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Early Freeze Warning: The Politics and Literature Debate as Cold War Culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
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This essay revisits the 1946-7 “Politics and Literature Debate” (Seiji to bungaku ronsō), a pivotal controversy among leftist Japanese writers and intellectuals that is conventionally cited as the starting point of postwar literary history. Situating the debate in tandem with three influential texts published at roughly the same time in the West—Lionel Trilling's The Liberal Imagination (1951), Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), and The God That Failed (1950), edited by Richard Crossman—the essay argues that the debate should be considered an early instance of the Cold War culture that would emerge globally in the decades that followed.
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.- Copyright
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References
Notes
1 See, for example, Marukawa Tetsushi, Reisen bunkaron: Wasurerareta aimai na sensō no genzaisei (On Cold War culture: The contemporariness of the forgotten enigmatic war) (Tokyo: Sōfūsha, 2005), and Ann Sherif, Japan's Cold War: Media, Literature, and the Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).
2 On Adorno, Horkheimer, and Auerbach as figures of Cold War culture, see Andrew Rubin, Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture, and the Cold War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), 74–86, 90–108. On René Wellek and Austin Warren, see Mark Walhout, “The New Criticism and the Crisis of American Liberalism: The Poetics of the Cold War,” College English, 49, no. 8 (December 1987): 861–71.
3 Rubin, Archives of Authority, 39–43. On US Cold War cultural policy in Japan and Okinawa, see Chizuru Saeki, U.S. Cultural Propaganda in Cold War Japan: Promoting Democracy 1948–1960 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen Press, 2007), and Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
4 See, for example, Nora Waln, “Is Japanese Youth Going Communist?” Saturday Evening Post, August 6, 1949, 36–37, 76–78; Joseph Yamagiwa, “Fiction in Post-War Japan,” Far Eastern Quarterly 13, no. 1 (November 1953): 3–22; Harry Emerson Wildes, “The War for the Mind of Japan,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 294 (July 1954): 1–7; and Anthony West, “Letter from Tokyo,” New Yorker, June 22, 1957, 33–73.
5 Sherif, Japan's Cold War, 14.
6 See, for example, George Orwell, “The Future of Socialism IV: Toward European Unity,” Partisan Review, July–August 1947, 346–51.
7 Louis Menand, introduction“ to The Liberal Imagination, by Lionel Trilling (New York: New York Review of Books, 2008), vii.
8 George Watson, “The Empire of Lionel Trilling,” Sewanee Review 115, no. 3 (2007): 484–90. The “Holy Writ” passage appears on 484.
9 Lionel Trilling, Bungaku to seishin bunseki, trans. Ōtake Masaru (Tokyo: Hyōronsha, 1959). On the efforts to transmit Trilling's writings around the globe, see Rubin, Archives of Authority, 68–69.
10 Lionel Trilling, The Middle of the Journey, trans. Saitō Kazue and Ōtake Masaru as Tabiji no naka ni, in Gendai Amerika bungaku zenshū (Complete works of contemporary American literature), (Tokyo: Arechi shuppansha, 1958).
11 See, for example, Nishikawa Masami, “Lionel Trilling-cho, ‘The Liberal Imagination,’ Morton Dauwen Zabel-cho, ‘Literary Opinion in America’ ” (Lionel Trilling's The Liberal Imagination, Morton Dauwen Zabel's Literary Opinion in America), Eibungaku kenkyū 28, no. 2 (1952): 254–57; Ōtake Masaru, “Futatabi Toriringu ni tsuite” (Another consideration of Trilling), Tōkyō keidaigaku gakkai 12 (1954): 67–95; and Ōnuki Saburō, “Lionel Trilling no shōsetsuron” (On Lionel Trilling's novels), Kenkyū ronshū: Shinshū daigaku kyōikugakubu jinbun shakai 3 (1953): 64–73. The last appears to be a Japanese translation of an essay by Trilling on fiction, but I have been unable to identify the original source.
12 Taniguchi Rikuo, “Amerika bunmei kara no tōsō: Henrī Jeimuzu ni kansuru oboegaki” (Struggle from American civilization: A note on Henry James), Ningen 5, no. 10 (October 1950): 16–29.
13 Russell J. Reising, “Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, and the Emergence of the Cultural Discourse of Anti-Stalinism,” boundary 2 20, no. 1 (1993): 94–124.
14 Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, xv. Subsequent references to this work are given parenthetically.
15 J. Victor Koschmann, Revolution and Subjectivity in Postwar Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 75.
16 Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 66.
