2003 | Hmuroi

Problems on Interpretation

in the Age of Database

International Congress of Association of Japanese Literary Studies

( UCLA, Los Angels Nov. 2003)

I would like to give you two notices before my talk today.

This is the first time for me to attend AJLS conference, so I have been observing this conference very carefully since the day before yesterday. As I was invited several times to Nichibunken’s international conferences before, I thought I understood the atmosphere of American researchers who are studying Japanese literature or culture in general approximately. However, I found that was my misunderstanding. The people of this association seem to me more powerful and look like playing your own game not subordinate or secondary to the Japanese studies in Japan. And especially I was much impressed by the people who are studying modern literature. They have their own favorite topics different from them in Japan, and most of them have rather historical or theoretical point of view than aesthetic one about the literary text. So I am anxious a little bit now if I grasp the point or target with my talk after attending this conference. For today’s talk was prepared for a little bit different type of audience. However I cannot change it now anyway, so I must go on with it.

I know most of you are very skillful in Japanese, but I dare try talking in my poor English here. When I could not go on, please forgive me if I return to Japanese suddenly again. I think however, talking in a foreign language seems to have a little relationship to the contents of today's talk. So I would like to try doing with something like Pidgin English way of talking consciously today.

Both the number of Americans who speak Japanese very well and Japanese who speak English very well are undoubtedly increasing. (I myself was left far behind). But it dose not mean becoming easier to communicate each other between these two different cultures. Language is not only a tool to communicate with but also a barrier disturbing to understand differences of us. So, with my talk, I would like you to “enjoy” the difference through my grammatical errors or curious phrases and remember that we are belonging completely different linguistic universe again.

Now, I want to discuss about the following three problems.

1. What is "Studying" "Foreign Literature" in the first place?

2. What is the purpose of literary studies or Cultural Studies in general? We will look back upon mainly the history of literary theory in the 20th century here.

3. On data base type knowledge; we will consider about the ethics of intellectual how one undertake the task of thinking now, or the future of knowledge will be also considered.

Let us consider the problem that what is studying Japanese literature as your "foreign literature" first of all. This is also that I myself who live in Japan examine myself about reading the English or French book, or the act which reads the book of those foreign languages by the Japanese translation, and collects, quotes or refers them in my lecture or paper.

It is necessary to consider the "foreign” in this case. Probably, the short consideration about "literature" will also be required.

“The foreign literature” -- literally -- means that it is not "literature" of "home country". The home country, in many of your case is the United States of America or whatever else. In my case it is "Japan". However, was there any "American literature" from the beginning? It will be only the 18th century at most that a country called the United States of America was born.　Moreover, it is after it that many residents and immigrants became "Americans" gradually. Therefore, the American literature in narrow sense, such as Melville, HOSON, or Twain, will not only be correctly called literature of home country in this case. Problem is what a certain people of a certain group that grows up in the United States have accepted as "literature" in the specific environment. Anyway, foreign literature has a close relation with the concept and system of “national literature” by the “native language”. It is also related to the process of formation of the "nation-states" born in the 19th century. In other words, we can say that the birth of "foreign literature" and that of "national literature" are the two sides of the same coin. It carved the "self" and the "others" of the nation-state, and is closely concerned with a process in which its own mirror image was made. Therefore, it is exactly the system made very much recently. National literature and foreign literature were born in the same place.

The situation is the same also about us Japanese. Because it was after the Meiji Restoration that the concept of "national literature" was materialized or actualized in Japan. It may be said that things like the tradition of literature different from Chinese literature had been existed in the geographical Japanese Islands. However, they were never represented as "national literature." It is because the system itself, "literature", is the translation word imported at the Meiji era. And it was closely connected with the process of building nation-state of modern Japan. The process in which the document of ancient or medieval times has been arranged as "Japanese literature", was incorporated with the formation of the national history based on the imperialistic historical view. The beginning of the foreign literary studies was also deeply related to the movement of this national history formation. It was by no means accidental for many Japanese intellectual who was studying French or German literature in his younger days to have returned to Japanese culture late in his life.

However, there may be a little difference between that Americans study "Japanese literature", and that Japanese study American or English literature. Unlike the United States having accepted the European literature as its cultural origin, Japan accepted it as totally alien culture. First of all, in Japan which was completely raped and forced to be open by the United States as a vanguard of the Western world in the 19th century, the Western literature and the system of art were the "Otherness" totally and fundamentally. And the Japanese literature has developed by concealing this "otherness", and "appropriate" them as it was our own original culture.

