Download or read book The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature written by Haruo Shirane and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature provides, for the first time, a history of Japanese literature with comprehensive coverage of the premodern and modern eras in a single volume. The book is arranged topically in a series of short, accessible chapters for easy access and reference, giving insight into both canonical texts and many lesser known, popular genres, from centuries-old folk literature to the detective fiction of modern times. The various period introductions provide an overview of recurrent issues that span many decades, if not centuries. The book also places Japanese literature in a wider East Asian tradition of Sinitic writing and provides comprehensive coverage of women's literature as well as new popular literary forms, including manga (comic books). An extensive bibliography of works in English enables readers to continue to explore this rich tradition through translations and secondary reading.
Download or read book Modanizumu written by William J. Tyler and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2008-01-04 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Remarkably little has been written on the subject of modernism in Japanese fiction. Until now there has been neither a comprehensive survey of Japanese modernist fiction nor an anthology of translations to provide a systematic introduction. Only recently have the terms "modernism" and "modernist" become part of the standard discourse in English on modern Japanese literature and doubts concerning their authenticity vis-a-vis Western European modernism remain. This anomaly is especially ironic in view of the decidedly modan prose crafted by such well-known Japanese writers as Kawabata Yasunari, Nagai Kafu, and Tanizaki Jun’ichiro. By contrast, scholars in the visual and fine arts, architecture, and poetry readily embraced modanizumu as a key concept for describing and analyzing Japanese culture in the 1920s and 1930s. This volume addresses this discrepancy by presenting in translation for the first time a collection of twenty-five stories and novellas representative of Japanese authors who worked in the modernist idiom from 1913 to 1938. Its prefatory materials provide a systematic overview of the literary movement’s salient features—anti-naturalism, cosmopolitanism, the concept of the double self, and actionism—and describe how modanizumu evolved from its early "jagged edges" into a sophisticated yet popular expression of Japanese urban life in the first half of the twentieth century. The modanist style, characterized by youthful exuberance, a tongue-in-cheek tone, and narrative techniques like superimposition, is amply illustrated. Modanizumu introduces faces altogether new or relatively unknown: Abe Tomoji, Kajii Motojiro, Murayama Kaita, Osaki Midori, Tachibana Sotoo, Takeda Rintaro, Tani Joji, Yoshiyuki Eisuke, and Yumeno Kyusaku. It also revisits such luminaries as Kawabata, Tanizaki, and the detective novelist Edogawa Ranpo. Key works that it culls from the modernist repertoire include Funahashi Seiichi’s Diving, Hagiwara Sakutaro’s "Town of Cats," Ito Sei’s Streets of Fiendish Ghosts, and Kawabata’s film scenario Page of Madness. This volume moves beyond conventional views to place this important movement in Japanese fiction within a global context: an indigenous expression born of the fission of local creativity and the fusion of cross-cultural interaction.
Download or read book Traditional Japanese Literature written by Haruo Shirane and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional Japanese Literature features a rich array of works dating from the very beginnings of the Japanese written language through the evolution of Japan's noted aristocratic court and warrior cultures. It contains stunning new translations of such canonical texts as The Tales of the Heike as well as works and genres previously ignored by scholars and unknown to general readers.
Download or read book The Modern Japanese Prose Poem written by Dennis Keene and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though the prose poem came into existence as a principally French literary genre in the nineteenth century, it occupies a place of considerable importance in twentieth-century Japanese poetry. This selection of poems is the first anthology of this genre and, in effect, the first appearance of this kind of poetry in English. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book The Factory written by Hiroko Oyamada and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamada—one of the most powerfully strange young voices in Japan The English-language debut of one of Japan's most exciting new writers, The Factory follows three workers at a sprawling industrial factory. Each worker focuses intently on the specific task they've been assigned: one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. But their lives slowly become governed by their work—days take on a strange logic and momentum, and little by little, the margins of reality seem to be dissolving: Where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? What's going on with the strange animals here? And after a while—it could be weeks or years—the three workers struggle to answer the most basic question: What am I doing here? With hints of Kafka and unexpected moments of creeping humor, The Factory casts a vivid—and sometimes surreal—portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of the modern workplace.
Download or read book The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories written by Theodore William Goossen and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with the first writings to assimilate and rework Western literary traditions, through the flourishing of the short story genre in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Taisho era, to the new breed of writers produced under the constraints of literary censorship, and the current writings reflecting the pitfalls and paradoxes of modern life, this anthology offers a stimulating survey of the entire development of the Japanese short story.
Download or read book Death Sentences written by Chiaki Kawamata and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young poet, Who May, pens one disturbing poem after another until he creates a poem that can kill, which sparks a "magic poem plague" when copies are mailed to all of his friends.
Download or read book A Waka Anthology Volume Two written by Edwin A. Cranston and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 1332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grasses of Remembrance, the second volume of Edwin Cranston's monumental Waka Anthology, carries forward the story of Japanese court poetry, drawing on sources dating from the 890s to the 1080s. The book presents over 2,600 poems in lively and readable translation, including all 795 poems from The Tale of Genji.
Download or read book A History of Japanese Literature written by W. G. Aston and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Reference Grammar of Classical Japanese Prose written by Alexander Vovin and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This complete description of the language of the golden Heian period (794-1185) features an innovative morphological analysis to facilitate reference usage and provides a comprehensive reference work for students of classical Japanese.
Download or read book Breaking Into Japanese Literature written by Giles Murray and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a graded reader for Japanese literature. There are 7 stories, 4 by Soseki and 3 by Akutagawa, representing 3 different reading levels. In each case the story is presented in Japanese and English with a running dictionary of terms used. An audio version of the stories is available as MP3 files on the Internet.
