Border-Crossing Japanese Literature

Border-Crossing Japanese Literature PDF Author: Akiko Uchiyama
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000917932
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
This collection focuses on metaphorical as well as temporal and physical border-crossing in writing from and about Japan. With a strong consciousness of gender and socio-historic contexts, contributors to the book adopt an intercultural and interdisciplinary approach to examine the writing of authors whose works break free from the confines of hegemonic Japanese literary endeavour. By demonstrating how the texts analysed step outside the space of ‘Japan’, they accordingly foreground the volatility of textual expression related to that space. The authors discussed include Takahashi Mutsuo and Nagai Kafū, both of whom take literary inspiration from geographical sites outside Japan. Several chapters examine the work of exemplary border-crossing poet, novelist and essayist, Itō Hiromi. There are discussions of the work of Tawada Yōko whose ability to publish in German and Japanese marks her also as a representative writer of border-crossing texts. Two chapters address works by Murakami Haruki who, although clearly affiliating with western cultural form, is rarely discussed in specific border-crossing terms. The chapter on Ainu narratives invokes topics such as translation, indigeneity and myth, while an analysis of Japanese prisoner-of-war narratives notes the language and border-crossing nexus. A vital collection for scholars and students of Japanese literature.

Border-Crossing Japanese Literature

Border-Crossing Japanese Literature PDF Author: Akiko Uchiyama
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000917932
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book

Book Description
This collection focuses on metaphorical as well as temporal and physical border-crossing in writing from and about Japan. With a strong consciousness of gender and socio-historic contexts, contributors to the book adopt an intercultural and interdisciplinary approach to examine the writing of authors whose works break free from the confines of hegemonic Japanese literary endeavour. By demonstrating how the texts analysed step outside the space of ‘Japan’, they accordingly foreground the volatility of textual expression related to that space. The authors discussed include Takahashi Mutsuo and Nagai Kafū, both of whom take literary inspiration from geographical sites outside Japan. Several chapters examine the work of exemplary border-crossing poet, novelist and essayist, Itō Hiromi. There are discussions of the work of Tawada Yōko whose ability to publish in German and Japanese marks her also as a representative writer of border-crossing texts. Two chapters address works by Murakami Haruki who, although clearly affiliating with western cultural form, is rarely discussed in specific border-crossing terms. The chapter on Ainu narratives invokes topics such as translation, indigeneity and myth, while an analysis of Japanese prisoner-of-war narratives notes the language and border-crossing nexus. A vital collection for scholars and students of Japanese literature.

Border Crossing

Border Crossing PDF Author: Alexander Burry
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474411436
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Each time a border is crossed there are cultural, political, and social issues to be considered. Applying the metaphor of the 'border crossing' from one temporal or spatial territory into another, Border Crossing: Russian Literature into Film examines the way classic Russian texts have been altered to suit new cinematic environments. In these essays, international scholars examine how political and economic circumstances, from a shifting Soviet political landscape to the perceived demands of American and European markets, have played a crucial role in dictating how filmmakers transpose their cinematic hypertext into a new environment. Rather than focus on the degree of accuracy or fidelity with which these films address their originating texts, this innovative collection explores the role of ideological, political, and other cultural pressures that can affect the transformation of literary narratives into cinematic offerings.

Narratives Crossing Borders

Narratives Crossing Borders PDF Author: Herbert Jonsson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789176351437
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Which is the identity of a traveler who is constantly on the move between cultures and languages? What happens with stories when they are transmitted from one place to another, when they are retold, remade, translated and re-translated? What happens with the scholars themselves, when they try to grapple with the kaleidoscopic diversity of human expression in a constantly changing world? These and related questions are explored in the chapters of this collection. Its overall topic, narratives that pass over national, language and ethnical borders includes studies about transcultural novels, poetry, drama, and the narratives of journalism. There is a broad geographic diversity, not only in the collection as a whole, but also in each of the single contributions. This in turn demands a multitude of theoretical and methodological approaches, which cover a spectrum of concepts from such different sources as post-colonial studies, linguistics, religion, aesthetics, art, and media studies, often going beyond the well-known Western frameworks. The works of authors like Miriam Toews, Yoko Tawada, Javier Moreno, Leila Abouela, Marguerite Duras, Kyoko Mori, Francesca Duranti, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, Rībi Hideo, and François Cheng are studied from a variety of perspectives. Other chapters deal with code-switching in West African novels, border crossing in the Japanese noh drama, translational anthologies of Italian literature, urban legends on the US-Mexico border, migration in German children's books, and war trauma in poetry. Most of the chapters are case studies of specific works and authors, and may thus be of interest, not only for specialists, but also for the general reader.

