Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo: 33 (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series) - Hardcover

Napier is a reader of considerable acuity and sympathy, with a refreshing candor about her convictions. Napier has provided us with a valuable guide to the key works and intellectual concerns of these two pillars of postwar Japanese discourse. Moreover, she has offered penetrating interpretations of numerous works that remain inaccessible to many readers, whether due to lack of existing translations or the difficulty of the texts themselves...Susan Napier has undertaken a daunting project in examining so much of the work of not just one, but two of Japan's most formidable writers and personalities. In so doing, she has provided all those who read and write about Japanese literature with a rich resource for provocative exchange. -- Alan Wolfe "Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies" [Napier] has provided us with a valuable guide to the key works and intellectual concerns of these two pillars of postwar Japanese discourse. Moreover, she has offered penetrating interpretations of numerous works that remain inaccessible to many readers, whether due to lack of existing translations or the difficulty of the texts themselves...Susan Napier has undertaken a daunting project in examining so much of the work of not just one, but two of Japan's most formidable writers and personalities. In so doing, she has provided all those who read and write about Japanese literature with a rich resource for provocative exchange. -- Alan Wolfe "Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies"

In short stories, novellas, and novels, two major postwar Japanese novelists, Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo, have explored the alienated life of twentieth-century Japan with an unsparing eye and at times a savage sense of humour. In this study, Susan Napier demonstrates that each author's vivid and often perverse depictions of sex, impotence, emperor worship, and violence are matched by images of romantic alternative realities which offer characters some escape from the banality of their lives. In the case of early works like Mishima's novella "The Sound of Wolves' or Oe's short story "Prize Stock", the mythic contrast to industrialized society may be objectified in the setting. "Our Era", the pain of modern life and the possibility of an alternative may be implied by the characters' sexual longings. In still others, like Mishima's "Patriotism" and Oe's "Seventeen", overt explorations of characters' political beliefs and actions (or inaction) may appear to offer straightforward political messages. Napier finds similarities as well as contrasts in the work of two writers of radically different political orientations, and places their fiction in the context of post-war Japanese political realities.