Photo/Illutration Natsuo Kirino, a novelist and president of the Japan P.E.N. Club, at a news conference in Tokyo on July 15 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

On Nov. 26, 1935, the inaugural ceremony of the Japan P.E.N. Club was held in Tokyo, attended by many of the era’s leading writers, critics and other literary figures.

Its first president, Toson Shimazaki (1872-1943)--a towering novelist and poet who helped shape modern Japanese literature--defined the organization’s mission with striking simplicity: to “select and introduce Japanese literature abroad.”

At the time, Japan was steadily descending into an age of intensifying militarism. The country had withdrawn from the League of Nations and was growing increasingly isolated on the world stage.

After the war that devastated the nation, the organization was reborn in 1947 as the new Japan P.E.N. Club, with Naoya Shiga (1883-1971), one of Japan’s most influential writers, serving as its first postwar president.

Reaffirming its role as a guardian of human rights and freedom of expression, the organization embarked on a new chapter grounded in its core principles: peace and opposition to war.

The Japan P.E.N. Club opposed the landmark 1957 Supreme Court ruling in the obscenity trial surrounding the Japanese translation of D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

The verdict--which fined both the translator and publisher--sparked intense debate within literary and legal circles about freedom of expression. The organization also protested a proposed anti-espionage law in the 1980s, which was ultimately abandoned.

Today marks the club’s 90th anniversary. Four years ago, novelist Natsuo Kirino became its first female president.

Reflecting in an interview with The Asahi Shimbun on why she was chosen to lead the organization, she suggested that “images from my novel ‘Nichibotsu’ (sunset) may have played a role.”

The novel is a stark dystopia depicting the gradual, chilling erosion of freedom of expression.

In the novel, the protagonist--a female writer--is summoned by the “Culture and Arts Ethics Improvement Committee” of “the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Bureau of Culture.”

She is detained in an isolated “rehabilitation and correction” facility and ordered to produce works that conform to officially sanctioned values. There, the facility director tells her, “We hope you writers will produce works that are socially appropriate.”

The Japan P.E.N. Club also serves as the regional chapter of PEN International (formerly International PEN), the global writers’ association that advocates for peace and freedom of expression.

This year, PEN International called on writers around the world to defend freedom of expression amid a world increasingly dominated by authoritarianism and conflict.

Whether in Japan or elsewhere, are we not witnessing ominous signs of threats to free expression?

To detect such dangers swiftly and with keen awareness--and to respond to them--is part of a writer’s responsibility.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 26

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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