A Tokyo anthology : literature from Japan's modern metropolis, 1850-1920 / edited by Sumie Jones and Charles Shiro Inouye ; advisory board, Howard Hibbett, Shinji Nobuhiro.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Jones, Sumie, editor.

Inouye, Charles Shirō, editor.

Hibbett, Howard, contributor.

Nobuhiro, Shinji, contributor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Japanese literature--Meiji period, 1868-1912--Translations into English.

Japanese literature.

Japanese literature--Taishō period, 1912-1926--Translations into English.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (530 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Honolulu, [Hawaii] : University of Hawaii Press, 2017.

Summary:

The city of Tokyo, renamed after the Meiji Restoration, developed an urban culture that was a dynamic integration of Edo’s highly developed traditions and Meiji renovations, some of which reflected the influence of Western culture. This wide-ranging anthology—including fictional and dramatic works, essays, newspaper articles, political manifestos, and cartoons—tells the story of how the city’s literature and arts grew out of an often chaotic and sometimes paradoxical political environment to move toward a consummate Japanese “modernity.”Tokyo’s downtown audience constituted a market that demanded visuality and spectacle, while the educated uptown favored written, realistic literature. The literary products resulting from these conflicting consumer bases were therefore hybrid entities of old and new technologies. A Tokyo Anthology guides the reader through Japanese literature’s journey from classical to spoken, pictocentric to logocentric, and fantastic to realistic—making the novel the dominant form of modern literature. The volume highlights not only familiar masterpieces but also lesser known examples chosen from the city’s downtown life and counterculture.Imitating the custom of creative artists of the Edo period, scholars from the United States, Canada, England, and Japan have collaborated in order to produce this intriguing sampling of Meiji works in the best possible translations. The editors have sought out the most reliable first editions of texts, also reproducing most of their original illustrations. With few exceptions the translations presented here are the first in the English language. This rich anthology will be welcomed by students and scholars of Japan studies and by a wide general audience interested in Japan’s popular culture, media culture, and literature in translation.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction. THE CONSTRUCTION OF JAPAN’S MODERNITY AND THE GROWTH OF A NEW LIT ER A TURE

Notes for the Reader

I. Responses to the Age of Enlightenment

Things Heard around a Pot of Beef

Catfish, Prostitutes, and Politicians: Satirical Cartoons

Toad Fed Up with Modernity

Monsters! Monsters! Read All about It!

II. Crime and Punishment, Edo and Tokyo

The Bad Girl Prefers Black and Yellow Plaid, performed 1873

Takahashi Oden, Devil Woman

Rat Boy

Wedlock and Electricity

III. The High and Low of Capitalism

Money Is All That Matters in This World

Oppekepe Rap

In Darkest Tokyo

The Jester

IV. Modernity and Individualism

To My Fellow Sisters

The Origins of My Colloquial Style and Confessions of Half a Lifetime

The Impasse of Our Age

V. A Sense of the Real and Unreal

Raw Depiction

Messenger from the Sea

VI. Romance and Eros

Pessimist Poets and Women

The Cuckoo

Tangled Hair

At Yushima Shrine

VII. The City Dreams of the Country

A True View of Kasane Precipice

A Woodcutter Falls in Love

Maidens, Stars, and Dreams

VIII. Interiority and Exteriority

My Grand mother’s Cottage

Hilltop

Short Pieces from Long Spring Days

Rich Boy

Source Texts

Contributors

Permissions

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed March 9, 2017).

ISBN:

0-8248-5591-4

0-8248-5593-0

OCLC:

1224278409