Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
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Momotaro as Proletarian: A Study of Revolutionary Symbolism in Japan Satoru Aonuma To cite this article: Satoru Aonuma (2014) Momotaro as Proletarian: A Study of Revolutionary Symbolism in Japan, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 11:4, 382-400, DOI: 10.1080/14791420.2014.959452 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2014.959452
Published online: 19 Nov 2014.
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Date: 10 September 2015, At: 15:29
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies Vol. 11, No. 4, December 2014, pp. 382–400
Momotaro as Proletarian: A Study of Revolutionary Symbolism in Japan Downloaded by [National Communication Association] at 15:29 10 September 2015
Satoru Aonuma
This article discusses the ideological working of Momotaro, a popular Japanese folktale in which an imaginary hero liberates his people from evil demons in a distant land. During the 1930s and 1940s, this folktale was used by the imperial authorities to justify the war against “demonic Anglo-Americans.” Little known is that the same story was also appropriated by Japanese orator-communists challenging imperialism and war capitalism. The article critically examines how the folk hero acquired “class consciousness” and became proletarian, critiquing the dominant ideology. Keywords: Folklore; Japanese Rhetoric; Marxism; Proletarian Literature; Rhetorical Subversion
Insofar as a writer really is a propagandist, not merely writing work that will be applauded by his allies, convincing the already convinced, but actually moving forward like a pioneer into outlying areas of the public and bringing them the first favorable impressions of his doctrine, the nature of his trade may give rise to special symbolic requirements.—Kenneth Burke1 Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.—Ho Chi Min2
Satoru Aonuma (MA, the University of Iowa; Ph.D., Wayne State University) is Professor of Rhetoric and Communication at Tsuda College, Japan. An embryonic idea of this article was presented at the 1992 Speech Communication Association (now National Communication Association) Annual Convention. The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers of the journal for their constructive feedback as well as Mark H. Wright for fine-tuning the author's use of language. Unless otherwise specified, all the translations from original Japanese sources to English in this article are the author's; all the Japanese names are transcribed in western order, i.e., given name followed by family name. This article is dedicated to the late Michael Calvin McGee, the late Robert James Branham, the late Tamotsu Todd Imahori, the late Bruce E. Gronbeck, and Professor Emeritus Roichi Okabe, without whom the author is not what he is. Correspondence to: Satoru Aonuma, Department of English, Tsuda College, 2-1-1 Tsuda-Machi, Kodaira, Tokyo 187–8577 Japan. Email:
[email protected]. ISSN 1479-1420 (print)/ISSN 1479-4233 (online) © 2014 National Communication Association http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2014.959452
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Introduction As a carrier of public morality, folktale makes a powerful persuasive discourse.3 With its wide and easy accessibility, its ideological utility is time-tested. In early-twentiethcentury Germany, the Third Reich appropriated folklore and mythic narratives to promote the Nazi’s ideology and its theory of a master-race. To celebrate and strengthen Bolshevism, the Soviet government solicited folk legends and heroic songs from the collective-farm workers.4 This was also true in Japan from the late nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, the time when the symbolic power of folklore was “the very cornerstone of the country’s political structure.”5 During the period when imperialism and, by extension, war capitalism constituted the country’s dominant ideology, the imperial regime adopted one folktale called Momotaro (Peach Boy) and exploited its rhetorical power. Momotaro is the name of an imaginary folk hero. He was so named, as he was miraculously born out of a peach (momo); together with his loyal companions (a monkey, a dog, and a pheasant), Momotaro took the divine mission to conquer evil demons in a distant land and saved his village. This benign folktale was picked and appropriated by the imperial authorities in need of rhetoric when their Empire was at war with the West. As John Dower coined the term “Momotaro Paradigm,” the story became an epitome of Japan’s waging of the Holy War in the name of Asian liberation: the war against the Western colonists and the creation of the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.6 Based on this folktale, many artifacts were created for propaganda purposes; these include Momotaro No Umi No Arawasi (Momotaro’s Sea Eagle) and Momotaro, Umi No Shinpei (Momotaro, God Warriors of the Sea), two animation films produced under the supervision of the Navy Ministry, featuring Momotaro as a commanding officer and his animal followers flying Zero-fighters over the island of demons, i.e., Hawaii.7 Approximately at the same time, however, there existed different versions of Momotaro that challenged imperialism and war capitalism. 8 Kunio Yanagita, a noted Japanese folklorist, contended that folktale is a genre that empowers common people: oral tradition teaches them practical, social knowledge; studies of folklore therefore are the scholarship of resistance.9 In the mid-1920s, Japanese Marxists and left intellectuals launched a revolutionary literary front called the Proletarian Literature Movement, organizing a nationwide politico-cultural opposition to the imperial-capitalist regime. In this Movement, Japanese “orator-communists”10 hailed Momotaro, the imaginary folk hero, to work for their political cause. They criticized the powers that be and were engaged in agitation and propaganda or agitprop for revolution, making the story of Momotaro a brilliant rhetorical work of proletarian counter-discourse. Namely, Momotaro was not only a collaborator of the imperial regime but also part of revolutionary symbolism. This article will delineate a rhetorical enactment of the folk narrative in the latter sense, i.e., Momotaro as proletarian, at the height of Japanese imperialism and war capitalism. Engaging the analysis, the article attempts to make a modest contribution to studies of modern Japanese rhetoric. Japan has been proven to possess a rich
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tradition of rhetoric. While the larger body of scholarly literature is now available, however, most of the previous studies, with a few exceptions,11 have focused mainly on the working of discourses of power, e.g., speeches and writings of national political larders,12 prominent opinion leaders,13 Emperor,14 teachings of a dominant religion (e.g., Buddhism),15 and official policy pronouncements,16 virtually ignoring a variety of dissenting discursive practices that have existed in the country’s history. This is truly unfortunate, given that Japan has a strong tradition of grassroots uprisings, civil unrest, and other forms of political dissension. It is a country where protests and other mass movements have traditionally been “a means of expressing popular grievances.”17 Particularly since the implantation of Marxism onto its soil, words and deeds of the political left have continued to play a significant role in shaping the nation’s political culture.18 Any fuller understanding of the actual working of rhetoric is incomplete without taking into account the existence of historically situated dissension and struggle. By examining this folktale-turned revolutionary symbolism, this articles wishes to shed light on a significant missing part of the politico-rhetorical history of a nation-state once erroneously depicted as a “rhetorical vacuum.”19 Perhaps more importantly, this article seeks to extend critical rhetorical scholarship, particularly the one that deals with the relationship between Marxism and rhetorical discourse. In the English-speaking world, the working of symbolic power that made history has been extensively studied by rhetorical scholars.20 Among them, issues regarding what rhetorical strategy left revolutionaries could/should employ have generated a contentious debate.21 Against this backdrop, this article will highlight rhetorical subversion, one viable tactic available to orator-communists and the political left. Revolutionary symbolism does not need a new language; “a new language, if it is to be political, cannot possibly be ‘invented’: it will necessarily depend on the subverting use of traditional material.”22 Ideological change is a symbolic conversion. When we employ symbolism rhetorically and ideologically to do the work, we change the internal structure of that symbolism as well as its relationship with other signs and discourses. In such rhetorical operation, we most likely locate “the potential to change … the ‘present’ ideology.”23 Thus, as James Aune suggested, the contemporary American left could steal the language of family values from the conservative, refurbish it, and use it for left politics.24 Most likely, however, strong objections will be raised by the conservative against this rhetoric. Rhetorical subversion does not always go smoothly as “various different classes … use one and the same language. As a result, different oriented accents intersect in every ideological sign. Sign becomes an arena of the class struggle.”25 I submit that Momotaro-as-proletarian should be understood as one particular instance of such ideological struggle. By critically exploring how the Japanese left in the early twentieth century attempted to fight the dominant ideology by recreating, refurbishing, and retelling the popular folktale, an attempt will be made to extend the ongoing scholarly discourse on Marxist rhetorical strategy outside the North American and European contexts. Following the Introduction, the article offers a synopsis of the historical development of Japanese Marxism and the Proletarian Literature Movement26 in which Momotaro-as-proletarian emerged. It then proceeds with an analysis of the proletarian
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remaking of this folktale as a form of rhetorical subversion, explicating how the popular folk hero became a proletarian hero (and anti-hero) during the heyday of the country’s capitalism and imperialism. The article concludes the analysis by reminding critical communication scholars of the historical significance of this rhetorical dissension in modern Japan and suggesting that they pay more attention to internationalization and global solidarity of rhetorical dissension.
