1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910785517103321

Autore

Lippit Seiji

Titolo

Topographies of Japanese Modernism / / Seiji Lippit

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, NY : , : Columbia University Press, , [2002]

©2002

ISBN

0-231-50068-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (321 pages)

Disciplina

895.634409112

Soggetti

Japanese fiction - Shōwa period, 1926-1989 - History and criticism

Japanese fiction - Taishō period, 1912-1926 - History and criticism

Literary criticism --  Asian -- General

Modernism (Literature) - Japan

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Fissures of Japanese Modernity -- 1. Disintegrating Mechanisms of Subjectivity: Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's Last Writings -- 2. Topographies of Empire: Yokomitsu Riichi's Shanghai -- 3. Mapping the Space of Mass Culture: Kawabata Yasunari's. Scarlet Gang of Asakusa -- 4. Negations of Genre: Hayashi Fumiko's Nomadic Writing -- 5. A Phantasmatic Return: Yokomitsu Riichi's Melancholic Nationalism -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

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.