This book provides a comprehensive analysis of major works in Japanese literature and film through the interpretive lens of trauma and PTSD studies. Focusing critical attention on the psychodynamics and enduring psychosocial aftereffects of social trauma, it also evaluates the themes of dissociation, failed mourning, and psychological defence fantasies.Building on earlier studies, this book emphasizes the role of protagonists in managing to effect partial recovery by composing memo...

Japanese literature and film have frequently been approached using lenses such as language, genre and ideology. Yet, despite a succession of major social traumas that have marked, and in many ways shaped and defined much of modern Japan, Japanese fiction and cinema have not often been examined psychoanalytically.In this book, David Stahl conducts in-depth readings and interpretations of a set of Japanese novels and film. By introducing the methodology of trauma/PTSD studies, Stahl ...

Many noir anthologies have inspired writers and publishers around the world to gather novelists to set noir stories in a city. When it comes to noir, not all cities are equal. The history of genocide and dislocation sets Phnom Penh apart from other places. What other city in modern times was emptied of all of his people at gun point, a city abandoned and left as a ghost town?The authors of Phnom Penh Noir take you inside the lives of Cambodians who carry that legacy of that fateful...

Sakura and sushi are only two things about Japan that the world knows about. There are so many more to love about the country, and this book will give you a glimpse of what those other reasons are. Picture books not only make learning fun but also encourages self-awareness. They provide the opportunity for children to associate with the world. Order your copy now!

Yöko Tawada: Voices from Everywhere is the first volume of criticism dedicated to the work of Yöko Tawada, one of the most highly acclaimed writers of her generation. Douglas Slaymaker has collected a range of essays including many that were featured at the 2006 MLA Conference, where a presidential panel featuring Yöko Tawada was organized by MLA President Marjorie Perloff, who has contributed a preface to this volume. The essays explore the plurality of voices and cultures in Taw...

In four critical essays, Hope Anderson desconstructs the production design, classical allusions, literary source, and Japanese cultural influences in the 1982 Ridley Scott film "Blade Runner," providing new insights into what is regarded by many as the greatest science fiction film of all time. Among the topics discussed are downtown Los Angeles and its architecture, the influence of Greek tragedy on the character Roy Batty, the meaning of Japanese cultural elements, and a comparison betwe...

Born in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, raised in the scholarly traditions of ancient China by his grandfather but forced into the Japanese educational system, Hu Taiming, the protagonist of Orphan of Asia, ultimately finds himself estranged from all three cultures. Wu's autobiographical novel, completed in 1945, is widely regarded as a classic of modern Asian literature and a groundbreaking expression of the postwar Taiwanese national consciousness. Originally written in Japanese and n...

This book uses texts from classical to modern Japanese literature to examine concepts of 'respect for the strong', as a notion of an evolutionary society, and 'sympathy for the weak', as a notion of a non-violent and changeless egalitarian society.The term strong refers not just to those with strength and power. It also includes other ideal attributes such as beauty, youth and goodness. Similarly, the term weak implies not only the weak and infirm, but also the disadvantaged, the i...

A critical rethinking of theories of national imagination, The Dawn That Never Comes offers the most detailed reading to date in English of one of modern Japan's most influential poets and novelists, Shimazaki Toson (1872–1943). It also reveals how Toson's works influenced the production of a fluid, shifting form of national imagination that has characterized twentieth-century Japan.Analyzing Toson's major works, Michael K. Bourdaghs demonstrates that the construction of n...

Throughout his academic career, Anthony C. Yu has employed a comparative approach to literary analysis that pays careful attention to the religious and philosophical elements of Chinese and Western texts. His mastery of both canons remains unmatched in the field, and his immense knowledge of the contexts that gave rise to each tradition supplies the foundations for ideal comparative scholarship.In these essays, Yu explores the overlap between literature and religion in Chinese and ...

Participating in the reframing of literary studies, Cosmopolitan Fictions identifies, as "cosmopolitan fiction", a genre of global literature that investigates the ethics and politics of complex and multiple belonging.The fictions studied by Katherine Stanton represent and revise the global histories of the past and present, including the "indigenous or native" narratives that are, in Homi Bhabha's words, "internal to" national identity itself.The works ta...

Colonialism/Postcolonialism is a comprehensive yet accessible guide to the historical, theoretical and political dimensions of colonial and postcolonial studies.This new edition includes a new introduction and conclusion as well as extensive updates throughout. Topics covered include globalization, new grassroots movements (including Occupy Wall Street), the environmental crisis, and the relationship between Marxism and postcolonial studies. Loomba also discusses how ongoi...