Marxism, Proletkult, and the Proletarian Literature Movement The year 1868 marked the birth of a modern empire on the Japanese archipelagos. It was also the dawn of the country’s economic industrialization/militarization. Taking over the country’s sovereign authority from the Shogunate, the imperial regime began aggressively engaged in transforming Japan into a modern industrial economy as well as a military power. By the 1910s, Japan had become the world’s leading exporter of textiles; there also was a drastic increase in steel, copper, and coal production, as well as other heavy industries such as railroads, arms production, and shipbuilding. Especially after winning two wars against China (1894–5) and then Russia (1904–5), Japan recognized itself, and became recognized by other major Western powers, as a newly emerging competitor in the world of colonialism, imperialism, and war capitalism. At the same time, with its rival powers, Japan also experienced its share of the problem during this period: “The introduction of an industrial economy in Japan … brought with it the labor problems of the West.”27 Namely, at the height of its industrialization, Japan saw a drastic increase in labor disputes, strikes, and other forms of organized unrest involving angry workers. While the regime succeeded in turning the country into a major world power, its aggressive modernization policy ran counter to the people’s wants and needs; whereas, the country itself became richer and stronger, the people became poorer and economically less secure. “Despite official disfavor, frequently manifesting itself in arrests, interruptions of meetings, suspension of publications, and dissolution of organizations, a number of leaders emerged who devoted themselves to the organization of trade unions and political groups.”28 It is these politico-material conditions that gave rise to Japanese Marxism. Its origin dates back to when Shusui Kotoku and Toshihiko Sakai, two progressive journalist-writers, encountered Marx and Engels and began translating their works.29 A portion of their Japanese translation of the Communist Manifesto appeared in 1904; two years later, the full Japanese version came out. Equally important is the role played by Sen Katayama, a US-educated Christian socialist and the publisher/ founder of Rodo Sekai (Labor World), the country’s first trade-union journal.30 Seeking to represent the interest of the working people in the political arena, Kotoku, Katayama, and other activists founded the Social Democratic Party. In 1906, they organized another socialist party, i.e., the Japan Socialist Party, taking a more radical turn and instigating more direct actions such as strikes and sabotage in the country’s major industrial sectors.
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As Japanese labor turned to socialism and became more politically involved, it invited severe governmental repression. Many of the activists were arrested or went underground. Some, including Kotoku, were executed by the authorities; others escaped overseas and sought political asylum, including Katayama who went back to the United States. In retrospect, this was a significant turning point in the historical development of Japanese Marxism: While in the United States, Katayama and his group were contacted by the Communist International or Comintern and, against the backdrop of the successful Russian Revolution, they became convinced of the superiority of Lenin’s interpretation of Marx, i.e., scientific socialism, and became part of the international Bolshevik movement.31 Soon, across the Pacific, Marxism was smuggled back into the country and (re)implanted onto its soil, enabling intellectual and literary socialism to flourish. In the late 1910s, intellectual and scholarly writings of Japanese Marxists began to appear not only in their own underground periodicals but also in general publications. Curiously enough, the authorities then were inattentive to the “non-political” works of socialists and Marxists, e.g., creative writing, scholarly treatises, etc., for “[s]ocialist literature was generally regarded by the state as being akin to ‘yellow journalism’— undeniably obstreperous but, for the most part, relatively harmless.”32 During the 1920s, the quantity and quality of their works became almost equal to that in Germany.33 In the words of Masao Maruyama, a noted post-WWII intellectual, Marxism “[swept] through the Japanese intelligentsia like a whirlwind,”34 making it “hard to find an intellectual who did not broadly agree with Marx’s basic diagnosis of the problems of capitalist society.”35 Against this politico-intellectual climate, the Japan Communist Party was inaugurated in 1922. As the one and only Bolshevik vanguard in Japan, it was less a mere political party than a political “organization.” Namely, under the Comintern’s direction, its primary goal was “the political education of the working class and the development of its political consciousness.”36 And to achieve that goal, literary-minded Marxists, as well as some communist sympathizers among literary circles, participated in the “battlefield of cultural practice,”37 commencing the Proletarian Literature Movement and seeking to create the distinct proletarian culture or Proletkult. “The proletarian state must educate thousands of first-class ‘craftsmen of culture,’ ‘engineers of the soul.’ This is necessary in order to restore to the whole mass of the working people the right to develop their intelligence, talents, and faculties.”38 As Kiyoshi Aono, a leading figure in the Movement, wrote: The Proletarian Literature Movement is an ultimate collective activity whereby already committed proletarian, that is, “socialist-proletarian,” artists seek to help other [would-be] proletarian fellows acquire the teleological consciousness of socialism. This is where the significance and the necessity of the Movement lie.39
With Bungei Sensen (Literary Front), a journal devoted exclusively to the publication of proletarian literature, they established the Japan Proletarian Literary Arts League in 1925. Going through some factional disputes within the League, it was later reformed as the All Japan Federation of Proletarian Arts and Senki (Battle Flag), the
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Federation’s official journal, became their primary literary outlet during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Distributing creative writing that carried politico-educational messages, those who participated in the Movement were largely under the Comintern’s directive and necessarily abided by the idea of “socialist realism,” the one and only literary genre for the international proletariat. Emphasizing objectivity and scientific truth, this Bolshevik dictum demands proletarian artists of “truthful (pravdivyi), historically concrete representation of reality,” while “truthfulness (pravdivost) and historical concreteness of artistic representation of reality must (or should) be combined with the task of ideologically remaking and training the labouring people in the spirit of socialism.”40 As such, it denounced and rejected impressionism, cubism, and other “unrealistic,” “untruthful,” and “imaginary” forms of artistic expressions as “bourgeois” and “decadent.” At the same time, among these Marxist writers and intellectuals were those who did not necessarily subscribe to the idea of socialist realism. This is particularly true during the early phase of the Movement when the Comintern’s dicta were not so dogmatically imposed. More specifically, these unorthodox Marxists called for “literary populism” that should supplement the realism, for scientific and objective representation of reality alone would have limited rhetorical appeal: It is simply not so interesting to the mass readership. Similarly, they maintained that Proletkult should be more inclusive and more widely accessible across generations and diverse social strata. Accordingly, they advocated that an equally significant generic emphasis should be put on the “imaginary, fanciful, and fairy,” as a counterpart of the real, scientific, and objective, in literature and other artifacts that should create necessary conditions for revolution to come: [I]s it really true that Marx and Engels avoided “the politics of dreaming,” the social poetics of anticipatory imagination? Can one separate the ideal from the real in a scientific fashion? Is it possible to mobilize people to fight oppression without a future “state of affairs” for consciousness to fasten on? Scattered throughout the Marx/Engels oeuvre are numerous references to life in communist society. And these anticipatory imaginings function as an ethical normative standard of the truly human by which to judge the failings of class society. Which is to say, utopian visions of communism are presented as powerful critiques of actually existing capitalism.41
