Estranged twins of revolution: An examination of Japanese modernist and proletarian literature

This dissertation examines the complex, dialectical relationship of Japanese proletarian and modernist literature in the 1920s and the 1930s, two movements whose differences were all the more polemicized because of the kinship they had with one another. From the undifferentiated political and aesthetic rebellion of the early avant-garde poets to the thematic co-dependency between proletarian writers and modernist writers, the two ostensibly opposed movements were in fact intimately intertwined. This study examines works of modernist and proletarian literature that exemplify the way they intersected, taken from three stages in the developments of these two literary currents: the anarchist expression of the avant-garde, Shinkankakuha (New Sensation School) and the socialist journal Bungei sensen, and modanizumu bungaku (literature of modernism) and the communist writers at NAPF. Extending the scope of Japanese modernist literature beyond the Shinkankakuha movement to include the modanizumu bungaku phenomenon, this study illuminates the aspects of modernism that are specific to Japanese culture. This study examines comparatively the works of Hagiwara Kyojiro, Murayama Tomoyoshi, Yokomitsu Riichi, Kawabata Yasunari, Maedako Hiroichiro, Okashita Ichiro, Kataoka Teppei, Hayashi Fusao, Kuno Toyohiko, Kobayashi Takiji, and Ryutanji Yu. The issue of collective literature in both modernist and proletarian literature is also explored, as this study analyzes the ramifications of their formal experiments in collaborative writing and in the storiette, an extremely short form of fiction. This study seeks to examine the place of modernist literature in the politically charged atmosphere of the period as well as the implications of the repulsion and attraction that many proletarian writers experienced towards the notions embodied by the Japanese modernism of the time.