Япония: цивилизация, культура, язык 2024

«ISSUES OF JAPANOLOGY, vol. 10» St-Petersburg State Univ 2024 185 is a kind of enterprise that seeks to study the relationship between human beings and the infinite ”. By scrutinizing the “pleasures” and “utility” of literature through “Meiji Bungaku Kanken”, Tōkoku established himself as a pioneer in defining the subjectivity of modern literature. Cultural Confusion in Meiji Society and Literature The Meiji Restoration government’s politics were marked by the inherent contradiction of promoting modernization through feudalistic power structures. This tension was compounded by the Restoration itself, which culminated in an incomplete bourgeois democratic revolution, resulting in a confused coexistence of feudal morality and unfulfilled modernism. In their pursuit of treaty revision, the government adopted an extreme policy of Westernization, superficially mimicking Western culture’s external aspects. Concurrently, they advanced toward absolute monarchy with the promulgation of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan. Consequently, the government fiercely suppressed the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement, which aimed for genuine modernization grounded in Western democratic principles. Given this social reality, several key issues were crucial in shaping the direction of literary content: a) dismantling the remnants of feudal consciousness that persisted, b) establishing a modern human perspective from a national standpoint, emphasizing bottom-up modernization rather than top-down modernization, and c) liberating individuals from established ethics, extending this liberation to all aspects of human life. These perspectives, especially those addressing issues as fundamental aspects of human nature, were prominent in the works of novelists of that era. Notably, Kitamura Tōkoku tackled these issues head-on. One of his