Posts Tagged ‘death’

Re-Member Me: the Sculptural ‘Self-Portrait’ of Hananuma Masakichi (A Piece Influenced by LitSciMed Event 2)

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

Masakichi

Dear Friends,

The image you see is of a ’self-portrait’.  If you keep reading, you’ll find out why that seemingly fair description is in inverted commas.  This piece of writing was written almost entirely after Event 2. I don’t have the object in question and have never seen it in real life, I am aware that I am focusing upon the idea of the object as distinct from the object.  Event 2 has sensitised me to such things.  Previously, I might not have complicated my object of interest, instead launching straight into the argument.  Now, however, I am able to separate the image from the object and, further, the object from the idea of the object.  I hope that the influence of Event 2 is apparent in the piece’s opening paragraphs.  And I hope you enjoy the writing.  If it interests anyone at all, I think it would interest Jo the most because of her interests in the male body.  It would be interesting to see what she thinks!

And so here we go!

Re-Member Me: the Sculptural ‘Self-Portrait’ of Hananuma Masakichi

The cover of ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Encyclopedia [sic] of the Bizarre’ insists that everything within is ‘amazing, strange, inexplicable, weird & all true!’ Indeed, inside this brash and garishly designed book of oddities are hundreds or thousands of works of art, objects, people, and events deemed to fit that description.  The encyclopaedia came to be in my hands as I had an interest in one of the works in Ripley’s collection: the 1885 sculptural self-portrait of Hananuma Masakichi.

Master sculptor Hananuma Masakichi, believing himself to be dying of consumption, created this life-like self-portrait, complete with his own nails, teeth, and hair, as a farewell gift to his beloved.  He later regained his health, but lost his lover.  The artist is pictured on the left; his creation appears on the right (Mooney 2005, 100)

And that is everything.  In fact, no other ‘official’ documentation is available, save for the image accompanying the above text, also on a postcard (see Appendix).  The presentation of this sculpture prompted me into thinking about portraiture and fidelity, and how a Japanese sculptor at the end of the 19th Century came to indulge in – at least ostensibly indulge in – what has been described as the ‘purely western phenomenon’ of self-portraiture (Lippard in Pearlstone and Ryan 2006, 70).

To preface my argument, I would like to spend a paragraph clarifying and describing the object of my interest.  My focus is not on any particular representation of the statue.  Rather, it is on the statue itself or, more specifically and in its absence, the idea of such a statue being constructed in Meiji Japan and being considered a ‘self-portrait’.  With this in mind, and to supply texture, I would like to offer a description of the statue according to one internet source (Anon. n.d.): Masakichi assembled his statue from somewhere between 2000 and 5000 wooden strips.  He painstakingly bore a separate hole in his statue for each pore of his body; pulled out each individual hair and placed them in their corresponding locations on his sculpture; tore off his toe- and finger-nails, carefully positioned them; and finally transplanted his teeth.  It now stands mid-restoration in one of Ripley’s museums.

The sculpture is evidently an attempt at self-preservation that, I argue, is a little more complicated than first appears in that it reflects not only the ‘Western’ influences of portraiture (or, more accurately, the ‘Western’ framing of the sculpture as a portrait) but also myriad Japanese traditions.  Not only was the sculpture meant so that Masakichi may be remembered – for posterity, his lover, et cetera – I argue that it is also a product that one might expect of Meiji Japan as a period in which the Japanese and ‘the West’ were concerned with each other through trade and culture; where ‘the West’ had an obsession with Japan in the Great Exhibitions and World Fairs, and Japan with applying Western technology whilst maintaining Japanese identity, or wakon yōsai (Japanese spirit, Western technology) (Schwartz 2000, 366).  As one author put it, ‘[I]t often seems in Meiji: tradition and change were not at odds; the one demanded the other’ (Seidensticker 1983, 93).  The sculpture becomes something only possible under such circumstances.  It may be viewed as a screen onto which this dialogue between Japan and ‘the West’ is reflected.  As part of its Japanese heritage I argue that, far from being a ‘self-portrait’, it is very much part of an ancient Japanese tradition of ritual and material ‘copying’ and, with that, part of an equally ancient tradition considering inanimate objects to be in some way ‘alive’.  However, its acquisition, presentation, and perhaps the spirit in which it was conceived and created all suggest a strong Western influence on its significance.

In order to satisfactorily explain my argument, firstly, I establish the extent to which trade and cultural dialogue between the two cultures grew.  Secondly, I situate Masakichi’s statue within the Meiji period and suggest that its conception and creation was most likely influenced by ‘the West’.  Thirdly, I use this as a springboard into a discussion of how, although the sculpture and the time in which it was produced was influenced by ‘the West’, it is nonetheless a ‘Japanese’ sculpture and, when the Japanese ideas of the copy and ningyō (and the notions bridging those two concepts) are applied, the meaning of the sculpture is obscured (ultimately, its acquisition by Ripley enforces the ‘purely Western phenomenon’ [Lippard in Pearlstone and Ryan 2006, 70]).  Finally, I conclude by complicating the notion that Masakichi’s sculpture is a self-portrait and re-negotiate its value and cultural significance.

During the conception and construction of the statue there existed significant dialogue between Japan and ‘the West’ that resulted in cultural changes and exchanges.  This is reflected not only in trade but also in fashions.  Around 1800, two years before Masakichi’s birth, a new era was supposed to have brought economic and social improvement to Japan.  Foreign ships had appeared with increasing frequency in Japanese waters since the 1790s and the shogunate had finally responded in 1825 with orders for the daimyō to ‘drive away any and all such ships’ (Tipton 2002/2008, 25).  Commodore Matthew Perry brought four American warships into Edo Bay in 1853, insisting that Japan should be ‘opened up’.  This was met with a variety of responses.  Some of the daimyō thought that the foreigners should be repelled, while others favoured opening up the country for trade which would enable the adoption of Western technologies and techniques.  The shogunate recognised that it would be impossible to expel the foreigners but were still not entirely enthusiastic about opening up the country.  Eventually, in 1858, the new American consul, Townsend Harris, succeeded in negotiating Japan’s opening for trade. Treaties were signed with Britain, France, Russia, and the Netherlands shortly after (ibid 28-29).  According to J. Richard Huber, ‘[n]o other nation has made the leap from virtually no trade to a flourishing commerce in so short a time [...]. 1858 marked the end for Japan of self-imposed restrictions [and] within a dozen years foreign trade had multiplied some seventy-fold’ (Huber 1971, 614).  Indeed, some Japanese historians consider there to have been a ‘worship of the West’ (Daikichi 1970/1985, 52) as trade encouraged the adoption of Western social customs and cultural styles to reach the goal of ‘”civilization and enlightenment” [...] with no doubt that “civilization” meant Western civilization’ (Tipton 2002/2008, 47).

