Interview with Sally Suzuki about Genres and Origins of the Shosetsu

This just in from Beholdmyswarthyface:

Neojaponisme's interview with BMSF co-founder and media director Sally Suzuki is now up. To read it, click here.

Mother Discovers Link to BMSF Encyclopedia

This just in from Mother:

I recently noticed that Tokyo University has posted an online link to your Beholdmyswarthyface Online Encyclopedia of Modern Japan. To see the link, click here, then go to the リンク集. I'm expecting that this will bring in more viewers/contributors.

Mother Discovers Google Books

This just in from Mother:

Dear son,

God bless Google Books (and UC Press E-Books). Together they've saved me literally hundreds of dollars over the last year or so, as I no longer have to make the 25-mile commute to the city just to the check out a few needed books from the university library. Though most of Google Book's collection is  still available only for "limited preview,"  I'm constantly amazed at how much of what I'm looking for has been made public. Just imagine how great it would be if they quit worrying about those damned copyright laws and put everything online. Imagine how smart and informed citizens would be. Governments would be overthrown! Mainstream media would lose its grip on the flow of info! The profit-driven university system would be destroyed! ... But alas, I digress... 

At any rate, here are some of the recent findings that have saved me hundreds in gas fees:

1. Suzuki Sadami's "Rewriting the Literary History of Japanese Modernism" 

2. J. Thomas Rimer's "Hegel in Tokyo: Ernest Fenollosa and His 1892 Lecture on the Truth of Art"

3. Kevin Doak on the bungei fukko movement from 1932 to 1935, from his Dreams of Difference: the Japanese Romantic School and the Crisis of Modernity

4. Edward Fowler's The Rhetoric of Confession (in its entirety!) on UCE Books

5. Kato Shuichi's A Sheep's Song (in its entirety!) on UCE Books

6. The Autobiography of Osugi Sakae (in its entirety!) 

7. David James Fisher's Romain Rolland and the Politics of Intellectual Engagement.

8. Andrew E. Barshay, State and Intellectual in Imperial Japan

9. Norma Field's From My Grandmother's Bedside

10. Joel Cohen's informative introduction to his recent translation of Soseki's Botchan  

11. These hilighted chapters from Andrew Gordon's Postwar Japan as History

"How Would You Define Japanese Modernism: An Interview with Suzuki Sadami"

Here’s Suzuki Sadami 鈴木貞美 (1947- ) in an interview with Raquel Abi-Samara, addressing the question, What is Japanese modernism? Suzuki traces its origins to the early 17th century, setting himself apart from critics like Karatani Kōjin and Nakamura Mitsuo (one might even throw Donald Keene in there) who see literary modernism as coinciding with historical “modernity,” i.e., Meiji Westernization. Suzuki holds that Japanese modernism should be limited neither to Westernization, nor to the “narrow sense of European modernism,” which is but one stage in its development. Suzuki proposes a re-periodization of the contemporary (gendai) as well, which he sees as beginning not in 1946 in the wake of Japan’s defeat but in 1920 with the advent of mass culture. Periodization of literary history, he notes, need not always coincide with that of cultural history.

In the first half of the interview, Suzuki walks us through some of terms. First, there is modanizumu モダニズム, which entered into common use around 1926. The term is derived from the word modan モダン, which

appeared for the first time in an essay on the “modern girl” movement in England in a women’s magazine 1923, and it quickly came into wide spread use circa 1926. The word was applied to many new styles of art and everyday lifestyles in urban settings, influenced from Europe and America at the time. The word “modan” was used to establish a new and different definition of the modern and to draw a distinction between it and an earlier katakana word, namely “haikara,” which also meant being fashionable in the European— namely, Victorian—style. The word haikara had come into use in Japan in late nineteenth century, its origin deriving from the word “high collar” in English. (Suzuki, 1-2)

There is also kindai, which until the Meiji period simply meant “recent,” as is the case in Fujiwara Teika’s Superior Poems of Our Times (Kindaishūka 近代秀歌, 1209). But by Meiji, the word came to refer specifically to the process of Westernization and the construction of a “capitalist nation-state.” To avoid confusion with the historical use of the term (which, like the term kinsei 近世, included the Edo period), the word was pronounced “kondai” when specifically referring to the Meiji period. The compound term kingendai 近現代 was invented later to encompass everything from Meiji to the present.

