2025 Volume 112 Pages 63-78
This paper focuses on Inagaki Taruho's WC: On an Aspect of Supreme Beauty (January 1925), which marked his entry into Bungei jidai, a journal that functioned as the medium of the New Sensationalist School (Shinkankakuha). Taruho made his debut in 1923 with One Thousand and One Second Stories which led him to be recognized as a prominent modernist writer. In 1925, WC was highly praised by Kawabata Yasunari, a leading figure of the New Sensationalist School. This prompted Taruho to officially join the School the following year. In this novel, the narrator introduces “detachment” and “prosaization” as methods for deriving beauty from faeces, echoing scatology. While previous studies have largely focused on interpreting the concept of “detachment”, this paper shifts the focus to “prosaization”, exploring its theory and mechanism in relation to the Futurism art movement that emerged during the same period. Through this analysis, the paper aims to clarify Taruho's position within the New Sensationalist School by addressing both the significance and limitations of his avant-garde approach to literature.
