“What we have to do is to face the things that hurt and sadden us” - Remembering the past and responsibility in The Silent Cry

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“What we have to do is to face the things that hurt and sadden us” - Remembering the past and responsibility in The Silent Cry

Lisa Anne Christine Petznick Master's Thesis in Modern Japan JAP4693

30 credits Fall semester 2019

Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS), University of Oslo

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2 Abstract

One of the most exciting aspects of literature is how literature deals with subjects and topics in the real world. In this thesis I will examine how Ôe Kenzaburô's novel The Silent Cry deals with the topics of remembering the past and responsibility. I will be doing a close reading of the novel and analyse the text by motives and topics. My goal is to point out how the two aforementioned topics are integrated into the novel and what statements the novel makes about remembering the past and about responsibility in the real world.

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3 Acknowledgement

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my supervisor Reiko Abe Auestad for the help and support in the process of writing this thesis. Furthermore I would like to extend my gratitude to all teachers of the subject Modern Japan for their help and sharing of knowledge over the past two years.

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4 Table of contents

1. Introduction p. 5 1.1. Theoretical Framework p. 6 2. Analysis p. 7 2.1. Different approaches to the past p.11 2.2. From passivity to activity p.28 2.3. A Personal Matter p.35

3. Conclusion p.38 4. Bibliography p.42

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5 1. Introduction

I originally became interested in Ôe Kenzaburô when I was still doing my Bachelor's degree in Germany. As I was considering various topics to write my thesis on, I was looking for connections between German and Japanese literature. While scanning the libraries of my home university, I came across a book called Gestern – vor 50 Jahren (Yesterday – 50 years ago). The book was published in 1994, 50 years after the end of the Second World War. In the book, Günther Grass and Ôe Kenzaburo discuss their memories and feelings about that war and the time after the war, about nuclear weapons and energy and - on top of that – they discuss the question of whether we should feel responsible for what happened during the war and how we should remember the time of the war.

A central part of the book is dedicated to the rehabilitation of deserters and to admitting the public's guilt to the world. On the one hand, Grass and Ôe suggest that people who did not follow the regimes in both Germany and Japan during the Second World War need to be rehabilitated as the true heroes of that time. On the other hand, both writers agree that their two nations admitting to their wrongdoing during the war is an important aspect of taking responsibility for the atrocities committed and Ôe empathizes how unhappy he is with the way Japan has dealt with this

responsibility.

“Japan can never avoid the responsibility for the crimes committed against other Asian countries. Neither can Japan justify them. It is hard, painful work to admit to these crimes in full detail and to ask for forgiveness. It is also hard work to find a way to offer compensation for what can be compensated. What we have to do is to face the things that hurt and sadden us and as people who have no other choice we need to find a way to reach reconciliation and a new life with our neighbours.”¹

The book left a lasting impression on me. The way in which two writers from completely different parts of the world discussed such serious and important topics sparked my interest. As the book published a conversation between two writers of fiction discussing real life issues I became interested in how real life issues are reflected in literature. It became clear to me while reading the book, that responsibility is a topic that is a central concern to Ôe. I was wondering how he turns this concern of his into a work of fiction. How does this concern appear in his works? What is his idea of how we should face this topic? These questions became especially interesting to me. I was

1Grass, Günther, Ôe, Kenzaburo. 1995. Gestern – vor 50 Jahren, ein deutsch-japanischer Briefwechsel. Steidl, Göttingen p.78-79 All translations are my own ones.

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fortunate enough to have a class during my master's degree that was concerned with Ôe in some way, which gave me the chance to get a more thorough look into his works while also connecting it to different theories, which helped me in developing a thesis idea. However, as I was developing my idea I realized that there was actually not a lot of material on Ôe specifically, especially not much in English which had been written recently. It seems that outside of Japan Ôe and his writing are not being focused on, which is odd since his writing is concerned with a multitude of topics that were not only relevant when he wrote his texts but continue to be relevant to this very day. By this thesis I hope to highlight a small part of Ôe's writing and illustrate why it is still important to read and talk about his works.

As I stated before I am interested in how fiction deals with real life issues. In this case I want to look at how being confronted with the past influences our actions in the present. Does coming to terms with the past influence us in the present? In what way should we remember the past?

But how does one look at a topic this broad? As a method I have chosen to do a close

reading of Ôe's novel The Silent Cry. I will concentrate on the two main characters of the novel, the brothers Mistusaburo and Takashi and their different ways of remembering the past to see how those influence their actions in the present and moreover, how the protagonists assume

responsibility for their past and present actions.

1.1. Theoretical framework

I want to briefly talk about the theoretical framework I intend to apply to discuss the aforementioned questions. In his book The Heritage Crusade, David Loewenthal discusses two approaches to the past which he calls the history-based approach and the heritage-based approach.

Loewenthal clearly distinguishes history and heritage with history being a fact-based account of what happened in the past and heritage being not an inquiry into, but a celebration of the past which does not necessarily need to be fact-based (Loewenthal 1998, p.X).

Loewenthal argues that by the use of a heritage-based approach the past is domesticated and can then be used for present causes. It can still be called history but is in fact heritage (Loewenthal 1998, p.XV).

He then asks the question what makes people seek a heritage-based approach to history and his answer is that through grief which we experience in the present, we tend to seek refuge in the past, we are consoled by tradition and by how our ancestors overcame their biggest struggles

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7 (Loewenthal 1998 p.XIII).

Furthermore, Loewenthal discusses the conflicts that involve heritage, because heritage cannot at all events be common property. Heritage has a worth because it belongs to only a certain group of people and not to everybody. It makes said group different from everyone else because they possess a heritage that others do not possess. Therefore, heritage is exclusive. It excludes everyone who is not part of the group that shares a certain heritage (Loewenthal 1998 p.227).

Because every group claims its own heritage, it evokes rivalry in which different heritages try to overtake each other (Loewenthal 1998, p.229).

Even though we might inherit several heritages we cannot possibly claim all of them Loewenthal says. Especially nations claim sole fealty from us, one cannot carry on the heritage of several nations (Loewenthal 1998, p.230). This idea of a shared heritage then also provides us with a solidarity against outsiders, who cannot possibly understand our ways and our heritage or make any claims about its nature (Loewenthal 1998, p.231). Heritage treasures what makes us different, unique from others and in trying to be different we define our heritage by being different from a rival or oppressor. However, several different stories about the same event may exist (Loewenthal 1998, p.234).

Many critics have mentioned that the distinction between the two approaches might not be as clear as Loewenthal describes it, but I believe that his approach is in accordance with my ideas.

This is relevant to The Silent Cry, because this concept gives me the necessary framework to analyse Mitsusaburo's and Takashi's approach to the past in the book.

