Contemporary Japanese Literature in Its Transition Towards the New Postmodern Humanism: Haruki Murakami
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2011.15.3.59-68Keywords:
transition, postmodernism, new humanism, contemporary Japanese literatureAbstract
Although Japan recorded no specific literary movement in the 1980s, in any classical sense of the term, we may say that today we are witnessing, in terms of our historical sensibility, a condensation of narrative viewpoints upon the present or, in other words, the transposition of the criteria of the present to another time, which is undoubtedly a consequence of the so-called “postmodern” will to reject grand narratives. This study aims to review and complete the inventory of the postmodern characteristics that specialisedliterature has identified in Haruki Murakami’s works, seen from the perspective of what the author of the present paper considers to be the “new postmodern humanism.”
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References
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Strecher, Matthew C. 1998b. “Beyond ‘Pure’ Literature: Mimesis, Formula, and the Postmodern in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki.” The Journal of Asian Studies 57(2): 354–378.
Eco, Umberto. 1989. Opera deschisă. (The Open Work). Translated into Romanian. Pitesti: Paralela 45.
Gregory, Sinda et al. 2002. “It Don’t Mean a Thing. If It Ain’t Got that Swing: An Interview with Haruki Murakami.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 22(2): 111–119.
Karatani, Kōjin. 1989. “D’un dehors à l’autre. Kawabata et Takeda Taijun.” In Litterature Japonaise Contemporaine, edited by Patrick De Voss, 32–45. Essais, Bruxelles: Editions Labor.
Kobayashi Hideo. 1995. Literature of the Lost Home. [Literary Criticism, 1924–1939]. Edited and translated and with an introduction by Paul Anderer. California: Standford University Press.
Marra, Michelle. 2002. Modern Japanese Aesthetics. A Reader. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Miyoshi, Masao. 1989. “Against the Native Grain: The Japanese Novel and the ‘Postmodern’ West.” In Postmodernism and Japan, edited by Masao Miyoshi and H. D. Harootunian, 143–169. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Murakami, Haruki. 1994 (1987). Hear the Wind Sing. Translated by Alfred Birnbaum. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
Murakami, Haruki. 1995. Nejimaki dori kuronikuru, I, II, III. Tokyo: Shinchosha.
Murakami, Haruki. 1997. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Translated by Jay Rubin. New- York: Knopf.
Murakami, Haruki. 2004 (1979). Kaze no uta o kike. Tokyo: Kodansha.
Pavel, Toma. 1989. Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: MA Harvard University Press.
Rubin, Jay. 1992. “The Other World of Murakami Haruki.” Japan Quarterly 39(4): 490–500.
Strecher, Matthew C.1998a. “Murakami Haruki: Japan’s Coolest Writer Heats Up.” Japan Quarterly 45(1): 61– 69.
Strecher, Matthew C. 1998b. “Beyond ‘Pure’ Literature: Mimesis, Formula, and the Postmodern in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki.” The Journal of Asian Studies 57(2): 354–378.
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Published
1. 12. 2011
Issue
Section
Reflecting Transition
How to Cite
Frentiu, Rodica. 2011. “Contemporary Japanese Literature in Its Transition Towards the New Postmodern Humanism: Haruki Murakami”. Asian Studies 15 (3): 59-68. https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2011.15.3.59-68.
