Description: In an increasingly connected world intercultural understanding is vital. Drawing on over fifty years of research, Understanding Modern Japan Through Its Literature explores how Japanese writers responded to imperialism, war, defeat, and modernization--revealing the struggle to shape national identity in a turbulent twentieth century
Brief description:
Roy Starrs, M.A., PhD (University of British Columbia), now an honorary professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand, before his recent retirement taught Japanese and Asian Studies in Canada, the United States, Denmark, and New Zealand. He has published widely on Japanese topics, including books on the major novelists Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, and Naoya Shiga, as well as studies of Japanese modernism, the relation between Japanese politics and religion, and cultural responses to the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that hit Japan in March, 2011. His most recent book is The Paradoxes of Japan's Cultural Identity (Routledge, 2025). At present, he is working on a three-volume multidisciplinary comparative study of global cultural responses to disaster from ancient times to the present.
Review Quotes: Starrs' expertise is matched by the deftness of his rhetoric and the intuitive discretion of his cultural insights. This volume will be of immense value to scholars and students working in East Asian studies, modernism studies, modern history, and other fields besides.--Professor Mark Byron, University of Sydney