Escape from the wasteland : romanticism and realism in the fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Escape from the wasteland : romanticism and realism in the fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo
(Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series, 33)
Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University : Distributed by Harvard University Press, 1991
Available at 54 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-244) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In short stories, novellas, and novels, two major postwar Japanese novelists, Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo, have explored the alienated life of twentieth-century Japan with an unsparing eye and at times a savage sense of humour. In this study, Susan Napier demonstrates that each author's vivid and often perverse depictions of sex, impotence, emperor worship, and violence are matched by images of romantic alternative realities which offer characters some escape from the banality of their lives. In the case of early works like Mishima's novella "The Sound of Wolves' or Oe's short story "Prize Stock", the mythic contrast to industrialized society may be objectified in the setting. "Our Era", the pain of modern life and the possibility of an alternative may be implied by the characters' sexual longings. In still others, like Mishima's "Patriotism" and Oe's "Seventeen", overt explorations of characters' political beliefs and actions (or inaction) may appear to offer straightforward political messages.
Napier finds similarities as well as contrasts in the work of two writers of radically different political orientations, and places their fiction in the context of post-war Japanese political realities.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 The lost garden - beginnings of a mythic alternative: festival days - "The sound of Waves"
- repletion and rhythm - "Prize Stock"
- the sacrifice of the innocent writ large - "Pluck the Buds, Shoot the Kids". Part 2 The wasteland of sex: eroticism in postwar literature
- absence and desire - "Confessions of a Mask" and "Our Era"
- from fantasy to reality - "The Locked Room" and "The Swimming Man". Part 3 Cries in the wasteland - sexual violence: sex begets murder - "Thirst for Love" and "Outcries"
- the intellectual takes action - "Madame de Sade" and "The Sexual Human"
- affirmitave visions - "A Personal Matter" and "Patriotism"
- sexuality and the role of women. Part 4 In search of the garden: when you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha - "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion"
- the bitter taste for glory - "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea"
- summer had passed them by -"Our Era"
- apocalypse now - "The Floodwaters have Come unto my Soul". Part 5 Death and the Emperor - the politics of betrayal: the Emperor and postwar Japan
- oh, my Emperor! - "Patriotism" and "Seventeen"
- from irony to madness - "Runway Horses" and "The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away". Part 6 The final quest: you can learn a lot from legends - "The Silent Cry"
- the empty garden - "The Sea of Fertility". Part 7 Mishima, OE, and modern Japan.
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