Paul Gordon Schalow

The Woman's Hand Gender and Theory in Japanese Women's Writing

This is a book of polemics. It reflects the dynamics of that social life which is built entirely on contradictions.... Such is our epoch. We have all grown up with it. We breathe it and live by it. How can we help being polemical if we want to be true to our period in the mode of the day? -Leon Trotsky, My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography

Knowing the Amorous Man: A History of Scholarship on Tales of Ise by Jamie L. Newhard (review)

Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 74.1 (2014): 176–183 state-directed. There are still countless research taboos with respect to both the preand post-1949 periods. The party/state still recruits (and rewards) servants who will turn out polemics that legitimize immediate state interests. During the run-up to the Bo Xilai trial, the party center circulated Document No. 9, which warns party regulars of serious threats to party rule: ideas about constitutional democracy, an independent judiciary, universal human rights, media independence, and civil society. The list also includes “nihilist” (and clearly unpatriotic) research on the history of party-initiated debacles after 1949. Under such circumstances, it comes as no surprise that many intellectuals, though not all, will continue to jump at a chance to serve, whether or not they really believe the latest orthodoxies. Others will self-censor. It can be a matter of survival. Li’s utopian call for fresh, nonteleological, grand narratives that arise from a “within-time and open-ended” conception of modern Chinese history is inspiring, but it presupposes structural arrangements and political prerequisites for such writing that do not exist in China. Until historians of modern China can enjoy a meaningful measure of professional independence and basic standards of personal security, they are likely to continue to self-censor and serve party/state power whether or not they “really” believe in the current political orthodoxy. By definition, critical scholarship on any subject involves keen debate and multiple possibilities for dissent. How many scholars of modern Chinese history working in mainland China today and writing in Chinese are ready to express views that challenge current party/state orthodoxies? Who will employ such people? Where will they publish their research?

In the Company of Men: Representations of Male-Male Sexuality in Meiji Literature (review)

1806). As to the crucial question why this short-lived literary genre suddenly “disappeared” around 1806, he argues plausibly that it was owing primarily to self-made reasons, rather than the often-cited Kansei reforms (1787–1793). Due to the changing composition of readership, he concludes, the authors increasingly lost sight of their readers, and the kibyôshi finally “fell victim to its own success” (p. 245). Part 2, to be read in Japanese order from the back of the book, contains three annotated translations plus introductory essays to them (chapters 5–7): “Those Familiar Bestsellers” (1782), “Playboy, Roasted à la Edo” (1785), and “The Unseamly Silverpiped Swinger” (1788), all by Santô Kyôden. Although all three translations give an impressive insight into a world full of visual and verbal puns and allusions, the author’s confession that “these three pieces were in part selected on subjective grounds” (p. 28) raises a problematic issue, as the oeuvre of a single author, even one as famous as Kyôden, cannot seriously be called a representative selection of kibyôshi. All in all, the present volume is a brilliant introduction to the world of the kibyôshi. Taking account of very different aspects of Edo’s literary and cultural life, Kern provides a fascinating view of a long-disregarded form of Edo literature. As the author’s stated main purpose is “to introduce the kibyôshi to the informed general reader as well as to the student of Japanese literature and culture” (p. 6), the translation of already edited and annotated works (see NKBT, NKBZ) is, needless to say, legitimate, even though the presentation of hitherto unedited material would have been more desirable from a philological point of view. The author’s statements about modern manga, however, unfortunately are highly controversial. As key studies on manga history and narrative framework were obviously not consulted for this study (the bibliographical references list only a few titles), comparisons such as in chapter 3 remain vague and inevitably foster misconceptions. As today’s students of Japanese literature and culture possess quite good knowledge of the modern manga, the author would have been wise to take a much more serious approach to this well-known element of contemporary Japanese popular culture. And finally, if Kern’s major interest is kibyôshi as a form of Edo literature, and if, as he argues, there exists no close link between the kibyôshi and the modern manga, the advent of the modern manga being solely stimulated by the influence of the Western comicbook, why should this study have been given the title Manga from the Floating World? At least for me, a less misleading title would have been preferable.