The Uncanny Intertextuality: Discomfort toward Technology

Development in Soseki’s Yume Juu Ya and Kurosawa’s Yume

Joyce A. Setyawan

, Rouli Esther Pasaribu

Japanese Studies, Faculty of Humanity, University of Indonesia

Keywords: Intertextuality, Uncanny, Natsume Soseki, Akira Kurosawa, Repressed Discomfort

Abstract: This paper is about the uncanny of the intertextuality between Natsume Soseki’s series of short stories Yume

Juu Ya (1908) and Akira Kurosawa’s film, Yume (1990). Freud (1919) explained uncanny as a class of the

terrifying which leads back to something very familiar yet it was become alienated from the mind through the

process of repression, so when it comes to light it gives a strange terrifying feeling. The method of this

research is textual analysis on Soseki’s Yume Juu Ya and Kurosawa’s Yume. The research result shows the

reasons why the intertextuality could be perceived as uncanny are the repetition, the concept of dream, and

the sublimation of repressed discomfort toward the development of technology in Japanese society. The fact

that both artworks internalized the discomfort toward the issue, means that the issue of technology

development continued from its beginning in Meiji era in 1900s all the way to the contemporary period in

1990s.

1 INTRODUCTION

Since Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan had been

trying to make themselves equal to the Western

countries in many aspects, such as military,

economical strength, and technology. This

enthusiasm of Western modeled modernization in

Meiji Era may be summarized by two slogans:

Datsua Nyuuo (leave Asia, join Europe), encouraging

Japanese society to leave the old traditional Asia and

pursuing the way of the more modern Western, and

Bunmei Kaika (era of civilization and enlightenment),

acceptance of Western civilization and modernization

in all aspects (Kitahara, 1986). This was the

beginning of Japanese famous industrialization and

technology development. The industrialization of

Japan prior to World War II happened very quickly

(Minami, 1977) and massive postwar industrial

technology development made Japan’s growth in

productivity the most rapid since 1960 compared to

the country with the same industry (Hart, 1992). On

the surface the notion of modernization and

technology development seemed to be a good idea

and welcomed by both society and government.

However, if we look deep into the Japanese society,

we can see that there are different voices regarding

the modernization and technology development in

Japan, which can also be traced down on the art

works, such as literature and cinematic works.

Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), one of the most

famous modern literature writers of Meiji era, wrote

in his 1902 diary that “Japan has tried to absorb

Western culture in a hurry and as a result has not had

time to digest it” (Fukuchi, 1993). His critics toward

modernization can also be traced in his writings, such

as series of short stories Yume Juu Ya (Ten Nights of

Dreams, 1908) and Kokoro (1914). Response toward

modernization, industrialization and westernization

did not stop in Meiji Era. In the history of Japanese

cinema, Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), regarded as

one of the most important and influential director and

screen-writer of all time, directed Yume (Dreams,

1990) in response to atomic bomb and Japan’s

“incompetent nuclear power industry” (Shapiro,

2001).

Both Soseki and Kurosawa were actively

responding to what happened in Japan during their

times using the form of art; Soseki with literature, and

Kurosawa with cinema. The connection between

literature and film may also be found in the form of

intertextuality. Kristeva said that each text is an

intersection of texts so at least one other text can be

read (Alfaro, 1996.) The similarity between

Kurosawa’s Yume and Soseki’s Yume Juu Ya, which

in fact share the same opening sentence “konna yume

332

Setyawan, J. and Pasaribu, R.

The Uncanny Intertextuality: Discomfort toward Technology Development in Soseki’s Yume Juu Ya and Kurosawa’s Yume.

DOI: 10.5220/0010007500002917

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Social Sciences, Laws, Arts and Humanities (BINUS-JIC 2018), pages 332-337

ISBN: 978-989-758-515-9

wo mita” (“I saw a dream like this”), is what to be

called as an intertextuality.

