Discussions of Thanatopsis in Japanese Fictions

The famous Doomsday Theory which predicted that the world would end in 2012 used to cloud people’s minds, triggering the emergence of a series of fictions and movies centered on the theme of Doomsday. Even though the prediction was proved wrong, the word ‘death’ has sparked a wave of heated discussions all around the world. Actually, the topic of ‘ending of life’ which is related to quiet death or apocalyptic catastrophe has already appeared in a large number of fictional texts. It has been one of the hot topics in Japanese fictional texts.

Under the influence of Confucian culture, Japanese people always hold the beliefs of cyclical life, which intrigues the popularity of fictions whose themes centered on death. The apocalytic themes can be found in fictional works which described wars and natural disasters such as earthquakes. After two world wars, Japanese people have suffered traumatic experiences, which boosts the emergence of a large amount of fictional texts about apocalyse. Besides, there were also lots of traditional Japanese fictions whose topics were related to peaceful death. Based on geographic reason and traditional cultural reasons, Japanese people have developed unique views of thanatopsis. In the following part, I would analyze and make a comparison of two Japnese fictions related to the topic of ‘ending of life’ – Norweigian Wood by Haruki Murakami and Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata.

The fiction Norweigian Wood by Haruki described a love story between one man named Watanabe and two women called Naoko and Reiko. Though the plots were shown in a tender way without much ups and downs, the theme of ending was penetrating through the whole fiction text, striking the hearstring of readers. Adopting the way of narrative is the most distinguishable charactristics of the fiction. According to Jameson The story is one of the forms narrative can take (Jameson 300). The fictions presented us with a series of stories related with the theme of death. In the fiction, there were a number people died of commiting suicide. The first one commited suicide was Kizuku who was a friend of Watanabe. He died of unkown reason without any suicide notes left or incentives that could be deducted. After palying a game of Billboards with Watanabe and without saying anything to his girlfriend Naoko, he suddenly comminted suicide. In the book Norweigian Wood, the death of Kizuku was as follows:

That night he died in his own garage. He placed the rubber hose in the escape-pipe and started the engine. It was hard to guese how long he died. When his parents came back and opened the door of garage, they found his dead body (Hakuri 6).

From the depiction of the author, it seems that Kizuki died in a very peaceful way without any struggling and pain. Though the author did not write a lot about Kizuki’s death , his ‘ending of life’ had clouded every one’s mind in the book. The author wanted to use the peaceful death of Kizuki to illustrate the common spirit of unrest and insecurity of Japanese youths in the 1960s. In the 1960s, Japanese economy had galloped and impresses the world. On the other hand, Japanese people lost in their bearings, for they did not know what exactly they wanted to pursue. The fortune was swelling and people could get information much easily. However, the communication between people had reduced, which brought the mental crisis. People felt lonely and incapable of dealing with social stress. Hence when Kizuki moved forward, he lost the goal of life because everything went on so smoothly for him. Like many Japanese who chose the way of escaping, he chose to avoid the future confusion by death. What’s more, there was one important reason why he chose to commit suicide – he lost the desire for sex. Freud used to describe the desire of sex as libido with which everyone was equipped. After Kizuki died, his girlfriend Naoko said that they could never make love in their relationships.It could be concluded that losing desire for sex used to make Kizuki shameful and he felt sorry for his girl friend Naoko, which were the other reasons why he chose to kill himself.

After the death of Kizuki, the other protagonist of the book Naoko later also commited suicide soon. According to the descriptions of the author, Naoko also died in a peaceful way. Haruki said:

She has decided everything. On that day she had good spirits and smiles a lot. Once she decided, she organized everything and burned them, including diaries and mails.(Hakuri 280)

Naoko died when she was only 21 years old. Before her, all of her uncle, her sister and her boyfriend Kizuki had chose the same way to end their lives, which served as the catalytic to her death. Besides, she had the sexual relationship with the hero Watanabe, which brought the sense of guilty to her because she thought that she was disloyal to Kizuki who she never could had sex with. To Naoko, the drive of sex was shameful. According to Freud, sexual drives are biologicailly instrinct, which demonstrates why Naoko could not resist having the ‘guilty’ relationship with Watanabe. Thus her personality was split and she tried to find her way through the labyrinth of guilt through which she was wandering. Ending life in some sense was a relief to her.