It is crucial to recognize the co-existence of these two different genres when we are to understand the status of children’s literature and the rhetorical deployment of folklore in the Proletarian Literature Movement. Just as Burke, these literary Marxists in Japan understood the role that “adult education”42 should play in the creation of proletarian hegemony; as such, they wrote novels and other forms of realistic literature for the would-be proletarian adult readership. At the same time, they also recognized the need for educating those who were, more or less, ideologically innocent; they found in many younger readers, i.e., school children, another significant group of potential comrades. With the belief that “the writers of children’s literature, with the consciousness of socialism and anti-capitalism, should liberate [our] children from the evil of the time,”43 they launched a series of politico-
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educational offensives through their literary works. In June 1927, “Chisai Doushi (A Little Comrade),” a column for primary and middle school children, started to appear regularly in Bungei Sensen. Also, Shonen Senki (Battle Flag Junior), a collection of proletarian literary works written for the same readership, began as a supplement to Senki in 1929, and it soon became a separate periodical. It is in this politicohistorico-cultural situation and in the literary-generic pendulum between realism and the politics of dreaming that we see Momotaro make a political turn.
Momotaro as We Ordinarily Know Him Momotaro is undoubtedly among the most popular (and perhaps the most favorite) folk heroes in Japan. The story of his conquest had been featured in every state-authorized, grade school level textbook for Japanese language instruction until 1945, the year WWII ended. Even today, most Japanese know the story as a bedtime story, in a picture book series, or even from cartoons and comics.44 While there are some variances, the following is a typical version most Japanese people would tell to an English-speaking audience when asked what the story is like: Once upon a time, there lived an old couple in a small village. One day the old wife was washing her clothes in the river when a huge peach came tumbling down the stream. The old woman brought the peach home and cut it up to share with her husband. To their great surprise, a healthy baby boy came right out of the peach! The old couple said, “Let’s name him Momotaro (Peach-boy) as he was born from a peach.” They brought him up with love and care. Momotaro grew up rapidly into a strong boy. One day, he said to the old couple, “Dear Grandma and Grandpa, I am going to fight and kill evil demons.” The old couple made some millet dumplings for Momotaro to take with him. As Momotaro walked toward Demon’s Island, a dog approached him and said, “Hello, Momotaro, can I have one of your millet dumplings, please?” “You can, if you come with me to fight and kill bad demons,” said Momotaro. Then, as Momotaro and the dog went further on, a pheasant came up to them and said, “Hello, Momotaro, can I have one of your millet dumplings that you’re carrying around your waist?” “Sure you can, if you come with us to fight and kill bad demons,” said Momotaro. As the three went on, a monkey showed up and said, “Hello, Momotaro, can I have one of your millet dumplings from around your waist?” “You sure can, if you come with us to fight and kill bad demons,” said Momotaro. Thus, Momotaro with the dog, pheasant, and monkey as his companions crossed over to Demon’s Island. As soon as they arrived on the island, red demons and blue demons attacked them, shouting, “What are you here for, you cocky people? We’ll knock you out!” The pheasant pecked at demon’s heads, the monkey scratched their faces, the dog bit them on the leg, and Momotaro swung his sword at them. “We’re sorry, so sorry. We won’t harm anyone any more. So please forgive us.” The demons begged and surrendered. Then they offered many treasures to Momotaro.
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Momotaro brought the treasures home where the old couple were waiting, and they lived happily together from that day on.45
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Reading Momotaro With Marx Unlike Momotaro-as-we-ordinarily-know-him, Momotaro-as-proletarian lived only four years. In 1927, as the first proletarian version, Kiyoshi Eguchi’s “Aru Hi No Onigashima (One Day in the Land of Demons)” appeared. Subsequently four others were published in 1929: Soichiro Imajiri’s “Shin Momotaro Banashi (A New Story of Momotaro)”; Mitsuo Sakanashi’s “Sonogo No Momotaro (Momotaro’s Later Life)”; Heihachi Kuroita’s “Momotaro Seibatsu (The Conquest of Momotaro)”; and Nobuo Mitsunari’s “Menboku Wo Tsubushita Hanashi (A Story of Losing Face).” The final proletarian Momotaro, Mutsuo Honjo’s “Oni Seibatsu No Momotaro (Momotaro’s Conquest of the Demon),” was published in 1931. Among these proletarian recreations of the story, two versions in particular deserve our attention: one by Eguchi and the other by Honjo. As the first proletarian version, Eguchi’s Momotaro was published in the October and November 1927 issues of Akaitori (Red Bird), a monthly periodical for grade school pupils founded and published by Miekichi Suzuki, a noted writer of children’s literature and a champion of child innocentism (dousin shugi), an educational philosophy that values freedom and innate creativity of children and is critical of governmental control over school education.46 Honjo’s final version appeared in the May 1931 issue of Shonen Senki, another monthly for the same readership published by the All Japan Federation of Proletarian Arts, the premier organization for Marxist writers and artists under the Communist Party’s/Comintern’s influence. My analysis in what follows will focus on these two works. As the two authors marshaled their brilliant literary techniques to incorporate Marxism into the story, subverting and turning it into a piece of revolutionary symbolism, their works should highlight the rhetorical power of folktale for political and ideological purposes. At the same time, reading the first and the final proletarian versions of the story in tandem should provide an interesting comparison and contrast in terms of generic requirements for, as well as historicalsituatedness of, this folktale-turned revolutionary symbolism. In one version, Momotaro was characterized as a hero of Bolshevik revolution. In the other version, the same folk hero was depicted as the arch enemy of the working people, i.e., a coldblooded imperialist-capitalist.
