A Room Where The Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard

A Room Where The Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard PDF Author: Hideo Levy
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231527977
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
Set against the political and social upheavals of the 1960s, A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard tells the story of Ben Isaac, a blond-haired, blue-eyed American youth living with his father at the American consulate in Yokohama. Chafing against his father's strict authority and the trappings of an America culture that has grown increasingly remote, Ben flees home to live with Ando, his Japanese friend. Refusing to speak English with Ben, Ando shows the young American the way to Shinjuku, the epicenter of Japan's countercultural movement and the closest Ben has ever felt to home. From the vantage point of a privileged and alienated "outsider" (gaijin), Levy's narrative, which echoes events in his own life, beautifully captures a heady, eventful moment in Japanese history. It also richly renders the universal struggle to grasp the full contours of one's identity. Wandering the streets of Shinjuku, Ben can barely decipher the signs around him or make sense of the sounds reaching his ears. Eventually, the symbols and sensations take root, and he becomes one with Japanese language and culture. Through his explorations, Ben breaks free from English and the constraints of being a gaijin. Levy's coming-of-age novel is an eloquent elegy to a lost time.

A Room Where The Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard

A Room Where The Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard PDF Author: Hideo Levy
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231527977
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
Set against the political and social upheavals of the 1960s, A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard tells the story of Ben Isaac, a blond-haired, blue-eyed American youth living with his father at the American consulate in Yokohama. Chafing against his father's strict authority and the trappings of an America culture that has grown increasingly remote, Ben flees home to live with Ando, his Japanese friend. Refusing to speak English with Ben, Ando shows the young American the way to Shinjuku, the epicenter of Japan's countercultural movement and the closest Ben has ever felt to home. From the vantage point of a privileged and alienated "outsider" (gaijin), Levy's narrative, which echoes events in his own life, beautifully captures a heady, eventful moment in Japanese history. It also richly renders the universal struggle to grasp the full contours of one's identity. Wandering the streets of Shinjuku, Ben can barely decipher the signs around him or make sense of the sounds reaching his ears. Eventually, the symbols and sensations take root, and he becomes one with Japanese language and culture. Through his explorations, Ben breaks free from English and the constraints of being a gaijin. Levy's coming-of-age novel is an eloquent elegy to a lost time.

Mother-Tongue in Modern Japanese Literature and Criticism

Mother-Tongue in Modern Japanese Literature and Criticism PDF Author: Takayuki Yokota-Murakami
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811085129
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
This book examines how early research on literary activities outside national literatures such as émigré literature or diasporic literature conceived of the loss of ‘mother-tongue” as a tragedy, and how it perpetuated the ideology of national language by relying on the dichotomy of native language/foreign language. It transcends these limitations by examining modern Japanese literature and literary criticism through modern philology, the vernacularization movement, and Korean-Japanese literature. Through the insights of recent philosophical/linguistic theories, it reveals the political problems of the notion of “mother-tongue” in literary and linguistic theories and proposes strategies to realize genuinely “exophonic” and “translational” literature beyond the confines of nation. Examining the notion of “mother-tongue” in literature and literary criticism, the author deconstructs the concept and language itself as an apparatus of nation-state in order to imagine alternative literature, genuinely creolized and heterogeneous. Offering a comparative, transnational perspective on the significance of the mother tongue in contemporary literatures, this is a key read for students of modern Japanese literature, language and culture, as well as those interested in theories of translation and bilingualism.

Pragmatics of Japanese

Pragmatics of Japanese PDF Author: Mutsuko Endo Hudson
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027264406
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Bringing together the latest studies on Japanese pragmatics, this edited volume showcases the breadth of research conducted in this ever-expanding, interdisciplinary field, with the introductory chapter providing a useful summary of developments in the field in the past decades. The twelve chapters address a variety of traditional and emerging topics by adopting diverse theoretical and methodological frameworks and presenting a range of perspectives on grammar, interaction and culture. They demonstrate a wide scope of pragmatics research informed by, as well as informing, usage-based grammar, cognitive linguistics, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and literary and cultural studies. Chapters also consider future directions as to how the study of Japanese language in use will continue to offer critical data and analyses to the field dominated by the study of English and other European languages. This volume is certain to be of interest to students and scholars engaged in pragmatics in general and the Japanese language in particular.

