The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 16 | Issue 4 | Number 1 | Article ID 5113 | Feb 15, 2018

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“Art as a Weapon”: Japanese Proletarian Literature on theCentenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution

Heather Bowen-Struyk, Norma Field

Introduction

One hundred years have passed since theBolshevik Revolution of 1917. It’s surely one ofthe signal events of the modern era, a projectwhose significance for humanity is hardlyexhausted by its history, including thedisastrous, tragic history of Stalinism. Ascholarly and curatorial boom in works andexhibits in the centenary reflecting on theimpact of the revolution suggests it is notforgotten, even in the former first world, but itslegacy remains clouded behind a veil of ColdWar hysteria.1 What complicates matters is thatthe emot ions , and even some o f theapparatuses, of that half-remembered,misremembered history are being mobilized inthe prosecution of the War on Terror.2 It mayalso be that the mad fury of our present makesus too impatient to open ourselves to theaspirations driving that massive transformationof a society still in the midst of war, itspopulation mostly illiterate, desperately coldand hungry, in the throes of awakening to whatwas their due as human beings. But it’sprecisely because of the misery and dreadproduced by unbridled neoliberalism andreckless militarism, along with unmistakablesigns of ecological devastation that we, in fact,need to learn about a historic effort to pursue adifferent vision of modernity—one that insistedon universal literacy and health care, genderand racial equality, and the reimagining ofsociety such that it would both enable andexpress those goals.

Screenshot of “Revolution Every Day”website, special exhibit at the SmartMuseum of Art, University of Chicago,September 14, 2017-January 28, 2018. Leftto right): Sergei Sen’kin, Let’s Make theWorkshops of Factories and PlantsGreen! 1931, lithograph on paper (poster),57 1/2 x 40 1/6 in. (1460 x 1020 mm), Neb o l t a i ! C o l l e c t i o n ; V a l e n t i n aKulagina, International Working Women'sDay Is the Fighting Day of the Proletariat,1931, lithograph on paper (poster), 39 5/8x 27 5/8 in. (1100 x 725 mm), Ne boltai!Collection; G. Komarov, The 8th of March:Woman Worker and Peasant, Enlist inLenin’s Party, ca. 1930, lithograph onpaper (poster), 40 1/4 x 27 3/4 in. (1028 x705 mm), Ne boltai! Collection; MariiaFeliksovna Bri-Bein, Woman Worker andWoman Collective Farmer, Join the Ranksof the Red Cross and Red Crescent, 1934,lithograph on paper, 40 1/8 x 28 in. (1019x 712 mm), Ne boltai! Collection.

The very fact of the Russian Revolutiongalvanized working people and intellectualsaround the world, even as their governments

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did their military best to topple the fledglingstate. The Japanese government outdid theirEuropean and American Allies, leaving asizable army in Siberia until 1922, two yearsafter the others had withdrawn. From thisalone might be gauged the fierceness of therepression directed at the growing numbers ofmen and women, in cities and the countryside,joining unions, beginning to think of themselvesas socialists and even as communists, thoughparties bearing those names would neverbecome legal in imperial Japan. Inspired bydevelopments in the Soviet Union and seekingties with comrades the world over, includingthe Korean colony, Japanese organizedfuriously, starting up groups for atheists,Esperantists, musicians, filmmakers, artists,daycare activists—all crowned by the term“puroretaria,” meaning that the unpropertiedproletariat (also “musansha” in Sino-Japanese)had distinctive and necessary contributions tom a k e . T h e c u l t u r a l m o v e m e n t w a sindispensable to the political movement, andliterature was at the heart of the culturalmovement. The movement, always subject toruthless repression, would be shut down by themid-1930s; its literature would be met withbourgeois condescension in postwar prosperity.But in the short time they had, the youngwomen and men in the movement took onvirtually every sphere of society, honing theirwrit ing in response to new real i t ies,simultaneously imagining and organizing for afuture for which they were prepared tosacrifice a great deal, including imprisonment,torture, and death. It’s the literature producedduring this breathtaking “red decade” of1925-35 that is introduced in our anthology,For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: AnAnthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature,from which the selection that follows, “Art as aWeapon,” is taken.

LEFT: Cover, For Dignity, Justice, andRevolution: An Anthology of JapaneseProletarian Literature, edited by HeatherBowen-Struyk and Norma Field, Universityof Chicago Press: 2016

RIGHT: Bowen-Struyk and Field at booktalk, East Asia by the Book! CEAS Author

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Talks at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore,Hyde Park, February 29, 2017.

The representation of reality, proletarianwriters theorized, was skewed towards thosewith privilege who sought at all cost tomaintain that privilege. The key essayundergirding their work was KuraharaKorehito’s 1929 “Path to Proletarian Realism,”a remarkable brief history of modern literature,which argued that what was called “literature”was really bourgeois literature, reproducingthe individualist moral universe of thebourgeoisie and not of humanity in general.Without discarding the resources accumulatedby bourgeois realism, proletarian literatureneeded to “rebel against the method thatdictates that we must always return to‘individual essence’ when considering socialproblems, and must emphasize instead one thatcompels us to strive to consider the societaldimensions of the problems of individuals.”3 Italso needed to mobilize the resources ofliterature in the activity that is its specialstrength, the instilling of consciousness. This,of course, would require changes in content,methodology, and form.

In our Anthology, “Art as a Weapon” ispreceded by chapters titled “The Personal Isthe Political,” “Labor and Literature,” “TheQuestion of Realism,” and “Children”; it isfollowed by two chapters, “Anti-imperialismand Internationalism” and “Repression,Recantation, and Socialist Realism.” In each,several complete works of fiction are followedby critical writings, usually excerpted. Wewanted to show women and men, colonizedsubjects included, tackling scenes andstructures crying to be communicated andtransformed. Accordingly, well-known writerssuch as Kobayashi Takiji appear in less familiarroles as critic-theorist and short story writer, asin the selection at hand, but also as the authorof the landmark “March 15, 1928,” hithertoavailable in English only in a disfiguring,

truncated translation.4

Original publication of Kobayashi Takiji’s“March 15, 1928.” Visible are the x’smeant to obscure and yet suggestobjectionable words and phrases. Alsovisible are the blank spaces 8, 9, and 10lines from the right, where words havebeen removed altogether.

Nakano Shigeharu, whose fame extended wellinto the postwar era, appears in what may beour most surprising chapter, “Children.”“Tetsu’s Story” is a lively coming-of-age,coming-to-political-consciousness account ofthe son of desperately poor tenant farmers. Theyoung intellectuals of the proletarian literaturemovement show us that the children of theindustrial and agricultural proletariat, withtheir early induction into the labor force, hadonly the barest access to what modern ideologyprojects as a universal phase cal led

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“childhood.” In the case of girls, childhoodcould be terminated even earlier by sex work.And of course, the threat of sexual predationaccompanied girls on their way to womanhoodon the factory floor, as traced in a remarkableshort story by Matsuda Tokiko, whose workappears in English for the first time. “AnotherBattlefront” (included in the chapter “Anti-imperialism and Internationalism”) depicts theimpact of impending war on the workplacethrough the viewpoint of a young woman. Thefamiliar oppressions of speedups and sexualharassment are exacerbated by chemicalhazards entailed in the production of rubber(essential to waging war) and intensifiedsurveillance, which the protagonist and hercomrades contest by cultivating habits ofsolidarity, including support for soldiersneedlessly exposed to the suffering endemic toimperialist adventurism.

“Art as a Weapon” showcases some of thepioneering efforts of, for the most part,intellectual writers, addressing the issue ofform and content, vigorously debated inmodernist aesthetic circles. Even as their workappealed to a considerable bourgeoisreadership—it was experimental andthoroughly modern—the proletarian writersunderstood that they had to learn to write foroverworked and undereducated people withlittle time and no change to spare. They had toavoid the pitfall of “crappy old sermonsordering people to ‘do this and do that!’” andinstead produce “the sort of work that hits yousmack where it counts.”5 (For more on thisissue, see the essay by Kobayashi Takiji in thisselection.) In this practice, they were buildingon a half-dozen years of debate and had thebenefit of models invented and developedelsewhere, such as the “wall story,” featured inthis selection. (The only work in our Anthologynot originally written in Japanese is a Korean“wall story” that reads like an origin tale of thegenre.) They wanted new writers as well asnew readers, and formed writers’ circles toencourage work from people who had never

imagined themselves as writers of any sort. Wehave included in this selection, for example, awork of reportage published by a factorywoman. As you can see in the images providedbelow, it was dignified with its own illustrationlike the works of core members of themovement and paired with a critique by asenior member. Literary Gazette, althoughfrequently banned, took the cultivation ofworker-farmer writers seriously.