Momotaro as Capitalist/Imperialist As the first proletarian recreation, the storyline of Eguchi’s Momotaro47 is basically the same as that of the standard version: With help from his three loyal animal companions, Momotaro, a miraculous boy, bravely took on a mission of conquering demons in a distant land. A glance at the story, however, would instantaneously alert us to the strong presence of Marxist ideological critique. Specifically put, what makes
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Eguchi’s version proletarian is the distinct vantage point from which he constructed the story, i.e., the story is narrated from the perspective of the demons Momotaro conquered. This completely reverses the role that each character is assigned to play: Momotaro as the exploiter and the demons as the exploited. Eguchi’s story begins with a description of the demons’ life. In an island far distant from the human world, a tribe of demons lived peacefully. One day, they held a festival at a shrine located at the top of a rocky mountain. Except for the aged and babies, all the other demons gathered at the shrine away from their village. Meanwhile, old demons were enjoying basking in the sun; they were at the south coast of the island, guarding the gate and babysitting infants. Suddenly a pheasant flew over the gate, and then came a monkey climbing the wall and opening the gate within. Through the gate, a baby-faced boy came in: “Attention, you demons! I am Momotaro, the number one in Japan. To conquer your land, I come all the way across the sea from Japan. Now the battle is declared!” So Momotaro shouted, brandishing a sword in front of the demons.48
The old demons did not get frightened, however. To capture the young human boy, they moved forward instead of surrendering or escaping. It was Momotaro who was appalled and frightened. He was too naïve to think that he could have easily conquered the demons without actually engaging in combat, expecting that showing a sword as a threat would do the job. Having realized that he was dead wrong, Momotaro screamed out of fear and ran away, not even having a chance of turning back. Back to the beach where his boat was anchored, Momotaro called his dog. Soon a dog as gigantic as an ox came out from the boat, and Momotaro came back to the gate, this time setting his dog on the demons. The dog assaulted the demons with its sharp teeth and strong jaw, while Momotaro sat down just watching the fight. The old demons bravely fought back, but unfortunately they were powerless against his gigantic dog and soon surrendered. Momotaro commanded one of the demons to open their storehouses and expropriated all of their treasure. Moreover, he captured some baby demons and brought them back to Japan as souvenirs. Later in the afternoon, the young demons came back from the festival and found that Momotaro had “invaded” their land. They became furious about things he did in their absence, but, since Momotaro and his followers were already gone, there was nothing they could do. Then several years later, a curious news story came into the land of demons from the human world. It was about Momotaro. Since brave Momotaro conquered the atrocious evils in the distant land, so went the news, the human race, especially people in Japan, admired him as a god-like figure, worshiping his pictures and singing songs about his brave mission. There was no mentioning of his sneak attack, the old demons, and his “kidnapping” of the baby demons; nor was there any mention of the dog, the monkey, and the pheasant who did all the work. Having heard of this, the demons recalled their furies of several years ago, and one after another they started to accuse Momotaro of being a “wimp (yowamushi),” a “liar (usotsuki),” and “sneaky (zurui).”49 Trying to calm down his angry fellows, however, one old demon who survived Momotaro’s invasion interrupted the talk:
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“This talk of fury gets us nowhere. That is the way of life in the human world anyway.” [Another demon replied:] “But that’s unfair, isn’t it? Those who work honestly aren’t entitled to receive a reward, and only sneaky folks can take the lion’s share? It that really the way it is in the human world? If so, then, I’m sure the land of demons is a much better place, for here everyone lives peacefully, works honestly, and cooperates with each other.” And another old black demon, with a low-toned voice showing his conviction, replied: “Yes, it certainly is. Life in the human world is really worthless. We are the luckiest to be able to be born and live in the land of demons.” Having heard his words, all demons eased their furies and then smiled at each other.50
Eguchi’s Momotaro was published when socialist realism was yet to become fully dogmatic in the Proletarian Literature Movement. As such, his recreation still retained the imaginary and unrealistic elements of the standard version. Just as the Momotaro we originally knew, the story told by Eguchi is hardly an objective, scientific, or concrete description of historical fact or truth. By contrasting the present (i.e., human’s) and alternative (i.e., demon’s) worlds, however, it exposes contradictions inherent in any capitalist society and asks his readers to imagine how wonderful it would be to live in a communist society. As Terry Eagleton maintained: [A]ll prescriptions about what to do imply description of what is the case. … It must combine the indicative mood with the subjunctive one, yoking a coldly demystified sense of the present to a warmly imaginative leap beyond it … The mind is called upon to be both mirror and lamp, faithfully reflecting its surroundings while shedding a transformative light upon them. The flights of fantasy which get in the way of trying to see the situation straight are vital to imagining an alternative to it.51
In Eguchi’s Momotaro, the land of demons is represented as an imaginary utopia where everyone lives peacefully. The human world, on the other hand, is depicted as a place full of contradictions, where “those who work honestly aren’t entitled to receive a reward, and only sneaky folks take the lion’s share.” For instance, although his subordinates did all the work, Momotaro took the lion’s share and was adored and worshipped as a god-like figure; such is the way of life in the human world, as one demon said in the story. In so doing, Eguchi offers a rationale for creating a socialist dream land where “everyone works honestly and cooperates with each other.” Equally notable in Eguchi’s story is a rhetorical implication of the parallel between Momotaro’s mission of conquest and Imperial Japan’s foreign adventurism. That is, told from the vantage point of the demons, the story ridicules the absurdity and destructiveness of Momotaro’s divine mission and exposes the not-so-divine material motives behind it. Put specifically, the story challenges kichiku beiei, literally translated as the demonic Anglo-Americans, a political symbol or “ideograph”52 which helped to justify the atrocity inflicted upon the Asia-Pacific by Imperial Japan in the name of the war against the white colonists. Eguchi’s proletarian storytelling functions as a powerful critique of this official ideology: Imperial Japan, as represented by Momotaro, was in fact itself a demonic imperialist seeking to colonize and exploit the rest of Asia. It should be remembered that Eguchi’s Momotaro was written for ideologically innocent school children. Yet, if the proletarian adults read this piece, they should
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have understood why Lenin referred to Japan as the prime example when he debunked “the objective conditions of imperialism” and critiqued “how shamelessly untruthful the capitalists … are on the questions of annexations.”53 This was the time when all news reports were to be officially authorized by the imperial authorities. Only good news came from China, annexed Korea, and other parts of the AsiaPacific; people were led to believe that their Empire was engaged in the Holy War, liberating Asia from the Western imperialists. All of these did make sense within Dower’s Momotaro Paradigm: Imperial Japan played a role of a Momotaro-like figure, emancipating the Asian nations from the hands of the demonic AngloAmericans. As Alvin Gouldner explained: Ideology makes a diagnosis of the social world and claims that it is true. It alleges an accurate picture of society and claims (or implies) that its political policies are grounded in that picture. To that extent, ideology is a very special sort of rational discourse by reason of its world-referring claims.54
Narrated from the side of the demons, Eguchi’s Momotaro attempted to deconstruct the rationality of the officially sanctioned ideological discourse.
