Enchi, Fumiko. Onna zaka, The Waiting Years,
1957.
「女å‚ã€
Summary
The story is set in the early Meiji period (the late
19th-century) when feudalism, the strongest determinant of the family
structure in the19th-century Japan, was going to end. Tomo (around
30 years old) is married to Yukitomo Shiwakawa (past 40), a rich
government official living in Fukuoka, but she is his wife only
nominally. The novel starts with Tomo's visit to Tokyo to find a
concubine for her own husband.
Tomo buys Suga, a sullen but beautiful young lady. It is
in no way unusual at this time for a rich local official like
Shirakawa to have more than one concubine. Tomo deliberately chooses
Suga because Suga is that kind of woman who is too weak and meek to
have will to control the Shirakawa family (and turned out sterile).
She is "safe," although Tomo completely lost her role of having sex
with her husband because of Suga. A few years later, Yumi was
welcomed as the second concubine to the Shirakawas. About 10 years
later, the son of Yukitomo and Tomo, Michimasa, came to live with his
parents, but he is abhorred by everyone, even by his parents, because
of his lack of humanity and intelligence. After the death of his
first wife, Michimasa marries Miya. Miya also comes to hate
Michimasa and insists on leaving him, but she changes her mind after
having sexual relation with Yukitomo, the father of her own husband.
Miya now secretly becomes the third concubine of Yukitomo. About 10
years later, Miya, after giving birth to seven children, is dying of
disease. Takao, the son born from the first wife of Michimasa, is
now a student of the first-rank university in Tokyo. He comes to be
very conscious of his half sister, Ruriko, but Tomo marries Ruriko
away as soon as she notices the unusual relation between the brother
and sister. On the way home from the visit to Kayo, a woman who
gave birth to an illegitimate child of one of Miya's children, Tomo
climbs up the hilly road called Kagurazaka--which is also the
"onnazaka 女å‚," or the female slope from which the Japanese title of the
text derives--and starts feeling very exhausted. Indeed, the hill
comes to stand for all the forces and repressions that women have to
oversome. She reflects on her life as picking up pieces that men (her
husband, sons, and even grandsons) left everywhere. It turns out
that Tomo has fatal disease. A few weeks later, she finally dies
after so many hardships she had to go through as a victim of Japan's
feudalism and patriarchy. As she lays dying, her eyes suddenly gleam
of excitement and she asks others to throw her corpse into the sea
after her death, instead of having a formal funeral ceremony, a
social, familial institution which would just be a mockery in the
case of her distorted, perverted family experience. This is the only
and last expression of her desire.
Review
Tomo is at the center of the novel, although the episodes
are narrated from various perspectives. She is not the center of the
novel, however. She keenly observes people of Shirakawa and their
situations in order to organize the Shirakawa family as well as to
conceal the family shame from the outside. She does not become
involved in love affairs herself, but busily struggles to keep up
appearences and conceal all the tawdry love affairs which the men
have left after their self-centered and self-indulgent love affairs.
In other words, she sacrifices herself for the "ethics"of the family
(or "ie," the house, in Japanese) because she knows no other way of
living. It is important to note that her name, Tomo, is applied an
unusual Chinese character for that name 倫, which signifies ethics or
moral (rin å€«ç† in Japanese).
So what, then, are the ethics of the family under Japan's feudalistic and
patriarchal system? Moral in this sense does not mean the rules about good and
bad, proper or improper, which are accepted by the public, but it is more like
the laws tacitly run in a small, conventional community called an "ie." (家)These
morals allows Yukitomo, the head of the "ie," to have sexual relationships with
his concubines (actually registered as his daughters), servants, and the wife
of his son. These relations cause much pain and anxiety among his women quite
naturally, both mentally and physically, and yet it isTomo who takes care of
them all. The "female slope" Tomo climbs up in exhaustion (Kagurazaka in the
novel, but metaphorically Onnazaka, women's hilly road) is symbolic of
the hard life women must endure while sacrificing everything as victims of feudalism.
Enchi, the author, says that she wanted to write "hush-hush stories" (hiso
hiso banashi) of women in Meiji period, which can never be narrated as part
of Japanese history. The story of Tomo, as being a silent, patient "cleaner"
of men's affairs, can be totally silenced unless writers like Enchi describe
in the manner that is neither sympathetic nor detached. I think that Enchi did
great job describing Tomo in the way that Tomo remains on the margins of the
novel but simultaneously occupies the invisible center of the family norms called
the "ie."
As reading the"kaisetsu" (means interpretation or explanation, a short
essay usually added to the novel in the end) written by Eto Jun, I was very
angry because this man made such an uninformed comment to the effect that: "It
is too modern interpretation that Tomo is a victim of "ie." She rather voluntarily
dedicates herself to the system called "ie." This system must be maintained
by any means, just like the system called "nation" is respected for the reason
that chaos will be caused without it. The tragic irony of Onnazaka resides
in the fact that this system must be maintained by a woman who should originally
belong to the existence/essence ("jittai") of Eros." He also claims that
"It has been widely said that Onnazaka is a history of Tomo's endurance
and women's curse upon men's oppression of women.
But I cannot help thinking that these criticisms are off
the point. I feel undescribable sweet pleasure in the novel; is it
because I am a "feudalistic" man and thus find sadistic pleasure in
pains of Tomo and other women?" Yes, it's because you are. Isn't
this this an all-too typical opinion of a Japanese male critic???
Kumiko Sato
5/28/1999
NOTE: I like what Ms. Sato has said here. She has drawn a line between her
interpretation and that of the male literary establishment in Japan ( as represented
by the well-known critic and Soseki expert, Eto Jun) which happens to be much
of what Enchi Fumiko's work is about as well. Enchi wants readers to undrstand
and appreciate that the traditonal family system, the ie, which is to
say, the patriarchy, is not something natural, but a social construct. Enchi
shows us through one example just how brutal and dehumanizing a construct it
could be. She also gives voice to a female perspective that would otherwise
be silenced. Kokoro is a powerful and great novel, but it has no real
place for women in it. Indeed, it is telling that the main female character
whom we know as Ojosan, is actually named Shizu which can mean "quiet."
So I believe students should read Kokoro and appreciate how it penetrates
the depths of its characters' hearts and minds, their very souls. But we only
get half of the picture, really. By adding in The Waiting Years, we get
a much more accurate depiction of the complex struggles Meiiji men and women
encountered because we have the oppotunity to look at the other half of the
equation.