Redacted : the archives of censorship in transwar Japan

Bibliographic Information

Redacted : the archives of censorship in transwar Japan

Jonathan E. Abel

(Studies of the East Asian Institute)(Asia Pacific modern / Takashi Fujitani, series editor, 11)(A Philip E. Lilienthal book)

University of California Press, c2012

Available at  / 21 libraries

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"A Philip E. Lilienthal book in Asian studies"--Jacket

Includes bibliographical references (p. 309-344) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

At the height of state censorship in Japan, more indexes of banned books circulated, more essays on censorship were published, more works of illicit erotic and proletarian fiction were produced, and more passages were Xed out than at any other moment before or since. As censors construct and maintain their own archives, their acts of suppression yield another archive, filled with documents on, against, and in favor of censorship. The extant archive of the Japanese imperial censor (1923-1945) and the archive of the Occupation censor (1945-1952) stand as tangible reminders of this contradictory function of censors. As censors removed specific genres, topics, and words from circulation, some Japanese writers converted their offensive rants to innocuous fluff after successive encounters with the authorities. But, another coterie of editors, bibliographers, and writers responded to censorship by pushing back, using their encounters with suppression as incitement to rail against the authorities and to appeal to the prurient interests of their readers. This study examines these contradictory relationships between preservation, production, and redaction to shed light on the dark valley attributed to wartime culture and to cast a shadow on the supposedly bright, open space of free postwar discourse. (Winner of the 2010-2011 First Book Award of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University").

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Note on the Translation Introduction: Archiving Censors Part I. Preservation 1. The Censor's Archives and Beyond 2. Indices of Censorship 3. Essaying the Censors Part II. Production 4. Seditious Obscenities 5. Literary Casualties of War Part III. Redaction 6. Epigraphs 7. Redactionary Literature 8. Beyond X 9. Unnaming and the Language of Slaves Coda 10. Redaction Countertime Notes Bibliography Index

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