Self-censorship: the case of wartime Japanese poetry

Abstract This article examines the nature of self-censorship practiced by Japanese poets during World War II by an examination of selected poets and poems. The question of self-censorship is especially important for Japanese poets since after the war many of them concealed their wartime verse by censoring controversial lines (in some cases whole poems) from later editions of their poetry. A number of questions are prompted by such attempts at concealment, including what are the criteria by which literature should be evaluated; can patriotic poetry be esteemed on aesthetic and literary grounds and what is the relationship between the author of a work of literature and the work itself? The relationship between ideology and literature is also fundamental to any such examination and this issue is also taken up by this study. The article begins with an examination of general issues and then moves on to investigate the wartime verse of four poets: Miyoshi Tatsuji (1900–64), Tsuboi Shigeji (1897–1975), Kaneko Mi...