MODERNIST LITERATURE (モダニズム文学): THE NEW SENSATIONALIST

SCHOOL (新感覚派) AND THE NEW AESTHETIC SCHOOL (新興芸術派)

The New Sensationalist School (新感覚派)

Modernist literature was a mainly European and North American literary
movement that began in the late 19th century and peaked from 1910 to 1940, though
modernist works continued to be written until after World War II. Modernist
writers rejected literary traditions and tried to write in a new, experimental style
that expressed the new sensibility of the modern age. Modernism included a
number of movements in art and literature, such as symbolism ( 象 徴主 義 ),
expressionism (表現主義) and surrealism (シュルレアリスム・超現実主義). Japanese
modernist literature began with the appearance of the new sensationalist school in
the 1920s.
The new sensationalist school was a group of 14 writers who started the literary
magazine Bungei Jidai (文芸時代) in 1924. They included Yokomitsu Riichi (横光利
一), Kawabata Yasunari (川端康成), Kataoka Teppei (片岡鉄兵) and Nakagawa
Yoichi (中河与一). The school’s name comes from an essay by the critic and journalist
Chiba Kameo (千葉亀雄), in which he praises the writers’ work as “the birth of a new
sensibility” ( 新 感 覚 の 誕 生 ). Though Kawabata Yasunari is far more famous,
Yokomitsu Riichi is generally considered the most representative writer of the new
sensationalist school because of his avant-garde and experimental writing style. His
1925 essay Kankaku Katsudo (感覚活動, “Sensory Activity”) and 1935 essay Junsui
Shosetsu Ron (純粋小説論, “Theory of the Pure Novel”) are considered essential for
understanding Japanese modernist literature.
The new sensationalists were influenced by Western modernist writers like the
French author Paul Morand (ポール・モラン), whose 1922 work Ouvert la Nuit (夜ひ
らく) was translated into Japanese by Horiguchi Daigaku (堀口大學) in 1924. They
were also influenced by modernist art movements like expressionism, Cubism (キュ
ビスム), Dadaism (ダダイスム) and surrealism. The new sensationalists often
compared their writing style to avant-garde art, which creates new views of reality
in order to convey new feelings and ideas. While modern painters experimented
with color and form, the new sensationalists experimented with language and
literary technique.
The new sensationalist authors strongly rejected the writing style of the Japanese
literary establishment, particularly naturalism. While naturalism believed in a
fixed concept of reality, the new sensationalists tried to depict people’s momentary
perception (刹那の感覚) of reality. They were interested not only in what we perceive
with our five senses, but in how we perceive things with our intuition (直感). New
sensationalist writers used devices like symbolism, suggestion (暗示) and unusual
metaphors (比喩) to convey this intuition as well as larger meanings to the reader.
Yokomitsu Riichi was a great admirer of Matsuo Basho because his haiku not only
depict what we see with our eyes, but convey a deeper sense of meaning and
emotion through the power of suggestion. The new sensationalists tried to convey a
similar sense, but while Basho was inspired by nature, the new sensationalists
found their themes in the modern city and new technology like machines, cars,
trains and airplanes.
New sensationalists believed that perceptions of reality differed from moment to
moment and from person to person. They viewed the I-novel, which only depicts
reality from one (the writer’s) viewpoint, as narcissistic and narrow-minded.
Instead, they tried to present a number of perspectives (視点) in their work. This is
similar to the art of the Cubists, who tried to depict subjects from a number of
angles and perspectives in order to show them in a larger context. The new
sensationalists wrote not only from the perspective of human characters, but also
from the perspective of animals and objects. Yokomitsu Riichi’s 1923 work Hae (蠅),
about an accident involving a horse carriage, is partly written from the perspective
of a fly sitting on the horse. His 1930 novel Kikai (機械) is written partly in the
“fourth person” (四人称), an entity which can see both the inner self (自分を見る自
分) and the outside world. This technique of writing from the perspective of different
people, entities and objects is known as prosopopoeia (擬人法).
The new sensationalists wrote in a highly visual style which is often compared to
that of cinema. They used perspective like the eye of a camera, creating vivid and
fragmentary (断片的な) images which changed rapidly in a montage (モンタージュ)
style. In fact, Yokomitsu Riichi and Kawabata Yasunari were involved in the
creation of Japan’s first avant-garde film, Kurutta Ippeji (狂った一頁, “A Page of
Madness”), which was released in 1926. They also experimented with rhythm,
varying the length of sentences and the connections between them in order to
convey feelings and ideas. In Kikai, for example, Yokomitsu uses almost no
punctuation marks (句読点) or paragraphs in an attempt to create a mechanical
feeling.
The most famous example of the new sensationalist writing style is the beginning
of Yokomistu Riichi’s 1924 novel Atama Narabi ni Hara (頭ならびに腹):
真昼である。特別急行列車は満員のまま全速力で馳けていた。沿線の小駅は石のように
黙殺された。
(Midday. The packed special express train was running at full speed. A small station
on the railway line was ignored like a stone.)

