The “Debate on the Literature of Action” and Its Legacy: Ideological Struggles in 1930s Japan and the “Rebirth” of the Intellectual

In the mid-1930s, a group of Japanese writers initiated a “literature of action” and, by appropriating the newly popular term chishikijin (intellectual), they pleaded for a renaissance of intellectuals. Their claims triggered a debate between liberal-humanists and orthodox Marxists on the sociopolitical mission of writers and the role of intellectuals. This debate was important in the shifting meaning of the term “intellectual” which reflected the cultural and political background of the time. It also laid the groundwork for the postwar debate on the social responsibility of the writer as intellectual, demonstrating the continuity in intellectual discourse between prewar and postwar Japan.