which the subject is constituted isperceived to coincide exhaustively with the entire world. Not just ethically butalso epistemologically, the private self in Zhu Xi's discourse is an indescribableobstacle, which eventually has to be eliminated in the course of learning. Oneshould not forget that the final stage, when the "I" is fully assimilated into Ii, isalso the completion of the formation of a certain habit through repetitive action inone's own body. The faculties of knowing and acting are united in a habitincarnated in the human whereby the shift from qi, opacity and deviation, towardIi, transparence and approximation, is ensured. Zhu Xi notes:

Silence at the Center42

Question: Do the observation of things and the examination of the self mean that,upon seeing things, one should reflectively ~tum to one's own body and seek theprinciple?

Answer: You do not necessarily have to talk in this way. Things and the self aregoverned by the same principle. If you illuminate one, you understand the other.This is the way to make the inside and the outside coincide.24

It is noteworthy that Zhu's concept of the self never loses contact with thebody. Furthermore, since the human body is always already engaged in the actualworld, there cannot be a radical rupture between the self and things. Like manywriters in both Confucianism and Buddhism, Zhu was also sensitive to theontological rupture between the self and things or between ideas and thingswhich certain formations of discourse tend to generate. In addition, he seems tohave taken great precautions to prevent transcendentalism from sneaking into hisdiscourse. As a matter of fact, the private "I" (shi, 1-19) as Zhu discussed it isnever entirely deprived of its materiality. A human body is a thing among otherthings, a part outside other parts. It is not a field of presentation where copies ofthings, not things themselves, are represented. For this reason, the self as Zhudiscussed it would never gain the transparence with which consciousness isendowed. Rather, it remains opaque as long as it is an "I." Only when it isdevoid of the ontological character as the "I" and when things and the self areidentical in Ii can it become completely transparent.

Here I postulate the parallelism of the three binary oppositions:

oneself to a patterned action repeatedly to achieve the Way.23 In each repetition,Ii is immanent, yet not fully revealed. But finally one should be able to reach thestage where one is identical with the sages and all impurities have been removed,so that Ii is clearly and exhaustively manifested. Underlying this argument is anassumption that Ii remains identical throughout the process of learning: learninggradually unveils the li that is immanent in things. On the other hand, learning isalso the formation of habit, that is a gradual process in which the leamer's bodyassimilates Ii in the patterned action. Zhu Xi puts it this way:

there. It is undeniable that his philosophy is a kind of positivism in which one isforced to adhere to the values in the world, and their validity is beyond question.

The ideational intentionality from the temporal presence of wu toward themeaning, Ii, is also a mode of transcendence from the present toward the atem­poral presence of the meaning. In other words, wu and Ii are related to each otherin a mediatory structure between the atemporal and the temporal. By contrast,the intentionality of praxis is from the present toward the future. Since it isfounded on the motor function of the human body, the practical intentionality isalso grounded on the ec-static transcendence of the human body toward the aimof its action. When Zhu Xi occasionally talks about the opposition of inside andoutside, it should be understood in terms of intention behind action and the aimof action. This opposition cannot be a stable and fixed rupture comparable to theepistemological dichotomy of subject and object. At each moment in each ac­tion, this opposition is constituted and resolved. What is to be established sub­stantially through repetitive practice is not such an opposition: rather, it is theaffirmation of the continuity of things and the subject (public "I," ware, wo, 1­20) of the intention and the consequence of an action. As patterned actionbecomes more and more spontaneous, the private "I" gradually dissolves intothe public subject, into a fuller participation of its body in the world. Concur­rently the "I" becomes increasingly invisible until a complete transparencyprevails, which is, as a matter of fact, the presence of Ii, the state described asclear virtue (meitoko, ming de, 1-21).

In perception, according to phenomenologists, what is visible is always ac­companied by the horizon, which is itself invisible. Yet this invisible horizondetermines the presence of the present and the meaningfulness of visible things.One perceives and acts only through one's own body, although one does notperceive one's body thematically. Compared to the abstractness of ideationalintentionality, this differentiation between the visible and the invisible, which isembodied in practical intentionality, manifests its theoretical importance to thefullest extent when we take into consideration the concreteness and the imme­diacy of praxis. For whereas the division of the above-fonn and the under-formsimultaneously marks the invisibility of Ii and the visibility of wu, it is impossi­ble to expect a similar parallelism in the practical intentionality with wu as theinvisible and shen (shin, human body, 1-22) as the visible. Perhaps the follow­ing schema will explain more clearly:

Ideational IntentionalityIi (meaning) ~

(invisible: above-form)(atemporal)

Practical Intentionalitywu (thing) ~

(visible) 26Ibid., vol. 14, section 15.

45

(presence: present as thepl~ce of action and desire)

The Mode of Discursive Formation

wuwu(visible)

~ wu~ shen

(temporal constancy:future as the aim ofbodily action and desire)

A. Iiwu

B. Ii ~

shen ~

(invisible)

Another schema relates the visible and the invisible:

In terms of directionality, I can posit a parallelism between the ideational andpraCtical intentionalities:

Does schema B tell us that one's body belongs to the realm of the above-form?It seems that this schema illustrates the duality of Ii in relation to shen: Ii at thesame time transcends and is immanent in shen when dust, the cause of opacity, iscompletely removed from nature-hence, the image of the clear mirror (meikyo,ming jing, 1-23). When the ideal state to which Zhu attributed sagehood isestablished, Ii and shen are no longer distinguishable. Li then becomes theprinciple regulating the world along with shen, and the rule of one's praxis. It hasto be noted, however, that shen never gains a central position in his discourse: itis never given as much emphasis as Ii, and it is conceived as an opacity that is tobecome completely transparent as learning proceeds toward the ideal state.

In contrast, the state of wu in schema A is ambiguous in the sense that, on theone hand, it is that which is transcended toward Ii and, on the other hand, it isthat toward which one's body is transcended. Unlike shen, thing's visibilityremains certain all the way through the learning process. In this regard, it shouldbe remembered that the reading of written documents is one of the most essentialpractices in the "investigation of things." Furthermore, many passages in Zhu'streatises suggest that reading is considered the most authentic mode of investigat­ing things. It may appear that Zhu urged his students to read, figuratively speak­ing, Ii in every phenomenon in the world, including the behavior of others. So, itcan be said that for Zhu Xi the world consisted of various documents, a book ofinnumerable pages, which had to be read gradually. The pedagogical significanceof the '"investigation of things and the exhaustion of knowledge" lies in theacquisition of this skill of reading such a book, as if it were habituated in one'sbody: "Once you grasp the general meaning of a writing, you should then read itcarefully. It is just like eating fruit. First you have a bite of it. As you keepchewing it, the delicious taste will come out."26

shen (human body)(invisible)

wu (thing)(visible: under-form)(temporal)

Silence at the Center44

Nevertheless, reading can be problematic in his discourse when it is concernedwith the procedure of extracting the authentic meaning from writings. ~ince, inhis discourse reading is the predominant mode of understanding the world ingeneral, to extract meaning from a book is, by extension, to interpret the world.In the passage just quoted, Zhu presumes that the authentic meaning is inherentin the book itself, regardless of what kind of relationship may exist between thebook and the reading subject. In other words, the reading act is totally passiveand the individuality of the reading subject cannot distort the meaning. As amatter of fact, the meaning of the book is the meaning within the book. Inschema A, Ii and wu are structurally fused, and we have already acknowledgedthat in Zhu Xi's discourse what should amount to textual materiality is oftensubstituted for the ideational presence of a text's meaning. This is exactly themode of existence in which the writing and the text in general are conceived.Therefore, the difference between the materiality of the text and the ideationalpresence of the meaning (Ii) of the text is deliberately repressed. As a result, 'thewriting, Confucian classics in particular, is supposed to transcend not only histor­ical time but also the empirical subjectivity of the readership. Similarly, theauthentic meaning of the book is always already ensconced within the book, justas the taste is hidden within the fruit. It is always already there in the midst of thetext's material presence.

As has been said, wu is the location where the IiIqi differentiation resides. Liis the atemporal presence of the meaning, whereas qi is the presence of' thepresent, which is always absent from the viewpoint of ideational intentionality asthe surplus of the meaning in wu. In this regard, a parallel can be drawn betweenthe mode of existence of the meaning in a written work and that of the meaning ina thing. In addition, inasmuch as wu plays a rather ambiguous role in the parallelalready noted in schema A, it should be possible in Zhu's discourse for the bookand the thing to be interchangeable in fact.

Furthermore, since the book is a thing and a thing a book, the division does nothold between its material presence and its ideality. Hence it should be held thatZhu Xi conceives of wu as that which is endowed with the depth of meaning. Inother words, wu is a locus where material is always inhabited by signification: itis an overlap of semantic space and physical space.

But if the significative function is allocated on the side of wu, how can we takeinto account the act that constitutes meaning? Is meaning not constituted bysomebody at some moment? Does the noematic intentionality always accompanythe noetic act? Insofar as wu, in which meaning is immanent, is autonomous andindependent of the subjectivity of reading and enunciation or of reading asenunciation, the question concerning the constitution of meaning does not occurin this discursive space. Indeed, Zhu occasionally refers to speech, but never asan ontological act by which to generate a meaning: rather, it is an element inwhich a meaning already established is to be repeated. As far as temporality isconcerned, meaning is always grasped in the present perfect tense. Its existence

precedes the constituting act~ therefore,· instead of constituting and generating it,the act only reveals and discloses what has already been incarnated in wu.Signification cannot be entirely absorbed into presence, into what is present to asubjectivity. (Undoubtedly, the term "mind" is very important in this context.We, will examine the problematic nature of this term in the next chapter.) For thisreason, the presence of meaning depet:lds on a consistency of material thatensures the possibility of repetitive presence. The author, an originator, belongsto a distant and dim memory of the book itself. What is repeatedly affirmed byZhuXi is the essential function of inscription, by which the empirical subject,regardless of whether it is the subject of enunciation or of reading, is constantlyerased or degraded.

Even if the text excludes its author from the presence of its meaning, must itappeal to the reading subject for its initiation and evocation? Even if it is certainthat the meaning is already immanent in the text, should it be awakened andevoked from its dormancy, for if nobody reads the text, how can its meaning bepresent and grasped? In Zhu Xi's discourse, however, this problem is not crucial,and it seems that the system of differentiations prohibits it from being articulatedas questions that could threaten the integrity of his discourse. It should beremembered that if we are ever to find the equivalent in his writings for what wecall subjectivity-an extremely problematic term in itself, as I shall demonstratein the following chapters-it is either in the conception of the self articulated interms of one's body, or in the notion of the mind completely deprived of indi­viduality. To the extent that the Iiiqi differentiation corresponds to the univer­sal/individual (not, let me repeat, the binary opposition universal [general]1particular), the private self must be overcome and transcended in the process ofdeciphering the meaning lying dormant in the text's material presence. There­fore, as has been demonstrated, one's own body as a philosopheme does notoccupy an important position in Zhu's philosophy despite his frequent referencesto it. As qi is the cause of deviation from Ii, the human body as the individual "I"remains indefinable and escapes linguistic elucidation. Yet qi is not silencehighly charged with a meaningfulness beyond verbalization~ it is, instead, a noisethat disturbs and blurs the contour of otherwise meaningful works. Likewise, theprivate "I" is equivalent to the source of noise. It is an obstacle that has to beovercome in the course of revealing Ii in the midst of events and things. Hence,learning, as defined by Zhu Xi, must be accompanied by the ultimate loss of theself, and what he calls "illuminating clear virtue" is the state in which the private"I" is completely erased. As learning proceeds from confusion to order, theconcern for the self gradually dissolves and eventually leaves only a selflessconcern for wu. Ultimately, the world reaches a state totally devoid of the private"I" and achieves a sort of timelessness. It is timeless because, where the tem­poral constancy of wu and the ideational atemporality of Ii are not clearly dis­tinguished, the world should appear both constant and atemporal once the princi­ple of individuation, a cognizance that the individual can never be located within

46 Silence at the Center The Mode of Discursive Formation 47

universal [general]/particular opposition, is removed. In other words, the presentassociated w.ith the human body is subordinated to the temporal constancy of wu.And in this sense the body proper to one's self is not captured in the regime ofvisibility, in which the originary source of the body as "here" and "now" isprojected and constituted in discourse.

What one observes here is a deliberate attempt to subordinate materiality asheterogeneous within the confines of a certain discursive economy, although I donot believe that such an attempt can be attributed to the intention of a fewauthors. Rather, it is a general feature of the discursive formation, which refusesto change and insists upon self-reproduction in the identical shape. Zhu Xirefuses to admit that what is determined as particular has already been univer­salized by virtue of the fact that the determination of particularity is possible onlyin signification. But it must be recalled that materiality is that which is repressedwith the accomplishment of signification, so that one cannot think materiality.Needless to say, Song rationalists' dualism of Ii and qi collapses if materiality assuch is directly confronted, as it is by Ito Jinsai. Whereas Zhu bears witness tomateriality in his conception of qi, he concentrates on the elimination of thisinsight and, subsequently, on the relief of his universalism from the threat of theheterogeneous. Thus, he has to conceive of wu primarily as the locus of constan­cy and stasis rather than change and irregularity.

The significance ofthe classic writings is based on this mode ofatemporality. Theclassics are thought of as containing the norms to which learners must adjust them­selves. What has to be discovered through reading the classics is not the originalintention of the sages-the classical authors-but the presence of norms that thesages discovered and incorporated in their writings once and for all. Hence, read­ing is an act by which to recognize the norms already installed there. There canbe a problem of recognition, but there should not be any problem directlyconcerning textuality, since reading cannot be a constitutive act capable of trans­forming the meaning. The materiality of the writings, which is supposed toremain constant throughout historical time from antiquity down to the momentwhen reading is taking place, supports the constancy of the meaning embodiedthere. It could be rightly concluded that since the material constancy of the text isfused with the ideality of its meaning, there is only the enunciated (enonce1, notthe enunciation (enonciation), in this discursive formation. Indeed, since theenunciation cannot be posed as problematical-cannot, indeed, be posed at a11­the subject of reading or understanding cannot be talked about or conceptualized.Precisely because of this impossibility, Zhu Xi could not articulate the problemof the private self in positive terms, and as a consequence, the self had to bedissolved into the universal and public subject that guaranteed the universalvalidity of knowledge.

Thus, Zhu Xi endows the book, as well as the world-totality of books, withautonomy. It is in this perspective that the formation of habit, as an approx­imative movement toward Ii, is to be interpreted. To seek Ii is to transcend theprivate self toward the autonomy of the book. It is important to note in this 27Zhu Xi, Wen ji, vol. 4L

This is called the achieving of the virtues [of intellect, benevolence, and courage]because [it indicates] the principle [Ii] that the virtues be realized everywhere andany time under the heaven. [These are] one, that is to say, only sincerity, [that really

49The Mode of Discursive Formation

respect that Zhu Xi described habit formation not as an accumulation but as atransition from opacity to transparence, fro.m murkiness to clarity, a process inwhich dust on the surface is gradually removed-a process of elimination as wellas approximation. In this sense, the world should appear constant and atemporal.Ther~ is an aspect, however, in which a clear distinction between Ii and wu mustbe maintained. The philosopheme, the diacritical difference between Ii and wu,implies that whereas it is impossible to attribute perishability and qualitativechange to li, the temporal constancy of wu is exposed to erosive time. It followsthat th~ world insofar as it is thought of as the totality of Wu, must be in constantchange. Yet, with regard to its participation in Ii, the world should be unchange­able.

This contradiction manifests itself most obviously when a classic and itsidentity are in question. What ensures the identity of a classic is not merely itsmaterial constancy. As Zhu's editing of the Great Learning shows, it is acceptedthat all or part of a classic can be lost. Yet its identity as a work cannot bedestroyed, and a work can be duplicated without damaging its identity. When onesays, "I have read this book," "this book" does not denote this particular copyof the book. Likewise, as a signified, that is, as a work, a classic writingtranscends its actual inscription in material. In a similar manner, the actualwriting that Confucious edited could be lost, but one would still read and in­terpret the same Great Learning whose identity can be kept only as a work. Thisis exactly the mode in which writing transcends historical time for Zhu Xi.According to him, behavior and speech also have transhistorical power as texts.They transcend neither eidos nor the original intention of the author's con­sciousness; nonetheless, they appear to transcend both. The text is' a place fordisplacement among various differentiations. Thus, whenever necessary, ide­ational atemporality could be replaced by temporal constancy or vice versa in theclassics: the writing is, therefore, a place where the significative contradiction isconcealed. No doubt, this is the problem from which Song rationalism continuedto suffer; yet, this is also the problem it could not afford to admit.

So far we have discussed in Zhu Xi's discourse a structural homogeneityamong the terms Ii, qui, wu on the one hand: the meaning, the heterogeneousoften associated with the private HI," and the text on the other. It is in relation to

;t:~~"';'~"'(;'J";;{" this homogeneity that his term "reverence" (kei, jing) should be understood.Zhu Xi quotes the Mencius: "When one manages to maintain reverence, desirewill cease in and of itself."27 This passage is to the point. But it is noteworthythat another important term of his, "sincerity" (sei, cheng), is explicated in afashion that reflects the same homogeneity:

Silence at the Center48

Sincerity, too, is understood as opposed to desire or is supposed to reduce theintensity of desire and to ensure one's return to human nature (the doctrine of thereturn to the original nature), which is universally applicable to everyone:

28Zhu Xi, Chuy6shoku (Zhong-yong zhang-ju) (Tokyo: Meitoku Shuppan-sha, 1974), chap. 20, p.

456.29Ibid., p. 458. . .30G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology ofSpirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford UOlverslty Press,

1977), pp. 109-19.

The ultimate sincerity of heaven means that the virtue of the sage is real and thatnothing can be added to it in order to better it. "To confonn to nature exhaustively"means that the virtue [thus achieved] cannot fail to be real. Thereupon there wouldbe no private "I" of desire: that with which the mandate of heaven endows thesubject [= public "I"] grasps nature, acts according to it, and confonns to it withoutthe slighest deviation, regardless of whether the matter it deals with is large or small,

fine or rough. 29

51The Mode of Discursive Formation

quotation is attributed to Zhou Dun-yi, in Reflections on Things at Hand, trans. Wing-tsitpp. 202-3. I have modified Chan's translation.

Thus it is said that to see how a ruler governs the world under heaven [tenka, tianxia,1-24], we observe the government of his family. To see how he governs his family,we observe how he governs his body [shin, shen]. To be correct in one's body meansto be sincere in one's mind [shin, xin]. And to be sincere in one's mind means to tumback from evil activities. Evil activities represent falsehood. When one turns backfrom falsehood, there will be no more falsehood in one. Being free frQm it, onebecomes sincere. This is the reason why the hexagram wu-wang [absence offalsehood, 1-25] comes after the hexagram fu [to return]. And it is said, "Theancient kings made their regulations in complete accordance with the seasons,thereby nourishing all things." How profound!31

its manifestation. Whereas the ideational intentionality is directed from wu to­ward Ii, sincerity. is associated with reducing the effect of qi toward the fullmanifestation of Ii, that is, from opacity to transparence, from confusion toorder. For this reason, sincerity receives a more explicitly ethical connotationthan .other virtues, and it would be misleading to interpret sincerity only as acertain state of mind. To maintain sincerity is, for Zhu Xi, not to fix one'sattitude: this term would not make much sense if it were not understood to entailsome relatedness of one's body to things.

Of course, this passage would be unintelligible without reference to the GreatLearning, and to the Book of Change. Among many interpretations of these.terms-the body, the mind, and sincerity-I must, above all, refer to Zhu Xi'swords: "The mind is the master of the body." Here, the primary definition of

. sincerity is given as that which arises when the body is subjugated by the mind.Let us note in passing that the mind not only enjoys the role of master of the body

,but is also endowed by heaven with an ability to encompass the totality of theruniverse within the particularity of a person." Epistemology and ethics are thus united in Zhu's discourse: action is ultimate­1'~.ly reduced to knowledge; prescription is reduced to description. Searching for Ii:~~d maintaining sincerity are complementary, since the submission of the body to'~<the reign of the mind and the subsumption of the singularity of the individual

under universals are, in the final analysis, synonymous: the body finally becomesfhe property of, and proper to, the mind. The diversity of myriad things, includ­'fig one's own body, is proved to conform to Ii in the instance when they are made

sent to the mind. This is to say, the recognition of wu in its essence consists ine's capacity to reduce the heterogeneity designated by haphazardness or irre-

i<SJjonsib1iIit:y (mo, wang, 1-26) so as to disclose the inherent identity between wuit is present to the mind and wu as it exists in itself. As it is assumed that Ii is

:~,·tmmtnel[}t in things, however, the question of how the mind constructs a repre­)y:·.'$¢.ntaltlo1n of the thing in conformity with universal categories is not posed.

Silence at the Center

matters]. Although the achieving of the Way is that upon which people all depend,the Way cannot be practiced unless these three virtues are available. It is t~e that theachieving of the virtues is equally possible for each, but if one of them is notsincerely pursued, human desire will interfere, so that the virtue will not be

[achieved as it should be]. 28

The individuality of the private self is said to arise simultaneously with desire,for the self of desire cannot be construed in universal terms. Therefore, this self,unlike the "I" ruled by the mandate of heaven (the public "1"), is neither aparticular that could form an opposition to the universal (general) nor the ubiq­uitous universal. This is to say, the self of desire designates the site of theheterogeneous in the economy of Zhu Xi's discourse: it has to be tamed andthereby accommodated and assimilated in order for the discursive space to re-

produce itself.Because qi is ascribed to it, desire also causes deviation and disorderliness. In

this context, desire should be thought of as an obstacle that prevents the "I" fromreturning to its original nature given by heaven. Insofar as desire exists, the selfas it is can never be adequate to the subject as it should be. Thus the rationalists'desire signifies exactly the contrary to the Hegelian and Lacanian notions ofdesire in which the return into the self as truth, as the passion of the self foritself, 'is called desire. 3o With desire, human nature never manifests itself asclearly as the shape of the moon viewed in clear and transparent air. Just as theimage in the mirror cannot be an adequate copy of the original because of dust onthe surface of the glass, human nature as reflected in everyday appearance cannever be identical with its original essence. Hence, it is no surprise that sincerityis called for as a cure for desire. And sincerity should play the role of a sort oflubricant that facilitates a smooth and unobstructed passage from the original to

50

Rather, Zhu Xi insists that Ii is in fact in things, in the universe, so that the mindin its ultimate clarity simply reflects Ii within the scope of one'8 body. Being anontological linkage between things and one's body, sincerity ensures the primor­dial continuity between Ii in wu and Ii in the action of the body. Thus, it isthrough the medium of sincerity that the principle of thought, which governs theknowledge of things, and the principle of practice, which ought to regulatehuman deeds, are integrated into one concept of Ii. In sincerity, the distinctionbetween cosmology and ethics is dissolved; in sincerity, the separation betweenthe descriptive and the prescriptive is believed to be filled in.

It seems that the discursive space in question was characterized by a ratherPeculiar coexistence of conflicting tendencies. It displayed an obsessive concernfor the materiality of the world, and accordingly, in this discursive space the taskof edification never failed to take into account that human beings live amongthings; ethical teaching was rarely divorced from the investigation of things; thepossibility was acknowledged that the world could be viewed as a text or even asthe general text. Yet, this acknowledgment did not lend itself to the admission ofthe materiality in the textuality of the text. On the contrary, philosophical effortswere directed toward the elimination and concealment of this problem. As aconsequence, the assumption was rePeatedly ascertained that discourse mustprecede text. As a corollary, the body, which was first recognized as a possibletopos of heterogeneity, was subsequently tranSformed into an invisibility, and thebody thus rendered transparent and invisible through sincerity was said to indi­cate the reducibility of the text to discourse. This is exactly what Zhu Xi meantby the invisibility of the body, but invisibility does not imply that the body wasfree from political control in his discourse. Hence, the world envisaged as thetext was explained away in terms that presumed the primordial position of theworld in the register of discourse. It is not difficult to see how hard it would be insuch a discursive formation to pursue the moment that renders the limit ofdiscourse explicit. Universalism such as Song rationalism, therefore, is able to beincredibly insensitive to the otherness of its Other and to the heterogeneous. Butby the same token, it could present itself as an ideal candidate for the legitimatingdoctrine of whatever officialdom is dominant. Of course, to mark the limit ofdiscourse is to seek various possibilities in order to alter and decompose on­tologized unities that are often taken to be eternal and transparent verities in thatparticular discursive formation. And to assimilate and integrate the hetero­geneous, thereby concealing the site where textuality disrupts discourse, is ob­viously absolutely necessary for a given discursive formation to reproduce itself.

In this sense, Zhu Xi's writings may be said to have only repeated what isexpected of any discourse. Yet, such a generalization must be carefully specifiedprecisely because it would call back what has been evaded at all costs: theontologization of such unities as discursive space. Moreover, it would only leadto some naIve thought of emancipation, to the belief that once the limit ofdiscourse has been marked, one can move outside it. Instead, with this warning

disclaimer, I shall shift the focus of attention from Zhu's discourse to at'h' h d' ... . opOS In

W IC Iscurslvlty Itself IS thematically questioned, a topos called Ito Jinsai.C~ncurrently, I shall see the term "sincerity" change its relation to other terms: itWIll become p~rt of a diff~rent regime. What had been named sincerity wouldbecome ~ypocnsy for Ito Jlnsai, and the change seems to attest to the emergenceof new dIscursive possibilities.

52 Silence at the CenterThe Mode of Discursive Formation 53

A Critique of Discursivity

Ito Jinsai: The Text as the Human Body

and the Human Body as the Text

It is noteworthy that Ito Jinsai used the same binary oppositions through whichZhu Xi had articulated his ethics to depict the rigid or frigid authoritarianism ofthe Song rationalists. What had once been seen as affirmative qualities were nowcriticized as basically hypocritical. For instance, the differentiation of nature (sei,xing, 1-10) from feeling (jo, qing, 2-1 or desire (yoku, yu, 2-2), according towhich Zhu posited the norms of praxis, was associated with "transcenden­talism," which, Ito claimed, inevitably generated hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is adiscursive complex that brings about many different effects, according to Ito.Analysis of how he discerned these effects and ascribed them to hypocrisy inSong rationalism will reveal how oppositions that had functioned positivelycould now be used to illustrate what Ito considered the fundamental falsificationof Cheng-Zhu Confucianism.

Neither individual philosophical terms nor the philosophical vocabulary atlarge had changed radically. Ito was also a Confucian scholar, and he relied onbasic terms that were almost identical to those of Zhu Xi. He adhered to the sameConfucian heritage as the Song rationalists. Nevertheless, at the level at whichthose terms were connected to each other and integrated into a network ofphilosophemes, one cannot but recognize a fundamental shift, followed in Ito'slater treatises by a completely different tone. The drastic change at the level ofphilosophemes forced the reevaluation and readjustment of each basic Confucianterm and its commentary. Nor, one has to acknowledge, was this reallocation ofphilosophemes independent of the intertextual transmutation that was under way.That is, the critique of Zhu Xi's philosophy was a necessary step toward the newarticulation of subjective or social position. The critique took a lexicographicalform common in Confucian scholarship and the works of Ito's contemporaries, inwhich the author deployed his own argument as a sort of parody of Zhu Xi's

IPrecisely for this reason, Ito's argument does not reside either "outside" or "inside" the discur­sive space of the eighteenth century. OUf notion of the discursive space must be protected against thepossibility of visualizing it as an equivalent to a totality clearly circumscribed so as to sustain its"inside" and "outside" absolutely separately, to a spatial sphere that can be juxtaposed to another~p~ere. Between such spheres, there can be only a relationship of negation in the sense that not beingmSlde one sphere immediately means being outside of it and being in another sphere. Iro's workrela~es itself. t? the discursive space of. the eighteenth century or to Song rationalism not in negationbut.tn negatlVlty. (For the want of tenmnology, I use the word "work" in this passage. It goes without~aYlDg that the notion of Ito linsai as a unified author and his work as a unified corpus of his thought1S .suspect, as I have a~d will continue to remind myself in this book.) Here, the question of exteriorityanses. Although theIr conceptual vocabulary is not identical to mine, Ernest Laclau and ChantalMou~e explain this issue in a similar vein: ··The hegemonic subject, as the subject of any articulatory~ractlce, must be partially exterior to what it articulates-otherwise, there would not be any articula­tIon at all. On the other hand, however, such exteriority cannot be conceived as that existing betweentwo different ontological levels. Consequently, it would seem that the solution is to reintroduce ourdistinction between discourse and general field of discursivity: in that elements would constitutethemselves on the same plane-the general field of discursivity-while the exteriority would be thatcorresponding to different discursive formations. No doubt this is so, but it must be further specifiedthat this exteriority cannot correspond to two fully constituted discursive formations. For, whatcharacterizes a discursive formation is the regularity in dispersion, and if that exteriority were a

Ito Jinsai 55

though the word "parody" does not have any pejorative connotation here. Thus,Ito's philosophical opinions and their expressions were in fact dependent uponZhu's discourse to the extent that they were formed as a refutation of quotationsfrom Zhu's writings. There can be no denying that Ito depended on Zhu'sterminology to formulate his critiques of Song rationalism, and Ito certainlyborrowed much more than terminology from Zhu.

Clearly, the dependence of Ito's argumentation upon Song rationalism is notmerely accidental to the fundamental theoretical orientation I detect in his writ­ings; I think it ~as imperative for Ito to construct his argument in this way. Theparodic, one might even say parasitic, nature of his philosophy disallows talkingabout it as a distinct philosophical system like Zhu Xi's, although Zhu Xi alsorelied on the Confucian classics to articulate his ideas. Song rationalists' dis­course could make sense only in the context of a certain intertextuality. Everystatement of Song rationalism necessarily articulates itself as an acknowledgmentin one form or another-agreement, refutation, and so on-of other texts. EvenZhu Xi's philosophy could not escape its dialogic infrastructure, its enunciationin history, no matter how hard it tried to ignore it. In Ito's case, however, theterm "intertextuality" must be understood more rigorously, mainly for two rea­sons.

First, it is not clear to what extent Ito's philosophy is governed by a wish toestablish a system according to which the series of his arguments achieve thecircularity of a philosophical position. Basically, I am suspicious of any readingthat sees in Ito's critique of Song rationalism a conflict between one system ofthought and another, between one philosophical position and another. What I seeis a theoretical endeavor to demonstrate instances when discourse collapses fromits own weight. 1 It may be said that his critique of Zhu Xi coincides at more thana few points with the critique of discourse in general.

2CHAPTER

54

Transcendentalism and "Nearness"

In a typical exchange one can see some connection between the advent of thediscursive complex of hypocrisy in Ito's awareness and the formation of a newphilosopheme in which the term "sincerity" was rephrased and acquired a newconnotation:

Question: Song Confucians upheld sincerity [of reverence] as the host [shu, zhu, 2­3] term. Why do you now uphold loyalty and trust [2-4] as the host term?

Answer: The essence of learning consists in real sincerity [1-7]. Therefore, theAnalects says, "Loyalty and trust is the host." Host is the opposite of guest [hin,bin, 2-5]. What this quotation means is that students ought to regard loyalty-trustas the host term. If a man regards loyalty-trust as the host, the man's speech andbehavior will be real even though he may not appear overtly brilliant and cultured.Those who adhere exclusively to the principle of reverence insist on pride andmaintain a solemn outlook. When seen by others, they might appear to be authen-

57Ito Jinsai

tic Confucians. Once we look at their interior state, however, we will discoverthat there is not a sufficiently sincere intention there. They tend to keep theirconscientious ego and to condemn others rigorously for immoral deeds. Here avariety of illnesses originates. 3

The metaphor of internality plays an. important role in this answer. Yet oneshould keep in mind that the opposition of internal to external is posited exactlyat the disjunction of outer appearance and internal intention. Also important isthe reciprocity of viewpoints between the self and the other which is ascribed tothe somewhat self-righteous attitude of Song rationalists. The hypocrisy inherentin the rigid authoritarianism comes from adherence to the vision of the self fromthe other's viewpoint. Song rationalists, it is argued, try to adjust the self-imageto the ideal ethical personality as if they were adjusting their costumes in front ofthe mirror. This attitude inevitably gives rise to a disparity between inner andouter: paradoxical as itmay sound, the premise that one takes up the position ofanother viewer immediately requires the positing of an interior that cannot beseen.

According to Song rationalists, one should be able to put one's feet in anybodyelse's shoes without difficulty. Therefore, empathy means to them a faculty ofreplacing the self with an other, erasing the singular for the sake of occupying theposition of a subject with wpich one is expected to coincide. Empathy, then, isbased on the common and universal essence that is shared by all persons, on theuniversal essence immanent in every human being: man immanent in man. Whenthe last trace of one's singularity is annihilated-an idealized state, indeed-oneshould be able to take up anybody's position. But Ito contends that it is impossi­ble to define empathy in terms of the reduction of the single individual (kobutsu,2-6) to subjectivity, even in terms of inter-subjectivity.4 Hypocrisy, as Ito sees it,stems from the Song rationalists' thesis that one in fact has an image of the selffrom the other's viewpoint which one can adjust, that one is capable of viewingoneself from the other's viewpoint. Zhu Xi was not aware that such an other'sviewpoint could never coincide with the viewpoint of the other in actuality. Thisis to say, Zhu Xi refused to understand the irreducible gap between the other'sviewpoint as one imagines it and the viewpoint of the other in actuality, that is, ofthe Other, which one could never master. Without awareness of the irredeemableotherness of the other, one's empathy and generosity toward others would simplybe another form of 4'keeping one's conscientious ego."

uTo keep one '8 conscientious ego" is a pejorative expression since, by sodoing, one could refuse to abandon one's centrality in behavior and utterance byrigidly adhering to a fixed and irreplaceable emotional capability. This is what Ito

3Ito Jinsai, Dojimon, in Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 97 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1967), p.82. .

4 "Kobutsu " is a term Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) uses extensively. It could be translated as either"individual thing" or "singular thing.

Silence at the Center56

regular feature in the relation between the two formations, it would become a new difference and thetwo formations would not, strictly speaking, be external to each other. (And with this, once again, thepossibility of any articulation would disappear.) Hence, if the exteriority supposed by the articulatorypractice is located in the general field of discursivity, it cannot be that corresponding to two systemsof fully constituted differences. It must therefore be the exteriority existing between subject positionslocated within certain discursive formations and 'elements' which have no precise discursive articula­tion. It is this ambiguity which makes possible articulation as a practice instituting nodal points whichpartially fix the meaning of the social in an organized system of differences" (Hegemony andSocialist Strategy [London: Verso, 1985], p. 135).

2See Koyasu Nobukuni, Ito Jinsai-jinrin-teki sekai no shiso (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press,1982), and Ito Jinsai kenkyu, Memoirs of the Faculty of Letters, 26 (Osaka: Osaka University, 1986).Koyasu bases his reading of Ito on the careful examination and comparison of Ito's manuscripts. Yethis readings are not of the nature of the so-called text-critique.

Second, as has been widely acknowledged, at least among scholars in Japan,Ito continued to revise his manuscripts until his death. He tirelessly rewrote histreatises until it became physically impossible for him to do so. Certainly, thispractice presents a difficult problem in talking about the so-called final version ofhis philosophy. As many as six different editions exist under the same title, manyof which contain several detailed revisions. 2 Furthermore, significant alterationshave been noted between his manuscripts and the printed editions, some of whichwere edited by his son, Ito Togai, and his disciples and published posthumously.It is not the task of this book to trace the development of Ito's thought through theexamination of those manuscripts and published editions. Nevertheless, I cannotoverlook the continual revision of his earlier scripts throughout his life. In adecisive manner, Ito's insistence upon revision seems to indicate the basic modein which his arguments are enunciated and which is part and parcel of his lifelongcritique.

But, what is the nature of what I have tentatively called Ito Jinsai's critique?

SIlo, Dojimon, p. 83.

thinks the followers of Song rationalism have done. Here is the distinctionbetween sincerity as Ito comprehends it and sincerity as it is understood by Songrationalism, which might be further explained by the two similar but differentvirtues, sincerity of reverence (1-4), which Zhu Xi emphasizes, and sincerity(1-7) which Ito favors. Sincerity of reverence is determined by rules primarilyconcerned with the subjective social positions of addresser and addressee. Thesetranscend the singularity of the encounter, that which escapes abstraction-thatis, the singularity (kobutsu-sei, 2-7) of the actual situation in which one dealswith individuals and the individual incident. Sincerity, by contrast, guides one tothe actualization of a deed, how to execute an action in response to an individualperson encountered in a concrete situation. Ito states that the possibility ofcompassion lies elsewhere than in the principle whose validity includes its for­malism, its existence irrespective of the individuality of the situation, accordingto which one individual person is interchangeable with another. Sincerity ofreverence is abstract in the sense that it could be applied to any interpersonalinteraction as long as the subject positions of participants are clearly defined: itdirects my behavior not toward that individual person but toward that person as ateacher, a father, a general, or a president, that is, as a subject whose identity isdetermined by a set of social codes. Sincerity of reverence dictates that I mustrevere that person because he is a teacher, a father, a general; I must be sincere tothat person because he is a priest or a doctor. On the other hand, sincerity givesno general principle according to which one is to socialize with others, becauseeach person dealt with is an individual irreducible to generalization. Therefore,conscience, insofar as it is conceived as a set of transcendent general rules towhich one tries to conform, must be considered a form of hypocrisy unless thereis also a fundamental awareness about the social, about the impossibility ofexhaustively reducing the individual to the subject, for everyone that one mightencounter is ultimately the Other.

Ito criticized the Song Confucians' understanding of the sincerity of reverenceand tried to correct their interpretation of it. Registering sincerity of reverence asthe host term that should govern every aspect of life, he says, is just likeprescribing one medicine uniformly for hundreds of different diseases. People ofantiquity never proposed such an understanding of this character; they only saidHto exert sincerity according to the occasion."5

Thus Ito sets forth the systematic conception of compassion in a rather nega­tive way, by discussing what hinders compassion toward others in a concretesituation. Yet, I think it is important to note that the self and the other are notdetached and abstracted from the performative environment already saturatedwith customs and other social institutions. One does not encounter an other in asocial vacuum, and the self is not a fixed and ontologized term insofar as it is anindividual agent (shutai, 2-8) of social action but rather one who constantly loses 6See Mikhail Bakhtin, The Problems of Dostoyevsky's Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor:

Ardis, 1973).7Ito, Dojimon, p. 72.8Ito, D6jimon, p. 72.

59Ito Jinsai

his or her subjective identity in the encounter with others. That is to say, shutai isan individual agent insofar as it is grasped in its dialogic moment. 6

What is surprising about Ito's qualifications concerning human sociality is thatthey are left rather undefined. It seems that he has abandoned, perhaps deliber­ately, the task of grounding them theoretically. Instead, as though they were self­evident, he continues his denunciation of Song rationalism.

Unconcerned with the particular details of the social situation in which onedeals with individual people, he argues, transcendentalism generates self­righteousness, adherence to the subjective identity, which inevitably gives rise toa rupture between inner and outer, thereby generating the "inner mind," impene­trable by those who do not share the same imperative rules. Underlying thisargument is a premise that people conduct social life on the basis not of transcen­dent and reified rules but of common trivial and mundane concerns, interests anddesires associated with the things of everyday life. Ito objects to the Songrationalists' identification of the "inner" (nai, nei, 2-9) with nature, on thegrounds that what the word "inner" refers to is not an innate essence of man: it issimply that a human being is inside certain social institutions such as family andis hence intimately involved with others through various social relations. "Whatis termed 'inner' is a word connoting intimacy [shin, qin, 2-10], while the outer[gai, wai, 2-11J is a word for estrangement [so, shu, 2-12]."7 Once the inner,the subjective, position, is reified, essentialized, and given the status of subjec­tive interiority, a transcendent mediation is required to assure the universal ap­plicability of imperative norms. Because Song rationalists postulate the subjec­tive interiority that has, as it were, no window, they are forced to posit sometranscendent viewpoint that guarantees communication between two "innerminds." Where there is no direct and immediate affectivity, then an imperativeand meaning as the transcendent nucleus of ideational intentionality must bepostulated in such a way as to be present to both the self and the others, just asthe system of coding must be available to the addresser and the addressee in thecommunication model, regardless of the concrete place and occasion in whichthe imperative and meaning are manifest. But morality does not consist of normsconceptualized in such a way: HWhen morality flourishes, arguments [giron, yilun, 2-13] are humble [hi, bei, 2-14]. When morality declines, argumentsflourish. The more refined arguments are, the more distant they are from themoral. Therefore, the refinement and abundance of discussions is the symptomof social decay." 8

Argument based on the universal (general) applicability of ideas and conceptshas nothing to do with the actual social situation, which alone enables one torealize what is ethically righteous. Unless one were to immerse oneself in the

Silence at the Center58

The Emergence of Speech in Discourse

high/lowouterI inner

solemn/vulgarestrangedlintimate

"nearness" opened up by one's desire, interest, and care, one would never beable to come across the context in which morality is meaningful to one:s socialaction. Only in relation to those "entities which we encounter as closest to us inthe environment within-the-world"9 could any discussion of morality be serious.

61Ito Jinsai

figurative expressions he applies to the view of verbalization he considers dis­torted, corrupt, and unhealthy are high, inner, solemn, and estranged. When theantonyms with which these expressions form semes are examined, it is evidentthat they are all arranged within an order that establishes the center around whichutter.ances are deployed. Moreover, the position of the author of these utterancesis designated topologically in relation to other positions it could possibly occupy.Ito Jinsai's argument obliges readers to view the other Confucian doctrines froma low, mundane perspective, from a position that is vulgar but intimate to them.It is important to realize that the tropological distance generated by this figurativearrangement corresponds, if rather obliquely, to the separation Ito always de­nounces. The kind of discourse he calls transcendental is not only unaware of theirreducible gap between the saying and the said but also inattentive to the amaz­ing diversity and heterogeneity of the sphere of "nearness," in which one en­counters mundane things and happenings. In that discourse, abstract values aredirectly ascribed to concrete incidents and "things at hand" without any media­tion. In relation to the position of the authorial voice thus designated in Ito'sdescription, the "transcendentalist" argument presents itself as high, estranged,and distant~ it may appear solemn, but it is not within the reach of "us," who arebasically vulgar~ it is a discourse of the lofty minded, who never concern them­selves with the mundane and trivial matters continually happening in the world.Needless to say, what is at issue is that the separation between enunciation andenunciated, between the speech act of the statement and the content of it, has tobe articulated with regard to the way social reality and an ethical perception of itare construed. By offering an evaluative order to these opposed views of ver­balization through the figurative arrangement, Ito established an agenda throughwhich to introduce a different way of talking about social relations and praxis.

Second, the emphasis on a speech act does not imply that a statement shouldbe understood as a relationship between the intention of the subject of theenunciation and what he or she achieves by uttering it in the situation of enuncia­tion. For Ito "inner" does not refer to the subjective interiority of a speaker. It isthe inside of the situation braided by existing social institutions: what dis­tinguishes the inner from the outer is involvement. Rather than differentiatebetween the inner of a person's consciousness and the outside world, this opposi­tion discerns an attitude of involvement that distinguishes participants fromnonparticipants. Therefore, the inner is the adherence of an actor to a Per­formative situation and also such involvement in it that the actor and the situationcannot be separated. Accordingly, Ito constantly speaks of "congruity," whichrefers to one's attachment both to the situation and to others. If verbalization is tocreate the separation in the self in the sense of shutai or the body of the enuncia­tion (which I shall talk about later), and of the self from the situation, hesuggests, the originary plenitude of the situation can never be arrested andpreserved in the enunciated. Involvement always precedes action; yet it cannotbe known, experienced in the sense of Erfarung, that is, in such a way that it isregistered in signification.

Silence at the Center60

hypocritical!sincereWhat is revealed here is the polarity of Ito's discourse. The position of the authorial voice from whichutterances are interjected into the intertextual space, a space already inhabited by voices other thanhis, is allocated on the side of low, inner, vulgar, and intimate. Considering that the highllow andsolemn/vulgar oppositions are matched in the reverse form, one can demonstrate the ironical tone ofIto's presentation as well as the structural configuration through which Ito's discourse is linked to ZhuXi's and the classics.

9Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York:Harper and Row, 1962), chap. 15, '"The Being of the Entities Encountered in the Environment," andchap. 16, "How the Worldly Character of the Environment Announces Itself in Entities Within-the­World," pp. 95-107. I will return to the question of language and the "being-ready-to hand."

IOWhether or not the term "subject U is appropriate to designate the agent of enunciation will bediscussed hereafter. In the meantime, I will continue to use this Benveniste's expression "the subjectof enunciation."

llHigh/low, inner/outer, refined/vulgar, estranged/intimate: the evaluative order is in effect here,too. These terms are indeed dispersed in many of Ito's treatises, but it is possible to determine theirfunction, by which specifically philosophical statements are related to a more familiar world ofeveryday happenings. Assembled, they form a metonymical space where one binary opposition islinked to another and organized within a certain directionality. When examined in isolation, thebinary opposition high/low, for example, is based on two semes: vertical relativity and the order ofevaluation. The following chart should indicate the organization of various oppositions in Ito'streatises:

Here, I must emphasize two premises underlying this argument. First, what Itodescribes as "argument" points to an aspect of verbal presentation in which anutterance transcends the locus and the moment of its enunciation. With regard tothe said, to what has been expressed in verbalization, an utterance cannot beconfined to the originary scene where it is created by the speech acts. Whenlinguistic expression is grasped as the enunciated (enonce) , it is indifferent toboth the subject of enunciation10 and the topos at which it projects its message.Only on condition that an argument is viewed as consisting solely of utterancesthus qualified can one claim that its validity is applicable to any person in anysituation. Ito sees the "rationalist" discourse in this light and counterposes to ithis own apprehension of verbalization, which denies to any and all utterances thekind of universality that is, as is characteristic of a certain conception of lan­guage, not clearly distinct from generality. He attributes the condition of univer­salization to what he calls "separation," between what is said and the saying, andhe covertly argues that it gave rise to "transcendentalism" because of this "sepa­ration" and that the said is considered to transcend the saying. 11 Among various

Enunciation and the Heterogeneous

12Zhu Xi, Reflections on Things at Hand, trans. Wing Tsit Chan (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1967), pp. 83-84.

What Ito questions is the relationship between the mind and feeling. Let usrecall that for Zhu Xi the mind was a place where "many Ii are innate, thanks towhich man is able to respond to all the phenomena." In addition, Zhu Xi noted:

63Ito Jinsai

13See Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.14Nearly three centuries later Wei-ming Tu summarizes precisely what Ito Jinsai saw in Song

rationalism although Tu's characterization covers Neo-Confucianism, a broader designation of theConfucian movement in the Song and Ming periods than Song rationalism or Zhu Xi's philosophy. In"Inner experience": The Basis of Creativity in Neo-Confucian Thinking" (in Artists and Traditions:Uses of the Past in Chinese Culture, ed. Christian F. Murck, [Princeton: The Art Museum, PrincetonUniversity, 1976J, pp. 12-13), Tu writes; "It is commonly accepted that universal principles can onlybe obtained by transcending the particular. To achieve a high level of generality, thought has to bedetached from the concrete. To construct a theorem that can have some universal claim necessitates aprocess of abstraction. In the present case, however, the inner experience of a concrete person servesas the real basis of generalization. And only through a total immersion in one's own being can thesource of universality be reached. Mencius' statement that 'he who has completely realized his mindknows his nature; knowing his nature, he knows Heaven' is therefore a classical formulation of suchan orientation. Commenting on this passage, Lu Hsian-shan advances his idealistic thesis: 'Mind isonly one mind. My own mind, or that of my friend, or that of a sage of a thousand generationshence-their minds are only [one] like this. The extent of the mind is very great. If I can completelyrealize my mind, I thereby become identified with Heaven. Study consists of nothing more than toapprehend this'-

"Implicit in the above-statement is the belief that one's inner experience is the real ground ofcommunication. It is not only the ultimate basis of human relationships but also the foundation uponwhich man, according to the Doctrine of the Mean, 'participates in the transforming and nourishingoperations of Heaven and Earth.' ... Actually, the apparent emphasis on 'subjectivity' is not at all inconflict with the view that 'to conquer oneself and return to propriety is humanity.' Indeed, the egohas to be transcended and sometimes even denied for the sake of realizing the genuine self. For self­control, overcoming the ego, is the authentic way to gain inner experience. This path is universallyopen to every human being, but it ought to be traveled concretely by each person.

"The cultivation of an inner experience is consequently a search for self-identity. Yet in Neo­Confucian thinking this process of looking into oneself does not at all alienate one from society. Itactually impels one to enter into what may be called 'the community of the like-minded' or even 'thecommunity of seltbood' " [quotation marks Tu's]. Including the consistent fusion of universality andgenerality, without which the synecdochic displacement of the concrete mind with the mind ofHeaven and Earth would be impossible, those traits of Song rationalism are mentioned which indicateits inherently monologic tendency and because of which Ito thought it imperative to launch athorough and rigorous critique of it.

Man's social nature, specifically as the basis for intersubjective reciprocity, isequated to the totalizing ability of the mind\ Of course, this social nature of manmust definitely be distinguished from the social. 13 The presence of the mind inan individual human being ensures his or her ability to communicate with otherpeople and things in the universe. That there is no "outside" of the mind, then,means that everyone is innately able to communicate with everyone else; thepossibility of communication with other human beings is anterior to any distur­bance or noise in mutual understanding; insofar as the other person is reduced toa presence in the mind, "r' and "you" are absolutely interchangeable. Hence,the conception of the mind implies that one is supposed to be able to sPeak in theplace of an other, thereby annihilating the transcendence of the other. Ironicallyenough, this transcendentalism in fact serves to get rid of the otherness of theOther and the Other's transcendence. Therefore, the heterogeneous, which re­sists and disturbs the action.of making the mind present to itself, must, first, beapprehended as a resistance to sincerity and, second, be thought of as on­tologically inferior in order that the optimistic belief in unlimited commen­surability be metaphysically guaranteed. 14 (This simply amounts to a belief in

Silence at the Center62

By enlarging one's mind, one can enter into all the things in the world. As long asanything is not yet entered into, there is still something outside the mind. The mindof ordinary people is limited to the narrowness of what is seen and what is heard.The sage, however, fully develops his nature and does not allow what is seen orheard to better his mind. He regards everything in the world as his own self. This iswhy Mencius said that if one exerts his mind to the utmost he can know Nature andHeaven. Heaven is so vast that there is nothing outside of it. Therefore the mind thatleaves something outside is not capable of uniting itself with the mind of Heaven. 12

It follows that the existence of the shutai cannot be construed in terms of therationalists' conception of the mind, and it is implied that the possibility of thesocial has nothing to do with the universal (general) validity of human nature.More specifically, Ito forcefully claims that the locus of the social is not to bediscovered either in the mind defined as the faculty to make human naturespresent or in the mind as a topos to which human natures are made present but infeeling (jo, qing, 2-1). This is a fundamental difference between Zhu Xi and ItoJinsai: whereas Zhu assumed the self to be so much extraneous noise, since ithinted at the existence of the individual, something to be suppressed an4 dis­solved in the process of learning, Ito's self acknowledges being always hetero­geneous to the subject. Since the rupture between the self and its outside isrejected, however, it cannot be regarded as the inner mind, or even as thepersonality as understood in modern psychology. Unlike the Cartesian ego,which belongs to an order entirely different from that of things and cannotreceive spatial attributes, Ito's self resides among things, and there is a continuitybetween the self and material beings. Obviously, the self as Ito articulates it isfirst and foremost a body, one's body. It is a self immersed in materiality.Consequently, the adherence of the self to the situation is marked by the mate­riality underlying both the self and the situation, saturated with things and others'bodies. But the things we encounter as closest to us in the situation are differentfrom the wu (thinghood) of Zhu Xi, whose basic mode of existence was stabilityand constancy: Ito's conception of things in relation to the self is characterized bychange, movement, animation, and dispersal. And one's body is the most ani­mated of material beings.

15Ito Jinsai, Gomojigi, Hayashi edition, manuscript # 406951 in Tenri University Central Library,Feeling 1, 2.

Zhu Xi claims that mind synthesizes nature and feeling, by equating nature withthe ti [substance] of mind and feeling with the yang [function] of mind.... Feelingis the movement of nature and belongs, then, to desire. Only insofar as feeling is intouch with thinking is it called mind. Such [phenomena] as the Four Beginnings andrage [fear, joy, grief] are thought by the mind; so they should not be called feel­ing. . . . Feeling is that which moves without being thought. Even if it is slightly intouch with thinking, it is called mind. If the seven phenomena of delight, anger,sorrow, joy, affection, hatred, and desire move without being thought about, thenthey should properly be called feelings. They should not be called feelings if they areto contain the slightest thought. 15

Ito challenges the idea that feeling can be controlled by the mind. By disqualify­ing the ontological order that places feeling below nature and sees feeling essen­tially as a derivative of nature, he disrupts the economy regulating the assimila­tion of the heterogeneous in Zhu Xi's discourse. Yet, it must be remembered thatIto's critique preserves the Song rationalist conception of feeling and nature. Headheres to the fonnula "Feeling is the desire of nature," mainly, I think, becausehis critique would lose its rigor if Zhu Xi '8 vocabulary were totally given up. Thetotal rejection of the dominant vocabulary is, first of all, impossible, and tofantasize such a rejection leads merely to a utopianism whose effect is oftenrather conservative. What is accomplished in this kind of critique is the dis­closure of the site where the heterogeneous has been contained. It goes withoutsaying that this site is now denominated as feeling. The new definition of feelingas that which moves without being thought at all is significant at two points.

First, Ito's definition denies the control of the mind over feeling. Obviously,

65Ito Jinsai

16Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. George Van Den Abbeele(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), p. 111.

17Jacques Derrida, "Quel QueUe: Valery's Sources," in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 296-97.

the tenn "thought" or "thinking" (2-15) implies a subsumption of feeling undera concept. It is precisely because this faculty is ascribed to the mind that the mindcan be said to synthesize nature and feeling. Subsequently the synthetic facultyof the mind can be construed in its two aspects: one in which feeling is made tocorrespond to nature and another in which feeling is posited as an object ofthinking. For this reason, Song rationalists could maintain parallelism betweenfeelings and natures. It should be obvious that without a parallelism of this sort itis impossible to claim that a nature manifests itself as a feeling. At the same time,a feeling is posited as an object for a positing subject, that is, the mind. Hence,through thinking, a feeling is determined in its presence to the mind and, accord­ingly, is subjected to the mind. This objectification of feeling is nothing but thearresting and fixing of feeling within the reign of the mind.

Second, what is disclosed by this definition of feeling is the working ofdiscourse that prevents the heterogeneous from breaking down the discursiveeconomy. The Song rationalists' conception of sincerity implicitly assumes thatfeeling is essentially tameable. In spite of or, rather, because of the cognizancethat feeling necessarily includes a moment heterogeneous to the regular, it wasabsolutely necessary for Song rationalists to find some persuasive argument that .feeling is eventually destined to conform to the economy of the given discourse.Of course, Mencius's doctrine of inherently good human nature was interpretedto serve this purpose. By contrast, Ito announces that feeling arises irrespectiveof this economy. He claims that there is no fundamental guarantee that feelingwill conform to nature. Whereas feeling must be objectified to be deprived of itsspontaneity and thereby rendered tameable, Ito now defines feeling as exactlyoutside of what can be objectified, that is to say, outside of the thinkable. Forhim, the appearance of the Other is "an event of feeling." 16 It is not an event ofcognition.

Hence, feeling is that which cannot be present or made present to the mind: italways flees the arresting reach of the mind. And because of its otherness tothought, it is now seen as a topos of spontaneity. This new definition hints thatthe spontaneous is in the pure incipiency of the happening, but it can emerge assuch "only on the condition that it does not itself present itself, on the conditionof this inconceivable and irrelievable passivity in which nothing can presentitself to itself." 17 Probably, it is not completely without merit to draw attention tothe figurative expression Ito uses in this instance: wataru (to link, 2-16). Thischaracter suggests an act of linking beyond some boundary, as in crossing a river.In other words, when a feeling reaches thought, it is included and assimilatedinto some field. Zhu Xi believed this field included the entire universe and wastherefore boundless. Ito, however, delimits this field where an object is positedas that which is determined by a limited number of universals-that is, as a

Silence at the Center

the reducibility of the Other to the other and, ultimately, in the non-existence ofthe Other and the exterior, but I must wait to discuss this issue later:) Man issupposed to be commensurable with every being of the universe in his normalstate, a state in which the mind reigns over him. Any incommensurability thatmight be incurred must be abnormal and irregular and subsequently rectifiable byreturning to the original normalcy.

Let me note that in Zhu Xi's philosophy the universal (general) applicability ofhuman nature is secured by the ontological order according to which nature-thepresence of Ii in man-is anterior to feeling. Furthermore, this ontologicalanteriority of nature to feeling enables one to construe various empirical phe­nomena in terms of the manifestation of Ii in wu.

It is against this ontological ordering that Ito insists on the anteriority offeeling. "Feeling," says Ito, ~'is the desire of nature because it implies move­ment. Hence, the characters 'nature' and ~feeling' are often mentioned together.It is said in the "Gaku-ki' [Yueji] chapter [of the Li ji] that what moves inresponse to things is the desire of nature." According to Ito:

64

18Emile Benveniste, Problemes de linguistique generate (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), pp. 80-82. Theitalics are mine.

detennined subject-and he opens up the "outside" by linking it to a differentregime, where'things are differently perceived and acted upon.

Through the figurative expression "to link" it seems possible to explore sometheoretical implications of Ito's comprehension of feeling. That he was able todelimit the field called the mind should indicate the emergence of a certainspecific understanding of "thinking," and this understanding first acknowledgesthat thinking cannot deal with what moves, that it can only get hold of a phe­nomenon, an object in stasis to consciousness. His emphasis on the mobility offeeling, in fact, leads to the reversal of the ontological ordering employed by ZhuXi. Now Ito states that that which moves pre~edes that which is arrested, and atthis moment, I think, the putative claim to universal validity of the Song ra­tionalists' discourse fell prey to a thorough and final critique.

What allows for the disclosure of the heterogeneous and marks the limit ofdiscourse is the introduction of a new discursive arrangement: enunciation.Emile Benveniste explains this tenn in his famous essay "L'appareil formel deI'enonciation" :

Enunciation is this putting of language [langue] into function by an individual act ofutilization. . . .

. But everyone knows that for the same subject the same sounds are n·~ver

exactly reproduced, and that the notion of identity is only approximate here whereexperience is repeated in its detail. These differences belong to the diversity of thesituations where enunciation is produced....

In enunciation we successively consider the act itself, the situations in which theact takes place, the instruments of the accomplishment.

The individual act by which language is utilized first introduces the speaker as theparameter in the conditions necessary for enunciation. Before enunciation, languageis nothing but the possibility of language. After enunciation, language is executed inan instance of discourse, which issues from a speaker, a sonorous form that reaches alistener and incites another enunciation in return....

But immediately, as soon as he [the speaker] declares himself a speaker andassumes language, he implants the other vis-a-vis himself, no matter what degree ofpresence he attributes to this other. Every enunciation is, explicitly or implicitly, anallocution: it postulates an allocution.

Finally, in enunciation language is found to be employed for the expression of acertain relationship to the world. The condition for this mobilization and this appro­priation of language, for the speaker, is the need to refer by discourse and. for theother, the possibility to corefer identically, in a pragmatic consensus that makes eachspeaker a cospeaker. Reference is an integral part of enunciation....

. . . The presence of the speaker to his enunciation makes it necessary for eachinstance of discourse to constitute a center of internal reference. This situation isgoing to be manifested by a play of specific forms whose function is to put thespeaker in a constant and necessary relation with his enunciation. 18

67Ito Jinsai

19Emile Benveniste. Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral Gables,Fla.: 1971): "The 'subjectivity' I am discussing here is the capacity of the speaker to posit himself as'subject.' It is defined not by the feeling which everyone experiences of being himself (this feeling, tothe degree that it can be taken note of. is only a reflection) but as the psychic unity that transcends the

Any utterance must be produced ata certain place, a certain time, but anutterance, once produced, gains a relative aJJtonomy and becomes independent ofits origin, Regardless of whether one knows who first enunciated it or not, onecan understand what the utterance signifies. Insofar as what it says is at issue,one, does not need to know and is never able to tell who spoke it or where andwhen it was uttered. The same utterance can be repeated "in principle" byanybody anywhere, And if it cannot be repeated, then it will not be the sameutterance. What constitutes the identity of an utterance is what it says, theenunciated (enonce). Indeed, a subject can be identifiable within an enunciatedsuch as "I" in '''1 tell you the truth," but this 4'1" and this <'4 you" could beanybody unless the enunciated is confused with the enunciation, In fact, insofaras the signification of an utterance in which the pronouns are embedded isconcerned, these pronouns are completely empty. The erasure of what Ben­veniste calls the "center of internal reference," which stems from the speaker'spresence to his enunciation, is also an integral part of language use.

Yet, that any person can say it without identifying her- or himself with 4'1" isthe necessary condition for such an utterance to be communicable, The ano­nymity .of the enunciated is, I must repeat, the very possibility of utterance. Aparticular 4'1" transfonns itself into an anonymous "I" in the enunciated, and, anideal or imaginary state in which a subject of a speech act must be coincidentalwith the subject of an enunciation is called the enunciation. As a matter of fact,we can only have a memory of the enunciation. Supposedly the enunciated is aproduct of the enunciation. It should be emphasized, however, that it is impossi­ble to recover from an enunciated the originary enunciation, in which the subject,situation, and intention are all integrated into a single occurrence of speech.There is an irredeemable and irremediable rupture between enunciation andenunciated. A statement such as "I am telling you a lie" or '41 am dead." revealsthis rupture most clearly. If the subject is telling a lie, how could his statementitself be intelligible? Or if she is dead, how could she speak at all? These cases inwhich the enunciation and the enunciated are contradictory are not exceptional,but they disclose the most fundamental working of language. It is through thisrupture, this antinomy, that human beings articulate the world in lan~uage,

This understanding of the "putting of language into function" renders Ben­veniste's notions of the "subject of enunciation" and "discourse" susceptible tofundamental doubt. While respecting his penetrating insight into the subjectivityin language, I must criticize his fonnulation and attempt to modify his tenns.

It should be remembered that one poses oneself as a subject by and in lan­guage. As Benveniste claims, only language can sound the concept of ego. Hesays, "Est ego qui dit ego" ("Ego" is he who says "ego").l9 Moreover, by

Silence at the Center66

totality of the actual experiences it assembles and that makes the permanence of the consciousness.Now we hold that the 'subjectivity,' whether it is placed in phenomenology or in psychology, as onemay wish, is only the emergence in the being of a fundamental property of language. 'Ego' is he whosays 'ego.' That is where we see the foundation of 'subjectivity; which is determined by thelinguistic status of 'person.'

"Consciousness of self is only possible if it is experienced by contrast. I use I only when I amspeaking to someone who will be a you in my address. It is this condition of dialogue that isconstitutive of person, for it implies that reciprocally I becomes you in the address of the one who inhis tum designates himself as /. Here we see a principle whose consequences are to spread out in alldirections. Language is possible only because each speaker sets himself up as a subject by referring tohimself as I in his discourse. Because of this,l posits another person, the one who, being, as he is,completely exterior to 'me,' becomes my echo to whom I say you and who says you to me. Thispolarity of persons is the fundamental condition in language, of which the process of communication,in which we share, is only a mere pragmatic consequence. It is a polarity, moreover, very peculiar initself, as it offers a type of opposition whose equivalent is encountered nowhere else outside oflanguage. This polarity does not mean either equality or symmetry: 'ego' always has a position oftranscendence with regard to you. Nevertheless, neither of the terms can be conceived of without theother; they are complementary, although according to an 'interior/exterior' opposition, and, at thesame time, they are reversible" (p. 224).

As should be obvious, I have a few reservations about Benveniste's argument, however brilliantand enlightening. Particularly important are the use of the term "discourse" and Benveniste's rathercareless endorsement of the universality of the Indo-European pronominal system, to which I shallreturn.

saying "I," according to Benveniste, the individual enters the reciprocal rela­tionship with the other, and in principle this other could be anybody. As Hegelillustrated it, the 4'1" thus designated is always a site of contradiction, and thiscontradiction allows for the positing of the "I" as well as the positivity of the"I," for the "I" who is pointed to in imagination is an other not only to the other,the addressee who listens to and receives the message, but also to the individualas the one who designates or indicates. Since the "I" can make sense at all onlywhen it is opposed to the "other," the "I" is in fact enabled by the "other."Already, when one says "I," one is shifted to the field of the "other," and thesubjectivity posited in the enunciation has lost its immediate rapport with theoriginary "ego."

Then, what is the nature of this delay, separation, or rupture? In uttering astatement one is always transformed into an "other" from whom one must beseparated or alienated. Confession is without exception ultimately a lie, notbecause one disguises and conceals oneself but because every utterance is neces­sarily a deviation of oneself from one's "ego." Unless man or woman is forced toidentify "ego" with his or her assigned subjective position, confession does notwork. Or to put it more rigorously, confession is essentially a political practice bywhich to subject and subordinate a person to his or her identity by soliciting thatperson into believing there is true "self" somewhere in that person's spirit orbody. In speech, one cannot coincide with oneself because what one intends tosay is always different from what one actually says. Therefore, we can think ofthe social as an encounter with the Other. In utterance, one lives two differenttemporalities that never meet: the time in which what one means to say ispresented, and the time of the actual speech in which saying is actually executed.By virtue of the fact that somebody must enunciate it for an event to be registered

Subjectivity and Persons

69Ito Jinsai

Perhaps, in this regard, it is necessary to pay attention to the absence inclassical literary Chinese of the pronominal system of European languages. Let

as such, an event insofar as it is identified and memorized in the text is inevitablyalso a discursive event, an image retained ill and by a given discourse. An eventthat is described in a statement precedes and succeeds other events in actuality, sothat it should be justifiable to say that the event took, takes, or will take place intime. Yet the statement can be repeatedly uttered. What puzzles us here is that anenunciation in which an event is described is also an event. The event describedin many different enunciations can be the same, whereas none of these enuncia­tions can be the same. Therefore, I must conclude that the upresent" of theenunciation and the ~'now" of the enunciated cannot coincide with each otherand that the antinomy that exists between the two terms, as a matter of fact,makes up the very possibility of verbalization and of linguistic expression ingeneral.

Now, it is not overly difficult to see that various philosophical tactics deployedin Zhu Xi's discourse organized themselves around the central issue of how toreduce textual traits indicating the problematic of enunciation and enunciated.Hence comes the ontological ordering of nature and feeling which dictated thatthe feeling or desire-that which moves-could be exhaustively defined interms of. nature. Once a variety of events had been reduced to the terms in theenunciated, they could be unanimously treated as universals, and through thisreduction one could discover Ii in things, events and one's body. What I calledthe invisibility of one's body meant that feeling, which is always linked to one'sbody, could be subordinated to the reign of the mind. Of course, the mind wasthe field of universals including human nature. Sincerity as Zhu understood itsignified nothing but the reducibility of the enunciation to the enunciated.

It is the heterogeneity inherent in the enunciation which Ito Jinsai illustrates byrejecting the ontological order of nature and feeling. He insists that feeling isirreducible to nature and thereby discloses the heterogeneity of feeling withinZhu Xi's discourse. Insofar as Ito accepts the vocabulary and the routine ways ofquestioning typical of Song rationalism, the disclosure of the heterogeneous isalso a critique, whose main task it is to reveal the topos of textuality underlyingand concealed by the discourse. But his critique seems to go farther: it is, aboveall else, a critique of discourse in general. In this respect, Ito proposes to see theworld-jinrin sekai,20 or the social world-primarily as text, not as discourse.Thus, Ito could come up with a new reading of the mobile nature of feeling: dOll(dong, 2-17).

2O'fhe term is borrowed from Koyasu Nobukuni, who emphasizes Ito's use of the termjinrin. Seehis Ito Jinsai-jinrin-teki sekai no shiso.

Silence at the Center68

me put aside for the present the question whether the pronominal system is innatein particular tanguages or imposed by a metalanguage about them) and ,even thetenability of a distinction between a particular language and its grammar asarticulated in some metalanguage. For now, I would like to ponder the fact thatthe classical literary Chinese in which most of Ito's works are written cannot bereduced to utterances performed in so-called conversational situations because itwas completely different from the language of everyday life. I discuss this issuein more detail in Part Three with regard to Ogyu Sorai and the emergence of thenew regimes of reading-translation; here it is sufficient to note that the illocution­ary aspect of philosophical discussion produced during the eighteenth century hasto be analyzed in a different manner from the one in which the theorists of thespeech acts examine utterance as perfonnance. The use of classical Chinesemight be compared to the use of graphic symbols in mathematics and sciencetoday. One might even claim that language in which Ito discusses "nearness" andeveryday life was not his "everydayn language, not even a language other peopleused in their everyday environments during his lifetime. The danger, which isvery obvious here, is to regard classical Chinese as a formal, artificial, andinsignificant language whose "categoriesn were somewhat alienated from the"realn and "ordinary" people; to postulate that for the common people classicalChinese was much less "natural" and, therefore, an inferior medium. And to saythat its "categories" were far too inadequate to reflect the belief system of theordinary people merely leads to a reification of ordinariness. Avoiding this pitfallrequires a series of theoretical operations that manifest the errors implicit in aneasy dismissal of philosophical and theoretical argument on populist grounds,but many of these operations fall outside the immediate scope of this book. Here,I must content myself with a few observations.

In !!lost case~".th.~.attrjbutiQn of language to speech acts seems to be facilitatedby "imagining-' a. subject

F·'We have already observed the split in the speaking

subject in enunciation. We must further note the well-known thesis that oppositeto the anonymous "I" who is registered in and signified by the word "I" (shugo),is the particular "In who has actually produced the speech.; This particular "I,"who appears external to the subject of the enunciated, is the one that has to berepresented;/The qualification that this "I," the subject of the enunciation, has tobe represented is not accidental to how the subject of the enunciation is possible:as Jacque~ Lacan and others have shown, the ~ubject of the enunciation can existonly' as asubject that is to be represented. In other words, the subject of theenunciation must be thetically posited and represented. Insofar as it is theticallyrepresented, it does not matter in what sort of syntactical"function it correspondsthe "I" or its equivalent, shugo, in a particular language. It follows that thesubject of the enunciation must be represented to someone:r,Not only must therebe a rupture between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of theenunciated; a separation is also absolutely necessary between the subject of theenunciation and the one to whom the subject of the enunciation is represented,i To

71Ito Jinsai

say that the subject of the enunciation is to be represented is to say that thatsubject is possible only with this separation~ a representational structure that canbe construed in terms of a mirror, not to mention the Lacanian reading of themirror stage.

This is to say, as many have argued, that the subject of the enunciation must bean image, Therefore, it is not possible outside theoria, as speculation, or history,broadly conceived as a narrative about the imagined past/Furthermore, it is notnecessary to call the agent of enunciation (shutai), who executes the enunciation,the subject of enunciation.21

If so, then the' whole distinction between pronoun and person, history as it isnarrated and discourse as it is lived, language and reality, and so on, seems to meto be dubious./ln order to secure the distinction between pronoun and person,Emile Benveniste, for instance, draws a line between the first and second personsingular~ and the third person.,-For him, the "I is 'the individual who utters thepresent instance of discourse containing the linguistic instance I."2:/ But thisdouble instance is entirely dependent on the way a pronoun is used; it is equallypossible to use a proper noun, even a personal name, to signify and designate theagent of the enunciation simultaneously. In his efforts to circumscribe languagefrom its exterior as a system of formal rules, Benveniste presupposes that thereare linguistically marked instances when the subject coincides with itself, or theshugo is automatically the shutai,i1n this example, a systematic feature isolatedfrom a family of languages is indiscriminately applied to other languages'lBut Iam not blaming Benveniste for the lack of empirical data; what I would like todraw attention to is a complicity between his distinction between language andnonlanguage and a certain positivism in his discussion of subjectivity.

The absence of the system of personal pronouns in the languages of Ito Jinsaishould make us very cautious about the uses of the term "subject. H I havetherefore marked it with a different set of tenos that might all be rendered as"subject." Considering the relationships between the subject as shugo and thesubject of the enunciation, one might first probe into the formal rules accordingto which the subject of the enunciation is supposedly transformed into the subjectof the proposition, for example:

21In "The Essential Solitude" (The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays. ed, P. AdamsSitney [Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill, 1981] trans. by Lydia Davis from L'espace litteraire [Paris:Gallimard, 1955)), Maurice Blanchot notes: "To write is to surrender oneself to the fascination of the

.)ff:1 :;<;~f:!<;;;!'!'~::,,,'.', absence of time. Here we are undoubtedly approaching the essence of solitude. The absence of timeis not a purely negative mode. It is the time in which nothing begins, in which initiative is notpossible, where before the affinnation there is already the recurrence of the affinnation. Rather than apurely negative mode, it is a time without negation, without decision, when here is nowhere, wheneach thing withdraws into its image and the T that we are recognizes itself as it sinks into theneutrality of a faceless 'it' [il]. The time of the absence of time is without a present, without apresence" (pp. 72-73, translation modified), I shall return to this issue in relation to Heidegger,Kant, and more important, Nishida Kitaro's critique of shugoshugi, or subjectivism.

22Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, pp. 218,217-22.

Silence at the Center70

23lt is important to stress that the term "desire" generally follows a different economy in Confu­cian discourse from that of the Freudian wish. Yet, in spite of very many differences in terminology, Imaintain that the imaginary construction of the subject is also at work in Confucian discourse.

Too often this kind of transformation defines the subject of the enunciation as animplicit positing of the "I," but note that the subject of the enunciation ispredetermined in the network of pronouns by virtue of its designation by the "I,"as though it were already opposed to "you," "we," "she." In its particularity,however, it is represented in the image or, more often, in the specular image ofthe subject's body as it is reflected in the structure, which might be compared to amirror. 23 Even in nonpronominallanguages the term that signifies and designatescould function in the same manner. The position of the subject, which can beidentified in a variety of ways, such as "your humble servant," "servant in frontof him or her," "self," and so on, can easily be equated to the subject of theenunciation. Very often, as is sometimes the case in the Indo-European pro­nominal systems, the social and historical nature of the subject's identity can beforgotten and internalized as if it were an ahistorical essence. And it is preciselythis kind of positivism of subjectivity that Ito Jinsai detects in what he regards asthe hypocrisy of Song rationalists.

What is overlooked in the transformations I have outlined is an internal contra­diction. One might follow the Kantian formula: every statement should be able tobe accompanied by "I think." Contrary to what one might expect, this formuladoes not justify the transition from "The rose is red" to "I think, 'The Rose isred' " or to "I think that the rose is red," for the formula actually leads to anindefinite series, to "I think, 'I think, "the Rose is red'"'' and to "I think, 'Ithink, "I think ... " ad nauseam. Later I will return to the many Japanese termsthat are used to translate the English word "subject"; let me meanwhile stressthese two points:

First, the closure or completion of the statement that can be accompanied by "Ithink" is intelligible only on the condition that the statement is undermined by thepossibility of an indefinite opening. And this indefinite opening is marked by thatwhich cannot be represented in the subject of the enunciation, by that which fleesthe capture of specular imagination in the subject of the enunciation. From now on,let me call this fleeing being, this nonbeing (not a being because it eludes arrest insignification), shutai, a word consisting of two Chinese characters shu or zhu (2-

24There are several lexicological meanings for each character. Shu is the site the spirit visits,master, host, head, what one relies upon, to administer, main, mainly, to respect. Tai is body, form,appearance, type, style, substance, entity, acquisition (of habits or skills), care for others.

250ne of the conducting threads that guide Kant's inquiry is the relationship between the conceptand its representation both as problematic and as a theoretical ground: it is problematic because "Ithink" is concerned with the very possibility of relating the concept and its representation; it is atheoretical ground because his transcendental deduction is motivated by the reducibility of therepresentation to the concept, by a careful distinction between the transcendent and the transcenden­tal. As his metaphysical project is of a "transcendental" and critical nature, his inquiry concerningthe possible conditions for experience never proceeds along the axis of temporal progression from"thinking" to "enunciation" to "said."

73Ito Jinsai

3) meaning "host, master, main" and tai or ti (2-18) meaning "body, sub­stance."24 I tentatively define shutai as that which flees in enunciation.

Second, some might perceive a confusionism in my argument and claim that Ihave consistently obliterated the distinction between saying and thinking. Focus­ing on the common formal feature of the two sets of propositions-"1 amhere" I "I say, 'I am here' " and "The [ose is red" I '~I think that the rose isred"-I have paid little attention to what one might consider the fundamentaldifference between "to say" and "to think." One might argue that one has to saya thing out loud, whereas one can think without making sound or causing anymaterial change: Another might suggest that to think is to say (something) inone's mind, silently. Yet, it is also true that, in order to gain any access to theexterior at all, thinking has to be expressed in saying or other actions. Only as the

" said is it possible for us to think the thinking. Then, shall we blind ourselves tothe naIvete in this kind of argumentation and conclude that a thought "I am here"is expressed in the saying of "I say, 'I am here' "? Lik~wise,must the thought "Ithink that the rose is red" be expressed not in "I think that I think that the rose isred" but in "I say, 'I think that the rose is red' "?

The pitfall is obvious. The presupposed positivistic distinction between think­ing and saying assumes a very definite and narrow comprehension of enuncia­tion: enunciation as an expression of thinking in saying, as the saying of think­ing. It is comprehended as a transition from possible thinking "(I think that) therose is red" to actualized saying "(I say that) the rose is red." When Kant said,"Every statement should be able to be accompanied by 'I think'," the possibjlityof "I think" was conceived of in the context of transcendental deduction. Ofcourse, this "transcendental" and "transcendentalism" in Song rationalism mustnot be confused, at least not without due elaboration. Kant seems to have sug­gested what might be described in our terminology as the equation of the subjectof the enunciation to the transcendental subject.25

What should be remembered is the secessionist nature of the enunciation,which can be construed as a separation between that which is arrested and thatwhich flees. Yet, this formulation does not imply an original plenitude anterior tothe separation, some harmonious wholeness or oneness, as Benveniste mightsuggest. The enunciation lets this asymmetrical separation between what can be

I am here.

II say, "I am here."

The rose is red.

II think that the rose is red.

Silence at the Center

or

72

thematically posited and the shutai that flees take place, and take a place wherethe subject of the enunciation and the agent of the enunciation are split. That is tosay, I will venture to consider enunciation in te~s of its parergonal structure, inwhich a subject in the sense of theme, or shudai, is posited in the field marked bya framing, or parergon. The agent of the enunciation cannot be posited as aspecular image unless a parergonal structure is assumed. So even in the Lacanianargument about the mirror stage, it is not, of course, a matter of whether or not amirror reflecting a child's body is actually there but a matter of the insertion ofparergonal secession into the child's world.

In Bartolome Esteban Murillo's self-portrait (figure B), the viewer feels ill atease because of the co-presence of two contradictory moments. Painting utensilsplaced outside the central frame, which somewhat resembles that of a mirror,and the inscription below it suggest that the image of the man's upper body is thespecular reflection of the painter who produces the image. The whole painting isset up in such a way that the viewer is lured into occupying the position of thepainter who views his own body reflected on the plane in front of him. Thepossibility for the viewer to identify her viewpoint with that of the painter in aspecific suturing, and to recognize the self of the painter in the reflected image iscreated by the insertion of the frame, which divides the background and theinside sphere of reflection. In this sphere because of its secondary and non­originary status indicated by the term reflection, the image emerges as an effectof some external cause, and the frame introduces distance whereby representa­tion, in the sense of making a thing present to the gaze or letting it stand againstconsciousness and thereby turning it into a phenomenon is rendered possible.The insertion of the frame, therefore, seems to stabilize the economy of theselfsame in which the specular image of the painter's body reflected within theframed space and the invisible and perspectival locus of his own body to whichthings are presented are clearly distinguished and located.

However, the viewer also notices the painter's hand, a part of his body, placedupon the frame which is supposed to divide the sphere for reflected images fromits outside. The intrusion of the hand immediately destabilizes the assumedequilibrium between the image of the painter's body in specularity and hissubjective gaze; it interferes with the economy of the selfsame, thereby putting injeopardy the very scheme for reproducing the identity of the subject in thereflected image of a self-portrait. The hand belongs to the body that is painted onthe canvas, yet it indicates that it is the body of the painter that produces theframe as well as distance, which is absolutely necessary to let the self standagainst the subject's gaze.

Of course, the intruding hand is a painted one and the intrusion of the frametakes place within a larger frame that marks and identifies Murillo's self-portraititself. I am talking about the intrusion of the economy of subjectivity at the levelof what one might refer to as a "secondary revision," and the subjectivity that I

Figure B. Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Self-Portrait, a. 1670. By permission of theNational Gallery, London.

75Ito Jinsai

thematize is already the one that has been framed up. But I want to exploit theanxiety provoked in the viewer by this painting in order to designate the body ofthe enunciation or shutai that can never be reduced to the specular image of thebody or to the subject of the enunciation. Shutai participates in the establishmentof the frame, but remains heterogeneous to the economy of subjectivity which isregulated by the framing mechanism; the body as shutai engenders the frame'seffect but can never be arrested in the work of the frame; shutai must necessarily

Silence at the Center74

Nondisjunctive Function and Disjunctive Function

be excluded in order for the body to be represented in its specularity. In otherwords, the bOdy as shuta; can never be grasped as a phenomenon in subjectiveidentification.

Hence, although in this book the subject of the en~nciation is occasionallyassociated with the body objectified in its specular image, in most cases I do notintend for the body to be taken as equivalent to its image. Instead, the body isprimarily that which moves, the topos of the heterogeneous or of textual mate­riality and, as I will demonstrate, the center of the sphere of "nearness." Thebody as the shutai is essentially that which moves away from the thinkable, thatwhich flees subjectification, or shudaika. Accordingly, what is suggested by theemergence of the body in Ito Jinsai's treatises is an awareness that the hetero­geneous and materiality can no longer be contained within the economy of thediscourse. Nevertheless, the body thus suggested would be recaptured andstripped of its heterogeneity in eighteenth-century discourse as it was subjugatedto the new regime of visibility.

With this shift, the mind that had hitherto been regarded as the ground ofsociality came to be understood as a closure to others, a sign of a-sociality. Theconstitution of the inner closure, however, and subsequently of the transcenden­talism Ito finds inherent in ideational intentionality, is thought of as simul­taneously a cause and its effect. Ito does not argue that transcendentalism resultsfrom the inner closure or vice versa; it is not because the inner is formed, fixed,or reified that transcendentalism is generated in due course. Nor does transcen­dentalism necessarily lead to the inner, a narrow ego centrism. As a matter offact, the two are synonymous and therefore simultaneous manifestations of adeep-rooted deficiency common, according to Ito, to Cheng-Zhu Confucianism,Buddhism, and Taoism. All these teachings are, he believed, pervaded in oneway or another by some features of "frigidity," and he used many figurativeexpressions in his attempts to describe the defect. He presented, for example, theaforementioned pairs of antonyms, such as high/low, estranged/intimate, and soon. In addition, he noted more theoretically oriented oppositions­rigidity/mobility, verbal demonstration (argumentation)/behavioral demonstra­tion, and quiescence/animation-which more clearly indicate a regulatory sys­tem by which textual productivity is organized into a certain economy. I must notoverlook that all the oppositions are polarized in the sense that the secondterms-mobility, behavioral demonstration, and animation-are fundamentaland the first terms are derivative. Often it is said that rigidity, argumentation, andquiescence are manifestations of the defect and that they simply signify theabsence or distortion of mobility, behavioral demonstration, and animation, re-

77Ito Jinsai

spectively. Furthermore, the' Chinese characters that Song rationalists used toindicate their main concepts are analyzed independently and individually in orderto show that they are either used differently or not found at all in the classics.Thus, Ito demonstrates that the priority of nature over feeling, Ii over qi is due tothe.deliberate efforts of Song rationalists to distort proper uses of the characters. Iwill undertake a more detailed examinati<?n of his interpretative strategy later, butthis much can be said about the formation of philosophical oppositions and theirdiscursive function: the first terms in the oppositions are delusive because theyrepr~sent conformity to the static rules; the second terms are associated withmutation and excess. Nature and feeling, sy.bstance (tai, ti, 2-18) and function(yo, yong, 2-19) are paired characters whose meanings are determined in op­position to each other. In the philosophemes thus formed, n~ither feeling norfunction is articulated as some surplus of nature or substance. In other words,when these characters are molded into categories and locked in the philoso­phemes through disjunctive oppositions, the discourse articulated and organizedby these paired categories would be not merely quiescent but also "transcenden­talistic."

Ai, Qr love (2-20), is the principle Ito posits against the "transcendentalistic"discourse and upon which he forms his conception of ethics and sociality. But aiis no longer grounded in the mind, as it was in Song rationalism, or seirigaku (2­21), in which ethics was always understood as a matter within the scope of thefaculty of the mind (shin, xin, 1-17). Fundamentally Ito's understanding of loveis informed by a new interpretation of the personal encounter, in which a personcomes across another in a basically nonreciprocal and asymmetrical manner. (Itgoes without saying that neither reciprocity or symmetry implies equality here.On the contrary, the relationship of loyalty, of the lord and the vassal, forinstance, can be conceived of as a reciprocal and symmetrical relation in thiscontext). But instead of analyzing this nonreciprocal encounter, Ito Jinsai demon­strates how love should not be construed in terms that necessarily posit the mindas a faculty by which reciprocal relations are constituted. Reciprocity can beconstrued in two ways: (1) as the differentiation or distinction of two oppositeterms and (2) as the equality of the two terms. The interchangeability of op­posites, then, requires an economy that governs difference and identity: thesurplus between difference and identity must be carefully restrained. First of all,there must be the field in which both terms share the same quality, so thatcomparison is possible, or to put it another way, these two terms must partake ofthe same genre. Only insofar as they are identified in terms of the same set ofuniversals can it be possible to talk about the particularities of each term, whichare predicated upon it and constitute their respective identities as subjects(shugo).

In the discussion of ethics and sociality, however, each term is also a subjectwho knows its other term, not merely a subject predicated upon the proposition

Silence at the Center76

but also a subject (shukan 2-22) who recognizes the other. Primarily, the ethicaland social relationship between the two terms appears to be that between the selfand the other, the one who recognizes as the subject (shukan) and the on~ who isrecognized as the object. At this stage, it is impossible to talk about reciprocitysince "I" as a subject definitely transcends ~'you" as an object. The otherpresents itself in the field in which it is recognized, and the presence of this fieldcoincides with the presence of the "I" as the subject. To recognize '~you" is tosubmit "you" as an object in my field of perception, and that field, which cannotbe thematically posited, is "I" as the subject (shukan). Without any doubt, therecannot be a reciprocal relationship between "you" and "me" at this stage. Inorder to have reciprocity between "you" and "I," therefore, there must be a thirdviewpoint to which "you" and ~'I" are present as two terms, as two subjects(shugo) who partake of the same essence and to whom different predicates areascribed.

~n ~ong rationalism, the aim of ethics and sociality is given as the ultimatecOIncIdence of this third viewpoint, which one might compare to the transcen­dental ego as a field of intersubjectivity, and the field of consciousness of aparticular subject (shukan) to which the other is present. It was presupposed thatone's particular field of consciousness could be identical with the field of thetranscendental ego. In this respect, the field thus acquired corresponds to thenotion of the mind, and the shared essence to human nature. Of course, the mindw~s said to be immanent in every human being, and from the viewpoint of themInd, every person was said to be interchangeable with another. And in relationto the mind, whi~h for Zhu Xi included the entire universe, the singularity ofeach person, precIsely because the single individual cannot be subsumed underthe subject (shugo), is of secondary importance, just as feeling is a derivative ofnature. Song rationalism projected a world where no otherness of the Other wasposs~ble, a world where the other could be exhaustively defined by a set ofpredIcates, a world where exteriority could ultimately be eliminated and doingcould be reduced to knowing. And all these ethical and epistemological claimswer~ mad: on the grounds that the feeling that appears in human beings is amanIfestatIon of and predetermined by nature, which is immanent in humanbeings, and that nature is substantial and feeling derivative. Thus the order ofnature and feeling had to be rigidly maintained, and the distinction between thetwo could never be abandoned.

But, when the assumed anteriority of nature to feeling is deconstructed and thepresumed authority of the mind is put in question, the sociality conceived of inthis format will undoubtedly collapse, with the result that the mind would thenb.ec?me .a closure incommensurable with other minds and would form a solip­SIstIC pnson.

.It~ 's conception of the distinction between nature and feeling obliterates thepnonty of nature over feeling and the separation between them. The contrastbetween Ito's argument and Zhu Xi's can be approached as nondisjunctive func-

tion versus disjunctive function. 26 This schema can be helpful in explaining thecore of the debate in the following passage, where Ito criticizes philosophemesorganized by disjunctive function: .

26Ito uses two temlS to conceptualize these functions: ryuk6 nondisjunctive opposition; taitai =disjunctive opposition. See Ito. Gomojigi, in Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 33 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.1971), pp. 15-16.

27Yong often rendered as function in English, is not to be confused with nondisjunctive anddisjunctive functions.

28Ito, Gomojigi (Nihon shiso taikei), p. 33.29Ibid., p. 34.

79Ito Jinsai

Here, the argument is conducted on two levels: first, Ito rejects the view thatBuddhism and Confucianism could be synthesized when the basic ideas in bothteachings had been adequately analyzed. This view has to be denied because itwas formulated on the basis of the theory of ti and yong. Second, the theory of tiand yong is impossible unless one adopts such an ontological ordering as regu­lates the relationship of nature and feeling in Song rationalism. The opposition ofti and yong is comparable to that of noumenon and phenomenon in that the tennsare not interchangeable, for ti is given priority over yong. But Confucianism,according to Ito, is a teaching based on the denial of this order, so that theadoption of such a doctrine indicates the heretical nature of this view. Further, heargues: "When one adopts the ti/yong opposition, Ii would then be regarded asthe ti and the event [ji, shi, 2-28] as the yong. It follows that, since ti is the rootand yong the branch, ti will be taken to be important, and yong unimportant."29

Only as long as the first term in the opposition is given ontological reality is itpossible to posit an entity behind appearance, since otherwise the oppositioncould be arranged to generate an indefinite sequence of causal relationships; anentity will be merely the appearance of another appearance and, therefore, there

Having heard of his doctrine [the theory of Hu Yun-feng, 2-23], the scholarsinferred that we Confucians differed from Buddhists only iIi the point of yong,27while we were very close to them as far as the ti [Tai. substance] of Ii was concerned.It should be said that such an understanding seriously obscures the Way. For wherethere is a root, there must be its branch [matsu, mo, 2-24] unthematically posited[as its opposite]. Where there is the branch, there cannot but be its root. [Since thesetenus always form an opposition], they differ not only in the application [yosho,yong chu, 2-25] but also in the ti, just as water and black are opposed to fire andwhite, and just as there is an irreconcilable separation between life and death, manand ghost. They are not interchangeable. When they said U[Their conceptions of]vacuity [2-26] and annihilation [2-27] are similar to ours in respect ofli," it was asif one shared a bath with others and laughed at them because they were naked. Howcould we maintain the fundamental difference between Confucianism and Bud­dhism? ... The theory of ti and yong was invented in modem times. The ancientsages' writings never mentioned this doctrine. 28

Silence at the Center78

80 Silence at the Center

can be no ontological priority in the relationship of an appearance to anotherappearance. A ti can be a ti of a ti, but the ti itself could also be a yong of ~~mother

ti, so that it is impossible to determine the final and ultimate entity that can nt?verbe a yong of something else. In Dojimon, Ito poses this question:

Question: I learned this from Zhu Xi: he said, "There is a difference within Iibetween "being as it should be" [2-29] and ~~being as it is" [2-30]. "Being as itshould be" is the ti and "being as it is" is the manifestation [2-31] of "being as itshould be." Therefore, he further said, yin and yang are naturally material beingsunder the form [1-15]. The great ultimate is naturally the Way above the form [1,­14]. According to the lecture you have just given, [all beings] are events belong­ing to "being as it is" and will never reach the substantiality of "being as it shouldbe." That is, they are all yong but never ti. Does this view seem too extreme and,as a result, sound too superficial?

Answer: Can't you see that what is called the Ii of "being as it should be" is nothingbut the reason why people are as they are, why things are as they are, and why yinand yang mutually replace each other, one increasing as the other decreases? Yin­yang is not the Way, indeed. The Way is nothing but the fact that yin and yangnever cease to replace each other and exchange each other. When yin and yang aremutually interchangeable, therein lies the Way of heaven. When solidity [2-32]and softness [2-33] are mutually replaceable, therein lies the Way of earth. Whenbenevolence and righteousness are mutually complementary, therein lies the Wayof men. 30

Li is no longer the principle that simultaneously governs the intelligibility ofoccurrences and the generation of things in the world. It has lost its a priorivalidity and been demoted to the status of a posteriori regularity. Furthermore, Iiis now stripped of its power to detennine what is to be realized in the process ofgenesis. New things are continually created in the world, but Ii is no longer theprinciple whereby to predetermine and predict what should be generated; Ii haslost its qualification as the principle of genesis: "One ought to see it is not thatthere being Ii first, qi is generated according to 1i."31 Once the ontological orderis no longer in effect, Ii cannot posit the realm of essences, which demands itsindependent existence beyond this world. It is declared definitively and almosttriumphantly that the world is as it is-nothing lies behind the surface of ap­pearances-and that the ultimate nothingness (2-24) Song Confucians oncedescribed as having no voice and no smell is a delusion from which one must becured, As the supremacy of Ii gradually declines, one recognizes the visibilityand concreteness of the world, the world filled with things visible, audible,tactile, or in a word, sensible. A new field of discourse is now being opened upwhere sensuality, perception, and emotion, which have hitherto been excludedfrom verbalization, are to be affirmatively articulated. In addition, this world has

3°lto, Dojimon, p. 137.31Ito, Gomojigi (Hayashi ed.), Tendou, 3d article.