One of the responses emerging from

intertextuality is the feeling of uncanny (Levin,

2011). Freud explained uncanny as a class of the

terrifying which leads back to something long known

to us, once very familiar (Svenaeus, 1999); it is

something familiar and old-established in the mind

yet it was become alienated from the mind only

through the process of repression, so when it comes

to light it gives a strange terrifying feeling; for

example the theme about death and pain are both

familiar, yet it is repressed and gives terrifying feeling

when mentioned. Intertextuality can produce some

kind of uncanny effect by repetition and rendering up

something that was familiar into something strangely

foreign (Levin, 2011). This paper will focus on how

the intertextuality of Yume Juu Ya in Kurosawa’s

Yume gives uncanny effect.

Napier wrote that Yume Juu Ya posses an

“effective development of a surreal otherness”

(Napier, 1996), which is also a key element to

creating the uncanny effect by choosing a setting

which differ from the real world. The closest study

about intertextuality between Yume Juu Ya and Yume

is an article by Notani talks about the similarity

between Yume Juu Ya and Yume, especially in the

sixth dream of the short stories and the fifth dream of

the film; but this article did not talk about the uncanny

effect in both art works (野谷, 1990).

Both Kurosawa and Soseki are part of the

Japanese society, and both of them experienced the

rapid development of technology in order to speed up

the modernization and advance industrialization. It is

reasonable to say that these issues could be

sublimated into the artworks of Kurosawa and Soseki

through their individual unconsciousness, yet since

it’s in fact a collective familiarity, the depiction of it

brings the sense of uncanny. Through text analysis

method, this paper will focus upon why the

intertextuality between Kurosawa’s Yume and

Soseki’s Yume Juu Ya could be perceived as uncanny

by the Japanese audience.

2 FINDING AND DISCUSSION

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2.1 Reality in a Dream

Yume (1990) consists of eight separated episodes,

containing various dreams which are based on the

dreams Kurosawa has had since his childhood

(Serper, 2001). Each dreams started with an opening

sentence, “konna yume wo mita” (“I saw a dream like

this”). The structure of Kurosawa’s Yume is pretty

much similar to Soseki’s Yume Juu Ya. Yume Juu Ya

is a series of ten short stories consisting of ten

unconnected dreams, just like Kurosawa’s Yume. The

dreams are narrated by an “I”, but unlike Kurosawa’s

Yume, the “I” here is not perceived as Soseki because

the dreams are not based on his own dreams. This

series of short stories also use the same opening

sentence as above, konna yume wo mita, which, a bit

different from Kurosawa’s Yume, is only used in the

beginning of four of the dreams: first dream, second

dream, third dream, and fifth dream. This is an

example of what is to be called as intertextuality.

Regarding intertextuality, Alfaro explained that to

understand the concept of intertextuality we need to

“understand texts not as self-contained systems but as

differential and historical, as traces and tracings of

otherness, since they are shaped by the repetition and

transformation of other textual structures” (Alfaro,

1996, and one factor which shaped Yume was of

course the repetition and transformation of Yume Juu

Ya such as the presence of the same opening sentence

and similar narrative structure.

Other than the same opening sentence, the “I”s in

both narratives are relatively passive. In Kurosawa’s

Yume, the main characterf presenting the main plot of

the dream is not “I”, but the characters he

encountered, while in Soseki’s Yume Juu Ya, the

dreamer is somewhat ghostlike in many ways, a

shadowy figure forced to take parts in situations

which he does not understand (Napier, 1996).

The key concept to both art works is that they are

the embodiment of narrated dreams, which is

something already familiar to humanity. The whole

process of dreaming itself could be considered as

uncanny. Freud said that the uncanny effect is often

and easily produced by blurring the distinction

between imagination and reality, and those who

dream often not realizing the fact that they are in a

dream. To Japanese society, to be specific, dream is

perceived as important in aesthetics and literature

where dreamlike motives are systematically

employed in order to explore states of reality and

feeling (Botz-Bornstein, 2007). Takeuchi says that

the dependent origination, the law of causality in

Buddhism, is like a dream: “When we dream, we live

in correlatedness with the world of the dream and

The Uncanny Intertextuality: Discomfort toward Technology Development in Soseki’s Yume Juu Ya and Kurosawa’s Yume

333

though the phenomenal identity of dreamer and

dream, keep the dream alive; but as soon as we

become aware of its correlatedness, we have already

awoken” (Botz-Bornstein, 2004). This implies that a

dream is not a result of reality, but reality is a result

of dream.