Momotaro as Working-Class Hero Mutsuo Honjo’s recreation of Momotaro is a shorter and final proletarian version55; in contrast to Eguchi’s, the story consistently exhibits, from the beginning to the end, a strong presence of socialist realism. While Eguchi’s version remains fanciful and folkloric, Honjo radically recontextualizes the narrative as a story of peasant’s uprising and worker’s revolt where Momotaro is presented as a Marxist role model. Equally important, Honjo claims that his proletarian version is a concrete description of the real, i.e., a (hi)story that actually happened. In Honjo’s version, Momotaro appears as a tenant farmer in a small village. Born out of a peach taken from a river, he was raised as a grandchild of an old peasant couple. As he grew up, he became a hard-working farmer, helping his old grandparents. But, as the story goes, he began to question his life as a farmer, a sign that he developed a distinct class consciousness, leading Momotaro to an idea of undertaking the divine mission: to conquer the demon: As he grew up, Momotaro started to think about the status of farmers who always remained poor no matter how hard they worked. Rice they harvested was exploited by the landowner as farm rent. Particularly this year, since most of their harvest was exploited, there was little left for the peasants to consume by themselves. People in the village backbit the landowner and called him “demon” behind his back. Momotaro, too, thought that he was certainly a demon. “I wish the demon should go away. We should exterminate him!”56
Momotaro knew that no history is made in a day by one’s solo work alone. One night, he talked to his grandparents of this idea and, after deliberation, they agreed that he should carry out the mission of conquest. Given the exploitation and
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oppression that the villagers had suffered, said his grandmother, it is natural (as it is in dialectical materialism) for them to engage a revolt:
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Listen, Momotaro. We grow and harvest rice, but we can eat yard grass only. Such a society is not just. It is no one but a demon in the hell who can exploit us and eat our rice to his full. We should [censored]57 him as much as we want to.58
Meanwhile, the rumor that Momotaro was to take on his mission to conquer the landowner spread in the village. Soon many began to unite under Momotaro. Among them were Saru-Ichi, Inu-Jiro, and Kiji-Suke,59 a trio of farmer-revolutionaries equipped with strong leadership and special skills. On the eve of his divine mission, the grandmother made dumplings for Momotaro to carry and Momotaro, instead of consuming them by himself, provided the dumplings to all who gathered and once again emphasized the significance of their unity and solidarity. In the morning, Momotaro and his comrades left for the landowner’s mansion, the place they called onigashima or the “island of the demon.” To cheer themselves up, these revolutionaries sang a “fight song” on their way: We farmers grow rice and wheat Are generous and powerful; To conquer the demon, the landowner United for the mission, we are ready to go!60
Having encountered the farmers’ uprising, the landowner got frightened at his mansion. He apologized, begged for mercy, and tried to negotiate a temporal resolution with Momotaro and his fellow revolutionaries. But they never listened to him, for they knew that “capitalists were always liars”61 and, more importantly, that workers and farmers in Russia had won the “unconditional victory”: [Conversation among the farmers] “Now is the time that we should get even! We capture that large mansion, comfortable with a lot of sunshine and cool air, and use it as our collective storehouse.” “Yes! What a good idea! That mansion should originally belong to us by nature.” “Beat him now! Beat him now! He is a poisonous evil, and we should not let him live any more.” “And in Russia, there are no capitalists nor landowners any more, and there people work and live peacefully. This is what I know.”62
Then Momotaro jumped into the conversation: “‘Yes, indeed. [In Russia] farmers and workers exterminated capitalists and landowners to the hilt. Now is our time to go ahead!’ Having heard this, [the farmers] did not have any hesitation at all.”63 After besting the demonic landowner, Momotaro and his comrades declared the victory. The treasure stripped off from the storehouse became the collective property of the villagers. Since then, the people were able to live a peaceful life thanks to Momotaro’s conquest of the “demon,” i.e., the landowner. As the final proletarian version published in 1931, Honjo’s Momotaro turns the folklore into a story of revolution where the folk hero is depicted as an exemplary proletarian. The story is social-realistic in several respects. First, except for Momotaro’s unnatural birth (a baby born from a peach on the river), Honjo accommodated the story into the genre of the objective, natural, and necessary. In his recreation,
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Momotaro was just an ordinary peasant who developed a distinct class consciousness through farm work, i.e., his dialectic with nature. As he knew that a revolution is a work of collectivity, he cooperated with his fellow villagers and emphasized the importance of their unity. Facing the demonic landowner, he was uncompromising. After conquering the demon(ic landowner), he never took the lion’s share. All of these aspects of the story make Momotaro a perfect leader for proletarian social movement. As Takiji Kobayashi’s64 quasi-autobiographical novel Tou Seikatsusha (A Life of the Party Man) taught adult readers how the life of a committed proletarian should ideally be, Honjo’s Momotaro provided children of the working class with a blueprint for possible Bolshevik revolution in Japan by representing Momotaro as a working class hero. The story told by Honjo is also socialist-realistic in that the episode of Bolshevik Russia was added to the story and was presented as the real and possible. The farmers knew the success of Russian Revolution; as one farmer said in the story, in Soviet Russia “there are no capitalists nor landowners any more, and there people work and live peacefully.” The idea and necessity of a vanguard was also implied, as the conquest of the demon was successful due not only to the (spontaneous) uprising of the villagers (working mass) but also to the role of organizers played by Momotaro and his party, i.e., a group of fully committed proletarian leaders represented as the monkey, the dog, and the pheasant. In Lenin’s words: Lack of training of the majority of the revolutionaries, an entirely natural phenomenon, could not have roused any particular fears. Once the tasks were correctly defined, … temporary failures represented only part misfortune. Revolutionary experience and organisational skill are things that can be acquired, provided the desire is there to acquire them, provided the shortcomings are recognized.65
Equally significant, at the end of story Honjo left the postscript to his readers, i.e., school children, claiming that the story adopted in school textbooks authorized by the imperial authorities was false and that his version in fact was real and authentic: The Story of Momotaro that you had been told [in schools] is wrong and distorted. This is because [in Japan] there still exist landowners and capitalists. They don’t want the true story to be told to you. It is no wonder, for you are children of farmers and workers. So these “demons” command your school teachers tell you a lie.66
Stating Momotaro was originally a story of revolution, Honjo rejected the textbook version as it embraced false consciousness. Condemning that school system was controlled by the ruling idea of the ruling class, he suggested that his readers not be deceived by these real-life demons but be united against them instead.