Ito Jinsai 81

neither an anc~orage in the "beyond" nor an explicit thematization of the fixedcenter from ~hlch~e social can be organized. In this sense, it is afloating worldwher~ the dIst~nce In d~pth between signifier and signified is constantly trans­lated Into a honzontal distance between one signifier and another on the surfacew~ere an endless series of signifiers generates and regenerates a multiplicity ofobjects for the senses.

Notwithstanding that Ito could not give a distinctive fonn of articulation to thecenter, ~ think: that ~is philosophy is actually organized around a certain ap­prehenSion of the SOCial. The deployment of figurative expressions I have notedsuggests that it must be nea:'. vulgar, mundane, and low, but I cannot identify aset of statements or propoSitions that describe, explain, or determine what thisa~prehensi~n is a~ut, It is referred to only metaphorically or in negating others'mlsconce~tlons of It. I can only guess where and what this center is from Ito'smany denIals of and objections to views that would supposedly contradict hisfund~ental c.onviction. He. never !llustrates the image of it: either its image isfor hI~ es~entIally not an object of Illustration, or it exists in such a way as neverto be Im~gIned. Th~s, ~h~t I can say at best is that the center is a place of silencefrom which verbahzatlon IS excluded. It seems to remain unthinkable.

Why is it silent? Why does Ito have to reject any literal explication and allowonly metaphorical references to it? Is his conviction of such a nature that it cannever be explicated in words at all?

The Problem of Change

What is striking in the treatises of Ito Jinsai is the absence of a theoreticale~planation about the authenticity and the orthodoxy of Confucian nonns. I findthiS ~ather unusual eve,n whe~ I take into account that Ito elaborates his philoso­p~Y .In the f~rm. of lexlcologlcal commentaries on the major concepts of Confu­cl~nls~ as slgmfied by ideographic characters and their compounds. When cer­tain ethical formulas are rejected on the grounds that they are artificial inventionsby Song Confucians, we encounter an abundance of reasoning. Yet when itcomes to ~o~e nonns that Ito agrees with, his reasoning is extremely brief,~lmo,st negh~Ible.. Apart from the intertextual network in which his argumenta­tIon IS orgamzed In reference to the Chinese classics and the commentaries onthem b~ later writers, another factor prevents norms from being posited indeclarative statements. The apparent lack of deductive reasoning, I think, testi­fies to the problematical position of ethics and consequently to the emergence ofa new problem concerning the legitimation of social control in the eighteenthcentury.

For Zhu Xi, there were two different conceptualizations of the self: shen(body, 1-22) and xin (mind, 1-17). On the one hand~ qi was attributed to shenbecause of its individuality, which could never be construed in universal terms.

32Ito, Gomojigi (Hayashi ed.), Toku, 2d article.

33Ibid.

Xin, on the other hand, was associated with nature and so was equated to a fonnof Ii immanent in every person. Just as every phenomenon had to be divi.ded into4'being as it should be" and "being as it is," human existence was reduced to"what one should be" and "what one is." Since in Zhu's discourse ideationalintentionality was conjunctively merged with practical intentionality, the concep­tion of the mind already implied the immanence of universal nonns in one'sexistence. Hence, the distinction of shen and xin was inCOrPOrated into theprocess of self-elevation in learning, at the beginning of which xin-~ind-"whatone should be," was obscured by qi-self-shen. Through the learning process,however, qi-self-shen would be eliminated to reveal the mind clearly. . .

Such a dichotomy as body/mind could no longer be acceptable to Ito JlnSal.Man is entirely corporeal, and there cannot be anything like the inner mi~d inman: "Zhu Xi fabricated the statement on virtue by putting the character 'mind'in place of the character 4body. ' "32 Ito grants the human body importance: it is

an existence irreducible to an essence.As the human body emerges from the exclusion, ethical norms, which could

be postulated in forms applicable to any situation, have to be re-evaluated.Accordingly, the sphere of "nearness" obliquely hinted at by the 44here" and"now" is connected to shen and has to intrude on the theoretical considerationabout the validity of norms in a specific situation. But if any statement has to beassociated with one's own body and is thereby reduced to the originary speechact confined to a specific here and now, how can the universality of ethicalimperatives be maintained? In this instance, one must be aware,. Ito .is saying notthat the already existing norms are unimportant but that the applicatIon or execu­tion of the norms determines and establishes their validity. Ethical imperativesthat are not actually performed are irrelevant to his notion of ethics and sociality.For Ito, ethics is, above all, a matter of praxis. In this sense, Ito's argument issurprisingly simple, even simplistic. The validity of a statement, from this view­point, consists in the immediate and direct involvement of the body in a co~cretesituation with specific people. Therefore, his ethics pertains to the cogniZanCethat one's body and its singularity cannot be excluded from consideration. Thesingularity of the body is no longer a deviation from norms; if norms are to beeffective, they must be postulated in such a way as not to hinder the activities andchanges that human bodies constantly incur. "What is called good," he says,"cannot be postulated in a definitive shape [keijo, xing zhuang, 2-35].... Oneshould not admonish it in language."33 What is righteous in one situation couldbe deceitful in another. The norms that have to be rejected in one situation mightbe acceptable in another. It seems that the actual execution of the norms oft~n,probably too often, proves their ineffectiveness; the norms do not seem to gUideone toward a successful mastery of the situation. Yet the self is not a fixed, stable

34Ibid.

83Ito Jinsai

~in.t either. Both the norm and the self are constantly changing. Here is theSIgnIficance of Ito's term ryiiko. (Ii xing •. 2-36), which I render as Uconstant~utu~l change" (between yin and yang). From the viewpoint of textual forma­tIon, It refers to the insight, fundamental in Ito's critique of Song rationalismthat good can~ot ~e contained within the existing discursive economy and there~fo~e necess~nly dlscl~ses t~e textual ~ateriality of the social world. When ap­phed to SOCIal formatlon-mdeed, SOCIal formation is inscriptive and thereforean effect ~f t~xtual f~rmation-this term means the impossibility to formalizegood, whI~h IS changIng all the time. Good always exceeds what one might call4'c~nf~rmlt~ to' the norm.". ~in~e the norms should correlate to the situation,Wh.IC~ IS flUId by nature, flUIdIty IS the essential feature of the ethical too. But thisflUIdIty, It? argues, is n~ mere arbitrary unstableness, nor do events take placepurely acc~dentally. SO, IS there ground on which to make an evaluative judgmentof the affaIrs of society? "When [it] is good, [it] is in accordance [with fluidity]When [it] is eVil, [it] is in opposition [to fluidity]. "34 .

. What is.most.significant in this argument is an urge to escape from an existingdiscourse In which phenomenal regularities and transcendent norms are believedto coi~cide ~ith each other without mediation. If the regularities one acknowl­edges In one Instance are identical with rules that are applicable to all cases, theprobh~m of. the ~uman bod! in relation to particular situations and specificoccaSions wIll~ Irrelevant SInce the regularity that is found in a specific instance~an be.g~nerahzed and confirmed without reference to the originary scene whereIts Vah?Ity was first. es~ablished. As the enunciated, a proposition stating theregulanty would be mdlfferent to the shutai and the topos of enunciation. Re­~a:dless0: who first uttered i~ or where it was uttered, the proposition, as long asIt IS conCeIVe? ~f as.an enunCIated, remains identical and thereby gains universal(general) :ahdlty; It becomes independent of its originary speech act. It isthrough thiS effacement ~ha~ an enunciated acquires universal applicability. As amatt~r of fact, the constitutIOn of observable regularity turned into transcendent~le IS ~ynonymous with the process inherent in every utterance when the speak­Ing sU~Ject and the topos of the enunciation are erased. In the discourse where thered.u~tlon of the enunciation to the enunciated is the rule, what is described as theflUIdIty of the situation is certainly counterproductive and most often has to beneglected. As long as one upholds this reduction, it is evident that one can talkonly in negative terms about the specificity of the enunciation, the situation andone's b~y involved in things and others. Indeed, Ito proposes the contrar;,: heemphaSIzes the specificity of an occasion on which a person encounters an otheror ~thers and confirms the irredeemability of a singular experience. If this is not aP?llosophical pro~ect limited to mere insistence on particularism, undoubtedlydIscurSive formation at large must be reorganized in order to accommodate somerecognition of the enunciation and the problematics accompanying it. The phrase

Silence at the Center82

35Ibid.

"Ii in qi" suggests a new link to a different regime of social action. The on­tologicalorder in which Ii has been given priority over qi is now made to.stand onits head: "One should see, it is posterior to the being of qi that its Ii arises. What

is called Ii is only a pattern on qi. "35

Qi, that which cannot be grasPed in the form of the enunciated, pre~edes Ii; anutterance is always dependent on the singularity of the agent of actIon, of theaddressee to whom the action is directed, and of the situation in which it isuttered and which cannot be thematically verbalized in itself. Further, Ito argues,what can be fixed in the enunciated and exhaustively presented by Ii is not life; Iiis a dead character (2-37), whereas life is constant change and cannot be petri­fied in words. Contrary to Song rationalism, words are always activated by thechanging situation insofar as they are meaningful and actively affecting peopleengaged in everyday activities in a particular environment.

The rejection of Ii as the character was defined by Zhu, however, does notprohibit the use of the word "Ii." Of course, Ito uses the word differently fr.omZhu. In Zhu's discourse, it was a principle, a special term with strong theoretIcalimplication; in Ito's discourse Ii simply means intelligibility, tha~ somet~ingmakes sense. In Dojimon. Chuyo hakki, and Gomojigi, the word IS wellinte­grated into the context, so that it does not stand out by itself. When Ito rejectedthe immediate equation of regularities observed in one specific instance to tran­scendent norms, the limit of the discourse was rendered explicit, with a conse­quence of disqualifying its assumed claim to universal validity and t~en breakingopen its closure. Thus, Ito is diametrically opposed to the conception of no~saccording to which the cohesiveness of a particular group is reinforced by theIr

repetitive application.This general shift in the discursive formation generated a crevice between the

ideational and the material aspects of the text, thereby exposing what could not becontained in the discourse. There emerged a sense of disparity between thenarrated experience that was intersubjectively shared in a given regime and theperceived experience, and the assumed correspondence t~at had g~aranteedthe putative adequacy of the narrated experience to the perceIved expen~nce ~asdislocated. Textual materiality disrupted the stable closure of the dIscursIveeconomy, so that historical accidents could not be contained in discourse. It was nolonger possible to presuppose beyond dispute that what was good now and herewould be good in the future and elsewhere. The priority of the human body somanifestly discernible in Ito's writings is certainly not without connection to thischange. The introduction of the human body opened up a completely newpossibility of discourse and, simultaneously, problematized the rules of the old

discursive formation.In Ito's treatises, what assures the meaningfulness of meaning is its adherence

to the text's heterogeneity to discourse. It seems that what is referred to as "real"is exactly this mode of the referential function in which the meaningfulness of an

36The questio~. o~ perspective, indeed, occupies the central position in our discursive and percep­tua~ scheme, ~~Ich I,S often referred ~o as.humanism. In painting, the linear perspective is a very rigidregime orgamzmg VIsual texts, and In thiS case too. humanism is a certain discursive fonnation thatmust continually be historicized .

.37~or th~ problematic of simultaneity, see William Haver, "The Body of This Death: Alterity inNishida-PhIlosophy and Post-Marxism" (Ph.D. diss" University of Chicago, 1987).

85Ito Jinsai

utterance is subjected to the human body'8 involvement in the situation throughits corporeal action. Yet one must not presume that the introduction of the humanbody automatically leads to the constitution of the linear perspective in which theviewer's own body is the center of sight, itself invisible while things and othersare ,objects deployed within this field of visibility.36 Nor did it lead to theconception of Ute human body as the primordial ground of intercorporeity, whichassures the harmonious integration of a human existence into communality.Together with the human body, the heterogeneous erupts within the supposedclosure of discourse, thereby dislocating and preventing the body from consol­idating its adequacy to itself; in fact, I understand one's own body as the center ofdecentering. Hence, in Ito's treatises, decentering and the predominance of theenunciation give rise to the sort of field where a text is grasped in its relatednessto what is excluded in discourse or what thinking cannot reach.

Two theses can be drawn from this analysis. First, the performative situation inwhich one's body and others' bodies are immediately connected to mundane andtrivial events and things of everyday life is, in fact, similar to a dramaturgicalspace. But as the opposition inner/outer has already shown us, both performerand audience are in this performative situation. Therefore, the possibility of thedualistic constitution of representational theater, in which the audience does notparticipate in performance, is excluded. The separation of the viewer from theviewed is against what Ito calls movement; so the movement of including theviewer in performance is always at work. Instead of a rather static and meditative(theoretical) attitude, this demands an active bodily involvement in a givensituation. Indeed, the use of language is legitimated only insofar as it is a meansfor this experiential participation.

Second, this kind of dramaturgical space has its own structure: the differentia­tion of that which manifests itself from that which plays the role of the horizonfor the manifested. As the term "situation" suggests, the horizon cannot beovertly presented, since, once it is exhaustively revealed, it ceases to be thehorizon and becomes manifest. This differentiation, which could be construed asa framing, differs from those of phenomenon/noumenon, appearance/substance,or unveiled/veiled, however, because there is on constant linkage between themanifested and the horizon. As the horizon changes, so does the meaning of themanifested. In fact, what we understand as the meaning of an event, action, orutterance is its relationship to the horizon. What mediates between the horizonand the manifested is, indeed, the human body, which is in movement togetherwith other bodies in the same situation. The simUltaneity, as distinct from thesynchroneity, can be defined only in this bodily mediation. 37 Therefore, the

Silence at the Center84

38Ito, Gomojigi (Nihon shiso taikei), p. 31.391t is interesting to note that another opposition, of real grapheme (2,-42) to unr~al graph~me (2­

43), is introduced here. Obviously these terms derive from grammatlcal cat~gon~s: no~mal andverbal. What he tries to show is that the substantialization of nature in Song rallonahs~ denves fr~mthe minimalization of the characters denoting natures; those characters used as v~rbal~ m the cl~SSlCSwere read by Song Confucians as nouns. It is impo~ant, ho~ever: that despite hIS emphaSIS ~nchange, movement, and action. Ito still accepts the C~mese phIlolog~calleg~c~ that charac~ers w~thnominal function represent realness more than those with verbal functiOn. ThiS IS ~ne of the mconsl.s­tendes I find in his treatises. As I will demonstrate, the relationship between nommal and verbal Will

be reversed in eighteenth-century language studies, . ..4OA. 1. Greimas, Structural Semantics, trans. D. McDowell, R. Schleifer, and A. Velte (Lmcoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 32-76.

simultaneous always occurs as fleeing, framing, and differing, as an asym­metrical parergonal separation. The body, insofar as it is the shutai, is the centerof decentering that gives rise to the present as the simultaneous, and the presentthus given can never be reduced to any "presence to itself," precisely because iteffectuates as decentering, fleeing, framing, and differing and never returns to

itself.Thus, Ito postulates that only when one is involved in a performative situation

can one attain an authentic understanding of the event happening in it. Involve­ment and participation are the fundamental conditions for the intelligibility ofthings and actions. But this postulate must, in tum, provide an explanation ofwhy and how "transcendentalism" and what he calls "separation" are possible.Decisive in this regard is the opposition death/life.

This opposition is dual. It is at the same time disjunctive and nondisjunctivebecause, according to Ito, things with which a perfonnative situation is filled upare classified into two groups: animated things and inanimate things. At onelevel, Ii is thought of as a regularity governing inanimated things. He writes,"You should see the character li belongs to event-things.... The character waywas a living word in origin, and it described the secret of genesis and change.The character Ii was a dead character in origin and was composed of yue (2-38)and Ii (2-39), which meant patterns on jewel. Therefore, it is put forth for thepurpose of describing regularities in event-things, but it is inadequate to d~scri~e

the secret of genesis and change in heaven and earth." 38 In accordance With thISclassification is another opposition: action (2-40/being (2-41).39 Action is asso­ciated with performance, change, and life, and being with a static entity, things,and death. Thus, at this level, the opposition life/death is disjunctive since in thisrelationship one tenn is defined as a negative of another so that the two tennstogether form a symmetrical opposition. Ito also argues, however, that life an.ddeath should never be grasped as unchangeable opposites, because death IS

merely the end of a life. Heaven and earth continue to generate and regenerate,so that a performative situation as a whole never ceases to change but always

belongs to life.What allows for the duality of this opposition is the coexistence of seme and

lexeme, to use the tenninology of A. 1. Greimas.4o By juxtaposing other lex-

emes, I can illustrate that the same opposition functions metaphysically aboutitself. In Table I, life is at the same time a member of a lexeme and a seme. As alexeme, the opposition lifeldeath simply refers to the presence (+) or absence(-) of animation, change, and movement, but when we take into account theasymmetrical opposition according to which only things with life can die (inani­mate things cannot die, cannot even be called dead), members of lexemes charac­terized by the absence of the seme "life" are excluded from the possibility ofbeing subsumed under the seme: mutuality. Therefore, these terms "being" and"'things" are neutral as to the nondisjunctive opposition of life and death and arenegative in terms of disjunctive opposition.

Because the nondisjunctive opposition is given priority over the disjunctive inIto's philosophy, those things categorized as static and inanimate have to besubjected to movement and animation. Consequently, "being" and "things,"which appear static and are indifferent to the seme of mutuality, can be includedand admitted in Ito's version of Confucianism only insofar as they are taken to becorrelatives of change and movement. As long as the nondisjunctive function isdominant in the discourse, inanimate things are secondary and can be talkedabout only provisionally. Only in relation to change and movement-that is, tofeeling and desire (I will return to these terms)- can inanimate things enterdiscussion. Although there is, as Table 1 shows, a question concerning the termsdesignating inanimate things, Ito flatly rejects further debate about them on thegrounds that they do not concern him since they are not directly connected to livemen. For him, to talk about things for their own sake would amount to a sheerwaste of time. He is preoccupied with the problem of praxis, which necessarilybrings about change and movement-hence, the absence of cosmology andphysics in his philosophy. Yet, although what one might call scientific interest inthings in general was not permitted to articulate itself in Ito's treatises, I wouldlike to point out that certain kinds of things that had hitherto been excluded fromdiscursive possibility were to emerge, to be meditated upon, and thereby to begiven recognition as objects of discourse in Ito's writings: they are things of

87Ito Jinsai

Presence of seme: + positive, - negative.

Table 1.

seme symmetrical asymmetrical

~ life life and death

life + +death 0

action + +being 0

men + +things 0

Silence at the Center86

88 Silence at the Center

everyday life;-food, clothes, money, bodies of other people, and so on-asobjects of desire t as objects connected to live men. <

What this change hints at will prove to be very important in the context of myargument. As a result of the shift in discursive formation, the status of langua~ewas reorganized in discourse. And as the emergence of the agent of the enunCia­tion indicates, the rupture between the speech act and the speech content wasrendered explicit, eventually, as we will observe, leading to, an irreconc~labledichotomy between speech and writing. This shift also gave nse to a new Inter­texuality in which a passage from nonverbal texts to written texts was estab­lished. Most important, the human body and the subject of the enuncia~ionentered the verbal text. (The complicated rapport between these two determIna­tions of the "I," far from uniform, will be discussed later.) That is to say, thewritten text was reduced to the human body in an unexpected fashion,- andconcurrently, the human body was presented as a site where different ways ofcategorizing speech and writing compete with one another. Along with the reduc­tion of the enunciated to the enunciation, we can observe in the new discourse apersistent tendency to animate written texts. What is suggested by Ito's emphasison the heterogeneity of feeling is exactly this: the human body as text and the textas the human body. In eighteenth-century discourse after Ito's, however, thehuman body would again be appropriated in discourse, as I will show mainly inPart Three, and conceived of not as a site of otherness but as a guarantee of

communality.In the meantime, let me stay with Ito with a view to further exploring the

ethicopolitical implications of his writings.

CHAPTER 3

Textuality and Sociality: The Question of

Praxis, Exteriority, and the Split in Enunciation

Feeling and Textuality

Then how does the human body incorporate itself into a performative situationsince it is not simply a thing juxtaposed to other things? Is it incarnated there byvirtue of its being the anchorage for consciousness? There must be a structurethrough which it is involved in a situation when it cohabits with other humanbeings.

Ito Jinsai seems to explicate this structure of the human body's involvement inthe situation in terms of feeling. As I have shown, he reversed the ontologicalorder of nature and feeling, and yet he continued to deploy his argument withinthe same theoretical framework. What kind of concern made him hesitate toconstruct a new conceptual system within which feeling could be identified asoriginary and not derivative? What prevented him from developing some affirma­tive conception of feeling to replace the rather negative notion that functioned inhis critique of the Song rationalists' ontology of nature and Ii?

In Zhu Xi's dualistic philosophy, mainly because of the ontological order,nature was understood as transcendent,l possessing universalistic applicability,whereas feeling was exclusively confined to the particularity of specific occa­sions. It was considered not only a concretization of nature but also its particu­larization. When Ito replaced the disjunctive function, which had enabled forma­tion of the philosopheme feeling/nature, with the non-disjunctive function, itbecame impossible to maintain the apriority of nature. Nature and feeling wereput on equal footing, differing only in that feeling was considered movement and

lSong rationalism draws no deliberate distinction between the transcendent and the transcendentallike that in Kantian epistemology or Husserlian phenomenology, and so, universality as transcenden­tal ideality and universality as empirical generality are not differentiated as I have repeatedly indi­cated by the phrase "universal (general). "

89

2Ito Jinsai, Gomojigi in Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 33 (Tokyo: lwanami Shoten, 1971), p. 56.3lto rejects any further argument about the reason why man is man and why beings in the world are

detennined as such, on the grounds that it is beyond human capacity to know the answer to this kindof question. He does not imply that beings in the world are determined as such eternally or trans-

historically.

nature was nQt. Feeling could no longer be considered derivative of nature, forthere could be neither a generative nor a causal relationship between them.Instead of. "nature as being as it should be" (3-1), Ito introduced the notion of"nature as qi" (3-2) by which to indicate a certain regularity observable in thingsand events: UWhat is eye for visual image, ear for voice, mouth for taste, andmembers for comfort is called nature. That the eye desires to see a beautifulimage, the ear to hear a good sound, the mouth to savor a good taste, themembers to have comfort is called feeling."2

Obviously, the postulate ~'nature as qi" strips nature of imperative implication:it is merely a datum. Just as a cow cannot be anything but a cow, a human beingis biologically determined as a human being, and this determination is nature.

3

But because of the transitiveness inherent in feeling, nature can be innatelyoriented toward ethical action. A human being can execute an ethical deed withinthe scope determined by his or her nature or disposition, not because ethicalimperatives are encoded in human nature but because one is fully capable ofethical' action if one wishes it. Of course, as one cannot expect fish to fly, onecannot demand of a human being something beyond his or her disposition. In thissense, a human being is determined by his or her nature. This does not mean,however, that one's disposition dictates what one ought to do: ethical imperatives

are not inscribed in human nature.As a matter of fact, Ito's intervention reveals a general characteristic of Song

rationalism: that its merger between cosmology and ethics was sustained by theassumption that the description of what a human being is should be able todetermine the prescription of what he or she ought to do. In Song rationalistdiscourse, therefore, the prescriptive was taken to be reducible to the descriptive;the prescriptive was, in the final analysis, derived from the descriptive. Whereasdescription posits a thing or a state of affairs in stasis, in the mode of "what itis," prescription, by contrast, involves the moment of change without which theprescriptive would be utterly senseless precisely because prescription concernsitself not with being but with doing. As has been repeatedly affirmed, change ispositive in Ito Jinsai's ethics, and the transitiveness inherent in feeling inevitablyutilizes nature as a disposition toward prescribed goals.

Despite the fact that nature as well as feeling is defined as a particularizingprinciple, the change to which feeling pertains is always oriented toward theOther, that is, toward that which is not present within the economy of a givendiscourse. It is noteworthy that Ito also preserved the classical definition of desirethat Song rationalists had endorsed: the desire of nature (3-3) is movement,change (2-17). Desire, in this instance, is not a movement to return to the

4For Ito Jinsai, good is essentially an ideal universality whose responsiveness to and validity forevery~dy should be considered as givens. Yet it is not a universality in the sense of empiricalgenerahty, not a regularity governing experience.

SAs ,I will show in the following chapters with regard to the writings of Ogyu Sorai and others, thefor:matlon of ~he co~cept of individual and social "feeling" at a level distinct from that of particu­lansm and unlversaltsm cannot be overemphasized, for the validation of moral and legal control ofthe society would be almost impossible if legal regulations could not be verified in universalisticterms. Social control is possible only where uniformity and subsequent confonnity prevail, howeversmall and fragmented the domain of its application might be. In this sense, social control must alwaystake ,th,e fonn of this kind of universalism. One should remind oneself, however, that particularism orrel~lIvlsmalso presupposes and necessitates universalism. On the one hand, particularism means the~mqueness, ~xcepti?nal character, or irregularity of some community, society, or "culture" in rela­tion to what IS ronsldered general. No doubt these attributes-uniqueness, irregularity, and so on­would not make sense without reference to generality and regularity. On the other hand, in order toabstract these qualities from a particular community, society, or "culture," one has to generalize,normalize, and universalize them among the factors of which that particular society or community is

91Textuality and Sociality

destined goal, and therefore Zhu Xi had to talk about desire as the deviation fromand obscuration of nature. Relying on the exactly identical comprehension of thisterm, Ito could expose and mark in the Confucian tradition a possibility for theprescriptive which Song rationalist discourse could not accept or accommodatebecause it would have counteracted the principle of reduction to the descriptivewhich was dominant in Song rationalism: Ito's specific understanding of ~'feel­

ing and desire" (3-4) suggested some theoretical consequences of the reversal ofthe ontological order and introduced the notion that the prescriptive was irreduci­ble to the descriptive. Denial of the anteriority of nature to feeling implies thatthe prescriptive is not grounded in the descriptive and also that the prescriptivepoints beyond what can be made present to the mind. The prescriptive designatesthe impossible within the restricted economy of a given discourse. Hence, onecan legitimately claim that feeling is the structural linkage between the humanbody as passage toward the heterogeneous and the performative situation astopos of what makes an utterance meaningful but is unrepresentable itself. Need­less to say, the performative situation is understood as a sort of context, a text orgroup of texts that surrounds an utterance but can never be thematically marked.As soon as it is posited as a theme, or shudai, it becomes an object in discourse,with the result of generating a further context. The performative situation is acontext only insofar as it cannot be talked about, that is, only insofar as it isheterogeneous to discourse.

For this reason, seemingly conflicting claims could be copossible. On the onehand, Ito says several times, "things are different from one another because offeeling." Here, feeling individuates things. On the other hand, he maintains that,because of feeling, human beings desire good that is universal, and he talks about"the common feeling of the world" (3-5). 4 What is significant in this argument isthat feeling as a category is indifferent to the two modes of determination,particularity and universality (generality), and consequently, the problem of sin­gularity and sociality is to be articulated without being disturbed by the dichoto­my particularism/universalism. 5

Silence at the Center90

Man, who is endowed with his body and human feeling, would never be able to be

utterly devoid of selfish desire.6

The self (1-19) in this statement is a correlative of human desire, and it ispresumed that to have desire is immediately to posit the self. But Ito also says:

Buddhists and Taoists seek the Way in their selves. Because they seek the Way intheir selves, they don't care whether it conforms to the. world o~ not. Bein~ con­cerned only with whether or not they are pure and devOld of deslre and seekmg. toachieve the peace in their selves, they eventually abandon ethical sense and abohsh

manners and rites.?

93Textuality and Sociality

8Ibid.9Mencius, trans. D. C. Lau (Hannondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 163, translation modified. See

also Moshi in Shinshaku kanbun taikei, vol. 4 (Tokyo: Meiji-shoin, 1962), p. 387.

true self-shudai as thematically reflected upon. Here, Ito attests to the primor­dial immediacy according to which the self is at the same time posited as anindividual and linked to the object of desire and the perfonnative situation ingeneral. Indeed, such a conception of immediacy was rendered possible by a newlo§ic that took into account the limit of discourse and its inherent textuality.Hence, Ito could maintain, justifiably and without disturbing the consistency ofhis thought, that the essential feature of the ethical lay in the ability of feeling topenetrate the surrounding world and constitute itself as the desire of the world(3-5), and he could simultaneously claim: "The other person and I (1-20) aredifferent in that' we have different bodies and different qi. One does not partici­pate in another person's pain and itch. It is even more so with regard to thedifference between man and things since [man and things] differ in species shape.How can they ever communicate with each other?"8

In feeling, therefore, the self and sociality are complementary to each other,assuming that the singularity of one's body and of things is always already givenas a fact of qi. It is not the physical being of a person as body but the identity ofman as constituted by a certain discursive fonnation that Ito Jinsai puts intoquestion. Evidently one cannot experience exactly the same as another as long asone is equated to shutai, one's body. Hence, Ito Jinsai warded off the insertion ofa primordial communality such as sensus communis J the sense of communalitybased on shared senses. (1 will observe the formation in discourse of the sense ofprimordial communality and its political significance when I undertake a readingof Ogyu Sorai.) The difference in the constitution (3-6) of human bodies cannotbe overcome no matter how humane and perceptive one may be toward another.Furthennore, it is almost nonsensical to talk about the sameness or commonnessof sensation at the primordial phase, which is supposedly also prelinguistic. Butaccording to Ito, Buddhist and Taoist teachings understood the identity of the selfdifferently; it was reduced to the self that is constituted discursively. Theirconception of sociality, Ito argued, was invariably confined to the closure of theself and, as a matter of fact, never went beyond the confines of the inner.

Ito'8 implicit but uncompromising insistence on the openness of sociality,however, seems to have given rise to many difficulties in conforming his view tothat of the Confucian classics. In the Mencius, for instance, one finds the follow­ing statement: "Benevolence, righteousness, observance of the rites, andwisdom are not welded onto me from the outside; they are in me originally."9However unequivocal the statement that the four natures of Song rationalism"are in me originally," obviously Ito could not accept this reading. Conse­quently, he had to try different readings in order to relieve the conception ofsociality from the confines of the inner, that is, being in the self originally. In

Silence at the Center92

The self referred to in this passage is viewed as detached and "separated" fromthe movement of desire. The shutai-self as a correlate of desire is affirmedbecause of its immediate linkage to the object of desire, whereas the shudai-selfas thematically reflected upon should be denied because it creates a rupture ornothingness that separates the self from the world. In the case of ~he self as .acorrelate of desire, desire obstructs and intervenes in the return to Its authentiCself which is defined in terms of innate human nature, irrespective of the fluidityof the situation, so that desire does not secure one's return to one's authentic and

supposed to consist. In other words, a society, community, or "culture" is represented in ~enns ofthese abstract and general qualities. We never encounter an otherness tha~ can be construed l~ .tennsof particularism and universalism; our confrontation with otherness begms when the opposition of

particularism and universalism itself collapses. . '6Ito, Dojimon, middle volume, chap. 9, manuscript 406178, Hayashi version (manuscnpt owned

by Tenri University Library).7Ibid.

Moreover, it is important to note that the transitiveness of feeli~g is stressed,with the effect that feeling is categorically opposed to any notion that maysuggest self-sufficiency or stability. More than anything else, it is a change an~movement so that it necessarily involves a transition of time. Nevertheless, Itdoes not h~ve a duration that can be measured, for no matter how short it may be,duration implies some constancy during the time it end~es. ~eith~r ~an ~eelingbe limited to the identity of an individual person or thing, since It IS neither aphenomenon taking place within the inner mind nor a state of things. Feeling ~s,as I have emphasized, a structure of linkage, a linkage of the ~uman body W.lth

the Other. In this regard, feeling is a form of affection and passion through whichone encounters the world: one is affected by the world. Ito's use of this termsuggests that it connotes much more than what we nonnally mean by the word"feeling." Thus, I am led to believe that the character qing (2-1) expresses amode of existence comparable to the concept of being-in-the-world.

It is in this context that the two uses of "self," which may often appear

contradictory, ought to be understood:

The Hayashi edition has:

lOMany of Ito Jinsai's manuscripts were obviously hand copied ~y his. disciples,. with marginalnotes later added by Ito himself. This jitsu bon is one of the few cases m whIch the mam tex.t was alsowritten down by Ito himself-hence, the "autographic edition."

[The statement] means "the four beginnings are in me originally." That is to say,naturally man is not conscious of [that is, does not think (3-7)] those from whichhuman nature derives.

95Textuality and Sociality

nings had to be distinguished from nature so that Ito could situate Mencius'sdoctrine of inherently good human nature. in the realm of feeling, not of natureas part of his ongoing critique of an essentialism of human nature. In view ofIto's understanding of sociality, it was absolutely necessary to release virtue (3-9)from t~e confines of human nature. This incompatibility with the Cheng-Zhufo~~tIon marked the initial moment of. Ito's departure from that philosophicaltradI~lon. ~hat may ap~ar a rather trivial issue of terminology, in fact, points to~e. site of lITeparable dIspute. Above an, these two distinctions on which ItoInSIsts amount to a question of the fundamental thesis of Song rationalismnamely, that sociality is to be construed as an experience for the mind. '

Song rationalism needed the concept of the mind as a topos: in the mind thehu~an being i~~uired into his or her own interiority and supposedly avoidedtak~ng up a position asymmetrical to that of others, particularly a position fromwh~ch to look down on others. The mind was equated to the universal position in",:hlch ~other's ~iewpoint substituted for one's own biased and particularizedVIewpoInt; the mInd, therefore, was thought of as a topos where one's self­~ente:edness ~as remedied. The mind could not be free from the positing of theImagIned totalIty that had been internalized in a particular Person, however. Farfrom e~empt fro~ the charges of totalization, the concept of the mind, just as inhumanism today, Imperceptibly re-introduced the vision of the whole with whichone was to identify and thereby authorized one to speak as if one had been freedfrom the particularity of the viewpoint. In the mind, "I" was always "we" asthe totality of humanity. '

Therefore, the virtue that is always and already innate in the mind is immedi­ately and universally valid since presence to the mind is equal to universality inthe sense of ~enera} validity. In this regard, the mind as it was postulated bySong ConfuCIans has to be apprehended as a field for universality, and its exis­tenc~ .has to be equ~ted to the possibility of universalization inherent in everyemplncal human beIng. As a matter of fact, it would be impossible to conceiveof universality in the sense of generality without some discursive apparatus suchas ~he mind. A~d ~recisely because of this universalizing faculty, Ito's sociality,WhICh necessanly Involves the otherness of people besides "me" or "us" cannot~~~~th~~m~. '

The Ethicality of Social Action

On the contrary, Ito Jinsai stressed that if sociality is ever possible at all it iso~ly so. outside the mind, outside the field of universals. 11 This is to sa;, theVIrtues 10 terms of which sociality inscribes itself cannot be reduced to human

l1Cf. ~ishida Kitaro, conce~ing ishiki co~sciousness. Consciousness is a field conSisting oflanguage m a loose sense or of '.t:'pansha-~mv~rs~ls.In consciousness, man is made to desire bylanguage. Hatarakumono kara mlrumonoe. m NIshida Kitaro zenshu. vol. 4 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shot­en, 1965), pp. 135-72.

Silence at the Center94

order to follow. the itinerary of his rereading of this passage, let me go throughtwo different editions of his moshikogi (Ancient meanings in the Mencius.).

The oldest extant edition of the moshikogi, generally referred to as jitsu bon(or the autographic edition) in the Kogido collection of the Ito family, nowpreserved in the Central Library at Tenri University in Nara, has been dated to asearly as 1683. 10 This edition consists of passages from the Mencius, togetherwith Zhu Xi's commentaries on the Mencius from Mozijizhu, which were exten­sively modified by Ito. Thus, from the reading of his manuscripts, it is obviousthat Ito gradually formulated his philosophy by erasing and modifying Zhu Xi'swords and inserting his own words in the midst of Zhu's passages. At the stage ofthe autographic edition his Moshikogi does not yet differ much from Zhu Xi'sMozi jizhu.

The last manuscript completed during Ito's lifetime is generally known as theHayashi edition. In this manuscript Zhu's commentaries on the Mencius havebeen reduced to a minimum, although the general form of Ito's commentary­argument remains the same. Basically his ideas are articulated as a refutation ofZhu Xi's powerful and overwhelming interpretation of the classic Mencius.

The theoretical problem with which Ito struggled is revealed in the significantdifferences between these two editions. For example, the autographic edition has:

Song rationalists inferred from this passage in the Mencius that benevolence,righteousness, observance of the rites, and wisdom are in "me" originally ashuman nature. Ito had to interfere with this reading in order to distinguish humannature (sei, xing, 1-10) from virtue (toku, de, 3-9), on the one hand, and thebeginning (tan, duan, 3-10) from human nature, on the other. The four begin-

"Being [in me] originally" means that there are necessarily the hearts (= mind) of thefour beginnings in a man whereby he is capable of attaining in himself the virtues ofbenevolence, dutifulness, observance of the rites, and wisdom. Naturally, a man is notconscious of [= does not think} them. . . ." It is stupid directly to equate these fOUf[the hearts of compassion, of shame, of respect, and of right and wrong] to benev­olence, righteousness [dutifulness in Lau's translation], observance of the rites, andwisdom. What are called benevolence and righteousness simply designate the natures;they are not the names of these natures. . . . The ancient Confucians did not denotethe character "nature" with these two characters "being in me originally" [3-8]. Whatare referred to as "being in me originally" cannot be in me originally.

nature, to making the universals present to the mind. In this respect, the virtuesnot only must not reside in "me" but also should not be able to be made presentto the mind: virtue should not abide with either my "self" or the "other" self butwith the Other. I think it is in order to accommodate these theoretical demandsthat Ito had to put forth a rather forced reading of "being in me [= the self]originally" (koyuu, 3-8). This reading strategy discloses what I wouldJ.ike to callthe prescriptive aspect of virtue.

Furthennore, Ito thus pointed out an unbridgeable gap between the descriptiveand the prescriptive. Ultimately his critique of Song rationalism boils down torejection of the rationalists' reduction of doing what one should do to thinking it,which erased the fundamental heterogeneity of praxis to thought. Instead ofadmitting the materiality or, more precisely, the textual materiality of the bodybecause of which the text of action, a text called action, is always heterogeneousto the thought or intention of the acting subject, Song rationalism postulatedaction as an externalization or expression in which what has been thought isrealized in concrete and material fonn. The entire discussion of the ethicalsignificance of action, therefore, ensues within the framework of expressivecausality in their discourse. Hence, they had to insist on the merger of ideationalintentionality and practical intent, and also on the ontological order of nature andfeeling according to which the aim of ethical action is to make what one has doneidentical to what one has thought. They provided a metaphysical guarantee thatbecause what one has done is already innate in what one has thought, doing isbound to coincide with thinking unless an external disturbance interferes with thedue process. Here I must note that the ethicality of Song rationalism consists inthe successful elimination of external interference. The rationalists' conceptionof ethical action thus requires the elimination of heterogeneity, textual mate­riality, and ultimately the otherness of the Other. In this sense, theirs was an ethicfor homogeneous communality.

By contrast, Ito saw the sociality of action in the unpredictability, from theviewpoint of one's intent, of what an action achieves and how it involves otherpeople. Now, it is obvious that what he tried to demonstrate was the fact, sosimple to state, yet extremely difficult to explain theoretically, that sociality as heconceived it would be impossible unless it pertained to the Other. Ito located theethicality of ethical action exactly opposite to its position in Song rationalism:despite the fact that one always aspires to coincide doing with thinking, an ethicis possible precisely because there is no guarantee of success and because whatone wishes to do can be blocked, twisted, and redirected in spite of one's intent.In ethical action, one faces other people most radically. But for this encounterwith the irreducible Other, an action could never be ethical. In this Ito's thinkingwas utterly opposed to the view of Song rationalism, which excluded the Other inits understanding of the ethicality of ethical action.

But how could one possibly construct a philosophy that would do justice to themoment of otherness in social action? Is philosophical explanation, after all,

What are", called benevolence, righteousness, [observance· of rites, and wisdom]simply designate the natures: they. are not the names of the natures.12

another form of.dis~ourse in which the Other is deprived of its otherness bymeans of thematlzatlon? To reach this problematic it seems we must traverse areading of an almost unintelligible passage that frequently recurs in Ito's writ­ings. Here, I present an admittedly obscure translation of that passage:

97Textuality and Sociality

Ito draws a distinction between the two uses of the character mei (ming) (3-11),one verbal and another nominal. The verbal use of this character at least suggeststhat the being it designates is determined as such in relation to a person whodenominates it. It is a designative determination, so that the being is determinedin terms of this character only as correlate of the designative intentionality, andthere seems to be an implication that the same being could be designated differ­ently. The nominal use of mei, on the contrary, suggests that regardless of the actof ~ami."g, the being is predetermined as such. This use tends to imply thatbehlOd Its appearance there is some entity to which this name is adequate. 13

Underlying such a provisional distinction is a certain comprehension of therelationship between the enunciation and the performative situation. In order tograsp an utterance in the mode not of the enunciated but of the enunciation, onemust be initiated into a new theoretical sensitivity to the instances when the limitsof discourse are marked by the heterogeneous. Furthennore, since neither thebody of the enunciation (shutai) nor the heterogeneous is given as an object or aphenomenon, no limit of discourse can be represented as a border between twoequally identifiable territories: the limit of discourse is, first of all, the limit ofwhat can be arrested or taken hold of. Perhaps a disclaimer must be issued, here.Surely, I have used such terms as "the heterogeneous," "shutai," and "textualmateriality" to designate what essentially cannot be arrested or taken hold of.These notions contain a contradiction that is mobilized as soon as they aredenominated. But I must draw attention to the necessity for these terms: withoutthem, textuality, which always overflows determinations in discourse, couldnever be problematized. The enunciation cannot be referred to as a positiveexterior of the enunciated: the enunciation has to be.problematized only throughthe enunciated. And by extension, the passage to the outside of language must befound within language without exception.

No dou?t it is this contradiction inherent in the asymmetrical relationshipbetween discourse and textuality which Ito tried to illuminate by this obscure

t21~o, N!0shi-k~gi, ~anuscript in Tenri University Central Library, no. 400219, vol. 6, chap. 6.Also In Nlhon melke ShlSO chushaku zenshu. vol. 9: Moshi~hen 1720; Tokyo: Toyo Tosho Kanko-kai1924). '

13In the posthumous~y published Moshi-k?gi, which his son Ito Togai and others edited, the quotedpassage takes a much Simpler and more straightforward expression. See Nihon meike shiso chushakuzensho 9: 241.

Silence at the Center96

The Inscriptional Nature of Virtue

Then I must acknowledge a certain ignorance with respect to what the pre­scriptive pertains to. One does not know why this virtue but not that virtue

14Gilles Deleuze addresses this issue with impressive clarity in Difference et repetition (Paris:Presses Universitaires de France, 1968): "But perhaps Cogito is the name which does not have anysense, and which has no object other than indefinite regression as the power of reiteration.(I think thatI think that I think. ..) Every proposition about consciousness implicates an unconSCIOUS of purethought, which constitutes the sphere of sense where one regresses to infini.ty".(p. 203), and ':It istrue that Platonic reminiscence pretends to capture the being of the past, WhICh IS, at the same time,immemorial or memorandum and caugh~_by an essential forgetting [un oubli essentiel], in confo~ity

with the law of the transcendent exercise, which claims that what can only be recalled also IS theimpossible to recall (in the empirical exercise). There is a great d~fference ~tween this essentialforgetting and an empirical forgetting. Empirical memory addresses Itself to thI~gS t~at can and evenmust be differently captured: as to what I recall, I must have seen, understood, Imagmed, or thoughtit. Forgetting in the empirical sense is that which one does not happen to recapture by memo~ whe~

searching for it the second time (it is too distant, forgetting separates me from the remem~nngof Itor has effaced it). But transcendental memory captures what can only be recalled the first hme, fromthe first time.... Forgetting is no longer a contingent powerlessness that separates us from aremembering that is itself contingent, but exists in the essential remembering as the nt? power o~ thememory with regard to its limit, or of what can only be recalled" (p. 183). Later, I diSCUSS TokledaMotoki's box-in-box fonnula, which addresses this Kantian problem very clearly.

99Textuality and Sociality

If a man is able to develop all these four germs in him, it will be like a fire startingup, or spring coming through. 17

Zhu Xi comments:

selectively applies to this situation; one cannot predict or predetermine the emer­gence of a virtue. Moreover, the mind is not accessible to virtue, the explicationof which I shall undertake presently. In this case too, one does not know.

With respect to the status of virtue (toku, de, 3-9), Ito's commentary is proba­bly ,most illustrative: "Virtue is the general term for benevolence, righteousness,observance of the rites, and wisdom.. '.. When benevolence, righteousness,observance of the rites, or wisdom is mentioned, there must be some concreteevent to which any of them is ascribed, and therefore, there must be a trace aboutwhich one should see a virtue." 15 In its theoretical implication, this commentaryon virtue is inseparably afflicted with the problematic of naming nature. Virtuecan emerge only after the event, post facto, always in a perfect tense: it must besupported by a "trace" (seki, ji, 3-12) to precede the emergence of any virtueunder any condition. Therefore, it should be impossible to talk about virtue as asort of potentiality that realizes itself in a process, in a procedure encompassingan intention and its actualization. At stake is the sense of continuity that bunchestogether the series: intention, action, consequence. Or this series can be con­strued in more general terms: thinking (knowing), enunciation, enunciated (andinscription). Indeed, the characterization of virtue in terms of the trace highlightsits inscriptional nature: virtue is inscribed in the textuality of general socialreality. Within the scope of Ito Jinsai '8 terminology, the way to rescue virtuefrom various reductionisms to the "mind" is at issue. Hence, he writes: "Zhu Xisaid, 'Virtue is the obtaining. It means what obtains in one's mind as onepractices the Way.' This phrase originally comes from the Yi jing. In the Yi jing,however, it says 'What obtains in one's body.' Zhu Xi obviously substituted thecharacter 'mind' for the character 'body.' "16

In order to announce the irreducibility of virtue to intention, thinking, andknowing, Ito situated virtue outside the mind. In so doing, he undertook the taskof illustrating a different conceptualization of virtue in which the ethicality of hisown ethics would be best articulated. Central in this move is how to understand asubtle, but decisive difference between "obtaining in one's mind" and "obtain­ing in one's body."

Let me connect this difference to two contrasting readings of a passage in theMencius I to show how Ito conceived of the ethicality of ethics in contrast to ZhuXi. The Mencius says:

151lo, Gomojigi, Hayashi version, virtue, article I. Manuscript in Tenri University Central Library,no. 406951. .

16Ibid., virtue, article 2.17Mencius, p. 83.

Silence at the Center98

statement about naming and nature. Those concepts indicated by the words"benevolence, nghteousness, observance of the rites, and wisdom" are.provi­sionally determined as such because the applicability of those terms is sustainedby the specific, individual situation, which, in fact, escapes from determinationin the enunciated and therefore affects the enunciation contextually. It must,however, be recalled that just as the passage from enunciation to enunciatedcannot be construed in terms of causality-or expressive causality either, ofcourse-the perfonnative situation, in its effect on the constitution of an enunci­ated, remains heterogeneous to discourse, for the completion of the enunciation,that is, the formation of signification, is, of necessity, the exclusion of theperformative situation. Only insofar as the enunciated is uprooted from andrendered independent of the perfonnative situation is it qualified as such. Where­as one could sayan enunciated succeeds enunciation, it is impossible to traceback, retroactively, from the enunciated to the enunciation. Hence, as I haveexplained, the body of enunciation as shutai is that which flees irredeemably andis present in the enunciated only as a loss. 14 And the subject, not the body, of theenunciation is always framed as an imaginary substitute for this loss.

It is for this reason that although the perfonnative situation affects discoursecontextually, we cannot say we know it. Also for this reason, while the adjective"singular" (or individual, although we must exclude the sense of individuum,indivisible unity) can be ascribed to it, the other adjective, "particular" or"specific" (from "species") cannot be predicated on it.

What we should learn from this passage is as follows: if one conducts "reflectivethinking" and "knowing in silence" and if one then develops what has been ob­tained through "reflective thinking" and "knowing in silence," one should not beunable exhaustively to gain all that has been endowed in me [= the self) by heav-

en. 18

18Zhu Xi, Shushigaku taikei (Tokyo: Meitoku Shuppan-sha, 1974), 8:483. . .19Ito Jinsai also used the compound "reflective thinking," but I hesitate to re~der It m t.he same

way in Ito's work. So I give a translation "reflecting upon oneself." As the foUowmg quotatIOn fromDojimon, book 1, chap. 21, shows, Ito's use suggests the contrary o~ what was understood in So~grationalism: "Question: Are 'reflecting upon oneself and the genume concern for o~hers .[chuJo,zhong shu, 3-14) different? Answer: Not so. The genuine concern for others m~ans domg thm~s forothers as if they were done to oneself. 'Reflecting upon oneself' means blammg oneself as If onewere blaming others. Therefore, those who are capable of reflecting upon themselves are necessarilyconcerned for others. Those who are concerned for others are necessarily capable of self-reflection.The two are no different." "Reflecting upon oneself" is grasped as the other side of ai, implying thatthe compound "reflecting upon oneself" (hankyu, fan qiu, 3-15) pertains to the vocabulary aboutemotional things. And for this reason, it maintains a certain resemblance to the sense of shame andthe heart sensitive to others' suffering.

I must isolate two issues preliminarily in order to reconstitute the itinerary ofIto Jinsai's argument, which places tremendous emphasis on the active aspect ofethics. First, the phrase "to develop" (kakujuu, kuo chong 3-13], which wouldplay an indispensable role in Ito's writings, was coined in the Mencius. In thisEnglish translation it is rather simplified. In Chinese the compound kuo chongconsists of two characters, kuo, roughly meaning "to propagate, to extend, topitch, to fill," and chong "to fill, to be full, to supplement, to apply, to enrich."Thus, a better translation might be "to propagate and fill," "to pitch and enrich,"or "to extend and apply." Second, in the Mencius, the self is referred to as "thatupon which the four beginnings [or four germs in Lau's translation] are .existent/'but in Zhu Xi's commentary it is "that which is endowed by heaven With all thatheaven can give." Thus, in Zhu's reading, the self corresponds to the entirety of

heaven.Undeniably, in Zhu Xi's commentary the sense of spatial enlargement and

propagation is translated into its synecdochic equivalent to the mind. It does notextend or propagate outside "me" (= the self); instead, it does so within "me."But from Zhu Xi's viewpoint, outside and inside meant the same thing sinceultimately the self (= me) and the universe were one. Thanks to this synecdochicapparatus, Zhu could equate spatial enlargement and propagation to .the ~ath~r

introverted mental processes of "reflective thinking~' and "knOWing in S1­

lence."19It is against the lack of the outside, the sense of confinement, of self-sufficien­

cy, and above all the absence of the other and the Other that Ito Jinsai had tostruggle in order to open up a new reading of Confucian classics. Thus, Itoproposed to recover the sense of the outside which he claimed still existed in theoriginal passage of the Mencius and from which the compound kuo chong could

101Textuality and Sodality

never be divorced. One must extend and propagate toward the outside what istaught through feeling about the four beginnings; efforts must be directed towardthe outside and not inward. In this respect, we must return our attention to thatwhich was at stake in discerning ~'obtaining in one's body" from "obtaining inone's mind," for it is the body that marks the beginning of this outside. As I haverepeatedly stressed, however, it is not that the topic of the body had been ignoredor under-estimated in Song rationalism. On the contrary, "obtaining in one'sbody" was an imperative underlying almost every major topic of its ethics. Ito'sremark about Zhu's "obtaining in one's mind" has less to do with the role of thebody in the formation of habit and the acquisition of skill than with what is meantby the visibility of the body in a newly emerging discursive space. It goeswithout saying that the visibility of the body does not signify the emergence ofthe specular image of the body, which had already been in discourse for a longtime. Rather, it indicates the appearance of the body as an irreducible obstaclethat constantly disturbs the discurSIve economy.

Ito stressed that "obtaining in one's body" necessarily involves a moment ofdeviation from the mind. It is true that the word "obtaining" (toku, de, 3-16), ahomonym for the character "virtue," implies a sort of mastery, but this masteryshould be distinguished from mastery by the mind. It cannot be equated to thinkingor knowing. "Obtaining in one's body" is radically heterogeneous to obtainingthrough thinking or knowing. Despite the fact that one intends to achieve theobtaining, one does not know when it is actually obtained.

Implicit in Zhu's argument is the premise that the body would eventuallysubmit itself to the mastery of the mind. Just as textual materiality ought to besubordinated to the discursive economy, he believed, the materiality of the bodyshould be rendered submissive to the mind and-though this amounts to thesame thing-transparent. By rigorously differentiating the body from the mindas the site where the obtaining takes place, Ito intervened in Song rationalistdiscourse with a view to elucidating the impossibility of the mastery of the mindover the body, of discourse over textuality. On the contrary, what may appear tobe the mastery of the mind is always masterminded by the body's materiality,which can be controlled by no means; only on the basis of the body's erraticmateriality can the mind's putative reign be maintained.

Obviously, what is problematized here is the exteriority of sociality to themind. The realization of virtue must be irredeemably heterogeneous to making itpresent to the mind. Only when it has been established as exterior to the interior,to thinking and knowing in the mind, can virtue possibly attain sociality. More­over, Ito argues, unless it is rendered exterior to the mind, it simply cannot benamed virtue. That virtue is basically social means that it can be observed only inthe ·~trace." Precisely because there is discontinuity between intention and con­sequence, social action attains sociality-that is, is able to become virtuous. Ofcourse, virtue as a consequence of social action is neither the externalization northe realization of a potentiality such as good personality or intent. The moment

Silence at the Center100

Institutions and Exteriority

essential to this concept of virtue is the actual execution .. of social action, so thatan action merely intended or fantasized has absolutely nothing to do with ;virtue.Accordingly, virtue can never be attained through ~'reflective thinking" or"knowing in silence," for these rationalist tactics lack the very moment ofdiscontinuity, so essential in the sociality of social action.

No doubt, this lack can be ascribed to the introduction of the enunciation intodiscourse. By showing the unbridgeable abyss that exists between the enuncia­tion and the enunciated, Ito disclosed the site of heterogeneity in discourse whichhad been concealed and suppressed in Song rationalism. It is also important tokeep in mind, however, that even so, Ito did not advocate some sort of utopia oran optimistic doctrine of emancipation in thematizing and reifying the outside ofdiscourse in general. He did not posit the realm of originary plenitude as anidentifiable sphere: he did not appeal to an arche as a ground for his ethics.

Perhaps some further exposition of the connections between Ito's notion ofsociality so far outlined and exteriority, the exteriority of the body's materiality inparticular, is in order. By far the most significant aspect of sociality as Itoconceived it consisted in participation in the virtue of, and the virtue's exposureto, others. If the virtue of a virtuous act is defined primarily as its presence to themind, it is evident that it constitutes itself first in the closed circuit of one'sinterior, from which others are of course excluded, to which others are notaccessible, at least in the first instance. The idea of an interior that entailspresence to the mind may be inferred from the crude observation that someone'sthinking or knowing cannot be seen or perceived by others. Apart from thequestion of the extent to which such an observation can be taken for granted, weare at least entitled to say that presence to the mind gives a preliminary definitionof the interior and also implies some notion of closure. If sociality is com­prehended in terms pertaining to the mind, it necessarily has to appeal to some"transcendent" principle that enables communication among interiors, someconcept of communality. As I have argued, Zhu Xi considered the mind's interiorequivalent to the totality of the universe in its rationality. That is to say, thesingularity of the "I" was in fact dissolved into the anonymous "I," which wassupposed to participate in every cognition of every phenomenon. This Songrationalist formation, as articulated by Zhu, is not only intelligible but alsoextremely persuasive in the light of Benveniste's thematization of the 441." Yet, itis most disturbing that the first and preliminary determination of the interior isignored and repressed as a mere unessential appearance. As a matter of fact, thesense of exteriority likewise dissolves, evaporates, and is completely repressedas the perceived interior is forcefully displaced by the totality. It seems that thisrationalist conception of the mind is possible precisely because it does not and

103Textuality and Sociality

The two characters "way" and "virtue" are very close to each other. "Way"~xpr~sses "the aspect of nondisjunctive opposition which constantly shifts" [ryiiko,lIu xmg, 2-36] "Virtue" expresses "the sense that it is already there" [son, cun,3-18. The Way consists in "naturally leading." Virtue consists in the aspect of"having worked upon things" [3-19]. In Zhong yang the relations of master-vassal,father-son, husband-wife, elder brother-younger brother, and friends are regardedas "achieved ways" [3-20], and wisdom, benevolence, and courage as "achievedvirtues" [3-21]. This is what I have in mind. Inferring from this, [we should say that]yin and yang are the Way of heaven and that nothing escapes from the coverage ofthe Way because that is the virtue of heaven. The Way of earth is the mutuals~pplementality of solidity and softness, and the virtue of earth is that things ariseWIthout calculated anticipation [3-22].20

cannot take into account the evident and rather elementary cognizance that theother's thought cannot be seen or known..Accordingly, Song rationalism wouldhave been impossible if it had been capable of addressing the questions arisingout of this cognizance and what is today suggested by the aporia of another'smind (which is not the same as the problem of the solipsism caused by the reifiedconcept of the ~'inner" mind). For instance, instead of addressing this issue, theSong rationalists deliberately repressed it in order to preserve its metaphysicaloptimism.

But does sociality not involve, above all, the others whom I am never sure Iam capable of knowing? And is this lack of certitude an indispensable moment insociality? At this juncture I must further explicate what is called the exteriority ofinstitutions. In respect of this cognizance, I will follow the threads of Ito'sargument, which combined the terms "to extend and propagate," 4'the Way," ~4to

achieve" (tatsu, da, 3-17), and '4 virtue" in such a way as to show the textual andmaterial nature of sociality.

2°Ito, Gomojigi, Hayashi ed., Dotoku 4.

An explicit characterization of virtue is given here. First, it is pointless to talkabout virtue unless it is predicated on things: only when an event has beenaccomplished can one mention virtue. This is to say, virtue is not a principle thatprepares a state of affairs for concretization, for taking place. Second, as acorollary, virtue exists only in the perfect tense, only in the mode of having beenaccomplished; when it has not been realized, virtue exists only in the futureanterior tense. It is, so to say, addressed to the collectivity of the others, whichdoes not exist in any present of the past, present, or future. Therefore, it isimpossible to talk about virtue in its potentiality; virtue that has not been realizedis simply not virtue; nor can virtue be an expression or extemalization of whathas yet to be realized. It follows that virtue simply cannot be equated to anattribute or property of a person, although it is not by any means impossible for a

Silence at the Center102

person to be virtuous. In other words, virtue is neither a quality inherent in. aperson nor a property of which an individual is proprietor; it is interwoven 10

one's relationship to others.Surely one can be virtuous, but only on condition that the others with who~

one enters certain relations also hold a final say over whether or not one 1Svirtuous: the virtuous is, in this sense, always a collective work. Of course, thisdoes not mean that one's virtue depends on the others' opinion: virtue is not apopularity contest. Rather it depends upon a contingency which the sU~j7ctsinvolved are not able to master and which is necessarily created by the partlc1pa­tion of the others in relations into which the individual is laced. It is exactly inthis context that virtue is always "already there" and "about things": it must bepredicated on a certain materiality that is exterior not only to the person her- or

himself but also to other participants.Thus, Ito's comprehension of the character "virtue" discloses the dimension

of sociality whose cognizance was repressed in Song rationalism. Sociality can­not be thought of without referring to the materiality of the inscription, which Itocalled the "trace," which indicates not only the participation in sociality of theothers but also that their participation surely generates some surplus or con­tingency no mind could possibly anticipate. It goes without saying that socialitycannot be reduced to an agreement of any sort, since such a conception ofsociality needs to posit the communality of many different minds and therebyends by neglecting the primary cognizance that others' minds c~nnot ~e known.Furthermore, this conception would postulate a transcendent vIewpoInt, some­thing like the Song rationalists' "mind," the universal mind innate in everyselfish mind, from which to overlook all the individual minds in order to securethe possibility of talking about the primordial agr~emen:. In one way o~ an~ther,an attempt to define sociality in terms of a pnmord1al agreement InevIta?lyassumes the reciprocity of "I" and "thou," or one subject and another, accordIngto which sociality is understood primarily as a form of intersubjectivity. Butunless reciprocity is guaranteed by a viewpoint transcendent with respect to bothof the subjects in a face-to-face confrontation, by the viewpoint that can beequated to transcendent subjectivity as intersubjectivity, such a primordial agree-

ment is impossible.For Zhu Xi, as 1 have said, sociality was conceivable only to the extent that

surplus, contingency, the dust generated by materiality, was subdued so ~s tosecure a transparency of communication comparable to the face of a clear muroror the surface of calm water. He presupposed an ideal community in which thebasic universal rules were agreed upon at the same time that the agreement wasformed on these universal rules. Reciprocity of intersubjectivity, the transcendentviewpoint that guarantees such intersubjective reciprocity, and universal rules onwhich the primordial agreement is formed were then equated to one another as aseries of tautologies. And the rationalists, of course, insisted that this ideal

21 1 repeat Wittgenstein's well-known argument in Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M.Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968); "This was our paradox: no course of action could bedetermined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule. Theanswer was: if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out toconflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here.... And here also 'obeyinga rule' is a practice. And to think one is obeying a rule is not to obey a rule. Hence it is not possible toobey a rule 'privately': otherwise thinking one was obeying a rule would be the same thing as obeyingit" (p. 81).

community coincided with the totality of the universe, insofar as such a totalitycould be imagined.

This discourse yielded many political effects, among which one cannot bepassed over: the entire argument was presented as though incommensurabilityought not to have been there, as though it were somewhat outrageous and morbidto admit that one cannot actually know another's mind. Nevertheless, this argu­ment possessed a certain rhetorical force. It persuaded readers to accept theimage of what would happen if communality were not there and convinced themthat such a situation would never ensue. Yet the afI'mnative power of this convic­tion derives from a displaced fear that agreement could not always prevail. In thesame gesture, this fear about an absence of agreement is implicitly acknowledgedand explicitly neglected. The contingent and heterogeneous are anticipated, butby virtue of this anticipation, they are deliberately suppressed.

Ito Jinsai never advocated the libertine idea of freedom. Notwithstanding hiscritique of the reified and naturalized notion of the ethical norm in Song ra­tionalism, he believed that the ethicality of ethical action consisted in actingaccording to Confucian ideas, for ethics was, first of aU, a matter of action. Forhim, ethical norms are established and affirmed in action, and they do not existeither temporally or logically anterior to action. Unlike Song Confucians, whobelieved in the anteriority of norms to praxis, as expressed in the anteriority ofnature to feeling, Ito conceived of the ethical norm as that which is brought intobeing in the execution of it. Therefore, he understood the universality of theethical norm completely differently, so that its universality was never confusedwith its generality. And for precisely this reason, one can argue that the univer­sality of the ethical norm falls into the thematic of poiesis concerning shutai, thebody of the enunciation. For ethical action is at the same time an action thatcreates an ethical norm and a procedure that affirms it. 21

From Ito. Jinsai's perspective, it is only too obvious that Song rationalismmissed the very moment of ethicality in ethical action and that this philosophicalsystem appeared to be constructed for the purpose of eliminating the contingentand heterogeneous from the universe by every conceptual means, so as to presenta convincing picture of a harmonized and perfectly ordered world in which therewould never be a need to act in Ito's sense of ethical action. It would be a worldin which the Other and the heterogeneous are completely eliminated, so that

105Textuality and SocialitySilence at the Center104

22Spacing should never be understood as if it were caused by the difference between me and the

other, conceived of as substances.23For a recent attempt to explore the various uses of this tenn, see William Haver, "Nishida,

Freud, Lacan," Theoria 28 (March 1985): 1-52.

ethics is absolutely unnecessary; it would be a world of perfect nonethicality, aworld of quiescent theoria. What Ito saw in Song Confucianism was, in the final

analysis, nonethicality.Undoubtedly the core of Ito's ethics is the moment we are forced to face

through this fear. One is capable of being ethical precisely because one is uncer­tain of the consequence of an intended ethical action. Only when there is discon­tinuity between intent and consequence, is the ethical possible. To be sure, thiscontinuity coincides with a gulf, an abyss, between thinking and doing. Sincedoing involves some materiality (of the body, situation, and so on), it necessarilygives rise to a modification worked upon things. Conversely, unless the modifi­cation of things, including one's body, is involved, it cannot be called doing and,

consequently, action.And it is not because the other's mind is located in the inside of his or her body

that one cannot know it but because to know the other always involves andnecessitates action toward the other, so that one can never say one exhaustivelyknows the other. In this sense, the irredeemable spacing, or espacement, whichseparates "you" from "me" is of the same kind as the split inherent in enuncia­tion, which also irredeemably distances "me" as the subject of enunciation fromthe body of the enunciation, or shutai. 22

In this respect, ethical action is already in the register of making, or poiesis:ethical action must be thought of primarily as making, a sort of making thatinscribes the trace on things in the world. Only in reference to things made, canone talk about virtue in Ito's philosophy. Therefore, as it is impossible in makingto eliminate the contingent, which in fact marks the textual materiality of actionof any sort, it is equally impossible to establish an unobstructed, transparentpassage from thinking to doing. Thinking never reaches doing, since thinking isirredeemably separated from doing by what I like to call aLea, the aleatory.23

First, what I think to do is separated from what I actually do because it is not"I" in the sense of epistemological subject, or shukan, but my body, or shutai,that does my doing. An execution that does not involve my body cannot be calledan ethical action, but in this action, the body is never thematically or thetically(shudai-tekini) posited as a subject, shugo. Therefore, this body of ethical actionessentially belongs to the register of the body of the enunciation, which, just likethe singular thing and the private self, is transcendent with respect to the '~I" assubject. The body of the enunciation thus is discontinuous with the "I" to whommy thought is ascribed. In this respect, the body, neither as an image nor as anobject to be made present but rather as a materiality, is heterogeneous to mythinking. Yet, without this materiality, my doing would never acquire its so­ciality, its openness to others; unless my doing is an inscription in the general text

in which other social institutions and other people are also inscribed, it wouldne:er obtain ext~riorit~, the sort ~f exteriority that is absolutely necessary for mydomg to be a SOCIal a~tIon. That IS to say, because of the materiality of my body, Iam able to engage In the social and to execute an ethical action. Ethics isme~ingful and ~ssible for ~e thanks to the materiality of my body. In thiss~clfic se~se., I thmk that ethiCS as an insight into social action is possible onlyWIth m~tenahsm, and I agre~ with Ito Jinsai that the spiritualism of the SongConfUCIan type or the BuddhIst type as he depicted them is in fact nonethical.. Se~ond, inasmuch as my doing is an inscription in the general text, it cannot beIdeationally detennined; its meaning is revealed in relation to others' doing.Although ~he mea~ing of m~ doi~g is far from arbitrarily detennined, it is opento man~ different InterpretatIons, IS always multivocal. In addition, my doing isalways Interwoven with others' doings. In this respect too, I am never the authorof my doing; my doing is doubly distanced from my thinking. It is this irre­ducibility of ~y a~tion t~ my thinking that constitutes ethicality. I do not imply Iam f~ee and Identical WIth myself in my doing. On the contrary, because of thealea .Inherent in materiality, my doing opens Up the possibility of what JacquesDemdacalls "spacing," and in this instance, the possibility of "spacing = play= :enture" ~arks the ethicality of action, rather than lighthearted escapism frometh~cs. F~r thiS reason, an ethical action is inevitably aleatory, but one can neverbe In~en~lonally ~leato~ i~ ethical action because the aIea can never be an objectof thlnkmg or wIsh. ThiS IS to say that an ethical action can best be conceived ofas Writing: an action inscribed in and by the body of the enunciation is Writingpar excellence.

Here, I come across the most explicit detennination of what Ito means by thetenn "sincerity." Whereas in the sort of "transcendentalist" discourses probablybest represented by Song Confucianism "sincerity" designates the possibility ofturning one's accidental self to one's proper self, the,possibility of passing fromo~e's .obscured self to one's authentic nature, Ito Jinsai primarily interpretssIncerIty as the impossibility of such a return. In Song rationalist treatises oneoften notes a strong and enduring moralism and sometimes a sense of inner~truggle which point toward a deep conviction. But this conviction is expressedIn repeated attempts to convince the author himself that the state of the clearmirror and calm water, in which one is identical with what one ought to be, canactually be reached, indeed, that the passage to the authentic self predetenninedby human nature is already drawn, so that, in the final analysis, one's return toauthenticity is guaranteed. Thus, Song rationalism could perceive the return toone a~t~en.tic inner self as total merger with the universe: the return on anymor~hstlc mvestment in action is guaranteed in advance. In other words, thedomInant concern of Song rationalism is how to convince oneself that this returnis guaranteed, to convince oneself of the reciprocity between one's investment inaction and its return.

For Ito Jinsai, sincerity is exactly the opposite: sincerity is possible precisely

107Textuality and SocialitySilence at the Center106

Ai and the Way

Because of the materialistic nature of ethical action, it never occurs in a social­historical vacuum. It is an inscription in the general text, where others and socialrelations are also inscribed. One acts as a singular individual or a private self thatcan never adequately correspond to the subject. At the same time, as it is wellrecognized, the subject is also always overdetennined, so that, as a matter offact, it is never a unified position: the subject is always already subjects. Yet, itmust be stressed that the agent of an action as a singular thing is embedded in thetextuality of the general text: it is not an ahistorical, free, and autonomousindividual that so-called individualism fantasizes. Moreover, what individualismcalls the individual is in fact nothing but a subject. My emphasis on the singularindividual as the agent of ethical action is concerned with this irredeemabledifference between the subject and the singular, and also with the idea that, byvirtue of this difference, the singular thing resides in the text but not exhaustivelyin the discourse. The singular thing thus marks an intrusion of textuality into thediscourse and indicates the possibility of intervening in the self-reproduction of

because one's self, which is after all not the proprietor of itself, cannot bereturned to a proper nature. It is because there can never be a guarantee ofpassage from the accidental to the authentic that one can be sincere. For Ito,sincerity prevails only in the absence of such a guarantee, for sincerity essentiallyinhibits one from returning to one's interiority and exposes a person to otherness.In sincerity, one makes oneself vulnerable to the accidental, to the otherness ofthe Other: one wagers without knowing whether or not one will win. When thereturn is guaranteed, one cannot be sincere, and sincerity as conceived by Chou,the Cheng brothers, and Zhu turns into hypocrisy. If the return to the authenticself-and therefore the recentering instead of decentering of the self-is guaran­teed, sincerity immediately turns into a gesture of taking a risk without exposingoneself to risk. Ito interprets this gesture as hypocrisy. From his vantage point,Song rationalism appears to be a systematic theoretical attempt to convince thethinkers themselves that a good deed would invariably be rewarded (kan-zen,chou-aku, 3-23). It is an attempt to eliminate the materiality of social action, itsethicality, and its sociality. To be sincere, in Ito's view, is to be courageouswithout guarantee. Instead of confinement to a putative subjective interiority,sincerity is openness to others, to the otherness of the Other.

For Ito Jinsai, sincerity must be an aleatory commitment to universal prescrip­tion-the universality of universal prescription should never be reduced to thegenerality of human essence-which opens poiesis to deconstruction, the "per­fonnative" to interference by the otherness of the Other, for the ethicality ofethical action, for Ito, lies in deconstruction inherent in the productive praxis ofpoiesis.

109Textuality and Sociality

the discourse.. For. this very reason, an ethical action is an action whereby Ic.h~ng~ the society 10 my small and trivial ~ays and whereby my putative subjec­tivity IS alter~d and decentered. And also for this reason, to respect the singularas the other IS to respect the possibility of social change that cannot be tele­ologic~lypredi~ted.. All these consequences are due to the textual materiality ofmy action: an.d 10 thiS re~pect too, one's own body is the center of decentering.

The ethicalIty of an ethical action is therefore synonymous with the fundamen­tal sociality thr~ugh which we as disparate individuals interact and live in history.By aleato~ aC~lon,. I open myself to others, not as subjects whose images arepredetermined 111 dIscourse but as Other singular individuals with whom I canne~er pr~su~e an! reciprocity. Ito Jinsai called the possibility of this aleatoryaction az (al also In Chinese, 2-20).

Ito ~insai.ofte~ de~cribes Ai as a fonn of reciprocity, but it is important to notethat thIS reciprocity IS not characterized as an exchange of equal value. It is, firstof all, confidence in the other or even courage in the relationship with the otherwhich initiates one's response and responsiveness to the other. It is confidencewithout guarantee, confidence that is not grounded. Therefore, Ai is not humannature but, above all else, feeling: it might also be d~scribed as fundamentalopenness to the other and care for another.

It should be all too obvious by now that ai is not the mutual transference~sually called "love," in which one glorifies the putative image of one's identityIn the name of one's other. Ai is a difference in the channel of this transference inwhich one wishes to fonn a stable regime of mutuality with another: ai consists inthe rejection and abandonment of such a wish for homosocial complicity withothers. When Ogyu Sorai later commented on Ito's ai, he mistook the theoreticalconstruction within which ai was embedded and thought of it as unduly senti­mental. His inability to comprehend this notion reveals a certain blindness inher­ent in his politics, for it is difficult to imagine a conception of sociality as devoidof sentime~t~Jityas Ito's ai. It is not preoccupied with demand for self-pity orself-recognItIon. Its strength comes from its aleatory feature, that is that one'saction is directed not toward either the image one has of another but'toward theother as an individual who is ultimately unthinkable and unknowable in itsentirety. My execution of an action toward the other can be called ai because I acteven though I cannot count on reward from that individual. Therefore, ai isalways accompanied by the feeling of limitless flowing (kakujuu) toward theot~e~ and by the sense of nonthematized confidence in the other. That is to say,Within the specific limits inscribed in the general text, I encounter others assi~gular beings, neither fully my superior nor my inferior nor my equal butWithout terms of comparison. Of course, I am not simply repeating that thesingular is not a subject. In spite of the fact that I encounter the others within thenetwork of social relations that putatively represents both me and the others aso~ersaturatedor overdetermined subjects, there is an aspect in which a singularthing encounters other singular things and which is irreducible to the relation of

Silence at the Center108

24Koyasu Nobukuni, "Ito Jinsai kenkyu," Memoirs of the Faculty of Letters, 26 (Osaka: OsakaUniversity, 1986). Koyasu argues that Ito's ethics were not concerned with the issue of "grounding"relations on metaphysical principles.

one subject to other subjects: unlike the encounter of subjects, which takes placein discourse arid hence is measurable, the encounter of individual beings is in thefinal analysis without any terms of comparison, not even equality. In this specificaspects of the encounter of the singular, one meets another not only as vassal,child, wife, friend, or younger brother but also as stranger. And only when onecan encounter the other partly as a stranger is ethical action possible. (1 say"partly" because it is impossible to think of an encounter with a completestranger, an other completely external to social relations.) Hence, ai prevailsbecause the other is not near or familiar but partly alien to me. I enter the linkageof ai even with my parent, brother, or husband through the moment of theirsingularity, of their strangeness: the other is always encountered as a mixture ofsubjective positions and strangeness which cannot be contained ina given dis-

course.It goes without saying that every social action takes place among individuals

each of whom bears habits and cultural formations and is implicated in them:social action happens only within the specific limits inscribed in the general text.In this regard, every individual is culturally and historically determined. But thisdoes not mean that these cultural and historical determinations can be objectifiedand known in their entirety. It is logically impossible to enumerate all the habitsone is subjected to, not because there are too many of them to count but becausethe isolation of one habit, which is the form objectification always takes indiscourse, necessarily requires the repression of other readings of it. A recogni­tion of so-called cultural difference, for instance, is possible only when a certainlanguage game is implicitly shared. The recognition of incommensurability neverarises unless it is embedded in some shared language game (as I will later arguein more detail): the recognition of incommensurability can take place only withinsociality. Hence, one always acts in the multiplicity of language games, and thebody of enunciation operates at this level. For this reason, the infinity of lan­guage games is inherent in the body of the enunciation, and the body is ~hatClaude Levi-Strauss called bricolage par excellence: it could never be confinedto a set of rules portrayed in terms of defined pUrPOses and means; it a~waysencompasses innovative uses of its materiality. Hence, the body of the enuncia­tion always marks the poietic as well as the poetic nature of sociality. One doesnot need to seek poems in his works-although in fact there are some-in order

to find the poetics of Ito Jinsai.As is only too evident by now, however, Ito's poetics, or more specifically

poietics, does not seek the arche, the original model in whose image things are tobe "made."24 In spite of his emphasis on everyday life or the sphere of nearness,or precisely because of this emphasis, Ito never attempted to reduce the histor-

Now, assemble six pieces of board together to build a box, and close it. Naturally,the box is filled with qi. When it is filled with qi, mildew will grow naturally. Whenthere is mildew in it, moss will grow naturally. This is the Ii of nature [shizen, ziren,3-25]. Heaven and earth are like one large box; yin and yang are qi within this box.Ten thousand things are like mildew and moss. Thes~ qi arise with nothing to follow.Where there is a box, there is necessarily qi [in it]; where there is no box, there is no

IIITextuality and Sociality

ically specific limits within which an ethical action took place to an original reignor arche; he never assumed that the sphere. of nearness consisted of identifiablecomponents that could be traced back to the origin, in spite of his frequentreferences to Confucian classics. As he conceived it the sphere of nearnessresembles the unconscious, in that any objectification or totalization of it neces­sarily leads to its repression; thematization (shudaika, J-24) of it would neces­sarily be haunted by the return of the repressed. Because he understood thesphere of nearness as an infinite set of language games, Ito never claimed tolmowit, to be able to demarcate it or reduce it to stated rules. Just as the body ofenunciation cannot be imagined or objectified, the sphere of nearness is actualbut never knowable. Unlike Ogyu Sorai's notion of communal and archaic "inte­riority," which he posited to objectify and demarcate the sphere of nearness, Ito'sphilosophy was completely free from culturalism. Neither cultural subjectivitynor the horizon of cultural tradition was appealed to in Ito's discourse. Accord­ingly, his reading of the classics was quite alien to hermeneutics, which emergedin subsequent philosophical writings during the eighteenth century. Possibly hisnonhermeneutical viewpoint explains why he did not bother with the problems ofso-called cultural differences in respect to ethics. It is not because Ito believed insome universal humanism or universal human nature-this is exactly what hedenounced in Song rationalism-but because he so thoroughly criticized essen­tialism, including, perhaps, cultural essentialism, that he did not need to dealwith these problems. For him, it was not a matter of epistemology but a matterof, in, and for action. As eighteenth-century discourse began to accommodatesome culturalism and phonocentrism, the moment of ethicality as Writing wouldbe replaced by the phonocentric ideal of cultural and linguistic "interiority," animage of a homosocial community in which the necessity for ethical action is nulland void and one can do away with ai completely. Perhaps Ito was aware thatboth universalistic quiescence (Song Confucianism) and particularistic nostalgia(Ogyu Sorai and some National Studies) arose from the same displacement of thepractical by the epistemological. I must repeat, Ito's primary concern was withpraxis and ethics.

We are thus brought to Ito's conception of "society," although I hesitate to usethe word. It makes a striking contrast to Ogyu Sorai's conception, as we shallsee, for it denotes the world under heaven, whose totality cannot be imaginedeither as a set of shared cultural institutions (Ogyu's "interiority") or as thewhole of the universe the mind is to encompass (the rationalists' cosmos).

Silence at the Center110

112 Silence at the Center

qi. Therefore, it is known that one element qi exists between heaven and earth. Oneshould see that it is not that there is first Ii and then qi. What is called Ii is in fact the

grain in qi. 25

The generation and regeneration of the Way is metaphorically explained withreference to the natural growth of mildew and moss in the box. One can hardlyoverlook Ito's emphasis on the phrase "with nothing to follow" in this passage.He refers to a world in which many lives continually change without originalmodels to follow. For Ito, there can be no model of the ideal society beyondhistorical time, no arche. In this sense, his was a non-archaic ethics.

The social world is characterized by the word "life" (sei, sheng, 3-26), whichmeans ceaseless decomposition and regeneration: it never remains static, and so,there cannot be any original archetyPe of it to which one can return. The idealsociety is the one under constant change and modification generated by the smalland trivial ethical actions of people.

As the consequences of ethical actions, then, social relations are formed asvirtues, that is, are inscribed as traces. Benevolence, for instance, is a virtue, aninscribed trace that is to be achieved through ethical action. Virtue and the socialrelations marked by it are not essences or a human nature anterior to socialactions, either in objective time or for transcendental analysis. Therefore, theexisting social relations as traces inscribed in the general text delimit the scope ofan action, but logically, they cannot predetermine actions in the way Songrationalists believed that human nature predetermines actions as the extemaliza­tion of feelings. Here, I must note the ultimate implication of Ito's critique ofSong Confucianism: social relations and subjective identities are not grounded inuniversal and ahistorical essences; they are primarily traces that cannot be ex­haustively contained in a discursive formation; they are exposed to history underwhatever conditions. Accordingly, Ito insisted that the Way as the whole of thosevirtues is like a road: if people walk together in one direction, they will create apath. There is no transcendent ground for the Way. The Way exists because thereis the way. "The Way is like the road; it is that by means of which people come,go, and encounter. It is named the Way by virtue of the fact that it enables people

to encounter one another."26

25Ito, Gomojigi (Hayashi ed.), tendou 5 (Nihon shiso taikei, p, 16).261to, Gomojigi (Hayashi ed.), tendou 1 (Nihon shiso raikei, p. 14).

PART I I

FRAME UP: THE SURPLUS

OF SIGNIFICATION AND

TOKUGAWA LITERATURE

In its m~lIenn~al tradition: the calligram has a triple role: to augment the alphabet, to re atsomethmg Without the aid of rhetoric, to trap things in a double cipher. First it brin~ atext and .a sha",: as close together as possible. It is composed of lines delimiting thef~of an object whtle also arranging the sequence of letters, It lodges statements in the spaceof a sha~, and ~akes the text say what the drawing represents. On the one hand italph~betlzes the .Ideogram, ~pulates it with discontinuous letters, and thus interrog~testhe sIlence of umnterrupted hnes. But on the other hand it dl'stn'butes wrl't' ,l ' ,mgm a space~o onger possessmg. the neutrali~y, openness, and inert blankness of paper, It forces theIdeogra~ to arrange Itsel~ ~ccordmg to the laws of a simultaneous fonn. For the blink ofan e~e. It reduces .phonetlclsm to a mere grey noise completing the contours of the sha .but It renders outlIne as a thin skin that must be pierced in order to follow wo d f, ped'the outpouring of its internal text. • r or wor ,

The caUigram is thus tautological. But in opposition to rhetoric, The latter toys with thfullness of language. It uses the possibility of repeating the same thing in different d ea~d profits from the extra richness of I~guage that allows us to say different thingS~~s~smgle wo~d. !he essenc~ of rhetonc IS m allegory. The calligram uses that capacit ofletters to slgn~fy both as.Imear elements that can be arranged in space and signs that ~ustunr~ll a~cordmg to. a umque cham of sound. As a sign, the letter pennits us to fix words;as hne, It let~ .us give shape to thi.ngs. ~~s the calligram aspires playfully to efface theoldest OppoSitIOns of our alphabetical CIVIlIzation: to show and to name' to shape d tsay; to reproduce and to articulate; to imitate and to signify; to look ar:d to read. an 0

-Michel Focault, This Is Not a Pipe

CHAPTER 4

The Enunciation and

Nonverbal'Texts

Literary Discourse and the New Formation

In Part One we have seen how new discursive possibilities erupted in Ito Jinsai'streatises and gave rise to the dichotomy between the enunciation and the enunci­ated. In the new discursive space I am about to portray, a written text no longermaintained its autonomy but had to be supplemented by nonverbal texts. Ourfocus will now be on the intertextuality among verbal and nonverbal texts, andhow the mutation from one signifying system to another gave rise to eighteenth­century discourse.

In Part Two I shift my attention from so-called intellectual discourse to literarydiscourse to investigate how the emergence of a new discursive fonnation engen­dered new possibilities for perceiving the world and conceiving the social reality.My inquiry will concern itself with the basic modes of discursive praxis pertain­ing to these possibilities. That is to say, I shall pose the basic questions ofwriting, speaking, hearing, reading, and seeing. Before I go into a detaileddescription and analysis of eighteenth-century documents, however, it seemsimperative to note the epistemological limitation of present-day scholarship, forregardless of whether we speak from the so-called West, from Japan (which onecan hardly claim to be outside the West today), or from elsewhere, our theoreticalglance can be cast only from within this scholarship. It would be very difficult todeny the present global domination of the modern European epistemologicalframework. Yet it is also important to consider how this domination works. Itdoes not exist like a blanket covering a certain territory, despite the fact that it isobviously very useful in the context of this work to attribute some spatial con­notation to it. It has to be sustained by various textual practices. By implication,it is always open to objectification; our own discursive praxis can be objectifiedand critically examined. If one is to be able to defamiliarize the institutionalizedpraxis of our knowing, it can only be by examining the nature of the discontinuity

115

Seeing and Reading

that obtains between the present and the past in the hope of being able to

objectify the nabits of our minds.

The neglect of the artistic genre calligraphy in the study of past cultures ?f theFar East is a scandal in today's academic disciplines of art history and the hIstOryof literature alike, for neither seems to handle this peculiar cultural object satis­factorily. Of course, these disciplines originated in modern Europe, and theyhave yet to become familiar with non-European traditions or even those ofEurope's own ancient past. One may hope that they will event~al~y developcategories and methods relevant to this genre of art and that thelf Inadequatetreatment of it up until now is not due to fundamental limitations necessary t9

sustain these intellectual disciplines.From the Renaissance until recently, a radical separation between the visual

and the verbal has been sanctified in the so-called West. A visual work has beenevaluated exclusively in terms of its capacity to appeal to the eye; any verbalelement within it has been rejected and excluded, as an unnecessary impurity,from within the framing boundary that distinguishes the work from i~s surround­ing space. The copresence of visual and verbal elements within the same space ofa work has implied either vulgarity or incompleteness in its mode of presenta­tion. It has been assumed that the visual or verbal text should be an adequaterepresentation or narration independent of any other textual form. Hence, such agenre of artwork as the cartoon has been considered inferior both to v~rbaldocuments without illustration and to visual presentations containing no wnttenwords. This generic hierarchy is implicit whenever this kind of a~ form isdisparaged as a symptom of low intelligence or educational degeneratIon on the

part of its readers. .In this context calligraphy poses a significant problem for those who are still

trapped by the assumptions underlying the disciplinary taxonomy tha~ prohibi~sthe intrusion of writing, of a verbal element, into a visual text. CallIgraphy IS

simultaneously visual and verbal. It cannot be reduced to verbal representation orto visual experience. After all, is calligraphy a text to see or is it a drawing toread? If it is both, then how should we understand the kind of seeing that is alsoreading? Or should we insist that seeing is always reading, so that visual percep­

tion is in fact an experience of reading the world?To be sure, I have posed these questions not to determine the status of calligra-

phy as compared to visual and verbal texts but rather to dra~ attentio.n to thecomplex interrelationship between the two forms of presentation. InqUIry ~ust

be aimed at the specific formation of a general text in which a work of calligra­phy was produced and received in order to understand the interaction in thatscandalous form of presentation between reading and seeing. Furthermore, the

117The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts

way in which a visual text relates itself to a verbal one varies culturally as well ashistorically. The dominant ideology in a certain society at a certain historicalstage may completely reject the very possibility of the copresence of the visualand the verbal; but the same society at a different stage may well allow writing orvoice to mingle with vision or scene in specific ways.

What is involved here is more than ·the boundaries imposed on humanistdisciplines by the conditions of possibility for their spheres of study. Our in­ability to handle certain cultural objects, such as calligraphy, raises fundamentalquestions concerning the epistemological limitations set by the dominant ide­ology of the societies in which we live. Those limitations are implicit andinherent in our perception and cognition; in fact, they enable us to perceive thingsas we do. Although, as I will argue, it is simply out of the question to imagineepistemology free from ideologies, an encounter with an alien object can revealthe limited scope of our knowledge, thereby disclosing the possibility of seeingthe world otherwise. That is to say, to analyze and determine the cultural andhistorical specificities of an alien thing is also to reveal the implicit blindnessunderlying the dominant modes of our understanding and perception. One mightpursue defamiliarization by contrasting a form of presentation particular to a pastideology to our own forms, which are themselves culturally determined. Thisduality implicit in any historical study facilitates the creation of a distance fromour own perceptions which permits us to establish a critical viewpoint fromwhich to encounter the Other. It is thanks to this duality that the historicalcritique of a foreign and past society could be indirectly linked to a critique of ourown. I must note, however, that no reciprocal or transferential exchange ispossible between the past (them) and the present (us). Furthermore, let us notassume that it is easy to avoid transference in historical study.

Interestingly enough, the writers of the Tokugawa era were faced with thesame problem. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, theyhad to deal with issues concerning the identity of their historical world andpossible relationships with the outside and the past of another, unfamiliar histor­ical world. One of the major issues concerned the manner in which contemporarydiscourse dealt with the writings of the past. In this respect, the question of theinterrelationship between visual and verbal texts played a decisive role.

As new discursive possibilities emerged in Tokugawa Japan, the relationshipbetween visual and verbal texts-one aspect of intertextuality-also changedradically. Prior to this time, these two forms of presentation could coexist with­out generating the surplus of signification: they remained indifferent to eachother.

As many historical artifacts testify, genres of literature and plastic art contain­ing both visual and verbal elements were not brought into being all of a sudden inthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the introduction of the writingsystem, successive polities in the Japanese archipelago adopted various forms ofpresentation whereby verbal texts were related to visual elements in one way or

Frame Up116

Framing and Its Effect

Taking this problematic of visual and verbal texts as a conducting thread, Iwant to examine the rules of a discursive formation, the protocols according towhich various texts were incorporated into the literary discourse of eighteenth­century Japan. I must first postulate two areas of theoretical concern, however,without which my analysis would lose its focus.

The first concerns framing, a device by means of which a work is identified asseparate and distinct from what is outside it. I do not intend to restrict myanalysis of this textual device to visual presentations alone, but it is undoubtedlytrue that its function can be most clearly demonstrated in pictures. The framedivides visual space into an inside and an outside and thereby gives this boundedsector of space a relative independence from its outside. Even when a supposedlyempty frame is placed on a wall, the bounded part of the wall is upgraded andbecomes a privileged object of vision. It ceases to be merely the surface of thewall and is endowed with a certain meaning, becomes pregnant with meaning:thereby it is thematized or posited as a shudai, theme-subject. Insofar as everyact of comprehension is a way to relate a subject to the world through significa­tion, every object, natural or artificial, appears pregnant with meaning when it iscomprehended as a shudai. But an object or a part of it bounded by a frame

another. (If we are to understand "writing" with the rigor suggested by JacquesDerrida's use of the term, Japanese culture maintained the interdependency ofvisual and verbal texts even before the introduction of what is conventionallycalled "writing system.") Later, through a phonetic writing system, kana, thepeople sought to articulate a mechanism that would reduce a text to its orality.Although heterogeneity in forms of presentation predominates there, the prob­lematic of intertextuality between the visual and the verbal is not, of course,limited to Japan: it can be found in many cultures and in many historical eras.What I am trying to construe is a specific mode through which vision, forexample, is transformed into orality or some other form of text.

To say that culture could not be properly comprehended without referring tothe notion of intertextuality is to say almost nothing. What is at issue here is not avague characterization but a specific description of the discursive formation at acertain historical moment. In other words, I want to characterize a particulardiscourse to define a field of historical contemporaneity; for my purposes,works, i~stitutionalized performances, historical documents, and other utter­ances are contemporaneous with one another as long as they participate in thesame discourse. Hence, even if two works share the same publication date, theycannot be said to be contemporaneous if they are not embedded in the samediscourse. Conversely, two utterances could be treated as contemporaneous evenif they were produced decades apart from each other.

119The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts

Katari Narrative

projects a different level of meaning, whereby the prepredicative determinationof the object is reduced and suppressed into its textual materiality. I say "pre­predicative" because''! think that predication is the general form of indication thateffectuates itself in the framing. The framing, or more specifically parergonalsplit, divides what is thematized from what is excluded from the theme-subject.To see a part of the wall not as the surface of a wall but as a picture is to be blindto its materiality. When we see a picture, we do not see it as an amalgam of paintor other pigment; instead, we see image and shapes. This blindness to textualmateriality is the effect of framing. In other words, a thing is made to besomething more than a thing by being framed. Hence the frame is one of thefundamental and most important textual devices by which one dimension ofmeaning is constituted.

I must hasten to add, however, that there is of course no such thing as theultimate material base. The determination of textual materiality as the wall, forinstance, is also a meaning. We can never reach the final material reality bybracketing the meaning thus constituted by framing, for framing is a textualdevice that is itself differance, and there is an infinite series of differences}Therefore, to reiterate Paul de Man's famous formula, textual blindness is anecessary condition for the formation of textuality. We simply cannot escape thisblindness. It follows that we are thereby obligated to describe the allocation oftextual blindness within the discursive space by delineating its rules.

Once the frame has been defined in a general way, it is not difficult to see thatits use is not limited to pictorial presentation. In theater, for example, the framecircumscribes a prestigious space called the stage. It is essential to note thatwhatever meaning a cultural object may evoke is enclosed not inside itself but inits implicit relationship with its surroundings. In addition, as its relationshipchanges, the meaning changes, even if the object remains identical. Without adoubt I must reject the substantialization of meaning.

