DOGRA MAGRA

So how, then, did this astonishing book come to be born in Japan at a time when they were predominantly focused on the idea of conquering their neighbors?

A unique modernist culture developed in interwar Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. New authors and new movements emerged. One such movement was ‘ero-guro-nonsense’, that is eroticism, grotesque, and nonsense. This trend in mass culture allowed ordinary Japanese people to distance themselves from ‘high culture’ and express themselves in their own way. The genre tackled themes like sex, cannibalism, dismemberment, and perversion. It marked the beginning of a new urban culture characterized by the unfamiliar and the strange, distant from traditional Japan.

The Shin seinen (New Youth) magazine was launched during this period, and while it initially featured mostly foreign writers, it soon began publishing young Japanese writers as well. And so, strange, mystical, and grotesque prose gained popularity. A new genre of detective stories also emerged—tantei shōsetsu (literally meaning detective fiction). A writer using the pseudonym Yumeno Kyūsaku made his debut in this magazine in 1926 with the story ‘The Ominous Drum’ and gradually gained recognition.

Yumeno Kyūsaku was born in Fukuoka on 4 January 1889, and his birth name was Sugiyama Naoki. Raised by his grandfather, Sugiyama developed a deep appreciation for traditional Japanese Noh theater. After finishing school in 1908, he enlisted in the First Imperial Guard Regiment, and His military experience profoundly influenced his worldview, evident in his works. After leaving the army, Sugiyama studied history at Keio University but did not complete his studies and returned to Fukuoka.

His father insisted that Sugiyama manage the family farm, but this venture turned out to be unsuccessful. Sugiyama changed his surname to Sugiyama Taido and became a monk at the Kifuku-ji Temple in Tokyo, where he acquired the monastic name Hōen. Over time, the ideas of Zen Buddhism significantly influenced his prose.

After two years of service at the temple, Sugiyama returned home again, this time to begin a career as a correspondent, writing articles and essays. In 1923, Sugiyama vividly described Tokyo, which had been devastated by the Great Kanto earthquake.iAn 8.3 magnitude earthquake that occurred on September 1, 1923. This earthquake almost completely destroyed Tokyo. More than 4 million people were affected by this earthquake.

In May 1926, Sugiyama began his career as a writer. Adopting the pseudonym Yumeno Kyūsaku, he started writing mystical and detective stories one after another. In the Kyushu dialect, ‘Yume-no Kyūsaku’ means ‘dreamer’, a name his father gave him when he read his son's prose.

In 1935, Sugiyama published Dogra Magra, and according to the author, he worked on it for twenty years, broken up into ten years of contemplation and ten years of writing. During the writing of the novel, Yumeno Kyūsaku visited the department of Psychiatry at the Kyushu Imperial University, where he was inspired by scientific research and the new ideas in psychoanalysis at that time. That same year, his father passed away, and in 1936, Sugiyama went to Tokyo to handle family affairs. However, he died of a stroke just a month later while he was receiving guests.

Dogra Magra is all about confusion. The words themselves have no exact translation, and their etymology is unknown even in Japan. The literal translation is "to twist into a spiral," but it also conveys a sense of "hocus-pocus" or "twist and turn, I want to confuse." This is precisely what the novel does: it spirals the plot and continuously confuses the reader. The book is considered one of Japan's three "great strange books"—and not without reason.iDogra Magra by Kyūsaku Yumeno, "Murder in the Hall of the Black Death" by Mushitaro Oguri, "Offerings to the Void" by Hideo Nakai.

The structure of the novel directly impacts the plot. The book is divided into several parts, each of which is a document read by the main character. At a certain point, it becomes evident that Dogra Magra itself is also a crucial document within the story.

Formally, Dogra Magra is a detective story. However, such a crude definition within the confines of a single genre does not help in understanding the novel. Let's examine the plot.

Each document read by the protagonist is meant to help him recover his memory and assist the reader in solving the book's mystery. The first document is a heretical sutra authored by the protagonist's attending physician. It critiques punitive psychiatry and narrates the tragic fate of the mentally ill in the modern world.

