Voices of the Past

The Status of Language in

Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse

NAOKI SAKAI

Cornell University Press

Ithaca and London
This book has been published with the aid of a grant from In memory of my father,
the Hull Memorial Publication Fund of Cornell University.
Haruyoshi Sakai
Copyright © 1991 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or
parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address
Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 1992 by Cornell University Press.

International Standard Book Number 0-8014-2580-8

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 91-55053
Printed in the United States of America
Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information
appears on the last page of the book.

§ The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements

of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
 Contents

Preface xi

Introduction: Theoretical Preliminaries

Other than Language 1
Discursive Space and Textual Materiality 2
Opening the Closure of "Us" through Defamiliarization 1J
Three Guiding Concerns 14
Hybridity of Language 18
The Logic of Self-Decentering 19

. PART I
Silence at the Center: Ito Jinsai and the Problems of Intertextuality 21
1. Change in the Mode of Discursive Formation 23
A Discursive Space and Textuality 23
Intertextuality 26
A Departure 30
The Notions of Sincerity and Hypocrisy 32
The Status of Thinghood 36
The Invisibility of One's Body 43

2. Ito Jinsai: The Text as the Human Body and the Human Body
as the Text 54
A Critique of Discursivity 54
Transcendentalism and "Nearness" 56
The Emergence of Speech in Discourse 60

vii
 Contents Contents ix
viii

Enunciation .and the Heterogeneous 62

6. Defamiliarization and Parody 177
Subjectivity and Persons 69 Genres. Taxonomy 177
Nondisjunctive Function and Disjunctive Function 76 Grapheme and Equivocity 178
The Problem of Change 81 Haikai-ka or the Double Operation 181
, Defamiliarization and Parody 183
Plural Voices 186
3. Textuality and Sociality: The Question of Praxis, Exteriority, and the Split
Perspective, or Abschattung 191
in Enunciation 89 Textual Materiality 197
Feeling and Textuality 89 The Enunci~tion and the Body 200
The Ethicality of Social Action 95 Perception and the Splitting of the Ego 201
The Inscriptional Nature of Virtue 98
Institutions and Exteriority 102
Ai and the Way 108 PART III
Language, Body, and the Immediate: Phoneticism and the Ideology
of the Identical 209
PART II 7. The Problem of Translation 211
Frame Up: The Surplus of Signification and Tokugawa Literature 113
The Outside of a Language 211
115 The Problematic of Wakun 214
4. The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts
The Interior and the Exterior 217
Literary Discourse and the New Formation 115
Interdependence of Verbal and Nonverbal in the Enunciation 222
Seeing and Reading 116 The Primacy of Speech 223
Framing and Its Effect 118 The Linearity of Speech and Wakun 225
Katari Narrative 119 Experiential Knowledge and Speculative Knowledge 231
The Absence of Historicity 121 Passivity and Activity, Reading and Writing 237
Representing Text and Represented Text 127
Relevance and Irrelevance of the Text in a Situation 130
8. Phoneticism and History 240
Corporeal Act and Perfonnative Situation 134
Representation as Distance and Delay 240
.The Status of the Classics 243
140 The Human Body and the Interior 246
5. Supplement
The Absence of Obsessive Concern for the Enunciation 140 Diacritical Identification of the Japanese Language 250
Haikai Poetry and the Openness of the Text 142 The lmagenary Relation to the Text: Phoneticism and the Historicity
of a Text 251
Playscripts with Illustrations 143
Anteriority of Voice 255
Stratification of the Verbal Continuum 144
Denial of Transcendent Value 258
Separation of Voice and Body 148
Historical Time as Writing 261
Direct or Indirect Speech 150
Poetic versus Theoretical 263
Copresence of Other Texts 153
Heterogeneity of a Language 266
Life and Death 163
Syntax: Shi and Ji 267
The Act of Reading 166
A Text and Its Performative Situation 274
Direct or Indirect Actions 169
Boxing, Framing, and Ideologies 171 Feeling and Temporarity 274
Representational Type and Gestalt Type 172 Sincerity and Silence 277
x Contents
9. The Politics of Choreography
Ideological Constitution of Social Reality
The Logic of Integration 285
Two Fonns of Memory, Two Senses of History
The Loom That Weaves the Subjects
Song as a Locus of Contradiction
Writing of the Body 305
The Politics of Choreography 308
The Stillbirth of Japanese 311
Death as the Possibility of Language
Exteriority 318
Conclusion
National Language and Subjectivity
Propriety in Language 326
Universalism and Particularism 333
Resurrection/Restoration of Japanese
Appendix. Japanese and Chinese Tenns
Index
280
280
293
294
299
Preface
317
320
320
This book presents a history-one of many possible histories-of the intellectual
./1
and literary discourses of eighteenth-century Japan am concerned both with the
335 historicity of Japanese discourses of the eighteenth century and with issues con-
cerning my relationship to that past.r 'Any writing of history occurs in the history
337 of the present, of which the historian can never be exh~ustively conscious and
which can be problematized only through his or her invention of the past. More
341 specifically, the writing of history is constrained as well as made possible by the
existing arrangement of this present, which can never be thematized as a fully
constituted object, and which necessarily includes the institutions of academic
discipline and knowledge.
My inquiry into the historicity of Japan's past, therefore, cannot evade the
problems about the historicity of the disciplinary framework within which the
validity of the questions this book raises is to be authorized, disputed, or rejected.
What I have in mind in particular is the idea of Japan, for my book can be classified
as belonging to the discipline of what is called Japan Studies in the United States,
Britain, and other so-called Western societies and Kokushi or the national history
in Japan. While the unity of Japan constitutes and legitimates the unity of tne
discipline "Japan Studies" in the United States, it serves in Japan to mark the
primary division of academic knowledge about the familiar or domestic as against
the foreign: national history, Kokushi, as distinct from. world history~ national
literature, Kokubungaku, as opposed to foreign literatures; national ethnology,
Minzokugaku. as different from anthropology, and so on. Because the disciplinary
framework is set up in this way, the historian of this field is inevitably lured into
posing the sorts of questions regulated by this framework and is made to de~ire to
know according to its protocols. Although I problematize the institutional reality
of the discipline in which the historian or the Japanologist in general works, I also
want to draw attention to the way the discipline is I£Qll§tru9J~9_ and reproduced.
Of course, such a framework is not simply illusionary and the possibiii-ty of
xi
xii Preface
unconstrained. study outside it is rather a fantasy. My book is enabled ~y this
institutional reality, which extends far beyond the university, and I cannot Ignore
my subjection to it. Nevertheless, neither can I forg~t t?at t~e object ~f my
research-what I am lured into. desiring to know-Is hlstoncally contIngent
upon an institutional reality that is constantly changing. Here ~ refer n~t ~e~ely
to changes in the social and economic circumstances surroundIng the dlsclphne.
Rather I mean the historicity of our desire to know, which typically takes the
fonn ~fsuch· questions as "What is the Japanese view of social relations?"
"What is the enduring and essential character of Japanese culture?" "What is the
essence of Japanese religions?"
~ Anyone desiring to be recognized as an expert on the putative object of the
field usually believes she or he is expected to pose those questions. ~
to note that, while the presence of such desire is no doubt an effect of the
discipline, such questions and the framing of desire in them have also served to
reproduce the social reality outside the academi~ cOlltex~. And I am concerned
with a history in which the particular fonn of the desue to know that those
questions induced effectively instituted a certain social reality, tha~ which is
imaginary (~ut not illusionary) in nature. I have therefor~ read se!;~tIvelY"some
Confucian, National Studies, and what are today claSSIfied as hterary (the
historicity of the tenn "literature" should indeed be noted) discourses produced
between the late seventeenth century and the early nineteenth century, with a
view to discerning a history in which Japan, designated by a variety of names,
was made to represent not merely a polity, a ruled population, or a geographic
territory but an essentialized community of shared habits, a singular language,
,and an organically systematized culture. I present' a history that should not be
confused with the history of Japane~e societY'i\a.hist~ryi~ which the image. of
such a community as a whole was Invented and pOSIted In the past and whIch
simultaneously puts into question the very concept of society as a systematic
unity. Thus I historicize the particular desire embedded in those questions th~t
motivate as well as legitimate the academic disciplines concerning Japan, m
order to show how the social reality designate<;l by ~'Japan" and its adjectival
form "Japanese" was brought into existence in the eighteenth century. And, by
historicizing thus, I engage myself in the present historically, I participate. in the
changing of the existing reality of the disciplines in which I work. By readIng the
texts of the past, I engage in the general text through the originary repetition of
the present.
Precisely because I discuss the historical formation of the object of knowledge
which serves to distinguish the experts from the nonexperts and the native from
the non-native, I must address my book to those who are unfamiliar with the
field. Of course, it is not for the sake of enlightening the nonexperts about
Japanese history that I must do so. The fact that this book is addressed to the~ is
essential to the entire project of its writing. I have had to argue, however, agaInst
the background of the accumulated knowledge of the field. For those readers
Preface xiii
who are not familiar with the histories of China and Japan, I include in the
footnotes conventional accounts of the teqns and names basic to the study of East
Asia. Translations into English from other languages are mine unless otherwise
indicated.
In writing this book I have become indebted to many people. The book is the
result, first, of possibilities opened to me by my teachers at the University of
Chicago. Perhaps because of my personal circumstances, I feel more grateful to
them than many students might to their teachers. Tetsuo Najita initially encour-
aged me to coine to the United States to start the academic career I had aspired
to, but had never dreamt would be realized. Through his example and his en-
cyclopedic knowledge of Japanese history, he solicited me to think hard and
daringly throughout my graduate years at Chicago and afterward. Harry Harootu-
nian continually provided me with chances to discuss the issues on my mind.
Thanks to his patience with my arrogance and his acceptance of the theoretical
implications of my work, I had valuable chances to articulate and reflect upon
my ideas. In him I found an amazing teacher, who made me realize that I could
go further than I thought I could and who teaches, again through his own
example, that without critical sensitivity to injustices, intellectual life would be
nothing but self-indulgence. Masao Miyoshi often inspires me to think afresh and
be suspicious of conventional views, and his own dynamic synthesis of political
and intellectual commitments demonstrates practical channels for connecting
academic matters to the actual problems of people treated unjustly. It is my hope
that this book is such a form of practical involvement in ethico-political issues,
however minor its effects may be when compared to those of his work. I also
thank William Sibley, who introduced me to Tokugawa literature and helped to
improve my English.
William Haver read my manuscript thoroughly and made very helpful sug-
gestions about it. I learned a lot from his constructive and rigorous critiques.
Rene Arcilla helped me with my writing and corrected many obscure ex-
pressions; I also thank him for his kind and quite ironical remarks, which often
persuaded me to rethink and modify my opinions. Paul Anderer and Nonnan
Bryson read the manuscript and encouraged me toward publication. Others who
kindly read and commented on early versions were the late Maeda Ai, Mat-
sunaga Sumio, Karatani Kojin, Kato Norihiro, and Kamei Hideo, from whose
comments I learned much. J. Voetor Koschmann gave me important insights and
encouragement. Brett deBary, who taught me a lot about what intellectual integ-
rity means, and Koyasu Nobukuni carefully read later drafts and gave me valu-
able suggestions. I would like t6 express my gratitude to all those friends and
colleagues.
The Humanities Division and the Center for Far Eastern Studies at the Univer-
sity of Chicago, and the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation provided me with
financial assistance. During my tenure of those fellowships the substantial part of
xiv Preface

this book was written, and I am grateful to those institutions, without whose help
the book would not exist. Judith Bailey copyedited the manuscript for Cornell
University Press, and made useful suggestions for improving it. I received per-
mission to reproduce Murillo's "Self-Portrait" from the National Gallery in
London, Magritte's "Deux Mysteres" from the Artists' Rights Society in New
York, and liro Takamatsu's "These Three Words" from the artist himself, to
whom I express my thanks. Soroku Yamamoto of the Tokyo Gallery arranged the
photography of Takamatsu's work.
Finally I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to Gail, who has not only Voices of the Past
encouraged and supported my decision to lead an academic career since 1979 but
has also proofread the manuscript at each stage and has so often suggested
different and certainly better ways for me to say things. Without her, I would not
even have wished to write this book, and, needless to say, I could never have
undertaken such a project. Under her care, the book has grown along with Ham
and Andrew, who are slightly younger than it is.
NAOKI SAKAI
Ithaca. New York
 NTRODUCTION

Theoretical Preliminaries

Other than Language

Let me begin with an observation that, I believe, is concerned with the essential
aspect of sociality.
The language in which I speak: and write does not belong to me. What I have
actually written is separated and distanced from what I meant to say, to such an
extent that my words appear to elude my control incessantly. The "I" discernible
in what I have actually written seefUs indifferent to the "I" who was producing
the discourse just a moment ago. /Thus~ as far as I am concerned, "my" state-
ments, those ascribed to me, only reveal and dramatize the absence of "I" in
what I have written. For there is an irredeemable distance between the "I" who
writes and "myselr~ expressed and inscribed in language.
What is the nature of this incomprehensible distance, of the delay that deprives
me of ownership and sovereignty over those words that supposedly belong to
me? Is it possible to imagine a language in which this rupture, distance, and
delay are unheard of, in which the "I" who writes is always and already identical
to the registered "I"? If such a language were indeed possible, to whom would it
belong, and who would belong to it? And if it is possible to imagine such a
language, what is the regime in which such imagination is possible? ·
It goes without saying that these questions cannot be answered adequately"
because they provoke a further inquietude with respect to the terms they consist! .
of. To begin with, What, if that is the right question, is the "I"? What is meant by:
"belonging to a language" or by "language's belonging to someone"? And
finally, the ultimate question to which all these seem to point, What is language?
Whenever language is questioned in such a fundamental way, the attempt to
reply on its behalf can never be contained by any objectively defined idea of
language, such as that of positivism. For we could not even begin to analyze such
an idea without first defining the terms of the analysis and assessing their claim
2 Introduction
to meet the demand for a rigorous, coherent language. Furthennore, the question
What is language? inevitably gives rise to its counterpart: What is nonlanguage?
What is other than language? It is assumed that any answer to such a question
must at least know how language distinguishes itself from nonlanguage, if not
what either is.
Discursive Space and Textual Materiality
Precisely this problem is dramatized by the concept of "text." Insofar as a text
is equated with writing in the conventional sense, it may appear clear and free
from ambiguity. But when the notion of writing is more rigorously analyzed, this
equation in fact reveals the inscriptural nature of textuality: a text is always
inscribed in some material body. Here, the notion of writing is indeed tricky,
because it designates, on the one hand, a fonn of presentation whose traits are
diacritically discerned as opposed to those of speech, painting, or gesture and, on
the other hand, the inscriptural nature of the text in general, within which the
possibilities for this distinction have already been codified. Hence, a text is, as it
were, the possible sum of, first, the verbal significafJon evoked by a certain
pattern of signs inscribed in some material and, second, the coded body includ-
ing both signification and material. Just as with the Saussurian concept of the
sign, the text is necessarily composed of its material aspect and its meaning,
which is dependent upon a material basis, yet is not material in itself. From a
particular perspective, we can always distinguish in the text what is significative
from what remains dormant, heterogeneous, accidental, and exterior with regard
to meaning. In a text such as this sheet of white paper covered with black letters,
we differentiate between those variables that could affect meaning, for example,
a change in the shape of a letter, from "on" to "of," and those that stay, within a
marked range of variation, indifferent to meaning, such as a change in paper
color from white to yellow. In this example, the supposed identity of a text will
be altered if its significative traits are changed but will not be affected if changes
are confined to the textual materiality. Or let me put it differently: the sig-
nificative aspect of the text is what is recognized as remaining identical through
and independent of various changes in textual materiality. This differentiation is
essential in our conception of a text, for rather than define a text in terms of
ideational meaning, I shall refer to it as an inherently ambivalent materiality, a
dual negativity. For this reason, it would be slightly misleading to say a text is a
composite of meaning and material. The differentiation itself is unstable unless
institutionally determined. If it were utterly stabilized, one would never be aware
of textual materiality because this materiality is precisely what is excluded from
the consciousness adherent to the institutional arrangement, which I also call
discursive space. But it is always possible that a text could allow for different
modes of discerning articulation. That is to say, when the mode of differentiation
Theoretical Preliminaries 3
between significative factors and textual materiality changes, the same text may
well be susceptible to an entirely different understanding.
Certainly, a text cannot be equated with the conventional notion of writing.
Speech, for instance, is also a text insofar as it overtly constitutes signification
and covertly posits textual materiality as the textual surplus of signification.
Time and time again, we must remind ourselves that even speech cannot be
reduced to its pure meaning. It too has the same ambivalent differentiation.
While in one sense speech is not writing, in another it is, and the two senses
remain problematic, continually transgressing each other's circumference.
In other words, a text is simultaneously verbal and nonverbal. In this connec-
tion, the term ·'textual materiality" should be elucidated to make certain that the
unstable nature of this differentiation be kept in mind. Textual materiality desig-
nates the sum of what participates in a text but does not overtly contribute to the
constitution of its meaning. Basically it is a negative tenn that points out the
surplus nature of textuality; this term presumes that a text cannot be arrested at its
signification or reduced to what it says overtly. 1
Moreover, certain types of texts, such as gesture, music, and visual artifacts,
do not constitute "firsthand" signification. Yet insofar as we are able to talk
about them, they can be read, and therefore grasped as significative. In this
respect, they are texts or components of texts that can be verbalized even if not in
a one-to-one correspondence. Conversely, in many instances the nonverbal
seems to accompany the verbal. In singing and music, for example, gesture and a
verbal act coexist and are the components that form another text: song. In song, a
variety of signifying practices are intertextually integrated into a whole that
expresses much more than the verbal can alone.
Indeed, my primary focus is on discourse, on the complex of institutionalized
verbal and other social statements. But even within this scope, I am forced to
deal with the nonverbal and the nonlinguistic aspect of textuality. The question
What is language? demands that I further explore the complicated and multifaced
boundary between verbal and nonverbal, linguistic and nonlinguistic, sig-
nificative and material.
The idea that text harbors these asymmetrical couples may amount to the
recognition that a text is not only intrinsically multilayered but also related to its
"outside," or more specifically, to its intrinsic heterogeneity which cannot be
internalized in a given discursive space, in several different ways. As I will point
out later in reference to many sources in both Europe and classical China, the
word "text" and its etymological derivatives, "textile," "texture," and so on,
illuminate this heterogeneity most clearly. A text is not a solid entity but a
network of many threads. As the level of meaning and consequently the area of
lparticularly in regard to the problem of history and textual materiality, see Jacques Derrida,
Introduction to Edmund HusserI's Origin of Geometry, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., and David B.
Allison (Boulder, Colo.: Great Eastern, 1978).
4 Introduction
textual materiality vary and as the "intertextual" regime2 in which a text is
located changes, the function assigned to a text and its supposed identity are
redefined accordingly. Yet, what is conversely implied in this comprehension is
that, relative to a given historical moment and region, the regime of speaking,
writing, reading, acting, and perceiving, 3 in which certain significative traits are
picked up and captured while textual materiality is excluded, is granted the kind
of conventional stability that allows for continual reproduction of itself. At a
particular moment, the regime, which actually varies all the time, is thought of as
natural and universal-universal in the sense of being applicable anywhere and
at any time-and it fonns part of "common sense." This general acceptance,
however, does not secure the regime against challenges from within and outside
the group of people for whom this common sense is natural; it is constantly
problematized, just as common sense is frequently defamiliarized. Necessarily
involved here is the problem of power in the sense that to sustain the unques-
tioned status of "common sense" is to insist on the legitimacy of excluding the
other possible regimes, thereby, in the long run, refusing to recognize that the
world could be otherwise.
What is assumed by the term "discursive space'.!.. is this conventional stability,
because of which the mechanism of ascribing meaning to things in the world is
accepted and in turn detennines the possible forms of textual production. Of
course, the space at issue is neither physical nor geographical but a field of
coexistence for various conditions of textual production. It is a space defined by
shared prejudices and implicit expectations, which conceal and repress the pos-
sible shifts and changes from one regime to another; what Jean-Fran«;ois Lyotard
21 use the term "regime" in a specific sense: a regime consists of a set of protocols and rules
according to which utterances and actions are directly meaningful. Like Wittgenstein's language
game, it defines the sphere of life in which an utterance or action must inhere to be meaningful. Yet,
one can never define a regime in terms of a set of rules because it always requires another regime; it
can be known only in terms of its incommensurability with other regimes. It should never be
confused with either discursive space or language, just as Wittgenstein's language game cannot be
equated to a langue. See Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. George
Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).
3For the regimes of painting and perceiving, see Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).
4According to Lyotard, "The differend is the unstable state and instant of language wherein
something that must be able to put into phrases cannot be yet. This state includes silence, which is a
negative phrase, but it also calls upon phrases that are possible in principle. What is ordinarily called
a feeling signals this state: 'one cannot find words,' etc. One must search hard to find new rules for
the forming and linking [enchainement] of phrases that are able to express the differend exposed by
the feeling, unless one wants this differend to be choked right way in a litigation and for the alarm
sounded by the feeling to have been useless" ("La quantite du silence," Atea 4 [February 1983]: 58).
In The Differend, Lyotard says: "The plaintiff lodges his or her complaint before the tribunal, the
accused.argues in such a way as to show the inanity of the accusation. Litigation takes place. I would
like to call a differend [differend] the case where the plaintiff is divested of the means to argue and
becomes for that reason a victim. If the addressor, the addressee, and the sense of the testimony are
neutralized, everything takes place as if there were no damages. A case of differend between two
parties takes place when the 'regulation' of the conflict that opposes them is done in the idiom of one
of the parties while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom" (p. 9), and "To give
Theoretical Preliminaries 5
called "the differend," 4 the possibility of actions disclosing the otherness of the
Other, is banned. And because these pr~udices and expectations are not de-
familiarized or thematically criticized, the production of texts in this space re-
mains controlled and dominated by presupposed conditions. In this respect, the
discursive space is also a field of power, but it lacks a controlling subject. (Or
might argue that the presence of that discursive sp1.ce is the transcendental
subject controlling the production of discourse.) To the extent to which those who
control a given social hierarchy and those who are controlled submit themselves
to the discursive space at a predeconstructive and precritical level, both are
controlled and dominated, and the meaning and moral of this domination and
submission are thereby ensured in this space. In this respect, both master and
_slave are constituted and are therefore two related subject-effects determined in
their roles by the the rules of the discursive space that they continue to hold
familiar. Hence, it is well known that even if the slave usurped the status of the
master, he would simply discard the role of victim and put on that of victimizer;
the whole business of victimization itself will continue intact unless the discur-
sive space in which such a power relation is articulated can be changed.
In this book, I discuss one of the discursive formations that I believe domi-
nated textual production during the eighteenth century in Tokugawa Japan, and I
describe the regimes of reading, writing, acting, perceiving, and so on which are
accommodated within it. I also present various arguments that inaugurated,
legitimated, or disrupted the discursive formation. Here, the "eighteenth cen-
turyn will be used symbolically, not to match any definite chronological dates but
to allude to the locus of a discursive space to which some documents and artifacts
from the late seventeenth century until the early nineteenth century can be re-
garded as belonging. In this discursive space, language was an object of exten-
sive and heated discussion, and the s~arch for "transparent" language was
tirelessly pursued. In describing this space and how the image of language was
articulated there, I consider neither the unity of an author nor that of a school of
primary importance; I do not aspire to know the 44thought" of an author or the
genealogy of a school. On the contrary, possible interrelationships of various
textual forms and shared regimes, according to which the object of their study
was imperceptibly posited, are the focus of my attention. What I aim at is the
question What is language? and those derivative problems this ultimate question
is bound to call forth.
In order even to pose the question What is language? we must involve our-
selves preliminarily in another no less complicated question: Is it possible to
posit language as an object? The use of language is, of course, necessarily
the differend its due is to institute new addressees, new addressors, new significations. and new
referents in order for the wrong to find an expression and for the plaintiff to cease being a victim" (p.
13). As I will argue, the notion of the feeling, which is closely related to the differend, as opposed to
the sentimentality that is devoid of connection to the differend, explains why Ito Jinsai was so much
concerned with the problem of feeling in his ethics.
 .J
6 Introduction
assumed in positing those questions and any question whatsoever. Questioning is
a language affair par excellence. One may follow a hermeneutic strategy by
saying that only on the basis of our implicit grasp of language can one possibly
ask anything at all. Comprehension inevitably precedes questioning; so the pos-
sibility of objectifying language should originate in the historically and culturally
limited horizon of our understanding. Only by virtue of the fact that we live in
language are we able to discuss language as an object. Therefore, as the argu-
ment would go, it is pointless to seek the universal essence of language outside
the context specific to a particular historical and cultural formation.
Insofar as the question What is language? necessarily discloses the historical
and cultural finitude of the inquirer, the hermeneutic response at least makes us
aware of some aspects of the interrogation which ought not be neglected outright.
I do not hesitate to admit it. Hermeneutics seems to fail to live up to our
expectations, however, not because of its rather skeptical attitude toward holistic
universalism but because its critique of universalism has not been pursued to the
limit. By virtue of the restrictions on this critique, it is inevitably particularistic.
The trouble lies with the emphasis of hermeneutics on the historical and cultur-
alistic horizon. If the possibility of objectifying language is always preceded by
our primordial habitation in it, where can we possibly find the instance of talking
about, in a sense objectifying, the horizon of our understanding and our "tradi-
tion"? As is well known, hermeneutics insists upon the anteriority of the horizon
of our understanding to interpretation in general. Historical or cultural distance,
informed by our encounter with documents of the past or with foreign language,
marks the limit of our language and thereby reflexively teaches us about the
historical and cultural finitude of our own being. That horizon is an enabling
rather than a restricting finitude, which, instead of preventing us from com-
prehending, makes it possible for us to know and guarantees our access to
universality. Therefore, it should be argued that our confinement to the tradition
is an opening to universality. Yet, it is not hard to detect the working of an
assumption that conceals another kind of circularity than the famed hermeneutic
circle in the hermeneutic vision of our historicocultural being.
Some claim that an experience of distance helps manifest the unity of our
language, which coincides with our world at the primordial level of pre-
predicative judgment. But it is also presumed that such an experience arises at
the periphery of that unity which is most frequently imagined as a spatial whole.
On the one hand, we should recall that the hermeneutic conception of that
distance was put forth in the context of a critique of an ahistorical universalism
incurably embedded in scientific positivism, which audaciously assumes the
possibility of a metalanguage free from any historicity of our being. It goes
without saying that the metalanguage thus granted is the language of positivism
itself. Then hermeneutics warns us of the danger of so-called universal scientism
and asks us to doubt the very possibility of that metalanguage. On the other hand,
it affirms the thesis that an appeal to, or need for, metalanguage is invoked by
Theoretical Preliminaries 7
:'(SQme failure or obstacle in the course of otherwise transparent, smooth, and flaw-
,~less' transactions such as talk, making things, or communication. This is to say,
';¥fpetalanguage is a consequence of some trouble, estrangement, breakdown, or
~(~dulteration. When combined with the vision of language as a spatial whole, the
~nnation of metalanguage and philosophical argumentation in general would'take
~i:definite connotations of hermeneutics. While such metalanguage and philo-
:phical argumentation might undertake a critical and reflective examination of
",world, it is understood that they do so from the alien sphere, from outside our
rld, the outside being located along either a historical or a geocultural axis.
e opportunity to criticize and thereby reinstitute our-that is, collective-
orical subjectivity is in fact facilitated by the insertion of the heterogeneous,
e external, in the form of a foreign language or an old, unfamiliar document.
s, critical impulse accompanied by an acute sense of historicity must not be
overlooked. But I also want to draw attention to the other, more implicit side of
>the thesis. At the same time that hermeneutics reveals our historicity, it installs an
'>~onomy that regulates the distribution of the heterogeneous. Our world is pre-
"isented as if its language were completely merged with it, as if the need for
!~'~theorizing" metalanguage would never arise there since there could be no
bistorical or cultural distance: immediacy and homosociality would reign. Just as
;,,1"'~it~i~~£;~,·"re are normally occupied with the purpose of our dealings and not aware of the
by means of which we try to accomplish them, and just as the tool, a
··~).·i\~i.1?./':"''i.;-';: IUILJlI][IlCl. for example, becomes conspicuous in its unusability when it is broken,
-so- language does not announce itself as such and remains transparent with
'tespect to our theorizing gaze. 5 In this regard, to say that the encounter with the
or the external gives rise to critical instances is to say that it is at least
.C,'.-. Ul}~~IUn::; to imagine as a point of contrast a state in which language is completely
:;~~·~',.c.<:~i,Ji<: free from estrangement and the possibility of problematizing language, of gener-
ating distance between language and the world, is null and void. Obviously our
world is posited as an idealized sphere in which our language is immediately our
world, in which we are allowed to live our language, that is, our world, in its
:·()niunal plenitude, and in return, this plenitude gives content to the phrase ~. our
world." Needless to say, language could never be objectified in this sphere, and
5See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New
York: Harper and Row, 1962): "When we concern ourselves with something, the entities which are
!post closely ready-lo-hand may be met as something unusable, not properly adapted for the use we
have decided upon. The tool turns out be damaged, or the material unsuitable. In each of these cases
equipment is here, ready-to-hand. We discover its unusability, however, not by looking at it and
establishing its properties, but rather by the circumspection of the dealings in which we use it. When
its unusability is thus discovered, equipment becomes conspicuous" (p. 102), and "If, in our every-
day concern with the 'environment,' it is to be possible for equipment ready-to-hand to be encoun-
tered in its 'Being-in-itself; then those assignments and referential totalities in which our circum-
spection 'is absorbed' cannot become a theme for that circumspection any more than they can for
grasping things 'thematically' but non-circumspectively. If it is to be possible for the ready-to-hand
not to emerge from its inconspicuousness, the world must not announce itself" (p. 106). I shall return
to this problem in my critique of Tokieda Motoki,
8 Jntroduction
as I argue in this book, such homogeneity is impossible; language always re-
mains "broken," even without intrusion from outside, and no-body is ex-
haustively at home in language.
So, to the question Is it possible to posit language as an object? I must reply
with two negative propositions. First, I do not think I can presuppose a meta-
language completely independent of the specific traits of an object-language it
talks about. Second, I do not think there is a language completely free from the
self-reflexivity that necessarily generates a desire for metalanguage either. In
other words, I entertain neither the notion of the complete separation between the
world and language, of two autonomous entities, nor the vision of the harmo-
nious unity of the world and language.
Hence, to the question What is language? we cannot expect a general and
universal answer, for the reason stated in the first proposition. Implicit in my
approach is the belief that this question can be formulated only in historical
terms.
To ask what language is is to ask how language was understood at a specific
historical moment. Furthermore, we must remind ourselves that even if we could
circumscribe what was conceived of as language, we could develop no mono-
lithic conception, as the extensive debates about the nature of language in the
eighteenth century clearly testify. As a specific object of discourse in the discur-
sive space at issue, "language" became a telltale locus of contradiction, rupture,
and disagreem~nt within language. Accordingly, I do not seek to establish a
universal definition or explanatory theory of language among the texts of the
eighteenth century; rather I look for various differentiations and oppositions and
their interactions, which, when put together, circumscribe an area in human
activities called language.
What is "I"? What is meant by "belonging to a language" or "a language's
belonging to someone"? These questions, too, are posed here, together with
other derivative queries. Indeed, they are asked repeatedly in the course of this
book. By making these questions traverse the texts of the eighteenth century, I
attempt to expose prejudices in the discourse within which we think language and
thereby to transform the resistance of these texts to reading, to our customary
process of investing the texts with meaning, into an occasion to defamiliarize our
own prejudices, according to which we normally conduct our transference to the
past. It is, of course, a way-probably one among many-to respect the past in
its othemess. In As- We Saw Them, Masao Miyoshi tried to use geographical and
cultural distance to defamiliarize our own conception of the other and the same,
although one might detect some tendency in his book to essentialize those unities
of u us" and "them."6 As there cannot be in our case the same kind of reciprocity
6Masao Miyoshi, As We Saw Them (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1979). In this book
on the first Japanese ambassadorial mission to the United States. Miyoshi describes the voyage over
the Pacific Ocean as a defamiliarization that engendered an unexpected encounter of the same and the
other. The metaphorical use of the sea. which occasions the intrusion of the other into the same,
Theoretical Preliminaries 9
that we find in Miyoshi's intercultural study, the historical distance that neces-
sarily generates defamiliarizing effects can. be incorporated into my research not
to affirm the unities of "us" and "them" but to draw attention to what is
excluded in the fonnation of these unities. It is true that we cannot take up the
viewpoint of a historical or cultural other as Miyoshi attempted to do, but insofar
as the object of study itself brings about an occasion to rethink the image of the
other, historical inquiry could serve the same purpose, disclosing the fundamen-
tal asymmetry in any relationship of the same to the other as well as the funda-
mental inadequacy of the image of the other to the Other. Hence, historical
inquiry can be an occasion to interfere with the workings of transference, and in
that very sense, it can be a historical praxis. To deal with texts of the past is to
defamiliarize the discursive space in which the putative unities of "us" and
"them" (historical or cultural) are taken for granted. But too often historiography
has served to conceal and suppress this potential defamiliarizing moment inher-
ent in any historical research, so that the present and the same may be recon-
firmed and authenticated as etemal verities. What must be challenged in histor-
ical projects such as this is a totalizing tendency that the ideology of the identical,
overtly or covertly, serves to legitimate. To historicize the present-that is, to
defamiliarize "us"-will be the motto in this book. Now, this does not mean
seeking ways in which to assimilate us to the other. Rather, I examine the use of
the shifter "we," which frequently silences and excludes some people unjustly in
its pretense of integrating them. After all, the other we face is primarily a
historical one and ultimately beyond conceptualization. Through the encounter
with the historical other, I search for some coherent way to go beyond ourselves
and the present. I search as well for some way to go beyond eighteenth-century
discourse, as Amazawa Taijiro once tried to go "beyond Miyazawa Kenji" in his
critical account. 7
Such an approach may provoke understandable reservations: Despite the pro-
claimed tendency toward defamiliarization, it might be argued, my method
would only imperialize the past by imposing questions upon it which, after all,
originate from our own contemporary concerns. Is this not simply one more way
of imposing our prejudices on the historical other and thereby extending our
sovereignty over it? Since I can no longer stake any claim to objectivity that
might refute this challenge or adopt any hermeneutic stance that might accommo-
date it, it is imperative that I stick to a set of rules that sustain self-critical
examination.
reminds us of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, which. as Mikhail Bakhtin repeatedly asserted, very suc-
cessfully exemplifies the polyphonic novel in Europe. Although Miyoshi seems to take the difference
between two identities, represented by the sea, as substantial rather than ideological on occasion. he
introduces polyphonic structure into his book to problematize the mode of knowledge dominant in
area studies, where specialists have tirelessly continued to reproduce the same old monologic dis-
course.
7 Amazawa Taijiro, Miyazawa Ken}i no kanata e (Beyond Miyazawa Kenji) (Tokyo: Shicho-sha.
1968).
10 Introduction
First, I must be attentive to the double articulation of differences between the
present and the past. I have already introduced the concept of a discursive space
to illustrate the gap between the present and the past as that between two different
discursive formations. By means of this concept, I should be able to establish a
standpoint that Permits me to view any assumption, no matter how general and
self-evident it seems, as historically determined and specific. If I strive to adhere
to this standpoint, I will be able to point out conspicuous instances in which the
estranging effects of the past would otherwise be concealed. One should be able
to disclose contradictions at the very locus where the ideology of the identical
conceals them. In this resPect, it should be remembered that mine is an attempt
not to internalize texts of the past but rather to retrace an itinerary of discursive
economy according to which the heterogeneous was excluded in discourse.
The second rule is based on a critical evaluation of the first. If historical
difference were simply apprehended as a difference between two discursive
spaces on the same plane, I would merely be affirming another relativism; to do
so would be nonsensical unless I presupposed some third and transcendent view-
point from which the two discourses could be observed equally. But is this
exactly the effect of being confined in a discursive space? Does this confinement
presume that the other in history can be reduced to an image at which a trans-
historical "I" stares without being affected by it? Is this the typical relativism
that necessitates holistic universalism in its gesture of paying respect to the
singular and the specific?
Insofar as history is thought of as it is articulated in discourse, the endless
oscillation between relativism and universalism is inevitable. But I will also be
attentive to those differences between the present and the past which can never be
posited as symmetrical opposites. The past, in this instance, must be com-
prehended as the loss that could not be recuPerated in discourse. Thus, the
relationship between the present and the past is, at the same time, that between
two images and that between what can be brought about in an image and what
can never be reduced to images. 8
SCf. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1979), pp. 226-47 in particular. Michel de Certeau, in The Writing of History, trans. Tom
Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), discusses the problem of history as recounted
story (Hislorie) and the work of history (Geschichte) in relation to psychoanalysis: "Psychoanalysis
does not institute a new sequence within the progress of a lure that the capacity to demystify, and
lucidity itself, are forever expanding. Psychoanalysis would like to establish an epistemological
rupture within this infinite process. It would be the means of thinking and practicing a new kind of
elucidation, worthy (galtig) in general, which ultimately intends to account for a double, structural
relation that excludes the possibility of closure. This would be, on the one hand, the relation of every
analytical process (which fragments the representation while driving deeper what is represented) with
what it intends to demonstrate but succeeds in displacing; and on the other hand, the relation of each
AUfkliirung with the elucidations that either precede or are contiguous to it in time, insofar as a clearer
focus on what had been represented is at once a scientific necessity, and a new way of being deceived
without knowing it" (p. 299), and "Nothing can guarantee the difference between these two figures
of history or of praxis-the one, which repeats, and the other, which initiates. They bring us back to
the ambiguity of the word 'history,' an unstable word that fluctuates between a 'legend' (a received
Theoretical Preliminaries 11
Opening the Closure of "Us" through Defamiliarization
In this project, I deal with the text in its exteriority. 9 My description is
... focused, as it were, on the surface of the texts, whose depth and solidity should
never be taken to be the hidden presence of some transcendent signified but
should be understood to designate that which is surplus and heterogeneous to
discourse, that is, to designate a certain resistance I have called "textual mate-
riality." Nor do I view the text in its supposed rapport with the original utterance
that is no longer present. Nor do I endeavor to comprehend the past or lay hold of
the plenitude that must have been present at the moment of the text's enunciation.
My task is not to return the texts of the past to their original meaningfulness.
Instead, I attempt to disclose the conditions in which statements were produced;
whether or not their authors or actors were conscious of these conditions is in fact
beyond my concern. If a historian's task is to understand the text better than its
author did, then this is certainly not a historical study. If the purpose of histo-
riography is to recover the reality of the past as the people of those times lived it,
text, a law that must be read, a society's profit) and a 'becoming other' (a taking of the risk of self-
affinnation, through ourselves assuring our own existences). The analyst himself does not escape this
ambivalence. As soon as his science becomes a •deceptive aid'; as soon as he 'keeps only the deposit
but not the drive'; as soon as he turns a teaching, a clientele, even a society into the exalted ersatz of
the father, into the congregation or the devil of the fonner times, he conceals from himself what he
believes he is clarifying_
Freud draws a line of demarcation between these two sides of psychoanalytic practice when he
speaks of the protean principle that he will use like a razor to cut through the signifiers on the surface
of a discourse or a text. He will express the criterion that saves him from accepting his own science as
a nurturing law. And with the wink of an eye he explains to us the imperialism of his diagnoses and,
quite a smprise for us, his way of imposing an interpretation by insisting on a patient's word: 'There
it is.' In his practice he establishes the scientist's act as what is beyond a necessary knowledge. In
effect, a casual ease curiously inhabits the minutiae of his analysis. He legitimizes his work as an
author by taking risks. He refers to a stylish 'fair' that can be only loosely defined because it is simply
his own. From his point of view, analytical practice is always an act of risk. It never eliminates a
surprise. It cannot be identified with the accomplishment of a norm. The ambiguity of a set of words
could never be brought forward solely by the 'application' of a law. Knowledge never guarantees this
'benefit.' The Aufklarung remains an affair of tact-eine Sache des Takts" (pp. 303-4).
9For the notion of exteriority, see Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M.
Sheridan Smith (London: Tavistock, 1972): "The analysis of statements operates therefore without
reference to a cogito. It does not pose the question of the speaking subject, who reveals or who
conceals himself in what he says, who, in speaking, exercises his sovereign freedom, or who,
without realizing it, subjects himself to constraints of which he is only dimly aware. In fact, it is
situated at the level of 'it is said' -and we must not understand by this a sort of communal opinion, a
collective representation that is imposed on every individual; we must not understand by it a great,
anonymous voice that must, of necessity, speak through the discourse of everyone; but we must
understand by it the totality of things said, the relations, the regularities, and the transformations that
may be observed in them, the domain of which certain figures, certain intersections indicate the
unique place of a speaking subject and may be given the name of author. 'Anyone who speaks,' but
what he says is not said from anywhere. It is necessarily caught up in the play of exteriority" (p.
122). The issues I discuss later in this book, which are very clearly stated here, include (1) two
definitions of tpe term ..discourse," depending upon how the status of the subject of enunciation is
understood; (2) the relationship between discursive analysis and Lacanian psychoanalysis; and (3)
Foucauldian exteriority and phenomenological reduction.
12 Jntroduction
then I do nQt pretend to be a historiographer in this book. What is in demand here
is the defamiliarization that a sort of phenomenological reduction necessarily
engenders in our discursive space. to It is a reduction by which to disqualify and
objectify assumptions about what is natural. The phenomenological reduction I
adhere to, however, does not imply a reduction of the text either to its eidetic
signification or to transcendental subjectivity. On the contrary, it is a decision to
reduce subjectivity to discourse. A basic premise of this book is that the fonnal
locus of subjectivity is constituted discursively: discourse precedes subjectivity.
But at this juncture, I find the terms "subject" and "subjectivity" far from
satisfactory in articulating the complex and interwoven aspects of their many
different uses. In order to distinguish among many different conceptualities,
including the subjectivity that is not appropriated in discourse, I introduce a
rather technical vocabulary (shugo, shukan, shudai, shutai, etc.), which contains
many contradictions and ambiguities but helps elucidate the problematics in-
volved in the phrase "historical subject."
That is, I continue to draw attention to the impossibility of comprehending the
past and, thereby, affirm the thesis that the historical other always remains the .
Other. But at the same time, I emphasize that "we" are also the other, insofar as
we are able to talk about ourselves, and that much of what is natural and self-
evident for "us" is, after all, a historical positivity, a positivity of a historically
limited construct.
Surely it is too easy to say that what was considered natural and self-evident in
the past was historically restricted. What a work of historiography is expected to
show is that the same applies to the present; it is to remind us of the historically
limited validity of our discourse. Historiography can be historical only through
self-decentering and self-criticism, only if the tension between the present and
the past is maintained and utilized to the fullest extent so as to ensure the
possibility of defamiliarizing a given discourse. And provided that the term
"historical" is apprehended in terms of this tension, my project claims to be
historical.
"History" must be considered as a problematic rather than as a name for an
established discipline with fixed procedures and protocols. It indicates an area
where discourse fails to reproduce itself, a locus where the same encounters the
Other. Eighteenth-century discursive space, for instance, was continually haunt-
ed by its past and could not construct the discourse of the identical without
establishing ways to accommodate the past in its present. The languages of the
other-the historical and the cultural other-were repeatedly referred to in
order, first, to mold the radical Other into the other and, then, to situate the
language of the same in that discursive space.
10 Jacques Derrida talks about a sort of reduction that suspends, neutralizes, and puts in paren-
theses the word's relation to its sense or thing, a reduction that is the reverse of phenomenology's
eidetic reduction. See Schibboleth (Paris: Galilee, 1986), p. 44.
Theoretical Preliminaries 13
It is precisely in this context that I· want to point again to the. necessity of
considering the relationship between lang~age and the world through two nega-
tive propositions: first, language cannot be autonomous, is always dePendent
upon the world, and second, language cannot be the world, always remains Qther
thtln the world. If it is impossible to envisage a language independent of the
world, a language that is valid transhistopcally, then we must talk of any existent
language in terms that remind us of its historical individuality. Our way of
thinking is definitely different from their way of thinking, but as the second
proposition asserts, there is no warranty that our thinking is either adequate to
our world or immediate to us. Surely it is true that we do not easily understand
those who lived in a different era in a remote country; yet it must also be kept in
mind that the world we inhabit can never be the world as we think about it in our
language because language is always either inadequate or excessive to the world.
Here, as I have hinted a few times, I must tentatively distinguish between the two
related terms the "other" and the "Other"-the "other" being the different
insofar as it is posited in thinking and appropriated in discourse, and the "Other"
being the different that evades being posited in thinking. To put it differently, the
"Other" requires linkage to different and new regimes, thereby always disclos-
ing "the differend" that has been suppressed, whereas the "other" is already
appropriated and positioned and presents itself as self-evident within the same
regime. This distinction, which will playa significant role in my discussion, may
apPear rather confusing. For instance, I would simultaneously insist that "we"
are historically different from "them" and that "we" are originarily different
from "us." On the one hand, I use such unities as 4l our language" and "their
language" to render explicit an economy sustaining positivities in a certain
discursive space, but on the other hand, I refuse these unities any ontological
grounding and criticize the imagined closure of a discursive space extensively.
At this level, the major question for which this book attempts to provide a
historical reply lends itself to another equally fundamental question: What is a
language (langue)? As a matter of fact, these two questions, What is language?
and What is a language? are indistinguishable in some contexts since differences
between languages (langues) encompass not only syntax and phonetics but also
the articulation of the linguistic and the nonlinguistic. Intertextuality, understood
in tenns of the regime of possible channels between verbal and nonverbal texts
varies from one discursive space to another. Accordingly, in the discursive spac;
of the eighteenth century, where differences are all ascribed to the difference of
languages (langues), inquiry into the language of the other inevitably leads to the
recognition that the other perceives and lives the world differently. This recogni-
tion is what writers of the eighteenth century were forced to face. Consequently,
their discourse on language was guided by their concern about the identity of a
language rather than about language in general.
Implied in this cognition is that intertextuality is institutionally maintained,
part and parcel of the discursive formation.
14 Introduction
Three Guiding Concerns
Thus, from its initial formulation,11 this book was guided by three main and
constant concerns: "What is the historicality of theoretical investigation in histo-
ry writing?", "What kinds of discursive formation can one delineate when the
identities of language and culture are perceived to be empirically given beyond
dispute?" and "Is a conception of sociality that is not closed to the Other
possible?" These three questions were intertwined with the main problems about
language and the "I," and they generated many corollary questions against the
background of which I tried to read a selection of documents written and drawn
during the eighteenth century.
What is the historicality of theoretical investigation in history writing?
Whether or not one wishes to avoid theories, one cannot write about the past
without generalization; to use language is already to generalize. Yet, there must
be ways to put into question and critically construe the very relationship between
theory and historical materials. If theory is taken to be a set of principles formu-
lated in universal terms and if its application to a specific historical environment
is understood to be its concretization, such an understanding of theory should be
blind to its own historicity. The assumed universality of theory must be delim-
ited, historically. But this is not to determine a particular body of theory in its
historical particularity, since to do so would require another set of universals in
terms of which the particularity is predicated. What I want to start from and
arrive at is neither the particularity of my position nor the generality of some
universal essences: I want to indicate, if not signify, that dimension which is not
reducible to either, which is "outside" the metaphysical opposition of univer-
salism and particularism. I can achieve this only by historicizing my reading in
terms of the text I am to read, not by the more common practice of historicizing
through my reading the text to be read: that is, by reversing the hierarchy of the
universal and the particular, of metalanguage and object language. In other
words, my argument about the eighteenth century has to be organized in such a
manner that an object language is allowed to speak back to a metalanguage.
It goes without saying that one can never be sure of one's success in such a
project. There can be no publicly ascertainable standard by which to tell if an
object language has in fact spoken back. The issue of historicality is closely
connected here with that of historical praxis. It is not a matter of how to know in
advance that such a success in letting the past speak back can be guaranteed; it is
primarily a matter of execution. In this connection I found some shared ground
among my concerns for the historicality of theoretical investigation, the exami-
nation of the ethical by Ito Jinsai, a Confucian scholar of the Tokugawa period,
and the subsequent transformations of the Confucian discussion on the ethical by
11"Voices of the Past: Discourse on Language in Eighteenth-Century Japan" (Ph.D. diss., Univer-
sity of Chicago, 1983).
Theoretical Preliminaries 15
Ogyu Sorai and others. For Ito, the issues of historicality and sociality were so
intimately related that he could not conceive of the ethical without reference to
social change. In his thorough critique of the essentialization of human nature in
Song rationalism, he was able to propose an understanding of the ethical which
respected the otherness of the Other rather than falling into essentialist univer-
salism or particularistic relativism, both ~f which necessarily suppress the Other.
In Ogyu's reaction to Ito's critique, however, the sociality had already become
divorced from ethics with the stress on the mimesis of habitual bodily action.
Wh~reas Ito pointed out that the Song rationalist conception of ethics ignored the
executionary and material aspect of the ethical by equating ethical action with its
ideational meaning, Ogyu reduced the ethical to the mimetic and the habitual and
brought forth the notion of the "interior n as a form of communality on the basis
of mimetic identification with, and return to, the idealized and aestheticized
commune of ancient China. With Ogyu, the rejection of universalism ended in an
endorsement of particularism, which meant the return to that same opposition of
universalism versus particularism.
In seeking to reverse the relationship of theory and its object, and thereby
indicate the dimension of a prescriptive universalism without essentialism, I try
to read those philosophical and pedagogic writings of eighteenth-century Japan
as a challenge and resistance to the assumed ubiquitous validity of the theoretical
assumptions on which my reading would otherwise proceed.
What kinds of discursive formation can one delineate when the identities of
.language and culture are perceived to be given beyond dispute? This shift away
;ti1,:;':{t~)~;:~;f7' ; from Ito's critique of Song rationalism to Ogyu's endorsement of the cultural and
linguistic "interior" marked the formation of discourses in which those unities of
language and the cultural sphere were fonned into what might be referred to as
constituting positivities, or some sort of regulative Ideas. They enabled the
selection and organization of empirical categories and led to the formation of
protocols according to which the perceived heterogeneities were fixed into sym-
metrical divisions between identities. I make use of Michel Foucault's term
"discourse" (with its particular critical import, which cannot be equated with
that intended by other users of the term such as Emile Benveniste) primarily
because I want to stress the historical nature of the regulative Ideas: these discur-
sive positivities should never be taken as transhistorical essences. But, at the
same time, adoption of the term "discourse" causes me certain problems because
it implies a positivistic comprehension of history and, correlatively, the assumed
positing of something like transcendental subjectivity. It seems to me that, in
spite of Foucault's repeated disclaimers, his approach can entail that the historian
must layout the rules of discursive formation from some "outside", and that this
separation between the "outside" and the discourse under examination might
easily induce me to operate on the basis of the theory-object opposition. If this
"outside," which Foucault insisted is not an outside of some inside, were under-
stood as the site from which a discursive formation can be grasped as an objec-
16 Introduction
tified totality, I would fall into the same theoretical trap that I mentioned above: I
would simply be repeating the anthropological scheme of the empirico-transcen-
dental double. In my case, the empirical object posited by the transcendental
gaze would be the discourse of eighteenth-century Japan.
Although, in the thoughts of Foucault, who rigorously pursued Nietzsche and.
Heidegger's path toward the Overman, this outside never coincides with tran-
scendental subjectivity, one could easily be tempted to assume that the sort of
historical analysis Foucault proposed is a method that can be applied" in its
H "interior," which in turn entailed the positing of absolute incommensurability
generality to the particular data of specific historical periods and areas. In that
event, the historian would end up speaking from the position of transcendental
subjectivity and his reading of historical materials would be no different from
that of the positivist. Time and time again I have had to resist this temptation; and
I have done so by focusing on the asymmetrical relationship between what is
accommodated in discourse and what is not captured by it. The latter, what is not
captured by discourse, is indicated by the difference between discursivity and
textuality; it has to be indicated because it could never be signified or identified.
By maintaining the sense of rupture between discourse and text, I seek to find a
way out of the determinism often ascribed to Foucault's discursive formation.
Discourse reproduces itself by repressing textuality. But, by the same token, it
should always be possible to detect sites where discourse is threatened and
eroded. Left to itself, any discursive formation will deteriorate or, to use Ito
Jinsai's expression, "decompose." In that respect, the stability of discursive
formation must imply the work of power that silences different ways of fonnat-
ting, addressing, and linking'issues and prevents people from otherwise seeing
and living the world. So, for me, a discursive space is never given: the historian
has, I think, to admit that it is his choice, his limit, and also sometimes his
inability that draw the contours of a given discursive space. Only when a histo-
rian pretends to speak from a transcendent position do social and cultural fonna-
tions appear objectively determined and simply there. Yet, at the same time, I do
not claim that discursive formation is arbitrary and totally dependent upon the
historian's "intention n either. What is in the past that resists the imposition of
our images is the interweaving of various texts within the general text, an inter-
weaving that disrupts the complicity between the determinism on the part of the
object of study and the assumed transcendent and transhistorical stance on the
part of the subject who studies.
As a gesture of respect for the particularities of a given culture and tradition,
and out of a certain diplomatic modesty (which is becoming more and more
fashionable), the historian tri~s to speak from a position delimited by his own
cultural particularism about a particular cultural and social formation that is
foreign to him. He tries to speak as if his culture or language could be opposed to
another, as if he could know in advance how culturally and linguistically his
world view is delimited and prejudiced. But, in assuming that his own culture
and a foreign culture can be placed on the same plane and compared, he cannot
Theoretical Preliminaries 17
but speak from the position of some invisible and transcendent universalism. His
diplomatic modesty is in fact his totaliziJ;lg hubris in disguise. In spite of the
seeming contradiction between them, these stances are both possible with the
complicity of particularism and universalism.
I, argue that in the eighteenth century several positivities came into being,
thanks to which a rigid partition between the inside of the "interior'" and its
"exterior" was formed. This separation resulted in a homogenization of the
betw~en the "interior" and the "exterior." This was the moment when the
Japanese as a linguistic and cultural unity was born. But the birth of Japanese was
a loss because the imagining of the homogeneous "interior" became possible
only when historical time was constructed through the new reading of the clas-
sics. Thus the issue of textuality in the reading of classic writings was directly
connected to the formation of the interior, of a social imaginary that opened up
new possibilities of social praxis.
Is a conception of sociality that is not closed to the Other possible? With the
formation of the interior, an incommensurability was assumed between the inte-
rior and the exterior; it became possible to believe that, while belonging in the
interior warranted one's immediate comprehension of things happening there,
anyone not belonging was unable to have immediate access to them. Belief that
one inhabits the interior enabled one to assume both the sense of homogeneous
communality based upon immediate comprehension and the outsider's inability
. to participate in such a sense of communality. Thus, it closed off the social to
" heterogeneities both within and without a given collectivity: it made one blind to
, misunderstanding, conflicts, and disorder within a collectivity, even while it
?,legitimated resignation to communality by concealing the fact that every form of
incommensurability, misunderstanding, and even indifference to the other had to
:: take place within sociality. In other words, by conceding to the interior, one
forget that the recognition of incommensurability could happen only in the
'·'.VI.V\o.''''',:),:) of learning and reaching out toward the Other. Concurrently one would
that one encounters disruption on the inside all the time. A collectivity that
imagined as a homogenized and monolithic sphere does not exist. For this
'~'itea~;on Ogyu Sorai, Motoori Norinaga, and other eighteenth-century writers had
J. LOCO the interior as an "arche," an idealized communality of ancient origin.
they had to critique their contemporary social reality by contrasting it with
"archaic" commune and to view the fonner primarily as a loss of immediate
,;,~:~;?]~c)m:munaljtv. Moreover, the newly emerging discourse neglected and repressed
........ ,..... '. ,--- possibility of an al~atory venture toward the otherness of the Other, of a
attempt to link the heterogeneous regimes of utterance and behavior which
otherwise remain incommensurate.
I recognize a fundamental transformation between Ito Jinsai and other writers
;of the eighteenth century in this regard. In launching a rigorous critique of Song
rationalism, which reduced the prescriptive universals of ethical action to the
 Introduction
18
cognition of descriptive universals, thereby ontologizing the ethical, Ito drew
attention to' the possibility of ethical action, to a sociality different from any
guaranteed by epistemological universalism, and above all different from ~hat
he called Ai, or compassion toward others. Ito .was adamantly opposed to ethIcal
relativism. But, at the same time, he stressed the aspect of social action which.
could never be reduced to 4'knowing." An ethical action always requires the
agenfs body-or what I call "shutai," as distinct fro~ the sUbje~t-wh~ch
necessarily deconstructs its putative intention; of neceSSIty, an ethIcal actIon
exceeds the closure of the agent's consciousness so that its actuality consists in its
exteriority to the intended meaning. Ito clearly saw that a prescription could
never be deduced from a description. That is, in his thinking of ethics through the
reading of Confucian classics, he focused on the materiality of s~ial acti~n,
materiality of praxis toward and with the otherness of th~ Other WhICh ~ave nse
to virtues. What is evident in his ethics is that the ethIcal and textualtty were
inseparably related: for Ito Jinsai, the problem of the ethical was i.mmedia~ely
that of textuality. Thus, in spite of his frequent references to ConfUCIan classIcs,
he did not need to sail back to the "arche"-to the original communality of
Kamo Mabuchi and Motoori Norinaga, and to the original creators or ancient
sage kings of Ogyu 50rai-in order to ascertain ethical principles.
Hybridity of Language
I am presenting this transformation of discourse in term~ of the formati~n of a
new closure, of silencing the otherness of the Other. Unhke the culturahsm of
modem Japan after the nineteenth century, the eighteenth-century discourse on
interiority undeniably carried critical momentum with it. Nevertheless, bec~use
of its obsessive concern for origin, its critique was directed toward the consobda-
tion of the immediate. Hence, it could easily lead to anti-intellectualism and the
worship of naIvete.
I find that the transformation of discourse involved a wide variety of changes,
including the rearrangement of genres, a new articulation of enunciative modes,
a new kind of intertextuality, and new regimes of writing and reading. I seek the
causes of the changes not only in "thought," but in "discourse" and its asym-
metrical relationship with textuality. For this reason, I draw attention to the
graphic, verbal, and performative aspects of eighteenth-century popular liter-
ature, puppet theater scripts, and linguistic pedagogy, and seek to understand the
problems of the ~4subject" in terms of their framing. Even when I read those
nontheoretical documents, my analysis is always motivated by my three ques-
tions. My reading is conducted with special concern for the formation of the
vernacular or "ordinary" language in eighteenth-century Japan. In response to
these questions, however, I see the formation of an ordinary language as the site
of hybridity. Yet, I must hasten to add that it is not the significance of some
Theoretical Preliminaries 19
hybrid language (as against pure language) or hybridity (as against pure blood)
that I want to favor. On the contrary, there is no such thing as the original unity of
language with which hybridity can be contrasted. (On that score, can we really
say that language is a countable? Can we ascribe singularity and plurality to
language?) Only in narrowly defined contexts could one still appeal to the dis-
tinction between an indigenous and pure language and· a hybrid language. But
ultimately, I insist, there is no way to distinguish a pure language from its hybrid
or Creole. My position, which I maintain throughout this book, is that language
is essentially a site of hybridity and that any notion of a pure language is some
fabricated and -dogmatic deviation from the correct view of language. And
hybridity is also the fundamental relationship between the body as the agent of
action and language: no-body can be exhaustively at home in language. This is
not a book about either the history of linguistic theory or the development of
Japanese language. Nonetheless, its main theme is language and its other: this is
a book devoted to the examination of the status of language in discourse.
The Logic of Self-Decentering ,
I believe that historiography can be confined neither to a narrative account of
past experience or of the experience of the dead nor to an imposition, uncon-
scious in the best of cases and intentional in the worst, of our expectations onto
the historical past; it results rather from an effort to articulate the problems
arising from the defects and the limits of the present. Therefore, it defamiliarizes
us. In short, in historiography, there is always some chance of having our own
problems traverse texts of the past as if the past would speak back to us, as if the
texts of the past would deflect our transference. 12 We thereby loosen the grip of
reified epistemic institutions on us by problematizing the very positivities on
which our knowledge has been constructed.
Indeed, in this book I seek a historiography that would do justice to the
otherness of the Other, that respects the historicity of the social, and that will
serve the logic of self-decentering. 13 I attempt to make history a locus where our
nihilism is continually challenged in order to reconsider the assumed image of
US" that is a universalized "me," of "men that is a particularized "us."
44
12See Dominick LaCapra, "Is Everyone a Mentalite Case? Transference and the 'Culture' Con-
cept" in History and Criticism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 71-94.
lJThe logic of self-decentering concerns itself with a fonn of social and political critique that
recognizes the mutually constitutive and transferential relationship between the criticizing subject and
the criticized subject and which, therefore, does not justify itself merely by ascribing negative traits
t~ the subject to be criticized. It is a logic that interntpts the scapegoating inherent in the symmetry of
bmary opposition by disclosing the site of the differend, which exists even in desire for identity. It
focuses on the shared tenns in which both subjects are constituted as such and because of which the
necessity for cptique arises. In other words, this critique itself is a new manifestation of the social in
which the subjects are released from the constraints of symmetry and reciprocity and are opened up
toward the Other in the other.
<0. PART I

SILENCE AT THE CENTER:

ITO JINSAI AND
THE PROBLEMS
OF INTERTEXTUALITY

Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like ways across the
earth. For actually the earth had no ways to begin with, but when many men pass in one
direction, a way is made.
-Lu Xun
CHAPTER 1

Change in the Mode

of Discursive Formation

A Discursive Space and Textuality

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, a radical change took place in the
mode of discursive formation in Japan. I do not c;laim that there ever was a
historical period when so-called Japanese society was entirely dominated by a
single discursive formation. Nevertheless, it can be maintained that seventeenth-
century Japan had its own dominant mode by which discourses were integrated.
In any society or culture, there is always a multiplicity of discursive formations.
(The conventional unities and self-evidence associated with the terms .. society"
and "culture" will be placed under thorough examination in the rest of this book,
but let us allow ourselves to use them meanwhile, with a view to disclosing and
critiquing the effects of their use.) Yet, it is axiomatic that the heterogeneities of
one discourse to another are suppressed so long as a society maintains a high de-
gree of integration. By the same token, unlike the modern nation-state, in which
an oppressively homogeneous cultural sphere is imagined and thereby con-
structed, a society may accommodate many heterogeneous discourses so long as
. it lacks or fails to achieve a high degree of integration. Tokugawa society was no
exception in this regard. Heterogeneity emerged within the dominant discursive
formation in the late seventeenth century, and I think the writings of Ito Jinsai
(1627-1705) testify to this sudden eruption of new conceptual possibilities.}
lIto was a Confucian scholar and a founder of the Kogigaku school. He was born in Kyoto to a
merchant family well connected to cultural elites there. and he later married a cousin of perhaps the
most famous painter ofthat time, Ogata Korin. From adolescence. he immersed himself in the study
the works of the Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi, and in his late twenties he abandoned his family
business and devoted himself to Buddhist practice. In his thirties, however, he became critical of
rationalism and Buddhism and began questioning them philosophically. Through the new
of Confucian classics, he wrote many works which criticized Song rationalism and its
philosophical and ethical implications. The Kogido, a private Confucian academy he established in
1662, continued to educate students for more than two hundred years, and his eldest son, Ito Togai.
was also a renowned Confucian scholar. His major works include Dojimon (A child questions).

23
24 Silence at the Center
Nevertheless, I do not intend to view this event, this change, as indicating a
historical break in something like the Japanese psyche, hidden beneath the sur-
face of texts. Nor do I mean that an epistemological framework that had domi-
nated Japan prior to that time was suddenly replaced by a new one. For-
following an early Michel Foucault-to identify the systematicity of discourse
on which the discursive space as a whole was constructed, I would first have to
appeal to the concept of totality. 2 But we should remind ourselves that a totality
is always constructed historically and discursively and in each period of history
has to be defined and articulated in terms of the contemporary discursive apparat..
us. The conception of totality in one historical time can be drastically different
from that in another. As circumstances change, totality also changes.
Furthermore, we should be wary of any presumption that the contour of a
discursive formation coincides with the whole of a society. Totality is always, by
definition, a discursive scheme functional only within a given discursive space
that can never be closed off. Certainly one can discuss the differences among
many discursive spaces, yet it does not follow that each discursive space must
have a definite boundary. Indeed, the concept of totality, without which closure
would be impossible, is itself the product of an ideological and discursive con..
struct based on and incorporated into a given discursive space. That is why the
concept of totality has been extensively discussed in the philosophy of history
even as conventional historiography has continued to rely on it without realizing
how problematic it is. This is to say, totality is one of the historical transcenden..
tals that both constitute and are constituted by the economies of particular discur-
sive formations.
Is it justifiable, then, to introduce this term into the study of seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Japan? Obviously it is impossible to give a definition of
totality that could be applied indiscriminately across historical time. Therefore,
admitting that it is a historical transcendental, I will continue to use it even as I
question the universal validity that has imperceptibly been ascribed to it in most
historiographical research and, indeed, the validity of any such universality in
general. What I propose is to tum the problem of totality into a conducting
thread, an inquiring voice to be projected onto writings produced during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. How did they constitute totality? How did
they imagine it?
I must begin by evaluating the eruption of new discursive possibilities in
the seventeenth century. My starting point is the philosophical writings of Ito·
Jinsai, whose intervention in the dominant discourse gave rise to these possi-
bilities.
Rongo·kogi (The ancient meaning of the Analects), Moshi-kogi (The ancient meaning of the Men·
cius), and Gomojigi (The words and meanings in the Analects and Mencius).
2Note that Foucault deliberately avoids equating the unity of discourse to that of "national" culture
or a national language. See The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, 1973).
The Mode of Discursive Formation
Ito's writings are concerned with changes occurring in the mode of discursive
formation. By criticizing the established. forms of philosophical and exegetic
argument in his time, he attempted to reformulate the intertextual relationship
between written texts and the reality for acting agents. The shift in intertextuality"
indeed, entailed the destruction of the dominant conception of language, and
'; through that destruction, Ito engaged himself in the inauguration of a new one. In
this instance, by the conception of language I mean various differentiations"
relations, and hierarchizations of philosophemes. So we will be able to analyze
this .shift only when we recognize those differentiations and other constituents of
the shift and pay careful attention to how their interrelationships and the status of
.language in discourse were altered. It is particularly important in this regard that
most of Ito's writings criticized readings of the Chinese classics and the commen-
taries of other Confucian scholars.
As a Confucian, Ito articulated his own philosophical position through in-
"terpretation of the Chinese classics and his attempts to refute heretical doctrines"
including Buddhism, Taoism, and Song rationalism. Without doubt, Song ra-
tionalism was his major ideological enemy since he could not have put forth his
Qwn readings of the Chinese classics until he had first undermined the authen-
. ticity of the commentaries produced by the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, and other
Confucian scholars of the so-called Zhu Xi school of thought, or Shushigaku
1-1 in the Appendix). What I regard as the coherent body of Ito's "thought"
or "philosophy," cannot be discussed without reference to his approval
and disapproval of theses or statements he quoted from the writings of those
scholars.
Ito's "thought," therefore, has to be sought, first of all, in a consideration of
his statements about statements of others. He managed to express his own the-
oretical position only against a background of others' voices, and he wrote in
constant dialogue with others. Only by identifying his affirmations and denials of
others' discourse can I possibly circumscribe a form of coherence in Ito Jinsai's
discourse. And I cannot assume that this coherence embodies a system that can
be reduced to a set of mutually noncontradictory propositions. We must keep in
mind that a statement quoted by him could function in his discourse differently
the way it does in the original. In addition, Ito made many statements about
theses held by others which do not seem to be based upon any specific reference.
For instance, he challenges Zhu Xi and the Cheng brothers extensively and
argues emphatically against Zhu's conception of the principle Ii. But the validity
of his criticism is sometimes questionable since the many writings of Zhu Xi and
the Cheng brothers offer a wide variety of reading possibilities-as the history of
Confucianism in China from Song onward has shown.
The problem of how and why Ito fonnulated his critique of Song rationalism
cannot be attacked by reference to the Analects, the Mencius, or the Five Clas-
sics; nor can it be dismissed by saying that, given the vast difference in social and
historical background between China and Japan, Japanese Confucians at that
 26 Silence at the Center
time simply could not understand what Zhu Xi originally meant. It encountered
Chinese writings that were already covered with a thick sediment of interpreta-
tion, and the accuracy of his critique is not at issue here. I am concerned to see
how Ito presented Song rationalism in his writings and to locate the ruptures in
the discursive space with which much of his argument seems to have been
concerned. I want, that is, to see what sort of intertextual transmutation was at
work in Ito's critique of Song rationalism.
Intertextuality
But before moving into a detailed reading of Ito's writings, let me elucidate the
term "intertextuality," which I use mainly in two ways. The primary understand-
ing of this term derives from the awareness that no utterance takes place in a
cultural vacuum. Besides linguistic and other institutional constraints that pene-
trate and saturate the occasion of an utterance, the texts and words of others form
an environment within which a text is produced. The accumulation of those texts
and words into which an utterance is thrown is called the general text, and to
produce a text is to implant a new utterance so as to effectuate a new arrangement
of the general text. Thus, analysis of a text is a procedure of unbinding, through
which the interaction of texts is revealed. Obviously, at this stage I limit myself
to dealing with the interrelationships of various verbal texts, as did Mikhail
Bakhtin, for instance, in his analysis of Dostoevsky's poetics.
Bakhtin's approach led him to postulate the idea of the polyphonic novel, as
opposed to the monologic novel in which the speeches of all the characters are
reduced to objects of the single consciousness and in which the author's sov-
ereignty is affirmed. This idea of polyphony can be traced back to such early
works as Marxism and the Philosophy ofLanguage, but Bakhtin gave it the most
explicit expression in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. "Dostoevsky's novel,"
he maintained, "is dialogical. It is not constructed as the entirety of a single
consciousness which absorbs other consciousnesses as objects, but rather as the
entirety of the interaction of several consciousnesses, of which no one fully
becomes the object of any other one. This interaction does not assist the viewer
to objectify the entire event in accordance with the ordinary monological pattern
(thematically, lyrically, or cognitively), and as a consequence makes him a par-
ticipant. "3
The idea of polyphony already sketches my perspective, in which history is
lmderstood as a locus where "we" meet, first, the other and, ultimately, the Other
md where our discursive formation is questioned and put in jeopardy rather than
Iffirmed in its exclusion of the Other. Bakhtin opened up the possibilities of seeing
3Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky'S Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis,
[973), p. 14.
The Mode of Discursive Formation 27
a text as an interaction of multiple voices. He did not conceive consciousness as an
independent subject, as is clear from his characteristic conception of monologue as
a variation of dialogue. What was disclosed by his juxtaposition of monologism
and dialogism is the ideological implication of the monologic discursive forma-
tion, in which a speaker is impelled to integrate speeches of the others without
being affected by them. In monologism, the heterogeneous is repressed, with the
consequence of reducing the Other to the other. What takes place concurrently in
this formula is the elimination of the Other from the "us," thereby rendering the
"us" a pure ability to objectify, an ability never to be dislocated. The author's
consciousness is thus made sovereign, and through monologic discourse it is
equated to a transcendental subject and insists upon the objectification of other
consciousnesses. Always, subjective identity is stressed in defiance of the con-
stant opportunity, bestowed by the others and in the Other, to decenter itself.
Because of its pervasiveness, monologic discourse may appear neutral and inno-
cent; in fact, however, it is a historical construct that generates a certain power
relationship. More precisely, monologism is less a reflection of a power rela-
tionship than a form in which a power is effectuated.
It is by acknowledging this effect that the term "intertextuality" has been
brought forward. Through the dramatization of the ambiguous status of writing
in various historical stages, Julia Kristeva develops the notion of an intertextual
relationship out of polyphony. 4 The notion of intertextuality further articulates
the dialogical structure of a text to the extent that plurality, not only of different
voices but also of different modes of utterance, is taken into account in the
analysis of a text. This is to say that a text is viewed as containing texts. In
addition to direct citations of other texts, the intertextual analysis of the text in
question reveals the degree to which the production of meaning depends on the
transcription of others' phonetic utterances. From this viewpoint, Kristeva ana-
lyzes historical texts and tries to define the historical specificity of textual pro-
duction.
Underlying this approach would seem to be the premise that the text is always
situated within history and society, but the notion of "history and society" as an
environment that is supposed to have existed at the time of the text's enunciation
4For example, Kristeva describes the emergence of the novel in Le texte du roman (The Hague:
Mouton, 1970): "Therefore, the extreme valorization of writing is accompanied by censure: when
one writes, one presents oneself as speaking; when one has finished writing, one is able to say 'it has
been done.' The verb 'write' could belong only to the past: it marks a terminated production, a
finished work. One does not WRITE, one can only HAVE WRITTEN. To contemplate the written is to
contemplate death. Once again, the kinship of writing with the tomb is manifested in a striking
manner" (p. 141), and "The novel, which will impose the notion of 'literature' on modernity to the
extent that it takes it over, will borrow the fetishization of the FINISHED OBJECT, of the EXPLAINED
TRUTH, and of COMPOSITION from the medieval concept of writing. It will mix vocal discourse
(profane literalure), on the one hand, and curbed space (volume against line), on the other, and
attempt by these two methods to combat the linearity and univocity of the epic (of the symbol) in the
interior of expressivity (of the book as the double of the idea, of writing as representation)" (pp. 145-
46). Historiography as I engage in it here is not free from this historicity of modem "literature."
28 Silence at the Center
remains undefinably abstract and open to arbitrariness. Thus, following Bakhtin,
Kristeva instead postulates history and society as texts against which a new text is
produced. "The only way a writer can participate in history is by transgressing
this abstraction (linear history) through a process of reading-writing, that is,
through the practice of a signifying structure in relation or opposition to another
structure. History and morality are written and read within the infrastructure of
texts."5 The position of a text is thus defined in history, but the production of a
text in history does not mean harmonious juxtaposition of a text with other texts.
A verbal text always exists within a given situation; a text of any sort is inscribed
in a materiality. As a materiality, it coexists with the heterogeneous that would
variously be articulated as the text is further determined in signification. In
talking about intertextuality, however, I do not refer to the kind of materiality that
has often been ascribed to matter or material objects. If textual materiality is
simply taken to denote an old and conventional concept of matter, a tex.t's
relationship to other materials and other texts would be extrinsic and charac-
terized only as "part outside part." It would give the somewhat misleading idea
that materiality could be isolated from the text, as the material body is fantasized
as separable from the existence of a person. It is impossible to analyze a text's
intertextual dependence upon other texts at this level, however, since "part
outside part" signifies the absence of such an intertextual rapport.
One thing should be clear: textual materiality is not an animated being in any
sense, but it is not stasis either. We assume certain mobility in textual materiality
from our inability to conceive of a text outside such acts as speaking, listening,
writing, reading, seeing, drawing, and so on. Yet, textual materiality is not that
which preserves, maintains, and registers the identity of the text even when it is
not spoken, listened to, written, read, and so on-that is, when it is not being
actualized. Must I then appeal to the presence of some constituting consciousness
or some transcendental ego for which the text is posited as such? Must I resort to
the presence of some consciousness to make sense of a text devoid of the scene of
addressing, devoid of the addresser and addressee? In other words, must I ground
the textuality of the text on some constituting subjectivity, which, of ontological
necessity, is a priori to the text?
One of the reasons for introducing the terms '~text" and "intertextuality" is to
reverse the order of subjectivity and various inscriptions so as to question our
persistent obsession, whose most elaborate expression can be found in what is
often referred to as the ideology of constructive subjectivity. "Text" and "inter-
5Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 65. I have a strong reservation about Kristeva's
notion of transgression, which seems to be based on a rather reified notion of the norm and which
might easily be recuperated. It is much like the institution of confession, which depicts transgression
in order to authorize the norm that is transgressed. As to materiality, see her article Matiere, sens,
dialeclique, in Polylogue (Paris: Seuil, 1977), pp. 263-86.
The Mode of Discursive Formation 29
textuality" are conceptual devices by which to deal with the problems of subjec-
tivity without totally succumbing to this ideology.
With a view to relating the shift of a system of signs to another system and to
understanding the transformation of subjectivity, Kristeva reasserts the Lacanian
thesis that every enunciation generates a rupture and posits the subject and its
object. This rupture that produces the position of signification is called a thetic
(shudai-teki) phase, and every enunciation is thetic, requiring the separation of
the subject and the object. 6
Within the scope of the terminology I have adopted, the shift of a system of
signs to another system can be described as a transformation of the thetic posi-
tion, that is, the destruction of the old system and the formation of a new one.
Kristeva argues:
A new signifying system can be produced in the same signifying material [matfriau
signifiant]: for example, in language, a shift can occur from narration to text; but it
can be adopted from ~ different signifying material: for example, a shift can occur
from the carnivalesque scene to the written text. In this respect, we have studied the
formation of the romanesque signifying system as a result of the redistribution of
many systems of different signs: carnival, poesie courtoise, and scholastic dis-
course. The term intertextuality designates this transposition of a (or many) sys-
tem(s) of signs onto another; but since this term has often been understood in the
banal sense of "critique of sources" of a text, we rather prefer the term "transposi-
tion," which has the advantage of expressing precisely that the shift of a signifying
system to another requires a new articulation of the thetic-of enunciative and
denotative positionality. If one admits that every signifying practice is a field of
transposition of various systems (intertextuality), one understands that its "place" of
enunciation and its denoted "object" are never unique, full, and identical unto
themselves but rather that they are always plural, torn apart, and susceptible to
tabular models. 7
The term "intertextuality," therefore, helps discover the modes in which the
subject is constituted. As a matter of fact, it implies that the new position of the
6See Julia Kristeva, La revolution du langage poelique (Paris: Seuil, 1974), pp. 41-42. Shudai-
teki employs one of the Japanese tenns for "subject". In modem Japanese intellectual discourse the
tenn "subject" is translated as shugo for the grammatical or the propositional subject~ shukan for the
epistemological subject; shudai for the thematic or thetic subject; and shutai for the subject of acting,
sometimes implying the body that initiates or leads the action. These differentiations, however, are
not stable and defining the interrelations among those four "subjects" leads to linguistically and
philosophically complicated problems about subjectivity. I attempt to delineate the economy of the
"subjects" in this book by paying special attention to the ways these subjects have been operative in
modern Japanese philosophy. This, however, does not mean that I am particularly interested in the
analysis of "Japanese ways of thinking," because the problems of subjectivity posed by Japanese
philosophers are not specifically Japanese. It goes without saying that one of the purposes of this
book is to show on theoretical grounds the fragility of culturalistic categorization.
7Ibid., pp. 59-60.
30 Silence at the Center
subject is always rendered possible intertextually and, therefore, that retro-
spective analysis illustrates the discursive formation against which the new sub-
ject is brought into being, that is, into effect.
At the risk of redundancy, I say that the term "text" embraces much more than
the written document. The text is an ensemble of inscriptions governed by
signifying systems. Here I would like to introduce the second major notion of
intertextuality used in this book. The distinction between the first and the second,
which is problematic at the very least, I shall dwell on later.
The term "intertextuality" can, I believe, relieve us of the constraints imposed
by the reflection theory. In past historical studies, the scheme of reflection has
been utilized loosely; often theories based on reflection were put forth as positive
proposals, and even more often, in one form or another, this scheme impercepti-
bly seeped into the tissue of historiography. It seems to me that in almost all these
cases the necessity for this scheme arose from the inability of historians to
explicate possible relationships between those aspects of the general text that can
be construed firsthand in terms of signification (such as legal documents,
folktales, and classic books) and the other aspects of it (such as paintings, tools,
and architecture), which are illegible unless they are first denoted. Because of the
narrowness of the conventional notion of the text and also because the text is
presumed to be related to what is outside it by reflection, both conscious and
unconscious adherents of the reflection scheme have no option but to see a verbal
text as reflecting what is outside it. But reflection is merely one of many different
ways or regimes by which a text is related to the exterior. There is no universal
and singular way in which a text relates itself to its others. Instead, as is indicated
by changes in intertextuality, a text's possible relationship to what is outside it
varies. Reflection appears universal only in a historically specific discourse that I
think we are moving away from. Thus the term "intertextuality" can be instru-
mental in historicizing discursive formations and in comprehending, for in-
stance, Ito's struggles to open up different ways of utterance and action in the
reading of the classics.
A Departure
I must seek to understand the intertextual conditions that enabled Ito Jinsai to
adopt certain interpretations of the Chinese writings and to reject others, and I
must also assess how this choice of a reading strategy accorded with the forma-
tion of the philosophemes he put forth.
Ito's critique of Song rationalism cannot be understood as merely the further
elaboration of a thought system called Confucianism. Ito made no attempt to
improve the already established understanding of Confucianism by means of
minor changes and emendations. Instead, he posited a gap between himself and
the Song Confucians; he declared the falsity of what they considered the most
The Mode of Discursive Formation 31
authentic reading of the classics; he proposed a fundamental change in the way
Confucian canonical writings should be read. He himself believed his rereading
of the classics was revolutionary, not refonnist. If we accept the view that any
theoretical criticism of established ideas must be based upon a certain sphere of
evidence, namely, the source of truth to which all appeals for legitimacy must
ultimately be made, then it is obvious tbat Ito's critique did not share the same
sphere of evidence as that used by the rationalists (rigaku-sha, 1-2).
Ito's attempt to revolutionize Confucianism was accompanied by and accorded
with a general shift in the economy of discursive formation. It is noteworthy that
his refusal of tbe Cheng-Zhu conception of Ii (1-3), was coordinated with an
appeal to a new sphere of evidence. It is not surprising in the context of exegetic
strategies that this shift amounted to an alteration of the canon: from the Four
Books and the Five Classics to the Three Books (Daxue was dropped) and the
Five or Six Classics. 8 This may not appear to be so drastic a change as that
carried out by Ogyu Sorai, but it is significant in the sense that the mode of
reading changed as authenticity was removed from one set of writings and placed
on another. Of course, Ito's alteration of the canon was hardly an isolated event.
As we shall see, the writers of the eighteenth century repeatedly altered the canon
in order to advance their own theoretical positions, and the choice of canon
provided the focus for an articulation of their philosophical discourse. Ito's
alteration of the canon was an essential part of his effort to open up new universes
of utterance and perception, to escape the discursive space in which he had been
trapped. Yet what, then, is the significance of this discontinuity he posited
between his own discourse and Song rationalism? What kind of relation is there
between the discontinuity thus posed and the choice of canonical writings?
According to Ito, "Song Confucians ... do not know that the Way of Yao,
Shun, and Confucius lies entirely in ordinary life and everyday conduct."9 This
statement can also be found in writings dated to Ito's later years. Because Ito
Jinsai reviewed and reformulated his treatises many times in the course of his
career, Japanese scholars have found it extremely difficult to identify the most
"mature" and, therefore, "final" version of his philosophy. to Be that as it may,
one thing is certain: like many Confucian scholars of the time, he experienced a
radical rupture between his early and later "thought." and the statement I have
8These are references to the basic texts of Confucianism. The Four Books are Daxue (The great
learning), Zhong yong (The doctrine of the mean), Lun yu (Analects) and Mengzu (Mencius). The
Five Classics are Yi jing (The book of changes), Li ji (The book of rites), Shi jing (The book of odes),
Shujing (The book of documents), and Chun qiu (The spring and autumn annals). Together with The
book of music, which is not extant, these books are sometimes called the Six Classics. The Five
Classics were the basic texts of Confucianism in China until the time of Zhu Xi, who placed the
utmost importance on the Four Books. These were treated as the basic textbooks for the civil service
examination in China.
9Ito Jinsai, Jinsai nissatsu, in Nihon rinri ihen, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Ikuseikai, 1908), p. 177.
IOSee Miyake.Masahiko, "Jinsai-gaku no keisei," Shirin 48, no. 5 (I965); and Noguchi Takehiko,
"Kugigaku teki hoho no seiritsu," Bungaku 23, nos. 7, 8, and 9 (1968): 1-11,62-76,96-113.
32 Silence at the Center
quoted is, indeed, characteristic of his so-called later thought. He repeatedly
declared that' Song Confucians knew only abstract ideas and sophisticated discus-
sion; they manipulated complex and refined arguments, but they did not realize
how empty their words were. According to Ito, Song Confucians knew how to
investigate books in order to discover principle, how to be reverent (kei, jing, 1-
4)11 and righteous (gi, yi, 1-5), and how to discipline themselves, but their
teachings lacked what he perceived to be essential: the quality that made learning
real (jitsu, shi, 1-6). However theologically profound and religiously solemn
one might be, nothing would be accomplished if all those ideas that were so
highly respected could not be put into practice. The final arena where philosophy
is to be judged is not some remote and exclusive realm that ordinary people
cannot reach but everyday life, an arena saturated with quotidian trivialities.
Thus Ito attempted to locate the sphere of "nearness" in the center of his philoso-
phy.
The Notions of Sincerity and Hypocrisy
Ito's argument could be summarized as a critique of hypocrisy and the emptiness
of the abstract theological system. The discordance between the words of the
Song rationalists and the reality Ito perceived is clearly revealed by his argument:
"Those rationalists preached to people about what to do while they had no hope
of practicing it themselves. Or even if they had practiced it, nobody could have
failed to recognize the oddity and inhumaneness of their conduct." 12 Does this
statement imply that his critique was directed at a certain class or group of people
who actually practiced Song rationalism? Was Song rationalism widely practiced
in Tokugawa polity at that time? Would the rationalists indeed have looked odd if
they had actually put Zhu Xi's teachings into action?
It seems likely that the followers of Shushigaku (Zhu Xi's school of thought)
were rather rare at the time. 13 Song rationalism was neither the official ideology
of the dominant political authority nor the practice of any significant social
group. For this reason alone, it would seem that no attempt to read Ito's critique
merely as a covert attack on the contemporary establishment can approach an
I I The first term in parentheses is Japanese, the second Chinese. The number refers to the ideogram
given in the Appendix.
121to, Jinsai nissatsu, p. 177.
13 As recent scholarship has demonstrated, it is very doubtful that Cheng-Zhu rationalism was
adopted as the orthodox ideology by the Tokugawa shogunate. See Bito Masahide, Nihon hoken
shiso-shi kenkyu (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1961), and Herman Ooms Tokugawa Ideology (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1986). All the problems concerning Shushigaku as the shogunate ide-
ology seem to stem from the mishandling of the intertextual distance, which has been automatically
translated into either historical distance or the distance between social groups. I do not claim that
orthodox ideology and ideological distance between social classes or social groups are not involved,
but I simply cannot reduce textual formation to social and economic formation. The power rela-
tionship in the society is constituted in the text, and not vice versa.
The Mode of Discursive Formation 33
understanding of the social and political implications of Ito's study of Confucian
classics. But I also believe that no text should be read as a reflection of extratex-
tual reality. Strictly speaking, the very question of how a written text might have
been pre-determined by the economic and social formation of society must be
disallowed if we admit-as I believe we must-that what has been perceived as
extratextual reality consists entirely of a set of texts. Of course, reality is posited
as if it were somewhere outside the· text, independent of all signifiers, or a
meaning without inscription. In the final analysis, however, this kind of common
sense must be considered an idealist fancy, the very sort of idealism Ito crit-
icized. I maintain that texts generate reality, but not the reverse-provided, of
course, that the word "text" is read with theoretical understanding that the text
necessarily encompasses "the referents": the relationship to the referents is inter-
nal to the text.
Ito's critique -of Song rationalism opened up a field of perception in which the
rationalists, who had previously seemed normal and respectable, came to appear
as Ito described them, abnonnal and odd. Ito talks about this very process in his
description of some followers of Song rationalism who finally came to Kyoto to
attend ·his lecture and reached a sudden realization that "transcendentalism"
inherent in Zhu Xi's teaching would only lead people to stubbornness and social
isolation.
But is this an account proper to Zhu Xi's teaching? If it is, in what sense is it
so? If not, in what sense is it not? Can we possibly maintain that Zhu's discourses
show no concern for life's mundane trivia. (This is intertextuality of the first
kind, namely, among written texts.) By analyzing the mode of dependence of
Ito's discourse on others, I hope to trace the intertextuality present in his critique
of the discursive space from which he fled. 14
I simply cannot agree with Ito that Zhu Xi neglected mundane things and
concrete social relations with others. Zhu constantly emphasized the importance
of everyday life; one of the books he edited is titled Reflections on Things at
Hand. Moreover, Zen Buddhism, which Ito also bitterly criticized, was no
14It is first of all intertextual distance that enabled Ito to criticize the Cheng-Zhu formation of
discourse. This distance is not necessarily historical since the presence of Cheng-Zhu writings in Ito's
time generated the necessity for such a critique. Neither is it primarily a distance between one social
group and another, although it could function as a means by which one social group identified itself in
opposition to another. Perhaps, the use ofthe term "intertextuality" might be emphasized once again.
La langue precedes Ie parole. But the mode of this precedence cannot be confused with temporal
ordering. As has been formulated by Kant, this problem is essentially that of de jure not de facto. If
we still maintain that historical knowledge belongs to the de facto sphere, the relationship between
parole and langue certainly defies any discussion of the truth of fact. Jonathan Culler writes:
"Intertextuality thus becomes less a name for a work's relation to particular prior texts than a
designation of its participation in the discursive space of a culture: the relationship between a text and
the various languages or signifying practices of a culture and its relation to those texts which
articulate for it the possibilities of that culture" (The Pursuit of Signs (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1980], p. 103). It is important to stress that intertextuality can never be reduced to a rela-
tionship between one book and another.
34 Silence at the Center
different from Song rationalism in this regard. Both of these teachings held
paramount the notion that philosophical ideas should never be uprooted from the
sphere of "nearness," where one encounters things and people in everyday life.
As a matter of fact, crude transcendentalism had never been accepted as a form
of discourse either in Confucianism or Zen Buddhism. It is likely, therefore, that
what had once been new and mundane for Zhu Xi and some Buddhists whose
works Ito read was so no longer: their sphere of nearness had been replaced by a
new perception of nearness. Things and human activities that had never been
present in discourse prior (prior in the intertextual order) to the late seventeenth
century now demanded inclusion in the presentation of basic Confucian values.
Ito pointed to an encounter of different regimes of action and perception.
This is the significance of Ito's critique of rationalism: not only is the rela-
tionship of Ito Jinsai to Zhu Xi and other Song Confucians discontinuous, but
also his critique of Zhu Xi was actually a way to articulate what had hitherto been
inexpressible in his time. Many of the basic philosophemes were so organized as
to indicate the location of the negative pole, which he associated with Zhu Xi or
Song rationalism. In this respect, Zhu's writings played an essential role; without
them it would have been impossible for Ito to construct his argument. So, in view
of the shift of the sphere of nearness, how am I to evaluate the discontinuity he
dramatized by distancing himself from the hypocrisy of "rationalists"?
For a tenn to play an important role in a supposedly unified field of discourse
(a book, a work, a set of works, a group of works belonging to the putative unity
of an author), it must be well incorporated into the network of differentiations
that govern the field of discourse. What endows such a term with a function and
makes it effective in organizing a series of arguments is its relatedness to the
economy of a discursive space. "Term," in this context, does not necessarily
mean a work or a morphological unit whose identity depends on the structure of
language (langue). It should rather be described as a complex, a discursive unit,
which consists of interchangeable sets of words or expressions. In other words, it
belongs not to the order of language but to that of discourse. Hypocrisy, as it
appears in Ito's writings, is a complex of this kind, and analysis of it should lead
us to an overview of the intertextual relationship between his and Zhu Xi's
discourses. The term Hhypocrisy" as repeatedly evoked in Ito's discourse neces-
sarily involves a discourse outside Ito's own, as is obvious from its connotatIon;
its function is to separate, to distance his discourse from what it criticizes and
reproaches. It differentiates one fonn of life from another, elevates one as sincere
and degrades another as false or, more precisely, hypocritical. Yet by emphasiz-
ing this distinction, it nonetheless relates one to the other; it is an intertextual
device, a sort of one-sided linkage bridging one form of life and another.
In the meantime, we must be aware that the term "hypocrisy" cannot denote
the divided consciousness we would customarily associate with it today. This
denotation is even less plausible if we recognize that Ito generated a new struc-
ture of thought in which, for the first time, hypocrisy as divided consciousness
The Mode of Discursive Formation 35
was endowed with its own voice and space for legitimate expression. Of course,
the expression of hypocrisy became detectable as the result of a discursive
transformation, and the critique of the "rationalists" was, after all, a discursive
event.
Ironically enough, the critique of hypocrisy also played an important role in
Zhu Xi's philosophy. Zhu Xi seemed to offer a much clearer definition of it than
Ito, partly because of the dualistic formation of his arguments. Remnants of Zhu
Xi's binary system can be detected in one of the essays normally attributed to Ito
Jinsai's earlier years, when he was still operating in the language of Song ra-
tionalism: .
In the Way of students, nothing precedes the establishment of sincerity [sei, cheng,
1-7] [in oneself], nothing is more essential than sincerity. Unless one is sincere, one
would never be able to exhaust one's own nature in following the Way. Hence the
teaching of Confucius regards loyalty and trust [chushin, zhong xin] as the central
issue and the establishment of sincerity as the root of ascetic practice.. .The
Doctrine of the Mean says, "Sincerity is the Way of heaven. To make [it] sincere 15 is
the Way of men. Sincerity is that which is real without vacuity [kyo, xu, 1-8], is that
which is true without fabrication [ka, jia,]. This is what makes the sages as they
are." "To make it sincere" is to be entirely real by getting rid of vacuity and to seek
truth by abandoning fabrication. This is what students should do. Once students
have successfully achieved this, they are identical to the sages. When this is talked
about from the viewpoint of students, however, one cannot acquire sincerity unless
one maintains it through reverence. 16
It is not difficult to see that this argument is constructed on the basis of the
binary oppositions real/vacuous and true/fabricated, in which the real and the
true are associated with nature (sei, xing, 1-10) and the vacuous and the fabri-
cated are veils that prevent nature from manifesting itself clearly and ex-
haustively. At this stage, Ito defined sincerity as one's relatedness without any
obstruction to the world in which nature was revealed. Those who constantly
maintained such relatedness were called sages, and those who could realize it
only momentarily were called students. Thus in regard to nature a student and a
sage were not different, but in regard to the endurance of nature they were. Of
15Literally translated, this phrase means "to render what can be sincere sincere." "What can be
sincere" is not specified, and I rather avoid substituting "the self" or "one's mind" because the
separation of the self from the world is nothing but what Ito called fabrication, or an absence of
sincerity. The entire passage in Zhong yong from which Ito's quotation is drawn is as follows:
..Sincerity is the Way of heaven. The realization of sincerity is the Way of men. He who is sincere is
he who, without an effort, hits what is right and apprehends without the exercise of thought; -he is
the sage who naturally and easily practices the right way. He who realizes sincerity is he who chooses
what is good, and firmly holds it fast." Zhong yong, Shinshaku kanbun taikei (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin,
1967), 2:275.
16Ito Jinsai, "Risshijikei no setsu," Kogaku sensei bunshu, in Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 33 (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1971), p. 211.
36 Silence at the Center
course, the theme running through the entirety of this article was the doctrine of
inherently good human nature (seizensetsu, xingshan-shuo, 1-11) as it was
interpreted in Song rationalism. If we were to define the term "hypocrisy"
within this system of binary oppositions, the only form its theoretical specifica-
tion could take would be the deviation from one's own nature or, more specifical-
ly, from the universal human nature innate in oneself. That is, when one deviated
from one's own nature, one would be called a hypocrite. But as Ito underwent a
radical change, the theoretical significance of the term would be altered and the
doctrine of inherently good human nature, accordingly, would take on a different
theoretical articulation.
The Status of Thinghood
In order to comprehend the significance of the discontinuity and the radical
change Ito underwent, we must first analyze how that binary system was related
to other philosophemes in Song rationalism. How were these binary divisions an
obstacle in articulating the sphere of nearness when the supposed authority of
discursive space was challenged?
There are some important but ambiguous words in Zhu Xi's writings. Wu
(mono, 1-12) is one that plays an important yet extremely problematical role not
only in Zhu Xi's discourse but also in Ogyu Sorai's (although Ogyu's use of it is
vastly different). For both, the ambiguity of this term tends to designate the
boundary between what could be explicitly demonstrated in language and what
could not. According to Zhu Xi's primary explication, wu is the locus where
further conceptual articulation could be pursued. For instance, it is in relation to
wu that the differentiation between Ii and qi (ki, 1-13) was posited. Interestingly
enough, this explication implies that it is impossible to pinpoint the signifier and
its unity in the form of "what it is." Hence, "thing" (wu) is primarily a place of
differentiation, not of identity. The only possible way we could tackle this term is
to describe it with a diacritical definition, as a part of philosophemes related to
what is necessarily excluded, that is, of the heterogeneous.
Zhu talked about the two principal terms, li and qi, as distinctively different.
At the same time, the two are supposedly present within things when they are
seen from the viewpoint of their participation in wu. Moreover, as far as Ii's
participation in things is concerned, it is impossible to determine which of the
two, Ii or wu, precedes the other. Li should be immanent in things, and it seems
that the presence of Ii is dependent on the presence of things, but Zhu Xi also
affirmed that Ii exists prior to the moment when the things in which Ii is to
manifest itself are made to exist: "What exists before physical form [and is
therefore without it] constitutes the Way. What exists after physical form [and is
therefore with it] constitutes concrete things." Although the differentiation be-
tween ·'above-form" (keijijo, xing er shang, 1-14), and "under-form" (keijika,
The Mode of Discursive Formation 37
xing er xia, 1-15), is associated in this translation with temporal ordering, before
and after, it also has a non-temporal dimension, for at the end of the same
paragraph we find the following statement ..So long as the Way obtains, it does
not matter whether it is present or future or whether it is the self or others." 17
In one aspect, Ii precedes things, but in another, it does not. The relationship
between Ii and wu is discussed in terms of temporal precedence as well as in
terms that are basically atemporal. What is at issue is the nature of the differentia-
tions by which Ii is constitutively identified. In fact, one passage in Reflections
on Things at Hand illustrates the principle of differentiation according to which Ii
is articulated in'opposition to other terms: "According to the principle of heaven
and earth and all things, nothing exists in isolation but everything necessarily has
its opposite. All this is naturally so and is not arranged or manipulated. I often
think of this at midnight and feel as happy as if I were dancing with my hands and
feet." 18
Zhu himself claimed that this statement by Cheng Vi, which he incorporated
into the system of his philosophy, was to be based on differences. Once viewed
from this standpoint, the seeming contradictions that we have encountered in his
writings soon dissolve.
Li and qi are not two principles that constitute reality in the same way as forma
and materia. What has to be acknowledged is that any datum can be construed in
terms of its meaning and the surplus of its meaning. In any thing there can be a
distinction between what linguistic explication can identify in it and what lan-
guage as narrowly defined cannot exhaust. In the case of a physical object, a
chair for example, the word "chair" certainly identifies this or that physical
entity, but its individual existence can never be fully absorbed into the linguistic
explication. One may describe this particular chair in more detail, but doing so
leads only to the discovery of its more detailed individual characteristics. This is
an essential aspect of referential signification-objectification, which posits the
relationship of adequacy between the subject in judgment and the individual as
an object for the subject. Yet, as can be seen, the subject can never be identical
with the individual, for the individual always transcends the subject: the actual
presence of an individual thing necessarily exceeds its meaning so that it can
never be exhaustively subsumed under the subject.
Perhaps, this problem can be clarified by introducing a term for a specific kind
of subject. Tentatively, the subject is shugo insofar as it signifies the subject of a
proposition or statement. This shugo-subject is a word, a nominal phrase, or
even a nominal clause, and it can also be a proper noun. Distinct from this shugo-
subject is the individual thing the shugo-subject designates, In response to the
question What is that thing? posed by someone who points to a thing, one might
17Zhu Xi, Kinshiroku, in Shushigaku taikei (Tokyo: Meitoku Shuppan-sha, 1974), 9:35. Part of the
English translation was adapted from Reflections on Things at Hand, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1967).
18Ibid., p. 38.
38 Silence at the Center
r
;
T
1 mo~hologically d~finea but also a semantic unity constituted syntagmatically.
Figure A. Rene Magritte, Les Deux Mysteres, 1966. Copyright 1991 Charly Hersco-
vici! ARS, N. Y.
answer, "That is . . . ." Here, the object pointed out is the individual thing, and
the word "that" in the answer, which takes the form of statement, is a shugo-
subject. Obviously the shugo-subject indicates the individual thing. Yet, as this
example shows, we cannot overlook that the shugo-subject belongs to the regis-
ter of words, whereas the individual thing belongs to the register of things.
Except in cases where these two registers are confused (See figure A, Les Deux
Mysteres) , the shugo-subject and the individual thing it indicates are infinitely
separated; the individual thing is infinitely transcendent with respect to the
shugo-subject. There seems no way to exhaustively subsume an individual thing
under a shugo-subject. In other words, to say a subject adequately expresses an
individual is to repress what cannot be designated in that individual, to repress its
surplus.
Hence, necessarily, to find a meaning in some datum is to introduce the
differentiation between what the meaning can denote and what escapes the mean-
ing. Li could then be associated with an aspect of things which linguistic explica-
tion is capable of identifying, and qi with the residue or surplus beyond this
linguistic explication.
The Mode of Discursive Formation 39
Then it may appear that the differentiation li/wu corresponds to that between
the signified and th~ signifier. Before adopting such interpretative terminology,
however, I should cIrcumscribe the area in which its use is justified. Otherwise
its application would generate unnecessary and irrelevant problems in the cours~
of my analysis.
First, the li/wu differentiation is not limited to the area of linguistic signs. In
Zhu's discourse i~ is ~m?ossible to find any criterion by which to distinguish
between areas of lIngUIStIC and nonlinguistic phenomena. Although Ferdinand de
Saussure seems to suggest that the pair, signifier and signified, should be incor-
pora~ed into a much wider field of study than linguistics, the primary definition
he gIves these concepts is linguistic. By contrast, Zhu Xi's differentiation is
ontic, in the sense that it should be valid for any phenomenon in the world. It is
"the principle of heaven and earth and all things." The ontic character of this
differentiation is of particular significance for us since it implies that the status of
language in Zhu's universe is fundamentally different from that in modem lin-
guistics. Especially important in this regard is that the absence of a distinction
betw~en the l~nguistic and the nonlinguistic suggests that li is not only the
meamng of thmgs but also the meaning of manner and behavior. Zhu Xi talks
about dressing, eating, and behavior as event-things. 19 As a thing is the location
for Ii, so an event-thing accommodates Ii, and Ii thus incarnated in the event-
thing is also called the Way. It is not only a basic unit of meaning that is
So, m.order to explIcate how language, things, and texts are mutually related and
s~m~tImes fused and how they differ from one another (or they do not differ) in
hIS dIscourse, I must inquire into the concepts Ii and qi in relation to the question
of signification .
. With regard to the mode of presence, it could be claimed the Ii and qi are
~ImuI~aneous. Only when qi is present is Ii also present. Likewise qi manifests
Itself m th~ present only if Ii does. Therefore, li and qi are mutually dependent.
But there IS an aspect in which Ii precedes qi. Since qi is identified in terms of
wh~t escapes the meaning of a thing, qi cannot determine itself. It is always
defmed as the residue or surplus of meaning. In this particular sense, qi is
depe~dent on li. Only when a thing is associated with Ii does qi gain its on-
ltolo~~cal s.t~t~s. Li is no~ prior. to qi temporally but precedes qi logically. In
addItIon, II s Immanence m a thmg as its meaning indicates that it is impossible
to talk about the "when" of Ii. As it transcends the individuality of things, li also
transcends the act of presenting. We may easily be drawn into the view that Ii is,
after all, that which consciousness projects onto a thing and, therefore, that Ii is
constituted by the synthetic function of epistemological consciousness, but this is
ce~ainly not the case here. Li cannot be reduced to the act of presenting con-
SCIOusness. Nonetheless, li maintains its transcendent character. Just as one
19For instance, Zhu Xi, Yu lei. vol. 62 (no modem edition available).
40 Silence at the Center
cannot in destroying a chair also annihilate its meaning, Ii seems to be indifferent
to accidental change that occurs in things. It is simpiy impossible to s~y when Ii
emerges or disappears. Obviously the li/qi differentiation is, at the same time,
the differentiation between the atemporal and the temporal. What is meant by the
statement just quoted- "it does not matter whether it is present or future" -is
not that Ii is the eternal presence of the principle. It should rather indicate that Ii
is the ideational and atemporal aspect of reality, realitas. This understanding of
Ii, in turn, enables us to define qi as the presence of what in fact can never be
objectified or identified. For this reason, Zhu Xi attributed the existence of actual
things to qi. Also for this reason, qi is always viewed as the cause of deviation
from the ideational intentionality, from Ii toward wu. Zhu Xi stated: "Where
there is no thing, there is no Ii. Similarly, Ii can only exist in the middle of qi.
Without qi, Ii would have no residence."2o Insofar as qi is equated with the
horizon for Ii, qi can never be identified explicitly. As soon as it received a
definite meaning,' it would lose its ontological status as qi. The fate of qi is to
reside only in the periphery of Ii's ideational intentionality, but this same fate
makes it possible for qi to become a fertile material realm for individuation, the
contingency of the present, and the deviation from essences. Hence, Ii and qi are
in a dialectical relationship in which Ii functions as a principle of universaliza-
tion, whereas qi seems to designate that which slides away from the effect of
universalization. (Nevertheless, it should be remembered that qi is not the princi- '
pIe of particularization since the particular is possible only as a type of the
universal: individuation and particularization should never be confused with each
other.) Essentially, qi must be grasped as the principle of individuality.
According to Zhu Xi, the ideational intentionality of Ii is something that has to
be initiated by the self, or one's mind (jikashin, zi jia xin, 1-16), and this self
belongs to qi. Although the self's capacity, or mind (shin, xin, 1-17), to give rise
to the ideational intentionality, does not necessarily belong to qi, the ideational
intentionality itself must be initiated in qi. 21 Where it fuses with the inten-
20Ibid., vol. I.
21Edmund Husserl explains the tenn ideation = essential insight in Ideas Pertaining to a Pure
Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. trans. F. Kersten, (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1983): "At first "essence" designates what is to be found in the very own being of an
individuum as the What of an individuum. Any such What can, however, be 'put into an idea.'
Experiencing, intuition of something individual can become transmuted into eidetic seeing ('ide-
ation)' a possibility which is itself to be understood not as empirical, but as eidetic. What is seen
when that occurs is the corresponding pure essence, or Eidos, whether it be the highest category or a
particularization thereof-down to full concretion" (p. 8).
And he says: "The essence (Eidos) is a new sort of object. Just as the datum of individual or
experiencing intuition is an individual object, so the datum ofeidetic intuition is a pure essence" (p.
II). Husser! talks about the ideality of language in general in Formal and Transcendental Logic,
trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978): "Let us note concerning the topic speech
a certain distinction that we must not overlook. The uttered word, the actually spoken locution, taken
as a sensuous, specifically an acoustic,. phenomenon, is something that we distinguish from the word
itself or the declarative sentence itself, or the sentence-sequence itself that makes up a more extensive
locution. Not without reason~in cases where we have not been understood and we reiterate-do we
The Mode of Discursive Formation 41
tionality of action is in fact the central locus of his theoretical construction.
Since, as we have already noted, there is. no distinction between the linguistic
and the nonlinguistic in Zhu's discourse, there is no conceptual device by which
to differentiate the temporalities of action and thinking. The aim of an action is
posited on the same level as the meaning of a thing; the intentionality of knowing
as the mind's act is incorporated into the intentionality of signification. Zhu Xi
recommends that his students repeat their reading of the classics until the mean-
ing inherent in them becomes completely obvious. The textuality of the classics
would then be transparent, so that the meaning would be revealed without a veil.
The differentiation between transparence and opacity is thus related to that be-
tween Ii and wu. The transition from opacity to transparence is now viewed as a
learning process in which one gradually casts aside qi and reveals Ii. In this
regard, the li/qi differentiation provides learning with its goal and starting point.
What had originally been posited as an atemporal diacritical division is now
deployed through the temporal duration of learning in which one gradually
proceeds toward the complete revelation of Ii. Learning, therefore, is a move-
ment toward an approximation of Ii, whose duration is sustained by repetitive
action. 22
Since learning is accomplished through the repetition of patterned behavior,
through habit fonnation, what has been characterized as the ideational and atem-
, poral aspect of Ii is translated into the possibility that Ii could be repeatedly
presented without losing its identity. At first, Ii is covered with qi, and Ii does not
manifest itself. In the same way, when a mirror is covered with impurities, an
image cannot be reflected; the vision is blurred and opaque. One has to submit
speak precisely of a reiteration of the same words and sentences. In a treatise or a novel every word,
every sentence, is a one-time affair, which does not become multiplied by a reiterated vocal or silent
reading. Nor does it matter who does the reading; though each reader has his own voice, his own
timbre, and so forth. The treatise itself (taken now only in its lingual aspect, as composed of words or
language) is something that we distinguish, not only from the multiplicities of vocal reproduction, but
also, and in the same manner, from the multiplicities of its pennanent documentations by paper and
print, parchment and handwriting, or the like. The one unique language-composition is reproduced a
thousand times, perhaps in book fonn: We speak simply of the same book with the same story, the
same treatise. And this self-sameness obtains even with respect to the purely lingual composition:
while, in another manner, it obtains also with respect to the sharply distinguishable significational
contents, which we shall shortly take into account.
"As a system of habitual signs, which, within an ethnic community, arises, undergoes transfonna-
tion, and persists in the manner characteristic of tradition-a system of signs by means of which, in
contrast to signs of other sorts, an expressing of thoughts comes to pass-language presents al-
together its own problems. One of them is the just-encountered ideality of language, which is usually
quite overlooked. We may characterize it also in this fashion: Language has the Objectivity proper to
the objectivities making up the so-called spiritual (geistige) or cultural world, not the Objectivity
proper to bare physical Nature. As an objective product of minds, language has the same properties
as other mental products: Thus we also distinguish from the thousand reproductions of an engraving,
the engraving itself; and this engraving, the engraved picture itself, is visually abstracted from each
reproduction, being given in each, in the same manner as an identical object" (pp. 19-20).
22Yasuda Jiro, "Shushi ni okeru shukan no mondai," in Chugoku kinseishiso kenkyu (Tokyo:
Kobundo, 1948), pp. 98-121.
42 Silence at the Center
oneself to a patterned action repeatedly to achieve the Way.23 In each repetition,
Ii is immanent, yet not fully revealed. But finally one should be able to reach the
stage where one is identical with the sages and all impurities have been removed,
so that Ii is clearly and exhaustively manifested. Underlying this argument is an
assumption that Ii remains identical throughout the process of learning: learning
gradually unveils the li that is immanent in things. On the other hand, learning is
also the formation of habit, that is a gradual process in which the leamer's body
assimilates Ii in the patterned action. Zhu Xi puts it this way:
Question: Do the observation of things and the examination of the self mean that,
upon seeing things, one should reflectively ~tum to one's own body and seek the
principle?
Answer: You do not necessarily have to talk in this way. Things and the self are
governed by the same principle. If you illuminate one, you understand the other.
This is the way to make the inside and the outside coincide. 24
It is noteworthy that Zhu's concept of the self never loses contact with the
body. Furthermore, since the human body is always already engaged in the actual
world, there cannot be a radical rupture between the self and things. Like many
writers in both Confucianism and Buddhism, Zhu was also sensitive to the
ontological rupture between the self and things or between ideas and things
which certain formations of discourse tend to generate. In addition, he seems to
have taken great precautions to prevent transcendentalism from sneaking into his
discourse. As a matter of fact, the private "I" (shi, 1-19) as Zhu discussed it is
never entirely deprived of its materiality. A human body is a thing among other
things, a part outside other parts. It is not a field of presentation where copies of
things, not things themselves, are represented. For this reason, the self as Zhu
discussed it would never gain the transparence with which consciousness is
endowed. Rather, it remains opaque as long as it is an "I." Only when it is
devoid of the ontological character as the "I" and when things and the self are
identical in Ii can it become completely transparent.
Here I postulate the parallelism of the three binary oppositions:
Li/Qi
Transparent/Opaque
Approximation/Deviation
According to this schema, the private self, as opposed to the public one, is an
area circumscribed by means of qi and the opaque and the deviation from es-
23Therefore, there should be a close connection between Ii and rite (rei, Ii, 1-18). See Tu Wei-
ming, "Li as Process of Humanization," in Humanity and Self-Cultivation (Berkeley, Calif.: Asian
Humanities Press, 1979), pp. 17-34. It goes without saying that Ito's critique is directed toward this
complicity of Ii and rite, and later we shall see Ogyu Sorai's attempt to reinstitute this complicity
against Ito Jinsai's critique of it.
24Zhu Xi, Reflections on Things at Hand, p. 304.
The Mode of Discursive Formation 43
sences. This characterization implies that, like qi in relation to Ii, the "self," or
private "I" (shi), is that which escapes liqguistic explanation or determination.
Since the self is in the element of individuation, it can be talked about only in
negative terms: it is impossible to identify the self in and of itself. If language is a
medium of universalization, this kind of self could be posited only as a resistance
to language use. In short, the private self.is equivalent to the individual thing, as
opposed to the public self, which is supposedly adequate to the subject. From our
standpoint, the public "I" is an imaginary state in which one believes his or her
self is exhaustively identical with what he or she as a subject should be. The
sense of disparity between the individual thing and the subject is totally lost in
the public "I": the field of universals within which the subject is constituted is
perceived to coincide exhaustively with the entire world. Not just ethically but
also epistemologically, the private self in Zhu Xi's discourse is an indescribable
obstacle, which eventually has to be eliminated in the course of learning. One
should not forget that the final stage, when the "I" is fully assimilated into Ii, is
also the completion of the formation of a certain habit through repetitive action in
one's own body. The faculties of knowing and acting are united in a habit
incarnated in the human whereby the shift from qi, opacity and deviation, toward
Ii, transparence and approximation, is ensured. Zhu Xi notes:
The two characters used in the phrase "investigation of things" are the most rele-
vant. "Things" in this phrase means event-things. When the ultimate meaning of an
event-thing is revealed, there will necessarily be one positive aspect to it. You must
do the positive and you must not do the negative. These positive and negative
aspects have to be experienced through your own body. When you study written
texts and are in contact with event-things, the area of experience you acquire through
your own body gradually widens and becomes spontaneous and easy. 25
Without the concept of the primordial relatedness between the human body and
things in the world, the investigation of things as Zhu Xi described it here would
never have had such an important role in his philosophy. To be sure, the inten-
tionality incarnated in the human body synthesizes the two: the ideational and
practical intentionalities.
The Invisibility of One's Body
The fundamental difference in temporal structure of these intentionalities is
concealed by means of the ambiguous ontological status of the human body in
Zhu's discourse. The human body and its work as the agent of action are con-
stantly suppressed and pushed toward the periphery in his argument, so that the
order and the world may be presented as if they were already and permanently
25Zhu Xi, Yu lei, vol. 15, section 2.
44 Silence at the Center
there. It is undeniable that his philosophy is a kind of positivism in which one is
forced to adhere to the values in the world, and their validity is beyond question.
The ideational intentionality from the temporal presence of wu toward the
meaning, Ii, is also a mode of transcendence from the present toward the atem-
poral presence of the meaning. In other words, wu and Ii are related to each other
in a mediatory structure between the atemporal and the temporal. By contrast,
the intentionality of praxis is from the present toward the future. Since it is
founded on the motor function of the human body, the practical intentionality is
also grounded on the ec-static transcendence of the human body toward the aim
of its action. When Zhu Xi occasionally talks about the opposition of inside and
outside, it should be understood in terms of intention behind action and the aim
of action. This opposition cannot be a stable and fixed rupture comparable to the
epistemological dichotomy of subject and object. At each moment in each ac-
tion, this opposition is constituted and resolved. What is to be established sub-
stantially through repetitive practice is not such an opposition: rather, it is the
affirmation of the continuity of things and the subject (public "I," ware, wo, 1-
20) of the intention and the consequence of an action. As patterned action
becomes more and more spontaneous, the private "I" gradually dissolves into
the public subject, into a fuller participation of its body in the world. Concur-
rently the "I" becomes increasingly invisible until a complete transparency
prevails, which is, as a matter of fact, the presence of Ii, the state described as
clear virtue (meitoko, ming de, 1-21).
In perception, according to phenomenologists, what is visible is always ac-
companied by the horizon, which is itself invisible. Yet this invisible horizon
determines the presence of the present and the meaningfulness of visible things.
One perceives and acts only through one's own body, although one does not
perceive one's body thematically. Compared to the abstractness of ideational
intentionality, this differentiation between the visible and the invisible, which is
embodied in practical intentionality, manifests its theoretical importance to the
fullest extent when we take into consideration the concreteness and the imme-
diacy of praxis. For whereas the division of the above-fonn and the under-form
simultaneously marks the invisibility of Ii and the visibility of wu, it is impossi-
ble to expect a similar parallelism in the practical intentionality with wu as the
invisible and shen (shin, human body, 1-22) as the visible. Perhaps the follow-
ing schema will explain more clearly:
Ideational Intentionality
Ii (meaning) ~ wu (thing)
(invisible: above-form) (visible: under-form)
(atemporal) (temporal)
Practical Intentionality
wu (thing) ~ shen (human body)
(visible) (invisible)
The Mode of Discursive Formation 45
(temporal constancy: (presence: present as the
future as the aim of pl~ce of action and desire)
bodily action and desire)
In terms of directionality, I can posit a parallelism between the ideational and
praCtical intentionalities:
wu
A. Ii ~
~ shen
wu
Another schema relates the visible and the invisible:
B. Ii ~ wu
shen ~ wu
(invisible) (visible)
Does schema B tell us that one's body belongs to the realm of the above-form?
It seems that this schema illustrates the duality of Ii in relation to shen: Ii at the
same time transcends and is immanent in shen when dust, the cause of opacity, is
completely removed from nature-hence, the image of the clear mirror (meikyo,
ming jing, 1-23). When the ideal state to which Zhu attributed sagehood is
established, Ii and shen are no longer distinguishable. Li then becomes the
principle regulating the world along with shen, and the rule of one's praxis. It has
to be noted, however, that shen never gains a central position in his discourse: it
is never given as much emphasis as Ii, and it is conceived as an opacity that is to
become completely transparent as learning proceeds toward the ideal state.
In contrast, the state of wu in schema A is ambiguous in the sense that, on the
one hand, it is that which is transcended toward Ii and, on the other hand, it is
that toward which one's body is transcended. Unlike shen, thing's visibility
remains certain all the way through the learning process. In this regard, it should
be remembered that the reading of written documents is one of the most essential
practices in the "investigation of things." Furthermore, many passages in Zhu's
treatises suggest that reading is considered the most authentic mode of investigat-
ing things. It may appear that Zhu urged his students to read, figuratively speak-
ing, Ii in every phenomenon in the world, including the behavior of others. So, it
can be said that for Zhu Xi the world consisted of various documents, a book of
innumerable pages, which had to be read gradually. The pedagogical significance
of the '"investigation of things and the exhaustion of knowledge" lies in the
acquisition of this skill of reading such a book, as if it were habituated in one's
body: "Once you grasp the general meaning of a writing, you should then read it
carefully. It is just like eating fruit. First you have a bite of it. As you keep
chewing it, the delicious taste will come out. "26
26Ibid., vol. 14, section 15.
46 Silence at the Center
Nevertheless, reading can be problematic in his discourse when it is concerned
with the procedure of extracting the authentic meaning from writings. ~ince, in
his discourse reading is the predominant mode of understanding the world in
general, to extract meaning from a book is, by extension, to interpret the world.
In the passage just quoted, Zhu presumes that the authentic meaning is inherent
in the book itself, regardless of what kind of relationship may exist between the
book and the reading subject. In other words, the reading act is totally passive
and the individuality of the reading subject cannot distort the meaning. As a
matter of fact, the meaning of the book is the meaning within the book. In
schema A, Ii and wu are structurally fused, and we have already acknowledged
that in Zhu Xi's discourse what should amount to textual materiality is often
substituted for the ideational presence of a text's meaning. This is exactly the
mode of existence in which the writing and the text in general are conceived.
Therefore, the difference between the materiality of the text and the ideational
presence of the meaning (Ii) of the text is deliberately repressed. As a result, 'the
writing, Confucian classics in particular, is supposed to transcend not only histor-
ical time but also the empirical subjectivity of the readership. Similarly, the
authentic meaning of the book is always already ensconced within the book, just
as the taste is hidden within the fruit. It is always already there in the midst of the
text's material presence.
As has been said, wu is the location where the IiI qi differentiation resides. Li
is the atemporal presence of the meaning, whereas qi is the presence of' the
present, which is always absent from the viewpoint of ideational intentionality as
the surplus of the meaning in wu. In this regard, a parallel can be drawn between
the mode of existence of the meaning in a written work and that of the meaning in
a thing. In addition, inasmuch as wu plays a rather ambiguous role in the parallel
already noted in schema A, it should be possible in Zhu's discourse for the book
and the thing to be interchangeable in fact.
Furthermore, since the book is a thing and a thing a book, the division does not
hold between its material presence and its ideality. Hence it should be held that
Zhu Xi conceives of wu as that which is endowed with the depth of meaning. In
other words, wu is a locus where material is always inhabited by signification: it
is an overlap of semantic space and physical space.
But if the significative function is allocated on the side of wu, how can we take
into account the act that constitutes meaning? Is meaning not constituted by
somebody at some moment? Does the noematic intentionality always accompany
the noetic act? Insofar as wu, in which meaning is immanent, is autonomous and
independent of the subjectivity of reading and enunciation or of reading as
enunciation, the question concerning the constitution of meaning does not occur
in this discursive space. Indeed, Zhu occasionally refers to speech, but never as
an ontological act by which to generate a meaning: rather, it is an element in
which a meaning already established is to be repeated. As far as temporality is
concerned, meaning is always grasped in the present perfect tense. Its existence
The Mode of Discursive Formation 47
precedes the constituting act~ therefore,· instead of constituting and generating it,
the act only reveals and discloses what has already been incarnated in wu.
Signification cannot be entirely absorbed into presence, into what is present to a
subjectivity. (Undoubtedly, the term "mind" is very important in this context.
We, will examine the problematic nature of this term in the next chapter.) For this
reason, the presence of meaning depet:lds on a consistency of material that
ensures the possibility of repetitive presence. The author, an originator, belongs
to a distant and dim memory of the book itself. What is repeatedly affirmed by
ZhuXi is the essential function of inscription, by which the empirical subject,
regardless of whether it is the subject of enunciation or of reading, is constantly
erased or degraded.
Even if the text excludes its author from the presence of its meaning, must it
appeal to the reading subject for its initiation and evocation? Even if it is certain
that the meaning is already immanent in the text, should it be awakened and
evoked from its dormancy, for if nobody reads the text, how can its meaning be
present and grasped? In Zhu Xi's discourse, however, this problem is not crucial,
and it seems that the system of differentiations prohibits it from being articulated
as questions that could threaten the integrity of his discourse. It should be
remembered that if we are ever to find the equivalent in his writings for what we
call subjectivity-an extremely problematic term in itself, as I shall demonstrate
in the following chapters-it is either in the conception of the self articulated in
terms of one's body, or in the notion of the mind completely deprived of indi-
viduality. To the extent that the Iiiqi differentiation corresponds to the univer-
sal/individual (not, let me repeat, the binary opposition universal [general]1
particular), the private self must be overcome and transcended in the process of
deciphering the meaning lying dormant in the text's material presence. There-
fore, as has been demonstrated, one's own body as a philosopheme does not
occupy an important position in Zhu's philosophy despite his frequent references
to it. As qi is the cause of deviation from Ii, the human body as the individual "I"
remains indefinable and escapes linguistic elucidation. Yet qi is not silence
highly charged with a meaningfulness beyond verbalization~ it is, instead, a noise
that disturbs and blurs the contour of otherwise meaningful works. Likewise, the
private "I" is equivalent to the source of noise. It is an obstacle that has to be
overcome in the course of revealing Ii in the midst of events and things. Hence,
learning, as defined by Zhu Xi, must be accompanied by the ultimate loss of the
self, and what he calls "illuminating clear virtue" is the state in which the private
"I" is completely erased. As learning proceeds from confusion to order, the
concern for the self gradually dissolves and eventually leaves only a selfless
concern for wu. Ultimately, the world reaches a state totally devoid of the private
"I" and achieves a sort of timelessness. It is timeless because, where the tem-
poral constancy of wu and the ideational atemporality of Ii are not clearly dis-
tinguished, the world should appear both constant and atemporal once the princi-
ple of individuation, a cognizance that the individual can never be located within
48 Silence at the Center
universal [general]/particular opposition, is removed. In other words, the present
associated w.ith the human body is subordinated to the temporal constancy of wu.
And in this sense the body proper to one's self is not captured in the regime of
visibility, in which the originary source of the body as "here" and "now" is
projected and constituted in discourse.
What one observes here is a deliberate attempt to subordinate materiality as
heterogeneous within the confines of a certain discursive economy, although I do
not believe that such an attempt can be attributed to the intention of a few
authors. Rather, it is a general feature of the discursive formation, which refuses
to change and insists upon self-reproduction in the identical shape. Zhu Xi
refuses to admit that what is determined as particular has already been univer-
salized by virtue of the fact that the determination of particularity is possible only
in signification. But it must be recalled that materiality is that which is repressed
with the accomplishment of signification, so that one cannot think materiality.
Needless to say, Song rationalists' dualism of Ii and qi collapses if materiality as
such is directly confronted, as it is by Ito J insai. Whereas Zhu bears witness to
materiality in his conception of qi, he concentrates on the elimination of this
insight and, subsequently, on the relief of his universalism from the threat of the
heterogeneous. Thus, he has to conceive of wu primarily as the locus of constan-
cy and stasis rather than change and irregularity.
The significance ofthe classic writings is based on this mode ofatemporality. The
classics are thought of as containing the norms to which learners must adjust them-
selves. What has to be discovered through reading the classics is not the original
intention of the sages-the classical authors-but the presence of norms that the
sages discovered and incorporated in their writings once and for all. Hence, read-
ing is an act by which to recognize the norms already installed there. There can
be a problem of recognition, but there should not be any problem directly
concerning textuality, since reading cannot be a constitutive act capable of trans-
forming the meaning. The materiality of the writings, which is supposed to
remain constant throughout historical time from antiquity down to the moment
when reading is taking place, supports the constancy of the meaning embodied
there. It could be rightly concluded that since the material constancy of the text is
fused with the ideality of its meaning, there is only the enunciated (enonce1, not
the enunciation (enonciation), in this discursive formation. Indeed, since the
enunciation cannot be posed as problematical-cannot, indeed, be posed at a11-
the subject of reading or understanding cannot be talked about or conceptualized.
Precisely because of this impossibility, Zhu Xi could not articulate the problem
of the private self in positive terms, and as a consequence, the self had to be
dissolved into the universal and public subject that guaranteed the universal
validity of knowledge.
Thus, Zhu Xi endows the book, as well as the world-totality of books, with
autonomy. It is in this perspective that the formation of habit, as an approx-
imative movement toward Ii, is to be interpreted. To seek Ii is to transcend the
private self toward the autonomy of the book. It is important to note in this
The Mode of Discursive Formation 49
respect that Zhu Xi described habit formation not as an accumulation but as a
transition from opacity to transparence, fro.m murkiness to clarity, a process in
which dust on the surface is gradually removed-a process of elimination as well
as approximation. In this sense, the world should appear constant and atemporal.
Ther~ is an aspect, however, in which a clear distinction between Ii and wu must
be maintained. The philosopheme, the diacritical difference between Ii and wu,
implies that whereas it is impossible to attribute perishability and qualitative
change to li, the temporal constancy of wu is exposed to erosive time. It follows
that th~ world insofar as it is thought of as the totality of Wu, must be in constant
change. Yet, with regard to its participation in Ii, the world should be unchange-
able.
This contradiction manifests itself most obviously when a classic and its
identity are in question. What ensures the identity of a classic is not merely its
material constancy. As Zhu's editing of the Great Learning shows, it is accepted
that all or part of a classic can be lost. Yet its identity as a work cannot be
destroyed, and a work can be duplicated without damaging its identity. When one
says, "I have read this book," "this book" does not denote this particular copy
of the book. Likewise, as a signified, that is, as a work, a classic writing
transcends its actual inscription in material. In a similar manner, the actual
writing that Confucious edited could be lost, but one would still read and in-
terpret the same Great Learning whose identity can be kept only as a work. This
is exactly the mode in which writing transcends historical time for Zhu Xi.
According to him, behavior and speech also have transhistorical power as texts.
They transcend neither eidos nor the original intention of the author's con-
sciousness; nonetheless, they appear to transcend both. The text is' a place for
displacement among various differentiations. Thus, whenever necessary, ide-
ational atemporality could be replaced by temporal constancy or vice versa in the
classics: the writing is, therefore, a place where the significative contradiction is
concealed. No doubt, this is the problem from which Song rationalism continued
to suffer; yet, this is also the problem it could not afford to admit.
So far we have discussed in Zhu Xi's discourse a structural homogeneity
among the terms Ii, qui, wu on the one hand: the meaning, the heterogeneous
often associated with the private HI," and the text on the other. It is in relation to
;t:~~"';'~"'(;'J";;{" this homogeneity that his term "reverence" (kei, jing) should be understood.
Zhu Xi quotes the Mencius: "When one manages to maintain reverence, desire
will cease in and of itself."27 This passage is to the point. But it is noteworthy
that another important term of his, "sincerity" (sei, cheng), is explicated in a
fashion that reflects the same homogeneity:
This is called the achieving of the virtues [of intellect, benevolence, and courage]
because [it indicates] the principle [Ii] that the virtues be realized everywhere and
any time under the heaven. [These are] one, that is to say, only sincerity, [that really
27Zhu Xi, Wen ji, vol. 4 L
 Silence at the Center
50
matters]. Although the achieving of the Way is that upon which people all depend,
the Way cannot be practiced unless these three virtues are available. It is t~e that the
achieving of the virtues is equally possible for each, but if one of them is not
sincerely pursued, human desire will interfere, so that the virtue will not be
[achieved as it should be]. 28
Sincerity, too, is understood as opposed to desire or is supposed to reduce the
intensity of desire and to ensure one's return to human nature (the doctrine of the
return to the original nature), which is universally applicable to everyone:
The ultimate sincerity of heaven means that the virtue of the sage is real and that
nothing can be added to it in order to better it. "To confonn to nature exhaustively"
means that the virtue [thus achieved] cannot fail to be real. Thereupon there would
be no private "I" of desire: that with which the mandate of heaven endows the
subject [= public "I"] grasps nature, acts according to it, and confonns to it without
the slighest deviation, regardless of whether the matter it deals with is large or small,
fine or rough. 29
The individuality of the private self is said to arise simultaneously with desire,
for the self of desire cannot be construed in universal terms. Therefore, this self,
unlike the "I" ruled by the mandate of heaven (the public "1"), is neither a
particular that could form an opposition to the universal (general) nor the ubiq-
uitous universal. This is to say, the self of desire designates the site of the
heterogeneous in the economy of Zhu Xi's discourse: it has to be tamed and
thereby accommodated and assimilated in order for the discursive space to re-
produce itself.
Because qi is ascribed to it, desire also causes deviation and disorderliness. In
this context, desire should be thought of as an obstacle that prevents the "I" from
returning to its original nature given by heaven. Insofar as desire exists, the self
as it is can never be adequate to the subject as it should be. Thus the rationalists'
desire signifies exactly the contrary to the Hegelian and Lacanian notions of
desire in which the return into the self as truth, as the passion of the self for
itself, 'is called desire. 3o With desire, human nature never manifests itself as
clearly as the shape of the moon viewed in clear and transparent air. Just as the
image in the mirror cannot be an adequate copy of the original because of dust on
the surface of the glass, human nature as reflected in everyday appearance can
never be identical with its original essence. Hence, it is no surprise that sincerity
is called for as a cure for desire. And sincerity should play the role of a sort of
lubricant that facilitates a smooth and unobstructed passage from the original to
28Zhu Xi, Chuy6shoku (Zhong-yong zhang-ju) (Tokyo: Meitoku Shuppan-sha, 1974), chap. 20, p.
456.
29Ibid., p. 458. . .
30G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology ofSpirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford UOlverslty Press,
1977), pp. 109-19.
The Mode of Discursive Formation 51
its manifestation. Whereas the ideational intentionality is directed from wu to-
ward Ii, sincerity. is associated with reducing the effect of qi toward the full
manifestation of Ii, that is, from opacity to transparence, from confusion to
order. For this reason, sincerity receives a more explicitly ethical connotation
than .other virtues, and it would be misleading to interpret sincerity only as a
certain state of mind. To maintain sincerity is, for Zhu Xi, not to fix one's
attitude: this term would not make much sense if it were not understood to entail
some relatedness of one's body to things.
Thus it is said that to see how a ruler governs the world under heaven [tenka, tianxia,
1-24], we observe the government of his family. To see how he governs his family,
we observe how he governs his body [shin, shen]. To be correct in one's body means
to be sincere in one's mind [shin, xin]. And to be sincere in one's mind means to tum
back from evil activities. Evil activities represent falsehood. When one turns back
from falsehood, there will be no more falsehood in one. Being free frQm it, one
becomes sincere. This is the reason why the hexagram wu-wang [absence of
falsehood, 1-25] comes after the hexagram fu [to return]. And it is said, "The
ancient kings made their regulations in complete accordance with the seasons,
thereby nourishing all things." How profound!31
Of course, this passage would be unintelligible without reference to the Great
Learning, and to the Book of Change. Among many interpretations of these
.terms-the body, the mind, and sincerity-I must, above all, refer to Zhu Xi's
words: "The mind is the master of the body." Here, the primary definition of
. sincerity is given as that which arises when the body is subjugated by the mind.
Let us note in passing that the mind not only enjoys the role of master of the body
,but is also endowed by heaven with an ability to encompass the totality of the
runiverse within the particularity of a person.
" Epistemology and ethics are thus united in Zhu's discourse: action is ultimate-
1'~.ly reduced to knowledge; prescription is reduced to description. Searching for Ii
:~~d maintaining sincerity are complementary, since the submission of the body to
'~<the reign of the mind and the subsumption of the singularity of the individual
under universals are, in the final analysis, synonymous: the body finally becomes
fhe property of, and proper to, the mind. The diversity of myriad things, includ-
'fig one's own body, is proved to conform to Ii in the instance when they are made
sent to the mind. This is to say, the recognition of wu in its essence consists in
e's capacity to reduce the heterogeneity designated by haphazardness or irre-
i<SJjonsib1iIit:y (mo, wang, 1-26) so as to disclose the inherent identity between wu
it is present to the mind and wu as it exists in itself. As it is assumed that Ii is
:~,·tmmtnel[}t in things, however, the question of how the mind constructs a repre-
)y:·.'$¢.ntaltlo1n of the thing in conformity with universal categories is not posed.
quotation is attributed to Zhou Dun-yi, in Reflections on Things at Hand, trans. Wing-tsit
pp. 202-3. I have modified Chan's translation.
52 Silence at the Center
The Mode of Discursive Formation 53
Rather, Zhu Xi insists that Ii is in fact in things, in the universe, so that the mind
disclaimer, I shall shift the focus of attention from Zhu's discourse to a t '
in its ultimate clarity simply reflects Ii within the scope of one'8 body. Being an h' h d' ... . opOS In
W IC Iscurslvlty Itself IS thematically questioned, a topos called Ito Jinsai.
ontological linkage between things and one's body, sincerity ensures the primor-
dial continuity between Ii in wu and Ii in the action of the body. Thus, it is
C~ncurrently, I shall see the term "sincerity" change its relation to other terms: it
WIll become p~rt of a diff~rent regime. What had been named sincerity would
through the medium of sincerity that the principle of thought, which governs the
become ~ypocnsy for Ito Jlnsai, and the change seems to attest to the emergence
knowledge of things, and the principle of practice, which ought to regulate of new dIscursive possibilities.
human deeds, are integrated into one concept of Ii. In sincerity, the distinction
between cosmology and ethics is dissolved; in sincerity, the separation between
the descriptive and the prescriptive is believed to be filled in.
It seems that the discursive space in question was characterized by a rather
Peculiar coexistence of conflicting tendencies. It displayed an obsessive concern
for the materiality of the world, and accordingly, in this discursive space the task
of edification never failed to take into account that human beings live among
things; ethical teaching was rarely divorced from the investigation of things; the
possibility was acknowledged that the world could be viewed as a text or even as
the general text. Yet, this acknowledgment did not lend itself to the admission of
the materiality in the textuality of the text. On the contrary, philosophical efforts
were directed toward the elimination and concealment of this problem. As a
consequence, the assumption was rePeatedly ascertained that discourse must
precede text. As a corollary, the body, which was first recognized as a possible
topos of heterogeneity, was subsequently tranSformed into an invisibility, and the
body thus rendered transparent and invisible through sincerity was said to indi-
cate the reducibility of the text to discourse. This is exactly what Zhu Xi meant
by the invisibility of the body, but invisibility does not imply that the body was
free from political control in his discourse. Hence, the world envisaged as the
text was explained away in terms that presumed the primordial position of the
world in the register of discourse. It is not difficult to see how hard it would be in
such a discursive formation to pursue the moment that renders the limit of
discourse explicit. Universalism such as Song rationalism, therefore, is able to be
incredibly insensitive to the otherness of its Other and to the heterogeneous. But
by the same token, it could present itself as an ideal candidate for the legitimating
doctrine of whatever officialdom is dominant. Of course, to mark the limit of
discourse is to seek various possibilities in order to alter and decompose on-
tologized unities that are often taken to be eternal and transparent verities in that
particular discursive formation. And to assimilate and integrate the hetero-
geneous, thereby concealing the site where textuality disrupts discourse, is ob-
viously absolutely necessary for a given discursive formation to reproduce itself.
In this sense, Zhu Xi's writings may be said to have only repeated what is
expected of any discourse. Yet, such a generalization must be carefully specified
precisely because it would call back what has been evaded at all costs: the
ontologization of such unities as discursive space. Moreover, it would only lead
to some naIve thought of emancipation, to the belief that once the limit of
discourse has been marked, one can move outside it. Instead, with this warning

