When Sartre was an erotic writer: body, nation and Existentialism in Japan after the Asia-Pacific War

Abstract

This article explores the manner in which Jean-Paul Sartre's philosophy of existence is equated with the carnality of post-war Japan as expressed by writers such as Tamura Taijir l (1911-83), and understood to be of a piece with post-war Japan's 'literature of the flesh' ( nikutai bungaku ), and the ramifications of this. This cross-fertilization of images is crucial to understanding the intellectual terrain of post-war Japan because, in the late 1940s, Existentialism was a critical element, especially in relation to issues of identity in the post-war milieu. The fictions of Tamura Taijir l and Jean-Paul Sartre were read as complementary parts of a post-war project to restore dignity to the individual via carnality. This article explores the reception of Sartre's work, the background for this specific Japanese reading of his fiction in the late 1940s, and looks closely at the work of Tamura Taijir l in order to explicate these overlaps.