HEAM 345 Saito, Detective Fiction & Rise o.t. Japanese Novel / Satoru Saito.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Saito, Satoru, author.

Series:

Harvard East Asian Monographs ; 345.

Harvard East Asian Monographs ; 345

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Detective and mystery stories, Japanese--History and criticism.

Detective and mystery stories, Japanese.

Japanese fiction--Western influences.

Japanese fiction.

Japanese fiction--Meiji period, 1868-1912--History and criticism.

Japanese fiction--Taisho period, 1912-1926--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 308 pages )

Distribution:

Leiden; Boston : BRILL, 2012.

Place of Publication:

Boston : Harvard University Asia Center, 2012.

Summary:

In Detective Fiction and the Rise of the Japanese Novel, Satoru Saito sheds light on the deep structural and conceptual similarities between detective fiction and the novel in prewar Japan. Arguing that the interactions between the two genres were not marginal occurrences but instead critical moments of literary engagement, Saito demonstrates how detective fiction provided Japanese authors with the necessary frameworks through which to examine and critique the nature and implications of Japan's literary formations and its modernizing society.Through a series of close readings of literary texts by canonical writers of Japanese literature and detective fiction, including Tsubouchi Shoyo, Natsume Soseki, Shimazaki Toson, Sato Haruo, Kuroiwa Ruiko, and Edogawa Ranpo, Saito explores how the detective story functioned to mediate the tenuous relationships between literature and society as well as between subject and authority that made literary texts significant as political acts. By foregrounding the often implicit and contradictory strategies of literary texts--choice of narrative forms, symbolic mappings, and intertextual evocations among others--this study examines in detail the intricate interactions between detective fiction and the novel that shaped the development of modern Japanese literature.

Contents:

Preliminary Material

Introduction

The Novel's Other: Detective Fiction and the Literary Project of Tsubouchi Shōyō

Allegories of Detective Fiction: Kuroiwa Ruikō and the Refashioning of a Meiji Subject

Of Crimes and Punishments: The Tribulations of Meiji Students in the Writings of Japanese Naturalism

Mysteries of the Modern Subject: The Detective and the Detective Fiction Framework in the Writings of Natsume Sōseki

Rhetoric of Disavowal: "Secrets and Liberation" and the Specters of the West

Detecting the Unconscious: Edogawa Ranpo and the Emergence of the Japanese Detective

The Detective, the Masses, and the State

Works Cited

Index

Harvard East Asian Monographs.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [285]-293) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-68417-521-6

OCLC:

1132226882

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9781684175215 DOI