China after Japan’s“Dawn to the West”: Modern Japanese Literature through the Eyes of a Chinese Scholar*

ZHENG Guohe

Abstract: It may be argued that every reader of foreign literature is a comparatist.In his effort to interpret a foreign writer or identify the dynamics and characteristics of a foreign tradition,he cannot but proceed through the lens of his own cultural background.The title of Donald Keene’s Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era,for example,not only pronounces a central theme of the volume by the most prominent scholar of Japanese studies in the West,but also testifies to the fact that it is modern Japanese literature viewed by a“blue-eyed Tarōkaja.”This article approaches modern Japanese literature from a different perspective—through the eyes of a Chinese scholar—by considering three subjects: Kajin no kigū,a Meiji political novel by Shiba Shirō,Sekibetsu,a wartime novel by Dazai Osamu,and short stories by Shiga Naoya.Widely different from each other otherwise,these works share a common trait: they are all related to“China”in a broad sense.In examining them together,I intend to challenge some views of modern Japanese literature commonly accepted in the West.1 I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript of this paper.The revision of the manuscript benefited much from their comments and suggestions.

Keywords: China after“Dawn to the West”;canon formation of Japanese literature;Kajin no kigū;Sekibetsu;Kinosaki nite;Seibei to hyōtan

1.Introduction

It may be argued that every reader of foreign literature is a comparatist.In his effort to interpret a foreign writer or to identify the dynamics and characteristics of that tradition,the reader cannot but proceed through the lens of his own cultural background.The title of

Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era

by Donald Keene (1922-2019), The book,first published in 1984 by Holt,Rinehart and Winston of New York,has two separate volumes,one being devoted to fiction and the other to poetry,drama and criticism.When the volume devoted to fiction was republished in 1998,now running 1329 pages,two pages longer than its 1984 edition and with a new preface by the author,it became volume 3 of a 4-volume series of a comprehensive history of Japanese literature by Keene.Volume 1 of the series is entitled and volume 2,-.Both of these books had been published separately before with the former appearing in 1993 and the latter in 1976.These 4 volumes have been translated into Japanese in a 18-volume series of history of Japanese literature.The series were published in 1994-1997 by Chūō kōron sha 中央公論社.This is the only comprehensive history of Japanese literature anywhere in the world.the most prominent scholar of Japanese literature in the West,is an example.It

not only pronounces a central theme running through this mammoth and monumental book—that modern Japanese literature is the product of“the changing Japanese responses to the challenge posed by ［Japan’s］inescapable encounter with the West,” Robert Torrance,review of (1987)and(1988),by Donald Keene,22,no.2 (November 1988): 196.——but also testifies to the fact that it is Japanese literature viewed by a“blue-eyed Tarōkaja.” The first book Donald Keene published in Japan in 1957 was entitled 碧い眼の太郎冠者(A Blue-Eyed Tarōkaja).The cover of the book features a photo of Keene playing the character Tarōkaja 太郎冠者 in a Kyōgen 狂言.But Donald Keene has not been the only“blue-eyed Tarōkaja”;as we shall see later in this paper,he represents a tendency of many Western scholars.This article approaches modern Japanese literature from a different perspective—through the eyes of a Chinese scholar—by considering three subjects:

Kajin no kigū

佳人之奇遇,a Meiji political novel

by Shiba Shirō (柴四朗，1852-1922),

Sekibetsu

惜別,a wartime novel by Dazai Osamu (太宰治，1909-1948),and short stories by Shiga Naoya (志賀直哉，1883-1971).Widely different from each other otherwise,these works share a common trait: they are all related to“China”in a broad sense.In examining them together,I intend to challenge some views of modern Japanese literature commonly accepted in the West.

