The influence of Fredric W. Brown’s micro fiction on Hoshi Shin’ichi’s and Akagawa Jirō’s short-short stories

Abstract

The short-short story was first introduced by Japanese writer Tsuzuki Michio, who in the late 1950s – the early 1960s familiarized the Japanese reader with extra-short stories of American author Fredric W. Brown (1906–1972); his traditions were followed by Japanese writer Hoshi Shin’ichi (1926–1997), Akagawa Jirō (b. 1948), and other authors experimenting in the new genre of social and psychological science fiction, as well as in the genre of fantasy and detective stories. In American literature, three major specific features of a short-short story were formulated: 1) a fresh idea, 2) an unexpected turn of events, 3) an unpredictable ending. These specific features can be traced in Japanese extra-short stories as well. Since the process of the emergence and development of the extra-short story as a new form of Japanese literature was influenced by American micro fiction, the research examines the elements borrowed from Fredric W. Brown’s micro fiction in Hoshi Shin’ichi’s and Akagawa Jirō’s first short-short stories; this includes genres, topics, canons, artistic styles and devices, as well as the treatment of certain social problems. The paper analyzes Hoshi’s and Akagawa’s short-short fiction from a comparative perspective, with an emphasis on intertextuality – shaping of a text’s meaning by another text, in this case, the texts by an American writer. Some literary parallels to Fredric W. Brown’s micro fiction can be found in Hoshi Shin’ichi’s first collection of short-short stories «Bokko-chan» (1971), which consists of stories written in 1958–1970, as well as in Akagawa Jirō’s first collection of short-short stories «The Dancing Man» (1986), which consists of stories written in the late 1970s – early 1980s. The succession of plots and philosophical ideas by Brown is examined on the material of seven early short-shorts by Hoshi, where the allusion to the American writer’s micro fiction can be traced; in addition, it is also noted that, in some mystic extra-short stories by Akagawa, it is not the plots which are borrowed, but mostly artistic devices and various techniques, such as psychologism, black humor, wordplay, and metaphorical images. American origins of the Japanese short-short story are investigated for the first time.