[In the following excerpt, DeZure perceives evidence of amae, a psychological syndrome particular to the Japanese, in the characters of the story "Yume no ukihashi" ("The Bridge of Dreams").]

"The Bridge of Dreams" by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki is the confessional memoir of a young man, Tadasu, and his relationships with his mother and stepmother. The tale traces the development of his obsessional dependency needs in relation to them and culminates in his social and economic deterioration and his demoralization. For western readers, it calls to mind Marcel's involvement with his mother in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and generally suggests a Freudian Oedipal Complex. But the tale is not occidental, and to characterize it quite so neatly in western terms is to misread and oversimplify the psychological dynamics Tanizaki portrays. The tale does exemplify personality syndromes particular to Japan, referred to collectively as the psychology of amae; and its unique application clarifies ambiguities of characterization, form, and imagery.

Takeo Doi, a Japanese psychiatrist, characterizes various dimensions of personality indigenous to the Japanese as the psychology of amae. Amae has no specific equivalent in English but does encompass a cluster of related western psychoanalytic constructs, among them: indulgent love, reciprocal dependence, denial of separation, passive love, passivity, loss of self, and, in its more neurotic forms, mother fixation and obsession.

Doi writes:

The prototype of amae is the infant's desire to be close to its mother, who, it has come vaguely to realize, is a separate existence from itself. Then one may perhaps describe amae as, ultimately, an attempt psychologically to deny the fact of separation from the mother . . . Amae psychology works to foster a sense of oneness between mother and child. In this sense, the amae mentality could be defined as the attempt to deny the fact of separation that is such an inseparable part of human existence and to obliterate the pain of separation . . . Wherever the amae psychology is predominant, the conflicts and anxiety associated with separation are conversely lurking in the background. . . . Since amae would seem to arise first as an emotion felt by the baby at the breast towards its mother . . . it corresponds to that tender emotion labeled by Freud "the child's primary object choice." [The Anatomy of Dependence, trans. John Bester]

This infant desire to depend upon the mother figure is reinforced by Japanese cultural patterns of maternal indulgence, late weaning, prolonged co-sleeping among children and their parents, and a societal value which prizes dependence over autonomy. The "desire to depend and presume upon another's benevolence" [David Y. H., "Asian Concepts in Behavioral Science," Psychologia, 25, No. 4, 1982], one of the connotations of amae, is carried over into diverse elements of Japanese adult life from its first manifestations in the infant's relationship with his mother. This culture-bound pattern of behavior and feeling is widely recognized in Japan and pervades dimensions of language, psychology, politics, law, and the arts. It is, therefore, relevant to explore Japanese literature with the insights of amae.

AMAE PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO CHARACTER ANALYSIS: TADASU, PROTAGONIST AND NARRATOR

Tadasu's mother obsession appears to be an extension into adulthood of a yearning to amae with his mother.

Amae psychology shapes not only Tadasu's behavior and character development but is also the basis of the formal structure of his "confessional," the emotional development of the other major characters with whom Tadasu relates, and the imagery he employs in narrating his memoir.

The tale is structured by a prototypic infant desire for a mother. Three scenes portray Tadasu suckling at his mother's breast. Each time the suckling reinforces this infantile need in Tadasu. The three episodes have great significance for the development of character and events and are the most dramatic moments in the memoir.

The prototypic amae experience occurs in Tadasu's childhood with his real mother:

Sometimes I fretted and lay awake for a long time, pleading, "Let me sleep with Mama!"

Then Mother would come to look in on me. "My, what a little baby I have tonight," she would say, taking me up in her arms and carrying me to her bedroom . . . She lay down next to me just as she was, not taking off her sash, and held me so that my head nestled under her chin. The light was on, but I buried my face inside the neck of her kimono and had a blurred impression of her being swarthed in darkness. The faint scent of her hair, which was done up in a chignon, waffled into my nostrils, seeking out her nipples with my mouth, I played with them like an infant, took them between my lips, ran my tongue over them. She always let me do that as long as I wanted without a word of reproach. I believe I used to suckle at the breasts until I was a fairly large child, perhaps because in those days people were not at all strict about weaning their children. When I used my tongue as hard as I could, licking her nipples and pressing around them, the milk flowed out nicely. The mingled scents of her hair and milk hovered there in her bosom around my face. As dark as it was, I could still dimly see her white breasts . . . often my dreams were penetrated by the distant clack of the water mortar, far beyond my sheltered windows.

