Emily Dickinson's Vision of "Circumference" and Death from a Japanese Perspective

Abstract

Emily Dickinson's Vision of "Circumference" and Death from a Japanese Perspective Midori Andō (bio) It can be said that, unlike all those around her who accepted God without question, Emily Dickinson entered into her own unique course of religious skepticism. I believe, however, that even though Emily Dickinson "disseminates" her "circumference" as an unbeliever, she is still a poet influenced by Christian Puritanism. I believe this perhaps because Japanese people know nothing of Dickinson's Puritan God and tend to look at Dickinson's "cicumference" comments from a completely different perspective. Even though many of Dickinson God of the Bible, as a Japanese I can still sympathize with her deeply. What is the source of my long fascination? First we should look at the nature of religion in Japan. It is said that religion in Japan is diverse and that even Western religion has been dissolved into Japanese traditional culture. There is a Japanese word "shūgō" (meaning compromise and fusion), which underlies Japanese culture, and can be summarized through Japanese dictionaries as follows: The word "shūgō" (compromise and fusion), symbolizes the essence of Japanese people who are good at accepting what they find favorable, while rejecting the unfavorable, in order to create something new. Japanese people generally live their daily lives according to teachings that fuse the two religions of Shintoism and Buddhism. There is a Japanese word "shin-butsu-shūgō" that refers to the compromise and fusion of Shintoism and Buddhism. In addition, Japanese have indigenous religious beliefs passed down through the generations, even though, on the surface at least, Japanese people may seem not to be very religious. Probably most Japanese, including Japanese Christians, have happy childhood memories of "matsuri," which are Shinto festivals held at local shrines. [End Page 221] Japanese also traditionally had the concept that Nature possesses mysterious powers greater than those of human beings. Especially to the ancient Japanese, Nature itself was an entity possessing life. Moreover, Japanese have indigenous beliefs concerning Death. One example is found in a passage from A Framing Green Tree, the latest novel by Kenzaburō Ōe, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in December, 1994. This novel is about the establishment and destruction of a religious group. In the story, a persona who later becomes the androgyne of the story is told by its grandmother about the way a man dies according to folklore. I have translated this passage as follows: At the moment of a person's death, the soul leaves the body, soaring high in the air and revolving in circles over houses, fields, and valleys to finally set down around the roots of the tree alloted to it before being born into this life. I would now like to suggest that, in light of the religious climate in Japan that I have just outlined, Japanese are well-suited for understanding Dickinson's "circumference" images of skepticism. Here I would like to add that, as far as "Circumference" is concerned, my own interpretation is not unlike Thomas H. Johnson's. He said that Dickinson associates the word's "circumference" images of skeptic "Awe" and "Circumference" "with cosmic expanse and the unknowable, and they must be interpreted in terms of her religious thinking" (Emily Dickinson 134). Japanese people are able to maintain almost any eschatological image under their philosophy of "shūgō." Tomiko Yamakawa (1879-1909), a "tanka" poet who lived during almost the same time as Dickinson, even regarded herself as God, writing a "tanka" in the previous year to her death: Lying sick on my quiet bed,I know unfeigned self as God. Perhaps the Japanese are more comfortable with Dickinson's skepticism than was Dickinson herself, for she always felt restrained by the image of God Almighty. She had to begin removing this image from within herself. But could she do it? There are countless reflections of God in her poems, such as "the silver strife—" (P157), "Heavenly Hurt" (P258), "Empress of Calvary!" (P1072), and others. In her poem beginning "Because I could not stop for Death—" (P712), the persona "I" passes through life and the grave, getting into the carriage with Death and Immortality, and then finally feeling skeptical...