Uncanny, as we have seen, is similarly a product

of strange repetition, an eerie recurrence whereby that

which was once familiar is rendered strangely foreign

so intertextuality will add to this strange repetition

and eerie recurrence (Levin, 2011). For the audience

who were familiar with Soseki’s works, watching

Kurosawa’s Yume will evoke an eerie feeling; a

feeling like something is being repeated, yet it is not

the same thing; the uncanny effect. What also makes

Kurosawa’s Yume uncanny is because it represents

the notion of a dream which brought up repressed

wishes as well as traumatic experience. Moreover, it

brings up traces of Soseki’s Yume Juu Ya, evoking a

sense of repetition. Since a dream is supposed to be a

road to the unconsciousness, a road to the repressed

wishes and traumatic experiences, it is safe to say that

the dreams in Yume and Yume Juu Ya also depict the

unconsciousness of someone, or something. Napier

wrote that “most of the anxieties and challenges he

[Soseki] chronicles [in Yume Juu Ya] are universally

experienced by modern human beings” (Natsume,

2015). Thus it is arguable that the dreams in

Kurosawa’s Yume also represent the

unconsciousness, not only of Kurosawa as an

individual, but even of the broader collective

unconsciousness of Japanese society in Kurosawa’s

era.

2.2 Depiction of Technology

Soseki lived through the Meiji period (1868-1912),

when the initial massive industrial and technology

development took place. Although in the surface, this

development seemed to be well received, but the

depiction of it in Yume Juu Ya tells otherwise. The

dreams in Yume Juu Ya talks about the anxiety and

challenges, also the feeling of alienated in modern

society (Natsume, 2015). “The Seventh Night” also

depicts that anxiety and alienated feeling by using a

depiction of Meiji modern technology in the form of

steamship, where “I” found himself standing on it. He

said: “I found myself abroad a great ship. Day and

night the ship cut its way through the waves, belching

endless black smoke as it went. The noise was

horrific” (Natsume, 2015).

The first sight of steam-powered ship for the

Japanese society was the sight of Kurofune or the

Black Ship, the vassal of United States Commodore

Matthew Perry entering Japan in 1853, which then

symbolizes the end of Tokugawa period as well as the

isolation policy (Nishiyama, 2016). Black Ship

demonstrated the power of technology development

which brought Japan into realization that the only

defense against the West was to adopt its superior

technology.

In the dream, the ship was headed somewhere “I”

didn’t know, in a never-ending voyage, yet always

seemed to be chasing the sun described like a “red-

hot fire iron.” The ship was crowded with foreigners,

with faces of all kinds. “I” was feeling too much

discomfort toward the ship and the foreigners that he

decided to end his own life. Unfortunately, just after

he leapt out of the ship he found his will to live and

being on the ship was the only option to live. To the

end of the dream, “I” kept on falling and falling

without even touching the water surface; he’s in the

state of never-ending fall. Treyvaud wrote that “the

seventh dream has long been viewed as a metaphor

for Japan in the Meiji Era” which “had lost its way in

its attempts to modernize” yet there’s no way of

stopping it (Natsume, 2015). Just like the Black Ship

symbolizes the superiority of the West, the steam-

powered ship full of foreigners symbolizes the

modernization of Japan bringing with it foreign

cultures, it is unstoppable and no way to escape from.

The appearance of a specifically steam-powered

ship puffing black cloud to the sky in the series clearly

shows that the notion of Black Ship was still going

around even 50 years after its entrance, in 1908 when

Yume Juu Ya released. The feeling of discomfort

toward foreign things has to be repressed in order to

keep up with the rest of the world, referring back to

the bunmei kaika motto, that acceptance of Western

modeled modernization was needed and critic toward

it was frown upon because Western was the one who

brought Japan civilization and helping Japan to move

forward. Since it was narrated as a dream, it stands on

the bridge between reality and imagination. The

readers realized that it was supposed to be just a

dream, but the familiar feeling of discomfort toward

technology development and foreign origin things

and people was real, resulting in the uncanny.

Kurosawa’s Yume also depicts technology in the

film despite that technology had been far developed

during Kurosawa’s period. Japan even managed to

gain some energy independence by building nuclear

power plants. However, the depiction of modern

technology in Kurosawa’s Yume, similar to the

depiction of technology in Yume Juu Ya, does not

speak about the wonders of the technology

development.

