the Dilemma of Modern in Japanese Fiction

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.

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. Comparing readings from the eleventh to the twentieth centuries, Washburn argues that modernity in Japan can be understood in terms of cultural conflict-not only Japan versus the West but also Japan's present versus its past. An ambitious and courageous effort to address the question of what constitutes the 'modern' in Japanese literary history and how it relates to what is 'Japanese.' An important contribution to the field. -Ken K. Ito, University of Michigan The book . . . covers an impressive range of authors and topics sensitively and eloquently. Washburn's familiarity with his materials is considerable, so his chapters might serve as intelligent introductions to representative writers and texts. -Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Free University, Berlin, Modern Language Quarterly