Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Literary World of 1946

Preface

From last October to this October, a year had passed.
During that time, a great many things occurred.
Since August of last year, when we began moving forward in pursuit of establishing a new humanity, establishing a democratic social life, and establishing a literary direction corresponding to those goals, our initial sentiments—which may have been simple but were filled with fresh hope—had undergone changes amidst various relationships through this progression.
While this might be called changes in the general situation, even within these shifts, significant differences had appeared between the year's first quarter—from January to around March—and the period leading up to today.
The root of this lay precisely in how Japan's democratization was progressing in reality.
As Mr. Nakano Shigeharu had concisely summarized in his recent report on "The Struggle Against Reactionary Literature," Japan's democratization was by no means proceeding smoothly.
It was not being implemented conscientiously.
It was not being implemented honestly.
Because it wanted to maintain its own power, the government greatly detested shifting toward the various new possibilities that all of us Japanese possessed.
This became clear when examining the current Constitution, but this half-hearted implementation of "Popular Sovereignty" directly impacted the emotions with which we lived while seeking democracy.

While calling it a democratic constitution, the government avoided having it take effect on May 1st. Moreover, what kind of day was May 1st this year for all of us? The emotions we felt on that day could indeed be recognized as one clear manifestation of the sentiment driving Japan’s democratic movements today. Nevertheless, the government disliked having it take effect on May 1st and promulgated it on November 3rd. (November 3rd has been a commemorative day of imperial rule since the Meiji era.) That very sentiment—the insistence that the democratic constitution based on popular sovereignty absolutely had to be delayed by merely two days from May 1st, the world's May Day, to take effect on May 3rd—aptly expressed how today's rulers and authorities conceptualized what they called democracy. Why must it not coincide with May Day?

These strange distortions emerging in Japan's democratization process were also reflected in the realm of literature.
The process of establishing democratic literature proved extremely complex and fraught with difficulties.
In Japan, profoundly deep-rooted backward and semi-feudal conditions had been at work in distorting various issues of democratization, but these became further complicated through combination with external forces.
As long as capitalism existed in other countries, even in capitalist nations where democracy had been established, contradictions and difficulties emerged that today required further elevation and development of that very democracy.

In even developed capitalist democratic nations, it is natural that elements lacking progressiveness emerge as one moment of contradiction in their development, and it is easy to imagine how these influences combine with Japan's even more backward aspects.

In these rapid transitions, literature had lived through a year.
We ardently seek humanism within new literature.
We seek democratic literature.
We are wholeheartedly seeking it.
But when considering whether these have emerged as the creative endeavors we envisioned, I must say the reality resists simple affirmation.
I believe chaos and confusion are particularly pronounced.

Today's Literature and Journalism

Literature was attempting to set out anew, but what new conditions did its material foundation possess?

In reality, it could not be denied that literature ultimately rested upon journalism.
While it was true that journalism had incorporated democratic elements, in essence, it remained capitalist journalism that pursued profit as a business.
It was said that in Japan at that time, even literary magazines alone numbered over three hundred in publication.
Among them were quite a few fairly large coterie magazines.
Among these, the most distinctive were the publications of Kamakura Bunko.
In the history of European literature as well, there had often been instances where writers with economic means gathered and established their own publishing companies.
However, in nearly all such cases, their motivation lay in seeking to protect the independence of literature and art against commercialist publishing and profit-driven journalism.
The small theaters of America and Ireland had been created by people who hoped to establish genuine theaters and genuine drama not solely focused on profit-making against commercial capital.
There had been instances of publishing not perpetually dragged along by the publishing industry—for example, where people had established publishing houses like those created by Virginia Woolf and her husband.
However, Japan at that time exhibited a particularly noteworthy phenomenon in this regard.
For example, Kamakura Bunko appeared to be a corporation formed by writers who had gained economic leeway during the publishing inflation era and come together to address issues such as the property tax and new yen.
While existing as profit-driven journalism, they also secured venues for publishing works.
It was a mechanism for circulating profits.
The publishing company Kamakura Bunko put out Humanity, Women’s Library, and even Society.
How were people to view the photo of Kaiya Yaeko in ballet attire featured in the frontispiece of Society, Number 2?
Didn't one feel astonishment regarding the fact that Kawabata Yasunari and others had created the company publishing Society, which carried such photographs?

Beyond the fact that certain literary figures themselves had begun engaging in profit-driven journalism, when we considered how—through whatever means—over three hundred literary magazines existed today, the reality that New Japanese Literature could only sporadically publish such flimsy issues due to paper shortages gave us profound pause.
How exactly was the freedom of speech and publication that the Japanese people should possess being realized?
Democratic publishing, in its budding stage, was being crushed beneath the dreadful weight of black market paper.
The Japan Publishing Association's paper allocation had fallen into a de facto situation akin to legitimizing black market paper, and the government was now attempting to bring that paper allocation completely under its own control.

The issue of war criminal publishers in the publishing sphere was also left unresolved.
The war criminal-like publishers participating in the Free Publishing Association they themselves created are instead dominating the upper tiers of paper allocation.

Viewed in direct connection with literary works, the first quarter of this year—from around January to March—was, as I briefly mentioned earlier, a time when democracy was handled with fresh-faced earnestness and a degree of seriousness—an exploratory period when caution prevailed because it remained unclear what excesses or distortions might emerge.

During this exploratory period, writers who had cooperated with the war effort refrained from publishing works, and for the sake of journalism’s own stability, writing requests were held in abeyance.
The fact that Nagai Kafū published such works in rapid succession during that period reveals a profound tragedy in Japan’s modern literature.
Nagai Kafū went to France during the Meiji 40s and observed that within French literary currents of the time, decadence represented an expression of rebellious spirit against France’s vulgar petit bourgeois worldview.
He too had intended to embrace decadence in this sense—as one manifestation of rebellious spirit—carrying it as befitting a modern individual.
However, upon returning to Japan, he discovered an immense disparity in historical foundations between Japan’s semi-feudal mentality and France’s modernity—the socio-spiritual necessity of French decadence—and Nagai Kafū could find neither in contemporary Japanese society nor within himself the spiritual anchor he had sought.
Even the freedom to combat feudal Japan, even the autonomy of modern petit bourgeois life that should resist through decadence—neither had been established in Japan.
As a result, Nagai Kafū became a writer who discarded European-style social thought, confined himself within bourgeois circumstances through obfuscation, and descended into erotic literature.
He had drifted far from that decadence which examines all societal phenomena to their marrow—unflinchingly discerning even the pus that emerges.
That this writer—sheltered by age and economic means, living somewhat removed from the war’s terrors that destroyed countless young talents—produced works addressing unrelated worlds and life fragments, works which nevertheless dominated Japanese journalism immediately after the Peace Preservation Law’s repeal, remains for us an unforgettable reality.

Shiga Naoya’s "The Gray Moon" and works by Satō Haruo similarly appeared during the first quarter.
However, I believe these writers’ works made us keenly aware that our literary generation had already advanced far beyond where they stand.

