Opinion

Rebel with a cause

By Roger Pulvers

Sept. 21 marks the anniversary of the death of Japan's greatest modern poet. Kenji Miyazawa died in his native town of Hanamaki, Iwate Prefecture, 70 years ago on that day.

Now, Japan is a country where most writers receive ample, often considerably more than ample, recognition in their own time. This was certainly not the case with Miyazawa. He was a wide-ranging eccentric, a recalcitrant and dogmatic Buddhist of the Nichiren sect, and a man pitifully out of step with both his time and his place. It is no wonder that it took decades for his reputation to grow to the monumental proportions that it enjoys today.

Miyazawa may be Japan's most misunderstood author. His lamentations of self-sacrifice and his prayerful concern for others have combined to create an aura about him: St. Miyazawa, the holy man of Iwate.

Many are drawn to him for his "selflessness" and his "goodness." But like more than a few deeply religious people, of whatever faith, Miyazawa was as fearful of his own fate as he was unsettled over that of others. To my mind his driving force was his ego, a force made all the more immediate to him for his fear of death. He desired fervently to be accepted in his community as its chief moralist, as spiritual mentor to the miserable farmers of his region.

Miyazawa's father was the town pawn broker, an autocrat typical of a Meiji family. Rebelling against him, Miyazawa styled himself the didactic do-gooder, countering the old man's hard-nose practicality with a mysticism taken from Tohoku myths and ancient spiritual beliefs.

Let's look first at Miyazawa the Moralist. Virtually all of his stories and many of his poems were written as parables. He defined the straight and narrow in terms of his own religious beliefs, then strove to convince his readers to follow him. In his exquisite short story, "Snow Crossing," he urges people not to tell lies or to be envious of others. In "The Bears of Mt. Nametoko" and what is still perhaps his most popular short story, "The Restaurant of Many Orders," he describes the awful fate hunters suffer at the hands of the hunted. (Miyazawa was a vegetarian and a fierce opponent of violence against animals.)

And what about Miyazawa the Mystic? The two stories "Matasaburo of the Wind" and "The Story of the Zashiki Bokko," both introduce a mysterious and, at times, unseen spirit that, like nature itself, can bring both havoc and good fortune in its wake.

These lyrical visions are wrapped tightly in scientific packets. Miyazawa was a professional agronomist and amateur geologist, who tried to reconcile myth with hard scientific fact. Historically, Christian thought has been obsessed with the perception of a conflict between faith and fact. In many senses it still is, particularly in this era of violent and fanatical faith. But Japanese thought glides far over this conflict. If you want to see the best and most convincing evidence of this, delve into the writing of Kenji Miyazawa. Seventy years after his death he is more vitally relevant to us than he ever was.

Shukan ST: Sept. 26, 2003

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