2. Analysis

First, I want to give a brief overview over the events of the novel.

The novel that I will be focusing on is The silent Cry. Again, the book is set in the 1960s. It starts off with a man, Mitsusaburo, who works at a university, and his wife. They have a mentally

disabled child, who doesn't live together with them in their home, but is in an institution where it is being cared for.

Mitsusaburo's brother Takashi has just returned from America and suggests to Mitsusaburo to quit his job to go to the village they were born in in rural Shikoku.

Takashi leaves for Shikoku first with his two friends and Mitsusaburo and his wife follow later. Upon arriving at the village Mitsusaburo learns that Takashi has sold an old storehouse that their family owned for a long time to the “Emperor”, a Korean who owns the local supermarket in the village. Mitsusaburo is enraged about this and leaves the family home where Takashi lives with

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his with his friends. He moves into the storehouse to distance himself from Takashi. His wife, on the other hand, stays with Takashi.

After a while Takashi starts to form a group from young villagers with whom he practices football. Mitsusaburo's wife and his two friends take part in it by supplying the group with food while Mitsusaburo stays distanced. But in the end Takashi and his group stage an uprising in the village where they raid the Emperor's supermarket. The whole city joins in and only Mitsusaburo stands aside. However, after a few days the riot begins to die down and the people start bringing the raided goods back to the supermarket as they fear repercussions from the emperor.

At the same time a girl is killed violently and Takashi claims that he is the perpetrator.

Mitsusaburo does not believe him and claims that Takashi is only trying to stage his own violent death. The two of them end up talking in the storehouse where Takashi hides from the angry lynch mob. Takashi reveals that he and their mentally disabled younger sister had an incestuous

relationship, which ended in their sister's suicide. Later that night a gunshot is heard from the storehouse. As Mitsusaburo goes to check he finds Takashi, who has shot himself.

A few days later the emperor arrives with workers to dismantle the storehouse. In the process they discover a hidden basement which proves that their great-grandfather's brother hid in the basement and did not flee as Takashi had claimed. Mitsusaburo and his wife, who is pregnant from Takashi, reconcile and decide to go back to Tokyo and get their child back home to raise it along with Takashi's child. Mitsusaburo takes a job as a translator on an expedition to Africa.

Before I get into talking about how the characters in the novel handle the past I want to establish what is happening in the present. I am going to establish what Mitsusaburo's ( he is the novel's first-person narrator) situation is like at the beginning of the novel before Takashi arrives.

In the beginning of the novel it is early morning and Mitsusaburo is sitting at the bottom of a deep pit near his house contemplating his situation. A few days prior to this morning one of his friends has committed suicide and Mitsusaburo, when talking with said friend's grandmother, expresses his regrets for not having done anything to convince his friend to stay in a mental hospital for some time longer.

““When he came back from the clinic, I should have persuaded him to go back again,” I said.

“No – the boy couldn't have stayed there any longer, “ his grandmother replied. “The other mental patients were so impressed with the fine things he'd done there that he couldn't possibly have remained any longer. You shouldn't forget that and blame yourself.””²

2Ôe, Kenzaburô The Silent Cry Kondansha International Ltd., Serpent's Tail, London, 1967, 1988 Translated by John Bester p.5

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A short while after, Mitsusaburo thanks his friend's grandmother for her support.

““You bear up so well, you're a great help.”

“Everyone has to die. And in a hundred years nobody's going to inquire just how most people died. The best thing is to do it in the way that takes your fancy most.”³

In this conversation we learn that Mitsusaburo regrets not having done something that he suspects would have helped his friend, but at the same time he also receives an explanation for why it is all right that he did not. Thus he gets reassured that, from what seems to him to be rational point of view, there is no need to have done anything.

After said friend's cremation, Mitsusaburo comes home and finds his wife drunk on whiskey.

“Squatting down facing her I watched, fascinated, a drop of sweat, quivering on the edge of her upper lip as she stared back at me suspiciously, roll down sideways as the lip curled.

Her squalid breath, laden with the damp fumes of alcohol, swept over me. The exhaustion brought by the living from the deathbed of a friend seeped like a dye into every corner of my body, and I could have sobbed.

“You're dead drunk, you know.””⁴

Again, Mitsusaburo does not do anything. He looks at his wife, contemplates why she might have got drunk and in the end brings her to bed. Later in the novel, when they wait for Takashi to arrive at the airport, Mitsusaburo's wife gets drunk again and Mitsusaburo's reaction is very similar.

“I watched her face: helpless, solitary, turned in on itself. Eventually she rose above it. The rigid outlines softened on the face which she held tilted slightly upward with closed eyes, and a young girl's face appeared in its place. The hand clasping the tumbler wavered in the space above her knees. I took the glass from her, and the thin, sinewy, sallow hand fell to her lap like a dying swallow. She was already asleep.”⁵

This time, Mitsusaburo is there to see her actually get drunk though at this point it has happened several times before. Again, Mitsusaburo remains passive and watches her getting drunk without intervening. Even when he identifies his wife's actions as helplessness, Mitsusaburo never tries to stop her from drinking but just lets it happen.

When contemplating his situation while sitting in the pit, Mitsusaburo recalls the

circumstances of finding his drunk wife, how he then went to their bedroom, finding their disabled baby in his bassinet. At this time the baby was still at home and had not yet been given away to an institution.

“The baby gazed up at me as ever with wide-open eyes, but whether he was hungry or

3 The Silent Cry p.5

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thirsty or felt some kind of discomfort I couldn't tell. He lay with eyes wide open and

expressionless, like a marine plant in the water of the dusk, simply and placidly existing. He demanded nothing, expressed absolutely no emotion. He didn't even cry. One might even wonder if he were alive at all. Supposing my wife had been drunk all day since my early morning departure and had left the baby to its own devices, what should I do? At the moment she was nothing but a drunken slut in a deep sleep. I had strong premonition of disaster. But as with my wife, I shrank from the sacrilege of stretching out contaminated hands and touching the baby. And to the baby, too, I felt less close than to my friend.

However long I gazed down at him, he went staring at me with utterly expressionless eyes.

Finally, a drowsiness that drew along with the irresistible force of a tidal wave came welling from those brown eyes. Without even fetching a bottle of milk for him, I curled up to sleep.”⁶ The situation that Mitsusaburo finds himself in is that he has to care for his baby as, presumably, no one has done so for the whole day. However, Mitsusaburo does not know what to do with the baby and due to this fact he finally ends up doing nothing. He does actually reason with himself about it, but as with his wife, he tells himself that his hands are contaminated after the cremation and should not touch the living. But even more important here is that he does not know what the baby needs and he fears that, if he does something, it might end up going wrong (“strong premonition of disaster”). Ultimately, before doing anything that might have negative consequences, Mitsusaburo decides to do nothing at all.

