As usual, I’d be happy to give extra credit to students who attend this talk and write a short essay relating it to course themes. The essay must be uploaded by Monday 11/7 at 5pm.

Friday, November 4th at 3:15 pm:
Janet Walker
 Professor of Comparative Literature
Rutgers University

"The Imperial I/Eye and the Imperial Subject:
Traces of Imperial Modernity in Shiga Naoya’s An’ya koro (A Dark Night’s Passing)"
301 Wilson Hall

Critics of modern Japanese literature do not typically consider Shiga Naoya (1883-1971), author of shi-shōsetsu, or fiction centering around the “I,” as either linked ideologically with the Japanese imperialism that developed from the late nineteenth century or representing it in artistic fashion in his works. Yet the period of composition of Shiga’s only novel-length work, the 400-some page An’ya kōro, coincides significantly with the period during which Japan built up its colonial rule in Korea (annexed 1910), made attempts at developing an empire in China, and gained control of large parts of Manchuria, setting up the puppet ruler of its colony Manchukuo, in 1932. Shiga first began to put together fictional works focusing on the later hero of An’ya kōro, Tokitō Kensaku, from the late Meiji period (1868-1912); he published the first half of the novel in 1921, in the mid-Taishō period (1912-1926); and he made the last addition to the novel in 1937, the year of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which began a war with China and eventually led to the Pacific War. It is not surprising, then, that Shiga’s text shows traces of Japanese imperialism, in particular, in two related episodes: one depicting the adventures over about one year and a half of Kensaku’s foster mother and the earlier object of his affection and lust, Oei, in China, Manchuria, and Korea; and the other depicting the brief journey that Kensaku himself makes to Korea near the end of the novel to bring Oei safely back to Japan. Moreover, both characters see empire in the course of their travels, manifesting different forms of the imperial gaze. By articulating the intertwined destinies of these two Japanese citizens who willingly, in the case of Oei, and reluctantly, in the case of Kensaku, participated in empire, Shiga’s text constructs two imperial subjects. Finally, the narrator brings imperialism as experience into the flow of experiences of the “I” that is the focus of his novel.