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Rethinking the Avant-Garde in Postwar Japanese Literature
Organizer: Lianying Shan, Princeton University
Chair: Richard H. Okada, Princeton University
Discussant: Janet A. Walker, Rutgers University
Our panel reexamines an important aspect of postwar Japanese literature—the avant-garde movement as represented by critics and writers including Hanada Kiyoteru, Ishikawa Jun, Shimao Toshio, and Abe Kobo. The papers explore the varied uses of surrealism and existentialism on the part of the avant-garde in literary texts, and the development of avant-garde theory, in the 1960s. Our panel aims to highlight the ways in which the avant-garde enriches the literary dynamics through providing alternative spaces and imaginations for narrating such crucial subjects as revolution, colonial history, nationhood, and modernity. Emphasizing the enabling factors of the avant-garde in redefining the reality in postwar Japan, the papers will also illuminate neglected thematic and stylistic characteristics of postwar Japanese literature.
Our discussion centers around three particular issues: the relationship of the avant-garde to social commitment, the connection of the avant-garde to popular culture, and the relationship of the avant-garde to colonial/postcolonial discourse.
Yoshihiro Yasuhara examines surrealism in prose, as illustrated in novels and theories of Ishikawa Jun and Shimao Toshio, highlighting the former's idea of "revolution" and the latter's critique of the Japanese surrealism, which was mostly represented in poetry in the period before World War II. Kumiko Sato focuses on Hanada Kiyoteru’s concept of audio-visual mass culture as a critical tool of the avant-garde to overcome the cul-de-sac in literary progress in postwar Japan. Lianying Shan analyzes Abe Kobo’s two Manchurian novels and their use of existentialism and surrealism in criticizing Japanese wartime nationalism and myths of a homogeneous postwar Japan.
The Surreal (Cho genjitsu) as Social Commitment in Postwar Japanese Novel
Yoshihiro Yasuhara, Florida State University
A second reception of European surrealism becomes evident in postwar Japanese literature, which this time develops in prose as opposed to poetry, the form in which it developed in its first reception in the 1920s. The novelistic form underscores the idea of the surreal (Cho genjitsu) as not just a matter of style but also involving a commitment to social issues, such as democracy, Americanization, and iconoclasm in postwar Japan. In its critique of postwar Japanese society, the surreal novel points to the reconciliation between literature and politics.
This paper demonstrates that two novels—Raptor (Taka, 1953) of Ishikawa Jun (1899-1987) and To the Island (Shima e, 1962) of Shimao Toshio (1917-1986)—sustain the idea of the surreal, challenging the postwar status quo after the Occupation led by the US (1945-1952) in the former and Japan’s myth of homogeneity in the latter.
Ishikawa’s Raptor exemplifies the surrealist aspect by promoting the central idea of his literature: “revolution” (kakumei). The story of the secret cigarette factory unfolds as an allegorical conflict between the hope for freedom and the controlled society. On the other hand, Shimao’s To the Island showcases his original idea of “Yaponesia,” an idea that calls attention to Japan as part of the Polynesian and Micronesian islands. Against the existing construction of Japanese history, the novel’s surreal world highlights an unwritten version of Japanese history with its vision for Japan’s diversity.
This study of the surreal in both novels points to issues of this sort, which remain to be resolved in the current conceptions of Japan’s postwar history.
Hanada Kiyoteru’s Rhetoric of Avant-Garde Literature and the Rise of Popular Culture in the 1960s
Kumiko Sato, Earlham College
Although the term avant-garde itself signifies the movement to challenge established norms in art and culture, Japan’s modern condition has necessitated the inclusion of another important factor in the conceptualization of this movement, which is modern Japan’s indebtedness to European art theories and traditions. The rise of various avant-garde movements in Japan is thus closely associated with the periods that observed both the fear of, and enthusiasm for, Western culture, such as the 1920s and 1960s. The way the avant-garde movements interacted with Japan's situation of being torn between its desire for nationhood and its desire for Westernization characterizes the Japanese avant-garde. This condition may explain Japan’s contemporary situation in which “avant-garde” exists mainly as a term for certain styles of fashion and pop music rather than indicating a serious intellectual current inspired by the political left. My paper examines the 1960s’ rhetorical reconstruction of the literary avant-garde by shedding light on Hanada Kiyoteru’s discourses about the dialectics of premodern Japan and the modern West in his attempts to overcome the limits of modern literature. Undertaking the prewar argument of “overcoming modernity,” Hanada develops his theory of a popular literature that combines, and thus surpasses, modern realism and premodern oral narrative. I will particularly focus on his notion of audio-visual mass culture as a critical tool of the avant-garde to break through the cul-de-sac of literary progress in postwar Japan, and test the validity of Hanada’s theories against the actual emergence of popular culture of the 1960s-70s, especially the genre of science fiction, in both written and visual culture.
The Avant-Garde and Colonial/Postcolonial Critique in Abe Kobo’s Two Manchurian Novels
Lianying Shan, Princeton University
As a literary and artistic movement, the avant-garde was first introduced to Japan from the West in the early 1920s, and it was revived by the sengoha writers (the postwar generation) after World War II. The existing scholarship on the avant-garde in Japan has largely overlooked the relations between the avant-garde and colonial/postcolonial discourse. From Yokomitsu Riichi’s impressionistic representation of Shanghai, to Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s surrealistic portrayal of China, to Anzai Fuyue’s modernist poetry produced in the colonial city of Dalian, the avant-garde and colonial space are closely, albeit ambiguously, connected. These two subversive/potentially subversive elements together form a powerful means to represent and critique colonial and transnational experience, nationhood, and modernity.
Focusing on Abe Kobo’s two Manchurian novels: The Sign at the End of the Road (1948) and Beasts Aim for Home (1957), this paper examines the use of surrealism and existentialism as forms of colonial and postcolonial critique. In these two novels, Manchuria provides an alternative perspective and space to criticize wartime and postwar Japanese nationalism. I will demonstrate that in the first novel, a Japanese individual’s self-imposed exile in Manchuria and his existentialist thoughts serve as implicit criticism of Japanese imperialism. Through describing a Japanese orphan’s repatriation journey from Manchuria, his ultimate failure, and his surrealistic transformation into an animal in the end, the second novel deconstructs the myth of postwar Japan as home and as a new beginning.