Japanese Literature Brushing History against the Grain

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

The current trend in Japan toward historical revisionism under the auspices of neoliberal politics must be read as an intentional rewriting of historical facts. Ongoing efforts to reinterpret the language of Article 9 and the official state repositioning on the existence of “comfort women” are but two instances of this rewriting. Their occurrence exacerbates the violence inherent in modern Japanese history and promotes an erasure of the devastating impact of unrestrained economic development. This panel considers the texts of Inoue Mitsuharu, Hayashi Kyôko, and Ishimure Michiko as “brush[ing] history against the grain,” to use Walter Benjamin’s words, which reflect concern for the poor, the deprived, and the silenced. How do literary representations write into or against historical revisionism? Do invocations of historical events “brush history against the grain” or do they contribute to this rewriting? How do authors revive or rewrite histories by incorporating victims into their texts? Sarah Clayton analyzes Inoue’s use of the uncanny in “Ninputachi no asu” as a strategy to counter erasure, Nobuko Yamasaki discusses racial formation and its critique in Hayashi’s “Yellow Sand,” and Hisaaki Wake compares and contrasts Ishimure’s _Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow_ with Hyakuta Naoki’s _The Eternal Zero_ for an ethical evaluation of these authors’ ideological stances and texts. Inspired by Benjamin’s notion of “brush[ing] against the grain,” this panel will expand upon the ethics and aesthetics of these literary interventions into historical revisionism, situating them within larger discourses of nation formation and economic development.

Area of Study

• Japan

Session Organizer

• Hisaaki Wake, Bates College

Chair

• Margherita Long, University of California, Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Employing the Uncanny to Combat Historical Erasure: Inoue Mitsuharu - Sarah Clayton, University of Washington

• Fragmenting Nationalist Narratives: Hayashi Kyôko - Nobuko Yamasaki, Lehigh University

• Between Reality and Fabrication: Ishimure and Hyakuta - Hisaaki Wake, Bates College

Discussant

• Nathaniel Heneghan, University of Southern California