Later, when Mitsusaburo and his wife are on the bus on their way to the valley, Mtsusaburo thinks about the time when the baby was being operated on.

“Eventually the baby came back to us, a creature no longer capable of any human reaction apart from gazing back at one with placid brown eyes, and I felt like I too had had a whole group of nerves cut away, thereby acquiring a profound insensitivity as a new characteristic.

Nor was the loss apparent only in the baby himself or me; if anything it was still more directly visible in my wife.”⁷

After the baby has come back from the operation he reacts to his parents even less than he did before. For Mitsusaburo this is the reason for “acquiring insensitivity” as he calls it himself, an insensitivity which is not only directed towards his baby but towards life in general. This

“insensitivity”, which Mitsusaburo has acquired at that point, is his reason for maintaining his passive attitude towards the care for his baby.

This emotionless attitude that portrays Mitsusaburo is also mirrored by his wife, who, as the

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two set out for Mitsusaburo's native village, promised to give up drinking.

“Before going to sleep, however, she'd determined that she should be sober to begin the new life in the village in the valley, and had thrown the remainder of the whiskey, flask and all, well back among the trees. I'd hoped that the moment of intoxication than leading her into sleep would be the last of its kind. Now, though, feeling beside me the hot reality of her eyes, still bloodshot with sleep, fixed rigidly on the peasant boy's head, I abandoned any

overoptimistic expectation that she would really start the new life sober”⁸

Mitsusaburo's own negative attitude towards taking active steps to change the way his family is living is reflected by his wife, who, even though she has resolved to do so, is unable to actually change anything and who falls back into her old patterns. Before Mitsusaburo and his wife arrive in the village they are in a state of passiveness, unable to take action in order to change the situation they are in. The major change that happens to them at the beginning of the novel is that they move to the village, however this action is, as aforementioned, not initiated by them but heavily pushed forward by Takashi.

2.1. Different approaches to the past

Mitsusaburo, from the beginning on, is not as keen on going back to the valley as Takashi is, presumably because he is less interested in being confronted with the past than his brother. Takashi's goal for coming back to Japan, on the other hand, is to go to the village he was born in and to research on what happened there in the past. Mitsusaburo only hesitantly agrees to come along to Shikoku but his own intention is to remove himself from his situation in Tokyo. He is not really interested in getting involved in the past. He is even confused by the intensity that Takashi puts into finding out what happened to their great-grandfather's brother.

“What impressed me more than such talk was the interest with which Takashi still pursued the truth about our great-grandfather and his younger brother. One day, at the time when the family, though still living in the village in the valley, was on the verge of breaking up, my brother had caught wind of the scandal involving our family a century or so earlier.

[…]

I myself had no accurate information about the incident. Particularly during the war , the village adults gave the impression of shunning all mention of the affair, and our family too had tried to pretend the ugly rumor didn't in fact exist.”⁹

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As none of the two brothers knows any hard facts about the rising that their great-grandfather's brother was involved in, technically neither of them can claim to know what happened back then.

The older people around them do not talk about the incidents of that time, which means that the two brothers are relying on rumours to piece together what might have happened. However, this lack of fact doesn't prevent either of the two from having an idea of what might have happened. Takashi has heard that after their great-grandfather's brother had stirred up an uproar in the village he was killed by their great-grandfather. Mitsusaburo, on the other hand, has heard the rumour, that their great- grandfather helped his brother to escape from the village and that he then got to Tokyo to live there.

Their great-grandfather never talked about it later to avoid angering the families that had lost members in the uproar that his brother had caused.

Mitsusaburo's statement implies that the vigour which Takashi relates to confronting the past surprises him. Mitsusaburo seems to never have thought about going back to the village and

confront himself with what had happened there in the past.

When talking to his brother in the village later Mitsusaburo's approach to history becomes clearer. The two brothers are talking about whether their great-grandfather or his brother went to Kochi before the rising to pick up some knowledge from the West.

““Great-grandfather makes me sick, Mitsu,” said Takashi. “He was so conservative, so careful, so farsighted. I'm sure his younger brother felt the same about him as I do.

Otherwise he wouldn't have gone against his brother and become a leader of the farmers.

He was the one who resisted, who had an eye on the trends of the time”

“Don't you think great-grandfather had his eye on the trends just as much as his brother?

He went all the way to Kochi, didn't he, just to pick up the latest knowledge from the West?”

“Surely it was the brother who went to Kochi?” Takashi objected. That was what he wanted to believe, so he was almost consciously ignoring the fact that it was wrong.

“No. It was great-grandfather who went to Kochi first, not his brother,” I said, taking a malicious pleasure in sabotaging his mistaken memory. “It's just that some people say that later, after the rising, his brother fled to Kochi and never came back. [...]””¹⁰

To Mitsusaburo the important part here seems to be that Takashi is disregarding what he himself believes are the facts of what happened in the past. Mitsusaburo also admits that it is important if not enjoyable to him to object to what Takashi is saying. We have no certainty that Mitsusaburo does actually know anything better than Takashi, but he seems to give a lot of importance to the idea of having facts to prove his version of the events. Mitsusaburo's approach to the past is

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strongly based on facts or what Mitsusaburo believes to be facts. In Loewenthal's scheme, this indicates a history-based approach.

Takashi, on the other hand, does not seem to be so much interested in actual facts. His approach to this is more based on emotion. This becomes obvious when he mentions how much he dislikes their great- grandfather and when he connects his emotions to their great-grandfather's brother's supposed emotions, stating that he, too, surely must have disliked his brother. Mitsusaburo clearly has some experience concerning this behaviour of Takashi's and this kind of dispute is hardly new to them.

“Ever since we were children I'd had to fight my brother's tendency to attribute scenes of heroic resistance to great-grandfather's younger brother.

“Why , Mitsu – you are bleeding,” my wife exclaimed, her eyes on my temple. “How can you get so wrapped up in these old legends when you're hurt and bleeding?”

“There's something to be learned even from legends,” Takashi said irritably”¹¹

Mitsusaburo apparently has a long-established need to object to Takashi whenever he felt that Takashi was reproducing a story that Mitsusabro believed not to be in accordance with historic facts. Again, we can see here how very important it is for Mitsusaburo to do so.

Takashi, contrary to his brother, claims that stories that are not fact-based can also be beneficial for one's process of learning. In his opinion the facts are not always necessary to put together a story about the past. He clearly favours legends much more than Mitsusaburo does.

Stating that one can learn from legends indicates that he likes to inspire his own doings with ideas from legends. On Takashi's side we can see a much more heritage-based approach, an approach that is in accordance with Loewenthal's theories.

