Ōe Kenzaburō's "Ningen no hitsuji"

My first encounters with Ōe Kenzaburō were as a student of Japanese language and literature at the University of California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though an adult in my late 20s and early 30s, I was still in my formative years as a "citizen" of a very messy world trying to make sense out of human history and my own life. I therefore begin this story -- about my reading of Ōe's "Ningen no hitsuji" (人間の羊) or "Human sheep" in 1972 -- with an overview of life till then.

Returning to school

After Mishima's and Kawabata's suicides

Being a writer did not always attract me. I was more interested in math and science, and then electrical engineering, and never devoted much time to courses on English, history, society, or government. I took 2 years of Spanish because I had to. Physical education and shops I liked, as I was fairly athletic and liked to make things.

I didn't begin to take an interest in writing until a junior college English teacher told me -- while turning my compositions red -- that my ideas were cogent -- and my way of putting things were colorful, if not always clear and concise or mechanically correct. Then at Berkeley in the fall of 1962, as a junior in the Department of Electrical Engineering, I lost my political innocence during the Cuban Crisis, and accidently got an A in a philosophy class I took to fulfill College of Engineering breadth requirements.

I began to have things I wanted to say about current events and world affairs, and the beauties of nature and the horrors of its destruction. And I discovered that I could convey my thoughts and feelings to others through writing -- starting with letters to editors for the world to read, and poems for my eyes only.

Dropping out and military service

I finished the fall semester of 1962, my first term at Cal, with a B+ average -- higher than the B- average I had registered in two years at Sierra College. Academically I was comfortable and confident. Emotionally, though, I began to dislike the prospects of a future in which my engineering skills would be most valued by the defense industry.

I'd already worked three summers and an entire year off from school for the Department of Navy at San Francisco Naval Shipyard at Hunters Point. My position was that of an aide in the Electronics Division, and I was assigned to the Fire Control Section, where I worked with enginners who serviced, installed, and tested anit-aircraft and anti-submarine missile and torpedo weapons systems on all classes of war ships, from mine sweepers to aircraft carriers, vintage as well as refitted or constructed at the shipyards.

As a member of the Sputnik generation, I had become fascinated with astronomy and space exploration. By the early 1960s, though, that fascination was undermined by prospects of a career in technology related to weapons and war.

During the Spring semester of 1963, I began auditing courses in the humanities, including archaeology and early writing systems. I also began skipping my enineering classes -- except the lab component of one of the classes, in which I was teamed with a friend who would have difficulty doing the lab work himself.

I took all the midterm exams but decided not to sit for the finals, and so I drew a slew of incompletes that would become so-called "Withdrawal Fs (WFs) on the transcript, for failure to complete course work by making up missing assignments and exams. Following an interview by the assistant dean of the College of Engineering, I was put on probation for one year, during which I could decide if I wanted to resume my studies in the college or withdraw.

That summer, no longer enrolled, I was ordered by my local Selective Service Board to take a physical exam as the first step of being drafted into the Army. At the time, I was working for the Tahoe National Forest as a member of a surveying crew, couldn't have been in better phyical conditon, and was classified 1A.

While waiting to be drafted for 2 years, and probably be assigned to a missile battery, I enlisted for a third year in order to choose my military specialty -- medical corpsman. If I had to be a soldier, I would be one who would treat wounds, not make them. I did not then understand the implications of this logic.

After a few months of training, I became a driver and medic in an ambulance company, which was part of a medical battalion that supported an evacuation hosptial, all at Fort Ord. The company supported infantry training units, but also trained in the field with the battalion and hospital, and once particpated in a regional war game that gave medical units a chance to strut their stuff under simulated combat conditions involving two entire divisions fighting over the Colorado River.

By the time the Vietnam War began, I had petitioned for classification as an in-service conscience objector, which alleviated me of the obligation non-CO medics had to undergo periodic familiarization with firearms. Again, I didn't fully appreciate the implications of my refusal to bear arms while in the service.

