Author: Ryan Shea. Ryan is a New England Tom of Bedlam. His writing focuses on the antipodes of literary culture and the Internet. His work has previously appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Atlas Obscura, and in French translation in the review Librarioli. He is currently a columnist for the music site Invisible Oranges. He looks forward to each project that requires one thousand and one nights to complete. His meandering cross sections can be found at Zoflyoa on Instagram

Introduction

The following two English translations are derived from the Spanish language versions of these essays published in Borges en Japon, Japon en Borges (1987). Edited by Argentinian historian Guillermo Gasió, Borges en Japon, Japon en Borges is a compilation of essays, interviews, and articles on Jorge Luis Borges by Japanese writers, filmmakers, and artists. The essays were presented at several symposiums held for Borges in Japan by the Japan Foundation (国際交流基金) during his visits to the country in 1979 and 1984. Unfortunately, several of the original Japanese versions of the essays translated into Spanish in Borges en Japon, Japon en Borges were lost even prior to 1987. This means the following English translations were derived from the Spanish versions presented to the Japan Foundation—those published by Gasió in Borges en Japon, Japon en Borges for Eudeba (Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires). These translations are presented here in sincere hopes of exposing these authors to a wider audience and encouraging continued analysis of Jorge Luis Borges’ relationship with Japanese culture.

Zeno of Elea (or the principle of Borges), by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa

Tasuhiko Shibusawa (澁澤龍彦           ) (1928-1987) was a major French translator, literary critic, and Horror author of modern Japanese literature. He was responsible for introducing French writers such as Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and the Marquis de Sade to the Japanese avant-garde, alongside other authors such as William Burroughs and Jorge Luis Borges. Shibusawa counted among his friends important figures such as fellow writer Yukio Mishima, choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata, and illustrator Tadanori Yokoo. Despite his cultural prominence in Japan, Shibusawa has seen little translation outside of Asia. His short story Gyorinki (魚鱗記) was translated by Anthony H. Chambers in 1982, and his only novel Takaoka’s Travels (高丘親王航海記) was translated by David Boyd in 2024.

The world of Borges is complex (labyrinths, mirrors, circles) and evidently indecipherable, but, in fact, is ruled by one principle: the paradox that was laid out more than two thousand years ago by Zeno of Elea, the paradox of the endless divisibility of infinity.

Borges’s writings most notably reveal this principle of Zeno.

His work is that of an artisan, from it is tangible a true melancholy for labyrinths and mirrors. 

The fantasy of Borges’s world is in no way similar, in its nature, to that Romanticism inherited from the 19^th century. His fantasy calls to mind the intuitive and intellectual, begotten by the concept of pure abstraction.

The position which is inside the position and thus continues inward to infinity; hence, that position does not exist. This is the paradox of Zeno. It denies physical action as it does space and time. This world (or is the world a metaphor for the world?) is fiction, false; we cannot consider it a true reality.

Borges acquired this paradox in his infancy, and he referenced it many times because it characterized the framework of his own intellect. It is more extreme than the philosophy of Berkeley and Hume, it expands beyond Schopenhauer to even Nietzsche.

The paradox of Zeno is the geometry of Platonism projected on the terrestrial surface. It is encountered in intimate connection with that geometry, which derives from Zeno and the phenomenon of deja vu. There are different versions of this same principle: the game of one box in the other box, that rose that is all roses, and, even more so, in the metaphysical and the religion-like elements of literary fiction. (“Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, in my opinion, is an exemplary text in that regard).

It is useless, for it is impossible, to claim an organized philosophy in Borges. His work denies even the identity of the individual—perhaps a consequence of extreme Platonism. Therefore, the individual is the species. One man is all men. He who repeats Shakespeare is Shakespeare…

A Small Universe Open, by Keizo Hino

Keizo Hino (日野 啓三)  (1929-2002) was a reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun. He was a well-known correspondent for the Japanese press in Seoul and Saigon during the Vietnam War. His book That Sunset (あの夕陽）won the Akutagawa Prize in 1975 and his major 1985 novel Isle of Dreams (夢の島) was translated by Charles de Wolfe in 2010. Hino’s fiction writing drew heavily upon his background as a reporter. His books are highly regarded for their intimate knowledge of Tokyo combined with stunning surrealism.

