Kurahashi Yumiko: A Dream of the Present? A Bridge to the Past?

Widely recognized as a leading writer of prose fiction, Kurahashi Yumiko (b. 1935) produced several early works permeated by stark modernist imagery, then combined this approach with an imaginative drawing upon the ancient prose narrative tradition. She thus developed a unique style which has been characterized as a fantasy that ‘relies for its powerful effects upon a kind of imagination that does not so much engage in romanticizing … as lay things bare with shocking candor and with a cynicism comparable to [that of] an anatomist at [an] autopsy.This attribution of cynicism to her works undoubtedly derives from the author's dispassionate treatment of various kinds of heightened sexuality, including trading sexual partners and the practice of incest. Kurahashi's unusual ‘kind of imagination’ also encompasses the portrayal of contemporary situations suffused with many attitudes and values expressed in the early prose narratives which mirror the court tradition of ancient Japan. One of the earliest works, The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari c. 1015? by Lady Murasaki Shikibu), seems to have exerted a strong influence on Kurahashi's recent novel, A Floating Bridge of Dreams (Yume no ukihashi, 1970). Kurahashi is likely to have been attracted to The Tale of Genji not only because it is the first important long narrative written by a woman, but also because this complex and beautiful work has long been held in esteem as the greatest narrative in Japanese literature, and has been accorded the same stature as The Divine Comedy or Don Quixote. The following essay considers the ways that Kurahashi's novel adapts the Japanese classical literary legacy, and explores the potential of this inheritance to act as a framework for describing contemporary experience.