Into the Fantastical Spaces of Contemporary Japanese Literature

(Hardback)

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Murakami Haruki, Ogawa Yko, Tawada Yko, Kanai Mieko, Hino Keiz, Murakami Ry, Kawakami Hiromi, Murata Sayaka... These acclaimed authors are united by a shared fascination with fantastical conceptions of space. In highlighting these luminaries of contemporary Japanese literature, Into the Fantastical Spaces of Contemporary Japanese Literature examines the role of extramundane topos from an interdisciplinary approach. As writers navigate fantastical spaces in resistance to the logic of everyday life, they are able to challenge the dualistic norms on the body and mind that typify modern Japanese life. These studies demonstrate the essential role played by fantastical spaces in the development of modern Japanese literature to the present day. Scholars of Japanese studies, literature, and other fields will find this book an excellent resource for teaching and research.

Reviews

If Japanese fiction today is inexorably linked in the minds of readers with the fantasticthe absurd, the ridiculous, the unconscious realthen rising star Mina Qiao and her fellow critics explain why: a national literary imagination is responding to traumas unique to Japan and others common to us all; to traumas both recent and looming. Starting with Murakami Haruki but moving on to younger, female writers such as Ogawa Yko, Murata Sayaka, Kawakami Hiromi and Tawada Yko, the collective project is this: Via close attention to space and time, Fantastical Spaces speaks to how Japanese writers understand the improbable world now itself uncannily unfolding before us.

Author Bio

Mina Qiao is professor of Japanese literature at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.