A Russian Immigrant Woman Who Became
a National Writer of USA in the Cold War Era:
Reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

The purpose of this study is to introduce Any Rand(1905-82) and her thoughts by analyzing Atlas Shrugged (1957), Which is the firstattempt in the academic field in Japan. Very strangely Ayn Rand has been almost unknown in Japan so far, though Japanese people have been eager to translate and read bestseller novels in America. This study also aims to explain this strangelateness of Ayn Rand's appearance in Japan.

Atlas Shrugged has four layers; a mystery story, a science fiction, a female/feminist fantasy and an Arthurian romance. The plot is as follows: From someday and somehow most of the able and virtuous people begin to disappear. Dagny Taggart, the heroic heroine, who is a role model of self-defining, assertive, and competent womanhood, wonders why there are so few competent workers. She wants to know the man who tries to destroy the world by convincing them to quit their works and desert their society. The destroyer is John Galt. Though/because he is a genuine genius, who invents the miracle motor that solves the secret of converting static energy into kinetic power, he decides to Create a new world without collective and bureaucratic system, under which parasitic, mean people exploit independent, responsible people. Under Galt's project, the productive and capable people join the strike of the mind. They move into Milligan's Valley (Galt's Gulch) in Colorado, and change the place into their own Atlantis, an ideal community. Some live on the outside to get information and search their comrades to be, doing menial jobs, not allowing the moochers and the leeches to utilize their brainpower. The outside world without good and great people is approaching a catastrophe. Finally the heroine also deserts her big railroad company and old America, and joins Galt's fellows to create a new America.

A 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club lists this novel second only to the Bible as the readers identified as having most influenced their lives. A 1998 Random House/Modern Library readers'poll placed this novel and The Fountainhead (1943) at the top of their list of 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. Judith Wilt says, “this stubborn bestsellerdom of Ayn Rand's novels in America suggests that the immigrant writer had a grip on some key components of the national fantasy life.”　What is the national fantasy of America? In Atlas Shrugged, Rand projects what America will become if things continue on the path of choosing collectivism over individualism and altruism over egotism. Dystopian America reflects USSR, and utopian Galt's Gulch mirrors what USA should be. In this point, this novel is “the Cold War romance” which powerfully advocates and supports the great cause and justice of USA in the Cold War Era. The disruption of USSR in 1990 proved the righteousness of Ayn Rand's thoughts, as well as that of American system from economic realm to personal matters. This can be part of why since the end of the Cold War, the number of academic studies of Rand and her thoughts has remarkably increased．

Nevertheless, Very few attempts have been made at Rand in Japan. The reasons can be explained as follows: First, her novel seems right-winged and too conservative for Japanese readers. In Japan, aside from mainstreamed conservative, right-winged politicians, intelligent people's cultural/political milieu has been left-winged and pro-socialist/communist, despite their acceptance of prosperity and freedom under American capitalistic system. Second, Rand's concept of a human being as an individual with free will and reason seems too against the grain of the 20th century's modern and postmodern thoughts. Rand's main philosophy, Objectivism seems too anachronistic and naive, as compared with Nietzsche's words, “There is no fact. There is only interpretation. ”Japanese people are very easy to accept such postmodern relativism, since the traditional, philosophical background of Japan is far away from absolutism. Similarly, third, Rand's emphasis of individualism and egotism is completely opposite to the traditional ethos of Japanese people. Good or bad, Japan is still in the pre-modern values and thoughts.Most of Japanese people are likely to confuse individualism with isolationism, egotism with egoism, and cooperation with conformism. Some social scientists indicate, the governmental and economical system in Japan share collective and bureaucratic policies with communist and socialist nations.

Even though Rand's philosophy is against modern and postmodern thoughts, or even if it is opposite to the traditional ethics of Japan, American people after the middle of the 20th century have been greatly influenced by Ayn Rand's novels!. This is a fact to face. It was a great fault of Japan that Japanese people had no opportunity to know Ayn Rand and her thoughts. What Japanese people should begin and keep above all is to investigate the national self-disguising fantasy of America which we can perceive by Americans’acceptance of Atlas Shrugged. Because Japan has been one of tributary countriesof American Empire since the defeat of the Second World War and must be also inthe future, at least during the first half of the 21st century, whether Japan likes or not. Without grasping the national fantasy of its suzerain state, a tributary country cannot know how to cope with its own vulnerability.