Enduring Postwar

Kendall Heitzman

Description

Yasuoka Shōtarō (1920–2013) was perfectly situated to become Japan's premier chronicler of the Shōwa period (1926–89). Over fifty years as a writer, Yasuoka produced stories, novels, plays, and essays, as well as monumental histories that connected his own life to those of his ancestors. He was also the only major Japanese writer to live in the American South during the Civil Rights Movement, when he spent most of an academic year at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. In 1977, he translated Alex Haley's Roots into Japanese.

For a long period, Yasuoka was at the center of the Japanese literary establishment, serving on prize committees and winning the major literary prizes of the era: the Akutagawa, the Noma, the Yomiuri, and the Kawabata. But what makes Yasuoka fascinating as a writer is the way that he consciously, deliberately resisted accepted narratives of modern Japanese history through his approach to personal and collective memory.

In Enduring Postwar, the first literary and biographical study of Yasuoka in English, Kendall Heitzman explores the element of memory in Yasuoka's work in the context of his life and evolving understanding of postwar Japan.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Japanese
• Asian

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826522573
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 16 Mo

Extrait

ENDURING POSTWAR
ENDURING POSTWAR YASUOKA SHŌTARŌ AND LITERARY MEMORY IN JAPAN
KENDALL HEITZMAN
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS
NASHVILLE
© 2019 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2019
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Heitzman, Kendall, 1973– author.
Title: Enduring postwar : Yasuoka Shotaro and literary memory in Japan / Kendall Heitzman.
Description: Nashville : Vanderbilt University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019006668 (print) | LCCN 2019011281 (ebook) | ISBN 9780826522573 (ebook) | ISBN 9780826522559 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780826522566 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Yasuoka, Shōtarō, 1920-2013—Criticism and interpretation.
Classification: LCC PL865.A7 (ebook) | LCC PL865.A7 Z65 2019 (print) | DDC 895.6/35—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019006668
To the memory of my grandparents, who lived the war and postwar in very different ways
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Names, Translations, and Citations
Introduction: Yasuoka Shōtarō and the Histories of Shōwa
1. Politics by Other Means: Allegories of Resistance and the Endless War
2. The Generation of Deception: Canon and Archive in the Fiction of the Long Postwar
3. Local History, Global History, and the Triangulation of Memory
4. Long Shots in Tokyo Olympiad
5. Bakumatsu, Postwar, and Memories of Survival
Conclusion
Appendix: Works by Yasuoka Shōtarō in English Translation
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
This book has accrued many debts over many years. John Treat, my PhD advisor at Yale University and someone known to resist facile collective memory himself, supported this project from beginning to end. Over the course of my graduate career, Aaron Gerow provided me with a stellar education in film and a model for working with passion and good cheer. Before Yale, I made the transition from English literature to Japanese literature during a year at Dartmouth College in the Comparative Literature master’s program, a wonderful, fully funded one-year program that more people should know about. There, I studied with Dennis Washburn and Ikuko Watanabe and benefited from the constant kindness of Jim and Yukari Dorsey.
In Japan, I benefited from the advice and hospitality of Kōno Kensuke at Nihon University in Tokyo for the academic years 2007–2009. Two fellow auditors in Professor Kōno’s class, Kameda Hiroshi and Yamanaka Chiharu, and a small crew of graduate students including Kitano Jun’ichi, Komine Hiroyoshi, and Koizumi Kōta provided me with a wealth of information and advice on modern Japanese literature and helped me to explore Yasuoka’s Tokyo haunts. I spent the 2014–2015 academic year at Waseda University, where Toba Kōji provided me with access to three valuable resources: the university library, the larger academic community, and his own endless knowledge of the field. A month at Osaka University in 2016 gave me an opportunity to discuss issues relating to memory and Japanese literature with a terrific group of undergraduate and graduate students, which helped shape this book. I am grateful to Unoda Shōya for the opportunity. In the summer of 2018, I desperately needed a place to work through some rewrites on this volume; I thank my old friend Jordan A. Y. Smith and Jōsai University for library access. Late in the process, I benefited from kind advice from Murakami Katsunao and Kim Jiyoung. Along the way, two teachers who taught me all kinds of things about Japanese language and literature despite the fact that I was not their charge have become great friends: I thank Hanzawa Chiemi and Akizawa Tomotarō, whom I first met at Middlebury and the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies (IUC), respectively, for their longstanding dedication to a wayside student.