ICf. Jacques Derrida, 'Differance,' in Margins ofPhilosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Univer­sity of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 1-27. As to the question of framing, see Jacques Derrida, La veriteen peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978); and Mikhail Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel," in TheDialogic Imagination, cd. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson (Austin: University of TexasPress, 1981), pp. 259-422.

In the early seventeenth century, as the Tokugawa shogunate established itsreign and many political institutions were transformed, an increasing number ofliterary works were published and printed. One of the literary genres that domi­nated popular literature at that time was kanazoshi (kana booklets, 4-1), in whichvisual and verbal texts coexist. Not all works classified within this genre containpictorial illustrations, but it is noteworthy that those with illustrations appear

Frame Up118

2Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis,1973). The teon "monologism" can be apprehended much more broadly than as a historicallyspecific model of the Western novel. Here I emphasize his critique of nineteenth-century Westernnovels whose structure reproduces the power relationship inherent in the modem state. In thisrespect, katari cannot be directly equated to the monologism of nineteenth-century novels, but at thesame time, I do not deny the possibility of reading Song rationalism as monologic. This is, I think,what Ito Jinsai demonstrated.

drastically different from otherwise similar literary works of the eighteenth cen-tury. .

Kanazoshi differs from other eighteenth-century literary works primarily in itsnarrative mode. A substantial amount of scholarship has been devoted to thisfeature, which has been designated katari, or folklore narrative. But since mostof that scholarship slights narratological analysis in favor of establishing gen­ealogies and tracing influences, it is not clear how one could ever hope toidentify the conditions under which literary production of this sort was initiatedand regulated in the seventeenth century.

Because of the implicit developmental model that has guided analysis of worksbelonging to this genre, adequate attention has yet to be paid to the internaldynamics of this form of literary discourse. Knowledge of its genealogy andorigins is not of great help in understanding how signification is generated inkatari and what kind of narrative skills are required for it. What is necessary isnot chronological but synchronic analysis (not to be understood as the synchronyof Saussurian linguistics). Before I attempt such analysis, however, I shouldclarify what is meant by katari and determine whether this term sufficientlydelineates the general characteristics of this genre.

The dominant narrative mode in kanazoshi should be first defined as theabsence of a differentiation of viewpoints. Kanazoshi narrative projects a mono­lithic representational space in which the viewpoint of narrator is only vaguelydistinguished from other possible viewpoints. Although it is possible to recog­nize the interaction of various voices in this narrative, it seems as if the varietyand differences that might otherwise exist are synthesized and integrated into thevoice of an anonymous narrator who stands neither inside nor outside the spaceof representation. Yet, it is not the kind of narrative form that Mikhail Bakhtincalled the monologic novel.2 Unlike Western novels of the nineteenth century,the dominant voice is not centered in a single viewpoint or transcendental subjectthat exercises unchallengeable authority over the things and events depicted. Forin order to have the voice of an authorized subject, there must be a relationship ofdomination of the author over others. In kanazoshi, however, this primary dis­tinction, which is essential for the relationship constituting monologic domina­tion, is absent.

This absence is best exemplified by expressions used in kanazoshi narrative todescribe a character's action. Adjectivals that designate subjective impressionsare constantly in use. Yet is is impossible to determine whose subjective impres-

The Absence of Historicity

121The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts

sions they are; they refer to a state of mind, but the mind does not seem anchoredin any ~pecific person, partly because there is no explicit pefsonal pronominalsystem 10 Japanese but also because these adjectivals shift and diffuse the estab­lishment of a fixed viewpoint. First of all, one can draw a line between directspeech and indirect speech only when the subject of the utterance is marked.~ore .important, the narration proceeds without formulating a definite perspec­tive eIther temporally or spatially. The notion of the "scene" in which an eventtakes place is absent, as is the distance that relates characters to each other:unless this distance is postulated, the viewpoints attributed to various characterscannot be expressed, for it is only through the sense of separation and distancethat one identifies oneself in opposition to another person.

Hence, the narrative voice does not have any spatial position in kanazoshi. It isimpossible to determine the narrator's position because the narrator speaks fromno individual character's perspective. This means that katari in fact represents aposition of anonymity, that is, it constitutes a field of discourse that could beshared by any member of the community. In this respect katari belongs tomythical discourse, in which the addresser and the addressee are in a reciprocalrelationship. In this kind of narrative, one does not speak against others, butforand with others. For this reason, characters who appear in these works do notseem to have inner worlds and individual personalities. They appear to be ex­haustively defined by names, professions, and social ranks.

Even though characters are identified in terms of their social positions, how­ever, they are not given their own style of language. Only occasionally doescontemporary colloquialism sneak into a single language, which is the languageof an anonymous third person. Furthermore, there is a striking lack of historicaldifferentiation between the language of the classics and the language of thepresent. Certainly, the pseudoclassic style persisted in Japanese literaturethroughout the eighteenth century; yet, in contrast to literary works of the lateeighteenth century, the nondifferential feature of this prose is obvious. Doubtless,this feature can in part be attributed to the absence of quotation marks with whichto distinguish quoted speech from the main narrative voice and which, as we willsee, were basically an eighteenth-century invention. In addition, it is worthnoting that a certain literary device with which classics and their language might~e parodied was not available. The language of classic writings could be objec­tIfied and parodied only if a distance separated the contemporary readership fromthe world of the classics. Only by perceiving and affirming such a distance couldone possibly postulate the historical present in contrast to the historical past. If~ne understands historicity as it is discussed in henneneutics, the literary produc­tion of the seventeenth century was conducted without a discursive apparatus by

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which the sense of historicity might be articulated. NQ doubt, people of the timeknew that classic writings in fact belonged to the past, that the language of theclassics was not their own; one might assume that they did not feel at ease withthe use of ancient words that they never encountered in their everyday life.Nonetheless, they knew neither how to express this sense of "unfamiliarity" norhow to legitimate the integration of vulgar and mundane expressions into literarydiscourse.

Hence the action of characters and their contextual arrangements were con­stantly assimilated into the already-established fonns. Perceived reality was as­similated into the literary world of the classics on the assumption that the lan­guage of the classics was continuous with the language of the present, and thisassumption masked the inadequacy of the classic language for the writers ofkanazoshi. The author of Tsuyudono monogatari (Tales of Tsuyudono, 4-2), forinstance, did not perceive the disparity between high and low language, betweenlanguage of the sophisticated and the mundane. Despite the introduction of newprinting methods and the consequent expansion of readership to which seven­teenth-century Japan was witness, this author, unlike Ito Jinsai, could not envi':'sion a literary language that would allow him to represent the mundane, vulgar,low, and u near" spheres of life.

Indeed, no single writer, no isolated genius, could have created a new fonn ofliterature single-handedly. Considering the extent to which the possibilities ofliterary fonns are limited by a given discursive fonnation, individual authorsplay a minimal role in generating new genres and new rules of discourse. It ispartly for this reason that the introduction of ordinary speech or colloquialisminto literature in the eighteenth century constitutes one of the most importantevents in Japanese history. It was neither the innovation of a few individuals nor aliterary fashion following on a historical accident.

In this regard, it is important to recall that what is called ordinary speech orcolloquialism is not a given/act naturally available in any society. It is, like anyother institution, identified in terms of a set of conditions. The differentiationbetween colloquialism and written language is a historically and culturally spe­cific formation. The myth that ordinary speech is primordial and writing is itssecondary derivative, a myth that enjoys widespread currency even today, is partand parcel of the deeply rooted imperialism from which our contemporaries findit so difficult to escape. Clearly, the exclusion of ordinary speech from literaryproduction in the seventeenth century was no more natural than was its inclusionin the eighteenth century. Exclusion and inclusion alike were results of discursiveinstitutionalization and therefore equally ideological.

From this point of view, it should be evident that the sphere of "nearness," themundane, vulgar, and low in life, cannot be posited in itself. Every directexperience, every immediate reality, every sense of the "real," is discursivelyarticulated; every "immediacy" is, in fact, a form of mediation. In other words,the people of eighteenth-century Japan perceived certain forms as immediate andnatural which those in the seventeenth century had not. If that is the case, we

3Cf. Hyodo Hiromi, "Monogatari, katari mono to tekisuto," Kokugo to kokubungaku (September1980): 16-30. In his essay, Hyodo argues that the notion ofkatari should never be confused with that ofyomi. Refening to etymological studies by Motoori Norinaga and Yanagida Kunia, he describes theunderlying structural differences between the verbs. While the act of yomi is to confinn the already

must ask how certain forms of immediacy were constituted in discourse and whatsort of obstacles had to be overcome in erder to perceive them as immediate.

It should be reasonable to assume that, because of the absence of historicaldifferentiation, the authors of kanazoshi did not perceive any major discrepancythat dissociated them from the language of the past. As one kanazoshi novella ina series of short stories puts it, "lma wa mukashi" ("the present is the past").Since the Heian period, the phrase had been used to indicate the beginning of astory in the tradition of what is nowadays called setsuwa (tale) literature (4-3).Usually setsuwa literature is classified as part of the oral tradition in whichvarious folkloric sources were assembled into a vaguely defined whole. It may bepossible to identify the editor of a particular setsuwa work, but in the majority ofcases it is impossible to detennine the author. Here we should remind ourselvesthat the absence of the author is due not to the lack of written material orhistorical evidence but to the internal necessity of the genre as it had beendeveloped. The orality of katari, which is one of the main characteristics ofsetsuwa, excludes the possibility of incorporating the position of the author in itsdiscourse. Regardless of whether it is preserved in writing or orally transmittedfrom generation to generation, its narrative structure cannot include a discursiveeffect called the author. But in utterances belonging to the other contemporarygenres, the author might well have been institutionalized, albeit not in the sameway as modem authorship is constituted.

In order for a literary work to have an author, the work must be ascribed to oneperson's originary speech act. Any work of a verbal nature, once uttered, can berepeatedly reproduced and reenacted. Yet, unless the distinction between theoriginary act ofexpression and its repetition is perceived, the audience cannot tellwhether a story being narrated originates from an opinion or an intention COD­

ceived by some individual, who mayor may not be present in the scene of thenarration. Folk song, for instance, does not project such a distinction; thus, noone takes what a singer says as his or her personal opinion or an expression of thesinger's intention. Here it does not matter whether the folk song actually sung infact has a writer or composer. Likewise in setsuwa literature, authorship is erasedbecause it does not project a message, does not transfer relevant infonnationfrom the addresser to the addressee. One does not necessarily sing in order tocommunicate infonnation to somebody else. Presumably the semantic meaningof the song is already shared by the audience, even on first hearing. As I shalldiscuss at length in the following chapters, the problem of language in "song"cannot be encompassed by the communication model, in which the verbal act isunderstood to be the transfer of a message from one consciousness to another.

The significance of what Japanese scholarship has called the oral trans~issionof Setsuwa literature3 lies in this: it annihilates the distance essential to the notion

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established text, katari always contains a certain degree of freedom because of which the notion of theoriginal text is constantly reedited and revised. The representational space (he uses the phrase .. sakuchu sekai") remains identical, however, despite the possible variety of scripts. "Through the mediumof [the katari] theme, the narrator is explicitly aware of the presence of listeners, and establishes 'a sortof spiritual cooperation' with them. If katari is thus defined, then its text-that part of the narrationwhich can be fixed in writing-should not be able to remain identical, since the enunciation changes foreach utterance" (p. 22). Therefore, "there was no original 'written' text called the Tales ofHeike. Thetexts that have been preserved today should be reduced to the evidence of the narrative act. What hasbeen narrated [actually] and what should be said [potentially] are to be homogenized" (p. 28). Thissuggestive article reminds me of a brilliant (unpublished) essay by M. Morris on Makura no sash;.which argues that it is only within a certain discursive space that the original text is endowed with theprestige we now take for granted. In the case of Makura na sashi the diversity of preserved texts hasannoyed scholars of Japanese literature, but it should be evident by now that the problem is not todetennine which text should be taken for the original.

of communication, translDlSSlon of messages. It is a verbal act by which acommunity afIrrms and enhances its shared tradition, ignoring the distinctionbetween the originary act of utterance by an author and the repetition of that actby other members of the community, erasing it and rendering it meaningless. Itsorality has nothing to do with the material form of its transmission, that is,whether it is spoken or written. Orality annihilates the distance between "them"and "us," the past and the present, and the addressee and the addresser. '

The phrase "ima wa mukashi" reveals the basic feature of discourse of thiskind. The reciprocity of the present and the past is exactly that toward whichsetsuwa literature is oriented. Here, the displacement of the present signifies thedisplacement of the absent. What is rejected is the temporal perspective bymeans of which, through the position of the present, the absent (that is, the pastand the future) is also posited in opposition to the present. The phrase functionsnot only as a literary marker, a frame placed at the beginning of a story toindicate the boundary where the actual space ends and an imaginary world starts,but also as a device to suggest the reciprocity between the absent world ofimagination and the actual world. Any event described in a narrative of this sort,according to the rules set by this kind of phrase, cannot have a ·'now" or a "here'because it cannot be attributed to any "present" in which the originary enuncia­tion produced the text itself. At issue is the paradox I have already mentioned: anenunciation in which a text describing events is also an event. The phrase "thepresent is the past," however, denies this dimension of discourse; it erases andexcludes that dimension wherein textual production itself is an event. It is only inrelation to the primordial present of enunciation that events described in textscould be positioned and defined in history. In other words, the time of theenunciation, one of the two temporalities inherent in utterance, is absent in thismode of narrative. As a result, the time of the enunciated appears to float,unanchored to the putative present of the enunciation. This is to say that eventsthat should have happened somewhere and sometime are narrated as if they couldhappen anywhere and any time. The dreamlike quality engendered by theplacelessness and timelessness of folklore obviously derives from this

4See Emile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics. trans Mary Elizabeth Meek (CoralGables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1966),217-22. Also important is an essay by Paul Ricoeurin which he discusses historicity and "l'instance du discours" in Paul Ricoeur, ed. M. A. J. Philibert(Paris: Seghers. 1971).

5Emile Benveniste, Problemes de linguistique gem?rale (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), p. 75.

125The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts

ahistoricity. Indeed, in the discursive space to which setsuwa literature belonged,there was no full-fledged discursive device whereby to articulate what EmileBenveniste called the instance of discourse.4 One might immediately object thatBenveniste's concept is supposedly valid to any language of any historical periodand is expected to underlie every possible language use. As I have alreadyindicated, however, I find his conception-of the instance of discourse inadequatein many regards. Benveniste's primary definition of the instance of discourseimplies that the speaker is present to his enunciation in the instance of discourseand that it constitutes a center of internal reference. He also postulates thedistinction between rhistoire and Ie discours and ascribes the role of foundingreality-just as phenomenologists have done to perception-to discourse: "Theonly time inherent in language [la langue] is the axial present of discourse," and"this present is implicit."5 If the enunciation is a split rather than a unity,however, how is it possible to talk about the presence of the speaker to herenunciation? Furthennore, if the subject of enunciation and the body of theenunciation (shutai) are split in enunciation, how can one talk about the speakerin the instance of discourse as if he were a unity, an individuum? I would arguethat what takes place in enunciation is not the present but the slip of the presentthat ceaselessly flees. Therefore, the instance of discourse is in the register of theimaginary and is an image in the classical sense of the tenn, namely, that animage is something to represent what cannot be, and cannot be present. And thediscourse in general should be taken as a field of ideology, where one's practicalrelationship to the real is imagined, rather than as the site of primordial given­ness. The instance of discourse should designate a discursive positivity wherebyto invest an insatiable desire in the image of original speech for ultimate mean­ingfulness.

In the midst of the katan, whose features are usually well defined, one is often'puzzled to discover that a fragment of an older narrative form has been incorpo­rated. Ukiyo monogatari (Tales of the floating world), for example, has an authorwho has been identified, and it was published commercially. Moreover, thesocial climate had changed greatly since the time when setsuwa literature waspredominant prior to the seventeenth century. Vocabulary, syntax, and socialcustoms were no longer the same. Yet, the old form of presentation pe~sisted andcontinued to detennine what one could say as well as what one could not say.

In some kanazoshi, one encounters phrases and even entire sentences that arequoted directly from classic writings and give the effect of distortion, therebyfunctioning as a sort of local parody_ In these quotations, some elements orsometimes proper nouns are replaced by those from contemporary surroundings.

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6The career of Matsuo Basho (1644-94), haikai poet of the early Tokugawa period, marks thematurity of an already popular genre, haikai no renga (haikai linked poetry). He was born in thedomain of Iga, now Mie prefecture, and studied haikai poetry with Kitamura Kigin (1624-1705)before moving to Edo, where he established himself as a professional teacher of haikai poetry. Usinghis student connections, he traveled west to Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka and north to Sendai and Echigo.His major works are Oi no kobumi ("The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel"), Fuyu no hi (Thewinter sun), Sarumino (Monkey's raincoat), and Oku no hosomichi ("The Narrow Road to the DeepNorth"), Ihara Saikaku (1642-93), born in Osaka, perhaps into a merchant family, left his businessin 1665 and soon achieved fame as a haikai poet. After the successful publication of his first prosefiction, Koshoku ichidai otoko (The Life of an Amorous Man), he became a professional writer. Hisprose fictions, usually classified in the genre of ukiyozoshi, combined his prolific productivity as apoet of comic haikai with classical literary styles. His other major works include Koshoku gonin onna(Five Women Who Loved Love), Koshoku ichidai onna (The life of an amorous woman), SekenMunesan'yo (Wordly Mental calculations), and Nihon eitaigura (The Japanese Family Storehouse).

By inserting foreign elements into the quotations the writers seem to have gener­ated different 'semes that put the original words into new multivocal contexts.Polysemy is extensively applied in the novellas, travelogues, and joke boo~s ofthe time. Nonetheless, one cannot escape an impression that parody remainedprovisional and regional; the heterogeneity of voices seems to have been inte­grated into the linear narrativity of katari, which necessitated the assumption of alinear continuity of language from the past through to the present.

This linearity is most evident in the overall construction of travelogues inwhich the progress of the narrative coincides with the itinerary of traveL Notonly such travelogues as Tokaido meishoki but also Basho's "Narrow Road to theDeep North" (Oku no hosomichi), and Saikaku's "Life of an Amorous Man"(Koshoku ichidai otoko,) are constructed on the principle that literary space issuperimposed upon geographical space.6 Names of places designate certain lociin the corpus of classical literature as well as actual geographical locations. Asmany have pointed out, this conjunction and mingling of geographical space,where one walks about, with the space of literary language, traversed through theact of reading, continued to dominate literary production throughout the entireEdo period. Nevertheless, this principle clearly underwent mutation. The modeof superimposing the two spaces in most seventeenth-century works is distinctlydifferent from the mode used in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen­turies.

The decisive difference between literary and geographical spaces resides in thestructures of temporality, the formation of perspective, and the participation ofthe spectator's body. If we understand the space of literary language to consist ofa great number of utterances, which have accumulated and fonned a thick layerof sedimentation during a long historical process, at least two procedures must beinvolved to form a mediatory mechanism through which a geographical placecomes to be identified by a word, aphrase, or even a work belonging to the spaceof literary language.

First is the linear deployment of the statements. Various poems, names ofcharacters, and images associated with tales that appear in classic writings couldrefer to places and landmarks. Because these landmarks of literary space are allfonns of verbal presentation, however, they cannot exist as if they were physical Representing Text and Represented Text

127The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts

. So what kind of intertextual relationship should have been possible betweenVisual and verbal texts in the discursive space thus characterized?

Among those prose works now classified as kanazoshi, some possess illustra-

objects. That is, in order to evoke such classic citations and make them present,~ey must. be actualized and verbalized in the parole. Inevitably verbalizationInv~lves lInear de~loyment of words and utterances according to a set of gram­matIcal and narratIve rules. No matter whether it is oral or written verbalizationwords .can~ot be organized paradigmatically-at least in the majority of case~(later In thIS chapter we shall deal with the spatialization of the verbal text).Those words that refer to classic sources, that is, must be put into the successiveorder characteristic of the syntagm, of "before" and "after," and must be locatedwithin a narrative linearity that possesses a beginning and an end. Insofar as it isa verbal work, one must hear or read it progressively; this is exactly why travel orgeographical space, another linear progression, could serve as a mediatory formthrough whic~ to combine literary and geographical spaces. Consequently, as isoften noted, In many premodern Japanese literary works, virtUally every placename seems saturated with classical associations. In works of the seventeenthcentury, there is hardly any disparity between the two spaces.

Second, I must consider the exclusion of perspective in verbal presentation. AsMiura Ts~tomu demonstrates, and as I shall discuss in more detail later, pictorialpresentation only shows things and events seen from viewpoints.7 It is true that apicture is capable of incorporating more than one viewpoint and that linearperspective based on the single viewpoint is a convention characteristic of only~erta~n s.ocieties. Nevertheless, it is possible to argue that whether the perspec­tive IS lInear, reversed, or multifocused, a pictorial presentation designates a~sitio~ or posi~ions from which drawn objects are seen. A human figure in anlllustration, for Instance, must be viewed from the front, from behind or other­wise. The barest sketch of the figure already presupposes an angle fr~m whicht~e dra:wing is to be seen, even though it is quite possible for plurality of~Iewpoln~s to be syn~hesiz.ed.within a single figure, as is done in ancient Egyp­tIan draWings or CUbISt palntmg. In contrast to the perspectival nature of visualpresentation, the verbal text transcends perspective and need not preserve theconditions of its genesis. 8

7Miura Tsutomu, Ninshiki to gengo no riron (Theory of cognition and language) (Tokyo: KeisoShobo, 1967), 1:25.

8Boris A. Uspensky has written about the constitution of viewpoints in verbal texts but what hec~lls viewpoint is more akin to Bakhtin's notion of "polyphony," in which different' voices fromdIffe~ent spe~erso~ social groups are incorporated into the text. One might well propose that despitethe d~jference In th:l~ textual modes, ~erbal an~ pictorial texts share isomorphemes. See Uspensky, AP~etlcs ofCOmpOsltlOn, trans. Valentma Zavann and Susan Wittig (Berkeley: University of Califor­ma Press, 1973).

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tions, among them Ukiyo monogatari and Tsuyudono '!lonogatari. Unlike popu­lar novellas of the late eighteenth century, the verbal parts of these works main- ,tain a relative autonomy: that is, the significative function of the verbal text doesnot require reference to the corresponding illustrations. Even if the illustrationswere deleted from these works, it would not be very difficult to follow the plot,nor would the meaning of the text be greatly transformed. It is evident, however,that, as in many pictorial scrolls (emakimono) of previous eras, the visual text isto a certain extent dependent on the verbal explication. In Tsuyudono monogatarione inevitably receives the impression that the narrative structure is more or lessincorporated into the visual text. In order to synchronize with the linear narrationof the verbal part, the visual text is organized according to a principle of progres­sive unfolding, which is not entirely nonlinear or atemporal. Neither is it com­posed according to the rules of linear perSPective; it encompasses many points ofview that are not supposed to be present simultaneously. The surface of the scrollis divided into many areas, each of which has its own viewpoint. Narrativelinearity links these points of view in an order of succession and thereby sustainsthe correspondence of visual and verbal texts in the work. The sequential order inwhich the reader shifts her or his glance from the right part of the illustration tothe left is in accordance with the linear progression of the narration. Which is tosay that the visual text has to be read; the gradual shifting of the reader's glanceis an integral component of this visual signification. It is for this reason that weare often led to believe that the visual presentation in pictorial scrolls is aderivative of the verbal text and therefore posterior or secondary to it. Thisrelationship between visual and verbal texts, one must remember, is exactly theopposite to that which obtains between a framed painting and its written title. Inmodern Western paintings, the title of a tableau, a verbal text in itself, is usuallylocated on or outside the picture frame. In any case, in the majority of visualworks produced in the modern EuroPe the title is excluded from that privilegedspace of vision the boundary of which is marked by a frame. (In this regard,figures A, B, and C demonstrate, by interfering with the framing mechanism,the implicit ideological assumptions on which the institutions of seeing andreading have been constructed in the modern West, which, as I have argued,includes present-day Japan.) Interestingly enough, the pictorial presentation inTsuyudono monogatari plays a role equivalent to that of the title in modernWestern painting. In both cases, the relationship between the two different textsis defined in terms of the subordination of one text to another. A text is supposedto explain, summarize, copy, or translate another, but such an explanation,summary, copy, or translation may well be extremely inadequate to the richnessof the text to be represented. Basically, the relationship is a correspondence ofrepresentation within which the main text and its representation are clearly postu­lated through the relationship of subordination. Hence, the representing text is akind of parasitic being attached to the main, original text that is being repre­sented.

Figure C. liro Takamatsu, These Three Words, 1970. By permission of the artist and theTokyo Gallery, Tokyo.

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Relevance and Irrelevance of the Text in a Situation

Here is the significance of the dramaturgical situation and the emergence ofthe human body in discourse. As I have suggested, Ito Jinsai was a witness to thenew form of presentation in which various texts, verbal and nonverbal alike,were grasped in reference to the enunciation. It followed that because of newarrangements thus introduced into discourse, the verbal text, especially writing,was perceived as too incomplete and inadequate to sustain an autonomous mean­ing. To signify sufficiently, it was thought that verbal texts had to refer tononverbal texts. It is possible that one of the dividing lines between the seven­teenth and eighteenth centuries could be drawn here; prior to the change, verbalutterances were perceived as independent and complete in themselves. The inter­textuality in this discursive space obtained primarily among verbal texts, notablywritten texts. To put it more precisely, even nonverbal texts were perceivedaccording to the model of writing. In this sense, the world appeared to consist of

In Tsuyudono monogatari illustrations are supposed both to explain what theverbal text says and, in order to synchronize with it, to integrate the narrativity of ..the verbal text into the visual configuration: within the work there is an attempt toreplace the Verbal text with the visual text. The term "representation" as I use ithere signifies this relationship of replacement. Doubtless, all that is signified inthe main text cannot be transferred to the subordinate text. There is always a partthat cannot be transcribed into another form of representation. (All these figur­ative terms-translation, transcription, transfer-seem to suggest that there issome sort of substance that moves from one textual surface to another but isindependent of a specific material form, but can we talk seriously about such aghostlike being? It goes with saying that this ghost-spirit is closely connected tothe issue of transference-translation.) Yet the sort of relationship binding the twodisparate texts presupposes that one text can be replaced by another and that thecoexistence of the two does not generate a surplus of signification belonging toneither of them, a surplus that can be generated only when they intersect. Whatcharacterizes this mode of intertextuality is, in the first instance, the relativeautonomy of texts, and second, the separation of these texts; texts emerge with­out an outside or horizon that would indirectly animate or distort them. Thecombination of verbal and visual texts does not give rise to an integrating wholethat could not be reduced to what either text alone is supposed to signify. Frombeginning to end, the copresence of the two texts remains divided and separatedeven though they are placed next to each other and coordinated by a sharednarrative linearity. In this sense, texts of different modes do not actually encoun­ter each other, either in Tsuyudono monogatari or, more generally, in the discur­sive space of the seventeenth century.

131The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts

9For further discussion on the difference between the terms signification and signifiance, see JuliaKristeva. La revolution du langage poetique: L'avant-garde a La fin du XIXe siecle (Paris: SeuB,1974); and Emile Benveniste, "Semiologie de la langue," Semiotica 1 (1969): 1-12; 127-35.

a variety of writings: there was no rupture between verbal and nonverbal texts,between speech and perception.

But in the new discursive space a text was to make implicit reference to itsoutside, to form a specific relationship with the situation in which it was pro­duced in enunciation or concretized through the reading act. At issue here is thegeneral question of historicity. With the ·introduction of the notion of enuncia­tion, the possibility of grasping an utterance as the instance of discourseemerged. But the situation to which an utterance is supposed to refer as aninstance of discourse cannot be thematized and objectified because of its deter­minations, its implicitness, vagueness, and status as the horizon. In contrast towhat is thematically marked by the framing, it should remain excluded from theframe thus drawn. Only insofar as it remains at the periphery and outside thetic,or shudai-teki, positing can it be the horizon, situation, or background. To theextent that the meaning of a text is determined by the surroundings into which itis inserted, the concretization of the text cannot escape from the implicit con­straints imposed upon it by its situation. It is easy to see, however, that therelation between the utterance and the -situation may be merely accidental, forone can -make an utterance that is completely irrelevant to a given situation. (As Ishall discuss with regard to Ogyu Sorai, the questions concerning the relevanceand irrelevance of an utterance in a situation need to be formulated in a muchmore organized way.) Furthermore, there is an indefinite number of aspects inany given situation, and the situation is always correlated with the action. Whenthe situation itself participates in the determination of the utterance's meaning,which aspects are overt and which are rendered dormant? This is, exactly, theproblem of signifiance-a neologism that means the process of signification inwhich the agent of enunciation is posited as a thetic position (shudai) and thenmade to coincide with the subject of the proposition (shugo)-raised by thecopresence of a verbal text and the situation. 9

The elucidation of the concept "situation" necessarily involves two problems:when we assume, even tentatively for the sake of argument, that the text can beconsidered to be in some way different from the situation, we simultaneouslyassume that the text can be equated to an isolatable and identifiable entity. Butdoes this mean that the text has imperceptibly been grasped as an enunciated? Infact, the conventional notion of the text usually implies the equation of the textand the enunciated, for it is only through an enunciation that the text can berelated to the situation since the determination of the text as the enunciateddictates that it be repeatable and identifiable, that is, independent of the situation.At this stage, therefore, it is pointless to discuss the relationship between text and

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lOWith respect to the difference between direct and indirect actions, action is always permeated bysignification. Action that cannot be transformed into a judgment or utterance cannot be called action.I shall return to this issue.

situation. But on the other hand, it is simply impossible to talk about the rela­tionship between them as the phase of enunciation because signification; whichis the identity both of and as the text, is not supposed to have been establishedyet.

Thus it becomes obvious that in signifiance, the process of signification, thetext is constituted as enunciated by being deprived of its primordial dependenceon the situation of enunciation. It would seem that a rigorous elucidation of theconcept "situation" would inevitably reveal an inherent ambiguity. That is to say,it is impossible to discover any logical necessity according to which the conceptof the situation might be universally applicable; some discursive formationsaccommodate such a concept, but others do not. Not as the physical arrangementof a stage setting but in its correlation to an action that can be construed as anenunciation, the situation must be understood in tenns of the instance of dis­course. tO Precisely for this reason, the notion of the situation, which derivesfrom the instance of discourse in my argument, must also have a historicallimitation.

Since the situation cannot be specified thematically, there is no other optionbut to accept it as a historical given, as a positivity particular to a specifichistorical discourse, such as that eighteenth-century discourse with which we arenow dealing. And since in a certain discursive space meaning is taken to beinherent not in the text itself but in its rapport with its situation, what may appearparticular to and immanent in the text-as its "meaning"-should in fact beconsidered a correlative of the situation, which is in constant change. A text isunderstood to be incapable of transcending the presence of the historically givenand unable, therefore, in any way to transcend its historicity.

I believe that the concern for history which dominates eighteenth-centurydiscourse originates from this particular fonnation. I shall discuss the question ofhistory and discourse later; in the meantime, let us examine the measures towhich eighteenth-<;entury writers appealed in order to ~~limit the absolute ar­bitrariness that might exist between utterance and situation.

It is true that a writing can be placed in an entirely irrelevant situation andthereby generate a surplus of signification. This was the tactic adopted by writersof late eighteenth-century novellas to defamiliarize the already established modeof generic taxonomy. Although their works do not explicitly postulate the prob­lem of historicity, the rule that initiated and governed their discourse containswithin it the same problematic that can be found in historicist discourse. Thoserules that give rise to the problem of the arbitrariness of utterance and situationmay be defined as follows.

There exists an absolute freedom in placing a text in a situation. For example,

a statement such as 44It is raining now" can be uttered anywhere and any time.Indeed, it is possible to suppose that a sincere locutioner who is not joking wouldnever utter the statement when in fact the weather is fine, but this speaker mightutter the same statement in a situation where nobody is interested in talking aboutthe -weather. As theorists of speech acts have shown, the locutionary act mustpresuppose the relevance of the situation and the sincerity of the locutioner.Nevertheless, the possibility that a statement could be uttered in a completelyirrelevant situation raises difficult questions. Since, as the enunciated, a text is insome- ways detached and estranged from its enunciation, one can by no meansgain access to the original scene or intention, not simply because the past inten­tion is not retained or the situation of the enunciation i8 lost with the passage ofhistorical time. Rather, the repeatability of the enunciated consists in what Jean­Paul Sartre termed 44bad faith." Only when pre-reflective consciousness is be­yond the reach of consciousness can a text appear as the enunciated and as arepeatable statement. In addition, that it was relevant to say ""It is fine" amoment ago does not ensure that it is relevant to say so now. Historical timealways erodes the validity and legitimacy of an utterance.

In this discussion, one may note, I have had to resort to the idea of the "same"utterance, whose sameness had to be defined in terms of the enunciated of theutterance. In order to identify the utterance, I have had to initiate the process ofenunciation as a result of which the putative presence of the speaker to his or herenunciation was lost. Only insofar as its adherence to the instance of discoursewas severed could I talk about the identity of an utterance and the situation as itscorrelate.

Let me reiterate this problem of significance. The process of signification canbe construed as a series of progressive stages from intention to the enunciation inwhich the speaker is present to her or his enunciation within the instance ofdiscourse-to the enunciated. But at the same time, enunciation should be con­strued as a parergonal split in which the shutai or body of the enunciation and thesubject of the enunciation or shudai-subject are irremediably separated. Enuncia­tion is framing, dividing, or drawing a distinction. Therefore, the meaning thatenunciation realizes and posits cannot be traced back to the stage prior to theinstallment of the division or frame, since the meaning is generated by andcontingent upon the framing. Our conventional understanding of the enunciation,however, presumes the existence of intention, which is supposedly the same asthe meaning of the enunciated. In the parergonal view, the meaning is posteriorto the enunciation, but in the progressive view, the meaning is anterior to it. Howis such a paradox possible? The meaning in the enunciated as the source of theidentity of the utterance must be produced as anterior to enunciation, as havingalready been there prior to the enunciation: the anteriority of the meaning itselfmust also be produced together with the enunciated. Needless to say, we areconcerned here with the issue of originary repetition, problematized, for in­stance, by the Lacanian Other, which differs from what I have designated as the

133The Enunciation and Nonverbal TextsFrame Up132

I I See Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), pp. 292-325.

Corporeal Act and Pefonnative Situation

Other in this book. II It illustrates that the objectivity of social institutions as­sumes the splitting of the subject in the enunciation. Unless the "I" is distancedand severed from what I have said, the "I" cannot be related to the other in asocially responsible manner. Hence, by signifiance is meant not the progressfrom intention to the enunciated but a process in which the paregonal split itselfis initiated and in which the shutai or body of the enunciation flees.

But how do we determine whether or not a text is related to a situationlegitimately and relevantly? What, in fact, is the mediating agency thrO)lghwhich a text is placed in a situation, thereby securing the proper signifiance?

135The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts

organized. Hence, the actor's body casts light on certain aspects of the situation;conversely, the aspects thus evoked prescribe the possible sense of her move­ments and utterance. In other words, the actor's body directs and organizesobjects in a given space, thereby forming a perfonnative situation, which in turngive rise to the sense of bodily movement. This is the primordial structure ofindication through which a text is related to a perforrilative situation. In thiscontextualization, the actor's body is the mediating agent that integrates theverbal text and the situation.

Important in this regard is the ontological detennination of the human body.Here the body is neither merely an entity nor an ego pole around which thesituation is organized: it is also the site of imaginary transference. The viewpointof the actor, which is located at his body and from which his own body isinvisible, can be replaced by the viewpoint of an observer who watches the actor.The actor thinks that he knows what he is doing, that is, he thinks that he is awareof how he may appear to an other's eye. Moreover, this transference facilitatesthe possibility of miming the other's behavior. It is important to note that even ifone simply observes the actor, one's body already traces the trajectory of theactor's behavior in such a way that the same behavior could potentially bereenacted by the observer himself. The comprehension of an other's actionimplies the possibility for the observer to reenact it: it is based on mimesis. As amatter of fact, this effect of transferential recentering defines what the imaginedinvolvement in a situation, as opposed to the actual involvement, means. So it isalso important to remember that the actor only thinks he knows what he is doing.That is, the transferential recentering is possible only in speculation or media­tion. As Ito Jinsai endeavored to illustrate philosophically, the reciprocal sharingof viewpoints can never be exhaustively attained because of sociality and feeling.Feeling is the sociality of the human body in the sense that in practice decenter­ing instead of recentering must occur to put into jeopardy the actor's image of theputative self. In this respect, the body as a center ofdecentering. not recentering,cannot be captured in the regime of visibility and the network of perspectivalpositions. Furtl"\ennore, because the specular image of one's own body is sus­tained by the network of reciprocal viewpoints, the body as a center of decenter­ing, that is, the shutai, the body of the enunciation, necessarily alters the self­image constituted in this regime of visibility. For this reason, shutai is the agentthat changes subjectivity. Yet I must also remind myself that it is not somethingwhose portrait can be uncovered in the structure of a given regime of visibility. Itinfonns us of its alluding and alluring presence in problematics that a givendiscourse cannot resolve. It would seem, then, that in the discursive space of theeighteenth-century, the problematics of issues such as sincerity, immediacy, andexperiential knowledge, which were repeatedly discussed, were all centered onthe question of involvement.

Also noteworthy in this regard is the introduction of enunciation into dis­course. The human body provided a text with an anchorage in a performative

Frame Up

It should be remembered that the term "situation" designates not the kind ofanonymous and empty space often conceived in modem physics but a field whereaction takes place. Without reference to an acting agent, the term "situation"cannot be distinguished from mere space. That is, "situation" is a space withinwhich acting agents perform; in this respect it is impossible to deny the drama­turgical connotation of the term. A situation is a whole whose parts includeacting agents, namely, human bodies. The cOrPOra of actors animate a givenspace and thereby tum it into a situation. Their bodies occupy certain volumesand coexist with other physical objects in that space. Yet these corpora are notmere objects juxtaposed to one another but prestigious beings that orient theenvironment along the axis of their action. Human bodies introduce direc­tionality and the senses into an otherwise anonymous physical space. In addition,these exceptional corpora are capable of generating and exchanging utterances.Through human bodies, language is conjoined to the situation.

In this connection, it must be stressed that it is only as a bodily behavior thatan utterance can be considered an event taking place in a specific place at aspecific time. When it is grasped as an event in the situation a verbal text istherefore simultaneously a gestural text. But as can be easily demonstrated, a textthat is apprehended as bodily movement encompasses objects other than theactor's body itself. For example, suppose an actor is trying to drink a cup ofwater. The text, the movement of her body, already contains references to a cupon the table and a certain distance between her and the table, a distance she triesto overcome in order to reach the cup. To understand the situation and theintention of the actor, we must attempt to comprehend certain objects as they arerelated to her movement. At the same time, it should be evident that even if shewere to utter only one word, '"water," not even the sentence "I want to drink thewater in that cup on the table," what she would be doing and trying to achieveshould be obvious from the way her bodily movement and the situation are

134

situation, but this anchorage was not a stable and atemporal point of fixity. It wasboth a spatial "point zero" and a temporal focus that defined the sense of action.The human being acted in a performative situation, and to the extent that it wasthere that a man acted, his body was assumed to supply the primordial determina­tion of here and now continually. Hence, through the positioning of the humanbody, the space it inhabited was synchronized. That is to say, things were predi­cated as correlates of one's action from a temporal perspective. They receivedcertain qualities that would not have been attributed to them if they had not beenin a specific rapport with the actor's body.

For instance, it would be utterly meaningless to say "object A is on the right ofobject Bn unless the body of the speaker is already positioned in a certainrelationship to both A and B in a performative situation. The spatial relationshipof A and B is not an attribute of either A or B. Likewise, only when the actor hasa burning thirst can we possibly appreciate the intensity with which she says,'~The water in the glass on that table looks so cool." This utterance is someaningful because it can be understood in terms of possible future action thatwill aim at relieving her from her present thirst. In fact, the meaningless and"realness" of a given situation are correlative to the involvement of an actor in aperformative situation. This sense of "realness" and meaningfulness charac­terizes the enunciation through which an actor produces an utterance.

Whereas the enunciated presupposes the separation of the shugo-subject fromthe situation, the enunciation is assumed to designate the imaginary state inwhich the subject is fused with his ecosystem, totally involved in a performativesituation. Insofar as it is taken as enunciation in this sense, a verbal text isnecessarily superimposed upon other, nonverbal texts. As enunciation, an utter­ance also takes on aspects of bodily movement: the gestural text, the accompany­ing intonation, rhythm, and other emotive features of textual materiality, whichwould be ignored in the enunciated. Thus, the perfonnative situation manifestsitself through its incorporation of the human body, whose function in this respectis to place a speaker in definite and specific rapport with the enunciation. Whenthe enunciated was reduced to the enunciation, there emerged in discursive spacea new configuration of positivities in which utterances were associated with nowand here and in which perception and discourse were placed in a new relationshipwith each other.

Nevertheless, the introduction of the enunciation thus depicted did not go sofar as to constitute subjectivity as it has been formulated in modem epistemology.The question of "inner intention" and "external expression" did not arise, andtherefore, the aporia of the alter ego was absent in the discourse in question,although there were those who detected in "transcendentalist" discourse such asSong rationalism a kind of aporia similar to modem solipsism. Neither can I findin this discourse the philosophical problem of the other's intention. The reason isprecisely this: an individual human being was never understood in terms of innerconsciousness. As Alfred Schutz has shown, once the interiority of mind has

12Edmund Hussed, Cartesian Meditations. trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,1960). Cf. Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. George Walsh and Freder­ick Lehnert (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1967). Husserl's insistence, in the courseof his problematization of the alter ego, on the interiority of consciousness must be criticized. But hiseffort to draw attention to the fact that the other cannot be "understood" must be regarded as anexcellent introduction to the problem of the Other.

I3Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Tav­istock, 1972).

been postulated, the understanding of another's motivation becomes impossible.Because the subject is endowed with an ontological prestige in which presence tothe self is the source of all evidence, the human being of modem times issupposed to be able to know with the fullest clarity what he himself wishes andintends. When compared to this immediate presence to oneself, others' intentionswould always be hidden and could be' approached only indirectly. In phe­nomenology, Husserl's in particular, the aporia of another's mind and intention isactually a counterpart of the epistemological prestige with which one's ownconsciousness is endowed. 12 Here modem epistemology and monologic philoso­phy like Song rationalism can be understood as two responses to the sameproblem: in order to avoid solipsism, they had to implant in each human beingthe guarantee of epistemological omniscience. Both thereby lost sight of theotherness of the Other and had to confine themselves in monologic closure. Whatwe are forced to confront in the question of corporeal action and the performativesituation is the apprehension that the intention of an actor is as opaque to theactor himself as to those who observe him. As I have repeatedly argued, theotherness of the other, from which the opacity ensures, comes from the textualmateriality of the body, not from the interiority of an individual consciousness.

So the otherness of corporeal action certainly belongs to the order of whatMichel Foucault calls exteriority.13 Intention always resides outside the actor'sconsciousness. This is exactly the reason why corporeal action must be under­stood as a text.

How is one to differentiate, then, the text of bodily movement from a visual orverbal text? Or how is one not to differentiate them? By the same token, howmight one discover, in a given discursive space, the regularity according towhich various texts are transformed from one another and related to one anotherintertextually?

Surely it requires no strenuous effort to realize that differentiation betweencorporeal behavior and verbal utterance involves many levels. Verbalizationcould well be corporeal action at the same time insofar as it is initiated by themovement of organs: tongue, mouth, facial muscles, and indeed the whole body.To a certain extent verbal and visual texts, for example, could undoubtedly beconceptualized in terms of temporalities and perspectival structures, what BorisA. Uspensky calls points of view. Indeed, by elaborating upon these marks, onecould establish a textual typology of the discourses of Tokugawa Japan. But itmust also be recalled that at another level verbal and visual texts are fused,

137The Enunciation and Nonverbal TextsFrame Up136

14} will deal further with verbal and visual texts in relation to the shutai, or body of enunciation, inmy Discourse and Image in Tokugawa Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcom­ing).

performing similar functions. As I have already pointed out, calligraphy andwriting in general are both verbal and visual. 14 Likewise, oral utterance is bothverbal and gestural. It is therefore essential to remark that the notion of a textualtypology necessarily leads to the notion of intertextual multilayeredness. Charac­teristics that may appear to adhere to the features ofone kind of text could well beviewed as another kind of text. And it is only insofar as one categorization of thetext is opposed to a different one that it can possibly be qualified as a specifickind of text.

It is in this context that dramaturgical performance occupies the central posi­tion in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Dramaturgical perfonnanceis surely one of the most complicated fonns of text. It is visual, verbal, andgestural at the same time; it encompasses both spatial and temporal modes ofpresentation; it unfolds temporally but also involves simultaneous occurrences ofmore than one action, as well as "things" that are present in the scene. Here thequestion of singular voice and linear presentation is extremely complex becauseheterogeneous factors are integrated into the sense-making mechanism of a givensituation. The situation projects the possibility of both integration and diffusionof various textual forms, as well as the possibility of a multiplicity of speeches.Theoretically, more than one actor can speak simultaneously, and of course, adramaturgical performance can contain many voices. This kind of multiplicity isimpossible in the linear narrative of katari, where, even if many narrators couldbe involved, the narrative voice must be unified and therefore singular. In adramaturgical presentation, the multiplicity of voices is converted into spatialterms in which utterances are distributed to different localities on the stage andassociated with bodies of actors in those localities. What distinguishes mono­logue from dialogue is this way of introducing spatialization into the text: di­alogue could be identified as that fonn of text in which voices are uttered fromdifferent loci. The factors that determine those loci are human bodies.

In this respect, the linear temporality inherent in narration and the nonlinearpresentation of a pictorial text are superimposed on each other in the text ofdrama. Inevitably one must ask, Does one read, hear, or see a dramaturgical text?Doubtless, writing, in which textual forms other than the verbal are excluded,must be a text for reading. (Indeed, one can pose a further question, Is writingpurely and simply a verbal text? There are levels at which a writing is nonverbal.Likewise, one can argue that speech is also nonverbal in certain respects. Atissue here is the multilayeredness of texts.) But when one takes into account thevariety of relationships that could exist between a theatrical script, which is awritten text according to "conventional" categories, and a dramaturgical text as awhole, one realizes how complicated the question can be. A script is not neces­sarily a verbal representation of a theatrical performance, and if a script is

presumptively incomplete in the sense -that it needs to be supplemented by aperfonnative situation, to read a script would be to relate it to an imaginedsituation, to transform it into a different series of signifiers. In this case thereading act is not a projection of representational space but a supplementationthrough which the absent scene and absent object alike are put into contact withthe script.

This is precisely the area of inquiry I shall examine next. The structuralrelationship that might exist between writing and the performative situation leadsus to larger que~tions about reading, understanding, and knowledge.

139The Enunciation and Nonverbal TextsFrame Up138

CHAPTER 5

Supplement

The Absence of Obsessive Concern for the Enunciation

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Japanese society witnessed the emer­gence of a new literary genre called eiri kyogenbon (playscripts with illustra­tions, 5-1). Significantly, the scripts of this genre were not meant to be used todirect the actual production of drama; they were printed and published in bookfonn in fairly large numbers and were obviously intended for mass literaryconsumption. These eiri kyogenbon fonnulated a connection between the actualseeing and hearing of a dramatic perfonnance and the reading of these scripts.The first few pages were usually devoted to a list of actors who had participatedin the actual perfonnance and the name of the theater where that performancetook place. Many of them contained illustrations portraying the actors' costumesand makeup. They seem, at first glance, to be exact records of actual perfor­mances, but a more detailed examination discloses that they do not conform tothe rules of what we today consider to be a drama script.

For instance, unlike kabuki scripts of the late eighteenth century, eiri kyogen­bon lacked grammatical markers by which to identify the viewpoints of narrator,actors, and spectators. Quotation marks or equivalent signs, as I have said, wereunheard of at the time. I am not suggesting that the writing system was somehowunderdeveloped or inadequate; rather, the concept of quotation, of distinguishinga speech of one person from that of another, was absent in the discursive space.Of course, one may attempt to insert quotation marks into these writings, as hasnot infrequently been done in "modem editions," and thereby to differentiatevarious characters' speeches pronounced on stage from the general narration,Yet, this procedure is possible only on condition that the narration can be clearlyand distinctly discerned from speeches ascribed to those other than the narrator.Clearly, however, the absence of quotation marks signifies the absence of such adistinction. Under such conditions, one might as well resort to merely writing

140

Supplement 141

down nothing but the words actually pronounced on stage. But if the situation~e "tt:ings" inv~lved, the actor's motions" facial and other bodily expressions:In~onatlon of VOIce, and other ~onverbal signifiers were all deleted, the scriptWl~out the support of these deVIces would be mostly unintelligible: transcribedVOIC~ alone would not have a proper signification. Therefore, narration has to~upp~e~ent the words of actors by depictjng the context, the situation, and theIdentItIes of.the speakers in ord~r.to mak~ the script intelligible. Moreover, partsof t~ese scnpts c~nnot be classIfIed as either narration or dialogue. The verbalcontinuum, the hnear succession of utterances, is not fully articulated withregard to the speaking subjects: one constantly encounters the voice of an anony­mous person.

To the extent .that the fra~~entationof narrative into many voice is suppressedand concealed .1n these w~tlngs,.katari, w~ich is still dominant, and the sup­posedly transcnbed narratIve based on katan are monotonous in the articulationof enunciative positions. Despite occasional discrepancies that permeate theapparently seamless surface of the scripts, their narrative form remains static andcontains .no manifest rupt~e. Also, the polysemy immanent in the language ofthese. sc~pts d~es not functIon to parody and thereby disqualify the authority ofthe singul~ VOIce and so does not reveal the artificiality and the conventionalityof ~he domInant mode of presentation. Because of the lack of critical distance,~hlCh would be the condition for objectification and dissociation from the estab­hshe~ fonn of presentation, these writings tend to yield to the authority of thosed~mlna~t mode~ that pres~nt themselves as naturally given, that repress thepnmordlal premIse that, .wlthout exception, any "fact" or "positivity" is medi­ated and therefore constItuted by certain ideologies.

Katari ~rojects a continuous and all-encompassing voice that 'appears to patchup narratives fragmented and disseminated by multiple voices. Yet this mono­~ogical v~ice is ~ot of th,e sa~e kind that Mikhail Bakhtin postulated in identify­mg the singulanty of vOice With the singularity of speaker "I." 1 Katari is indeeda fonn of narrative, but it does not have a specific speaker. In this context it isworth noting again that the instance of discourse was not incorporated intodiscursive space prior to the late seventeenth century; that is, a discursive forma­tion that articulate~ enunciation as such was absent. Katari is admittedly a voicethat n~ates, but It n~rrate~ only in the mode in which a clear separation ofenunCIation and enuncIated IS not fully established. In the enunciated, individual

. I~i~ ~s. partly a proble~ of te~inology. On the one hand, Bakhtin rejects the individuality orIn?IVISlbIbty of the speaker s conSCIousness and hence posits the speaker as always already split InthIS .r~spe~t. the spe~er is ?ot an ide?tity. On the other hand, he explains polyphony in terms of'the

.C<J.... >.' .. ,,-.- partICIpatIon?f multIple VOIces. multIple speakers, Is he simply suggesting that if there is more thanone .spe~er 10. the scene of utterance, the text. produced will necessarily be polyphonic and di­alogical. C~rtamly not. It m~st be st~essed that ~lS conception of dialogism has very little to do withthe conven,tlOna.1 under~tan~lng of dIalogue. WItness his insistence that even monologue is funda­m:ntally dIalo~lcal. MIkhaIl Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel," in The Dialogic Imagination, ed.MIchael HO]qUlst. trans. Caryl Emerson (Austin: University of Texas Press. 1981), pp, 259-422.

Haikai Poetry and the Openness of the Text

2Not only in poetry but also in Japanese literature in general, the fonnation of sentence andjudgment (whose completion is often taken to mean the completion of a sentence) is extremelycomplex. It is not clear to what extent, according to the theoretical protocols under which I write, Iam allowed to rely on these tenns. This problem has to be properly addressed elsewhere, b~t in themeantime I grudgingly accept their putative validity. Perhaps, the term "phrase" should be adopted.

actors, places of historical importance, and chronological dates are articulatedand fixed. But these are merely constituted within given texts, whe~eas thesubject, place, and time of the enunciation-the tenns specifically related totextual production rather than to its products-fall outside the scope of thematicproblematization. In discourses prior to the late seventeenth century the subjectof the enunciation and other problems concerning the enunciation were notarticulated. Accordingly, it was irrelevant to ask such questions as Who is reallyspeaking in katari?

143Supplement

30kumagawa genzaemon, with the subtitle, Kumano gongen nyonin 0 awaremi tamau kOIO,

published by Shohon-ya Kizaemon, Kyoto. The original peIformance took place at the Mandayu-zaTheater in Kyoto, 1688. Reprint, Tenri Library Reprint Series, Kinsei bungei lokan 5 (l969): 1-18.

In Okumagawa genzaemon, one of the earliest "playscripts with illustrations,"one encounters a strange mixture of styles. 3 A large part of the script consists ofdirectly transcribed speeches, but there are no quotation marks by means ofwhich to distinguish one actor's line from another's. And descriptive narrationoccasionally interrupts the flow of the actors' voices in order to supply informa­tion about who is speaking to whom and in what context. It may be assumed thatthis kind of text both allows for the multiplicity of voices and adopts measures toarticulate different positions, positions where voices supposedly originate on thestage. After all, it is the presence of the spatial element that distinguishes the­atrical texts from such narrative forms as kalari. Whereas the distance of theaddresser from the addressee is not integrated into the significative mechanism of

Playscripts with Illustrations

never a meaning present to the writers; even the signification of one's own workalways remains unknown to oneself. In thi& sense, a writer is never an author aswe conventionally understand the term. In haikai poetry only readers exist, neverauthors. Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that a completely different stanzacould just as well be placed after the first stanza, in which case the same wordswould be put in relation to other semes and would carry -a meaning different yetagain from the one in the previous case. There is no intrinsic continuity betweensuccessive stanzas: instead, each is related to its predecessor and successoraccidentally. This element of chance is an essential feature of haikai poetics. Aword in haikai works like the face of a prism, which reflects and refracts colorscoming from the outside while in itself it does not have any color. These words inhaikai are open and exposed to the outside. As we shall see with regard to thestructure of parody in the literature of Tokugawa Japan, language interacts withthe performative situation; as the performative situation changes, the significa­tion of language also changes accordingly.

But this correlation of polysemic language with the situation confronted writ­ers of the eighteenth century with a problem: How could one assume a one-to­one correspondence between an expression and an act of expression when theexpression is expressed in this kind of polysemic language? Concomitantly, howcould one retrace an expression back to its originating act? In this context, itcannot be assumed that the emergence of the enunciation led to the establishmentof authorship, for until the Meiji era and the inauguration of modem state con­trol, Japan never witnessed a discourse in which authorship and the nation-statewere venerated simultaneously as infallible orthodoxies.

Frame Up142

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the polysemic characteristic oflanguage took on a different form of .ideological praxis. A radical differencebetween speech as enunciation (equated to speech) and speech as the enunciated(equated to writing) was introduced, along with a corresponding change in inter­textuality. Polysemy and multivocity in literary discourse then began to shiftaway from the enclosed space of writing. A word served to open up the closureof meaning by incorporating the possibility of reference to the word's outside. Ata certain seme, a word has a definite connotation, but at another it does not havea fixed connotation, because syntactical and semantic configuration is organizedso as to allow outside factors to determine the semes. This point can be illustratedby haikai no renga (5-2) (although haikai poetry and its antecedent renga, orlinked poetry [5-3], certainly predate the eighteenth century), in which a word ina stanza remains intentionally ambiguous until the following stanza is juxtaposedto it. This technique is facilitated by the syntactical incompleteness of haikaipoems. Words are loosely assembled in such a way that they form neither asentence nor a judgment.2 As subsequent stanzas are added, the ones alreadycomposed are put into new relationships, which generate semes hitherto absent.Even if the polysemy of a word in the first stanza is perceived, its semes cannotbe determined when we examine the stanza in isolation. If someone puts anotherstanza after it, then we suddenly recognize a seme that had been previouslydormant: the words in the first stanza now carry a new meaning. More important­ly, each stanza is produced by a different writer, so the meaning of a stanzaconstantly escapes from the control of the author; although one places words in acertain order, one cannot determine the intention and the signification of one '8

work. In this case, the writer is a producer of words, and it is only insofar as oneplaces words that one is the author of one's work or stanza. But the meaning is

Stratification of the Verbal Continuum

In Fukujukai, another eiri kyogenbon, Chikamatsu Monzaemon appears as anactor-author (he i~ listed as one of the actors under the title of author at thebeginning of the work). 4 We can barely recognize as such a voice that belongs to

4Fukujukai was first published by Shohon-ya Kizaemon, Kyoto. The original performance tookplace at Miyako Mandayu-za, 1700. Reprint, Tenri Library Reprint Series, Kinsei bungei zokan(1969): 5:361-77. The authorial position is extremely ambiguous here. It is important to stress thatother works of this genre do not necessarily follow this rule of treating the author as if he were one ofthe characters. This authorial ambiguity seems to suggest the absence of distinction between repre­sentational space and actual space. In other words, there may have been no notion of the productionof a text as categorically opposed to its product. If the author is listed as one of the characters, then hewould have to belong to the work represented by the text. But the author produces a text within whichonly characters are identified. In this sense, characters are produced by the author. How then, couldthe producer (= author) and products (= characters) coexist in the same space?

Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724), playwright for the puppet theater, or ningyo joruri. andalso for the kabuki theater, was born to a samurai family, but his father abandoned his feudal duties.Chikamatsu produced many works for the jomri chanter Takemoto Gidayu. Among his major worksare Yotsugi Soga (The Soga heir), Shusse Kagekiyo (Kagekiyo victorious), Sonezaki shinju (The LoveSuicides at Sonezaki), Shinju ten no Amijima (The Love Suicide at Amijima), and Kokusen'ya Kassen(The Battles ojCoxinga). His later works are particularly well known for the theme of double suicide.

145Supplement

These three sentences all depict the same event, even though the position ofthe parenthetical narration is different in each. Of course, the position wheredescriptive narration breaks into the verbal continuum cannot be completelyarbitrary: the 4HB will join,' said A, 'us soon:" for example, would be soawkward as to be nearly nonsensical. Still, the relative syntactical independence

B will join us soon said A("B will join us soon," said A.)6

B will A said join us soon(UB will," A said, "join us soon.")

SThis argument might not apply to some languages, such as Latin, in which syntagm in the senseof the successive order of words does not playas decisive a role as it does in English. The argumentholds for Japanese, however. A more detailed analysis will disclose those features of Japanese syntaxthat limit the possibilities of narrative fonns.

6In order to create an effect similar to that of the original texts of eiri kyogenbon, which lackquot~tion marks and other punctuation, I have deleted these marks from the examples.

A said B will join us soon(A said, "B will join us soon")

an anonymous person, given between quoted speeches. Utterances of actors,which diversify and fracture the unity of the verbal continuum, are bunchedtogether by a descriptive narration that does not seem to resemble oral presenta­tion. The narration is mechanical and functional, sparingly giving the minimalamot:}.nt of information necessary to link quoted speeches linearly. Sometimes thenarration lacks a predicate or the inflectional ending of a verb and thereforeliterally cannot be pronounced. Thus, the verbal continuum is divided into twoclasses: a transcription of speeches that are pronounceable and a description ofscenes, which remains indifferent to pronounceability. Thus, I am concernedhere with a division between oral and nonoral verbalizations. To be sure, thisdivision is not unrelated to the dichotomy particular to this discursive spacebetween speech and writing, but it is important to note that the differentiation ofquoted speech from descriptive narration also refers to their temporal difference.In the work as a linear continuum, the two modes of verbal presentation shouldbe organized serially, but whereas syntactical relationships among words of aquoted speech cannot be changed without causing a change of meaning,S therelationship between descriptive narration and quoted speech seems to enjoy amuch higher degree of syntagmatic arbitrariness. For example, suppose a quotedspeech ~~B will join us soon" is to be linked to a descriptive narration "A said."The order of words in the quoted speech is fixed: B-will-join-us-soon. Tochange the syntax would be to change the speech itself. There is, however,greater freedom with regard to the position of a parenthetical statement.

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katari, the distance that sustains the possibility of conversation among characterson the stage is essential in theatrical performance. He"nce, in a theatric~ scriptevery utterance of a character is directed toward some other character within thefictional space of its stage performance. It need scarcely be said that the sameutterance directed toward another character is simultaneously addressed to theaudience. What determines the fictionality and artificiality of the theatricalspeech act is precisely this double directedness of utterances. By contrast, be­cause katari addresses itself not to any specific character but rather to an anony­mous audience, it has no such double directedness.

An essential point to be considered when theatrical directedness is transcribedinto a script is the question of how double directedness and spatial elements aresynthesized in that linear presentation to which verbalization inevitably adheres.The addition of a visual text to a verbal script is one solution, but unless it isjoined to a relevant discursive apparatus in the verbal text of the script, illustra­tion alone could never supplement utterances in such a way as to spatialize thenarrative. This is exactly the case with Okumagawa genzaemon. On the onehand, it is presumed that the script, a writing, corresponds to the text of drama­turgical performance, as well as to its visual representation, its illustration. True,descriptive narration marks some utterances with respect to the identities ofspeakers or listeners. Phrases such as "A said . . ." or "B heard . . ." designatethe identities of speakers and listeners and thereby establish the network ofdistances between characters. But nonetheless, one can scarcely avoid the overallimpression that the writing still adheres to the norms of katari narrative.

A said stratum of descriptive narrationB will join us soon = stratum of speech

C said, = stratum of descriptive narrationA said B will join us soon = stratum of speech

In other words, the stratum of descriptive narration expresses how the quotedspeech was produced and thereby attempts to provide information concerning itsenunciation. I must emphasize, however, that the strata of descriptive narrationand speech are not fixed, and are differentially set. Only in relation to thesentence "B will . . ." can the parenthetical "A said" be determined to be partof the descriptive narration. For after all, a formation such as the following isalso possible:

147Supplement

(performative situation) stratum of descriptive narrationB will join us soon = stratum of speech

7It is for this reason that Nishida Kitaro could not but posulate the jikatu (self-awareness, 5-4) interms of basho-a term meaning "place" or "topos," which Nishida coined by modifying "chora"in Plato's Timeus-as what he called mu no jikaku tki gentei." For the term "basho" see NishidaKitaro, Basho, in Hataraku mono kara mirumono e. Nishida Kitaro Zenshu (Tokyo: Iwanami Sholen,1965) 5:208-89.

By increasing the number of strata~ it is possible to continue to shift thestratum of descriptive narration indefinitely. As each new stratum is added,

. transforming the stratum of descriptive narration into that of speech, the subjectOf the enunciation also shifts. Hence, even within the scope of this discussion,

.the. agent of enunciation is that which flees the moment when an attempt to'Identify it is made, that which indefinitely transcends the subject of the enunci­',ated.7 The subject of enunciation can be designated only insofar as it is split fromUte shutai, which flees the moment the subject of enunciation is captured in itsimage.:\" If we focus dn the very movement of shifting or fleeing, however, the mostbasic model of stratification would be as follows:

Here, in spite of the absence of descriptive narration, the perfonnative situationitself serves to determine the enunciation, in which case the fleeing of the shutaican be.defined as the asymmetrical linkage between' quoted speech and theperformative situation. When the stratum of the performative situation is lacking,hO'Ne,rer. quoted speech can be apprehended only as an enunciated. In this case,the signification of quoted speech is determinable, but its signifiance cannot beunderstood. In writing, where the performative situation is not supposed to be

"t<IC::;~·~;·€'!;l;;y·,·:i· given, descriptive narration is its substitute and plays a role equivalent in itsopposition to quoted speech.

This problem of substituting the performative situation for descriptive narra­tion will always be encountered when one attempts to transcribe theatrical perfor­mance into writing. Of course, in the process of transcription, the basic structureof performance has to be omitted because writing is usually a linear presentationbut the performative situation is not. Whereas speech, grasped as an enunciated,may be subject to the linearity of verbal presentation, speech as enunciationcannot be encompassed in this form because of its referential link to nonlineartexts such as body movement and facial expression. The introduction of descrip­tive narration signifies the most elementary phase of stratification of writing,which requires the stratification of the verbal continuum.

One can argue that a certain form of stratification, hitherto nonexistent, gaverise to an opposition between descriptive narration and quoted speech and cameto dominate the literary discourse of the late seventeenth and eighteenth cen­turies. In the following chapters, I discuss this stratification of the verbal con-

Frame Up146

of the parenthetical narration in relation to the rest of the sentence is consider­able.

It is impossible to apply this argument directly to the discourse with which weare now dealing. Nonetheless, the same function of descriptive. narration can befound in eiri kyogenbon. What this relative syntagmatic indePendence achievesis a stratification of texts, whereby different temporalities are introduced.

It is easy to recognize that the parenthetical statement "A said" and the quotedspeech "B will join us soon" belong to two different strata in the text. To showthe difference between these strata plainly, I might analyze the sentence inrespect to its enunciation. The sentence "B will join us soon" posits A as thesubject of enunciation; the moment of enunciation is indicated by the past tenseof the parenthetical "A said." Yet if we take the utterance in its entirety- "Asaid, 'B will join us soon' "-it becomes obvious that we can determine neitherthe subject of enunciation nor its moment of enunciation. That is to say, insofaras the sentence "B will join us soon" is concerned, it is only in relation toanother time in which the act "A said" took place that we can possibly determinethe time in which the content of "B will join us soon" is to be realized. Inprinciple, there is no need to integrate the two temporalities into a singular time.To put it more precisely, integration of the temporalities always requires anothertemporality, which is heterogeneous to them. The time in which A made theutterance and the time in which "B will join us" could be utterly indifferent toeach other. For instance, the sentence "B will join us soon" could be a quotationfrom a book that A happened to read aloud. In that case, "B will join us soon"belongs to the story in the book and the parenthetical statement indicates thestratum in which the sentence was uttered.

It is decisive in this respect that although the signification of the quoted speechcan be determined by itself, one cannot refer to its signifiance. the process asenunciation, unless another stratum, such as the one indicated by the parentheti­cal statement in my example is mentioned.

Separation of Voice and Body

8Noel Burch To the Distant Observer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 14;Roland Barthes', "Lesson in Writing," in lmage-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hilland Wang, 1977), pp. 155-164. What might appear to be an excessively wide scope in the works.ofBarthes and Burch is, I think, valid and important, even within the context of Far Eastern studIespursued as a professional discipline in the West and Japan. For both Barthes and Burch attempt to

tinuum whose structural characteristics were, I think, specific to eighteenth­century' disco~se. For the moment, however, let me observe that this stratifica­tion suggests a new way of thematizing the position of the speaker, a new modeof thetic articulation resulting from the transformation of intertextuality. A vari­ety of signifying systems were newly differentiated from each other and situatedin different relationships. In this respect, it is important to note that the level ofdiscourse at which I ought to identify the stratification is not linguistic, that itnecessarily involves texts other than verbal ones, that it cannot be discussed as aform of syntactical regularity because it inevitably encompasses nonlinguisticsignifying systems as well, and that the level is primarily semiotic. It is onlythrough this mechanism of the stratification of the verbal continuum that what isgenerally called "observer's speech" can be established. In other words, so­called observer's speech is specific to certain discourses and cannot be presumedto exist everywhere and at all times.

149Supplement

d~monst~ate that a ~i~ursiv~ positivity called ..J~pan" continually threatens a conventional (profes­Sional) discourse Within which so many assumptions are never subjected to rigorous interrogation.Both Barthes and Burch try to demonstrate that various aspects of that positivity called Japan beliemany of those assumptions, jeopardizing that fundamentally uncritical universalism to which human­ism lays claim. Both works are invaluable in that they show positivism to be an instance of intellec­tual provincialism ~re~isely because positivism does not acknowledge that everyone is historicallyand cu~turally prOVinCial. Furthermore. both demonstrate that the will to know both the past andothers IS necessarily also the will to criticize the present and whatever society of which one issupposedly a member. Inasmuch as their arguments are marshalled against a single dominant ide­ology, however, what I intend to demonstrate in this book cannot be entirely subsumed within thescop~ of their work. They tend to substantiate a perceived dichotomy between the West and Japan,seemingly unaware that their considerations of "Japan" could be equally effective critiques ofpresent-day Japanese intellectual discourse. Although it is perhaps excusable and to a certain extenti~evitable in the light of the strategy they employ, both Barthes and Burch accepted the reifieddIchotomy of the West versus the non-West and postulated a unitary "Japan" as a radical ..outside"that would escape the dominance of Western ethnocentrism. But does this critique of "Western"ethnocentrism itself har~r the very ethnocentrism they wish to criticize? Is it the putative unity of theWest that has to be put IOtO doubt? In the Empire ofSigns, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill~d Wang, ~ 982), Ba-:h~s openly announces that the "empire of signs" has nothing to do with JapanItself. And mdeed, thiS IS more than an apology from an author who evidently did not speak or readJapanese and whose knowledge of "Japan"(!) was admittedly limited. Yet Barthes's admission drawsour attention to the fact that what is supposedly the "real Japan," as well as presumptively objective~owledge about that "real Japan," is also, after all, a product of discursive activity. If that continu­mg accumulatio~ o! positivist kno,":ledge a~ut Japan which constitutes itself as a ..Japanology"chooses to remam ignorant or neghgent of Its own ideological constraints, then no claim to theauthority of expertise by and on behalf of Japanologists (be they native Japanese or not) can besustained.

trism of which they write is understood in terms of modem subjectivism. But arethere not other discursive possibilities for other centrisms? Did no centrism playany ideological role in Japanese discursive spaces? Interestingly enough, bothBarthes and Burch point out how various verbal and nonverbal texts are synthe­sized into a text and thus contribute to Japanese dramaturgical performance.Significantly the narrative voice is separated from the fictional locus of thespeaking subject (the puppet's body in ningyo joruri). Yet we must remindourselves that, even in no drama, in which the source of the voice may appear tocoincide with the actor's body, constant dislocation and displacement are at workbetween the locus of the speaking subject and the voice. Sorrow expressed inwords is often independent of the movement of the actor's body, and rarely areemotion, words, and gestural expression synchronized. If one expected to hearthe words of a character as an expression of inner emotion, one would almostsurely be disappointed, for words do not mediate between the feeling and theappearance of a character. It seems as if sorrow thus described exists not in therecesses of a character's interiority but rather in language itself.

In ningyo joruri and kabuki, in contrast to no, one observes a coincidence ofverbal presentation with scenes in which the bodies of the actors move. Despitethe involvement of puppets and a theatrical setting that separates chanter andstage, ningyo joruri utilizes intertextual devices through which the puppet's bodyseems to take on the feeling the words project. Nonetheless, in ningyo jomri as

Frame Up

The inner mechanism of the stratification can be best analyzed with referenceto the text of the ningyo joruri (Japanese puppet play, 5-5). Here, music, intona­tion, and the gesture of the chanter, which had been excluded and thereforebelonged to the textual materiality of katari narrative, help articulate and stratify

the verbal text.It has frequently been remarked that the genres of performative art that flour-

ished in Tokugawa Japan seem to have mixed forms of presentation in peculiar orat least now-unfamiliar ways. Japanese scholars have traced ningyo joruri, one ofthese arts, back to the mid-sixteenth century, but it reached the zenith of itscommercial success in the first half of the eighteenth century. This artistic formcoordinates a combination of speech, intonation, music, and of course the move­ment of puppets. The copresence of these texts within the text of dramaturgicalperformance is by no means particular to the performative arts of TokugawaJapan, but the intertextual coordination of various texts in ningyo joruri, kabuki,and so on assuredly cannot be subsumed under the rubric of what we normallyunderstand as "theatrical art." Roland Barthes, in a brilliant essay on Japanesepuppet theater, and Noel Burch, in a more extensive elaboration on a similarsubject, have both remarked on this characteristic of Japanese theater and film,which Burch identifies as "the rejection of anthropocentrism and all the otherform of centrism."8 This assessment certain!y makes sense insofar as the cen-

148

150 Frame Up

well as kabuki this effect remains provisional. That is to say, the identity of bodyand voice never becomes the general principle governing the structure of theentire work. Hence, these genres cannot be categorized as realistic theater­"realistic" here meaning the continual projection of the character's appearanceto his subjective interior. In some cases, body and voice are split; in others, theyare merged. This ambiguous relationship between the puppet's body on the stageand the narrative text within which a subject is constituted was the conditionunder which these theaters developed their dramaturgy.

Direct or Indirect Speech

Since kabuki and ningyo joruri belong to different genres, they require differ­ent acting skills and dramaturgies. This is exactly the point at which the stratifi­cation of verbal continuum is introduced into the performance, a point where thecoordination of nonverbal texts with verbal ones regulates the relationship be­tween body and voice. Here, I must consider two theoretical issues that aredirectly involved in determining any possible relationship between the two terms:first, differentiation of direct and indirect speeches and, second, natural gestureand formalized bodily behavior (direct and indirect actions).

Underlying my discussion of stratification is the assumption that in variousJapanese languages there existed no syntactical distinction equivalent to thatbetween direct and indirect speech in modem European languages. For the sakeof explanation, I postulated structural homogeneity between English and Japa­nese sentence structures. As a matter of fact, however, it is well known that onecan hardly find explicit grammatical rules in classical Japanese by means ofwhich direct and indirect speech might be clearly distinguished. It is also impor­tant to remark that, notwithstanding the absence of syntactical differentiation, theeighteenth century witnessed the development of graphic markers, by which anequivalent differentiation was expressed in "writing." I will try to explain howthese worked by using my previous example:

A said, "B will join us soon."lAl B will join us soon.

Instead of the pronounceable verbal construction "A said," a graphic marker,beyond the scope of oral presentation, is introduced (see figure D). (A similarnotation has been used in the West too.) This notation, which functions as anintermediary term between the descriptive narration, which is verbal, and theperformative situation, which is nonverbal, is one of the first graphic deviceswhereby "direct speech" is clearly discernible. Written elements that are neces­sary to provide the verbal text with a context but which cannot be pronounced areplainly distinguished from the words actually uttered. The purpose of these

Figure D. From T6kaid6chii.:"'\. \¥ hizakurige (Shanks' mare) by

"" Ikku Jippensha, 1802. Here onecan see the extensive use ofquotation marks. Speakers'names are indicated by one- ortwo-character abbreviations atthe start of each quote. Insteadof "Yajirobei says '... ,'" thefonn used is [Ya]" .... Noclosing quotation marks appear;the quote is marked only at thebeginning. I have included(bottom) the modem edition(Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshu[Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1975], vol.49, p. 90) because some of theuses of characters can moreeasily be distinguished there.

'- ([) Iv ~ 8l :It ij:J; f).., ..,OJ L. ~ b jj~ tf; i~ ~

~t; t \" t.:::. ]it h Iu -r.~ ......... Q fJ .1 tr..

\"tt JJ; !; ~ :*:~Jl ti ~It.., """1

iti < ii t m\t t. 7A tr.. Iv .:t "? III; ".. /C 't>" te.. -r tt. ~ tt!!Q) k" tJt <.. m~ 7 il• k"

"'":*: f~ *1:: ~\>

6t Iv t.!. "'" ~ lfit iDflt tJ: "? < ~~ ~ .ilt 61EfI 1IJf. ~

'"( l4!~ "? OJ ri fl '-. If

c'f~

~ IIJ~ '"C 4tff''''fJ)tJ: :it t!. '" ", m'~ liU\' ~ :tt!!'" W"C ~ ~ i(·"-

()~ .1 III ~ 7 f/) ~I?-t:: iJ~ ~

t: t.::. <-I

"'? -£ -1:' :J!II~ 9J; lib .:t1:> ~ tJ ... Iv J&~

I~ b, :*: t=l

~ 1 ~tl:. JIIJ b lib t~

tJ: '"\" '- tJ· <- f~\"

~:*: l:.. ~ IBJ it;

:*:1.- b .t ~~ l: ~t!..' < 'J ftz ", tJt

fJ f8J ~ JIIJ b ......... 1nr ~ ~ 7 ~ U:' '-, f/)

v~

1.,.l\ t.t.:. t!.. 1:f:1"? " t- V 7 t t1J1 iii l:: "? .........=

Z~,O) 1<Iv ;.,-e h~ ~ IT "? (7) "? t.::. t.::.

t.::.t.:.li. roC: ~"?

~ P i"" .~ ~'- t.r..

l..~ "?tc to tJ:( t!.."'?

~ -e....... 'It_ < -r I.' 9J; I- iI~ ......... (JJ <" ......... vt 1""l- t: l!Q1Itibo "? ~ -r'? lJ,.. ~ nR ~~ l.t' IlIIt tr.. ~ :it!1~1< tJ~ tJ~

\'_"? h t.r. fj:l: ~t! :It-C\ tJt ;.,'-, t~~ \" <<t> Mjc "? t!.. l.t' <- ~, -, t;tltc J: iJF "? 1.-;" :Q~ '"C "'? < iii Ii"!" * C h0-....... --, ~-e 'fl\."

tJ· ::r tt. 't:. 00 Itt C ~ fli "" b "Ctl·\,- t. -- gro7 b v <;., f I- ~U Iv.! ~ i f/) 10 (J) < L t.r..,

~ Ef- tA> iJ.,.. < \" r-:~ T .. L :JJ:t IBJ t.: a-'Y C1b -e ....... ro L t!.. rot.:. "'"

t .. ......... .~ .t L "'?...,;jl:; .........

" , 1< 1fi.

~-ltlv '-', ;z:. t --C vi: 10 i? t.:...,

tl~ ~ -ec I

r ~1k ~ < L. \,., Iv

151

9y' N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R.Titunik (New York: Seminar Press, 1973), p. 128.

lOIbid., p. 129.

I do not claim that literary discourse prior to the late seventeenth century wasentirely free of the features of direct speech as Volosinov defines them here. Butin parodist literature it is simply impossible to overlook either the overwhelming

All the various ellipses, onussl0ns, and so on, possible in direct discourse onemotive-affective grounds, are not tolerated by the analyzing tendencies of indirectdiscourse and can enter indirect discourse only if developed and filled out. The Ass'sexclamation, "Not Bad!" in Peskovskij's example cannot be mechanically regis­tered in indirect discourse as: "He says that not bad ... ," but only as "He saysthat it was not bad ... ," or even "He says that the nightingale sang not badly."lO

153Supplement

Despite the lack of an explicit syntactical mechanism by which to differentiateindirect from direct speech in classical Japanese languages, a new mode ofintertextuality came into play in such a way that the narrative voice, which wouldotherwise be merely verbal, is related to other, non-verbal, texts. Accordingly,

ltShikitei Samba, Namaei katagi (originally published in 1807, modem edition: Nihon kotenbungaku zenshu, voL 47 (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1971), pp. 203-54. Samba was a native of Edo, sonof a woodblock engraver and therefore familiar with the world of commercial publication and printingfrom his early years. He became a secondhand book merchant and a writer of vernacular novellas andhumorous fiction in various genres-for example, kibyoshi (yellow cover), gokan (bound volume),and kokkeibon. His often effective combinations of illustrations and prose made him one of theearliest writer~ to live on the publication of fiction. Among his major works are Ukiyo buro (TheBathhouse of the Floating World), Kokon hyaku baka (A hundred fools, ancient and modem) andUkiyo doko (The Barbershop of the Floating World).

Copresence of Other Texts

use of direct speech or the constant reference to sounds and visual images thatcannot be represented' analytically. ShMebon (5-6) and kokkeibon (comicalbooks, 5-7), for example, are filled with onomatopoeia. Namaei katagi (5-8), byShikitei Samba, portrays many features of drunks, precisely by means ofemotive-affective features of speech and onomatopoeia, all of which would beomitted in indirect speech. I 1 What is at -issue here is not whether direct speechgenerally predominated in the literary 'discourse of that time or not-of coursemany contemporary works did not contain any direct speech. Rather, it is aquestion of discovering and elucidating the conditions that allowed a literarydiscourse saturated with direct speech to come into being.

If the stratification of the verbal continuum were to coincide with the differ­entiation of direct from indirect speech, we would obtain a kind of discourse inwhich indirect speech would function as a descriptive narration devoted to por­traying the performative situation, while quoted direct speech would be ex­pressed replete with its emotive-affective features. In addition, such a discoursewould be capable of integrating into itself utterances that otherwise merelyviolate what is perceived to be grammatically correct. In such a discourse itwould be possible to incorporate dialects, onomatopoeia, ungrammatical uses ofwords, and utterances of those who are without sophisticated knowledge aboutlanguage. All these "defects~' would contribute to a more vivid portrayal ofutterances. Such a discourse would be filled with the noise of grammatical and

. stylistic variety, a noise that would call forth a strong sense of heterogeneity inlanguage. This is what had been impossible in katari, in which stratification waspoorly developed and indirect speech predominant. Stylistic and dialectical di­versity are scarce in katari because the same language tends to pervade the entirework. With rare exception, in kanazoshi of the early seventeenth century, peas­ants speak virtually the same language as merchants.

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The essence of the differentiation between direct and indirect "discourse"(here I momentarily adopt Volosinov's use of the term "discourse") consists ofneither syntactical patterns nor agreement of tense. In indirect discourse, re­ported speech loses its immediate affinities with enunciation and is transformedinto a construction in which nonverbal elements are simply explained. WhatVolosinov calls the "emotive-affective features of speech" should also includeintonation, rhythm, and the speaker's personal peculiarities. Hence, whereasdirect speech suggests a sense of involvement, indirect speech generally bestowsa sense of detachment from the speech it reports. Furthermore, the features ofspeech that cannot be verbalized according to the syntax of a given language,such as onomatopoeia, are either ignored or translated into an expression adher­ing to the syntactical rules. Indirect discourse does not tolerate grammaticaldefects:

consists in the analytical transmission of someone's speech....The analytical tendency of indirect discourse is manifested by the fact that all

emotive-affective features of speech, in so far as they are expressed not in thecontent but in the form of a message, do not pass intact into indirect discourse. Theyare translated from form into content, and only in that shape do they enter into theconstruction of indirect discourse, or are shifted to the main clause as commentarymodifying the verbum indicendi.9

nonpronounceable graphic markers is to separate clearly and distinctly the wordsthat have been actually pronounced from descriptive signs, verbal or nonverbal,applied to designate the environment in which those words are uttered. Prior tothe eighteenth century, by implication, indirect speech predominated; katari,although it was orally transmitted, actually presented a form of indirect speech.What, then, is the nature of indirect discourse if it is not distinguished accordingto syntactical rules? V. N. Volosinov has provided what I think is one of the mostpersuasive definitions. He finds that the linguistic essence of indirect discourse.

12Boris A. Uspensky, A Poetics oJComposition , trans. Valentina Zavarin and Susan Wittig (Berke­ley: University of California Press, 1973).

our analysis must grasp a text of ningyo joruri, which probably best exemplifiesthe workings of this new intertextuality, as a "bundle" of texts: the stage or thespace of the puppet theater is in fact a topos where many different kinds of textsintersect and are interwoven.

Until now I have postulated two basic modes of relating speech at its instanceofdiscourse. in its direct adherence to the performative situation by means of theenunciation: direct speech and indirect speech. Indirect speech maintains a cer­tain distance from the environment of the speech act and inCOrPOrates quotedspeech into the verbal text without destroying its coherence and unity, unknittingthe very textuality of the verbal text. Hence it analytically screens out elementsforeign to the coherent and homogeneous verbal flow, such as ungrammaticalexpressions and onomatopoeia, as we have seen. It "protects" the verbal text,preventing it from being mixed with other texts.

Yet if the verbal text has such different ways of relating to other texts, howcould we possibly presume that no other form of text does? One could also askwhether or not performance can in fact be adequately articulated in terms of"indirect" and "direct" actions. In pantomime or dance, where verbalization islacking, would it still be possible to talk about an intertextual relationship be­tween the gestural text and the performative situation?

Here I confront two different but interrelated issues. The first concerns therelationship between bodily movement and other nonverbal texts; the second is amore specific problem concerning the relationship between verbal and gestural­bodily texts. The choice of ningyo joruri as an object of investigation will workto our advantage because the separation of voice and body is a given charac­teristic of the puppet theater, whereas it can be sustained only hypothetically intheatrical texts that involve live actors: ningyo joruri thus supplies us with anopportunity to see a new mode of intertextuality at the specific nexus of work andbody.

I return to a consideration of the first of these problems later. Meanwhile, letme draw attention to the movement of the puppet in relation to the verbal text andfocus on the connection of the puppet's body and words, a connection that fromour perspective appears to be dually articulated, in the sense that two layers are tobe discerned, namely, the level of script (written verbal text) and stage perfor­mance as a whole and the level of the puppet's body and the chanter's voice.

A puppet by itself is always wordless. Yet we know that it is integrated into theentirety of the text of ningyo joruri. I shall use the terminology of Boris A.Uspensky to argue that it is through structural isomorphism that verbal andnonverbal texts are related to each other and integrated into the whole of thetext. 12

In order to determine the status of script (writing) in relation to other texts in

13Hirosue Tamotsu, Genroku-ki no bungaku to zoku (Tokyo: Mirai-sha, 1979), pp. 27-51.

155Supplement

the context of ningyo joruri, it must be remembered that what is conventionallyunderstood as writing plays a rather ambiguous role. For one thing, the Japanesepuppet theater is a performative art in which no writing is explicitly involved, if"writing" is understood to mean a form of verbal text opposed to speech. Itmight appear that the script falls outside the actual performance, so that its solefunction is to represent and project its content onto the stage. It should be able todirect act.ing and scenes. Yet, as Hirosue Tamotsu has remarked, the script ofningyo joruri is not merely the verbal transcription of a performance. 13 Readersdid not expect a script to represent the performance conducted at a theater; theydid not expect documentary reportage. To read a script was to conjure up theactual performance, but it was done by involving the reader in the recitation ofthe words of a script, thereby inserting a verbal text into the performative situa­tion. As participants rather than mere spectators, readers supposedly placedthemselves at the locus of the instance of discourse. Even if the situation was notpresent to them, the act of reading presupposed the inclusion of an imaginarysituation in the comprehension of the script. That is, the act of reading could beconstrued as mimetic identification.

This kind of reading attests to the thesis that the structure of the reading act isdetermined within a given discursive space. The mode of understanding a writingis, in fact, subject to the interrelationship of verbal and non-verbal texts. At thisstage, I am still not able to postulate the extent to which the script is verbal andthe extent to which it includes and anticipates musical and gestural factors thatare not verbal.

Accordingly, the participation of nonverbal texts in the script takes on decisiveimportance when one views the text of ningyo joruri in the light of the notion ofthe incompleteness of a written text. A crucial question in this inquiry is hownonverbal texts, such as the sound of musical instruments, the gestures of pup­pets, and the emotive-affective features of the chanter's voice, are already de­picted and structurally incorporated into the sense-making mechanism of theJapanese puppet theater. This question is preliminary but essential. The perfor­mance, the entire bundle of the text (hereafter designated as Text) of ningyojoruri, consists of a structurally coordinated copresence of plural texts. There­fore, the participation of nonverbal texts in the verbal text is part and parcel ofsignijiance in the Text and is structured so that the Text may sustain a stablemeaning. Therefore, the way nonverbal texts are coordinated with verbal texts isan essential factor in constituting the meaning of the Text. Conversely, themeaning determines how the script is related to performance. This is the reasonwhy I have argued that writing plays an ambiguous role in the Japanese puppettheater and that to read such a script is to go beyond the limits of writing into therealm of what is normally excluded from it. Here again we face the fact that a textis always an interweaving of texts, and therefore, in order to identify a text, we

Frame Up154

must necessarily refer to other texts. The identity of a text, far from beingreducible to its signification, relies on references to and differences from othertexts.

It is well known that scripts of ningyo joruri contain many sorts of graphicmarkers indicating tone, meter, and stylistic features of the chanter's voice. Theseries of changed words (gidayu-bushi, 5-9) is divided into parts marked by shi,ji. and so on. Shi specifies that the part thus designated should be recited as if itwere uttered by a character in the story. More precisely, because of its oppositionto ji, melodic chanting, the parts of narrative concatenation designated as shi arerendered in such a way as to represent ordinary speech directly quoted from theactual scene. It is precisely because of this binary opposition between melodicchanting (ji) and ordinary speech (shi) that the utterance directly quoted fromordinary speech finds its way into the Text of ningyo joruri. (There are manystages between shi and ji, but here I assume that these two tenns detennine theextremes.) Moreover, in a sense, the absence of the syntactical distinction be­tween direct and indirect speech in Japanese is compensated for by this extra­linguistic device, which also gives the voice of the chanter the appearance ofbeing conjoined to the body of a puppet. Thus the audience is able to apprehendthat the voice of the chanter is supposed to derive from the locus on the stagewhich the puppet's body occupies, although in fact the voice comes from thechanter's mouth. Usually the sound of the samisen, which otherwise accom­panies the chanting, ceases when the chanter's voice recites ordinary speech and,by other means, makes the subject of the enunciation appear to coincide with thesubject of the enunciated. Here it is imperative to note, as did Roland Barthes,that the subjects of enunciation and enunciated are never the same in the Text ofthe Japanese puppet theater. The narration is conducted solely by the chanter~ hemonopolizes the voice. Since puppets are, after all, what ChikamatsuMonzaemon called deku (pieces of wood), the actors never speak. It is notfeasible to ascribe the voice of a character directly to the actual utterance of anactor. Because of this fundamental limitation, the Text of ningyo joruri plainlyindicates an irredeemable disparity between the enunciation and the enunciated,thereby debunking any humanistic ideological "frame up" by which the subjectof the enunciated might ultimately seem to coincide with the subject of enuncia­tion, the myth of subjective interiority.

It does not follow, however, that the binary opposition of ordinary speech tomelodic chanting corresponds to the stratification of quoted speech and descrip­tive narration. Characters do not always speak in ordinary voices; indeed, occa­sionally their utterances almost reach a level of dramatization wherein ordinaryspeech is merged with ritualized and formalized narration. In such cases thecharacters talk as if singing and sing as if they were in dialogue. Such a mode ofnarration is surely not peculiar to the performative arts of Tokugawa Japan. Onecould easily mention equivalents in other societies, such as Western opera. Yetgiven the separation of the source of the chanting voice from the location ofgestural action, a new expression of the signifiance to which the Text of ningyo

157Supplement

<f-Ji~

fuda toraneba, omon ga deraremasenu, machitto hima ga irimasho. Ee

oyakata ga sunde kara. Shukuro-dono de han 0 keshi. Gachigyoji kara

jHChubei lei 0 seite, Kasha wa ooze osoizo, Gohei, Ute sette kure to tach; ni1 A

~,*iti1&~4tv~'"( ~ 1£JlUit.l-ltil~~.:e. 1i~~~ fTw:J'"(4tw:J'"( <tL~ :lIt~:

14Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Meido no hikyaku. The aspects of these verbs can not be rendered inEnglish. Since the acting is being conducted simultaneously on the stage, it is natural to assume thatthe narration is done in the present tense. It is implied, however, that the performance is a re­presentation or repetition of what has actually happened. In this case, it might be better to use the pasttense. Ii'ira and fushi specify the intonational and melodic aspects of the chanting, as I shall explain.

