Message from the President to Everyone (September 28, 2020) Reading a book by Hideo Levy, former faculty member of Hosei University

→ English (by Google Translation)

Hideo Levy. Until his retirement this year, in August 2020, he was a professor in the Faculty of Intercultural Communication at Hosei University. But more than that, he is a well-known author who is introduced as "the first Japanese-language writer from the West. The reason why "as a native of the West" is added is that there are many writers of novels and criticism in Japanese who are from Korea or its second or third generation, or from China or Taiwan or its second or third generation.

I urge you all to read the works of Hideo Levy. Because each of his works will probably remind each of you of your own childhood, or make you want to remember it, or bring up the house you lived in as a child in your dreams on the day you read it. I feel as if this is the case. In fact, the memories of places, people, and landscapes that we perceived with all of our senses when we were young have a great influence on our later life. Memories can be "understood" and "interpreted" from a broader perspective by the intellect. And by verbalizing them, they become rich "experiences" that nurture a person. If one can remember and verbalize, as Hero Levy did, the pain, sadness, anxiety, and dread of existence, it will nourish one's words and leave an imprint in one's mind of the person who lived in that time period. Any person, even if he or she has not had any significant experiences, can bring his or her presence to the hearts of others. This becomes a "tame" way to truly understand diverse ways of life that we have never had the opportunity to encounter before. The novels of Liebherr Hideo make this very clear.

He is a writer who has won many literary awards. The Ten Thousand Leaves : A Translation of the Man Yoshi, Japan's Premier Anthology of Classical Poetry (Princeton Library of Asian He won the 1982 National Book Award for his translation of Manyoshu into English, and the 1992 Noma Literary Newcomer Award for his translation of Hoshijoki no Kikoinai Juroku (The Room Where the Stars and Stripes Do Not Hear) from Kodansha Ltd. He won the 2005 Obutsu Jiro Prize for his work "Chidan ni kudakudate" (Kodansha). Kari no mizu" (Kodansha) won the 2009 Sei Ito Literary Award. And he won the Yomiuri Literary Award in 2017 for "Mokoban-go" (Shueisha). So, then, where should I start reading? I recommend reading "Hoshijoki no Hearing Room" first. I recommend reading "The Room Where the Stars and Stripes Cannot Be Heard" first, because it describes the author's experiences and his days when he was close to your age. Next would be "Model Township". Just by reading these two works, you will repeatedly experience a strange and intense sensation as if you have entered someone else's childhood dream. Eventually, you will feel as if the experience were your own. Rarely does a novel cause such a stirring of the heart.

My stirring was like this. The Hoshijoki no Hearing No Room" begins in Yokohama, Japan, in 1967. The protagonist is 17 years old, the same age as the author, and has the same experiences as the author. In other words, even though Lieby Hideo's novel is written in the third person, it is almost a personal novel. And I myself was 15 years old at the time. I was born and raised in Yokohama, so I was familiar with the area from Sakuragicho to the harbor area from elementary school. When the main character walked, I felt as if I were walking there myself. There were still many U.S. soldiers in Yokohama, dockworkers' houses around the port, and homeless people. It was as if I could see it right in front of my eyes. However, in the process of the protagonist taking the Toyoko Line from Sakuragi-cho to "Shibuya," the perspective that I had taken over from the protagonist was reversed. This is because he is always "seen" by the Japanese. I am Japanese and he is an American in a foreign country. In Hideo Levy's novel, we are reminded of what it was like to be an American boy in Japan at that time, and what it was like to live in solitude under the gaze of the Japanese, a complex mixture of admiration, bewilderment, curiosity, repulsion, and a sense of inferiority. Writing in Japanese and walking through familiar territory, the reader is led to believe that they share a position and feelings, but is confronted with the fact that this is an illusion.

