Decentering 'Japaneseness'
Exophonic Writing as a Challenge to Dominant Notions of 'Japanese Literature'
Introduction to Topic
The still dominant idea that modern Japanese literature is a national literature (kokubungaku) – written only by ethnic Japanese, whose mother tongue is Japanese, for a Japanese readership – is increasingly being challenged. A growing number of writers who are not native speakers of Japanese have migrated to Japan and deliberately chosen Japanese as their literary language. Many of them have become award-winning authors. Through their very existence – and through their plots, linguistic experimentation, and multilingual narrative strategies – these authors challenge and decenter established notions of what Japanese literature is, what it seeks to convey, and how it is written.
Corpus
- Literary texts (novels, short stories, essays)
- Published from the 1990s to present
- By the following exophonic writers (i.e., non-native authors writing in Japanese):
| Ian Hideo Levy (USA) | Li Kotomi (Taiwan) | Shirin Nezammafi (Iran) |
| Takahashi Buranka (Serbia) | Yan Î (China) | David Zopetti (Switzerland) |
- Essays, interviews, and roundtable discussions with these authors
- Literary criticism and academic articles on exophonic literature in Japanese
Example I: Ian Hideo Levy
Ian Hideo Levy (Rîbî Hideo in Japanese) is the first USAmerican to write literature in Japanese who has become a highly appraised author in Japan. With his works, he questions and subverts the common notion of a Japanese “national literature,” which operates under the assumption that only Japanese nationals are able to write in Japanese. In Levy’s literary project, the central concern is a conscious struggle over the “ownership” of the Japanese language.
Research Questions
Step 1:The literary texts will be examined with regard to their thematic focus and linguistic characteristics.
- Questions concerning the level of content:
- Are migration, language, and identity central themes?
- If so, how are they represented? (For instance, are migration and the adoption of a new language depicted as painful ruptures in the characters' lives, or as points of departure for a liberating new beginning?)
- What additional topics do the texts explore?
- How are essentialist notions of "Japanese identity" and exclusionary tendencies in Japanese society asddressed (if at all)?
- Questions concerning the level of literary language:
- How many, and what kinds of languages, appear in the texts?
- In what ways does multilingualism manifest itself (e.g., overtly or implicitly, with or without explanation, reading aids, or translation)?
- How is language thematized? (For example, do the texts reproduce or subvert hierarchies between different languages?)
- What connections are established between language(s) and the protagonists’ identities?
- What role does the act of reading and/or writing literature play within the fictional universe?
Step 2: The discourse surrounding exophonic literature in the Japanese context will be analyzed.
- Questions concerning authors’ self-reflections:
- What issues do the authors address in essays, interviews, and roundtable discussions?
- How do they position themselves within the Japanese literary landscape?
- How do they describe their experiences of migration and of writing in Japanese? What difficulties or obstacles do they emphasize?
- How do they articulate their motivations for choosing Japanese as their literary language?
- Questions concerning public reception:
- How are these texts received and discussed in Japan – both in academic contexts and in the broader public sphere (e.g., the media and literary criticism)?
- For what reasons are the authors praised or criticized? Are assessments tied to their linguistic proficiency?
- Do public discussions differentiate between authors according to their country of origin? How significant are ethnic or national backgrounds in the discourse?
- To what extent do these authors’ literary activities challenge or reshape the concept of “Japanese literature”?