Life after Death? Writing the Alienated Self in Post-war Japan
This paper represents an attempt to consider how artists in general — and Japanese post-war novelists in particular — deal with traumatic experience and how this process is reflected in their subsequent literary texts. More specifically, it will consider how two Japanese immediate post-war authors,...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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The International Academic Forum
2013-09-01
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| Series: | IAFOR Journal of Literature & Librarianship |
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| Online Access: | https://iafor.org/journal/iafor-journal-of-literature-and-librarianship/volume-2-issue-2/article-1/ |
| Summary: | This paper represents an attempt to consider how artists in general — and Japanese post-war novelists in particular — deal with traumatic experience and how this process is reflected in their subsequent literary texts. More specifically, it will consider how two Japanese immediate post-war authors, Shimao Toshio (1917–86) and Shiina Rinzō (1911–73) — neither of whom saw active experience at the front but who both emerged, by their own admission, heavily traumatized from their experiences of the period—tackled the issue of depicting in their literary texts their wartime experiences and their subsequent attempts to return to "normal" life in the immediate aftermath of war. The literary process whereby they first "act out" and subsequently "work through" their particular traumatic experiences will be examined — and, in so doing, their oeuvres will be presented as ongoing, collaborative projects aimed at more fully "constituting" certain traumatic events in cognitive, affective and ethical terms. |
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| ISSN: | 2187-0608 2187-0608 |