Today, on both sides of the Pacific—indeed,around the world—we are pressed to be fearfulof certain others and promised prosperitythrough the expanded privatization of socialgoods. Over the past year, especially in theU.S., we’ve been inundated by reports ofhor r i f i c i n jus t i ce , exacerba ted byenvironmental catastrophe, delivered alongwith fresh batches of fake news designed todivide the many who suffer from job, housing,and health precarity; addiction; sexualharassment; domestic violence; educationalinequality; the ever-present menace of gunsand now, once again, nuclear war. All this,combined with grotesque concentration ofwealth, as if in mocking testament to thedictum, “The opposite of poverty is notwealth—it is justice.”6

The writers in our Anthology were working inwhat they understood to be a pre-revolutionarysociety, replete with the harsh features ofrapidly advancing capitalism. They had thehistoric luxury of believing, in the face ofoverwhelming repression, that a just societywas in the making. They didn’t think literaturealone would get them there, so they gaveunstintingly to various activities, but literaturewas what they loved. So they embraced thatgrand instrument of modernity as a tool forgrasping reality, for themselves and forhitherto excluded others, and then forimagining and creating a more just future.

We know their hopes were crushed, the fruitsof their labor buried under mounting reaction

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and the devastation of war. We know that withthe end of the war, their phoenix had a rebirth;that its flight was constrained by the revival ofreactionary forces under the US Occupationand then by the security treaty regime; that itscolors were dulled in the depoliticizationaccompanying a prosperity whose definingquality was access to consumer goods; thatfinally, it would be recalled, occasionally, withcondescension.

But what can such dismissal of a past struggle,of this past struggle, yield us?

A 1999 video of a young Albanian’s interviewwith his mother provides a parable of sorts inresponse.7 Anri Sala, while studying film inParis, comes upon an old reel of his mother as ayoung Communist militant. He shows it to hismother, Valdet, who is disappointed that thesoundtrack is missing. Tracking down thosewho might know either how to retrieve the tapeor remember the words uttered only elicitspainful dismissals of the revolution itself.Finally, Anri has the inspired idea of going to aschool for the hearing impaired in Tirana,where he manages to produce subtitles as hisvibrantly youthful mother’s lips are read. But ashocked Valdet vehemently denies that shec o u l d h a v e m o u t h e d s u c h“gibber ish”—imperia l ism, people ’srevolutionary movement, two powers, theMarxist-Leninist Party—twenty years earlier.But as she reads her own lips while listening toher son read the subtitles, she comes toacknowledge that disavowed self. Tearsglistening in her eyes, she slowly allows thatshe had been then, and still was, a person whoworked “So that society could be more social-minded … more attentive to the individual …more humane.”

Stills from the film “Intervista” (Findingthe Words) , screened during the“Revolution Every Day” exhibit at theSmart Museum.

Post-Soviet Albania had been wracked by

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pyramid schemes and just undergone a civilwar. Fear and confusion beset her. She cannotsee a way through it. And yet. What else isthere to affirm, to seek, now as then? So it is inthat spirit that we invite you, our readers, toturn to these works by young Japanese writersof nearly a century ago who observed anddignified neglected lives, and under daunting,even terrifying circumstances, exhortedthemselves and others to work toward thatelusive and self-evident goal: a “social-minded”society.

Note: For reasons of length and copyright, theexcerpt below omits the poem “Leafleting” bySata Ineko; “Shawl” by Tokunaga Sunao; “OurOwn Literature Course [1] A Guide to WritingLiterary Reportage” by Yamada Seizaburō; “AGuide to Fiction Writing: How to Write Stories”by Kobayashi Takiji; and “The Achievements ofthe Creative Writing Movement: An Assessmentof Works to Date” by Tokunaga Sunao.

In our Anthology, we indicate passages thatwere suppressed at first publication with markssuch as “x” and “o” or ellipses, the record ofpreemptive censorship by editors and authorsto avoid costly banning. These marks coincidedwith the practice of using initials or x’s insteadof proper nouns as well as unvoiced thought, allpart and parcel of the orthography of Japanesemodern literature. Modern literature has yet toadequately deal with this practice intranslation. A few examples appear in thisselection.

Art as a Weapon in Japanese ProletarianLiterature8

Heather Bowen-Struyk and Norma Field

Keywords: Bolshevik Revolution,proletarian, modernism, Kobayashi Takiji,Kuroshima Denji, Kurahara Korehito, YiTong-gyu, female factory workers, “wallstories,” workers literature, peasant

literature, children, labor organizing, anti-war, imperialism 小林多喜二, プロレタリア文学

In the poem by Sata Ineko [8, 15, 21]9 thatopens this chapter, the speaker is poised in themoment before she deploys “art as aweapon”—in this case, an agitational leaflet.Art as a vehicle of protest may be as old as artitself. The rhetoric of art as a weapon, part andparcel of the language of class struggle andrevolution, could be considered an instance ofthis venerable practice, but this twentieth-century usage, which aggressively challengedthe principle of “art for art’s sake,” never failedto exercise bourgeois critics and writers of the“aesthetic school” (see [22, 29]) in Japan andelsewhere. They were inclined to declare artwith a purpose, especially a political purpose,not to be art at all, or at best, an inherentlyinferior art. But the relationship of art andpolitics stirred heated debate within theproletarian literature movement itself.

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LEFT:Leaflet for the 1930 Tōyō MuslinDispute: Across the top: “Arm yourselvesand attack!” Center stripe: “Don’t let the3000 female factory workers from Yōmosudie without your help!” Source.

RIGHT: Writers organized lecture eventsand went on speaking tours to supporttheir movement organs, not just bypublicizing them but by fundraising. Thisphoto is from January 1931 at TennōjiPublic Auditorium, Osaka. Front row fromleft: Takeda Rintarō, Tokunaga Sunao [23,31], Sata Ineko [8, 15, 21], MiyamotoYuriko [36, 40]. Back row from left:Tanabe Kōichirō, Kuroshima Denji [26,34], Hasegawa Susumu. Ōmori Sueko, ed.Yuriko kagayaite (Shinnihon Shuppansha,1999): 24.

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The major debates of that movement—on thepopularization of art, on form and content, andon the relationship of artistic value to politicalvalue—are all pertinent to the short formsincluded in this chapter. Can the aestheticallyvaluable be melded with the politicallyvaluable? Which is more important, form orcontent? Or are they an inseparable whole, inwhich artistic and political values merge in thecause of the proletariat? What kind of writingwould best reach the various levels of thatproletariat, from the highly literate printer tothe virtually illiterate day laborer or tenantfarmer? These debates were intenselyintellectual, but the stakes were high preciselybecause the participants were agreed that theywanted to con t r ibu te to the ac tua ltransformation of society and not just scorepoints with one another. Of the threecategories of debate, popularization had themost practical urgency: how were theintellectuals who dominated the movement tocreate work appealing to industrial workersand tenant farmers? The first round ofpopularization debates took place in mid-1928,with Kurahara Korehito [13], Hayashi Fusao[7], Kaji Wataru [16], and Nakano Shigeharu[19] as key participants. Arguments rangedfrom whether it was desirable to distinguishbetween agitprop for the masses and genuineproletarian art; whether proletarian art couldeven be produced in a pre-revolutionarysociety; or whether mass entertainmentinevitably transmitted its ideology along withits forms and was therefore useless, if notharmful, for the goals of the movement.

The creation of an expanded umbrellaorganization (KOPF, for Federacio de ProletajKultur Organizoj Japanaj) in late 1931 camewith the directive to locate the foundations ofthe cultural movement in the literature circles“at the factories, at the farms.” With thisinitiative came the promotion of new formssuch as the “wall story,” “correspondence,” and“reportage” by industrial and agriculturalworkers. Kobayashi Takiji’s “On Wall Stories

and ‘Short’ Short Stories” ([29]; see also [1, 5,11, 22, 30]) suggests that this version of thegenre—with possible antecedents ranging frompremodern forms to the European contes to“aesthetic school” champion KawabataY a s u n a r i ’ s “ p a l m - o f - t h e - h a n d ”stories10—developed in response to workers’desires for fiction commensurate with theirneeds, given lack of time and disposableincome as well as preparation for readinglengthy works. Takiji’s essay is an importantstatement of what unity of form and contentmeant for proletarian writers. At the sametime, we need to acknowledge that even thoughthe accessible placement of the “wall story”—inpublic places such as factory walls—was key tothe genre, it’s unclear whether Japanesewriters and readers were able to use it in thisway: the extant compositions, including thosegiven here, were all published in journals.Whether they were ever ripped out and pinnedup, as described in the Korean example [24] isunknown. Kurumisawa Ken argues that thepoint of envisioning where the stories might beplaced was to prompt writers (and illustratorsand printers) to create their stories with aconcrete sense of the readers who wouldgather there, with the story itself coming to lifefrom that interaction.11 Kamei Hideo, reflectingon Takiji’s “Letter” [22], probably the best-known example of the genre, suggests that ifthese stories had been made conspicuous on awall—a medium not, legally speaking,belonging to the workers but claimed as theirsite of expression—that in itself could haveserved as a spark for struggle.12 At any rate,selections 22 through 26 suggest the range ofthe “wall story.”

