Uchida Hyakken: A Critique of Modernity and Militarism in Prewar Japan (review)

Most scholars of modern Japanese literature have brushed up against Uchida Hyakken (1889-1971) but few have spent meaningful time with him. Rachel DiNitto rights this absence with a rich and ambitious study of his writing, life, and times. In the process, she deepens our understanding of modern Japanese literature and the complexities of Japanese culture in the 1930s. DiNitto does not simply carve out a niche by turning to a neglected author. Instead, she also shows that the best single-author studies can develop dramatically our sense of the literary, political, and cultural landscape of an author's lifetime (and beyond as people continue to respond to his work).

This approach to Hyakken is fresh because, in part due to its formal and thematic qualities, scholars have tended to treat his work entirely within an enclosed literary space. DiNitto argues that it is essential to view his writings in context in order to understand fully both why his literature took the particular forms that it did and the extent to which his writings grappled with others' experiences of modernity. DiNitto provides significant research into contexts of publication—changes in media culture; movements in literature, art, philosophy, and politics—as well as the reception of Hyakken by critics. She also allows us to see the idiosyncrasies of Hyakken's personality and writing style and take pleasure in them. This holistic approach yields a nuanced picture not only of Hyakken but also of the 1920s and 1930s.

The subtitle of the book and one of its chapter titles refer to "critiques" conducted by Hyakken (of modernity, militarism, and elite fiction). These are intriguing possibilities for an author often treated entirely outside his political and cultural context, and usually paired in literary studies to established literary figures such as his mentor Natsume Sōseki and contemporary Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. DiNitto demonstrates that Hyakken presented compelling responses to and beautiful expressions of unease with modernity and the manifestations of militarism he observed around him. He expressed these criticisms not through sustained arguments but usually through "the aesthetic of the fragment" by which he represented the alienating nature of Japanese modernity and the haunting experiences of war (both the era of the Russo-Japanese War in his youth and the long war that began in the early 1930s, during which he was prolific). She convincingly shows through close analysis, adroit paraphrasing, and well-translated quotations that essay-type forms, such as the zuihitsu, as well as often mysterious short stories can come together to comment powerfully upon troubling forces even in the face of increased censorial attention; Hyakken often succeeded in reaching readers when more explicitly political expressions would not be printed.

DiNitto's analysis of Hyakken helps us think anew about questions of responsibility and the possibilities for literature (and cultural production more broadly) in the context of both militarism and consumer capitalism. This book thus enters into conversation with other recent work on this period by North Americans on literature and fascism and Japanese proletarian literature.¹ DiNitto is also attentive to the relevant work by Miriam Silverberg on Nakano Shigeharu and Harry Harootunian's analyses of cultural theorists who grapple with similar issues.²

Over the course of her study, the author invokes analyses from the writings of critical theorists in and outside Japan. Andreas Huyssen's "great divide" helps to conceptualize Hyakken's own fraught relationships with mass culture and politics over the course of his life.³ Walter Benjamin's writings on mechanical reproduction come into play, and Tosaka Jun's works on literature and politics, particularly his treatment of zuihitsu, play a prominent role.⁴ DiNitto's evocative and nonmechanical use of such theoretical works gives insight into Hyakken and the twentieth-century Japanese literary landscape and allows her to lucidly articulate the themes and questions in Hyakken's writings. As is fairly usual in Japan studies, the book does...