Mushanokōji Saneatsu, the central figure of the Shirakaba (White Birches) group of writers in the second decade of the twentieth century, was born into the family of a Tokyo viscount. As a junior high school student at the Peers’ School (Gakushūin), he made friends with Shiga Naoya. In high school he came under the sway of the Tolstoyan ideals of self-denial, asceticism, and charity. Mushanokōji left the sociology department of Tokyo University without graduating, and with Peers’ School friends Shiga, Kinoshita Rigen, and ōgimachi Kinkazu formed a literary study group called the Jūyokka Kai (The Fortnight Club).

In 1910, this group started publishing Shirakaba magazine. Under the influence of the Shirakaba group, Saneatsu began to move away from Tolstoy’s idea of self-sacrifice and toward an ideological posture of confident self-affirmation. Omedataki hito (An Innocent, 1911) is the most important work in this vein, and this was followed by Seken shirazu (Babe in the Woods, 1912). With the outbreak of World War I, Saneatsu turned again for inspiration to Tolstoyan humanitarianism. He urged respect for “the will of nature and the will of man,” arriving at the belief that making use of each individual’s potential was the best way to ensure the happiness of all mankind. A rapid succession of major works soon followed: Sono imōto (His Sister, 1915), a play turning on the dilemma of being caught between self-love and love for mankind; Kōfukumono (A Happy Man, 1919) a novel presenting Mushanokōji’s image of an ideal human being; and Yūjō (Friendship, 1920), a novel that portrays the victory of the human ego as it wavers between friendship and love.

The same sort of idealism can be found in the autobiographical novel Aru otoko (A Certain Man, 1923) and the play Ningen banzai (Three Cheers for Mankind, 1922). Mushanokōji even attempted to put his ideals into practice in 1918 by creating a quasi-socialistic “new village” (Atarashiki Mura) in Hyūga, Kyushu. (Mushanokōji left the village in 1926, and a dam project forced it to relocate to Saitama Prefecture in 1939, where it still operates.) Mushanokōji faded into the literary background in the 1930s and 1940s, although he gained something of a reputation as an artist specializing in the depiction of vegetables like pumpkins and potatoes. Mushanokōji’s last popular word was Shinri sensei(The Teacher of Truth, 1951), a novel that once again holds up for the reader’s admiration a life sincerely led. It is this sincere humanitarianism that continues to appeal to those who admire his works.

• Friendship. Trans. Ryuzo Matsumoto. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1958.
• New Plays from Japan. Trans. Yozan Iwasaki and Glenn Hughes. 1923. New York: Appleton, 1930. Contains "A Family Affair."
• The Passion and Three Other Japanese Plays. Trans. Noboru Hidaka. Introduction by Gregg M. Sinclair. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971. Contains "The Passion."
• Love and Death. Trans. Saburo Yamamura. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1967.
• Akatsuki: Dawn. Trans. Takahide Kikuchi. Tokyo: Information Publishing, 1972.
• The Man of the Flowers. Trans. Jun’ichi Natori. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1955.
• Two Fables of Japan Dramatized by Saneatsu Mushakoji. Trans. Jun’ichi Natori. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1957. Contains "The Man of the Flowers" and "The Rabbit’s Revenge."
• Long Corridor: The Selected Poetry of Mushakoji Saneatsu. Trans. Robert Epp. Stanwood, Wash: Yakusha, 1996.

• Mortimer, Maya. Meeting the Sensei: The Role of the Master in Shirakaba Writers. Leiden: Brill, 2000.

Atarashiki-Mura: A mini-site describing Mushanokoji's New Village in its present Saitama Prefecture incarnation, from the viewpoint of a British man who spent a year living there. Links to relevant Japanese sites are also provided.