The English patient is Japanese

[Michael Hirohama]

I received permission from Bernard <Bernx at aol.com> and "Leuers"
<leuers at cec.mii.kurume-u.ac.jp> to resend this message to the Japanese
Cinema forum.  This came out of a discussion of the "English Patient" from
a psychoanalytic perspective.  I haven't seen either the "English Patient"
or "Shitsurakuen".  Anyone here like to respond?

Michael Hirohama
Owner, PSYCHOHISTORY List

>Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 23:33:18 GMT
>Sender: psychoanalytic-studies-request at sheffield.ac.uk
>From: Bernx at aol.com
>To: Multiple recipients of list <psychoanalytic-studies at sheffield.ac.uk>
>Subject: Re: The English patient is Japanese
>X-Comment: Psychoanalytic Studies E-mail Discussion Forum
>
>In a message dated 97-11-28 08:35:06 EST, leuers at cec.mii.kurume-u.ac.jp
>writes:
>
>>
>>Thanks Bernard, Brett, Chess Denman and Marakay Rogers.
>>(Names as signed unless otherwise) All very interesting if a
>>little difficult to understand. Thanks for pointing out the link with
>>Orpheus, Bernard. There is an interesting Orpheus myth here
>>by the way. You may well know it but in case you don't, and
>>are interested, it goes like this
>>
>>Izanagi visits  Izanami in the underworld. (Second episode in
>>the "Kojiki")
>>
>>The primal male (-gi) and female (-mi) bonk and the latter
>>gives birth the world until, giving birth to the god of fire, the
>>PF burns her vagina and dies. The PM cries, lamenting the loss of
>>his wife "in exchange for a child", and goes down into the
>>underworld to bring her back. Knocking at the door of the
>>underworld, this time giving the reason "We still have a world
>>to complete", the PM is told by his wife to wait while she
>>discusses the matter with the God of the underworld and, by her,
>>"Don't look" (Very Orphic). After what seems like a long time
>>the PM lights the end of this comb (the "male tooth-of-the-comb")
>>and peers in to see his wife's rotten corpse with "lightening
>>gods" coming out of every orifice. He runs scared. She and
>>her minions run after him, shamed and angry. He throws behind
>>him his hair pin and other accessories which turn into food and slows
>>his greedy pursuers progress (common theme)  and finally blocks
>>the path to the under world with a giant rock. The PF says
>>"If you block me in here I will kill 1000 people every day". The
>>PM replies "And I will build 1500 secluded-birth-houses every
>>day, good-bye!" and blocks the entrance to the underworld
>>forever. Finally the PM washes away the "impurity" which stuck
>>to him in the underworld and in so doing gives birth to the
>>Sun goddess (and two others) on his own, about which he is
>>very pleased indeed and goes into permanent retirement.
>>
>>I make a meal out of the similarities between this and
>>"The Fall". Both contain a prohibition not to see something
>>and end up covering something up - genitals with fig leaves
>>and birth in secluded houses. So both explain the origin of
>>life/death and a central cultural taboo - birth and things
>>to do with it are very taboo here. But of course the above
>>myth is much more similar to Orpheus. In Orpheus
>>the tabooer is male, however, whereas tabooers are always
>>female here in Japan.
>>
>>In a vain attempt to link this with "The English Patient"
>>(A doomed love affair) I bring your attention to the fact that:
>>in Japan romances traditionally end in double suicide like
>>the blockbuster adultery film "Shitsurakuen = Lost Paradise"
>>released earlier this year. The Japanese moral may be that
>>partnerships based on eros are essentially doomed. Partnerships,
>>traditionally "arranged", based on creating a family are
>>safe if a little boring.
>>
>>This is a long way from "The English Patient" but... comments
>>gratefully received, particularly with reference to the
>>"matri-retentive male" - if there is any connection.
>                                 *************
>Wow! Tim, that is a dynamite amplification of what we know of
>as the Orpheus story. The Japanese equivalent is directly and
>far more psychological than the Western version. But your
>comments about the double suicide of lovers motif are provocative.
>In your view, and which perhaps follows the more orthodox
>Japanese interpretation, the "Romeo & Juliet" tragedy is not simply
>an advisory in support of  family arranged marriages and
>maintaining the pragmatics of such arrangements, but a
