Paper short abstract:

During the 1920s, Tani Jōji published short stories exploring the Japanese American community. In one of these collections, Modan Dekameron (1929), he presents a multifaceted America featuring heavy use of hybridized styles, languages, characters and images.

Paper long abstract:

When Hasegawa Kaitarō (1900-1935) returned to Japan in 1924 after four years in the American Midwest and New York, he intended to return to America as soon as possible. However, the Immigration Act of 1924 prevented it. A few months later, he began to publish short stories in the magazine Shinseinen under the pen name Tani Jōji. Known as Meriken jappu mono ("Jap-American stories"), these stories were compiled into two volumes in 1929: Tekisaku mushuku (Homeless in Texas) and Modan Dekameron (The Modern Decameron).

As the author makes clear in his foreword, the purpose of Modan Dekameron was to present Japanese readers with the modern city (kindai no tokai), which he compared to a living being (seibutsu). He also metaphorically explained that "nocturnal walkers" (yoru no sanposha) stroll and dive into this modern city by transforming themselves into chair legs, waste paper, garters and post boxes, etc. Tani Jōji, whose foreword ends by stating that this modern city can be found in its American version (as a "modern Rome"), focuses his stories on the apparently fictional experiences of Japanese migrants interacting with other ethnic minorities and the WASP majority.

He also makes abundant use of modernist writing techniques in the 10 stories that make up Modan Dekameron, including an explosion of narrative structures, mixing of language levels, linguistic code-switching, humoristic puns and metatextual discourses. Modernism thus allowed Tani Jōji to give a voice to new, often muzzled, characters. Modan Dekameron is anchored in a non-linear, kaleidoscopic vision of the modern city, often compared to the art of collage. The stories and hybridization they employ concretely capture the zeitgeist of the 1920s, shared by Japan and Western countries.

In this presentation, I will use examples from Modan Dekameron to analyze how this work's themes and formal elements help create a highly hybridized text, reflecting the very image of the modern city that Tani Jōji wished to present to his Japanese readers.