Crisis of Time! The Tyranny of the Immediate and Community in Two Literary Works by Takahashi Gen'ichirō

Abstract

In his fiction, Takahashi Gen'ichirô often portrays crises of contemporary life where characters do not identify with shared ideologies or communities, resorting to repetitive actions to survive in their empty daily existences. This article argues that a central factor for such crises is a shattering of perceptions of orders of time, predicated on problematics linked to the lingering postwar Japanese context, and leading to an overextended present as the only dimension that matters. Characters can only focus on acting in their proximate realities, without critically confronting themselves with others or with wider issues in society. Often, this type of compulsive action is in response to sudden violent stimuli, also of a sexual nature. Ultimately, a possible way out of the never-ending cycles of the present is to reconstitute a community based on mutual understanding. The article examines these occurrences of the dominating immediate and community in the salient examples of the novel Godira and the stories in Kimi ga yo wa chiyo ni yachiyo ni. Through this analysis, the article shows the relevance of the theme in Takahashi's fiction and how it contributes to the broader field of Japanese literary studies, especially vis-à-vis the discourse on post-Fukushima productions.