Before I knew any of these people, two decades ago, on my very first trip to Japan, I met three members of the English Club of Sukumo City, Kōchi Prefecture, five minutes after I arrived in town. I am so happy that I am still in regular touch with all of them. For my very first education in Japanese language and culture, I am grateful to Matsumoto Miho, Miki Mika, and Fujisaki Aki. I miss Matsumoto Yasuhiro, my self-appointed Japanese father, every day.
I was able to meet with Yasuoka Shōtarō himself in the summer of 2006, at his home in Tokyo. For making this happen, and for generous assistance provided over the years since, I am deeply grateful to his daughter, Prof. Yasuoka Haruko. Yasuoka Shōtarō’s cousin, Yasuoka Fumi, allowed me to visit her at the Yasuoka ancestral estate in Kōchi-ken, the o-shita , now designated as an Important Cultural Property. More recently, her son Yasuoka Masatoshi has welcomed me to the newly restored estate and has been of great help to me in determining the proper pronunciation of family names. Prof. Minoo Adenwalla, emeritus of Lawrence University, provided me with information relating to his friendship with Shōno Junzō during their time at Kenyon College. Tokushima Takayoshi was kind enough to reminisce about his days as Yasuoka’s editor and to send me a copy of the essay he wrote over half a century later about the experience.
I am grateful to the following funding sources: A grant from the Blakemore Freeman Foundation took me to the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama in 2003–2004, and the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale provided me with Summer Travel & Research Grants in the summers of 2004–2007. A Monbukagakushō (MEXT) Fellowship brought me to Nihon University in 2007–2009, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) provided funding that allowed me to conduct further research at Waseda University in 2014–2015. The Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (CAPS), International Programs, and the Old Gold funding, all at the University of Iowa, funded multiple trips to Japan over the past seven years. A faculty research award from the Japan Foundation’s Institutional Project Support (IPS) 2016–2019 grant to the University of Iowa gave me funding at a key point in the project.
During the Great Recession, I taught at three liberal arts colleges as I continued to work on this study. Thanks to my colleagues who supported me during those years and made it—if I am allowed to admit this—such a pleasant period of my life: Mariko Kaga, Bardwell Smith, Katie Sparling, and Noboru Tomonari at Carleton College in 2009–2010; Hoyt Long and Michiko Baribeau at Bard College in 2010–2011; and Satoko Suzuki, Christopher Scott, Ritsuko Narita, and Frederik Green at Macalester College in 2011–2012.
Colleagues at the University of Iowa who have helped me in one way or another over the years are certainly too numerous to name, but I want to thank those who have devoted significant time to mentoring me, perhaps without even realizing it: Russ Ganim, Katina Lillios, Philip Lutgendorf, Scott Schnell, Fred Smith, and Stephen Vlastos. I thank my colleagues in the Japanese Program, Yumiko Nishi and Kendra Strand, for their good company and extraordinary collegiality. Thanks as well to my current and former colleagues who have read or discussed portions of this project: Amber Brian, Corey Creekmur, Melissa Curley, Roxanna Curto, Jennifer Feeley, Denise Filios, Brian Gollnick, Lisa Heineman, Jiyeon Kang, and Ana Rodríguez-Rodríguez. Luis Martín-Estudillo channeled my sensibilities and suggested the title for this book in its entirety. During my time at Iowa, I have benefited from the support of two of the great librarians in the field, Chiaki Sakai and Tsuyoshi Harada. My co-PI on the Japan Foundation grant and dear friend Morten Schlütter has been there for me and my family in ways large and small.
One of the pleasures of the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies is getting to know people in other fields studying Japanese for various reasons: Rebecca Nickerson, Gene Park, Lorraine Plourde, Sam Porter, Jamie Ravetz, and David Wolitz have all shaped my broader understanding of Japan. During my first extended research period in Tokyo, I got to know a group of scholars who have been there for me over the years, as friends and as sounding boards: Susan Furukawa, Nick Kapur, Kari Shepherdson-Scott, Ben Uchiyama, and Kirsten Ziomek. Without the willingness of these two groups of intellectuals to work long evenings and occasionally through the night, the discipline of karaoke studies would not be the rich, burgeoning field of inquiry it is today. Thanks as well to those who over the years have shared their knowledge and advice, practical and theoretical, with someone a stage or two behind them: Charles Exley, Sarah Frederick, Alisa Freedman, Joe Hankins, Kyle Ikeda, Anne McKnight, Steve Ridgely, Colin S. Smith, and, really, the field as a whole. Finally, I was always fortunate to be surrounded by smart, thoughtful people who had an effect on my thinking at every school I attended, researched at, or taught at; I fear that if I try to name them all there will be no end and too many inadvertent omissions, so a simple thank you to all of my cohorts along the way.
At Vanderbilt University Press, this project first caught the eye of Michael Ames; I am in his debt. Zack Gresham and Joell Smith-Borne cared immensely about details on this project. For assistance with many of the images in this book, I am grateful to the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Literature and especially staff member Saitō Yasuko. I am honored to use with permission Tamura Yoshiya’s famous lettering of Yasuoka Shōt