Contemporary Japanese Literature Research Articles

The European Middle Ages through the prism of Contemporary Japanese Literature: a study of Vinland Saga, Spice & Wolf and l’Éclipse

Abstract Since the past few decades, the European Middle Ages have started to become a recurrent motif in Japan. Either depicted in historical works, appearing in a roundabout way, or even implied through archetypal backgrounds and characters in Medieval Fantasy, it has become a source of inspiration for Japanese authors and screenwriters, even taking a firm root in the video game industry— Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series acting as relevant touchstones. Regarding the field of Literature at large, countless manga are based upon its settings ( Berserk , Akagami no Shirayukihime), as well as several light novels (Slayers, The Record of Lodoss War ) and “pure” literary works—among them, the Akutagawa Prize’s winner in 1998, L'Eclipse by Hirano Keiichirō. Besides offering the elation of exotic stories and re-enchanting our world, this foreign exploration of The Middle Ages creates a new approach of its realities and myths, sometimes reorganizing them to the point of syncretism with Japanese values. Thus, from folktales to civilizations features, those transcultural medieval elements affect the perception of Europe in contemporary Japan. In this article, in order to highlight the interaction between this part of the European culture and Japanese literature, I study three examples of literary works representing The European Middle Ages: the historical manga Vinland Saga (Yukimura Makoto), set during the Vikings Era and using the literary features of the Icelandic sagas; the light novel Spice & Wolf (Hasekura Isuna), a unique tale depicting the medieval merchant world; and the novel L'Eclipse (Hirano Keiichirō), portraying a young Dominican in the fifteenth century thrown into the world of alchemy and metaphysics. I argue that they are not only transcultural works, but that they also offer new perspectives on understanding how European realities and myths are being adapted in Japan.

平成27年度「日本現代文学」における授業の工夫 「となりのトトロ」から「絶歌」まで

平成27年度「日本現代文学」における授業の工夫 「となりのトトロ」から「絶歌」まで

New whines in old skins: the recluse in contemporary Japanese literature

New whines in old skins: the recluse in contemporary Japanese literature

The Study of Contemporary Japanese literature in the United States

The Study of Contemporary Japanese literature in the United States

국제공동연구를 통해 본 일본연구의 가능성 중남미지역의 아시안계 이민문학을 중심으로

Recently it is noticeable that the studies about Japan by Korean universities, research institutions, and academic groups have reduced. This thesis is to find the potentials on studies about Japan based on the approach of the international joint studies on the third space(nation/ continental). Especially, this study is focused on studies of immigration literature by Asians in Latin America and the forums of East Asia and contemporary Japanese literature managed by specialized research institutions. The joint studies placed on the third place can dismantle academic homogeneity in central areas or the main stream and enhance the comprehensive point of view that can be overlooked by individual studies. Also, intensified and segmentalized studies can be developed along with this effort by constructing network among international researchers. For successful international joint studies, it is important to establish academic identity of individual participants and consider glocalism, post-nationalism, and academic ethics. It is meaningful to present the human value in terms of glocalism.

Okinawan Peruvian Poet’s Gender Performativity: On “Diario de la mujer es ponja” by Doris Moromisato

