ABSTRACT
The introduction of avant-garde European art and literature to Japan began around the ninth year of Taisho. At that time, the poets and writers who were associated with such journals as Shinko Bungaku and Aka to Kuro began actively to develop the Dadaist and expressionist movements in Japan, paving the way for the New Perceptionist movement led by Yokomitsu Riichi. Yokomitsu's "Kikai" (Machine, 1930) was the major outcome of his shift from New Perceptionism to psychological realism. The dramatization of a sense of fear and anxiety, and of a sense of impending destruction, is also the central theme of many of Kajii Motojiro's short stories. In the works of both Yokomitsu and Kajii, the basic method of realism achieves a symbolic representation of the human condition. The modernist perception of the human soul as diseased, as estranged from itself and existing in a threatening environment, is dramatized by inner or psychological realism.
