DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Border-Crossing Japanese Literature

Reading Multiplicity

Barbara Hartley editor Akiko Uchiyama editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:28th Nov '24

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This paperback is available in another edition too:

Border-Crossing Japanese Literature cover

This collection focuses on metaphorical as well as temporal and physical border-crossing in writing from and about Japan.

With a strong consciousness of gender and socio-historic contexts, contributors to the book adopt an intercultural and interdisciplinary approach to examine the writing of authors whose works break free from the confines of hegemonic Japanese literary endeavour. By demonstrating how the texts analysed step outside the space of ‘Japan’, they accordingly foreground the volatility of textual expression related to that space. The authors discussed include Takahashi Mutsuo and Nagai Kafū, both of whom take literary inspiration from geographical sites outside Japan. Several chapters examine the work of exemplary border-crossing poet, novelist and essayist, Itō Hiromi. There are discussions of the work of Tawada Yōko whose ability to publish in German and Japanese marks her also as a representative writer of border-crossing texts. Two chapters address works by Murakami Haruki who, although clearly affiliating with western cultural form, is rarely discussed in specific border-crossing terms. The chapter on Ainu narratives invokes topics such as translation, indigeneity and myth, while an analysis of Japanese prisoner-of-war narratives notes the language and border-crossing nexus.

A vital collection for scholars and students of Japanese literature.

ISBN: 9780367697747

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 430g

220 pages