In the first place, why did "literature" then become important device of such a history of a nation-state? Because it is regarded as reflection of the ethnic or racial spirit (Ethos) that Herder once told. And it started the made-up system of "people of Nation State”. The system of "literary studies" in universities cannot be separated from such movement nor considered without it. So it is also to be said about pre-modern literary studies.

The academic literary studies was able to be separated from the community of amateurs or journalism just because it was thought that studying national literature was clarifying the ethos of ourselves and national traits and studying foreign literature was also clarifying those people’s ethos and national traits. We have to have the following two things in mind. First, the "literature" is thus a temporal and historical cultural phenomenon materialized only in the specific social form of "modern civil society". Second, a thing called literary studies is an ideological issue materialized only in such a specific historical context. And it has entered into universities under the dress named “science” and camouflaged its ideological character.

In other words, literary studies are never neutral or scientific.

I think that it is necessary to say in the first place there is neither Japanese Literature nor Japanese culture that you are studying. It is the effect made by the specific cultural position made very recently.

Next, let us look back at the history of the literary studies in the 20th century.

The literary theory in the 20th century has been fundamentally formed involving the question "what is literature?” Literary theory in the 20th century has gradually shifted its central concern from "Author" to “Work” or "Text" itself as linguistic structure. Furthermore, it was moved toward theories of “Reader” or historical readers’ community that produce "meaning" through the act of interpretation, like reader response criticism or reception aesthetics. That is, it developed from the research on the historical background and the biographical fact which form the consciousness of the author to the research on the “intertextual” relations with various other linguistic structures which the work as text makes, and also toward the research on how a text functions as social discursive devices by the social structure around the “reader”.

However, such shift of the importance inside this triangle of “Author – Text –Reader” is only a local change produced in a very narrow path. Inside the institution of "literature" made by the occidental modernity and the social structure supporting it, it is merely asked in turn about what makes a certain text “the literature”, which Roman Jacobson once called “the Literality”, whether it is in the consciousness of the "author" as a romantic genius, in signification of a text, or in practice so called reading. What is the meaning of such process of history at all?

It is clear that such question as "what is literature?" has been functioning without any doubt or suspicion there. That is, linguistic texts were classified into "literature" and the "not literature", and it has been considered that the most important question is to draw the boundary line of literature in various forms. There was a fantasy that the act that investigates the essence of “the true literature” which really exists somewhere is the task of literary studies.

However, the system itself of " literature " which the typography and the modern society based on the uniform human view built up is exposed to the crisis of dismantling today. By the flood of pop culture like comic and animation, the collapse of a literary world supported by some readers’ community and literary magazines, the conversion of anything in culture into consumer goods arranged in a enormous supermarket, the rapid progress of globalization, hybridization and standardization of culture, and the conversion to a database of learning by the rapid advancement of technologies (to make index of whole knowledge which anyone can use easily by subdividing, categorizing and attaching labels to them)，literary study is almost losing its obviousness and its important foundations.

In Japan, the literary series or complete works almost stopped being published. If we exclude the book of the very popular authors, the literary books are placed in the most inconspicuous corner of a bookstore. Moreover, the sales of the literary magazine supporting the literary world are very small now. Even at the big bookstore near a terminal station, those monthly magazines such as “Shincho”, “SUBARU”, “Bungakukai” will be distributed only one volume and never supplied even when it was sold. It is assumed that these numbers of readers are far less than 10,000. Considering that there are hundreds thousands readers of the coterie comic magazines sold at the comics market called KOMIKE, this is a so much small number. The concern of the ordinary intellectuals or college students to literature has extremely faded. For example, there are very few college students who know the name of Hirabayashi Taiko in Japan.

Of course, it may also be able to say that there is always some value to be studied about anything. However, it is not necessary to say that the decay of so-called "high cultures", such as "literature" and "art", will be remarkable after the 80s.

