The Rhetoric of Confession, Fowler

"To the extent that form can be distinguished from content, the mode of presentation in shishosetsu(한국에서 말하는-일본의- "사소설"을 의미) (and probably in other kinds of Japanese literary texts as well), would appear to be more culture-bound than the specific information presented. What distinguishes the shishosetsu from western fiction is not how closely it follows "real life" but how singularly it operates as a mode of discourse. As confession, it usually pales before its western counterparts. The novels of many writers, from Strindberg and Tolstoy to Miller and Mailer, contain "revelations" far more blatant and shocking than any to be found in the shishosetsu. Confessional autobiograthy, however, like most traditional fiction in the west, is informed by what might be described as a secular teleology whereby personal disclosures are made with a specific formal as well as moral end in mind.Confession in the interest of atonement or slef-analysis or even self-aggrandizement is the catalyst for some resolution or action that gives the work its shape and direction. In short, fiction and autobiography in the west have one of their formal properties a sense of forward movement and purpose.

The literary mechanism by whuch an author makes the reader sense this movement is, of course, the emplotted narrative (henceforth "narrative" will vbe used in this particular sense), and it is precisely this mechanism that appears to be so attenuated in shishosetsu and in much of Japanese fiction. It should come as nor surprise, then, that Japanese critics are generally uncomfortable calling the shishosetsu fiction at all. Fiction, as in other western modes of discourse, from history and bigoraphy to the expository essay, houses a narrative dynamo that generates a linear, forward-moving plot and, like harmony and counterpoint in music, propels the thematic development to its conclusion. Since at least the eighteenth century, narrative in the west has been founded on the belief that process- the growth or development of a hero or institution in fiction, biography, or history- was not only an ontological possibility but could be faithfully represented. Japanese literature, however, has traditionally been more concerned with state than with process, and narrative in the sense defined here has therefore played a limited role.

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Moreover, while narrative in the west, according to Noel Burch, is weighted heavily toward "realistic" representaiton, it has competed in Japan with more self-consciously presentational styles in a variety of literary and performative modes throughout history: waka, haikai, nikki, zuihitsu, no, joruri, and even monogatari and ukiyo zoshi whuch have commonly but incorrectly been regarded as narrative-centered forms. The linear narrative flow in all these forms is contitnually intersected by allusion, polysemy, and discursive meditations, whuch disrupt the readers' focus on the object of narration and redirect it insistently on the narrating subject and /or the very process of narration. (Introduction, xx-xxi)