From the Brazilian Senzala to the Japanese Buraku: Naturalism, Stigma, and the Rise of Human Rights Discourse in Aluísio Azevedo and Shimazaki Tōson

Abstract

article proposes a comparative analysis of Brazilian and Japanese Naturalism with a focus on two seminal novels, O Mulato (1881), by Aluisio Azevedo (1857-1913), and Hakai (1907), by Shimazaki Tōson (1872-1943), which are regarded as each country’s starting points for Naturalism. These novels gave rise to conflicting critical interpretations, being charged both with reproducing the biases of social Darwinism and Eurocentric scientificism, and with voicing the condition of oppression in authoritarian societies. This article discusses both sides of the debate and reads these foundational works based on the concepts of stigma and abjection. Such a reading will suggest that what the detractors of Naturalism perceived as its prejudiced stance, identified in its crude descriptions of social pathologies, could in fact be interpreted as a portrayal of social injustice and a call for social change. This article’s reading of Naturalism that recognizes it as socially progressive gives rise to a discussion of the relation between its aesthetic innovations and the rise of human rights discourse in Brazil and Japan, approached from the standpoint of the political and intellectual implications existing between Naturalism and Abolitionism in Brazil, and between Naturalism and the Buraku Liberation Movement in Japan.