The Silent Cry

In The Silent Cry, themes of universal significance are compacted together chapter by chapter in dense detail. The novel exists as a texture, and to disentangle its components is to destroy that texture. O

- e’s imaginative land-

scape is wide. Themes not directly related to one another mesh together as the narrative progresses. The novel concerns itself with the reality of evil, the search for identity in life, power relationships in a social context and the symbolic power of myth as a way of interpreting existence. The main action takes place in a village, and events there can be seen in one sense as an allegory of the upheaval and uncertainty that took place in post-war Japan, following the misery of defeat and the dismantling of imperial authority. Like life itself, The Silent Cry is not governed by a single theme, and no single interpretation will suffice. This complexity can be seen if we begin by comparing the Japanese title with the title given to it in English. The Japanese title Man’en gannen no futtobo-ru actually means The Foot-

ball Game of the First Year of Man’en (1860). The Silent Cry, the title chosen by the translator was, one might suspect, selected for its greater market appeal. O

- e’s title is ironic, and the first sign of the satirical tone

which runs throughout the book. The football game refers to a ‘rising’ by Japanese villagers against a Korean-owned supermarket. The rebellion is led by a group of young men who have trained army-style in the guise of football training. The pillaging of the store peters out within a few days and leads to the humiliation of those involved. This small incident is part of a chain of violent incidents that had occurred in the village and is modelled on a rising by farmers against the authorities in 1860, a second rising in 1871 and a clash between Japanese and Koreans in 1945. All these had led to violent deaths. But the looting of the supermarket and its momentary takeover is of little consequence when compared to these preceding incidents and is an anti-climax in the cycle. Thus, the title is ironic. On the other hand, the title The Silent Cry chosen by the translator John

Bester is equally pertinent, as it strikes at a deep theme pervading the novel: despair expressed in Sartrean existentialist terms. Here again we find a cycle going on. The leading figures in the novel are Nedokoro Mitsusaburo-and his brother, Takashi. Examples of despair abound. A friend of Mitsusaburo-’s

hangs himself in the face of an ‘unutterable truth’; Mitsusaburo-and his wife, Natsumiko are in a state of psychological collapse because their new-born son has severe brain damage and is lost in impenetrable silence, just looking at them without any reaction; and Takashi, who has followed a path of evil throughout his life, commits suicide. The silent cry of anguish in all of them is a symbol of this despair. So, the two titles bind together two of the great themes in the novel: power

and violence, expressed in the village risings, and despair, expressed in the psychological state of the characters. The two themes twist and encircle each other like a double helix. The overall tone of the novel is one of enveloping gloom. It opens with

Mitsusaburo-crouched foetus-like in the mud and water of a recently dug septic tank pit in a state of absolute degradation, clutching a stinking dog to his chest. The scene is a classic example of O

- e’s ongoing symbol of ‘con-

finement within walls’.1 This scene goes even further. Mitsusaburo-has voluntarily descended into his grave, feeling ‘no different from the load of soil that the labourers dug yesterday and discarded in some distant river’.2

Then when Takashi returns from America, the two brothers agree to abandon city life and return to their native village in the forests of Shikoku. Takashi is politically disaffected. Once an activist in the AMPO demonstration,3 he has cast away his former ideals and wants to return to the village where, in that small community, he can become a hero by inciting a riot against the Koreans who have gained the upper hand there financially. He does not reveal this plan to Mitsusaburo-, who is emotionally exhausted and reluctantly agrees to go. Psychologically, their return is a pilgrimage back to their roots. The brothers are opposites in character. As Susan Napier has observed: ‘The fact that the novel succeeds so well on a literary level results from the tension between active and passive protagonists’.4 Takashi is flamboyant, confident, cynical. He acknowledges the evil that is in him and gives it full expression in acts of violence or treachery. Mitsusaburo-, on the other hand, is passive, disassociated, overwhelmed by the tragedy of his son. He and his wife, Natsumiko are alienated from each other. In going to the village they abandon all contact with their infant son, leaving him behind in the care of an institution. So the novel, as it progresses, explores questions of truth and responsibility in personal actions. The twin forces of evil and atonement, which dominate Takashi’s char-

acter, form the axis of the novel, around which the other features revolve. Takashi has been ‘torn all along between the desire to justify myself as a creature of violence and to punish myself for it’.5