Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the centennial process where European sonnets have been adapted to Japanese verse, and developed into 'Japanese Sonnets'. From the viewpoints of versification and musicality, all the achievements by Japanese modern poets should be analysed and summarised as a new movement.

Paper long abstract:

Various experiments have been done in modern Japanese poetry. Among them, this paper casts a new light on 'Japanese sonnets', an interesting invention in the history of Japanese literature. During Shintaishi movement in Meiji era, European sonnets were first introduced through translation as one of the fixed forms. Since then sonnets have been adapted and adjusted to Japanese language, and developed into sonnet-styled Japanese poems. The main focus in this paper is put on the process where European sonnets were accepted and adapted by Japanese poets, especially from these two viewpoints: the versification of Japanese language; the musicality of Japanese sonnets.

Ariake Kambara (1875-1952) invented a new experimental rhyme named 'Dokugen-chō', and developed the rhyme into the first sonnet form in Japanese literature. Ariake was followed by his friend Kyūkin Susukida (1877-1945), who arranged the rhyme more effectively both in versification and in vocabulary. Another Shintaishi poet Hōmei Iwano (1873-1920) tried adapting French symbolist sonnets to Japanese poems, both in form and in theme. Their achievements proceeded into those in early Shōwa era, when sonnets remained still fresh and new, as a challenging and charming genre in Japanese poetry. Chūya Nakahara (1907-37) and Michizō Tachihara (1914-39) left fourteen-lined poems with slightly-devised ending rhymes, trying to follow European sonnet convention. In 1942, during World War II, a group of young Japanese poets, including Shūichi Katō (1919-2008), Takehiko Fukunaga (1919-79) and Shinichirō Nakamura (1918-97), started 'Matinee Poetique' movement, influenced by French poets and poetics. Their poetical experiments culminated in an aesthetic completeness of musicality in Japanese sonnets. The movement was short-lived, finished in 1950, but Yoshinao Nakada (1923-2000) appreciated their musicality, and composed four musical settings to the poems (1951) as if in the same way as traditional Italian sonnets were in accordance with musical settings. Our contemporary sonneteer Shuntarō Tanikawa (1931-) and his works should be introduced to examine the future possibility of Japanese sonnets.

In this way, looking through all the attempts and experiments that Japanese modern poets have done for more than a century, this paper concludes a genealogy of the great achievements in Japanese sonnets.

Paper short abstract:

This study aims to analyze Itoh`s Togenuki shin Sugamo Jizo engi (2007) through her distinctive, unconventional style in which she cites, at times explicitly, other`s texts. Herein, I interpret her work as a "transfer genre", both in terms of the narrative and the weaving together of other`s voices.

Paper long abstract:

In Toge-nuki shin Sugamo jizo engi, the narrator "Watashi", who is only partially identifiable with the author, constructs a tale that, moving between the comical and sorrowful, in which her various "difficulties"with regard to elderly care, parenting and the culture gap between her and her husband are conveyed. This modern tale is narrated in the first person, and diffiers from the more conventional Japanese I-novel in borrowing elements from genres ranging from classic literature to contemporary poetry.

This work is characterized by the use of "citation". Itoh cites a wide range of texts and authors- Kojiki, Sekkyo-Bushi, Franz Kafka, Nakahara Chuya, and Ishimure Michiko. Itoh herself explains that she has "borrowed these voices;" thus, her text can be read as a responce to the voices of others. Itoh was conscious of her language belonging to these others and her style is not only an example of intertextuality, but also demonstrates various types of citation, direct reference and allusion. Kawaksmi Hiromi states that, in some cases, there are no obvious distinctions within Itoh`s quotations from other texts(2007), suggesting that these other voices sometimes dissolve in her texts and her approach relies on polysemy.

A detailed examination of her text reveals that the narrator ( "I") becomes a metaphorical representation of various protagonists from the works from which she borrows. Additionally, "I"sometimes directly translates Japanese -to -English word order when communicating with her English-speaking husband, while her mother speaks in Kanto dialect, and her children talk in a Japanese- English creole. Further, she adopts a colloquial style that includes scatological expressions peculiar to Itoh and her sence of body, as well as the use of words to simply represent sound throughout her text. Through this, we become aware of irrational elements within her words.

In the aforementioned examples, the words themselves become fantastic and everchanging. Each time the narrator moves, her words are transformed. Thus, we can characterize her writing as developing a "transfer genre". Further careful analysis is needed to identify the various allusions and references in her words, sentences, and text, which resonate with multiple voices.

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