Ōe raises an issue never voiced by any of his predecessors or contem-
poraries: "Wasn't there another way of ending the novel? If there were,
Japanese literature would have taken a slightly different course." ⁵

To illustrate a different ending to A Dark Night's Passing, Ōe brings
in semiotics, specifically the concept of "grotesque realism" put for-
ward by Mikhail M. Bakhtin in his famous Rabelais discussion. Based
on the image system of carnivalization in Europe, one of the images of
"grotesque realism" deals with human excrement. Central to Bakh-
tin's analysis is the ambivalent nature of excrement. In ancient scato-
logical images, excrement is "linked to the generating force and to
fertility. On the other hand, excrement is conceived as something
intermediate between earth and body, as something relating the one to
the other. It is also an intermediate between the living body and dead,
disintegrating matter that is being transformed into the earth, into
manure. The living body returns to the earth its excrement, which
fertilizes the earth as does the body of the dead." ⁶ Possessing this
dynamic element, excrement plays the key role in Ōe's version of how
to end A Dark Night's Passing: "Shiga Naoya did not have to make
Tokitō Kensaku take the herbal medicine. He could have come up with
another solution: let Kensaku continue his bout with the diarrhea. For
example, let us say Kensaku runs around [on the mountain] with diar-
rhea. He shits all over the place. . . . Through this, a dynamic
regeneration takes place. Rather than letting him merge into nature,
and dissolving the confrontation between him and nature, Shiga could
have regenerated Tokitō Kensaku as a character who actively interacts
with nature. Had he concluded A Dark Night's Passing with the [alter-
nate] ending, would not Japanese literature have changed a little?" ⁷

The usual approach to fiction in Japan tacitly but doggedly assumes
that "in the process of writing a novel, there is actually no need, at a
conscious level, to use a mechanism or methodological device." ⁸ Ōe
makes a radical break with this conventional wisdom exercised by the
still popular "I-novel" (shishōsetsu), whose most consummate artist is
Shiga Naoya. What the definition of this traditional fiction exactly is
still generates debate among critics. ⁹ It is commonly held that the "I-
novel" records and exposes the writer's candid emotions, failures, and
lifestyle, i.e., his "undisguised personal preliterary self" in the man-
ner of a narrative. ¹⁰ Its viewpoint is inevitably confined to the writer's
limited environment as it replaces "the pluralist 'real world' with a
private universe." ¹¹ Based on the fusion or confusion of art and life,
the solemn tone of the "I-novel" leaves hardly any room for humor,

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