Though terms like kindaika 近代化 (“modernization”) and kindaishugi 近代主義 (“modern-ism”) didn’t appear until later (the latter was first used by Kaneko Chikusui in his 1911 essay “The Origins of Modernism”), the process itself had in fact begun much earlier. Like Ishikawa Jun, Suzuki speaks of the essential modern-ness of the Edoites, who were among the world’s most literate, and whose city was the world’s most populated by 1710. The emergence of a “national language” (kokugo), too, preceded that of the European nations. And in the arts, Suzuki points out, traces of a modernistic realism can be seen in the writings of Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), Ishida Baigan (1685-1744), Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725), Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693), and in the Edo-era shinkei 真景 landscape paintings, “in which the artist actually copied real scenes as opposed to those imagined in one’s head” (Suzuki, 5).

To be frank, however, I don’t see why Suzuki feels the need to cite examples of pre-Meiji realism in order to prove that Japan was modern before Westernization. Who ever said realism was a precondition for the modern? Is not much of European modernism in fact a reaction against the old notions of mimesis and realism? Also, the claim that Chikamatsu practiced a kind of realism is rather dubious given that Chikamatsu himself stated that realism should be avoided at all costs, as it would “permit no pleasure in the work.”

I’m late for my orthodontist appointment, and I still haven’t said a word about the second half of the interview, so I’ll just briefly mention a few of the topics discussed:

*the reciprocal relation between Japanese tradition and European modernism
*the built-in ambiguity between subject-object in Japanese grammar, writing
*the many ways of looking at Kajii Motojirō’s “Lemon” (1925)
*the war years: what really happened vs. the American triumphalist version of history scripted by the IMTFE
*Japanese universalism, militarism and the Taishō vitalism
*and some thoughts on how “the tradition” is, more often than not, creatively invented.

Aside from some clunky phrases and the occasional typo (e.g., “the poet Noguchi Yonejirô (1975-1947)”), this interview is an excellent introduction to the subject of Japanese modernism, and we should all thank Professors Tyler, Suzuki, and Abi-Samara for making it public.

Beholdmyswarthyface Encyclopedia of Modern Japan Update

This just in from hacker "V. Wu":

I know it isn't polite to hack, but I couldn't resist breaking into your Encyclopedia of Modern Japan file in order to make a few changes. I hope you don't mind. I have eliminated some of the unnecessary categories, combined others, fixed spelling and factual errors, and put the historical figures in chronological order according to date of birth. I couldn't bear to see such a valuable resource remain in such a disorderly state. There are still many improvements to be made, so I will be back. Best, "V. Wu."

The World in Japanese: A Lecture by Ian Hideo Levy

This just in from Sally Suzuki:

While the content of Levy's speech is fascinating in its own right (especially the parts about the relation between language and identity), I post it here mainly as a warning to young Americans living abroad about how an extended stay in a non-English-speaking country can adversely affect your English speaking ability. Levy is obviously hamming it up a bit, pretending to be less articulate than he really is, but boy is his delivery weird as all get up.

The scary thing is, after a decade or two of limited exposure to demotic English, we're all bound sound like this. Levy is not the exception, he is the rule. (Trust me, I know many long-term ex-pats, and nearly all of them talk like this.) So make sure you fellow native speakers band together and form English-speaking support groups to keep this from happening. And when no native speakers are around, talk to yourself.

Letter to Mom (Or, Cancelled Request for Automated Thought Transcriber)

Dear Mom,

Dr. Fahim, a friend of mine who gets paid by Google to make our world more ergonometric, recently asked me, "What technologies, if made accessible, would improve your life?" I told him, a device that transcribes my thoughts into my blog on command. He said he’d look into it.

But after spending the last few days examining my own thoughts, I now wish I’d answered differently. You see, for the most part my thoughts are formless, stupid, ungrammatical, and are constantly moving between two entirely unrelated linguistic systems.

To illustrate, I’ll transcribe the thought that just flashed through my head, exactly as it occurred. Incidentally, it was a memory from childhood.

You and the girl and we had become chummy over ten years from now.その時間からあなたの住宅に入ることのポイントに正常な人が何かから見る見る間に見ることのできない世界を導入する、何が来る？That time, I was the youth who still wears the boot. また世界ちょうどアメリカのすばらしい人の陰だったようである事実、ロシアの大統領も、この違反の状態を同時に書いた時、そして、今、私、私のよう な状態が低いところにある。また2人がchummyになった事実、非常にそれらのための独自性の種類の機会にthough it was safe and inviting in the villa that is your family and my family do the fireworks with everyone and/or swim with the river, it is to hide it is the cell in the forest, doing, gently tickling her breasts, that time it was pleasantly and truly is. 私達は偽りなく認める。Never mind the world is not thought enough even in the how-dream where am I who am born with afflatus or status can play with such a party, with you did not enter at that time unintentionally?

See what I mean? It doesn’t make any sense. No one would ever read it. So, Fahim, if you’re reading this, go ahead and scrap my request for an automated thought transcriber.

Your dutiful son,
Beholdmyswarthyface