Nishida Kawabata And The Japanese Response To Modernity

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Nishida, Kawabata, and the Japanese Response to Modernity

Author : Andrew Feenberg
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781702006781
Total Pages : 154 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (67 download)

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Book Synopsis Nishida, Kawabata, and the Japanese Response to Modernity by : Andrew Feenberg

Download or read book Nishida, Kawabata, and the Japanese Response to Modernity written by Andrew Feenberg and published by . This book was released on 2019-10-23 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: © Chisokudo Publications 2019 Nishida, Kawabata, and the Japanese Response to Modernity explores the Japanese response to Western modernity in philosophy and literature. Throughout the 20th century, Japanese thinkers and writers were engaged in the paradoxical attempt to produce original works rooted in their own culture within forms adapted from the West. In the 1930s the founder of modern Japanese philosophy, Kitaro Nishida, proposed an innovative theory of multi-cultural modernity based largely on the Western philosophical tradition. After World War II, the Nobel prize winning novelist, Yasunari Kawabata, depicted the cultural conflict between West and East within Western literary forms. Were these and other Japanese thinkers discussed in this book successful in modernizing Japanese culture? Did their attempts to do so establish or refute the often claimed universality of Western modernity? These are the questions to which this book is addressed. Also available as an Apple iBook and as a Kindle eBook

Topographies of Japanese Modernism

Author : Seiji M. Lippit
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231500688
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Topographies of Japanese Modernism by : Seiji M. Lippit

Download or read book Topographies of Japanese Modernism written by Seiji M. Lippit and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2002-04-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when a critique of modernity—a "revolt against the traditions of the Western world"—is situated within a non-European context, where the concept of the modern has been inevitably tied to the image of the West? Seiji M. Lippit offers the first comprehensive study in English of Japanese modernist fiction of the 1920s and 1930s. Through close readings of four leading figures of this movement— Akutagawa, Yokomitsu, Kawabata, and Hayashi—Lippit aims to establish a theoretical and historical framework for the analysis of Japanese modernism. The 1920s and 1930s witnessed a general sense of crisis surrounding the institution of literature, marked by both the radical politicization of literary practice and the explosion of new forms of cultural production represented by mass culture. Against this backdrop, this study traces the heterogeneous literary topographies of modernist writings. Through an engagement with questions of representation, subjectivity, and ideology, it situates the disintegration of literary form in these texts within the writers' exploration of the fluid borderlines of Japanese modernity.

Art and Cosmotechnics

Author : Yuk Hui
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452963991
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

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Book Synopsis Art and Cosmotechnics by : Yuk Hui

Download or read book Art and Cosmotechnics written by Yuk Hui and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In light of current discourses on AI and robotics, what do the various experiences of art contribute to the rethinking of technology today? Art and Cosmotechnics addresses the challenge of technology to the existence of art and traditional thought, especially in light of current discourses on artificial intelligence and robotics. It carries out an attempt on the cosmotechnics of Chinese landscape painting in order to address this question, and further asks: What is the significance of shanshui (mountain and water) in face of the new challenges brought about by the current technological transformation? Thinking art and cosmotechnics together is an attempt to look into the varieties of experiences of art and to ask what these experiences might contribute to the rethinking of technology today.

The British Stake In Japanese Modernity

Author : Michael Gardiner
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351757466
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (517 download)

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Book Synopsis The British Stake In Japanese Modernity by : Michael Gardiner