The next document is an interview with the same doctor. In it, he claims that the entire Earth is essentially a vast psychiatric clinic and that everyone is actually insane. Some people are unfortunate enough to end up in real psychiatric institutions, while the rest simply live ordinary lives.

After the interview, the protagonist and the reader delve into a pseudoscientific paper titled "The Dream of the Embryo." In it, the doctor attempts to prove that a person’s life is directly influenced by the dreams they experience while still in the womb. Bad dreams could even lead to congenital defects, and nightmares might result in a tragic life. This paper also introduces a key idea for both Zen Buddhism and the novel itself: the illusory nature of time. The events of the book take place within a single day, but only at first glance.

Next, the protagonist reads a scroll that describes the fate of a certain Ichirō Kure. A young man who also found a scroll, after reading which, his libido—or rather, "karmic" psychic inheritance—was awakened. This energy compelled him to kill his fiancée shortly before their wedding.

After reading these documents, the protagonist suspects that he is Ichirō Kuré. He believes that these events have happened to him many times before and that he has lost his memory several times and participated in experiments to recover it. He concludes that everything he has experienced is just one of many identical days repeating over and over as part of Dr. Wakabayashi’s psychiatric experiment.

Perhaps it is not actually November 20, 1926. Perhaps he will never escape from this clinic. Or maybe it is merely the dream of an embryo that is dreaming of a person yet to be born. These ideas can only be understood and interpreted by re-reading the novel and finding clues within the text itself. One could say that the ending of the novel directly depends on how the reader interprets it.

One of the main interpretations of Dogra Magra views the text primarily as a novel about Zen Buddhism, the wheel of samsara, and the escape from the endless cycle. This interpretation is supported by several themes and plotlines.

Firstly, there is the illusion of the self. The protagonist constantly tries to remember his true self but never fully understands who he is or if he even exists as a real entity.

Secondly, there is the illusion of reality: for both the protagonist and the reader, it is unclear whether events are actually happening or if they are merely dreams of the embryo or the protagonist's hallucinations. Throughout the novel, the protagonist is not just trying to unravel the mystery of his name and past. He is searching for "satori," a profound experience of enlightenment. He is trying to understand what is happening to him and how to end it, seeking a resolution to the endless repetitions of the experiment.

If the novel is viewed as the dreams of an embryo, it introduces another Buddhist theme—reincarnation. In this context, the protagonist is merely about to be born and will embark on a new cycle of attempts to understand reality. Perhaps the local psychiatric clinic represents hell, where people await judgment and their subsequent rebirth, continuing the cycle of eternal suffering.

Notably, the novel itself underwent a cycle of rebirth. After its publication, it was quickly forgotten; at that time, public attention was focused on the Second Sino-Japanese War and, later, the Second World War. However, in 1962, cultural scholar Shūnsuke Tsurumi rediscovered the text and published an article titled "The World of Dogra Magra." In the 1960s, politically engaged Japanese students began to embrace the book, and it became a cult classic.

For contemporary Japan, Dogra Magra is an underground classic. It was never considered high literature by Japanese standards. It is a work of pulp fiction that became a cult phenomenon, intrigued contemporaries, and firmly established itself in the culture after the author’s death.

In 1988, the novel was adapted into a film by Toshio Matsumoto—a legendary director who inspired Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”. Later, a manga adaptation of the novel was published. A bar in Osaka is named after the novel, and references to it frequently appear in popular anime films and video games.

In Japan, there is an urban legend that this novel can drive its reader insane. Before Kyūsaku Yumeno, no one in Japan had described madness so convincingly. Readers risk getting caught in the loop, losing their sanity, and becoming as deranged as the protagonist. This novel can be revisited endlessly, constantly reread, or one can attempt to delve into it, understand it, and break the cycle of endless repetitions.

Юмэно Кюсаку. Догра Магра / Пер. с яп. А. Слащевой. — СПб.: Изд-во книжного магазина «Желтый двор», 2023. — 544 с.