Hayama Yoshiki

Hayama Yoshiki ( Japanese 葉 山 嘉樹 ; born March 12, 1894 in Toyotsu (today: Miyako ), Fukuoka Prefecture ; † October 18, 1945 ) was an author of proletarian literature in Japan.

Life

He was born into a samurai family. After the Toyotsu Middle School (today: Ikutokukan High School of Fukuoka Prefecture) he took the preparatory course for Waseda University in 1913 , but was excluded because of arrears in tuition fees. After that he went as a sailor on board cargo ships of Calcutta - and Muroran - Yokohama -Seewege. The experiences of this time became the basis of his later works. In 1920 he was employed in a cement factory in Nagoya , after an accident at work he tried to form a union, but was unsuccessful and was fired. He then joined the Nagoya Workers' Association and led various campaigns to improve working conditions.

In 1923 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Nagoya Communist Party incident . In prison he wrote Umi ni ikuru Hitobito ( 海 に 生 く る 人 々 , dt. "Those living on the sea") and Inbaifu ( 淫 売 婦 , dt. "Prostitute"). After his release, he published Inbaifu in the magazine Bungei Sensen ("literary front ") and Umi ni ikuru Hitobito as a new novel in 1926 , making him the young hope of the literary world.

Compared to the existing proletarian literature, which was theoretical and schematic, Hayama's works openly described people's natural feelings and had a high degree of literary perfection. Umi ni ikuru Hitobito , in particular , has been considered a masterpiece of Japanese proletarian literature. When the proletarian literary movement split into the war flag (Senki) and literary front groups, he belonged to the literary front and was active as its representative author.

But when the ideological control by the Tokkō secret police was more violent and public opinion was united by the advance into China , Hayama revoked his views through Tenkō and emphasized his support for the system. From 1934 he lived in Nagano Prefecture , and while writing novels there, he also worked on a construction site. In 1943, he wrote articles for the in Manchukuo published newspaper Manshu , he also dealt actively with the settlement , went there several times and finally went in June 1945 together with his daughter to Manchukuo to move to a new village. While he was returning to Japan on October 18, 1945 because of the occupation by the Soviet troops and the defeat in the war, he died in a train of a cerebral hemorrhage .

On October 18, 1977, a memorial stone was erected in his home town of Yakeyama near Miyako (then: Toyotsu).

Major works

• Rōgoku no hannichi ( 牢獄 の 半日 , dt. "Half a day in prison")
• Inbaifu ( 淫 売 婦 , German "prostitute")
• Semento-daru no naka no tegami ( セ メ ン ト 樽 の 中 の 手紙 )
  • The letter in the cement barrel . Translated by Jürgen Berndt. In: Dreams of Ten Nights. Japanese narratives of the 20th century. Eduard Klopfenstein, Theseus Verlag, Munich 1992. ISBN 3-85936-057-4
  • Letter found in a cement barrel . In: Modern Japanese Stories , ISBN 978-0804833363
• Umi ni ikuru hitobito ( 海 に 生 く る 人 々 , Eng . "Those who live on the sea")
• Idōsuru sonraku ( 移動 す る 村落 , dt. "The village that moves")
• Dakuryū ( 濁流 , German "mud flood")

Web links

• Digitized works at Aozora Bunko (Japanese)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Renmin Ribao (Japanese edition): "Article series discovered by Hayama" [1] (Japanese)

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Hayama is the family name, Yoshiki the first name.