From "Terako of Asakusa" to "Observer of Postwar Culture"--The Life of Rokusuke Ei

From "Terako of Asakusa" to "Observer of Postwar Culture"--The Life of Rokusuke Ei

Rokusuke Ei was born in Asakusa, Tokyo in 1929. From the end of the Taisho era (1912-1926) to the beginning of the Showa era (1926-1989), Japan was recovering from the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923), and while Western-style culture known as "Modern Tokyo" was flowing into the urban areas, the Great Depression was also having a strong impact, and the country was in a period of recession and social unrest. Asakusa was at the forefront of this trend. Kaminarimon and yose, katsudo photos and freak shows. Ei was born in Asakusa as a child of a temple, and grew up in this melting pot of culture and common people.

His childhood was overshadowed by Japan's shift to the right during the 1930s and the progression of the wartime regime. Militaristic education was thoroughly taught in national schools, and even in temples it was difficult to distance oneself from the national Shinto religion. His father's position as head priest also sometimes forced him to be in close proximity to state power, and Ei must have experienced the conflict between "public" and "private," "power" and "ideology" from an early age.

When the war ended in 1945, Ei was 16 years old. In the scorched downtown of Tokyo, he eventually entered Waseda University. After the war, the university was spoken of as a symbol of democracy, but inside it was a mixture of the old atmosphere and a new liberalism. In the midst of this chaos, Ei formed friendships with the poets Eroshenko and Masamichi Takatsu. Eroshenko traveled the world blind and was involved with the proletarian cultural movement in Japan. Takatsu was known for his cultural activities on the side of the people before the war. Naga says that although he mingled with such "thinkers of the defeated," he "could never become an activist.

His goal was not to be part of the core of the movement, but to observe it from the periphery and translate it into culture. As a broadcaster involved in NHK and commercial radio and TV programs, he used "laughter" and "irony" as weapons to expose the contradictions and ridiculousness of postwar Japanese society. Although a religious figure, his incisive criticism of the political and social atmosphere was the very embodiment of the "unconventional aesthetics" of downtown Asakusa.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Japan was in the midst of its rapid economic growth. The "three sacred treasures" (black-and-white TVs, washing machines, and refrigerators) were widely used in homes, motorization and suburbanization were progressing, and young people from rural areas were moving to Tokyo to find work in large groups. In the midst of these rapid changes, Ei continued to dig up "memories of the Showa era," "the language of the common people," and "forgotten landscapes" on the radio and in his essays.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when the Vietnam War protests and student movements were flourishing, Rokusuke Ei consistently spoke out from the standpoint of "anti-war," "peace," and "from a citizen's point of view. In his position as a monk, he became a presence that questioned "what is human being" and "what is power" from inside and outside of society, rather than from the standpoint of his parishioners or doctrine.

His rebellious spirit had something in common with that of Takenaka Labor, who was a "born dissident. Both of them did not belong to any "organization," and they were rare individuals who could "have an ideology but not talk about the movement. Naga's "anti-authority" was neither emotional nor sentimental, but rather came from a downtown "gut feeling" and "sense of distance. While rooted in a gut feeling of "I don't like something," his ability to transform it into the language of culture lent humor and culture to his narratives.

Thus, Rokusuke Ei was a cultural figure who lived through the chaos of prewar Japan and the oppression of wartime, and always spoke "from the slant of society" while rooted in Tokyo as a testing ground for postwar democracy. His life and words are a microcosm of the contradictions that modern Japan has faced, and at the same time, an example of how to live with them as an "individual.