2018 Volume 98 Pages 194-209
During the 1930s, Japanese critics, writers, and scientists all used the phrase “scientific spirit.” Although members of these three communities attached different definitions and connotations to “scientific spirit,” using this phrase seems to have been, for all of them, a strategy for forming a common intellectual foundation. Discussions in which the same phrase was used with a variety of different meanings resulted in a vague new standard which evaluated the authority of “science” according to the level of its “scientific spirit.”
In this paper, I analyze the gūzen bungaku ronsō, a mid-1930s literary controversy that concerned the role of “the haphazard” in literature as a case in point. First, I focus on the debate among critics, writers, and scientists. Then, in order to examine this literary controversy in detail, I discuss its influence, particularly the ways in which the phrase “scientific spirit” was used in this context. By strongly asserting their mutual understanding of the “scientific spirit,” critics, writers, and scientists sought to interlink their world views based on their “scientific” knowledge, leading to their relationship as silent accomplices, which I hope I have revealed in the conclusion.
