Korehito Kurahara was a Japanese

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

literary critic. He wrote under the name Soichiro Furukawa.

Early life and education

Kurahara was born in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

on January 26, 1902. His father, Korehiro Kurahara, was a politician. Kurahara studied

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

at the

Tokyo University of Foreign Studies , often referred to as TUFS, is a specialist research university in Fuchū, Tokyo, Japan. TUFS is primarily devoted to foreign language, international affairs and foreign studies. It also features an Asia-African institution. History The Uni ...

before going to the Soviet Union to study

Russian literature Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia and its émigrés and to Russian language, Russian-language literature. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were c ...

in 1925. While living in Russia he worked as a special correspondent for the ''

Miyako Shinbun was the first Japanese daily newspaper to be published in an evening edition.Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005). "''Miyako Shimbun''" in It was established in Nagoya. History When the newspaper was founded in 1884, its name was ...

''.

Career

Kurahara returned from Russia in 1926 and began writing for ''Bungei Sensen''. He joined the

proletarian literature Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created by left-wing writers mainly for the class-conscious proletariat. Though the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' states that because it "is essentially an intended device of revolution", it is ...

movement and began translating Marxist theories from Russian to Japanese. The proletarian literature movement at the time was struggling to decide whether political and arts organizations associated with the movement should remain separate or merge. In1928 Kurahara spearheaded the movement to merge many of the organizations into one: the . Kurahara debated Marxist theory frequently, following in the footsteps of and . He officially joined the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...

in 1929. However, he left Japan in June 1930 after a warrant was put out for his arrest. While he was away he attended the fifth

Profintern The Red International of Labor Unions (russian: Красный интернационал профсоюзов, translit=Krasnyi internatsional profsoyuzov, RILU), commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Comm ...

congress. He returned in February 1931, after many other Communist Party leaders were arrested by the police. When he returned to Japan Kurahara continued writing and formed the , which was meant to reform society and create art groups in factories. This united all of the proletariat art groups into one organization. However, in 1932 Kurahara was arrested by the police for violating the

Peace Preservation Law The was a Japanese law enacted on April 22, 1925, with the aim of allowing the Special Higher Police to more effectively suppress socialists and communists. In addition to criminalizing forming an association with the aim of altering the ''kokuta ...

and the movement collapsed in 1934. He was released in 1940, and did not renounce his Marxist beliefs while imprisoned. In 1941 he married

Takako Nakamoto Takako Nakamoto was a Japanese novelist and activist. She is best known for writing proletariat literature before World War II, and after the war, she became known for writing about political protests. Early life and education Nakamoto was born ...

. They had two children. He was one of the founders of the New Japanese Literature Association in 1945. Despite being imprisoned for his beliefs, he also remained active in the Japanese Communist Party. Kurahara died on January 25, 1991.

References

1902 births 1991 deaths Japanese Marxists Japanese literary critics Tokyo University of Foreign Studies alumni {{DEFAULTSORT:Kurahara, Korehito