Inoue, Hisashi 1934-

views updated

INOUE, Hisashi 1934-

PERSONAL: Born 1934, in Yamagata, Japan; married. Education: Attended Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan.

ADDRESSES: Home—Ichikawa, Tokyo, Japan. Agent—c/o Kino International Corp. 333 West 39th St., Ste. 503, New York, NY 10018.

CAREER: Former television writer and stagehand; freelance writer, 1970—.

AWARDS, HONORS: Naoki prize, 1971, for Tegusari shinju.

WRITINGS:

Kinema no tenchi (screenplay), Shochiku, 1986, produced in Japanese with English subtitles as Final Take, 1986.

Author of novels, including Bun to Fun, 1970, Tegusari shinju, 1971, Kirikirijin, 1981, The Fortunes of Father Mockinpott, and Moto no Mokuami. Author of plays, including Nihonjin no Heso, 1969, The Adventures of Dogen, 1970, and Kesho, 1994, translated into English as Greasepaint.

SIDELIGHTS: A Time critic was quoted as calling Japan's Hisashi Inoue "one of the most successful writers" of the 1980s by Joel R. Cohn in Studies in the Comic Spirit in Modern Japanese Fiction. The fact that Inoue's work is not widely translated in the United States makes this an even more remarkable statement, indicating the international interest Inoue has generated during his writing career. Inoue lives in the Tokyo suburb of Ichikawa, where he shuns company for the seclusion of the writing annex he has dubbed "the cockpit."

Inoue, a best-selling comic novelist, has published works spanning a variety of subjects and mediums. Cohn explained, "Beginning with radio and television scripts, Inoue's output sprawls over the fields of drama, fiction, nonfiction, and song. . . . Like his early creation, the four-dimensional master thief Bun, Inoue operates on such a breathtakingly vast scale that 'phenomenon' seems to be the only adequate label for him."

Inoue was born in a small town in the Tohoku region of Japan in 1934, which, according to Cohn, had a reputation for being "backward". His childhood years were difficult and marked with instability. When he was three years old, his father died and he and his family moved several times to various parts of Japan. Inoue was eventually placed in a Roman Catholic orphanage in Sendai at the age of fifteen. Unfortunately, the family's frequent relocations had affected his language development due to the unique dialects that he had to adapt to during the multiple relocations. This ultimately led to a stuttering problem and feelings of inferiority. Aided by Canadian priests, he attempted to overcome his stuttering problem by immersing himself in the French language. However, once arriving at Sophia University in Tokyo, he found his French Canadian accent was as disreputable as his native Tohoku accent had been. He regressed into more stuttering and a period of depression. At this time, he returned to Tohoku, where Inoue, according to Cohn, "discovered a collection of kibyoshi in a public library and found himself captivated by their verbal pyrotechnics, spirit of out-and-out nonsensicality, and the audacious willingness to take everything and anything and unhesitatingly turn it on its head. . . . In the wake of this liberating discovery, he began to regain his equilibrium, gradually overcoming his deep-seated depression and fears. Moreover, he was awakened to the literary possibilities of wordplay and to the equally significant realization that this type of writing had its own place, legitimate even if not revered, in the Japanese tradition, and thus provided both an inspiration and a model for his own writing."

According to Cohn, Inoue also admired "Gesaku", where the writer's role is that of a comic entertainer. Yet he has never seen himself as a pure "gesakusha". Cohn explained, "It would be a gross oversimplification . . . to view Inoue only as a twentieth century reincarnation of gesakusha. While some of his free-wheeling satires may evoke the desperado spirit of Gennai, his original ambition was to be a novelist and playwright; and he himself concedes that, having succeeded handsomely, he cannot qualify as a genuine gesakusha. Even if we discount his definition of the true gesakusha type as excessively purist, there are other significant ways in which he differs; the gesakusha after Gennai rarely wrote for the stage, and they certainly did not engage in extensive public defenses and explanations of their own work as Inoue has done."

Inoue has used his talents at wordplay to challenge falsehoods and authority figures who abuse their positions of power. He feels that these individuals, if continually empowered and unchallenged, pose a serious threat. Cohn explained, "Inoue sees Japan as beset with countless problems stemming from unscrupulous and abusive behavior by people in positions of illegitimate authority, who regularly attempt to advance their interests or buttress their positions by cloaking them in the illegitimate authority of words. . . . By treating people like language and language like people, and defamiliarizing the relations between words in the ordered structure of the Japanese language, he seeks to undermine established patterns of relations between members of Japanese society."

According to Roger Pulvers in World Press Review, "In Japan, satire and parody are an old tradition. Parody serves an important function as a link between eras, a vehicle for reassessing Japanese ways in progressively modern contexts, and of deriding the past while paying sly tribute to it. The Japanese word parodei signified emulation out of respect as much as the mockery of orthodoxy. . . . Social criticism is masked in Japanese literature, lightened by metaphorical abstractions and witty wordplay. It is in this context that Inoue must be viewed."

In many of his novels, and notably in Kirikirijin, Inoue juxtaposes those who abuse their positions of authority with the common people, whom he embellishes with characteristics of strength, virtue, and vitality. In this way, the "little people" are able to expose the self-righteous and pompous elite and overcome their humble positions. In an online interview, Inoue revealed one of the objectives he had when writing Kirikirijin: "One of the things I wanted to say in that book was that Japan has no business thinking so highly of itself. The corporate bigshots, they really do think Japan is 'Number 1.' But we're just ordinary people, after all; the electronics and automobiles and other things we're so proud of—the basic ideas all come from somewhere else. I think the situation in my book, the poor little village in Tohoku not wanting to be part of Japan anymore, appealed to a lot of younger people. But there were also lots of people who got very angry about it."

In Kirikirijin one of the main characters is a stripper, whom Inoue portrays as an example of one of the "little people" who represent virtuous characteristics. Inoue, based on an early experience working in a striptease establishment, views strippers as representing natural, honest urges. In his book he contrasts these virtues with the dishonest, self-important elitist group who abuse their power—the same group who publicly disapprove of the stripper, yet at the same time cannot resist her. In his book, the stripper, Abe Maria, becomes the Kirikiri Living National Treasure and receives the honor of publicly introducing the nation's new flag to the world.

Cohn observed, "In Inoue's comic fiction . . . satiric correction characteristically takes the form of a continuous process of overturning the various unhealthy aspects of human nature through ridicule, rather than the enlightenment of expulsion of aberrant individuals. In his most ambitious works, a broad range of types is held up to comic scrutiny; so, implicitly or explicitly, is humanity en masse." He added, "If the ground rules in Japan are such that attempts to identify and correct human folly do not fall into the category of 'philosophy' (shiso) or 'attitude toward life,' and if this excludes Inoue's work from consideration as 'serious' or high art, he is as usual ready to counterattack with a reversal. . . . The right way for writers to do what they do is to enliven their work, to remember that art can be entertainment and discovery as well as philosophy, geijutsu in the fullest sense of the word, and to take advantage of all available resources, including extravagant language, fantasy, laughter, and nonsense, even if on the surface they appear inimical to the serious presentation of serious issues."