After this first description of memories of breast feeding before age five, we are aware of Tadasu's strong attachment to his mother. Their relationship, however, is still within the normal cultural bounds of late weaning in Japan and exemplifies indulgence of male children by their mothers. Tadasu ends his description of this memory by announcing that his mother died when he was five. The decisive aspect of this memory, therefore, is his association of his close relationship with his mother and her subsequent death, which in turn led to the frustration of his need to amae. This separation from the mother he loved is the trauma which fixates Tadasu's infantile attachment and need to amae with a mother or mother figure and determines much of his personality.

The second breast feeding episode occurs when Tadasu is an adolescent. His stepmother invites him to share her bed and suckle from her milkless breasts:

. . ."What a funny little boy you are! Now, hurry up and see if you can find the milk!"

I drew the top of her kimono open, pressed my face between her breasts, and played with her nipples with both hands. Because she was still looking down at me, a beam of light shone in over the edge of the bedclothes. I held one nipple and then the other in my mouth, sucking and using my tongue avidly to start the flow of milk . . . But as hard as I tried, it wouldn't come. . . . I wouldn't let go of her breasts, and kept sucking at them. I knew it was hopeless, but still enjoyed the sensation of rolling around in my mouth those firm little buds at the tips of her soft, full breasts.

. . . Once again by some strange association, I seemed to drift among the mingled scents of hair oil and milk that had hovered in my mother's bosom so long ago. That warm, dimly white dream world—the world I thought had disappeared forever—had actually returned.

. . . When I reached the age of twelve or thirteen, I began sleeping alone at night. But even then I would sometimes long to be held in my mother's bosom. "Mama, let me sleep with you!" I would beg. Drawing open her kimono, I would suck at her milkless breasts, and listen to her lullabies. And after drifting peacefully asleep I would awaken the next morning to find that in the meantime—I had no idea when—someone had carried me back and put me to bed alone in my small room. Whenever I said: "Let me sleep with you!" Mother was glad to do as I wished, and Father made no objection.

Just as the first episode was followed by the associated pronouncement that his mother died when he was five, this episode, too, is followed by a significant association: "Within half a year, though I hadn't forgotten my real mother, I could no longer distinguish sharply between her and my present one . . . Gradually the two images merged." Thus, with the second episode, Tadasu is no longer able to distinguish between reality and illusion. This confusion reveals his ambiguous vision of the world and the people in his life.

Indulgence of male children is by no means unusual in Japan. Doi quotes Daisetsu Susuki as writing, "The mother enfolds everything in an unconditioned love. There is no question of right or wrong. Everything is accepted without difficulties or questioning." However, it is clear from the second episode that the breast feeding initially took place at the initiative of the mother and not on request of the son. Moreover, asking Tadasu to suck when there was no milk was a bizarre form of enticement. From this episode, it appears that the mother herself is maladjusted. Whatever her motives are, or those of the passive and indulgent father, they no longer reflect characteristic Japanese practices.

The third episode takes place on the veranda when Tadasu is eighteen. His stepmother, having given birth to a son, offers Tadasu milk from her swollen breasts:

"I wonder if you remember how to nurse," she went on. "You can try, if you like." Mother held one of her breasts in her hand and offered me the nipple. "Just try it and see!" I sat down before her so close that our knees were touching, bent my head toward her, and took one of her nipples between my lips. At first it was hard for me to get any milk, but as I kept suckling, my tongue began to recover its old skill. I was several inches taller than she was, but I leaned down and buried my face in her bosom, greedily sucking up the milk that came gushing out. "Mama," I began murmuring instinctively in a spoiled, childish voice.

