Search

The acceptance of ethical literary criticism in Japan has gone through three stages: initial period, high period and falling period. The main reason for its decline lies in the prevalent misunderstanding in Japanese academia, simply equating ethical literary criticism with Chinese traditional ethical criticism or moral criticism. To dispel misunderstandings and deepen Japanese scholars' understanding of ethical literary criticism, it is necessary to emphasize the interdisciplinary characteristic of ethical literary criticism within the academic community in Japan. Taking into account the characteristics of Japanese literature and the research tradition of Japanese academia, this paper suggests three interdisciplinary approaches: 1) the interdisciplinary path of literature and psychology, which enjoys a broad research base in Japan; 2) the interdisciplinary path of literature and brain science, an area that has not gained substantial research in Japan; 3) the interdisciplinary path of literature and science and technology with significant development prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Disability Studies is the property of Canadian Disability Studies Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Nameless Book (Mumyōzōshi, ca. 1200) is frequently cited as the first work of prose criticism in the Japanese literary tradition, in part due to its author’s sensitive treatment of several vernacular tales (monogatari) composed between the early tenth and late twelfth centuries. The author is generally assumed to be the poet known as Shunzei’s Daughter (ca. 1171–1252), and the text can be seen as part of a larger movement on the part of her father’s Mikohidari House to promote monogatari fiction as essential to poetic training at court. This paper explores possible models the author may have considered in constructing this work, the first of its kind. An analysis of the text’s rhetorical strategies reveals several of its implied objectives, including the promotion of literary women, and the elevation of vernacular fiction itself to the same critical level as the more-esteemed genre of traditional waka poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a set of 9,035 salaryman senryū poems over an eighteen-year period (1990-2007) in order to track salaryman reactions to workplace transition from an organizational behavioralist perspective. Major findings include: (i) the number of submissions and votes for the major poetry competition, Salaryman Senryū, have been falling since 1994, suggesting a decline in shared salaryman mentality; (ii) there has been a shift in the relative importance of broad themes, so that the workplace as a category of senryū poems is of less centrality in 2007 than it was in 1990; (iii) within the workplace category, (negative) interpersonal relations, especially with supervisors, still dominate; and (iv) workstyle is also a strong subtheme, with workers showing more interest in work processes than actual work conditions. The analysis also shows that the years 1996 and 1997 are a watershed where poems shift from a more jocular to strident tone. The overall implication of the study is a potential breach of the social contract between Japanese employers and regular employees, which will require the assiduous application of supportive employment practices (SEP) in order to ensure a high level of employee performance and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article takes a new approach to the study of Natsume Soseki's Bungakuron (Theory of literature, 1907) by examining it in the context of the formation of 'literature' in late-Meiji Japan, with a specific focus on the development of national literary history (kokubungakushi) and rhetoric (bijigaku). The dialogue between Bungakuron and the context in which Soseki published the text is particularly important because it was a time in which the institution of 'literature' was beginning to take form in Japan. My paper examines Bungakuron's contribution to the realm of 'literature' and identifies how Bungakuron functioned as a criticism of how 'literature' was being conceived in Japan. The ultimate goal of my project is thus double: situating Bungakuron within the movement of literary formation and identifying how the text becomes a theory that critiques the trend itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper addresses the problem of literary history as a problem of data comprehensiveness and selection, seeking not to resolve the impossibility of literary historical narrative, but to reframe it through a computational perspective. Our focus is on the Quan Tang shi 全唐詩 (Complete Tang poetry), the massive comprehensive anthology of Tang poetry that was produced at the height of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). The sheer quantity of Tang poetry preserved in the Quan Tang shi (over 50,000 poems and poem fragments) exceeds the human-scale perspectives of close reading. To make sense of the corpus as a whole, we will show how two related forms of distant reading — topic modeling and divergence measures — allow us to reframe and rethink these literary historical questions and provide a new perspective on what it means to read Tang poetry. Examines how topic modeling and divergence measures can be used to examine literary historical questions regarding Tang poetry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meisho (...) refers to places in Japan far-famed for their literary references, originating from kagaku terminology (...) and now indicating a diverse range of places of interest. Meisho can be a subject of interdisciplinary studies involving celebrity study, mobility humanities, ethical literary criticism, and cultural memory study. Meisho in celebrity study can be regarded as an artificial fame that humans tag a place through media. Mobility decides the efficiency of how a place evolves from a relatively immobile constant into a mobile variable, namely meisho. Ethical literary criticism motivates humans to ethically select a place as meisho through literature. Literature derives from brain text, "memory stored in the human brain." In this sense, literature can be viewed as shared brain memory that is outsourced from brain text to written and electronic text. When a place is referred to constantly in literature, cultural memories for this place come into being and hence make this place meisho. This article aims to figure out the mechanism behind meisho by studying the ukiyoe series Tokaido Gojusan-tsugi as visual literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will examine the way in which Koreans are mobilized in Kitano Takeshi's Outrage series and how their representations may be related to Kitano's vision of Japan. In order to do so, the article first places the Outrage trilogy in the context of Kitano's other films as well as previous representations of Koreans in Japanese yakuza (gangster) films in general. The article then continues to explore the role of Korean characters in Outrage Beyond and Coda and discusses the way in which the seemingly progressive transnational bonding and Korean representation may confirm Kitano's romantic nationalism or what I would call 'melancholic nationalism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike the arts of nō, kabuki and bunraku, Japan's comic storytelling art rakugo rarely gets termed 'literature'. This has to do with the fact that it's an oral tradition without formal scripts and because intellectuals have long viewed rakugo as uncouth, unsophisticated variety entertainment. Still, some label rakugo a 'classical' art. Truth be told, many still are not sure what to make of rakugo, so it's often relegated to the margins. But rakugo is many things, literature included. The art is intimately linked to conventional written literature, both early modern and modern. Yet some become alarmed or offended at the suggestion that rakugo is literature. This is strange considering that rakugo makes up an immense body of work and serves as an extraordinary vessel for a good deal that has otherwise vanished with history--adages, customs, jokes, home remedies, poems, prejudices, profanity, recipes, songs, stories, wisdom, words and more. This article aims to challenge misguided perceptions about rakugo and how Japanese literature should be defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the turn of the twentieth century, a series of government policies established public hospitals and regulated the quarantine of patients diagnosed with Hansen’s disease (leprosy). Soon after the first public facilities began receiving patients in 1909, residents of the facilities formed literary coteries and began to write a genre that became popularly referred to as ‘leprosy literature’ up until the 1940s. The genre includes poetry, essays, diaries, short fiction, literary criticism, and children’s work. Focusing on output from the Nagashima Aisei-en hospital, this article offers readings of a sample of children’s work written in the context of thetsuzurikataeducational movement, examining writings by both healthy children with institutionalized parents and children diagnosed with Hansen’s disease. It explores the disruption to the biological family and the ways in which an ideology of familialism at Aisei-en created the institutional family. It then highlights the approaches taken by children to negotiate this ideology so as to create ties to both their biological and institutional families. Tracing the categories of the infected and not-yet-infected child, the article underscores the ways in which children understood their isolation experience and the concept of family within the hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Due to the application of Euro-centered methods of interpretation, literary criticism has overlooked key social aspects that are characteristic of Japanese literature. Among these much-neglected characteristics one can include the paired concepts tatemae and honne. By incorporating those concepts into a reading of Japanese texts, the reader can discover social issues previously unseen. Banana Yosimoto's novel Kitchen is used to illustrate the different interactions of tatemae and honne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the reception of the works of Emily Dickinson in Japan. It talks about the history of study of Dickinson's work in Japan. It discusses how the works of Dickinson been introduced in Japan by Mabel Loomis Todd the editor of her works. It also discusses the translation of the works of Dickinson.

