Japanese Studies

ISSN: 1037-1397 (Print) 1469-9338 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjst20

Aftermath: Fujin Bungei and Radical Women's

Fiction after the Downfall of the Proletarian
Literature Movement in Japan
Angela Coutts
To cite this article: Angela Coutts (2013) Aftermath: Fujin Bungei and Radical Women's Fiction
after the Downfall of the Proletarian Literature Movement in Japan, Japanese Studies, 33:1,
1-17, DOI: 10.1080/10371397.2013.778390
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2013.778390

Published online: 22 Apr 2013.

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Date: 30 October 2015, At: 19:01

Japanese Studies, 2013

Vol. 33, No. 1, 117, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2013.778390

Aftermath: Fujin Bungei and Radical Womens

Fiction after the Downfall of the Proletarian
Literature Movement in Japan

Downloaded by [Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana] at 19:01 30 October 2015

ANGELA COUTTS, The University of Shefeld, UK

This article highlights the important contribution made by Kamichika Ichiko to the interwar
publishing scene by providing an overview of the literary journal Fujin Bungei launched by her
and an analysis of three stories it published from leading female writers of the era, Matsuda
Tokiko, Hirabayashi Eiko and Asai Hanako. Fujin Bungei was a rare oppositional voice
within the media that questioned the narrow nationalism sanctioned and promoted by the
Japanese state when others had fallen silent or been silenced. Furthermore, its focus on writing
by women provided a forum for passionate and provocative works which shed new light on the
downfall of the Proletarian Literature Movement.

The use of ction for ideological purposes, consciousness-raising, and to effect social
change has a long history in modern Japanese literature. When it comes to womens
rights and feminism, this dates back to 1911 with the founding of the Seit Group and
their journal Seit (Bluestocking, 19111916). While there is a growing body of critical
material about this rst literary feminist venture and its successor, the journal Nyonin
Geijutsu (Female Arts, 19281932), virtually nothing has been written about what can be
considered the nal literary feminist journal of the interwar years, Fujin Bungei
(Womens Literary Arts, 193437).1 During the 1920s, radical arts movements ourished in Japan, and the Proletarian Literature Movement (PLM) came to dominate the
literary scene. From 1925, with the revision of the Peace Preservation Law, there was
considerable intimidation of those involved in a broad range of radical movements. In
1928 some 1,600 people were arrested on suspicion of radical activity, and the expansion of the law in 1931 to include cultural organisations led to further mass arrests in
1932.2 The effective end of the PLM came in 1933 with the recantations of the
Communist Party leaders Sano Manabu (18921953) and Nabeyama Sadachika
(19011979) and the murder in police custody of Kobayashi Takiji (19031933). All
of the cultural journals associated with the PLM had folded by the end of 1933, and the
Writers League was nally disbanded in 1934.3 Although the radical cultural organisations were dominated by male intellectuals and often denied women membership, many
female activists afliated with them in the hope of achieving improved rights for women.
However, as with their male contemporaries, many feminists eventually came to support
1

Studies include, but are by no means limited to, Bardsley, The Bluestockings; Tomida, Hiratsuka Raich;
Coutts, Gender and Literary Production, and Imagining Radical Women; Frederick, Turning Pages;
and Ogata, Nyonin Geijutsu no sekai, and Nyonin Geijutsu no hitobito.
2
Shea, Leftwing Literature; Mitchell, Thought Control, 8195.
3
Karlsson, United Front, 46; Shea, Leftwing Literature, 128.
2013 Japanese Studies Association of Australia

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Angela Coutts

the state, seeing opportunities for improving the status of women through their increasingly important role on the so-called home front.
One socialist-feminist who did not align herself with state ideology was Kamichika
Ichiko (18881981) who as a young woman had been involved with Seit, and had
produced her own literary journal Saffron (MarchAugust 1914). It was during an era of
increased state censorship and control of the media in the wake of the 1931 Manchurian
Incident that Kamichika decided to launch Fujin Bungei. In this article, I present an
overview of this important but neglected journal, together with an analysis of some of its
literary content. I argue that the journal fostered radical female subjectivity; it also
maintained an oppositional stance to the states move towards nationalism, militarism
and imperialist expansionism in an era of growing conformity in which the media was
encouraged to promote a conservative domestic role for women.
While Kamichika is known for her relationship with the anarchist sugi Sakae (1885
1923) and for her post-war career as a socialist politician, her signicant contribution to
the development of the pre-war literary feminist movement is rarely discussed.4 Born in
Nagasaki prefecture to a middle-class rural family, Kamichika nevertheless grew up in
relative poverty due to the death of her father and oldest brother while she was still
young.5 An intelligent girl, she persuaded her family to allow her to study at a Christian
college in Nagasaki and then to train as a teacher in Tokyo at the famous Tsuda
Academy. She found the conservative atmosphere of the college somewhat restrictive,
and the discovery of the Seit group had a signicant impact on her emotional and
intellectual development. She learned about the group through a kindred spirit at the
college, Nakanishi Shiho, who died while giving birth to a child from a clandestine open
marriage (jiy kekkon). On learning of her friends death, Kamichika wrote an impassioned letter to Seit asking to become a member. She received a swift reply from its
founder Hiratsuka Raich (18861971), who invited her to the next meeting, which
happened to be a celebration of the rst year of Seit. Kamichika, unaware of this
timing, was completely overwhelmed by the occasion; not only was the venue a smart
restaurant the like of which she had never been to before, she arrived late due to college
commitments to nd that most of the women present were somewhat tipsy. She
describes her rst meeting with Hiratsuka as follows:
Her sophisticated beauty came from an intellect steeped in Buddhism and
literature as well as from her noble blood. Her brightly sparkling eyes glittered
as if she were irting with the younger members; I was overjoyed to be in her
presence but was overwhelmed and felt unable to look her in the face.6
Kamichika also quotes from Hiratsukas autobiography in which she had the following
to say about Kamichika:
Her conversation, like her writing, was informed with passion and intelligence.
Her appearance also made a good impression. She had a rm masculine air;
4

Kamichikas biographer expresses surprise at the lack of critical material available on Fujin Bungei;
Sugiyama, Purometeusu, 191. A brief overview of the journal is offered by Kno, Kamichika Ichiko;
Nagahata and Ogata refer to it in their edited volume, Feminizumu ryran, but devote far more space to
Nyonin Geijutsu and comparatively short-lived publications such as Hataraku Fujin.
5
Biographical details are based on Kamichika, Waga ai; translations from Waga ai and Fujin Bungei are
my own
6
Kamichika, Waga ai, 108.

