Is This What I Wished For?: Hojo Tamio’s Diary As an Literary Refuge

• In Event: The Conformed/Deviated Self in Diaries of Modern Japan: The Diversity and Contradiction of Self-expression

Abstract

Hojo Tamio (1914-1937) is arguably the only Japanese short story writer who has won significant critical acclaim as well as popularity among contemporary readers while being diagnosed with Hansen’s disease. Up until today, he has been noted as a powerful chronicler of the lives of the patients, and a stronghold of literary history surrounding the disease. But did he wish for such a role? This paper aims to shed a light on another aspect of Hojo’s persona, which to some extent has been overlooked: a troubled, angry young writer who was more than occasionally doubtful about the authenticity of his own fame. By looking at his texts of less-fictitious nature, we can see that he believed his works were widely read not because of their literary finesse per se, but rather because they depicted grim and often gruesome lives of the patients at the sanatorium. In his unfinished essay Keijitsu Zakki (Notes of Recent Days), he concisely states that he does not wish to participate in the development of so-called “leprosy literature”. Moreover, we can learn from his diary entries that he was pejorative towards some of the successful writers outside the sanatorium because they were “not bound to rot”, and that he was furious towards the censorship enforced at the institute because it thwarted his true self-expression. Hojo was not altogether content with his achievements, and interestingly, his malaise did not find its refuge in works of fiction, but rather in texts such as essays and diary entries.

Author

• Robert Ono, Japan College of Social Work