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The Acceptance of Dostoevsky in Japan — the theme of St.Petersburg and dialogue as the means
Preface
The United Nations proclaim the year 2001 the year of dialogue between civilizations. Regrettably partly because of September 11th attacks, in many countries and areas people seek to settle their disputes by force, not through dialogue.
Dostoevsky, a Russian novelist who considered deeply the problem of conflicts between “self and others” in his many works such as “Crime and Punishment” is the one of the most popular foreign writers in Japan. For example, three different editions of Dostoevsky’s complete works have beenpublished so far.
In addition to that, in 2000, the international conference on the theme of “The Twenty-first Century through Dostoevsky’s Eyes-The Prospect for Humanity” was successfully held in Japan for five days in which many scholars including 25 from foreign countries participated. (The schedule included a short excursion introducing Japan.) At the conference there many reports were made on ‘the importance of dialogue’ in the works of Dostoevsky*1.
Henceforth this paper will analyze the meaning of the acceptance of Dostoevsky in Japan from the viewpoint of comparative civilizations, noting the theme of St.Petersburg and dialogue as the means. Through this attempt, I intend to seek for the possibility of overcoming the clash of civilizations.
1, Peter the Great’s Reforms and Russo-Japanese Relations
Now St.Petersburg is celebrating the tercentenary. It is interesting that this year Edo, which was once the seat of government of the Tokugawa Shogunate and later turned to be the capital Tokyo happens to be attain the quadricentenary of foundation.; moreover, like the Romanov dynasty, the Tokugawa Shogunate maintained very long regime over 250 years from 1603 until 1867. The big difference is that while the Romanovs, especially Peter the Great employed ‘open-door policy’, the Shogunate kept ‘isolationism’: In 1612 international trade with European countries was forbidden. The Shogunate prohibited the Japanese people from returning from abroad and, at one point, even refused to receive its people who suffered shipwreck.
Peter the Great was the first ruler who wanted to begin trade with Japan during the period of Japanese isolation by the Edo Shogunate. Knowing of such policy in Japan, Peter the Great who met with such victims in 1702, founded a Japanese school in St. Petersburg in 1705 and appointed these Japanese as teachers. (The death masks of some Japanese teachers had been kept in the Kunstkamera). These conditions reflected in the following case. In 1783, a Japanese merchant, Kodayu, was shipwrecked on a Russian island. He got to Russia and learnt many things while he was in Russia, but he still longed to go home. Catherine the Second, the successor of Peter the Great’s policy, thought that this was a good chance to have contact with Japan. In 1792, she sent him in a Russian ship to the Japanese ruler. After returning from Russia, Kodayu gave a wide range of useful information about Russia; customs, history, language and so on. He also gave such information that Peter the Great had reformed Russia and been regarded very highly.
2, Peter the Great’s ‘Enlightenment’ and Meiji Restoration in Japan
From the beginning of the 19th century other Western countries also came to Japan to demand the opening up of several ports for trade. Many people who wanted to preserve traditional Japanese ways and, to that purpose, they went so far as to propose the killing of foreigners. Some able administrators, however, found such measures useless, and wanted to establish a new political system immediately so as not to be conquered like India and China and began to adopt European civilization.
In this sense it is interesting that there were some thinkers who thought Peter the Great’s enlightenment in Russia would be a good model for Japan. Indeed after the Meiji Restoration was achieved in 1868, the new Japanese government carried out many reforms :the establishing of a conscription system; the relocation of the Capital from Kyoto to Tokyo; That is, the new Edo became a “window” from which European civilization came in : the introduction of a compulsory education system; the sending of many students abroad; the employment of many engineers and teachers at top salaries. They even carried out a ban on the old traditional hair style and constructed a special ball room in Tokyo in order to learn European customs etc. Of course not every reform was based on Peter’s, but some of them are obviously similar.
After opening its doors, Japan’s situation changed dramatically. Successful industrialization and militarization of the country brought the government wealth and produced a new rich class. In 1894 Japan dared to go to war with China, a country which once had a great influence on Japanese culture. Japan won this encounter and gained a market in Korea.
But a successful modernization of the country did not mean an improvement of the situation for the general population. In order to carry out many reforms, the new government needed more money and they exacted heavy taxes from the people.
