In this blog post, I will examine the rebellion, interpersonal relationships, and the issues of action and loneliness exhibited by the postwar Japanese youth through Shintaro Ishihara’s ‘The Season of the Sun’ and ‘What Cannot Be Taken Away’.
The First Postwar Author to Assert His Own Voice
Shintaro Ishihara was born on September 30, 1932, in the Japanese port city of Kobe. Because his father worked for a shipping company, he moved to Hokkaido with his father at the age of five and lived there for seven years—from the time he entered elementary school until he moved to Zushiro in Kanagawa Prefecture. It is striking that the nature and climate of Hokkaido during this period had a profound influence on his literary world. As a boy, he dreamed of becoming a diplomat or a naval officer, but after enrolling in Shonan Junior High School the year Japan surrendered, he was influenced by his art teacher and devoted himself to painting and soccer, and he also began sailing. During this time, introduced by Edo Jun, a student one year his junior, he visited Professor Eguchi of the Iko School to hear about the historical materialist perspective, and he also organized the Minhakdong club at school. In 1950, feeling disillusioned with school life, he took a one-year leave of absence, citing illness. The very next year, upon returning to school, his father passed away. Although he had once been interested in French literature and had even applied to the Department of French Language and Literature at the University of Tokyo, he came to keenly feel his duty to support his family as he faced his father’s death, his younger brother Yujiro’s dissolute lifestyle, and other family problems. Eventually, in 1952, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at Hitotsubashi University and later transferred to the Faculty of Sociology. While studying Symbolism, he regained a deep interest in literature. With the help of his seniors, he revived the suspended literary magazine ‘Hitotsubashi Bungei’ and published “The Gray Classroom” in its first issue. After this debut work received high praise from Fukashi Asami in a review of the ‘Bungakukai’ members’ magazine, he submitted ‘The Season of the Sun’ to the ‘Bungakukai’ New Writer’s Award and won the first-ever Bungakukai New Writer’s Award. This work, which depicts the stoicism of youth expressed through an affirmation of the physical body and a distrust of established values, went on to win the 34th Akutagawa Prize. However, it also sparked a fierce controversy when jury member Haruo Sato criticized the author’s “lack of aesthetic restraint.” Afterward, he published “The Execution Room” and compiled his works into his debut short story collection, ‘The Season of the Sun’, earning Shintaro Ishihara explosive acclaim as the first self-assertive voice of the pure postwar generation. The book sold out 250,000 copies, and even gave rise to a new term: “the Sun Tribe.” These works, which disregarded established morals and customs and laid bare raw emotions about human existence, served as a manifesto for the postwar generation. Ishihara Shintaro’s emergence marked a turning point in the history of modern Japanese literature and was significant in that it established a trend whereby Akutagawa Prize-winning authors rose to become social stars.
