ABSTRACT
In a prepublication interview with Asahi Shimbun, Ōe talked passionately about the concept of cultural negation central to the literary universe of The Game of Contemporaneity (Dōjidai gēmu, 1980, hereafter Contemporaneity). 1 By cultural negation, I mean the condition of being marginal and peripheral, which enables one to look at the “official” culture from the margins. It is the power “to confuse and to escape the structures of society and the order of cultural things.” 2 Ōe implied that the 493-page narrative deals with “impossible possibilities, with endless caricatures, with reversals, negations, violations, and transformations” 3 that characterize the paradox of the world of the trickster:
I was in India [when Mishima Yukio committed suicide]. I thought then that his suicide would bring about a revision of our history into one that centers around the Emperor. I wrote to an editor, a good friend of mine, that I would rather want to think about a god who did not obey the Emperor, and look at ancient times, medieval and modern times from the viewpoint of those who were chased outside, expelled to the margins. My novel started from that proposition. According to Yanagita Kunio [1875–1962], when the gods of the Imperial Family entered the scene, despite persistent resistance, the local gods were chased away. The gods of the disobedient nation [matsurowanu kunitsukami] went deep inside the forest and became demons. I attempted to write not a history that revolves around the Emperor, but a history that belongs to those who became demons. 4
