Le « champ littéraire » japonais en lutte : l’après-guerre et le discours sur la responsabilité des écrivains

Two debates arose in postwar Japan over the wartime responsibility of Japanese intellectuals. The first broke out in 1946 between two groups dominating the literary field at the time: the Orthodox-Marxist Shin Nihon bungakukai (New Japan Literary Association) and the “modernist” Kindai bungakukai (Modern Literature Association). The second arose in 1956 between members of the New Japan Literary Association and a group of New Left sympathisers organised around the journal Arechi (Waste Land). These two debates reflect the tensions affecting the literary field at the time and the “battle for symbolic capital”. By examining the socio-political context surrounding the debates, this article highlights the different positions of each group and reveals the fragmentation and infighting that characterized the intellectual field of postwar Japan.