Writing Human Feeling: Emotionality, Desire, and the Production of Literature in 19th Century Japan

Professor Poch, Daniel Taro   (Principal Investigator (PI))

48

2017-06-01

450000

Writing Human Feeling: Emotionality, Desire, and the Production of Literature in 19th Century Japan

19th Century Literature, History of Emotions, Japanese Literature, Narrative Fiction, Sexuality and Gender, the Novel

Literature

Humanities & Social Sciences (H)

27613716

Early Career Scheme (ECS)

2016

Completed

1 To demonstrate that the emergence of modern Japanese literature was not the result of a clear-cut historical break, brought about by the influx of Western ideas, discourses and translations in the Meiji period, but also relates back to discourses and narrative practices in the early modern period (Edo period). 2 To investigate the continuous significance of the writing of emotions and desires in the production of literature in Japan from the early 19th to the early 20th century. 3 To examine how notions of emotionality and desire – such as the traditional concept of ""human feeling"" (ninjô) – shaped major 19th century literary genres. For example, what was the continuity between late Edo-period yomihon (""books for reading"") or ninjôbon (""books of human feeling"") and the Meiji-period novel (shôsetsu)? 4 To explore how emotions and desires, in particular sexual desire, are represented as a potentially excessive and dangerous force in 19th century Japanese literary texts. What narrative strategies or plot and gender dynamics did texts use to negotiate that force? 5 To shed new light on 19th century discussions about the socio-cultural and political significance of narrative fiction, for instance as a didactic tool or, in the Meiji period, as a medium able to advance the nation toward civilization and enlightenment. 6 To investigate how Japanese texts from the late-Edo to the Meiji period reflect and dramatize the ambiguity of literature as a medium that represents potentially dangerous emotions while simultaneously claiming social and political significance. How did these textual negotiations over the meaning and function of literary writing shape the formation of literary modernity in 19th century Japan? 7 To offer a case study to rethink the specific temporality of modernity in Japan and East Asia, as well as to resituate the study of 19th century Japanese literature and culture within the burgeoning scholarship on emotionality as a dominant paradigm in modern (global) culture.