Previously, I stated that changing one’s character within the context of “play” is no cause for embarrassment. However, even in “play” changes of character do not just occur randomly. Essentially, character changes occur in connection with communicative behavior.

For example, in Makoto Shiina’s novel Aishuu no Machi ni Kiri ga Furu no da(Vol. 1) (1981), the protagonist (Makoto Shiina) says: “Sokode ore wa shizuka ni tachiagatta. Mou ‘boku’ nante itteirarenai.” (Then I (ore) stood up quietly. No longer able to say “I” (boku)(1)) describing a situation in which his character undergoes change. The occasion for this character transformation was that Shiina, angry at the person with whom he was talking, stood up to take action —in other words, to embark on a more violent kind of communicative behavior.

In the same work, Shiina again transforms from using the first-person pronoun ore to boku, explaining that he does so because he was “trying to write a love story about a man and a woman.” It seems that if he tried to write a love story using ore, he would have to open with a foggy dockside in a hardboiled style, but in thinking about his own behavior regarding love (for that too is communicative behavior), this pronoun just didn’t fit.

In other words, each character has a communicative behavior at which that character is particularly skilled. When the speaker wishes to engage in a certain communicative behavior, he deploys the character that is skilled at it. For violent communicative behavior, he deploys the ore character. In situations where a hardboiled approach is inappropriate, the boku character is deployed instead.

Within this same work, Shiina transforms into other characters as well. Shiina’s friend Shinsuke Kimura, wanting to pass the National Bar Examination, tries to have a prefab shed put up in his yard so that he can study there. In what could only be an attempt to lure Kimura into delinquency, Shiina invites him to rent an apartment and live together with their friends. How does Shiina he follow up this invitation?

Leering, he sidles up to Kimura, and says “Sentoo nanka ni haitte, shogi yatte katsudon tabemashoo yo, nee” (let’s go to bath houses, play shogi, and eat katsudon(2)) pinching him on the knee. His comportment is “alluring” and “seductive,” like that of the “bar hostess” character that he is deploying.

Kimura, enticed into the communal lifestyle and finding himself forced into kitchen duty, asks his friends to at least buy him an apron, as he doesn’t want to get his nice shirts dirty. Shiina and his friends grant this request. Kimura says “Ureshii waa,“(3) (thanks!) and “be coquettish with an air of semi-desperation.” This probably indicates that Kimura was deploying a “housewife” character, whose special skill was “to be pleased at receiving a kitchen apron.”

Obviously, it is unusual for a man to take on feminine characters, such as the “bar hostess” or “housewife” outside of the context of joking (i.e. play). When he attempts to use such characters, he will usually be stopped by an inner voice, telling him, “This won’t do! How embarrassing for me, a guy, to deploy this character.” The part of him that is embarrassed, and halts the activity, is his persona (part 4).

When the speaker wishes to engage in a certain communicative behavior, he deploys the character that is skilled at it; in most cases, the link between the communicative behavior and character is under the control of the speaker’s persona, and can be inhibited by it. This link is what I mean by “essence.”

*　*　*