Rikuo Honjo--A Writer Who Scooped Up the Voices of the People during and after World War II, 1930s-1950s

Rikuo Honjo--A Writer Who Scooped Up the Voices of the People during and after World War II, 1930s-1950s
Rikuo Honjo (1903-1945) was a writer deeply attuned to the contradictions in the lives of ordinary people and society during the turbulent early Showa period. From 1930 to 1945, when he was working on his creative works, Japan was in the midst of a recession, militarization, and the strengthening of the war system, and the lives of working people were being squeezed. In the early Showa period (1926-1989), the Great Depression brought a flood of unemployed people in the cities, hunger in rural areas became a social problem, and farmer disputes broke out frequently. Rikuo Honjo depicted the reality from the perspective of the people in the midst of such unrest.

His works are characterized not by flashy techniques, but rather by the way in which they scoop up the weight of life through straightforward narrative. In his masterpiece "Ishi no Manju" (Stone Manju), he depicts issues such as poverty and the breakdown of family relationships in a calm manner, presenting at the same time the harsh reality of the common people and a glimmer of hope. The themes he dealt with were the very social contradictions that were magnified during the prewar and wartime periods, such as poverty, illness, family discord, and instability in the work environment.

Although Rikuo Honjo's literature has a strong proletarian flavor, denouncing the systemic defects of society, he emphasized the portrayal of human beings themselves rather than ideology. While maintaining a distance from ideological movements, he established a unique position by meticulously picking up the emotions of ordinary people and the details of their daily lives. This was deeply related to the cultural situation in the late 1930s, when ideological control was advanced. Under the Security Law, expression of thought was severely restricted and many artists turned to other fields.

As the war intensified in the 1940s, people's lives became even more impoverished. Food shortages, evacuation, deaths of soldiers, and the separation of families all contributed to the severity of the situation, and Honjo continued to write about these realities. Honjo's career was short-lived, however, as he died of illness in 1945. Nevertheless, his works have been reevaluated for their sincere depictions of ordinary people during the chaotic period of the war and the postwar period.

The value of Rikuo Honjo lies not in his denunciations of social contradictions, but in his ability to use his solid powers of observation to scoop up the silent voices of people living in harsh realities and crystallize them in a concise style. His writing style is bold, yet devoid of sentimentality, and continues to confront the reader with reality with a quiet weight.