Beyond Naturalism: Sōma Gyofū, Italian Futurism, and the Search for a New “Art of Force”

Sōma Gyofū (1883–1950), one of the most influential literary critics in Taishō Japan (1912–26), published a short essay called “Gendai geijutsu no chūshin seimei” (The central life in contemporary art) in the March 1913 issue of Waseda bungaku (Waseda literature). In it, after illustrating the shortcomings of a number of outlooks on modern life provided by European writers and philosophers, he praised Italian Futurism as the sole movement that came closest to his own ideal of an “art of force” able to cope with the anguished condition of man in a modern technological society. By combining historical research and a textual overview on publications that shaped Gyofū’s knowledge of Futurism, I show how Gyofū’s reception of Futurism was mediated by his philosophical background, which was characterized by an attempt at going beyond Japanese naturalism (shizenshugi). In that, “Gendai geijutsu no chūshin seimei” can be seen as representative of a transition in the Japanese literary scene, which, in the shift from the Meiji to the Taishō era, was experiencing a crisis of naturalism and the rise of discourses centred on “life,” the “self,” and their creative potential.