日中戦争勃発後の日本詩壇研究 - 詩誌「日本詩壇」の戦争特集号を中心に -

Abstract

In this article, we explore the effects of the Japan-China War on the Japanese poetry circle, focusing on the analysis of the special issue in war of Nihon Shidan, published in November 1937. This special issue consists of two parts: “authors’ thoughts on the wartime” and “war-featured poems.” In the former part, the authors admit that the war became “people’s experience” and stimulated people’s “emotion.” Their opinions, however, vary with regard to the “cultural significance” of the war, the symbolic “agony” of the time, the possibility that it may become “the new impulse of creation,” and so on. They, however, agreed that the war-featured poetry may lose the eternity of art and may also become “temporary literature,” “cheap, ideological war-featured poetry,” and “trivial sophistication.” Next, the depiction of battlefield scenes as well as the dead and injured during the war constituted the most important themes for poetry. Furthermore, it is suggested that simulated experiences through the popular visual medium of the time, called “news movie,” served as a basis for the creation of war poetry. We find a number of poems which portray the everyday affairs where people were sent to battlefields and also some poems which were created from the perspective of women.