After March, so-called mid-career writers in their prime emerged in journalism.
These writers were said to have made comebacks.
"What exactly does 'comeback' mean here?"

It seemed that people who had not previously published works in journalism began writing, and this was being referred to as a "comeback." However, what we wish to examine as a literary issue is whether these writers have merely made a "comeback" by joining the list of those receiving writing commissions in journalism, or whether their "comeback" signifies a potential new departure in literature itself. To say that every single one has merely made a "comeback" in journalism would be too crude an expression. However, to a very large extent, writers who had only made journalistic comebacks stood out.

One of the reasons lay in bourgeois journalism’s need for “business.”
They had to fill fixed page counts and compel readership despite having nothing worth reading.
There existed no fresh writers to vitalize the scene with new debuts.
Nothing could be done.
As cultural war responsibility pursuits grew muddled and Japan’s permissible scope for conservative tendencies became apparent, they made writers—whom even their commissioners disrespected yet who retained audiences—produce works.
Thus did these writers drag themselves back into journalism’s fold.

When I looked at the table of contents of a certain general magazine, there in the essays section were Hani Gorō, Hosokawa Karoku, Shinobu Seizaburō, and Hirano Yoshitarō.
If we ask what kind of novelists are featured in that same magazine, they are the likes of Nagai Tatsuo and Niwa Fumio.
It has become clearly evident that today’s literature maintains a considerable gap with criticism circles and intellectual spheres.
In this way, even when considering the comebacks of established writers, the fact that literary comebacks remain relatively few while journalistic ones form the mainstream is, as previously mentioned, one distinctive aspect of Japanese democracy today.
When considered as issues for writers themselves and as literary problems, this ultimately means—as Nakano Shigeharu had earlier criticized regarding war crimes and literature—that we have not yet sufficiently undertaken the crucial task of truly confronting, within our own hearts as our developmental direction, how we lived as literary figures during the war era.
There is a tendency to handle this crucial developmental momentum literarily with superficial cleverness, thereby muddying the waters.

Abe Tomoji wrote about his southern experience in his work.
The work titled *Shi no Hana* appeared in *Sekai*, depicting the cruel fate suffered by people of that land whom the author witnessed—how they would ultimately be killed through irrational means.
In that work, regarding the profound fact that the protagonist himself occupies a position to witness those actual conditions—in the crucial, most novel-like part where one would explore how the author felt about this—there is never any descent into crude anguish.
"What am I doing in a place like this?!"
He does not write lines like "What am I doing in a place like this?!" or "How could this happen?!"
He writes that [the protagonist] snapped shut the Bible at the passage: "I was sought by those who did not ask; I was found by those who did not seek Me. I said, 'Here I am, here I am,' to a nation that was not called by My name."
Thus, he intends to show the position in which the protagonist finds himself placed against his will.

The author implied through subtext that he had been placed in a nation that did not call upon his name—in other words, that his involvement in such turmoil and cruelty was not of his own volition.
When considered as a literary issue, this approach to thematic treatment was extremely superficial.

Niwa Fumio, having gone to kamikaze squadron bases as a press corps member, dispassionately depicted their actual corruption without connecting it to his inner life—presenting it as a literary work while adopting a facile attitude that lacked deeper literary or human resonance.
A slightly more astute writer had a national school teacher—who possessed cultural demands—come to meet him in his rural evacuation area and engage in various conversations.
That national school teacher was a liberal who held skeptical critiques regarding perspectives on the war.
The writer engaged in such dialogue with the protagonist.
Given that they were addressing topics that had been strictly prohibited at the time, they had the national school teacher’s account provide endorsement that the protagonist was a liberal.
It was an elaborate method of establishing an alibi.

Here we have a writer who wrote something called "The Northern Coast Unit". It may have been written with the intent to convey to people what the author witnessed: those being made into soldiers from rural villages, factories, workplaces, and schools—their human sorrows, their innocent human joys, their exposure to death in all its forms. "The Northern Coast Unit" is a work that provided royalties to its author some years ago but has now faded from view. But what have we been made aware of lately at the Tokyo Trials? The soldiers of the Northern Coast Unit came to know that they had committed inhumane atrocities—acts they would never have perpetrated as individuals—or had been forced to commit them. This is a heartfelt shock and pain for all of us.

Generally speaking, I believe artists should possess the ability to perceive reality comprehensively.
When the author of *The Northern Coast Unit*—who had believed they wrote standing upon their conscience as a human being and as an artist—discovered that unimaginable atrocities had been committed immediately after the events depicted in their work, they must have been brutally awakened to the deception and contempt inflicted upon the soldiers, themselves, and ordinary citizens; must have lashed themself as a writer for having treated reality so carelessly; and must have endured unbearable sorrow and indignation.
As for the superficiality of their vision as writers, they truly cannot bear the shame.
The more pure their motives were as individuals, the more acute this blow must have been.
It is precisely there that the theme of art—today and tomorrow with no yesterday—is given to that writer.
Herein lies a motive worthy of inspiring the writer as an artist.
And is this very theme not something that can resonate together from the depths of the Japanese people's hearts?
If today that writer were to faithfully grasp that point and take a step forward in their new literature, that very act would constitute a meaningful comeback for Japanese literature as a whole.
From around March onward, almost all of the so-called mid-career writers who made comebacks began working through the facility of journalism, and the fact that they instead allowed the moments of true literary development for themselves to be easily swept away is a point that I believe cannot possibly be irrelevant when discussing the future development of new literature.

Intertwining Tendencies

The tendencies of each established writer who had thus made their comeback through journalism were mutually entangled.
They were neither like prewar times nor remained as they had been during the war; nor were they filled with the will and power to truly become democratic, break free from old conventions, and rise up as humane individuals.

In Funabashi Seiichi’s *Poison*, there existed a kind of self-consciously depraved literary tendency.
Ishizaka Yōjirō and Niwa Fumio, among others, also exhibited works of that tendency.
Writers such as Funabashi Seiichi and Niwa Fumio characteristically adopted an attitude of "that’s just how the times were," dispassionately detaching themselves to depict wartime reality with self-conscious depravity.
They eliminated both their own human inquiry as writers and any sense of responsibility felt as human beings and artists within given environments, while adopting an other-power-reliant approach that attributed even the protagonist's baseness and inferiority to external forces.
Was this not an even more complex reflection of how the establishment of the individual had not been achieved in past literature?

I believe that art is something that always seeks to transcend itself—it should exist as that which pursues self-development.
Settling into a vicious cycle, such a life attitude—"It's not my fault," "There was no other choice back then"—is artistically and humanly vulgar, amounting to mere go-along-to-get-along conformity, and I believe it represents something devoid of modern literature's essential aspirations.

On the other hand, there were also writers and works that, while not particularly enraged during the war, failed to clearly grasp the vicissitudes occurring in social life and personal circumstances as historical reality, instead adopting an attitude of viewing them in a naturalistic manner as mere shifts in society.
This was represented by works such as Uno Kōji’s *Floating and Sinking*.