I had become a medic to avoid assignment to a missile battery, but my engineering background, with lots of math, chemistry, and physics, made me ripe for selection to sent to the 6th Army Medical Laboratory at Fort Baker near Sausalito for training as a laboratory technician. I couldn't have asked for a better assignment -- six months doing nothing but learning the theory and practice of all manner of clinical testing. A year later, after six months of actual hospital laboratory experience, I was sent to Japan with the 106th General Hospital to set up operations at Kishine Barracks in Yokohama.

Before my lab tech training, I worked on college courses paid for by the Army. My enrollment in a marine biology course at Monterey College near Fort Ord was interrupted by my transfer to Fort Baker. I then opted for and completed a couple of correspondence courses through the extention program at the Univeristy of California. Just before mustering out of the Army in the fall of 1966, I enrolled in a couple of more extension courses, which I completed as a civilian while living with my parents and resuming my surveying job with the Tahoe National Forest, now as a crew chief.

In early 1967, I wrote to the College of Engineering about resuming my status as a student, with the option of remaining in the college or transferring to the College of Letters and Science. I was told that, if I wanted to transfer from the Department of Electrical Engineering to another department, in any college, I would have to be approved for admission to the other department. And whatever I did, I would have to request the College of Engineering to waive my WFs in the computation of my GPA on the condition that I get passing grades.

I had thought of going into a field related to clinical pathology, and on a lark I knocked on the door of a professor in the Department of Parisitology. He confided in me that the field had little future as there was little demand for parisitologists in the United States.

With a bit more resolve, and inspired by a friend who had been a math major before changing his major to Chinese, I stopped by the Department of Oriental Languages and talked with departmental secretary about transfer procedures. As my case was a bit unusal, she stuck her head in the office of the departmental chair, and he invited me in to talk about my situation.

Half an hour later I had forms to complete. My admission to the department would be contingent on a statement of purpose from me, and permission from the dean of the College of Engineering conditionally discounting the WFs in my GPA. The dean of the College of Engineering turned out to have been the assistant dean who put me on probation rather than expell me.

Nearly four years had passed, but my military service had begun within the probation period. And I had completed a number of UC extension courses in several departments with good grades. So the same professor who put me on probation approved my reinstatement of status as a UCB student. And a few weeks later I was informed by the Department of Oriental Languages that I could register and enroll in classes from the Fall of 1967.

Return to college

By the time I returned to Berkeley in the fall of 1967, as a junior in the Department of Oriental Languages, I had several letters to editors, a few by-lined articles, and even a newspaper column under my belt. I was also reading Writer's Digest and collecting rejection slips.

I had previously written the usual short reports and essays for some high school and college classes. But 1967 marked the first time I would have to write term papers that demonstrated my ability to use libraries and other research skills in the service of developing an original thesis.

The thought of writing any kind of paper intimidated some of my classmates, but I thrived on writing reports. I never asked questions about length or mechanics, and sometimes began writing before an assignment was made, knowing one was coming.

The only rules I diligently followed were that reports be typed, double spaced with liberal margins, and submitted on time. Some professors, but not all, allowed hand corrections so long as they were neat and few. Some specified the citation style to be followed, but most accepted any style so long as it was clear and consistent. I did a lot of experimenting, mixing elements of one style with those of another, and sometimes doing things not found in the Chicago Manual of Style.

The main obstacle for me, in the Oriental Languages Department, was its requirement that undergraduates study a European language in addition to an Oriental language. My simultaneous study of elementary Chinese with elementary Japanese, then my study of elementary Korean with intermediate Japanese, did not count.

When transferring to Oriental Languages, I had already completed all breath requirements, so for two years I could focus entirely on courses related to Japan. Completing the European language requirement, however, would require more time, and I wanted to finish in two years. So in my second (senior) year in the department, I petitioned for an individual major that involved course work related to Japan in several departments -- and relieved me of the need to satisfy the European language requirement.

