Shanghai between the world wars is a fascination of Westerns, the Chinese themselves, but also the Japanese. The zeitgeist of 1920s Shanghai is reflected in the appropriately named Shanghai by Riichi Yokomitsu.
Serialized between 1928 to 1931, the novel takes place in 1925, following the lives of Japanese expats living in Shanghai. There’s Sanki, a white-collared bank clerk, Koya, a businessman in the lumber industry, his brother, Takashige, the foreman of a cotton mill, and Yamaguchi, a politically-minded architect. These men voice different beliefs but are bound by the commonality of their Japanese nationality. Sanki is aimless and suffers from existential angst, looking for meaning in the urban isolation of Shanghai. A fitting analog for the Japanese bourgeoisie of the 1920s, obsessed with Western modernity and culture, but lacking a purpose in life.
Koya and Takashige represent the view of Japanese
imperialism, i.e. the more influence Japanese business has in China, the more
it benefits the nation. As such, Koya plots to put a British timber competitor
out of business, and Takashige sees his Chinese factory workers as a mere means
to an end of enhancing Japan’s prestige.
Yamaguchi is the most complex of the characters, representing
the pan-Asianist view that was beginning to take hold in many Japanese
intellectuals and even among military officers. This view held that only the
Japanese Army and Navy were powerful enough to liberate Asia from the yoke of Western
colonialism and lead it into a new golden age – under Japan’s tutelage, of
course. This view was exemplified in Kanji Ishiwara, an Imperial Army officer
who, in 1931, was one of the masterminds behind the Japanese invasion of
Manchuria.
Yokomitsu himself was a pan-Asianist, but Shanghai is never
propagandistic. The city itself is a place of melancholy loneliness, with the
expats searching for an elusive meaning to their humdrum lives. The sights,
sounds, and smells are interlaced throughout every paragraph, unsurprising
since Yokomitsu was part of the Shinkankakuha, or the New Sensation School. A popular
movement among Japanese writers in the 1920s and 1930s, the New Sensation
School strived from realism and objectivity. An unfortunate byproduct of this is
that we never really feel connected to or “in the shoes” of any of the
characters. We are merely observing what happens to them.
The female characters of Shanghai are even sadder than their
male counterparts, a notch above prostitutes. There’s dimwitted Osugi and
scheming Oryu, two women working at a Japanese bathhouse, frequented by Sanki
and the others. Miyako has it a little better, being a taxi dancer at Shanghai’s
famous nightclubs. Most intriguing of all is Fang Qui-lan, a seductive Chinese
Communist, who represents China’s growing resentment toward colonialism.
The contradiction of the Japanese expats being Asian but
also colonialists themselves is apparent to the characters. The fact that the novel is written from a Japanese perspective adds to its value as a time capsule, given most non-Chinese literature about Interwar Shanghai is seen through Western eyes. Shanghai’s
International Settlement was controlled by British, Americans, Italians, and
Japanese, who would later use it as a launching pad for two destructive wars –
both in 1932 and 1937. As mentioned, this novel takes place in 1925, on the eve
of the May 30th
Movement, an anti-imperialist uprising in Shanghai, which targeted foreign-owned businesses. This historical event serves as the climax, and our
characters are caught up in the maelstrom.