Novel Japan : spaces of nationhood in early Meiji narrative, 1870-88
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Novel Japan : spaces of nationhood in early Meiji narrative, 1870-88
(Michigan monograph series in Japanese studies, no. 48)
Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2003
Available at 20 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
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-285) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Novel Japan interrogates the mechanisms by which literary narrative was transformed into national discourse in early Meiji Japan. By elucidating the interplay between popular fiction and its political and economic contexts, Mertz shows how ideas of nationhood were often the incidental result of conflicting projects of modernization and literary representation. To illustrate these mechanisms, the author explores cultural phenomena such as crime trial reportage, steamboat tourism, the market for overseas fashions, peasant uprisings, images of crowds, changing expressions of social mobility, and other topics rarely brought into discussions of literary history. For instance, crime trial fiction prompted readers to consider the fate of the nation as an extension of the politics of the courtroom. Images of women were used to allegorically represent the nation itself, suffering at the hands of corrupt government, yet comprising a potent force of political righteousness.
In the final chapters, Mertz examines the relations of these early Meiji works to the canon of modern Japanese literature, demonstrating the self-concealing nature of literary history, and questioning the role of the west as Japan's model for modernity.
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