Synopses & Reviews
In 1862, fifty-one-year-old Matsuo Taseko left her old life behind by traveling to Kyoto, the old imperial capital. Peasant, poet, and local political activist, Taseko had come to Kyoto to support the nativist campaign to restore the Japanese emperor and expel Western "barbarians." Although she played a minor role in the events that led to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, her actions were nonetheless astonishing for a woman of her day. Honored as a hero even before her death, Taseko has since been adopted as a patron saint by rightist nationalists.
In telling Taseko's story, Anne Walthall gives us not just the first full biography in English of a peasant woman of the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), but also fresh perspectives on the practices and intellectual concerns of rural entrepreneurs and their role in the Meiji Restoration. Writing about Taseko with a depth and complexity that has thus far been accorded only to men of that time, Walthall has uncovered a tale that will captivate anyone concerned with women's lives and with Japan's dramatic transition to modernity.
Review
andldquo;For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution is an activist anthology: savvy, vibrant, and engaging. It grabs you, the reader, by the lapels and addresses you directly, with a rare sense of urgency not found in other such collections. This volume is not just welcome; it is an essential guidebook for navigating twentieth-century Japanandrsquo;s literary and political terrain.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Fiction created by and for the working class emerged worldwide in the early twentieth century as a response to rapid modernization, dramatic inequality, and imperial expansion. In Japan, literary youth, men and women, sought to turn their imaginations and craft to tackling the ensuing injustices, with results that captured both middle-class and worker-farmer readers. This anthology is a landmark introduction to Japanese proletarian literature from that period.
Contextualized by introductory essays, forty expertly translated stories touch on topics like perilous factories, predatory bosses, ethnic discrimination, and the myriad indignities of poverty. Together, they show how even intensely personal issues form a pattern of oppression.and#160; Fostering labor consciousness as part of an international leftist arts movement, these writers, lovers of literature, were also challenging the institution of modern literature itself. This anthology demonstrates the vitality of the andldquo;red decadeandrdquo; long buried in modern Japanese literary history.
About the Author
Norma Field retired in 2011 as the Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Chicago. Her books include In the Realm of a Dying Emperor.
Heather Bowen-Struyk is the coeditor of Red Love Across the Pacific and the guest editor for Proletarian Arts in East Asia, a special edition of the journal positions.and#160;
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Personal Is the Political
1 Comrade Taguchiandrsquo;s Sorrow
Kobayashi Takiji
2 Red
Nakamoto Takako
3 The Mother
Wakasugi Toriko
4 A Statement of My Views in Response to Mr. Masamune Hakucho
Aono Suekichi
5 A Chronology of My Life
Kobayashi Takiji
Chapter 2. Labor and Literature
6 The Prostitute
Hayama Yoshiki
7 Apples
Hayashi Fusao
8 Prayer
Sata Ineko
9 Natural Growth and Purposeful Consciousness
Aono Suekichi
10 Going on a Field Trip?
Nakamoto Takako
Chapter 3. The Question of Realism
11 March 15, 1928
Kobayashi Takiji
12 The Linesmen
Kataoka Teppei
13 The Path to Proletarian Realism
Kurahara Korehito
14 On the Tendency of Proletarian Works to Become Formulaic
Hirabayashi Taiko
15 Covering Over the Essence
Sata Ineko
Chapter 4. Children
16 Hell
Kaji Wataru
17 Death of a Cricket
Murayama Kazuko
18 Elephant and Mouse
Murayama Kazuko
19 Tetsuandrsquo;s Story; Or, a Rope around Whose Neck?
Nakano Shigeharu
20 The Question of andldquo;Realityandrdquo; and andldquo;Unrealityandrdquo; in Childrenandrsquo;s Stories
Makimoto Kusuro
Chapter 5. Art as a Weapon
21 Leafleting
Sata Ineko
22 Letter
Kobayashi Takiji
23 Shawl
Tokunaga Sunao
24 The Bulletin Board and the Wall Story
Yi Tong-gyu
25 A Farmer among Farmers
Hosono Kojiro
26 To Qiqihar
Kuroshima Denji
27 A Day at the Factory
Nagano Kayo
28 Our Own Literature Course (1): A Guide to Writing Literary Reportage
Yamada Seizaburo
29 On Wall Stories and andldquo;Shortandrdquo; Short Stories: A New Approach to Proletarian Literature
Kobayashi Takiji
30 A Guide to Fiction Writing: How to Write Stories
Kobayashi Takiji
31 The Achievements of the Creative Writing Movement: An Assessment of Works to Date
Tokunaga Sunao
Chapter 6. Anti-Imperialism and Internationalism
32 Another Battlefront
Matsuda Tokiko
33 Hell of the Starving
Chang Hyok-chu
34 On Antiwar Literature
Kuroshima Denji
Chapter 7. Repression, Recantation, and Socialist Realism
35 Midnight Sun
Murayama Tomoyoshi
36 The Breast
Miyamoto Yuriko
37 Negative Realism: One Direction for Proletarian Literature
Kawaguchi Hiroshi
38 Proletarian Realism and andldquo;Socialist Realismandrdquo;: A Study of Literary Method (1)
Moriyama Kei
39 Socialist Realism or XXX Realism?
Kim Tu-yong
40 Buds That Survive Winter
Miyamoto Yuriko
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Translators