Download or read book The British Stake In Japanese Modernity written by Michael Gardiner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-30 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes firstly a Japanese modernity which is readable not only as a modernising, but also as a Britishing, and secondly modernist attempts to overhaul this British universalism in some well-known and some less-known Japanese texts. From the mid-nineteenth century, and particularly as hastened by the spectre of China in the First Opium War, Japan’s modernity was bound up with a convergence with British Newtonian cosmology, something underscored by the British presence in Meiji Japan and the British education of key Meiji state-makers. Moreover the thinking behind Britain’s own unification in the long eighteenth century, particularly the Scottish Enlightenment, is echoed strikingly faithfully in the 1860s-70s work of Fukuzawa Yukichi, Nakamura Masanao, and other writers in the ‘Japanese Enlightenment’. However, from around the end of the Meiji era, we can see a concerted and pointed response to this British universalism, its historiography, its basis in the sovereign individual subject, and its spatial mapping of the world. Elements of this response can be read in texts including Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro, Watsuji Tetsurō’s Fūdo (Climate and Culture), Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s In’ei Raisan (In Praise of Shadows), Kawabata Yasunari’s Yukiguni (Snow Country), and various work of the mid-period Kyoto School. Rarely understood in terms of its British specificity, this response should have something to say to modernist studies more generally, since it aimed at a pluralism and de-universalisation that was difficult for mainstream British modernism itself. Indeed the strength of this de-universalisation may be precisely why these ‘native’ Japanese modernist tendencies have not much been accepted as modernism within the Anglophone academy, despite this field’s apparent widening of its ground in the twenty-first century.

Rethinking Japanese Modernism

Author : Roy Starrs
Publisher : Global Oriental
ISBN 13 : 9004211306
Total Pages : 561 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Rethinking Japanese Modernism by : Roy Starrs

Download or read book Rethinking Japanese Modernism written by Roy Starrs and published by Global Oriental. This book was released on 2011-10-14 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By adopting an open, multidisciplinary, and transnational approach, this book sheds new light both on the specific achievements and on the often-unexpected interrelationships of the writers, artists and thinkers who helped to define the Japanese version of modernism and modernity.

Text and the City

Author : Ai Maeda
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822333463
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (334 download)

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Book Synopsis Text and the City by : Ai Maeda

Download or read book Text and the City written by Ai Maeda and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-25 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maeda Ai was a prominent literary critic and an influential public intellectual in late-twentieth-century Japan. Text and the City is the first book of his work to appear in English. A literary and cultural critic deeply engaged with European critical thought, Maeda was a brilliant, insightful theorist of modernity for whom the city was the embodiment of modern life. He conducted a far-reaching inquiry into changing conceptions of space, temporality, and visual practices as they gave shape to the city and its inhabitants. James A. Fujii has assembled a selection of Maeda’s essays that question and explore the contours of Japanese modernity and resonate with the concerns of literary and cultural studies today. Maeda remapped the study of modern Japanese literature and culture in the 1970s and 1980s, helping to generate widespread interest in studying mass culture on the one hand and marginalized sectors of modern Japanese society on the other. These essays reveal the broad range of Maeda’s cultural criticism. Among the topics considered are Tokyo; utopias; prisons; visual media technologies including panoramas and film; the popular culture of the Edo, Meiji, and contemporary periods; maps; women’s magazines; and women writers. Integrally related to these discussions are Maeda’s readings of works of Japanese literature including Matsubara Iwagoro’s In Darkest Tokyo, Nagai Kafu’s The Fox, Higuchi Ichiyo’s Growing Up, Kawabata Yasunari’s The Crimson Gang of Asakusa, and Narushima Ryuhoku’s short story “Useless Man.” Illuminating the infinitely rich phenomena of modernity, these essays are full of innovative, unexpected connections between cultural productions and urban life, between the text and the city.

Modanizumu

Author : William J. Tyler
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824863666
Total Pages : 625 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis Modanizumu by : William J. Tyler

