Word Games and Postwar Maturation: Saiichi Marutani and the Reorganization of Japanese Literature from the 1960s to the 1990s

Word Games and Postwar Maturation: Saiichi Marutani and the Reorganization of Japanese Literature from the 1960s to the 1990s
Marutani Saiichi's literature and criticism questioned the nature of literature itself at a time when postwar Japan had passed through a period of ideology and reflection and was approaching maturity and stagnation after its rapid economic growth. Distancing himself from mainstream postwar literature, which dealt squarely with the war experience and political frustrations, he sought to restore the intellectual pleasure of literature through stylistic manipulation of language, form, allusion, and parody. In the 1960s, amid the trend in Japanese literature to emphasize ethics and seriousness, Marutani expressed discomfort with the attitude of limiting literature to a device of accusation and suffering, and actively connected the literary traditions of the past with an international perspective. Even in the post-1970s era, when ideals lost their power and became increasingly relativized, Marutani's literature did not drift into lightness, but continued to precisely inspect the b
ehavior of language itself. Marutani's mature postwar attitude and literary significance can be seen in the fact that he treated the postwar period not as a wound to be overcome but as a text to be re-edited.