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"Ikuho Amano examines the significance of "decadence" in the context of twentieth-century Japanese literature. Decadence, the literary theme and motif surviving through the history of literary and cultural discourses in Japan since antiquity to the present, holds a key to understand the wide range of social consciousnesses that cannot be always molded by a given social mainstream. Drawing on the economic issues prevalent in twentieth-century fictions, the book argues that non-productive labor plays an integral part of modern society and culture while accommodating the entropic excess of modern society. Subversive practice of economy is in particular a recurrent theme in Japanese Decadent literature, including waste, squandering, wagering, and excessive generosity. Through these deviant dealing of resources such as money and body, the decadent individuals negotiate with modern utilitarian ideologies of society based on labor and production, showcasing their desire and dream outside the circle of diligenceand productivity"--
List of contents
Introduction: The Making of Decadence in Japan 1. Immature Decadents: The Waste of Useless Men in Indulgences - Two Novellas by Oguri F?y? and Iwano H?mei 2. The Decadent Consumption of the Self: Naturalist Aestheticismin Morita S?hei's Sooty Smoke 3. Decadent Returnees: The Dialogic Labor of Sensibility in Nagai Kaf?'s Sneers and Ueda Bin's The Vortex 4. Taish? Malaise as Decadence: Self-Reclusion and Creative Labor in Sat? Haruo's A Pastoral Spreen and Tanizaki Jun'ichir?'s A Fool's Love 5. Decadence Begins with Physical Labor: The Postwar Usethe Body in Sakaguchi Ango's The Idiot and Tamura Taijir?'s Gateway to the Flesh 6. Decadence as Generosity: Squander and Oblivion in Mishima Yukio's Spring Snow 7. Capitalist Generosity: Decadence as Giving and Receiving in Shimada Masahiko's Decadent Sisters Conclusion: Toward Japanese Decadence: The Dynamics of Energy from Waste to Living Labor
Report
"Skillfully blending literary, philosophical, historical, and economic issues, Ikuho Amano's exploration of Japanese decadence is groundbreaking and compelling. This brilliant analysis of non-productive, subversive labor as resistance to mainstream social and aesthetic values highlights new fascinating connections between European and Japanese modernity...a crucial reading for anyone interested in East-West literary and cultural relations." - Nicoletta Pireddu, Associate Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, Georgetown University, USA
"This book is an exceptionally fine study of how decadence as a theme can be understood as a counter trope to the major aesthetic currents (including collectivity and conformity) that dominate twentieth century Japanese fiction. Ikuho Amano's brilliant, close readings - buttressed by a wealth of references to Japanese literary-critical discourse and contemporary Western literature and theory - and rediscovery of some important but neglected works of fiction portrays modern Japanese fiction in an entirely new light." - Leith Morton, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, and author of The Alien Within: Representations of the Exotic in Twentieth Century Japanese Literature
'Ikuho Amano's study of Decadence is a contemporary genealogy of 'useless men' in a modern efficiency-driven economy. It will be of interest to all scholars of modern Japanese culture, transculturation, and intercultural studies.' - Regenia Gagnier, Professor of English, University of Exeter, UK and author of Individualism, Decadence and Globalization
