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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses how U.S.-born author Levy Hideo, who has adopted Japanese as his literary language, employs a multilinguistic strategy to explore the relation between identity, migration, and language(s), thereby challenging the notion of Japanese 'national literature' (kokubungaku).

Paper long abstract:

U.S.-born Levy Hideo has spent parts of his childhood and adolescence in Taiwan, Hongkong and Japan. Having acquired Japanese as a foreign language, today he is a highly appraised author of fiction and essays written (predominantly) in Japanese. His early prose describes the protagonists' encounters with Japan and the Japanese language. Recently, however, Levy has increasingly been turning towards the literary form of the essay and, at the same time, to China as a main topic. A third category of texts authored by Levy consists of programmatic essays about his decision to adopt Japanese as his literary language and the challenges this poses to the usual conceptualization of 'Japaneseness' and 'Japanese national literature' (kokubungaku). Here, Levy clearly questions and subverts the common notion of the Japanese language solely belonging to the Japanese, and the idea that Japanese literature is written by and for ethnic Japanese only.

Though Levy's texts appear to be written in standard Japanese at first glance, a closer look reveals that they are interspersed with other languages, mostly English and Chinese. This paper undertakes a close reading of passages from Levy's writings. The analysis first focuses on the level of content: What statements does the author make with regard to the languages of English, Japanese, and Chinese? What connections are drawn between language(s) and identity? What connotations are ascribed to the experience of migration and the adoption of a new language? And how is the act of reading and writing literature in Japanese (as a foreign language) reflected upon? Secondly, I scrutinize the stylistic means Levy employs to inscribe multiple linguistic layers in his texts. Specifically, I look at inserts of words, phrases and sentences in languages other than Japanese; the unconventional use of kanji / hiragana / katakana; the use of loanwords; the use of rubi etc. The overarching question will be how this multilinguistic mode of writing relates to the ways in which Levy discusses the topics of migration, language, and identity.