Conclusions Once flourishing as a nationwide politico-cultural dissension, the Proletarian Literature Movement was disbanded by the government in 1934. Many involved in the Movement were arrested and tortured to death; others were forced to accept
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ideological conversion and became collaborators of the imperial authorities.67 Momotaro was no exception. While he was allowed to continue appearing in stateauthorized school textbooks, his story started to be featured in other state-sanctioned cultural texts and artifacts, glorifying the Empire’s Holy War against the West: heroic Japan represented by Momotaro drives out the demonic evil doers of the West and establishes its hegemony in the world. With Japan’s defeat in WWII, Momotaro completely disappeared from the political scene. Since then, no state-sanctioned school textbook adopted this folktale; nor is there any political propaganda based on the story. After all, as Michael McGee put, no ideological symbolism “can be divorced from past commitments.”68 Japanese orator-communists in the early twentieth century failed to make Bolshevik revolution a reality; their efforts to create Proletkult were crushed by the imperial regime. This should never be a reason to ignore one obvious fact: strong politicorhetorical oppositions did exist when the country’s imperialism and war capitalism were at their pinnacle. The Proletarian Literature Movement was the chief example of such oppositions. The preceding analysis also shows literary creativity as well as rhetorical sophistication of those who participated in the Movement. Two versions of Momotaro-as-proletarian analyzed in this article particularly demonstrate the political utility of folklore-turned revolutionary symbolism. Eguchi subverted the standard version by retelling it from the side of the demons and refurbishing it with the critique of capitalism and imperialism, while retaining the story’s folkloric dimensions. Honjo’s version incorporated socialist realism with the original storyline, turning this folktale to a real story of farmers’ revolt and suggesting to his readers that his in fact was authentic. Executed by Japanese orator-communists, these, I submit, are textbook examples of rhetorical subversion. Just like the contemporary American left stealing the symbol of family value, they chose not to invent a completely new symbol for agitprop; they instead picked the story of Momotaro, a traditional story. Engaging revolutionary symbolism, they turned the traditional folktale into a powerful counterdiscourse critiquing the dominant ideology and exposing its contradictions. Among the world’s prominent political left figures, Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci stands out as the one who found in folklore critical rhetorical potentials. In his words, “Folklore should … be studied as a ‘conception of the world and life’ implicit to a large extent in determinate (in time and space) strata of society and in opposition … to ‘official’ conceptions of the world.”69 When he wrote this passage, Italy was in the hands of fascism. As one of Mussolini’s prisoners, Gramsci died in 1937, never being able to put his idea into practice. Across the Eurasian continent, however, his contemporaries in Japan launched the Proletarian Literature Movement and were engaged in a politico-cultural struggle. The rhetorical strategy they deployed was what Gramsci had envisioned: Fully recognizing the political utility of folklore to oppose the official worldview or the dominant ideology, they exploited its rhetorical power for critiquing the status quo and for creating the discursive condition necessary for revolution. We also know that a similar politico-rhetorical development was simultaneously taking place in North America. In 1935, young Kenneth Burke called for the creation of counter-hegemony by way of rhetoric,
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arguing that the American left should drop the symbol of worker and instead use a more unifying, class-transcendent symbol of people. Unfortunately, his call was not welcomed by his comrades at that time; yet if we can now praise Burke for “doing Gramsci’s work before anyone but Gramsci,”70 the historical significance of Momotaro-as-proletarian should become obvious. Namely, Japanese orator-communists may have been practicing a Gramscian rhetoric before Gramsci and, more importantly, before Burke. This, in fact, should come as little surprise: As far as this particular historical period is concerned, rhetoricians, Marxists, and other political dissidents in Japan were the best accomplices in crime. As the first comprehensive historical treatment of Japanese rhetoric, Meiji Enzetsushi (History of Oratory in the Meiji Era) was published in 1929; Gaikotsu, the author, declared that he published this work to express “oppositions to the dictatorial government,” to support “resistance of popular rights advocates,” and to further instigate “clash between the people and the authorities.”71 In 1930, Eizo Kondo, a veteran Marxist-Leninist and a founding member of the Japan Communist Party, published Proletaria Yubengaku (Proletarian Elocution), the country’s very first practical handbook on public speaking and persuasive argumentation exclusive for orator-communists.72 In addition, the first theoretical treatise on rhetoric in modern Japan was published in 1937; it was authored by Kiyoshi Miki, a Marxist, a philosopher, and one of the most influential figures in the country’s intellectual history.73 This Japanese tradition of dissenting rhetoric even continued after WWII. Makoto Oda, a prominent anti-establishment activist who played the leading role in the post-WWII peace movement, wrote that the “classical Greek rhetoric” he studied at the University of Tokyo where Miki had served as the Philosophy Department Chair “likely constituted the basis for his anti-war activism.”74 Calling for more studies of rhetoric in international relations, Robert Oliver once wrote: “[T]here is no such thing as a rhetoric that is common to all; instead there are many rhetorics. Peoples in separate cultures and separate nations are concerned about different problems; and they have different systems of thinking about them.”75 Perhaps. But we also know that there have been many historical instances in which peoples with different cultures and nationalities were engaged in rhetorical practice for a common cause, responding to a common issue beyond boundaries. For instance, we know globalization is a problem that should be fought not only globally but also locally; those who consider themselves as 99 percent are taking to the street and joining Occupy Movements not only in Wall Street but also at many other corners around the globe. Against this backdrop, we should be more attentive to the working of localized rhetorical dissension while, at the same time, taking into account solidarity of such dissenting practices across borders. More specifically, I humbly suggest that, regardless of their nationalities or citizenships, and whether they agree with communism, socialism, or any other left politics, critical rhetorical scholars of the world should not forget one politico-rhetorical phenomenon that took place glocally in the early twentieth century: the workers of the world united against imperialism and war capitalism. It was the period when “‘international Bolshevism’ … was formed … among the anti-war socialist left wings. The concentrated and interrelated series of
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events on Russia’s western” and, I would add, eastern “borders. … should be treated as ‘an integral whole’ … And the very idea of ‘World Revolution’ underlies the integral whole.”76 It is in this very politico-discursive climate that Momotaro turned proletarian.