Download or read book Modanizumu written by William J. Tyler and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2008-01-04 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Remarkably little has been written on the subject of modernism in Japanese fiction. Until now there has been neither a comprehensive survey of Japanese modernist fiction nor an anthology of translations to provide a systematic introduction. Only recently have the terms "modernism" and "modernist" become part of the standard discourse in English on modern Japanese literature and doubts concerning their authenticity vis-a-vis Western European modernism remain. This anomaly is especially ironic in view of the decidedly modan prose crafted by such well-known Japanese writers as Kawabata Yasunari, Nagai Kafu, and Tanizaki Jun’ichiro. By contrast, scholars in the visual and fine arts, architecture, and poetry readily embraced modanizumu as a key concept for describing and analyzing Japanese culture in the 1920s and 1930s. This volume addresses this discrepancy by presenting in translation for the first time a collection of twenty-five stories and novellas representative of Japanese authors who worked in the modernist idiom from 1913 to 1938. Its prefatory materials provide a systematic overview of the literary movement’s salient features—anti-naturalism, cosmopolitanism, the concept of the double self, and actionism—and describe how modanizumu evolved from its early "jagged edges" into a sophisticated yet popular expression of Japanese urban life in the first half of the twentieth century. The modanist style, characterized by youthful exuberance, a tongue-in-cheek tone, and narrative techniques like superimposition, is amply illustrated. Modanizumu introduces faces altogether new or relatively unknown: Abe Tomoji, Kajii Motojiro, Murayama Kaita, Osaki Midori, Tachibana Sotoo, Takeda Rintaro, Tani Joji, Yoshiyuki Eisuke, and Yumeno Kyusaku. It also revisits such luminaries as Kawabata, Tanizaki, and the detective novelist Edogawa Ranpo. Key works that it culls from the modernist repertoire include Funahashi Seiichi’s Diving, Hagiwara Sakutaro’s "Town of Cats," Ito Sei’s Streets of Fiendish Ghosts, and Kawabata’s film scenario Page of Madness. This volume moves beyond conventional views to place this important movement in Japanese fiction within a global context: an indigenous expression born of the fission of local creativity and the fusion of cross-cultural interaction.

The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing

Author : Andrew Feenberg
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1804290858
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing by : Andrew Feenberg

Download or read book The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing written by Andrew Feenberg and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Marcuse helps us understand the ecological crisis of the 21st century For several years after 1968, Herbert Marcuse was one of the most famous philosophers in the world. He became the face of Frankfurt School Critical Theory for a generation in turmoil. His fame rested on two remarkable books, Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man. These two books represent the utopian hopes and dystopian fears of the time. In the 1960s and 70s, young people seeking a theoretical basis for their revolution found it in his work. Marcuse not only supported their struggles against imperialism and race and gender discrimination, he foresaw the far-reaching implications of the destruction of the natural environment. Marcuse’s Marxism was influenced by Husserl and Heidegger, Hegel and Freud. These eclectic sources grounded an original critique of advanced capitalism focused on the social construction of subjectivity and technology. Marcuse contrasted the “one-dimensionality” of conformist experience with the “new sensibility” of the New Left. The movement challenged a society that “delivered the goods” but devastated the planet with its destructive science and technology. A socialist revolution would fail if it did not transform these instruments into means of liberation, both of nature and human beings. This aspiration is alive today in the radical struggle over climate change. Marcuse offers theoretical resources for understanding that struggle.

The Philosophy Of Praxis

Author : Andrew Feenberg
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1781681724
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (816 download)

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Book Synopsis The Philosophy Of Praxis by : Andrew Feenberg

Download or read book The Philosophy Of Praxis written by Andrew Feenberg and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The early Marx called for the “realization of philosophy” through revolution. Revolution thus became a critical concept for Marxism, a view elaborated in the later praxis perspectives of Lukács and the Frankfurt School. These thinkers argue that fundamental philosophical problems are, in reality, social problems abstractly conceived. Originally published as Lukács, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory, The Philosophy of Praxis traces the evolution of this argument in the writings of Marx, Lukács, Adorno and Marcuse. This reinterpretation of the philosophy of praxis shows its continuing relevance to contemporary discussions in Marxist political theory, continental philosophy and science and technology studies.

Disruptions of Daily Life

Author : Arthur M. Mitchell
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501752936
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Disruptions of Daily Life by : Arthur M. Mitchell

Download or read book Disruptions of Daily Life written by Arthur M. Mitchell and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disruptions of Daily Life explores the mass media landscape of early twentieth century in order to uncover the subversive societal impact of four major Japanese authors: Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Yokomitsu Riichi, Kawabata Yasunari, and Hirabayashi Taiko. Arthur Mitchell examines this literature against global realities through a modernist lens, studying an alternative modernism that challenges the Western European model. Through broad surveys of discussions surrounding Japanese life in the 1920s, Mitchell locates and examines flourishing divergent ideologies of the early twentieth century such as gender, ethnicity, and nationalism. He unravels how the narrative and linguistic strategies of modernist texts interrogated the innocence of this language, disrupting their hold on people's imagined relationship to daily life. These modernist works often discursively displaced the authority of their own claims by inadvertently exposing the global epistemology of East vs. West. Mitchell's reading of these formalist texts expands modernism studies into a more translational dialogue by locating subversions within the local historical culture and allowing readers to make connections to the time and place in which the texts were written. In highlighting the unbreakable link between literature and society, Disruptions of Daily Life reaffirms the value of modernist fiction and its ability to make us aware of how realities are constructed—and how those realities can be changed.

