The IAFOR Academic Review Volume 1 | Issue 3
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The IAFOR Academic Review Volume 1 | Issue 3 In this edition The Style of Interiority: The Zen- Modern Self in Shiga Naoya’s An’ya kōro Musicians’ Enigma in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes The ‘otherness’ in the Literary Experience of Endo Shusaku: Encounters and Exchanges “Mukouda Kuniko no Koibumi”: A Woman Writer’s Lifelong Secret From Her Family Exploring Nagusamegusa (1418): The Semiotics of Encounter and Exchange for a Poettraveller in Muromachi, Japan Essays in Japanese Literature ISSN: 2188-9570 THE IAFOR ACADEMIC REVIEW 3 14 7 CONTENTS 1-2 7-13 University of Central Editorial Committee Musicians’ Enigma Lancashire, UK Introduction in Kazuo Ishiguro’s An introduction to the Nocturnes 20-24 latest edition of The IAFOR Yu-min Huang, National “Mukouda Kuniko no Academic Review by Changhua University of Koibumi”: A Woman Michael Liam Kedzlie Education,Taiwan Writer’s Lifelong Secret From Her Family 3-6 14-19 Megumi Ohsumi, The Style of Interiority: The ‘otherness’ in the Université de Neuchâtel, The Zen-Modern Self Literary Experience of Switzerland in Shiga Naoya’s An’ya Endo Shusaku: kōro Encounters and 25-29 Jacob Lee, Brigham Exchanges Exploring Young University, USA Justyna Weronika Kasza, Nagusamegusa (1418): THE IAFOR ACADEMIC REVIEW 20 25 The IAFOR Academic Review The Semiotics of Volume 1 | Issue 3 Encounter and Exchange for a Poettraveller in Editorial Committee Rev. Professor Stuart Picken – Chairman of the IAB Muromachi, Japan Dr. Joseph Haldane – IAFOR Executive Director Penelope Shino, Massey Mr. Michael Liam Kedzlie – IAFOR Research and University, New Zealand Policy Manager IAFOR Cultural Studies, Arts & Humanities & 30-33 Literature Conference Chairs & Advisory Board Table of References Professor Baden Offord – Director and Professor, Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia Professor Donald E. Hall – Herbert J. and Ann L. Siegel Dean, Lehigh University, USA Cover Image Dr. Thomas French - Ritsumeikan University, Japan Shiga, Naoya (1883 - 1971) Professor Myles Chilton - Nihon University, Japan Image sourced Gendai IAFOR Publications © Copyright 2015 Shosetsu Zenshu vol.8 ISSN: 2188-9570 Editorial Committee Introduction One of the central missions of The International Kazuo Ishiguro’s perspectives on a musicians’ career, Academic Forum (IAFOR) is to provide avenues for their aging, marital relationships, separations and their academics and researchers to be international, reunions, through the eyes of the protagonous Mikhail intercultural and interdisciplinary. One of the ways in Mikhailovich Bakhtin’s in Ishiguro’s Nocturnes: Five which we do this is through our in-house magazine Eye, Stories of Music and Nightfall (2009). Yu-min Huang our various conference proceedings, our Journals, and argues that Ishiguro intends to provide his readers with now beginning in 2015 are our special editions of the consciousnesses in the various examples of musicians and IAFOR International Academic Review. In this edition couples in relation in the novel to arouse open-ended of the IAFOR International Academic Review we the meanings of career and marriage in the musicians’ world, editorial committee bring together a selection of the most which the readers comprehend by themselves through interesting research contributions from our recent the relation of the hero and the characters in each story. conferences with respect to Japanese Art. The papers Yu-min Huang’s papers reveals that the novel focuses its selected by the editorial committee for this special edition attention on what challenges a musician encounters in certainly reflect the international, intercultural and different stages of career and how he faces the music and interdisciplinary approach that lies at the heart of both struggles for marriage and love in different career IAFOR and Cultural Studies. situations, either rising or falling in the fierce business world. We hope you enjoy reading the selection of papers from this IAFOR special review edition. The ‘otherness’ in the Literary Experience of Endo Shusaku: Encounters and Exchanges The Style of Interiority: The Zen-Modern Self in Shiga Justyna Weronika Kasza, University of Central Naoya’s An’ya kōro Lancashire, UK Jacob Lee, Brigham Young University, USA In her paper The ‘otherness’ in the Literary Experience of Shiga Naoya 志賀直哉 is famously known as the “god of Endo Shusaku: Encounters and Exchanges Justyna the shōsetsu” 小説の神様 for his pristine style and Weronika Kasza, from the University of Central commanding personality. In his paper The Style of Lancashire in the UK discusses the category of Interiority: The Zen-Modern Self in Shiga Naoya’s An’ya “otherness” and the Other in the works of a kōro Jacob Lee examines the consistency of Shiga’s style contemporary