{"product_id":"origins-of-modern-japanese-literature-paperback","title":"Origins of Modern Japanese Literature - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eKojin Karatani\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSince its publication in Japan ten years ago, \u003ci\u003eOrigins of Modern Japanese Literature\u003c\/i\u003e has become a landmark book, playing a pivotal role in defining discussions of modernity in that country. Against a history of relative inattention on the part of Western translators to modern Asian critical theory, this first English publication is sure to have a profound effect on current cultural criticism in the West. It is both the boldest critique of modern Japanese literary history to appear in the post-war era and a major theoretical intervention, which calls into question the idea of modernity that informs Western consciousness. \u003cbr\u003e In a sweeping reinterpretation of nineteenth-and twentieth-century Japanese literature, Karatani Kojin forces a reconsideration of the very assumptions underlying our concepts of modernity. In his analysis, such familiar terms as \u003ci\u003eorigin, modern, literature, \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ethe state\u003c\/i\u003e reveal themselves to be ideological constructs. Karatani weaves many separate strands into an argument that exposes what has been hidden in both Japanese and Western accounts of the development of modern culture. Among these strands are: the \"discovery\" of landscape in painting and literature and its relation to the inwardness of individual consciousness; the similar \"discovery\" in Japanese drama of the naked face as another kind of landscape produced by interiority; the challenge to the dominance of Chinese characters in writing; the emergence of confessional literature as an outgrowth of the repression of sexuality and the body; the conversion of the samurai class to Christianity; the mythologizing of tuberculosis, cancer, and illness in general as a producer of meaning; and the \"discovery\" of \"the child\" as an independent category of human being. \u003cbr\u003e A work that will be important beyond the confines of literary studies, Karatani's analysis challenges basic Western presumptions of theoretical centrality and originality and disturbs the binary opposition of the \"West\" to its so-called \"other.\" \u003ci\u003eOrigins of Modern Japanese Literature \u003c\/i\u003eshould be read by all those with an interest in the development of cultural concepts and in the interrelating factors that have determined modernity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eBack Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eI have hopes that Karatani's book--one of those infrequent moments in which a rare philosophical intelligence rises to the occasion of full national and historical statement--will also have a fundamental impact on literary criticism in the West. . . . For Origins\" has some lessons for us about critical pluralism, in addition to its principal message, which turns on that old and new topic of modernity itself.\"--Fredric Jameson, from the Preface\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKōjin Karatani is Professor of Humanities at Hosei University in Tokyo, Japan. Brett de Bary is Professor of Japanese Literature at Cornell University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 240\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.8 x 8.9 x 5.9 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e May 28, 1993\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53337023807853,"sku":"9780822313236","price":50.67,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1001\/0823\/9213\/files\/bU5la2NnTk12a3IyMzFrd3RFSDMzUT09.webp?v=1778922878","url":"https:\/\/cleanfreaklab.myshopify.com\/products\/origins-of-modern-japanese-literature-paperback","provider":"Clean Freak Lab","version":"1.0","type":"link"}