Furthermore, among recent characteristics, the prominent tendencies are decadence and eroticism.
There are works by Oda Sakunosuke, Funabashi Seiichi, Kitahara Takeo, Sakaguchi Ango, and others.
When examining individual writers, we find differing styles along with varied interpretations of decadence and attitudes toward eroticism; however, when viewed as a whole, I believe the current prevalence of decadent and erotic literature amidst discussions about establishing new humanity warrants particular attention.

Could we not say that decadence and eroticism in Japanese literature possess a tragic lineage? In Europe's modern literature, decadence and eroticism always emerged as rebellion against petit-bourgeois morality. In modern Japanese literature, decadence and eroticism manifested as humanity's revolt against feudalistic formal morality and customs. To take an older example: during the collapse of samurai authority at the end of the Tokugawa period, the merchant class—which had gained economic power—created pleasure quarters as extraterritorial zones in rebellion against the feudal class system of samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants. This phenomenon could also be observed in the contrast between Bakin’s literature and that of Kyoden and others. Merchant-class literature, theater, and ukiyo-e became expressions of a humanity that remained politically unliberated from feudal class distinctions—a humanity that nevertheless asserted itself tragically within a world of human trafficking where money erased social status. It constituted a sorrowfully embellished exhibition of merchant-class freedom and humanity constructed upon female enslavement.

The decadence of Kafū in the Meiji 40s (1907–1912), as previously mentioned, was characterized by its abandonment of direct protest against Japan’s historical yoke, while elements of neo-romanticism seen in Taishō-era writers like Jun’ichirō Tanizaki—similar to the contemporaneously emerging humanism of Saneatsu Mushanokōji—represented, as a reaction to the Kōtoku Shūsui Incident, not an engagement with the liberation of social humanity but rather a leap from the historical reality of their society into reverence for universal humanity and submersion into sensuality as subjective expression.

After the Proletarian Literature Movement was crushed in 1933, when activities of the Popular Front—which had emerged worldwide as an anti-fascist movement—reached Japan, those introducing it under threat of the Peace Preservation Law desperately attempted to confine it to being “non-social.”

[They] tried to limit the Popular Front to that.

While fascism constituted an organized political pressure, the Popular Front that should have resisted it became reduced solely to upholding general humanism—thereby erasing its democratic sociopolitical essence—a self-evident impossibility for maintaining cohesive force.

Japan’s barbaric suppression rendered the Popular Front asocial and deformed; consequently, discussions of humanism remained incomplete, devolving into mere assertions of active spirit, while works born from these assertions culminated in depictions of aimless, naive vitality like *Young People*.

The liberation of humanity that proletarian literature advocated was understood as inseparable from class liberation—a social reality.

Therefore, in pursuing humanity’s liberation and its demand for freedom, they had naturally come to regard various social conflicts and struggles against feudalistic elements as unavoidable aspects of process; moreover, to ultimately triumph in those struggles, they understood that even collective regulations, devotion, and self-discipline—which might superficially appear antithetical to liberation—remained necessary.

The constraints these historical processes imposed upon reality came after 1933 to be felt as nothing but “sectarian coercion”—proclaiming this became fashionable—while humanism’s banner flared along facile lines of uncontrolled emotional outpourings.

In Japan’s modern spirit, when humanism is invoked, that it almost invariably ends confined solely to sensual excess itself speaks—I believe—to Japanese modernity’s fundamental immaturity.

Japan’s spirit remains unaware of civil society and has not matured to truly feel within itself the social backbone of individual existence.

Just as a boy first discovers selfhood through his body, so too does Japan’s immature modern spirit—even today—seek to condense and express what it perceives as humanity’s most comprehensible form through sexual acts of flesh—a notion compelling deepest reflection.

The recently prominent tendencies of decadence and eroticism are, according to their advocates among these writers, claimed to constitute rebellions against feudal Japan's hypocrisy and its customs of formal self-righteousness; other arguments assert them as humanity's exposure through caustic counterpropositions against the superficially bandied-about catchphrase of democratic liberation.
Sakaguchi Ango’s "Decadence Theory" vehemently argues this point.
But when considering the natural state of humanity that develops progressively—life and its art as a process of spirit and body—even if directed against the feudality we must combat, does not remaining merely reactive constitute in itself a stagnation into complacency that must be challenged?
The tragedy of writers like Yokomitsu Riichi and Kobayashi Hideo lies in this point: no matter how they embellish it, they lack the human capacity to develop themselves beyond being mere fixed antitheses positioned against Japan's democratic literary tradition.
Therefore, in the dynamic process of history, they cannot even constitute a true antithesis and are merely reactionary entities.
The current stage of world history grants Japanese writers the possibility to assert, act upon, and depict humanity beyond mere sexual expression.
If we, these intricate humans, possess no capacity for self-awareness beyond an ego reduced to genitals, that is pathological.
That this grand twentieth century's essence should be reduced to the affairs of men and women who cannot perceive spiritual combustion in sexual intercourse constitutes an intolerable deformity to reason.
In the worlds of literature and art, why does such a collapse of humanity exist unchallenged—nay, celebrated as literary?
Do they exist unchallenged—forcing affirmation precisely in their sorrow and in their ardent desire to overcome?

Toyoshima Yoshio, who had long remained silent, recently published several works including *Shiohana*, all featuring young women as protagonists.
When reading these works by Mr. Toyoshima—who had created symbolic pieces since his early career—one might sense that he sought to embody the innate purity, freshness, and authenticity we desire in life through his depictions of young women’s spontaneous emotions.
Yet could Mr. Toyoshima’s symbolism truly express social purity—that unceasing yearning within our hearts?

And finally, there was an attempt being made—through a skeptical, sadistic, and self-flagellating pursuit of oneself directed at certain tendencies that held a peculiar allure at the time—to express the intent to reaffirm humanity and construct justice.
In the vocabulary of such group-affiliated writers, words like "anguish" and "defilement" were employed with striking frequency.
A representative example of this was Takami Jun’s *Waga Mune no Soko no Koko ni wa* (*Here in the Depths of My Heart*), a work serialized in *Shincho*.
I believed it was being read quite widely among avid readers of literature.

The title "Waga Mune no Soko no Koko ni wa" ("Here in the Depths of My Heart") was said to have been taken from a poem by Tōson that began with the phrase "Waga mune no soko no koko ni wa iigataki hiji sumeri" ("Here in the depths of my heart dwells an unspeakable secret"). This novel had only been published in four installments so far. Though impossible to predict its future development from this point, it began with childhood and attempted to trace the author's social growth. Works that viewed human existence solely through a superficially bright lens were not realistic literature. Just as a sculpted frieze required three-dimensional apprehension through deep chiaroscuro, *Waga Mune no Soko no Koko ni wa* struck me as a work trying to observe humanity's emergence by tracing only the indentations on a casting's reverse side. In roughly the first third of its initial installment, the prose contorted itself with this author's characteristic melody, emitting sounds like a violin string straining to voice the soul's cry. There, Takami Jun employed unrelenting expressions that seemed determined to pierce ears if not hearts. It was not a harmonized richness of multiple resonances but a single violin string endlessly twisting itself. Through such physical contortions, the sorrowful expression that one's life until forty remained bound to childhood defilement was rendered with visceral intensity.