Shortly afterwards, as they talk about S, their brother who was in the army and was later killed by Koreans living nearby, the difference between the brothers is even more obvious.

““Do you remember the cadets' winter uniform, Natsumi¹²? S came up the graveled road at the height of summer in his dark blue winter uniform, carrying a military sword and

wearing calf-length flying boots. Whenever he met one of the valley folk, he'd click the heels of his boots like the Nazi military used to do. I can still hear the valley ringing to the click of the hard leather heels and his manly voice saying 'Nedokoro S, back from the forces!'.”

For all Takashi's talk, my memory of S was quite remote from such bravado. When S was discharged, for example he threw his cap, boots, and sword off the bridge into the water, removed his jacket, and climbed the graveled road with bent back, his jacket beneath his

11The Silent Cry p.66

12Mitsusaburo's wife

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arm. That, at least, was how I recalled his homecoming.

“I remember the day he was beaten to death still more vividly,” Takashi told my wife. “I often have dreams about it, even now. I can see the scene extraordinarily clearly.””¹³ In this part we have a direct comparison of what Takashi claims has happened with what

Mitsusaburo believes to be the facts. In Takashi's recollection, S's homecoming is that of a strong, young man, who seems to be not too heavily burdened by having been in the army.

Mitsusaburo's own recollection seems more negatively connoted and it portrays S as a rather

ordinary man, the bent back indicating that he carries some weight home from his time in the armed forces. That weight, of course, could stem from the defeat that Japan suffered in the Second World War. Given that S returned from the defeat alive without having died for the Emperor, which was contrary to a very important narrative in Japan during the war (as Ôe has pointed out himself in his own personal recollections), it is likely to assume that what S felt on that day might have been closer to the negative, less heroic picture that Mitsusaburo remembers.

Takashi then tells Mitsusaburo's wife about his recollections of the day S was killed. He describes himself as lying beside S's corpse in the sunlight and then gives a detailed description of the body, drawing an extraordinarily violent picture. Mitsusaburo, however, questions whether this description is really from Takashi's memory.

““You don't mean to say you actually saw all of this?” I demanded.“Admittedly, it's supplemented in part from my dreams. But by now I'm not sure where the boundary lies between dreams and what I actually saw there on the road, a hundred yards downstream from the bridge, on the day S was beaten to death. Memory feeds on dreams, you know.””¹⁴ Takashi has no problem admitting that not everything of what he tells people is based on his actual memories, but he indicates that he does not think it to be necessary. This implies that to Takashi the impact and the effect of the story are more important than whether or not it gives an account of what actually happened. But Takashi still maintains that he himself cannot do anything about it, because he is no longer able to tell apart which part is real and which part is not, thus leaving him effectively no choice but to tell the story the way he did to Mitsusaburo's wife.

This prompts Mitsusaburo to tell his version of what happened that day saying that everything Takashi remembers must have been a dream.

According to Mitsusaburo, it was he who brought S back in a cart from the Korean

settlement where S had been killed. That his brother's memories contradict his own ones seems to embarrass Takashi and he keeps making claims about that day while Mitsusaburo keeps correcting

13The Silent Cry p.70-71

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“I found a perverted pleasure in waiting for the fresh flaws that my corrections lured from Takashi's memory and shooting them down as they appeared. Suppressing a certain disgust with myself, I energetically set about stripping the heroic aura from the image of S that Takashi had just built up in my wife's memory.”¹⁵

Again, Mitsusaburo mentions how satisfying it is for him to debunk Takashi's recollections of the past. It's not only an attempt to highlight what he, Mitsusaburo, believes to be the actual facts, but it is also a pleasure for him to show that he takes Takashi's way of remembering the incident to be

“wrong” in his opinion and it is fun to Mitsusaburo to show that he has the “right” way of remembering.

When questioned why he believes S to have acted the way he remembers, Takashi states the following:

““In my dreams,” he went on, “I've never had the slightest doubt of why S had to play the role. My fantasy S was born to be just that kind of hero-victim. Besides, I never look at him critically in the way Mitsu does, whether in my dreams or out of them. It comes as a kind of shock to be asked “Why?” ”¹⁶

Takashi does not need any reasons to understand why S acted in a certain way. For him the only memory that is needed is the one of S's heroism, a memory he does not question. There is also no reason for Takashi to question what he sees and feels in his dreams. Emotional categories are more important to him than facts, emotional categories such as the “hero-victim” category, into which he puts S. Moreover, Takashi mentions that as a child he had no means of inquiring into S's reasoning implying that now it is not important to him any longer.

The novel pictures Takashi as a man who easily gets close to the people from the valley, especially to a group of young people. This is something Mitsusaburo completely refuses to do.

““Taka's quickly making himself at home with the young men of the valley,” she said. “not like you – you're just the same here as you were shut up in your room in Tokyo.”

“Taka's trying to put down roots again,” I replied. “I don't seem to have any roots to put down.””¹⁷

Takashi is trying to become friendly with the young men of the village. These young men might be in a similar position as Takashi imagines the people who took part in the uproar of his great-

grandfather's brother to have been in. The young men are in trouble with the Emperor¹⁸ and they

18The Korean owner of a local supermarket chain. The young men of the village raised chickens for him, which ended up dying due to cold and malnourishment

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come to Takashi to ask for help. This indicates that this group of young people is looking for a leader or someone they can follow and who will give them some sense of direction as the great- grandfather's brother might have done in his time by leading the uproar in the village and who is idealized by Takashi in the same way as he idealizes his own brother S. Even though Mitsusaburo objects to this idealization it does not lead him to action. He, in contrast to Takashi, does not interact much with the village people. By mentioning that he has no roots to put down he conveys the

impression that he feels lost in the world, might it be in Tokyo or in the village. This also indicates that Mitsusaburo does not intend to make a connection to the village people.

That night, awaking from a nightmare, Mitsusaburo reflects on the earlier uprising in the village, which involved their great-grandfather and even more so his brother. He reflects on how his mother would say that their great-grandfather was a great man and how she would wonder which one of her two surviving sons might some day become like him.

“If I stayed silent and refused to reply to such an obviously didactic question, mother would go on pressing indefinitely; and if I reluctantly declared that I would be like great-

grandfather, she would respond with silence and a faint, doubting smile.”¹⁹

It should be noted here, that the mother shows a similar way of idealizing an ancestor as Takashi does, however, it is interesting that she prefers their great-grandfather, indicating that emotional remembrance of the past does not necessarily always have to be the same for everyone, several different versions of the same story can well exist simultaneously. In one of them, which is close to their mother's heart, their great-grandfather is a great man. In Takashi's version of the past events it is their great-grandfather's brother who is such a great man.