Russia was not able to play an important role in the political and industrial field in Japan, however Russia made a great contribution to Japanese literature.Kawabata Kaori, a scholar of Russian literature and comparative literature suggested that in 1908 the total number of translations from Russian literature exceeded those of English literature. He explained the reason in such a way: the description of deep suffering from rapid civilization and a search for solutions to such problems aroused the sympathy of the Japanese people, because they had almost the same problems.
In this sense, it is intriguing that Yamamoto Shin, a Japanese scholar of comparative study of civilization analyzes as follows: Both Japan and Russia started as ‘peripheral civilizations’ based on Chinese and Byzantine Empires respectively, and only gradually developed originality. He observes that, when they encountered Western civilization in the modern age, “Both countries adopted a policy to strengthen their economic base and military power in a hurry, for fear of colonization by the great Western powers which surpassed them. They forced modernization ‘from the top’ by means of Westernization for that purpose”. This is particularly true of Peter the Great who abolished Russia’s former isolationism, and whose “policy was similar to our Meiji Restoration to some extent”*2.
Yet when the economical situations went worse and conflicts with Western nations became frequent, repulsion to westernization and revival of tradition of own country arose–this time from the public.
Noticing the alternation of contempt for the indigenous traits through worship of the West and ethnocentric nationalism as a reaction against it, Yamamoto Shin, a scholar of comparative study of civilizations argues that the cyclical change takes place every twenty years. It is interesting that both the highest and the lowest point in the cycle curiously coincided with the acceptance of Dostoevsky in Japan.
3, Dostoevsky’s Works and the theme of St.Petersburg
Dostoevsky’s father Mikhail rose to aristocrat in his lifetime thanks to the system established by Peter the Great which made it possible that any able man should be promoted.
Young Dostoevsky appreciated highly such modernization by Peter, while he criticized in his first novel,”Poor Folk”, the problems of serfdom and censorship from a westernizer’s viewpoint following the grand tradition of Pushkin’s “The Bronze Horseman” written with St.Petersburg as the background.
However, having released from banishment to Siberia, he began to advocate ‘Pochvennichestvo'(native soil conservatism), observing the importance of and reconciliation with Russian cultural and historical tradition, for drastic westernization was apt to shake the cultural foundation of one’s own country and bring its people to identity crisis, only to provoke chauvinism as a reaction.
After the journey through Europe in 1862, he wrote ” Crime and Punishment”, in which he depicted murders and agony of an excellent student who had been forced to leave the law school of St.Petersburg University for poverty. What has to be noted is that Dostoevsky had the protagonist who regarded struggles for existence as the laws of nature invented a theory that an ‘extraordinary man’ was allowed to kill evil men. This novel, especially before the World War the Second, put questions to Japanese readers as to one’s own self and the means of enlightenment. About this novel, various interpretations were made. One went so far as to sympathize the protagonist and insisted that one should not flinch from war for a reformation of the World*3.
As the studies of Dostoevsky are proceeding, however, gradually it has become clear that this novel did not appreciated the theory of “superman” but represented the collapse of it.
In the epilogue of “Crime and Punishment”, having Raskolinikov dream of the extinction of the human race, Dostoevsky carried out the conversion of Raskolinikov’s “egocentric view of the world”*4.
Such a point of view was a result of Dostoevsky’s own experience in Siberia, who lived with people in the bosom of the nature. Although it appeared to be an idea of compromise, it already had some modern themes such as importance of dialogue between ‘self’ and ‘others’; the intellects and the public, one’s own nation and other nations, the human race and the nature.
4, The ‘Diversity’ of the Edo Era and Golovnin
I will take an example to show how to overcome the clash of civilizationsinthe Russo-Japanese contact. When Russia was invaded by the Napoleon army in 1812, it was on the brink of another war in the far east, for its relation with Japan had become worse for the territorial issues and trade friction. It was Takadaya Kahei, a Japanese merchant who contributed to avert this crisis. With knowledge of the level of Russian culture, he respected both Russia and Japanese cultures and maintained persistently the risk in war as the means, saying that Japan had not made war nor invaded any countries for two hundred years and finally succeeded in liberation of Golovnin who had been detained for intrusion of territorial water.