Following Perry and Harris’ ‘opening up’ of Japan, ‘the West’ can be seen to influence Japanese society in myriad ways.  A comparison between how Japan was represented in the 1876 World Fair in Philadelphia and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition of Chicago demonstrates clearly the altered focus of the Japanese image of itself presented to the rest of the world.  In the 1876 exhibition in Philadelphia, the concentration was on porcelains, bronzes, silks, et cetera and emphasised ‘Japanese design’ that emphasised an ‘aesthetic shift from the overstuffed display of Victorian sensibilities’ (Gross and Snyder 2005, 109) In contrast, the World’s Columbian Exposition of Chicago in 1893, presented a changed focus.  While the elaborate objects were still there, manufacturing and other aspects of Japanese life were represented including ‘72 exhibits of rice, 215 exhibits of tea and tobacco, photographs of railways and telegraphs, textbooks, crime statistics, toys and numerous other products like those found in Western countries’ (Tipton 2002/2008, 75).

The example of the exhibitions gives a general idea of how ‘Western’ technology and values took hold in Japan but, to give more specific examples of wakon yōsai (‘Japanese spirit: Western technology’): in the 1880s, the Shinto ritual in which one bowed before a mirror while scrutinizing one’s reflection in order to cleanse the soul was resurrected due to the full-length mirrors brought by ‘the West’ (Schwartz 2000, 366).  Further, in the mid 1880s, when Masakichi built his sculpture, the Rokumeikan was established.  This was a ‘Renaissance-style hall, for Western-style dancing, eating, card-playing and other events.  The Rokumeikan gave its name to the height of the civilization and enlightenment era in the mid-1880s’ (Tipton 2002/2008, 49).  Furthermore, in Edo, the playwright Hasegawa Shigure recalled her return home one day to find her mother transformed:

She performed the usual maternal functions without the smallest change, but she had a different face.  Her eyebrows had always been shaved, so that only a faint blue-black sheen was where they might have been.  Her teeth had been cleanly black.  The mother I now saw before me had the stubbly beginnings of eyebrows, and her teeth were a startling, gleaming white.  It was the more disturbing because something else was new.  The new face was all smiles, as the old one had not been. (in Seidensticker 1991, 91)

The empress also ceased to blacken her teeth in 1873, as it was ‘out of keeping with the new day’.  The ladies of the court followed her lead (ibid).

At the beginning of the Meiji period (1868), Masakichi was 36 years old.  It is not inconceivable that this ‘Western civilization’ would have influenced his life and art, particularly as Japan had been altering its focus in the World Fairs and adopting some Western cultural practices throughout the time of the sculpture’s creation.  Indeed it clearly did influence him.  Masakichi’s hair, for instance, is in the Western style, which has great significance in the 1880s and 1890s: ‘“If you thump a jangiri head [a head cut in the Western style],” went a popular ditty of the day, “it sounds back ‘Civilization and Enlightenment”’ (Seidensticker 1983, 93).  Presumably, a head cut in the traditional style resounded with the old order.  The length of the hair is congruent with this trend, as the sculpture was completed in 1885, around the time when Western influence was already keenly felt in Japan and men who wanted to appear more ‘enlightened’ had their hair cut in such a style.  Indeed, the emperor had adopted a Western-style short haircut in order to signify his ‘strong statement in favour of reform’ and this example was rapidly followed.  Helping this was the pressure from the police, who ‘cut any long hair they encountered’.  This new style was seen to replace the samurai topknot (Tipton 2002/2008, 49).

[T]he fiction of late Edo the barbershop, like the bathhouse, had been a place for watching the world go by.  The new world spelled change here too.  Western dress was initially expensive, but the Western haircut was not.  The male masses took to it immediately; the other masses [...] more slowly.  The Meiji word for the most advanced way of cutting the hair was zangiri or jangiri, meaning something like “random cropping.”  The old styles, for aristocrat and commoner alike, had required shaving a part of the head and letting the remainder grow long, so that it might be pulled into a topknot.  Already in 1873, the sixth year of Meiji, a newspaper was reporting that about a third of the men in the city had cropped heads. [...].  The first new-style barbershop opened in 1869. [...].  By 1880, two-thirds of the men in the city had randomly cropped heads.  The figure had reached 90 percent a scant six years later, and by 1890 [...] only the rare eccentric still wore his hair in the old fashion. (Seidensticker 1983, 93)

It would therefore appear that Masakichi was at least influenced by these Western ideas of ‘enlightenment’ and ‘civilization’ if only passively by following fashion and, as someone willing to produce a piece of artwork in a ‘Western’ spirit – one to be cherished and, essentially, collected – he was probably influenced to a great extent.  I suggest that this following of fashion is as far as the sculpture’s construction goes into being ‘Western’.  Everything else is imposed by its framing.  David Piper, in his introduction to Joan Kinneir’s The Artist by Himself, states that:

[The] reflection [of a person in their self-portrait] is not only not the object itself but a reproduction of its three-dimensional existence on a two-dimensional plane, but, further, [...] it reverses the object.  Our own faces as we know them in daily life, are the wrong way round and no face, once it develops from childhood, is symmetrical.  We do not “see ourselves as others see us”.  Alice, even when through the looking-glass, had problems about the nature of reality.  Self-portraits [are] inevitably subject to distortion if considered as attempts at exactly accurate description.  The nature of human perception allows of no such thing, and even a life-mask distorts (Piper in Kinneirs 1980, 12-13).

