Refining Nature In Modern Japanese Literature

Author : Nanyan Guo
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 0739181041
Total Pages : 221 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Refining Nature in Modern Japanese Literature written by Nanyan Guo and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-01-23 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the literature of Shiga Naoya, who is highly regarded in modern Japan for his unique style and methods of describing his personal experiences and emotions. Contributing new findings to the field of scholarship on Shiga, this study focuses in particular on Shiga’s nature-inspired writings and discusses how he created some vivid images of nature that became famous and still linger in Japanese people’s minds. Shiga’s remarkable sensitivity toward nature and the influences he received from earlier writers in Japan and abroad is examined. The complexity and depth of his understanding of nature is further revealed in his fascination with the supernatural, which also contributed to the creation of his literary style.

Author : Makoto Ueda
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804711661
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Modern Japanese Poets and the Nature of Literature written by Makoto Ueda and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Stanford University Press classic.

Author : Reiko Abe Auestad
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040106692
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Affect, Emotion and Sensibility in Modern Japanese Literature written by Reiko Abe Auestad and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-29 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes the unique approach of combining cognitive approaches with more established close-reading methods in analysing a selection of Japanese novels and a film. They are by four well-known male authors and a director (Natsume Sôseki, Shiga Naoya, Ôe Kenzaburô, Ibuse Masuji and Imamura Shôhei) and five female authors (Kirino Natsuo, Kawakami Mieko, Murata Sayaka, Tsushima Yûko, and Ishimure Michiko) from the early twentieth century up to the early millennium. It approaches the different artistic strategies that oscillate between emotional immersion and critical reflection. Inspired by new developments in cognitive theory and neuroscience, the book seeks to put a spotlight on the aspects of modern Japanese novels that were not fully appreciated earlier; the eclectic and fluid nature of the novel as a form, and the vital roles played by affects and emotions often complicated under the impact of trauma. Rejuvenating previously established cultural theories through a cognitive and emotional lens (narratology, genre theory, historicism, cultural study, gender theory, and ecocriticism), this book will appeal to students and scholars of modern literature and Japanese literature.

Author : Makoto Ueda
Publisher : Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804709040
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature written by Makoto Ueda and published by Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1976 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Art versus nature, the literary work and the author, the literary work and the reader, structure and style, and the purpose of literature are the main subjects treated in a study of eight leading writers of modern Japan

Author : Michihiro Ama
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438481438
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Awakening of Modern Japanese Fiction written by Michihiro Ama and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Awakening of Modern Japanese Fiction is the first book to treat the literary practices of certain major modern Japanese writers as Buddhist practices, and to read their work as Buddhist literature. Its distinctive contribution is its focus on modern literature and, importantly, modern Buddhism, which Michihiro Ama presents both as existing in continuity with the historical Buddhist tradition and as having unique features of its own. Ama corrects the dominant perception in which the Christian practice of confession has been accepted as the primary informing source of modern Japanese prose literature, arguing instead that the practice has always been a part of Shin Buddhist culture. Focusing on personal fiction, this volume explores the works of literary figures and Buddhist priests who, challenged by the modern development of Japan, turned to Buddhism in a variety of ways and used literature as a vehicle for transforming their sense of selfhood. Writers discussed include Natsume Sōseki, Tayama Katai, Shiga Naoya, Kiyozawa Manshi, and Akegarasu Haya. By bringing Buddhism out of the shadows of early twentieth-century Japanese literature and elucidating its presence in both individual authors' lives and the genre of autobiographical fiction, The Awakening of Modern Japanese Fiction demonstrates a more nuanced understanding of the role of Buddhism in the development of Japanese modernity.

Author : Haruo Shirane
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231152817
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons written by Haruo Shirane and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Elegant representations of nature and the four seasons populate a wide range of Japanese genres and media. In Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shirane shows how, when, and why this practice developed and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings of this imagery. Shirane discusses textual, cultivated, material, performative, and gastronomic representations of nature. He reveals how this kind of 'secondary nature, ' which flourished in Japan's urban environment, fostered and idealized a sense of harmony with the natural world just at the moment when it began to recede from view. Illuminating the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts, Shirane also clarifies the use of natural and seasonal topics as well as the changes in their cultural associations and functions across history, genre, and community over more than a millennium. In this book, the four seasons are revealed to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world."--Back cover.