I suppose Mother and I were in each other's embrace for about half an hour. At last she said: "That's enough for today, isn't it?" and drew her breast away from my mouth. I thrust her aside without a word, jumped down from the veranda, and ran off into the garden.

. . . Mother's state of mind was a mystery to me, but my own actions had been equally abnormal. The moment I saw her breasts there before me, so unexpectedly revealed, I was back in the dream world that I had longed for, back in the power of the old memories that had haunted me for so many years. Then, because she lured me into it by having me drink her milk, I ended by doing the crazy thing I did. In an agony of shame, wondering how I could have harbored such insane feelings, I paced back and forth around the pond alone. But at the same time that I regretted my behavior and tortured myself about it, I felt that I wanted to do it—not once, but over and over again—if I were lured by her that way—I would not have the power to resist.

This episode of breast feeding, with the statement of intense shame and impotence to resist, completes Tadasu's development in relation to his mother. The shame Tadasu bears remains with him; the powerlessness to deny his mother and his own desires for her determine his actions in the future.

Thus, the prototype of amae, the closeness of mother and child manifest in the act of breast feeding, structures the character development of the narrator and, therefore, structures the tale itself as a memoir of his life. . . .

[That amae does not end suggests] the ongoing nature of Tadasu's quest for a mother and the continuation of his feelings of yearning, shame, and confusion as established in the breast feeding episodes. As the tale ends, we are told of his latest attempt to recapture his mother by bringing his brother, Takeshi, to his home becuase Takeshi resembles the stepmother. And, as the memoir ends, it is dated, "the anniversary of Mother's death," suggesting the continuity of his obsession in which telling the story of his life is used as a way to re-live once more his closeness with his mothers. This is confirmed by Tadasu's statement of purpose in writing: "I write for the sake of writing, simply because I enjoy looking back at the events of the past and trying to remember them one by one."

In Jungian terms, Tadasu has a mother complex. It reveals itself most clearly in the emphasis placed upon his mother figures as the central characters in the memoir. We learn almost nothing of Tadasu's life at school. We are told of no friends; and we hear that after his father's death, Tadasu receives no guests but Sawado and her family. In short, Tadasu is friendless and alienated from society; if he functions in the outside world, he clearly gives it no attention in his memoir.

Tadasu's mother complex is apparent in other ways. Physically, Tadasu prefers to identify with his mother, not his father. He writes, "She used to say I looked exactly like him, not like my mother, that made me unhappy too." In evaluating Sawado, all of his reactions are relative to his feelings for his mother: for example, "Mother's strength and firmness made her [Sawado] seem retiring, by contrast." Tadasu marries to provide his mother with a servant. He takes Takeshi, his brother, to live with him to be near one who resembles his stepmother and to fulfill his wish, "simply to go on living as long as possible with Takeshi, my one link with Mother."

Tadasu's mother complex is an obsession. Doi identifies a number of pathological conditions associated with an obsession, all of which relate to amae psychology. One of these, hitomishiri, is the way a baby comes to distinguish its mother from other people, objecting when other people hold him, calming down only in his mother's arms. If a child's hitomishiri is too strong, the child will make no move to leave its mother and tends to shy away from strangers.

Tadasu exemplifies hitomishiri. As a child, he cried incessantly for his mother and would not be quieted until she came to him. After her death, when Okane, his nurse, tried to comfort him, he "cried about in bed. 'I don't want you to sing for me. I want Mama!' Kicking off the covers, I howled and wept." At times his father would try to comfort him, but Tadasu rejected him because of his father's intolerable "masculine smell."

Doi writes about hitomishiri:

Where the individual is by birth extremely sensitive or where the mother's personality or other environmental factors have hindered a good relationship with the mother during the early stages, the individual it seems never transcends the experience of hitomishiri which continues into adulthood.

