Literary Writing, Print Media, and Urban Space in Modern Japan, 1895-1933
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Literary Writing, Print Media, and Urban Space in Modern Japan, 1895-1933 Nathan Shockey Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts of Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Nathan Shockey All rights reserved ABSTRACT Literary Writing, Print Media, and Urban Space in Modern Japan, 1895-1933 Nathan Shockey The first decades of the 20th century saw the radical transformation of the ways in which literary media was produced and consumed in Japan. A new mass readership and a widening market for all manner of typographic print formed a rapidly changing ground upon which writers and critics reassessed how, why, and for whom they created works of literature and social thought. This dissertation examines a selection of fictional and critical texts from the turn of the century through the 1930s to demonstrate how mass- produced typographic media both served to produce mass consumer society in this period and functioned as sites for its critique, extending the aesthetic, linguistic, and political horizons of modern Japanese social life. I contend that an engagement with the commodity character of printed text enabled authors to develop experimental practices of writing that problematized the nexus of mutual interactions between printed text, visual media, urban space, and the human body. Chapter 1 traces the rise of magazines and affordable books through the late 1920s to show how new forms of print media served as forums for the dissemination and discussion of alternative models of literary practice and social organization. In Chapter 2, I examine the journal Bungei Jidai (Literary Age, 1924-1927) to explore how a generation of authors born into the age of mass-market print established literary networks, evaluated existing paradigms of reading, and experimented with new forms of writing. In the third chapter, I examine an array of fictional texts, sociological studies, schemas of urban planning, and other representations of modern city life in order to analyze how authors and critics understood the mutual mediations between municipal space, the printed text, and the human body in this period. Finally, in Chapter 4, I identify a shift in the understanding of printed language concurrent with the changes to urban and discursive space that I discuss in the previous chapters. I follow discussions of language reform policies, literary formalism, the economics of the publishing industry, and the project of proletarian literature in the late 1920s in order to demonstrate the emergence of a sense of “literary materialism” precipitated by the proliferation of typographic text. In a brief conclusion, I address the importance of this crucial period for understanding the present shift from print to digital text. CONTENTS Introduction 1 The Many Reconstructions of Print Media Chapter One Technologies of Reading: Mass Readership, Literary Media, and the Book as Commodity 44 in Modern Japan Chapter Two The Sensation of the New and the Problems of Perception: 101 Bungei Jidai and the Rewriting of the Literary Realm Chapter Three 157 The Transformation of Tokyo, the Mapping of Urban Space, and the Making of the Mediated Body Chapter Four 224 The Labor of the Letter and the Words of Workers: Language Reform, Literary Formalism, and Proletarian Publishing Critique Conclusion 316 Publishing Revolution Repetition Bibliography and Works Cited 330 i Acknowledgements I feel an enormous debt of gradtitude toward the people who supported me in the long process of planning and writing this dissertation. Without the boundless help and guidance of these people, not only would this dissertation never have been completed, but in all likelihood it never would have been started at all. First and foremost, I would like to extend my deep thanks to my teachers at Columbia University – they taught me how to read and how to write, and there can be no greater gift than that. Professor Tomi Suzuki has been an advisor and a mentor to me in a capacity above and beyond what I ever could have imagined. After countless hours spent together in her office, her classroom, and other precincts, I find myself truly at a loss for words how to express my thanks to her for sharing her time, wisdom, and sense of humor with me. For her dedication to scholarship and teaching, her endless support, and her willingness to push me further than I knew I could go, I am deeply grateful. Professor Paul Anderer has been an inspirational advisor, believing in me and in this project through the many twists and turns since our first conversation when I took my initial steps onto this path. I hope that I might someday inspire my students the way that he inspires his, and that my work might be everything that it can to do justice to his faith in me. Professor Haruo Shirane has taught me what it means to be an academic, from his meticulous care in cultivating my reading and writing skills to his endless help guiding me through the academic world every step of the way. Without his constructive criticism, his dedication to preparing me for all aspects of graduate school and beyond, and his patience, I never would have made it this far, or even close. I was also blessed to have another advisor in Professor Toeda Hirokazu of Waseda University. From well before my time spent in dissertation research to well ii beyond my time in Tokyo, Professor Toeda has been an invaluable guide as well as a warm and generous friend. In a very real sense, this dissertation would not have taken its present shape were it not for his guidance and his scholarship, which I can only hope to someday live up to. I would like to further thank all of the faculty, students, and staff of the Waseda University Faculty of Literature, where I earned an additional M.A. degree while researching this dissertation. My time at Waseda was far more than time spent in the library, and a part of me remains in happy disbelief every time I see the school’s name on my own C.V. My time in Japan was made possible through a grant from the Japan Foundation in the first year, and was generously funded by the Shinchô Foundation in the second. I would like to extend a special thanks to Itô Kiwako of Shinchôsha for her warm assistance in matters both academic and domestic, and for all the gyôza. Throughout the course of my graduate career at Columbia, I received support from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, whose generosity allowed me to complete my degree without suffering the financial hardship faced by many graduate students. At Columbia, I would like to extend a special thanks to Professor Lydia Liu, who has been a critical source of scholarly inspiration and took the time to serve on both my orals and defense committees. She has challenged me to ceaselessly rethink the boundaries of literary study and has been an encouraging voice, to quote a mistranslation of Lu Xun, “cheering from the sidelines.” I would also like to extend my thanks to Professor Stefan Andriopoulos, who graciously agreed to read my dissertation on short notice, and whose seminar inspired me to develop a media-focused methodology. In iii seminars in my department, Professors David Lurie and Donald Keene shared not only their unparalleled knowledge of Japanese literary history, but also their unique and wonderful senses of humor. In Japan, Naitô Chizuko, Naitô Mariko, Tanaka Yukari, Fujii Sadakazu, Kôno Kensuke, Sakasai Akito, Yuri Tokinoya, Shihono Kaori, Kô Youngran, and Ôsawa Satoshi made many contributions to my research and helped introduce me to the world of academia in Japan in various capacities. In Columbia’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, the mentorship of Professors Max Moerman, Hikari Hori, Eugenia Lean, and Theodore Hugues prepared me for a future of academic teaching, for which I will be grateful for a long time to come. A very special thanks is owed to all the staff of the department, as well as the staff of the C.V. Starr East Asian Library. I shudder to think at the amount of hours, office supplies, and smiling assistance that they donated to me over the course of the completion of this dissertation. I am lucky to have been blessed with many great teachers over the course of my life, each of whom contributed toward my scholarly pursuits. Since my undergraduate days at Stanford, Yoshiko Matsumoto has been an encouraging advisor and friend; also at Stanford, Jim Reichert and Steven Carter taught me my first classes in Japanese literature, for which I am exceedingly thankful. More than anyone else, it was Adrienne Hurley who pushed me to go down this path, and I thank her for it, as well as her undying support in troubled times. I would like to extend a very deep thanks to my many language teachers over the years, with a special thanks to Haruka Ueda, who pushed me the hardest, and Jim Fujita, who taught me my first words in Japanese. When I first began studying Japanese, I never imagined that I might someday be teaching the language, and I iv thank Fumiko Nazikian and Shigeru Eguchi for their pedagogical instruction in taking on that task. The number of people who provided everything from much-needed academic needling to unconditional emotional support and laughter over the years is too large to recount here. In New York, friends and colleagues at Columbia were a true community, academic and otherwise. In Japan, the Shima, Kosugi, and Matsukura families and many others opened up their homes and their hearts; I also want to thank all of those who shared their own personal stories of hope and chance with me, reminding me why the study of literature remains so worthwhile.