Download or read book Early Modern Japanese Literature written by Haruo Shirane and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2002-07-10 with total page 1054 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first anthology ever devoted to early modern Japanese literature, spanning the period from 1600 to 1900, known variously as the Edo or the Tokugawa, one of the most creative epochs of Japanese culture. This anthology, which will be of vital interest to anyone involved in this era, includes not only fiction, poetry, and drama, but also essays, treatises, literary criticism, comic poetry, adaptations from Chinese, folk stories and other non-canonical works. Many of these texts have never been translated into English before, and several classics have been newly translated for this collection. Early Modern Japanese Literature introduces English readers to an unprecedented range of prose fiction genres, including dangibon (satiric sermons), kibyôshi (satiric and didactic picture books), sharebon (books of wit and fashion), yomihon (reading books), kokkeibon (books of humor), gôkan (bound books), and ninjôbon (books of romance and sentiment). The anthology also offers a rich array of poetry—waka, haiku, senryû, kyôka, kyôshi—and eleven plays, which range from contemporary domestic drama to historical plays and from early puppet theater to nineteenth century kabuki. Since much of early modern Japanese literature is highly allusive and often elliptical, this anthology features introductions and commentary that provide the critical context for appreciating this diverse and fascinating body of texts. One of the major characteristics of early modern Japanese literature is that almost all of the popular fiction was amply illustrated by wood-block prints, creating an extensive text-image phenomenon. In some genres such as kibyôshi and gôkan the text in fact appeared inside the woodblock image. Woodblock prints of actors were also an important aspect of the culture of kabuki drama. A major feature of this anthology is the inclusion of over 200 woodblock prints that accompanied the original texts and drama.
Download or read book The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature written by Susan Napier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Japan's repressed anxieties, fears and hopes come to the surface in the fantastic. A close analysis of fantasy fiction, film and comics reveals the ambivalence felt by many Japanese towards the success story of the nation in the twentieth century. The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature explores the dark side to Japanese literature and Japanese society. It takes in the nightmarish future depicted in the animated film masterpiece, Akira, and the pastoral dream worlds created by Japan's Nobel Prize winning author Oe Kenzaburo. A wide range of fantasists, many discussed here in English for the first time, form the basis for a ground-breaking analysis of utopias, dystopias, the disturbing relationship between women, sexuality and modernity, and the role of the alien in the fantastic.
Download or read book Seeds in the Heart written by and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 1284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Donald Keene, a noted authority in the field, offers a guide through the first 900 years of Japanese literature. This period not only defined the unique properties of Japanese prose and prosody, but also produced some of its greatest works.
Download or read book Pleasure in Profit written by Laura Moretti and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the seventeenth century, Japanese popular prose flourished as waves of newly literate readers gained access to the printed word. Commercial publishers released vast numbers of titles in response to readers’ hunger for books that promised them potent knowledge. However, traditional literary histories of this period position the writings of Ihara Saikaku at center stage, largely neglecting the breadth of popular prose. In the first comprehensive study of the birth of Japanese commercial publishing, Laura Moretti investigates the vibrant world of vernacular popular literature. She marshals new data on the magnitude of the seventeenth-century publishing business and highlights the diversity and porosity of its publishing genres. Moretti explores how booksellers sparked interest among readers across the spectrum of literacies and demonstrates how they tantalized consumers with vital ethical, religious, societal, and interpersonal knowledge. She recasts books as tools for knowledge making, arguing that popular prose engaged its audience cognitively as well as aesthetically and emotionally to satisfy a burgeoning curiosity about the world. Crucially, Moretti shows, readers experienced entertainment within the didactic, finding pleasure in the profit gained from acquiring knowledge by interacting with transformative literature. Drawing on a rich variety of archival materials to present a vivid portrait of seventeenth-century Japanese publishing, Pleasure in Profit also speaks to broader conversations about the category of the literary by offering a new view of popular prose that celebrates plurality.
Download or read book Kanbunmyaku written by Mareshi Saito and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-01-11 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Kanbunmyaku: The Literary Sinitic Context and the Birth of Modern Japanese Language and Literature, Saito Mareshi demonstrates the centrality of kanbun and kanshi in the creation of modern literary Japanese and problematizes the modern antagonism between kanbun and Japanese.
Download or read book Complicit Fictions written by James A. Fujii and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1993-03-04 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "James Fujii's Complicit Fictions is the first genuinely convincing study of the crucial relationship between the production of literature and the experience of history in the making of modern Japan. He has brilliantly, and with great intellectual originality, liberated the reading of modern Japanese prose narratives from an earlier, formalistic practice which had assimilated them to the requirements of the European realist novel, and thereby robbed them of their own particularity. As a replacement for the earlier critical program, he proposes a strategy that promises to restore the historical moment inscribed in the very act of narrative production. In making this move, he has, I believe, managed to bring these fictions back to Japan yet avoid reducing them to expressions of cultural exceptionalism. By showing us how the narratives of Shimazaki Toson, Natsume Soseki and Tokuda Shusei must be read for an enabling history which they invariably sought to repress, their historical unconscious, Fujii has given students of history and literature, in and out of Japan, a magisterial mix of critical sophistication and textual authority, rigorous thinking and stylistic elegance."—Harry Harootunian, University of Chicago "Unlike many literary studies that seek to be theoretical but finally prove merely tautological, Complicit Fictions is both genuinely theoretical and passionately engaged. It explains all that needs explanation, leaving little to quotations or citations. James Fujii is stunningly lucid and persuasively precise. Together with Richard Okada's Figures of Resistance and Naoki Sakai's Voices of the Past, this work will open a new era in the studies of Japanese literature."—Masao Miyoshi, University of California, San Diego