The frustration of amae which Tadasu experiences is a function of his mother's death and of a father whose own sense of loss made it impossible to comfort his son or to serve as an adequate love object substitute. Therefore, coupled with Tadasu's fixation at a stage of hitomishiri, Tadasu lives with feelings of the frustration of amae (shinkeishitsu) and the feelings of shame associated with them.

The frustration of amae has many other effects, including the tendency to form an inadequate sense of self (jibun ga nai). Doi points out that if the need to share amae with a mother has been unsatisfied or if the primary love object is denied to the child, satisfactory feelings of self are impossible to attain. This is because the loss of the world to which one belongs is normally experienced as a loss of the self. Tadasu suffers from this sense of inadequacy. Tadasu defines himself through his identification with others, most notably his mothers. He acknowledges his passivity and lack of initiative. He accepts all demands and acquiesces in all decisions made about his life (with, of course, the outstanding exception of his indulged desire to sleep with and presume upon his mothers). In the end, he chooses to live his life for his mother's sake and ultimately for her memory. In short, he totally denies his own jibun as an active, asserting being.

Associated with an inadequate sense of self is the tendency to project. Tadasu frequently projects attitudes and motives to his mothers and his father, which enables him to deny responsibility for his actions. He attributes to others the feelings he is afraid to acknowledge because of his weak sense of self. After he suckles with his mother at age eighteen, Tadasu rationalizes and projects responsibility for the act onto his parents. For example, "possibly knowing he [father] hadn't long to live, he was trying to create a deeper intimacy between mother and me so that she would think of me as taking his place and she made no objection." Tadasu is merely the passive one who obeys the will of others and is dependent upon them. Doi concludes that a man who has a jibun is capable of checking amae, while a man who is at the mercy of amae has no jibun. Tadasu is clearly the latter.

At more aggressive moments, Tadasu's projection transforms itself into a sense of being victimized (higai). In anger at his mother and father for the shame of nursing at his mother's breast at eighteen, his first thoughts are, "I hardly think Mother would have tried to tantalize me so shamelessly without his permission." Ultimately, Tadasu expresses feelings of regret, kuyama, defined by Doi as "to regret something that has happened over which one has no control, or about which it is too late to do anything." After Tadasu suckles in the third episode and acknowledges that he has no self control, he has feelings of deep regret. Once again, this kind of regret Tadasu's impotence and jibun ga nai.

The frustration of amae leads to feelings of loneliness and insatiable yearning. The word loneliness appears a number of times in the memoir, both in relation to Tadasu and to his father. The term is used to end the tale when Tadasu offers a final explanation for all that has gone before:

Because my real mother died when I was a child, and my father and stepmother when I was some years older, I want to live for Takeshi until he is grown. I want to share with him the loneliness I knew.

Another more tentative interpretation of the effect of frustrated amae on Tadasu is related to homosexuality. Doi suggests that closeness to the mother and frustration of amae in some cases lead to homosexuality. As the tale ends, Tadasu tells us that he will never marry again and turns his attention to a young boy, his brother. Tadasu is reluctant to acknowledge Sawado's beauty and tells us that only others think of her as beautiful. Further, his identification with his mother rather than his father suggests the classic Freudian cause of homosexuality. While there is no overt reference to either bisexuality or homosexuality, the closing passage is suggestive of a final denial of women in his life.

THE ARCHETYPE OF Amae PATHOLOGY

The frustration of amae in the lives of the Japanese has led to the development of an archetypical pattern. This pattern, seen in Japanese literary figures like Yoshitsune, includes many pathological factors already cited by Doi. In early life, the frustration of amae and a sense of denial fixate the character in a stage of infantile dependence. Life is thereafter permeated with an emotional yearning. The archetypical character is often sensitive and yet can exhibit cruelty or contradictory behavior. The character will often presume upon others. Most importantly, he is compulsively driven to be self-destructive. Eventually, the character resigns himself to his loss and from continued frustration becomes increasingly passive and apathetic.

