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This study introduces the concepts of naturalization and naturalized modernity, and uses them as tools for understanding the way modernity has been experienced and portrayed in Japanese literature since the end of the Second World War. Special emphasis is given to four leading post-war writers Kawabata Yasunari, Abe Kobo, Murakami Haruki and Murakami Ryu. The author argues that notions of shock in modern city life in Japan (as exemplified in the writings of Walter Benjamin and George Simmel), while present in the work of older Japanese writers, do not appear to hold true in much contemporary Japanese literature: it is as if the shock impact of change has evolved as a naturalized or Japanized process. The author focuses on the implications of this phenomenon, both in the context of the theory of modernity and as an opportunity to reevaluate the works of his chosen writers."
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SHOCK AND NATURALIZATION IN CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE LITERATURE SHOCK AND NATURALIZATION IN CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE LITERATURE CARL CASSEGÅRD Göteborg University SHOCK AND NATURALIZATION IN CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE LITERATURE Carl Cassegård First published in 2007 by GLOBAL ORIENTAL LTD PO Box 219 Folkestone Kent CT20 2WP UK www.globaloriental.co.uk © Carl Cassegård 2007 ISBN 978-1-905246-29-8 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library Set in 9/12pt Stone Serif by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester Printed and bound in England by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts. Contents Preface Introduction 1. Modernity and Shock vii ix 1 2. Second Nature and Revolt 35 3. Naturalized Modernity 50 4. Strategies for the Good Life 111 5. Kawabata Yasunari: Shock and the Reunion with Inner Nature 128 6. Abe Kobo and the Triumph of Shock 148 7. Murakami Haruki: Loneliness and Waiting 162 8. Murakami Ryu: Boredom and the Nostalgia for Shock 188 9. Nature and the Critique of Myth 208 Bibliography Index 220 233 Preface Tirelessly the process of thinking makes new beginnings, returning in a roundabout way to its original object. This continual pausing for breath is the mode most proper to the process of contemplation. WALTER BENJAMIN T his book is partly about modernity and partly about Japanese literature. Literature has helped me on many occasions to rethink assumptions I have held about modernity – assumptions acquired above all from the classics of sociology, Marxism, the debates about ‘postmodernity’, and perhaps above all from Walter Benjamin. This process of rethinking is far from a destructive process. Theory, I feel, only comes alive when it is used for understanding something else, when thought in conjunction with something else. A careful and sensitive use of theoretical concepts for understanding literature usually involves creating a fruitful tension between them, in which both theory and literature are destabilized. The impulse to think something over once again originates in such destabilization. To understand literature with the help of theory and to rethink theory with the help of literature are two aims of this book which, in my mind, naturally belong together. The book originated as a PhD thesis completed in 2002 (at Kyoto University in Japan and Lund University in Sweden), but has been extensively rewritten