The Uses Of Literature In Modern Japan

Author : Sari Kawana
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2018-02-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9781350024892

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The Uses of Literature in Modern Japan by Sari Kawana Pdf

The Uses of Literature in Modern Japan explores the varying uses of literature in Japan from the late Meiji period to the present, considering how creators, conveyors, and consumers of literary content have treated texts and their authors as cultural resources to be packaged, promoted, and preserved. As the printed word became a crucial form of entertainment and edification for an increasingly literate public in early 20th-century Japan, literature came to assume a variety of new uses. Touching upon a wide array of sources, Sari Kawana traces the ways in which literary works have morphed into different variants, ranging from textual (compilations, textbooks) and visual (film, manga, other media) to virtual and real world, through innovative publishing and reading practices. She takes up themes such as the materiality of texts, the role of publishers and advertising campaigns, the interplay between literature and other media, and the creation and dissemination of larger cultural fantasies tied to literary consumption. She stresses the agency and creativity with which readers engaged literary works, from divergent readings of propaganda literature to inventive adaptations of canonical texts in adjacent media, culminating in the practice of literary tourism. Moving beyond close reading of texts to look at their historical context, the book will appeal not only to scholars of modern Japanese literature but also those studying the history of the book and modern Japanese cultural history.

Author : Sari Kawana
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 293 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2018-02-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9781350024908

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The Uses of Literature in Modern Japan by Sari Kawana Pdf

The Uses of Literature in Modern Japan explores the varying uses of literature in Japan from the late Meiji period to the present, considering how creators, conveyors, and consumers of literary content have treated texts and their authors as cultural resources to be packaged, promoted, and preserved. As the printed word became a crucial form of entertainment and edification for an increasingly literate public in early 20th-century Japan, literature came to assume a variety of new uses. Touching upon a wide array of sources, Sari Kawana traces the ways in which literary works have morphed into different variants, ranging from textual (compilations, textbooks) and visual (film, manga, other media) to virtual and real world, through innovative publishing and reading practices. She takes up themes such as the materiality of texts, the role of publishers and advertising campaigns, the interplay between literature and other media, and the creation and dissemination of larger cultural fantasies tied to literary consumption. She stresses the agency and creativity with which readers engaged literary works, from divergent readings of propaganda literature to inventive adaptations of canonical texts in adjacent media, culminating in the practice of literary tourism. Moving beyond close reading of texts to look at their historical context, the book will appeal not only to scholars of modern Japanese literature but also those studying the history of the book and modern Japanese cultural history.

Author : William G. Beasley
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 1977
Category : History
ISBN : 0520034953

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Modern Japan by William G. Beasley Pdf

Author : Rachael Hutchinson,Leith Douglas Morton
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 364 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2016-06-03
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317647720

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Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature by Rachael Hutchinson,Leith Douglas Morton Pdf

The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature provides a comprehensive overview of how we study Japanese literature today. Rather than taking a purely chronological approach to the content, the chapters survey the state of the field through a number of pressing issues and themes, examining the ways in which it is possible to read modern Japanese literature and situate it in relation to critical theory. The Handbook examines various modes of literary production (such as fiction, poetry, and critical essays) as distinct forms of expression that nonetheless are closely interrelated. Attention is drawn to the idea of the bunjin as a ‘person of letters’ and a more realistic assessment is provided of how writers have engaged with ideas – not labelled a ‘novelist’ or ‘poet’, but a ‘writer’ who may at one time or another choose to write in various forms. The book provides an overview of major authors and genres by situating them within broader themes that have defined the way writers have produced literature in modern Japan, as well as how those works have been read and understood by different readers in different time periods. The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature draws from an international array of established experts in the field as well as promising young researchers. It represents a wide variety of critical approaches, giving the study a broad range of perspectives. This handbook will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Studies, Literature, Sociology, Critical Theory, and History.

Author : Tomoko Aoyama
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2008-09-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780824832858

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Reading Food in Modern Japanese Literature by Tomoko Aoyama Pdf

Literature, like food, is, in Terry Eagleton’s words, "endlessly interpretable," and food, like literature, "looks like an object but is actually a relationship." So how much do we, and should we, read into the way food is represented in literature? Reading Food explores this and other questions in an unusual and fascinating tour of twentieth-century Japanese literature. Tomoko Aoyama analyzes a wide range of diverse writings that focus on food, eating, and cooking and considers how factors such as industrialization, urbanization, nationalism, and gender construction have affected people’s relationships to food, nature, and culture, and to each other. The examples she offers are taken from novels (shosetsu) and other literary texts and include well known writers (such as Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, Hayashi Fumiko, Okamoto Kanoko, Kaiko Takeshi, and Yoshimoto Banana) as well as those who are less widely known (Murai Gensai, Nagatsuka Takashi, Sumii Sue, and Numa Shozo). Food is everywhere in Japanese literature, and early chapters illustrate historical changes and variations in the treatment of food and eating. Examples are drawn from Meiji literary diaries, children’s stories, peasant and proletarian literature, and women’s writing before and after World War II. The author then turns to the theme of cannibalism in serious and popular novels. Key issues include ethical questions about survival, colonization, and cultural identity. The quest for gastronomic gratification is a dominant theme in "gourmet novels." Like cannibalism, the gastronomic journey as a literary theme is deeply implicated with cultural identity. The final chapter deals specifically with contemporary novels by women, some of which celebrate the inclusiveness of eating (and writing), while others grapple with the fear of eating. Such dread or disgust can be seen as a warning against what the complacent "gourmet boom" of the 1980s and 1990s concealed: the dangers of a market economy, environmental destruction, and continuing gender biases. Reading Food in Modern Japanese Literature will tempt any reader with an interest in food, literature, and culture. Moreover, it provides appetizing hints for further savoring, digesting, and incorporating textual food.

