"Masks" by Fumiko Enchi

Masks by Fumiko Enchi (1958, translated 1983 by Juliet Carpenter, 141 pages)

Last month I read and posted on The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi.   This work, eight years in the writing was a very insightful look at the state of marriage in Japan in the second half of the 19th century among upper class families.    We saw how women seemed on the surface powerless and we witness the many changes and transformations in an arranged marriage while the wife waits for her husband to die.    Enchi is an acute observer of very small details.    We see a woman internalize her anger and shame as social requirements dictate her increasingly successful husband take a series of concubines.

Fumiko Enchi (1905 to 1986-Tokyo) was the daughter of a famous scholar of classical Japanese literature.   She acknowledged as one of her strongest literary influence the work of Junichiro Tanizaki  which I did  see.    During a bombing raid in WWII the house of her and her husband was destroyed along with all their possessions.    She was educated at home by tutors and at 13 was reading Oscar Wilde, Edgar Alan Poe,  and classical Japanese literature.    She was very much into the reading life.

Masks is  about cruelty between an older very cultured woman in her 50s and her widowed daughter-in- law.    The daughter- in- law, who seems to be portrayed as what we would now see as a mildly learning impaired person, is a virtual slave to her mother- in- law.    The daughter- in-law is very attractive and has two suitors.   The mother in law manipulates these relationships for her own amusement.  She basically causes the daughter to become pregnant by a brutish man who cares nothing for her and by so doing insures she can never marry again.    Some of the great charm of this book is the combining of the story line with the older woman's interest in and great knowledge of No masks.    We see what is under the seemingly inert older woman just as we begin to understand the masks a bit.    There are also woven within the work many references to classical Japanese literature.    Looking deeper into this I think Masks and The Waiting Years are about the aspects of Japanese culture that were, I mean no offense here, a slave society.    There is no freedom in these books other than perhaps the freedom to be casually cruel.   Of course this is just one aspect of the work of Enchi but to me it seems part of her deeper focus.    Much of Japanese literature is about various forms of enslavement.     There is deep wisdom in this short book.    I endorse it without reservation.

Mel u

The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi

The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi (1971, trans. from the Japanese by John Bester, 203 pages)

Fumiko Enchi (1905 to 1986-Tokyo) was the daughter of a famous scholar of classical Japanese literature.   She acknowledged as one of her strongest literary influence the work of Junichiro Tanizaki  which I did  see.    During a bombing raid in WWII the house of her and her husband was destroyed along with all their possessions.    She was educated at home by tutors and at 13 was reading Oscar Wilde, Edgar Alan Poe,  and classical Japanese literature.    She was very much into the reading life.

The Waiting Years took Enchi nearly eight years to write.   It is a wonderful basically flawless work of art.   The novel is set in the home of a Samurai family in late 19th century Japan.   The husband is a middle level, maybe a higher at times, government official.   The family is quite comfortable and can afford several servants but they are not among the truly rich or elite.    The novel's center is Tumo, the wife, about ten years younger than her husband.   One day the husband comes to her with some instructions for her to carry out.   He wants her to find a new maid for the household that will also serve as his concubine.    She suppresses her anger and jealousy as he explains to her it is simply that a man of his standing is expected to have at least one concubine and if he does not it casts doubts on the families financial status and looks bad for him to his peers.   There were functionaries whose served the needs of those who sought out concubines/maids and Tomo went to one of them with the money her husband had given her.    She tries to control her emotions as she imagines her husband sleeping with the various girls she interviews.   These girls were basically offered for sale by their families.   Once funds were paid for them they were more or less slaves and certainly had no right to leave their masters.   It was a bit shocking to learn that the typical age of these girls was 13 to 15.   The girls trained in household duties and most also service the sexual needs of the master of the house.   We see Tomo and the girl develop a relationship even though they have every reason to dislike and distrust each other.   It is not openly stated but the husband  seems to be very brutal in his relations with both his wife and the new maid.   

The novel covers at least 40 years in the life of the family.   In each chapter we are given a view of a different aspect of their developing lives.   Soon the husband feels a need for a second then a third concubine.   All of the women are bought as young girls and live in the household.   We see the tensions between the wife and the concubines.   One of the concubines seems to have some power over the husband and they urge her to have the wife, who has now lost her looks and is quite heavy,  displaced from the household.   

Along the way we meet their children and grandchildren.   I could not help but laugh when I found out who the real father of the children of one of the concubines really was.   We see the shifting relationships of the women over time.    We see that  the women have no power other than what ever emotional hold they have over the husband.   

   The Waiting Years is a very subtle, cerebral work that takes us deeply into the lives of the women (and the husband) in a late 19th century Samurai family.     I hope to post on another of her novels in July, Masks.  She wrote many novels all of which center on female characters trying to find away towards self-actualization in a male dominated society.   Sadly only  three of her novels have been translated into English.   I recommend this book with the only reservations that if you find Jane Austin, The Brontes, Tanizaki or George Sand boring you may have the same reaction to this book.

The translator, John Bester (1927-) is one of the foremost translators of the Japanese novel into English-having translated over a dozen works.   He is a graduate of the London School of African and Oriental Studies.   (From now on I will try to post a bit about the translators of the works I read.)

Mel U