2.Kanbun Style in the Meiji Political Novel Kajin no kigū5

I will first examine

Kajin no kigū

(Strange Encounters with Beautiful Women;serialized between 1885-1897),the most well-known of Meiji political novels,and the use of the

kanbun

漢文（classical Chinese) style in its composition.The novel tells the story of how Tōkai Sanshi 東海散士,a young Japanese studying in America,happens to meet two beautiful European women in early Meiji at Independence Hall,Philadelphia,and how their friendship develops due to their shared lamentation for the misfortunes of their respective countries and their determination to fight for freedom and independence against Western imperialist powers.While the story of the novel is set in Philadelphia,the stage of

Kajin no kigū

is global,and the thread of the romance between Sanshi and the two beauties serves only as a pretext for the author to weave together his numerous tales of weak nations that have fallen victim to Western imperialism.After Sanshi returns to Japan later in the novel,however,he becomes more and more involved in the crisis between Japan and China over the issue of Korea which eventually leads to the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895).By the end of the novel,Japan has emerged victorious from its war with China,but it has done so by adopting the policies of imperialist powers that Tōkai Sanshi vehemently condemns in the beginning of the novel.Ironically,in the last scene of the novel,the protagonist finds himself incarcerated due to charges that he has been involved in the assassination of Queen Min of Korea,a country whose independence he claims he was fighting for.When it first appeared in 1885,the novel became an immediate bestseller.In fact,it was so popular that it was said that there was no remote village in Japan where some young man did not have a copy in his pocket, See Kimura Ki 木村毅,日米文學交流史の研究 (A Study of the History of Literature Exchanges between Japan and the United States) (Tokyo: Kodansha 講談社,1982),247.See also George Bailey Sansom, (New York: Alfred a.Knopf,1949),412.A most vivid picture of how warmly was received by young people of the day is seen in a 1928 novel by Tokutoku Roka 徳富蘆花,a passage from which is to be quoted later in this paper.and contemporary critics even claimed that it had“raised the price of paper in the capital.” See Commentary to volume 16 of .While the novel has not lacked detractors in Japan since its publication,its numerous admirers acclaim the novel as one of the masterpieces of Meiji literature,with a style of language that is paricularly fitting for its theme. For the views of its admirers,see the following: Nakamura Mitsuo 中村光夫, ふたたび政治小説を (A Reevaluation of Political Novels) (Tokyo: Chūōkōron,May 1959),281-83;Nakamura Mitsuo 中村光夫,“Sakuhin kaisetsu”作品解説 (An Introduction) to ,,政治小説集,日本現代文學全集,vol.3 (Tokyo: Kodansha,1965),395-400;Yanagida Izumi 柳田泉,“to Tōkai Sanshi”佳人之奇遇と東海散士 (and Tōkai Sanshi) in the first volume of his three-volume 政治小説研究 (A Study of Political Novels).For the views of its detractors,see most of histories of modern Japanese literature.For a comprehensive review of the critical history of the novel,see 鄭國和：《柴四朗〈佳人奇遇〉研究》，武漢：武漢大學出版社，2000年。［ZHENG Guohe, (A Study of by Shiba Shirō),Wuhan: Wuhan University Press,2000.］In contrast,ever since the formation of the orthodox canon of modern Japanese literature in the West after World War II,Western critics share an almost unanimous opinion of this novel.For example,in his influential book

The Western World and Japan

,British diplomat and scholar Sir George Bailey Sansom characterizes it as a“deplorably bad novel”; George Bailey Sansom, (New York: Alfred a.Knopf,1949),413.similarly,Donald Keene calls it“hardly more than ［a curiosity］,” Keene,,87.and its language as“ornate,difficult and exceedingly conventional.”As such the novel has been categorically denied a place in the canon of modern Japanese literature in the West.More recently,some Western scholars have tried to defend the novel——as seen in the studies by John Mertz and Atsuko Sakaki——but only succeed in pointing out its transitionalor non-intrinsic value. Atsuko Sakaki,“The Meiji Political Novel and the Boundaries of Literature,”55,no.1 (Spring 2000),102.Moreover,no Western scholar has ever read the entire text of

Kajin no kigū

.Instead,they have either based their discussions of the novel on a summary of the story from certain dictionaries,or consulted an incomplete version of the novel with only the first ten of the sixteen volumes,resulting in many factual errors in their discussions. For a detailed discussion of this,see Guohe Zheng,“Politics of Canon Formation and Writing Style: A Linguistic Analysis of ,”223-26.In the Western orthodox canon,Tsubouchi Shōyō’s 坪內逍遙 critical thesis

