Broken Commandment (The Japanese Foundation Translation Series) [Paperback]

Toson Shimazaki (Author), Kenneth Stone (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1995 | ISBN-10: 0860081915 | ISBN-13: 978-0860081913

Shimazaki's 1906 classic of modern Japanese literature portrays a young man born into the Burakumin outcaste class and his struggle against both social discrimination and his own hypocrisy.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Japanese (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: University of Tokyo Press (June 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0860081915
• ISBN-13: 978-0860081913
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #351,585 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lively view of Japanese history and the pain of prejudice, May 3, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Fussa, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Broken Commandment (The Japanese Foundation Translation Series) (Paperback)

Shimazaki's life-like portrayal of a young man's struggle with prejudice and his own hypocrisy in Hakai create a delicate tension. Shimazaki's draws heavily on the sights, sounds and sense of natural things for his backdrop. Repeatedly I was reminded of the Japanese appreciation for nature as the main character, Ushimatsu hurried home to his father's funeral. Along the way, Shimazaki takes the time to describe the sky, the river waters and the flowering weeds growing beside the dirt road. Although it was his heavy use of nature that moved me, Okazaki was moved most by Shimazaki's depiction of humanity. "This spirit of religious self-examination extends through all of Shimazaki's works. This is Shimazaki's humanism rather than his naturalism." (p. 241) An additional strength to Hakai is the vivid detail Shimazaki uses in describing his main character's living quarters, the hard life of the drunkard's family, and the rigid caste system employed during that time. The reader has a full sense of being a member of the eta outcast group and a full sense of being a Japanese person in a complicated, striated social system. It simplifies these issues from a standpoint of historical study because instead of rote memorization of various levels of the community, literature allows the reader to mentally walk among the people, live with them and relate to them. The images created by his character bring such life to the community that it becomes easy to understand the structure. Even the simplest of scenes illuminates life in that time. This description of the funeral for Ushimatsu's father provides a vignette of life, religion and the relationship between people and nature: "The rough wooden coffin was draped in a white cloth, and before it stood a newly inscribed memorial tablet, offerings of water and sweets, and bunches of chrysanthemums and anise leaves." "Shimazaki Toson's Broken Commandment is another step in the right direction," Kojin says on page 76 before going on to explain that genbun itchi (written and spoken language as one) "was a literary form of the confession - confession as a system - that produced the interiority that confessed the 'true self.' " While it is certainly true the reader sees the world from the inside of the main character's mind in Hakai, Armando Martins Janeira compliments Shimazaki's humanistic approach in his book Japanese and Western Literature: A Comparative Study, page 129. "In 1906, Toson Shimazaki published the most significant novel of shinzenshugi (naturalism) literature, Hakai, about a young outcast who rebels against conventions which banish him from society." My only concern about Janeira's critique is that he credits Christians with giving Shimazaki and other Japanese Meiji era authors their insight to write against the social system. While I don't doubt that contact with external agencies helped bring new perspectives to Japan, I question whether anyone can accurately trace that origin to source. After making this questionable parallel on page 144, he pays a compliment to the author that I feel is absolutely correct. "Toson Shimazaki's Hakai is the first important novel inspired by deep humanist intention." I can't say whether it is the first, but it is deeply humanistic and inspiring because it holds such a valuable message that still has application today. Although humanism is a defining aspect of another novel from that time, Tsuchi (1910) ties humanism so tightly to naturalism that it is hard to say where humanity stops and nature takes over. Perhaps it is best defined by the author who links The Soil to the people: "Hardly a day passed in Oshina's life when she had not felt the soil beneath her feet. Barefooted except in icy winter, she had been its creature. And now, in death, she was it's creature still. Separated only by a thin layer of pine, her feet would rest on the soil forever." (Page 25) The power of Tsuchi lies in the reader's sense of the onerous tasks of daily existence as a poverty-stricken farmer in Meiji jidai Japan. I came to empathize with Kanji's hard work and failed attempts to improve his painfully meager existence as the years kept flowing past him and his life did not change for the better. At heart, he seemed to be such a genuine human and yet cursed by birth to be a Japanese farmer in the late 1880s. The complete poverty of his existence and the other farmers in his categroy described as mizunomi or water drinkers. His food seemed so scarce that he could not have afforded to subsist on much more than water. Both Tsuchi and Hakai give detailed descriptions of rural funerals during a similar time period. However, they differ in some interesting ways. "Ushimatsu's uncle, faithful to the old way of doing things, had provided for the journey to the next world a sunshade and a pair of straw sandles. A knife to ward off devils lay on the lid of the coffin. The praying and the beating of the drum began again, and talk of the dead man, punctuated by artless laughter and the clatter of dishes, was sad and at the same time lively," Shimazaki wrote in Hakai. (Page 138) In contrast, Oshina has no knife to ward off spirits, nor does the author mention any sunshade to cover her during her journey in the after world. Instead, she gets a shave. This difference may have been due to gender or to the difference in various regions at that time. "The acolyte lifted the lid of the casket, removed Oshina's hood, and stroked her cheeks with a razor. In as much as the hard life and hard labor of Tsuchi appears to have deeper roots in realism, the birth or rebirth of realism in Japanese literature took place in the late 1800s. Authors began to mimic the language of everyday use in their novels creating a direct form of literary realism.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening study of prejudice as well as character study, August 1, 2008

