Detail Image
click to view more

Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction

by Washburn, Dennis C

$46.50

add to favourite
  • In Stock - Ship in 24 hours with Free Online tracking.
  • FREE DELIVERY by Wednesday, July 23, 2025
  • 24/24 Online
  • Yes High Speed
  • Yes Protection

Description

This book looks at modernity in Japanese literary culture as a continuing historical dynamic rather than as merely the product of the intense Westernization of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author links the modern in Japan to a sense of cultural discontinuity that may be located in fictional narratives before the encounter of Japan with the West, and he argues that modernity in Meiji Japan can be understood in terms of cultural conflict--not only Japan versus the West, but also Japan's present versus its past.

Washburn compares readings from Meiji literature with readings from pre-Meiji and post-Meiji works. He begins with Genji monogatari (early eleventh century) and the Hojoki (1212), continues with stories by Saikaku (late seventeenth century), and ends with a consideration of selected texts from the Meiji period (1868-1912) through the end of the Second World War. Washburn focuses on common thematic elements that recur over time and on such formal considerations as voice and perspective that evolve historically to give expression to the sense of the modern. Using this approach, he is able to look at many individual authors in a new way and to present significant reevaluations of many important texts.
This book is also a study of the East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

Last updated on

Product Details

  • Yale University Press Brand
  • Mar 11, 1995 Pub Date:
  • 9780300105254 ISBN-13:
  • 0300105258 ISBN-10:
  • 326 Pages
  • English Language
  • 8.5 in * 5.5 in * 0.73 in Dimensions:
  • 1 lb Weight: