Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the reception of the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich in Japan, particularly during the early post-war period when his works had a catalyzing effect on social movements affiliated with the then powerful Japan Communist Party.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I discuss the reception of the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) in cold war Japan. Before 1945, Shostakovich was known to a small coterie who thought of him as a composer of genius; the New Symphony Orchestra, a forerunner of NHK orchestra, performed his first symphony in 1931. During the post-war period, however, Shostakovich's major symphonic works entered the repertory of orchestras throughout Japan and had an immense impact on Japanese musicians. Furthermore, leftwing movements in Japan welcomed Shostakovich as a revolutionary and popular musician and associated him with opposition to the post-war state. For example, Song of the Forests (Opus 81), a minor oratorio considered one of Shostakovich's "official" works, enjoyed a wide popularity in Japan. After it debuted in Kyoto, choral groups made up of ordinary workers, students and citizens performed the oratorio in 30 cities throughout Japan. In addition, the work had a catalyzing effect on both workplace choruses and the emerging popular protest song movement (utagoe undō) affiliated with the then powerful Japan Communist Party. These works were often performed by striking workers and in ANPO demonstrations opposing American bases in Japan.

While Shostakovich was welcomed as a revolutionary compose during the period of political mobilization in the 1950s, his image in the media changed in the subsequent high growth period as a look at contemporary newspapers suggests. In 1960, shortly after the defeat of the ANPO movement, the new wave film director Ōshima Nagisa released Night and Fog in Japan that casts a retrospective and disillusioned gaze on the ANPO movement. Music plays an essential part in the movie, which features both utagoe protest songs sung by demonstrators and the music of Shostakovich. In a climactic scene of the movie, the film's main characters listen to an extended (eight minute) recording of first movement of Shostakovich's Fifth (Revolution) Symphony. In this scene, rather than inspiring young Japanese to protest, the music serves as a kind of commentary on the personal betrayals and intrigues that undermined the intense political protest of the previous decade.

Paper short abstract:

The Soviet author Boris Pilnyak visited Japan in 1926 and 1932 and published two related travelogues and other short works. This talk discusses Pilnyak's idiosyncratic depiction of Japan, including the political situation and his own reception as representative of the Russian Revolution.

Paper long abstract:

Boris Pilnyak (pen name of Boris Vogau; 1894-38) was the best-traveled Soviet writer of the first decades of Bolshevik rule in Russia. Although he is not much studied today, in the early-to-mid 1920s he was arguably the Soviet Union's top prose author. Pilnyak traveled to Japan twice: in 1926, at the invitation of the Asahi newspaper conglomerate, during a burst of enthusiasm and interest that followed the normalization of relations with between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan that was signed in January, 1925; and in 1932, possibly at the request of Stalin, after relations between the two nations had taken a turn for the worse and while the Japanese economy and social fabric were under considerable stress. Both visits resulted in books about Japan, as well as a few short stories that, like the travel narratives, today might be classified as creative non-fiction. Pilnyak's Japan connections became part of the pretext for Pilnyak's arrest in the fall of 1937 and execution early in 1938: among the accusations leveled against him was espionage for Japan.

Pilnyak's works about Japan are odd, but fascinating works. Banal orientalist clichés and mistaken understandings (sometimes taken from Japan experts) stand side-by-side with strong insights; all have a way of relating to persistent concerns in Pilnyak's poetic world. This is particularly true in his depiction of Japan's political left and the potential for revolution that Pilnyak apprehended--or, as Soviet critics alleged after the first book, ignored--in his writings. Pilnyak was received as representing the Russian Revolution. He was incessantly followed by police and forced to leave the country abruptly during his second visit. Pilnyak's treatment of the political situation in Japan, and of his own situation as representative of the Russian Revolution, speaks as much of the USSR as it does of Japan and is riddled with ironic tensions, especially in his polemics against the Japanese Catholic social activist author Toyohiko Kagawa. Ultimately, politics becomes set in tense opposition to his greater interest in what he saw as distinctive in Japanese culture.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the tension between Meiji Japan's imperial project and the emergence of political idealism and activism inspired by Russia's revolutionary movement. It centers on the writings of Futabatei Shimei and the reformist work of the Heiminsha (People's Society) coterie.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the intersection of Japan's imperial project of the Meiji period (1868-1912) and the emergence of social and political idealism and activism at the turn of the twentieth century, especially in the context of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) and its aftermath. The focus will be Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909; pen name of Hasegawa Tatsunosuke), a writer and intellectual whose unparalleled mastery of Russian language and literature eventuated in a major body of literary translation, fiction, and socio-political writings. It will consider Futabatei's journalistic career, during and after the war with Russia, as Russian affairs specialist with one of Japan's leading daily newspapers, the Asahi shinbun, and the constraints that this position imposed upon him. Futabatei's ambivalent stance vis a vis Meiji Japan's imperial expansionism will be noted, together with his embrace of social reformism and humanitarian movements largely inspired by developments in Russia, in the wake of the war. Of particular interest is Futabatei's translation of Russian fiction— by Tolstoy, Gorky, Garshin, and Andreyev, among others— which channeled a powerfully anti-war message.

Futabatei is positioned within the broader context of the idealism and political activism that marked the late Meiji period (1868-1912), both before and after the Russo-Japanese war. Attention is paid to an important reformist coterie, the Heiminsha (People's Society), and to writers and intellectuals such as Uchida Roan (1868-1929), Uchimura Kanzô (1861-1929), Kôtoku Shûsui (1871-1911), and Tokutomi Roka (1868-1927) who were committed, in their respective ways, to a humanist and reformist agenda. Together with Futabatei, they were cognizant of, and moved by, Russia's revolutionary movement of 1905. Mention is made as well of the contribution of a new cadre of late-Meiji and early-Taishô (1912-26) feminists to Japanese idealism and social reformism.

In conclusion, a comparison is drawn between the late-Meiji work of the Heiminsha group and Futabatei Shimei, and Japan's Proletarian Literary Movement, which emerged in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. This movement, which was directly modeled upon Russia's Proletkult (Proletarian Culture) movement of 1917, inspired wide-ranging literary and artistic production during the 1920s, prior to the militarist suppression of leftist activism.