Fujin Bungei and Radical Womens Fiction

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her large eyes, which appeared to be on the verge of tears, sparkled in a

strangely provocative manner as if she were suppressing some kind of terrible,
dangerous instability.7
Kamichika, who was not used to alcohol, ended up getting drunk and passing out. Her
misgivings that her behaviour would be discovered and create problems with the college
turned out to be correct: she was told that she either had to leave Tokyo or leave the
college. To support herself, she agreed to take a teaching post in Aomori prefecture, but
her career was cut short when the school principal found her name in an issue of Seit.
Although Kamichika pointed out that the photograph under which her name was listed
did not actually have her in it, the mere fact that she was associated with the group was
enough to bring about her dismissal. She returned to Tokyo and in 1914 she became the
only female reporter at the Tokyo Nichinichi shinbun (now the Mainichi shinbun). Due to
her English-language abilities, particularly her spoken skills, she was assigned to the
politics and society section rather than being restricted to topics such as home and
family typically given to female reporters. She relished the opportunity to become
directly involved with contemporary social and political events and also interviewed
many important literary gures of the day.
Her radical nature led her to a group of anarchists whose self-appointed leader was
the notorious sugi Sakae. sugi, who was married, claimed to believe in free love and
started a relationship with Kamichika in the spring of 1915. Not long afterwards he also
became involved with the then editor of Seit, It Noe (18951923), who had run away
from an arranged marriage and was living with her former teacher Tsuji Jun (1895
1944), with whom she had two children; in September of 1916 sugi and It moved in
together. Kamichika was the only one with a regular source of income and so ended up
effectively supporting sugi, continuing to do so even after she lost her job at the
newspaper in the spring of 1916 (due to their affair) and had to turn to freelance
translation work in order to survive. In the end, she found it all too much to bear,
and the unfortunate culmination was the Hikage Inn incident of November 1916 when
Kamichika stabbed sugi in the neck, for which she received a four-year prison sentence, reduced on appeal to two.8
One of the more immediate outcomes of this scandal was that it was effectively the
end of Seit. Hiratsuka Raich comments on the incident as follows:
I feared the larger reverberations of this three-sided affair of free love gone
wrong. It could only hurt the cause of those who opposed feudalistic morality
and called for a new sexual morality. [] sugi, who was at least partially
responsible, was not even ordered to appear in court and continued to live with
Noe. [] The women of Seit had changed. The journal was no more. For
better or for worse, the Hikage Teahouse incident served as its elegy.9
According to Stanley, sugi was the one held responsible for the whole incident, which
resulted in him being isolated from other radicals who felt that his behaviour brought

Ibid., 109.
Ibid., 152176.
9
Hiratsuka, In the Beginning, 285286.
8

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Angela Coutts

them all into ill-repute. After this he found it very difcult to make a living, as no-one
wanted to hire him as a speaker or publish his writing.10
From October 1917 to October 1919 Kamichika was imprisoned in what was essentially solitary connement. On her release, she had lost all standing in society, was
unable to continue her career as a journalist, and was not able to visit her family due to
the disgrace that she had brought them. Kamichika nevertheless continued to be active
in the various oppositional movements of the 1920s, working for Japans rst literary
socialist journal Tanemakuhito (The Sower, 19211923) and the Communist-afliated
Senki (Battle Flag, 19271931). The most signicant event for her came in 1928 when
former Seit member Hasegawa Shigure (18791941) invited her to join the editorial
team of Nyonin Geijutsu, a radical new journal showcasing the literary and artistic talents
of women. An article by Kamichika entitled Fujin to musanseit (Women and the
Proletarian Political Parties) was featured in the rst issue, and she continued to
contribute to the journal with articles, participation in discussions, and a serialised
translation of the novel Love and Revolution by Jessica Smith.11
Nyonin Geijutsu was published during a very turbulent era and, particularly after the
demise of the key leftist arts journals Bungei Sensen (Literary Arts Front, 19241930)
and Senki, became a central forum for oppositional voices as well as for debates between
the various radical factions about literatures role in social change.12 When the journal
folded in 1932, things did not look at all optimistic for radical journalism and, given the
brutal treatment the state meted out to those involved in oppositional movements, many
of whom Kamichika knew personally, it did not seem a good time to launch a new
publication. Nevertheless, in 1934, the year that the Proletarian Writers League nally
disbanded due to state repression and internal rifts, Kamichika founded Fujin Bungei,
which continued to publish radical writing, including works by feminists who had been
part of the PLM.
When considering Kamichikas motivation to make this move and the ability of the
journal to survive for four years, it should be remembered that the era between the
Manchurian Incident and the China Incident some six years later was one of considerable political uidity. Although the proletarian parties lost seats in the 1930 general
election, and only managed to maintain their ve Diet seats in 1932, February 1936 saw
an increase to 18 seats for the newly formed broad socialist alliance, the Shakai
Taisht, which in April 1937 obtained 37 seats or 8.2% of the Diet, making it the
third largest political party represented.13 It is therefore perhaps not so surprising that a
progressive thinker like Kamichika might feel that there was an opportunity to contribute to the creation of a more liberal environment through a journal. The political
instability of the time might also explain why censorship was less rigorous than in the
past. Despite the fact that Fujin Bungei regularly published writings by well-known
leftists afliated with banned political organisations, such as Hirabayashi Taiko
(19051972), Miyamoto (Chj) Yuriko (18991951) and Sata (Kubokawa) Ineko
(19041998), there was no instance of the journal being banned as had occurred with
Seit and Nyonin Geijutsu. Perhaps the government was less concerned about a female-

Stanley, sugi Sakae, 107109.