-E-ji ir~ -E-shHlatte sekikeredomo, Iya miuke no shu wa

2, B

JL"'Jl4t~ ttttt"{) , 1.:vJf~.~t(J)nu;;t

(Being impatient, Chubei says "Why is Kasha so late? Gohei, go and tell them tohurry up." Thus, Chubei, never sitting down, in a state of extreme impatience,HThose who are to be redeemed must first do away with the master, have the sealerased at the doyen's office, and then receive a licence from the monthly official.Otherwise you cannot go out of the grand gate. It should take a bit longer." Chubeisays "Well, despite that, you could make them hurry up, please," and throws outanother ryo. "All right, I'll do it." Gohei trots downstairs. Money worked betterthan moxa treatment on his ankle to get him going.)

sokora 0 hayo korya tanomu to, mata ichi-ryo nage dasu, Otto makase to3, C D

of;: t.> ~!fl" ~ ~ t) {>~ ,ltv t. J: t~-plijt~~1iliT. i>"".J t J: ip1t t.fushi

ashi karuku, hashiru sanri no kyu yorimo koban no kiki zo kotaekeru. 14

joruri gives rise is definitely peculiar to eighteenth-century discourse. It allowsfor the generation of many levels of discursive activity ranging from entirelyanonymous, fonnalized utterance to individuated direct speech, with all thepossible emotive-affective features particular to it. For instance, here is a passagefrom Meido no hihyaku (A courier to Hades, 5-10), by Chikamatsu Monzaemon:

Here, Chubei, a young merchant, opens a sealed packet of money, which wassupposed to be delivered to one of his clients, and uses it instead to redeemUmekawa, a low-ranking courtesan. She had no idea that the money Chubei paid

Frame Up156

Sasa kono aida ni misoroe, betabeta shita torinari, obi mo kiriri to shiE,7

4t7 \ '\ ~O)f'JJ~;:Jlti"", ,r;:,t::.,r;:,t::. L-t::.D: t) f.l:. t), 'fff<b ~ t) ). ~

a boooshi ya to metta ni sekeba, Nanzoi no, ichidai no gaibun hobai-shu emo

F,8

L-ii L-~, N:>"Jt::.~:1t~t~f. t:t.1v.7C\i~0). -itO);iM, milm",,{)

159

domo, lomo joro no man'naka de kawaii otoko ga chijoku 0 tori, sonata no

!:"{), 2ttr:ftJSO)alvlfI--c:, i>\~j:v~v~~i>~~D1S~n t), Tt:t.t::.O)

Supplement

shirazuka ima no koban wa Doshima no, oyashiki no kyuy6kin kono kane

~t.:>'i)\ 4'-O)/J\*,nI~aO), j:)mIkO)~m~R .. ~O)M

ga tsuratsuki sugu ni haha ni nukasu kao, Jahakken no nakama kara

shiya. A soja ikiraruru dake kono yo de so' ou. [ma nimo hito ga kuruJ,15

L{>. 7' of? t {> 0 ~~ G~Qt.:~t ~O)t!t-c~~i ?, 4'-~: {)A 'h~*Q

o chirashite wa, mi no daiji wa shireta koto. Zuibun koraete mitsusure

namida ni wana wana to. Core misanse tsunezune fishi wa koko no koto,H,12

frt.1J.tiV:..bt:t.bt:t. t. oftLJiIv~Ivtr. 'I4g0 L-~j:~ 'l, O)~ t,

esengi ni kuru wa ima no koto jigoku no ue no issoku to bi tonde tamoya to

~IU:*Q~j:4'(J)~!:" i&JlO)l::O)-~ma. JRAo,--c:t~ {){>~f

bakari nile sugari tsuite nakikereba. Umewaka ha to furui dashi koe moII

~fil~ t)~:~ • • t). "Jv:)~?)i~ ~tn~!, ffiJlnitf> t .vltfjL~ <b

ooze ni inochi ga osh; zo futari shinureba hon'm6. [ma totemo yasui koto

t:t.1f~: €iril(fI L- vl .7C.. =AJE~n~f*ii!. ~!: 't' {)~"l~ t ..

naru mono ka. Ikirareru dake sowaruru dake taka wa shinuru to kakugo

t:t. 10> tJ (J)7J\ ~~ t:J 10>~ t.:~t, iii*:> Q~t.:~t. t.: iI~~iJEtr 10> t 1ifg

mo hirakenu wa otoko no yaku. Konaru inga to omote ta mo, Hachleman9

<b? 51i1~tt~~i~O)t~, iI\? t:t.~m~ ~}!? 't't.: ~" )\::fiitr,

gfunbetsu suete kundanse no. Yare inochi ikiyo to omoute kono datji ga

13 1,14

?}BlJtlit't'< tf.Iv4J:. frt.? -tv-$!t~ J:? ~,~\?'t'. :;"0)7($i>{

kokoro no munen sa 0 harachitai to omou yori, futto kane ni te 0 kakete

JL\O)~;t ~ >d=. 'Iff L t~v~ ~ Ji!!. ? J: l'), b "J ~au:.J: t: iI~~t 't'"

Frame Up158

csakazukigoto, itomagoi mo wake yo shite yururi to dashite kuda same to,

G

~$. ~Z<bml~L~. ~~~~ffiL~<~~~~t.

dnanigokoro naku isamu kao otoko wa watto naki idashi, itoshiya nani mo

fiiJ,L\f.l <IJu1!.ft.. ~~;t:b"J ~ ?ftffi L-, v:\ t L-{>{PJ {)

to her master was illegally obtained. Knowing that the couple had to run away assoon as possible, Chubei waited impatiently for the due process of redemption tobe completed so that they could escape the pleasure quarter.

The italicized parts are utterances ascribed to characters present on the stage,but not all are presented as direct speech. A, C, and D are recited with melodicintonation. It is noteworthy that the differentiation between ordinary speech andmelodic chanting further articulates the levels of narration, the most informal ofwhich is ordinary speech without melodic intonation, such as B. We should beaware that, in addition to intonation, melodic recitation, and background music,other devices, such as stylization, are used to emphasize the characteristics ofdifferent voices. Although the narration between points 1 and 2 designates theagent of the action onstage as well as the subject of the utterance (quoted speechA), narration between points 2 and 3 does not specify who is speaking, andpossibly acting, on the stage. It is like a tape-recorded account of an actualspeech in which the listener can hardly identify the subject of utterance withoutreferring to the actual situation or to knowledge of the situation. But this uncer­tainty poses no serious problem in the Text of ningyo joruri because devices otherthan those inscribed in writing determine how to ascribe voice to a character or apuppet. In other words, the separation of the chanter's voice from the actor'sbody onstage is taken to be an integral part of the mechanism through which theText, as a whole, means. The role of the verbal text is thus determined within anetwork of various nonverbal texts. What may appear to be an ordinary quotedspeech moves within the hierarchy of various levels of dramatization. Thus, inthe paragraph that follows the one I just quoted, we find a construction in whichthe coordination of different texts is used to get the fullest effect:

Sonata wa kono Chubei ga eko 0 tanomu to byobu no ue. Kao 0 idaseba

-ft:lt::.~i~O)/~~1fi'ht@]~~'ltr 't, JJf.1IQ)J:.. m~tB1t~f ..Haa kanashiya ima ;rna ski, chatto oile kudanse iyana. Mono niM,18

J\7' i6\tet'L{>, &Jx L":\, ;~~tt>,,:)'"« t:'~Iv1t. V~{>t.lt~~::

yo nita to, byobu ni hishito idaki tsuki muse kaeri te zo nageki keru. 15

J: ? ftJ.t::. 't, JJJJIU::V L't t?!~ ft ~Piic!, t) "C-f~ ~ ~t¢.

Hate kakaru akuji 0 shidashite.. ikana mamori no chikara nimo kono togaL,16

J\7\ i6~1i~~!!.~LV~tfjLL, "~i)"tcl~t)QJnt::~.. ~Q)~

ga nogaryo ka. Tokaku shinimi to gaten shite ware wa sonata no ek6 sen.k

,)tj!tL'?,)\ 't iJ'4 <~Jl 't ft.8 L'"(, fJHi-ftclt::.O)@)rPJ{tlv ..

161Supplement

cherished desire to die together with you. I can die right now if you wish. Please befinn in your determination." "How can we ppssibly accomplish such a difficult task[as running away without being prosecuted: Translator] if we are afraid of losing ourlives? As long as we are alive, I will try to live; as long as we are together, I will tryt~ be with you. After aU, we are going to die, so please do not evade our fate,""Yes, of course, I will be with you in this world as long as, we live. Someone maycome at any moment, so you should hide here." Umekawa pushes Chubei behind thescreen. 441 left my precious amulet for good fortune behind in a drawer at home. 1want it," says Umekawa. Upon hearing Umekawa, Chubei says "I have committedsuch a grave c~me. However miraculous your amulet may be, it cannot save mefrom the charge. Granting that we are going to die, I will pray for your redemption.Please pray for my redemption in tum." Speaking thus, Chubei's head appears justabove the screen, 4'Oh, how sad, how cursed. Stop it, will you. You just look likethat damned thing" [possibly referring to the decapitated head of a criminal nonnallyexhibited on a high platform: Translator]: Umekawa holds tightly to the screen andchokes with tears.)

As is obvious from the plot composition of the script, italicized parts aresupposed to be quoted speeches, which should be attributed to particular charac­ters. As Table 2 shows, however, these are accompanied by other, nonverbal,markers. Time and again it should be emphasized that the opposition of directand indirect speech does not correspond to any dichotomy between colloquialand literary languages. So-called stylistic characteristics also do not determinewhether an utterance is direct or indirect. As I have argued, whether speech isdirect or not is determined by means of coordination with other texts.

Among the many markers designated in the script or left to various conven­tions among chanters and puppeteers, which direct the forms of performance, Ihave selected and tabulated the deployment of two in order to illustrate how theirvariations are coordinated to constitute the Text of ningyo joruri. Column 1 inTable 2 deals with the stratification of verbal texts. The value (quoted speech ordescriptive narration) can be decided without reference to factors other than theverbal text itself. The opposition of shi and ji in column 2 is concerned with thepresence of the musical element in the oral presentation of a verbal text. Shiindicates the absence of the musical element; whereas ji indicates its presence, aswell as chanting that is to be conducted. Since the musical text is mainly led bythe samisen, the synchronization of the two texts requires that the verbal textincorporate elements that serve to mediate both texts. It is amazing in this respectthat the relatedness of the verbal and musical texts varies so as to accommodatemany different intensities and is integrated into the signifiance of the Text. Thus,narration can be strongly rhymed to ensure that it keeps time with the samisen, orit can progress almost independently of the background music. Fushi and ji bothindicate this correspondence with the musical text. Iro and ji'iro indicate lowerlevels of correspondence with the music. I use the term "melodic" to mean thedegree of musicality, but indeed, it has very little to 'do with the number of

Frame Up

h itame koko e kakurete gozanse to. By6bu no kage ni oshi ire A washi ga

K

t:.i>.. ~ ~ .l'..Kltt'"( -:.:.~1v1tC, JJfJl(J)~i~::flflLAfl. .. .." t> L,)~

jdatji no mamar; o. Uchi no tansu n; oUe kita kore ga hoshii to iikereba.

*.O)~ t) ~, rtJO)1tI!H:iI"~,"(~ t::.o ~tt,)~~:f L"~ ~ ~o~ttt~f,

("Don't be relaxed now. You must straighten up your clothes before we leave here.Oh, your outfit looks loose. Why don't you tighten up the sash?" Chubei urgesUmekawa impatiently. UWhat is the matter with you? This is the event of my life.Can't you let me take time? Before my departure, of course, I want to exchange cupsof sake with myoId colleagues and say farewell to them." Not knowing the situa­tion, Umekawa is ecstatic. Then, Chubei bursts into tears, confessing, "Oh, mypoor love. You know nothing. The gold coins I have just paid to redeem you are theemergency money belonging to a Samurai mansion in Doshima. As I have spent themoney, surely something grave will happen to me. I tried very hard to controlmyself. But, I was humiliated among your fellow courtesans, and I as your lover somuch wanted to avenge your chagrin. Without much thought I embezzled the mon­ey. As a man, I cannot beg it back. Please accept this as your destiny. When I gavethe money, Hachiemon looked rather suspicious, so he will soon get in touch withmy mother. It is a matter of time before the Eighteen House Guild will send out aninquiry about me. Please jump over the abyss of hell with me. Please run away withme." Holding on to Umekawa, Chubei murmurs in tears, "Haa." Umekawa beginsto tremble and bursts into tears, too. "Now look at me. This is what I have alwayspromised-how can I be afraid of losing my life at this stage? It is my long

151 consulted the following editions: Nihon Koter Bungalen Zenshu (Tokyo: Shogalculcan, 1975),44:55-56; Nihon Koten Bungala Zensho, Chikamatsu Monzaemon. vol. 2 (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbur,1952), 80-82.

160

162 Frame Up

Table 2. Nonverbal markers

1 2 3 4narration (-) shi (+) melodic high (+) direct (+)speech (+) ji (-) low (-) indirect (-)

7-8 E +7-8 a-88-9 F +8-9 c-d8-9 G +9-10 G +9-10 e-IO

10-1111-12 11-£ +11-12 £-12 +12-13 H + +13-14 +14-15 I + + +15-16 J +15-16 h-i15-16 K +15-16 j-1616-17 L + + +16-17 17-k +17-18 k-1818-19 M +18-19 1-1919-

NO~E: Cap~tal letters designate quoted speech; numerals indicate points at which intonation,m71~lc ch~ntmg, etc., change; and small letters indicate positions within narrative continuity. Theongmal scnpt does not have any of these marks.

syllables in a line or the pitch of the chanter's voice. According to plot develop­ment, the chanter introduces nuances and intonations that suggest a descriptivet~uch.or a hint of speech. (According to the kind of script used, the stage ofhlstoncal development, and the school to which chanters belong, the terms forgraphic markers specifying the degree of musicality vary so much that discussionabout specific ways of chanting has to be omitted here.) In addition to this kindof musicality, scripts often indicate pitch and tone (melodic intonation, fushi).Uses of melody and musical sound are doubtless much more complicated inactual performances. For the sake of simplification, however, these elements arenot indicated in Table 2. 16

What is striking in this table is that only two sections, 14-15 and 16-17, arepresented as if they were directly quoted from actual speech. Other quoted~peeches are accompanied by ji, ji'iro, or iro intonation in such a way as to makeIt appear that the utterances are mediated and distanced from the actors or, more

16For a detailed analysis, see Chikaishi Yasuaki, Zoku ayatsuri joruri no kenkyu (Tokyo: KazamaShobo, 1965).

SuppLement 163

precisely, from the puppets' bodies. Even though these are supposedly utterancesof characters whose roles are played by puppets, they are narrated and recitedsomewhat objectively. Presented in the modalities of ji, ji'iro, and iro, they areencased in the narrative voice of the third person, whose viewpoint does notcoincide with that of the character-speaker.

Life and Death

The inclusion' of musicality affects verbalization in two ways. It is often saidthat musicality enhances the emotional aspect of utterance and adds a lyricalelement to it. Through lyricism, an utterance that would otherwise be mundaneand ordinary attains to a higher dimension of meaning, where the sentimentexpressed is to be shared by others: others approach the utterance not as an objectof understanding but as a mediation through which empathy is acquired. Itengenders a feeling of communality into which the individuality of the utteranceis ultimately resolved. But on the other hand, musicality has the effect of estrang­ing speaker in a very obvious manner. For one thing, musicality transforms thetemporality of utterance. In ordinary speech, an utterance is always made simul..taneously with other gestural and emotive-affective features. One utters wordswhile doing something else. The act of utterance is always accompanied by facialexpressions, movements of the speaker's body, and so forth. One never says, forexample, "How much is this book?" while standing in a frozen posture like asoldier at attention. One may be handing a book to a clerk behind a cash registeror pointing to a book on the shelf. In any case, a relevant gesture occurs whensuch an utterance is made. The naturalness of such a statement lies in theaccordance of the enunciation with other bodily movements and the perfonnativesituation. The time of an utterance is synchronized with the time of the bodilyaction. This temporal accord, however, is destroyed by the inclusion of musi­cality. Musicality generates a rupture between the time of speech and the time ofaction. Only in an artificial situation would one try to utter the query How muchis this book? recitatively. Under ordinary circumstances such behavior would beodd or grotesque, and its very oddity consists in the violation of the underlyingpremise that an enunciation always corresponds with the time of its performativesituation. What musicality accomplishes is the severance of the coordinationbetween the time of speech and the time of action. Hence, one would be at a lossif one were asked to make an utterance recitatively and at the same time tobehave with complete indifference to the content of the utterance. Nonetheless,this is exactly what happens in the Text of ningyo joruri: the separation of voiceand body manifests itself most distinctively here.

In this respect, I can claim that ji, ira, and ji'iro, which suggest the musicalityof the verb~l text, detach and distance the enunciated for the actor-speaker whosespeech act supposedly generated that utterance. These thereby create the differ-

171n Naniwa miyage (Nihon koten bungaku laikei, vol. 50 [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1959J), p.563, Chikamatsu says, "Puppets were perceived as being without souls when they had to competewith kabuki theater, where live human actors played. Seen from a different viewpoint, the puppettheater had developed and modernized that far, but at that stage of development, the puppets wereperceived as being without souls. As a result, it was necessary to invent words by which puppetscould be made soulfuL No doubt, this was an extremely difficult task: puppets had become soulless[pieces of wood]; so souls had to be introduced into them again."

entiation between direct and indirect speech. This is to say that the radicalrupture between the enunciated and the enunciation is thematized and fullyexploited in the Text of Japanese puppet theater. But does this not seem contraryto what has to be accomplished in order to unify and synthesize various texts inrepresenting fictional dramatic reality? Did Chikamatsu Monzaemon not say,"Unlike Kabuki, where live human bodies act ... joruri [the script of ningyojoruri] should be composed so that it may exert feelings on puppets, which, infact, do not have souls, and thus provoke an emotional response from the au­dience." 17 The physical setting of the stage, the site at which the Text is com­posed, necessarily assumes the separation of body and voice, the enunciation andthe enunciated, gestural text and verbal text. Neither puppets nor puppeteers uttera word throughout the play. From the outset, as I have shown, there is nopossibility that the body could be the locus of the voice. Why, then, exaggerateand expose that rupture, rather than attempt to mediate and conceal it?

In order to see the nature of this problem more clearly, let me examine thescript in detail. How do the sections of direct speech that are not marked bydistancing devices, musical factors, relate themselves to the development of theplot? The first of the two sections (point 14 to point 15) states: "How could Ihave committed such a grave deed if I had wished to keep on living! I will live aslong as I can. I will be with you as long as I can. You see, anyway, I will bepunished by death!" This passage is preceded by Umekawa's confession, inwhich she declares her willingness to die with Chubei. At point 14, the tonechanges from ji to iro and finally to shi (here iro is a transitional intonation), andwhile Umekawa's confession is narrated more formally and indirectly, Chubei'sutterance is presented as realistically as possible. It seems that dramatic realitymanifests itself in the most condensed form here and that the body of the puppet,the voice, and the subject of the enunciation seem to be directly synthesized.Reality is presented as if there were no mediation and distance between theenunciation and the enunciated. Here, the utterance should be a direct speech byChubei himself, mediated by no third person, with the presence of chanter beingalmost transparent. Nonetheless, we should remember that this effect of di­rectness and unity of utterance can be achieved only because this section in thescript is preceded by more indirect speech: the directness of direct speech can beevoked only when the speech is contrasted with more indirect fonns of speech.The effect of the real is sustained by the paradigmatic possibility that this samesection could be narrated in a less direct way.

As narration proceeds after this section, the tone again changes to ji'iro at point

15. According to the plot development, an utterance that follows Chubei's shouldbe ascribed to Umekawa and should also be direct speech, but instead, the utter­ance shifts into a more distant and indirect mode. The immediate unity between thepuppet's body and the voice, previously achieved in Chubei's speech, dissolves;the. source of the voice or the soul located in Chubei's body then slips away tosomewhere remote from the scene. Thus; the voice loses the sense of immediatepresence and, concomitantly, the subject of enunciation is lost. One cannot helpbut sense that Umekawa's speech is already a reported one, viewed by a detachedand sober eye. As it unfolds in verselike fonn, it transfonns itself into a song, oruta, in which tlie individuality of the subject of enunciation is replaced by ano­nymity. No longer does it matter who is speaking in this utterance, even though it isobvious that the speaker is supposed to be a low-ranking courtesan who had beeneuphoric just a moment before, when redeemed by her love. The narration is now astep closer to that of the epic. ~ccordingly, the story is recited in a mode that keepstwo temporalities distinct from each other: the time of narration and the time ofthenarrated event. The "now" of speech is no longer the "now" of what is spokenabout. Hence, the actual performance of puppets on the stage appears to be dyedwith a tint of the past and takes on characteristics of representation. It appears to bean act that has happened once and is now being replayed. In the following section(h-16), the third-person narrative emerges on the surface of the Text, and Um­ekawa's speech, which this narrative reports, is, as a matter of fact, a box within abox, or framed speech, an equivalent to what Volosinov called indirect discourse.But once again, the tone changes to shi (16-17). As if awakening from adaydream, Chubei reaffirms the irredeemability and the gravity of the deed he hasdone once and for all. "I have committed such a grave crime. However miraculousyour amulet may be, it cannot save me from the charge." This time, the realnessdirect speech projects and the irredeemability of the deed are superimposed oneach other. An acute recognition of the real, that an action, once done, can beneither repeated nor undone, is stated here. It is an oblique reference to thefundamental feature of the enunciation and the enunciated. Like an action, anenunciation cannot be repeated; the enunciated, which it produces, is autonomousand independent of the one who has done it. Chubei is alienated in the result of hisdeed, and irrespective of his intention, his deed now punishes him and imposesconstraints on his future.

The constant oscillation- between direct speech and indirect fonns of verbalpresentation thus generates multiple dimensions of a real in which binary opposi­tions-immediate/mediate, present/absent, nonreported/reported, and so on­are superimposed on one another, thereby creating a wealth of narrative pos­sibilities. Noteworthy in this connection is that these oppositions ultimately leadto a dialectic of life and death. Not only is it imperative that puppets be animatedand made to look alive in the Text of ningyo joruri, it is equally necessary thatpuppets be able to die. Life and death must be dramatically articulated in thisspatiotemporal continuum.

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The Act of Reading

When one takes into consideration that many ningyo joruri scripts were actu­ally published in woodblock print, questions regarding the status of the written

In this respect, it should be acknowledged that we are dealing with twodimensions ofaiscourse. As I remarked in regard to Ito Jinsai's notion of death,two semes are involved here: the seme of animated (life) versus inanimate(death) and that of life versus death. As he pointed out, it is possible to argue thatone cannot die unless one is alive. An inanimate being neither lives nor dies. Apuppet cannot portray a death unless it is already animated~ death cannot happento the dead. This duality of death is of course of particular importance in shinjumono (double-suicide drama, 5-11).

Through gradual stratification, various viewpoints are introduced into theText. One of these viewpoints is that of the character. At this level, the voice,adorned with intonation, rhythm, and musical sound, projects a field based on aspectrum stretching between two poles: ultimate death and the presence of life.Here the presence of life suggests the formation of an utterance in which theenunciated is entirely absorbed into the enunciation, whereas ultimate deathimplies a formation in which the enunciation is completely erased. In ultimatedeath, the utterance is without its own author or subject of enunciation. Presum­ably the utterance could be pronounced by anybody or could, alternatively, takethe form of universal anonymity. In contrast, ningyo joruri of the late seventeenthand early eighteenth centuries was faced with a new discursive formation thatcould no longer avoid the presence of life. As the radical rupture betweenenunciation and enunciated intruded into the dramaturgical discourse, the pres­ence of life, as a constituting positivity, invaded and, as a result, transformed thediscursive space of the time. From this perspective, it is possible to see how thetreatment of death and suicide in some literary works took on a special signifi­cance.

In fact, dramatic death as depicted in the Text of ningyo joruri represents atransition from the supposed presence of life toward an anonymous utterance,from the singularity of the speaker toward the universality of the subject. Acharacter, by committing suicide, ceases to perform the role of speaker, ofproprietor of the utterance; rather, the character enters an imaginary space wherehe or she is only spoken of. In this regard, it is rather easy to uncover themeaning of death in the Text of the Japanese puppet theater; it is a one-wayitinerary (michiyuki, 5-12) leading from a realm where a character is permitted tospeak into another where the character can no longer speak but only be spokenof. In death the character is deprived of the ability to enunciate, is an existentcompletely frozen in language. Although language produces the character fromtime to time, the character cannot produce language. Death, that is, is thecondition for the possibility of language in general.

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18As I have said, a complete correspondence of narrative time and time of narrated events sup­posedly occurs only in shi. Even when there is a rupture between the two, it cannot be wide sincedescriptive narration follows the stage performance. In principle, the scene is always present to thenarrator. In this case, however, it must be stressed that only a representation of the completecorrespondence of the two temporalities occurs. This is to say, according to our theoretical position.these can never be identical to each other. Every form of narration, whether speech or writing,description or reportage, necessarily generates a difference or distance between the two temporalities.Time is inconceivable without this disparity.

191n no plays, for instance, narrative temporality constantly deviates from the time of narratedevents. Time is far from linear. Particularly in what modem scholars call mugen-no temporal stratifi­cation is so complex that it is very often impossible to determine the time of a narrated event.

text inevitably arise. It is said that these printed scripts were intended not forstage direction but for individual reading and that they were circulated among thereadership of Tokugawa society. As I have emphasized, the Text of ningyo joruricontains texts other than the verbal one. Hence, insofar as the written text isalways incomplete within the discursive space at issue, the question should beposed in reverse: How was its incompleteness as a written text supplemented tomake it more widely readable? What is the structure of a supplement whereby awritten text anticipated and was related to other texts that were absent from thewritten one?

At the very least, these scripts possess a structure of stratification. Despite thecontinuity of the narrative voice, the text is stratified in order to accommodate thedistinction between descriptive narration and reported speech. Descriptive narra­tion supplies information necessary to locate the quoted speech in relation to thesituation in which it was uttered. Moreover, the descriptive narration presup­poses that speech is generated within a highly stable situation and that therefore itis only on exceptional occasions that the time of the narration deviates widelyfrom the time of the narrated events. IS In an epic narrative, by contrast, narrationcan sometimes condense time so that events that would take several days orseveral years in actuality are narrated within the scope of a few lines. What isinteresting about ningyo joruri is that the time of its narration is not endowedwith such freedom: narrative temporality in this genre is bound by the conditionof theatrical presentation. 19 Time can elapse between scenes, but during thescene, the time of narration must faithfully follow the time of action and perfor­mance. Because of the stratification in its verbal continuum, however, descrip­tive narration is spatialized and serves as a verbal equivalent to the situation.Obviously when the chanter's voice is providing descriptive narration, the voicewill correspond to no actor on the stage. Unless a character on the stage reportssomebody else's speech, reported speech always corresponds to the presence of apuppet. As I have argued, there is not always complete correspondence betweenthe time of perfonnance and the time of narration, but there exists at least aparallelism between voice and the movements of the puppet to indicate to theaudience who is supposed to be speaking on the stage. Yet quite evidently thisstructure does not apply to descriptive narration. In descriptive narration the

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voice has no body, has no anchorage in the dramaturgical space. It speaks fromnowhere; there'is no moment of presence with which it could be synchronized.Instead, it describes the context and environment in which reported speech takesplace and the relationship of the characters whose speech is reported. The tem­porality of descriptive narration corresponds to the time of the situation, which isby no means necessarily linear. Although it is linearly presented at the level ofthe syntagm, the relationship of descriptive narration and reported speech isspatial insofar as the mode of signijiance is concerned.

Thus, discourse begins to include a radical difference between the temporaland the spatial. It is finally a differance: no kind of text could ever be eitherexclusively temporal or exclusively spatial. By articulating the verbal contiIiuumin terms pertaining to the economy of this differance. discourse incorporates aGestalt whereby the narrative continuum is divided into figure and background.As I shall discuss later, this mode of differance dominated literary production inthe eighteenth century, and even if a literary text was not concerned with the­atrical performance, it seems to have adhered to this mode of presentation. Thestructure of both writing and reading in the discursive space of the eighteenthcentury was in fact organized on the basis of this very differance. Within thisstructure, the act of reading inserts writing into the scheme of figure and back­ground and discovers one of the possible relationships of interdependence be­tween figure and background. First, writing is seen as correlated to the back­ground; its signification is equated to the figure. Because writing does not retainits background when it is perceived as the enunciated, it needs to be supple­mented with a relevant background. This supplementation in fact returns writingto the original scene of the enunciation, where figure and background are sup­posedly synthesized through the corporeal act. Thus, in the eighteenth centurythe question of reading was posed in this form: How could the reading actpossibly be equated either to a sort of prepredicative/preverbal experience or tobodily cognition?

When we consider nonverbal devices by means of which the binary oppositionof direct and indirect speech is to be postulated, it is noteworthy that, thecumulative use of this opposition further bifurcates the verbal continuum intodirect-direct, direct-indirect, indirect-direct, and indirect-indirect sPeeches. Bythus generating a variety of levels, the text projects dramatic effects at multipledegrees of intensity. Moreover, it should be stressed in this connection that thecoordination of these nonverbal devices can articulate a text such as bodily actionin such a way that it is possible to talk about direct/indirect actions. As I havesuggested, the involvement of musicality in narration engenders a rift betweennatural and spontaneous gesture, on the one hand, and the verbal utteranceaccompanying the gesture, on the other. It is nevertheless still possible to sustainthe coordination of bodily action with verbal utterance even when musicality isinvolved in verbalization.

It is possible to transform bodily action in such a way that it may be syn­chronized ,with a verbal utterance adorned by rhythm, melody, and other musicalfeatures. When one sings, one's body normally sways or moves in time with therhythm of the song. This movement can nb longer be considered either '''naturaln

or "spontaneous," as it would be if there were no accompanying music. Indance, primarily a form of bodily movement, the verbal utterance (if it is sung),bodily movement, and music are synchronized and coordinated, thus preventinga schism from eiupting between bodily action and the verbal text. Yet the actioncannot be considered natural and spontaneous: it is regulated, formalized, andritualized. Thus, I should be able to talk about indirect action.

In direct action, on the contrary, there is supposedly no rift between the bodilyaction and the perfonnative situation. The wholeness that characterizes directspeech is partially missing as the performative situation deviates from the syn­chronized and coordinated bundle of other texts. So, tentatively, I might arguethat corporeal action can be classified into two categories: direct and indirectaction. Direct action involves synchronization and coordination among all par­ticipating elements-bodily action, verbal utterance, and performative situation.It is further characterized by the absence of musicality and other formalizingagents. Indirect action calls for synchronization and coordination among all theparticipating elements except the performative situation.

Indirect action is a form of corporeal behavior detached from a given per­formative situation. Not only a mutation of temporality but also a shift of view­point and a disappearance of the subject of the enunciation are involved in thisform of action. By following formal, ritualized patterns in accordance withmusicality in narration, the body of the actor loses its adherence to the per­formative situation and thereby its putative individualistic originality and spon­taneity. Two essential features are that the action can be repeated and that it canbe Performed by another person. From the outset, one is presented as a thirdperson, or anybody. As in indirect speech, indirect action is autonomous, inde­pendent of a given performative situation. Its rePeatability implies this relativeautonomy and independence of indirect, formalized action. That is, it loses theSPecificity of now and here. The same bodily movement can be performed in thepast, the present, and the future. This transhistoricity is the necessary conditionof possibility for indirect, formalized, or ritualized action. By formalizing andritualizing bodily action, the performer transcends the erosion of historical timein which nothing remains identical. (I inquire more thoroughly into the problemof transhistoricity in ritualized action in subsequent chapters.)

Likewise, indirect action is another form of the individual'g death. This featureis most particularly manifest in instances when bodily movement is accompaniedby music. No matter whether it is performed by one person or a group, ritualized

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Direct or Indirect Actions

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behavior adheres to a mode in which, in principle, a performer transforms hisown body into'an already coded pattern. What distinguishes ritualized behaviorfrom "natural n gesture is that in ritualized behavior the performer consciouslysuppresses her own "spontaneous" initiatives and encases the movement of herown body within a given framework. Ritualized or formalized behavior such asdance often requires a long process of discipline and repeated practice throughwhich the actor finally acquires an ability to conform to a pregiven code ofbehavior whereby the individual self, as taken in its imagined unredeemableuniqueness, is abolished. Through formalized behavior, one's individuality,imagined in its own self-misrecognition, is shed: the original self of the person isreplaced by the image of the self that is demanded of him. That is to say, oneerases the enunciation in dance or formalized behavior, where there is, in fact, nopossibility of immediately equating the subject of the enunciation and the subjectof the enunciated.

The performer opens up possibilities for others to join the text through thesynchronization of music, bodily action, and verbal utterance. Simultaneously,the subject who might otherwise imagine herself able to enjoy the status ofproprietor of her own action is disqualified and degraded to a rank where her"individuality" is totally dispensable. Promises in a song carry no respon­sibilities, for it is assumed that the message and the performance are ascribed tocompletely different agents and that therefore the performer cannot be heldculpable for the message. It is not the singer herself but an anonymous voice, nothe or she but "it" that sings in the song. The same argument can be applied todance, where there is a separation between the performer's self and the per­formed character's person. It is worth remembering that the word "person"comes from "persona," which means the mask. A particular gesture-a glance,the lifting of an arm-does not express the performer's emotion: her individualemotion is redirected and thereby masked in dance.

Regardless of whether the actual performance involves only one person orseveral, synchronization of music with bodily movement or verbal utterance orboth leads to the genesis of an anonymous speaker. Anybody can join this text aslong as she synchronizes her bodily movement with music, rhythm, and pat­terned motion.

Thus the synchronization of music and verbal utterance amounts to a firsthandconstitution of collectivity. The term "collectivity" implies not an assemblage ofmultiple subjects but a form of the individual's death, a form in which theimagined originality of the subject of the enunciation is erased. Hence, "collec­tivity" is a certain mode of systematic organization of the Text.

Remembering that the ritualization of the gestural text and the formation ofindirect speech can be characterized only insofar as they are contrasted to non­ritualized, "natural" behavior and direct and ordinary speech, one should notoverlook that notions of ~'natural" action and "ordinary" speech are not them­selves "given" but constituted in opposition to these categories concerning texts.

Boxing, Framing, and Ideologies

It is essential to note in this connection that what has been termed "directspeech" in the Text of ningyo joruri is constituted in terms of various oppositions

Only differences exist, differences that give rise to oppositions without whichneither "natural" behavior nor ritualized gesture would exist. There is no suchthing as natural behavior in itself or direct speech in itself. Therefore "natural"behavior and direct speech are possible only when ritualized and formalizedaction and speech have been introduced as their opposites. There could be neitherdirect speech nor nonformal behavior without these oppositions.

Thus indirect action, as opposed to "natural" and "spontaneous" action,transforms the individual into a subject: the individual who could not be placedwithin the circulatory network of exchange is now turned into a subject whoseidentity is deterinined. Since identification always involves subsumption underuniversals, it is only with the loss of those singular traits that can never besubsumed under universals that the individual becomes identifiable. In this re­spect, paradoxical though it may sound, only through anonymity can one gainone's subjective identity, a subjective identity that is necessarily constituted inuniversals. As I shall discuss later, individual subjectivity, regarded in certaindiscursive fonnationsas the origin of "natural" and "spontaneous" action, is anideological fiction precisely because there can be no genuinely natural or spon­taneous .action.

Precisely because any action aims at a meaning, it is comprehensible. Whatone does is inseparable from what one tries to achieve. But as I discussed inChapter 3 with regard to the anteriority of a norm that an action realizes, themeaning of an action always presupposes meaning for the third viewpoint. Thisthird viewpoint does not coincide with a specific person who happens to observemy action. Although I cannot discuss this topic in detail here, I must simply notethat the comprehensibility of one's action is, in fact, its visibility from thisanonymous viewpoint. I act with a view to this viewpoint. As the word "act"clearly illustrates, I always act in a double sense: I act in the sense of doing, andin the sense of pretending. But obviously, pretending necessarily presupposessome spectator for whom I act.

What I have referred to as the "collectivity" is this anonymous and alwaysabsent viewpoint for which I pretend to be a subject. At the same time that Iemphasize the "collectivity" inherent in the very comprehensibility of an action,the anteriority of this "collectivity" never implies its existence in objective time.This is a point crucial in my ensuing argument in the following chapters, for thecentral problem I probe is the essentialization and reification of this "collec­tivity" in the eighteenth century. Just as I realize the ethical norm, I create this"collectivity" in my action as anterior to my action. This is why action, whichis, in the final analysis, always already indirect, is poietic and poetic.

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Representational Type and Gestalt Type

It is possible to argue that a structural relationship between a boxed utterance,or reported speech, and other texts outside this box determines the status of the

20Undeniably this fonnulation has an affinity with the box-in-box fonnula that Tokieda Motokipostulated as the fundamental syntactical and ontological structure of Japanese. As 1 understand thetenns of the box-in-box fonnula (irekogata kozo), however, Tokieda also intended to explicate boththe possible relationship between the enunciation and the enunciated and the framing effect. See hiskokugogaku genron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1941). I shaH return later to the problematic of the box­in-box fonnula and the parergonal split.

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utterance within the Text. As the Text of Japanese puppet theater illustrates, thereare many sorts of phonetic and musical markers and graphic arrangements bywhich an utterance can be boxed and detached from its outside. No doubt theboxing or framing effect itself creates both outside and inside. Thus there arealmost innumerable kinds of boxing, depending upon possible combinations oftexts.

Two types of boxing are essential in the context of this book, however, andmust be mentioned to clarify the mode of textual formation in the eighteenthcentury. Important within the scope of my concern are two texts: verbal andpictorial. One can easily recognize a great deal of difference in the mode ofinteraction of verbal and pictorial texts according to whether they are the repre­sentational type or the gestalt type.

In the representational type, both verbal and pictorial texts maintain a relativeautonomy, such that one text can signify or designate without the aid of another.Even if the verbal text is withdrawn from the whole, the pictorial text remainsidentical in respect of its designation, and its visual message does not greatlychange. Indeed, it is possible to transform its mode ofdesignation by substitutinga different statement, as Rene Magritte does in Les Deux Mysteres (figure A).But then, of course, it is no longer classified as a representational type. Let usremember that this sort of typology does not apply to the internal structure ofeach constituent text. Here I am dealing with a mode of coexistence amongmultiple texts that together constitute a new text.

In the representational type, the verbal text functions as a metastatement withrespect to the pictorial text. The relative autonomy of texts in this type suggeststhat either the pictorial or the verbal text can be presented as if it did not requireits counterpart. Their relationship is most often that of representation, the pic­torial text being that which is represented and the verbal text being that whichrepresents. By implication an order of subordination usually obtains between thetwo texts: the pictorial text is assigned to the role of the main text and the verbaltext is subordinate. Or one might view the relationship in terms of a translationfrom visual to verbal signifying systems, the verbal being a translation of thepictorial. This relationship can also be compared to the traditional apprehensionof the subject and the predicate, the visual being the subject (as both shugo andshudai), and the verbal the predicate. The verbal is linked to the visual as ananswer to the type of question What is this? in which "this" of course indicatesthe visual. For example, a picture depicting a mountain is linked through acopula to the verbal "Mount Saint-Victoire," which forms an answer: "This is'Mount Saint-Victoire.' " Despite the heterogeneity of the visual to the verbal,the representational type operates on the assumption that both can be linked inthe medium of propositional judgment. Here, the judgment in which the subject(shugo) is synthesized with the predicate, as it were, imitates the indication inwhich the referent is linked to the subject (shudai). Therefore, in this modepredicative judgment is equated to thematization (shudaika).

In the gestalt type of relationship, by contrast, texts are mutually dependent

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generated by the introduction of musicality into the Text. Since every word,every act, and even every situation is "set up" and therefore fabricated, noelement in the Text is immediately "natural." After all, it is only within the Text,a spatiotemporal continuum, that what these oppositions generate may appear tobe ordinary speech or natural rather than artificial behavior. Because this spa­tiotemporal continuum functions as a privileged topos, which a variety of dif­ferences articulates into a drama only when it is framed and detached from thecontext of everyday life, no word and no action deployed within it can be naturalor immediate. The presentation of naturalness and immediacy is impossiblewithout this mechanism of framing. The "real" can be presented only throughthe medium of the "unreal." That is to say, the presence of "ordinary speech"assumes and requires the circumscription of a spatial realm whose existence itselfis artificially fabricated. Here we encounter a paradox: the direct is possible onlywithin the indirect, the immediate within the mediated, the natural within theartificial. This is undoubtedly an inevitable aspect of the significative contradic­tion also inherent in the discursive space of the eighteenth century.

It has been argued that descriptive narration serves as an equivalent to apictorial text surrounding a reported speech. The stratification of the verbalcontinuum can lead to the most elementary form of spatialization in which partsof the verbal continuum, assigned to the role of descriptive narration, explain anddepict the contextual conditions in which reported speech occurs.

Using the Text of the Japanese puppet theater, I have demonstrated thatwhether an utterance is qualified as direct or not, it cannot be determined in termsof internal characteristics such as phonetic and syntactical features. On the con­trary, an utterance receives such a qualification only through its relationship tothe outside or to other texts juxtaposed to it.

Spatialization, based on the stratification of the verbal continuum and thedirect/indirect differentiation, calls forth what I have termed the framing effect,in which reported speech and its situation are, at the same time, clearly dividedand related to each other. According to the terms of this framing effect, areported speech is "boxed" within the general flow of the Text. But the privi­leged topos of the spatiotemporal continuum, the Text of ningyo jorori, is alsopositioned within the much wider context of ordinary life, so that the reportedspeech is in fact a box within a box.20

Figure E. From Osugi otama futami no adauchi (Double venge~nce by Osugi and Otama)by Santo Kyoden, 1807, illustrations by Utagawa Toyokum. These pag~s show therelationships among illustration, descriptive narration, and direct speech: Whl1e the narra­tion explains the illustration, relating it to previous plot developm~nts, direct s~eches. areinserted, independent of the narration, at the lower margins and hnk~ t.o the IllustratIOnsnonverbally. The most common nonverbal relation is that of p~oxlInlty: the words ofspeeches appear on the page near the i1lustrat~d figure~. T~e ~hmese charact~rs on thesleeves of two women (righthand page, upper nght), which mdlcate the two mam charac­ters, Dtama and Osugi, embody another means of linking speec~ to ~he image ~f thecharacter's (or the speaking subject's) body. In contrast to the relatIOnshIp of narratIon toillustration that of direct speech to illustration seems to follow what I call the Gestalt type,in which reading consists primarily of situating speeches in a scene.

2IThe body of the enunciation (shutai) cannot be construed in the gestalt type. It is not thebackground that animates the figure and endows the perceived object with an emotive-affectiveatmosphere. Above all, it is the split itself between figure and background. Hence, it is, rather,parergQnal, not something that can be brought into presence to some transcendental As I haveargued repeatedly, it cannot be arrested in signification or discourse, nor can it captured invisibility as an image. It eludes the monopoly of either reading or seeing. In this sense, it is alwayscalligraphic.

(see figure E). Withdrawing the verbal text would completely distort the meaningof the text as a whole. It is impossible to extract the meaning of the whole textfrom either the pictorial or the verbal text alone, since their copresence creates asurplus of signification that does not exist in either text alone. In addition, therelationship between the two resembles the relationship between figure and back­ground. The pictorial text functions as the background' for the verbal text~ weperceive that the verbal text is activated and animated by the pictorial text. Therecognition of the gestalt type as such, however, requires the double articulationof the viewpoint. Primarily it is a juxtaposition of what is thematized, that is,posited as a subject (shudai), and what cannot be thematized. Emotive-affectivefeatures that animate the figure, therefore, cannot be made present preciselybecause they are not thematized. But to be aware of the effects of the backgroundon the figure, of the emotive-affective effects on the speech, is possibly only oncondition that the background has been grasped thematically. In the first in­stance, the background is not pointed out: it is not determined, in contrast to thefigure, which is determined. But in the second instance, the background isdetermined as SUCh, as that which is excluded from this delineation. Unlike therepresentational tyPe, in which the equation between propositional judgment andindication is guaranteed, the gestalt type does not allow for omission of themoment of self-reflexivity. The moment of thematic positing (shudaika) and themoment of grasping this thematic positing as distinguishing between the figureand the background must coexist: these two moments must be folded upon eachother, as if they were simultaneous. 21

It is in this way that a verbal text is made to pertain to the situation of itsutterance: it generates an effect as if the primordial liveliness of the verbal wererecovered. Even though both texts are in inscriptional form, the verbal text seemsto take on the emotive-affective features of speech. Of course, not all suchemotive-affective features can be reproduced in this configuration, but it is atleast possible to suggest that words are uttered within a given situation. It isworth noting that this mode of coexistence is a procedure by which a linear text isrelated to a nonlinear text.

This delinearization of the background, together with linearization of thefigure, occurs also in the case of the written text without illustration. This isexactly what the presence of descriptive narration and the spatialization of theverbal continuum in the script of ningyo joruri allude to. Although both descrip­tive narration and reported speech are linear insofar as they are verbal, they

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interact with each other in such a way that descriptive narration constitutes thebackground, and reported speech the figure. Adhering to Boris Uspensky's argu­ment, I claim that structural isomorphism not only exists among various texts butalso exists· in various combinations of texts.22 Hence, one can reasonably arguethat it is possible to identify the same mode of intertextuality in written textswhether or not they appear with pictorial illustrations.

Thus far I have treated texts as if they were entities, as if they could bedifferentiated from other texts. By no means can this treatment be sustained, forthe very notion of textual materiality I have adopted in this book protests againstthis use of the tenn "text." Yet we must also take into account that a text canexist as such only when it is traversed, transcended, or related to others. That isto say, a text is a moment in a wider signifying practice, which I have tennedintertextuality. It is only in this context that I could possibly be justified in usingthe tenn "text" to indicate a factor mobilized in this practice. Precisely becauseof the heterogeneous nature of this practice, it has been necessary to use the tennin such a way that its difference from other factors may be shown. And yet,throughout this book I have stressed that the text is not an entity with an identifi-

able core.The emergence of a dramaturgical situation in discourse in the eighteenth

century was possible, of course, only on the ground that literary discourse incor­porates the mode of intertextuality characterized as the gestalt type. By means ofthis discursive apparatus, verbal and nonverbal texts were mediated and inte­grated into a specific form of presentation. And through this apparatus, I main­tain, the discursive space in question integrates those texts that are, in the firstplace, not discursive. Both the representational and the gestalt types are part ofthe apparatus by means of which discourse renders its other intelligible to itself

and regulates it.This gestalt type of intertextuality reached its fullest development in those

literary works now called gesaku (5-13), to which my attention now turns.

22Uspensky, A Poetics of Composition, pp. 130-72.

CHAPTER 6

DeJamiliarization and Parody

Genres, Taxonomy

In the eighteenth century literary utterances were classified and evaluated intenns of their genres. Any single genre maintained itself at a certain distancefrom other genres by means of its specific features, characteristics that othergenres presumably did not possess. This system of generic distancing sustained adominant taxonomy in which all literary production was controlled by that powerwhich organized the variety of social relations as an imagined whole. A literarywork, then, was produced in a social and historical milieu, indeed, but this doesnot mean that a work merely reflected the control imposed upon its author by theauthority of existing social and political institutions. For one thing, a social andhistorical "milieu" consists of texts. A work, therefore, does not merely reflectan extratextual reality. Rather, what I call ~'power" is a rule or a set of rules thatregulate how a text can be related to other texts. As a matter of fact, power in thiscontext cannot be ascribed merely to an authority such as a political organizationor a social group: it is equivalent to the sum of the constraints and regulations atwork in a particular literary productivity. In other words, such power is equiv­alent to the set of the conditions of possibility for literary and textual production.I shall call this set of conditions the space of generic discontinuity, within whichboth the possibilities and the impossibilities of a literary form are given.

In general, the space of generic discontinuity and the languages attached to itare perceived by members of the readership(s) as pregiven and natural. Theputative transparency of such a space is entirely consonant with the effectivenessof the power that establishes it: hence, the more transparent such a space appearsto be, the more effective is the power. The historical and cultural distance thatseparates us from the eighteenth century endows us with a certain privilege byvirtue of whic111iterary discourse of that time appears obscure, even opaque, toour perception. The powers that were effective then are unable to manipulate us

177

Grapheme and EquivQcity

lRyohashigen (1728?), reprint in Sharehon taisei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Chu'okoron-sha, 1978), pp. 15­32.

Already in an early work such as Ryohashigen (6-1), I can recognize a discur­sive apparatus by means of which the authority implicit in generic hierarchy isdisplaced and thereby ridiculed.} The title contains a ploygrapheme (ha 6-2),which could refer to sensation in general (ira 6-3), but in this case the allusion toeroticism is obvious, and to town or quarter (6-4). It should be read as somethinglike uWords on sake cups in the pleasure quarters." Here, the play of equivocityis obvious. This book is in the kanbun style, literary Chinese with kunten, orJapanese annotations; thus it appears to belong to the general class of written

179Dejamiliarization and Parody

2Kakai Jura, Byakusofuken kyo (1744?), reprint in Sharehon Taisei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Chu'okoron­sha, 1978), pp. 161-90.

documents that were perceived as didactic in one way or another during theeighteenth century. Works in Chinese were not exclusively about Confucianism,Buddhism, or other intellectual subjects. They could also be about Chinesehistory or poetry. It is particularly significant, however, that it was not thecontent of a work but rather its stylistic-or, more precisely, its graphic­arrangement that was considered to be· the distinguishing mark according towhich it would be classified. In the space of generic discontinuity, variousdiscourses were classified not only on the basis of what they said and how theysaid it but also according to their visual appearance. As I have previously argued,the discursive space of the eighteenth century is extremely complex as far asvisual and verbal aspects of texts and their various interrelationships are con­cerned. The case of Ryohashigen demonstrates the complexity of such interre­lationships most vividly. Notwithstanding that it is written in kanbun, a closeexamination reveals characteristics that were generated by constantly ignoring orviolating grammatical stipulations governing literary Chinese annotated in Japa­nese. Some phrases that look like authentic Chinese are, in fact, direct quotationsfrom what was then called the "language of villagers." After the frrst page ortwo, a reader would become aware that this entire work is organized in such away as to produce the effective recognition that the notion of a genre and certainassumed conditions to which a work belonging to this genre supposedly adheresare being relativized and ridiculed. The same can be said as wen with regard toByakusojuken kyo (Byakusofuken sutra, 6-5) and its revised edition, Tosei kagaidangi (Treatise on today's pleasure quarter). 2 The former a:;sumes the outlook ofa Buddhist sutra, in which the narrative form is itself borrowed from the mostcommonly acknowledged image of Buddhist discourse. It begins with a phrasethat can be found in identical form in many Buddhist sutras: "Thus I haveheard." Yet, already in the second line, .Chinese characters that sound likeSanskrit but connote completely different things are to be found. Polysemy isconstantly utilized to incorporate double discourse; this pseudosutra, in the guiseof a Buddhist sermon, preaches about techniques for handling women in thepleasure quarters. Such words as nyorai (tatagatha) (6-6) are deliberately mis­spelled to foster multivocity of graphic signs (in this case, nyorai becomes"women coming," 6-7). Even at the level of phonetics, polysemy is obvious, butthe essence of the humor actually lies in the linkage of phonetic polysemy to thedisplacement of graphemes. Jodo, or the Pure Land (6-8), for instance, is given acompletely different combination of Chinese characters (6-9), whereby the wordis almost abruptly associated with an impure, sinful, yet joyous image of the landof sensuality. The narration, which pretends to be that of a Buddhist sutra,reverses its message and relativizes the authority behind the official voices,which would otherwise exercise a tremendous didactic pressure on the readers.

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in most cases. But by the same token, our own textual products are subject to thecontrol of the powers among "us." What is implied here is that this blindness tothe constraints and regulations inherited and internalized within "us" is preciselythe locus where 4'we" are manipulated by such powers.

The emergence of parodist literature in the eighteenth century seems not onlyto testify to the presence of a specific power in Tokugawa Japan but could alsoperhaps be characterized as an effort to dislocate the junctures of the economy ofgeneric discontinuity. It should also be noted that this effort was appropriated bythat very economy when parodist literature became institutionalized into specificgenres through the repeated use of the same strategies. Parody was quicklytransfonned into a ucliche." Here I am not concerned with the motives andintentions of writers of popular novellas or parodist poetry. It is undeniable thatthese writers sometimes created such an unbearable discordance in TokugawaJapan that the shogunate had to impose censorship and ordinances intended toeliminate the sources of disorder and "excessive" and 44 illegitimate" pleasuresfrom a social environment that was otherwise supposed to be balanced andharmonious. The history of literature in the eighteenth century, as has been welldocumented, is marked by frequent censorship and by the varied tactics writersused to evade that censorship. Nevertheless, one should never oversimplify therelationship between literary production and power, should never reduce it to arelationship between the author and the shogunate. According to my tentativedefinition, the term "power" also bears something of the sense of "censorship"as this term is used in psychoanalysis. As the account of the dream is screened bycensorship, so too is literary production controlled and initiated by the system,that is, power. It is at this level of censorship that parodist literature seems toviolate the fabric of Tokugawa authority. But this violation, I must also note, wasin tum easily accommodated by the new discursive space of generic discon-

tinuity.

The humor of such a practice thus resides in this duality of narration, accordingto which the surface voice is constantly betrayed by the graphic arrangement ofthe booklet. A"written text and its "voice" do not speak in unison. Instead, theyoften designate opposites. This is a text in which rigid moralism is thoroughly

defeated.Furthermore, as Tose; kagai dangi demonstrates, the structure of reasoning

itself is parodied: stereotyped metaphors, enumerations, and categorizations­all features typical of Buddhist and some Confucian sermons-are incorporatedinto the booklet in such a way that the absurdity ofofficial discourse is exposed tothe fullest degree. A depraved monk, Shizoken or Shidoken (6-10), who appearsin a number of the parodist works is an actant whose function is of greatimportance. In Tosei kagai dangi, Shizoken functions as a "deviation effect" ~f

the double discourse. In opposition to Honmu Dojin, another character (who IS

supposed to be a street lecturer on popular ethics), Shizoken's arguments effec­tively parody and disqualify those assumptions without which official discoursecould not claim its validity as the truth. It should be noted that the main objectiveof his argument is not to disprove what Honmu Dojin puts forth as true andnormal. Rather, by disturbing the mechanism of signification through which astatement is evaluated as true or false, Shizoken demonstrates the conven­tionality of what has hitherto been regarded as true, natural, and normal. Hisutterances are filled with puns, abuses of metaphors, and mistaken categories, allof which tend to destroy the possibility of normal communication. For thisreason, I can say that Shizoken is an actant who represents the duality of dis­course. He calls forth a discursive possibility, the possibility of generating thesort of discursive field wherein binary oppositions such as true/false, good/bad,and normal/abnormal are always reversed and rotated so that notions of truth,good, and norm are ultimately proved nonsensical. As a consequence, one can­not even say that Shizoken or his claim is insincere, because sincerity (withoutwhich the notions of insincerity would be unintelligible) does not itself makesense. The presence of this actant in these literary works no doubt testifies to thestrength of literature vis-A-vis reified transcendent values. If power generates andregenerates what are to be perceived as transcendent values by means of a set <:>fdiscursive apparatuses, the discursive possibility represented by this actant never­theless continues to relativize and disqualify such values. Shizoken intervenes inthe official argument by interjecting unexpected combinations of images and bydisrupting the assumed isotopy, the established association, of words. At the veryleast, it was possible in this work to illustrate that the legitimate existing institu­tions could be parodied and thereby deprived of their presumed authority eventhough what was perceived to be social and institutional reality at that time couldnot be transformed merely by defamiliarizing the assumed isotopy. It is essentialin this connection that in spite of the disguise Shizoken appears to assume indebate, he nonetheless makes the very idea of debate nonsensical. He seems toattest to the notion that even if one does not subscribe to an ideological position

Haikai-ka or the Double Operation

3Ishikawa Jun, Edojin no hassoho ni tsuite, in Ishikawa Jun zenshu, vol. 7 (Tokyo: ChikumaShobo, 1962), pp. 252-63.

181Dejamiliarization and Parody

Naturally, defamiliarization extended into other genres of official discourse.Classic Japanese poetry was widely parodied to create another popular genre,kyoka (6-4), or comic tanka (6-12); similarly, Chinese poetry was transformedinto kyoshi (6-13), or comic Chinese poems. It is not difficult to see that becauseof the nature of defamiliarization, as soon as any genre receives recognition assuch and is contained within the space of generic discontinuity, it can be de­familiarized and parodied.

Those works belonging to authorized genres-notably classic poetry, Bud­dhist sutras, and Confucian treatises-were constantly parodied. Ishikawa Junconceptualizes this defamiliarization and parody as haikai-ka (6-14), or the re­organization of discourse by haikai principle.3 Using the example of comicverse, he demonstrates how a work belonging to classic literature is vulgarizedby associating the renowned image in the no play Eguchi with a maid employedin a trading house, who sleeps around indiscriminately. Let me reproduce theverse he cites and briefly explain its phrases.

outside the space of generic discontinuity and its languages, it is possible todisclose the implicit assumptions underlying that space by creating nonsense, bygenerating within that space fissures that force the sense-making mechanismsparticular to that space to malfunction. What is being achieved by the presence ofthis actant, I suspect, is a defamiliarization of the space of literary conventions.

Nonetheless, it is doubtful that the parodist literature of the eighteenth centuryactually carried out the defamiliarization to the extent that I have suggested, for itseems that it failed to defamiliarize the very conditions of its genesis. Despite itsradical gesture,. such parody did not actually succeed in striking the discursivefonnation in which power was couched, which probably explains why the par­odist literature could be institutionalized so soon and so easily. Instead of beingan effective critique, parodist literature became a form of flirtation. Preciselybecause of the lack of what Ito Jinsai called ai, which does not necessarilyexclude parody as an attempt to reach others, the playfulness of its own parodiststrategies ended up institutionalized: in a sense, it forgot to parody '·seriously."In that case) what was it that prevented it from being a Penetrating critique ofcontemporary common sense? From this perspective, my analysis must be ori­ented, first, toward that aspect of parodist literature within which the prevalentimage of power was effectively disqualified and, second, toward that literature'sintegration by a new discursive space within which parody merely reinforcedrather than debunked the new arrangement of power.

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Sakuma no ~ejo wa hakutsuki no chijire gami, ura ni kite kikeba ototsui zo ni nori.

4Ibid., p. 252.5Ibid., p. 254.

"Sakuma no gejo": a maid employed by Sakuma. "Sakuma" probably de­notes a trading house owned by the Sakuma family.

"Hakutsuki": Baku is a metal leaf; here it refers to golden leaves attached(tsuki) to the head of a Buddha image. Hakutsuki also means notorious orrenowned.

"Chijire gami": frizzled hair. Normally the head of Buddha image is coveredwith many buds, which are, in fact, constructed from curled hair with metalleaves on top. However, frizzled hair also evokes the image of pubic hair.Therefore, "being notorious or renowned for her pubic hair" (4'Hakutsuki nochijire gami") implies that every man in the neighborhood knows what her pubichair looks like.

"Ura ni kite kikeba": "Coming to the back door to ask for/about her." Indeedthis should mean that somebody came to the Sakuma household with a view toarranging a date with her. One would not come to the front door to see her forsuch a purpose.

Ishikawa then points out in the verse the dual structure in which the image ofDainichi Nyorai is superimposed on this young employee Otake: "In the Dtakelegend, we recognize a dual operation. It consists of a mechanism of mutationaccording to which the same image, while referring to a historical figure,Eguchi, also designates a symbol of an everyday affair. Here, we are talkingabout a mechanism of transformation within which one sees Dtake with one'seyes open, but also see Dainichi Nyorai with one's eyes closed."5

The underlying rule of what Ishikawa refers to as the reorganization of dis­course by the haikai principle operates on the basis of two assumptions. First, thegeneral readership must be familiar with both classic literature and the space ofgeneric discontinuity. Words quoted from classics and forms of narrative con­struction must not only be immediately understood as pertaining to a positiondefined within that space but also be associated with specific isotopies andgroups of images. As is the case with literature in general, an utterance does nottake place in a cultural vacuum but is produced against and for certain textsalready existing in the archive of the classics. Even a single word, such as"elephant" in the verse I just quoted, should automatically evoke the wholeimagery associated with the classics: in our case, it is the no play Eguchi. inwhich a courtesan in a small village called Eguchi, riding an elephant, transformsherself into Fugen Bosatsu, or Samantabhadra. In this respect, every word orphrase is already sedimented with textual associations. It is only in terms ofintertextual relationships, therefore, that words serve to project meanings accord­ing to the specific expectations installed in a work's readership by past works.Without covert reference to other texts, a work does not make sense.

183DeJamiliarization and Parody

Defamiliarization and Parody

Second, the space composed and constituted by the classics is distanced fromthe field of everyday speech. It is assumed that one lives in a reality that thelanguage of classic literature is unable to de,scribe legitimately and exhaustively.There is an implicit consensus that the words and vocabulary of the classics areforeign and that they therefore do not have direct appeal to those engaged in theeveryday mundane world. That the field' of everyday language is separated anddistanced from the languages of official and authorized discourse does not mean,however, that there exists a distinct presumptive unity of classical and officiallanguage within which one might adequately express activities, sentiments, andperceptions that would otherwise not be accessible to a general audience. Oneshould never be so naIve as to presume that a certain experience can be ver­balized in one language but not in another, as if experience could be identifiedindependently of language. There is simply no way to unequivocally distinguishlanguage from experience; conversely, there is no experience independent oflanguage. Any argument based on the implicit assumption that language andexperience are two autonomous entities is suspect. In this connection, it isimportant tostress that what is called "colloquialism" is not an explicit kind oflanguage. Certain phraseology that often appears in written and authorized textscan be used in ordinary conversation and hence rendered colloquial. Neithervocabulary, phraseology, nor even syntax is an adequate means by which todefine the putative colloquial language, for as I have suggested with regard to thestatus of direct speech in the script of ningyo joruri, ordinary speech and itslanguages are constituted in terms of a variety of differentiations including thosedividing verbal and nonverbal texts.

By means of the reorganization of discourse according to the haikai principle(or dual operation), an authentic classic is related to a new textlcon-text that hadnot been associated with the original. The sense of discontinuity is, in fact,produced by that very unexpectedness. An unexpected juxtaposition of wordsadds a new meaning to the original text to which reference is being made, andthereby transforms it. In short, such an operation is motivated by the will todistort the originality of the text and trivialize its authority, rather than to secureand restore the original. What is even more striking is that the writers of parodistliterature were interested in the authenticity of original texts only in order tointegrate them into the world of "nearness." That is, they respected the authen­ticity of the original texts in order to laugh at them. It is for precisely this reasonthat defamiliarization is also a form of familiarization. The iconoclasm of par­odic literature is always accompanied by a certain sense of vulgarization.Stripped of the authority and remoteness usually associated with them, pres­tigious texts are boldly inserted into the scene of the everyday, mundane, andvulgar world. Santo Kyoden's Nishiki no ura, for example, presents one of the

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Edo: Izumi Shikibu. Arazaramu kono yo no hoka no omoide ni,Isaemon: Ima hitotabi no kando no wabi mo sumi, kono nikai e rno harete kite,

awaruru yo ni naritai rnonoja.Yugiri: Hon'ni, maiban awarenshita toki wa, takusan so ni omoishita ga, konogoro

wa konoyona hakanaio koto sae, taitei no kokoro zukai ja ozansen.Isaemon: Sosano.Edo: Ushi to mishi yo zo imawa koishiki.7

6Santo Kyoden, Nishiki no ura, in Kolen nihon bungaku taikei, vol. 59 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,1958), pp. 415-40. A writer of gesaku fiction in the late eighteenth century, Santo Kyoden (1761­1816) was also a ukiyo~e illustrator, poet, and shopkeeper. In addition to illustrating many kibyoshi(yellow cover) booklets, he wrote in a wide range of popular genres, excelling in satire and the vividportrayal of city life. For the publication of his satirical book, he was arrested by the Bakufuauthority. The titles of his major works-including Edo umare uwakt no kabayaki, Tsugen somagaki,Shikake bunko. and Tsuzoku daiseiden-contain so many phonetic and graphic puns that they are nottranslatable.

7Santo Kyoden, Nishiki no ura, in Koten nihon bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1958),59:415-40.

Edo, one of the apprentice courtesans, recites one of the one hundred poems.First, the name of the poet and the kami no ku, the first stanza of the poem, arepronounced. Edo's voice is then interrupted by the conversation going on be­tween Isaemon and Yugiri, which happens to coincide with the beginning of theshimo no ku, that is, the second stanza of the poem, "ima hitotabi no" (onceagain). The series of words in the lovers' dialogue shifts away from the words ofthe poem, and loses its parallelism with the poem. Yet the dual operation is atwork here too, as the end of Isaemon's utterance refers to the poem again. Thisutterance and the poem end with the same syntactical construction, which ex­presses hope or expectation in the subjunctive mood:

185DeJamiliarization and Parody

Ima hitotabi no kando no wabi rno surni, (A*)kono nikai e rno harete kite, awaruru yo ni naritai monoja.) (B*)

Edo: ... Arazaramu kono yo no hoko no ornoide oi, (A)[Ima hitotabi no au kOIO rno gana.) (B)

The second stanza (B), indeed, does not get pronounced; rather, it is implicitas an other text to which this text refers. This implicit reference is assumed by thesyntactical isomorphism between this stanza and the actual utterance of Isaemon(A*). Both texts in fact express a wish for an impossible rendezvous. In thissense, Isaemon's utterance is almost a semantic equivalent to the lower stanza,except that additional information is included here which does not appear in thePoem. That is, Izumi Shikibu, a renowned poet of the Heian period, did notmention how to apologize to the family and ask them to redeem the hero fromdisinheritance, nor did she specifically mention the second floor of a brothelwhere the rendezvous was to take place. The apparent similarity between the textreferred to and the actual utterance generates a hilarious contrast.

Moreover, we see how the poem is deprived of its aristocratic and other­worldly connotations when its entire message is compared with the contextwithin which it is inserted in Nishiki no ura. This poem, by a poet famous for herstraightforward expression of sensual affection, could roughly be rendered intoEnglish as follows: "I will soon cease to be in the world [that is, I will soon besomewhere outside this world]. As a precious memory [to take with me], I wish Icould have another encounter with you." "Arazaram" in this context does notmean "I" am going to die soon. Rather, the Buddhist cosmology that might leadus to believe that the poem is essentially valedictory, in which this world is one ofmahy worlds, is merely stated and used as a framework. As is often the case inHeian literature, the division between this real world and imaginary worlds isconstantly reversed, in the sense that the realness of this world is perceived as asign of its unrealness. In addition, the shift of viewpoints in this poem is the mainthrust, without which the whole semantic construction would be unintelligible.First, the world in which "I" cease to exist is marked as this world; yet my owndeath in this world would only lead to my presence outside this world. Here thefrrst shift of viewpoint is indicated by "kono yo no hoka no omoide ni" (for thesake of the memory "I" would have about this world when "I" am outside thisworld). The actual rendezvous that "I" wish for should take place in this realworld, however, and the "I" who wishes for another encounter with her lover isthe one who is still in this world in flesh and blood.

In Isaemon '8 utterance, what had been a metaphysical reference to anotherworld in the original is flattened out so thoroughly that no anguish expressingspiritual bondage can be found. Isaemon's wish is, from beginning to end, bothearthly and earthy, concerned only with sensuality and everyday trivialities.Moreover, because of the isomorphism in semantic construction, the contrast

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most successful applications of this dual operation.6 This novella parodies manyprevious texts, including Chikamatsu Monzaemon's. But for the sake of myargument, let me concentrate on a thread that connects this work to Japaneseclassic poetry.

Toward the end of this novella, a courtesan, Yugiri, and her lover, Isaemon,are exchanging amorous words while the next room shinzo (apprentice courte­sans) are enjoying themselves playing with hyakunin isshu (6-15) or waka poemcards of one hundred poems by one hundred poets. The lovers' words and thoseof classic poetry intersect and generate a peculiar field of polyphony. This coex­istence of two different genres of discourse in a synchronized field projects thestyle of humor particular to the dual operation as postulated by Ishikawa. It isimpossible to make the interactions of the various voices and isotopies of Nishikino ura available in English, for translation would require reorganization ofsyntagmatic word order which would destroy the synchronic effects. I will,therefore, present a few selections in Japanese and try to explain how equivocitygenerates hilarious consequences.

Plural Voices

8The poem in its entirety: "Nagaraeba, mata konogoroya shinobaremu, usito mishiyo ZO, ima wakoishiki."

The notion of genre poses many difficulties, particularly with regard to liter­ature in the eighteenth century, not because many works of parodist literature

187DejamiliarizatiQn and Parody

incorporate forms and vocabulary that nonnally belong to other genres but 00­ca~se th.ese work~, intentionally or not, objectify and relativize the very interre­latIonship accordIng to which the style and vocabulary of any specific genre areevaluated and implicitly used to distinguish it from other genres. Certainly, everytex~ is produced against the background of other texts, but even more apparentlyso 10 the case of Tokugawa parodist literature. This particular kind of literature~an ~e .located within the given space of generic discontinuity, but at the sametime It IS .a metag~nre, for it problematizes and exposes the rules generating andregen~ratI.ng th: gIven taxonomy of genres. In this sense, it could be argued thatparod~st l~terat~e ~ot only was co-opted by and incOrPOrated into the space ofgenenc discontinuIty but also that it simultaneously gave rise to the possibilitythat a text could be liberated from constraints that determined the mode within~hich it suppo~edly signified. This dual position leads to an apparently contra­~lctOry evaIUa~l?n of parodist literature: it is at once the most vulgar fonn oflIterature (positIoned at the bottom of the generic hierarchy), and at the sametime,. because of its parasitic relations to whatever genre is to be parodied, itfunctlons as the metalanguage for the parodied genre. Hence, it is outside thedetermin~tion of the generic hierarchy. The tenn gesaku (works of play or jokes,5-11), Widely u~ed to designate this genre of Tokugawa literature today, ex­presses ~he ambivalence of parody very well. It does not simply signify self­deprecat~on on the part of the parodist; it also means that, by being "insincere,"s.uch wnters are capable of objectifying, distancing, and relativizing conven­tional modes of presentation. It demonstrates that one need not speak in a givens~yle, la~~~age, and voice, that multiplicity itself can be the principle of discur­sive act~vItles. Even though gesaku may not convince the readership that theconventlonal mode of presentation is inadequate, at least it suggests discursivepossibilities other than those accepted by contemporary institutions.

Nevertheless, it must also be emphasized that this form of insincerity andparody was itself institutionalized. I must ask, therefore, to what extent theconventional mode of present':\tion was actually objectified, distanced, and rela­ti:vized in this kind of literary practice. Or the question should probably be askeddifferently: Was there some silent site, constituted in this discursive space, whichenabled this practice but to which this practice was completely blind? But beforeI elucidate this question, it seems necessary to analyze the structure of parodistliterature further.

~~ radical plurality of voices one finds in kokkeibon (comic books, 5-7)testIfIes to the intersection and collision of a variety of voices at the expense ofplot coherence. Many kokkeibon and sharebon (5-6) seem to lack coherentnarrative structure; their narrative unities may appear dependent on a mere suc­cession of scenes, partly because of the structure of this plurality in which it isnot an event but a scene that determines how various voices are integrated into alinear succession of words. In such works, one can hardly avoid the impressionthat words uttered in a given situation at a given time are collected and recordedwithout being synthesized into a drama. As I have mentioned with regard to

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between classic language and the contemporary language of the townspeople iseven more clearly illuminated. What strikes the reader is the marked irrelevanceof the classic poem within the context of the described situation. No doubt thissense of irrelevance is intrinsic to the humor in this work and is constituted bymeans of narrative devices. Were there no such isomorphism in semantic con­struction, even the sense of humor based on such an irrelevance would be lost.

In a similar manner, Yugiri's succeeding utterance is skillfully parodied inorder to call forth an effect, namely, that the second stanza ("Ushi to mishi yo zoima wa koishiki") of another hyakunin isshu poem by Fujiwara Kiyosuke,obliquely sums up the emotion the lovers share with each other.8 Again, a senseof irrelevance evoked by the juxtaposition of the classic poem and the mundaneconversation is evident. The lovers lament the passing of time. When Isaemonused to pay frequent visits to Yugiri, they did not realize how precious time was,but since they are no longer allowed to see each other, their feelings are inten­sified.

Yet, the metaphysical anguish expressed in the classic poem is totally absent inthe lovers' conversation. The poem depicts the fear of death and the transitorynature of life, but neither Isaemon nor Yugiri attempts to relate their situation toany otherworldly speculations. The obvious similarity between the situation inthe poem and in the lovers' fate enhances the irrelevance, making it all the moreclear and striking. Thus, the worlds of classic literature and contemporary mun­dane life are superimposed upon each other.

This strategy is exactly what is suggested by Ishikawa's notion of doubleoperations: it is effective not only because classic texts are defamiliarized anddeprived of their authenticity but also because what would otherwise be remoteand transcendent is reduced to the earthly and earthy world. The grandiosestatements in the classic texts are trivialized and thereby introduced into theworld of "nearness," the familiar sphere of "actual life" in which the people ofeighteenth-century Tokugawa Japan dealt with everyday necessities. We shouldremember at the same time, however, that although a classic text thus parodied isremoved from its designated position within the space of generic discontinuityand defamiliarized, the double operation also familiarizes the classic text becauseit gives a new readership uninhibited access to classic writings that had once beenbeyond their reach. Fragments of the classics are absorbed into mundane life andfind their way into everyday activities. As has often been remarked, it is duringthe Tokugawa period that classic literature was introduced to the common au­dience at large and became part of mass literature.

pictorial and spatial presentation, it is a scene, rather ~an a linear organization ofvarious actions, which is the determinant rule in these works. No wonder writersfaced such tremendous difficulties in tying one scene to another, for in order toaccommodate this plurality, they had to generate a scene or a situation in whichvarious voices were presented as they were uttered. It is important to note in thisrespect that the sphere of ordinary language, "nearness," and mundane life isnothing but a space in which innumerable voices, none dominant, intersect andcollide with one another without explicit order. Such spaces may appear chaotic,but they escape from any synthesizing mechanism that could screen utterancesand put them in order so as to fonn a coherent message. Therefore, this kind ofsphere, filled with heterogeneous words, possesses no telos according to whichnarrative time arranges utterances in a linear order. Here, time is a mere suc­cessivity that loosely connects one speech to another; there is only change, nooverarching continuity. Certain things happen at one moment; at another, otherthings happen. There is no particular· connection except for some very simpleplot. What endows actions and happenings with signification in these texts is notthe context (if by "context" we mean a narrative linearity by which utterancesare organized in successive order). Instead, signification is produced within asituational con-text that surrounds and animates the words and behavior of char­acters. Although words are necessarily organized linearly in a verbal text, thestructure of semantic order horizontally redistributes utterances in such a waythat a statement representing speech is juxtaposed to other quoted speechesthrough what I have called the gestalt type of intertextual construction. Ofcourse, this fonn of presentation is problematic to the extent that within such ajuxtaposition the time of narration does not proceed as it does in other narratives.That is, it appears that the time of narration is glued to the time of the action andthat the space represented by the verbal text is confined within the space ofaction. Consequently, the same constraints to which action adheres determineand limit narrative possibilities. Restricted by the principle that to read such atext is both to retrace utterances contained in it and to repeat speech acts thatproduced these utterances, the time of narration cannot "skip" or "leap over"the temporality of the speech act. Here, just. as in scripts for theatrical perfor­mance, no deployment of words ever overcomes the restraints imposed by thescene: unless the scene changes, the time of narration must continue to beenclosed within a given scene. And when the scene does change, there cannot betemporal continuity between scenes. The narrative continuity ends abruptly asthe scene ends; just as on a stage the theatrical space that establishes itself withinthe stage setting, as well as its imagined world, disappears when the curtain falls,so the continuity of narrative time must come to a sudden halt. In this case the,time of these novellas is fragmented and detached from the overarching time ofchronology; these parodist novellas not only defamiliarize classic literature, dis­qualifying the authority of generic hierarchy, but also disseminate encompassinghistorical time. Instead of one authentic history based on narrative continuity,

these generate innumerable histories disseminated and distributed within thespace of ordinary language. No longer are they histories of heroes; we are toldthat there is no prestigious viewpoint from which events of the past can besynthesized into a singular line of narration and thus integrated into the unity ofthe whole. By offering a different fonn of presentation and a new epistemologicalchoice, such texts destroy and dissemble the myth of linear history in a subtleway.

At the same time, it is worth noting that these parodist novellas represent asense of ahistoricity. Imm~rsed in the reality of the mundane world, the writerscould not see how the present was related to and determined by the past. Thus,above all they seem to have lost a valuable means by which to defamiliarize whatwas perceived to be near, immediate, and familiar. History was recognized in itsinstantiation in the present, just as fragmented and disseminated quotations fromthe classic writings were incorporated into the language of the townspeople.Only insofar as the traces of the past were scattered on the surface of contempo­rary discourse did history "mean" something to the readers of parodist literaturein the eighteenth century. Their concern was exclusively with the here and now,and this strong adherence to the present required the double operation throughwhich texts of the past were subjected to general consumption.

Two issues relate to the question of parodist literature and historicity. First, asIshikawa's notion of the reorganization of discourse by the haikai principlesuggests, parody and defamiliarization would be impossible without positingsome kind of distance or discontinuity. What, then, is the nature of this distance,this discontinuity that sustains the double operation? Violating assumptions un­derlying literary production produces an effect in which what has been acceptedis suddenly estranged and resituated within an irrelevant context. Seen from apolitical stance that is eager to affirm the existing discursive arrangement, thereorganization of discourse by the haikai principle would appear rather grotesqueand destructive. Yet it is in fact a creative attempt to liberate one from therestricted economy power imposes. What this practice discloses is the conven­tionality and historicity of positivity; that is to say, what the majority of a socialgroup believes is given and real. In this context, what is at stake is not a specificinstitutional form such as the shogunate but the legitimacy of power itself. Forthis reason I have argued that authors of parodist literature, albeit unconsciously,had proposed not another form of power but rather the dislocation of the existingpower, which had regulated their discourse. This argument, however, can bemaintained only on condition that the object of defamilarization and parody isrecognized as integral to a power that presents itself as a transparency, a neu­trality, a set of commonsensical presuppositions. In other words, the same doubleoperation cannot be repeated once such a transparency has been objectified anddefamiliarized. Its critical effect is lost if parody is institutionalized. I think thatthis is why Tokugawa parodist literature degenerated into a "playful" skepticismthat tamed the radical historical difference of the past by familiarizing it, into an

188 Frame Up Dejamiliarization and Parody 189

9For this reason, such overgeneralizations as "Japanese society is not logocentric." "Japaneseculture is feminine," etc. are simply pointless.

easygoing liberal relativism that accorded every political stance its merits anddemerits and "deemed all to be deserving of equal respect. Instead of facing theintrusion of the otherness of the Other in the sphere of nearness, the parodistsoften seem to have ended up clinging to a homosocial world where they weresecurely at home, engaging in an endless series of chats about how to handle thewomen of the pleasure quarters, continually indulging themselves in mutual self­pity and rivalry over women. Their skepticism turned out to be an excuse for notrisking themselves in the encounter with the Other in everyday life and a legit­imation of their inability in ai to go out of their homosocial world.

Second, in eighteenth-century parodist literature, specific uses of polysemyhelped visualize and thematize what had been presumed to be normal and naturaland had thus been reduced to transparency. It was believed that polysemy ren­dered the invisible visible and that systematic constraints on the production ofknowledge and speech had to be exposed. By engendering abnormalities in theperspective of reception and situating it in apparently queer angles with respect toan epistemological framework, presumptively transparent assumptions could berendered opaque; precisely in this way the omnipresence of the epistemologicalframework could be illustrated. That is, polysemy, when validly applied, couldcreate a particular angle of refraction, which could make the hitherto invisibleemerge as an obstacle in vision. But by the same token, there would be no pointin repeating the same procedure in order to make visible what had already beenrendered visible. Parodists might have continued to crack and fissure the invisi­ble network of criteria according to which a work was evaluated and classified,but without a continuing effort to defamiliarize, the presence of the system ofimplicit assumptions could not be recognized, just as we do not realize thepresence of clear glass except when it is cracked.

This is, of course, one of the most important recurring themes in this book: ifthere are no cracks in the glass, strike it so that cracks will appear. Then it will benot a reality beyond the glass but the glass itself that will be visible.

The problem of historicity is closely related to this critical effort. Moreover,historicity and polysemy are interdependent. We should remember that the crit­ical function cannot in itself be ascribed to polysemy in general. Nevertheless, aspecific use of polysemy in a specific discursive formation is able to perform acritical function. In this sense, too, the problem of parody is historically specific.

The obsessive concern of parodist literature with the here and now effectivelyeliminated any possibility for critical self-evaluation. In addition, the ahistoricityof these texts could be securely contained within a discursive space to which, as Iwill elucidate, polysemy was no threat. (But here too I must hasten to repeat thatthe discursive space at issue does not coincide either with so-called Japanesesociety as a whole or with Japanese culture as an all-encompassing system).9

Perspective, or Abschattung

191DeJamiliarization and Parody

IOMiura Tsutomu, Nihongo wa douiu gengo ka (Tokyo: Kisetsu-sha, 1971), p. 70. Miura does notseem aware of the theoretical implications of his attempt (as explicitly announced in the title of thisbook) to define the characteristics of the Japanese language. Perhaps, this explains why his argumenton occasions sounds rather parochiaL

In Nihongo wa do iu gengo ka (What sort of language is Japanese? 6-16),Miura Tsutomu discusses differences between pictorial expression (kaigatekihyogen, 6-17) and verbal expression (gengoteki hyogen, 6-18). He contends thatin pictorial expression the depiction of an object inevitably involves expression ofthe subject's perspective. An object can be described, identified, and determinedas such only if it is seen from the position of a specific viewer. A thing seen fromnowhere is merely an impossibility. Like phenomenologists, Miura acknowl­edges in pictorial expression some of the conditions of perspective, or Abschat­tung. pertaining to the perception of things in general. Thus he regards pictorialexpression, in contrast to verbal expression, as an imitation of objects in thesensory aspect, which "implies that pictorial or cinematographic expression isrestricted by the position of the author's sensory organs and by his particular wayof grasping by means of the senses." 10

In pictorial expression, therefore, subjective and objective expressions alwayscoexist as already synthesized. The pictorial expression of an object is first andforemost an expression of the subject's attitude and position. But Miura alsopoints out that the viewpoint and subject's attitude that are registered in pictorialpresentation cannot be immediately identical to the position and attitude of theviewer. Rather, the subject's imagined position is preserved in pictorial presenta­tion.

Thus far we have seen how a new discursive space emerged in Tokugawaliterature and some problems its emergence engendered. It is possible to pointout, of course, that a schism existed within eighteenth-century Tokugawa societyas to how history was to be conceived, since there were also other genres ofdiscourse in which the continuity of historical narrative was maintained. (Ofcourse, we must never assume that whatI mean by eighteenth-century discursivespace ever coincides with the whole of eighteenth-century Japanese society.) Wecan conclude that the notion of history was extremely problematic at that timeand, possibly, ~hat I should talk about plural senses of history in the eighteenthcentury.

Of course, I have by no means presented a comprehensive account of theliterary scene; nevertheless, I have identified certain basic features of this discur­sive space. In the remainder of this chapter, I shall review some of the issuesalready discussed in Part Two and evaluate their theoretical significance withinthe scope of this entire book. '

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This is, indeed, an attempt to classify various forms of presentation in tenus oftheir structures. Elsewhere Miura attributes the specificity of linguistic ex­pression to duality in expression:

tl Ibid., p. 45.12Ibid., p. 71.13Miura Tsutomu, Ninshiki to gengo no riron (Theory of cognition and language) 2 (Tokyo: Keiso

Shobo, 1967), 2:381.14Miura's use of the phrase "Genjitsu ni sonzai suru jiko" to refer to the ego already existing in the

world does not mean that he simply assumes the identity of the "real" ego.

On the other hand, this kind of immediate synthesis of the subjective and theobjective does not exist in verbal expression. Referring to the language processtheory (gengo kateisetsu, 6-19) of Tokieda Motoki, Miura defines the nature ofverbal expression, noting: "One of the main characteristics of language is thatthere is no direct relationship between the sensory mode of an object and thesensory mode of the fonn of its expression." 11 Later he remarks:

193Defamiliarization and Parody

the world of perception. In other words, through verbalization one becomes ananonymous other who is at the same time both nowhere and everywhere; that is,one becomes universalized. If the nonverbal text is characterized by the subject'spositionality in the world, then the verbal text is certainly 'defined by its subject'sfreedom from perspectival constraints. In other words, language is the field ofthe other, and enunciation is a transition from the state in which one has not yetexperienced the splitting and therefore has not been transformed into a subject, tothe realm where the subject has been split and has thereby lost its direct rapportwith the world. Such is Miura's argument.

Perhaps I should point out a fundamental problem in Miura's approach similarto the one I found in Benveniste's ideas. By emphasizing the difference betweensensory expression and linguistic expression, or the visible and the articulatory,Miura tends to ascribe an immedi.acy to the visual in contrast to the mediatednature of the linguistic, as if the visual were more directly affiliated with theprimordial experience of perception. He posits, in fact, a real ego (shutai teki najiko, 6-20) as opposed to the ideational ego (kannen teki najiko, 6-21).15 In spiteof his insight into the importance of the "mirror stage" in social formation,which he draws from his reading of Marx, he seems to posit the real ego withoutany qualification:

Hence, Miura's notion of shutai is blind to many questions that necessarily arisewhen the shutai is substantialized and subjectified. This blindness is, in fact,shared not only by Benveniste (most evidently, as I said, in his notions ofdiscourse and person) but also by Tokieda Motoki, as I shall indicate in mydiscussion of his linguistics later. Though they do so in different ways, Ben­veniste, Tokieda, and Miura all reduce the shutai to the subject of enunciation,despite the fact that, particularly in Miura's work, the specular image of the selfis clearly distinguished from the agent who speaks. I?

It sometimes seems that eighteenth-century parodist literature was haunted,obsessively attempting to deny the nonPOsitionality of verbal expression. Byspatialization and the denial of narrative linearity, it showed a coherent tendency

15Miura, Ninshiki to gengo no riron 1:22-39, 149-69, 230-40, 2:354-401, 510-26.16Ibid., p. 29. The quotation is from Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward

Aveling (New York: International, 1967), p. 52.17See esp. Miura, Ninshiki to gengo no riron 2:519-26.

The material mirror used in the idealistic split of ego is not exclusively a glass mirror. AlreadyMarx pointed out the existence of "other men" as one of those material mirrors. "Since hecomes into the world neither with a looking glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtean philosopher, towhom 'I am r is sufficient, man first sees and recognizes himself in other men. Peter onlyestablishes his own identity as a man by first comparing himself with Paul as being of like kind.And thereby PaUl, just as he stands in his Pauline personality, becomes to Peter the type of thegenus homo." This is Marx's critique of the idealism of Fichtean type. As I have mentioned,Fichte's "ego" is, in fact, an ideational self, [Kannen teki no jikol, but Fichte insists that such"ego" exists from the outset. In contrast, Marx argues that the ideational self does not exist withbirth, but through the encounter with "the mirror called other men:' the real self [genjitsu tekina jiko, 6-22] is split to generate the ideational self. 16

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[The fact] that language is free from the constraints inherent in the sensory aspects ofan object leads, on the one hand, to the fact that it requires social convention for itsexpression and, on the other hand, to the fact that objective and subjective ex­pressions are separated [in language]. One must seek an essential feature of languagehere. Duality in expression exists in the form of synthesis in the case of pictures andmovies, but in the case of language, duality is divided, with another duality oflinguistic and nonlinguistic expression being generated as a result. 12

He then maintains that the enunciation is therefore an act by which the divisionbetween immediate sensory perception and conceptualization is generated. Itfollows with regard to the speaking subject that the enunciation is always adoubling of the subject. What he refers to as "splitting in the linguistic ex­pression of ego" is related. To express an object through linguistic media is toposit a subject other than the one already existing in the world. 14 A subject thusgenerated is no longer subjugated to the constraints of Abschattung. It is in thiscontext that Maurice Merleau-Ponty once said, "Language is not a being-in-the­world": the subject posited in linguistic expression does not have its place within

There are many ways to grasp an object. But in linguistic expression, variousspecificities of the sensory mode in which an object is presented and sometimes thecharacteristic of the sensory mode itself are omitted, or the nonsensory object can bepresented. In any case, an object is always presented through generalization oruniversalization. That is to say, language expresses an object either by generalizingit into a presentation and thereby conceptualizing it or by directly grasping it as auniversal aspect of the concept. Therefore, differences that a particular object entailsin the sensory mode of its perception prior to conceptualization cannot be expressedin linguistic form. And listeners and readers do not have direct access to an object inlinguistic expression. 13

toward that which Miura identified as characteristic of nonlinguistic expression.Insofar as it is an expression at all, a non-linguistic expression does not immedi­ately project the position of the viewer in the world. Yet it is true that parodistliterature favored textual configurations that alternatively adhere to the scene andthe perfonnative situation. Instead of constituting what Roman Ingarden called"represented space" by organizing "represented objectivities," it created thefield of many perspectives, directly tying the visual and verbaL 18 Narrative time,if I can still speak in tenns of narrativity, was almost congruent with the time ofaction that flowed within the scene. By dispersing the unity of the narrative voiceinto many utterances by multiple speakers, the time of narration was disruptedand deployed horizontally. The impression that one would normally have aboutthe works of Santo Kyoden or Jippensha Ikku19 affinns the thesis that theseworks present a space where various voices intersect and contradict one another,rather than a story or definite plot that connects various utterances in linear

18In The Literary Work ofArt, trans. George G. Grabowicz (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univer­sity Press, 1973), Roman Ingarden defines "represented objectivities" (or objects) and "representedspace": "I would especially like to emphasize that the expression 'represented object' (or objectivity)that I am using is to be understood in a very broad sense, encompassing, above all, everything that isnominally projected regardless of the objectivity category and material essence. Thus it refers tothings as well as persons, but also to all possible occurrences, states, acts performed by persons, etc.At the same time, however, the stratum of what is represented can also contain the nonnominallyprojected, as, in particular, what is intended purely verbally. For the purpose of simplifying termi­nology, the expression 'represented object' is meant to encompass-in the absence of expressrestrictions on this usage-everything that is represented as such. At the same time, it must be notedthat 'objectified' objects need not necessarily find themselves in the stratum of 'represented objects.'And this is true in various senses. In the first place, it is not necessarily a question of the particularfonn of the objective givenness in which the object remains distinctly 'distanced' with respect to theobserver (although in the great majority of instances this is exactly the case). Second, what isrepresented does not necessarily have to possess 'objective' properties, i.e., those that are intended asbeing free of every existential relativity" (219-20). He continues: i< 'Represented space does notallow itself to be incorporated either into real space or into the various kinds of perceptible orienta­tional space, even when the represented objects are expressly represented as 'finding' themselves in aspecific location in real space, e.g., 'in Munich.' This represented Munich, and in particular thespace within which this city-as one that is represented- 'lies', cannot be identified with thecorresponding segment of space in which the real city of Munich actually lies. If it could be, then itwould have to be possible to walk out, as it were, from represented space into real space and viceversa, which is patently absurd. Moreover, nothing can change the fact that the segment of space inwhich the real city of Munich is constantly and invariably situated has a pronounced existentialrelativity with respect to cognitive subjects (even though it does not yet coincide with the orienta­tional space that is existentially relative to a particular cognitive subject), since this real city quiteevidently constantly changes its position in the one, objective, homogeneous cosmic space-if that atall exists-and therefore, in this latter sense, there is actually no segment of space in which it couldconstantly and invariably be found. The segment of space represented in the literary work is not to beidentified even with the 'always the same' existentially relative segment of space in which the realcity of Munich lies. They are entirely separate kinds of space, between which there is no spatialcrossing" (224-25).

19Jippensha Ikku (1765-1831), fiction writer and playwright of the later Tokugawa period, was alow-ranking samurai who left feudal service and began writing joruri scripts and kibyoshi. His talentextended over many genres, including gokan (bound volume), yomihon (reading book), kyoka (comicwaka poetry), and senryu (comic haiku poetry). Perhaps he is best known for his very successfulkokkeibon series Tokaidochu hizakurige (Shanks' mare).

succession. What is manifested here is a deeply rooted desire to return to theenunciation, to the imagined primordial and immediate synthesis of subjectiveand objective in perception, a return from the splitting of the subject in languageand from the out-of-the-world-ness of linguistic expression to a direct rapportwith the world through lived experience.

Furthermore, since many parodist works do not have an explicit plot structureaccording to which the unity of a work might be construed in tenns of a begin­ning and an end, they create the impression that speeches of ordinary peoplewere directly transcribed into writing, although such transcription is doubtlessimpossible, a fantasy projected by phonocentrism. Thus depicted, the events ofeveryday life do not exhibit an overarching meaning. There is the suggestion thatlife simply does not have a transcendent essence, only immediate, concrete, and"near" reality (which is, after all, a transcendent value nonetheless). It is also forthis reason that parodist literature could be an effective critique of those contem­porary ideologies that in one way or another seduced people into belief in atranscendent order and found a moral implication immanent in every possibleevent, even though those who were not ethically cultivated might not be able tosee it. This is how the parodists told the audience that the world was, after all, asit was, and possibly this is the fundamental reason why the shogunate feared thiskind of discourse and censored it many times. That is, regardless of what classic,authorized documents said to the readership, nothing was hidden under thesurface of everyday phenomena, and therefore, the sphere of nearness, of vulgar,mundane, and trivial everyday deeds, was, as a matter of fact, where the ultimateauthority lay. Parodist literature helped remove from the minds of the audiencevarious ideological constraints, the main function of which was to posit theexistence of a univocal "truth" beyond the reach of commoners and thus tojustify the existence of authorized commentaries on classic writings. It is pre­cisely in this context that eighteenth-century parody was at one and the same timeboth defamiliarization and familiarization. It defamiliarized the orthodoxy andauthenticity associated with those writings, but it also gave direct access to thosewritings to those who were supposedly not properly educated. Parodist literaturetaught its readership that one did not need to know the original meaning of aclassic, that the reader should place it in the contemporary scene and see how itworked when surrounded by other texts of the time.

In this respect, the way Ito Jinsai treated the canonical writings adumbrated theemergence of parodist literature. Instead of generating a metalanguage based oncanonical writings, he reversed the order of the original ancient writings and theircommentaries. He attempted to determine the dimension within which canonicalwritings were to speak to his contemporaries; the authentic voice of the writingsshould come from the site where they encounter nonverbal texts, that is, what Iidentified as' the performative situation. Although the performative situationfunctions as the background for the writings (which in turn function as thefigure), it contributes as much to the constitution of meaning as the writings

195DeJamiliarization and ParodyFrame Up194

themselves. Implicit in Ito's approach is the awareness that whatever the per­formative situation may have been when the ancient writings were originallyproduced, it has been permanently lost; there is no way to authenticate one'sreading by recourse to the origin. His notion of kogi (ancient meaning, 6-23) isneither the original intention of the author nor the plentitude of the scene of theoriginary utterance. Rather it points toward the cognition that the meaning of thecharacter should not be taken to be transcendent nature but should be com­prehended within the specific discourse in which it is used. Hence, the validity ofConfucian teaching had to be judged in relation to the contemporary per­formative situation in which Jinsai was involved. This relevance of the contem­porary situation in reading Chinese classics was further affirmed in his discussionof nearness. Validity is primarily concerned with ethicality; that is, it is ap­proached from the viewpoint of the establishment of virtues in action in thecontemporary situation.