Mitsusaburo's mother did not believe that Mitsusaburo could be someone like his great- grandfather, whom she apparently thought very highly of. On the other hand, when his mother wondered which one of her two sons would be like him, she obviously thought that it would be Takashi, who would become a great man.

This expectation is interesting because clearly Takashi has no ambition to be like his great- grandfather. However, he is clearly the one of the two brothers who puts more energy into becoming what he perceives to be a great man. In Takashi's case that would be their great-grandfather's

brother.

The next day, while Takashi is training the village youths in (American) football, a young village priest, who Mitsusaburo knows, comes to their house and they talk about the earlier uprising. The great-grandfather's brother was the only one of the leaders of the rising to escape execution and he was said to have fled into the forest or, as others said, hid in the storehouse. They also talk about

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how the great-grandfather's brother gave the young people of the village special training before the rising, thus implying that Takashi's action is mimicking his great-grandfather's brother's actions (p.115-116).

““Takashi is like S,” I said. “He seems to want his actions to be influenced by the 1860 affair. Today, for example, he's started getting the young men of the valley together for football practice, just because he's taken a fancy to the story of how great-grandfather's brother cut a clearing in the forest as a training ground to prepare the young men to fight.””²⁰

Again, Takashi's presumed will to imitate his great-grandfather's actions is highlighted. This time, however it is not only that he remembers his great-grandfather and his brother, this time Takashi is actually taking action to imitate his ancestor. This shows how, in Takashi's case, the way in which he perceives the past leads directly to action. Mitsusaburo even comments on how he is similar to their brother S in that sense. It is also interesting how he separates Takashi and S from himself who does obviously not want to act in a way that might be influenced by the “1860s affair”. The priest has also brought a diary of S' that he found somewhere and assuming that his brother would be interested Mitsusaburo passes it on to Takashi, who finds the thoughts portrayed in the diary similar to his own and keeps it.

Some time later, Mitsusaburo overhears a conversation between Takashi and his wife.

““Not, I'm not saying that my memories tally with the facts. But I didn't consciously distort them either. After all, I once did have roots here, so to fall in with the communal aspirations of the valley can hardly be called a kink in my personality, can it? After I was separated from the village, memory combined with the communal dream to form a kind of pure culture in my mind.””²¹

Takashi again admits that he is aware of the fact that his memories are not purely based on facts.

His memory of the village and the fact that he is back in that village act for him as a mediator to bring the events that happened to his ancestors closer to himself and, moreover, to involve them into his life and also to involve himself into their time in a way. Another important point Takashi makes is that he feels that, because he has once lived in the valley, this kind of not purely fact-based approach has come natural to him. This, however, does not explain why Mitsusaburo, who has the same roots as Takashi, does not feel the same way. It is another indication for the two different approaches Mitsusaburo and Takashi have with regard to the village's and their own family's history. So, when we compare this with Loewenthal's arguments, we can clearly see the exclusive

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significance of heritage here. Takashi is connected to the history of the valley because he was born there. Moreover, he is connected in a way that people who are not from the valley cannot be.

Mitsusaburo realizes that his wife, too, has become a part of Takashi's group by now and it becomes apparent that the stories Takashi produces are well suited to bring more and more people to follow him. This shows how the approach that Takashi utilizes can form a group that, just as he himself, is not really interested in facts, but, as a group, rather pays attention to the emotional connection to said past.

Later Mitsusabuto and his wife talk to each other.

““But I didn't keep quiet about it deliberately. You see, I know S wasn't the leader of the young men in the valley, and I've got my own powerful memory of S's body lying where he'd

been beaten to death. So I just couldn't connect up such a heroic and attractive “spirit” with S's actual death.”

“All that means that you're cut off from what Taka calls the 'communal sentiments' of the valley folk.”

“If I'm really cut off from the valley, then any trouble the 'spirits' bring here has nothing to do with me, thank God,” I said,[...]²²

Takashi is making the stories that he tells about S and his great-grandfather's brother some kind of communal property, which all the people in the valley share. It is a part of their “heritage” and, as Mitsusaburo's wife realizes, everybody who does not have this “communal sentiment” is excluded from the group. This means that even though the historical facts about the valley are the same for everyone, the ideas which Takashi has about the village can exclude someone who is equally as much a descendant of the same ancestors in the village as Takashi and can include someone who is not even from the village such as Mitsusaburo's wife. Mitsusaburo already suspects the training that Takashi is conducting not to be intended entirely for peaceful reasons (p.126-127).

On another day, Mitsusaburo encounters Takashi talking about the 1860 rising to some young men from the valley.

“The thing that puzzled me most was that the role of the young men in the 1860 rising – as I understood it at least – has been distinguished by its brutal cruelty and was hardly

something to evoke hearty laughter.

“Takashi cleverly worked in some amusing episodes,” she said. “There's something essentially alive about him, I feel – he refuses to have preconceived ideas about the rising, or to see it as exclusively depressing, as you do.”

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“Does the 1860 business have so many amusing episodes to offer, then?”²³

Again it is implied that Takashi bends the events of 1860 in a way that make them more attractive to the young men he is talking to. Takashi seems to also have a certain charisma that brings people to follow him, turning him into the leader of the group of men. In contrast to this Mitsusaburo's more fact-based approach to the history of the valley becomes obvious again. By asking whether

there are that many amusing incidents in connection with the 1860 rising, Mitsusaburo implies doubts that there are really many such incidents that Takashi could retell.

For Takashi, on the other hand, it does not matter if what he is telling people is fact or fiction. As he refuses to accept “preconceived ideas” about the rising he equally refuses to be told what the rising was like. This includes the denial of a fact-based approach. Instead he rather creates his own version of the events, including episodes that are supposed to evoke a certain reaction as in this case to amuse his listeners. Mitsusaburo does not agree with the way Takashi uses these stories, but he refuses to do anything about it.

““If you object what Taka does,” she²⁴ said, “you'd better take it up directly with him and the young men, Mitsu”

“Not me. I've no desire to interfere in his propaganda activities.,””²⁵

Mitsusaburo has identified the purpose that these stories serve for Takashi as propaganda directed towards young men to make them follow him. But Mitsusaburo, instead of intervening, prefers to assume the passive role of an outsider to avoid being entangled and thus being responsible for what happens with the group. He is also aware of the fact that, according to himself, Takashi is spreading propaganda which opposes his own approach to the past but he refuses to confront Takashi with it.

He is an intellectual who is able to identify the purpose of Takashi's way of retelling the past, however, he doesn't act upon that discovery, he merely observes. This is what makes Mitsusaburo's role in the valley different from everybody else's. As an intellectual, he does not want to get

involved in the emotions that the other people in the valley have for joining the rising. His analytical way of looking at things keeps him apart and probably thinking too much makes him unable to act.

