Return to Japan: From 'Pilgrimage' to the West - Hardcover

Nagashima, Yochi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8772888377 ISBN 13: 9788772888378

Publisher: Aarhus University Press, 2001

Synopsis

This fascinating book presents 15 modern writers, critics and intellectuals from Mori Ogai to Oe Kenzaburo and Murakama Haruki, who analyse the issues surrounding the concepts of the West as fantasy and Japan as nostalgia. This collection is the result of a conference held in Copenhagen in 1998. Many Japanese writers have journeyed to the west in praise of western civilization, the editor explains in his foreword, only to revert to their conception of otrueo Japanese spiritual, social, cultural and aesthetic values. The book aims at describing and clarifying these movements to and from Japan in both the spiritual and physical senses. This idea can be seen as a Japanese search for cultural identity during the modern period. Several chapter headings will serve to clarify the thrust of the book. Sukehiro Hirakawa presents a Japanese intellectualAes return to Japan as predicted and described by Lafcadio Hearn; Hae-Hyung Sung analyses Okakura TenshinAes encounter with the west, and Noriko Thunman describes Mishima Yukio's fascination with Greek culture and his later rejection of the superficial culture of Japan in the post-war period. This book will be a welcome addition to the bookshelf of anyone who studies the links between Japan and the West and others who are interested in Japanese cultural, historical and intellectual thought inside and outside of Japan and how they have been affected by the west.

Edition details

• Publisher: Aarhus University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 8772888377
• ISBN 13: 9788772888378
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352