CHAPTER 2 terminology to formulate his critiques of Song rationalism, and Ito certainly
Ito Jinsai: The Text as the Human Body
and the Human Body as the Text
A Critique of Discursivity
It is noteworthy that Ito Jinsai used the same binary oppositions through which
Zhu Xi had articulated his ethics to depict the rigid or frigid authoritarianism of
the Song rationalists. What had once been seen as affirmative qualities were now
criticized as basically hypocritical. For instance, the differentiation of nature (sei,
xing, 1-10) from feeling (jo, qing, 2-1 or desire (yoku, yu, 2-2), according to
which Zhu posited the norms of praxis, was associated with "transcenden-
talism," which, Ito claimed, inevitably generated hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a
discursive complex that brings about many different effects, according to Ito.
Analysis of how he discerned these effects and ascribed them to hypocrisy in
Song rationalism will reveal how oppositions that had functioned positively
could now be used to illustrate what Ito considered the fundamental falsification
of Cheng-Zhu Confucianism.
Neither individual philosophical terms nor the philosophical vocabulary at
large had changed radically. Ito was also a Confucian scholar, and he relied on
basic terms that were almost identical to those of Zhu Xi. He adhered to the same
Confucian heritage as the Song rationalists. Nevertheless, at the level at which
those terms were connected to each other and integrated into a network of
philosophemes, one cannot but recognize a fundamental shift, followed in Ito's
later treatises by a completely different tone. The drastic change at the level of
philosophemes forced the reevaluation and readjustment of each basic Confucian
term and its commentary. Nor, one has to acknowledge, was this reallocation of
philosophemes independent of the intertextual transmutation that was under way.
That is, the critique of Zhu Xi's philosophy was a necessary step toward the new
articulation of subjective or social position. The critique took a lexicographical
form common in Confucian scholarship and the works of Ito's contemporaries, in
which the author deployed his own argument as a sort of parody of Zhu Xi's
54
Ito Jinsai 55
though the word "parody" does not have any pejorative connotation here. Thus,
Ito's philosophical opinions and their expressions were in fact dependent upon
Zhu's discourse to the extent that they were formed as a refutation of quotations
from Zhu's writings. There can be no denying that Ito depended on Zhu's
borrowed much more than terminology from Zhu.
Clearly, the dependence of Ito's argumentation upon Song rationalism is not
merely accidental to the fundamental theoretical orientation I detect in his writ-
ings; I think it ~as imperative for Ito to construct his argument in this way. The
parodic, one might even say parasitic, nature of his philosophy disallows talking
about it as a distinct philosophical system like Zhu Xi's, although Zhu Xi also
relied on the Confucian classics to articulate his ideas. Song rationalists' dis-
course could make sense only in the context of a certain intertextuality. Every
statement of Song rationalism necessarily articulates itself as an acknowledgment
in one form or another-agreement, refutation, and so on-of other texts. Even
Zhu Xi's philosophy could not escape its dialogic infrastructure, its enunciation
in history, no matter how hard it tried to ignore it. In Ito's case, however, the
term "intertextuality" must be understood more rigorously, mainly for two rea-
sons.
First, it is not clear to what extent Ito's philosophy is governed by a wish to
establish a system according to which the series of his arguments achieve the
circularity of a philosophical position. Basically, I am suspicious of any reading
that sees in Ito's critique of Song rationalism a conflict between one system of
thought and another, between one philosophical position and another. What I see
is a theoretical endeavor to demonstrate instances when discourse collapses from
its own weight. 1 It may be said that his critique of Zhu Xi coincides at more than
a few points with the critique of discourse in general.
IPrecisely for this reason, Ito's argument does not reside either "outside" or "inside" the discur-
sive space of the eighteenth century. OUf notion of the discursive space must be protected against the
possibility of visualizing it as an equivalent to a totality clearly circumscribed so as to sustain its
"inside" and "outside" absolutely separately, to a spatial sphere that can be juxtaposed to another
~p~ere. Between such spheres, there can be only a relationship of negation in the sense that not being
mSlde one sphere immediately means being outside of it and being in another sphere. Iro's work
rela~es itself. t? the discursive space of. the eighteenth century or to Song rationalism not in negation
but.tn negatlVlty. (For the want of tenmnology, I use the word "work" in this passage. It goes without
~aYlDg that the notion of Ito linsai as a unified author and his work as a unified corpus of his thought
1S .suspect, as I have a~d will continue to remind myself in this book.) Here, the question of exteriority
anses. Although theIr conceptual vocabulary is not identical to mine, Ernest Laclau and Chantal
Mou~e explain this issue in a similar vein: ··The hegemonic subject, as the subject of any articulatory
~ractlce, must be partially exterior to what it articulates-otherwise, there would not be any articula-
tIon at all. On the other hand, however, such exteriority cannot be conceived as that existing between
two different ontological levels. Consequently, it would seem that the solution is to reintroduce our
distinction between discourse and general field of discursivity: in that elements would constitute
themselves on the same plane-the general field of discursivity-while the exteriority would be that
corresponding to different discursive formations. No doubt this is so, but it must be further specified
that this exteriority cannot correspond to two fully constituted discursive formations. For, what
characterizes a discursive formation is the regularity in dispersion, and if that exteriority were a
56 Silence at the Center
Second, as has been widely acknowledged, at least among scholars in Japan,
Ito continued to revise his manuscripts until his death. He tirelessly rewrote his
treatises until it became physically impossible for him to do so. Certainly, this
practice presents a difficult problem in talking about the so-called final version of
his philosophy. As many as six different editions exist under the same title, many
of which contain several detailed revisions. 2 Furthermore, significant alterations
have been noted between his manuscripts and the printed editions, some of which
were edited by his son, Ito Togai, and his disciples and published posthumously.
It is not the task of this book to trace the development of Ito's thought through the
examination of those manuscripts and published editions. Nevertheless, I cannot
overlook the continual revision of his earlier scripts throughout his life. In a
decisive manner, Ito's insistence upon revision seems to indicate the basic mode
in which his arguments are enunciated and which is part and parcel of his lifelong
critique.
But, what is the nature of what I have tentatively called Ito Jinsai's critique?
Transcendentalism and "Nearness"
In a typical exchange one can see some connection between the advent of the
discursive complex of hypocrisy in Ito's awareness and the formation of a new
philosopheme in which the term "sincerity" was rephrased and acquired a new
connotation:
Question: Song Confucians upheld sincerity [of reverence] as the host [shu, zhu, 2-
3] term. Why do you now uphold loyalty and trust [2-4] as the host term?
Answer: The essence of learning consists in real sincerity [1-7]. Therefore, the
Analects says, "Loyalty and trust is the host." Host is the opposite of guest [hin,
bin, 2-5]. What this quotation means is that students ought to regard loyalty-trust
as the host term. If a man regards loyalty-trust as the host, the man's speech and
behavior will be real even though he may not appear overtly brilliant and cultured.
Those who adhere exclusively to the principle of reverence insist on pride and
maintain a solemn outlook. When seen by others, they might appear to be authen-
regular feature in the relation between the two formations, it would become a new difference and the
two formations would not, strictly speaking, be external to each other. (And with this, once again, the
possibility of any articulation would disappear.) Hence, if the exteriority supposed by the articulatory
practice is located in the general field of discursivity, it cannot be that corresponding to two systems
of fully constituted differences. It must therefore be the exteriority existing between subject positions
located within certain discursive formations and 'elements' which have no precise discursive articula-
tion. It is this ambiguity which makes possible articulation as a practice instituting nodal points which
partially fix the meaning of the social in an organized system of differences" (Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy [London: Verso, 1985], p. 135).
2See Koyasu Nobukuni, Ito Jinsai-jinrin-teki sekai no shiso (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press,
1982), and Ito Jinsai kenkyu, Memoirs of the Faculty of Letters, 26 (Osaka: Osaka University, 1986).
Koyasu bases his reading of Ito on the careful examination and comparison of Ito's manuscripts. Yet
his readings are not of the nature of the so-called text-critique.
Ito Jinsai 57
tic Confucians. Once we look at their interior state, however, we will discover
that there is not a sufficiently sincere intention there. They tend to keep their
conscientious ego and to condemn others rigorously for immoral deeds. Here a
variety of illnesses originates. 3
The metaphor of internality plays an. important role in this answer. Yet one
should keep in mind that the opposition of internal to external is posited exactly
at the disjunction of outer appearance and internal intention. Also important is
the reciprocity of viewpoints between the self and the other which is ascribed to
the somewhat self-righteous attitude of Song rationalists. The hypocrisy inherent
in the rigid authoritarianism comes from adherence to the vision of the self from
the other's viewpoint. Song rationalists, it is argued, try to adjust the self-image
to the ideal ethical personality as if they were adjusting their costumes in front of
the mirror. This attitude inevitably gives rise to a disparity between inner and
outer: paradoxical as itmay sound, the premise that one takes up the position of
another viewer immediately requires the positing of an interior that cannot be
seen.
According to Song rationalists, one should be able to put one's feet in anybody
else's shoes without difficulty. Therefore, empathy means to them a faculty of
replacing the self with an other, erasing the singular for the sake of occupying the
position of a subject with wpich one is expected to coincide. Empathy, then, is
based on the common and universal essence that is shared by all persons, on the
universal essence immanent in every human being: man immanent in man. When
the last trace of one's singularity is annihilated-an idealized state, indeed-one
should be able to take up anybody's position. But Ito contends that it is impossi-
ble to define empathy in terms of the reduction of the single individual (kobutsu,
2-6) to subjectivity, even in terms of inter-subjectivity. 4 Hypocrisy, as Ito sees it,
stems from the Song rationalists' thesis that one in fact has an image of the self
from the other's viewpoint which one can adjust, that one is capable of viewing
oneself from the other's viewpoint. Zhu Xi was not aware that such an other's
viewpoint could never coincide with the viewpoint of the other in actuality. This
is to say, Zhu Xi refused to understand the irreducible gap between the other's
viewpoint as one imagines it and the viewpoint of the other in actuality, that is, of
the Other, which one could never master. Without awareness of the irredeemable
otherness of the other, one's empathy and generosity toward others would simply
be another form of 4'keeping one's conscientious ego."
uTo keep one '8 conscientious ego" is a pejorative expression since, by so
doing, one could refuse to abandon one's centrality in behavior and utterance by
rigidly adhering to a fixed and irreplaceable emotional capability. This is what Ito
3Ito Jinsai, Dojimon, in Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 97 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1967), p.
82. .
4 "Kobutsu " is a term Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) uses extensively. It could be translated as either
"individual thing" or "singular thing.
58 Silence at the Center
thinks the followers of Song rationalism have done. Here is the distinction
between sincerity as Ito comprehends it and sincerity as it is understood by Song
rationalism, which might be further explained by the two similar but different
virtues, sincerity of reverence (1-4), which Zhu Xi emphasizes, and sincerity
(1-7) which Ito favors. Sincerity of reverence is determined by rules primarily
concerned with the subjective social positions of addresser and addressee. These
transcend the singularity of the encounter, that which escapes abstraction-that
is, the singularity (kobutsu-sei, 2-7) of the actual situation in which one deals
with individuals and the individual incident. Sincerity, by contrast, guides one to
the actualization of a deed, how to execute an action in response to an individual
person encountered in a concrete situation. Ito states that the possibility of
compassion lies elsewhere than in the principle whose validity includes its for-
malism, its existence irrespective of the individuality of the situation, according
to which one individual person is interchangeable with another. Sincerity of
reverence is abstract in the sense that it could be applied to any interpersonal
interaction as long as the subject positions of participants are clearly defined: it
directs my behavior not toward that individual person but toward that person as a
teacher, a father, a general, or a president, that is, as a subject whose identity is
determined by a set of social codes. Sincerity of reverence dictates that I must
revere that person because he is a teacher, a father, a general; I must be sincere to
that person because he is a priest or a doctor. On the other hand, sincerity gives
no general principle according to which one is to socialize with others, because
each person dealt with is an individual irreducible to generalization. Therefore,
conscience, insofar as it is conceived as a set of transcendent general rules to
which one tries to conform, must be considered a form of hypocrisy unless there
is also a fundamental awareness about the social, about the impossibility of
exhaustively reducing the individual to the subject, for everyone that one might
encounter is ultimately the Other.
Ito criticized the Song Confucians' understanding of the sincerity of reverence
and tried to correct their interpretation of it. Registering sincerity of reverence as
the host term that should govern every aspect of life, he says, is just like
prescribing one medicine uniformly for hundreds of different diseases. People of
antiquity never proposed such an understanding of this character; they only said
Hto exert sincerity according to the occasion."5
Thus Ito sets forth the systematic conception of compassion in a rather nega-
tive way, by discussing what hinders compassion toward others in a concrete
situation. Yet, I think it is important to note that the self and the other are not
detached and abstracted from the performative environment already saturated
with customs and other social institutions. One does not encounter an other in a
social vacuum, and the self is not a fixed and ontologized term insofar as it is an
individual agent (shutai, 2-8) of social action but rather one who constantly loses
SIlo, Dojimon, p. 83.
Ito Jinsai 59
his or her subjective identity in the encounter with others. That is to say, shutai is
an individual agent insofar as it is grasped in its dialogic moment. 6
What is surprising about Ito's qualifications concerning human sociality is that
they are left rather undefined. It seems that he has abandoned, perhaps deliber-
ately, the task of grounding them theoretically. Instead, as though they were self-
evident, he continues his denunciation of Song rationalism.
Unconcerned with the particular details of the social situation in which one
deals with individual people, he argues, transcendentalism generates self-
righteousness, adherence to the subjective identity, which inevitably gives rise to
a rupture between inner and outer, thereby generating the "inner mind," impene-
trable by those who do not share the same imperative rules. Underlying this
argument is a premise that people conduct social life on the basis not of transcen-
dent and reified rules but of common trivial and mundane concerns, interests and
desires associated with the things of everyday life. Ito objects to the Song
rationalists' identification of the "inner" (nai, nei, 2-9) with nature, on the
grounds that what the word "inner" refers to is not an innate essence of man: it is
simply that a human being is inside certain social institutions such as family and
is hence intimately involved with others through various social relations. "What
is termed 'inner' is a word connoting intimacy [shin, qin, 2-10], while the outer
[gai, wai, 2-11J is a word for estrangement [so, shu, 2-12]."7 Once the inner,
the subjective, position, is reified, essentialized, and given the status of subjec-
tive interiority, a transcendent mediation is required to assure the universal ap-
plicability of imperative norms. Because Song rationalists postulate the subjec-
tive interiority that has, as it were, no window, they are forced to posit some
transcendent viewpoint that guarantees communication between two "inner
minds." Where there is no direct and immediate affectivity, then an imperative
and meaning as the transcendent nucleus of ideational intentionality must be
postulated in such a way as to be present to both the self and the others, just as
the system of coding must be available to the addresser and the addressee in the
communication model, regardless of the concrete place and occasion in which
the imperative and meaning are manifest. But morality does not consist of norms
conceptualized in such a way: HWhen morality flourishes, arguments [giron, yi
lun, 2-13] are humble [hi, bei, 2-14]. When morality declines, arguments
flourish. The more refined arguments are, the more distant they are from the
moral. Therefore, the refinement and abundance of discussions is the symptom
of social decay." 8
Argument based on the universal (general) applicability of ideas and concepts
has nothing to do with the actual social situation, which alone enables one to
realize what is ethically righteous. Unless one were to immerse oneself in the
6See Mikhail Bakhtin, The Problems of Dostoyevsky's Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor:
Ardis, 1973).
7Ito, Dojimon, p. 72.
8Ito, D6jimon, p. 72.
60 Silence at the Center
"nearness" opened up by one's desire, interest, and care, one would never be
able to come across the context in which morality is meaningful to one:s social
action. Only in relation to those "entities which we encounter as closest to us in
the environment within-the-world"9 could any discussion of morality be serious.
The Emergence of Speech in Discourse
Here, I must emphasize two premises underlying this argument. First, what Ito
describes as "argument" points to an aspect of verbal presentation in which an
utterance transcends the locus and the moment of its enunciation. With regard to
the said, to what has been expressed in verbalization, an utterance cannot be
confined to the originary scene where it is created by the speech acts. When
linguistic expression is grasped as the enunciated (enonce), it is indifferent to
both the subject of enunciation 10 and the topos at which it projects its message.
Only on condition that an argument is viewed as consisting solely of utterances
thus qualified can one claim that its validity is applicable to any person in any
situation. Ito sees the "rationalist" discourse in this light and counterposes to it
his own apprehension of verbalization, which denies to any and all utterances the
kind of universality that is, as is characteristic of a certain conception of lan-
guage, not clearly distinct from generality. He attributes the condition of univer-
salization to what he calls "separation," between what is said and the saying, and
he covertly argues that it gave rise to "transcendentalism" because of this "sepa-
ration" and that the said is considered to transcend the saying. 11 Among various
9Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York:
Harper and Row, 1962), chap. 15, '"The Being of the Entities Encountered in the Environment," and
chap. 16, "How the Worldly Character of the Environment Announces Itself in Entities Within-the-
World," pp. 95-107. I will return to the question of language and the "being-ready-to hand."
IOWhether or not the term "subject is appropriate to designate the agent of enunciation will be
U
discussed hereafter. In the meantime, I will continue to use this Benveniste's expression "the subject
of enunciation."
llHigh/low, inner/outer, refined/vulgar, estranged/intimate: the evaluative order is in effect here,
too. These terms are indeed dispersed in many of Ito's treatises, but it is possible to determine their
function, by which specifically philosophical statements are related to a more familiar world of
everyday happenings. Assembled, they form a metonymical space where one binary opposition is
linked to another and organized within a certain directionality. When examined in isolation, the
binary opposition high/low, for example, is based on two semes: vertical relativity and the order of
evaluation. The following chart should indicate the organization of various oppositions in Ito's
treatises:
high/low
outerI inner
solemn/vulgar
estrangedlintimate
hypocritical!sincere
What is revealed here is the polarity of Ito's discourse. The position of the authorial voice from which
utterances are interjected into the intertextual space, a space already inhabited by voices other than
his, is allocated on the side of low, inner, vulgar, and intimate. Considering that the highllow and
solemn/vulgar oppositions are matched in the reverse form, one can demonstrate the ironical tone of
Ito's presentation as well as the structural configuration through which Ito's discourse is linked to Zhu
Xi's and the classics.
Ito Jinsai 61
figurative expressions he applies to the view of verbalization he considers dis-
torted, corrupt, and unhealthy are high, inner, solemn, and estranged. When the
antonyms with which these expressions form semes are examined, it is evident
that they are all arranged within an order that establishes the center around which
utter.ances are deployed. Moreover, the position of the author of these utterances
is designated topologically in relation to other positions it could possibly occupy.
Ito Jinsai's argument obliges readers to view the other Confucian doctrines from
a low, mundane perspective, from a position that is vulgar but intimate to them.
It is important to realize that the tropological distance generated by this figurative
arrangement corresponds, if rather obliquely, to the separation Ito always de-
nounces. The kind of discourse he calls transcendental is not only unaware of the
irreducible gap between the saying and the said but also inattentive to the amaz-
ing diversity and heterogeneity of the sphere of "nearness," in which one en-
counters mundane things and happenings. In that discourse, abstract values are
directly ascribed to concrete incidents and "things at hand" without any media-
tion. In relation to the position of the authorial voice thus designated in Ito's
description, the "transcendentalist" argument presents itself as high, estranged,
and distant~ it may appear solemn, but it is not within the reach of "us," who are
basically vulgar~ it is a discourse of the lofty minded, who never concern them-
selves with the mundane and trivial matters continually happening in the world.
Needless to say, what is at issue is that the separation between enunciation and
enunciated, between the speech act of the statement and the content of it, has to
be articulated with regard to the way social reality and an ethical perception of it
are construed. By offering an evaluative order to these opposed views of ver-
balization through the figurative arrangement, Ito established an agenda through
which to introduce a different way of talking about social relations and praxis.
Second, the emphasis on a speech act does not imply that a statement should
be understood as a relationship between the intention of the subject of the
enunciation and what he or she achieves by uttering it in the situation of enuncia-
tion. For Ito "inner" does not refer to the subjective interiority of a speaker. It is
the inside of the situation braided by existing social institutions: what dis-
tinguishes the inner from the outer is involvement. Rather than differentiate
between the inner of a person's consciousness and the outside world, this opposi-
tion discerns an attitude of involvement that distinguishes participants from
nonparticipants. Therefore, the inner is the adherence of an actor to a Per-
formative situation and also such involvement in it that the actor and the situation
cannot be separated. Accordingly, Ito constantly speaks of "congruity," which
refers to one's attachment both to the situation and to others. If verbalization is to
create the separation in the self in the sense of shutai or the body of the enuncia-
tion (which I shall talk about later), and of the self from the situation, he
suggests, the originary plenitude of the situation can never be arrested and
preserved in the enunciated. Involvement always precedes action; yet it cannot
be known, experienced in the sense of Erfarung, that is, in such a way that it is
registered in signification.
62 Silence at the Center
It follows that the existence of the shutai cannot be construed in terms of the
rationalists' conception of the mind, and it is implied that the possibility of the
social has nothing to do with the universal (general) validity of human nature.
More specifically, Ito forcefully claims that the locus of the social is not to be
discovered either in the mind defined as the faculty to make human natures
present or in the mind as a topos to which human natures are made present but in
feeling (jo, qing, 2-1). This is a fundamental difference between Zhu Xi and Ito
Jinsai: whereas Zhu assumed the self to be so much extraneous noise, since it
hinted at the existence of the individual, something to be suppressed an4 dis-
solved in the process of learning, Ito's self acknowledges being always hetero-
geneous to the subject. Since the rupture between the self and its outside is
rejected, however, it cannot be regarded as the inner mind, or even as the
personality as understood in modern psychology. Unlike the Cartesian ego,
which belongs to an order entirely different from that of things and cannot
receive spatial attributes, Ito's self resides among things, and there is a continuity
between the self and material beings. Obviously, the self as Ito articulates it is
first and foremost a body, one's body. It is a self immersed in materiality.
Consequently, the adherence of the self to the situation is marked by the mate-
riality underlying both the self and the situation, saturated with things and others'
bodies. But the things we encounter as closest to us in the situation are different
from the wu (thinghood) of Zhu Xi, whose basic mode of existence was stability
and constancy: Ito's conception of things in relation to the self is characterized by
change, movement, animation, and dispersal. And one's body is the most ani-
mated of material beings.
Enunciation and the Heterogeneous
What Ito questions is the relationship between the mind and feeling. Let us
recall that for Zhu Xi the mind was a place where "many Ii are innate, thanks to
which man is able to respond to all the phenomena." In addition, Zhu Xi noted:
By enlarging one's mind, one can enter into all the things in the world. As long as
anything is not yet entered into, there is still something outside the mind. The mind
of ordinary people is limited to the narrowness of what is seen and what is heard.
The sage, however, fully develops his nature and does not allow what is seen or
heard to better his mind. He regards everything in the world as his own self. This is
why Mencius said that if one exerts his mind to the utmost he can know Nature and
Heaven. Heaven is so vast that there is nothing outside of it. Therefore the mind that
leaves something outside is not capable of uniting itself with the mind of Heaven. 12
12Zhu Xi, Reflections on Things at Hand, trans. Wing Tsit Chan (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1967), pp. 83-84.
Ito Jinsai 63
Man's social nature, specifically as the basis for intersubjective reciprocity, is
equated to the totalizing ability of the mind\ Of course, this social nature of man
must definitely be distinguished from the social. 13 The presence of the mind in
an individual human being ensures his or her ability to communicate with other
people and things in the universe. That there is no "outside" of the mind, then,
means that everyone is innately able to communicate with everyone else; the
possibility of communication with other human beings is anterior to any distur-
bance or noise in mutual understanding; insofar as the other person is reduced to
a presence in the mind, "r' and "you" are absolutely interchangeable. Hence,
the conception of the mind implies that one is supposed to be able to sPeak in the
place of an other, thereby annihilating the transcendence of the other. Ironically
enough, this transcendentalism in fact serves to get rid of the otherness of the
Other and the Other's transcendence. Therefore, the heterogeneous, which re-
sists and disturbs the action.of making the mind present to itself, must, first, be
apprehended as a resistance to sincerity and, second, be thought of as on-
tologically inferior in order that the optimistic belief in unlimited commen-
surability be metaphysically guaranteed. 14 (This simply amounts to a belief in
13See Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.
14Nearly three centuries later Wei-ming Tu summarizes precisely what Ito Jinsai saw in Song
rationalism although Tu's characterization covers Neo-Confucianism, a broader designation of the
Confucian movement in the Song and Ming periods than Song rationalism or Zhu Xi's philosophy. In
"Inner experience": The Basis of Creativity in Neo-Confucian Thinking" (in Artists and Traditions:
Uses of the Past in Chinese Culture, ed. Christian F. Murck, [Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton
University, 1976J, pp. 12-13), Tu writes; "It is commonly accepted that universal principles can only
be obtained by transcending the particular. To achieve a high level of generality, thought has to be
detached from the concrete. To construct a theorem that can have some universal claim necessitates a
process of abstraction. In the present case, however, the inner experience of a concrete person serves
as the real basis of generalization. And only through a total immersion in one's own being can the
source of universality be reached. Mencius' statement that 'he who has completely realized his mind
knows his nature; knowing his nature, he knows Heaven' is therefore a classical formulation of such
an orientation. Commenting on this passage, Lu Hsian-shan advances his idealistic thesis: 'Mind is
only one mind. My own mind, or that of my friend, or that of a sage of a thousand generations
hence-their minds are only [one] like this. The extent of the mind is very great. If I can completely
realize my mind, I thereby become identified with Heaven. Study consists of nothing more than to
apprehend this'-
"Implicit in the above-statement is the belief that one's inner experience is the real ground of
communication. It is not only the ultimate basis of human relationships but also the foundation upon
which man, according to the Doctrine of the Mean, 'participates in the transforming and nourishing
operations of Heaven and Earth.' ... Actually, the apparent emphasis on 'subjectivity' is not at all in
conflict with the view that 'to conquer oneself and return to propriety is humanity.' Indeed, the ego
has to be transcended and sometimes even denied for the sake of realizing the genuine self. For self-
control, overcoming the ego, is the authentic way to gain inner experience. This path is universally
open to every human being, but it ought to be traveled concretely by each person.
"The cultivation of an inner experience is consequently a search for self-identity. Yet in Neo-
Confucian thinking this process of looking into oneself does not at all alienate one from society. It
actually impels one to enter into what may be called 'the community of the like-minded' or even 'the
community of seltbood' " [quotation marks Tu's]. Including the consistent fusion of universality and
generality, without which the synecdochic displacement of the concrete mind with the mind of
Heaven and Earth would be impossible, those traits of Song rationalism are mentioned which indicate
its inherently monologic tendency and because of which Ito thought it imperative to launch a
thorough and rigorous critique of it.
64 Silence at the Center
the reducibility of the Other to the other and, ultimately, in the non-existence of
the Other and the exterior, but I must wait to discuss this issue later:) Man is
supposed to be commensurable with every being of the universe in his normal
state, a state in which the mind reigns over him. Any incommensurability that
might be incurred must be abnormal and irregular and subsequently rectifiable by
returning to the original normalcy.
Let me note that in Zhu Xi's philosophy the universal (general) applicability of
human nature is secured by the ontological order according to which nature-the
presence of Ii in man-is anterior to feeling. Furthermore, this ontological
anteriority of nature to feeling enables one to construe various empirical phe-
nomena in terms of the manifestation of Ii in wu.
It is against this ontological ordering that Ito insists on the anteriority of
feeling. "Feeling," says Ito, ~'is the desire of nature because it implies move-
ment. Hence, the characters 'nature' and ~feeling' are often mentioned together.
It is said in the "Gaku-ki' [Yueji] chapter [of the Li ji] that what moves in
response to things is the desire of nature." According to Ito:
Zhu Xi claims that mind synthesizes nature and feeling, by equating nature with
the ti [substance] of mind and feeling with the yang [function] of mind.... Feeling
is the movement of nature and belongs, then, to desire. Only insofar as feeling is in
touch with thinking is it called mind. Such [phenomena] as the Four Beginnings and
rage [fear, joy, grief] are thought by the mind; so they should not be called feel-
ing. . . . Feeling is that which moves without being thought. Even if it is slightly in
touch with thinking, it is called mind. If the seven phenomena of delight, anger,
sorrow, joy, affection, hatred, and desire move without being thought about, then
they should properly be called feelings. They should not be called feelings if they are
to contain the slightest thought. 15
Ito challenges the idea that feeling can be controlled by the mind. By disqualify-
ing the ontological order that places feeling below nature and sees feeling essen-
tially as a derivative of nature, he disrupts the economy regulating the assimila-
tion of the heterogeneous in Zhu Xi's discourse. Yet, it must be remembered that
Ito's critique preserves the Song rationalist conception of feeling and nature. He
adheres to the fonnula "Feeling is the desire of nature," mainly, I think, because
his critique would lose its rigor if Zhu Xi '8 vocabulary were totally given up. The
total rejection of the dominant vocabulary is, first of all, impossible, and to
fantasize such a rejection leads merely to a utopianism whose effect is often
rather conservative. What is accomplished in this kind of critique is the dis-
closure of the site where the heterogeneous has been contained. It goes without
saying that this site is now denominated as feeling. The new definition of feeling
as that which moves without being thought at all is significant at two points.
First, Ito's definition denies the control of the mind over feeling. Obviously,
15Ito Jinsai, Gomojigi, Hayashi edition, manuscript # 406951 in Tenri University Central Library,
Feeling 1, 2.
Ito Jinsai 65
the tenn "thought" or "thinking" (2-15) implies a subsumption of feeling under
a concept. It is precisely because this faculty is ascribed to the mind that the mind
can be said to synthesize nature and feeling. Subsequently the synthetic faculty
of the mind can be construed in its two aspects: one in which feeling is made to
correspond to nature and another in which feeling is posited as an object of
thinking. For this reason, Song rationalists could maintain parallelism between
feelings and natures. It should be obvious that without a parallelism of this sort it
is impossible to claim that a nature manifests itself as a feeling. At the same time,
a feeling is posited as an object for a positing subject, that is, the mind. Hence,
through thinking, a feeling is determined in its presence to the mind and, accord-
ingly, is subjected to the mind. This objectification of feeling is nothing but the
arresting and fixing of feeling within the reign of the mind.
Second, what is disclosed by this definition of feeling is the working of
discourse that prevents the heterogeneous from breaking down the discursive
economy. The Song rationalists' conception of sincerity implicitly assumes that
feeling is essentially tameable. In spite of or, rather, because of the cognizance
that feeling necessarily includes a moment heterogeneous to the regular, it was
absolutely necessary for Song rationalists to find some persuasive argument that .
feeling is eventually destined to conform to the economy of the given discourse.
Of course, Mencius's doctrine of inherently good human nature was interpreted
to serve this purpose. By contrast, Ito announces that feeling arises irrespective
of this economy. He claims that there is no fundamental guarantee that feeling
will conform to nature. Whereas feeling must be objectified to be deprived of its
spontaneity and thereby rendered tameable, Ito now defines feeling as exactly
outside of what can be objectified, that is to say, outside of the thinkable. For
him, the appearance of the Other is "an event of feeling." 16 It is not an event of
cognition.
Hence, feeling is that which cannot be present or made present to the mind: it
always flees the arresting reach of the mind. And because of its otherness to
thought, it is now seen as a topos of spontaneity. This new definition hints that
the spontaneous is in the pure incipiency of the happening, but it can emerge as
such "only on the condition that it does not itself present itself, on the condition
of this inconceivable and irrelievable passivity in which nothing can present
itself to itself." 17 Probably, it is not completely without merit to draw attention to
the figurative expression Ito uses in this instance: wataru (to link, 2-16). This
character suggests an act of linking beyond some boundary, as in crossing a river.
In other words, when a feeling reaches thought, it is included and assimilated
into some field. Zhu Xi believed this field included the entire universe and was
therefore boundless. Ito, however, delimits this field where an object is posited
as that which is determined by a limited number of universals-that is, as a
16Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. George Van Den Abbeele
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), p. 111.
17Jacques Derrida, "Quel QueUe: Valery's Sources," in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 296-97.
66 Silence at the Center
detennined subject-and he opens up the "outside" by linking it to a different
regime, where'things are differently perceived and acted upon.
Through the figurative expression "to link" it seems possible to explore some
theoretical implications of Ito's comprehension of feeling. That he was able to
delimit the field called the mind should indicate the emergence of a certain
specific understanding of "thinking," and this understanding first acknowledges
that thinking cannot deal with what moves, that it can only get hold of a phe-
nomenon, an object in stasis to consciousness. His emphasis on the mobility of
feeling, in fact, leads to the reversal of the ontological ordering employed by Zhu
Xi. Now Ito states that that which moves pre~edes that which is arrested, and at
this moment, I think, the putative claim to universal validity of the Song ra-
tionalists' discourse fell prey to a thorough and final critique.
What allows for the disclosure of the heterogeneous and marks the limit of
discourse is the introduction of a new discursive arrangement: enunciation.
Emile Benveniste explains this tenn in his famous essay "L'appareil formel de
I' enonciation" :
Enunciation is this putting of language [langue] into function by an individual act of
utilization. . . .
. But everyone knows that for the same subject the same sounds are n·~ver
exactly reproduced, and that the notion of identity is only approximate here where
experience is repeated in its detail. These differences belong to the diversity of the
situations where enunciation is produced....
In enunciation we successively consider the act itself, the situations in which the
act takes place, the instruments of the accomplishment.
The individual act by which language is utilized first introduces the speaker as the
parameter in the conditions necessary for enunciation. Before enunciation, language
is nothing but the possibility of language. After enunciation, language is executed in
an instance of discourse, which issues from a speaker, a sonorous form that reaches a
listener and incites another enunciation in return....
But immediately, as soon as he [the speaker] declares himself a speaker and
assumes language, he implants the other vis-a-vis himself, no matter what degree of
presence he attributes to this other. Every enunciation is, explicitly or implicitly, an
allocution: it postulates an allocution.
Finally, in enunciation language is found to be employed for the expression of a
certain relationship to the world. The condition for this mobilization and this appro-
priation of language, for the speaker, is the need to refer by discourse and. for the
other, the possibility to corefer identically, in a pragmatic consensus that makes each
speaker a cospeaker. Reference is an integral part of enunciation....
. . . The presence of the speaker to his enunciation makes it necessary for each
instance of discourse to constitute a center of internal reference. This situation is
going to be manifested by a play of specific forms whose function is to put the
speaker in a constant and necessary relation with his enunciation. 18
18Emile Benveniste, Problemes de linguistique generate (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), pp. 80-82. The
italics are mine.
Ito Jinsai 67
Any utterance must be produced ata certain place, a certain time, but an
utterance, once produced, gains a relative aJJtonomy and becomes independent of
its origin, Regardless of whether one knows who first enunciated it or not, one
can understand what the utterance signifies. Insofar as what it says is at issue,
one, does not need to know and is never able to tell who spoke it or where and
when it was uttered. The same utterance can be repeated "in principle" by
anybody anywhere, And if it cannot be repeated, then it will not be the same
utterance. What constitutes the identity of an utterance is what it says, the
enunciated (enonce). Indeed, a subject can be identifiable within an enunciated
such as "I" in '''1 tell you the truth," but this 4'1" and this <'4 you" could be
anybody unless the enunciated is confused with the enunciation, In fact, insofar
as the signification of an utterance in which the pronouns are embedded is
concerned, these pronouns are completely empty. The erasure of what Ben-
veniste calls the "center of internal reference," which stems from the speaker's
presence to his enunciation, is also an integral part of language use.
Yet, that any person can say it without identifying her- or himself with 4'1" is
the necessary condition for such an utterance to be communicable, The ano-
nymity .of the enunciated is, I must repeat, the very possibility of utterance. A
particular 4'1" transfonns itself into an anonymous "I" in the enunciated, and, an
ideal or imaginary state in which a subject of a speech act must be coincidental
with the subject of an enunciation is called the enunciation. As a matter of fact,
we can only have a memory of the enunciation. Supposedly the enunciated is a
product of the enunciation. It should be emphasized, however, that it is impossi-
ble to recover from an enunciated the originary enunciation, in which the subject,
situation, and intention are all integrated into a single occurrence of speech.
There is an irredeemable and irremediable rupture between enunciation and
enunciated. A statement such as "I am telling you a lie" or '41 am dead." reveals
this rupture most clearly. If the subject is telling a lie, how could his statement
itself be intelligible? Or if she is dead, how could she speak at all? These cases in
which the enunciation and the enunciated are contradictory are not exceptional,
but they disclose the most fundamental working of language. It is through this
rupture, this antinomy, that human beings articulate the world in lan~uage,
This understanding of the "putting of language into function" renders Ben-
veniste's notions of the "subject of enunciation" and "discourse" susceptible to
fundamental doubt. While respecting his penetrating insight into the subjectivity
in language, I must criticize his fonnulation and attempt to modify his tenns.
It should be remembered that one poses oneself as a subject by and in lan-
guage. As Benveniste claims, only language can sound the concept of ego. He
says, "Est ego qui dit ego" ("Ego" is he who says "ego").l9 Moreover, by
19Emile Benveniste. Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral Gables,
Fla.: 1971): "The 'subjectivity' I am discussing here is the capacity of the speaker to posit himself as
'subject.' It is defined not by the feeling which everyone experiences of being himself (this feeling, to
the degree that it can be taken note of. is only a reflection) but as the psychic unity that transcends the
68 Silence at the Center
saying "I," according to Benveniste, the individual enters the reciprocal rela-
tionship with the other, and in principle this other could be anybody. As Hegel
illustrated it, the 4'1" thus designated is always a site of contradiction, and this
contradiction allows for the positing of the "I" as well as the positivity of the
"I," for the "I" who is pointed to in imagination is an other not only to the other,
the addressee who listens to and receives the message, but also to the individual
as the one who designates or indicates. Since the "I" can make sense at all only
when it is opposed to the "other," the "I" is in fact enabled by the "other."
Already, when one says "I," one is shifted to the field of the "other," and the
subjectivity posited in the enunciation has lost its immediate rapport with the
originary "ego."
Then, what is the nature of this delay, separation, or rupture? In uttering a
statement one is always transformed into an "other" from whom one must be
separated or alienated. Confession is without exception ultimately a lie, not
because one disguises and conceals oneself but because every utterance is neces-
sarily a deviation of oneself from one's "ego." Unless man or woman is forced to
identify "ego" with his or her assigned subjective position, confession does not
work. Or to put it more rigorously, confession is essentially a political practice by
which to subject and subordinate a person to his or her identity by soliciting that
person into believing there is true "self" somewhere in that person's spirit or
body. In speech, one cannot coincide with oneself because what one intends to
say is always different from what one actually says. Therefore, we can think of
the social as an encounter with the Other. In utterance, one lives two different
temporalities that never meet: the time in which what one means to say is
presented, and the time of the actual speech in which saying is actually executed.
By virtue of the fact that somebody must enunciate it for an event to be registered
totality of the actual experiences it assembles and that makes the permanence of the consciousness.
Now we hold that the 'subjectivity,' whether it is placed in phenomenology or in psychology, as one
may wish, is only the emergence in the being of a fundamental property of language. 'Ego' is he who
says 'ego.' That is where we see the foundation of 'subjectivity; which is determined by the
linguistic status of 'person.'
"Consciousness of self is only possible if it is experienced by contrast. I use I only when I am
speaking to someone who will be a you in my address. It is this condition of dialogue that is
constitutive of person, for it implies that reciprocally I becomes you in the address of the one who in
his tum designates himself as /. Here we see a principle whose consequences are to spread out in all
directions. Language is possible only because each speaker sets himself up as a subject by referring to
himself as I in his discourse. Because of this,l posits another person, the one who, being, as he is,
completely exterior to 'me,' becomes my echo to whom I say you and who says you to me. This
polarity of persons is the fundamental condition in language, of which the process of communication,
in which we share, is only a mere pragmatic consequence. It is a polarity, moreover, very peculiar in
itself, as it offers a type of opposition whose equivalent is encountered nowhere else outside of
language. This polarity does not mean either equality or symmetry: 'ego' always has a position of
transcendence with regard to you. Nevertheless, neither of the terms can be conceived of without the
other; they are complementary, although according to an 'interior/exterior' opposition, and, at the
same time, they are reversible" (p. 224).
As should be obvious, I have a few reservations about Benveniste's argument, however brilliant
and enlightening. Particularly important are the use of the term "discourse" and Benveniste's rather
careless endorsement of the universality of the Indo-European pronominal system, to which I shall
return.
Ito Jinsai 69
as such, an event insofar as it is identified and memorized in the text is inevitably
also a discursive event, an image retained ill and by a given discourse. An event
that is described in a statement precedes and succeeds other events in actuality, so
that it should be justifiable to say that the event took, takes, or will take place in
time. Yet the statement can be repeatedly uttered. What puzzles us here is that an
enunciation in which an event is described is also an event. The event described
in many different enunciations can be the same, whereas none of these enuncia-
tions can be the same. Therefore, I must conclude that the upresent" of the
enunciation and the ~'now" of the enunciated cannot coincide with each other
and that the antinomy that exists between the two terms, as a matter of fact,
makes up the very possibility of verbalization and of linguistic expression in
general.
Now, it is not overly difficult to see that various philosophical tactics deployed
in Zhu Xi's discourse organized themselves around the central issue of how to
reduce textual traits indicating the problematic of enunciation and enunciated.
Hence comes the ontological ordering of nature and feeling which dictated that
the feeling or desire-that which moves-could be exhaustively defined in
terms of. nature. Once a variety of events had been reduced to the terms in the
enunciated, they could be unanimously treated as universals, and through this
reduction one could discover Ii in things, events and one's body. What I called
the invisibility of one's body meant that feeling, which is always linked to one's
body, could be subordinated to the reign of the mind. Of course, the mind was
the field of universals including human nature. Sincerity as Zhu understood it
signified nothing but the reducibility of the enunciation to the enunciated.
It is the heterogeneity inherent in the enunciation which Ito Jinsai illustrates by
rejecting the ontological order of nature and feeling. He insists that feeling is
irreducible to nature and thereby discloses the heterogeneity of feeling within
Zhu Xi's discourse. Insofar as Ito accepts the vocabulary and the routine ways of
questioning typical of Song rationalism, the disclosure of the heterogeneous is
also a critique, whose main task it is to reveal the topos of textuality underlying
and concealed by the discourse. But his critique seems to go farther: it is, above
all else, a critique of discourse in general. In this respect, Ito proposes to see the
world-jinrin sekai,20 or the social world-primarily as text, not as discourse.
Thus, Ito could come up with a new reading of the mobile nature of feeling: dOll
(dong, 2-17).
Subjectivity and Persons
Perhaps, in this regard, it is necessary to pay attention to the absence in
classical literary Chinese of the pronominal system of European languages. Let
2O'fhe term is borrowed from Koyasu Nobukuni, who emphasizes Ito's use of the termjinrin. See
his Ito Jinsai-jinrin-teki sekai no shiso.
70 Silence at the Center
me put aside for the present the question whether the pronominal system is innate
in particular tanguages or imposed by a metalanguage about them) and ,even the
tenability of a distinction between a particular language and its grammar as
articulated in some metalanguage. For now, I would like to ponder the fact that
the classical literary Chinese in which most of Ito's works are written cannot be
reduced to utterances performed in so-called conversational situations because it
was completely different from the language of everyday life. I discuss this issue
in more detail in Part Three with regard to Ogyu Sorai and the emergence of the
new regimes of reading-translation; here it is sufficient to note that the illocution-
ary aspect of philosophical discussion produced during the eighteenth century has
to be analyzed in a different manner from the one in which the theorists of the
speech acts examine utterance as perfonnance. The use of classical Chinese
might be compared to the use of graphic symbols in mathematics and science
today. One might even claim that language in which Ito discusses "nearness" and
everyday life was not his "everydayn language, not even a language other people
used in their everyday environments during his lifetime. The danger, which is
very obvious here, is to regard classical Chinese as a formal, artificial, and
insignificant language whose "categories n were somewhat alienated from the
"real n and "ordinary" people; to postulate that for the common people classical
Chinese was much less "natural" and, therefore, an inferior medium. And to say
that its "categories" were far too inadequate to reflect the belief system of the
ordinary people merely leads to a reification of ordinariness. Avoiding this pitfall
requires a series of theoretical operations that manifest the errors implicit in an
easy dismissal of philosophical and theoretical argument on populist grounds,
but many of these operations fall outside the immediate scope of this book. Here,
I must content myself with a few observations.
In !!lost case~".th.~.attrjbutiQn of language to speech acts seems to be facilitated
by "imagining-' a. subjectF · 'We have already observed the split in the speaking
subject in enunciation. We must further note the well-known thesis that opposite
to the anonymous "I" who is registered in and signified by the word "I" (shugo),
is the particular "In who has actually produced the speech.; This particular "I,"
who appears external to the subject of the enunciated, is the one that has to be
represented;/The qualification that this "I," the subject of the enunciation, has to
be represented is not accidental to how the subject of the enunciation is possible:
as Jacque~ Lacan and others have shown, the ~ubject of the enunciation can exist
a
only' as subject that is to be represented. In other words, the subject of the
enunciation must be thetically posited and represented. Insofar as it is thetically
represented, it does not matter in what sort of syntactical"function it corresponds
the "I" or its equivalent, shugo, in a particular language. It follows that the
subject of the enunciation must be represented to someone:r,Not only must there
be a rupture between the subject of the enunciation and the subject of the
enunciated; a separation is also absolutely necessary between the subject of the
enunciation and the one to whom the subject of the enunciation is represented,i To
.)ff:1 :;<;~f:!<;;;!'!'~::,,,'.',
Ito Jinsai 71
say that the subject of the enunciation is to be represented is to say that that
subject is possible only with this separation~ a representational structure that can
be construed in terms of a mirror, not to mention the Lacanian reading of the
mirror stage.
This is to say, as many have argued, that the subject of the enunciation must be
an image, Therefore, it is not possible outside theoria, as speculation, or history,
broadly conceived as a narrative about the imagined past/Furthermore, it is not
necessary to call the agent of enunciation (shutai), who executes the enunciation,
the subject of enunciation. 21
If so, then the' whole distinction between pronoun and person, history as it is
narrated and discourse as it is lived, language and reality, and so on, seems to me
to be dubious./ln order to secure the distinction between pronoun and person,
Emile Benveniste, for instance, draws a line between the first and second person
singular~ and the third person.,-For him, the "I is 'the individual who utters the
present instance of discourse containing the linguistic instance I. "2:/ But this
double instance is entirely dependent on the way a pronoun is used; it is equally
possible to use a proper noun, even a personal name, to signify and designate the
agent of the enunciation simultaneously. In his efforts to circumscribe language
from its exterior as a system of formal rules, Benveniste presupposes that there
are linguistically marked instances when the subject coincides with itself, or the
shugo is automatically the shutai,i1n this example, a systematic feature isolated
from a family of languages is indiscriminately applied to other languages'lBut I
am not blaming Benveniste for the lack of empirical data; what I would like to
draw attention to is a complicity between his distinction between language and
nonlanguage and a certain positivism in his discussion of subjectivity.
The absence of the system of personal pronouns in the languages of Ito Jinsai
should make us very cautious about the uses of the term "subject. I have H
therefore marked it with a different set of tenos that might all be rendered as
"subject." Considering the relationships between the subject as shugo and the
subject of the enunciation, one might first probe into the formal rules according
to which the subject of the enunciation is supposedly transformed into the subject
of the proposition, for example:
21In "The Essential Solitude" (The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays. ed, P. Adams
Sitney [Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill, 1981] trans. by Lydia Davis from L'espace litteraire [Paris:
Gallimard, 1955)), Maurice Blanchot notes: "To write is to surrender oneself to the fascination of the
absence of time. Here we are undoubtedly approaching the essence of solitude. The absence of time
is not a purely negative mode. It is the time in which nothing begins, in which initiative is not
possible, where before the affinnation there is already the recurrence of the affinnation. Rather than a
purely negative mode, it is a time without negation, without decision, when here is nowhere, when
each thing withdraws into its image and the T that we are recognizes itself as it sinks into the
neutrality of a faceless 'it' [il]. The time of the absence of time is without a present, without a
presence" (pp. 72-73, translation modified), I shall return to this issue in relation to Heidegger,
Kant, and more important, Nishida Kitaro's critique of shugoshugi, or subjectivism.
22Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, pp. 218,217-22.
72 Silence at the Center
I am here.
I stance. "24 I tentatively define shutai as that which flees in enunciation.
I say, "I am here."
or
The rose is red.
I here" I "I say, 'I am here' " and "The [ose is red" I '~I think that the rose is
I think that the rose is red.
Too often this kind of transformation defines the subject of the enunciation as an
implicit positing of the "I," but note that the subject of the enunciation is
predetermined in the network of pronouns by virtue of its designation by the "I,"
as though it were already opposed to "you," "we," "she." In its particularity,
however, it is represented in the image or, more often, in the specular image of
the subject's body as it is reflected in the structure, which might be compared to a
mirror. 23 Even in nonpronominallanguages the term that signifies and designates
could function in the same manner. The position of the subject, which can be
identified in a variety of ways, such as "your humble servant," "servant in front
of him or her," "self," and so on, can easily be equated to the subject of the
enunciation. Very often, as is sometimes the case in the Indo-European pro-
nominal systems, the social and historical nature of the subject's identity can be
forgotten and internalized as if it were an ahistorical essence. And it is precisely
this kind of positivism of subjectivity that Ito Jinsai detects in what he regards as
the hypocrisy of Song rationalists.
What is overlooked in the transformations I have outlined is an internal contra-
diction. One might follow the Kantian formula: every statement should be able to
be accompanied by "I think." Contrary to what one might expect, this formula
does not justify the transition from "The rose is red" to "I think, 'The Rose is
red' " or to "I think that the rose is red," for the formula actually leads to an
indefinite series, to "I think, 'I think, "the Rose is red'"'' and to "I think, 'I
think, "I think ... " ad nauseam. Later I will return to the many Japanese terms
that are used to translate the English word "subject"; let me meanwhile stress
these two points:
First, the closure or completion of the statement that can be accompanied by "I
think" is intelligible only on the condition that the statement is undermined by the
possibility of an indefinite opening. And this indefinite opening is marked by that
which cannot be represented in the subject of the enunciation, by that which flees
the capture of specular imagination in the subject of the enunciation. From now on,
let me call this fleeing being, this nonbeing (not a being because it eludes arrest in
signification), shutai, a word consisting of two Chinese characters shu or zhu (2-
23lt is important to stress that the term "desire" generally follows a different economy in Confu-
cian discourse from that of the Freudian wish. Yet, in spite of very many differences in terminology, I
maintain that the imaginary construction of the subject is also at work in Confucian discourse.
Ito Jinsai 73
3) meaning "host, master, main" and tai or ti (2-18) meaning "body, sub-
Second, some might perceive a confusionism in my argument and claim that I
have consistently obliterated the distinction between saying and thinking. Focus-
ing on the common formal feature of the two sets of propositions-"1 am
red"- I have paid little attention to what one might consider the fundamental
difference between "to say" and "to think." One might argue that one has to say
a thing out loud, whereas one can think without making sound or causing any
material change: Another might suggest that to think is to say (something) in
one's mind, silently. Yet, it is also true that, in order to gain any access to the
exterior at all, thinking has to be expressed in saying or other actions. Only as the
" said is it possible for us to think the thinking. Then, shall we blind ourselves to
the naIvete in this kind of argumentation and conclude that a thought "I am here"
is expressed in the saying of "I say, 'I am here' "? Lik~wise, must the thought "I
think that the rose is red" be expressed not in "I think that I think that the rose is
red" but in "I say, 'I think that the rose is red' "?
The pitfall is obvious. The presupposed positivistic distinction between think-
ing and saying assumes a very definite and narrow comprehension of enuncia-
tion: enunciation as an expression of thinking in saying, as the saying of think-
ing. It is comprehended as a transition from possible thinking "(I think that) the
rose is red" to actualized saying "(I say that) the rose is red." When Kant said,
"Every statement should be able to be accompanied by 'I think'," the possibjlity
of "I think" was conceived of in the context of transcendental deduction. Of
course, this "transcendental" and "transcendentalism" in Song rationalism must
not be confused, at least not without due elaboration. Kant seems to have sug-
gested what might be described in our terminology as the equation of the subject
of the enunciation to the transcendental subject. 25
What should be remembered is the secessionist nature of the enunciation,
which can be construed as a separation between that which is arrested and that
which flees. Yet, this formulation does not imply an original plenitude anterior to
the separation, some harmonious wholeness or oneness, as Benveniste might
suggest. The enunciation lets this asymmetrical separation between what can be
24There are several lexicological meanings for each character. Shu is the site the spirit visits,
master, host, head, what one relies upon, to administer, main, mainly, to respect. Tai is body, form,
appearance, type, style, substance, entity, acquisition (of habits or skills), care for others.
250ne of the conducting threads that guide Kant's inquiry is the relationship between the concept
and its representation both as problematic and as a theoretical ground: it is problematic because "I
think" is concerned with the very possibility of relating the concept and its representation; it is a
theoretical ground because his transcendental deduction is motivated by the reducibility of the
representation to the concept, by a careful distinction between the transcendent and the transcenden-
tal. As his metaphysical project is of a "transcendental" and critical nature, his inquiry concerning
the possible conditions for experience never proceeds along the axis of temporal progression from
"thinking" to "enunciation" to "said."
74 Silence at the Center Ito Jinsai 75

thematically posited and the shutai that flees take place, and take a place where
the subject of the enunciation and the agent of the enunciation are split. That is to
say, I will venture to consider enunciation in te~s of its parergonal structure, in
which a subject in the sense of theme, or shudai, is posited in the field marked by
a framing, or parergon. The agent of the enunciation cannot be posited as a
specular image unless a parergonal structure is assumed. So even in the Lacanian
argument about the mirror stage, it is not, of course, a matter of whether or not a
mirror reflecting a child's body is actually there but a matter of the insertion of
parergonal secession into the child's world.
In Bartolome Esteban Murillo's self-portrait (figure B), the viewer feels ill at
ease because of the co-presence of two contradictory moments. Painting utensils
placed outside the central frame, which somewhat resembles that of a mirror,
and the inscription below it suggest that the image of the man's upper body is the
specular reflection of the painter who produces the image. The whole painting is
set up in such a way that the viewer is lured into occupying the position of the
painter who views his own body reflected on the plane in front of him. The
possibility for the viewer to identify her viewpoint with that of the painter in a
specific suturing, and to recognize the self of the painter in the reflected image is
created by the insertion of the frame, which divides the background and the
inside sphere of reflection. In this sphere because of its secondary and non-
originary status indicated by the term reflection, the image emerges as an effect
of some external cause, and the frame introduces distance whereby representa-
tion, in the sense of making a thing present to the gaze or letting it stand against
consciousness and thereby turning it into a phenomenon is rendered possible.
The insertion of the frame, therefore, seems to stabilize the economy of the
selfsame in which the specular image of the painter's body reflected within the
framed space and the invisible and perspectival locus of his own body to which
things are presented are clearly distinguished and located.
However, the viewer also notices the painter's hand, a part of his body, placed
upon the frame which is supposed to divide the sphere for reflected images from
its outside. The intrusion of the hand immediately destabilizes the assumed
equilibrium between the image of the painter's body in specularity and his
subjective gaze; it interferes with the economy of the selfsame, thereby putting in Figure B. Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Self-Portrait, a. 1670. By permission of the
jeopardy the very scheme for reproducing the identity of the subject in the National Gallery, London.
reflected image of a self-portrait. The hand belongs to the body that is painted on
the canvas, yet it indicates that it is the body of the painter that produces the thematize is already the one that has been framed up. But I want to exploit the
frame as well as distance, which is absolutely necessary to let the self stand anxiety provoked in the viewer by this painting in order to designate the body of
against the subject's gaze. the enunciation or shutai that can never be reduced to the specular image of the
Of course, the intruding hand is a painted one and the intrusion of the frame body or to the subject of the enunciation. Shutai participates in the establishment
takes place within a larger frame that marks and identifies Murillo's self-portrait of the frame, but remains heterogeneous to the economy of subjectivity which is
itself. I am talking about the intrusion of the economy of subjectivity at the level regulated by the framing mechanism; the body as shutai engenders the frame's
of what one might refer to as a "secondary revision," and the subjectivity that I effect but can never be arrested in the work of the frame; shutai must necessarily
76 Silence at the Center
be excluded in order for the body to be represented in its specularity. In other
words, the bOdy as shuta; can never be grasped as a phenomenon in subjective
identification.
Hence, although in this book the subject of the en~nciation is occasionally
associated with the body objectified in its specular image, in most cases I do not
intend for the body to be taken as equivalent to its image. Instead, the body is
primarily that which moves, the topos of the heterogeneous or of textual mate-
riality and, as I will demonstrate, the center of the sphere of "nearness." The
body as the shutai is essentially that which moves away from the thinkable, that
which flees subjectification, or shudaika. Accordingly, what is suggested by the
emergence of the body in Ito Jinsai's treatises is an awareness that the hetero-
geneous and materiality can no longer be contained within the economy of the
discourse. Nevertheless, the body thus suggested would be recaptured and
stripped of its heterogeneity in eighteenth-century discourse as it was subjugated
to the new regime of visibility.
Nondisjunctive Function and Disjunctive Function
With this shift, the mind that had hitherto been regarded as the ground of
sociality came to be understood as a closure to others, a sign of a-sociality. The
constitution of the inner closure, however, and subsequently of the transcenden-
talism Ito finds inherent in ideational intentionality, is thought of as simul-
taneously a cause and its effect. Ito does not argue that transcendentalism results
from the inner closure or vice versa; it is not because the inner is formed, fixed,
or reified that transcendentalism is generated in due course. Nor does transcen-
dentalism necessarily lead to the inner, a narrow ego centrism. As a matter of
fact, the two are synonymous and therefore simultaneous manifestations of a
deep-rooted deficiency common, according to Ito, to Cheng-Zhu Confucianism,
Buddhism, and Taoism. All these teachings are, he believed, pervaded in one
way or another by some features of "frigidity," and he used many figurative
expressions in his attempts to describe the defect. He presented, for example, the
aforementioned pairs of antonyms, such as high/low, estranged/intimate, and so
on. In addition, he noted more theoretically oriented oppositions-
rigidity/mobility, verbal demonstration (argumentation)/behavioral demonstra-
tion, and quiescence/animation-which more clearly indicate a regulatory sys-
tem by which textual productivity is organized into a certain economy. I must not
overlook that all the oppositions are polarized in the sense that the second
terms-mobility, behavioral demonstration, and animation-are fundamental
and the first terms are derivative. Often it is said that rigidity, argumentation, and
quiescence are manifestations of the defect and that they simply signify the
absence or distortion of mobility, behavioral demonstration, and animation, re-
Ito Jinsai 77
spectively. Furthermore, the' Chinese characters that Song rationalists used to
indicate their main concepts are analyzed independently and individually in order
to show that they are either used differently or not found at all in the classics.
Thus, Ito demonstrates that the priority of nature over feeling, Ii over qi is due to
the.deliberate efforts of Song rationalists to distort proper uses of the characters. I
will undertake a more detailed examinati<?n of his interpretative strategy later, but
this much can be said about the formation of philosophical oppositions and their
discursive function: the first terms in the oppositions are delusive because they
repr~sent conformity to the static rules; the second terms are associated with
mutation and excess. Nature and feeling, sy.bstance (tai, ti, 2-18) and function
(yo, yong, 2-19) are paired characters whose meanings are determined in op-
position to each other. In the philosophemes thus formed, n~ither feeling nor
function is articulated as some surplus of nature or substance. In other words,
when these characters are molded into categories and locked in the philoso-
phemes through disjunctive oppositions, the discourse articulated and organized
by these paired categories would be not merely quiescent but also "transcenden-
talistic. "
Ai, Qr love (2-20), is the principle Ito posits against the "transcendentalistic"
discourse and upon which he forms his conception of ethics and sociality. But ai
is no longer grounded in the mind, as it was in Song rationalism, or seirigaku (2-
21), in which ethics was always understood as a matter within the scope of the
faculty of the mind (shin, xin, 1-17). Fundamentally Ito's understanding of love
is informed by a new interpretation of the personal encounter, in which a person
comes across another in a basically nonreciprocal and asymmetrical manner. (It
goes without saying that neither reciprocity or symmetry implies equality here.
On the contrary, the relationship of loyalty, of the lord and the vassal, for
instance, can be conceived of as a reciprocal and symmetrical relation in this
context). But instead of analyzing this nonreciprocal encounter, Ito Jinsai demon-
strates how love should not be construed in terms that necessarily posit the mind
as a faculty by which reciprocal relations are constituted. Reciprocity can be
construed in two ways: (1) as the differentiation or distinction of two opposite
terms and (2) as the equality of the two terms. The interchangeability of op-
posites, then, requires an economy that governs difference and identity: the
surplus between difference and identity must be carefully restrained. First of all,
there must be the field in which both terms share the same quality, so that
comparison is possible, or to put it another way, these two terms must partake of
the same genre. Only insofar as they are identified in terms of the same set of
universals can it be possible to talk about the particularities of each term, which
are predicated upon it and constitute their respective identities as subjects
(shugo).
In the discussion of ethics and sociality, however, each term is also a subject
who knows its other term, not merely a subject predicated upon the proposition
 78 Silence at the Center
but also a subject (shukan 2-22) who recognizes the other. Primarily, the ethical
and social relationship between the two terms appears to be that between the self
and the other, the one who recognizes as the subject (shukan) and the on~ who is
recognized as the object. At this stage, it is impossible to talk about reciprocity
since "I" as a subject definitely transcends ~'you" as an object. The other
presents itself in the field in which it is recognized, and the presence of this field
coincides with the presence of the "I" as the subject. To recognize '~you" is to
submit "you" as an object in my field of perception, and that field, which cannot
be thematically posited, is "I" as the subject (shukan). Without any doubt, there
cannot be a reciprocal relationship between "you" and "me" at this stage. In
order to have reciprocity between "you" and "I," therefore, there must be a third
viewpoint to which "you" and ~'I" are present as two terms, as two subjects
(shugo) who partake of the same essence and to whom different predicates are
ascribed.
~n ~ong rationalism, the aim of ethics and sociality is given as the ultimate
cOIncIdence of this third viewpoint, which one might compare to the transcen-
dental ego as a field of intersubjectivity, and the field of consciousness of a
particular subject (shukan) to which the other is present. It was presupposed that
one's particular field of consciousness could be identical with the field of the
transcendental ego. In this respect, the field thus acquired corresponds to the
notion of the mind, and the shared essence to human nature. Of course, the mind
w~s said to be immanent in every human being, and from the viewpoint of the
mInd, every person was said to be interchangeable with another. And in relation
to the mind, whi~h for Zhu Xi included the entire universe, the singularity of
each person, precIsely because the single individual cannot be subsumed under
the subject (shugo), is of secondary importance, just as feeling is a derivative of
nature. Song rationalism projected a world where no otherness of the Other was
poss~ble, a world where the other could be exhaustively defined by a set of
predIcates, a world where exteriority could ultimately be eliminated and doing
could be reduced to knowing. And all these ethical and epistemological claims
wer~ mad: on the grounds that the feeling that appears in human beings is a
manIfestatIon of and predetermined by nature, which is immanent in human
beings, and that nature is substantial and feeling derivative. Thus the order of
nature and feeling had to be rigidly maintained, and the distinction between the
two could never be abandoned.
But, when the assumed anteriority of nature to feeling is deconstructed and the
presumed authority of the mind is put in question, the sociality conceived of in
this format will undoubtedly collapse, with the result that the mind would then
b.ec?me .a closure incommensurable with other minds and would form a solip-
SIstIC pnson.
.It~ 's conception of the distinction between nature and feeling obliterates the
pnonty of nature over feeling and the separation between them. The contrast
between Ito's argument and Zhu Xi's can be approached as nondisjunctive func-
Ito Jinsai 79
tion versus disjunctive function. 26 This schema can be helpful in explaining the
core of the debate in the following passage, where Ito criticizes philosophemes
organized by disjunctive function: .
Having heard of his doctrine [the theory of Hu Yun-feng, 2-23], the scholars
inferred that we Confucians differed from Buddhists only iIi the point of yong,27
while we were very close to them as far as the ti [Tai. substance] of Ii was concerned.
It should be said that such an understanding seriously obscures the Way. For where
there is a root, there must be its branch [matsu, mo, 2-24] unthematically posited
[as its opposite]. Where there is the branch, there cannot but be its root. [Since these
tenus always form an opposition], they differ not only in the application [yosho,
yong chu, 2-25] but also in the ti, just as water and black are opposed to fire and
white, and just as there is an irreconcilable separation between life and death, man
and ghost. They are not interchangeable. When they said U[Their conceptions of]
vacuity [2-26] and annihilation [2-27] are similar to ours in respect ofli," it was as
if one shared a bath with others and laughed at them because they were naked. How
could we maintain the fundamental difference between Confucianism and Bud-
dhism? ... The theory of ti and yong was invented in modem times. The ancient
sages' writings never mentioned this doctrine. 28
Here, the argument is conducted on two levels: first, Ito rejects the view that
Buddhism and Confucianism could be synthesized when the basic ideas in both
teachings had been adequately analyzed. This view has to be denied because it
was formulated on the basis of the theory of ti and yong. Second, the theory of ti
and yong is impossible unless one adopts such an ontological ordering as regu-
lates the relationship of nature and feeling in Song rationalism. The opposition of
ti and yong is comparable to that of noumenon and phenomenon in that the tenns
are not interchangeable, for ti is given priority over yong. But Confucianism,
according to Ito, is a teaching based on the denial of this order, so that the
adoption of such a doctrine indicates the heretical nature of this view. Further, he
argues: "When one adopts the ti/yong opposition, Ii would then be regarded as
the ti and the event [ji, shi, 2-28] as the yong. It follows that, since ti is the root
and yong the branch, ti will be taken to be important, and yong unimportant."29
Only as long as the first term in the opposition is given ontological reality is it
possible to posit an entity behind appearance, since otherwise the opposition
could be arranged to generate an indefinite sequence of causal relationships; an
entity will be merely the appearance of another appearance and, therefore, there
26Ito uses two temlS to conceptualize these functions: ryuk6 nondisjunctive opposition; taitai =
disjunctive opposition. See Ito. Gomojigi, in Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 33 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
1971), pp. 15-16.
27Yong often rendered as function in English, is not to be confused with nondisjunctive and
disjunctive functions.
28Ito, Gomojigi (Nihon shiso taikei), p. 33.
29Ibid., p. 34.
80 Silence at the Center
can be no ontological priority in the relationship of an appearance to another
appearance. A ti can be a ti of a ti, but the ti itself could also be a yong of ~~mother
ti, so that it is impossible to determine the final and ultimate entity that can nt?ver
be a yong of something else. In Dojimon, Ito poses this question:
Question: I learned this from Zhu Xi: he said, "There is a difference within Ii
between "being as it should be" [2-29] and ~~being as it is" [2-30]. "Being as it
should be" is the ti and "being as it is" is the manifestation [2-31] of "being as it
should be." Therefore, he further said, yin and yang are naturally material beings
under the form [1-15]. The great ultimate is naturally the Way above the form [1,-
14]. According to the lecture you have just given, [all beings] are events belong-
ing to "being as it is" and will never reach the substantiality of "being as it should
be." That is, they are all yong but never ti. Does this view seem too extreme and,
as a result, sound too superficial?
Answer: Can't you see that what is called the Ii of "being as it should be" is nothing
but the reason why people are as they are, why things are as they are, and why yin
and yang mutually replace each other, one increasing as the other decreases? Yin-
yang is not the Way, indeed. The Way is nothing but the fact that yin and yang
never cease to replace each other and exchange each other. When yin and yang are
mutually interchangeable, therein lies the Way of heaven. When solidity [2-32]
and softness [2-33] are mutually replaceable, therein lies the Way of earth. When
benevolence and righteousness are mutually complementary, therein lies the Way
of men. 30
Li is no longer the principle that simultaneously governs the intelligibility of
occurrences and the generation of things in the world. It has lost its a priori
validity and been demoted to the status of a posteriori regularity. Furthermore, Ii
is now stripped of its power to detennine what is to be realized in the process of
genesis. New things are continually created in the world, but Ii is no longer the
principle whereby to predetermine and predict what should be generated; Ii has
lost its qualification as the principle of genesis: "One ought to see it is not that
there being Ii first, qi is generated according to 1i."31 Once the ontological order
is no longer in effect, Ii cannot posit the realm of essences, which demands its
independent existence beyond this world. It is declared definitively and almost
triumphantly that the world is as it is-nothing lies behind the surface of ap-
pearances-and that the ultimate nothingness (2-24) Song Confucians once
described as having no voice and no smell is a delusion from which one must be
cured, As the supremacy of Ii gradually declines, one recognizes the visibility
and concreteness of the world, the world filled with things visible, audible,
tactile, or in a word, sensible. A new field of discourse is now being opened up
where sensuality, perception, and emotion, which have hitherto been excluded
from verbalization, are to be affirmatively articulated. In addition, this world has
3°lto, Dojimon, p. 137.
31Ito, Gomojigi (Hayashi ed.), Tendou, 3d article.
Ito Jinsai 81
neither an anc~orage in the "beyond" nor an explicit thematization of the fixed
center from ~hlch~e social can be organized. In this sense, it is afloating world
wher~ the dIst~nce In d~pth between signifier and signified is constantly trans-
lated Into a honzontal distance between one signifier and another on the surface
w~ere an endless series of signifiers generates and regenerates a multiplicity of
objects for the senses.
Notwithstanding that Ito could not give a distinctive fonn of articulation to the
center, ~ think: that ~is philosophy is actually organized around a certain ap-
prehenSion of the SOCial. The deployment of figurative expressions I have noted
suggests that it must be nea:'. vulgar, mundane, and low, but I cannot identify a
set of statements or propoSitions that describe, explain, or determine what this
a~prehensi~n is a~ut, It is referred to only metaphorically or in negating others'
mlsconce~tlons of It. I can only guess where and what this center is from Ito's
many denIals of and objections to views that would supposedly contradict his
fund~ental c.onviction. He. never !llustrates the image of it: either its image is
for hI~ es~entIally not an object of Illustration, or it exists in such a way as never
to be Im~gIned. Th~s, ~h~t I can say at best is that the center is a place of silence
from which verbahzatlon IS excluded. It seems to remain unthinkable.
Why is it silent? Why does Ito have to reject any literal explication and allow
only metaphorical references to it? Is his conviction of such a nature that it can
never be explicated in words at all?
The Problem of Change
What is striking in the treatises of Ito Jinsai is the absence of a theoretical
e~planation about the authenticity and the orthodoxy of Confucian nonns. I find
thiS ~ather unusual eve,n whe~ I take into account that Ito elaborates his philoso-
p~Y .In the f~rm. of lexlcologlcal commentaries on the major concepts of Confu-
cl~nls~ as slgmfied by ideographic characters and their compounds. When cer-
tain ethical formulas are rejected on the grounds that they are artificial inventions
by Song Confucians, we encounter an abundance of reasoning. Yet when it
comes to ~o~e nonns that Ito agrees with, his reasoning is extremely brief,
~lmo,st negh~Ible.. Apart from the intertextual network in which his argumenta-
tIon IS orgamzed In reference to the Chinese classics and the commentaries on
them b~ later writers, another factor prevents norms from being posited in
declarative statements. The apparent lack of deductive reasoning, I think, testi-
fies to the problematical position of ethics and consequently to the emergence of
a new problem concerning the legitimation of social control in the eighteenth
century.
For Zhu Xi, there were two different conceptualizations of the self: shen
(body, 1-22) and xin (mind, 1-17). On the one hand~ qi was attributed to shen
because of its individuality, which could never be construed in universal terms.

82 Silence at the Center
Xin, on the other hand, was associated with nature and so was equated to a fonn
of Ii immanent in every person. Just as every phenomenon had to be divi.ded into
4'being as it should be" and "being as it is," human existence was reduced to
"what one should be" and "what one is." Since in Zhu's discourse ideational
intentionality was conjunctively merged with practical intentionality, the concep-
tion of the mind already implied the immanence of universal nonns in one's
existence. Hence, the distinction of shen and xin was inCOrPOrated into the
process of self-elevation in learning, at the beginning of which xin-~ind- "what
one should be," was obscured by qi-self-shen. Through the learning process,
however, qi-self-shen would be eliminated to reveal the mind clearly. . .
Such a dichotomy as body/mind could no longer be acceptable to Ito JlnSal.
Man is entirely corporeal, and there cannot be anything like the inner mi~d in
man: "Zhu Xi fabricated the statement on virtue by putting the character 'mind'
in place of the character 4body. ' "32 Ito grants the human body importance: it is
an existence irreducible to an essence.
As the human body emerges from the exclusion, ethical norms, which could
be postulated in forms applicable to any situation, have to be re-evaluated.
Accordingly, the sphere of "nearness" obliquely hinted at by the 44here" and
"now" is connected to shen and has to intrude on the theoretical consideration
about the validity of norms in a specific situation. But if any statement has to be
associated with one's own body and is thereby reduced to the originary speech
act confined to a specific here and now, how can the universality of ethical
imperatives be maintained? In this instance, one must be aware,. Ito .is saying not
that the already existing norms are unimportant but that the applicatIon or execu-
tion of the norms determines and establishes their validity. Ethical imperatives
that are not actually performed are irrelevant to his notion of ethics and sociality.
For Ito, ethics is, above all, a matter of praxis. In this sense, Ito's argument is
surprisingly simple, even simplistic. The validity of a statement, from this view-
point, consists in the immediate and direct involvement of the body in a co~crete
situation with specific people. Therefore, his ethics pertains to the cogniZanCe
that one's body and its singularity cannot be excluded from consideration. The
singularity of the body is no longer a deviation from norms; if norms are to be
effective, they must be postulated in such a way as not to hinder the activities and
changes that human bodies constantly incur. "What is called good," he says,
"cannot be postulated in a definitive shape [keijo, xing zhuang, 2-35] .... One
should not admonish it in language."33 What is righteous in one situation could
be deceitful in another. The norms that have to be rejected in one situation might
be acceptable in another. It seems that the actual execution of the norms oft~n,
probably too often, proves their ineffectiveness; the norms do not seem to gUide
one toward a successful mastery of the situation. Yet the self is not a fixed, stable
32Ito, Gomojigi (Hayashi ed.), Toku, 2d article.
33Ibid.
Ito Jinsai 83
~in.t either. Both the norm and the self are constantly changing. Here is the
SIgnIficance of Ito's term ryiiko. (Ii xing •. 2-36), which I render as Uconstant
~utu~l change" (between yin and yang). From the viewpoint of textual forma-
tIon, It refers to the insight, fundamental in Ito's critique of Song rationalism
that good can~ot ~e contained within the existing discursive economy and there~
fo~e necess~nly dlscl~ses t~e textual ~ateriality of the social world. When ap-
phed to SOCIal formatlon-mdeed, SOCIal formation is inscriptive and therefore
an effect ~f t~xtual f~rmation-this term means the impossibility to formalize
good, whI~h IS changIng all the time. Good always exceeds what one might call
4'c~nf~rmlt~ to' the norm.". ~in~e the norms should correlate to the situation,
Wh.IC~ IS flUId by nature, flUIdIty IS the essential feature of the ethical too. But this
flUIdIty, It? argues, is n~ mere arbitrary unstableness, nor do events take place
purely acc~dentally. SO, IS there ground on which to make an evaluative judgment
of the affaIrs of society? "When [it] is good, [it] is in accordance [with fluidity]
When [it] is eVil, [it] is in opposition [to fluidity]. "34 .
. What is. most.significant in this argument is an urge to escape from an existing
discourse In which phenomenal regularities and transcendent norms are believed
to coi~cide ~ith each other without mediation. If the regularities one acknowl-
edges In one Instance are identical with rules that are applicable to all cases, the
probh~m of. the ~uman bod! in relation to particular situations and specific
occaSions wIll ~ Irrelevant SInce the regularity that is found in a specific instance
~an be. g~nerahzed and confirmed without reference to the originary scene where
Its Vah?Ity was first. es~ablished. As the enunciated, a proposition stating the
regulanty would be mdlfferent to the shutai and the topos of enunciation. Re-
~a:dless 0:
who first uttered i~ or where it was uttered, the proposition, as long as
It IS conCeIVe? ~f as.an enunCIated, remains identical and thereby gains universal
(general) :ahdlty; It becomes independent of its originary speech act. It is
through thiS effacement ~ha~ an enunciated acquires universal applicability. As a
matt~r of fact, the constitutIOn of observable regularity turned into transcendent
~le IS ~ynonymous with the process inherent in every utterance when the speak-
Ing sU~Ject and the topos of the enunciation are erased. In the discourse where the
red.u~tlon of the enunciation to the enunciated is the rule, what is described as the
flUIdIty of the situation is certainly counterproductive and most often has to be
neglected. As long as one upholds this reduction, it is evident that one can talk
only in negative terms about the specificity of the enunciation, the situation and
one's b~y involved in things and others. Indeed, Ito proposes the contrar;,: he
emphaSIzes the specificity of an occasion on which a person encounters an other
or ~thers and confirms the irredeemability of a singular experience. If this is not a
P?llosophical pro~ect limited to mere insistence on particularism, undoubtedly
dIscurSive formation at large must be reorganized in order to accommodate some
recognition of the enunciation and the problematics accompanying it. The phrase
34Ibid.