When the young men together with the valley folk raid the supermarket a young man is expelled from the group because of harassing Takashi's friend Momoko. After getting expelled he allegedly tried to flee through the forest to Kochi as the great-grandfather's brother - according to Takashi - tried as well.

“Now that the first signs have shown in him, I'm sure the tendency to identify with the young

23´The Silent Cry p.149

24Mitsusaburo's Wife

25The Silent Cry p. 152

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men of 1860 will soon take hold among the team as a whole. I'm going to spread it among all the valley people. I want to start another rising here, to reproduce the rising of our ancestors a century ago even more realistically then the Nembutsu dance. Mitsu – it's not impossible!”²⁶

Here Takashi distinctly states that he is indeed intending to re-enact what happened in 1860. He also makes quite clear that this is what he has actually intended to do by telling the group of young men the stories from the past. Once again it is obvious that for Takashi the past serves as a tool to provoke action in the present.

The same day, while the raid is going on, Mitsusaburo talks to an older woman in the village and he wonders whether no-one in the valley has any sympathy with the Emperor.

““Everybody feels things have gone to pieces since the Koreans came. They should kill 'em all off!” she declared with extraordinary intensity, flogging herself on in her irrationality.

Her eyes had gone dark with hatred.

“But Jin, the Koreans have never willingly inflicted any harm on the people living here. The trouble just after the war was the fault of both sides. Why say such things when you know the facts as well as I do?”²⁷

Takashi's retelling of historic events seems to have had an effect on most people in the valley. It becomes clear how powerful Takashi's propaganda is, when even someone who actually was there in those days after the war is willing to agree with it and believe it. Confronting the past in this way seems to prove extremely effective in order to make people take action of some kind. So, once again, the exclusive nature of Takashi's approach is made clear. The apprehension of the valley folk is directed towards the people in the valley who do not share their heritage, the Koreans.

On his way to a shop Mitsusaburo talks to a child who lives in the valley about the manager of the raided supermarket.

““He talks so much rubbish that the valley folk have stopped paying much attention to him and the Emperor. He's a Korean too, you know.”

I was disgusted at this unreasoning hostility towards Koreans in a child born since the war, but if I tried to defend the manager, the boy would almost certainly get his gang of little ruffians together and have me running away in the same tottering, aimless fashion.”²⁸ Two things are important here. On the one hand, it is shown how successful the propaganda has been with a child who is too young to even remember any of the trouble concerning the Koreans and who is therefore solely relying on what he has been told by others.

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On the other hand, there's Mitsusaburo, who knows better than what Takashi's propaganda is trying to tell the boy, but feels unable to do anything about it. If we think about how much action Takashi's approach to how the past should be remembered has prompted, Mitsusaburo's approach just seems to achieve the opposite. Instead of doing anything, Mitsusaburo keeps thinking about how unhappy he is with the way Takashi approaches the past as well as the present. But instead of stepping in he remains passive and unemotional, rethinking the same details again and again.

The next day Mitsusaburo sees a traditional Nembutsu dance taking place outside the house.

In the dance, there are usually “spirits” of the valley that appear, however, in this special dance they are replaced by people in Korean costumes.

“The “spirits” of the Emperor and his wife in Korean dress had rekindled a new excitement in all these people from the valley and the 'country' beyond.”²⁹

The traditional dance, tweaked into fitting Takashi's purposes, excites the people of the valley once more for the rising. The dance is cleverly made into a connection between the events of the past and what is happening in the village at the moment. The Nembutsu dance has been present in the valley for a very long time. This way the history of the valley symbolized by the dance is connected to what happens at the moment, which is a new kind of uproar against the Koreans in the valley. As the dance evokes a new surge of excitement for the rising it is clear that this use of the legends of the valley has a strong emotional effect on the people living there.

Later Takashi comes to talk to Mitsusaburo about the attitude the village people have towards the Koreans.

““[...]Once they decide the enemy's a helpless weakling, they feel they can trample all over him. And the crucial fact here is that the Emperor's Korean. They've always been thoroughly aware of how wretched their lives were. And they've always kept low, feeling they were the most insignificant species in the forest. But now they remember the delicious superiority they felt toward the Koreans before and during the war.[...]””³⁰

This part can be well used to illustrate how important it is that the person or group who the rage of the village is directed towards is an “outsider”. In this case the people in the valley are the large group that can exclude some people who are not part of that group, in this case the Koreans. As a method to present themselves as a group traditions, such as the Nembutsu dance, can be exerted.

Such traditions are, as Takashi puts it, communal sentiments of the valley. These communal sentiments belong uniquely to people from the valley and others, such as the Koreans, cannot be part of them. Heritage mentality is concerned about your own group of people and as the Koreans

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are not in the group of the valley people, they cannot be a part of the communal sentiments Takashi refers to.

We have seen the two different approaches to the past that Mitsusaburo and Takashi employ throughout the book. In accordance with the theories Loewenthal established in The Heritage Crusade, the history-based approach can be attributed to Mitsusaburo . As we saw before, in the conversations with his brother, he is keen on pointing out what the facts are or at least what he thinks to be the facts. He is equally keen on contradicting anything in Takashi's statements that he, Mitsusaburo, believes to be part of mistaken memories or even dreams. Mitsusaburo's approach is not emotional, quite on the contrary, he rationalizes the past by purely concentrating on facts, giving no room for emotions or emotional connections with the past. Moreover, Mitsusaburo has neither understanding nor sympathy for the way Takashi approaches the past. Claiming his own approach to be the “correct” one, he despises Takashi's way and, as mentioned before, is rather entertained by correcting Takashi into what he himself is convinced of being correct.

Takashi's way of dealing with the past shows the other extreme. He is far less concerned with retelling fact-based stories which puts his approach into the category of a heritage-based approach to the past. Takashi mentions several times that not everything he says is based on facts, his stories are underpinned by legends, dreams and vague childhood memories. The scene in which Mitsusaburo's wife tells her husband about the amusing episodes that Takashi has added to the account of the 1860 rising indicates that parts of what Takashi tells the young men might even rely completely on something Takashi has made up. To Takashi it does not matter whether what he tells people are facts or not. He is trying to construct a seemingly historical background with the goal of making the young men from the valley follow him.