The double operation that characterized Edo literature in general, according toIshikawa Jun, invalidated the authority of the classics and further articulated themanner in which the classic writings were introduced into the present. In theeighteenth-century discursive space, the act of reading was also defined by thisdouble operation; obviously the status of writing (written text) in general thushad to undergo a radical change. The rules of the discursive formation weretransformed so that the relationships between verbal and nonverbal texts, andwriting and speech, were necessarily changed.

The problematic that thinkers faced in the eighteenth century was no doubt inaccordance with this transformation of discursive space. In addition to the reduc­tion of the verbal text to the performative situation, the sense of nearness andimmediacy was continually emphasized. Following Miura Tsutomu's termi­nology, the sensory aspect of perception was directly incorporated into the non­verbal and, especially, into the visible. What defines the positionality of theviewer-speaker in such texts is the presence of the subject's body, according towhich perspective, nows and heres were determined. Hence, the overwhelmingtendency toward spatialization and pictorial presentation in eighteenth-centuryparodist literature implied an effort on the part of the writers to include the bodyof the subject in discourse. The plurality of voices one often encounters inparodist novellas of this time is certainly related to the problematic of the pres­ence of the subject's body in discursive space. Voices are uttered by a plurality ofspeakers without a single, monophonic center, a center that would often beinvisible and hidden but would give an 4'objective" tone to the entire work.Instead, the writers of eighteenth-century Tokugawa Japan let various voicesspeak, thereby creating a heterogeneous literary space where the center wasconstantly shifted by means of parody or the double operation. Needless to say,this method was possible only on the grounds that direct speech and spatializeddiscourse were articulated as distinct forms: without the spatialization of dis­course, the multiplicity of speaking voices would have been impossible; without

Textual Materiality

the articulation of direct speech, the presence of the speaking subject could nothave been postulated.

197DeJamiliarization and Parody

Now I must turn to the problem that was posed at the beginning of Part Two:the text that is simultaneously seen and read. As has been mentioned, texts suchas calligraphy always pose an irreconcilable contradiction between these twomodes of perception. In a text produced solely to be read, it is possible to identifythe level at which it is determined, as a text, to be read. For instance, a book notonly contains its message but is also, and at the same time, a bound set ofcompiled sheets of paper on which letters have been printed in black ink. Whenwe talk about a specific book, however, we feel entitled to ignore the kind ofpaper and print used. Only when we exclude various aspects of textual mate­riality from our consideration and concentrate exclusively on its enunciated or itsmessage is it possible to define and determine the unity of that book as"thought." Much the same can be said about speech as an enunciated, for otheraccompanying phenomena such as the facial expression of the speaker, thesituation of the enunciation, and the tone of voice necessarily have to be excludedand ignored in order for a speech to be identified as such. The very act ofreading, when viewed in this context, denotes the distinction of various levelsimmanent in textuality, whereby one level is the thematized focus of attentionwhile other levels are reduced to being part of the privileged level's undifferenti­ated background. Hence, reading is a structured procedure by means of which acertain aspect of textuality is differentiated from others; factors within that cer­tain aspect are thematically posited as constituting the signification of the text inquestion.

Seeing is also a structured procedure whereby a different aspect of the textualmateriality is the thematic focus of attention while other aspects remain un­differentiated. Reading, indeed, is a form of seeing, but different aspects arethematized in reading and seeing. It is possible to see or look at a book instead ofreading it. Even if it is the same book as one that we read, it manifests itself as adifferent text when it is seen. In this respect as well, a text is always texts; a textis already other texts.

Texts such as calligraphy call into question the presumed division betweenseeing and reading, which is normally taken for granted. Faced with a work ofcalligraphy, it appears, one should constantly shift the focus of one's attentionbetween reading and seeing. That which is normally ignored and cast into theundifferentiated background in reading, surfaces into prominence in the constitu­tion of a calligraphic work as text. A calligraphic work cannot be classified aseither purely visual text or purely verbal text. Because of the inherent hetero­geneity characteristic of this genre of text, a work of calligraphy casts light on the

Frame Up196

textual materiality that would otherwise be ignored and reduced to transparency.Similarly, literature of the eighteenth century, parody in particular, continuallyrenders the very notion of reading problematic. Its emphasis on the visual aspectof textual materiality continually disrupts and intervenes in the constitution ofrepresentational space. When the focus of attention is fixed on one aspect and thestructuring procedure of such reading is stratified, various other aspects of textualmateriality pass unnoticed. Provided that the structuring procedure is stable, atext is able to project an imaginary space independent of the actual unidentifiedspace in which it exists as material, in which case one no longer follow~ bla~k

patterns on white sheets. Instead, one lives with the heroes and the herOInes mthat imaginary space a book projects; one becomes blind to the book as material;one does not remember when one turned the page or what kind of print was used.In order for a literary text to be capable of constituting such an imagined repre­sentational space, the other aspects of textual materiality must be suppressed. Ifthose other aspects could not be rendered transparent, one would frequentlyencounter the merger of representational space with excesses that make the textopaque.

Indeed, it is feasible to argue that this is the fundamental problem of eigh­teenth-century Tokugawa literature, for this literature cannot be analyzed solelyin terms of its content or in terms of what it means to say. Rather, any under­standing of eighteenth-century literature must inevitably involve a concern for itsforms, for the question of how it means to say, as well as for the spatial arrange­ment of words, prints, and illustrations. Therefore, what I postulated as spa­tialization with regard to ningyo joruri, parodist literature, and so on is notexclusively concerned with the space of representation. Of course, any literarytext projects an imagined space to a certain extent, despite the fact that the actualnarrative itself must be deployed linearly; yet it is on the surface of narrative thatspatialization takes place in those cases I have so far considered. It is true thatparts of these works consist of linear verbal presentations; nevertheless, the wayutterances are constructed, juxtaposed, and related to one another encompasses anonlinear formation. As a result, such a representational space can neither becircumscribed nor form a closure. Indeed, it is always open to the performativesituation. The reader's involvement in the imagined space the work represents iscontinually interrupted and spoiled by the opacity of the text. The text does notform a self-sufficient whole: it must necessarily be supplemented and foldedwithin a certain arrangement of its "outside." The signification of such a textcannot be determined independently of the various loci of its writing, reading, orutterance. Haikai poetry provides perhaps the best example of this interdepen­dence, for in itself it has no fixed meaning; rather, its meaning must be deter­mined by the readership on each occasion of its production. The reader mustactively and productively intervene in the text in reading haikai no renga. It isintentionally produced in such a way that a stanza of haikai no renga generatesnew effects according to the differing scenes within which it is read. In other

words, a scene or performative situation that is in some 'sense accidental withrespect to the stanza and the series of stanzas is included within the signifiance ofhaikai poetry as a correlative. Correspondingly, insofar as the process of itssignifiance is projected as an interrelationship of the performative situation andthe· actual words of haikai, its signification does not remain identical when thesituation changes. Or more specifically, .since the identity and the sameness ofthe situation depend on the identity of meaning and the identity of meaning issystematically jeopardized, we can justifiably go so far as to say that it isimpossible to tell whether or not the situation actually remains the same orchanges. .

Let us now take up the question of the two sides of the relationshiplt thesituation and the verbal text. Although the situation is not merely a sum ofvarious texts (because it is not a composite of texts), the haikai text does serve toreorganize the performative situation. In a two-way process the haikai text helpsto structure the situation while the situation reciprocally places a definite mean­ing within the verbal text of haikai of which we hitherto had been unaware. Inthis specific sense, haikai poetry is a performative art. The verbal text of haikaicommunicates with its so-called outside in terms of the gestalt-type relationship.

The detennination of signification in the gestalt type of intertextuality is adetermination neither of causality nor of expression. The perfonnative situationdoes not determine the conditions of possibility for what a verbal text says, forthe verbal text also determines what aspects of the situation can be mobilized andmanifested. Similarly, a verbal text is not a mere reflection of a situation. It issignifiance, not signification, that is generated as a surplus when a text encoun­ters a given situation. In other words, in this encounter of different texts theidentity of the verbal text as a discrete, singular "work" is always subverted byunexpected factors, by chance. Thus, as I have argued, we need to recognize twodifferent levels in the conception of intertextuality. When the notion of the text istaken to mean simply a written text, we are able to postulate a field of significa­tion wherein a verbal text constantly refers to other absent writings. However, ithas been widely recognized that the opposition between verbal and nonverbaltexts is far from clear and stable. If my notion of text includes nonverbal textssuch as bodily action, visual presentation, and music, I am not justified in usingthe term "intertextuality" to indicate merely a stable relationship between agiven, putatively autonomous text and other texts.

The two different uses of "intertextuality" are of immediate concern to anycharacterization of the general features of eighteenth-century Tokugawa liter­ature. Like calligraphy, many literary works of the period constantly vacillatebetween representational and situational spaces, as I have repeatedly noted. Yetthese works attempt to project imaginary worlds in which events are posited asreferents of the narrative. The polysemy, parody, and spatial arrangements ofthese texts always interfere with the possible constitution of such a world ofimagination and thereby direct the attention of readers away from what is de-

198 Frame Up DeJamiliarization and Parody 199

The Enunciation and the Body

scribed, discussed, and represented toward the how of these descriptions andrepresentations. The reader cannot remain securely within the time of. narratedevents in these works but is very often drawn back into the time of narration. Inshort, textual materiality cannot be suppressed enough to render the text com­pletely transparent; consequently these works appear extremely self-reflective.The framing effect that separates the space of representation from the space of theperformative situation is so fragile that the reader's gaze is disrupted from time totime and shifts from the content toward its form. Innumerable plays of signifierson the textual surface prevent the text from appearing transparent and therebyforce readers to be aware of the presence of the text as a material artifact withinthe space of mundane everyday living.

Lived space, thus posited, is the world of nearness that Ito Jinsai tried toarticulate. Supposedly it is a space that exists in front of, rather than beyond, atext. It is the world of everyday life, nearness, and immediacy consisting ofvarious nonverbal texts.

This concern for immediacy dominated not only the literary production butalso the general intellectual discourse of Tokugawa Japan. We have observed thatthe notion of immediacy is related to the thematic emergence of the human bodyin the discursive space of the eighteenth century. After all, it is the human bodythat defines here and now, that anchors the world of immediacy as the desire forperceptual primordiality applies to it. One must also remember that the enuncia­tion, as opposed to the enunciated, is that mode of utterance in which posi­tionality and perspective, lost in the enunciated, play major roles. Therefore, tocomprehend a verbal text as an enunciation is, supposedly, to see the verbal textas a bodily act that takes place in a given situation.

Phenomenologists have long since demonstrated that the imagined world pro­jected by linguistic expression does not necessarily obey the principle of perspec­tive. Using this insight as the criterion, they have defined the mode in whichobjects of imagination, memory, and dream are given to consciousness, as op­posed to the way in which objects are perceived. (For the time being, let mepostpone asking whether or not the very conceptualization of the present, accord­ing to which the U realness" of perception in the here and now is discerned fromthe "unrealness" of imagination, is imaginary in itself.) It seems that the "split­ting of the ego," as postulated by Miura Tsutomu, confirms this dichotomybetween perceptions and other modes of consciousness. As Boris A. Uspensky,Roman Ingarden, and others have claimed, however, representational space thatcannot be given in perception can be articulated according to viewpoints. Never­theless, if perception is granted the status of the origin of realness, the introduc­tion of viewpoints would not necessarily mean that the space projected by the

201Dejamiliarization and Parody

As has been demonstrated, the literature of Tokugawa Japan underwent aradical transformation toward the end of the seventeenth century. Eighteenth-

Perception and the Splitting of the Ego

verbal text accommodates the notion of perspective, because, according to thephenomenological approach, a viewpoint constituted by various discursive prac­tices (indirect speech, stylistic variation, and so on) is not directly or immediate­ly linked to the POsitionality of the viewer's body. In the case of literary works inwhich representational and "real" spaces are definitively distinguished (that is,as in the case of the "transparent" text); we should be clearly able to recognizethe "unrealness" of the discursive perspective and the "realness" of the sensoryperspective. But in the case of eighteenth-century Tokugawa literature, this dis­tinction is rath~r problematic: the two spaces are often merged.

This is one of the reasons why speech played a prestigious role in eighteenth­century literary and intellectual discourse. Speech, taken as enunciation, occupiesa rather ambiguous position in this discursive space because it can be simul­taneously both a bodily act taking place within a given perfonnative situation andan enunciated, detached from the situation (and thereby deprived of the POsi­tionality of its enunciation). In ningyo joruri speech was considered to be the directutterance ofa character in which the gesture of the puppet, the voice of the chanter,and the scene itself were synchronized to form a whole. In this whole, the separa­tion of· voice from body, which is the principal mechanism of puppet theater,appears to be overcome. The representational space projected by the chanter'snarration and the actual scene merge together, with the effect that the "realness" ofthe voice supplements the "unrealness" of the puppet's body. Thus a puppet ceasesto be a piece of wood and begins to take on life. On the other hand, manyeighteenth-century popular novellas depict direct speech without providing "ade­quate" plots. Instead, pictorial illustrations of the situation are supplied, creatingthe impression that a verbal utterance is made in the midst of a given situation. Inworks without illustrations, which were also common, readers were required tosupplement the vision of the scene, just as one has to do when reading a playscript.

In either case, one thing is evident: a verbal text or writing is perceived asincomplete; it must be supplemented by the copresence of other texts and aperformative situation. In other words, the representational space these worksproject is not closed. It requires the support of "real" space. In that space, tounderstand a verbal text is to integrate it into the space constituted around one'sown body. Hence, without the mimetic participation of one's body, the text istaken to be unintelligible and meaningless. Doubtless as a result of this in­completeness of the verbal or written text, works of this kind are characterized byconcern for the present, for immediacy and other attributes that are normallyassociated with the primordial experience lived-or imagined-by one's ownbody.

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century literature, particularly parody, is implicated in various problems intrinsicto the new rules of formation which governed discursive space. In earlyTokugawa literature, no discontinuity existed in the field of presentation; theauthors maintained a sense of continuity between their own discourse and classicwritings. Certainly, they were unaware that the reality in which they thought theylived could not be adequately expressed in the language of what they consideredto be classic, and therefore authentic, writings. They did not see any fundamentalrupture between their own literary language and the world they inhabited. Hence,polysemy, which of course is not only characteristic of certain genres of eigh­teenth-century literature but also had dominated premodern Japanese literature,did not create a disparity between immediate and verbalized experience. Thus,authors of early Tokugawa literature never witnessed the irreconcilable opposi­tion of enunciation, as a bodily perfonnance, and the enunciated.

As discursive space transformed itselt the presumptive authority accorded toclassics was challenged and constantly called into question. No longer werewriters satisfied with the putatively stable relationship that had existed betweenthe production of new writings and the corpus of already existing texts. It wouldseem that they were increasingly aware of the sphere of nearness, for which theestablished forms of presentation were not adequate. At the same time, classicsthat had long been regarded as transparent and intelligible became problematicwhen it was realized that historical distance had indeed separated people fromantiquity. Yet it must be noted that such awareness was not due merely to thehistorical changes that had occurred as time had passed. More specifically, theloss of a viewpoint from which both old and new texts could be equally ap­prehended problematized the relation to the classic texts of antiquity. This trans­formation gave rise to a fundamental mutation in the relationship among lan­guage, human beings, and the world. The very differentiation of language fromnonlinguistic phenomena, or of the articulatory from the visible, changed, and asa result, the notion of language had to encompass what had hitherto been ex­cluded from the field of specifically linguistic phenomena. In this respect, there­fore, the sphere of nearness was not simply a new territory of discourse, a newfield of discursive objects. Rather, it was a new dimension in linguistic ex­pression, which came into being when the dichotomy between enunciation asbodily performance and the enunciated was made explicit.

It was by means of the double operation that this sphere of nearness wasidentified as such. Writers could no longer locate this sphere on a continuousplane encompassing the world of classic writings. The sphere of nearness wasgenerated by discontinuity, without which the double operation would have beenmeaningless. Classics belonged to a certain "world," but it was perceived thateveryday speech, feeling, and desire formed a constituency beyond the scope ofthe classical "world." Many came to view the language of the classics as com­pletely alien to their own experience. To speak about their ordinary life in classiclanguage was thus to parody and defamiliarize words and phrases borrowed from

20Mikhail Bakhtin. Rabelais and His World. trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge: MIT Press,1968).

203DeJamiliarization and Parody

~,the classics. In ukiyozoshi, it was still possible to glorify and authenticate imme­'diate experience by using classic style, terminology and syntax, but popular: literature of the eighteenth century used the classics only to exaggerate and" promote a comic effect. The continuity between classic literature and the paradist

works was shattered; the discontinuity that emerged became one of the principlesOf literary production.

Because of this emerging discontinUity, polysemy in parodist literature oper­ated in a quite specific manner: semes were superimposed upon each other in anequivocal word! one seme belonging to the sphere of classic language and the(ltber to the sphere of nearness, as we have seen in the example of the comicpoem depicting both the no play Eguchi and the maid. When more than two

,semes were involved, at least one of them belonged to the network of semes that,generates the dimension of nearness, that is, the mundane and familiar world.Concomitantly, the superimposition of semes generates an effect of unexpected­ness because semes from completely different spheres meet in the multivocalword. Indeed, the unity of such a sphere is defined in terms of isotopy, ananalytical concept according to which words are discerned as members of the

, same class and as belonging to the same homogeneous world of meaning. Whatcreates the effect of unexpectedness is the encounter of two irreconcilable iso­topies, which also suggests an unexpected encounter between different regimesof reading. Thus, to return to my example, it was possible to combine a classicHeian poem, which was supposedly refined and aristocratic, with the lovers' talkin an ordinary chamber in the brothel.

Hence, what distinguishes early Tokugawa literature from eighteenth-centuryparody is not the presence of polysemy but how polysemy is organized: continu­ously or discontinuously. When discontinuity is the principle, polysemy not onlycombines many written texts within a single corpus but also engenders de­familiarization. Relating what is normally regarded as authentic and refined tomundane and vulgar objects and the events one commonly encounters in every­day life, the parodist's work discredits, disqualifies, and thereby defamiliarizesthe set of presumed values by which the very authenticity and refinement of textsof certain genres are sustained. As Mikhail Bakhtin demonstrated in Rabelaisand His World, parody could deprive the established and assumed order in whichpower resides of its authority and legitimacy.20 In one of the most penetratingcritiques of humanism as monologism, he illustrated the possibility of a parodythat effectively dislocates the existing institution. Laughter, in this context, is aninstrument by means of which to disclose, objectify, and disqualify the system ofpresumed values, a system that, after all, is most powerful when it is concealed.

We must also remember, however, that whereas parodist literature knows howto defamiliarize what was perceived to be solemn and authoritative, it was not

Frame Up202

aware that the sphere of immediacy, familiarity, and nearness itself had becomeexempt from'defamiliarization; it refused to recognize that what is perceived asnear constitutes itself as such discursively and that therefore the perception ofnearness itself is also imaginary, Perhaps this explains why it was so easilyinstitutionalized and lost its critical momentum. (In the next part, I shall return tothe appropriation of parodist literature with reference to a particular form ofphonocentrism. )

Of course, not all discourse of the eighteenth century accommodated discon­tinuity. As I have repeatedly insisted, the discursive space should never be takento coincide with a society, nation, culture, tradition, or even mentality as ahomogeneous whole, partly because it is impossible to determine thetotality ofdiscursive space as a totality of referents and also because many genres do notseem to have been affected by the emergence of discontinuity. (For instance, Ihave not dealt with the legal and administrative discourses of eighteenth-centuryJapan.) Even so, parodist literature occupied a prestigious position and cannot bediscussed on the same plane as other genres. First, it is true that parodist liter­ature was one of many genres and was characterized and differentiated fromworks of other genres by its specific features. Second, because it was parody, itdid not have any specific object other than works of other genres. In this sense, itwas parasitic and could never circumscribe a domain of its own proper discursiveobjects. Nonetheless, this characteristic parasitism seems to have endowed itwith a special force no other genre could acquire. In order for a work to beidentified as a parody of another work, it had to objectify the rules of genericdiscontinuity according to which various works were classified into genres andevaluated within the existing generic hierarchy. In other words, parodist literaturecould function as a sort of metalanguage, although only to a limited extent; it hadto be composed on the basis of an acute awareness of its position in relation toother genres and to the determination of generic differences. Parodists had to besensitive to the manner in which texts of various discrete origins were circulatedamong readers, and what status was attributed to those texts-all without beingtrapped themselves within the accepted system of presumed values. In fact~ thissensitivity gave them the outlook of skeptics. It was not by protesting againstpower but rather by defamiliarizing it that they attempted to reveal the innermechanism of social control. After all, one may say that their critique was easilyappropriated, but not because they doubted too much; rather, they did not doubtradically enough: they did not doubt the limitation of their own defamiliarizingtactics and naIvely believed that one could doubt everything. They thereby al­lowed their own conception of nearness and immediacy to subsist uncriticized,Consequently, the sphere of nearness and immediacy emerged as the new locusof authority and ground of their homosociality. True, authority no longer camefrom on high, from a remote and sophisticated place; it was in the here and now,where things were primordially grasped in relation to the body. The here and thepresent associated with one's body, however, always escaped the grasp of verbal

21Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), p. 298, or EcritsII (Paris: Seuil, 1966), p. 159. I have slightly altered Sheridan's translation in order to maintain aconsistency of tenninology with the rest of this book.

designates the subject of the enunciation, but it does not signify it. This is apparentfrom the fact that every signifier of the subject of the enunciation may be lacking inthe enunciated, not to mention the fact that there are those that differ from the I, andnot only what is inadequately called the case of the first person singular, even if oneadded its accommodation in the plural invocation, or even in the Self [Soil of auto­suggestion. 21

205DeJamiliarization and Parody

Like Lacan's subject of enunciation, the sphere of nearness, which is lived by thesubject's body, can be only designated, never posited within the enunciated. Onecan talk about the image of the body, but it is impossible to identify the bodyitself as part of the enunciated, because a body within the enunciated is unavoida­bly universalized and detached from its specific position within the performativesituation, once it has been brought into verbalization. Neither as a specular imagenor as an instance of discourse can it be arrested. The topos from which wordsare issued remains transcendent with respect to visibility and verbal articulation;it is the shutai that flees whenever an attempt is made to arrest it. After all, it isthe locus not of the same but of the Other, although it is very near to me: it is, asit were, the Other in me.

This is why the verbal text, and writing in particular, had to remain incompletewithin the discursive space of the eighteenth century. When primacy is accordedto the enunciation, the enunciated can only be regarded as a trace of its enuncia­tion, the function of which is to suggest and designate the enunciative mode of itsoriginary repetition. Yet the dominant desire in eighteenth-century discursivespace was specifically to determine what the enunciation was. As one can see,this is an impossible task. As soon as the enunciation is specifically determinedin the verbal text, it will have been transformed into the enunciated. I shall showin the following chapters how this significative contradiction generated andregenerated itself in eighteenth~century discourse.

In general, the dichotomy between the enunciation and the enunciated is

texts because, bereft of the POsitionality and perspective that were supposedlycharacteristic of sensory rather than linguis.tic expression, lived experience of thebody could not be verbalized. Here lies the significative contradiction that con­tinued to motivate the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Because of thesensory nature of this sphere of nearness, it could be cited, yet could not bethematically discussed. The sphere of nearness was supposedly a topos of enun­ciation, but it ceased to be so in the enunciated. Only as a highly charged silencecould it be vaguely suggested to accompany an enunciated.

Jacques Lacan has described a similar phenomenon with regard to the subject"I. n The "In as signifier, he notes,

Frame Up204

limited to the verbal text. In a nonverbal text, as Miura maintains apropos of"nonlinguistit expression," the final product of expression gives us the impres­sion that it somehow better preserves the sensory conditions at the act of ex­pression. My analysis of ningyo joruri has demonstrated, however, that there aremany intermediary stages between direct speech (within which disparity betweenenunciation and the enunciated supposedly does not appear) and the enunciated(within which the subject of the enunciation is completely erased). Through thesynchronization of various texts such as music, the chanter's voice, and thepuppets' gestures, the Text of ningyo joruri managed to articulate the "intensityof subjectivity" with many different degrees of subtlety. In deleting stylizedintonation, music, and rhythm, the utterance of the chanter came closest to anactor's raw voice, and this utterance was int~grated with the movement of thepuppet's body to project the illusion that it was an enunciation by the puppetitself. From time to time, the Text reached that highest intensity of subjectivity, inwhich an actor played by a puppet appeared to be speaking in a given situation.By contrast, the voice often 4'lost" the subject of its enunciation and becameanonymous. Particularly when the voice was regulated by set intonation, music,and rhythm, it was detached from the body that was supposed to utter it. Like­wise, the movement of the body itself could be regulated by formal rules. Indance, for instance, the body of the dancer was controlled not by its supposedindividual initiative (which is of course suspect) but by general rules that any­body at all could follow. In such regulated bodily movement the dancer's loss ofindividuality and integration with collectivity are pronounced. The body be­comes an instrument of the collectivity, and its movement falls outside thecategory of the "putatively natural gesture."

At this point, the problem of language and the verbal text encounters that ofritual, for how could we understand the notion of ritual if it were not defined byformalized behavior, a synchronization of various texts and music? The essenceof ritual lies in its constitution from nonverbal texts of an enunciated whereby theindividual subjectivity, or the image thereof, dissolves into the collectivity: itposits the Other as an anonymous addressee to whom action in general (becauseall actions are indirect insofar as they mean) is addressed. But precisely becausethis Other, this "collectivity," is established as anterior to the execution of anaction, it carries political significance. When the Other is reified and identifiedwith the existing "collectivity," it affirms the existing power relations. By con­trast, when the Other and its anteriority are understood otherwise, they couldproject a "collectivity" that does not exist, an impossible collectivity that doesnot conform to the existing institutions.

Nevertheless, the dominant tendency to see verbal texts from the aspect of theenunciation raised an extremely difficult problem both for those outside theestablishment and for those who were in the position of governing the society,and the philosophical discourse of Ogyu Sorai was one of the first attempts toconfront this problem. The question of the social institution was caught up with

the problematics of the enunciation, ritual, and history in discourse, and eigh­teenth-century discourse on poetry harbored all these issues as well. It is noaccident, therefore, that the National Studies (kokugaku, 6-24) (a large andheterogeneous group of hermeneutic studies which newly constructed as theauthentic objects of learning Japanese classics, customs, and language and whichflourished with an increasing number of students from the late seventeenth cen­tury until the end of the Tokugawa period) were much concerned with theproblems of textuality, immediacy, and the enunciation, for at the center of all ofthese.issues lies ~he significative contradiction of the human body and language.

206 Frame Up DeJamiliarization and Parody 207

PART III

LANGUAGE, BODY, AND

THE IM'MEDIATE: PHONONETICISM

AND THE IDEOLOG Y

OF THE IDENTICAL

Narcissism is a one-sided but alluring response to the anxiety of transference. It involvesthe impossible, imaginary attempt totally to integrate the self; it is active in the speculativeeffort to elaborate a fully unified perspective, and its self-regarding "purity" entails theexorcistic scapegoating of the "other" that is always to some extent within. As Freudindicated, the desirable but elusive objective of an exchange with an "other" is to workthrough transferential displacement in a manner that does not blindly replicate debilitatingaspects of the past. Transference implies that the considerations at issue in the object ofstudy are always repeated with variations-or find their displaced analogues-in one'saccount of it, and transference is as much denied by an assertion of the total difference ofthe past as by its total identification with one's own "self" or "culture."

-Dominick LaCapra, History and Criticism

/

CHAPTER 7

The Problem of Translation

The Outside of a Language

A discursive space always contains a system of generic discontinuity within it: itis composed of a variety of utterances and of the relationships among classes ofutterances. I have already identified the level at which utterances are referred toas essential components in the space of discourse. At the same time that a literarytext presupposes and includes verbal texts of the past in order for it to directitself-to make the kind of sense according to which the utterance of that text isaimed toward its contemporaneity as distinguished from the pastness of the pasttexts-it relates itself to nonverbal texts. Thus, intertextuality designated twoaxes of the text, in which other texts participate through the formation of variousframings from which the identity of the work is constituted. Only as long as bothaxes of intertextuality are invoked can the putative identity of a verbal text and itsplace vis-a-vis other texts within a given discourse be construed. To sum up,although a document may be located in a particular discursive space, its locationdoes not entail its production in a certain reality. The space I have been discuss­ing is not a spatiotemporal continuum, marked by a chronology, but a possiblesum of verbal utterances whose mode of meaning accords with systems thatexclude and repress the materiality of the text, on the one hand, and accommo­date it within the propriety of what is representable and eligible, on the other.Hence, the notion of discursive space is necessary in order to discern a seeminglyconfusionistic shift between the text in its textuality (including the general text)and the conventional and fetishized notion of the text-a notion, after all, notmuch different from that of the "book." Nonetheless, I allow this shift to occur,and I do not try to cleanse from my discussion the many assumptions that theconventional notion of the text carries, which would prove unacceptable underrigorous examination. We should rather move along this shift and reiterate theprocedure by which the textuality of the text is repressed in a given discursive

211

formation. Following the slippage of this shift is in fact intended to substitute forwhat is often called contextual analysis, as a new approach of decipherment. Thenotion of the context is encompassed by that of intertextuality, and this concep­tion of a discursive space, despite the attribute "discursive," includes nonverbaltexts insofar as these are posited as a text's referential and exterior limit.

Here, let us not be confused about the status of the nonverbal text as a referentand an outside point to which the text refers. The nonverbal texts in question arenot the exteriority of the text; they are constituted as an outside within a givendiscourse; the very reference to the nonverbal texts means that it does not point tothe exteriority of the text. In this sense, the exteriority of the text can never belocated on the outside of the text, for exteriority is incompatible with an economythat upholds the dichotomy of inside and outside. Instead, my analysis attemptsto illustrate the set of relations according to which a text's reference to other textsis determined in a given discursive space. There is scarcely any verbal text thatdoes not relate itself to verbal texts. Furthermore, there is scarcely any verbal textthat does not relate to itself as a nonverbal text, either. A text may relate to othernonverbal texts by indication, denotation, allegory, representation, what I calledthe gestalt type, and so on.

In examining those relations governing a discursive space, then, I encounterthis ambiguous boundary between verbal and nonverbal. We have observed thatthe emergence of the enunciation dramatized the roles of nonverbal texts in thesignifiance of a verbal text. In my analysis, this kind of intertextual relationshipseemed to be one of the most urgent issues to be examined in order to reach someapprehension of eighteenth-century discourse. As a matter of fact, this was oneof the problems extensively discussed by eighteenth-century writers, albeit not inidentical terms to mine. And this is the area where a particular notion of languageis most explicitly postulated.

Perhaps it is unnecessary to note that it is in contrast to nonverbal and non­linguistic phenomena that the question What is language? is best answered. Yetthis question was, I think, pursued by the writers of the eighteenth century with aview to identifying the object of their inquiry.

The constant difficulty encountered in examining the notion of language in agiven discursive space is paradoxical: one can talk about language, but themedium of inquiry collapses in upon its supposed object. In order to talk aboutlanguage as a whole, one is required to establish an economy whereby to gainsome notion of inside and outside. Figuratively speaking, the inside could becircumscribed only in relation to its outside.

In eighteenth-century discourse, the outside of a language was posited alongtwo differentiae: historical and geopolitical. It is noteworthy that instead ofposing a general question, the theorists were first concerned with a more specificquestion: What is a language of the other? or What is the other language? In thisconnection, Harry D. Harootunian points out the general intellectual climate inwhich interest in language was generated in the eighteenth century. The theorists'

IHarry D. Harootunian, "The Consciousness of Archaic Form in the New Realism of Kokugaku"in Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period. ed. Tetsuo Najita and Irwin Scheiner (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 85.

"recovery of antique words," he says, "was prompted by a conviction thatcontemporary language had lost its translucent character; opacity prevailed overclarity and this revealed the degree to which things, and meaning itself, no longerconfonned to received categories of similitude."1 In stressing the opacity oflanguage(s), they sought a transparent language, but it is through the wish for atransparent language that they formulatecl the notion of opaque language. Need­less to say, neither transparency nor opacity is an attribute intrinsic to a particularlanguage. Certain styles of languages available in Japan around that time mayhave been incomprehensible to those not cultivated in them; in many countries,the very incomprehensipility of some texts is celebrated and regarded as anmanifestation of the sacred. Such texts may well be perceived as opaque, butthey do not necessarily give rise to a desire for more transparent ones. Neverthe­less, it is certain that unless there are discursive apparatuses relevant to theformation of the discourse in which language(s) is identified as opaque, extensivediscussion of linguistic transparency is never generated, and what may appear tocause opacity is categorized differently. Perhaps the question must be poseddifferently. So I will ask how one was solicited to desire the transparency oflanguage, rather than how language became opaque.

In eighteenth-century discourse, there is a decided sense of crisis in language,centering around the dichotomy opaque/transparent, which was dramatized in agreat number of intellectual debates. It is not easy, however, to determine whatthe theorists were actually alluding to with the term "opacity." How was itarticulated, and rendered conspicuous? What were the conditions in which thiscrisis in language was highlighted and expressed?

Of course, these have been the thematic questions since the beginning of thisbook. But here I want to focus on the sort of treatises that nowadays would beclassified as "theoretical." As I will demonstrate, the terms resembling ourHtheory" (which still maintains too much familial resemblance to Aristoteliantheoria) were definitively denounced by many in the eighteenth century. None­theless, the fact remains that a sizable portion of eighteenth-century publicationwas devoted to studies of language, which were inevitably theoretically inclined.Any denunciation of "theories'~ is invariably theoretical, and the writers of theeighteenth century could not exempt themselves from this rule any more than canthose of the present day.

Opacity was first located at the point where these writers encountered thelanguage of the other. As is always the case, the language of the same, or ourlanguage, was defined only after the languages of the other were postulated andrecognized. Thus, the formation of discourse on language(s) in the eighteenthcentury is twofold: first, language was viewed against nonlanguage; second, thelanguage of the same was viewed against the languages of the other. Although

213The Problem of TranslationLanguage, Body, and the Immediate212

The Problematic of Wakun

these two issues are of different types, they are intertwined in the discursivespace. For-example, the problem of translation was of necessity posed in relationto both questions.

2In his earlier career Ogyu devoted himself to the study of Song Confucianism and its commen­taries on the Confucian classics. He was later influenced by two Chinese writers of the sixteenthcentury, Li Paulong and Wang Shizhen, whose philological method he developed into his ownphilological and philosophical enterprise, kobunjigaku (the learning of ancient texts and words). Themany works of this adviser to two Tokugawa shoguns include Benmei (Distinguishing names),Rongocho (Commentaries on the Analects), Gakusoku (Rules of study), and Seidau (Discourse onpolitics), together with many language instruction books.

215The Problem of Translation

B = "That goes"b "That goes"

C ~~<;a va"

A = HFine"a HFine"

And suppose:

Whether or not a and b are admissible translations of C depends, to a large extentand in a variety of ways, on coexisting sentences and non-verbal dispositions towhich C might relate. Consequently, the accuracy and appropriateness of atranslation must be decided on the basis of the given conditions of each specifictext at issue. Nonetheless, it can be inferred that we accept both as compatible

3The term "sentence" is obviously as problematic as "translation." Yet, for lack of a suitableword, I have used this word as if it were innocent. I do not know to what extent one could in factexempt oneself from the responsibility for the ideological effects engendered by the adoption ofcertain terms, but it may not be utterly pointless to issue a disclaimer here. By the use of the word"sentence," I do not imply that eighteenth-century discourse necessarily contained the notion ofcompletion at the elementary level of signification. Therefore, completion of signification cannot beequated to the formation of a grammatical unit "sentence" in the discourse at issue here. Cf. MikhailBakhtin, "The Problem of Speech Genre," in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W.McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), pp. 10-59; and also Jean-Claude Chevalier,Histoire de La syntaxe (Geneva: Librairie Dmz, 1968).

same language (of course, the idea of the sameness of the same language has tobe and will be submitted to a careful serutiny), it is generally assumed thattranslation can take place only between two different languages, say, betweenEnglish and French or Chinese and Japanese. Ideally, reciprocity should existbetween the original in one language and its translation in another, so that thetranslation of the translation could return to or coincide with the originaL But it iswidely agreed that such translation, producing no surplus meaning, is impossibleand that the divergence of a translation from the original is unavoidable. Hence,translation is taken to be a process of approximation: approximation to themeaning of the" original. Here, however, I must also note that in assenting tothese notions of translation, we have also imperceptibly posit the existence oftwo linguistic unities, one from which we translate and one into which wetranslate.

If sentences A and B exist in the same language, they are taken to be differentsentences and are therefore recognized as embodying two different significa­tions. 3 On the other hand, if two sentences a and b are both said to be translationsof the original sentence C, they can be considered identical insofar as they areconceived of as translations. Because of the postulate that A and B belong to thesame language unit, one.is compelled to discern the differences between the twosentences, but compatibility is allowed for when they are related to C since bothsentences can lay claim to a referent that is, by definition, in another language.Suppose sentences A, B, a, and b, are as follows.

Language, Body, and the Immediate

Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728) started his career as a Confucian lecturer in Edo,introducing a new method of reading Chinese classics, which he called kiyo nogaku (the learning of Nagasaki translators, 7-1).2 It included an extensive critiqueof the established reading method that was widely accepted in the early eigh­teenth century. Specifically, his method concerned the manner of reciting Chi­nese books, but in Tokugawa society to propose such a new way of reading wasto initiate a radical change in the regime according to which Chinese canonicalwritings had been interpreted. Moreover, the introduction of a new readingmethod, it seems, abided by the general shift in verbal- nonverbal relations,which I have described. As a matter of fact, kiyo no gaku can be apprehended asa reaction to the emergence of the instance of discourse in the domain of intellec­tual discussion.

At first sight, the idea of translation may appear devoid of all the traits of anissue that invites painstaking reflection and, on some occasions, deadly aporia.All those who have studied a foreign language presumably understand what ismeant by translation itself, the procedures it prompts and what is desired from it.Some may simply take it as a transference of meaning from one language toanother.

As is always the case with a commonsensical comprehension of a conceptwhose currency is generally accepted, however, the notion of translation asfundamentally unproblematic does not withstand rigorous examination. Whenone is not asked about translation, one knows, but when one is asked, one doesnot know. Perhaps this phenomenon illuminates the unnoticed discrepancy be­tween what we know and what we actually do, a discrepancy thanks to which thecritique of ideology is possible. So, what is translation after all?

Our common sense tells us that through translation we rewrite or refonnulate atext, spoken or written in one language, into its equivalent in another; that is,both the original and its translation denote the same event, judgment, or state ofaffairs. Although there are instances in which the tenn "translation" is used todescribe a transformation or rephrasing of a text within what is supposedly the

214

Person 1: "Paul replied, 'Fine,'"Person 2: "Dh, no! He said, 'Ca va.' "

4Although this idea applies to translation in a broader sense, that is, translation as reading ingeneral, the positing of the sphere of compatibility is correlative to the detennination of the possibleintertextual relations of a text to itself. Whether or not the difference between "Fine" and «Fine," forinstance, is discerned in the register of reading is totally dependent on the way the sphere ofcompatibility is predicted.

variations simply because a and b are supposed to refer to C. Furthermore, thiscompatibility requires that C never emerge on the same plane as a and b, or Aand B; C must be ascribed to the outside of the language unity to which A., B, a,and b all belong. Otherwise, the following kind of confusion will ensue:

l

217The Problem of Translation

The Interior and the Exterior

Chinese, 7-2) and Ogyu Sorai's extensive criticism of this peculiar writing andreading system, in which language unities were constantly eroded and put intoquestion. Wakun confuses those categories we take for granted today: it cannotbe thought of as either Japanese or Chinese, either verbal or nonverbal. Thevisibility of Wakun scripts ceaselessly interferes with the possible determinationof a text as purely verbal.

Ogyu's critique of wakun was based on his observation of many students ofConfucianism. Time after time, he urged the readers of his treatises to be atten­tiveto what h~ called the "disease of the times," the students' inability toconfront Chinese writings head-on. Despite their claim that they actually readChinese canonical writings, they could read them only with the Japanese annota­tions of the wakun system: "When they encounter originals without wakun, theywould rather avoid reading them. This means that they do not actually readChinese texts."5 Wakun prevents readers from directly facing the original Chi­nese writings because the Japanese annotations partially translate and interpretthese writings. As long as the reader encounters Chinese writings in Japaneseannotation, the foreignness of the Chinese language is disguised by being famil­iarized into the already established mode of conceptualization. In the majority ofcases, reliance on wakun creates the illusion that the Chinese language as used inJapan can be synthesized into one without the estrangement to be experiencedwhen one tries to understand a foreign culture.

SOgyu Sorai, Shibun kokujitoku, in Ogyu Sorai zenshu, voL 5 (Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha1977). p. 632. '

In Ogyu's treatises, however, the unity of the Japanese language and Japaneseculture had yet to be circumscribed; it had to be given, yet was absent. Diversedialects were spoken and written around that time, and it was impossible tofonnulate the single unity of a national language. In eighteenth-century Japan,compartmentalized into many social classes, social groups, and regions, therewas no single standardized language to which the majority of the population hadimmediate access. Instead, there were many language styles, ranging from kan­

",<".,;;,".,;:"" .. ;,.'. bun (literary Chinese) to native vernacular forms, which the same individual hadto employ according to the occasion. In informal everyday situations, if the

'."11:::.......•.. ,'-' addresser-addressee relationship allowed, one had to use what was then calledthe language of village people, or rigen (the local dialect of the region, 7-3);formal occasions, one used another style of language; in writing a letter, onewrote in sorobun (7-4), a style that excluded certain colloquial vocabulary; andfor official and intellectual treatises, one used kanbun or its derivative. These arebut examples of many possible variations that created immense linguistic diver­sity in the eighteenth century.

Language. Body, and the Immediate

Let us consider the question of translation in reverse. Suppose, we simply donot understand the notion of language unity and have no idea of a foreignlanguage or a native one. We can even imagine a linguistic medium in which"Fine" and "Ca va" are allowed to coexist. In such a case, A and C areincompatible not because they belong to different language unities but becausethey are supposed to point to different denotata and to embody different significa­tions from A and B. This problematic may be best illustrated by asking suchquestion as How can one translate a work that contains phrases and idioms fromthe two different unities of language into either of these languages? How can onetranslate the whole of an utterance implicating the multiplicity of languages intothe medium of one language? And ultimately, how can one translate the coexis­tence of languages into the putative homogeneity of one language which exilesand purges the other languages? This is nothing but an issue forcefully an­nounced by the presence of wakun, the Japanese way of reading Chinese.

I have suggested that the notion of translation in the narrow sense of the wordalso posits language unities. Translation implicitly requires that two languageunities be clearly delineated; where it is impossible to demarcate them, transla­tion is also impossible. It is for this reason that the introduction of translation intothe discursive space of the eighteenth century gave rise to the discussion of whata language was, whereby the unity of a language as opposed to that of anotherlanguage was thematically pursued. I am not launching an extensive analysishere, but I suggest that a similar argument can be made about the text's relationto itself as a nonverbal text. 4 As we shall see, this problem further reveals thecomplications of the extremely unstable differentiation between the verbal andthe nonverbal when we ask, Is it possible to think about translating a nonverbaltext into a verbal one or into another nonverbal one? This question may soundutterly irrelevant, but it was certainly relevant in eighteenth-century discourse,for a reason I shall elucidate.

Before going into detail about the formation of an ethnic unity of language,however, I should explore the topic of wakun (the Japanese way of reading

216

But I do not base my claim that the unity of the Japanese language was absentsolely on die grounds of what may be called historical facts. As I shall substanti­ate later, the unity of a language never emerges simply as an empirical fact, anobservable positivity~ its element is always discourse.

For this reason, Ogyu had to take pains to identify the specific linguistic milieuinto which Chinese written scripts, which he believed had originated from anexplicitly foreign environment, were to be translated. Let us note that Ogyu wasunmistakably aware that the unity he was postulating was absent in his contem­porary world. Concomitant with this postulation of an ideal linguistic milieu isthe introduction of a regime equipped with set protocols and a translationscheme, which required the formation of two linguistic unities: a language fromwhich a text is translated and another into which it is translated. It was essentialthat these two language unities be exterior to each other, that there be no mergerbetween the two. Wakun had to be turned down because it violated the require­ment of radical mutual exteriority. It merged two languages and allowed studentsto conceive of them in the mode of continuity. Underlying Ogyu's conception oftranslation is the assumption that within the unity thus identified of either thetranslating or the translated language, anyone belonging to that unity is to haveimmediate and intimate comprehension of a message expressed in that language.In other words, Ogyu's extensive queries about language instruction would havebeen impossible without presuming some notion of a native tongue that shouldappear completely transparent to the native speaker. In theory, at least, in pos­tulating the unity of a native language he imperceptibly introduced the notion ofthe native speaker. In contrast to the radical foreignness supposedly perceived inreading or hearing utterances in other languages, one's own language wasthought to allow for direct and intimate comprehension of verbal expression.Hence, whereas other language appeared exterior in relation to one's own lan­guage, utterances in the language of one's propriety should be immediatelycomprehended by those who shared it.

What is at issue in this conception of an idealized linguistic milieu and itsrelationship with other languages is the formation of a linguistic interior, positedas opposite to an exterior, that is, the exterior to which the Chinese classicsadhered. By emphasizing that students must experience difference in dealingwith writings from China, Ogyu purported to circumscribe the area of the identi­cal. Only through the determination of the other linguistic milieu as exteriorcould the interior, the realm of the identical, be demarcated.

Where there was neither a standard national language nor even its image, itwas not easy to associate the interior, the realm of the identical, with existinglinguistic and cultural institutions. Ogyu had to discern from a mixture of alieningredients and components what was immediately familiar to "us" that genu­inely belonged to the interior. It was imperative to expose a set of criteria bywhich to disqualify those linguistic forms that obscured the boundary betweeninterior and exterior.

60gyu Sorai, Kunyaku jimo, in Ogyu Sorai zenshu 5:369.70gyu did not identify ancient Chinese with the ordinary language of antiquity from the outset of

his career. During his so-called rationalist phase, when Ogyu thought of himself as follower of ZhuXi, he believed that the language in which ideas were to be properly expressed was the literary styleof the written treatise. See Ogyu, Kunyaku jimo, p. 371. At this stage he gave preference to thewritten text over the oral and had yet to recognize the primary importance of ordinary spoken words.It is noteworthy that the denunciation of Zhu Xi came as his emphasis shifted from writing to speech.

Ito Jinsai's conception of nearness, or more specifically his conception of theimpossibility in conceptualizing it, is transformed and appropriated by Ogyu intoa discursive device, somewhat akin to the horizon of understanding in modemhermeneutics, to be used to discern experiences that manifested traits of theinterior: "Books consist of characters, and characters are the spoken words of theChinese people [which have been transcribed]. . . . Despite the fact that the Wayis extremely high and deep, the Six Classics transmit [from antiquity down to thepresent day] only ordinary speech that was directly transcribed into characters.So, after all, what they contain is ordinary speech. "6 Even though the SixClassics seemed complex and abstruse to those whose command of classicalChinese was inadequate, their profundity did not consist in linguistic sophistica­tion. They were originally written in such language that at the time they wereuttered any modestly cultured Person should have been able to apprehend themeasily. The language used was that of the commoners, but because of the histor­ical distance and cultural differences that separated Chinese antiquity fromTokugawa Japan, it had become hard to decipher and comprehend. Its apparentreconditeness would disappear once an eighteenth-century Japanese student hadacquired sufficient knowledge of Chinese antiquity and its language; then thestudent would comprehend these writings easily, just as peasants of Chineseantiquity must have understood one another in their daily verbal intercourse.What Ogyu's contemporaries perceived as obsolete and abstruse was not intrinsicto the books themselves'?

Thus Ogyu postulated and projected an imagined language unity that sup­posedly allowed for a realm of intimate and immediate communion, an interior,and he tentatively associated the already existing ordinary and colloquial lan­guage with the possibility of an absolute interior where no trace of disruption oralienation could be detected. He tacitly assumed that the state of society in whichhe lived was far from identical to the idealized realm he depicted in terms of theinterior. The world under the Tokugawa shogunate, as he saw it, was in theprocess of decomposition, and everywhere he witnessed indications of social andcultural decay. Instead of an interior that sustained holistic and harmonious socialcohesion, disruption, discommunication, and desolation seemed to characterizehistorical reality as perceived. Thus, his language instruction method set forthhow his diagnosis of the social ills in Tokugawa society was to be organized andthen the probable remedies to be prescribed. By positing an idealized interioropposed to the existing state of affairs, Ogyu highlighted the decayed and decom­posed aspects of the Tokugawa world. As is all the more evident, the introduction

219The Problem of TranslationLanguage, Body, and the Immediate218

of a new notion of translation was full of political implications and enabled himto specify wbat in his contemporary world engendered such a sense of crisis inhim. Whereas Ito Jinsai associated decomposition and decay with the generationand regeneration of life, Ogyu met them with some dread.

In postulating the notion of translation and establishing the new regime ofreading, Ogyu Sorai introduced a symmetrical structure of the interior and theexterior by which to explicate the procedure of reading Chinese writings. Butbecause the relationship between the exterior and the interior was imagined to besymmetrical and reciprocal in essence, it could be construed as the relationshipbetween the two interiors.

I can mention at least two prerequisites for this symmetrical structure: first, theinterior and the exterior must not overlap at all; they must be external to eachother; there must be no common factor belonging to both at the same time.Second, both the interior and the exterior must form a closure, so that each can betalked about as a totality, a unity; however complicated or vast it may be, itstotality must be conceivable. And probably I ought to consider a third prerequi­site without which the reciprocal structure itself would be impossible. I shalltouch on it later in discussing the problem of transcendence. Meanwhile, let meelicit the possible theoretical consequences of this structure.

Translation is understood as the transference of speech from one interior toanother. Since the unity of an interior is defined in terms of immediate and directcomprehension, the kind of verbal expression that seemingly belongs to theinterior but does not facilitate easy and straightforward communication is to berejected and denounced. Hence, the social decay and disease that Ogyu repeat­edly deplored were ascribed to the absence of the interior he believed any healthysocial formation needed. Of course, it is at this juncture that the opposition oftransparency and opacity in language acquired its highest political charge.

Ogyu accounts for the genesis of textual obscurity and opacity in two ways.First, when a text is written or spoken in a foreign language, it naturally appearsindecipherable and therefore opaque. (Naturally? Yes, "naturally," that is, onlyin a certain discursive space.) As I have said, a text originating in the otherinterior cannot meet the requirements interior texts are expected to fulfill. Ageocultural differentiation is applied so as to determine and categorize causes oftextual opacity.

Ogyu also identified how what once was transparent was made obscure. Atthis locus he outlined the primary apprehension of historical time, which does notmerely generate events and change institutions and customs but also distorts andobscures texts. By the famous statement that language changes as time changes,he meant that what had once been immediately and directly approached hasbecome contaminated and overshadowed. In eroding and obscuring texts, histor­ical time creates a distance because of which what was once immediate nowseems unavailable to "us."

If there is enough distance between one historical era and the present, it should

80gyu Sorai, Bendo, Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 36 (Tokyo: lwanami Shoten, 1973), p. 11. Thetranslation is that of Tetsuo Najita, unpublished.

9'fhe symmetry of Ogyu's model can be seen in many of his treatises on language. See Kunyakujimo. where it is evident that he understood Japanese culture in a symmetrical analogy to Chineseculture.

be possible to conceive of the past as another interior, which is external and aliento the present era just as the ancient Chinese community was to Ogyu's contem­porary Japanese community. In this respect, textual obscurity is translated intoevidence of the boundary between the inside and the outside. It seems that thissymmetrical model was adopted to account for the historical and cultural aspectsof textual production. But more important, by introducing translation, Ogyuposited the very possibility of the realm of interiority. The interior, just likemodern subjective interiority, is a historical and social construct. Indeed, Ogyucovertly invented a criterion by which to judge the validity of a given reading,and he stipulated terms in which the authentic mode of reading was to bediacritically discerned from other already existing but inauthentic ones.

It is in regard to how to reorganize and comprehend textual production that heaimed to assert cultural and historical differentiations and pursued a new articula­tion of the world. It is through a transformation of the regime of reading that anew way of viewing the world and the possibility of imagining a new "collec­tivity" were introduced.

Therefore, even when Ogyu argued against philosophical positions of otherwriters; he had to resort to the question of reading. For example, '''Ito Jin­sai ... interpreted ancient texts with the light of modem language, so that, inthe end, his position remained similar to the Cheng brothers' .... He still hadread these classics in a Japanese manner." 8 Ogyu assumes that the historicaldifferentiation between ancient text (#7-5) and modem text (#7-6) is structurallyisomorphic to the geocultural differentiation between Chinese and Japanese.These oppositions, ancient/modem and Chinese/Japanese, are seen as two ho­mologous relations. 9 The underlying premise for the adoption of these differ­entiations is that the mono (things or reality, social reality in the sense of realitas,1-12) of ancient China can be understood only through the medium of ancientChinese. Since the reality of ancient China constitutes an interior, it has to beviewed and understood from within. This premise implies a more general thesis,namely, that both things and language belong to a unity of reality or interioritywhich is geoculturally and historically identifiable, and without reference to thisinteriority, neither things nor texts produced in it could be grasped properly. Thispremise also alludes to the point that one who stands outside the interior wouldnever be able to comprehend things belonging to it. Even though interiority asOgyu conceived it encompasses nonlinguistic phenomena as well, he clearlystates that the images of the interior and the exterior are envisaged throughdifferences associated with aspects of linguistic experience. More precisely, theinteriority of the interior thus defined seems to designate a certain primordial

221The Problem of TranslationLanguage, Body, and the Immediate220

Interdependence of Verbal and Nonverbal in the Enunciation

experience where things and language are not separated, where language inhabitsthings, where language is the world.

What now confronts us is a paradox, around which the discourse of OgyuSorai and his contemporaries seems to linger. In order to comprehend the thingsand nonlinguistic reality of the past or the other culture, Ogyu insists, on,e mustexperience its language uses. But at the same time, a language of the past cannotbe acquired without references to the mono that activates and substantiates theuses of such a language. Hence, language occupies a rather ambiguous position,for in order to comprehend the things and nonlinguistic reality of the past, it isessential to envisage the past through the language of that time, but the languagecannot be acquired without the knowledge of its historical reality, which bydefinition falls outside mere linguistic mastery.

As Ogyu emphasizes the necessity to know the historical reality that sup­posedly surrounds language use, the boundary between verbal and nonverbalexpression becomes all the more problematic. Here, I should note Ito's concep­tion of a writing as always incomplete. Ito claimed that the proper account of awritten document involved inserting that document into its own relevant discur­sive context (ketsumyaku, 7-7).10 Thus, Ito hinted at the conception of a text aspractice and of reading as a dialogic decentering that never comes to its ownprefigured end. In his understanding of reading, the textuality of the text was, asit were, respected rather than repressed, so that the reading of a text could neverreach absolute saturation. The text could never be exhaustively known, notbecause of human finitude but because of the materiality of the text. Ogyureconceptualizes Ito'8 textual strategy by reducing the discursive context to theinstance of discourse. It seems that, for Ogyu, to read and comprehend anancient writing necessarily required the supplement of the scene of the enuncia­tion; to read and comprehend was to track the intertextual relations beyond thecontour of a fetishized text, thereby relating it to its performative outside. Ogyualso saw the problematic of reading in terms of the incompleteness of a text andthe supplementary nature of the reading act. He saw that an ancient book that hadbeen handed down to the present time was essentially incomplete. But he fanciedthe possibility that reading could recover the initial plenitude that he believed hadexisted at the moment of its originary production and enunciation. It goes with·out saying that the postulation of such a possibility is correlative to the postula­tion of the interior. Whether or not such a perfect reading is realizable is besidethe point: in the discursive space of the eighteenth century, it was assumed to bepossible, and it seems to me, the wish for the transparent reading of the text and

lOSee, for instance, Ito Jinsai, Soron (General Introduction) to Rongo Kogi. Hayashi edition,Kogido Collection, Tenri University General Library.

223The Problem of Translation

for the reading of a transparent text continued to be generated and regenerated.But for .this wish, the· prolifigacy of discourse on language would have beenimpossible.

Even though Ogyu regarded a text as incomplete, he presumed that at themoment of its enunciation, it was full, complete, and integrated into the per­formative situation, where disparity could not exist between verbal and nonver­bal texts. It is noteworthy that once such an image of plenitude has been broughtinto being, language uses cannot be isolated and identified as such but must bethought Qf as integrated parts of a coherent action that involves various texts,among which verbal expression is but one. Enunciation suggests an act takingplace in a specific situation that is simultaneously corporeal and verbal. Such asituation would necessarily accommodate various cultural and natural objects, aswell as human bodies that responded to the speaker's act. According to thisconception of verbal utterance, an act cannot be reduced to what it says. It is alsoa cOfPQreal movement, a movement of the speaker's body toward an object,among other objects, and it relates the body of the speaker to other thingsnonverbally. Although the nonverbal aspects of an enunciation do not give rise tosignification, they prepare, activate, and modify it. Hence, it was imperative forwriters of the eighteenth century to seek the lost connection between what a textsaid and the putative plenitude in which the original enunciation as a whole tookplace. What underlies the incompleteness of written texts is this recognition thatthe enunciated and, therefore, the signification of an utterance are necessarilyto be supplemented and do not represent the enunciation that supposedly pro­duced it.

In this connection, I understand why Ogyu's conception of language is ambig­uous: in order to return a text to the plenitude of its enunciation, one must recoverthe objects and possibly the sociocultural milieu that surrounded and permeatedthat text at the instance of its enunciation. At the same time, though, theseobjects and sociocultural milieu would never be apprehended without the properunderstanding of the text, since they reveal their historical significance only inrelation to the text itself. Here I note an implicit acknowledgment that a text andits outside relate to each other in the mode of interdependence. And I believe thisis the way Ogyu understood language and historical reality. Thus, he postulated arealm of plenitude where an enunciation as a whole was generated and where atext and its outside were fully integrated. There is no doubt that the interiority ofthe interior found its most concrete expression in this sense of plenitude. Hence­forth, to read a text was to recover, resurrect, and rerealize such a plenitude.

In this conception of language, text, and history, it is essential that a text beapprehended primarily as speech. Speech is conceptualized as maintaining the

The Primacy of Speech

Language, Body, and the Immediate222

primordial adherence to its outside and to the objects and human beings presentin the performative situation. Whereas writing solidifies and fixes the detach­ment of a text from its outside and brings about its autonomy, speech thoroughlyadheres to the scene of the enunciation. Whether or not such a view of speech asopposed to writing can be upheld has yet to be examined, but Ogyu introduced aradial dichotomy between speech and writing and, from this perspective, re­viewed the contemporary academic conventions according to which Chinesebooks were read and commented on. This extreme dichotomy made the denun­ciation of wakun absolutely necessary not only for Ogyu but also for the discur­sive formation of the eighteenth century, those notions of historical time, histor­ical reality, and the other that we consider specific to eighteenth-centurydiscourse.

Insofar as a text is fixed in writing, it loses the historical milieu proper toitself, where it could speak in its proper voice. In other words, writing confuses atext and relates it to an irrelevant situation precisely because it uproots and freesthe text from its proper environment. Moreover, written language tends to tran­scend historical time because of the characteristic ascribed to writing: writingpreserves, whereas speech does not. On these premises, Ogyu accused Zhu Xiand the Cheng brothers of reading ancient texts in modem language, and hecriticized Japanese Confucianism for both historical confusion and cultUral mix­ing. Because it lacked the idea of interiority, he believed, Japanese Confucianismconstantly obliterated the boundary between the Chinese and Japanese lan­guages.

Ogyu Sorai committed himself to the task of eradicating this almost incurabledefect of Japanese Confucianism. If reading is ultimately a means by which torecover the originary plenitude associated with speech, the understanding ofancient texts should mean an entry into such a plenitude, such an interior. If averbal utterance is integrated into some sphere of immediate action, then lan­guage ceases to exist as an object independent of the historical reality in which itis uttered. But this state of ultimate harmony cannot be realized unless the readeris immersed in it, that is, situated within that interior. Of course, this notion ofinvolvement in the situation requires more than physical presence in it: one mustbe able to use the language as if it were one's own proper mother tongue andshould acquire and internalize the knowledge of the situation to such an extentthat one is unaware of knowing it. This may be an ideal and imagined state ofachievement to which one can only aspire. For Ogyu, however, it was muchmore concrete than we are inclined to assume, and he envisaged the possibility ofits achievement by repeatedly appealing to the idea of the ancient reign of thesage-kings.

What he observed in his contemporary world was far from this ideal. Chinesebooks were read and deciphered in a manner that was completely indifferent andeven hostile to it: "Scholars on this side read writings in a dialect and call such a llOgyu Sorai, Yakubun sentei, in Ogyu Sora; zenshu 5:24.

The Linearity of Speech and Wakun

225The Problem of Translation

Trying to reach this originary intention of the Chinese book through wakunwas, to Ogyu Sorai, like "an attempt to scratch one's itchy feet with shoes on."He regarded wakun as an obstacle that stood between the originary speech andthe readers, and he implicitly assumed that authentic reading should give readersimmediate and direct access to the original, as if the readers were insiders withinthe interior from which the text originated.

Suffice it to say that the primary conception of translation is given in terms ofthe transformation of a speech from one language into another speech in adifferent language. Therefore, the mediation of writing and visual signs is addi­tional and excessive. On this basis Ogyu taught his students to approach Chinesebooks not as visual but as aural. It is not difficult to understand why this newmethod, which called for transforming Chinese writings into colloquial Japanese,caught the intellectual world of the times by surprise, for scarcely any Confucianscholars in Japan could actually speak Chinese then. The ability to speak Chinesewas considered unnecessary. Confucian scholars were exposed to Chinese books,and only a few had had any experience of communicating with the Chineseorally. As Yoshikawa Kojiro pointed out, a prominent Confucian scholar at thattime did not know what the word womien meant in vernacular Chinese, although

way of reading wakun, which they claim is recitation of the writings. In fact, it isnothing but translation. Nonetheless people do not realize that it is transla­tion." 11 The dialect Ogyu mentions is a method in which a distinctly Chinesewriting is appropriated into Japanese syntax. This kind of transformation, be­cause it fails to recognize two different language unities, is ineffective. The statusof the language into which a Chinese text is transformed is obviously ambiguousand unstable. Because it is formed by putting markers and Japanese particles inthe margin of Chinese characters, the major portion of this transformation has tobe undertaken visually, or at least with reference to visual signs. Certainly it ispossible to gain'a high fluency in this "dialect," but it is almost impossible to useit as a spoken language in everyday transactions. Wakun is never felt to be a formof direct linguistic expression. It is a form of Japanese language, but a Japaneseperson must translate the text into a more familiar language in order to grasp it.Thus wakun is also a rather parasitic and foreign language within Japanese andconstantly disturbs the possible constitution of an interior. Instead of allowing forthe experience of an interior in which language and things are not separated,wakun seems to provide an example of an alienated and ruptured verbal act inwhich language is detached from things and people.

Language, Body, and the Immediate224

-transformation II!

(Commentary)-VocalizationII

(Understanding)

227The Problem of Translation

Instead of reciting the ideographs in Chinese, however, Japanese scholars addedwakun marks and particles and transfonned the original as follows:

c. lioN I {tf,o ~ II~. ~g~ I .. *~'~ tnJlllIi'<{t+I~""u {><{r'Hiittmt< .. W.Rlmn ~=' ..

B. Yi zhi yizi, wei dushu zhenju, gai shu jie wenzi, wenzi ji huaren yuyan.

The yomikudashi text is vocalized according to some sort of Japanese gram­matical order. Both Band D are, in fact, linear and do not seem to disturb thelinearity rule of a verbal text when they are recited, but text D is far fromimmediately comprehensible, since such words as shinketsu or gogen are phonet­ic imitations of the Chinese original and can not be understood by the generalreadership unless the visual text A or C is referred to. As I have said, theyomikudashi text occupies an extremely ambiguous position, and for this reason,the second. transformation is necessary: D must be translated into the morefamiliar dialect.

In the early eighteenth century, it was a general rule not to vocalize the original

The transformed passage is vocalized as

D. Yaku no ichiji, dokusho no shinketsu tari, kedashi sho wa mina monji ni shite,monji wa sunawachi kajin no gogen nari.

ble of vocalizing. Thus the first stage of transformation is concerned with re­organizing the syntactical order and supplementing the text with the Japaneseparticles te, ni, 0 ha. Since this process entails transforming the linear order ofwords and ascribing voice to ideographs, the visual and oral aspects of the textcannot be treated independently. Yomikudashi (vocalized wakun text, 7-8) makessense only as an operation on the graphic text. It is impossible to deny that thereorganization of syntax, which Ogyu called circular reading (mawashi yomi),could be accomplished only if two different texts, the Chinese original andyomikudashi, are juxtaposed to each other. At the level of the Chinese original,ideographs are 'ordered linearly, and this linear order is, indeed, essential inChinese syntax. Yet once appropriate wakun marks and particles (kaeriten, 7-9,and okurigana, 7-10) have been added to these ideographs, the focal point ofreading has to shift back and forth among ideographs to follow the directionsprovided by the marks, and thus, the given linear order of the original is de­stroyed. One should note, however, that the text resulting from this transfonna­tion is also linear if it is vocalized. For instance, a passage from Ogyu's Yakubunsentei provides a good example of what Ogyu tried to do in urging his students towrite as if they were Chinese of antiquity;

According to present-day standard Beijing pronunciation, this passage should bevocalized in Chinese as follows:

Language; Body; and the Immediate

!Translated Text ---1> Vocalization

II(Understanding)

In the first schema, there must be two stages of transformation or translationbefore the understanding of the text is attained. The original is given as a visualtext, which Japanese readers, for whom wakun is prepared, are normally incapa-

2. Ogyu's Method(Voice ------+) Written Text ---» Vocalizationtranscription) II

(Understanding)-transformation

12Yoshikawa Kojiro, Jinsai, Sorai, Norinaga (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1975). One finds a brilliantdescription of Ogyu's language-learning problematic in this collection of essays. Yoshikawa main­tains, however, that phonetic reading is superior to wakun. Moreover, he assumes that Ogyu'sparticular view of spoken Chinese is transhistorically valid. There is no such thing as a trans­historically correct or incorrect way of reading; simply different regimes of reading exist. It seems tome that he fails to notice how such a view as his functions as a protocol for the professionalauthorization of sinology. Prior to the eighteenth century, the phrase "the ability to speak Chinese"simply did not make sense unless one specified which Chinese was at issue. After all, what does onemean by "Chinese"? Do we understand "French" if we can read the French language of the sixthcentury B.C.?

226

this does not mean there were not people who could converse with visitors fromthe continent. 12 It was simply beyond their scope to imagine that Chinese clas­sics could be studied without referring to the visual text.

Thus, the introduction of Ogyu's concept of translation marks the emergenceof the dichotomy between speech and writing in the discursive space of eigh­teenth-century Japan. To postulate actual speech behind writing, to regard writ­ing as the transcription of speech, is by no means a superior or natural approachto texts, and it does not necessarily facilitate a truer understanding of them byany means, but its consequences were unquestionably extensive and fundamen­tal. For the new mode of reading redefined and reformulated the very notion oftruth and the purpose of study. At the core of this transformation of the discursivespace was the reformulation of the differentiation between verbal and nonverbaltexts. Ogyu's attempt to disqualify the Japanese way of reading Chinese wasinitiated by the necessity to exclude what had hitherto been categorized as verbal,but now fell into the class of the nonverbal as a result of this change.

We can schematize the two different modes of reading as follows:1. Wakun

Writing (Visual)-transfonnation I

!Wakun (Yomikudashi) ~ Vocalization

Chinese, so text B of this example was excluded from the process of readingChinese baoks. The original text was given primarily as something ,to look at.Only if it were transformed could it be vocalized according to the Japanese wayof reading Chinese. Thus, before Ogyu introduced his new method, visual andaural aspects of the text were merged, and no obsessive discrimination betweenthe two was made. Voice always referred to vision, and speech was merely a by­product of writing. Ogyu's method, therefore, signifies a twofold endeavor, first,to identify the level of voice as distinct from the graphic inscription in the processof reading and, then, to eliminate the visual factor from it.

In comparing Ogyu's mode with that of wakun, it becomes evident that Ogyupostulates a parallel between the sequence "written text to vocalization to under­standing" and the sequence "translated text to vocalization to understanding. Inaddition, he regarded the written text as a mediation between the two vocaliza­tion phases: voice is transcribed into graphic inscription and then recovered fromthat inscription.

to write to read

voice graphic inscription -- voice(written text)

Underlying this mode is an assumption that the ideal transfer of the verbalmessage is accomplished without the mediation of graphic inscription. Ideally,one should be able to communicate with another in a face-to-face situation andthe understanding of the message should be acquired in the immediacy ~f thevoice. The sense of interiority is also constructed in this mode since such a vocaland immediate understanding without the mediation of writing circumscribes andpostulates an area of experience free from alienation and separation. In otherwords, the interior is a cultural space where this ideal verbal communion ispossible and guaranteed.

When the essential of the text is equated to the immediacy of the voice, thevisual presence of the writing has to be secondary, if not entirely negative, and isnot to playa conspicuous role in the text's signification: the sale purpose of awriting is to transcribe the original voice. Insofar as one aims at reaching theoriginal, the writing is only an obstacle, a disturbance that tends to obscure themeaning of the text. It follows from this premise that the less visible is thepresence of writing, the more transparent the text ought to be.

Also decisive in Ogyu's method of reading is that the same structure is im­posed on the translated text. The translated text is supposed to be in a languagethat facilitates immediate and direct understanding. Hence, Ogyu tried to trans­late a Chinese classic into the "language of villagers," which ordinary people~sed to communicate with one another, without appealing to any written inscrip­tIon. The language utilized should ensure that no more commentary or translationis required for the translated. No doubt, the notion of translation as he understoodit was fashioned after the transparency of language in everyday intercourse, in 130gyu, Yakubun sentei, p. 28.

229The Problem of Translation

everyday speech. Thus, the primacy of speech over writing seems to mark thebasic condition without which Ogyu's "thought" could not have been formed.

Therefore, what he called kiyo no gaku (the learning of Nagasaki translators),occupies a highly significant locus in the new discursive space. As we shall see,translation as postulated in kiyo no gaku was adopted by an increasing number ofwriters in the eighteenth century, and it expanded the possibility of disseminatingancient writings.

First, I have established kiyo no gaku, according to which I now teach my studentsin colloquial language and recite the texts following Chinese phonology. When Itranslate, I always translate the texts into the language of our villagers and neveraccept wakun and the circular way of reading. At the beginning, I use small pieces,and teach phrases consisting of a few ideographs. Then I urge my students to readentire books. Only when they have mastered kiyo no gaku will they have trans­formed themselves into real Chinese people. 13

By eliminating the ambiguous mediation of wakun, Ogyu offered a definiteconception of translation, and by so articulating the scheme of "translation" hecircumscribed the area of experience I have designated by the term "interiority."But it is essential to note that the translation of Chinese books was not the finalgoal of his scholarly project: it was but one of many pedagogical steps for hisstudents to follow. As a matter of fact, he emphasized the acquisition of Chinesephonology, repeatedly asserting that authentic and true understanding could beachieved only wh~n the reader took on the interiority of a Chinese person, livedin the interior from which the text in question originated. What Ogyu's entirepedagogical project intends is a transformation of his students into the Chinese ofantiquity, a collective and united subject who Ogyu believed had produced allthose canonical writings. The core of his new teaching method consisted ofmimetic identification with the imagined subject of enunciation who producedthe text in its originary plenitude in ancient China.

A particular historical world is always equipped with social customs, lan­guage, and institutions. If one did not know those practices and how to live withand in them, one could not begin the game of reading. "When there is no boardfor Chinese chess," one might argue, "how could you ever speculate a move?"Acts of reading, of comprehension, are possible only when the rules of the gameare understood. Accordingly~ to enter the interior was to acquire and internalizethe knowledge of social and cultural institutions of which the historical worldconsisted.

Nevertheless, it is not a speculative kind of knowledge that one must beacquainted with but the kind of knowledge that enables a player to perform. Mereknowledge of the rules is not enough: to own the rule book, or even to learn everyarticle in it by heart, would not make one competent in the game. The rules have

Language, Body, and the Immediate228

140gyu Sorai, Gakusoku. in Nihon Shiso Taikei 36:191

to be internalized to an almost unconscious extent, so that the player can attend totheir strategic manipulation. Indeed, the acquisition of language plays the centralrole in Ogyu's project, in the sense that language fully mastered provides thesavoir faire crucial to a particular culture. Yet the question of how and wherelanguage is located in relation to social and cultural formation, or mono, and theknowledge about it ineluctably arises. Insofar as it is determined in his philoso­phy, the mono, cultural formation of a given interior, is not something that can beexplained away, even though it is understood to be linguistic in nature; it cannotbe exhaustively construed in terms of a limited number of statements; neither canit be reconstructed from a limited number of rules. Certainly Ogyu did notbelieve that the words of ancient Chinese books set norms for his contemporariesto follow: imperative statements could not be discovered in those books whichwere, after all, not applicable to his present-day social reality. In no case, then,were the Chinese classics believed to provide eighteenth-century readers withany universal principles on which to erect an ideal society? Ogyu refused to seekin them the representation of an ideal social order. He did not conceive of ancientclassics as conveying an image of reality; he saw them as part of such a reality,rather than its representation: "When the world had not really changed since the'ancient age,' its language similarly had not changed. Therefore, Jian Zi, Chunqiu of Yan Zi, Lao Zi, and Lie Zi all shared the same language. Why do youworry that all books represent different ways? We must learn not what theyrepresent but the language in which they were written." 14 According to Ogyu,one must focus on how a text speaks, rather than what it says. Even if thoseancient books call forth different ways, one can learn and benefit equally fromthem, provided that they belong to the same interior, that is, that they share thesame language and the same social and cultural formation. What has to berecognized is how a text is incorporated into its outside, its environment orcontext.

Let us recall the gestalt type of intertextuality, according to which a verbalutterance is placed in a nonverbal situation, whereby the locus of signifiance, notsignification, is identified in terms of the utterance's relationship to other nonver­bal texts. It constitutes a topos where the surplus of signification is generated.Examples from eighteenth-century literature illuminate an obsessive concern forthe instance of discourse in which an utterance as enunciation, not as enunciated,is conceived as the primordial adherence of a verbal expression to its per­formative situation. There, it is assumed, an utterance designates the mode of itsadherence, rather than represents its content. Indeed, even in the gestalt type ofintertextuality, an utterance could have its signification and be viewed as anenunciated, and therefore, a text could be read with regard to its content, or whatit says. But the transformation of the discursive space engendered a differentfocus of attention, because of which a text was now read primarily within thescope set by the gestalt type.

Ogyu proposed this new mode of intertextuality. He was no longer taken upwith the dimension of the text in which a writing is equated to its enunciated. Byreducing a written text to speech, he attempted to inaugurate a new conception ofcomprehension and to open a field in which a text is grasped primarily as anenunciation.

The ambivalence in his conception of language can be construed in this lighttoo, since the enunciation always has a reciprocal and ambiguous rapport with itsoutside. To grasp an enunciation is to refer it to its other nonverbal texts, butthese nonverbal texts, in their tum, cannot be identified as such without referringback to the enunciation; neither verbal nor nonverbal texts located in a givensituation, from which the verbal text is produced, can be grasped independentlyof each other. As a consequence, I have proposed, the locus of signifiance in factresides in this mutual referential relationship between the two types of texts in theperformative situation.

Because of this mutual referentiality, neither language nor social and culturalinstitutions that are nonverbal in themselves, can constitute A self-sufficientobject of inquiry. (And for this reason, the conventional contextualist reading ofhistorical materials is doomed to infinite regression when its reified notion of thetext is scrutinized.) But if an eighteenth-century student, who was, of course,outside the interior of Chinese antiquity, had wished to transform himself mim­etically into a Chinese of antiquity, how could he ever have had access to thepossibility of such a transformation? For him, neither the language nor theinstitutions of Chinese antiquity were given and accessible. How then couldOgyu still uphold the possibility that a Tokyoite-or perhaps I should sayEdoite-of a later age could enter the interior?

This contradiction discloses that as the discursive fonnation radically changed,a different kind of knowledge was called for. Already I have sketched the viewthat the sort of knowledge with which Ogyu was occupied is mainly concernedwith the ability to regenerate certain patterns of behavior. Basically it is practicaland experiential knowledge. This is to say that one's knowledge is to be esti­mated according to whether or not one can act in a certain way when a relevantsituation occurs. What matters is not whether one can describe, explain, justify,or represent a thing but whether one can behave and perform in such a way as tomake something happen. The metaphor of Chinese chess, which Ogyu cites inorder to explain the nature of knowledge, makes this very point: what he seeks isthe kind of knowledge necessary to perform successfully. Language ability, inthis instance, is not the ability to get hold of what a text says; rather, it concernsitself with generating utterances, with the rules by which to produce the text in asimilar manner, regardless of what these utterances signify. To acquire such anability is to become capable of generating an indefinite number of statements, thecontents of which are less important than this generative capability: this kind oflearning seems to require total concentration on the "performative" of action at

231The Problem of Translation

Experiential Knowledge and Speculative Knowledge

Language, Body, and the Immediate230

15For "Constative" see Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1962). Here with certain hesitation, I have adopted the tenn "perfonnative" instead of themore specific "iIlocutionary" or "perlocutionary" mainly because the sort of perfonnative locutionat issue can be called "illocutionary" and "perlocutionary" at the same time. It installs and refers tothe reality of its own location (see Figure C). Since what this act does is the instauration of thelocutionary capacity itself and, by extension, of the capacity to behave in meaningful but sociallydelimited ways (accordingly, those ways are talked about in tenns of rites), the relationship betweensaying and doing in this speech act appears doubly complicated in the vocabulary of speech acttheory. Perhaps, one of the problems with speech act theory is that it always assumes the "interior" ofa given speech community-of the English language in the case of Austin-as the stage where aspeech act takes place. The speech act of learning a language or entering the interior as in the case ofOgyu is excluded from the outset. Or it is believed possible to make unequivocal distinctions betweenstatements proper to the interior of a language and those improper to it, and to exclude the latter. Onecannot deny that in Ogyu's Kobunjigaku the speaking of archaic Chinese was a mimetic act to returnto Arche, on the one hand, and, a poietIc performative to install a certain social reality through theperformer's body, on the other. I would like to use "perfonnative" in the sense of the poietic aspect ofthe archaic restorationism of Kobunjigaku.

16Tetsuo Najita, "Secular Philosophy of Ogyu Sorai," unpublished.l7Ogyu, Gakusoku, pp. 190-91.

the expense of the "constative", with the adjective "perfonnative" characteriz­ing the act af saying in its aspect of instituting a reality by stating it as opposed tothe "constative" in which the descriptive adequacy of the statement is thema­tized. 15 But knowledge thus specified can never be construed in merely formalterms. Although it is an ability to generate an indefinite number of statements, itis also an ability to generate mutual referentiality between an utterance and non­verbal texts in the situation, thereby making or creating the situatiQn relevant to astatement.

Once again, I should take up the quotation in which Ogyu juxtaposes ancientbooks of different doctrinal traditions. As Tetsuo Najita has remarked, it isextraordinary for a Confucian scholar to say that it does not matter which bookone learns. 16 Lao Zi, for instance, was very rarely included among the classicsfor students of Confucianism to learn. But for Ogyu, a heretical text could serveas well as other Confucian classics, provided that it was written in genuineancient Chinese. Such an attitude toward the authenticity of the classics could bejustified only on the ground that the primary goal was a practical and experientialknowledge that could repeatedly generate a certain reality-what I have called"interior." Accordingly, the kind of knowledge fixed in writing must be ofsecondary importance since what needs to be acquired is not what the writingsays but what initiates and regulates its production, or the enunciation of which itis a remnant. It is only to the extent that the writing preserves the originalenunciation that it is thought to retain whatever little authority may be left to it,and one is urged to extract from the writing some coherence that regulates andgoverns the enunciation. "The world changes, carrying language with it, andlanguage changes, carrying the Way with it. ... Once written, however, dis­course lasts forever, and its written text remains unchanged." 17 It is the act ofproducing utterance that is significant. Through vocalization, Ogyu believed,one could return from the writing to the original scene of the enunciation. What

was implied by his emphasis on the oral aspect of language learning, as well asthe writing practice in ancient language (kubunji gaku, the learning of ancienttexts and words, 7-11), was the acquisition of the regularities of both verbal andnonverbal expressions.

Nonetheless, this notion of regularities is obviously vague and has yet to beclarified. Surely Ogyu conceived of language as a set of such regularities, butthis kind of regularity reveals itself only when it is embodied in performance: ithas to be lived in a concrete manner-concrete in the sense that it is internalizedand consolidated into habit. Hence, the regularity of language could manifestitself as enunciation, and the enunciation was regarded as one sort of bodilyaction. That is, language was equated to a form of habit. The anteriority ofnonnsto social action that establishes them is now taken to be anteriority in real time.Social action creates norms in "future anterion," in the mode of "will havebeen," that is, it establishes norms as anterior to the action. What is lost here isthe theoretical rigor that prevents confusion between anteriority in the sense offuture anterior and anteriority in chronological time, as well as the subsequentreification of this anteriority into enduring constancy.

It was assumed that social and cultural institutions, of which the interiorsupposedly consisted, were regularities of a similar nature. Rites 'and the legalsystem were among them, as were poetry and music. Yet, none of these heldoverall supremacy. Together, they constituted a whole, and only in reference tothat whole could each of them function as it ought. To use the terminology ofJurij M. Lotman, the interior thus portrayed should be equivalent to the conceptof "culture," which is defined as comprising many cultural systems. IS Ofcourse, we cannot expect Ogyu to be as scientific as Lotman. It is highly doubtfulthat Ogyu conceived of the systematicity of language, whose conceptualizationwould be impossible without the collapse of "simultaneity" into "synchrony,"and then left the task of examining the regularity of language to other writers ofthe eighteenth century. 19 Nevertheless, without doubt he recognized regularities

18Unlike Lotman's concept of culture, Ogyu's mono (social and cultural reality) seems to lack theprimary modeling system on which other cultural systems-the secondary modeling systems-are tobe constructed. Since Lotman identifies the primary modeling system with natural language. it ispossible to say, "Culture is built on natural language, and its relation to this natural language is one ofits most essential parameters." See "Primary and Secondary Communication-Modeling Systems,"in Soviet Semiotics, ed. D. P. Lucid (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 95-98.According to Lotman, the possibility of a semiotics of culture consists in the premise that there mu~t

be a certain structural homogeneity between natural language and other cultural systems. In thISrespect, it is interesting to note that Lotman's basic apprehension of culture and his semiotic approachto it seem to have changed considerably, as is manifested in an essay published a few years later,"The Structure of the Narrative Text" (ibid.• pp. 193-97). There, he asks: "Can the bearer ofmeaning be some message in which we cannot distinguish signs in the sense intended by classicaldefinitions which refer mainly to the word of natural language?" Here, I think, the scope of thesemiotic s;udy of culture is widened, and it becomes possible to take int~ account the no!ion ofculture implicitly developed in Ogyu's philosophy. His view of culture mIght be summanzed asfollows: one cannot talk about it; one can only live it.

19ft has often been argued that the systematic nature of language surpasses the grasp of con­sciousness and that the structural analysis of language provides evidence for the objective presence of

233The Problem of TranslationLanguage, Body, and the Immediate232

in ritual, musical, linguistic, and other institutions. Yet he rejected the claim thatnatural language could be the metalanguage of other systems. For no culturalsystem could manifest itself as it should when isolated from the mono, whatmodem .ethnographers might call the totality of "unconscious conditions ofsociallife."20 Thus, Ogyu remarks: "Six Classics are the reality [mono]," and"The reality [mono] is the essential condition for learning. Ancient peoplewished to learn so that they could assimilate themselves to virtue. Therefore,those who taught [virtue] presented their learners with the essential condition forlearning [instead of directly teaching them virtue]. "21

While the major part of Ogyu's kobunji gaku (learning of ancient texts andwords) is directed toward the acquisition of linguistic ability that is supposedlyrelevant to life in ancient China, the final goal is to know the Way of ancient

social and cultural institutions against the onslaught of subjectivist philosophy. Such a claim that thesystematic nature of language or the thought of it goes beyond consciousness is highly dubious. Farfrom exemplifying "Ie pense du dehors," it simply is ignorant that the systematicity itself is con­stituted by consciousness and that when that which is outside consciousness is pursued, systematicityin the mode of synchrony cannot be equated to simultaneity. The critique of consciousness must beattentive to disparity between synchrony and simultaneity precisely because that disparity is the locuswhere one could envisage the outside of consciousness.

Very often, the lack of awareness about the distinction between synchrony and simultaneity has ledto a thesis that phenomenological consciousness has been criticized by the structuralist notion ofstructure and the priority of structure over consciousness. The sort of linguistic systematicity whichstructuralist analysis uncovers is, in fact, not much different from the object of analysis which isbrought into being through eidetic reduction in phenomenology. What is handled in structural analy­sis is a phenomenon that is present to the transcendental ego. Some structuralists, who are notgenerally perceptive about the nature of transcendental analysis, seem to believe that it is fairly easyto escape from the confines of consciousness. They tend to assume that, whenever consciousness ismentioned, it is immediately taken to be an individual consciousness, as if the individual con­sciousness were not mediated by language. This critique of consciousness was put forth by NishidaKiataro. See "Hyogen sayo," in Hataraku mono kara mirumono e, vol. 4 of Nishida Kitaro zenshu(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1965), pp. 135-72. More recently a similar critique, which focuses ontranscendental subjectivity, was formulated by Julia Kristeva, Karatani Kojin, and William Haver,among others. See Julia Kristeva, La revolution du langage poetique: L'avant -garde alafin du XIXesiecle (Paris: Seuil, 1974); Karatani Kojin, Naisei to sokou (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1985), pp. 122-68;and William Haver, ·'The Body of This Death: Alterity in Nishida-Philosophy and Post-Marxism"(Ph.D. diss. University of Chicago, 1987).

20CIaude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 18,25. Michelde Certeau, for instance, addresses the issue of historical writing in relation to "unconscious condi­tions of social life" in The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1988): "The question to be asked of ethnological research-what does this writing presupposeabout orality?-is to be asked also of what it makes me bring forth, which reaches back and returnsfrom much further than I. My analysis comes and goes between these two variants of a singlestructural relation, between the texts that it studies and the text that it produces. Through this doublelocation it upholds the problem without resolving it-that is to say, without being able to moveoutside of ·circum-scription.' At least in this way appears one of the rules of the system which wasestablished as being Occidental and modern: the scriptural operation which produces, preserves, andcultivates imperishable 'truths' is connected to a rumor of words that vanish no sooner than they areuttered, and which are therefore lost forever. An irreparable loss is the trace of these spoken words inthe texts whose object they have become. Hence through writing is formed our relation with the other,the past" (p. 212). The constitution of ethnographic interest is invariably connected to the emergenceof orality as a discursive object.

210gyu, Gakusoku in Nihon shiso taikei 36: 167; Benmei in same, p. 179.

sage-kings in the most concrete form, and the concretization of the Way issynonymous with the interior of Chinese antiquity. In this particular sense,language is viewed as instrumental, but only insofar as it is an issue for thosewho are still at the learning stage. Once they have reached the final stage,language should be neither an instrument nor a goal: it should be actually lived.As long as one speculates on language as an object, one cannot be said to beperforming in the milieu of that language. Native speakers, Ogyu would surelyclaim, would never pose their language thematically as an object of inquiry. Theysimply live it and do things with it. Objectification of language, therefore,implies the subject's estrangement from it or lack of proficiency. Only when oneis not thoroughly at home in a language can the language appear to be a means.Such notions of the native speaker's relationship to his or her native language aretheoretically and ethically highly dubious, I think, but Ogyu posited an idealstage in learning, when other cultural regularities were all harmoniously inte­grated into performance.

Hence, he strongly opposed any objectification of these regularities. Instead offixing them in the form of speculative knowledge, he proposed to acquire themthrough practice and to use these skills in concrete performance. Thus the agendain kobunji gaku is organized with a view to leading his students to the stage atwhich the object of study would no longer be posited as an entity separate fromthe learning and acting body, at which language would be completely trans­parent. At the same time that the denial of objectification implicitly posits anideal realm of interiority, it is a measure of one's position in relation to thatinterior. To the extent that the language and the regularities of Chinese antiquityare familiarized and internalized, the subject can be said to be in the interior.

It is on this theoretical ground that Ogyu criticized Song rationalism. Heclaimed that the followers of Zhu Xi ignored the fundamental condition withoutwhich ancient Chinese writings would not speak to contemporary readers whocould not recognize the historical and geocultural limitations of ancient China.Moreover, they presumed that it was possible to appeal to a metalanguage validboth in the interior and the exterior. But the interior could never be described orrepresented adequately because there was no language to enable an observerstanding outside to apprehend what was actually there. On this point Ogyu differsfrom his contemporary Confucian scholar Arai Hakuseki.22 Arai's extensive

22Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725) was born to a samurai family in the domain of Kazusa (now inChiba prefecture). His father became masterless when Arai was nineteen. The young man studiedConfucianism and entered feudal service as a Confucian tutor, becoming personal tutor to TokugawaIenobu, who later ruled as the shogun. From 1709 until 1716, he served as a key adviser to the twoconsecutive shoguns. As a scholar, Arai is known for the encyclopedic scope of his interests. Hestudied the histories of the Daimyo houses, of the myths, and of Japan from the Heian period to theestablishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. He also studied military affairs, languages, geography.Western civilization (based on his interrogations of the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Sidotti), and Chinesepoetry. All these studies are in one way or another connected to his knowledge of Song rationalism.His main works are Tokushiyoron (On reading Japanese history), Seiyokibun (Recorded accounts ofthe countries of the western ocean), and his autobiography, Oritaku shibanoki (Told round a brush­wood fire).

235The Problem of TranslationLanguage, Body, and the Immediate234

23Arai Hakuseki. Toga in Nihon shiso falkei. 35: 101-44. For Arai Hakuseki, see Kate Nakai, AraiHakuseki and the Premises of Tokugawa Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies,Harvard University, 1988).

24For more detailed explication of the significance of this term in Ogyu Sorai's work, see Mar­uyama Masao, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Mikiso Hane (Tokyo:University of Tokyo Press, 1974), pp. 76-134, 206-73.

25See• for instance, article 15 in Bendo. pp. 25-26. It is wen known that many adopted thisexegetic method. Perhaps the most famous case is Tominaga Nakamoto's critical study of the historyof Buddhism. See Tetsuo Najita, The Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan (Chicago: University of

study of comparative linguistics is based on the assumption that languages couldbe objectified, juxtaposed, and compared to one another. 23 In his .treatise onlanguages, there seems to be no trace of doubt about the existence of a meta­language that made it possible for him to describe various languages withoutassimilating himself to mono.

By contrast, in Ogyu's view, the Way of the ancient kings is universally validonly to the extent that the present reality, whose historic and geocultural limita­tions he acknowledged, can be transformed into the interior from which the sage­kings, if they had been alive, would possibly speak. Although the issue is not toreturn the world to the interior of ancient China, language learning is a measureby which to change the world and, therefore, is a political program too. Ogyu,however, would also caution that one cannot change the world merely by chang­ing things in it. The task must include the reorganization of people's behavior. Itmust concern itself with how things should be viewed and ordered in reference tothe whole. Yet this whole, the interior, is not a sum of parts; it is a wholeconsisting of regularities. And what Ogyu ascribed to the ancient sage-kings isprecisely this wholeness of the social and cultural formation, which he believedwas absent from his contemporary Tokugawa society.

The ancient sage-kings were, according to Ogyu, sakusha (authors or makers,7-12), who could see the totality of the interior and organize a collectivity into aninterior. 24 The viewpoint of the sage-kings, in fact, coincides in theory with thepossibility of conceiving of the whole of the social as a cultural and politicalclosure in which perfect and transparent communication is guaranteed and everymember fully integrated-that is, every nonmember perfectly excluded. And theexistence of the sage-kings signifies the universal possibility of turning a socialand cultural formation into a community of transparent communication andcomplete compassion. Potentially, any collectivity could be transformed into aninterior with a definite sense of its whole. For this reason, the sage-kings weresaid to be impartial, for they always dealt with things from the viewpoint of thesociety as a whole. As Ogyu read the history of Chinese thought, the notion ofthe whole represented by the sage-kings worked as a guiding principle, and whenhe construed the history of Chinese thought since antiquity in terms of a series ofdisputes among conflicting schools, he perceived the development of thought inChina as caused by the loss of the sense of a whole and the decomposition of theinterior in historical time. 25 In this sense, it was necessary to posit the sage-kings

Passivity and Activity, Reading and Writing

237The Problem of Translation

Chicago Press, 1987). The best-known works of Tominaga Nakamoto, who was known for his criticalviews on Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto, are Shutsujo kogo (Buddha's comments after hismeditation) and Okina no fumi (Writings of an old man). Tominaga was born in 1715 to a wealthyOsaka merchant family that helped to found the Kaitokudo, an academy of Osaka townsmen. Hefocused on the historical development of Buddhism. Confucianism, and Shinto and showed that thoseteachings were based on ideological conflicts. He then argued that the religious dogmas should neverbe taken as they themselves claimed to be and that to understand them it was necessary to assess whatthey tried to promote against their opponents within and outside of their respective traditions. He diedat the age of thirty-one.

26See Ogyu Sorai, Benmei, in Nihon shiso taikei 36:53-58. and Taiheisaku. "Thus the Way of thesage-kings does not make any sense at all if it is separated from the totality of the kings' reign" (ibid .•p.467).