Affirmation of the Body and Distrust of Established Values
Shintaro Ishihara embarked on a career as a writer after graduating from Hitotsubashi University, but initially faced fierce opposition from the literary world, with the exception of a few understanding figures such as Yukio Mishima. However, he continued to be active under the banner of “The Glory of the Subverter of Values” and overcame his first crisis with the publication of the serialized novel ‘Lunar Eclipse’ in ‘Weekly Novel’. He went on to publish controversial works such as ‘Perfect Amusement’ and the novel ‘The Crack’, and after appearing in the film ‘Crazy Fruit’, he gained attention as a leading figure representing Japan’s postwar youth. In 1958, he adapted his own work ‘The Young Beast’ and directed it himself; after returning from a trip abroad in 1959, he formed the “Young Japan Society” with Jun Edo, Kenjaburo Oe, and Juntaro Tanigawa to explore the ideological and artistic issues facing their generation. He also led four members of the Hitotsubashi University Motorcycle Club on a scooter trip through South America, and, inspired by the New Theater Movement, wrote his first comedy, ‘Let the Wolf Live, Let the Pig Die’, for a performance by the theater troupe “Shiki.” Later, while working as a theater manager and athlete, he published experimental conceptual novels such as ‘Panky Jump’—a prose-poetic work depicting the inner monologue of a drug-addicted jazz pianist—and ‘The Mallard’. These works reveal his quest to find the source of a sense of life that has lost its direction and his attempt to restore humanity from that source. He also solidified his foundation as a popular author by serializing the novels ‘Eternal Japan’ and ‘Challenge’ and publishing works such as ‘The Tree of Youth’. One of Shintaro Ishihara’s most significant works as a novelist was the novel ‘The Forest of Fossils’, which he wrote over the course of five years while serving as a member of the House of Councillors. This work was acclaimed for capturing the theme of self-recovery through the concepts of “loathing” and “the Other.” He subsequently pursued a career in politics and was elected to the House of Representatives from Tokyo’s 3rd District in the 1972 election. I believe Shintaro Ishihara’s originality lies in his ability to portray, through his unflinching prose, the melancholy of a new generation that—amidst the intellectual excess of postwar Japan—had no choice but to make an active affirmation of the body its spiritual pillar. The young people in his works do not meekly conform to established values and morals; instead, they reveal the oppression and emptiness of that era through their own bodies and actions.
The Runaway Youth Depicted in ‘The Season of the Sun’
The protagonist of ‘The Season of the Sun’ is Tatsuya, a student and boxer. The work depicts the detached interpersonal and romantic relationships of the postwar youth, who are bound by established moral codes. In particular, Eiko, the daughter of a wealthy family, is a character accustomed to taking whatever she wants; however, upon meeting Tatsuya, she discovers love and becomes pregnant with his child. Yet Tatsuya abuses Eiko, using it as a means to verify the authenticity of his love. When Eiko dies after a failed abortion procedure compounded by peritonitis, Tatsuya hurls an incense burner at her photograph at her funeral and screams, “You fool!” This scene demonstrates that their relationship cannot be explained as a simple love story. I felt it was a scene that starkly reveals the reckless behavior of youth—people who desire love but do not know how to love, and who hurt their partners to confirm their own feelings. What is particularly striking about this work is that the young people do not merely rebel against the morality of the older generation. Without even properly identifying what they should be rebelling against, they push their emotions and desires to the limit. Consequently, their actions embody both a sense of freedom and a profound emptiness. ‘The Season of the Sun’ can be described as a provocative work that depicts the reckless youth of postwar young people who have lost the very object of their rebellion.
“The Untakeable”: Action and Solitude
The co-included story “The Untakeable” depicts the dichotomy between social reality—that is, an inhuman reality—and human reality as encountered in the world of actual action. While reading this work, the central issue that struck me was that if one pursues the pure “completion of action,” one inevitably falls into a state of isolated solitude. The image of humanity that we universally associate with “action” may, in fact, be that of a person who continues to wander and despair within this very contradiction. Humans must act while keeping their feet firmly planted in reality, yet reality does not always move according to their pure intentions. The more one attempts to achieve something through action, the more pronounced the gap between reality and humanity becomes, and in that process, humans are confronted with loneliness and despair. Yet, we cannot simply turn our backs on reality and pursue pure action alone. Rather, the desirable path would be for humans to regain their position as agents while remaining grounded in reality amidst this conflict. But how, exactly, can this be achieved? The question posed by this work centers precisely on that point. It prompts us to reflect on the fact that, while humans constantly struggle and wander between reality and their own actions, they must ultimately become beings who act within reality once again. Reading ‘The Season of the Sun’ and ‘The Untakeable’ together, I came to the conclusion that the humans depicted by Shintaro Ishihara are not so much people living within stable values as they are people striving to affirm their existence in an era where established values have been shaken. On the one hand, they challenge established morality through the body and desire; on the other, they confront reality through their actions—yet they find no easy answers in either realm. Ultimately, the portrayal of youth and humanity in these works encompasses not only rebellion and freedom but also a sense of wandering and loneliness that cannot be explained by those concepts alone.