As Loewenthal suggests, there are instances in which heritage might be called history even though it is not based on facts solely and is therefore not what is commonly considered to be history. This is exactly what Takashi does. He sells his stories to the young men as history, creating a legitimation for what they are attempting to do, for re-enacting the 1860 rising. As Matsubara suggests, facts do not matter to Takashi unless he can use them as “means to create myth”.³¹

Another point Loewenthal makes is that heritage highlights what is unique to a group, what makes them different from others. For heritage and hence for a heritage-based approach to the past it is important, that one's own heritage belongs to one's own group and therefore cannot be

understood by others. Loewenthal puts it this way:

“Aliens remain alien by nurture if not nature. Hence we hold onto what we inherit as ours

31Matsubara Shinichi Ôe Kenzaburô no sekai. Kodansha, Tokyo p.256

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alone. And the usual view […] is that only our own flesh and blood can cherish heritage intact, newcomers and colonials erode or debase it.”³²

This point is also of great importance for Takashi. For his rising it is crucial that his followers accept their heritage as a part of what defines them and at the same time excludes the Emperor, who owns the supermarket, and other Koreans. By spreading the narrative that the Koreans are the outsiders, who came to the valley later than the ancestors of people who live there at present , he can effectively alienate the Koreans and make it easier to provoke a conflict with them.

Takashi and his approach to the past are highly based on emotion. This is clearly shown when Takashi repeatedly becomes agitated about Mitsusaburo correcting him, which indicates how much emotion is involved in what Takashi is doing. Mitsusaburo, on the other hand, appears to be

emotionally completely detached from the past, may it be due to pretending or actually being so.

The two different approaches to this topic that the two brothers adopt in fact have a profound effect on their actions. Throughout the novel, Takashi is highly active. He is constantly engaged in confronting the past, dealing with the past or putting together a version of the past that suits his needs. Not only in that regard, but in everyday life as well is he extremely active. He is the one who suggests going to Shikoku and who even convinces his brother and sister-in-law to come with him. He sells the storehouse, gets together the group of young men and initiates the rising against the Korean supermarket owner.

Mitsusaburo's actions, on the other hand, contrast Takashi's sharply. For the vast majority of the narrative he remains completely passive, for example in connection with his baby, when going to Shikoku, to which he only reluctantly agrees, or when he does not take part in anything that happens around him, neither in his family nor in the village. Even when he finds out that Takashi sold the storehouse without his consent, Mitsusaburo's goal is to remain as passive and unimpressed as possible.

“Calmly I worked to maintain my placid smile, worked with the absolute calmness I'd seen in the eyes of our baby who had failed, in the long run, to establish any ties of

understanding with the real world. I had shut myself up, had no interest in, couldn't be disturbed by, anything in the valley. I wasn't there in the graveled road, not there for any strangers who lived along it.”³³

As I discussed earlier, Mitsusaburo is not only unable to act in any way, he is also unwilling to do so. Mitsusaburo is constantly rationalizing what is happening, be it about his baby or about the question of how to approach the past or even about the possibility of taking action. Everything he

32Loewenthal, David. The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1968 p.

232

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does takes place in his head, thinking things over again and again, but no physical action ever arises from it.

Apart from Takashi's and Mitsusaburo's personal approaches to the past there are two more aspects that are closely connected with the past in the valley: The storehouse of the Nedokoro family and the Nembutusu festival, which used to be celebrated annually in the village. Especially Takashi is very much aware of the significance these two things have in the village and he

incorporates them into the narrative connected with the rising he is planning.

When the brothers arrive at the village, the old Nembutsu festival is not being celebrated any longer and nor has it been for years. As Takashi and his group of youths try to recreate the 1860 rising, they also revive the Nembutsu festival.

““Was it your leader Takashi's idea to play the Nembutsu music out of season like this?” I asked. “Does he think the music's going to remind people of the 1860 rising? If so, it's a puerile idea that'll only serve to annoy the neighbours. Takashi, you, and the rest are the only ones who're carried away. Do you really think those stolid valley types are going to get excited over a few drums and gongs?”

“Well, it's got you annoyed at least, Mitsu,” she pointed out calmly, “you who're trying so hard to be indifferent to everything in the valley.[...]”³⁴

Even though Mitsusaburo has not been in the valley for a very long time, the Nembutsu music has an immediate effect on him as it supposedly has on the other villagers as well. Upon hearing the music, Mitsusaburo immediately understands its connection with the 1860 rising, a circumstance that Takashi uses constantly to remind people that his own rising is already a reality.

“The Nembutsu music nagged at me unceasingly, torturing my nerves, sapping my mental energy. Like it or not, my ears kept reminding me of the abnormal events taking place in the valley. Somewhere deep inside them, the “rising” was already an actuality.”³⁵

The Nembutsu music indeed does have an effect on the people in the valley just as predicted. As the rising continues, a lot of people take part in it, people who opposed it before, when it was just Takashi's group who started it.

“Before long, two “spirits” appeared, heading a company of musicians, dogs, and spectators more numerous than at any Nembutsu dance I'd seen in my childhood. They poured into the yard, filling it completely. In the small, round clearing they left in the center, the “spirits” began a slow, circular movement.”³⁶

But not only is the Nembutsu festival much bigger than Mitsusaburo has ever seen it before, it has

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also been somewhat updated with new “spirits”. Mitsusaburo notices with some surprise that this time the dance includes a “spirit” that wears the clothes of his grandfather representing the

“emperor” of the supermarket and one in a white Korean dress to represent his wife.

“The spectators too had an air of contented excitement. Shouts of joy – some innocent, some cruel – burst from their smiling faces. Among them I saw the women from the “country”

who at dusk the day before had come, clothed once more in the working garb of the hollow, their whole beings exuding dark despair, to make their appeal. They were still in the same drab, indigo – striped peasant dress, but were now outdoing all the rest with their peals of cheerful laughter. The “spirits” of the Emperor and his wife in Korean dress had rekindled a new excitement in all these people from the valley and the “country” beyond.”³⁷

The new Nembutsu dance certainly has brought together not only the village but also the valley beyond under the pretext of Takashi's rising. It is apparent how Takashi has managed to use the valley tradition and what people associate with it for his own goals by “updating” it to the current form.

Takashi's connection with the Nembutsu festival however, does not end after his death. At the end of the novel, when Mitsusaburo and his wife are preparing to leave the valley, a carpenter from the valley comes up to them and shows them a Nembutsu mask representing Takashi's face. That mask is supposed to be used in the Nembutsu festival from then on.

“That morning, a man came from the valley to say good-bye to us, bringing with him a newly made wooden mask. It represented a human face like a split pomegranate, and the closed eyes were studded with countless nails. The man was the tatami maker who had once absconded from the valley and had been summoned back from the town to help revive the Nembutsu dance that summer

[…]

“Lots of young fellows have said they want to come down from the forest in this mask,” the tatami maker said proudly. “They are already arguing about it among themselves””³⁸ In the end Takashi's actions have brought the Nembutsu dance, which had been abandoned for years, back to the village. While there is no telling for how long the tradition of the dance will be preserved in future, it is clear that for the present the dance, that Takashi used to rally up the people in his rising, has become a communal act of remembering the valley's past in general and - with Takashi's mask in the dance – has also become a communal act of remembering Takashi's rising.