84 Silence at the Center
"Ii in qi" suggests a new link to a different regime of social action. The on-
tologicalorder in which Ii has been given priority over qi is now made to.stand on
its head: "One should see, it is posterior to the being of qi that its Ii arises. What
is called Ii is only a pattern on qi. "35
Qi, that which cannot be grasPed in the form of the enunciated, pre~edes Ii; an
utterance is always dependent on the singularity of the agent of actIon, of the
addressee to whom the action is directed, and of the situation in which it is
uttered and which cannot be thematically verbalized in itself. Further, Ito argues,
what can be fixed in the enunciated and exhaustively presented by Ii is not life; Ii
is a dead character (2-37), whereas life is constant change and cannot be petri-
fied in words. Contrary to Song rationalism, words are always activated by the
changing situation insofar as they are meaningful and actively affecting people
engaged in everyday activities in a particular environment.
The rejection of Ii as the character was defined by Zhu, however, does not
prohibit the use of the word "Ii." Of course, Ito uses the word differently fr.om
Zhu. In Zhu's discourse, it was a principle, a special term with strong theoretIcal
implication; in Ito's discourse Ii simply means intelligibility, tha~ somet~ing
makes sense. In Dojimon. Chuyo hakki, and Gomojigi, the word IS wellinte-
grated into the context, so that it does not stand out by itself. When Ito rejected
the immediate equation of regularities observed in one specific instance to tran-
scendent norms, the limit of the discourse was rendered explicit, with a conse-
quence of disqualifying its assumed claim to universal validity and t~en breaking
open its closure. Thus, Ito is diametrically opposed to the conception of no~s
according to which the cohesiveness of a particular group is reinforced by theIr
repetitive application.
This general shift in the discursive formation generated a crevice between the
ideational and the material aspects of the text, thereby exposing what could not be
contained in the discourse. There emerged a sense of disparity between the
narrated experience that was intersubjectively shared in a given regime and the
perceived experience, and the assumed correspondence t~at had g~aranteed
the putative adequacy of the narrated experience to the perceIved expen~nce ~as
dislocated. Textual materiality disrupted the stable closure of the dIscursIve
economy, so that historical accidents could not be contained in discourse. It was no
longer possible to presuppose beyond dispute that what was good now and here
would be good in the future and elsewhere. The priority of the human body so
manifestly discernible in Ito's writings is certainly not without connection to this
change. The introduction of the human body opened up a completely new
possibility of discourse and, simultaneously, problematized the rules of the old
discursive formation.
In Ito's treatises, what assures the meaningfulness of meaning is its adherence
to the text's heterogeneity to discourse. It seems that what is referred to as "real"
is exactly this mode of the referential function in which the meaningfulness of an
35Ibid.
Ito Jinsai 85
utterance is subjected to the human body'8 involvement in the situation through
its corporeal action. Yet one must not presume that the introduction of the human
body automatically leads to the constitution of the linear perspective in which the
viewer's own body is the center of sight, itself invisible while things and others
are ,objects deployed within this field of visibility.36 Nor did it lead to the
conception of Ute human body as the primordial ground of intercorporeity, which
assures the harmonious integration of a human existence into communality.
Together with the human body, the heterogeneous erupts within the supposed
closure of discourse, thereby dislocating and preventing the body from consol-
idating its adequacy to itself; in fact, I understand one's own body as the center of
decentering. Hence, in Ito's treatises, decentering and the predominance of the
enunciation give rise to the sort of field where a text is grasped in its relatedness
to what is excluded in discourse or what thinking cannot reach.
Two theses can be drawn from this analysis. First, the performative situation in
which one's body and others' bodies are immediately connected to mundane and
trivial events and things of everyday life is, in fact, similar to a dramaturgical
space. But as the opposition inner/outer has already shown us, both performer
and audience are in this performative situation. Therefore, the possibility of the
dualistic constitution of representational theater, in which the audience does not
participate in performance, is excluded. The separation of the viewer from the
viewed is against what Ito calls movement; so the movement of including the
viewer in performance is always at work. Instead of a rather static and meditative
(theoretical) attitude, this demands an active bodily involvement in a given
situation. Indeed, the use of language is legitimated only insofar as it is a means
for this experiential participation.
Second, this kind of dramaturgical space has its own structure: the differentia-
tion of that which manifests itself from that which plays the role of the horizon
for the manifested. As the term "situation" suggests, the horizon cannot be
overtly presented, since, once it is exhaustively revealed, it ceases to be the
horizon and becomes manifest. This differentiation, which could be construed as
a framing, differs from those of phenomenon/noumenon, appearance/substance,
or unveiled/veiled, however, because there is on constant linkage between the
manifested and the horizon. As the horizon changes, so does the meaning of the
manifested. In fact, what we understand as the meaning of an event, action, or
utterance is its relationship to the horizon. What mediates between the horizon
and the manifested is, indeed, the human body, which is in movement together
with other bodies in the same situation. The simUltaneity, as distinct from the
synchroneity, can be defined only in this bodily mediation. 37 Therefore, the
36The questio~. o~ perspective, indeed, occupies the central position in our discursive and percep-
tua~ scheme, ~~Ich I,S often referred ~o as.humanism. In painting, the linear perspective is a very rigid
regime orgamzmg VIsual texts, and In thiS case too. humanism is a certain discursive fonnation that
must continually be historicized .
.37~or th~ problematic of simultaneity, see William Haver, "The Body of This Death: Alterity in
Nishida-PhIlosophy and Post-Marxism" (Ph.D. diss" University of Chicago, 1987).
86 Silence at the Center
simultaneous always occurs as fleeing, framing, and differing, as an asym-
metrical parergonal separation. The body, insofar as it is the shutai, is the center
of decentering that gives rise to the present as the simultaneous, and the present
thus given can never be reduced to any "presence to itself," precisely because it
effectuates as decentering, fleeing, framing, and differing and never returns to
itself.
Thus, Ito postulates that only when one is involved in a performative situation
can one attain an authentic understanding of the event happening in it. Involve-
ment and participation are the fundamental conditions for the intelligibility of
things and actions. But this postulate must, in tum, provide an explanation of
why and how "transcendentalism" and what he calls "separation" are possible.
Decisive in this regard is the opposition death/life.
This opposition is dual. It is at the same time disjunctive and nondisjunctive
because, according to Ito, things with which a perfonnative situation is filled up
are classified into two groups: animated things and inanimate things. At one
level, Ii is thought of as a regularity governing inanimated things. He writes,
"You should see the character li belongs to event-things. . . . The character way
was a living word in origin, and it described the secret of genesis and change.
The character Ii was a dead character in origin and was composed of yue (2-38)
and Ii (2-39), which meant patterns on jewel. Therefore, it is put forth for the
purpose of describing regularities in event-things, but it is inadequate to d~scri~e
the secret of genesis and change in heaven and earth." 38 In accordance With thIS
classification is another opposition: action (2-40/being (2-41).39 Action is asso-
ciated with performance, change, and life, and being with a static entity, things,
and death. Thus, at this level, the opposition life/death is disjunctive since in this
relationship one tenn is defined as a negative of another so that the two tenns
together form a symmetrical opposition. Ito also argues, however, that life an.d
death should never be grasped as unchangeable opposites, because death IS
merely the end of a life. Heaven and earth continue to generate and regenerate,
so that a performative situation as a whole never ceases to change but always
belongs to life.
What allows for the duality of this opposition is the coexistence of seme and
lexeme, to use the tenninology of A. 1. Greimas. 4o By juxtaposing other lex-
38Ito, Gomojigi (Nihon shiso taikei), p. 31.
391t is interesting to note that another opposition, of real grapheme (2,-42) to unr~al graph~me (2-
43), is introduced here. Obviously these terms derive from grammatlcal cat~gon~s: no~mal and
verbal. What he tries to show is that the substantialization of nature in Song rallonahs~ denves fr~m
the minimalization of the characters denoting natures; those characters used as v~rbal~ m the cl~SSlCS
were read by Song Confucians as nouns. It is impo~ant, ho~ever: that despite hIS emphaSIS ~n
change, movement, and action. Ito still accepts the C~mese phIlolog~calleg~c~ that charac~ers w~th
nominal function represent realness more than those with verbal functiOn. ThiS IS ~ne of the mconsl.s-
tendes I find in his treatises. As I will demonstrate, the relationship between nommal and verbal Will
be reversed in eighteenth-century language studies, . ..
4OA. 1. Greimas, Structural Semantics, trans. D. McDowell, R. Schleifer, and A. Velte (Lmcoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 32-76.
Ito Jinsai 87
Table 1.
seme symmetrical asymmetrical
~ life life and death
life + +
death 0
action + +
being 0
men + +
things 0
Presence of seme: + positive, - negative.
emes, I can illustrate that the same opposition functions metaphysically about
itself. In Table I, life is at the same time a member of a lexeme and a seme. As a
lexeme, the opposition lifeldeath simply refers to the presence (+) or absence
(-) of animation, change, and movement, but when we take into account the
asymmetrical opposition according to which only things with life can die (inani-
mate things cannot die, cannot even be called dead), members of lexemes charac-
terized by the absence of the seme "life" are excluded from the possibility of
being subsumed under the seme: mutuality. Therefore, these terms "being" and
"'things" are neutral as to the nondisjunctive opposition of life and death and are
negative in terms of disjunctive opposition.
Because the nondisjunctive opposition is given priority over the disjunctive in
Ito's philosophy, those things categorized as static and inanimate have to be
subjected to movement and animation. Consequently, "being" and "things,"
which appear static and are indifferent to the seme of mutuality, can be included
and admitted in Ito's version of Confucianism only insofar as they are taken to be
correlatives of change and movement. As long as the nondisjunctive function is
dominant in the discourse, inanimate things are secondary and can be talked
about only provisionally. Only in relation to change and movement-that is, to
feeling and desire (I will return to these terms)- can inanimate things enter
discussion. Although there is, as Table 1 shows, a question concerning the terms
designating inanimate things, Ito flatly rejects further debate about them on the
grounds that they do not concern him since they are not directly connected to live
men. For him, to talk about things for their own sake would amount to a sheer
waste of time. He is preoccupied with the problem of praxis, which necessarily
brings about change and movement-hence, the absence of cosmology and
physics in his philosophy. Yet, although what one might call scientific interest in
things in general was not permitted to articulate itself in Ito's treatises, I would
like to point out that certain kinds of things that had hitherto been excluded from
discursive possibility were to emerge, to be meditated upon, and thereby to be
given recognition as objects of discourse in Ito's writings: they are things of
88 Silence at the Center
everyday life;-food, clothes, money, bodies of other people, and so on-as
objects of desire as objects connected to live men.
t <
What this change hints at will prove to be very important in the context of my
argument. As a result of the shift in discursive formation, the status of langua~e
was reorganized in discourse. And as the emergence of the agent of the enunCia-
tion indicates, the rupture between the speech act and the speech content was
rendered explicit, eventually, as we will observe, leading to, an irreconc~lable
dichotomy between speech and writing. This shift also gave nse to a new Inter-
texuality in which a passage from nonverbal texts to written texts was estab-
lished. Most important, the human body and the subject of the enuncia~ion
entered the verbal text. (The complicated rapport between these two determIna-
tions of the "I," far from uniform, will be discussed later.) That is to say, the
written text was reduced to the human body in an unexpected fashion,- and
concurrently, the human body was presented as a site where different ways of
categorizing speech and writing compete with one another. Along with the reduc-
tion of the enunciated to the enunciation, we can observe in the new discourse a
persistent tendency to animate written texts. What is suggested by Ito's emphasis
on the heterogeneity of feeling is exactly this: the human body as text and the text
as the human body. In eighteenth-century discourse after Ito's, however, the
human body would again be appropriated in discourse, as I will show mainly in
Part Three, and conceived of not as a site of otherness but as a guarantee of
communality.
In the meantime, let me stay with Ito with a view to further exploring the
ethicopolitical implications of his writings.
CHAPTER 3
Textuality and Sociality: The Question of
Praxis, Exteriority, and the Split in Enunciation
Feeling and Textuality
Then how does the human body incorporate itself into a performative situation
since it is not simply a thing juxtaposed to other things? Is it incarnated there by
virtue of its being the anchorage for consciousness? There must be a structure
through which it is involved in a situation when it cohabits with other human
beings.
Ito Jinsai seems to explicate this structure of the human body's involvement in
the situation in terms of feeling. As I have shown, he reversed the ontological
order of nature and feeling, and yet he continued to deploy his argument within
the same theoretical framework. What kind of concern made him hesitate to
construct a new conceptual system within which feeling could be identified as
originary and not derivative? What prevented him from developing some affirma-
tive conception of feeling to replace the rather negative notion that functioned in
his critique of the Song rationalists' ontology of nature and Ii?
In Zhu Xi's dualistic philosophy, mainly because of the ontological order,
nature was understood as transcendent,l possessing universalistic applicability,
whereas feeling was exclusively confined to the particularity of specific occa-
sions. It was considered not only a concretization of nature but also its particu-
larization. When Ito replaced the disjunctive function, which had enabled forma-
tion of the philosopheme feeling/nature, with the non-disjunctive function, it
became impossible to maintain the apriority of nature. Nature and feeling were
put on equal footing, differing only in that feeling was considered movement and
lSong rationalism draws no deliberate distinction between the transcendent and the transcendental
like that in Kantian epistemology or Husserlian phenomenology, and so, universality as transcenden-
tal ideality and universality as empirical generality are not differentiated as I have repeatedly indi-
cated by the phrase "universal (general). "
89

90 Silence at the Center
nature was nQt. Feeling could no longer be considered derivative of nature, for
there could be neither a generative nor a causal relationship between them.
Instead of. "nature as being as it should be" (3-1), Ito introduced the notion of
"nature as qi" (3-2) by which to indicate a certain regularity observable in things
and events: UWhat is eye for visual image, ear for voice, mouth for taste, and
members for comfort is called nature. That the eye desires to see a beautiful
image, the ear to hear a good sound, the mouth to savor a good taste, the
members to have comfort is called feeling."2
Obviously, the postulate ~'nature as qi" strips nature of imperative implication:
it is merely a datum. Just as a cow cannot be anything but a cow, a human being
is biologically determined as a human being, and this determination is nature.
3 points beyond what can be made present to the mind. The prescriptive designates
But because of the transitiveness inherent in feeling, nature can be innately
oriented toward ethical action. A human being can execute an ethical deed within
the scope determined by his or her nature or disposition, not because ethical
imperatives are encoded in human nature but because one is fully capable of
ethical' action if one wishes it. Of course, as one cannot expect fish to fly, one
cannot demand of a human being something beyond his or her disposition. In this
sense, a human being is determined by his or her nature. This does not mean,
however, that one's disposition dictates what one ought to do: ethical imperatives
are not inscribed in human nature.
As a matter of fact, Ito's intervention reveals a general characteristic of Song
rationalism: that its merger between cosmology and ethics was sustained by the
assumption that the description of what a human being is should be able to
determine the prescription of what he or she ought to do. In Song rationalist
discourse, therefore, the prescriptive was taken to be reducible to the descriptive;
the prescriptive was, in the final analysis, derived from the descriptive. Whereas
description posits a thing or a state of affairs in stasis, in the mode of "what it
is," prescription, by contrast, involves the moment of change without which the
prescriptive would be utterly senseless precisely because prescription concerns
itself not with being but with doing. As has been repeatedly affirmed, change is
positive in Ito Jinsai's ethics, and the transitiveness inherent in feeling inevitably
utilizes nature as a disposition toward prescribed goals.
Despite the fact that nature as well as feeling is defined as a particularizing
principle, the change to which feeling pertains is always oriented toward the
Other, that is, toward that which is not present within the economy of a given
discourse. It is noteworthy that Ito also preserved the classical definition of desire
that Song rationalists had endorsed: the desire of nature (3-3) is movement,
change (2-17). Desire, in this instance, is not a movement to return to the
2Ito Jinsai, Gomojigi in Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 33 (Tokyo: lwanami Shoten, 1971), p. 56.
3lto rejects any further argument about the reason why man is man and why beings in the world are
detennined as such, on the grounds that it is beyond human capacity to know the answer to this kind
of question. He does not imply that beings in the world are determined as such eternally or trans-
historically.
Textuality and Sociality 91
destined goal, and therefore Zhu Xi had to talk about desire as the deviation from
and obscuration of nature. Relying on the exactly identical comprehension of this
term, Ito could expose and mark in the Confucian tradition a possibility for the
prescriptive which Song rationalist discourse could not accept or accommodate
because it would have counteracted the principle of reduction to the descriptive
which was dominant in Song rationalism: Ito's specific understanding of ~'feel­
ing and desire" (3-4) suggested some theoretical consequences of the reversal of
the ontological order and introduced the notion that the prescriptive was irreduci-
ble to the descriptive. Denial of the anteriority of nature to feeling implies that
the prescriptive is not grounded in the descriptive and also that the prescriptive
the impossible within the restricted economy of a given discourse. Hence, one
can legitimately claim that feeling is the structural linkage between the human
body as passage toward the heterogeneous and the performative situation as
topos of what makes an utterance meaningful but is unrepresentable itself. Need-
less to say, the performative situation is understood as a sort of context, a text or
group of texts that surrounds an utterance but can never be thematically marked.
As soon as it is posited as a theme, or shudai, it becomes an object in discourse,
with the result of generating a further context. The performative situation is a
context only insofar as it cannot be talked about, that is, only insofar as it is
heterogeneous to discourse.
For this reason, seemingly conflicting claims could be copossible. On the one
hand, Ito says several times, "things are different from one another because of
feeling." Here, feeling individuates things. On the other hand, he maintains that,
because of feeling, human beings desire good that is universal, and he talks about
"the common feeling of the world" (3-5). 4 What is significant in this argument is
that feeling as a category is indifferent to the two modes of determination,
particularity and universality (generality), and consequently, the problem of sin-
gularity and sociality is to be articulated without being disturbed by the dichoto-
my particularism/universalism. 5
4For Ito Jinsai, good is essentially an ideal universality whose responsiveness to and validity for
every~dy should be considered as givens. Yet it is not a universality in the sense of empirical
generahty, not a regularity governing experience.
S As ,I will show in the following chapters with regard to the writings of Ogyu Sorai and others, the
for:matlon of ~he co~cept of individual and social "feeling" at a level distinct from that of particu-
lansm and unlversaltsm cannot be overemphasized, for the validation of moral and legal control of
the society would be almost impossible if legal regulations could not be verified in universalistic
terms. Social control is possible only where uniformity and subsequent confonnity prevail, however
small and fragmented the domain of its application might be. In this sense, social control must always
take ,th,e fonn of this kind of universalism. One should remind oneself, however, that particularism or
rel~lIvlsm also presupposes and necessitates universalism. On the one hand, particularism means the
~mqueness, ~xcepti?nal character, or irregularity of some community, society, or "culture" in rela-
tion to what IS ronsldered general. No doubt these attributes-uniqueness, irregularity, and so on-
would not make sense without reference to generality and regularity. On the other hand, in order to
abstract these qualities from a particular community, society, or "culture," one has to generalize,
normalize, and universalize them among the factors of which that particular society or community is

