Hotta Yoshie

Hotta Yoshie 

Born July 17, 1918, in Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture. Japanese writer.

Hotta graduated from the department of French literature of Keio University in Tokyo in 1942. Although he wrote poetry as a student, he revealed his talent most fully in his sociopsychological novels, which can be interpreted on many levels. Loss of the Homeland (1950), for example, probes the psychology of a Japanese intellectual in China at the moment of Japan’s surrender. The Solitude of the City Square (1951) deals with the Japanese intelligentsia and its anxiety at the rebirth of militarism.

Hotta created a panorama of Japanese life at the end of World War II and in the first postwar years in Memorial (1955; Russian translation, 1962). The novel From the Depths of the Raging Sea (1960–61; Russian translation, 1968) is devoted to the struggle of the Japanese people against militarism. The themes of the tragedy of Hiroshima and the moral consequences of the war were reflected in The Trial (1960–63; Russian translation, 1969) and The Apparition on the Bridge (1970).

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Shesterni. Vremia. Tashkent, 1958.

REFERENCES

Istoriia sovremennoi iaponskoi literatury. Moscow, 1961.
Rekho. K. “Khirosima i literatura.” In Ideologicheskaia bor’ba v literature i estetike. Moscow, 1972.
Ito Moriyo. “Hotta Yoshie-no shosetsu.” Mita bungaku, 1956, no. 4.

K. REKHO