This transposition from three to two dimensions is one aspect of representing the human form that is obviated for the sculptural form.   However, the point is made – true for all portraits – that this form of copying requires some distortion.  Masakichi aimed for a fidelity that has, apparently, never been seen before or since.  Contrary to what Ripley’s encyclopaedia suggests, this is more akin to the Japanese culture of copying than to that of self-portraiture.  Continuing, Piper argues that:

Naturally the ordinary client’s wish is to be shown by his artist at his best and an occupational hazard for all portrait painters who depend on portraiture for their livelihood is the temptation to flatter.  When the sitter is the artist the portrait is unlikely to be cash-productive, but there is no likelihood that his personal vanity will be less than that of any other sitter, and he may only too easily see himself through rose-coloured spectacles in “the deceiving mirror of self-love.  Moreover, he, unlike the ordinary sitter, is in complete charge of the production.  Flattery may include factors other than the approximation of the sitter to the currently fashionable view of ideal beauty, and the playing down of physical flaws.  The sitter can be dressed in expensive clothes that do not belong to him, as Pepys was when he sat, or may be provided with attributes, armour or even a martyr’s palms, and s shown equated with historic or mythological heroes.  Skilful control of lighting can achieve wonders (ibid, 13)

Masakichi has none of this, ostensibly, although some users of an online blog featuring his image are resolute that Masakichi adorned his abdomen, asking ‘anyone else suspecting that he embellished maybe just a liiiiitle [sic] bit on those abs?’ (comment from a user in Foer 2009).  Lucy R. Lippard in her essay ‘Differing Differences’ (2006, 69-74) Pearlstone and Ryan’s About Face, asserts that ‘[s]elf-portraits, like autobiographies, are a purely western phenomenon, trademarks of an individualization [...] “snowflake singularity” and “imperial non-conformity”’ (Lippard in Pearlstone and Ryan 2006, 70).  It appears that her idea of a self-portrait being of an individual tallies with Piper’s and must necessarily include representations of one’s character as part of that ‘snowflake singularity’ and being an ‘individual’.  In the portrait tradition, for instance, the sitter is typically seen with objects that represent their profession, character, temperament, ailment, or whatever.  It is seldom the case that absolute bodily fidelity is intended or achieved in any medium.  In addition, the significance of a collectable object personal to an individual is amplified with a ‘self-portrait’ (or indeed ‘copy’ of the self) which is, by its very nature, personal to an individual.  Because it has been isolated as an object of almost absolute fidelity – even the accuracy of the glass eyes are said to puzzle those in the profession of making such ornaments (Foer 2009) – this is arguably even more the case for Masakichi’s statue.  It initially seems that Lippard’s comment, above, that self-portraiture is a ‘purely Western phenomenon’ cannot be entirely true, as Masakichi is Japanese.  Despite this seeming incongruity, I very much agree with Lippard.  A self-portrait is only a self-portrait when it is framed as one.

The statue is stored and displayed as a Western curiosity and ‘billed’ as a self-portrait, yet does not seem to adhere to the individualistic trappings of the self-portrait.  Rather than a clandestine aim to self-flatter or admonish, the portrait supposes to be as faithful a copy as possible.  In thinking about this statue as a copy, its authenticity might seem important – not necessarily whether it is authentic in being a ‘good’ copy as opposed to a ‘bad’ one, rather whether it might fall into the category of being authentically a copy of the Japanese tradition.  Indeed, Japan has been referred to as ‘a society of copyists’ (Schwartz 2000, 368) due to their long traditions of ritual, creating likenesses, and their reputation for replicating (and improving upon) technology with utmost precision.  However, this is only one of the significant aspects of a ‘copy’.   By ‘copy’, I refer simultaneously to the accuracy with which something is duplicated but also to what Law describes as ‘being perceived to work’.  Law tells the story of when she visited a shrine where the Hōjō-e was being re-enacted.  Hōjō-e, ‘Rite for the Release of Living Beings’, is widespread in Japanese Buddhism: ‘small birds and fish are released into fields and streams to show one’s compassion and awareness that other sentient beings [are] related to oneself’ (Law 1994, 325).  In another publication, Law recounts her own experience:

[T]he priest at the [...] shrine presenting the rite insisted on the “authenticity” of the contemporary ritual.  Though his claim for authenticity was in part attributed to how carefully he had “copied” the original rite, his real claim for authenticity was that puppets continued to be possessed by deities.  In short, the “copy”, a historical re-enactment of sorts, was real because it was still perceived to work as ritual (Law in Cox 2008, 42).

It is easy to see that one facet of such a ‘copy’ is fidelity to form (the accuracy the priest displays in his re-enactment or the fidelity of the form of Masakichi’s sculpture).  The other facet of ‘being perceived to work’, on the other hand, might be well explained for the priest insisting that deities still occupy puppets but, for Masakichi, requires further explanation as it draws upon particular concepts that interpret inanimate objects as nevertheless alive and Masakichi’s sculpture as ningyōNingyō (written with the two characters signifying ‘person’ and ‘shape’ and commonly interpreted as ‘doll’, or less commonly ‘puppet’).  ‘The same characters, read in another way, are pronounced hitogata and this word was historically used to refer to small sticks or bundles of grass offered as ritual substitutes for actual people in rites of purification (Law in Cox 2008, 40).  In another publication, Law states that such a thing is ‘a body substitute’ for the deceased (Law 1997, 202).

Hair seems not to be an unusual material in art-work but Masakichi, in allowing himself to ‘live on’ for his lover, went farther by using more than merely a lock of his own hair.  This aspect of the sculpture presents itself as a particularly obvious kind of authentic copy.  Early Japanese ‘robotics’ of the 18th Century onwards valued another kind of authenticity, however: that of an inanimate object being somehow alive.  One of the earliest ‘robots’ was a ‘kimono-clad boy servant carrying a cup of tea’.  The machine would be ‘wound up and aimed [at a person.  It would then] “walk” towards [him] carrying [the] cup of tea and nodding its head.  When the recipient lifts the cup from its hands to drink, the doll will stop and wait until the cup is replaced.  Then it will about-face and carry the cup back to its starting point’ (Schodt 1988, 55).  This particular aspect of the history of robotics is, it seems, shared with puppetry and ningyō.  This goes some way to defining the texture and flavour of, as well as logic behind, the Japanese belief that inanimate objects are in some sense peculiarly alive.