The individual major declaration allowed me to graduate in June 1969 with a degree in Japanese Studies, which was not listed in Cal's catalog. My principle sponsors were George De Vos in the Department of Anthropology and Frank Motofuji in the Department of Oriental Languages. I did not rule out someday going to graduate school, but at the time, wanted to go to Japan and see what it was really like.

I met and befriended a couple of Japanese visiting professors, one of whom introduced me to a family in Japan. And I met a woman who was passing through who gave me the name of the chief of the personnel department at a language school in Tokyo that employed university graduates for teachers.

Interlude in Japan

I went to Japan in January 1970, armed with a BA in Japanese Studies, to live with a family in Urawa while teaching English at Japanese American Conversation Institute, under the administration of International Education Center, a non-governmental foundation in Yotsuya. I was formally an IEC employee and a JACI faculty member.

Privately, my intent was to become personally familiar with Japan's mass media and popular culture, about which which I had written a lengthy paper, and social pathologies like delinquency, discrimination, and suicide. Living with the family was a way to directly experience everyday life and language.

In 1971, married to the niece of the mother of the family I lived with, I applied to the Group in Asian Studies at Berkeley for admission to its MA program -- a terminal "area studies" program originally established for training foreign service officers and other people, including journalists, who would benefit from a deeper and broader understanding of East Asia.

To my surprise, the acceptance letter came with an offer of a 1-year full-support fellowship. That the fellowship was called The fellowship resolved my ambivalence about graduate school. What could I lose?

Graduate school

I knew both the academic and urban terrain. I needed only to find an apartment, somewhere on the north side, where I had lived the first two times I'd been at Cal. I anticipated spending several days to find something that would work for me and my wife, but I was lucky. Within half a day I, signed a contract for an apartment in a convenient location with reasonable rent.

I befriended the resident manager, a sansei. When he left for medical school in Mexico a few months later, he recommended to the building owner, a real estate company, that I replace him. I had also become the manager of the apartment house I lived in during my second stay in Berkeley from 1967, around the corner from its owner, the deputy fire chief of Berkely.

During both managerial stints I was called to testify in court. My first testimony was in defense of the deputy fire chief, who had been sued by someone who the manager of another apartment house he owened had been turned away. The plaintiff alleged discrimination on account of race. I testified that the residents of the apartment I managed represented several races. The only conditions I was obliged to impose were no drugs, no pets, and no noise -- and a willingness to keep the toilet, bathroom, kitchen, and other communal spaces clean. My second testimony was simply that I had never, before that day in court, seen the suspect, who had been arrested and charged for a number of laundry room breakins in the neighborhood, including the apartment building I managed.

What I lost this third time at UCB was my academic innocence. My first time, in 1962-1963, on the eve of the Free Speech Movement, had made me more aware and even cynical of government and politics. My second time, in 1967-1969, in the thick of protests against the Vietnam War, and demands for human rights and an ethnic studies department, had made me more aware of the need for peace advocacy and solutions to social problems.

I returned to Berkeley from the fall of 1972 as a student in the Group in Asian Studies, an interdisciplinary (interdepartmental) program. For both my MA (Asian Studies, Japan) and PhD (Asian Studies, Northeast Asia), I would have one foot in Oriental Langauges and the other in Anthropology, with a couple of toes in Sociology and History.

During this third period at Berkeley -- from 1972-1975, and a term in 1982 to file and defend my doctoral dissertation -- I became skeptical of how Japan was being presented in academia and media, both in Japan and overseas.

During my stay in Japan, from January 1970 to July 1972, two of Japan's best known novelists died. Mishima Yukio (b1925), on 25 November 1970, unequivocally committed suicide by disembowelment and decapitation, at the Ground Self-Defense Force Headquarters in Ichigaya, a short walk from Yotsuya, where at the time he died I was teaching English. Kawabata Yasunari (b1899), on 16 April 1972, at his home in Kamakura, was asphyxiated by gas he apparently released with the intention of ending his life.