Shock and Naturalization in Contemporary Japanese Literature

Author : Carl Cassegård
Publisher : Global Oriental
ISBN 13 : 9004213481
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Shock and Naturalization in Contemporary Japanese Literature by : Carl Cassegård

Download or read book Shock and Naturalization in Contemporary Japanese Literature written by Carl Cassegård and published by Global Oriental. This book was released on 2007-03-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study introduces the concepts of naturalization and naturalized modernity, and uses them as tools for understanding the way modernity has been experienced and portrayed in Japanese literature since the end of the Second World War.

Reconfiguring Modernity

Author : Julia Adeney Thomas
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520926846
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Reconfiguring Modernity by : Julia Adeney Thomas

Download or read book Reconfiguring Modernity written by Julia Adeney Thomas and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-01-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Julia Adeney Thomas turns the concept of nature into a powerful analytical lens through which to view Japanese modernity, bringing the study of both Japanese history and political modernity to a new level of clarity. She shows that nature necessarily functions as a political concept and that changing ideas of nature's political authority were central during Japan's transformation from a semifeudal world to an industrializing colonial empire. In political documents from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century, nature was redefined, moving from the universal, spatial concept of the Tokugawa period, through temporal, social Darwinian ideas of inevitable progress and competitive struggle, to a celebration of Japan as a nation uniquely in harmony with nature. The so-called traditional "Japanese love of nature" masks modern state power. Thomas's theoretically sophisticated study rejects the supposition that modernity is the ideological antithesis of nature, overcoming the determinism of the physical environment through technology and liberating denatured subjects from the chains of biology and tradition. In making "nature" available as a critical term for political analysis, this book yields new insights into prewar Japan's failure to achieve liberal democracy, as well as an alternative means of understanding modernity and the position of non-Western nations within it.

Three-Dimensional Reading

Author : Angela Yiu
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824838025
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis Three-Dimensional Reading by : Angela Yiu

Download or read book Three-Dimensional Reading written by Angela Yiu and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2013-07-31 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

A Bloody Song

Author : Caroline Kerjean
Publisher : FriesenPress
ISBN 13 : 1525551132
Total Pages : 100 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (255 download)

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Book Synopsis A Bloody Song by : Caroline Kerjean

Download or read book A Bloody Song written by Caroline Kerjean and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing up in a fractious household in working-class Brooklyn, my mother dreamt of living in France, of experiencing “civilization.” As for myself, molded by the gloomy obsessions of the adults around me, I sought refuge as a child in a Japanese anime titled Lady Oscar, and its story of a woman forced into the role of military officer for the royal guard at Versailles. Very personal in tone, A Bloody Song examines the enduring mystery of “time travel”, leading from an adult’s awakening into the enchanted world of childhood and back again. It explores the major themes and imagery in the celebrated anime Lady Oscar and comments on those of The Rose of Versailles, the manga it is based on. The essay also proposes to examine these motifs through a comparative study of Nobel-prize winning Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. Divided into eight distinct parts, or themes, A Bloody Song offers a glimpse into the rich, ancient culture and literature of Japan via one of its most famous animes and mangas. In this way, it aims to elucidate the adult themes concealed within the dark, fairytale realm of a cherished girlhood series. My main reason for revisiting this world is this: to save a favourite animated character from feeling abandoned. As I once did. As we all sometimes do. “I enjoyed [the read]—simultaneously very academic and well-written.” —Morris Berman, author of Neurotic Beauty: An Outsider Looks at Japan “The best tribute to a favorite manga and anime is to analyze it, delving into its influences, insights, and impact. Caroline Kerjean does this beautifully in her personal, passionate, powerful essay about Rose of Versailles (Lady Oscar).” —Alisa Freedman, Professor of Japanese Literature and Film, University of Oregon and Editor-in-Chief of the U.S.-Japan Women's Journal “I was impressed by Kerjean's clear, graceful writing and the wonderful diversity of sources she brings to bear on her topic.” —Wendy Steiner, author of The Trouble with Beauty “There is quite a lot to say about this wonderfully rich and evocative book!” —Nathalie Nadaud-Albertini, CREM, Université de Lorraine “Wonderful book. I was especially struck by Kerjean's explanation of koi. I know the feeling...” —Andrew Feenberg, author of Nishida, Kawabata and the Japanese Response to Modernity

