Jiichiro Yamate (1899-1978) -- Salt Bean Saltiness, the Clapsticks of a Kodan, 1930s-1970s

Jiichiro Yamate (1899-1978) -- Salt Bean Saltiness, the Clapsticks of a Kodan, 1930s-1970s
Yamate, burdened with memories of poverty, mass-produced stories that momentarily lightened the fatigue of the common people with his painful historical novels in the style of kodan (storytelling). Riding on the expansion of prewar popular culture and the serialization circuit of newspapers and magazines, Yamate produced "Hadaka Daimyo," "Tekka Bogyo," "Seigumo no Oni," and other works in rapid succession. His works had a craftsman's sense of timing: good and evil were not precepts, but canes for living, and he never shunned a man for laughing, but never made him conceited by letting him win. After the defeat in World War II, he made his storytelling plain in accordance with the age of rental books and the black market, and guaranteed a "world where reason makes sense" in the midst of chaos. The passage in which he accepts the news of his eldest son's return from Siberian internment as "the bell of the new year of history" is a double portrait of devastation and rebirth, and
illuminates the author's ethics behind the entertainment: a share for the defeated and respect for the weak. It illuminates the ethics behind the entertainment - a share for the losers, respect for the weak. A subtle sorrow, like the saltiness of salted beans, ensured a painful aftertaste.