Japanese Aesthetics of Death in the Works of V. Pelevin

Gun Anping Postgraduate student; Department of the History of Russian Literature; St. Petersburg State University 199034, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Universitetskaya nab., 7-9-11B gap0921liza@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Japanese motifs also occupy a significant place in the work of Victor Pelevin. In the works of V. Pelevin, there are characters who follow the path of self-destruction, correlated with the Japanese aesthetics of death. In Japanese society, the attitude towards death allows "to perceive suicide as an honorable and significant action. In some cases, this is the most honorable and meaningful way to perform a kettlebell to one's name" ^{[1, p. 119]}. A. Morris in his work "The Nobility of Defeat. The tragic hero of Japanese literature"describes two types of heroes of Japanese culture: the winner and another hero, "whose straightforward sincerity does not allow him to make any maneuvers and compromise." … Faced with defeat, the hero usually takes his own life in order to avoid the humiliation of captivity, assert his honor and give final assurances of his sincerity" ^{[9, p. 5]}. The formation of such an attitude is largely related to the spirit of Bushido and Japanese aesthetics.

Bushido literally means the norms that samurai should follow in their daily lives and professional activities ^{[2, p. 16]}. Its ideological basis consists of Zen Buddhism, Shintoism and Confucianism. In V. Pelevin's works, three characters commit suicide related to the spirit of Bushido: the character Serdyuk in the novel Chapaev and the Void (1996), Yukio Mishima in the story A Guest at the Bon Festival (2003), and Sasaki in the story Duel (2021) commit suicide by seppuku. Among Japanese samurai, the most characteristic way of death is seppuku (hara-kiri). The reason why the abdominal incision was chosen is that, according to ancient anatomy, the abdomen is the seat of the soul and feelings ^{[2, pp. 119-120]}. However, the true causes of their deaths, as well as their function in the texts, are different.

In the novel Chapaev and the Void, Serdyuk's character commits seppuku in his hallucination at the instigation of Japanese businessman Kawabata. Kawabata convinced Serdyuk to become an employee of the Taira Kiyomori clan with an annual salary of 40 thousand dollars and awarded him the title of Japanese samurai. Unable to resist the money, Serdyuk completely ignored the oath that Kawabata made him take. In addition to the idea that death is an honor according to Bushido, another important reason for Serdyuk's suicide was also the concept of the beauty of death proposed by Kawabata. In Kawabata's eyes, life is fleeting, like sakura blossoms or bubbles in water, and is constantly changing, while the seppuku doctrine calls for a direct and fearless return to eternity. This idea is an expression of one of the most important concepts of Japanese literature and even of the entire Japanese society — mono no aware. Japanese scientist Motoori Norinaga introduced the concept of mono no aware and used it to rethink the classic Japanese monogatari novel The Tale of Genji. Mono-no avare is a deep and quiet feeling that naturally or involuntarily arises from subjective emotional contact with external phenomena ^{[8, p. 79]}. Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata (the prototype of the hero Kawabata) is a practitioner of the aesthetics of mono no aware. In his work "Flowers do not Sleep," he describes how at four o'clock in the morning he saw a wonderful apple tree blooming (Latin Malus spectabilis). Admiring her beauty, he simultaneously felt the painful beauty with which the flower opened, exerting all its strength. He continues his reflections: natural beauty is endless, but the beauty that a person is able to comprehend in his life is limited. Therefore, mono-no avare generates a unique perception of life and death: the desire for "instant beauty." In ancient Japan, people compared themselves to sakura, turning the idea of "instant beauty" into a behavior where suicide was considered the high point of life. Their ritual death also symbolized the desire for a brief burst of life, an attempt to find eternal peace in annihilation.

The Japanese in the novel also adhere to the doctrine of "everything is emptiness." However, Serdyuk did not fully recognize their teachings and did not follow them, he even became a samurai fraudulently. After committing seppuku, he still came to the "Void".: "Serdyuk (and never really Serdyuk) floated in a low-quality void and felt that he was moving towards something huge, radiating unbearable heat" ^{[11, p. 211]}. Therefore, this void here does not represent a place of enlightenment, but rather signifies a more extreme situation. Seppuku is a way for a samurai to achieve enlightenment, because at that moment he overcomes life and death, but for Serdyuk it is impossible. The rules regarding death in the spirit of Bushido push Serdyuk on the path of self-destruction.

