Water Imagery in the Work of Izumi Kyoka

Abstract

I ZUMI KYOKA 7Amt, 1873-1939, has been aptly described by Juliet Carpenter as a stylist and as an author of 'perverse difficulty'.1 Donald Keene similarly holds that the difficulties of Kyoka's style have kept the author from obtaining a large audience in recent years. He adds, however, that for the same reason Kyoka's work partakes of 'a mystery that transcends any particular place and time.'2 His work was not particularly popular even in his own day, but it has, as Tanizaki predicted one year after Kyoka's death, worn well.3 We can enjoy Kyoka's prose for its subtle rhythms and vivid imagery, but we cannot always understand why one scene follows another. Rich and involved, a Kyoka story often reads like a series of striking moments rather than a coherent work of art. Our inability to understand how such labyrinthine tales are formed poses a considerable problem, requiring us to search the fragmented surface of style for whatever principles of form we can find. What follows is one key to reading Kyoka: knowing how he apprehends imagery and how imagery, as much as plot or characterization, gives structure to his work.