Background
Denji Kuroshima was born on December 12, 1898 in Shodo Isle, Kagawa Prefecture.
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Denji Kuroshima
Edit ProfileCareer
Denji Kuroshima was originally a soldier during World War I and served the Japanese Array in Siberia. After his discharge from the army he started writing antiwar novels based on his personal experiences as well as books on the life of farmers. Soon he was known as a proletarian writer.
One of modern Japan's most dedicated antimilitarist intellectuals, Denji Kuroshima is best known for his Siberian stories of the late 1920s – vivid descriptions of agonies suffered by Japanese soldiers and Russian civilians during Japan's invasion of the newly emerged Soviet Union. He also wrote powerful narratives dealing with the hardships, struggles, and rare triumphs of Japanese peasants. His only full-length novel "Militarized Streets" a shocking description of economic and military aggression against China, was censored not only by Japan's imperial government, but by the US occupation authorities as well.
Views
Denji Kuroshima is convinced, only a vast international movement based on grassroots solidarity stands a chance of replacing a heartless status quo with a sane, livable world of justice and generosity. Meanwhile, faced with the daily tragedies of an irrationally structured world, radical artists everywhere are bound to persevere in their oppositional work. In his 1929 essay "On Antiwar Literature," Kuroshima writes: "So long as the capitalist system exists, proletarian antiwar literature must also exist, and fight against it."
