In the years following the Manchurian adventure, literature in Japan became more and more nationalistic; it fell into a “dark ravine.” Proletarian literature, which had seen a spectacular rise after World War I, declined rapidly after the death of the leftist writer, Kobayashi Takiji, in a police station at Tsukiji, Tokyo, on February 20, 1933. Writers previously devoted to liberal, progressive, and radical ideas were converted to orthodox thinking. In the late thirties and during World War II the few authors who still nurtured leftist ideas were completely silenced. Some, like Hirabayashi Taiko, went to jail. It was only in the first post-war years, with the release of political prisoners and encouragement given to freedom of expression, that literature once more began to show its former diversity and vitality. As the Occupation continued, various limitations were placed on the activities of the Communist Party, but, as we shall see, leftist authors still have their following.

In the intellectual ferment which defeat and occupation brought to Japan the social sciences underwent a particular upheaval. The decade before the war had seen their development stultified by the officially enforced atmosphere of dogmatic moralism and irrational metaphysics which was actively inimical to any positivistic and scientific study of life in society. The end of the war opened the flood-gates to the works of American and European writers of the previous two decades. It also gave courage and opportunity to the intellectuals who had received their academic training in the more liberal period of the twenties or in foreign universities but had since preserved silence or lost their way.

This article, like Marius Jansen's “Notes on Japanese Universities” (FEQ 12.2), has been prepared to acquaint Western scholars with significant developments in Japanese studies during the postwar period. It is organized on a different basis from Jansen's article, however, and is limited to studies of China (especially North China), Manchuria, Mongolia, Central Asia and Korea. Since complete coverage is out of the question in an article of this length, we concentrate on historical studies but also include significant advances in the humanities and to a certain extent in the social sciences.

The Chinese literary renaissance has produced in the past few decades many distinctly new results. The universal acceptance of the vernacular as a literary medium by a whole generation of writers, the absorption of modern western ideas, and the transvaluation of all traditional values brought about radical changes in creative literature. New theories were studied and practised, new forms and genres developed, and an appreciable number of distinguished works of poetry, fiction and essays created during this period can be assured of a permanent place in the history of Chinese literature. Yet one ancient literary genre, biography, seems to have benefited little by the new movement. It is this fact that makes the excellent work now under review deserve more than usual attention.