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The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature
Modern Japan's repressed anxieties, fears and hopes come to the surface in the fantastic. A close analysis of fantasy fiction, film and comics reveals the ambivalence felt by many Japanese towards the success story of the nation in the twentieth century. The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature explores the dark side to Japanese literature and Japanese society. It takes in the nightmarish future depicted in the animated film masterpiece, Akira, and the pastoral dream worlds created by Japan's Nobel Prize winning author Oe Kenzaburo. A wide range of fantasists, many discussed here in English for the first time, form the basis for a ground-breaking analysis of utopias, dystopias, the disturbing relationship between women, sexuality and modernity, and the role of the alien in the fantastic.
Escape from the Wasteland
Lurid depictions of sex and impotence, themes of emperor worship and violence, the use of realism and myth - these characterize the fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo. Napier discovers similarities as well as dissimilarities in the work of two writers of radically different political orientations. Napier places Yukio's and Kenzaburo's fiction in the context of postwar Japanese political and social realities and, in a new preface for the paperback edition, reflects on each writer's position in the tradition of Japanese literature.
Miyazakiworld
The story of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki's life and work, including his significant impact on Japan and the world A thirtieth-century toxic jungle, a bathhouse for tired gods, a red-haired fish girl, and a furry woodland spirit—what do these have in common? They all spring from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest living animators, known worldwide for films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises. Japanese culture and animation scholar Susan Napier explores the life and art of this extraordinary Japanese filmmaker to provide a definitive account of his oeuvre. Napier insightfully illuminates the multiple themes crisscrossing his work, from empowered women to environmental nightmares to utopian dreams, creating an unforgettable portrait of a man whose art challenged Hollywood dominance and ushered in a new chapter of global popular culture.
Ten Nights Dreaming
A murderer discovers his true nature from a talking infant, a samurai is frustrated in his attempts to meditate, and a dying man bestows his hat on a friend in these surrealistic short stories. The dream-like, open-ended tales by the father of Japanese modernist literature offer thought-provoking reflections on fear, death, and loneliness. Their settings range from the Meiji period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the era in which the tales were written, to the prehistoric Age of the Gods; the twelfth-century Kamakura period, in which the samurai class emerged; and the remote future. A scholar of British literature, author Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) was also a composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. The stories of Ten Nights Dreaming, which were originally published as a newspaper serial, constitute milestones of Japanese fantasy. Like Sōseki's other writings, they have had a profound effect on readers, writers, and filmmakers. This edition features an expert new English translation by Matt Treyvaud, who has translated the story "The Cat's Grave" for this work as well.
Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke
With the popularity of Pokemon still far from waning, Japanese animation, known as anime to its fans, has a firm hold on American pop culture. However, anime is much more than children's cartoons. It runs the gamut from historical epics to sci-fi sexual thrillers. Often dismissed as fanciful entertainment, anime is actually quite adept at portraying important social and cultural issues like alienation, gender inequality, and teenage angst. This book investigates the ways that anime presents these issues in an in-depth and sophisticated manner, uncovering the identity conflicts, fears over rapid technological advancement, and other key themes present in much of Japanese animation.
From Impressionism to Anime
What is it about anime that is so appealing to a transnational fan base? Is the American attraction to anime similar to the popularity of previous fads of Japanese culture, like the Japonisants of fin-de-siecle France enamored of Japanese art and architecture, or the American poets in the fifties and sixties who latched onto haiku? Or is this something new, a product of global culture in which ethnic identities carry less weight? This book explores these issues by taking a look at anime fans and the place they occupy, both in terms of subculture in Japan and America, and in relation to Western perceptions of Japan since the late 1800s.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World takes a tour through two parallel narratives, exploring consciousness, the subconscious and identity. A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. This book is science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel. Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy. *ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW*
Miyazakiworld
The story of filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki's life and work, including his significant impact on Japan and the world--"an essential work in anime scholarship." (Angelica Frey, Hyperallergic) A thirtieth-century toxic jungle, a bathhouse for tired gods, a red-haired fish girl, and a furry woodland spirit--what do these have in common? They all spring from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki, one of the greatest living animators, known worldwide for films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises. Japanese culture and animation scholar Susan Napier explores the life and art of this extraordinary Japanese filmmaker to provide a definitive account of his oeuvre. Napier insightfully illuminates the multiple themes crisscrossing his work, from empowered women to environmental nightmares to utopian dreams, creating an unforgettable portrait of a man whose art challenged Hollywood dominance and ushered in a new chapter of global popular culture.
Deadly Dialectics
Although Mishima's main literary ambition was to write philosophical novels in the tradition of Goethe and Thomas Mann, Deadly Dialectics is the first critical study to take this objective seriously: it also provides the first adequate account of Mishima's intellectual background and characteristic modes of thought and it is the first book to show the intimate and integral relation between his thought and his psychology and militant politics - or, more specifically, between his nihilism, his sexuality and his propensity to violence.
To Become a God
Evidence from Shang oracle bones to memorials submitted to Western Han emperors attests to a long-lasting debate in early China over the proper relationship between humans and gods. One pole of the debate saw the human and divine realms as separate and agonistic and encouraged divination to determine the will of the gods and sacrifices to appease and influence them. The opposite pole saw the two realms as related and claimed that humans could achieve divinity and thus control the cosmos. This wide-ranging book reconstructs this debate and places within their contemporary contexts the rival claims concerning the nature of the cosmos and the spirits, the proper demarcation between the human an...
