Eyes that Refuse Illusions: Mitsuharu Kaneko's Ideological Recollections (Prewar to Postwar)

Eyes that Refuse Illusions: Mitsuharu Kaneko's Ideological Recollections (Prewar to Postwar)

Mitsuharu Kaneko was a poet active from the Taisho to Showa periods, and at the root of his thought was the creed, "Do not be intoxicated by illusion. During the Taisho period, Romanticism and Modernism flourished, and many art forms were pursuing ideals, but he criticized them as "false pretenses that distract from reality" and maintained a direct attitude toward the contradictions of human life. During the war years, many literary figures and artists were mobilized by nationalism and manipulated words in the name of the greater good, but Kaneko was not complicit in this. Rather, he continued to emphasize the "danger of losing sight of humanity by becoming intoxicated with dreams.

He continued to speak of the danger of losing sight of human beings by becoming intoxicated with dreams. He maintained this perspective even after World War II, when society was enveloped in the illusion of "progress" during the period of rapid economic growth, and he spoke of the truth in human weakness and contradiction. He also paid attention to popular culture such as rakugo and science fiction, seeing them not as mere entertainment but as mirrors of human beings, and tried to see reality through the laughter and humor in their fictions.

This philosophy was a wake-up call for a generation that had experienced the war, and a criticism of postwar Japan being swept away again by falsehoods. Mitsuharu Kaneko's words were an attempt to define the mission of literature and art as "to face reality and depict the contradictions of human beings," an echo that has not been lost.