TSUBOI SHIGEJI

Tsuboi Shigeji was a poet from Kagawa Prefecture and husband of novelist Tsuboi Sakae. After graduating from Waseda University and marrying Sakae, he affiliated with the anarchist movement in the 1920s and published the verse anthology Aka to Kuro (Red and Black). Later he joined the Communist movement and was also a key member of the proletarian literature movement. After being imprisoned several times in the 1930s, he moved to the countryside during World War II and was inactive except for writing humorous prose with hidden antiwar messages as part of the Sancho Kurabu (Sancho Panza Club) with Oguma Hideo and Murayama Tomoyoshi (1901–77). After the war, Tsuboi helped found two literary journals and published one of his most famous anthologies, Fusen (Balloon, 1957). He also helped establish and promote the Shin Nihon Bungakkai (New Japanese Literature Association). His decision to abstain from writing during the war alienated him from the younger generation of poets, which led to his forming a new poetry group that focused on democratic poetry.

See also MARXISM; THOUGHT POLICE; WAR LITERATURE.