NEW TRENDS IN JAPAN

Waipa Post, Volume 51, Issue 3645, 19 July 1935, Page 9

NEW TRENDS IN JAPAN

INFLUENCE OF THE WEST. HOLLYWOOD COMES TO STAY. In literature, as in many other fields, the old culture of Japan is feeling the heavy impact of modern and Western influences and ideas. Scholars still peruse the classics of medieval Japan; large and enthusiastic audiences attend the Kabuki Theatre, where the historica and legendary achievements of samurai and ronin of ancient times are vividly presented through the medium of a theatrical technique that has been polished and refined by many generations of acting.

But at the same time there is great and growing interest in foreign cinema films, which open up to Japanese spectators problems, emotions, psychological situations which would scarcely be conceivable in the disciplined, traditional life of old Japan, where the individual was so unquestiqningly subordinated to the family. The cinema reaches the largest numbers of people; the efforts of the Hollywood stars not infrequently provide an important item in the amusement of even small Japanese towns. But other leavening influences are at work, especially among the educated classes: foreign travel and study, translations into Japanese of foreign novels and books on sociology and philosophy. A school of Japanese authors has arisen that follows, in the main, foreign models, adding, however, certain distinctive Japanese tints of physical and psychological colouring.

RUSSIAN INFLUENCE. One of the most popular and representative of these modern Japanese novelists is Mr Kikuchi Kan, whose work shows the influence of the Russian classics, especially of Tolstoy and Doostoevsky. He writes in a naturalist style, with a poetic flavour and a keen sensitiveness to the beauties of Japanese landscape.

Another contemporary Japanese author, Tengai Kosugi, suggests the extreme school of French realism typified in Zola. His novel, Kobushi,” is a merciless study of the disintegration of the character of a handsome student, Masao Sinju, who is ruined by the ready love of too many women. Some complicated family antagonisms enter, into the picture of Sinju’s deterioration. There is a traditional Japanese note at the end, when Sinju accepts the stern advice of one of his friends, who is disgusted with his lapse into indolence and dissipation, and commits hari-kiri with the dagger which the friend has given him.

One finds in this novel a reflection of the uprooted, disturbed mood that is characteristic of some of the younger Japanese, who feel that their old standards of judgment and conduct have slipped away from them and who have not yet taken firm footing in new ones.

“THE IDEAL HUSBAND.” A woman writer named 'Nobuko Yoshiya has outlined the new type ot independent professional woman in Japan in her novel, “ Riso No Riojin” (“The Ideal Husband”). While there are several threads in this work the outstanding figure is the woman physician, Kaoru, who is depicted as very steadfast and devoted, and who finds consolation in her work when a love experience 'turns out unhappily-

The modern Japanese short story is well represented by two works of Mr Mori Ogai, “Gan” (“Wild Geese”) and “ Takase Bune ” (“The Ship Takase”). The former is a clever piece of impressionism, an almost unspoken romance between a student and a girl whom he sees at a window, which abruptly ends as soon as a few words have been exchanged between the two. There is a touch of symbolism at the end: a wild goose, sho£, down by the student, suggests the girl, who has been spiritually wounded, perhaps as dangerously, by the contact with him, and who soon dies.

“ Takase Bune ” is the story of a convict ship, and especially of one man who killed his brother for love, when the latter had made an unsuccessful effort to commit suicide from despair over his inability .to find work and was in great suffering. In contrast to these sophisticated and usually melodramatic works of the modern Japanese authors is the charming, graceful, and placid writing of Mme. Etsu Sugimoto, whose first autobiographical work, “ A Daughter' of the Samurai,” contributed very much to an understanding of the customs and thought of Japan in foreign countries. Mme. Sugimoto subsequently published a second book, “A Daughter of the Narikm, this being the term applied to the newly-enriched class of enterprising business men of humble social origin ■which emerged aft‘:r Restoration. She is now at work on another novel, “A Daughter of the Nohfu,” a description of a girl in a Japanese farming community.