Shibata Renzaburō and the Reinvention of Modernism in Postwar Japanese Popular Literature
Shibata Renzaburō and the Reinvention of Modernism in Postwar Japanese Popular Literature

Author: Artem Vorobiev

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-10-30

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 3031111923

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Shibata Renzaburō and the Reinvention of Modernism in Postwar Japanese Popular Literature explores the life and work of Shibata Renzaburō (柴田錬三郎, 1917–1978), the author of adventure and historical novels who was instrumental in reinvigorating popular Japanese literature in the postwar period. This book considers postwar Japanese society through the prism of Shibata’s writing, exploring how the postwar period under SCAP Occupation influenced Shibata’s writing and generated the extraordinary popularity of samurai fiction in the postwar era at large. Through the use of a nihilistic warrior, Nemuri Kyōshirō, and other samurai characters, Shibata Renzaburō addresses important social issues of the day, such as the trauma of defeat, postwar reconstruction, and the attending societal ills and neuroses, while keeping his literature entertaining and easy to read, which ensured its mass appeal in postwar Japan.

The Inhabited Island
The Inhabited Island

Author: Arkady Strugatsky

Publisher: Chicago Review Press

Published: 2020-02-04

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1613736002

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When Maxim Kammerer, a young space explorer from twenty-second-century Earth, crash-lands on an uncharted world, he thinks of himself as a latter-day Robinson Crusoe. Eager to establish first contact with the planet's humanlike inhabitants, he finds himself increasingly entangled in their primitive way of life. After his experiences in their nightmarish military, criminal justice, and mental health systems, Maxim begins to realize that his sojourn on this radioactive and war-scarred world will not be a walk in the park. The Inhabited Island is one of the Strugatsky brothers' most popular and acclaimed novels, yet the only previous English-language edition (Prisoners of Power) was based on a version heavily censored by Soviet authorities. Now, in a sparkling new edition by award-winning translator Andrew Bromfield, this land-mark novel can be newly appreciated by both longtime Strugatsky fans and new explorers of the Russian science fiction masters' astonishingly rich body of work.

The Literature of Shibata Renzaburō and a New Perspective on Nihilism in Postwar Japan, 1945-1978
The Literature of Shibata Renzaburō and a New Perspective on Nihilism in Postwar Japan, 1945-1978

Author: Artem Vorobiev

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13:

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This dissertation intends to delineate and explore the work of Shibata Renzaburo (1917-1978), author of kengo shosetsu novels, the genre of historical and adventure novels, which occupies a large and important niche in popular Japanese literature of the twentieth century. Shibata Renzaburo is widely known in Japan; his works have seen numerous editions and reprints, and a number of his most popular works have been adapted for film and television. Shibata Renzaburo is an iconic writer in that he was instrumental in establishing and solidifying the kengo shosetsu genre, a genre in which stories were usually set in the Edo period (1603-1868) and which involved elaborate plots and revolved around fictional master swordsmen, featuring intrigue, adventure, masterful swordplay, and fast-paced narratives. While the notion of a master swordsman protagonist was not new and came about during the prewar period, Shibata’s writing differed from prewar works in several important aspects. One of the points of difference is the role and influence of French literature in Shibata’s work, in particular, in the character of Nemuri Kyoshiro, the protagonist of the eponymous Nemuri Kyoshiro series.

Literature among the Ruins, 1945–1955
Literature among the Ruins, 1945–1955

Author: Atsuko Ueda

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2018-05-07

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 0739180746

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In the wake of the disaster of 1945—as Japan was forced to remake itself from “empire” to “nation” in the face of an uncertain global situation—literature and literary criticism emerged as highly contested sites. Today, this remarkable period holds rich potential for opening new dialogue between scholars in Japan and North America as we rethink the historical and contemporary significance of such ongoing questions as the meaning of the American occupation both inside and outside of Japan, the shifting semiotics of “literature” and “politics,” and the origins of what would become crucial ideological weapons of the cultural Cold War. The volume consists of three interrelated sections: “Foregrounding the Cold War,” “Structures of Concealment: ‘Cultural Anxieties,’” and “Continuity and Discontinuity: Subjective Rupture and Dislocation.” One way or another, the essays address the process through which new “Japan” was created in the postwar present, which signified an attempt to criticize and reevaluate the past. Examining postwar discourse from various angles, the essays highlight the manner in which anxieties of the future were projected onto the construction of the past, which manifest in varying disavowals and structures of concealment.

The Japanization of Modernity
The Japanization of Modernity

Author: Rebecca Suter

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-03-17

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1684174716

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"Murakami Haruki is perhaps the best-known and most widely translated Japanese author of his generation. Despite Murakami’s critical and commercial success, particularly in the United States, his role as a mediator between Japanese and American literature and culture is seldom discussed. Bringing a comparative perspective to the study of Murakami’s fiction, Rebecca Suter complicates our understanding of the author’s oeuvre and highlights his contributions not only as a popular writer but also as a cultural critic on both sides of the Pacific. Suter concentrates on Murakami’s short stories—less known in the West but equally worthy of critical attention—as sites of some of the author’s bolder experiments in manipulating literary (and everyday) language, honing cross-cultural allusions, and crafting metafictional techniques. This study scrutinizes Murakami’s fictional worlds and their extraliterary contexts through a range of discursive lenses: modernity and postmodernity, universalism and particularism, imperialism and nationalism, Orientalism and globalization. By casting new light on the style and substance of Murakami’s prose, Suter situates the author and his works within the sphere of contemporary Japanese literature and finds him a prominent place within the broader sweep of the global literary scene."

