Questioning Postwar Words: Jun Eto and the Juncture of Postwar Spiritual History from the 1950s to the 1970s

Questioning Postwar Words: Jun Eto and the Juncture of Postwar Spiritual History from the 1950s to the 1970s
Jun Eto is a critic who, from within postwar Japanese literature, attempted to question the premises of the postwar period itself. From the field of literature, he attempted to examine when and how the ideals of democracy, peace, and progress that Japan had chosen after its defeat became fixed and transformed into a device to stop thinking.

In the 1950s, Japan regained its sovereignty after the occupation, but its spiritual independence remained in limbo. Words adjusted to pass the censorship of the occupation were eventually internalized as self-censorship. Eto felt a strong sense of discomfort in the fact that postwar literature, while upholding anti-war and democratic ideals, did not adequately sum up the disconnect and continuity with the prewar period.

In the 1960s, the security struggle and rapid economic growth were simultaneously underway, and progressive discourse was shared as unquestionably correct. Eto took issue not with a particular political position, but with the very situation in which values circulated uncritically. He exploited the paradox that the ethical dominance of postwar literature formalized the question of war responsibility.

Eto's work, represented by Maturity and Loss, reveals the self-denying structure of the postwar spirit, which was established through the total denial of the prewar period. He saw the danger in the lightness of borrowing only ideas without accepting the past.

As postwar democracy hollowed out after the 1970s, Eto turned to empirical research on censorship during the occupation. His stance of reexamining the conditions under which the postwar language was established, not to deny the postwar period, maintains a critical tension that is still relevant today.