Monstrous Narratives: Storytelling in Mori Ōgai’s ‘As If’

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this reading of Mori Ōgai’s 1912 short story ‘As If’ (‘Kanoyō ni’), I examine how the monstrous is both central to the understanding of modern Japanese experiences and potentially allows for subverting established narratives of Japanese nationhood and modernity. While a number of readings emphasize Ōgai’s conflicting relation with the Japanese imperial state, I argue that the use in this story of monstrous figures such as goblins and ghosts is part of an ongoing experiment in writing to answer to a global urban situation. I call this particular mode of writing a monocularism and argue that it allows us to decenter and displace debates on Ōgai’s work that focus too often on questions of national subjectivity, Japanese modernization and individual alienation. In addition to this contribution to modern Japanese literary studies and Mori Ōgai studies, attention to the monstrous in fiction writing also shows the relevance of recent debates in urban studies, environmentalism and object-oriented ontology for the study of canonical texts of Japanese modern literature. In conclusion, I argue that ‘As If’ allows us to articulate a new relation between the local and the global, already prefiguring the present interest for planetary thinking.