Recontextualizing Text: Narrative Performance in Modern Japanese Fiction

Offering the first systematic examination of five modern Japanese fictional narratives, all of them available in English translations, Atsuko Sakaki explores Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro and Kusamakura (The Three-Cornered World); Ibuse Masuji’s Kuroi ame (Black Rain); Mori Ōgai’s Gan (Wild Geese); and Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s Manji (Quicksand). Her close reading of each text reveals a hitherto unexplored area of communication between narrator and audience, as well as between “implied author” and “implied reader.” By using this approach, the author situates each of these works not in its historical, cultural, or economic contexts but in the situation the text itself produces.

Atsuko Sakaki is Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at Harvard University.