Saiichi Marutani: An Intellectual Writer Who Revamped Postwar Literature with a Classical Education and a Critical Spirit, 1950s-1980s

Saiichi Marutani: An Intellectual Writer Who Revamped Postwar Literature with a Classical Education and a Critical Spirit, 1950s-1980s
Saiichi Marutani is a writer who established a unique position in both fiction and criticism from the 1950s to the 1980s, a period of great upheaval in postwar Japan's sense of values. While society was rapidly becoming more affluent due to high economic growth, the 1960 Security Treaty triggered an awareness of the limits of postwar thought, and intellectuals were searching for new cultural standards. Marutani combined his deep knowledge of classical literature with a wry sense of humor to present a new intellectual foundation for postwar literature by rethinking literature from the formal aspects of language consciousness, style, and narrative structure. In novels such as "The Sasamakura" and "Twilight Greeting," he demonstrated a high degree of compositional ability and humor, while his critiques "The Text Reader" and "What is the Chushingura? In the midst of the retreat of the culturist movement, Marutani's stance of bridging the classical and modern worlds was unique, an
d played a role in expanding the possibilities of the Japanese language. In the 1980s, Marutani expanded his comments into cultural and social theory, becoming a symbol of literary intelligence. Marutani reexamined the nature of literature during the period of postwar cultural change, and his intellectual renewal formed the foundation of postwar literature.