Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature: A Critical Approach / Edition 1

by Rachael Hutchinson, Mark Williams

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415361859
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/21/2006
Series:	The University of Sheffield/Routledge Japanese Studies Series
Edition description:	1ST
Pages:	364
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rachael Hutchinson is Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies at Colgate University. Her current research interests focus on the dynamics of representation in a range of textual and new media, including the literature of Nagai Kafu, the films of Kurosawa Akira and the manga of Tezuka Osamu.

Mark Williams is Professor of Japanese Studies and Head of the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds. His previous publications include Endo Shusaku: A Literature of Reconciliation (Routledge, 1999), and with Mark Williams & John Breen (eds) Japan and Christianity: Impacts and Responses (Macmillan, 1996).

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Hermes and Hermés: Othernesses in Modern Japanese Literature 2. Meet Me on the Other Side: Strategies of Otherness in Modern Japanese Literature Part 1: External Others 3. Who Holds the Whip? Power and Critique in Nagai Kafu's Tales of America 4. Foreign Bodies: 'Race', Gender and Orientalism in Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's The Mermaid's Lament 5. Self and Other in the Writings of Kajii Motojiro 6. Yokomitsu Riichi's Others: Paris and Shanghai Part 2: Internal Others 7. Passing: Paradoxes of Alterity in The Broken Commandment 8. The Burakumin as Other in Noma Hiroshi's Circle of Youth 9. Sincerely Yours: Uno Chiyo's A Wife's Letters as Wartime Subversion 10. Foreign Sex, Native Politics: Lady Chatterley's Lover in Post-Occupation Japan 11. The Way of the Survivor: Conversion and Inversion in Oe Kenzaburo's Hiroshima Notes 12. Free to Write: Confronting the Present and the Past in Shiina Rinzo's The Beautiful Woman Part 3: Liminal Sites 13. Yuta as the Postcolonial Other in Oshiro Tatsuhiro's Fiction 14. Modernity, History, and the Uncanny: The Colonial Encounter and the Epistemological Gap 15. There's No Such Place As Home: Goto Meisei, or Identity as Alterity 16. Beyond Language: Embracing the Figure of 'the Other' in Yi Yang-Ji's Yuhi