男色と国家

─原抱一庵の『闇中政治家』─

抄録

In 1890, as Meiji leaders consolidated their power and celebrated Japan's future through the festivities surrounding the opening of the Imperial Diet, Hara Hôitsuan's Secret Politician (Anchû seijika, 1890) spotlighted the turbulent 1880s and the tragic consequences of the government's violent suppression of opposition voices in the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement. Much more than just a notable embodiment of the contestatory nature of the creation of the modern Japanese nation-state, Secret Politician also punctuates the end of the period of political novels (seiji shôsetsu) with a provocative evocation of male-male sexuality (nanshoku). Hara's valorization of men's relationships, which invoke an earlier code of "manhood" shaped by the tropes of nanshoku, operates as an oppositional act. Loyal bonds among government-declared criminals on trial at the end of the novel are framed within the sexualized language and associations of love-pacts between warriors, while the state is depicted as a deplorable villain lacking fidelity to its male citizenry. I maintain, however, that its oppositional stance nevertheless reinforced a growing trend that envisioned the Japanese nation as overwhelmingly masculine, a trend that not only bolstered the very state Hara sought to challenge but also had far reaching consequences for women, whose position in the new nation was greatly circumscribed to fit the needs of the masculinist, imperial state. I suggest that Secret Politician demands attention precisely because of these fissures that reveal the shifting boundaries of modern Japanese literature, contestatory politics, and the contentious struggle to define sexuality and gender that are obfuscated by grand narratives of Japan's smooth and natural "progress" towards "civilization."