Shōsetsu shinzui

小説神髄 (The Essence of the Novel,1885) has long been regarded as the manifesto of modern Japanese literature.According to this thesis,modern literature is more compatible with the genre of

shōsetsu

rather than with other genres;with the language style of

genbun icchi

言文一致 (unification of the written and spoken language) rather than

kanbun

;with the theme of

ninjō

人情 (human feelings) raher than politics;and with the

shasei

寫生 (sketch) mode of representation rather than that of

shūji

修辭 (rhetoric).Given the clear preference in the above dichotomies,it is only to be expected that

Kajin no kigū

is excluded from the canon of modern Japanese literature: while it is a novel,it contains more history than fiction and,in the words of Sir George Bailey Sansom,is“crammed with information about four and twenty nations in revolt.” Sansom,,414.Moreover,it is written in the

kanbun yomikudashi

漢文読み下し style and is full of the author’s political aspirations but lacks realistic portraying or characterization.In short,that is the reason why

Kajin no kig

ū

has been excluded from the canon of modern Japanese literature in the West.Clear as the above logic seems to be,however,it has a serious problem: if

Kajin no kigū

was such a bad novel with such a poor language style,as Western scholars claim it to be,the tremendous popularity it enjoyed in Meiji Japan becomes a mystery.The gap between its reception in Meiji Japan and in the West today calls for an explanation.

To fill this gap,we must first of all historicize our notion of literature.In his study of literary style from the end of the Edo period through the Meiji period,Maeda Ai 前田愛 states the following:

One of the books in a series published in the 1880s and 1890s by Tokutomi Sohō’s 徳富蘇峰 Min’yūsha 民友社 was entitled

Jūni bung

ō

十二文豪 (Twelve Literary Masters).Among the foreign literary masters included in the book,which was compiled by Kitamura Tōkoku 北村透谷,Tokutomi Roka 徳富蘆花 and Yamaji Aizan 山路愛山,were Carlyle,Macaulay,Wordsworth,Goethe,Emerson,Hugo,and Tolstoy.On the other hand,the five people honored as Japanese literary masters were Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠,Chikamatsu Monzaemon 近松門左衛門,Arai Hakuseki 新井白石,Rai San’yō 頼山陽,and Takizawa Bakin 滝沢馬琴.It is perhaps puzzling to us today for the names of Carlyle,Macaulay,and Emerson to be listed next to those of Goethe and Tolstoy.Or,similarly,in the case of Japan,the three names of Sorai,Hakuseki,and San’yō should be more appropriately identified as scholars or thinkers rather than writers of literature.However,the Meiji period was a time when the tradition was still strong and deep-rooted to hold Confucian studies and

kanshibun

漢詩文 as the orthodox of literature. Maeda Ai 前田愛,近代日本の文學空間 (Modern Japan and Its Literary Space) (Tokyo: Shin’yōsha 新曜社,1983),231.Yamaji Aizan (1864-1917) was a Meiji period commentator.He published a large number of commentaries on politics,history,and literature.Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881),was a British social critic and historian.His major works include , and .Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859),British statesman and historian,was famous for his eloquent but prejudiced history work .Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),was an American essayist,poet,and thinker.He is considered to be one of the most influential figures in American literary history.Ogū Sorai (1666-1728),was a Confucian scholar in the mid Edo period.Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725),was a politician and scholar of the mid Edo period.Maeda Ai’s point is supported by numerous accounts of how

Kajin no kigū

was received by Meiji readers.The most vivid of such accounts is seen in Tokutomi Roka’s (1868-1927) 1928 novel

Kuroi me to chairo no me

黒い目と茶色の目 (Black Eyes and Brown Eyes).The setting of the following passage from the novel is a college in Kyoto:Just about that time a novel titled

Kajin no kigū

appeared.Everyone who was literate read it ...And the beautiful writing style of

Kajin no kigū

was admired by everyone in Kyōshisha School.In particular,most of the numerous elegant

kanshi

poems in the novel were committed to memory.Keiji ［the protagonist in Tokutomi’s novel］had a classmate by the name of Ogata Ginjirō ...who,though a mediocre student in academic subjects,was recognized as the best reciter of poetry in the whole school.On frosty,moonlit nights,close to school bedtime,Ogata would start to recite in a loud voice ...along the sandy path between the dorm buildings.His voice was sonorous and forceful,like the sound made by striking metal with stones.At this,the 300 students,who had been quietly concentrating on their school work under the lamplight,would be enraptured by the recitation as if spellbound.On the tables here and there in Kyōshisha School,one would see copies of the novel in blue covers bound in Japanese style with string.The characters in the novel were printed in big woodblock letters mixed with katakana. Tokutomi Roka 德富蘆花,蘆花全集(Complete Collection of Tokutomi Roka),vol.10 (Tokyo: Shinchōsha 新潮社,1928),92-93.It is important to note here that

