Literature and Materialism: Critical Essays

Does the materialist view of history destroy art? Can the novel be studied as a science? What happens to literature when it becomes a commodity? In the 1920s Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke (1892-1931), one of the founding theorists of Japan's proletarian literary movement, took up these questions with clarity, combativeness and an unexpected sense of humor.

This collection brings together four of his essays: Historical Materialism and Literature (1921), a defense of Marx's view of history against critics who claimed it would destroy spiritual culture; A Reply to Mr. Nakanishi (1922), a sharp polemic with a fellow activist; Émile Zola's Literary Methodology (1926), a lucid account of Zola's theory of the experimental novel and its debt to Claude Bernard; and The Modern Novel as Commodity (1929), which uses a British publisher's guide to best sellers to separate commercial value from artistic worth.

Each essay is translated complete and unabridged from Japanese, with a translator's note, brief endnotes, and source information.