I have spent the last fifteen years familiarizing myself with his literature and this is the first piece I have written about the grand writer of Argentina. Borges awakens in me a jealous enthusiasm; Borges is mine alone, I consider him a secret subject. Frankly, I don’t like to write about Borges, but I would like to write like Borges. I take him as the parameter of good literature, and I judge the quality of my own writing by that distance which separates it from Borges.

The immediate images and sensations that Borges’s literature produces in me could be summarized in their brevity, their conciseness. His blindness, perhaps, the return to “mental drafts”, may have accentuated this quality. In his concision, there is an irony opposed to large works, series, and pretensions. There, too is an attitude assumed about not writing about those concepts or sentiments common to those works that are naturally rooted in reality. The essential of Borges is that, despite his brevity, his works are rich and fecund. There is no “excess”, nor ideology, nor sentimentality; it is not worldly wealth, it is the wealth of a world alone, of which the man is the sole part. This is the world, the cosmos, the universe. The universe is taken as the cosmos with respect to chaos and the totality of time and space. That’s why, instead of speaking of wealth, it is more accurate to speak of totality, plenitude, and integrity.

The writer Hiroshi Noma must include in his novel aspects biological, psychological, environmental, and social. In contrast, the integrity of Borges’s work is four-dimensional: in Borges’s cosmos, the infinite is often a point; the absolute is able to express itself in four letters; or through an image. It is able to express itself in a closed infinity or a measurable eternity. Thus, in “The Aleph” and “The Library of Babel”, Borges is able to encompass in a united space-time all of space and all of time.

The size of the square in a painting by Klee, or the number of pages in Borges’s texts, do not signify anything. The smaller or fewer resources employed to represent the totality of that which is not visible, achieve a greater comprehension of that which is visible. There is something modest in all this. The worth of a writer considered: like a spark that shines in an instant; or that which is glimpsed in the depths by way of a crack, or opening. That which introduces us to human relations; that which is a mere part of the reality we all live.

In regards to myself, that which shakes, trembles, terrifies and stirs the depths of myself is that mysterious infinity, in shadows, that which is perceived through the plot of the human relationship.  I do not live only in that environment that surrounds me, my habitat, my place, but I live the infinite, the cosmos, and the universe. The pains of life are what lead us to eternity. Eternity, for it to be tangible, visible, needs to be the darkness, the ghostly; that is reality, this reality. We confront reality, pushed by the force of eternity, from time to time and because of different means. This is relative and limited. I alone have the sense of being a shadow, a ghost, which carries in its breast that which is eternity. I carried this thought and feeling with me, but I discovered them by reading Borges. I feel such solidarity with his works, however, I shake at his decisive brevity, just the same at the concision of that brevity.

I fear that one day I will not be able to write long works either. Borges is dangerous in that sense. Due to his literature, every night I see the universe. This experience is much more intense than the contemplation of the starry heavens through a telescope, because I can appreciate not only the visible stars, but also those things invisible, like, for example, the thread of time.

I would like to write other short essays about Borges. For example, the word as expression; Borges, in his old age, writes realistic works; in his work, he refers to the mother but never speaks of his wife (I do not know if he was ever married); reading The Divine Comedy on his way to the library where he was employed; if in the week he wrote “The Circular Ruins” everything seemed like a dream to him; the relationship his work has with the exotic world of South America, where the mixing is a culture more European than that of Europe proper with the indigenous, autochthonous culture… About all these things I would like to write. Maybe I will never be able to. The works of Borges suggest to me this: “More than write about yourself; write about your own universe.”