The archetypical pattern fits Tadasu's life in many ways. Tadasu was denied amae in his early childhood by the death of his mother and the inability of his father to amae with him. Tadasu's yearning for amae continues throughout his life. His behavior toward his mothers is one of extreme indulgence and presumption. His sensitive nature, as demonstrated in his acute sensory description and awareness, is contrasted with his selfishness and cruelty as revealed in his plan to marry Sawado and use her for his mother's purposes. Clearly, Tadasu's relationship with his stepmother is self-destructive though he pursues it as if without choice.

Tadasu becomes increasingly passive and dependent on others, particularly mother figures. Tadasu acknowledges his passivity when he writes, "not that I was determined to steal Takeshi away from them and bring him home again. I am not the sort of person to do a thing like that on my own initiative."

Tadasu is the subordinate in his home although he is a married man, already about twenty years old, and the only male figure. Tadasu writes, ". . . . since I was still going to school and was still a dependent . . . Mother was in charge of all the household accounts." At an earlier point, when his father tells him to marry for his mother's sake and give away his child should he ever have one, Tadasu makes no objections. He passively agrees. Tadasu tells us that he was always careful to ensure that he never conceived a child, thereby fulfilling his father's wishes even after both his stepmother and father are dead. At the end of the tale, presumably because of the scandal of incest, Sawado's family forces him into a divorce settlement in which he loses his estate. Once again, it appears that he accepted these events with resignation. Finally, he ends up working as a bank clerk in the bank once owned by his father, a clear demotion and fall from power and status. In all these ways, Tadasu's passivity exemplifies the results of a frustrated need to amae and reflects the Japanese archetypical pattern of amae pathology.

THE FATHER

Tadasu's personality and behavior are in many ways clearer than those of his father and stepmother about whom he tells us. Veiled by Tadasu's tendency to project and distort, his selective inattention, and his ambivalence towards his parents, the father and stepmother are enigmatic figures. In addition, the ambiguity in characterization is due to Tadasu's inability to distinguish between reality and illusion. The motives for the parents' actions are presented to us as questions in the mind of Tadasu, questions which he cannot answer because he is incapable of decisiveness and is torn by conflicts of trust-mistrust and shame.

The father was an insular man who "liked a quiet life." His main respites were his wife and the solitude of his home and garden to which he seldom invited guests. The father presents a contrast to the grandfather who was active and financially more successful, living in the hub of Kyoto business and social life. We are told that the grandfather's teahouse, built for entertaining, was no longer in use. From these few background facts, we may infer that perhaps Tadasu's father also suffered from some pathology of amae which made him adverse to strangers and capable of only limited communication.

The father's life appears to center around his first wife. Except for an "appearance at his bank now and then . . . [he] spent most of his time at home with her." Tadasu makes a point of telling us that his father's love and attention for his mother were so strong and undivided that they excluded him:

All my father's love was concentrated on my mother. With this house, this garden and this wife, he seemed perfectly happy.

This suggests that Tadasu felt frustrated amae with his father even before the loss of his real mother. If Tadasu had already felt rejected by his father, we can more readily understand his inordinately close relationship with his first mother and interpret, in part, his excessive need for her as a response to his father's distance.

However, numerous references to the father reveal his concern and interest in his son. Tadasu's memories include many episodes of eating at home, dining out, and feeding fish with his mother and father. Although no feelings of warmth towards the father are to be found in these descriptions, they do suggest some domesticity and a family relationship.

The most significant clue to the father's personality is his direct admission to Tadasu that "Her death was a terrible blow to me—I couldn't get over it." The father states that he is remarrying only because the woman resembles his first wife. He has a persistent, pathological need to think of his second wife as his first wife. Here, then, is the basis for the crucial influence of the father on the son. Because of the father's need to believe that his present wife is his first one, he projects that need onto Tadasu. The father manipulates others to ensure that Tadasu thinks of the stepmother as his first mother. This served to ensure the security of the father's own fantasy, his bridge of dreams which denied the reality of death. Tadasu's acceptance of this illusion further assured the perpetuation of the fantasy. Thus, Tadasu writes, "No doubt father had instructed my present mother how to behave and was trying his best to confuse me about what my mothers had said or done so that I would identify them in my mind." A further example is that the father changes his second wife's name to Chinu, the name of his first wife.

