An Antithetical History of Contemporary Japanese Poetry
Twenty-First-Century Poets and Politics
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:4th Feb '27
£90.00
This title is due to be published on 4th February, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Providing both literary-historical context and in-depth poetry analysis, this book traces major changes in twenty-first century Japanese poetry.
The book examines three major contemporary poets: Tanikawa Shuntaro, Yotsumoto Yasuhiro, and Koike Masayo, as well as women’s voices in contemporary poetry and poetry composed on the theme of politics. Leith Morton examines how these domains were influenced by technology and catastrophe; some poets retreated into the subjectivity of the self, while other poets boldly struck out to confront Japanese society.
In part one, the book begins with a historical analysis of representative Japanese women poets followed by a chapter investigating the work of a few famous contemporary poets who have taken up political themes, including agitprop verse published online.
In part two, Morton examines Tanikawa, Yotsumoto, and Koike’s works. He traces the figurative and antithetical interrelations between these three major poets and the complex interplay of influence between their works.
In this book, Morton’s masterful translations and close readings of an astonishing variety of works—many of which appear here in English for the first time—become a way for him to rewrite the recent history of Japanese poetry. The reader is given an excellent sense of the arc of poetic innovation in the last three decades in Japan and all of its complexity, vibrancy, and cross-mediality. Most importantly, the author centers the strong interpersonal foundations of the Japanese poetry world: the networks of connection, influence, and 'misreadings,' that are so often the core engine of poetic experimentation, and yet are something so few studies have done justice to, like Morton has done here. * Andrew Campana, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Media, Cornell University, USA *
Leith Morton offers a rich overview of contemporary Japanese poetry, covering a broad range of work with significant attention given to both women’s and political poetry, touching upon important critical writings including those of Yoshimoto Takaaki, who has received little attention in the west despite his importance. Along with the theoretical apparatus, Morton provides ample translations of the poetry itself. This is a welcome addition to the understanding of Japanese poetry in the twenty-first-century. * Eric Selland, Independent Scholar of Japanese Poetry, Tokyo *
ISBN: 9798216393078
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
256 pages