Critique of Japan as an East-West Literary Hybrid in Yoko Tawadas Kafka Kaikoku

Abstract

Yoko Tawadas drama Kafka Kaikoku (2013) depicts Japans encounter with Western culture from the Meiji era on as the catalyst for a metamorphosis much like Gregor Samsas in the work of the same name by Franz Kafka. Ironically, the victim of this East-West clash turns out to be Izumi Kyōka (1873- 1939), a man who was anything but an enthusiastic adopter of European literary style. Interweaving elements also from Kafkas Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor, 1919), Tawadas play suggests further that Izumis fate was set, since he—and, by extension, all Japanese—could not resist roles the West had prepared for him. Ultimately, this article explains, Kafka Kaikoku offers a critical view of modernization as a force that made Japanese into beings with a hybrid literary consciousness who lacked both much of their own native particularity and also their very humanity.