The international, especially German,inspiration for these forms is attested by a farmore extensive treatment of “wall fiction”written for a Japanese readership by Otto Biha,editor of the Left Turn (Die Linkskurve), theorgan of the Association of Proletarian-Revolutionary Writers. Biha’s essay on“Burgeoning Forms of Proletarian Literature in

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Germany” appeared in Japan as part of a five-volume ser ies edited by Akita Ujaku(1883–1962) and Eguchi Kan (1887–1975),General Course in Proletarian Arts, anextraordinary collection of theoretical analysis,historical reflection (on such a youngmovement!), and guides spanning the range ofproletarian arts—visual, theatrical, cinematic,and literary—primarily in Japan, but also inGermany, the Soviet Union, and the UnitedStates. Takiji’s “Guide to Writing Fiction”appeared in the second volume of the GeneralCourse, following Tokunaga Sunao’s guide inthe inaugural volume. Much of the advice islikely to strike the reader as sensible for anyyoung, or for that matter, seasoned fictionwriter. Together with Tokunaga’s “TheAchievements of the Creative WritingMovement” [31], a retrospective assessmentidentifying areas for improvement, thesereflections demonstrate the proletarian writers’care for their craft and, in so doing, prompt usto reexamine the significant and superficialdistinctions between proletarian and bourgeoisliterature.

Together with the essays from Takiji andTokunaga in this chapter, Yamada’s “A Guide toWriting Literary Reportage” [28] illustrates themovement’s efforts to recruit not only newreaders, but also writers who were workers andtenant farmers by day. Yamada encouragesthem to try their hand at correspondence orliterary reportage, a genre also discussed inOtto Biha’s “Burgeoning Forms.” When theliterary wing of the movement was reorganizedas one among many units (music, art, film, etc.)under the umbrella of KOPF in late 1931,“circles” were organized in factories and farmcommunities.

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LEFT: “Activities of the Culture Circle,”cover of NAPF (November 1931), organ ofKOPF (Federacio de Proletaj KulturOrganizoj Japanaj); design by Ōtsuki Genji(1904-1971). Black and white version.

RIGHT: Poster for the Defense of Senki(Battle Flag) Lecture Meeting. Speakersinclude Kobayashi Takiji [1, 5, 11, 22, 29,30], Tokunaga Sunao [23, 31], KataokaTeppei [12], Ōya Sōichi, Nakano Shigeharu[19], Kishi Yamaji, and others. May 19,1930. Admission: 30 sen. Workers: 20 sen.Source.

The impetus was a call from the Fifth Congressof the Red International of Labor Unions(Profintern) in 1930. If workers were to beexhorted to put their experiences into writing,their effort needed to be acknowledged throughpublication. The Literary Gazette was one such

site, carrying international and domestic news,reports of various circles, articles by majorfigures (Takiji, Tokunaga, Miyamoto Yuriko [36,40], Nakano, etc.), but also a page for readers’prose and poetry, sometimes with prizes andevaluation. Every page had photographs, andoriginal illustrations were as likely toaccompany submissions by readers as well asby movement leaders. “A Day at the Factory”[27] is the only piece in this anthology by awriter about whom we know nothing beyondwhat appears here. It is paired with YamadaSeizaburō’s how-to piece [28], which includes acriticism of her composition. His discussionhelpfully illustrates the political imperativesunderlying promotion of the reportage form.However we assess his framework, as well asthe appropriateness of his specific criticisms,we acknowledge the serious commitment theleaders of the proletarian literature movementmade to encourage men and women who hadnever imagined themselves as writers to takeup pen and paper.

That so much writing, organizing, teaching, andediting persisted at this time is remarkable.Not only were key leaders arrested andimprisoned beginning in April of 1932, but ofthe thirty-three issues of the Literary Gazettepublished between October 1931 and August1933, one was confiscated in its entirety andtwenty-four were banned. With the tenacity ofthe forbidden, they still found their way toreaders. (Norma Field)

[(21) Leafletting omitted]

(22) Letter

KOBAYASHI TAKIJI

Translated from Central Review (Chūō kōron,August 1931)13

The best known of a l l “wal lstories,” “Letter,” written in thescript children first learn, was

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published as one of six examples ofthe genre in the very mainstreamCentral Review. At the time of itspublication, 1968 Nobel laureateKawabata Yasunari singled out“Letter” for praise: in contrast tothe insensitivity to languagedisplayed in the other f iveselections, he observes, therewasn’t a single needless word in“Letter”; nor, at the same time,was there anything exceptionalt h a t c a l l e d a t t e n t i o n t oitself.14 Intriguingly, this is not theonly instance of Takiji, iconicproletarian writer, receiving praisefrom Kawabata, champion of the“aesthetic school” fiercely criticalof the proletarians.15

Kawabata’s praise, though,invariably refers to Takiji’s writingand avoids the content of hisfiction. For Takiji [1, 5, 11, 29, 30],the literary and political demandsof writing implicated each other,just as form and content wereinseparable. As we’ve seen in“Comrade Taguchi’s Sorrow” [1],h e w a s i n t e r e s t e d i n t h eexperiences of proletarian childrenand experimented with theirportrayal. A tireless letter writerhimself, he seemed to find theepisto lary form especia l lyconducive to presenting theirvoices. Even more, KurumisawaKen argues, the choice of the formreflects Takiji’s grasp of theessence of the genre, for what is aletter that doesn’t anticipate aresponse? Had this story-letterbeen posted near the factory gate(“this place”) where the eventsdescribed could easily be imaginedas taking place, the worker-readerscould begin arguing about whether

the father needed to die, whetherhis family needed to starve, whatmore could have been done—allthe while comparing the fictionalcircumstances with their ownreality.16 (Norma Field)

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LEFT: First publication of “Letter” byKobayashi Takiji. The script is mostlykatakana, suggestive of a child’s writing.

RIGHT: Kobayashi Takiji. Source.

Attention: All persons passing this place are toread this letter.

Kimi-chan’s papa? He was sharpening a file atthe XX, when a piece of the spinning stonebroke off and hit him in the tummy. He felldown onto the floor, and they carried himpiggyback all the way back home. Doc said tokeep his wound cool with ice, but they didn’thave no money for that. That’s why Kimi-chan’smama walked three big blocks to fetch coldwater from a well. She musta headed out there

four or five times, ’cause the reason for that isthe water over there is coldest of all. Her mamakept on crying and crying and saying, Oh, whyain’t it winter no more?

Her papa was crying too. And when Kimi-chanasked, It hurt Papa? he just shook his head. No,it don’t. And when she asked him later, It hurtPapa? he closed his eyes without sayingnothing, and then he told her, Papa’s chestdon’t hurt him at all. He looked up at Kimi-chan’s face, and whenever she wasn’twatching, he wiped away his tears.

Kimi-chan’s mama was thin, too, and her eyeswere all dark and hollow, even her hair wasfal l ing out. And I ’d say al l of ’em waspractically starving. It was so damp inside thathouse of theirs that the floor was all stickywhen your feet touched it. And whenever theycame by from the factory? To check on him, youknow? You could always hear ’em saying, Pew,it stinks in here! But that was just at first,’cause soon enough they just stopped comingby at all. By the time Kimi-chan’s papa died,just about everyone forgot about the whole lotof ’em. Kimi-chan’s papa went beddy-bye for sixmonths long, and just as soon as they ran out ofthings to sell, he went and died.

But the day after that Kimi-chan’s mama wentbeddy-bye too. And she was even more skinnythan Kimi-chan’s dead papa, and had less hairthan he did. And that’s the reason why she hadto go beddy-bye. They still had a bit of moneyfrom the factory leftover, but it wasn’t nearenough, and that’s why they moved into thattiny room—up on the third floor of that oldbuilding about ready to fall down. With thatsteep staircase and all you gotta rest a coupletimes on the way up just to catch your breath,you know. And there’s dozens of peoplecrammed up inside there making all kinds ofscary noise. Sometimes people get into fights inthe middle of the night and you can feel thewhole building wobbling side to side.

So there was Kimi-chan’s mama lying in bed,

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with her eyes looking dark and hollow, and notsaying nothing at all. And you know how whenyou breathe, you can see your blankets movingup and down? Well, it was almost like herblankets didn’t move up and down no more. . . .And then one day her mama tells Kimi-chan toshake her whenever she wakes up at night,’cause you never know, she said, I might just belaying here dead as a dog. Later that nightKimi-chan opens her eyes, and she was allshaking and scared. She didn’t try sayingnothing to her mama, but just stuck out herhand to give her a poke. It was only when sheheard her mama answer in the dark that Kimi-chan stopped worrying no more. She ain’t deadyet! said Kimi-chan, breathing a sigh of relief,and turning onto her side. She curled herselfup into a ball and went back to sleep again. Thesame thing happened to Kimi-chan just aboutevery single night.