Furthermore, a memory of his childhood comes back to him on the train. As the author writes, "A golden-haired child in Asia grows up under the eyes of many people," we learn that the protagonist has moved from Hong Kong, Phnom Penh, Taipei, Washington, and Japan as a toddler, as his diplomat father was transferred from one place to another. In particular, the protagonist repeatedly recounts the time when he lived with his father, mother, and disabled brother in Taipei, in a house surrounded by "a thick fence with pieces of colored glass stuck through the top to keep out thieves," which he would write about in his later works. He is constantly drawn back to it, searching for it and trying to live in a space close to it. Note the title of this novel. You can understand if it is the "invisible" room of the Stars and Stripes, but it is the "inaudible" room. He seeks a room where he cannot hear the sound of the Stars and Stripes flapping in the wind, which is right outside his room at the American Consulate in Yokohama, where he is temporarily staying. It was the house in Taipei where his family lived together.

At the consulate in Yokohama are his father, his Chinese stepmother, and his half-brother. We learn that his parents divorced in Taipei and that his mother returned to the U.S. alone with him and his brother. We also learn that his current location in Yokohama is in accordance with his family court-ordered interview rights, and that his father is a Chinese scholar who is not pleased with his son's enthusiasm for the Japanese language. Under these circumstances, the protagonist finally runs away from home, finds a part-time job, and goes to live with a Japanese friend. In the wooden apartment of his friend, he felt that it was too different from the "Japan" described in the book. There was a Japan he had never known. What he sees and hears, the Japanese he understands and does not understand, the gaze and attitude of people, are described in detail in Hideo Levy's novel. He must have lived his life with such a strong awareness. It is as if he is telling us that this is what it means to be a foreigner.

At the degree conferment ceremony in September 2017, I mentioned the Taiwan-born novelist Wen Mataju, a graduate of our Faculty of Intercultural Communication, whose book "Children in the Middle" (Shueisha) was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize that year. Immediately prior to that, I had a conversation with him on our university's website, "HOSEI ONLINE. Wen Mataju was a student of Lee Vi Hideo. Children in the Middle" is a novel about young people with multiple parents and ancestors from Taiwan, Japan, and China, people living in the "middle" of various ethnic groups and struggling with their own identities over language. The "middle" position is difficult for Japanese people who have grown up in Japan since childhood to understand, but by writing about how they feel and see in their own words, while using the Japanese language as a means, we are able to realize that such a position exists.

At the degree conferment ceremony, I also mentioned that I was reminded of a Hungarian writer named Agota Kristof while talking with Wen Mataju. Agota Kristof was a person who escaped to Switzerland during the Hungarian uprising, learned French while working in a factory in Switzerland, and wrote in French. Kristof constantly asked himself, "Who am I?" over French, which was not his native language. I became interested in those in the middle because one of my graduate students was bilingual in English and Japanese, a Japanese citizen and an American citizen, but considered himself an Okinawan. Okinawans are people who immigrated from Okinawa to Hawaii before the war. Just as Okinawa is discriminated against in Japan, Okinawans are discriminated against by the Japanese in Hawaii, but have kept their own industry and culture. She earned a doctorate in Okinawan studies and is now a university teacher.

Let's return to Leibi Hero. Wen Mataju accompanied Leibi Hideo to Taiwan, and the process was made into a documentary film and a book. That is "Model Township. Mofanxiang is a Japanese house built by the Japanese occupiers of Taiwan. Hideo Levy lived with his parents and younger brother in that Japanese house, and his room was a tatami room. In later years, in search of a similar space, he went deep into China and lived in old wooden apartments that were few and far between in Japan. In his works, his life in Taipei's Model Township appears again and again, as if it were a dream. Each time, my heart is stirred because I recall my own life in a tenement house in downtown Yokohama in the same way over and over again. I feel as if my memories are blending together. Why do I remember? I am not sure if it is the same as Liebherr's hero, but the reason why I recall it repeatedly is because I lost something important along with that space in my case. I sometimes wonder if this is connected to the fact that I have come to specialize in Edo literature.

Hideo Levy, by the way, was born to parents with no connection to Japan or Japanese people. Despite this, the name "HIDEO" is his real name. His father gave it to him. I don't know why his father, who as a Chinese scholar had a low opinion of Japan, gave his son a Japanese name. And as you can see from what you have read so far, the root of Hideo Leibi's learning Japanese literature, becoming a translator, and becoming a writer of novels in Japanese was clearly his happy life in a Japanese house in a model township. It is truly a wonder what kind of life a young mind can open up to a person.

September 28, 2020
TANAKA Yuko, President, Hosei University