The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity

by Susan J. Napier

An exploration of the dark side to Japanese literature and Japanese society. A wide range of fantasists form the basis for a ground breaking analysis of the fantastic.

Genres: Japan, Nonfiction, Japanese Literature, Literary Criticism, Criticism

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Susan Jolliffe Napier is a Professor of the Japanese Program at Tufts University.

Reviews

[Aslı Can]

''By examining the role of the anti-real, paradoxially, the ''real'' Japan may actually become clearer.''

Nowadays I've read so many books and thesis about Kobo Abe, Japanese literature and westernization; but Napier's book is a really dedicted one. It's really good pleasure to read it. His view of fantastic, especially in Japan, is satsfiying. I recommend it to everyone who has interest in Japan and its literature.

[Leyre · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book touches a topic which looks really interesting to me. However, as it always happens with this kind of books -books that deal about books- if you have not read some of the books mentioned, is like believing in ghosts. You cannot really know if the author is right or if your opinions will be the same and you will also believe in the same ghosts, or in different ones. That is what hsa happened to me, since I have read very few of the ones Napier mentions in her book. I have started reading the most interesting ones, so that I can form my opinion and contrast it with hers later, re-reading the book. But, for now, I can say that is a good book suggesting a lot of Japanese books, short stories and mangas (or films) to read (or see). I specially liked the introduction, the chapter about the alien (although I think that it lacks a reference that kept coming to my mind all the time I was reading it: Gothic fiction), and the chapter about dystopias. Her conclusion is not very enlightening, however, it sums up nicely the whole book. I still recommend it to anybody interested on fantasy, science-fiction and Japan.

[E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Napier is very much a literary scholar, but this book (and her popular book on anime,) feels as though it has a bit of an identity crisis. On one hand, Napier does not shy away from the literary theory of academia (Todorov, Lacan, etc.) but on the other hand, she does not seem to assume that the reader has read any of the works in question, not to mention existing scholarships on those works. Coming from an academia point of view, the arguments in this book can be a bit sloppy and oversimplifying, yet I can see how they can be enlightening for readers of Murakami or Soseki who want to read some interpretations of those cryptic novels. All in all it was an *interesting* read, and perhaps belongs in the fuzzy boundary between popular books and literary criticism. It is perhaps best suited for the serious reader of Japanese fiction or the Anglophone literary critic getting into the realm of Japanese literature.

[Marika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I would have read this before diving into so many Murakami novels so quickly. I enjoyed the novels immensely, but what I was missing from my experience of those stories was context. As I am finding with so many other (non-Japanese) stories, sometimes it is precisely the reader's reaction that completes the story. It's "audience participation expectation" weaving the reader into and out of the story's experience. It's so very easy to see the fantastic elements in Japanese novels in particular as a "way out" and escape from reality, when it can, at its best, be a way back in.

The fantastic traces the unsaid and the unseen of culture: that which has been silenced, made invisible, covered over and made "absent. (attributed to Rosemary Jackson) pg 8

Napier also discusses at length the contradictory portrayals of women, particularly in Soseki and Murakami - as both the catalyst for heartache and abandonment, and as a healing force of transformation. Those elements in both authors' stories were particularly hard for me to grasp at times - leaving me asking, but what does it all mean?

Some positive portrayals of women do exist in contemporary male fantasy, of course, most notably in the works of Murakami Haruki, whose women are memorable for possessing their own independent personalities. As with Soseki, women in Murakami's works are also clearly linked to an escape into another, better world; but, even with Murakami, this final escape will be from women, too, an aspect at which Soseki only hints." pg 59

One of the most gratifying and illuminating sections of the book, Napier discusses the consistent challenge of Japanese 'fantastic' literature poses to the myth of the Japanese purely hierarchical, homogeneous society by pointing to the recurring theme of primacy of individual will, not just in Murakami, Soseki, and Inoue - but also the in very popular manga and anime tales.

Napier provides no easy answers for what symbols should mean, or how to draw direct correlations that hold true throughout the genre - nor should she. As Japan's literature evolved with its exposure to the West, so the West's literature is taking on frequently dystopic, fantastic symbols from Japanese authors. Yet the individual's will to choose fantasy or reality remains his or her own - a common thread throughout Japan's fantastic literature.

"Someday too, I'll meet myself in a strange place in a far-off world... In that place I am myself and myself is me. Subject is object and object is subject. All gaps gone. A perfect union." --Murakami's "The Girl from Ipanema" 1963/1982

[Enrique · Rating 2 out of 5]

Este libro ha sido una de las primeras fuentes de información que consulté para la elaboración de mis investigaciones sobre la literatura fantástica en Japón. Este libro, con un análisis basado en el modelo propuesto por Rosemary Jackson en Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, se adentra en la literatura japonesa através del análisis de los temas, imágenes y símbolos de relatos del siglo XX.

Para mí, su lectura no fue de gran ayuda, pues mi trabajo no se enfoca en un estudio temático, sino estructural basado en el lenguaje, la recepción y la hermenéutica del mismo. Cumple con creces este libro la parte de hermenéutica, pero se centra fundamentalmente en sociocrítica dejando de un lado otros aspectos a interpretar.

Si alguien desea hacer un trabajo sobre temas, lo recomiendo mas, si uno quiere realizar un trabajo que esté fuera de ese ámbito, debe retroceder y buscar otros textos.