But after a while, you know, Kimi-chan’smama? She didn’t answer Kimi-chan so fast nomore. And whenever Kimi-chan tried to wakeher up, she could tell her mama was turningskin and bones. And then one time? When hermama opened up her eyes? She done whisperto Kimi-chan, It ain’t gonna be long now. . . .

A couple nights later something woke up Kimi-chan. She stuck out her hand to find her mama,’cause she was too scared to talk out loud inthe dark. But when she shook her mama? Shedidn’t wake up. And then, after a while? Kimi-chan starts shaking her mama harder andharder. And she starts yelling out loud, Oh,Mama, Mama! She could hear her own voiceechoing in that dark room of theirs. But hermama? Her mama didn’t move at all.

All of a sudden Kimi-chan screamed out loud.She jumped to her feet and tried to run outside.But she tripped on the way out and fell all theway down that steep set of stairs. And what aracket that made, being the middle of the nightand all. But Kimi-chan’s mama? Sure enough,she was dead as a dog.

The only ones left now are Kimi-chan, her babybrother, and her kid sister. And after fallingdown them stairs like that, Kimi-chan gotbruised up enough to end up in bed. That’s whyall the people living in the same building asthem got together to hold a funeral for Kimi-chan’s mama. Everyone in that building’s sodarn poor they figured best stick together tohelp one another out.

But on the night of the wake, after everyone fellasleep? That’s when someone woke up and sawall the food on the altar done disappeared. Andlet me tell you, what a stir that caused! Itwasn’t no cat or dog that’d eaten that foodneither. Who coulda done it? we was allthinking.

I was at the wake too. And when I happened towalk into the room next door, the room whereKimi-chan and them was sleeping, well, I neargot the shock of my life and froze up on thespot. They’s just kids, I know, but there wasKimi-chan, her baby brother, and her kid sistergobbling down all the food we’d brought fortheir dead mama. And ’cause I wasn’t thinkingstraight, I done scream out loud. All the othersthen came running into the room shouting,What’s the matter, what’s the matter? Thosethree kids sitting there, gobbling up all thatfood like that. Well, to me, they seemed likegoblins or something with them lips of theirshanging open wide.

They all asked Kimi-chan, What d’you thinkyou’re doing, girl? But Kimi-chan? She justturned white as a sheet and didn’t say nothingat all. Then all of a sudden she starts crying.Tears are rolling down her cheeks, and shesays ever since their mama died four or fivedays beforehand they didn’t have no food left toeat. They was so hungry their heads wasspinning, and they got the pains in their chest,and they been lying down on the floor half deadall day long. And since they didn’t have no foodto eat for so long, there wasn’t nothing gonnastop their eyes from popping out of their heads

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when they saw the offerings set out for thefuneral. Kimi-chan wasn’t doing right by herdead mama, and she knew it, but with her kidbrother and sister being so small and all, shejust waited for when no one was looking, andthen let them eat as much as they wanted.

There wasn’t a soul in the tenement not cryingafter hearing Kimi-chan tell her story.

Kimi-chan won’t be around for much longer.But even still she sometimes tells me thingslike this: Why is it that all XXXX people like ushave our papas die, and then have our mamasdie, and then end up dying too? Well, when Iget better, Kimi-chan says, I’m gonna become aXXXXXXXXX and go out marching with a XX inmy X.17

Translated by Samuel Perry

[(23) Shawl omitted]

Cover of proletarian writer and theorist ofchildren's literature Makimoto Kusurō's[20] Akai Hata (Kōgyokudō, 1930). TheJapanese title, meaning "Red Flag," surelyevoked Akai Tori, or "Red Bird," the title ofthe famous monthly magazine of storiesand songs for children that initiated the"child's heart" movement, with the childunderstood as fundamentally innocent and,in effect, bourgeois. "Red," of course,signals revolution, and Makimoto's coverdesign uses red type for the Hangulmeaning "proletarian" (vertical) and"children's song collection" (horizontal),intertwining them with the Sino-Japanesescript in black, foregrounding the classcommonality and fraternity of the childrenof the colonized and the colonizers. All thesongs are Japanese, but the book openswith a Korean translation of Makimoto's

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song about falling snow.

(24) The Bulletin Board and the Wall Story

YI TONG-GYU

Translated from Group (Chiptan, February1932)18

As with many Korean figures of theJapanese colonial period and theearly postliberation years, thebasic facts of Yi Tong-gyu’s life aresubject to speculation. He wasborn in Seoul, perhaps in 1911 or1913.1 9 He was working as areporter for the journal New Youth(Sinsonyŏn) when he joined KAPF(Korea Ar t i s ta Pro le ta r i aFederacio), of which he wouldremain a member unt i l i t sdissolution in 1935. Caught in themass arrests of 1934, Yi wasimprisoned until 1936. Afterliberation, in 1946, he becamechief editor of People’s Korea(Minju Chosŏn), the officialnewspaper of the North KoreanPeople’s Committee, but he diedsometime during the Korean War.

In December of 1931—the sameyear when “wall stories” began toappear in Japan—Yi published “TheMute” (Pŏngŏri), perhaps the firstpiece to be labeled a “wall story”in Korea.20 We are lucky to have“The Bulletin Board and the WallStory,” for it appeared in the onlyi ssue o f the journa l Group(Chiptan) currently known to havesurvived censorship and otherhistorical vicissitudes. This is theonly piece in this anthology notoriginally written in Japanese. (Asother selections [33, 39] show,

some Koreans in the proletarianmovement, whether in Japan orcolonized Korea, also wrote inJapanese.) Although intensifyingcrackdowns had weakened the tiesbetween the Japanese and Koreanmovements by the time this storywas published, it presents an idealorigin narrative of the wall story,as plausible in Japan as in Korea.For more proletarian storiestranslated from Korean, see theanthology edited by Hughes, Kim,Lee, and Lee, Rat Fire.21 (NormaField)

Like the setup in any old shack put up to servered bean porridge, the factory cafeteria waslaid out with rows of long pine boards, nailed tomakeshift legs, except that today, hanging onone of the walls, there appeared a gleaming,newly lacquered bulletin board. What the heckis that for? wondered the puzzled factoryworkers.

The next day, coming inside to eat theirlunches, they found a white piece of paperposted on the bulletin board, a piece of papercovered with neatly penned letters. Theircuriosity sufficiently piqued, they gatheredround. “What is it, an advertisement?” shoutedSŏngdong, the short one standing behind therest . “Advert isement? This a in ’ t noadvertisement,” replied one of the menstanding in front, all of whom now proceeded toread it out loud.

“Lessons in Character Building. Part One:Diligence. It has long been said that thehardworking man is the successful man,therefore all men should be hardworking. Inorder to build his personhood and then toestablish his household, it not only behooves aman to approach all his tasks with the utmostof sincerity but also . . .”

The men sounded out each word deliberately,

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as though they were reading from a storybookout loud.

No sooner had the lunchtime siren startedringing than Insŏng ran quickly toward thecafeteria, opened up his lunch box, and startedchomping on a rice ball. And as he sat therenow, lunch in hand, he too glanced over at thebulletin board: “What do we need that kind oflecture for?”

“Hey, let me see too!” said Sŏndong, musclinghis way to the front of the crowd.

“What do you need to look at that for?” chimedin Yunsik, the prankster, blocking Sŏngdong’sview.

Sprawled out on a bench as he ate his lunch,Taesŏk offered his two cents as well:

“What do ya think they’re up to, postingsomething like that up here?”

“Something stupid, that’s what.” Good oldhighpockets, Sŏngbok, had finally chimed in.“‘Stop goofing off and work harder’ is all theywant to say.”

“Man, that ain’t the half of it. I bet when theyannounce more layoffs or lower wages, they’rejust gonna post a notice up here, so they don’thave to tell us face-to-face.”

From that day forward the office posted a newLesson in Character Building every day, whichbasically said something along the lines of“work hard” or “be loyal.” About once a week afactory supervisor or one of the officeemployees would come to read out loud thewriting as though they were delivering somesort of lecture. But not a single one of theworkers attempted to read these notices anylonger, or even give them a second glance.Three or four months beforehand there mighthave been one or two men who would haveread them with sincerity. But since then astrike had broken out to demand better

treatment from their bosses and to protest thereduction in wages that had so shocked theworld. After this, things finally sank in and theworkers were no longer the fools they once hadbeen—not a soul among them now had time forthis sort of garbage. After all, the only reasonthis cafeteria had been constructed in the firstplace was that they had demanded it in the laststrike.

