Obsessions With the Sino-japanese Polarity in Japanese Literature

Despite an abundance of textual evidence, there have been very few theoretical attempts to grapple with the construction of China in the Japanese imagination. Atsuko Sakaki’s challenging work explores this neglected phenomenon, analyzing aspects of Japan’s literary negotiations with China from the tenth to the twentieth centuries. Using close readings of a range of premodern and modern texts, Sakaki focuses on the ways in which Japanese writers and readers revised—or in many cases devised—rhetoric to convey "Chineseness" and how this practice contributed to shaping a national Japanese identity.

The volume begins by examining how Japanese travelers in China, and Chinese travelers in Japan, are portrayed in early literary works such as the Tosa nikki (A Tosa journal). An increasing awareness of the diversity of Chinese culture forms a premise for the next chapter, which looks at Japan’s objectification of the Chinese and their works of art from the eighteenth century onward. China, which had taught Japan how to fetishize art objects, was itself changed into an object of fetishist adoration. Chapter 3 examines gender as a factor in the formation and transformation of the Sino-Japanese dyad. Sakaki considers contemporary and later receptions of three women Sinophiles (including Murasaki Shikibu), who were mis- or underrepresented in modern literary scholarship in accordance with the nationalism, anti-intellectualism, and male centrism of the time. She then continues with an investigation of early modern and modern Japanese representations of intellectuals who were marginalized for their insistence on the value of the classical Chinese canon and literary Chinese. The work concludes with an overview of writing in Chinese by early Meiji writers and the presence of Chinese in the work of modern writer Nakamura Shin’ichirô. A final summary of the book’s major themes makes use of several stories by Tanizaki Jun’ichirô.

Challenging the modern equation of China with geographical otherness, spirituality/textuality, masculinity, and tradition, this rich and nuanced study allows complex and dynamic perceptions of China to emerge. Sakaki’s grasp of postmodern thought, her engagement with both Japanese and Western scholarship, and her sensitivity to Chinese culture and literature make this a valuable contribution to understanding the history of cultural interactions in the region.