By the end of 1972, I had submitted a 10-page "Proposal for Dissertation for Master's Degree in Asian Studies (Japan)" to the Group in Asian Studies. The title was to be Myth and thought in Japanese mass media. Chapter 10, titled "Information and Sensation in the Weekly Magazines", included "A study of the responses of the weeklies to the suicides of Mishima and Kawabata, but also the attempted suicides of Kurosawa Akira and Funaki Kazuo".

The Group in Asian Studies viewed my proposal as too ambitious for an MA. The group thus created a PhD program for me to complete a doctorate in Asian Studies with a focus on North East Asia (Japan and Korea). I completed the MA with a written exam, then embarked on seminar work in preparation for field work and the oral exam required for admission to candidacy.

By the fall of 1974, however, partly because of the suicide of a classmate followed by the suicides of first her father and then her older sister, my research interests had shifted to suicide. With committee approval, I decided to write a dissertation on Suicide in Japan, and I began to apply for grants to conduct field work in Japan at the National Institute of Mental Health at Kōnodai in Ichikawa.

In in fall of 1972, however, during the first term of my return to Berkeley, I was focused on classes, including a course that familiarized intermediate and advanced students of Japanese with Japanese fiction in Japanese, for which I wrote Ōe Kenzaburō and Sheep, the report shown here.

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Click on page to enlarge 1st of 7 pages of "Ōe Kenzaburō and "Sheep" written for Fall 1972 Japanese literature course taught by Frank T. Motofuji, Department of Oriental Languages, University of California, Berkeley Yosha Bunko scan

First graduate school report

What I think now of what I thought then

The following report, Ōe Kenzaburō and Sheep, was the first paper I wrote after returning to Berkeley as a graduate student in the fall of 1972. I wrote the report for a course on reading Japanese fiction in Japanese, taught by Frank T. Motofuji, who had published an English translation of "Ningen no hitsuji" (人間の羊) as "Sheep" rather than "Human sheep".

As I recall, Motofuji began the course with a reading "Ningen no hitsuji" in Japanese, with reference to his translation. We then read passages from the originals of stories by several other authors, including -- as I recall -- Sōseki's Botchan (坊っちゃん 1906), which had been translated several times. We also chose a work to read for ourselves, and as I recall I read Mishima's Shiosai (潮騒 1954), which had been translated into English in 1956 by Meredith Weatherby as Sound of Waves, by then had already filmed 3 times (as of this writing in 2023, it has been filmed 5 times, and dramatized many times for television, radio, stage, and animation.

Reading this paper half a century later, I would grade it "B" on my overall scale, meaning "fair with quite a few serious problems". Knowing what I think I know better today than I did then, I wax between cynically disputing every assertion I made in the paper, and generously dismissing only 20 or 30 percent of what I wrote.

I wrote the paper to showcase a variety of real and imaginary research and analytical abilities, applied to topics and materials drawn from popular culture. Mass magazines and their content were totally beyond the scope of "serious" contemporary scholarship, which was supposed to be about economic, political, and social institutions, intellectual history, religion and philosophy, and the fine arts. De Vos's lectures, however, had left me with the impression that he might accept the subject matter of my paper -- and he did. I did not yet know him personally, and was prepared for a lower grade, but he gave my paper an "A" and wrote a number of remarks which indicated that he liked what I did or tried to to do. Tellingly, he did not comment on my odd jargon and pretentious style, nor mark a single spelling, grammar, or usage problem. This was a new experience for me, as most of my papers came back with at least some remarks about the mechanics of writing.

De Vos was amused by the colorful tables I created to show the "grading" and "structure" of my collection of magazines. He called them "mandalas" and would later joke, when referring to the need to reduce a jumble of multidimensional data to a single chart that revealed at a glance all its patterns and meanings, that "Maybe we could get Bill to make a mandala." To this day, I have a strong bent toward graphic representations, whether tables, charts, or graphs, or schematic diagrams.