Translation and the Borders of Contemporary Japanese Literature

Translation and the Borders of Contemporary Japanese Literature PDF Author: Victoria Young
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040029728
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
This book examines contemporary debates on such concepts as national literature, world literature, and the relationship each of these to translation, from the perspective of modern Japanese fiction. By reading between the gaps and revealing tensions and blind spots in the image that Japanese literature presents to the world, the author brings together a series of essays and works of fiction that are normally kept separate in distinct subgenres, such as Okinawan literature, zainichi literature written by ethnic Koreans, and other “trans-border” works. The act of translation is reimagined in figurative, expanded, and even disruptive ways with a focus on marginal spaces and trans-border movements. The result decentres the common image of Japanese literature while creating connections to wider questions of multilingualism, decolonisation, historical revisionism, and trauma that are so central to contemporary literary studies. This book will be of interest to all those who study modern Japan and Japanese literature, as well as those working in the wider field of translation studies, as it subjects the concept of world literature to searching analysis.

South of the Border, West of the Sun

South of the Border, West of the Sun PDF Author: Haruki Murakami
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679767398
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
South of the Border, West of the Sun is the beguiling story of a past rekindled, and one of Haruki Murakami’s most touching novels. Hajime has arrived at middle age with a loving family and an enviable career, yet he feels incomplete. When a childhood friend, now a beautiful woman, shows up with a secret from which she is unable to escape, the fault lines of doubt in Hajime’s quotidian existence begin to give way. Rich, mysterious, and quietly dazzling, in South of the Border, West of the Sun the simple arc of one man’s life becomes the exquisite literary terrain of Murakami’s remarkable genius.

The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan

The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan PDF Author: Steve Rabson
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824860330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
The experiences of Okinawans in mainland Japan, like those of migrant minorities elsewhere, derive from a legacy of colonialism, war, and alien rule. Okinawans have long coped with a society in which differences are often considered “strange” or “wrong,” and with a central government that has imposed a mono-cultural standard in education, publicly priding itself on the nation’s mythical “homogeneity.” They have felt strong pressures to assimilate by adopting mainland Japanese culture and concealing or discarding their own. Recently, however, a growing pride in roots has inspired more Okinawan migrants and their descendants to embrace their own history and culture and to speak out against inequities. Their experiences, like those of minorities in other countries, have opened them to an acute and illuminating perspective, given voice in personal testimony, literature, and song. Although much has been written on Okinawan emigration abroad, this is the first book in English to consider the Okinawan diaspora in Japan. It is based on a wide variety of secondary and primary sources, including interviews conducted by the author in the greater Osaka area over a two-year period. The work begins with the experiences of women who worked in Osaka’s spinning factories in the early twentieth century, covers the years of the Pacific War and the prolonged U.S. military occupation of Okinawa, and finally treats the period following Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972. Throughout, it examines the impact of government and corporate policies, along with popular attitudes, for a compelling account of the Okinawan diaspora in the context of contemporary Japan’s struggle to acknowledge its multiethnic society. The Okinawan Diaspora in Japan will find a ready audience among students of contemporary Japanese history and East Asian societies, as well as general readers interested in Okinawans and other minorities living in Japan.

Manchukuo Perspectives

Manchukuo Perspectives PDF Author: Annika A. Culver
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888528130
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
This groundbreaking volume critically examines how writers in Japanese-occupied northeast China negotiated political and artistic freedom while engaging their craft amidst an increasing atmosphere of violent conflict and foreign control. The allegedly multiethnic utopian new state of Manchukuo (1932–1945) created by supporters of imperial Japan was intended to corral the creative energies of Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Russians, and Mongols. Yet, the twin poles of utopian promise and resistance to a contested state pulled these intellectuals into competing loyalties, selective engagement, or even exile and death—surpassing neat paradigms of collaboration or resistance. In a semicolony wrapped in the utopian vision of racial inclusion, their literary works articulating national ideals and even the norms of everyday life subtly reflected the complexities and contradictions of the era. Scholars from China, Korea, Japan, and North America investigate cultural production under imperial Japan’s occupation of Manchukuo. They reveal how literature and literary production more generally can serve as a penetrating lens into forgotten histories and the lives of ordinary people confronted with difficult political exigencies. Highlights of the text include transnational perspectives by leading researchers in the field and a memoir by one of Manchukuo’s last living writers. “This first-rate collection offers the most comprehensive overview of Manchukuo literature in any language. Containing an abundance of very original research and analysis, with relevant references to diverse sources in Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian, the essays will be welcomed by scholars dealing with literary, historical, political, and colonization issues in Manchukuo and its neighbors.” —Ronald Suleski, Suffolk University, Boston “Manchukuo Perspectives is an excellent contribution to the field. Manchukuo was a fascinating and fraught experiment. Colonialism, imperialism, modernism, and nationalism were just some of the many different forces at play there. With an impressive set of contributors bringing both breadth and depth to the study of these issues, this collection fills a void in our understanding of the cultural and literary production of Manchukuo wonderfully.” —James Carter, Saint Joseph’s University

