Paper short abstract:

The Soviet author Boris Pilnyak visited Japan in 1926 and 1932 and published two related travelogues and other short works. This talk discusses Pilnyak's idiosyncratic depiction of Japan, including the political situation and his own reception as representative of the Russian Revolution.

Paper long abstract:

Boris Pilnyak (pen name of Boris Vogau; 1894-38) was the best-traveled Soviet writer of the first decades of Bolshevik rule in Russia. Although he is not much studied today, in the early-to-mid 1920s he was arguably the Soviet Union's top prose author. Pilnyak traveled to Japan twice: in 1926, at the invitation of the Asahi newspaper conglomerate, during a burst of enthusiasm and interest that followed the normalization of relations with between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan that was signed in January, 1925; and in 1932, possibly at the request of Stalin, after relations between the two nations had taken a turn for the worse and while the Japanese economy and social fabric were under considerable stress. Both visits resulted in books about Japan, as well as a few short stories that, like the travel narratives, today might be classified as creative non-fiction. Pilnyak's Japan connections became part of the pretext for Pilnyak's arrest in the fall of 1937 and execution early in 1938: among the accusations leveled against him was espionage for Japan.

Pilnyak's works about Japan are odd, but fascinating works. Banal orientalist clichés and mistaken understandings (sometimes taken from Japan experts) stand side-by-side with strong insights; all have a way of relating to persistent concerns in Pilnyak's poetic world. This is particularly true in his depiction of Japan's political left and the potential for revolution that Pilnyak apprehended--or, as Soviet critics alleged after the first book, ignored--in his writings. Pilnyak was received as representing the Russian Revolution. He was incessantly followed by police and forced to leave the country abruptly during his second visit. Pilnyak's treatment of the political situation in Japan, and of his own situation as representative of the Russian Revolution, speaks as much of the USSR as it does of Japan and is riddled with ironic tensions, especially in his polemics against the Japanese Catholic social activist author Toyohiko Kagawa. Ultimately, politics becomes set in tense opposition to his greater interest in what he saw as distinctive in Japanese culture.