As the focal point of language learning shifted from what writing said and didto how it spoke, from the "constative" to the "performative," so the Way nolonger dictated what one should do but, instead, governed how one shouldrespond to and behave in a given situation. To put it another way, what had to belearned was how to manipulate intrinsic regularities that governed various kindsof practice, rather than consequences and representations of that practice. It is inperformance that Ogyu saw the locus of the whole, the nucleus where the wholewas generatively constituted.

In this context, I can outline how and why writing, not as the enunciated but asthe enunciation, has to be incorporated into this theory of language. Writing asOgyu talked about it within the scope of kobunji gaku, is an act, a form ofpractice and performance. When he repeatedly accused his contemporaries of

of antiquity to legitimate the idea that a thought should be judged according towhether or not its fundamental concern began with the totality. Ogyu postulatedthat a thought about the society which posits its totality may not always be true,but a thought that does not posit the totality is invariably false. 26 Thus, althoughOgy.u insisted that the content of the interior could not be talked about but shouldbe lived, he also taught that its totality could and should be thought and imaginedwhenever social and political issues were to be touched upon. The positing of thesage-kings coincides with the articulation of a certain enunciative position inwhich one could speak impartially, as a representative of the whole. Needless tosay, this scheme'serves to differentiate those who speak on behalf of the wholefrom those who put forth partial and biased views, but it also legitimates those-who are supposed to speak for the whole as opposed to those who argue fromtheir "egoistic" position of personal interest. When Ogyu saw the universalessence of Confucianism in the Way of the ancient kings, he was trying toestablish the universal validity of such an enunciative position.

There is no doubt that in the eighteenth century the claim to the universality ofsuch an enunciative position was available only to the samurai class.

Language, Body, and the Immediate236

270gyu Sorai, "Kutsu keisan ni kotau" Soraisha, in Nihon Shiso Taikei 36:529.

Kobunji gaku does not merely consist of reading. It requires that a learner reproduceancient language with his own hand and fingers. Only when he has acquired theability to reproduce language this way can ancient texts be as if they were comingout of his mouth. Then it would be as though he were together with ancient people,directly conversing with them. No formality would be required, and he would beable to socialize with them without any inhibition. 27

In this paragraph too, it is possible to point out that the written text is subjectedto voice, which is "coming out of his mouth." Furthennore, two issues are worthexamining. First, although writing is grasped in the mode of activity- "toreproduce ancient language" (the literal translation should be "to push or throwout ancient words")-the goal is "to be accepted by the ancient people." That isto say, writing is supposed to initiate a certain action that the learner views aspassive. Even though the ancient people could not be present in the scene of thisutterance, the words were in fact understood to be addressed to them. We havealready encountered such a dual conception of action in the act of reading. Byassociating the voice with the text through vocalization, Ogyu attempted totransfonn reading into a (re-)productive act, whose mode is indeed active. Now,he tried to do the reverse with writing.

Second, kobunji gaku is perceived to be a device by means of which one entersa certain community, in this case the community of the ancient Chinese. Ogyuthus acknowledged that action is always addressed to the "collectivity." But

239The Problem of Translation

28See Jean-Luc Nancy, "La communaute desoeuvree," AUa (1983): 11-49.

unlike Ito, he equated "collectivity" to an ancient China that had existed in thepresent of the past. His was not a "collectivity" that would be in the futureanterior, and hence, it would not simply coincide with an already existing polity.A leamer, he claimed, could participate in an infonnal and frank conversationwith people of ancient China through the mastery of writing in ancient Chinese.The interior, therefore, has a communal .dimension and Ogyu ascribed to thisimagined reality all the favorable attributes-intimacy, frankness, absence ofalienation, and compassion, to mention but a few. Through these attributes, heprojected an image of a society that completely coincided with its institutions,without any surplus or deficit, a society entirely covered by the infinitely homo­geneous texture of sociocultural institutions. In this ideal society, there is nodisparity between doing and knowing, between the instituting and the instituted.Such a society constitutes a perfectly sealed totality, where what I have referredto as textual materiality-and, therefore, historicity as well-is completely "­eliminated; nobody is aleatory in such a society. Complete compassion is pos­sible because there is absolutely no room for the otherness of the Other. There isabsolutely no need and no room for ethical action, for the "collectivity" to whicha social action is addressed coincides with the whole that is there. It is a societyin which sociality is completely eliminated. 28

In addition, Ogyu claims that through kobunji gaku one can enter the interiorwhere language ceases to be distinct from other beings and events, where lan­guage is fused with the situation and the events happening in it. It seems that theji (ci, 7-14) in kobunji means language fused in this way with the situation andthe events (ji, shi, 2-28). I find the same kind of reciprocal duality of reading andwriting, as well as the same conception of language fused with the world, in thewritings of Kamo Mabuchi and others. Obviously this notion of the verbal actwas not an invention of one author but rather an indication of a general trend inthis new discursive fonnation.

Language, Body, and the Immediate238

inability to write in ancient Chinese, or kobunji (7-13) he did not mean simplythat they did not know ancient Chinese well enough. Here too, what is .at issue isthe distinction between speculative and practical knowledge. Knowledge aboutancient China, accordingly, should not be limited to the student's ability to readthe writings in an authentic manner, or to extensive memorization of facts aboutantiquity. Both language and nonverbal institutions must be comprehended asacts, as regularities that are intrinsic in perfonnance. No matter how renowned ascholar of Confucianism might be, Ogyu declared, if he could not perfonnproperly, he should be disqualified as a Confucian. Time and time again Ogyuemphasized that all knowledge has to be founded on practice, and he made theact of writing an essential component in kobunji gaku.

Nonnally the act of writing is conceived in the active mode, as an expressionor projection, as opposed to the act of reading, which is a passive practice inwhich a message is received. Thus, we tend to regard reading and writing as twosorts of linguistic practice that are specifically associated with written texts,differentiated by the voice distinction and by passivity and activity. The case,however, is not so simple in Ogyu '8 philosophy. In kobunji gaku writing isequivalent to composition practice in a present-day language course, but it isaccorded much greater significance.

CHAPTER 8

Phoneticism and History

Representation as Distance and Delay

Both writing and reading are legitimate only insofar as they are grasped as modesof practice in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. We tend to presumethat what distinguishes these two from the other modes of practice-notably,nonverbal texts-is ascribed to the work of language: the superiority of linguisticpractice over others lies in the self-reflective function with which linguisticpractice is endowed. Statements can represent phenomena that are not of lin­guistic origin, but they are also capable of representing linguistic phenomena. Ithas often been asserted that only language is able to talk about language itself.

In the eighteenth century, however, this function of language was severelyquestioned, and a typically phonocentric view of language developed. Of defini­tive importance in this connection is the dichotomy writing/speech, which isprimarily concerned with the material support of the two fonns: writing is medi­ated by durable matter, whereas speech has no durable hold. Here, the differentaspects of utterance are called forth and diacritically distinguished, speech beingthe production of words itself and writing its product. Hence, to define writing asa transcription of speech, the content of writing, not as the writing act but as awritten text, is already to prefigure the temporal structure in which these twoaspects are incorporated. Temporally, the written text is taken to be the presenceof a verbal utterance in the perfect tense, whereas speech is present in theprogressive present tense. These temporal and modal characterizations seem toplay important roles since re-presentation necessarily implies the sense of delaybetween that which is present and represents, and that which is present butrepresented. No matter whether the two items are actually copresent or not, therelationship called representation necessitates that the represented be in the per­fect tense while the representing be in progressive present tense. The modaldifferentiation of the representing and the represented derives from the fact that

240

Phoneticism and History 241

\ the represented can be arrived at only though the representing: unless the repre­senting is given, the represented is never known. As a matter of fact, representa­tion inevitably generates this disparity between the two terms, whereby therepresented and the representing are posited as such.

As. we have seen, eighteenth-century discursive space indicated a strong ten­dency toward the progressive present tense, which gave rise to overwhelminginsistence on performative aspects of various social and cultural fonnations. Inthis resPect, it is natural that the representational function of language wasceaselessly problematized.

Yet we must not forget that there is more to it. Insofar as an utterance is viewedin relation to the context re-presented in it, that is, in relation to what the contextimplicitly portrays, it addresses itself only as an enunciated, not as an enuncia­tion. Deprived of the aspects of Performance and enunciation, this utteranceloses its adherence to its originary scene. Words that make up an utterance maybe thrown out in the midst of some ongoing events, in a situation, but once anutterance has been produced, it no longer preserves the environment of theoriginary enunciation. As I have already discussed, the fundamental charac­teristic of verbal expression, or the discursivity of verbal expression, is depriva­tion of the sensory perspective: the represented transcends the horizon: of itsenunciation. On the other hand, seeing an utterance at the moment of enuncia­tion, one is led to postulate that other things and events must also be present inthe situation in which the representing takes place.} Despite the fact that thesewill support and animate the signification of the utterance, they will never berepresented in the utterance itself. This mode of copresence should be dis­tinguished from that of representation because it certainly does not abide by thetemporal structure characteristic of representation. I have suggested that thiscopresence could be construed in terms of the gestalt type of intertextuality, inwhich an utterance is perceived as a figure, circumscribed by a certain framing,and things that are copresent with it are excluded from it and drawn into thebackground.

1Perhaps, a distinction has to be introduced among the three possible uses of the tenn "present."The first is a well-known phenomenological definition that the present is the mode of the primordialdatum, that is, the mode of things being given originally in perception. It is always given to, and so,the present is necessarily "present to." The second is the present articulated in transcendentalanalysis, which can often be equated to the temporal moment of synchrony. This present is thecondition of the possibility for thinking or the thinkable, and it is defined in tenns of a copossibilitythat presupposes the presence of the system. This sort of present is understood when we say "8 mustbe present in order for A to be." Synchrony can be defined by a series of relays of the present of thiskind. The third, and most significant in my discussion here, is the present in which the situation ispresent in enunciation. As the situation cannot be "present to" the utterance specularly unless it isthematically presented in the utterance, the situation is neither primordially given to phenomenologi­cal consciousness nor synchronous with the utterance. In order for the situation, things, the ad­dressee, or even the addresser to be present in enunciation, it must be excluded from the circuit ofspecularity. Therefore, this present can never be objectified or made present. In this sense, thispresent cannot be talked about in tenus of onthotheological being or nothingness as the negation ofbeing. It goes without saying that the body of the enunciation, or shutai. is present in this sort ofpresent. Therefore, the shutai neither is nor is not.

To see an utterance not as the enunciated but as the enunciation, not as aproduct but· as an action producing it, is to transfonn the paradigm of ~epresenta­tion into that of copresence. It necessarily leads to the view that an utterance is anact embodied in a performative situation. The reduction of writing to speech canthen be understood differently. If an utterance is an event taking place in asituation, it can be seen as similar to nonlinguistic practice, can and should beequated to nonverbal behavior.

It should be evident that what is supposedly the product of behavior, a writtentext, for instance, does not maintain its immediate adherence to the performativesituation. Therefore, it could be argued that only when a text is isolated from itsimmediate environment can it be possible to transcend the horizon of the text'senunciation. Concurrently, the distance perceived between the text and things itrepresents would give rise to the temporal structure without which representationwould be impossible. If we believe that such a mode of copresence really guaran­tees the proclaimed immediate adherence to the performative situation, we couldeasily be persuaded that writing, as opposed to speech, indicates distance andseparation: a form of estrangement. If immediacy is to be the sole ultimateontological premise on which the ideal society could possibly be imagined, thenrepresentation, and writing as a form of concretized representation, should meandecomposition and dissemination of the ideal order since writing constantlydisturbs and disqualifies the legitimacy of any claim to immediacy. The socialpraxis would then be dominated by concern to overcome the estrangement andalienation.

Implicit in this denial of representation is the assumption that without thedistance essential for representation, it should be impossible to posit the opposi­tions activity/passivity and subject/object. In other words, a linguistic practicecould be apprehended as active or passive only insofar as distance is presup­posed. Moreover, this distance is a pivotal issue in terms of which activity andpassivity in linguistic practice are defined: a linguistic practice could be activewhen it expresses or externalizes something, thereby generating distance; it couldbe passive when it acts to overcome such a distance. Therefore, the act of writingis active, for it certainly distances, delays, and differs. By contrast, the act ofreading signifies a passive reception of something conceived from afar. In bothcases, some distance is always presupposed to make expression or receptionintelligible.

What then does the reciprocal duality according to which Ogyu Sorai stressedthe passive nature of writing and the active nature of reading mean? What thereciprocal duality denies is the condition that makes the opposition ac­tivity/passivity possible, namely, representational distance. As far as the ques­tion of language is concerned, Ogyu's philosophical enterprise can be interpretedin terms of his endeavor to overcome the distance thus generated and thereby toannul the representational function of language. I must also note, however, thathis overzealous attempt to overcome representational distance not only concealedbut also excluded the kind of distance always generated in textuality, which

The Status of the Classics

20gyu wrote, "Therefore, when the Way is in the body, one's words are naturally orderly; one'sdeed is correct; one serves one's master royally; one serves one's father piously; one socializes withothers trustfully; and one controls things naturally" (Benmei. in Nihon shiso taikei. vol. 36 [Tokyo:Iwanami Sholen, 1973], p. 44).

243Phoneticism and History

It is in this context that kiyo no gaku (the learning of Nagasaki translators) andkobunji gaku (the learning of ancient texts and words) can be recognized asessential components of this philosophical enterprise. Kiyo no gaku was strate­gically constructed so that reading might be subordinated to speech in an attemptto eliminate the opacity of language. Similarly, kobunji gaku gears itself towardthe stage of learning in which a student achieves the ultimate fluency in alanguage, so that to him verbal practice is just like other modes of perfectlyacquired nonverbal practice. Ultimately, fluency in ancient language, just likeother skills, would be obtained in the body.2 Therefore, the interior that bothkinds of learning aspire to attain is modeled after the kind of performative

cannot be accommodated within the activity/passivity opposition. He refused toacknowledge the ethical-practical possibility, probably most explicitly an­nounced by Ito Jinsai, that there is a distance without which the ethical action, asIto understands the term "ethics," would be unintelligible.

What initiated Ogyu's enterprise is the perception that language had becomeopaque, had lost its integrity, but that it ought originarily and properly to beimmediate and transparent. His rhetorical strategies seem to have been deployedin this direction (we will witness the same direction in Kamo Mabuchi's dis­course on poetry). Thus the reciprocal duality in writing and reading is a meansby which to eliminate distance so as to ensure transparent language. By deprivingwriting of activity and reading of passivity, he reduces the two modes of verbalpractice to another mode akin to performative practice. This reduction is broughtabout by means of various theoretical projects, all of which ail{l at abolishing therepresentational function of language. It goes without saying that the most pres­tigious aspect particular to linguistic practice, namely, the possibility of meta­language, is no longer acceptable in that conception of language. It is in itssimilarity to the nonlinguistic act that the representational aspect of language isgiven ontological significance. Although the extreme glorification of immediacycannot be found in Ogyu's works, his conception of language, when fully devel­oped, would recognize exclamation as the most authentic form of linguisticpractice because it does not have any representational function at all. It is purelyvociferous, and in its vociferousness, it is effectively illocutionaL It does not talkabout anything; it lacks the distance that characterizes other verbal practice. Ofcourse, it adheres to the performative situation, for if it were detached from it,the exclamation would hardly signify anything: it is totally empty of significa­tion, but full of prelinguistic articulation in signifiance.

Language, Body, and the Immediate242

3Bom to a family of Shinto priests in the domain of Thtomi (now in Shimizu prefecture), KamoMabuchi (1697-1769) was trained from an early age in waka composition and Japanese classics andbecame a National Studies scholar and waka poet. By combining the comparative philologicaltechniques of Keichu (1640-1701) with the theological system of Kada Azumaro (1669-1736), heestablished a new scholarship on classical Japanese literature and language. His poetry stressed themasculine style of the Man'yoshu, on which he wrote an extensive commentary, Man'yoko. He alsowrote Kaiko (Thesis on waka poetry), Niimanabi (New learning), Genjimonogatari shinshaku (Newcommentary on the Tale of Genji), and others.

4Kamo Mabuchi, Kokuiko, in Nihon shiso taikei 39:381.5Ibid., p. 387.

situation in which an utterance is made as naturally, sincerely, and spontaneouslyas possible. This is the realm where language is supposed to be .completelytransparent. As I have remarked, the interior thus conceived is also dyed with thecommunal atmosphere of frankness, intimacy, and lack of artificial formality. Init, the distance of both representational language and interpersonal relationshippresumably ceases to exist.

The idealization of communal spirit and the absence of the representationaluses of language also characterize the interior we recognize in the treatises ofKamo Mabuchi. 3 Ogyu projects interiority onto ancient China; Kamo identifies itwith Japanese antiquity instead. Kamo posited an ideal era in antiquity when theminds of the Japanese were frank and straight. Since those people were enthusi­astically and spontaneously engaged in nonverbal practice, he believed, they didnot need many words. Kamo assumed that the representational function of lan­guage interfered with interpersonal compassion, and he argued that the distur­bance of compassion in his own time was caused by the dominance of representa­tional uses of language. The remedy he proposed for the decomposed socialorder was almost identical in structure to Ogyu's. First, the central mode oflinguistic practice has to be shifted to speech, and since writing and readingendanger the immediacy of practice, they have to be condemned. Only as amedium through which the original voice is recovered could written texts begiven some recognition. In antiquity, Kamo believed, "people could freely ma­nipulate written words because the spoken word was thought of as the master andthe written word as the slave. But as time passed, it was as if the master had diedand his position had been usurped by his slave."4 Two binary oppositions are tobe noted here. The first is the one I have noted in Ogyu, speech/writing. Thesecond is phoneticism/ideography. I shall begin with the first and return to thesecond later.

Just as Ogyu denied the possibility that one could learn the Way throughexplanation, so Kamo rejected the thesis that a human being could and shouldfollow the principle set by any teaching. "Those who believe that people are tofollow what the teaching says do not understand the mind of heaven and earth."sOnly the acquisition of practical knowledge enables people to learn in the propersense. Like kobunji gaku, Kamo's pedagogical project specifies: "First oneshould learn ancient poems and learn how to compose poems in the ancient

6Kamo Mabuchi, Niimanabi, in Nihon shiso takei 39:363.1Here, I assume the possibility of distinguishing constituting positivities from constituted

positivities. As is obvious this possibility is extremely hard to prove without falling into a series oftautologies. Nevertheless, one's analysis could not even start without dealing with this question,unless one is completely unable to question what is given as reality.

sFor instance, Ogyu published many of his works in yomikudashibun, and most of his treatises InChinese were annotated with the wakun he so vehemently denounced. Likewise, Kamo wrote in akind of pseudoarchaic Japanese style, or gikobun, which differed a great deal from ancient Japanese.The style of language was one of many traits by which a school of thought was identified, but oneshould be aware that that alone does not define its identity.

245Phoneticism and History

fashion, and then one should learn the writings of antiquity and write in theancient fashion."6

Obviously Kamo's argument is dominated by the orientation toward speechand performance in the same way as Ogyu's. It has often been argued that thissimilarity is due to Ogyu's influence on Kamo, and a substantial amount ofresearch has been devoted to the biographical connection between the two au­thors. I have no inclination to disprove a possible influence of kobunji gaku onKamo's poetics or to discover the similarity between the two sets of works and toreinforce it by quoting biographical evidence concerning the authors. I wouldrather concern myself with the positivities that constituted other positivities in thediscursive space of the eighteenth century and with the articulation of differencesthat therefore formed that similarity.7 In this regard, the question of influence isexcluded from my scope not only because the concept of influence is ill definedand arbitrary but also because I should first elucidate the conditions withoutwhich so-called influence itself would make no sense. My attention is drawntoward whether or not some regularities in the texts of the eighteenth centurysustain various differentiations.

In order to talk about differences and similarities between Ogyu and Kamo­and also between their affiliations with schools of thought, Confucianism andNational Studies-I should identify the level of discourse at which writings weredistinguished from one another and, then, despite these differences, demonstratetheir similarity. Most obviously, whereas Ogyu insisted that the ultimate goal oflearning was the acquisition of ancient Chinese, for Kamo it was ancient Japa­nese that was to be acquired. Accordingly, Ogyu wrote in the Chinese of antiq­uity, and Kamo in ancient Japanese, although neither could be totally free of theconvention of his time. 8

In addition, Ogyu's writings, because they were Confucian, were expected tofollow rules of generic taxonomy according to which the space of generic discon­tinuity was constituted and discourse was classified into genres, schools, and soon. I by no means imply that certain dogmatic theses persisted in JapaneseConfucianism and that it was distinguished from other schools of thought by itsproclaimed ideals. Genealogy does not necessarily explain how unities of genreand school were constituted within a given discursive space. The rules thatfashioned the identity of Confucianism in the eighteenth century might be verydifferent from those of the sixteenth or the nineteenth century.

Language, Body, and the Immediate244

The Human Body and the Interior

It is at this locus of discourse, namely, of intertextual structure, that thequestion of practice becomes decisive. Performance certainly occupies the center

One of these rules dealt with the intertextual relationships according to whichtexts were 'incorporated into other already existing ones. To be recognized asConfucian, a written text had to justify what it advocated through reference tocertain Confucian classics. The classical reference was not particular to Confu­cian discourse; the National Studies, too, used classical references to legitimateits validity. When the classics regarded as the source of authority were associatedwith the Confucian tradition, a discourse was diacritically identified as Confu­cian. Furthermore, this generic distinction extended to the inner articulation ofConfucianism itself, and works were identified with a specific school of Confu­cianism according to which classics were cited. In this sense, the relationship ofOgyu's philosophical treatises to Confucian classics was twofold. I pointed outearlier that Confucian classics no longer held the authority to confirm Confucianethical and epistemic principles. Ito Jinsai had challenged the application ofConfucian norms to praxis, and Ogyu Sorai flatly refused to see those norms asconceptually represented in the classics. At the same time, the emphasis shiftedfrom the Four Books to the Six Classics. This shift agreed with the radical shift ofattention from representational language to performance, for the Four Bookswere rather theoretical and said to be written in representational language,whereas the Six Classics were considered more practical, recording emotionaland institutional practices of ancient people.

Thus, I can at least point out the level at which the differences among schoolsof thought were constituted: the different classics referred to as the source oflegitimation. Likewise, I have identified the level of discourse at which thesimilarity was posited: the intertextuality by which eighteenth-century texts wererelated to ancient texts. Although writers affiliated with different schools at­tempted to legitimate different theses, the structure by which they related theirown discourse to the classics remained unchanged, at least insofar as the authorsin question are concerned. History thus played an important role in eighteenth­century discourse because it delineated the particular intertextual structure thatregulated the production of texts. Suffice it to say that this history has nothing todo with a kind of historiography based on the seriality of events. It is instead acondition of legitimation; legitimation and history were indiscernibly inter­twined. History was not an asset or an object of discourse for a specific genre orschool of thought; it was an essential component of the general rule of discursiveformation which permeated the entire discursive space. Thus, without appealingto the notion of influence, it is possible to analyze and construe the network ofdifference and identity in the discursive space.

247Phoneticism and History

90gyu Sorai, Benmei, p. 167.101encountered some difficulty in translating these sentences, attributable perhaps to the common

problem of translating Japanese or Chinese into European languages: that there is no equivalent inJapanese or Chinese to the pronominal system of European languages. In this case the difficulty alsoseems to be related to the systematic constitution of Ogyu's philosophic enterprise. Translatedliterally, the statements read: "Men (man) understand(s) if said/talked/spoken. Men (man) do(es) notunderstand if not said/talked/spoken." The object of understanding and the subject and the object ofsaying are all unspecified. Nonnally the context detennines unspecified terms in translation. Oneshould not confuse philosophical with linguistic problems and should not yield to a rather naivecultural-essentialist argument that a certain structure of language produces a certain type of philo­sophical system. In this case, however, I have reason to draw attention to the lack of specificity ofthese tenns; first, whether or not understanding is a transitive act that takes an object is ratherproblematical in Ogyu. Second, the unspecificity of the subject of linguistic practice seems to be animportant issue and cannot be overlooked. We should keep in mind Ogyu's claim that by vocalizingan ancient text one does not reach the inner experience of the individual author but the interior, whichdefinitely has a communal implication. Vocalization was thought of as an act by which to integrate anindividual subject into the community.

1lOgyu Sorai, Benmei, p. 70.

The human body holds a privileged status and also acquires an exceptionalprestige in the world. It is the locus of anchorage in this world according to

People understand a person if he speaks. People do not understand him if he does notspeak. to Why is it possible that rites and music can be superior to language inteaching people? Because people assimilate rites and music. When one has learnedand attained proficiency by learning, even if he still does not understand it. his bodyas intentionality [shinshi shintai, xinzhi shenti. 8-1] has already implicitly assimi­lated it. l !

of the discursive space to which Ogyu's argument was confined. As I havediscussed, the axis along which a variety of POsitivities in this space wereorganized was oriented toward an idealized conception of practice. I must alsonote that this conception dramatized the discontinuity between Ogyu and hispredecessors in the Confucian tradition. He claimed that practice preceded spec­ulative knowledge and that Zhu Xi's theery of knowledge and practice failed tograsp the primordial rapport between these two terms: "To know something is toknow it truly. To practice something is to practice it enthusiastically. Only afterone has thoroughly acquired the skill by practicing enthusiastically many timesover can one know it truly. Therefore, knowledge does not necessarily precedepractice and practice does not necessarily succeed knowledge."9 Ogyu forcefullystates that the realness and meaningfulness of knowledge can be found only whenknowledge is subordinated to practice and grasped as a moment of practice. Herethe immediate and transparent nature of the mastered skill is associated withrealness and meaningfulness. This conceptualization of practice could be de­scribed as sustained by a desire for lively togetherness, that supreme mode ofimmediacy.

Ogyu claims that the source of this possibility for lively togetherness is locatedin the human body:

Language, Body, and the Immediate246

12Ibid.

which here and now are primordially given, although the body is not what ispresent to -consciousness but that to which something is present. Hence, whenassociated with the human body, knowledge is supposed to be revealed here andin the present. This is another implication of the practical terms in which Ogyuconceives knowledge. Then he attempts to provide his own interpretation of"investigation of things" and "extension of knowledge" from the Daxue:

One who learns actual things at length and preserves what he has acquired bylearning can achieve virtue. This process [of learning] is called "investigation ofthings" [which Ogyu reads as "arrival of mono" (mono kitaru, wuke, 8-2)]. Whenyou first start to learn, mono is not in you. This state could be described as thoughmono were still there and had not come here. When you achieve virtue, mono willbe in you. This state could be described as though mono had left there and arrivedhere. This means that you no longer needed conscious effort [because mono is here].This is why we say mono kitaru [mono has arrived]. This Chinese character ke is, infact, Lai. Once the conditions of learning [mono] are in you, knowledge is spon­taneously manifest. This is called "extension of knowledge" [which he reads as"knowledge arrives"].12

249Phoneticism and History

always surrounded by many objects and other human bodies in relation to whichit takes on signifiance if not signification, particularly when we deal with anethical or social action that presupposes the potential articulation of a givensituation. Although its mode of articulation is the supplementary relationship ofcorrelation, it cannot be reduced to even the patterned behavior of a human body.For this reason, the physiological description of an action does not tell us any­thing about its ethical or social implication. (Compare these two statements,which are said to describe the same occurrence: hA swung his fist" and "A beatB.") It requires that the situation will have been institutionally and culturallyarticulated and that only as a correlate of the situation thus semanticized can amovement of the human body assume its ethical and social determination. Like­wise, it is impossible to define a performative situation without referring to thehuman body in action within it. Thus, what we perceive as practice and itsmeaning are properties inherent neither in the situation nor in the human body.

Had we been allowed to postulate the ontological status of practice in termssimilar to those in which I talked about verbal texts, practice would be nothingbut signifiance. Ogyu's conception of learning valorizes not signification or theenunciated but signifiance and enunciation. Accordingly, Ogyu demands that hisstudent be equipped with practical knowledge concerning the relationship be­tween the performative situation and his body. Certainly what Maurice Merleau­Ponty called the ambiguity of the human body is prescribed in the frameworkwithin which Ogyu deploys his argument. What is meant by ambiguity is themode of existence in which various dichotomies that I have already identified areaccommodated without being synthesized. In this perspective, dichotomies suchas transcendence/immanence and activity/passivity cease to be asymmetrical.They are governed by the symmetrical transference so that a constant shifttransforms transcendence into immanence, activity into passivity. But Ito Jinsai'sperception of the human body as the center of decentering no longer plays amajor role in Ogyu's thought. The body is seen instead as the center of recenter­ing, so that for Ogyu it is primarily the topos of empathy, on empathy guarantee­ing the sense of togetherness, which consists of the reciprocity of transference. InOgyu's political philosophy, I think, empathy is primarily transference, and thehuman body a synthesizing locus that guarantees the preestablished hannony ofintersubjective communality through its intercorporeity.

Whereas Ito tries to demonstrate the ethicality of a social action in reference tothe human body as a locus of otherness which can never be entirely subsumedunder intention, Ogyu posits the human body as the medium of habit formation.Above all he emphasizes the aspect of the human body that assimilates andintegrates a person into the community. Hence, his conception of the humanbody is oriented toward conformity and stability. Unlike Ito's, which stresses thedynamic and changing nature of the social, Ogyu's conception of the body isstrikingly hostile to change and disintegration. And it should be added that his

Language, Body, and the Immediate248

In this conception of mono, the duality of direction in learning is of principalimportance. As we have seen, the interior is an area one is to enter throughlearning. That is to say, one moves away from the present position and arrives atthe interior, which is located there. In this respect, learning can be explicated astranscendence or pro-ject. Learning can also be described in terms of imma­nence, however, because from the viewpoint installed in the human body theinterior moves from there to here. Mono gradually penetrates and inhabits thebody. The relationship between the human body and the interior is also dual. It isno contradiction to say that the interior is in one's body and the body is in theinterior, provided that one has already achieved virtue. Yet it is also important tonote that the conceptualization of reciprocity between activity and passivity infact requires a certain objectification in the imagination of the body: this concep­tualization is dependent on the possibility of taking up the other's viewpoint, animaginary possibility that Jacques Lacan and Miura Tsutomu explain in terms ofthe "mirror." Already in Ogyu, the radical otherness of the shutai has beenreduced to the specular image of the body.

Since the interior, or mono, is not merely an area in a geographical sense butalso a prepredicative horizon for specific practices, it could be associated withsome image of the performative situation. One cannot perceive an acting humanbody without referring to the performative situation in which it is acting. In thissense too, the human body I am talking about cannot be directly equated to theorganic unity in physiology. A bodily act never takes place in a vacuum. It is

Diacritical Identification of the Japanese Language

body is always taken up from the viewpoint of the whole. For Ogyu the perspec­tive coinciding with the viewpoint of the whole designates the benevolent andvirtuous presence of authentic Confucianism.

Nevertheless the problematic of the human body dominates eighteenth-centurydiscourse in the sense that the conceptualization of political and social formation~s dependent on the conception of the body. A slight difference in this conceptionIS greatly amplified in specific visions of the social.

It seems that Kamo Mabuchi relied on the same set of discursive devices asOgyu to project the idealized image of ancient Japan. The primary differencebetween Kamo and Ogyu lay in Kamo's rejection of China. Ogyu attributed therepresentational use of language mainly to Song rationalism and its followers,but Kamo held China at large responsible for it. The term kara (China) had beenused extensively to identify and glorify what was originally pure and ought to beresurrected but Kamo argued that China was a vicious country.13 He believedthat things of Chinese origin had contaminated Japanese life, which otherwise~ould be straight and stainless. Whereas for Ogyu it was historical time that gaveflse to changes and decomposed the presumed integrity of the interior, for Kamoit was China or Chinese civilization. Yet, although he does not share the cosmo­politanism characteristic of Ogyu's treatises, the directionality that governs hisdiscourse resembles Ogyu's in the sense that the interior thus conceived of isascribed first to voices and then to practice. Voice, as in Ogyu's vocalization ofthe ancient texts, is supposed to ensure interpersonal intimacy and transparentlanguage. Kamo believed that by properly vocalizing ancient poems one couldbecome copresent with poets of a thousand years before. Moreover, since theancient people were straight and direct, their minds would be present to thereader without any mediation once such a state was actualized. 14 For Kamo alsothe learning of ancient language was of primary importance, a necessary steptoward the interior, which he posited in Japanese antiquity. Without a practicalknowledge of ancient Japanese, one could never properly vocalize the ancientpoems preserved in written form.

. In this connection, I must attend to the status of poetics in eighteenth-centurydIscourse. Around that time, many publications appeared about the proper usageof kana, the etymology of ancient Japanese, and Japanese syntax and phonology.Most of these publications, if not all, were in one way or another related topoetics. Kamo himself published etymological studies of the Man'yoshu, 15 as

13Kamo Mabuchi, Kokuiko, p. 179. Similar statements can be found in his other articles.14Kamo Mabuchi, Niimanabi, p. 362.I~Man'yoshu, the earliest extant collection of Japanese poetry, contains 4,516 waka poems, the

ear~lest d~ted to the fourth century and the last to 759. Most of the poems are written in man'yo-gana,Chmese Ideographs used phonetically, with extended headnotes, footnotes, prose settings, letters,

251Phoneticism and History

and other compositions-all in Chinese, not Man'yo~gana-and a few Chinese poems. Of the threeJapanese poetic fonns represented in the anthology the great majority are tanka (short songs), butthere are also about 260 choka (long songs) and 60 sedoka (head-repeated songs). The Man'yoshu isthe culmination of a tradition of anthology making at least several decades old. Those most exten­sively involved in its compilation were the poet Otomo no Yakamochi (718?-785) and perhapsYamanoue no Okura (66O-ca. 733).

I 6Kokinshu , or Kokin Wakashu (Collection of Japanese waka poems from ancient and modemtimes), was officially commissioned under Emperor Daigo (reign 897-930) in 905. Although thecompilers of the Kokinshu thought that the Man'yoshu had already been royally commissioned, theKokinshu was in fact the first in a series of anthologies of Japanese verse commissioned by imperialorder. The four compilers of the Kokinshu were Ki no Tsurayuki, Ki no Tomonori, Oshikochi noMitsune, and Mibu no Tadamine. The Kokinshu set the rules according to which its 1, III poemswere arranged by topics, and twenty ensuing imperial collections use the same taxonomy. The firstsix books were dedicated to seasonal poems-two to spring, one to summer, two to autumn, and oneto winter-followed by one book each on the themes of congratulatory gifts, parting, travel, andacrostic. Next come five books of love poems, followed by a book of laments, two books onmiscellaneous matters, one book of miscellaneous poetic fonns, and one of poems from the Bureauof Poetry at court. The Kokinshu begins the taxonomy of Japanese poetic imagery which would fonnthe background for much of the ensuing waka tradition.

Since some people in the region now called Japan adopted the Chinese writingsystem, the dichotomy phoneticism/ideography may be said to be immanent in"Japanese culture." As the "Japanese" way of reading Chinese, or wakun, bestreveals, Chinese ideography and its relationship to vocalization had always dra­matized heterogeneity in a writing system in which two different principlescoexisted and violated each other. It has been argued that the Chinese writing

The Imagenary Relation to the Text: Phoneticismand the Historicity of a Text

well as his theory of Japanese syntax, to foster a better understanding of ancientPOetry and to teach students to compose poems in the ancient fashion.

Of course the Japanese had a long tradition of poetic discourse, perhaps evenoutdating the introduction to the Kokinshu, 16 but a concern for poetics had neverbeen as widespread as in the eighteenth century. Why did interest in poeticssuddenly increase, and what kind of rules governed the voluminous discussion ofpoetry and language?

Kamo's studies of language are motivated by the desire to reach transparency.Underlying this tendency is the structural parallelism among the oppositions:transparent/opaque, speech/writing, and phoneticism/ideography. I have at­tempted to uncover the rules governing the differentiations in both Ogyu's andKamo's treatises. Thus far, voice, practice, and the human body have beenidentified in relation to the modes of reading and the conceptualization of lan­guage. Ogyu and Kamo share the first two oppositions and deploy them along thesame axis, but the opposition between phoneticism and ideography has yet to beexamined. Next I want to consider how that opposition accords with the generaldiscursive formation.

Language, Body, and the Immediate250

17Kojiki (Record of ancient matters) is Japan's oldest extant chronicle, recording events from themythical age of the gods up to the time of Empress Suiko (reign 593-628). The compiler, 0 noYasumaro, states in the preface that it was presented to Empress Gemmei (reign 707-715) on March9, 712. According to 0 no Yasumaro's preface, sometime during the latter half of the seventh century,Emperor Temmu (reign 673-686) ordered the court attendant Hieda no Are to commit to memory therecords of the imperial family, myths, and legends. The Kojiki is divided into three parts. The firstpart records the creation of heaven and earth and myths concerning the founding of Japan. It describesthe descent from heaven of Ninigi no Mikoto, grandson of Amaterasu Omikami, original figure of theimperial line, to the mountain Takachiho no Mine in Kyushu. The second part deals with the periodfrom the first emperor, Jimmu, through the reign of Emperor Ojin at the beginning of the fifthcentury. The third part covers events from the reign of Emperor Nintoku until the rule of Suiko in theearly seventh century.

system thus assimilated and accepted was the only way for people to articulateand preserve their words since they did not know· any other mean~ of verbalinscription. Yet, interestingly enough, not until the eighteenth century did thetotal rejection of ideography and the adoption of "pure" phoneticism arise as amajor intellectual concern. The two principles had been somewhat reconciledand had continued to allow for the production of texts. Neither purely ide­ographic nor purely phonetic inscription dominated the production of intellec­tual, literary, and legal discourse. In other words, the radical dichotomy phonet­icisml ideography had been unheard of until then.

As the Kojiki17 shows, phoneticism existed as soon as the Chinese writingsystem was known to those inhabiting today's Kinki area. During a period of onethousand years, phoneticism was assimilated into systems of inscription fairlywidely used in the region now called Japan. During this time, kana, the Japanesephonetic writing system, was invented as a supplement to Chinese ideographs.We must remind ourselves, however, that kana (or what might be rendered"makeshift names" [ka-naJ) does not designate the specific sign system we nowknow as katakana or hiragana. Rather, it signifies a certain use of inscriptions tomaintain the identity of graphic unity in relation to the phonemes they provoke.In other words, even Chinese ideographs can be viewed as kana if their verbalfunction is limited to a correspondence to sounds, as witnessed in man'yo-gana(Chinese ideographs used phonetically). A writing is in kana if and only if it isviewed solely from the aspect of sound generation. On the other hand, ideogra­phy is a principle by which a graphic inscription participates in the constitution ofsignification only insofar as that inscription cannot be linearly related to thesingular series of phonemes. An ideograph is not necessarily a sign that does notevoke a sound; instead, it is a sign that evokes more than one sound or no soundat all and therefore relates itself to sounds multivocally. Phoneticism postulatesthat a text can be reduced to a series of sounds and that the text's signification isidentical to that constituted by the sounds alone. Hence, phoneticism requiresthat a graphic inscription be related to the sounds univocally. In this connection,we should be aware of an important thesis: once ideography and phoneticismhave been defined this way, a text can be both ideographic and phonetic orneither wholly ideographic nor wholly phonetic, unless the text must be voiced.

l8Y.N. Yolosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I.R.Titunik (New York: Seminar Press, 1973), p. 9.

253Phoneticism and History

Any ideological product is not only itself a part of a reality (natural or social), just asis any physical body, any instrument of production, or any product for consumption,it also, in contradiction to these other phenomena, reflects and refracts anotherreality outside itself. Everything ideological possesses meaning, it represents, de­picts, or stands for something lying outside itself. In other words, it is a sign.Without signs, there is no ideology. A physical body equals itself, so to speak; itdoes not signify anything but wholly coincides with its particular, given nature. Inthis case there is no question of ideology.

However, any physical body may be perceived as an image; for instance, theimage of natural inertia and necessity embodied in that particular thing. Any suchartistic-symbolic image to which a particular physical object gives rise is already anideological product. The physical object is converted into a sign. Without ceasing tobe a part of material reality, such an object, to some degree, reflects and refractsanother reality. 18

The so-called writing system, of course, is a system of such signs; it is impossi­ble to identify it at the level of physical body. The Chinese writing system, forinstance, cannot be characterized as such unless it is related to a specific ide-

As long as one regards a writing as visual, these two categories do not apply:painting is not phonetic, ideographic, or hi~roglyphicunless one is constrained tosee it as a verbal text; a writing, likewise, is not phonetic, ideographic, orhieroglyphic as long as it is seen solely visual. Such categories as phoneticismanq ideography are matters of ideology par excellence in the sense (not entirelyunrelated to Louis Althusser's rather well.known definition of ideology) that eachof them is a specific mode of the human being's imaginary and practical rela­tionship to the text and that one's investment of desire in the perception of texts isregulated by a set of rules. These categories are always related to the implicitimperatives under which a writing is read, recited, or merely seen and accordingto which the mode of investing desire for meaning in inscription is detennined.In other words, these categories designate the regimes of praxis according towhich one invests and practices one's relationship to the text and lives thatimaginary relationship. For this reason, it is pointless to talk about the ide­ographic nature of the system of Chinese characters or the phonetic nature ofJapanese kana or even of alphabetical signs, except in relation to the accompany­ing ideology. Already, through Mallarme's and Apollinaire's experiments, whichjeopardized its accompanying ideology, have we not been obliged to acknowl­edge that even the system of alphabetical signs could work against its phono­centric ideology? A writing system cannot be ideographic, phonetic, or hiero­glyphic in itself, independently of ideology. Any sign system has to be evaluatedin discourse.

V.N. Volosinov gives a precise account of this problematic:

Language, Body, and the Immediate252

19Zhang Longxi, "The Tao and the Logos: Notes on Derrida's critique of logocentrism," CriticalInquiry 11 (March 1985): 385-98.

ology. Therefore, the Chinese writing system is not innately ideographic: it isonly in relation to a regime that it is so. To see a writing system inde~ndentlyofits ideological nature is to refuse to see it as a system of signs. Furthennore, thereis a problem about how to identify the unity of the so-called Chinese writingsystem, not to mention the unities of Chinese language and tradition.

In pointing out a certain naivete in Jacques Derrida's understanding of non­Western writings in an article on the Chinese character Way, but without payingdue attention to Derrida's critique of conventional categories such as phonetic,ideographic, hieroglyphic, and so on, Zhang Longxi fails to take this ideologicalnature of signs into consideration and constructs his argument on the assumptionthat the Chinese language is nonphonetic and ideographic in itself. 19 But on whatground can one claim that Chinese writing is inherently nonphonetic and ide­ographic, to use "conventional categories"? As we have seen, Ogyu Sorai clear­ly understood Chinese writing to be phonetic, and he succeeded in treating it inthat mode, though not fully. He succeeded only partially not because Ogyu triedto use Chinese writing against its innately ideographic nature but because, as Iwill argue, no writing-or speech for that matter-can be made to confonncompletely to an ideology.

What is at stake here is the impossibility of a writing system that can beexhaustively contained in a regime of praxis. Because of its textual materiality,any inscription generates a surplus that betrays the economy of that regime: thereis always a gap between the text and what the imaginary relation to the textclaims it to be. It is this irreducibility of the text to the imaginary relation to it,differance in and of writing, that marks textuality as distiI)ct from discourse. Andtextuality always harbors the possibility of criticizing the ideology, no matterhow overwhelming and dominant that ideology may happen to be. In fact,phonocentrism's hostility to writing stems from the acknowledgment of thiscritical possibility. '

This is the reason why the dichotomy phoneticism/ideography did not arise asa constituting positivity in discourse preceding the seventeenth century. I do notmean that writings were not vocalized before then. Indeed, people tried to recitewritings such as the Buddhist sutras, and the vocalization of writings was acommon practice, but these attempts were regional and lacked coherence be­cause the primacy of voice and radical reduction to the voice were absent in thediscursive space at that time. Writings were linked to a different set of ideologies.

What is implied by this characterization of the pre-seventeenth-century discur­sive spaces is that an obsessive concern with separating the text to see from thetext to hear had not yet developed, and so visual inscriptions were constantlycontaminated by and merged with the aural. These discursive spaces weremarked by perpetual hybridization, but in the absence of a separatist insistenceon rigid partition between writing and speech, communication among different

Anteriority of Voice

255Phoneticism and History

20Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), scholar of Japanese classics, is often regarded as the mostimportant National Studies writer. A merchant's son born in Matsusaka in the province of Ise (nowMie prefecture), he studied Chinese classics and Japanese classical poetry with his mother. He beganworking in the paper trade but soon abandoned his career in business and went to Kyoto for medicalstudy. While preparing himself for his future medical career in Kyoto, he studied Chinese classicsunder the tutelage of Hori Katsunan (1688-1757) and began to write about Japanese classical poetry.

In the works of Kamo Mabuchi, Motoori Norinaga, and Fujitani Nariakira, wefind further development of this theme. 20 Like Kamo, Motoori elaborated on

modes of inscription was not perceived as abnonnal. In a sense, the world was·conceived as consisting of writings and· words, and things and words wereperceived as continuous-that is, they coexisted more or less on the same level.Once the dichotomies transparent/opaque, speech/writing, and phoneticism/ideography emerged, the division between verbal and nonverbal texts was newlyformed according to them. Before the eighteenth-century discursive space wasformed, the voice did not hold such primacy, such as in the eighteenth century.

Once these conditions had been set, the dichotomy phoneticism/ideographywas dramatized to such an extent that the Japanese language was circumscribedas the source of that which constantly deviated from ideography. At first, Japa­nese was demarcated in tenns of that which did not appear in the written Chinesetexts but which had, nonetheless, to be added in order to vocalize it. Wakun wasan essential apparatus by which to reveal the dimension of Japanese interferencein writings. Let us recall that wakun was a measure invented by those whohandled Chinese documents in places such as Buddhist monasteries in order totransform a Chinese writing, which was not recitable, into a fonn they couldvocalize. As I explained in the previous chapter, this transformation consists oftwo different operations, one being the reorganization of syntactical order (so­called kaeriten) and another the addition of Japanese particles and verbal end­ings. Very often the second operation was dropped because the annotators feltthey were adding to the Chinese original something that was not Chinese. Tradi­tionally, studies of te ni 0 ha (Japanese particles) were concerned with this secondoperation, for these grammatical units could not be found in Chinese books, butthey nevertheless made these texts recitable. Such traits were absent in the visualtext but evident in the aural one. As long as the dichotomies speech/writing andtransparent/opaque did not play the roles of constituting PQsitivities in the discur­sive space, Japanese particles were not problematical. But once those dichot­omies were erected as regularities according to which the wish to read, to know,was constituted, intellectual attention was naturally drawn to the ambiguity ofthose particles and verbal endings. In due course, many writers of the eighteenthcentury considered Japanese particles the identificatory feature of the Japaneselanguage.

Language, Body, and the Immediate254

these dichotomies, using them, it seems, to shape the motifs orienting his her­meneutic enterprise. He insisted that the more phonetically oriented language ofthe Kojiki made it a more authentic revelation of antiquity than the Nihonshoki:

One must consider ancient words to be most authentic and endeavor not to lose sightof the true reality of antiquity. . . . People of today generally value only the Ni­honshoki, and even the name of Kojiki is known by few, for Chinese studies are sofashionable and everybody wants to imitate the things of China.... The Kojiki issuperior to the Nihonshoki, for written words did not exist in antiquity, and whatpeople of antiquity actually spoke cannot be similar in style to the words of theNihonshoki. They must have spoken according to the words reported in the Kojiki. 21

The Kojiki has been widely accepted as one of the oldest and most importantwritten documents produced in Japan. Consequently, it has been endowed with aprivileged position in the vast storehouse of Japanese classics. As we are able toguess from Motoori's words, however, only in the late seventeenth century didthe Kojiki gain the prestige due to the first and most authentic historiographicalaccount of the empire of Japan. Even in the late eighteenth century, whenMotoori compiled Kojiki-den, the Kojiki was not widely read. Recorded refer­ences to this document during the Heian, Kamakura, and Muromachi periodsreveal that the Kojiki, though regarded as one of the ancient writings, was notaccorded the consistent reverence felt for the Nihonshoki, the Man'yoshu, andother documents. 22 It was never considered a sacred text.

257Phoneticism and History

Toward the end of the seventeenth century this attitude gradually changed.Once the Kojiki was printed, commentaries on it began to be published inincreasing numbers. Just as the choice of canonical books shifted from the FourBooks to the Six Classics in the Confucian camp, attention was drawn to theKojiki rather than the Nihonshoki, among National Studies scholars.

Notwithstanding the impressive amouflt of scholarly labor devoted to the Ko­jik;, the opacity of this text remained problematical: its readability was always anagging issue. Like Ogyu's kobunji gaku, which taught students to read andwrite obscure ancient Chinese, this effort to decipher archaic Japanese wasprompted by the cognition that one could envisage Japanese antiquity through itslanguage.

In a sense, all the preceding efforts to read the Kojiki culminated in the forty­four-volume Kojiki-den. In this monumental study, Motoori reduced the writingof the Kojiki to a series of phonetic kana. What he achieved is a transformation ofunreadable writing into a "readable" (meaning pronounceable) inscription of theoriginal voice, thereby subordinating writing to voice. In fact, one of the uses ofthe verb yomu (to read), which appears in Kojiki-den, designates the act ofpronunciation. Motoori "read" the Kojiki in this specific manner and therebyproduced a new text, which was also called the Kojiki and which was entirely inphonetic kana.

In order to accomplish this task, Motoori faced theoretical difficulties, manyof which originated in the heterogeneity of the writing system. His orientationtoward voice necessitated a rigorous distinction between phoneticism, and theideography he wished to eliminate. To add voice to the Kojiki, Motoori had totransform thousands of ideographs, all with many possible pronunciations. De­spite occasional directions for the pronunciation of certain ideographs, the rela­tionship between the aural and the written texts of the Kojiki seemed largelyarbitrary.

Wakun was one possible way of determining this relationship, but Motoorirejected it because it would only have enhanced the confusion between the visualand aural texts. In addition, as we have discussed with Ogyu's kiyo no gaku,annotations that would reorganize the linear order of words on a page would notpermit the kind of reading Motoori desired, in which comprehensibility would bebased on pronounceability. Motoori held it to be an irrefutable principle that itwas the linearity of oral verbalization that produced immediate comprehen­sibility. Wakun violates this principle and spatializes the text, thereby disruptingthe linear unity of its oral presentation. The dominance of voice in the Kojiki-denis meant to eliminate the spatializing factors that always serve to disseminate thesupposed singular unity of voice. As a matter of fact, the entire project of theKojiki-den is dictated by this obsessive concern for univocity and phoneticism.

But why should the singularity of voice have to be secured at all costs? To posethis question is to concern ourselves with historicity in textual production, not thechronological history in which a text is supposedly located but the historical time

Language, Body, and the Immediate256

Motoori returned to Matsusaka in 1757 to start practicing medicine, and he also began to hold classeson Japanese classical literature, including the Tale ofGenji, the Man'yoshu, and the Kokinshu. Later,primarily under the influence of Kamo Mabuchi, he turned to the Kojiki. For thirty-four years, from1764, he devoted himself to the study of antiquity in order to complete the forty-four volumes of theKojiki-den, perhaps the most important book in the entire National Studies movement during theTokugawa period. His other major works include Ashiwara obune, Tamakushige, Shibun yoryo. andTamakatsuma.

Fujitani Nariakira (1738-1779), literary theorist and grammarian, was born in Kyoto, youngerbrother of the Confucian and grammarian Minagawa Kien (1734-1807), and was adopted into theFujitani family. He developed a new morphological theory of classical poetry, which was expandedby his son Fujitani Mitsue (1768-1823). His most famous works are the Kazashi-sho and the Ayui­shoo

21Motoori Norinaga, Kojiki-den in Motoori Norinaga zenshu, (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1968)9:3-6. The Nihonshoki (Chronicle of Japan) is the oldest official history of Japan, covering themythical age of the gods up to the reign of Empress Jito (686-697). A later imperial historiographyShoku nihongi (797) says that the Nihonshoki was completed on July 1, 720. The Shoku nihongi alsorecounts that Prince Tonen, a son of Emperor Temmu, was ordered to compile the Nihonshoki andthat upon its completion he presented thirty volumes plUs one volume of genealogical charts (which ismissing today). Of the thirty volumes in the Nihonshoki. the first and second deal with mythicaltimes, and volumes 3 to 30 depict events from the reign of Emperor Jimmu until that of lito inchronological order. Unlike the earlier Kojiki, Nihonshoki contains quotations from the Chinese (Weizhi) and Korean ( Paekche ki, Paekche pon'gi, and Paeckche sinch'an) historiographies. Its style alsodiffers from that of the Kojiki, as does its stress on recent events as opposed to the detailed treatmentof myths in the Kojiki.

22See Hisamatsu Sen'ichi, Kojiki kenkyu-shi josetsu, in Kojiki Taisei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Heibonsha,1962), pp. 1-24.

23Motoori Norinaga, Kojiki-den 9:33.

Denial of Transcendent Value

Within the interpretative scheme of Motoori Norinaga, it is evident that theposteriority of voice in the reading act has to be suppressed and concealed. For

259Phoneticism and History

should writing precede its aural reading, it would be impossible to claim that thevoice he ascribes to the writing, through ,strenuous efforts involving extensiveresearch on ancient etymology, syntax, phonetics, and mythology, was actuallythe one for which the written version of the Kojiki was a provisional substitute.However obvious the posteriority of voice may have been, the anteriority ofvoice had to be maintained and enforced so as to secure the legitimacy of hisstudies. It would have been meaningless to pursue such a project as the Kojiki­den but for the premise that the voice added to the writing could be and had to bethe original voice preceding the writing itself. In other words, Motoori believedthat by fonnulating a systematic way to ascribe voice to the Kojiki he couldovercome the historical time separating the written presence of the Kojiki in hiscontemporary world from antiquity, when the original voice was uttered.

Thus, Motoori's hermeneutics is twofold. It pretends to seek a mimetic corre­spondence between the original voice to be transcribed in the document and thereader's voice generated by the reading of it. Yet from the outset it acknowledgesthat it is utterly impossible to secure such a correspondence. What is at stake inhis hermeneutics is not whether the original voice can in fact be reached but howsuch a problematic of historical distance can be annihilated. By dealing thema­tically with the problems of historicity, Motoori sought the way to escape fromhistorical time and move to the issue of belief in ancient Japan, which was"beyond history."

Here is a strange scheme in which the temporal posteriority of voice is re­versed to anteriority. Reading, accordingly, is not an innocent act but full ofpolitical implication, a strategic move by which to return to the original time, thevirginity present at the founding of Japan. Thus, historical time is redefined asthat which causes this separation of the anterior and the posterior voices, leavingMotoori to find a specific form of reading by which to overcome this estrange­ment or separation, to overcome historical time.

It is not difficult to explain the role writing plays in this scheme. The writtentext of Kojiki is the agent that causes the separation. That is to say, the presenceof writing as an inscription of the original voice distances the readership of theeighteenth century from antiquity and generates both a barrier and a mediationbetween the readership and the original voice. Writing prevents voice from beingimmediately present to the readership: the original voice cannot be present toreaders because it has to be mediated by writing. Writing puts both spatial andtemporal distance between voice and reader in an effect similar to the distancingand separating effect of representational language which Ogyu sensed. On theother hand, the voice would have been lost irredeemably had its trace not beensecured and fixed in writing. Had ancient writing not been preserved, the speechof ancient Japan could not have been transmitted to the readers of the eighteenthcentury. Writing, therefore, occupied an extremely ambiguous position in thediscours~ of Motoori Norinaga and in eighteenth-century discourse in general.

From this apprehension of historical time derives the exclusive prestige of the

Language, Body, and the Immediate258

Since letters are provisional substitutes adopted at a later time [for spoken words],what kind of significance can there ever be in deeply inquiring into them? Theessence of learning [monomanabi] should consist in examining ancient words manytimes over, so as to get well ;lcquainted with the ancient use of language [inishie notebun, literally, the hand's gesture of antiquity], for only through the way she speaks[monoii no sarna] can we possibly guess the personality and the attitude [kokorobae]of the speaker. 23

being generated within textuality. This notion of a history immanent in textualproduction provides us with an insight into Ogyu's conception of entry into aninterior that belongs to the historical past. At issue are the notion of historicaltime within textual production and the significance of the speech/writing dichot­omy in this regard.

At the level of reading, whereby we act upon an existing writing, the voice isundeniably posterior to the material existence of the writing itself. First there is awriting and then the reader adds his or her voice to it in reading it. If a writing ismultivocal, as the Kojiki is, then it is always possible to ascribe more thalt onevoice to it. No doubt in the reading act, as Motoori understood it, the addition ofvoice to writing has to be the return to the original voice of which the writing is atranscription:

Motoori asserted that letters were mere substitutes for spoken words, and hedirected his inquiry accordingly. He used this conception of writing as a provi­sional substitute for speech to screen out from the wide variety of ancient docu­ments those legitimate ones through which he believed he could envisage 'thespoken language of antiquity. His denunciation of the Nihonshoki was certainlyrelated to this method of evaluating ancient documents. Those that preservedancient pronunciation he considered authentic. Of course, all the ancient writingsavailable in the eighteenth century were in Chinese ideographs, simply becausethese were the only method of writing then available. Yet although many of themalso adhered to Chinese syntax, some merely recorded the sounds of actualspeech. Motoori argued that the author of the Nihonshoki, because he followedChinese syntax, viewed the historical reality of Japan from the Chinese perspec­tive. On the other hand, Motoori saw the Kojiki as an effort to preserve thespoken language of ancient Japan, which was rapidly disappearing under theincreasing influence of continental civilization.

24Corresponding to this Japanese pronunciation "kotowari" is, indeed, a Chinese character Iiwhich in the context of Song rationalism can be translated as "reason" or "principle." Here I renderthis term "transcendent meanings," with an emphasis on the use of "transcendent" as distinct from"transcendentaL" Often Motoori's critique of karagokoro comes close to the Kantian or Husserliancritique of the transcendent in transcendental analysis, though.

25Motoori Norinaga, Kojiki-den. 9:33.

Whereas books of foreign lands such as those dogmatic [or didactic (oshiegoto)]Confucian and Buddhist treatises are essentially concerned solely with transcendentmeanings [kotowari] ,24 not with actual words, the ancient writings of the Great Land[Japan] never seek to refute dogmas or the reason for things [mono no kotowari]:these writings simply inscribe ancient words and have no hidden intention or reasonunder the surface of words. 25

Kojiki. The assessment that it is the oldest existing Japanese document written inJapanese rather than Chinese makes it into a watershed between (\ pure andhomogeneous realm and one already contaminated by writing. Some NationalStudies scholars adopted an interpretative scheme that allowed them to projectthe voice-writing-reading sequence onto a historical axis. In conceiving theprocess of understanding a writing in terms of the inscription of voice and therecovery of voice from the inscription, they disqualified certain other ways toread. And this is the point where Motoori '8 condemnation of the karagokorJ}, theChinese mind-a pejorative he often used to refute philosophical naivete incertain idealisms-offers theoretical significance:

261Phoneticism and History

It is in this connection that I ought to examine the significance of the dichoto­my speeCh/writing, again. In the scope of this dichotomy writing was seen as amode that allows for the genesis of "'transcendent" universality. According toMotoori, the transcendence of meaning is possible only when an inscription

Historical Time as Writing

occasion and at a specific historical motnent, but the meaning as it is signified isnot limited to a specific occasion. Its m~aningfulness lies in the modality inwhich it is constituted, and therefore, it should be valid anywhere at any time: themeaning as it is grasped in this modality constitutes itself as a universal. But thisconception does not imply that it is factually valid anywhere at any time, at anyhistorical moment. It is' not a general universal. Its atemporality and ahistor­icality simply suggest that it is impossible to ascribe the temporal and historicaldeterminations to its universality, just as it is utterly irrelevant to ask when andwhere about the validity of a mathematical equation. Therefore, it is supposedthat the meaning transcends the historical specifications that necessarily accom­pany the occasion of its utterance: if the utterance infonns us of a truth, then thistruth should be a universal one. Nevertheless, in the "transcendent" the irre­ducibility of universality to historical and temporal specifications is confusedwith the omnipresence of its factual validity at every historical moment. Thissubstitution of its omnipresence for the irreducibility of universality to spatiotem­poral topoi was most evident in rationalism, as Ito clearly saw, and is stilldetectable in present-day humanistic universalism: both stem from this fetishisticconfusion.

In his reading of the Kojiki Motoori rejected the inclusion of this "transcen­dent" meaning; any truth contained in the text of the Kojiki must by all means beof the historical kind, provided that "historical" means adherence to the enuncia­tion, to the original and historically specific scene of utterance. He insisted thatthe Kojiki never related a truth that could be valid in any time and any place, andhe ascribed the claim of "transcendent" universality to human hubris or tokaragokoro, Chinese mind. He himself sought to uncover the dimension of thewords by suspending all fetishistic temptations to read eternal truth into the text.He would have maintained that there is no such thing as the true meaning of atext. Yet he would have hastened to add that there is nonetheless the true voice ofthat text.

In this specific mode of reading, Motoori aspired to transform a set of sig­nifiers into another set of signifiers without involving a transcendent meaning, totransform a writing as a set of signifiers into voice, which is also a set ofsignifiers. Whether or not he could do so without encountering the transcendentmeaning is another question yet to be examined, but unquestionably his the­oretical orientation kept his henneneutic enterprise intact.

Language, Body, and the Immediate260

Here, the "word" is related to a text's surface, a set of signifiers, and is not seenas the signified that the surface denotes. By introducing a new definition of"word," Motoori simultaneously points out a level of signification that, in prin­ciple, precedes all other interpretations and commentary. All that an unbiasedand sincere reading could possibly disclose, he declares, is already manifest atthe level of signifiers thus identified. The words should, in this sense, suggest afield of apriority, whereas the intention or reason that a reader tends to postulatebehind a text is a posteriori, a simulacrum. He insists on rigorous observation oflogical precedence, and insofar as intention and reason are posterior to "words,"they must be reduced and put into parentheses. Readers are urged to apply acertain phenomenological epoche in reading the Kojiki. We must remember,however, that these words, so privileged and sanctified, are not written down onpaper or fixed in durable substance: they are not the letters.

In contrast to words, what Motoori calls "reason for things" or "intention"designates the presence of meaning in the modality of transcendent necessity. By"transcendent," I mean the way in which the signification of an utterance isconfused with the constancy of a physical object and is taken as ideally identicalto itself independently of the occasion of its instance of discourse. Meaning hereappears atemporal and, hence, ahistorical. Indeed, the utterance that signifies ithas to be produced or executed by some individual or individuals on a specific

denotes meaning without the mediation of voice. Insofar as writing is a faithfulreflection of words actually voiced, it should not lead to an ahistori«al, gener­alized truth. There are cases, however, in which writing does not correspond to adefinite series of sounds, and many different series of sounds can equally beascribed to it. In such cases of multivocity, the unity of the grapheme or theideograph cannot be related to a phonetic unit in linear correspondence. A readerwho tries to avert multivocity, Motoori concludes, must resort to the premise thatthe writing contains a unified meaning regardless of the variety of possiblepronunciations attributed to it. In other words, Utranscendent" meaning resultswhen silence is forced on enunciation. The kind of reading that relies on thetranscendence of meaning is created and necessitated in order to overcome theproblems posed by multivocity. Therefore, if multivocity could be eliminated,the silent reading bearing transcendent meaning could also be avoided.

Since the reading act is conceived of as a transformation of visual signs intooral/aural signs, the central issue in Motoori's hermeneutic project is concernedwith methods by which to eliminate those aspects of the writing which resistreduction to voice, that is, which resist the exhaustive reduction to the regime ofphonocentric ideology. Thus, Motoori opposed any reading of the Kojiki inwhich its meaning was arrived at without provoking voice, and he saw in writingitself the cause of dissemination that necessitated the transcendence of meaningand made the return to the original, singular voice impossible.

For instance, many paragraphs in the Kojiki are written in kanbun. Although itwas customary to read these in yomikudashi (a Chinese document rewritten inJapanese with wakun), Motoori refused to do so, even though it was impossibleto conform such sentences to Japanese pronunciation in any other way. Ratherthan use wakun, he rewrote or recomposed them in what he judged to be theauthentic Japanese of antiquity and in so doing opened a path to the Kojiki as aspoken text. Just as Ogyu consistently rejected the Japanese way of readingChinese and postulated a scheme of reading in which translation was construedas a symmetrical procedure, so Motoori executed the same kind of translation ofthese Chinese sentences in the Kojiki. It must be admitted that Motoori's enter­prise is faithful to the prerequisites of the discursive space, and within that spaceit is justifiable to claim, as he in fact did, that his translated version preemptedwhat his contemporaries knew as the text of the Kojiki.

Probably all these efforts to vocalize the Kojiki amounted to the problem of theapprehension of the verbal, an apprehension in which a written text is thought ofprimarily as a lost voice. In the final analysis, the entire project of his Kojiki-dencan be summarized as an attempt to reclaim the text from the realm of seeing andrestore it to the realm of speaking/hearing. In many respects, this attempt coin­cides with the shift from representational language, where distance is inevitable(seeing also requires distance), to practice.

Furthermore, it is noteworthy that this shift also indicates the transfer of thefocus of attention from one level of language to another, that is, from the 26Kamo Mabuchi, Shoi. in Nihon shiso taike; 39:444.

Poetic versus Theoretical

263Phoneticism and History

An implicit consensus shared by many writers, including Motoori and FujitaniNariakira, is that Chinese books are theoretical. The Chinese text was thought of

enunciated to the enunciation and from signified to signifier. We should be awarethat the differentiation signifier/signified cannot be substantiated. It is a relativedifferentiation: how the signified is determined depends on how the signifier isidentified. Although Motoori rejected "transcendent" meanings, he still reliedon· the meaning of sentences in order to translate ancient texts. In addition, thisregression from the signified to the signifier seems to imply a topos beyond thesignifier, a topos anterior to the very division of signifier from signified, adivision that is the sign. Thus, this shift from seeing to speaking/hearing includesnot only the refusal of distance inherent in vision but also a strong impulsetoward the annihilation of separation between signifier and signified. The shift isrepeatedly displaced, but through displacement it fonos a series of relays: seeing~ speaking/hearing-signified ---+ signifier-sign ---+ "before the sign"-sig­nification ~ signifiance-enunciated ---+ enunciation. What is at issue here ishow Motoori ultimately identifies the locus where his claim to immediacy isjustified. In this sense, practice and the body's adherence to the performativesituation are decisive in that they circumscribe an area of experience, in the senseof Erlebnis, where distance and therefore disparity between speech and its mean­ing are supposedly absent.

For this reason, to the writers of the eighteenth century history meant dis­semination caused by writing. Historical time was conceived of as a process inwhich the primordial unity of the original utterance was disseminated and dis­sected. Thus, written inscription was made to represent the image of estrange­ment in general. Motoori and others appealed to the dichotomy phonet­icism/ideography to dramatize their notion of historical time. As Kamo noted,"People of later times had forgotten the original words; so they tried to under­stand texts according to the characters used. Although the shapes of charactershave been persistent [through history], they cannot reflect the original reality."26Here, too, the historical distance separating the present from the past is translatedinto the difference of graphic images from voice. Consequently, transcendinghistorical distance is equated to overcoming ideography. Kamo insists that thephonetic mode is the only authentic mode for the writing system as if phoneticsigns were utterly free of the negative traits he and Motoori and others attributedto writing in general. We are witnessing the displacement of the oppositionspeech/writing by the opposition phoneticism/ideography. Since ideography

.poses a rupture between speech as a mode of practice and the content of speech,Motoori argues, Chinese ideographs are inferior to Japanese kana.

Language, Body, and the Immediate262

Translation into colloquialism was not primarily a means by which to understandancient words. It was rather a henneneutic method by which to explicate what hadalready been comprehended. Prior to this sort of explication, however, there must be

270f course, there was no national language equivalent to today's hyojun kogo (standard spokenJapanese, or NHK Japanese). Motoori translated the Kokinshu into a dialect probably unintelligible toJapanese living in other remote regions. State intervention in everyday culture since the Meiji periodis just astounding-and probably an inescapable aspect of the modem nation-state-and it has beenchanging the cultural features of Japan fundamentally. We must constantly remind ourselves that whatnow seems "natural" is a very recent historical construct. "Always historicize!"

as a vehicle by which the meaning was conveyed beyond historical time, and theChinese ideographs were regarded as independent graphic units that remainedidentical throughout history. Evidently these Japanese theorists attributed ide­ational constancy to Chinese ideographs. I have claimed that Motoori's rejectionof the "transcendent" meaning originated from this assumption. A corollary <Vasthe view that Chinese texts could represent theories in the modality of necessitybut, for that very reason, could not describe the living present, which is by naturetemporary and actual. Thus linguistic studies, which ascribed the overwhelmingsense of estrangement to Chinese ideographs, were dominated by the search for alanguage that could capture the troth of the lived, actual, temporary moment.However culturally and historically limited the present moment might be, thelinguists emphasized that its actuality should be as valid as the universal truthpresumably inherent in the canonical books of the Central Kingdom. Likewise,for Japanese classics to hold any authenticity at all, they must be decoded in themidst of the present moment, so that the temporary truth embodied in them couldbe made present with original intensity. Like Ogyu, Motoori and Fujitani tried tomake classics present and immediate to contemporary readers by translatingthem into colloquialisms-what Ogyu called rigen, the language of villagers.Translation became a discursive device by which to hint at the intense intimacyand emotiveness in the original, which they believed theoretical language wasincapable of rendering.

In Kokinshu t6kagami, Motoori translated poems of the Kokinshu into a muchmore colloquial and dialectical style than what has been called kogobun (state­controlled standard colloquial style) in modem Japan. 27 His attempt was a reac­tion to the tie between what was written and what was not written. The autonomyof a written text was no longer accepted: it had to be secondary, a temporarysubstitute. Only by recovering the lost voice and the bodily action that must haveaccompanied it at the originary scene of its enunciation could a text be resur­rected in its original plenitude; a text had to be integrated into the relevant whole,so that it might speak with its original voice.

A similar operation is performed in Fujitani's linguistic studies. In Ayuisho,for example, he extensively employs translation as a linguistic method. Transla­tion was not merely a pedagogical means to help students. As Tokieda Motokinoted of the linguistic studies of Tokugawa Japan:

265Phoneticism and History

an experiential comprehension; not only a conceptual and intellectual understandingbut also a concrete comprehension based up'On one's own experience was required.Translation into colloquialism did not mean a mechanical replacing of ancient wordswith their contemporary ones but rather an attitude through which linguists tried to~ really involved in the depth of words. 28

Involvement facilitated by practice was placed at the center of linguistic stud­ies. Fujitani Nariakira, like many grammarians of his time, recognized thisnucleus of linguistic studies since the essential feature of language was thought tomanifest itself in colloquialism and the linguistic consciousness attached to it. Incolloquialism as in everyday practice, it was thought, one could take whatTokieda called the participational stance, an attitude in which one involvedoneself in verbal performance as a speaker or listener and in which an utterancewas perceived as part of one's lived experience. 29 This claim presupposes thatthe observation of verbal phenomenon to be acquired in the observational stanceis necessarily preceded by a concrete experience one gains in the participationalstance. Translation into colloquialism is a measure adopted to recover or, in myopinion, to reflectively and retrospectively reconstitute the original experiencethat supposedly had once been lived in the participational stance. In the observa­tional stance, an utterance is split into many morphological categories and con­strued in its syntactical functions; yet language thus treated is no longer alive orevocative of the intensity of the original experience. By reliving the intensity ofthe original, Fujitani wanted to relate his linguistic analysis to the immediacy andintimacy with which language was originally used and to avoid the disparitybetween the lived experience and the utterance which characterized the observa­tional stance. What Tokieda called involvement in "the depth of words" wasapparently sought as a way to relive the verbal experience of the past.

Interestingly enough, it is through the theme of lived experience that prose andpoetry were distinguished. The criterion was not primarily the style or content ofthe verbal presentation but whether a verbal work speaks in the representationalmode. When the mode of expression was judged to be analytical, suggesting thedetachment of the agent from the perfonnative situation, it was usually consid­ered theoretical prose and correspondingly devalued, as happened in the shiftfrom the Four Books to the Six Classics in Ogyu's philosophical enterprise. Sinceintimacy and emotion were thought to be best conveyed in poems, poetry came

,to be seen as the most privileged genre. Ogyu's emphasis on poetry in kobunji::gaku and his disciples' extensive practice in the imitation of Chinese poetry were'not unrelated to the general shift in the choice of cannonical books. In the

National Studies, the differentiation Chinese mind/Japanese mind was related to

28Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogakushi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1940), p. 101.29For the exposition of this term and its pair lenn, "observational stance," refer to Tokieda's

Kokugogaku genron (Tokyo: Iwanami Sholen, 1941), pp. 17-38. These terms in Japanese arerespectively shutaiteki-tachiba and kansatsuteki-tachiba. So, the participational stance could also berendered "shutai stance."

Language, Body, and the Immediate264

Heterogeneity of a Language

another differentiation: theoretical/poetic. Motoori rejected all the Chinese booksexcept Shi jing (the book of odes), and Fujitani titled his treatises on languageSho, which was said to mean commentaries on poetry. The concept of poetry thusgained a special political function according to which various intellectual ac­tivities were evaluated. In the discursive space of the eighteenth century, poetrybecame a privileged topic in reference to which writers were able to define theirown language unity and, consequently, their own cultural identity. By contrastingpoetic to representational language, they further articulated the image of theinterior and ascribed to it another predicate: Japanese. As a matter of fact, theinterior thus defined meant for Fujitani as well as Motoori an area of transparentlanguage where the so-called native speakers are completely at home, an area oflanguage comparable to the "unbroken hammer.'"

The very construction that made it possible to differentiate the Chinese fromthe Japanese mind presented an obstacle in idealizing the language of Japan. HereI should consider the radical nature of the denunciation of the Japanese way ofreading Chinese. First, linguists were attacking a specific mode of reading theChinese text. Yet, Chinese texts reorganized by wakun represented the generalstructure of current language use. Since the introduction of the Chinese writingsystem, the so-called Japanese language had so extensively assimilated Chineseelements that to reject wakun as an amalgam of two different languages was ofnecessity to abandon all the Japanese writings then available. Both phoneticsmand ideography had been integrated into the very structure of Japanese, and theelimination of ideographic elements, if such a thing were even possible, wouldhave ruined the whole writing system. By the eighteenth century, this coexistenceof two inscriptional principles had penetrated the language right down to thephonetic level. Even colloquialism could not escape from what Kamo calledChinese contamination. The style almost intentionally adopted in both Kamo'sand Motoori's works is testimony to the desperation of their attempt to render thelanguage transparent by excluding syllables of Chinese origin: on. Obviously thetask was doomed to faiL Paradoxically, the distinctive trait of the Japaneselanguage is its capacity to absorb foreign elements so thoroughly as to obliteratethe distinction between itself and Chinese; heterogeneity-the absence of acoherent writing system and the copresence of different inscriptional prin­ciples-defined the identity of the Japanese language. Of course, every writingsystem is in one way or another 44 contaminated" by heterogeneity just as Japa­nese has been. Every language originates essentially as a creole. A purely pho­netic writing system is no doubt an irresponsible political fancy not only becauseno such writing system actually exists but also because such a system simplywould not work. We must caution ourselves against the commonsensical notion

267Phoneticism and History

Studies of syntax during the period disclose a similar fonnation of the identi­cal. Realizing that a Chinese written text had to be transfonned to be pronoun-

30Cf. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri C. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1976).

Syntax: Shi and Ji

that writings systems like the Japanese are abnormal; as a matter of fact, theJapanese system is perhaps a very accurate representation of the nature of writingitself. In this regard, homogeneity-the exclusion of ideography and the absenceof dissemination-to which the National Studies aspired, went against the verygrain of language in general and of Japanese cultural fonnations in particular.The Japanese language was and still is, despite constant state intervention to makeit homogeneous, a disseminated and decomposed language par excellence.3o

As I have repeatedly stressed, the unity of the Japanese language is neithergiven· nor self-e,:ident. One can hardly imagine that those in the region nowcalled Japan had any coherent notion of their own national language prior to theseventeenth century. The concept of a national language, which now seems self­explanatory, would have been incomprehensible. At most, people may have hada vague notion of foreign languages, but the distinction was not sharp enough topennit a definitive demarcation. Surely, there was some cognition of differences,but the resemblances between Japanese dialects did not converge into the identi­cal.

As is always the case, the identity of one's own language and culture, orethnos, has to be posited diacritically and discursively. Only when a givendiscursive space accommodates the discursive apparatus by which to acknowl­edge the alienness of foreign languages and to appropriate it into the economy ofthe dominant discourse (of course, this means the elimination of the otherness ofthe Other, since this otherness is exactly what cannot be appropriated), can onepossibly identify the identity of one's own. The constitution of the identical,therefore, never precedes the recognition of the other, and since the identical isposterior to the other logically as well as temporally, the definition of the identi­cal varies as the other is perceived differently. This was the case with eighteenth­century discourse on Japan.

All the dichotomies-speech/writing, Japanese mind/Chinese mind, and pho­neticismlideography-functioned as constituting positivities in tenns of whichthe other was diacritically posited and appropriated. I must note in this instancethat the identical was not merely the Japanese and their culture: the identical wasposited in the historical past of China or Japan. By circumscribing the interior inantiquity linguists postulated the identical outside the present society of theeighteenth century. The identical was, in fact, a utopia, or arche just as it isalways an Idea.

Language, Body, and the Immediate266

3lKaibara Ekken (1630-1714) was a Confucian scholar, born into the family of a retainer of theFukuoka domain (now in Fukuoka prefecture). He served the domaniallord but was forced to leavehis feudal service. Then he traveled to Nagasaki to study medicine and botany. His stipend wasrestored by the new domanial lord. who sent him to study in Kyoto, where his teachers wereKinoshita Jun' an (1621-98), Confucian scholar, and Mukai Gensho (1609-77), a scholar of medici­nal herbs. At first he was a follower of Song Confucianism, but in his later years he deviated fromZhu Xi's philosophy to claim the monism of qi. The scope of his scholarship encompassed history,medicine, education, and others. Among his major works are Yamato honzo (Japanese medicalherbs), Daigiroku (The records of great doubt), Yojokun (For health diet), and Onna daigaku (Thegreat learning for women).

ceable, eighteenth-century grammarians saw the essential difference' betweenJapanese and'Chinese in this very fact that Chinese writing could not be pro­nounced in Japanese unless it was reorganized and supplemented with non­Chinese particles and verbal endings. This trait had already been observed in tbeHeian period, but not until the eighteenth century was it fully explored. TheJapaneseness of the Japanese language was first recognized as that which wasabsent in Chinese. Therefore, the primary determination of the Japanese lan­guage was that its grammatical construction was different from and could not beexplained by Chinese.

One of the issues that distinguished eighteenth-century language studies fromearlier ones was the way in which morphological units, particularly verbs andparticles, were analyzed. Both Motoori and Fujitani inherited some concepts andmethods from their predecessors but rejected the atomistic approach to languagestructure which characterized Kaibara Ekken's Nippon shakumei, for instance.31Such studies were based on the assumption that words were composed of small­er, more basic units and that the proper understanding of words could be facili­tated by understanding the original meanings of these units. This etymologicalatomism also implied that the historical change of words could be measured interms of the deviation of the current meaning from the original meaning of thebasic units. More complicated morphological units, such as phrase, could not beanalyzed by this method; they were viewed as sums of the meanings of words.This linguistic atomism was mainly concerned with nouns, not verbs, becauseimmobile and fixable units were considered the most significant aspect of lan­guage. Grammatical rules by which units were syntactically combined remainedoutside the scope of inquiry.

Motoori's and Fujitani's language studies made a sharp contiast to Kaibara's.No longer was analysis of the noun central to linguistics. Fujitani saw the noun asmerely a substantive to which adverbials, adjectivals, particles, and verbs wereattached. He argued that linguistic activity occurred only when a noun wascombined with nonnominal units: it was no longer a stable and fixable unit inwhich meaning was encapsulated. Fujitani likened a noun to the immobile part ofthe human body, the thorax. Signification could occur only when this immobilepart was provided with legs, hat, and clothes and started to walk. His simile wasfar-reaching.

First, Fujitani perceived that language decomposed into fixable elements

32Motoori Norinaga. Tamakatsuma, in Nihon shiso taikei 40:241.33Ibid.

269Phoneticism and History

It may sound reasonable that you must first inquire into the core of a thing [moto]and, only after this one should talk of its tip [sue]. This approach does not work witheverything, however. In some cases, you should start with the tip and later try toinquire. into the core. Usually it is difficult to grasp the original meaning of anancient word. What you regard as the original meaning is often not right, and yourguess in most cases fails to get the correct answer. Therefore, in studies of language,the search for the original meaning must be put aside. Instead, you should concen­trate on knowing how certain words were used, even if you have no knowledge oftheir original meaning.33

"Core" normally designates substance, and "tip" its derivative, but here I mightas well read these words as "fixed center" and ··flexible periphery." Then it willbe obvious that the opposition core/tip corresponds to a grammatical oppositionnominal/nonnominal. Motoori's emphasis on the usage of words rather than theirmeaning suggests the shift of attention from isolated grammatical units towardrules governing the combination of these units. Moreover, syntax is closelyassociated with the mode of practice. This association explains why Motoori sooften talked about kotodama (spirit of language, 8-3) in reference to kakarimusubi (8-4), a traditional term denoting syntactical rules that govern the rela­tionship between the conjugation of a verb, an adjectival or an adverbial, andparticles located in the preposition. Possibly the obsolescence of these rules bythe eighteenth century encouraged Motoori to attribute the spirit of language tothis grammatical trait of old Japanese.

Motoori believed these rules demonstrated that the spirit of language did notreside in words: the mystery of language was posited not in morphological unitsthemselves but in the syntagm, which could not be reduced to the function ofisolated words. The grammatical opposition nominallnonnominal was analogous

ceases to work as language. Just as a dissected body is not a human being, so adecomposed utterance cannot be an occasion for signification. Second, languagecan best be understood in the mode of movement; that is, language is primarily atemporary phenomenon that by nature resists fixation and etemalization. Heretoo, we can recognize the superiority Fujitani accorded to voice over the graphicinscription, but voice in this instance must mean bodily practice, a movementand a living present. Motoori goes even farther. "Generally speaking," he wrote,"you must make the intention of ancient people's usage of the word evidentrather than seek for its original meaning. Once you understand the intention of itsuse, you can do without understanding the original meaning."32 Not only doeshe denounce constructivism based on etymological atomism; he locates the sig­nificative function of language at the level of how a word is used syntactically.Motoori continues:

Language. Body~ and the Immediate268

to that between what could be written in Chinese ideographs and what could notbe. Although the nominal is not identical with what can be written in Chineseideographs since the nominal could also be in phonetic kana, grammarians of theeighteenth century believed they had discovered the way to explicate the funda­mental structure of Japanese syntax by handling these similar oppositions: ..

speech/writingpractice/theory

poetic!representationalJapanese mind/Chinese mind

phoneticism/ideographynonnominal/nominal

34} say "utterance" rather than "sentence" for the reason I have already mentioned, namely, that Icannot find any discursive positivity equivalent to the sentence in eighteenth-century discourse onlanguage. No doubt, an institution called the sentence belongs to a historically and culturally specificdiscursive formation and carries with it restrictive assumptions about subjectivity which are by nomeans self-evident. Nonetheless, for the sake of simplicity, } have used and will use this term bywhich I mean a grammatical unit larger than a phrase and smaller than, say, a paragraph. Of course,such concepts as sentence, syntax, subject, and judgment have played important roles in modemEuropean thought. It is absolutely necessary to delineate the historical scope of these constitutingpositivities and to deconstruct them. See Julia Kristeva, "Objet ou complement," in Polylogue (Paris:Seuil, 1977), pp. 225-62.

271Phoneticism and History

jectification. Yet, although they flatly denied the instrumental view of language,the instrumental or rhetorical character of tl;leir studies is clear: their knowledgehad to be completely instrumental. Like Ogyu's methods, their studies wereprimarily a vehicle by which a student was to acquire immediate comprehensionof t~e whole from which texts were produced; once this immediate comprehen­sion was achieved, detailed and scholastic knowledge of language should be castaside. What can be characterized as the intellectual tendency to seek encyclo­pedic knowledge about archaic cultures, on the one hand, and the antiintellectualtendency toward instantaneous actualization of the enunciation, on the other,were mutually complementary in many language studies of the eighteenth cen­tury. This analysis of language, so widely prevalent then, was destined to servepoetics, whose theme was, indeed, how to read, write in the fashion of, andrelive ancient poetry.

Underlying all these intellectual pursuits is an acute sense of the incomplete­ness of written texts. The thesis that a written text cannot be understood in itselfand has to be supplemented led to an assumption concerning the relationshipbetween what is inscribable and what is not. But as I have maintained from theoutset, voice as well as writing and drawing is inscriptive, speech is incomplete,another form of inscription. For the time being, however, let us concern our­selves with the aSPects of language in which eighteenth-century theorists locatedthis notion of incompleteness so as to identify the Japaneseness as the outside ofthe writing.

First, Japanese particles and conjugational suffixes were added to the originalChinese writing to enable vocalization. The Japanese language was therebyidentified with what was absent on the surface of the Chinese text, yet necessaryfor vocalization. This pairing of absence and presence extended to the analysis ofthe basic structure of the Japanese language in tenus of the opposition nomi­nallnonnominal. At this stage, the text's outside was appropriated into a gram­matical opposition and translated into a positivity in the discourse, thereby avert­ing more radical and fundamental problems about the outside. Needless to say,neither the question whether the text's outside can be posited as an identifiableobject nor the less specific issue of general text was posited straightforwardly.

Second, the outside of a text was ontologized in tenus of the speech/writingdichotomy. Here, the issue was no longer purely grammatical but inevitablyinvolved another problem concerning the relationship between verbal and non­verbal texts. It had been postulated that SPeech is simultaneously verbal andnonverbal but that writing does not have such transformability. Speech could alsobe a corporeal act taking place in the midst of a Performative situation. Incontrast, writing was seen as a form of verbal text that had been detached fromsuch a situation. Thus, compared to writing, which is marked by its physicallimits and thus separated from its outside, speech has no outside, no extratextualreality, because the speech is such an extratexual reality in its apophantic aspect.I repeat that the characterization of speech as the plenitude of verbalization andof writing as the absence of verbalization is extremely dubious. Nevertheless, I

Language, Body, and the Immediate

The predominant principle in the study of syntax was fonuulated in terms offixable grammatical units and the context, which activated these units and wasmeaningless in itself. The traditional study of te ni 0 ha was connected to themainstream of inquiry into Japanese syntax at this point because these Japaneseparticles are preeminently syntactical morphological units: they function only tocombine other words and are meaningless in themselves. Although I have usedthe tenus adjectival, adverbial and verb, these are inventions of modem Japaneselinguistics. Eighteenth-century writers did not employ them. They construedutterances into the aforementioned cores (moto) and tips (sue).34 Even what arenow called verbs were dissected into stems and conjugational suffixes, and thenthe opposition nominallnonnominal was applied to them. Moreover, context andwhat activates nominals were further articulated by appealing to the image of thehuman body in practice. Therefore, Fujitani's human-body model, in whichvarious functions of morphemes are associated with various parts of the humanbody, is not simply an ad hoc scheme by which to explain the rules of language.Rather, it points out the practical nature of language, which was believed toreside in the temporary movement of the body but not in objectifiable things. Inthis sense, we must never view Motoori's language study entirely in the light oflinguistics: his scheme also considered the possibility of morphology itself and oflinguistics as systematic knowledge.

Ironically, though, the language studies of Motoori and Fujitani, which afterall were attempts to objectify language, were sustained by the awareness thatlanguage could be understood only in immediate experience preceding any ob-

270

•

35Motoori Norinaga, Isonokami sasamegolo, in MOloor; Norinaga zenshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo:Chikuma Shobo, 1968), pp. 85-198.

36Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogaku genron, p. 28. Suzuki Akira (1764-1837), son of a medical doctorin the service of the Owari domain (now in Aichi prefecture), was interested in Japanese grammar andbecame a student of Motoori Norinaga. In many respects, his work represented an attempt to

think that the speech/writing dichotomy was part and parcel of the discursivespace in which linguistic studies were conducted.

Eighteenth-century discourse on language did not clearly discriminate betweenthese two aspects, as Motoon's study of punctuation demonstrates. In every useof words, Motoori claims, there are rules as to where one should punctuate andwhere one should not.35 He demonstrates how the meaning of an entire wakapoem changes according to where it is divided. From this observation, he derivesthe concept of 0 (8-5). 0 originally signifies the cord of a necklace and tama(8-6) a gem on it: 0 is that which puts together different nominal units, tama isthe isolated units; the whole utterance is the entire necklace. Here I must dis­tinguish two axes: the first is the axis along which the opposition nomi­naIlnonnominal is constituted; the second is the one along which the oppositionof isolated words and the relationship among words is thought. Syntagm is notencompassed within the scope of the nominallnonnominal opposition. It ad­dresses itself to the differences in function among various morphological catego­ries of words. To determine the function of a word, however, one has to considerthe position of that word in the whole utterance and its rapport with other words.As Fujitani also maintained, the opposition nominallnonnominal relates itself tothe distinction between the immobile and the mobile. Thus, at one level, 0 meansnonnominal factors in the utterance, but at another, it is the syntagm, or thethread combining the gems, by which a whole utterance becomes alive, just as ahuman body is in practice. It is with this concept of 0 that Motoon identifies thelevel of syntax, which is concerned not with isolated words but with syntagmaticrapports that cannot be reduced to individual words.

The best explanation for this dual conception can be found in TokiedaMotoki's language process theory. Tokieda introduces a pair of syntactical cate­gories, shi and ji. At the most elementary level, shi is the stem, and ji theconjugational suffix of a verb, adjectival or adverbial. In that sense, they corre­spond to nominal and nonnominal, but this differentiation cannot be limited tothe morphological categorization of words. Shi andji are conceived as the mostelementary syntactical units and are postulated to discern the level of syntagmfrom that of words. Through this pair of concepts, Tokieda differentiates thecontained, words synthesized by syntactical rules, from the container, syntacticalrules that synthesize words. Referring to an eighteenth-century linguist, Tokiedaremarks: "Suzuki Akira has already said that the things shi and ji respectivelydesignate belong to different dimensions. Suzuki's idea derived from MotooriNorinaga, and according to Motoori, shi is tama, ji is o. Or shi is a dish andji is ahand to manipulate it."36 When a hand is added to an inanimate dish, the dish

273Phoneticism and History

synthesize the grammatical studies of the Chinese language by Ogyu Sorai and Minagawa Kien withFujitani Nariakira's and Motoori's. He developed theories of the morphology and syntax of Japanesein such works as Gengyo shitsu ron (Thesis on Japanese morphology) and Katsugo danzoku fu (Thetable of inflectional paradigms).

Tokieda calls this multilayered construction the "box-in-box structure"(irekogata kozo, 8-7). Ji s~rves to transform whatever may precede it, accom­panying it into shi. Regardless of whether shi consists of a morpheme or a wholeutterance,.ji can contain its antecedent and ascribe to it a determination (gentei,8-8) of shi. For this reason, Tokieda also calls the box-in-box structure thefuroshiki structure. A furoshiki is a wrapping cloth once widely used in Japan as asubstitute for a bag or case. Because of its flexibility, it can contain things of anyshape. Like the furoshiki, ji does not have its own determined shape; it assumesthe shape of whatever is contained in it and keeps what is contained together as asynthesized whole. Suffice it to say that a furoshiki containing things can also bewrapped up by another furoshiki, and therefore, the synthesized whole, or anutterance, can contain many sheets of furoshiki in it. At this level, shi and ji nolonger denote nominal and nonnominal: the shi-ji relationship~ Tokieda claims, isthe fundamental" pattern of Japanese syntax.

It is far from clear how Tokieda can attribute Japaneseness to the shi-ji struc­ture~ however. Tokieda himself rigorously criticized the positivistic conception ofthe unity of a language, or langue, and I believe that his argument in spite ofitself, amounts to denial of the direct connection between the shi-ji structure andthe Japaneseness of the Japanese language. I shall discuss this and other problemsinherent in Tokieda linguistics later, but meanwhile, let me note that what arehighlighted by Tokieda's shi-ji structure-the oppositions nominallnonnominaland "isolated words" / "relationship between words"-were continuously dis­cussed in eighteenth-century discourse without explicating a difference of levels.It was not a confusion easy to rectify, for it was inherent in the conception of

(Shi) (Ji)

Contained /contain:tContained Container

Contained ContainerContained Container

can move and become integrated into an action. Thus, ji is not only a category ofmorphemes but also a principle by which the minimum unity of an utterance isconstituted: an utterance must contain at least a pair of shi and ji. Shi alone nevergenerates an utterance; only when it is accompanied by ji does it serve as a wordin an utterance. Therefore ji generates the layer of syntax as opposed to the layerof morphology. It is, however, important to note that this pair allows for thegeneration of an indefinite number of layers:

Language, Body, and the Immediate272

A Text and Its Performative Situation

Feeling and Temporarity

language itself: language and nonlanguage are not entirely external to each other;their difference is strangely implicated in their complicity.