These sentences do not seem so unusual today, but they were so new in 1924 that
they surprised and even angered some readers. First of all, the sentences are
written not from the perspective of people but from the perspective of two objects:
the train and the station. Secondly, Yokomitsu uses the word mokusatsu (to “ignore”
or “give the silent treatment”) to mean “pass by without stopping,” together with the
metaphor “like a stone.” Usually, “like a stone” is a metaphor for a person being
silent (石のように黙る), but in this case it is a metaphor for being “given the silent
treatment” (石のように黙殺される). Usually one person ignores another person, but
in this case the train (an object) is ignoring the station (another object). Yokomitsu’s
combination of prosopopoeia (擬人法) and metaphors was sharply criticized by many
older Japanese writers, who called the writing style “deliberately eccentric.”
Younger readers and writers, however, were impressed by the way Yokomitsu
vividly evoked the speed of the train with his choice of vocabulary and short
sentences. The fact that these sentences seem commonplace today shows the
influence that new sensationalism had on the Japanese writing style.
Bungei Jidai magazine was popular at the same time as the proletarian literature
magazine Bungei Sensen ( 文 芸 戦 線 ), and the new sensationalist school and
proletarian literature soon became rivals. Representatives of the two movements
wrote essays criticizing each other in the formalism debate (形式主義文学論争) of
1928-1929. Proletarian writers emphasized the importance of ideology in literature,
and accused new sensationalism of being “form without content.” New
sensationalist writers emphasized the need for stylistic innovation in literature,
and called proletarian literature “content without form.” Though the two
movements appear completely incompatible, however, they did in fact influence
each other. Some proletarian writers experimented with metaphors and language
under the influence of new sensationalism, and some new sensationalists tried to
incorporate ideology into their work under the influence of proletarian literature.
Publication of Bungei Jidai ended in 1927, and by 1930 the center of the
modernist literature movement had shifted from new sensationalism to the new
aesthetic school. Some of Yokomitsu Riichi’s most important new sensationalist
works, however, were published in the early 1930s.
Famous Writers
1. Yokomitsu Riichi (横光利一 1898-1947). Yokomitsu Riichi is considered the most
representative author of the new sensationalist school. He is known for his
experimental short stories Hae, Atama Narabi ni Hara and Kikai, as well as Haru
wa Basha ni Notte, a story based on Yokomitsu’s experience of caring for his sick
wife, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 23. He is also famous for his long novel
Shanghai, the story of a group of Japanese living in the Shanghai International
Settlement (上海共同租界) at the time of the May 30 Incident (五・三〇事件) of 1925,
which led to a movement by the Chinese people against foreign imperialism.
Famous works: Hae (蠅) 1923
Nichirin (日輪) 1923
Atama Narabi ni Hara (頭ならびに腹) 1924
Napoleon to Tamushi (ナポレオンと田虫) 1926
Haru wa Basha ni Notte (春は馬車に乗って) 1926
Shanghai (上海) 1928-1931
Kikai (機械) 1930
Shin’en (寝園) 1930
Monsho (紋章) 1934
Ryoshu (旅愁) 1937-1946
Bisho (微笑) 1948