Jessica Smith (18951983) was an American activist who went to the Soviet Union in 1922 with a
Quaker mission and later became editor of Soviet Russia Today.
12
Coutts, Gender and Literary Production, 172185, and Imagining Radical Women, 330338;
Frederick, Turning Pages, 137177; Ogata, Nyonin Geijutsu no sekai, 4559.
13
Large, Organised Workers, 194, 199.
10
11

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Fujin Bungei and Radical Womens Fiction

only publication run by what they might consider the remnants of a group of defunct
activists than they were about the instability and unpredictability of the military.14
The closure of the journal at the end of August 1937 is perhaps easier to understand.
Concerns about an impending war and the isolation of Japan due to its withdrawal from
the League of Nations in 1933 after censure over the occupation of Manchuria, and its
withdrawal in 1934 and 1936 from the Washington and London Naval Disarmament
Treaties, meant that it became easier to mobilise people around the concept of national
unity and to highlight the dangers of so-called western liberalism.15 A military insurrection soon after the 1936 election, the February 26 Incident, resulted in the killing of a
former prime minister, the nance minister and several other moderate leaders who had
opposed increased military spending. The China Incident of July 1937, which led to war
with China, brought an end to the possibility of a resurgence of the socialist parties and
extinguished the last remnants of liberal protest. Furthermore, Kamichika had been ill
for some months, and was undergoing a difcult divorce while trying to support herself
and her three children with translation work. Although in her autobiography Kamichika
mentions Fujin Bungei only briey in the afterword, she does have the following to say
about the era in which it was published:
After coming out of prison, my attempts to make amends [for bringing political
radicals into disrepute] meant that I was not directly involved in resistance. In
one sense, my silence shielded me from danger. At the time of the February 26
incident, I was living in Kami-Ochiai, and despite the fact that they arrested
my neighbour Hosokawa Takamoto, who was a reporter for the Asahi newspaper, they passed by my house. Ultra-nationalism swept through Japan, the
press and public opinion were censored and freedom of speech was severely
curtailed, but as I was occupied with translating travelogues and social science
textbooks, I was not perceived as an enemy. Nevertheless, I was not in agreement with what was happening. The Patriotic Womens Association and the
Womens National Defence League became active, and people who had previously called for the improved status of women cooperated with the war effort;
I did not even consider joining. I avoided everyone and chose a solitary life. I
was completely isolated.16
It is important to add that Kamichika was publishing Fujin Bungei at the time of the
February 26 incident and was doing a great deal more than the translation of mundane
textbooks mentioned above. The following overview highlights the journals oppositional stance and the opportunities it provided for women to develop a different understanding of themselves in the world than the one being offered by the increasingly
conservative Japanese state.

14
Miyamoto and Sata were members of the illegal Japanese Communist Party. Miyamoto was arrested in
1931 and spent several periods in police detention thereafter; from December 1937 she was forbidden to
write. Sata was arrested for several months in 1932. They were both re-arrested in 1935 and put on trial
in 1936 for distributing Communist propaganda. Hirabayashi was detained in police custody in
December 1937 for afliation with the banned Rn Party. Loftus, Telling Lives, 214215; Muramatsu
and Watanabe, Gendai josei, 297302; Shea, Leftwing Literature, 371.
15
Garon, State and Society, 175176.
16
Kamichika, Waga ai, 236.

Angela Coutts

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What Kind of Journal Was Fujin Bungei?

As the name suggests, the journal was established with the aim of publishing womens
writing, and initially it had a purely literary focus. It was common practice at the time for
journals to include a sengen declaring their purpose or ideological stance. This was not the
case with Fujin Bungei, but the names which made an appearance in the rst issue in June
1934 give a clear indication of the literary voices that Kamichika wished to be heard.
These included Nogami Yaeko (18851985) who was known for examining Marxist
ideology through her writings, and Matsuda Tokiko (19052004) and Hirabayashi Eiko
(19022001), both well-known radicals who had been arrested for their political activism.17 Starting from the third volume in 1936, each months issue began with a section
entitled Photojournalism, which provide fascinating documentation of the kinds of topics
of interest to the journal. These include photographs of Japanese women camping in the
mountains (in issue 3:8); a woman in the Spanish resistance carrying a gun (3:9); and a
selection of images documenting female participation in politics: peace activists in
England; Japanese women discussing female representation in parliament; and the aviator
and member of Femme Nouvelle Denise Finat staging a mock poll for womens suffrage
during the 1936 General Election in France (3:6).
In terms of the written content, the focus on ction and articles on literary topics
continued until October of 1935 (2:10) when Kamichika decided to put out a special
issue on working women, widening the content to include social and political articles
which were placed prominently at the front of the journal.18 Kamichika had signalled
this change in her Foreword (kantgo) to the previous issue, stating there that the journal
would enter a new phase in which the articially constructed division between literature
and society would be removed: While maintaining the emphasis on literature, my aim is
for the journal to take a female perspective on social phenomena, to summarise and
critique them so that they can be absorbed into our lives. The social function of
literature is emphasised, with Kamichika exhorting women involved in the arts to
throw off the relics of feudalism and unite in an effort to enlighten the female masses
through literature (fujin taish ni mukatte keimteki na yakuwari o toran to suru).19 In this
second phase, non-literary topics included a series of articles analysing love and marriage, the concubine system, prostitution and birth control (3:510); and a series on
notable women, beginning with Eve and moving through Sappho and Cleopatra to
women in the French Revolution (3:39).
Although the ction had been moved to the back, it continued to account for a
substantial amount of each issue. Furthermore, the journal promoted the idea of
literature as an international phenomenon that could be used to unite women as a
group. This had been part of the strategy of Seit and Nyonin Geijutsu. Both used articles
about literary feminists and translations of their work to construct a broader understanding of womens role in society and foster a sense of solidarity between women
regardless of national borders, thus undermining the narrow nationalism promoted by
Matsuda was rst arrested in 1926 while participating in a May Day demonstration not long after she
had arrived in Tokyo from Akita prefecture. She was arrested again in the notorious 15 March 1928
roundups; in 1935 her poetry collection was banned. Hirabayashi joined the Proletarian Writers League
in 1930 and was arrested for her activism. Okada, Kaze ni mukatta, 151153, 200.
18
These articles were written by men. However, contributions from men remained minimal and, with the
exception of translations, the journal did not publish ction or poetry by men.
19
Kamichika, Kantgo, 2:9, 7. These one-page commentaries began in March 1935 (2:3) and appeared
at the front of almost every issue until September 1936 (3:9).
17

