Writing Home: Representations of the Native Place in Modern Japanese Literature (Harvard East Asian Monographs) - Hardcover

Dodd, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674016521 ISBN 13: 9780674016521

Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005

Synopsis

This book examines the development of Japanese literature depicting the native place (furusato) from the mid-Meiji period through the late 1930s as a way of articulating the uprootedness and sense of loss many experienced as Japan modernized. The 1890s witnessed the appearance of fictional works describing a city dweller who returns to his native place, where he reflects on the evils of urban life and the idyllic past of his childhood home. The book concentrates on four authors who typify this trend: Kunikida Doppo, Shimazaki Tōson, Satō Haruo, and Shiga Naoya.

All four writers may be understood as trying to make sense of contemporary Japan. Their works reflect their engagement with the social, intellectual, economic, and technological discourses that created a network of shared experience among people of a similar age. This common experience allows the author to chart how these writers’ works contributed to the general debate over Japanese national identity in this period. By exploring the links between furusato literature and the theme of national identity, he shows that the debate over a common language that might “transparently” express the modern experience helped shape a variety of literary forms used to present the native place as a distinctly Japanese experience.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Dodd is Lecturer in Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674016521
• ISBN 13: 9780674016521
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320