Glimpses of Siberia in Hayashi Fumiko’s Travelogues

After the Mukden Incident on September 18, 1931, Japan invaded China’s north-eastern provinces and established the puppet state of Manchukuo. In early November of the same year, at the age of 28, Hayashi Fumiko set out on her own on a journey to Paris where she would spend four months. Thanks to her earnings from the proceeds of Hōrōki (Diary of a Wanderer) she was able to afford a third-class ticket on the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Paris via Korea, Manchuria, Siberia, and Eastern Europe. The two short travelogues Shiberiya no santō ressha (Third Class on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, 1932) and Pari made seiten (Clear Sky to Paris, 1932) are about her journey through Siberia. She describes the scenery of Siberian taiga from the train windows, the stations, the meals she buys on board and, of course, her fellow Russian passengers. While there have been many studies addressing different aspects of her novels, the travelogues have not received close scrutiny yet. Thus, the goal of this paper is to examine the two texts to observe how the writer represents the Other and describes the portion of the vast periphery of Soviet Russia she crosses by train.