Open Collections

Miyamoto Yuriko : imagery and thematic development from Mazushiki hitobito no mure to Banshū Heiya

University of British Columbia

Miyamoto Yuriko is generally seen as belonging to the proletarian literary movement which reached its height in Japan around 1930. Brought up amid the comforts and intellectual stimulation of a middle class background, Miyamoto actually began her writing career in 1916. She continued to write for thirty-five years until her premature death in 1951. Her personal life/and the novels which were born from it, passed through several stages of development. Her participation in the proletarian literary movement was merely one of these stages. From the time of her first published novel, Miyamoto Yuriko was concerned with the plight of oppressed people within her own society. As she matured, her attention became focused in turn on women's issues, working class struggles and, finally, the problems facing the Japanese nation in the early post-war years. Concern for the effect of the social environment on the quality of human life, and the concept of positive action to change that which restricts human potential, were not features of Miyamoto Yuriko's novels which emerged solely through the stimulation of the proletarian literary movement in which she took part during the middle years of her career. They were features which appeared in her earliest published works and which continued to be features years after the demise of the proletarian literary movement. The novels of Miyamoto Yuriko show consistency in their development, rather than a radical departure from the concerns of the years before her overt political commitment. Through an analysis of imagery and thematic development in four novels from the most representative stages in her career, one hopes that the restrictive label of "proletarian writer" will be reconsidered, and that the scope and accomplishment of Miyamoto Yuriko's novels will be seen in a new light.

Text

2010-03-09

For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/21652

Asian Studies

University of British Columbia

Graduate