However, when it came to the second installment, this work turned into a mere recounting of childhood.
The motifs being written lost their intensity, turning into an easy recounting of the past.
The literary stance of excavating our defilement, which began with a melodious technique in the opening of the first installment, had now collapsed.
And then, in the third installment, the melody that had been sounded at the beginning of the first installment revived within the author's heart.
And he reflected on his own approach to writing.
In other words—what does it mean for a forty-year-old to grow old?
What could it mean?
Have I already lost my will to live somewhere?
The resolve I had when writing the first installment—that "I must write this to live again"—was recalled as I reached the third.

In the third installment, this author stated that artistic decline manifests not through an inability to write, but paradoxically through writing with excessive fluency.
And he reflected: What could it mean that he had begun writing with such smooth facility?
In the first installment, he began by declaring that "shame means self-exposure."
That "direct emotion that makes one’s face flush red in an instant"
While this author failed to grapple with shame through raw emotion, Mr. Nakamura Mitsuo approached shame theory by discussing it through detached observations of others' actions.
Though the word "shame" proliferates throughout this work, within its narrative reality it never pulses with genuine sensitivity.
For instance, in the second installment—which centered on this emotion—when attempting to enter Ichū Middle School and learning of his illegitimacy, he suffered terribly; returning home, he threw a maddened fit of “No! No!”, chronicling that despairing heart.
The catalyst came when a boy named Hanamura remarked, “I hear you’ve gotten into Ichū Middle School.”
I thought entering Ichū would cause trouble due to money problems.
However, having been told by a parent that illegitimate children like me weren’t admitted to proper schools like Ichū, he had spoken with that implication.
The protagonist—an illegitimate boy—endured intense anguish over this, precipitating a grand dramatic scene.
This story unfolded in the second installment as the author narrated these events as his own tormented records.
When the author smoothly posed “What exactly is shame?” in the third installment, we readers sensed he needn’t have looked outward to study it.
Because when the protagonist boy himself fell into a ditch and soiled his clothes—and when his mother harshly scolded him—Hanamura pushed him back in while lying about the stained garments, framing the innocent boy.
This led to a scene where the mother stormed into Hanamura’s house only to be berated by his father.
Hanamura—who had heard adults sneer “Women who bear bastards anyway”—absorbed secondhand prejudices about illegitimacy, their motivation rooted in a lie spawned from the protagonist’s own abjectness.
If the author truly possessed that searing motif declared initially—that defilement and shame mean self-exposure—why didn’t he confront this truth: that Hanamura’s motivation for tormenting him over illegitimacy had been fabricated by the protagonist himself? That disgrace stemmed not from bastardy but from that petty lie’s abjectness—the very defilement central to probing humanity?
Had a consistent motif truly resided in the author’s heart, such moments would have been recognized as the work’s core and emerged with vivid, painful clarity.

When we write works—when we smoothly describe a psychological state phenomenologically only to then reconsider, "What exactly are defilement and shame?"—we acutely realize this truth: however earnest the resonance of words like "defilement" and "shame" may be, within the author's reality that suffering remains shallow, merely what is written on manuscript paper. Thus, while some critics bow their heads before Takami Jun’s *Here in the Depths of My Heart*, it remains a wavering work whose motif lacks visceral conviction. The essence of what he seeks to write has not been fully captured.

Today，many people in the literary world were adopting an attitude of blithely feigning innocence with “that was then”—as if past actions bore no relation to the present．The stance of Mr．Takami’s novel was likely appreciated as one form of protest against this tendency；the work itself was likely initiated reflecting the psychology of today’s intelligentsia—who as authors acutely harbored such demands．However，I believe this served as a significant example of how even self-excavation，when conducted within the confines of one’s subjective framework，could only warp in accordance with that framework’s existing distortions．To live in today’s history，there existed a widespread sentiment that we had to immerse ourselves in the very suffering inherited from preceding eras and from there chart our path toward new development．And this mindset—of viewing their own experiences as the womb of development and attempting to adhere to them—became a unique source of confusion in today’s Japan，where democratic literature was being advocated．Since the modern self in its true sense had never been established within Japanese literary tradition，there existed a tendency which—though rooted in the theory that literature’s present task lay in establishing and asserting individual personality at the stage of bourgeois democracy—did not propel us toward advancing the democratic social life of all people，including the intelligentsia，but rather manifested as a tendency that found meaning in resisting such societal currents：stubbornly isolating individuals from that flow，abstracting them from social history，and obstinately entrenching themselves within the subjective psychological complex of “the particularity of individual experience．”I believe this was a tendency common to Hirano Ken，Ara Masahito，and others centered around *Modern Literature*．

What causes have produced such complex psychological states?
I believe we must clearly understand the causes that have made our Japanese literature so warped.
One cause of people’s obsessive fixation on "the individual" lies, I believe, in this emotional surge to now defend their very selves—selves that were utterly ignored and trampled during the many wartime years of the past decade or more—and to assert the value of their existence.
The second cause lies in this psychological resistance: despite the intensity of such sentiments, because the ability to rigorously grasp through scientific analysis the relationship between individuality and society—stemming from Japan's historical lack of civic spirit—has not been cultivated, when confronted with what is now termed democratic literature, people perceive even this as merely another variation of the coercion that once constrained them in the past.
However, when it comes to this psychology, the motives themselves are never frankly disclosed by those involved.
They take forms entirely divorced from the essence—such as criticizing political bias in the old proletarian literary movement, underestimating the issue of worldview in literature, or in author studies, Hirano Ken’s critique of Kobayashi Takiji.
Moreover, it is notable that this suggests a direction of rebellion and self-assertion against Japan’s avant-garde party, which had consistently exerted guiding influence over the proletarian literary movement.

This truly awakens a multitude of thoughts within us.
How starkly the Japanese intelligentsia lack any tangible sense of autonomy!
How completely the dynamic force to break free from itself has withered within Japanese literature's very spirit!
Within the people's sentiments encompassing those engaged in literature—because that irrepressible yearning for autonomy remains unawakened—the democratic imperative that these people must achieve self-determination rings like an external authoritarian decree.
I believe those whose nerves have grown pathologically acute at detecting feudal elements—wounded as they are by such matters—now direct those same nerves toward democracy's ardent aspirations without ever recognizing modernity's backwardness within themselves; within Japan's so-called democracy, they zealously hunt for feudal remnants embedded within it and obsess over their eradication.

