Kappa Definition of Terms

Mardiana worked on many focuses such as revealing the satire on Japan‟s imperialism, ultra nationalism, gender issues, and capitalism. Mardiana uses socio-historical study as the basic analysis of the novel. She gives a standpoint that her thesis is merely about Akutagawa‟s criticism toward Japanese cultural society during 1920s. In accordance with her standpoint, Mardiana then highlights the condition in Japan 1920s during the novel was written. The issues that are identified are the political condition, the economic condition, and the social order as she puts in her description about Japan In a brief, in the year 1920s, Japan was in a period of economic crisis as the glimpse of World War I and of the isolationism politics, which had been taken place during two decades. To go forward as the Western has done, Japan started to develop her industries in various sectors 2008:19 The analysis is divided under two headings. The first is the level of prosperity and later the development of the industry. She assumed that Kappaland society is similar to Japanese society without giving any satisfactory explanation on why Kappa is the representation of Japanese society. Moreover, some of her arguments are inadequate to show the similarity between Kappa and Japanese society as the object of criticism. She stated that politically Kappaland is stable and thus it results in welfare and prosperous living of kappa. The evidence that she gives is merely on the portrayal of shops that provides everything the society needs, a street in Kappaland that is similar to Ginza in Tokyo and some cars which pass by. “This stable condition merely can be seen from the well arrangement of the beech trees on each side of the road, the crowds of cars a a lot of shops that provide ev erything” Mardiana, 2008:31. Yet, this explanation is not comprehensible as a PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI proof that one country is living in prosperity. Moreover, she does not set the parameter of prosperous living and welfare to begin with. At the end of the analysis Mardiana concludes that Kappaland and Japan are different in a way that Kappaland had developed to be a wealthy and prosperous country based on its industrialization and mechanized manufacturing, while in Japan the political condition was still in an unstable condition that the problems of infanticide, family, and abortion rose. In short, she asserts that Kappas relatively have shared a prosperous living because of he significant growth of industrialization, while Japan was still in the transformation to modernity as in 1920s she was in economic stagnation. The second related study is conducted by Ho Koon-ki entitled Kappa as a Dystopia: A study of Ak utagawa’s Anti-utopian Thought. He examines Kappa as a literary expression of Akutagawa‟s vision of a malevolent society, or a dystopia. In Kappa according to Koon-ki, the influence of Jonathan Swift is especially prominent and important. Often, Kappa is r egarded as „Gulliver in a Kimono‟, specifically after an article reviewing the first English translation of Kappa in Time magazine under the title „Guliver in the Kimono‟appeared. Koon-ki asserts that despite the fact that an intimate relation can be identified between Kappa and some Western utopian fiction, not a single critic, has ever argued that Kappaland is a utopia as the term is used to mean ideal commonwealth. This is the reason behind his attempts to conduct this research. Kappa demonstrated the conviction that unless human nature changes, a perfect PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI