Two or Three Things I Know about Kanai Mieko's Intertextuality (2025)

Woman Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women's Writing. Edited by Rebecca L. Copeland. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006. x, 281 pp. $60.00 (cloth); $27.00 (paper)

The Journal of Asian Studies, 2008

Book Review: The Uses of Modern Japanese Literature: Histories and Cultures of the Book by Sari Kawana

History: Reviews of New Books, 2019

Travel in Rībi Hideo's Novels or the Search for an Alternative Writing Style in Japanese

Narratives Crossing Borders: The Dynamics of Cultural Interaction, 2021

The Rise and Fall of Modern Japanese Literature

Japanese Studies, 2020

Woman Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women's Writing

University of Hawaii Press eBooks, 2006

The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature

The Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature provides a comprehensive overview of how we study Japanese literature today. Rather than taking a purely chronological approach to the content, the chapters survey the state of the field through a number of pressing issues and themes, examining the ways in which it is possible to read modern Japanese literature and situate it in relation to critical theory. The Handbook examines various modes of literary production (such as fiction, poetry, and critical essays) as distinct forms of expression that nonetheless are closely interrelated. Attention is drawn to the idea of the bunjin as a ‘person of letters’ and a more realistic assessment is provided of how writers have engaged with ideas – not labelled a ‘novelist’ or ‘poet’, but a ‘writer’ who may at one time or another choose to write in various forms. The book provides an overview of major authors and genres by situating them within broader themes that have defined the way writers...

Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature

JPNS 432.01: Postwar Japanese Literature

2002

Content: This course, an elective for the major in Japanese, is designed for students having little or no previous knowledge of Japan. We will examine Japanese writers' responses to the spiritual and economic collapse that follows Japanese defeat in WWII, conditions under the US occupation, economic recovery and prosperity, and postmodernism. We will also explore how various writers deal with concepts of family, gender, memory; identity, history, sexuality, the emperor system, state power, marginality, language, myth, nationalism, etc. Note that all works read will be in English (Those who read Japanese may read Japanese originals), and no knowledge of the Japanese language is required or expected.

Envisioning Women Writers: Female Authorship and the Cultures of Publishing and Translation in Early 20th Century Japan

2012

This dissertation examines the discourses surrounding women and writing in the rapidly commercialized publishing industry and media in early 20th-century Japan. While Japan has a rich history of women's writing from the 10th century onwards, it was in the 1910s that the journalistic category of "women's literature" (joryû bungaku) emerged within the dominant literary mode of Naturalism, as the field of literature itself achieved a respectable cultural status after the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5). Through a close textual analysis of fictional works, literary journals, and newspapers from the turn of the century to the 1930s, I explore how various women embraced, subverted, and negotiated the gendered identity of the "woman writer" (joryû sakka) while creating their own spheres of literary production through women's literary journals. Central to this investigation are issues of media, translation, canonization, and the creation of literary histories as Japanese literature became institutionalized within the new cosmopolitan notion of world literature. This dissertation would not have been possible without the extraordinary support from a number of people. First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor Professor Tomi Suzuki for her unending support, encouragement, constructive criticism, and dedicated mentorship throughout my years at Columbia University. She has gone above and beyond the duties of an advisor to guide me, not only when I sought out her help but also when I was not aware that I needed it. She has been essential to my growth as a scholar, and I could not have completed my dissertation without her mentorship and dedication to scholarship. Professor Haruo Shirane has also been invaluable to my growth as a scholar, not only through his various graduate seminars on premodern Japanese literature, but also through his mentorship regarding the various intricate processes of the graduate program, from grant applications to conference preparations to finally getting a job. I could not have successfully completed the graduate program without his generous encouragement and astute criticism from the day I entered the program. I would also like to thank Professor Paul Anderer for his warm encouragement and guidance, and for setting a model for excellent teaching. His eloquence and charismatic presence in the classroom have been an inspiration to me, and I hope to someday do the same for my future students. My research in Japan was made possible by the sponsorship of the Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences at Waseda University, and the generous fellowship of Waseda's 125th Anniversary Commemorative Junior Visiting Researcher Program. I would particularly like to thank Professor Toeda Hirokazu for his warm welcome and generous mentorship during my research stay at Waseda, through which the first chapters of my dissertation took shape. His iv scholarship on modern Japanese literature and media studies has fundamentally impacted the methodology of my dissertation. I also thank Professor Shibata Motoyuki for allowing me to continue to be a part of the vibrant community of scholars at the University of Tokyo. His seminars and workshops on literary translation and involvement with living authors have repeatedly inspired in me a fresh enthusiasm and love for literature. The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University have generously supported me throughout my graduate studies. I thank Professors Theodore Hughes, David Lurie, and Conrad Schirokauer for their mentorship in and outside of the classroom, as well as Professors Sarah Cole and Sharon Marcus in the English Department for their excellent graduate seminars. I am grateful to my undergraduate thesis advisor Professor Margaret Homans for making me aware of the hardships of graduate school, but nonetheless encouraging my interest in literary studies. Without my friends and colleagues who have supported me over the years, I would not be where I am today. I thank Steven Karl for his constant presence and for keeping me sane during the most isolating years of dissertation writing. His enthusiasm and active involvement in the contemporary poetry community in Brooklyn and beyond inspire me to keep my own scholarship alive and relevant. Lastly, I thank my family for their love, patience, and support throughout my life, and for encouraging me to read.

Rodica Frentiu: Contemporary Japanese Literature in Its Transition

2016

Although Japan recorded no specific literary movement in the 1980s, in any classical sense of the term, we may say that today we are witnessing, in terms of our historical sensibility, a condensation of narrative viewpoints upon the present or, in other words, the transposition of the criteria of the present to another time, which is undoubtedly a consequence of the so-called “postmodern ” will to reject grand narratives. This study aims to review and complete the inventory of the postmodern characteristics that specialised literature has identified in Haruki Murakami’s works, seen from the perspective of what the author of the present paper considers to be the “new postmodern humanism.”