An Archaeological Perspective on Wartime Japanese Literature

Abstract

During the wartime period from 1931 to 1945, Japan not only formulated a series of meticulous and systematic military plans but also implemented a "general mobilization of literary circles" culturally. Except for a few anti-war theorists represented by Yuriko Miyamoto, the vast majority of intellectuals actively participated in the war, complementing the military expeditions. These literary writers, wielding their pens as weapons, created a substantial body of wartime literature to serve the nation and rally support for the war. The content of these works aimed to incite war enthusiasm among the Japanese populace, depict the war as a "sacred war," beautify the actions of the Japanese army, praise the "bravery" and "dedication" of the Imperial Army, and vilify the image of the Chinese people. Among these works, the war reports by three Japanese female writers—Yoshiya Nobuko, Fumiko Hayashi, and Ineko Sata—based on their military experiences in the Chinese battlefield, serve as crucial texts for investigating the interplay between wartime national discourse, literary discourse, and personal discourse. As a discursive space reflecting wartime social relations, the mode of writing in war reportage was predetermined before its creation. In these works, military writers vigorously promote the bravery of Japanese soldiers, freely express distortions and vilifications of China and its people, and construct theories of "meritorious war" and "imperial salvation" within a binary opposition narrative structure, thereby providing a legal basis for the war. The Japanese military explicitly stipulated and called for literary writers to cooperate in the war effort, severely violating the criterion of authenticity in literary creation. Such mandatory provisions inevitably had a serious negative impact on writers, preventing them from truly expressing the cruelty of war. However, the emotional construction, personalized annotation, and interpretation of wartime national discourse by the three female writers through their war reports, as well as their role in establishing the interpretive subject, also reflect the role of literature as a constructive subject.