2. Kawabata Yasunari (川端康成 1899-1972). Kawabata Yasunari is one of the most

famous authors of modern Japanese literature. He had a very difficult childhood.
Both his parents died by the time he was 3 years old, and all his close relatives,
including his grandparents and sister, died by the time he was 15. This profoundly
affected Kawabata both as a person and as a writer. His most famous early novel is
Izu no Odoriko, about a 20-year-old youth who takes a trip alone to Izu, becomes
friends with a family of travelling entertainers and has a platonic romance with the
daughter, a 14-year-old dancing girl. However, his early career also includes highly
experimental and surreal works like Aoi Umi Kuroi Umi, which employs the
fragmentary visual style of the new sensationalist school, and Suisho Genso, which
employs the stream-of-consciousness technique of the neo-psychological school. He
wrote many very short stories (掌編小説) of only a few pages, which he called
tenohira no shosetsu (掌の小説), but today Kawabata is best known for his long
novels like Yukiguni, Senbazuru and Yama no Oto. His most famous works are
written in a quiet and poetic style and are rich in Japanese traditional culture and
the traditional Japanese sense of beauty, but involve dark themes like loneliness,
fleeting or impossible love, aging, and death. His death in 1972 is generally thought
to have been a suicide, though some believe it was an accident. In 1968, he became
the first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Famous works: Aoi Umi Kuroi Umi (青い海黒い海) 1925
Izu no Odoriko (伊豆の踊子) 1926
Suisho Genso (水晶幻想) 1931
Jojoka (抒情歌) 1932
Kinju (禽獣) 1933
Yukiguni (雪国) 1935-1948
Senbazuru (千羽鶴) 1949-1951
Yama no Oto (山の音) 1949-1954
Meijin (名人) 1951-1952
Nemureru Bijo (眠れる美女) 1960-1961
Koto (古都) 1961-1962

3. Kataoka Teppei (片岡鉄兵 1894-1944). After Yokomitsu Riichi and Kawabata

Yasunari, Kataoka Teppei was the most popular new sensationalist writer. His most
famous work from this period is Tsuna no Ue no Shojo, about a young man who goes
to the circus to watch a performance by his sister, who he has not seen since his
father sold her to the circus more than 10 years before. In 1928, Kataoka left the
new sensationalist school and became a proletarian writer, but he was arrested and
imprisoned in 1932. After his conversion and release from prison in 1933, he wrote
popular novels (大衆小説) like Hanayome Gakko and Shu to Midori.
Famous works: Nigai Hanashi (にがい話) 1924
Tsuna no Ue no Shojo (綱の上の少女) 1926
Hanayome Gakko (花嫁学校) 1935
Shu to Midori (朱と緑) 1936

4. Nakagawa Yoichi ( 中 河 与 一 1897-1994). As a new sensationalist writer,

Nakagawa Yoichi published works like Shishu serareta Yasai and Kohru Butojo. He
is best known for his later novel Ten no Yugao, about a student and an older
married woman who fall in love and have a platonic romance, consisting almost
entirely of letters they send to each other, which continues for 25 years. Ten no
Yugao is considered a classic of Japanese romantic literature, and has been
translated into six languages.
Famous works: Shishu serareta Yasai (刺繍せられた野菜) 1924
Kohru Butojo (氷る舞踏場) 1925
Ten no Yugao (天の夕顔) 1938

l to r: Yokomitsu Riichi, Kawabata Yasunari, Kataoka Teppei, Nakagawa Yoichi

The New Aesthetic School (新興芸術派) and Neo-Psychological School (新心理主義)

