This book is a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study which compares responses to modernity in the literary cultures of Japan and Taiwan, 1960-1990. Moving beyond the East-West framework that has traditionally dominated comparative enquiry, the volume sets out to explore contemporary East Asian literature on its own terms. As such, it belongs to the newly emerging area of inter-Asian cultural studies, but is the first full-length monograph to explore this field through the prism of literature. The book combines close readings of paradigmatic texts with in-depth analysis of the historical, social, and ideological contexts in which these works are situated, and explores the form and function of literary practice within the “miracle” societies of industrialized East Asia.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction     The regional imperative     Interregional, interdisciplinary     Literatures of disenchantment     The outline of the book Chapter One: The Scope of the Enquiry     Regionalism in practice: cultural convergence in post Cold-War East Asia     Regionalism and ‘alternative modernities’: towards a fruitful intersection     Literary studies and the resistance to regionalism     Contemporary East Asian comparative literature: an embattled discipline     Old-school comparativism: a compromised practice     The theory conundrum: promise and pitfalls     Towards an intraregional comparative practice     The dystopian impulse: roots, targets, and terminology     Western modernism: borrowing and beyond     Japan and Taiwan: the background to comparison     Time-frame, themes, and tropes     Writers Chapter Two: Rest & Recreation in the City: Dystopian     Visions of US power in Cold War East Asia     US hegemony in Cold War East Asia     The US and its East Asian allies: the background to literary dissent     Triangular paradigms for the geopolitical world     Politics and sexuality: “Leap Before You Look” and the occupation narratives of Ôe Kenzaburô     The past in the present: Nosaka Akiyuki’s “American Hijiki”     Huang Chunming’s Young Widows: Vietnam, R&R, and the entertainment boom     Pimping on the grand scale: Wang Zhenhe’s Rose, Rose, I Love You     Conclusion Chapter Three: Discord at Home: The Ruptured Family in Postwar Fiction     Transformations in the family: basic themes     Kinship change: the socio-cultural background to literary opposition     The city and sexuality: the circuit of loss and substitution     Wang Wenxing’s “Mother”: modernity, neurosis, and the incest taboo     Paternalism and patriarchy in Bai Xianyong’s Cursed Sons     Tokyo in apocalypse: Murakami Ryû’s Coin Locker Babies     A fake fairytale of the consumer family: Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto     Conclusion Chapter Four: Sex and the City: Commodities of Choice     Consumption in East Asia: general remarks     The cult of consumerism in contemporary East Asia: the socio-economic background to literary opposition     The urban marketplace: city and sexuality     Mishima Yukio’s “The Million Yen”: income-doubling, ‘the three imperial regalia’, and consumption as sexual labor     Journeys through the consumer maze: Murakami Haruki’s Dance, Dance, Dance     Closed circuits of consumption: Dark Nights by Li Ang     KTV city: Zhu Tianwen’s “Red Rose is Paging You”     Conclusion Conclusion Glossary     Japanese section     Chinese section Bibliography Index