Susan J. Napier - The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity (Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies)

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The fantastic in modern Japanese literature

The fantastic brings out the repressed anxieties, fears and hopes of modern Japan. Susan J. Napiers exploration of fantasy in literature, film and comics puts the dark side of Japanese society under the spotlight. She argues that the fantastic reveals the ambivalence felt by many Japanese toward the modernization, economic success and Westernization of Japan in the twentieth century. The bizarre creations of the fantasists produce radically different visions of contemporary Japan from those that stress Japans success story.

Susan J. Napier brings under scrutiny a rich seam of writers, filmmakers and artists: many are discussed here in English for the first time; some are neglected by critics in Japan. Her hunting ground takes in both high and popular culture. Her discussion of fantasy women embraces the enchantresses created by Izumi Kyka at the turn of the century and the grotesque and comic sex fantasies of recent science fiction writer Tsutsui Yasutaka. This book introduces the extraordinary range of Japanese fantasy; it also explores the role of fantasy as a cross-cultural genre.

Susan J. Napier is Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series

Editorial Board

J.A.A.Stockwin, Nissan Professor of Modern Japanese Studies, University of Oxford and Director, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies

Teigo Yoshida, formerly Professor of the University of Tokyo, and now Professor, Obirin University, Tokyo

Frank Langdon, Professor, Institute of International Relations, University of British Columbia, Canada

Alan Rix, Professor of Japanese, The University of Queensland

Junji Banno, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo

Leonard Schoppa, University of Virginia

Other titles in the series:

The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness, Pet er Dale

The Emperors Adviser: Saionji Kinmochi and Pre-war Japanese Politics, Lesley Connors

A History of Japanese Economic Thought, Tessa Morris-Suzuki

The Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional System, Junji Banno, translated by J.A.A.Stockwin

Industrial Relations in Japan: the Peripheral Workforce, Norma Chalmers

Banking Policy in Japan: American Efforts at Reform during the Occupation, William M.Tsutsui

Education Reform in Japan, Leonard Schoppa

How the Japanese Learn to Work, Ronald P.Dore and Mari Sako

Japanese Economic Development: Theory and Practice, Penelope Francks

Japan and Protection: the Growth of Protectionist Sentiment and the Japanese Response, Syed Javed Maswood

The Soil, by Nagatsuka Takashi: a Portrait of Rural Life in Meiji Japan, translated and with an introduction by Ann Waswo

Biotechnology in Japan, Malcolm Brock

Britains Educational Reform: a Comparison with Japan, Mike Howarth

Language and the Modern State: the Reform of Written Japanese, Nanette Twine

Industrial Harmony in Modern Japan: the Invention of a Tradition, W.Dean Kinzley

Japanese Science Fiction: a View of a Changing Society, Robert Matthew

The Japanese Numbers Game: the Use and Understanding of Numbers in Modern Japan, Thomas Crump

Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan, Roger Goodman and Kirsten Refsing

Technology and Industrial Development in Pre-War Japan, Yukiko Fukasaku

Japans Early Parliaments 18901905, Andrew Fraser, R.H.P.Mason and Philip Mitchell

Japans Foreign Aid Challenge, Alan Rix

Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan, Stephen S.Large

Japan: Beyond the End of History, David Williams

Ceremony and Ritual in Japan: Religious Practices in an Industrialized Society, Jan van Breman and D.P.Martinez

Understanding Japanese Society: Second Edition, Joy Hendry

Militarization and Demilitarization in Contemporary Japan, Glenn D.Hook

The fantastic in modern Japanese literature

The subversion of modernity

Susan J. Napier

London and New York

First published 1996
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

1996 Susan J. Napier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-97463-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-12457-3 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-12458-1 (pbk)

To my parents, Julia and Reginald Phelps, who opened the magic casements

Series editors preface

It remains unfortunately true, halfway through the 1990s, that Japan is an underreported country. Despite significant increases in the amount of information available, it is still the case that few aspects of Japan and its people are discussed in comparable depth, or with similar assumptions about familiarity, to discussion of the United States, Britain or other major countries. Differences of language and culture of course constitute a barrier, though less so than in the past. As the patterns of our post-cold-war world gradually consolidate, it is clearer than ever that the regional and global importance of Japan is increasing, often in ways more subtle than blatant. To borrow a phrase from Ronald Dore, we really should start taking Japan seriously.

The Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies Series seeks to foster an informed and balanced, but not uncritical, understanding of Japan. One aim of the series is to show the depth and variety of Japanese institutions, practices and ideas. Another is, by using comparison, to see what lessons, positive and negative, can be drawn for other countries. The tendency in commentary on Japan to resort to outdated, ill-informed or sensational stereotypes still remains, and needs to be combated.

The year 1995 began with a devastating earthquake in and around the city of Kbe, in western Japan, killing over 5,000 people. A little later in the year, the underground railway system of Tokyo was disrupted by the deliberate spilling of toxic chemicals. Several people died and thousands became seriously ill. In the aftermath of this incident, police and media attention focused on a strange new religious sect which dealt in occult beliefs and engaged in bizarre practices. In a sense these events symbolized the unpredictable and turbulent under-currents beneath the normal day-to-day existence of supermodern Japan. Unsurprisingly, the constant tensions of Japanese life have created a fantasy literature of great richness and diversity. If a peoples literature is a mirror of its society, then its fantasy literature reflects, and diffracts through the medium of imagination, the neuroses and tensions of that society. Susan Napiers book introduces us to a world of literary fantasy that, while bearing comparison with much fantasy literature elsewhere, testifies intriguingly to the salient dichotomies of Japan: order with turbulence, delicacy with ugliness, belief in progress with neurotic despair, the assumption of formality in human interaction with the search for freer and wilder worlds.

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