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Paper short abstract:

Nakajima Atsushi is sometimes labeled a forerunner of Japanese postcolonial literature. This fact is rather surprising for at least two reasons. Not only was Japan a colonial superpower for almost eighty years, but Nakajima also did not live to see the collapse of the Empire of Japan in 1945.

Paper long abstract:

Although practically unknown outside Japan, Nakajima Atsushi (1909-1942) is sometimes labeled a forerunner of Japanese postcolonial literature even by some prominent Japanese literary historians. He was a bright student that showed his passion for literary pursuits while still in middle school. Nakajima wrote his first short stories while living in Keijō (now Seoul); after moving back to the colonial metropolis, he could not stop dreaming about returning to the imperial periphery. A few years before his premature death, Nakajima came across the literary works of Robert Louis Stevenson and instantly became an eager reader of the author. He even wrote a quasi­-diary about this Scottish novelist. In addition to his recurring health problems, Nakajima's fascination with Stevenson was undoubtedly among the reasons why he decided to move to Koror, Palau, when he was offered a position as a supervisor for elementary­-school textbooks

In his diaries and letters to his family, Nakajima was critical of the Japanese colonial policies, yet he never directly opposed the imperial elites in Tokyo. In my opinion, his recent rediscovery should be placed in the broader perspective of the rediscovery of the Japanese imperial past after Hirohito's death in 1989—which, on the other hand, did not end the widespread belief among the Japanese that in the first half of the twentieth century they were actually victims, and not victimizers. This clearly shows that literary canonisation is frequently a political statement and serves some political purposes of the time.

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Paper short abstract:

The fundamental question underlying this paper is how intellectuals of postwar Japan responded to the encounter with the Soviet Union, and in particular how their identity and beliefs were challenged by that experience, and to what extent such issues were embodied in their writings.

Paper long abstract:

The fundamental question underlying this paper is how intellectuals of postwar Japan responded to the encounter with the Soviet Union.

More than fifty travelogues to the USSR were published in Japan either as magazine articles or in book form between the 50s and the 60s, testifying to a thriving intercultural exchange as well as to a growing interest in Soviet Union by the Japanese public. To be sure, most of the travelogues were written by members of the Japanese political, economical and technical elite. Some of them, however, were authored by members of literary world. This paper will specifically focus on the latter by analyzing two such works by the renowned Japanese writers Tokunaga Sunao (1899-1958) and Ōoka Shōhei (1909-1988), who respectively visited the USSR in 1954 and 1962.

In his seminal book "Political Pilgrims" (1981), Paul Hollander examined the infatuation of Western intellectuals who traveled to the Soviet Union and the other communist countries, arguing that their perception and judgement was ultimately shaped both by personal self-deception and by carefully arranged "techniques of hospitality" that strongly influenced and limited their experience.

In Ōoka Shōhei's opinion, for people of his generation the Soviet Union was indeed the "country one longed for" (akogare no kuni), that is, an object of admiration, curiosity, and idealization, regardless of one's ideological belief.

Following Hollander's scholarship I will discuss the two travelogues in order to explore questions as to how did the authors confront with the myth of the Soviet Union as a socialist utopia, that is, how did their identities within Japanese society informed their beliefs about the Soviet Union and how were such beliefs negotiated with the actual experience.