Rethinking Japanese proletarian literature.

This dissertation rereads Japanese proletarian literature in terms that will restore it to broader discussions of literature, society and culture in Japan during the volatile prewar years. In particular, this dissertation is concerned with the way that literary concerns have impinged upon the political and vice versa. The language, images, and the characters of proletarian literature appeal to the reader in ways that treatments of the genre so far have been unable to explain. Through a combination of exegetical close-reading and inquiry into the terms and conditions debated in proletarian literary forums, this dissertation traces the way that such literary issues are in fact doing sometimes unacknowledged political work. This dissertation is a reconsideration of great works of Japanese proletarian literature: Hayama Yoshiki's The Prostitute (Inbaifu, 1925) and Life on the Sea (Umi ni ikuru hitobito, 1926), Tokunaga Sunao's The Sunless Street (Taiyo no nai machi, 1929), Kobayashi Takiji's The Factory Ship (Kani kosen, 1929), and Miyamoto Yuriko's The Family of Koiwai (Koiwai no ikka, 1934). These works were some of the most widely read and influential to be published during the boom of proletarian literature. Moreover, they appeal to the reader in complex ways that provide rich sites for investigating literary issues and for challenging the reader's sensibility regarding the distinctions between politics and literature. This dissertation investigates the literary and political issues of character representation, literary style and genre, and the relationship of the author to the work, issues which, it turns out, have political implications not addressed in cold war partisan treatments of proletarian literature. For example, how should the proletariat be represented? How do sex and gender relations affect the representation of the proletariat? How should the proletarian masses be apprehended as readers of proletarian literature? When and/or why does it matter what social class the author comes from? Proletarian literature was being composed, published and read in a context of complex literary and political issues. This dissertation restores historical and literary context, investigates questions of language and expression, and interrogates the social, cultural and literary dynamics whereby something is evaluated as great proletarian literature.PhDAsian literatureComparative literatureLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129288/2/3000927.pd