Title: Playing in the shadows : fictions of race and blackness in postwar Japanese literature /
Authors: Bridges, William H., 1983-
Year: 2020
Subjects: Japanese fiction History and criticism; Literature and race Japan.; Race in literature; Black people in literature; Japanese fiction American influences.; African Americans Relations with Japanese; African Americans Relations with Japanese; Blacks in literature; Civilization American influences; Intellectual life; Japanese fiction Shōwa period; Literature and race; Race in literature; Vie intellectuelle Japon; Civilisation Japon Influence américaine.; Race Dans la littérature.; Noirs Dans la littérature.; Littérature japonaise; Japan Intellectual life; Japan Civilization American influences; Japan
Abstract: "Playing in the Shadows explores the body of literature arising from post-World War II Japanese authors' robust cultural exchanges with African Americans and African Americana. Rather than solely focusing on representations of African Americans in Japanese literature, this manuscript argues that the black characters who rise to the textual surface are just the tip of the signifying iceberg. Beneath those representations -- or, as Professor Bridges argues, even in the absence of overt representations of black characters, there runs a rich history of Afro-Japanese literary and cultural exchange, as well as a history characterized by cross-cultural-pollination and creative experimentation that spans the Pacific. By tracing how blackness is written in and into Japanese literature, this book argues that fictions of race provide visions of the way that postwar Japanese authors reimagine the ascription of race to bodies: in bodies of literature, the body politic, or the human body itself"--
Contents: Introduction: Playing in the shadows, fictions of race, and blackness in postwar Japanese literature -- Unspeakable things unspoken: Moments of silence, racial preoccupation, and the hauntology of blackness in the literature of occupied Japan -- In the beginning: Ōe Kenzaburō and the creative nonfiction of blackness -- Of passing significance: Pronominal politics, Nakagami Kenji, and the fiction of “Burakuness” -- Genre trouble: Breaking the law of genre and literary blackness in the long 19702 -- Japanese literature in the age of hip hop: A mic check -- Conclusion: Parallax vision and playing in the shadows--elsewhere and otherwise.