Okinawan Peruvian Poet’s Gender Performativity: On “Diario de la mujer es ponja” by Doris Moromisato Shigeko Mato (bio) Shigeko Mato Waseda University, Tokyo Shigeko Mato Shigeko Mato received her Ph.D in Spanish American literature from the University of New Mexico. She is Associate Porfessor of Latin American Literature and Culture and Spanish Language at School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo. Her articles on contemporary Japanese Peruvian literature and Mexican literature have appeared in Hispanófila, Confluencia, and other journals. She is also the author of Cooptation, Complicity, and Representation: Desire and Limits for Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Mexican Fiction (2010). Endnotes 1. The painting on which Juan Kanashiro Iparraguirre bases his could be one of Utamaro’s many that depict a woman sitting in front of a mirror, either putting white powder to her neck or fixing her hair or makeup (Asano). As in Utamaro’s paintings, in Moromisato’s Diario’s covers, the viewer also sees the woman’s face reflected in the mirror and her long neck from the back. 2. “Esponja” in Spanish (sponge in English) has the connotation of a person who has a great faculty for absorbing information, according to Real Academia Española. Debbie Lee-DiStefano also interprets the meaning of sponge as a woman “capable of soaking up her surroundings, of absorbing any information” (48) 3. Derrida, elaborating on J. L. Austin’s concept of “performative utterances,” delineates that it is the citationality and iterability of every sign (spoken or written) that first “do things” or make it possible for a sign to produce certain effects and actions (by repeating), yet it is also the citationality and iterability that make the effects and actions of a sign unidentifiable, incomprehensible, and invalid within any given context (by altering), “engendering] infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion” (320). Butler, also adapting Austin’s concept of “performative utterances,” applies this notion of citationality and iterability of performativity to her study of the construction of gender and sex. For her more detailed analysis of Austin’s performativity of speech acts, see the introduction of Bulter’s Excitable Speech, in which she examines how “injurious speech” (“hate speech”) functions both as “the deed that [utterance] effects” and “certain effects that are not the same as the speech act itself” (3). 4. Butler states “the question is no longer, How is gender constituted as and through a certain interpretation of sex? (a question that leaves the “matter” of sex untheorized), but rather, Through what regulatory norms is sex itself materialized? And how is it that treating the materiality of sex as a given presupposes and consolidates that normative conditions of its own emergence?” (xviii–xix). 5. Paracelsus (1493–1541 b. in Einsiedeln, Switzerland) was a 16th century physician, alchemist, and botanist who invented new chemical treatments for illnesses and wounds (such as use of laudanum and mercury for syphilis) (Norden). 6. See p. 1–2 of this study. 7. I first found this quote in Carmen Tisnado’s study on four South American short stories with lesbian themes (278) and then examined Butler’s original study. Works Cited Asano, Shugo. Kitagawa Utamaro. Tokyo: Shincho Nippon Bijutsu Bunko, 1997. Google Scholar Balderston, Daniel and José Maristany. “The Lesbian and Gay Novel in Latin America.” The Cambridge Companion to the Latin American Novel. ed. Efraín Kristal. Cambrdige, England: Cambridge UP, 2005. 200–16. Google Scholar Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge Classics, 2006. Google Scholar Butler, Judith. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination.” The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Ed. Henry Abelove, Michèle Anina Barale, and David M. Halperin. New York: Routledge, 1993.307–20. Google Scholar Butler, Judith. “Introduction.” Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” London: Routledge Classics, 2011. xi–xxx. Google Scholar Butler, Judith. “Introduction: On Linguistic Vulnerability.” Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997.1–41. Google Scholar Derrida, Jacques. “Signature Event Context.” Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982.307–30. Google Scholar “Esponja.” Diccionario de la lengua española. 22 ed. 2001. Real Academia Española. Web. 1 Feb. 2012. Google...

Studies on Modern and Contemporary Japanese Literature in Korea: Present and Future -A Comparative Review Based on Statistics from 2005 through 2011-

Studies on Modern and Contemporary Japanese Literature in Korea: Present and Future -A Comparative Review Based on Statistics from 2005 through 2011-

Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value (review)

