Errant Naturalism: Persons in Tōson’s Hakai

• In Event: 260. Japanese Literature and the Animal in Person

Abstract

Shimazaki Tōson’s 1906 novel, Hakai (The Broken Commandment), deemed the first naturalist novel in Japan, has been widely acknowledged to reach an impasse in its treatment of discrimination against Japan’s burakumin population. On the one hand, the novel calls on political theories of natural rights and natural law in order to challenge the naturalness of racial or ethnic distinctions, showing them to be social constructions. On the other hand, the novel situates its burakumin character so close to nature and animals that received social distinctions come to feel entirely naturalized. In one of its most powerful scenes, as a bull is slaughtered, Ushimatsu and the bull become conflated as persons.
Usually, this scene is read as indicative of the impasse and even the failure of the novel’s political stance. Here I propose to reconsider it in terms of the central paradox of the theory of natural rights: the very source called upon to uphold human freedom and equality, Nature, is open to diverse interpretations. As Tōson’s naturalism draws on a variety of interpretations of Nature, his account of natural rights is unable to draw a clear line between the human and the animal. I would like to consider this naturalist confusion not only in terms of its failure but also in terms of its potential to enlarge our thinking about equality and freedom, which comes of the strange power of literature to work with “person” beyond anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism.

Author

• Thomas Lamarre, McGill University