Ethics of Incorporation: (Im)possibility of Accepting Otherness in Kawabata's ‘One Arm’

Abstract

On touching, an object mediates and equally prevents our contacts with others. But what if one incorporates other's body? Japanese author Kawabata Yasunari, in his 'One Arm', describes a peculiar encounter with the other's body: the protagonist's replaces his arm with a girl's arm and incorporates her arm, causing him some spasm, the sense of otherness, and affective as well as repulsive feeling. This replacement of body parts questions the possibility of getting in touch with the other, as well as risky intersections with the other. Considering this (fictional) bodily encounter and the process of being together with another body, I aim to examine the rupture of contact, the (im)possibility of accepting otherness, and the ethics of communication in Kawabata, through the phenomenon of incorporation. By examining the under-researched topic of incorporation and touch in Kawabata in dialogue with relevant theories by Jean-Luc Nancy, Emmanuel Levinas and Melanie Klein, this paper aims to advance theorisations of touch and incorporation at the intersection of literature and critical theories. Introduction: Incorporating affection as well as repulsion '"I can let you have one of my arms for the night"', says the girl to the protagonist. She removes her right arm at the shoulder and uses her left hand to lay it on the protagonist's knee. The girl's right arm is still warm (Kawabata 1969: 103). This is the beginning of a short story, 'One Arm' (originally published as 'Kataude'), written by Japanese author Kawabata Yasunari in 1964. Kawabata (1899-1972), the first Japanese Nobel Prize-winning author, played a pivotal role in a prewar Japanese literary group called Shinkankaku-ha (New Sensationalist School), organised in 1924, trying to capture immediate sensations through language while applying this sensibility in his literary creations. Regarding the description of perceptual experiences, Kawabata's protagonists are generally hesitant to conduct even surface contact with others; descriptions of touch are carefully hidden for a combination of aesthetic and censorial reasons. Despite such a careful attention to physical contact and a subtle tension between touching and not touching in Kawabata's works, an arm is radically joined with another's body in 'One Arm': the male protagonist incorporating the girl's arm