Twelve Centuries of Japanese Literature [Part 4]

Towards the end of the Meiji period, especially in the decade 1905-1915, many great writers emerged. The number of outstanding writers of this special decade far exceeded the number of great writers from the 1920s to the end of World War II.

Meiji Literature

By the end of the Meiji period, especially in the decade 1905-1915, many great writers appeared such as: Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Shiga Naoya, Yokomitsu Riichi, Kawabata Yasunari. Some writers following the "proletarian literary movement" were politically active such as: Tokunaga Sunao, Hayama Yoshiki, Kobayashi Takiji.

The number of outstanding writers of this special decade far exceeds the number of great writers from the 1920s to the end of World War II. This period had many movements: new realism, sentimentalism, naturalism, symbolism, surrealism... Each movement was divided into many small trends and schools.

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Writer Tanizaki Jun'ichirō.

Tanizaki Jun'ichirō (1886-1965) wrote about the inner conflicts between East and West. He sought beauty rather than morality as he had previously done. He delicately portrayed the dynamics of family life against the backdrop of rapid changes in twentieth-century Japanese society, and was one of six authors on the final list for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, the year before his death.

His novels are marked by pathological sexuality and a very Western aestheticism. He went against the trend of autobiographical writing that emphasized the ego and returned to traditional aesthetic principles.

A Fool's Love (Chijin no Ai, 1925) depicts a serious engineer husband who falls in love with and marries a very young, Westernized, capricious woman who likes to make love to him. He becomes her slave, and then finds pleasure in torturing her.

The Key (Kagi, 1956) tells the story of a 56-year-old university professor and his 55-year-old wife. They secretly write diaries, knowing that they secretly read each other's. The husband feels sexually impotent and tries to stimulate himself by causing jealousy. The wife also plays the game silently and consciously, making her husband find pleasure again; he becomes so passionate that he dies.

Some other major works of Tanizaki: Kirin (1910), Children (Shōnen, 1911), Demons (Akuma, 1912), Swastika (Manji, 1930), Love in the Dark (Mōmoku Monogatari, 1931), Dream Bridge (Yume no Ukihashi, 1959)...

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Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892-1927) was a modern writer, famous abroad, especially since the film Rashōmon based on his story (Rashōmon - La sou mon, 1915) won an international award. He studied English literature, taught English and wrote. He tried to combine European and Japanese culture.

Although he was imbued with Western culture, he often took a wide variety of themes from ancient Japanese and Chinese literature. He left behind over 140 works (mostly short stories), essays and poems. He took a different path from the literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Japan, not following Western themes and naturalistic, proletarian and romantic individualistic tendencies (literature of the Ego).

His works return to the traditional story roots but analyze modern psychology, describe objectively, blend reality and fantasy, have flowery but concise literature, and a tight structure. He attacked the stupidity, falsehood, and greed of the bourgeoisie in Mori Sensei (1919), The Land (Tochi no Ichibu, 1924)...

In his later years, his work reflected his fear of the unknown, as he was haunted by his mother's madness; he feared losing his ability to compose. There was also the crisis of bourgeois intellectuals in the face of the rise of fascist militarism. He committed suicide by taking poison at the age of 35, leaving behind his wife and three children.

Some of his other major works include: Old Age (Ronen, 1914), The Nose (Hana, 1916), The Screen of Hell (Jigokuhen, 1918), The Spider's Thread (Kumo no Ito, 1918), Autumn Mountain Scenery (Shuzanzu, 1921), In the Bamboo Forest (Yabu no Naka, 1922), Genkaku Villa (Genkaku Sanbo, 1927)...

In 1935, a friend of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, writer and publisher of Shinshichō magazine named Kikuchi Kan (1888-1948), founded the annual Akutagawa Ryūnosuke literary prize given to young writers. For nearly 90 years, the prize has remained a supreme honor for Japanese writers.

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Shiga Naoya (1883-1971) was a writer who had a great influence on modern Japanese literature, recognized as a master of realism. His style combined beauty with subtle emotions and psychological analysis. His works were mainly autobiographical novels (I), inspired by real, ordinary, everyday events with meticulous details, very popular in modern Japanese literature.

For example, in the short story At Kinosaki (Kinosaki de, 1917), a young patient who has just survived a train accident, being treated in a mountain sanatorium, thinks about death and human destiny when he sees a dead bee, a mouse thrown while swimming underwater, and a lizard accidentally thrown to death.

In 1895, his mother died, and in the fall of that year, his father remarried, events and settings for the autobiographical novel The Death of a Mother and a New Mother (Haha no Shi to Atarashī Haha, 1912).

He was also influenced by Andersen's Fairy Tales and wrote Rapeseed and the Lady (Nanohana to Komusume, 1913), and the essay A Drop of Water on the Nile (Nairu no Mizu no Hitoshizuku, 1969) which marked the end of his writing career.

Some of his other typical works include: At the Cape of the Fortress (Ki no Saki Nite, 1920), Reconciliation (Wakai, 1917), The God of the Apprentice (Kozou no Kami-Sama, 1920), The Road of the Dark Night (Anyakouro, 1921 and 1937), The Gray Moonlight (Hai'iro no Tsuki, 1946)...

(to be continued)

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