Nogami Yaeko's socially psychological novel

In the works of the oldest Japanese authoress, there are key events of the Japanese and world history which are conveyed through the lives of her heroes. In contrast to many women writers, Nogami Yaeko (1885−1985) did not confine herself to writing novels of everyday life, but created socially psychological novels which are full of urgent problems, historic conflicts, social and political developments. The proletarian literature movement was at its height and Nogami Yaeko absorbed its influence. She was always sensitive to social and political issues. However, she could not write proletarian literature that was based on personal experience because she had grown up in an upper-middle-class household. Nogami Yaeko embodied spiritual search of her youth in the complex form of the socially psychological novel «Machiko» (1931) devoted to the student participation in the revolutionary movement. Her heroine, Sone Machiko, is a girl from the bourgeois environment, but she feels its foreignness. The heroine resembles authoress in personality but not in experience. She frets over the restrictions her class has imposed on her, and attempts to break through them by participation in revolutionary activities. Machiko desires to be loved by Seki, a young revolutionary of peasant stock. However, he has a wife already. Machiko realizes that she has never really loved Seki, only his ideology. She knows she has been deceived, she is no sure she believes in proletarian ideology. Her disappointment in the radical transformation of the world, her aversion of the «new morality» conveyed the position of the authoress who maintains moral ideals and humanistic principles. The continuation of the left movement topic can be found in the novel-epopee «The Labyrinth» («Meiro», 1956). The principal character is Sugano Shozo, a young man who became involved in the left-wing movement a few years earlier. Although, he formally renounced his left-wing beliefs, he was fired from his post at the university and shunned by many former acquaintances. The broad picture of the Japanese life covers 30−40 years of the ХХ century and shows the search of intellectuals in the condition of the country militarization and deploy of hostilities in Asian countries. In the novel, there is condemnation of the war, affirmation of personal freedom, and the call to preservation of cultural wealth. In the search of freedom, having undergone severe trials, obstacles and spiritual struggle, her heroes find the meaning of life. Faithful to the life truth, the authoress convincingly reconstitutes Japanese tragic life.