The Japanese appreciation for life imbuing inanimate objects goes further still, however, with kuyō.  In La Fleur’s Liquid Life, the Japanese custom of kuyō is explained as something that, ‘though readily understood by Japanese, might prove next to incomprehensible to Americans [“Americans”, presumably, standing in for any non-Japanese people]’ (La Fleur 1992, 144).  Kuyō is a Buddhist term referring to a ritual practice that is ‘at once a worship service, a formal apology and an expression of gratitude, an appeasement rite, and a funeral. [...]’ (Law 1997, 201-202).  La Fleur quotes from Wagatsuma:

The women pray that these needles may now enter into a deserved Buddhahood.  There in the temple or shrine they pass these through a block of bean-curd (tofu, an eminently soft substance).  In effect they say: ‘You needles have spent your lives doing hard work.  You unstintingly gave of yourself by again and again going through tough pieces of cotton cloth – even suffering in such labors [sic].  Now lie down on this mattress of bean-curd and take your rest.’ In this way the women humanize their treatment of even a piece of metal. (quoted from Wagatsuma in La Fleur 1992, 144-145)

Until the late nineteenth century, puppets and dolls could not be thrown away or even recycled (in fact, as suggested above, this extended to needles, calligraphy brushes, household cleaning instruments, and even underwear).  Likewise, they could not be placed into art collectors’ cases as examples of art.  Instead, these objects are brought to a temple or shrine where a kuyō is conducted.  ‘[T]he people who brought them make a series of invocations and statements of apology or gratitude as above, and the objects are then ritually disposed of in a way that concretizes the feelings of the people who used them’ (Law 1997, 201-202).  Thus a unique category not quite living yet not quite dead is recognised.  Inanimate objects are treated as living beings with some kind of soul that can be worshipped, apologised to, appeased, et cetera.  So, ningyō are not simply regarded as being alive and yet are not entirely dead; whilst they are inanimate, there is a spirit of sorts which animates them in the imagination.  It is noteworthy that this treatment of pseudo-living objects is preferred to the humiliation that must be associated with being preserved as pieces of ‘folk art’ (a humiliation that Masakichi, due to his wish to be preserved, probably did not feel).  It is thus rare for a Japanese ningyō to be displayed as a curiosity piece in an American ‘odditorium’.  Having been bought by Robert Ripley, Masakichi’s sculpture became what a Japanese ningyō would never be.  Moreover, the sculpture is said to have been damaged in an earthquake and is currently undergoing restoration (Anon., n.d.).  The ‘Western’ need to preserve and resurrect surely is strong.

By lending his own bodily excrement to the statue, Masakichi’s being persisted, albeit in an inanimate form: ningyô can be used as representational equals of a particular person or animal, with ningyô serving as surrogates for actual people [...]’ (Law in Cox 2008, 43).  The use of Masakichi’s body parts attaches him to the sculpture in myriad ways but there must be some particularly poignant significance in transferring his own body parts to his sculpture.  When considering inanimate objects as living beings, in this way, the use of bodily excreta along with wood takes on a new significance that is, in a sense, brought to the ‘Western’ audience by the very reality – or hyper-reality – of the statue.  The Japanese conception of ‘reality’ indeed has been marked as different from the Western one.  The framing of Masakichi’s sculpture is thus complicated but relies heavily on the notion of the copy and those concepts that make the inanimate live.

It might be suggested, therefore, that the significance and authenticity of the puppet/ doll/ statue/ copy of Masakichi is not in its status as an art object – still less in its framing as a self-portrait – rather in its meaning as a ritual being occupying the complex status of inanimate vessel for a departed being.  This, combined with the ‘Western’ aesthetic appreciation as a self-portrait ‘status’, makes for a complex web of inter-relating references.  By viewing Masakichi’s statue as a ritual re-enactment of his being in inanimate form, it is a copy rather than a self-portrait.  This lends an authenticity to its living-inanimate object status, thus to its Japanese root.  That the copy could be considered ‘authentic’ is central, as an ‘authentic’ copy, in this case, means that the sculpture might be considered as being ‘authentically’ Japanese, rather than falling into the ‘self-portrait’ tradition in which it is currently framed.

The sculpture was constructed in Japan during the Meiji Restoration and, as the hair style of Masakichi suggests, was influenced by Western values, at least passively, if not actively and significantly.  However, there is evidently a heavy Japanese tradition that could be drawn upon, particularly that of copying as applied to ningyō and kuyō.  Masakichi’s sculpture would therefore seem to be located between Japanese and ‘Western’ views of the real and the represented; the membered and the re-membered; the dead and the alive.  It is a copy by construction and history but a self-portrait by framing and presentation.  Being a sculpture with complicated references from Japan and ‘the West’, Masakichi’s sculpture acts as a palimpsest onto which the impact of the events of the Meiji period are presented in a cluttered space, as traditional Japanese values, continually written over as the statue continues to be venerated, stored, and restored in the ‘Western’ odditorium.  To adopt and adapt Daikichi’s phrase summing up the Meiji period, Masakichi’s statue truly is born of Japanese spirit and Western significance.

List of Works Cited

Anon. (n.d.), Which is the Real Masakichi, online at http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Death/Masakichi.html.

Cox, Rupert (2008), The Culture of Copying in Japan, London: Routledge.

Daikichi, Irokawa (1970, trans. Jansen, Marius B., 1985), The Culture of the Meiji Period, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Elsner, J and Cardinal, R (1994/1997), The Cultures of Collecting, London: Reaktion.

