Narratives of Victimhood and Sekai: Sekai's Role in the Early Development of Victim Consciousness in Postwar Japanese Literature

Abstract

The Japanese political magazine Sekai (World), a left-wing publication which was founded in December 1945, provided a platform to progressive ideas and literature in the immediate postwar era. As a product of the immediate postwar political climate, the literature included in Sekai is unavoidably charged with the political and social issues of the time, while often also being shrouded under the literary guise, as well as under the strictures of the media censorship of the United States Occupation. While a more fully formed victim consciousness among the Japanese people and its explicit expression in literature was to emerge after the end of the United States occupation and its censors were lifted, the historical, political, and social context in which Sekai came to be, as well as the nature of Sekai's particular stance and characteristics as a general interest, or opinion magazine (sōgō zasshi), fostered the early development of implicit and explicit victimhood and trauma narratives in immediate postwar works. Sekai was founded in December 1945, within months of the Japanese surrender to the Allied forces on September 2, 1945. The situation for the Japanese people had become more and more dire in Japan during the final year and final months leading up to the end of World War II. Japanese leadership persisted in continuing the war effort in a desperate last resort tactic, using the ketsugō (decisive battle) strategy despite the fact that military defeat was glaringly imminent, while the Allied powers implemented a naval blockade on resources entering Japan. The ensuing shortages combined with and further restricted the rationing system already in place, resulting in a black market that promoted scarcity in official channels yet further. Whereas in 1941 the average Japanese diet consisted of about 2,000 calories a day, by 1944 the average fell to 1,900 calories per day, sinking yet again to 1,680 calories in 1945. This led 20 to 25 percent of the urban population to suffer from serious nutritional deficiency and vitamin-deficiency related diseases. The Japanese government's inability to maintain a realistic military outlook nor a healthy population domestically in turn stimulated a feeling of distrust and unrest in Japanese society, to the extent that Japanese government elites feared the possibility of an uprising. Observing the failing national morale, Japanese leaders worried over the possibility of Communist sentiments inspiring social revolution and an overthrowing of the kokutai (national polity). In response, under the preexisting Peace Preservation Laws enacted in 1925 to suppress political dissent though socialism and communism, the Japanese "Special Higher Police" (Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu, hereafter referred to by the abbreviated Tokkō) or as more notoriously called, the "Thought Police" (Shisō Keisatsu), intensified their hunt for "dangerous thought" and proceeded to arrest those suspected of subversive sympathies. This did little but aggravate the unrest and distrust of the Japanese populace.