Text and the City

Essays on Japanese Modernity

By: Ai Maeda, James A. Fujii (Editor)

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Paperback | 25 March 2004

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410 Pages

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23.4 x 15.5 x 2.4

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Maeda Ai was a prominent literary critic and an influential public intellectual in late-twentieth-century Japan. Text and the City is the first book of his work to appear in English. A literary and cultural critic deeply engaged with European critical thought, Maeda was a brilliant, insightful theorist of modernity for whom the city was the embodiment of modern life. He conducted a far-reaching inquiry into changing conceptions of space, temporality, and visual practices as they gave shape to the city and its inhabitants. James A. Fujii has assembled a selection of Maeda’s essays that question and explore the contours of Japanese modernity and resonate with the concerns of literary and cultural studies today.

Maeda remapped the study of modern Japanese literature and culture in the 1970s and 1980s, helping to generate widespread interest in studying mass culture on the one hand and marginalized sectors of modern Japanese society on the other. These essays reveal the broad range of Maeda’s cultural criticism. Among the topics considered are Tokyo; utopias; prisons; visual media technologies including panoramas and film; the popular culture of the Edo, Meiji, and contemporary periods; maps; women’s magazines; and women writers. Integrally related to these discussions are Maeda’s readings of works of Japanese literature including Matsubara Iwagoro’s In Darkest Tokyo, Nagai Kafu’s The Fox, Higuchi Ichiyo’s Growing Up, Kawabata Yasunari’s The Crimson Gang of Asakusa, and Narushima Ryuhoku’s short story “Useless Man.” Illuminating the infinitely rich phenomena of modernity, these essays are full of innovative, unexpected connections between cultural productions and urban life, between the text and the city.

Industry Reviews

"Despite the lamentably premature death of Maeda Ai in 1987, his works have left an incontrovertible mark on the study of early modern and modern Japanese literature. Adopting liberally from phenomenological hermeneutics, cultural anthropology, semiotics, and marxist literary study, Maeda invented new ways of inquiring into the historicity of 'literature,' thereby leading a number of young scholars of Japan in the United States in the direction of what would be generally recognized as 'cultural studies.' In the fields of trans-Pacific Japanese studies, it is no exaggeration to say that Maeda accomplished something comparable to what Raymond Williams did in the English-speaking worlds."--Naoki Sakai, Cornell University "Some of us were fortunate to walk with the scholar Maeda Ai as he quietly, with passion, led us back through the urban history of modern Japanese literary culture. Refusing to forget the ravages of war, he rendered foreign thinking familiar and detail significant. Maeda brought to his readers folklore disciplining children growing up in the alleyways, glimpses of women reading new magazines from within their spaces of confinement, records from colonial travel. Here James A. Fujii and his co-translators pass on Maeda's gifts with interpretations of erudition, respect, and imagination. Bravo and thank you."--Miriam Silverberg, University of California, Los Angeles

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Non-Fiction Literature, Poetry & Plays History & Criticism of Literature Literary Theory General Literary Studies Society & Culture Cultural Studies Reference, Information & Interdisciplinary Subjects Interdisciplinary Studies Regional Studies

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Foreword: A Walker in the City: Maeda Ai and the Mapping of Urban Space	p. xi
Introduction: Refiguring the Modern: Maeda Ai and the City	p. 1
Light City, Dark City: Visualizing the Modern
Utopia of the Prisonhouse: A Reading of In Darkest Tokyo	p. 21
The Panorama of Enlightenment	p. 65
The Spirits of Abandoned Gardens: On Nagai Kafu's "The Fox"	p. 91
Play, Space, and Mass Culture
Their Time as Children: A Study of Higuchi Ichiyo's Growing Up (Takekurabe)	p. 109
Asakusa as Theater: Kawabata Yasunari's The Crimson Gang of Asakusa	p. 145
The Development of Popular Fiction in the Late Taisho Era: Increasing Readership of Women's Magazines	p. 163
Text, Space, Visuality
From Communal Performance to Solitary Reading: The Rise of the Modern Japanese Reader	p. 223
Modern Literature and the World of Printing	p. 255
Crossing Boundaries in Urban Space
Ryuhoku in Paris	p. 275
Berlin 1888: Mori Ogai's "Dancing Girl"	p. 295
In the Recesses of the High City: On Soseki's Gate	p. 329
Afterword	p. 351
Contributors	p. 375
Index	p. 377
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Text and the City

Essays on Japanese Modernity

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

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