Literature among the Ruins, 1945–1955

Postwar Japanese Literary Criticism

Edited by Atsuko Ueda; Michael K. Bourdaghs; Richi Sakakibara and Hirokazu Toeda - Contributions by Michael K. Bourdaghs; James Dorsey; Ko Youngran; Seiji M. Lippit; Richi Sakakibara; Ann Sherif; Doug Slaymaker; Hirokazu Toeda and Atsuko Ueda

In the wake of the disaster of 1945—as Japan was forced to remake itself from “empire” to “nation” in the face of an uncertain global situation—literature and literary criticism emerged as highly contested sites. Today, this remarkable period holds rich potential for opening new dialogue between scholars in Japan and North America as we rethink the historical and contemporary significance of such ongoing questions as the meaning of the American occupation both inside and outside of Japan, the shifting semiotics of “literature” and “politics,” and the origins of what would become crucial ideological weapons of the cultural Cold War.

The volume consists of three interrelated sections: “Foregrounding the Cold War,” “Structures of Concealment: ‘Cultural Anxieties,’” and “Continuity and Discontinuity: Subjective Rupture and Dislocation.” One way or another, the essays address the process through which new “Japan” was created in the postwar present, which signified an attempt to criticize and reevaluate the past. Examining postwar discourse from various angles, the essays highlight the manner in which anxieties of the future were projected onto the construction of the past, which manifest in varying disavowals and structures of concealment.

Lexington Books

Pages: 208 • Trim: 6½ x 9⅛

978-0-7391-8072-3 • Hardback • May 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-0-7391-8073-0 • Paperback • June 2020 • $47.99 • (£37.00)

978-0-7391-8074-7 • eBook • May 2018 • $45.50 • (£35.00)

Series: New Studies in Modern Japan

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Asian / Japanese, History / Asia / Southeast Asia, Literary Criticism / Asian / General

Literature among the Ruins, 1945–1955

Postwar Japanese Literary Criticism

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

In the wake of the disaster of 1945—as Japan was forced to remake itself from “empire” to “nation” in the face of an uncertain global situation—literature and literary criticism emerged as highly contested sites. Today, this remarkable period holds rich potential for opening new dialogue between scholars in Japan and North America as we rethink the historical and contemporary significance of such ongoing questions as the meaning of the American occupation both inside and outside of Japan, the shifting semiotics of “literature” and “politics,” and the origins of what would become crucial ideological weapons of the cultural Cold War.

The volume consists of three interrelated sections: “Foregrounding the Cold War,” “Structures of Concealment: ‘Cultural Anxieties,’” and “Continuity and Discontinuity: Subjective Rupture and Dislocation.” One way or another, the essays address the process through which new “Japan” was created in the postwar present, which signified an attempt to criticize and reevaluate the past. Examining postwar discourse from various angles, the essays highlight the manner in which anxieties of the future were projected onto the construction of the past, which manifest in varying disavowals and structures of concealment.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 208 • Trim: 6½ x 9⅛

978-0-7391-8072-3 • Hardback • May 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-0-7391-8073-0 • Paperback • June 2020 • $47.99 • (£37.00)

978-0-7391-8074-7 • eBook • May 2018 • $45.50 • (£35.00)

Series: New Studies in Modern Japan

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Asian / Japanese, History / Asia / Southeast Asia, Literary Criticism / Asian / General

Author

Atsuko Ueda is associate professor of modern Japanese literature at Princeton University.

Michael K. Bourdaghs is Robert S. Ingersoll Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

Richi Sakakibara is professor of modern Japanese literature at Waseda University.

Hirokazu Toeda is professor of modern Japanese literature at Waseda University.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Atsuko Ueda, Richi Sakakibara, Michael K. Bourdaghs, and Hirokazu Toeda
Part I: Foregrounding the Cold War
Chapter 1: Early Freeze Warning: The Politics and Literature Debate as Cold War Culture, Michael K. Bourdaghs
Chapter 2: The Korean War and Disputed Memories: Kim Dal-su’s Nihon no fuyu and the 1955 System, Ko Youngran, translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs
Chapter 3: Politics and Culture of Fascism, Ann Sherif
Part II: Structures of Concealment: Cultural Anxieties
Chapter 4: Cultural Resentment and Valorization in Postwar Japanese Literary Criticism: Nakamura Mitsuo’s Literary History, Atsuko Ueda
Chapter 5: Small Hopes and a Terror: Katō Shūichi’s and Mori Arimasa’s 1955 Return from France, Doug Slaymaker
Chapter 6: Language and the People: The Amateur Writing Subject in Kindai bungaku, Shin Nihon bungaku, and Shisō no kagaku, Richi Sakakibara, translated by Atsuko Ueda
Part III: Continuity and Discontinuity: Subjective Rupture and Dislocation
Chapter 7: Temporalities of Ruin: Shiina Rinzō and the Subject of Tenkō, Seiji M. Lippit
Chapter 8: Literature at War’s End: The Prosecution of Writers in Bungaku jihyō, James Dorsey
Chapter 9: From the God of Literature to War Criminal: The Media and the Shifting Image of Yokomitsu Riichi from Prewar and Wartime to the Postwar Era, Toeda Hirokazu, translated by Atsuko Ueda

Reviews

This collection of essays by distinguished scholars on both sides of the Pacific is an excellent companion volume to The Politics and Literature Debate in Postwar Japanese Criticism, 1945–52. The provocative essays take up the topic of literary criticism in postwar Japan and open it up to rigorous and multifaceted examination. Japanese literary criticism was intensely argumentative during this period, embroiling writers in debates about political commitment, war responsibility, literary autonomy, and human subjectivity. These debates are discussed and contextualized here in admirably lucid prose. This is essential reading for students and scholars of modern Japan, but is also highly recommended to anyone whose reading and thinking touch on the relation of art and politics in the modern world.
— Ayako Kano, University of Pennsylvania

Literature among the Ruins, 1945–1955 takes up the most vital debates of Japan's immediate postwar period, an era of great hardship that saw profound reflections on literature’s relationship to individual political agency. This collection of critical essays—drawn from leading scholars in both the United States and Japan—illuminates what was at stake then and what remains relevant today. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between culture and power in the twentieth century.
— Edward Mack, University of Washington

This work, together with its companion volume, The Politics and Literature Debate in Postwar Japanese Criticism, 1945–52, fills a substantial lacuna in postwar scholarship on Japan. While the essays collectively address the question of literature, the complex relations literature invariably maintains with history and the political are examined here with remarkable insight. The core notion of ‘literature among the ruins’ helps pave the way for a rethinking of trauma beyond the personal in properly geopolitical terms.
— Richard Calichman, City College of New York