In a second way, the father projects his needs—this time onto his wife. He assumes that his wife has a need to see him reincarnated in Tadasu. Therefore, the father says to Tadasu on his deathbed:

"Everyone says you resemble me. I think so myself. As you get older you'll look even more like me. If she has you, she'll feel as if I am still alive. I want you to think of taking my place with her as your chief aim in life, as the only kind of happiness you need."

There is no evidence to confirm that, in fact, the mother wants Tadasu as a reincarnation of her husband, but rather preferred to maintain him as a young lover quite distinct from her husband. It is really only the father's need which is reflected here. Consistent with the father's life struggle to shun death by creating illusions, the father structures this last bridge of dreams to perpetuate his own life on earth.

The father's inability to accept his wife's death may well have had its roots in a personality maladjustment established before her loss. His social isolation would suggest this. Nonetheless, his wife's death is the factor which dramatically alters his ability to function and eventually leads him along a self-destructive path.

As the father progresses in his self-destructive behavior, his motives become increasingly unclear. Tadasu states that his father had no objections to Tadasu lying with his stepmother during his adolescence. This raises questions about the father's motives, but it still does not seem necessarily insidious or perverse. However, we learn of other more questionable acts: the father probably knew that Tadasu was suckling from the stepmother at age eighteen; the father gave away his second son; and, on his deathbed, the father asks Tadasu to take his place with his second wife. We must, therefore, view the father's motives as pathological, harmful to himself as well as others. This calls to mind the title of another Tanizaki novel, Some Prefer Nettles, because the father appears to be masochistic.

The issue is further complicated by the geisha past of the mother, also presented in a veil of mystery. In the father's apparently self-destructive behavior, he may have been responding in some way to her immoral past. Tadasu suggests that perhaps the father's fatal illness has driven him to resignation. The doctor's prohibition against sexual relations may also have affected the father. Whether or not the father willfully desired to destroy his son, the father did so at the expense of his wife and his own personal shame.

The father also exemplifies the archetypical pattern of amae pathology which, in turn, explains some of his enigmatic behavior. In the end, the father succumbs to total passivity in the face of a wife who succeeds in demoralizing him and his son. This is born out by Tadasu's references to his father as one who "made no objections," which demonstrates an essentially passive attitude to other's actions. The father also states that he is resigned to death. Most significantly, the father is locked into a compulsive selfdestructive need to recapture the illusion of his first wife, even if it means living vicariously through the delusion and arousal of his own son.

THE STEPMOTHER

The stepmother's personality is even more complex and ambiguous than the father's. Not only are we unclear as to her motives, we also cannot be sure at times that Tadasu is speaking about her, rather than the first wife. For example, we do not know for sure which mother wrote the poem at the beginning of the tale. The spectrum of possible interpretations for the stepmother begins at one extreme in which she is a perverted, lascivious, former geisha who indulges herself with father and son. At the other extreme she can be understood as the passive subordinate of a sick, self-destructive husband who orders her to carry on perverse activities in order to satisfy his obsession with his first wife; she patiently tends her husband during his illness and treats Tadasu with the indulgent love of a Japanese mother.

The ambiguity which surrounds this character is typified by Tadasu's inability to decide why she and his father sent the baby away. Tadasu makes numerous conjectures about her motives, ranging once again from characterizing her as a demonic whore to a self-sacrificing mother, which is, in fact, the range of Tadasu's confused images of his mother figures. At one point, Tadasu writes that possibly the stepmother sent the baby away for Tadasu's sake (as confirmed by the father's words on his deathbed). At another point, Tadasu thinks that sending the baby away gave the stepmother more of an opportunity to entice him. It is implied that perhaps her activities and status as a former geisha or her role as a second wife had something to do with her decision. Sokichi Tsuda indicates, however, that ordinarily Japanese stepmothers are particularly covetous of their own real children because only they are bound in obligation to their parents. Therefore, the stepmother would not be likely to give the baby away. Her husband's imminent death or his prohibition from intercourse may have affected her decision. And, last, if the most extreme of the rumors is true, that Takeshi is Tadasu's own son, then sending the baby away could be seen as an act of shame or denial.