275Phoneticism and History

Feeling is not a state of mind independent of mono; it is a movement that takesplace only in contact with Mono. The term "feeling" denotes an instantaneousmoment of encounter and change, or the passive aspect of the incessantly chang­ing relationship between the human body and the world. Likewise, omou (think­ing, 8-9) and shiru (knowing, 8-10) have a meaning exactly opposite to thataccorded them by modem philosophy. Neither is an act by which objects areposited in front of the thinking or knowing subject. Surely, insofar as bothverbs-omou and shiru-can take complements that are in this case shudai­subjects, objects (those which are posited thematically as shudai for some act)are thetically posited in thinking and knowing. Yet objects are never fully con­stituted and determined as correlates of the likewise fully constituted subject.Thus, omou and shiro, so to speak, drag embryonic codes that connect theutterance to its prelinguistic or primordial symbiosis with the world.38 In thequoted passage, these terms refer to modes of assimilation to mono and ofimmediate contact with it. So, as a matter of fact, "thinking" and "knowing"

37Motoori Norinaga, lsonokami sasamegoto, pp. 85-198. There are two introductions to theKokinshu, one in Japanese (kana-jo) and another in Chinese (mana-jo). Here, Motoori refers to thelatter.

38In this regard. the meaningfulness of mono necessarily implies a sense of transgression since itdesignates the state of instability for the subject. It is the state in which ..I" is not sure of who ..1" isand where "I" stands in relation to other subjective positions. Thus, Motoori refers to the well­known case of a Buddhist monk who falls in love with a woman as the best example of mono noaware. Motoori's notion of "femininity." or taoyame bur;, which he sometimes claimed to be theeSSence of Japaneseness, seems to be closely related to the instability of the subject. Two centurieslater Nishida Kitaro addresses a similar problematic of "femininity." In spite of his stylistic features.

The introduction in Chinese to the Kokinshu says, uThought changes, and sorrowand joy also change." This, too, explains what is meant by "knowing the mean­ingfulness of monon [mono no aware 0 shiro]. I think that what is meant by"knowing the meaningfulness of mono" refers to the fact that every living creaturein this world has feeling and that, insofar as it has feeling, it should necessarily think[omou], whenever it is in contact with mono. Therefore, every living creaturepossesses poetry [uta].... Every time a man is in contact with an event, [his]feeling is stirred and never remains calm. What is meant by "feeling being stirred"is that man becomes sad, angry, happy, or pleased.... Because man "knows themeaningfulness of mono," [his] feeling is stirred. For instance, man thinks [omou]he is pleased when he comes across a pleasing event. It is because he knows[wakimae shim] the essence [kokoro] of what is pleasing in this said event that he ispleased.3?

thought of as the essence of literature, should signify the ultimate state of textualcomprehension in.which a text is completely reduced to the level of performativesituation and practice. What I see in his explanation of the meaningfulness ofmono is that when one grasps the world in its instantaneous immediacy, the beingof tile world thus grasped is absolute in itself and requires no further justification.The feeling with which one encounters the world, however immoral it may be byconventional standards, is to be affirmed because it is absolute in its immediacy.

Language, Body, and the Immediate274

The desire for transparent language, therefore, reflects the tendency in eigh­teenth-century discourse to reduce any text to actuality in an instantaneous andtemporary moment. No doubt, within the framework of the dichotomls I havementioned, the hmeaningfulness of mono" (mono no aware), which Motoori

Significant in this analysis of the "Japanese" language is that the shi/ji differ­entiation can be extended to explain the text's adherence to its extratextual reality.Or another interpretation is feasible: if shi is taken to be what is fixed and framedin enunciation, ji would simultaneously mean what fixes and frames and whatflees from fixation within the frame. Thus the box-in-box structure could implic­itly or perhaps unknowingly designate the manner in which some unity of utter­ance, verbal in nature, is differentiated from its performative situation throughframing mechanism.

As Fujitani sensed, what gives unity to an utterance or any linguistic activity isnot the inner transcendental synthesis of the speaking subject. Rather, its unity iscomparable to that of a human body in practice within a certain performativesituation. When language is understood in this way, it follows that the identity ofa poem, for example, necessarily includes some apprehension of the situation inwhich it happens to be recited. Its signification might transcend the contingencyof a particular reading, but what matters is signifiance, and eighteenth-centurygrammarians all seem to have agreed that a poem's worth lies in signifiance, notin signification. Hence, the meaning of a text can be absolute only on conditionthat it is conceived within the immediacy of practice. And if one really wishes toreach the absolute meaning of a text, one should create a situation identical tothat in which the text was originally uttered and then assimilate oneself into thepattern of practice through which the text was produced. To be sure, such aventure should prove impossible. The only trace of the act producing a text is thetext itself, and neither situation nor practice can be posited independently of thetext, so that the very notion of situation and practice as extratextual makes bothsituation and practice antinomical. Therefore, to keep this venture viable it isnecessary to posit a state prior to the separation of shi and ji, a prelinguistic statewhere supposedly the preservation, fixation, and inscription of the text has notyet been completed. That is to say, the modality of existence for a performativesituation and practice is taken to be actuality in an instantaneous and temporarymoment, or Augenblick.

which do not suggest any "femininity" at all, Nishida's philosophical enterprise put the question of"femininity" radically. In this sense, Nishida was a philosopher of "feminism." A half century afterNishida, Julia Kristeva produced a philosophical critique of the phallocentric West, the basic the­oretical premises of which are astonishingly similar to Nishida's. Both attempted to examinC1lheconstitution of the subject and its instability-legitimate problems indeed-starting from Platlrrticchora which Nishida called basho. It is important to note, however, that Nishida's philosophy endedup serving assimilationism during the 1930s and early 19408 as a universalistic ideology. That it didsuggests to me a danger of talking about "femininity" in aesthetic and philosophical tenns withoutdue attention to its socio-political consequences.

were made to indicate the dissolution of the distance between subject and object,and the existence of what Motoori alluded to in the notion of feeling seems totestify to the legitimacy of using omou and shim in that manner. Just as Ito Jinsaihad extensively discussed feeling without any nostalgia for primordial together­ness, so Motoori, too, rejected any objectification and substantiation of it b'Utwith a great deal of nostalgia. Feeling must be comprehended in its tran­sitoriness. It is not a phenomenon ascribable to an entity that itself does notchange but remains identical in the process of movement; instead, it is thechanging aspect of movement itself.

Hence the transitoriness of the meaningfulness of mono is only too evident;mono can be meaningful only because it does not last. It is destined to disappear.Since it does not have the constancy of a thing, mono is always eroded by time.Without doubt, Motoori's thesis of the meaningfulness of mono contains theaffirmation of the present. Yet in the same thesis is there not also the desperaterecognition of the irredeemability of the past? Is the present most glaring whensurrounded by the darkness of the past? If to affirm the present is to affirm life,the irredeemability of the past then implies the irredeemability of past life.Because we know that this instantaneous moment, this present overwhelming joyor acute sorrow, will never come back and will be lost forever, do we not try toimmerse ourselves in this moment? Because the past is irredeemably lost, is thepresent, which will be the past in the next instant, so valuable to us? Or put yetanother way, to the extent that the loss of the past is acutely felt, is the presentintense and glorified, or is it expected to be?

In this respect, I claim that the discursive space in question was secretly butdecisively governed by a concern for death. As a dead body has to be resurrectedin order to revive past life, so a written text has to be reactivated for it to speakwith its originary meaningfulness. But the very way the past is imagined asirredeemable makes it impossible to truly recover its originary meaningfulness.The past is synonymous with what has been irrevocably lost. However much onemay try to grasp the writing in its transparency, it will never be returned to thestatus of its original practice.

Ironically enough, Motoori's conception of moto/sue (nominallnonnominal)clearly depicts this fundamental contradiction immanent in the discursive spaceof the eighteenth century. Since immobility and mobility are attributed to nomi­nal and nonnominal, this opposition inevitably relates itself to a temporal differ­entiation durable/temporary. Yet if the nominal is taken to be atemporal, and the

Sincerity and Silence

277Phoneticism and History

NegativeWritingldeography(Chinese mind)DurableRepresentationalTheoryNominalPlurality of voices: Multivocity

PositiveSpeechPhoneticism(Japanese mind)Temporary,PoeticPracticeNonnominalVoice: Univocity

In the discursive space of the eighteenth century, it was imperative to generatethe image of a language free from all these negative terms and consisting of onlythe positive ones. For this purpose, discourse was generated and regenerated toeliminate whatever obstacles writers of the times perceived as hindering theactualization of that image. But the notion of a language that is totally devoid ofmultivocity, of a language whose traits include none of those negative terms, isself-contradictory because the positive terms are posterior to and dependent onthe oppositions and also because exclusion of the negative terms amounts toelimination of the oppositions themselves. Once these have been negated, thenthe positive terms equally cease to exist. In other words, the realization of anideal language is, in fact, its annihilation. Nonetheless, it is this contradictionthat sustained the production and reproduction of discourse in the eighteenthcentury, indeed, was the fundamental condition of possibility for the discursivespace of eighteenth-century Japan. It was a wish embedded there, a wish thatwould never be fulfilled.

An explicit manifestation of this wish can be discerned in the poetics ofKagawa Kageki. 39 Kagawa placed an overwhelming emphasis on the present,

39Kagawa Kageki (1168-1843), waka poet and literary theorist, was born in the Tottori domain(now Tottori prefecture) and at the age of twenty-five went to Kyoto to study. There he was adoptedinto the Kagawa family, inheritors of the Nijo school of court poetry. Against the tradition of the Nijo

nonnominal to be transitory and temporal, then the past can never be excludedfrom the present. Every utterance necessarily comprises the two. To use theterminology of Kamo and Motoori, their language had already been contami­nated by ideography, which fixed the enunciation and made it atemporal. Hence,in order to render transparent the language they thought of in terms of thoseoppositions, they had to emphasize the positive term of e'ach opposition, therebydecreasing the importance of the negative terms or eliminating them, treatingthem as if they had not existed. The oppositions were organized according to thepositive-negative polarity and presented with a certain directionality clearly dis­cernible here: .

Language, Body, and the Immediate276

Usually poets transfer already composed poems into written form. When you trans­fer poems into written form, you use your eyes. When you use your eyes, you

school, from which he was later excluded, he advocated simplicity, intelligibility, and the use ofvemac~larlanguage in poetry. Gradually, his poetics attracted followers all over Japan, who fonnedth~ Kelen .s~hool of wak~ poetry. His works include Keien isshi (Kagawa Kagei's waka anthology),Nllmanabl Iken (A HeretIcal VIew, new learning), Kagaku teiyo (Summa poetical, and others.

40Kagawa Kageki, Kagaku Teiyo, in Koten nihon bungaku taikei, voL 94 (Tokyo: IwanamiSholeD, 1964), pp. 144-45.

41Ibid., p. 146.

for he was determined to eliminate any factor that escapes the present. Evensocial conventions and traditions that ensure continuity between past and presentin waka poetry were challenged. Kagawa believed that the vulgar language of thepast had become the classical language of his day, and therefore, the vulgarlanguage of his day would be the classical language of the future. One does notspeak classical language but studies it. By contrast the vulgar language of one'sown time should be spoken but never studied. From this point of view, Kagawadenied the authenticity of classical language in waka composition. Since only thepresent is significant, its ultimate expression must be the vulgar speech of theday, not writing: "To say that only classical language is refined and elegant, andt~ay's language vulgar is just like loathing yourself because your own bodystinks.... Poesie should exist only in the vulgarity of the actual world."4O

The immediate present and the sphere of nearness are associated with one'sown body. The human body is the locus where the present, immediacy, and themeaningfulness of mono (which Kagawa terms "correspondence," or kanno) areto be discovered. For him too, voice is the source of poetry. It is the very form inwhich sincerity is expressed: "Because [a poem of sincerity] is the voice utteredwhen one is in contact with mono and moved by it, there should never be theslightest rupture as fine as a hair between the excitement [kan] and the tone[shirabe] [of a poem]. Such a poem comes directly out of the immediate stirredmind."41 Sincerity, then, is a stale comparable to the meaningfulness of mono.Kagawa's idea of sincerity seems to suggest total adherence to the performativesituation. Thus, the rupture between the present and the past, the temporary andthe durable, is erased by eliminating from his poetry what has been associatedwith the past and the durable. The distance between the excitement and the tonetherefore, is supposed to be generated by the disparity between what cannot b;written and what can be written, between what, as a horizon of utterance,activates a text but is never presented in it and what the text explicitly says. Ifsuch a poem as Kagawa sought is possible, it should consist entirely of eitherwhat can be written or what cannot be written at all. Any coexistence of the twois rejected. The whole performative situation should be captured exhaustively ina poem, or a poem should be equated to the wholeness of the performativesituation and should cease to be a verbal text, so as to become a non-verbalpractice. From both of these possibilities the result would be identical: the totalrenunciation of writing.

279Phoneticism and History

42Ibid., p. 150.

In short, all his argument seems to amount to is the identification of poetrywith exclamation, for in exclamation, there cannot be any distance or rupturebetween the utterance and the adherence to the performative situation. The realfeeling, as Kagawa understood it, could thus be interpreted as similar to mean­ingfulness (aware), and a poem's essential function was to express the mean­ingfulness of mono (if I am allowed to use Motoori's terminology even thoughKagawa's poetics was quite distinct from Motoori's). The difference betweenvoice and writing, according to Kagawa's view, caused a rupture between theexcitation and the tone. His fear of rupture extends even into spoken language,and Kagawa placed importance on the nonrepresentational aspect of voice. Inevery phase of Kagawa's poetics a tendency to reorganize the view of language isdetectable. By authorizing the supremacy of exclamation and the nonrepresenta­tional aspect of voice, his conception of language reveals its dominant image as acry-a cry that refuses to signify anything outside itself. What is manifest inKagawa's rejection of writing as well as his inclination toward exclamatorypoetry is an obsessive wish to be perfectly at home in a language and an equallyobsessive dread of being excluded from some primordial symbiosis with lan­guage.

It seems to me that Kagawa's poetics and, more generally, the internal struc­ture of the discursive space point to an extremity where language> is completelyliberated from signification. But I must also note that when language is liberatedfrom writing, it is deprived of sociality and ethicality; when one rejects thefundamental insight that no body is at home in language, the annihilation oflanguage results; when language is stripped of Otherness, it ceases to enablepeople to encounter each other. Sociality, which was the inalienable moment inIto's sincerity, has evaporated. Instead, it seems, Kagawa's sincerity manifestsan inclination toward homosociality. Even though this extremity cannot be char­acterized by the absence of sound, we should still be able to say that it is a formof silence.

inevitably rely on the signification of language [girl]. When you rely on the sig­nification of language, you alienate yourself from the tone of voice. When you arealienated from the tone, there will be no feeling to be expressed, and a poem willlose its essential function. 42

Language, Body, and the Immediate278

CHAPTER 9

The Politics of Choreography

Ideological Constitution of Social Reality

In spite of its seeming indifference to power and domination, under the guise ofinnocent neutrality, poetics became the arena where the severest ideologicalbattles were fought. It occupied the central locus in eighteenth-century intellec­tual and literary discourse, even though no specific conception of poetry couldserve as an incentive for social reforms, political programs, or revolutionarychange. No one, then or now, could believe that the production of a good poemcould actually result in a more justifiable social order. Nevertheless, this appar­ent apoliticality was far from free of ideological maneuvering. I am saying notthat the discourse on poetry was necessarily motivated by a wish for dominationbut that its very production generated and regenerated particular forms of desire.

Moreover, the ideological concerns embedded in the discourse on poetry andlanguage were directed not toward a choice of political programs but toward theconditions by which such a choice could be made. In this sense, these concernsdirectly related to the discursive formation within which politics could be articu­lated.

It is in this light that the ideological nature of kiyo no gaku and kobunji gaku isbest illustrated. Not only did Ogyu Sorai posit an ideal social and cultural orderfrom which to criticize the reality of his contemporary world, but he also outlineda conceptual framework that explained how the institution was to regulate thebehavior of individuals in the social environment. His notion of institutionalreality was closely connected to language. Ogyu was talking not about socialinstitutions extrinsic to members of the community but institutions as inter­nalized by the members. Institutions could not exercise infallible power over thesubjects, he reasoned, unless they were completely internalized and conse­quently rendered invisible and transparent. Any form or imperative that appearsextrinsic to one's spontaneity can direct and regulate one's deeds only extrin-

280

The Politics of Choreography 281

sically and, as a consequence, would have to appeal to authoritarian measures.When a power reveals itself as an authority, it cannot have maximum efficiency.Any power, if it is to control and direct a community successfully, must effectu­ate itself so that the motivation for social action appears to originate in thespontaneous participation of each subject. Power must not be naked; it must notreveal itself; it must reside not somewhere high above ordinary people but in themidst of their everyday deeds, where it can imperceptibly regulate their mundaneconduct from within.

Perhaps Ogyu's accurate awareness of the nature of political control explainswhy he conceived of institutions as posterior to language. Language is the mostexplicit form of social control that is supposedly imperceptible to the personcontrolled, that is, to the putatively "native" speaker of that language. Languageis not perceived as a set of rules extrinsic to the speech acts; speaking and actingin a given language medium presuppose the internalization of the language.Likewise, Ogyu suggested, effective institutions are always internalized, so thatthey should not be noticed.

We must remember, though, that internalization is a stage of leaming. Onlythrough-repetitive practice can one acquire language ability or the knowledge toact in certain ways. This is to say, language and institutions have to be registeredin the body as a pattern (Ii, Ii, 1-3) or a sort of tattoo (bun, wen, 9-1).1 Thus thetransition from the exterior to the interior was equated to the pedagogic processby which a student followed gradual steps leading to the ultimate acquisition ofancient Chinese and its institutions. Of course, the language and institutionalizedbehavior patterns thus acquired are not preserved in the form of speculativeknowledge but rather in habit, or practice and experiential knowledge; the locusof the interior is not in the mind but in the body, where language and institutionsare internalized preconsciously.

This is the point that is in need of theoretical elucidation, for it is in the modeof existence of the human body that language and institutions experientiallyacquired by a person were believed to have a communal dimension. Yet if aconscientious individual student learned the language and institutions of antiq­uity, would his achievement not be limited to the student himself? Would it notmanifest the interior to him alone? On what grounds could Ogyu claim that therealization of the interior goes beyond an individual person toward collectivity atlarge? It is hard to imagine that he and other writers of the eighteenth centurybelieved it possible to transform the society of Tokugawa Japan into that ofantiquity merely by teaching a few students ancient texts and languages. Whatwas at stake was not a political program whose viability could be measured byshort-term observation.

lThe character bun in Japanese (wen in Chinese) is very important in this context. Let us recall thatthis character was used in Ogyu's leaming of ancient texts and words, kobunji gaku. Bun can berendered as figure, embroidery, coloring, brilliance, appearance, surface pattern, beauty, ornament,tattoo, regularity, rhythm, manners, grain, individual culture obtained through the mastery of ritesand music, expression. writing, text, prose, document, book, etc.

2ef. Jacques Lacan, Le seminaire: Le moi dans la theorie de Freud et dans Ie technique de Lapsychanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1978), pp. 207-338.

30gyu Sorai explicitly said, "The 'Xiangyinjiu yi' section of the Li jf says, 'It is in the body thatthe virtue is obtained.' Zhu Xi may well have thought that the virtue was in intention; so he arguedthat to mention the body rather than the mind [where the virtue would reside] was superficial-atypical mistake by someone who knew no ancient language! In antiquity no one opposed the body tothe mind. By the body was always meant the self. How could one conceive of the self that excludesthe mind?" (Benmei, in Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 36 [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1973], p. 50).

In this regard, we should particularly note two theses about language and theinstitution in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. First, that the humanbody was taken to be the locus of language and the institution implies theimpossibility of grasping an individual as an isolated entity. It is not that a socialinteraction takes place between two individual bodies or consciousnesses but thatthe image of the body is where the relation of the subject to the other subjectoccurs. 2 What are often depicted as the invisible inner recesses of the mind insideone's body are in fact already socially constructed. Attributes such as privacy,secrecy, and interiority are social categories. Therefore, the acquisition of lan­guage or an institution not only affects the wayan individual agent behav·es butalso transforms the relationships she has with her "self" and others.

Second, language and the institution are inherently in possession of the Otherin the sense of a projected "collectivity." It goes without saying that the self isalways posited as an other in language. Instead of declaring the authenticity ofthe subject of enunciation, language use annihilates and replaces that subjectwith an anonymous "I." (Of course, I do not necessarily imply that there is anauthentic and nonanonymous "I" before language use.) Partly because of thisfundamental character of language use, Ogyu could argue that his student had tobecome a Chinese of antiquity in order to speak the language fluently. Thespeaker who emerges out of language use belongs to the sphere defined by thatlanguage or interior, but the prelinguistic individual speaker does not. Hence, tomaster a language is always to subject oneself to the order of the Other. But at thesame time, it could be an attempt to "apophantically" establish a "collectivity"that does not exist. The subject in language is always the one who is subject tothe Other, and the same could be said of the institution. By entering the circuit ofset behavior patterns, one conforms first to the rules imagined to be regulatingthe membership of the institution and subsequently to the image of that institu­tion, and one is transformed into the role expected in the given institutionalsetting. One is then defined as a subject according to rules that are also the rulesof transference.

The consequences I can draw from these theses are far-reaching. The reality ofan individual man's presence is defined in terms of his body,3 whereas hisselfhood is entirely dependent upon language and the institutions he happens toadhere to. Indeed, this is another way of saying one's identity is determinedsocially, but in the discursive space of the eighteenth century, it meant muchmore. Social reality was conceived of not as a given but as that which is

4Maruyama Masao, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Mikiso Hane(Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1974).

283The Politics of Choreography

constituted ideologically. All the discussion of antiquity and the ancient institu­tional order was necessarily based on the 'implicit recognition that what thesewriters called mono, or the institutional reality of the society, was an ideologicalconstruct. They assumed that the institution and even language were alwaysconstructed politically. In this respect, Maruyama Masao's insight is still valid:surely eighteenth-century discourse conceived the social' order as a convention,not as nature. 4 This is not to say, though, that the construction of social realitywas manipulated and controlled by individual consciousnesses.

On 'what grounds can one possibly understand the eighteenth-century view ofthe ideological construction of social reality? How can one still claim that institu­tions were comprehended as conventions when the intention of a manipulatingand controlling consciousness could not be posited as a support behind thesurface of the texts called institutional realities? The emergence of the humanbody in the discursive space plays a decisive role in my attempt to respond tothese questions, fc: it is in tenns of the ontological determination of the humanbody that the working of ideology, by which social realities are generated andprojected, can be elucidated. In this connection, we ought to remind ourselvesthat although these writers urged their disciples to learn about antiquity andthereby assimilate themselves into the interior, they never tried to convince themof the legitimacy of the ancient social order. It seems to me that their refusal togive verbal justification to what they considered the ideal order illustrates thedimension of social reality to which the ideological function was ascribed.

Only as long as it is free from and beyond the scope of verbal explication andjustification does ideology continue to generate and regenerate institutions and tokeep them intact. Because institutions cease to be infallible when they are objec­tified and thematically queried, they must be invisible and transparent to thosewho conform to them, just as language should never be an object of questioningfor its "native" speakers. (This notion is indeed rather problematic since the ideaof the native speaker itself is discursively constituted. After all, I maintain thatno-body is exhaustively at home in language. Nevertheless, eighteenth-centurydiscursive space, or at least a majority of the writers who lent themselves to it,seems to have held this notion.) Similarly, institutions when they are alive andhealthy are not doubted or questioned. Instead, they are familiarized and inter­nalized, that is, internalized in one's body, not one's mind. As self-reproducingregularities, institutions are registered in the human body as habit and are main­tained as practical and experiential knowledge. Whereas speculative knowledgedictates the representation of a past event and persuades one toward a certainpraxis, practical knowledge enables one to manipulate a given situation strate­gically without questioning its terms reflectively. Practical knowledge endows itspractitioners with the ability to perceive and articulate a given situation in termspertinent to their effective, assumed participation. Here, the perception of a

Language. Body. and the Immediate282

situation and the response to it are one. For a skilled tennis player, for instance,the perception' of the direction of a ball and the immediate response by which theplayer's entire body begins to move toward the ball are not differentiated and donot take place independently. It was precisely this sort of knowledge, eighteenth­century writers believed, that generated institutions. They rejected and dis­qualified verbal legitimation of ideal institutions because they believed that disci­pline and practice alone could enable people to assimilate themselves into waat­ever social order might be proclaimed.

Naturally, eighteenth-century writers, aware of this practical nature of ide­ology, despised those who believed in the possibility of improving the societysolely by appealing to the mind, by rational persuasion or explanation in words.Furthermore, they promoted philosophical inquiry into the mechanism by whichthe mind and the reason were generated as symptoms of some cultural deficiency.The human body, then, became the nucleus around which a varied discourse onthe ideological constitution of social realities accumulated. It is not surprisingthat their notions of mono, the performative situation, and language intersect anddiverge around this thesis of corporeal practice. On the one hand, mono wasconceived as a given, a background against which explicitly verbal texts wereenunciated, but not a neutral and amorphous background. This horizon for theenunciation was implicitly articulated in relation to a specific speech act; in thisregard, certain regularities were already embedded in it. Otherwise, stripped ofthese potential regularities, mono would have been a purely historical accidentthat could never repeat itself. Because it was always viewed in relation to thishorizon for the enunciation, a verbal text would not have been able to repeat itselfeither unless it was endowed with the same horizon. It would therefore bepointless to claim that one could resurrect the past by learning the language of thepast. What is affirmed here is the mediation of the human body between theverbal and its performative situation.

Underlying this argument is the tendency, which was conspicuous in thediscourse of the eighteenth century, to construe the verbal or nonverbal text in itsgenerative function. What mattered was not what a text meant, what it repre­sented, but how it was made to signify. Hence, a writing of antiquity was studiedto bring out the conditions of its enunciation, not to register it as an event ofhistoriography. Insofar as an enunciation is seen in isolation and grasped as anevent, its adherence to its performative situation only informs us of the irre­deemable nature of historical time, and it is utterly impossible to think of itsresurrection and rerealization: with this approach, all the discussions of antiquityand its ideal order would be devoid of serious significance. Clearly, this was notthe case, for the discourse was organized around an interest in performance. Atthe center of the continual dispute was the concern for action, a motor-sensoryrapport that an actor established with the situation in which he or she performed.In addition, there was an awareness that the so-called social order belonged to thekind of reality that was constituted in accordance with the actor's behavior. It was 50gyu Sorai, SeMan, in Nihon shiso Taikei 36:263.

The Logic of Integration

285The Politics of Choreography

not a sum of things independent of what an actor attempted to do with them, butrather the relationship to be generated between the actor and the situation. There­fore, it could not be comprehended as a being-in-itself, and the realness of thesocial reality thus conceived already encompassed the role of an active agent.

Ogyu Sorai's politics would be unintelligible without reference to his under­standing of the working of social reality. He asserts repeatedly that what isusually taken to be politics is possible only when the rules of the game have beenestablished. It is no accident that Ogyu explains the essence of the rule in tennsof the game of go: "What is generally meant by the rule of the country is, so tospeak, just like marking lines on the go board. However skillful a player of goyou may be, you cannot play the game on a board without squares."5 Here, twodifferent kinds of politics are discerned: a politics that can be equated to playingthe game and a politics that concerns itself with making the rules of the game. Nodoubt, Ogyu zealously occupied himself with the latter. As for the former, he leftit to the rather arbitrary demands of each situation. As he claims, making therules of the game is the politics in which one can be truly creative and benevolentand one can identify the genuinely political nature of Confucianism. He implies,of course, that Confucianism in its ultimate essence is a teaching of, and is basedon, benevolence, as manifested by the inaugural creative act of the sage-kings. Inthe rule-making sense of the term "politics," the ancient sage-kings weresakusha (authors or makers, 7-12) who inaugurated the act of inscribing the ruleson behalf of the whole community and who created the institutions, or seido(9-2), through their political acts.

Ogyu argues that only in the image of the sage-kings as authors can the notionof benevolence be apprehended in its proper sense. Benevolence cannot be under­stood except through the totality of a community. Benevolence that is not repre­sentative of the whole necessarily fails to be impartial and, therefore, cannot becalled benevolence. In chronological time, the benevolent act of the sage-kingsbrought about the rules, or seido~ of the whole for the s·ak.e of the whole for thefirst time. Yet, it must be noted that neither benevolence nor the sense of totalitycould exist independently of each other, for the virtue of benevolence cannot beapprehended outside of the totality, nor can the sense of the totality be feltwithout the mediation of this virtue. In this respect, benevolence is synonymouswith the instituting of the totality. It goes without saying that the inseparability ofthose two seemingly heterogeneous terms directly derives from the imaginarynature of totality in general. In the strict sense, totality is not something that canbe empirically perceived or experienced as an object of empirical knowledge but

Language, Body, and the Immediate284

In instances when criminals disrupt and interfere with cultural institutions thatkeep the people at ease, one must kill them out of benevolence. Ogyu's political

6()gyu Sorai. Taiheisaku. in Nihon shiso taikei 36:466.7Maruyama Masao, Studies in the Intellectual History, pp. 83-113.80gyu Sorai, Taiheisaku, p. 467.

"To set people at ease" [anmin, 9-3] is benevolence. To know men is intellect.Confucians of modem times interpret "benevolence" as ~'ultimate sincerity andempathy," but even if one is equipped with the mind of utmost sincerity and empa­thy, one is not said to be benevolent unless one is able to set people at ease. Howevermerciful one's mind may be, it would all be vain benevolence, women's benevolence[if it were not the benevolence of setting people at ease]; it would be no more thanthe kind of benevolence with which a mother cares for her child.6

287The Politics of Choreography

philosophy consists of a series of arguments legitimating the existing politicalhierarchy on the basis of the concept of social welfare. If Confucianism is to becharacterized as the typical philosophy for social welfare, it is very difficult todismiss Ogyu's claim to the authenticity of his Confucianism. He justifies therelationship of the ruler and the ruled in tenns of the ruler's complete subjugationto the ruled. Therefore, one might as well summarize his politics by saying thatthe ruler acquires legitimacy to rule over the ruled by being servant, subject,servile, and subservient to the ruled. Yet we should remember that the ruler is notsubject or servile to the ruled in personal relations; rather, the ruler is subject tothe ruled as a totality. As a matter of fact, the mediation of totality reverses thedirection of subjection and servitude. We now gain the following formula: pre­cisely because the ruler ought to be servile and subservient to the ruled (as awhole), the ruler should be allowed to claim that the ruled (as individuals) oughtto be servile and subservient to the ruler.

Such a fonn of legitimation is commonplace, not unusual either historically orgeopolitically, as one may easily guess. What is significant, however, is thatOgyu links the notion of totality to the interior and makes it concrete in terms ofthe attributes that, as we have already observed, are predicated on the interiorityof the interior. The primary trait he ascribes to sage-kingship is the ability tocreate and install institutions thanks to which the whole of the people are able toimagine themselves to be together, to communicate with one another trans­parently and reciprocally, and to know the subjective position of. each in relationto the whole. Thus, in a sense, Ogyu probed into the political use of nostalgia byassessing the relationship of institutions and the interior. Consequently, the be­nevolent act of the sage-kings simultaneously ensures the identification of eachmember with the whole of the community and the identification of each subjec­tive position within the whole: it generates the sense of belonging to the wholeand the sense of being recognized by the whole. In this respect, I think, Ogyuinstalled at the center of his politics a conception of desire similar to Hegel's,namely, that the desire to be recognized constitutes one's identity.

Unlike the followers of Song rationalism, who attempted to control desirewithout dealing with its generative mechanism and consequently ended up ap­pealing to extremely repressive measures, Ogyu proposed to regulate desire notby suppressing it but by encouraging and promoting it. As we have already seenwith Ito Jinsai who had decisively departed from the politics of essentialism,Ogyu did not conceive of politics in terms of how feeling (jo, qing) should beadjusted to nature (sei, xing) by the mind (shin, xin). Instead, he denied theanteriority of nature to feeling and identified the domain of politics with the set ofinstitutions according to which desire is generated. Underlying such a novel ideaof politics is the insight that desire is not deviation from nature; instead, desireand nature are both effects of the configuration of institutions. Thus, desire andnature are figured.

If desire seems to deviate from the existing norms, it is not because the deviant

Language, Body, and the Immediate

Benevolence is distinct from mercy since it is always mediated by the sense ofthe whole, and this mediation necessarily entails the consideration of purposeand means, or at least the differentiation of the two. Whereas mercy is bestowedimmediately and without reference to the welfare of the whole, benevolencewithout exception incites the calculation of the maximum effectiveness of themeasures taken to realize the set purpose; it takes into account that goodwillcould possibly lead to evil results or evil will to good results. One might evendiscover in Ogyu, as Maruyama Masao did, a responsible political consciousnesstypical of modernity that is somewhat akin to Max Weber's responsibility ethics. 7

Thus, severed from instrumental rationality and the sense of political responsibil­ity, benevolence, as Ogyu understands it, is lost. Yet benevolence could remainauthentic and genuine even when it means the opposite of mercy and affection:

It is not because we hate their evil nature that punishment is to be inflicted oncriminals. Inasmuch as those who commit crimes, after all, do so out of their ownextreme stupidity, they should rather be pitied. Because they do harm to people,however, punishment is, of course, necessary. The crime of those who disrupt the"cultural discipline of people" [fuka. 9-4] is all the more grave since its ill effectsspread very widely. Thus, punishment executed with a view to setting people at easeis the Way of benevolence. Benevolence does not imply that one should not kill. 8

a positivity whose necessary element is discourse. Thus, benevolence is, so tospeak, the emotive equivalent of the discursive positivity of totality. Aqcording­ly, Ogyu manages to render two distinct theses tautological and to merge theminto the thesis that to be benevolent is to act on behalf of totality and that totalitycan be conceived of only on the basis of benevolence.

This association of benevolence with totality seems to prevent the word "be­nevolence" from falling into what Ogyu regards as deviant or perverse uses, suchas Ito Jinsai's "ai." What is most significant in this virtue is its absolute dedica­tion to the whole and its consequent impartiality:

286

90gyu Sorai, Benmei. p. 143.

tendency is inherent in desire but because the set of institutions, in tenns ofwhich desire and norms are constituted, is not well coordinated to form anorganic whole. If the institutions were organically incorporated so as to fonn theinterior, desire would be generated within the restricted and well-organized econ­omy of circulation; desire would not obscure the normalcy of human relations;desire would guide people to reaffirm and return to the norms. The presence ofdeviant desire, then, should be understood to indicate that the circuit of institu­tions does not form a closure, that there is surplus or leakage in the networkwhich would result in the transmutation of the original institutional arrangement.But there is nothing wrong with desire in itself, and desire should be nurtured. Itis when desire is encouraged, and controlled in that encouragement, that thecommunity as a whole can be best controlled and the authority of the ruler mostfIrmly established. People then spontaneously desire to identify themselves withthe whole; they spontaneously desire to be controlled. Here lies a striking con­trast between Ogyu and Ito Jinsai, who 4lfollowed the ideas of Mencius and didnot understand the teaching of the sage-kings. . . . Feeling is not related tothought (shiryo, silu, 2-15). Music disciplines feeling because it can neither beadmonished by righteousness nor applied to by thought. Therefore, nature andfeeling ought to be governed by music. This is the skill of government which thesage-kings taught."9 For Ito Jinsai, feeling is the very locus of sociality, whereone encounters the other in its otherness. For Ogyu, however, it is merely adeviation that must be tamed and controlled: it should not be suppressed byovertly authoritarian measures, but it nonetheless should be governed by andsubjected to authority.

And since the authority of the ruler would be based on the spontaneity of theruled, the ruler would never need to be authoritarian. The followers of Songrationalism appeared authoritarian precisely because they misunderstood thenature of desire and therefore tried to suppress it. In other words, they wereauthoritarian because their authoritarianism inevitably failed. Ogyu Sorai wasthus aware of the nature of political control: in order to be effective, authorityshould never appear as such.

According to Ogyu, the essence of political power consists in the ability not toprevent something from happening but to let someone desire: it is not prohibitivebut positive and creative. Insofar as both the ruler and the ruled belong to theinterior and are programmed to desire according to the system of institutions,there can be no basic difference between the ruler and the ruled. What decisivelydistinguishes the ruler from the ruled must be found in the domain of knowledge.The ruler knows, and the ruled do not. Or rather, the ruler should know, but theruled must not. ("Yorashimu beshi, shirashimu bekarazu"). But what and howshould the ruler know to ensure his or her political superiority over the ruled?

In everyday life, the ruled are preoccupied with the objects of their conduct

Let me combine these propositions to see what is implied in them.1 + 2. The ruler creates the institutions according to which the ruled desire

and act. Although not directly, since it is done through the medium of theinstitutions, the ruler makes the ruled desire and act. But because the ruled arenot directly ordered to desire and act (Commands are possible only when theterms in which an order is articulated have already been institutionalized. Thepossibility of the command is dependent on the existence of relevant institutions.You cannot order those who do not understand your language.), they do not knowthat they are made to desire and act. And precisely because they do not know, theruled are ruled.

I + 3. The ruler does not rule arbitrarily, however. The institutions are createdwith a view to providing the best possible welfare for the whole. Otherwise, theinstitutions would not be benevolent. Hence, it should be possible to make anobjective judgment as to whether or not an institution is benevolent, that is,legitimate, by referring to the whole.

2 + 3. The ruled are set at ease (anmin) when they can desire and actaccording to the institutions that are created by the ruler with a view to providing

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and intersubjective interests; they participate in the games following the institu­tions, or mono; they assume and do not question the given image of the totality orthe authority supposedly representing that totality. Similarly, the ruler assumesthe validity of the given image of the totality and participates in the games ofwhich his everyday life also consists, but at the same time, the ruler knows thatthe institutions according to which he desires and acts are conventions createdsometime in history. The ruler knows that he desires and is made to desire. Aslong as he participates in the games and interacts with others in the givensettings, he is partial, that is, he cannot claim to be benevolent, for how can heplay the game without being partial? The essence of participation in the game isto pursue one's own interest against others' and to try to achieve certain objec­tives that are set up by the conventions of the game. That is to say, participationrequires that one be in conflict with one's opponent in a regulated fashion. Onecannot participate in the game without being partial. Players must be "egoistic,""selfish," and "partial" in order for the game to be possible.

Nevertheless, at the same time, the ruler concerns himself with the task ofcreating institutions. Ogyu located the true business of the ruler in the creation ofinstitutions; he claimed that in the business appropriate for the ruler he could beauthentically and properly benevolent and impartial. This is to say that the rulerand the ruled are basically social roles, so that the same person could be the ruleron some occasions and the ruled on others.

Here, we face a series of propositions that form a tautological circuit:1. The ruler is the one who creates seido, or institutions. '2. The ruled desire and act according to the institutions.3. The ruler is benevolent because he represents the totality.

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•

lOCompare this view to, for instance, 1-1. Rousseau's idea of the legislator in his "On the SocialContract," Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, ed. C.E. Vaughan (New York: Lenox Hill,1971), pp. 51-54.

the best possible welfare for the whole. If the institutions guarantee the bestpossible welfare for the whole, the ruled are set at ease and do not know that theyare made to desire and act. This is the reign of ultimate benevolence.

In the preceding expositions we should note the assertions that are tautologicalbut without which the propositions could not be put together. These concern therelationship between totality and benevolence. Let me explicate the folds fonnedby the juxtaposition of these propositions.

It is stated that because the ruler is benevolent, he acts to create seido on behalfof the totality. At the same time, the totality is that which is defined and charac­terized by the benevolent act and by impartiality. Therefore, totality and benev­olence are not only copossible but also codependent on each other. Furthennore,the relationship between totality and benevolence is sustained by the mediation ofthe ruler, who is assumed to represent the totality. As can easily be inferred,Ogyu's conception of proper politics and the argument legitimating it will col­lapse as soon as this mediation, the possibility of the ruler who can be assumed torepresent the totality, is taken away. Yet, I do not mean that Ogyu did not andcould not entertain a question as to whether or not a particular person in powerrepresents the totality. In fact, such a question regarding the empirical qualifica­tions of the ruler is virtually irrelevant to the point I am making. Even if therehave been no rulers in history who could represent totality, his argument wouldbe as solid as ever. As a matter of fact, this is more or less what Ogyu implied byequating the ideal ruler to the ancient sage-kings, whose historical existence wascertainly a matter of faith. to

Throughout his argument, one thing has to be assumed without any evidence,withouWny substantiation: the representability of totality. In addition, Ogyuassumes that it is possible to conceive of the totality. He simply assumes that onebelieves in totality, and his argument is organized in such a way that, oncetotality has been conceived of as that which people are induced to believe in, allthe avenues are opened to a variety of political possibilities of legitimating orillegitimating the existing regime in the name of totality.

As Maruyama Masao clearly saw, the positing of the sage-kings is the linchpinof Ogyu's political philosophy, so to speak. Both the justifiable distinction be­tween the ruler and the ruled and the political notion of benevolence depend on thebeliefin totality. In this respect, I agree with Maruyama that Ogyu Sorai's politicaldiscourse articulated the possibility of humanism during the eighteenth century.But Maruyama failed to see that this form of social imaginary, that is, the belief intotality, also closed off passage to different political possibilities. To be sure, byeliminating those other possibilities, Ogyu refused to consider the dissolution ofthe ruler-ruled differentiation, for instance. It was no accident that despite a greatdeal of similarity, Ogyu was hostile to Ito Jinsai, who tried to respect the

It is in order to change fuzoku [culture, 9-5] that seido must be rebuilt. Fuzokuextends monolithically over the society; so it is as hard to change it by force as it is toblock the sea with one's hands. There is, however, a technique and it is called thetechnique of the great Way of the sage-kings. Modem followers of Song rationalismbelieve that they can change it by rectifying the minds of people through reasoningand persuasion. This is just like refining rice grain by grain, instead of pounding it ina mortar. . . . Fuzoku is narawashi [habit formation, 9-6]. The way of scholarshipis also narawashi [habit learning]. One who has habituated oneself to good is a goodman; one who has habituated oneself to evil is an evil man. The way of scholarshipis to learn, become skilled, and habituate oneself. There are no other techniques ormeans of learning than this.... There are old saying such as "What one has

291The Politics of Choreography

otherness of the Other in the social and for whom sociality was simply untotaliza­ble and unrepresentable. As I have said,. to describe sociality Ito deliberatelychose the trope of the roadway, which stresses openness and constant movement.

So far I have isolated from Ogyu's treatises features that rather fonnalisticallycireumscribe totality as a discursive positivity. I do not mean to imply, however,that this positivity works merely as a fonnal principle. It is also an imaginaryconstruct that is linked by a series of displacements to another set of imaginaryconstructs. Its function is to synthesize beings that are heterogeneous to eachother and to have them perceived as if they all belong indiscriminately to ahomogeneous domain. Hence, totality has to be given as the interior, a homoge­neous domain where transparent and reciprocal communication among the insid­ers prevails. As totality is associated with the interior, the institutions that aresupposedly established with the welfare of the whole in view also acquire theattributes of the interior.

Similarly, those institutions, if they are benevolent, should also be perceived astransparent and intimate: they should be penneated by the sense·of interiority.Insofar as the institutions are hannoniously inCOrPOrated into the interior, theyshould be internalized and lived by all the members of the community, just as thelanguage of villagers is internalized and lived by the members of the village. Theruled should never perceive them as norms they are forced to obey, as order givenin the propositional fonn. At this level of politics, it is no use reasoning withpeople to make them abide by the institutions, not because people are ignorant orincapable of apprehending persuasion but because reasoning is possible onlywhen the tenns in which it is conducted have already been institutionalized.Logically, the institution is anterior to reasoning. Ogyu would argue that thosefollowers of Song rationalism who presuppose the universal validity of reasonare naive not only because they do not know the actuality of politics but alsobecause their reasoning about reason is faulty. Whereas Ito Jinsai criticized Songrationalists on the grounds that the followers of Zhu Xi were nonethical and thattheir doctrine led only to the elimination of the materiality of the social, whichwas the sole basis for ethics, Ogyu Sorai criticized them for their political andphilosophical stupidity.

Language, Body, and the Immediate290

habituated oneself to becomes one's nature," or "Habit islike nature.titfhe Zhongyong says, "Sincerity is the way of men." What this means is to acquire a habit tosuch an extent that one feels as if one had been born with it. Hence, the Way of thesage-kings gives priority to learning [habit formation], while the rule of the sage­kings regarded fuzoku as the most important. 11

lIOgyu Sorai, Taiheisaku, p. 473. Fuzoku consists of two characters ju. or jeng in Chinese, andzoku, or suo Fu can be rendered as wind, teaching, custom, appearance, rumor, etc., zoku can betranslated custom, world, secular, mundane, etc. The compound can then be: customs in a specificsociety or local folk songs.

12Ibid., pp. 453-54. I must emphasize that the exterior (a teon not actually registered in hisvocabulary) does not designate a place geographically outside the interior in Ogyu's discourse; yet hehighly valued the knowledge of foreign things.

Thus, the ruler knows not only that the institutions are created and inventedrather than given or natural but also that people have to become accustomed tothem. To be aware of the original creation of institutions, therefore, is notenough. The ruler must also know the process of habit formation by whichinstitutions are internalized in the body of the ruled to such an extent that theruled take them to be natural, and immediately universal.

But how could a pedagogic program that concerned itself with the control ofan individual human body serve to organize and regulate the collectivity thatconsists of multiple bodies? Does the effectiveness of social control depend onthe actual number of students disciplined in the program? Certainly this questionapplies to modem Japan, where national education and the modem school systemhave made it possible to punish and discipline the populace in great number, butno such system existed in the eighteenth century; the discourse of that day neverconceived of education as a tool to be used by government to achieve the socialhomogeneity of the nation.

Here, the significance of Ogyu's kobunji gaku is clearly manifest. The rulermust know the process of habit formation by going through that process her orhimself, for the form of knowledge that is decisive in politics is experientialknowledge internalized in the body, or mini tsuita (attached to or rooted in thebody).

Whereas the ruled take culturally and historically specific institutions to benatural and immediately universal, the ruler knows the difference between theexterior as I have defined it and the interior, knows that habit formation is a shiftfrom the exterior to the interior, knows why one gets accustomed to believing inthe naturalness and universality of these institutions. In an oblique way, theruler/ruled distinction is related to the opposition of those who know both theexterior and the interior and those who do not know the exterior. 12 Yet, again, theprestige accorded the ruler depends on the separability of the exterior and theinterior and, ultimately, on the representability of totality. For this very reason,kobunji gaku is the scholarship of the ruler.

293The Politics of Choreography

Like a habit, it is acquired by the repetition of the same effort. Like a habit, itdemands first a decomposition and then a recomposition of the whole action. Lastly,like every habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up in a mechanism which is set inmotion as a whole body by an initial impulse, in a closed system of automaticmovements which succeed each other in the same order and, together, take the same

Two Fonns of Memory, Two Senses of History

13Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy M. Paul and W. Scott Palmer (London:George Allen ~d Unwin, 1911), p. 67.

14Ibid., p. 72.15Ibid., p. 89.

Now that sociohistorical reality has been defined in this manner, it is notoverly difficult to understand the notion of historical time as depicted ineighteenth-century discourse on language. The emergence of a history that wasbased not on the seriality of events but' on the recognition pertaining to theideological constitution of social reality can be best elucidated by a distinctionHenri Bergson drew between two forms of memory.

ASSerting the priority of action over affection, Bergson demanded that philo­sophical inquiry start from action, "that is to say, from our faculty of effectingchanges in things, a faculty attested to by consciousness and towards which allthe powers of the organized body are seen to converge." 13 To say that actionpreceded affection was, of course, to challenge the basic modem epistemologicalframework without which even present-day positivism could not survive, andalso to destabilize the fixed and sanctioned myth of naturalist objectivism, whichis completely incarcerated in this framework. Perception, which has normallybeen attributed to affection from the "external world," is, he said, much les~objective and much more dependent on memory than has been assumed. Ourperceptions are almost always interlaced with memory, and I"a memory onlybecomes actual by borrowing the body of some perception into which it slips." 14

For Bergson, memory is the locus of action or motor mechanism. And it is in thiscontext that he introduced the two distinct forms by which the past survives.

Trying to learn a lesson by heart-a form of discipline-I read it. Then Irepeat it a number of times. As Ogyu described, progress is made at eachrepetition until I can say the lesson has been learned by heart, imprinted on mymemory. On the other hand, if I look back on the process of this discipline, I canpicture for myself the successive phases of the process. Each of several readingsthen recurs with its own individuality and the particular circumstances that at­tended it then; no reading can be the same as those that preceded or followed it."Each reading stands out before my mind as a definite event in my history." 15

Although we say we "remember" in both cases, the memory of the lesson,which is remembered in the sense of learned by heart, has all the marks of ahabit. Bergson continues:

Language, Body, and the Immediate292

The Loom That Weaves the Subjects

Whereas Ito inherited the conceptual determinations of Song rationalism,Ogyu seems to have made a final departure from them. Ogyu rearticulated the

16Ibid., pp. 89~91.

17Ibid., p. 91.

length of time.... The memory of the lesson I have learnt, even if I repeat thislesson only mentally, requires a definite time, the time necessary to develop one byone, were it only in imagination, all the articulatory movements that are necessary: itis no longer a representation, it is an action. And, in fact, the lesson once learntbears upon it no mark which betrays its origin and classes it in the past; it is part ofmy present, exactly like my habit of walking or of writing; it is lived and acted,rather than represented: I might believe it innate, if I did not choose to recall at thesame time, as so many representations, the successive readings by means of which Ilearnt it. 16

295The Politics of Choreography

180gyu used the character Ii, or principle, as a verb "to regulate." "The master [Ito Jinsai]devotedly followed Mencius, and did not comprehend the teaching of the sage-kings about music andrites. Consequently, he may well have inferred that feeling could be left unregulated as it was....Feeling is outside the reach of thought. What music teaches cannot be explained by reason[righteousness and Ii] or applied to by thought. Hence, [the sage-kings] adopted music to regulatefeeling and nature. This is the teaching of the sage-kings" (Benmei, p. 143).

19'fhe great constancy, or in literary usage, great warp, implies the five constancies regulating thefive basic human relations.

Generally speaking, keizai is to rule all under heaven and in the state. Its meaning isto regulate the world and save the people. But the character kei [in keizai] is toarrange and spin [yarn] [keirin, jinglun, 9-9]. Thus the Yi jing says "Gentlementhereby rule [= arrange and spin]," and the Zhong yong says, "To rule [= arrangeand spin] the great constancy [taikei, dajing, 9-10]19 of all under heaven." To

notions of desire and feeling in a revolutionary manner, but the political effect ofhis rearticulation was to endorse what Song rationalism was committed to assert.Whereas Song rationalists had been hostile to the heterogeneity of desire andfeeling, Ogyu accepted them insofar as they were regulated and confined withinthe interior of the restricted economy. Yet I must also emphasize the differencesbetween the two conceptualizations of desire and feeling~ For Ogyu, desire andfeeling are not necessarily heterogeneous to Ii.I8 He accepts the possibility thatdesire can be molded into the impulse toward the self, an impulse not entirelydissimilar to Heg~lian desire as self-consciousness, or desire for the recognitionof the self by the other. And his tolerance toward desire and feeling seems tostem from this new way of conceptualizing them. The new conception of desireis undoubtedly accompanied by his apprehension of rite and music, which in factare to regulate desire and feeling.

The sociality that is heterogeneous to the restricted eco~omy of the interiormust be controlled and eliminated. Despite his rejection of the ontologization ofIi as found in Song Confucianism, Ogyu acknowledges the necessity to rule andcontain the heterogeneity inherent in feeling. What is most interesting in thisregard is' that he considered music the most effective means by which to regulatefeeling, which would otherwise be untamable. There is no question that Ogyunow sees the most significant aspect of the rule and politics in music and rites.But concomitantly, his understanding of social reality is closely connected to theway he construes politics in terms of music and rites. How, then, is this concep­tion of politics related to his extensive interest in habits and culture as manifestedin his many treatises on the customs of ancient China?

In order to probe into this issue, I must first inquire into the term that Ogyu'scontemporary Confucians believed summarized the fundamental task of Confu­cianism: keizai (9-7). Today this compound is translated "economy," "econom­ics," or sometimes "political economy," but as is well known, in Confuciandiscourse it was an abbreviation of the four-character compound: keisei saimin(9-8). Dazai Shundai, one of Ogyu Sorai's disciples, explicates this compound atthe beginning of his Keizairoku:

Language, Body, and the Immediale294

The memory of each reading shares none of the traits of a habit. Since it can beevoked by my spontaneous will and is sustained in the intuitive act of myimagination, it is merely a representation rather than an action. UI assign to it anyduration I please; there is nothing to prevent my grasping the whole of it in­stantaneously, as in one picture." 17 Hence, the memory of a reading as an eventdeviates from the principle of the verbal expression conceived of as performance:linearity. While memory in the sense of a habit preserves the past as a ~'speech,"

an imagined action requiring the same length of time, memory of a reading as anevent cannot project the past as an action but functions just like writing, aswriting was conceived in the eighteenth century.

Aside from exhibiting the same kind of phonocentrism as I witnessed inTokugawa discourse, the Bergsonian conception of memory dramatizes two dis­tinct senses of history. In the former sense, the past is conceived of not as anevent but as a potential faculty stored in the human body which is set in motionwhen a situation relevant to a specific form of affection is perceived. But since,as he asserts, action precedes affection, the perception of the situation is shapedafter the faculty to act. As is now evident, this sense of history and historicalreality is exactly what Ogyu, Kamo, and Motoori sought to articulate: it is areality belonging to the past, but it can also resurrect and realize itself in thepresent through repeated discipline: it is not a history of the seriality of events buta history inhabiting the human body. Therefore, they refused to read ancientwritings as representations of the past; instead, they sought for that which actedthe past in them. If they still agreed that writings of antiquity preserved memory,it was not because bygone images were conserved there but because they be­lieved the writings were capable of exerting their useful effect on the present.Thus they sought to recover the past as speech, enunciation, and performance,and they refused to read it as writing, enunciated, and representation.

arrange and sp!n is to regulate yarn. Kei is the warp of textile, and the character i (9­II) is its woof.20

While the rites that consist of manners and ceremonies differentiate and maintainvarious social positions defined by the five constancies-the five basic relationsof lord-retainer, father-son, husband-wife, elder brother-younger brother, andfriend-friend-music, song, and dance harmonize those who are separated bythese relations and make them feel intimate toward one another. Thus, Dazaiargues that rites and music supplement each other. 24

I would like to underline two points in this account. First, both rites and music

There are no other [institutions] that incite the hearts of people as well as rites andmusic. There are no other [institutionsJthat are closer to [the purpose of] guiding thepeople correctly than rites and music. Teaching in words does not penetrate the mindof people; its scope is very narrowt and its effect is slow to come out. The teaching ofrites and music influences people deeply; its scope is wide; and its effect is immedi­ate. It is through the way of rites and music that the ancient sage-kings taught all thepeople without uttering a single word and united the minds of all the people underheaven.23

297The Politics of Choreography

25Although the compound ideogram for'shosa consists of two Chinese characters, this particularuse seems to have no precedent in China except in the Buddhist context. From the beginning,Keizairoku was written in kakikudashibun, in the style of a Japanese annotation of Chinese writing.

26Dazai Shundai, Sekihifuroku, in Nihon shiso taikei 37: 179. Odes, History, Rites, and Music are.of course, four of the Six Classics.

As to poetry, it is natural that you decide on the meaning of the poem according to itstheme and that you obtain words according to emotion. And some might choose

are grasped as institutions pertalDlng to bodily movement. With regard to"rites," which is the collective name for manners and ceremonies, it is only tooevident that bodily movement is indispensable in the habituation of manners andthe staging of a ceremony. But why does music necessarily pertain to bodilymovement? In explicating the character "music" (gaku, yue or Ie, 9-12), Danzaiagain appeals to its etymology: the character "music" also means "to enjoy." Joyarises when a man moves his body. By moving the body (shosa, 9-13),25 a manconsoles his mind. On occasions, a man encounters extraordinary feelings, suchas sorrow and depression, from which he cannot be relieved just by moving hislxxty in ordinary ways. Then he releases his voice in singing and plays a musicalinstrument. Therefore, music, the collective name for singing, dancing, andplaying an instrument, is apprehended basically as patterned bodily movement.

Second, music is understood to be a means by which to reproduce and solidifysocial positions defined by rites. It is a means by which subjects who areseparated and distanced from one another because of the configuration of socialpositions are brought together and made to enjoy their 'communality withoutliquidating social relations. Politically speaking, therefore, music is cpnsideredto be a conservative means. Although it appeals to the feelings of people andmoves their hearts, music serves to confine them to their assigned positions. Forthis reason, for instance, Ogyu Sorai, Dazai's mentor, reintroduces the characterIi, which, although it no longer means a priori human nature as in Song ra­tionalism, regulates and regularizes the a posteriori configuration of social posi­tions. Thus, rites and music are conceptualized as the fundamental ways in whichfeeling is controlled.

Feeling still remains poetic in the sense that music, particularly song, or uta, isclosely associated with feeling, but it is deprived of its creative potential, of itsaleatory possibility to encounter the otherness of the Other. Therefore, poetry toois now understood within the a posteriori configuration of social positions whichis referred to in the metaphor of texture. And just as the ancient language has tobe acquired and internalized, rites and music also have to be assimilated intoone's body. "Confucius said, 'Habit is like naturalness.' When odes and historyhave been assimilated into your mouth, and rites and music into your body, andwhen they have been habituated just like nature, your learning has been accom­plished."26 In the context of kobunji gaku, Hattori Nankaku, another brilliantdisciple of Ogyu Sorai, explicates the connection between the subject and thetexture of social reality:

Language, Body, and the Immediate296

20Dazai Shundai, Keizairoku, in Bibliothecajaponica oeconomiae politicae, or Nihon keizai sosho(Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Sosho Kankokwai. 1914), p. 10.

The Confucian scholar and student of political institutions Dazai Shundai (1680-1747) was born toa Samurai family in Iida in Shinano (now Nagano prefecture) and studied Confucianism in Edo. Heleft Edo for Kyoto and Osaka but later returned and joined Ogyu Sorai's school. Together with HattoriNankaku, he is regarded as Ogyu's most brilliant disciple. Keizairoku (Discussions on keizai) is hismost famous work.

21These are topics Ogyu Sorai studied. His mono consists of these institutions in concrete forms.22Dazai Shundai said. "As to the way to rule [keirin, jinglun] the world, there is nothing that

precedes rites and music" (Keizairoku, p. 24).23Ibid., p. 25.24Ibid .• pp. 48-49.

One cannot overlook the etymological connections of the character kei to texture,textile, and of course text. This character was also used to designate the classicsin Confucianism and particularly the Six Classics in Ogyu's kobunji gaku. Here,I cannot help but notice the interweaving of the study of classics, economy, andpolitics. Or perhaps I must recognize, above all else, the ambiguity of the term"economy," which cannot be immediately equated to the discipline of modemeconomics. Political economy in the sense of keizai must deal with forms ofexchange that define and maintain social relations. It follows that essential issuesfor political economy must include rites, gift exchange, measurements, the hier­archy of official ranks, costumes, and names. 21

For Ogyu as well as his disciples, however, the practices most significant inunderstanding communal life and the benevolent reign that orders the communityare rites and music.22 Following Ogyu, Dazai Shundai reconfirms the impor­tance and usefulness of rites and music in stabilizing social relations:

27Hattori Nankaku, Nankaku sensei bunshu, in Nihon shiso taikei 37:226-27. Hattori (1683­1759), Confucian scholar, poet, and painter, applied Ogyu's kobunji gaku to his poetic composition.His works include many instructions on Chinese poetry, an anthology of Tang ~oetry, Nanakakusensei bunshu (Collected essays of Master Nankaku), Tokashu (Under the candlelIght), and others.

words following the general tone, and the meaning following the words. Yet, unlessthe meaning i~ already set, the composition of the poem is difficult to outline. Evenif you happen to have several good phrases, the whole of a poem would not besynthesized, with the meaning dispersed and the connection of stanzas disrupted.This is what the poet suffers from. Once the fruits of efforts to imitate the ancientsmatured, however, one would be endowed with the great vision [just as the ancientswere]. Thereupon, the style and the meaning of the poem would be in harmony; thesecret of naturalness would emerge all by itself. Where this learning leads you, therewill be no need to worry about the dispersion of meaning or the disrupted connectionof stanzas. Then, your choice of words would naturally be those used by theancients; your meaning would be the one the ancients achieved. You would notjudge the degree of your accomplishment by placing your poem in the midst of thoseby the ancients. That is not the way you inherit from the ancients. It is rather that the100m [of poetic text] weaves you [as the subject].27

The objective of learning poetry is depicted as a paradoxical state in which thesubject is produced by the poetic text, not the other way around. Needless to say,this metaphor of the loom's weaving the subject contains a profound insight intothe social formation. Ogyu and his followers were at least aware that the ~~I," orthe subject, does not exist outside the text, does not belong to some extratextualreality; it is possible only within the text, is constituted by or woven into the text.Moreover, they acknowledged that social reality, or mono, was essentially tex­tual in nature. Accordingly, politics and the study of classics are inseparable, asOgyu repeatedly asserted by saying, "The Six Classics are mono. n Only at thestage where the student of poetry is not inside the "interior," can his "I" not beproduced by the poetic text.

I must also emphasize, however, that Ogyu and his followers eliminatedsurplus and heterogeneity from the textuality of social reality. In this respect, myuse of the term "text" is radically different from his. If left alone, his text wouldcontinually reproduce itself and subjects and the configuration of subjectivepositions. Hence, the texture of social and institutional reality as mono is akin toour discourse. And what Ogyu's kobunji gaku purported to do through the notionof the body as a storehouse of habits was to annihilate the textuality of the text, toconceive of social reality as discourse, and ultimately to rid the body of itsotherness. Thus, the body was reduced to its capacity for recentering instead ofdecentering, to its ability to repeat patterned behaviors that have been inter­nalized. Concurrently, the body was defined in its historicity as a place where ahistorically specific set of habits was installed.

What was also presumed in the historicity of the human body was the thesisthat the body's mode of existence was already intersubjective~ inherent in its

299The Politics of Choreography

What distinguishes an indirect action from a direct one is its relative autonomyfrom the given performative situation in which it occurs. Whereas a direct actionseems to adhere to a given situation and to be initiated by the agent's spontaneousintention, an indirect action is detached from the situation and is capable ofrepeating itself infinitely irrespective of the context. There is a sense of com­pleteness in it, and since the degree of reliance on the outside, that is, thesituational arrangement, is comparatively low, it has an internal organization ofwhich its autonomy is made up. Correlative to the decreased reliance on theoutside is its lack of designative function, so that an indirect action does not pointto real objects or referents, although it is capable of indicating imagined ones. Adance, for example, given a sufficient space and a relevant social occasion, canbe performed many times; within the duration of a single dance, a dancer maypoint a finger or hand at an object that either is or is not supposed to be located inthe vicinity of her body. But it is important to note that an object so indicated isnot the real one, regardless of whether there is actually a physical object or anempty space at the point being designated on the stage. Insofar as an action is

Song as a Locus of Contradiction

mode of existence was an ability to establish a "collectivity" as the Other towhom an action was addressed. But let me,note in passing that this collectivitywas often directly equated to the one that existed and thereby was substan­tialized. As we have seen, eighteenth-century discourse repeatedly tried to riditself of the notion of substantialized individual subjectivity and, as often as not,identified this formation of the self as a symptom of the prevailing social diseasewith which it thought the contemporary world was afflicted. Yet, this discoursetended to substantialize the collectivity, confusing the future anterior of thecollectivity, the nonchronological anteriority of a collectivity which the socialaction creates as'its anonymous addressee, with the historical collectivity thatwas imagined to have existed at one moment in historical time. To posit a socialorder in a body was, therefore, to determine corporeity primarily in terms of itsintersubjective function and to assume that the body is the primordial site ofcommunality but not of the sociaL The differentiation I have drawn betweendirect and indirect actions will allow the microscopic structure underlying theintersubjectivity of the human body to surface in an illuminating manner. ThusOgyu and his disciples proposed an outline of the regime of visibility underwhich they believed the body was subsumed and by which the body as shutaiwould be stripped of its heterogeneity and transformed into a storehouse ofhabits. Thus, whereas for Ito the body was the site of heterogeneity and creativity(making, poiesis) without arche, for Ogyu and his disciples, the body wasessentially poetic and poietic toward arche: the body was thought of solely as themoment of transformation to the original model.

Language, Body, and the Immediate298

28Cf. Julia Kristeva, "Le geste, pratique ou communication?" in Semeiotike (Paris: Seuil, 1969),pp. 90-112. Kristeva stresses the irreducibility of the corporeal text to linguistic categories but doesnot deal with formalized gesture. "If all these reflections suppose the synchronic anteriority oflll!lesemiotic system in relation to the 'real cutout' [reel coupe), it is striking that this anteriority, contraryto what ethnologists explain, is not that of a concept in relation to a sound (signified-signifier) but thatof a gesture of demonstration, of designation, of indication by action in relation to 'consciousness,'to idea. Prior (this anteriority is spatial and not temporal) to the sign and every problematic ofsignification (and therefore of signifying structure), one might think of a designation practice, agesture that indicates not for signifying but for embracing subject, object, and practice within thesame space (without the idea/word, signified/signifier dichotomy), or let us say, within the samesemiotic text" (p. 95).

indirect, of necessity the object of the designative gesture is an imagined one, inthe sense of the classic definition of 4'imagination," that is, the faculty tQ posit anobject in its absence. When a dancer puts on an act of looking at the sea, his eyesfocused ori the distant horizon and his hand waving at a passing boat do positthese referents as correlatives of his gesture. But they are empty referents toimagined objects. Even if there is a wall painted blue at the side of the stage, it isthe sea only in the imagination. The ability to posit imagined objects and to erectan imaginary relationship with a given perfonnative situation is part and parcel ofthe ability of an indirect action to repeat itself infinitely, and thus constitutes theessence of its transhistoricity. In short, in an indirect action the performer isacting, so that, as I mentioned earlier, a promise made in singing is not expectedto be kept; it is a promise in the imagination. Whereas a direct action teaches uswhat participation in a situation means, an indirect one seems to dramatize thearbitrariness of the sign, although in this case it is an arbitrariness not betweensignifier and signified but between the sign and its referent. More important, theindirect action informs us of the faculty inherent in cOrPQreity, the body's facultyto posit or produce objects imaginarily through perfonnance. In this respect, thebody is a productivity rather than an image that is produced. The objects thusposited and produced, however, are not entities in themselves but are envelopedand encompassed in the space of the corporeal text, which cannot be construed inphonetico-semantic tenns such as signification, communication, subject's inten­tion, or expression. 28 Indirect action thus reveals the workings of the regime asan ideology in which the subject lives its imaginary relationship to the reality. Inthe regime that is incorporated in a given discourse, therefore, an action isalways indirect.

Indirect action also addresses itself to the question of the actor's subjectivity.Another aspect of formalization and ritualization of an action is the transforma­tion of the action which forces an actor to perfonn according to extrinsic rules. Ifthe rules to be followed are neither extrinsic to one's inner motivation nor positedas an authority one must obey despite one's spontaneous and natural inclination,then there would be no need for discipline. In this connection we must recall thatdiscipline is a kind of torture because it is, by definition, imposed on one's bodyagainst one's will. But do formalization and ritualization demand discipline, oreliminate one's self? The essence of indirect action consists in the way the actor's

29See Watsuji Tetsuro, Ornate to perusona, in Watsuji Tetsuor zenshu, vol. 17 (Tokyo: lwanamiShoten, 1962). It is worthwhile to note that in Watsuji's conception of personality and sociality ingeneral, there is little awareness about the otherness that cannot be accommodated in the network ofthe existing institutions. In this sense, he was apparently insensitive to what Georges Bataille calledgeneral economy, as opposed to restricted economy. This insensitivity may characterize much ofWatsuji's philosophical position. For the problem of subjectivity and mask, see Sakabe Megumi,Watsuji Tetsuro, (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1986). pp. 55-94, 264n.

301The Politics of Choreography

spontaneous and individual will is flatly ignored and does not reflect on theactual action at all. The verb "to acf' exp~ains this mechanism very well: on theone hand, to act is to behave, to initiate a movement of the body; on the otherhand, it is to disguise, to hide the inner self, to imitate and take the role ofanQther. In this respect, the indirect action demands the elimination of what issupposed to be the individual self. Hence., ""actorn is a name for one who refusesto be identical to herself and continues to transfonn herself into an actor: an actoris a person, that is, a mask.29 This analysis shows the reason why an indirectaction allows for a substitution of the acting subject. Because it is fonnalized andritualized, dance can be perfonned by any subject who has been disciplined in itand endowed with the ne~essary skill to perform it. This interchangeability of thesubject should imply the communality and intersubjectivity characteristic ofindirect action, while indicating the mimetic identification of an individual agentwith an other, Regardless of whether or not it is a collective action involvingmultiple subjects simultaneously, indirect action is thoroughly communal, for itilluminates the constant shift of the putative individual subjectivity to its otherand shows how impossible is the naive notion of the individualistic self.

If an indirect action is the case in which the arbitrariness of the sign is mostevidently exemplified, a direct, natural, and spontaneous action, not mediated bydisciplinary formalization, should instead affirm the nonarbitrary rapport be­tween a designative gesture and its referent. At first sight, this rapport may seeman unquestionable certainty since a body's movement toward a cup on the tableclearly indicates the body's thirst for water, and the protective gesture one makeswhen a dangerous object is fast approaching one certainly posits a real object.The realness of this last referent can be measured by the pain one would feel ifone failed to protect oneself and the object hit one's face. One may even say thatthe direct action never betrays the primordial tie between the body and theperfonnative situation. But can we really ascribe the adjectives "natural" and"direct" to an action? I think that the point elucidated in regard to the Japanesepuppet theater applies here too: the direct action is a construct, a social construct,which is constituted by various oppositions and consequently is a fonn of media­tion. What I suggest is that the immediacy of a direct action, with its proclaimedabsence of formalization, is in fact a result of complex mediation involvingframing and the very differentiation direct/indirect itself. The directness of directaction is conceivable only within a certain social reality, within a certain discur­sive formation: the real is always constituted socially and, therefore, is mean­ingless outside a given discourse.

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But this difference, this distance one perceives between direct and indirectactions, is the locus where the ideological constitution of the social order wasexplained in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Scholars insisted thata verbal text could be coordinated and subordinated to a project involving theentirety of the human body in the enunciation. In other words, the enunciationmeant this merger, this amalgamation of verbal and corporeal texts. Hence,verbal utterance was seen as a simultaneously linguistic and corporeal act. None­theless, when a verbal act was coordinated with corporeal movement, the basicstructural differences between the two modes were disclosed. Aside from the factthat a corporeal text is a productivity rather than a signification, the comparisonof the two highlights the absence in the corporeal text of unities that wouldresemble morphological divisions in language. In a corporeal text, it is impossi­ble to identify anything comparable to phonemes or morphemes. Whereas vari­ous units hold relative autonomy and can be assembled to fonn an utterance in averbal expression, any movement, even of a hand, involves the human body as awhole. Even if only a particular part of the body is mobilized, a gesture inevita­bly gives an impetus to other part of it and establishes itself as a network ofrelationships among various agents-face, hands, and so on-of the body. Inshort, a gesture is inseparable from what is called attitude and cannot be con­strued linearly, This is why the text of the body should never be confused with thebanal notion of 44body language," in which some message already codified inpropositional form in some "inner mind" is expressed through the body to theoutside receiver and in which every bodily movement is construed dactylolog­ically. Consequently, the notion of body language cannot take account of the verydistinction-without which dactylology would be impossible-between ordi­nary gesture and dactylology.

Despite all these heterogeneities, eighteenth-century discourse continued tosee the verbal text as a derivative of corporeal movement. Indeed, some discur­sive apparatuses were fabricated in order to keep this merger of words and bodyviable. Particularly relevant are the studies of syntax that emerged in that era. AsI have noted, grammarians constantly alluded to the attitudinal wholeness char­acteristic of a corporeal text. The body metaphor of Fujitani Nariakira is possiblythe best example. His morphological classification of the syntactical functions ofwords was counterbalanced by equating the integrity of an utterance to theintegrity of the attitude in a corporeal action. Instead of viewing a verbal ex­pression as a sum of autonomous units, he stressed that enunciation as an actpartook of the traits of gesture. Similarly, Motoori Norinaga recognized in kakarimusubi (conjugational rules of old Japanese) the manifestation of an integritycomparable to the bodily attitude into which a gesture of a part of the body isalways coordinated and subordinated.

What is at issue here is involvement in and adherence to the performativesituation. We are naturally led to question the validity of such an approach,however, since sincere adherence to the performative situation is guaranteed only

for direct, not indirect, actions. Moreover, we should recall that the social orderand languages applauded by eighteenth-century writers belonged to the past orforeign sources or both. At least as long as students had not acquired fluency orfamiliarized the institutions of antiquity within their bodies, they had to mimicthe s~t foons of behavior and utterance, and as a consequence, their actions wereindirect rather than direct. In the course of the discipline necessary for theacquisition of an ancient language or institution within the body, one had toimitate the rules of its inner organization while ignoring the actual situation. Aslong as the ideal order that students would supposedly have assimilated at the endof the discipline had not penetrated and accumulated in their own bodies, imme­diacy and transparency could not exist. The actions of the students, that is to say,would have remained indirect and detached from the situation.

Nevertheless, this is exactly why grammarians argued for the validity of theirpedagogic projects. They assumed that neither the ancient language nor institu­tions would be felt to be estranged or distanced from the body once they wereacquired experientially to perfection. Then the very differentiation between di­rect and indirect action would be overcome and eliminated. As Bergson recog­nized, a habit completely internalized and familiarized' cannot be distinguishedfrom &Pinnate faculty; an imagined object and a reality that an indirect actionposits would then be indiscernible from the objective and natural world, whichmay appear external. When one is entirely in the interior, one acts, sees, talks,and hears just as a member of that interior should. Under this condition realitywould manifest itself according to the institutional regularities from which theinterior is construed as mono. But this scenario is feasible only if it is possible tomaster, familiarize, and internalize institutions or ideology to perfection. Inother words, it is possible only on the assumption that one could eventually becompletely and exhaustively at home in those institutions, including language.Let me repeat, such a scenario is feasible if and only if one could be purely andperfectly "native" to one's native language.

Today, many believe that the distinction between direct and indirect actions,between spontaneous, natural behavior and formalized, ritualized behavior, is areal one. It is assumed that one can in fact tell a rite from ordinary behavior, andthe assumption is rarely questioned. In eighteenth-century discourse, however,this distinction was rigorously examined. I believe this is the main reason whylanguage was the focus of constant debate, for language is a formal and ritualizedaction par excellence. To speak is to adhere to formal rules that one can neverchange voluntarily; to speak is to erase one's putative individuality in the face ofthese anonymous regularities; to speak is to cease to be oneself, to lose one'sidentity. It is no surprise that the acquisition of a language carried such weight indisciplinary programs of the eighteenth century.

Thus, language duly emerged as the central object of discourse around whichthe issue of the ideological constitution of social reality was articulated. Asshould be obvious by now, what are referred to by the terms "ideology" and

302 Language, Body. and the Immediate The Politics of Choreography 303

3O'fhat every perception includes imaginary factors is, of course, nothing new. The notion, to put itin the Kantian vocabulary, that experience would be impossible without imagination has been thor­oughly discussed by thinkers in Japan, China, and the West (it goes without saying that "so-called"must be added to all three names of regions). In the eighteenth century, the rediscovery of idea wasmade in a new way.

"institution" include what are normally excluded from the categories of thepolitical institUtion and of the system of values legitimating polity; that. is, theyencompass the predominant structure of perception in a given collectivity, habitformation, .and language. The discovery of history, as Ogyu, Kamo, Motoori,and others showed in the discourse on language, was also a testimony to thediscovery-or, more accurately, rediscovery-of the ideological quality of cul­tural institutions and the mode of perception. Extending this argument to itsinevitable conclusion, I can postulate that every action is ultimately indirect sincethere cannot be an action not mediated by social formation. This is to say that apurely direct action is impossible, just as the individual self of modem indi­vidualism is a fancy. Likewise, without exception, the perception of realityincludes imaginary factors. 3o This is to say, every action and every perception isalways subject to ideology. Hence, naturalness, spontaneity, and immediacy arein fact subordinated to ideological mediation just as language is, although itappears transparent and invisible to a speaker who is supposed to be native.However spontaneous and natural it may look, every action is already a ritual,and consequently the differentiation natural/formal is not real but constitutedwithin a given discursive formation. Just as it is impossible to think of a privatelanguage, it is absurd to talk about a purely direct action.

It is in this connection that the problem of uta, or song, was posed in a radicalway. Song-or, more precisely, singing-represented the border line betweenverbal and nonverbal texts, on the one hand, and between direct and indirectspeech, on the other. As has been explained in regard to Kamo Mabuchi, singingwas seen as the most authentic form of utterance in which writing, understood inthe sense of the enunciated, was supposed to be totally absent. Kamo projectedan image of antiquity in which people communicated with one another in song.In other words, he believed, ordinary utterances and singing were indistinguisha­ble in the historical ages before the Japanese knew Chinese civilization and itswriting system. Therefore, not only for Kamo but also for other writers of theeighteenth century, singing was immediately the enunciation, perhaps the purestform of it.

It is not hard to understand how problematical this conception of song is, forsong is a form of utterance accompanied by music, rhythm, and other nonverbalfactors that establish it as overtly indirect speech. Moreover, singing alwaysinitiates nonverbal corporeal movement and is subordinated to some 'indirectaction. Hence, it is misleading to say that song belongs to the class of verbaltexts. Although Kamo claimed it to be the enunciation in its purest form, thesubject who sings is detached from the performative situation and forced to act in

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With the denial of individual subjectivity in the discursive space of the eigh­teenth century (individual subjectivity was not unknown then, but it was accusedof being a symptom of a rigid, sometimes frigid authoritarian conformism thatthought of itself as original) what may appear to be communication should beunderstood more as communion and compassion. When Kamo and others at­tributed the ultimate expression of feeling to song or singing, it is unlikely thatthey saw in it a cathartic manifestation of individual feeling that otherwise couldnot find an outlet from the closed inner life of an individual subject. Rather,singing was a form of communion and compassion that cured the individual of"selfish" arrogance. Nor did this absence of the self lead to irresponsibility or alack of seriousness, as some might expect. On the contrary, sincerity was trans­formed and rendered synonymous with this resolution of individual subjectivityinto communality. Sincerity, which had once implied the sociality toward theheterogeneous, had been captured within the logic of homosociality.

an imagined scene. Obviously, the reference to antiquity allowed for the coexis­tence of these apparently contradictory pr<;>positions; antiquity was defined as arealm in which a formal and ritualized action was, at the same time, both thepurest form of enunciation and the verbal text indistinguishably merged intocorporeal action. On this ground, Kamo claimed that words were hardly neces­sary in antiquity and that life itself was. singing, with, no room for individualsubjectivity or the complete manifestation thereof (these two amount to the samething). In this regard, antiquity was a utopia where contradictory claims werebelieved to be copossible.

No doubt, the obstacle that continually prevents me from comprehending sucha formation of communality as supposedly existed in antiquity is our notion oflinguistic communication, not because eighteenth-century Japanese writers didnot articulate this sphere well enough but because we tend to superimpose thenarrowly determined conception of it onto the texts of Tokugawa Japan. Somemay argue that this subconscious projection of our own epistemological limita­tion onto the past is inevitably, part and parcel of the hermeneutic circle thatallows for the revelation of our historicality and, therefore, a creative rather thana reportive act. Yet, we should also be aware that our conception of communica­tion has already been seriously questioned for its heavy debt to humanisticpositivism and particularly for its untenable idea of individual consciousness.Given this situation, it is nothing but intellectual conceit to say that our discourseis so determined by humanistic positivism.that we cannot escape from it. One ofthe tasks of this study is to review and problematize the epistemological frame­work that sustains the commonsensical claim to universal validity, that is, tohistoricize our present.

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31Cf. Julia Kristeva, "Gesture is the very example of a ceaseless production of death. In its field,the individual cannot constitute itself-gesture is an impersonal mode since it is a mode of productiv­ity without production" ("Le geste, pratique ou communicatonT' p. 99).

It is noteworthy that the ideal society, where the verbal act necessarily entailedcommunion and compassion, could not be envisioned as possible in the mjdst ofthe Tokugawa reign. It was a utopia, impossible in the contemporary socio­political setting. In contrast to this image of a commune, the current state ofaffairs was seen as deprived of an atmosphere of intimate communality. Even toKagawa Kageki, who denounced the idealization of ancient language and institu­tions, his contemporary world appeared dispersed, fragmented, and contami­nated by writing and by the lack of sincerity. This perception committed him to apursuit of the sort of singing in which there could be no such lack.

Of course, writing had to be excluded from his conception of song. For onething, writing was understood as the agent that interfered with the adherence ofthe speaking agent to the given situation; writing was thought to uproot thespeaking subject from the situation. If the human body was the mediatory bondbetween the performative situation and the verbal text, then writing liberated theutterance from the speaker's body and, therefore, from the performative situa­tion. Whereas speech was both a verbal and a nonverbal text, writing did notnecessarily give rise to a performance adherent to a given situation. In writing, asKagawa conceived it, the human body did not mediate. Surely the act of writingitself is a corporeal action, but by definition, it never achieved the integrity ofdirect action for the body and the situation to be found in speech.

Strangely enough, it is in writing that the elimination, the death, of individualspontaneity is most strongly pronounced. I argue that in singing or the corporealgesture in general, the death of individual is also eVident, but in a differentsense. 31 Whereas in writing the subject's body is contradictorily absent from thediscursively constituted self, the body must be present in a corporeal and spokentext. The gesture or corporeal text takes for its textual materiality the individualitself; it is a writing inscribed on the body by the body: I have my body, and at thesame time, I am my body. For this reason, the singular embedded in a corporealtext is thoroughly materialistic (and calligraphic) and is utterly devoid of theindividual subject, which is nothing but a discursive positivity.

The human body, the ambiguous point of intertextual intersection, was also thelocus of singing. Singing, then, was a text simultaneously visual and oral/aural,spatial and temporal, nonlinear and linear. As it affirmed the anonymity andcommunality of the subject that was constituted discursively, it revealed thepresence of the body as that in which the singing was inscribed, or the textualmateriality itself; the body and text were made of the same stuff in this case. Andwhat the idealized notion of song aspired to was exactly the kind of integration ofvarious heterogeneous texts for which the human body allowed. Seen from thisperspective, the problematic role of song and poetics in the discursive space iseven more evident. First, song was a specific genre in which the verbal text was

taken to be an immediate concretization of feeling. But as we have observed inMotoori's conception of mono no aware (~eaningfulness of mono), feeling thusconcretized was not a product or a remnant of some prior psychological occur­rence. Song was not a product but a process of production, not an enunciated butan «nunciation. Therefore, it was supposed that direct involvement in and imme­diate adherence to the performative situation should be .guaranteed in it. In thisrespect, all the traits of direct action were ascribed to it. It was claimed that, justlike an exclamation, it did not represent but produced itself as an instance ofactive enunciation. Also, because it could repeat itself and was not confined to anevent that could not be reproduced, it transcended historical time. Similarly,because it could be repeated by other actors, it addressed itself to anonymity andwas addressed to a collectivity. Furthennore, it was believed that singing couldproject an image of a collectivity of sympathy. In this regard, many of the traits ofindirect action were to be found within it.

What is revealed in this characterization of song is that it marked the am­bivalent boundary between verbal and nonverbal texts, direct and indirect actionsin the discursive formation. It was the topos of sincerity, a topos in whichlanguage and nonlanguage were supposedly synthesized and the primordial an­chorage of language in the world was identified. Hence, all the studies of lan­guage during the eighteenth century explicitly or implicitly pointed to this pres­tigious object of discourse. The question What is language? could not beanswered without taking singing into consideration, since the fundamental coor­dinate defining the world of language was assumed to be located in this sphere ofhuman activity. It is also for this reason that enunciation was conceptualized interms of process rather than signification and that social reality was conceived tobe an effect of corporeal and textual productivity. Despite its seeming ap­oliticality and obvious indifference to the contemporary political struggle, poetryor song held the key to debates about the issue of social control and hegemony ininstitutional reproduction. How the relation between the poetic and the poieticwas conceived almost determined the political implications of the debates.

Thus, history and poetics were closely intertwined. The ability to repeat itself,as I have elucidated with regard to the Bergsonian concept of memory, was ofprimary importance in the formation of the sense of history and in concerns aboutan ideological construction of social reality. Singing was not an event expressedby a singing subject. Through the act of singing, one assimilated oneself to thefeeling of sorrow or joy that was the song. When the singer says she is sad orgesticulates sadness during the performance of singing, I would not mistake thefeeling thus exposed solely for the singer's own, partly because in singing theindividual agent is absent and the feeling expressed belongs to no specific personbut to anybody, including the listener. So it can be said that the feeling in song iscontagious. Hence, singing is always an experience of sympathy, an experiencein which one can be free from imprisonment in the atomized self.

Underlying the discussion of song was an insight, which Ito- Jinsai forcefully

307The Politics of ChoreographyLanguage, Body, and the bnmediate306

32Bergson, Matter and Memory, p. 90.

The Politics of Choreography

It is clear, then, how the issues of history, communality, and the ideologicalconstitution of social reality converge on this topic of poetry. From an extensivediscussion of the nature of poetry emerged images of the ideal social order,communal life, and politics. Feeling, intimacy, and immediacy were the ideolog­ical instruments by means of which the most effective social control was to beaccomplished. Because of the involvement of the body, the affirmative political

309The Politics of Choreography

process that was imagined was neither persuasion nor authoritarian coercion butchoreography. In the coordinated moveme,nt of various texts, each perfonnerwas to be given a specific role-as in a dance team-and was expected to playthat role in harmony with the whole. The ideal regularities that in principle keptthe dance intact could then serve as a lure for endless, habitual practice andbodily inscription. Although those regularities may appear extrinsic as a still-to­be-attained standard of perfection in one's memory of language and other institu­tions, supposedly, just like one's mother tongue, they become transparent andeffectively indiscernible from one's innate nature once the internalization intobodily practice, however gradual, has been attained. This is precisely what hasbeen portrayed as a transition from the exterior to the interior. Again, thistransition to the interior should never be confused with mere mechanical masteryof a skill or memorization of foreign words. Entering the interior entails theacquisition of an ability to share sympathy, to feel naturally as the others belong­ing to it do. At the same time that such an ability, which determines the essenceof the interior, resides in the body, the interior should never be felt within one'sbody but in one's rapport with other subjects. Hence, while it is appropriate tosay that .the interior arrives in you, it is not contradictory to claim that you enterit. Indeed, entry into an interior means a total alteration of the way one perceivesthe world, that is, a total change of the world.

In the imaginary constitution of the interior, the body was thus regarded as anagent that ensured a reciprocity of feeling and institutionalized intimacy withothers on the basis of transference. As if counteracting Ito's comprehension ofthe body that constantly discloses its materiality and therefore its surplus overwhat is appropriated into transferential intersubjectivity, a notion of sociality wasproposed in terms of transparent communion, the guarantee of intimacy, and theconception of the body as a storehouse of habits. What took place in the discur­sive space of the eighteenth century, I think, is a debate concerning the body, adebate between the conceptualization in which the body was, above all, theanchorage of social and cultural institutions in the world and another notion ofthe body which refused to be conceptualized, pointed to its materiality, andendorsed the body's otherness, and its heterogeneity to individual subjectivity,consciousness, and intersubjectivity.

As an integrated component of an interior rooted in corporeal motor function,language was now given its unity as representative of the interior. The unity of alanguage, therefore, was fashioned after the sense of interiority. Let us notforget, however, that there was no national, standard language in the eighteenthcentury. It was almost unanimously upheld that the contemporary world wasfragmented and its language disrupted. Thus it was impossible to recognize theintegrity of a language suggested by the notion of a unified interior: there was nosingle Japanese language, only Japanese languages. Even this may be an inade­quate description of the situation, for Japaneseness, implying some unity ofethnos, could not be identified without recourse to the conception of some

Language. Body. and the Immediate308

noted, that the feeling is not subjective or shukan-teki therefore cannot simply beintegrated into and controlled by "consciousness"; it is an insight that th.e fol­lowers of rationalism could not appreciate, for they presumed that the feelingwas a subjective phenomenon occurring within the mind and that it had to beontologically determined as something predestined to be administered and regu­lated by the mind. While Ito acknowledged the social, the intervention by theotherness of the Other, in feeling, however, the writers of National Studiesassociated it with intersubjectivity in the discussion of song. Therefore, throughthe transference mechanism of intersubjectivity, the feeling in which a singerparticipated was understood to be both a feeling she rendered her own by assim­ilating herself into it and a communal feeling concretized in the song.

But this is not the only reason for the absence of the individual agent insinging. The anonymity of feeling in singing is not restricted to here and now andcannot be understood as part of an event that takes place once in chronologicaltime. It does not have a date or a place. Suffice it to say that this is another side ofthe fact that the feeling cannot be attributed to any SPecific individual. Given thisaccount of communal feeling concretized in singing, it should be evident thatsinging does not tolerate such oppositions as performer/spectator, object/subject,and speaker/listener. Both the singing and the hearing of a song indicate anexperience whose primary characteristic coincides with participation. This par­ticipation is not achieved by one's conscious effort, however, but by the disci­plined and habituated human body that participates in a communal action calledsong or poetry, even when one's "mind" refuses to acknowledge it. As an event,history does not repeat itself; yet, as a song and a poem, history continuallyresurrects itself in one's body in the midst of the present performance. AsBergson puts it, "It is part of my present, exactly like my habit of walking or ofwriting; it is lived and acted, rather than represented. "32 It is through thisspecific determination of song that feeling, which for Ito Jinsai had been apassage to the social, to the otherness of the Other, to the exteriority that couldnot be exhaustively contained in discourse, was made to conform to a commu­nality that was nothing but a reification of the anonymous collectivity.

33Cf. Jacques Derrida; for the problematic of history and ethnocentricity in Western metaphysics,see his Edmund Husserl's Origin ofGeometry: An Introduction, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., and DavidB. Allison (Boulder, Colo.: Great Eastern, 1978); Speech and Phenomena, trans. David B. Allison(Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973); and, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri C.Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).

overarching unity equivalent to the interior. Hence" the unity of a single Japaneselanguage could hardly be founded insofar as it was sought after in the contempo­rary world. The only thing to be discovered there was regional diversity, anindefinitely disseminated mixture of various languages. It is in this context thathistory was solicited. Positing the standard language of antiquity dramatized thisdiversity by pointing up the absence of intrinsic unity. Because a coherent wholewas assumed in the past, the present was analyzed as a lack, a negative thatrequired a fundamental change. Projecting the idealized unity of language ontothe ancient world that preceded writing inscribed the Japanese language in eigh­teenth-century culture as an absence, a loss.

Thus historical time was taken for granted as a distance between the world as itshould be and the world as it is, an instance inviting critique. History wasconstantly summoned to testify to the degraded and decayed reality of contempo­rary society. Evidently the sense of history proclaimed by kiyo no gaku, kobunjigaku, and National Studies could not be assimilated into a linear and continuoushistory based on the seriality of events. While linear history affirmed continuity,it was discontinuity between the present and the past, the other and the identical,that was called out in the studies of ancient languages and institutions.

Now, I cannot afford to dismiss what was implied in the assumption impercep­tibly introduced by this notion of the interior and the unity of one Japaneselanguage. Through these discursive apparatuses, the unity of ethnos was, possi­bly for the first time, constructed and confirmed. 33 In Tokugawa Japan too,phonocentrism was essential in forming the ethnocentric closure. As I havedemonstrated, the priority of speech was the essential condition without whichthe other and the exterior, which continually eroded and broke open the pro­claimed unity and the closure of an ethnocentric unity of a language, could not beexcluded and suppressed. Because language was associated with corporeal be­havior and dissociated from its representational function, the unity of the lan­guage thus constituted pointed to a realm beyond verbal explanation and persua­sion, where language was reduced to a communal silence that continued to bemeaningful only by excluding those who did not agree to conceal the social.Thus, the realm identified in teons of this language unity was also a communitycomposed of the accomplices to such a silence. We should remember that thediscursive foonation of this ethnos was an ideological coercion, if not moreoppressive than the ethnocentricity based on garrulous phonocentrism of theWest, at least as powerful. That is, the formulation of this language in terms of"communal silence," rather than "communal speech," is a way of displacing thecontradiction between the nonrepresentational, nonsensory sensation of the inte­rior, which such a language is supposed to generate, and the aleatoriness of the

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311The Politics of Choreography

34As some readers are aware, the term "ethnocentricity" is usually used in an opposite sense tomine in this paragraph. Ethnocentricity is a discursive formation in which the claim of the univer­sality of some terms implicitly privileges the identity of a certain ethnic group and asserts itssuperiority over others while insisting on the indiscriminate openness of those terms. Hence, twoopposing tendencies of ethnic selflessness (declared claim) and self-centeredness (displaced impetus)are accommodated in the double structure characteristic of ethnocentricity. In this regard, the discur­sive formation of Tokugawa Japan may not appear ethnocentric inasmuch as it lacks the aspect ofdeclared ethnic selflessness: it does not pretend to be open. As I shall argue, however, the discursiveformation of Tokugawa Japan easily forms a supplementary rapport with the authentically ethno­centric discourse. The National Studies documents of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen­turies, in addition to the books by Yamazaki Ansai in the seventeenth century, amply show that such aformation of particularistic and immature ethnocentricity could tum into universalistic and genuineethnocentricity or vice versa. There is hardly any difference between them in the degree to which theyreinforce ethnocentric closure.

