The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese Cinema and Literature: Polygraphic Desire

241 Pages·2007·1.6 MB·English

by  Nina Cornyetz

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,IS!BN 9778-I0-4A15-4770B87-3
Routledge Contemporary Japan Series
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The Ethics of Aesthetics in
Japanese Cinema and Literature
The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese Cinema and Literature is a study of the
ethics of modern Japanese aesthetics from the 1930s, through the Second
World War and into the postwar period. What makes this book unique is
that Nina Cornyetz opens up the field in new and controversial ways by
exploring the tensions and harmonies between psychoanalytic ethics of the
drive and sociopolitical ethics of relation to the other. Rejecting the conven-
tion of viewing these as contradictory, Cornyetz insists that the exemplars
of psychoanalytic ethics are to the contrary, simultaneously politicallyethical.
Cornyetz embarks on innovative and unprecedented readings of some of
the most significant literary and film texts of the Japanese canon, including
works by Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Abe Kdbd, and Shinoda
Masahiro, all renowned for their texts’ aesthetic and philosophic brilliance.
The study looks at how relations between individuals and communities in
these texts either reiterate or transcend stereotypes, and how desire is or is
not limited by sociocultural norms. Cornyetz argues that these authors’ and
filmmakers’ concepts of beauty and relation to others were, in fact, deeply
impacted by political and social factors.
Ranging from a discussion of fascist aesthetics to heterosexism in modern
Japan, The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese Cinema and Literature shows
how certain changing political, intellectual, and artistic issues, as well as
sociocultural norms, variously nuanced these texts’ depictions of desire and
the “other.” Through her analysis of cultural texts such as the films Woman
in the Dunes and Double Suicide, Cornyetz challenges the convention that
praises the universality of their artistic, existential or intellectual achieve-
ments. Rather she seeks to reorient these within a specifically Japanese his-
torical context to give a new and insightful interpretation to the work. This
groundbreaking study is truly interdisciplinary and will appeal to students
and scholars of Japanese literature, film, gender, culture, history, and even
psychoanalytic theory.
Nina Cornyetz is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at New
York University, USA.
Routledge Contemporary Japan Series
1 A Japanese Company in Crisis
Ideology, strategy, and narrative
Fiona Graham
2 Japan’s Foreign Aid
Old continuities and new directions
Edited by David Arase
3 Japanese Apologies for World War II
A rhetorical study
Jane W. Yamazaki
4 Linguistic Stereotyping and Minority Groups in Japan
Nanette Gottlieb
5 Shinkansen
From bullet train to symbol of modern Japan
Christopher P. Hood
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Edited by Carola Hein and Philippe Pelletier
8 The Changing Japanese Family
Edited by Marcus Rebick and Ayumi Takenaka
9 Adoption in Japan
Comparing Policies for Children in Need
Peter Hayes and Toshie Habu
10 The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese Cinema and Literature
Polygraphic desire
Nina Cornyetz
The Ethics of Aesthetics
in Japanese Cinema
and Literature
Polygraphic desire
Nina Cornyetz
First published 2007 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2007 Nina Cornyetz
Typeset in Times New Roman by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Kings Lynn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Cornyetz, Nina, 1955–
The ethics of aesthetics in Japanese cinema and literature : poly-
graphic desire / by Nina Cornyetz.
p. cm. — (Routledge contemporary Japan series ; 10)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-77087-4 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Authors, Japanese—20th century—Aesthetics. 2. Literature and
morals. 3. Motion pictures—Aesthetics. 4. Motion pictures—Japan.
I. Title. II. Series.
PL723.C67 2006
895.6′0935520904—dc22
2006007402
ISBN10: 0-415-77087-4 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-96701-1 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-77087-3 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-96701-0 (ebk)
For my parents Paul and Bernice Cornyetz

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
PART I
Woman as second nature and other fascist proclivities
in Kawabata Yasunari 13
1 Myth-making 16
2 Fascist aesthetics 23
3 Kawabata and fascist aesthetics 34
4 Virgins and other little objects 40
PART II
The politics of climate and community in Woman in the
Dunes and “The idea of the desert” 59
5 A preface to Woman in the Dunes: space, geopolitics,
and “The idea of the desert” 64
6 Social networks and the subject 75
7 Technologies of gazing 96
PART III
Naming desire: Mishima Yukio and the politics
of “sexuation” 109
8 Textualizing flesh, or, (in)articulate desire 113
viii Contents
9 Narcissism and sadism: Mishima as homofascist 134
10 The homosocial fixing of desire 145
Epilogue 153
11 Scripting the scopic: disinterest in Double Suicide 155
Notes 176
Works cited 205
Index 218
Acknowledgments
Of course this study, like most intellectual projects, has deep roots. The
varied support, critiques, and intellectual input of friends and colleagues
have been simply indispensable to the writing of this book. The final chap-
ter, actually, is a revised version of an essay written well in advance of the
study itself, inspired by the topic of a Rutgers University Center for Critical
Analysis of Contemporary Culture Seminar – “The Aesthetic” – when I
was a fellow there during 1997–8. I thank all the members of the seminar,
but most of all Joan Copjec, Louisa Schein, and Xudong Zhang, for their
incisive commentary, meaningful participation throughout the year, and for
their friendship. During the same period I taught a closely related gradu-
ate seminar for the Comparative Literature Department at Rutgers, “The
Aesthetic in Modern Japanese Film and Narrative,” where I began broad-
ening my thinking beyond the one film. I was very fortunate to have the
regular input of an astoundingly sophisticated group of students. I am par-
ticularly thankful for their enthusiasm and insights. Subsequent versions of
my work-in-progress on Double Suicide, presented at an annual Association
for Asian Studies meeting in March 1998, and at the University of Oregon
in early 1999, benefited from wonderful comments by, respectively, Livia
Monnet and Stephen Brown. Slowly my thoughts had begun their metamor-
phosis into this study.
In order to write the book, however, I needed time. The gracious grant of
a semester leave in spring 1999 by Rutgers University Deans Richard Foley
and Barry Qualls gave me the first chunk of that time. A sudden, unex-
pected but very welcome invitation from Matsuura Hisaki and Hasumi
Shigehiko to teach a graduate seminar at Tokyo University for the Depart-
ment of Theories of Representations and Culture paved my way to a three-
month-plus stint in Tokyo from April to July 1999. There I was able to
access sources on film that are hard to come by in the States. The seminar
I taught, “Nihon eiga/bungaku ni okeru jendA to bigaku” (Aesthetics and
gender in Japanese cinema and literature), helped me explore many ofthe
themes that have come together in this book, refined by the (once again)
regular intellectual contributions of a group of very engaged, insightful, and
surprisingly vocal (for Japanese, or so I am told) graduate students. The