Modernism and Japanese Culture

An in-depth and comprehensive account of the complex history of Japanese modernism from the mid-19th century "opening to the West" until the 21st century globalized world of "postmodernism." Its concept of modernism encompasses not just the aesthetic avant-garde but a wide spectrum of social, political and cultural phenomena.

ROY STARRS teaches Japanese and Asian Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He has published widely on Japanese literature, art and culture, including books on Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata and Naoya Shiga. He has also edited three books on Japanese and Asian nationalism and globalization. His edited book, Politics and Religion in Modern Japan: Red Sun, White Lotus, is forthcoming from Palgrave in 2011.

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Modernity and Modernism in a Japanese Context
PART I: CONSTRUCTING ‘MODERNITY’ AND ‘TRADITION’: MODERNISM AND ANTI-MODERNISM IN MEIJI JAPAN, 1868-1912
Constructing Meiji Modernity
The Anti-Modernist Backlash: Constructing Meiji Tradition
The Novel as Modernist Medium: Modernity and Anti-Modernity in Meiji Fiction
PART II: HIGH MODERNISM AND THE FASCIST BACKLASH, 1912-1945
The Japanese Modernist Generation, 1912-1931
The Historical Context of Japanese Modernism
The Legacy of Japonisme in Japan Itself
Kawabata as Modernist and Anti-modernist
Overview
Crystal Fan¬tasies: Kawabata and the Modern Condition
Snow Country: Kawabata and the Overcoming of Modernity
PART III: THE RIVAL MODERNISMS OF POSTWAR JAPAN, 1945-1970
Modernist Missionaries: The Americans in Japan, 1945-1952
Japanese Responses to American Missionary Modernism
The Occupation in Fiction
French as an Alternative to American Modernism
Oe Kenzaburo’s ‘Ambiguous’ Utopianism
Responses from the Right: The Empire Strikes Back
The Reactionary Modernism of Mishima Yukio
PART IV: EMPTY AND MARVELLOUS: JAPAN IN THE ‘POSTMODERN AGE’, 1970-2010
Defining the ‘Postmodern Condition’
‘Postmodernity’ in Japan
National Culture and Identity in a ‘Postmodern’ Age
A Goethean Conclusion
Afterword: Japanese Modernism Today