The Conformed/Deviated Self in Diaries of Modern Japan: The Diversity andContradiction of Self-expression
Organizer and Chair: Yusuke Tanaka, Meiji Gakuin University
The culture of diaries flourished in Modern Japan. It meant not only that the production
and consumption of diaries increased in a rapid and constant manner, but also that they
developed to be classified into diverse categories according to gender, age, community,education, profession, or even ethnicity. While diaries created private space for selfexpression, they also became ideological apparatus for national education conforming users
to the relevant social norms. Although some enjoyed to be a role model, others refused to be
so and thus deviated from the norm; diaries constructed conflicting discursive space for selfexpression with a tension between subjection and emancipation.
This panel examines how self-expression were performed in the dynamics of the social
norms of modern Japan from various aspects. Tanaka will investigate the inculcating natureof mandatory diaries with a focus on censorship by teachers and military superiors. Kawachi
will reveal how the youth in agricultural communities were imposed to be an ideal farmer
when writing about themselves in diaries. Kō will scrutinize the tangled self-expression incolonial occupation by shedding a light on a diary of a secondary school student in Manchuria,
who kept his diary both in Chinese and Japanese. Ōno will explore the case of deviation into
the diary space by analyzing the works of Hōjo Tamio, who epitomizes so-called leprosy
literature of modern Japan. Through the four studies on diverse and contradicted selfexpression in diaries, the panel aims to provide new perspectives to the social intellectual
history in modern Japan.

1) Yusuke Tanaka, Meiji Gakuin University
Writing Inculcated Genuine Heart: Self-expression and Censorship in Modern Japanese
DiariesThroughout the course of modern Japanese history, diaries were used as means toeducate students to be a proper national subject. At elementary schools or even at higherlevels, it was very common for students to periodically submit mandatory diaries to theirteachers. The instructor carefully read the diaries as to inspect whether the students weregood in behavior, and whether they kept healthy ways of thought as little subjects of thenation. The same practice was continued after their graduation, most notably in the military.
There, superiors censored if their subordinates possessed the correct spirit, as Donald Keene
recalled with amazement in his Travelers of a Hundred Ages. In these cases diaries were nolonger sanctuaries for secret confession; under the eye of manifest authority, diary keepers
were inculcated to express the appropriate — seemingly genuine thoughts and feelings. The
voice of the authority appeared in red ink on pages of diaries, usually in a calm, educatingmanner. However, once diary keepers write something inappropriate in the sense that they
deviated from the norm imposed by the authority, the voice was immediately raised toreproach them with fonts of large size. Based upon the research on over a hundred actual
diaries, this presentation analyzes how comment and criticism of authority appeared and what
effects it had on the following entries of diaries. Special focus is laid on diaries by students
and soldiers of World War Two, when the need for censorship culminated in the everworsening situation of Japan’s holy war.

2) Satoko Kawachi, Tohoku UniversityDiary-Keeping in Modern Agricultural Society: Self-Representation of The Youth inAgricultural Areas
In this presentation, the phenomenon in which keeping the diary was deemed
exemplary among the youth in various agricultural areas in modern Japan is discussed fromthe perspective of sociocultural trends and their backgrounds. While young farmers wereencouraged to keep a diary primarily because of it’s pragmatic functions in the agriculturalreformation during the Taisho and Showa periods, the youth were also expected to express
their own “farmerhood” in terms of self-representation. Such expectation was associated withthe social background of the Seikatsu-Tsuzurikata movement that advocated manners ofdiary-keeping to simply describe the author’s ways of life and routines as they are. Therefore,
those engaged in agriculture were increasingly expected to describe their “peasant lives”,
which in many ways contrasted the modernized urban cultures. This suggests that diary-keeping in agricultural communities during the period played a role in the development of
normative and ideal models of young farmers through their routine descriptions and selfrepresentation as farmers. The aims of this presentation are to reveal the manners of theirself-representation as farmers by focusing on the act of diary-keeping among the youth inagricultural society of modern Japan, and to discuss the primary function of diary-keeping,which is the self-imposition of norms as ideal farmers.
3) En Kō, Komazawa University
The School Life and City Experience in Colonial Manchuria: An analysis of a Chinese
Youth’s Diary of 1936
This paper explores the school life and city experience in Manchuria underJapanese occupation by focusing on a diary written by a Chinese student of NanmanChugakudo 南満中学堂, a Japanese-run secondary school in Mukden city. The school wasfounded by South Manchuria Railway Company (SMR) in 1917 as the only secondary
educational institution of SMR for Chinese students. Most of the faculty members wereJapanese, and the language used in school was Japanese. Until the Manchurian Incident of1931, Nanman Chugakudo had been regarded as a symbol of Japanese educational invasionin Manchuria. Following the formation of Manchukuo in 1932, the number of applicants tothis school dramatically increased while the popularity of Japanese language skyrocketed.
The Chinese student, who is the author of the said diary, entered this school in 1932, the same
year Manchukuo was established. In his diary entries during 1936, he comments on various
events: the Manchukuo National Sports Festival, the fifth anniversary of the Manchuria
Incident, and the school trip to Japan. Moreover, by tracing his footsteps in Mukden thatencompassed SMR zone and Chinese residential zone, we can see that his consumption
activities mostly took place in the former area, while entertainments, such as cinema andeating out, were enjoyed in the latter. By reading between the lines of the diary written bothin Japanese and Chinese, this paper attempts not only to reveal his psychological world, butalso to illuminate colonial history from a more personal perspective.

4) Robert Ōno, Japan College of Social WorkIs This What I Wished For?: Hojo Tamio’s Diary As an Literary Refuge
Hojo Tamio (1914-1937) is arguably the only Japanese short story writer who has
won significant critical acclaim as well as popularity among contemporary readers while
being diagnosed with Hansen’s disease. Up until today, he has been noted as a powerfulchronicler of the lives of the patients, and a stronghold of literary history surrounding thedisease. But did he wish for such a role? This paper aims to shed a light on another aspect of
Hojo’s persona, which to some extent has been overlooked: a troubled, angry young writer
who was more than occasionally doubtful about the authenticity of his own fame. By looking
at his texts of less-fictitious nature, we can see that he believed his works were widely readnot because of their literary finesse per se, but rather because they depicted grim and often
gruesome lives of the patients at the sanatorium. In his unfinished essay Keijitsu Zakki (Notesof Recent Days), he concisely states that he does not wish to participate in the developmentof so-called “leprosy literature”. Moreover, we can learn from his diary entries that he waspejorative towards some of the successful writers outside the sanatorium because they were“not bound to rot”, and that he was furious towards the censorship enforced at the institutebecause it thwarted his true self-expression. Hojo was not altogether content with hisachievements, and interestingly, his malaise did not find its refuge in works of fiction, butrather in texts such as essays and diary entries.

Discussant: M. William Steele, International Christian University