Nationalism in Ulysses and Kenji Miyazawa's Works

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My aim is to compare the references to Arthur Griffith in James Joyce's Ulysses in connection with Chigaku Tanaka in Kenji Miyazawa's works from the perspective of nationalism. In Ulysses Leopold Bloom, who has a Jewish-Hungarian background, is rumored to have given the ideas for Sinn Fein to Griffith. Bloom's contemporaries would believe this gossip because Griffith was persistently rumored to have a Jewish adviser-ghostwriter. On the other hand, Griffith was a notorious anti-Semite. Joyce strategically employed Griffith's rumor for Bloom's characterization. Ulysses can be read as a novel about anti-Semitism. Bloom is considered a Jew of Ireland by other Irish people, but he insists he is Irish. Why does being labeled "Jewish" matter? It mattered to nationalists who, wishing for political independence from powerful neighboring countries, shunned those they considered not to be Irish. Miyazawa was known as a pious believer of the Lotus Sutra of Mahayana Buddhism, and was also influenced by Chigaku Tanaka, founder of the Kokuchukai, the Lotus Sutra or Nichiren sect. Tanaka was a Japanese Arthur Griffith in that he founded the Kokuchukai (Nation's Pillar Society) and influenced two radical nationalists, Kanji Ishihara, an admirer of Adolf Hitler and the mastermind of the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931, and Nissho Inoue who pulled the strings of the assassination of Premiere Tsuyoshi Inukai in 1932 (The 5/15 incident). Miyazawa once wrote in a letter dated Dec. 2, 1920 to Kanai Hosaka that "... Now I swear to Saint Nichiren to obeying Tanaka-sensei. At his command, I would be glad go even to the frozen Siberian plain or the inland of China. Or I would be a shoe keeper at Kokuchukai building, Tokyo with my whole heart. I would never regret if my life would end with it."
2005-01-31

Nationalism in Ulysses and Kenji Miyazawa's Works

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