Japanese writer Endō Shūsaku (1923- of interiority and suggests that a knowing naiveté of the 1996). Broadly understood “literary experience” of Endō, limits of language does not hinder the reader from filling first as a reader of Western literature and further as a in their own gaps or indeed imagining the paradoxically novelist, is based on constant transition from the indescribable. Lee notes that words such as hen’na, “encounter” with what to him is foreign, distant and alien fushigina, myōna, and shikashi are eached characterized within the Western world to the definitive attempt to by their ability to signify alterity and negativity, yet are appropriate this “otherness” into his fictional works. also concrete in their typographic and prosodic “Otherness,” in Endō Shūsaku’s literary experience is materiality. The ‘self’ in An’ya kōro is rigidly persistent in discussed by Kasza through the confrontation of various its internal structure yet ultimately characterized by its literary forms, enabling us to acknowledge the writer’s relation with the absolute, and in fact a relationship that encounters with “otherness” and the Other. The may be inexpressible but nevertheless intuitable. Lee significance of his texts lies in exposing the exchange that contends that perhaps sincerity itself is a matter of being was developing in a parallel way between what was alien open to such possibilities as intimated incompletely by and what he Endo recognized as his own Japanese self. Shiga’s text. If that is the case Lee proposes that, An’ya kōro therefore still has value for in imagining not only “Mukouda Kuniko no Koibumi”: A Woman Writer’s our continued encounters with texts but also encounters Lifelong Secret From Her Family with ourselves. Megumi Ohsumi, Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland Musicians’ Enigma in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes Yu-min Huang, National Changhua University of Megumi Ohsumi, in her paper “Mukouda Kuniko no Education,Taiwan Koibumi”: A Woman Writer’s Lifelong Secret From Her Family reveals the life and work of Kuniko Mukoda Yu-min Huang examines in his paper Musicians’ Enigma (1929-1981) of writer who for the most part has eluded in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, the Anglo-Japanese novelist scholarly criticism, especially in the English language and 1 the English-speaking world. Neither a novelist nor a in terms of their highly transitional, symbiotic and poet, Kuniko Mukoda was one of the most celebrated socially mobile characteristics of Muromachi society, and writers in Japan and a winner of prestigious literary the penetration of the culture of the capital into the prizes, for her works as a scriptwriter for television. provinces, and warrior uptake of aristocratic tradition. Tragically killed in airplane accident she left many things Shino also explores Shōtetsu’s need to compose his about her private life untold. Megumi Ohsumi reveals by poetry at richly literary sites so as to show his ‘culturally- examples from Mukoda’s fictional works and the determined’ drive to construct a ‘proper' identity for posthumous Mukoda Kuniko no Koibumi (The Love Letters himself as a poet. of Kuniko Mukoda) work published in 2002 that Mukoda incorporated elements from her real life when writing fiction, including her secret decade long affair with a married man 13 years her senior. Exploring Nagusamegusa (1418): The Semiotics of Encounter and Exchange for a Poettraveller in Muromachi, Japan Penelope Shino, Massey University, New Zealand In exploring explores the fifteenth century Japanese travelogue, Nagusamegusa (‘Grasses of Consolation', 1418), by the influential poet and Zen priest Shōtetsu (1381- 1459) Penelope Shino examines in her paper Exploring Nagusamegusa (1418): The Semiotics of Encounter and Exchange for a Poettraveller in Muromachi, Japan the encoded significance in historical, social and cultural terms, the encounters contained within Shōtetsu’s travels within provincial Japan. The paper interprets encounters 2 The Style of Interiority: The Zen-Modern Self in Shiga Naoya’s An’ya kōro JACOB LEE BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY Shiga Naoya 志賀直哉 is famously known as the “god of emerges as central: does Tokitō Kensaku 時 任 謙 作 the shōsetsu” 小 説 の神様 for his pristine style and achieve an authentic epiphany after his long journey of self discovery? Or does a domineering solipsism commanding personality. While his technical compromise his supposed sincerity? Answering yes to achievements in modern Japanese literature’s colloquial this latter question, Cody Poulton criticizes the book for prose style is virtually undisputed, some critics have been having “absolutely no sense of Kensaku’s internal less reverential when it comes to the ethics implied in his development” (Shiga Naoya’s 23) even while recognizing autobiographical