Foer, Joshua (2009), Whatever Happened to the Self-Portrait of Hananuma Masakichi’, online at http://boingboing.net/2009/06/17/whatever-happened-to-1.html

Gross, Linda P and Snyder, Theresa R (2005), Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition, San Francisco: Arcadia.

Henny, Sue, et al (1985), Karakuri Ningyō, London: Barbican Art Gallery.

Huber, J Richard (1971), ‘Effects on Prices of Japan’s Entry into World Commerce after 1858’ in The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 79, No. 3, May – June 1971, 614-628.

Joly, Henry L (1908), Legend in Japanese Art, London: John Lane the Bodley Head.

Kinneir, Joan (1980), The Artist by Himself: Self-portrait drawings from youth to old age, London: Granada Publishing.

La Fleur, William R (1992), Liquid Life, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Law, Jane Marie (1994), ‘Violence, Ritual Reenactment and Ideolgy: the Hōjō-e (Rite for Release of Sentient Beings) of the USA Hachiman Shrine in Japan’ in History of Religions, Vol. 33, No. 4 (May 1994), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 325-357.

Law, Jane Marie (1997), Puppets of Nostalgia: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of the Japanese Awaji Ningyō Tradition, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Mooney, Julie (2005), Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Encyclopedia of the Bizarre, New York: Black Dog.

Pearlstone, Zena, and Ryan, Allan (2006), About Face: Self-Portraits by Native American, First Nations, and Inuit Artists, Santa Fe: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.

Seidensticker, Edward (1983), Low city, High City: Tokyo From Edo to the Earthquake, 1867-1923, Middlesex: Penguin.

Schodt, Frederik L (1988), Inside the Robot Kingdom, New York: Kodansha International Ltd.

Schwartz, Hillel (1996), The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles, New York: Zone Books.

Tipton, Elise K (2002/2008) Modern Japan: A Social and Political History, London: Routledge.

Bodily Resurrection and Food 2: Food and the Dead Body

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Dear Friends,

This week has been a slightly odd week for research.  I’ve been writing more than I’ve written without writer’s block.  I hope this stream of words coming from my pen (yes, I still use pen and paper, what of it, tough guy?) doesn’t stop.  I put it down to a new item of food I have been having for lunch.  There’s a lovely lovely place outside of Euston station that sells something called ’shraps’ and they’re like larger portions of sushi but more filling.  I’ve been feeling fantastic in the two days since I’ve had them!  Anyway…

Here is the second instalment of some of my thinking on food and the dead body to follow up the last post on the living body.  To remind you, the question I aimed to address was: Have Ideas on Food and Eating Influenced Understanding of the Corporeal Resurrection Body, Particularly in Relation to 1 Corinthians 15:42-44? and, also to remind you, the passage in question is:

‘It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.  It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.  There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body’ (1 Corinthians 15: 42-44, King James Version)

And now…

Food and the Dead Body:

Christ as Food:

I have not indulged in the debates about the Last Supper, as might be expected here.  The debate on the meaning of the unleavened bread, for example, and even the disputes that the bread is unleavened in the first place I have found ultimately irrelevant, if very interesting.  Indeed, there are also well-trodden sets of arguments, I have come to discover, that surround the various meanings of Christ’s blood.  These intricacies are all very fascinating but it is the notion of Christ’s body being food that interests me.

Food and the dead body in both the Last Supper and the resurrection perverts the usual relationship between food and the body.  Whereas it is usually the body that takes the food, the body now is the food.  A consumed body demonstrates an interesting relationship and complicated passage between the living and the dead, and the corruptible and the incorruptible.  The ownership of the body is placed into question, for example, when one eats another’s body.  Also, it would seem that two bodies cannot occupy the same space and this must have implications for the resurrection, if material continuity and a concept of identity are to be integral.

Apart from accounts of the Last Supper and the symbols of bread and wine as Christ’s body and blood, the idea of Christ’s body as food seems to have been prevalent in medieval theory and particularly in painting.  One such painting, from the studio of Freidrich Herlin, painted Christ with Ears of Wheat and Grape Vine.

Freidrich Herlin School

Bynum, in Fragmentation and Redemption writes on this in a chapter about conceptions of the body of Christ in the middle ages.  She points out that the female was seen to be the provider of the food and many medieval assumptions linked woman and flesh to the body of God (Bynum 1991, 100, 101).  Bynum concludes by saying that ‘Holy women imitated Christ in their bodies [most stigmatics were women]; and Christ’s similar bleeding and feeding body was understood as analogous to theirs (ibid 104).  Robin Campin’s Madonna and Child before a Firescreen (below) depicts Mary offering both her breast and son to the viewer (ibid).  Here, both the woman and Christ are offered as food, linking both birth (through implicating Mary) and death to food and the process of eating.

capinRobbert1430NatGal

An interesting passage to bring to bear upon this is 1 Corinthians 12:27: ‘Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular’.  Not only is the bread and wine Christ’s body and blood, it is the Christian body and blood by extension.  Further, Vine insists that the passage in the pre-translation bible lacks a definite article thereby placing different emphasis upon the relationship between Christ and His followers: ‘[t]he proper rendering is “ye are body of Christ” (not ye are Christ’s body, which puts emphasis on “Christ”), that is to say “body of Christ” is the quality or condition of the assembly as a whole of which each individual forms a member.’ (Vine 1951, 175-176) This is also reflected in Paul: ‘we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.’ (1 Corinthians 10: 17) In her From Feasting to Fasting, Grimm renders this relationship from Paul’s view as ‘participation in “the body of Christ”’ (Grimm 1996, 67) Further, Hodgeson notes that, with this gesture, the body of every believer is a member of Christ and it must therefore follow that ‘”flesh and blood” have entered the kingdom, and are now in the present life.’ (Hodgeson 1853, 24) Furthermore, Tertullian asserts that ‘the flesh feeds on the Body and Blood of Christ so that the soul also may be replete with God’ (reproduced with commentary in Evans 1960, 25).