Three-Dimensional Reading
Three-Dimensional Reading

Author: Angela Yiu

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2013-07-31

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0824838025

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A 29th-century dystopian society seen through the eyes of a mutant-cum-romantic poet; a post-impressionist landscape of orbs and cubes experienced by a wandering underdog; an imaginary sick room generated entirely from sounds reaching the ears of an invalid: These and other haunting re-presentations of time and space constitute the Japanese modernist landscape depicted in this volume of stories from the 1910s to the 1930s. The fourteen stories selected for this anthology—by both relatively unknown and “must-read” authors—experiment with a protean modernist style in the vivacious period between the nation-building Meiji and the early years of Showa. The writers capture imaginary temporal and spatial dimensions that embody forms of futuristic urban space, colonial space, utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia. Their work invites readers to abandon the conventional naturalistic approach to spatial and temporal representations and explore how the physical and empirical experience of time and space is distorted and reconfigured through the prism of modernist Japanese prose. An introduction and prefatory materials provide historical and critical context for Japanese modernism, making Three-Dimensional Reading a valuable teaching text not only for the study of modern Japanese literature, but for world literature, global modernism, and utopian studies as well. The volume also includes drawings by contemporary artist Sakaguchi Kyōhei, whose ability to create a stunning visual reality beyond the borders of time and place is a testament to the power and reverberations of the modernist imagination.

Mei Yumi's Postwar Japanese Literature
Mei Yumi's Postwar Japanese Literature

Author: Hayashi Fumiko

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2015-09-05

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 9781517080990

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The postwar Japanese strived, unsteadily as if about to fall, to live everyday lives and to restore Japan, while suffering from the survivor's guilt. The early postwar novels of Hayashi Fumiko. Three novels of Hayashi Fumiko translated here are related to the early postwar period in Japan. Late Chrysanthemum - Ban'Giku "Late Chrysanthemum" is an ex-geisha's one night story after the war. The main character Kin had a strong will to survive. An ex-geisha had a visitor, who was her ex-lover sometime in the prewar years and desperately needed money. He intrigued to get money from his ex., even by slaughter. How did the ex-geisha rid out of the crisis? Her quick wit worked, which suggests us how to manage a risk in a daily life. In November 1948, 23 Showa, "Late Chrysanthemum" appeared in an extra issue of a literary magazine, the Bungei'Shunju. This is the most important work of Hayashi Fumiko, which is praised for its highly qualified perfection and elaborate description. Downtown - Shita'machi "Downtown" is a two week story of a female peddler and an ex-soldier after the war. Their relationship finished all of sudden. "Downtown" appeared in April 1949, 24 Showa in an extra issue of a literary magazine, Shosetsu'Shincho. The literary magazine has been published monthly since September 1947 from The Shinchosha Publishing Co, Ltd. which was founded in 1896. Floating clouds - Uki'gumo "Floating Clouds" is mainly a five year story. The storyline, however, extends from 1939 in Japan, during the years since 1943 in French Indochina, and the postwar period in 1945 to 1949 in Japan. The author describes changes in people's feelings after the war, while following the trajectories of men and women before and after the war. This novel can be seen as Hayashi Fumiko's compilation. "Floating clouds" is compiled in a book and published in April 1951, 26 Showa, which is considered to be the last novel of Hayashi Fumiko. The author died suddenly of heart attack at home at about 11:00 pm, June 28 in 1951, 26 Showa, at the age of 48. Enjoy!

Literature Among the Ruins, 1945-1955
Literature Among the Ruins, 1945-1955

Author: Atsuko Ueda

Publisher: New Studies in Modern Japan

Published: 2020-05-15

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9780739180730

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This collection examines literary criticism in postwar Japan. The contributors analyze the debates that occurred among Japanese intellectuals and highlight the various ideological forces that shaped the country's postwar trajectory.

Yokomitsu Riichi
Yokomitsu Riichi

Author: Dennis Keene

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 1999-05

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1583482857

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Yokomitsu Riichi occupied a central position in the Japanese literary world during the 1920's and 1930's. He is perhaps the most important counterpart in modern Japanese prose literature to the "modernist" writers at work in Europe during and following World War I. His experimental works of the mid-1920's are a fascinating, self-conscious attempt to introduce the modernism of Europe to what was, by any standards, an alien tradition. These experimental writings are perhaps the most striking example in Japanese literature of "European influence" can be. Dennis Keene's study, Yokomitsu Riichi: Modernist concerntrates on these early modernist works. Although he attends fully to Yokomitsu's works as worthy objects of study in themselves, Keene's real subject is the ways in which pme literature can affect another. "For modern Japanese literature, and for modern Japanese society as a whole, the overwhelming fact is the presence of the West." In this context Yokomitsu himself emerges as one of the most significant agents of this presence. In demonstrating how Yokomitsu and other writers of the early twentieth century created a new form of Japanese literature, Keene provides not only a significant study in comparative literature, but a paradigm of cross-cultural relations between Japan and the West.