Reviewed by: Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value Michael K. Bourdaghs (bio) Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value. By Edward Mack. Duke University Press, Durham, 2010. x, 320 pages. $84.95, cloth; $23.95, paper. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of Japanese scholars stopped studying literature and took up instead “literature.” In other words, rather than focusing on the fiction and poetry presumed to belong to the category of literature, they pursued a critical rethinking of the origins of the category itself. Some of these figures (Karatani Kōjin and Kamei Hideo come to mind) were conceptually oriented, tracing the history of the epistemological structures that sculpt our understanding of modern Japanese literature. Others (such as Suzuki Sadami) carried out extensive keyword studies, showing the transformative drift across the decades of categories such as bungaku (literature) and shōsetsu (often translated as “novel,” albeit problematically). Still others—Seki Reiko, for example, and Hirata Yumi—explored the inherently gendered hierarchies that were woven into the framework of literature. Finally, scholars such as Maeda Ai and Kōno Kensuke explored the rise of literature as a material practice in the form of media histories. Edward Mack’s excellent new study makes an important contribution to this last line of scholarship. Building on recent studies of the media history of Japanese literature by scholars such as Peter Kornicki and Jonathan Zwicker, Mack pursues “a historical reconstruction of the sociology of modern Japanese literature” (p. 7), one focused on the side of producers (publishers, [End Page 229] editors, booksellers, and—to a lesser extent—writers) rather than consumers. Looking primarily at the 1920s and 1930s, albeit with glances at earlier and later periods, he is interested in retracing how a sense of literary value was manufactured and then naturalized through the efforts of a relatively small group of persons located in Tokyo. Although Mack does not use this phrase, he argues that the widespread belief at the time that this literary value was autonomous and that it somehow transcended mundane economic concerns was a kind of ideological false consciousness, and he takes up the task of uncovering the blind spots and unconscious choices that sustained it. The opening chapter provides a useful survey of the rise of the publishing industry in Japan from the Edo period through the twentieth century. Along the way, we learn how modern distribution networks arose, how the fixed-price regime was established, and how other crucial aspects of modern book production and retailing took shape. This is followed by a fascinating account of how the Tokyo publishing world not only survived the devastating 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake but emerged from it as an even more dominant center in the industry. What looked at first to be a devastating blow to Tokyo’s cultural centrality—including, symbolically, the loss to fire of the Iwanami Bookstore’s shop sign, with its famous calligraphy in the hand of Natsume Sōseki himself—resulted instead in an increased dominance of the capital city in all branches of publishing, including newspapers, magazines, and books. Having traced the rise of the institutions needed to produce and distribute the material texts that would become literature, Mack turns his attention to the processes by which some of those printed texts were selected to form the core of a modern national canon. The book presents an engaging history of the massive Gendai Nihon bungaku zenshū (Complete works of contemporary Japanese literature) subscription series published by the Kaizōsha house from 1926 to 1931. The series not only saved Kaizōsha from looming bankruptcy, it also launched the one-yen book boom that became one of the definitive cultural phenomena of the era. More important, Mack argues, the series had a “profound effect on modern Japanese literature” because it made “a single image of contemporary literature available to a much larger audience than ever before” and “invested that literature with a prestige it had not previously enjoyed” (p. 93). The real breakthrough was its claim to present a coherent, comprehensive canon of the entirety of modern national literature in Japan. Mack narrates the fascinating history...

Contemporary Japanese Literature in Its Transition Towards the New Postmodern Humanism: Haruki Murakami

Although Japan recorded no specific literary movement in the 1980s, in any classical sense of the term, we may say that today we are witnessing, in terms of our historical sensibility, a condensation of narrative viewpoints upon the present or, in other words, the transposition of the criteria of the present to another time, which is undoubtedly a consequence of the so-called “postmodern” will to reject grand narratives. This study aims to review and complete the inventory of the postmodern characteristics that specialisedliterature has identified in Haruki Murakami’s works, seen from the perspective of what the author of the present paper considers to be the “new postmodern humanism.”

The Meaning of defeat in the World War Ⅱin contemporary Japanese literature

The Meaning of defeat in the World War Ⅱin contemporary Japanese literature

Contemporary Japanese Literature in South Korea

Contemporary Japanese Literature in South Korea

Ambient Literature and the Aesthetics of Calm: Mood Regulation in Contemporary Japanese Fiction

During the "healing boom" of the late 1990s, Japanese media promoted calming products as a way to deal with the stresses of contemporary life. Such emphasis reflected a longer-term cultural shift toward using media as tools of personal mood regulation. In this essay, I explore how contemporary Japanese literature has reconfigured its affective appeals to both compete with and reflect upon this mood-regulating culture, ultimately leading to the emergence of what I call "ambient literature." I then situate this literature within larger debates about infantilization and self-care in contemporary Japanese media.

The ‘Generation of the Burnt-out Ruins’

This paper will present a historical overview of the yakeato generation. After investigating the occurrences of yakeato themes in contemporary Japanese literature a working definition of the yakeato generation is suggested and the paper will answer the question of whether the yakeato generation is still relevant in contemporary Japanese society. This historically pivotal Japanese generation will be analysed with general references to the criticism and literature of Oda Makoto, Nosaka Akiyuki, Ōe Kenzaburō and Ishihara Shintarō.

