Scripting Suicide in Japan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cather, Kirsten.

Series:

New Interventions in Japanese Studies

New Interventions in Japanese Studies ; v.5

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Authors, Japanese--Suicidal behavior--20th century.

Authors, Japanese.

Authors, Japanese--Suicidal behavior--21st century.

Suicide and literature--Japan--20th century.

Suicide and literature.

Suicide and literature--Japan--21st century.

Suicide in literature.

Suicide--Social aspects--Japan--20th century.

Suicide.

Suicide--Social aspects--Japan--21st century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (352 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2024.

Summary:

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Japan is a nation saddled with centuries of accumulated stereotypes and loaded assumptions about suicide. Many pronouncements have been made about those who have died by their own hand, without careful attention to the words of the dead themselves. Drawing upon far-ranging creations by famous twentieth- and twenty-first-century Japanese writers and little-known amateurs alike--such as death poems, suicide notes, memorials, suicide maps and manuals, works of literature, photography, film, and manga--Kirsten Cather interrogates how suicide is scripted and to what end. Entering the orbit of suicidal writers and readers with care, she shows that through close readings these works can reveal fundamental beliefs about suicide and, just as crucially, about acts of writing. These are not scripts set in stone but graven images and words nonetheless that serve to mourn the dead, straddling two impulses: to put the dead to rest and to keep them alive forever. These words reach out to us to initiate a dialogue with the dead, one that can reveal why it matters to write into and from the void.

Contents:

Cover

Lilienthal Imprint

Subvention

Series

Title

Copyright

Contents

List of Figures

Note on Names, Romanization, and Translation

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Thoughts at the Precipice

Part One. Mapping Suicide: Jisatsu Meisho, the Poetic Places of Suicide

2. Mount Mihara's Same-Sex Suicides and Flippant Flips

3. Suicide Maps and Manuals

4. Aokigahara Jukai, Sea of Trees

Part Two. Noting Suicide: Isho, the Writings Left Behind

5. A Note to an Old Friend, or Two

6. A Note for Oneself

7. A Note to the Nation

8. Autothanatography, or the Exorbitant Call to Write One's Own Death

Part Three. Mourning in Multimedia

9. Copycat Poets and Suicides

10. Death in Mixed Media

Epilogue: Dialoguing with the Dead

Notes

References

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

ISBN:

9780520400276