92 Silence at the Center
Moreover, it is important to note that the transitiveness of feeli~g is stressed,
with the effect that feeling is categorically opposed to any notion that may
suggest self-sufficiency or stability. More than anything else, it is a change an~
movement so that it necessarily involves a transition of time. Nevertheless, It
does not h~ve a duration that can be measured, for no matter how short it may be,
duration implies some constancy during the time it end~es. ~eith~r ~an ~eeling
be limited to the identity of an individual person or thing, since It IS neither a
phenomenon taking place within the inner mind nor a state of things. Feeling ~s,
as I have emphasized, a structure of linkage, a linkage of the ~uman body W.lth
the Other. In this regard, feeling is a form of affection and passion through which
one encounters the world: one is affected by the world. Ito's use of this term
suggests that it connotes much more than what we nonnally mean by the word
"feeling." Thus, I am led to believe that the character qing (2-1) expresses a
mode of existence comparable to the concept of being-in-the-world.
It is in this context that the two uses of "self," which may often appear
contradictory, ought to be understood:
Man, who is endowed with his body and human feeling, would never be able to be
utterly devoid of selfish desire. 6
The self (1-19) in this statement is a correlative of human desire, and it is
presumed that to have desire is immediately to posit the self. But Ito also says:
Buddhists and Taoists seek the Way in their selves. Because they seek the Way in
their selves, they don't care whether it conforms to the. world o~ not. Bein~ con-
cerned only with whether or not they are pure and devOld of deslre and seekmg. to
achieve the peace in their selves, they eventually abandon ethical sense and abohsh
manners and rites.?
The self referred to in this passage is viewed as detached and "separated" from
the movement of desire. The shutai-self as a correlate of desire is affirmed
because of its immediate linkage to the object of desire, whereas the shudai-self
as thematically reflected upon should be denied because it creates a rupture or
nothingness that separates the self from the world. In the case of ~he self as .a
correlate of desire, desire obstructs and intervenes in the return to Its authentiC
self which is defined in terms of innate human nature, irrespective of the fluidity
of the situation, so that desire does not secure one's return to one's authentic and
supposed to consist. In other words, a society, community, or "culture" is represented in ~enns of
these abstract and general qualities. We never encounter an otherness tha~ can be construed l~ .tenns
of particularism and universalism; our confrontation with otherness begms when the opposition of
particularism and universalism itself collapses. . '
6Ito, Dojimon, middle volume, chap. 9, manuscript 406178, Hayashi version (manuscnpt owned
by Tenri University Library).
7Ibid.
Textuality and Sociality 93
true self-shudai as thematically reflected upon. Here, Ito attests to the primor-
dial immediacy according to which the self is at the same time posited as an
individual and linked to the object of desire and the perfonnative situation in
general. Indeed, such a conception of immediacy was rendered possible by a new
lo§ic that took into account the limit of discourse and its inherent textuality.
Hence, Ito could maintain, justifiably and without disturbing the consistency of
his thought, that the essential feature of the ethical lay in the ability of feeling to
penetrate the surrounding world and constitute itself as the desire of the world
(3-5), and he could simultaneously claim: "The other person and I (1-20) are
different in that' we have different bodies and different qi. One does not partici-
pate in another person's pain and itch. It is even more so with regard to the
difference between man and things since [man and things] differ in species shape.
How can they ever communicate with each other?"8
In feeling, therefore, the self and sociality are complementary to each other,
assuming that the singularity of one's body and of things is always already given
as a fact of qi. It is not the physical being of a person as body but the identity of
man as constituted by a certain discursive fonnation that Ito Jinsai puts into
question. Evidently one cannot experience exactly the same as another as long as
one is equated to shutai, one's body. Hence, Ito Jinsai warded off the insertion of
a primordial communality such as sensus communis the sense of communality
J
based on shared senses. (1 will observe the formation in discourse of the sense of
primordial communality and its political significance when I undertake a reading
of Ogyu Sorai.) The difference in the constitution (3-6) of human bodies cannot
be overcome no matter how humane and perceptive one may be toward another.
Furthennore, it is almost nonsensical to talk about the sameness or commonness
of sensation at the primordial phase, which is supposedly also prelinguistic. But
according to Ito, Buddhist and Taoist teachings understood the identity of the self
differently; it was reduced to the self that is constituted discursively. Their
conception of sociality, Ito argued, was invariably confined to the closure of the
self and, as a matter of fact, never went beyond the confines of the inner.
Ito '8 implicit but uncompromising insistence on the openness of sociality,
however, seems to have given rise to many difficulties in conforming his view to
that of the Confucian classics. In the M encius, for instance, one finds the follow-
ing statement: "Benevolence, righteousness, observance of the rites, and
wisdom are not welded onto me from the outside; they are in me originally."9
However unequivocal the statement that the four natures of Song rationalism
"are in me originally," obviously Ito could not accept this reading. Conse-
quently, he had to try different readings in order to relieve the conception of
sociality from the confines of the inner, that is, being in the self originally. In
8Ibid.
9Mencius, trans. D. C. Lau (Hannondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 163, translation modified. See
also Moshi in Shinshaku kanbun taikei, vol. 4 (Tokyo: Meiji-shoin, 1962), p. 387.
94 Silence at the Center
order to follow. the itinerary of his rereading of this passage, let me go through
two different editions of his moshikogi (Ancient meanings in the Mencius.).
The oldest extant edition of the moshikogi, generally referred to as jitsu bon
(or the autographic edition) in the Kogido collection of the Ito family, now
preserved in the Central Library at Tenri University in Nara, has been dated to as
early as 1683. 10 This edition consists of passages from the Mencius, together
with Zhu Xi's commentaries on the Mencius from Mozijizhu, which were exten-
sively modified by Ito. Thus, from the reading of his manuscripts, it is obvious
that Ito gradually formulated his philosophy by erasing and modifying Zhu Xi's
words and inserting his own words in the midst of Zhu's passages. At the stage of
the autographic edition his Moshikogi does not yet differ much from Zhu Xi's
Mozi jizhu.
The last manuscript completed during Ito's lifetime is generally known as the
Hayashi edition. In this manuscript Zhu's commentaries on the Mencius have
been reduced to a minimum, although the general form of Ito's commentary-
argument remains the same. Basically his ideas are articulated as a refutation of
Zhu Xi's powerful and overwhelming interpretation of the classic Mencius.
The theoretical problem with which Ito struggled is revealed in the significant
differences between these two editions. For example, the autographic edition has:
[The statement] means "the four beginnings are in me originally." That is to say,
naturally man is not conscious of [that is, does not think (3-7)] those from which
human nature derives.
The Hayashi edition has:
"Being [in me] originally" means that there are necessarily the hearts (= mind) of the
four beginnings in a man whereby he is capable of attaining in himself the virtues of
benevolence, dutifulness, observance of the rites, and wisdom. Naturally, a man is not
conscious of [= does not think} them. . . ." It is stupid directly to equate these fOUf
[the hearts of compassion, of shame, of respect, and of right and wrong] to benev-
olence, righteousness [dutifulness in Lau's translation], observance of the rites, and
wisdom. What are called benevolence and righteousness simply designate the natures;
they are not the names of these natures. . . . The ancient Confucians did not denote
the character "nature" with these two characters "being in me originally" [3-8]. What
are referred to as "being in me originally" cannot be in me originally.
Song rationalists inferred from this passage in the Mencius that benevolence,
righteousness, observance of the rites, and wisdom are in "me" originally as
human nature. Ito had to interfere with this reading in order to distinguish human
nature (sei, xing, 1-10) from virtue (toku, de, 3-9), on the one hand, and the
beginning (tan, duan, 3-10) from human nature, on the other. The four begin-
lOMany of Ito Jinsai's manuscripts were obviously hand copied ~y his. disciples,. with marginal
notes later added by Ito himself. This jitsu bon is one of the few cases m whIch the mam tex.t was also
written down by Ito himself-hence, the "autographic edition."
Textuality and Sociality 95
nings had to be distinguished from nature so that Ito could situate Mencius's
doctrine of inherently good human nature. in the realm of feeling, not of nature
as part of his ongoing critique of an essentialism of human nature. In view of
Ito's understanding of sociality, it was absolutely necessary to release virtue (3-9)
from t~e confines of human nature. This incompatibility with the Cheng-Zhu
fo~~tIon marked the initial moment of. Ito's departure from that philosophical
tradI~lon. ~hat may ap~ar a rather trivial issue of terminology, in fact, points to
~e. site of lITeparable dIspute. Above an, these two distinctions on which Ito
InSIsts amount to a question of the fundamental thesis of Song rationalism
namely, that sociality is to be construed as an experience for the mind. '
Song rationalism needed the concept of the mind as a topos: in the mind the
hu~an being i~~uired into his or her own interiority and supposedly avoided
tak~ng up a position asymmetrical to that of others, particularly a position from
wh~ch to look down on others. The mind was equated to the universal position in
",:hlch ~other's ~iewpoint substituted for one's own biased and particularized
VIewpoInt; the mInd, therefore, was thought of as a topos where one's self-
~ente:edness ~as remedied. The mind could not be free from the positing of the
ImagIned totalIty that had been internalized in a particular Person, however. Far
from e~empt fro~ the charges of totalization, the concept of the mind, just as in
humanism today, Imperceptibly re-introduced the vision of the whole with which
one was to identify and thereby authorized one to speak as if one had been freed
from the particularity of the viewpoint. In the mind, "I" was always "we" as
the totality of humanity. '
Therefore, the virtue that is always and already innate in the mind is immedi-
ately and universally valid since presence to the mind is equal to universality in
the sense of ~enera} validity. In this regard, the mind as it was postulated by
Song ConfuCIans has to be apprehended as a field for universality, and its exis-
tenc~ .has to be equ~ted to the possibility of universalization inherent in every
emplncal human beIng. As a matter of fact, it would be impossible to conceive
of universality in the sense of generality without some discursive apparatus such
as ~he mind. A~d ~recisely because of this universalizing faculty, Ito's sociality,
WhICh necessanly Involves the otherness of people besides "me" or "us" cannot
~~~~th~~m~. '
The Ethicality of Social Action
On the contrary, Ito Jinsai stressed that if sociality is ever possible at all it is
o~ly so. outside the mind, outside the field of universals. 11 This is to sa;, the
VIrtues 10 terms of which sociality inscribes itself cannot be reduced to human
l1Cf. ~ishida Kitaro, conce~ing ishiki co~sciousness. Consciousness is a field conSisting of
language m a loose sense or of '.t:'pansha-~mv~rs~ls. In consciousness, man is made to desire by
language. Hatarakumono kara mlrumonoe. m NIshida Kitaro zenshu. vol. 4 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shot-
en, 1965), pp. 135-72.
96 Silence at the Center
nature, to making the universals present to the mind. In this respect, the virtues
not only must not reside in "me" but also should not be able to be made present
to the mind: virtue should not abide with either my "self" or the "other" self but
with the Other. I think it is in order to accommodate these theoretical demands
that Ito had to put forth a rather forced reading of "being in me [= the self]
originally" (koyuu, 3-8). This reading strategy discloses what I wouldJ.ike to call
the prescriptive aspect of virtue.
Furthennore, Ito thus pointed out an unbridgeable gap between the descriptive
and the prescriptive. Ultimately his critique of Song rationalism boils down to
rejection of the rationalists' reduction of doing what one should do to thinking it,
which erased the fundamental heterogeneity of praxis to thought. Instead of
admitting the materiality or, more precisely, the textual materiality of the body
because of which the text of action, a text called action, is always heterogeneous
to the thought or intention of the acting subject, Song rationalism postulated
action as an externalization or expression in which what has been thought is
realized in concrete and material fonn. The entire discussion of the ethical
significance of action, therefore, ensues within the framework of expressive
causality in their discourse. Hence, they had to insist on the merger of ideational
intentionality and practical intent, and also on the ontological order of nature and
feeling according to which the aim of ethical action is to make what one has done
identical to what one has thought. They provided a metaphysical guarantee that
because what one has done is already innate in what one has thought, doing is
bound to coincide with thinking unless an external disturbance interferes with the
due process. Here I must note that the ethicality of Song rationalism consists in
the successful elimination of external interference. The rationalists' conception
of ethical action thus requires the elimination of heterogeneity, textual mate-
riality, and ultimately the otherness of the Other. In this sense, theirs was an ethic
for homogeneous communality.
By contrast, Ito saw the sociality of action in the unpredictability, from the
viewpoint of one's intent, of what an action achieves and how it involves other
people. Now, it is obvious that what he tried to demonstrate was the fact, so
simple to state, yet extremely difficult to explain theoretically, that sociality as he
conceived it would be impossible unless it pertained to the Other. Ito located the
ethicality of ethical action exactly opposite to its position in Song rationalism:
despite the fact that one always aspires to coincide doing with thinking, an ethic
is possible precisely because there is no guarantee of success and because what
one wishes to do can be blocked, twisted, and redirected in spite of one's intent.
In ethical action, one faces other people most radically. But for this encounter
with the irreducible Other, an action could never be ethical. In this Ito's thinking
was utterly opposed to the view of Song rationalism, which excluded the Other in
its understanding of the ethicality of ethical action.
But how could one possibly construct a philosophy that would do justice to the
moment of otherness in social action? Is philosophical explanation, after all,
Textuality and Sociality 97
another form of. dis~ourse in which the Other is deprived of its otherness by
means of thematlzatlon? To reach this problematic it seems we must traverse a
reading of an almost unintelligible passage that frequently recurs in Ito's writ-
ings. Here, I present an admittedly obscure translation of that passage:
What are", called benevolence, righteousness, [observance· of rites, and wisdom]
simply designate the natures: they. are not the names of the natures.12
Ito draws a distinction between the two uses of the character mei (ming) (3-11),
one verbal and another nominal. The verbal use of this character at least suggests
that the being it designates is determined as such in relation to a person who
denominates it. It is a designative determination, so that the being is determined
in terms of this character only as correlate of the designative intentionality, and
there seems to be an implication that the same being could be designated differ-
ently. The nominal use of mei, on the contrary, suggests that regardless of the act
of ~ami."g, the being is predetermined as such. This use tends to imply that
behlOd Its appearance there is some entity to which this name is adequate. 13
Underlying such a provisional distinction is a certain comprehension of the
relationship between the enunciation and the performative situation. In order to
grasp an utterance in the mode not of the enunciated but of the enunciation, one
must be initiated into a new theoretical sensitivity to the instances when the limits
of discourse are marked by the heterogeneous. Furthennore, since neither the
body of the enunciation (shutai) nor the heterogeneous is given as an object or a
phenomenon, no limit of discourse can be represented as a border between two
equally identifiable territories: the limit of discourse is, first of all, the limit of
what can be arrested or taken hold of. Perhaps a disclaimer must be issued, here.
Surely, I have used such terms as "the heterogeneous," "shutai," and "textual
materiality" to designate what essentially cannot be arrested or taken hold of.
These notions contain a contradiction that is mobilized as soon as they are
denominated. But I must draw attention to the necessity for these terms: without
them, textuality, which always overflows determinations in discourse, could
never be problematized. The enunciation cannot be referred to as a positive
exterior of the enunciated: the enunciation has to be.problematized only through
the enunciated. And by extension, the passage to the outside of language must be
found within language without exception.
No dou?t it is this contradiction inherent in the asymmetrical relationship
between discourse and textuality which Ito tried to illuminate by this obscure
t21~o, N!0shi-k~gi, ~anuscript in Tenri University Central Library, no. 400219, vol. 6, chap. 6.
Also In Nlhon melke ShlSO chushaku zenshu. vol. 9: Moshi~hen 1720; Tokyo: Toyo Tosho Kanko-kai
1924). '
13In the posthumous~y published Moshi-k?gi, which his son Ito Togai and others edited, the quoted
passage takes a much Simpler and more straightforward expression. See Nihon meike shiso chushaku
zensho 9: 241.
98 Silence at the Center
Textuality and Sociality 99
statement about naming and nature. Those concepts indicated by the words
selectively applies to this situation; one cannot predict or predetermine the emer-
"benevolence, nghteousness, observance of the rites, and wisdom" are.provi-
gence of a virtue. Moreover, the mind is not accessible to virtue, the explication
sionally determined as such because the applicability of those terms is sustained
of which I shall undertake presently. In this case too, one does not know.
by the specific, individual situation, which, in fact, escapes from determination
With respect to the status of virtue (toku, de, 3-9), Ito's commentary is proba-
in the enunciated and therefore affects the enunciation contextually. It must,
bly ,most illustrative: "Virtue is the general term for benevolence, righteousness,
however, be recalled that just as the passage from enunciation to enunciated
observance of the rites, and wisdom.. '. . When benevolence, righteousness,
cannot be construed in terms of causality-or expressive causality either, of
observance of the rites, or wisdom is mentioned, there must be some concrete
course-the perfonnative situation, in its effect on the constitution of an enunci-
event to which any of them is ascribed, and therefore, there must be a trace about
ated, remains heterogeneous to discourse, for the completion of the enunciation,
which one should see a virtue." 15 In its theoretical implication, this commentary
that is, the formation of signification, is, of necessity, the exclusion of the
on virtue is inseparably afflicted with the problematic of naming nature. Virtue
performative situation. Only insofar as the enunciated is uprooted from and
can emerge only after the event, post facto, always in a perfect tense: it must be
rendered independent of the perfonnative situation is it qualified as such. Where-
supported by a "trace" (seki, ji, 3-12) to precede the emergence of any virtue
as one could sayan enunciated succeeds enunciation, it is impossible to trace
under any condition. Therefore, it should be impossible to talk about virtue as a
back, retroactively, from the enunciated to the enunciation. Hence, as I have
sort of potentiality that realizes itself in a process, in a procedure encompassing
explained, the body of enunciation as shutai is that which flees irredeemably and
an intention and its actualization. At stake is the sense of continuity that bunches
is present in the enunciated only as a loss. 14 And the subject, not the body, of the
together the series: intention, action, consequence. Or this series can be con-
enunciation is always framed as an imaginary substitute for this loss.
strued in more general terms: thinking (knowing), enunciation, enunciated (and
It is for this reason that although the perfonnative situation affects discourse
inscription). Indeed, the characterization of virtue in terms of the trace highlights
contextually, we cannot say we know it. Also for this reason, while the adjective
its inscriptional nature: virtue is inscribed in the textuality of general social
"singular" (or individual, although we must exclude the sense of individuum,
reality. Within the scope of Ito Jinsai '8 terminology, the way to rescue virtue
indivisible unity) can be ascribed to it, the other adjective, "particular" or
from various reductionisms to the "mind" is at issue. Hence, he writes: "Zhu Xi
"specific" (from "species") cannot be predicated on it.
said, 'Virtue is the obtaining. It means what obtains in one's mind as one
practices the Way.' This phrase originally comes from the Yi jing. In the Yi jing,
however, it says 'What obtains in one's body.' Zhu Xi obviously substituted the
The Inscriptional Nature of Virtue character 'mind' for the character 'body.' "16
In order to announce the irreducibility of virtue to intention, thinking, and
Then I must acknowledge a certain ignorance with respect to what the pre-
knowing, Ito situated virtue outside the mind. In so doing, he undertook the task
scriptive pertains to. One does not know why this virtue but not that virtue
of illustrating a different conceptualization of virtue in which the ethicality of his
own ethics would be best articulated. Central in this move is how to understand a
14Gilles Deleuze addresses this issue with impressive clarity in Difference et repetition (Paris: subtle, but decisive difference between "obtaining in one's mind" and "obtain-
Presses Universitaires de France, 1968): "But perhaps Cogito is the name which does not have any ing in one's body."
sense, and which has no object other than indefinite regression as the power of reiteration.(I think that
I think that I think. ..) Every proposition about consciousness implicates an unconSCIOUS of pure Let me connect this difference to two contrasting readings of a passage in the
thought, which constitutes the sphere of sense where one regresses to infini.ty".(p. 203), and ':Itis M encius to show how Ito conceived of the ethicality of ethics in contrast to Zhu
I

true that Platonic reminiscence pretends to capture the being of the past, WhICh IS, at the same time, Xi. The Mencius says:
immemorial or memorandum and caugh~_ by an essential forgetting [un oubli essentiel], in confo~ity
with the law of the transcendent exercise, which claims that what can only be recalled also IS the
impossible to recall (in the empirical exercise). There is a great d~fference ~tween this essential If a man is able to develop all these four germs in him, it will be like a fire starting
forgetting and an empirical forgetting. Empirical memory addresses Itself to thI~gS t~at can and even up, or spring coming through. 17
must be differently captured: as to what I recall, I must have seen, understood, Imagmed, or thought
it. Forgetting in the empirical sense is that which one does not happen to recapture by memo~ whe~
searching for it the second time (it is too distant, forgetting separates me from the remem~nng of It Zhu Xi comments:
or has effaced it). But transcendental memory captures what can only be recalled the first hme, from
the first time. . . . Forgetting is no longer a contingent powerlessness that separates us from a
remembering that is itself contingent, but exists in the essential remembering as the nt? power o~ the 151lo, Gomojigi, Hayashi version, virtue, article I. Manuscript in Tenri University Central Library,
no. 406951. .
memory with regard to its limit, or of what can only be recalled" (p. 183). Later, I diSCUSS Tokleda 16Ibid., virtue, article 2.
Motoki's box-in-box fonnula, which addresses this Kantian problem very clearly. 17Mencius, p. 83.
100 Silence at the Center
What we should learn from this passage is as follows: if one conducts "reflective
thinking" and "knowing in silence" and if one then develops what has been ob-
tained through "reflective thinking" and "knowing in silence," one should not be
unable exhaustively to gain all that has been endowed in me [= the self) by heav-
en. 18
I must isolate two issues preliminarily in order to reconstitute the itinerary of
Ito Jinsai's argument, which places tremendous emphasis on the active aspect of
ethics. First, the phrase "to develop" (kakujuu, kuo chong 3-13], which would
play an indispensable role in Ito's writings, was coined in the Mencius. In this
English translation it is rather simplified. In Chinese the compound kuo chong
consists of two characters, kuo, roughly meaning "to propagate, to extend, to
pitch, to fill," and chong "to fill, to be full, to supplement, to apply, to enrich."
Thus, a better translation might be "to propagate and fill," "to pitch and enrich,"
or "to extend and apply." Second, in the Mencius, the self is referred to as "that
upon which the four beginnings [or four germs in Lau's translation] are .existent/'
but in Zhu Xi's commentary it is "that which is endowed by heaven With all that
heaven can give." Thus, in Zhu's reading, the self corresponds to the entirety of
heaven.
Undeniably, in Zhu Xi's commentary the sense of spatial enlargement and
propagation is translated into its synecdochic equivalent to the mind. It does not
extend or propagate outside "me" (= the self); instead, it does so within "me."
But from Zhu Xi's viewpoint, outside and inside meant the same thing since
ultimately the self (= me) and the universe were one. Thanks to this synecdochic
apparatus, Zhu could equate spatial enlargement and propagation to .the ~ath~r
introverted mental processes of "reflective thinking~' and "knOWing in S1-
lence."19
It is against the lack of the outside, the sense of confinement, of self-sufficien-
cy, and above all the absence of the other and the Other that Ito Jinsai had to
struggle in order to open up a new reading of Confucian classics. Thus, Ito
proposed to recover the sense of the outside which he claimed still existed in the
original passage of the Mencius and from which the compound kuo chong could
18Zhu Xi, Shushigaku taikei (Tokyo: Meitoku Shuppan-sha, 1974), 8:483. . .
19Ito Jinsai also used the compound "reflective thinking," but I hesitate to re~der It m t.he same
way in Ito's work. So I give a translation "reflecting upon oneself." As the foUowmg quotatIOn from
Dojimon, book 1, chap. 21, shows, Ito's use suggests the contrary o~ what was understood in So~g
rationalism: "Question: Are 'reflecting upon oneself and the genume concern for o~hers .[chuJo,
zhong shu, 3-14) different? Answer: Not so. The genuine concern for others m~ans domg thm~s for
others as if they were done to oneself. 'Reflecting upon oneself' means blammg oneself as If one
were blaming others. Therefore, those who are capable of reflecting upon themselves are necessarily
concerned for others. Those who are concerned for others are necessarily capable of self-reflection.
The two are no different." "Reflecting upon oneself" is grasped as the other side of ai, implying that
the compound "reflecting upon oneself" (hankyu, fan qiu, 3-15) pertains to the vocabulary about
emotional things. And for this reason, it maintains a certain resemblance to the sense of shame and
the heart sensitive to others' suffering.
Textuality and Sodality 101
never be divorced. One must extend and propagate toward the outside what is
taught through feeling about the four beginnings; efforts must be directed toward
the outside and not inward. In this respect, we must return our attention to that
which was at stake in discerning ~'obtaining in one's body" from "obtaining in
one's mind," for it is the body that marks the beginning of this outside. As I have
repeatedly stressed, however, it is not that the topic of the body had been ignored
or under-estimated in Song rationalism. On the contrary, "obtaining in one's
body" was an imperative underlying almost every major topic of its ethics. Ito's
remark about Zhu's "obtaining in one's mind" has less to do with the role of the
body in the formation of habit and the acquisition of skill than with what is meant
by the visibility of the body in a newly emerging discursive space. It goes
without saying that the visibility of the body does not signify the emergence of
the specular image of the body, which had already been in discourse for a long
time. Rather, it indicates the appearance of the body as an irreducible obstacle
that constantly disturbs the discurSIve economy.
Ito stressed that "obtaining in one's body" necessarily involves a moment of
deviation from the mind. It is true that the word "obtaining" (toku, de, 3-16), a
homonym for the character "virtue," implies a sort of mastery, but this mastery
should be distinguished from mastery by the mind. It cannot be equated to thinking
or knowing. "Obtaining in one's body" is radically heterogeneous to obtaining
through thinking or knowing. Despite the fact that one intends to achieve the
obtaining, one does not know when it is actually obtained.
Implicit in Zhu's argument is the premise that the body would eventually
submit itself to the mastery of the mind. Just as textual materiality ought to be
subordinated to the discursive economy, he believed, the materiality of the body
should be rendered submissive to the mind and-though this amounts to the
same thing-transparent. By rigorously differentiating the body from the mind
as the site where the obtaining takes place, Ito intervened in Song rationalist
discourse with a view to elucidating the impossibility of the mastery of the mind
over the body, of discourse over textuality. On the contrary, what may appear to
be the mastery of the mind is always masterminded by the body's materiality,
which can be controlled by no means; only on the basis of the body's erratic
materiality can the mind's putative reign be maintained.
Obviously, what is problematized here is the exteriority of sociality to the
mind. The realization of virtue must be irredeemably heterogeneous to making it
present to the mind. Only when it has been established as exterior to the interior,
to thinking and knowing in the mind, can virtue possibly attain sociality. More-
over, Ito argues, unless it is rendered exterior to the mind, it simply cannot be
named virtue. That virtue is basically social means that it can be observed only in
the ·~trace." Precisely because there is discontinuity between intention and con-
sequence, social action attains sociality-that is, is able to become virtuous. Of
course, virtue as a consequence of social action is neither the externalization nor
the realization of a potentiality such as good personality or intent. The moment
102 Silence at the Center
essential to this concept of virtue is the actual execution . of social action, so that
an action merely intended or fantasized has absolutely nothing to do with ;virtue.
Accordingly, virtue can never be attained through ~'reflective thinking" or
"knowing in silence," for these rationalist tactics lack the very moment of
discontinuity, so essential in the sociality of social action.
No doubt, this lack can be ascribed to the introduction of the enunciation into
discourse. By showing the unbridgeable abyss that exists between the enuncia-
tion and the enunciated, Ito disclosed the site of heterogeneity in discourse which
had been concealed and suppressed in Song rationalism. It is also important to
keep in mind, however, that even so, Ito did not advocate some sort of utopia or
an optimistic doctrine of emancipation in thematizing and reifying the outside of
discourse in general. He did not posit the realm of originary plenitude as an
identifiable sphere: he did not appeal to an arche as a ground for his ethics.
Institutions and Exteriority
Perhaps some further exposition of the connections between Ito's notion of
sociality so far outlined and exteriority, the exteriority of the body's materiality in
particular, is in order. By far the most significant aspect of sociality as Ito
conceived it consisted in participation in the virtue of, and the virtue's exposure
to, others. If the virtue of a virtuous act is defined primarily as its presence to the
mind, it is evident that it constitutes itself first in the closed circuit of one's
interior, from which others are of course excluded, to which others are not
accessible, at least in the first instance. The idea of an interior that entails
presence to the mind may be inferred from the crude observation that someone's
thinking or knowing cannot be seen or perceived by others. Apart from the
question of the extent to which such an observation can be taken for granted, we
are at least entitled to say that presence to the mind gives a preliminary definition
of the interior and also implies some notion of closure. If sociality is com-
prehended in terms pertaining to the mind, it necessarily has to appeal to some
"transcendent" principle that enables communication among interiors, some
concept of communality. As I have argued, Zhu Xi considered the mind's interior
equivalent to the totality of the universe in its rationality. That is to say, the
singularity of the "I" was in fact dissolved into the anonymous "I," which was
supposed to participate in every cognition of every phenomenon. This Song
rationalist formation, as articulated by Zhu, is not only intelligible but also
extremely persuasive in the light of Benveniste's thematization of the 441." Yet, it
is most disturbing that the first and preliminary determination of the interior is
ignored and repressed as a mere unessential appearance. As a matter of fact, the
sense of exteriority likewise dissolves, evaporates, and is completely repressed
as the perceived interior is forcefully displaced by the totality. It seems that this
rationalist conception of the mind is possible precisely because it does not and
Textuality and Sociality 103
cannot take into account the evident and rather elementary cognizance that the
other's thought cannot be seen or known ..Accordingly, Song rationalism would
have been impossible if it had been capable of addressing the questions arising
out of this cognizance and what is today suggested by the aporia of another's
mind (which is not the same as the problem of the solipsism caused by the reified
concept of the ~'inner" mind). For instance, instead of addressing this issue, the
Song rationalists deliberately repressed it in order to preserve its metaphysical
optimism.
But does sociality not involve, above all, the others whom I am never sure I
am capable of knowing? And is this lack of certitude an indispensable moment in
sociality? At this juncture I must further explicate what is called the exteriority of
institutions. In respect of this cognizance, I will follow the threads of Ito's
argument, which combined the terms "to extend and propagate," 4'the Way," ~4to
achieve" (tatsu, da, 3-17), and '4 virtue" in such a way as to show the textual and
material nature of sociality.
The two characters "way" and "virtue" are very close to each other. "Way"
~xpr~sses "the aspect of nondisjunctive opposition which constantly shifts" [ryiiko,
lIu xmg, 2-36] "Virtue" expresses "the sense that it is already there" [son, cun,
3-18. The Way consists in "naturally leading." Virtue consists in the aspect of
"having worked upon things" [3-19]. In Zhong yang the relations of master-vassal,
father-son, husband-wife, elder brother-younger brother, and friends are regarded
as "achieved ways" [3-20], and wisdom, benevolence, and courage as "achieved
virtues" [3-21]. This is what I have in mind. Inferring from this, [we should say that]
yin and yang are the Way of heaven and that nothing escapes from the coverage of
the Way because that is the virtue of heaven. The Way of earth is the mutual
s~pplementality of solidity and softness, and the virtue of earth is that things arise
WIthout calculated anticipation [3-22].20
An explicit characterization of virtue is given here. First, it is pointless to talk
about virtue unless it is predicated on things: only when an event has been
accomplished can one mention virtue. This is to say, virtue is not a principle that
prepares a state of affairs for concretization, for taking place. Second, as a
corollary, virtue exists only in the perfect tense, only in the mode of having been
accomplished; when it has not been realized, virtue exists only in the future
anterior tense. It is, so to say, addressed to the collectivity of the others, which
does not exist in any present of the past, present, or future. Therefore, it is
impossible to talk about virtue in its potentiality; virtue that has not been realized
is simply not virtue; nor can virtue be an expression or extemalization of what
has yet to be realized. It follows that virtue simply cannot be equated to an
attribute or property of a person, although it is not by any means impossible for a
2°Ito, Gomojigi, Hayashi ed., Dotoku 4.
104 Silence at the Center
person to be virtuous. In other words, virtue is neither a quality inherent in. a
person nor a property of which an individual is proprietor; it is interwoven 10
one's relationship to others.
Surely one can be virtuous, but only on condition that the others with who~
one enters certain relations also hold a final say over whether or not one 1S
virtuous: the virtuous is, in this sense, always a collective work. Of course, this
does not mean that one's virtue depends on the others' opinion: virtue is not a
popularity contest. Rather it depends upon a contingency which the sU~j7cts
involved are not able to master and which is necessarily created by the partlc1pa-
tion of the others in relations into which the individual is laced. It is exactly in
this context that virtue is always "already there" and "about things": it must be
predicated on a certain materiality that is exterior not only to the person her- or
himself but also to other participants.
Thus, Ito's comprehension of the character "virtue" discloses the dimension
of sociality whose cognizance was repressed in Song rationalism. Sociality can-
not be thought of without referring to the materiality of the inscription, which Ito
called the "trace," which indicates not only the participation in sociality of the
others but also that their participation surely generates some surplus or con-
tingency no mind could possibly anticipate. It goes without saying that sociality
cannot be reduced to an agreement of any sort, since such a conception of
sociality needs to posit the communality of many different minds and thereby
ends by neglecting the primary cognizance that others' minds c~nnot ~e known.
Furthermore, this conception would postulate a transcendent vIewpoInt, some-
thing like the Song rationalists' "mind," the universal mind innate in every
selfish mind, from which to overlook all the individual minds in order to secure
the possibility of talking about the primordial agr~emen:. In one way o~ an~ther,
an attempt to define sociality in terms of a pnmord1al agreement InevIta?ly
assumes the reciprocity of "I" and "thou," or one subject and another, accordIng
to which sociality is understood primarily as a form of intersubjectivity. But
unless reciprocity is guaranteed by a viewpoint transcendent with respect to both
of the subjects in a face-to-face confrontation, by the viewpoint that can be
equated to transcendent subjectivity as intersubjectivity, such a primordial agree-
ment is impossible.
For Zhu Xi, as 1 have said, sociality was conceivable only to the extent that
surplus, contingency, the dust generated by materiality, was subdued so ~s to
secure a transparency of communication comparable to the face of a clear muror
or the surface of calm water. He presupposed an ideal community in which the
basic universal rules were agreed upon at the same time that the agreement was
formed on these universal rules. Reciprocity of intersubjectivity, the transcendent
viewpoint that guarantees such intersubjective reciprocity, and universal rules on
which the primordial agreement is formed were then equated to one another as a
series of tautologies. And the rationalists, of course, insisted that this ideal
Textuality and Sociality 105
community coincided with the totality of the universe, insofar as such a totality
could be imagined.
This discourse yielded many political effects, among which one cannot be
passed over: the entire argument was presented as though incommensurability
ought not to have been there, as though it were somewhat outrageous and morbid
to admit that one cannot actually know another's mind. Nevertheless, this argu-
ment possessed a certain rhetorical force. It persuaded readers to accept the
image of what would happen if communality were not there and convinced them
that such a situation would never ensue. Yet the afI'mnative power of this convic-
tion derives from a displaced fear that agreement could not always prevail. In the
same gesture, this fear about an absence of agreement is implicitly acknowledged
and explicitly neglected. The contingent and heterogeneous are anticipated, but
by virtue of this anticipation, they are deliberately suppressed.
Ito Jinsai never advocated the libertine idea of freedom. Notwithstanding his
critique of the reified and naturalized notion of the ethical norm in Song ra-
tionalism, he believed that the ethicality of ethical action consisted in acting
according to Confucian ideas, for ethics was, first of aU, a matter of action. For
him, ethical norms are established and affirmed in action, and they do not exist
either temporally or logically anterior to action. Unlike Song Confucians, who
believed in the anteriority of norms to praxis, as expressed in the anteriority of
nature to feeling, Ito conceived of the ethical norm as that which is brought into
being in the execution of it. Therefore, he understood the universality of the
ethical norm completely differently, so that its universality was never confused
with its generality. And for precisely this reason, one can argue that the univer-
sality of the ethical norm falls into the thematic of poiesis concerning shutai, the
body of the enunciation. For ethical action is at the same time an action that
creates an ethical norm and a procedure that affirms it. 21
From Ito. Jinsai's perspective, it is only too obvious that Song rationalism
missed the very moment of ethicality in ethical action and that this philosophical
system appeared to be constructed for the purpose of eliminating the contingent
and heterogeneous from the universe by every conceptual means, so as to present
a convincing picture of a harmonized and perfectly ordered world in which there
would never be a need to act in Ito's sense of ethical action. It would be a world
in which the Other and the heterogeneous are completely eliminated, so that
21 1 repeat Wittgenstein's well-known argument in Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M.
Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968); "This was our paradox: no course of action could be
determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule. The
answer was: if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to
conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here. . . . And here also 'obeying
a rule' is a practice. And to think one is obeying a rule is not to obey a rule. Hence it is not possible to
obey a rule 'privately': otherwise thinking one was obeying a rule would be the same thing as obeying
it" (p. 81).
 Textuality and Sociality 107
106 Silence at the Center
in which other social institutions and other people are also inscribed, it would
ethics is absolutely unnecessary; it would be a world of perfect nonethicality, a
ne:er obtain ext~riorit~, the sort ~f exteriority that is absolutely necessary for my
world of quiescent theoria. What Ito saw in Song Confucianism was, in the final domg to be a SOCIal a~tIon. That IS to say, because of the materiality of my body, I
analysis, nonethicality. am able to engage In the social and to execute an ethical action. Ethics is
Undoubtedly the core of Ito's ethics is the moment we are forced to face
me~ingful and ~ssible for ~e thanks to the materiality of my body. In this
through this fear. One is capable of being ethical precisely because one is uncer-
s~clfic se~se., I thmk that ethiCS as an insight into social action is possible only
tain of the consequence of an intended ethical action. Only when there is discon-
WIth m~tenahsm, and I agre~ with Ito Jinsai that the spiritualism of the Song
tinuity between intent and consequence, is the ethical possible. To be sure, this ConfUCIan type or the BuddhIst type as he depicted them is in fact nonethical.
continuity coincides with a gulf, an abyss, between thinking and doing. Since . Se~ond, inasmuch as my doing is an inscription in the general text, it cannot be
doing involves some materiality (of the body, situation, and so on), it necessarily Ideationally detennined; its meaning is revealed in relation to others' doing.
gives rise to a modification worked upon things. Conversely, unless the modifi-
Although ~he mea~ing of m~ doi~g is far from arbitrarily detennined, it is open
cation of things, including one's body, is involved, it cannot be called doing and, to man~ different InterpretatIons, IS always multivocal. In addition, my doing is
consequently, action. always Interwoven with others' doings. In this respect too, I am never the author
And it is not because the other's mind is located in the inside of his or her body of my doing; my doing is doubly distanced from my thinking. It is this irre-
that one cannot know it but because to know the other always involves and
ducibility of ~y a~tion t~ my thinking that constitutes ethicality. I do not imply I
necessitates action toward the other, so that one can never say one exhaustively
am f~ee and Identical WIth myself in my doing. On the contrary, because of the
knows the other. In this sense, the irredeemable spacing, or espacement, which
alea .Inherent in materiality, my doing opens Up the possibility of what Jacques
separates "you" from "me" is of the same kind as the split inherent in enuncia-
Demdacalls "spacing," and in this instance, the possibility of "spacing = play
tion, which also irredeemably distances "me" as the subject of enunciation from
= :enture" ~arks the ethicality of action, rather than lighthearted escapism from
the body of the enunciation, or shutai. 22 eth~cs. F~r thiS reason, an ethical action is inevitably aleatory, but one can never
In this respect, ethical action is already in the register of making, or poiesis:
be In~en~lonally ~leato~ i~ ethical action because the aIea can never be an object
ethical action must be thought of primarily as making, a sort of making that of thlnkmg or wIsh. ThiS IS to say that an ethical action can best be conceived of
inscribes the trace on things in the world. Only in reference to things made, can
as Writing: an action inscribed in and by the body of the enunciation is Writing
one talk about virtue in Ito's philosophy. Therefore, as it is impossible in making
par excellence.
to eliminate the contingent, which in fact marks the textual materiality of action Here, I come across the most explicit detennination of what Ito means by the
of any sort, it is equally impossible to establish an unobstructed, transparent tenn "sincerity." Whereas in the sort of "transcendentalist" discourses probably
passage from thinking to doing. Thinking never reaches doing, since thinking is best represented by Song Confucianism "sincerity" designates the possibility of
irredeemably separated from doing by what I like to call aLea, the aleatory. 23
turning one's accidental self to one's proper self, the,possibility of passing from
First, what I think to do is separated from what I actually do because it is not
o~e's .obscured self to one's authentic nature, Ito Jinsai primarily interprets
"I" in the sense of epistemological subject, or shukan, but my body, or shutai,
sIncerIty as the impossibility of such a return. In Song rationalist treatises one
that does my doing. An execution that does not involve my body cannot be called
often notes a strong and enduring moralism and sometimes a sense of inner
an ethical action, but in this action, the body is never thematically or thetically
~truggle which point toward a deep conviction. But this conviction is expressed
(shudai-tekini) posited as a subject, shugo. Therefore, this body of ethical action
In repeated attempts to convince the author himself that the state of the clear
essentially belongs to the register of the body of the enunciation, which, just like
mirror and calm water, in which one is identical with what one ought to be, can
the singular thing and the private self, is transcendent with respect to the '~I" as
actually be reached, indeed, that the passage to the authentic self predetennined
subject. The body of the enunciation thus is discontinuous with the "I" to whom
by human nature is already drawn, so that, in the final analysis, one's return to
my thought is ascribed. In this respect, the body, neither as an image nor as an
authenticity is guaranteed. Thus, Song rationalism could perceive the return to
object to be made present but rather as a materiality, is heterogeneous to my
one a~t~en.tic inner self as total merger with the universe: the return on any
thinking. Yet, without this materiality, my doing would never acquire its so-
mor~hstlc mvestment in action is guaranteed in advance. In other words, the
ciality, its openness to others; unless my doing is an inscription in the general text
domInant concern of Song rationalism is how to convince oneself that this return
22S acing should never be understood as if it were caused by the difference between me and the
is guaranteed, to convince oneself of the reciprocity between one's investment in
p
other, conceived of as substances. action and its return.
23For a recent attempt to explore the various uses of this tenn, see William Haver, "Nishida, For Ito Jinsai, sincerity is exactly the opposite: sincerity is possible precisely
Freud, Lacan," Theoria 28 (March 1985): 1-52.
108 Silence at the Center
because one's self, which is after all not the proprietor of itself, cannot be
returned to a proper nature. It is because there can never be a guarantee of
passage from the accidental to the authentic that one can be sincere. For Ito,
sincerity prevails only in the absence of such a guarantee, for sincerity essentially
inhibits one from returning to one's interiority and exposes a person to otherness.
In sincerity, one makes oneself vulnerable to the accidental, to the otherness of
the Other: one wagers without knowing whether or not one will win. When the
return is guaranteed, one cannot be sincere, and sincerity as conceived by Chou,
the Cheng brothers, and Zhu turns into hypocrisy. If the return to the authentic
self-and therefore the recentering instead of decentering of the self-is guaran-
teed, sincerity immediately turns into a gesture of taking a risk without exposing
oneself to risk. Ito interprets this gesture as hypocrisy. From his vantage point,
Song rationalism appears to be a systematic theoretical attempt to convince the
thinkers themselves that a good deed would invariably be rewarded (kan-zen,
chou-aku, 3-23). It is an attempt to eliminate the materiality of social action, its
ethicality, and its sociality. To be sincere, in Ito's view, is to be courageous
without guarantee. Instead of confinement to a putative subjective interiority,
sincerity is openness to others, to the otherness of the Other.
For Ito Jinsai, sincerity must be an aleatory commitment to universal prescrip-
tion-the universality of universal prescription should never be reduced to the
generality of human essence-which opens poiesis to deconstruction, the "per-
fonnative" to interference by the otherness of the Other, for the ethicality of
ethical action, for Ito, lies in deconstruction inherent in the productive praxis of
poiesis.
Ai and the Way
Because of the materialistic nature of ethical action, it never occurs in a social-
historical vacuum. It is an inscription in the general text, where others and social
relations are also inscribed. One acts as a singular individual or a private self that
can never adequately correspond to the subject. At the same time, as it is well
recognized, the subject is also always overdetennined, so that, as a matter of
fact, it is never a unified position: the subject is always already subjects. Yet, it
must be stressed that the agent of an action as a singular thing is embedded in the
textuality of the general text: it is not an ahistorical, free, and autonomous
individual that so-called individualism fantasizes. Moreover, what individualism
calls the individual is in fact nothing but a subject. My emphasis on the singular
individual as the agent of ethical action is concerned with this irredeemable
difference between the subject and the singular, and also with the idea that, by
virtue of this difference, the singular thing resides in the text but not exhaustively
in the discourse. The singular thing thus marks an intrusion of textuality into the
discourse and indicates the possibility of intervening in the self-reproduction of
Textuality and Sociality 109
the discourse.. For. this very reason, an ethical action is an action whereby I
c.h~ng~ the society 10 my small and trivial ~ays and whereby my putative subjec-
tivity IS alter~d and decentered. And also for this reason, to respect the singular
as the other IS to respect the possibility of social change that cannot be tele-
ologic~ly predi~ted.. All these consequences are due to the textual materiality of
my action: an.d 10 thiS re~pect too, one's own body is the center of decentering.
The ethicalIty of an ethical action is therefore synonymous with the fundamen-
tal sociality thr~ugh which we as disparate individuals interact and live in history.
By aleato~ aC~lon,. I open myself to others, not as subjects whose images are
predetermined 111 dIscourse but as Other singular individuals with whom I can
ne~er pr~su~e an! reciprocity. Ito Jinsai called the possibility of this aleatory
action az (al also In Chinese, 2-20).
Ito ~insai.ofte~ de~cribes Ai as a fonn of reciprocity, but it is important to note
that thIS reciprocity IS not characterized as an exchange of equal value. It is, first
of all, confidence in the other or even courage in the relationship with the other
which initiates one's response and responsiveness to the other. It is confidence
without guarantee, confidence that is not grounded. Therefore, Ai is not human
nature but, above all else, feeling: it might also be d~scribed as fundamental
openness to the other and care for another.
It should be all too obvious by now that ai is not the mutual transference
~sually called "love," in which one glorifies the putative image of one's identity
In the name of one's other. Ai is a difference in the channel of this transference in
which one wishes to fonn a stable regime of mutuality with another: ai consists in
the rejection and abandonment of such a wish for homosocial complicity with
others. When Ogyu Sorai later commented on Ito's ai, he mistook the theoretical
construction within which ai was embedded and thought of it as unduly senti-
mental. His inability to comprehend this notion reveals a certain blindness inher-
ent in his politics, for it is difficult to imagine a conception of sociality as devoid
of sentime~t~Jity as Ito's ai. It is not preoccupied with demand for self-pity or
self-recognItIon. Its strength comes from its aleatory feature, that is that one's
action is directed not toward either the image one has of another but'toward the
other as an individual who is ultimately unthinkable and unknowable in its
entirety. My execution of an action toward the other can be called ai because I act
even though I cannot count on reward from that individual. Therefore, ai is
always accompanied by the feeling of limitless flowing (kakujuu) toward the
ot~e~ and by the sense of nonthematized confidence in the other. That is to say,
Within the specific limits inscribed in the general text, I encounter others as
si~gular beings, neither fully my superior nor my inferior nor my equal but
Without terms of comparison. Of course, I am not simply repeating that the
singular is not a subject. In spite of the fact that I encounter the others within the
network of social relations that putatively represents both me and the others as
o~ersaturated or overdetermined subjects, there is an aspect in which a singular
thing encounters other singular things and which is irreducible to the relation of
110 Silence at the Center
one subject to other subjects: unlike the encounter of subjects, which takes place
in discourse arid hence is measurable, the encounter of individual beings is in the
final analysis without any terms of comparison, not even equality. In this specific
aspects of the encounter of the singular, one meets another not only as vassal,
child, wife, friend, or younger brother but also as stranger. And only when one
can encounter the other partly as a stranger is ethical action possible. (1 say
"partly" because it is impossible to think of an encounter with a complete
stranger, an other completely external to social relations.) Hence, ai prevails
because the other is not near or familiar but partly alien to me. I enter the linkage
of ai even with my parent, brother, or husband through the moment of their
singularity, of their strangeness: the other is always encountered as a mixture of
subjective positions and strangeness which cannot be contained ina given dis-
course.
It goes without saying that every social action takes place among individuals
each of whom bears habits and cultural formations and is implicated in them:
social action happens only within the specific limits inscribed in the general text.
In this regard, every individual is culturally and historically determined. But this
does not mean that these cultural and historical determinations can be objectified
and known in their entirety. It is logically impossible to enumerate all the habits
one is subjected to, not because there are too many of them to count but because
the isolation of one habit, which is the form objectification always takes in
discourse, necessarily requires the repression of other readings of it. A recogni-
tion of so-called cultural difference, for instance, is possible only when a certain
language game is implicitly shared. The recognition of incommensurability never
arises unless it is embedded in some shared language game (as I will later argue
in more detail): the recognition of incommensurability can take place only within
sociality. Hence, one always acts in the multiplicity of language games, and the
body of enunciation operates at this level. For this reason, the infinity of lan-
guage games is inherent in the body of the enunciation, and the body is ~hat
Claude Levi-Strauss called bricolage par excellence: it could never be confined
to a set of rules portrayed in terms of defined pUrPOses and means; it a~ ways
encompasses innovative uses of its materiality. Hence, the body of the enuncia-
tion always marks the poietic as well as the poetic nature of sociality. One does
not need to seek poems in his works-although in fact there are some-in order
to find the poetics of Ito Jinsai.
As is only too evident by now, however, Ito's poetics, or more specifically
poietics, does not seek the arche, the original model in whose image things are to
be "made."24 In spite of his emphasis on everyday life or the sphere of nearness,
or precisely because of this emphasis, Ito never attempted to reduce the histor-
24Koyasu Nobukuni, "Ito Jinsai kenkyu," Memoirs of the Faculty of Letters, 26 (Osaka: Osaka
University, 1986). Koyasu argues that Ito's ethics were not concerned with the issue of "grounding"
relations on metaphysical principles.
Textuality and Sociality III
ically specific limits within which an ethical action took place to an original reign
or arche; he never assumed that the sphere. of nearness consisted of identifiable
components that could be traced back to the origin, in spite of his frequent
references to Confucian classics. As he conceived it the sphere of nearness
resembles the unconscious, in that any objectification or totalization of it neces-
sarily leads to its repression; thematization (shudaika, J-24) of it would neces-
sarily be haunted by the return of the repressed. Because he understood the
sphere of nearness as an infinite set of language games, Ito never claimed to
lmowit, to be able to demarcate it or reduce it to stated rules. Just as the body of
enunciation cannot be imagined or objectified, the sphere of nearness is actual
but never knowable. Unlike Ogyu Sorai's notion of communal and archaic "inte-
riority," which he posited to objectify and demarcate the sphere of nearness, Ito's
philosophy was completely free from culturalism. Neither cultural subjectivity
nor the horizon of cultural tradition was appealed to in Ito's discourse. Accord-
ingly, his reading of the classics was quite alien to hermeneutics, which emerged
in subsequent philosophical writings during the eighteenth century. Possibly his
nonhermeneutical viewpoint explains why he did not bother with the problems of
so-called cultural differences in respect to ethics. It is not because Ito believed in
some universal humanism or universal human nature-this is exactly what he
denounced in Song rationalism-but because he so thoroughly criticized essen-
tialism, including, perhaps, cultural essentialism, that he did not need to deal
with these problems. For him, it was not a matter of epistemology but a matter
of, in, and for action. As eighteenth-century discourse began to accommodate
some culturalism and phonocentrism, the moment of ethicality as Writing would
be replaced by the phonocentric ideal of cultural and linguistic "interiority," an
image of a homosocial community in which the necessity for ethical action is null
and void and one can do away with ai completely. Perhaps Ito was aware that
both universalistic quiescence (Song Confucianism) and particularistic nostalgia
(Ogyu Sorai and some National Studies) arose from the same displacement of the
practical by the epistemological. I must repeat, Ito's primary concern was with
praxis and ethics.
We are thus brought to Ito's conception of "society," although I hesitate to use
the word. It makes a striking contrast to Ogyu Sorai's conception, as we shall
see, for it denotes the world under heaven, whose totality cannot be imagined
either as a set of shared cultural institutions (Ogyu's "interiority") or as the
whole of the universe the mind is to encompass (the rationalists' cosmos).
Now, assemble six pieces of board together to build a box, and close it. Naturally,
the box is filled with qi. When it is filled with qi, mildew will grow naturally. When
there is mildew in it, moss will grow naturally. This is the Ii of nature [shizen, ziren,
3-25]. Heaven and earth are like one large box; yin and yang are qi within this box.
Ten thousand things are like mildew and moss. Thes~ qi arise with nothing to follow.
Where there is a box, there is necessarily qi [in it]; where there is no box, there is no
112 Silence at the Center
qi. Therefore, it is known that one element qi exists between heaven and earth. One
should see that it is not that there is first Ii and then qi. What is called Ii is in fact the
grain in qi. 25
The generation and regeneration of the Way is metaphorically explained with
reference to the natural growth of mildew and moss in the box. One can hardly
overlook Ito's emphasis on the phrase "with nothing to follow" in this passage.
He refers to a world in which many lives continually change without original
models to follow. For Ito, there can be no model of the ideal society beyond
historical time, no arche. In this sense, his was a non-archaic ethics.
The social world is characterized by the word "life" (sei, sheng, 3-26), which
means ceaseless decomposition and regeneration: it never remains static, and so,
there cannot be any original archetyPe of it to which one can return. The ideal
society is the one under constant change and modification generated by the small
and trivial ethical actions of people.
As the consequences of ethical actions, then, social relations are formed as
virtues, that is, are inscribed as traces. Benevolence, for instance, is a virtue, an
inscribed trace that is to be achieved through ethical action. Virtue and the social
relations marked by it are not essences or a human nature anterior to social
actions, either in objective time or for transcendental analysis. Therefore, the
existing social relations as traces inscribed in the general text delimit the scope of
an action, but logically, they cannot predetermine actions in the way Song
rationalists believed that human nature predetermines actions as the extemaliza-
tion of feelings. Here, I must note the ultimate implication of Ito's critique of
Song Confucianism: social relations and subjective identities are not grounded in
universal and ahistorical essences; they are primarily traces that cannot be ex-
haustively contained in a discursive formation; they are exposed to history under
whatever conditions. Accordingly, Ito insisted that the Way as the whole of those
virtues is like a road: if people walk together in one direction, they will create a
path. There is no transcendent ground for the Way. The Way exists because there
is the way. "The Way is like the road; it is that by means of which people come,
go, and encounter. It is named the Way by virtue of the fact that it enables people
to encounter one another. "26
25Ito, Gomojigi (Hayashi ed.), tendou 5 (Nihon shiso taikei, p, 16).
261to, Gomojigi (Hayashi ed.), tendou 1 (Nihon shiso raikei, p. 14).
PART I I
FRAME UP: THE SURPLUS
OF SIGNIFICATION AND
TOKUGAWA LITERATURE
In its m~lIenn~al tradition: the calligram has a triple role: to augment the alphabet, to re at
somethmg Without the aid of rhetoric, to trap things in a double cipher. First it brin a ~
text and .a sha",: as close together as possible. It is composed of lines delimiting the f~
of an object whtle also arranging the sequence of letters, It lodges statements in the space
of a sha~, and ~akes the text say what the drawing represents. On the one hand it
alph~betlzes the .Ideogram, ~pulates it with discontinuous letters, and thus interrog~tes
the lsIlence of'umnterrupted hnes. But on the other hand, it dl'stn'butes
m wrl't' gm , a space
~o onger possessmg. the neutrali~y, openness, and inert blankness of paper, It forces the
Ideogra~ to arrange Itsel~ ~ccordmg to the laws of a simultaneous fonn. For the blink of
an e~e. It reduces .phonetlclsm to a mere grey noise completing the contours of the sha .
but It renders outlIne as a thin skin that must be pierced in order to follow wo d f, ped'
the outpouring of its internal text. • r or wor ,
The caUigram is thus tautological. But in opposition to rhetoric, The latter toys with th
fullness of language. It uses the possibility of repeating the same thing in different de
a~d profits from the extra richness of I~guage that allows us to say different thingS~~s~
smgle wo~d. !he essenc~ of rhetonc IS m allegory. The calligram uses that capacit of
letters toslgn~fy both as.Imear elements that can be arranged in space and signs that ~ust
unr~ll a~cordmg to. a umque cham of sound. As a sign, the letter pennits us to fix words;
as hne, It let~ .us give shape to thi.ngs. ~~s the calligram aspires playfully to efface the
oldest OppoSitIOns of our alphabetical CIVIlIzation: to show and to name' to shape d t
say; to reproduce and to articulate; to imitate and to signify; to look ar:d to read. an 0
-Michel Focault, This Is Not a Pipe
CHAPTER 4

The Enunciation and

Nonverbal'Texts

Literary Discourse and the New Formation

In Part One we have seen how new discursive possibilities erupted in Ito Jinsai's
treatises and gave rise to the dichotomy between the enunciation and the enunci-
ated. In the new discursive space I am about to portray, a written text no longer
maintained its autonomy but had to be supplemented by nonverbal texts. Our
focus will now be on the intertextuality among verbal and nonverbal texts, and
how the mutation from one signifying system to another gave rise to eighteenth-
century discourse.
In Part Two I shift my attention from so-called intellectual discourse to literary
discourse to investigate how the emergence of a new discursive fonnation engen-
dered new possibilities for perceiving the world and conceiving the social reality.
My inquiry will concern itself with the basic modes of discursive praxis pertain-
ing to these possibilities. That is to say, I shall pose the basic questions of
writing, speaking, hearing, reading, and seeing. Before I go into a detailed
description and analysis of eighteenth-century documents, however, it seems
imperative to note the epistemological limitation of present-day scholarship, for
regardless of whether we speak from the so-called West, from Japan (which one
can hardly claim to be outside the West today), or from elsewhere, our theoretical
glance can be cast only from within this scholarship. It would be very difficult to
deny the present global domination of the modern European epistemological
framework. Yet it is also important to consider how this domination works. It
does not exist like a blanket covering a certain territory, despite the fact that it is
obviously very useful in the context of this work to attribute some spatial con-
notation to it. It has to be sustained by various textual practices. By implication,
it is always open to objectification; our own discursive praxis can be objectified
and critically examined. If one is to be able to defamiliarize the institutionalized
praxis of our knowing, it can only be by examining the nature of the discontinuity

115
 Frame Up
116
that obtains between the present and the past in the hope of being able to
objectify the nabits of our minds.
Seeing and Reading
The neglect of the artistic genre calligraphy in the study of past cultures ?f the
Far East is a scandal in today's academic disciplines of art history and the hIstOry
of literature alike, for neither seems to handle this peculiar cultural object satis-
factorily. Of course, these disciplines originated in modern Europe, and they
have yet to become familiar with non-European traditions or even those of
Europe's own ancient past. One may hope that they will event~al~y develop
categories and methods relevant to this genre of art and that thelf Inadequate
treatment of it up until now is not due to fundamental limitations necessary t9
sustain these intellectual disciplines.
From the Renaissance until recently, a radical separation between the visual
and the verbal has been sanctified in the so-called West. A visual work has been
evaluated exclusively in terms of its capacity to appeal to the eye; any verbal
element within it has been rejected and excluded, as an unnecessary impurity,
from within the framing boundary that distinguishes the work from i~s surround-
ing space. The copresence of visual and verbal elements within the same space of
a work has implied either vulgarity or incompleteness in its mode of presenta-
tion. It has been assumed that the visual or verbal text should be an adequate
representation or narration independent of any other textual form. Hence, such a
genre of artwork as the cartoon has been considered inferior both to v~rbal
documents without illustration and to visual presentations containing no wntten
words. This generic hierarchy is implicit whenever this kind of a~ form is
disparaged as a symptom of low intelligence or educational degeneratIon on the
part of its readers. .
In this context calligraphy poses a significant problem for those who are still
trapped by the assumptions underlying the disciplinary taxonomy tha~ prohibi~s
the intrusion of writing, of a verbal element, into a visual text. CallIgraphy IS
simultaneously visual and verbal. It cannot be reduced to verbal representation or
to visual experience. After all, is calligraphy a text to see or is it a drawing to
read? If it is both, then how should we understand the kind of seeing that is also
reading? Or should we insist that seeing is always reading, so that visual percep-
tion is in fact an experience of reading the world?
To be sure, I have posed these questions not to determine the status of calligra-
phy as compared to visual and verbal texts but rather to dra~ attentio.n to the
complex interrelationship between the two forms of presentation. InqUIry ~ust
be aimed at the specific formation of a general text in which a work of calligra-
phy was produced and received in order to understand the interaction in that
scandalous form of presentation between reading and seeing. Furthermore, the
The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 117
way in which a visual text relates itself to a verbal one varies culturally as well as
historically. The dominant ideology in a certain society at a certain historical
stage may completely reject the very possibility of the copresence of the visual
and the verbal; but the same society at a different stage may well allow writing or
voice to mingle with vision or scene in specific ways.
What is involved here is more than ·the boundaries imposed on humanist
disciplines by the conditions of possibility for their spheres of study. Our in-
ability to handle certain cultural objects, such as calligraphy, raises fundamental
questions concerning the epistemological limitations set by the dominant ide-
ology of the societies in which we live. Those limitations are implicit and
inherent in our perception and cognition; in fact, they enable us to perceive things
as we do. Although, as I will argue, it is simply out of the question to imagine
epistemology free from ideologies, an encounter with an alien object can reveal
the limited scope of our knowledge, thereby disclosing the possibility of seeing
the world otherwise. That is to say, to analyze and determine the cultural and
historical specificities of an alien thing is also to reveal the implicit blindness
underlying the dominant modes of our understanding and perception. One might
pursue defamiliarization by contrasting a form of presentation particular to a past
ideology to our own forms, which are themselves culturally determined. This
duality implicit in any historical study facilitates the creation of a distance from
our own perceptions which permits us to establish a critical viewpoint from
which to encounter the Other. It is thanks to this duality that the historical
critique of a foreign and past society could be indirectly linked to a critique of our
own. I must note, however, that no reciprocal or transferential exchange is
possible between the past (them) and the present (us). Furthermore, let us not
assume that it is easy to avoid transference in historical study.
Interestingly enough, the writers of the Tokugawa era were faced with the
same problem. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they
had to deal with issues concerning the identity of their historical world and
possible relationships with the outside and the past of another, unfamiliar histor-
ical world. One of the major issues concerned the manner in which contemporary
discourse dealt with the writings of the past. In this respect, the question of the
interrelationship between visual and verbal texts played a decisive role.
As new discursive possibilities emerged in Tokugawa Japan, the relationship
between visual and verbal texts-one aspect of intertextuality-also changed
radically. Prior to this time, these two forms of presentation could coexist with-
out generating the surplus of signification: they remained indifferent to each
other.
As many historical artifacts testify, genres of literature and plastic art contain-
ing both visual and verbal elements were not brought into being all of a sudden in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the introduction of the writing
system, successive polities in the Japanese archipelago adopted various forms of
presentation whereby verbal texts were related to visual elements in one way or
118 Frame Up
another. (If we are to understand "writing" with the rigor suggested by Jacques
Derrida's use of the term, Japanese culture maintained the interdependency of
visual and verbal texts even before the introduction of what is conventionally
called "writing system.") Later, through a phonetic writing system, kana, the
people sought to articulate a mechanism that would reduce a text to its orality.
Although heterogeneity in forms of presentation predominates there, the prob-
lematic of intertextuality between the visual and the verbal is not, of course,
limited to Japan: it can be found in many cultures and in many historical eras.
What I am trying to construe is a specific mode through which vision, for
example, is transformed into orality or some other form of text.
To say that culture could not be properly comprehended without referring to
the notion of intertextuality is to say almost nothing. What is at issue here is not a
vague characterization but a specific description of the discursive formation at a
certain historical moment. In other words, I want to characterize a particular
discourse to define a field of historical contemporaneity; for my purposes,
works, i~stitutionalized performances, historical documents, and other utter-
ances are contemporaneous with one another as long as they participate in the
same discourse. Hence, even if two works share the same publication date, they
cannot be said to be contemporaneous if they are not embedded in the same
discourse. Conversely, two utterances could be treated as contemporaneous even
if they were produced decades apart from each other.
Framing and Its Effect
Taking this problematic of visual and verbal texts as a conducting thread, I
want to examine the rules of a discursive formation, the protocols according to
which various texts were incorporated into the literary discourse of eighteenth-
century Japan. I must first postulate two areas of theoretical concern, however,
without which my analysis would lose its focus.
The first concerns framing, a device by means of which a work is identified as
separate and distinct from what is outside it. I do not intend to restrict my
analysis of this textual device to visual presentations alone, but it is undoubtedly
true that its function can be most clearly demonstrated in pictures. The frame
divides visual space into an inside and an outside and thereby gives this bounded
sector of space a relative independence from its outside. Even when a supposedly
empty frame is placed on a wall, the bounded part of the wall is upgraded and
becomes a privileged object of vision. It ceases to be merely the surface of the
wall and is endowed with a certain meaning, becomes pregnant with meaning:
thereby it is thematized or posited as a shudai, theme-subject. Insofar as every
act of comprehension is a way to relate a subject to the world through significa-
tion, every object, natural or artificial, appears pregnant with meaning when it is
comprehended as a shudai. But an object or a part of it bounded by a frame
The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 119
projects a different level of meaning, whereby the prepredicative determination
of the object is reduced and suppressed into its textual materiality. I say "pre-
predicative" because''! think that predication is the general form of indication that
effectuates itself in the framing. The framing, or more specifically parergonal
split, divides what is thematized from what is excluded from the theme-subject.
To see a part of the wall not as the surface of a wall but as a picture is to be blind
to its materiality. When we see a picture, we do not see it as an amalgam of paint
or other pigment; instead, we see image and shapes. This blindness to textual
materiality is the effect of framing. In other words, a thing is made to be
something more than a thing by being framed. Hence the frame is one of the
fundamental and most important textual devices by which one dimension of
meaning is constituted.
I must hasten to add, however, that there is of course no such thing as the
ultimate material base. The determination of textual materiality as the wall, for
instance, is also a meaning. We can never reach the final material reality by
bracketing the meaning thus constituted by framing, for framing is a textual
device that is itself differance, and there is an infinite series of differences}
Therefore, to reiterate Paul de Man's famous formula, textual blindness is a
necessary condition for the formation of textuality. We simply cannot escape this
blindness. It follows that we are thereby obligated to describe the allocation of
textual blindness within the discursive space by delineating its rules.
Once the frame has been defined in a general way, it is not difficult to see that
its use is not limited to pictorial presentation. In theater, for example, the frame
circumscribes a prestigious space called the stage. It is essential to note that
whatever meaning a cultural object may evoke is enclosed not inside itself but in
its implicit relationship with its surroundings. In addition, as its relationship
changes, the meaning changes, even if the object remains identical. Without a
doubt I must reject the substantialization of meaning.
Katari Narrative
In the early seventeenth century, as the Tokugawa shogunate established its
reign and many political institutions were transformed, an increasing number of
literary works were published and printed. One of the literary genres that domi-
nated popular literature at that time was kanazoshi (kana booklets, 4-1), in which
visual and verbal texts coexist. Not all works classified within this genre contain
pictorial illustrations, but it is noteworthy that those with illustrations appear
ICf. Jacques Derrida, 'Differance,' in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 1-27. As to the question of framing, see Jacques Derrida, La verite
en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978); and Mikhail Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel," in The
Dialogic Imagination, cd. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1981), pp. 259-422.
120 Frame Up
drastically different from otherwise similar literary works of the eighteenth cen-
tury. . in any ~pecific person, partly because there is no explicit pefsonal pronominal
Kanazoshi differs from other eighteenth-century literary works primarily in its
narrative mode. A substantial amount of scholarship has been devoted to this
feature, which has been designated katari, or folklore narrative. But since most
of that scholarship slights narratological analysis in favor of establishing gen-
ealogies and tracing influences, it is not clear how one could ever hope to
identify the conditions under which literary production of this sort was initiated
and regulated in the seventeenth century.
Because of the implicit developmental model that has guided analysis of works
belonging to this genre, adequate attention has yet to be paid to the internal
dynamics of this form of literary discourse. Knowledge of its genealogy and
origins is not of great help in understanding how signification is generated in
katari and what kind of narrative skills are required for it. What is necessary is
not chronological but synchronic analysis (not to be understood as the synchrony
of Saussurian linguistics). Before I attempt such analysis, however, I should
clarify what is meant by katari and determine whether this term sufficiently
delineates the general characteristics of this genre.
The dominant narrative mode in kanazoshi should be first defined as the
absence of a differentiation of viewpoints. Kanazoshi narrative projects a mono-
lithic representational space in which the viewpoint of narrator is only vaguely
distinguished from other possible viewpoints. Although it is possible to recog-
nize the interaction of various voices in this narrative, it seems as if the variety
and differences that might otherwise exist are synthesized and integrated into the
voice of an anonymous narrator who stands neither inside nor outside the space
of representation. Yet, it is not the kind of narrative form that Mikhail Bakhtin
called the monologic novel. 2 Unlike Western novels of the nineteenth century,
the dominant voice is not centered in a single viewpoint or transcendental subject
that exercises unchallengeable authority over the things and events depicted. For
in order to have the voice of an authorized subject, there must be a relationship of
domination of the author over others. In kanazoshi, however, this primary dis-
tinction, which is essential for the relationship constituting monologic domina-
tion, is absent.
This absence is best exemplified by expressions used in kanazoshi narrative to
describe a character's action. Adjectivals that designate subjective impressions
are constantly in use. Yet is is impossible to determine whose subjective impres-
2Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis,
1973). The teon "monologism" can be apprehended much more broadly than as a historically
specific model of the Western novel. Here I emphasize his critique of nineteenth-century Western
novels whose structure reproduces the power relationship inherent in the modem state. In this
respect, katari cannot be directly equated to the monologism of nineteenth-century novels, but at the
same time, I do not deny the possibility of reading Song rationalism as monologic. This is, I think,
what Ito Jinsai demonstrated.
The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 121
sions they are; they refer to a state of mind, but the mind does not seem anchored
system 10 Japanese but also because these adjectivals shift and diffuse the estab-
lishment of a fixed viewpoint. First of all, one can draw a line between direct
speech and indirect speech only when the subject of the utterance is marked.
~ore .important, the narration proceeds without formulating a definite perspec-
tive eIther temporally or spatially. The notion of the "scene" in which an event
takes place is absent, as is the distance that relates characters to each other:
unless this distance is postulated, the viewpoints attributed to various characters
cannot be expressed, for it is only through the sense of separation and distance
that one identifies oneself in opposition to another person.
The Absence of Historicity
Hence, the narrative voice does not have any spatial position in kanazoshi. It is
impossible to determine the narrator's position because the narrator speaks from
no individual character's perspective. This means that katari in fact represents a
position of anonymity, that is, it constitutes a field of discourse that could be
shared by any member of the community. In this respect katari belongs to
mythical discourse, in which the addresser and the addressee are in a reciprocal
relationship. In this kind of narrative, one does not speak against others, butfor
and with others. For this reason, characters who appear in these works do not
seem to have inner worlds and individual personalities. They appear to be ex-
haustively defined by names, professions, and social ranks.
Even though characters are identified in terms of their social positions, how-
ever, they are not given their own style of language. Only occasionally does
contemporary colloquialism sneak into a single language, which is the language
of an anonymous third person. Furthermore, there is a striking lack of historical
differentiation between the language of the classics and the language of the
present. Certainly, the pseudoclassic style persisted in Japanese literature
throughout the eighteenth century; yet, in contrast to literary works of the late
eighteenth century, the nondifferential feature of this prose is obvious. Doubtless,
this feature can in part be attributed to the absence of quotation marks with which
to distinguish quoted speech from the main narrative voice and which, as we will
see, were basically an eighteenth-century invention. In addition, it is worth
noting that a certain literary device with which classics and their language might
~e parodied was not available. The language of classic writings could be objec-
tIfied and parodied only if a distance separated the contemporary readership from
the world of the classics. Only by perceiving and affirming such a distance could
one possibly postulate the historical present in contrast to the historical past. If
~ne understands historicity as it is discussed in henneneutics, the literary produc-
tion of the seventeenth century was conducted without a discursive apparatus by
122 Frame Up
which the sense of historicity might be articulated. NQ doubt, people of the time
knew that classic writings in fact belonged to the past, that the language of the
classics was not their own; one might assume that they did not feel at ease with
the use of ancient words that they never encountered in their everyday life.
Nonetheless, they knew neither how to express this sense of "unfamiliarity" nor
how to legitimate the integration of vulgar and mundane expressions into literary
discourse.
Hence the action of characters and their contextual arrangements were con-
stantly assimilated into the already-established fonns. Perceived reality was as-
similated into the literary world of the classics on the assumption that the lan-
guage of the classics was continuous with the language of the present, and this
assumption masked the inadequacy of the classic language for the writers of
kanazoshi. The author of Tsuyudono monogatari (Tales of Tsuyudono, 4-2), for
instance, did not perceive the disparity between high and low language, between
language of the sophisticated and the mundane. Despite the introduction of new
printing methods and the consequent expansion of readership to which seven-
teenth-century Japan was witness, this author, unlike Ito Jinsai, could not envi':'
sion a literary language that would allow him to represent the mundane, vulgar,
low, and u near" spheres of life.
Indeed, no single writer, no isolated genius, could have created a new fonn of
literature single-handedly. Considering the extent to which the possibilities of
literary fonns are limited by a given discursive fonnation, individual authors
play a minimal role in generating new genres and new rules of discourse. It is
partly for this reason that the introduction of ordinary speech or colloquialism
into literature in the eighteenth century constitutes one of the most important
events in Japanese history. It was neither the innovation of a few individuals nor a
literary fashion following on a historical accident.
In this regard, it is important to recall that what is called ordinary speech or
colloquialism is not a given/act naturally available in any society. It is, like any
other institution, identified in terms of a set of conditions. The differentiation
between colloquialism and written language is a historically and culturally spe-
cific formation. The myth that ordinary speech is primordial and writing is its
secondary derivative, a myth that enjoys widespread currency even today, is part
and parcel of the deeply rooted imperialism from which our contemporaries find
it so difficult to escape. Clearly, the exclusion of ordinary speech from literary
production in the seventeenth century was no more natural than was its inclusion
in the eighteenth century. Exclusion and inclusion alike were results of discursive
institutionalization and therefore equally ideological.
From this point of view, it should be evident that the sphere of "nearness," the
mundane, vulgar, and low in life, cannot be posited in itself. Every direct
experience, every immediate reality, every sense of the "real," is discursively
articulated; every "immediacy" is, in fact, a form of mediation. In other words,
the people of eighteenth-century Japan perceived certain forms as immediate and
natural which those in the seventeenth century had not. If that is the case, we
The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 123
must ask how certain forms of immediacy were constituted in discourse and what
sort of obstacles had to be overcome in erder to perceive them as immediate.
It should be reasonable to assume that, because of the absence of historical
differentiation, the authors of kanazoshi did not perceive any major discrepancy
that dissociated them from the language of the past. As one kanazoshi novella in
a series of short stories puts it, "lma wa mukashi" ("the present is the past").
Since the Heian period, the phrase had been used to indicate the beginning of a
story in the tradition of what is nowadays called setsuwa (tale) literature (4-3).
Usually setsuwa literature is classified as part of the oral tradition in which
various folkloric sources were assembled into a vaguely defined whole. It may be
possible to identify the editor of a particular setsuwa work, but in the majority of
cases it is impossible to detennine the author. Here we should remind ourselves
that the absence of the author is due not to the lack of written material or
historical evidence but to the internal necessity of the genre as it had been
developed. The orality of katari, which is one of the main characteristics of
setsuwa, excludes the possibility of incorporating the position of the author in its
discourse. Regardless of whether it is preserved in writing or orally transmitted
from generation to generation, its narrative structure cannot include a discursive
effect called the author. But in utterances belonging to the other contemporary
genres, the author might well have been institutionalized, albeit not in the same
way as modem authorship is constituted.
In order for a literary work to have an author, the work must be ascribed to one
person's originary speech act. Any work of a verbal nature, once uttered, can be
repeatedly reproduced and reenacted. Yet, unless the distinction between the
originary act of expression and its repetition is perceived, the audience cannot tell
whether a story being narrated originates from an opinion or an intention COD-
ceived by some individual, who mayor may not be present in the scene of the
narration. Folk song, for instance, does not project such a distinction; thus, no
one takes what a singer says as his or her personal opinion or an expression of the
singer's intention. Here it does not matter whether the folk song actually sung in
fact has a writer or composer. Likewise in setsuwa literature, authorship is erased
because it does not project a message, does not transfer relevant infonnation
from the addresser to the addressee. One does not necessarily sing in order to
communicate infonnation to somebody else. Presumably the semantic meaning
of the song is already shared by the audience, even on first hearing. As I shall
discuss at length in the following chapters, the problem of language in "song"
cannot be encompassed by the communication model, in which the verbal act is
understood to be the transfer of a message from one consciousness to another.
The significance of what Japanese scholarship has called the oral trans~ission
of Setsuwa literature3 lies in this: it annihilates the distance essential to the notion
3Cf. Hyodo Hiromi, "Monogatari, katari mono to tekisuto," Kokugo to kokubungaku (September
1980): 16-30. In his essay, Hyodo argues that the notion ofkatari should never be confused with that of
yomi. Refening to etymological studies by Motoori Norinaga and Yanagida Kunia, he describes the
underlying structural differences between the verbs. While the act of yomi is to confinn the already
124 Frame Up
of communication, translDlSSlon of messages. It is a verbal act by which a
community afIrrms and enhances its shared tradition, ignoring the distinction
between the originary act of utterance by an author and the repetition of that act
by other members of the community, erasing it and rendering it meaningless. Its
orality has nothing to do with the material form of its transmission, that is,
whether it is spoken or written. Orality annihilates the distance between "them"
and "us," the past and the present, and the addressee and the addresser. ' in many regards. Benveniste's primary definition of the instance of discourse
The phrase "ima wa mukashi" reveals the basic feature of discourse of this
kind. The reciprocity of the present and the past is exactly that toward which
setsuwa literature is oriented. Here, the displacement of the present signifies the
displacement of the absent. What is rejected is the temporal perspective by
means of which, through the position of the present, the absent (that is, the past
and the future) is also posited in opposition to the present. The phrase functions
not only as a literary marker, a frame placed at the beginning of a story to
indicate the boundary where the actual space ends and an imaginary world starts,
but also as a device to suggest the reciprocity between the absent world of
imagination and the actual world. Any event described in a narrative of this sort,
according to the rules set by this kind of phrase, cannot have a ·'now" or a "here'
because it cannot be attributed to any "present" in which the originary enuncia-
tion produced the text itself. At issue is the paradox I have already mentioned: an
enunciation in which a text describing events is also an event. The phrase "the
present is the past," however, denies this dimension of discourse; it erases and
excludes that dimension wherein textual production itself is an event. It is only in
relation to the primordial present of enunciation that events described in texts
could be positioned and defined in history. In other words, the time of the
enunciation, one of the two temporalities inherent in utterance, is absent in this
mode of narrative. As a result, the time of the enunciated appears to float,
unanchored to the putative present of the enunciation. This is to say that events
that should have happened somewhere and sometime are narrated as if they could
happen anywhere and any time. The dreamlike quality engendered by the
placelessness and timelessness of folklore obviously derives from this
established text, katari always contains a certain degree of freedom because of which the notion of the
original text is constantly reedited and revised. The representational space (he uses the phrase .. saku
chu sekai") remains identical, however, despite the possible variety of scripts. "Through the medium
of [the katari] theme, the narrator is explicitly aware of the presence of listeners, and establishes 'a sort
of spiritual cooperation' with them. If katari is thus defined, then its text-that part of the narration
which can be fixed in writing-should not be able to remain identical, since the enunciation changes for
each utterance" (p. 22). Therefore, "there was no original 'written' text called the Tales ofHeike. The
texts that have been preserved today should be reduced to the evidence of the narrative act. What has
been narrated [actually] and what should be said [potentially] are to be homogenized" (p. 28). This
suggestive article reminds me of a brilliant (unpublished) essay by M. Morris on Makura no sash;.
which argues that it is only within a certain discursive space that the original text is endowed with the
prestige we now take for granted. In the case of Makura na sashi the diversity of preserved texts has
annoyed scholars of Japanese literature, but it should be evident by now that the problem is not to
detennine which text should be taken for the original.
The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 125
ahistoricity. Indeed, in the discursive space to which setsuwa literature belonged,
there was no full-fledged discursive device whereby to articulate what Emile
Benveniste called the instance of discourse. 4 One might immediately object that
Benveniste's concept is supposedly valid to any language of any historical period
and is expected to underlie every possible language use. As I have already
indicated, however, I find his conception-of the instance of discourse inadequate
implies that the speaker is present to his enunciation in the instance of discourse
and that it constitutes a center of internal reference. He also postulates the
distinction between rhistoire and Ie discours and ascribes the role of founding
reality-just as phenomenologists have done to perception-to discourse: "The
only time inherent in language [la langue] is the axial present of discourse," and
"this present is implicit."5 If the enunciation is a split rather than a unity,
however, how is it possible to talk about the presence of the speaker to her
enunciation? Furthennore, if the subject of enunciation and the body of the
enunciation (shutai) are split in enunciation, how can one talk about the speaker
in the instance of discourse as if he were a unity, an individuum? I would argue
that what takes place in enunciation is not the present but the slip of the present
that ceaselessly flees. Therefore, the instance of discourse is in the register of the
imaginary and is an image in the classical sense of the tenn, namely, that an
image is something to represent what cannot be, and cannot be present. And the
discourse in general should be taken as a field of ideology, where one's practical
relationship to the real is imagined, rather than as the site of primordial given-
ness. The instance of discourse should designate a discursive positivity whereby
to invest an insatiable desire in the image of original speech for ultimate mean-
ingfulness.
In the midst of the katan, whose features are usually well defined, one is often'
puzzled to discover that a fragment of an older narrative form has been incorpo-
rated. Ukiyo monogatari (Tales of the floating world), for example, has an author
who has been identified, and it was published commercially. Moreover, the
social climate had changed greatly since the time when setsuwa literature was
predominant prior to the seventeenth century. Vocabulary, syntax, and social
customs were no longer the same. Yet, the old form of presentation pe~sisted and
continued to detennine what one could say as well as what one could not say.
In some kanazoshi, one encounters phrases and even entire sentences that are
quoted directly from classic writings and give the effect of distortion, thereby
functioning as a sort of local parody_ In these quotations, some elements or
sometimes proper nouns are replaced by those from contemporary surroundings.
4See Emile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics. trans Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral
Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1966),217-22. Also important is an essay by Paul Ricoeur
in which he discusses historicity and "l'instance du discours" in Paul Ricoeur, ed. M. A. J. Philibert
(Paris: Seghers. 1971).
5Emile Benveniste, Problemes de linguistique gem?rale (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), p. 75.
126 Frame Up
By inserting foreign elements into the quotations the writers seem to have gener-
ated different 'semes that put the original words into new multivocal contexts.
Polysemy is extensively applied in the novellas, travelogues, and joke boo~s of
the time. Nonetheless, one cannot escape an impression that parody remained
provisional and regional; the heterogeneity of voices seems to have been inte-
grated into the linear narrativity of katari, which necessitated the assumption of a
linear continuity of language from the past through to the present.
This linearity is most evident in the overall construction of travelogues in
which the progress of the narrative coincides with the itinerary of traveL Not
only such travelogues as Tokaido meishoki but also Basho's "Narrow Road to the
Deep North" (Oku no hosomichi), and Saikaku's "Life of an Amorous Man"
(Koshoku ichidai otoko,) are constructed on the principle that literary space is
superimposed upon geographical space. 6 Names of places designate certain loci
in the corpus of classical literature as well as actual geographical locations. As
many have pointed out, this conjunction and mingling of geographical space,
where one walks about, with the space of literary language, traversed through the
act of reading, continued to dominate literary production throughout the entire
Edo period. Nevertheless, this principle clearly underwent mutation. The mode
of superimposing the two spaces in most seventeenth-century works is distinctly
different from the mode used in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
turies.
The decisive difference between literary and geographical spaces resides in the
structures of temporality, the formation of perspective, and the participation of
the spectator's body. If we understand the space of literary language to consist of
a great number of utterances, which have accumulated and fonned a thick layer
of sedimentation during a long historical process, at least two procedures must be
involved to form a mediatory mechanism through which a geographical place
comes to be identified by a word, aphrase, or even a work belonging to the space
of literary language.
First is the linear deployment of the statements. Various poems, names of
characters, and images associated with tales that appear in classic writings could
refer to places and landmarks. Because these landmarks of literary space are all
fonns of verbal presentation, however, they cannot exist as if they were physical
6The career of Matsuo Basho (1644-94), haikai poet of the early Tokugawa period, marks the
maturity of an already popular genre, haikai no renga (haikai linked poetry). He was born in the
domain of Iga, now Mie prefecture, and studied haikai poetry with Kitamura Kigin (1624-1705)
before moving to Edo, where he established himself as a professional teacher of haikai poetry. Using
his student connections, he traveled west to Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka and north to Sendai and Echigo.
His major works are Oi no kobumi ("The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel"), Fuyu no hi (The
winter sun), Sarumino (Monkey's raincoat), and Oku no hosomichi ("The Narrow Road to the Deep
North"), Ihara Saikaku (1642-93), born in Osaka, perhaps into a merchant family, left his business
in 1665 and soon achieved fame as a haikai poet. After the successful publication of his first prose
fiction, Koshoku ichidai otoko (The Life of an Amorous Man), he became a professional writer. His
prose fictions, usually classified in the genre of ukiyozoshi, combined his prolific productivity as a
poet of comic haikai with classical literary styles. His other major works include Koshoku gonin onna
(Five Women Who Loved Love), Koshoku ichidai onna (The life of an amorous woman), Seken
Munesan'yo (Wordly Mental calculations), and Nihon eitaigura (The Japanese Family Storehouse).
The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 127
objects. That is, in order to evoke such classic citations and make them present,
~ey must. be actualized and verbalized in the parole. Inevitably verbalization
Inv~lves lInear de~loyment of words and utterances according to a set of gram-
matIcal and narratIve rules. No matter whether it is oral or written verbalization
words .can~ot be organized paradigmatically-at least in the majority of case~
(later In thIS chapter we shall deal with the spatialization of the verbal text).
Those words that refer to classic sources, that is, must be put into the successive
order characteristic of the syntagm, of "before" and "after," and must be located
within a narrative linearity that possesses a beginning and an end. Insofar as it is
a verbal work, one must hear or read it progressively; this is exactly why travel or
geographical space, another linear progression, could serve as a mediatory form
through whic~ to combine literary and geographical spaces. Consequently, as is
often noted, In many premodern Japanese literary works, virtUally every place
name seems saturated with classical associations. In works of the seventeenth
century, there is hardly any disparity between the two spaces.
Second, I must consider the exclusion of perspective in verbal presentation. As
Miura Ts~tomu demonstrates, and as I shall discuss in more detail later, pictorial
presentation only shows things and events seen from viewpoints. 7 It is true that a
picture is capable of incorporating more than one viewpoint and that linear
perspective based on the single viewpoint is a convention characteristic of only
~erta~n s.ocieties. Nevertheless, it is possible to argue that whether the perspec-
tive IS lInear, reversed, or multifocused, a pictorial presentation designates a
~sitio~ or posi~ions from which drawn objects are seen. A human figure in an
lllustration, for Instance, must be viewed from the front, from behind or other-
wise. The barest sketch of the figure already presupposes an angle fr~m which
t~e dra:wing is to be seen, even though it is quite possible for plurality of
~Iewpoln~s to be syn~hesiz.ed. within a single figure, as is done in ancient Egyp-
tIan draWings or CUbISt palntmg. In contrast to the perspectival nature of visual
presentation, the verbal text transcends perspective and need not preserve the
conditions of its genesis. 8
Representing Text and Represented Text
. So what kind of intertextual relationship should have been possible between
Visual and verbal texts in the discursive space thus characterized?
Among those prose works now classified as kanazoshi, some possess illustra-
7Miura Tsutomu, Ninshiki to gengo no riron (Theory of cognition and language) (Tokyo: Keiso
Shobo, 1967), 1:25.
8Boris A. Uspensky has written about the constitution of viewpoints in verbal texts but what he
c~lls viewpoint is more akin to Bakhtin's notion of "polyphony," in which different' voices from
dIffe~ent spe~ers o~ social groups are incorporated into the text. One might well propose that despite
the d~jference In th:l~ textual modes, ~erbal an~ pictorial texts share isomorphemes. See Uspensky, A
P~etlcs of COmpOsltlOn, trans. Valentma Zavann and Susan Wittig (Berkeley: University of Califor-
ma Press, 1973).
128 Frame Up The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 129

tions, among them Ukiyo monogatari and Tsuyudono '!lonogatari. Unlike popu-
lar novellas of the late eighteenth century, the verbal parts of these works main- ,
tain a relative autonomy: that is, the significative function of the verbal text does
not require reference to the corresponding illustrations. Even if the illustrations
were deleted from these works, it would not be very difficult to follow the plot,
nor would the meaning of the text be greatly transformed. It is evident, however,
that, as in many pictorial scrolls (emakimono) of previous eras, the visual text is
to a certain extent dependent on the verbal explication. In Tsuyudono monogatari
one inevitably receives the impression that the narrative structure is more or less
incorporated into the visual text. In order to synchronize with the linear narration
of the verbal part, the visual text is organized according to a principle of progres-
sive unfolding, which is not entirely nonlinear or atemporal. Neither is it com-
posed according to the rules of linear perSPective; it encompasses many points of
view that are not supposed to be present simultaneously. The surface of the scroll
is divided into many areas, each of which has its own viewpoint. Narrative
linearity links these points of view in an order of succession and thereby sustains
the correspondence of visual and verbal texts in the work. The sequential order in
which the reader shifts her or his glance from the right part of the illustration to
the left is in accordance with the linear progression of the narration. Which is to
say that the visual text has to be read; the gradual shifting of the reader's glance
is an integral component of this visual signification. It is for this reason that we
are often led to believe that the visual presentation in pictorial scrolls is a
derivative of the verbal text and therefore posterior or secondary to it. This
relationship between visual and verbal texts, one must remember, is exactly the
opposite to that which obtains between a framed painting and its written title. In
modern Western paintings, the title of a tableau, a verbal text in itself, is usually
located on or outside the picture frame. In any case, in the majority of visual
works produced in the modern EuroPe the title is excluded from that privileged
space of vision the boundary of which is marked by a frame. (In this regard,
figures A, B, and C demonstrate, by interfering with the framing mechanism,
the implicit ideological assumptions on which the institutions of seeing and
reading have been constructed in the modern West, which, as I have argued,
includes present-day Japan.) Interestingly enough, the pictorial presentation in
Tsuyudono monogatari plays a role equivalent to that of the title in modern
Western painting. In both cases, the relationship between the two different texts
is defined in terms of the subordination of one text to another. A text is supposed
to explain, summarize, copy, or translate another, but such an explanation,
summary, copy, or translation may well be extremely inadequate to the richness
of the text to be represented. Basically, the relationship is a correspondence of
representation within which the main text and its representation are clearly postu- Figure C. liro Takamatsu, These Three Words, 1970. By permission of the artist and the
lated through the relationship of subordination. Hence, the representing text is a Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo.
kind of parasitic being attached to the main, original text that is being repre-
sented.
130 Frame Up
In Tsuyudono monogatari illustrations are supposed both to explain what the
verbal text says and, in order to synchronize with it, to integrate the narrativity of ..
the verbal text into the visual configuration: within the work there is an attempt to
replace the Verbal text with the visual text. The term "representation" as I use it
here signifies this relationship of replacement. Doubtless, all that is signified in
the main text cannot be transferred to the subordinate text. There is always a part
that cannot be transcribed into another form of representation. (All these figur-
ative terms-translation, transcription, transfer-seem to suggest that there is
some sort of substance that moves from one textual surface to another but is
independent of a specific material form, but can we talk seriously about such a
ghostlike being? It goes with saying that this ghost-spirit is closely connected to
the issue of transference-translation.) Yet the sort of relationship binding the two
disparate texts presupposes that one text can be replaced by another and that the
coexistence of the two does not generate a surplus of signification belonging to
neither of them, a surplus that can be generated only when they intersect. What
characterizes this mode of intertextuality is, in the first instance, the relative
autonomy of texts, and second, the separation of these texts; texts emerge with-
out an outside or horizon that would indirectly animate or distort them. The
combination of verbal and visual texts does not give rise to an integrating whole
that could not be reduced to what either text alone is supposed to signify. From
beginning to end, the copresence of the two texts remains divided and separated
even though they are placed next to each other and coordinated by a shared
narrative linearity. In this sense, texts of different modes do not actually encoun-
ter each other, either in Tsuyudono monogatari or, more generally, in the discur-
sive space of the seventeenth century.
Relevance and Irrelevance of the Text in a Situation
Here is the significance of the dramaturgical situation and the emergence of
the human body in discourse. As I have suggested, Ito Jinsai was a witness to the
new form of presentation in which various texts, verbal and nonverbal alike,
were grasped in reference to the enunciation. It followed that because of new
arrangements thus introduced into discourse, the verbal text, especially writing,
was perceived as too incomplete and inadequate to sustain an autonomous mean-
ing. To signify sufficiently, it was thought that verbal texts had to refer to
nonverbal texts. It is possible that one of the dividing lines between the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries could be drawn here; prior to the change, verbal
utterances were perceived as independent and complete in themselves. The inter-
textuality in this discursive space obtained primarily among verbal texts, notably
written texts. To put it more precisely, even nonverbal texts were perceived
according to the model of writing. In this sense, the world appeared to consist of
The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 131
a variety of writings: there was no rupture between verbal and nonverbal texts,
between speech and perception.
But in the new discursive space a text was to make implicit reference to its
outside, to form a specific relationship with the situation in which it was pro-
duced in enunciation or concretized through the reading act. At issue here is the
general question of historicity. With the ·introduction of the notion of enuncia-
tion, the possibility of grasping an utterance as the instance of discourse
emerged. But the situation to which an utterance is supposed to refer as an
instance of discourse cannot be thematized and objectified because of its deter-
minations, its implicitness, vagueness, and status as the horizon. In contrast to
what is thematically marked by the framing, it should remain excluded from the
frame thus drawn. Only insofar as it remains at the periphery and outside thetic,
or shudai-teki, positing can it be the horizon, situation, or background. To the
extent that the meaning of a text is determined by the surroundings into which it
is inserted, the concretization of the text cannot escape from the implicit con-
straints imposed upon it by its situation. It is easy to see, however, that the
relation between the utterance and the -situation may be merely accidental, for
one can -make an utterance that is completely irrelevant to a given situation. (As I
shall discuss with regard to Ogyu Sorai, the questions concerning the relevance
and irrelevance of an utterance in a situation need to be formulated in a much
more organized way.) Furthermore, there is an indefinite number of aspects in
any given situation, and the situation is always correlated with the action. When
the situation itself participates in the determination of the utterance's meaning,
which aspects are overt and which are rendered dormant? This is, exactly, the
problem of signifiance-a neologism that means the process of signification in
which the agent of enunciation is posited as a thetic position (shudai) and then
made to coincide with the subject of the proposition (shugo)-raised by the
copresence of a verbal text and the situation. 9
The elucidation of the concept "situation" necessarily involves two problems:
when we assume, even tentatively for the sake of argument, that the text can be
considered to be in some way different from the situation, we simultaneously
assume that the text can be equated to an isolatable and identifiable entity. But
does this mean that the text has imperceptibly been grasped as an enunciated? In
fact, the conventional notion of the text usually implies the equation of the text
and the enunciated, for it is only through an enunciation that the text can be
related to the situation since the determination of the text as the enunciated
dictates that it be repeatable and identifiable, that is, independent of the situation.
At this stage, therefore, it is pointless to discuss the relationship between text and
9For further discussion on the difference between the terms signification and signifiance, see Julia
Kristeva. La revolution du langage poetique: L' avant-garde a La fin du XIXe siecle (Paris: SeuB,
1974); and Emile Benveniste, "Semiologie de la langue," Semiotica 1 (1969): 1-12; 127-35.
132 Frame Up
situation. But on the other hand, it is simply impossible to talk about the rela-
tionship between them as the phase of enunciation because signification; which
is the identity both of and as the text, is not supposed to have been established
yet.
Thus it becomes obvious that in signifiance, the process of signification, the
text is constituted as enunciated by being deprived of its primordial dependence
on the situation of enunciation. It would seem that a rigorous elucidation of the
concept "situation" would inevitably reveal an inherent ambiguity. That is to say,
it is impossible to discover any logical necessity according to which the concept
of the situation might be universally applicable; some discursive formations
accommodate such a concept, but others do not. Not as the physical arrangement
of a stage setting but in its correlation to an action that can be construed as an
enunciation, the situation must be understood in tenns of the instance of dis-
course. tO Precisely for this reason, the notion of the situation, which derives
from the instance of discourse in my argument, must also have a historical
limitation.
Since the situation cannot be specified thematically, there is no other option
but to accept it as a historical given, as a positivity particular to a specific
historical discourse, such as that eighteenth-century discourse with which we are
now dealing. And since in a certain discursive space meaning is taken to be
inherent not in the text itself but in its rapport with its situation, what may appear
particular to and immanent in the text-as its "meaning"-should in fact be
considered a correlative of the situation, which is in constant change. A text is
understood to be incapable of transcending the presence of the historically given
and unable, therefore, in any way to transcend its historicity.
I believe that the concern for history which dominates eighteenth-century
discourse originates from this particular fonnation. I shall discuss the question of
history and discourse later; in the meantime, let us examine the measures to
which eighteenth-<;entury writers appealed in order to ~~limit the absolute ar-
bitrariness that might exist between utterance and situation.
It is true that a writing can be placed in an entirely irrelevant situation and
thereby generate a surplus of signification. This was the tactic adopted by writers
of late eighteenth-century novellas to defamiliarize the already established mode
of generic taxonomy. Although their works do not explicitly postulate the prob-
lem of historicity, the rule that initiated and governed their discourse contains
within it the same problematic that can be found in historicist discourse. Those
rules that give rise to the problem of the arbitrariness of utterance and situation
may be defined as follows.
There exists an absolute freedom in placing a text in a situation. For example,
lOWith respect to the difference between direct and indirect actions, action is always permeated by
signification. Action that cannot be transformed into a judgment or utterance cannot be called action.
I shall return to this issue.
The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 133
a statement such as 44It is raining now" can be uttered anywhere and any time.
Indeed, it is possible to suppose that a sincere locutioner who is not joking would
never utter the statement when in fact the weather is fine, but this speaker might
utter the same statement in a situation where nobody is interested in talking about
the -weather. As theorists of speech acts have shown, the locutionary act must
presuppose the relevance of the situation and the sincerity of the locutioner.
Nevertheless, the possibility that a statement could be uttered in a completely
irrelevant situation raises difficult questions. Since, as the enunciated, a text is in
some- ways detached and estranged from its enunciation, one can by no means
gain access to the original scene or intention, not simply because the past inten-
tion is not retained or the situation of the enunciation i8 lost with the passage of
historical time. Rather, the repeatability of the enunciated consists in what Jean-
Paul Sartre termed 44bad faith." Only when pre-reflective consciousness is be-
yond the reach of consciousness can a text appear as the enunciated and as a
repeatable statement. In addition, that it was relevant to say ""It is fine" a
moment ago does not ensure that it is relevant to say so now. Historical time
always erodes the validity and legitimacy of an utterance.
In this discussion, one may note, I have had to resort to the idea of the "same"
utterance, whose sameness had to be defined in terms of the enunciated of the
utterance. In order to identify the utterance, I have had to initiate the process of
enunciation as a result of which the putative presence of the speaker to his or her
enunciation was lost. Only insofar as its adherence to the instance of discourse
was severed could I talk about the identity of an utterance and the situation as its
correlate.
Let me reiterate this problem of significance. The process of signification can
be construed as a series of progressive stages from intention to the enunciation in
which the speaker is present to her or his enunciation within the instance of
discourse-to the enunciated. But at the same time, enunciation should be con-
strued as a parergonal split in which the shutai or body of the enunciation and the
subject of the enunciation or shudai-subject are irremediably separated. Enuncia-
tion is framing, dividing, or drawing a distinction. Therefore, the meaning that
enunciation realizes and posits cannot be traced back to the stage prior to the
installment of the division or frame, since the meaning is generated by and
contingent upon the framing. Our conventional understanding of the enunciation,
however, presumes the existence of intention, which is supposedly the same as
the meaning of the enunciated. In the parergonal view, the meaning is posterior
to the enunciation, but in the progressive view, the meaning is anterior to it. How
is such a paradox possible? The meaning in the enunciated as the source of the
identity of the utterance must be produced as anterior to enunciation, as having
already been there prior to the enunciation: the anteriority of the meaning itself
must also be produced together with the enunciated. Needless to say, we are
concerned here with the issue of originary repetition, problematized, for in-
stance, by the Lacanian Other, which differs from what I have designated as the
134 Frame Up
Other in this book. II It illustrates that the objectivity of social institutions as-
sumes the splitting of the subject in the enunciation. Unless the "I" is distanced
and severed from what I have said, the "I" cannot be related to the other in a
socially responsible manner. Hence, by signifiance is meant not the progress
from intention to the enunciated but a process in which the paregonal split itself
is initiated and in which the shutai or body of the enunciation flees.
But how do we determine whether or not a text is related to a situation
legitimately and relevantly? What, in fact, is the mediating agency thrO)lgh
which a text is placed in a situation, thereby securing the proper signifiance?
Corporeal Act and Pefonnative Situation
It should be remembered that the term "situation" designates not the kind of
anonymous and empty space often conceived in modem physics but a field where
action takes place. Without reference to an acting agent, the term "situation"
cannot be distinguished from mere space. That is, "situation" is a space within
which acting agents perform; in this respect it is impossible to deny the drama-
turgical connotation of the term. A situation is a whole whose parts include
acting agents, namely, human bodies. The cOrPOra of actors animate a given
space and thereby tum it into a situation. Their bodies occupy certain volumes
and coexist with other physical objects in that space. Yet these corpora are not
mere objects juxtaposed to one another but prestigious beings that orient the
environment along the axis of their action. Human bodies introduce direc-
tionality and the senses into an otherwise anonymous physical space. In addition,
these exceptional corpora are capable of generating and exchanging utterances.
Through human bodies, language is conjoined to the situation.
In this connection, it must be stressed that it is only as a bodily behavior that
an utterance can be considered an event taking place in a specific place at a
specific time. When it is grasped as an event in the situation a verbal text is
therefore simultaneously a gestural text. But as can be easily demonstrated, a text
that is apprehended as bodily movement encompasses objects other than the
actor's body itself. For example, suppose an actor is trying to drink a cup of
water. The text, the movement of her body, already contains references to a cup
on the table and a certain distance between her and the table, a distance she tries
to overcome in order to reach the cup. To understand the situation and the
intention of the actor, we must attempt to comprehend certain objects as they are
related to her movement. At the same time, it should be evident that even if she
were to utter only one word, '"water," not even the sentence "I want to drink the
water in that cup on the table," what she would be doing and trying to achieve
should be obvious from the way her bodily movement and the situation are
I I See Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), pp. 292-325.
The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 135
organized. Hence, the actor's body casts light on certain aspects of the situation;
conversely, the aspects thus evoked prescribe the possible sense of her move-
ments and utterance. In other words, the actor's body directs and organizes
objects in a given space, thereby forming a perfonnative situation, which in turn
give rise to the sense of bodily movement. This is the primordial structure of
indication through which a text is related to a perforrilative situation. In this
contextualization, the actor's body is the mediating agent that integrates the
verbal text and the situation.
Important in this regard is the ontological detennination of the human body.
Here the body is neither merely an entity nor an ego pole around which the
situation is organized: it is also the site of imaginary transference. The viewpoint
of the actor, which is located at his body and from which his own body is
invisible, can be replaced by the viewpoint of an observer who watches the actor.
The actor thinks that he knows what he is doing, that is, he thinks that he is aware
of how he may appear to an other's eye. Moreover, this transference facilitates
the possibility of miming the other's behavior. It is important to note that even if
one simply observes the actor, one's body already traces the trajectory of the
actor's behavior in such a way that the same behavior could potentially be
reenacted by the observer himself. The comprehension of an other's action
implies the possibility for the observer to reenact it: it is based on mimesis. As a
matter of fact, this effect of transferential recentering defines what the imagined
involvement in a situation, as opposed to the actual involvement, means. So it is
also important to remember that the actor only thinks he knows what he is doing.
That is, the transferential recentering is possible only in speculation or media-
tion. As Ito Jinsai endeavored to illustrate philosophically, the reciprocal sharing
of viewpoints can never be exhaustively attained because of sociality and feeling.
Feeling is the sociality of the human body in the sense that in practice decenter-
ing instead of recentering must occur to put into jeopardy the actor's image of the
putative self. In this respect, the body as a center ofdecentering. not recentering,
cannot be captured in the regime of visibility and the network of perspectival
positions. Furtl"\ennore, because the specular image of one's own body is sus-
tained by the network of reciprocal viewpoints, the body as a center of decenter-
ing, that is, the shutai, the body of the enunciation, necessarily alters the self-
image constituted in this regime of visibility. For this reason, shutai is the agent
that changes subjectivity. Yet I must also remind myself that it is not something
whose portrait can be uncovered in the structure of a given regime of visibility. It
infonns us of its alluding and alluring presence in problematics that a given
discourse cannot resolve. It would seem, then, that in the discursive space of the
eighteenth-century, the problematics of issues such as sincerity, immediacy, and
experiential knowledge, which were repeatedly discussed, were all centered on
the question of involvement.
Also noteworthy in this regard is the introduction of enunciation into dis-
course. The human body provided a text with an anchorage in a performative
136 Frame Up
situation, but this anchorage was not a stable and atemporal point of fixity. It was
both a spatial "point zero" and a temporal focus that defined the sense of action.
The human being acted in a performative situation, and to the extent that it was
there that a man acted, his body was assumed to supply the primordial determina-
tion of here and now continually. Hence, through the positioning of the human
body, the space it inhabited was synchronized. That is to say, things were predi-
cated as correlates of one's action from a temporal perspective. They received
certain qualities that would not have been attributed to them if they had not been
in a specific rapport with the actor's body.
For instance, it would be utterly meaningless to say "object A is on the right of
object B n unless the body of the speaker is already positioned in a certain
relationship to both A and B in a performative situation. The spatial relationship
of A and B is not an attribute of either A or B. Likewise, only when the actor has
a burning thirst can we possibly appreciate the intensity with which she says,
'~The water in the glass on that table looks so cool." This utterance is so
meaningful because it can be understood in terms of possible future action that
will aim at relieving her from her present thirst. In fact, the meaningless and
"realness" of a given situation are correlative to the involvement of an actor in a
performative situation. This sense of "realness" and meaningfulness charac-
terizes the enunciation through which an actor produces an utterance.
Whereas the enunciated presupposes the separation of the shugo-subject from
the situation, the enunciation is assumed to designate the imaginary state in
which the subject is fused with his ecosystem, totally involved in a performative
situation. Insofar as it is taken as enunciation in this sense, a verbal text is
necessarily superimposed upon other, nonverbal texts. As enunciation, an utter-
ance also takes on aspects of bodily movement: the gestural text, the accompany-
ing intonation, rhythm, and other emotive features of textual materiality, which
would be ignored in the enunciated. Thus, the perfonnative situation manifests
itself through its incorporation of the human body, whose function in this respect
is to place a speaker in definite and specific rapport with the enunciation. When
the enunciated was reduced to the enunciation, there emerged in discursive space
a new configuration of positivities in which utterances were associated with now
and here and in which perception and discourse were placed in a new relationship
with each other.
Nevertheless, the introduction of the enunciation thus depicted did not go so
far as to constitute subjectivity as it has been formulated in modem epistemology.
The question of "inner intention" and "external expression" did not arise, and
therefore, the aporia of the alter ego was absent in the discourse in question,
although there were those who detected in "transcendentalist" discourse such as
Song rationalism a kind of aporia similar to modem solipsism. Neither can I find
in this discourse the philosophical problem of the other's intention. The reason is
precisely this: an individual human being was never understood in terms of inner
consciousness. As Alfred Schutz has shown, once the interiority of mind has
The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 137
been postulated, the understanding of another's motivation becomes impossible.
Because the subject is endowed with an ontological prestige in which presence to
the self is the source of all evidence, the human being of modem times is
supposed to be able to know with the fullest clarity what he himself wishes and
intends. When compared to this immediate presence to oneself, others' intentions
would always be hidden and could be' approached only indirectly. In phe-
nomenology, Husserl's in particular, the aporia of another's mind and intention is
actually a counterpart of the epistemological prestige with which one's own
consciousness is endowed. 12 Here modem epistemology and monologic philoso-
phy like Song rationalism can be understood as two responses to the same
problem: in order to avoid solipsism, they had to implant in each human being
the guarantee of epistemological omniscience. Both thereby lost sight of the
otherness of the Other and had to confine themselves in monologic closure. What
we are forced to confront in the question of corporeal action and the performative
situation is the apprehension that the intention of an actor is as opaque to the
actor himself as to those who observe him. As I have repeatedly argued, the
otherness of the other, from which the opacity ensures, comes from the textual
materiality of the body, not from the interiority of an individual consciousness.
So the otherness of corporeal action certainly belongs to the order of what
Michel Foucault calls exteriority.13 Intention always resides outside the actor's
consciousness. This is exactly the reason why corporeal action must be under-
stood as a text.
How is one to differentiate, then, the text of bodily movement from a visual or
verbal text? Or how is one not to differentiate them? By the same token, how
might one discover, in a given discursive space, the regularity according to
which various texts are transformed from one another and related to one another
intertextually?
Surely it requires no strenuous effort to realize that differentiation between
corporeal behavior and verbal utterance involves many levels. Verbalization
could well be corporeal action at the same time insofar as it is initiated by the
movement of organs: tongue, mouth, facial muscles, and indeed the whole body.
To a certain extent verbal and visual texts, for example, could undoubtedly be
conceptualized in terms of temporalities and perspectival structures, what Boris
A. Uspensky calls points of view. Indeed, by elaborating upon these marks, one
could establish a textual typology of the discourses of Tokugawa Japan. But it
must also be recalled that at another level verbal and visual texts are fused,
12Edmund Hussed, Cartesian Meditations. trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1960). Cf. Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. George Walsh and Freder-
ick Lehnert (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1967). Husserl's insistence, in the course
of his problematization of the alter ego, on the interiority of consciousness must be criticized. But his
effort to draw attention to the fact that the other cannot be "understood" must be regarded as an
excellent introduction to the problem of the Other.
I3Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Tav-
istock, 1972).
138 Frame Up The Enunciation and Nonverbal Texts 139

performing similar functions. As I have already pointed out, calligraphy and presumptively incomplete in the sense -that it needs to be supplemented by a
writing in general are both verbal and visual. 14 Likewise, oral utterance is both perfonnative situation, to read a script would be to relate it to an imagined
verbal and gestural. It is therefore essential to remark that the notion of a textual situation, to transform it into a different series of signifiers. In this case the
typology necessarily leads to the notion of intertextual multilayeredness. Charac- reading act is not a projection of representational space but a supplementation
teristics that may appear to adhere to the features of one kind of text could well be through which the absent scene and absent object alike are put into contact with
viewed as another kind of text. And it is only insofar as one categorization of the the script.
text is opposed to a different one that it can possibly be qualified as a specific This is precisely the area of inquiry I shall examine next. The structural
kind of text. relationship that might exist between writing and the performative situation leads
It is in this context that dramaturgical performance occupies the central posi- us to larger que~tions about reading, understanding, and knowledge.
tion in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Dramaturgical perfonnance
is surely one of the most complicated fonns of text. It is visual, verbal, and
gestural at the same time; it encompasses both spatial and temporal modes of
presentation; it unfolds temporally but also involves simultaneous occurrences of
more than one action, as well as "things" that are present in the scene. Here the
question of singular voice and linear presentation is extremely complex because
heterogeneous factors are integrated into the sense-making mechanism of a given
situation. The situation projects the possibility of both integration and diffusion
of various textual forms, as well as the possibility of a multiplicity of speeches.
Theoretically, more than one actor can speak simultaneously, and of course, a
dramaturgical performance can contain many voices. This kind of multiplicity is
impossible in the linear narrative of katari, where, even if many narrators could
be involved, the narrative voice must be unified and therefore singular. In a
dramaturgical presentation, the multiplicity of voices is converted into spatial
terms in which utterances are distributed to different localities on the stage and
associated with bodies of actors in those localities. What distinguishes mono-
logue from dialogue is this way of introducing spatialization into the text: di-
alogue could be identified as that fonn of text in which voices are uttered from
different loci. The factors that determine those loci are human bodies.
In this respect, the linear temporality inherent in narration and the nonlinear
presentation of a pictorial text are superimposed on each other in the text of
drama. Inevitably one must ask, Does one read, hear, or see a dramaturgical text?
Doubtless, writing, in which textual forms other than the verbal are excluded,
must be a text for reading. (Indeed, one can pose a further question, Is writing
purely and simply a verbal text? There are levels at which a writing is nonverbal.
Likewise, one can argue that speech is also nonverbal in certain respects. At
issue here is the multilayeredness of texts.) But when one takes into account the
variety of relationships that could exist between a theatrical script, which is a
written text according to "conventional" categories, and a dramaturgical text as a
whole, one realizes how complicated the question can be. A script is not neces-
sarily a verbal representation of a theatrical performance, and if a script is

14} will deal further with verbal and visual texts in relation to the shutai, or body of enunciation, in
my Discourse and Image in Tokugawa Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcom-
ing).

CHAPTER 5 VOIC~ alone would not have a proper signification. Therefore, narration has to
Supplement
The Absence of Obsessive Concern for the Enunciation
Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Japanese society witnessed the emer-
gence of a new literary genre called eiri kyogenbon (playscripts with illustra-
tions, 5-1). Significantly, the scripts of this genre were not meant to be used to
direct the actual production of drama; they were printed and published in book
fonn in fairly large numbers and were obviously intended for mass literary
consumption. These eiri kyogenbon fonnulated a connection between the actual
seeing and hearing of a dramatic perfonnance and the reading of these scripts.
The first few pages were usually devoted to a list of actors who had participated
in the actual perfonnance and the name of the theater where that performance
took place. Many of them contained illustrations portraying the actors' costumes
and makeup. They seem, at first glance, to be exact records of actual perfor-
mances, but a more detailed examination discloses that they do not conform to
the rules of what we today consider to be a drama script.
For instance, unlike kabuki scripts of the late eighteenth century, eiri kyogen-
bon lacked grammatical markers by which to identify the viewpoints of narrator,
actors, and spectators. Quotation marks or equivalent signs, as I have said, were
unheard of at the time. I am not suggesting that the writing system was somehow
underdeveloped or inadequate; rather, the concept of quotation, of distinguishing
a speech of one person from that of another, was absent in the discursive space.
Of course, one may attempt to insert quotation marks into these writings, as has
not infrequently been done in "modem editions," and thereby to differentiate
various characters' speeches pronounced on stage from the general narration,
Yet, this procedure is possible only on condition that the narration can be clearly
and distinctly discerned from speeches ascribed to those other than the narrator.
Clearly, however, the absence of quotation marks signifies the absence of such a
distinction. Under such conditions, one might as well resort to merely writing
140
Supplement 141
down nothing but the words actually pronounced on stage. But if the situation
~e "tt:ings" inv~lved, the actor's motions" facial and other bodily expressions:
In~onatlon of VOIce, and other ~onverbal signifiers were all deleted, the script
Wl~out the support of these deVIces would be mostly unintelligible: transcribed
~upp~e~ent the words of actors by depictjng the context, the situation, and the
IdentItIes of.the speakers in ord~r.to mak~ the script intelligible. Moreover, parts
of t~ese scnpts c~nnot be classIfIed as either narration or dialogue. The verbal
continuum, the hnear succession of utterances, is not fully articulated with
regard to the speaking subjects: one constantly encounters the voice of an anony-
mous person.
To the extent .that the fra~~entation of narrative into many voice is suppressed
and concealed .1n these w~tlngs,. katari, w~ich is still dominant, and the sup-
posedly transcnbed narratIve based on katan are monotonous in the articulation
of enunciative positions. Despite occasional discrepancies that permeate the
apparently seamless surface of the scripts, their narrative form remains static and
contains .no manifest rupt~e. Also, the polysemy immanent in the language of
these. sc~pts d~es not functIon to parody and thereby disqualify the authority of
the singul~ VOIce and so does not reveal the artificiality and the conventionality
of ~he domInant mode of presentation. Because of the lack of critical distance,
~hlCh would be the condition for objectification and dissociation from the estab-
hshe~ fonn of presentation, these writings tend to yield to the authority of those
d~mlna~t mode~ that pres~nt themselves as naturally given, that repress the
pnmordlal premIse that, .wlthout exception, any "fact" or "positivity" is medi-
ated and therefore constItuted by certain ideologies.
Katari ~rojects a continuous and all-encompassing voice that 'appears to patch
up narratives fragmented and disseminated by multiple voices. Yet this mono-
~ogical v~ice is ~ot of th,e sa~e kind that Mikhail Bakhtin postulated in identify-
mg the singulanty of vOice With the singularity of speaker "I." 1 Katari is indeed
a fonn of narrative, but it does not have a specific speaker. In this context it is
worth noting again that the instance of discourse was not incorporated into
discursive space prior to the late seventeenth century; that is, a discursive forma-
tion that articulate~ enunciation as such was absent. Katari is admittedly a voice
that n~ates, but It n~rrate~ only in the mode in which a clear separation of
enunCIation and enuncIated IS not fully established. In the enunciated, individual
. I~i~ ~s. partly a proble~ of te~inology. On the one hand, Bakhtin rejects the individuality or
In?IVISlbIbty of the speaker s conSCIousness and hence posits the speaker as always already split In
thIS .r~spe~t. the spe~er is ?ot an ide?tity. On the other hand, he explains polyphony in terms of'the
.C<J.... >.' .. ,,-.- partICIpatIon?f multIple VOIces. multIple speakers, Is he simply suggesting that if there is more than
one .spe~er 10. the scene of utterance, the text. produced will necessarily be polyphonic and di-
alogical. C~rtamly not. It m~st be st~essed that ~lS conception of dialogism has very little to do with
the conven,tlOna.1 under~tan~lng of dIalogue. WItness his insistence that even monologue is funda-
m:ntally dIalo~lcal. MIkhaIl Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel," in The Dialogic Imagination, ed.
MIchael HO]qUlst. trans. Caryl Emerson (Austin: University of Texas Press. 1981), pp, 259-422.
142 Frame Up
actors, places of historical importance, and chronological dates are articulated
and fixed. But these are merely constituted within given texts, whe~eas the
subject, place, and time of the enunciation-the tenns specifically related to
textual production rather than to its products-fall outside the scope of thematic
problematization. In discourses prior to the late seventeenth century the subject
of the enunciation and other problems concerning the enunciation were not
articulated. Accordingly, it was irrelevant to ask such questions as Who is really
speaking in katari?
Haikai Poetry and the Openness of the Text
Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the polysemic characteristic of
language took on a different form of .ideological praxis. A radical difference
between speech as enunciation (equated to speech) and speech as the enunciated
(equated to writing) was introduced, along with a corresponding change in inter-
textuality. Polysemy and multivocity in literary discourse then began to shift
away from the enclosed space of writing. A word served to open up the closure
of meaning by incorporating the possibility of reference to the word's outside. At
a certain seme, a word has a definite connotation, but at another it does not have
a fixed connotation, because syntactical and semantic configuration is organized
so as to allow outside factors to determine the semes. This point can be illustrated
by haikai no renga (5-2) (although haikai poetry and its antecedent renga, or
linked poetry [5-3], certainly predate the eighteenth century), in which a word in
a stanza remains intentionally ambiguous until the following stanza is juxtaposed
to it. This technique is facilitated by the syntactical incompleteness of haikai
poems. Words are loosely assembled in such a way that they form neither a
sentence nor a judgment. 2 As subsequent stanzas are added, the ones already
composed are put into new relationships, which generate semes hitherto absent.
Even if the polysemy of a word in the first stanza is perceived, its semes cannot
be determined when we examine the stanza in isolation. If someone puts another
stanza after it, then we suddenly recognize a seme that had been previously
dormant: the words in the first stanza now carry a new meaning. More important-
ly, each stanza is produced by a different writer, so the meaning of a stanza
constantly escapes from the control of the author; although one places words in a
certain order, one cannot determine the intention and the signification of one '8
work. In this case, the writer is a producer of words, and it is only insofar as one
places words that one is the author of one's work or stanza. But the meaning is
2Not only in poetry but also in Japanese literature in general, the fonnation of sentence and
judgment (whose completion is often taken to mean the completion of a sentence) is extremely
complex. It is not clear to what extent, according to the theoretical protocols under which I write, I
am allowed to rely on these tenns. This problem has to be properly addressed elsewhere, b~t in the
meantime I grudgingly accept their putative validity. Perhaps, the term "phrase" should be adopted.
Supplement 143
never a meaning present to the writers; even the signification of one's own work
always remains unknown to oneself. In thi& sense, a writer is never an author as
we conventionally understand the term. In haikai poetry only readers exist, never
authors. Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that a completely different stanza
could just as well be placed after the first stanza, in which case the same words
would be put in relation to other semes and would carry -a meaning different yet
again from the one in the previous case. There is no intrinsic continuity between
successive stanzas: instead, each is related to its predecessor and successor
accidentally. This element of chance is an essential feature of haikai poetics. A
word in haikai works like the face of a prism, which reflects and refracts colors
coming from the outside while in itself it does not have any color. These words in
haikai are open and exposed to the outside. As we shall see with regard to the
structure of parody in the literature of Tokugawa Japan, language interacts with
the performative situation; as the performative situation changes, the significa-
tion of language also changes accordingly.
But this correlation of polysemic language with the situation confronted writ-
ers of the eighteenth century with a problem: How could one assume a one-to-
one correspondence between an expression and an act of expression when the
expression is expressed in this kind of polysemic language? Concomitantly, how
could one retrace an expression back to its originating act? In this context, it
cannot be assumed that the emergence of the enunciation led to the establishment
of authorship, for until the Meiji era and the inauguration of modem state con-
trol, Japan never witnessed a discourse in which authorship and the nation-state
were venerated simultaneously as infallible orthodoxies.
Play scripts with Illustrations
In Okumagawa genzaemon, one of the earliest "playscripts with illustrations,"
one encounters a strange mixture of styles. 3 A large part of the script consists of
directly transcribed speeches, but there are no quotation marks by means of
which to distinguish one actor's line from another's. And descriptive narration
occasionally interrupts the flow of the actors' voices in order to supply informa-
tion about who is speaking to whom and in what context. It may be assumed that
this kind of text both allows for the multiplicity of voices and adopts measures to
articulate different positions, positions where voices supposedly originate on the
stage. After all, it is the presence of the spatial element that distinguishes the-
atrical texts from such narrative forms as kalari. Whereas the distance of the
addresser from the addressee is not integrated into the significative mechanism of
30kumagawa genzaemon, with the subtitle, Kumano gongen nyonin 0 awaremi tamau kOIO,
published by Shohon-ya Kizaemon, Kyoto. The original peIformance took place at the Mandayu-za
Theater in Kyoto, 1688. Reprint, Tenri Library Reprint Series, Kinsei bungei lokan 5 (l969): 1-18.
144 Frame Up
katari, the distance that sustains the possibility of conversation among characters
on the stage is essential in theatrical performance. He"nce, in a theatric~ script
every utterance of a character is directed toward some other character within the
fictional space of its stage performance. It need scarcely be said that the same