Postmodern, Feminist and Postcolonial Currents in Contemporary Japanese Culture: A Reading of Murakami Haruki, Yoshimoto Banana, Yoshimoto Takaaki and Karatani Kōjin (review)

Reviewed by: Postmodern, Feminist and Postcolonial Currents in Contemporary Japanese Culture: A Reading of Murakami Haruki, Yoshimoto Banana, Yoshimoto Takaaki and Karatani Kōjin Atsuko Ueda (bio) Postmodern, Feminist and Postcolonial Currents in Contemporary Japanese Culture: A Reading of Murakami Haruki, Yoshimoto Banana, Yoshimoto Takaaki and Karatani Kōjin. By Murakami Fuminobu. Routledge, London, 2005. xiii, 206 pages. £65.00. This book, with its daunting title, prompts us to rethink the status of theory in our academic practices. It provokes us to reconsider theoretical issues that many of us, perhaps naively, thought were behind us. What does it mean for us to "use" theory, as the author claims to do in this book? What determines theory to be "Western" and "non-Western"? What assumptions underlie the question of whether "Euro-American theory" is applicable to non-Western cultures? The theoretical focus of the work is made abundantly clear in the title and the pages of the book. Yet, from the beginning, I was puzzled at a basic level: what constitutes "theory" for the writer? This question arose as I read the introductory chapter entitled "Western Ideologies and Japan." A subsection on "Postmodernism, Feminism, Postcolonialism and Japan" includes a cursory discussion of "Euro-American studies on Japan based on Western postmodern perspectives," as well as a discussion of Euro-American theory in Japan (p. 11). On "Euro-American studies on Japan," the author refers to Postmodernism and Japan, Japanese Encounters with Postmodernity, and Multicultu-ral Japan, along with John W. Treat's work on Yoshimoto Banana and Susan Napier's book The Fantastic and Modern Japanese Literature.1 Murakami then claims the following: "However, other than these studies, as far as I know, no serious attempt has yet been made to use Euro-American theories of postmodernism, feminism and postcolonialism to analyse contemporary Japanese literature in English" (p. 12). I probably do not have to list specific works to contradict such a statement for readers of The Journal of Japanese Studies, nor do I have enough space to list them all. [End Page 251] However, it would be too easy to say that the author did not conduct sufficient archival research or that he is merely ignorant of Japanese literary studies in the Euro-American context. There must be some of that too, but more important is the way such a characterization exposes his view of what constitutes theory. His statement prompts an interesting question: when does theory constitute itself as theory in our academic practices? For the author, it appears that a work needs to overtly claim a certain theoretical framework, such as postcolonial theory or feminism, for it to display its theoretical engagement. Theory, in other words, must be named as such for Murakami to recognize it as theory. Otherwise, I cannot explain the absence of many works on Nakagami Kenji, ōe Kenzaburō, ōba Minako, Yamada Eimi, and others from the list above, nor his outlandish comments, such as "After the early 1980s postmodernism had little impact in Japan" (p. 13), and "other aspects of postmodernism . . . such as its critique of rationalism, power systems, the structure of discrimination, and utopian/dystopian worlds, have not been given sufficient attention in Japanese postmodern literary criticism" (p. 13). It is certainly not valid to claim that Japanese postmodern literary criticism has not paid enough attention to such issues. Consider, for example, the extensive amount of study on the nation-state and its ideology in the 1980s and 1990s, studies that analyzed the nation's oppressive scheme, structures of power, and the modern systems of discrimination. Similarly, Murakami claims that "it was . . . only in 1996 that a round-table discussion . . . entitled 'What is the Postcolonial Thought' took place and introduced Euro-American postcolonial thought to Japan" (p. 15). His discussion precludes much scholarship on Okinawan and Ainu studies, as well as resident Korean studies that were widespread before the round table took place. Clearly lacking from the author's notion of theory is the notion that theory is inscribed in the language we mobilize to analyze texts. It is further inscribed in the gaze of the analyzing subject, which manifests not only in how we approach our objects of inquiry...

Spirit matters: the transcendent in modern Japanese literature

Spirit Matters is a ground-breaking work, the first to explore a broad range of writings on spirituality in contemporary Japanese literature. It draws on a variety of literary works, from enormously popular fiction (Miura Ayako's Hyoten and Shirokari Pass and the novels of Murakami Haruki) to more problematic serious fiction (Oe Kenzaburo's Somersault) to nonfiction meditations on martyrdom and miracles (Sono Ayako's Kiseki) and the dynamics of religious cults (Murakami's interviews with members of Aum Shinrikyo in Underground). The first half of the volume focuses on the work of two women Christian writers, Miura Ayako and Sono Ayako. Combining a decidedly evangelistic bent with the formulas of the popular novel, Miura's 1964 novel Hyoten (Freezing Point) and its sequel are entertaining perennial bestsellers, but also treat spiritual issues - like original sin - that are largely unexplored in modern Japanese literature. Sono's Kiseki (Miracles) and Miura's Shiokari Pass focus on the meaning of self-sacrifice and the miraculous and survey both the paths by which people come to faith and the spiritual doubts that assail them. Perhaps most striking for Western readers, Gabriel reveals how Miura's novel shows the lingering resistance to Christianity and its oppositional nature in Japan, and how in Kiseki Sono considers the kind of spiritual struggles many Japanese Christians experience as they try to reconcile their belief in a minority faith.