The modernist movement was in decline in 1928. The publishing of Bungei Jidai
magazine had ended the previous year, and the new sensationalist writers Kataoka
Teppei and Kon Toko (今東光 1898-1977) had switched over to the proletarian
literature movement. In this climate, Nakamura Murao (中村武羅夫 1886-1949), a
writer and editor of Shincho ( 新 潮 ) magazine, published the essay Dare da?
Hanazono o Arasu Mono wa! (誰だ? 花園を荒らす者は! , “Who Has Trampled the
Flower Garden?”), a scathing attack on proletarian literature. He criticized
proletarian writers’ refusal to accept any literature which did not include Marxist
ideology, and asserted that literature is a place for artistic creativity, not intolerant
ideology. The following year he helped to create the Club of Thirteen (十三人倶楽部),
a group of modernist writers who he hoped could become a rival force to proletarian
literature. The members included Kawabata Yasunari and the I-novel author
Kamura Isota (嘉村礒多). The following year, this was expanded into the New
Aesthetic Club (新興芸術派倶楽部). This is often called the new aesthetic school (新
興芸術派).
Unlike the new sensationalist school, the new aesthetic school does not have a
single author or writing style that can be called representative. It was a diverse
group of writers whose main point in common was that they were not Marxists.
Some authors wrote in a highly experimental style, while others did not. The
central members of the new aesthetic school were Ryutanji Yu (龍胆寺雄 1901-
1992), Kuno Toyohiko (久野豊彦 1896-1971), Asahara Rokuro (浅原六朗 1895-1977)
and Yoshiyuki Eisuke (吉行エイスケ 1906-1940), who was the father of the famous
postwar author Yoshiyuki Junnosuke (吉行淳之介). In fact, none of these central
writers are well-known today. However, writers who had less central connections to
the new aesthetic school, such as Ibuse Masuji (井伏鱒二), Kajii Motojiro (梶井基次
郎), and Hori Tatsuo (堀辰雄), are among the most famous names in Showa era
literature.
The final movement to emerge from the modernist literature movement was the
neo-psychological school (新心理主義), which started around 1932. Writers of this
school were interested in the theories of Freud (フロイト) and the novels of James
Joyce (ジェイムズ・ジョイス), Marcel Proust (マルセル・プルースト) and Virginia
Woolf (ヴァージニア・ウルフ). They tried to depict their characters’ stream of
consciousness (意識の流れ) in writing, showing their conscious and unconscious
motivations. The main writers of this school were Hori Tatsuo and Ito Sei (伊藤整
1905-1969). Ito Sei was a novelist, translator and poet who translated James Joyce’s
novel Ulysses (ユリシーズ) into Japanese from 1931 to 1934, and was the first to
propose the idea of a neo-psychological movement in Japanese literature. Yokomitsu
Riichi and Kawabata Yasunari also wrote works belonging to this school, since they
felt that it allowed them to examine human perception at a deeper level.

Famous Writers
1. Ibuse Masuji (井伏鱒二 1898-1993). Many of Ibuse Masuji’s early works used
animals as metaphors for human feelings and behavior. The most famous of these is
Sanshouo, about a giant salamander that sits idly in its cave until its body becomes
too big to fit through the cave exit. Other works from this period include Yane no Ue
no Sawan, about a lonely man who cares for an injured wild goose and eventually
releases it, and Koi, about a man who finds symbolic importance in a carp that was
given to him by his dead friend. Ibuse was later conscripted into the army and spent
part of the war in Singapore editing a Japanese-language newspaper. The war had a
profound effect on him and became the theme of later novels like Yohai Taicho,
about a man who is the hero of his village until he goes to war and returns with
severe mental problems, and Kuroi Ame, about survivors of the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima. Today, there is some controversy about whether Kuroi Ame should be
considered Ibuse’s original work, since a large part of the novel is basically a rewrite
of the diary of atomic bomb survivor Shigematsu Shizuma (重松静馬).
Famous works: Koi (鯉) 1928
Sanshouo (山椒魚) 1929
Yane no Ue no Sawan (屋根の上のサワン) 1929
 John Manjiro Hyoryuki (ジョン万次郎漂流記) 1937
Sazanami Gunki (さざなみ軍記) 1938
Honjitsu Kyushin (本日休診) 1949-1950
Yohai Taicho (遥拝隊長) 1950
Kuroi Ame (黒い雨) 1965-1966

