Itō Ken (1895-1945), a proletarian writer, stated in 1930 that his collection of short stories Shanhai Yawa (Shanghai Night Stories) was intended to be a “detective and proletarian like popular novel.” But how can a proletarian writer with a Marxist worldview change an apolitical genre such as the detective story into a weapon of proletarian literature? Could a Marxist detective reveal the crimes of capital? Examining Itō's journalistic articles and fiction within the context of mass media and detective fiction, I aim to show how Itō Ken tried to rework the detective genre into a form of proletarian literature.

Shanghai in the early 1930s was a city teeming with intrigue and decadence. Amidst this backdrop, Doctor B, a flamboyant physician, invites writer Shimura Yōhei on a late-night excursion to the mysterious Fortune Club. Promising an experience unlike any other, Doctor B leads Shimura through the shadowy streets to a lavish dance hall, a sanctuary for Shanghai's international elite. As the night unfolds, Shimura is mesmerized by the club's opulence and the eclectic mix of patrons. However, a chance encounter with a Portuguese dancer named Kate unveils a sinister secret lurking beneath the surface. Guided by a cryptic hint, Shimura ventures into the dark and eerie basement, where he discovers a hidden world of unimaginable horror—a prison for women ensnared in a web of exploitation and despair. Itō's work critiques capitalist exploitation and the underclass's struggles, challenging the superficial and exoticized depictions of Shanghai by his contemporaries. Through gripping narratives that reveal the exploitation beneath Shanghai's glamorous surface, Itō aimed to counter the prevailing bourgeois narratives and expose the harsh realities of life in Shanghai, presenting a nuanced critique of social inequalities and the revolutionary potential of the city's conflicts.

Workers, activists, and volunteers organized the first Migrant Worker Poetry Competition in Singapore in 2014. The competition has been held annually since then, and it has created a vibrant literary scene among migrant workers that has become an increasingly important part of migrant worker advocacy in the city-state. The migrant worker literary scene has developed within the constraints on critical political discourse in Singapore, but expressions of international labor solidarity have also emerged from the migrants' literary activity. This article focuses on the work of two poets, Shromik Monir and Rolinda O. Espanola, in order to illustrate the kinds of cultural politics that migrant workers have been able to engage in despite the restrictions on political activity imposed by the state of Singapore and the influence of the US Embassy. Monir's poetry has articulated international solidarity in terms of a connection between migrant workers and workers in his originating country, Bangladesh, and he directly references literary traditions that have supported workers internationally. Espanola, in contrast to Monir, refers not to literary traditions, but rather to the conditions created by NGO programs in Singapore. The poems thus provide lessons for developing a framework for interpreting migrant worker poetry in relation to both the traditions of proletarian literature and the forms of working-class organizing in specific contexts.