Kajin no kigū

was read as literature at the time.Even in the beginning of the Showa period,it was still read and admired as literature,as we can see in the childhood experience with

Kajin no kigū

as recollected by Ibuse Masuji 井伏鱒二 (1898-1993),author of

Kuroi ame

黒い雨 (Black Rain,1965),a novel on the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima:Before I was old enough to go to school,I could recite from memory the opening passages of

Kajin no kigū

which begin“When I raise my eyes,I see the Liberty Bell ...”My father would tell the guests to our house:“This boy of mine is going to be a doctor in literature.” Ibuse Masuji 井伏鱒二,“Honkokuhon no omoshirosa: Kajin no kigū ni tsuite”翻刻本の面白さ：『佳人之奇遇』について (Strange Encounters with Beautiful Women),’ 春陽堂月報 (June 1930): 4.Clearly,

Kajin no kigū

was part of the literary main-stream literature when it first appeared.To judge it by Western notions of literature is not only unfair to the work,but leaves a gaping hole between its reception in Meiji-period Japan and in the West today.The next notion we must historicize is that of the

kanbun

style.In his comparative study of the histories of China and Japan,Chin Shunshin 陳舜臣 (Chen Shunchen in Chinese,1924-2015) notes how knowledge of

kanshi

漢詩 poetry was common among the Japanese in the Meiji period:Japanese newspapers still carried a column of

kanshi

poetry well into the teens of the Taisho period (1912-1926).Until that time

,kanshi

poetry contributed by readers was routinely carried in the newspapers in the same way

haiku

俳句 or

waka

和歌 poetry was published.This is particularly true of the beginning years of the Meiji period when it was common for men to compose

kanshi

poetry and for women to compose

waka

poetry.At the time there were many people who practiced

kanshi

poetry composition. See Naramoto Tatsuya 奈良本辰也 and CHIN Shunshin 陳舜臣 歴史対談日本と中國: 近代の幕明け (Dialogue: Japan and China,at the Dawn of the Modern Period) (Tokyo: Tokuma shoten 徳間書店,1986),187.Of course,people’s knowledge of

kanbun

-style writing was not limited to

kanshi

poetry: they were also well read in Chinese history.An example cited by Chin Shunshin lends support to this point:For example,there was a Meiji

shishi

志士 by the name of Hashimoto Sanai 橋本左內 who was executed at the age of twenty-four.Even when he was in prison,he never stopped reading Chinese history.It is recorded that by the time he was executed,he had finished

Shiji

史記 and had just started

Hanshu

漢書.In other words,he was taken to execution when he was deeply absorbed in

Hanshu

.Therefore,as his example illustrates,knowledge of Chinese history was common among intellectuals of the time and could be expected of everyone.In this connection,we should remind ourselves of the well-known fact that the friendship between the narrator and the protagonist in Mori ōgai 森鴎外’s novel

Gan

雁 (The Wild Goose,1911-1913) develops because of their common interest in hunting for books in old bookstores,especially for classical Chinese novels.A sense of the extent to which readers in Meiji Japan were conversant with

kanbun

style writing is best captured by Nakamura Shinichirō 中村真一郎 (1918-1997) in his book

Rai San

’

yō to sono jidai

頼山陽とその時代 （Rai San’yo and His Times).He recalls an episode from his childhood:Born in the beginning of the Meiji period,my grandmother was literally an old woman from the countryside with little education.One day when I was in middle school,I had trouble reading my supplementary

kanbun

book—selected essays from ［Rai San’yō’s Japanese history］

Nihon gaish

日本外史.When she sensed my problem,my grandmother,still standing in the kitchen,recited loudly without any difficulty the part where I got stuck.It seems that memorizing

