Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series)

By the turn of the twentieth century, Japan's military and economic successes made it the dominant power in East Asia, drawing hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese students to the metropole and sending thousands of Japanese to other parts of East Asia. The constant movement of peoples, ideas, and texts in the Japanese empire created numerous literary contact nebulae, fluid spaces of diminished hierarchies where writers grapple with and transculturate one another's creative output. Drawing extensively on vernacular sources in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, this book analyzes the most active of these contact nebulae: semicolonial Chinese, occupied Manchurian, and colonial Korean and Taiwanese transculturations of Japanese literature. It explores how colonial and semicolonial writers discussed, adapted, translated, and recast thousands of Japanese creative works, both affirming and challenging Japan's cultural authority. Such efforts not only blurred distinctions among resistance, acquiescence, and collaboration but also shattered cultural and national barriers central to the discourse of empire. In this context, twentieth-century East Asian literatures can no longer be understood in isolation from one another, linked only by their encounters with the West, but instead must be seen in constant interaction throughout the Japanese empire and beyond. By the turn of the twentieth century, Japan s military and economic successes made it the dominant power in East Asia, drawing hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese students to the metropole and sending thousands of Japanese to other parts of East Asia. The constant movement of peoples, ideas, and texts in the Japanese empire created numerous literary contact nebulae, fluid spaces of diminished hierarchies where writers grapple with and transculturate one another s creative output. Drawing extensively on vernacular sources in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, this book analyzes the most active of these contact nebulae: semicolonial Chinese, occupied Manchurian, and colonial Korean and Taiwanese transculturations of Japanese literature. It explores how colonial and semicolonial writers discussed, adapted, translated, and recast thousands of Japanese creative works, both affirming and challenging Japan s cultural authority. Such efforts not only blurred distinctions among resistance, acquiescence, and collaboration but also shattered cultural and national barriers central to the discourse of empire. In this context, twentieth-century East Asian literatures can no longer be understood in isolation from one another, linked only by their encounters with the West, but instead must be seen in constant interaction throughout the Japanese empire and beyond. Frontmatter Conventions (page xiii) Introduction: Empire, Transculturation, and Literary Contact Nebulae (page 1) 1 Travel, Readerly Contact, and Writerly Contact in the Japanese Empire (page 28) PART I: INTERPRETIVE AND INTERLINGUAL TRANSCULTURATION (page 83) 2 Transcultural Literary Criticism in the Japanese Empire (page 91) 3 Multiple Vectors and Early Interlingual Transculturations of Japanese Literature (page 127) 4 From Cultural Innovations to Total War (page 172) PART II: INTERTEXTUAL TRANSCULTURATION (page 209) 5 Intertextuality, Empire, and East Asia (page 213) 6 Spotlight on Suffering (page 251) 7 Reconceptualizing Relationships: Individuals, Families, Nations (page 291) 8 Questions of Agency: Raising Responsibility, Parodying Persistence, and Rethinking Reform (page 331) Epilogue: Postwar Intra-East Asian Dialogues and the Future of Negotiating Transculturally (page 375) Reference Matter Notes (page 389) Works Cited (page 467) Index (page 535) The constant movement of peoples, ideas, and texts in the Japanese empire at the turn of the twentieth century created numerous literary contact nebulae. This book analyzes three of them: semicolonial Chinese, occupied Manchurian, and colonial Korean and Taiwanese transculturations of Japanese literature. During the first half of the 20th century, Japan was the dominant military & political force in East Asia. This study explores the transculturations of Japanese literature amongst the Chinese, Koreans, Taiwanese & Manchurians whose lives had come within the sphere of the Japanese Empire