“Lust, sorrow, and despair suddenly assailed Tokio’s heart. He laid out the futon, covered himself with the comforter, buried his face in the cold, dirty velvet collar, and cried.”
This is the ending of “Futon” (or “The Quilt”) written by Katai Tayama in 1907. Yet, it is the beginning of what came to be known as the Japanese I-novel, a genre that delved deeply into an author’s semi-autobiographical confessions. “Futon” is inspired by Katai Tayama’s own experience of having an affair with his student.
This novel tells the story of a middle-aged novelist, Tokio Takenaka, and his student, Yoshiko Yokoyama. Tokio was in a loveless marriage and fantasizing about younger women when he received a letter from Yoshiko, who was inspired by Tokio’s novel and wished to become his disciple. Yoshiko was so similar to Tokio’s fantasy woman that he persuaded her to move to Tokyo to study with him.
However, Yoshiko soon falls in love with a young man named Tanaka. Enraged by Yoshiko’s choice, Tokio told Yoshiko’s parents about her relationship and sent her back home, where her parents would undoubtedly punish her. At the time, having a young daughter in an unarranged relationship was deeply shameful.
In the end, Tokio is tortured by his memory of Yoshiko, sinking himself into the fragrance Yoshiko left on the comforter. All that remains of Yoshiko is her scent — the sweet fragrance of youth and desire that could fade at any moment, but for now resides in the comforter that can no longer comfort him.
When I finished this short, 100-page novel, I was speechless. Not only was I stunned by the plot itself, but also by the ineffable melancholy rising within my heart. It felt like the realization that the blossoms withered in autumn will not return, or that the youth you wasted playing the video game Valorant will not come back. It is the melancholy of hugging a disappearing shadow that you love, despite its emptiness.
Tokio’s love for Yoshiko is much like this embrace of the shadow. His love refers to something that is, in a way, illusory. Yoshiko, while real, exists within Tokio’s mind as the embodiment of his fantasies — a young, pretty female student who is easy to manipulate and full of admiration for him and his work.
But what does love’s object have to do with love? Is Tokio’s love still genuine? In some ways, it is. Tokio brought Yoshiko from her hometown to Tokyo, offered her a place to live, tirelessly taught her modern philosophy and helped her become an independent woman.
Yet this love is also completely artificial. It is a product of Tokio’s lust and unfulfillment. It strikes me as paradoxical that this love can exist, at once both deeply sincere and utterly filled with hypocritical lust.
In my opinion, many forms of love are like this; they encompass contradictory emotions, resisting binary categorizations of good and bad.
In my opinion, many forms of love are like this; they encompass contradictory emotions, resisting binary categorizations of good and bad.
It is the love I have for Gacha games and my friends have for Valorant; it is the love we have for objects or objectified beings. We can spend hours, days or even years loving them. But unlike human interactions, we do not expect unsettling emotions, challenges or any forms of resistance from them, as we believe they exist with the purpose of serving us. They are, at most, a quick and immediate substitute for the pleasure I seek when dissatisfaction (like tedious homework) appears in my life. It is a form of love — just one without much substance, like a shadow.
For Tokio, Yoshiko is an object rather than a real person. Her appearance fills a gap in his heart that cannot be filled by himself, because he is a lustful yet cowardly man who both cannot escape his responsibility as a father and a husband and is unwilling to face the public shame of divorce. He imprisons himself in a jail of his own humiliation and guilt, pleasure and fantasy — all of which emerged from his own sexual desire for Yoshiko. Yet, facing her resistance — a resistance from someone he views as an object — Tokio spills his rage and sorrow onto Yoshiko by sending her back to her hometown.
This objectification of Yoshiko is exemplified in a simile Tayama used in the novel. It is not an exemplary one, but will remain in my mind forever: “The electric light spread across the carriage, making Yoshiko’s white face appear almost like a relief sculpture.”
Tayama’s language evokes the sculptor’s perverted desire to create life from marble. Even though Bernini could carve the half-lidded eyes, the opening lips and the wrinkled robe, he could not revive St. Teresa from the vanished ecstasy. No matter how lively Yoshiko might be, for Tokio, she is only a relief sculpture. Tokio carves Yoshiko with his guidance and care long enough that he believes she is an object that he owns.
He is genuine in adoring her beauty and obedience but is incapable of accepting her as a real woman. He is unable to accept her love for someone else – outraged by his own inability to control the object of his secret lust.
So what is the point of sharing this emotional struggle? Why would the author shame himself further after his affair? Is it simply an attempt to utilize personal experience to explore the limits of humanity?
Imagine a person in our time, or even in this precise moment, opening this book and starting to read it. Will they treat it as a disgusting novel, a tragedy or even an account of their own life — a similar narration of their unspeakable memories?
This infinite range of reactions speaks to the essence of the I-novel. There is no definite experience the author wants the reader to have because the story belongs primarily to its creator. If the story prompts the reader to cry on their comforter and think of their past, that births another I-novel.
Leslie Tong PO ’29 is from California. She loves films, history and literature. She is currently trying her best to get a driver’s license ASAP.
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