Interestingly, except Nakoki’s uncle who died of cancer, all of the other protagonists died of self-destruction. Haruki’s obessession with using death as the theme demonsntrated Japanese traditional thanatopis.Japanese had special feelings towards death and consider death as asthetics. In a sense, the theme of death refelcted Japanese traditional thoughts towards death.In addition, Haruki’s thoughts about death reflected the befuddlement of Japanese lost generation in 1960s.

Similarly, the other fiction Thouands Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata also related ‘ending of life’ with aesthetics. Thousands Cranes mainly talked about the story between one man and four women. In Thousands Cranes, death was like the falling of petals, bringing the sense of beauty. Like Hakuri, Yasunari regarded death as beauty. On the other hand, Yasunari thought that the concept ‘ending of life’ was pure, which was in contrast with Hakuri who connected death with sexual desire. In the fiction Thousands Cranes, Yasunari described ending as somehing desirable. For example, the end of Mrs Ohta was as follows:

Your mother has passed away. Madam Killed herself. (Yasunari 346)

From above, it could be detected that there was not much direct descriptions about Mrs Ohta’s death. However, the side description about the ‘ending’was much more delicate:

Kiku reminded of what Fumiko said: death was under the feet. His feet got numb and took out the handkerchief to wipe his pale face. He said to himself: She would not go to die.( Ysunari 351)

The brief description of Mrs Ohta’s death formed a sharp contrast with the sentimental and moral tortune she suffered when she was alive. Mrs Ohta chose to die when she could not get along with her lover. Thus it could be seen that in the eyes of Yasunari, death is for the service of life. If one could not get freedom of life, death would be a relief.

Compred to Norweigian wood by Hakuri, Yasunari utilized more of the depiction of scenaries to reflect the asthetics of death. For example, the scenearies indicating Mrs Ohta’s death was as follows:

The sunset he saw on his way home came clear to Kiru. It seemed that the red sunset

came from forest. The star whose edge seemed to be soaked with water was shining

in the cloud. (Yasunari 355)

The delicate portrayal of views above rendered the quietness and beauty of the ending of life.

Compared to Norweigian Wood in which ‘end’reflected the social reality in 1960s, the ending in Thousands Cranes was more related with traditional aesthetics and Japanese traditional death philosophy: life was accompanied by death all the time. In other words, in order to understand the meaning of life, one also has to understand the meaning of death. In the fiction, the Buddist philosophy of cyclinical life was shown. The ending of life was mysterious and was deemed as the ultimate arts in Yasunari’s eyes. Freud used to demonstrated that in the subconsciouness of human beings, there were two impulsions – one is the tendency of life and the other one is the tendency of death. When one tendeny took the upper wind, the psychogical move would follow that tendency. In the book, Mrs Ohta was always struggling between death and life. At the end, the desire for ending the life predominated. Besides, like other Japanese, Mrs Ohta thought that her death was doomed because God had arranged everything for her such as her miserable love. In the perspectives of Mrs Ohta, it was hard to escape from the arrangements of God. This was the main reason why she could end her life in such a peaceful way.

The reason why Yasunari was so obessed with the theme of death had a strong relationship with Yasunari’s personal experiences. He had lost several most important family members such as parents during his childhood, which exerted great laverage on him. Besides, Yasunari had experienced two world wars during which he had witnessed thousands of Japanese died, which further influenced the thanatopsis of Hasunari. That was why the theme of death always adopted in his literature works.

In short, death has become the eternal topic in Japanese fictions. Both of Norweigian Wood and Thousand Cranes related death with aesthetics. In the Norweigian Wood, the death reflected the confusion of Japanese lost generation in 1960s. However, compared to Norweigian Wood, ‘end of life’was more related to traditional Japanese Buddish view of death in Thousand Cranes. Hence, it can be seen that the reflections of ‘ending’ in two fictions were equipped with different meanings.