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Fujin Bungei and Radical Womens Fiction

the state and the ideology that conned women to a domestic role. Fujin Bungei
published articles on Pearl Buck (18921973), Agnes Smedley (18921950), Virginia
Woolf (18821941), George Sand (18041876), Colette (18731954) and Rosa
Luxemburg (18711919), as well as serialised translations of novels by Alexandra
Roub-Jansky (1899?) and Helena Bobiska (18871968). There is also a ve-part
series on international women writers (2:15); a three-part series featuring the translation of works by contemporary female American poets with brief biographical details
(4:46); and an article on German woman writers and the Nazi party (2:9).
Kamichika was also concerned to maintain a prole for Japanese womens literature,
which was vitally important as women were still largely neglected by the more widely
circulated radical publications and the literary world remained one that was very much
dominated by men. The histories of Seit and Nyonin Geijutsu were outlined in the
transcript of a lecture given by Kamichika at the Kanda YWCA entitled Fujin to bunka
und (Women and the Cultural Movement) (3:56), and the journal frequently
included reviews of works by women who had written for the journal as well as
advertisements for new publications by women, upcoming book launches, lectures
and the like. In this way, the journal was able to create a sense of a community of
female writers who had something signicant to contribute to the literature of the day.
There is no evidence of the journal moving towards a more insular or nationalistic
stance or attempting to appease the state authorities. If anything, its radical oppositional
stance increased in a variety of ways. It broadened the scope of the journal from
literature to social, political and economic issues; opposed the state-sanctioned view
that it was womens patriotic duty to full the domestic role of mother and housewife;
and continued to provide informed opinion on international politics. Articles in the nal
volume (JanuaryAugust 1937) include an update on the Spanish Civil War (4:1); an
article about Japanese women in the labour movement (4:4); an article criticising the
Nazi regimes oppression of women in Germany, particularly in relation to their
emphasis on womens domestic role (4:6); and an article which is openly critical of
the rising militarism in Japan, analysing the political motivation behind the formation of
the Womens Defence League (4:7). This volume also featured a serialised translation of
a work by the Soviet novelist Panteleimon Romanov (18841938) (4:46). Right up
until the nal issue, the journal maintained a lively mixture of literature, commentary
and discussion about contemporary politics and society, providing a rare voice within
the media asserting that different solutions were possible to those being sanctioned and
promoted by the Japanese state.
Kamichika clearly saw literature as vital to maintaining this oppositional voice, and
was particularly intent on ensuring that womens concerns continued to be heard. The
social function of literature is explored in articles such as Gendai shsetsu to kazoku
mondai (Contemporary Fiction and the Problem of the Family), and Tenkki to
bungaku no moraritei (The Era of tenk and Literary Morality) (3:2); Renai to jiy:
Kikuchi Kan no Renai to kekkon no sho (Love and Freedom: On Kikuchi Kans Love
and Marriage), and Rusukin joseikan no ichibu (Ruskin on Women) (3:4); and
Bungaku ni awarareta seidtoku no atarashiki shihy (New Directions in Sexual
Morality as Expressed in Literature) (3:8). The vital role that the cultural arts could
play in continuing the struggle to improve the status of women was emphasised by
Kamichika right up until the end. As she states in an article she wrote in July 1937 for
the fourth anniversary issue:

Angela Coutts

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A cultural crisis (bunka kiki) is ever approaching and threatens to engulf us like
a huge wave. There is a real danger that if we neglect the situation of women,
we will be embroiled in an increasingly retrograde state of affairs. Resisting the
current climate is impossible unless we women make a positive effort to
educate and inform ourselves. The commercial nature of mainstream journalism means that it is powerless, [and] therefore today more than ever it is
essential that we have our own publications.20
Thus, although Kamichika underplays her own radicalism in her autobiography, perhaps because so many people that she knew were arrested while she was not, her vital
role in providing a forum for dissent and a place for women to support one another
should not be overlooked.

