The View after the War: Hino Ashihei’s 1955 Korean Tour

• In Event: East Asia in Global Flows

Abstract

The Conference of Asian Countries was held at New Delhi in April 1955. Chaired by Prime Minister Nehru’s cousin, it gathered two hundred people from fourteen nations. The Japanese delegation included nine representatives focusing on cultural issues, among which was Hino Ashihei, award-winning author Tales of Excrement and Urine (1937) and Wheat and Soldiers (1938). After this meeting, which confirmed the durable peace and unity of Asian nations, Hino first toured India and China before traveling on to North Korea, which was only two years removed from the calamity of civil war. The Korean tour had a profound impact on Hino. He visited the border village of Panmunjom and met women who had been victimized during the war. He conferred with the chief delegate for China and North Korea to the Military Armistice Commission. He also attended a performance by Choi Seung-hee, the famous dancer whose unhappy fate traced the history of imperialism and the Cold War. Over ten days in Korea, Hino keenly realized both the necessity and the difficulty of realizing peace in Asia. This paper examines Hino’s experiences on his tour of Korea and the record he left of them in his journal and his later fiction. His writings vividly evoke Japan’s engagement, at the cultural level, with the reorganization of the world order after World War II. Reflecting on Japan’s colonial past, Hino articulated the critique of colonialism reflected in the emergence of former colonies as non-aligned nations situated between the two superpowers.

Author

• Chikako Masuda, Kansai University