Ishimure Michiko's Writing in Ecocritical Perspective
Ishimure Michiko's Writing in Ecocritical Perspective

Author: Bruce Allen

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2015-11-19

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0739194232

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This collection of ecocritical essays is focused on the work of Japan’s foremost writer on environment and culture, Ishimure Michiko. Ishimure is known for her pioneering trilogy that exposed the Minamata Disease incident and the nature of modern industrial pollution. She is also regarded by many critics as Japan’s most original and important literary writer. Ishimure has written over 50 volumes in a wide range of genres, including novels, Noh drama, poetry, children’s stories, essays, and mixed-genre writing. This collection brings together the work of scholars from Japan, the U.S., and Canada who are authorities on Ishimure’s writing. Contributors discuss Ishimure’s writing in the context of the latest issues in ecocritical theory, arguing for an expanded, more-than-Western understanding of literature, theory, and environmental responsibility. It will help to relate various environmental, cultural, and ecocritical issues, ranging from the events at Minamata to those at Fukushima, and consider how they point to future developments.

Ecocriticism in Japan
Ecocriticism in Japan

Author: Hisaaki Wake

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-11-30

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 149852785X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What can ecocriticism do when engaging with Japanese literature and culture? This edited volume Ecocriticism in Japan attempts to answer this question. The contributors place themselves inside the domestic fields of production of works of art and express their concerns and ideas for the English-speaking spheres of the world. Taking up subjects ranging from the eleventh-century novel The Tale of Genji, an early twentieth-century writer Taoka Reiun, the post-WWII atomic bombing literature by women, the internationally-renowned Abe Kōbō, the Nobel laureate Ōe Kenzaburō, the world-widely popular writer Murakami Haruki, the Minamata writer Ishimure Michiko, and the anime artist Miyazaki Hayao to the recent TV anime Coppelion, a production that foresaw a devastating nuclear disaster after the Great East Japan Earthquake, this volume extricates and discusses innate, complex values of Japanese people and culture in terms of nature and environment.

Affect, Emotion and Sensibility in Modern Japanese Literature
Affect, Emotion and Sensibility in Modern Japanese Literature

Author: Reiko Abe Auestad

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-07-29

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1040106692

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book takes the unique approach of combining cognitive approaches with more established close-reading methods in analysing a selection of Japanese novels and a film. They are by four well-known male authors and a director (Natsume Sôseki, Shiga Naoya, Ôe Kenzaburô, Ibuse Masuji and Imamura Shôhei) and five female authors (Kirino Natsuo, Kawakami Mieko, Murata Sayaka, Tsushima Yûko, and Ishimure Michiko) from the early twentieth century up to the early millennium. It approaches the different artistic strategies that oscillate between emotional immersion and critical reflection. Inspired by new developments in cognitive theory and neuroscience, the book seeks to put a spotlight on the aspects of modern Japanese novels that were not fully appreciated earlier; the eclectic and fluid nature of the novel as a form, and the vital roles played by affects and emotions often complicated under the impact of trauma. Rejuvenating previously established cultural theories through a cognitive and emotional lens (narratology, genre theory, historicism, cultural study, gender theory, and ecocriticism), this book will appeal to students and scholars of modern literature and Japanese literature.

Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media
Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media

Author: Cajetan Iheka

Publisher: Modern Language Association

Published: 2021-12-28

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1603295550

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Taking up the idea that teaching is a political act, this collection of essays reflects on recent trends in ecocriticism and the implications for pedagogy. Focusing on a diverse set of literature and media, the book also provides background on historical and theoretical issues that animate the field of postcolonial ecocriticism. The scope is broad, encompassing not only the Global South but also parts of the Global North that have been subject to environmental degradation as a result of colonial practices. Considering both the climate crisis and the crisis in the humanities, the volume navigates theoretical resources, contextual scaffolding, classroom activities, assessment, and pedagogical possibilities and challenges. Essays are grounded in environmental justice and the project to decolonize the classroom, addressing works from Africa, New Zealand, Asia, and Latin America and issues such as queer ecofeminism, disability, Latinx literary production, animal studies, interdisciplinarity, and working with environmental justice organizations.

Ecocritical Aesthetics
Ecocritical Aesthetics

Author: Peter Quigley

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2018-02-28

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0253032113

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This lively collection of essays explores the vital role of beauty in the human experience of place, interactions with other species, and contemplation of our own embodied lives. Devoting attention to themes such as global climate change, animal subjectivity, environmental justice and activism, and human moral responsibility for the environment, these contributions demonstrate that beauty is not only a meaningful dimension of our experience, but also a powerful strategy for inspiring cultural transformation. Taken as a whole, they underscore the ongoing relevance of aesthetics to the ecocritical project and the concern for beauty that motivates effective social and political engagement.

