As Japan moved from the devastation of 1945 to the economic security that survived even the boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s, its literature came to embrace new subjects and styles and to reflect on the nation's changing relationship to other Asian countries and to the West. This volume will help instructors introduce students to novels, short stories, and manga that confront postwar Japanese experiences, including the suffering caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the echoes of Japan's colonialism and imperialism, new ways of thinking about Japanese identity and about minorities such as the zainichi Koreans, changes in family structures, and environmental disasters. Essays provide context for understanding the particularity of postwar Japanese literature, its place in world literature, and its connections to the Japanese past.

This book explores one of the crucial themes in postwar Japanese fiction. Through an examination of the work of a number of prominent twentieth century Japanese writers, the book analyses the meaning of the body in postwar Japanese discourse, the gender constructions of the imagery of the body and the implications for our understanding of individual and national identity. This book will be of interest to all students of modern Japanese literature.

Playing in the Shadows considers the literature engendered by postwar Japanese authors’ robust cultural exchanges with African Americans and African American literature. The Allied Occupation brought an influx of African American soldiers and culture to Japan, which catalyzed the writing of black characters into postwar Japanese literature. This same influx fostered the creation of organizations such as the Kokujin kenkyū no kai (The Japanese Association for Negro Studies) and literary endeavors such as the Kokujin bungaku zenshū (The Complete Anthology of Black Literature). This rich milieu sparked Japanese authors’—Nakagami Kenji and Ōe Kenzaburō are two notable examples—interest in reading, interpreting, critiquing, and, ultimately, incorporating the tropes and techniques of African American literature and jazz performance into their own literary works. Such incorporation leads to literary works that are “black” not by virtue of their representations of black characters, but due to their investment in the possibility of technically and intertextually black Japanese literature. Will Bridges argues that these “fictions of race” provide visions of the way that postwar Japanese authors reimagine the ascription of race to bodies—be they bodies of literature, the body politic, or the human body itself.

The postwar Japanese strived, unsteadily as if about to fall, to live everyday lives and to restore Japan, while suffering from the survivor's guilt. The early postwar novels of Hayashi Fumiko. Three novels of Hayashi Fumiko translated here are related to the early postwar period in Japan. Late Chrysanthemum - Ban'Giku "Late Chrysanthemum" is an ex-geisha's one night story after the war. The main character Kin had a strong will to survive. An ex-geisha had a visitor, who was her ex-lover sometime in the prewar years and desperately needed money. He intrigued to get money from his ex., even by slaughter. How did the ex-geisha rid out of the crisis? Her quick wit worked, which suggests us how to manage a risk in a daily life. In November 1948, 23 Showa, "Late Chrysanthemum" appeared in an extra issue of a literary magazine, the Bungei'Shunju. This is the most important work of Hayashi Fumiko, which is praised for its highly qualified perfection and elaborate description. Downtown - Shita'machi "Downtown" is a two week story of a female peddler and an ex-soldier after the war. Their relationship finished all of sudden. "Downtown" appeared in April 1949, 24 Showa in an extra issue of a literary magazine, Shosetsu'Shincho. The literary magazine has been published monthly since September 1947 from The Shinchosha Publishing Co, Ltd. which was founded in 1896. Floating clouds - Uki'gumo "Floating Clouds" is mainly a five year story. The storyline, however, extends from 1939 in Japan, during the years since 1943 in French Indochina, and the postwar period in 1945 to 1949 in Japan. The author describes changes in people's feelings after the war, while following the trajectories of men and women before and after the war. This novel can be seen as Hayashi Fumiko's compilation. "Floating clouds" is compiled in a book and published in April 1951, 26 Showa, which is considered to be the last novel of Hayashi Fumiko. The author died suddenly of heart attack at home at about 11:00 pm, June 28 in 1951, 26 Showa, at the age of 48. Enjoy!

Postwar modernist verse has been rarely discussed in English-language works on Japanese literature, despite the fact that it has been the dominant mode of poetic expression in Japan since World War II. Now readers of modern Japanese poetry in translation have gained an impressive intellectual and linguistic companion in their enjoyment of modern Japanese verse. Modernism in Practice combines close readings of individual Japanese postwar poets and poetry with historical and critical analysis. Five of the seven chapters concentrate on the life and work of such outstanding poets as Soh Sakon, Ishigaki Rin, Ito Hiromi, Asabuki Ryoji, and Tanikawa Shuntaro. Several of these writers have only come into prominence in recent decades, so this work also serves to acquaint readers with contemporary Japanese verse. A significant dimension of this volume is the detailed and extensive treatment afforded two important areas of postwar Japanese verse: the poetry of women and of Okinawa. Modernism in Practice is noteworthy not only as an introduction to postwar Japanese poets and their times, but also for the numerous poems that appear in translation throughout the volume--many for the first time in book form.

In the wake of the disaster of 1945—as Japan was forced to remake itself from “empire” to “nation” in the face of an uncertain global situation—literature and literary criticism emerged as highly contested sites. Today, this remarkable period holds rich potential for opening new dialogue between scholars in Japan and North America as we rethink the historical and contemporary significance of such ongoing questions as the meaning of the American occupation both inside and outside of Japan, the shifting semiotics of “literature” and “politics,” and the origins of what would become crucial ideological weapons of the cultural Cold War. The volume consists of three interrelated sections: “Foregrounding the Cold War,” “Structures of Concealment: ‘Cultural Anxieties,’” and “Continuity and Discontinuity: Subjective Rupture and Dislocation.” One way or another, the essays address the process through which new “Japan” was created in the postwar present, which signified an attempt to criticize and reevaluate the past. Examining postwar discourse from various angles, the essays highlight the manner in which anxieties of the future were projected onto the construction of the past, which manifest in varying disavowals and structures of concealment.

This study examines how various Japanese authors and other artists seeking artistic representation of traumatic Asia Pacific War experience have drawn upon their imaginative powers to create affect-charged images of the extreme violence, psychological damage and ideological contradiction surrounding the conflict.