>warning against [Oedipal] disidence, deviation and
>experimentation with the unknown. Interestingly enough, you
>equate this with "partnerships based in eros." Would the Japanese draw such a
>conclusion? Or does Eros have more to do with traffic with the unconscious
>than it does with sexual gratification?
>In other words, any commerce with the potentials of the
>unconscious are generally and absolutely taboo; whereas, by
>contrast, such variance is the liet-motif of Western culture.
>
>Notably, the Japanese Primal Male is not especially dedicated to effecting a
>revolutionary change but regaining his wife (and by
>which the status quo may be retained). This is, astoundingly
>enough, the same level on which the Orpheus story performs.
>I would refer to this as the cultural reification of the pre-oedipal
>state: where the authority figures (Ma, Pa, King, Queen, etc) are inscrutably
>in place and fused in the super-ego function.
>
>But the second episode of the Kojiki, as you so clearly report it, and the
>Orpheus myth, show a first crack in this inscrutablity of the
>powers that be. Notably, in the case of Orpheus, his story and
>figure went on to evolve the Thracian Mystery religion (Dionysios
>and the Feminine Mysteries which had to do with descent to and
>return from the underworld [of death]) right through the Hellenistic
>tradition and into some of the ritual meanings retained by the
>Roman Church. But all through this evolvement the myth of the
>hero descending below in attempt to kill Mr. Death (Hades) and
>rescue the virgin of new potential (from Perseus to St. George).
>The "dragon" or "serpent" of Death does, of course, represent the utter
>inscrutablity of the status quo, of *what is* shall be *what is* evermore;
>from womb to tomb in uninterruptable cycle.
>
>The virgin is thus kept as the dragon's captive and unable to
>open her womb of new potential. The uroboros, or tail-eating
>serpent symbol, represents this unbreakable wheel of Fate (Moira) (and what I
>often use to define my notion of matricentric
>consciousness).
>
>In all cases, the serpent and Draco represent the fused images of
>the chthonian phallic father and the chthonian, all generating and all
>devouring mother. Here, Freud's allusion to the "mother penis" is
>quite literally realized in the gender fusion of the parents. The
>culture evolution in the West is to overcome this stasis through the invasive
>extraverion of its archetypal heroes. Is there a parallel in Japanese
>mytholgogy? I remember a myth told many years ago
>by Joseph Campell at a lecture. I was quite young at the time and hardly
>tuned into mythology and psyhcology. Campell set my
>wheels rolling.
>
>He told of an myth from the Einu people of Japan involving three brothers who
>were fisherman. Their vessel was stranded on an
>island during a storm and this island was known to reside a
>fearsome mother goddess who lived in a cave. Knowing this the
>lads decided to sleep on the beach well out of her reach. But during the
>night the oldest brother was awakened by a most beautiful
>maiden who tempted him into her cave.
>
>No sooner did he enter her than his penis was severed and he
>bled to death. The next night this episode was repeated for the
>second brother. On the third night the youngest brother took his turn. Now it
>seems that fishermen were known to carry a whetstone dangling from their belt
>and by which they sharpened their hooks. Before the younger brother entered
>his penis into the lady he first inserted his whetstone knowing that she had
>a sharp set of teeth in her vagina (*vagina dentatis*) and which his stone
>soon enough disposed of but not without driving her to great passion. Then he
>safely inserted his penis and won the eternal
>favour of the goddess. Here the erotic motif is put to service of overcoming
>the dragon nature of the goddess and in effect
>removing the kid brother from the pre-oedipal stasis, or state of unborning
>[death] (would we speak here of the cruel and fatally sharp teeth of the
>superego that, like Papa Uranus, reclaims all his born children down below in
>the bowels of Mother Earth?)
>
>Tim, in a previous post I included that quote by Freud of the "mother penis"
>and which I said was appropriate to some of the Japanese myths you first
>reported. I had promise to post that quote but only did so the other day, re:
>the *English Patient.* In any case, thank you for that marvelous Orpheus
>parallel,
>
>Sincerely:
>Bernard
>(BXBovasso)