ISBN: 9780804809160

Renaissance in Japan is a superb survey of Japan's literary giantsforerunners of today's modern Japanese writers. Called the "Kyoto epoch," the age in which these writers lived was the… More...

Renaissance in Japan is a superb survey of Japan's literary giantsforerunners of today's modern Japanese writers. Called the "Kyoto epoch," the age in which these writers lived was the period in which Japanese cultural development made many of its greatest advances. In these years of the early Tokugawa era, the old aristocratic culture was confronted with the new plebeian awakening, giving rise to dynamic social developments, in effect a peaceful revolution. The humanistic movement that emerged during this period is epitomized in and popular arts and letters by such famous figures as Basho, the pilgrim poet; Saikaku, novelist of the gilded age, and Chikamatsu, Japan's greatest playwright. In that stirring period Basho wrote such undying poetry as: "The lark sings through the long spring day, but never enough for its heart's content." Saikaku noted that "love is darkness, but in the land of love the darkest night is bright as noon." Chikamatsu wrote wisely that "art is something which lies in the slender margin between the real and the unreal." In Japan it was the beginning of the end of the feudal Dark Ageseven though the political ramifications would not be manifest until the advent of the Meiji Restoration. History History eBook, Tuttle Publishing<

ISBN: 9780804809160

This book is a critical study of ten postwar Japanese novels that focus on man's search for identity in the modern world. With the presentation of the Nobel Prize for Literature to a Ja… More...

This book is a critical study of ten postwar Japanese novels that focus on man's search for identity in the modern world. With the presentation of the Nobel Prize for Literature to a Japanese author in 1969, the international significance of modern Japanese literature was formally recognized by the Western world. The best indication of the West's present keen appreciation of modern Japanese literature is the large number of excellent translations that have appeared in recent years. In Crisis in Identity a common thememodern man's search for identityhas been traced through ten major novels. This quest takes place n conjunction with wartime cannibalism, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, expatriation, senile eroticism, and personal and social alienation. The works in which these are depicted include: Diary of a Mad Old Man (Junichiro Tanizaki) House of the Sleeping Beauties (Yusunari Kawabata) Black Rain (Masuji Ibuse) Fires on the Plain (Shohei Ooka) THe Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Yukio Mishima) The Woman in the Dunes (Kobe Abe) A Personal Matter (Kenzaburo Oe) If you have not yet read these novels, Crisis in Identity will provide a stimulating introduction to them; if you have, it will reveal new insights. Fiction Fiction eBook, Tuttle Publishing<