Nihon gaishi

was part of the elementary education for young girls in the countryside when she was young. Cited in Maeda Ai,,233-34.Maeda Ai comments on this episode:This episode gives us a rare glimpse into the linguistic life of a time remotely separated from our own.The fact that a young girl from the countryside who could retrieve the content of

Nihon gaishi

from her memory promptly and accurately at an old age testifies to the fact that during the Meiji period there was a language world that was an inseparable part of people’s life but that is at the same time entirely different from that of their daily life.Clearly,however old-fashioned

kanbun

-style writing might appear to Westerners

today

,or for that matter to the Japanese today,the harsh judgment passed onto

Kajin no kigū

by Western scholars reflects Western notions of modernity,a point that is poignantly clear to Chinese readers,like myself,to whom

kanbun

-style writings prove to be no more difficult than contemporary colloquial Japanese thanks to our own cultural background.Unfair as the above-mentioned harsh judgment may be,it stands unchallenged even today.This unchallenged marginalization has led to a series of consequences,the first of which is the commonly accepted theory that Japanese literature,both modern and pre-modern,is somehow unique in that it deals largely with aesthetic issues and is not concerned about Japan’s fate as a nation.For example,Ching-mao Cheng generalizes in the following way about modern Japanese literature:“Japanese writers were absorbed in discovering the meaning of literature and seeking emancipation,assertion,and perfection of

jiga

自我 (selfhood) at an abstract level.” See Ching-mao Cheng,“The Impact of Japanese Literary Trends on Modern Chinese Writers,”in ,ed.Merle Goldman (Cambridge,Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,1977),76.Suzuki Shūji 鈴木修次 comments that“in the world of Japanese literature ...it is the concept of

mono-no-aware

物の哀れthat is the key to literary refinement.If politics is allowed to be involved,literature will only be made vulgar.” Suzuki Shūji 鈴木修次, 中國文學と日本文學 (Chinese Literature and Japanese Literature) (Tokyo: Tokyo shoseki kabushiki kaisha 東京書籍株式會社,1987),17.Similarly,Earl Miner remarks that“throughout recorded time Japanese have been patriotic and conscious of their national identify,but patriotism has not provided their poets with a literary option they cared to take up.” Earl Miner, (Stanford: Stanford University Press,1968),2.Obviously,the above generalization is made with no consideration given to politically motivated works such as

Kajin no kigū

and other Meiji political novels,and as such results in a one-sided and misleading view of modern Japanese literature. See the last chapter of Guohe Zheng’s for a more detailed critique of the theory.Also see 王向遠：《“筆部隊”與侵華戰爭》，北京：北京師范大學出版社，1999年。［WANG Xiangyuan, (“The Pen Units”and Japanese Invasion against China),Beijing: Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe,1999.］The second consequence of the marginalization of

Kajin no kigū

is that it leaves Western scholars oblivious of the problems created by the ambiguous theorizing of Meiji political novels among some Japanese scholars.The Meiji period was the golden age of political novels,with more than two hundred of them published in the twenties and thirties alone.Many of these novels are devoted to the theme of Japan’s relations with other countries and represented the different roads for Japan in its pursuit of modernization.For example,some of the novels deal with Japan’s struggles to revise the unequal treaties imposed on Japan by Western powers;others propose Japan’s solidarity with other Asian nations against Western powers;some advocate that Japan should follow the example of Western powers and expand its territory by force.Clearly these novels are very different in their visions of the future of Japan in the world.Some Japanese scholars of Meiji political novels,however,lump all of these novels together under the rubric of“

kokken shōsetsu

”國権小説 (novels of national rights).” See Yanagida Izumi 柳田泉’s classification of Meiji political novels in 明治政治小説集 (2) (Meiji Political Novels),in 明治文學全集 (Complete Works of Meiji Literature),vol.6 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō 筑摩書房,1967).The problem with this label is obvious: the term“

kokken

”國権 blurs the vital difference between advocacy of patriotism,solidarity with other Asian nations against Western imperialism,and blatant imperialism.The label reminds one of the term

shinshutsu

進出 (going into and coming out of),used by Japanese rightwing ideologues to characterize Japan’s invasion of Asian countries.As such,its absurdity must be exposed and made known.Given the exclusion of Meiji political novels from the canon,however,the questionable theory of“

kokken shōsetsu”

is virtually unknown in the West,let alone subject to criticism.The third consequence is that,although the legacy of

