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The Taishō Period 1912 – 1926

Week 4

Mōga, the Modern Girl

Tanizaki Junichirō (1886-1965), Naomi (Chijin no ai, 1924), part I (pp. 1-112)

Anthony H. Chambers, trans., Naomi: A Novel (New York: Vintage, 2001).


Naomi, part II (pp. 113-237)


Week 5

The Modern Woman

Tamura Toshiko (1884-1945), “Lifeblood” (Ikichi, 1911)

Edward Fowler, “Lifeblood,” in The Modern Murasaki: Writing Women of Meiji Japan, edited by Rebecca L. Copeland & Melek Ortabasi (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 348-357.


Hirabayashi Taiko (1905-1972), “Self-Mockery” (Azakeru, 1927)

Yukiko Tanaka, ed., To Live and to Write: Selections by Japanese Women Writers 1913-1938 (Seattle: Seal Press, 1987), 75-96.

Mizoguchi Kenji, dir. Osaka Elegy. 1936. (82 min.)


Week 6

Modern Nostalgia for the Past

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892-1927), “Rashōmon” (1915) & “In a Grove”(Yabu no naka, 1922)

Jay Rubin, trans., “Rashōmon,” in Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories (Penguin Books, 2006), 3-9.

Jay Rubin, trans., “In a Bamboo Grove,” in Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories (Penguin Books, 2006), 10-19.


Library workshop


The Shōwa Period 1926 – 1989

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