Feminism and the Social Role of Literature

The concept of journals run by and for women had been controversial in Japan ever
since the publication of Seit. The debate had raged in Nyonin Geijutsu, leading to an
eventual split in the editorial team between the anarchists who left to form their own
journal Fujin Sensen (Womens Front, 19301931) and the Bolsheviks who stayed,
steering the journal towards a Marxist perspective and ending the women-only policy.21
Kamichika clearly felt the need to defend her decision to launch Fujin Bungei as a
womens journal, as indicated in her article Bungaku ni okeru feminizumu
(Feminism in Literature) published in October 1934 (1:4). Here she attempts to
reconcile the opinions of the opposing camps by stating that Fujin Bungei is a strand
in a much broader social, political and economic movement designed to bring about a
more equal and just society. She asserts that while some might contend that womenonly journals serve to increase sexual discrimination as they perpetuate the idea that
there is some kind of inherent difference between writing by women and writing by men,
women still need their own groups so as to develop their full potential:
It is not that we are inferior to men, but due to the fact that socially and
educationally what is available to women to enable us to pursue literary knowledge is signicantly inferior, we have yet to display our full potential in the eld
of the arts. The movement towards equality by and for women must work
patiently and resolutely on two fronts: the reformation of society and the
development of our own abilities.22
She also points to the fact that mainstream literary journals tend to place all female
writers in the same category, which means that they are competing in a very narrow
eld. Thus to offer a journal for women has two positive outcomes: more opportunities
for women to publish, and a forum for women to hone their literary skills.23

Kamichika, Yonshnen, 12.

Coutts, Gender and Literary Production, 175185; Frederick, Turning Pages, 137177; Ogata, Nyonin
Geijutsu no sekai, 91141. For a discussion of the nature of these debates, see Tsurumi, Visions of
Women, and Mackie, Creating Socialist Women, 148150.
22
Kamichika, Bungaku ni okeru, 8283.
23
Ibid., 83.
20
21

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Fujin Bungei and Radical Womens Fiction

Kamichikas belief that literature should be of high quality was related to both artistic
and political concerns. She perceived creative ction as an enabling strategy and therefore felt that it was important for women to learn how to write well as this would allow
them to give voice to their needs and desires and to communicate them in a convincing
fashion to others. The relationship between ideologically driven literature and artistic
merit had been an important topic of debate in Japan for well over a decade and the
cause of much dispute.24 The second section of Kamichikas article, written in the form
of an open letter to a certain T, takes on the issue of the role of the Proletarian Writers
League (Sakka Dmei) in providing guidelines to writers. While Kamichika is clearly in
favour of politically informed writing, supporting the idea that literature could enable
the proletarian movement to regain a foothold within the masses, she expresses her
reservations about the methods used to date. Her chief concerns are with the narrowness
of the debate and the use of prescriptive slogans. She feels that the pressure on writers to
be political activists may well be detrimental to the quality of the literature produced,
due to the difculty of nding time to write while also trying to gain an understanding of
ideology by attending political meetings.25
This article is important for understanding where Kamichika placed herself and Fujin
Bungei in the key debates preoccupying radical women of the era. Women had always
held an ambivalent position in relation to the male intellectuals of the left, who had very
little interest in gender politics and tended to exploit sexually women who joined their
movements.26 Many were torn between alignment with a Marxist ideology, and simple
identication with the masses, and pursuit of particular causes that needed to be fought
separately such as female suffrage. Given the specic discrimination that Japanese
women suffered in terms of their disenfranchisement and the strictures of the ie system
which denied them basic rights under the law, the notion of a subject position was
always a difcult one. This was compounded by the fact that the leftist ideology
regarded individualism as bourgeois and required those who engaged in the political
struggle to subjugate their individual needs and desires to those of the masses. This
remained problematic for women who essentially had no individual identity in the rst
place, and whose struggle involved trying to create a sense of self-hood under social,
political and cultural circumstances that denied them autonomy. Much of the ction
published in Fujin Bungei is concerned with this dilemma, and in the section below I
discuss three stories that explore the use of leftist political ideology in the construction of
the modern female subject.

Radical Feminist Literature in Fujin Bungei

The women whose contributions formed the backbone of the ction in Fujin Bungei had
all been activist writers involved in the PLM and had been part of the drive to form
writing circles in the workplace as a means of radicalisation, a technique which was
based on Soviet models.27 The contributions of female activists to this process and their
literary output deserve a lot more attention if we are to achieve a more nuanced
Karlsson details this in Kurahara Korehito.
Kamichika, Bungaku ni okeru, 86.
26
Coutts, Imagining Radical Women, 33034; Loftus, Telling Lives, 6973, 24851; Mackie, Creating
Socialist Women, 137. Karlsson notes that the August 1930 congress of the Protern in Moscow was aware
that more needed to be done in Japan to radicalise women workers; see Karlsson, United Front, 43.
27
Karlsson outlines the ideology behind the formation of writing circles in United Front.
24
25

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understanding of politically informed literature after the collapse of the PLM.28 The
stories that I discuss here are by three such women, Hirabayashi Eiko, Asai Hanako
(19031972) and Matsuda Tokiko.29 Their works are of particular interest because they
explore in literary form many of the issues that motivated Kamichika to launch Fujin
Bungei. Not only do they offer a female perspective on leftist ideology and the practical
implementation of policies such as writing circles, they also document the struggle that
women underwent to construct a subjectivity as politically active beings and explore the
relationship between the creative process and female subjectivity.
Keiei (The Long and Short of It, 1934) by Matsuda is the most readily recognisable
as what might be considered proletarian literature. The story takes place in a police
interrogation room where a female activist, Miyo, is being forced to write a confession
about her involvement in radicalising workers through a writing circle. As Miyo attempts
to write something to secure her release, she recalls the events that led up to her arrest,
reecting on her political life. The activities of the writing circle are presented in a
positive, possibly idealistic manner, with factory workers animatedly debating each
others writing, apparently aware of the role that ideology can play in literature to
provoke activism. They also discuss how publication of their writing in the party
organ (Sakka Dmei no kikanshi) has been used to spread their cause to workers outside
of their own factory.30
Not everything is positive, however: the fact that the police were able to intimidate
group members into betraying Miyo means that her attempts at radicalisation have not
been entirely successful. She reects on her lack of knowledge about how to run the
circle and her failure to foster political commitment from the workers, who were willing
to become involved in strike action to reap short-term benets but would not commit to
regular attendance of the circle in order to heighten their political awareness. She also
reects on the difculties of radicalising women, blaming herself for not being able to
reach the wife of one of the key members of the circle, the one who caves in and
confesses when the police come to search her home. The woman and her husband are
brought in for interrogation to the police station, where Miyo is made to witness their
abject apologies. The woman is described as wearing poor, thin clothing and having a
baby strapped to her back; she sobs uncontrollably as she bows over and over again in
fearful deference to the police.31 Miyo regrets the fact that although the womans
husband would take home copies of the movements journal for women (puroha no
fujin zasshi), he would not allow her to come to the writing circle because it was too far
from where they lived and she had a young child.32 Moreover, Miyo herself has faced
the dilemma of being a mother, recalling with a sense of guilt how, in order to devote
herself to radicalising workers, she left her children with her parents in the impoverished
countryside where they are likely to go hungry.33
28

