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Paper short abstract

Focusing on narrative structure and speech representation, this paper reads Mori Ōgai’s “The Snake” (1911) as a reflection on social hierarchy and discrimination embedded in the ie system and Meiji-era governance.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the representation of discriminatory structures embedded in the national administrative system of Meiji Japan through a close reading of Mori Ōgai’s short story “Hebi” (“The Snake”), published in Chūō Kōron in 1911 and set in rural Nagano in the late Meiji period. Narrated by an unnamed government-employed scholar temporarily lodged in the household of the once-influential Hozumi family, the story depicts the family’s gradual decline following the death of the former matriarch and the subsequent mental collapse of the master’s wife.

Because of its publication date and its references to anarchism and socialism, existing scholarship has tended to read “Hebi” in relation to the High Treason Incident, which involved the arrest of prominent socialists and anarchists accused of plotting to assassinate Emperor Meiji. While this historical context is significant, such readings have often overlooked the story’s sustained engagement with the everyday structures of authority that shaped Meiji society.

I argue that “Hebi” represents social hierarchy and discrimination not only thematically but also at the level of narrative structure, particularly through the differential treatment of characters’ speech. By analyzing the distribution of direct and indirect discourse, the use of dialect, and evaluations of intelligibility, this paper demonstrates how narrative voice functions as a mechanism of authority within both the Hozumi household and the Meiji state. Characters occupying positions of power—such as the narrator and the master of the household —are granted stable, direct speech, while the master’s wife and the servants are discredited.

Special attention is given to the contrast between the former master’s “unintelligible” final words, which are nonetheless accepted as authoritative, and the current master’s wife’s speech, which is consistently dismissed as irrational or meaningless. This asymmetry reveals how legitimacy is conferred not by speech itself but by one’s position within hierarchical structures. Through this analysis, I show that “Hebi” offers a critical reflection on discrimination inherent in the ie system and the broader administrative logic of the Meiji state, exposing how governance operates through narrative control, linguistic standardization, and the regulation of who is allowed to speak—and be heard.