Taiko Hirabayashi (平林 たい子)

Taiko Hirabayashi (平林 たい子)  was a novelist and writer, her best novels are “Best Mockery”, “I walk alone”, “Song from Underworld”, “Blind Chinese Soldiers”, “Black Notes”. Her novels were political, she had a great political interest in Japanese political system and political future – she was rather a controversial writer. What must be mentioned, she was a member of Democratic Socialist Party. People will always acknowledge her as so-called proletarian writer of proletarian literature. Her youth was hard, her marriage was empty – emotionally dry (the divorce later), the death of her child shortly after it was born made a profound impact of the literature, her novels and short stories became more and more autobiographical. Her political fictional stories are masterpieces, the language, the metaphors, descriptions made it unique and out of censorship. She was a forerunner of proletarian literature which was raw to the winter bones, the female s portrayed in her novels are a ‘man replacement’ – strong, but fragile at the same time,  the gender role in her novels is replaced, the gender ‘vanishes’- the changes are forced by war, by change of the system, by the lack of values Japan believed in for centuries, modernization and diversification of culture by western elements. Nonetheless the reader will always perceive her books as autobiography, as a mean to put on paper the ‘raw reality’, ‘hopeless reality’, ‘harsh life’. Without a cloud of doubt Taiko is a representative of “I novel” – literary genre. “I novel” is characterized by autobiographical narration, the descriptions, dialogues, plot are verbatim, thoroughly detailed, the facts are mixed with a bit of fiction. It made the novels magical, sometimes surreal. Taiko implemented two torrents in her novels – political Marxism and literary Naturalism. Her descriptions of women are rough, the flesh and blood are portrayed with ruthless, brute manner, the man is no “a man” – he is a tough villain, heartless, cold character. Her novels reflect the political changes that occurred in Japan, her stories describe everyday struggle for life. Taiko had very strong personality, she belonged to a middle class – the class that had its onset when she was growing up – in general overall girls didn't study, they dealt with household chores. Yet, she was stubborn enough to graduate school and had higher education degree. She had a great interest with Yakuza and its implementation in Japanese political, cultural and shadow life. She called the members of Yakuza ‘black criminals’. The men she was so much fascinated with changed her perception and outlook for life, writing, women, gradually everything had different sense. After the Second World War Taiko wrote to magazines, newspapers, generally, she became popular and started being recognized. Her heroines are women deeply affected by war, kept in prison, often raped, forced to prostitution, hopeless, yet, still strong enough to go on. Survival thoughts and self-defense from self-destruction were the key to form inside a kind of disobedience, to live against the odds.  The prime motive of her books points out for mother; but it is not an ideal mother, but rather, the one who subconsciously hurts her child, her over-protectiveness leads to disaster, the irreversible damage of someone else’s life. Her daughter becomes fragile, she is a solitude person, her perception of men, the relationship between two people is very distracted, the mother who should give an example, the mother who should show how to live the life, fails, she embraces the daughter with love which is felt only by one person – the mother, the daughter, instead, feels hatred, anger, frustration and tries to rebel, tries to escape. She deliberately punishes her mother by showing disobedience toward social, cultural norms. Due to a destructive image of live and love, the daughter refuses to accept of what is normal, of what is common equal with a common-sense, normal becomes abnormal, grotesque and fake. The daughter fails the exam of having a proper life. Invariably she wastes chance for normality, what is more, prosperity.