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Rather than the technology itself, the dreams in

Kurosawa’s Yume depict more of the side effects of

technology. The dream in the episode of “Mount Fuji

in Red” for example is a dream about Mount Fuji that

was dyed in red color as the result of the explosions

of six nuclear reactors surrounding it.

During the catastrophe, a female character met by

the “I” enraged and said that the government

promised nuclear was safe, and if anything is

dangerous it would be the human: “But, they said that

the nuclear plants were safe! What’s dangerous is the

miscalculation, but the nuclear plant itself is

harmless. They said they will not do any

miscalculation so there will be no problem. I will

never forgive those people” (Baishō, & Harada,

1990). Shapiro described that in this sequence

“Japan’s scandalously incompetent nuclear power

industry causes a catastrophic meltdown” (Baishō, &

Harada, 1990).

Mizumoto in Thomas (2015) argued that Japan

has four faces regarding nuclear issue: face of an

atomic victim, of a US ally under a nuclear umbrella,

of an active promoter of peaceful nuclear energy, and

of a peaceful nation promoting nuclear abolition.

Japanese can neither securitize nor de-securitize

nuclear weapons, nor to be introduced to or excluded

from it (Doyle, 2015). However, this tension and the

anti-nuclear power movement did not stop the

government from planting atomic power generators

and having an alliance with the US under their nuclear

umbrella.

A dream is supposed to be a road to one’s

unconsciousness. “Mount Fuji in Red” was

designated to bring up a repressed trauma and fear of

the unconsciousness of Japanese society. Although,

until this film was released, there was no high level

nuclear related accident ever happened in Japan, yet

the trauma of the atomic bombing and the fear of

another nuclear catastrophe existed during

Kurosawa’s period. This repetitiveness connected to

collective trauma creates an effect of the uncanny

(Svenaeus, 1999). Both dreams, “The Seventh Night”

from Yume Juu Ya and “Mount Fuji in Red” from

Yume, are depicting the dark side of modernization

and technology development in a narration of a

dream. Despite the difference in time period, both

internalized the issue of discomfort toward

technology development, an issue repressed by the

need to catch up with the rest of the developed

country.

One reason why this discomfort remains a century

after the initial development begun was the war as it

was the perfect example where the development of

technology brought destruction to the humanity.

Japanese also developed a collective trauma to the

notion of nuclear energy after the bombing (Doyle,

2015). Another was the risk of using nuclear powered

energy, especially after Chernobyl disaster happened

in 1986. Even with all the risk, Japan chose to

continue their development in nuclear energy to gain

economic independence. These were the reasons why

the discomfort toward technology remains in the

1990s; the development of high-risk technology.

2.3 The Gods of the Past

Tibesar (1937) argued that Japan possessed a “deeply

religious nature”. The ancient religion’s belief and

value had been a part of the society for so long that it

could not be separated and defined as a “religion”.

Yet, the root of the beliefs and value could be traced

back to Shinto and Buddhism.

In Yume Juu Ya’s “The Sixth Night”, “I” was

watching Unkei, an influential Japanese Buddhist

sculptor, carves Niou (Two Benevolent Kings, the

guardian gods of the Buddhism) out of a wooden log

at the gate of the Gokokuji Temple. What’s

interesting is that Unkei was a real influential sculptor

from the 13

century Kamakura period, while

Gokokuji Temple was not built until 1681, and “I”

himself is depicted as someone from Meiji era. “I”

was fascinated with the way Unkei carved without

hesitation when a young man near him said: “Those

exact eyebrows and noses are buried in the wood, and

he just uses the hammer and chisel to dig them out.

It’s just like digging a rock out of the ground – there’s

no way to get it wrong” (Natsume, 2015). Thinking

he could do it too, the narrator heads home to carve

gods out of wooden logs in his garden; it was

unsuccessful. Niou, the Two Benevolent Gods, were

only accessible to Unkei and his Kamakura period

log; it was nowhere to be found in the wooden logs of

Meiji. Napier explained that “The Sixth Night”

suffused with nostalgia for a purer, richer past, an

increasingly inaccessible past for the modernizing

Japan of the Meiji period (Napier, 1996). Since

Buddhism and Shinto is more like a way of living

than of a way of praising the gods and deities, the

inexistence of gods in Meiji’s wooden log could also

be interpreted as the failure of some ancient ways of

living to prevail in the “modernized” Meiji era.