utterance directed toward another character is simultaneously addressed to the
audience. What determines the fictionality and artificiality of the theatrical
speech act is precisely this double directedness of utterances. By contrast, be-
cause katari addresses itself not to any specific character but rather to an anony-
mous audience, it has no such double directedness.
An essential point to be considered when theatrical directedness is transcribed
into a script is the question of how double directedness and spatial elements are
synthesized in that linear presentation to which verbalization inevitably adheres.
The addition of a visual text to a verbal script is one solution, but unless it is
joined to a relevant discursive apparatus in the verbal text of the script, illustra-
tion alone could never supplement utterances in such a way as to spatialize the
narrative. This is exactly the case with Okumagawa genzaemon. On the one
hand, it is presumed that the script, a writing, corresponds to the text of drama-
turgical performance, as well as to its visual representation, its illustration. True,
descriptive narration marks some utterances with respect to the identities of
speakers or listeners. Phrases such as "A said . . ." or "B heard . . ." designate
the identities of speakers and listeners and thereby establish the network of
distances between characters. But nonetheless, one can scarcely avoid the overall
impression that the writing still adheres to the norms of katari narrative.
Stratification of the Verbal Continuum
In Fukujukai, another eiri kyogenbon, Chikamatsu Monzaemon appears as an
actor-author (he i~ listed as one of the actors under the title of author at the
beginning of the work). 4 We can barely recognize as such a voice that belongs to
4Fukujukai was first published by Shohon-ya Kizaemon, Kyoto. The original performance took
place at Miyako Mandayu-za, 1700. Reprint, Tenri Library Reprint Series, Kinsei bungei zokan
(1969): 5:361-77. The authorial position is extremely ambiguous here. It is important to stress that
other works of this genre do not necessarily follow this rule of treating the author as if he were one of
the characters. This authorial ambiguity seems to suggest the absence of distinction between repre-
sentational space and actual space. In other words, there may have been no notion of the production
of a text as categorically opposed to its product. If the author is listed as one of the characters, then he
would have to belong to the work represented by the text. But the author produces a text within which
only characters are identified. In this sense, characters are produced by the author. How then, could
the producer (= author) and products (= characters) coexist in the same space?
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724), playwright for the puppet theater, or ningyo joruri. and
also for the kabuki theater, was born to a samurai family, but his father abandoned his feudal duties.
Chikamatsu produced many works for the jomri chanter Takemoto Gidayu. Among his major works
are Yotsugi Soga (The Soga heir), Shusse Kagekiyo (Kagekiyo victorious), Sonezaki shinju (The Love
Suicides at Sonezaki), Shinju ten no Amijima (The Love Suicide at Amijima), and Kokusen'ya Kassen
(The Battles ojCoxinga). His later works are particularly well known for the theme of double suicide.
Supplement 145
an anonymous person, given between quoted speeches. Utterances of actors,
which diversify and fracture the unity of the verbal continuum, are bunched
together by a descriptive narration that does not seem to resemble oral presenta-
tion. The narration is mechanical and functional, sparingly giving the minimal
amot:}.nt of information necessary to link quoted speeches linearly. Sometimes the
narration lacks a predicate or the inflectional ending of a verb and therefore
literally cannot be pronounced. Thus, the verbal continuum is divided into two
classes: a transcription of speeches that are pronounceable and a description of
scenes, which remains indifferent to pronounceability. Thus, I am concerned
here with a division between oral and nonoral verbalizations. To be sure, this
division is not unrelated to the dichotomy particular to this discursive space
between speech and writing, but it is important to note that the differentiation of
quoted speech from descriptive narration also refers to their temporal difference.
In the work as a linear continuum, the two modes of verbal presentation should
be organized serially, but whereas syntactical relationships among words of a
quoted speech cannot be changed without causing a change of meaning, S the
relationship between descriptive narration and quoted speech seems to enjoy a
much higher degree of syntagmatic arbitrariness. For example, suppose a quoted
speech ~~B will join us soon" is to be linked to a descriptive narration "A said."
The order of words in the quoted speech is fixed: B-will-join-us-soon. To
change the syntax would be to change the speech itself. There is, however,
greater freedom with regard to the position of a parenthetical statement.
A said B will join us soon
(A said, "B will join us soon")
B will A said join us soon
(UB will," A said, "join us soon.")
B will join us soon said A
( "B will join us soon," said A.)6
These three sentences all depict the same event, even though the position of
the parenthetical narration is different in each. Of course, the position where
descriptive narration breaks into the verbal continuum cannot be completely
arbitrary: the 4HB will join,' said A, 'us soon:" for example, would be so
awkward as to be nearly nonsensical. Still, the relative syntactical independence
SThis argument might not apply to some languages, such as Latin, in which syntagm in the sense
of the successive order of words does not playas decisive a role as it does in English. The argument
holds for Japanese, however. A more detailed analysis will disclose those features of Japanese syntax
that limit the possibilities of narrative fonns.
6In order to create an effect similar to that of the original texts of eiri kyogenbon, which lack
quot~tion marks and other punctuation, I have deleted these marks from the examples.
146 Frame Up
of the parenthetical narration in relation to the rest of the sentence is consider-
able.
It is impossible to apply this argument directly to the discourse with which we
are now dealing. Nonetheless, the same function of descriptive. narration can be
found in eiri kyogenbon. What this relative syntagmatic indePendence achieves
is a stratification of texts, whereby different temporalities are introduced.
It is easy to recognize that the parenthetical statement "A said" and the quoted
speech "B will join us soon" belong to two different strata in the text. To show
the difference between these strata plainly, I might analyze the sentence in
respect to its enunciation. The sentence "B will join us soon" posits A as the
subject of enunciation; the moment of enunciation is indicated by the past tense
of the parenthetical "A said." Yet if we take the utterance in its entirety- "A
said, 'B will join us soon' "-it becomes obvious that we can determine neither
the subject of enunciation nor its moment of enunciation. That is to say, insofar
as the sentence "B will join us soon" is concerned, it is only in relation to
another time in which the act "A said" took place that we can possibly determine
the time in which the content of "B will join us soon" is to be realized. In
principle, there is no need to integrate the two temporalities into a singular time.
To put it more precisely, integration of the temporalities always requires another
temporality, which is heterogeneous to them. The time in which A made the
utterance and the time in which "B will join us" could be utterly indifferent to
each other. For instance, the sentence "B will join us soon" could be a quotation
from a book that A happened to read aloud. In that case, "B will join us soon"
belongs to the story in the book and the parenthetical statement indicates the
stratum in which the sentence was uttered.
It is decisive in this respect that although the signification of the quoted speech
can be determined by itself, one cannot refer to its signifiance. the process as
enunciation, unless another stratum, such as the one indicated by the parentheti-
cal statement in my example is mentioned.
A said stratum of descriptive narration
B will join us soon = stratum of speech
In other words, the stratum of descriptive narration expresses how the quoted
speech was produced and thereby attempts to provide information concerning its
enunciation. I must emphasize, however, that the strata of descriptive narration
and speech are not fixed, and are differentially set. Only in relation to the
sentence "B will . . ." can the parenthetical "A said" be determined to be part
of the descriptive narration. For after all, a formation such as the following is
also possible:
C said, = stratum of descriptive narration
A said B will join us soon = stratum of speech
. transforming the stratum of descriptive narration into that of speech, the subject
"t<IC::;~·~;·€'!;l;;y·,·:i·
Supplement 147
By increasing the number of strata~ it is possible to continue to shift the
stratum of descriptive narration indefinitely. As each new stratum is added,
Of the enunciation also shifts. Hence, even within the scope of this discussion,
.the. agent of enunciation is that which flees the moment when an attempt to
'Identify it is made, that which indefinitely transcends the subject of the enunci-
',ated. 7 The subject of enunciation can be designated only insofar as it is split from
Ute shutai, which flees the moment the subject of enunciation is captured in its
image.
:\" If we focus dn the very movement of shifting or fleeing, however, the most
basic model of stratification would be as follows:
(performative situation) stratum of descriptive narration
B will join us soon = stratum of speech
Here, in spite of the absence of descriptive narration, the perfonnative situation
itself serves to determine the enunciation, in which case the fleeing of the shutai
can be. defined as the asymmetrical linkage between' quoted speech and the
performative situation. When the stratum of the performative situation is lacking,
hO'Ne,rer. quoted speech can be apprehended only as an enunciated. In this case,
the signification of quoted speech is determinable, but its signifiance cannot be
understood. In writing, where the performative situation is not supposed to be
given, descriptive narration is its substitute and plays a role equivalent in its
opposition to quoted speech.
This problem of substituting the performative situation for descriptive narra-
tion will always be encountered when one attempts to transcribe theatrical perfor-
mance into writing. Of course, in the process of transcription, the basic structure
of performance has to be omitted because writing is usually a linear presentation
but the performative situation is not. Whereas speech, grasped as an enunciated,
may be subject to the linearity of verbal presentation, speech as enunciation
cannot be encompassed in this form because of its referential link to nonlinear
texts such as body movement and facial expression. The introduction of descrip-
tive narration signifies the most elementary phase of stratification of writing,
which requires the stratification of the verbal continuum.
One can argue that a certain form of stratification, hitherto nonexistent, gave
rise to an opposition between descriptive narration and quoted speech and came
to dominate the literary discourse of the late seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. In the following chapters, I discuss this stratification of the verbal con-
7It is for this reason that Nishida Kitaro could not but posulate the jikatu (self-awareness, 5-4) in
terms of basho-a term meaning "place" or "topos," which Nishida coined by modifying "chora"
in Plato's Timeus-as what he called mu no jikaku tki gentei." For the term "basho" see Nishida
Kitaro, Basho, in Hataraku mono kara mirumono e. Nishida Kitaro Zenshu (Tokyo: Iwanami Sholen,
1965) 5:208-89.
 Frame Up
148
tinuum whose structural characteristics were, I think, specific to eighteenth-
century' disco~se. For the moment, however, let me observe that this stratifica-
tion suggests a new way of thematizing the position of the speaker, a new mode
of thetic articulation resulting from the transformation of intertextuality. A vari-
ety of signifying systems were newly differentiated from each other and situated
in different relationships. In this respect, it is important to note that the level of
discourse at which I ought to identify the stratification is not linguistic, that it
necessarily involves texts other than verbal ones, that it cannot be discussed as a
form of syntactical regularity because it inevitably encompasses nonlinguistic
signifying systems as well, and that the level is primarily semiotic. It is only
through this mechanism of the stratification of the verbal continuum that what is
generally called "observer's speech" can be established. In other words, so-
called observer's speech is specific to certain discourses and cannot be presumed
to exist everywhere and at all times.
Separation of Voice and Body
The inner mechanism of the stratification can be best analyzed with reference
to the text of the ningyo joruri (Japanese puppet play, 5-5). Here, music, intona-
tion, and the gesture of the chanter, which had been excluded and therefore
belonged to the textual materiality of katari narrative, help articulate and stratify
the verbal text.
It has frequently been remarked that the genres of performative art that flour-
ished in Tokugawa Japan seem to have mixed forms of presentation in peculiar or
at least now-unfamiliar ways. Japanese scholars have traced ningyo joruri, one of
these arts, back to the mid-sixteenth century, but it reached the zenith of its
commercial success in the first half of the eighteenth century. This artistic form
coordinates a combination of speech, intonation, music, and of course the move-
ment of puppets. The copresence of these texts within the text of dramaturgical
performance is by no means particular to the performative arts of Tokugawa
Japan, but the intertextual coordination of various texts in ningyo joruri, kabuki,
and so on assuredly cannot be subsumed under the rubric of what we normally
understand as "theatrical art." Roland Barthes, in a brilliant essay on Japanese
puppet theater, and Noel Burch, in a more extensive elaboration on a similar
subject, have both remarked on this characteristic of Japanese theater and film,
which Burch identifies as "the rejection of anthropocentrism and all the other
form of centrism." 8 This assessment certain!y makes sense insofar as the cen-
8Noel Burch To the Distant Observer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 14;
Roland Barthes', "Lesson in Writing," in lmage-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill
and Wang, 1977), pp. 155-164. What might appear to be an excessively wide scope in the works.of
Barthes and Burch is, I think, valid and important, even within the context of Far Eastern studIes
pursued as a professional discipline in the West and Japan. For both Barthes and Burch attempt to
Supplement 149
trism of which they write is understood in terms of modem subjectivism. But are
there not other discursive possibilities for other centrisms? Did no centrism play
any ideological role in Japanese discursive spaces? Interestingly enough, both
Barthes and Burch point out how various verbal and nonverbal texts are synthe-
sized into a text and thus contribute to Japanese dramaturgical performance.
Significantly the narrative voice is separated from the fictional locus of the
speaking subject (the puppet's body in ningyo joruri). Yet we must remind
ourselves that, even in no drama, in which the source of the voice may appear to
coincide with the actor's body, constant dislocation and displacement are at work
between the locus of the speaking subject and the voice. Sorrow expressed in
words is often independent of the movement of the actor's body, and rarely are
emotion, words, and gestural expression synchronized. If one expected to hear
the words of a character as an expression of inner emotion, one would almost
surely be disappointed, for words do not mediate between the feeling and the
appearance of a character. It seems as if sorrow thus described exists not in the
recesses of a character's interiority but rather in language itself.
In ningyo joruri and kabuki, in contrast to no, one observes a coincidence of
verbal presentation with scenes in which the bodies of the actors move. Despite
the involvement of puppets and a theatrical setting that separates chanter and
stage, ningyo joruri utilizes intertextual devices through which the puppet's body
seems to take on the feeling the words project. Nonetheless, in ningyo jomri as
d~monst~ate that a ~i~ursiv~ positivity called .. J~pan" continually threatens a conventional (profes-
Sional) discourse Within which so many assumptions are never subjected to rigorous interrogation.
Both Barthes and Burch try to demonstrate that various aspects of that positivity called Japan belie
many of those assumptions, jeopardizing that fundamentally uncritical universalism to which human-
ism lays claim. Both works are invaluable in that they show positivism to be an instance of intellec-
tual provincialism ~re~isely because positivism does not acknowledge that everyone is historically
and cu~turally prOVinCial. Furthermore. both demonstrate that the will to know both the past and
others IS necessarily also the will to criticize the present and whatever society of which one is
supposedly a member. Inasmuch as their arguments are marshalled against a single dominant ide-
ology, however, what I intend to demonstrate in this book cannot be entirely subsumed within the
scop~ of their work. They tend to substantiate a perceived dichotomy between the West and Japan,
seemingly unaware that their considerations of "Japan" could be equally effective critiques of
present-day Japanese intellectual discourse. Although it is perhaps excusable and to a certain extent
i~evitable in the light of the strategy they employ, both Barthes and Burch accepted the reified
dIchotomy of the West versus the non-West and postulated a unitary "Japan" as a radical ..outside"
that would escape the dominance of Western ethnocentrism. But does this critique of "Western"
ethnocentrism itself har~r the very ethnocentrism they wish to criticize? Is it the putative unity of the
West that has to be put IOtO doubt? In the Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill
~d Wang, ~ 982), Ba-:h~s openly announces that the "empire of signs" has nothing to do with Japan
Itself. And mdeed, thiS IS more than an apology from an author who evidently did not speak or read
Japanese and whose knowledge of "Japan"(!) was admittedly limited. Yet Barthes's admission draws
our attention to the fact that what is supposedly the "real Japan," as well as presumptively objective
~owledge about that "real Japan," is also, after all, a product of discursive activity. If that continu-
mg accumulatio~ o! positivist kno,":ledge a~ut Japan which constitutes itself as a ..Japanology"
chooses to remam ignorant or neghgent of Its own ideological constraints, then no claim to the
authority of expertise by and on behalf of Japanologists (be they native Japanese or not) can be
sustained.
150 Frame Up Figure D. From T6kaid6chii
.:"'\. \¥ hizakurige (Shanks' mare) by
well as kabuki this effect remains provisional. That is to say, the identity of body
and voice never becomes the general principle governing the structure of the
"" Ikku Jippensha, 1802. Here one
can see the extensive use of
entire work. Hence, these genres cannot be categorized as realistic theater- quotation marks. Speakers'
"realistic" here meaning the continual projection of the character's appearance names are indicated by one- or
two-character abbreviations at
to his subjective interior. In some cases, body and voice are split; in others, they
the start of each quote. Instead
are merged. This ambiguous relationship between the puppet's body on the stage
of "Yajirobei says '... ,'" the
and the narrative text within which a subject is constituted was the condition fonn used is [Ya]" .... No
under which these theaters developed their dramaturgy. closing quotation marks appear;
the quote is marked only at the
beginning. I have included
Direct or Indirect Speech (bottom) the modem edition
(Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshu
Since kabuki and ningyo joruri belong to different genres, they require differ- [Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1975], vol.
ent acting skills and dramaturgies. This is exactly the point at which the stratifi- 49, p. 90) because some of the
cation of verbal continuum is introduced into the performance, a point where the uses of characters can more
easily be distinguished there.
coordination of nonverbal texts with verbal ones regulates the relationship be-
tween body and voice. Here, I must consider two theoretical issues that are
directly involved in determining any possible relationship between the two terms: '-
([) Iv ~ 8l
jj~
..,:It .., ij:J; f)
OJ L. ~ b tf; i~ ~
first, differentiation of direct and indirect speeches and, second, natural gesture ~t; t \" t.:::. ]it h Iu -r
.~ ......... Q fJ .1 tr..
and formalized bodily behavior (direct and indirect actions). \"tt ..,JJ; !; ~ :*:~Jl ti ~It
"""1
iti < ii t m\t t. 7
Underlying my discussion of stratification is the assumption that in various A tr.. Iv .:t "? III; "~.. /
Japanese languages there existed no syntactical distinction equivalent to that C 't>" te..
tJt
-r<. tt. tt!!
Q)
m~ 7 il
between direct and indirect speech in modem European languages. For the sake
of explanation, I postulated structural homogeneity between English and Japa-
•
6t Iv
Dflt tJ:
k"
k"
"'" "'<"
t.!.
"?
:*: f~
~~
*1::
~
~
\>

lfit i
.ilt 61
~

EfI 1IJf. '"( l4!~ ri. If fl '-

nese sentence structures. As a matter of fact, however, it is well known that one ~ "? OJ

~ IIJ~
c'f ~ '"C 4tff''''fJ)
can hardly find explicit grammatical rules in classical Japanese by means of tJ:
\'() ~
:it t!.
:tt!!'" '"W"C ",
~
m'~ liU
~ i(·"-
which direct and indirect speech might be clearly distinguished. It is also impor-
I?-t::
~
iJ~
.1 III
t: ~ 7 f/) ~
tant to remark that, notwithstanding the absence of syntactical differentiation, the ~ I t.::. <-
"'? -£ -1:' :J!II~ 9J; lib .:t
eighteenth century witnessed the development of graphic markers, by which an 1:> , ~ tJ.. Iv J&~
I
:*: ~
t=l b
~ tl:. JIIJ t~
equivalent differentiation was expressed in "writing." I will try to explain how tJ:
1 ~ tJ·
b lib
'"\" '-
<- f~
these worked by using my previous example: l:.. ~ it;

~fJ
\" :*: IBJ
:*:1.- b .t ~~ l: ~

A said, "B will join us soon."

t!..' <
f8J ~
'J ftz
JIIJ ",
b .........
tJ t
1n
r ~ ~ 7 ~ U:' '-, f/)
lAl B will join us soon. v 1.,.l\ t.t.:. t!.. 1:f:1"?
;.,-e " t- V 7 t t1 J1
iii l:: "? .........=
~ ~,O)
t.:.li.
1<Iv
roC:
h~
~"?
~ IT "? (7) "? t.::. t.::.
Z t.::. l..~
-e.. . .
"?tc
< -r
to
9J; I- tJ:( ~ P i"" .~
......... ~
'-
t!..
"'? t.r..
1""
Instead of the pronounceable verbal construction "A said," a graphic marker, ~ 'It_ I.' iI~ ......... (JJ
<" vt
beyond the scope of oral presentation, is introduced (see figure D). (A similar
ibo
-C\
l-
"?
tJt
~ -r'?
\'_"?
lJ,.. ~
h t.r. t: l!Q1It
nR ~~
fj:l: l.t'
"?
IlIIt tr..
t!.. l.t'
~ :it!1~1<
~t! :It
-,
tJ~ tJ~
t;
;.,'-, t~~ \" <<t> Mjc <- ~,

tltc iJF Ii"!"

notation has been used in the West too.) This notation, which functions as an 0-....... J: --,
::r
~-e 'fl\." "?
tt.
1.-;"
't:.
:Q~ '"C
00
"'?
Itt
<
C
iii
~ fli *"" b
C h
"C
intermediary term between the descriptive narration, which is verbal, and the
performative situation, which is nonverbal, is one of the first graphic devices
7

'Y
tJ·
b
~
v
tl·\,- t. --
<;.,
Ef- -e.. . . ro
tA>
f I-
iJ.,.. <
L
" , 1< 1fi. t!..
~U Iv.!
\"
gro
r-:~
rot.:.
,
~ i
T ..
..., ..
t
f/) 10
L
.........
(J)
< t.:
:JJ:t IBJ
.~ .t L
L t.r..
a-
"'?
...,;jl:; C1b -ltlv
"''-'," ;z:. t --C vi: 10 i? t.:
~ -ec
.........
whereby "direct speech" is clearly discernible. Written elements that are neces- tl~ ~
I
r ~1k ~ < L. \,., Iv
sary to provide the verbal text with a context but which cannot be pronounced are
plainly distinguished from the words actually uttered. The purpose of these

151
152 Frame Up
nonpronounceable graphic markers is to separate clearly and distinctly the words
that have been actually pronounced from descriptive signs, verbal or nonverbal,
applied to designate the environment in which those words are uttered. Prior to
the eighteenth century, by implication, indirect speech predominated; katari,
although it was orally transmitted, actually presented a form of indirect speech.
What, then, is the nature of indirect discourse if it is not distinguished according
to syntactical rules? V. N. Volosinov has provided what I think is one of the most
persuasive definitions. He finds that the linguistic essence of indirect discourse.
consists in the analytical transmission of someone's speech....
The analytical tendency of indirect discourse is manifested by the fact that all
emotive-affective features of speech, in so far as they are expressed not in the
content but in the form of a message, do not pass intact into indirect discourse. They
are translated from form into content, and only in that shape do they enter into the
construction of indirect discourse, or are shifted to the main clause as commentary
modifying the verbum indicendi. 9
The essence of the differentiation between direct and indirect "discourse"
(here I momentarily adopt Volosinov's use of the term "discourse") consists of
neither syntactical patterns nor agreement of tense. In indirect discourse, re-
ported speech loses its immediate affinities with enunciation and is transformed
into a construction in which nonverbal elements are simply explained. What
Volosinov calls the "emotive-affective features of speech" should also include
intonation, rhythm, and the speaker's personal peculiarities. Hence, whereas
direct speech suggests a sense of involvement, indirect speech generally bestows
a sense of detachment from the speech it reports. Furthermore, the features of
speech that cannot be verbalized according to the syntax of a given language,
such as onomatopoeia, are either ignored or translated into an expression adher-
ing to the syntactical rules. Indirect discourse does not tolerate grammatical
defects:
All the various ellipses, onussl0ns, and so on, possible in direct discourse on
emotive-affective grounds, are not tolerated by the analyzing tendencies of indirect
discourse and can enter indirect discourse only if developed and filled out. The Ass's
exclamation, "Not Bad!" in Peskovskij's example cannot be mechanically regis-
tered in indirect discourse as: "He says that not bad ... ," but only as "He says
that it was not bad ... ," or even "He says that the nightingale sang not badly."lO
I do not claim that literary discourse prior to the late seventeenth century was
entirely free of the features of direct speech as Volosinov defines them here. But
in parodist literature it is simply impossible to overlook either the overwhelming
9y' N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R.
Titunik (New York: Seminar Press, 1973), p. 128.
lOIbid., p. 129.
Supplement 153
use of direct speech or the constant reference to sounds and visual images that
cannot be represented' analytically. ShMebon (5-6) and kokkeibon (comical
books, 5-7), for example, are filled with onomatopoeia. Namaei katagi (5-8), by
Shikitei Samba, portrays many features of drunks, precisely by means of
emotive-affective features of speech and onomatopoeia, all of which would be
omitted in indirect speech. I 1 What is at -issue here is not whether direct speech
generally predominated in the literary 'discourse of that time or not-of course
many contemporary works did not contain any direct speech. Rather, it is a
question of discovering and elucidating the conditions that allowed a literary
discourse saturated with direct speech to come into being.
If the stratification of the verbal continuum were to coincide with the differ-
entiation of direct from indirect speech, we would obtain a kind of discourse in
which indirect speech would function as a descriptive narration devoted to por-
traying the performative situation, while quoted direct speech would be ex-
pressed replete with its emotive-affective features. In addition, such a discourse
would be capable of integrating into itself utterances that otherwise merely
violate what is perceived to be grammatically correct. In such a discourse it
would be possible to incorporate dialects, onomatopoeia, ungrammatical uses of
words, and utterances of those who are without sophisticated knowledge about
language. All these "defects~' would contribute to a more vivid portrayal of
utterances. Such a discourse would be filled with the noise of grammatical and
. stylistic variety, a noise that would call forth a strong sense of heterogeneity in
language. This is what had been impossible in katari, in which stratification was
poorly developed and indirect speech predominant. Stylistic and dialectical di-
versity are scarce in katari because the same language tends to pervade the entire
work. With rare exception, in kanazoshi of the early seventeenth century, peas-
ants speak virtually the same language as merchants.
Copresence of Other Texts
Despite the lack of an explicit syntactical mechanism by which to differentiate
indirect from direct speech in classical Japanese languages, a new mode of
intertextuality came into play in such a way that the narrative voice, which would
otherwise be merely verbal, is related to other, non-verbal, texts. Accordingly,
ltShikitei Samba, Namaei katagi (originally published in 1807, modem edition: Nihon koten
bungaku zenshu, voL 47 (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1971), pp. 203-54. Samba was a native of Edo, son
of a woodblock engraver and therefore familiar with the world of commercial publication and printing
from his early years. He became a secondhand book merchant and a writer of vernacular novellas and
humorous fiction in various genres-for example, kibyoshi (yellow cover), gokan (bound volume),
and kokkeibon. His often effective combinations of illustrations and prose made him one of the
earliest writer~ to live on the publication of fiction. Among his major works are Ukiyo buro (The
Bathhouse of the Floating World), Kokon hyaku baka (A hundred fools, ancient and modem) and
Ukiyo doko (The Barbershop of the Floating World).
154 Frame Up
our analysis must grasp a text of ningyo joruri, which probably best exemplifies
the workings of this new intertextuality, as a "bundle" of texts: the stage or the
space of the puppet theater is in fact a topos where many different kinds of texts
intersect and are interwoven.
Until now I have postulated two basic modes of relating speech at its instance
of discourse. in its direct adherence to the performative situation by means of the
enunciation: direct speech and indirect speech. Indirect speech maintains a cer-
tain distance from the environment of the speech act and inCOrPOrates quoted
speech into the verbal text without destroying its coherence and unity, unknitting
the very textuality of the verbal text. Hence it analytically screens out elements
foreign to the coherent and homogeneous verbal flow, such as ungrammatical
expressions and onomatopoeia, as we have seen. It "protects" the verbal text,
preventing it from being mixed with other texts.
Yet if the verbal text has such different ways of relating to other texts, how
could we possibly presume that no other form of text does? One could also ask
whether or not performance can in fact be adequately articulated in terms of
"indirect" and "direct" actions. In pantomime or dance, where verbalization is
lacking, would it still be possible to talk about an intertextual relationship be-
tween the gestural text and the performative situation?
Here I confront two different but interrelated issues. The first concerns the
relationship between bodily movement and other nonverbal texts; the second is a
more specific problem concerning the relationship between verbal and gestural-
bodily texts. The choice of ningyo joruri as an object of investigation will work
to our advantage because the separation of voice and body is a given charac-
teristic of the puppet theater, whereas it can be sustained only hypothetically in
theatrical texts that involve live actors: ningyo joruri thus supplies us with an
opportunity to see a new mode of intertextuality at the specific nexus of work and
body.
I return to a consideration of the first of these problems later. Meanwhile, let
me draw attention to the movement of the puppet in relation to the verbal text and
focus on the connection of the puppet's body and words, a connection that from
our perspective appears to be dually articulated, in the sense that two layers are to
be discerned, namely, the level of script (written verbal text) and stage perfor-
mance as a whole and the level of the puppet's body and the chanter's voice.
A puppet by itself is always wordless. Yet we know that it is integrated into the
entirety of the text of ningyo joruri. I shall use the terminology of Boris A.
Uspensky to argue that it is through structural isomorphism that verbal and
nonverbal texts are related to each other and integrated into the whole of the
text. 12
In order to determine the status of script (writing) in relation to other texts in
12Boris A. Uspensky, A Poetics oJComposition , trans. Valentina Zavarin and Susan Wittig (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1973).
Supplement 155
the context of ningyo joruri, it must be remembered that what is conventionally
understood as writing plays a rather ambiguous role. For one thing, the Japanese
puppet theater is a performative art in which no writing is explicitly involved, if
"writing" is understood to mean a form of verbal text opposed to speech. It
might appear that the script falls outside the actual performance, so that its sole
function is to represent and project its content onto the stage. It should be able to
direct act.ing and scenes. Yet, as Hirosue Tamotsu has remarked, the script of
ningyo joruri is not merely the verbal transcription of a performance. 13 Readers
did not expect a script to represent the performance conducted at a theater; they
did not expect documentary reportage. To read a script was to conjure up the
actual performance, but it was done by involving the reader in the recitation of
the words of a script, thereby inserting a verbal text into the performative situa-
tion. As participants rather than mere spectators, readers supposedly placed
themselves at the locus of the instance of discourse. Even if the situation was not
present to them, the act of reading presupposed the inclusion of an imaginary
situation in the comprehension of the script. That is, the act of reading could be
construed as mimetic identification.
This kind of reading attests to the thesis that the structure of the reading act is
determined within a given discursive space. The mode of understanding a writing
is, in fact, subject to the interrelationship of verbal and non-verbal texts. At this
stage, I am still not able to postulate the extent to which the script is verbal and
the extent to which it includes and anticipates musical and gestural factors that
are not verbal.
Accordingly, the participation of nonverbal texts in the script takes on decisive
importance when one views the text of ningyo joruri in the light of the notion of
the incompleteness of a written text. A crucial question in this inquiry is how
nonverbal texts, such as the sound of musical instruments, the gestures of pup-
pets, and the emotive-affective features of the chanter's voice, are already de-
picted and structurally incorporated into the sense-making mechanism of the
Japanese puppet theater. This question is preliminary but essential. The perfor-
mance, the entire bundle of the text (hereafter designated as Text) of ningyo
joruri, consists of a structurally coordinated copresence of plural texts. There-
fore, the participation of nonverbal texts in the verbal text is part and parcel of
signijiance in the Text and is structured so that the Text may sustain a stable
meaning. Therefore, the way nonverbal texts are coordinated with verbal texts is
an essential factor in constituting the meaning of the Text. Conversely, the
meaning determines how the script is related to performance. This is the reason
why I have argued that writing plays an ambiguous role in the Japanese puppet
theater and that to read such a script is to go beyond the limits of writing into the
realm of what is normally excluded from it. Here again we face the fact that a text
is always an interweaving of texts, and therefore, in order to identify a text, we
13Hirosue Tamotsu, Genroku-ki no bungaku to zoku (Tokyo: Mirai-sha, 1979), pp. 27-51.
156 Frame Up
must necessarily refer to other texts. The identity of a text, far from being
reducible to its signification, relies on references to and differences from other
texts.
It is well known that scripts of ningyo joruri contain many sorts of graphic
markers indicating tone, meter, and stylistic features of the chanter's voice. The
series of changed words (gidayu-bushi, 5-9) is divided into parts marked by shi,
ji. and so on. Shi specifies that the part thus designated should be recited as if it
were uttered by a character in the story. More precisely, because of its opposition
to ji, melodic chanting, the parts of narrative concatenation designated as shi are
rendered in such a way as to represent ordinary speech directly quoted from the
actual scene. It is precisely because of this binary opposition between melodic
chanting (ji) and ordinary speech (shi) that the utterance directly quoted from
ordinary speech finds its way into the Text of ningyo joruri. (There are many
stages between shi and ji, but here I assume that these two tenns detennine the
extremes.) Moreover, in a sense, the absence of the syntactical distinction be-
tween direct and indirect speech in Japanese is compensated for by this extra-
linguistic device, which also gives the voice of the chanter the appearance of
being conjoined to the body of a puppet. Thus the audience is able to apprehend
that the voice of the chanter is supposed to derive from the locus on the stage
which the puppet's body occupies, although in fact the voice comes from the
chanter's mouth. Usually the sound of the samisen, which otherwise accom-
panies the chanting, ceases when the chanter's voice recites ordinary speech and,
by other means, makes the subject of the enunciation appear to coincide with the
subject of the enunciated. Here it is imperative to note, as did Roland Barthes,
that the subjects of enunciation and enunciated are never the same in the Text of
the Japanese puppet theater. The narration is conducted solely by the chanter~ he
monopolizes the voice. Since puppets are, after all, what Chikamatsu
Monzaemon called deku (pieces of wood), the actors never speak. It is not
feasible to ascribe the voice of a character directly to the actual utterance of an
actor. Because of this fundamental limitation, the Text of ningyo joruri plainly
indicates an irredeemable disparity between the enunciation and the enunciated,
thereby debunking any humanistic ideological "frame up" by which the subject
of the enunciated might ultimately seem to coincide with the subject of enuncia-
tion, the myth of subjective interiority.
It does not follow, however, that the binary opposition of ordinary speech to
melodic chanting corresponds to the stratification of quoted speech and descrip-
tive narration. Characters do not always speak in ordinary voices; indeed, occa-
sionally their utterances almost reach a level of dramatization wherein ordinary
speech is merged with ritualized and formalized narration. In such cases the
characters talk as if singing and sing as if they were in dialogue. Such a mode of
narration is surely not peculiar to the performative arts of Tokugawa Japan. One
could easily mention equivalents in other societies, such as Western opera. Yet
given the separation of the source of the chanting voice from the location of
gestural action, a new expression of the signifiance to which the Text of ningyo
Supplement 157
joruri gives rise is definitely peculiar to eighteenth-century discourse. It allows
for the generation of many levels of discursive activity ranging from entirely
anonymous, fonnalized utterance to individuated direct speech, with all the
possible emotive-affective features particular to it. For instance, here is a passage
from M eido no hihyaku (A courier to Hades, 5-10), by Chikamatsu Monzaemon:
jH
Chubei lei 0 seite, Kasha wa ooze osoizo, Gohei, Ute sette kure to tach; ni
1 A
~,*iti1&~4tv~'"( ~ 1£JlUit.l-ltil~~.:e. 1i~~~ fTw:J'"(4tw:J'"( <tL~ :lIt~:
-E-ji ir~ -E-shH
latte sekikeredomo, Iya miuke no shu wa
2, B
JL"'Jl4t~ ttttt"{) , 1.:v Jf~.~t(J)nu;;t
oyakata ga sunde kara. Shukuro-dono de han 0 keshi. Gachigyoji kara
<f-Ji~
fuda toraneba, omon ga deraremasenu, machitto hima ga irimasho. Ee
sokora 0 hayo korya tanomu to, mata ichi-ryo nage dasu, Otto makase to
3, C D
of;: t.> ~!fl" ~ ~ t) {>~ ,ltv t. J: t~-plijt~~1iliT. i>"".J t J: ip1t t.
fushi
ashi karuku, hashiru sanri no kyu yorimo koban no kiki zo kotaekeru. 14
(Being impatient, Chubei says "Why is Kasha so late? Gohei, go and tell them to
hurry up." Thus, Chubei, never sitting down, in a state of extreme impatience,
HThose who are to be redeemed must first do away with the master, have the seal
erased at the doyen's office, and then receive a licence from the monthly official.
Otherwise you cannot go out of the grand gate. It should take a bit longer." Chubei
says "Well, despite that, you could make them hurry up, please," and throws out
another ryo. "All right, I'll do it." Gohei trots downstairs. Money worked better
than moxa treatment on his ankle to get him going.)
Here, Chubei, a young merchant, opens a sealed packet of money, which was
supposed to be delivered to one of his clients, and uses it instead to redeem
Umekawa, a low-ranking courtesan. She had no idea that the money Chubei paid
14Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Meido no hikyaku. The aspects of these verbs can not be rendered in
English. Since the acting is being conducted simultaneously on the stage, it is natural to assume that
the narration is done in the present tense. It is implied, however, that the performance is a re-
presentation or repetition of what has actually happened. In this case, it might be better to use the past
tense. Ii'ira and fushi specify the intonational and melodic aspects of the chanting, as I shall explain.
158 Frame Up Supplement 159

to her master was illegally obtained. Knowing that the couple had to run away as shirazuka ima no koban wa Doshima no, oyashiki no kyuy6kin kono kane
soon as possible, Chubei waited impatiently for the due process of redemption to ~t.:>'i)\ 4'-O)/J\*,nI~aO), j:)mIkO)~m~R . ~O)M
be completed so that they could escape the pleasure quarter.
o chirashite wa, mi no daiji wa shireta koto. Zuibun koraete mitsusure
The italicized parts are utterances ascribed to characters present on the stage,
but not all are presented as direct speech. A, C, and D are recited with melodic
intonation. It is noteworthy that the differentiation between ordinary speech and domo, lomo joro no man'naka de kawaii otoko ga chijoku 0 tori, sonata no
melodic chanting further articulates the levels of narration, the most informal of
!:"{), 2ttr:ftJSO)alvlfI--c:, i>\~j:v~v~~i>~~D1S~n t), Tt:t.t::.O)
which is ordinary speech without melodic intonation, such as B. We should be
aware that, in addition to intonation, melodic recitation, and background music, kokoro no munen sa 0 harachitai to omou yori, futto kane ni te 0 kakete
other devices, such as stylization, are used to emphasize the characteristics of
different voices. Although the narration between points 1 and 2 designates the
JL\O)~;t ~ >d=. 'Iff L t~ v~ ~ Ji!!. ? J: l'), b "J ~ au:.J: t: iI~~t 't'"
agent of the action onstage as well as the subject of the utterance (quoted speech mo hirakenu wa otoko no yaku. Konaru inga to omote ta mo, Hachleman
9
A), narration between points 2 and 3 does not specify who is speaking, and
possibly acting, on the stage. It is like a tape-recorded account of an actual <b? 51i1~tt~~i~O)t~, iI\? t:t. ~m~ ~}!? 't't.: ~" )\::fiitr,
speech in which the listener can hardly identify the subject of utterance without ga tsuratsuki sugu ni haha ni nukasu kao, Jahakken no nakama kara
referring to the actual situation or to knowledge of the situation. But this uncer-
tainty poses no serious problem in the Text of ningyo joruri because devices other
than those inscribed in writing determine how to ascribe voice to a character or a e
puppet. In other words, the separation of the chanter's voice from the actor's sengi ni kuru wa ima no koto jigoku no ue no issoku to bi tonde tamoya to
body onstage is taken to be an integral part of the mechanism through which the ~IU:*Q~j:4'(J)~!:" i&JlO)l::O)-~ma. JRAo, --c:t~ {){>~
Text, as a whole, means. The role of the verbal text is thus determined within a
f
network of various nonverbal texts. What may appear to be an ordinary quoted bakari nile sugari tsuite nakikereba. Umewaka ha to furui dashi koe mo
speech moves within the hierarchy of various levels of dramatization. Thus, in II
the paragraph that follows the one I just quoted, we find a construction in which
the coordination of different texts is used to get the fullest effect:
~fil~ t)~:~ • • t). "Jv:)~?)i~ ~tn~!, ffiJlnitf> t .vltfj L~ <b
namida ni wana wana to. Core misanse tsunezune fishi wa koko no koto,
H,12
Sasa kono aida ni misoroe, betabeta shita torinari, obi mo kiriri to shi
E,7 frt.1J.tiV:..bt:t.bt:t. t. oftLJiIv~ Ivtr. 'I4g0 L-~j:~ O)~ t, 'l,

4t7 \ '\ ~O)f'JJ~;:Jlti"", ,r;:,t::.,r;:,t::. L-t::.D: t) f.l:. t), 'fff<b ~ t) ). ~ ooze ni inochi ga osh; zo futari shinureba hon'm6. [ma totemo yasui koto
a b t:t.1f~: €iril(fI L- vl .7C.. =AJE~n~f*ii!. ~!: 't' {)~"l ~ t .
oooshi ya to metta ni sekeba, Nanzoi no, ichidai no gaibun hobai-shu emo
F,8 g
funbetsu suete kundanse no. Yare inochi ikiyo to omoute kono datji ga
L-ii L-~, N:>"Jt::.~:1t~t~f. t:t.1v.7C\i~0). -itO);iM, milm",,{) 13 1,14
c ?}BlJtlit't'< tf.Iv4J:. frt.? -tv-$!t~ J:? ~,~\?'t'. :;"0)7($i>{
sakazukigoto, itomagoi mo wake yo shite yururi to dashite kuda same to,
G naru mono ka. Ikirareru dake sowaruru dake taka wa shinuru to kakugo

~$. ~Z<bml~L~. ~~~~ffiL~<~~~~t. t:t. 10> tJ (J)7J\ ~~ t:J 10> ~ t.:~t, iii*:> Q ~ t.:~t . t.: iI~~iJEtr 10> t 1ifg
d shiya. A soja ikiraruru dake kono yo de so' ou. [ma nimo hito ga kuru
nanigokoro naku isamu kao otoko wa watto naki idashi, itoshiya nani mo J,15
fiiJ,L\f.l <IJu1!.ft.. ~~;t:b"J ~ ?ftffi L-, v:\ t L-{>{PJ {) L {>. 7' of? t {> 0 ~ ~ G~ Qt.:~t ~ O)t!t-c~~i ?, 4'-~: {) A 'h~*Q
160 Frame Up
h i
tame koko e kakurete gozanse to. By6bu no kage ni oshi ire A washi ga
K [as running away without being prosecuted: Translator] if we are afraid of losing our
t:.i>.. ~ ~ .l'..Kltt'"( -:.:.~ 1v1t C, JJfJl(J)~i~::flflLAfl. . .." t> L,)~
j "Yes, of course, I will be with you in this world as long as, we live. Someone may
datji no mamar; o. Uchi no tansu n; oUe kita kore ga hoshii to iikereba.
*.O)~ t) ~, rtJO)1tI!H:iI"~,"(~ t::.o ~tt,)~~:f L"~ ~ ~o~ttt~f,
Hate kakaru akuji 0 shidashite.. ikana mamori no chikara nimo kono toga
L,16
J\7\ i6~1i~~!!.~LV~tfjLL, "~i)"tcl~t)QJnt::~. ~Q)~
ga nogaryo ka. Tokaku shinimi to gaten shite ware wa sonata no ek6 sen.
k that damned thing" [possibly referring to the decapitated head of a criminal nonnally
,)tj!tL'?,)\ 't iJ'4 <~Jl 't ft.8 L'"(, fJHi-ftclt::.O)@)rPJ{tlv .
Sonata wa kono Chubei ga eko 0 tanomu to byobu no ue. Kao 0 idaseba
-ft:lt::.~i~O)/~~1fi'ht@]~~'ltr 't, JJf.1IQ)J:.. m~tB1t~f .
Haa kanashiya ima ;rna ski, chatto oile kudanse iyana. Mono ni
M,18
J\7' i6\tet'L{>, &Jx L":\, ;~~tt>,,:)'"« t:'~Iv1t. V~{>t.lt~~::
yo nita to, byobu ni hishito idaki tsuki muse kaeri te zo nageki keru. 15
J: ? ftJ.t::. 't, JJJJIU:: V L 't t?! ~ ft ~ Piic!, t) "C -f~ ~ ~t ¢.
("Don't be relaxed now. You must straighten up your clothes before we leave here.
Oh, your outfit looks loose. Why don't you tighten up the sash?" Chubei urges
Umekawa impatiently. UWhat is the matter with you? This is the event of my life.
Can't you let me take time? Before my departure, of course, I want to exchange cups
of sake with myoId colleagues and say farewell to them." Not knowing the situa-
tion, Umekawa is ecstatic. Then, Chubei bursts into tears, confessing, "Oh, my
poor love. You know nothing. The gold coins I have just paid to redeem you are the
emergency money belonging to a Samurai mansion in Doshima. As I have spent the
money, surely something grave will happen to me. I tried very hard to control
myself. But, I was humiliated among your fellow courtesans, and I as your lover so
much wanted to avenge your chagrin. Without much thought I embezzled the mon-
ey. As a man, I cannot beg it back. Please accept this as your destiny. When I gave
the money, Hachiemon looked rather suspicious, so he will soon get in touch with
my mother. It is a matter of time before the Eighteen House Guild will send out an
inquiry about me. Please jump over the abyss of hell with me. Please run away with
me." Holding on to Umekawa, Chubei murmurs in tears, "Haa." Umekawa begins
to tremble and bursts into tears, too. "Now look at me. This is what I have always
promised-how can I be afraid of losing my life at this stage? It is my long
151 consulted the following editions: Nihon Koter Bungalen Zenshu (Tokyo: Shogalculcan, 1975),
44:55-56; Nihon Koten Bungala Zensho, Chikamatsu Monzaemon. vol. 2 (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbur,
1952), 80-82.
Supplement 161
cherished desire to die together with you. I can die right now if you wish. Please be
finn in your determination." "How can we ppssibly accomplish such a difficult task
lives? As long as we are alive, I will try to live; as long as we are together, I will try
t~ be with you. After aU, we are going to die, so please do not evade our fate,"
come at any moment, so you should hide here." Umekawa pushes Chubei behind the
screen. 441 left my precious amulet for good fortune behind in a drawer at home. 1
want it," says Umekawa. Upon hearing Umekawa, Chubei says "I have committed
such a grave c~me. However miraculous your amulet may be, it cannot save me
from the charge. Granting that we are going to die, I will pray for your redemption.
Please pray for my redemption in tum." Speaking thus, Chubei's head appears just
above the screen, 4'Oh, how sad, how cursed. Stop it, will you. You just look like
exhibited on a high platform: Translator]: Umekawa holds tightly to the screen and
chokes with tears.)
As is obvious from the plot composition of the script, italicized parts are
supposed to be quoted speeches, which should be attributed to particular charac-
ters. As Table 2 shows, however, these are accompanied by other, nonverbal,
markers. Time and again it should be emphasized that the opposition of direct
and indirect speech does not correspond to any dichotomy between colloquial
and literary languages. So-called stylistic characteristics also do not determine
whether an utterance is direct or indirect. As I have argued, whether speech is
direct or not is determined by means of coordination with other texts.
Among the many markers designated in the script or left to various conven-
tions among chanters and puppeteers, which direct the forms of performance, I
have selected and tabulated the deployment of two in order to illustrate how their
variations are coordinated to constitute the Text of ningyo joruri. Column 1 in
Table 2 deals with the stratification of verbal texts. The value (quoted speech or
descriptive narration) can be decided without reference to factors other than the
verbal text itself. The opposition of shi and ji in column 2 is concerned with the
presence of the musical element in the oral presentation of a verbal text. Shi
indicates the absence of the musical element; whereas ji indicates its presence, as
well as chanting that is to be conducted. Since the musical text is mainly led by
the samisen, the synchronization of the two texts requires that the verbal text
incorporate elements that serve to mediate both texts. It is amazing in this respect
that the relatedness of the verbal and musical texts varies so as to accommodate
many different intensities and is integrated into the signifiance of the Text. Thus,
narration can be strongly rhymed to ensure that it keeps time with the samisen, or
it can progress almost independently of the background music. Fushi and ji both
indicate this correspondence with the musical text. Iro and ji'iro indicate lower
levels of correspondence with the music. I use the term "melodic" to mean the
degree of musicality, but indeed, it has very little to 'do with the number of
 162 Frame Up
SuppLement 163
Table 2. Nonverbal markers
precisely, from the puppets' bodies. Even though these are supposedly utterances
1 2 3
of characters whose roles are played by puppets, they are narrated and recited
4
narration (-) shi (+) melodic high (+) direct (+) somewhat objectively. Presented in the modalities of ji, ji'iro, and iro, they are
speech (+) ji (-) low (-) indirect (-) encased in the narrative voice of the third person, whose viewpoint does not
coincide with that of the character-speaker.
7-8 E +
7-8 a-8
8-9 F +
8-9 c-d
8-9 G +
Life and Death
9-10 G +
9-10 e-IO The inclusion' of musicality affects verbalization in two ways. It is often said
10-11
11-12 11-£
that musicality enhances the emotional aspect of utterance and adds a lyrical
+
11-12 £-12 + element to it. Through lyricism, an utterance that would otherwise be mundane
12-13 H + + and ordinary attains to a higher dimension of meaning, where the sentiment
13-14 +
14-15 I
expressed is to be shared by others: others approach the utterance not as an object
+ + +
15-16 J + of understanding but as a mediation through which empathy is acquired. It
15-16 h-i engenders a feeling of communality into which the individuality of the utterance
15-16 K +
15-16 j-16
is ultimately resolved. But on the other hand, musicality has the effect of estrang-
16-17 L + + +
ing speaker in a very obvious manner. For one thing, musicality transforms the
16-17 17-k + temporality of utterance. In ordinary speech, an utterance is always made simul..
17-18 k-18
18-19 M
taneously with other gestural and emotive-affective features. One utters words
+
18-19 1-19 while doing something else. The act of utterance is always accompanied by facial
19- expressions, movements of the speaker's body, and so forth. One never says, for
example, "How much is this book?" while standing in a frozen posture like a
NO~E: Cap~tal letters designate quoted speech; numerals indicate points at which intonation, soldier at attention. One may be handing a book to a clerk behind a cash register
m71~lc ch~ntmg, etc., change; and small letters indicate positions within narrative continuity. The
ongmal scnpt does not have any of these marks. or pointing to a book on the shelf. In any case, a relevant gesture occurs when
such an utterance is made. The naturalness of such a statement lies in the
syllables in a line or the pitch of the chanter's voice. According to plot develop- accordance of the enunciation with other bodily movements and the perfonnative
ment, the chanter introduces nuances and intonations that suggest a descriptive situation. The time of an utterance is synchronized with the time of the bodily
t~uch. or a hint of speech. (According to the kind of script used, the stage of action. This temporal accord, however, is destroyed by the inclusion of musi-
hlstoncal development, and the school to which chanters belong, the terms for cality. Musicality generates a rupture between the time of speech and the time of
graphic markers specifying the degree of musicality vary so much that discussion action. Only in an artificial situation would one try to utter the query How much
about specific ways of chanting has to be omitted here.) In addition to this kind is this book? recitatively. Under ordinary circumstances such behavior would be
of musicality, scripts often indicate pitch and tone (melodic intonation, fushi). odd or grotesque, and its very oddity consists in the violation of the underlying
Uses of melody and musical sound are doubtless much more complicated in premise that an enunciation always corresponds with the time of its performative
actual performances. For the sake of simplification, however, these elements are situation. What musicality accomplishes is the severance of the coordination
not indicated in Table 2. 16 between the time of speech and the time of action. Hence, one would be at a loss
What is striking in this table is that only two sections, 14-15 and 16-17, are if one were asked to make an utterance recitatively and at the same time to
presented as if they were directly quoted from actual speech. Other quoted behave with complete indifference to the content of the utterance. Nonetheless,
~peeches are accompanied by ji, ji'iro, or iro intonation in such a way as to make this is exactly what happens in the Text of ningyo joruri: the separation of voice
It appear that the utterances are mediated and distanced from the actors or, more and body manifests itself most distinctively here.
In this respect, I can claim that ji, ira, and ji'iro, which suggest the musicality
16For a detailed analysis, see Chikaishi Yasuaki, Zoku ayatsuri joruri no kenkyu (Tokyo: Kazama of the verb~l text, detach and distance the enunciated for the actor-speaker whose
Shobo, 1965).
speech act supposedly generated that utterance. These thereby create the differ-
164 Frame Up
entiation between direct and indirect speech. This is to say that the radical
rupture between the enunciated and the enunciation is thematized and fully
exploited in the Text of Japanese puppet theater. But does this not seem contrary
to what has to be accomplished in order to unify and synthesize various texts in
representing fictional dramatic reality? Did Chikamatsu Monzaemon not say,
"Unlike Kabuki, where live human bodies act ... joruri [the script of ningyo
joruri] should be composed so that it may exert feelings on puppets, which, in
fact, do not have souls, and thus provoke an emotional response from the au-
dience." 17 The physical setting of the stage, the site at which the Text is com-
posed, necessarily assumes the separation of body and voice, the enunciation and
the enunciated, gestural text and verbal text. Neither puppets nor puppeteers utter
a word throughout the play. From the outset, as I have shown, there is no
possibility that the body could be the locus of the voice. Why, then, exaggerate
and expose that rupture, rather than attempt to mediate and conceal it?
In order to see the nature of this problem more clearly, let me examine the
script in detail. How do the sections of direct speech that are not marked by
distancing devices, musical factors, relate themselves to the development of the
plot? The first of the two sections (point 14 to point 15) states: "How could I
have committed such a grave deed if I had wished to keep on living! I will live as
long as I can. I will be with you as long as I can. You see, anyway, I will be
punished by death!" This passage is preceded by Umekawa's confession, in
which she declares her willingness to die with Chubei. At point 14, the tone
changes from ji to iro and finally to shi (here iro is a transitional intonation), and
while Umekawa's confession is narrated more formally and indirectly, Chubei's
utterance is presented as realistically as possible. It seems that dramatic reality
manifests itself in the most condensed form here and that the body of the puppet,
the voice, and the subject of the enunciation seem to be directly synthesized.
Reality is presented as if there were no mediation and distance between the
enunciation and the enunciated. Here, the utterance should be a direct speech by
Chubei himself, mediated by no third person, with the presence of chanter being
almost transparent. Nonetheless, we should remember that this effect of di-
rectness and unity of utterance can be achieved only because this section in the
script is preceded by more indirect speech: the directness of direct speech can be
evoked only when the speech is contrasted with more indirect fonns of speech.
The effect of the real is sustained by the paradigmatic possibility that this same
section could be narrated in a less direct way.
As narration proceeds after this section, the tone again changes to ji'iro at point
171n Naniwa miyage (Nihon koten bungaku laikei, vol. 50 [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1959J), p.
563, Chikamatsu says, "Puppets were perceived as being without souls when they had to compete
with kabuki theater, where live human actors played. Seen from a different viewpoint, the puppet
theater had developed and modernized that far, but at that stage of development, the puppets were
perceived as being without souls. As a result, it was necessary to invent words by which puppets
could be made soulfuL No doubt, this was an extremely difficult task: puppets had become soulless
[pieces of wood]; so souls had to be introduced into them again."
Supplement 165
15. According to the plot development, an utterance that follows Chubei's should
be ascribed to Umekawa and should also be direct speech, but instead, the utter-
ance shifts into a more distant and indirect mode. The immediate unity between the
puppet's body and the voice, previously achieved in Chubei's speech, dissolves;
the. source of the voice or the soul located in Chubei's body then slips away to
somewhere remote from the scene. Thus; the voice loses the sense of immediate
presence and, concomitantly, the subject of enunciation is lost. One cannot help
but sense that Umekawa's speech is already a reported one, viewed by a detached
and sober eye. As it unfolds in verselike fonn, it transfonns itself into a song, or
uta, in which tlie individuality of the subject of enunciation is replaced by ano-
nymity. No longer does it matter who is speaking in this utterance, even though it is
obvious that the speaker is supposed to be a low-ranking courtesan who had been
euphoric just a moment before, when redeemed by her love. The narration is now a
step closer to that of the epic. ~ccordingly, the story is recited in a mode that keeps
two temporalities distinct from each other: the time of narration and the time of the
narrated event. The "now" of speech is no longer the "now" of what is spoken
about. Hence, the actual performance of puppets on the stage appears to be dyed
with a tint of the past and takes on characteristics of representation. It appears to be
an act that has happened once and is now being replayed. In the following section
(h-16), the third-person narrative emerges on the surface of the Text, and Um-
ekawa's speech, which this narrative reports, is, as a matter of fact, a box within a
box, or framed speech, an equivalent to what Volosinov called indirect discourse.
But once again, the tone changes to shi (16-17). As if awakening from a
daydream, Chubei reaffirms the irredeemability and the gravity of the deed he has
done once and for all. "I have committed such a grave crime. However miraculous
your amulet may be, it cannot save me from the charge." This time, the realness
direct speech projects and the irredeemability of the deed are superimposed on
each other. An acute recognition of the real, that an action, once done, can be
neither repeated nor undone, is stated here. It is an oblique reference to the
fundamental feature of the enunciation and the enunciated. Like an action, an
enunciation cannot be repeated; the enunciated, which it produces, is autonomous
and independent of the one who has done it. Chubei is alienated in the result of his
deed, and irrespective of his intention, his deed now punishes him and imposes
constraints on his future.
The constant oscillation- between direct speech and indirect fonns of verbal
presentation thus generates multiple dimensions of a real in which binary opposi-
tions-immediate/mediate, present/absent, nonreported/reported, and so on-
are superimposed on one another, thereby creating a wealth of narrative pos-
sibilities. Noteworthy in this connection is that these oppositions ultimately lead
to a dialectic of life and death. Not only is it imperative that puppets be animated
and made to look alive in the Text of ningyo joruri, it is equally necessary that
puppets be able to die. Life and death must be dramatically articulated in this
spatiotemporal continuum.
166 Frame Up
In this respect, it should be acknowledged that we are dealing with two
dimensions ofaiscourse. As I remarked in regard to Ito Jinsai's notion of death,
two semes are involved here: the seme of animated (life) versus inanimate
(death) and that of life versus death. As he pointed out, it is possible to argue that
one cannot die unless one is alive. An inanimate being neither lives nor dies. A
puppet cannot portray a death unless it is already animated~ death cannot happen
to the dead. This duality of death is of course of particular importance in shinju
mono (double-suicide drama, 5-11).
Through gradual stratification, various viewpoints are introduced into the
Text. One of these viewpoints is that of the character. At this level, the voice,
adorned with intonation, rhythm, and musical sound, projects a field based on a
spectrum stretching between two poles: ultimate death and the presence of life.
Here the presence of life suggests the formation of an utterance in which the
enunciated is entirely absorbed into the enunciation, whereas ultimate death
implies a formation in which the enunciation is completely erased. In ultimate
death, the utterance is without its own author or subject of enunciation. Presum-
ably the utterance could be pronounced by anybody or could, alternatively, take
the form of universal anonymity. In contrast, ningyo joruri of the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries was faced with a new discursive formation that
could no longer avoid the presence of life. As the radical rupture between
enunciation and enunciated intruded into the dramaturgical discourse, the pres-
ence of life, as a constituting positivity, invaded and, as a result, transformed the
discursive space of the time. From this perspective, it is possible to see how the
treatment of death and suicide in some literary works took on a special signifi-
cance.
In fact, dramatic death as depicted in the Text of ningyo joruri represents a
transition from the supposed presence of life toward an anonymous utterance,
from the singularity of the speaker toward the universality of the subject. A
character, by committing suicide, ceases to perform the role of speaker, of
proprietor of the utterance; rather, the character enters an imaginary space where
he or she is only spoken of. In this regard, it is rather easy to uncover the
meaning of death in the Text of the Japanese puppet theater; it is a one-way
itinerary (michiyuki, 5-12) leading from a realm where a character is permitted to
speak into another where the character can no longer speak but only be spoken
of. In death the character is deprived of the ability to enunciate, is an existent
completely frozen in language. Although language produces the character from
time to time, the character cannot produce language. Death, that is, is the
condition for the possibility of language in general.
The Act of Reading
When one takes into consideration that many ningyo joruri scripts were actu-
ally published in woodblock print, questions regarding the status of the written
Supplement 167
text inevitably arise. It is said that these printed scripts were intended not for
stage direction but for individual reading and that they were circulated among the
readership of Tokugawa society. As I have emphasized, the Text of ningyo joruri
contains texts other than the verbal one. Hence, insofar as the written text is
always incomplete within the discursive space at issue, the question should be
posed in reverse: How was its incompleteness as a written text supplemented to
make it more widely readable? What is the structure of a supplement whereby a
written text anticipated and was related to other texts that were absent from the
written one?
At the very least, these scripts possess a structure of stratification. Despite the
continuity of the narrative voice, the text is stratified in order to accommodate the
distinction between descriptive narration and reported speech. Descriptive narra-
tion supplies information necessary to locate the quoted speech in relation to the
situation in which it was uttered. Moreover, the descriptive narration presup-
poses that speech is generated within a highly stable situation and that therefore it
is only on exceptional occasions that the time of the narration deviates widely
from the time of the narrated events. IS In an epic narrative, by contrast, narration
can sometimes condense time so that events that would take several days or
several years in actuality are narrated within the scope of a few lines. What is
interesting about ningyo joruri is that the time of its narration is not endowed
with such freedom: narrative temporality in this genre is bound by the condition
of theatrical presentation. 19 Time can elapse between scenes, but during the
scene, the time of narration must faithfully follow the time of action and perfor-
mance. Because of the stratification in its verbal continuum, however, descrip-
tive narration is spatialized and serves as a verbal equivalent to the situation.
Obviously when the chanter's voice is providing descriptive narration, the voice
will correspond to no actor on the stage. Unless a character on the stage reports
somebody else's speech, reported speech always corresponds to the presence of a
puppet. As I have argued, there is not always complete correspondence between
the time of perfonnance and the time of narration, but there exists at least a
parallelism between voice and the movements of the puppet to indicate to the
audience who is supposed to be speaking on the stage. Yet quite evidently this
structure does not apply to descriptive narration. In descriptive narration the
18As I have said, a complete correspondence of narrative time and time of narrated events sup-
posedly occurs only in shi. Even when there is a rupture between the two, it cannot be wide since
descriptive narration follows the stage performance. In principle, the scene is always present to the
narrator. In this case, however, it must be stressed that only a representation of the complete
correspondence of the two temporalities occurs. This is to say, according to our theoretical position.
these can never be identical to each other. Every form of narration, whether speech or writing,
description or reportage, necessarily generates a difference or distance between the two temporalities.
Time is inconceivable without this disparity.
191n no plays, for instance, narrative temporality constantly deviates from the time of narrated
events. Time is far from linear. Particularly in what modem scholars call mugen-no temporal stratifi-
cation is so complex that it is very often impossible to determine the time of a narrated event.
168 Frame Up
voice has no body, has no anchorage in the dramaturgical space. It speaks from
nowhere; there'is no moment of presence with which it could be synchronized.
Instead, it describes the context and environment in which reported speech takes
place and the relationship of the characters whose speech is reported. The tem-
porality of descriptive narration corresponds to the time of the situation, which is
by no means necessarily linear. Although it is linearly presented at the level of
the syntagm, the relationship of descriptive narration and reported speech is
spatial insofar as the mode of signijiance is concerned.
Thus, discourse begins to include a radical difference between the temporal
and the spatial. It is finally a differance: no kind of text could ever be either
exclusively temporal or exclusively spatial. By articulating the verbal contiIiuum
in terms pertaining to the economy of this differance. discourse incorporates a
Gestalt whereby the narrative continuum is divided into figure and background.
As I shall discuss later, this mode of differance dominated literary production in
the eighteenth century, and even if a literary text was not concerned with the-
atrical performance, it seems to have adhered to this mode of presentation. The
structure of both writing and reading in the discursive space of the eighteenth
century was in fact organized on the basis of this very differance. Within this
structure, the act of reading inserts writing into the scheme of figure and back-
ground and discovers one of the possible relationships of interdependence be-
tween figure and background. First, writing is seen as correlated to the back-
ground; its signification is equated to the figure. Because writing does not retain
its background when it is perceived as the enunciated, it needs to be supple-
mented with a relevant background. This supplementation in fact returns writing
to the original scene of the enunciation, where figure and background are sup-
posedly synthesized through the corporeal act. Thus, in the eighteenth century
the question of reading was posed in this form: How could the reading act
possibly be equated either to a sort of prepredicative/preverbal experience or to
bodily cognition?
When we consider nonverbal devices by means of which the binary opposition
of direct and indirect speech is to be postulated, it is noteworthy that, the
cumulative use of this opposition further bifurcates the verbal continuum into
direct-direct, direct-indirect, indirect-direct, and indirect-indirect sPeeches. By
thus generating a variety of levels, the text projects dramatic effects at multiple
degrees of intensity. Moreover, it should be stressed in this connection that the
coordination of these nonverbal devices can articulate a text such as bodily action
in such a way that it is possible to talk about direct/indirect actions. As I have
suggested, the involvement of musicality in narration engenders a rift between
natural and spontaneous gesture, on the one hand, and the verbal utterance
accompanying the gesture, on the other. It is nevertheless still possible to sustain
the coordination of bodily action with verbal utterance even when musicality is
involved in verbalization.
Supplement 169
Direct or Indirect Actions
It is possible to transform bodily action in such a way that it may be syn-
chronized ,with a verbal utterance adorned by rhythm, melody, and other musical
features. When one sings, one's body normally sways or moves in time with the
rhythm of the song. This movement can nb longer be considered either '''natural n
or "spontaneous," as it would be if there were no accompanying music. In
dance, primarily a form of bodily movement, the verbal utterance (if it is sung),
bodily movement, and music are synchronized and coordinated, thus preventing
a schism from eiupting between bodily action and the verbal text. Yet the action
cannot be considered natural and spontaneous: it is regulated, formalized, and
ritualized. Thus, I should be able to talk about indirect action.
In direct action, on the contrary, there is supposedly no rift between the bodily
action and the perfonnative situation. The wholeness that characterizes direct
speech is partially missing as the performative situation deviates from the syn-
chronized and coordinated bundle of other texts. So, tentatively, I might argue
that corporeal action can be classified into two categories: direct and indirect
action. Direct action involves synchronization and coordination among all par-
ticipating elements-bodily action, verbal utterance, and performative situation.
It is further characterized by the absence of musicality and other formalizing
agents. Indirect action calls for synchronization and coordination among all the
participating elements except the performative situation.
Indirect action is a form of corporeal behavior detached from a given per-
formative situation. Not only a mutation of temporality but also a shift of view-
point and a disappearance of the subject of the enunciation are involved in this
form of action. By following formal, ritualized patterns in accordance with
musicality in narration, the body of the actor loses its adherence to the per-
formative situation and thereby its putative individualistic originality and spon-
taneity. Two essential features are that the action can be repeated and that it can
be Performed by another person. From the outset, one is presented as a third
person, or anybody. As in indirect speech, indirect action is autonomous, inde-
pendent of a given performative situation. Its rePeatability implies this relative
autonomy and independence of indirect, formalized action. That is, it loses the
SPecificity of now and here. The same bodily movement can be performed in the
past, the present, and the future. This transhistoricity is the necessary condition
of possibility for indirect, formalized, or ritualized action. By formalizing and
ritualizing bodily action, the performer transcends the erosion of historical time
in which nothing remains identical. (I inquire more thoroughly into the problem
of transhistoricity in ritualized action in subsequent chapters.)
Likewise, indirect action is another form of the individual'g death. This feature
is most particularly manifest in instances when bodily movement is accompanied
by music. No matter whether it is performed by one person or a group, ritualized
170 Frame Up
behavior adheres to a mode in which, in principle, a performer transforms his
own body into'an already coded pattern. What distinguishes ritualized behavior
from "natural n gesture is that in ritualized behavior the performer consciously
suppresses her own "spontaneous" initiatives and encases the movement of her
own body within a given framework. Ritualized or formalized behavior such as
dance often requires a long process of discipline and repeated practice through
which the actor finally acquires an ability to conform to a pregiven code of
behavior whereby the individual self, as taken in its imagined unredeemable
uniqueness, is abolished. Through formalized behavior, one's individuality,
imagined in its own self-misrecognition, is shed: the original self of the person is
replaced by the image of the self that is demanded of him. That is to say, one
erases the enunciation in dance or formalized behavior, where there is, in fact, no
possibility of immediately equating the subject of the enunciation and the subject
of the enunciated.
The performer opens up possibilities for others to join the text through the
synchronization of music, bodily action, and verbal utterance. Simultaneously,
the subject who might otherwise imagine herself able to enjoy the status of
proprietor of her own action is disqualified and degraded to a rank where her
"individuality" is totally dispensable. Promises in a song carry no respon-
sibilities, for it is assumed that the message and the performance are ascribed to
completely different agents and that therefore the performer cannot be held
culpable for the message. It is not the singer herself but an anonymous voice, not
he or she but "it" that sings in the song. The same argument can be applied to
dance, where there is a separation between the performer's self and the per-
formed character's person. It is worth remembering that the word "person"
comes from "persona," which means the mask. A particular gesture-a glance,
the lifting of an arm-does not express the performer's emotion: her individual
emotion is redirected and thereby masked in dance.
Regardless of whether the actual performance involves only one person or
several, synchronization of music with bodily movement or verbal utterance or
both leads to the genesis of an anonymous speaker. Anybody can join this text as
long as she synchronizes her bodily movement with music, rhythm, and pat-
terned motion.
Thus the synchronization of music and verbal utterance amounts to a firsthand
constitution of collectivity. The term "collectivity" implies not an assemblage of
multiple subjects but a form of the individual's death, a form in which the
imagined originality of the subject of the enunciation is erased. Hence, "collec-
tivity" is a certain mode of systematic organization of the Text.
Remembering that the ritualization of the gestural text and the formation of
indirect speech can be characterized only insofar as they are contrasted to non-
ritualized, "natural" behavior and direct and ordinary speech, one should not
overlook that notions of ~'natural" action and "ordinary" speech are not them-
selves "given" but constituted in opposition to these categories concerning texts.
Supplement 171
Only differences exist, differences that give rise to oppositions without which
neither "natural" behavior nor ritualized gesture would exist. There is no such
thing as natural behavior in itself or direct speech in itself. Therefore "natural"
behavior and direct speech are possible only when ritualized and formalized
action and speech have been introduced as their opposites. There could be neither
direct speech nor nonformal behavior without these oppositions.
Thus indirect action, as opposed to "natural" and "spontaneous" action,
transforms the individual into a subject: the individual who could not be placed
within the circulatory network of exchange is now turned into a subject whose
identity is deterinined. Since identification always involves subsumption under
universals, it is only with the loss of those singular traits that can never be
subsumed under universals that the individual becomes identifiable. In this re-
spect, paradoxical though it may sound, only through anonymity can one gain
one's subjective identity, a subjective identity that is necessarily constituted in
universals. As I shall discuss later, individual subjectivity, regarded in certain
discursive fonnationsas the origin of "natural" and "spontaneous" action, is an
ideological fiction precisely because there can be no genuinely natural or spon-
taneous .action.
Precisely because any action aims at a meaning, it is comprehensible. What
one does is inseparable from what one tries to achieve. But as I discussed in
Chapter 3 with regard to the anteriority of a norm that an action realizes, the
meaning of an action always presupposes meaning for the third viewpoint. This
third viewpoint does not coincide with a specific person who happens to observe
my action. Although I cannot discuss this topic in detail here, I must simply note
that the comprehensibility of one's action is, in fact, its visibility from this
anonymous viewpoint. I act with a view to this viewpoint. As the word "act"
clearly illustrates, I always act in a double sense: I act in the sense of doing, and
in the sense of pretending. But obviously, pretending necessarily presupposes
some spectator for whom I act.
What I have referred to as the "collectivity" is this anonymous and always
absent viewpoint for which I pretend to be a subject. At the same time that I
emphasize the "collectivity" inherent in the very comprehensibility of an action,
the anteriority of this "collectivity" never implies its existence in objective time.
This is a point crucial in my ensuing argument in the following chapters, for the
central problem I probe is the essentialization and reification of this "collec-
tivity" in the eighteenth century. Just as I realize the ethical norm, I create this
"collectivity" in my action as anterior to my action. This is why action, which
is, in the final analysis, always already indirect, is poietic and poetic.
Boxing, Framing, and Ideologies
It is essential to note in this connection that what has been termed "direct
speech" in the Text of ningyo joruri is constituted in terms of various oppositions
172 Frame Up
generated by the introduction of musicality into the Text. Since every word,
every act, and even every situation is "set up" and therefore fabricated, no
element in the Text is immediately "natural." After all, it is only within the Text,
a spatiotemporal continuum, that what these oppositions generate may appear to
be ordinary speech or natural rather than artificial behavior. Because this spa-
tiotemporal continuum functions as a privileged topos, which a variety of dif-
ferences articulates into a drama only when it is framed and detached from the
context of everyday life, no word and no action deployed within it can be natural
or immediate. The presentation of naturalness and immediacy is impossible
without this mechanism of framing. The "real" can be presented only through
the medium of the "unreal." That is to say, the presence of "ordinary speech"
assumes and requires the circumscription of a spatial realm whose existence itself
is artificially fabricated. Here we encounter a paradox: the direct is possible only
within the indirect, the immediate within the mediated, the natural within the
artificial. This is undoubtedly an inevitable aspect of the significative contradic-
tion also inherent in the discursive space of the eighteenth century.
It has been argued that descriptive narration serves as an equivalent to a
pictorial text surrounding a reported speech. The stratification of the verbal
continuum can lead to the most elementary form of spatialization in which parts
of the verbal continuum, assigned to the role of descriptive narration, explain and
depict the contextual conditions in which reported speech occurs.
Using the Text of the Japanese puppet theater, I have demonstrated that
whether an utterance is qualified as direct or not, it cannot be determined in terms
of internal characteristics such as phonetic and syntactical features. On the con-
trary, an utterance receives such a qualification only through its relationship to
the outside or to other texts juxtaposed to it.
Spatialization, based on the stratification of the verbal continuum and the
direct/indirect differentiation, calls forth what I have termed the framing effect,
in which reported speech and its situation are, at the same time, clearly divided
and related to each other. According to the terms of this framing effect, a
reported speech is "boxed" within the general flow of the Text. But the privi-
leged topos of the spatiotemporal continuum, the Text of ningyo jorori, is also
positioned within the much wider context of ordinary life, so that the reported
speech is in fact a box within a box. 20
Representational Type and Gestalt Type
It is possible to argue that a structural relationship between a boxed utterance,
or reported speech, and other texts outside this box determines the status of the
20Undeniably this fonnulation has an affinity with the box-in-box fonnula that Tokieda Motoki
postulated as the fundamental syntactical and ontological structure of Japanese. As 1 understand the
tenns of the box-in-box fonnula (irekogata kozo), however, Tokieda also intended to explicate both
the possible relationship between the enunciation and the enunciated and the framing effect. See his
kokugogaku genron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1941). I shaH return later to the problematic of the box-
in-box fonnula and the parergonal split.
Supplement 173
utterance within the Text. As the Text of Japanese puppet theater illustrates, there
are many sorts of phonetic and musical markers and graphic arrangements by
which an utterance can be boxed and detached from its outside. No doubt the
boxing or framing effect itself creates both outside and inside. Thus there are
almost innumerable kinds of boxing, depending upon possible combinations of
texts.
Two types of boxing are essential in the context of this book, however, and
must be mentioned to clarify the mode of textual formation in the eighteenth
century. Important within the scope of my concern are two texts: verbal and
pictorial. One can easily recognize a great deal of difference in the mode of
interaction of verbal and pictorial texts according to whether they are the repre-
sentational type or the gestalt type.
In the representational type, both verbal and pictorial texts maintain a relative
autonomy, such that one text can signify or designate without the aid of another.
Even if the verbal text is withdrawn from the whole, the pictorial text remains
identical in respect of its designation, and its visual message does not greatly
change. Indeed, it is possible to transform its mode ofdesignation by substituting
a different statement, as Rene Magritte does in Les Deux Mysteres (figure A).
But then, of course, it is no longer classified as a representational type. Let us
remember that this sort of typology does not apply to the internal structure of
each constituent text. Here I am dealing with a mode of coexistence among
multiple texts that together constitute a new text.
In the representational type, the verbal text functions as a metastatement with
respect to the pictorial text. The relative autonomy of texts in this type suggests
that either the pictorial or the verbal text can be presented as if it did not require
its counterpart. Their relationship is most often that of representation, the pic-
torial text being that which is represented and the verbal text being that which
represents. By implication an order of subordination usually obtains between the
two texts: the pictorial text is assigned to the role of the main text and the verbal
text is subordinate. Or one might view the relationship in terms of a translation
from visual to verbal signifying systems, the verbal being a translation of the
pictorial. This relationship can also be compared to the traditional apprehension
of the subject and the predicate, the visual being the subject (as both shugo and
shudai), and the verbal the predicate. The verbal is linked to the visual as an
answer to the type of question What is this? in which "this" of course indicates
the visual. For example, a picture depicting a mountain is linked through a
copula to the verbal "Mount Saint-Victoire," which forms an answer: "This is
'Mount Saint-Victoire.' " Despite the heterogeneity of the visual to the verbal,
the representational type operates on the assumption that both can be linked in
the medium of propositional judgment. Here, the judgment in which the subject
(shugo) is synthesized with the predicate, as it were, imitates the indication in
which the referent is linked to the subject (shudai). Therefore, in this mode
predicative judgment is equated to thematization (shudaika).
In the gestalt type of relationship, by contrast, texts are mutually dependent
 Frame Up
174
Figure E. From Osugi otama futami no adauchi (Double venge~nce by Osugi and Otama)
by Santo Kyoden, 1807, illustrations by Utagawa Toyokum. These pag~s show the
relationships among illustration, descriptive narration, and direct speech: Whl1e the narra-
tion explains the illustration, relating it to previous plot developm~nts, direct s~eches. are
inserted, independent of the narration, at the lower margins and hnk~ t.o the IllustratIOns
nonverbally. The most common nonverbal relation is that of p~oxlInlty: the words of
speeches appear on the page near the i1lustrat~d figure~. T~e ~hmese charact~rs on the
sleeves of two women (righthand page, upper nght), which mdlcate the two mam charac-
ters, Dtama and Osugi, embody another means of linking speec~ to ~he image ~f the
character's (or the speaking subject's) body. In contrast to the relatIOnshIp of narratIon to
illustration that of direct speech to illustration seems to follow what I call the Gestalt type,
in which reading consists primarily of situating speeches in a scene.
Supplement 175
(see figure E). Withdrawing the verbal text would completely distort the meaning
of the text as a whole. It is impossible to extract the meaning of the whole text
from either the pictorial or the verbal text alone, since their copresence creates a
surplus of signification that does not exist in either text alone. In addition, the
relationship between the two resembles the relationship between figure and back-
ground. The pictorial text functions as the background' for the verbal text~ we
perceive that the verbal text is activated and animated by the pictorial text. The
recognition of the gestalt type as such, however, requires the double articulation
of the viewpoint. Primarily it is a juxtaposition of what is thematized, that is,
posited as a subject (shudai), and what cannot be thematized. Emotive-affective
features that animate the figure, therefore, cannot be made present precisely
because they are not thematized. But to be aware of the effects of the background
on the figure, of the emotive-affective effects on the speech, is possibly only on
condition that the background has been grasped thematically. In the first in-
stance, the background is not pointed out: it is not determined, in contrast to the
figure, which is determined. But in the second instance, the background is
determined as SUCh, as that which is excluded from this delineation. Unlike the
representational tyPe, in which the equation between propositional judgment and
indication is guaranteed, the gestalt type does not allow for omission of the
moment of self-reflexivity. The moment of thematic positing (shudaika) and the
moment of grasping this thematic positing as distinguishing between the figure
and the background must coexist: these two moments must be folded upon each
other, as if they were simultaneous. 21
It is in this way that a verbal text is made to pertain to the situation of its
utterance: it generates an effect as if the primordial liveliness of the verbal were
recovered. Even though both texts are in inscriptional form, the verbal text seems
to take on the emotive-affective features of speech. Of course, not all such
emotive-affective features can be reproduced in this configuration, but it is at
least possible to suggest that words are uttered within a given situation. It is
worth noting that this mode of coexistence is a procedure by which a linear text is
related to a nonlinear text.
This delinearization of the background, together with linearization of the
figure, occurs also in the case of the written text without illustration. This is
exactly what the presence of descriptive narration and the spatialization of the
verbal continuum in the script of ningyo joruri allude to. Although both descrip-
tive narration and reported speech are linear insofar as they are verbal, they
2IThe body of the enunciation (shutai) cannot be construed in the gestalt type. It is not the
background that animates the figure and endows the perceived object with an emotive-affective
atmosphere. Above all, it is the split itself between figure and background. Hence, it is, rather,
parergQnal, not something that can be brought into presence to some transcendental As I have
argued repeatedly, it cannot be arrested in signification or discourse, nor can it captured in
visibility as an image. It eludes the monopoly of either reading or seeing. In this sense, it is always
calligraphic.
176 Frame Up
interact with each other in such a way that descriptive narration constitutes the
background, and reported speech the figure. Adhering to Boris Uspensky's argu-
ment, I claim that structural isomorphism not only exists among various texts but
also exists· in various combinations of texts. 22 Hence, one can reasonably argue
that it is possible to identify the same mode of intertextuality in written texts
whether or not they appear with pictorial illustrations.
Thus far I have treated texts as if they were entities, as if they could be
differentiated from other texts. By no means can this treatment be sustained, for
the very notion of textual materiality I have adopted in this book protests against
this use of the tenn "text." Yet we must also take into account that a text can
exist as such only when it is traversed, transcended, or related to others. That is
to say, a text is a moment in a wider signifying practice, which I have tenned
intertextuality. It is only in this context that I could possibly be justified in using
the tenn "text" to indicate a factor mobilized in this practice. Precisely because
of the heterogeneous nature of this practice, it has been necessary to use the tenn
in such a way that its difference from other factors may be shown. And yet,
throughout this book I have stressed that the text is not an entity with an identifi-
able core.
The emergence of a dramaturgical situation in discourse in the eighteenth
century was possible, of course, only on the ground that literary discourse incor-
porates the mode of intertextuality characterized as the gestalt type. By means of
this discursive apparatus, verbal and nonverbal texts were mediated and inte-
grated into a specific form of presentation. And through this apparatus, I main-
tain, the discursive space in question integrates those texts that are, in the first
place, not discursive. Both the representational and the gestalt types are part of
the apparatus by means of which discourse renders its other intelligible to itself
and regulates it.
This gestalt type of intertextuality reached its fullest development in those
literary works now called gesaku (5-13), to which my attention now turns.
22Uspensky, A Poetics of Composition, pp. 130-72.
CHAPTER 6
DeJamiliarization and Parody
Genres, Taxonomy
In the eighteenth century literary utterances were classified and evaluated in
tenns of their genres. Any single genre maintained itself at a certain distance
from other genres by means of its specific features, characteristics that other
genres presumably did not possess. This system of generic distancing sustained a
dominant taxonomy in which all literary production was controlled by that power
which organized the variety of social relations as an imagined whole. A literary
work, then, was produced in a social and historical milieu, indeed, but this does
not mean that a work merely reflected the control imposed upon its author by the
authority of existing social and political institutions. For one thing, a social and
historical "milieu" consists of texts. A work, therefore, does not merely reflect
an extratextual reality. Rather, what I call ~'power" is a rule or a set of rules that
regulate how a text can be related to other texts. As a matter of fact, power in this
context cannot be ascribed merely to an authority such as a political organization
or a social group: it is equivalent to the sum of the constraints and regulations at
work in a particular literary productivity. In other words, such power is equiv-
alent to the set of the conditions of possibility for literary and textual production.
I shall call this set of conditions the space of generic discontinuity, within which
both the possibilities and the impossibilities of a literary form are given.
In general, the space of generic discontinuity and the languages attached to it
are perceived by members of the readership(s) as pregiven and natural. The
putative transparency of such a space is entirely consonant with the effectiveness
of the power that establishes it: hence, the more transparent such a space appears
to be, the more effective is the power. The historical and cultural distance that
separates us from the eighteenth century endows us with a certain privilege by
virtue of whic111iterary discourse of that time appears obscure, even opaque, to
our perception. The powers that were effective then are unable to manipulate us
177
178 Frame Up
in most cases. But by the same token, our own textual products are subject to the
control of the powers among "us." What is implied here is that this blindness to
the constraints and regulations inherited and internalized within "us" is precisely
the locus where 4'we" are manipulated by such powers.
The emergence of parodist literature in the eighteenth century seems not only
to testify to the presence of a specific power in Tokugawa Japan but could also
perhaps be characterized as an effort to dislocate the junctures of the economy of
generic discontinuity. It should also be noted that this effort was appropriated by
that very economy when parodist literature became institutionalized into specific
genres through the repeated use of the same strategies. Parody was quickly
transfonned into a ucliche." Here I am not concerned with the motives and
intentions of writers of popular novellas or parodist poetry. It is undeniable that
these writers sometimes created such an unbearable discordance in Tokugawa
Japan that the shogunate had to impose censorship and ordinances intended to
eliminate the sources of disorder and "excessive" and 44illegitimate" pleasures
from a social environment that was otherwise supposed to be balanced and
harmonious. The history of literature in the eighteenth century, as has been well
documented, is marked by frequent censorship and by the varied tactics writers
used to evade that censorship. Nevertheless, one should never oversimplify the
relationship between literary production and power, should never reduce it to a
relationship between the author and the shogunate. According to my tentative
definition, the term "power" also bears something of the sense of "censorship"
as this term is used in psychoanalysis. As the account of the dream is screened by
censorship, so too is literary production controlled and initiated by the system,
that is, power. It is at this level of censorship that parodist literature seems to
violate the fabric of Tokugawa authority. But this violation, I must also note, was
in tum easily accommodated by the new discursive space of generic discon-
tinuity.
Grapheme and EquivQcity
Already in an early work such as Ryohashigen (6-1), I can recognize a discur-
sive apparatus by means of which the authority implicit in generic hierarchy is
displaced and thereby ridiculed.} The title contains a ploygrapheme (ha 6-2),
which could refer to sensation in general (ira 6-3), but in this case the allusion to
eroticism is obvious, and to town or quarter (6-4). It should be read as something
like uWords on sake cups in the pleasure quarters." Here, the play of equivocity
is obvious. This book is in the kanbun style, literary Chinese with kunten, or
Japanese annotations; thus it appears to belong to the general class of written
lRyohashigen (1728?), reprint in Sharehon taisei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Chu'okoron-sha, 1978), pp. 15-
32.
Dejamiliarization and Parody 179
documents that were perceived as didactic in one way or another during the
eighteenth century. Works in Chinese were not exclusively about Confucianism,
Buddhism, or other intellectual subjects. They could also be about Chinese
history or poetry. It is particularly significant, however, that it was not the
content of a work but rather its stylistic-or, more precisely, its graphic-
arrangement that was considered to be· the distinguishing mark according to
which it would be classified. In the space of generic discontinuity, various
discourses were classified not only on the basis of what they said and how they
said it but also according to their visual appearance. As I have previously argued,
the discursive space of the eighteenth century is extremely complex as far as
visual and verbal aspects of texts and their various interrelationships are con-
cerned. The case of Ryohashigen demonstrates the complexity of such interre-
lationships most vividly. Notwithstanding that it is written in kanbun, a close
examination reveals characteristics that were generated by constantly ignoring or
violating grammatical stipulations governing literary Chinese annotated in Japa-
nese. Some phrases that look like authentic Chinese are, in fact, direct quotations
from what was then called the "language of villagers." After the frrst page or
two, a reader would become aware that this entire work is organized in such a
way as to produce the effective recognition that the notion of a genre and certain
assumed conditions to which a work belonging to this genre supposedly adheres
are being relativized and ridiculed. The same can be said as wen with regard to
Byakusojuken kyo (Byakusofuken sutra, 6-5) and its revised edition, Tosei kagai
dangi (Treatise on today's pleasure quarter). 2 The former a:;sumes the outlook of
a Buddhist sutra, in which the narrative form is itself borrowed from the most
commonly acknowledged image of Buddhist discourse. It begins with a phrase
that can be found in identical form in many Buddhist sutras: "Thus I have
heard." Yet, already in the second line, .Chinese characters that sound like
Sanskrit but connote completely different things are to be found. Polysemy is
constantly utilized to incorporate double discourse; this pseudosutra, in the guise
of a Buddhist sermon, preaches about techniques for handling women in the
pleasure quarters. Such words as nyorai (tatagatha) (6-6) are deliberately mis-
spelled to foster multivocity of graphic signs (in this case, nyorai becomes
"women coming," 6-7). Even at the level of phonetics, polysemy is obvious, but
the essence of the humor actually lies in the linkage of phonetic polysemy to the
displacement of graphemes. Jodo, or the Pure Land (6-8), for instance, is given a
completely different combination of Chinese characters (6-9), whereby the word
is almost abruptly associated with an impure, sinful, yet joyous image of the land
of sensuality. The narration, which pretends to be that of a Buddhist sutra,
reverses its message and relativizes the authority behind the official voices,
which would otherwise exercise a tremendous didactic pressure on the readers.
2Kakai Jura, Byakusofuken kyo (1744?), reprint in Sharehon Taisei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Chu'okoron-
sha, 1978), pp. 161-90.
180 Frame Up
The humor of such a practice thus resides in this duality of narration, according
to which the surface voice is constantly betrayed by the graphic arrangement of
the booklet. A"written text and its "voice" do not speak in unison. Instead, they
often designate opposites. This is a text in which rigid moralism is thoroughly
defeated.
Furthermore, as Tose; kagai dangi demonstrates, the structure of reasoning
itself is parodied: stereotyped metaphors, enumerations, and categorizations-
all features typical of Buddhist and some Confucian sermons-are incorporated
into the booklet in such a way that the absurdity of official discourse is exposed to
the fullest degree. A depraved monk, Shizoken or Shidoken (6-10), who appears
in a number of the parodist works is an actant whose function is of great
importance. In Tosei kagai dangi, Shizoken functions as a "deviation effect" ~f
the double discourse. In opposition to Honmu Dojin, another character (who IS
supposed to be a street lecturer on popular ethics), Shizoken's arguments effec-
tively parody and disqualify those assumptions without which official discourse
could not claim its validity as the truth. It should be noted that the main objective
of his argument is not to disprove what Honmu Dojin puts forth as true and
normal. Rather, by disturbing the mechanism of signification through which a
statement is evaluated as true or false, Shizoken demonstrates the conven-
tionality of what has hitherto been regarded as true, natural, and normal. His
utterances are filled with puns, abuses of metaphors, and mistaken categories, all
of which tend to destroy the possibility of normal communication. For this
reason, I can say that Shizoken is an actant who represents the duality of dis-
course. He calls forth a discursive possibility, the possibility of generating the
sort of discursive field wherein binary oppositions such as true/false, good/bad,
and normal/abnormal are always reversed and rotated so that notions of truth,
good, and norm are ultimately proved nonsensical. As a consequence, one can-
not even say that Shizoken or his claim is insincere, because sincerity (without
which the notions of insincerity would be unintelligible) does not itself make
sense. The presence of this actant in these literary works no doubt testifies to the
strength of literature vis-A-vis reified transcendent values. If power generates and
regenerates what are to be perceived as transcendent values by means of a set <:>f
discursive apparatuses, the discursive possibility represented by this actant never-
theless continues to relativize and disqualify such values. Shizoken intervenes in
the official argument by interjecting unexpected combinations of images and by
disrupting the assumed isotopy, the established association, of words. At the very
least, it was possible in this work to illustrate that the legitimate existing institu-
tions could be parodied and thereby deprived of their presumed authority even
though what was perceived to be social and institutional reality at that time could
not be transformed merely by defamiliarizing the assumed isotopy. It is essential
in this connection that in spite of the disguise Shizoken appears to assume in
debate, he nonetheless makes the very idea of debate nonsensical. He seems to
attest to the notion that even if one does not subscribe to an ideological position
Dejamiliarization and Parody 181
outside the space of generic discontinuity and its languages, it is possible to
disclose the implicit assumptions underlying that space by creating nonsense, by
generating within that space fissures that force the sense-making mechanisms
particular to that space to malfunction. What is being achieved by the presence of
this actant, I suspect, is a defamiliarization of the space of literary conventions.
Nonetheless, it is doubtful that the parodist literature of the eighteenth century
actually carried out the defamiliarization to the extent that I have suggested, for it
seems that it failed to defamiliarize the very conditions of its genesis. Despite its
radical gesture,. such parody did not actually succeed in striking the discursive
fonnation in which power was couched, which probably explains why the par-
odist literature could be institutionalized so soon and so easily. Instead of being
an effective critique, parodist literature became a form of flirtation. Precisely
because of the lack of what Ito Jinsai called ai, which does not necessarily
exclude parody as an attempt to reach others, the playfulness of its own parodist
strategies ended up institutionalized: in a sense, it forgot to parody '·seriously."
In that case) what was it that prevented it from being a Penetrating critique of
contemporary common sense? From this perspective, my analysis must be ori-
ented, first, toward that aspect of parodist literature within which the prevalent
image of power was effectively disqualified and, second, toward that literature's
integration by a new discursive space within which parody merely reinforced
rather than debunked the new arrangement of power.
Haikai-ka or the Double Operation
Naturally, defamiliarization extended into other genres of official discourse.
Classic Japanese poetry was widely parodied to create another popular genre,
kyoka (6-4), or comic tanka (6-12); similarly, Chinese poetry was transformed
into kyoshi (6-13), or comic Chinese poems. It is not difficult to see that because
of the nature of defamiliarization, as soon as any genre receives recognition as
such and is contained within the space of generic discontinuity, it can be de-
familiarized and parodied.
Those works belonging to authorized genres-notably classic poetry, Bud-
dhist sutras, and Confucian treatises-were constantly parodied. Ishikawa Jun
conceptualizes this defamiliarization and parody as haikai-ka (6-14), or the re-
organization of discourse by haikai principle. 3 Using the example of comic
verse, he demonstrates how a work belonging to classic literature is vulgarized
by associating the renowned image in the no play Eguchi with a maid employed
in a trading house, who sleeps around indiscriminately. Let me reproduce the
verse he cites and briefly explain its phrases.
3Ishikawa Jun, Edojin no hassoho ni tsuite, in Ishikawa Jun zenshu, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Chikuma
Shobo, 1962), pp. 252-63.
182 Frame Up
Sakuma no ~ejo wa hakutsuki no chijire gami, ura ni kite kikeba ototsui zo ni nori.
"Sakuma no gejo": a maid employed by Sakuma. "Sakuma" probably de-
notes a trading house owned by the Sakuma family.
"Hakutsuki": Baku is a metal leaf; here it refers to golden leaves attached
(tsuki) to the head of a Buddha image. Hakutsuki also means notorious or
renowned.
"Chijire gami": frizzled hair. Normally the head of Buddha image is covered
with many buds, which are, in fact, constructed from curled hair with metal
leaves on top. However, frizzled hair also evokes the image of pubic hair.
Therefore, "being notorious or renowned for her pubic hair" (4'Hakutsuki no
chijire gami") implies that every man in the neighborhood knows what her pubic
hair looks like.
"Ura ni kite kikeba": "Coming to the back door to ask for/about her." Indeed
this should mean that somebody came to the Sakuma household with a view to
arranging a date with her. One would not come to the front door to see her for
such a purpose.
Ishikawa then points out in the verse the dual structure in which the image of
Dainichi Nyorai is superimposed on this young employee Otake: "In the Dtake
legend, we recognize a dual operation. It consists of a mechanism of mutation
according to which the same image, while referring to a historical figure,
Eguchi, also designates a symbol of an everyday affair. Here, we are talking
about a mechanism of transformation within which one sees Dtake with one's
eyes open, but also see Dainichi Nyorai with one's eyes closed."5
The underlying rule of what Ishikawa refers to as the reorganization of dis-
course by the haikai principle operates on the basis of two assumptions. First, the
general readership must be familiar with both classic literature and the space of
generic discontinuity. Words quoted from classics and forms of narrative con-
struction must not only be immediately understood as pertaining to a position
defined within that space but also be associated with specific isotopies and
groups of images. As is the case with literature in general, an utterance does not
take place in a cultural vacuum but is produced against and for certain texts
already existing in the archive of the classics. Even a single word, such as
"elephant" in the verse I just quoted, should automatically evoke the whole
imagery associated with the classics: in our case, it is the no play Eguchi. in
which a courtesan in a small village called Eguchi, riding an elephant, transforms
herself into Fugen Bosatsu, or Samantabhadra. In this respect, every word or
phrase is already sedimented with textual associations. It is only in terms of
intertextual relationships, therefore, that words serve to project meanings accord-
ing to the specific expectations installed in a work's readership by past works.
Without covert reference to other texts, a work does not make sense.
4Ibid., p. 252.
5Ibid., p. 254.
DeJamiliarization and Parody 183
Second, the space composed and constituted by the classics is distanced from
the field of everyday speech. It is assumed that one lives in a reality that the
language of classic literature is unable to de,scribe legitimately and exhaustively.
There is an implicit consensus that the words and vocabulary of the classics are
foreign and that they therefore do not have direct appeal to those engaged in the
everyday mundane world. That the field' of everyday language is separated and
distanced from the languages of official and authorized discourse does not mean,
however, that there exists a distinct presumptive unity of classical and official
language within which one might adequately express activities, sentiments, and
perceptions that would otherwise not be accessible to a general audience. One
should never be so naIve as to presume that a certain experience can be ver-
balized in one language but not in another, as if experience could be identified
independently of language. There is simply no way to unequivocally distinguish
language from experience; conversely, there is no experience independent of
language. Any argument based on the implicit assumption that language and
experience are two autonomous entities is suspect. In this connection, it is
important tostress that what is called "colloquialism" is not an explicit kind of
language. Certain phraseology that often appears in written and authorized texts
can be used in ordinary conversation and hence rendered colloquial. Neither
vocabulary, phraseology, nor even syntax is an adequate means by which to
define the putative colloquial language, for as I have suggested with regard to the
status of direct speech in the script of ningyo joruri, ordinary speech and its
languages are constituted in terms of a variety of differentiations including those
dividing verbal and nonverbal texts.
Defamiliarization and Parody
By means of the reorganization of discourse according to the haikai principle
(or dual operation), an authentic classic is related to a new textl con-text that had
not been associated with the original. The sense of discontinuity is, in fact,
produced by that very unexpectedness. An unexpected juxtaposition of words
adds a new meaning to the original text to which reference is being made, and
thereby transforms it. In short, such an operation is motivated by the will to
distort the originality of the text and trivialize its authority, rather than to secure
and restore the original. What is even more striking is that the writers of parodist
literature were interested in the authenticity of original texts only in order to
integrate them into the world of "nearness." That is, they respected the authen-
ticity of the original texts in order to laugh at them. It is for precisely this reason
that defamiliarization is also a form of familiarization. The iconoclasm of par-
odic literature is always accompanied by a certain sense of vulgarization.
Stripped of the authority and remoteness usually associated with them, pres-
tigious texts are boldly inserted into the scene of the everyday, mundane, and
vulgar world. Santo Kyoden's Nishiki no ura, for example, presents one of the
184 Frame Up
most successful applications of this dual operation. 6 This novella parodies many
previous texts, including Chikamatsu Monzaemon's. But for the sake of my
argument, let me concentrate on a thread that connects this work to Japanese
classic poetry.
Toward the end of this novella, a courtesan, Yugiri, and her lover, Isaemon,
are exchanging amorous words while the next room shinzo (apprentice courte-
sans) are enjoying themselves playing with hyakunin isshu (6-15) or waka poem
cards of one hundred poems by one hundred poets. The lovers' words and those
of classic poetry intersect and generate a peculiar field of polyphony. This coex-
istence of two different genres of discourse in a synchronized field projects the
style of humor particular to the dual operation as postulated by Ishikawa. It is
impossible to make the interactions of the various voices and isotopies of Nishiki
no ura available in English, for translation would require reorganization of
syntagmatic word order which would destroy the synchronic effects. I will,
therefore, present a few selections in Japanese and try to explain how equivocity
generates hilarious consequences.
Edo: Izumi Shikibu. Arazaramu kono yo no hoka no omoide ni,
Isaemon: Ima hitotabi no kando no wabi mo sumi, kono nikai e rno harete kite,
awaruru yo ni naritai rnonoja.
Yugiri: Hon'ni, maiban awarenshita toki wa, takusan so ni omoishita ga, konogoro
wa konoyona hakanaio koto sae, taitei no kokoro zukai ja ozansen.
Isaemon: Sosano.
Edo: Ushi to mishi yo zo imawa koishiki. 7
Edo, one of the apprentice courtesans, recites one of the one hundred poems.
First, the name of the poet and the kami no ku, the first stanza of the poem, are
pronounced. Edo's voice is then interrupted by the conversation going on be-
tween Isaemon and Yugiri, which happens to coincide with the beginning of the
shimo no ku, that is, the second stanza of the poem, "ima hitotabi no" (once
again). The series of words in the lovers' dialogue shifts away from the words of
the poem, and loses its parallelism with the poem. Yet the dual operation is at
work here too, as the end of Isaemon's utterance refers to the poem again. This
utterance and the poem end with the same syntactical construction, which ex-
presses hope or expectation in the subjunctive mood:
6Santo Kyoden, Nishiki no ura, in Kolen nihon bungaku taikei, vol. 59 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
1958), pp. 415-40. A writer of gesaku fiction in the late eighteenth century, Santo Kyoden (1761-
1816) was also a ukiyo~e illustrator, poet, and shopkeeper. In addition to illustrating many kibyoshi
(yellow cover) booklets, he wrote in a wide range of popular genres, excelling in satire and the vivid
portrayal of city life. For the publication of his satirical book, he was arrested by the Bakufu
authority. The titles of his major works-including Edo umare uwakt no kabayaki, Tsugen somagaki,
Shikake bunko. and Tsuzoku daiseiden-contain so many phonetic and graphic puns that they are not
translatable.
7Santo Kyoden, Nishiki no ura, in Koten nihon bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1958),
59:415-40.
DeJamiliarization and Parody 185
Edo: ... Arazaramu kono yo no hoko no ornoide oi, (A)
[Ima hitotabi no au kOIO rno gana.) (B)
Ima hitotabi no kando no wabi rno surni, (A*)
kono nikai e rno harete kite, awaruru yo ni naritai monoja.) (B*)
The second stanza (B), indeed, does not get pronounced; rather, it is implicit
as an other text to which this text refers. This implicit reference is assumed by the
syntactical isomorphism between this stanza and the actual utterance of Isaemon
(A*). Both texts in fact express a wish for an impossible rendezvous. In this
sense, Isaemon's utterance is almost a semantic equivalent to the lower stanza,
except that additional information is included here which does not appear in the
Poem. That is, Izumi Shikibu, a renowned poet of the Heian period, did not
mention how to apologize to the family and ask them to redeem the hero from
disinheritance, nor did she specifically mention the second floor of a brothel
where the rendezvous was to take place. The apparent similarity between the text
referred to and the actual utterance generates a hilarious contrast.
Moreover, we see how the poem is deprived of its aristocratic and other-
worldly connotations when its entire message is compared with the context
within which it is inserted in Nishiki no ura. This poem, by a poet famous for her
straightforward expression of sensual affection, could roughly be rendered into
English as follows: "I will soon cease to be in the world [that is, I will soon be
somewhere outside this world]. As a precious memory [to take with me], I wish I
could have another encounter with you." "Arazaram" in this context does not
mean "I" am going to die soon. Rather, the Buddhist cosmology that might lead
us to believe that the poem is essentially valedictory, in which this world is one of
mahy worlds, is merely stated and used as a framework. As is often the case in
Heian literature, the division between this real world and imaginary worlds is
constantly reversed, in the sense that the realness of this world is perceived as a
sign of its unrealness. In addition, the shift of viewpoints in this poem is the main
thrust, without which the whole semantic construction would be unintelligible.
First, the world in which "I" cease to exist is marked as this world; yet my own
death in this world would only lead to my presence outside this world. Here the
frrst shift of viewpoint is indicated by "kono yo no hoka no omoide ni" (for the
sake of the memory "I" would have about this world when "I" am outside this
world). The actual rendezvous that "I" wish for should take place in this real
world, however, and the "I" who wishes for another encounter with her lover is
the one who is still in this world in flesh and blood.
In Isaemon '8 utterance, what had been a metaphysical reference to another
world in the original is flattened out so thoroughly that no anguish expressing
spiritual bondage can be found. Isaemon's wish is, from beginning to end, both
earthly and earthy, concerned only with sensuality and everyday trivialities.
Moreover, because of the isomorphism in semantic construction, the contrast
186 Frame Up
between classic language and the contemporary language of the townspeople is
even more clearly illuminated. What strikes the reader is the marked irrelevance
of the classic poem within the context of the described situation. No doubt this
sense of irrelevance is intrinsic to the humor in this work and is constituted by
means of narrative devices. Were there no such isomorphism in semantic con-
struction, even the sense of humor based on such an irrelevance would be lost.
In a similar manner, Yugiri's succeeding utterance is skillfully parodied in
order to call forth an effect, namely, that the second stanza ("Ushi to mishi yo zo
ima wa koishiki") of another hyakunin isshu poem by Fujiwara Kiyosuke,
obliquely sums up the emotion the lovers share with each other. 8 Again, a sense
of irrelevance evoked by the juxtaposition of the classic poem and the mundane
conversation is evident. The lovers lament the passing of time. When Isaemon
used to pay frequent visits to Yugiri, they did not realize how precious time was,
but since they are no longer allowed to see each other, their feelings are inten-
sified.
Yet, the metaphysical anguish expressed in the classic poem is totally absent in
the lovers' conversation. The poem depicts the fear of death and the transitory
nature of life, but neither Isaemon nor Yugiri attempts to relate their situation to
any otherworldly speculations. The obvious similarity between the situation in
the poem and in the lovers' fate enhances the irrelevance, making it all the more
clear and striking. Thus, the worlds of classic literature and contemporary mun-
dane life are superimposed upon each other.
This strategy is exactly what is suggested by Ishikawa's notion of double
operations: it is effective not only because classic texts are defamiliarized and
deprived of their authenticity but also because what would otherwise be remote
and transcendent is reduced to the earthly and earthy world. The grandiose
statements in the classic texts are trivialized and thereby introduced into the
world of "nearness," the familiar sphere of "actual life" in which the people of
eighteenth-century Tokugawa Japan dealt with everyday necessities. We should
remember at the same time, however, that although a classic text thus parodied is
removed from its designated position within the space of generic discontinuity
and defamiliarized, the double operation also familiarizes the classic text because
it gives a new readership uninhibited access to classic writings that had once been
beyond their reach. Fragments of the classics are absorbed into mundane life and
find their way into everyday activities. As has often been remarked, it is during
the Tokugawa period that classic literature was introduced to the common au-
dience at large and became part of mass literature.
Plural Voices
The notion of genre poses many difficulties, particularly with regard to liter-
ature in the eighteenth century, not because many works of parodist literature
8The poem in its entirety: "Nagaraeba, mata konogoroya shinobaremu, usito mishiyo
koishiki."
DejamiliarizatiQn and Parody 187
incorporate forms and vocabulary that nonnally belong to other genres but 00-
ca~se th.ese work~, intentionally or not, objectify and relativize the very interre-
latIonship accordIng to which the style and vocabulary of any specific genre are
evaluated and implicitly used to distinguish it from other genres. Certainly, every
tex~ is produced against the background of other texts, but even more apparently
so 10 the case of Tokugawa parodist literature. This particular kind of literature
~an ~e .located within the given space of generic discontinuity, but at the same
time It IS .a metag~nre, for it problematizes and exposes the rules generating and
regen~ratI.ng th: gIven taxonomy of genres. In this sense, it could be argued that
parod~st l~terat~e ~ot only was co-opted by and incOrPOrated into the space of
genenc discontinuIty but also that it simultaneously gave rise to the possibility
that a text could be liberated from constraints that determined the mode within
~hich it suppo~edly signified. This dual position leads to an apparently contra-
~lctOry evaIUa~l?n of parodist literature: it is at once the most vulgar fonn of
lIterature (positIoned at the bottom of the generic hierarchy), and at the same
time,. because of its parasitic relations to whatever genre is to be parodied, it
functlons as the metalanguage for the parodied genre. Hence, it is outside the
determin~tion of the generic hierarchy. The tenn gesaku (works of play or jokes,
5-11), Widely u~ed to designate this genre of Tokugawa literature today, ex-
presses ~he ambivalence of parody very well. It does not simply signify self-
deprecat~on on the part of the parodist; it also means that, by being "insincere,"
s.uch wnters are capable of objectifying, distancing, and relativizing conven-
tional modes of presentation. It demonstrates that one need not speak in a given
s~yle, la~~~age, and voice, that multiplicity itself can be the principle of discur-
sive act~vItles. Even though gesaku may not convince the readership that the
conventlonal mode of presentation is inadequate, at least it suggests discursive
possibilities other than those accepted by contemporary institutions.
Nevertheless, it must also be emphasized that this form of insincerity and
parody was itself institutionalized. I must ask, therefore, to what extent the
conventional mode of present':\tion was actually objectified, distanced, and rela-
ti:vized in this kind of literary practice. Or the question should probably be asked
differently: Was there some silent site, constituted in this discursive space, which
enabled this practice but to which this practice was completely blind? But before
I elucidate this question, it seems necessary to analyze the structure of parodist
literature further.
~~ radical plurality of voices one finds in kokkeibon (comic books, 5-7)
testIfIes to the intersection and collision of a variety of voices at the expense of
plot coherence. Many kokkeibon and sharebon (5-6) seem to lack coherent
narrative structure; their narrative unities may appear dependent on a mere suc-
cession of scenes, partly because of the structure of this plurality in which it is
not an event but a scene that determines how various voices are integrated into a
linear succession of words. In such works, one can hardly avoid the impression
ZO, ima wa that words uttered in a given situation at a given time are collected and recorded
without being synthesized into a drama. As I have mentioned with regard to
188 Frame Up
pictorial and spatial presentation, it is a scene, rather ~an a linear organization of
various actions, which is the determinant rule in these works. No wonder writers
faced such tremendous difficulties in tying one scene to another, for in order to
accommodate this plurality, they had to generate a scene or a situation in which
various voices were presented as they were uttered. It is important to note in this
respect that the sphere of ordinary language, "nearness," and mundane life is
nothing but a space in which innumerable voices, none dominant, intersect and
collide with one another without explicit order. Such spaces may appear chaotic,
but they escape from any synthesizing mechanism that could screen utterances
and put them in order so as to fonn a coherent message. Therefore, this kind of
sphere, filled with heterogeneous words, possesses no telos according to which
narrative time arranges utterances in a linear order. Here, time is a mere suc-
cessivity that loosely connects one speech to another; there is only change, no
overarching continuity. Certain things happen at one moment; at another, other
things happen. There is no particular· connection except for some very simple
plot. What endows actions and happenings with signification in these texts is not
the context (if by "context" we mean a narrative linearity by which utterances
are organized in successive order). Instead, signification is produced within a
situational con-text that surrounds and animates the words and behavior of char-
acters. Although words are necessarily organized linearly in a verbal text, the
structure of semantic order horizontally redistributes utterances in such a way
that a statement representing speech is juxtaposed to other quoted speeches
through what I have called the gestalt type of intertextual construction. Of
course, this fonn of presentation is problematic to the extent that within such a
juxtaposition the time of narration does not proceed as it does in other narratives.
That is, it appears that the time of narration is glued to the time of the action and
that the space represented by the verbal text is confined within the space of
action. Consequently, the same constraints to which action adheres determine
and limit narrative possibilities. Restricted by the principle that to read such a
text is both to retrace utterances contained in it and to repeat speech acts that
produced these utterances, the time of narration cannot "skip" or "leap over"
the temporality of the speech act. Here, just. as in scripts for theatrical perfor-
mance, no deployment of words ever overcomes the restraints imposed by the
scene: unless the scene changes, the time of narration must continue to be
enclosed within a given scene. And when the scene does change, there cannot be
temporal continuity between scenes. The narrative continuity ends abruptly as
the scene ends; just as on a stage the theatrical space that establishes itself within
the stage setting, as well as its imagined world, disappears when the curtain falls,
so the continuity of narrative time must come to a sudden halt. In this case the
,time of these novellas is fragmented and detached from the overarching time of
chronology; these parodist novellas not only defamiliarize classic literature, dis-
qualifying the authority of generic hierarchy, but also disseminate encompassing
historical time. Instead of one authentic history based on narrative continuity,
Dejamiliarization and Parody 189
these generate innumerable histories disseminated and distributed within the
space of ordinary language. No longer are they histories of heroes; we are told
that there is no prestigious viewpoint from which events of the past can be
synthesized into a singular line of narration and thus integrated into the unity of
the whole. By offering a different fonn of presentation and a new epistemological
choice, such texts destroy and dissemble the myth of linear history in a subtle
way.
At the same time, it is worth noting that these parodist novellas represent a
sense of ahistoricity. Imm~rsed in the reality of the mundane world, the writers
could not see how the present was related to and determined by the past. Thus,
above all they seem to have lost a valuable means by which to defamiliarize what
was perceived to be near, immediate, and familiar. History was recognized in its
instantiation in the present, just as fragmented and disseminated quotations from
the classic writings were incorporated into the language of the townspeople.
Only insofar as the traces of the past were scattered on the surface of contempo-
rary discourse did history "mean" something to the readers of parodist literature
in the eighteenth century. Their concern was exclusively with the here and now,
and this strong adherence to the present required the double operation through
which texts of the past were subjected to general consumption.
Two issues relate to the question of parodist literature and historicity. First, as
Ishikawa's notion of the reorganization of discourse by the haikai principle
suggests, parody and defamiliarization would be impossible without positing
some kind of distance or discontinuity. What, then, is the nature of this distance,
this discontinuity that sustains the double operation? Violating assumptions un-
derlying literary production produces an effect in which what has been accepted
is suddenly estranged and resituated within an irrelevant context. Seen from a
political stance that is eager to affirm the existing discursive arrangement, the
reorganization of discourse by the haikai principle would appear rather grotesque
and destructive. Yet it is in fact a creative attempt to liberate one from the
restricted economy power imposes. What this practice discloses is the conven-
tionality and historicity of positivity; that is to say, what the majority of a social
group believes is given and real. In this context, what is at stake is not a specific
institutional form such as the shogunate but the legitimacy of power itself. For
this reason I have argued that authors of parodist literature, albeit unconsciously,
had proposed not another form of power but rather the dislocation of the existing
power, which had regulated their discourse. This argument, however, can be
maintained only on condition that the object of defamilarization and parody is
recognized as integral to a power that presents itself as a transparency, a neu-
trality, a set of commonsensical presuppositions. In other words, the same double
operation cannot be repeated once such a transparency has been objectified and
defamiliarized. Its critical effect is lost if parody is institutionalized. I think that
this is why Tokugawa parodist literature degenerated into a "playful" skepticism
that tamed the radical historical difference of the past by familiarizing it, into an
190 Frame Up
easygoing liberal relativism that accorded every political stance its merits and
demerits and "deemed all to be deserving of equal respect. Instead of facing the
intrusion of the otherness of the Other in the sphere of nearness, the parodists
often seem to have ended up clinging to a homosocial world where they were
securely at home, engaging in an endless series of chats about how to handle the
women of the pleasure quarters, continually indulging themselves in mutual self-
pity and rivalry over women. Their skepticism turned out to be an excuse for not
risking themselves in the encounter with the Other in everyday life and a legit-
imation of their inability in ai to go out of their homosocial world.
Second, in eighteenth-century parodist literature, specific uses of polysemy
helped visualize and thematize what had been presumed to be normal and natural
and had thus been reduced to transparency. It was believed that polysemy ren-
dered the invisible visible and that systematic constraints on the production of
knowledge and speech had to be exposed. By engendering abnormalities in the
perspective of reception and situating it in apparently queer angles with respect to
an epistemological framework, presumptively transparent assumptions could be
rendered opaque; precisely in this way the omnipresence of the epistemological
framework could be illustrated. That is, polysemy, when validly applied, could
create a particular angle of refraction, which could make the hitherto invisible
emerge as an obstacle in vision. But by the same token, there would be no point
in repeating the same procedure in order to make visible what had already been
rendered visible. Parodists might have continued to crack and fissure the invisi-
ble network of criteria according to which a work was evaluated and classified,
but without a continuing effort to defamiliarize, the presence of the system of
implicit assumptions could not be recognized, just as we do not realize the
presence of clear glass except when it is cracked.
This is, of course, one of the most important recurring themes in this book: if
there are no cracks in the glass, strike it so that cracks will appear. Then it will be
not a reality beyond the glass but the glass itself that will be visible.
The problem of historicity is closely related to this critical effort. Moreover,
historicity and polysemy are interdependent. We should remember that the crit-
ical function cannot in itself be ascribed to polysemy in general. Nevertheless, a
specific use of polysemy in a specific discursive formation is able to perform a
critical function. In this sense, too, the problem of parody is historically specific.
The obsessive concern of parodist literature with the here and now effectively
eliminated any possibility for critical self-evaluation. In addition, the ahistoricity
of these texts could be securely contained within a discursive space to which, as I
will elucidate, polysemy was no threat. (But here too I must hasten to repeat that
the discursive space at issue does not coincide either with so-called Japanese
society as a whole or with Japanese culture as an all-encompassing system).9
9For this reason, such overgeneralizations as "Japanese society is not logocentric." "Japanese
culture is feminine," etc. are simply pointless.
DeJamiliarization and Parody 191
Thus far we have seen how a new discursive space emerged in Tokugawa
literature and some problems its emergence engendered. It is possible to point
out, of course, that a schism existed within eighteenth-century Tokugawa society
as to how history was to be conceived, since there were also other genres of
discourse in which the continuity of historical narrative was maintained. (Of
course, we must never assume that whatI mean by eighteenth-century discursive
space ever coincides with the whole of eighteenth-century Japanese society.) We
can conclude that the notion of history was extremely problematic at that time
and, possibly, ~hat I should talk about plural senses of history in the eighteenth
century.
Of course, I have by no means presented a comprehensive account of the
literary scene; nevertheless, I have identified certain basic features of this discur-
sive space. In the remainder of this chapter, I shall review some of the issues
already discussed in Part Two and evaluate their theoretical significance within
the scope of this entire book. '
Perspective, or Abschattung
In Nihongo wa do iu gengo ka (What sort of language is Japanese? 6-16),
Miura Tsutomu discusses differences between pictorial expression (kaigateki
hyogen, 6-17) and verbal expression (gengoteki hyogen, 6-18). He contends that
in pictorial expression the depiction of an object inevitably involves expression of
the subject's perspective. An object can be described, identified, and determined
as such only if it is seen from the position of a specific viewer. A thing seen from
nowhere is merely an impossibility. Like phenomenologists, Miura acknowl-
edges in pictorial expression some of the conditions of perspective, or Abschat-
tung. pertaining to the perception of things in general. Thus he regards pictorial
expression, in contrast to verbal expression, as an imitation of objects in the
sensory aspect, which "implies that pictorial or cinematographic expression is
restricted by the position of the author's sensory organs and by his particular way
of grasping by means of the senses." 10
In pictorial expression, therefore, subjective and objective expressions always
coexist as already synthesized. The pictorial expression of an object is first and
foremost an expression of the subject's attitude and position. But Miura also
points out that the viewpoint and subject's attitude that are registered in pictorial
presentation cannot be immediately identical to the position and attitude of the
viewer. Rather, the subject's imagined position is preserved in pictorial presenta-
tion.
IOMiura Tsutomu, Nihongo wa douiu gengo ka (Tokyo: Kisetsu-sha, 1971), p. 70. Miura does not
seem aware of the theoretical implications of his attempt (as explicitly announced in the title of this
book) to define the characteristics of the Japanese language. Perhaps, this explains why his argument
on occasions sounds rather parochiaL
192 Frame Up
On the other hand, this kind of immediate synthesis of the subjective and the
objective does not exist in verbal expression. Referring to the language process
theory (gengo kateisetsu, 6-19) of Tokieda Motoki, Miura defines the nature of
verbal expression, noting: "One of the main characteristics of language is that
there is no direct relationship between the sensory mode of an object and the
sensory mode of the fonn of its expression." 11 Later he remarks:
[The fact] that language is free from the constraints inherent in the sensory aspects of
an object leads, on the one hand, to the fact that it requires social convention for its
expression and, on the other hand, to the fact that objective and subjective ex-
pressions are separated [in language]. One must seek an essential feature of language
here. Duality in expression exists in the form of synthesis in the case of pictures and
movies, but in the case of language, duality is divided, with another duality of
linguistic and nonlinguistic expression being generated as a result. 12
This is, indeed, an attempt to classify various forms of presentation in tenus of
their structures. Elsewhere Miura attributes the specificity of linguistic ex-
pression to duality in expression:
There are many ways to grasp an object. But in linguistic expression, various
specificities of the sensory mode in which an object is presented and sometimes the
characteristic of the sensory mode itself are omitted, or the nonsensory object can be
presented. In any case, an object is always presented through generalization or
universalization. That is to say, language expresses an object either by generalizing
it into a presentation and thereby conceptualizing it or by directly grasping it as a
universal aspect of the concept. Therefore, differences that a particular object entails
in the sensory mode of its perception prior to conceptualization cannot be expressed
in linguistic form. And listeners and readers do not have direct access to an object in
linguistic expression. 13
He then maintains that the enunciation is therefore an act by which the division
between immediate sensory perception and conceptualization is generated. It
follows with regard to the speaking subject that the enunciation is always a
doubling of the subject. What he refers to as "splitting in the linguistic ex-
pression of ego" is related. To express an object through linguistic media is to
posit a subject other than the one already existing in the world. 14 A subject thus
generated is no longer subjugated to the constraints of Abschattung. It is in this
context that Maurice Merleau-Ponty once said, "Language is not a being-in-the-
world": the subject posited in linguistic expression does not have its place within
tl Ibid.,p. 45.
12Ibid., p. 71.
13Miura Tsutomu, Ninshiki to gengo no riron (Theory of cognition and language) 2 (Tokyo: Keiso
Shobo, 1967), 2:381.
14Miura's use of the phrase "Genjitsu ni sonzai suru jiko" to refer to the ego already existing in the
world does not mean that he simply assumes the identity of the "real" ego.
Defamiliarization and Parody 193
the world of perception. In other words, through verbalization one becomes an
anonymous other who is at the same time both nowhere and everywhere; that is,
one becomes universalized. If the nonverbal text is characterized by the subject's
positionality in the world, then the verbal text is certainly 'defined by its subject's
freedom from perspectival constraints. In other words, language is the field of
the other, and enunciation is a transition from the state in which one has not yet
experienced the splitting and therefore has not been transformed into a subject, to
the realm where the subject has been split and has thereby lost its direct rapport
with the world. Such is Miura's argument.
Perhaps I should point out a fundamental problem in Miura's approach similar
to the one I found in Benveniste's ideas. By emphasizing the difference between
sensory expression and linguistic expression, or the visible and the articulatory,
Miura tends to ascribe an immedi.acy to the visual in contrast to the mediated
nature of the linguistic, as if the visual were more directly affiliated with the
primordial experience of perception. He posits, in fact, a real ego (shutai teki na
jiko, 6-20) as opposed to the ideational ego (kannen teki najiko, 6-21).15 In spite
of his insight into the importance of the "mirror stage" in social formation,
which he draws from his reading of Marx, he seems to posit the real ego without
any qualification:
The material mirror used in the idealistic split of ego is not exclusively a glass mirror. Already
Marx pointed out the existence of "other men" as one of those material mirrors. "Since he
comes into the world neither with a looking glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtean philosopher, to
whom 'I am r is sufficient, man first sees and recognizes himself in other men. Peter only
establishes his own identity as a man by first comparing himself with Paul as being of like kind.
And thereby PaUl, just as he stands in his Pauline personality, becomes to Peter the type of the
genus homo." This is Marx's critique of the idealism of Fichtean type. As I have mentioned,
Fichte's "ego" is, in fact, an ideational self, [Kannen teki no jikol, but Fichte insists that such
"ego" exists from the outset. In contrast, Marx argues that the ideational self does not exist with
birth, but through the encounter with "the mirror called other men:' the real self [genjitsu teki
na jiko, 6-22] is split to generate the ideational self. 16
Hence, Miura's notion of shutai is blind to many questions that necessarily arise
when the shutai is substantialized and subjectified. This blindness is, in fact,
shared not only by Benveniste (most evidently, as I said, in his notions of
discourse and person) but also by Tokieda Motoki, as I shall indicate in my
discussion of his linguistics later. Though they do so in different ways, Ben-
veniste, Tokieda, and Miura all reduce the shutai to the subject of enunciation,
despite the fact that, particularly in Miura's work, the specular image of the self
is clearly distinguished from the agent who speaks. I?
It sometimes seems that eighteenth-century parodist literature was haunted,
obsessively attempting to deny the nonPOsitionality of verbal expression. By
spatialization and the denial of narrative linearity, it showed a coherent tendency
15Miura, Ninshiki to gengo no riron 1:22-39, 149-69, 230-40, 2:354-401, 510-26.
16Ibid., p. 29. The quotation is from Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, trans. Samuel Moore and Edward
Aveling (New York: International, 1967), p. 52.
17See esp. Miura, Ninshiki to gengo no riron 2:519-26.
194 Frame Up
toward that which Miura identified as characteristic of nonlinguistic expression.
Insofar as it is an expression at all, a non-linguistic expression does not immedi-
ately project the position of the viewer in the world. Yet it is true that parodist
literature favored textual configurations that alternatively adhere to the scene and
the perfonnative situation. Instead of constituting what Roman Ingarden called
"represented space" by organizing "represented objectivities," it created the
field of many perspectives, directly tying the visual and verbaL 18 Narrative time,
if I can still speak in tenns of narrativity, was almost congruent with the time of
action that flowed within the scene. By dispersing the unity of the narrative voice
into many utterances by multiple speakers, the time of narration was disrupted
and deployed horizontally. The impression that one would normally have about
the works of Santo Kyoden or Jippensha Ikku 19 affinns the thesis that these
works present a space where various voices intersect and contradict one another,
rather than a story or definite plot that connects various utterances in linear
18In The Literary Work ofArt, trans. George G. Grabowicz (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univer-
sity Press, 1973), Roman Ingarden defines "represented objectivities" (or objects) and "represented
space": "I would especially like to emphasize that the expression 'represented object' (or objectivity)
that I am using is to be understood in a very broad sense, encompassing, above all, everything that is
nominally projected regardless of the objectivity category and material essence. Thus it refers to
things as well as persons, but also to all possible occurrences, states, acts performed by persons, etc.
At the same time, however, the stratum of what is represented can also contain the nonnominally
projected, as, in particular, what is intended purely verbally. For the purpose of simplifying termi-
nology, the expression 'represented object' is meant to encompass-in the absence of express
restrictions on this usage-everything that is represented as such. At the same time, it must be noted
that 'objectified' objects need not necessarily find themselves in the stratum of 'represented objects.'
And this is true in various senses. In the first place, it is not necessarily a question of the particular
fonn of the objective givenness in which the object remains distinctly 'distanced' with respect to the
observer (although in the great majority of instances this is exactly the case). Second, what is
represented does not necessarily have to possess 'objective' properties, i.e., those that are intended as
being free of every existential relativity" (219-20). He continues: 'Represented space does not
i<
allow itself to be incorporated either into real space or into the various kinds of perceptible orienta-
tional space, even when the represented objects are expressly represented as 'finding' themselves in a
specific location in real space, e.g., 'in Munich.' This represented Munich, and in particular the
space within which this city-as one that is represented- 'lies', cannot be identified with the
corresponding segment of space in which the real city of Munich actually lies. If it could be, then it
would have to be possible to walk out, as it were, from represented space into real space and vice
versa, which is patently absurd. Moreover, nothing can change the fact that the segment of space in
which the real city of Munich is constantly and invariably situated has a pronounced existential
relativity with respect to cognitive subjects (even though it does not yet coincide with the orienta-
tional space that is existentially relative to a particular cognitive subject), since this real city quite
evidently constantly changes its position in the one, objective, homogeneous cosmic space-if that at
all exists-and therefore, in this latter sense, there is actually no segment of space in which it could
constantly and invariably be found. The segment of space represented in the literary work is not to be
identified even with the 'always the same' existentially relative segment of space in which the real
city of Munich lies. They are entirely separate kinds of space, between which there is no spatial
crossing" (224-25).
19Jippensha Ikku (1765-1831), fiction writer and playwright of the later Tokugawa period, was a
low-ranking samurai who left feudal service and began writing joruri scripts and kibyoshi. His talent
extended over many genres, including gokan (bound volume), yomihon (reading book), kyoka (comic
waka poetry), and senryu (comic haiku poetry). Perhaps he is best known for his very successful
kokkeibon series Tokaidochu hizakurige (Shanks' mare).
DeJamiliarization and Parody 195
succession. What is manifested here is a deeply rooted desire to return to the
enunciation, to the imagined primordial and immediate synthesis of subjective
and objective in perception, a return from the splitting of the subject in language
and from the out-of-the-world-ness of linguistic expression to a direct rapport
with the world through lived experience.
Furthermore, since many parodist works do not have an explicit plot structure
according to which the unity of a work might be construed in tenns of a begin-
ning and an end, they create the impression that speeches of ordinary people
were directly transcribed into writing, although such transcription is doubtless
impossible, a fantasy projected by phonocentrism. Thus depicted, the events of
everyday life do not exhibit an overarching meaning. There is the suggestion that
life simply does not have a transcendent essence, only immediate, concrete, and
"near" reality (which is, after all, a transcendent value nonetheless). It is also for
this reason that parodist literature could be an effective critique of those contem-
porary ideologies that in one way or another seduced people into belief in a
transcendent order and found a moral implication immanent in every possible
event, even though those who were not ethically cultivated might not be able to
see it. This is how the parodists told the audience that the world was, after all, as
it was, and possibly this is the fundamental reason why the shogunate feared this
kind of discourse and censored it many times. That is, regardless of what classic,
authorized documents said to the readership, nothing was hidden under the
surface of everyday phenomena, and therefore, the sphere of nearness, of vulgar,
mundane, and trivial everyday deeds, was, as a matter of fact, where the ultimate
authority lay. Parodist literature helped remove from the minds of the audience
various ideological constraints, the main function of which was to posit the
existence of a univocal "truth" beyond the reach of commoners and thus to
justify the existence of authorized commentaries on classic writings. It is pre-
