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April 12,
2003
Mocking
Militarism
On
Ishikawa Jun's Song of Mars
by
ZELJKO CIPRIS
One of the finest literary descriptions of a nation
caught in the grip of martial hysteria was produced by Ishikawa
Jun (1899-1987), a Japanese writer widely read in modern European,
Edo period Japanese, and classical Chinese literature, and translator
of Andre Gide, Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, and others. Winner, in
1936, of the Akutagawa Prize for a story about intellectuals
living on the fringe of Japanese society, Ishikawa was an unaffiliated
leftist with the anti-authoritarian temperament of an anarchist.
It was thus fitting that his short story Marusu no uta
(The Song of Mars), published in the January 1938 issue of the
literary journal Bungakkai, was banned on the grounds
of "fomenting antimilitary and antiwar thought."
In finely wrought sentences, by turns
flowing and concise, The Song of Mars tells of a season--autumn
1937--usurped by militarism, presided over by the nationalistic
incarnation of Mount Fuji, and dominated by the implacable blaring
of a war song, "Mars." Beginning and ending at dusk,
it is largely a story about sanity's twilight. An agent and the
symbol of the ascendant lunacy is the ubiquitous song whose hypnotic
effect on the populace transforms them into enthusiastic instruments
of state power. Representing governmental ability to sway emotionally
a majority of the governed into supporting its policies, the
belligerent anthem replaces reason and intellect by patriotic
frenzy. Its very mention provokes a conditioned response, reducing
those affected to feverishly babbling automata. Presented literally
as a loathsome air pollutant, the militarist song is a noxious
miasma "blasting trees throughout the city, asphyxiating
chickens and dogs," and sapping the human will to resist
officially decreed madness.
One of the seemingly few who remain impervious
to the siren song is the story's narrator, a novelist struggling
to preserve his sanity against a deranged environment. Revolted
by the mindless euphoria and acquiescence to regimentation which
surround him, he is equally disgusted by his own powerlessness
to offer forceful and effective resistance. With his active opposition
limited to spasmodic shouts of angry defiance, a refusal to act
as a moral watchdog, and an exhortation to a conscript to return
from the war alive, he is painfully aware of the inadequacy of
his response to the crisis but can manage no other. A refractory
intellectual clinging to thought when relinquishing it is mandatory,
he finds his only relief from spiritual suffocation in escape,
retreating into both spatial and temporal isolation. This he
achieves by doing his best to cut himself off from the surroundings
whenever "Mars" and the concomitant drivel come within
earshot, and by engrossing himself in the comic poetry of the
Edo period masters, men who lived unvanquished in a similarly
oppressive era.
Paralleling and underscoring the figurative
suffocation that pervades the narrative is an incident of literal
asphyxiation which takes the life of Fuyuko, a young woman fond
of toying with danger. Infatuated by the Western dramatic narratives
she loves, Fuyuko indulges in seemingly safe adventurism which
unexpectedly ends in self-inflicted death. In the absurdity of
her morbid playacting a reader may discern a satirical allegory
of Japan's own reckless course of action, while the inadvertent
suicide may be seen as a prognostic warning that emulating Western
adventurism will lead to self-destruction. Just as Fuyuko never
suspects that playing with kitchen gas will kill her, so the
population fails to perceive the menace inherent in the intoxicating
atmosphere symbolized and stimulated by the song of Mars. The
link between the two equally pernicious fumes is confirmed by
a loquacious guest speaking of Fuyuko at her funeral:
Placed into a certain situation, individual
will and emotions are rendered powerless. Even if those affected
should desire to break free, they might well find themselves
unable to. A popular song sweeping through the streets is a case
in point. Within the swirl of its popularity, everyone is strung
together.
Targeting more than the ominous domestic
impact of subservience and delusion, the author also expresses
outrage at the closely related exercise of terror overseas where
the same government that is manipulating minds at home is simultaneously
carrying out murderous repression. This is most graphically shown
in the description of a news film the protagonist stumbles upon
in search of respite from the odious song:
I blinked up at the screen where a gigantic
warship was thrusting its long gun barrels over the sunlit water:
the guns seeming just to have fired, their smug muzzles coolly
trailed soft wisps of whitest smoke which slenderly rose and
dissipated. For an instant, the smoke impressed me as very tranquil,
like puffs from the pipe of an old man basking in the sunshine,
but I realized with a start it was precisely in such feigned
innocence the bombardment's ghastliness resided. The scene changed
to a village by the waterside lined with willows and semidemolished
farmhouses in front of which a troop of smiling young men stood
around an older man seated on a chair, his ample beard swaying
with laughter as he thrust both arms before him to press his
sinewy hands over the small heads of two children whose nationality
decidedly differed from that of the men. It certainly seemed
a peaceable sight. And yet, the faces of the two children, surrounded
by the native landscape and the aliens' laughter, remained absolutely
expressionless. In trapped silence, they were shrieking a categorical
NO! Ah, faced with their NO! how feeble mine sounds.
