“Territory of Light” by Yuko Tsushima: Nameless Tokyo woman and her young daughter struggle through year of marital separation and divorce

The author “was born in Tokyo in 1947, the daughter of the novelist Osamu Dazai, who took his own life when she was one year old” (1, back flap), which is similar to the protagonist, who “had entered the world at more or less the same time as my father departed it” (1, p. 142).

The author describes herself as having a real-life/writing-life, double consciousness: “Writing is to me a way to confirm myself. If I stop writing, I will feel like a kite without string. I write fiction, but I experience the fiction I write. In that sense, they are not fiction anymore, but reality. That’s frightening. Like other novelists, I live a real life and a life as a writer. At times I get confused which is which” (2).

Double or multiple consciousness is multiple personality.

Territory of Light is the story of a modestly employed, young Tokyo woman and her two, going on three-year-old daughter, as they struggle through a year of the mother’s separation and divorce. It “sheds light on Japan’s marginalized” (3).

Namelessness

I don’t know whether Yuko Tsushima ever explained her protagonist’s namelessness.

Contrary to what most people think, namelessness of characters may not originate as a literary technique.

The only psychological situation in which namelessness is common and makes sense is multiple personality: Many alternate personalities originally lived inside, have not come out and overtly interacted with other people, or, if they have occasionally come out, have remained incognito (answering to the person’s regular name).

Thus, they haven’t needed names. Or even if they do have names, they may fear that revealing it will give people too much power over them.

And when such an alternate personality is used as a character, some authors are respectful of their character’s wish to remain nameless.

1. Yuko Tsushima. Territory of Light [1979]. Translated from the Japanese by Geraldine Harcourt. New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2019.

2. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1989-01-22-8902270344-story.html3. 3. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/03/31/books/territory-light-timely-translation-sheds-light-japans-marginalized/ 

Added Oct. 21, 2020: Since this novel is an example of the Japanese literary genre called the "I-novel," it might be argued that the nameless narrator is simply the author. But why, then, was the author's name not used in this novel? Because the author's first name as given is a pseudonym. And as I've discussed previously, pseudonyms, per se, may raise the issue of multiple personality.