The literary studies after it has come to avoid the problem whether the target "text" being an important literary work or not. It seems to have brought concern together in what social conditions which produced that text is and how it has functioned as "cultural device" in a fixed social context. And this way comes to be used also in studies about rock music or pop culture. Literary studies are rather considered more and more to be one genre of "cultural studies" there. They do not carry out dividing "culture" into "true culture" and "fake culture”.　They accept the culture as it is from the beginning, and it is only asked how it functions. Literary text changed its meaning from “Work” to “Data” here.

Is a literary text a data for understanding the singularity of a certain local culture, or is a beautiful object connected with the universal humanity for arranging to the directory of territory called Art or Literature? While the every border and various boundaries fluidize, the fictitious characteristic of so called " national culture " is also becoming more and more clear. Under these circumstances, what is it to study and interpret Japanese literature and Japanese culture? Or more generally speaking, what is the condition of knowledge itself today?

Finally I will talk about the most remarkable phenomenon of the"databasi-zation of knowledge" in the current situation.

Foreign literary studies are assumed to be included inside a large field of the “regional studies” also in Japan or the United States. After the dismantling of literature, the text written in various local languages carries out the representation of the cultural feature of the area, a disposition, a view of the world, etc., and it is thought that useful data is provided for understanding the world where we live.

All researches are the "information" which whenever someone can use. The value is beforehand guaranteed unconditionally. As the concept of “culture” was extended, all of detailed various cultural phenomenon disregarded have come to be registered as a candidate for research now. Nobody can deny a possibility of saying that someone probably gets interested in it in the future even if nobody shows concern to such trifling information now. All the knowledge about the universe has some value to be stored into the huge database which the academy supports. Even the minor novel which attracted attention from nobody, the teleplay which was very low as for the audience rating, and unpopular CD can be also registered into a database.

Of course, there may have been those who study the trivial phenomenon in which nobody gets interested in the past. However, in the world of academy centering on the publication of academic magazines they were buried, forgotten and disappeared in many cases. However, the Internet spreads, there are no temporal and spatial restrictions. And when the database which can accumulate knowledge without limit and which was connected by network appeared, the situation has completely changed. All researches now have the chance to be used by someone, and its value came to be guaranteed from the beginning.

The development of the Internet realized the dream of "the amplification of intelligence" at least partially. Anyone can make access to the voluminous information and can connect not only the text but also the image, voice and animation freely. If the infrastructure such as the portable terminal and the circuit are upgraded furthermore, and the database is more improved, the dream of Intelligence Amplifier will be almost realized.

However, as for the human intelligence, will it be really amplified by it? It will not be so, regretfully. When I want to know something, the electronic database will certainly give me an answer easily and quickly. But it will not take the trouble of telling of helping me know "what I really want to know".

The true problem is inside of the database itself. That is, the database is the spatial arrangement of information. It resembles the library where a lot of bookshelves are arranged and classified. Unlike the library, we can access the electronic database at any time and from any place. At the same time, it means, "we don't need to access now and here". The information, which is spatially arranged, actually lacks in the sense of time in this way.

On the contrary, the human knowledge is a temporal experience. We obtain a knowledge by encountering with it in a certain place and time. Although a text called Dostoevsky’s "The Brothers of Karamazov " is one and the same, its meaning would be entirely different between when read by a high school student and when read by a middle aged. As the hermeneutics says, interpretation is a specific individual's act in a specific historical situation.

The environment where we can access a huge database anytime, anywhere are certainly the necessary condition for intelligence amplification, but not its sufficient condition of it. If so, the librarian of a big library must be the greatest intellectual in the world. That is to say, the Hypermedia alone don't amplify the human intelligence and occasionally rather intensify the feeling of powerlessness and subordination to the system.　The impression that our intelligence was amplified by contacting with the electronic database is the same as the exaltation that we feel when we entered in a big library or a bookstore, and that is an illusion after all. We are just pulling out the possibility in advance included in the system or program, and no new experiences will be born there. It is such misunderstanding about the knowledge and intelligence that most of the discussions over the Internet and database are trapped in.

Knowledge is essentially individual and is produced from an individualistic experience and personal encounter. It is formed through experiences in time out of the specific individual way as a living animal. The interpretation of text is also termed and limited by such individuality and isolation of being an animal. I am apprehensive about such a tendency as reducing all knowledge into a system of the huge database in the field of cultural studies and literary studies. I believe the knowledge is fundamentally specific belonging to the individual itself and never to be reduced or surrender to the “data”.