In reproducing a few seconds of film,
Ishikawa brilliantly sums up a war of indiscriminate destruction,
savage pacification, and beaming amity staged for home consumption.
The episode forms a trenchant critique of modern aggressive warfare
which Ishikawa correctly perceives as entailing not only massive
devastation but invariable efforts to present the slaughter and
oppression as motivated by benevolence and love of peace. Under
such circumstances it is not incongruous for smug victors to
pose gleefully as protectors of the very people whose homes they
have destroyed and whose relatives they have killed. Since the
author, however, refuses to accept the convenient pretense that
the conquered are children in need of paternal care, the spectacle
of the officer's muscular hands resting on native heads loses
its benign aspect, becoming instead a potent image of gross offense
against human dignity.
About the prospects of stopping the domestic
and overseas madness, the author is less than sanguine. Although
his last sentence quoted above suggests that both the Chinese
and the narrator--an independent-minded Japanese intellectual--are
confronting the same enemy, it also reveals the latter's relative
impotence to oppose the common adversary. Nor is there much sign
of opposition from his compatriots, many of whom are sent with
astonishing ease to kill and die:
A small slip of paper, a flimsy red strip
of rough, low-quality paper, quivered between the fingers of
his right hand. It was the fateful slip of paper by which at
present the young men of this country are rounded up without
distinction to be sucked up into the chorus of the Song of Mars
and driven to faraway fields reeking of gunpowder smoke.
Those conscripted, like Fuyuko's bereaved
husband, typically respond with resigned acquiescence, directing
their efforts merely toward tasting life's joy for the final
time. There is an eerie normalcy amidst the madness, causing
many to behave as though nothing calamitous were going on:
The very fact that no one's behavior
was particularly eccentric, bizarre, inscrutable, or anything
other than commonplace, made the strangeness of the resulting
tableau all the more strange. Thrust into the season of the Song
of Mars, did people's shadows slip away from their proper places?
Divested of capacity for thought, people
are demoted to the level of unreflecting animals: fish, dogs,
dolphins. Nevertheless, a thirst for thought persists unextinguished
in some quarters, and with it a hope of sanity's recovery.
If despite its pessimism Ishikawa's story
remains largely free from gloom, this is thanks to the beauty
of its style--a blend of late Edo and modernist idiom--and its
humor. Amusingly mocking the official penchant for secrecy, references
to "a certain newspaper," "a certain girls' school"
and the like dot the narrative, leading up to the ultimate in
confidential information:
"Listen, this is an absolute secret:
know how many nails it takes to make a pair of infantryman's
shoes?"
Ishikawa Jun's overt literary resistance
began and ended with The Song of Mars. After its banning,
he turned to less controversial writing and immersed himself
in continued study of Edo literature. The Song of Mars,
a wittily incisive expression of moral and aesthetic revolt against
dehumanization and injustice, continues to be recognized as a
splendid example of art striking at malevolent power through
irony.
A final note: Although the late 1930s
Japan was awash in the red white and khaki of flags and uniforms,
and resounding with martial music (some of it strongly reminiscent
of John Philip Sousa's marches), none of the many patriotic songs
was actually named after the Roman god of war. That was an invention
of Ishikawa Jun.
Click here to read Song
of Mars.
Zeljko Cipris
can be reached at: zcipris@uop.edu
Yesterday's
Features
Zoltan
Grossman
The Perils of Occupation: the Easier
the Victory, the Harder the Peace
Uri
Avnery
The Night After
Wayne Madsen
The Telltale Signs of Empire
David Krieger
Before You Become Too Flushed with Victory, Think of Ali Ismaeel
Abbas
Jeremy
Brecher
What Can the World Do Now That Tanks Prowl Baghdad?
Robert
Jensen
The Unseen War
Geoffrey
Neale
Ashcroft's War on the Constitution:
A Patriot Attack on America
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Last Tango in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
Rumors of War
Joseph
Heller
Nately's Old Man
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/10
Website
of the Day
The
Third Page
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