When Mitsusaburo and Takashi return after not having been in the valley for years the

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storehouse of the Nedokoro family is still there. While, as mentioned before, Takashi has secret plans of selling it, Mitsusaburo does not pay much attention to it apart from the fact that it has been owned by the their family for a long time. He becomes first aware of the idea that the storehouse could be sold when he talks to Jin, the woman who lives on the property of the Nedokoro family.

With the storehouse having been in the family for so long, she disapproves of it being sold very much.

““If S was alive, he would never have sold the storehouse,” she muttered at my departing back in a hoarse, reproachful voice. “But then what can you expect with Mitsusaburo as head of the family?”

I ignored her and went to look for the others in the storehouse […].”³⁹

Because the storehouse has been in the village for so long, it is not only looked upon as the Nedokoro's property but also as a communal point of remembrance, hence explaining Jin's disapproval of its sale. Mitsusaburo doesn't feel much concern about selling it, but as the story progresses, his connection with the building intensifies.

As the relationship between Mitsusaburo and Takashi becomes more and more difficult,

Mitsusaburo decides to move out of the Nedokoro home where Takashi lives with his followers and Mitsusaburo's wife. He then decides to live in the storehouse.

““Even if we're snowbound I'll sleep in the storehouse, independent from the rest of you,” I said. “You can use the main building as you like,[...]””⁴⁰

From the moment on Mitsusaburo moves into the storehouse, it becomes his safe place to shield him from being in any way part of the events that unfold in the valley. As he refuses to come out and take part in the activities, it is in the storehouse that he first hears the Nembutsu music and most of his conversations with the other characters take place there. Here he has his final talk with his brother before Takashi kills himself and here Mitsusaburo finds Takashi's body after his suicide.

But even after Takashi's suicide, the significance of the storehouse for the story is not yet over. The storehouse had already been sold to the “emperor” by Takashi before his death. Therefore, after the rising has died down, the “emperor” can come to the village to dismantle the building.

“At first , the youths removed the doors of the storehouse and carried out the tatami and other movables with almost reverent care. But after a while Paek gave an order in Korean, and they suddenly began to look much more like demolition workers. As they knocked down the wall of the first floor facing the valley, the plaster and bamboo laths, crumbling to powder after standing there for more than a century, rose into the air and rained down on

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the heads of myself and the valley children who had come to watch.”⁴¹

The effect of this scene is a very strong one because of the connection between the spectators and the event of dismantling the building. On the one hand there is Mitsusaburo, for whom the

storehouse represents both a part of his family's property and a part of his childhood in the valley.

On the other hand there are the children of the valley, who will now continue to grow up without he storehouse to represent the Nedokoro family in the valley and who therefore are losing a place of communal remembrance. The remains of the building, which stood in that same spot for “more than a century”, are now raining down on both Mitsusaburo and the children, hence making this

connection between the protagonists and the event even stronger.

For Mitsusaburo himself, however, there is even more significance in this. With the storehouse being dismantled, he loses a shield against dealing with the consequences of Takashi's actions. Throughout the novel, Mitsusaburo hid away in the storehouse to separate himself from Takashi and his group. With that place disappearing, Mitsusaburo has no save place to flee to anymore.

However, the dismantling of the storehouse brings about even more significant developments.

“Then, still not convinced of the possible existence of a cellar, I stood beside Paek in the doorway of the storehouse, watching as the young men pried up the floorboards. Rotten with age, the boards soon gave way, and the onlookers frequently had to turn aside to avoid fresh clouds of dust. Then suddenly a black mist of fine, damp dust, like the cloud of ink I'd seen ejected by an octopus in some movie of underwater life, arose from the back of the

storehouse and slowly advanced towards us. We shrank before it, but could hear the young men levering the floorboards wider open still. When the dust finally settled and Paek and I went inside, we found a long gap running continuously from the alcove at the back of the room to the edge of the raised floor in the entrance.”⁴²

As stated before, for Mitsusaburo the discovery of this cellar is very important. While he was convinced that after the 1860 rising had failed their great-grandfather's brother had run away and abandoned his comrades, Takashi had always said, that their ancestor had hidden somewhere and lived in solitude as an atonement. As I said before, as soon as the papers in the cellar are discovered, it dawns upon Mitsusaburo that Takashi must have been right.

“I shook my head in silence, still drunk with my revelation, which was taking increasingly well-defined shape. The central core of it, the realization that after the 1860 rising great- grandfather's brother had not in fact abandoned his fellows to their fate and set off through

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the forest in search of a hew world was already unshakeable. Though he'd been unable to prevent the tragedy of their decapitation, he himself had carried out his own punishment.”⁴³ Lastly, Mitsusaburo decides that he will sit in the recently discovered cellar of the storehouse to rethink what he thought about Takashi , which is Mitsusaburo's last scene in the building. The storehouse has then served its purpose.

Looking at the Nembutsu festival and the storehouse together, it is apparent that these two are the most prominent markers of communal remembrance in the story. However, beyond that both of them are connected individually to respectively Mitsusaburo and Takashi. While the storehouse is connected to Mitsusaburo - it being the property of the Nedokoro family whose head Mitsusaburo now is and it also serving as his save haven - the Nembutsu dance has closer connections to

Takashi as he employed it for his rising. At the end of the story he even becomes a part of the festival by the new mask that was made for it. Interestingly, by the end of the book the storehouse is gone while the Nembutsu festival is revived further indicating that Takashi has made an influence in both Mitsusaburo's life and the life in the valley.

2.2. From passivity to activity

Earlier I discussed Mitsusaburo's attitude at the beginning of the novel as passive and indifferent and we have seen that for a certain length of time Mitsusaburo is not willing to act in any way. As mentioned before, he is hesitant to leave Tokyo and go with Takashi in the first place. As Takashi insists that his brother should go start a new life with him, Mitsusaburo is reluctant and needs his wife's support to decide to go.

“I admit my friend's death took the stuffing out of me. There was the business of the baby as well,” I said in hesitant self-justification.”⁴⁴

Mitsusaburo refers to the events that happened before the beginning of the novel to justify his hesitation to consent to his brother's plans. Even though the situation at home is not pleasant for Mitsusabuo as he says himself, he uses the events of his friend's death and the baby's disability to justify his unwillingness to act (e.g. to go with Takashi). He looks at the past from a purely intellectual point of view, while Takashi's approach is quite a different one. He uses the past to incite actions for his own goals as discussed in the last chapter. However, at the closing part of the novel, Mitsusaburo and his wife do take action towards solving the problems they have been dealing with since the beginning of the novel, i.e. the treatment of their baby, their rocky