was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

Personal life

A largely self-taught writer of humble social origins, Kuroshima was born on

Shōdoshima Shōdoshima or is an island located in the Seto Inland Sea, Inland Sea of Japan. The name means "Island of Azuki bean, Small Beans". There are two towns on the island: Tonoshō, Kagawa, Tonoshō and Shodoshima, Kagawa, Shōdoshima, composing the ...

in the

Inland Sea An inland sea (also known as an epeiric sea or an epicontinental sea) is a continental body of water which is very large and is either completely surrounded by dry land or connected to an ocean by a river, strait, or "arm of the sea". An inland se ...

and went to

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 ...

to work and study. Conscripted into the army in 1919, he was sent to fight in a doomed war against the USSR waged at the time by Japan and its allies, including the US and Britain. Upon his return, Kuroshima joined a flourishing proletarian literature movement and published his narratives in a variety of journals. His passionately anti-imperialist novel was researched in China. As his health began to fail in the early 1930s, Kuroshima returned to his native island where he lived with his wife and three children.

Works

One of modern Japan's most dedicated antimilitarist intellectuals, Kuroshima Denji is best known for his Siberian stories of the late 1920svivid descriptions of agonies suffered by Japanese soldiers and Russian civilians during Japan's invasion of the newly emerged

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Kuroshima also wrote powerful narratives dealing with the hardships, struggles, and rare triumphs of Japanese peasants. His only full-length novel, '' Militarized Streets'', a shocking description of economic and military aggression against China, was censored not only by Japan's imperial government, but by the US occupation authorities as well.

Literary style

Kuroshima's narratives—like those of

Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...

, whom Kuroshima greatly admired—are unadorned in style, straightforward in storytelling, and attentive to detail. Their content conveys a sense of authenticity, grief over the unnecessary suffering, and above all the urgent need for change. Despite occasional flashes of humor and lyricism, the tone is seldom cheerful and happy endings are rare: Kuroshima refrains from accomplishing in fiction what is much harder to attain in actuality. Devoid of easy optimism, his stories are open-ended chronicles of abuse and resistance. Ultimately, Kuroshima is convinced, only a vast international movement based on grassroots solidarity stands a chance of replacing a heartless status quo with a sane, livable world of justice and generosity. Meanwhile, faced with the daily tragedies of an irrationally structured world, radical artists everywhere are bound to persevere in their oppositional work. In his 1929 essay 'On Antiwar Literature,' Kuroshima writes: "So long as the capitalist system exists, proletarian antiwar literature must also exist, and fight against it."

External links

黒島伝治：作家別作品リスト

Against the System: Antiwar Writing of Kuroshima Denji
* Kuroshima Denji (translation and introduction by Michael Bourdaghs)
"The Two-Sen Copper Coin"
''The Asia-Pacific Journal'', Vol. 12, Issue 43, No. 2, November 3, 2014 {{DEFAULTSORT:Kuroshima, Denji 1898 births 1943 deaths Japanese Marxists 20th-century Japanese novelists Marxist writers Proletarian literature Imperial Japanese Army personnel

Personal life

Works

Literary style

Further reading

See also

External links