After the round-up of radicals in March 1932, many of the activists who remained outside of prison
were women left to continue the political struggle and raise children, often under severely nancially
constrained circumstances.
29
Hirabayashi Eiko and Matsuda Tokiko contributed to the rst issue and continued to have a strong
presence. Matsudas novel Inakamono (Country Folk) was one of the journals major literary offerings,
being serialised over 10 issues of volume two. Asais story Nukarumi no haru (Muddy Spring) which
also appeared in volume two, was nominated for the rst Akutagawa Prize.
30
Matsuda, Keiei, 5254.
31
Ibid., 56.
32
Ibid., 57.
33
Ibid., 58.

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While Miyo feels some resentment towards her betrayers given her own sacrices, in
this story the enemy is clearly the repressive state and their agents the secret police. This
is reected in the fact that it is an interrogator who criticises Miyo for neglecting her
children and derides her attempts to radicalise the workers through the writing circle,
saying, You go to ignorant workers and think that you can turn those fellows into
writers with your lectures. And you cant even bring up your own children.34 It is also
the interrogators who take a cynical attitude towards her commitment to political
literature; one berates her for making the lives of ordinary people difcult by dragging
them into politics, while another adds:
If that kind of thing really bothered her, she couldnt be in that so-called
movement of hers. You know what she gets out of it? Shes doing all right for
herself. Shes already an esteemed proletarian writer and you know what
shell do? Shell take this experience, write some fancy piece of literature about
it and make herself some money isnt that right?35
Although Matsuda assigns a derisory voice to the interrogators, making the struggle one
between an upright progressive idealist and a backward repressive state, there are
indications that womens relationship to activism is more complex than mens, both
because of their responsibility for children and also because of social isolation arising
from their lack of opportunities for education and radicalisation.
The complexity and ambivalence of the role of the female activist-writer is developed
further in Hirabayashis story Hagukumu mono (Nurturing, 1934) in which Tamiko, a
member of a political cultural group (bunka dantai), struggles to balance her roles as
wife and mother, activist, writer and worker. She has to contend with both increasing
police surveillance and her husbands scorn, while ghting her own doubts about the
political methods that she is being asked to implement. As with Matsudas story, the
difculty of politicising women is a key theme. Here it is explored through Tamikos
sister, Miyo, who has been sent by the family to nd work because in their economically
depressed village even working as a factory girl is no longer an option. The vast gap that
exists between the countryside and Tokyo is portrayed in Miyos attitude towards
Tamikos womens group (fujin iinkai no kaig); she is described as looking at them as
if they were animals in a zoo due to their short hair, western-style clothing and urban
mannerisms. After one meeting, she confesses to her sister that she would like to
become one of those socialists as they are all so stylish (haikara) and that none of
them seems at all like Tamiko, whom she refers to as a country bumpkin (yabonakakk
no hito). Tamiko feels belittled by the remark, detecting what she perceives as piteous
contempt in her sisters voice, and is dismayed that she seems to have completely
misunderstood the whole point of the group.36
The womens group creates further rifts in the family as Tamikos middle-class,
university educated husband Senkichi, who took on the role of her mentor when they
were rst married, resents the women, dismissing them as petit bourgeois internationalists; he claims they look down on genuine peasant workers (rdsha nmin) such as
Tamiko and her sister.37 She in turn berates him for refusing to support her politically
34