Crossing Borders

Crossing Borders PDF Author: Dorothee Schneider
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674061306
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Aspiring immigrants to the United States make many separate border crossings in their quest to become Americans—in their home towns, ports of departure, U.S. border stations, and in American neighborhoods, courthouses, and schools. In a book of remarkable breadth, Dorothee Schneider covers both the immigrants’ experience of their passage from an old society to a new one and American policymakers’ debates over admission to the United States and citizenship. Bringing together the separate histories of Irish, English, German, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican immigrants, the book opens up a fresh view of immigrant aspirations and government responses. Ingenuity and courage emerge repeatedly from these stories, as immigrants adapted their particular resources, especially social networks, to make migration and citizenship successful on their own terms. While officials argued over immigrants’ fitness for admission and citizenship, immigrant communities forced the government to alter the meaning of race, class, and gender as criteria for admission. Women in particular made a long transition from dependence on men to shapers of their own destinies. Schneider aims to relate the immigrant experience as a totality across many borders. By including immigrant voices as well as U.S. policies and laws, she provides a truly transnational history that offers valuable perspectives on current debates over immigration.

Japanese Philosophy

Japanese Philosophy PDF Author: James W. Heisig
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082483707X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1362

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Book Description
With Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, readers of English can now access in a single volume the richness and diversity of Japanese philosophy as it has developed throughout history. Leading scholars in the field have translated selections from the writings of more than a hundred philosophical thinkers from all eras and schools of thought, many of them available in English for the first time. The Sourcebook editors have set out to represent the entire Japanese philosophical tradition—not only the broad spectrum of academic philosophy dating from the introduction of Western philosophy in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but also the philosophical ideas of major Japanese traditions of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto. The philosophical significance of each tradition is laid out in an extensive overview, and each selection is accompanied by a brief biographical sketch of its author and helpful information on placing the work in its proper context. The bulk of the supporting material, which comprises nearly a quarter of the volume, is given to original interpretive essays on topics not explicitly covered in other chapters: cultural identity, samurai thought, women philosophers, aesthetics, bioethics. An introductory chapter provides a historical overview of Japanese philosophy and a discussion of the Japanese debate over defining the idea of philosophy, both of which help explain the rationale behind the design of the Sourcebook. An exhaustive glossary of technical terminology, a chronology of authors, and a thematic index are appended. Specialists will find information related to original sources and sinographs for Japanese names and terms in a comprehensive bibliography and general index. Handsomely presented and clearly organized for ease of use, Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook will be a cornerstone in Japanese studies for decades to come. It will be an essential reference for anyone interested in traditional or contemporary Japanese culture and the way it has shaped and been shaped by its great thinkers over the centuries.

The Coronavirus Pandemic in Japanese Literature and Popular Culture

The Coronavirus Pandemic in Japanese Literature and Popular Culture PDF Author: Mina Qiao
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000953300
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
This volume is the first book-length collection on Japanese literary and popular cultural responses to the coronavirus pandemic in English. Disrupting the narrative of COVID-19 as a catastrophe without precedent, this book contextualizes the COVID-19 global public health crisis and pandemic-induced social and political turbulence in a post-industrial society that has withstood multiple major destructions and disasters. From published fiction by major authors to anonymous accounts on social media, from network TV shows to contents by Virtual YouTubers (VTubers), in both "high" and "low" culturescapes, timely representations of coronavirus and individual and social livings under its impact emerge. These narratives, either personal or top-down, all endeavor to fathom this unexpected disruption of modern linear progress. Exploring the paradoxes underlying the "new normal" of Japanese society of the present day, the book collectively demonstrates how the narratives of coronavirus are not "neo-" but "re-": returning to the past, revealing existing problems and reclaiming memories lost and lessons forgotten. This edited volume will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of Japanese culture and society, Japanese literature, and pandemic studies.