A World Otherwise
A World Otherwise

Author: Yuki Miyamoto

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-02-17

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 179364361X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In her book A World Otherwise: Environmental Praxis in Minamata, Yuki Miyamoto examines the struggles of those suffering from Minamata disease, eponymous with the Japanese city in which a Chisso factory released methylmercury into the Shiranui Sea, leading to widespread poisonings. Miyamoto explores Minamata sufferers’ struggles, examining their physical pains as well as the emotional plight of having lost their loved ones, their livelihood, and fellowship in communities, to the illness. Miyamoto’s analysis focuses on the philosophies and actions of a group, Hongan no kai, comprised of Minamata disease sufferers and their supporters in 1994. Relying on the group’s newsletter, “Tamashii utsure” (Transferring the spirit), this monograph explores the ways in which Hongan no kai members have come to terms with their experiences as well as their visions of “a world otherwise” (janaka shaba), where ontology, epistemology, and worldviews are construed differently from those of this modern world.

Teaching Postwar Japanese Fiction
Teaching Postwar Japanese Fiction

Author: Alex Bates

Publisher: Modern Language Association

Published: 2023-01-17

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 160329595X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As Japan moved from the devastation of 1945 to the economic security that survived even the boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s, its literature came to embrace new subjects and styles and to reflect on the nation's changing relationship to other Asian countries and to the West. This volume will help instructors introduce students to novels, short stories, and manga that confront postwar Japanese experiences, including the suffering caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the echoes of Japan's colonialism and imperialism, new ways of thinking about Japanese identity and about minorities such as the zainichi Koreans, changes in family structures, and environmental disasters. Essays provide context for understanding the particularity of postwar Japanese literature, its place in world literature, and its connections to the Japanese past.

Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication
Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication

Author: Scott Slovic

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-02-01

Total Pages: 553

ISBN-13: 1351682695

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Ecocriticism and environmental communication studies have for many years co-existed as parallel disciplines, occasionally crossing paths but typically operating in separate academic spheres. These fields are now rapidly converging, and this handbook aims to reinforce the common concerns and methodologies of the sibling disciplines. The Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication charts the history of the relationship between ecocriticism and environmental communication studies, while also highlighting key new paradigms in information studies, diverse examples of practical applications of environmental communication and textual analysis, and the patterns and challenges of environmental communication in non-Western societies. Contributors to this book include literary, film and religious studies scholars, communication studies specialists, environmental historians, practicing journalists, art critics, linguists, ethnographers, sociologists, literary theorists, and others, but all focus their discussions on key issues in textual representations of human–nature relationships and on the challenges and possibilities of environmental communication. The handbook is designed to map existing trends in both ecocriticism and environmental communication and to predict future directions. This handbook will be an essential reference for teachers, students, and practitioners of environmental literature, film, journalism, communication, and rhetoric, and well as the broader meta-discipline of environmental humanities.

The Human–Animal Boundary
The Human–Animal Boundary

Author: Mario Wenning

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-11-27

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 149855783X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Throughout the centuries philosophers and poets alike have defended an essential difference—rather than a porous transition—between the human and animal. Attempts to assign essential properties to humans (e.g., language, reason, or morality) often reflected ulterior aims to defend a privileged position for humans.. This book shifts the traditional anthropocentric focus of philosophy and literature by combining the questions “What is human?” and “What is animal?” What makes this collection unique is that it fills a lacuna in critical animal studies and the growing field of ecocriticism. It is the first collection that establishes a productive encounter between philosophical perspectives on the human–animal boundary and those that draw on fictional literature. The objective is to establish a dialogue between those disciplines with the goal of expanding the imaginative scope of human-animal relationships. The contributions thus do not only trace and deconstruct the boundaries dividing humans and nonhuman animals, they also present the reader with alternative perspectives on the porous continuum and surprising reversal of what appears as human and what as nonhuman.

Ecology without Culture
Ecology without Culture

Author: Christine L. Marran

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2017-12-01

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1452955719

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Cultures have long defined themselves through biological elements to prove their strength and longevity, from cherry blossoms in Japan to amber waves of grain in the United States. In Ecology without Culture, Christine L. Marran introduces the concept of biotropes—material and semiotic figures that exist for human perception—to navigate how and why the material world has proven to be such an effective medium for representing culture. A bold and timely reconsideration of ecocriticism, Ecology without Culture insists on decentering questions of culture to highlight the materiality of poetry, film, and prose fiction. Marran argues that ecocriticism can critique ecological realities more effectively from outside the frame of human exceptionalism. Through discussions of primarily non-Anglophone literature, poetry, and cinema about toxic events in contemporary history— from the depiction of slow violence in documentary by Tsuchimoto Noriaki to the powerful poetry of Ishimure Michiko—Marran argues that ecocriticism must find a way to engage culture without making the perpetuation of ethnos and anthropos the endgame of ecopolitics. Using the biological foundations and geological time scales of textual worlds to more deeply critique cultural humanism, Marran ultimately contends that the chief stumbling block to ecological thinking is not the image of nature, but the image of culture.