The Japan Proletarian Writers’ League’s ‘Greatest Enemy’: Miyamoto Yuriko Denounces Hayashi Fusao’s Youth

ABSTRACT

Writing in the early 1960s, literary critic Hirano Ken argued that writer Hayashi Fusao became the Japan Proletarian Writers’ League’s (Nihon Puroretaria Sakka Dōmei) ‘greatest enemy’, following his romantic interpretation of the Meiji Restoration in his historical novel Seinen (Youth). Hirano asserted that Hayashi questioned the Marxist interpretation of the Meiji Restoration, in hopes of challenging the leadership of the Writers’ League. Hirano maintains that this confrontation eventually led to the dissolution of the proletarian literature movement. Thus, here we first examine the initial criticism of Seinen by Kamei Katsuichirō and Tokunaga Sunao, followed by an analysis of the increasingly scathing condemnations of Hayashi’s historical novel by Kobayashi Takiji, Miyamoto Kenji, and finally a vitriolic and particularly mocking piece by Miyamoto Yuriko. Next, we review Hayashi’s response to this criticism, and end by considering appraisals of the confrontation: first, from a contemporary source in Marxist literary critic Aono Suekichi, and secondly, from Hirano Ken. Ultimately, this study hopes to underscore the contributing role of scorn and derision in intensifying the battle over the politics versus literature debate in the proletarian literature movement’s final days.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the two outside readers from Japanese Studies for their constructive suggestions for revisions to the manuscript, and also recognize the useful comments and suggestions on an earlier presentation of this material from the scholars who were part of the Bundan Snark: Writing and Fighting in Modern Japan Workshop Conference (May 2014), organized by Kendall Heitzman and Alisa Freedman.

Notes

¹ Tenkō 転向literally means a ‘change of direction,’ but in early Shōwa Japan (1926–1945) this term came to mean a forced political and/or ideological disavowal of the political and/or ideological Left during the 1930s.

² Izu took the phrase ‘historical paradox’ from Hayashi (1933e: 120).