Indeed, because Japan remains so backward, feudal elements persist everywhere in various forms and nuances. Even within what should be the most democratic avant-garde elements, political aspects not yet fully modernized or scientized likely endure. Yet does this mean it becomes appropriate—when discussing the proletarian literary movement—to ignore the Peace Preservation Law as a destructive force of feudal absolutism organized by those in power and criticize it for political bias? Could such conduct truly be considered wise discernment befitting literary figures—to underestimate the necessity of a scientific worldview for writers needing to comprehend and insightfully grasp increasingly complex realities, then assert rebuttals as if making specious arguments about whether literature can be created through worldview alone? At a time when no fool anywhere would even entertain the notion that worldview itself constitutes the power to create novels.
——

Thus, some writers today waste their prime energies on directions objectively criticized as conservative reaction—but isn’t this precisely because they have failed to fundamentally grasp the nature of Japan’s democracy as it now stands?

Although bourgeois democracy's achievement remains the central aim, the bourgeoisie as its historical agents in Japan have followed a completely different historical trajectory compared to their counterparts in European countries.

It is clear that the feudal lords and lower-ranking samurai who became the new rulers in the Meiji Restoration possessed a semi-feudal nature.
Japan’s bourgeoisie elevated themselves through compromise under the protection of those semi-feudal elements; from their very emergence as a class, they were never negators of feudalism.
The European bourgeoisie shattered feudalism and brought revolution to social life.
The European bourgeoisie asserted themselves as an autonomous people against the rule of kings, nobles, and clergy; however, Japan’s bourgeoisie emerged from the outset as a class that had lost its revolutionary power, and thus through their own efforts could neither create a democratic constitution nor establish a democratic civil code.

When we speak of Japan's democratization today, we must clearly understand the historical nature of Japan's bourgeoisie—which lacks the capability to achieve bourgeois democracy's completion—and recognize this reality: that which will smash Japanese society's semi-feudal nature to establish modern democracy can only be the working class possessing sufficient power to bring revolution against the bourgeoisie's own semi-feudal character.
I think the reason why the democratic processes of Japan and China are referred to as New Democracy lies in the distinctive historical character of their societies.

Therefore, I believe that unless literature's demanded tasks at the stage of bourgeois democracy—the establishment of self and autonomy of individuality—are fundamentally understood in alignment with Japan's backward democracy's particularities, we will fall into grave errors. Unless the advancement into democratic social life encompassing all people including the intelligentsia is realized, no individuality or self today can possibly develop. Even when considering matters as fundamental as public transportation or black market realities, we cannot help but acknowledge this truth. Moreover, to advance this construction of democratic social life for all people, the intelligentsia now bears grave responsibility. Progressive cultural activists who have awakened to the necessity of combating feudal ideology—the very ideology from which the working class itself struggles to liberate itself—find themselves compelled by circumstance to concern themselves with Japan's total democratization, if only to achieve their own emancipation.

When we seriously and deeply internalized this reality, I believe we came to clearly understand—starting from the decadent and erotic literature mentioned earlier—the error of overvaluing individualistic elements into which many in *Modern Literature* had fallen.
As Mr. Nakano had stated in his report "The Struggle Against Reactionary Literature"—"There can be no individual development when individuals are treated in opposition to historical development"—this held true.
In response to Mr. Aramasa Hito’s deviant perspectives, I considered it appropriate that Mr. Nakano’s essay “Humanity in Criticism”—published in *New Japanese Literature*—attempted to critique Aramasa’s literary activities which most starkly exposed the errors of the Modern Literature group.
However, it remained regrettable that the paper’s approach became a technical display of theoretical acrobatics and lacked the objective exposition necessary to clearly present its arguments to third parties and ensure proper understanding of the issues.
I believed we had to consider it a task of the democratic literature movement that literary criticism had become such backroom discourse—comprehensible only to those directly involved in disputes and serving merely to provoke their mutual emotions.

In the magazine *Kikaku*, a work titled *Dark Pictures* by Noma Hiroshi was being serialized. Beginning with a description of Bruegel's dark, intense, eerily captivating satirical painting *The Crucifixion*, it featured as protagonist a young man named Fukami Shinsuke—set around 1937 Kyoto University—who approached and interacted with a barely surviving student movement group yet could not fully integrate with them, feeling various unresolved conflicts. This work attracted attention for its thematic focus on exploring the organic relationship between the history of social development and the individual—a subject we had been addressing. What made this author Noma particularly intriguing was how he approached this theme—neither subjectively as Takami Jun did nor with the one-sided obsessiveness characteristic of the *Modern Literature* group—but rather grounded it in a far more expansive, objectively grounded social-historical perspective, while still centering his protagonist Fukami Shinsuke’s anguish on the problem of personal establishment and the desire for self-perfection. In this work, Noma Hiroshi wrote with full understanding of the historical perspective concerning Japan that permeated the leftist student movement of that time—the significance of "the arrival of a bourgeois-democratic revolution bearing tendencies toward transformation into proletarian revolution"—while also accurately grasping and depicting the essential nature of a student group that, diverging from that leftist faction in their historical outlook, shifted toward the student consumer union movement and fell into unionism and economism. The usurious old man in the student cafeteria; the impoverished life of Fukami’s father; and the protagonist—a poor university student who frequented konjac oden stalls. The author also depicted these elements as the shame, indignation, and anguish born from this awareness—the awareness that in modern society, money wounded the human spirit and deformed it. He depicted this with extraordinary density, almost sadistically, in a manner reminiscent of Bruegel’s paintings. Through the protagonist who contemplated "carving into one’s own flesh the path of self-perfection and its ceaseless striving," the author consistently brought all scenes, thoughts, and actions into the work’s reality solely through Fukami Shinsuke’s physical body and sensory perceptions. I considered this technique to be another distinctive feature of this work. Where Fukami Shinsuke’s irises constricted, there was light and scenes; where they dilated, there was darkness—in this manner, it clung obstinately to Fukami’s body, never separating, making the world of forms existent solely through his emotions. In this sense, it could be said that the author’s technique aligned with the theme of scrutinizing the protagonist’s life. Fukami Shinsuke, while interacting with a radical student group, "knew there was nowhere to go or live except with that group, felt this with his entire being, yet remained unable to merge with them." He suffered. He thought this stemmed from his own insufficient political awareness, yet still "felt something like a hot, dark resistance touching his heart." He felt this not as something he alone experienced, but as "the tip of Japan's soul." A young man was depicted who understood that self-perfection was a task connected to the completion of Japan’s bourgeois democracy and had resolved to pursue "the accumulation of self-perfection through scientific methods."

Here emerges with clarity the aspect that gives this work its notable significance.
The author indicates that the protagonist comprehends self-perfection not as something molded by subjective compromises or conceptual frameworks, but as "the cumulative pursuit of self-perfection through scientific methodology."
By "scientific," this cannot denote natural sciences—it must rather carry socio-scientific implications.
Though expressed through what one might term literary intricacy, does this not precisely suggest that self-perfection becomes understood through socio-scientific contemplation, judgment, and the convolutions of human action they entail—through one's own trajectory and progression within a society advancing toward truth?

The reason I believed this interpretation was not far off lay in how this work depicted protagonist Fukami Shinsuke repeatedly engaging in a particular act of self-reflection at certain moments.
It was that he strove to rigorously distinguish within himself between the pure manifestation of his desire for self-perfection and self-protective egoism.
This was an aspect that warranted attention.
Within *Modern Literature*’s tendency toward individualistic assertions, this crucial sharpness and sensibility were entirely absent; their gaze did not turn inward, but rather their eyes remained fixed on external reactions to their own pronouncements.

If this author were to use *Dark Pictures* to never permit any compromise between Fukami Shinsuke's fierce desire for self-perfection and his egoism—pursuing them relentlessly through "scientific methods"—where might the protagonist's path of self-realization unfold and be driven forward?
I find this question deeply intriguing.

This *Dark Pictures* still carried an excessive amount of superfluous elements.
The prose's texture felt clammy, like night sweat, and remained thoroughly unpleasant.
However, the author seemed aware of this.
He appeared to persist in that writing style because he believed this unsettling Bruegel-esque brushwork best captured the unresolved melancholy permeating the work's world.

Although it might not have qualified as a masterpiece, when democratic literature was coming to the forefront, I found this work—created by a member of the intelligentsia who had consciously grappled with this task through their own words in the process of their spiritual growth, a work born of anguish—could not be ignored.
During the Proletarian Literature Movement era, this issue of the intelligentsia had never been captured in literature through such reasoning.
The path for the intelligentsia had been simplified into several options—whether to join the proletarian camp, exist as fellow travelers, harden into reactionaries, or drop out altogether. Consider Arishima Takeo or Akutagawa Ryunosuke: though they had entangled their very existence with the people’s liberation movement to such profound depths, they nevertheless lacked the power to express in literary works a clear thematic exploration of the mutual relationship between the intellectual class and democratic spirit’s development.
This was not due to any lack of literary talent on their part, but rather because Japanese society and literary consciousness remained immature.
I believed it warranted attention—how Noma Hiroshi would complete *Dark Pictures*, and furthermore what themes and style he would demonstrate next.

In addition, there is a writer named Agawa Hiroyuki who has newly produced works.
He wrote *Nen'nen Sairai* for *Sekai* and *Rei Sandai* for *Shinchō*, and there seems to have been criticism calling these works childlike.
But are they truly nothing more than childish works?
At least I found myself favorably impressed by the unpretentious, straightforward, and modest decency of *Nen'nen Sairai*.
Amidst today's garish, thoroughly journalistic, trash-like works, the novels of Agawa Hiroyuki—while seemingly unremarkable in expression—possess an unadorned yet vivid imagery born of keen observation and felt experience, their substantial style earnestly confronting reality through sensory engagement, which I found commendable.
Shouldn’t the fact that this author who wrote *Nen'nen Sairai* is producing works like the third piece in *Rei Sandai* command our attention?
Is it not through one unwavering temperament manifested here—in how a young man who went off to war and survived reintegrates into his homeland’s life (as in *Nen'nen Sairai*), and in what he discovers there and the emotional states he encounters (the third work of *Rei Sandai*)—that Japan’s fundamental challenges are being revealed?
Of course, it is still too early to make any definitive statements about this writer.
But as one type of new literature that must be diverse, I believe elements such as modest purity, decency, and a quality that transcends naturalism should be valued.
Not limited to this author—after all, we’re inundated with works that leave a mouth-puckeringly sour taste.

The Achievements and Challenges of *New Japanese Literature*

Now, amidst today’s complex and chaotic literary trends, what kind of literary creativity had *New Japanese Literature* demonstrated over this past year?

Regarding the achievements of the New Japanese Literature Association’s organizational activities, I believed there would be a separate report by Mr. Kubokawa Tsurujirō, so I deferred to that and limited my own report to the creative aspects of *New Japanese Literature*.

As you knew, the New Japanese Literature Association had been established in January 1946, and from March, *New Japanese Literature* began publication.
However, publishing the magazine proved extremely difficult, with only four issues of about ninety-five pages each released to date.
Our literature undertook no easy task.
In other words, it faced a paper problem.
The current of democratic literature had never pursued profit-making, so even now it could not resort to acquiring black-market paper through timber bartering.
Shady publishers proliferated as an inflationary phenomenon, spawning peculiar magazines that all competed to hoard paper and drive up prices.
Therefore, *New Japanese Literature*—which held significance for Japan’s democratic literature—found itself compelling its editors-in-charge to exert tremendous effort and endure heartache.
I thought it could be said that black-market paper was devouring the vital new shoots of Japan's democratic culture.
I believed monitoring proper paper distribution to establish democratic publishing constituted the most fundamental necessity in combating reactionary culture.

The fact that *New Japanese Literature* could not be published regularly due to paper shortages became a significant detriment to the entire activities of the New Japanese Literature Association, as you all could see.
For example, Mr. Tokunaga Sunao’s novel *Sleep, My Wife*, which began serialization in the inaugural issue of *New Japanese Literature*, was a work that demonstrated noteworthy value attracting general attention during the first half of that year.
While there may have been aspects where it was discontinued due to Mr. Tokunaga’s personal circumstances, in any case, it remained interrupted, and generally speaking, whether in criticism or otherwise, they simply could not manage to include anything as substantial as one or two hundred pages.
In order to both introduce considerable variety to a thin single-volume magazine and painstakingly attempt to touch upon topics from all areas of literature, they ended up including relatively this and that in small portions.
If this had been a for-profit magazine, that might have been one thing, but as the organ of a movement that aimed—no matter how broad its scope—to consistently form the mainstream of democratic literature, it was truly robbed of its power to impress.
Due to the lack of pages, we could not suddenly expect that effect where all literary figures capable of gathering at the New Japanese Literature Association mobilized all their capabilities to the fullest and, through that splendid vista, awakened Japan’s passion for new democratic literature.

We must clearly understand the meaning of these difficulties and persevere in pushing forward.
I do not think that the hardship faced by *New Japanese Literature* should be considered solely from the angle that it lacks the means to engage in black-market dealings.
The difficulties encountered by this magazine are the very difficulties that Japanese democracy itself is facing both overtly and covertly, and today's rulers are not inconvenienced by the existence of these difficulties.
Should we not fully comprehend the meaning therein and persevere?

*New Japanese Literature* has addressed various issues essential to the democratic literature movement from multiple angles in each issue from its inaugural through the third, but its contributors, much like its fiction authors, were largely established figures.
Even among young critics and writers, those who have each proven themselves as full-fledged contributors are the ones writing.

