Structure Recap: Kishotenketsu

Say hello to your neighbor Totoro

We’ve dug into a lot of specific, narrowly focused things, so let’s take a step back and check in with the big picture we’re here for: Plot and Structure.  We discussed these explicitly in the opening, but let’s circle back to that now that we’ve got some more tools and concepts on our belt.

Structure is the overall shape of a piece.  Plot, on the other hand, is the sequence of events that occur.  Our early discussion stressed that these aren’t the same thing, even if they appear to have the same shape.  Then we promptly did a deep dive into X-Act structures, which tend to have plots that demonstrate the same change in tension pivoting around a climax as the structure.  If we were to stop here, stressing the difference between structure and plot would feel a bit academic; yes, of course structure exists independent of plot, but if they tend to strongly correlate, that distinction doesn’t matter much.  That’s why we’re not stopping there.

For this and the next several posts, it’ll be really helpful if you’ve read a novel  with a Kishotenketsu structure. The one in the official class syllabus is Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, and specific examples will pull from it.  

That said, if you want to read along with a different work as your touchstone, go ahead.  You’ll probably get some insight out of how the example you read does and doesn’t do things the same way Confessions of a Mask does.

In the introduction to the different types of structure we’re going to explicitly discuss, I called Kishotenketsu the second most famous structure, after X-Act.  It has since come to my attention that I may have had no idea what structures people actually know about when I said that, and Kishotenketsu is, in fact, a bit obscure outside circles engaged with literature from China, Korea, and Japan.  Whoops. In my defense, I thought Pacific Rim meant everybody was an intense anime nerd now, so I’m blaming pop culture for this one.

Kishotenketsu is very much a structure that plots have difficulty mimicking, so it’s great for teasing apart structure qua structure and plot.  Recall that this is a structure with four acts, and they are:

• Act 1: Introduction

• Act 2: Development

• Act 3: Twist

• Act 4: Conclusion

This was originally a poetic form, and its focus is more on argument or illustration than on tension as we see in X-Act structures.  Let’s take a moment to examine each of these acts and contrast them with their “equivalent” in the X-Act structure.

Introduction

This is pretty much the same in purpose as the opening of an X-Act structure, but because of the difference in focus on this structure, it winds up quite distinct in effect.  The introduction is where you’ll meet the protagonist and find out about setting and the narrative preoccupation of the work. Remember, though, that this isn’t about tension, so while you might get an introduction to a plot, you are much less likely to run into an “inciting incident” or similar in this introduction than you would in an X-Act structure.  Instead, what you’ll find are the themes and images the work will be using. You aren’t here to find out what kind of wild ride you’re about to engage in; rather, this is setting you up for what argument or ideas you’re about to witness.

Development

This is the spot that would get described as “rising action” in an X-Act structure.  Here, though, there’s a progression, there might be an intensification, but there isn’t necessarily a build toward anything.  If you think back to your school essay days, when you were being taught how to structure a paragraph, if the Introduction is the topic sentence, then the Development is the 2-3 sentences following that explain and support the topic sentence.  The images introduced in the first act are fleshed out or enriched. The argument is unpacked. Everything you were given to start with gets richer. If you really need a movement based metaphor for this, you’re going in depth, drilling down, rather than climbing.  (Or spreading out. Both work, depending on the specific example you’re looking at.)

Twist

This is not a climax.  Do not expect it to be one.  It might feel climactic, especially if the twist is epiphanic in nature.  It is a shift, change, or upheaval, but not necessarily of the world or the characters.  Often, in fact, the world of the piece doesn’t change at all during the twist. What happens, instead, is the audience receives information that upsets or challenges their understanding of that world in some way.  We’re going to discuss, in great depth, the ways Kishotenketsu as a structure engages more directly with the audience’s experience than X-Act structures do, and that difference is the heart of how the twist works. So, if this feels fuzzy to you right now, sit tight.  We will come back to this.

Conclusion

This fills the denouement slot of the X-Act structure, but as with the other sections, it is functionally quite different.  A denouement is about resolving lingering threads, reflecting on the new status quo, and getting emotional space to breathe after the peak tension of the climax. In a Kishotenketsu, the conclusion is about synthesis, a reconciliation of what was introduced and developed with the twist into a fresh understanding.  The world of the story may not have changed at all, but the audience’s understanding has, and they walk away with more than they had before. Note also that this is a conclusion, not a resolution. There’s no “problem” intrinsic to this structure, therefore there’s not necessarily anything to solve. The themes and images introduced at the beginning will reappear, but they’ll land differently now.  

Through all this, plot is a vehicle to convey each of these sections, not a driving force in and of itself.  It might be linear or not, episodic or continuous, it may even have an arc, but it is a series of events that are chosen in order to fulfill the needs of each act in which they appear. 

If you’re really used to action-packed, event-driven plots, reading Kishotenketsu might even feel like you’re reading something without a plot. In most cases you’d be wrong, there’s a plot there, but it is significantly downplayed in service to the narrative goals of the work. 

If you finish a piece with this structure and find yourself asking, “Why even did I just read that?” then I’d encourage you to apply that question directly to the work: Why even, dear reader, was that narrative presented to you? What was it really saying? How did it do it?