23—
1946
Most of the young men who gathered in a drinking party in the blacked-out city of Kawaguchi toward the end of the war to send their friends off to the front did manage to survive and return to the gutted ruins of Tokyo. And by the time they themselves were drafted, no vessels were left to transport them to the battlefields in the South Pacific. They were expected to strap their bodies to gasoline bombs and throw themselves at the enemy's tanks in the "battle of Japan"—but in the end the battle never took place. These young men did not know war; they knew only how senseless life was in the army. They had no experience at killing Chinese; their only experience was their expectation of getting killed. They had not lived for the future, but they felt the need to define the present and the future for themselves.
When these young men gathered once again in occupied Tokyo, they founded a coterie magazine called Sedai (Generation). Among them were Hidaka Hiroshi, later to become an economist, and Nakamura Minoru, a poet and the author of an epochal book on Miyazawa Kenji. In the same magazine I serialized a number of essays later published in 1946: Bungakuteki kosatsu[*] (1946: a literary inquiry), a book I coauthored with two novelists, Fukunaga Takehiko and Nakamura Shin'ichiro[*] .[1] In that book,
[1] Sedai (July 1946–December 1952, in 17 vols.) was one of the first significant postwar literary journals. • Hidaka Hiroshi (1923–) studied philosophy at Tokyo University, taught Marxist economics at Hosei[*] University from 1954, and wrote on Das Kapital and on economic theories; under the pseudonym Hamada Shin'ichi, he wrote literary criticism, especially on Yoshiyuki Junnosuke. • Nakamura Minoru (1927–), whose 1955 study of Miyazawa Kenji (and its expanded editions) was a landmark in Japanese postwar scholarship and latertriggered a debate (the Ame ni mo makezu controversy) with the critic and philosopher Tanikawa Tetsuzo[*] , also a Miyazawa scholar; he also wrote on the contemporary poet Nakahara Chuya[*] (Kotobanaki uta—Nakahara Chuya[*] ron [Songs without words: a study of Nakahara Chuya, 1973]). • 1946: Bungakuteki kosatsu[*] , published in 1947, helped launch Kato's[*] career within the Japanese literary world.
the two novelists contemplated the future of the novel. With what struck me as a skillful combination of two perspectives, Nakamura emphasized the idea that the novel as understood by the prewar Tokyo literary establishment was in fact nothing more than a peculiar representation of the form. If one assumes that The Tale of Genji and A la recherche du temps perdu represented the typical forms of the novel, the watakushi-shosetsu[*] (the Japanese I-novel) since the advent of naturalism can scarcely be described as a novel at all. And if one traces the history of the novel in England and France since the eighteenth century, with its progressive development of techniques, the realm of the novel has obviously expanded. In this day and age, is it not an appalling anachronism, he argues, to adhere stubbornly to the naturalist style of depicting every minor detail about a third-person character? After pondering these issues, they began their inquiry into the newest techniques of the novel. For example, Fukunaga wrote about William Faulkner's artistic devices, and Nakamura spoke of the necessity for new narrative techniques and went on to explain how they worked. Now that I think about it, Nakamura Shin'ichiro[*] was a literary specialist even before he was widely known as a writer, and Fukunaga Takehiko was a professional novelist before he began to make his living as one.
During the war I was more interested in reading the collections of the Shinkokinshu[*] poets than contemporary novels. As far as I was concerned, literature, more than anything else, meant the Sankashu[*] , Shui[*] guso[*] , and the Kinkaishu[*] , works that transcend time and strike a chord in the depths of my soul.[2] I wrote essays on Teika and Sanetomo, but what enabled
[2] An early Kamakura imperial anthology, the 20-vol. Shinkokinshu (New poetry collection of ancient and contemporary times) holds 1,978 waka poems from 101 poets compiled by Fujiwara Teika, Fujiwara Ariie, Minamoto Michitomo, and the priest Jakuren at the order of the retired emperor Gotoba, also himself a compiler. • Sankashu (The mountain hut collection) is a 3-vol. collection of unknown date of poems by Saigyo[*] (1118–90), a late Heian and early Kamakura poet and priest. • Shui guso (Meager gleanings) (1216–33) is a collection of poems by Fujiwara Teika (1162–1241), an early Kamakura poet and critic and generally regarded as one of Japan's greatest poets. • Kinkaishu is a poetry anthology of Minamoto Sanetomo (1192–1219), the third shogun of the Kamakura bakufu , who was assassinated at the age of 27.
me to do so were the collapse of militarism and the recognition of freedom of the press. I also wrote about my experiences after gaining my freedom of expression. In other words, I was speaking my mind about the laudable postwar democratic ideal and the absolutely ludicrous war propaganda we had been fed during the war years.
What precisely was the similarity among the three of us? Perhaps it was our common resolve to bring our private and long-cherished thoughts out into the public forum. And for me, that public forum was represented by the scorched wasteland, the wasteland where philosophers of the Kyoto school, Japan romanticists, Takamura Kotaro[*] , and Mushanokoji[*] Saneatsu had all crumbled away in the wake of the bombings.[3] The only literary figures who seemed to have survived intact were Nagai Kafu[*] , the chronicler of Risai nichiroku (Diary of war sufferings), and Ishikawa Jun, the author of "Mujinto[*] " (The everlasting light).[4] It never
[3] Kato[*] argues that the Kyoto school philosophers such as Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962) used such expedient constructs as "the philosophy of world history" to justify the war ("Senso[*] to chishikijin" [1959], in Chishikijin no seisei to yakuwari, Kindai Nihon shisoshi[*] koza[*] [Chikuma shobo[*] , 1972], 4:325–61, esp. 345–48). On the Japan romanticists, see chapter 14, note 22. • Takamura Kotaro (1883–1956), a sculptor and poet best known for his collection Dotei[*] (Journey, 1914) and his love poems collected in Chieko sho[*] (Selected works on Chieko, 1941; as ed. Kusano Shimpei, 1956) who was president of the Poets' Division of the Patriotic Literary Association in 1942 and, after the war, was charged by the critic Odagiri Hideo for his war responsibility; on Takamura during the war, see Yoshimoto Takaaki, Takamura Kotaro[*] : Zoho[*] ketteiban (Shunjusha[*] , 1973), 95–140. • Mushanokoji Saneatsu (1885–1976), a leading novelist of the prewar Shirakaba-ha (white birch school) who allowed himself to align with Japan's war efforts (see his Dai Toa senso[*] shikan [Personal views on the great East Asian war, 1942]) and later stated he was "deceived" (damasarete ita ) during the war, to which Kato replied: "Perhaps he was. But what that actually means is that he himself wanted to be deceived. Our question is not who was deceived, but why one wished to be deceived; not who was not deceived, but why one did not wish to be deceived" ("Senso to chishikijin," 327). Kato's[*] essay remains an astute assessment of the role of Showa[*] writers and intellectuals during the Pacific War.
[4] Kafu's[*]Risai nichiroku was his diary for 1945 and part of his massive 42-year diary Danchotei[*] nichijo[*] (Chronicle from the house of heartrending grief) from September 16, 1917, to April 29, 1959; it records the Tokyo air raids and the destruction of his house, the Henkikan (house for the eccentric), along with "ten thousand volumes" of his beloved books on the night of March 10; he refused to read any Japanese books—he read only works in French—an act Kato interpreted as Kafu's resistance to fascism and to Japan: see Kato's "Senso to chishikijin," 352, 360, his more extensive discussion in "Kafu to iu gensho[*] " (Kafu as a phenomenon, Sekai , June–August 1960), and Edward Seidensticker,Kafu[*] the Scribbler (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965). • "Mujinto[*] " (Bungei shunju[*] [July 1946])—the everlasting and ever-expanding light of the Buddhist law—comes from a series of wartime and early postwar works suggesting Ishikawa's resistance to the militarist period and his desire to keep alive his inner sense of freedom and independence. Kato[*] ranked Ishikawa and Nakano Shigeharu as the two finest writers of postwar Japan (see the memorial issue on Ishikawa, Subaru 4 [1988]: 58; and "Senso[*] to chishikijin," 360–61 n.21).
even crossed my mind that somewhere else, some other people might also privately entertain ideas similar to ours. But though Tokyo lay in ruins, it was by no means a totally barren landscape.
As I mentioned earlier, I continued to live in the second-class patients' ward at Tokyo University Hospital and went back to my house in Meguro Ward only on weekends. One day a nurse came in to tell me the unusual news that I had a visitor. As I opened the door and stepped out into the corridor, still dark in the daytime, I saw a stoutly built stranger standing straight and looking at me without a word. After I invited him into my room and offered him the only chair, I climbed up and sat on my bunk. Then my taciturn visitor finally opened his mouth and quietly uttered a single word: "Kibachi."
"Kibachi?" If he was a salesman trying to peddle a new drug, he should visit me at the medical office instead of coming over here out of the blue and asking to see me by name. I wondered if "Kibachi" could be the name of some sort of secret organization. What on earth was the language he was speaking and what did the word mean?
"I came to see you about Kibachi." My visitor paid no attention whatsoever to my mounting suspicions and spoke with imperturbable composure. "I really want you to do something for it."
That was Noma Hiroshi.[5] He went on to explain to me that kibachi , a Japanese word meaning "yellow wasp," was the name of a new literary journal, though the tone of his voice seemed to suggest that the name did not matter one way or the other. He said that the most compelling thing for writers to do then was to start new literary journals from the standpoint of pacifism and respect for human rights.
[5] Noma Hiroshi (1915–91), a prominent postwar writer, the author of youthful reminiscences of wartime student activities at Kyoto University (Kurai e [Dark painting, first published in Kibachi , 1946]), a massive 5-vol. social novel (Seinen no wa [The cycle of youth, 1947–50, 1962–71], on the leaders of the burakumin liberation movement), and a scathing study of the corruption and brutality of Japanese military life (Shinku[*] chitai [The vacuum zone, 1952]).
In order to raise questions about a speaker's comments, one has to wait until he finishes talking. Meanwhile, the author of Shinku[*] chitai (The vacuum zone) was speaking at a painfully slow speed. His talk seemed endless, and when it finally did come to an end I was almost under the illusion that I had become his convert.
At that point Noma Hiroshi remarked, "It's not going to do any good to keep on writing the same kind of novels as before!" Nakamura Shin'ichiro[*] had said the same thing. To be sure, their messages were very different in substance; but I had an unmistakable feeling that what I was witnessing was none other than the dawn of the age of postwar literature.[6]
In those days Hanada Kiyoteru was in charge of the journal Sogo[*] bunka (Culture in synthesis), and all kinds of people would gather at his editorial office. Occasionally they would engage in high-spirited discussions that energized the atmosphere of the office. During the war Hanada wrote Fukkoki[*] no seishin (The Renaissance spirit), in which he discusses Eastern and Western classics from all ages and along the way castigates Japanese militarism with admirable dexterity.[7] I knew nothing about his work during the war, and when I read it for the first time after the war ended, I was greatly astounded by his talents. As we became more closely acquainted, I was all the more impressed by his awesome presence. With bright piercing eyes and long hair flowing like a stallion's mane to the nape of his neck, he would utter words loaded with
[6] At Noma's request, Kato[*] wrote the essay "Hyumanizumu[*] to shakaishugi" (Humanism and socialism), Kibachi 3 (October 1946). He was then twenty-seven.
[7] Hanada Kiyoteru (1909–74), a Marxist critic, novelist, playwright, member of the Kindai bungaku (modern literature) coterie, and editor of Shin Nihon bungaku (New Japanese literature) from 1952 to July 1954. His colleague and critic Sasaki Kiichi aptly summarizes Hanada's postwar leitmotiv as an attempt "to rescue the subjective praxis of art from the trap of formal logic and to unify dialectically the political avant-garde with the artistic avant-garde" (Nihon kindai bungaku daijiten [Kodansha[*] , 1984], 1187). • Sogo bunka (July 1947–January 1949) was founded by the first generation of prominent postwar intellectuals (Kato, Hanada, Sasaki Kiichi, Noma Hiroshi, and the poet Sekine Hiroshi) to create "synthesized art" (sogo[*] geijutsu ) by probing the relations between politics, science, and art. • Hanada's classic Fukkoki no seishin (1946), 21 essays written between 1941 and 1946, ostensibly address the European Renaissance but take up the universal question of an intellectual's role in society and during cultural transformation; his discussions of Dante, Machiavelli, da Vinci, and Luther to Cervantes, Swift, Goethe, and van Gogh employ an array of similes and metaphors, devices he describes as "the weapons of the suppressed."
such profound implications and insights that one could hardly fathom them, and indeed they often went beyond my comprehension. Meanwhile the poet Sekine Hiroshi was talking enthusiastically about "the energies of the masses," while the physicist Watanabe Satoshi was touting the "republican system" as if he had total faith in it. Miyagi Otoya astonished me by declaring that if only psychology, his specialty, became a little more sophisticated, literature would be reduced to a superfluity.[8] I protested and challenged his views, and the arguments went back and forth. Since I was ignorant about psychology and Mr. Miyagi's knowledge about literature was almost nil, mutual communication was doomed from the start. Another psychologist, Minami Hiroshi, conducted himself with an air of detachment and seemed to enjoy directing witticisms at himself and the people around him.[9] "The Japanese are so fond of ideologies! That's why they'll never get tired of debating on and on forever."
It was also around this time that I became acquainted with the Kindai Bungaku (modern literature) critics. Their magazine [Kindai bungaku ] often carried debates on the subject of "politics vis-à-vis literature," and the Kindai Bungaku members maintained that literature should not be turned into a handmaiden of political ideologies.[10] I surmised that they
[8] Sekine Hiroshi (1920–94), a poet, critic, and chief editor of Sogo[*] bunka . • Watanabe Satoshi (1910–93), a founder of the Nijisseiki kenkyujo[*] (research institute for the twentieth century) in 1946 with Shimizu Ikutaro[*] and the influential journal Shiso[*] no kagaku (Scientific discourse), known for his liberal wartime stance and critique of Marxism in Genshito[*] sengen (Declaration of an atomic physicist, 1946). • Miyagi Otoya (1908–), a prominent psychologist and son of a Protestant priest, was a Marxist during his days at Kyoto University who later used Freudian ideas to reinterpret Marxism after the purge of Stalin and also criticized Japanese Marxism's feudal character and passivity toward political authority ("Hokenteki[*] Marukusushugi," Shisaku [1948]). He later taught at the Tokyo University of Technology (1949–68) and wrote Yume (Dreams, 1953), Seikaku (Personality, 1960), and Shinshinrigaku nyumon[*] (Introduction to new psychology, 1981).
[9] Minami Hiroshi (1914–), a distinguished Cornell-educated social psychologist known for his study of the Japanese personality and his historical analysis of Nihonjinron , or discourse on the Japanese character; his major works include Nihonjin no shinri (1953; trans., Psychology of the Japanese People [Honolulu: East-West Center, 1970]) and Nihonjinron no keifu (The genealogy of the discourse on the Japanese character [1980]).
[10] The Kindai Bungaku coterie and its magazine of the same name (January 1946–August 1964) were highly significant in shaping postwar Japanese literature into the mid-1950s and beyond. The common war experience, sympathy with Marxism, and broad knowledge of Western literature helped itsfounding members—Honda Shugo[*] , Hirano Ken, Ara Masahito, Sasaki Kiichi, Yamamuro Shizuka, Odagiri Hideo, and Haniya Yutaka (who published his monumental metaphysical novel Shirei [Departed souls] in its first issues)—redefine the relationship between politics and literary imagination, between the individual and organizational collectivism, and reassess major prewar writers and the modern Japanese novel. Kato[*] became a Kindai Bungaku member in July 1947 along with Nakamura Shin'ichiro[*] and Fukunaga Takehiko. • The postwar "politics vis-à-vis literature" debate revived attempts since mid-Meiji to define the political and aesthetic dimensions of modern Japanese literature and set writers and critics who believed in the sociopolitical imperatives of literature as defined by Communist political agenda against those who upheld its artistic autonomy against intrusive politics; for more details see chapter 34, note 3.
were opposed to treating literature as a tool for political revolution in the way left-wing literature had been treated in the past. It was only natural for those who had devoted themselves so selflessly to the proletarian literary movement in the 1930s and suffered repeated hardships as a result of thinking in those terms. Because I myself had not experienced such anguish, for me the word "politics" first conjured up images of the strategies of the Occupation forces and of the conservative Japanese government rather than the Japanese Communist Party, which was, after all, a minority opposition party. On hearing the words "politics vis-à-vis literature," I didn't have the thinking or rhetorical habit to associate them instantly with the idea of "the revolutionary movement and literature." Now when I reflect on it, I realize that the Kindai Bungaku critics treated me with great generosity and kindness. But we did have a problem in communication.[11]
With the collapse of militarism, people began to emerge everywhere from the ruins of Tokyo, forming congenial groups and speaking out on issues they hadn't dared mention before. I most certainly didn't find myself in a "state of prostration"; what I saw was an age filled with great expectations. For the first time—and probably the last—I felt events
[11] The Matinée Poétique writers and the Kindai Bungaku critics were of roughly the same generation and agreed on the primacy of art over politics and the dignity of the individual over the collectivist impulse but not on all issues: Kato and Ara Masahito, for example, differed significantly in their ideas of the subjective self and their assessment of the Japanese literary tradition, as they did in personality and in war experiences. Nakamura Shin'ichiro in his memoirs Sengo bungaku no kaiso[*] (Reminiscing about postwar literature) laments the failure to create a sense of solidarity with the Kindai Bungaku critics; see the summary on the subject in Matsubara Shin'ichi, Isoda Koichi[*] , and Akiyama Shun, Zoho[*] Kaitei Sengo Nihonbungakushi/nenpyo[*] (History and chronology of postwar Japanese literature, rev. ed. [Kodansha[*] , 1985]), 94–98.
