Modern Japanese Literature (Pre-War) Franziska Kasch

Dr. Andy Murakami-Smith

OUSSEP Fall Semester 2007

Yokomitsu Riichi and the Modernisation of Japan

1 Introduction
With the rapid modernisation of Japan since the opening of the country in 1868 the

influence of Western thoughts and techniques also had a great impact on Japanese modern

literature. Western literature was translated into Japanese and influenced Japanese writers who

adapted their prose and poetry to European styles like for example dadaism, futurism,

expressionism and the like. Notably two schools evolved from these influences and were

popular during the mid-twenties: The realistic schools of the so-called I novels of the

naturalists and the ideological works of the proletarians.

But there was also another literature movement between 1924 and 1930 that became

known as the Shinkankaku-ha or New Sensationalist school and is often marked as the

origin of Modernism in Japanese fiction. The New Sensationalist school revolted against the

realistic schools and experimented with the new techniques that had been created in Europe

after World War I. It is widely associated with its leader Yokomitsu Riichi (1898-1947),

although only a few of his works are clearly connected to this movement. (Keene 1987:644)

In this essay I want to concentrate on Yokomitsu Riichi and point out some characteristics

of his works as a reaction to the modernisation of Japan.

2 Yokomitsu Riichi and the Creation of the New Sensationalist School

Yokomitsus youth was affected by his fathers profession as an engineering contractor,

who was engaged in building a railway line, which meant that Yokomitsu was constantly

moving around the country following the work of his father. Consequently, Yokomitsu lacked

of a place he could call home which might be the reason for his dislike of the I novels for

1
wich origins play such an important role. Nevertheless, at every stage of his career, the works

that involve his personal experience are said to be Yokomitsus best. (Keene 1987:645) This

seems to be paradoxical but the fact, that his youth was determined by the building of a

railway line can also be compared to the external factors that determine the characters of his

novels.

Satire and trivial occurances are characteristic for Yokomitsus literary works. Yokomitsu

sees sensation in trivial situations and said that if he could express this sensation adequately,

a philosophy symbolic of life and fate would emerge from a mere sensation (Yokomitsu cited

after Keene 1987:647). But he did not only speak of Sensationalism but of New

Sensationalism which he explained in the first issue of the movements magazine Bungei Jidai

(Literary Age) as follows:

The difference between sensation and new sensation is this: that the objectivity of
the object that bursts into life is not purely objective, but is rather the representation of
that emotional cognition which has broken away from subjective objectivity,
incorporating as it does both a formal appearance and also the generalized consciousness
within it. And it is thus that the new sensationalist method is able to appear in a more
dynamic form to the understanding than the sensationalist method by virtue of the fact
that it gives a more material representation of an emotional apprehension. (Yokomitsu
cited after Keene 1987:644)

Giving this definition of New Sensationalism Yokomitsu explains objectivity as more than

the mere appearance of an object. There is also subjective meaning connected to an object

which makes it possible to use the object in a representative way to express these meanings.

Thus Yokomitsu is able to describe immaterial things through material ones.

Taking also the time of the creation of the New Sensationalist School into consideration,

the impact of the Great Earthquake in September 1923 is very clear. Just like most Japanese,

Yokomitsu realized the great loss of their old culture and the neccessity to create a new one.

(Keene 1987:649) He said:

2
 The beliefs I had held concerning beauty were shattered by this desaster, and I
entered what people call my New Sensabilies period. As far as the eye could see, the
great city stretched out around me in a vast, unbelievable plain of ashes. Such was the
scene within which the automobile, that monstrous incarnation of speed, first began to
prowl among us. Suddenly the radio appeared, that abnormal offspring of sound. The
artificial bird called the airplane first began to fly the skies as a thing that could be used.
All these concrete embodiments of modern science first sprang up in our country just
after the earthquake. The sensibilities of people who were in their youth when such
venguards of modern science took shape one after another on the burned out plain
simply had to change. (Yokomitsu cited after Campbell 1972: 28)

The awkward feelings towards new techniques Yokomitsu expresses in this statement,

reflect the enormous change in Japanese culture. The western modernity that suddenly swept

over Japan must have been overwhelming and it might be in reaction to this that Yokomitsu

tried to give subjective meaning to these new objects which formed a new, completely

different environment for the Japanese.

3 The New Japan and Yokomitsus Novels

As mentioned before Yokomitsus novels are determined by trivial, external factors which

shows his mechanistic view of the world (Keene 1987:647). Experiencing the rapid changes

in Japanese culture he must have felt like a small part of a machine that he did not control. He

sensed mechanisms that control human beings everywhere and tries to explain the world

through them.

