Atsuko Ueda is associate professor of modern Japanese literature at Princeton University.Michael K. Bourdaghs is Robert S. Ingersoll Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.Richi Sakakibara is professor of modern Japanese literature at Waseda University.Hirokazu Toeda is professor of modern Japanese literature at Waseda University.

• Introduction, Atsuko Ueda, Richi Sakakibara, Michael K. Bourdaghs, and Hirokazu ToedaPart I: Foregrounding the Cold WarChapter 1: Early Freeze Warning: The Politics and Literature Debate as Cold War Culture, Michael K. BourdaghsChapter 2: The Korean War and Disputed Memories: Kim Dal-su’s Nihon no fuyu and the 1955 System, Ko Youngran, translated by Michael K. BourdaghsChapter 3: Politics and Culture of Fascism, Ann SherifPart II: Structures of Concealment: Cultural AnxietiesChapter 4: Cultural Resentment and Valorization in Postwar Japanese Literary Criticism: Nakamura Mitsuo’s Literary History, Atsuko UedaChapter 5: Small Hopes and a Terror: Kato Shuichi’s and Mori Arimasa’s 1955 Return from France, Doug SlaymakerChapter 6: Language and the People: The Amateur Writing Subject in Kindai bungaku, Shin Nihon bungaku, and Shiso no kagaku, Richi Sakakibara, translated by Atsuko UedaPart III: Continuity and Discontinuity: Subjective Rupture and DislocationChapter 7: Temporalities of Ruin: Shii

This collection of essays by distinguished scholars on both sides of the Pacific is an excellent companion volume to The Politics and Literature Debate in Postwar Japanese Criticism, 1945–52. The provocative essays take up the topic of literary criticism in postwar Japan and open it up to rigorous and multifaceted examination. Japanese literary criticism was intensely argumentative during this period, embroiling writers in debates about political commitment, war responsibility, literary autonomy, and human subjectivity. These debates are discussed and contextualized here in admirably lucid prose. This is essential reading for students and scholars of modern Japan, but is also highly recommended to anyone whose reading and thinking touch on the relation of art and politics in the modern world.