were moving in my direction. I found many new friends, but at the same time I also discovered the difficulty of articulating ideas among ourselves. It was Japan in the immediate aftermath of the war, not Europe years later, that made me conscious of the problems involved in communication between those who speak different languages.
At the time when nameless young men like us were publishing coterie magazines and speaking our minds, a number of novelists living in Kamakura pooled their own resources and founded a publishing firm called Kamakura Bunko (Kamakura books). It published a literary monthly called Ningen (Humanity).[12] Its chief editor, Kimura Tokuzo[*] , had read 1946: A Literary Inquiry , and on one occasion he asked the three of us to contribute to his magazine. "Because this is your first time writing for us, I won't be able to pay you much," Mr. Kimura said. "As for subject matter, you're free to write anything you please." Before that time, I had never received manuscript fees. Thanks to Mr. Kimura's kindness and his magazine, I thus began my vocation as a writer.[13] Mr. Kimura knew the marketplace we called the bundan (literary world) inside out. He knew exactly whether the mix of a certain editor and a particular writer would set up a seller's or a buyer's market. And he impressed me as an editor who hoped to infuse his journal with idealistic literary spirit. Usui Yoshimi, the chief editor of the magazine Tenbo[*] (Perspective), and Yoshino Genzaburo[*] , the chief editor of Sekai (The world), shared this idealism.[14] This was a time when we were living on
[12] Kamakura Bunko began as a lending library and became a publisher after the war. Its founders were Kume Masao, Kawabata Yasunari, and Takami Jun. • Ningen was published from January 1946 to August 1951.
[13] Kato[*] received his first manuscript fees for contributing the essay "Shinko[*] no seiki to shichinin no senkusha" (The century of faith and seven precursors) to Ningen in July 1947.
[14] Usui Yoshimi (1905–87), a critic and novelist who wrote on Saito[*] Mokichi, Nakano Shigeharu, Hori Tatsuo, Shiga Naoya, and Mishima Yukio in Ningen to bungaku (Man and literature, 1957) and modern literary debates in Kindai bungaku ronso[*] (1956); his ambitious long novel Azumino (1965–74), set in his native Nagano Prefecture and Tokyo, won the Tenth Tanizaki Jun'ichiro[*] Literary Prize. • Tenbo (January 1946–September 1951, and October 1964–August 1978 under Okayama Takeshi as chief editor), founded by Karaki Junzo[*] , Nakamura Mitsuo, and Usui, was to be "a magazine we ourselves would like to read," and it serialized such major postwar works as Miyamoto Yuriko's Dohyo[*] (Guideposts), Ooka[*] Shohei's[*]Nobi (Fires on the plain), and Shiina Rinzo's[*]Shin'ya no shuen (Midnight feast). • Yoshino Genzaburo[*] (1899–1981), a critic and translator, who created the Iwanami shinsho (Iwanami new book) series at Iwanami shoten in1938 and was chief editor of Sekai from 1946 to 1965; on his role as spokesman for postwar democratic thought see Suzuki Tadashi, Senchu[*] to sengo seishin (Keiso[*] shobo[*] , 1983), 3–27. • Sekai (January 1946–) remains one of the most influential and widely read journals among the Japanese intelligentsia today.
meager rations of food and clothing; the black market was thriving, and the red flags of the "rice movement" fluttered along the streets. Yet an indomitable spirit of idealism flourished in Tokyo. In Ningen I began to serialize Aru hareta hi ni (One fine day), a novel based on my experience during the war.[15]
While it was still an unsalaried position, I continued to work as a physician. In the first place, I had been working too long to get out of the habit; second, medicine itself was endlessly fascinating to me; and third, I thought I could still make a living practicing medicine should money become a problem in the future. The need for money, however, never arose. After I started to publish in Ningen , I could somehow make ends meet by accepting requests from newspapers and journals for manuscripts. And so I continued to live a life in which writing was my occupation and medicine my avocation, not the reverse.