In many ways, this single report sealed my fate at Berkeley. I was happy enough to be studying Japanese and Chinese, and then Korean, in the Department of Oriental Languages. The department's classical and modern Japanese literature courses were fun if not exactly exciting. And the few courses I was required to take in other departments were tolerable. But having abandoned my engineering studies, and decided not to pursue the interests in medical pathology I acquired during my military service, I was still looking for something to "do" and a "field" in which to do it. I found "Oriental Languages" and "History" and "Sociology" too confining. "Anthropology" was closer to where I felt I wanted to be, but I was not especially drawn to its "cultural" and "physical" focuses. Archaeology had always interested me, but not as a specialty.

I can't clearly remember whose idea it was that I petition for what was called an "individual major". I had seen the option in College of Letters and Science literature describing program choices, but whether I first approached De Vos with the idea, or whether he suggested it as a solution to my search for an academic "home", I can't recall.

As a major in Oriental Languages, and not Anthropology, my faculty adviser at the time was Frank Motofuji, who taught Japanese literature. But when it came to talk of what interested me most about Japan and its people, in relation to other countries and their peoples, I gravitated toward De Vos. His focus on comparative human behavior through what he called "cultural psychology" was intriguing. As an "approach" to understanding why people do what they do, because of or despite their social and cultural circumstances, it appealed to the "cosmological" viewpoint I acquired when asking What shall we do with Andromeda?" and synthesizing Cybernetics and semantics -- my recent efforts while in the Army, still on the run from my engineering studies, to understand the workings of the human condition and the problems humanity faces in an increasingly industrialized, nuclearized, and technocratic, yet still very tribal and nationalistic world. De Vos's illumination of the grandeurs (plural) of life through its darker windows appealed to me.

Enrollment at the University of California involved different levels. At the "college" level I had migrated from the College of Engineering to the College of Letters and Science. At the "departmental" level I had moved from the Department of Electrical Engineering to the Department of Oriental Languages. The Department of Anthropology was also in the College of Letters and Science, but like all departments, it had its own admissions rules and degree requirements. Creating an individual major, within the College of Letters and Science, required that I petition for recognition of a degree program in a non-departmental field, involving courses in two or more related departments. The petition had to be sponsored by a professor in one of the departments, who agreed to be my adviser, and supported by several professors in the related departments. De Vos agreed to be my adviser, and Motofuji and a couple of other professors also signed my petition for a degree in Japanese Studies.

Without De Vos's accommodation of my unusual academic interests when an undergraduate, I would never have been able to continue my studies at Berkeley. He, above all, understood my need for disciplinary freedom -- not freedom from the disciplines of academic rigour, but freedom from the limitations of departmental constraints regarding themes and methodologies. De Vos was himself an academic outlaw who didn't fit in the mainstreams of either Anthropology or Psychology, who insisted that personality was neither determined by nor free from culture, that cultures were subject to individual mediation, and no culture could be understood without examining "abnormal" as well as "normal" behaviors in their sociocultural and psychocultural contexts. Before taking courses from De Vos, I had acquired interests in "anti-social" behaviors such as racial discrimination, suicide, and crime. I understood that these were human behaviors found in every country. But it had never occurred to me such behaviors exposed the limits of cultural determinism -- to put it in a way would probably have triggered a long response from De Vos were he still alive and able to read this. De Vos rejected pat "national character" explanations, which generally hold that suicide in Japan is induced by a "culture of suicide". He (and Hiroshi Wagatsuma, his closest collaborator at the time) recognized that all suicide is motivated by common psychological factors, which cultural factors then affect, but on a case-by-case basis that belies the very notion of "national character" -- which encourages beliefs in lock-step, culturally driven mass behavior.

As a postscript to this wandering latter-day preface, I would add that all the magazines used in the following report are still in my possession -- in one of perhaps two hundred boxes of magazines collected over the years.

Abiko
10 May 2023

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