Golovnin who had been in prison in Japan for three years was surprised at a low illiteracy percentage of the Japanese and politeness of the people. In his book, “The Experiences of a Russian Prisoner in Japan” published in 1816. he defined Japanese civilization as completely different type from a European civilization, still described Japan as one of the most civilized nation in the world. Chaadaev in “Philosophical Letters” referred to this book*5.
Actually, the policy of isolation gave a period of about 300 years of peace to Japan, so that national wealth was not wasted and it led to a development, not only in the commercial system, but also in education. Therefore about two hundred seventy clans live together and compete with each other to develop their own cultures and enhance their productivity. Ukiyoe or wood block prints which influenced greatly the Impressionists is one of the instances. This high level of culture led to drive the rapid successful modernization in Japan after the Meiji period.
According to the Commentary, Golovnin’s book gained popularity and was translated into all European languages. It is young missionary Nikolai that was most influenced by this book. He came to be interested in above-mentioned Takadaya Kahei and the Japanese culture. He came to Japan and in addition to missionary work, he introduced Russian literature, including Dostoevsky, which had great influence on many Japanese.
From my point of view, this episode proves that the world today needs understanding of ‘self and others’ through ‘dialogue as the means’. Dostoevsky depicted his novels by the method of polyphony stressing on dialogue instead of monophony and have had a great influence on other novels since then. Shiba Ryotaro, a novelist who wrote a novel about Takadaya Kahei, said the ‘diversity’ of Edo period enabled Japan’s peaceful development*6. I think the principle of diversity was very important for opening up the possibility of overcoming the clash of civilizations. In other words, the world is not composed of just one kind of flowers and butterflies, but made up of variety of flowers, trees and butterflies. Just like this, when the polyphonic voices, not monophonic one, sing in harmony, we can establish the peace of the world.
5, The Clash of Civilizations and the Solution for that
In 1993 S.P.Huntington analyzed the world situation after the cold war and suggested that a number of countries which shared the same religion began an alliance mainly against European civilization*7.
However, this is not the first time in history that we encountered such a situation. From the viewpoint of comparative civilizations, it is noteworthy that after the Crimean War, Danilevsky, an old friend of Dostoevsky appealed to Slavic counties to unite against Europe *8. And before the Second World War, Japan also proposed a confederation among Asian countries against Europe.
In other words, when the clash of civilizations is emphasized, small and weak countries with a civilization in common seek to unite for survival. In his philosophiacal book written in the form of dialogue, Nakae Chomin analyzed French and German history and concluded that wars were apt to recur and expand, because after a war, the lost country claimed ‘the right of reprisal’ and develop powerful weapons*9. Indeed oppression by strong military power may obtain success for a while, but after several years or several decades, ‘a war of reprisal’ will possibly break out.
Thus along with dialogue as the means, the idea, “thou shalt not kill” which Dostoevsky stated in “Crime and Punishment” is the basic principle of all civilizations as well as those of Buddhism, Islamism and Christianity.
Notes
*1 See, Doetoevsky Square, No.,10, Edited by The Japanese Dostoevsky Society,2001(in Japanese)
*2 Yamamoto Shin, Shuhen-bunmeiron, Tosui-shobo,1985, p.62-63
*3 Takahashi Seiichiro. The Acceptance of “Crime and Punishment in Japan”: On the Theory of the Cycle of Westernization and Nationalism,”The Twenty-first Century through Dostoevsky’s Eyes-The Prospect for Humanity”ID Graal,Moscow,2002,pp.76-81(in Russian)
*4 Takahashi Seiichiro. Problem of Conscience in the novel “Crime and Punishment”, Dostoevsky.Materialy i issledovaniya,vol.10,L.,Nauka,1990,pp.56-62(in Russian)
*5 Chaadaev,P.Ya., Polnoe sobranie sochinenij i izbrannye pis’ma, vol.1,Nauka¤M.¤1991,p.333,p.695
*6 Shiba Ryotaro, Nanohana no Oki, Bungei-shunju,1982
*7 Huntington, S.P.”The Clash of Civilizations?”, Foreign Affairs,Summer 1993
*8 Danilevsky,N.Ya.,Rossiya i Evropa,izd.Glagol j izd.S-Peterburgskogo universiteta,@SPb,1995
*9 Nakae Chomin, San suijin keirin mondo, Iwanami-shoten, 1965 (originally published in 1887)
（Comparative Civilizations Review, No.51,2004）