Introduction to Focus: Noh Man's Land

Introduction to Focus: floh Man's Land K. Malcolm Richards, Focus Editor Aiaericai HBVlBW We Japanese do not think it strange if a dialogue leaves undefined what is really intended, or even restores it back to the keeping ofthe undefinable. —Martin Heidegger In "A Dialogue on Language," Heidegger stages a scene involving "an Inquirer" and, as it was translated into English in 1971, "a Japanese." This conversation, echoing a format most frequently associated with the dialogues of Plato, takes up a problem involving the translation not only of words, but of concepts between East and West. This dialogue is all the more strange, for, at one level, even if inspired partly by the visit of a Japanese scholar conversant in Heidegger's philosophy, it is a fiction taking place between two speakers, who are, at one and the same time, both voices of Heidegger. (Imagine the aging ex-Nazi philosopher alone in his Freiburg home, enacting this conversation with the help of two sock puppets.) This fictive dialogue necessitates a peculiar friction, a friction caused between the meeting of two cultures and the differences of their respective languages, as well as the resultant frictions produced through a conversation that takes place in German, in Heidegger's own language. Indeed, this meeting within a Western language becomes one of the facets to this strange essay that allows Heidegger to explore a difference within Japanese thought, as embodied in his questioning of the Japanese term iki,- a difference that is threatened by the translation of this concept into the language of Western metaphysics. I wish to counter Heidegger's aestheticization of iki with an aesthetics of Ichi. That is to say, the filmic work created by the director ofIchi the Killer (2001), Takashi Miike, seems to offer a way beyond the simple oppositions presumed by Heidegger's dialogue, oppositions between realism and antirealism , Western and Japanese (or, as Heidegger terms it, EastAsian). To put it briefly, Miike's work offers moments where realism and antirealism coexist, breaking down or, dare I say, deconstructing the opposition between realism and antirealism, and pointing to something lurking beneath the very concept of realism in representation, undoing a tradition ofmimesis, even while providing moments of excess that send some of his viewers toward the exit sign in disgust. One can regurgitate everything Derrida has to say on Kant, mimesis, and vomit, at this point. Still, it would be a mistake to homogenize this quality of Miike's work, giving it a stable identity, for if it manifests itself in one instance as a milklike substance spilling out of Ichi, while forming the kanji character for Ichi (simultaneously the film's title, protagonist's name, and the number "one," which is also the number that Ichi's costume bears), this milklike substance also appears in a more maternal form in Visitor Q (2001) or Gozu (2003), almost real, but not quite as real as real can get. In his refusal of a simple either/or logic, Miike pushes aside questions of realism and antirealism, embracing the fictive qualities of film, as well as how film can, at the same time, inscribe itself both within and without reality. Beyond these concerns of Western aesthetics , Miike's work also destabilizes the domestic Japanese, challenging a notion of the Japanese home that situates his work amongst themes from contemporary Japanese literature and culture. This can be seen not only through his collaboration with Japanese authors, as in his adaptation of RyQ Murakami's Audition (1999), but also in his use of Japanese popular culture, as in his adaptations of manga classics, such as Ichi or MPD Psycho (2000). In his engagement with the contemporary, his work flows into many of the cultural currents the reader will discover in this Focus, from the genre crossing to be found in the work of Haruki Murakami to the wealth of experimental music covered in Improvised Musicfrom Japan. The latter can be witnessed in the soundtrack to Ichi provided by Seiichi Yamamoto of the Boredoms or the dissonant acid-folk music of Kazuki Tomokawa in Izo (2004), while the former can be experienced in Miike's destructuring of the yakuza genre (nowhere more spectacularly...

