Description
Book SynopsisIn
The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction, William C. Hedberg investigates the reception of
The Water Margin in a variety of early modern and modern Japanese contexts, from eighteenth-century Confucian scholarship and literary exegesis to early twentieth-century colonial ethnography.
Trade ReviewMeticulously researched and written with clarity and wit, this is literary historiography at its best and most illuminating. . . Essential. * Choice *
The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction is a first-rate work of scholarship that makes innovative and important contributions to the field of East Asian studies by crossing geographical borders between Japan and China, temporal borders between the Tokugawa and Meiji eras, and disciplinary borders between literature and history. Hedberg deserves high marks for navigating those conceptual margins as deftly as he interprets the margins of
Shuihu zhuan. -- Erik Esselstrom, University of Vermont * Journal of Japanese Studies *
Concise, thoughtfully structured, and meticulously researched,
The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction is one of those rare books that opens up a bracingly new perspective on a well established field of study. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the literary history of Japan from the seventeenth century into the first decades of the twentieth, or in rediscovering “the literary history of Japan” itself as a concept. -- Michael Emmerich, author of
The Tale of Genji: Translation, Canonization, and World LiteratureIn this erudite and sophisticated account of the Japanese appropriation of
The Water Margin, Hedberg probes a series of compelling examples and raises important questions about the nature of texts, commentaries, and literary history. This excellent work embraces the marginal as a powerful hermeneutical tool to destabilize received views. -- Laura Moretti, author of
Recasting the Past: An Early Modern Tales of Ise
for ChildrenThe Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction manages to be scholarly, witty, engaging, and personable all at the same time—a rare combination for a subject that is so dense and requires such intimate knowledge of a premodern literary text and the complex scholarly debates that surrounded it. -- Pieter Keulemans, author of
Sound Rising from the Paper: Nineteenth-Century Martial Arts Fiction and the Chinese Acoustic ImaginationWilliam C. Hedberg argues convincingly for
The Water Margin’s centrality to early modern and modern Japanese and Chinese literature. And like its subject,
The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction moves across national, linguistic, temporal, and generic boundaries with energy and eloquence. -- Glynne Walley, author of
Good Dogs: Edification, Entertainment, and Kyokutei Bakin's Nansō Satomi hakkenden
Remarkable in its breadth,
The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction illuminates how Japanese encounters with successive renditions of
The Water Margin over more than three centuries served to inspire radical rethinking about ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Japaneseness’ across cultural, literary, and political registers. Hedberg especially handles the textual and linguistic complexities with expert skill. -- Paul Gordon Schalow, author of
A Poetics of Courtly Male Friendship in Heian JapanHedberg’s book stands out as a model of historically-informed transregional research that... participants in any type of humanities research can only hope to emulate. * Japan Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Note on Formatting
Introduction: Entering the Margins—Reading
Shuihu zhuan as Japanese Literature
1. Sinophilia, Sinophobia, and Vernacular Philology in Early Modern Japan
2. Histories of Reading and Nonreading:
Shuihu zhuan as Text and Touchstone in Early Modern Japan
3. Justifying the Margins: Nation, Canon, and Chinese Fiction in Meiji and Taishō Chinese-Literature Historiography (
Shina bungakushi)
4. Civilization and Its Discontents: Travel, Translation, and Armchair Ethnography
Epilogue: A Final View from the Margins
List of Titles, Names, and Selected Key Terms
Notes
Bibliography
Index
