‘Overcoming Modernity’ in Kenji Miyazawa

Abstract

This chapter uses the terms 'modernity' and 'modernism' primarily to refer to 'Western modernity' and 'Western modernism'. It discusses, considering modernism, the cultural and artistic movement considered to have arisen in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to be a kind of reaction against modernity. Reflecting the negative aspects of modernity, (Western) modernism contains many elements of modernity that often give the reader excruciatingly frustrating sensations of alienation, absurdity, disruption, incoherence, fragmentation, violence, and destruction, feelings expressed particularly in works employing imagism, cubism, fauvism, futurism, expressionism, magic realism, etc. As he lived in modern, Westernized Japan, Kenji Miyazawa (1896- 1933) inevitably was influenced by Western modernity and modernism. While deeply rooted in modernity, Miyazawa dedicated his life and literature to overcome modern problems, and by extension, his own modernism itself. Keywords: 'Western modernism'; Kenji Miyazawa