Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.

LitMod03


has 1 film 1
Political Conversion and Its Narratives: Tenkō in Transwar Japan 
Convenor:
George T. Sipos (West University of Timisoara)
Send message to Convenor
Section:
Modern Literature
Sessions:
Thursday 26 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels

Short Abstract:

While well-known and researched in Japan, tenkō (political conversion) remains largely under-studied in Western languages. This panel will revisit the concept itself, as well as the corpus of narratives usually identified as tenkō literature.

Long Abstract:

The concept of tenkō incorporates expressions of ideological conversion performed by members of the Japanese Communist Party, starting in 1933, whereby they renounced Marxism, either willingly or fearing for their health and life, and expressed support for Japan's imperial expansion on the continent.

The debate is still open as to whether Japan's tenko of anti-kokutai activists was a unique phenomenon in Japan and elsewhere, a social experiment in oppression in which state authorities, and societal and personal pressures alike, led to a public mass ideological conversion of almost all of Japan's leftist organizations' members and to their declarative "re-integration" in the "family state." This panel proposes not only a re-positioning of tenkō within its historical context and beyond, but also a re-opening of the discussion about tenkō through literary narratives produced by the "converted" writers of the time.

The presentations in the panel focus on conceptual reassessments of the larger phenomena of tenkō and tenkō literature, while also adding a fresh reading of the literary works of Takami Jun (1907-1965), as a tenkō writer. Iterations of the presentations in the panel are part of a brand new book project focused on interwar Japan: Tenkō: Cultures of Political Conversion in Transwar Japan (Routledge, 2021).

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Thursday 26 August, 2021, -