Author : Tomoko Aoyama
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824864077
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reading Food in Modern Japanese Literature written by Tomoko Aoyama and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literature, like food, is, in Terry Eagleton’s words, "endlessly interpretable," and food, like literature, "looks like an object but is actually a relationship." So how much do we, and should we, read into the way food is represented in literature? Reading Food explores this and other questions in an unusual and fascinating tour of twentieth-century Japanese literature. Tomoko Aoyama analyzes a wide range of diverse writings that focus on food, eating, and cooking and considers how factors such as industrialization, urbanization, nationalism, and gender construction have affected people’s relationships to food, nature, and culture, and to each other. The examples she offers are taken from novels (shosetsu) and other literary texts and include well known writers (such as Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, Hayashi Fumiko, Okamoto Kanoko, Kaiko Takeshi, and Yoshimoto Banana) as well as those who are less widely known (Murai Gensai, Nagatsuka Takashi, Sumii Sue, and Numa Shozo). Food is everywhere in Japanese literature, and early chapters illustrate historical changes and variations in the treatment of food and eating. Examples are drawn from Meiji literary diaries, children’s stories, peasant and proletarian literature, and women’s writing before and after World War II. The author then turns to the theme of cannibalism in serious and popular novels. Key issues include ethical questions about survival, colonization, and cultural identity. The quest for gastronomic gratification is a dominant theme in "gourmet novels." Like cannibalism, the gastronomic journey as a literary theme is deeply implicated with cultural identity. The final chapter deals specifically with contemporary novels by women, some of which celebrate the inclusiveness of eating (and writing), while others grapple with the fear of eating. Such dread or disgust can be seen as a warning against what the complacent "gourmet boom" of the 1980s and 1990s concealed: the dangers of a market economy, environmental destruction, and continuing gender biases. Reading Food in Modern Japanese Literature will tempt any reader with an interest in food, literature, and culture. Moreover, it provides appetizing hints for further savoring, digesting, and incorporating textual food.

Author : Hisaaki Wake
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 149852785X
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ecocriticism in Japan written by Hisaaki Wake and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecocriticism in Japan provides an answer to the question, “What can ecocriticism do when engaging with Japanese literature and culture?” Engaging works ranging from The Tale of Genji to Abe, Ōe, Ishimure, and Miyazaki, this volume examines works Japanese people and culture in terms of nature and environment.

Author : Peter Dale Scott
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1498576672
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Poetry and Terror written by Peter Dale Scott and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-08-15 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study at many levels of Scott’s long poem Coming to Jakarta, a book-length response to a midlife crisis triggered in part by the author’s initial inability to share his knowledge and horror about American involvement in the great Indonesian massacre of 1965. Interviews with Ng supply fuller information about the poem’s discussions of: a) how this psychological trauma led to an explorations of violence in American society and then, after a key recognition, in the poet himself; b) the poem's look at east-west relations through the lens of the yin-yang, spiritual-secular doubleness of the human condition; c) how the process of writing the poem led to the recovery of memories too threatening at first to be retained by his normal presentational self, and d) the mystery of right action, guided by the Bhagavad Gita and the maxim in the Gospel of Thomas that "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.” Led by the interviews to greater self-awareness, Scott then analyses his poem as also an elegy, not just for the dead in Indonesia, but “for the passing of the Sixties era, when so many of us imagined that a Movement might achieve major changes for a better America.” Subsequent chapters develop how human doubleness can lead to an inner tension between the needs of politics and the needs of poetry, and how some poetry can serve as a non-violent higher politics, contributing to the evolution of human culture and thus our “second nature.” The book also reproduces a Scott prose essay, inspired by the poem, on the U.S. involvement in and support for the 1965 massacre. It then discusses how this essay was translated into Indonesian and officially banned by the Indonesian dictatorship, and how ultimately it and the poem helped inspire the ground-breaking films of Josh Oppenheimer that have led to the first official discussions in Indonesia of what happened in 1965.

Author : Nobuko Adachi
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498544851
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ethnic Capital in a Japanese Brazilian Commune written by Nobuko Adachi and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-02-16 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about the power ethnic capital and how it drives both the economics of, and the quest for identity in, a Japanese Brazilian commune. Adachi tells readers what this small diaspora community can teach us about how life “in the trenches” looks to those on the outskirts of the exploding transnational world economy. This book explores the various strategies locals use to compete with others with whom they are linked locally, nationally, and globally. Through the story of Kubo daily life, Adachi offers insights into important aspects of social and linguistic theory, as well as explicating how cross-border relations become more and more intertwined. In a sense, Kubo’s story, with its struggles to maintain its identity—even its survival—in an increasingly globalized world, encapsulates many of the problems now faced by smaller communities around the world, be they diasporic or regionally entrenched, or ethnically, racially, or religiously composed. Adachi explores the motivations for racial and ethnic boundary-making based primarily on values and principles rather than purely physiological features by focusing on Kubo and its marketing of supposedly traditional Japanese cultural values, in spite of the commune being located in the interior of Brazil. To do this she incorporates notions from linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics, including problems of language maintenance, the relationships between language and symbolic power, and the intricacies of language and gender. Doing so helps theorize the tensions between hybridity and purity entailed in the complexities of identity dynamics.