Yakudoshi: A Critical Age for Japanese Women and Japan

Although these books vary in the complexity of their presentation, each is useful for the scholar examining contemporary Japanese women, literature, politics, and economics. Patricia Morley's The Mountain is Moving: fapanese Women's Lives is the most engaging and useful for the nonspecialist. Morley's perceptions will be used to provide insights into the other books in the course of this review essay. Maria Rosa Henson's Comfort Woman: A Filipina's Story of Prostitution and Slavery Under the Japanese Military is a straightforward, painful account, simply told. Myra H. Strober and Agnes Miling Kaneko Chan compare the family and work configurations of male and female university graduates ten years after commencement in The Road Winds Uphill All the Way: Gender, Work, and Family in the United States and Japan. Finally, Nina Cornyetz's materialist-feminist, psychoanalytic approach in Dangerous Women, Deadly Words: Phallic Fantasy and Modernity in Three Japanese Writers, the most complex of the four books, analyzes a Japanese literary trope, the dangerous woman, in the writings of Izumi Kyoka, Fumiko Enchi, and Kenji Nakagami whose works span the Meiji and Showa eras. Patricia Morley, Professor Emerita in Concordia University's English department, Montreal, Canada, was a founding member of the Simone de

Meeting the Sensei: The Role of the Master in Shirakaba Writers

The early twentieth century Shirakaba ('White Birch') movement's later involvement with prewar Japanese nationalism has hitherto caused especially Western scholars to neglect its major significance. Shirikaba was created by graduates of the aristocratic Gakushuin ('Peers' School') in reaction against the dominant naturalism of contemporary Japanese literature. Though at first seeking ideological and cultural models in Europe, Shirakaba writers soon developed an increasing sense of their own Japaneseness. The first part of this volume chronicles the birth of this literary movement and of its important magazine under the charismatic leadership of Mushanokoji Saneatsu. In the second part the author illuminates the ethos of the movement by analysing the figure of the Sensei (Master) in key Shirakaba texts by Mushanokoji Saneatsu, Nagayo Yoshiro and Kurata Hyakuzo. This volume definitely breaks new ground by seeing the movement as one of the significant episodes in the cultural history of Japan.

Coin Locker Babies

Coin Locker Babies is Ryu Murakami's cult cyperpunk novel. Two babies are left in a Tokyo station coin locker and survive against the odds, but their lives are forever tainted by this inauspicious start. As they grow up, they join the ranks of Toxitown: a district of addicts, freaks and prostitutes. One becomes a bisexual rock star and looks for his mother, while the other one, an athlete, seeks revenge. This savage and stunning story unfolds in a surrealistic whirl of violence. Coin Locker Babies is translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder and published by Pushkin Press 'A cyber-Bildungsroman of playful breadth and uncertain depth' Publishers Weekly 'A fascinating peek into the weirdness of contemporary Japan' Oliver Stone 'Like a cross between a Grimms fairy tale and Katsuhiro Otomo's classic manga comic series Akira... A deliriously ambitious novel... recalls Thomas Pynchon.' Ben Jeffery, Times Literary Supplement A great big pulsating parable . . . wildly undisciplined, occasionally tongue-in-cheek.' Washington Post 'The explosive rhythms of hard rock, the intensity of emotions, and the highly vivid images make . . . Murakami's postmodern novel an exceptionally successful one' World Literature Today Ryu Murakami is the enfant terrible of contemporary Japanese literature. Awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976 for his first book, a novel about a group of young people drowned in sex and drugs, he has gone on to explore with cinematic intensity the themes of violence and technology in contemporary Japanese society. His novels include Coin Locker Babies, Sixty-Nine, Popular Hits of the Showa Era, Audition, In the Miso Soup and From the Fatherland, with Love. Murakami is also a screenwriter and a director; his films include Tokyo Decadence, Audition and Because of You.

Beheaded Emperors and the Absent Figure in Contemporary Japanese Literature

Fukazawa Shichirō's 1960 short story “Furyū mutan” (“The Story of a Dream of Courtly Elegance”) humorously postulates an anarchic popular uprising that culminates in the execution of the Japanese imperial family. A right-wing terrorist attack on the story's publisher not only prompted an end to the depiction of the emperor in fiction but also may have caused the informal ban—still in force—against any overtly critical public discussion of the emperor system (tennō-sei). What distinguished “Furyū mutan” from earlier literary treatments of the emperor is its unique parody of his postwar, postdivine status as emblem of a democratic citizenry and, at the same time, of his cultural duties as principal poet of the nation. Fukazawa's carnivalesque mockery of imperial verse challenges the rhetoric of the emperor's ambiguous role as Japan's foremost symbol and reigning symbolist. The apparent price, however, has been the freedom of Japanese writers to raise such issues ever again.