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[1]
[2] [3]
[4]
[5]
[6] [7]
[8]
[9] [10]
[11]
[12]
[13] [14]
[15]
Kenneth Burke, “Revolutionary Symbolism in America. Speech by Kenneth Burke to American Writers’ Congress, April 26, 1935,” in The Legacy of Kenneth Burke, ed. Herbert W. Simons and Trevor Melia (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 10. Famous Revolutionary Quotations, http://irishredstar.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/famousrevolutionary-quotations/ (accessed October 30, 2013). Robert Glenn Howard, “A Theory of Vernacular Rhetoric: The Case of the ‘Sinner’s Prayer,’” http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_2_116/ai_n15727506/?tag=content; col1 (accessed August 30, 2013). William R. Bascom, “Folklore and Anthropology,” Journal of American Folklore 66 (1953): 283–90; Richard M. Dorson, “Folklore and the National Defense Education Act,” Journal of American Folklore 75 (1962): 160–64; Dana Prescott Howell, The Development of Soviet Folkloristics (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992). Matthias Eder, “Reality in Japanese Folktales,” Asian Ethnography 28 (1969): 19. Also see Robert J. Adams, “Folktale Telling and Storytellers in Japan,” Asian Ethnography 30 (1967): 99–118. John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986). Klaus Antoni, “Momotaro (The Peach Boy) and the Sprit of Japan: Concerning the Function of a Fairly Tale in Japanese Nationalism of the Early Showa Age,” Asian Folklore Studies 50 (1991): 155–88. This article is inspired by and indebted to Shin Torigoe who collected and reviewed a variety of Momotaro stories that existed in modern Japanese history. See his Momotaro No Unmei (Tokyo: NHK Books, 1983). For Yanagita’s contribution to political theory, see, for instance, Kazuko Tsurumi, “Yanagita Kunio’s Work as a Model of Endogenous Development,” Japan Quarterly 22 (1975): 224–7. The term is adapted from Ronald Walter Greene, “Orator Communist,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 39 (2006): 85–95; and James Arnt Aune, Rhetoric & Marxism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 15–43. Robert James Branham, “Debate and Dissident in Late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan,” Argumentation and Advocacy 30 (1994): 131–49; Miyori Nakazawa, “A Rhetorical Analysis of the Japanese Student Movement: University of Tokyo Struggle 1968–69” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1989). Hiroko Okuda, “Murayama’s Political Challenge to Japan’s Public Apology,” International & Intercultural Communication Annual 28 (2005): 14–42; Toshiyuki Sakuragi, “Doi Takako: A Japanese Player of the Western Game of Dialogue—Doi’s Speech of September 17, 1987,” Howard Journal of Communication 4 (1992): 105–17. Roichi Okabe, “Yukichi Fukuzawa: A Promulgator of Western Rhetoric in Japan,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 59 (1973): 188–95. Takeshi Suzuki and Frans H. van Eemeren, “‘This Painful Chapter’: An Analysis of Emperor Akihito’s Apologia in the Context of Dutch Old Sores,” Argumentation and Advocacy 41 (2000): 102–11. Satoshi Ishii, “Buddhist Preaching: The Persistent Main Undercurrent of Japanese Traditional Rhetorical Communication,” Communication Quarterly 40 (1992): 391–97.
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[16] Yuko Kawai, “Neoliberalism, Nationalism, and Intercultural Communication: A Critical Analysis of Japan’s Neoliberal Nationalism Discourse under Globalization,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 2 (2009): 16–43. [17] Patricia Steinhoff, “Protest and Democracy,” in Democracy in Japan, ed. Takeshi Ishida and Ellis E. Krauss (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 172; Also see David E. Apter and Nagayo Sawa, Against the State: Politics and Social Protest in Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984); Ellis S. Krauss, Thomas P. Rohlen, and Patricia G. Steinhoff, eds., Conflict in Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984). [18] Rikki Kersten and David Williams, eds., The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy: Essays in Honor of J. A. A. Stockwin (London: Rutledge, 2006); George R. Packard, III, Protest in Tokyo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966). [19] John L. Morrison, ”The Absence of a Rhetorical Tradition in Japanese Culture,” Western Speech 36 (1976): 89–102. [20] See, for example, Celeste Michelle Condit and John Louis Lucaites, Crafting Equality: America’s Anglo African World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Michael Calvin McGee, “The Origin of ‘Liberty’: A Feminization of Power,” Communication Monographs 47 (1980): 23–45; Michael C. Leff and Fred J. Kauffeld, eds., Texts in Context: Critical Dialogues on Significant Episodes in American Political Rhetoric (New York: Routledge, 1995). [21] Aune, Rhetoric & Marxism; Lee Artz, Steve Macek, and Dana L. Cloud, eds., Marxism and Communication Studies: The Point is to Change it (New York: Peter Lang, 2006); Dana L. Cloud, “Fighting Words: Labor and the Limits of Communication at Staley, 1993 to 1996,” Management Communication Quarterly 18 (2005): 509–42; Terry Eagleton, Walter Benjamin or Toward a Revolutionary Criticism (London: Verso, 1981); Ronald Walter Greene, “Another Materialist Rhetoric,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 15 (1998): 21–41; Greene, “Orator Communist”; Richard W. Wilkie, “Karl Marx on Rhetoric,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 9 (1976): 232–46. [22] Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 80. [23] Michael Calvin McGee, “The ‘Ideograph’: A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 66 (1980): 14. [24] James Arnt Aune, “Culture of Discourse: Marxism and Rhetorical Theory,” in Argumentation Theory and the Rhetoric of Assent, ed. David Cratis Williams and Michael David Hazen (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990), 165. Also see Dana L. Cloud, “The Rhetoric of : Scapegoating, Utopia, and the Privatization of Social Responsibility,” Western Journal of Communication 62 (1997): 387–419. [25] V. N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislave Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 23. [26] Unless otherwise specified, the historical synopsis of Japanese Marxism and the Proletarian Literature Movement given in this article is based on the following: Hirotaka Koyama, Nihon Marukusushugi Shi (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1956); Ken Hirano, Showa Bungaku Shi (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1963); Yukio Kurihara, Proletaria Bungaku To Sono Jidai (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1971); Hiroaki Matsuzawa, Nihon Marukusushugi No Shiso (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1973); Kazuo Nimura, “The Formation of Japanese Labor Movement: 1868–1914,” in The Formation of Labour Movements 1870–1914: An International Perspective, Vol. II, ed. M. van der Linden and J. Rojahn (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), rpt., http://oohara.mt.tama.hosei.ac. jp/nk/English/eg-formation.html (accessed October 30, 2013); Hideo Odagiri, Shakaibungaku Shakaishugibungaku Kenkyu (Tokyo: Seisou Shobo, 1990). [27] Evelyn S. Colbert, The Left Wing in Japanese Politics (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1952), 7. [28] Ibid. [29] Kazuo Ohkouchi, Koutoku Shusui To Katayama Sen: Meiji No Shakai Shugi (Tokyo: Koudansha, 1972).
