The Literature of Shibata Renzaburō and a New Perspective on Nihilism in Postwar Japan, 1945-1978 PDF Download

Author: Artem Vorobiev
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Asia
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This dissertation intends to delineate and explore the work of Shibata Renzaburo (1917-1978), author of kengo shosetsu novels, the genre of historical and adventure novels, which occupies a large and important niche in popular Japanese literature of the twentieth century. Shibata Renzaburo is widely known in Japan; his works have seen numerous editions and reprints, and a number of his most popular works have been adapted for film and television. Shibata Renzaburo is an iconic writer in that he was instrumental in establishing and solidifying the kengo shosetsu genre, a genre in which stories were usually set in the Edo period (1603-1868) and which involved elaborate plots and revolved around fictional master swordsmen, featuring intrigue, adventure, masterful swordplay, and fast-paced narratives. While the notion of a master swordsman protagonist was not new and came about during the prewar period, Shibata’s writing differed from prewar works in several important aspects. One of the points of difference is the role and influence of French literature in Shibata’s work, in particular, in the character of Nemuri Kyoshiro, the protagonist of the eponymous Nemuri Kyoshiro series.

Author: Artem Vorobiev
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031111923
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Shibata Renzaburō and the Reinvention of Modernism in Postwar Japanese Popular Literature explores the life and work of Shibata Renzaburō (柴田錬三郎, 1917–1978), the author of adventure and historical novels who was instrumental in reinvigorating popular Japanese literature in the postwar period. This book considers postwar Japanese society through the prism of Shibata’s writing, exploring how the postwar period under SCAP Occupation influenced Shibata’s writing and generated the extraordinary popularity of samurai fiction in the postwar era at large. Through the use of a nihilistic warrior, Nemuri Kyōshirō, and other samurai characters, Shibata Renzaburō addresses important social issues of the day, such as the trauma of defeat, postwar reconstruction, and the attending societal ills and neuroses, while keeping his literature entertaining and easy to read, which ensured its mass appeal in postwar Japan.

Author: Atsuko Ueda
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739180746
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
In the wake of the disaster of 1945—as Japan was forced to remake itself from “empire” to “nation” in the face of an uncertain global situation—literature and literary criticism emerged as highly contested sites. Today, this remarkable period holds rich potential for opening new dialogue between scholars in Japan and North America as we rethink the historical and contemporary significance of such ongoing questions as the meaning of the American occupation both inside and outside of Japan, the shifting semiotics of “literature” and “politics,” and the origins of what would become crucial ideological weapons of the cultural Cold War. The volume consists of three interrelated sections: “Foregrounding the Cold War,” “Structures of Concealment: ‘Cultural Anxieties,’” and “Continuity and Discontinuity: Subjective Rupture and Dislocation.” One way or another, the essays address the process through which new “Japan” was created in the postwar present, which signified an attempt to criticize and reevaluate the past. Examining postwar discourse from various angles, the essays highlight the manner in which anxieties of the future were projected onto the construction of the past, which manifest in varying disavowals and structures of concealment.

Author: Atsuko Ueda
Publisher: New Studies in Modern Japan
ISBN: 9780739180730
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This collection examines literary criticism in postwar Japan. The contributors analyze the debates that occurred among Japanese intellectuals and highlight the various ideological forces that shaped the country's postwar trajectory.

Author: Professor Atsuko Ueda
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780739180754
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In the wake of its defeat in World War II, as Japan was forced to remake itself from "empire" to "nation" in the face of an uncertain global situation, literature and literary criticism emerged as highly contested sites. Today, this remarkable period holds rich potential for opening new dialogue between scholars in Japan and North America as we rethink the historical and contemporary significance of a number of important issues, including the meaning of the American occupation both inside and outside of Japan, the shifting semiotics of "literature" and "politics," and the origins of crucial ideological weapons of the cultural Cold War. This collection features works by Japanese intellectuals written in the immediate postwar period. These writings--many appearing in English for the first time--offer explorations into the social, political, and philosophical debates among Japanese literary elites that shaped the country's literary culture in the aftermath of defeat.

Author: Roy Starrs
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824816315
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Although Mishima's main literary ambition was to write philosophical novels in the tradition of Goethe and Thomas Mann, Deadly Dialectics is the first critical study to take this objective seriously: it also provides the first adequate account of Mishima's intellectual background and characteristic modes of thought and it is the first book to show the intimate and integral relation between his thought and his psychology and militant politics - or, more specifically, between his nihilism, his sexuality and his propensity to violence.

Author: Shunsuke Tsurumi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136917667
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Shunsuke Tsurumi, one of Japan’s most distinguished contemporary philosophers, continues his study of the intellectual and social history of modern Japan with this penetrating analysis of popular culture in the post-war years. Japanese manga (comics), manzai (dialogues), television, advertising and popular songs are the medium for a revealing examination of the many contradictory forces at work beneath the surface of an apparently uniform and universal culture. The author argues that the iconography of these popular forms has deep and significant implication for the development of Japanese national life in the post-growth years that lie ahead.

Author: J. Victor Koschmann
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226451213
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
After World War II, Japanese intellectuals believed that world history was moving inexorably toward bourgeois democracy and then socialism. But who would be the agents—the active "subjects"—of that revolution in Japan? Intensely debated at the time, this question of active subjectivity influenced popular ideas about nationalism and social change that still affect Japanese political culture today. In a major contribution to modern Japanese intellectual history, J. Victor Koschmann analyzes the debate over subjectivity. He traces the arguments of intellectuals from various disciplines and political viewpoints, and finds that despite their stress on individual autonomy, they all came to define subjectivity in terms of deterministic historical structures, thus ultimately deferring the possibility of radical change in Japan. Establishing a basis for historical dialogue about democratic revolution, this book will interest anyone concerned with issues of nationalism, postcolonialism, and the formation of identities.

Author: Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317619099
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Recent natural as well as man-made cataclysmic events have dramatically changed the status quo of contemporary Japanese society, and following the Asia-Pacific war’s never-ending ‘postwar’ period, Japan has been dramatically forced into a zeitgeist of saigo or ‘post-disaster.’ This radically new worldview has significantly altered the socio-political as well as literary perception of one of the world’s potential superpowers, and in this book the contributors closely examine how Japan’s new paradigm of precarious existence is expressed through a variety of pop-cultural as well as literary media. Addressing the transition from post-war to post-disaster literature, this book examines the rise of precarity consciousness in Japanese socio-cultural discourse. The chapters investigate the extent to which we can talk about the emergence of a new literary paradigm of precarity in the world of Japanese popular culture. Through careful examination of a variety of contemporary texts ranging from literature, manga, anime, television drama and film this study offers an interpretation of the many dissonant voices in Japanese society. The contributors also outline the related social issues in Japanese society and culture, providing a comprehensive overview of the global trends that link Japan with the rest of the world. Visions of Precarity in Japanese Popular Culture and Literature will be of great interest to students and scholars of contemporary Japan, Japanese culture and society, popular culture and social and cultural history.

Author: David C. Stahl
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004182985
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
This study examines how various Japanese authors and other artists seeking artistic representation of traumatic Asia Pacific War experience have drawn upon their imaginative powers to create affect-charged images of the extreme violence, psychological damage and ideological contradiction surrounding the conflict.