Just like many other writers of that time Yokomitsu was trapped in the dilemma of

Japanese Modernity (Ellis 1999:723) and therefore had to define his position between

traditional and modern which resulted in taking a satiric position at first. This satiric position

is noticeable in many of Yokomitsus works like for example in The Trial of Marx

(Marukusu no shimpan, 1923) in which a judge who is absorbed with the Marxist theories he

read tries to solve a trial through projecting these theories onto the assumed motive of the

accused. When the judge thinks over it again he realizes that he almost delivered a false

3
verdict and feels guilty but in the end he blames the Marxist theories and not himself for this

fault. (Campbell 1972:29/30) Marxism also has the function of a mechanism in this story and

shows Yokomitsus skepticism about those theories which connect everything concerning

human society to economic reasons.

Another satiric example for the trivial, external factors is given in Napoleons

Ringworm (Naporeon to tamushi, 1926). Yokomitsu here evolves the theory that Napoleon

suffered from ringworm and went mad because of the itchiness. As the ringworm advances

across Napoleons belly, his armies advance across the plains and his conquests were

therefore only the result of little fungi. (Campbell 1972:32/33)

Yokomitsus satiric position later changed to a more severe view of the changes of

modernity. Between 1928 and 1931 he published his full-length novel Shanghai in segments

in which he depicts Shanghai as an alsmost unhuman city. To Yokomitsu the city of Shanghai

was a foretaste of the world to come (Keene 1987:656) and he stressed this image through

his descriptive passages as well as his characters that are left one-dimensional and superficial.

(Keene 1987:655-657) This novel also gives a foretaste of Yokomitsus changing feelings

towards Japan as he describes China as inferior to Japan and thus follows the increasing

nationalistic trend at that time.

In 1930 Yokomitsus masterpiece The Machine (Kikai) was published and marked a

change in his style. He abandoned the short-sentenced, jumping New Sensationalist style and

now wrote in a dense and flexible way. (Keene 1987:658) In this story Yokomitsus

mechanistic views get very clear and point at his feelings about modernity. From the

beginning of the story he describes the main characters work in a small plate factory as

unpleasant and the main character as otherwise useless. He thereby already gives a

negative image of factory work which is an achievement of modernization and one gets the

impression that the main character itself functions like a machine. This impression gets

reinforced as the story moves on and the main character says: Violence was the only thing

4
that worked with a person like me. Further he and his collegues had to work virtually

without sleep. All these points stress the inhumanity brought by modernization.

As the main character learns more about chemicals he says, I learned to see delicate

organic movements in inorganic substances. The discovery that in the tiniest things a law, a

machine, is at work came to me as the beginning of a spiritual awakening. This

spiritualization of the machine continues throughout the story and serves as the reason for

the quarrels between the workers as well as the death of one them in the end. It is said that

some invisible machine was constantly measuring us all, as if it understood everything that

went on, and was pushing us according to the results of its measurements. The machine is

infallible as well as a sharp menace. Like Keene said, the machine is a symbol of fate

(Keene 1987:660) and if we apply it on Yokomitsus view of the world, it can also be seen in

the same sense as his description of Shanghai resulting in his opinion of modernization.

4 Conclusion
Overall, Yokomitsus works show kind of a resignation. Without local roots and facing the

loss of long established customs that was filled with foreign thoughts he transferred his

insecurity into a sense of trivial mechanisms all his works have in common.

The only thing Yokomitsu could rely on was being Japanese which became the main topic

of his later works. His understanding of the Japanese spirit as superior to other nationalities

was already foreshadowed in Shanghai and became visible in his works after 1934.

On one hand, he was fascinated by foreign things and ideas and even traveled to Europe to

learn more about it, but on the other hand, they always stayed foreign to him. While he was

able to turn them into a modern style of literature at the beginning of his career, this

modernism later disappeared.

Nevertheless, Yokomitsus writings were important for the development of Japanese

literature and can be seen as an example for the cultural struggle Japan had to undergo during

the last 140 years in search for a japanese postion between tradition and modernity.
5
5 Bibliography
Keene, Donald (1987): Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era. Holt, New
York

Ellis, Toshiko (1999): The Japanese Avant-Garde of the 1920s: The Poetic Struggle with the
Dilemma of the Modern. In: Poetics Today, Vol. 20, No. 4. (Winter, 1999), pp. 723-741

Campbell, Alan (1972): The Historical Satires of Yokomitsu Riichi. In: The Journal of the
Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 8, No. 1, Tenth Anniversary Issue.
(Nov., 1972), pp. 26-33.