Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan by Alan Stephen Wolfe

Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan by Alan Stephen Wolfe

Dazai Osamu (1909-1948) is one of Japan's most famous literary suicides, known as the earliest postwar manifestation of the genuinely alienated writer in Japan. In this first deconstructive reading of a modern Japanese novelist, Alan Wolfe draws on contemporary Western literary and cultural theories and on a knowledge of Dazai's work in the context of Japanese literary history to provide a fresh view of major texts by this important literary figure. In the process, Wolfe revises Japanese as well as Western scholarship on Dazai and discovers new connections among suicide, autobiography, alienation, and modernization. As shown here, Dazai's writings resist narrative and historical closure; while he may be said to serve the Japanese literary establishment as both romantic decadent and representative scapegoat, his texts reveal a deconstructive edge through which his posthumous status as a monument of negativity is already perceived and undone. Wolfe maintains that cultural modernization pits a Western concept of the individual as realized self and coherent subject against an Eastern absent self--and that a felt need to overcome this tension inspires the autobiographical fiction so prevalent in Japanese novels. Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan shows that Dazai's texts also resist readings that would resolve the gaps (East/West, self/other, modern/premodern) still prevalent in Japanese intellectual life. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Alan Wolfe is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, Boston College. A prolific and esteemed writer and speaker, Wolfe's books include The Future of Liberalism; Does American Democracy Still Work?; and Return to Greatness: How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What it Needs to Do to Recover It. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Erik C. Owens is Assistant Director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Theology, Boston College. He lives in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780691067742
ISBN 10	0691067740
Title	Suicidal Narrative in Modern Japan
Author	Alan Stephen Wolfe
Series	Princeton Legacy Library
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Princeton University Press
Year published	1990-03-21
Number of pages	264
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.