Narrating the Self

Tomi Suzuki is Associate Professor of Japanese and Comparative Literature at Queens College of the City University of New York.

• Introduction: narratives of Japanese modernity; Part I. The Novel and the Self as Master Signifiers: 1. The position of the Shosetsu: paradigm change and new literary discourse; 2. Self, Christianity, and language: Genbun-itchi and concern for the self; 3. The furor over the I-novel: the question of authenticity; Part II. Rereading the I-Novel: 4. Love, sexuality, and nature: Tayama Katai's Quilt and Japanese naturalism; 5. Shaping life, shaping the past: Shiga Naoya's narratives of recollection; Part III. Traces of the Self: 6. Crossing boundaries: truth and fiction in Nagai Kafu's Strange Tale from East of the River; 7. Allegories of modernity: parodic confession in Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's Fool's Love; Epilogue: Tanizaki's speaking subject and creation of tradition; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

"This is an extraordinary book. It is the most systematic and critical treatment of what may be termed the 'postwar theoretical hysteria.' In the process, the study introduces for the first time in English a number of very important primary sources and provides sensitive and insightful new readings of some of the texts crucial to the formation of the Japanese literary canon. In presenting this critically informed 'new literary history,' Suzuki frees the reader to become aware of a far greater diversity and multiplicity of voices in the Japanese novel, voices that have often been silenced by a monolithic totalizing theory of Japan. . . . This study is required reading for those with an interest in Japanese literature and modern Japanese intellectual history, and should occasion reflection on how we teach and have taught Japanese literature in the United States."—Journal of Japanese Studies