October 9, 2025

From “Dehumanised” to “Co-perpetrator”: The Translingual Reconstruction of Lin Yutang’s Thought in Hotta Yoshie’s War Perspective

Key Points

This transformation highlights the nuanced interpretations of Lin Yutang's philosophies within Japanese literature, considering historical context.
Hotta Yoshie’s reflection on Lin Yutang’s ideas reshapes the discourse on human alienation by adapting it to address war responsibility.
The case study demonstrates the intersections of personal experience and literary reception in constructing complex narratives about historical responsibility.
The analysis reveals how transnational influences contribute to evolving postwar Japanese perspectives on ethical implications of war.

Abstract

Lin Yutang’s works were introduced to Japan in the 1930s and gained widespread circulation. Moving beyond previous one-dimensional diffusion models, this paper examines the reception of Lin Yutang by Japanese “postwar school” writer Hotta Yoshie as a case study, focusing on how he, drawing on his personal experiences in Shanghai, reconstructed Lin’s core concept critiquing human alienation— “dehumanized”—into a political-ethical concept for analyzing war responsibility: “co-perpetrator”. This transformation exemplifies the recipient’s subjective agency in transnational intellectual flows, profoundly deepening the complexity of postwar Japanese discourse on war responsibility.

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