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Inoue Yasushi (1907-1991) |
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Prolific Japanese novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and poet, whose subject matters ranged from modern Japan to ancient China, but he gained fame with his historical fiction. Inoue began his literary career after reaching middle age. Among Inoue Yasushi's best-known works is Tempyo no iraka (1957, The Roof Tile of Tempyo), set in the 8th-century, and describing the journey of a group of Japanese Buddhist monks in China. Inoue received several awards and was honored as a "Living National Treasure" of Japan. "He sat on the expanse of grass, cross-legged in contemplation, and old man in a turban. When he opened his eyes I asked him what he prayed for. He said he prayed for freedom all mind, all thought. I asked him then how one might enter these mindless regions. He said you hold the tongue in the center of the mouth, making quite sure its sides touch against nothing." (from 'Old Man in a Turban', trans. Dennis Keene, from Global Voices, 1995) Inoue Yasushi was born in Asahikawa on the northern island of
Hokkaido. His father, Hayao, was an army doctor, who was transferred
several times. His mother, Yae Inoue, came from a family of doctors in
several generations. At the age of six Inoue was sent to his
grandmother, a former geisha. He grew up in the family's native village
in Shizuoka Prefecture. While in the Numazu Middle School, Inoue
started to read poetry. In 1926 Inoue moved to Kanazawa where his
parents lived and attended the Fourth Higher School. During this period
he trained obsessively at a judo club and wrote poetry. To his
family's disappointment, Inoue failed the entrance examination for the
medical school at Kyushu Imperial University. His father, who retired
from his work, spent his last years in semi-seclusion raising chickens.
Inoue was accepted into the University's English department, but he did
not pay much attention to his studies. After entering the Kyoto
Imperial University, where he studied aesthetics and philosophy, Inoue
received his degree in 1936. His thesis dealt with Paul Valéry's "poésie pure." Inoe had became acquainted with Valéry's work through translations when he started composing his own poetry. In 1935 Inoue married Adachi Fumi (d. 2008), whose father was a
professor of anthropology. Inoue published some poems and short stories
in magazines, but he abandoned his career in literature and became a
reporter for the weekly magazine Sande Mainichi in
Osaka.
After serving as a foot soldier in northern China in 1937-38, Inoue
continued in the culture department of the Mainichi newspapers. His
diaries – three notebooks – in which he wrote about his life around the
end of the war, were found in 2017. On hearing about Japan's surrender,
Inoue wrote: "I looked at the moon in the night sky. It is the moon on
the night that the Japanese people took their first step toward a new,
unparalleled fate." ('Writer Yasushi Inoue's previously unpublished diaries from end of WWII found,' The Mainichi, December 13, 2017) After the war Inoue made his breakthrough as a prose writer in 1949
with two short novels, Ryoju (The Hunting Gun) and Togyu
(Bullfight) – the latter, which was published in the magazine Bungakukai, won in 1950 the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for
literature. The Hunting Gun is a love story set in the post-war
period. It is told from three points of view in letters written to the
male protagonist, Josuke. Shoko, his mistress' daughter, has found her
mother Saiko's diary and learns that there are secrets between mothers
and daughters; his wife goes through their unhappy marriage, and his
mistress reveals her true self before her death. Midori is the unhappy
wife of Josuke, the husband-lover. The novel originated from a prose
poem, inspired by the relationship between a hunting gun and human
loneliness, which Inoue wrote for the magazine The Hunter's
Companion.
