Playing in the shadows : fictions of race and blackness in postwar Japanese literature / Will Bridges.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bridges, Will (Screenwriter), author.

Contributor:

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Series:

Michigan monograph series in Japanese studies ; number 88.

Michigan monograph series in Japanese studies ; number 88

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Japanese literature--Shōwa period, 1926-1989--History and criticism.

Japanese literature.

Race in literature--20th century.

Race in literature.

Black people in literature--20th century.

Black people in literature.

Ethnicity in literature--20th century.

Ethnicity in literature.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (282 pages : illustrations).

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2020.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Playing in the Shadows explores the body of literature arising from post-World War II Japanese authors' robust cultural exchanges with African Americans and African Americana. Rather than solely focusing on representations of African Americans in Japanese literature, this manuscript argues that the black characters who rise to the textual surface are just the tip of the signifying iceberg. Beneath those representations -- or, as Professor Bridges argues, even in the absence of overt representations of black characters, there runs a rich history of Afro-Japanese literary and cultural exchange, as well as a history characterized by cross-cultural-pollination and creative experimentation that spans the Pacific. By tracing how blackness is written in and into Japanese literature, this book argues that fictions of race provide visions of the way that postwar Japanese authors reimagine the ascription of race to bodies: in bodies of literature, the body politic, or the human body itself.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Unspeakable Things Unspoken: Moments of Silence, Racial Preoccupation, and the Hauntology of Blackness in the Literature of Occupied Japan p. 29

Chapter 2 In the Beginning: Oe Kenzaburo and the Creative Nonfiction of Blackness p. 65

Chapter 3 Of Passing Significance: Pronominal Politics, Nakagami Kenji, and the Fiction of Burakuness p. 97

Chapter 4 Genre Trouble: Breaking the Law of Genre and Literary Blackness in the Long 1970s p. 137

Chapter 5 Japanese Literature in the Age of Hip Hop: A Mic Check p. 181.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-282)

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472126521

0472126520

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.