Description
Book SynopsisWhat can ecocriticism do when engaging with Japanese literature and culture? This edited volume Ecocriticism in Japan attempts to answer this question. The contributors place themselves inside the domestic fields of production of works of art and express their concerns and ideas for the English-speaking spheres of the world. Taking up subjects ranging from the eleventh-century novel The Tale of Genji, an early twentieth-century writer Taoka Reiun, the post-WWII atomic bombing literature by women, the internationally-renowned Abe Kobo, the Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo, the world-widely popular writer Murakami Haruki, the Minamata writer Ishimure Michiko, and the anime artist Miyazaki Hayao to the recent TV anime Coppelion, a production that foresaw a devastating nuclear disaster after the Great East Japan Earthquake, this volume extricates and discusses innate, complex values of Japanese people and culture in terms of nature and environment.
Table of ContentsForeword by Ursula Heise Acknowledgements Introduction by Yuki Masami Chapter 1: Exploring Ecocritical Perspectives by Juxtaposing The Tale of Genji's "Suma" chapter with Folktales by Marjorie Rhine Chapter 2: Taoka Reiun and Environmental Thought in the Early 1900s by Ronald Loftus by Chapter 3: Kyoko Matsunaga Radioactive Discourse and Atomic Bomb Texts: Ōta Yōko, Sata Ineko, and by Hayashi Kyōko Chapter 4: Abe Kõbõ in Ecosophy by Toshiya Ueno Chapter 5: Literary ground opened in fissures: The Great East Japan Earthquake and Ōe Kenzaburō's In Late Style by Haga Koichi Chapter 6: Ōe and the Uses of Ecocritical Affect: Suspicion, Shame and Care after 3.11 by Margherita Long Chapter 7: Nature Strikes Back: Human Interaction with Natural Forces in Literary Representations of Disaster by Alex Bates Chapter 8: Horses and Ferns: Kaneko Mitsuharu and Furukawa Hideo by Doug Slaymaker Chapter 9: Invisible Waves: On Some Japanese Artists After March 11, 2011 by Keijiro Suga Chapter 10: From "Suffering" to "Compassion": The World of Ishimure Michiko's Works by Shuji Takazawa Chapter 11: Representation of Nomads in the Works of Ishimure Michiko by Daisuke Higuchi Chapter 12: On the Ideological Manipulation of Nature in Japanese Popular Culture: Miyazaki, Hyakuta, Ishimure by Hisaaki Wake Chapter 13: A Chaosmos of Condivision: Radiation Aesthetics in the TV Anime Series Coppelion (2013) by Livia Monnet Chapter 14: Arboreal Unicorns and Other Megaflora: On Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s film Charisma by Christine Marran About the Contributors Index
