Allison Holland

Japanese Counterculture: The Antiestablishment Art of Terayama Shūji

ironic detachment. At times Karatani’s central concept of historical repetition is overly literal and deterministic. This is particularly notable in his claim in chapter 3 that historical repetition occurs not in 60-year but 120-year cycles. However, Karatani’s basic argument that the contradictions of Japanese modernity – the struggle for freedom and democracy, the concept of the nation, and Japan’s relations with Asia and with the West – are recurrent themes in Japan history is convincing. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Karatani has taken an active role in the anti-nuclear movement where, as a writer and participant in demonstrations, he has emphasised that these same unresolved contradictions lie behind the disaster and the political response to it. In History and Repetition we find a powerful exposition of the contradictions that continue to haunt the modern Japanese state.