The Philosophy Of Praxis

Author : Andrew Feenberg
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1781682194
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (816 download)

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Book Synopsis The Philosophy Of Praxis by : Andrew Feenberg

Download or read book The Philosophy Of Praxis written by Andrew Feenberg and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy of Praxis examines the work of four Marxist thinkers, the early Marx and Lukács, and the Frankfurt School philosophers Adorno and Marcuse. The book holds that fundamental philosophical problems are in reality social problems, abstractly conceived. This argument has two implications: on the one hand, philosophical problems are significant insofar as they reflect real social contradictions; on the other hand, philosophy cannot resolve the problems it identifies because only social revolution can eliminate their social causes. Feenberg’s Lukacs, Marx and the Sources of Critical Theory was an intellectual history of these discussions. Philosophy of Praxis is an update of that classic theoretical work, which details how the discussion has been taken up by contemporary schools of thought, including Marxist political theory and continental philosophy.

Critical Aesthetics

Author : James Dorsey
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684174910
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (841 download)

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Book Synopsis Critical Aesthetics by : James Dorsey

Download or read book Critical Aesthetics written by James Dorsey and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study revolves around the career of Kobayashi Hideo (1902–1983), one of the seminal figures in the history of modern Japanese literary criticism, whose interpretive vision was forged amidst the cultural and ideological crises that dominated intellectual discourse between the 1920s and the 1940s. Kobayashi sought in criticism a vehicle through which to rhetorically restore to the artistic work an aura of concreteness that precluded interpretation and instead inspired awe, to somehow recover a literary experience unmediated by intellectual machinations. In adhering firmly to this worldview for the duration of World War II, Kobayashi came to assume a complex stance toward the wartime regime. Although his interweaving of aesthetics and ideology exhibited elements of both resistance and complicity, his critical ethos served ultimately to undergird his wartime fascist stance by encouraging acquiescence to authority, championing patriotism, and calling for more vigorous thought control. Treating Kobayashi’s influential works and the historical context in which they are rooted, James Dorsey traces the emergence of a modern critical consciousness in conversation with such concerns as the nature of materiality in capitalist culture, the relationship of narrative to subjectivity, and the nostalgia for beauty in a time of war."

The Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction

Author : Dennis C. Washburn
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300105254
Total Pages : 332 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis The Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction by : Dennis C. Washburn

Download or read book The Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction written by Dennis C. Washburn and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1995-03-11 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at modernity in Japanese literary culture as a continuing historical dynamic rather than as merely the product of the intense Westernization of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author links the modern in Japan to a sense of cultural discontinuity that may be located in fictional narratives before the encounter of Japan with the West, and he argues that modernity in Meiji Japan can be understood in terms of cultural conflict--not only Japan versus the West, but also Japan's present versus its past. Washburn compares readings from Meiji literature with readings from pre-Meiji and post-Meiji works. He begins with Genji monogatari (early eleventh century) and the Hojoki (1212), continues with stories by Saikaku (late seventeenth century), and ends with a consideration of selected texts from the Meiji period (1868-1912) through the end of the Second World War. Washburn focuses on common thematic elements that recur over time and on such formal considerations as voice and perspective that evolve historically to give expression to the sense of the modern. Using this approach, he is able to look at many individual authors in a new way and to present significant reevaluations of many important texts. This book is also a study of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University.