cisely in this context that eighteenth-century parody was at one and the same time
both defamiliarization and familiarization. It defamiliarized the orthodoxy and
authenticity associated with those writings, but it also gave direct access to those
writings to those who were supposedly not properly educated. Parodist literature
taught its readership that one did not need to know the original meaning of a
classic, that the reader should place it in the contemporary scene and see how it
worked when surrounded by other texts of the time.
In this respect, the way Ito Jinsai treated the canonical writings adumbrated the
emergence of parodist literature. Instead of generating a metalanguage based on
canonical writings, he reversed the order of the original ancient writings and their
commentaries. He attempted to determine the dimension within which canonical
writings were to speak to his contemporaries; the authentic voice of the writings
should come from the site where they encounter nonverbal texts, that is, what I
identified as' the performative situation. Although the performative situation
functions as the background for the writings (which in turn function as the
figure), it contributes as much to the constitution of meaning as the writings
196 Frame Up
themselves. Implicit in Ito's approach is the awareness that whatever the per-
formative situation may have been when the ancient writings were originally
produced, it has been permanently lost; there is no way to authenticate one's
reading by recourse to the origin. His notion of kogi (ancient meaning, 6-23) is
neither the original intention of the author nor the plentitude of the scene of the
originary utterance. Rather it points toward the cognition that the meaning of the
character should not be taken to be transcendent nature but should be com-
prehended within the specific discourse in which it is used. Hence, the validity of
Confucian teaching had to be judged in relation to the contemporary per-
formative situation in which Jinsai was involved. This relevance of the contem-
porary situation in reading Chinese classics was further affirmed in his discussion
of nearness. Validity is primarily concerned with ethicality; that is, it is ap-
proached from the viewpoint of the establishment of virtues in action in the
contemporary situation.
The double operation that characterized Edo literature in general, according to
Ishikawa Jun, invalidated the authority of the classics and further articulated the
manner in which the classic writings were introduced into the present. In the
eighteenth-century discursive space, the act of reading was also defined by this
double operation; obviously the status of writing (written text) in general thus
had to undergo a radical change. The rules of the discursive formation were
transformed so that the relationships between verbal and nonverbal texts, and
writing and speech, were necessarily changed.
The problematic that thinkers faced in the eighteenth century was no doubt in
accordance with this transformation of discursive space. In addition to the reduc-
tion of the verbal text to the performative situation, the sense of nearness and
immediacy was continually emphasized. Following Miura Tsutomu's termi-
nology, the sensory aspect of perception was directly incorporated into the non-
verbal and, especially, into the visible. What defines the positionality of the
viewer-speaker in such texts is the presence of the subject's body, according to
which perspective, nows and heres were determined. Hence, the overwhelming
tendency toward spatialization and pictorial presentation in eighteenth-century
parodist literature implied an effort on the part of the writers to include the body
of the subject in discourse. The plurality of voices one often encounters in
parodist novellas of this time is certainly related to the problematic of the pres-
ence of the subject's body in discursive space. Voices are uttered by a plurality of
speakers without a single, monophonic center, a center that would often be
invisible and hidden but would give an 4'objective" tone to the entire work.
Instead, the writers of eighteenth-century Tokugawa Japan let various voices
speak, thereby creating a heterogeneous literary space where the center was
constantly shifted by means of parody or the double operation. Needless to say,
this method was possible only on the grounds that direct speech and spatialized
discourse were articulated as distinct forms: without the spatialization of dis-
course, the multiplicity of speaking voices would have been impossible; without
DeJamiliarization and Parody 197
the articulation of direct speech, the presence of the speaking subject could not
have been postulated.
Textual Materiality
Now I must turn to the problem that was posed at the beginning of Part Two:
the text that is simultaneously seen and read. As has been mentioned, texts such
as calligraphy always pose an irreconcilable contradiction between these two
modes of perception. In a text produced solely to be read, it is possible to identify
the level at which it is determined, as a text, to be read. For instance, a book not
only contains its message but is also, and at the same time, a bound set of
compiled sheets of paper on which letters have been printed in black ink. When
we talk about a specific book, however, we feel entitled to ignore the kind of
paper and print used. Only when we exclude various aspects of textual mate-
riality from our consideration and concentrate exclusively on its enunciated or its
message is it possible to define and determine the unity of that book as
"thought." Much the same can be said about speech as an enunciated, for other
accompanying phenomena such as the facial expression of the speaker, the
situation of the enunciation, and the tone of voice necessarily have to be excluded
and ignored in order for a speech to be identified as such. The very act of
reading, when viewed in this context, denotes the distinction of various levels
immanent in textuality, whereby one level is the thematized focus of attention
while other levels are reduced to being part of the privileged level's undifferenti-
ated background. Hence, reading is a structured procedure by means of which a
certain aspect of textuality is differentiated from others; factors within that cer-
tain aspect are thematically posited as constituting the signification of the text in
question.
Seeing is also a structured procedure whereby a different aspect of the textual
materiality is the thematic focus of attention while other aspects remain un-
differentiated. Reading, indeed, is a form of seeing, but different aspects are
thematized in reading and seeing. It is possible to see or look at a book instead of
reading it. Even if it is the same book as one that we read, it manifests itself as a
different text when it is seen. In this respect as well, a text is always texts; a text
is already other texts.
Texts such as calligraphy call into question the presumed division between
seeing and reading, which is normally taken for granted. Faced with a work of
calligraphy, it appears, one should constantly shift the focus of one's attention
between reading and seeing. That which is normally ignored and cast into the
undifferentiated background in reading, surfaces into prominence in the constitu-
tion of a calligraphic work as text. A calligraphic work cannot be classified as
either purely visual text or purely verbal text. Because of the inherent hetero-
geneity characteristic of this genre of text, a work of calligraphy casts light on the
198 Frame Up
textual materiality that would otherwise be ignored and reduced to transparency.
Similarly, literature of the eighteenth century, parody in particular, continually
renders the very notion of reading problematic. Its emphasis on the visual aspect
of textual materiality continually disrupts and intervenes in the constitution of
representational space. When the focus of attention is fixed on one aspect and the
structuring procedure of such reading is stratified, various other aspects of textual
materiality pass unnoticed. Provided that the structuring procedure is stable, a
text is able to project an imaginary space independent of the actual unidentified
space in which it exists as material, in which case one no longer follow~ bla~k
patterns on white sheets. Instead, one lives with the heroes and the herOInes m
that imaginary space a book projects; one becomes blind to the book as material;
one does not remember when one turned the page or what kind of print was used.
In order for a literary text to be capable of constituting such an imagined repre-
sentational space, the other aspects of textual materiality must be suppressed. If
those other aspects could not be rendered transparent, one would frequently
encounter the merger of representational space with excesses that make the text
opaque.
Indeed, it is feasible to argue that this is the fundamental problem of eigh-
teenth-century Tokugawa literature, for this literature cannot be analyzed solely
in terms of its content or in terms of what it means to say. Rather, any under-
standing of eighteenth-century literature must inevitably involve a concern for its
forms, for the question of how it means to say, as well as for the spatial arrange-
ment of words, prints, and illustrations. Therefore, what I postulated as spa-
tialization with regard to ningyo joruri, parodist literature, and so on is not
exclusively concerned with the space of representation. Of course, any literary
text projects an imagined space to a certain extent, despite the fact that the actual
narrative itself must be deployed linearly; yet it is on the surface of narrative that
spatialization takes place in those cases I have so far considered. It is true that
parts of these works consist of linear verbal presentations; nevertheless, the way
utterances are constructed, juxtaposed, and related to one another encompasses a
nonlinear formation. As a result, such a representational space can neither be
circumscribed nor form a closure. Indeed, it is always open to the performative
situation. The reader's involvement in the imagined space the work represents is
continually interrupted and spoiled by the opacity of the text. The text does not
form a self-sufficient whole: it must necessarily be supplemented and folded
within a certain arrangement of its "outside." The signification of such a text
cannot be determined independently of the various loci of its writing, reading, or
utterance. Haikai poetry provides perhaps the best example of this interdepen-
dence, for in itself it has no fixed meaning; rather, its meaning must be deter-
mined by the readership on each occasion of its production. The reader must
actively and productively intervene in the text in reading haikai no renga. It is
intentionally produced in such a way that a stanza of haikai no renga generates
new effects according to the differing scenes within which it is read. In other
DeJamiliarization and Parody 199
words, a scene or performative situation that is in some 'sense accidental with
respect to the stanza and the series of stanzas is included within the signifiance of
haikai poetry as a correlative. Correspondingly, insofar as the process of its
signifiance is projected as an interrelationship of the performative situation and
the· actual words of haikai, its signification does not remain identical when the
situation changes. Or more specifically, .since the identity and the sameness of
the situation depend on the identity of meaning and the identity of meaning is
systematically jeopardized, we can justifiably go so far as to say that it is
impossible to tell whether or not the situation actually remains the same or
changes. .
Let us now take up the question of the two sides of the relationshiplt the
situation and the verbal text. Although the situation is not merely a sum of
various texts (because it is not a composite of texts), the haikai text does serve to
reorganize the performative situation. In a two-way process the haikai text helps
to structure the situation while the situation reciprocally places a definite mean-
ing within the verbal text of haikai of which we hitherto had been unaware. In
this specific sense, haikai poetry is a performative art. The verbal text of haikai
communicates with its so-called outside in terms of the gestalt-type relationship.
The detennination of signification in the gestalt type of intertextuality is a
determination neither of causality nor of expression. The perfonnative situation
does not determine the conditions of possibility for what a verbal text says, for
the verbal text also determines what aspects of the situation can be mobilized and
manifested. Similarly, a verbal text is not a mere reflection of a situation. It is
signifiance, not signification, that is generated as a surplus when a text encoun-
ters a given situation. In other words, in this encounter of different texts the
identity of the verbal text as a discrete, singular "work" is always subverted by
unexpected factors, by chance. Thus, as I have argued, we need to recognize two
different levels in the conception of intertextuality. When the notion of the text is
taken to mean simply a written text, we are able to postulate a field of significa-
tion wherein a verbal text constantly refers to other absent writings. However, it
has been widely recognized that the opposition between verbal and nonverbal
texts is far from clear and stable. If my notion of text includes nonverbal texts
such as bodily action, visual presentation, and music, I am not justified in using
the term "intertextuality" to indicate merely a stable relationship between a
given, putatively autonomous text and other texts.
The two different uses of "intertextuality" are of immediate concern to any
characterization of the general features of eighteenth-century Tokugawa liter-
ature. Like calligraphy, many literary works of the period constantly vacillate
between representational and situational spaces, as I have repeatedly noted. Yet
these works attempt to project imaginary worlds in which events are posited as
referents of the narrative. The polysemy, parody, and spatial arrangements of
these texts always interfere with the possible constitution of such a world of
imagination and thereby direct the attention of readers away from what is de-
200 Frame Up
scribed, discussed, and represented toward the how of these descriptions and
representations. The reader cannot remain securely within the time of. narrated
events in these works but is very often drawn back into the time of narration. In
short, textual materiality cannot be suppressed enough to render the text com-
pletely transparent; consequently these works appear extremely self-reflective.
The framing effect that separates the space of representation from the space of the
performative situation is so fragile that the reader's gaze is disrupted from time to
time and shifts from the content toward its form. Innumerable plays of signifiers
on the textual surface prevent the text from appearing transparent and thereby
force readers to be aware of the presence of the text as a material artifact within
the space of mundane everyday living.
Lived space, thus posited, is the world of nearness that Ito Jinsai tried to
articulate. Supposedly it is a space that exists in front of, rather than beyond, a
text. It is the world of everyday life, nearness, and immediacy consisting of
various nonverbal texts.
The Enunciation and the Body
This concern for immediacy dominated not only the literary production but
also the general intellectual discourse of Tokugawa Japan. We have observed that
the notion of immediacy is related to the thematic emergence of the human body
in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. After all, it is the human body
that defines here and now, that anchors the world of immediacy as the desire for
perceptual primordiality applies to it. One must also remember that the enuncia-
tion, as opposed to the enunciated, is that mode of utterance in which posi-
tionality and perspective, lost in the enunciated, play major roles. Therefore, to
comprehend a verbal text as an enunciation is, supposedly, to see the verbal text
as a bodily act that takes place in a given situation.
Phenomenologists have long since demonstrated that the imagined world pro-
jected by linguistic expression does not necessarily obey the principle of perspec-
tive. Using this insight as the criterion, they have defined the mode in which
objects of imagination, memory, and dream are given to consciousness, as op-
posed to the way in which objects are perceived. (For the time being, let me
postpone asking whether or not the very conceptualization of the present, accord-
ing to which the realness" of perception in the here and now is discerned from
U concern for the present, for immediacy and other attributes that are normally
the "unrealness" of imagination, is imaginary in itself.) It seems that the "split-
ting of the ego," as postulated by Miura Tsutomu, confirms this dichotomy
between perceptions and other modes of consciousness. As Boris A. Uspensky,
Roman Ingarden, and others have claimed, however, representational space that
cannot be given in perception can be articulated according to viewpoints. Never-
theless, if perception is granted the status of the origin of realness, the introduc-
tion of viewpoints would not necessarily mean that the space projected by the
Dejamiliarization and Parody 201
verbal text accommodates the notion of perspective, because, according to the
phenomenological approach, a viewpoint constituted by various discursive prac-
tices (indirect speech, stylistic variation, and so on) is not directly or immediate-
ly linked to the POsitionality of the viewer's body. In the case of literary works in
which representational and "real" spaces are definitively distinguished (that is,
as in the case of the "transparent" text); we should be clearly able to recognize
the "unrealness" of the discursive perspective and the "realness" of the sensory
perspective. But in the case of eighteenth-century Tokugawa literature, this dis-
tinction is rath~r problematic: the two spaces are often merged.
This is one of the reasons why speech played a prestigious role in eighteenth-
century literary and intellectual discourse. Speech, taken as enunciation, occupies
a rather ambiguous position in this discursive space because it can be simul-
taneously both a bodily act taking place within a given perfonnative situation and
an enunciated, detached from the situation (and thereby deprived of the POsi-
tionality of its enunciation). In ningyo joruri speech was considered to be the direct
utterance of a character in which the gesture of the puppet, the voice of the chanter,
and the scene itself were synchronized to form a whole. In this whole, the separa-
tion of· voice from body, which is the principal mechanism of puppet theater,
appears to be overcome. The representational space projected by the chanter's
narration and the actual scene merge together, with the effect that the "realness" of
the voice supplements the "unrealness" of the puppet's body. Thus a puppet ceases
to be a piece of wood and begins to take on life. On the other hand, many
eighteenth-century popular novellas depict direct speech without providing "ade-
quate" plots. Instead, pictorial illustrations of the situation are supplied, creating
the impression that a verbal utterance is made in the midst of a given situation. In
works without illustrations, which were also common, readers were required to
supplement the vision of the scene, just as one has to do when reading a playscript.
In either case, one thing is evident: a verbal text or writing is perceived as
incomplete; it must be supplemented by the copresence of other texts and a
performative situation. In other words, the representational space these works
project is not closed. It requires the support of "real" space. In that space, to
understand a verbal text is to integrate it into the space constituted around one's
own body. Hence, without the mimetic participation of one's body, the text is
taken to be unintelligible and meaningless. Doubtless as a result of this in-
completeness of the verbal or written text, works of this kind are characterized by
associated with the primordial experience lived-or imagined-by one's own
body.
Perception and the Splitting of the Ego
As has been demonstrated, the literature of Tokugawa Japan underwent a
radical transformation toward the end of the seventeenth century. Eighteenth-
202 Frame Up
century literature, particularly parody, is implicated in various problems intrinsic
to the new rules of formation which governed discursive space. In early
Tokugawa literature, no discontinuity existed in the field of presentation; the
authors maintained a sense of continuity between their own discourse and classic
writings. Certainly, they were unaware that the reality in which they thought they
lived could not be adequately expressed in the language of what they considered
to be classic, and therefore authentic, writings. They did not see any fundamental
rupture between their own literary language and the world they inhabited. Hence,
polysemy, which of course is not only characteristic of certain genres of eigh-
teenth-century literature but also had dominated premodern Japanese literature,
did not create a disparity between immediate and verbalized experience. Thus,
authors of early Tokugawa literature never witnessed the irreconcilable opposi-
tion of enunciation, as a bodily perfonnance, and the enunciated.
As discursive space transformed itselt the presumptive authority accorded to
classics was challenged and constantly called into question. No longer were
writers satisfied with the putatively stable relationship that had existed between
the production of new writings and the corpus of already existing texts. It would
seem that they were increasingly aware of the sphere of nearness, for which the
established forms of presentation were not adequate. At the same time, classics
that had long been regarded as transparent and intelligible became problematic
when it was realized that historical distance had indeed separated people from
antiquity. Yet it must be noted that such awareness was not due merely to the
historical changes that had occurred as time had passed. More specifically, the
loss of a viewpoint from which both old and new texts could be equally ap-
prehended problematized the relation to the classic texts of antiquity. This trans-
formation gave rise to a fundamental mutation in the relationship among lan-
guage, human beings, and the world. The very differentiation of language from
nonlinguistic phenomena, or of the articulatory from the visible, changed, and as
a result, the notion of language had to encompass what had hitherto been ex-
cluded from the field of specifically linguistic phenomena. In this respect, there-
fore, the sphere of nearness was not simply a new territory of discourse, a new
field of discursive objects. Rather, it was a new dimension in linguistic ex-
pression, which came into being when the dichotomy between enunciation as
bodily performance and the enunciated was made explicit.
It was by means of the double operation that this sphere of nearness was
identified as such. Writers could no longer locate this sphere on a continuous
plane encompassing the world of classic writings. The sphere of nearness was
generated by discontinuity, without which the double operation would have been
meaningless. Classics belonged to a certain "world," but it was perceived that
everyday speech, feeling, and desire formed a constituency beyond the scope of
the classical "world." Many came to view the language of the classics as com-
pletely alien to their own experience. To speak about their ordinary life in classic
language was thus to parody and defamiliarize words and phrases borrowed from
DeJamiliarization and Parody 203
~,the classics. In ukiyozoshi, it was still possible to glorify and authenticate imme-
'diate experience by using classic style, terminology and syntax, but popular
: literature of the eighteenth century used the classics only to exaggerate and
" promote a comic effect. The continuity between classic literature and the paradist
works was shattered; the discontinuity that emerged became one of the principles
Of literary production.
Because of this emerging discontinUity, polysemy in parodist literature oper-
ated in a quite specific manner: semes were superimposed upon each other in an
equivocal word! one seme belonging to the sphere of classic language and the
(ltber to the sphere of nearness, as we have seen in the example of the comic
poem depicting both the no play Eguchi and the maid. When more than two
,semes were involved, at least one of them belonged to the network of semes that
,generates the dimension of nearness, that is, the mundane and familiar world.
Concomitantly, the superimposition of semes generates an effect of unexpected-
ness because semes from completely different spheres meet in the multivocal
word. Indeed, the unity of such a sphere is defined in terms of isotopy, an
analytical concept according to which words are discerned as members of the
, same class and as belonging to the same homogeneous world of meaning. What
creates the effect of unexpectedness is the encounter of two irreconcilable iso-
topies, which also suggests an unexpected encounter between different regimes
of reading. Thus, to return to my example, it was possible to combine a classic
Heian poem, which was supposedly refined and aristocratic, with the lovers' talk
in an ordinary chamber in the brothel.
Hence, what distinguishes early Tokugawa literature from eighteenth-century
parody is not the presence of polysemy but how polysemy is organized: continu-
ously or discontinuously. When discontinuity is the principle, polysemy not only
combines many written texts within a single corpus but also engenders de-
familiarization. Relating what is normally regarded as authentic and refined to
mundane and vulgar objects and the events one commonly encounters in every-
day life, the parodist's work discredits, disqualifies, and thereby defamiliarizes
the set of presumed values by which the very authenticity and refinement of texts
of certain genres are sustained. As Mikhail Bakhtin demonstrated in Rabelais
and His World, parody could deprive the established and assumed order in which
power resides of its authority and legitimacy.20 In one of the most penetrating
critiques of humanism as monologism, he illustrated the possibility of a parody
that effectively dislocates the existing institution. Laughter, in this context, is an
instrument by means of which to disclose, objectify, and disqualify the system of
presumed values, a system that, after all, is most powerful when it is concealed.
We must also remember, however, that whereas parodist literature knows how
to defamiliarize what was perceived to be solemn and authoritative, it was not
20Mikhail Bakhtin. Rabelais and His World. trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1968).
204 Frame Up
aware that the sphere of immediacy, familiarity, and nearness itself had become
exempt from'defamiliarization; it refused to recognize that what is perceived as
near constitutes itself as such discursively and that therefore the perception of
nearness itself is also imaginary, Perhaps this explains why it was so easily
institutionalized and lost its critical momentum. (In the next part, I shall return to
the appropriation of parodist literature with reference to a particular form of
phonocentrism. )
Of course, not all discourse of the eighteenth century accommodated discon-
tinuity. As I have repeatedly insisted, the discursive space should never be taken
to coincide with a society, nation, culture, tradition, or even mentality as a
homogeneous whole, partly because it is impossible to determine thetotality of
discursive space as a totality of referents and also because many genres do not
seem to have been affected by the emergence of discontinuity. (For instance, I
have not dealt with the legal and administrative discourses of eighteenth-century
Japan.) Even so, parodist literature occupied a prestigious position and cannot be
discussed on the same plane as other genres. First, it is true that parodist liter-
ature was one of many genres and was characterized and differentiated from
works of other genres by its specific features. Second, because it was parody, it
did not have any specific object other than works of other genres. In this sense, it
was parasitic and could never circumscribe a domain of its own proper discursive
objects. Nonetheless, this characteristic parasitism seems to have endowed it
with a special force no other genre could acquire. In order for a work to be
identified as a parody of another work, it had to objectify the rules of generic
discontinuity according to which various works were classified into genres and
evaluated within the existing generic hierarchy. In other words, parodist literature
could function as a sort of metalanguage, although only to a limited extent; it had
to be composed on the basis of an acute awareness of its position in relation to
other genres and to the determination of generic differences. Parodists had to be
sensitive to the manner in which texts of various discrete origins were circulated
among readers, and what status was attributed to those texts-all without being
trapped themselves within the accepted system of presumed values. In fact~ this
sensitivity gave them the outlook of skeptics. It was not by protesting against
power but rather by defamiliarizing it that they attempted to reveal the inner
mechanism of social control. After all, one may say that their critique was easily
appropriated, but not because they doubted too much; rather, they did not doubt
radically enough: they did not doubt the limitation of their own defamiliarizing
tactics and naIvely believed that one could doubt everything. They thereby al-
lowed their own conception of nearness and immediacy to subsist uncriticized,
Consequently, the sphere of nearness and immediacy emerged as the new locus
of authority and ground of their homosociality. True, authority no longer came
from on high, from a remote and sophisticated place; it was in the here and now,
where things were primordially grasped in relation to the body. The here and the
present associated with one's body, however, always escaped the grasp of verbal
DeJamiliarization and Parody 205
texts because, bereft of the POsitionality and perspective that were supposedly
characteristic of sensory rather than linguis.tic expression, lived experience of the
body could not be verbalized. Here lies the significative contradiction that con-
tinued to motivate the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Because of the
sensory nature of this sphere of nearness, it could be cited, yet could not be
thematically discussed. The sphere of nearness was supposedly a topos of enun-
ciation, but it ceased to be so in the enunciated. Only as a highly charged silence
could it be vaguely suggested to accompany an enunciated.
Jacques Lacan has described a similar phenomenon with regard to the subject
"I. n The "In as signifier, he notes,
designates the subject of the enunciation, but it does not signify it. This is apparent
from the fact that every signifier of the subject of the enunciation may be lacking in
the enunciated, not to mention the fact that there are those that differ from the I, and
not only what is inadequately called the case of the first person singular, even if one
added its accommodation in the plural invocation, or even in the Self [Soil of auto-
suggestion. 21
Like Lacan's subject of enunciation, the sphere of nearness, which is lived by the
subject's body, can be only designated, never posited within the enunciated. One
can talk about the image of the body, but it is impossible to identify the body
itself as part of the enunciated, because a body within the enunciated is unavoida-
bly universalized and detached from its specific position within the performative
situation, once it has been brought into verbalization. Neither as a specular image
nor as an instance of discourse can it be arrested. The topos from which words
are issued remains transcendent with respect to visibility and verbal articulation;
it is the shutai that flees whenever an attempt is made to arrest it. After all, it is
the locus not of the same but of the Other, although it is very near to me: it is, as
it were, the Other in me.
This is why the verbal text, and writing in particular, had to remain incomplete
within the discursive space of the eighteenth century. When primacy is accorded
to the enunciation, the enunciated can only be regarded as a trace of its enuncia-
tion, the function of which is to suggest and designate the enunciative mode of its
originary repetition. Yet the dominant desire in eighteenth-century discursive
space was specifically to determine what the enunciation was. As one can see,
this is an impossible task. As soon as the enunciation is specifically determined
in the verbal text, it will have been transformed into the enunciated. I shall show
in the following chapters how this significative contradiction generated and
regenerated itself in eighteenth~century discourse.
In general, the dichotomy between the enunciation and the enunciated is
21Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), p. 298, or Ecrits
II (Paris: Seuil, 1966), p. 159. I have slightly altered Sheridan's translation in order to maintain a
consistency of tenninology with the rest of this book.
206 Frame Up DeJamiliarization and Parody 207

limited to the verbal text. In a nonverbal text, as Miura maintains apropos of the problematics of the enunciation, ritual, and history in discourse, and eigh-
"nonlinguistit expression," the final product of expression gives us the impres- teenth-century discourse on poetry harbored all these issues as well. It is no
sion that it somehow better preserves the sensory conditions at the act of ex- accident, therefore, that the National Studies (kokugaku, 6-24) (a large and
pression. My analysis of ningyo joruri has demonstrated, however, that there are heterogeneous group of hermeneutic studies which newly constructed as the
many intermediary stages between direct speech (within which disparity between authentic objects of learning Japanese classics, customs, and language and which
enunciation and the enunciated supposedly does not appear) and the enunciated flourished with an increasing number of students from the late seventeenth cen-
(within which the subject of the enunciation is completely erased). Through the tury until the end of the Tokugawa period) were much concerned with the
synchronization of various texts such as music, the chanter's voice, and the problems of textuality, immediacy, and the enunciation, for at the center of all of
puppets' gestures, the Text of ningyo joruri managed to articulate the "intensity these.issues lies ~he significative contradiction of the human body and language.
of subjectivity" with many different degrees of subtlety. In deleting stylized
intonation, music, and rhythm, the utterance of the chanter came closest to an
actor's raw voice, and this utterance was int~grated with the movement of the
puppet's body to project the illusion that it was an enunciation by the puppet
itself. From time to time, the Text reached that highest intensity of subjectivity, in
which an actor played by a puppet appeared to be speaking in a given situation.
By contrast, the voice often 4'lost" the subject of its enunciation and became
anonymous. Particularly when the voice was regulated by set intonation, music,
and rhythm, it was detached from the body that was supposed to utter it. Like-
wise, the movement of the body itself could be regulated by formal rules. In
dance, for instance, the body of the dancer was controlled not by its supposed
individual initiative (which is of course suspect) but by general rules that any-
body at all could follow. In such regulated bodily movement the dancer's loss of
individuality and integration with collectivity are pronounced. The body be-
comes an instrument of the collectivity, and its movement falls outside the
category of the "putatively natural gesture."
At this point, the problem of language and the verbal text encounters that of
ritual, for how could we understand the notion of ritual if it were not defined by
formalized behavior, a synchronization of various texts and music? The essence
of ritual lies in its constitution from nonverbal texts of an enunciated whereby the
individual subjectivity, or the image thereof, dissolves into the collectivity: it
posits the Other as an anonymous addressee to whom action in general (because
all actions are indirect insofar as they mean) is addressed. But precisely because
this Other, this "collectivity," is established as anterior to the execution of an
action, it carries political significance. When the Other is reified and identified
with the existing "collectivity," it affirms the existing power relations. By con-
trast, when the Other and its anteriority are understood otherwise, they could
project a "collectivity" that does not exist, an impossible collectivity that does
not conform to the existing institutions.
Nevertheless, the dominant tendency to see verbal texts from the aspect of the
enunciation raised an extremely difficult problem both for those outside the
establishment and for those who were in the position of governing the society,
and the philosophical discourse of Ogyu Sorai was one of the first attempts to
confront this problem. The question of the social institution was caught up with
 /

PART III

LANGUAGE, BODY, AND

THE IM'MEDIATE: PHONONETICISM
AND THE IDEOLOG Y
OF THE IDENTICAL

Narcissism is a one-sided but alluring response to the anxiety of transference. It involves

the impossible, imaginary attempt totally to integrate the self; it is active in the speculative
effort to elaborate a fully unified perspective, and its self-regarding "purity" entails the
exorcistic scapegoating of the "other" that is always to some extent within. As Freud
indicated, the desirable but elusive objective of an exchange with an "other" is to work
through transferential displacement in a manner that does not blindly replicate debilitating
aspects of the past. Transference implies that the considerations at issue in the object of
study are always repeated with variations-or find their displaced analogues-in one's
account of it, and transference is as much denied by an assertion of the total difference of
the past as by its total identification with one's own "self" or "culture."
-Dominick LaCapra, History and Criticism
CHAPTER 7

The Problem of Translation

The Outside of a Language

A discursive space always contains a system of generic discontinuity within it: it

is composed of a variety of utterances and of the relationships among classes of
utterances. I have already identified the level at which utterances are referred to
as essential components in the space of discourse. At the same time that a literary
text presupposes and includes verbal texts of the past in order for it to direct
itself-to make the kind of sense according to which the utterance of that text is
aimed toward its contemporaneity as distinguished from the pastness of the past
texts-it relates itself to nonverbal texts. Thus, intertextuality designated two
axes of the text, in which other texts participate through the formation of various
framings from which the identity of the work is constituted. Only as long as both
axes of intertextuality are invoked can the putative identity of a verbal text and its
place vis-a-vis other texts within a given discourse be construed. To sum up,
although a document may be located in a particular discursive space, its location
does not entail its production in a certain reality. The space I have been discuss-
ing is not a spatiotemporal continuum, marked by a chronology, but a possible
sum of verbal utterances whose mode of meaning accords with systems that
exclude and repress the materiality of the text, on the one hand, and accommo-
date it within the propriety of what is representable and eligible, on the other.
Hence, the notion of discursive space is necessary in order to discern a seemingly
confusionistic shift between the text in its textuality (including the general text)
and the conventional and fetishized notion of the text-a notion, after all, not
much different from that of the "book." Nonetheless, I allow this shift to occur,
and I do not try to cleanse from my discussion the many assumptions that the
conventional notion of the text carries, which would prove unacceptable under
rigorous examination. We should rather move along this shift and reiterate the
procedure by which the textuality of the text is repressed in a given discursive

211
212 Language, Body, and the Immediate
formation. Following the slippage of this shift is in fact intended to substitute for
what is often called contextual analysis, as a new approach of decipherment. The
notion of the context is encompassed by that of intertextuality, and this concep-
tion of a discursive space, despite the attribute "discursive," includes nonverbal
texts insofar as these are posited as a text's referential and exterior limit.
Here, let us not be confused about the status of the nonverbal text as a referent
and an outside point to which the text refers. The nonverbal texts in question are
not the exteriority of the text; they are constituted as an outside within a given
discourse; the very reference to the nonverbal texts means that it does not point to
the exteriority of the text. In this sense, the exteriority of the text can never be
located on the outside of the text, for exteriority is incompatible with an economy
that upholds the dichotomy of inside and outside. Instead, my analysis attempts
to illustrate the set of relations according to which a text's reference to other texts
is determined in a given discursive space. There is scarcely any verbal text that
does not relate itself to verbal texts. Furthermore, there is scarcely any verbal text
that does not relate to itself as a nonverbal text, either. A text may relate to other
nonverbal texts by indication, denotation, allegory, representation, what I called
the gestalt type, and so on.
In examining those relations governing a discursive space, then, I encounter
this ambiguous boundary between verbal and nonverbal. We have observed that
the emergence of the enunciation dramatized the roles of nonverbal texts in the
signifiance of a verbal text. In my analysis, this kind of intertextual relationship
seemed to be one of the most urgent issues to be examined in order to reach some
apprehension of eighteenth-century discourse. As a matter of fact, this was one
of the problems extensively discussed by eighteenth-century writers, albeit not in
identical terms to mine. And this is the area where a particular notion of language
is most explicitly postulated.
Perhaps it is unnecessary to note that it is in contrast to nonverbal and non-
linguistic phenomena that the question What is language? is best answered. Yet
this question was, I think, pursued by the writers of the eighteenth century with a
view to identifying the object of their inquiry.
The constant difficulty encountered in examining the notion of language in a
given discursive space is paradoxical: one can talk about language, but the
medium of inquiry collapses in upon its supposed object. In order to talk about
language as a whole, one is required to establish an economy whereby to gain
some notion of inside and outside. Figuratively speaking, the inside could be
circumscribed only in relation to its outside.
In eighteenth-century discourse, the outside of a language was posited along
two differentiae: historical and geopolitical. It is noteworthy that instead of
posing a general question, the theorists were first concerned with a more specific
question: What is a language of the other? or What is the other language? In this
connection, Harry D. Harootunian points out the general intellectual climate in
which interest in language was generated in the eighteenth century. The theorists'
The Problem of Translation 213
"recovery of antique words," he says, "was prompted by a conviction that
contemporary language had lost its translucent character; opacity prevailed over
clarity and this revealed the degree to which things, and meaning itself, no longer
confonned to received categories of similitude."1 In stressing the opacity of
language(s), they sought a transparent language, but it is through the wish for a
transparent language that they formulatecl the notion of opaque language. Need-
less to say, neither transparency nor opacity is an attribute intrinsic to a particular
language. Certain styles of languages available in Japan around that time may
have been incomprehensible to those not cultivated in them; in many countries,
the very incomprehensipility of some texts is celebrated and regarded as an
manifestation of the sacred. Such texts may well be perceived as opaque, but
they do not necessarily give rise to a desire for more transparent ones. Neverthe-
less, it is certain that unless there are discursive apparatuses relevant to the
formation of the discourse in which language(s) is identified as opaque, extensive
discussion of linguistic transparency is never generated, and what may appear to
cause opacity is categorized differently. Perhaps the question must be posed
differently. So I will ask how one was solicited to desire the transparency of
language, rather than how language became opaque.
In eighteenth-century discourse, there is a decided sense of crisis in language,
centering around the dichotomy opaque/transparent, which was dramatized in a
great number of intellectual debates. It is not easy, however, to determine what
the theorists were actually alluding to with the term "opacity." How was it
articulated, and rendered conspicuous? What were the conditions in which this
crisis in language was highlighted and expressed?
Of course, these have been the thematic questions since the beginning of this
book. But here I want to focus on the sort of treatises that nowadays would be
classified as "theoretical." As I will demonstrate, the terms resembling our
Htheory" (which still maintains too much familial resemblance to Aristotelian
theoria) were definitively denounced by many in the eighteenth century. None-
theless, the fact remains that a sizable portion of eighteenth-century publication
was devoted to studies of language, which were inevitably theoretically inclined.
Any denunciation of "theories'~ is invariably theoretical, and the writers of the
eighteenth century could not exempt themselves from this rule any more than can
those of the present day.
Opacity was first located at the point where these writers encountered the
language of the other. As is always the case, the language of the same, or our
language, was defined only after the languages of the other were postulated and
recognized. Thus, the formation of discourse on language(s) in the eighteenth
century is twofold: first, language was viewed against nonlanguage; second, the
language of the same was viewed against the languages of the other. Although
IHarry D. Harootunian, "The Consciousness of Archaic Form in the New Realism of Kokugaku"
in Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period. ed. Tetsuo Najita and Irwin Scheiner (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 85.
214 Language, Body, and the Immediate
these two issues are of different types, they are intertwined in the discursive
space. For-example, the problem of translation was of necessity posed in relation
to both questions.
The Problematic of Wakun
Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728) started his career as a Confucian lecturer in Edo,
introducing a new method of reading Chinese classics, which he called kiyo no
gaku (the learning of Nagasaki translators, 7-1).2 It included an extensive critique
of the established reading method that was widely accepted in the early eigh-
teenth century. Specifically, his method concerned the manner of reciting Chi-
nese books, but in Tokugawa society to propose such a new way of reading was
to initiate a radical change in the regime according to which Chinese canonical
writings had been interpreted. Moreover, the introduction of a new reading
method, it seems, abided by the general shift in verbal- nonverbal relations,
which I have described. As a matter of fact, kiyo no gaku can be apprehended as
a reaction to the emergence of the instance of discourse in the domain of intellec-
tual discussion.
At first sight, the idea of translation may appear devoid of all the traits of an
issue that invites painstaking reflection and, on some occasions, deadly aporia.
All those who have studied a foreign language presumably understand what is
meant by translation itself, the procedures it prompts and what is desired from it.
Some may simply take it as a transference of meaning from one language to
another.
As is always the case with a commonsensical comprehension of a concept
whose currency is generally accepted, however, the notion of translation as
fundamentally unproblematic does not withstand rigorous examination. When
one is not asked about translation, one knows, but when one is asked, one does
not know. Perhaps this phenomenon illuminates the unnoticed discrepancy be-
tween what we know and what we actually do, a discrepancy thanks to which the
critique of ideology is possible. So, what is translation after all?
Our common sense tells us that through translation we rewrite or refonnulate a
text, spoken or written in one language, into its equivalent in another; that is,
both the original and its translation denote the same event, judgment, or state of
affairs. Although there are instances in which the tenn "translation" is used to
describe a transformation or rephrasing of a text within what is supposedly the
2In his earlier career Ogyu devoted himself to the study of Song Confucianism and its commen-
taries on the Confucian classics. He was later influenced by two Chinese writers of the sixteenth
century, Li Paulong and Wang Shizhen, whose philological method he developed into his own
philological and philosophical enterprise, kobunjigaku (the learning of ancient texts and words). The
many works of this adviser to two Tokugawa shoguns include Benmei (Distinguishing names),
Rongocho (Commentaries on the Analects), Gakusoku (Rules of study), and Seidau (Discourse on
politics), together with many language instruction books.
The Problem of Translation 215
same language (of course, the idea of the sameness of the same language has to
be and will be submitted to a careful serutiny), it is generally assumed that
translation can take place only between two different languages, say, between
English and French or Chinese and Japanese. Ideally, reciprocity should exist
between the original in one language and its translation in another, so that the
translation of the translation could return to or coincide with the originaL But it is
widely agreed that such translation, producing no surplus meaning, is impossible
and that the divergence of a translation from the original is unavoidable. Hence,
translation is taken to be a process of approximation: approximation to the
meaning of the" original. Here, however, I must also note that in assenting to
these notions of translation, we have also imperceptibly posit the existence of
two linguistic unities, one from which we translate and one into which we
translate.
If sentences A and B exist in the same language, they are taken to be different
sentences and are therefore recognized as embodying two different significa-
tions. 3 On the other hand, if two sentences a and b are both said to be translations
of the original sentence C, they can be considered identical insofar as they are
conceived of as translations. Because of the postulate that A and B belong to the
same language unit, one.is compelled to discern the differences between the two
sentences, but compatibility is allowed for when they are related to C since both
sentences can lay claim to a referent that is, by definition, in another language.
Suppose sentences A, B, a, and b, are as follows.
A = HFine" B = "That goes"
a HFine" b "That goes"
And suppose:
C ~~<;a va"
Whether or not a and b are admissible translations of C depends, to a large extent
and in a variety of ways, on coexisting sentences and non-verbal dispositions to
which C might relate. Consequently, the accuracy and appropriateness of a
translation must be decided on the basis of the given conditions of each specific
text at issue. Nonetheless, it can be inferred that we accept both as compatible
3The term "sentence" is obviously as problematic as "translation." Yet, for lack of a suitable
word, I have used this word as if it were innocent. I do not know to what extent one could in fact
exempt oneself from the responsibility for the ideological effects engendered by the adoption of
certain terms, but it may not be utterly pointless to issue a disclaimer here. By the use of the word
"sentence," I do not imply that eighteenth-century discourse necessarily contained the notion of
completion at the elementary level of signification. Therefore, completion of signification cannot be
equated to the formation of a grammatical unit "sentence" in the discourse at issue here. Cf. Mikhail
Bakhtin, "The Problem of Speech Genre," in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W.
McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), pp. 10-59; and also Jean-Claude Chevalier,
Histoire de La syntaxe (Geneva: Librairie Dmz, 1968).
216 Language. Body, and the Immediate
variations simply because a and b are supposed to refer to C. Furthermore, this
compatibility requires that C never emerge on the same plane as a and b, or A
and B; C must be ascribed to the outside of the language unity to which A., B, a,
and b all belong. Otherwise, the following kind of confusion will ensue:
l visibility of Wakun scripts ceaselessly interferes with the possible determination
Person 1: "Paul replied, 'Fine,'"
Person 2: "Dh, no! He said, 'Ca va.' "
Let us consider the question of translation in reverse. Suppose, we simply do
not understand the notion of language unity and have no idea of a foreign
language or a native one. We can even imagine a linguistic medium in which
"Fine" and "Ca va" are allowed to coexist. In such a case, A and C are
incompatible not because they belong to different language unities but because
they are supposed to point to different denotata and to embody different significa-
tions from A and B. This problematic may be best illustrated by asking such
question as How can one translate a work that contains phrases and idioms from
the two different unities of language into either of these languages? How can one
translate the whole of an utterance implicating the multiplicity of languages into
the medium of one language? And ultimately, how can one translate the coexis-
tence of languages into the putative homogeneity of one language which exiles
and purges the other languages? This is nothing but an issue forcefully an-
nounced by the presence of wakun, the Japanese way of reading Chinese.
I have suggested that the notion of translation in the narrow sense of the word
also posits language unities. Translation implicitly requires that two language
unities be clearly delineated; where it is impossible to demarcate them, transla-
tion is also impossible. It is for this reason that the introduction of translation into
the discursive space of the eighteenth century gave rise to the discussion of what
a language was, whereby the unity of a language as opposed to that of another
language was thematically pursued. I am not launching an extensive analysis
here, but I suggest that a similar argument can be made about the text's relation
to itself as a nonverbal text. 4 As we shall see, this problem further reveals the
complications of the extremely unstable differentiation between the verbal and
the nonverbal when we ask, Is it possible to think about translating a nonverbal
text into a verbal one or into another nonverbal one? This question may sound
utterly irrelevant, but it was certainly relevant in eighteenth-century discourse,
for a reason I shall elucidate.
Before going into detail about the formation of an ethnic unity of language,
however, I should explore the topic of wakun (the Japanese way of reading
4Although this idea applies to translation in a broader sense, that is, translation as reading in
general, the positing of the sphere of compatibility is correlative to the detennination of the possible
intertextual relations of a text to itself. Whether or not the difference between "Fine" and «Fine," for
instance, is discerned in the register of reading is totally dependent on the way the sphere of
compatibility is predicted.
The Problem of Translation 217
Chinese, 7-2) and Ogyu Sorai's extensive criticism of this peculiar writing and
reading system, in which language unities were constantly eroded and put into
question. Wakun confuses those categories we take for granted today: it cannot
be thought of as either Japanese or Chinese, either verbal or nonverbal. The
of a text as purely verbal.
Ogyu's critique of wakun was based on his observation of many students of
Confucianism. Time after time, he urged the readers of his treatises to be atten-
tiveto what h~ called the "disease of the times," the students' inability to
confront Chinese writings head-on. Despite their claim that they actually read
Chinese canonical writings, they could read them only with the Japanese annota-
tions of the wakun system: "When they encounter originals without wakun, they
would rather avoid reading them. This means that they do not actually read
Chinese texts."5 Wakun prevents readers from directly facing the original Chi-
nese writings because the Japanese annotations partially translate and interpret
these writings. As long as the reader encounters Chinese writings in Japanese
annotation, the foreignness of the Chinese language is disguised by being famil-
iarized into the already established mode of conceptualization. In the majority of
cases, reliance on wakun creates the illusion that the Chinese language as used in
Japan can be synthesized into one without the estrangement to be experienced
when one tries to understand a foreign culture.
The Interior and the Exterior
In Ogyu's treatises, however, the unity of the Japanese language and Japanese
culture had yet to be circumscribed; it had to be given, yet was absent. Diverse
dialects were spoken and written around that time, and it was impossible to
fonnulate the single unity of a national language. In eighteenth-century Japan,
compartmentalized into many social classes, social groups, and regions, there
was no single standardized language to which the majority of the population had
immediate access. Instead, there were many language styles, ranging from kan-
",<".,;;,".,;:"" .. ;,.'. bun (literary Chinese) to native vernacular forms, which the same individual had
to employ according to the occasion. In informal everyday situations, if the
'."11:::.......•.. ,'-' addresser-addressee relationship allowed, one had to use what was then called
the language of village people, or rigen (the local dialect of the region, 7-3);
formal occasions, one used another style of language; in writing a letter, one
wrote in sorobun (7-4), a style that excluded certain colloquial vocabulary; and
for official and intellectual treatises, one used kanbun or its derivative. These are
but examples of many possible variations that created immense linguistic diver-
sity in the eighteenth century.
SOgyu Sorai, Shibun kokujitoku, in Ogyu Sorai zenshu, voL 5 (Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha
1977). p. 632. '
218 Language, Body, and the Immediate
But I do not base my claim that the unity of the Japanese language was absent
solely on die grounds of what may be called historical facts. As I shall substanti-
ate later, the unity of a language never emerges simply as an empirical fact, an
observable positivity~ its element is always discourse.
For this reason, Ogyu had to take pains to identify the specific linguistic milieu
into which Chinese written scripts, which he believed had originated from an
explicitly foreign environment, were to be translated. Let us note that Ogyu was
unmistakably aware that the unity he was postulating was absent in his contem-
porary world. Concomitant with this postulation of an ideal linguistic milieu is
the introduction of a regime equipped with set protocols and a translation
scheme, which required the formation of two linguistic unities: a language from
which a text is translated and another into which it is translated. It was essential
that these two language unities be exterior to each other, that there be no merger
between the two. Wakun had to be turned down because it violated the require-
ment of radical mutual exteriority. It merged two languages and allowed students
to conceive of them in the mode of continuity. Underlying Ogyu's conception of
translation is the assumption that within the unity thus identified of either the
translating or the translated language, anyone belonging to that unity is to have
immediate and intimate comprehension of a message expressed in that language.
In other words, Ogyu's extensive queries about language instruction would have
been impossible without presuming some notion of a native tongue that should
appear completely transparent to the native speaker. In theory, at least, in pos-
tulating the unity of a native language he imperceptibly introduced the notion of
the native speaker. In contrast to the radical foreignness supposedly perceived in
reading or hearing utterances in other languages, one's own language was
thought to allow for direct and intimate comprehension of verbal expression.
Hence, whereas other language appeared exterior in relation to one's own lan-
guage, utterances in the language of one's propriety should be immediately
comprehended by those who shared it.
What is at issue in this conception of an idealized linguistic milieu and its
relationship with other languages is the formation of a linguistic interior, posited
as opposite to an exterior, that is, the exterior to which the Chinese classics
adhered. By emphasizing that students must experience difference in dealing
with writings from China, Ogyu purported to circumscribe the area of the identi-
cal. Only through the determination of the other linguistic milieu as exterior
could the interior, the realm of the identical, be demarcated.
Where there was neither a standard national language nor even its image, it
was not easy to associate the interior, the realm of the identical, with existing
linguistic and cultural institutions. Ogyu had to discern from a mixture of alien
ingredients and components what was immediately familiar to "us" that genu-
inely belonged to the interior. It was imperative to expose a set of criteria by
which to disqualify those linguistic forms that obscured the boundary between
interior and exterior.
The Problem of Translation 219
Ito Jinsai's conception of nearness, or more specifically his conception of the
impossibility in conceptualizing it, is transformed and appropriated by Ogyu into
a discursive device, somewhat akin to the horizon of understanding in modem
hermeneutics, to be used to discern experiences that manifested traits of the
interior: "Books consist of characters, and characters are the spoken words of the
Chinese people [which have been transcribed]. . . . Despite the fact that the Way
is extremely high and deep, the Six Classics transmit [from antiquity down to the
present day] only ordinary speech that was directly transcribed into characters.
So, after all, what they contain is ordinary speech. "6 Even though the Six
Classics seemed complex and abstruse to those whose command of classical
Chinese was inadequate, their profundity did not consist in linguistic sophistica-
tion. They were originally written in such language that at the time they were
uttered any modestly cultured Person should have been able to apprehend them
easily. The language used was that of the commoners, but because of the histor-
ical distance and cultural differences that separated Chinese antiquity from
Tokugawa Japan, it had become hard to decipher and comprehend. Its apparent
reconditeness would disappear once an eighteenth-century Japanese student had
acquired sufficient knowledge of Chinese antiquity and its language; then the
student would comprehend these writings easily, just as peasants of Chinese
antiquity must have understood one another in their daily verbal intercourse.
What Ogyu's contemporaries perceived as obsolete and abstruse was not intrinsic
to the books themselves'?
Thus Ogyu postulated and projected an imagined language unity that sup-
posedly allowed for a realm of intimate and immediate communion, an interior,
and he tentatively associated the already existing ordinary and colloquial lan-
guage with the possibility of an absolute interior where no trace of disruption or
alienation could be detected. He tacitly assumed that the state of society in which
he lived was far from identical to the idealized realm he depicted in terms of the
interior. The world under the Tokugawa shogunate, as he saw it, was in the
process of decomposition, and everywhere he witnessed indications of social and
cultural decay. Instead of an interior that sustained holistic and harmonious social
cohesion, disruption, discommunication, and desolation seemed to characterize
historical reality as perceived. Thus, his language instruction method set forth
how his diagnosis of the social ills in Tokugawa society was to be organized and
then the probable remedies to be prescribed. By positing an idealized interior
opposed to the existing state of affairs, Ogyu highlighted the decayed and decom-
posed aspects of the Tokugawa world. As is all the more evident, the introduction
60gyu Sorai, Kunyaku jimo, in Ogyu Sorai zenshu 5:369.
70gyu did not identify ancient Chinese with the ordinary language of antiquity from the outset of
his career. During his so-called rationalist phase, when Ogyu thought of himself as follower of Zhu
Xi, he believed that the language in which ideas were to be properly expressed was the literary style
of the written treatise. See Ogyu, Kunyaku jimo, p. 371. At this stage he gave preference to the
written text over the oral and had yet to recognize the primary importance of ordinary spoken words.
It is noteworthy that the denunciation of Zhu Xi came as his emphasis shifted from writing to speech.
220 Language, Body, and the Immediate
of a new notion of translation was full of political implications and enabled him
to specify wbat in his contemporary world engendered such a sense of crisis in
him. Whereas Ito Jinsai associated decomposition and decay with the generation
and regeneration of life, Ogyu met them with some dread.
In postulating the notion of translation and establishing the new regime of
reading, Ogyu Sorai introduced a symmetrical structure of the interior and the
exterior by which to explicate the procedure of reading Chinese writings. But
because the relationship between the exterior and the interior was imagined to be
symmetrical and reciprocal in essence, it could be construed as the relationship
between the two interiors.
I can mention at least two prerequisites for this symmetrical structure: first, the
interior and the exterior must not overlap at all; they must be external to each
other; there must be no common factor belonging to both at the same time.
Second, both the interior and the exterior must form a closure, so that each can be
talked about as a totality, a unity; however complicated or vast it may be, its
totality must be conceivable. And probably I ought to consider a third prerequi-
site without which the reciprocal structure itself would be impossible. I shall
touch on it later in discussing the problem of transcendence. Meanwhile, let me
elicit the possible theoretical consequences of this structure.
Translation is understood as the transference of speech from one interior to
another. Since the unity of an interior is defined in terms of immediate and direct
comprehension, the kind of verbal expression that seemingly belongs to the
interior but does not facilitate easy and straightforward communication is to be
rejected and denounced. Hence, the social decay and disease that Ogyu repeat-
edly deplored were ascribed to the absence of the interior he believed any healthy
social formation needed. Of course, it is at this juncture that the opposition of
transparency and opacity in language acquired its highest political charge.
Ogyu accounts for the genesis of textual obscurity and opacity in two ways.
First, when a text is written or spoken in a foreign language, it naturally appears
indecipherable and therefore opaque. (Naturally? Yes, "naturally," that is, only
in a certain discursive space.) As I have said, a text originating in the other
interior cannot meet the requirements interior texts are expected to fulfill. A
geocultural differentiation is applied so as to determine and categorize causes of
textual opacity.
Ogyu also identified how what once was transparent was made obscure. At
this locus he outlined the primary apprehension of historical time, which does not
merely generate events and change institutions and customs but also distorts and
obscures texts. By the famous statement that language changes as time changes,
he meant that what had once been immediately and directly approached has
become contaminated and overshadowed. In eroding and obscuring texts, histor-
ical time creates a distance because of which what was once immediate now
seems unavailable to "us."
If there is enough distance between one historical era and the present, it should
The Problem of Translation 221
be possible to conceive of the past as another interior, which is external and alien
to the present era just as the ancient Chinese community was to Ogyu's contem-
porary Japanese community. In this respect, textual obscurity is translated into
evidence of the boundary between the inside and the outside. It seems that this
symmetrical model was adopted to account for the historical and cultural aspects
of textual production. But more important, by introducing translation, Ogyu
posited the very possibility of the realm of interiority. The interior, just like
modern subjective interiority, is a historical and social construct. Indeed, Ogyu
covertly invented a criterion by which to judge the validity of a given reading,
and he stipulated terms in which the authentic mode of reading was to be
diacritically discerned from other already existing but inauthentic ones.
It is in regard to how to reorganize and comprehend textual production that he
aimed to assert cultural and historical differentiations and pursued a new articula-
tion of the world. It is through a transformation of the regime of reading that a
new way of viewing the world and the possibility of imagining a new "collec-
tivity" were introduced.
Therefore, even when Ogyu argued against philosophical positions of other
writers; he had to resort to the question of reading. For example, '''Ito Jin-
sai ... interpreted ancient texts with the light of modem language, so that, in
the end, his position remained similar to the Cheng brothers' . . . . He still had
read these classics in a Japanese manner." 8 Ogyu assumes that the historical
differentiation between ancient text (#7-5) and modem text (#7-6) is structurally
isomorphic to the geocultural differentiation between Chinese and Japanese.
These oppositions, ancient/modem and Chinese/Japanese, are seen as two ho-
mologous relations. 9 The underlying premise for the adoption of these differ-
entiations is that the mono (things or reality, social reality in the sense of realitas,
1-12) of ancient China can be understood only through the medium of ancient
Chinese. Since the reality of ancient China constitutes an interior, it has to be
viewed and understood from within. This premise implies a more general thesis,
namely, that both things and language belong to a unity of reality or interiority
which is geoculturally and historically identifiable, and without reference to this
interiority, neither things nor texts produced in it could be grasped properly. This
premise also alludes to the point that one who stands outside the interior would
never be able to comprehend things belonging to it. Even though interiority as
Ogyu conceived it encompasses nonlinguistic phenomena as well, he clearly
states that the images of the interior and the exterior are envisaged through
differences associated with aspects of linguistic experience. More precisely, the
interiority of the interior thus defined seems to designate a certain primordial
80 gyu Sorai, Bendo, Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 36 (Tokyo: lwanami Shoten, 1973), p. 11. The
translation is that of Tetsuo Najita, unpublished.
9'fhe symmetry of Ogyu's model can be seen in many of his treatises on language. See Kunyaku
jimo. where it is evident that he understood Japanese culture in a symmetrical analogy to Chinese
culture.
222 Language, Body, and the Immediate
experience where things and language are not separated, where language inhabits
things, where language is the world.
Interdependence of Verbal and Nonverbal in the Enunciation
What now confronts us is a paradox, around which the discourse of Ogyu
Sorai and his contemporaries seems to linger. In order to comprehend the things
and nonlinguistic reality of the past or the other culture, Ogyu insists, on,e must
experience its language uses. But at the same time, a language of the past cannot
be acquired without references to the mono that activates and substantiates the
uses of such a language. Hence, language occupies a rather ambiguous position,
for in order to comprehend the things and nonlinguistic reality of the past, it is
essential to envisage the past through the language of that time, but the language
cannot be acquired without the knowledge of its historical reality, which by
definition falls outside mere linguistic mastery.
As Ogyu emphasizes the necessity to know the historical reality that sup-
posedly surrounds language use, the boundary between verbal and nonverbal
expression becomes all the more problematic. Here, I should note Ito's concep-
tion of a writing as always incomplete. Ito claimed that the proper account of a
written document involved inserting that document into its own relevant discur-
sive context (ketsumyaku, 7-7).10 Thus, Ito hinted at the conception of a text as
practice and of reading as a dialogic decentering that never comes to its own
prefigured end. In his understanding of reading, the textuality of the text was, as
it were, respected rather than repressed, so that the reading of a text could never
reach absolute saturation. The text could never be exhaustively known, not
because of human finitude but because of the materiality of the text. Ogyu
reconceptualizes Ito '8 textual strategy by reducing the discursive context to the
instance of discourse. It seems that, for Ogyu, to read and comprehend an
ancient writing necessarily required the supplement of the scene of the enuncia-
tion; to read and comprehend was to track the intertextual relations beyond the
contour of a fetishized text, thereby relating it to its performative outside. Ogyu
also saw the problematic of reading in terms of the incompleteness of a text and
the supplementary nature of the reading act. He saw that an ancient book that had
been handed down to the present time was essentially incomplete. But he fancied
the possibility that reading could recover the initial plenitude that he believed had
existed at the moment of its originary production and enunciation. It goes with·
out saying that the postulation of such a possibility is correlative to the postula-
tion of the interior. Whether or not such a perfect reading is realizable is beside
the point: in the discursive space of the eighteenth century, it was assumed to be
possible, and it seems to me, the wish for the transparent reading of the text and
lOSee, for instance, Ito Jinsai, Soron (General Introduction) to Rongo Kogi. Hayashi edition,
Kogido Collection, Tenri University General Library.
The Problem of Translation 223
for the reading of a transparent text continued to be generated and regenerated.
But for .this wish, the· prolifigacy of discourse on language would have been
impossible.
Even though Ogyu regarded a text as incomplete, he presumed that at the
moment of its enunciation, it was full, complete, and integrated into the per-
formative situation, where disparity could not exist between verbal and nonver-
bal texts. It is noteworthy that once such an image of plenitude has been brought
into being, language uses cannot be isolated and identified as such but must be
thought Qf as integrated parts of a coherent action that involves various texts,
among which verbal expression is but one. Enunciation suggests an act taking
place in a specific situation that is simultaneously corporeal and verbal. Such a
situation would necessarily accommodate various cultural and natural objects, as
well as human bodies that responded to the speaker's act. According to this
conception of verbal utterance, an act cannot be reduced to what it says. It is also
a cOfPQreal movement, a movement of the speaker's body toward an object,
among other objects, and it relates the body of the speaker to other things
nonverbally. Although the nonverbal aspects of an enunciation do not give rise to
signification, they prepare, activate, and modify it. Hence, it was imperative for
writers of the eighteenth century to seek the lost connection between what a text
said and the putative plenitude in which the original enunciation as a whole took
place. What underlies the incompleteness of written texts is this recognition that
the enunciated and, therefore, the signification of an utterance are necessarily
to be supplemented and do not represent the enunciation that supposedly pro-
duced it.
In this connection, I understand why Ogyu's conception of language is ambig-
uous: in order to return a text to the plenitude of its enunciation, one must recover
the objects and possibly the sociocultural milieu that surrounded and permeated
that text at the instance of its enunciation. At the same time, though, these
objects and sociocultural milieu would never be apprehended without the proper
understanding of the text, since they reveal their historical significance only in
relation to the text itself. Here I note an implicit acknowledgment that a text and
its outside relate to each other in the mode of interdependence. And I believe this
is the way Ogyu understood language and historical reality. Thus, he postulated a
realm of plenitude where an enunciation as a whole was generated and where a
text and its outside were fully integrated. There is no doubt that the interiority of
the interior found its most concrete expression in this sense of plenitude. Hence-
forth, to read a text was to recover, resurrect, and rerealize such a plenitude.
The Primacy of Speech
In this conception of language, text, and history, it is essential that a text be
apprehended primarily as speech. Speech is conceptualized as maintaining the
224 Language, Body, and the Immediate
primordial adherence to its outside and to the objects and human beings present
in the performative situation. Whereas writing solidifies and fixes the detach-
ment of a text from its outside and brings about its autonomy, speech thoroughly
adheres to the scene of the enunciation. Whether or not such a view of speech as
opposed to writing can be upheld has yet to be examined, but Ogyu introduced a
radial dichotomy between speech and writing and, from this perspective, re-
viewed the contemporary academic conventions according to which Chinese
books were read and commented on. This extreme dichotomy made the denun-
ciation of wakun absolutely necessary not only for Ogyu but also for the discur-
sive formation of the eighteenth century, those notions of historical time, histor-
ical reality, and the other that we consider specific to eighteenth-century
discourse.
Insofar as a text is fixed in writing, it loses the historical milieu proper to
itself, where it could speak in its proper voice. In other words, writing confuses a
text and relates it to an irrelevant situation precisely because it uproots and frees
the text from its proper environment. Moreover, written language tends to tran-
scend historical time because of the characteristic ascribed to writing: writing
preserves, whereas speech does not. On these premises, Ogyu accused Zhu Xi
and the Cheng brothers of reading ancient texts in modem language, and he
criticized Japanese Confucianism for both historical confusion and cultUral mix-
ing. Because it lacked the idea of interiority, he believed, Japanese Confucianism
constantly obliterated the boundary between the Chinese and Japanese lan-
guages.
Ogyu Sorai committed himself to the task of eradicating this almost incurable
defect of Japanese Confucianism. If reading is ultimately a means by which to
recover the originary plenitude associated with speech, the understanding of
ancient texts should mean an entry into such a plenitude, such an interior. If a
verbal utterance is integrated into some sphere of immediate action, then lan-
guage ceases to exist as an object independent of the historical reality in which it
is uttered. But this state of ultimate harmony cannot be realized unless the reader
is immersed in it, that is, situated within that interior. Of course, this notion of
involvement in the situation requires more than physical presence in it: one must
be able to use the language as if it were one's own proper mother tongue and
should acquire and internalize the knowledge of the situation to such an extent
that one is unaware of knowing it. This may be an ideal and imagined state of
achievement to which one can only aspire. For Ogyu, however, it was much
more concrete than we are inclined to assume, and he envisaged the possibility of
its achievement by repeatedly appealing to the idea of the ancient reign of the
sage-kings.
What he observed in his contemporary world was far from this ideal. Chinese
books were read and deciphered in a manner that was completely indifferent and
even hostile to it: "Scholars on this side read writings in a dialect and call such a
The Problem of Translation 225
way of reading wakun, which they claim is recitation of the writings. In fact, it is
nothing but translation. Nonetheless people do not realize that it is transla-
tion." 11 The dialect Ogyu mentions is a method in which a distinctly Chinese
writing is appropriated into Japanese syntax. This kind of transformation, be-
cause it fails to recognize two different language unities, is ineffective. The status
of the language into which a Chinese text is transformed is obviously ambiguous
and unstable. Because it is formed by putting markers and Japanese particles in
the margin of Chinese characters, the major portion of this transformation has to
be undertaken visually, or at least with reference to visual signs. Certainly it is
possible to gain'a high fluency in this "dialect," but it is almost impossible to use
it as a spoken language in everyday transactions. Wakun is never felt to be a form
of direct linguistic expression. It is a form of Japanese language, but a Japanese
person must translate the text into a more familiar language in order to grasp it.
Thus wakun is also a rather parasitic and foreign language within Japanese and
constantly disturbs the possible constitution of an interior. Instead of allowing for
the experience of an interior in which language and things are not separated,
wakun seems to provide an example of an alienated and ruptured verbal act in
which language is detached from things and people.
The Linearity of Speech and Wakun
Trying to reach this originary intention of the Chinese book through wakun
was, to Ogyu Sorai, like "an attempt to scratch one's itchy feet with shoes on."
He regarded wakun as an obstacle that stood between the originary speech and
the readers, and he implicitly assumed that authentic reading should give readers
immediate and direct access to the original, as if the readers were insiders within
the interior from which the text originated.
Suffice it to say that the primary conception of translation is given in terms of
the transformation of a speech from one language into another speech in a
different language. Therefore, the mediation of writing and visual signs is addi-
tional and excessive. On this basis Ogyu taught his students to approach Chinese
books not as visual but as aural. It is not difficult to understand why this new
method, which called for transforming Chinese writings into colloquial Japanese,
caught the intellectual world of the times by surprise, for scarcely any Confucian
scholars in Japan could actually speak Chinese then. The ability to speak Chinese
was considered unnecessary. Confucian scholars were exposed to Chinese books,
and only a few had had any experience of communicating with the Chinese
orally. As Yoshikawa Kojiro pointed out, a prominent Confucian scholar at that
time did not know what the word womien meant in vernacular Chinese, although
llOgyu Sorai, Yakubun sentei, in Ogyu Sora; zenshu 5:24.
226 Language; Body; and the Immediate
this does not mean there were not people who could converse with visitors from
the continent. 12 It was simply beyond their scope to imagine that Chinese clas-
sics could be studied without referring to the visual text.
Thus, the introduction of Ogyu's concept of translation marks the emergence
of the dichotomy between speech and writing in the discursive space of eigh-
teenth-century Japan. To postulate actual speech behind writing, to regard writ-
ing as the transcription of speech, is by no means a superior or natural approach
to texts, and it does not necessarily facilitate a truer understanding of them by
any means, but its consequences were unquestionably extensive and fundamen-
tal. For the new mode of reading redefined and reformulated the very notion of
truth and the purpose of study. At the core of this transformation of the discursive
space was the reformulation of the differentiation between verbal and nonverbal
texts. Ogyu's attempt to disqualify the Japanese way of reading Chinese was
initiated by the necessity to exclude what had hitherto been categorized as verbal,
but now fell into the class of the nonverbal as a result of this change.
We can schematize the two different modes of reading as follows:
1. Wakun
Writing (Visual)
-transfonnation I
!
Wakun (Yomikudashi) ~ Vocalization
-transformation II
! vocalized in Chinese as follows:
(Commentary)-Vocalization
II
(Understanding)
2. Ogyu's Method
(Voice - - - - - - + ) Written Text ---» Vocalization
transcription) II
(Understanding)
-transformation
! The transformed passage is vocalized as
Translated Text ---1> Vocalization
II
(Understanding)
In the first schema, there must be two stages of transformation or translation
before the understanding of the text is attained. The original is given as a visual
text, which Japanese readers, for whom wakun is prepared, are normally incapa-
12Yoshikawa Kojiro, Jinsai, Sorai, Norinaga (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1975). One finds a brilliant
description of Ogyu's language-learning problematic in this collection of essays. Yoshikawa main-
tains, however, that phonetic reading is superior to wakun. Moreover, he assumes that Ogyu's
particular view of spoken Chinese is transhistorically valid. There is no such thing as a trans-
historically correct or incorrect way of reading; simply different regimes of reading exist. It seems to
me that he fails to notice how such a view as his functions as a protocol for the professional
authorization of sinology. Prior to the eighteenth century, the phrase "the ability to speak Chinese"
simply did not make sense unless one specified which Chinese was at issue. After all, what does one
mean by "Chinese"? Do we understand "French" if we can read the French language of the sixth
century B.C.?
The Problem of Translation 227
ble of vocalizing. Thus the first stage of transformation is concerned with re-
organizing the syntactical order and supplementing the text with the Japanese
particles te, ni, 0 ha. Since this process entails transforming the linear order of
words and ascribing voice to ideographs, the visual and oral aspects of the text
cannot be treated independently. Yomikudashi (vocalized wakun text, 7-8) makes
sense only as an operation on the graphic text. It is impossible to deny that the
reorganization of syntax, which Ogyu called circular reading (mawashi yomi),
could be accomplished only if two different texts, the Chinese original and
yomikudashi, are juxtaposed to each other. At the level of the Chinese original,
ideographs are 'ordered linearly, and this linear order is, indeed, essential in
Chinese syntax. Yet once appropriate wakun marks and particles (kaeriten, 7-9,
and okurigana, 7-10) have been added to these ideographs, the focal point of
reading has to shift back and forth among ideographs to follow the directions
provided by the marks, and thus, the given linear order of the original is de-
stroyed. One should note, however, that the text resulting from this transfonna-
tion is also linear if it is vocalized. For instance, a passage from Ogyu's Yakubun
sentei provides a good example of what Ogyu tried to do in urging his students to
write as if they were Chinese of antiquity;
According to present-day standard Beijing pronunciation, this passage should be
B. Yi zhi yizi, wei dushu zhenju, gai shu jie wenzi, wenzi ji huaren yuyan.
Instead of reciting the ideographs in Chinese, however, Japanese scholars added
wakun marks and particles and transfonned the original as follows:
c. lioN I {tf,o ~ II~. ~g~ I .. *~'~ tnJlllIi'<{t+I~""u {><{r'Hiittmt< .. W.Rlmn ~=' ..
D. Yaku no ichiji, dokusho no shinketsu tari, kedashi sho wa mina monji ni shite,
monji wa sunawachi kajin no gogen nari.
The yomikudashi text is vocalized according to some sort of Japanese gram-
matical order. Both Band D are, in fact, linear and do not seem to disturb the
linearity rule of a verbal text when they are recited, but text D is far from
immediately comprehensible, since such words as shinketsu or gogen are phonet-
ic imitations of the Chinese original and can not be understood by the general
readership unless the visual text A or C is referred to. As I have said, the
yomikudashi text occupies an extremely ambiguous position, and for this reason,
the second. transformation is necessary: D must be translated into the more
familiar dialect.
In the early eighteenth century, it was a general rule not to vocalize the original
228 Language, Body, and the Immediate
Chinese, so text B of this example was excluded from the process of reading
Chinese baoks. The original text was given primarily as something ,to look at.
Only if it were transformed could it be vocalized according to the Japanese way
of reading Chinese. Thus, before Ogyu introduced his new method, visual and
aural aspects of the text were merged, and no obsessive discrimination between
the two was made. Voice always referred to vision, and speech was merely a by-
product of writing. Ogyu's method, therefore, signifies a twofold endeavor, first,
to identify the level of voice as distinct from the graphic inscription in the process
of reading and, then, to eliminate the visual factor from it.
In comparing Ogyu's mode with that of wakun, it becomes evident that Ogyu
postulates a parallel between the sequence "written text to vocalization to under-
standing" and the sequence "translated text to vocalization to understanding. In
addition, he regarded the written text as a mediation between the two vocaliza-
tion phases: voice is transcribed into graphic inscription and then recovered from
that inscription.
to write to read
voice graphic inscription - - voice
(written text)
Underlying this mode is an assumption that the ideal transfer of the verbal
message is accomplished without the mediation of graphic inscription. Ideally,
one should be able to communicate with another in a face-to-face situation and
the understanding of the message should be acquired in the immediacy ~f the
voice. The sense of interiority is also constructed in this mode since such a vocal
and immediate understanding without the mediation of writing circumscribes and
postulates an area of experience free from alienation and separation. In other
words, the interior is a cultural space where this ideal verbal communion is
possible and guaranteed.
When the essential of the text is equated to the immediacy of the voice, the
visual presence of the writing has to be secondary, if not entirely negative, and is
not to playa conspicuous role in the text's signification: the sale purpose of a
writing is to transcribe the original voice. Insofar as one aims at reaching the
original, the writing is only an obstacle, a disturbance that tends to obscure the
meaning of the text. It follows from this premise that the less visible is the
presence of writing, the more transparent the text ought to be.
Also decisive in Ogyu's method of reading is that the same structure is im-
posed on the translated text. The translated text is supposed to be in a language
that facilitates immediate and direct understanding. Hence, Ogyu tried to trans-
late a Chinese classic into the "language of villagers," which ordinary people
~sed to communicate with one another, without appealing to any written inscrip-
tIon. The language utilized should ensure that no more commentary or translation
is required for the translated. No doubt, the notion of translation as he understood
it was fashioned after the transparency of language in everyday intercourse, in
The Problem of Translation 229
everyday speech. Thus, the primacy of speech over writing seems to mark the
basic condition without which Ogyu's "thought" could not have been formed.
Therefore, what he called kiyo no gaku (the learning of Nagasaki translators),
occupies a highly significant locus in the new discursive space. As we shall see,
translation as postulated in kiyo no gaku was adopted by an increasing number of
writers in the eighteenth century, and it expanded the possibility of disseminating
ancient writings.
First, I have established kiyo no gaku, according to which I now teach my students
in colloquial language and recite the texts following Chinese phonology. When I
translate, I always translate the texts into the language of our villagers and never
accept wakun and the circular way of reading. At the beginning, I use small pieces,
and teach phrases consisting of a few ideographs. Then I urge my students to read
entire books. Only when they have mastered kiyo no gaku will they have trans-
formed themselves into real Chinese people. 13
By eliminating the ambiguous mediation of wakun, Ogyu offered a definite
conception of translation, and by so articulating the scheme of "translation" he
circumscribed the area of experience I have designated by the term "interiority."
But it is essential to note that the translation of Chinese books was not the final
goal of his scholarly project: it was but one of many pedagogical steps for his
students to follow. As a matter of fact, he emphasized the acquisition of Chinese
phonology, repeatedly asserting that authentic and true understanding could be
achieved only wh~n the reader took on the interiority of a Chinese person, lived
in the interior from which the text in question originated. What Ogyu's entire
pedagogical project intends is a transformation of his students into the Chinese of
antiquity, a collective and united subject who Ogyu believed had produced all
those canonical writings. The core of his new teaching method consisted of
mimetic identification with the imagined subject of enunciation who produced
the text in its originary plenitude in ancient China.
A particular historical world is always equipped with social customs, lan-
guage, and institutions. If one did not know those practices and how to live with
and in them, one could not begin the game of reading. "When there is no board
for Chinese chess," one might argue, "how could you ever speculate a move?"
Acts of reading, of comprehension, are possible only when the rules of the game
are understood. Accordingly~ to enter the interior was to acquire and internalize
the knowledge of social and cultural institutions of which the historical world
consisted.
Nevertheless, it is not a speculative kind of knowledge that one must be
acquainted with but the kind of knowledge that enables a player to perform. Mere
knowledge of the rules is not enough: to own the rule book, or even to learn every
article in it by heart, would not make one competent in the game. The rules have
130gyu, Yakubun sentei, p. 28.
230 Language, Body, and the Immediate
to be internalized to an almost unconscious extent, so that the player can attend to
their strategic manipulation. Indeed, the acquisition of language plays the central
role in Ogyu's project, in the sense that language fully mastered provides the
savoir faire crucial to a particular culture. Yet the question of how and where
language is located in relation to social and cultural formation, or mono, and the
knowledge about it ineluctably arises. Insofar as it is determined in his philoso-
phy, the mono, cultural formation of a given interior, is not something that can be
explained away, even though it is understood to be linguistic in nature; it cannot
be exhaustively construed in terms of a limited number of statements; neither can
it be reconstructed from a limited number of rules. Certainly Ogyu did not
believe that the words of ancient Chinese books set norms for his contemporaries
to follow: imperative statements could not be discovered in those books which
were, after all, not applicable to his present-day social reality. In no case, then,
were the Chinese classics believed to provide eighteenth-century readers with
any universal principles on which to erect an ideal society? Ogyu refused to seek
in them the representation of an ideal social order. He did not conceive of ancient
classics as conveying an image of reality; he saw them as part of such a reality,
rather than its representation: "When the world had not really changed since the
'ancient age,' its language similarly had not changed. Therefore, Jian Zi, Chun
qiu of Yan Zi, Lao Zi, and Lie Zi all shared the same language. Why do you
worry that all books represent different ways? We must learn not what they
represent but the language in which they were written." 14 According to Ogyu,
one must focus on how a text speaks, rather than what it says. Even if those
ancient books call forth different ways, one can learn and benefit equally from
them, provided that they belong to the same interior, that is, that they share the
same language and the same social and cultural formation. What has to be
recognized is how a text is incorporated into its outside, its environment or
context.
Let us recall the gestalt type of intertextuality, according to which a verbal
utterance is placed in a nonverbal situation, whereby the locus of signifiance, not
signification, is identified in terms of the utterance's relationship to other nonver-
bal texts. It constitutes a topos where the surplus of signification is generated.
Examples from eighteenth-century literature illuminate an obsessive concern for
the instance of discourse in which an utterance as enunciation, not as enunciated,
is conceived as the primordial adherence of a verbal expression to its per-
formative situation. There, it is assumed, an utterance designates the mode of its
adherence, rather than represents its content. Indeed, even in the gestalt type of
intertextuality, an utterance could have its signification and be viewed as an
enunciated, and therefore, a text could be read with regard to its content, or what
it says. But the transformation of the discursive space engendered a different
focus of attention, because of which a text was now read primarily within the
scope set by the gestalt type.
140gyu Sorai, Gakusoku. in Nihon Shiso Taikei 36:191
The Problem of Translation 231
Experiential Knowledge and Speculative Knowledge
Ogyu proposed this new mode of intertextuality. He was no longer taken up
with the dimension of the text in which a writing is equated to its enunciated. By
reducing a written text to speech, he attempted to inaugurate a new conception of
comprehension and to open a field in which a text is grasped primarily as an
enunciation.
The ambivalence in his conception of language can be construed in this light
too, since the enunciation always has a reciprocal and ambiguous rapport with its
outside. To grasp an enunciation is to refer it to its other nonverbal texts, but
these nonverbal texts, in their tum, cannot be identified as such without referring
back to the enunciation; neither verbal nor nonverbal texts located in a given
situation, from which the verbal text is produced, can be grasped independently
of each other. As a consequence, I have proposed, the locus of signifiance in fact
resides in this mutual referential relationship between the two types of texts in the
performative situation.
Because of this mutual referentiality, neither language nor social and cultural
institutions that are nonverbal in themselves, can constitute A self-sufficient
object of inquiry. (And for this reason, the conventional contextualist reading of
historical materials is doomed to infinite regression when its reified notion of the
text is scrutinized.) But if an eighteenth-century student, who was, of course,
outside the interior of Chinese antiquity, had wished to transform himself mim-
etically into a Chinese of antiquity, how could he ever have had access to the
possibility of such a transformation? For him, neither the language nor the
institutions of Chinese antiquity were given and accessible. How then could
Ogyu still uphold the possibility that a Tokyoite-or perhaps I should say
Edoite-of a later age could enter the interior?
This contradiction discloses that as the discursive fonnation radically changed,
a different kind of knowledge was called for. Already I have sketched the view
that the sort of knowledge with which Ogyu was occupied is mainly concerned
with the ability to regenerate certain patterns of behavior. Basically it is practical
and experiential knowledge. This is to say that one's knowledge is to be esti-
mated according to whether or not one can act in a certain way when a relevant
situation occurs. What matters is not whether one can describe, explain, justify,
or represent a thing but whether one can behave and perform in such a way as to
make something happen. The metaphor of Chinese chess, which Ogyu cites in
order to explain the nature of knowledge, makes this very point: what he seeks is
the kind of knowledge necessary to perform successfully. Language ability, in
this instance, is not the ability to get hold of what a text says; rather, it concerns
itself with generating utterances, with the rules by which to produce the text in a
similar manner, regardless of what these utterances signify. To acquire such an
ability is to become capable of generating an indefinite number of statements, the
contents of which are less important than this generative capability: this kind of
learning seems to require total concentration on the "performative" of action at
232 Language, Body, and the Immediate
the expense of the "constative", with the adjective "perfonnative" characteriz-
ing the act af saying in its aspect of instituting a reality by stating it as opposed to
the "constative" in which the descriptive adequacy of the statement is thema-
tized. 15 But knowledge thus specified can never be construed in merely formal
terms. Although it is an ability to generate an indefinite number of statements, it
is also an ability to generate mutual referentiality between an utterance and non-
verbal texts in the situation, thereby making or creating the situatiQn relevant to a
statement.
Once again, I should take up the quotation in which Ogyu juxtaposes ancient
books of different doctrinal traditions. As Tetsuo Najita has remarked, it is
extraordinary for a Confucian scholar to say that it does not matter which book
one learns. 16 Lao Zi, for instance, was very rarely included among the classics
for students of Confucianism to learn. But for Ogyu, a heretical text could serve
as well as other Confucian classics, provided that it was written in genuine
ancient Chinese. Such an attitude toward the authenticity of the classics could be
justified only on the ground that the primary goal was a practical and experiential
knowledge that could repeatedly generate a certain reality-what I have called
"interior." Accordingly, the kind of knowledge fixed in writing must be of
secondary importance since what needs to be acquired is not what the writing
says but what initiates and regulates its production, or the enunciation of which it
is a remnant. It is only to the extent that the writing preserves the original
enunciation that it is thought to retain whatever little authority may be left to it,
and one is urged to extract from the writing some coherence that regulates and
governs the enunciation. "The world changes, carrying language with it, and
language changes, carrying the Way with it. ... Once written, however, dis-
course lasts forever, and its written text remains unchanged." 17 It is the act of
producing utterance that is significant. Through vocalization, Ogyu believed,
one could return from the writing to the original scene of the enunciation. What
15For "Constative" see Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1962). Here with certain hesitation, I have adopted the tenn "perfonnative" instead of the
more specific "iIlocutionary" or "perlocutionary" mainly because the sort of perfonnative locution
at issue can be called "illocutionary" and "perlocutionary" at the same time. It installs and refers to
the reality of its own location (see Figure C). Since what this act does is the instauration of the
locutionary capacity itself and, by extension, of the capacity to behave in meaningful but socially
delimited ways (accordingly, those ways are talked about in tenns of rites), the relationship between
saying and doing in this speech act appears doubly complicated in the vocabulary of speech act
theory. Perhaps, one of the problems with speech act theory is that it always assumes the "interior" of
a given speech community-of the English language in the case of Austin-as the stage where a
speech act takes place. The speech act of learning a language or entering the interior as in the case of
Ogyu is excluded from the outset. Or it is believed possible to make unequivocal distinctions between
statements proper to the interior of a language and those improper to it, and to exclude the latter. One
cannot deny that in Ogyu's Kobunjigaku the speaking of archaic Chinese was a mimetic act to return
to Arche, on the one hand, and, a poietIc performative to install a certain social reality through the
performer's body, on the other. I would like to use "perfonnative" in the sense of the poietic aspect of
the archaic restorationism of Kobunjigaku.
16Tetsuo Najita, "Secular Philosophy of Ogyu Sorai," unpublished.
l7Ogyu, Gakusoku, pp. 190-91.
The Problem of Translation 233
was implied by his emphasis on the oral aspect of language learning, as well as
the writing practice in ancient language (kubunji gaku, the learning of ancient
texts and words, 7-11), was the acquisition of the regularities of both verbal and
nonverbal expressions.
Nonetheless, this notion of regularities is obviously vague and has yet to be
clarified. Surely Ogyu conceived of language as a set of such regularities, but
this kind of regularity reveals itself only when it is embodied in performance: it
has to be lived in a concrete manner-concrete in the sense that it is internalized
and consolidated into habit. Hence, the regularity of language could manifest
itself as enunciation, and the enunciation was regarded as one sort of bodily
action. That is, language was equated to a form of habit. The anteriority ofnonns
to social action that establishes them is now taken to be anteriority in real time.
Social action creates norms in "future anterion," in the mode of "will have
been," that is, it establishes norms as anterior to the action. What is lost here is
the theoretical rigor that prevents confusion between anteriority in the sense of
future anterior and anteriority in chronological time, as well as the subsequent
reification of this anteriority into enduring constancy.
It was assumed that social and cultural institutions, of which the interior
supposedly consisted, were regularities of a similar nature. Rites 'and the legal
system were among them, as were poetry and music. Yet, none of these held
overall supremacy. Together, they constituted a whole, and only in reference to
that whole could each of them function as it ought. To use the terminology of
Jurij M. Lotman, the interior thus portrayed should be equivalent to the concept
of "culture," which is defined as comprising many cultural systems. IS Of
course, we cannot expect Ogyu to be as scientific as Lotman. It is highly doubtful
that Ogyu conceived of the systematicity of language, whose conceptualization
would be impossible without the collapse of "simultaneity" into "synchrony,"
and then left the task of examining the regularity of language to other writers of
the eighteenth century. 19 Nevertheless, without doubt he recognized regularities
18Unlike Lotman's concept of culture, Ogyu's mono (social and cultural reality) seems to lack the
primary modeling system on which other cultural systems-the secondary modeling systems-are to
be constructed. Since Lotman identifies the primary modeling system with natural language. it is
possible to say, "Culture is built on natural language, and its relation to this natural language is one of
its most essential parameters." See "Primary and Secondary Communication-Modeling Systems,"
in Soviet Semiotics, ed. D. P. Lucid (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 95-98.
According to Lotman, the possibility of a semiotics of culture consists in the premise that there mu~t
be a certain structural homogeneity between natural language and other cultural systems. In thIS
respect, it is interesting to note that Lotman's basic apprehension of culture and his semiotic approach
to it seem to have changed considerably, as is manifested in an essay published a few years later,
"The Structure of the Narrative Text" (ibid.• pp. 193-97). There, he asks: "Can the bearer of
meaning be some message in which we cannot distinguish signs in the sense intended by classical
definitions which refer mainly to the word of natural language?" Here, I think, the scope of the
semiotic s;udy of culture is widened, and it becomes possible to take int~ account the no!ion of
culture implicitly developed in Ogyu's philosophy. His view of culture mIght be summanzed as
follows: one cannot talk about it; one can only live it.
19ft has often been argued that the systematic nature of language surpasses the grasp of con-
sciousness and that the structural analysis of language provides evidence for the objective presence of
234 Language, Body, and the Immediate
in ritual, musical, linguistic, and other institutions. Yet he rejected the claim that
natural language could be the metalanguage of other systems. For no cultural
system could manifest itself as it should when isolated from the mono, what
modem .ethnographers might call the totality of "unconscious conditions of
sociallife."20 Thus, Ogyu remarks: "Six Classics are the reality [mono]," and
"The reality [mono] is the essential condition for learning. Ancient people
wished to learn so that they could assimilate themselves to virtue. Therefore,
those who taught [virtue] presented their learners with the essential condition for
learning [instead of directly teaching them virtue]. "21
While the major part of Ogyu's kobunji gaku (learning of ancient texts and
words) is directed toward the acquisition of linguistic ability that is supposedly
relevant to life in ancient China, the final goal is to know the Way of ancient
social and cultural institutions against the onslaught of subjectivist philosophy. Such a claim that the
systematic nature of language or the thought of it goes beyond consciousness is highly dubious. Far
from exemplifying "Ie pense du dehors," it simply is ignorant that the systematicity itself is con-
stituted by consciousness and that when that which is outside consciousness is pursued, systematicity
in the mode of synchrony cannot be equated to simultaneity. The critique of consciousness must be
attentive to disparity between synchrony and simultaneity precisely because that disparity is the locus
where one could envisage the outside of consciousness.
Very often, the lack of awareness about the distinction between synchrony and simultaneity has led
to a thesis that phenomenological consciousness has been criticized by the structuralist notion of
structure and the priority of structure over consciousness. The sort of linguistic systematicity which
structuralist analysis uncovers is, in fact, not much different from the object of analysis which is
brought into being through eidetic reduction in phenomenology. What is handled in structural analy-
sis is a phenomenon that is present to the transcendental ego. Some structuralists, who are not
generally perceptive about the nature of transcendental analysis, seem to believe that it is fairly easy
to escape from the confines of consciousness. They tend to assume that, whenever consciousness is
mentioned, it is immediately taken to be an individual consciousness, as if the individual con-
sciousness were not mediated by language. This critique of consciousness was put forth by Nishida
Kiataro. See "Hyogen sayo," in Hataraku mono kara mirumono e, vol. 4 of Nishida Kitaro zenshu
(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1965), pp. 135-72. More recently a similar critique, which focuses on
transcendental subjectivity, was formulated by Julia Kristeva, Karatani Kojin, and William Haver,
among others. See Julia Kristeva, La revolution du langage poetique: L' avant -garde a lafin du XIXe
siecle (Paris: Seuil, 1974); Karatani Kojin, Naisei to sokou (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1985), pp. 122-68;
and William Haver, ·'The Body of This Death: Alterity in Nishida-Philosophy and Post-Marxism"
(Ph.D. diss. University of Chicago, 1987).
20CIaude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 18,25. Michel
de Certeau, for instance, addresses the issue of historical writing in relation to "unconscious condi-
tions of social life" in The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1988): "The question to be asked of ethnological research-what does this writing presuppose
about orality?-is to be asked also of what it makes me bring forth, which reaches back and returns
from much further than I. My analysis comes and goes between these two variants of a single
structural relation, between the texts that it studies and the text that it produces. Through this double
location it upholds the problem without resolving it-that is to say, without being able to move
outside of ·circum-scription.' At least in this way appears one of the rules of the system which was
established as being Occidental and modern: the scriptural operation which produces, preserves, and
cultivates imperishable 'truths' is connected to a rumor of words that vanish no sooner than they are
uttered, and which are therefore lost forever. An irreparable loss is the trace of these spoken words in
the texts whose object they have become. Hence through writing is formed our relation with the other,
the past" (p. 212). The constitution of ethnographic interest is invariably connected to the emergence
of orality as a discursive object.
210gyu, Gakusoku in Nihon shiso taikei 36: 167; Benmei in same, p. 179.
The Problem of Translation 235
sage-kings in the most concrete form, and the concretization of the Way is
synonymous with the interior of Chinese antiquity. In this particular sense,
language is viewed as instrumental, but only insofar as it is an issue for those
who are still at the learning stage. Once they have reached the final stage,
language should be neither an instrument nor a goal: it should be actually lived.
As long as one speculates on language as an object, one cannot be said to be
performing in the milieu of that language. Native speakers, Ogyu would surely
claim, would never pose their language thematically as an object of inquiry. They
simply live it and do things with it. Objectification of language, therefore,
implies the subject's estrangement from it or lack of proficiency. Only when one
is not thoroughly at home in a language can the language appear to be a means.
Such notions of the native speaker's relationship to his or her native language are
theoretically and ethically highly dubious, I think, but Ogyu posited an ideal
stage in learning, when other cultural regularities were all harmoniously inte-
grated into performance.
Hence, he strongly opposed any objectification of these regularities. Instead of
fixing them in the form of speculative knowledge, he proposed to acquire them
through practice and to use these skills in concrete performance. Thus the agenda
in kobunji gaku is organized with a view to leading his students to the stage at
which the object of study would no longer be posited as an entity separate from
the learning and acting body, at which language would be completely trans-
parent. At the same time that the denial of objectification implicitly posits an
ideal realm of interiority, it is a measure of one's position in relation to that
interior. To the extent that the language and the regularities of Chinese antiquity
are familiarized and internalized, the subject can be said to be in the interior.
It is on this theoretical ground that Ogyu criticized Song rationalism. He
claimed that the followers of Zhu Xi ignored the fundamental condition without
which ancient Chinese writings would not speak to contemporary readers who
could not recognize the historical and geocultural limitations of ancient China.
Moreover, they presumed that it was possible to appeal to a metalanguage valid
both in the interior and the exterior. But the interior could never be described or
represented adequately because there was no language to enable an observer
standing outside to apprehend what was actually there. On this point Ogyu differs
from his contemporary Confucian scholar Arai Hakuseki. 22 Arai's extensive
22Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725) was born to a samurai family in the domain of Kazusa (now in
Chiba prefecture). His father became masterless when Arai was nineteen. The young man studied
Confucianism and entered feudal service as a Confucian tutor, becoming personal tutor to Tokugawa
Ienobu, who later ruled as the shogun. From 1709 until 1716, he served as a key adviser to the two
consecutive shoguns. As a scholar, Arai is known for the encyclopedic scope of his interests. He
studied the histories of the Daimyo houses, of the myths, and of Japan from the Heian period to the
establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. He also studied military affairs, languages, geography.
Western civilization (based on his interrogations of the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Sidotti), and Chinese
poetry. All these studies are in one way or another connected to his knowledge of Song rationalism.
His main works are Tokushiyoron (On reading Japanese history), Seiyokibun (Recorded accounts of
the countries of the western ocean), and his autobiography, Oritaku shibanoki (Told round a brush-
wood fire).
236 Language, Body, and the Immediate
study of comparative linguistics is based on the assumption that languages could
be objectified, juxtaposed, and compared to one another. 23 In his .treatise on
languages, there seems to be no trace of doubt about the existence of a meta-
language that made it possible for him to describe various languages without
assimilating himself to mono.
By contrast, in Ogyu's view, the Way of the ancient kings is universally valid
only to the extent that the present reality, whose historic and geocultural limita-
tions he acknowledged, can be transformed into the interior from which the sage-
kings, if they had been alive, would possibly speak. Although the issue is not to
return the world to the interior of ancient China, language learning is a measure
by which to change the world and, therefore, is a political program too. Ogyu,
however, would also caution that one cannot change the world merely by chang-
ing things in it. The task must include the reorganization of people's behavior. It
must concern itself with how things should be viewed and ordered in reference to
the whole. Yet this whole, the interior, is not a sum of parts; it is a whole
consisting of regularities. And what Ogyu ascribed to the ancient sage-kings is
precisely this wholeness of the social and cultural formation, which he believed
was absent from his contemporary Tokugawa society.
The ancient sage-kings were, according to Ogyu, sakusha (authors or makers,
7-12), who could see the totality of the interior and organize a collectivity into an
interior. 24 The viewpoint of the sage-kings, in fact, coincides in theory with the
possibility of conceiving of the whole of the social as a cultural and political
closure in which perfect and transparent communication is guaranteed and every
member fully integrated-that is, every nonmember perfectly excluded. And the
existence of the sage-kings signifies the universal possibility of turning a social
and cultural formation into a community of transparent communication and
complete compassion. Potentially, any collectivity could be transformed into an
interior with a definite sense of its whole. For this reason, the sage-kings were
said to be impartial, for they always dealt with things from the viewpoint of the
society as a whole. As Ogyu read the history of Chinese thought, the notion of
the whole represented by the sage-kings worked as a guiding principle, and when
he construed the history of Chinese thought since antiquity in terms of a series of
disputes among conflicting schools, he perceived the development of thought in
China as caused by the loss of the sense of a whole and the decomposition of the
interior in historical time. 25 In this sense, it was necessary to posit the sage-kings
23Arai Hakuseki. Toga in Nihon shiso falkei. 35: 101-44. For Arai Hakuseki, see Kate Nakai, Arai
Hakuseki and the Premises of Tokugawa Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies,
Harvard University, 1988).
24For more detailed explication of the significance of this term in Ogyu Sorai's work, see Mar-
uyama Masao, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Mikiso Hane (Tokyo:
University of Tokyo Press, 1974), pp. 76-134, 206-73.
25See • for instance, article 15 in Bendo. pp. 25-26. It is wen known that many adopted this
exegetic method. Perhaps the most famous case is Tominaga Nakamoto's critical study of the history
of Buddhism. See Tetsuo Najita, The Visions of Virtue in Tokugawa Japan (Chicago: University of
The Problem of Translation 237
of antiquity to legitimate the idea that a thought should be judged according to
whether or not its fundamental concern began with the totality. Ogyu postulated
that a thought about the society which posits its totality may not always be true,
but a thought that does not posit the totality is invariably false. 26 Thus, although
Ogy.u insisted that the content of the interior could not be talked about but should
be lived, he also taught that its totality could and should be thought and imagined
whenever social and political issues were to be touched upon. The positing of the
sage-kings coincides with the articulation of a certain enunciative position in
which one could speak impartially, as a representative of the whole. Needless to
say, this scheme'serves to differentiate those who speak on behalf of the whole
from those who put forth partial and biased views, but it also legitimates those
-who are supposed to speak for the whole as opposed to those who argue from
their "egoistic" position of personal interest. When Ogyu saw the universal
essence of Confucianism in the Way of the ancient kings, he was trying to
establish the universal validity of such an enunciative position.
There is no doubt that in the eighteenth century the claim to the universality of
such an enunciative position was available only to the samurai class.
Passivity and Activity, Reading and Writing
As the focal point of language learning shifted from what writing said and did
to how it spoke, from the "constative" to the "performative," so the Way no
longer dictated what one should do but, instead, governed how one should
respond to and behave in a given situation. To put it another way, what had to be
learned was how to manipulate intrinsic regularities that governed various kinds
of practice, rather than consequences and representations of that practice. It is in
performance that Ogyu saw the locus of the whole, the nucleus where the whole
was generatively constituted.
In this context, I can outline how and why writing, not as the enunciated but as
the enunciation, has to be incorporated into this theory of language. Writing as
Ogyu talked about it within the scope of kobunji gaku, is an act, a form of
practice and performance. When he repeatedly accused his contemporaries of
Chicago Press, 1987). The best-known works of Tominaga Nakamoto, who was known for his critical
views on Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto, are Shutsujo kogo (Buddha's comments after his
meditation) and Okina no fumi (Writings of an old man). Tominaga was born in 1715 to a wealthy
Osaka merchant family that helped to found the Kaitokudo, an academy of Osaka townsmen. He
focused on the historical development of Buddhism. Confucianism, and Shinto and showed that those
teachings were based on ideological conflicts. He then argued that the religious dogmas should never
be taken as they themselves claimed to be and that to understand them it was necessary to assess what
they tried to promote against their opponents within and outside of their respective traditions. He died
at the age of thirty-one.
26See Ogyu Sorai, Benmei, in Nihon shiso taikei 36:53-58. and Taiheisaku. "Thus the Way of the
sage-kings does not make any sense at all if it is separated from the totality of the kings' reign" (ibid .•
p.467).
238 Language, Body, and the Immediate
inability to write in ancient Chinese, or kobunji (7-13) he did not mean simply
that they did not know ancient Chinese well enough. Here too, what is .at issue is
the distinction between speculative and practical knowledge. Knowledge about
ancient China, accordingly, should not be limited to the student's ability to read
the writings in an authentic manner, or to extensive memorization of facts about
antiquity. Both language and nonverbal institutions must be comprehended as
acts, as regularities that are intrinsic in perfonnance. No matter how renowned a
scholar of Confucianism might be, Ogyu declared, if he could not perfonn
properly, he should be disqualified as a Confucian. Time and time again Ogyu
emphasized that all knowledge has to be founded on practice, and he made the
act of writing an essential component in kobunji gaku.
Nonnally the act of writing is conceived in the active mode, as an expression
or projection, as opposed to the act of reading, which is a passive practice in
which a message is received. Thus, we tend to regard reading and writing as two
sorts of linguistic practice that are specifically associated with written texts,
differentiated by the voice distinction and by passivity and activity. The case,
however, is not so simple in Ogyu '8 philosophy. In kobunji gaku writing is
equivalent to composition practice in a present-day language course, but it is
accorded much greater significance.
Kobunji gaku does not merely consist of reading. It requires that a learner reproduce
ancient language with his own hand and fingers. Only when he has acquired the
ability to reproduce language this way can ancient texts be as if they were coming
out of his mouth. Then it would be as though he were together with ancient people,
directly conversing with them. No formality would be required, and he would be
able to socialize with them without any inhibition. 27
In this paragraph too, it is possible to point out that the written text is subjected
to voice, which is "coming out of his mouth." Furthennore, two issues are worth
examining. First, although writing is grasped in the mode of activity- "to
reproduce ancient language" (the literal translation should be "to push or throw
out ancient words")-the goal is "to be accepted by the ancient people." That is
to say, writing is supposed to initiate a certain action that the learner views as
passive. Even though the ancient people could not be present in the scene of this
utterance, the words were in fact understood to be addressed to them. We have
already encountered such a dual conception of action in the act of reading. By
associating the voice with the text through vocalization, Ogyu attempted to
transfonn reading into a (re-)productive act, whose mode is indeed active. Now,
he tried to do the reverse with writing.
Second, kobunji gaku is perceived to be a device by means of which one enters
a certain community, in this case the community of the ancient Chinese. Ogyu
thus acknowledged that action is always addressed to the "collectivity." But
270gyu Sorai, "Kutsu keisan ni kotau" Soraisha, in Nihon Shiso Taikei 36:529.
The Problem of Translation 239
unlike Ito, he equated "collectivity" to an ancient China that had existed in the
present of the past. His was not a "collectivity" that would be in the future
anterior, and hence, it would not simply coincide with an already existing polity.
A leamer, he claimed, could participate in an infonnal and frank conversation
with people of ancient China through the mastery of writing in ancient Chinese.
The interior, therefore, has a communal .dimension and Ogyu ascribed to this
imagined reality all the favorable attributes-intimacy, frankness, absence of
alienation, and compassion, to mention but a few. Through these attributes, he
projected an image of a society that completely coincided with its institutions,
without any surplus or deficit, a society entirely covered by the infinitely homo-
geneous texture of sociocultural institutions. In this ideal society, there is no
disparity between doing and knowing, between the instituting and the instituted.
Such a society constitutes a perfectly sealed totality, where what I have referred
to as textual materiality-and, therefore, historicity as well-is completely "-
eliminated; nobody is aleatory in such a society. Complete compassion is pos-
sible because there is absolutely no room for the otherness of the Other. There is
absolutely no need and no room for ethical action, for the "collectivity" to which
a social action is addressed coincides with the whole that is there. It is a society
in which sociality is completely eliminated. 28
In addition, Ogyu claims that through kobunji gaku one can enter the interior
where language ceases to be distinct from other beings and events, where lan-
guage is fused with the situation and the events happening in it. It seems that the
ji (ci, 7-14) in kobunji means language fused in this way with the situation and
the events (ji, shi, 2-28). I find the same kind of reciprocal duality of reading and
writing, as well as the same conception of language fused with the world, in the
writings of Kamo Mabuchi and others. Obviously this notion of the verbal act
was not an invention of one author but rather an indication of a general trend in
this new discursive fonnation.
28See Jean-Luc Nancy, "La communaute desoeuvree," AUa (1983): 11-49.

\ the represented can be arrived at only though the representing: unless the repre-
CHAPTER 8 As. we have seen, eighteenth-century discursive space indicated a strong ten-
Phoneticism and History
Representation as Distance and Delay
Both writing and reading are legitimate only insofar as they are grasped as modes
of practice in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. We tend to presume
that what distinguishes these two from the other modes of practice-notably,
nonverbal texts-is ascribed to the work of language: the superiority of linguistic
practice over others lies in the self-reflective function with which linguistic
practice is endowed. Statements can represent phenomena that are not of lin-
guistic origin, but they are also capable of representing linguistic phenomena. It
has often been asserted that only language is able to talk about language itself.
In the eighteenth century, however, this function of language was severely
questioned, and a typically phonocentric view of language developed. Of defini-
tive importance in this connection is the dichotomy writing/speech, which is
primarily concerned with the material support of the two fonns: writing is medi-
ated by durable matter, whereas speech has no durable hold. Here, the different
aspects of utterance are called forth and diacritically distinguished, speech being
the production of words itself and writing its product. Hence, to define writing as
a transcription of speech, the content of writing, not as the writing act but as a
written text, is already to prefigure the temporal structure in which these two
aspects are incorporated. Temporally, the written text is taken to be the presence
of a verbal utterance in the perfect tense, whereas speech is present in the
progressive present tense. These temporal and modal characterizations seem to
play important roles since re-presentation necessarily implies the sense of delay
between that which is present and represents, and that which is present but
represented. No matter whether the two items are actually copresent or not, the
relationship called representation necessitates that the represented be in the per-
fect tense while the representing be in progressive present tense. The modal
differentiation of the representing and the represented derives from the fact that
240
Phoneticism and History 241
senting is given, the represented is never known. As a matter of fact, representa-
tion inevitably generates this disparity between the two terms, whereby the
represented and the representing are posited as such.
dency toward the progressive present tense, which gave rise to overwhelming
insistence on performative aspects of various social and cultural fonnations. In
this resPect, it is natural that the representational function of language was
ceaselessly problematized.
Yet we must not forget that there is more to it. Insofar as an utterance is viewed
in relation to the context re-presented in it, that is, in relation to what the context
implicitly portrays, it addresses itself only as an enunciated, not as an enuncia-
tion. Deprived of the aspects of Performance and enunciation, this utterance
loses its adherence to its originary scene. Words that make up an utterance may
be thrown out in the midst of some ongoing events, in a situation, but once an
utterance has been produced, it no longer preserves the environment of the
originary enunciation. As I have already discussed, the fundamental charac-
teristic of verbal expression, or the discursivity of verbal expression, is depriva-
tion of the sensory perspective: the represented transcends the horizon: of its
enunciation. On the other hand, seeing an utterance at the moment of enuncia-
tion, one is led to postulate that other things and events must also be present in
the situation in which the representing takes place.} Despite the fact that these
will support and animate the signification of the utterance, they will never be
represented in the utterance itself. This mode of copresence should be dis-
tinguished from that of representation because it certainly does not abide by the
temporal structure characteristic of representation. I have suggested that this
copresence could be construed in terms of the gestalt type of intertextuality, in
which an utterance is perceived as a figure, circumscribed by a certain framing,
and things that are copresent with it are excluded from it and drawn into the
background.
1Perhaps, a distinction has to be introduced among the three possible uses of the tenn "present."
The first is a well-known phenomenological definition that the present is the mode of the primordial
datum, that is, the mode of things being given originally in perception. It is always given to, and so,
the present is necessarily "present to." The second is the present articulated in transcendental
analysis, which can often be equated to the temporal moment of synchrony. This present is the
condition of the possibility for thinking or the thinkable, and it is defined in tenns of a copossibility
that presupposes the presence of the system. This sort of present is understood when we say "8 must
be present in order for A to be." Synchrony can be defined by a series of relays of the present of this
kind. The third, and most significant in my discussion here, is the present in which the situation is
present in enunciation. As the situation cannot be "present to" the utterance specularly unless it is
thematically presented in the utterance, the situation is neither primordially given to phenomenologi-
cal consciousness nor synchronous with the utterance. In order for the situation, things, the ad-
dressee, or even the addresser to be present in enunciation, it must be excluded from the circuit of
specularity. Therefore, this present can never be objectified or made present. In this sense, this
present cannot be talked about in tenus of onthotheological being or nothingness as the negation of
being. It goes without saying that the body of the enunciation, or shutai. is present in this sort of
present. Therefore, the shutai neither is nor is not.
242 Language, Body, and the Immediate
To see an utterance not as the enunciated but as the enunciation, not as a
product but· as an action producing it, is to transfonn the paradigm of ~epresenta­
tion into that of copresence. It necessarily leads to the view that an utterance is an
act embodied in a performative situation. The reduction of writing to speech can
then be understood differently. If an utterance is an event taking place in a
situation, it can be seen as similar to nonlinguistic practice, can and should be
equated to nonverbal behavior.
It should be evident that what is supposedly the product of behavior, a written
text, for instance, does not maintain its immediate adherence to the performative
situation. Therefore, it could be argued that only when a text is isolated from its
immediate environment can it be possible to transcend the horizon of the text's
enunciation. Concurrently, the distance perceived between the text and things it
represents would give rise to the temporal structure without which representation
would be impossible. If we believe that such a mode of copresence really guaran-
tees the proclaimed immediate adherence to the performative situation, we could
easily be persuaded that writing, as opposed to speech, indicates distance and
separation: a form of estrangement. If immediacy is to be the sole ultimate
ontological premise on which the ideal society could possibly be imagined, then
representation, and writing as a form of concretized representation, should mean
decomposition and dissemination of the ideal order since writing constantly
disturbs and disqualifies the legitimacy of any claim to immediacy. The social
praxis would then be dominated by concern to overcome the estrangement and
alienation.
Implicit in this denial of representation is the assumption that without the
distance essential for representation, it should be impossible to posit the opposi-
tions activity/passivity and subject/object. In other words, a linguistic practice
could be apprehended as active or passive only insofar as distance is presup-
posed. Moreover, this distance is a pivotal issue in terms of which activity and
passivity in linguistic practice are defined: a linguistic practice could be active
when it expresses or externalizes something, thereby generating distance; it could
be passive when it acts to overcome such a distance. Therefore, the act of writing
is active, for it certainly distances, delays, and differs. By contrast, the act of
reading signifies a passive reception of something conceived from afar. In both
cases, some distance is always presupposed to make expression or reception
intelligible.
What then does the reciprocal duality according to which Ogyu Sorai stressed
the passive nature of writing and the active nature of reading mean? What the
reciprocal duality denies is the condition that makes the opposition ac-
tivity/passivity possible, namely, representational distance. As far as the ques-
tion of language is concerned, Ogyu's philosophical enterprise can be interpreted
in terms of his endeavor to overcome the distance thus generated and thereby to
annul the representational function of language. I must also note, however, that
his overzealous attempt to overcome representational distance not only concealed
but also excluded the kind of distance always generated in textuality, which
Phoneticism and History 243
cannot be accommodated within the activity/passivity opposition. He refused to
acknowledge the ethical-practical possibility, probably most explicitly an-
nounced by Ito Jinsai, that there is a distance without which the ethical action, as
Ito understands the term "ethics," would be unintelligible.
What initiated Ogyu's enterprise is the perception that language had become
opaque, had lost its integrity, but that it ought originarily and properly to be
immediate and transparent. His rhetorical strategies seem to have been deployed
in this direction (we will witness the same direction in Kamo Mabuchi's dis-
course on poetry). Thus the reciprocal duality in writing and reading is a means
by which to eliminate distance so as to ensure transparent language. By depriving
writing of activity and reading of passivity, he reduces the two modes of verbal
practice to another mode akin to performative practice. This reduction is brought
about by means of various theoretical projects, all of which ail{l at abolishing the
representational function of language. It goes without saying that the most pres-
tigious aspect particular to linguistic practice, namely, the possibility of meta-
language, is no longer acceptable in that conception of language. It is in its
similarity to the nonlinguistic act that the representational aspect of language is
given ontological significance. Although the extreme glorification of immediacy
cannot be found in Ogyu's works, his conception of language, when fully devel-
oped, would recognize exclamation as the most authentic form of linguistic
practice because it does not have any representational function at all. It is purely
vociferous, and in its vociferousness, it is effectively illocutionaL It does not talk
about anything; it lacks the distance that characterizes other verbal practice. Of
course, it adheres to the performative situation, for if it were detached from it,
the exclamation would hardly signify anything: it is totally empty of significa-
tion, but full of prelinguistic articulation in signifiance.
The Status of the Classics
It is in this context that kiyo no gaku (the learning of Nagasaki translators) and
kobunji gaku (the learning of ancient texts and words) can be recognized as
essential components of this philosophical enterprise. Kiyo no gaku was strate-
gically constructed so that reading might be subordinated to speech in an attempt
to eliminate the opacity of language. Similarly, kobunji gaku gears itself toward
the stage of learning in which a student achieves the ultimate fluency in a
language, so that to him verbal practice is just like other modes of perfectly
acquired nonverbal practice. Ultimately, fluency in ancient language, just like
other skills, would be obtained in the body.2 Therefore, the interior that both
kinds of learning aspire to attain is modeled after the kind of performative
20 gyu wrote, "Therefore, when the Way is in the body, one's words are naturally orderly; one's
deed is correct; one serves one's master royally; one serves one's father piously; one socializes with
others trustfully; and one controls things naturally" (Benmei. in Nihon shiso taikei. vol. 36 [Tokyo:
Iwanami Sholen, 1973], p. 44).
244 Language, Body, and the Immediate
situation in which an utterance is made as naturally, sincerely, and spontaneously
as possible. This is the realm where language is supposed to be .completely
transparent. As I have remarked, the interior thus conceived is also dyed with the
communal atmosphere of frankness, intimacy, and lack of artificial formality. In
it, the distance of both representational language and interpersonal relationship
presumably ceases to exist.
The idealization of communal spirit and the absence of the representational
uses of language also characterize the interior we recognize in the treatises of
Kamo Mabuchi. 3 Ogyu projects interiority onto ancient China; Kamo identifies it
with Japanese antiquity instead. Kamo posited an ideal era in antiquity when the
minds of the Japanese were frank and straight. Since those people were enthusi-
astically and spontaneously engaged in nonverbal practice, he believed, they did
not need many words. Kamo assumed that the representational function of lan-
guage interfered with interpersonal compassion, and he argued that the distur-
bance of compassion in his own time was caused by the dominance of representa-
tional uses of language. The remedy he proposed for the decomposed social
order was almost identical in structure to Ogyu's. First, the central mode of
linguistic practice has to be shifted to speech, and since writing and reading
endanger the immediacy of practice, they have to be condemned. Only as a
medium through which the original voice is recovered could written texts be
given some recognition. In antiquity, Kamo believed, "people could freely ma-
nipulate written words because the spoken word was thought of as the master and
the written word as the slave. But as time passed, it was as if the master had died
and his position had been usurped by his slave."4 Two binary oppositions are to
be noted here. The first is the one I have noted in Ogyu, speech/writing. The
second is phoneticism/ideography. I shall begin with the first and return to the
second later.
Just as Ogyu denied the possibility that one could learn the Way through
explanation, so Kamo rejected the thesis that a human being could and should
follow the principle set by any teaching. "Those who believe that people are to
follow what the teaching says do not understand the mind of heaven and earth."s
Only the acquisition of practical knowledge enables people to learn in the proper
sense. Like kobunji gaku, Kamo's pedagogical project specifies: "First one
should learn ancient poems and learn how to compose poems in the ancient
3Bom to a family of Shinto priests in the domain of Thtomi (now in Shimizu prefecture), Kamo
Mabuchi (1697-1769) was trained from an early age in waka composition and Japanese classics and
became a National Studies scholar and waka poet. By combining the comparative philological
techniques of Keichu (1640-1701) with the theological system of Kada Azumaro (1669-1736), he
established a new scholarship on classical Japanese literature and language. His poetry stressed the
masculine style of the Man'yoshu, on which he wrote an extensive commentary, Man'yoko. He also
wrote Kaiko (Thesis on waka poetry), Niimanabi (New learning), Genjimonogatari shinshaku (New
commentary on the Tale of Genji), and others.
4Kamo Mabuchi, Kokuiko, in Nihon shiso taikei 39:381.
5Ibid., p. 387.
Phoneticism and History 245
fashion, and then one should learn the writings of antiquity and write in the
ancient fashion."6
Obviously Kamo's argument is dominated by the orientation toward speech
and performance in the same way as Ogyu's. It has often been argued that this
similarity is due to Ogyu's influence on Kamo, and a substantial amount of
research has been devoted to the biographical connection between the two au-
thors. I have no inclination to disprove a possible influence of kobunji gaku on
Kamo's poetics or to discover the similarity between the two sets of works and to
reinforce it by quoting biographical evidence concerning the authors. I would
rather concern myself with the positivities that constituted other positivities in the
discursive space of the eighteenth century and with the articulation of differences
that therefore formed that similarity. 7 In this regard, the question of influence is
excluded from my scope not only because the concept of influence is ill defined
and arbitrary but also because I should first elucidate the conditions without
which so-called influence itself would make no sense. My attention is drawn
toward whether or not some regularities in the texts of the eighteenth century
sustain various differentiations.
In order to talk about differences and similarities between Ogyu and Kamo-
and also between their affiliations with schools of thought, Confucianism and
National Studies-I should identify the level of discourse at which writings were
distinguished from one another and, then, despite these differences, demonstrate
their similarity. Most obviously, whereas Ogyu insisted that the ultimate goal of
learning was the acquisition of ancient Chinese, for Kamo it was ancient Japa-
nese that was to be acquired. Accordingly, Ogyu wrote in the Chinese of antiq-
uity, and Kamo in ancient Japanese, although neither could be totally free of the
convention of his time. 8
In addition, Ogyu's writings, because they were Confucian, were expected to
follow rules of generic taxonomy according to which the space of generic discon-
tinuity was constituted and discourse was classified into genres, schools, and so
on. I by no means imply that certain dogmatic theses persisted in Japanese
Confucianism and that it was distinguished from other schools of thought by its
proclaimed ideals. Genealogy does not necessarily explain how unities of genre
and school were constituted within a given discursive space. The rules that
fashioned the identity of Confucianism in the eighteenth century might be very
different from those of the sixteenth or the nineteenth century.
6Kamo Mabuchi, Niimanabi, in Nihon shiso takei 39:363.
1Here, I assume the possibility of distinguishing constituting positivities from constituted
positivities. As is obvious this possibility is extremely hard to prove without falling into a series of
tautologies. Nevertheless, one's analysis could not even start without dealing with this question,
unless one is completely unable to question what is given as reality.
sFor instance, Ogyu published many of his works in yomikudashibun, and most of his treatises In
Chinese were annotated with the wakun he so vehemently denounced. Likewise, Kamo wrote in a
kind of pseudoarchaic Japanese style, or gikobun, which differed a great deal from ancient Japanese.
The style of language was one of many traits by which a school of thought was identified, but one
should be aware that that alone does not define its identity.
246 Language, Body, and the Immediate
One of these rules dealt with the intertextual relationships according to which
texts were 'incorporated into other already existing ones. To be recognized as
Confucian, a written text had to justify what it advocated through reference to
certain Confucian classics. The classical reference was not particular to Confu-
cian discourse; the National Studies, too, used classical references to legitimate
its validity. When the classics regarded as the source of authority were associated
with the Confucian tradition, a discourse was diacritically identified as Confu-
cian. Furthermore, this generic distinction extended to the inner articulation of
Confucianism itself, and works were identified with a specific school of Confu-
cianism according to which classics were cited. In this sense, the relationship of
Ogyu's philosophical treatises to Confucian classics was twofold. I pointed out
earlier that Confucian classics no longer held the authority to confirm Confucian
ethical and epistemic principles. Ito Jinsai had challenged the application of
Confucian norms to praxis, and Ogyu Sorai flatly refused to see those norms as
conceptually represented in the classics. At the same time, the emphasis shifted
from the Four Books to the Six Classics. This shift agreed with the radical shift of
attention from representational language to performance, for the Four Books
were rather theoretical and said to be written in representational language,
whereas the Six Classics were considered more practical, recording emotional
and institutional practices of ancient people.
Thus, I can at least point out the level at which the differences among schools
of thought were constituted: the different classics referred to as the source of
legitimation. Likewise, I have identified the level of discourse at which the
similarity was posited: the intertextuality by which eighteenth-century texts were
related to ancient texts. Although writers affiliated with different schools at-
tempted to legitimate different theses, the structure by which they related their
own discourse to the classics remained unchanged, at least insofar as the authors
in question are concerned. History thus played an important role in eighteenth-
century discourse because it delineated the particular intertextual structure that
regulated the production of texts. Suffice it to say that this history has nothing to
do with a kind of historiography based on the seriality of events. It is instead a
condition of legitimation; legitimation and history were indiscernibly inter-
twined. History was not an asset or an object of discourse for a specific genre or
school of thought; it was an essential component of the general rule of discursive
formation which permeated the entire discursive space. Thus, without appealing
to the notion of influence, it is possible to analyze and construe the network of
difference and identity in the discursive space.
The Human Body and the Interior
It is at this locus of discourse, namely, of intertextual structure, that the
question of practice becomes decisive. Performance certainly occupies the center
Phoneticism and History 247
of the discursive space to which Ogyu's argument was confined. As I have
discussed, the axis along which a variety of POsitivities in this space were
organized was oriented toward an idealized conception of practice. I must also
note that this conception dramatized the discontinuity between Ogyu and his
predecessors in the Confucian tradition. He claimed that practice preceded spec-
ulative knowledge and that Zhu Xi's theery of knowledge and practice failed to
grasp the primordial rapport between these two terms: "To know something is to
know it truly. To practice something is to practice it enthusiastically. Only after
one has thoroughly acquired the skill by practicing enthusiastically many times
over can one know it truly. Therefore, knowledge does not necessarily precede
practice and practice does not necessarily succeed knowledge."9 Ogyu forcefully
states that the realness and meaningfulness of knowledge can be found only when
knowledge is subordinated to practice and grasped as a moment of practice. Here
the immediate and transparent nature of the mastered skill is associated with
realness and meaningfulness. This conceptualization of practice could be de-
scribed as sustained by a desire for lively togetherness, that supreme mode of
immediacy.
Ogyu claims that the source of this possibility for lively togetherness is located
in the human body:
People understand a person if he speaks. People do not understand him if he does not
speak. to Why is it possible that rites and music can be superior to language in
teaching people? Because people assimilate rites and music. When one has learned
and attained proficiency by learning, even if he still does not understand it. his body
as intentionality [shinshi shintai, xinzhi shenti. 8-1] has already implicitly assimi-
lated it. l !
The human body holds a privileged status and also acquires an exceptional
prestige in the world. It is the locus of anchorage in this world according to
90gyu Sorai, Benmei, p. 167.
101 encountered some difficulty in translating these sentences, attributable perhaps to the common
problem of translating Japanese or Chinese into European languages: that there is no equivalent in
Japanese or Chinese to the pronominal system of European languages. In this case the difficulty also
seems to be related to the systematic constitution of Ogyu's philosophic enterprise. Translated
literally, the statements read: "Men (man) understand(s) if said/talked/spoken. Men (man) do(es) not
understand if not said/talked/spoken." The object of understanding and the subject and the object of
saying are all unspecified. Nonnally the context detennines unspecified terms in translation. One
should not confuse philosophical with linguistic problems and should not yield to a rather naive
cultural-essentialist argument that a certain structure of language produces a certain type of philo-
sophical system. In this case, however, I have reason to draw attention to the lack of specificity of
