Touching the unreachable : writing, skinship, modern Japan / Fusako Innami,

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Innami, Fusako, 1983- author.

Series:

Michigan monograph series in Japanese studies ; no. 91.

Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies ; number 91

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Japanese literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Japanese literature.

Touch in literature.

Skin in literature.

Popular culture--Japan.

Popular culture.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (253 pages)

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2021.

Summary:

Fusako Innami offers the first comprehensive study of touch and skinship-relationality with the other through the skin-in modern Japanese writing. The concept of the unreachable-that is, the lack of characters' complete ability to touch what they try to reach for-provides a critical intervention on the issue of intimacy. Touch has been philosophically addressed in France, but literature is an effective-or possibly the most productive-venue for exploring touch in Japan, as literary texts depict what the characters may be concerned with but may not necessarily say out loud. Such a moment of capturing the gap between the felt and the said-the interaction between the body and language-can be effectively analyzed by paying attention to layers of verbalization, or indeed translation, by characters' utterances, authors' depictions, and readers' interpretations. Each of the writers discussed in this book-starting with Nobel prize winner Kawabata Yasunari, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Yoshiyuki Junnosuke, and Matsuura Rieko-presents a particular obsession with objects or relationality to the other constructed via the desire for touch. In Touching the Unreachable, phenomenological and psychoanalytical approaches are cross-culturally interrogated in engaging with literary touch to constantly challenge what may seem like the limit of transferability regarding concepts, words, and practices. The book thereby not only bridges cultural gaps beyond geographic and linguistic constraints, but also aims to decentralize a Eurocentric hegemony in its production and use of theories and brings Japanese cultural and literary analyses into further productive and stimulating intellectual dialogues. Through close readings of the authors' treatment of touch, Innami develops a theoretical framework with which to examine intersensorial bodies interacting with objects and the environment through touch.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title

Series Information

Title page

Copyright information

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Notes on Citations and Names

Introduction: Literary Touch to Mediate the Senses

Touch, Embodied, or Fantasized

Translating Sense Experiences into Language in Context

Toward the Unreachable

Chapter 1 Loved Object: The Unreachable

Loved Object

Ruptured Incorporation

Love of the Object and of the Self

Reciprocity in Sleep

Chapter 2 Touch in Plays of Distance, Shadow, Light

The Potentiality of an Unbridgeable Distance

Light and Darkness

Shadows Animated beyond the Surface

The Imagined through Touch

Coda

Chapter 3 Mediated Touch: Membrane, Skin, the "I"

The Membrane that Narrates

The Imaginary Membrane to Mediate the Body and Language

Mediated Construction of the Self

Giving through the Surface

Chapter 4 Renewing Relationship through the Skin

Skinship

Writing Intimate Relationships through Alternative Sensualities

Ambivalent Feelings about Love

The Unsaid Performative

Renewing Relationality

Conclusion: Touching through Language

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 209-226) and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

0-472-90587-2

0-472-12930-9

OCLC:

1263873133