Teaching Postwar Japanese Fiction
- Editor: Alex Bates
- Pages: 372
- Published: 2023
- ISBN: 9781603295949 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603295932 (Hardcover)
As Japan moved from the devastation of 1945 to the economic security that survived even the boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s, its literature came to embrace new subjects and styles and to reflect on the nation’s changing relationship to other Asian countries and to the West. This volume will help instructors introduce students to novels, short stories, and manga that confront postwar Japanese experiences, including the suffering caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the echoes of Japan’s colonialism and imperialism, new ways of thinking about Japanese identity and about minorities such as the zainichi Koreans, changes in family structures, and environmental disasters. Essays provide context for understanding the particularity of postwar Japanese literature, its place in world literature, and its connections to the Japanese past.
Acknowledgments (ix)
Introduction: Teaching Japanese Postwar Fiction in the English-Language Classroom (1)
Part I: Border Crossings and Japanese Fiction from the Margins
Critical Approaches to “Japanese-Language Literature” (21)
Teaching Cross-Border Literature: Reading Mizumura Minae’s Works (32)
Okinawa in the Modern Japanese Literary Imagination (45)
Teaching Nakagami Kenji’s “The Cape” through Translation (58)
Part II: Gender, Sexuality, Family, and Domestic Life
Gender Studies and Modern Japanese Literature (73)
Teaching Boys Love Comics (87)
The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P in Japanese Literature, Gender Studies, and World Literature Courses (99)
Reading Family in Postwar Japanese Literature (116)
Mishima Yukio, Gender, and the “Japanese Mind” (132)
Japanese Postwar Literature and the Culture of Cooking (143)
Part III: War and Memory
Teaching Japanese War Crimes through Literature (157)
Teaching Black Rain in Hiroshima (169)
The Nagasaki Atomic Bombing and Seirai Yūichi’s “Birds” (184)
Colonial Traces in Postwar Japanese Fiction (197)
Part IV: Nature and Environment
An Environmental Approach to the Works of Ishimure Michiko and Others (215)
First-Person Animal Voices in Tawada Yōko’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear (223)
Teaching Disaster: The Fiction of 3/11 (239)
Part V: Classroom Contexts
The Tragedy before the Blood Commons: Araki Tetsurō, the “Crisis in the Humanity,” and Animated Education (255)
Kawabata Yasunari’s Thousand Cranes in an Online World Literature Course (273)
Murakami Haruki in the Literary Theory Classroom (281)
Oishinbo and Japanese Food Cultures (291)
Teaching Japanese Fiction through Adaptation (304)
Japanese Literature in the Medical and Health Humanities Curriculum: Ariyoshi Sawako’s The Twilight Years (311)
Cultural Synesthesia and Transcending Temporal Identities: Teaching (Mis)reading in Endō Shūsaku’s Silence (322)
Translation Practicum on Kawabata Yasunari’s “Izu no odoriko” (336)
Part VI: Resources (351)
Notes on Contributors (357)
