A Study Of Miyamoto Yuriko’s Literature

Japanese writer, Miyamoto Yuriko, was a proletarian and won much attentionsince the publication of her debut, Mazusikihitobitonomure. After the “humanitariannovitiate period” and “break the family woman” period, she came to acceptcommunist ideology, and had as her faith to fight for the liberation of human-beings.During World War II, spreading communist ideology was cracked harshly byGovernment of Fascist Militarism, but Yuriko stuck to her belief. She fought againstthe reactionary social system in her limited publications, disseminating communism.After the war, Yuriko churned out publications, reflecting the war and promoting theimprovement of woman’s living conditions, and drove the development of anti-wardemocracy and woman’s liberation. Her works were translated into many languages①,which contributed to the democracy, anti-war movement and woman’s liberation.Miyamoto Yuriko’s literary works can be classified into different stages, arerealistic expression of the time and similar to autobiographies. Nearly all of herrepresentative works are descriptions of a certain stage of life. They showcase thewriter’s background and her states of mind. Humanitarian period, women liberationperiod and confusion and transition period are all embodiments of Yuriko’s literarystages. Realism and demi-autobiography make possible readers to truly experiencewriter’s perception of life, guaranteeing her literary conception and fully enabling thefull imagination. Although some of her works, such as Futatunoniwa and Douhyou,are not consistent with Yuriko’s real life tracks, we can still form a completeunderstanding of her literature and explore her thoughts of the environment andemotional state behind such time disruption.Miyamoto Yuriko was good at using calm or passionate brushwork, expressing the internal feelings of the protagonists through the description of externalenvironment, capturing social trends and people’s inner thinking through her delicateand keen feeling. Unfolding the plot with multiple description skills such asonomatopoeia and mimicry made the works more vivid and left readers with space ofreverie and reflection, and aroused reading interest. From a woman’s standpoint,Miyamoto Yuriko observed and thought about the society and surroundings from theperspective of a daughter, a wife, a mother, a feminist and others. And by means ofself-perception, she showcased the social condition of the time and her refection on it.In Japan, research on Miyamoto Yuriko’s literature began in early Taisho. Theresearch in this period has following characteristics: emphasizing textual research anddetail analysis, especially on the research of unpublished data and details such as theprocess of her writing; expanding research field, from the representative works tounknown works. The acknowledgement of her literature in China starts withtranslation. And the interest of her and her works increased recently. But differentfrom Japanese colleagues, Chinese researchers very often are interested in theresearch of her feminism expressed in her representative works like Nobuko, and heranti-war ideology embodied in her post-war works.This research of Yuriko literature, by means of phylogenetics, and femalecriticism methodology and other research methods, sorted out her literaturecharacteristics in different periods, talked about her humanitarian, running through herworks in the hope of improving the territory of Yuriko’s literature research andfostering an overall image of the writer.This paper takes Yuriko’s Mazusikihitobitonomure, Higakagayaki and NegisamaMiyata as main objects to analyze the humanism and ideological roots of her earlyworks. By comparing these with Tolstoy and Shirakabaha literature, making clear thatYuriko’s early stage of humanism broke through the narrow and personal experienceand imagination of Shirakabaha, bringing with it some social outlook withoutreaching the heights of Tolstoy. Yuriko failed to recognize the class and social statusshe was in, and such humanism could only be one’s goodwill, but could not make anysubstantial change. This paper, taking Nobuko as an example, mainly analyzes Miyamoto Yuriko’sideological characteristics from her study in the US to the end of her first marriage.During this period, she expressed her resistance against the feudal family and hereagerness for free love and marriage, which won her the fame of being in thetendency of woman’s liberation, which so many researchers agree with. Through theresearch the author believes, such kind of woman’s liberation is actually an externalexpression of her pursuing her self-value from the standpoint of a woman. In essence,it is a special expressiong of humanism in the woman writer, it is the self-liberation ofher identity as a woman.When her initial humanism, marked by her sympathy with the week, her fightagainst the feudal family system, and her pursuit of free love and free marriage, andher self-liberation frustrated as a female failed, Miyamoto Yuriko lost into confusionand thinking in her works of Futatunoheya and Douhyou not quite excellent, but ledto the most significance of the transition. Through years of consideration anddistillation, Yuriko completed her transformation from early Tolstoyism, to humanistichumanism, and to the Marxism, carrying as objective of liberating the whole mankindand extending humanism social and political fields.The paper is divided into two parts with the dissolution of Japanese ProletarianWriters League in1932as the demarcation, describing her life of achieving socialreform to popularization of her publication after she returned to her homeland fromthe Soviet Union. In the first part, Yuriko followed trend of the heyday of Japaneseproletarian literature, described the superiority of Soviet socialist system to popularizethe communist ideology, promoting the process of social reform. In the second part,the increasing the suppression from Fascist Militarists, and the going into trouble ofthe proletarian literature movement severely restricted the dissemination of thecommunist thoughts. In this hard time, Yuriko managed to publish some works,spreading the communist ideology, criticizing bourgeois literature and fighting againstthe rule of Fascist Militarists.After WWII, the Fascist Militarism collapsed, democracy and peace prevailed.Miyamoto Yuriko publicized communism more actively in a freer environment, promoted woman’s liberation movement in Japan from her female identity. Herliterature thoughts mainly are presented in two categories—novels such asBansyuuheiya and Futisou, and her commentary, showing her inheritance anddevelopment of the war-time thoughts. She never stopped spreading and pursuing thecommunism and kept it in the right track even during the period of Japan beingoccupied by the UN armies.Based on the above analysis, this paper, by making a description of MiyamotoYuriko literature, draws the following conclusion: in Yuriko literature, humanism notonly led to the publication of her debut Mazusikihitobitonomure, it is always hidden inall her works reflecting female liberation, communism, anti-war and world peace.Behinds her own reason, Yuriko’s humanism was more influenced by Russian writers’Tolstoyism—represented by Leo Tolstoy. Her pursuit of female liberation andcommunism were embodiment of her humanism in different backgrounds. Therefore,Yuriko literature is still in the trajectory of humanism, set in Mazusikihitobitonomure,,and female liberation and communism are merely derivatives of humanism.So far, the academic study of Miyamoto Yuriko in both Japan and China ismostly focused on her representative works, to explore the humanism, femaleliberation and democratic anti-war thoughts contained in these works. In this paper,Yuriko’s whole literature is the research object, supported by detailed analysis of herrepresentative works. The paper also explores her literary characteristics of differentperiods, and finally confirms that humanism is the writer’s foundational thought,running through both her life and works.