In the second dream of Yume, “The Peach

Orchard”, “I” encountered the personification of the

peach tree’s spirits who appear in the form of hina

dolls. The spirits told the young narrator that they

shall not come to his house again because his family

chopped the whole field of peach trees. During

modernization and industrialization, nature has long

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335

been the victim of the process. If a family cutting an

orchard of peach trees resulting in the gods’ desertion

of the house, what will happen to a whole nation

sacrificing the nature for the sake of capital

advantages? Is there still any kami (gods) in modern

Japan? The question probably could be answered by

looking back at Soseki’s “The Sixth Night”; the

inexistence of gods, the lost of ancient ways of living.

The second appearance of the depiction of god or

kami in Yume is in the episode of “Mount Fuji in

Red”. Mountains in Japan have been regarded as holy

places of ancestral spirits and gods, and Mount Fuji is

worshipped as the sacred place of various kami. The

threatening blazing red Mount Fuji depicted in the

episode contrasts the usual benevolent image of

Mount Fuji. Regarding the red Mount Fuji, Serper

explained: “The angered god of the mountain, who

was badly treated, causes natural disaster as a

contemporary polluter” (Serper, 2001). As the result

of technology development disaster, the benevolent

ancient traditional god changed into the threatening

polluting god. The image of red threatening Mount

Fuji has become an uncanny image to the eyes of

Japanese society that worship the great gentle Mount

Fuji.

Dream does not only bring back the traumatic

experiences, but also the repressed wishes. Soseki’s

“The Sixth Night” and Kurosawa’s “The Peach

Orchard” can be read as a representation of repressed

wishes of Japanese society toward modernity and

technology; wishes of going back to the past, to the

traditional beliefs and norms that were silenced by the

force to catch up with modernity and technology. In

the last dream, “The Watermill Village”, Kurosawa

shares a hope that somewhere there’s a place where

human being can live without modern technology and

one with nature, where the gods are benevolent, and

where everybody is happy with their life that they

want to live long.

This last dream of Kurosawa’s Yume probably

could also answer the question why the discomfort

towards development of technology and

modernization lasts even during the contemporary

era. When “I” encountered an old man in the

Watermill Village, the old man said something like

this: “What’s worse, most people see those stupid

inventions as a miracle and worship them. They don’t

realize how nature is destroyed by it and that they are

going to perish with it” (Baishō & Harada, 1990).

The discomfort toward the development of

technology is not without reason. The existence of

atomic power reactor means there will be radioactive

wastes that must be managed correctly. Even if the

waste is dumped somewhere safe, far from

civilization, it will still going to be a pollutant decades

after it was dumped.

3 CONCLUSIONS

Through text analysis applied on the two art works

above, it can be concluded that there are three reasons

why the intertextuality between Kurosawa’s Yume

and Soseki’s Yume Juu Ya could be perceived as

uncanny by the Japanese audience: because of (1) the

repetition, (2) the concept of dream, and (3) the

repressed “familiar something” sublimated in the art

works.

Intertextuality between Kurosawa’s Yume and

Soseki’s Yume Juu Ya allows repetition to happen and

to the Japanese audience who had already familiar

with Soseki’s works, especially Yume Juu Ya, the

similar structure and opening sentence of Kurosawa’s

Yume will trigger the strange feeling of having

already visualized the work, yet it still felt different;

thus the uncanny.

Yume Juu Ya allows the reader to fit into the place

of the anchor character by the usage of first speaker

point of view, while Yume allows the audience to be

attached to the anchor character by using the same

actor along all along the series of dream. As the result,

although they are technically the dreams of the anchor

characters, the uncanny experience of a dream could

be transferred from the fictional world to the readers

or the audiences.

The repressed “familiar something” which

internalized in both artworks is the issue of

discomfort toward modernization and technology

development. This feeling of discomfort continued

from its initiation in Meiji era, even to the

contemporary 1990s when Yume was released as the

result of the war trauma, and the development of

high-risk technology.

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