Any combination of these interpretations is possible. The evidence, however, points heavily in the direction of her incestuous activities, although not to the extreme position that Tadasu is the father of the baby. We are told early in the tale that the stepmother, "preferred the thick, fleshy Konoe line . . . which probably reveals her personality"; which is to say, it reflects her sensuous nature. She was a geisha; and whether or not she had been officially married before, she was divorced after three years for an unknown reason. Tadasu writes that he was reluctant to ask Okane about his stepmother's past because he was afraid of what he might discover. We do not, however, know what aroused Tadasu's suspicions. One might conjecture about the feelings of rejection the stepmother felt as a result of that first marriage. There are suggestions of her excessive physical self-indulgence, if not bisexuality. She spends most of her time getting massaged by Tadasu and Sawado. Sawado is said to massage the stepmother alone at night in the stepmother's bed. The stepmother's selfishness is clear when Tadasu discusses his marriage and she replies, "You're not getting married for their benefit—it's enough if you and I and Sawado are happy." The order of pronouns is significant here; it characterizes the stepmother's interference between Tadasu and Sawado as a married couple.

For Tadasu, as for Tanizaki in other works, feet are used repeatedly as the symbol of female sensuality. Tadasu writes about his real mother:

Mother would sit at the edge of the pond and dangle her feet in the water, where they looked more beautiful than ever. She was a small, delicately built woman with plump, white little dumpling like feet which she held quite motionless as she soaked them in the water letting the coolness seep through her body . . . Even as a child I thought how pleasant it would be if the fish in our pond came playfully around her beautiful feet, instead of coming only when we fed them.

Foot imagery itself contains the dual association central to Tadasu's confusion; that is, the feet are both sensual and maternal.

In remembering his stepmother, Tadasu writes,

As I looked at her feet through the water, I found myself remembering my real mother's feet. I felt as if they were the same; or rather to put it more accurately, whenever I caught a glimpse of my mother's feet, I recalled that those of my own mother, the memory of which had long ago faded, had had the same lovely shape.

The sensuous nature of the stepmother's feet is confirmed by the daughter-in-law who perceives them as a source of envy and jealousy. This reaction to the stepmother's feet provides one of the few clues to Sawado's feelings towards her mother-in-law. When the mother invites Sawado to dangle her feet, too, Sawado responds, "Your feet are so pretty! . . . I couldn't possibly show ugly ones like mine beside them!"

Preoccupation with feet and feet fetishes, evident in Tadasu's attachment to the memory of his mother's feet, have been associated with mother complexes. Donald Keene states [in Landscapes and Portraits, 1971]:

Psychoanalysis has cleared up one of the remaining gaps in our understanding of fetishism . . . Both the feet and hair are objects with a strong smell which have been exalted into fetishes after the olfactory sensation has become unpleasurable and been abandoned. Various of Freud's followers have pointed out that fetishism is associated with a clinging to the mother and a strong desire to identify with her, and with castration anxiety . . . Tanizaki's fetishisms . . . seem to be associated with longing for the mother which is a powerful intermittent theme in his works.

For Tadasu, feet represent sexuality and his mothers, and each memory of breast feeding refers to the hair of his mothers.

THE QUESTION OF INCEST

Whether Tadasu did, in fact, commit incest with his stepmother is a significant ambiguity central to understanding what happens to Tadasu after his father's death. We first hear rumors of incest from Okane, although she need not be believed. Okane does, however, represent the community at large and its responses to the behavior of this secluded Kyoto family. There are other more significant factors which suggest that incest did occur. First, the tale is a confessional written for a reason which Tadasu will not share with us. As if attempting to expiate his guilt by writing down his deeds and their causes, he tries to purge himself. Just at the time in the narrative when Tadasu would have begun having sexual relations with his stepmother, he intrudes into the text to tell us that lies of omission may follow because

There are limits even to telling the truth. There is a line one ought not to cross. And so, although I certainly never write anything untrue, neither do I write the whole of the truth.