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Wave Tossed (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Broken Commandment (The Japanese Foundation Translation Series) (Paperback)

As a member of a minority (based on my sexual orientation) that had been frequently cursed and despised by various religions and societies -- and also a minority where one can remain hidden and concealed -- I related readily to this book. Does a person hide his or her despised minority status and thus attain and maintain one's position as a part of the privileged majority -- even if this position is based upon a false and dishonest premise? Or should a person come out and reveal membership as part of a despised minority and achieve a certain amount of freedom from having been honest and open? However, this revelation can likely carry grim consequences: the economic hardship of loss of job and career, the social hardship of isolation and rejection, the personal hardship of being a target of overt or covert violence. The temptation can be overwhelming to hide one's status as a member of a minority on the basis that it is "private" and also that it would unjustly deprive the person of the protection, privileges, and rights that such a person would normally be entitled to as a human being within a society. However, there is a drive to openly reveal one's self in order to join with other members in order to engage in a struggle for human justice.

So what does a member of a despised minority do? How to solve this dilemma? This is what the main character of THE BROKEN COMMANDMENT faces. The book was written in 1905, set in the author's native Japan. It was a time when the previously-segregated "outcast" classes of Japan, the eta ("abundant filth") and the hinin ("non-human"), were supposed to have been freed from the forced segregation and degradation, existing on the bottom rungs of the feudal class structure that had recently been set aside. Ironically, at the time that the alleged abolition of these pariah classes took place - practically at the same time, another pariah group in the US, African-Americans, who had been enslaved, were supposed to have been freed from their slavery. In both cases, however, the former outcasts (or slaves in the US) continued to be subjected to segregation, harsh discrimination, and violence; perhaps things aren't so different after all in various parts of the world.

A note here: it was not until the 1920's, many years after the novel was written, that the term "burakumin" began to be used to refer to the former outcasts of Japan. So this would explain the author's use of the word "eta" rather than "burakumin" in the book.

Specifically, in THE BROKEN COMMANDMENT, Segawa Ushimatsu, a young teacher in a Japanese village, happens to belong to the old eta class. His father had gone to great pains to cover up this ancestry, so that Ushimatsu can have the opportunities that he would never have as an open member of the eta. He has literally laid down a commandment to his son to never reveal his membership as a part of an "unclean" outcast class. The novel goes on to explore the onerous burden that Ushimatsu must carry in concealing his true self. When others talk about the "unclean" eta, when a wealthy eta gentleman is refused admission to a hospital and then evicted from his rented lodgings, Ushimatsu feels unable to express any sympathy toward his fellow outcast. This is similar to the times when a hidden Jewish or gay person in the US would have felt as if he/she had to laugh at Jewish or gay jokes in order to conceal one's true identity. As the novel progresses, Ushimatsu feels the pressure of his secret more and more. The writings and activities of a prominent eta who has become an activist for his people make it even more difficult for Ushimatsu to continue in his deception. He longs for the freedom to come out and reveal who he truly is. But he feels burdened by his father's original commandment to him. The martyrdom of the eta activist, who dies from being stoned by violent, anti-eta bigots, finally motivates Ushimatsu to break his father's commandment and come out openly at his school and in his community. Though he faces the consequences of loss of his position and some condemnation, he is also admired by his former students and others who can perceive his courage.

The ending is a bit controversial. Some people have said that it is unsatisfactory, a sort of "deus-ex-machina" ending. The book could have ended tragically, with Ushimatsu forced into ruin and degradation, and possibly his own martyrdom. However, instead, the author is able to impart a feeling of freedom inside Ushimatsu's mind. Ushimatsu has lost a lot in freeing himself of his secret. But he has gained a remarkable measure of freedom. He has also won over many people who have experienced his break from engrained prejudice. He ends up allying himself in an act of solidarity with the man who had been evicted from both hospital and home at the beginning of the story. There are vague plans made about Ushimatsu and his colleagues possibly emigrating from Japan to the US (where a few decades later, he and his colleagues would have been interned in detention camps as "Japs"), but there is an "open-ended" feel to the story's end. The final impression is of a person who has flown freely out of a prison that had been built by ancient prejudices.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars At its heart, a very modern novel, February 5, 2007

By 

Jonathan Groner (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Broken Commandment (The Japanese Foundation Translation Series) (Paperback)

This novel, written 100 years ago, finds its place easily in modern literature. Its theme is authenticity: A real life and real happiness can only be achieved if someone recognizes, internally and externally, who he is. "Passing," which is the strategy advocated by the protagonist's father, necessarily inovolves a lack of authenticity and a lack of completeness. The only way to achieve wholeness is to "break the commandment."

This book is secondarily a social novel about discrimination against the "eta," a form of class prejudice that persists in Japan today.