Author : Rachael Hutchinson,Mark Williams
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 445 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2006-09-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9781134233908

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Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature by Rachael Hutchinson,Mark Williams Pdf

Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature looks at the ways in which authors writing in Japanese in the twentieth century constructed a division between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ in their work. Drawing on methodology from Foucault and Lacan, the clearly presented essays seek to show how Japanese writers have responded to the central question of what it means to be ‘Japanese’ and of how best to define their identity. Taking geographical, racial and ethnic identity as a starting point to explore Japan's vision of 'non-Japan', representations of the Other are examined in terms of the experiences of Japanese authors abroad and in the imaginary lands envisioned by authors in Japan. Using a diverse cross-section of writers and texts as case studies, this edited volume brings together contributions from a number of leading international experts in the field and is written at an accessible level, making it essential reading for those working in Japanese studies, colonialism, identity studies and nationalism.

Author : W. G. Beasley
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2021-12-19
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000510935

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Modern Japan by W. G. Beasley Pdf

Originally published in 1975, much of Western scholarly writing on Japan had in recent years concerned the study of modernisation. The papers in this volume, which were prepared by leading specialists from Europe and Israel, concentrate on the problems arising from modernisation, rather than on an analysis of the process itself. The historical papers deal with various aspects of the political and international tensions that link modernisation to Japanese expansion and the Second World War: the civil war of 1868; early newspapers and nationalist opinion; the Washington Conference; politics in the 1930s; the bombing of Japan in 1945. Those on literature examine some related themes concerning national attitudes, as expressed in drama and the novel, especially in the context of the relationship of modern ideas and institutions to traditional culture and society. Similar questions are raised by the discussion of new post-war religions, as well as in papers on the use of leisure and on industrial relations in contemporary Japan. Finally, there are two contributions dealing with the economic consequences of the industrial miracle that has marked the latest phase of modernisation, one on balance of payments difficulties and one on current plans to deal with the problems of urban growth. Many of these papers present the results of hitherto unpublished research of great importance to students of modern Japan.

Author : Makoto Ueda
Publisher : Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 1976
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0804709041

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Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature by Makoto Ueda Pdf

Art versus nature, the literary work and the author, the literary work and the reader, structure and style, and the purpose of literature are the main subjects treated in a study of eight leading writers of modern Japan

Author : Kōjin Karatani
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 1993
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0822313235

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Origins of Modern Japanese Literature by Kōjin Karatani Pdf

Karatani Kojin is one of Japan's leading critics. In his work as a theoretician, he has described Modernity as have few others; he has re-evaluated the literature of the entire Meiji period and beyond. As one critic has said, Karatani's thought "has had a profound effect on the way we formulate the questions we ask about modern literature and culture ... [his] argument is compelling, moving even, and in the end the reader comes away with a different understanding not only of modern Japanese literature but of modern Japan itself." Among the many authors discussed are Soseki Natsume, Doppo Kunikida, Katai Tayama, and Shoyo Tsubouchi.

Author : Stephen Dodd
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2020-03-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781684174041

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Writing Home: Representations of the Native Place in Modern Japanese Literature by Stephen Dodd Pdf

"This book examines the development of Japanese literature depicting the native place (furusato) from the mid-Meiji period through the late 1930s as a way of articulating the uprootedness and sense of loss many experienced as Japan modernized. The 1890s witnessed the appearance of fictional works describing a city dweller who returns to his native place, where he reflects on the evils of urban life and the idyllic past of his childhood home. The book concentrates on four authors who typify this trend: Kunikida Doppo, Shimazaki Tōson, Satō Haruo, and Shiga Naoya. All four writers may be understood as trying to make sense of contemporary Japan. Their works reflect their engagement with the social, intellectual, economic, and technological discourses that created a network of shared experience among people of a similar age. This common experience allows the author to chart how these writers’ works contributed to the general debate over Japanese national identity in this period. By exploring the links between furusato literature and the theme of national identity, he shows that the debate over a common language that might “transparently” express the modern experience helped shape a variety of literary forms used to present the native place as a distinctly Japanese experience."

