For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature ed. by Heather Bowen-Struyk and Norma Field (review)

The present volume is an exceptionally welcome and valuable contribution to the body of translated works of Japanese fiction into English. In terms of main literary genres there is probably none that has hitherto been as underrepresented as the genre of proletarian literature. Except for the heroic efforts of Željko Cipriš (A Flock of Swirling Crows and Other Proletarian Writings, The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle), in addition to an older translation of Kobayashi Takiji's masterpiece The Factory Ship plus The Absentee Landlord by Frank Motofuji, what we have had easily accessible in the field so far are occasional well-known proletarian short stories tucked away in anthologies of modern Japanese literature. That we have had to wait for almost a century after the event for translations to appear is probably indicative of a bias working against proletarian fiction in general, as referenced in the introduction: "Despite the commonplace view that ahistorically reduces all literature produced within a leftwing movement to 'socialist realism' and understands this to be a mindless, propagandistic celebration of workers and tractors, these writers regularly warned one another of the pitfalls of formulaic writing" (p. 1).

As mentioned in the introduction, the proletarian literature movement that the volume treats was the most vigorous wing of the wider anticapitalism and anti-imperialism proletarian cultural movement that was in operation for about a decade, roughly speaking from 1925 to 1935. Originally a congregation of writers, artists, critics, students, and intellectuals of various leftist, anti-establishment leanings, the movement was gradually bolshevized as it came under the increasing influence of the banned Japanese Communist Party, which pounced on it as it had few other legal channels to spread its ideology. Operating in semilegal circumstances, the movement became tolerated less and less by the authorities until they decided toward the middle of the 1930s that they could no longer risk leftist dissent being disseminated through society. Reading through the stories in the collection that give ample testimony of harassment at all levels, one wonders why authorities even bothered about only interfering with the movement when they surely possessed the means to clamp down on it decisively much earlier. But then again, Japan was ostensibly a democracy that perhaps needed to appear to be adhering to minimum standards of rules of engagement. Perhaps, also, the movement was up to a point a useful tool to authorities in that it constituted a red peril, an enemy on the home front to unite against that warranted close state surveillance and control of its own citizens?

The present anthology is the result of collective work by 14 translators including the editors. The translations of the 40 short pieces that go into the collection are organized into seven chapters by topic—"The Personal Is the Political," "The Question of Realism," and "Art as a Weapon," to name a few—each of which is usefully prefaced by the editors. Cross-referencing of works together with biographical notes about featured writers combine to make the volume a user-friendly learning tool. It is a strong merit of the collection that it takes a broad outlook over the field to include aspects such as writings for children and the movement's internationalist intentions, which tend to be overlooked in treatments of the movement. Noteworthy also, 13 of the translated pieces are penned by women writers, who are otherwise marginalized in a movement perceived to have been a heavily male-oriented initiative. One crucial question regarding the popularization of the movement is raised in the introduction to the second chapter, "Labor and Literature": "What is the relationship between labor and proletarian literature? On the one hand … proletarian literature sought to represent the indignities and aspirations of those with nothing but their labor to sell. On the other hand, proletarian writers anguished...