Plant Performance: War, Ethnicity, and the Japanese Garden in Patricia Grace's Chappy

植物表演：葛瑞絲《日本鬼子》中的二戰、族裔與日本花園

Iping Liang

《Tamkang Review》 51卷1期 (2020/12) Pp. 3-25

https://doi.org/10.6184/TKR.202012_51(1).0001

摘要

This essay investigates the representation of the Japanese garden as a site of ＂plant performance＂ in New Zealand writer Patricia Grace's Chappy (2015). By drawing on critical plant studies publications by Patricia Vieira et al., John Ryan, Alan Read, Brendan Doody et al., and others, I examine both the material and metaphor of the Japanese garden in Grace's novel. Planted in New Zealand by Chappy, the garden represents a human-made and ethnic landscape, bearing a specific politicized aesthetics and coding of Japan and embodying an ＂ecological poesies＂-a performance site that in the words of Vieira et al., is one of ＂bearing seeds, irrupting in flowers, sprouting rhizomes, uncoiling leaves, attracting pollinators, garnering human attention, and mobilizing transnational networks＂ (viii). Focusing on the ethnic and botanical ＂performance＂ of the Japanese garden in Chappy according to the given critical perspectives, I explore the connection between the garden and other content that addresses war, ethnicity, and transvegetal interconnectedness. I argue that the Japanese garden in Grace's novel creates and calls for a ＂poetics of inclusion＂ that centers on peace and interconnectedness rather than war and exclusion.

關鍵字

Patricia Grace ； Chappy ； Maori ； ethnicity ； plant performance ； Critical Plant Studies

並列摘要

本論文探討紐西蘭毛利族女作家派翠西亞．葛瑞絲小說《日本鬼子》（2015）中日本枯山水花園的再現作為植物表演的場域。本文重點有三：其一在紐西蘭英語小說中，葛瑞絲的《日本鬼子》有其重要之處，因為這是紐西蘭原住民作家以日本士兵為主題的二戰小說，相對於紐西蘭主流媒體對日本的負面報導，葛瑞絲從紐西蘭原住民的角度展現「日本鬼子」的人性光輝。其二本文引用批判植物研究學者諸如派翠西亞．薇伊拉、約翰．瑞恩、亞倫．瑞德、布蘭登．杜迪等人相關論述，闡述小說中日本枯山水花園作為物質與隱喻的雙重面向。一方面它象徵日本文化的庭園景觀，另一方面它內涵一個植物表演的生態介面—「從育種、開花、爬芽、展葉、傳播花粉，引起人類注意，帶動國際網路互動等」（薇伊拉等，xviii）。其三本文從上述角度說明小說中日本枯山水花園如何在二戰情境中，藉由植物表演召喚一個強調和平與連結的包容詩學，接納族裔他者，發掘跨太平洋的跨植物連結，進而串連日本、美國、紐西蘭、夏威夷等亞太地區，從而省思戰爭之惡與排除日本之失。

並列關鍵字

派翠西亞．葛瑞絲 ； 《日本鬼子》 ； 毛利人 ； 族裔他者 ； 植物表演 ； 批判植物研究

參考文獻

Mohamed, Neveen Samir. “Dialogism and Native American Literature in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes,” Beni-Suef University International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2019, pp. 39-70. doi: 10.21608/buijhs.2019.73514. Accessed 10 August 2020.

Sykes, W. R., “Checklist of Bamboos (Poaceae) Naturalised in New Zealand.” New Zealand Journal of Botany, Vol. 34, 1996, pp. 153-6. doi: 10.1080/0028825X.1996.10410679.

Adamson, Joni. “Gardens in the Desert: Migration, Diaspora and Food Sovereignty in the Work of Native North American Women Writers.” Aspects of Transnational and Indigenous Cultures Series, edited by Hsinya Huang and Clara Shu-Chun Chang, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014, pp. 47-70.

Balston, Michael. The Well-Furnished Garden (1960). Mitchell Beazley, 1990, pp. 14-17.

Berthier, Francios. Reading Zen in the Rocks: The Japanese Dry Landscape Garden, translated by Graham Parkes, U of Chicago P, 2000.