The Origin of Modern Japanese Literature

Author: (Japanese) Nishio Katsuhiko
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-01-01
Features: This book is not a scholarly monograph on literary history, but a collection of theoretical critical essays. Published in 1980, it has been reprinted 25 times since then, becoming a classic work of postmodern criticism. The author critiques literary modernity to dissect the present, separately exploring the formation processes of unique characteristics in Japanese modern literature such as "landscape," "interior," "confession," "pathology," "childhood," and "narrative methods." He digs into the origins of literary modernity, revealing the symbiotic relationship between modern literature and modern nation-states. Once modern literature establishes itself, its origins are forgotten. This forgetting leads people to believe that its fundamental concepts possess historical universality, which in turn gains an unquestioned hegemonic status, thereby excluding any "non-modern" elements and arbitrarily segmenting, reversing, and reorganizing any pre-modern aspects.