Paper short abstract:

Y. Hijikata worked to popularize the Stanislavsky system and to break away from the prewar "Meyerholdism." This presentation will explore the possibility of understanding Socialist realism in postwar Shingeki, using the example of Hijikata's experiences in the USSR and his exchange with K. Simonov.

Paper long abstract:

After the war, Hijikata Yoshi worked to popularize the Stanislavsky system and attempted to create a socialist realist theater, breaking away from the prewar "Meyerholdism." Koreya Senda said, "In the process of moving from theatrical avant-gardism to Socialist realism, it seems that he had a lot of difficulty in trying to scrub away the residue of idealism, mechanism, and formalism. This is probably why he studied the Stanislavsky system so intensely after the war.” Already in the prewar 1930s Japanese Shingeki circles, the discourse on Meyerhold was negative, which was in line with the cultural policy of the Soviet government of the time. In fact, Hijikata himself wrote after the war, in writing about Meyerhold's death, that the "biological or mechanical emancipation of theater and acting techniques was no longer effective, and superficial posters were no longer possible," and that the purpose of his visit to the USSR in 1933 was "to break away from all the influences of the past that had produced defects in me as a director, that is, the influence of Meyerhold, and to see a new and true creative method."

It should be noted, however, that Hijikata's statement was written in 1945, after the war, as a memoir. It will be necessary to consider the influence of Hijikata's four years of experience in the Soviet Union, from 1933 to 1937, on his postwar attitude. Hijikata himself left no record of his time in the Soviet Union. In this regard, we will review the memoirs of Natalya Semper-Sokolova, a friend and private translator of Hijikata. Then, we will examine how Hijikata's postwar exchanges with K. Simonov, a leading writer of Socialist realism, influenced him.