67 - Literary marketplace, politics, and history: 1900s–1940s

Summary

This chapter highlights three main developments in Japanese literature in the first half of the twentieth century. First, it examines changes in the literary marketplace. Second, the chapter looks at the formation of the canon of "pure literature", together with the emergence of competing standards, including nationalism and Marxism-Leninism. Third, it analyzes a series of embroilments between literature and politics, and the impact they had on historical interpretation. The development of a mass readership is an important premise for understanding the impact made by the writers of the Shirakaba magazine. Shirakaba was originally a coterie journal created by young graduates of Gakushuin University. Around the time when Shiga Naoya's literary style was generally accepted as the canon-setter for pure literature, a group of writers without formal education emerged. One development during the Edo period of "literary renaissance" in the mid to late 1930s was the so-called unification of pure literature and popular literature.