In those days, I was often keenly aware of the conspicuous "backwardness" of Japan vis-à-vis the West. In my specialized area of hematology, Japan had made very little progress during the war, but meanwhile in the West pioneering work had been accomplished. We already knew about this through our contact with American scholars in Hiroshima. But the Western sources we had in our university library only went up to the late 1930s—giving us no way to learn about the details of Western progress. I discussed the matter with Dr. Nakao, and through the good offices of First Lieutenant L, we got a special pass to go inside Tsukiji's St. Luke's Hospital, at that time requisitioned by the Occupation forces.
At the hospital gate, we saw a posted bill that read "Those who enter without permission will be shot." After showing our pass to the armed guards, we were allowed to walk through the hospital corridor with the American doctors and nurses and into the library. There I avidly read the new American medical journals. Until the late 1930s, the field of hematology, developed primarily in Germany and Austria, had dealt with
[15] The novel, which began Kato's[*] career as a novelist (serialized in Ningen [January–August 1949]), is set in Karuizawa and Tokyo during the air raids and its protagonist is a young physician, the author's alter ego.
the microscopic morphology of hemocyte and hematogenous tissues, an area we knew very well. But during the war, by focusing on the study of blood transfusion, researchers had made progress in figuring out the thitherto highly obscure mechanism of blood coagulation. The electrophoresis of blood plasma protein had come to be widely practiced. What had until then been nearly independent studies of areas such as morphology, serology (the observation of antigens and the reaction of antibodies inside a test tube), and the chemical analysis of blood constituents had now become mutually relevant. To us, this meant the discovery of new methodologies and, for all practical purposes, the emergence of a new area of study. When we saw the specialized journals on hematology from America in the St. Luke's Hospital library, we became keenly aware of our ignorance about what had happened outside Japan, how the world had changed as a consequence, and how serious our "backwardness" was. It almost reminded me of the bygone days of Rangaku kotohajime (The beginning of Dutch learning).[16] If my work in hematology had any significance to speak of, it was perhaps in my assistance of Nakao Kiku and Miyoshi Kazuo, the two scholars who, after the war in their poorly equipped study, devoted their energies so totally to redeeming Japan's backwardness. Late one winter night in his makeshift study built in the corridor of the university hospital, Dr. Miyoshi rubbed his freezing hands over a small electric heater under his table as he put together perhaps one of Japan's first devices for the electrophoresis of blood plasma protein. "Until we have the equipment, I'm afraid we can't have any clinical study," said Dr. Miyoshi. "But this freezing temperature is unbearable." The only warm place in winter was the library at St. Luke's Hospital.
I felt that Japan's backwardness was not limited only to the field of hematology. During the war, while many Japanese writers ingratiated themselves with the militarist authorities, sang praises of fascism, and allowed literature to degenerate into a total wasteland, many French poets were waging their resistance against Germany's national socialism, denouncing fascism, and breathing new life into literature by champi-
[16] Rangaku kotohajime , completed in 1815 and published in 1869, was a 2-vol. memoir by the physician and scholar Sugita Gempaku (1733–1817) on the development of Rangaku (Dutch learning) from mid-Edo translations and interpretations that marked a systematic Japanese effort to learn Western medicine, astronomy, geography, physics, chemistry, and the military sciences.
oning the cause of human freedom and dignity. I learned from the book exhibition at the l'Institut franco-japonais about how poets who fell silent before the war quickly returned to their vibrant selves and how new writers, unknown before the war, were now competing with one another. That was an unprecedented and inspiring development. No one could deny the spiritual backwardness among Japanese literary intellectuals. The fact that Japanese writers could not produce a literature of resistance against fascism was, of course, due to the absence of any popular antifascist feelings around them, just as the complete reverse was true in France. The differences between our writers and their French counterparts, I thought, must ultimately mean the difference between the premodern and the modern mentality—between the idea of the Japanese people as "subjects" and the French people as "citizens," between the Japanese Imperial Rescript on Education and the French Déclaration des droits de l'homme, and between the Japanese notion of the way of the Shinto[*] gods and Descartes's spirit of rationalism.[17] But my way of thinking oversimplified the facts: the Pétain government was a puppet regime created by a foreign power, while the Tojo[*] government was not. And insofar as my thinking was premised on the French national sentiment, something I knew practically nothing about, my thinking was also inaccurate.
