The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945

Review
"This is a rich and comprehensive anthology of modern Japanese literature that includes not only the finest samples of poetry, drama and prose fiction but what are often considered marginal such as political accounts and detective stories. Almost completely isolated from the rest of the world at its beginning, poets and writers in Japan since the late 1860s have swung back and forth between the indigenous tradition and the newly imported forms and styles in every type of writing. From Soseki, Tanizaki, and Kawabata to authors translated here for the first time, they have each in his or her own way attempted to transmit to the readers degrees of their enthusiasm or reservations concerning imports from the West. They have created a kind of experimental laboratory thattests the universal validity of romanticism and naturalism, the idea of the individual and society, the rhetoric ofautobiographical confession, the debate over socialist realism, the role of art as memory, the poetics of gender and feminism, and so forth. This anthology provides the results of those experiments, showing an immense variety of literary scenes that illustrate stages of modernization in Japan." -- Makoto Ueda, editor of Far Beyond the Field: Haiku by Japanese Women

Book Description
This comprehensive anthology collects the works of fiction, poetry and drama, from a pivotal time in Japanese history. The volume offers outstanding, often new translations of classic texts by celebrated writers and fascinating works from lesser-known writers, including several by women, many of which have never been available in English. Each chapter includes a helpful critical introduction, situating the works within their literary, political, and cultural contexts.

About the Author
J. Thomas Rimer is professor of East Asian languages and literatures at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of several works, including Traditions in Modern Japanese Fiction: An Introduction and A Reader's Guide to Japanese Literature.Van C. Gessel is dean of the College of Humanities and professor of Japanese literature at Brigham Young University. He is the author of Three Modern Novelists: Soseki, Tanizaki, Kawabata and coeditor of The Showa Anthology: Modern Japanese Short Stories.


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This anthology collects the works of fiction, poetry, and drama from a pivotal time in Japanese history. The volume offers translations of classic texts by such celebrated writers as Nagai Kafu, Shimazaki Toson, Natsume Soseki, and Kawabata Yasunari. The editors have also unearthed works from lesser-known women writers, many of which have never been available in English. Organized chronologically and by genre within each period, the anthology begins with the early-modern texts of the 1870s, continues through the years of social change preceding World War I and the bold and innovative writing of the interwar period, and concludes with works written during World War II. Each chapter includes a helpful critical introduction and biographical introductions for each writer.


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