The first time that the narrator and the narrative structure of “Shonen no Hi no Omoide” clearly gained attention in the field of Japanese education was in 2012, and three of the five authorized textbooks that year mention the narrator in their study guides.
1Senri Sugai, “‘Katarite’ toiu ‘Gakushuyogo’ no Tojo—Teiban Kyozai ‘Shonen no Hi no Omoide’ (Hermann Hesse) nite—” (in Japanese), Nihon Bungaku 61, no. 8 (2012): 66. One of them clearly states that the narrator changes from the first half to the second half of the work and that in the second part the reader learns of the events between the narrator (the guest in the first part, the frame story) and Emil, the main character of the second half of the story, through the narrator, who relates the events in first person, making the students strongly aware of the existence of the narrator in this work. At the same time, this guide also draws the reader’s attention to the structural characteristics of the work due to the change in the narrator. However, another study guide introduces the term “narrative structure.” In the third study guide, it is explained that the host and narrator of the first half has become the “listener” to the guest, who is re-telling his story, looking back on the past. However, in “Jugendgedenken,” there is no structure in which the narrator in the first half re-tells the boyhood story of the guest, and this assertion feels abrupt and out of place. In other words, it is entirely possible that, in the Japanese language classes at junior high school, the interpretation of this short story proceeds without an adequate understanding of its narrative structure. For example, the narrative structure of this story is not understood like that of
Steppenwolf, which works effectively to approach a characterization of its protagonist Harry Haller from multiple perspectives. Unfortunately, it must be said that little attention has been paid to the structural effect of “Shonen no Hi no Omoide” caused by the change of narrator, which is made possible through the frame structure of this story.
Takeuchi also mentions the issue of the narrator exclusively in relation to the above-mentioned re-telling by the narrator of the first half (the host).
2Joichi Takeuchi, Yomukoto no Kyoiku—Takasebune, Shonen no Hi no Omoide (in Japanese) (Tokyo: Yamabuki Shoten, 2005), 137–70. He does not mention at all that the presence of multiple narrators in this frame structure, such as that seen for example in
Steppenwolf, contributes to the multi-layered depiction of the subject from multiple perspectives. What he means by re-telling is that the host listens to the story of the guest’s childhood, and the host then creates a new version out of that story. However, not only is the narrator not synonymous with the author who created the story, but the narrator in the story of the guest’s childhood is told from the first-person perspective. Therefore, “I” is a character in action, and there is no other narrator present who retells the story in the work. It is a case of confusion between the narrator and the author. The reason for this confusion is that Takeuchi does not clearly distinguish between narrator and author.
In the classroom, however, many teachers discuss the issue of the narrator of this novel exclusively in relation to the re-telling. In their discussions, their understanding of the definition of narrator itself is ambiguous in the above-mentioned sense, and as a result, their understanding of the narrative structure may also be insufficient. This ambiguity stems specifically from the assignment of the host as the narrator of the introductory part of this story, which has an incomplete frame narrative structure with no conclusion, overlooking the re-telling of the events of the guest’s boyhood as the framed story and the core of the short story. In the field of junior high school education, if one were to attempt to read “Shonen no Hi no Omoide” from the perspective of a re-telling, the rationale for focusing on the issue of the narrator would be undermined, potentially impeding an accurate understanding of the work’s structure and content.
When using the narrator and narrative structure as keys to reading and understanding this story, it is equally important to pay attention to the relationship of the multiple perspectives of the frame structure of this work. If junior high school students become more aware of this fact, this work may have a more noticeable impact on them and will instill a stronger impression of the story in their minds and memories. On the surface, in “Shonen no Hi no Omoide,” the first half (the frame story) appears to be an introduction to the story as a whole, in which the host and the guest discuss their childhood memories while looking at the host’s collection of butterflies in the study. But as a story of two parts, while looking at the host’s collection, the guest, who used to collect butterflies, tells the host about his bitter memories related to his collection, which is the second part of the story (the framed story). This story is within a “frame narrative” structure, although it is incomplete without a return to the frame story as conclusion.
In the field of Japanese language education in Japan, some attempts have been made to consider the development of the story by taking advantage of the fact that such a conclusion, that is, a closing of the frame, is missing. This is an effective method for students to add the ending of the story through independent interpretation and to actively engage in the world of the literary work. For example, pupils may propose that the guest, who has suffered for many years from bitter memories of his boyhood, should be liberated from his anguish and changed in the conclusion after the catharsis caused by expressing and externalizing his own experiences. In such an interpretation, the description of the guest, who is about to begin recounting his memories of the past as he sits down on the edge of the open window of the study, “his figure was hardly discernible from the darkness outside” (“seine Figur sich kaum von der Finsternis abhob”),
3“Jugendgedenken,” I.P. 4. symbolizes the dark side of the guest and the transformation of that “darkness” into “light” in the non-existent reprise of the frame narrative.
What reason, then, did Hesse have for not writing the concluding frame, when the work began with a frame structure? To find a clue to answering this question, it is necessary to focus on how the information conveyed by the two narrators, the one in the frame story that is the first half of the work and the one in the framed story, changed from “Das Nachtpfauenauge” to “Jugendgedenken.”