Righteous Cause or Tragic Folly: Changing Views of War in Modern Japanese Poetry (Volume 17) (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies) - Hardcover

Rabson, Steve

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0939512777 ISBN 13: 9780939512775

Publisher: U of M Center For Japanese Studies, 1998

Synopsis

The subject of modern Japanese poetry written in support of the nation's wars, long considered a taboo in postwar literary circles, is explored here in historical and cultural context. Steve Rabson presents translations and explications of works by poets who wrote both for and against war, and provides background essential for understanding why some of Japan's most famous writers swung 180 degrees to support or oppose war at different times in their careers. Through examples from American and British poetry, Rabson also shows that this phenomenon of poets changing their views is by no means exclusive to Japan. Exposing the efforts of some Japanese writers after 1945 to conceal or revise their poetry written during World War II, the author discusses assertions by literary critics and historians that poets bear a special "war responsibility.""Provocative and stimulating. War poetry, whether Eastern or Western, has rarely been probed so skillfully. . . . Righteous Cause or Tragic Folly may well become a model for future literary studies."--John Bradley, Northern Illinois University and editor of Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age 

About this title

About the Author

Steve Rabson teaches at Brown University. He has published widely on Japanese fiction and poetry.

Review

 “Eschewing the one-dimensional myths of the Japanese as either inherently bellicose or inveterately pacific, Steve Rabson has written a nuanced but nonetheless provocative account of fluctuating Japanese attitudes toward war as evidenced in their modern poetry. This painstakingly researched but highly readable book is a must for anyone interested in modern Japan, war in the twentieth century, or the problematic role of writers in dark times.”
—David G. Goodman, author of After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Long, Long Autumn Nights: Selected Poems of Oguma Hideo, 1901–1940
 

Edition details

• Publisher: U of M Center For Japanese Studies
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0939512777
• ISBN 13: 9780939512775
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300