Border-crossing Japanese literature : reading multiplicity

This collection focuses on metaphorical as well as temporal and physical border-crossing in writing from and about Japan. With a strong consciousness of gender and socio-historic contexts, contributors to the book adopt an intercultural and interdisciplinary approach to examine the writing of authors whose works break free from the confines of hegemonic Japanese literary endeavour. By demonstrating how the texts analysed step outside the space of 'Japan', they accordingly foreground the volatility of textual expression related to that space. The authors discussed include Takahashi Mutsuo and Nagai Kafu, both of whom take literary inspiration from geographical sites outside Japan. Several chapters examine the work of exemplary border-crossing poet, novelist and essayist, Ito Hiromi. There are discussions of the work of Tawada Yoko whose ability to publish in German and Japanese marks her also as a representative writer of border-crossing texts. Two chapters address works by Murakami Haruki who, although clearly affiliating with western cultural form, is rarely discussed in specific border-crossing terms. The chapter on Ainu narratives invokes topics such as translation, indigeneity and myth, while an analysis of Japanese prisoner-of-war narratives notes the language and border-crossing nexus. A vital collection for scholars and students of Japanese literature.

Part I Longing for Distant Borders to Cross 1 Only Yesterday: The Queerness of Cross-Temporal Identification in the Poetry of Takahashi Mutsuo 2 Living on the Edge: The Negotiation of Modern Borders in Nagai Kafu's Amerika monogatari 3 Flights Across Inner Borders: Japanese Picture Book Retellings of Ainu Owl Stories Part II Oscillation, Borders and Ito Hiromi 4 The Poetics of Border-Crossing: A Case Study of Ito Hiromi from the 1990s to the Present 5 The Practice of 'Trans': Observations on Ito Hiromi's Novel Togenuki - The Thorn-Puller 6 Border-Crossing Food and Humour in Ito Hiromi's Prose and Poetry Part III Borders Crossed outside Japan 7 Crossing Borders of Culture and Language: Historical Fiction Depicting Japanese Internment in Australia 8 Sydney!: Murakami Haruki's Olympic Border Cross 9 Border-Crossing in the Collective Trauma Narratives of Murakami Haruki and Tawada Yoko 10 The Gaze of the Girl Displaced across Borders: Tawada Yoko's Tabi o suru hadaka no me