The corpus of haikai (haiku) poetic material produced from the early until the latter part of the nineteenth century in Japan has been largely dismissed as unliterary since Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). In particular scholars have avoided the study of the poetic practice known as tsukinami haikai, a form of poetic competition. By examining a specific tsukinami haikai text as well as looking at the process of tsukinami haikai competitions, I argue that they had an important pedagogical and cultural value. The poets who composed poems for tsukinami haikai competitions gained the education necessary to read Masaoka Shiki's arguments in favor of a 'literary poetry'. In addition the vocabulary that they learned from tsukinami haikai was 'universal' and thus transcended local identities. Tsukinami haikai is important for understanding the cultural history of nineteenth century Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entertainment-education programming represents a promising media strategy in development communication that can increase audiences' knowledge about social issues, create favorable attitudes, and change their overt behaviors on such topics as family planning, gender equality, and child development. This article draws upon the fields of development and organizational communication, psychology, and literary criticism to analyze the audience success of a Japanese television soap opera Oshin, arguing that incorporation of strategically ambiguous messages and cultural archetypes can help broaden the cultural appeal of entertainment-education messages. Caveats on the incorporation of these concepts in entertainment-education programming are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on Otaku Sanctuaries in Tokyo, Japan. Topics discussed include emerging bookstores in 1980s including material objects like postcards, magazines and illustration books; industrialization of female fanzines and Otaku Sanctuaries, and feminine space in sanctuaries like K-books, Mandarake and KAQ shops.

The article discusses typologies of manga such as Material Conditions and Semiotic Affordances, Topics discussed include several elements uses in manga such as impact lines, pictograms and sound words; Natsume Fusanosuke conception on Manga, and use of shape-metaphors and Picture-writing Symbols in Manga.

The article presents information on aspects of Manga in different Media in the 1950-60. Topics discussed include differences between traditional format digital comics and scrolling format webtoons, manga narrative in visual and graphic style of comics, and differences between rental manga and mainstream magazines.