However, with what feelings did you all view the recently published fourth issue? The cover had changed to an unimpressive one featuring a nude man reminiscent of Michelangelo, but with this fourth issue, I felt delighted that for the first time, *New Japanese Literature*'s publication efforts had borne fruit worthy of their purpose. In addition to Nakano Shigeharu’s essay “The Humanity of Criticism,” it carried Hirata Jisaburō’s “On Shimaki Kensaku,” Kitaki Suke’s “On Hirabayashi Taiko,” and Nakagawa Ryūichi’s “On Niwa Fumio.” These three essays were by no means lengthy. Though not grand critiques, *New Japanese Literature*’s act of publishing them carried a sincere and profound joy that resonated deeply.

If I may offer my candid impressions: while earlier issues up through Volume Three contained essays of guiding significance or individual interest, when read consecutively and synthesized, they failed to manifest objective diversity or enlightening quality in the sense that readers could coherently grasp—“Ah yes, these specific issues must be addressed for democratic literature’s development”—through comprehensive engagement with every aspect of our movement’s challenges. Mr. Odagiri pursued his preferred topics, Mr. Sasaki his chosen points, while Mr. Iwakami Jun’ichi and Mr. Yokemura Yoshitarō each developed their subjects through distinct approaches.

For those newly embracing literature as cultural construction aligned with democratic society’s prospects, reading these three works sequentially would have made consolidated judgment elusive and inspiration from literary beauty improbable. The essays by Mr. Odagiri and Mr. Sasaki expressed their authors’ desired content in their preferred styles—writing driven by personal fervor rather than historical investigation or thematic development, as if such individualistic expression itself constituted democratic literary practice.

Yet the democratic literature movement cannot be this naive endeavor of voicing whatever one wishes however one pleases. The various issues and inquiries of democratic literature—though diversifying through writers’ manifold individual nuances—must never remain mere subjective pronouncements; rather, they demand research and synthesis of objective characteristics necessitated by democratic literature’s intrinsic historical essence, to be brought forth as shared literary achievements for us all.

The three new critics writing author studies in the fourth issue had naturally chosen writers they personally wished to examine as their subjects of free inquiry. What deserved attention was how all three of these modest attempts demonstrated an attitude earnestly seeking—through modest, objective, social, and literary investigation—to determine what methodological approach to critical analysis could most closely approach the truth of a given writer.
The absence of that old personal assertiveness—that "this is how I do it" attitude—was what made it fresh.
And was this freshness due to the writers still being immature—because they had not yet established their individuality, because they remained timid about themselves—that their work lacked a distinctive personal imprint?
That was entirely incorrect.
The modest yet genuine freshness these individuals possessed demonstrated a new trajectory in literature—one where their lived sensibilities and literary sentiments had expanded beyond antiquated notions of self-assertion, revealing a maturation that surpassed the mere interest in showcasing one’s distinctive qualities through a single author study.
In their fervor and joy of apprehending a single writer and objectively investigating them while being aligned with the historical trajectory of social progress, there was revealed an attitude of seeking to investigate themselves and develop themselves.
Therefore, among these three, was even one demonstrating the so-called "exceptional talent"?
Not one of them displayed exceptional talent in the sense that journalism would immediately come seeking.
However, the sound, clear, and logical realistic judgment of the people—which democratic literature must necessarily take as its foundation—had become the underpinning of this experimental work.
Having read them, was there even a single instance of that harsh, unpleasant aftertaste?
They might be small, but they were proper works.
With its fourth issue, *New Japanese Literature* had finally begun to encompass literature that transcended the domain of biased literati and to include voices for literature grounded in the reason and emotion of ordinary, socially engaged human beings.
If we did not proceed in this manner, there would be no meaning in *New Japanese Literature*’s publication.

The person named Kohara Gen, who wrote the open letter "To Mr. Kobayashi Hideo" in the September issue of the magazine *Shin・Zen・Bi*, appeared far more versed than the three critics who had published experimental works in *New Japanese Literature* regarding the intricacies of established literature and had inherited its vocabulary—yet he still seemed to stand upon a new force and fresh presence.
Critics like Kobayashi Hideo could only be fully critiqued through the sensibilities of this young generation.

Also included in this fourth issue was Ozawa Kiyoshi’s novel *Town Factory*.
Through Mr. Tokunaga’s recommendation, he has been able to discuss both the strengths and the immaturity of this work.
Indeed, there may be aspects one could call immature, but does that necessarily mean there is coarseness in the eyes that observe reality or the heart that perceives it?
I do not think so.
Through the protagonist—a young laborer working at a town factory—the author’s human sensibility in perceiving society is by no means crude.
Nor does it possess any self-righteous immaturity.
It is delicate and knowing of hardship, yet not servile.
Anyone who reads *Town Factory* will find themselves wholeheartedly impressed by its refreshing simplicity and authentically human strength; however, I believe we must seriously examine this novel as one of *New Japanese Literature*’s acquisitions and anticipate this author’s maturation both as a laborer and as a novelist.

The value of *Town Factory* as a novel lies precisely in how it depicts—not through the lens of ideological constructs like what might be called "the conscious awareness of progressive laborers"—but through the very minutiae of lived experience, the protagonist 'I' navigating various semi-feudal and exploitative details embedded within laboring life.
I think laborer-writers of the past lacked this kind of groundedness.
To organize their immediate reality, they needed some tool.
Ideology and social historical perspectives—such things were trotted out to serve as that tool.
Without such organizational tools, immersed in everyday reality with their entire being, they lacked the strength to transform it into a work.
Because their feet kept getting caught, they needed something to hold onto.
In the case of the intelligentsia, when discussing Noma Hiroshi’s *Dark Pictures*, he touched upon the literature of Arishima Takeo and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke—exactly as I mentioned before.
Melting into lived experience—regardless of how social science texts might frame it—they pursue that experience to its limits within life and literature itself, naturally tracing the development of themes that are legitimate as laborers and thus authentically human.

This was precisely where attention needed to be focused. At a time when debates arose pitting worldview against lived experience—arguing that a motif's urgency couldn't emerge from something like worldview—works like *Town Factory* within literary reality demonstrated how a refreshing young generation was beginning to rise, having in a sense already transcended that very issue. When one lives as a laborer, learns from society, and comprehends—as this author does—the significance of study as a means to decipher reality, the social nature of motifs themselves eventually deepens and expands. Through depictions of poverty itself as seen in *Town Factory*, one comes to grasp how two distinct attitudes among laborers—that of the protagonist "I" and the man named Otokawa—naturally emerge in response, ultimately penetrating through to the visceral spiritual realization that finds Otokawa's approach regrettable.

