“Eroshenko” — A Novel of a Blind Ukrainian Socialist in 1915 Tokyo
Historical fiction by Lucy May Lennox set among the real-world activists of Taisho-era Japan
Eroshenko is a novel of historical fiction by Lucy May Lennox based on the the true story of Vasily Eroshenko, a blind Ukrainian, and his friend and sometime lover, Ichiko Kamichika (神近市子), socialists in Tokyo during the heady days of 1915.
WW1 is raging, Russia is embarking on a communist revolution, and Japan is in the middle of its transition from Shogunate feudalism to Meiji Westernization on a path to military dictatorship. Eroshenko, a blind Ukrainian arrives in Tokyo.
Eroshenko is a musician and writer, as well as a teacher and promoter of Esperanto, the international language that he believes will build bridges between people around the world and make war impossible. He learns to speak fluent Japanese and writes stories and fables in Japanese.
Eroshenko is a socialist activist, and arrives at the activist community in Tokyo centered around a group that meets above the Nakamura-ya Bakery in Shinjuku. There he meets Ichiko, a young writer for the groundbreaking Bluestocking feminist literary magazine and soon, the first female journalist for the Tokyo Daily News.
The small group of writers and radicals gather at Nakamura-ya to fight for a hodgepodge of related causes: socialism, anarchism, women’s emancipation, free love, and Esperanto. They are subject to disdain by family and arrest by the police, but mostly succumb to the internal strife of headstrong activists.
Eroshenko and Ichiko become intimate. She transcribes his stories from braille and sells them to magazines for him. She escorts him to socialist events around the city where he’s a popular speaker. He seems to be in love with her, and her with him, but the radical community is too devoted to overturning social norms for something as conventional as monogamy and marriage.
Ichiko has an affair with the anarchist leader, Osugi Sakae (大杉栄), who leaves his wife, a fellow Bluestocking writer, but he also starts seeing Ito Noe (伊藤野枝), who takes over management of Bluestocking. Ichiko falls in love with Noe. Although Noe doesn’t return Ichiko’s sapphic yearning, the three move in together. If you think this can’t end well, I won’t give away the ending, but you can read about the Hayama Hikage Chaya incident and Amakasu Incident on Wikipedia.
Eroshenko is eventually deported from Japan to Vladivostok in 1921, but not before his portrait is painted by Tsune Nakamura (中村彝), another member of the group. The portrait is now designated an Important Cultural Property on permanent display at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. The Nakamura-ya Bakery continues to this day as a curry restaurant in Shinjuku after the Indian revolutionary Rash Behari Bose fled to Tokyo and married the bakery’s owner’s daughter. Ichiko later became a member of parliament as a representative of the Japan Socialist Party.
The story of these real-world characters during a turbulent era is fascinating. The research for this book is well done. I felt like I was transported back to Shinjuku and Waseda University in the early 1900s. This novel taught me a part of Japanese history I knew nothing about. For that reason alone, this book is worth reading.
As a novel, though, it’s equally enjoyable and frustrating. At times, the writing soars; at other times, it plods along. The socialist speeches go on for too long and take away from the flow of the story. For a self-published novel, it’s very well done, but it’s missing some of the polish of a big press production.
The story has two fascinating main characters — Ichiko and Eroshenko. I loved both of them. I wanted both of them to find love, success, and happiness. But if the story has a focus, it’s not really either of the bickering pair, but the entire messy group of radicals who gather at Nakamura-ya, fight with each other, have sex with each other, and love each other while stabbing each other in the back. It’s a hard story to pull off while remaining true to the historical record. But the history alone makes it worth reading for anyone with an interest in Japanese political history.
Eroshenko by Lucy May Lennox. Available from Amazon in ebook and paperback.