Sometime afterward a theory of sortscirculated among the workers: “It is with greatregret that this bulletin board, supposedly forour benefit, has offered us nothing whatsoever.So let us make this bulletin board somethingbeneficial to ourselves!” This is why they alldecided to take turns writing down somethingand posting it on the wall for everybody to readtogether. Each day something new was postedright on top of the piece of paper drawn up andposted by the office. They posted newspaperarticles as well (especially articles aboutstrikes) and even good pieces of writing theyhad torn out of magazines. Later on they postedwall stories they took from journals, whichbrought about the best results. Reading themwhile they ate lunch became a daily routine,one they found thoroughly enjoyable. Of coursethe office knew nothing about what was goingon.

Then one day during lunchtime their supervisorwalked into the cafeteria, cool as a cucumber,with that big smile of his plastered on his face.He was there to read to them what was writtenon the bulletin board. On the bulletin board,however, had been posted a sheet of whitepaper with a wall story on it called “TheWorkers Committee” by Mr. XYZ. Mistaking itfor something the office had actually posted,the supervisor began reading the story outloud.

“Ahem! ‘They gathered together with greatexcitement. For an event of the utmost gravitywas about to play out before their very eyes. . ..’”

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After he read a few lines, the color suddenlydrained from the super’s face.

“Wait a minute, just what is this . . . ?”

The man was all eyeballs as he read theremainder of the story to himself. The workerswatching him now could hardly help burstingout into wails of laughter, which they had onlymanaged to hold back for a few seconds.

“Aha, ha, ha!”

“Whoopee!”

Without speaking a single word—his faceindeed spoke what was on his mind—the superlifted the heavy bulletin board off the wall,propped it onto his shoulder, and then headedstraight toward the office. Behind him followeda stream of uproarious laughter that shook theentire cafeteria.

By the following day the bulletin board haddisappeared for good. But by then the workershad all understood the need for more wallstories, and having become quite accustomedto reading them, they were determined to startthem up again. From now on they would usethe doors of the cafeteria just as they had thebulletin board, and whenever they found wallstories in magazines, they would post them onthe doors and read them with enthusiasm everyday.

Translated by Samuel Perry from the Korean

(25) A Farmer among Farmers

HOSONO KŌJIRŌ

Translated from Proletarian Literature(Puroretaria bungaku, February 1932)22

Hosono Kōjirō (1901–1977) wasborn in Gifu Prefecture but moved

to Hokkaido in his youth. There, asa farm worker, he gained intimateknowledge of the bleak conditionsof tenant farming in northern landsas depicted in this selection. Whileholding a string of jobs includingreporting—a feature shared withmany proletarian writers—hebecame active in the movement,maintaining his commitmentthrough its decline and resuminghis activities after the war.23

The pro letar ian l i teraturemovement, like the larger politicalunits of the movement, regularlycoupled “farmers” with “workers.”But the materials it drew on weremuch more likely to reflect urbanindustrial life, despite the fact thatthe boundary between city andcountry was increasingly blurred,with tenant farmers finding itdifficult to support themselves withfarm work alone. Besides “Tetsu’sStory” [19], “A Farmer amongFarmers” is the only selection inthis anthology with a rural setting.Farmers were ostensibly harder toorganize because they didn’t havea shared workplace to fostersolidarity; nor were they likely tohave a bulletin board for postingthis kind of story. The depiction ofencroaching war in this story,however, brings it in dialogue withother pieces [26, 32, 34] revealingsubtle and explicit resistance toJapan’s imperialist ventures.(Norma Field)

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LEFT: The fifth meeting of the NationalFarmers Union. March 20 and 21,1932,Tokyo. “We resolutely oppose highsharecropping fees, land confiscation,high-interest loans, and heavy taxes!Defeat the exploitation by landlords andcapitalists and the war of oppression! Jointhe National Farmers Union— it fights forfarmers’ livelihood! String the ropes ofNational Farmers Union members in everyvillage! Destroy the Zenkoku KaigiFaction’s split movement!! Help themasses’ National Farmers Union advanceforward!! 1932. Source.

RIGHT: Lecture on Farmers' Problems,sponsored by Japan Farmers’ Union; posterdesign by Yanase Masamu (1900-1945),1920s. Source.

He stooped down beneath the eaves and tossed

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off the reed mat that was folded over his back.In his haste, however, the snow clinging to anold straw mat, hung over a crack in the wall,was knocked down onto the nape of his neck.

“Oh, cripes, that’s cold,” said the old man,jerking his head to the side and shaking off thesnow. A copy of the Farmers Union Newsletterhe’d just been given fell flat on the ground infront of him. He picked it up off the floor andstood up again, noticing as he did so thatvisitors had arrived, and then hearing peopletalking softly inside. Now, who could that be?the old man wondered for an instant, his mouthwatering as he opened the muddied neck of hisstraw sack. Inside the sack were bracken rootsstill freshly covered in soil, by now so bone-chillingly cold they were practically frozen to acrisp. The old man lifted his shivering hands upto his mouth and blew on them repeatedly.Each time he did so there came a grumblingsound from the depths of his stomach. It hadbeen empty for a very long time.

Twilight was setting in and the powdery snowthat had begun to fall since noontime hadalready spread out a blanket of white in all fourdirections. Winter had arrived. In the paddieson either side of the road stood the rottingstubs of last year’s rice plants, with whatlooked like tiny withered beards of grain stuckhere and there. The apple orchards andmulberry fields were engulfed in a gray hazethat extended far into the distance—dusk wassettling over this hamlet, which now looked likea desolate heath. Plagued by poor harvests andwidespread famine, this cold and barrennorthern village hadn’t a hearth still burning,and would soon be abandoned into the depthsof the snow.

Soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone, theold man managed to stumble into his house onlegs numbed of all sensation. The visitors werethe village head and a man from the town hall.The village head shifted his gaze toward theblack bracken roots stacked up on the earthen

floor.

“Still workin’ hard though it’s gettin’ to bewinter, eh?” he said with a smile.

“It’s gotta be tough now that you’re older. Howabout it, heard from your boy recently?”

By “your boy” the visitor was referring to hisson, who’d been taken off24 to the Mongolian-Manchurian front line. Had somethinghappened? wondered the old man, his facetwisting into an expression that betrayed hisbewilderment.

“They say a journalist’s coming by to visit.So—” chimed in his wife from beside thehearth.

“A what?”

“Well, actually—” began the village head,launching himself into the fol lowingexplanation.

A journalist from a newspaper in Tokyo wasmaking his rounds in the area, visiting thefamilies of soldiers drafted to the front fromplaces hit hard by poor harvests, and itappeared that he might stop by this hamletsometime tomorrow. If the journalist did come,they wanted to make sure the old man wouldnot complain about how hard it was to feedhimself, and instead focus on how his son wasdevoting himself to the good of the nation.

“You know, it’ll be an honor for the wholevillage if we get taken up in the papers,” saidthe man from the town hall, conspicuouslyslipping something wrapped in paper towardthe doorframe. As he did so, a malnourishedchild with sunken eyes, who sat beside thehearth, flashed his eyes greedily in itsdirection.

“So that’s what this is all about—you gotta bekidding me.” The old man glanced to the side ofhim. “Me, I don’t do business that way!”

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“Well, it’s not meant to be—I mean, you’re aloyal citizen of Japan, aren’t you?”

“Look here, mister, I don’t know how all yougents with storehouses full of rice do things,but poor folk like me? Who’ve got to feedthemselves by digging up wild roots outta thesnow—? Well, I say to hell with you and all yoursmooth talking—and your goddamned countryas well!”

“Pa, how could you—” shouted his wife, stern-faced, from beside him.

“Oh, shut up, woman!” he replied. Shifting hisglance toward the village head and his lackey,he added something more menacing:

“We’re already at our wit’s end! All you gentswith full storehouses best be careful, youhear?”

Sour-faced, the visitors then took their leave.Through the crack in the door the powderysnow blew its way into the dark, earthen-floored room with each gust of the wind.

“I’m starving, goddamnit,” the old man saidangrily, as he stepped up to the hearth and satin front of his “dinner” tray.

“ ‘ A g e s t u r e o f t h e g o v e r n m e n t ’ ssympathy’—Hell, they’ll say any god-damnthing they want to get what they’re after. Andall to pull the damn wool over our eyes! Craftyold bastards, the whole lot of ’em.”

His lips already pursed, the man blew into hissteaming bowl. The broth made a bubblingsound as it was forced into small ripples thatran to the opposite side. The barnyard millet,almost grayish in color, rose up to this side ofthe bowl as though it were sand in the surf. Itwas just then that the words from thenewsletter he’d placed in his breast pocketsurfaced in the old man’s mind:

Don’t be fooled by the “sympathy” of the

capitalist landlords! Let us join arms and riseup!

Translated by Samuel Perry

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LEFT: Senki cover showing a Chinesepeasant and Japanese peasant workingtogether, October 1929; cover announcesthat August and September issues werebanned . Des ign by Ōtsuk i Gen j i(1904-1971).