2. Kajii Motojiro (梶井基次郎 1901-1932). Kajii Motojiro began to suffer from lung
disease at the age of 19. After leading a wild life for a few years, he turned his
attention to writing novels before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 31. Kajii wrote
only about 20 works, all of them short stories, and was not well-known while he was
alive. The first time he received payment for one of his novels was only three
months before his death. However, his works came to be highly evaluated after he
died and are now considered classics of the Japanese short story form. In a highly
poetic style with keen observations of both the outside world and the human heart,
he examined the “darkness” of sickness and death together with the “light” of life
and youth. His early works are about the anxiety and restlessness of youth, but also
its purity and playfulness. Works he wrote near the end of his life focus more on
illness and have a sadder tone. His most famous work is his early short story Remon,
about a sick and unhappy young man who finds his spirits revived by the bright
yellow color and pleasing shape, coolness and smell of a lemon he buys at a fruit
shop. The cathartic ending of the story is considered to be one of the greatest in
modern Japanese literature.
Famous works: Remon (檸檬) 1925
Shiro no aru Machi ni te (城のある町にて) 1925
K no Shoten (Ｋの昇天) 1926
Fuyu no Hi (冬の日) 1927
Sokyu (蒼穹) 1928
Fuyu no Hae (冬の蠅) 1928
Sakura no Ki no Shita ni wa (桜の樹の下には) 1928
Yami no Emaki (闇の繪巻) 1930
Kobi (交尾) 1931
Nonki na Kanja (のんきな患者) 1932

3. Hori Tatsuo (堀辰雄 1904-1953). Hori Tatsuo is often considered the most
representative writer of the neo-psychological school. He was strongly influenced by
the French writer Marcel Proust (マルセル・プルースト) and the Austrian poet and
novelist Rainer Maria Rilke (ライナー・マリア・リルケ), particularly these writers’
concept of time and memory. Though many of his works are love stories, Hori tended
to focus more on depictions of emotional and physical landscapes than he did on the
stories themselves. His most famous work is Kaze Tachinu, based on Hori’s actual
experience of living in a sanatorium and taking care of his fiancée, who died of
tuberculosis.
Famous works: Rubens no Giga (ルウベンスの偽画) 1927
Bukiyo na Tenshi (不器用な天使) 1929
Sei Kazoku (聖家族) 1930
Utsukushii Mura (美しい村) 1933-1934
Kaze Tachinu (風立ちぬ) 1936-1938
Kagerou no Nikki (かげろふの日記) 1937
Naoko (菜穂子) 1941
Yamatoji, Shinanoji (大和路・信濃路) 1943

left to right: Ibuse Masuji, Kajii Motojiro, Hori Tatsuo

Sources: 伴一孝『「自然主義文学」と「新感覚派文学」の書き出しを授業する』(retrieved from

TOSS ランド website); Ghostbuster’s Book Web 『横光利一と生のようなレトリック』; 石川
偉子『中河与一作品年譜』(retrieved from 一橋大学機関リポジトリ HERMES-IR); Kotobank;
『日本の文学 79 名作集(三)』(中央公論社 1970); Azusa Omura, The Birth of Shinkankaku-ha
Bungeijidai Journal and Paul Morand (retrieved from ejcjs website); 島村輝『「新感覚派」は
「感覚」的だったのか？』(retrieved from 立命館大学国際言語文化研究所 website); Wikipedia;
山田美和子『横光利一における「新感覚」とは何か–「感覚活動」を通して』(retrieved from
http://www.geocities.co.jp/CollegeLife-Library/5111/024.htm); Joseph K. Yamagiwa,
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