these tenns; first, whether or not understanding is a transitive act that takes an object is rather
problematical in Ogyu. Second, the unspecificity of the subject of linguistic practice seems to be an
important issue and cannot be overlooked. We should keep in mind Ogyu's claim that by vocalizing
an ancient text one does not reach the inner experience of the individual author but the interior, which
definitely has a communal implication. Vocalization was thought of as an act by which to integrate an
individual subject into the community.
1lOgyu Sorai, Benmei, p. 70.
248 Language, Body, and the Immediate
which here and now are primordially given, although the body is not what is
present to -consciousness but that to which something is present. Hence, when
associated with the human body, knowledge is supposed to be revealed here and
in the present. This is another implication of the practical terms in which Ogyu
conceives knowledge. Then he attempts to provide his own interpretation of
"investigation of things" and "extension of knowledge" from the Daxue:
One who learns actual things at length and preserves what he has acquired by
learning can achieve virtue. This process [of learning] is called "investigation of
things" [which Ogyu reads as "arrival of mono" (mono kitaru, wuke, 8-2)]. When
you first start to learn, mono is not in you. This state could be described as though
mono were still there and had not come here. When you achieve virtue, mono will
be in you. This state could be described as though mono had left there and arrived
here. This means that you no longer needed conscious effort [because mono is here].
This is why we say mono kitaru [mono has arrived]. This Chinese character ke is, in
fact, Lai. Once the conditions of learning [mono] are in you, knowledge is spon-
taneously manifest. This is called "extension of knowledge" [which he reads as
"knowledge arrives"].12
In this conception of mono, the duality of direction in learning is of principal
importance. As we have seen, the interior is an area one is to enter through
learning. That is to say, one moves away from the present position and arrives at
the interior, which is located there. In this respect, learning can be explicated as
transcendence or pro-ject. Learning can also be described in terms of imma-
nence, however, because from the viewpoint installed in the human body the
interior moves from there to here. Mono gradually penetrates and inhabits the
body. The relationship between the human body and the interior is also dual. It is
no contradiction to say that the interior is in one's body and the body is in the
interior, provided that one has already achieved virtue. Yet it is also important to
note that the conceptualization of reciprocity between activity and passivity in
fact requires a certain objectification in the imagination of the body: this concep-
tualization is dependent on the possibility of taking up the other's viewpoint, an
imaginary possibility that Jacques Lacan and Miura Tsutomu explain in terms of
the "mirror." Already in Ogyu, the radical otherness of the shutai has been
reduced to the specular image of the body.
Since the interior, or mono, is not merely an area in a geographical sense but
also a prepredicative horizon for specific practices, it could be associated with
some image of the performative situation. One cannot perceive an acting human
body without referring to the performative situation in which it is acting. In this
sense too, the human body I am talking about cannot be directly equated to the
organic unity in physiology. A bodily act never takes place in a vacuum. It is
12Ibid.
Phoneticism and History 249
always surrounded by many objects and other human bodies in relation to which
it takes on signifiance if not signification, particularly when we deal with an
ethical or social action that presupposes the potential articulation of a given
situation. Although its mode of articulation is the supplementary relationship of
correlation, it cannot be reduced to even the patterned behavior of a human body.
For this reason, the physiological description of an action does not tell us any-
thing about its ethical or social implication. (Compare these two statements,
which are said to describe the same occurrence: hA swung his fist" and "A beat
B.") It requires that the situation will have been institutionally and culturally
articulated and that only as a correlate of the situation thus semanticized can a
movement of the human body assume its ethical and social determination. Like-
wise, it is impossible to define a performative situation without referring to the
human body in action within it. Thus, what we perceive as practice and its
meaning are properties inherent neither in the situation nor in the human body.
Had we been allowed to postulate the ontological status of practice in terms
similar to those in which I talked about verbal texts, practice would be nothing
but signifiance. Ogyu's conception of learning valorizes not signification or the
enunciated but signifiance and enunciation. Accordingly, Ogyu demands that his
student be equipped with practical knowledge concerning the relationship be-
tween the performative situation and his body. Certainly what Maurice Merleau-
Ponty called the ambiguity of the human body is prescribed in the framework
within which Ogyu deploys his argument. What is meant by ambiguity is the
mode of existence in which various dichotomies that I have already identified are
accommodated without being synthesized. In this perspective, dichotomies such
as transcendence/immanence and activity/passivity cease to be asymmetrical.
They are governed by the symmetrical transference so that a constant shift
transforms transcendence into immanence, activity into passivity. But Ito Jinsai's
perception of the human body as the center of decentering no longer plays a
major role in Ogyu's thought. The body is seen instead as the center of recenter-
ing, so that for Ogyu it is primarily the topos of empathy, on empathy guarantee-
ing the sense of togetherness, which consists of the reciprocity of transference. In
Ogyu's political philosophy, I think, empathy is primarily transference, and the
human body a synthesizing locus that guarantees the preestablished hannony of
intersubjective communality through its intercorporeity.
Whereas Ito tries to demonstrate the ethicality of a social action in reference to
the human body as a locus of otherness which can never be entirely subsumed
under intention, Ogyu posits the human body as the medium of habit formation.
Above all he emphasizes the aspect of the human body that assimilates and
integrates a person into the community. Hence, his conception of the human
body is oriented toward conformity and stability. Unlike Ito's, which stresses the
dynamic and changing nature of the social, Ogyu's conception of the body is
strikingly hostile to change and disintegration. And it should be added that his
 250 Language, Body, and the Immediate
body is always taken up from the viewpoint of the whole. For Ogyu the perspec-
tive coinciding with the viewpoint of the whole designates the benevolent and
virtuous presence of authentic Confucianism.
Nevertheless the problematic of the human body dominates eighteenth-century
discourse in the sense that the conceptualization of political and social formation
~s dependent on the conception of the body. A slight difference in this conception
IS greatly amplified in specific visions of the social.
Diacritical Identification of the Japanese Language
It seems that Kamo Mabuchi relied on the same set of discursive devices as
Ogyu to project the idealized image of ancient Japan. The primary difference
between Kamo and Ogyu lay in Kamo's rejection of China. Ogyu attributed the
representational use of language mainly to Song rationalism and its followers,
but Kamo held China at large responsible for it. The term kara (China) had been
used extensively to identify and glorify what was originally pure and ought to be
resurrected but Kamo argued that China was a vicious country.13 He believed
that things of Chinese origin had contaminated Japanese life, which otherwise
~ould be straight and stainless. Whereas for Ogyu it was historical time that gave
flse to changes and decomposed the presumed integrity of the interior, for Kamo
it was China or Chinese civilization. Yet, although he does not share the cosmo-
politanism characteristic of Ogyu's treatises, the directionality that governs his
discourse resembles Ogyu's in the sense that the interior thus conceived of is
ascribed first to voices and then to practice. Voice, as in Ogyu's vocalization of
the ancient texts, is supposed to ensure interpersonal intimacy and transparent
language. Kamo believed that by properly vocalizing ancient poems one could
become copresent with poets of a thousand years before. Moreover, since the
ancient people were straight and direct, their minds would be present to the
reader without any mediation once such a state was actualized. 14 For Kamo also
the learning of ancient language was of primary importance, a necessary step
toward the interior, which he posited in Japanese antiquity. Without a practical
knowledge of ancient Japanese, one could never properly vocalize the ancient
poems preserved in written form.
. In this connection, I must attend to the status of poetics in eighteenth-century
dIscourse. Around that time, many publications appeared about the proper usage
of kana, the etymology of ancient Japanese, and Japanese syntax and phonology.
Most of these publications, if not all, were in one way or another related to
poetics. Kamo himself published etymological studies of the Man'yoshu, 15 as
13Kamo Mabuchi, Kokuiko, p. 179. Similar statements can be found in his other articles.
14Kamo Mabuchi, Niimanabi, p. 362.
I~Man'yoshu, the earliest extant collection of Japanese poetry, contains 4,516 waka poems, the
ear~lest d~ted to the fourth century and the last to 759. Most of the poems are written in man'yo-gana,
Chmese Ideographs used phonetically, with extended headnotes, footnotes, prose settings, letters,
Phoneticism and History 251
well as his theory of Japanese syntax, to foster a better understanding of ancient
POetry and to teach students to compose poems in the ancient fashion.
Of course the Japanese had a long tradition of poetic discourse, perhaps even
outdating the introduction to the Kokinshu, 16 but a concern for poetics had never
been as widespread as in the eighteenth century. Why did interest in poetics
suddenly increase, and what kind of rules governed the voluminous discussion of
poetry and language?
Kamo's studies of language are motivated by the desire to reach transparency.
Underlying this tendency is the structural parallelism among the oppositions:
transparent/opaque, speech/writing, and phoneticism/ideography. I have at-
tempted to uncover the rules governing the differentiations in both Ogyu's and
Kamo's treatises. Thus far, voice, practice, and the human body have been
identified in relation to the modes of reading and the conceptualization of lan-
guage. Ogyu and Kamo share the first two oppositions and deploy them along the
same axis, but the opposition between phoneticism and ideography has yet to be
examined. Next I want to consider how that opposition accords with the general
discursive formation.
The Imagenary Relation to the Text: Phoneticism
and the Historicity of a Text
Since some people in the region now called Japan adopted the Chinese writing
system, the dichotomy phoneticism/ideography may be said to be immanent in
"Japanese culture." As the "Japanese" way of reading Chinese, or wakun, best
reveals, Chinese ideography and its relationship to vocalization had always dra-
matized heterogeneity in a writing system in which two different principles
coexisted and violated each other. It has been argued that the Chinese writing
and other compositions-all in Chinese, not Man'yo~gana-and a few Chinese poems. Of the three
Japanese poetic fonns represented in the anthology the great majority are tanka (short songs), but
there are also about 260 choka (long songs) and 60 sedoka (head-repeated songs). The Man'yoshu is
the culmination of a tradition of anthology making at least several decades old. Those most exten-
sively involved in its compilation were the poet Otomo no Yakamochi (718?- 785) and perhaps
Yamanoue no Okura (66O-ca. 733).
I 6Kokinshu , or Kokin Wakashu (Collection of Japanese waka poems from ancient and modem
times), was officially commissioned under Emperor Daigo (reign 897-930) in 905. Although the
compilers of the Kokinshu thought that the Man'yoshu had already been royally commissioned, the
Kokinshu was in fact the first in a series of anthologies of Japanese verse commissioned by imperial
order. The four compilers of the Kokinshu were Ki no Tsurayuki, Ki no Tomonori, Oshikochi no
Mitsune, and Mibu no Tadamine. The Kokinshu set the rules according to which its 1, III poems
were arranged by topics, and twenty ensuing imperial collections use the same taxonomy. The first
six books were dedicated to seasonal poems-two to spring, one to summer, two to autumn, and one
to winter-followed by one book each on the themes of congratulatory gifts, parting, travel, and
acrostic. Next come five books of love poems, followed by a book of laments, two books on
miscellaneous matters, one book of miscellaneous poetic fonns, and one of poems from the Bureau
of Poetry at court. The Kokinshu begins the taxonomy of Japanese poetic imagery which would fonn
the background for much of the ensuing waka tradition.
252 Language, Body, and the Immediate
system thus assimilated and accepted was the only way for people to articulate
and preserve their words since they did not know· any other mean~ of verbal
inscription. Yet, interestingly enough, not until the eighteenth century did the
total rejection of ideography and the adoption of "pure" phoneticism arise as a
major intellectual concern. The two principles had been somewhat reconciled
and had continued to allow for the production of texts. Neither purely ide-
ographic nor purely phonetic inscription dominated the production of intellec-
tual, literary, and legal discourse. In other words, the radical dichotomy phonet-
icisml ideography had been unheard of until then.
As the Kojiki 17 shows, phoneticism existed as soon as the Chinese writing
system was known to those inhabiting today's Kinki area. During a period of one
thousand years, phoneticism was assimilated into systems of inscription fairly
widely used in the region now called Japan. During this time, kana, the Japanese
phonetic writing system, was invented as a supplement to Chinese ideographs.
We must remind ourselves, however, that kana (or what might be rendered
"makeshift names" [ka-naJ) does not designate the specific sign system we now
know as katakana or hiragana. Rather, it signifies a certain use of inscriptions to
maintain the identity of graphic unity in relation to the phonemes they provoke.
In other words, even Chinese ideographs can be viewed as kana if their verbal
function is limited to a correspondence to sounds, as witnessed in man'yo-gana
(Chinese ideographs used phonetically). A writing is in kana if and only if it is
viewed solely from the aspect of sound generation. On the other hand, ideogra-
phy is a principle by which a graphic inscription participates in the constitution of
signification only insofar as that inscription cannot be linearly related to the
singular series of phonemes. An ideograph is not necessarily a sign that does not
evoke a sound; instead, it is a sign that evokes more than one sound or no sound
at all and therefore relates itself to sounds multivocally. Phoneticism postulates
that a text can be reduced to a series of sounds and that the text's signification is
identical to that constituted by the sounds alone. Hence, phoneticism requires
that a graphic inscription be related to the sounds univocally. In this connection,
we should be aware of an important thesis: once ideography and phoneticism
have been defined this way, a text can be both ideographic and phonetic or
neither wholly ideographic nor wholly phonetic, unless the text must be voiced.
17Kojiki (Record of ancient matters) is Japan's oldest extant chronicle, recording events from the
mythical age of the gods up to the time of Empress Suiko (reign 593-628). The compiler, 0 no
Yasumaro, states in the preface that it was presented to Empress Gemmei (reign 707-715) on March
9, 712. According to 0 no Yasumaro's preface, sometime during the latter half of the seventh century,
Emperor Temmu (reign 673-686) ordered the court attendant Hieda no Are to commit to memory the
records of the imperial family, myths, and legends. The Kojiki is divided into three parts. The first
part records the creation of heaven and earth and myths concerning the founding of Japan. It describes
the descent from heaven of Ninigi no Mikoto, grandson of Amaterasu Omikami, original figure of the
imperial line, to the mountain Takachiho no Mine in Kyushu. The second part deals with the period
from the first emperor, Jimmu, through the reign of Emperor Ojin at the beginning of the fifth
century. The third part covers events from the reign of Emperor Nintoku until the rule of Suiko in the
early seventh century.
Phoneticism and History 253
As long as one regards a writing as visual, these two categories do not apply:
painting is not phonetic, ideographic, or hi~roglyphic unless one is constrained to
see it as a verbal text; a writing, likewise, is not phonetic, ideographic, or
hieroglyphic as long as it is seen solely visual. Such categories as phoneticism
anq ideography are matters of ideology par excellence in the sense (not entirely
unrelated to Louis Althusser's rather well.known definition of ideology) that each
of them is a specific mode of the human being's imaginary and practical rela-
tionship to the text and that one's investment of desire in the perception of texts is
regulated by a set of rules. These categories are always related to the implicit
imperatives under which a writing is read, recited, or merely seen and according
to which the mode of investing desire for meaning in inscription is detennined.
In other words, these categories designate the regimes of praxis according to
which one invests and practices one's relationship to the text and lives that
imaginary relationship. For this reason, it is pointless to talk about the ide-
ographic nature of the system of Chinese characters or the phonetic nature of
Japanese kana or even of alphabetical signs, except in relation to the accompany-
ing ideology. Already, through Mallarme's and Apollinaire's experiments, which
jeopardized its accompanying ideology, have we not been obliged to acknowl-
edge that even the system of alphabetical signs could work against its phono-
centric ideology? A writing system cannot be ideographic, phonetic, or hiero-
glyphic in itself, independently of ideology. Any sign system has to be evaluated
in discourse.
V.N. Volosinov gives a precise account of this problematic:
Any ideological product is not only itself a part of a reality (natural or social), just as
is any physical body, any instrument of production, or any product for consumption,
it also, in contradiction to these other phenomena, reflects and refracts another
reality outside itself. Everything ideological possesses meaning, it represents, de-
picts, or stands for something lying outside itself. In other words, it is a sign.
Without signs, there is no ideology. A physical body equals itself, so to speak; it
does not signify anything but wholly coincides with its particular, given nature. In
this case there is no question of ideology.
However, any physical body may be perceived as an image; for instance, the
image of natural inertia and necessity embodied in that particular thing. Any such
artistic-symbolic image to which a particular physical object gives rise is already an
ideological product. The physical object is converted into a sign. Without ceasing to
be a part of material reality, such an object, to some degree, reflects and refracts
another reality. 18
The so-called writing system, of course, is a system of such signs; it is impossi-
ble to identify it at the level of physical body. The Chinese writing system, for
instance, cannot be characterized as such unless it is related to a specific ide-
l8Y.N. Yolosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I.R.
Titunik (New York: Seminar Press, 1973), p. 9.
254 Language, Body, and the Immediate
ology. Therefore, the Chinese writing system is not innately ideographic: it is
only in relation to a regime that it is so. To see a writing system inde~ndently of
its ideological nature is to refuse to see it as a system of signs. Furthennore, there
is a problem about how to identify the unity of the so-called Chinese writing
system, not to mention the unities of Chinese language and tradition.
In pointing out a certain naivete in Jacques Derrida's understanding of non-
Western writings in an article on the Chinese character Way, but without paying
due attention to Derrida's critique of conventional categories such as phonetic,
ideographic, hieroglyphic, and so on, Zhang Longxi fails to take this ideological
nature of signs into consideration and constructs his argument on the assumption
that the Chinese language is nonphonetic and ideographic in itself. 19 But on what
ground can one claim that Chinese writing is inherently nonphonetic and ide-
ographic, to use "conventional categories"? As we have seen, Ogyu Sorai clear-
ly understood Chinese writing to be phonetic, and he succeeded in treating it in
that mode, though not fully. He succeeded only partially not because Ogyu tried
to use Chinese writing against its innately ideographic nature but because, as I
will argue, no writing-or speech for that matter-can be made to confonn
completely to an ideology.
What is at stake here is the impossibility of a writing system that can be
exhaustively contained in a regime of praxis. Because of its textual materiality,
any inscription generates a surplus that betrays the economy of that regime: there
is always a gap between the text and what the imaginary relation to the text
claims it to be. It is this irreducibility of the text to the imaginary relation to it,
differance in and of writing, that marks textuality as distiI)ct from discourse. And
textuality always harbors the possibility of criticizing the ideology, no matter
how overwhelming and dominant that ideology may happen to be. In fact,
phonocentrism's hostility to writing stems from the acknowledgment of this
critical possibility. ' omies were erected as regularities according to which the wish to read, to know,
This is the reason why the dichotomy phoneticism/ideography did not arise as
a constituting positivity in discourse preceding the seventeenth century. I do not
mean that writings were not vocalized before then. Indeed, people tried to recite
writings such as the Buddhist sutras, and the vocalization of writings was a
common practice, but these attempts were regional and lacked coherence be-
cause the primacy of voice and radical reduction to the voice were absent in the
discursive space at that time. Writings were linked to a different set of ideologies.
What is implied by this characterization of the pre-seventeenth-century discur-
sive spaces is that an obsessive concern with separating the text to see from the
text to hear had not yet developed, and so visual inscriptions were constantly
contaminated by and merged with the aural. These discursive spaces were
marked by perpetual hybridization, but in the absence of a separatist insistence
on rigid partition between writing and speech, communication among different
19Zhang Longxi, "The Tao and the Logos: Notes on Derrida's critique of logocentrism," Critical
Inquiry 11 (March 1985): 385-98.
Phoneticism and History 255
modes of inscription was not perceived as abnonnal. In a sense, the world was·
conceived as consisting of writings and· words, and things and words were
perceived as continuous-that is, they coexisted more or less on the same level.
Once the dichotomies transparent/opaque, speech/writing, and phoneticism/
ideography emerged, the division between verbal and nonverbal texts was newly
formed according to them. Before the eighteenth-century discursive space was
formed, the voice did not hold such primacy, such as in the eighteenth century.
Once these conditions had been set, the dichotomy phoneticism/ideography
was dramatized to such an extent that the Japanese language was circumscribed
as the source of that which constantly deviated from ideography. At first, Japa-
nese was demarcated in tenns of that which did not appear in the written Chinese
texts but which had, nonetheless, to be added in order to vocalize it. Wakun was
an essential apparatus by which to reveal the dimension of Japanese interference
in writings. Let us recall that wakun was a measure invented by those who
handled Chinese documents in places such as Buddhist monasteries in order to
transform a Chinese writing, which was not recitable, into a fonn they could
vocalize. As I explained in the previous chapter, this transformation consists of
two different operations, one being the reorganization of syntactical order (so-
called kaeriten) and another the addition of Japanese particles and verbal end-
ings. Very often the second operation was dropped because the annotators felt
they were adding to the Chinese original something that was not Chinese. Tradi-
tionally, studies of te ni 0 ha (Japanese particles) were concerned with this second
operation, for these grammatical units could not be found in Chinese books, but
they nevertheless made these texts recitable. Such traits were absent in the visual
text but evident in the aural one. As long as the dichotomies speech/writing and
transparent/opaque did not play the roles of constituting PQsitivities in the discur-
sive space, Japanese particles were not problematical. But once those dichot-
was constituted, intellectual attention was naturally drawn to the ambiguity of
those particles and verbal endings. In due course, many writers of the eighteenth
century considered Japanese particles the identificatory feature of the Japanese
language.
Anteriority of Voice
In the works of Kamo Mabuchi, Motoori Norinaga, and Fujitani Nariakira, we
find further development of this theme. 20 Like Kamo, Motoori elaborated on
20Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), scholar of Japanese classics, is often regarded as the most
important National Studies writer. A merchant's son born in Matsusaka in the province of Ise (now
Mie prefecture), he studied Chinese classics and Japanese classical poetry with his mother. He began
working in the paper trade but soon abandoned his career in business and went to Kyoto for medical
study. While preparing himself for his future medical career in Kyoto, he studied Chinese classics
under the tutelage of Hori Katsunan (1688-1757) and began to write about Japanese classical poetry.
256 Language, Body, and the Immediate
these dichotomies, using them, it seems, to shape the motifs orienting his her-
meneutic enterprise. He insisted that the more phonetically oriented language of
the Kojiki made it a more authentic revelation of antiquity than the Nihonshoki:
One must consider ancient words to be most authentic and endeavor not to lose sight
of the true reality of antiquity. . . . People of today generally value only the N i-
honshoki, and even the name of Kojiki is known by few, for Chinese studies are so
fashionable and everybody wants to imitate the things of China.... The Kojiki is
superior to the Nihonshoki, for written words did not exist in antiquity, and what
people of antiquity actually spoke cannot be similar in style to the words of the
Nihonshoki. They must have spoken according to the words reported in the Kojiki. 21
The Kojiki has been widely accepted as one of the oldest and most important
written documents produced in Japan. Consequently, it has been endowed with a
privileged position in the vast storehouse of Japanese classics. As we are able to
guess from Motoori's words, however, only in the late seventeenth century did
the Kojiki gain the prestige due to the first and most authentic historiographical
account of the empire of Japan. Even in the late eighteenth century, when
Motoori compiled Kojiki-den, the Kojiki was not widely read. Recorded refer-
ences to this document during the Heian, Kamakura, and Muromachi periods
reveal that the Kojiki, though regarded as one of the ancient writings, was not
accorded the consistent reverence felt for the Nihonshoki, the Man'yoshu, and
other documents. 22 It was never considered a sacred text.
Motoori returned to Matsusaka in 1757 to start practicing medicine, and he also began to hold classes
on Japanese classical literature, including the Tale ofGenji, the Man'yoshu, and the Kokinshu. Later,
primarily under the influence of Kamo Mabuchi, he turned to the Kojiki. For thirty-four years, from
1764, he devoted himself to the study of antiquity in order to complete the forty-four volumes of the
Kojiki-den, perhaps the most important book in the entire National Studies movement during the
Tokugawa period. His other major works include Ashiwara obune, Tamakushige, Shibun yoryo. and
Tamakatsuma.
Fujitani Nariakira (1738-1779), literary theorist and grammarian, was born in Kyoto, younger
brother of the Confucian and grammarian Minagawa Kien (1734-1807), and was adopted into the
Fujitani family. He developed a new morphological theory of classical poetry, which was expanded
by his son Fujitani Mitsue (1768-1823). His most famous works are the Kazashi-sho and the Ayui-
shoo
21Motoori Norinaga, Kojiki-den in Motoori Norinaga zenshu, (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1968)
9:3-6. The Nihonshoki (Chronicle of Japan) is the oldest official history of Japan, covering the
mythical age of the gods up to the reign of Empress Jito (686-697). A later imperial historiography
Shoku nihongi (797) says that the Nihonshoki was completed on July 1, 720. The Shoku nihongi also
recounts that Prince Tonen, a son of Emperor Temmu, was ordered to compile the Nihonshoki and
that upon its completion he presented thirty volumes plUs one volume of genealogical charts (which is
missing today). Of the thirty volumes in the Nihonshoki. the first and second deal with mythical
times, and volumes 3 to 30 depict events from the reign of Emperor Jimmu until that of lito in
chronological order. Unlike the earlier Kojiki, Nihonshoki contains quotations from the Chinese (Wei
zhi) and Korean ( Paekche ki, Paekche pon'gi, and Paeckche sinch'an) historiographies. Its style also
differs from that of the Kojiki, as does its stress on recent events as opposed to the detailed treatment
of myths in the Kojiki.
22See Hisamatsu Sen'ichi, Kojiki kenkyu-shi josetsu, in Kojiki Taisei, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Heibonsha,
1962), pp. 1-24.
Phoneticism and History 257
Toward the end of the seventeenth century this attitude gradually changed.
Once the Kojiki was printed, commentaries on it began to be published in
increasing numbers. Just as the choice of canonical books shifted from the Four
Books to the Six Classics in the Confucian camp, attention was drawn to the
Kojiki rather than the Nihonshoki, among National Studies scholars.
Notwithstanding the impressive amouflt of scholarly labor devoted to the Ko-
jik;, the opacity of this text remained problematical: its readability was always a
nagging issue. Like Ogyu's kobunji gaku, which taught students to read and
write obscure ancient Chinese, this effort to decipher archaic Japanese was
prompted by the cognition that one could envisage Japanese antiquity through its
language.
In a sense, all the preceding efforts to read the Kojiki culminated in the forty-
four-volume Kojiki-den. In this monumental study, Motoori reduced the writing
of the Kojiki to a series of phonetic kana. What he achieved is a transformation of
unreadable writing into a "readable" (meaning pronounceable) inscription of the
original voice, thereby subordinating writing to voice. In fact, one of the uses of
the verb yomu (to read), which appears in Kojiki-den, designates the act of
pronunciation. Motoori "read" the Kojiki in this specific manner and thereby
produced a new text, which was also called the Kojiki and which was entirely in
phonetic kana.
In order to accomplish this task, Motoori faced theoretical difficulties, many
of which originated in the heterogeneity of the writing system. His orientation
toward voice necessitated a rigorous distinction between phoneticism, and the
ideography he wished to eliminate. To add voice to the Kojiki, Motoori had to
transform thousands of ideographs, all with many possible pronunciations. De-
spite occasional directions for the pronunciation of certain ideographs, the rela-
tionship between the aural and the written texts of the Kojiki seemed largely
arbitrary.
Wakun was one possible way of determining this relationship, but Motoori
rejected it because it would only have enhanced the confusion between the visual
and aural texts. In addition, as we have discussed with Ogyu's kiyo no gaku,
annotations that would reorganize the linear order of words on a page would not
permit the kind of reading Motoori desired, in which comprehensibility would be
based on pronounceability. Motoori held it to be an irrefutable principle that it
was the linearity of oral verbalization that produced immediate comprehen-
sibility. Wakun violates this principle and spatializes the text, thereby disrupting
the linear unity of its oral presentation. The dominance of voice in the Kojiki-den
is meant to eliminate the spatializing factors that always serve to disseminate the
supposed singular unity of voice. As a matter of fact, the entire project of the
Kojiki-den is dictated by this obsessive concern for univocity and phoneticism.
But why should the singularity of voice have to be secured at all costs? To pose
this question is to concern ourselves with historicity in textual production, not the
chronological history in which a text is supposedly located but the historical time
258 Language, Body, and the Immediate
being generated within textuality. This notion of a history immanent in textual
production provides us with an insight into Ogyu's conception of entry into an
interior that belongs to the historical past. At issue are the notion of historical
time within textual production and the significance of the speech/writing dichot-
omy in this regard.
At the level of reading, whereby we act upon an existing writing, the voice is
undeniably posterior to the material existence of the writing itself. First there is a
writing and then the reader adds his or her voice to it in reading it. If a writing is
multivocal, as the Kojiki is, then it is always possible to ascribe more thalt one
voice to it. No doubt in the reading act, as Motoori understood it, the addition of
voice to writing has to be the return to the original voice of which the writing is a
transcription:
Since letters are provisional substitutes adopted at a later time [for spoken words],
what kind of significance can there ever be in deeply inquiring into them? The
essence of learning [monomanabi] should consist in examining ancient words many
times over, so as to get well ;lcquainted with the ancient use of language [inishie no
tebun, literally, the hand's gesture of antiquity], for only through the way she speaks
[monoii no sarna] can we possibly guess the personality and the attitude [kokorobae]
of the speaker. 23
Motoori asserted that letters were mere substitutes for spoken words, and he
directed his inquiry accordingly. He used this conception of writing as a provi-
sional substitute for speech to screen out from the wide variety of ancient docu-
ments those legitimate ones through which he believed he could envisage 'the
spoken language of antiquity. His denunciation of the Nihonshoki was certainly
related to this method of evaluating ancient documents. Those that preserved
ancient pronunciation he considered authentic. Of course, all the ancient writings
available in the eighteenth century were in Chinese ideographs, simply because
these were the only method of writing then available. Yet although many of them
also adhered to Chinese syntax, some merely recorded the sounds of actual
speech. Motoori argued that the author of the Nihonshoki, because he followed
Chinese syntax, viewed the historical reality of Japan from the Chinese perspec-
tive. On the other hand, Motoori saw the Kojiki as an effort to preserve the
spoken language of ancient Japan, which was rapidly disappearing under the
increasing influence of continental civilization.
Denial of Transcendent Value
Within the interpretative scheme of Motoori Norinaga, it is evident that the
posteriority of voice in the reading act has to be suppressed and concealed. For
23Motoori Norinaga, Kojiki-den 9:33.
Phoneticism and History 259
should writing precede its aural reading, it would be impossible to claim that the
voice he ascribes to the writing, through ,strenuous efforts involving extensive
research on ancient etymology, syntax, phonetics, and mythology, was actually
the one for which the written version of the Kojiki was a provisional substitute.
However obvious the posteriority of voice may have been, the anteriority of
voice had to be maintained and enforced so as to secure the legitimacy of his
studies. It would have been meaningless to pursue such a project as the Kojiki-
den but for the premise that the voice added to the writing could be and had to be
the original voice preceding the writing itself. In other words, Motoori believed
that by fonnulating a systematic way to ascribe voice to the Kojiki he could
overcome the historical time separating the written presence of the Kojiki in his
contemporary world from antiquity, when the original voice was uttered.
Thus, Motoori's hermeneutics is twofold. It pretends to seek a mimetic corre-
spondence between the original voice to be transcribed in the document and the
reader's voice generated by the reading of it. Yet from the outset it acknowledges
that it is utterly impossible to secure such a correspondence. What is at stake in
his hermeneutics is not whether the original voice can in fact be reached but how
such a problematic of historical distance can be annihilated. By dealing thema-
tically with the problems of historicity, Motoori sought the way to escape from
historical time and move to the issue of belief in ancient Japan, which was
"beyond history."
Here is a strange scheme in which the temporal posteriority of voice is re-
versed to anteriority. Reading, accordingly, is not an innocent act but full of
political implication, a strategic move by which to return to the original time, the
virginity present at the founding of Japan. Thus, historical time is redefined as
that which causes this separation of the anterior and the posterior voices, leaving
Motoori to find a specific form of reading by which to overcome this estrange-
ment or separation, to overcome historical time.
It is not difficult to explain the role writing plays in this scheme. The written
text of Kojiki is the agent that causes the separation. That is to say, the presence
of writing as an inscription of the original voice distances the readership of the
eighteenth century from antiquity and generates both a barrier and a mediation
between the readership and the original voice. Writing prevents voice from being
immediately present to the readership: the original voice cannot be present to
readers because it has to be mediated by writing. Writing puts both spatial and
temporal distance between voice and reader in an effect similar to the distancing
and separating effect of representational language which Ogyu sensed. On the
other hand, the voice would have been lost irredeemably had its trace not been
secured and fixed in writing. Had ancient writing not been preserved, the speech
of ancient Japan could not have been transmitted to the readers of the eighteenth
century. Writing, therefore, occupied an extremely ambiguous position in the
discours~ of Motoori Norinaga and in eighteenth-century discourse in general.
From this apprehension of historical time derives the exclusive prestige of the
260 Language, Body, and the Immediate
Kojiki. The assessment that it is the oldest existing Japanese document written in
Japanese rather than Chinese makes it into a watershed between (\ pure and
homogeneous realm and one already contaminated by writing. Some National
Studies scholars adopted an interpretative scheme that allowed them to project
the voice-writing-reading sequence onto a historical axis. In conceiving the
process of understanding a writing in terms of the inscription of voice and the
recovery of voice from the inscription, they disqualified certain other ways to
read. And this is the point where Motoori '8 condemnation of the karagokorJ}, the
Chinese mind-a pejorative he often used to refute philosophical naivete in
certain idealisms-offers theoretical significance:
Whereas books of foreign lands such as those dogmatic [or didactic (oshiegoto)]
Confucian and Buddhist treatises are essentially concerned solely with transcendent
meanings [kotowari] ,24 not with actual words, the ancient writings of the Great Land
[Japan] never seek to refute dogmas or the reason for things [mono no kotowari]:
these writings simply inscribe ancient words and have no hidden intention or reason
under the surface of words. 25
Here, the "word" is related to a text's surface, a set of signifiers, and is not seen
as the signified that the surface denotes. By introducing a new definition of
"word," Motoori simultaneously points out a level of signification that, in prin-
ciple, precedes all other interpretations and commentary. All that an unbiased
and sincere reading could possibly disclose, he declares, is already manifest at
the level of signifiers thus identified. The words should, in this sense, suggest a
field of apriority, whereas the intention or reason that a reader tends to postulate
behind a text is a posteriori, a simulacrum. He insists on rigorous observation of
logical precedence, and insofar as intention and reason are posterior to "words,"
they must be reduced and put into parentheses. Readers are urged to apply a
certain phenomenological epoche in reading the Kojiki. We must remember,
however, that these words, so privileged and sanctified, are not written down on
paper or fixed in durable substance: they are not the letters.
In contrast to words, what Motoori calls "reason for things" or "intention"
designates the presence of meaning in the modality of transcendent necessity. By
"transcendent," I mean the way in which the signification of an utterance is
confused with the constancy of a physical object and is taken as ideally identical
to itself independently of the occasion of its instance of discourse. Meaning here
appears atemporal and, hence, ahistorical. Indeed, the utterance that signifies it
has to be produced or executed by some individual or individuals on a specific
24Corresponding to this Japanese pronunciation "kotowari" is, indeed, a Chinese character Ii
which in the context of Song rationalism can be translated as "reason" or "principle." Here I render
this term "transcendent meanings," with an emphasis on the use of "transcendent" as distinct from
"transcendentaL" Often Motoori's critique of karagokoro comes close to the Kantian or Husserlian
critique of the transcendent in transcendental analysis, though.
25Motoori Norinaga, Kojiki-den. 9:33.
Phoneticism and History 261
occasion and at a specific historical motnent, but the meaning as it is signified is
not limited to a specific occasion. Its m~aningfulness lies in the modality in
which it is constituted, and therefore, it should be valid anywhere at any time: the
meaning as it is grasped in this modality constitutes itself as a universal. But this
conception does not imply that it is factually valid anywhere at any time, at any
historical moment. It is' not a general universal. Its atemporality and ahistor-
icality simply suggest that it is impossible to ascribe the temporal and historical
determinations to its universality, just as it is utterly irrelevant to ask when and
where about the validity of a mathematical equation. Therefore, it is supposed
that the meaning transcends the historical specifications that necessarily accom-
pany the occasion of its utterance: if the utterance infonns us of a truth, then this
truth should be a universal one. Nevertheless, in the "transcendent" the irre-
ducibility of universality to historical and temporal specifications is confused
with the omnipresence of its factual validity at every historical moment. This
substitution of its omnipresence for the irreducibility of universality to spatiotem-
poral topoi was most evident in rationalism, as Ito clearly saw, and is still
detectable in present-day humanistic universalism: both stem from this fetishistic
confusion.
In his reading of the Kojiki Motoori rejected the inclusion of this "transcen-
dent" meaning; any truth contained in the text of the Kojiki must by all means be
of the historical kind, provided that "historical" means adherence to the enuncia-
tion, to the original and historically specific scene of utterance. He insisted that
the Kojiki never related a truth that could be valid in any time and any place, and
he ascribed the claim of "transcendent" universality to human hubris or to
karagokoro, Chinese mind. He himself sought to uncover the dimension of the
words by suspending all fetishistic temptations to read eternal truth into the text.
He would have maintained that there is no such thing as the true meaning of a
text. Yet he would have hastened to add that there is nonetheless the true voice of
that text.
In this specific mode of reading, Motoori aspired to transform a set of sig-
nifiers into another set of signifiers without involving a transcendent meaning, to
transform a writing as a set of signifiers into voice, which is also a set of
signifiers. Whether or not he could do so without encountering the transcendent
meaning is another question yet to be examined, but unquestionably his the-
oretical orientation kept his henneneutic enterprise intact.
Historical Time as Writing
It is in this connection that I ought to examine the significance of the dichoto-
my speeCh/writing, again. In the scope of this dichotomy writing was seen as a
mode that allows for the genesis of "'transcendent" universality. According to
Motoori, the transcendence of meaning is possible only when an inscription
262 Language, Body, and the Immediate
denotes meaning without the mediation of voice. Insofar as writing is a faithful
reflection of words actually voiced, it should not lead to an ahistori«al, gener-
alized truth. There are cases, however, in which writing does not correspond to a
definite series of sounds, and many different series of sounds can equally be
ascribed to it. In such cases of multivocity, the unity of the grapheme or the
ideograph cannot be related to a phonetic unit in linear correspondence. A reader
who tries to avert multivocity, Motoori concludes, must resort to the premise that
the writing contains a unified meaning regardless of the variety of possible
pronunciations attributed to it. In other words, Utranscendent" meaning results
when silence is forced on enunciation. The kind of reading that relies on the
transcendence of meaning is created and necessitated in order to overcome the
problems posed by multivocity. Therefore, if multivocity could be eliminated,
the silent reading bearing transcendent meaning could also be avoided.
Since the reading act is conceived of as a transformation of visual signs into
oral/aural signs, the central issue in Motoori's hermeneutic project is concerned
with methods by which to eliminate those aspects of the writing which resist
reduction to voice, that is, which resist the exhaustive reduction to the regime of
phonocentric ideology. Thus, Motoori opposed any reading of the Kojiki in
which its meaning was arrived at without provoking voice, and he saw in writing
itself the cause of dissemination that necessitated the transcendence of meaning
and made the return to the original, singular voice impossible.
For instance, many paragraphs in the Kojiki are written in kanbun. Although it
was customary to read these in yomikudashi (a Chinese document rewritten in
Japanese with wakun), Motoori refused to do so, even though it was impossible
to conform such sentences to Japanese pronunciation in any other way. Rather
than use wakun, he rewrote or recomposed them in what he judged to be the
authentic Japanese of antiquity and in so doing opened a path to the Kojiki as a
spoken text. Just as Ogyu consistently rejected the Japanese way of reading
Chinese and postulated a scheme of reading in which translation was construed
as a symmetrical procedure, so Motoori executed the same kind of translation of
these Chinese sentences in the Kojiki. It must be admitted that Motoori's enter-
prise is faithful to the prerequisites of the discursive space, and within that space
it is justifiable to claim, as he in fact did, that his translated version preempted
what his contemporaries knew as the text of the Kojiki.
Probably all these efforts to vocalize the Kojiki amounted to the problem of the
apprehension of the verbal, an apprehension in which a written text is thought of
primarily as a lost voice. In the final analysis, the entire project of his Kojiki-den
can be summarized as an attempt to reclaim the text from the realm of seeing and
restore it to the realm of speaking/hearing. In many respects, this attempt coin-
cides with the shift from representational language, where distance is inevitable
(seeing also requires distance), to practice.
Furthermore, it is noteworthy that this shift also indicates the transfer of the
focus of attention from one level of language to another, that is, from the
Phoneticism and History 263
enunciated to the enunciation and from signified to signifier. We should be aware
that the differentiation signifier/signified cannot be substantiated. It is a relative
differentiation: how the signified is determined depends on how the signifier is
identified. Although Motoori rejected "transcendent" meanings, he still relied
on· the meaning of sentences in order to translate ancient texts. In addition, this
regression from the signified to the signifier seems to imply a topos beyond the
signifier, a topos anterior to the very division of signifier from signified, a
division that is the sign. Thus, this shift from seeing to speaking/hearing includes
not only the refusal of distance inherent in vision but also a strong impulse
toward the annihilation of separation between signifier and signified. The shift is
repeatedly displaced, but through displacement it fonos a series of relays: seeing
~ speaking/hearing-signified ---+ signifier-sign ---+ "before the sign"-sig-
nification ~ signifiance-enunciated ---+ enunciation. What is at issue here is
how Motoori ultimately identifies the locus where his claim to immediacy is
justified. In this sense, practice and the body's adherence to the performative
situation are decisive in that they circumscribe an area of experience, in the sense
of Erlebnis, where distance and therefore disparity between speech and its mean-
ing are supposedly absent.
For this reason, to the writers of the eighteenth century history meant dis-
semination caused by writing. Historical time was conceived of as a process in
which the primordial unity of the original utterance was disseminated and dis-
sected. Thus, written inscription was made to represent the image of estrange-
ment in general. Motoori and others appealed to the dichotomy phonet-
icism/ideography to dramatize their notion of historical time. As Kamo noted,
"People of later times had forgotten the original words; so they tried to under-
stand texts according to the characters used. Although the shapes of characters
have been persistent [through history], they cannot reflect the original reality."26
Here, too, the historical distance separating the present from the past is translated
into the difference of graphic images from voice. Consequently, transcending
historical distance is equated to overcoming ideography. Kamo insists that the
phonetic mode is the only authentic mode for the writing system as if phonetic
signs were utterly free of the negative traits he and Motoori and others attributed
to writing in general. We are witnessing the displacement of the opposition
speech/writing by the opposition phoneticism/ideography. Since ideography
.poses a rupture between speech as a mode of practice and the content of speech,
Motoori argues, Chinese ideographs are inferior to Japanese kana.
Poetic versus Theoretical
An implicit consensus shared by many writers, including Motoori and Fujitani
Nariakira, is that Chinese books are theoretical. The Chinese text was thought of
26Kamo Mabuchi, Shoi. in Nihon shiso taike; 39:444.
264 Language, Body, and the Immediate
as a vehicle by which the meaning was conveyed beyond historical time, and the
Chinese ideographs were regarded as independent graphic units that remained
identical throughout history. Evidently these Japanese theorists attributed ide-
ational constancy to Chinese ideographs. I have claimed that Motoori's rejection
of the "transcendent" meaning originated from this assumption. A corollary <Vas
the view that Chinese texts could represent theories in the modality of necessity
but, for that very reason, could not describe the living present, which is by nature
temporary and actual. Thus linguistic studies, which ascribed the overwhelming
sense of estrangement to Chinese ideographs, were dominated by the search for a
language that could capture the troth of the lived, actual, temporary moment.
However culturally and historically limited the present moment might be, the
linguists emphasized that its actuality should be as valid as the universal truth
presumably inherent in the canonical books of the Central Kingdom. Likewise,
for Japanese classics to hold any authenticity at all, they must be decoded in the
midst of the present moment, so that the temporary truth embodied in them could
be made present with original intensity. Like Ogyu, Motoori and Fujitani tried to
make classics present and immediate to contemporary readers by translating
them into colloquialisms-what Ogyu called rigen, the language of villagers.
Translation became a discursive device by which to hint at the intense intimacy
and emotiveness in the original, which they believed theoretical language was
incapable of rendering.
In Kokinshu t6kagami, Motoori translated poems of the Kokinshu into a much
more colloquial and dialectical style than what has been called kogobun (state-
controlled standard colloquial style) in modem Japan. 27 His attempt was a reac-
tion to the tie between what was written and what was not written. The autonomy
of a written text was no longer accepted: it had to be secondary, a temporary
substitute. Only by recovering the lost voice and the bodily action that must have
accompanied it at the originary scene of its enunciation could a text be resur-
rected in its original plenitude; a text had to be integrated into the relevant whole,
so that it might speak with its original voice.
A similar operation is performed in Fujitani's linguistic studies. In Ayuisho,
for example, he extensively employs translation as a linguistic method. Transla-
tion was not merely a pedagogical means to help students. As Tokieda Motoki
noted of the linguistic studies of Tokugawa Japan:
Translation into colloquialism was not primarily a means by which to understand
ancient words. It was rather a henneneutic method by which to explicate what had
already been comprehended. Prior to this sort of explication, however, there must be
270f course, there was no national language equivalent to today's hyojun kogo (standard spoken
Japanese, or NHK Japanese). Motoori translated the Kokinshu into a dialect probably unintelligible to
Japanese living in other remote regions. State intervention in everyday culture since the Meiji period
is just astounding-and probably an inescapable aspect of the modem nation-state-and it has been
changing the cultural features of Japan fundamentally. We must constantly remind ourselves that what
now seems "natural" is a very recent historical construct. "Always historicize!"
Phoneticism and History 265
an experiential comprehension; not only a conceptual and intellectual understanding
but also a concrete comprehension based up'On one's own experience was required.
Translation into colloquialism did not mean a mechanical replacing of ancient words
with their contemporary ones but rather an attitude through which linguists tried to
~ really involved in the depth of words. 28
Involvement facilitated by practice was placed at the center of linguistic stud-
ies. Fujitani Nariakira, like many grammarians of his time, recognized this
nucleus of linguistic studies since the essential feature of language was thought to
manifest itself in colloquialism and the linguistic consciousness attached to it. In
colloquialism as in everyday practice, it was thought, one could take what
Tokieda called the participational stance, an attitude in which one involved
oneself in verbal performance as a speaker or listener and in which an utterance
was perceived as part of one's lived experience. 29 This claim presupposes that
the observation of verbal phenomenon to be acquired in the observational stance
is necessarily preceded by a concrete experience one gains in the participational
stance. Translation into colloquialism is a measure adopted to recover or, in my
opinion, to reflectively and retrospectively reconstitute the original experience
that supposedly had once been lived in the participational stance. In the observa-
tional stance, an utterance is split into many morphological categories and con-
strued in its syntactical functions; yet language thus treated is no longer alive or
evocative of the intensity of the original experience. By reliving the intensity of
the original, Fujitani wanted to relate his linguistic analysis to the immediacy and
intimacy with which language was originally used and to avoid the disparity
between the lived experience and the utterance which characterized the observa-
tional stance. What Tokieda called involvement in "the depth of words" was
apparently sought as a way to relive the verbal experience of the past.
Interestingly enough, it is through the theme of lived experience that prose and
poetry were distinguished. The criterion was not primarily the style or content of
the verbal presentation but whether a verbal work speaks in the representational
mode. When the mode of expression was judged to be analytical, suggesting the
detachment of the agent from the perfonnative situation, it was usually consid-
ered theoretical prose and correspondingly devalued, as happened in the shift
from the Four Books to the Six Classics in Ogyu's philosophical enterprise. Since
intimacy and emotion were thought to be best conveyed in poems, poetry came
,to be seen as the most privileged genre. Ogyu's emphasis on poetry in kobunji
::gaku and his disciples' extensive practice in the imitation of Chinese poetry were
'not unrelated to the general shift in the choice of cannonical books. In the
National Studies, the differentiation Chinese mind/Japanese mind was related to
28Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogakushi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1940), p. 101.
29For the exposition of this term and its pair lenn, "observational stance," refer to Tokieda's
Kokugogaku genron (Tokyo: Iwanami Sholen, 1941), pp. 17-38. These terms in Japanese are
respectively shutaiteki-tachiba and kansatsuteki-tachiba. So, the participational stance could also be
rendered "shutai stance."
266 Language, Body, and the Immediate
another differentiation: theoretical/poetic. Motoori rejected all the Chinese books
except Shi jing (the book of odes), and Fujitani titled his treatises on language
Sho, which was said to mean commentaries on poetry. The concept of poetry thus
gained a special political function according to which various intellectual ac-
tivities were evaluated. In the discursive space of the eighteenth century, poetry
became a privileged topic in reference to which writers were able to define their
own language unity and, consequently, their own cultural identity. By contrasting
poetic to representational language, they further articulated the image of the
interior and ascribed to it another predicate: Japanese. As a matter of fact, the
interior thus defined meant for Fujitani as well as Motoori an area of transparent
language where the so-called native speakers are completely at home, an area of
language comparable to the "unbroken hammer.'"
Heterogeneity of a Language
The very construction that made it possible to differentiate the Chinese from
the Japanese mind presented an obstacle in idealizing the language of Japan. Here
I should consider the radical nature of the denunciation of the Japanese way of
reading Chinese. First, linguists were attacking a specific mode of reading the
Chinese text. Yet, Chinese texts reorganized by wakun represented the general
structure of current language use. Since the introduction of the Chinese writing
system, the so-called Japanese language had so extensively assimilated Chinese
elements that to reject wakun as an amalgam of two different languages was of
necessity to abandon all the Japanese writings then available. Both phoneticsm
and ideography had been integrated into the very structure of Japanese, and the
elimination of ideographic elements, if such a thing were even possible, would
have ruined the whole writing system. By the eighteenth century, this coexistence
of two inscriptional principles had penetrated the language right down to the
phonetic level. Even colloquialism could not escape from what Kamo called
Chinese contamination. The style almost intentionally adopted in both Kamo's
and Motoori's works is testimony to the desperation of their attempt to render the
language transparent by excluding syllables of Chinese origin: on. Obviously the
task was doomed to faiL Paradoxically, the distinctive trait of the Japanese
language is its capacity to absorb foreign elements so thoroughly as to obliterate
the distinction between itself and Chinese; heterogeneity-the absence of a
coherent writing system and the copresence of different inscriptional prin-
ciples-defined the identity of the Japanese language. Of course, every writing
system is in one way or another contaminated" by heterogeneity just as Japa-
44
nese has been. Every language originates essentially as a creole. A purely pho-
netic writing system is no doubt an irresponsible political fancy not only because
no such writing system actually exists but also because such a system simply
would not work. We must caution ourselves against the commonsensical notion
Phoneticism and History 267
that writings systems like the Japanese are abnormal; as a matter of fact, the
Japanese system is perhaps a very accurate representation of the nature of writing
itself. In this regard, homogeneity-the exclusion of ideography and the absence
of dissemination-to which the National Studies aspired, went against the very
grain of language in general and of Japanese cultural fonnations in particular.
The Japanese language was and still is, despite constant state intervention to make
it homogeneous, a disseminated and decomposed language par excellence. 3o
As I have repeatedly stressed, the unity of the Japanese language is neither
given· nor self-e,:ident. One can hardly imagine that those in the region now
called Japan had any coherent notion of their own national language prior to the
seventeenth century. The concept of a national language, which now seems self-
explanatory, would have been incomprehensible. At most, people may have had
a vague notion of foreign languages, but the distinction was not sharp enough to
pennit a definitive demarcation. Surely, there was some cognition of differences,
but the resemblances between Japanese dialects did not converge into the identi-
cal.
As is always the case, the identity of one's own language and culture, or
ethnos, has to be posited diacritically and discursively. Only when a given
discursive space accommodates the discursive apparatus by which to acknowl-
edge the alienness of foreign languages and to appropriate it into the economy of
the dominant discourse (of course, this means the elimination of the otherness of
the Other, since this otherness is exactly what cannot be appropriated), can one
possibly identify the identity of one's own. The constitution of the identical,
therefore, never precedes the recognition of the other, and since the identical is
posterior to the other logically as well as temporally, the definition of the identi-
cal varies as the other is perceived differently. This was the case with eighteenth-
century discourse on Japan.
All the dichotomies-speech/writing, Japanese mind/Chinese mind, and pho-
neticismlideography-functioned as constituting positivities in tenns of which
the other was diacritically posited and appropriated. I must note in this instance
that the identical was not merely the Japanese and their culture: the identical was
posited in the historical past of China or Japan. By circumscribing the interior in
antiquity linguists postulated the identical outside the present society of the
eighteenth century. The identical was, in fact, a utopia, or arche just as it is
always an Idea.
Syntax: Shi and Ji
Studies of syntax during the period disclose a similar fonnation of the identi-
cal. Realizing that a Chinese written text had to be transfonned to be pronoun-
30Cf. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri C. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1976).
268 Language. Body~ and the Immediate
ceable, eighteenth-century grammarians saw the essential difference' between
Japanese and' Chinese in this very fact that Chinese writing could not be pro-
nounced in Japanese unless it was reorganized and supplemented with non-
Chinese particles and verbal endings. This trait had already been observed in tbe
Heian period, but not until the eighteenth century was it fully explored. The
Japaneseness of the Japanese language was first recognized as that which was
absent in Chinese. Therefore, the primary determination of the Japanese lan-
guage was that its grammatical construction was different from and could not be
explained by Chinese.
One of the issues that distinguished eighteenth-century language studies from
earlier ones was the way in which morphological units, particularly verbs and
particles, were analyzed. Both Motoori and Fujitani inherited some concepts and
methods from their predecessors but rejected the atomistic approach to language
structure which characterized Kaibara Ekken's Nippon shakumei, for instance. 31
Such studies were based on the assumption that words were composed of small-
er, more basic units and that the proper understanding of words could be facili-
tated by understanding the original meanings of these units. This etymological
atomism also implied that the historical change of words could be measured in
terms of the deviation of the current meaning from the original meaning of the
basic units. More complicated morphological units, such as phrase, could not be
analyzed by this method; they were viewed as sums of the meanings of words.
This linguistic atomism was mainly concerned with nouns, not verbs, because
immobile and fixable units were considered the most significant aspect of lan-
guage. Grammatical rules by which units were syntactically combined remained
outside the scope of inquiry.
Motoori's and Fujitani's language studies made a sharp contiast to Kaibara's.
No longer was analysis of the noun central to linguistics. Fujitani saw the noun as
merely a substantive to which adverbials, adjectivals, particles, and verbs were
attached. He argued that linguistic activity occurred only when a noun was
combined with nonnominal units: it was no longer a stable and fixable unit in
which meaning was encapsulated. Fujitani likened a noun to the immobile part of
the human body, the thorax. Signification could occur only when this immobile
part was provided with legs, hat, and clothes and started to walk. His simile was
far-reaching.
First, Fujitani perceived that language decomposed into fixable elements
3lKaibara Ekken (1630-1714) was a Confucian scholar, born into the family of a retainer of the
Fukuoka domain (now in Fukuoka prefecture). He served the domaniallord but was forced to leave
his feudal service. Then he traveled to Nagasaki to study medicine and botany. His stipend was
restored by the new domanial lord. who sent him to study in Kyoto, where his teachers were
Kinoshita Jun' an (1621-98), Confucian scholar, and Mukai Gensho (1609-77), a scholar of medici-
nal herbs. At first he was a follower of Song Confucianism, but in his later years he deviated from
Zhu Xi's philosophy to claim the monism of qi. The scope of his scholarship encompassed history,
medicine, education, and others. Among his major works are Yamato honzo (Japanese medical
herbs), Daigiroku (The records of great doubt), Yojokun (For health diet), and Onna daigaku (The
great learning for women).
Phoneticism and History 269
ceases to work as language. Just as a dissected body is not a human being, so a
decomposed utterance cannot be an occasion for signification. Second, language
can best be understood in the mode of movement; that is, language is primarily a
temporary phenomenon that by nature resists fixation and etemalization. Here
too, we can recognize the superiority Fujitani accorded to voice over the graphic
inscription, but voice in this instance must mean bodily practice, a movement
and a living present. Motoori goes even farther. "Generally speaking," he wrote,
"you must make the intention of ancient people's usage of the word evident
rather than seek for its original meaning. Once you understand the intention of its
use, you can do without understanding the original meaning."32 Not only does
he denounce constructivism based on etymological atomism; he locates the sig-
nificative function of language at the level of how a word is used syntactically.
Motoori continues:
It may sound reasonable that you must first inquire into the core of a thing [moto]
and, only after this one should talk of its tip [sue]. This approach does not work with
everything, however. In some cases, you should start with the tip and later try to
inquire. into the core. Usually it is difficult to grasp the original meaning of an
ancient word. What you regard as the original meaning is often not right, and your
guess in most cases fails to get the correct answer. Therefore, in studies of language,
the search for the original meaning must be put aside. Instead, you should concen-
trate on knowing how certain words were used, even if you have no knowledge of
their original meaning. 33
"Core" normally designates substance, and "tip" its derivative, but here I might
as well read these words as "fixed center" and ··flexible periphery." Then it will
be obvious that the opposition core/tip corresponds to a grammatical opposition
nominal/nonnominal. Motoori's emphasis on the usage of words rather than their
meaning suggests the shift of attention from isolated grammatical units toward
rules governing the combination of these units. Moreover, syntax is closely
associated with the mode of practice. This association explains why Motoori so
often talked about kotodama (spirit of language, 8-3) in reference to kakari
musubi (8-4), a traditional term denoting syntactical rules that govern the rela-
tionship between the conjugation of a verb, an adjectival or an adverbial, and
particles located in the preposition. Possibly the obsolescence of these rules by
the eighteenth century encouraged Motoori to attribute the spirit of language to
this grammatical trait of old Japanese.
Motoori believed these rules demonstrated that the spirit of language did not
reside in words: the mystery of language was posited not in morphological units
themselves but in the syntagm, which could not be reduced to the function of
isolated words. The grammatical opposition nominallnonnominal was analogous
32Motoori Norinaga. Tamakatsuma, in Nihon shiso taikei 40:241.
33Ibid.
270 Language, Body, and the Immediate
to that between what could be written in Chinese ideographs and what could not
be. Although the nominal is not identical with what can be written in Chinese
ideographs since the nominal could also be in phonetic kana, grammarians of the
eighteenth century believed they had discovered the way to explicate the funda-
mental structure of Japanese syntax by handling these similar oppositions: ..
speech/writing
practice/theory
poetic!representational
Japanese mind/Chinese mind
phoneticism/ideography
nonnominal/nominal
The predominant principle in the study of syntax was fonuulated in terms of
fixable grammatical units and the context, which activated these units and was
meaningless in itself. The traditional study of te ni 0 ha was connected to the
mainstream of inquiry into Japanese syntax at this point because these Japanese
particles are preeminently syntactical morphological units: they function only to
combine other words and are meaningless in themselves. Although I have used
the tenus adjectival, adverbial and verb, these are inventions of modem Japanese
linguistics. Eighteenth-century writers did not employ them. They construed
utterances into the aforementioned cores (moto) and tips (sue).34 Even what are
now called verbs were dissected into stems and conjugational suffixes, and then
the opposition nominallnonnominal was applied to them. Moreover, context and
what activates nominals were further articulated by appealing to the image of the
human body in practice. Therefore, Fujitani's human-body model, in which
various functions of morphemes are associated with various parts of the human
body, is not simply an ad hoc scheme by which to explain the rules of language.
Rather, it points out the practical nature of language, which was believed to
reside in the temporary movement of the body but not in objectifiable things. In
this sense, we must never view Motoori's language study entirely in the light of
linguistics: his scheme also considered the possibility of morphology itself and of
linguistics as systematic knowledge.
Ironically, though, the language studies of Motoori and Fujitani, which after
all were attempts to objectify language, were sustained by the awareness that
language could be understood only in immediate experience preceding any ob-
34} say "utterance" rather than "sentence" for the reason I have already mentioned, namely, that I
cannot find any discursive positivity equivalent to the sentence in eighteenth-century discourse on
language. No doubt, an institution called the sentence belongs to a historically and culturally specific
discursive formation and carries with it restrictive assumptions about subjectivity which are by no
means self-evident. Nonetheless, for the sake of simplicity, } have used and will use this term by
which I mean a grammatical unit larger than a phrase and smaller than, say, a paragraph. Of course,
such concepts as sentence, syntax, subject, and judgment have played important roles in modem
European thought. It is absolutely necessary to delineate the historical scope of these constituting
positivities and to deconstruct them. See Julia Kristeva, "Objet ou complement," in Polylogue (Paris:
Seuil, 1977), pp. 225-62.
Phoneticism and History 271
jectification. Yet, although they flatly denied the instrumental view of language,
the instrumental or rhetorical character of tl;leir studies is clear: their knowledge
had to be completely instrumental. Like Ogyu's methods, their studies were
primarily a vehicle by which a student was to acquire immediate comprehension
of t~e whole from which texts were produced; once this immediate comprehen-
sion was achieved, detailed and scholastic knowledge of language should be cast
aside. What can be characterized as the intellectual tendency to seek encyclo-
pedic knowledge about archaic cultures, on the one hand, and the antiintellectual
tendency toward instantaneous actualization of the enunciation, on the other,
were mutually complementary in many language studies of the eighteenth cen-
tury. This analysis of language, so widely prevalent then, was destined to serve
poetics, whose theme was, indeed, how to read, write in the fashion of, and
relive ancient poetry.
Underlying all these intellectual pursuits is an acute sense of the incomplete-
ness of written texts. The thesis that a written text cannot be understood in itself
and has to be supplemented led to an assumption concerning the relationship
between what is inscribable and what is not. But as I have maintained from the
outset, voice as well as writing and drawing is inscriptive, speech is incomplete,
another form of inscription. For the time being, however, let us concern our-
selves with the aSPects of language in which eighteenth-century theorists located
this notion of incompleteness so as to identify the Japaneseness as the outside of
the writing.
First, Japanese particles and conjugational suffixes were added to the original
Chinese writing to enable vocalization. The Japanese language was thereby
identified with what was absent on the surface of the Chinese text, yet necessary
for vocalization. This pairing of absence and presence extended to the analysis of
the basic structure of the Japanese language in tenus of the opposition nomi-
nallnonnominal. At this stage, the text's outside was appropriated into a gram-
matical opposition and translated into a positivity in the discourse, thereby avert-
ing more radical and fundamental problems about the outside. Needless to say,
neither the question whether the text's outside can be posited as an identifiable
object nor the less specific issue of general text was posited straightforwardly.
Second, the outside of a text was ontologized in tenus of the speech/writing
dichotomy. Here, the issue was no longer purely grammatical but inevitably
involved another problem concerning the relationship between verbal and non-
verbal texts. It had been postulated that SPeech is simultaneously verbal and
nonverbal but that writing does not have such transformability. Speech could also
be a corporeal act taking place in the midst of a Performative situation. In
contrast, writing was seen as a form of verbal text that had been detached from
such a situation. Thus, compared to writing, which is marked by its physical
limits and thus separated from its outside, speech has no outside, no extratextual
reality, because the speech is such an extratexual reality in its apophantic aspect.
I repeat that the characterization of speech as the plenitude of verbalization and
of writing as the absence of verbalization is extremely dubious. Nevertheless, I
272 Language, Body, and the Immediate
think that the speech/writing dichotomy was part and parcel of the discursive
space in which linguistic studies were conducted.
Eighteenth-century discourse on language did not clearly discriminate between
these two aspects, as Motoon's study of punctuation demonstrates. In every use
of words, Motoori claims, there are rules as to where one should punctuate and
where one should not. 35 He demonstrates how the meaning of an entire waka
poem changes according to where it is divided. From this observation, he derives
the concept of 0 (8-5). 0 originally signifies the cord of a necklace and tama
(8-6) a gem on it: 0 is that which puts together different nominal units, tama is
the isolated units; the whole utterance is the entire necklace. Here I must dis-
tinguish two axes: the first is the axis along which the opposition nomi-
naIlnonnominal is constituted; the second is the one along which the opposition
of isolated words and the relationship among words is thought. Syntagm is not
encompassed within the scope of the nominallnonnominal opposition. It ad-
dresses itself to the differences in function among various morphological catego-
ries of words. To determine the function of a word, however, one has to consider
the position of that word in the whole utterance and its rapport with other words.
As Fujitani also maintained, the opposition nominallnonnominal relates itself to
the distinction between the immobile and the mobile. Thus, at one level, 0 means
nonnominal factors in the utterance, but at another, it is the syntagm, or the
thread combining the gems, by which a whole utterance becomes alive, just as a
human body is in practice. It is with this concept of 0 that Motoon identifies the
level of syntax, which is concerned not with isolated words but with syntagmatic
rapports that cannot be reduced to individual words.
The best explanation for this dual conception can be found in Tokieda
Motoki's language process theory. Tokieda introduces a pair of syntactical cate-
gories, shi and ji. At the most elementary level, shi is the stem, and ji the
conjugational suffix of a verb, adjectival or adverbial. In that sense, they corre-
spond to nominal and nonnominal, but this differentiation cannot be limited to
the morphological categorization of words. Shi andji are conceived as the most
elementary syntactical units and are postulated to discern the level of syntagm
from that of words. Through this pair of concepts, Tokieda differentiates the
contained, words synthesized by syntactical rules, from the container, syntactical
rules that synthesize words. Referring to an eighteenth-century linguist, Tokieda
remarks: "Suzuki Akira has already said that the things shi and ji respectively
designate belong to different dimensions. Suzuki's idea derived from Motoori
Norinaga, and according to Motoori, shi is tama, ji is o. Or shi is a dish andji is a
hand to manipulate it."36 When a hand is added to an inanimate dish, the dish
35Motoori Norinaga, Isonokami sasamegolo, in MOloor; Norinaga zenshu, vol. 2 (Tokyo:
Chikuma Shobo, 1968), pp. 85-198.
36Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogaku genron, p. 28. Suzuki Akira (1764-1837), son of a medical doctor
in the service of the Owari domain (now in Aichi prefecture), was interested in Japanese grammar and
became a student of Motoori Norinaga. In many respects, his work represented an attempt to
•
Phoneticism and History 273
can move and become integrated into an action. Thus, ji is not only a category of
morphemes but also a principle by which the minimum unity of an utterance is
constituted: an utterance must contain at least a pair of shi and ji. Shi alone never
generates an utterance; only when it is accompanied by ji does it serve as a word
in an utterance. Therefore ji generates the layer of syntax as opposed to the layer
of morphology. It is, however, important to note that this pair allows for the
generation of an indefinite number of layers:
(Shi) (Ji)
Contained /contain:t
Contained Container
Contained Container
Contained Container
Tokieda calls this multilayered construction the "box-in-box structure"
(irekogata kozo, 8-7). Ji s~rves to transform whatever may precede it, accom-
panying it into shi. Regardless of whether shi consists of a morpheme or a whole
utterance,.ji can contain its antecedent and ascribe to it a determination (gentei,
8-8) of shi. For this reason, Tokieda also calls the box-in-box structure the
furoshiki structure. A furoshiki is a wrapping cloth once widely used in Japan as a
substitute for a bag or case. Because of its flexibility, it can contain things of any
shape. Like the furoshiki, ji does not have its own determined shape; it assumes
the shape of whatever is contained in it and keeps what is contained together as a
synthesized whole. Suffice it to say that a furoshiki containing things can also be
wrapped up by another furoshiki, and therefore, the synthesized whole, or an
utterance, can contain many sheets of furoshiki in it. At this level, shi and ji no
longer denote nominal and nonnominal: the shi-ji relationship~ Tokieda claims, is
the fundamental" pattern of Japanese syntax.
It is far from clear how Tokieda can attribute Japaneseness to the shi-ji struc-
ture~ however. Tokieda himself rigorously criticized the positivistic conception of
the unity of a language, or langue, and I believe that his argument in spite of
itself, amounts to denial of the direct connection between the shi-ji structure and
the Japaneseness of the Japanese language. I shall discuss this and other problems
inherent in Tokieda linguistics later, but meanwhile, let me note that what are
highlighted by Tokieda's shi-ji structure-the oppositions nominallnonnominal
and "isolated words" / "relationship between words" -were continuously dis-
cussed in eighteenth-century discourse without explicating a difference of levels.
It was not a confusion easy to rectify, for it was inherent in the conception of
synthesize the grammatical studies of the Chinese language by Ogyu Sorai and Minagawa Kien with
Fujitani Nariakira's and Motoori's. He developed theories of the morphology and syntax of Japanese
in such works as Gengyo shitsu ron (Thesis on Japanese morphology) and Katsugo danzoku fu (The
table of inflectional paradigms).
274 Language, Body, and the Immediate
language itself: language and nonlanguage are not entirely external to each other;
their difference is strangely implicated in their complicity.
A Text and Its Performative Situation
Significant in this analysis of the "Japanese" language is that the shi/ji differ-
entiation can be extended to explain the text's adherence to its extratextual reality.
Or another interpretation is feasible: if shi is taken to be what is fixed and framed
in enunciation, ji would simultaneously mean what fixes and frames and what
flees from fixation within the frame. Thus the box-in-box structure could implic-
itly or perhaps unknowingly designate the manner in which some unity of utter-
ance, verbal in nature, is differentiated from its performative situation through
framing mechanism.
As Fujitani sensed, what gives unity to an utterance or any linguistic activity is
not the inner transcendental synthesis of the speaking subject. Rather, its unity is
comparable to that of a human body in practice within a certain performative
situation. When language is understood in this way, it follows that the identity of
a poem, for example, necessarily includes some apprehension of the situation in
which it happens to be recited. Its signification might transcend the contingency
of a particular reading, but what matters is signifiance, and eighteenth-century
grammarians all seem to have agreed that a poem's worth lies in signifiance, not
in signification. Hence, the meaning of a text can be absolute only on condition
that it is conceived within the immediacy of practice. And if one really wishes to
reach the absolute meaning of a text, one should create a situation identical to
that in which the text was originally uttered and then assimilate oneself into the
pattern of practice through which the text was produced. To be sure, such a
venture should prove impossible. The only trace of the act producing a text is the
text itself, and neither situation nor practice can be posited independently of the
text, so that the very notion of situation and practice as extratextual makes both
situation and practice antinomical. Therefore, to keep this venture viable it is
necessary to posit a state prior to the separation of shi and ji, a prelinguistic state
where supposedly the preservation, fixation, and inscription of the text has not
yet been completed. That is to say, the modality of existence for a performative
situation and practice is taken to be actuality in an instantaneous and temporary
moment, or Augenblick.
Feeling and Temporarity
The desire for transparent language, therefore, reflects the tendency in eigh-
teenth-century discourse to reduce any text to actuality in an instantaneous and
temporary moment. No doubt, within the framework of the dichotomls I have
mentioned, the hmeaningfulness of mono" (mono no aware), which Motoori
Phoneticism and History 275
thought of as the essence of literature, should signify the ultimate state of textual
comprehension in. which a text is completely reduced to the level of performative
situation and practice. What I see in his explanation of the meaningfulness of
mono is that when one grasps the world in its instantaneous immediacy, the being
of tile world thus grasped is absolute in itself and requires no further justification.
The feeling with which one encounters the world, however immoral it may be by
conventional standards, is to be affirmed because it is absolute in its immediacy.
The introduction in Chinese to the Kokinshu says, uThought changes, and sorrow
and joy also change." This, too, explains what is meant by "knowing the mean-
ingfulness of monon [mono no aware 0 shiro]. I think that what is meant by
"knowing the meaningfulness of mono" refers to the fact that every living creature
in this world has feeling and that, insofar as it has feeling, it should necessarily think
[omou], whenever it is in contact with mono. Therefore, every living creature
possesses poetry [uta].... Every time a man is in contact with an event, [his]
feeling is stirred and never remains calm. What is meant by "feeling being stirred"
is that man becomes sad, angry, happy, or pleased.... Because man "knows the
meaningfulness of mono," [his] feeling is stirred. For instance, man thinks [omou]
he is pleased when he comes across a pleasing event. It is because he knows
[wakimae shim] the essence [kokoro] of what is pleasing in this said event that he is
pleased. 3?
Feeling is not a state of mind independent of mono; it is a movement that takes
place only in contact with Mono. The term "feeling" denotes an instantaneous
moment of encounter and change, or the passive aspect of the incessantly chang-
ing relationship between the human body and the world. Likewise, omou (think-
ing, 8-9) and shiru (knowing, 8-10) have a meaning exactly opposite to that
accorded them by modem philosophy. Neither is an act by which objects are
posited in front of the thinking or knowing subject. Surely, insofar as both
verbs-omou and shiru-can take complements that are in this case shudai-
subjects, objects (those which are posited thematically as shudai for some act)
are thetically posited in thinking and knowing. Yet objects are never fully con-
stituted and determined as correlates of the likewise fully constituted subject.
Thus, omou and shiro, so to speak, drag embryonic codes that connect the
utterance to its prelinguistic or primordial symbiosis with the world. 38 In the
quoted passage, these terms refer to modes of assimilation to mono and of
immediate contact with it. So, as a matter of fact, "thinking" and "knowing"
37Motoori Norinaga, lsonokami sasamegoto, pp. 85-198. There are two introductions to the
Kokinshu, one in Japanese (kana-jo) and another in Chinese (mana-jo). Here, Motoori refers to the
latter.
38In this regard. the meaningfulness of mono necessarily implies a sense of transgression since it
designates the state of instability for the subject. It is the state in which ..I" is not sure of who .. 1" is
and where "I" stands in relation to other subjective positions. Thus, Motoori refers to the well-
known case of a Buddhist monk who falls in love with a woman as the best example of mono no
aware. Motoori's notion of "femininity." or taoyame bur;, which he sometimes claimed to be the
eSSence of Japaneseness, seems to be closely related to the instability of the subject. Two centuries
later Nishida Kitaro addresses a similar problematic of "femininity." In spite of his stylistic features.
276 Language, Body, and the Immediate
were made to indicate the dissolution of the distance between subject and object,
and the existence of what Motoori alluded to in the notion of feeling seems to
testify to the legitimacy of using omou and shim in that manner. Just as Ito Jinsai
had extensively discussed feeling without any nostalgia for primordial together-
ness, so Motoori, too, rejected any objectification and substantiation of it b'Ut
with a great deal of nostalgia. Feeling must be comprehended in its tran-
sitoriness. It is not a phenomenon ascribable to an entity that itself does not
change but remains identical in the process of movement; instead, it is the
changing aspect of movement itself.
Hence the transitoriness of the meaningfulness of mono is only too evident;
mono can be meaningful only because it does not last. It is destined to disappear.
Since it does not have the constancy of a thing, mono is always eroded by time.
Without doubt, Motoori's thesis of the meaningfulness of mono contains the
affirmation of the present. Yet in the same thesis is there not also the desperate
recognition of the irredeemability of the past? Is the present most glaring when
surrounded by the darkness of the past? If to affirm the present is to affirm life,
the irredeemability of the past then implies the irredeemability of past life.
Because we know that this instantaneous moment, this present overwhelming joy
or acute sorrow, will never come back and will be lost forever, do we not try to
immerse ourselves in this moment? Because the past is irredeemably lost, is the
present, which will be the past in the next instant, so valuable to us? Or put yet
another way, to the extent that the loss of the past is acutely felt, is the present
intense and glorified, or is it expected to be?
In this respect, I claim that the discursive space in question was secretly but
decisively governed by a concern for death. As a dead body has to be resurrected
in order to revive past life, so a written text has to be reactivated for it to speak
with its originary meaningfulness. But the very way the past is imagined as
irredeemable makes it impossible to truly recover its originary meaningfulness.
The past is synonymous with what has been irrevocably lost. However much one
may try to grasp the writing in its transparency, it will never be returned to the
status of its original practice.
Ironically enough, Motoori's conception of moto/sue (nominallnonnominal)
clearly depicts this fundamental contradiction immanent in the discursive space
of the eighteenth century. Since immobility and mobility are attributed to nomi-
nal and nonnominal, this opposition inevitably relates itself to a temporal differ-
entiation durable/temporary. Yet if the nominal is taken to be atemporal, and the
which do not suggest any "femininity" at all, Nishida's philosophical enterprise put the question of
"femininity" radically. In this sense, Nishida was a philosopher of "feminism." A half century after
Nishida, Julia Kristeva produced a philosophical critique of the phallocentric West, the basic the-
oretical premises of which are astonishingly similar to Nishida's. Both attempted to examinC1lhe
constitution of the subject and its instability-legitimate problems indeed-starting from Platlrrtic
chora which Nishida called basho. It is important to note, however, that Nishida's philosophy ended
up serving assimilationism during the 1930s and early 19408 as a universalistic ideology. That it did
suggests to me a danger of talking about "femininity" in aesthetic and philosophical tenns without
due attention to its socio-political consequences.
Phoneticism and History 277
nonnominal to be transitory and temporal, then the past can never be excluded
from the present. Every utterance necessarily comprises the two. To use the
terminology of Kamo and Motoori, their language had already been contami-
nated by ideography, which fixed the enunciation and made it atemporal. Hence,
in order to render transparent the language they thought of in terms of those
oppositions, they had to emphasize the positive term of e'ach opposition, thereby
decreasing the importance of the negative terms or eliminating them, treating
them as if they had not existed. The oppositions were organized according to the
positive-negative polarity and presented with a certain directionality clearly dis-
cernible here: .
Positive Negative
Speech Writing
Phoneticism ldeography
(Japanese mind) (Chinese mind)
Temporary, Durable
Poetic Representational
Practice Theory
Nonnominal Nominal
Voice: Univocity Plurality of voices: Multivocity
In the discursive space of the eighteenth century, it was imperative to generate
the image of a language free from all these negative terms and consisting of only
the positive ones. For this purpose, discourse was generated and regenerated to
eliminate whatever obstacles writers of the times perceived as hindering the
actualization of that image. But the notion of a language that is totally devoid of
multivocity, of a language whose traits include none of those negative terms, is
self-contradictory because the positive terms are posterior to and dependent on
the oppositions and also because exclusion of the negative terms amounts to
elimination of the oppositions themselves. Once these have been negated, then
the positive terms equally cease to exist. In other words, the realization of an
ideal language is, in fact, its annihilation. Nonetheless, it is this contradiction
that sustained the production and reproduction of discourse in the eighteenth
century, indeed, was the fundamental condition of possibility for the discursive
space of eighteenth-century Japan. It was a wish embedded there, a wish that
would never be fulfilled.
Sincerity and Silence
An explicit manifestation of this wish can be discerned in the poetics of
Kagawa Kageki. 39 Kagawa placed an overwhelming emphasis on the present,
39Kagawa Kageki (1168-1843), waka poet and literary theorist, was born in the Tottori domain
(now Tottori prefecture) and at the age of twenty-five went to Kyoto to study. There he was adopted
into the Kagawa family, inheritors of the Nijo school of court poetry. Against the tradition of the Nijo
 278 Language, Body, and the Immediate
for he was determined to eliminate any factor that escapes the present. Even
social conventions and traditions that ensure continuity between past and present
in waka poetry were challenged. Kagawa believed that the vulgar language of the
past had become the classical language of his day, and therefore, the vulgar
language of his day would be the classical language of the future. One does not
speak classical language but studies it. By contrast the vulgar language of one's
own time should be spoken but never studied. From this point of view, Kagawa
denied the authenticity of classical language in waka composition. Since only the
present is significant, its ultimate expression must be the vulgar speech of the
day, not writing: "To say that only classical language is refined and elegant, and
t~ay's language vulgar is just like loathing yourself because your own body
stinks. . . . Poesie should exist only in the vulgarity of the actual world."4O
The immediate present and the sphere of nearness are associated with one's
own body. The human body is the locus where the present, immediacy, and the
meaningfulness of mono (which Kagawa terms "correspondence," or kanno) are
to be discovered. For him too, voice is the source of poetry. It is the very form in
which sincerity is expressed: "Because [a poem of sincerity] is the voice uttered
when one is in contact with mono and moved by it, there should never be the
slightest rupture as fine as a hair between the excitement [kan] and the tone
[shirabe] [of a poem]. Such a poem comes directly out of the immediate stirred
mind."41 Sincerity, then, is a stale comparable to the meaningfulness of mono.
Kagawa's idea of sincerity seems to suggest total adherence to the performative
situation. Thus, the rupture between the present and the past, the temporary and
the durable, is erased by eliminating from his poetry what has been associated
with the past and the durable. The distance between the excitement and the tone
therefore, is supposed to be generated by the disparity between what cannot
written and what can be written, between what, as a horizon of utterance,
activates a text but is never presented in it and what the text explicitly says. If
such a poem as Kagawa sought is possible, it should consist entirely of either
what can be written or what cannot be written at all. Any coexistence of the two
is rejected. The whole performative situation should be captured exhaustively in
a poem, or a poem should be equated to the wholeness of the performative
situation and should cease to be a verbal text, so as to become a non-verbal
practice. From both of these possibilities the result would be identical: the total
renunciation of writing.
Usually poets transfer already composed poems into written form. When you trans-
fer poems into written form, you use your eyes. When you use your eyes, you
school, from which he was later excluded, he advocated simplicity, intelligibility, and the use of
vemac~lar language in poetry. Gradually, his poetics attracted followers all over Japan, who fonned
th~ Kelen .s~hool of wak~ poetry. His works include Keien isshi (Kagawa Kagei's waka anthology),
Nllmanabl Iken (A HeretIcal VIew, new learning), Kagaku teiyo (Summa poetical, and others.
40Kagawa Kageki, Kagaku Teiyo, in Koten nihon bungaku taikei, voL 94 (Tokyo: Iwanami
SholeD, 1964), pp. 144-45.
41Ibid., p. 146.
Phoneticism and History 279
inevitably rely on the signification of language [girl]. When you rely on the sig-
nification of language, you alienate yourself from the tone of voice. When you are
alienated from the tone, there will be no feeling to be expressed, and a poem will
lose its essential function. 42
In short, all his argument seems to amount to is the identification of poetry
with exclamation, for in exclamation, there cannot be any distance or rupture
between the utterance and the adherence to the performative situation. The real
feeling, as Kagawa understood it, could thus be interpreted as similar to mean-
ingfulness (aware), and a poem's essential function was to express the mean-
ingfulness of mono (if I am allowed to use Motoori's terminology even though
Kagawa's poetics was quite distinct from Motoori's). The difference between
voice and writing, according to Kagawa's view, caused a rupture between the
excitation and the tone. His fear of rupture extends even into spoken language,
and Kagawa placed importance on the nonrepresentational aspect of voice. In
every phase of Kagawa's poetics a tendency to reorganize the view of language is
detectable. By authorizing the supremacy of exclamation and the nonrepresenta-
tional aspect of voice, his conception of language reveals its dominant image as a
cry-a cry that refuses to signify anything outside itself. What is manifest in
Kagawa's rejection of writing as well as his inclination toward exclamatory
poetry is an obsessive wish to be perfectly at home in a language and an equally
obsessive dread of being excluded from some primordial symbiosis with lan-
guage.
It seems to me that Kagawa's poetics and, more generally, the internal struc-
ture of the discursive space point to an extremity where language> is completely
b; liberated from signification. But I must also note that when language is liberated
from writing, it is deprived of sociality and ethicality; when one rejects the
fundamental insight that no body is at home in language, the annihilation of
language results; when language is stripped of Otherness, it ceases to enable
people to encounter each other. Sociality, which was the inalienable moment in
Ito's sincerity, has evaporated. Instead, it seems, Kagawa's sincerity manifests
an inclination toward homosociality. Even though this extremity cannot be char-
acterized by the absence of sound, we should still be able to say that it is a form
of silence.
42Ibid., p. 150.

CHAPTER 9 ate itself so that the motivation for social action appears to originate in the
The Politics of Choreography
Ideological Constitution of Social Reality
In spite of its seeming indifference to power and domination, under the guise of
innocent neutrality, poetics became the arena where the severest ideological
battles were fought. It occupied the central locus in eighteenth-century intellec-
tual and literary discourse, even though no specific conception of poetry could
serve as an incentive for social reforms, political programs, or revolutionary
change. No one, then or now, could believe that the production of a good poem
could actually result in a more justifiable social order. Nevertheless, this appar-
ent apoliticality was far from free of ideological maneuvering. I am saying not
that the discourse on poetry was necessarily motivated by a wish for domination
but that its very production generated and regenerated particular forms of desire.
Moreover, the ideological concerns embedded in the discourse on poetry and
language were directed not toward a choice of political programs but toward the
conditions by which such a choice could be made. In this sense, these concerns
directly related to the discursive formation within which politics could be articu-
lated.
It is in this light that the ideological nature of kiyo no gaku and kobunji gaku is
best illustrated. Not only did Ogyu Sorai posit an ideal social and cultural order
from which to criticize the reality of his contemporary world, but he also outlined
a conceptual framework that explained how the institution was to regulate the
behavior of individuals in the social environment. His notion of institutional
reality was closely connected to language. Ogyu was talking not about social
institutions extrinsic to members of the community but institutions as inter-
nalized by the members. Institutions could not exercise infallible power over the
subjects, he reasoned, unless they were completely internalized and conse-
quently rendered invisible and transparent. Any form or imperative that appears
extrinsic to one's spontaneity can direct and regulate one's deeds only extrin-
280
The Politics of Choreography 281
sically and, as a consequence, would have to appeal to authoritarian measures.
When a power reveals itself as an authority, it cannot have maximum efficiency.
Any power, if it is to control and direct a community successfully, must effectu-
spontaneous participation of each subject. Power must not be naked; it must not
reveal itself; it must reside not somewhere high above ordinary people but in the
midst of their everyday deeds, where it can imperceptibly regulate their mundane
conduct from within.
Perhaps Ogyu's accurate awareness of the nature of political control explains
why he conceived of institutions as posterior to language. Language is the most
explicit form of social control that is supposedly imperceptible to the person
controlled, that is, to the putatively "native" speaker of that language. Language
is not perceived as a set of rules extrinsic to the speech acts; speaking and acting
in a given language medium presuppose the internalization of the language.
Likewise, Ogyu suggested, effective institutions are always internalized, so that
they should not be noticed.
We must remember, though, that internalization is a stage of leaming. Only
through-repetitive practice can one acquire language ability or the knowledge to
act in certain ways. This is to say, language and institutions have to be registered
in the body as a pattern (Ii, Ii, 1-3) or a sort of tattoo (bun, wen, 9-1).1 Thus the
transition from the exterior to the interior was equated to the pedagogic process
by which a student followed gradual steps leading to the ultimate acquisition of
ancient Chinese and its institutions. Of course, the language and institutionalized
behavior patterns thus acquired are not preserved in the form of speculative
knowledge but rather in habit, or practice and experiential knowledge; the locus
of the interior is not in the mind but in the body, where language and institutions
are internalized preconsciously.
This is the point that is in need of theoretical elucidation, for it is in the mode
of existence of the human body that language and institutions experientially
acquired by a person were believed to have a communal dimension. Yet if a
conscientious individual student learned the language and institutions of antiq-
uity, would his achievement not be limited to the student himself? Would it not
manifest the interior to him alone? On what grounds could Ogyu claim that the
realization of the interior goes beyond an individual person toward collectivity at
large? It is hard to imagine that he and other writers of the eighteenth century
believed it possible to transform the society of Tokugawa Japan into that of
antiquity merely by teaching a few students ancient texts and languages. What
was at stake was not a political program whose viability could be measured by
short-term observation.
lThe character bun in Japanese (wen in Chinese) is very important in this context. Let us recall that
this character was used in Ogyu's leaming of ancient texts and words, kobunji gaku. Bun can be
rendered as figure, embroidery, coloring, brilliance, appearance, surface pattern, beauty, ornament,
tattoo, regularity, rhythm, manners, grain, individual culture obtained through the mastery of rites
and music, expression. writing, text, prose, document, book, etc.
282 Language. Body. and the Immediate
In this regard, we should particularly note two theses about language and the
institution in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. First, that the human
body was taken to be the locus of language and the institution implies the
impossibility of grasping an individual as an isolated entity. It is not that a social
interaction takes place between two individual bodies or consciousnesses but that
the image of the body is where the relation of the subject to the other subject
occurs. 2 What are often depicted as the invisible inner recesses of the mind inside
one's body are in fact already socially constructed. Attributes such as privacy,
secrecy, and interiority are social categories. Therefore, the acquisition of lan-
guage or an institution not only affects the wayan individual agent behav·es but
also transforms the relationships she has with her "self" and others.
Second, language and the institution are inherently in possession of the Other
in the sense of a projected "collectivity." It goes without saying that the self is
always posited as an other in language. Instead of declaring the authenticity of
the subject of enunciation, language use annihilates and replaces that subject
with an anonymous "I." (Of course, I do not necessarily imply that there is an
authentic and nonanonymous "I" before language use.) Partly because of this
fundamental character of language use, Ogyu could argue that his student had to
become a Chinese of antiquity in order to speak the language fluently. The
speaker who emerges out of language use belongs to the sphere defined by that
language or interior, but the prelinguistic individual speaker does not. Hence, to
master a language is always to subject oneself to the order of the Other. But at the
same time, it could be an attempt to "apophantically" establish a "collectivity"
that does not exist. The subject in language is always the one who is subject to
the Other, and the same could be said of the institution. By entering the circuit of
set behavior patterns, one conforms first to the rules imagined to be regulating
the membership of the institution and subsequently to the image of that institu-
tion, and one is transformed into the role expected in the given institutional
setting. One is then defined as a subject according to rules that are also the rules
of transference.
The consequences I can draw from these theses are far-reaching. The reality of
an individual man's presence is defined in terms of his body, 3 whereas his
selfhood is entirely dependent upon language and the institutions he happens to
adhere to. Indeed, this is another way of saying one's identity is determined
socially, but in the discursive space of the eighteenth century, it meant much
more. Social reality was conceived of not as a given but as that which is
2ef. Jacques Lacan, Le seminaire: Le moi dans la theorie de Freud et dans Ie technique de La
psychanalyse (Paris: Seuil, 1978), pp. 207-338.
30gyu Sorai explicitly said, "The 'Xiangyinjiu yi' section of the Li jf says, 'It is in the body that
the virtue is obtained.' Zhu Xi may well have thought that the virtue was in intention; so he argued
that to mention the body rather than the mind [where the virtue would reside] was superficial-a
typical mistake by someone who knew no ancient language! In antiquity no one opposed the body to
the mind. By the body was always meant the self. How could one conceive of the self that excludes
the mind?" (Benmei, in Nihon shiso taikei, vol. 36 [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1973], p. 50).
The Politics of Choreography 283
constituted ideologically. All the discussion of antiquity and the ancient institu-
tional order was necessarily based on the 'implicit recognition that what these
writers called mono, or the institutional reality of the society, was an ideological
construct. They assumed that the institution and even language were always
constructed politically. In this respect, Maruyama Masao's insight is still valid:
surely eighteenth-century discourse conceived the social' order as a convention,
not as nature. 4 This is not to say, though, that the construction of social reality
was manipulated and controlled by individual consciousnesses.
On 'what grounds can one possibly understand the eighteenth-century view of
the ideological construction of social reality? How can one still claim that institu-
tions were comprehended as conventions when the intention of a manipulating
and controlling consciousness could not be posited as a support behind the
surface of the texts called institutional realities? The emergence of the human
body in the discursive space plays a decisive role in my attempt to respond to
these questions, fc: it is in tenns of the ontological determination of the human
body that the working of ideology, by which social realities are generated and
projected, can be elucidated. In this connection, we ought to remind ourselves
that although these writers urged their disciples to learn about antiquity and
thereby assimilate themselves into the interior, they never tried to convince them
of the legitimacy of the ancient social order. It seems to me that their refusal to
give verbal justification to what they considered the ideal order illustrates the
dimension of social reality to which the ideological function was ascribed.
Only as long as it is free from and beyond the scope of verbal explication and
justification does ideology continue to generate and regenerate institutions and to
keep them intact. Because institutions cease to be infallible when they are objec-
tified and thematically queried, they must be invisible and transparent to those
who conform to them, just as language should never be an object of questioning
for its "native" speakers. (This notion is indeed rather problematic since the idea
of the native speaker itself is discursively constituted. After all, I maintain that
no-body is exhaustively at home in language. Nevertheless, eighteenth-century
discursive space, or at least a majority of the writers who lent themselves to it,
seems to have held this notion.) Similarly, institutions when they are alive and
healthy are not doubted or questioned. Instead, they are familiarized and inter-
nalized, that is, internalized in one's body, not one's mind. As self-reproducing
regularities, institutions are registered in the human body as habit and are main-
tained as practical and experiential knowledge. Whereas speculative knowledge
dictates the representation of a past event and persuades one toward a certain
praxis, practical knowledge enables one to manipulate a given situation strate-
gically without questioning its terms reflectively. Practical knowledge endows its
practitioners with the ability to perceive and articulate a given situation in terms
pertinent to their effective, assumed participation. Here, the perception of a
4Maruyama Masao, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Mikiso Hane
(Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1974).
284 Language, Body, and the Immediate
situation and the response to it are one. For a skilled tennis player, for instance,
the perception' of the direction of a ball and the immediate response by which the
player's entire body begins to move toward the ball are not differentiated and do
not take place independently. It was precisely this sort of knowledge, eighteenth-
century writers believed, that generated institutions. They rejected and dis-
qualified verbal legitimation of ideal institutions because they believed that disci-
pline and practice alone could enable people to assimilate themselves into waat-
ever social order might be proclaimed.
Naturally, eighteenth-century writers, aware of this practical nature of ide-
ology, despised those who believed in the possibility of improving the society
solely by appealing to the mind, by rational persuasion or explanation in words.
Furthermore, they promoted philosophical inquiry into the mechanism by which
the mind and the reason were generated as symptoms of some cultural deficiency.
The human body, then, became the nucleus around which a varied discourse on
the ideological constitution of social realities accumulated. It is not surprising
that their notions of mono, the performative situation, and language intersect and
diverge around this thesis of corporeal practice. On the one hand, mono was
conceived as a given, a background against which explicitly verbal texts were
enunciated, but not a neutral and amorphous background. This horizon for the
enunciation was implicitly articulated in relation to a specific speech act; in this
regard, certain regularities were already embedded in it. Otherwise, stripped of
these potential regularities, mono would have been a purely historical accident
that could never repeat itself. Because it was always viewed in relation to this
horizon for the enunciation, a verbal text would not have been able to repeat itself
either unless it was endowed with the same horizon. It would therefore be
pointless to claim that one could resurrect the past by learning the language of the
past. What is affirmed here is the mediation of the human body between the
verbal and its performative situation.
Underlying this argument is the tendency, which was conspicuous in the
discourse of the eighteenth century, to construe the verbal or nonverbal text in its
generative function. What mattered was not what a text meant, what it repre-
sented, but how it was made to signify. Hence, a writing of antiquity was studied
to bring out the conditions of its enunciation, not to register it as an event of
historiography. Insofar as an enunciation is seen in isolation and grasped as an
event, its adherence to its performative situation only informs us of the irre-
deemable nature of historical time, and it is utterly impossible to think of its
resurrection and rerealization: with this approach, all the discussions of antiquity
and its ideal order would be devoid of serious significance. Clearly, this was not
the case, for the discourse was organized around an interest in performance. At
the center of the continual dispute was the concern for action, a motor-sensory
rapport that an actor established with the situation in which he or she performed.
In addition, there was an awareness that the so-called social order belonged to the
kind of reality that was constituted in accordance with the actor's behavior. It was
The Politics of Choreography 285
not a sum of things independent of what an actor attempted to do with them, but
rather the relationship to be generated between the actor and the situation. There-
fore, it could not be comprehended as a being-in-itself, and the realness of the
social reality thus conceived already encompassed the role of an active agent.
The Logic of Integration
Ogyu Sorai's politics would be unintelligible without reference to his under-
standing of the working of social reality. He asserts repeatedly that what is
usually taken to be politics is possible only when the rules of the game have been
established. It is no accident that Ogyu explains the essence of the rule in tenns
of the game of go: "What is generally meant by the rule of the country is, so to
speak, just like marking lines on the go board. However skillful a player of go
you may be, you cannot play the game on a board without squares."5 Here, two
different kinds of politics are discerned: a politics that can be equated to playing
the game and a politics that concerns itself with making the rules of the game. No
doubt, Ogyu zealously occupied himself with the latter. As for the former, he left
it to the rather arbitrary demands of each situation. As he claims, making the
rules of the game is the politics in which one can be truly creative and benevolent
and one can identify the genuinely political nature of Confucianism. He implies,
of course, that Confucianism in its ultimate essence is a teaching of, and is based
on, benevolence, as manifested by the inaugural creative act of the sage-kings. In
the rule-making sense of the term "politics," the ancient sage-kings were
sakusha (authors or makers, 7-12) who inaugurated the act of inscribing the rules
on behalf of the whole community and who created the institutions, or seido
(9-2), through their political acts.
Ogyu argues that only in the image of the sage-kings as authors can the notion
of benevolence be apprehended in its proper sense. Benevolence cannot be under-
stood except through the totality of a community. Benevolence that is not repre-
sentative of the whole necessarily fails to be impartial and, therefore, cannot be
called benevolence. In chronological time, the benevolent act of the sage-kings
brought about the rules, or seido~ of the whole for the s·ak.e of the whole for the
first time. Yet, it must be noted that neither benevolence nor the sense of totality
could exist independently of each other, for the virtue of benevolence cannot be
apprehended outside of the totality, nor can the sense of the totality be felt
without the mediation of this virtue. In this respect, benevolence is synonymous
with the instituting of the totality. It goes without saying that the inseparability of
those two seemingly heterogeneous terms directly derives from the imaginary
nature of totality in general. In the strict sense, totality is not something that can
be empirically perceived or experienced as an object of empirical knowledge but
50gyu Sorai, SeMan, in Nihon shiso Taikei 36:263.
286 Language, Body, and the Immediate
a positivity whose necessary element is discourse. Thus, benevolence is, so to
speak, the emotive equivalent of the discursive positivity of totality. Aqcording-
ly, Ogyu manages to render two distinct theses tautological and to merge them
into the thesis that to be benevolent is to act on behalf of totality and that totality
can be conceived of only on the basis of benevolence.
This association of benevolence with totality seems to prevent the word "be-
nevolence" from falling into what Ogyu regards as deviant or perverse uses, such
as Ito Jinsai's "ai." What is most significant in this virtue is its absolute dedica-
tion to the whole and its consequent impartiality:
"To set people at ease" [anmin, 9-3] is benevolence. To know men is intellect.
Confucians of modem times interpret "benevolence" as ~'ultimate sincerity and
empathy," but even if one is equipped with the mind of utmost sincerity and empa-
thy, one is not said to be benevolent unless one is able to set people at ease. However
merciful one's mind may be, it would all be vain benevolence, women's benevolence
[if it were not the benevolence of setting people at ease]; it would be no more than
the kind of benevolence with which a mother cares for her child. 6
Benevolence is distinct from mercy since it is always mediated by the sense of
the whole, and this mediation necessarily entails the consideration of purpose
and means, or at least the differentiation of the two. Whereas mercy is bestowed
immediately and without reference to the welfare of the whole, benevolence
without exception incites the calculation of the maximum effectiveness of the
measures taken to realize the set purpose; it takes into account that goodwill
could possibly lead to evil results or evil will to good results. One might even
discover in Ogyu, as Maruyama Masao did, a responsible political consciousness
typical of modernity that is somewhat akin to Max Weber's responsibility ethics. 7
Thus, severed from instrumental rationality and the sense of political responsibil-
ity, benevolence, as Ogyu understands it, is lost. Yet benevolence could remain
authentic and genuine even when it means the opposite of mercy and affection:
It is not because we hate their evil nature that punishment is to be inflicted on
criminals. Inasmuch as those who commit crimes, after all, do so out of their own
extreme stupidity, they should rather be pitied. Because they do harm to people,
however, punishment is, of course, necessary. The crime of those who disrupt the
"cultural discipline of people" [fuka. 9-4] is all the more grave since its ill effects
spread very widely. Thus, punishment executed with a view to setting people at ease
is the Way of benevolence. Benevolence does not imply that one should not kill. 8
In instances when criminals disrupt and interfere with cultural institutions that
keep the people at ease, one must kill them out of benevolence. Ogyu's political
6()gyu Sorai. Taiheisaku. in Nihon shiso taikei 36:466.
7Maruyama Masao, Studies in the Intellectual History, pp. 83-113.
80gyu Sorai, Taiheisaku, p. 467.
The Politics of Choreography 287
philosophy consists of a series of arguments legitimating the existing political
hierarchy on the basis of the concept of social welfare. If Confucianism is to be
characterized as the typical philosophy for social welfare, it is very difficult to
dismiss Ogyu's claim to the authenticity of his Confucianism. He justifies the
relationship of the ruler and the ruled in tenns of the ruler's complete subjugation
to the ruled. Therefore, one might as well summarize his politics by saying that
the ruler acquires legitimacy to rule over the ruled by being servant, subject,
servile, and subservient to the ruled. Yet we should remember that the ruler is not
subject or servile to the ruled in personal relations; rather, the ruler is subject to
the ruled as a totality. As a matter of fact, the mediation of totality reverses the
direction of subjection and servitude. We now gain the following formula: pre-
cisely because the ruler ought to be servile and subservient to the ruled (as a
whole), the ruler should be allowed to claim that the ruled (as individuals) ought
to be servile and subservient to the ruler.
Such a fonn of legitimation is commonplace, not unusual either historically or
geopolitically, as one may easily guess. What is significant, however, is that
Ogyu links the notion of totality to the interior and makes it concrete in terms of
the attributes that, as we have already observed, are predicated on the interiority
of the interior. The primary trait he ascribes to sage-kingship is the ability to
create and install institutions thanks to which the whole of the people are able to
imagine themselves to be together, to communicate with one another trans-
parently and reciprocally, and to know the subjective position of. each in relation
to the whole. Thus, in a sense, Ogyu probed into the political use of nostalgia by
assessing the relationship of institutions and the interior. Consequently, the be-
nevolent act of the sage-kings simultaneously ensures the identification of each
member with the whole of the community and the identification of each subjec-
tive position within the whole: it generates the sense of belonging to the whole
and the sense of being recognized by the whole. In this respect, I think, Ogyu
installed at the center of his politics a conception of desire similar to Hegel's,
namely, that the desire to be recognized constitutes one's identity.
Unlike the followers of Song rationalism, who attempted to control desire
without dealing with its generative mechanism and consequently ended up ap-
pealing to extremely repressive measures, Ogyu proposed to regulate desire not
by suppressing it but by encouraging and promoting it. As we have already seen
with Ito Jinsai who had decisively departed from the politics of essentialism,
Ogyu did not conceive of politics in terms of how feeling (jo, qing) should be
adjusted to nature (sei, xing) by the mind (shin, xin). Instead, he denied the
anteriority of nature to feeling and identified the domain of politics with the set of
institutions according to which desire is generated. Underlying such a novel idea
of politics is the insight that desire is not deviation from nature; instead, desire
and nature are both effects of the configuration of institutions. Thus, desire and
nature are figured.
If desire seems to deviate from the existing norms, it is not because the deviant
 288 Language, Body, and the Immediate
tendency is inherent in desire but because the set of institutions, in tenns of
which desire and norms are constituted, is not well coordinated to form an
organic whole. If the institutions were organically incorporated so as to fonn the
interior, desire would be generated within the restricted and well-organized econ-
omy of circulation; desire would not obscure the normalcy of human relations;
desire would guide people to reaffirm and return to the norms. The presence of
deviant desire, then, should be understood to indicate that the circuit of institu-
tions does not form a closure, that there is surplus or leakage in the network
which would result in the transmutation of the original institutional arrangement.
But there is nothing wrong with desire in itself, and desire should be nurtured. It
is when desire is encouraged, and controlled in that encouragement, that the
community as a whole can be best controlled and the authority of the ruler most
fIrmly established. People then spontaneously desire to identify themselves with
the whole; they spontaneously desire to be controlled. Here lies a striking con-
trast between Ogyu and Ito Jinsai, who 4lfollowed the ideas of Mencius and did
not understand the teaching of the sage-kings. . . . Feeling is not related to
thought (shiryo, silu, 2-15). Music disciplines feeling because it can neither be
admonished by righteousness nor applied to by thought. Therefore, nature and
feeling ought to be governed by music. This is the skill of government which the
sage-kings taught."9 For Ito Jinsai, feeling is the very locus of sociality, where
one encounters the other in its otherness. For Ogyu, however, it is merely a
deviation that must be tamed and controlled: it should not be suppressed by
overtly authoritarian measures, but it nonetheless should be governed by and
subjected to authority.
And since the authority of the ruler would be based on the spontaneity of the
ruled, the ruler would never need to be authoritarian. The followers of Song
rationalism appeared authoritarian precisely because they misunderstood the
nature of desire and therefore tried to suppress it. In other words, they were
authoritarian because their authoritarianism inevitably failed. Ogyu Sorai was
thus aware of the nature of political control: in order to be effective, authority
should never appear as such.
According to Ogyu, the essence of political power consists in the ability not to
prevent something from happening but to let someone desire: it is not prohibitive
but positive and creative. Insofar as both the ruler and the ruled belong to the
interior and are programmed to desire according to the system of institutions,
there can be no basic difference between the ruler and the ruled. What decisively
distinguishes the ruler from the ruled must be found in the domain of knowledge.
The ruler knows, and the ruled do not. Or rather, the ruler should know, but the
ruled must not. ("Yorashimu beshi, shirashimu bekarazu"). But what and how
should the ruler know to ensure his or her political superiority over the ruled?
In everyday life, the ruled are preoccupied with the objects of their conduct
90gyu Sorai, Benmei. p. 143.
•
The Politics of Choreography 289
and intersubjective interests; they participate in the games following the institu-
tions, or mono; they assume and do not question the given image of the totality or
the authority supposedly representing that totality. Similarly, the ruler assumes
the validity of the given image of the totality and participates in the games of
which his everyday life also consists, but at the same time, the ruler knows that
the institutions according to which he desires and acts are conventions created
sometime in history. The ruler knows that he desires and is made to desire. As
long as he participates in the games and interacts with others in the given
settings, he is partial, that is, he cannot claim to be benevolent, for how can he
play the game without being partial? The essence of participation in the game is
to pursue one's own interest against others' and to try to achieve certain objec-
tives that are set up by the conventions of the game. That is to say, participation
requires that one be in conflict with one's opponent in a regulated fashion. One
cannot participate in the game without being partial. Players must be "egoistic,"
"selfish," and "partial" in order for the game to be possible.
Nevertheless, at the same time, the ruler concerns himself with the task of
creating institutions. Ogyu located the true business of the ruler in the creation of
institutions; he claimed that in the business appropriate for the ruler he could be
authentically and properly benevolent and impartial. This is to say that the ruler
and the ruled are basically social roles, so that the same person could be the ruler
on some occasions and the ruled on others.
Here, we face a series of propositions that form a tautological circuit:
1. The ruler is the one who creates seido, or institutions. '
2. The ruled desire and act according to the institutions.
3. The ruler is benevolent because he represents the totality.
Let me combine these propositions to see what is implied in them.
1 + 2. The ruler creates the institutions according to which the ruled desire
and act. Although not directly, since it is done through the medium of the
institutions, the ruler makes the ruled desire and act. But because the ruled are
not directly ordered to desire and act (Commands are possible only when the
terms in which an order is articulated have already been institutionalized. The
possibility of the command is dependent on the existence of relevant institutions.
You cannot order those who do not understand your language.), they do not know
that they are made to desire and act. And precisely because they do not know, the
ruled are ruled.
I + 3. The ruler does not rule arbitrarily, however. The institutions are created
with a view to providing the best possible welfare for the whole. Otherwise, the
institutions would not be benevolent. Hence, it should be possible to make an
objective judgment as to whether or not an institution is benevolent, that is,
legitimate, by referring to the whole.
2 + 3. The ruled are set at ease (anmin) when they can desire and act
according to the institutions that are created by the ruler with a view to providing
290 Language, Body, and the Immediate
the best possible welfare for the whole. If the institutions guarantee the best
possible welfare for the whole, the ruled are set at ease and do not know that they
are made to desire and act. This is the reign of ultimate benevolence.
In the preceding expositions we should note the assertions that are tautological
but without which the propositions could not be put together. These concern the
relationship between totality and benevolence. Let me explicate the folds fonned
by the juxtaposition of these propositions.
It is stated that because the ruler is benevolent, he acts to create seido on behalf
of the totality. At the same time, the totality is that which is defined and charac-
terized by the benevolent act and by impartiality. Therefore, totality and benev-
olence are not only copossible but also codependent on each other. Furthennore,
the relationship between totality and benevolence is sustained by the mediation of
the ruler, who is assumed to represent the totality. As can easily be inferred,
Ogyu's conception of proper politics and the argument legitimating it will col-
lapse as soon as this mediation, the possibility of the ruler who can be assumed to
represent the totality, is taken away. Yet, I do not mean that Ogyu did not and
could not entertain a question as to whether or not a particular person in power
represents the totality. In fact, such a question regarding the empirical qualifica-
tions of the ruler is virtually irrelevant to the point I am making. Even if there
have been no rulers in history who could represent totality, his argument would
be as solid as ever. As a matter of fact, this is more or less what Ogyu implied by
equating the ideal ruler to the ancient sage-kings, whose historical existence was
certainly a matter of faith. to
Throughout his argument, one thing has to be assumed without any evidence,
withouWny substantiation: the representability of totality. In addition, Ogyu
assumes that it is possible to conceive of the totality. He simply assumes that one
believes in totality, and his argument is organized in such a way that, once
totality has been conceived of as that which people are induced to believe in, all
the avenues are opened to a variety of political possibilities of legitimating or
illegitimating the existing regime in the name of totality.
As Maruyama Masao clearly saw, the positing of the sage-kings is the linchpin
of Ogyu's political philosophy, so to speak. Both the justifiable distinction be-
tween the ruler and the ruled and the political notion of benevolence depend on the
beliefin totality. In this respect, I agree with Maruyama that Ogyu Sorai's political
discourse articulated the possibility of humanism during the eighteenth century.
But Maruyama failed to see that this form of social imaginary, that is, the belief in
totality, also closed off passage to different political possibilities. To be sure, by
eliminating those other possibilities, Ogyu refused to consider the dissolution of
the ruler-ruled differentiation, for instance. It was no accident that despite a great
deal of similarity, Ogyu was hostile to Ito Jinsai, who tried to respect the
lOCompare this view to, for instance, 1-1. Rousseau's idea of the legislator in his "On the Social
Contract," Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, ed. C.E. Vaughan (New York: Lenox Hill,
1971), pp. 51-54.
The Politics of Choreography 291
otherness of the Other in the social and for whom sociality was simply untotaliza-
ble and unrepresentable. As I have said,. to describe sociality Ito deliberately
chose the trope of the roadway, which stresses openness and constant movement.
So far I have isolated from Ogyu's treatises features that rather fonnalistically
cireumscribe totality as a discursive positivity. I do not mean to imply, however,
that this positivity works merely as a fonnal principle. It is also an imaginary
construct that is linked by a series of displacements to another set of imaginary
constructs. Its function is to synthesize beings that are heterogeneous to each
other and to have them perceived as if they all belong indiscriminately to a
homogeneous domain. Hence, totality has to be given as the interior, a homoge-
neous domain where transparent and reciprocal communication among the insid-
ers prevails. As totality is associated with the interior, the institutions that are
supposedly established with the welfare of the whole in view also acquire the
attributes of the interior.
Similarly, those institutions, if they are benevolent, should also be perceived as
transparent and intimate: they should be penneated by the sense·of interiority.
Insofar as the institutions are hannoniously inCOrPOrated into the interior, they
should be internalized and lived by all the members of the community, just as the
language of villagers is internalized and lived by the members of the village. The
ruled should never perceive them as norms they are forced to obey, as order given
in the propositional fonn. At this level of politics, it is no use reasoning with
people to make them abide by the institutions, not because people are ignorant or
incapable of apprehending persuasion but because reasoning is possible only
when the tenns in which it is conducted have already been institutionalized.
Logically, the institution is anterior to reasoning. Ogyu would argue that those
followers of Song rationalism who presuppose the universal validity of reason
are naive not only because they do not know the actuality of politics but also
because their reasoning about reason is faulty. Whereas Ito Jinsai criticized Song
rationalists on the grounds that the followers of Zhu Xi were nonethical and that
their doctrine led only to the elimination of the materiality of the social, which
was the sole basis for ethics, Ogyu Sorai criticized them for their political and
philosophical stupidity.
It is in order to change fuzoku [culture, 9-5] that seido must be rebuilt. Fuzoku
extends monolithically over the society; so it is as hard to change it by force as it is to
block the sea with one's hands. There is, however, a technique and it is called the
technique of the great Way of the sage-kings. Modem followers of Song rationalism
believe that they can change it by rectifying the minds of people through reasoning
and persuasion. This is just like refining rice grain by grain, instead of pounding it in
a mortar. . . . Fuzoku is narawashi [habit formation, 9-6]. The way of scholarship
is also narawashi [habit learning]. One who has habituated oneself to good is a good
man; one who has habituated oneself to evil is an evil man. The way of scholarship
is to learn, become skilled, and habituate oneself. There are no other techniques or
means of learning than this . . . . There are old saying such as "What one has
292 Language, Body, and the Immediate
habituated oneself to becomes one's nature," or "Habit islike nature.titfhe Zhong
yong says, "Sincerity is the way of men." What this means is to acquire a habit to
such an extent that one feels as if one had been born with it. Hence, the Way of the
sage-kings gives priority to learning [habit formation], while the rule of the sage-
kings regarded fuzoku as the most important. 11
Thus, the ruler knows not only that the institutions are created and invented
rather than given or natural but also that people have to become accustomed to
them. To be aware of the original creation of institutions, therefore, is not
enough. The ruler must also know the process of habit formation by which
institutions are internalized in the body of the ruled to such an extent that the
ruled take them to be natural, and immediately universal.
But how could a pedagogic program that concerned itself with the control of
an individual human body serve to organize and regulate the collectivity that
consists of multiple bodies? Does the effectiveness of social control depend on
the actual number of students disciplined in the program? Certainly this question
applies to modem Japan, where national education and the modem school system
have made it possible to punish and discipline the populace in great number, but
no such system existed in the eighteenth century; the discourse of that day never
conceived of education as a tool to be used by government to achieve the social
homogeneity of the nation.
Here, the significance of Ogyu's kobunji gaku is clearly manifest. The ruler
must know the process of habit formation by going through that process her or
himself, for the form of knowledge that is decisive in politics is experiential
knowledge internalized in the body, or mini tsuita (attached to or rooted in the
body).
Whereas the ruled take culturally and historically specific institutions to be
natural and immediately universal, the ruler knows the difference between the
exterior as I have defined it and the interior, knows that habit formation is a shift
from the exterior to the interior, knows why one gets accustomed to believing in
the naturalness and universality of these institutions. In an oblique way, the
ruler/ruled distinction is related to the opposition of those who know both the
exterior and the interior and those who do not know the exterior. 12 Yet, again, the
prestige accorded the ruler depends on the separability of the exterior and the
interior and, ultimately, on the representability of totality. For this very reason,
kobunji gaku is the scholarship of the ruler.
lIOgyu Sorai, Taiheisaku, p. 473. Fuzoku consists of two characters ju. or jeng in Chinese, and
zoku, or suo Fu can be rendered as wind, teaching, custom, appearance, rumor, etc., zoku can be
translated custom, world, secular, mundane, etc. The compound can then be: customs in a specific
society or local folk songs.
12Ibid., pp. 453-54. I must emphasize that the exterior (a teon not actually registered in his
vocabulary) does not designate a place geographically outside the interior in Ogyu's discourse; yet he
highly valued the knowledge of foreign things.
The Politics of Choreography 293
Two Fonns of Memory, Two Senses of History
Now that sociohistorical reality has been defined in this manner, it is not
overly difficult to understand the notion of historical time as depicted in
eighteenth-century discourse on language. The emergence of a history that was
based not on the seriality of events but' on the recognition pertaining to the
ideological constitution of social reality can be best elucidated by a distinction
Henri Bergson drew between two forms of memory.
ASSerting the priority of action over affection, Bergson demanded that philo-
sophical inquiry start from action, "that is to say, from our faculty of effecting
changes in things, a faculty attested to by consciousness and towards which all
the powers of the organized body are seen to converge." 13 To say that action
preceded affection was, of course, to challenge the basic modem epistemological
framework without which even present-day positivism could not survive, and
also to destabilize the fixed and sanctioned myth of naturalist objectivism, which
is completely incarcerated in this framework. Perception, which has normally
been attributed to affection from the "external world," is, he said, much les~
objective and much more dependent on memory than has been assumed. Our
perceptions are almost always interlaced with memory, and I"a memory only
becomes actual by borrowing the body of some perception into which it slips." 14
For Bergson, memory is the locus of action or motor mechanism. And it is in this
context that he introduced the two distinct forms by which the past survives.
Trying to learn a lesson by heart-a form of discipline-I read it. Then I
repeat it a number of times. As Ogyu described, progress is made at each
repetition until I can say the lesson has been learned by heart, imprinted on my
memory. On the other hand, if I look back on the process of this discipline, I can
picture for myself the successive phases of the process. Each of several readings
then recurs with its own individuality and the particular circumstances that at-
tended it then; no reading can be the same as those that preceded or followed it.
"Each reading stands out before my mind as a definite event in my history." 15
Although we say we "remember" in both cases, the memory of the lesson,
which is remembered in the sense of learned by heart, has all the marks of a
habit. Bergson continues:
Like a habit, it is acquired by the repetition of the same effort. Like a habit, it
demands first a decomposition and then a recomposition of the whole action. Lastly,
like every habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up in a mechanism which is set in
motion as a whole body by an initial impulse, in a closed system of automatic
movements which succeed each other in the same order and, together, take the same
13Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy M. Paul and W. Scott Palmer (London:
George Allen ~d Unwin, 1911), p. 67.
14Ibid., p. 72.
15Ibid., p. 89.
294 Language, Body, and the Immediale
length of time.... The memory of the lesson I have learnt, even if I repeat this
lesson only mentally, requires a definite time, the time necessary to develop one by
one, were it only in imagination, all the articulatory movements that are necessary: it
is no longer a representation, it is an action. And, in fact, the lesson once learnt
bears upon it no mark which betrays its origin and classes it in the past; it is part of
my present, exactly like my habit of walking or of writing; it is lived and acted,
rather than represented: I might believe it innate, if I did not choose to recall at the
same time, as so many representations, the successive readings by means of which I
learnt it. 16
The memory of each reading shares none of the traits of a habit. Since it can be
evoked by my spontaneous will and is sustained in the intuitive act of my
imagination, it is merely a representation rather than an action. UI assign to it any
duration I please; there is nothing to prevent my grasping the whole of it in-
stantaneously, as in one picture." 17 Hence, the memory of a reading as an event
deviates from the principle of the verbal expression conceived of as performance:
linearity. While memory in the sense of a habit preserves the past as a ~'speech,"
an imagined action requiring the same length of time, memory of a reading as an
event cannot project the past as an action but functions just like writing, as
writing was conceived in the eighteenth century.
Aside from exhibiting the same kind of phonocentrism as I witnessed in
Tokugawa discourse, the Bergsonian conception of memory dramatizes two dis-
tinct senses of history. In the former sense, the past is conceived of not as an
event but as a potential faculty stored in the human body which is set in motion
when a situation relevant to a specific form of affection is perceived. But since,
as he asserts, action precedes affection, the perception of the situation is shaped
after the faculty to act. As is now evident, this sense of history and historical
reality is exactly what Ogyu, Kamo, and Motoori sought to articulate: it is a
reality belonging to the past, but it can also resurrect and realize itself in the
present through repeated discipline: it is not a history of the seriality of events but
a history inhabiting the human body. Therefore, they refused to read ancient
writings as representations of the past; instead, they sought for that which acted
the past in them. If they still agreed that writings of antiquity preserved memory,
it was not because bygone images were conserved there but because they be-
lieved the writings were capable of exerting their useful effect on the present.
Thus they sought to recover the past as speech, enunciation, and performance,
and they refused to read it as writing, enunciated, and representation.
The Loom That Weaves the Subjects
Whereas Ito inherited the conceptual determinations of Song rationalism,
Ogyu seems to have made a final departure from them. Ogyu rearticulated the
16Ibid., pp. 89~91.
17Ibid., p. 91.
The Politics of Choreography 295
notions of desire and feeling in a revolutionary manner, but the political effect of
his rearticulation was to endorse what Song rationalism was committed to assert.
Whereas Song rationalists had been hostile to the heterogeneity of desire and
feeling, Ogyu accepted them insofar as they were regulated and confined within
the interior of the restricted economy. Yet I must also emphasize the differences
between the two conceptualizations of desire and feeling~ For Ogyu, desire and
feeling are not necessarily heterogeneous to Ii.I8 He accepts the possibility that
desire can be molded into the impulse toward the self, an impulse not entirely
dissimilar to Heg~lian desire as self-consciousness, or desire for the recognition
of the self by the other. And his tolerance toward desire and feeling seems to
stem from this new way of conceptualizing them. The new conception of desire
is undoubtedly accompanied by his apprehension of rite and music, which in fact
are to regulate desire and feeling.
The sociality that is heterogeneous to the restricted eco~omy of the interior
must be controlled and eliminated. Despite his rejection of the ontologization of
Ii as found in Song Confucianism, Ogyu acknowledges the necessity to rule and
contain the heterogeneity inherent in feeling. What is most interesting in this
regard is' that he considered music the most effective means by which to regulate
feeling, which would otherwise be untamable. There is no question that Ogyu
now sees the most significant aspect of the rule and politics in music and rites.
But concomitantly, his understanding of social reality is closely connected to the
way he construes politics in terms of music and rites. How, then, is this concep-
tion of politics related to his extensive interest in habits and culture as manifested
in his many treatises on the customs of ancient China?
In order to probe into this issue, I must first inquire into the term that Ogyu's
contemporary Confucians believed summarized the fundamental task of Confu-
cianism: keizai (9-7). Today this compound is translated "economy," "econom-
ics," or sometimes "political economy," but as is well known, in Confucian
discourse it was an abbreviation of the four-character compound: keisei saimin
(9-8). Dazai Shundai, one of Ogyu Sorai's disciples, explicates this compound at
the beginning of his Keizairoku:
Generally speaking, keizai is to rule all under heaven and in the state. Its meaning is
to regulate the world and save the people. But the character kei [in keizai] is to
arrange and spin [yarn] [keirin, jinglun, 9-9]. Thus the Yi jing says "Gentlemen
thereby rule [= arrange and spin]," and the Zhong yong says, "To rule [= arrange
and spin] the great constancy [taikei, dajing, 9-10]19 of all under heaven." To
180gyu used the character Ii, or principle, as a verb "to regulate." "The master [Ito Jinsai]
devotedly followed Mencius, and did not comprehend the teaching of the sage-kings about music and
rites. Consequently, he may well have inferred that feeling could be left unregulated as it was. . . .
Feeling is outside the reach of thought. What music teaches cannot be explained by reason
[righteousness and Ii] or applied to by thought. Hence, [the sage-kings] adopted music to regulate
feeling and nature. This is the teaching of the sage-kings" (Benmei, p. 143).
19'fhe great constancy, or in literary usage, great warp, implies the five constancies regulating the
five basic human relations.
 Language, Body, and the Immediate
296
arrange and sp!n is to regulate yarn. Kei is the warp of textile, and the character i (9-
II) is its woof. 20
One cannot overlook the etymological connections of the character kei to texture,
textile, and of course text. This character was also used to designate the classics
in Confucianism and particularly the Six Classics in Ogyu's kobunji gaku. Here,
I cannot help but notice the interweaving of the study of classics, economy, and
politics. Or perhaps I must recognize, above all else, the ambiguity of the term
"economy," which cannot be immediately equated to the discipline of modem
economics. Political economy in the sense of keizai must deal with forms of
exchange that define and maintain social relations. It follows that essential issues
for political economy must include rites, gift exchange, measurements, the hier-
archy of official ranks, costumes, and names. 21
For Ogyu as well as his disciples, however, the practices most significant in
understanding communal life and the benevolent reign that orders the community
are rites and music. 22 Following Ogyu, Dazai Shundai reconfirms the impor-
tance and usefulness of rites and music in stabilizing social relations:
There are no other [institutions] that incite the hearts of people as well as rites and
music. There are no other [institutions Jthat are closer to [the purpose of] guiding the
people correctly than rites and music. Teaching in words does not penetrate the mind
of people; its scope is very narrow and its effect is slow to come out. The teaching of
t tionalism, regulates and regularizes the a posteriori configuration of social posi-
rites and music influences people deeply; its scope is wide; and its effect is immedi-
ate. It is through the way of rites and music that the ancient sage-kings taught all the
people without uttering a single word and united the minds of all the people under
heaven. 23
While the rites that consist of manners and ceremonies differentiate and maintain
various social positions defined by the five constancies-the five basic relations
of lord-retainer, father-son, husband-wife, elder brother-younger brother, and
friend-friend-music, song, and dance harmonize those who are separated by
these relations and make them feel intimate toward one another. Thus, Dazai
argues that rites and music supplement each other. 24
I would like to underline two points in this account. First, both rites and music
20Dazai Shundai, Keizairoku, in Bibliothecajaponica oeconomiae politicae, or Nihon keizai sosho
(Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Sosho Kankokwai. 1914), p. 10.
The Confucian scholar and student of political institutions Dazai Shundai (1680-1747) was born to
