Reading Ōgai Mori's <i>Kanzan-jittoku</i> in the Age of Religious Conflict

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  • 「神々の闘い」の時代に、鷗外の『寒山拾得』を読む
  • 「 カミガミ ノ タタカイ 」 ノ ジダイ ニ 、 オウガイ ノ 『 カンザン シュウトク 』 オ ヨム

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Abstract

<p>In this article I will read Ōgai Mori's Kanzan-jittoku, but my interest is not in diegetically examining it but in interpreting the epistemological codes for reading it to discover something that lies outside them. The moral of this story is obvious; we must not blindly worship anyone or anything. In its annotation text Kanzan-jittoku-engi, the author gives an explanation of the moral, saying that a wise man is wise whether people respect him or not. Philosophically paraphrased, subjects have no influence on the nature of objects whatever the former thinks of the latter. In other words, no one can know things as they are; they remain irrevocably alienated from us. But here I am not arguing for anarchistic relativism. Today such relativism can become very dangerous because it justifies even religious terrorism, a product of “blind worship.” Instead of merely telling an agnostic fable, I think, the narrator of the story points to something beyond an unbridgeable gap between subjects and objects. I will call it the “third term,” a key concept that has a potentiality to overcome postmodernism as well as modernism to open up a new field of post-postmodernism.</p>

Journal

  • Japanese Literature

    Japanese Literature 64 (8), 2-14, 2015-08-10

    Japanese Literature Association

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