Ibid., 59.
Ibid., 57.
36
Hirabayashi, Hagukumu mono, 63.
37
Ibid., 634.
35

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Angela Coutts

despite his supposed concern about class (kaikyteki ryshin).38 Tamiko is also ashamed
of how he treats her in front of the women, who have advised her that he needs to be
educated about sexism (teish no kyiku), and she longs for the kind of mutual respect
and trust that some of them seem to have in their relationships. This leads to an
argument about the possibility of separation, but Tamiko realises that if she left
Senkichi, it would be impossible to be politically active and bring up their children.39
This story highlights how poverty is responsible for the migration of women from
rural areas, and how urban women are attempting to challenge the family structure and
the nature of husband-wife relationships. It also explores the role that ideology plays in
the construction of modern female subjectivity, not only in Tamikos struggles to
educate her family about feminism and the problems of gender and class that emerge
between husband and wife, but also through her involvement with the PLM and her
attempts to set up a writing circle. Unlike Matsudas story, where the negative voice
remains with the repressive state, in Hagukumu mono things are more complex, with
Hirabayashi presenting a rather different picture of the writing circles, as well as a less
idealistic portrayal of both the workers and the activists. Tamiko struggles to maintain
her cultural group at a small factory in the Koto district of Tokyo for various reasons,
one of which is that the factory is a three-hour walk from where she lives and the lack of
money for public transport necessitates many hours away from home. Rather than
supporting her, Senkichi becomes increasingly annoyed with the time this takes away
from him and their two young children. Furthermore, he accuses her of using meaningless jargon, such as dialectic (benshh) and creative method (ssaku hh), to
sound self important and derides her for thinking that the writing circles are going to do
any good. He criticises the movement for expecting a poor woman with two young
children to be able to take on so much.40
This critical attitude is not restricted to Senkichi; Tamiko herself is depicted as having
doubts about the movements policies. This is demonstrated in her puzzlement over
how to implement the new slogan, The dialectical unication of creative and organisational activism (ssaku katsud to kumishiki katsud to no benshhteki titsu). Tamiko
faces some basic problems with this. Firstly, a clamp-down on organisational activities
has meant that meetings can no longer take place at the factory, so it is increasingly
difcult to nd a venue and persuade workers to attend. Secondly, even when she is able
to hold a meeting, the workers only read popular magazines (Kingu ya fujin zasshi) and
novels (taish shsetsu), so it is difcult give them concrete examples of the kind of
literature they should be writing.41 Meanwhile, Tamiko is unable to produce some
examples of her own for them to follow as she has no time to write; the outcome is
that she feels as if she is unable to full either element of the slogan. Tamikos frustration about what the political organisation expects of its members culminates in a scene
where a young male activist from party headquarters comes to give a talk.42 The rst
thing that Tamiko notices about him is how well dressed he is in relation to herself and
the workers of her cultural group; the second thing is that the leftwing jargon he uses is
both intimidating and incomprehensible (muzukashii sakyokugo). The artistic merit of
political literature is also challenged when Tamiko asks the male activist how it is
38

Ibid.,
Ibid.,
40
Ibid.,
41
Ibid.,
42
Ibid.,
39

64.
7172.
65, 69.
68.
7477.

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Fujin Bungei and Radical Womens Fiction

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possible for a wife and mother who supports her family by working in poorly paid
irregular employment to nd time to write anything at all, let alone something of literary
value. She is silenced by the activist, who reprimands her for questioning the ofcial line
and offers purported examples of workers who manage to put in eight-hour shifts, attend
political meetings and also write.43 The story makes clear the discrepancy that exists
between the organisational ideals and the real experience on the ground, particularly in
relation to the demands made on women. It also highlights the frustration of those
wishing to write politically relevant literature but lacking time to devote themselves to
the task, due to the demands of their domestic lives and the hours spent supporting an
organisation that provides them with little real guidance.
The uneasy relationship between the practical realities of womens lives and the
political ideology of the PLM is a theme developed in Asais story Kagirinaki michi
(The Never-ending Road, 1936), which concerns an activist couple, Chino and
Tatsukichi. For the ve years that Tatsukichi has been in prison, Chino has been living
in the slums of Tokyo with their son, scraping a living as a kamishibai (picture-card
show) storyteller. The story opens when Tatsukichi has been released from prison but is
conned to bed due to paralysis, which appears to be both medical and psychological in
origin. In the few days that the couple have together before Tatsukichi disappears on
another political mission, they argue about ideology and the future of the movement.
Tatsukichi is an idealist who has maintained his political resolve while in prison, whereas
Chino has struggled in the outside world with the need for emotional fullment and the
tangible problems of hunger and poverty. Tatsukichis political enlightenment and
ideological commitment are portrayed as making him a more developed human being
than Chino, to whom he has given the nickname Penpengusa (shepherds purse) from a
poem that she wrote when she was a factory girl:
On a rubbish dump
Blooms the colourless, odourless shepherds purse
Someone said: you are not a ower.
Someone said: you are not a woman,
You poor girl who works in the lth.44
On his release from prison, Tatsukichi is disappointed that, despite the passage of time,
Chino has not grown into a woman and remains undeveloped both physically and
politically. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the reason Chino has not grown
is because the ideology has failed to feed her. Although actual physical hunger is a
problem both of them face, metaphorical hunger is the real issue: whether ideology can
feed the needs of the activists and the masses, whether it can put re in their bellies to
ignite revolution. Ideology has not been able to sustain Chino through the difcult
times, and lack of spiritual nourishment together with a meagre diet have taken her to
the verge of physical and emotional collapse.
Asai draws on the spiritual and ideological dimensions of hunger to criticise the
Japanese state when Chino complains to her husband that After ten years of struggle
we have fallen into despair with the collapse of the Japanese movement. Even though the
people are still hungry, their starvation is more emphatically denied than ever.45 Yet this
43

Ibid., 7576.
Asai, Kagirinaki michi, 137. The phrase penpengusa ga haeru means to be dilapidated.
45
Ibid., 140.
44

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Angela Coutts

concept is also used to critique the limits of ideology. To guide Chino, her resolute
husband cites the rational nature of ideology, reminding her that We must think about
things in their entirety and regard the process of development as being a dialectical one.
While Chino can understand on an intellectual level that a political analysis of her
situation will enable her to pull herself out of the quagmire of starvation (kiga no
nukarumi), and that this starvation is the avour of the age (gendai no jidai no aji), in the
long term this approach is not emotionally satisfying and she weakens again, stating that
she simply has no strength left.46
Chinos impatience with ideology and her frustration that it does not yield tangible
results are also present in her struggles to write literature that is both politically rigorous
and personally fullling. In the emotional climax to the tale, Chino confronts the
proletarian writer who has been acting as her mentor but has been highly critical of
her stories. She is infuriated when he tells her that her work would be stronger if she
could keep her emotions in check and be more objective and detached, reacting with a
vehemence that surprises even herself:
Is that what literature is all about? Well, then it isnt something that I can do.
Poor people cant create that kind of thing. Are you telling me that something
good will emerge if I write in a detached manner and suppress subjective
opinion? If I write well, Ill make money and all my troubles will come to an
end? But when youre poor, someone like me with no money, you dont
possess the mental state needed to write a good novel. Insisting on objectivity
is preposterous!47
After this outburst, Chino is resigned to the fact that she will remain a weed forever: I
am not noble. Nor am I a representative of the ne proletariat (Erakumo nai. Rippa na
puroretariya demo nai).48 This despair is yet another reection in the story of the
difculties of reconciling ideology with the physical realities of ones own life, and
how this can lead to loss of identity rather than acting as a guiding principle. Yet it is
ideology that wins out; Tatsukichi remains noble (erai) to the end and shows true
proletarian resolve by accepting another assignment, despite his weakened physical
state. His fortitude (fukutsusa) miraculously transforms Chinos pathological weakness
(kiseki no y ni Chino no byteki na yowai kimochi), giving her the strength to carry on.
Not only this, he urges her to keep on writing, and she promises in return to mature as a
person (ningenteki nimo seich suru). At the end of the story, she buys two cosmos
owers, one for their sons desk and one for her own, a symbol of hope and determination that she can keep on writing.49

