Out of the alleyway : Nakagami Kenji and the poetics of outcaste fiction / Eve Zimmerman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zimmerman, Eve, author.

Series:

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 290.

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 290

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nakagami, Kenji--Criticism and interpretation.

Nakagami, Kenji.

Buraku people in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London : Harvard University Asia Center, [2007]

Summary:

The writer Nakagami Kenji (1946-1992) rose to fame in the mid-1970s for his vivid stories about a clan scarred by violence and poverty on the underside of the Japanese economic miracle. Drawing upon the lives, experiences, and languages of the burakumin, the outcaste communities long discriminated against in Japanese society as a defiled underclass, Nakagami's works of fiction and nonfiction record with vitality and violence the realities--actual and imagined--of buraku culture.In this critical study of Nakagami's life and oeuvre, Eve Zimmerman delves into the writer's literary world, exploring the genres, forms, and themes with which Nakagami worked and experimented. These chapters trace the biographical thread running through his works while foregrounding such diverse facets of his writing as his interest in the modern possibilities of traditional myths and forms of storytelling, his deployment of shocking tropes and images, and his crafting of a unique poetic language.By bringing to the fore the literary urgency and social engagement that informed all aspects of Nakagami's creative and intellectual production, from his works of prose and poetry to his criticism, this book argues eloquently and effectively for us to appreciate Nakagami as a distinctive and relevant voice in modern Japanese literature.

Contents:

Roots and branches

Icarus descending: expendable males and the poetry of Nakagami Kenji

Brother-sister love and the creation of Akiyuki

Knowing pleasures: Sennen no yuraku, a tale for our times

A language of Kumano

Violent histories: the snake and the shaman.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-68417-459-7

OCLC:

654458471

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9781684174591 DOI