Modern Japanese Literature

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will introduce students to modern Japanese literature, starting from the emergence of the shōsetsu and discourses surrounding it through the postwar era. We will look at changes in the conception of literary texts and readership, and their relationship to changes in Japanese society and the construction of the image of "Japan" during this period. Readings will cover canonical authors from the late Meiji Period through the 1960s such as Mori Ōgai, Natsume Sōseki, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Kawabata Yasunari, Hayashi Fumiko, Mishima Yukio, and Ōe Kenzaburō; they will also include key works of Gothic literature, proletarian literature, and colonial literature. We will focus on close textual analysis within this specific cultural and historical context, the politics of canonization, and the role of literature in constructing the ideas of modernity and nationhood in modern Japan.