This book examines the development of Japanese literature depicting the native place ("furusato") from the mid-Meiji period through the late 1930s as a way of articulating the uprootedness and sense of loss many experienced as Japan modernized. The 1890s witnessed the appearance of fictional works describing a city dweller who returns to his native place, where he reflects on the evils of urban life and the idyllic past of his childhood home. The book concentrates on four authors who typify this trend: Kunikida Doppo, Shimazaki T'son, Sat' Haruo, and Shiga Naoya.
All four writers may be...
This book examines the development of Japanese literature depicting the native place ("furusato") from the mid-Meiji period through the late 1930s as...
When he died from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-one, Kajii Motojiro had written only twenty short stories. Yet his life and work, it is argued here, sheds light on a significant moment in Japanese history and, ultimately, adds to our understanding of how modern Japanese identity developed. By the time Kajii began to write in the mid-1920s there was heated debate among his peers over "legitimate" forms of literary expression: Japanese Romantics questioned the value of a western-inspired version of modernity; others were influenced by Marxist proletarian literature or modernist...
When he died from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-one, Kajii Motojiro had written only twenty short stories. Yet his life and work, it is argued ...
