“Chugoku Senpan” in Hino Ashihei’s Fushun Prison no Senpantachi ：A Comparison with Their Representation in Contemporaneous Newspaper Reports

This paper explores the representations of soldiers who remained detained in China as war criminals for 10 years after Japan’s defeat in 1945, and the Japanese public’s reception of these representations. In the mid-1950s, China started conducting diplomacy through allowing a controlled opening to citizens of other countries, and the number of Japanese visiting China significantly increased. In particular, the Chinese government considered the opening of the Fushun War Criminals Management Center to the public to be one of its most important diplomatic initiatives.In light of this, first, this paper analyzes newspaper articles by reporters of the Japan Broadcast Inspection Team who visited China in 1955. Then, this paper turns to letters from readers of Hino’s work, and examines their reaction to Hino Ashihei’s Fushun Prison no Senpantachi. Finally, this paper compares such newspaper articles and Hino’s work, and identifies the characteristics of his representation of “Chugoku Senpan” (Japanese war criminals in China) and the issue of the detention of war criminals.Hino Ashihei was a writer who served in the Second Sino-Japanese War, and he was therefore inevitably familiar with issues surrounding the war. For that reason, readers paid close attention to his representation of Japanese war criminals. This paper argues that the significance of Hino’s visit to the Fushun War Criminals Management Center was best represented through his depiction of the body, and that the work took on the role of informing Japanese readers about the “present” situation of the soldiers 10 years after their defeat.