CENTER: January 15-21, 192?: Anti-Militarism Week. Oppose the Burden ofMilitarism that Sacrifices the Youth! TheAll-Japan Proletarian Youth League.Design by Yanase Masamu (1900-1945).Source.

RIGHT: September 19-24 , 1927:Declaration Opposing the Invasion ofManchuria and Mongolia Week. Posterdepicts the outstretched hands ofJapanese, Chinese, Korean, and Russianworkers all threatened by a man with asword. Design by Yanase Masamu. Source.

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(26) “To Qiqihar”

KUROSHIMA DENJI

Translated from Literary Gazette (Bungakushimbun, February 1932)25

As evident from his biography (seethe in t roduc t ion to [34 ] ) ,Kuroshima Denji was a tirelessproletarian critic of war. Followingthe Manchurian Incident ofSeptember 1931, in which theJapanese military staged a pretextfor expansion into northeast China,stepped-up mobilization promptedc o m m u n i s t s t o c o m b i n eantimilitarist and labor issues intheir factory organizing. Withgreat courage, they attempted todo the same in the military. As thisstory shows, the correspondinglywary authorities did not hesitate toa c t s w i f t l y o n t h e i rsuspicions.26 With a handful ofdetails, Kuroshima manages tosketch the shift of control overterrain among the Japanese andSoviet armies, Chinese warlords,and resistance forces. Zooming inon the campaign to take Qiqihar,which would become an importantbase throughout the war innortheastern China, he fashions anarrative of Japanese resistance tothe imperialist war. Given theeagerness of the authorities tostamp out antiwar activity in themilitary, it is curious to note theabsence of defensive deletions inthis story and the fact that theissue of the Literary Gazette inwhich it was carried was one of the

few to escape banning. (NormaField)

First publication of “To Qiqihar” byKuroshima Denji; illustration by Kitamura

Zensaku.

At the start of November, northern Manchurianground begins to freeze.

The occupied Chinese houses were turned intotemporary barracks. A piercing cold assaultedthe skin even through winter coats made of fur.

Two weeks earlier, First Class Private Wada’scompany had set out from Sipingjie. Theyarrived in Taonan by the Si-Tao line, and thenadvanced two hundred kilometers farthernorth.

The soldiers began to be afflicted by stubbornlyproliferating lice.

“I wonder if it’s true that Russia is backing MaZhanshan.” They had not taken a bath for a fulltwenty days. Hoping they could soon withdrawto the rear, they discussed a rumor heard fromabove.

“It’s a lie.” Second Class Private Ehara deniedit on the spot. Ehara was a soldier with nochance of promotion because he had oncebelonged to a labor union.

“But they’re supplying him with cannons andammunition, aren’t they?”

“That’s a totally made up story.”

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“I wonder.”

In the wake of shelling, countless Chinesesoldiers lay scattered along the hills andtrenches around the Daqing Station, lookinglike lumps of meat ravaged by wild animals.Wada’s company had occupied the area. Thatthe Chinese soldiers had not been blessed withmoney or food or clothing while alive wasevident from their malnourished skins and fromthe torn and ragged Sun Zhongshan jackets inwhich they lay. Seeing that, Wada shivered inspite of himself.

Following its retreat, Ma Zhanshan’sHeilongjiang army readied the ammunition andcannons and concentrated its forces to attempta counter-attack. Russia was supporting this. Acommunist army of “Chinese and Koreans” hadmarched out o f B lagoveshchensk asreinforcements. Such were the rumors that hadspread through all the units.

“—The goddamned enemy’s not just theChinese, so you’d all better not let your guarddown even for a moment! Got that?” Thepencil-mustached company commanderrepeated his warning.

Officers who returned from reconnoitering atthe front line spoke of seeing Russian cannons.

“Can i t be true?” Feel ing numb as i fanesthetized, many of Wada’s comrades wereat a loss what to believe.

“How can they say Russia supplied theweapons? Jus t l ook a t the guns theHeilongjiang army threw away when they ranoff. Nothing but Type-38 Arisaka rifles, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right!” But the rumor began tospread wildly out of control.

One evening when they returned to thebarracks from the occupied territory, letterswere distributed to them along with thecomfort packages.

“This year, looks like there’s a famine not onlyhere but all over Hokkaido too. After paying theland tax, we don’t even have any straw left. . ..” This is what Wada was reading when acorporal arrived to summon Ehara.

“Something they want me to do?” Ehara askeduneasily.

“Don’t ask. Just come!”

“How do I know what it’s about if I don’t ask?”

“Shut up! . . . Moriguchi and Hamada, youcome too!”

Not only Ehara but five or six others reluctantlyrose and went before they had even had achance to finish reading their letters. Theylined up and marched out. Wada and those ofhis comrades who were left behind lookedsilently at one another’s faces.

Ehara and the others never came back.

The next day at dawn, the army received theorder to proceed north.

After twenty-six hours of fierce fighting andmarching, they advanced as far as Qiqihar.Clusters of Chinese soldiers lay abouteverywhere, like ants doused with boilingwater. Horses shot in the legs were shriekingamong the abandoned cannons and rifles. Butno Russians, Russian rifles, or Russian cannonscould be discovered anywhere. Wada graduallybegan to feel deflated as if his expectations hadsomehow been betrayed.

Translated by Željko Cipriš

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The expansion of the Japanese empire.Source.

(27) A Day at the Factory

NAGANO KAYO (Shimosuwa Circle)

Translated from Literary Gazette (Bungakushimbun, April 25, 1932)27

All we know about Nagano Kayo is her name,her membership in the Shimosuwa Circle(Nagano Prefecture), and what we learn fromthis piece itself. She is, in other words, one ofthe workers encouraged to write under the“Bolshevization” of the movement in the early1930s, which meant taking the movement tothe factories and the farms and hearing backfrom them. Absent the circle movement, it ishard to imagine Nagano thinking herexperiences worth recording and sharing. Interms of format, her piece, illustrated by KiireIwao and published in the Literary Gazette,looks much like the celebrated Tokunaga’s“Shawl” in the Arts Gazette. The pedagogicalfunction of such writing is made clear inYamada Seizaburō’s critique [28] in the sameissue. That the work and its review appear inthe same issue provides not only a rareopportunity to witness a concrete example ofthe pedagogical process, but also to see whatwas important for the leadership as comparedto the young factory worker, for whom theprospect of organized protest did not yet haveimmediacy. This aspect—of the lack of

exposure to organizing—makes for interestingcomparison with “Another Battlefront” [32], apiece of f ict ion by the comparativelyexperienced writer Matsuda Tokiko.

(Norma Field)

First publication of “A Day at the Factory,”Nagano Kayo; illustration by Kiire Iwao

(1904-1989).

Whew! It’s cold. Another snowy morning.

If you commute on a day like today, you realizeit’d be a whole lot better just to live in thedorm.

I’ve been working for twenty days straightwithout a day off. My body’s plumb worn outand I can’t even get up. My feet are chilblainedand itchy so I rub ’em against each other andjust stare up at the ceiling. . . .

Anyways, I force myself to stand up and put onmy work clothes and get into my canvas workshoes and head out the door. I can see the roadin the weird faint brightness of snow. Thesecanvas shoes, they get soakin’ wet in thefactory then frozen stiff so they creak withevery step and cut into my feet that’re allswollen and purple. It’s still a little dark, and allyou can see in the snow are the sharp tracks ofthe milkman’s wheels.

I go in at the gate with a worn-out wooden signsaying XX Silk Filature, turn my name tag over,

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and head straight for the cafeteria. The narrowentrance to the cafeteria is abuzz with folksstuck there holding their chopsticks and ricebowls. It’s practically start time and the tableonly holds about twenty when there’s fourhundred girls waiting for their breakfast, youcan hardly eat in peace, it’s practically likeyou’re fighting with everybody. You get somecrumbly black mixture of three parts rice andseven parts barley and just one plate ofshriveled up greens for a side.

The monk who gives lectures on self -improvement at the factory preaches, “Whenyou receive food you must bow in gratitude.”So some simple-minded fools actually bow totheir food. You have to wash your own ricebowl. And there’s only cold water. So bloodstarts to trickle out of the cracks in yourchapped hands.

It’s on us to soak fourteen reels. They’re metal,so they make your hands bleed. Can’t wait for’em to get all callused up. . . .

The minute you hang up your cleaning rag onyour seat or in the hallway, the shaft starts toturn. Even though start time’s supposed to besix thirty, work always begins five or even tenminutes early. And then you can’t hear nothingbut the shaft roaring and the foreman yelling.