Subjectively, Serdyuk did not want to commit suicide — his supervisor, Kawabata, forced him to do it for the honor of their company. At its core, this reflects the Confucian ideas embedded in Bushido. Confucianism is an important ethical foundation for Bushido. These moral principles of Confucianism apply to interpersonal and social relationships. Confucius hoped that the rulers would perform their social roles well and observe their moral duties. In the book "Bushido", Nitobe Inazo reduced the spirit of Bushido to eight aspects: justice, bravery, compassion for the grief of others, politeness, honesty and sincerity, honor, loyalty (zhong), self-control ^{[2, p. 7]}. To maintain power, the rulers exaggerated the importance of the Confucian concept of zhong, making it not only the people's faith in the rulers, but also an ideological shackle limiting the behavior of samurai. In Bushido, zhong means absolute submission. Initially, the Confucian concept of Zhong limited not only ordinary people, but also rulers. It meant loyalty to the state and the people, not just to the ruler. However, in the feudal era, loyalty to superiors and rulers was put first in Bushido. Thus, hara-kiri, committed in the name of honor and loyalty in the spirit of Bushido under the influence of Confucian philosophy, in the author's opinion, brings only false liberation. During World War II, Japan was attacked by two atomic bombs and defeated, but still became the strongest economy in post-war Asia. In this novel, Kawabata believes that the emptiness that arises in the depths of the Russian soul is similar to the emptiness of the Japanese, so Russia needs an "alchemical alliance" with the East. Serdyuk's suicide symbolizes that the path chosen by Japan is not suitable for Russia.

V. Pelevin's short story "A Guest at the Bon Festival" is written in the first person and is composed of intertextual fragments referring to Yukio Mishima's novel "Confessions of a Mask" (1949), the treatise "Hagakure", the biography of Japanese writer and politician Yukio Mishima, the Chinese chengyu (phraseology) "Ye-gong's Love for Dragons" and the tale of the dragon and the prince. The narrator attempted hara-kiri and was beheaded on the second attempt. This is also the real personal experience of the writer Mishima. According to the narrator, his death occurred as a result of striving for the spirit of Bushido and beauty. Firstly, Pelevin pays special attention to the spirit of Bushido, and the quotes from "Hagakure" given in his story emphasize the inextricable link between death and Bushido: "The way of the samurai is found in death. If, by strengthening his heart with determination every morning and every evening, a person can live as if his body has already died, the path will be clear for him" ^{[3, pp. 20-21]}. Secondly, at the beginning of the story, the question is asked: "What is beauty?" and he concludes: "Death and beauty are essentially the same thing" ^{[10, p. 353]}. The spirit of Bushido and beauty were also two of the causes of writer Yukio Mishima's death, but there were other, more significant reasons. The reasons why Yukio Mishima chose seppuku for himself may be related to four main factors, as indicated in the biography written by his friend: worship of the emperor of Japan, a love passion for a person of the same sex, reverence for Bushido and a desire for the aesthetics of death. In addition to these four reasons, A. Morris argues that Mishima's tragedy lies in the fact that "Yukio Mishima adopted the philosophy of Oshio Heihachiro at a time when there was no social ground for the application of his powers" ^{[9, p. 169]}. The metaphysical system of Osio Heihachiro was based on the Wangyanmin concept of taike. The concept of "unity of knowledge and action" is the most important thought of Wang Yangming: "Knowledge is the beginning of action, action is the fulfillment of knowledge" ^{[4, p. 186]}. Mishima believes that the thoughts of Wang Yangming's monistic idealism are dangerous and radical, but he nevertheless accepts this idea and tries to apply it: "moral truth, subjectively idealistically recognized, must immediately turn into action, otherwise awareness itself is untenable" ^{[5, p. 92]}. Therefore, he has this opinion: revolution is an action, and action is often accompanied by death. However, in Pelevin's story, the cause of his death is simplified to a desire for the spirit of Bushido and beauty, which does not fully coincide with the historical circumstances of Yukio Mishima's death.