17 Kobayashi Takiji was the leading figure of the prewar proletarian movement and became a martyr-figure on the Japanese left after his murder by Japanese police in 1933. Hino Ashihei came to prominence in the 1930s as the author of pro-military propagandistic novels. See Hirano Ken, “What is the ‘Primacy of the Politics,” trans. Miyabi Goto and Ron Wilson, in The Politics and Literature Debate in Postwar Japanese Criticism 1945-52, ed. Atsuko Ueda, Michael K. Bourdaghs, Richi Sakakibara, and Hirokazu Toeda (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017), 115-125. Subsequent references to this essay are given parenthetically. For the original Japanese, see Hirano Ken, “‘Seiji no yūisei’ to wa nani ka,” reprinted in Hirano Ken zenshū (Collected Works of Hirano Ken) (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1974-1975), 1:216–25.
18 On Arishima's notion of “representation” in politics and literature and its reappropriation in the postwar debate, see Satō Izumi, Sengo hihyō no metahisutorī: Kindai o kioku suru ba (The metahistory of postwar criticism: Modern sites of memory) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2005), 165–87.
19 Ibid., 178–79.
20 See, for example, Margaret Mead, “Ruth Fulton Benedict 1887–1948,” American Anthropologist, n.s., 51, no. 3 (July–September 1949): 457–68.
21 For “Tensei jingo” columns that touch on The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, see the Asahi newspapers of February 8, 1949, and May 4, 1950.
22 On the Japanese reception of Benedict's work, see Sonia Ryang, “Chrysanthemum's Strange Life: Ruth Benedict in Postwar Japan,” Occasional Paper 32 (July 2004), Japan Policy Research Institute, University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim. See also Minzokugaku kenkyū 14, no. 4 (May 1950), for a special issue devoted to Benedict, including essays by Yanagita and Watsuji; Tsurumi Kazuko, “Kiku to katana: Amerikajin no mita Nihonteki dōtoku-kan” (The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: An American view on the Japanese sense of morality) Shisō 276 (March 1947): 221–24; and Tsuda Sōkichi, “Kiku to katana no kuni: Gaikokujin no Nihon kenkyū ni tsuite” (The land of the chrysanthemum and the sword: Regarding research on Japan by foreigners) Tenbō 65 (May 1951): 6–25.
23 John W. Bennett and Michio Nagai, “The Japanese Critique of the Methodology in Benedict's ‘Chrysanthemum and the Sword,‘ ” American Anthropologist, n.s., 55, no. 3 (August 1953), 404–11.
24 Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1946; repr., New York: Meridian, 1974), 315. Subsequent references to this work are given parenthetically.
25 “What Mrs. Benedict has done by way of interpreting Japanese culture needs to be done by the same investigator, or by someone else equally competent, for the culture and life of the Russian people. In such interpretations lies the road to that world understanding which is needed in order that the United Nations may develop and become effective” (Emory S. Bogardus, review of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, by Ruth Benedict, Social Forces 25, no. 4 [May 1947]: 454–55).
26 See, for example, Ryang, “Chrysanthemum's Strange Life.”
27 “The author situates the cultural anthropologist on the front lines of the race problem as a scientist who resolves the anxieties and discord that are entangled in this problem” (Hayashi Sanpei, “Kokuminsei hihan no ichi shiten: Rūsu Benedikuto-cho Kiku to katana” [From the perspective of critique of nationality: Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword], Amerika kenkyū 5, no. 5 [May 1950]: 69–74).
28 See Richard Handler, “Boasian Anthropology and the Critique of American Culture,” American Quarterly 42, no. 2 (June 1990): 252–73, and Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), 102–28.
29 Klein, Cold War Orientalism, 11.
30 See Lisa Yoneyama, “Habits of Knowing Cultural Differences: Chrysanthemum and the Sword in the U.S. Liberal Multiculturalism,” Topoi 18, no. 1 (1999): 71–80.
31 Naoko Shibusawa, America's Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 296.
32 On the Lincoln Day celebration, see Saeki, U.S. Cultural Propaganda, 118–24. See also the commemorative pamphlet The Lincoln Day Celebration (Tokyo: America-Japan Cultural Society, 1951).
33 Stevenson's and Sarnoff's messages are reproduced in Lincoln Day Celebration, 5, 8. Subsequent quotations from this work will be cited parenthetically.
34 On Benedict's literary past, see C. Douglas Lummis, “Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese Culture,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Volume 5, Issue 7 (July 19, 2007), accessed August 31, 2020.
35 “Japan also has her proletarian novels protesting desperate economic conditions in the cities and terrible happenings on commercial fishing boats,” but Benedict identifies these as being outside the mainstream of what she calls character novels, presumably referring to the I-novel genre (166).
