1. Kuroshima Denji 黒島 伝治 A Flock of Circling Crows

3. Born on Shodo Island in the Inland Sea

4. Married and had 3 children: 2 girls and 1 boy

5. Moved to Tokyo in 1919

6. Accepted to study at Waseda University

7. Conscripted into army in December, 1919

8. Sent to Siberia where he was hospitalized and later discharged

9. Returned home and wrote of his time abroad

11. Antimilitaristic themes

12. Wrote proletarian literature

13. "So long as the capitalist system exists, proletarian antiwar literature must also exist to fight against it.“-Kuroshima Denji

14. " It doesn't matter whether I write about a factory, a farming village, or the army; I draw my materials from ordinary daily life, and in these materials I can find struggles, hopes, and an ideology no less intense than if I dealt with a confrontation...of course there is nothing wrong about describing confrontation, but confrontations occupy only a fraction of a fraction of our entire lives. Before confrontation occurs there is a long period of endurance, pain, pathos, and many other experiences. At present the confrontation between workers and capitalits inevitably casts a shadow in some form or another, even over our daily lives, and we must not overlook this. One can discover the resolution even in a grain of unhulled rice.“ –Kuroshima Denji Literary Style

16. Various social movements swept across Japan

17. In response, the government promoted ultra-nationalism

18. “In war, truly good literature can probably do nothing but disappear.“-Kuroshima Denji

20. Invaded with the goal of creating a buffer state and impede the spread of communism

21. Continued occupying area long after all other allied forces left

23. Use of imagery, and relatable feelings/situations

24. No nationalism

25. Focus on environment

28. Keene, Donald. Down to the West: Japanese literature of the modern era. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1984.