In the story, the author tries to create a schizophrenic situation: there are two individuals in the same body: one is the narrator, engaged in philosophical reflections, and the other is Yukio Mishima, who strives infinitely closer to beauty and self—destruction. In other words, in this body, the narrator represents his soul, and Yukio Mishima's self-destruction symbolizes the disappearance of his body. In this story, as it seems at first glance, the author discusses the aesthetics of death, but in fact he uses these intertextual fragments to express his own philosophical thoughts about life and death. The narrator also introduces into the novel an intertextual fragment related to Yukio Mishima's obsession with the death of Saint Sebastian, but its function is to bring out the concept of "death of God." The narrator believes that in the death of Saint Sebastian, beauty merges with something high, which is Sebastian's holiness. Saint Sebastian acts as the vessel of God, and his murder symbolizes the murder of God. Based on this, he proceeds to reflect on the nature of suicide and comes to the conclusion that suicide is an attack on the God who lives in the heart. The writer Y. Mishima's fascination with the image of Saint Sebastian permeates his literature, aesthetics, and even his life path. In the semi-autobiographical novel "Confessions of a Mask" by Yu. Mishima, beauty is symbolized by the bodies of young people such as Sebastian or soldiers when they die. The hero of the novel describes Sebastian as the source of his sexual awakening. ^{[6, pp. 39-40]} The most important reasons for this phenomenon are that the hero is immersed in this beauty because of his own inferiority: Bodily defects or the absence of certain qualities can cause pathological emotions in them. Therefore, according to Mishima, beauty reaches eternity through death and destruction. He not only embodied the beauty of death in his works, but also applied it in his own life: bringing his body to physical perfection, he recreated the image of Saint Sebastian in a series of photographs, and at the end of his life, like Sebastian, sacrificed himself in the name of a sublime ideal. Thus, the image of Yukio Mishima in Pelevin's story is a parody reinterpretation of the real writer. In fact, his death is used as a means to express the author's philosophical reflections on the nature of death.

V. Pelevin dates the days of suicide and philosophical reflections to the time of the bon (or Obon) holiday. The concept of smell refers to an object used to save people from suffering from hanging upside down. The treatise "The Ullambana Sutra preached by the Buddha" describes the origin of this holiday: "The disciple of the Buddha Maudgalyayana (Japanese Mokuren) saw that his dead mother was suffering in the world of hungry spirits, so he turned to the Buddha for salvation. The Buddha told him that if he prepared a variety of food and treated monks from the ten directions on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, it could free his mother."^[13] This holiday was introduced in Japan in the 7th century AD along with the spread of Buddhism and later became one of the most revered ^{[12, p. 46]}. During its celebration, a number of events dedicated to the memory of ancestral spirits are held. Therefore, in the title of the story, the word "guest" means a soul that returns to this holiday. The narrator believes that all people are doomed to die and become souls, so there is no difference between the living and the dead on this holiday.

In the story "The Guest at the Bon Festival" and the novel "Chapaev and the Void", the deaths of Serdyuk and Yukio Mishima do not lead to the expected result: Serdyuk does not reach the true "Void", and Mishima's head rolls, but never reaches the edge ^{[10, p. 369]}. But the author does not always treat the spirit of Bushido with irony. In the work "Transhumanism Inc." (2021), there is a story that examines the spirit of Bushido in the world of the future. The hero of the story "Duel" samurai Sasaki-san creates fighting robots in the style of samurai and arranges fights with their participation, which brings him the favor of criminal authorities. He constantly transforms his combat robots and recreates the classic duels of the great Japanese samurai with their help. In the end, he plans to arrange a fight between the great samurai Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro using robots. However, the computer program invokes samurai souls into robots. Realizing what is happening, they kill all the spectators of the fight, refuse to fight and commit suicide. As a result of this event, Sasaki is sentenced to hara-kiri. After committing seppuku, Sasaki does not die, but finds himself on the third level of the virtual world.

What remains unchanged is that the spirit of Bushido is still closely associated with death and honor, but in the future world of this novel, where technology is highly advanced, there is a different attitude to the spirit of Bushido. Everything in this story is based on contrasts.: active hara-kiri and passive hara-kiri, truly noble ancient samurai and samurai of the future, compromising for the sake of life. V. I. Miller argues that "V. Pelevin's characters demonstrate the complete meaninglessness of their existence in the absence of goals and life guidelines. Their whole life is reduced to the realization of natural instincts.… this is a given of the modern world, which is the most reliable option for the future development of man in it" ^{[7, p. 90]}. Therefore, when the ancient samurai appeared in the world of the future, there was a conflict of concepts: their actions embody the glory of the spirit of Bushido. Despite the fact that their actions are cruel, the author still praises their spirit in this world.

Thus, when analyzing the death of Japanese characters in V. Pelevin's work, we found that the unique aesthetics of the Japanese guide Japanese life, so the aesthetics expressed in the actions and words of the Japanese characters created by V. Pelevin are unconsciously reflected in the text. The spirit of Bushido and the aesthetics of death in Japanese culture provide V. Pelevin's characters with the opportunity for poetic self-destruction. However, their death invariably symbolizes failure on the path to enlightenment: Serdyuk does not achieve "Emptiness"; Yukio Mishima does not realize his aesthetic goal; Sasaki's behavior contrasts with the image of an ancient samurai. Therefore, the function of these Japanese heroes is usually to serve as a contrast to the true path of enlightenment.