Author : Irena Powell
Publisher : Springer
Page : 163 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 1983-06-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781349050284

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Writers and Society in Modern Japan by Irena Powell Pdf

Author : Keiko I. McDonald
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2016-09-16
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781315292397

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From Book to Screen by Keiko I. McDonald Pdf

Of all the world s cinemas, Japan's is perhaps unique in its closeness to the nation's literature, past and contemporary. The Western world became aware of this when Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon was awarded the Grand Prize at the Venice film festival in 1951 and the Oscar for best foreign film in 1952. More recent examples include Shohei Imamura's Eel, which won the Palm d'Or (Best Picture) at Cannes in 1997.From Book to Screen breaks new ground by exploring important connections between Japan's modern literary tradition and its national cinema. The first part offers an historical and cultural overview of the working relationship that developed between pure literature and film. It deals with three important periods in which filmmakers relied most heavily on literary works for enriching and developing cinematic art. The second part provides detailed analyses of a dozen literary works and their screen adoptions.

Author : J. Thomas Rimer
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2014-07-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781400856633

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Modern Japanese Fiction and Its Traditions by J. Thomas Rimer Pdf

Thomas Rimer's book seeks to explain the background, structural principles, and development of pre-modem and modern Japanese fiction in a way that is comprehensive, methodical, and accessible to the general reader. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author : Leith Morton
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2009-02-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780824864576

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The Alien Within by Leith Morton Pdf

Readers worldwide have long been drawn to the foreign, the exotic, and the alien, even before Freud’s famous essay on the uncanny in 1919. Given Japan’s many years of relative isolation, followed by its multicultural empire, these themes seem particularly ripe for exploration and exploitation by Japanese writers. Their literary adventures have taken them inside Japan as well as outside, and how they internalized the exotic through the adoption of modernist techniques and subject matter forms the primary subject of this book. The Alien Within is the first book-length thematic study in English of the alien in modern Japanese literature and helps shed new light on a number of important authors. Morton examines the Gothic, a form of writing with strong affinities to European Gothic and a motif in the fiction of several key modern Japanese writers, such as Arishima Takeo. Morton also discusses the translations of Tsubouchi Shoyo, Japan’s most famous early translator of Shakespeare, and how this most alien and exotic author was absorbed into the Japanese literary and theatrical tradition. The new field of translation theory and how it relates to translating Shakespeare are also discussed. Morton devotes two chapters to the celebrated female poet Yosano Akiko, whose verse on childbirth and her unborn children broke taboos relating to the expression of the female body and sensibility. He also highlights the writing of contemporary Okinawan novelist Oshiro Tatsuhiro, whose work springs from what is for Japanese an exotic subtropical landscape and makes symbolic reference to the otherness at the heart of Japanese religiosity. Another significant but equally overlooked subject is the focus of the final chapter, which analyzes the travel writing of internationally best-selling author Murakami Haruki. Murakami’s great corpus of work includes a one-volume study of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, which Morton discusses in detail. The Alien Within breaks new ground in its treatment of the exotic in modern Japanese writing and in its discussion of authors and work hitherto absent from critical discussions in English. It will be of significant interest to readers of literature and students of modern Japanese culture and women’s writing as well as those fascinated by the occult, Gothic fiction, and the exotic.

Author : Maria Chiara Oltolini
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 211 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2024-01-25
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781501389894

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Rediscovered Classics of Japanese Animation by Maria Chiara Oltolini Pdf

Rediscovered Classics of Japanese Animation is the first academic work to examine World Masterpiece Theater (Sekai Meisaku Gekijô, 1969-2009), which popularized the practice of adapting foreign children's books into long-running animated series and laid the groundwork for powerhouses like Studio Ghibli. World Masterpiece Theater (Sekai Meisaku Gekijô, 1969-2009) is a TV staple created by the Japanese studio Nippon Animation, which popularized the practice of adapting foreign children's books into long-running animated series. Once generally dismissed by critics, the series is now frequently investigated as a key early work of legendary animators Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki. In the first book-length examination of the series, Maria Chiara Oltolini analyzes cultural significance of World Masterpiece Theater, and the ways in which the series pioneered the importance of children's fiction for Japanese animation studios and laid the groundwork for powerhouses like Studio Ghibli. Adapting a novel for animation also means decoding (and re-coding) socio-cultural patterns embedded in a narrative. World Masterpiece Theater stands as a unique example of this linguistic, medial, and cultural hybridisation. Popular children's classics such as Little Women, Peter Pan, and Anne of Green Gables became the starting point of a full-fledged negotiation process in which Japanese animators retold a whole range of narratives that have one basic formula in common: archetypal stories with an educational purpose. In particular, the series played a role in shaping the pop culture image of a young girl (shôjo). Examining the series through the lens of animation studies as well as adaptation studies, Oltolini sheds new light on this long-neglected staple of Japanese animation history.