One time Nakamura Shin'ichiro[*] and I visited Professor Takeyama Michio in Kamakura.[18] Every now and then when our conversation turned to the backwardness of the Japanese masses, Professor Takeyama with his keen insight immediately saw through such flaws in my argument. Outside the window of the Takeyama residence, the pine forest rustled in the ocean breeze. Clad in his informal kimono, Professor Takeyama would calmly puff away on his cigarette as he listened to what I, in my youthful rashness, had to say on the subject. Then he said, "But the
[17] From 1890 to its annulment by the Diet in June 1948, the conservative Meiji Imperial Rescript on Education established the absolute standards of national morality and defined the fundamental principles of education. Occasional later efforts by conservative politicians and intellectuals to "reevaluate" it testify to its resilient spirit.
[18] Takeyama Michio (1903–84), a critic, scholar of German literature, and novelist (Biruma no tategoto [Harp of Burma, 1947–48; Eng. trans. by Howard Hibbett, 1966], a novel about Japanese wartime experience in Burma), also wrote studies on the origins of ideology in Japan and Germany, the role of modernity in war, ancient Japanese art, and the political situations in Nazi Germany and the Communist-bloc countries in Europe.
masses are the same everywhere! They are all stupid enough to be duped by stupid propaganda. I have seen enough of that in Germany. It was by no means true only in Japan. . . . " Until that time, I had never seen Europe, and I had never spoken any of their languages. I had read a few books, but Professor Takeyama must have read and known at least ten times as much as I did. I was by no means convinced by his ideas, but I could not refute his arguments. Are the masses the same everywhere? Later, after living in Europe myself, I came to agree substantially with the professor. But at the same time, I was also able to see through the flaws in his argument. I wasn't mistaken about Japan's backwardness; I exaggerated it.
My reading of French Résistance literature not only strengthened my conviction about Japan's backwardness, it also forced me to realize how immature my understanding of French literature had been. For instance, I had read through the bulk of François Mauriac's writings, but my understanding in no way prepared me to imagine that one day this Catholic writer would join hands with the Communists and throw himself into the network of Résistance writers. And even though I was not entirely ignorant of the works of Louis Aragon and Drieu La Rochelle, the images I formed of these writers put me at a loss to explain the source of Aragon's movingly beautiful poetry written during the occupation of France, or the motives for Drieu La Rochelle's collaboration with the Germans and his suicide at the time of France's liberation. In other words, it was obvious that something was missing either from my reading or from my perception of French writers. Also, while Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus had taken the world by storm with their dramatic emergence after the war, it was difficult to grasp the core of their writings without altering the way one normally perceived and read literature. I realized how backward Japan was in terms of its intellectual discipline. The question went beyond novelistic techniques. It was necessary to make a fresh start on more fundamental issues. I was young; I felt that there was nothing I couldn't do, and I thought I had all the time in the world to assemble my tools before I started to work. Instead of justifying Japan's backwardness and more so my own backwardness, I thought the new age for our recovery was opened infinitely into the future. The only person who questioned whether Japan and the Japanese had really changed was my teacher Watanabe Kazuo. As a few of us gathered and talked about new currents of thought overseas and our reform ideals—come to think of it, these two things had been inseparably intertwined
since Meiji, or rather, since the days of the Japanese missions to the capital of T'ang China—Professor Watanabe said, "Shall we listen to some music?"[19] The song that poured forth from the gramophone blared, "We'll return with our victories, you'll see! / After we have pledged this heroic vow and gone to the battlefield overseas."
"Isn't it a good idea to listen to this kind of song from time to time, just to help us remember the past . . . "
And sure enough, throughout the twenty years after the war, that song kept on reverberating inside my ears. But there were also times when we needed to let our angry screams drown out its noise.
[19] From 630 to 894, Japanese envoys made sixteen overseas missions to Chang-an, the capital of the T'ang dynasty; the Buddhist monks and students who accompanied them were instrumental in introducing continental culture to Japan.