Kajin no kigū

as political literature is still very much alive in Japan,it remains completely unexplored due to the marginalized status of political literature.The evidence for the legacy can be seen,for example,in the role Japanese literature played in Japan’s invasion of China,as eloquently argued by Wang Xiangyuan 王向遠 in his 1999 book

Bibudui he qinhua zhanzheng

“筆部隊”和侵華戰爭 (“The Pen Units”and the Japanese Invasion of China). 王向遠：《“筆部隊”與侵華戰爭》。［WANG Xiangyuan, (“The Pen Units”and the Japanese Invasion of China).］The best example of its legacy at work is perhaps seen in Kobayashi Yoshinori’s 小林よしのり 1998 bestseller

Sensō ron

戦爭論 (On the War),a controversial

manga

漫畫 book that attempts to justify Japan’s role in the last war. Kobayashi Yoshinori, (Tokyo: Gentōsha 幻冬社,1998).Interestingly enough,while both

Sensō ron

and

Kajin no kigū

are filled with the authors’ burning desire to revitalize Japan,the former employs a language style that is the exact opposite of the latter: Kobayashi Yoshinori’s extremely colloquial Japanese is liberally mixed with slang expressions popular among Japan’s younger generation today.

Sensō ron

’

s

manga form and its colloquial language style reflect its author’s attempts to target his readers’ educational background and their lack of interest in pure literature.But in its use of first-person narratives,its frequent citing of the author’s own experiences to appeal to its readers,and its ultranationalistic stance,it has something remarkably similar to

Kajin no kigū

which,as we have seen,demonstrates a change of its political views from patriotism to imperialism.In summary,in the eyes of a Chinese scholar,

Kajin no kigū

should be granted a due position in the history of modern Japanese literature as a piece of political literature whose legacy is still carried on today as Japan struggles to locate its proper place in twenty-first-century global society.

3.Dazai Osamu’s Sekibetsu and the Status of Wartime Literature

Japanese literature produced during“the Fifteen-Year War”(

jūgonen kan

十五年間

,

1931-1945) has often been deemed as unworthy of in-depth study.As a result,the war years have been characterized as“barren”and an interruption of Japan’s aesthetic tradition. For example,in the early 1960s Ozaki Hotsuki 尾崎秀樹noted that“when speaking of literature produced during the war,people often characterize it as ‘barren’.”See Ozaki Hotsuki,“Daitōa kyōdō sengen to futatsu no sakuhin”大 東 亜 共 同 宣 言と二つの作品 (The Declaration of the Greater East Asia and Two Literary Works), 文學29 (August 1961): 20.Later Donald Keene entitled his discussion of war literature as literature of“the Barren Years.”See Donald Keene,“The Barren Years: Japanese War Literature,”xxxiv (Spring 1978): 67-112.More recently,Michael Molasky and Steve Rabson comment that Japanese writers,from the mainland and Okinawa alike,“published comparatively little literature of interest from the late 1930s until the end of the Pacific War.”See Michael Molasky and Steve Rabson,eds., (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,2000),5.Katō Norihiro加藤典洋 likens the sudden blooming of postwar literature to water that rushes out of a dam that gives way.From the day of defeat,“where there was almost no water,a torrential flood rushed in from outside.”See Katō Norihiro, 敗戦後論 (Tokyo: Kodansha,1998).Quoted in Hara Hiroshi 原仁司,“Sensō to nashonarizumu: Katō Norihiro cho ”戦爭とナショナリズム—加藤典洋著『敗戦後論』にふれつつ, 國文學 解釈と教材の研究44 (7) (June 1999): 32.This section challenges this view by examining Dazai Osamu 太宰治’s wartime novel

Sekibetsu

惜別 (Regretful

Parting,1945),a novel inspired by Chinese sources.In November 1943,the Japanese Cabinet Information Bureau (Naikaku jōhōkyoku 內閣情報局) and the Patriotic Association for Japanese Literature (Nihon bungaku hōkoku kai日本文學報國會) decided to sponsor the writing of literary works that would help promote the five principles newly adopted in the Joint Declaration (Daitōa kyōdō sengen 大東亜共同……