Yanagawa Tanigawa is an important figure in the post-war poetry history of Japan, and his poetry and activities as an organizer of social movements have had a profound impact on future generations. The academic research on it mainly focuses on two perspectives: post-war poetry history and New Left thought. At the beginning of the 21st century, with the increasing attention to the popular cultural movement of the 1950s, Tanigawa Hikaru and his ideas of community were once again valued. This article aims to explore in depth the poetry and community ideology of Yan Tanigawa from the perspective of the intersection of East Asian literature and intellectual history.

Yanagawa Tanigawa and Japanese Postwar Poetry

Yanagawa Tanigawa is a famous Japanese poet after World War II, whose poetry has a distinct political nature and also has an impact in language form. His works are located at the intersection of realism and modernism in post-war Japanese modern poetry, reflecting the development of the proletarian literary movement while emphasizing language experimentation. Tanigawa's poetry creates conceptual images through the combination of concrete objects and abstract words, such as the "crazy wheat" and "merchants of the earth" in his poem "The Merchant", which are connected to his socialist ideals. In 'Returning to the Pavilion', he calls out to the 'Party' in the form of calling out to the 'village girl', internalizing the 'Party' as an equal object of expression with the lyrical subject, and arousing hidden attachment.

From 'poet' to 'worker'

Tanigawa Yan emphasized the importance of "assertion" in his poetry, believing that the reality of poetry lies in the poet's choices and participation in the face of reality. He realized that modern poetry is difficult to make macro assertions, and in the face of a depoliticized era, poets need to become "workers", break the private nature of experience, and open up private experience to the public. In the special issue of "New Japanese Literature", Yan Tanigawa affirmed the crisis of modern poetry, believing that post-war poetry had vitality between 1950 and 1955, but as society entered a period of stability, poetry moved towards introversion and privatization. He criticized the current situation in the cultural sphere, pointed out the lack of the dimension of "peasants" in national literary theory, reviewed the process of proletarianization of peasants, and believed that the ancestors of modern poetry were the military songs of peasant armed forces and the folk songs of trafficked women. Tanigawa Yan believes that the task of poets is to understand and promote the reintegration of workers and farmers, transforming local energy and impulses into a profound sense of life and abundant emotions.

The Practice of Cultural Societies and the Impossibility of Representation

In 1958, Yanagawa Tanigawa and his colleagues founded the publication "Club Village" in Fukuoka Prefecture, aiming to promote the cultural movement into a new stage, emphasizing the role of collectives in cultural creation and opposing elite culture and mass consumption culture. The "Community Village" attempts to integrate dispersed energy and promote regional exchanges. Tanigawa Yan proposed the idea of establishing a national publication as a communication platform. Tanigawa advocates that cultural organizations should collaborate with political movements, but focus on the inherent areas of cultural struggle and pay attention to the division and heterogeneity within the collective. The "Community Village" focuses on the difficulties and divisions of workers, promotes exchanges among workers from different industries, publishes poems, short songs, novels, etc., and becomes a platform for sharing life experiences. However, the main members are still mainly from the lower class of citizens, and Tanigawa Yan is aware of the silence of the lower class. He believes that public silence contains subjectivity and refuses to be easily endorsed. Tanigawa Yan emphasized that communication should include painful friction and collision. At the literary and political level, he criticized the realism approach of left-wing literature and the "representation" of avant-garde political parties and intellectuals to the masses. After the strike at the Mitsui Mikawa coal mine in 1959, Tanigawa Hikaru and others parted ways with existing unions and formed the "Taisho Action Team", insisting on uncompromising resistance. Tanigawa spread his experience of the movement through writing, and his critical thinking had an impact on the New Left group. Although the influence of the "Taisho Action Team" was limited, Tanigawa devoted himself wholeheartedly to the coal mine strike struggle, saving the interests of workers and having an impact as a practice of self-expression for workers. After the suspension of the publication of "Club Village" in 1961, colleagues and Tanigawa Yan gradually drifted apart.

The idea of the "Asian Community"

This article delves into the concept of "Asian Community" proposed by Yan Tanigawa, analyzes his use of the "village" image in "Community Village," and discusses cultural communities with Toshisuke Tsurumi. Tanigawa Yan believes that old villages have been destroyed, and capitalists have created new "villages" through factories, requiring the organization of movements to create new relationships. He attempted to overcome the concept of private ownership and regain commonality by reconstructing the "pre modern" rural experience. Tanigawa Yan proposed in "Countryside and Poetry" that there are differences in the nature of the community between Asia and Western Europe, and exploring the connection of the community is a more "independent" way of thinking. He drew inspiration from Marx's discourse on the "Asian Community" and believed that the "horizontal linkage" in ancient traditions could become the foundation of a new political community.