Cannibalism:

Hodgson worried, in his text about the resurrection, that ‘more than thrice seven years ago an European was eaten up by a company of cannibals in a distant island, and when we reflect that the substance of his body became, by assimilation, incorporated with theirs; and supposing that those cannibals died before they had thrown off the particles of matter acquired from his body, would not one man be entirely lost from the universe for ever?’ (Hodgeson 1853, 54) This concern has long stood and Aquinas also voiced (and dealt with) it:

There are to be found men who eat human flesh and nothing else; and men thus nourished have children.  Consequently the same flesh will be in several men.  But it cannot possibly rise again in several men: and yet the resurrection would surely not be universal and entire, if each one did not regain what he had before.  Therefore it would seem impossible that men will rise again.’ (Aquinas 1927, 273)

The above quotation is from Summa contra Gentiles.  This work is referred to in John Candlish’s article, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Dynamic State of Body Constituents.  Candlish points out that Summa contra Gentiles was Aquinas’ ‘reference work for missionaries [who were] obliged to deal with the concept of the resurrection and the theoretical difficulties which might be raised by it.’ (Candlish 1968, 272) This refers to an objection that Aquinas later deals with by explaining that the assumption that ‘identity [...] depends on continuity’ is ‘based on a false premise’ – that of being is ‘not merely adherent to matter and the soul’s being [...] remains after the dissolution of the body’ (Aquinas 1927, 277).  The identity of the risen body has therefore been a key concern in the resurrection of the body, as it has been thought that bodily continuity is integral to the resurrection; Christians want not only a body back after death, they want their own body.  Aquinas addresses some fears of the missionaries: ‘the flesh consumed will rise again in the man in whom it was first perfected by a rational soul’ (Aquinas 1927, 278).  He continues to be concerned for those potential savage converts and their families who may have not eaten anything but other people!

‘the second man – if he partook of other food besides human flesh – will rise again with only such matter as he acquired from this other food, and in such quantity as is required from this other food [...].  But if he partake of no other food, he will rise again with what he received from his parents, and the deficiency will be supplied by the omnipotence of his Creator.  And if his parents also partook of none but human meat, so that this seed would also be engendered therefrom, their children will rise again with that seed, and he whose flesh was consumed will be supplied from another source.’ (ibid, 278-279)

This rather elaborate explanation will allow for those who have had their own flesh eaten to regain that flesh and for the cannibal to be resurrected too, in theory. Graham, in contrast, worries that if you have ‘eaten swine’, part of you ‘has once wallowed like a hog in the mire’ (Graham 1783, 7) and that part of you is forever a part of you – relating to the earlier segment of the discussion about food and the living body.  Identity is central here, too.  Indeed, the corporeal fate of those eaten by savages seems to be that one becomes part of the savage, quite literally becoming what you eat (possible title here that you will like, Sharon: ‘You are what you eat!’) Aquinas, however, obviates such fears and advises that ’there is no need that whatever was in man materially should rise again in him; and that if anything be lacking, it can be supplied by God’s power.’ (Aquinas 1927, 278)

The above interpretations rely on the idea of individual identity persisting through the passage from corruptible to incorruptible and place physical continuity at the heart of that.  Theophilus of Antioch (unknown – c183) associates this material continuity with bones, which did not appear to decay.  Cannibalism is a crucial issue for him. (Bynum 1995, 31)  The bone, then, would seem to act as the seed from which one could sprout a heavenly, incorruptible body on the day of judgement.

As an aside concerning identity, there have arisen questions of what might be called the liminal body parts – hair, teeth, nails et cetera and whether, having no use after the resurrection, would they be resurrected? This question has been asked of all body parts but seem particularly pertinent for these liminal parts, as they continuously grow and it would be unseemly for all of the matter ever grown to be re-united with the body.  Aquinas, as always, has an answer in the supplement to his Summa Theologica when discussing ‘The integrity of the bodies in the resurrection’.  He identifies two ‘perfections’: the first being those parts that are ‘directed to the accomplishment of the souls’ operations, for instance the heart, liver, hand, foot’ and the second being those ‘directed to the safe keeping of other parts as leaves to cover fruit; thus hair and nails are in man for the protection of other parts’ and, he says, all parts will rise again for the purpose of identity (Aquinas 1947, Part 3, supplement, qu80:2).  So, for Aquinas, identity is re-established after death.

Bynum states that the question of individual identity had not been raised in philosophy of the period of Paul (Bynum 1995, 25) and so identifying oneself as an individual seems not to have been an issue to him but something read into his text by later theologians like Aquinas and Graham.  To contrast with this concern of identity that Aquinas and others worry about, I would like to draw upon Clement of Rome’s (unknown – c100) version of the story of the Phoenix, bringing to bear the body as food.  To later Authors, as Bynum points out, it is important that the same bird rises.  To Clement, however, bodily continuity does not seem particularly important:

‘the bird dies; its flesh decays; a worm or larva is born from this putrefying flesh and feeds on it.  Eventually the worm grows wings and flies to the altar of its triumph carrying the bones of the old bird, now stripped clean.’ (in Bynum 1995, 25)

The condition of the dead body is actually complicated further by Graham, who likens the corruptible body to ‘grass’.  Graham refers to the Hebrew word used in the original scripture: ‘whatever is newly sprung up and sprouteth out of the ground’ (Graham 1783, 5) – for other uses, see Genesis 1:11, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass’; Matthew 6:30, ‘God so clothe the grass of the field’.  It is interesting how under this interpretation, the body is treated as being fundamentally similar to things that are edible; prepared for the journey inside – at least for the purposes of resurrection.  By this logic, one can be eaten and be still of a stuff that can be raised; the pre-resurrection body and food are essentially of the same ilk.

‘What man who believes in a resurrection would offer himself as a tomb for bodies destined to arise?’ (Athenagoras 1972, 86)

Identity seems central to Athenagoras too, who argues that a human being cannot be said to exist when scattered and dissolved, even if the soul survives.  The restoration of a soul to its original body is what defines resurrection (Athenagoras 1972, 146).  In contrast to this and as a note on continuity, Aquinas points out the metaphor of a fire: the fire that burns when the logs have disappeared and new ones put on is still the same fire (Aquinas 1927, 278).

