The Turn of the Twentieth Century and Ikaho Hot Spring Placed at the Beginning ：The Fabricated Bliss in Tokutomi Roka’s <i>Hototogisu</i>

Abstract

This paper reappraises Tokutomi Roka’s Hototogisu, a work which was widely presented in a variety of media between the Meiji and Showa periods. Previous studies on this novel have paid attention to its melodramatic structure, which is based on the representation of the Zushi, and the depiction of Takeo reconciling with his late wife Namiko’s father as marking “the end” (owari). However, the Shinpa versions, which were considered to be the most representative of various stage adaptations of Hototogisu, used the hot spring site of Ikaho as the setting for the opening act of the play, as in the original novel. Both the Shinpa adaptations and the original novel entail the link between the Ikaho hot spring and Hototogisu, in this way centering the portrayal of marital bliss. This is also emphasized in collected essays Ikaho Miyage. To elucidate the function of this bliss in the literary works of later generations, this paper revisits the centrality of Ikaho in the original novel while also considering the instability and multiplicity of the 1890s Japanese society from which it emerged. This focus reveals how the image of “hot springs” is conceptualized and the kind of linguistic network that is constructed in Hototogisu.