Modernization
In 1894 Japan went to war with China and won in 1895. Developments after this war led to a war with Russia in 1904-1905 that Japan also won.
China’s defeat exposed her weakness and helped lead to the exploitation of China by the Western powers. It also led to a lowering of the traditional prestige of China in Japanese eyes.
Victory over Russia convinced many Japanese that they had joined the advanced nations of the West and instilled great national pride.
On the other hand, the squabbling for spoils after the Sino-Japanese War caused many Japanese to doubt the value of war as a political or economic policy. Also, after the war there arose economic hardship that encouraged the development of socialism.
By the 1920s a kind of party government had formed. In 1925 universal manhood suffrage was granted and two major parties formed. However, the party system and any democracy associated with it were weak and readily crushed by the militarists in the 1930s. There was never great political strength in the socialism of the time, but artists and intellectuals were deeply affected by it.
Japan joined WWI (1914-1918) on the side of the Allies. She did not do much, but enlarged her empire through the German defeat, adding German interests in Northern China and the Pacific to Taiwan, which she had acquired in the war with China.
By this time Japan was a modern monopolistic capitalist state with much of its economic life controlled by a small number of financial combines (zaibatsu) managed by families with ties to the bureaucracy and politicians. The state allowed zaibatsu economic exploitation, bad labor conditions, and absentee landlords who controlled most of agriculture, but, although the Russian Revolution had aroused some enthusiasm for socialist reform among some intellectuals and politicians, the peasants and workers made little progress.
Most farmers were on family-orientated farms and conservative. Reverence for the Emperor (thus support for a traditional Confucian-based social system) was very strong. Workers in cities were often in a kind of servitude to their employers.
There were occasional strikes and riots. The government dealt harshly with these. People were educated and literate, but the educational system stressed moral values and reverence for the Emperor who was a sacred figure. Therefore, there was little effective social or economic reform.
Although the 1920s were a time of some democratic developments in Japan, world conditions and the 1929 world market crash led to increasing calls for independent conduct of international affairs. The military in particular felt that Japan should act more forcefully on the world scene.
In 1931 the army staged a false incident of sabotage in Manchuria and formed a puppet state called Manchukuo. In 1933 Japan withdrew from the League of Nations. Plots against the government marked the early 30s and in 1932 a group of young officers assassinated the prime minister. In 1940 the civilian government was dissolved and Japan was ruled by the military until defeat in 1945. The military came to be viewed as the repository of traditional Japanese spirit. Its actions were ostensibly taken in the name of the Emperor whose true wishes were seen as impeded by the civilian government. The actual stance of the Emperor remains a matter of controversy among scholars in and outside Japan.
Japan was said to be a sacred land, ruled by a descendant of the gods. Japanese citizens were members of a family that the emperor headed and unquestioning loyalty was demanded. The military supposedly spoke in the name of the Emperor.
After the adoption of new theories derived from the West in the late 19th century, literature became concerned with truth and accurate description of life. The Confucian ideal of literature (i.e., poetry) as a tool to educate and the Edo period view of literature as entertainment were thrown into question.
The life of the individual became a focus for many writers, especially the life of the writer himself. The belief was that one cannot really know the facts of the lives of others. This concern for the individual was in conflict with the traditional priority of the group and was often seen as egotism.
Conflict between Eastern and Western culture became another frequent theme. A common pattern for writers and intellectuals was an early fascination with things Western and a return in later life to preference for things Japanese. A particularly noteworthy example among writers was Tanizaki Jun’ichiro (1886-1965).
Probably the most important writer of pre-war Japan was Natsume Soseki (1867-1916). Until well after WWII his novel Kokoro written in 1914 remained the most widely read Japanese novel in Japan.
Kokoro deals with questions of self versus group, modernization versus tradition, loyalty versus self-interest that still occupy modern Japanese writers and intellectuals.
Many other writers, such as Kawabata Yasunari, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, and Mori Ogai, whose works are known to Western readers in translation, were active before the war.
Writers produced many novels treating a wide variety of topics in the 20s and 30s. These included, for example: the position of the eta, the traditional outcast group of Japan, in The Broken Commandment (Hakai, 1906); the confrontation with modernization in The Makioka Sisters (Sasame Yuki) and Some Prefer Nettles (Tade Kuu Mushi, 1928); stories reworking traditional themes in modern terms such as In a Grove (Yabu no naka), known to western film goers through the movie, Rashomon, and many more. For a short while socialist and communist writers criticized injustices in Japan’s industrial and agricultural spheres, but many of these writers were put in prison where some died apparently at the hands of the police.
During WWII most writers did not publish much of lasting value. For the most part stories that were concerned with societal problems and personal questioning were seen as detrimental to the war effort. Many writers wrote stories supporting the war effort; others became almost totally inactive.
One of Japan’s most prestigious works, Tanizaki’s novel, The Makioka Sisters started to appear during the mid-30s but was seen by the government as undermining the Japanese spirit. Tanizaki went into a kind of self-imposed suspension of publication until after the war.