Witness and Inerasable Traces
II. Literary Text as a Testimonial Breakthrough
For Yamasaki, listening to survivors’ life stories and writing the novel fall into two distinct tasks. Although testimony and literature both manage to create certain access “for a historical experience which annihilated the very possibility of address”
(Felman and Laub 41), they develop different ways to witness. With a comparison between the functions of testimony and literature, I discuss how Yamasaki’s novel
contributes to Manchukuo studies by creating a different window to “see” historical violence.
First, each testimony claims a strong authority of reality. For every survivor, his/her life story cannot be replaced or repeated by others; otherwise, the function of testimony can be diluted. Hence, the basic unit of testimony is singularity and the one who bear witness must also bear a lonely responsibility. Felman describes such a responsibility as “a strange appointment, from which the witness-appointee cannot relieve himself by any delegation, substitution or representation” (Felman and Laub 3).
The survivors whom Yamasaki has interviewed possess their own stories, with special memories of the past. They prefer to account by themselves with a belief that no one can represent their life experiences. The children shot like rabbits, the babies strangled by parents, the Kwantung Army demanding male settlers decapitate or commit
hara-kiri (happy dispatch) and female settlers drink pesticide and reservoirs flooded with blood . . . , all these can only be understood by those who have experienced historical violence. Arai Yoshiko unforgettably testifies that “the mother, with a ghostly face, strangles her child without hesitation” (SGI, 60), but by no means can we realize the “ghostly face” since it becomes a solitary burden of the witness, Yoshiko herself.
Nevertheless, literature appears to transcend the solitary condition of testimony, since it voices for the Other (survivors) and to the Other (readers). For Yamasaki, literature always addresses itself to the readers, who are able to reinterpret meanings of the text. Therefore, literature essentially opens to be shared. Besides, literature makes possible the communication and circulation of different testimonies. In Child
of the Continent, the testimonies cannot become transparent or complete by their own
statements, but rely on others’ testimonies to access the “truth” they eager to know. As we discern, Matsumoto’s uncertainty about his mother obtains answer from Sakiko’switness of the massacre, Sakiko’s incomplete information about the condition of those in the refugee camp is well-illustrated by Yoshida’s testimony, and Huang’s story gives account of the tragedy of Manchukuo remnants during 1960. In short, in the field of literature, the “solitary burden” in testimonial process is shared, but this does not mean to disperse the burden; instead, literature carries out a “performative value”
(Felman and Laub 54), which makes readers suffer the burden and experience certain transference of pain as well.
The second particularity of testimony lies in its process of transmitting information. By testifying the facts, the secret of their survival stories, and even the resistance against extermination, the survivors attempt to report violent events to us.
Notwithstanding telling the facts, literature contributes to witness in a way more than just reporting. While the testimony transmits the historical tragedies to listeners, literature beckons readers to “cut in” the violence. In other words, literature does not transmit historical events to readers, but brings them into “the crisis or the critical dimension which is inherent in the literary subjects” (Felman and Laub 54). Instead of just passing down certain given facts, literature structures a scene of violence to involve readers. The vivid depiction cannot make readers “see” the distressing scenes as the survivors, but it does beckon readers to feel a crisis—“crisis of experiencing their boundaries, their separateness, their functionality, and indeed their sanity, at risk” (Felman and Laub xvii). Such a crisis fills readers with dread, and makes it impossible for them to claim to be outsiders of the events. Child of the Continent is replete with scenes of terror, as demonstrated in the following passages:
The scarlet blood ejected from the chest turns into jet black. The bodies alongside the road leave only the bodies, of which the heads have been blown off. (vol.1 60)
The bandits circle around . . . they dismember the body and throw the human flesh into the pot, cooking it. The smell of the flesh drifts in the air.
The empty stomach of starveling refugees cannot bear the simulative smell, spitting out the gastric juice. (vol.1 118)
A disheveled old woman sits inside the house. Eyes opened, she tightly holds a girl with bangs in her arms. The body of the girl has decayed . . . the woman caresses her neck, on which marks a trace of strangulation. (vol.1 267)
The three passages here respectively refer to the Manchukuo victims, the refugees trapped between CPC and KMT’s checkpoints, and the civilians during the Cultural Revolution. Yamasaki pictures us as witnesses to these political misdeeds. Despite the fact that the victims in these passages cannot voice what has been acted on them, they shake up our foundation of knowledge. We are summoned to contemplate on the strange occasion of cannibalistic practice and thanatophilia. The third passage, for instance, brings out the fact of injustice, and that body becomes the ultimate means for demanding justice. Being moved, and shocked, we cannot reject the fact that we have been impacted by the horror.
Apart from the above-mentioned victims, Yamasaki uses paradoxical phrases to emphasize the inhuman and degrading conditions of remnants. The “ten-year-old boy with countless wrinkles on his face” (vol.1 115), “the girl heading out from the quilt with an old face” (vol.3 119), “political prisoners whose lives are inferior to the property of state (dam)” (vol.1 172), “female body with eyes opened, face like waning moon” (vol.1 113) all sound strange to us, but these phrases summon us to “see” them.
