Empire of texts in motion : Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese transculturations of Japanese literature / Karen Laura Thornber.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thornber, Karen Laura.

Series:

Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series ; 67.

Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Japanese literature--History and criticism.

Japanese literature.

Japanese literature--China--History and criticism.

Japanese literature--Korea--History and criticism.

Japanese literature--Taiwan--History and criticism.

Translating and interpreting.

Intertextuality.

Taiwan.

Korea.

China.

Physical Description:

xii, 591 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Asia Center : Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2009.

Summary:

By the turn of the twentieth century, Japan's military and economic successes made it the dominant power in East Asia, drawing hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese students to the metropole and sending thousands of Japanese to other parts of East Asia. The constant movement of peoples, ideas, and texts in the Japanese empire created numerous literary contact nebulae, fluid spaces of diminished hierarchies where writers grapple with and transculturate one another's creative output. Drawing extensively on vernacular sources in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, this book analyzes the most active of these contact nebulae: semicolonial Chinese, occupied Manchurian, and colonial Korean and Taiwanese transculturations of Japanese literature. It explores how colonial and semicolonial writers discussed, adapted, translated, and recast thousands of Japanese creative works, both affirming and challenging Japan's cultural authority. Such efforts not only blurred distinctions among resistance, acquiescence, and collaboration but also shattered cultural and national barriers central to the discourse of empire. In this context, twentieth-century East Asian literatures can no longer be understood in isolation from one another, linked only by their encounters with the West, but instead must be seen in constant interaction throughout the Japanese empire and beyond.

Contents:

Introduction: Empire, Transculturation, and Literary Contact Nebulae 1

Situating Literary Contact Nebulae in the Japanese Empire 11

Empire of Texts in Motion 23

1 Travel, Readerly Contact, and Writerly Contact in the Japanese Empire 28

Travel and Contact in the Metropole 34

Travel, Readerly Contact, and Writerly Contact in China, Occupied Manchuria, Korea, and Taiwan 68

Part I Interpretive and Interlingual Transculturation 83

2 Transcultural Literary Criticism in the Japanese Empire 91

Trajectories of Discourse on Japanese Literature 100

Japan as Launching Pad 104

Leaping among Texts and Cultures 107

Calculating Debt 115

Negotiating with Japanese Literary Criticism 119

3 Multiple Vectors and Early Interlingual Transculturations of Japanese Literature 127

Adapting and Translating Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Literatures in the Japanese Empire 131

Intra-Empire Adaptations and Translations of Japanese Literature 137

Early Trajectories of (Semi)colonial Adaptation and Translation, 1895-1919 141

Confronting Contempt and Probing Difference 147

4 From Cultural Innovation to Total War 172

Trajectories of Adaptation and Translation, 1919-1945 173

Prewar Translation 180

Translating the War 187

Part II Intertextual Transculturation 209

5 Intertextuality, Empire, and East Asia 213

Passove Intertextuality 215

Dynamic Intertextuality 218

The Case of East Asia: An Overview 238

6 Spotlight on Suffering 251

Redefining Suffering of Unknown Origins: Spotlight on Despair 254

Redefining Suffering Spawned by Lethargy: Spotlight on Poverty 260

Redefining Suffering Brought on by Internecine Corruption 270

Redefining Suffering from Internecine Corruption and Foreign Aggression 282

7 Reconceptualizing Relationships: Individuals, Families, Nations 291

Among Strangers 294

Families and Societies 306

The Individual and the Nation 314

Perspectives on Relationships Transcending Nations 321

8 Questions of Agency: Raising Responsibility, Parodying Persistence, and Rethinking Reform 331

Challenging Fate, Raising Responsibility 333

Parodying Persistence 342

Rethinking Individual, Social, and National Reform 361.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0674036255

9780674036253

OCLC:

316038266