The content characteristics of *Town Factory*, as Mr. Tokunaga had also noted, were clearly evident in its style as well.
This style possessed a certain dignity.
Why was this so?
There was not a trace of contrived affectation, yet a dignified quality emerged in the prose because, in confronting each subject he sought to portray, the author’s entire inner composition engaged earnestly and cohesively—contemplating and observing each as deeply and broadly as possible—not superficially reflecting reality, but striving to recreate it as literary truth through his own being.
It was a dignity born of reason's lucidity.
In the early days of proletarian literature, when one spoke of workers’ literature, it was invariably marked by rough-hewn vigor, the strained earnestness of 'us laborers,' and a certain coarseness.
In his foreword as recommender, Mr. Tokunaga wrote: "With deep emotion as a young laborer-writer of twenty years ago, I now introduce contemporary young laborer-writers before the readers."
I wished this particular point had been explained far more objectively as an issue of democratic literature.
*Town Factory* was a small work, and while it was evident that tackling larger subjects and themes from here would require considerable effort and training, it was also a fact that this served as by no means a poor example of new laborer-writers.
Shiga Naoya’s literary style had marked the endpoint of Japanese bourgeois realism.
Declaring they could no longer linger behind Shiga Naoya-style descriptions, Takami Jun and others attempted various deformations—but now that it grew increasingly clear these efforts merely resulted in deforming reality's comprehension, realism in literature had begun to flow anew from unnoticed places, fresh and untainted like a murmuring stream.

As those responsible for the democratic literature movement, *New Japanese Literature* must nurture writers who connect labor life directly to art without becoming tainted by the pretensions of literary youth along the way.
Farmers becoming painters directly.
Factory workers becoming writers directly.
Democratic revolutionaries becoming poets.
Housewives and mothers becoming writers.
Should not male and female artists—as a new type who have swept away the old literati environment and its atmosphere—be people possessing three-dimensionality in life: socially engaged individuals who clearly understand their role in building a new democratic social life?

Pursuing this line of thought, I felt compelled to reconsider how *New Japanese Literature* had thus far—up to its fourth issue—insufficiently engaged in systematically and thoroughly elucidating or researching the issues surrounding socialist realism, both through historical reflection and in relation to contemporary democratic literature.

Of course, the inaugural issue contained Mr. Kurahara Korehito's critique clarifying the essence of democratic literature, along with Mr. Kubokawa Tsurujirō's treatise and Mr. Yoshimuro Kitarō's beneficial paper titled "Various Issues of Democratic Literature." However, for today's truly young generation—who had grown up completely severed from democratic literary traditions for over a dozen years without reading a single proper work of literary criticism—I considered it crucial to clearly retrace Japan's democratic literary tradition since the Meiji era and elucidate both the history of proletarian literature's emergence and its complex developmental process.

While various opinions were being voiced regarding issues of worldview and creative methodology, the fact that readers—without fully grasping the essence of these fundamental issues—heard these discussions and became uncertain in their judgments proved detrimental to the development of democratic literature.

Proletarian literature—which stands upon the essential nature of democratic literature alongside bourgeois literature—is by no means two aspects of homogeneous literature; just as the proletarian class itself emerged from capitalist society as a historically new and qualitatively distinct class, so too did the proletarian literary movement emerge as a new literary developer fundamentally distinct from bourgeois literature in essence.

It was precisely because they failed to grasp this through lived experience—despite its vehement discussion—that someone like Mr. Hirano Ken ended up obsessively declaring Hino Ashihei and Kobayashi Takiji to be merely two aspects of the same history, rendering a conclusion utterly devoid of human sensibility.

And we had to fully account for the fact that among today’s youth—rendered ignorant and stripped of value judgments by the war—there existed this unimaginable blunting of emotions.

Even with democratic literature—as the essence of Japanese democracy demonstrates—while encompassing within its broad scope the literature of the progressive intelligentsia and petit bourgeoisie, its most driving force must be represented by the literature of the working class.

Both *Dark Pictures* from *Kōshō* and *Town Factory* were encompassed within and advancing through the breadth of today’s democratic literature; however, in terms of quality, we had to strive to produce far more works like *Town Factory*.

At the current stage of democratic literature, how should the issue of socialist realism be addressed?
This was something I felt during the recent roundtable discussion when writers like Simonov came from the Soviet Union—everyone asked about Soviet socialist realism as if something weighed on their minds.
Simonov replied that in the Soviet Union they had been employing that creative method since 1929.
"Oh, I see," came the response, and the conversation trailed off.

Even when we speak of socialist realism, it does not mean imposing a single fixed model upon various nations or their respective stages of national development.
Creating literature for the people—that is socialist realism, Simonov stated, and with this self-evident conclusion, the discussion came to an end.

However, something lingers uneasily.

That lingering unease was precisely the problem.
In Japan, socialist realism had been taken up from late 1931 for roughly two years.
In the Soviet Union's case, since their Five-Year Plan had commenced in 1929, socialist realism—emerging as an evolution from proletarian realism—became an inevitable development when viewed through both their social conditions and artistic standpoint.

Yet in Japan's society still rife with semi-feudal elements and unfinished struggles for bourgeois democracy, this sudden invocation of socialist realism carried an incongruous quality.
Before scholars could comprehensively examine this dissonance from sociological and literary perspectives to reach definitive conclusions, the spring of 1932 saw all cultural organizations suppressed, allowing the socialist realism debates to be exploited in wretched fashion as pretexts for negating literature's progressive and class-conscious elements.
Matters have since dragged on unresolved in this muddled state through to today.
The fourth issue of *New Japanese Literature* featured Mr. Nakano Shigeharu's essay "The Humanity of Criticism" as its lead piece.
While refuting arguments by Hirano Ken and Mr. Aramasa Hito that undermined democratic literature's legitimacy—his writing style acrobatic yet precise in its critical thrust—such essays remain insufficient for those outside literary circles.
Works of this essential nature must indeed be produced, yet without clarifying fundamental issues we cannot properly grasp derivative debates; to advance democratic literature itself requires clearly defining how socialist realism should be understood within its developmental process.
Is this not one of the urgent tasks facing our New Japanese Literature Association?

The Tokyo branch of the New Japanese Literature Association mobilized reportage literature titled *A Day in Tokyo*.
A remarkably wide range of writers participated in this project, which was compiled into a single volume.
Its outcomes will likely undergo proper literary evaluation in due course.

Furthermore, the New Japanese Literature Works Competition was held, and its selection process was conducted.
What works and writers would emerge?
There were high expectations in many regards.
I would be delighted if works emerged that were truly new, youthful, and crafted with a flexible spirit.

The course of Japan's democratic literature movement could never be smooth, and especially given that both the association itself and its members faced dire economic circumstances, the movement inevitably tended to lose focus as a cohesive literary endeavor.
Each individual's literary activities sporadically emerged within established journalism.
I believed we had to thoroughly study these unavoidable circumstances, further clarify the essence of democratic literature, unify our efforts accordingly, and strive across all fronts and disciplines.

Postscript: This text compiles my report titled "The General State of the Literary World and Literature" delivered at the Second General Meeting of the New Japanese Literature Association on October 29, 1946.
In this report, I was unable to address national literature studies, tanka, haiku, drama, children’s literature, and other fields now developing research in new directions.
As this report contains inadequacies stemming from these omissions, I ask that you read it with this understanding.

[May–June 1947]