Modern Japanese Literature

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course is an introduction to the major authors and works of Japan's modern period, from the 18th century through the middle of the 20th century. We will examine writers, works and literary institutions in historical context to explore how Japanese writers engaged with the changing world in the modern era. This was the period when modern literature, more specifically the novel, was emerging internationally as a new technology of state-building. Early modern Japan was highly literate with a flourishing popular culture that included diverse literary forms (high and low) that would be refashioned, contested and sometimes abandoned as the institution of literature would come to be established by the turn of the 20th century, although not without ongoing contestation. The rise of the novel (shosetsu) as exemplar of literature corresponded with Japan's rise to imperialist power over the fifty-year build-up of the empire. Our themes will include: elite and popular literature; the West, Orientalism and Counter-Orientalism; protest literature by women, workers and ethnic minorities; empire and resistance; modernism and modernity. Authors will include: Higuchi Ichiyo, Natsume Soseki, Tamura Toshiko, Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Kobayashi Takiji, Edogawa Rampo, and others.