Tertullian also sees resurrection as re-assemblage of bits: ‘So then the flesh will rise again, all of it indeed, itself, entire.  Wherever it is, it is on deposit with God through the faithful trustee of God and men, Jesus Christ, who will pay back both God to man and man to God, spirit to flesh and flesh to spirit.’ (reproduced with commentary in Evans 1960, 184-185) Thus we rise “whole” [...] like a damaged and repaired ship whose parts are restored though some of the planks are new. (Bynum 1995, 37)

Thinking about the stomach as a tomb and being resurrected from it, Ignatius, in his Epistle to the Romans (around year 100), proclaims himself ‘the wheat of God; and I shall be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.’ (in Bickersteth 1838, 75-76).  He is to be executed and thrown to the lions.  He taunts his executioners: ‘Let breaking of bones and tearing of members; let the shattering in pieces of the whole body, and all the wicked torments of the devil come upon me; and only let me enjoy Jesus Christ’ (ibid, 76).  No matter what the lions do to him, even if they grind him into dust, he will be raised because God will piece him together again.  For Ignatius, not even material continuity of bones is needed.  So, it appears that under some interpretations, complete digestion is still not an obstacle to resurrection; digestion is interpreted as a transition, not as annihilation, as particles can be placed together by the power of God.

Afterthought:

There seems to be sibling understandings of purity in eating and purity in the raised body.  Through controlling beastly passions, one can prepare for resurrection.  The dead body being food is something that allows the resurrection to be understood through bodily margins and conceptions of purity.  But it also complicates it.  By considering cannibalism, and even Christ as food is a form of cannibalism, one is forced into increasingly inventive and elaborate explanations.

It appears as though food is indeed essential to understanding the body in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44.  If one understands that the corporeal body is usually, but not always, defined by a concept of identity and continuity, it appears that the act of eating and the image of the body as food is analogous to that of resurrection or a transition between bodies.  Following the passage between corruptible and incorruptible is as if following a passage of outside to inside; impurity to purity.

List of Works Cited:

Athenagoras of Athens (1972) Legatio and De Resurrectione, trans. Schoedel, William R., Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Aquinas, Thomas (1923), Summa contra Gentiles, Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, London: Burns Oates & Washbourne ltd.

Aquinas, Thomas (1947), Summa Theologica, Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, New York: Benziger Bros. Online at <http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.toc.html>

Bickersteth, E (1838), The Christian Fathers of the First and Second Centuries, London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside

Bynum, Caroline Walker (1991), Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, New York: Zone Books.

Bynum, Caroline Walker (1995), The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, New York: Columbia University Press.

Campin, Robert (1430), The Virgin and Child Before a Firescreen, London: National Gallery.  Online at <http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=9366>.

Candlish, John (1968), ‘St Thomas Aquinas and the Dynamic State of Body Constituents’ in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, vol.23, July 1968, pp272-275.

Evans, Ernst (1960), Tertullian’s Treatise on the Resurrection, London: SPCK.

Graham, James (1783), A Discourse Delivered on Sunday, August 17th 1783 at Edinburgh, wherein the nature, and manner of the Resurrection of the human Body, and the immortality, or future modes of existence, and progress of the Soul! Are Philosophically, Medically, and Religiously explained, by Doctor James Graham of the Temple of Health, In Pall-Mall, near the King’s Palace, London, Hull: T. Briggs.

Grimm, Veronika E. (1996), From Feasting to Fasting, the Evolution of a Sin, London: Routledge.

Hodgeson, George (1853), The Human Body at the Resurrection of the Dead, London: R.Boyd.

Vine, W.E. (1951), 1 Corinthians, London: Oliphants Limited.

Bodily Transplant and Survival (a few thoughts on Missed Deaths and the Fractured Self)

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

I’m going to attempt, here, some in-depth discussion about the intricacies of survival and transplants.  I hope it’s of some interest.

There is a wonderful piece of art called Transplant.   It was born of an artistic collaboration between Tim Wainwright and John Wynne (2008-2009).  I plan to interview them about it for a Static TV production early in 2010, actually (watch this space!).  The piece includes an installation, DVD, website, and book.  In audio, still image, reflective/ analytic writing, they represent – and allow the presentation of – fifty patient experiences and reflections of their transplant procedures.  Over the months of interviews, and amid the expected praise of staff dedication and expressions of satisfaction with their care, some patients expressed metaphysical ponderings and intricate descriptions of hospital machinery and the sounds with which they are constantly bombarded whilst waiting in their hospital beds for weeks, months, years.  Alongside these were recorded soundscapes of the modern ward, and essays of health-care professionals and artists.  On the DVD alone, a great variety and depth of thought is provoked: ‘I don’t feel no different [sic]‘ says one patient, while another claims that he has ‘quite a surreal existence, really’.  Watch a little longer, though, and other patients have obviously had darker thoughts about their situation: ‘it’s awful because you think: “someone else has died”.  I just try not to think about it too much.’  Towards the end of the DVD, a man, in a matter-of-fact manner, speaks his sentiments:

‘Like my father, I think, I had totally acclimatised myself to the fact that I was going to die and I’d never been frightened of dying, as a lot of people seem to be.  So I just accepted the situation… I’d caused it, it was my fault.  What a shame! I’m going to die a bit sooner than I would otherwise have done.  So, a few weeks after my operation the staff thought I was depressed and called in the psychiatrist and, in actual fact, I wasn’t depressed.  It had suddenly dawned on me that: “hang on! I’ve got so many years to live now.  What do I do now?”

It is this ‘acclimatisation’ to the inevitability of death and sudden snatching away of this moment that may open the discussion and I’d rather like some thoughts on, if I may ask such a thing! Here, though, I’m going to compare that experience to a story by the writer and philosopher Maurice Blanchot.  I say ’story’, though the word doesn’t feel appropriate:

Nazi soldiers sentenced Blanchot to death by firing squad when he was young.  He later wrote of this experience as though he did die after resigning himself to death.  That is his ’self’ died.  Obviously, his body still had something going on inside of it – it still had an ‘I’ but it wasn’t the same ‘I’ as before.  I’m going to try to argue that this experience of Blanchot’s ‘I’ being fractured (thus his identity and self no longer complete) is comparable to that of the patient I’ve just mentioned above.  Something residual is there; an ‘I’ of sorts has been constructed but he is dead.

That was in his The Instant of My Death.  And this is the story in short: upon being rounded up with his family and led outside by Nazi soldiers, a young man [as Blanchot was writing in third person] was lined up in sight of the firing squad and, encountering his last moments – or what he thought were his last moments (they were ‘his’ last moments) – Blanchot says:

‘I know – do I know it – that the one at whom the Germans were already aiming, awaiting but the final order, experienced then a feeling of extraordinary lightness, a sort of beatitude (nothing happy, however) – sovereign elation? The encounter of death with death?

(Blanchot 2000, 5).

‘The encounter of death with death’.  Very interesting.  Very chilling to consider the very moment of death being upon one! Using Derrida’s analysis helpfully included in the same volume as the story, we can surmise that this young man is Blanchot as, at the very beginning of the story, Blanchot writes: ‘I remember a young man – a man still young – prevented from dying by death itself – and perhaps the error of injustice.’ (ibid 2000, 3)  The man is still young because this is where his ‘self’ died (yet lives on in his absence) and Blanchot is writing about this instance from a position of absence (temporally displaced, if you will): a presence filled by absence; the young man is Blanchot’s self, who is ‘still young’ (lives on) yet has died in that he is only to be associated with Blanchot in the third person (a tenuous link – but still a link – to Blanchot).  The narrator is Blanchot ‘now’ or Blanchot without Blanchot; the dead Blanchot, still living; the un-dead Blanchot? He is writing in the third person to signify the death, which is possible because his (corporeal) death was prevented: there exists the same body but a different ‘I’, one that is defined by the fracture.  I think that’s followable! It’s rather difficult to communicate such a complicated process.  It is difficult to comprehend what that patient must be feeling simply because he had received something that had taken root inside of him in order to give him life.  I think it’s all the more powerful when you consider it as comparable to being in front of a firing squad.

Anyway, after preparing for death, he encountered an ‘extraordinary lightness, a sort of beatitude (nothing happy, however) – sovereign elation?’ (ibid, 5) that has similarities with the patient’s experience above.  We might paraphrase the patient from Wainwright and Wynne’s project and say that Blanchot had ‘totally acclimatised himself to the fact he was going to die’ and ‘accepted his situation’ and, upon finding that his death was to be postponed, asked himself ‘what do I do now?’ Similarly, we could say that the patient, having been led to the hospital by his diseased heart, became convinced that his death was imminent and was just ‘awaiting but the final order’ where his heart would cease beating then, when a donor became available, the threat was removed and he went hiding in ‘the dense forest’ (ibid, 5) which, for the patient, caused the psychiatrist to be called.

Indeed, the situations are different but nevertheless the same in that there is the robbing of that instant of death on both occasions: the patient had effectively been provoked into killing himself off by acclimatising to his death; Blanchot did the same.  Although the death itself remains empirically absent, there exists the trace of it having already occurred in the narrator’s questioning of the ‘encounter of death with death’ or the narrator’s utterance: ‘”I am alive.  No, you are dead”’ (ibid, 9) and the patient’s behaviour that prompted the staff to call the psychiatrist.  In another (infinitely more complex!) volume, The Writing of the Disaster, Blanchot asserts:

‘The disaster does not put me into question, but annuls the question, makes it disappear’ as if along with the question, ‘I’ too disappeared in the disaster which never appears. The fact of disappearing is, precisely, not a fact, not an event: it does not happen, not only because there is no ‘I’ to undergo the experience, but because (and this is exactly what presupposition means), since the disaster always takes place after having taken place, there cannot possibly be any experience of it.’

(Blanchot 1995, 28)

Indeed, one might say that The Instant of My Death and the patient’s experience in Wainwright and Wynne’s project are dramatisations of that.  So a successful transplant can be a disaster at the same time as a success? Of course, there are many people who had transplants who are not thinking ‘Bloody hell! I’ll have to live longer now!’ but are actually rather happy about their transplants.  I would still argue that a disaster has taken place, though, as an ‘I’ has been disrupted.  I suppose it could be akin to a city being built up again to be better and stronger after an earthquake had decimated it.

Another patient interviewed by Wainwright and Wynne for their DVD says: ‘my personality and character had gone’.  And another that she ‘emerged changed; fractured and put back together again’ (Wainwright and Wynne 2008 – 2009, 26) and both seem to resonate with Blanchot to varying degrees.  An ‘I’ is lost and identity is pieced together again.  In fact, one could go as far as to say that the new ‘I’ constructed from the fragments is other, even more significant, I think, when there is literally an other inside of oneself.  This may not necessarily negate the fact that so many patients, upon finding an extended life, find a new-found enthusiasm for life.  This is to be contrasted with Blanchot’s being ‘lost’ but both types of experience are an alteration following the initial displacement, disruption, and effective destruction of the ‘I’.

In considering these ‘displaced Is’, it is interesting to consider something I came across in an article by Lesley Sharp (1995, 372) who points out that ‘[many patients] celebrate the day of their transplant as a “second birthday” or “re-birthday” (complete with a cake shaped like the organ).’!

A little on the ‘other’ in the self: after the operation, the required immune-suppressive medication ensures that the self being ‘complete’ in any way is always in abeyance: an Other is introduced to the body, quite literally, and one is reminded about this each time one takes the medication: in a sense, the Other needs taming.  After the displacement of the ‘I’, the Other wrestles (both medically and figuratively) for space in the void opened up inside the chest.  As Blanchot writes in his 1988 essay Do Not Forget: ‘[w]e think we respect others by grudgingly leaving room for them, but others demand (without demanding) all the room’ (Blanchot 1988 in Holland 1995, 245).  In the case of bodily transplant, this seems as true inside the body as it is outside in the ‘real world’, facing ‘real’ others.

So, the question of survival is a difficult one; not just a consideration of whether one lives or dies.

I do hope that isn’t too heavy and was of some interest!