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Narrating the Self examines the historical formation of modern Japanese literature through a fundamental reassessment of its most characteristic form, the 'I-novel, ' an autobiographical narrative thought to recount the details of the writer's personal life thinly veiled as fiction. Closely analysing a range of texts from the late nineteenth century through to the present day, the author argues that the 'I-novel' is not a given form of text that can be objectively identified, but a historically constructed reading mode and cultural paradigm that not only regulated the production and reception of literary texts but also defined cultural identity and national tradition. Instead of emphasising, as others have, the thematic and formal elements of novels traditionally placed in this category, she explores the historical formation of a field of discourse in which the 'I-novel' was retroactively created and defined.
Uniquely covering literary, visual and performative expressions of culture, this volume aims to correlate the conjunctions of nation building, gender and representation in late 19th and early 20th century China and Japan. Focusing on gender formation, the chapters explore the changing constructs of masculinities and femininities in China and Japan from the early modern up to the 1930s. Chapters focus on the dynamism that links the remodeling of traditional arts and media to the political and cultural power relations between China, Japan, and the Western world. A true tribute to multidisciplinary studies.
Classical Japanese: A Grammar is a comprehensive, and practical guide to classical Japanese. Extensive notes and historical explanations make this volume useful as both a reference for advanced students and a textbook for beginning students. The volume, which explains how classical Japanese is related to modern Japanese, includes detailed explanations of basic grammar, including helpful, easy-to-use tables of grammatical forms; annotated excerpts from classical premodern texts. Classical Japanese: A Grammar - Exercise Answers and Tables (ISBN: 978-0-231-13530-6) is now available for purchase as a separate volume.
This collection of Japanese women’s diary literature (nikki bungaku) begins with The Takemitsu Journal (also known as The Tale of the Tōnomine Lesser Captain, c. 962), an important precursor and model for the famous Kagerō Diary, and Tales of Toyokage (c. 971), a fictionalized reworking of his own poems by Regent Koremasa himself. It also includes the first complete English translations of the Hon’in no Jiju and of the narrative section of The Collected Poems of Lady Ise. The volume concludes with the Tales of Takamura (1185-1333), which Mostow describes as a site of struggle between masculine and feminine narrative styles.
"Manners and Mischief is a cohesive, stimulating volume. Reading these essays and the editors' enlightening introduction was a joy: I learned a great deal, smiled and laughed with uncommon regularity, and marveled at the quality of this remarkable collection." -William M. Tsutsui, author of Godzilla on My Mind "This book is full of fascinating insights. Well-written and often witty, it captures a detailed snapshot of Japanese society in the early 21st century. I would say this is the most insightful book on modern Japan I have read in years." -Liza Dalby, anthropologist and novelist
This volume introduces readers to classical Chinese literature from its beginnings (ca. 10th century BCE) to the tenth century BCE through a conceptual framework centered on textual production and transmission. It focuses on recuperating historical perspectives for the period it surveys, and attempts to draw connections between the past and present.
In Detective Fiction and the Rise of the Japanese Novel, Satoru Saito sheds light on the deep structural and conceptual similarities between detective fiction and the novel in prewar Japan. Arguing that the interactions between the two genres were not marginal occurrences but instead critical moments of literary engagement, Saito demonstrates how detective fiction provided Japanese authors with the necessary frameworks through which to examine and critique the nature and implications of Japan’s literary formations and its modernizing society. Through a series of close readings of literary texts by canonical writers of Japanese literature and detective fiction, including Tsubouchi Shoyo, Na...
"Language, Nation, Race is an exceptional book. It not only provides a cogent interpretation of Meiji-era linguistic and literary reform movements, but it also productively challenges the current scholarly consensus regarding the meaning of these movements. On top of that, Ueda makes an entirely original and convincing argument about the relevance of 'whiteness' to the understanding of linguistic, aesthetic, and cultural values within these movements."––James Reichert, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University "A remarkable accomplishment, bound to have a lasting impact in the field of Japan Studies and beyond. Ueda’s compelling reading of Meiji period literary and linguistic debates opens new avenues for a philosophical questioning of phoneticism and its significance to the formation of the geopolitical categories of 'West' and 'non-West.'"––Pedro Erber, author of Breaching the Frame: The Rise of Contemporary Art in Brazil and Japan
Michael Emmerich thoroughly revises the conventional narrative of the early modern and modern history of The Tale of Genji. Exploring iterations of the work from the 1830s to the 1950s, he demonstrates how translations and the global circulation of discourse they inspired turned The Tale of Genji into a widely read classic, reframing our understanding of its significance and influence and of the processes that have canonized the text. Emmerich begins with an analysis of the lavishly produced best seller Nise Murasaki inaka Genji (A Fraudulent Murasaki's Bumpkin Genji, 1829–1842), an adaptation of Genji written and designed by Ryutei Tanehiko, with pictures by the great print artist Utagawa...
In this, the first collection in English of feminist-oriented research on Japanese art and visual culture, an international group of scholars examines representations of women in a wide range of visual work. The volume begins with Chino Kaori's now-classic essay "Gender in Japanese Art," which introduced feminist theory to Japanese art. This is followed by a closer look at a famous thirteenth-century battle scroll and the production of bijin (beautiful women) prints within the world of Edo-period advertising. A rare homoerotic picture-book is used to extrapolate the "grammar of desire" as represented in late seventeenth-century Edo. In the modern period, contributors consider the introductio...