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In the 1940s, when Shanghai was under the Japanese rule, publication of magazines was discontinued. However, it soon began to revitalize thanks to the rise of prose writing. Gujin was the first magazine that was published after Shanghai became occupied. The pieces in Gujin were mostly historic prose essays. With its partial success, similar magazines were born, and prose essays became popular in Shanghai. There is another reason that prose became popular: the style of writing allowed the writer to easily express his emotions and the writer can vaguely express his thoughts without having to actually talk about the reality. The subject of this paper, Wen Zhai Dao, was at first a progressive author who used to write miscellany. When it became difficult for him to write, he gave it up. Then he began to contribute essay-type writing on Gujin, making a come-back to the literary circle. His prose writing was considered similar in characteristic as that of Zhou Zuo Ren, a celebrated author of the time. Wen contributed most of the work that he wrote during the Japanese colonization on Gujin. This paper seeks to analyze Wen’s work published on Gujin in order to shed light on the close relationship between the national circumstances at the time and an individual’s mindset on writing or the selection of the subject. Furthermore, this paper aims at discovering the characteristics of Wen’s work and the meaning behind them. The fact that a lyrical and retrospective prose was popular at the time when collectivism prevailed over individualism and resistance against war was encouraged has strong implications. It may seem ironic, but this kind of writing might have been possible precisely because it was wartime.