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[30] Ibid., 172–79. [31] Akito Yamauchi, “The Early Comitern in Amsterdam, New York, and Mexico City,” The Journal of History (Kyushu University) 147 (2010): 111–12. [32] Hyman Kublin, “The Origin of Japanese Socialist Tradition,” The Journal of Politics 14 (1952): 269. [33] Miriam Silverberg, Changing Song: The Marxist Manifestos of Nakano Shigeharu (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 47–48. [34] Quoted in Christopher Goto-Jones, “The Left Hand of Darkness: Forging a Political Left in Interwar Japan,” in The Left in the Shaping of Japanese Democracy (New York: Routledge, 2006), 5. [35] Ibid. [36] Vladimir I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/ download/what-itd.pdf (accessed August 30, 2013), 34. [37] Asao Yuichi, Proletaria Bungaku Undo: Sono Riso to Genjitsu (Tokyo: Banseisha, 1991), 10. [38] Hilary Chung and Tommy McClellan, “The ‘Command Enjoyment’ of Literature in China: Conferences, Controls, and Excesses,” in In Party Spirit: Socialist Realism and Literary Practice in the Soviet Union, East Germany, and China, vol. 6 of Critical Studies, ed. Hilary Chung (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 3. [39] Quoted in Yuichi, Proletaria Bungaku, 10. [40] Martin Dewherst, “Socialist Realism and Soviet Censorship System,” in In Party Spirit: Socialist Realism and Literary Practice in the Soviet Union, East Germany and China, vol. 6 of Critical Studies, ed. Hilary Chung (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 24. [41] Jerry Phillips, “Marxism and Utopia Socialism,” http://www.english.ilstu.edu/Strickland/495/ utopia.html (accessed August 30, 2013). [42] Burke, “Revolutionary Symbolism”; Also see Frank Lentricchia, Criticism and Social Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 28–29. [43] Torigoe, Momotaro, 94. [44] For a picture book currently available in English, see Momoe Saito and Ralf F. McCarthy, The Adventure of Momotaro, the Peach Boy, bilingual ed. (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1996). For Momotaro comics (in Japanese), see Makoto Niwano, Za Momotaro, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Homusha, 2004). [45] “Reading Japanese Folklore in English: Momoraro (The Peace Boy),” Karashidane’s Blog, March 14, 2011, http://blog.livedoor.jp/karashidane/archives/50832281.html (accessed November 30, 2013). [46] Regarding the relationship between child innocentism and Marxism, see, for example, Takashi Kumagai, Bungaku kyouiku (Tokyo: Kokudosha, 1956), esp. Chapter 1. [47] Kiyoshi Eguchi, “Aruhi No Onigashima, Jou,” Akaitori (October 1927): 48–53; “Aruhi No Onigashima, Ge,” Akaitori (November 1927): 40–47. [48] Eguchi, “Jou,” 51. [49] Eguchi, “Ge,” 47. [50] Ibid. [51] Terry Eagleton, Figures of Dissent: Critical Essays on Fish, Spivak, Zizek and Others (London: Verso, 2005), 87–88. [52] McGee, “Ideograph.” [53] Vladimir I. Lenin, “Preface,” in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), http:// www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/pref01.htm (accessed August 30, 2013). [54] Alvin W. Gouldner, The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology: The Origins, Grammar, and Future of Ideology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 31 (my italics). [55] Mutsuo Honjo, “Oniseibatsu No Momotaro,” Shonen Senki (May 1931): 8–9. [56] Ibid., 8.
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[57] Typical of works published in this period, a word or two are made “blank” in a copy of the original print obtained from the National Diet Library. [58] Honjo, “Oniseibatsu,” 9. [59] These correspond to three animals, i.e., a monkey, a dog, and a pheasant, that supported Momotaro in the standard version. In Japanese, saru refers to monkey, inu dog, and kiji pheasant. [60] Honjo, “Oniseibatsu,” 9. [61] Ibid. [62] Ibid. [63] Ibid. [64] Takiji Kobayashi was one of the most prominent and active members of the Proletariat Literature Movement. He was arrested and tortured to death by the authorities in 1932. [65] Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, 19. [66] Honjo, “Oniseibatsu,” 9. [67] For a comprehensive discussion on the issue of war-time ideological conversion, see Shugo Honda, Tenko Bungaku Ron, 3rd ed. (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1985). [68] McGee, “Ideograph,” 13. [69] Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey NowellSmith, trans. William Boelhower (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 189. [70] Lentricchia, Criticism, 37. For a more contemporary rhetorical (re)appropriation of Gramsci, see Joseph P. Zompetti, “Toward a Gramscian Critical Rhetoric,” Western Journal of Communication 61 (1997): 66–86. [71] Gaikotsu, Meiji Enzetsu Shi (Tokyo: Seikokan Shoten, 1929), front cover. [72] Eizo Kondo, Proletaria Yubengaku (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1930). [73] Kiyoshi Miki, “Kaishakugaku To Shujigaku,” in Miki Kiyoshi Zenshu 5 Kan (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1967 [original published in 1937]), 139–58. For contemporary studies of Miki’s rhetorical theory, see Mitsuhiro Hashimoto, “Miki Kiyoshi No Rhetoric To Communication,” Hikaku Bunka Kenkyu 49 (2000): 61–68; Hideki Kakita, “Rhetorical Resistance in Wartime Japan: Kiyoshi Miki’s Critical Praxis” (PhD diss, University of Iowa, 2003). [74] Kimihiko Ohtsuru, “Demo Ni Koso Honshitsu Ga Aru,” Ohtsuru Kimihiko No Blog, July 27, 2008, http://ootsuru.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/cat20507669/index.html (accessed August 30, 2013). [75] Robert T. Oliver, Culture and Communication: The Problem of Penetrating National and Cultural Boundaries (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1962), 155 (italics in original). [76] Yamauchi, “The Early Comintern,” 112.
