Ecocriticism in Japan

Contributions by Alex Bates, Koichi Haga, Ursula Heise, Daisuke Higuchi, Ronald Loftus, Margherita Long, Christine Marran, Kyoko Matsunaga, Livia Monnet, Marjorie Rhine, Doug Slaymaker, Shuji Takazawa, Toshiya Ueno, Caroline Wake Edited by Hisaaki Wake, Keijiro Suga, Yuki Masami Aoyama Gakuin University

Publication date:

30 November 2017

Length of book:

308 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

239x162mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781498527842

What can ecocriticism do when engaging with Japanese literature and culture? This edited volume Ecocriticism in Japan attempts to answer this question. The contributors place themselves inside the domestic fields of production of works of art and express their concerns and ideas for the English-speaking spheres of the world. Taking up subjects ranging from the eleventh-century novel The Tale of Genji, an early twentieth-century writer Taoka Reiun, the post-WWII atomic bombing literature by women, the internationally-renowned Abe Kōbō, the Nobel laureate Ōe Kenzaburō, the world-widely popular writer Murakami Haruki, the Minamata writer Ishimure Michiko, and the anime artist Miyazaki Hayao to the recent TV anime Coppelion, a production that foresaw a devastating nuclear disaster after the Great East Japan Earthquake, this volume extricates and discusses innate, complex values of Japanese people and culture in terms of nature and environment.

Foreword by Ursula Heise
Acknowledgements
Introduction by Yuki Masami
Chapter 1: Exploring Ecocritical Perspectives by Juxtaposing The Tale of Genji's "Suma" chapter with Folktales by Marjorie Rhine
Chapter 2: Taoka Reiun and Environmental Thought in the Early 1900s by Ronald Loftus by
Chapter 3: Kyoko Matsunaga Radioactive Discourse and Atomic Bomb Texts: Ōta Yōko, Sata Ineko, and by Hayashi Kyōko
Chapter 4: Abe Kõbõ in Ecosophy by Toshiya Ueno
Chapter 5: Literary ground opened in fissures: The Great East Japan Earthquake and Ōe Kenzaburō's In Late Style by Haga Koichi
Chapter 6: Ōe and the Uses of Ecocritical Affect: Suspicion, Shame and Care after 3.11 by Margherita Long
Chapter 7: Nature Strikes Back: Human Interaction with Natural Forces in Literary Representations of Disaster by Alex Bates
Chapter 8: Horses and Ferns: Kaneko Mitsuharu and Furukawa Hideo by Doug Slaymaker
Chapter 9: Invisible Waves: On Some Japanese Artists After March 11, 2011 by Keijiro Suga
Chapter 10: From "Suffering" to "Compassion": The World of Ishimure Michiko's Works by Shuji Takazawa
Chapter 11: Representation of Nomads in the Works of Ishimure Michiko by Daisuke Higuchi
Chapter 12: On the Ideological Manipulation of Nature in Japanese Popular Culture: Miyazaki, Hyakuta, Ishimure by Hisaaki Wake
Chapter 13: A Chaosmos of Condivision: Radiation Aesthetics in the TV Anime Series Coppelion (2013) by Livia Monnet
Chapter 14: Arboreal Unicorns and Other Megaflora: On Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s film Charisma by Christine Marran
About the Contributors
Index

Ecocriticism in Japan answers a growing need in Japan studies and contributes to the broader field of environmental studies generally.