Through the literary techniques, Yamasaki propels the eyes of readers to linger on these figures. These figures in Child of the Continent pose crisis to our cognition, and
we begin to think: What can make a boy looks like an old man? In what circumstance can a dam outweigh the value of thousands prisoners? The war, political violence and crisis come before our eyes, and we cannot reject the fact that we have seen them. The unspeakable ones, to put in Felman’s delicate metaphor, are “message in the
bottle—the obscurity, the suffering, the uncertainty—and yet the absoluteness”
(Felman and Laub 40). These literary victims make us the summoned, waited
receivers for the message in the bottle, so we have to be ready to receive, and resonate with these opaque Other. Novel, then, displays a sea “opening to the risks
incorporated by the chance—and the necessity—of the encounter with the drifting testimony” (Felman and Laub 40). Every word is potential to become seashore for the washed-up message in the bottle. When the message in the bottle reaches the seashore, readers become the ones who exactly stand on this “continent.”
Third, while survivors’ shock in testimony remains to be the bygones, the dramatic tension in literature extends to the present. That is, literature tries “to
recontextualize the crisis and to put it back into perspective, to relate the present to the past and to the future and to thus reintegrate the crisis in a transformed frame of
meaning” (Felman and Laub 54). The “crisis” here is not limited to historical disasters, but has become a constant impact on readers’ intelligence and emotion. Since readers deeply vibrate with tension, they become certain “witnesses” who engage the
emotional and cognitive crisis. In Child of the Continent, Yamasaki engages inhuman violence in the beginning and extends it throughout the novel. Besides the appalling conditions during the Manchukuo tragedy, Yamasaki intervolves readers into a series of crises through Matsumoto’s life troubles, which include the struggle session (public humiliation during the Cultural Revolution), human trafficking, the civil war between CPC and KMT, Chinese hostility, bullying, sentimental crisis, problems of national identity, labor camp, becoming political prisoner, imputation, being delegated to
Mongolia, confessions extorted by torture, suffering from tetanus, betray, etc. By accessing a series of events, Yamasaki reconfigures the life experiences of readers, who cannot ignore the crises embedded in their minds. For readers reading the novel for the first time, they feel both cognitive and emotional crises, which remain after putting the novel aside. Since numerous crises enter into their existences, readers become another kind “witnesses” of crises.
Literature makes a testimonial breakthrough by involving readers in the crisis and offering possible access to the life of Manchukuo remnants. The protagonist Matsumoto plays a pivotal role in the novel. Instead of reporting or reflecting on the accidents, Matsumoto becomes an “innovative figure of the witness”—a figure that has undergone desubjectification, and is ready “to become himself a medium of the testimony—and a medium of the accident” (Felman and Laub 24). As a medium, Matsumoto provides accesses to readers by continuing the terror. Furthermore, the process of becoming himself a medium of the testimony reveals the concurrence of subjectification and desubjectification. The desubjectification, in particular, serves as an essential prerequisite for engaging the past by demonstrating how the state
apparatuses in the past deprive his human right. Thus, Matsumoto’s desubjectification provides a “precocious mode of witnessing” (Felman and Laub 21), which speaks ahead of knowledge for the present and future readers, who probably never heard what’s the “Manchukuo tragedy” but have already understood how remnants live through the massacres and humiliations. Like the Yangtze River in the end of the novel, Matsumoto keeps moving on, and discloses the view before the eyes of readers.
Yamasaki also witnesses her life. Through writing, she mourns her youth and beauty which has been devoured by the world war. Most female characters, under disciplines, wear the same hair style and uniforms, and miss the golden time for marriage due to the Cultural Revolution. The distinctive, fashionable Zhao alludes to
Yamasaki’s reminiscences of lost youth and beauty. What’s more, Matsumoto’s dream sheds light on Yamasaki’s childhood memory: “corpses piled like a mountain, burning houses, bullets grazing through the ear, the sound of the horse screams, the bayonet waved through his belly by the Soviet soldiers” (Vol. 1 67). Having experienced the wartime, Yamasaki laments her passing youth engulfed by the flames. Thus,
Matsumoto’s dream brings to light Yamasaki’s memory or the collective memory of the Japanese. Through the writing, Yamasaki manages to deal with the nightmares which repetitively haunt her like specters. Instead of alienating the characters from guilt, trauma and shame, Yamasaki suggests that each character values his/her life with an intimate connection to these inner troubles. The remnants are the ones who are able to live through unfulfillment and the process of losing. Consequently, Yamasaki also witnesses her life, in which she continues to write and revisits the garden of past, where the faded petals leave another intriguing smell for her.
To sum up, with her literary techniques as well as ingredients from memory, Yamasaki manifests that literary witness presents a “truth” other than scientific
knowledge or political discourse. Literature serves “as a mode of truth’s realization . . . not as a mode statement of, but rather as a mode of access to truth” (Felman and Laub 15-16). Unlike the testimonial statement in which truth appears available, literature does not provide a completed and transparent account of events. Involved in emotional and cognitive crises, readers are beckoned to join the journey of truth realization. In Child of the Continent, Yoshida’s testimony seems to be the most
“completed” account of Soviet soldiers’ invasion, but it fails to provide the “truth”
which Matsumoto is keen to understand—his sister’s whereabouts. Similarly, Sakiko’s witness seems to bring out the “truth” Matsumoto’s original father has searched for years, but it frustrates him when the most crucial part has lost. Through this
arrangement in the novel, Yamasaki indicates that truth cannot be passed down with a
given transparency. To access Atsuko’s whereabouts, Matsumoto and his biological father must start a journey, and indeed, it is through their engagement that they acquire the actualities they crave to understand. Likewise, despite many testimonies depicted in the novel, they are still far from any conclusive information about the
“truth.” Readers must join Matsumoto’s ultimate journey of Yangtze River, which presents a meandering and circuitous route before the alluvial plain of truth flooded out.