What is "literature?" The answer to this question may seem self-evident to us now. However, the production of literature as a category was in fact a very complex historical process that engaged with varying forces of modernity. Concealment of Politics, Politics of Concealment illuminates the large picture of intellectual, political, and literary culture of 1880s Japan and offers a paradigm-shattering discussion of the creation of literature as a cultural category. Literature emerged out of ongoing negotiations with modernizing and globalizing impulses that governed Meiji Japan...

This collection features works by Japanese intellectuals written in the immediate postwar period. These writings--many appearing in English for the first time--offer explorations into the social, political, and philosophical debates among Japanese literary elites that shaped the country's literary culture in the aftermath of defeat.

This collection examines literary criticism in postwar Japan. The contributors analyze the debates that occurred among Japanese intellectuals and highlight the various ideological forces that shaped the country's postwar trajectory.