Tane maku Hito

Tane maku Hito was a Japanese proletarian literary magazine published in Akita Prefecture, and later Tokyo, between 1921 and 1923.[1]

Much left-leaning literature had been produced in Japan going back to the beginning of the century.[2] With a few noted exceptions,[lower-alpha 1] however, these works tended to be, as Japanese literary historian and critic Donald Keene wrote, "immature and sentimental".[2]

Tane maku Hito's founder, Ōmi Komaki, a young man from Tsuchizaki (土崎, a small town in Akita Prefecture), studied in France as a teenager, and he spent World War I there.[3] There, he was heavily influenced by the pacifist movement and, later, the left-leaning Clarté group led by Henri Barbusse, Anatole France and others.[3] Komaki personally promised Barbusse that he would organize an equivalent movement when he returned to Japan.[3]

The first Tane maku Hito was founded by Komaki and his friends Yōbun Kaneko (金子洋文) Kenzō Imano (今野賢三) and others in Tsuchizaki in February 1921,[4] and lasted for a scant three issues.[4] Ōmi had recently returned to Japan having participated in Barbusse's anti-war movement.[4] These writers were later joined by Takamaru Sasaki (佐々木孝丸) and Masatoshi Muramatsu (村松正俊),[4] and the magazine was revived in Tokyo in October.[4]

The magazine had an internationalist and anti-militarist outlook, and regularly published literary criticism that emphasized art and literary movements as aspects of the liberation movement.[4]

It ceased publication in October 1923, due to government pressure following the Great Kantō Earthquake.[1] Its final issue, as well as the supplement Tane-maki Ki (種蒔き記), were heavily critical of the massacre of Koreans and socialists in the aftermath of the earthquake.[4]

In total, 21 issues were published,[4] of which four had been banned by government censors before the earthquake.[3]

Each issue of Tane maku Hito included an "oath" that, in (perhaps deliberately) obscure language, expressed apparent support of the Russian Revolution.[3]

Tane maku Hito is generally credited with launching the proletarian literature movement in Japan.[5] Reprints of the magazine were published in 1961 and 1986.[4]