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LitMod01


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Literature and Globalization before WW2 (1920-1940) : Japanese Characters and Images of Cosmopolitanism and Mixed Race (konketsu). 
Convenor:
Cecile Sakai (Université de Paris)
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Section:
Modern Literature
Sessions:
Wednesday 25 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels

Short Abstract:

From the 1920s to the 1940s, Japanese writers of both highbrow and popular literature were confronted with foreignness, perhaps as never before. Their response was to explore different ways of expressing this new paradigm by creating characters and writing styles characterized by hybridity.

Long Abstract:

This four-person panel will focus on various expressions of Japanese literature which appeared in response to "the experience of foreignness" during the interwar period (1920-1940), seen as the very point of shifting paradigms between Meiji modernization and the postwar high-growth period. The changes that occurred will be analyzed using examples from both highbrow and popular literature, representing episodes of real stays in the United States and Europe as well as fictional situations linking Japan to overseas countries, including in Asia. We propose to explore "métissage" (mixed race/hybridity) as an ambivalent new concept and metaphor. On the one hand, especially with authors like Tani Jōji and Hisao Jūran, who travelled abroad, cosmopolitanism is expressed as a utopic scenery in which the Japanese characters are more or less able to blend into an international, hybrid environment. On the other hand, some authors adopted the figure of the "mixed-blood" character as an emblem to represent national and ethnic blood boundaries, in the context of colonial domination. Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Nakajima Atsushi, for example, will be mentioned. The focus here will be on global reflection on so-called "contact zones". Our panel will also consider the effects of hybrid characters on literary genres and styles, as they imbue the texts with their complexity and paradoxical, inventive spirit, incorporating dramatic and conflictual images. This cross-fertilization spurred an evolution in the writings from this crucial period, as authors tried to break away from the former opposition (from imitation to re-creation) between foreign and Japanese literatures. This also corresponded to a strengthening of literary modernism in Japan. Using this framework, our panel will attempt to reinterpret Edogawa Ranpo's contribution to the Japanese detective novel through his characters and plots, but also his quest to find an original voice. Thanks to his perfect knowledge of international classics, Edogawa was able to creatively develop an unusual and truly distinctive world. His example shows that such an approach can generate an international reception on a long-term process: another way to reach the global arena.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Wednesday 25 August, 2021, -