'Between distant realities': The Japanese avant-garde, Surrealism, and the colonies, 1924--1943

This dissertation investigates Surrealism as a form of avant-garde expression coinciding with Japan's moment of imperial expansion into China and Manchuria from 1924-1943. I interrogate the terms avant-garde and modernism in Japan, and maintain that Japanese imperialism shaped an environment stimulating the rise of literary and artistic movements in dialogue with international trends. I argue that Surrealism was an avant-garde aesthetic suited for depicting the radical incongruities of colonialism, and situate this artistic and literary form as a reflection of the transnational nature of modernity and imperialism. The spatial loci of Tokyo, Dairen, Shanghai, and Manchukuo structure my discussion as "contact zones" as I analyze the equivocating images of writers and artists experimenting with Surrealism including Koga Harue, Kitagawa Fuyuhiko, Anzai Fuyue, Migishi Kotaro, Fukuzawa Ichiro, and others who depict Japan, China, and Manchuria during key moments in Sino-Japanese relations. I contend that oscillation between the central imperial capital of Tokyo and encounters with the colonial periphery deeply informed Japanese avant-garde literary and artistic production from the interwar period until the early forties.; Chapter One outlines the surrealist movement in Japanese literature and art in Tokyo, imperial Japan's political and cultural capital, and focuses on individuals articulating and disseminating Surrealism while examining an interdisciplinary work by a surrealist artist in the late twenties when literary Surrealism waned but flourished in art. Chapter Two discusses how the Manchurian port city of Dairen became a cultural center for Japanese avant-garde literary and artistic production, including Surrealism, from 1924-1937. Chapter Three investigates an example of transcultural exchange between avant-garde Japanese and Chinese writers and artists in Shanghai in 1926, while comparing the surrealist artist Migishi's poem and paintings of China with late-twenties works by Yokomitsu Ri'chi and Kitagawa. Chapter Four analyzes poetry and short stories by Anzai and Kitagawa from 1929-1931 that depict the devastating cost of the imperialist development of Manchuria, but exoticize the colonial space. Chapter Five investigates how Mantetsu and the new Manchukuo government sponsored visiting avant-garde cultural figures to promote a cosmopolitan vision of Japanese culture integrating Manchukuo into the imperial cultural sphere from 1932-1943.