Teaching Postwar Japanese Fiction

Teaching Postwar Japanese Fiction PDF Author: Alex Bates
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 160329595X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
As Japan moved from the devastation of 1945 to the economic security that survived even the boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s, its literature came to embrace new subjects and styles and to reflect on the nation's changing relationship to other Asian countries and to the West. This volume will help instructors introduce students to novels, short stories, and manga that confront postwar Japanese experiences, including the suffering caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the echoes of Japan's colonialism and imperialism, new ways of thinking about Japanese identity and about minorities such as the zainichi Koreans, changes in family structures, and environmental disasters. Essays provide context for understanding the particularity of postwar Japanese literature, its place in world literature, and its connections to the Japanese past.

Immigrant and Ethnic-Minority Writers since 1945

Immigrant and Ethnic-Minority Writers since 1945 PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004363246
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description
This is the first volume to present an international overview of immigrant and ethnic-minority writing in 14 national contexts and a conclusion discussing this writing as a vanguard of cultural change.

Trans-pacific Imagination, The: Rethinking Boundary, Culture And Society

Trans-pacific Imagination, The: Rethinking Boundary, Culture And Society PDF Author: Naoki Sakai
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814462969
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
This anthology critically re-examines and re-articulates the discursive boundary that binds the region called East Asia in order to produce Trans-Pacific Studies. Recognizing that the creation of regional boundaries depends on a new configuration of both inter- and intra-national power relations and the ideological constructs that generate historical, ideological, and cultural effects, this volume proposes that the term “trans-Pacific” be mobilized to complicate the phrase “East Asian” as the boundary of academic discipline and socio-cultural discourse. The anthology also examines the historical conditions under which “East Asia” was constructed as an area and the trans-Pacific directives that nurtured the sense of nationality in each component nation of East Asia.With the contribution of: Sun Ge (The Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences); Soyoung Kim (Korean National University of Arts); Hyoduk Lee (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies); Jie-Hyun Lim (Hanyang University); Lisa Lowe (University of California); Tessa Morris-Suzuki (The Australian National University); Naoki Sakai (Cornell University), Yuko Shibata (Saint John's University); Annmaria Shimabuku (University of California); Ikuo Shinjou (University of the Ryukyus); Hyon Joo Yoo (University of Vermont).

Demons Be Gone, A Romance

Demons Be Gone, A Romance PDF Author: Tuna Cole
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1365900118
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Keywords: Japan/Nippon; history, culture, language, religion, geographic/geologic/demographic features; memoir; gonzo ethnography and linguistics; American-Japanese cross-cultural pratfalls and anomalies.

Nimble Tongues

Nimble Tongues PDF Author: Steven G. Kellman
Publisher: Purdue University Press
ISBN: 1612496016
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Nimble Tongues is a collection of essays that continues Steven G. Kellman's work in the fertile field of translingualism, focusing on the phenomenon of switching languages. A series of investigations and reflections rather than a single thesis, the collection is perhaps more akin in its aims—if not accomplishment—to George Steiner’s Extraterritorial: Papers on Literature and the Language Revolution or Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality. Topics covered include the significance of translingualism; translation and its challenges; immigrant memoirs; the autobiographies that Ariel Dorfman wrote in English and Spanish, respectively; the only feature film ever made in Esperanto; Francesca Marciano, an Italian who writes in English; Jhumpa Lahiri, who has abandoned English for Italian; Ilan Stavans, a prominent translingual author and scholar; Hugo Hamilton, a writer who grew up torn among Irish, German, and English; Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, a Mexican who writes in English; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a multilingual text.

Translation and the Borders of Contemporary Japanese Literature

Translation and the Borders of Contemporary Japanese Literature PDF Author: Victoria Young
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040029728
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
This book examines contemporary debates on such concepts as national literature, world literature, and the relationship each of these to translation, from the perspective of modern Japanese fiction. By reading between the gaps and revealing tensions and blind spots in the image that Japanese literature presents to the world, the author brings together a series of essays and works of fiction that are normally kept separate in distinct subgenres, such as Okinawan literature, zainichi literature written by ethnic Koreans, and other “trans-border” works. The act of translation is reimagined in figurative, expanded, and even disruptive ways with a focus on marginal spaces and trans-border movements. The result decentres the common image of Japanese literature while creating connections to wider questions of multilingualism, decolonisation, historical revisionism, and trauma that are so central to contemporary literary studies. This book will be of interest to all those who study modern Japan and Japanese literature, as well as those working in the wider field of translation studies, as it subjects the concept of world literature to searching analysis.

The Europa Directory of Literary Awards and Prizes

The Europa Directory of Literary Awards and Prizes PDF Author: Europa
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135356327
Category : Directories
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description