a Samurai family in Iida in Shinano (now Nagano prefecture) and studied Confucianism in Edo. He
left Edo for Kyoto and Osaka but later returned and joined Ogyu Sorai's school. Together with Hattori
Nankaku, he is regarded as Ogyu's most brilliant disciple. Keizairoku (Discussions on keizai) is his
most famous work.
21These are topics Ogyu Sorai studied. His mono consists of these institutions in concrete forms.
22Dazai Shundai said. "As to the way to rule [keirin, jinglun] the world, there is nothing that
precedes rites and music" (Keizairoku, p. 24).
23Ibid., p. 25.
24Ibid .• pp. 48-49.
The Politics of Choreography 297
are grasped as institutions pertalDlng to bodily movement. With regard to
"rites," which is the collective name for manners and ceremonies, it is only too
evident that bodily movement is indispensable in the habituation of manners and
the staging of a ceremony. But why does music necessarily pertain to bodily
movement? In explicating the character "music" (gaku, yue or Ie, 9-12), Danzai
again appeals to its etymology: the character "music" also means "to enjoy." Joy
arises when a man moves his body. By moving the body (shosa, 9-13),25 a man
consoles his mind. On occasions, a man encounters extraordinary feelings, such
as sorrow and depression, from which he cannot be relieved just by moving his
lxxty in ordinary ways. Then he releases his voice in singing and plays a musical
instrument. Therefore, music, the collective name for singing, dancing, and
playing an instrument, is apprehended basically as patterned bodily movement.
Second, music is understood to be a means by which to reproduce and solidify
social positions defined by rites. It is a means by which subjects who are
separated and distanced from one another because of the configuration of social
positions are brought together and made to enjoy their 'communality without
liquidating social relations. Politically speaking, therefore, music is cpnsidered
to be a conservative means. Although it appeals to the feelings of people and
moves their hearts, music serves to confine them to their assigned positions. For
this reason, for instance, Ogyu Sorai, Dazai's mentor, reintroduces the character
Ii, which, although it no longer means a priori human nature as in Song ra-
tions. Thus, rites and music are conceptualized as the fundamental ways in which
feeling is controlled.
Feeling still remains poetic in the sense that music, particularly song, or uta, is
closely associated with feeling, but it is deprived of its creative potential, of its
aleatory possibility to encounter the otherness of the Other. Therefore, poetry too
is now understood within the a posteriori configuration of social positions which
is referred to in the metaphor of texture. And just as the ancient language has to
be acquired and internalized, rites and music also have to be assimilated into
one's body. "Confucius said, 'Habit is like naturalness.' When odes and history
have been assimilated into your mouth, and rites and music into your body, and
when they have been habituated just like nature, your learning has been accom-
plished. "26 In the context of kobunji gaku, Hattori Nankaku, another brilliant
disciple of Ogyu Sorai, explicates the connection between the subject and the
texture of social reality:
As to poetry, it is natural that you decide on the meaning of the poem according to its
theme and that you obtain words according to emotion. And some might choose
25Although the compound ideogram for'shosa consists of two Chinese characters, this particular
use seems to have no precedent in China except in the Buddhist context. From the beginning,
Keizairoku was written in kakikudashibun, in the style of a Japanese annotation of Chinese writing.
26Dazai Shundai, Sekihifuroku, in Nihon shiso taikei 37: 179. Odes, History, Rites, and Music are.
of course, four of the Six Classics.
298 Language, Body, and the Immediate
words following the general tone, and the meaning following the words. Yet, unless
the meaning i~ already set, the composition of the poem is difficult to outline. Even
if you happen to have several good phrases, the whole of a poem would not be
synthesized, with the meaning dispersed and the connection of stanzas disrupted.
This is what the poet suffers from. Once the fruits of efforts to imitate the ancients
matured, however, one would be endowed with the great vision [just as the ancients
were]. Thereupon, the style and the meaning of the poem would be in harmony; the
secret of naturalness would emerge all by itself. Where this learning leads you, there
will be no need to worry about the dispersion of meaning or the disrupted connection
of stanzas. Then, your choice of words would naturally be those used by the
ancients; your meaning would be the one the ancients achieved. You would not
judge the degree of your accomplishment by placing your poem in the midst of those
by the ancients. That is not the way you inherit from the ancients. It is rather that the
100m [of poetic text] weaves you [as the subject].27
The objective of learning poetry is depicted as a paradoxical state in which the
subject is produced by the poetic text, not the other way around. Needless to say,
this metaphor of the loom's weaving the subject contains a profound insight into
the social formation. Ogyu and his followers were at least aware that the ~~I," or
the subject, does not exist outside the text, does not belong to some extratextual
reality; it is possible only within the text, is constituted by or woven into the text.
Moreover, they acknowledged that social reality, or mono, was essentially tex-
tual in nature. Accordingly, politics and the study of classics are inseparable, as
Ogyu repeatedly asserted by saying, "The Six Classics are mono. n Only at the
stage where the student of poetry is not inside the "interior," can his "I" not be
produced by the poetic text.
I must also emphasize, however, that Ogyu and his followers eliminated
surplus and heterogeneity from the textuality of social reality. In this respect, my
use of the term "text" is radically different from his. If left alone, his text would
continually reproduce itself and subjects and the configuration of subjective
positions. Hence, the texture of social and institutional reality as mono is akin to
our discourse. And what Ogyu's kobunji gaku purported to do through the notion
of the body as a storehouse of habits was to annihilate the textuality of the text, to
conceive of social reality as discourse, and ultimately to rid the body of its
otherness. Thus, the body was reduced to its capacity for recentering instead of
decentering, to its ability to repeat patterned behaviors that have been inter-
nalized. Concurrently, the body was defined in its historicity as a place where a
historically specific set of habits was installed.
What was also presumed in the historicity of the human body was the thesis
that the body's mode of existence was already intersubjective~ inherent in its
27 Hattori Nankaku, Nankaku sensei bunshu, in Nihon shiso taikei 37:226-27. Hattori (1683-
1759), Confucian scholar, poet, and painter, applied Ogyu's kobunji gaku to his poetic composition.
His works include many instructions on Chinese poetry, an anthology of Tang ~oetry, Nanakaku
sensei bunshu (Collected essays of Master Nankaku), Tokashu (Under the candlelIght), and others.
The Politics of Choreography 299
mode of existence was an ability to establish a "collectivity" as the Other to
whom an action was addressed. But let me,note in passing that this collectivity
was often directly equated to the one that existed and thereby was substan-
tialized. As we have seen, eighteenth-century discourse repeatedly tried to rid
itself of the notion of substantialized individual subjectivity and, as often as not,
identified this formation of the self as a symptom of the prevailing social disease
with which it thought the contemporary world was afflicted. Yet, this discourse
tended to substantialize the collectivity, confusing the future anterior of the
collectivity, the nonchronological anteriority of a collectivity which the social
action creates as'its anonymous addressee, with the historical collectivity that
was imagined to have existed at one moment in historical time. To posit a social
order in a body was, therefore, to determine corporeity primarily in terms of its
intersubjective function and to assume that the body is the primordial site of
communality but not of the sociaL The differentiation I have drawn between
direct and indirect actions will allow the microscopic structure underlying the
intersubjectivity of the human body to surface in an illuminating manner. Thus
Ogyu and his disciples proposed an outline of the regime of visibility under
which they believed the body was subsumed and by which the body as shutai
would be stripped of its heterogeneity and transformed into a storehouse of
habits. Thus, whereas for Ito the body was the site of heterogeneity and creativity
(making, poiesis) without arche, for Ogyu and his disciples, the body was
essentially poetic and poietic toward arche: the body was thought of solely as the
moment of transformation to the original model.
Song as a Locus of Contradiction
What distinguishes an indirect action from a direct one is its relative autonomy
from the given performative situation in which it occurs. Whereas a direct action
seems to adhere to a given situation and to be initiated by the agent's spontaneous
intention, an indirect action is detached from the situation and is capable of
repeating itself infinitely irrespective of the context. There is a sense of com-
pleteness in it, and since the degree of reliance on the outside, that is, the
situational arrangement, is comparatively low, it has an internal organization of
which its autonomy is made up. Correlative to the decreased reliance on the
outside is its lack of designative function, so that an indirect action does not point
to real objects or referents, although it is capable of indicating imagined ones. A
dance, for example, given a sufficient space and a relevant social occasion, can
be performed many times; within the duration of a single dance, a dancer may
point a finger or hand at an object that either is or is not supposed to be located in
the vicinity of her body. But it is important to note that an object so indicated is
not the real one, regardless of whether there is actually a physical object or an
empty space at the point being designated on the stage. Insofar as an action is
300 Language, Body, and the Immediate
indirect, of necessity the object of the designative gesture is an imagined one, in
the sense of the classic definition of 4'imagination," that is, the faculty tQ posit an
object in its absence. When a dancer puts on an act of looking at the sea, his eyes
focused ori the distant horizon and his hand waving at a passing boat do posit
these referents as correlatives of his gesture. But they are empty referents to
imagined objects. Even if there is a wall painted blue at the side of the stage, it is
the sea only in the imagination. The ability to posit imagined objects and to erect
an imaginary relationship with a given perfonnative situation is part and parcel of
the ability of an indirect action to repeat itself infinitely, and thus constitutes the
essence of its transhistoricity. In short, in an indirect action the performer is
acting, so that, as I mentioned earlier, a promise made in singing is not expected
to be kept; it is a promise in the imagination. Whereas a direct action teaches us
what participation in a situation means, an indirect one seems to dramatize the
arbitrariness of the sign, although in this case it is an arbitrariness not between
signifier and signified but between the sign and its referent. More important, the
indirect action informs us of the faculty inherent in cOrPQreity, the body's faculty
to posit or produce objects imaginarily through perfonnance. In this respect, the
body is a productivity rather than an image that is produced. The objects thus
posited and produced, however, are not entities in themselves but are enveloped
and encompassed in the space of the corporeal text, which cannot be construed in
phonetico-semantic tenns such as signification, communication, subject's inten-
tion, or expression. 28 Indirect action thus reveals the workings of the regime as
an ideology in which the subject lives its imaginary relationship to the reality. In
the regime that is incorporated in a given discourse, therefore, an action is
always indirect.
Indirect action also addresses itself to the question of the actor's subjectivity.
Another aspect of formalization and ritualization of an action is the transforma-
tion of the action which forces an actor to perfonn according to extrinsic rules. If
the rules to be followed are neither extrinsic to one's inner motivation nor posited
as an authority one must obey despite one's spontaneous and natural inclination,
then there would be no need for discipline. In this connection we must recall that
discipline is a kind of torture because it is, by definition, imposed on one's body
against one's will. But do formalization and ritualization demand discipline, or
eliminate one's self? The essence of indirect action consists in the way the actor's
28Cf. Julia Kristeva, "Le geste, pratique ou communication?" in Semeiotike (Paris: Seuil, 1969),
pp. 90-112. Kristeva stresses the irreducibility of the corporeal text to linguistic categories but does
not deal with formalized gesture. "If all these reflections suppose the synchronic anteriority oflll!le
semiotic system in relation to the 'real cutout' [reel coupe), it is striking that this anteriority, contrary
to what ethnologists explain, is not that of a concept in relation to a sound (signified-signifier) but that
of a gesture of demonstration, of designation, of indication by action in relation to 'consciousness,'
to idea. Prior (this anteriority is spatial and not temporal) to the sign and every problematic of
signification (and therefore of signifying structure), one might think of a designation practice, a
gesture that indicates not for signifying but for embracing subject, object, and practice within the
same space (without the idea/word, signified/signifier dichotomy), or let us say, within the same
semiotic text" (p. 95).
The Politics of Choreography 301
spontaneous and individual will is flatly ignored and does not reflect on the
actual action at all. The verb "to acf' exp~ains this mechanism very well: on the
one hand, to act is to behave, to initiate a movement of the body; on the other
hand, it is to disguise, to hide the inner self, to imitate and take the role of
anQther. In this respect, the indirect action demands the elimination of what is
supposed to be the individual self. Hence., ""actor n is a name for one who refuses
to be identical to herself and continues to transfonn herself into an actor: an actor
is a person, that is, a mask. 29 This analysis shows the reason why an indirect
action allows for a substitution of the acting subject. Because it is fonnalized and
ritualized, dance can be perfonned by any subject who has been disciplined in it
and endowed with the ne~essary skill to perform it. This interchangeability of the
subject should imply the communality and intersubjectivity characteristic of
indirect action, while indicating the mimetic identification of an individual agent
with an other, Regardless of whether or not it is a collective action involving
multiple subjects simultaneously, indirect action is thoroughly communal, for it
illuminates the constant shift of the putative individual subjectivity to its other
and shows how impossible is the naive notion of the individualistic self.
If an indirect action is the case in which the arbitrariness of the sign is most
evidently exemplified, a direct, natural, and spontaneous action, not mediated by
disciplinary formalization, should instead affirm the nonarbitrary rapport be-
tween a designative gesture and its referent. At first sight, this rapport may seem
an unquestionable certainty since a body's movement toward a cup on the table
clearly indicates the body's thirst for water, and the protective gesture one makes
when a dangerous object is fast approaching one certainly posits a real object.
The realness of this last referent can be measured by the pain one would feel if
one failed to protect oneself and the object hit one's face. One may even say that
the direct action never betrays the primordial tie between the body and the
perfonnative situation. But can we really ascribe the adjectives "natural" and
"direct" to an action? I think that the point elucidated in regard to the Japanese
puppet theater applies here too: the direct action is a construct, a social construct,
which is constituted by various oppositions and consequently is a fonn of media-
tion. What I suggest is that the immediacy of a direct action, with its proclaimed
absence of formalization, is in fact a result of complex mediation involving
framing and the very differentiation direct/indirect itself. The directness of direct
action is conceivable only within a certain social reality, within a certain discur-
sive formation: the real is always constituted socially and, therefore, is mean-
ingless outside a given discourse.
29See Watsuji Tetsuro, Ornate to perusona, in Watsuji Tetsuor zenshu, vol. 17 (Tokyo: lwanami
Shoten, 1962). It is worthwhile to note that in Watsuji's conception of personality and sociality in
general, there is little awareness about the otherness that cannot be accommodated in the network of
the existing institutions. In this sense, he was apparently insensitive to what Georges Bataille called
general economy, as opposed to restricted economy. This insensitivity may characterize much of
Watsuji's philosophical position. For the problem of subjectivity and mask, see Sakabe Megumi,
Watsuji Tetsuro, (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1986). pp. 55-94, 264n.
302 Language, Body. and the Immediate
But this difference, this distance one perceives between direct and indirect
actions, is the locus where the ideological constitution of the social order was
explained in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Scholars insisted that
a verbal text could be coordinated and subordinated to a project involving the
entirety of the human body in the enunciation. In other words, the enunciation
meant this merger, this amalgamation of verbal and corporeal texts. Hence,
verbal utterance was seen as a simultaneously linguistic and corporeal act. None-
theless, when a verbal act was coordinated with corporeal movement, the basic
structural differences between the two modes were disclosed. Aside from the fact
that a corporeal text is a productivity rather than a signification, the comparison
of the two highlights the absence in the corporeal text of unities that would
resemble morphological divisions in language. In a corporeal text, it is impossi-
ble to identify anything comparable to phonemes or morphemes. Whereas vari-
ous units hold relative autonomy and can be assembled to fonn an utterance in a
verbal expression, any movement, even of a hand, involves the human body as a
whole. Even if only a particular part of the body is mobilized, a gesture inevita-
bly gives an impetus to other part of it and establishes itself as a network of
relationships among various agents-face, hands, and so on-of the body. In
short, a gesture is inseparable from what is called attitude and cannot be con-
strued linearly, This is why the text of the body should never be confused with the
banal notion of 44body language," in which some message already codified in
propositional form in some "inner mind" is expressed through the body to the
outside receiver and in which every bodily movement is construed dactylolog-
ically. Consequently, the notion of body language cannot take account of the very
distinction-without which dactylology would be impossible-between ordi-
nary gesture and dactylology.
Despite all these heterogeneities, eighteenth-century discourse continued to
see the verbal text as a derivative of corporeal movement. Indeed, some discur-
sive apparatuses were fabricated in order to keep this merger of words and body
viable. Particularly relevant are the studies of syntax that emerged in that era. As
I have noted, grammarians constantly alluded to the attitudinal wholeness char-
acteristic of a corporeal text. The body metaphor of Fujitani Nariakira is possibly
the best example. His morphological classification of the syntactical functions of
words was counterbalanced by equating the integrity of an utterance to the
integrity of the attitude in a corporeal action. Instead of viewing a verbal ex-
pression as a sum of autonomous units, he stressed that enunciation as an act
partook of the traits of gesture. Similarly, Motoori Norinaga recognized in kakari
musubi (conjugational rules of old Japanese) the manifestation of an integrity
comparable to the bodily attitude into which a gesture of a part of the body is
always coordinated and subordinated.
What is at issue here is involvement in and adherence to the performative
situation. We are naturally led to question the validity of such an approach,
however, since sincere adherence to the performative situation is guaranteed only
The Politics of Choreography 303
for direct, not indirect, actions. Moreover, we should recall that the social order
and languages applauded by eighteenth-century writers belonged to the past or
foreign sources or both. At least as long as students had not acquired fluency or
familiarized the institutions of antiquity within their bodies, they had to mimic
the s~t foons of behavior and utterance, and as a consequence, their actions were
indirect rather than direct. In the course of the discipline necessary for the
acquisition of an ancient language or institution within the body, one had to
imitate the rules of its inner organization while ignoring the actual situation. As
long as the ideal order that students would supposedly have assimilated at the end
of the discipline had not penetrated and accumulated in their own bodies, imme-
diacy and transparency could not exist. The actions of the students, that is to say,
would have remained indirect and detached from the situation.
Nevertheless, this is exactly why grammarians argued for the validity of their
pedagogic projects. They assumed that neither the ancient language nor institu-
tions would be felt to be estranged or distanced from the body once they were
acquired experientially to perfection. Then the very differentiation between di-
rect and indirect action would be overcome and eliminated. As Bergson recog-
nized, a habit completely internalized and familiarized' cannot be distinguished
from &Pinnate faculty; an imagined object and a reality that an indirect action
posits would then be indiscernible from the objective and natural world, which
may appear external. When one is entirely in the interior, one acts, sees, talks,
and hears just as a member of that interior should. Under this condition reality
would manifest itself according to the institutional regularities from which the
interior is construed as mono. But this scenario is feasible only if it is possible to
master, familiarize, and internalize institutions or ideology to perfection. In
other words, it is possible only on the assumption that one could eventually be
completely and exhaustively at home in those institutions, including language.
Let me repeat, such a scenario is feasible if and only if one could be purely and
perfectly "native" to one's native language.
Today, many believe that the distinction between direct and indirect actions,
between spontaneous, natural behavior and formalized, ritualized behavior, is a
real one. It is assumed that one can in fact tell a rite from ordinary behavior, and
the assumption is rarely questioned. In eighteenth-century discourse, however,
this distinction was rigorously examined. I believe this is the main reason why
language was the focus of constant debate, for language is a formal and ritualized
action par excellence. To speak is to adhere to formal rules that one can never
change voluntarily; to speak is to erase one's putative individuality in the face of
these anonymous regularities; to speak is to cease to be oneself, to lose one's
identity. It is no surprise that the acquisition of a language carried such weight in
disciplinary programs of the eighteenth century.
Thus, language duly emerged as the central object of discourse around which
the issue of the ideological constitution of social reality was articulated. As
should be obvious by now, what are referred to by the terms "ideology" and
304 Language, Body, and the Immediate
"institution" include what are normally excluded from the categories of the
political institUtion and of the system of values legitimating polity; that. is, they
encompass the predominant structure of perception in a given collectivity, habit
formation, .and language. The discovery of history, as Ogyu, Kamo, Motoori,
and others showed in the discourse on language, was also a testimony to the
discovery-or, more accurately, rediscovery-of the ideological quality of cul-
tural institutions and the mode of perception. Extending this argument to its
inevitable conclusion, I can postulate that every action is ultimately indirect since
there cannot be an action not mediated by social formation. This is to say that a
purely direct action is impossible, just as the individual self of modem indi-
vidualism is a fancy. Likewise, without exception, the perception of reality
includes imaginary factors. 3o This is to say, every action and every perception is
always subject to ideology. Hence, naturalness, spontaneity, and immediacy are
in fact subordinated to ideological mediation just as language is, although it
appears transparent and invisible to a speaker who is supposed to be native.
However spontaneous and natural it may look, every action is already a ritual,
and consequently the differentiation natural/formal is not real but constituted
within a given discursive formation. Just as it is impossible to think of a private
language, it is absurd to talk about a purely direct action.
It is in this connection that the problem of uta, or song, was posed in a radical
way. Song-or, more precisely, singing-represented the border line between
verbal and nonverbal texts, on the one hand, and between direct and indirect
speech, on the other. As has been explained in regard to Kamo Mabuchi, singing
was seen as the most authentic form of utterance in which writing, understood in
the sense of the enunciated, was supposed to be totally absent. Kamo projected
an image of antiquity in which people communicated with one another in song.
In other words, he believed, ordinary utterances and singing were indistinguisha-
ble in the historical ages before the Japanese knew Chinese civilization and its
writing system. Therefore, not only for Kamo but also for other writers of the
eighteenth century, singing was immediately the enunciation, perhaps the purest
form of it.
It is not hard to understand how problematical this conception of song is, for
song is a form of utterance accompanied by music, rhythm, and other nonverbal
factors that establish it as overtly indirect speech. Moreover, singing always
initiates nonverbal corporeal movement and is subordinated to some 'indirect
action. Hence, it is misleading to say that song belongs to the class of verbal
texts. Although Kamo claimed it to be the enunciation in its purest form, the
subject who sings is detached from the performative situation and forced to act in
3O'fhat every perception includes imaginary factors is, of course, nothing new. The notion, to put it
in the Kantian vocabulary, that experience would be impossible without imagination has been thor-
oughly discussed by thinkers in Japan, China, and the West (it goes without saying that "so-called"
must be added to all three names of regions). In the eighteenth century, the rediscovery of idea was
made in a new way.
The Politics of Choreography 305
an imagined scene. Obviously, the reference to antiquity allowed for the coexis-
tence of these apparently contradictory pr<;>positions; antiquity was defined as a
realm in which a formal and ritualized action was, at the same time, both the
purest form of enunciation and the verbal text indistinguishably merged into
corporeal action. On this ground, Kamo claimed that words were hardly neces-
sary in antiquity and that life itself was. singing, with, no room for individual
subjectivity or the complete manifestation thereof (these two amount to the same
thing). In this regard, antiquity was a utopia where contradictory claims were
believed to be copossible.
No doubt, the obstacle that continually prevents me from comprehending such
a formation of communality as supposedly existed in antiquity is our notion of
linguistic communication, not because eighteenth-century Japanese writers did
not articulate this sphere well enough but because we tend to superimpose the
narrowly determined conception of it onto the texts of Tokugawa Japan. Some
may argue that this subconscious projection of our own epistemological limita-
tion onto the past is inevitably, part and parcel of the hermeneutic circle that
allows for the revelation of our historicality and, therefore, a creative rather than
a reportive act. Yet, we should also be aware that our conception of communica-
tion has already been seriously questioned for its heavy debt to humanistic
positivism and particularly for its untenable idea of individual consciousness.
Given this situation, it is nothing but intellectual conceit to say that our discourse
is so determined by humanistic positivism.that we cannot escape from it. One of
the tasks of this study is to review and problematize the epistemological frame-
work that sustains the commonsensical claim to universal validity, that is, to
historicize our present.
Writing of the Body
With the denial of individual subjectivity in the discursive space of the eigh-
teenth century (individual subjectivity was not unknown then, but it was accused
of being a symptom of a rigid, sometimes frigid authoritarian conformism that
thought of itself as original) what may appear to be communication should be
understood more as communion and compassion. When Kamo and others at-
tributed the ultimate expression of feeling to song or singing, it is unlikely that
they saw in it a cathartic manifestation of individual feeling that otherwise could
not find an outlet from the closed inner life of an individual subject. Rather,
singing was a form of communion and compassion that cured the individual of
"selfish" arrogance. Nor did this absence of the self lead to irresponsibility or a
lack of seriousness, as some might expect. On the contrary, sincerity was trans-
formed and rendered synonymous with this resolution of individual subjectivity
into communality. Sincerity, which had once implied the sociality toward the
heterogeneous, had been captured within the logic of homosociality.
306 Language, Body, and the bnmediate
It is noteworthy that the ideal society, where the verbal act necessarily entailed
communion and compassion, could not be envisioned as possible in the mjdst of
the Tokugawa reign. It was a utopia, impossible in the contemporary socio-
political setting. In contrast to this image of a commune, the current state of
affairs was seen as deprived of an atmosphere of intimate communality. Even to
Kagawa Kageki, who denounced the idealization of ancient language and institu-
tions, his contemporary world appeared dispersed, fragmented, and contami-
nated by writing and by the lack of sincerity. This perception committed him to a
pursuit of the sort of singing in which there could be no such lack.
Of course, writing had to be excluded from his conception of song. For one
thing, writing was understood as the agent that interfered with the adherence of
the speaking agent to the given situation; writing was thought to uproot the
speaking subject from the situation. If the human body was the mediatory bond
between the performative situation and the verbal text, then writing liberated the
utterance from the speaker's body and, therefore, from the performative situa-
tion. Whereas speech was both a verbal and a nonverbal text, writing did not
necessarily give rise to a performance adherent to a given situation. In writing, as
Kagawa conceived it, the human body did not mediate. Surely the act of writing
itself is a corporeal action, but by definition, it never achieved the integrity of
direct action for the body and the situation to be found in speech.
Strangely enough, it is in writing that the elimination, the death, of individual
spontaneity is most strongly pronounced. I argue that in singing or the corporeal
gesture in general, the death of individual is also eVident, but in a different
sense. 31 Whereas in writing the subject's body is contradictorily absent from the
discursively constituted self, the body must be present in a corporeal and spoken
text. The gesture or corporeal text takes for its textual materiality the individual
itself; it is a writing inscribed on the body by the body: I have my body, and at the
same time, I am my body. For this reason, the singular embedded in a corporeal
text is thoroughly materialistic (and calligraphic) and is utterly devoid of the
individual subject, which is nothing but a discursive positivity.
The human body, the ambiguous point of intertextual intersection, was also the
locus of singing. Singing, then, was a text simultaneously visual and oral/aural,
spatial and temporal, nonlinear and linear. As it affirmed the anonymity and
communality of the subject that was constituted discursively, it revealed the
presence of the body as that in which the singing was inscribed, or the textual
materiality itself; the body and text were made of the same stuff in this case. And
what the idealized notion of song aspired to was exactly the kind of integration of
various heterogeneous texts for which the human body allowed. Seen from this
perspective, the problematic role of song and poetics in the discursive space is
even more evident. First, song was a specific genre in which the verbal text was
31Cf. Julia Kristeva, "Gesture is the very example of a ceaseless production of death. In its field,
the individual cannot constitute itself-gesture is an impersonal mode since it is a mode of productiv-
ity without production" ("Le geste, pratique ou communicatonT' p. 99).
The Politics of Choreography 307
taken to be an immediate concretization of feeling. But as we have observed in
Motoori's conception of mono no aware (~eaningfulness of mono), feeling thus
concretized was not a product or a remnant of some prior psychological occur-
rence. Song was not a product but a process of production, not an enunciated but
an «nunciation. Therefore, it was supposed that direct involvement in and imme-
diate adherence to the performative situation should be .guaranteed in it. In this
respect, all the traits of direct action were ascribed to it. It was claimed that, just
like an exclamation, it did not represent but produced itself as an instance of
active enunciation. Also, because it could repeat itself and was not confined to an
event that could not be reproduced, it transcended historical time. Similarly,
because it could be repeated by other actors, it addressed itself to anonymity and
was addressed to a collectivity. Furthennore, it was believed that singing could
project an image of a collectivity of sympathy. In this regard, many of the traits of
indirect action were to be found within it.
What is revealed in this characterization of song is that it marked the am-
bivalent boundary between verbal and nonverbal texts, direct and indirect actions
in the discursive formation. It was the topos of sincerity, a topos in which
language and nonlanguage were supposedly synthesized and the primordial an-
chorage of language in the world was identified. Hence, all the studies of lan-
guage during the eighteenth century explicitly or implicitly pointed to this pres-
tigious object of discourse. The question What is language? could not be
answered without taking singing into consideration, since the fundamental coor-
dinate defining the world of language was assumed to be located in this sphere of
human activity. It is also for this reason that enunciation was conceptualized in
terms of process rather than signification and that social reality was conceived to
be an effect of corporeal and textual productivity. Despite its seeming ap-
oliticality and obvious indifference to the contemporary political struggle, poetry
or song held the key to debates about the issue of social control and hegemony in
institutional reproduction. How the relation between the poetic and the poietic
was conceived almost determined the political implications of the debates.
Thus, history and poetics were closely intertwined. The ability to repeat itself,
as I have elucidated with regard to the Bergsonian concept of memory, was of
primary importance in the formation of the sense of history and in concerns about
an ideological construction of social reality. Singing was not an event expressed
by a singing subject. Through the act of singing, one assimilated oneself to the
feeling of sorrow or joy that was the song. When the singer says she is sad or
gesticulates sadness during the performance of singing, I would not mistake the
feeling thus exposed solely for the singer's own, partly because in singing the
individual agent is absent and the feeling expressed belongs to no specific person
but to anybody, including the listener. So it can be said that the feeling in song is
contagious. Hence, singing is always an experience of sympathy, an experience
in which one can be free from imprisonment in the atomized self.
Underlying the discussion of song was an insight, which Ito- Jinsai forcefully
308 Language. Body. and the Immediate
noted, that the feeling is not subjective or shukan-teki therefore cannot simply be
integrated into and controlled by "consciousness"; it is an insight that th.e fol-
lowers of rationalism could not appreciate, for they presumed that the feeling
was a subjective phenomenon occurring within the mind and that it had to be
ontologically determined as something predestined to be administered and regu-
lated by the mind. While Ito acknowledged the social, the intervention by the
otherness of the Other, in feeling, however, the writers of National Studies
associated it with intersubjectivity in the discussion of song. Therefore, through
the transference mechanism of intersubjectivity, the feeling in which a singer
participated was understood to be both a feeling she rendered her own by assim-
ilating herself into it and a communal feeling concretized in the song.
But this is not the only reason for the absence of the individual agent in
singing. The anonymity of feeling in singing is not restricted to here and now and
cannot be understood as part of an event that takes place once in chronological
time. It does not have a date or a place. Suffice it to say that this is another side of
the fact that the feeling cannot be attributed to any SPecific individual. Given this
account of communal feeling concretized in singing, it should be evident that
singing does not tolerate such oppositions as performer/spectator, object/subject,
and speaker/listener. Both the singing and the hearing of a song indicate an
experience whose primary characteristic coincides with participation. This par-
ticipation is not achieved by one's conscious effort, however, but by the disci-
plined and habituated human body that participates in a communal action called
song or poetry, even when one's "mind" refuses to acknowledge it. As an event,
history does not repeat itself; yet, as a song and a poem, history continually
resurrects itself in one's body in the midst of the present performance. As
Bergson puts it, "It is part of my present, exactly like my habit of walking or of
writing; it is lived and acted, rather than represented. "32 It is through this
specific determination of song that feeling, which for Ito Jinsai had been a
passage to the social, to the otherness of the Other, to the exteriority that could
not be exhaustively contained in discourse, was made to conform to a commu-
nality that was nothing but a reification of the anonymous collectivity.
The Politics of Choreography
It is clear, then, how the issues of history, communality, and the ideological
constitution of social reality converge on this topic of poetry. From an extensive
discussion of the nature of poetry emerged images of the ideal social order,
communal life, and politics. Feeling, intimacy, and immediacy were the ideolog-
ical instruments by means of which the most effective social control was to be
accomplished. Because of the involvement of the body, the affirmative political
32Bergson, Matter and Memory, p. 90.
The Politics of Choreography 309
process that was imagined was neither persuasion nor authoritarian coercion but
choreography. In the coordinated moveme,nt of various texts, each perfonner
was to be given a specific role-as in a dance team-and was expected to play
that role in harmony with the whole. The ideal regularities that in principle kept
the dance intact could then serve as a lure for endless, habitual practice and
bodily inscription. Although those regularities may appear extrinsic as a still-to-
be-attained standard of perfection in one's memory of language and other institu-
tions, supposedly, just like one's mother tongue, they become transparent and
effectively indiscernible from one's innate nature once the internalization into
bodily practice, however gradual, has been attained. This is precisely what has
been portrayed as a transition from the exterior to the interior. Again, this
transition to the interior should never be confused with mere mechanical mastery
of a skill or memorization of foreign words. Entering the interior entails the
acquisition of an ability to share sympathy, to feel naturally as the others belong-
ing to it do. At the same time that such an ability, which determines the essence
of the interior, resides in the body, the interior should never be felt within one's
body but in one's rapport with other subjects. Hence, while it is appropriate to
say that .the interior arrives in you, it is not contradictory to claim that you enter
it. Indeed, entry into an interior means a total alteration of the way one perceives
the world, that is, a total change of the world.
In the imaginary constitution of the interior, the body was thus regarded as an
agent that ensured a reciprocity of feeling and institutionalized intimacy with
others on the basis of transference. As if counteracting Ito's comprehension of
the body that constantly discloses its materiality and therefore its surplus over
what is appropriated into transferential intersubjectivity, a notion of sociality was
proposed in terms of transparent communion, the guarantee of intimacy, and the
conception of the body as a storehouse of habits. What took place in the discur-
sive space of the eighteenth century, I think, is a debate concerning the body, a
debate between the conceptualization in which the body was, above all, the
anchorage of social and cultural institutions in the world and another notion of
the body which refused to be conceptualized, pointed to its materiality, and
endorsed the body's otherness, and its heterogeneity to individual subjectivity,
consciousness, and intersubjectivity.
As an integrated component of an interior rooted in corporeal motor function,
language was now given its unity as representative of the interior. The unity of a
language, therefore, was fashioned after the sense of interiority. Let us not
forget, however, that there was no national, standard language in the eighteenth
century. It was almost unanimously upheld that the contemporary world was
fragmented and its language disrupted. Thus it was impossible to recognize the
integrity of a language suggested by the notion of a unified interior: there was no
single Japanese language, only Japanese languages. Even this may be an inade-
quate description of the situation, for Japaneseness, implying some unity of
ethnos, could not be identified without recourse to the conception of some
310 Language, Body, and the Immediate
overarching unity equivalent to the interior. Hence" the unity of a single Japanese
language could hardly be founded insofar as it was sought after in the contempo-
rary world. The only thing to be discovered there was regional diversity, an
indefinitely disseminated mixture of various languages. It is in this context that
history was solicited. Positing the standard language of antiquity dramatized this
diversity by pointing up the absence of intrinsic unity. Because a coherent whole
was assumed in the past, the present was analyzed as a lack, a negative that
required a fundamental change. Projecting the idealized unity of language onto
the ancient world that preceded writing inscribed the Japanese language in eigh-
teenth-century culture as an absence, a loss.
Thus historical time was taken for granted as a distance between the world as it
should be and the world as it is, an instance inviting critique. History was
constantly summoned to testify to the degraded and decayed reality of contempo-
rary society. Evidently the sense of history proclaimed by kiyo no gaku, kobunji
gaku, and National Studies could not be assimilated into a linear and continuous
history based on the seriality of events. While linear history affirmed continuity,
it was discontinuity between the present and the past, the other and the identical,
that was called out in the studies of ancient languages and institutions.
Now, I cannot afford to dismiss what was implied in the assumption impercep-
tibly introduced by this notion of the interior and the unity of one Japanese
language. Through these discursive apparatuses, the unity of ethnos was, possi-
bly for the first time, constructed and confirmed. 33 In Tokugawa Japan too,
phonocentrism was essential in forming the ethnocentric closure. As I have
demonstrated, the priority of speech was the essential condition without which
the other and the exterior, which continually eroded and broke open the pro-
claimed unity and the closure of an ethnocentric unity of a language, could not be
excluded and suppressed. Because language was associated with corporeal be-
havior and dissociated from its representational function, the unity of the lan-
guage thus constituted pointed to a realm beyond verbal explanation and persua-
sion, where language was reduced to a communal silence that continued to be
meaningful only by excluding those who did not agree to conceal the social.
Thus, the realm identified in teons of this language unity was also a community
composed of the accomplices to such a silence. We should remember that the
discursive foonation of this ethnos was an ideological coercion, if not more
oppressive than the ethnocentricity based on garrulous phonocentrism of the
West, at least as powerful. That is, the formulation of this language in terms of
"communal silence," rather than "communal speech," is a way of displacing the
contradiction between the nonrepresentational, nonsensory sensation of the inte-
rior, which such a language is supposed to generate, and the aleatoriness of the
33Cf. Jacques Derrida; for the problematic of history and ethnocentricity in Western metaphysics,
see his Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., and David
B. Allison (Boulder, Colo.: Great Eastern, 1978); Speech and Phenomena, trans. David B. Allison
(Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973); and, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri C.
Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).
The Politics of Choreography 311
social inherent in the material inscription of institutionalized practices in the
body.
But it is also necessary to remember that such a unity of ethnic collectivity was
not directly linked to the existing social order. The world of Tokugawa Japan was
perceived to be devoid of this commuanlity" and the ethnic unity was always
projected into the past, into antiquity. In this sense, a certain reification of an
anonymous collectivity, which social action establishes, had already taken place,
but it was not directly equated to the existing order. This ethnic identity came
into being primarily as a loss, as that which had existed a long time ago but was
no longer available. Thus, Japanese was born into eighteenth-century discourse
long dead; Japanese was stillborn.
The Stillbirth of Japanese
The birth ot Japanese as a language as well as an ethnic community of an
aesthetic nature was thus prompted by a phonocentric obsession generated in the
discursive space of the eighteenth century. Both Japanese as a language unity and
Japanese as an ethnos were, at the same time, constituted positivities made up of
utterances in discourse and constituting positivities regulating the production of
utterances. Like all positivities, they- served to fashion the social reality while
claiming to be embedded in that reality. Hidden or manifest, they were assumed
to be already there in the tissue of everyday deeds spontaneously initiated by
ordinary people. Now, I do not imply that what positivists vaguely refer to as the
Japanese language or culture did not exist prior to the eighteenth century. Indeed,
people in the region now called -Japan had acted and lived in a medium of
languages and cultural institutions from the first human habitation of the land.
But to claim that these inhabitants were Japanese speaking one language and
sharing one culture necessitated an unprecedented organization of discourse in
which various differentiations, which otherwise would have fonned a field of
differences, converged to constitute an ethnocentric closure. 34 It should be noted
34As some readers are aware, the term "ethnocentricity" is usually used in an opposite sense to
mine in this paragraph. Ethnocentricity is a discursive formation in which the claim of the univer-
sality of some terms implicitly privileges the identity of a certain ethnic group and asserts its
superiority over others while insisting on the indiscriminate openness of those terms. Hence, two
opposing tendencies of ethnic selflessness (declared claim) and self-centeredness (displaced impetus)
are accommodated in the double structure characteristic of ethnocentricity. In this regard, the discur-
sive formation of Tokugawa Japan may not appear ethnocentric inasmuch as it lacks the aspect of
declared ethnic selflessness: it does not pretend to be open. As I shall argue, however, the discursive
formation of Tokugawa Japan easily forms a supplementary rapport with the authentically ethno-
centric discourse. The National Studies documents of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
turies, in addition to the books by Yamazaki Ansai in the seventeenth century, amply show that such a
formation of particularistic and immature ethnocentricity could tum into universalistic and genuine
ethnocentricity or vice versa. There is hardly any difference between them in the degree to which they
reinforce ethnocentric closure.
Yamazaki Ansai (1619-1682) was a prominent rationalist Confucian and the founder of the Suika
Shinto of the early Tokugawa period. His father, an unemployed samurai in Kyoto, sent him to the
312 Language, Body, and the Immediate
that these unities meant much more than the mere sum of languages and institu-
tions to be found in the region during the eighteenth century. If the teno H Japa-
nese" was a proper name for the languages in use there, it would have encom-
passed even those tongues used by the Chinese, Koreans, and Ainu. Conversely,
of course, many "Japanese" could not make themselves understood to other
"Japanese." As long as one pursues a rigorous unity of language, one will only
prove the impossibility of defining a language and its boundary empirically. As a
matter of fact, the unity of a language is one of the conditions of possibility on
which empirical evidence can be constructed. In other words, it precedes em-
pirical positivity, so that neither its presence nor its absence can be proven
factually. The unity of a language cannot be given in experience: its unity cannot
be an object of empirical science. Here, positivism is utterly hopeless precisely
because it does not know its historicity and theoretical limitations. That is, it
should be equally possible to envisage a discursive space where the unities of
ethnos and language are not constituted or are viewed as historically arbitrary.
What was alluded to by the eruption of the enunciation into the discursive
space was this transfonnation, as a result of which the unities of a language and
an ethnos were brought about. It is not that the emergence of the enunciation
caused them to appear, but that the emergence of the enunciation was the condi-
tion allowing for these unities. I have frequently stressed the discursive nature of
the enunciation, namely, that the enunciation cannot be taken as a real being; it is
an imaginary construct, an originary repetition, although it is posited as a real
event. Hence, in the discursive space in question, it points to an event of the
production of utterance, but it is posterior to the enunciated. Just as so-called
extratextual reality is always an effect of the text-the text being anterior to the
extratextual reality-the enunciation may be considered to be a product of the
enunciated. Thus, whereas the enunciation is conventionally defined as the pro-
duction and the enunciated is equated to a product, I must note that raising the
issue of the production of the originary repetition puts this convention into
question.
The primacy of speech which we witnessed in the discursive space is, of
course, closely related to this issue, but it was necessary in order to avoid the
disclosure of the entire problematic. Above all, the notion of speech based on the
opposition enunciation!enunciated supposedly enabled one to ex.perience the
Enryakuji temple to become a Buddhist priest; later he served at a temple in Tosa province (now in
Ko~hi prefecture) where Song rationalism had flourished. At the age of twenty-three, Yamazaki
deCided to abandon Buddism and to devote himself entirely to the philosophy of Zhu Xi. Returning to
Kyoto, he wrote and lectured on Zhu Xi's philosophy for the rest of his life. His Kimon school
attracted many talented students, including Asami Keisai (1652-1711) and Miyake Shosai (1662-
1741). Yamazaki's understanding of Zhu Xi's philosophy tended to emphasize rigorous moralism and
the virtue of loyalty to one's lord. He especially valued and acknowledged his indebtedness to a
Korea~ C~nfucian, Yi T'.oegye (l50l~ 70). His major works include Kekii (Refutations of heresies),
Bunkat hlStsuroku (Readmg notes), and Suika bunshu (Collected essays on Suika).
The Politics of Choreography 313
utterance at the very moment of its birth. This notion stipulated the original scene
where the addresser, the addressee, and· thfngs surrounding the act of utterance
were all present, as I have detected in Benveniste'8 notion of the instance of
disc~urse. Yet such a vision is possible only in retrospect. All one could possibly
say about the origina! scene is that all thes~ items must haye been simultaneously
present there. What IS decisive about the enunciation is that it cannot be thought
or ex~erienced. It. is jus,t l~ke the primordiality of perception in phenomenology.
To thlOk or expenence It IS to grasp it as the enunciated, and the original scene
one might posit is necessarily absent, lost, and bypassed. From the outset, it is
only in its repetition that it is thought or experienced. In this sense, the text
always belongs to the past. Accordingly, the absence of the addresser, the ad-
dressee, and the things that must have animated the production of the enunciated
is in fact the condition for the possibility of the text. Since the original scene is
necessarily absent, one cannot think of any text that belongs to the present. The
notio~ of its belonging to the present is altogether absurd. Therefore, even during
the eIghteenth century, the text was given the detenoination of a lost voice. But
what wa~ .neglected then is that this detennination applies to every text, not only
to the ancient documents. Furthennore, eighteenth-century discourse ignored the
contradiction this detennination already indicated, the contradiction inherent in
the intellectual commitment to the resurrection of the originary voice, which
demanded the primacy of speech and at the same time negated every possibility
of resurrecting the original scene. The point is that even if a lost voice could be
returned to its originary plenitude, the voice thus recovered would still be a
repetition of a past event. And insofar as it is a repetition, it would constitute a
diff~rent enunciation; a repetition of the past enunciation can point to its original,
but It can do so only by supplementing all those items that were supposed to be
present in the original scene but are absent at the scene of the repeated enuncia-
tion. But their presence, if it could ever be repeated, would be a representation.
If a lost voice should be recovered, the voice thus recovered could coincide with
itself in the very essence of its repeatability.
I have already argued this thesis with regard to the anteriority of writing in
MOloori Norinaga's reading of the Kojiki. What I disclosed then was the political
implication of his reading. Now I should pursue this fundamental contradiction
without which discourse could not have been generated. It is evident not only that
a lost voice can be resurrected only as a representation but also that the notion of
enunciation itself is impossible as long as we understand it as an object of
thought. Suppose there is a document; it seems obvious that in order for it to exist
it must have been produced at some moment prior to this moment. Likewise, an
utterance exists as an enunciated in the present in one form or another-in the
fonn of the transcribed voice, for instance-so that it must have been produced
and recorded at some time prior to this. Then one would conclude that a product
presupposes the production anterior to it and that an enunciated similarly presup-
poses the enunciation; one would be forced to postulate that because the utter-
 Language, Body, and the Immediate
314
ance as an enunciated is here and now, there must have been textual production
and the enunciation whose only trace is the text, narrowly comprehended 'as a
book, document, or monument. It goes without saying that the text can be
equated to a book, document, or monument only metonymically and in some
very rare contexts and that the term Utext" must be kept distinct from the terms
"book," "discourse," and "work" by every means possible in order for the
textuality of the text to be preserved. The simplistic positing of the temporal
sequence enunciation-enunciated or production-product confuses the ve~ notion
of the text. It ignores the truism that it is impossible to postulate the signification
of an utterance in the physical presence of a book, document, or monument, like
a spirit inhabiting a physical body, that the reading of the text is always an
enunciation and the text is not an entity like a book, whose unity is given by the
physical contour of the object, but inclusive of various relationships between that
materiality I called textual materiality and various items such as the addresser,
the addressee, and subjects of many different kinds-speaking, reading, and so
on. When it is not read or heard, a book is merely bound paper.
The notion of the book is ignorant of this internal articulation of textuality. On
the one hand, the book is defined as a physical entity whose unity is given as the
contour of piled paper or some equivalent things, and on the other hand, the book
is defined as the identity of its message. In the notion of the book, these two
definitions coexist as if they were synthesized. It is obvious that the signification
or the message cannot be extracted from the qualities of bound paper. The
determination of the book as a physical entity does not tell anything about its so-
called content. In order to recognize some message in the marks inscribed oli that
physical entity, one must read it, and in that reading, the content of the book is
constituted as being already there, that is, as being atemporal and independent of
the vicissitude of the individual reading act. As a matter of fact, the second
definition of the book betrays the first one, so that the coexistence of the two is a
mystery or superstition. When one takes into account the constitution of content,
the notion of the book is no longer of any help; we require the notion of the text,
which encompasses the subject and the act of the reading. It is not that in reading
the ~'I" faces the text as though the "I" has stood outside the text but rather that
in reading the "I" is constituted in the text just as the book, as the identity of
message, is constituted in the text.
It is around the problematic of the difference between the text and the book
that the enunciation, as I have observed it, was assigned an important role in the
organization of discourse in the eighteenth century. It was equated to an utterance
enacted in the performative situation, where the speaking subject was plunged
into an active communion with things and others; it was an act of anchoring
words in the world. 35
Nevertheless, as Jacques Derrida has elaborated, "the possibility of repeating,
35The reader might note certain similarities between the enunciation and Austin'S speech acts. See
J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1962). See also
John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).
The Politics of Choreography 315
and therefore of identifying marks is implied in every code, making of it a
communicable, transmittable, decipherable grid that is iterable for a third party,
and thus for any possible user in general. "36 Suffice it to say that Derrida's
explication can and, in fact, did extend to the addresser, or the speaking subject,
and to the performative situation: that an enunciation is repeatable is a rupture
between the enunciated and the horizon of 'the enunciation. That is to say, if the
enunciation is repeatable, it is no longer an enunciation; only as an enunciated
can it repeat itself. Derrida writes, "The subtraction of all writing from the
semantic or the hepneneutic horizon which, at least as a horizon of meaning, lets
itself be punctured by writing" and "the disqualification or the limit of the
concept of the 'real' or 'linguistic' context, whose theoretical detennination or
empirical saturation are, strictly speaking, rendered impossible or insufficient by
writing. "37 Thus the very possibility of repeating the enunciation, which the
writers of the eighteenth century desired so urgently, is denied by the enunciation
itself; the possibility of the enunciation is already marked by the impossibility of
returning the enunciated to its original scene.
Hence, I refuse to see as real what eighteenth-century grammarians claimed to
exist in antiquity and what they believed to be the originary voice behind the text,
not because these claims are factually incorrect but because their act of claiming
already harbored a fundamental contradiction. There is no such thing as a real
enunciation or an original utterance. From the outset an utterance is a repetition
preceded by no presence. In understanding their discourse I have taken it upon
myself, instead, to see how such a conception of the enunciation was generated
in that discursive space. That is, I started with the premise that a product pro-
duces production, that an enunciated produces an enunciation.
Enunciation is a reality of an elusive nature, a reality that cannot be arrested in
concepts or identities, that betrays itself ceaselessly. It is, in principle, posterior
to writing, to the textuality in which the author, the speaker, and the reader can
all emerge only as the dead, as the absent. Seen in this light, it is evident why
death as loss, so essential in textual production, had to be obsessively denied and
renounced in eighteenth-century discourse. What was constantly rejected and
excluded was the death inherent in textual formation, where death indicates the
possibility of utterance itself. So the dichotomy death/life related itself closely to
another predominant opposition, enunciated/enunciation. Writing, ideograph,
and nominal were often equated to the symptoms of death, and speech, phonet-
icism, and nonnominal were associated with the body, with liveliness, move-
ment, and action. As was illustrated by the analysis of the Japanese puppet
theater, however, enunciation as a describable event was constituted in terms of
those oppositions themselves and never posited as "real" independent of tex-
tuality. If it is to be called an event, it certainly belongs to the class of phenomena
36Jacques Derrida, "Signature Event Context;' in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 315-16.
37Ibid.
316 Language, Body. and the Immediate
registered in the text and not to extratextual reality. Solely on condition that the
oppositions deathllife, enunciated/enunciation, and writing/speech precede its
discursive constitution can an event possibly emerge as such. That is to say,
despite the proclaimed renunciation of death, the act of eliminating it always
presupposes its positing, without which the entire argument would be mean-
ingless. The process of erasing it is then never ending, for to erase it is simul-
taneously to generate it. All these oppositions, far from establishing entities in
themselves, continue to activate the play of difference and to be unresolvably tied
to differance. As long as the discursive space was dominated by the oppositions I
have identified, it was generated and regenerated as a necessary field of dif-
ferences.
By the economy of this discursive formation, the identical or the ethnic identi-
ty thus composed was constantly exchanged with the other. In due course, the
image of the identical, which was constantly appealed to during the eighteenth
century, functioned as a discursive apparatus by means of which the identical
could be posited as the other. Without the mediation of the other as a specular
positing of the self, the unity of an ethnos could never have been thought or
projected. But each time the identity of the ethnos was ascertained, it was posited
as an other for the self, as other than the self, and as an other distant from the
self. To attempt to see the other as identical to the self, that is, to see the identical
(to itself), is necessarily to engender the movement of repetition, iterability,
because the identical is meaningless without recourse to the process in which it
returns to itself. As Derrida notes, "Iter, once again, comes from itera, other in
Sanskrit, and everything that follows may be read as the exploitation of the logic
which links repetition to alterity." Iterability, he continues, "structures the mark
of writing itself, and does so moreover for no matter what type of writing
[pictographic, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetic, alphabetic, to use the old
categories]. A writing that was not structurally legible-iterable-beyond the
death of the addressee would not be writing. "38
Derrida's use of the word "writing," being beyond the scope determined by
the writing/speech dichotomy, reveals the economy of a restricted investment of
desire which the primacy of speech in phonocentrism assumed; by the same
stroke, it pronounces that it is impossible to maintain the primacy of speech.
Instead of warranting the ethnic and the ethnocentric identical in the homoge-
neous and immediate "presence to itself' of speech, it is revealed that speech
itself posits the identical as an other. What was purported to be accomplished in
the primacy of speech was to isolate the positive terms of main oppositions and to
link them together as if there were a subject to which only these positive terms
were attributed. Needless to say, that subject, or shugo, would later be called
Japan. In this formation of a discursive positivity called Japan, writing was made
responsible for estrangement, delay, the positing of the other, and the hetero-
38Ibid., p. 315. Brackets are Derrida's.
The Politics of Choreography 317
geneity caused by historical time, but speech was apprehended as indicating a
realm of interiority where immediacy, the identical, homogeneity-all believed
to be beyond history-were assumed to exist as attributes of the subject Japan.
That the identical had to be constituted discursively, therefore, implies the
most -typical form of distancing between us and ourselves. This distance is, at the
same time, the condition of the possibility for the identical and also what the
positing of the identical aims to conceal by every means. Only at the cost of open
recognition of this iterability and alterity could ethnocentricity be called forth. It
follows that ethn~entricity always necessitates the repression of heterogeneity
and alterity on behalf of those who conform to it and intellectual deceit for those
who legitimate it.
Death as the Possibility of Language
Now I am well placed to retrace the network of concealments and displace-
ments embedded in the discursive space of the eighteenth century. Under the
name of immediacy, intimacy, and directness, the possibility of death, which is
inherent in every textual production and is perhaps best illustrated by such a
statement as "I am telling you a lie," was disguised, substituted, and finally
hidden. The ceaseless pursuit of direct involvement· in the total perfonnative
situation, despite its proclaimed intent, lent itself to a recognition that what one
meant to say and what one had actually said were linked together in the element
of a lie. Here, to speak was to tell a lie directly, and the possibilities of language
use, the social, and the encounter with the Other (not the other, the symmetrical
opposite of the self or intersubjective other, but the Other in its alterity) coin-
cided. Ultimately, when this fundamental feature of language was rigorously
eliminated, one could only resort to silence, which was also the final form of
interiorized sincerity, as Kagawa Kageki's POetics of sincerity infonned us. At
the extreme limit of what could be called the denial of death in language ap-
peared the total rejection of language, the death of language in its entirety; the
effort to exclude from language the rift between what I meant to say and what I
have said ended by murdering language as a whole; the full presence of the
enunciation became synonymous with its total absence.
I believe that what eighteenth-century theorists perceived to be the fundamen-
tal disease of the world in fact inhabited their language itself, rather than the
external world they so wished to rectify. Thus the eighteenth-century discursive
space suffered from its intrinsic tendency toward silence, its overwhelming ob-
session with immediacy. We should recall, however, that it also encompassed the
kind of discourse that problematized its own discursivity and thus pointed to its
limits, a discourse in which the issue of textual materiality was addressed in
relation to' practical, that is, ethical, problematics. There, the possibility of
sociality, defamiliarization, and death in language was affirmed, so that the
318 Language, Body, and the Immediate
otherness of the Other was respected as a resistance to appropriation into dis-
course, as the unthinkable that could never be exhaustively universalized; as a
radical critique of idealist ethics, which was inevitably nonethical in reducing the
Other to universals. Hence, such a possibility was diametrically opposed to the
poetics of sincerity in that it continually highlighted the iterability according to
which the otherness of materiality could never be entirely repressed in repetition.
The absence of concern for the original enunciation and of recourse to the past in
Ito Jinsai's treatises is striking when we consider the overwhelming urge to let
the enunciated and the enunciation coincide with each other in the poetics of
Umeaningfulness of mono" and of sincerity. It is not that enunciation was absent
there but that the fleeing nature of enunciation and the unbridgeable distance
between the enunciated and the enunciation were thoroughly taken into account
and brought into a dialogism in which language was freed from the myth of the
original enunciation, the myth of immediacy-a dialogism that never attempted
to eliminate heterogeneity, polyphony, and above all the otherness of the Other.
Exteriority
Surely the attentiveness to the otherness of the Other did not confine itself to
the opposition exterior/interior, which played a decisive role in the discursive
formation of the interior as an ethnic closure. Being distinct from the exterior, the
exteriority to which defamiliarization leads us may be said to be that which
disqualifies the very opposition exterior/interior itself, a difference whose func-
tion it is to posit the opposite terms as real, as independent identities, and which
allows us instead to see the opposition as a difJerance, a site where ethnic or
cultural identities can never be completed. Without using this term "exteriority"
to disclose the network of concealment and displacement, this difJerance may
easily be reconciled with the logic of cultural identity; it may merely be made to
denote the distinction between the two possible rapports a subject can have with a
given cultural, linguistic, or other institutional reality; it may be accommodated
in an alternative by which one either belongs to a given community or not,
without disclosing the perversion of posing such a choice. As I have endeavored
to show, this opposition exterior/interior is not an extratextual occurrence but
takes place in the midst of discursive formation. It goes without saying that
exteriority cannot be understood either within this opposition or as a geograph-
ical outside of Japanese territory.
Finally I have arrived at the cognizance that the exteriority I talked about in the
Introduction is, after all, not so remote from Ito Jinsai's concept of ai. Exteri-
ority, or dehors, ensures the possibility of a certain kind of history writing in
which we are to refuse to see the past as our past and so integrate it into our
present. It serves neither as a real cultural position (because the unity of culture
can be posited only discursively) nor as an inevitably consequence of the estab-
The Politics of Choreography 319
lishment of national consciousness but rather as a specific perspective from
which texts ~e seen, read, written, and produced. Exteriority thereby enables us
to cease to be accomplices in the kind of history whose main task is to legitimate
whatever discursive system may be imposed upon us, and to conceal its intrinsic
contradiction.
In eighteenth-century discourse, the risk of falling into the dimension of inte-
riority depicted in tenns of consciousness is not as grave as it is today because of
the constant resistance of texts to the imposition of the epistemological frame-
work of which co~sciousness is constructed, and also because of the philosoph-
ical argument that criticizes the concept of the "mind."39 On the other hand,
interiority as a cultural and ethnocentric closure presents a continual threat to my
approach. I have read texts of the period in question with a view to depicting the
historical a priori conditions for the emergence of the interior as such. Time and
time again, I had to caution that the interior must not be granted the status of the
ahistorical essence.
All these efforts amount to my strategic focus on the dimension of the text,
which is anterior to the formation of the interior. The locus of textuality to which
my reading leads is to be found in the exterior of the discursive space, where the
opposition interior/exterior is perceived as real. Instead of yielding to a her-
meneutical temptation to involve myself in a lived experience, instead of fan-
tasizing my speech as already anchored in some horizon of a life world, I have at
least attempted to base my analysis on discursive fonnation. That is to say, I have
been seeking a position outside of ethnocentric closure, a position of impos-
sibility from which the constitution of ethnos can be critically construed.
39'Jbe mind, xin, cannot be directly equated to "consciousness," of course. As I have tried to
illustrate, however, in certain contexts these two appear very similar. If we construe consciousness as
a field of language that is misrecognized as unique to the individual subject, Tokugawa discourse is
not so different from ours. Many attempts have been made to discover modern man as subjective
interiority in Tokugawa intellectual discourse. Cf. Bito Masahide, Nihon hoken shiso-shi kenkyu
(Tokyo: Aoki Shoten. 1961).

Conclusion
National Language and Subjectivity
In the beginning of this book, I posed several questions: What is language? What
is nonlanguage? What is the "I"? What is meant by belonging to a language? and
What is meant by a language's belonging to ~~me"? I ventured to implicate
"what," or quiddity, in these questions as if I expected the definitive and defini-
tional (or essential) answers to them. Yet, throughout my discussion of these
questions, I have tried my best not to lose sight of the issues that positing of these
questions might enable me to talk about. The frrst issue is the ambiguous bound-
ary between a national, ethnic, or regional language and language in general.
The second issue is concerned with the use of "I" or its equivalent in language in
relation to various determinations of subject: shugo, shukan, shudai, shutai,and
so on. In dealing with the first issue, I have forced myself to adhere to a
principle: instead of asking how a pure, archaic, and original language was
divided, contaminated, and eroded in chronological time, I have always asked
how the idea of a pure and internally coherent language was generated out of
hybrid languages. That is, I have consistently let my argument be regulated by
the idea that language is invariably hybrid.
Eighteenth-century discourse, as I have read it, posed this problem most
succinctly. The unity of Japanese language was undoubtedly an invention that
was called forth in order to render the encounter of differences thinkable and
commensurable in discourse; it was a scheme by which what one could not
accommodate within the existing discourse, such as the Kojiki, was appropriated
into that discourse as an identifiable other to the consentaneous apprehension of
"us." This discursive invention can be said to have facilitated a passage to the
understanding of the incommensurable as such, to the determination of the
unthinkable as unthinkable, It successfully disclosed the site of what had been
silenced and linked it to different regimes. Sophistic though it may seem, it
320
Conclusion 321
opened up a process in which what one encountered but could not think or
understand was determined, defined, ·thought of, and apprehended as unthinka-
ble, The incommensurable was identified as such and thereby rendered commen-
surate in speculation,
Here a,n example of a foreign language might help. For the sake of argument,
let a forel~n ~anguage be ,what we, cannot understand at all, that is, take a foreign
language In Its most radical foreIgnness.· When we come across a foreign lan-
guage for the first time, we recognize this encounter with otherness in the fact
that we-do not understand it. We do not understand it not only in the sense that we
cannot grasp signification articulated in that medium but also in the sense that we
cannot discern even the difference between language and nonlanguage in that
medi~~. The pit,ch, which does not play any role in "our" language, might play
a deCISive role In that foreign language, or some categories such as dual in
nU~ber or neuter, in gender might be essential in it. But the whole point about
foreign language IS that we do not know it, and so we cannot be attentive to these
unfamiliar features. In principle, that language is foreign or alien to us not
because we can identify it as a language different from ours but because we
simply cannot identify it at all. By the same token, we cannot know how far our
language goes, where the language we understand ceases to be intelligible.
Sup~sedly there are many dialects in "our" language, but, as a matter of fact,
there IS no way to tell at what point some dialects cease to be in ~'our" language
and begin to belong to some other language. We cannot tell where "our" lan-
guage ends and another language begins.
Perha~s, I should d~~ll on Wittgenstein's well-known argument involving the
field of SIght and the hmit of my world, to illuminate what is at stake in determin-
ing the unthinkable as the unthinkable. Allow me to maintain a certain reserva-
tion as to Wittgenstein's uses of the words '~language" and "logic" here in
reproducing these propositions:
5.6 The limit of my language means the limit of my world.
5.6.1 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits,
We cannot therefore say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is
not.
For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and
this cannot be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world:
that is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also.
What we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what we
cannot think, , , .
5.632 The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.
5.633 Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted?
You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But
322 Language. Body, and the Immediate
you do not really see the eye. And from nothing in the field of sight can it be
concluded that it 'is seen from an eye.·
In its otherness, we cannot oppose a foreign language to "our" language, nor
can we identify the unthinkable as opposed to the thinkable. Yet we think we
know that there are many languages we do not understand. That we think so
shows precisely that what we understand by foreign languages are objects imag-
ined in discourse: what we do not understand or experience is identified in terms
of the objects constituted in discourse. Therefore, it is impossible for us to
experience foreign languages in their foreignness. They are imaginary, but not
illusionary, for there are certain protocols by which to demonstrate the nonexis-
tence of the referent in the case of an illusionary object, but one cannot show that
the imaginary object does not exist. Precisely because we cannot identify it, the
language is radically foreign, But in order to show that a referent does not exist,
one must first show the connection between the name of a foreign language and
its referent. Yet it is this ability of ascribing a name of language to the activity of
that language that we do not possess. But we believe in imaginary objects that we
can neither understand or experience, and they are part and parcel of the social
reality in which we live.
·What the invention of the Japanese language amounts to is, first, a distinction
drawn between the thinkable and the unthinkable, as if our understanding could
consider this distinction "from the other side," as if there were some transcen-
dent viewpoint from which the incommensurability of the unthinkable could be
thought; and second, an explanation that because the limits of a language (in this
case the Japanese language) inhere in "our" thinking, we cannot think what falls
outside that language unity. Let me note that this is where the first important
displacement from language in general to a particular language occurs. And in
this constitution of Japanese language, a dual operation proceeds. On the one
hand, it is claimed that our thinking is predetermined by our belonging to a
national language; on the other, it is assumed that some cultural or linguistic
subjectivity that enables us to think and perceive in certain ways can be seen,
objectified, and posited as an identity, just as if we could see our own eye. And
Wittgenstein certainly did not use the word "language" in the sense of a national
language.
Thus, the invention of the Japanese language as an ethnic closure requires the
simultaneous positing of two subjectivities that are distinct from each other. One
might call one of these transcendental and the other empirical: transcendental
subjectivity ensures that the unthinkable is intelligible as that which lies beyond
the limit, and empirical subjectivity ascertains that the unthinkable is literally
unintelligible. Thus, a nonspeaker of that language might assume a transcenden-
tal subjectivity in relation to an empirical subjectivity that is occupied by the
lLudwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner,
1922), pp. 148-51.
I
Conclusion 323
speaker of that language. But it is immediately obvious that the same argument
applies to the language of the transcendental. position, so that what may appear to
be the predetermined limits of the object language should not be distinguishable
from the reflections of the language of the transcendental observer, which must
equally be predetermined. Here a typical case of linguistic and cultural solipsism
ensues.
Now I must ask what constitutes the unity of the Japanese language, or kokugo
(10-1). To respond to this question without falling into a series of tautologies is
not as easy as it might seem. Knowing that this question has frequently been
confronted by Japanese linguists and philosophers, I should first follow the
itinerary of an argument by Tokieda Motoki about the unity of the Japanese
language, for Tokieda's argument is exemplary in its attentiveness to the specif-
icities of a putative Japanese language and also fairly revealing about the pitfalls
in the notions of language and subjectivity.
What is generally called Tokieda kokugogaku 00-2), or Tokieda linguistics,
assigns an essential role to the concept of kokugo. In defining the task of
linguistics as knowing about the essence of language, Tokieda proposed a lin-
guistic study in which the existing general view of language is constantly put in
question through the study of a particular language. He extended this view of
linguistics to the relationship between the philosophy of language, which sup-
posedly deals with language in general, and linguistics~ which cannot avoid
empirical research on particular languages. Instead of discarding the philosophy
of language, he insisted that the study of a particular language is to be conceived
of as an opportunity to doubt and challenge the predominant view of the essence
of language in general. Implied was an obvious critique of nineteenth-century
European linguistics, which he thought naively presumed the universal essence
of language to be found in the familiarized conception of modem European
languages. In addition, Tokieda outlined in theoretical terms a search for a study
of language that is not ethnocentric, a study in which the relationship between the
pursuit of the understanding of language in general and the investigation of a
particular language is thought differently. Accordingly, he insisted that the phi-
losophy of language, which supposedly deals with language· in its universal
features, ignoring specific differences inherent in the images of language that
different communities and social groups possess, ought to be constantly ques-
tioned by those who directly investigate particular languages. In this sense, he
argued that every linguist must also be a philosopher of language and should
always examine and reevaluate the view of the essence of language (gengo
honshitsu-kan), which operates as a framework for the description of empirical
data about a language. Thus, the linguist was required to be attentive not only to
the objectivity of the empirical and objective data generated about linguistic
phenomena but also to what today one might call an episteme of linguistics-the
very condition of the possibility for I1hguistic knowledge-with which knowl-
edge about language(s) is posited as a set of positivities.
Following his argument, one would necessarily be urged to question the very
 Language, Body, and the Immediate
324
opposition between the essence of language, which is in~vitably articulated in
universal terms, and the particularity of a particular language, kokugo,2 or Qne's
own national language, Japanese in his case-an opposition on which he based a
different conception of linguistics. What was at issue in his discussion about the
significance of kokugogaku was in fact how the agent of study or one who studies
(subject in the sense of shukan) is related to the theme of his study (subject in the
sense of shudai). Tokieda's concept of kokugo, or a particular language, seems
virtually empty outside the context of those problematics concerning the rela-
tionship between one who studies language and the language itself in the forma-
tion of linguistic knowledge in the discipline of linguistics.
For Tokieda, language consists of the concrete acts of talking, reading, listen-
ing, and writing, and it cannot be apprehended at all outside those activities. This
view means that language is this kind of subjective, or shutai-teki, activities and
that the factual and concrete object of language study is this shutai-teki activity
itself. Yet in everyday life one does not adopt an attitude in which one takes
language as an object of study. When language exists, the "I" is engaged in the
linguistic acts and does not take an observational stance (kansatsu-teki tachiba)
toward it. In a manner that suggests his debt to phenomenology and her-
meneutics, Tokieda postulated the distinction between the shutai-teki stance and
the observational stance and emphasized the theoretical anteriority of the former.
Because language only exists in shutai-teki activities, toward which a participant
primordially takes a shutai-teki stance, the observational stance has to be the-
oretically posterior to the shutai-teki stance. In other words, shutai must be
anterior to shukan, or the epistemological subject who posits language as an
object of its theoretical gaze. Above all, language is given to us only insofar as I
speak, listen, write, or read as an active or actional (koi-teki, 10-3) shurai, or a
shurai in action. Hence, Tokieda writes:
If language as it is conceived as an object [speculated on] in an observational stance
is taken to be something substantial whose existence is external to and severed from
shutai-teki koh'i [10-4], or the subjective action between the "I" and the other, and
if language [as an independent entity] is put in contact with the shutai only when the
shutai uses the language, there should then be no room for shutai-teki consciousness
in the observation of language(s). 3
2Literally translated, kokugo, which consists of two characters koku o~ kuni (country, state, nation,.
etc.) and go (language, word, speech, etc.) is a country's language or natIonallangua~e.Kok~ or kum
in modern Japan invariably means the modem state or nation-stat~. <;:ompm::e these With okum-koto~a
(Ogyu's rigen) a country or village dialect where kuni never c010clded With t~e modern s~ate: It IS
noteworthy that in this compound kokugo, koku or k~ni is u.sed ~~thout mod~fier; hence It .slmp~y
means the country or the nation. The compound kokugo Imphcltly detennmes the relationship
between the addresser and the addressee, for it would in principle designate a different national
language if it were uttered between the addresser and addressee of a different nationality, just as. a
similar shifting function (typical of the shifter "we") is indicated by some personal pronouns 10
European languages. Furthennore, this word cannot be used if the addresser and the addressee belong
to two different nations. Thus, a linguistic community is self-reflexively marked through the use of
this word.
3Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogaku genron (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1941), p. 27.
Conclusion 325
The insistence on the connection between shutai-teki action and language was
essential in the context of the academic debate in which Tokieda participated,
arguing against Saussurian linguistics, which was fast gaining prominence in the
linguists' community of Japan during the 1920s and early 1930s. His critique was
dire~ted against the Saussurian concept of langue or, more specifically from the
present-day perspective, against a certain. naive reading of Saussurian langue in
which synchrony collapsed in upon simultaneity."tThkieda warned against imme-
diately equating the unity of a language, which tends to be conceived of im-
plicitly as a substance, to a langue, which is assumed to be a closed systematicity
consisting of rules and· regulaiities not contradicting one another.
Nevertheless, Tokieda still referred to the term langue in order to elucidate his
conception of kokugo, or a particular language. In this strategy to modify and
reuse the Saussurian term, I cannot overlook problems that arose because he too
failed to distinguish synchrony from simultaneity. It seems that his critique of the
substantialized notion· of language did not explicitly illustrate how the substan-
tialization of language is complicit with the essentialization of culture, nation,
and other POsitivities.
In defining kokugo, Tokieda claimed that the Japanese language is neither a
language used by the Japanese people as a nation (minzoku, 10-5) or a speech
community nor a language instituted by the nation-state of Japan. As a matter of
fact, he argued, the Japanese language as the object of his linguistic study must
necessarily include the Japanese used by those who do not belong to the Japanese
nation and by those who are outside the territories under the jurisdiction of the
Japanese state. 5 Therefore, as far as kokugogaku is concerned, the identity of the
Japanese language can by no means be given as the identity of the nation or as the
identity instituted by the state or as the unity of Japanese territory. Ethnic and
national identity is irrelevant; so it must include the languages spoken by non-
Japanese as well. Instead of defining the Japanese language in terms of referents
external to the language itself, Tokieda proposed another definition: 4f.Kokugo, or
the Japanese language, is a collective name for all those languages which share
the characteristic of Japanese language [nihongo-teki seikaku, 10-6]."6 As he
noted himself, this definition is openly circular, for what characterizes the Japa-
nese language as such can be disclosed and known only at the end of language
research. If it is known at the outset, one may argue, there would be no need for
the linguist to undertake lengthy study to identify it. Here, Tokieda stressed the
necessity of this circularity-a version of the hermeneutic circle-which he
claimed was inherent in any object particular to cultural science. This is to say
that the characteristic of Japanese language is not only that which identifies the
object proper to kokugogaku but also the objective for it, an objective that directs
4See note 18, Chapter 7, (p. 233).
5With regartl to the historical significance of linguistic knowledge, I do not maintain that Tokieda
linguistics was less political because of its openness to foreigners. Depending on the historical
situation, openness of this sort could result in a variety of different and sometimes opposite political
effects.
6Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogakushi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1940), p. 4.
326 Language, Body, and the Immediate
and motivates language study toward its putative goal. The unity of Japanese
language is a regulative Idea and, in that sense, the Japanese language as a unity
of systematicity does not exist, for this unity must continually be produced in
imagination through linguistic inquiries. The study of a language is concerned
with poiesis, with the performative rather than with the constative in spite of, or
perhaps I should say because of, its scientific outlook. And it is obvious that
what makes the study of a particular language possible is this distance between
the language as it is lived and comprehended and the language as it is identified,
objectified. Therefore, the study of language is an instrument by which to invent
the communal self. Needless to say, this was best illuminated by eighteenth-
century studies of ancient Chinese and Japanese languages which invented the
other with whom one was to identify mimetically in order to install the identity of
the communal self.
A cursory review of Tokieda's definition of the Japanese language brings me
back to the opposition he first erected between the shutai-teki stance and the
observational stance. The characteristic of Japanese language will be identified
as the ultimate objective of language study, but to identify it requires an observa-
tional stance in which language is observed, analyzed, and known as an object,
rather than lived as a shutai-teki activity. Although Tokieda is not explicit about
this point, his construct seems to suggest that the subject in the sense of shutai
must be clearly and definitely distinguished from the subject who knows or the
shukan who posits language as an object of knowing; in fact, the shutai who
participates in and lives a language should not know that language in the sense
that the shukan knows it.
Here, the status of the Japanese language is extremely ambivalent. Above all,
it is comprehended in the shutai-teki activity from the outset, and without this
comprehension one could not even begin to identify it as a particular language.
Yet it is not known or given in experience in the Kantian sense but should rather
be posited as an objective or something like an "idea," which, by definition,
should be absent in experience. The Japanese language is not a being that con-
forms to the conditions of possibility for experience; it is just like the "I" as the
thing in itself which does not conform to the conditions of possibility for experi-
ence.? Just as the "I" cannot be experienced, the unity of the Japanese language
cannot be experienced either. In the final analysis, the unity of the Japanese
language is a matter of metaphysics.
Propriety in Language
But some might as well argue that the absence of the unity of the Japanese
language in experience can be shown only insofar as it is related to the discussion
of auto-affection or self-referentiality, Already here, I am discussing the second
7Here I use the tenn "experience" primarily in the Kantian sense: Eifahrung.
Conclusion 327
issue, concerning the status of the "I," for it seems quite possible to draw a
parallel between the procedure used to identify the "I" and another used to
identify one's own language. It is not in Benveniste's sense of the subject's
always being constituted in language but rather in the sense of the identification
of a language that I think the problems of language and subjectivity meet.
If language cannot be experienced as an identifiable ·larigue how can one talk
1
about one's native language as such? I must first state that the discussion of auto-
affection and self-referentiality is necessarily preceded by the identification of a
language, since the "auto" and "self" in these terms would be meaningless
unless a language'were identified. In order to elucidate the process of identifica-
tion, let me return to Tokieda Motoki's box-in-box formula, which captures the
problem of shutai and self-referentiality very succinctly despite its many the-
oretical defects.
Following the insight of Tokugawa linguistics, Tokieda construed the forma-
tion of an utterance as the combination of shi arid ji. I equate shi and ji to the
theme-subject (shudai) and predicate. Unlike the conventional formula of the
subject-copula-predicate, Tokieda sought the synthetic unity of the utterance in
the enclosure of the theme-subject within the predicate at the moment when the'
content or contained (shi) was contained in the container (ji). In relation to this
formula, he explains his use of the term "shutain which is considerably different
from mine:
Frequently the nominative case [shukaku, 10-7] in grammar is regarded as the shutai
of language, but the nominative is [identified as such] in terms of logical relations
among themes [sozai, 10-8] expressed [hyogensareta, 10-9] in language and entirely
different from the shutai as the agent of the action of language... ,
. . . the grammatical first person is sometimes taken to be the shutai. True, the
"I" who reads is identical to the agent of reading action in the expression "I read."
So one might infer that this first person designates [arawashiteiru J the shutai of
language. Careful consideration shows, however, that the "I" is neither the shutai
nor the direct expression by the shutai itself, because that which has been objectified
and thematized [just like the "I"] is always posited externally to the shutai [by virtue
of the fact that it has been objectified and thematized]. . , . The difference between
[the .. 1" and the cat in the expression "A cat eats a mouse"] consists in the fact that
whereas the "I" is an objectification of the shutai, the cat is a thematization of the
third person, . , . the first person, just like the second and the third persons, is a
category pertaining to themes. . . .
, , . the shutai of language never expresses itself at the same level, or in the same
capacity, as the theme of expression. To compare this to the case of painting, the
self-portrait of a painter is not the shutai of the painter but her objectification and
thematization. The shutai of [the entire production of] the painting is the painter
herself; the "I" in "I read" is not directly the shutai but its objectification; the shutai
is the one that expresses the whole expression "I read." The shutai does not express
itself by the word [alone] but by the entire sentence "I read. U8
8Tokieda Motoki, Kokugogaku genron, p. 41-43.
328 Language, Body. and the Immediate
The shutai m1.!st be deliberately distinguished from the nominative on the
grounds that the nominative is a theme-subject, which could only be an objec-
tification of the shutai. I understand Tokieda to say that the shutai expresses itself
by creating an utterance within which the shutai is thematized as one of the
components of the utterance. In addition to Tokieda's rather arbitrary usage of the
tenn "expression," one cannot help but notice some theoretical problems in this
explication of the subject of the enunciation. Does the objectification or
thematization of the shutai imply that some entity so called is externalized or
alienated into an object or a theme? What does Tokieda mean by "the speaker
himself" to whom he compares "the painter herself."? It seems obvious to me
that he presupposes the presence of the subject of the enunciation and that he
demonstrates the irreducibility of the subject of the enunciation to the theme-
subject. And ultimately he is forced to postulate a moment called bamen (original
situation, 10-10), somewhat similar to Benveniste's instance of discourse, in
which the shutai is primordially identical to the subject of the enunciation and is
internally present to both the act of utterance and the addressee. 9 In reference to
the bamen, Tokieda seems to believe it possible to identify the speaker herself. In
his schematization of this concept, however, he neglects to mention that a view-
point away from the position marked as the shutai is essential to comprehend the
original situation of the shutai; the representation of the shutai as such requires a
viewpoint other than the shutai's. Thus, Tokieda's shutai is equivalent to the
subject of enunciation. In this respect, the split in enunciation is anterior to the
original situation. In spite of his insistence, primordialness cannot be accorded to
the original situation. Here too, it is obvious that the subject of the enunciation
and the original situation of enunciation which the subject is supposed to live are
in an imaginary register.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Tokieda clearly points out the fundamental
but necessary rupture between the shutai and the subject (shudai, shugo). There-
by, in conjunction with the box-in-box formula, he locates the shutai in the
direction of the predicate Oi), the container that thematizes the content by con-
taining it. What is at issue here is the predicative detennination in which the
shutai, which is never an identity, objectifies, thematizes, and frames-or
frames up-a thing as a theme (shudai) by introducing the very division between
that which is made present and that which is excluded from being made present.
In this sense, it is impossible to establish the one-to-one relationship between the
shutai that provides an utterance and a theme-subject such as "I," which is
merely one component among many in that utterance. It is the agent of the
parergonal process in which the enunciation ml~st be comprehended primarily as
a split or a contradiction. But precisely because of the nature of this process, the
shutai must be understood as that which flees as soon as an attempt is made to
identify it. For this reason, the shutai is transcendent with respect to the proposi-
9For the concept of bamen, see Kokugogaku genron, pp. 43-50, 156-60, 434-41.
Conclusion 329
tional subject (shugo), the theme (shudai), and being in general. Hence, the
shutai cannot be equated to the specular. image of the proper body, a body
supposedly or imaginarily proper to one who speaks: it is also transcendent with
respect to any specular image. I have therefore proposed "the body of the
enunciation," as distinct from the subject of the enunciation, for an English
rendering of this term. .
Despite his insistence on the Japaneseness of the box-in-box fonnula, the same
problem has been encountered in modem Western philosophy. As a matter of
fact, .the various Japanese terms for subject I have mobilized in this study-
shugo, shudai, sbukan, shutai-are neither traditional nor well accepted. These
are hybrids in a historical context, invented mainly in the process of translating
modem European philosophical treatises, when modem Japanese philosophers
encountered questions internal to the conception(s) of subjectivity, to which they
needed to respond theoretically. to
Inasmuch as this issue has been probed extensively, for instance in the context
of the critique of ontology, the translation of the tenn "subject" must have had to
deal with the peculiarity of a convention in which the subject in the sense of the
nominative case (shukaku) has been assumed to be identical to the subject
(shugo) of a proposition. And in a proposition, the subject is linked to the
predicate by the copula, thereby entering the register of being. The situation has
been further complicated by the frequent use of the word "subject" to signify an
IOQiven this ambivalence. supposedly innate in the conception of the Japanese language, how
should I understand a Japanese philosophy whose primary definition is a philosophical discourse
conducted in the medium of the Japanese language? Immediately, it seems. the ambivalence of the
Japanese language is transmitted to Japanese philosophy. Now, the Japaneseness of Japanese philoso-
ph~ appears all the. more pt~blematic: And when one looks at the huge quantity of books and papers
wntten under the tItle of phllosophy In Japanese, there is scarcely anything "native" about modern
Japanese philosophical discourse, the majority of which discusses European and American philoso-
phy in ~erms that have been brought in from the Occident through translation. With rare exceptions,
the subject matter. concepts, and questions Japanese philosophy has dealt with are no different from
those in European philosophy.
The term "subject" well exemplifies the case. I know of no word equivalent to "subject" that
pl~yed an.y m~jor role in. the intell~~!ual. world of Japan prior to the importation of European
phIlosophical discourse dunng the MelJI penod, although the problematics later articulated in relation
to "subject" had certainly been addressed in pre-Meiji Japan. Hence, with a certain degree of
caution, I believe it acceptable to say that the problem of subjectivity emerged when the term
"subject" was translated into Japanese.
Thus, the various and varying translations into Japanese of the term "SUbject" have formed a
discursive c~nfiguration that is seemingly regulated by a certain economy. Yet. this economy is
treacherous: It should be noted that the configuration of the "subjects" shifts and slides from one
philosopher to another, in the course of a single philosopher's career, and even in a single work. I
admit that its instability is more often than not due to a lack of consistency and rigor on the part of the
authors, but I suggest that it also reflects the instability of the problematic of subjectivity itself. One
must recall that the problematic of subjectivity had not been in the Japanese intellectual world until
~he discipline of philosophy was imported and that it arose in the process of reading and comprehend-
l~g modern philosophy. In this respect, this instability is in fact innate in modern philosophical
dls~ourse itself. In other words, it is simply impossible to conceive of Japanese philosophy as an
entity external to modem Western philosophy despite obvious differences that made the translation of
Western philosophy necessary in the first place.
330 Language, Body, and the Immediate
individual who speaks or acts. The subject is often both that which is thought, or
the subject in the sense of theme (shudai), and one who thinks.
For example, the same problem appears in Kant's famous statement *"It must
be possible for the 'I think' to accompany all my representations." He elaborates:
"In all judgments I am the determining subject of that relation which constitutes
the judgment. That the 'I,' the 'I' that thinks, can be regarded always as subject,
and as something which does not belong to thought as a mere predicate, must be
granted." 11 In translating key words such as "subject," "predicate," and "judg-
ment," or through the difficulties that must have been encountered in translating
them, the philosopher-translators must have been able to disclose the appropriate
moments of rather irrational decisions made for the sake of rationality, moments
at which Kant decided to establish the possibility of transcendental rationality out
of the lack of reason he could rely on. Here I might be witnessing the site of the
abyss, which Kant recognized and went over toward the "idea" of his transcen-
dental metaphysics.
Either as consciousness in general, which accompanies all the representations,
or as self-consciousness, which synthetically constitutes the judgment, the "I
think" is simultaneously equated to the combination and to the combining of the
subject and the predicate. And these two different moves which supposedly
intersect in the word "I" are connected and merged by the term subject. It seems,
however, that some Japanese philosophers-like many Western and non-Western
thinkers-could not ignore the difference between a term that is combined with
another term and that which combines those terms, that is, judgment. Japanese
translations of Kant, therefore, endlessly oscillate between the subject in the
sense of the propositional subject (shugo) and the subject in the sense of the
epistemological subject (shukan). And what is revealed in this oscillation seems
to be that there is no inherent reason to equate the epistemological subject to the
propositional one, other than Kant's decision to do so. Although this equation
has been taken for granted and conventionalized in Japan as well, using the same
term for two different conceptualities remains problematic and leads to a series of
questions.
However innocent. and natural it may seem, this equation requires certain
constraints and repressions for its maintenance. First, although Kant dealt with
this issue only implicitly, the dimension of enunciation had to be obliterated in
order to make the equation appear natural. The subject in the sense of proposi-
tional subject (shugo) can be identified as such only in a proposition or state-
ment, but it is a truism that unless a statement is uttered, there would be no
statement and, hence, no subject. Given the transcendental character of Kant's
argument, one cannot, of course, demand an analysis of a specific historical
instance in which an individual statement is produced in the real: such a demand
is irrelevant because it confuses the validity of the transcendental with that of the
llImmanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Nonnan Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1929), pp. 152 (B 131), 369 (B 407).
Conclusion 331
empirical. My query is not about the empirically specific production of the
statement.
What is at stake for me can be clarified by following Kant's claim about the "I
think" in the context of the detennination of a statement. The statement being a
case of representation, it must be able to be accompanied by the "I think." So if
there is a statement A, then this statement should be able to be refonnulated as:
A
I
I think A
Here, I obtain another statement A* which is, this time, "I think A." Therefore,
this statem~nt A* should also be able to be accompanied by the "I think."
A*
I
I think A * I think (I think A)
It is evident that this procedure can be repeated an infinite number of times just as
in Tokieda's box-in-box formula. 12 Gilles Deleuze called this "indefinite regres-
sion as the power of reiteration." 13 I do not believe that this demonstration can
immediately spoil the force of Kant's argument, but it is, 1 think, adequate to
disclose two assumptions without which his argument cannot be sustained. First,
Kant's claim can be sustained only insofar as the "I think" is not enunciated or
mel1tioned in words. Correlatively, it is assumed that consciousness can be
conceived irreSPective of its concretization in. utterance. Second, it should be
postulated that the "I" in the "I think" can correspond to the word "1" through a
means other than the enunciation. Precisely because it is not the speaking subject
12The only difference is that whereas the synthetic function is attributed to the subject-shugo in
Kantian fonnation, so that the infinite regression moves "upward" in the direction of the proposi-
tional subject, Tokieda's fonnulation marshals the regression in ··downward" toward the position of
the predicate. Hence, Nishida Kitaro, for instance, proposed ronri-teki jutsugoshugi, or logical
predicativism. as against the West's shugoshugi. or subjectivism. Subjectivism can be illustrated with
a modification of Tokieda's scheme:
Container \ Contained
ontainer Contained
Container Contained
Container Contained
Container Contained
In this regard, Nishida simply reversed the subject-predicate relationship. The reversal may be related
to his later endorsement of the simplistic binary opposition of the West (being) and the East (mu, or
nothingness). See Nishida Kitaro, Ronriteki jutsugoshugi, in Nishida Kitaro zenshu, vol. 5 (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1965), pp. 57-97.
I3Gilles Deleuze, Difference et repetition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), p. 203.
332 Language, Body, and the Immediate
but the thinking subject, it cannot be identified as the person "I," who, according
to Emile Benven'iste, "is uttering in the present instance of discourse containing
'I,' " But this.is another way to put the "I" of the "I think" as the transcendental
subject: it is not a referent identifiable in an instance of discourse,
What the addition of the "I think" to the statement reveals is the basic dif-
ference between thinking and speaking, on the one hand, and shukan [epist-
emological subject: one who knows] and shutai. Furthermore, this operation
clarifies the status of the subject in the sense both of shukan and shutai and
demonstrates that these subjects cannot be thematically posited or treated as a
theme-subject (shudai): neither shukan nor shutai can be thematized (shudaika)
unless in the context of transcendental dialectic, And finally, it can be ascertained
that there is no necessity to associate the specific proposition "I think" with the
bare consciousness which accompanies all concepts, which Kant also called the
form of representation in general (and which 1 might call the framing ofrepresen-
tation in general). For with respect to enunciation, the transcendental subject that
is to accompany all the representations is that which flees or cannot be arrested: it
need not be HI",. it is simply X. This is to say that the transcendental subject need
not be called a subject at all. Undoubtedly Kant has already acknowledged this
much in his argument about the subject. In other words, Kant participated in the
establishment of a regime in which the agent of action (shutai) is equated to the
propositional subject (shugo), admitting that there is no necessary connection
between the two. This is one of the best examples of what I call the regime. And
in the final analysis, it is a matter of neither linguistic nor cultural determinism
but of apophansis.l 4
So, already for Kant the link between the shutai and the subject was du-
bious.l 5 I cannot find any grounds to say that there must be a necessary connec-
tion between the subject and the shutai, and it is precisely the matter of ideology
14This point can hardly be overemphasized. Two of the authors I have referred to have been
implicated in their own versions of culturalism. Both Nishida Kitaro and Julia Kristeva have penetrat-
ing insight into the problems of subjectivity and have written extensively about the formation of the
subjective position in modem philosophy. Although their culturalism is theoretically very sophisti-
cated, they often appeal to a simplistic binary opposition to criticize what Nishida called subjec-
tivism. Nishida proposed predicativism as opposed to subjectivism, just as the Orient was opposed to
the Occident. Kristeva drew the same opposition between the masculine and the feminine. It seems to
me that both led to the substantialization of the West and eventually prepared the return to their
respective origins (return to the East and to the West).
15Many have noted the dubious status of the subject. See, for example, Martin Heidegger, On Time
and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper Torchbooks. 1972): "Interpreted by the rules
of grammar and logic, that about which a statement is made appears as the subject: hypokeimenon-
that which already lies before us, which is present in some way. What is then predicated of the subject
appears as what is already present along with the present subject, the symbebekos, accidens: 'The
auditorium is illuminated.' In the 'It' of 'It gives' speaks a presence of something that is present, that
is, there speaks, in a way, a Being. If we substitute Being for It in our sentence 'It gives Being: it
says as much as 'Being gives Being.' And here we are back in the same difficulty that we mentioned
at the beginning of the lecture: Being is. But Being 'is' just as little as time 'is.' We shall therefore
now abandon the attempt to determine 'It' by itself, in isolation, so to speak. But this we must keep in
Conclusion 333
as a regime of practice that one lives and practices an imaginary relation to
oneself as the subject and imagines (but not fantasizes) oneself as the subject in
one's lived (that is, imagined) experience.
Universalism and Particularism
Despite Tokieda's emphasis on the anteriority of the subjective stance, I have
disclosed that <?nly after language is grasped in the observational stance can the
subjective stance be known as a lived experience of language. Strangely enough,
active involvement in one's native language is a posterior imagined construct.
Moreover, it follows that the system of a language can be revealed as a set of
identifiable rules by virtue of the distance between the subjective stance and the
observational stance. But if one could establish a different stance, the observa-
tional stance that a linguist assumes in order to study a particular language can be
approached as a subjective stance. In relation to the object language, the ob-
server's attitude is that of the observational stance, but when she describes and
analyzes the object of her study in her own language, which is not objectified for
her and which she in fact lives in the subjective stance, her shutai-teki activities
themselves can be described from another observational stance. In theory, a
regression similar to that of the box-in-box formula could happen between the
subjective stance and the observational stance. Every observational stance is
already a shutai-teki stance, and it is impossible to conceive an instance of the
shutai-teki stance like Benveniste's instance of discourse, which contains no
tinge of the observational stance, is utterly devoid of reflective consciousness,
just as it is impossible to imagine a purely observational stance that is absolutely
free of shutai-teki activities.
Only if one is completely blind to the subjective stance hidden and implicated
in the supposedly purely observational stance, can one believe it possible to
mind: The It, at least in the interpretation available to us for the moment, names a presence of
absence" (p. 18). In The Space 0/ Literature, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1982), Maurice Blanchot notes: "The act of writing is the interminable. the incessant. The
writer, it is said, gives up saying 'I.' Kafka remarks, with surprise, with enchantment, that he has
entered literature as soon as he can substitute 'He [or It].' This is true, but the transformation is much
more profound. The writer belongs to a language which no one speaks, which is addressed to no one,
which has no center, which reveals nothing. He may believe that he affirms himself in this language,
but what he affirms is altogether deprived of self. To the extent that. being a writer, he does justice to
what requires writing, he can never again express himself, any more than he can appeal to you. or
introduce another's speech. Where he is. only being speaks.-which means that language doesn't
speak any more, but is. It devotes itself to the pure passivity of being. If to write is to surrender to the
interminable, the writer who consents to sustain Writing's essence loses the power to say 'I' .. (pp.
26-27). Also see Maurice Blanchot, "The Narrative Voice," in The Gaze o/Orpheus, trans. Lydia
Davis (Barrytown, N.¥.: Station Hill, 1981), pp. 133-43. The dubious relationship between the "I"
and the "it" (or id in the Freudian scheme) is thus not particular to the Japanese language and has
little to do with the discussion of the "absence of subject in Japanese."
334 Language, Body, and the Immediate
observe and identify a particular language as if the attributes one discovers about
that language were purely and simply in that language itself The grammar of.that
language can be identified only from the position of another language. One's
own language, to which I should say one is necessarily, if not completely, blind,
is always implicated in what one takes to be the features of a particular language.
I do not mean that the grammar thus identified is not valid or arbitrary. On the
contrary, precisely because one is blind to the medium in which a different
language is explicated, a grammar can be useful and usable. What one should
remember is that there is no metaposition from which a language can be identi-
fied exhaustively as an object in itself. There can be no position of the epis-
temological subject which is completely devoid of shutai: even observation is an
action that requires the agent of action. And the positing of such a transcendent
viewpoint is unnecessary in order to obtain a useful account of that language-to
acquire a competence in it, for example-as Tokieda Motoki attempted to dem-
onstrate by his critique of the substantialization of a language unity.
Correlative to the postulation of the transcendent viewpoint is the essentializa-
tion of the object language. Here, linguistic or cultural essentialism arises. The
image of an object language facilitated by linguistic studies (or of an object
culture facilitated by cultural studies) is often equated to the entity of that lan-
guage. The cultural essentialist claims that because of the systematic constraints
imposed on the members of that language (or culture) by the grammatical rules of
the language, they are predetermined in what they can express and what they
cannot~ they are, so to say, innately programmed by the language. Moreover, the
language thus grasped is assumed to have a life of its own, to be an organism that
continues to reproduce itself, albeit in not exactly the same shape.
For the cultural essentialists, the language is invariably a substance that is not
distinguished from the grammar of that language they happen to know. They are
utterly ignorant either that many different grammars can exist or of the problems
concerning the way the unity of a language is imagined. The same can be said
about their reified notion of culture, which is again equated to a self-subsistent
organism.
Thus, cultural essentialists believe that they can define the particularity of a
language, and implicitly, they assume the position of a transcendent subject
(shukan) completely free from shutai-teki activity. In the gesture of respecting
the particularity of a particular language and culture, they in fact assume a
transcendent and omniscient position from which to intuit the substantialized and
ahistorical essences of particular cultures. What are often referred to as particu-
larism and universalism are, therefore, in complicity, and what neither particu-
larism nor universalism can afford to acknowledge is that as a theoretical conse-
quence of their premises and because of their inherent monologism, both
inevitably lead to cultural solipsism and that no language can monopolize either a
purely subjective (shukan-teki) or an observational positionality because neither
would be possible without shutai-teki (subjective in the sense of actional agent)
Conclusion 335
activity.16 Particularism and universalism-two sides of the same coin-arise
only when the shutai, who acts on the cultt,lral formation and necessarily changes
it, is eliminated, when the shutai is equated to the subjectivity of a national
language or even to the national identity. As we saw in Ito Jinsai's critique of
Song Confucianism, the elimination of the body of the enunciation necessarily
means the elimination of the encounter with the Other, within and without.
Consequently, both particularism and universalism are the results of narcissism,
of "a one-sided but alluring response to the anxiety of transference": they arise
out of the fear of a dialogic encounter.
Resurrection/Restoration of Japanese
During the eighteenth century, this difference between the unthematized dis-
course in which the unity of a language is imagined and the language thus
objectified was acutely perceived. Therefore, the ancient Chinese, in the case of
Ogyu Sorai, and the Japanese language, in the case of the scholars of the National
Studies., were always posited in the past as languages that no longer existed.
Although these thinkers believed that such languages once existed in the past
moment, they could maintain awareness that the unity of a language could not be
directly equated to the unity of their existing contemporary community. Certainly
they perceived the Tokugawa polity as fragmented, disrupted, and far from
internally coherent or harmonious, but there is more to their refusal to superim-
pose the unity of an internally homogenized and coherent whole, or the status of
the 44interior," on their contemporary polity. For one thing, their argument still
carried a strong critical impulse, so that they posited the image of the homoge-
.nized C'interior" in order to highlight the estranged and fragmented state of
affairs. But more important, they still retained some sense of the "idea" of the
Japanese language, even though the poietic and creative aspect of ethical action
was largely repressed in their discourse; they had not completely lost the insight
that the Japanese language was possible only as an Hidea," particularly a lost
4'idea," and that it was necessarily u-topian: it should be nowhere.
In this sense, I claim that the Japanese language and its "culture" were born in
the eighteenth century, but I also insist on some difference between the eigh-
teenth-century conception of the Japanese and the modem conception after the
Meiji period. What happened in the late nineteenth century was the collapse of
16It should be evident by now that the critique of universalism does not demand the denial of rules
that ought to be valid to everyone. On the contrary, what universalism fails to acknowledge is this
openness to the other, precisely because universalism assumes that what appears universally valid to
"us" ~d to "~e" is immediately valid to others. In other words, universalism cannot distinguish
generality from prescriptive universality. What is implied in universality is the fundamental dialogism
according to which "we" or ''I'' do not know what is universal, and universality is always exterior
(in the sense of exteriority or otherness) to "our" or "my" consciousness. I must seek it and be taught
it by the other.
336 Language, Body, and the Immediate

the distance that had kept the unity of the Japanese apart from the immediate A P PEN D I X Japanese and Chinese Terms
"us." It is because of this distance that eighteenth-century discourse did not
totally degenerate into a version of cultural nationalism. But as this sense of Introduction 2- 3 1:
distance and loss was erased, the unity of the Japanese and the "interior" were
2- 4 I~,ig
equated to the existing language and community without mediation. Of course,
what this equation achieved was to eliminate the sites of the unthinkable, standar- Chapter 1 2 5 J(
dize cultural institutions, and homogenize the language. In this process, the I- I *f~ 2- 6 fl9t~
concept "culture," which was substantialized and made to imply the unity of 1- 2 !I~~ 2- 7 ilf~tt
homogeneous systematicity, was fully utilized. By first establishing a consensus 1 3 J! 2- 8 1:1*
that the "interior" was already there, the ruler was fully authorized to illegiti-
mate any institution that might enhance the heterogeneous. The Japanese lan-
guage and its ethnos were brought into being and made to exist in the present and
1
1- 5
4
,.
1a 2- 9
2-10
pg
•
were thereby transformed into unobjectionable certainties as if they were entities }- 6 ~ 2- 1 1 ;1-
observable in experience. Thus the Japanese were resurrected from the dormant 1 7 III 2- 1 2 if'-
past and, as a nation, began to play the role of the subject (shinmin, 10-11) to and 1- 8 J.I 2-1 3 ml~
for the modem state. Concurrently, the Japanese language was constituted as a 1- 9 1& 2-14 .f,!
substance in the positivistic discourse of cultural essentialism. Needless to say,
this was the process in which the modem nation-state of Japan was appropriated
1'- 1 0 11 2 15 I!'~
into the nineteenth-century discourse of global colonialism, cultural essentialism, 1 11 11wiSt 2 16 ?!)
and racism. 1 12 ft.7 2- 1 7 itJ
Thus the invention of the Japanese language can serve to guarantee that the 1- 1 3 ~ 2- 1 8 f*
unthinkable always comes from outside the border, from outsiders, for the un- 1 14 2 19
*001: ffl
thinkable can never take place in the "interior": the reification of Japanese
1- 1 5 *ffifF 2-20 ~
"culture" can make one blind to heterogeneities within. It is essential in con-
structing the economy of blindness without which the sense of ethnocentric }- 1 6 *1
EJ c., 2 21 ttJI~
"togetherness" and the concretization of the "species being" in national terms 'I 17 IL'\ 2-22 1:.
would hardly be possible. The invention of the Japanese language or national 1 18 tl 2-23 m~dr!
language in general partakes of an ideology in and by which one lives, an 1- 1 9 fL 2-24
ideology of the lived experience.
But such a language can never be transparent; it is always Hbroken," so that
1 20
1- 2 1
fl
fJJJt!
2-25
2-26
*1i
ffl!2&
one never totally belongs to it, and no body, no body of the enunciation, or
shutai, is ever exhaustively at home there. 1 22 Jl 2-27 ?Ji
1-23
1-24
DRal
~T
2-28
2 29 •
PJT~?t.{
1-25 JG~ 2-30 PJTj,.j.~
1-26 ~ 2 31 ~
2 32 PJU
2- 33 ~
Chapter 2 2-35 ~~7\
2- 1 ffl 2-36 mIff
2- 2 ~ 2 37 9E~

337
 338 Appendix
Japanese and Chinese Terms 339
2 38 :Ii 3 26 6-13 ff~ 8- 5 K
2-39
2-40
2-41
*
17 Chapter 4
6-14
6 15
U~ft
aA-fj
8- 6
8 7
.:E
AtLT~flii
ff 4- 1 fJi~.T 6 16 B*Sft~ j: t:.* ? v~ ? ~~glJ" 8- 8 ~IDE
2-42 ~ 4 2 alRf!~ 6-17 ~@~a!(JJ! 8- 9 J~~
2-43 11m 4- 3 iit~;;C~ 6-18 =~~JJ! 8-10 LQ
6 19 emit§fiait
Chapter 3 Chapter 5 6-20 . 3:.f*~rJ: 138 Chapter 9
3 1 *~ztt 5- 1 ~At)ff~* 6 21 1Li:~t:t13B 9- 1 )(
5 2 U~ftlillX 6-22 UfI9t:tEJB 9- 2 Milt
3- 2 ~ztt 5 3 illS: 6-·23 tift 9 3 3(~
3 3 tt~ 5- 4 EJ1t 6 24 OO~ 9- 4 11ft
3- 4 1IiX 5 5 ~!I£. 9- 5 Jj\ftt
3- 5 XTztftW\ 5- 6 }M* Chapter 7 9- 6 ~~
3- 6
3- 7
U
,Ji!!,
5- 7 ?In* 7 1 _Z~
9- 7 ~Im
5 8 MifiJ~J( 7- 2 fDalQ 9- 8 JIilttA~
3 8 ~~ 5- 9 ~au 7- 3 il3 9- 9 lf~
3- 9 t'S! 5-10 ~±O)M 7- 4 ~ 9-10 M.I
3 10 ~ 5- 1 1 IL~~f! ,I

-
7 5 tiX 9 11
3 11 ~ 5 12 i!f7 7- 6 ~)( 9-12
3- 1 2 ~ 5-13 ~fF 7 1 9-13 **fJif'F
3 13 it7t: 7~ 8 Mt"L
3 14 I~J!
3-15
Chapter 6 7 9 ~t) • .a Conclusion
Jjl)j( 6- 1 iii~Je!~
3-16 t, 6- 2 ~
7-10 ~t) iJ;.rJ: 10- I oom
7- 1 1 ~~ 10 2 ~ttoo~~
3- 1 7 it 6- 3 ~ 7 12 M- ID- 3 f7~a9
3-18 if. 6- 4 B 7-13 tiXm 10- 4 ±f*fI9tT~
3- 1 9 ~ilimf! 6- 5 8J.it~~I 7-14 6$ 10- 5 ~
3-20 iN: 6- 6 ~D* 10- 6 B*~~11~
3 21
3-22
i!t~
:;r4JtIJ
6
6-
7
8
**
?J±
Chapter 8
8 1 IL'~Itf*
10- 7
10- 8
±~
~M
3 23 tb~mJ! 6 9 tI± 8- 2 ff6* 1'0 - 9 ~JJt~tLt:.
3 24 3:Ilift
3 25 EJ~
6 11 i!:jQf (~J!ff) 8- 3 -a. t 0 10 tMioo
6 12 Jf~ 8- 4 ~t).arJ 10- 1 1 b!~
Index

Words in bold italic 'are Japanese terms (excluding proper nouns); those in bold roman
are Chinese. Numbers in parentheses refer to the Chinese/Japanese characters or
compounds listed in the Appendix.
Abschattung (perspective), 191-92, 200-201, Barthes, Roland, 148-49, 156
241 basho, 147, 276
"achieve" (tatsu, da, 3-17), 103 Basho (Matsuo), 126
actant, 180 beginning (tan, duan, 3-10), 94, 100-101
action, 86, 96, 99, 101-2, 106-7, 163-65, being as it is (2-30), 80, 82
171, 233, 294, 300-301 being as it should be (2-29), 80, 82
ai, 18,77, 108, 109-11, 180, 190, 286, 318 being-in-the-world, 92
alia, 106-9, 239, 297, 310 being (son, 2-41), 86
alphabet, 113, 253 Bendo (Distinguishing ways), 221
alterity, 85, 316-17 benevolence, 80, 93-94, 97-99, 112, 285-86,
Althusser, Louis, 253 289-90, 296
Amaterasu Omikami, 252 Benmel (Distinguishing names), 214, 234,
Amazawa Taijiro, 9 237,243,247,282,288,295
Analects, the, 25 Benveniste, Emile, 15, 60, 66-68, 71-73,
ancient text (kobun, 7-5), 221, 224 102, 125, 131, 193, 312, 327-28, 332-33
anmin (to set people at ease, 9-3), 286, 289 Bergson, Henri, 293-94, 303, 307-8
annihilation, 79 Bito Masahide, 32, 319
Apollinaire, Guillaume, 253 Blanchot, Maurice, 71, 333
application (yosho, 2-25), 79 blindness, 119
Arai, Hakuseki, 235-36 body (shen, 1-22), 44-45, 81-89, 93. 101-9,
arche (or archaic), 17, 102, 110-12,232, 130-38, 147-50, 156, 164, 168-70, 196,
267, 299, 320 200-207, 223, 235, 243, 247-51, 268-84,
Aristotle, 213 292-302, 306-11, 329; of enunciation (see
Asami Keisai, 314 also shutal), 61, 75, 97-99, 105-11, 125,
Ashiwara obune, 256 133-35, 175, 241, 335; as intentionality,
Austin, 1. L., 232 247
authenticity, 107-8 Book of Change, the. See Yi jing
Ayui-sho, 256, 264 box-in-box structure (irekogaia kozo 8-7), 98,
172, 273-74, 327-33
Bakhtin, Mikhaii, 9, 26, 28, 59, 119, 141, branch (matsu, rno, 2-24), 79
202, 215 bricolage, 110
bamen (original scene of utterance, 10-10), Bunkai hitsuroku, 312
328 bun (wen, 9-1), 281

341
342 Index Index 343

Burch, Noel, 148-49 differend, 4, 19 Five Classics, 25, 31 Heidegger, Martin, 7, 16, 60, 71, 332
Byakuso fukenkyo (Byakuso fuken sutra, 6-5), differing, the, 86 Five Constancies, 296 Helke monogatari (Tales of Heike), 124
179 direct action, 150, 168-69, 300-306 fleeing, 86, 98, 147, 205, 332 henneneutics, 6, Ill, 121, 207, 259-64, 305,
direct speech, 121,150-53, 161, 164~71, fluidity, 83 315, 319, 324-25
calligram, 113 183, 196-97, 206, 304 Foucault, Michel, 11, IS, 17, 24, 113, 137 Hieda no Are, 252
calligraphy, 116-17, 138, 175, 197-99, 306 discursive economy, 84, 101 Fot,1f Books, 31, 246, 257, 265 hieroglyphic, 253-54, 316
category, 253 discursive formation, 14, 23-25, 55-56, 118, frame or framing, 18, 74-75, 85-86, 98, hiragana, 252
center of decentering. See decentering l71, 181,196,224,246,301,304,307. 118-19, 124, 128, 131-33, 165, 172, 200, Hirose Tamotsu, 155
center of recentering. See recentering 310, 318-19 211,241,274,301,332 Hisamatsu Sen'ichi, 256
change (2-17), 87, 90, 109, 276, 280 discursive positivity, 291, 306 Fugen Bosatsu (Samantabhadra), 182 historicality, 14-15
Cheng: brothers, 25, 31-33, 108,221, 224; discursivity, 53-55, 317 Fujitani Mitsue, 256 historicity, 121-22, 131-32, 190, 239, 257,
yi, 37; Zhu, 54, 76, 95 disposition, 90 . Fujitani, Nariakira, 255-56, 263-73, 302 298, 312
Chevalier, Jean-Claude, 215 dissemination, 242, 263, 267 Fujiwara Kiyosuke, 186 homosocial world, 190, 204
Chikaishi Yasuaki, 162 Doctrine of inherently good hUl1Uln nature !"Iea (Cultural discipline of people, 9-4), 286 Hon Katsunan, 255
Chikamatsu Monzaemon, 144, 156-57, 164, (seizensetsu, xingshanshuo, 1-11), 36, 65, Fukujukai, 144 horizon, 85
184 95 function (yo, yong, 2-19), 79, 80 human nature, 62-64
choka (long song), 251 Dojimon, 23, 53, 58-59, 80. 84, 100 !uroshiJci structure (see also box-in-box struc- HusserI, Edmund. 40, 89, 137,260
chora, 147, 276 Dostoevsky, Feodor, 26 ture).273 Hu Yu-feng, 78
Chou ton-i, 108 !ushi, 157, 161-62 Hyak"nin isshu (6-15), 184-86
Chun qui (The spring and autumn annals), 31, economy (see also discursive economy), 212, Fuyu no hi, 126 hybrid, 18-19, 254, 320, 329
230 254,267,288,295-96,316,336 !iizok" (culture, 9-5), 291-92, 295 HyOd6 Hiromi, 123
Chuyo hakki, 84 Edo umare uwakino kabayaki, 184 hypokeimenon,' 332
cogito, 98 Eguchi, 181-82 Gakuki (Yueji) of the Liji, 64
colloquialism, 121-22, 161, 183, 225, 264-66 eidetic reduction (see also phenomenological Gakusoku, 214, 230, 234 Idea, 330, 335; regulative, 326
communality, 88, 93, 102-4, 299-301, 305- reduction), 234 Gemmei, emperor, 252 ideational ego, 193
6,311 eiri kyogennbon (playscripts with illustrations, general text, 106-12, 116, 211, 271 ideational intentionality, 40, 44, 76, 82, 96
concern for others (chiijo, zhongshu 3-14), 5-1), 140, 143-46 generic discontinuity, 177-83, 186-87, 204, ideography/ideogram, 81, 113, 227-29. 244,
100 emakimono (pictorial scroll), 128 211 250-55, 258, 262-67, 270, 277, 315-16
Confucius. 297 enunciated, the, 48, 60, 67-69, 83-84, 88, gengo kate; setsu (language process theory, Ihara Saikaku. See Saikaku
constative, the, 232, 237, 326 97-99, 102, 115, 124, 131-33, 136, 141, 6-19), 192, 272 Ikku. See Jippensha Ikku
contained/container, 272, 327 147, 156, 163-68, 172, 197, 200-202, Gengyo shitsu ron, 273 imaginary, the, 98, 125, 135, 253-54, 285,
corporeity, 223, 271, 284, 299, 300-305, 205-7, 223, 237, 241-42, 249, 263, 294, Genjimonogatari shinshaku, 244 290-91, 300, 304, 309, 312, 322, 333
309-10 304, 307, 318 gesaku (5-13), 186, 184, 187 incommensurability, 105, 110
Creole, 19, 266 enunciation, 48, 62, 66-69, 83-85, 88, 97- Gestalt, 168, Gestalt-type, 172-73, 175-76, indirect action, 150, 154, 165, 168, 171, 300-
Culler, Jonathan, 33 99, 102, 106, 115, 124, 130-36, 142-43, 188, 199, 212, 230, 241 304,307
146-47, 152, 156, 163-68, 172, 192-97, gidayu~bushi (5-9), 156 indirect speech, 121, 150-54, 168-70, 201,
Daigiroku, 268 200-202, 205-207, 212, 222-24, 230-33, gikobun, 245 304
Daigo, emperor, 251 237, 241-42, 249, 261-64, 270, 274, 277, gokan (bound volume), 153, 194 individual thing. See kobutsu
Dainichi nyorai, 182 282-84, 294, 302-7, 312-18, 330-32 Gomojigi, 24, 64, 80, 84, 90, 99, 103, 112 individuum, 125
dance, 296-300, 309 Erlebnis, 263 grapheme, 86, 179, 262 Ingarden, Roman, 194, 200
Daxue, 49, 50, 248 ethics, 78, 82, 96, 99, 102, 106-11, 196, Great Learning (Daxue), 49, 50, 248 inscription, 2, 47,83,98-99, 104-10, 175,
Dazai Shundai, 295-97 279, 291 Greimas, A. J., 86 228,252-60,263,266,269-71,274,309-
decentering, 19, 85, 108-9, 222, 249, 298 ethnocentricity, 310-11, 316-19,323,336 11
de Certeau, Michel, 10, 234 etymological atomism, 268-69 habit, 233, 249, 281-83, 292-99, 303-4, inside, the, 212, 221
decomposition, 236, 242-44, 250 event (ii, shi, 2-28), 79, 242, 294, 316; event- 308-9 instance of discourse, 66, 125, 131-33, 141,
Deleuze, Gilles, 98, 331 thing, 86 haikai-Jca (reorganization of discourse by the 154-55, 205, 214, 222, 230, 260, 312,
de Man, Paul, 119 extension of knowledge (chichi, zhizhi,) 248 Haikai principle or double operation, 6-14), 332-33
Derrida, Jacques, 3, 12, 65, 107, 118-19, exterior, the, 64, 102, 218-21, 235, 292, 181-83, 189, 196, 202 intensity of subjectivity, 206
254,267, 310, 314-16 309-10, 318 Haikai no renga (5-2), 126, 142-43, 198- intercorporeity, 85, 249
description, 90, 96 exteriority, 56, 78, 101, 104, 107, 137, 212, 99 interior, the, 17,95, 111,218-25,228-39,
descriptive narration, 145-47, 153, 161, 168, 308, 318-19 Hane, Mikiso, 236, 283 244, 248-50, 258, 266, 281-83, 287-88,
172, 175-76 Harootunian, Harry D., 212-13 291-92,295,298,303,309-10,317-19,
desire, 50, 64, 72, 87,92-93,202, 287-89, feeling (jo, qing, 2-0, 5, 54, 62-66, 69, 77- Hattori Nankaku, 296-98; Nankaku sensei 335-36; of the mind or subjective, 102,
295; of nature, 90 78, 87-96, 101, 105, 109, 112, 274-76, bunshu, 298 108, 150, 156
"develop" (kakujyu, kuo chong, 3-13), 100 287,295-97,305-8,318 Haver, William, 85, 106, 234 intersubjectivity, 78, 84, 104, 249, 289, 298-
dialogism. 26-27, 141, 222, 318, 335 femininity, 275-76 Heath, Stephen, 148 301, 308-9, 317
differance, 119, 168, 316-18 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 193 Hegel, G. W. F., 50, 68, 287,295 intertextuality, 4, 13, 25-30, 33, 88, 115-18,
344 Index
Index 345
intertextuality (cont.) Kazashi-sho, 256
127, 130, 137-38.. 142, 148, 153-55, 176, Keichu, 244 Lao zi, 230-32 Motoori Norinaga, 17-18. 123, 255-77, 294,
182, 188, 199,211-12,216,222,230-31, Keien isshi, 278 Lau, D. C., 93-94 . 302, 307, 313
241, 246, 306 keirin (9-9), 295 Levinas, Emmanuel, 10 Mouffe, Chantal, 55, 63
investigation of things (kakuhutsu, gewu,) 248 keizai (9-7, or keisei saimin, 9-8), 295-96 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 110, 234 movement, 87, 276
ippansha (universal), 95 Keizairoku. 295-97 lexeme, 86-87 Mozi jizhu. 94
irekogata kozo. See box-in-box structure ketsumyaku (xiemai, 7-7), 222 Ii (.1-3),25,31,80-86, 111-12,281,295 Mukai Gensho, 268
iro, 161-63 kibyoshi (yellow cover), 153, 184, 194 Liji, 282 multivocal, the" 107, 126, 142, 179, 202, 252,
Ishikawa Jun, 181-84, 189, 196 Kinoshita lun'an, 268 linear perspective, 85 258, 262, 277
Isonokami sasamegoto, 272, 275 Ki no Tomonori, 251 Li Paulong. 214 Murillo, Bartolome Esteban, 74-75
isotopy, 180-82, 202 Ki no Tsurayuki, 251 loss, 98 music, 233-34, 247, 295-97, 304
iterability, 315-18 Kitamura Kigin, 126 Lotman, J. M., 233 musicality, 161-63, 168-69, 172
lto Jinsai, 5, 14-15, 23-26, 30-33, 36, 42, Kiyo liD gM" (qiyangzhixue, learning of Lu Xun, 21 mutuality, 87
48,53-58,62-66,69,70,76-86,90-97, Nagasaki translators. 7-1), 214, 229, 243, Lyotard, Jean-Fran~ois, 4, 65
100-12, 115, 120-22, 130, 135, 166, 181, 257, 280, 310 Najita. Tetsuo, 213, 221, 232, 236
195-96, 200, 219-22, 239, 243, 246, 249, Kobunjigaku (guwencixue, learning of ancient Magritte, Rene, 38, 173 Nakai Kate, 236
261, 279, 286-91, 294, 299, 307-8, 318, text and words, 7-11), 214,232-39,243- Makura no joshi. 124 Namaei katagi (5-8), 153
335 45, 257, 265, 280-81, 292, 296-98, 310 Mallarme, Stephane, 253 naming (mei, ming, 3-11), 97-99
Ito Togai, 23, 56, 97 kobutsu (individual/singular thing, 2-6), 38, man'yowgana, 250-52 Nancy, Jean-Luc, 239
Izumi Shikibu, 185 57-58, 108 Man'yoko, 244 narawashi (9-6), 291
Kogaku sensei bunshu.. 35 Man'yoshtl. 244, 250-51, 256 National Studies (Kokugaku), 207, 245-46,
ji (of chanting), 156-57, 161-64 Kogid6, 23, 94 Maruyama Masao, 236, 283, 286, 290 255-57, 260, 267, 308-11, 335
ji(ci, of syntax, 7-14),267,272-74,327 Kogigaku (guyixue), 23 Marx, Karl, 193 native speaker, tongue, 218, 235, 266, 281-
ji (shi, event, 2-28), 79, 239 kogi (guyi, 6-23), 196 materiality, 96, 101-10, 119, 211, 222, 309, 83, 303-4, 329, 333
ji iro, 161-64 kogobun, 264 314, 317 nature as being as it should be, 90
Jian, Zi, 230 Kojiki, 252. 256-62, 313, 320 Matsuo Basho. See Basho (Matsuo) nature (sei, xing, 1-10), 35, 54, 64,77-78,
Jimmmu, emperor, 252, 256 Kojiki-den. 256-59,262 mawashi yomi, 227-29 89-91,94-99, 105-12,287,309
linsai nissatsu, 31-32 kokkeibon (comical books, 5-7), 153, 187, Meido no hikyaku (A courier to Hades, 5-10), nearness, 32-34, 56, 60-61, 70, 76, 82, 110-
lippensha Ikku, 194 194 157 11, 122, 183, 186-90, 195~96, 200-205,
lito, empress, 256 Kokinshu. 251, 256, 264, 275 memory, 98, 293-94, 307; empirical, 98; tran- 219, 278
Kokinshu. tokagami, 264 scendental, 98 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 16
kabuki, 140, 144, 148-50, 164 Kokon hyaku baka (A hundred fools, ancient Mencius, the (Moshi, Menzi), 25, 31, 49, 63- nigyo joruri (Japanese puppet theater 5-5),
Kada Azumaro, 244 and modern), 153 65,94-95,99-100,288,295 144, 148-50, 154-58, 161-66, 171-72,
kaeriten (7-9), 227, 255 kokugo (l0-1), 323-25 MerJeau-Ponty, Maurice, 192, 249 175, 183, 194, 201, 206
Kagaku leiyo, 278 Kokuiko, 244, 250 Mibu no Tadamine, 251 Nihon eitaigura (The Japanese family store-
Kagawa Kageki, 277-79, 306, 317 Kokusen ya gassen (The Battle of Coxinga), michiyuki, 166 house), 126
Kaibara Ellen, 268 144 mimesis, 135, 155,201,231-32,259,303, Nihonshoki, 256-58
Kaiko, 244 Koshoku gonin onna (Five women who loved 326; mimetic identification, 229, 301 Niimanabi, 244-45, 250
Kaitokudo, 237 love), 126 Minagawa Kien, 256, 273 Niimanbai iken, 278
Kakai IUfO, 179 Koshoku ichidai otoko (The Life of an Amo- mind (xin, 1-17),62-65,78,81, 95-96, 99- Nijo school of court poetry, 277
kakari musubi, 269, 302 rous Man), 126 106, Ill, 281-87, 302, 308, 319 Nimigi no Mikoto, 252
Kamo Mabuchi, 18, 239, 243-45, 250-51, kotodama (The spirit of language, 8-3), 269 minzoku (nation or ethnos), 325 Nintoku, Emperor, 252
255-56, 263, 266, 277, 294, 304-5 Koyasu Nobukuni, 56, 59, 110 mirror stage, 193 Nippon shakumei. 268
kana, 118, 250-53, 263, 270 Kristeva, Julia, 27-29, 131,234, 270, 276, Miura Tsutomu, 127, 191-93, 200, 206, Nishida Kitaro, 57, 71, 85, 95, 147, 234,
kanazoshi (kana booklet), 4-1), 119-27, 153 300, 306, 332 248 275-76, 331-32
kanbun, 178-79,217,262 kunten, 178 Miyake Masahio, 31 Nishiki no ura. 183-85
kannenteki najiko (ideational ego, 6-21), 193 Kunyakujimo, 219,221 Miyake Shosai, 314 Noguchi Takehiko, 31
kansatsuteki tachiba (observational stance), kyoka (6-12), 181, 194 Miyoshi, Masao, 8-9 nondisjunctive, the, 78, 87-89, 103
265, 324-26, 333 kyoshi (6-13), 181 modern text (kinbun, jinwen 7-6), 221 noumenon, 79, 85
Kant, Immanuel, 33, 71-73, 89, 98, 260, mono (1-12), 221-22, 230, 233-34, 236, 248,
304, 326, 330-32 Lacan, Jacques, 11, 50, 70-71, 134, 205, 248 275, 283-84, 289, 298, 303 o (8-5), 272
lcaragokoro (Chinese mind), 260- 61 LaCapra, Dominick, 19, 209 monologism, 27, 141,203,334 observational stance. See kansatsuteki tachiba
Karatani Kojin, 234 Laclau, Ernesto, 55, 63 mono no aware, 274-79,307,318 obtaining (toku, de, 3·16), 101
kalakana, 252 language process theory. See gengo kate; setsu Morris, M., 124 Ogata Korin, 23
katari, 119-26, 138, 141-44, 148-49, 152- language(s) of the other, 213 Moshi. See Mencius, the Ogyu Sorai, 15-17,31,36,42,70,91-93,
53 languages of villagers. See rigen Moshi-kogi, 24, 94, 97 109-11, 131,206,214,217-39,244-51,
Katsugo danzokuJu, 273 langue. 13, 34-35, 273, 325-27 mother tongue, 224 254, 257-59. 262-65, 271-73, 280~82,
molD (core), 269-70, 276 285-99, 304, 324, 335
346 Index
Oi no kobumi, 126
Okina no fumi, 237 .
Okumagawa genzaemon, 143-44
Oku no hosomichi. (Narrow road to the deep
north), 126
okurigana (7-10), 227
on, 266
Onna daigaku, 268
o no Yasumaro, 252
Ooms, Herman, 32
opacity, 41-43
ordinary language, 18, 188-89
ordinary speech, 122, 156-58, 163, 170-72,
183, 219
Oshikochi no Mitsune, 251
Other, the, 12-13, 17-19,27,52,57-58,63-
65, 68, 96-97, lOS, 108, 117, 134, 190,
205-6, 299, 317, 335; in the Lacanian
sense, 133, 282
otherness of the Other, 78, 96, 108, 190, 239,
249,267,279,290,297,298,308,318,
312
Otomo no Yakamochi, 251
outside, the, 212, 224
overdetermination, 108
paragon, 74, 86, 119, 133-34, 172, 175, 328
parody, 125-26, 141-43, 178-84, 187-89,
195-98, 202-4
participational stance. See shutaiteki tachiba
perfonnative (of speech acts), 232, 237, 241,
326; situation, 86, 93, 97-98, 108, 135-37,
143, 147, 153, 163, 169, 194-201, 205,
223-24,230-31,242-43,248-49,263-
65,271,274,278,284,299-307,314-17
perspective. See Abschatlung
phenomenological epoche. 260
phenomenological reduction, 12
phenomenology, 125, 137, 191, 200-201,
234, 241, 312, 324
phenomenon, 79, 85
phoneticism, 113, 118, 244, 251-55, 262-63,
266-67, 277, 316
phonocentrism, Ill, 195, 204, 240, 253-54,
262,294,310-11,315-16
pictoriography, 316
Plato, 98, 147, 276
poetry I poetics , 110, 171, 226, 233, 243-45,
250-51, 270-71, 275-80, 298-99, 306-8,
317-18
poiesis, 105-10, 171,232,299, 307, 326,
335
polyphony, 127, 141
. polysemy, 190, 202-;-3
positivity, 312; constituted, 245, 310; con-
stituting, 166,245,267,270,310
practical, the, 235-38, 251-53, 283
practical intentionality, 82
praxis, 44, 82, 96, 108, 242, 246
prepredicative, the, 6, 117, 168, 248
prescription, 90, 96
pronoun, 69-72, 121
property, 103, 107
propriety, 103, 108, 211, 218
qi (1-13), 36-42, 81, 84, 111-12
qing. See feeling
quotation mark, 121, 140, 143
reading, 116, 131, 138-40,175, 196-97,
202, 220-23, 238-40, 251, 259-61, 314
reality (realitas), 221-24, 230-34, 284-85,
294-303, 307-11, 322
recentering, 135, 249, 298
reflecting upon oneself (hanley;;, fanqiu,
3-15), 100
Reflection on things at hand (jinsilu), 33, 37,
42, 51
regime, 4, 30, 84, 202, 214, 218-21, 253-54,
262, 299-300, 320, 332-33
reminiscence, 98
repetition,originary, 133, 205, 312
representability of totality, 290-92
representational type, 172-73, 175-76
restricted economy, 189, 295
return, 107-8, Ill, 232, 236, 258, 276, 288,
313-16, 332
Ricoeur, Paul, 125
rigaku-sha (rationalist), 31
rigen (the language of village people, 7-3),
179, 217, 228, 324
righteousness (gi, yi, 1-5), 32, 80-82, 93-94,
97-99
rite, 93-94, 97-99. 232-34,247,295-97,
301-4
Rongocho (Commentaries on the Analects),
214
Rongo kogi, 24, 222
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 290
Ryohashigen (6-1), ]78-79
ry;;ko (Jiuxing, 2-36), 79, 83, 103
Saikaku (Ihara), 126
Sakabe Megumi, 301
sakusha (author or maker, 7-12), 236, 285
Samba (Shikitei), 153
Santo Kyoden, 183
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 133
Sarumino, 126
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 39, 120
Schutz, Alfred, 136-37
sedoka (head-repeated songs), 251
seeing, 116, 128, 175, 197, 262-63
Seidan (Discourse on politics), 214, 285
Seiyokibun, 235
Seken munesan'yo (Worldly mental calcula-
tions), 126
Sekihi foroku, 297
seme, 86-87, 203
senryii (comic Haikau poetry), 194
sensus communis, 93
separation, 86
setsuwa bungalu (setsuwa literature, 4-3),
123-25
sharebon (5-6), 153, 187
shen~ See body
shi (of chanting), 156-57, 161, 164-67
Shibun kokujitoku, 217
Shibun y6ryo, 256
Shi jing (Book of Odes), 266
Shikake bunko, 183 . speculative knowledge, 235, 238, 247, 281,
shinjii mono (double suicide drama), 166
Shinju Tenno Amijima (The love suicide at
Amijima), 144
shinmin (subject subject to the state, 10-11),
336
shi (of syntax), 267, 272-74, 327
Shoi, 263
Shoku nihongi, 256
shudai (theme/thetic subject), 12, 29, 74-76,
91-93, 104, Ill, 118-19, 131-33, 148,
173-75, 275, 320, 327-36
shugo (propositional subject), 12, 29, 37-38,
70-71, 77-78, 104, 131, 136, 173, 316,
320, 328-32
Shu jing (Book of Documents), 31
shu1uJlcu (nominative case, 10-7), 327-29
shukan (epistemological subject, 2-22), 12,
29, 78, 106, 308, 320, 324-26
Shushigaku. See Song rationalism
Shusse Kagekiyo (Kagekiyo Victorious), 144
shuta; (agent of action, 2-8), 12, 18, 29, 58-
61, 71-76, 83-86, 92-93, 97-99. 105-6,
125, 133-35, 147, 175, 193, 205, 241,
248, 299, 320, 324-29, 332-33, 336. See
also body, of enunciation
shutaitekina jiko (6-20), 193
shutauek; tachiba (participational stance),
265. 324-26, 333
Sidotti, Giovanni, 235
signifiance. 131-35, 146-47, 155, 168, 199,
212, 230-31, 243, 249, 263, 274
simultaneity, 85-86, 233-35
singular thing. See kobutsu
situation, 85, 130-35, 141, 172, 175, 188,
199, 241, 249, 294
Six Classics, 31, 219,246,257,265,296,
298
sociality, 1, 14-15,78,82,93-96, 101-10,
239,279,288,291,295,305,309,317
softness, 80
Index 347
solidity, 80
solipsism, 78. 136-37
Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicide at
Sonezaki), 144
Song rationalism (Song Confucianism,
Rigaku, Sorigaku, or Shushigaku), 15, 25,
30.33,34-36,49.50-59,65-69,72,77,
81, 85, 89-91, 94-96, 100-108, 112, 120,
136-37, 214, 235, 250, 260, 268, 287-88,
291. 294-97, 308, 335
song (ufa), 3, 123, 156, 165, 168-70, 275,
295-97, 304-8
Sorai. See Ogyu Sorai
gorobun (7-4), 217
spacing, 106-7
specularity, 75-76, 205, 241, 248, 329
283
speech, 3, 88, 131, 138, 142, 145-47, 163,
175, 188, 196, 201-2, 220, 223-24, 228-
32, 240-45, 251, 254-55, 258, 261-63,
267,271-72,277-78,284,294,306,310-
12, 315-19
splitting, 192, 195, 200
structuralism, 233-34
subjectivity, 11-12, 18, 28-29, 60-71, 108,
135-36, 149-50, 166, 171-75, 191-92,
197,206,229,234-35,270,274-76,280-
82, 297-301, 305-9, 314, 320-23, 329-
30; agent of action: see shutai; epis-
temological subject: see shulcan; proposi-
tional subject: see shugo; subject of the
enunciated, 156, 170; subject of enuncia-
tion, 11,47,60,67,70-76,88,98, 125,
133, 142, 147, 156, 164-66, 169-70, 193,
205-6, 229, 328; subject subject to the
state: see shinmin; theme subject: see
shudai
substance (tai, ti, 2-18), 79, 80
sue (tip), 269-70, 276
Suika bunshu, 314
Suika shinto, 311
Suiko, empress, 252
surplus, 104, 117, 130-32, 215, 230, 239,
254, 288, 298, 309
suture, 74
Suzuki Akira, 272
Swift, Jonathan, 9
synchrony, 85, 120, 170, 233-34, 325
Taiheisaku, 237, 286, 292
taikei (dajing, Great Constancies, 9-10), 295
Takamatsu Jiro, 128
Takemoto Gidayu, 144
Tale of Genji. 256
tama (8-6), 272
Tamakatsuma, 256, 269
348 Index Index 349

Tamakushige, 256 vacuity, 79 Zhang Longxi, 254 Zhu Xi, 23-26, 31-54, 58-65, 69, 81, 84,
tanka (short songs), J81, 251 verbal expression (gengoteki hyogen, 6-18), Zhongyong (Doctrine of the mean), 31, 35, 63, 89-91, 94, 99-,104, 108, 219, 235, 247,
taoyameburi (femininity), 275-76 191-92 103. 292, 295 . 268. 282, 291, 312; Yulei, 39,
te, ni, 0, ha, 227, 255, 270 verbal text, 116-19, 128, 130, 135-36, 144, Zhonyong zhangju (Chfiyoshoku), 50 43-45
Temmu, emperor; 252, 256 158. 161-64, 173-76, 179, 183, 188, 193,
textual materiality, 2, 4, 28, 46, 84, 96-97, 196-201,205,212,223,255,271,278,
101, 106, 109, 119, 136-37, 148-49, 176, 302
197-200, 239, 254,306, 317 verbal, the, 86, 123-24, 127, 131, 138, 194,
texture, 296-98 214, 222, 226
theme subject. See shudai vernacular language, 18
theoria, 7 t, 106, 213 virtue (toku, de, 3-9), 94-106, 112, 196, 248,
ti. See substance 282, 285
Timeus, 147 voice, 148-50, 156-58, 164-68, 179-80,
Titunik, I. R., 152, 253 188, 196-97, 201, 206, 228, 238, 250-52,
Toga, 236 257-64, 269-71, 277-79, 313
Tokaidochu hizakurige (Shank's mare), 194 Volosinov, V. N., 152, 165, 253
Tokaido meishoki, 126
T6kashu, 298 wakun (Japanese way of reading Chinese,
Tokieda Motoki, 7, 98, 192-93, 264-65, 7·2),216-18,224-29.245,251,255-57,
272-73, 323-27, 331-34 266
Tokushiyoron, 235 Wang Shizhen, 214
Tominaga Nakamoto, 236 Watsuji Tetsuro, 301
Toneri, prince, 256 way. 86, 92, 103, 112, 235-37, 286, 292
Tosei kagai dangi (Treatise on today's pleasure Weber, Max, 286
quarter), 179-80 Wen ji, 49
totality, 16, 24, 95, 102-5, 220, 236-39, whole, 95, 233, 236-39, 250, 270, 286-90.
285-87, 290-91 310, 335
trace (seli, ji, 3-12), 99, 101, 104-6, 112, wisdom, 93-94, 97-99
205, 234, 259, 274, 313 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 4, 105, 321-22
transcendental, the, 78, 234, 322 writing, 2, 88,107, 1I1, 115-18,130-32,
transcendentalism, 56-61, 76-77, 86, 107, 139, 145-47, 154-55, 158, 168, 195-96,
136; transcendent subject, 104 201, 205, 217, 222-24, 228-29, 232-34,
transcription, 130, 141, 145-47, 195, 226, 238-42, 251-54, 258-63, 267, 270-72,
240, 258-59, 313 277-78, 284, 294, 304-6, 310,
transference, 19, 130, 209, 214, 220, 249, 313-16
282, 308-9; transferential recentering, 135
Tsugen somagaki, 184
Tsuyudono mongatari (Tales of Tsuyudono, xin. See mind
4-2), 122, 130
Tsuzoku daiseiden, 184 Yakubun senlei, 225-27
Tu Wei-ming, 42, 63 Yamanoue no Okura, 251
Yamato honzo, 268
Ukiyo buro (The Bathhouse of the Floating Yamazaki, Ansai, 311
World), 153 Yanagida Kunio, 123
Ukiyo doko (The Barbershop of the Floating Yan zi, 230
World), 153 Yasuda Jim, 41
Ukiyo-e, 184 Yi jing (the Book of Change), 50. 99, 295
Ukiyo monogalari (Tales of the Floating yin/yang, 80, 83, III
World), 125, 128 Yi T'oegye, 314
ukiyozoshi, 126, 203 Yojokun, 268
ultimate nothingness, 80 yomihon (reading book), 194
universality, 82, 89, 105, 108, 166, 324; uni- yomikudashi, 226-27, 245, 262
versal(s), 95-96, 171; universalization, yomu (to read), 257
192-93 yong. See function
univocal, the, 252, 257, 277 Yoshikawa Kojiro, 225~26
Uspensky, Boris A" 127, 137, 154, 176,200 yosho. See application
uta. See song Yotsugi Soga (The Soga heir), 144