Japanese scholar researches Faulkner, presents annual lecture at Southeast

William Faulkner has long been one of Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa's favorite authors, and the professor of letters at Kyoto Prefectural University got a chance to look into the Southern writer more deeply while doing research in the Louis Daniel Brodsky Collection of William Faulkner Materials at Southeast Missouri State University.

After a two-week stay in Cape Girardeau, Kanazawa leaves Saturday. On Thursday, he presented a lecture titled "A Legend of an Unknown Soldier: Faulkner's 'A Fable'" at Kent Library.

Published in 1954, "A Fable" won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Set in France during World War I, Kanazawa said the plot centers on a corporal's attempt to stop the war. He's court-martialed before the top generals. He's sentenced to death.

It turns out the supreme commander of the allied army is the corporal's father. His father offers the corporal freedom and power, but the corporal refuses and is executed and buried. Ultimately, the corporal is buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris.

Kanazawa said it's well-known that as a child Faulkner identified with his great-grandfather, who was a soldier and writer, among other things. Faulkner enlisted as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force in Canada, but the war ended before he had a chance to be a hero or a pilot, Kanazawa said.

Kanazawa is the 2013 BioKyowa Visiting Japanese Scholar. The award is sponsored by BioKyowa Inc., a Cape Girardeau business with headquarters in Japan, according to a news release from Southeast.

The BioKyowa Visiting Japanese Scholar program honors the relationship Faulkner developed with the Japanese during an official visit to the country on behalf of the U.S. State Department in 1955. Since then, almost all of Faulkner's works have been published in Japanese translations, and today there is a "thriving interest in Faulkner's works among Japanese readers and scholars," the release said.

Kanazawa said he found the Brodsky collection to be "the greatest in the world," and if one is interested in not only Faulkner's work, but his life, the center is the place to come.

"It was more than I expected. I've seen the catalog of this collection ... but still, when I came here, I found the collection more rich than expected," Kanazawa said.

He said the experience will make him a more confident instructor.

During his visit, Kanazawa visited Faulkner's hometown of Oxford, Miss., with retired center director Robert Hamblin and three Chinese students.

Dr. Christopher Rieger, director of the Faulkner Center, said a conference is being planned for October pairing Faulkner and author Zora Neale Hurston. Forty to 50 scholars and graduate students, including five or six from foreign countries, are expected to participate, Rieger said.

rcampbell@semissourian.com

388-3639

Pertinent address: 1 University Plaza, Cape Girardeau