The only ones who take the fifteen-minutebreak at nine o’clock are the foreman and theclerk and maybe the guys. We gotta use thatfifteen minutes to make sure we’re caught upon the work, because even though we’resupposed to have a half an hour at lunch, ifwe’re just a little bit late, there’s no rice left inthe cafeteria. Matter of fact, this happens allthe time. That damn cafeteria supervisor, hewalks around and around, and if he finds agrain of rice on the floor, he starts yelling. Theydon’t even let you fill up your belly with thatstinking food. When I think about how it’s notjust in the factory that we’re being wrung dry, Iwant to take my rice bowl and smash it on theforeman’s mug—

“Hey, XX-chan. Shall we tell ’em they have tofeed us right at least?” XX-chan was sittingnext to me, eating but looking sad, not saying aword.

Yesterday, XX-chan let the big reel drop andbroke it. Then a supervisor guy rushes over andhas the nerve to yell, “This here reel cost ahelluva lot. Same’s these rings.” XX-chan wassobbing so I says to him, “It’s not like she did iton purpose.” Then the guy glares at me, butwho gives a shit. XX-chan just doesn’t have anyguts. . . .

You can’t even sit down once during the elevenhours (in fact, more like eleven and a half hoursif you add the time before start time and theextension of finish time), you’re just flying infront of the Minorikawa-style reeling machine,just hoppin’ around, so that by evening,everybody’s face is pale and their hairdo’sfalling apart and all’s you can do is look at eachother with sad faces. . . .

The big reel gets inspected under a dim ten-watt light and then gets inspected under ahundred-watt light in the quality-controlsection. Sure enough, the light’s different so itdoesn’t pass, and then for punishment you haveto sit on the wooden floor for over an hour andget preached at.

Finally, the shaft stops turning, and it’s like abig wind died down, it’s so quiet. We’re in adaze for a while, then from somewheres comesa sigh of relief.

“I’d just as soon die as live another day likethis,” says XX-chan next to me in a pitiful voice.

“My chilblains are a-itching and a-hurting,maybe I’ll just take these shoes off.”

“You take those shoes off and you’ll really getit, XX-chan.”

You hear people talkin’ like that. Then youforce your tired body to clean up your spot,

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then clean the hallway, and the person whoseturn it is to clean the toilet has to do that, too.The company saves money by making us dothese things instead of hiring somebody. Itmakes me so mad. . . .

Translated by Norma Field

Female factory workers at a textile factoryusing Masuzawa-style reeling machines,similar to Minorikawa-style. Source.

[(28) Our Own Literature Course (1): AGuide to Writing Literary Reportageomitted]

(29) On Wall Stories and ‘Short’ ShortStories: A New Approach to ProletarianLiterature

KOBAYASHI TAKIJI

Translated from Studies in the Newly RisingArts (Shinkō geijutsu kenkyū, June 1931)28

This and the following piece [30]show Kobayashi Takiji (see [1] forbiographical information) astheorist as well as star writer inthe movement. This discussion ofwall stories appeared in Volume 2of a three-volume series, Studies in

the Newly Rising Arts, which was,interestingly enough, a volumedevoted to wr i t ings o f the“aesthetic school,” understood tobe generally critical of Marxism.Perhaps this indicates a specialregard for Takiji as craftsmanand/or tacit sympathy for hiscause. Takiji himself doesn’tdisguise his ideology or hispurpose for one moment. Hiselaboration of the “risk of bias” istelling. “Bias” was the wordroutinely modified by “political” toindicate submission to the primacyof politics as the fatal flaw ofproletarian literature. Takiji,however, uses “bias” to indicate“one-dimensional” and “formulaic”writing, which will necessarilythwart the political purpose of thegenre: to attract readers withoutmuch education or spare time. Badart, in other words, makes for badpolit ics. Was this primarilystrategic?

Surely so. But we shouldn’toverlook the respect for theintended readership implicit in thisview. That readership is deemed tobe of “low cultural level,” aphrasing that doubtless makes usw i n c e , b u t w e m i g h t a l s oacknowledge the resonance of the“wall story” project with ourcontemporary pedagogicalprinciple of “meeting the studentswhere they’re at .” I t ’s alsointerest ing to see Tak i j i ’ sopenness, in contrast to some ofhis comrades, to such popularwriters as Kikuchi Kan (1888–1949) as valuable guides to writingthat could hold the interest ofnonintellectuals. (Norma Field)

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As writers, many of us have fully appreciated[Anatoli] Lunacharsky’s [1875– 1933]observation that we need to create literaryworks “elementary and simple” in content thatwill gain currency among the millions ofindustrial and agricultural workers.29 We havenot, however, succeeded in producing worksthat live up to this ideal.

Early last year, some among our ranksmisunderstood the ideological implications of“elementary and simple” content. Even afterthis misinterpretation had been rectified(“Resolution on the Problem of Popularization,”Battle Flag [Senki], July 1930), no concreteexample of this concept—in other words, no“literary work”—appeared.

This results not so much from our sloth butrather reveals the practical difficulties of thetask that we have been assigned.

From the latter half of last year, however,Battle Flag proposed that we experiment withwall stories. As for why Battle Flag embarkedon this experiment, it was first and foremostour way of responding to the wishes of thepeople right away; it was also a matter of thewriters themselves wanting to dedicate energyto this project. Though they are far fromperfect in form, we have succeeded in findingin wall stories the early manifestations of a newtype of proletarian literature, one grounded in“elementary and simple” content.

I can offer several reasons why wall stories willfind favor among people of the industrial andagricultural working classes. First, they areonly a page or two in length, so they can beread quickly at any time, any place, andmoreover, they let the reader grasp somethingsolid and coherent. Second, wall stories will beposted in places where workers and farmerscongregate, and address topics of immediateconcern to the masses.

Given such a role, wall stories hold greatpotential if we put effort into them. We must be

wary, however, of the risk of developing acertain bias. What sort of bias do we risk?

It is the risk of understanding the role of wallstories one-dimensionally and formulaically. Ifsuch an understanding were to take hold, wallstories would turn into crappy old sermonsordering people to “do this and do that!” And inactual practice, all the wall stories to date seemto have succumbed to that tendency, despitethe authors’ good intentions and efforts.

Nevertheless, to the extent that wall stories arewall stories as distinguished from “short” shortstories—however much they may resemblethem—I believe they have a limitation. Thereason is the role with which they have beencharged. In that respect, wall stories are boundto be a “one-dimensional” art form.

What I wish to emphasize here is that the genreof wall stories will have a completely new andsignificant influence on the field of proletarianliterature. This is because wall stories caninform our interest in the “short short story” inproletarian l i terature, y ielding r ichcontributions on the question of form in shortshort fiction.

There is an important reason for why I refer to“short” short stories here, rather than “shortstories.” What would that reason be? Allow meto quote from my monthly literary review forthe May issue of Central Review:30

A factory worker once said to me,“Can we get you to write lots ofreally short pieces that we couldread in five or ten minutes?” Thekind of story he had in mind wasvery simple, with a very specifictheme, something that he could getthe gist of immediately. A storythat makes you say the minute youfinish reading it, yeah, that’s theway it is, or, is that right—the sortof work that hits you smack where

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it counts.

In the case o f p ro le tar ianliterature, especially in Japan,which is pre- revolutionary, andwhere the cultural level of workersis low, I believe this type of shortstory has a special significance.

Many short stories familiar to uslook like excerpts from novels withthe beginnings and ends cut off.You finish reading them, and youdon’t really “get” it. (Howeverexcellent they may be as examplesof a certain kind of narrative, theyfail to stand on their own as shortstor ies . We have had many“excellent” short stories of thiskind in Japan.) The minute youfinish reading the last line of ashort story, the story shouldbecome crystal clear to you.

Just as in the case of a bad joke, ifthe last sentence of a short story isvague and unclear, the reader feelsunsatisfied and is likely to preferan interesting, plot-driven novel.For workers who have little time ormoney, however, this is not anoption. —For this reason as well,we must produce many, manyshort, convincing works.

Proletarian writers have much tolearn from the “theme stories” ofKikuchi Kan [1888–1948] or theworks of some of the excellentforeign short story writers whoemploy the conte form.

It takes a special talent andtechnique to master the short storyform. One reason that we haveseen so few convincing shortstories is that many writers regardthem as something to be slappedtogether when taking a break fromnovel writing, rather than as aform requiring a specific skill.

The important thing is thathenceforth, when we “consciously”take up short stories in this sense,Lunacharsky’s dictum—that thesestories must penetrate the stratumof workers of low cultural level byrelying on “elementary” and“simple” content—will surely findconcrete realization. . . .

I have only been able to discuss these topics ina very general manner, but I believe that this isone new direction that our Japanese proletarianliterature must seek in 1931.

Translated by Ann Sherif

Heather Bowen-Struyk is co-editor, with Norma Field, of For Dignity, Justice, andRevolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature (University of Chicago Press,2016); co-editor with Ruth Barraclough and Paula Rabinowitz of Red Love Across the Pacific:Political and Sexual Revolutions of the Twentieth Century (Palgrave, 2015); and guest editorof the Fall 2006 positions: east asia cultures critique special issue, “Proletarian Arts in EastAsia: Quests for National, Gender, and Class Justice.”

