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Asian Studies Book Services |
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Available
in English translation for the first time, Transformations of Sensibility
is a monumental publication on the literary history of Japan, one that
deliberately challenges conventional wisdom about the rise of modern
Japanese literature. This book, first published in Japan in 1983 and now a
classic in modern Japanese literature studies, covers an astonishing range
of texts from the Meiji period (1868–1912) and offers highly original
close readings of works by such writers as Futabatei Shimei, Tsubouchi
Shoyo, Higuchi Ichiyo, and Izumi Kyoka, as well as writers previously
ignored by most scholars. It
also presents sophisticated analyses of the ways that experiments in
literary language produced multiple new—and sometimes
revolutionary—forms of sensibility and subjectivity. Along the way,
Kamei Hideo carries on an extended debate with Western theorists such as
Saussure, Bakhtin, and Lotman, as well as with such contemporary Japanese
critics as Karatani Kojin and Noguchi Takehiko. In doing so Kamei provides
a new critical theorization of the relationship between language and
sensibility, one that links the specificity of Meiji literature to broader
concerns that transcend the field of Japanese literary studies. This
English edition incorporates a new preface by the author and an
introduction by the translation editor that explain the theoretical and
historical contexts in which the work first appeared. Published by Center for
Japanese Studies, University of Michigan |