Yamazaki Ansai (1619-1682) was a prominent rationalist Confucian and the founder of the SuikaShinto of the early Tokugawa period. His father, an unemployed samurai in Kyoto, sent him to the

The birth ot Japanese as a language as well as an ethnic community of anaesthetic nature was thus prompted by a phonocentric obsession generated in thediscursive space of the eighteenth century. Both Japanese as a language unity andJapanese as an ethnos were, at the same time, constituted positivities made up ofutterances in discourse and constituting positivities regulating the production ofutterances. Like all positivities, they- served to fashion the social reality whileclaiming to be embedded in that reality. Hidden or manifest, they were assumedto be already there in the tissue of everyday deeds spontaneously initiated byordinary people. Now, I do not imply that what positivists vaguely refer to as theJapanese language or culture did not exist prior to the eighteenth century. Indeed,people in the region now called -Japan had acted and lived in a medium oflanguages and cultural institutions from the first human habitation of the land.But to claim that these inhabitants were Japanese speaking one language andsharing one culture necessitated an unprecedented organization of discourse inwhich various differentiations, which otherwise would have fonned a field ofdifferences, converged to constitute an ethnocentric closure. 34 It should be noted

social inherent in the material inscription of institutionalized practices in thebody.

But it is also necessary to remember that such a unity of ethnic collectivity wasnot directly linked to the existing social order. The world of Tokugawa Japan wasperceived to be devoid of this commuanlity" and the ethnic unity was alwaysprojected into the past, into antiquity. In this sense, a certain reification of ananonymous collectivity, which social action establishes, had already taken place,but it was not directly equated to the existing order. This ethnic identity cameinto being primarily as a loss, as that which had existed a long time ago but wasno longer available. Thus, Japanese was born into eighteenth-century discourselong dead; Japanese was stillborn.

Language, Body, and the Immediate310

312 Language, Body, and the Immediate

that these unities meant much more than the mere sum of languages and institu­tions to be found in the region during the eighteenth century. If the teno H Japa­nese" was a proper name for the languages in use there, it would have encom­passed even those tongues used by the Chinese, Koreans, and Ainu. Conversely,of course, many "Japanese" could not make themselves understood to other"Japanese." As long as one pursues a rigorous unity of language, one will onlyprove the impossibility of defining a language and its boundary empirically. As amatter of fact, the unity of a language is one of the conditions of possibility onwhich empirical evidence can be constructed. In other words, it precedes em­pirical positivity, so that neither its presence nor its absence can be provenfactually. The unity of a language cannot be given in experience: its unity cannotbe an object of empirical science. Here, positivism is utterly hopeless preciselybecause it does not know its historicity and theoretical limitations. That is, itshould be equally possible to envisage a discursive space where the unities ofethnos and language are not constituted or are viewed as historically arbitrary.

What was alluded to by the eruption of the enunciation into the discursivespace was this transfonnation, as a result of which the unities of a language andan ethnos were brought about. It is not that the emergence of the enunciationcaused them to appear, but that the emergence of the enunciation was the condi­tion allowing for these unities. I have frequently stressed the discursive nature ofthe enunciation, namely, that the enunciation cannot be taken as a real being; it isan imaginary construct, an originary repetition, although it is posited as a realevent. Hence, in the discursive space in question, it points to an event of theproduction of utterance, but it is posterior to the enunciated. Just as so-calledextratextual reality is always an effect of the text-the text being anterior to theextratextual reality-the enunciation may be considered to be a product of theenunciated. Thus, whereas the enunciation is conventionally defined as the pro­duction and the enunciated is equated to a product, I must note that raising theissue of the production of the originary repetition puts this convention intoquestion.

The primacy of speech which we witnessed in the discursive space is, ofcourse, closely related to this issue, but it was necessary in order to avoid thedisclosure of the entire problematic. Above all, the notion of speech based on theopposition enunciation!enunciated supposedly enabled one to ex.perience the

Enryakuji temple to become a Buddhist priest; later he served at a temple in Tosa province (now inKo~hi prefecture) where Song rationalism had flourished. At the age of twenty-three, YamazakideCided to abandon Buddism and to devote himself entirely to the philosophy of Zhu Xi. Returning toKyoto, he wrote and lectured on Zhu Xi's philosophy for the rest of his life. His Kimon schoolattracted many talented students, including Asami Keisai (1652-1711) and Miyake Shosai (1662­1741). Yamazaki's understanding of Zhu Xi's philosophy tended to emphasize rigorous moralism andthe virtue of loyalty to one's lord. He especially valued and acknowledged his indebtedness to aKorea~ C~nfucian, Yi T'.oegye (l50l~70). His major works include Kekii (Refutations of heresies),Bunkat hlStsuroku (Readmg notes), and Suika bunshu (Collected essays on Suika).

The Politics of Choreography 313

utterance at the very moment of its birth. This notion stipulated the original scenewhere the addresser, the addressee, and· thfngs surrounding the act of utterancewere all present, as I have detected in Benveniste'8 notion of the instance ofdisc~urse. Yet such a vision is possible only in retrospect. All one could possiblysay about the origina! scene is that all thes~ items must haye been simultaneouslypresent there. What IS decisive about the enunciation is that it cannot be thoughtor ex~erienced. It. is jus,t l~ke the primordiality of perception in phenomenology.To thlOk or expenence It IS to grasp it as the enunciated, and the original sceneone might posit is necessarily absent, lost, and bypassed. From the outset, it isonly in its repetition that it is thought or experienced. In this sense, the textalways belongs to the past. Accordingly, the absence of the addresser, the ad­dressee, and the things that must have animated the production of the enunciatedis in fact the condition for the possibility of the text. Since the original scene isnecessarily absent, one cannot think of any text that belongs to the present. Thenotio~ of its belonging to the present is altogether absurd. Therefore, even duringthe eIghteenth century, the text was given the detenoination of a lost voice. Butwhat wa~ .neglected then is that this detennination applies to every text, not onlyto the ancient documents. Furthennore, eighteenth-century discourse ignored thecontradiction this detennination already indicated, the contradiction inherent inthe intellectual commitment to the resurrection of the originary voice, whichdemanded the primacy of speech and at the same time negated every possibilityof resurrecting the original scene. The point is that even if a lost voice could bereturned to its originary plenitude, the voice thus recovered would still be arepetition of a past event. And insofar as it is a repetition, it would constitute adiff~rent enunciation; a repetition of the past enunciation can point to its original,but It can do so only by supplementing all those items that were supposed to bepresent in the original scene but are absent at the scene of the repeated enuncia­tion. But their presence, if it could ever be repeated, would be a representation.If a lost voice should be recovered, the voice thus recovered could coincide withitself in the very essence of its repeatability.

I have already argued this thesis with regard to the anteriority of writing inMOloori Norinaga's reading of the Kojiki. What I disclosed then was the politicalimplication of his reading. Now I should pursue this fundamental contradictionwithout which discourse could not have been generated. It is evident not only thata lost voice can be resurrected only as a representation but also that the notion ofenunciation itself is impossible as long as we understand it as an object ofthought. Suppose there is a document; it seems obvious that in order for it to existit must have been produced at some moment prior to this moment. Likewise, anutterance exists as an enunciated in the present in one form or another-in thefonn of the transcribed voice, for instance-so that it must have been producedand recorded at some time prior to this. Then one would conclude that a productpresupposes the production anterior to it and that an enunciated similarly presup­poses the enunciation; one would be forced to postulate that because the utter-

35The reader might note certain similarities between the enunciation and Austin'S speech acts. SeeJ.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1962). See alsoJohn Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

ance as an enunciated is here and now, there must have been textual productionand the enunciation whose only trace is the text, narrowly comprehended 'as abook, document, or monument. It goes without saying that the text can beequated to a book, document, or monument only metonymically and in somevery rare contexts and that the term Utext" must be kept distinct from the terms"book," "discourse," and "work" by every means possible in order for thetextuality of the text to be preserved. The simplistic positing of the temporalsequence enunciation-enunciated or production-product confuses the ve~ notionof the text. It ignores the truism that it is impossible to postulate the significationof an utterance in the physical presence of a book, document, or monument, likea spirit inhabiting a physical body, that the reading of the text is always anenunciation and the text is not an entity like a book, whose unity is given by thephysical contour of the object, but inclusive of various relationships between thatmateriality I called textual materiality and various items such as the addresser,the addressee, and subjects of many different kinds-speaking, reading, and soon. When it is not read or heard, a book is merely bound paper.

The notion of the book is ignorant of this internal articulation of textuality. Onthe one hand, the book is defined as a physical entity whose unity is given as thecontour of piled paper or some equivalent things, and on the other hand, the bookis defined as the identity of its message. In the notion of the book, these twodefinitions coexist as if they were synthesized. It is obvious that the significationor the message cannot be extracted from the qualities of bound paper. Thedetermination of the book as a physical entity does not tell anything about its so­called content. In order to recognize some message in the marks inscribed oli thatphysical entity, one must read it, and in that reading, the content of the book isconstituted as being already there, that is, as being atemporal and independent ofthe vicissitude of the individual reading act. As a matter of fact, the seconddefinition of the book betrays the first one, so that the coexistence of the two is amystery or superstition. When one takes into account the constitution of content,the notion of the book is no longer of any help; we require the notion of the text,which encompasses the subject and the act of the reading. It is not that in readingthe ~'I" faces the text as though the "I" has stood outside the text but rather thatin reading the "I" is constituted in the text just as the book, as the identity ofmessage, is constituted in the text.

It is around the problematic of the difference between the text and the bookthat the enunciation, as I have observed it, was assigned an important role in theorganization of discourse in the eighteenth century. It was equated to an utteranceenacted in the performative situation, where the speaking subject was plungedinto an active communion with things and others; it was an act of anchoringwords in the world. 35

Nevertheless, as Jacques Derrida has elaborated, "the possibility of repeating,

36Jacques Derrida, "Signature Event Context;' in Margins ofPhilosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chi­cago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 315-16.

37Ibid.

315The Politics of Choreography

and therefore of identifying marks is implied in every code, making of it acommunicable, transmittable, decipherable grid that is iterable for a third party,and thus for any possible user in general. "36 Suffice it to say that Derrida'sexplication can and, in fact, did extend to the addresser, or the speaking subject,and to the performative situation: that an enunciation is repeatable is a rupturebetween the enunciated and the horizon of 'the enunciation. That is to say, if theenunciation is repeatable, it is no longer an enunciation; only as an enunciatedcan it repeat itself. Derrida writes, "The subtraction of all writing from thesemantic or the hepneneutic horizon which, at least as a horizon of meaning, letsitself be punctured by writing" and "the disqualification or the limit of theconcept of the 'real' or 'linguistic' context, whose theoretical detennination orempirical saturation are, strictly speaking, rendered impossible or insufficient bywriting. "37 Thus the very possibility of repeating the enunciation, which thewriters of the eighteenth century desired so urgently, is denied by the enunciationitself; the possibility of the enunciation is already marked by the impossibility ofreturning the enunciated to its original scene.

Hence, I refuse to see as real what eighteenth-century grammarians claimed toexist in antiquity and what they believed to be the originary voice behind the text,not because these claims are factually incorrect but because their act of claimingalready harbored a fundamental contradiction. There is no such thing as a realenunciation or an original utterance. From the outset an utterance is a repetitionpreceded by no presence. In understanding their discourse I have taken it uponmyself, instead, to see how such a conception of the enunciation was generatedin that discursive space. That is, I started with the premise that a product pro­duces production, that an enunciated produces an enunciation.

Enunciation is a reality of an elusive nature, a reality that cannot be arrested inconcepts or identities, that betrays itself ceaselessly. It is, in principle, posteriorto writing, to the textuality in which the author, the speaker, and the reader canall emerge only as the dead, as the absent. Seen in this light, it is evident whydeath as loss, so essential in textual production, had to be obsessively denied andrenounced in eighteenth-century discourse. What was constantly rejected andexcluded was the death inherent in textual formation, where death indicates thepossibility of utterance itself. So the dichotomy death/life related itself closely toanother predominant opposition, enunciated/enunciation. Writing, ideograph,and nominal were often equated to the symptoms of death, and speech, phonet­icism, and nonnominal were associated with the body, with liveliness, move­ment, and action. As was illustrated by the analysis of the Japanese puppettheater, however, enunciation as a describable event was constituted in terms ofthose oppositions themselves and never posited as "real" independent of tex­tuality. If it is to be called an event, it certainly belongs to the class of phenomena

Language, Body, and the Immediate314

38Ibid., p. 315. Brackets are Derrida's.

registered in the text and not to extratextual reality. Solely on condition that theoppositions deathllife, enunciated/enunciation, and writing/speech precede itsdiscursive constitution can an event possibly emerge as such. That is to say,despite the proclaimed renunciation of death, the act of eliminating it alwayspresupposes its positing, without which the entire argument would be mean­ingless. The process of erasing it is then never ending, for to erase it is simul­taneously to generate it. All these oppositions, far from establishing entities inthemselves, continue to activate the play of difference and to be unresolvably tiedto differance. As long as the discursive space was dominated by the oppositions Ihave identified, it was generated and regenerated as a necessary field of dif­ferences.

By the economy of this discursive formation, the identical or the ethnic identi­ty thus composed was constantly exchanged with the other. In due course, theimage of the identical, which was constantly appealed to during the eighteenthcentury, functioned as a discursive apparatus by means of which the identicalcould be posited as the other. Without the mediation of the other as a specularpositing of the self, the unity of an ethnos could never have been thought orprojected. But each time the identity of the ethnos was ascertained, it was positedas an other for the self, as other than the self, and as an other distant from theself. To attempt to see the other as identical to the self, that is, to see the identical(to itself), is necessarily to engender the movement of repetition, iterability,because the identical is meaningless without recourse to the process in which itreturns to itself. As Derrida notes, "Iter, once again, comes from itera, other inSanskrit, and everything that follows may be read as the exploitation of the logicwhich links repetition to alterity." Iterability, he continues, "structures the markof writing itself, and does so moreover for no matter what type of writing[pictographic, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetic, alphabetic, to use the oldcategories]. A writing that was not structurally legible-iterable-beyond thedeath of the addressee would not be writing. "38

Derrida's use of the word "writing," being beyond the scope determined bythe writing/speech dichotomy, reveals the economy of a restricted investment ofdesire which the primacy of speech in phonocentrism assumed; by the samestroke, it pronounces that it is impossible to maintain the primacy of speech.Instead of warranting the ethnic and the ethnocentric identical in the homoge­neous and immediate "presence to itself' of speech, it is revealed that speechitself posits the identical as an other. What was purported to be accomplished inthe primacy of speech was to isolate the positive terms of main oppositions and tolink them together as if there were a subject to which only these positive termswere attributed. Needless to say, that subject, or shugo, would later be calledJapan. In this formation of a discursive positivity called Japan, writing was maderesponsible for estrangement, delay, the positing of the other, and the hetero-

Death as the Possibility of Language

317The Politics of Choreography

geneity caused by historical time, but speech was apprehended as indicating arealm of interiority where immediacy, the identical, homogeneity-all believedto be beyond history-were assumed to exist as attributes of the subject Japan.

That the identical had to be constituted discursively, therefore, implies themost -typical form of distancing between us and ourselves. This distance is, at thesame time, the condition of the possibility for the identical and also what thepositing of the identical aims to conceal by every means. Only at the cost of openrecognition of this iterability and alterity could ethnocentricity be called forth. Itfollows that ethn~entricity always necessitates the repression of heterogeneityand alterity on behalf of those who conform to it and intellectual deceit for thosewho legitimate it.

Now I am well placed to retrace the network of concealments and displace­ments embedded in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Under thename of immediacy, intimacy, and directness, the possibility of death, which isinherent in every textual production and is perhaps best illustrated by such astatement as "I am telling you a lie," was disguised, substituted, and finallyhidden. The ceaseless pursuit of direct involvement· in the total perfonnativesituation, despite its proclaimed intent, lent itself to a recognition that what onemeant to say and what one had actually said were linked together in the elementof a lie. Here, to speak was to tell a lie directly, and the possibilities of languageuse, the social, and the encounter with the Other (not the other, the symmetricalopposite of the self or intersubjective other, but the Other in its alterity) coin­cided. Ultimately, when this fundamental feature of language was rigorouslyeliminated, one could only resort to silence, which was also the final form ofinteriorized sincerity, as Kagawa Kageki's POetics of sincerity infonned us. Atthe extreme limit of what could be called the denial of death in language ap­peared the total rejection of language, the death of language in its entirety; theeffort to exclude from language the rift between what I meant to say and what Ihave said ended by murdering language as a whole; the full presence of theenunciation became synonymous with its total absence.

I believe that what eighteenth-century theorists perceived to be the fundamen­tal disease of the world in fact inhabited their language itself, rather than theexternal world they so wished to rectify. Thus the eighteenth-century discursivespace suffered from its intrinsic tendency toward silence, its overwhelming ob­session with immediacy. We should recall, however, that it also encompassed thekind of discourse that problematized its own discursivity and thus pointed to itslimits, a discourse in which the issue of textual materiality was addressed inrelation to' practical, that is, ethical, problematics. There, the possibility ofsociality, defamiliarization, and death in language was affirmed, so that the

Language, Body. and the Immediate316

Exteriority

otherness of the Other was respected as a resistance to appropriation into dis­course, as the unthinkable that could never be exhaustively universalized; as aradical critique of idealist ethics, which was inevitably nonethical in reducing theOther to universals. Hence, such a possibility was diametrically opposed to thepoetics of sincerity in that it continually highlighted the iterability according towhich the otherness of materiality could never be entirely repressed in repetition.The absence of concern for the original enunciation and of recourse to the past inIto Jinsai's treatises is striking when we consider the overwhelming urge to letthe enunciated and the enunciation coincide with each other in the poetics ofUmeaningfulness of mono" and of sincerity. It is not that enunciation was absentthere but that the fleeing nature of enunciation and the unbridgeable distancebetween the enunciated and the enunciation were thoroughly taken into accountand brought into a dialogism in which language was freed from the myth of theoriginal enunciation, the myth of immediacy-a dialogism that never attemptedto eliminate heterogeneity, polyphony, and above all the otherness of the Other.

Surely the attentiveness to the otherness of the Other did not confine itself tothe opposition exterior/interior, which played a decisive role in the discursiveformation of the interior as an ethnic closure. Being distinct from the exterior, theexteriority to which defamiliarization leads us may be said to be that whichdisqualifies the very opposition exterior/interior itself, a difference whose func­tion it is to posit the opposite terms as real, as independent identities, and whichallows us instead to see the opposition as a difJerance, a site where ethnic orcultural identities can never be completed. Without using this term "exteriority"to disclose the network of concealment and displacement, this difJerance mayeasily be reconciled with the logic of cultural identity; it may merely be made todenote the distinction between the two possible rapports a subject can have with agiven cultural, linguistic, or other institutional reality; it may be accommodatedin an alternative by which one either belongs to a given community or not,without disclosing the perversion of posing such a choice. As I have endeavoredto show, this opposition exterior/interior is not an extratextual occurrence buttakes place in the midst of discursive formation. It goes without saying thatexteriority cannot be understood either within this opposition or as a geograph­ical outside of Japanese territory.

Finally I have arrived at the cognizance that the exteriority I talked about in theIntroduction is, after all, not so remote from Ito Jinsai's concept of ai. Exteri­ority, or dehors, ensures the possibility of a certain kind of history writing inwhich we are to refuse to see the past as our past and so integrate it into ourpresent. It serves neither as a real cultural position (because the unity of culturecan be posited only discursively) nor as an inevitably consequence of the estab-

319The Politics of Choreography

39'Jbe mind, xin, cannot be directly equated to "consciousness," of course. As I have tried toillustrate, however, in certain contexts these two appear very similar. Ifwe construe consciousness asa field of language that is misrecognized as unique to the individual subject, Tokugawa discourse isnot so different from ours. Many attempts have been made to discover modern man as subjectiveinteriority in Tokugawa intellectual discourse. Cf. Bito Masahide, Nihon hoken shiso-shi kenkyu(Tokyo: Aoki Shoten. 1961).

lishment of national consciousness but rather as a specific perspective fromwhich texts ~e seen, read, written, and produced. Exteriority thereby enables usto cease to be accomplices in the kind of history whose main task is to legitimatewhatever discursive system may be imposed upon us, and to conceal its intrinsiccontradiction.

In eighteenth-century discourse, the risk of falling into the dimension of inte­riority depicted in tenns of consciousness is not as grave as it is today because ofthe constant resistance of texts to the imposition of the epistemological frame­work of which co~sciousness is constructed, and also because of the philosoph­ical argument that criticizes the concept of the "mind."39 On the other hand,interiority as a cultural and ethnocentric closure presents a continual threat to myapproach. I have read texts of the period in question with a view to depicting thehistorical a priori conditions for the emergence of the interior as such. Time andtime again, I had to caution that the interior must not be granted the status of theahistorical essence.

All these efforts amount to my strategic focus on the dimension of the text,which is anterior to the formation of the interior. The locus of textuality to whichmy reading leads is to be found in the exterior of the discursive space, where theopposition interior/exterior is perceived as real. Instead of yielding to a her­meneutical temptation to involve myself in a lived experience, instead of fan­tasizing my speech as already anchored in some horizon of a life world, I have atleast attempted to base my analysis on discursive fonnation. That is to say, I havebeen seeking a position outside of ethnocentric closure, a position of impos­sibility from which the constitution of ethnos can be critically construed.

Language, Body, and the Immediate318

Conclusion

National Language and Subjectivity

In the beginning of this book, I posed several questions: What is language? Whatis nonlanguage? What is the "I"? What is meant by belonging to a language? andWhat is meant by a language's belonging to ~~me"? I ventured to implicate"what," or quiddity, in these questions as if I expected the definitive and defini­tional (or essential) answers to them. Yet, throughout my discussion of thesequestions, I have tried my best not to lose sight of the issues that positing of thesequestions might enable me to talk about. The frrst issue is the ambiguous bound­ary between a national, ethnic, or regional language and language in general.The second issue is concerned with the use of "I" or its equivalent in language inrelation to various determinations of subject: shugo, shukan, shudai, shutai,andso on. In dealing with the first issue, I have forced myself to adhere to aprinciple: instead of asking how a pure, archaic, and original language wasdivided, contaminated, and eroded in chronological time, I have always askedhow the idea of a pure and internally coherent language was generated out ofhybrid languages. That is, I have consistently let my argument be regulated bythe idea that language is invariably hybrid.

Eighteenth-century discourse, as I have read it, posed this problem mostsuccinctly. The unity of Japanese language was undoubtedly an invention thatwas called forth in order to render the encounter of differences thinkable andcommensurable in discourse; it was a scheme by which what one could notaccommodate within the existing discourse, such as the Kojiki, was appropriatedinto that discourse as an identifiable other to the consentaneous apprehension of"us." This discursive invention can be said to have facilitated a passage to theunderstanding of the incommensurable as such, to the determination of theunthinkable as unthinkable, It successfully disclosed the site of what had beensilenced and linked it to different regimes. Sophistic though it may seem, it

320

Conclusion 321

opened up a process in which what one encountered but could not think orunderstand was determined, defined, ·thought of, and apprehended as unthinka­ble, The incommensurable was identified as such and thereby rendered commen­surate in speculation,

Here a,n example of a foreign language might help. For the sake of argument,let a forel~n ~anguage be ,what we, cannot understand at all, that is, take a foreignlanguage In Its most radical foreIgnness.· When we come across a foreign lan­guage for the first time, we recognize this encounter with otherness in the factthat we-do not understand it. We do not understand it not only in the sense that wecannot grasp signification articulated in that medium but also in the sense that wecannot discern even the difference between language and nonlanguage in thatmedi~~. The pit,ch, which does not play any role in "our" language, might playa deCISive role In that foreign language, or some categories such as dual innU~ber or neuter, in gender might be essential in it. But the whole point aboutforeign language IS that we do not know it, and so we cannot be attentive to theseunfamiliar features. In principle, that language is foreign or alien to us notbecause we can identify it as a language different from ours but because wesimply cannot identify it at all. By the same token, we cannot know how far ourlanguage goes, where the language we understand ceases to be intelligible.Sup~sedly there are many dialects in "our" language, but, as a matter of fact,there IS no way to tell at what point some dialects cease to be in ~'our" languageand begin to belong to some other language. We cannot tell where "our" lan­guage ends and another language begins.

Perha~s, I should d~~ll on Wittgenstein's well-known argument involving thefield of SIght and the hmit of my world, to illuminate what is at stake in determin­ing the unthinkable as the unthinkable. Allow me to maintain a certain reserva­tion as to Wittgenstein's uses of the words '~language" and "logic" here inreproducing these propositions:

5.6 The limit of my language means the limit of my world.5.6.1 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits,

We cannot therefore say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there isnot.

For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, andthis cannot be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world:that is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also.

What we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what wecannot think, , , .

5.632 The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.5.633 Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted?

You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But

lLudwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner,1922), pp. 148-51.

you do not really see the eye. And from nothing in the field of sight can it beconcluded that it 'is seen from an eye.·

In its otherness, we cannot oppose a foreign language to "our" language, norcan we identify the unthinkable as opposed to the thinkable. Yet we think weknow that there are many languages we do not understand. That we think soshows precisely that what we understand by foreign languages are objects imag­ined in discourse: what we do not understand or experience is identified in termsof the objects constituted in discourse. Therefore, it is impossible for us toexperience foreign languages in their foreignness. They are imaginary, but notillusionary, for there are certain protocols by which to demonstrate the nonexis­tence of the referent in the case of an illusionary object, but one cannot show thatthe imaginary object does not exist. Precisely because we cannot identify it, thelanguage is radically foreign, But in order to show that a referent does not exist,one must first show the connection between the name of a foreign language andits referent. Yet it is this ability of ascribing a name of language to the activity ofthat language that we do not possess. But we believe in imaginary objects that wecan neither understand or experience, and they are part and parcel of the socialreality in which we live.

·What the invention of the Japanese language amounts to is, first, a distinctiondrawn between the thinkable and the unthinkable, as if our understanding couldconsider this distinction "from the other side," as if there were some transcen­dent viewpoint from which the incommensurability of the unthinkable could bethought; and second, an explanation that because the limits of a language (in thiscase the Japanese language) inhere in "our" thinking, we cannot think what fallsoutside that language unity. Let me note that this is where the first importantdisplacement from language in general to a particular language occurs. And inthis constitution of Japanese language, a dual operation proceeds. On the onehand, it is claimed that our thinking is predetermined by our belonging to anational language; on the other, it is assumed that some cultural or linguisticsubjectivity that enables us to think and perceive in certain ways can be seen,objectified, and posited as an identity, just as if we could see our own eye. AndWittgenstein certainly did not use the word "language" in the sense of a national

language.Thus, the invention of the Japanese language as an ethnic closure requires the

simultaneous positing of two subjectivities that are distinct from each other. Onemight call one of these transcendental and the other empirical: transcendentalsubjectivity ensures that the unthinkable is intelligible as that which lies beyondthe limit, and empirical subjectivity ascertains that the unthinkable is literallyunintelligible. Thus, a nonspeaker of that language might assume a transcenden­tal subjectivity in relation to an empirical subjectivity that is occupied by the

323Conclusion

speaker of that language. But it is immediately obvious that the same argumentapplies to the language of the transcendental. position, so that what may appear tobe the predetermined limits of the object language should not be distinguishablefrom the reflections of the language of the transcendental observer, which mustequally be predetermined. Here a typical case of linguistic and cultural solipsismensues.

Now I must ask what constitutes the unity of the Japanese language, or kokugo(10-1). To respond to this question without falling into a series of tautologies isnot as easy as it might seem. Knowing that this question has frequently beenconfronted by Japanese linguists and philosophers, I should first follow theitinerary of an argument by Tokieda Motoki about the unity of the Japaneselanguage, for Tokieda's argument is exemplary in its attentiveness to the specif­icities of a putative Japanese language and also fairly revealing about the pitfallsin the notions of language and subjectivity.

What is generally called Tokieda kokugogaku 00-2), or Tokieda linguistics,assigns an essential role to the concept of kokugo. In defining the task oflinguistics as knowing about the essence of language, Tokieda proposed a lin­guistic study in which the existing general view of language is constantly put inquestion through the study of a particular language. He extended this view oflinguistics to the relationship between the philosophy of language, which sup­posedly deals with language in general, and linguistics~ which cannot avoidempirical research on particular languages. Instead of discarding the philosophyof language, he insisted that the study of a particular language is to be conceivedof as an opportunity to doubt and challenge the predominant view of the essenceof language in general. Implied was an obvious critique of nineteenth-centuryEuropean linguistics, which he thought naively presumed the universal essenceof language to be found in the familiarized conception of modem Europeanlanguages. In addition, Tokieda outlined in theoretical terms a search for a studyof language that is not ethnocentric, a study in which the relationship between thepursuit of the understanding of language in general and the investigation of aparticular language is thought differently. Accordingly, he insisted that the phi­losophy of language, which supposedly deals with language· in its universalfeatures, ignoring specific differences inherent in the images of language thatdifferent communities and social groups possess, ought to be constantly ques­tioned by those who directly investigate particular languages. In this sense, heargued that every linguist must also be a philosopher of language and shouldalways examine and reevaluate the view of the essence of language (gengohonshitsu-kan), which operates as a framework for the description of empiricaldata about a language. Thus, the linguist was required to be attentive not only tothe objectivity of the empirical and objective data generated about linguisticphenomena but also to what today one might call an episteme of linguistics-thevery condition of the possibility for I1hguistic knowledge-with which knowl­edge about language(s) is posited as a set of positivities.

Following his argument, one would necessarily be urged to question the very

Language. Body, and the Immediate322

I

If language as it is conceived as an object [speculated on] in an observational stanceis taken to be something substantial whose existence is external to and severed fromshutai-teki koh'i [10-4], or the subjective action between the "I" and the other, andif language [as an independent entity] is put in contact with the shutai only when theshutai uses the language, there should then be no room for shutai-teki consciousness

in the observation of language(s). 3

2Literally translated, kokugo, which consists of two characters koku o~ kuni (country, state, nation,.etc.) and go (language, word, speech, etc.) is a country's language or natIonallangua~e.Kok~ or kumin modern Japan invariably means the modem state or nation-stat~.<;:ompm::e these With okum-koto~a(Ogyu's rigen) a country or village dialect where kuni never c010clded With t~e modern s~ate: It IS

noteworthy that in this compound kokugo, koku or k~ni is u.sed ~~thout mod~fier; hence It .slmp~ymeans the country or the nation. The compound kokugo Imphcltly detennmes the relationshipbetween the addresser and the addressee, for it would in principle designate a different nationallanguage if it were uttered between the addresser and addressee of a different nationality, just as. asimilar shifting function (typical of the shifter "we") is indicated by some personal pronouns 10European languages. Furthennore, this word cannot be used if the addresser and the addressee belongto two different nations. Thus, a linguistic community is self-reflexively marked through the use of

this word.3Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogaku genron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1941), p. 27.

opposition between the essence of language, which is in~vitably articulated inuniversal terms, and the particularity of a particular language, kokugo,2 or Qne'sown national language, Japanese in his case-an opposition on which he based adifferent conception of linguistics. What was at issue in his discussion about thesignificance of kokugogaku was in fact how the agent of study or one who studies(subject in the sense of shukan) is related to the theme of his study (subject in thesense of shudai). Tokieda's concept of kokugo, or a particular language, seemsvirtually empty outside the context of those problematics concerning the rela­tionship between one who studies language and the language itself in the forma­tion of linguistic knowledge in the discipline of linguistics.

For Tokieda, language consists of the concrete acts of talking, reading, listen­ing, and writing, and it cannot be apprehended at all outside those activities. Thisview means that language is this kind of subjective, or shutai-teki, activities andthat the factual and concrete object of language study is this shutai-teki activityitself. Yet in everyday life one does not adopt an attitude in which one takeslanguage as an object of study. When language exists, the "I" is engaged in thelinguistic acts and does not take an observational stance (kansatsu-teki tachiba)toward it. In a manner that suggests his debt to phenomenology and her­meneutics, Tokieda postulated the distinction between the shutai-teki stance andthe observational stance and emphasized the theoretical anteriority of the former.Because language only exists in shutai-teki activities, toward which a participantprimordially takes a shutai-teki stance, the observational stance has to be the­oretically posterior to the shutai-teki stance. In other words, shutai must beanterior to shukan, or the epistemological subject who posits language as anobject of its theoretical gaze. Above all, language is given to us only insofar as Ispeak, listen, write, or read as an active or actional (koi-teki, 10-3) shurai, or a

shurai in action. Hence, Tokieda writes:

325Conclusion

The insistence on the connection between shutai-teki action and language wasessential in the context of the academic debate in which Tokieda participated,arguing against Saussurian linguistics, which was fast gaining prominence in thelinguists' community of Japan during the 1920s and early 1930s. His critique wasdire~ted against the Saussurian concept of langue or, more specifically from thepresent-day perspective, against a certain. naive reading of Saussurian langue inwhich synchrony collapsed in upon simultaneity."tThkieda warned against imme­diately equating the unity of a language, which tends to be conceived of im­plicitly as a substance, to a langue, which is assumed to be a closed systematicityconsisting of rules and· regulaiities not contradicting one another.

Nevertheless, Tokieda still referred to the term langue in order to elucidate hisconception of kokugo, or a particular language. In this strategy to modify andreuse the Saussurian term, I cannot overlook problems that arose because he toofailed to distinguish synchrony from simultaneity. It seems that his critique of thesubstantialized notion· of language did not explicitly illustrate how the substan­tialization of language is complicit with the essentialization of culture, nation,and other POsitivities.

In defining kokugo, Tokieda claimed that the Japanese language is neither alanguage used by the Japanese people as a nation (minzoku, 10-5) or a speechcommunity nor a language instituted by the nation-state of Japan. As a matter offact, he argued, the Japanese language as the object of his linguistic study mustnecessarily include the Japanese used by those who do not belong to the Japanesenation and by those who are outside the territories under the jurisdiction of theJapanese state. 5 Therefore, as far as kokugogaku is concerned, the identity of theJapanese language can by no means be given as the identity of the nation or as theidentity instituted by the state or as the unity of Japanese territory. Ethnic andnational identity is irrelevant; so it must include the languages spoken by non­Japanese as well. Instead of defining the Japanese language in terms of referentsexternal to the language itself, Tokieda proposed another definition: 4f.Kokugo, orthe Japanese language, is a collective name for all those languages which sharethe characteristic of Japanese language [nihongo-teki seikaku, 10-6]."6 As henoted himself, this definition is openly circular, for what characterizes the Japa­nese language as such can be disclosed and known only at the end of languageresearch. If it is known at the outset, one may argue, there would be no need forthe linguist to undertake lengthy study to identify it. Here, Tokieda stressed thenecessity of this circularity-a version of the hermeneutic circle-which heclaimed was inherent in any object particular to cultural science. This is to saythat the characteristic of Japanese language is not only that which identifies theobject proper to kokugogaku but also the objective for it, an objective that directs

4See note 18, Chapter 7, (p. 233).5With regartl to the historical significance of linguistic knowledge, I do not maintain that Tokieda

linguistics was less political because of its openness to foreigners. Depending on the historicalsituation, openness of this sort could result in a variety of different and sometimes opposite politicaleffects.

6Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogakushi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1940), p. 4.

Language, Body, and the Immediate324

326 Language, Body, and the Immediate Conclusion 327

and motivates language study toward its putative goal. The unity of Japaneselanguage is a regulative Idea and, in that sense, the Japanese language as a unityof systematicity does not exist, for this unity must continually be produced inimagination through linguistic inquiries. The study of a language is concernedwith poiesis, with the performative rather than with the constative in spite of, orperhaps I should say because of, its scientific outlook. And it is obvious thatwhat makes the study of a particular language possible is this distance betweenthe language as it is lived and comprehended and the language as it is identified,objectified. Therefore, the study of language is an instrument by which to inventthe communal self. Needless to say, this was best illuminated by eighteenth­century studies of ancient Chinese and Japanese languages which invented theother with whom one was to identify mimetically in order to install the identity ofthe communal self.

A cursory review of Tokieda's definition of the Japanese language brings meback to the opposition he first erected between the shutai-teki stance and theobservational stance. The characteristic of Japanese language will be identifiedas the ultimate objective of language study, but to identify it requires an observa­tional stance in which language is observed, analyzed, and known as an object,rather than lived as a shutai-teki activity. Although Tokieda is not explicit aboutthis point, his construct seems to suggest that the subject in the sense of shutaimust be clearly and definitely distinguished from the subject who knows or theshukan who posits language as an object of knowing; in fact, the shutai whoparticipates in and lives a language should not know that language in the sensethat the shukan knows it.

Here, the status of the Japanese language is extremely ambivalent. Above all,it is comprehended in the shutai-teki activity from the outset, and without thiscomprehension one could not even begin to identify it as a particular language.Yet it is not known or given in experience in the Kantian sense but should ratherbe posited as an objective or something like an "idea," which, by definition,should be absent in experience. The Japanese language is not a being that con­forms to the conditions of possibility for experience; it is just like the "I" as thething in itself which does not conform to the conditions of possibility for experi­ence.? Just as the "I" cannot be experienced, the unity of the Japanese languagecannot be experienced either. In the final analysis, the unity of the Japaneselanguage is a matter of metaphysics.

Propriety in Language

But some might as well argue that the absence of the unity of the Japaneselanguage in experience can be shown only insofar as it is related to the discussionof auto-affection or self-referentiality, Already here, I am discussing the second

7Here I use the tenn "experience" primarily in the Kantian sense: Eifahrung.

issue, concerning the status of the "I," for it seems quite possible to draw aparallel between the procedure used to identify the "I" and another used toidentify one's own language. It is not in Benveniste's sense of the subject'salways being constituted in language but rather in the sense of the identificationof a language that I think the problems of language and subjectivity meet.

If language cannot be experienced as an identifiable ·larigue1 how can one talkabout one's native language as such? I must first state that the discussion of auto­affection and self-referentiality is necessarily preceded by the identification of alanguage, since the "auto" and "self" in these terms would be meaninglessunless a language'were identified. In order to elucidate the process of identifica­tion, let me return to Tokieda Motoki's box-in-box formula, which captures theproblem of shutai and self-referentiality very succinctly despite its many the­oretical defects.

Following the insight of Tokugawa linguistics, Tokieda construed the forma­tion of an utterance as the combination of shi arid ji. I equate shi and ji to thetheme-subject (shudai) and predicate. Unlike the conventional formula of thesubject-copula-predicate, Tokieda sought the synthetic unity of the utterance inthe enclosure of the theme-subject within the predicate at the moment when the'content or contained (shi) was contained in the container (ji). In relation to thisformula, he explains his use of the term "shutain which is considerably differentfrom mine:

Frequently the nominative case [shukaku, 10-7] in grammar is regarded as the shutaiof language, but the nominative is [identified as such] in terms of logical relationsamong themes [sozai, 10-8] expressed [hyogensareta, 10-9] in language and entirelydifferent from the shutai as the agent of the action of language... ,

. . . the grammatical first person is sometimes taken to be the shutai. True, the"I" who reads is identical to the agent of reading action in the expression "I read."So one might infer that this first person designates [arawashiteiruJ the shutai oflanguage. Careful consideration shows, however, that the "I" is neither the shutainor the direct expression by the shutai itself, because that which has been objectifiedand thematized [just like the "I"] is always posited externally to the shutai [by virtueof the fact that it has been objectified and thematized]. . , . The difference between[the ..1" and the cat in the expression "A cat eats a mouse"] consists in the fact thatwhereas the "I" is an objectification of the shutai, the cat is a thematization of thethird person, . , . the first person, just like the second and the third persons, is acategory pertaining to themes. . . .

, , . the shutai of language never expresses itself at the same level, or in the samecapacity, as the theme of expression. To compare this to the case of painting, theself-portrait of a painter is not the shutai of the painter but her objectification andthematization. The shutai of [the entire production of] the painting is the painterherself; the "I" in "I read" is not directly the shutai but its objectification; the shutaiis the one that expresses the whole expression "I read." The shutai does not expressitself by the word [alone] but by the entire sentence "I read. U8

8Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogaku genron, p. 41-43.

9For the concept of bamen, see Kokugogaku genron, pp. 43-50, 156-60, 434-41.

The shutai m1.!st be deliberately distinguished from the nominative on thegrounds that the nominative is a theme-subject, which could only be an objec­tification of the shutai. I understand Tokieda to say that the shutai expresses itselfby creating an utterance within which the shutai is thematized as one of thecomponents of the utterance. In addition to Tokieda's rather arbitrary usage of thetenn "expression," one cannot help but notice some theoretical problems in thisexplication of the subject of the enunciation. Does the objectification orthematization of the shutai imply that some entity so called is externalized oralienated into an object or a theme? What does Tokieda mean by "the speakerhimself" to whom he compares "the painter herself."? It seems obvious to methat he presupposes the presence of the subject of the enunciation and that hedemonstrates the irreducibility of the subject of the enunciation to the theme­subject. And ultimately he is forced to postulate a moment called bamen (originalsituation, 10-10), somewhat similar to Benveniste's instance of discourse, inwhich the shutai is primordially identical to the subject of the enunciation and isinternally present to both the act of utterance and the addressee.9 In reference tothe bamen, Tokieda seems to believe it possible to identify the speaker herself. Inhis schematization of this concept, however, he neglects to mention that a view­point away from the position marked as the shutai is essential to comprehend theoriginal situation of the shutai; the representation of the shutai as such requires aviewpoint other than the shutai's. Thus, Tokieda's shutai is equivalent to thesubject of enunciation. In this respect, the split in enunciation is anterior to theoriginal situation. In spite of his insistence, primordialness cannot be accorded tothe original situation. Here too, it is obvious that the subject of the enunciationand the original situation of enunciation which the subject is supposed to live arein an imaginary register.

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Tokieda clearly points out the fundamentalbut necessary rupture between the shutai and the subject (shudai, shugo). There­by, in conjunction with the box-in-box formula, he locates the shutai in thedirection of the predicate Oi), the container that thematizes the content by con­taining it. What is at issue here is the predicative detennination in which theshutai, which is never an identity, objectifies, thematizes, and frames-orframes up-a thing as a theme (shudai) by introducing the very division betweenthat which is made present and that which is excluded from being made present.In this sense, it is impossible to establish the one-to-one relationship between theshutai that provides an utterance and a theme-subject such as "I," which ismerely one component among many in that utterance. It is the agent of theparergonal process in which the enunciation ml~st be comprehended primarily asa split or a contradiction. But precisely because of the nature of this process, theshutai must be understood as that which flees as soon as an attempt is made toidentify it. For this reason, the shutai is transcendent with respect to the proposi-

tional subject (shugo), the theme (shudai), and being in general. Hence, theshutai cannot be equated to the specular. image of the proper body, a bodysupposedly or imaginarily proper to one who speaks: it is also transcendent withrespect to any specular image. I have therefore proposed "the body of theenunciation," as distinct from the subject of the enunciation, for an Englishrendering of this term. .

Despite his insistence on the Japaneseness of the box-in-box fonnula, the sameproblem has been encountered in modem Western philosophy. As a matter offact, .the various Japanese terms for subject I have mobilized in this study­shugo, shudai, sbukan, shutai-are neither traditional nor well accepted. Theseare hybrids in a historical context, invented mainly in the process of translatingmodem European philosophical treatises, when modem Japanese philosophersencountered questions internal to the conception(s) of subjectivity, to which theyneeded to respond theoretically. to

Inasmuch as this issue has been probed extensively, for instance in the contextof the critique of ontology, the translation of the tenn "subject" must have had todeal with the peculiarity of a convention in which the subject in the sense of thenominative case (shukaku) has been assumed to be identical to the subject(shugo) of a proposition. And in a proposition, the subject is linked to thepredicate by the copula, thereby entering the register of being. The situation hasbeen further complicated by the frequent use of the word "subject" to signify an

329Conclusion

IOQiven this ambivalence. supposedly innate in the conception of the Japanese language, howshould I understand a Japanese philosophy whose primary definition is a philosophical discourseconducted in the medium of the Japanese language? Immediately, it seems. the ambivalence of theJapanese language is transmitted to Japanese philosophy. Now, the Japaneseness of Japanese philoso­ph~ appears all the. more pt~blematic: And when one looks at the huge quantity of books and paperswntten under the tItle of phllosophy In Japanese, there is scarcely anything "native" about modernJapanese philosophical discourse, the majority of which discusses European and American philoso­phy in ~erms that have been brought in from the Occident through translation. With rare exceptions,the subject matter. concepts, and questions Japanese philosophy has dealt with are no different fromthose in European philosophy.

The term "subject" well exemplifies the case. I know of no word equivalent to "subject" thatpl~yed an.y m~jor role in. the intell~~!ual. world of Japan prior to the importation of EuropeanphIlosophical discourse dunng the MelJI penod, although the problematics later articulated in relationto "subject" had certainly been addressed in pre-Meiji Japan. Hence, with a certain degree ofcaution, I believe it acceptable to say that the problem of subjectivity emerged when the term"subject" was translated into Japanese.

Thus, the various and varying translations into Japanese of the term "SUbject" have formed adiscursive c~nfiguration that is seemingly regulated by a certain economy. Yet. this economy istreacherous: It should be noted that the configuration of the "subjects" shifts and slides from onephilosopher to another, in the course of a single philosopher's career, and even in a single work. Iadmit that its instability is more often than not due to a lack of consistency and rigor on the part of theauthors, but I suggest that it also reflects the instability of the problematic of subjectivity itself. Onemust recall that the problematic of subjectivity had not been in the Japanese intellectual world until~he discipline of philosophy was imported and that it arose in the process of reading and comprehend­l~g modern philosophy. In this respect, this instability is in fact innate in modern philosophicaldls~ourse itself. In other words, it is simply impossible to conceive of Japanese philosophy as anentity external to modem Western philosophy despite obvious differences that made the translation ofWestern philosophy necessary in the first place.

Language, Body. and the Immediate328

330 Language, Body, and the Immediate Conclusion 331

individual who speaks or acts. The subject is often both that which is thought, orthe subject in the sense of theme (shudai), and one who thinks.

For example, the same problem appears in Kant's famous statement *"It mustbe possible for the 'I think' to accompany all my representations." He elaborates:"In all judgments I am the determining subject of that relation which constitutesthe judgment. That the 'I,' the 'I' that thinks, can be regarded always as subject,and as something which does not belong to thought as a mere predicate, must begranted." 11 In translating key words such as "subject," "predicate," and "judg­ment," or through the difficulties that must have been encountered in translatingthem, the philosopher-translators must have been able to disclose the appropriatemoments of rather irrational decisions made for the sake of rationality, momentsat which Kant decided to establish the possibility of transcendental rationality outof the lack of reason he could rely on. Here I might be witnessing the site of theabyss, which Kant recognized and went over toward the "idea" of his transcen­dental metaphysics.

Either as consciousness in general, which accompanies all the representations,or as self-consciousness, which synthetically constitutes the judgment, the "Ithink" is simultaneously equated to the combination and to the combining of thesubject and the predicate. And these two different moves which supposedlyintersect in the word "I" are connected and merged by the term subject. It seems,however, that some Japanese philosophers-like many Western and non-Westernthinkers-could not ignore the difference between a term that is combined withanother term and that which combines those terms, that is, judgment. Japanesetranslations of Kant, therefore, endlessly oscillate between the subject in thesense of the propositional subject (shugo) and the subject in the sense of theepistemological subject (shukan). And what is revealed in this oscillation seemsto be that there is no inherent reason to equate the epistemological subject to thepropositional one, other than Kant's decision to do so. Although this equationhas been taken for granted and conventionalized in Japan as well, using the sameterm for two different conceptualities remains problematic and leads to a series ofquestions.

However innocent. and natural it may seem, this equation requires certainconstraints and repressions for its maintenance. First, although Kant dealt withthis issue only implicitly, the dimension of enunciation had to be obliterated inorder to make the equation appear natural. The subject in the sense of proposi­tional subject (shugo) can be identified as such only in a proposition or state­ment, but it is a truism that unless a statement is uttered, there would be nostatement and, hence, no subject. Given the transcendental character of Kant'sargument, one cannot, of course, demand an analysis of a specific historicalinstance in which an individual statement is produced in the real: such a demandis irrelevant because it confuses the validity of the transcendental with that of the

llImmanuel Kant, Critique ofPure Reason, trans. Nonnan Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin'sPress, 1929), pp. 152 (B 131), 369 (B 407).

empirical. My query is not about the empirically specific production of thestatement.

What is at stake for me can be clarified by following Kant's claim about the "Ithink" in the context of the detennination of a statement. The statement being acase of representation, it must be able to be accompanied by the "I think." So ifthere is a statement A, then this statement should be able to be refonnulated as:

A

II think A

Here, I obtain another statement A* which is, this time, "I think A." Therefore,this statem~nt A* should also be able to be accompanied by the "I think."

A*I

I think A* I think (I think A)

It is evident that this procedure can be repeated an infinite number of times just asin Tokieda's box-in-box formula. 12 Gilles Deleuze called this "indefinite regres­sion as the power of reiteration." 13 I do not believe that this demonstration canimmediately spoil the force of Kant's argument, but it is, 1 think, adequate todisclose two assumptions without which his argument cannot be sustained. First,Kant's claim can be sustained only insofar as the "I think" is not enunciated ormel1tioned in words. Correlatively, it is assumed that consciousness can beconceived irreSPective of its concretization in. utterance. Second, it should bepostulated that the "I" in the "I think" can correspond to the word "1" through ameans other than the enunciation. Precisely because it is not the speaking subject

12The only difference is that whereas the synthetic function is attributed to the subject-shugo inKantian fonnation, so that the infinite regression moves "upward" in the direction of the proposi­tional subject, Tokieda's fonnulation marshals the regression in ··downward" toward the position ofthe predicate. Hence, Nishida Kitaro, for instance, proposed ronri-teki jutsugoshugi, or logicalpredicativism. as against the West's shugoshugi. or subjectivism. Subjectivism can be illustrated witha modification of Tokieda's scheme:

Container \ Containedontainer Contained

Container ContainedContainer Contained

Container Contained

In this regard, Nishida simply reversed the subject-predicate relationship. The reversal may be relatedto his later endorsement of the simplistic binary opposition of the West (being) and the East (mu, ornothingness). See Nishida Kitaro, Ronriteki jutsugoshugi, in Nishida Kitaro zenshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo:Iwanami Shoten, 1965), pp. 57-97.

I3Gilles Deleuze, Difference et repetition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), p. 203.

14This point can hardly be overemphasized. Two of the authors I have referred to have beenimplicated in their own versions of culturalism. Both Nishida Kitaro and Julia Kristeva have penetrat­ing insight into the problems of subjectivity and have written extensively about the formation of thesubjective position in modem philosophy. Although their culturalism is theoretically very sophisti­cated, they often appeal to a simplistic binary opposition to criticize what Nishida called subjec­tivism. Nishida proposed predicativism as opposed to subjectivism, just as the Orient was opposed tothe Occident. Kristeva drew the same opposition between the masculine and the feminine. It seems tome that both led to the substantialization of the West and eventually prepared the return to theirrespective origins (return to the East and to the West).

15Many have noted the dubious status of the subject. See, for example, Martin Heidegger, On Timeand Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper Torchbooks. 1972): "Interpreted by the rulesof grammar and logic, that about which a statement is made appears as the subject: hypokeimenon­that which already lies before us, which is present in some way. What is then predicated of the subjectappears as what is already present along with the present subject, the symbebekos, accidens: 'Theauditorium is illuminated.' In the 'It' of 'It gives' speaks a presence of something that is present, thatis, there speaks, in a way, a Being. If we substitute Being for It in our sentence 'It gives Being: itsays as much as 'Being gives Being.' And here we are back in the same difficulty that we mentionedat the beginning of the lecture: Being is. But Being 'is' just as little as time 'is.' We shall thereforenow abandon the attempt to determine 'It' by itself, in isolation, so to speak. But this we must keep in

but the thinking subject, it cannot be identified as the person "I," who, accordingto Emile Benven'iste, "is uttering in the present instance of discourse containing'I,' " But this.is another way to put the "I" of the "I think" as the transcendentalsubject: it is not a referent identifiable in an instance of discourse,

What the addition of the "I think" to the statement reveals is the basic dif­ference between thinking and speaking, on the one hand, and shukan [epist­emological subject: one who knows] and shutai. Furthermore, this operationclarifies the status of the subject in the sense both of shukan and shutai anddemonstrates that these subjects cannot be thematically posited or treated as atheme-subject (shudai): neither shukan nor shutai can be thematized (shudaika)unless in the context of transcendental dialectic, And finally, it can be ascertainedthat there is no necessity to associate the specific proposition "I think" with thebare consciousness which accompanies all concepts, which Kant also called theform of representation in general (and which 1 might call the framing ofrepresen­tation in general). For with respect to enunciation, the transcendental subject thatis to accompany all the representations is that which flees or cannot be arrested: itneed not be HI",. it is simply X. This is to say that the transcendental subject neednot be called a subject at all. Undoubtedly Kant has already acknowledged thismuch in his argument about the subject. In other words, Kant participated in theestablishment of a regime in which the agent of action (shutai) is equated to thepropositional subject (shugo), admitting that there is no necessary connectionbetween the two. This is one of the best examples of what I call the regime. Andin the final analysis, it is a matter of neither linguistic nor cultural determinismbut of apophansis.l4

So, already for Kant the link between the shutai and the subject was du­bious.l 5 I cannot find any grounds to say that there must be a necessary connec­tion between the subject and the shutai, and it is precisely the matter of ideology

Universalism and Particularism

333Conclusion

mind: The It, at least in the interpretation available to us for the moment, names a presence ofabsence" (p. 18). In The Space 0/ Literature, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of NebraskaPress, 1982), Maurice Blanchot notes: "The act of writing is the interminable. the incessant. Thewriter, it is said, gives up saying 'I.' Kafka remarks, with surprise, with enchantment, that he hasentered literature as soon as he can substitute 'He [or It].' This is true, but the transformation is muchmore profound. The writer belongs to a language which no one speaks, which is addressed to no one,which has no center, which reveals nothing. He may believe that he affirms himself in this language,but what he affirms is altogether deprived of self. To the extent that. being a writer, he does justice towhat requires writing, he can never again express himself, any more than he can appeal to you. orintroduce another's speech. Where he is. only being speaks.-which means that language doesn'tspeak any more, but is. It devotes itself to the pure passivity of being. If to write is to surrender to theinterminable, the writer who consents to sustain Writing's essence loses the power to say 'I' .. (pp.26-27). Also see Maurice Blanchot, "The Narrative Voice," in The Gaze o/Orpheus, trans. LydiaDavis (Barrytown, N.¥.: Station Hill, 1981), pp. 133-43. The dubious relationship between the "I"and the "it" (or id in the Freudian scheme) is thus not particular to the Japanese language and haslittle to do with the discussion of the "absence of subject in Japanese."

Despite Tokieda's emphasis on the anteriority of the subjective stance, I havedisclosed that <?nly after language is grasped in the observational stance can thesubjective stance be known as a lived experience of language. Strangely enough,active involvement in one's native language is a posterior imagined construct.Moreover, it follows that the system of a language can be revealed as a set ofidentifiable rules by virtue of the distance between the subjective stance and theobservational stance. But if one could establish a different stance, the observa­tional stance that a linguist assumes in order to study a particular language can beapproached as a subjective stance. In relation to the object language, the ob­server's attitude is that of the observational stance, but when she describes andanalyzes the object of her study in her own language, which is not objectified forher and which she in fact lives in the subjective stance, her shutai-teki activitiesthemselves can be described from another observational stance. In theory, aregression similar to that of the box-in-box formula could happen between thesubjective stance and the observational stance. Every observational stance isalready a shutai-teki stance, and it is impossible to conceive an instance of theshutai-teki stance like Benveniste's instance of discourse, which contains notinge of the observational stance, is utterly devoid of reflective consciousness,just as it is impossible to imagine a purely observational stance that is absolutelyfree of shutai-teki activities.

Only if one is completely blind to the subjective stance hidden and implicatedin the supposedly purely observational stance, can one believe it possible to

as a regime of practice that one lives and practices an imaginary relation tooneself as the subject and imagines (but not fantasizes) oneself as the subject inone's lived (that is, imagined) experience.

Language, Body, and the Immediate332

334 Language, Body, and the Immediate Conclusion 335

observe and identify a particular language as if the attributes one discovers aboutthat language were purely and simply in that language itself The grammar of.thatlanguage can be identified only from the position of another language. One'sown language, to which I should say one is necessarily, if not completely, blind,is always implicated in what one takes to be the features of a particular language.I do not mean that the grammar thus identified is not valid or arbitrary. On thecontrary, precisely because one is blind to the medium in which a differentlanguage is explicated, a grammar can be useful and usable. What one shouldremember is that there is no metaposition from which a language can be identi­fied exhaustively as an object in itself. There can be no position of the epis­temological subject which is completely devoid of shutai: even observation is anaction that requires the agent of action. And the positing of such a transcendentviewpoint is unnecessary in order to obtain a useful account of that language-toacquire a competence in it, for example-as Tokieda Motoki attempted to dem­onstrate by his critique of the substantialization of a language unity.

Correlative to the postulation of the transcendent viewpoint is the essentializa­tion of the object language. Here, linguistic or cultural essentialism arises. Theimage of an object language facilitated by linguistic studies (or of an objectculture facilitated by cultural studies) is often equated to the entity of that lan­guage. The cultural essentialist claims that because of the systematic constraintsimposed on the members of that language (or culture) by the grammatical rules ofthe language, they are predetermined in what they can express and what theycannot~ they are, so to say, innately programmed by the language. Moreover, thelanguage thus grasped is assumed to have a life of its own, to be an organism thatcontinues to reproduce itself, albeit in not exactly the same shape.

For the cultural essentialists, the language is invariably a substance that is notdistinguished from the grammar of that language they happen to know. They areutterly ignorant either that many different grammars can exist or of the problemsconcerning the way the unity of a language is imagined. The same can be saidabout their reified notion of culture, which is again equated to a self-subsistentorganism.

Thus, cultural essentialists believe that they can define the particularity of alanguage, and implicitly, they assume the position of a transcendent subject(shukan) completely free from shutai-teki activity. In the gesture of respectingthe particularity of a particular language and culture, they in fact assume atranscendent and omniscient position from which to intuit the substantialized andahistorical essences of particular cultures. What are often referred to as particu­larism and universalism are, therefore, in complicity, and what neither particu­larism nor universalism can afford to acknowledge is that as a theoretical conse­quence of their premises and because of their inherent monologism, bothinevitably lead to cultural solipsism and that no language can monopolize either apurely subjective (shukan-teki) or an observational positionality because neitherwould be possible without shutai-teki (subjective in the sense of actional agent)

activity.16 Particularism and universalism-two sides of the same coin-ariseonly when the shutai, who acts on the cultt,lral formation and necessarily changesit, is eliminated, when the shutai is equated to the subjectivity of a nationallanguage or even to the national identity. As we saw in Ito Jinsai's critique ofSong Confucianism, the elimination of the body of the enunciation necessarilymeans the elimination of the encounter with the Other, within and without.Consequently, both particularism and universalism are the results of narcissism,of "a one-sided but alluring response to the anxiety of transference": they ariseout of the fear of a dialogic encounter.

Resurrection/Restoration of Japanese

During the eighteenth century, this difference between the unthematized dis­course in which the unity of a language is imagined and the language thusobjectified was acutely perceived. Therefore, the ancient Chinese, in the case ofOgyu Sorai, and the Japanese language, in the case of the scholars of the NationalStudies., were always posited in the past as languages that no longer existed.Although these thinkers believed that such languages once existed in the pastmoment, they could maintain awareness that the unity of a language could not bedirectly equated to the unity of their existing contemporary community. Certainlythey perceived the Tokugawa polity as fragmented, disrupted, and far frominternally coherent or harmonious, but there is more to their refusal to superim­pose the unity of an internally homogenized and coherent whole, or the status ofthe 44interior," on their contemporary polity. For one thing, their argument stillcarried a strong critical impulse, so that they posited the image of the homoge-

.nized C'interior" in order to highlight the estranged and fragmented state ofaffairs. But more important, they still retained some sense of the "idea" of theJapanese language, even though the poietic and creative aspect of ethical actionwas largely repressed in their discourse; they had not completely lost the insightthat the Japanese language was possible only as an Hidea," particularly a lost4'idea," and that it was necessarily u-topian: it should be nowhere.

In this sense, I claim that the Japanese language and its "culture" were born inthe eighteenth century, but I also insist on some difference between the eigh­teenth-century conception of the Japanese and the modem conception after theMeiji period. What happened in the late nineteenth century was the collapse of

16It should be evident by now that the critique of universalism does not demand the denial of rulesthat ought to be valid to everyone. On the contrary, what universalism fails to acknowledge is thisopenness to the other, precisely because universalism assumes that what appears universally valid to"us" ~d to "~e" is immediately valid to others. In other words, universalism cannot distinguishgenerality from prescriptive universality. What is implied in universality is the fundamental dialogismaccording to which "we" or ''I'' do not know what is universal, and universality is always exterior(in the sense of exteriority or otherness) to "our" or "my" consciousness. I must seek it and be taughtit by the other.

the distance that had kept the unity of the Japanese apart from the immediate"us." It is because of this distance that eighteenth-century discourse did nottotally degenerate into a version of cultural nationalism. But as this sense ofdistance and loss was erased, the unity of the Japanese and the "interior" wereequated to the existing language and community without mediation. Of course,what this equation achieved was to eliminate the sites of the unthinkable, standar­dize cultural institutions, and homogenize the language. In this process, theconcept "culture," which was substantialized and made to imply the unity ofhomogeneous systematicity, was fully utilized. By first establishing a consensusthat the "interior" was already there, the ruler was fully authorized to illegiti­mate any institution that might enhance the heterogeneous. The Japanese lan­guage and its ethnos were brought into being and made to exist in the present andwere thereby transformed into unobjectionable certainties as if they were entitiesobservable in experience. Thus the Japanese were resurrected from the dormantpast and, as a nation, began to play the role of the subject (shinmin, 10-11) to andfor the modem state. Concurrently, the Japanese language was constituted as asubstance in the positivistic discourse of cultural essentialism. Needless to say,this was the process in which the modem nation-state of Japan was appropriatedinto the nineteenth-century discourse of global colonialism, cultural essentialism,and racism.

Thus the invention of the Japanese language can serve to guarantee that theunthinkable always comes from outside the border, from outsiders, for the un­thinkable can never take place in the "interior": the reification of Japanese"culture" can make one blind to heterogeneities within. It is essential in con­structing the economy of blindness without which the sense of ethnocentric"togetherness" and the concretization of the "species being" in national termswould hardly be possible. The invention of the Japanese language or nationallanguage in general partakes of an ideology in and by which one lives, anideology of the lived experience.

But such a language can never be transparent; it is always Hbroken," so thatone never totally belongs to it, and no body, no body of the enunciation, orshutai, is ever exhaustively at home there.

336 Language, Body, and the Immediate

A P PEN D I X Japanese and Chinese Terms

Introduction 2- 3 1:2- 4 I~,ig

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338 AppendixJapanese and Chinese Terms 339

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Index

Words in bold italic 'are Japanese terms (excluding proper nouns); those in bold romanare Chinese. Numbers in parentheses refer to the Chinese/Japanese characters orcompounds listed in the Appendix.

Abschattung (perspective), 191-92, 200-201,241

"achieve" (tatsu, da, 3-17), 103actant, 180action, 86, 96, 99, 101-2, 106-7, 163-65,

171, 233, 294, 300-301ai, 18,77, 108, 109-11, 180, 190, 286, 318alia, 106-9, 239, 297, 310alphabet, 113, 253alterity, 85, 316-17Althusser, Louis, 253Amaterasu Omikami, 252Amazawa Taijiro, 9Analects, the, 25ancient text (kobun, 7-5), 221, 224anmin (to set people at ease, 9-3), 286, 289annihilation, 79Apollinaire, Guillaume, 253application (yosho, 2-25), 79Arai, Hakuseki, 235-36arche (or archaic), 17, 102, 110-12,232,

267, 299, 320Aristotle, 213Asami Keisai, 314Ashiwara obune, 256Austin, 1. L., 232authenticity, 107-8Ayui-sho, 256, 264

Bakhtin, Mikhaii, 9, 26, 28, 59, 119, 141,202, 215

bamen (original scene of utterance, 10-10),328

Barthes, Roland, 148-49, 156basho, 147, 276Basho (Matsuo), 126beginning (tan, duan, 3-10), 94, 100-101being as it is (2-30), 80, 82being as it should be (2-29), 80, 82being-in-the-world, 92being (son, 2-41), 86Bendo (Distinguishing ways), 221benevolence, 80, 93-94, 97-99, 112, 285-86,

289-90, 296Benmel (Distinguishing names), 214, 234,

237,243,247,282,288,295Benveniste, Emile, 15, 60, 66-68, 71-73,

102, 125, 131, 193, 312, 327-28, 332-33Bergson, Henri, 293-94, 303, 307-8Bito Masahide, 32, 319Blanchot, Maurice, 71, 333blindness, 119body (shen, 1-22), 44-45, 81-89, 93. 101-9,

130-38, 147-50, 156, 164, 168-70, 196,200-207, 223, 235, 243, 247-51, 268-84,292-302, 306-11, 329; of enunciation (seealso shutal), 61, 75, 97-99, 105-11, 125,133-35, 175, 241, 335; as intentionality,247

Book of Change, the. See Yi jingbox-in-box structure (irekogaia kozo 8-7), 98,

172, 273-74, 327-33branch (matsu, rno, 2-24), 79bricolage, 110Bunkai hitsuroku, 312bun (wen, 9-1), 281

341

342 Index Index 343

Burch, Noel, 148-49Byakuso fukenkyo (Byakuso fuken sutra, 6-5),

179

calligram, 113calligraphy, 116-17, 138, 175, 197-99, 306category, 253center of decentering. See decenteringcenter of recentering. See recenteringchange (2-17), 87, 90, 109, 276, 280Cheng: brothers, 25, 31-33, 108,221, 224;

yi, 37; Zhu, 54, 76, 95Chevalier, Jean-Claude, 215Chikaishi Yasuaki, 162Chikamatsu Monzaemon, 144, 156-57, 164,

184choka (long song), 251chora, 147, 276Chou ton-i, 108Chun qui (The spring and autumn annals), 31,

230Chuyo hakki, 84cogito, 98colloquialism, 121-22, 161, 183, 225, 264-66communality, 88, 93, 102-4, 299-301, 305-

6,311concern for others (chiijo, zhongshu 3-14),

100Confucius. 297constative, the, 232, 237, 326contained/container, 272, 327corporeity, 223, 271, 284, 299, 300-305,

309-10Creole, 19, 266Culler, Jonathan, 33

Daigiroku, 268Daigo, emperor, 251Dainichi nyorai, 182dance, 296-300, 309Daxue, 49, 50, 248Dazai Shundai, 295-97decentering, 19, 85, 108-9, 222, 249, 298de Certeau, Michel, 10, 234decomposition, 236, 242-44, 250Deleuze, Gilles, 98, 331de Man, Paul, 119Derrida, Jacques, 3, 12, 65, 107, 118-19,

254,267, 310, 314-16description, 90, 96descriptive narration, 145-47, 153, 161, 168,

172, 175-76desire, 50, 64, 72, 87,92-93,202, 287-89,

295; of nature, 90"develop" (kakujyu, kuo chong, 3-13), 100dialogism. 26-27, 141, 222, 318, 335differance, 119, 168, 316-18

differend, 4, 19differing, the, 86direct action, 150, 168-69, 300-306direct speech, 121,150-53, 161, 164~71,

183, 196-97, 206, 304discursive economy, 84, 101discursive formation, 14, 23-25, 55-56, 118,

l71, 181,196,224,246,301,304,307.310, 318-19

discursive positivity, 291, 306discursivity, 53-55, 317disposition, 90dissemination, 242, 263, 267Doctrine of inherently good hUl1Uln nature

(seizensetsu, xingshanshuo, 1-11), 36, 65,95

Dojimon, 23, 53, 58-59, 80. 84, 100Dostoevsky, Feodor, 26

economy (see also discursive economy), 212,254,267,288,295-96,316,336

Edo umare uwakino kabayaki, 184Eguchi, 181-82eidetic reduction (see also phenomenological

reduction), 234eiri kyogennbon (playscripts with illustrations,

5-1), 140, 143-46emakimono (pictorial scroll), 128enunciated, the, 48, 60, 67-69, 83-84, 88,

97-99, 102, 115, 124, 131-33, 136, 141,147, 156, 163-68, 172, 197, 200-202,205-7, 223, 237, 241-42, 249, 263, 294,304, 307, 318

enunciation, 48, 62, 66-69, 83-85, 88, 97­99, 102, 106, 115, 124, 130-36, 142-43,146-47, 152, 156, 163-68, 172, 192-97,200-202, 205-207, 212, 222-24, 230-33,237, 241-42, 249, 261-64, 270, 274, 277,282-84, 294, 302-7, 312-18, 330-32

Erlebnis, 263ethics, 78, 82, 96, 99, 102, 106-11, 196,

279, 291ethnocentricity, 310-11, 316-19,323,336etymological atomism, 268-69event (ii, shi, 2-28), 79, 242, 294, 316; event­

thing, 86extension of knowledge (chichi, zhizhi,) 248exterior, the, 64, 102, 218-21, 235, 292,

309-10, 318exteriority, 56, 78, 101, 104, 107, 137, 212,

308, 318-19

feeling (jo, qing, 2-0, 5, 54, 62-66, 69, 77­78, 87-96, 101, 105, 109, 112, 274-76,287,295-97,305-8,318

femininity, 275-76Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 193

Five Classics, 25, 31Five Constancies, 296fleeing, 86, 98, 147, 205, 332fluidity, 83Foucault, Michel, 11, IS, 17, 24, 113, 137Fot,1f Books, 31, 246, 257, 265frame or framing, 18, 74-75, 85-86, 98,

118-19, 124, 128, 131-33, 165, 172, 200,211,241,274,301,332

Fugen Bosatsu (Samantabhadra), 182Fujitani Mitsue, 256

. Fujitani, Nariakira, 255-56, 263-73, 302Fujiwara Kiyosuke, 186!"Iea (Cultural discipline of people, 9-4), 286Fukujukai, 144function (yo, yong, 2-19), 79, 80!uroshiJci structure (see also box-in-box struc-

ture).273!ushi, 157, 161-62Fuyu no hi, 126!iizok" (culture, 9-5), 291-92, 295

Gakuki (Yueji) of the Liji, 64Gakusoku, 214, 230, 234Gemmei, emperor, 252general text, 106-12, 116, 211, 271generic discontinuity, 177-83, 186-87, 204,

211gengo kate; setsu (language process theory,

6-19), 192, 272Gengyo shitsu ron, 273Genjimonogatari shinshaku, 244gesaku (5-13), 186, 184, 187Gestalt, 168, Gestalt-type, 172-73, 175-76,

188, 199, 212, 230, 241gidayu~bushi (5-9), 156gikobun, 245gokan (bound volume), 153, 194Gomojigi, 24, 64, 80, 84, 90, 99, 103, 112grapheme, 86, 179, 262Great Learning (Daxue), 49, 50, 248Greimas, A. J., 86

habit, 233, 249, 281-83, 292-99, 303-4,308-9

haikai-Jca (reorganization of discourse by theHaikai principle or double operation, 6-14),181-83, 189, 196, 202

Haikai no renga (5-2), 126, 142-43, 198-99

Hane, Mikiso, 236, 283Harootunian, Harry D., 212-13Hattori Nankaku, 296-98; Nankaku sensei

bunshu, 298Haver, William, 85, 106, 234Heath, Stephen, 148Hegel, G. W. F., 50, 68, 287,295

Heidegger, Martin, 7, 16, 60, 71, 332Helke monogatari (Tales of Heike), 124henneneutics, 6, Ill, 121, 207, 259-64, 305,

315, 319, 324-25Hieda no Are, 252hieroglyphic, 253-54, 316hiragana, 252Hirose Tamotsu, 155Hisamatsu Sen'ichi, 256historicality, 14-15historicity, 121-22, 131-32, 190, 239, 257,

298, 312homosocial world, 190, 204Hon Katsunan, 255horizon, 85human nature, 62-64HusserI, Edmund. 40, 89, 137,260Hu Yu-feng, 78Hyak"nin isshu (6-15), 184-86hybrid, 18-19, 254, 320, 329HyOd6 Hiromi, 123hypokeimenon,' 332

Idea, 330, 335; regulative, 326ideational ego, 193ideational intentionality, 40, 44, 76, 82, 96ideography/ideogram, 81, 113, 227-29. 244,

250-55, 258, 262-67, 270, 277, 315-16Ihara Saikaku. See SaikakuIkku. See Jippensha Ikkuimaginary, the, 98, 125, 135, 253-54, 285,

290-91, 300, 304, 309, 312, 322, 333incommensurability, 105, 110indirect action, 150, 154, 165, 168, 171, 300­

304,307indirect speech, 121, 150-54, 168-70, 201,

304individual thing. See kobutsuindividuum, 125Ingarden, Roman, 194, 200inscription, 2, 47,83,98-99, 104-10, 175,

228,252-60,263,266,269-71,274,309­11

inside, the, 212, 221instance of discourse, 66, 125, 131-33, 141,

154-55, 205, 214, 222, 230, 260, 312,332-33

intensity of subjectivity, 206intercorporeity, 85, 249interior, the, 17,95, 111,218-25,228-39,

244, 248-50, 258, 266, 281-83, 287-88,291-92,295,298,303,309-10,317-19,335-36; of the mind or subjective, 102,108, 150, 156

intersubjectivity, 78, 84, 104, 249, 289, 298­301, 308-9, 317

intertextuality, 4, 13, 25-30, 33, 88, 115-18,

344 Index

intertextuality (cont.)127, 130, 137-38.. 142, 148, 153-55, 176,182, 188, 199,211-12,216,222,230-31,241, 246, 306

investigation of things (kakuhutsu, gewu,) 248ippansha (universal), 95irekogata kozo. See box-in-box structureiro, 161-63Ishikawa Jun, 181-84, 189, 196Isonokami sasamegoto, 272, 275isotopy, 180-82, 202iterability, 315-18lto Jinsai, 5, 14-15, 23-26, 30-33, 36, 42,

48,53-58,62-66,69,70,76-86,90-97,100-12, 115, 120-22, 130, 135, 166, 181,195-96, 200, 219-22, 239, 243, 246, 249,261, 279, 286-91, 294, 299, 307-8, 318,335

Ito Togai, 23, 56, 97Izumi Shikibu, 185

ji (of chanting), 156-57, 161-64ji(ci, of syntax, 7-14),267,272-74,327ji (shi, event, 2-28), 79, 239ji iro, 161-64Jian, Zi, 230Jimmmu, emperor, 252, 256linsai nissatsu, 31-32lippensha Ikku, 194lito, empress, 256

kabuki, 140, 144, 148-50, 164Kada Azumaro, 244kaeriten (7-9), 227, 255Kagaku leiyo, 278Kagawa Kageki, 277-79, 306, 317Kaibara Ellen, 268Kaiko, 244Kaitokudo, 237Kakai IUfO, 179kakari musubi, 269, 302Kamo Mabuchi, 18, 239, 243-45, 250-51,

255-56, 263, 266, 277, 294, 304-5kana, 118, 250-53, 263, 270kanazoshi (kana booklet), 4-1), 119-27, 153kanbun, 178-79,217,262kannenteki najiko (ideational ego, 6-21), 193kansatsuteki tachiba (observational stance),

265, 324-26, 333Kant, Immanuel, 33, 71-73, 89, 98, 260,

304, 326, 330-32lcaragokoro (Chinese mind), 260-61Karatani Kojin, 234kalakana, 252katari, 119-26, 138, 141-44, 148-49, 152­

53Katsugo danzokuJu, 273

Kazashi-sho, 256Keichu, 244Keien isshi, 278keirin (9-9), 295keizai (9-7, or keisei saimin, 9-8), 295-96Keizairoku. 295-97ketsumyaku (xiemai, 7-7), 222kibyoshi (yellow cover), 153, 184, 194Kinoshita lun'an, 268Ki no Tomonori, 251Ki no Tsurayuki, 251Kitamura Kigin, 126Kiyo liD gM" (qiyangzhixue, learning of

Nagasaki translators. 7-1), 214, 229, 243,257, 280, 310

Kobunjigaku (guwencixue, learning of ancienttext and words, 7-11), 214,232-39,243­45, 257, 265, 280-81, 292, 296-98, 310

kobutsu (individual/singular thing, 2-6), 38,57-58, 108

Kogaku sensei bunshu.. 35Kogid6, 23, 94Kogigaku (guyixue), 23kogi (guyi, 6-23), 196kogobun, 264Kojiki, 252. 256-62, 313, 320Kojiki-den. 256-59,262kokkeibon (comical books, 5-7), 153, 187,

194Kokinshu. 251, 256, 264, 275Kokinshu. tokagami, 264Kokon hyaku baka (A hundred fools, ancient

and modern), 153kokugo (l0-1), 323-25Kokuiko, 244, 250Kokusen ya gassen (The Battle of Coxinga),

144Koshoku gonin onna (Five women who loved

love), 126Koshoku ichidai otoko (The Life of an Amo-

rous Man), 126kotodama (The spirit of language, 8-3), 269Koyasu Nobukuni, 56, 59, 110Kristeva, Julia, 27-29, 131,234, 270, 276,

300, 306, 332kunten, 178Kunyakujimo, 219,221kyoka (6-12), 181, 194kyoshi (6-13), 181

Lacan, Jacques, 11, 50, 70-71, 134, 205, 248LaCapra, Dominick, 19, 209Laclau, Ernesto, 55, 63language process theory. See gengo kate; setsulanguage(s) of the other, 213languages of villagers. See rigenlangue. 13, 34-35, 273, 325-27

Lao zi, 230-32Lau, D. C., 93-94Levinas, Emmanuel, 10Levi-Strauss, Claude, 110, 234lexeme, 86-87Ii (.1-3),25,31,80-86, 111-12,281,295Liji, 282linear perspective, 85Li Paulong. 214loss, 98Lotman, J. M., 233Lu Xun, 21Lyotard, Jean-Fran~ois, 4, 65

Magritte, Rene, 38, 173Makura no joshi. 124Mallarme, Stephane, 253man'yowgana, 250-52Man'yoko, 244Man'yoshtl. 244, 250-51, 256Maruyama Masao, 236, 283, 286, 290Marx, Karl, 193materiality, 96, 101-10, 119, 211, 222, 309,

314, 317Matsuo Basho. See Basho (Matsuo)mawashi yomi, 227-29Meido no hikyaku (A courier to Hades, 5-10),

157memory, 98, 293-94, 307; empirical, 98; tran­

scendental, 98Mencius, the (Moshi, Menzi), 25, 31, 49, 63-

65,94-95,99-100,288,295MerJeau-Ponty, Maurice, 192, 249Mibu no Tadamine, 251michiyuki, 166mimesis, 135, 155,201,231-32,259,303,

326; mimetic identification, 229, 301Minagawa Kien, 256, 273mind (xin, 1-17),62-65,78,81, 95-96, 99-

106, Ill, 281-87, 302, 308, 319minzoku (nation or ethnos), 325mirror stage, 193Miura Tsutomu, 127, 191-93, 200, 206,

248Miyake Masahio, 31Miyake Shosai, 314Miyoshi, Masao, 8-9modern text (kinbun, jinwen 7-6), 221mono (1-12), 221-22, 230, 233-34, 236, 248,

275, 283-84, 289, 298, 303monologism, 27, 141,203,334mono no aware, 274-79,307,318Morris, M., 124Moshi. See Mencius, theMoshi-kogi, 24, 94, 97mother tongue, 224molD (core), 269-70, 276

Index 345

Motoori Norinaga, 17-18. 123, 255-77, 294,. 302, 307, 313Mouffe, Chantal, 55, 63movement, 87, 276Mozi jizhu. 94Mukai Gensho, 268multivocal, the" 107, 126, 142, 179, 202, 252,

258, 262, 277Murillo, Bartolome Esteban, 74-75music, 233-34, 247, 295-97, 304musicality, 161-63, 168-69, 172mutuality, 87

Najita. Tetsuo, 213, 221, 232, 236Nakai Kate, 236Namaei katagi (5-8), 153naming (mei, ming, 3-11), 97-99Nancy, Jean-Luc, 239narawashi (9-6), 291National Studies (Kokugaku), 207, 245-46,

255-57, 260, 267, 308-11, 335native speaker, tongue, 218, 235, 266, 281­

83, 303-4, 329, 333nature as being as it should be, 90nature (sei, xing, 1-10), 35, 54, 64,77-78,

89-91,94-99, 105-12,287,309nearness, 32-34, 56, 60-61, 70, 76, 82, 110­

11, 122, 183, 186-90, 195~96, 200-205,219, 278

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 16nigyo joruri (Japanese puppet theater 5-5),

144, 148-50, 154-58, 161-66, 171-72,175, 183, 194, 201, 206

Nihon eitaigura (The Japanese family store-house), 126

Nihonshoki, 256-58Niimanabi, 244-45, 250Niimanbai iken, 278Nijo school of court poetry, 277Nimigi no Mikoto, 252Nintoku, Emperor, 252Nippon shakumei. 268Nishida Kitaro, 57, 71, 85, 95, 147, 234,

275-76, 331-32Nishiki no ura. 183-85Noguchi Takehiko, 31nondisjunctive, the, 78, 87-89, 103noumenon, 79, 85

o (8-5), 272observational stance. See kansatsuteki tachibaobtaining (toku, de, 3·16), 101Ogata Korin, 23Ogyu Sorai, 15-17,31,36,42,70,91-93,

109-11, 131,206,214,217-39,244-51,254, 257-59. 262-65, 271-73, 280~82,

285-99, 304, 324, 335

346 Index Index 347

Oi no kobumi, 126Okina no fumi, 237 .Okumagawa genzaemon, 143-44Oku no hosomichi. (Narrow road to the deep

north), 126okurigana (7-10), 227on, 266Onna daigaku, 268o no Yasumaro, 252Ooms, Herman, 32opacity, 41-43ordinary language, 18, 188-89ordinary speech, 122, 156-58, 163, 170-72,

183, 219Oshikochi no Mitsune, 251Other, the, 12-13, 17-19,27,52,57-58,63­

65, 68, 96-97, lOS, 108, 117, 134, 190,205-6, 299, 317, 335; in the Lacaniansense, 133, 282

otherness of the Other, 78, 96, 108, 190, 239,249,267,279,290,297,298,308,318,312

Otomo no Yakamochi, 251outside, the, 212, 224overdetermination, 108

paragon, 74, 86, 119, 133-34, 172, 175, 328parody, 125-26, 141-43, 178-84, 187-89,

195-98, 202-4participational stance. See shutaiteki tachibaperfonnative (of speech acts), 232, 237, 241,

326; situation, 86, 93, 97-98, 108, 135-37,143, 147, 153, 163, 169, 194-201, 205,223-24,230-31,242-43,248-49,263­65,271,274,278,284,299-307,314-17

perspective. See Abschatlungphenomenological epoche. 260phenomenological reduction, 12phenomenology, 125, 137, 191, 200-201,

234, 241, 312, 324phenomenon, 79, 85phoneticism, 113, 118, 244, 251-55, 262-63,

266-67, 277, 316phonocentrism, Ill, 195, 204, 240, 253-54,

262,294,310-11,315-16pictoriography, 316Plato, 98, 147, 276poetryI poetics , 110, 171, 226, 233, 243-45,

250-51, 270-71, 275-80, 298-99, 306-8,317-18

poiesis, 105-10, 171,232,299, 307, 326,335

polyphony, 127, 141. polysemy, 190, 202-;-3

positivity, 312; constituted, 245, 310; con­stituting, 166,245,267,270,310

practical, the, 235-38, 251-53, 283

practical intentionality, 82praxis, 44, 82, 96, 108, 242, 246prepredicative, the, 6, 117, 168, 248prescription, 90, 96pronoun, 69-72, 121property, 103, 107propriety, 103, 108, 211, 218

qi (1-13), 36-42, 81, 84, 111-12qing. See feelingquotation mark, 121, 140, 143

reading, 116, 131, 138-40,175, 196-97,202, 220-23, 238-40, 251, 259-61, 314

reality (realitas), 221-24, 230-34, 284-85,294-303, 307-11, 322

recentering, 135, 249, 298reflecting upon oneself (hanley;;, fanqiu,

3-15), 100Reflection on things at hand (jinsilu), 33, 37,

42, 51regime, 4, 30, 84, 202, 214, 218-21, 253-54,

262, 299-300, 320, 332-33reminiscence, 98repetition,originary, 133, 205, 312representability of totality, 290-92representational type, 172-73, 175-76restricted economy, 189, 295return, 107-8, Ill, 232, 236, 258, 276, 288,

313-16, 332Ricoeur, Paul, 125rigaku-sha (rationalist), 31rigen (the language of village people, 7-3),

179, 217, 228, 324righteousness (gi, yi, 1-5), 32, 80-82, 93-94,

97-99rite, 93-94, 97-99. 232-34,247,295-97,

301-4Rongocho (Commentaries on the Analects),

214Rongo kogi, 24, 222Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 290Ryohashigen (6-1), ]78-79ry;;ko (Jiuxing, 2-36), 79, 83, 103

Saikaku (Ihara), 126Sakabe Megumi, 301sakusha (author or maker, 7-12), 236, 285Samba (Shikitei), 153Santo Kyoden, 183Sartre, Jean-Paul, 133Sarumino, 126Saussure, Ferdinand de, 39, 120Schutz, Alfred, 136-37sedoka (head-repeated songs), 251seeing, 116, 128, 175, 197, 262-63Seidan (Discourse on politics), 214, 285

Seiyokibun, 235Seken munesan'yo (Worldly mental calcula-

tions), 126Sekihi foroku, 297seme, 86-87, 203senryii (comic Haikau poetry), 194sensus communis, 93separation, 86setsuwa bungalu (setsuwa literature, 4-3),

123-25sharebon (5-6), 153, 187shen~ See bodyshi (of chanting), 156-57, 161, 164-67Shibun kokujitoku, 217Shibun y6ryo, 256Shi jing (Book of Odes), 266Shikake bunko, 183 .shinjii mono (double suicide drama), 166Shinju Tenno Amijima (The love suicide at

Amijima), 144shinmin (subject subject to the state, 10-11),

336shi (of syntax), 267, 272-74, 327Shoi, 263Shoku nihongi, 256shudai (theme/thetic subject), 12, 29, 74-76,

91-93, 104, Ill, 118-19, 131-33, 148,173-75, 275, 320, 327-36

shugo (propositional subject), 12, 29, 37-38,70-71, 77-78, 104, 131, 136, 173, 316,320, 328-32

Shu jing (Book of Documents), 31shu1uJlcu (nominative case, 10-7), 327-29shukan (epistemological subject, 2-22), 12,

29, 78, 106, 308, 320, 324-26Shushigaku. See Song rationalismShusse Kagekiyo (Kagekiyo Victorious), 144shuta; (agent of action, 2-8), 12, 18, 29, 58-

61, 71-76, 83-86, 92-93, 97-99. 105-6,125, 133-35, 147, 175, 193, 205, 241,248, 299, 320, 324-29, 332-33, 336. Seealso body, of enunciation

shutaitekina jiko (6-20), 193shutauek; tachiba (participational stance),

265. 324-26, 333Sidotti, Giovanni, 235signifiance. 131-35, 146-47, 155, 168, 199,

212, 230-31, 243, 249, 263, 274simultaneity, 85-86, 233-35singular thing. See kobutsusituation, 85, 130-35, 141, 172, 175, 188,

199, 241, 249, 294Six Classics, 31, 219,246,257,265,296,

298sociality, 1, 14-15,78,82,93-96, 101-10,

239,279,288,291,295,305,309,317softness, 80

solidity, 80solipsism, 78. 136-37Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicide at

Sonezaki), 144Song rationalism (Song Confucianism,

Rigaku, Sorigaku, or Shushigaku), 15, 25,30.33,34-36,49.50-59,65-69,72,77,81, 85, 89-91, 94-96, 100-108, 112, 120,136-37, 214, 235, 250, 260, 268, 287-88,291. 294-97, 308, 335

song (ufa), 3, 123, 156, 165, 168-70, 275,295-97, 304-8

Sorai. See Ogyu Soraigorobun (7-4), 217spacing, 106-7specularity, 75-76, 205, 241, 248, 329speculative knowledge, 235, 238, 247, 281,

283speech, 3, 88, 131, 138, 142, 145-47, 163,

175, 188, 196, 201-2, 220, 223-24, 228­32, 240-45, 251, 254-55, 258, 261-63,267,271-72,277-78,284,294,306,310­12, 315-19

splitting, 192, 195, 200structuralism, 233-34subjectivity, 11-12, 18, 28-29, 60-71, 108,

135-36, 149-50, 166, 171-75, 191-92,197,206,229,234-35,270,274-76,280­82, 297-301, 305-9, 314, 320-23, 329­30; agent of action: see shutai; epis­temological subject: see shulcan; proposi­tional subject: see shugo; subject of theenunciated, 156, 170; subject of enuncia­tion, 11,47,60,67,70-76,88,98, 125,133, 142, 147, 156, 164-66, 169-70, 193,205-6, 229, 328; subject subject to thestate: see shinmin; theme subject: seeshudai

substance (tai, ti, 2-18), 79, 80sue (tip), 269-70, 276Suika bunshu, 314Suika shinto, 311Suiko, empress, 252surplus, 104, 117, 130-32, 215, 230, 239,

254, 288, 298, 309suture, 74Suzuki Akira, 272Swift, Jonathan, 9synchrony, 85, 120, 170, 233-34, 325

Taiheisaku, 237, 286, 292taikei (dajing, Great Constancies, 9-10), 295Takamatsu Jiro, 128Takemoto Gidayu, 144Tale of Genji. 256tama (8-6), 272Tamakatsuma, 256, 269

348 Index Index 349

Tamakushige, 256tanka (short songs), J81, 251taoyameburi (femininity), 275-76te, ni, 0, ha, 227, 255, 270Temmu, emperor; 252, 256textual materiality, 2, 4, 28, 46, 84, 96-97,

101, 106, 109, 119, 136-37, 148-49, 176,197-200, 239, 254,306, 317

texture, 296-98theme subject. See shudaitheoria, 7t, 106, 213ti. See substanceTimeus, 147Titunik, I. R., 152, 253Toga, 236Tokaidochu hizakurige (Shank's mare), 194Tokaido meishoki, 126T6kashu, 298Tokieda Motoki, 7, 98, 192-93, 264-65,

272-73, 323-27, 331-34Tokushiyoron, 235Tominaga Nakamoto, 236Toneri, prince, 256Tosei kagai dangi (Treatise on today's pleasure

quarter), 179-80totality, 16, 24, 95, 102-5, 220, 236-39,

285-87, 290-91trace (seli, ji, 3-12), 99, 101, 104-6, 112,

205, 234, 259, 274, 313transcendental, the, 78, 234, 322transcendentalism, 56-61, 76-77, 86, 107,

136; transcendent subject, 104transcription, 130, 141, 145-47, 195, 226,

240, 258-59, 313transference, 19, 130, 209, 214, 220, 249,

282, 308-9; transferential recentering, 135Tsugen somagaki, 184Tsuyudono mongatari (Tales of Tsuyudono,

4-2), 122, 130Tsuzoku daiseiden, 184Tu Wei-ming, 42, 63

Ukiyo buro (The Bathhouse of the FloatingWorld), 153

Ukiyo doko (The Barbershop of the FloatingWorld), 153

Ukiyo-e, 184Ukiyo monogalari (Tales of the Floating

World), 125, 128ukiyozoshi, 126, 203ultimate nothingness, 80universality, 82, 89, 105, 108, 166, 324; uni­

versal(s), 95-96, 171; universalization,192-93

univocal, the, 252, 257, 277Uspensky, Boris A" 127, 137, 154, 176,200uta. See song

vacuity, 79verbal expression (gengoteki hyogen, 6-18),

191-92verbal text, 116-19, 128, 130, 135-36, 144,

158. 161-64, 173-76, 179, 183, 188, 193,196-201,205,212,223,255,271,278,302

verbal, the, 86, 123-24, 127, 131, 138, 194,214, 222, 226

vernacular language, 18virtue (toku, de, 3-9), 94-106, 112, 196, 248,

282, 285voice, 148-50, 156-58, 164-68, 179-80,

188, 196-97, 201, 206, 228, 238, 250-52,257-64, 269-71, 277-79, 313

Volosinov, V. N., 152, 165, 253

wakun (Japanese way of reading Chinese,7·2),216-18,224-29.245,251,255-57,266

Wang Shizhen, 214Watsuji Tetsuro, 301way. 86, 92, 103, 112, 235-37, 286, 292Weber, Max, 286Wen ji, 49whole, 95, 233, 236-39, 250, 270, 286-90.

310, 335wisdom, 93-94, 97-99Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 4, 105, 321-22writing, 2, 88,107, 1I1, 115-18,130-32,

139, 145-47, 154-55, 158, 168, 195-96,201, 205, 217, 222-24, 228-29, 232-34,238-42, 251-54, 258-63, 267, 270-72,277-78, 284, 294, 304-6, 310,313-16

xin. See mind

Yakubun senlei, 225-27Yamanoue no Okura, 251Yamato honzo, 268Yamazaki, Ansai, 311Yanagida Kunio, 123Yan zi, 230Yasuda Jim, 41Yi jing (the Book of Change), 50. 99, 295yin/yang, 80, 83, IIIYi T'oegye, 314Yojokun, 268yomihon (reading book), 194yomikudashi, 226-27, 245, 262yomu (to read), 257yong. See functionYoshikawa Kojiro, 225~26yosho. See applicationYotsugi Soga (The Soga heir), 144

Zhang Longxi, 254Zhongyong (Doctrine of the mean), 31, 35, 63,

103. 292, 295Zhonyong zhangju (Chfiyoshoku), 50

Zhu Xi, 23-26, 31-54, 58-65, 69, 81, 84,89-91, 94, 99-,104, 108, 219, 235, 247,

. 268. 282, 291, 312; Yulei, 39,43-45