"A large seaman's pipe in his mouth, / A setter running
before him in grass, / The man strode up the early winter path of Mount
Amagi, / And frost cracked under boot-sole. / The band with five and
twenty bullets, / The leather coat, dark brown, / The double-barrelled
Churchill – / What made him cold, armed with white, bright steel, / To
take the lives of creatures?" Gosho Heinosuke's screen adaptation of
the epistolary novel, told in flashback, was structured more
conventionally, but was otherwise faithful to Inoue's plot, characters,
and themes. Inoue's serialized samurai novel published in the Sunday Mainichi was filmed in 1952 by Hiroshi Inagaki, starring Toshiro Mifune. Inagaki wrote the sceenplay for the film, Sword for Hire, with Akira Kurosawa. In the story civil war and another woman separate a warrior and his lover, a chambermaid, but eventually they are reunited. Sword for Hire was filmed in black-and-white. When it was shown in the United States, it was paired with an Italian sex comedy. Kurosawa also wrote the screenplay for Asunaro monogatari (1955), directed by Hiromichi Horikawa, and based on Inoue's story. Honkakubo Ibun (1981) inspired Kei Kumai's film Sen no Rikyu – honkakubo ibun (1989). It told of a famous tea master, Sen Rikyu, who was an adviser to warlord Hideyoshi. Twenty-seven years after Rikyo's death his disciple Honkakubo tries to determine, whether the tea master committed suicide by his own volition, or whether he was compelled to commit seppuku by Hideyoshi. The film won the Venice Film Festival's Silver Lion Award. Inoue
moved in 1951 to Tokyo and devoted himself entirely to
writing. Inoue visited China in the late 1950s, where later he also
travelled several times, and in 1964 he was elected to the Japan
Academy of Arts. He was also a founding member of the Japan-China
Cultural Exchange Association. Inoue's wish to spend the Chinese New
Year in China came true in 1983, when he stayed in Beijing. The
influential politician Liao Zhongkai invited the author and his family
to his house. Many of Inoue's postwar bestsellers have Chinese
settings. From 1969 to 1972 Inoue served as chairman of the board of directors for the Japan Literary Association. In 1976 he received the Order of Cultural Merit, the highest honor bestowed by the Japanese government. Following Kawabata Yasunari, Inoue was elected an international vice president of PEN in 1984. Inoue died on January 29, 1991 in Tokyo. His name was frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature. Inoue's tales are often autobiographical and had an essayish objectivity and calmness. His stories are composed both with the precision of a poet and journalist's economy with words. "At first encounter, the potential appeal to Western readers of Inoue's writings may seem somewhat limited," wrote the American scholar of modern Japanese theatre and literature J. Thomas Rimer. "While his work is not difficult in terms and style, a certain amount of close attention in needed from readers learning to respond to his celebrated re-creations of life in classical China and early Japan." (A Reader's Guide to Japanese Literature by J. Thomas Rimer, 1988, p. 165) 'The Counterfeiter,' written in 1951, is a tragedy of a mediocre artist. The story is narrated by a writer who has been asked to compose the biography of a famous artist. "When I was first approached, I had jumped at the opportunity of taking on this arduous task. I was very fond not only of Keigaku's work but also of Keigaku as an individual. Besides, compiling a biography of Keigaku would be more than just writing a history of Kyoto's art circles with him at the core; it would be like writing a history of Japan's art world." He finds out that Keikagu had only a few friends, the most important of them the mysterious Shinozaki. The narrator suspects that Shinozaki was in fact Hosen Hara, who had devoted his life to counterfeiting Keigaku's works. Haunted by the fame of Keigaku, Hosen Hara is not able to pursue his own career in the arts. In Chronicle of My Mother (1975) Inoue tells without sentimentality about his strained relationship with his father, and his mother's illness (Alzheimer's disease?), when she declines into senility. His father's attempt to reach his son with a simple gesture, shaking hands, ends sadly: '' Just that – two hands gently holding onto each other. Then in the next instant I felt my hand being softly pushed away. It was a sensation similar to the slight jerk of the tip of a fishing rod.'' In his mother's fate the author examines the themes of loss, resignation, and loneliness – she forgets her marriage and husband and sinks into a timeless world of childhood images. Inoue's historical works include Ro-ran (1959), about the rise and fall of a small state in Central Asia, Tonko (1959), which deals with Buddhist manuscripts hidden in the Tun-huang caves, Aoki okami (1960, The Blue Wolf:), a fictional account of the life of Genghis Khan, which was originally published in the cultural journal Bungei shunju in 1959-60, and Futo (1963, Wind and Waves), about the Mongol attacks in the 13th century. Its material was partly based on Inoue's travels in Korea. His visit in the United States produced Wadatsumi (1977, God of the Sea), an account of Japanese immigration to America. Seiiki monogarari (1968, Journey Beyond Samarkand) drew on Inoue's experiences in Central Asia. Inoue paid much attention to historical accuracy and frequently consulted with academic historians; for Tun-Huang he sought advice from Fujiara Akira (1911-98), a specialist on manuscipts and for Tempyo no iraka (The Roof Tile of Tempyo) he consulted with Ando Kosei (1900-70). For further reading: Inoue Yasushi "Ryōjū" no sekai: shi to monogatari no yūgō emaki = The world of Inoue Yasushi's "The hunting gun": the fusion of poetry and narrative by Fujisawa Matoshi (2017); 'Translator's Note' by Joshua A. Fogel, in The Blue Wolf: a Novel of the Life of Chinggis Khan (2008); The Cinema of Gosho Heinosuke: Laughter Through Tears by Arthur Nolletti (2005); 'Inoue Yasushi's Reception of Valéry's "Poésie Pure" during the 1930s' by Matoshi Fujisawa, in Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 37, No. 2, East-West Issue (2000); 'Inoue Yasushi,' in World Authors 1980-1985, edited by Vineta Colby (1991); 'Introduction' by Leon Picon, in The Counterfeiter and Other Stories (1965) Selected works:
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