Other than incest, there is no action logically emanating from the text itself which Tadasu could be withholding from the reader. In addition, Tadasu tells us that he, "went to suckle at Mother's breast more than once," at the age of eighteen and after. He also writes that "unable to forget the days when mother had given her breasts to me, I now found my sole pleasure in massaging her." After his father's death, he tells us that his stepmother thrives so well that, "Mother was almost too plump as if now that father was dead her worries were over." And, finally, we are not told (because, as Tadasu states, "it is too painful to relate") the reason for his divorce and the settlement in favor of Sawado and her family.

Tadasu's guilt could have stemmed solely from his confused incestuous desires and his shame about breast feeding with his mother as an adult. However, incest itself is the natural conclusion of the events described and is consistent with the degree of pathology associated with the stepmother, the son, and the father.

SHAME AND GUILT

Shame is a significant aspect of "The Bridge of Dreams" which affects the form of the work, specifically, the point of view. The tale itself is written as an "I" memoir. It is a confessional of Tadasu's abnormal life, a life for which he bears great shame. He writes,

I am not writing out of a desire to have others read this. But even .. . if no one ever reads it, I shall have no regret.

Tadasu himself calls the work a "novel"—referring perhaps to an I-novel (shishosetsu). The tale concerns a man who is self-indulgent, preoccupied both by an obsession and by his resultant shame associated with the obsession. He is excessively introverted and sensitive with a tendency to distort reality. The formal manifestation of this sense of shame lies in the use of a subjective "I" or first person narrator.

Helen Merrill Lynd notes that the experience of shame cannot be expiated. It carries the weight of "I cannot have done this. But I have done it and I cannot undo it, because this is I." It is pervasive . . . ; its focus is not a separate act, but a revelation of the whole self. The thing that has been exposed is what I am. For this reason, the shame of Tadasu is not expiated by his confessional, but continues to his last words which indicates that his shame is ongoing.

Shame is central to Tadasu's behavior and attitudes about himself. Tadasu frequently uses the term shame in reference to his own sense of shame as well as to his parents' shamelessness. The most dramatic statement of his shame follows the third episode of breast feeding. He writes,

In an agony of shame, wondering how I could have harbored such insane feelings, I paced back and forth around the pond alone. But at the same time that I regretted my behavior and tortured myself for it, I felt that I wanted to do it—not once, but over and over. I knew that if I were placed in those circumstances again—if I were lured by her again that way—I would not have the will power to resist.

Tadasu's shame was dramatically revealed to him by acting out his long-felt incestuous desires. It led to his recognition of his total lack of self-control. He saw himself as unalterably "abnormal" without the desire or ability to change.

Tadasu's feelings of shame are related, in part, to his disappointed trust in his parents and their limited trust in him. Tadasu writes of his stepmother, "Did our sudden encounter give her the impulse to embarrass and upset me?" and "I hardly think Mother would have tried to tantalize me so shamelessly without his permission". Her shamelessness placed the burden of shame on Tadasu. As explained above in reference to jibun ga nai, a loss of self experienced as a result of parent's death creates a sense of shame in the one who has been abandoned. The father's inability to amae with Tadasu further confirmed the boy's feelings of inadequacy and shame. Later in life, Tadasu questions why his parents did not confide in him about the decision to send Takeshi away. For Tadasu, it is a sign of their mistrust. Tadasu often remarks that his parents think of him as a child, although he is already grown. This, too, confirms his feelings of shame.

Shame, then, as the emotional state resultant from frustrated amae, pervades the narrative world of this tale. Characterization reveals a confused, ambiguous portrayal of people and relationships. Point of view is limited to a subjective first person narrator using a confessional tone. The theme suggests the illusive nature of reality where people are caught in a confused world of dreams, sexuality, and death.