75 - Trends in postwar literature, 1945–1970s

Summary

In the drive toward Total War, Japan maintained strict control over media and speech for more than a decade. After the war, the Allied Occupation forces dismantled the empire and discredited the ideology and rhetoric that had supported it. Noteworthy during the first years after the war was the flood of pulp magazines on the market. As literary writers explored the means and meanings of liberating desire, the postwar media simultaneously pursued the commodification of sex. The innovations of the First Generation of Postwar Writers were not solely philosophical. Noma Hiroshi attempted to forge a new literary language, a style to the nihilistic worldview of those who knew the profound violence of war and the soul-searching over complicity in the aftermath. In the aftermath of the Korean War during 1950-3, which initiated Japan' rapid economic growth, the focus of literature started to move away from wartime, with writers turning to stories about contemporary families, the home, and daily life.