March 06, 2011
Amaterasu and Susano as Echo and Narcissus in a Textual Mirror
The part of the myth that I will comment on this time is the following.
Susano-o meets Amaterasu by the Well of True Names . The Sun Goddess speaks first asking him, "Why do you come to my kingdom, do you meant to rob me of it?" "Not at all sister" he replies and proceeds to explain what happened. "My father came and finding me crying asked me "Why do you cry"E I said 'I cry because I want to see my mother in the world of the dead,' whereupon he said 'go from here!' and banished me from my kingdom."
The above seems pretty inconsequential. All the same, I managed to write a paper and give a presentation about it to a congress of Japanese psychotherapists at which Takeo Doi (Mr. Amae) and Kitayama Osamu (genius, poet, folk singer, and leading Japanese psychotherapist) were present at the congress. Bearing in mind the company, though alas I think that Doi had left the building, I was on fire:-) But alas, the learned members of the audience were pretty disinterested, even if they were in the room, as far as I know.
As mentioned previously, the Kojiki myth is very terse. Perhaps this is a characteristic of myth in general, it is certainly true of the Kojiki. There is very little repetition. There are repetitions of structural elements, mentioned in more than one episode of the myth, such as of a child that cries until he is advanced in years, or deities spitting or dripping, things, and symbols into water. There are also repetitions of some words, presumably for emphasis such as the aforementioned, "Skinly-skinned"Eor"chewily-chewed." But generally speaking the writer of the myth did not write the same thing twice. But in the above passage, the myth repeats itself, word for word, character for character, *almost*.
Here is the part that is being repeated:
[Izanagi said] "Why do you cry?" Susano-o replies, "I cry because I want to see my mother in the world of the dead". Hearing this Izanagi says "*If you want to do that*, then go from here!" and banished him[Susano-o] from his[Susano-o's kingdom."
Compare the second version above:
[Izanagi said] "why do you cry" I said 'I cry because I want to see my mother in the world of the dead,' whereupon he said 'go from here!' and banished me from my kingdom."
The repetition is long in a book which has little repetition. The repetition is word for word. The exact same sequence of characters repeat themselves, with one very small change. The change is miniscule. In the Japanese text it is only one character, read "shikaraba" which I have translated "if you want to do that." It could be translated "if so." What is significance of a missing single character written 1500 or so years ago?
1) The myth is a sacred text for those that wrote it. In the preface they state that they have taken great care. So why in one of the few places that the scripture repeats itself does the writer slip up, miss a character, unless the exclusion were deliberate?
2) The same type of omission occurs in at least one other place very clearly, and possibly in several other places (I list them in my paper). The Kojiki has a particularly regular structure. In at least two clearly, probably three, and more mistily in several other episodes, there is a sort of refrain: a winger/fawner repeats the words of another (or himself) in a (deliberately?) incorrect way.
3) In this case and in others, the misquotation serves to make the quoter out to be a victim. The quoter is allowing himself to "amaeru" or (my trans) "fawn"in an unhealthy way.
"Amae" (the noun) amaeru (the verb) are, thanks to Takeo Doi, definitive of Japanese culture. Many books have been written, by Doi and others, attempting to define the term. Doi and others attempt to explain Amae/amaeru . They explain the prevalence of that which it describes in Japanese culture. but perhaps due to the non-linguisticness, of what the terms mean, the descriptions continue.
Amae is the *unspoken* demand to "Love me!"that children beam, as it were, towards their mothers. It is "being cute,"Eit is being weak, it is avoiding the linguistic expression of ones desire, but behaving in such a way as to encourage the beamed, the recipient of the extra-linguistic message, to respond and fulfil the unspoken (but beamed) desire of the "fawner."E
And here Susano-o is engaging in a particularly excessive, pathological form of "fawning" Susano-o's father, Izanagi, came along, asked what was the matter, found out what was the matter, did not allow Susano-o to amae/fawn, but instead, said "if that is the case, go and do it". Izanagi presented a perfect linguistic mirror to his son. He was the shrink that the son seemed to have needed. But Susano-o, ignores the linguistic mirror that he was presented with. And when he meets his sister, by a minor modification of the words his father spoke, made himself out to be the poor, little, lovable victim. The readers of the Kojiki myth have just read of the fathers'slove, his sincerity, so they know what went down. But the son says, "there was I feeling lonely for my mother and our father came along and banished me from my kingdom." Instead of showing the Son what he has to to do to fulfil his desire, the father becomes, in the misquotation, a bully.
The protagonist, Susano-o, takes a good linguistic copy of himself ("Well if you want to do that, then go and do it") and transforms it into vector for Japano-Narcissitic self love (" I am so weak and sad and put upon").
Mirrors, be they linguistic or visual, can be deformed to suit our self love. Narcissus, if he had been visually awake, would have seen in his reflection the image, movements, of a man engaged in self-love-sickness.
Susano-o goes and stands above the Well-of-True-Names, and copies himself, in his self narration (that imperfect medium) presenting himself as linguistically lovable, and in the Well-of-True-Names, I argue a mirror, there is someone that loves him.
So, the structure of the myth of Amaterasu-Susano is (please compare with the previous post) as follows
1) Susano-o's linguistic self-narrative, his linguistic-self-copying, is just a copy, but a bad copy, a deceptive copy. It is certainly not alive. It is a nothing, a chimera allowing gross and misplaced self love.
2) Amaterasu's image is truthy. Though "it" is only a copy of what Susano appears to be, "it" is not an "it" at all but being, a tragic, supernatural being that loves, means, meaningfully loves the protagonist.
3) But even though it is the image that (in Japanese myth), as always, comes out the winner, the speech plays an essential part of the story. The speech is the scapegoat, the nub of jokes, that nasty deceptive bit to be derided. The fawning self speech of Susano-o is needed both for the suspension of unbelief, and for subsequent defamiliarization (Brecht) to take place.
3.1) If it were just a story about some "Mirror Goddess" loving some guy, no one would be able to see the Mirror Goddess as a person at all, let alone a tragic hero.
3.2) If it were not for the speech, then we would never be able to come back to the realisation that, "oh ****! The Mirror Goddess, is just a copy. She is not, we are not, really people at all!"
4)Amaterasu is Susano-o *queered*. Amaterasu is just Susano-O's image, but she is also a woman.
The next part, the vows of Susano and Amaterasu, are both a trick, and explain the phenomenon of mirror reversal.