Stories of the Aftermath

In launching Fujin Bungei, Kamichika was afrming her belief that the arts were an
important medium for developing modern female subjectivity and fostering radicalism.
In her Foreword to the October 1935 issue, she asserts that the literary world is mistaken
46

Ibid.,
Ibid.,
48
Ibid.,
49
Ibid.,
47

141.
149.
150.
150151.

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in thinking that social and political issues should not be tackled in works of ction,
stating that this is the biggest reason why literature has lost the interest and esteem of
the masses.50 Furthermore, she wanted the journal to play a part in developing skilled
writers with an awareness and understanding of contemporary events and the ability to
describe convincingly people living in a world surrounded by these social phenomena so
as to enlighten and inspire a wide range of readers. As she states in the Foreword to the
November 1935 issue:
We Japanese women should apply a little self examination in relation to understanding the signicance of operating socially and viewing ourselves as social
beings. We need to understand that this is the link to improving the quality of
the literature that we write and obtaining the love and admiration of the masses
[] It is not possible to write works with the power to move us through their
commitment to justice and moral conscience if we ignore the lives of the
ordinary people.51
The three works of ction discussed here are certainly attempts to view women as social
beings. But should they be read as examples of proletarian realism in which attempts are
made to portray living people in their total complexity in accordance with the slogans of
the PLM, or are they personal stories about individual womens lives written in a more
confessional (shishsetsu) mode?52 I contend that they lie somewhere in between, and
read them as literary explorations of the very literary movement that the PLM was trying
to instigate through the writing circles while being at the same time products of the
writing circles themselves. More than anything, these stories are concerned with the use
of the medium of ction to gain an understanding of what it means to be human at a
particular time in history; they explore what it means to be not only a woman, but also a
politically active woman. In so doing, they reect on the impact of PLM ideology on
both creating ction and constructing an identity. In other words, these stories can be
read as interrogating the relationship between political ideology, creative ction and the
creation of the self.
Matsudas story is the most positive in its assessment, showing the writing circles to
be effective and inspiring, and ideology continuing to be an important guiding principle
for her protagonist. She remains politically resolute, and even after being returned to her
police station cell, she focuses on the beam of light that shines in through the tiny
window, a metaphor of hope often used by proletarian writers.53 Yet there is an element
of self-reection in the story that takes it beyond being a formulaic piece of proletarian
ction. This lies in the interrogators comment that she will use her political experiences
to advance her own literary career while only bringing trouble to the workers. The fact
that Matsuda does indeed go on to publish a story opens up a question about the role of
the activist writer and the true value of the end product.
In Hirabayashis story, the struggle with the artistic method is more explicitly
described. Tamikos writing circle is not a success, and moreover she nds the ideology
offers little as a guide to either her way of life or her creativity. Doubts about the value of
Kamichika, Kantgo, 2:10.
Kamichika, Kantgo, 2:11.
52
Karlsson discusses the slogan exhorting portrayal of living people and other aspects of proletarian
realism in Kurahara Korehito.
53
Mackie, Creating Socialist Women, 116.
50
51

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literature that is the product of ideology are voiced openly when she says to the young
male activist: If there really are people who are able to labour and organise and create
workers writing (rsaku) then I truly respect them. However, I would like to take a look
at their work. After all, there is a difference between stringing together sentences and
writing good ction.54
Perhaps the biggest challenge comes from Asais work, where Chino reects on the
process of writing political ction and reveals how it has in fact been quite disruptive to
the creation of the self:
She would constantly ask herself, What are the signicant issues when you
write a novel? She tried and tried to write something. She would take up her
pen, turn to her paper and with a ood of enthusiasm would frantically pour
out all her emotions. But when she looked at what she had written, she felt as if
she had been struck with the gory shipwreck of her own creation. She had
thought of herself as strong, but in her writing the true weakness of her
character was starkly revealed: Is this what I really look like? Her work
came across as a wild rant. And no matter how much she tried to improve it,
it still ended up looking as if she had ung her emotions at the page. Trying to
write a novel was like plumbing the depths of her emotions. Although it could
be seen as an opportunity for self-reection, it did not help her grow; the
painful process simply scattered her underfed body and her undernourished
soul in tiny particles.55
This powerful description of the creative process offers an honest confrontation with the
difculties of trying to write ideological ction and a recognition that theory and practice
do not always complement each other. All three stories provide a clear articulation of the
struggles that women went through to maintain a presence in political activism as writers
and organisers and are important for the insight they provide into the lives of women
from this era. Yet they are also provocative accounts of the nal stages of the Proletarian
Literature Movement from a female perspective, adding a new dimension to the relationship between ideology and the creative process.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge a grant from the Japan Foundation Endowment
Committee which made the research for this article possible. She also thanks the
anonymous reviewers for their helpful and insightful feedback.
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