Spatiality, destruction, and the individual in Takeda Taijun’s Sekai: an exposition and critique

Abstract

This article offers an examination of the Japanese postwar writer Takeda Taijun’s concept of destruction (metsubō) and his view of the sekai, or “world,” as a theoretical tool against Japanese imperialism, and potentially also for a transnational history. It first examines Takeda’s wartime book-length essay entitled Sima Qian: The World of Shiji (Shiba Sen: Shiki no sekai, 1943) to highlight Takeda’s conceptualization of space (kūkan) that anchors his figuration of the sekai. According to Takeda’s reading of Shiji, the structure of the sekai suggests a world without a hegemonic center that could survive its fate of destruction, which is considered by many Takeda scholars to be a prophesy of the bankruptcy of Japanese imperialism. It then points out the focus on the totality of the sekai in Takeda’s Sima Qian, in which the writer looks at history only from a retrospective standpoint and as a bystander. After the first section follows a reading of Takeda’s short story ‘Judgment’ (‘Shinpan,’ 1947) and his last work Shanghai Firefly (Shanhai no hotaru, 1976), in which this article not only observes the trajectory of the evolution of Takeda’s concept of the sekai as an absolute continuity that feeds on the absolute destruction of its parts, but also recognizes how Takeda’s concern of the individual in the sekai has been developed over the years. Finally, it discusses how a transnational history might be possible based on a scrutiny and critique of Takeda’s concept of the sekai.