Norma Field is a professor emerita, University of Chicago. Recent publicationsinclude Fukushima Radiation: Will You Still Say No Crime Has Been Committed? (editor and

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co-translator, 2015); For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of JapaneseProletarian Literature (co-editor and translator, 2016; Ima heiwa o honki de kataru ni wa:Inochi, jiyu, rekishi (To seriously talk peace today: Life, freedom, history, 2018); in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus: “From Fukushima: To Despair Properly, To Find the Next Step”(with Muto Ruiko, September 1, 2016); “Art as a Weapon,” (with Heather Bowen-Struyk,February 15, 2018); “No One Who Is Alive Today”… An Introduction to “The FukushimaNuclear Disaster and the Tokyo Olympics” (with Koide Hiroaki, March 1, 2019); “This WillStill Be True Tomorrow: Fukushima Ain’t Got the Time for Olympic Games”: Two Texts onNuclear Disaster and Pandemic” (with Muto Ruiko, June 25, 2020).

Notes1 Here are a few of the works published on the centenary: Tariq Ali, The Dilemmas of Lenin(Verso, 2017); Laura Engelstein, Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914–1921(Oxford University Press, 2017); Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler,1929-1941 (Penguin Press, 2017); China Miéville, October (Verso, 2017); Ronald Suny, RedFlag Unfurled: History, Historians, and the Russian Revolution (Verso, 2017); Yuri Slezkin,The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution (Princeton University Press,2017); A. James McAdams, Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the CommunistParty (Princeton University Press, 2017); a 30-article series in the New York Times on the“history and legacy of Communism” titled the “Red Century,” (February 24-November 6,2017). In Chicago, where we live, the Art Institute of Chicago mounted the largest exhibit ofSoviet art in a quarter century, “Revoliutsiia! Demonstratia! Soviet Art Put to the Test”(October 29, 2017-January 15, 2018); the University of Chicago, “Red Press: Radical PrintCulture from St. Petersburg to Chicago” at the Special Collections Research CenterExhibition Gallery (September 25, 2017-February 2, 2018); and the Smart Museum of theUniversity, “Revolution Every Day,” a special exhibit of posters and video and film, mostlyfocused on women (September 14, 2017-January 28, 2018), yielding a catalog by the sametitle in the format of a Soviet tear-off calendar, Revolution Every Day: A Calendar (MoussePublishing, 2017).2 Joseph Masco, The Theater of Operations: National Security Affect from the Cold War to theWar on Terror (Duke University Press, 2014).3 Kurahara Korehito, “The Path to Proletarian Literature,” translated by Brian Bergstrom, inFor Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 178.4 A partial version was first translated anonymously by Max Bickerton, an English teacher inJapan in the early 1930s, sympathetic to the movement, thanks to which he was subjected toarrest and torture, in The Cannery Boat by Kobayashi Takiji and Other Japanese Short Stories(New York: International Publishers, 1933). This version was reproduced in The ColumbiaAnthology of Modern Japanese Literature, edited by J. Thomas Rimer and Van C. Gessel (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2005).5 Kobayashi Takiji, “On Wall Stories and ‘Short’ Short Stories: A New Approach to ProletarianLiterature,” translated by Ann Sherif, in For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution, 254.6 Leonardo Boff, quoted in Julie McCarthy, “Pope’s Brazil Visit Puts Social Justice in

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Spotlight,” National Public Radio, May 8, 2007. A variant also appears in Bryan Stevenson’swork on racial injustice in the US penal system: “My work with the poor and the incarceratedhas persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty isjustice” (Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2014),18.7 “Intervista” (Finding the Words). Screened during the “Revolution Every Day” exhibit at theSmart Museum (see note 1, above).8 “Chapter 5: Art as a Weapon” is an excerpt from For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: AnAnthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature (Chicago and London: University of ChicagoPress, 2016). Republished with permission from the University of Chicago Press, theUniversity of Hawai’i Press, the editors, authors, and translators. Not for additionalpublication without permission.9 “Leafletting,” omitted from this excerpt. Numbers in brackets refer to works in theanthology [1-40] of which 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, and 29 are included here.10 Samuel Perry, Recasting Red Culture in Proletarian Japan: Childhood, Korea, and theHistorical Avant-garde (University of Hawai’i Press, 2014), 79–82; Kawabata, Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, translated by Lane Dunlop and J. Martin Holman (New York: Farrar, Straus andGiroux, 1988).11 Kurumisawa Ken, “Kabe shōsetsu no shūdan geijutsusei: ‘operētā’ to shite no puroretariasakka” [The group aesthetic of the wall story: The proletarian writer as “operator”], in Takijino bungaku, sekai e, edited by Ogino Fujio (Otaru Shōka Daigaku Shuppankai, 2013), 341–46.12 Kamei Hideo, “Kobayashi Takiji no ‘Tegami’: Kabe shōsetsu no jikkensei” [KobayashiTakiji’s “Letter”: The experimental nature of the wall story]. Lecture, Otaru Bungakukan(February 23, 2003).13 Kobayashi Takiji, “Tegami” [Letter], Chūō kōron (August 1931): 64-67; in Kobayashi Takijizenshū [Collected works of Kobayashi Takiji] (Shinsōban) (Shinnihon Shuppansha, 1993), vol.3:358-62.14 Kawabata Yasunari, (Bungei jihyō) “Bungakuteki shibutsu: seisai no nai kabe ‘shōsetsu’”[(Literary Review) Literary cadavers: lackluster wall “stories”], Jiji shimpō (July 30, 1931); inKawabata Yasunari zenshū (Shinchōsha, 1999), vol. 30:503.15 Kawabata Yasunari, “Sangatsu bundan no ichi inshō” [A certain sense of the literaryestablishment in March], Shinchō (April 1933): 97-103; in Kawabata Yasunari zenshū, vol.31:76–80.16 Kurumisawa, “Kabe shōsetsu no shūdan geijutsusei,” 347–50.17 The Xs here appear in the original and represent self-censorship by either the editors or theauthor. The last line most likely refers to Kimi-chan’s desire to march in the streets holding upa flag or banner in her hand—as many children were portrayed doing in the proletarianmedia. (Translator)18 Yi Tong-gyu, “Kesip’an kwa pyŏk sosŏl” [The bulletin board and the wall story], Chiptan(February 1932): 37-38.19 The first date is given in “Yi Tong-gyu,” the second, in Kwŏn Yŏng-min, Han’gukkyegŭpmunhak undongsa [History of the class-literature movement] (Seoul:Munyech’ulp’ansa, 1998), 387.20 Perry, Recasting Red Culture, 189n100.

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21 Theodore Hughes, Jae-yong Kim, Jin-kyung Lee, Sang-kyung Lee, eds., Rat Fire: KoreanStories from the Japanese Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press/Cornell East AsiaSeries, 2013).22 Hosono Kōjirō. “Hyakushō kan” [A farmer among farmers], Puroretaria bungaku (February1932): 126-27; in Nihon puroretaria bungakushū [A collection of Japanese proletarianliterature], (Shinnihon Shuppansha, 1985-87), vol. 29:503-504.23 Maeda Kakuzō, “Hosono Kōjirō,” in Kindai Nihon shakai undōshi jimbutsudaijiten/Biographical Dictionary of the Social Movements in Modern Japan (NichigaiAssociates, 1997), vol. 4:228.24 Strike-throughs mark passages not available to readers of the first published versions,usually because of preemptive (protective) self-censorship on the part of the publisher.25 Kuroshima Denji. “Chichiharu made” [To Qiqihar], Bungaku shimbun (Feb. 5, 1932): 1; inNihon puroretaria bungakushū [A collection of Japanese proletarian literature], (ShinnihonShuppansha, 1985-87), vol. 20:494-95.26 Perry, Recasting Red Culture, 93–94.27 Nagano Kayo. “Kōjō no ichinichi” [A day at the factory], Bungaku shimbun (April 25, 1932):6.28 Kobayashi Takiji, “Kabe shōsetsu to ‘mijikai’ tampen shōsetsu: puroretaria bungaku noatarashii doryoku” [Wall stories and “short” short stories: A new initiative for proletarianliterature], in Shinkō geijutsu kenkyū, vol. 2, Shu to shite geijutsu no keishiki ni kansurutokushū, edited by Itagaki Takaho (Tōkō Shoin, 1931): 1-5; in Kobayashi Takiji zenshū, vol.5:254-58.29 Anatoli Lunacharsky, “Theses on the Problems of Marxist Criticism” [1928], translated by Y.Ganushin, in A. Lunarchsky: On Literature and Art (Moscow: Progressive Publishers, 1973),sec. 9.30 Kobayashi Takiji, “Bungei jihyō: Tokidoki, kata o sobiyakashite” [Literary review: Let’s holdour heads high from time to time], Chūō kōron (May 1931); in Kobayashi Takiji zenshū, vol.5:250-51.