36 Nakano Shigeharu, “The Role of the Writer as National Citizen,” trans. Scott W. Aalgaard and annotated by Richi Sakakibara and Mariko Takano, Politics and Literature Debate in Postwar Japanese Criticism, ed. Ueda et al., 159-69; this passage appears on 159. For the original Japanese, see Nakano Shigeharu, “Bungakusha no kokumin toshite no tachiba,” in Nakano Shigeharu zenshū (Complete Works of Nakano Shigeharu) (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1979), 12:25.
37 Nakano Shigeharu, “The Humanity of Criticism I: Concerning Hirano Ken and Ara Masahito,” trans. Joshua Solomon and Kaori Shiono, Politics and Literature Debate in Postwar Japanese Criticism, ed. Ueda et al., 105-14. For the original Japanese, see Nakano Shigeharu, “Hihyō no ningensei I: Hirano Ken Ara Masahito ni tsuite,” in Nakano Shigeharu zenshū, 12:84.
38 Nakano Shigeharu, “The Humanity of Criticism II: On the Literary Reactions, et Cetera,” trans. Joshua Solomon and Kaori Shiono, Politics and Literature Debate in Postwar Japanese Criticism, ed. Ueda et al., 137-49. For the original Japanese, see Nakano Shigeharu, “Hihyō no ningensei II: Bungaku handō no mondai nado,” in Nakano Shigeharu zenshū, 12:96.
39 Ibid., 144-5.
40 Nakano, “The Role of the Writer as National Citizen,” 166. For the original Japanese, see Nakano, “Bungakusha no kokumin toshite,” 32.
41 Richard F. Calichman, ed. and trans., Introduction to What Is Modernity? Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi, by Takeuchi Yoshimi (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 3.
42 Takeuchi Yoshimi, “Ways of Introducing Culture (Japanese Literature and Chinese Literature II)—Focusing Upon Lu Xun,” trans. Richard F. Calichman, in Takeuchi, What Is Modernity?, 46.
43 Takeuchi Yoshimi, “The Question of Politics and Literature (Japanese Literature and Chinese Literature I),” trans. Richard F. Calichman, in Takeuchi, What Is Modernity?, 86–87.
44 David C. Engerman, foreword to The God That Failed, by Richard H. Crossman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), vii–xxxiv. See also Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: New Press, 2000).
45 Takeuchi Yoshimi, “Kurossuman hen Kami wa tsumazuku” (Crossman, editor, The God That Failed), Ningen 5, no. 12 (December 1950): 148–49.
46 Stephen Spender, “Some Japanese Observations,” Encounter 9, no. 6 (December 1957): 49–51.
47 On Koestler's visit, see Edward Seidensticker, Tokyo Central: A Memoir (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), 87–91.
48 Crossman, The God That Failed, 9. Subsequent references to this text are given parenthetically.
49 Hirano Ken, “An Antithesis,” trans. Junko Yamazaki et al, Politics and Literature Debate in Postwar Japanese Criticism, ed. Ueda et al., 87-92; this passage appears on 88-9. For the original Japanese, see Hirano Ken, “Hitotsu no hansotei,” Shinseikatsu, May 1, 1946, 183.
50 Engerman, foreword, xxiii.
51 On Buck, see Klein, Cold War Orientalism, 123–35. On Mears, see Shibusawa, America's Geisha Ally, 61–63.
52 When Keene traveled to London in 1940, Trilling provided a letter of introduction to E. M. Forster. See Donald Keene, Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 70.
53 See the expression of gratitude to McClellan for editorial assistance in Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 42. McClellan's pathbreaking translation of Natsume Sōseki's Kokoro, published in 1957 by the conservative Henry Regnery Company, was produced to allow Hayek to read one of the works taken up in McClellan's dissertation, “An Introduction to Natsume Soseki: A Japanese Novelist” (Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago, 1957). Prior to his encounter with Hayek, McClellan had studied with another seminal figure of American conservatism, Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind (1953). See Hirotsugu Aida, “The Soseki Connection: Edwin McClellan, Friedrich Hayek, and Jun Eto,” 2008.
54 On Seidensticker's work with the CCF, see his Tokyo Central, esp. 87–95. Seidensticker's correspondence and receipts for salary and travel expenses with the CCF are archived in the papers of the International Association for Cultural Freedom, series IV, box 11, Special Collections Research Center, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago. Scott Charles, one of Seidensticker's main correspondents at CCF, is identified as a CIA agent in Saunders, The Cultural Cold War, 243.
55 For a detailed account of the history of Encounter, see Saunders, The Cultural Cold War.
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