Queen Mab's Chariot over the Wasteland

In 1970, the centenary year of the death of Charles Dickens, a number of people in Japan who loved the author and his work established the Tokyo Branch of the Dickens Fellowship. The first president and honorary secretary of the Branch was Professor Koichi Miyazaki, the foremost Dickens scholar in Japan at the time. After him, Professor Shigeru Koike and Professor Takao Saijo kept alive the adventurous spirit of the branch. By their strenuous efforts it has grown into one of the most significant of the overseas branches of the Fellowship. In 2000 it was renamed the Japan Branch and a new charter was granted to the then honorary secretary Takao Saijo.

It was around 1976 when I first entered the organization but, thirty years on, I still find much to explore and to comprehend fully in the great novelist and his immortal work. When I began to study Dickens, the trend of literary criticism was rapidly shifting from Structuralism to Post-Structuralism and then to Deconstruction. I was not immune to some of the strongly asserted new credos of the time: that a literary text is not the product of an isolated, individual genius but a complex structure or texture into which past texts, both literary and non-literary, are densely interwoven, and that these texts echo and re-echo each other and will continue to do so in the future. This did not necessarily run counter to the historical methodology in which I had been nurtured as a young scholar. As I was very much intrigued by theatricality in Dickens's novels, I began to search for its origins in the works of eighteenth-century novelists. To my surprise, it was Samuel Richardson, not Fielding or Smollett, that proved most rewarding in terms of the dramatic presentation of characters and situations. Stimulated by the discovery of this unexpected kinship, I was led to examine the dramas of the preceding periods. I delved deeper and deeper into the past, reading first the plays of the Restoration and then, skipping over the Interregnum, Caroline, Jacobean, and Elizabethan city comedies and domestic plays. We believe that Dickens is unique, that he is an einimitable'. However, it is undeniable that his novels were firmly rooted in the tradition of urban literature created by Ben Jonson (Dickens's favourite), Thomas Dekker, and Thomas Middleton and inherited by Restoration dramatists. I have established for myself that it is this fertile soil of dramatic, chiefly comic, tradition going back more than two hundred years that made it possible for Dickens's genius to take root, sprout, and shoot up to such a height of achievement. I believe I am at last ready to grapple with this giant again, having cultivated this soil by myself.

During the last thirty years, the cultural and social environment surrounding not only English studies but also literary studies in general has undergone a great change. Academics of my generation have always been beset and troubled with interminable reforms of the university system in Japan. The final outcome of all the upheavals is a situation in which the study of the humanities is unjustly held in disrepute, even despised. Academic disciplines that cannot earn money or have little to do with utility are being neglected and discarded as superfluous. Today the study of literature is, to quote Mr Dombey, emerely a piece of base coin that couldn't be invested--a bad Boy--nothing more'. We are dismayed to find a legion of Pecksniffs and Bounderbys arrogantly striding not only over political and economic grounds but also on our campuses. Hard times are being renewed with a vengeance.

Paradoxically, however, in this age dominated by callous utility, Dickens's humanism seems to shine again all the more powerfully. Fancy is not there solely to regenerate a Gradgrind; it has the innate potential to push back or shrewdly divert the onset of vandalism, to restore vitality and radiance to civilization. I would like to believe that Dickens's gift to us, if we continue to treasure it, will ultimately transform itself into Queen Mab's chariot, soaring in triumph over the modern wasteland of sterile pragmatism and money-worship.

Looking back on my own career, I cannot help feeling how small my contribution to the activities of the Fellowship has been. I am well aware of my own unworthiness as the honorary secretary of the Japan Branch. I cannot hope to emulate the dedication, self-sacrifice, and resourcefulness Professor Saijo has shown during the past six years. However, I may find an excuse for accepting the task in persuading myself that I have been given the chance to repay a part of the great debt I owe to Dickens and to the members of the Fellowship. I will never forget the warm response, questions and comments (which, though astute, were never lacking in kindness and encouragement) when I read my first paper at a conference of the Japan Branch. Our membership consists mostly of academics but the organization has always maintained a friendly, often convivial, atmosphere not always seen in other academic societies. Relying fully on the help of my friends, I would like to do my best to strengthen the bond of fellowship among us and to make sure that Dickens's humanitarian values are handed down to the next generation.

Eiichi Hara
Honorary Secretary, Japan Branch of the Dickens Fellowship