Things, Space, and Sensation in, around, and through Modern Japanese Literature in Print (circa 1910–1990)

Dear Colleagues,

Non-visual sensations aroused through interaction between things and bodies in space–time—sound, scent, touch—were essential elements of both the physical production and the content of premodern Japanese literature in the age of manuscript culture.

How did this change with the advent of print culture in Japan?

On the one hand, there is the “discovery of interiority” and “discovery of landscape” (Karatani), with which the binary of (human) subject and (inanimate) object is demarcated and naturalized. The themes of literature appear to be divided into matters of the mind and matters of the environment. Meanwhile, the transparency of the medium of observation—whether the vernacular national language or the scientific technology of image reproduction (the camera)—was propagated and largely undisputed.

On the other hand, “the age of mechanical reproducibility” (Benjamin) normalized the physical distance and imagined closeness between artists (in our context, literary writers) and their anonymous and indefinite audience, through repetition of sameness in the printing and circulation of literature. The author’s aura (Benjamin) was lost in the ubiquity and accessibility of texts and images in the mediated space (the pages of printed matter).

The images and texts that tend to dominate printed pages, as each other’s illustration or commentary in the representation of meaning/message, are flat, fixed, framed, and finite. Silent and inert, their purported transparency, objectivity, and truthfulness obliterate the material and corporeal contingencies of the processes of their reproduction.

How is modern Japanese literature relevant to the non-visual sensations that travel across space–time, haunt us with memories of matters experienced, and remind us of our corporeal presence? How are non-visual sensations negotiated in the processes of literary (re)production (writing, publishing, reading)? How can they be reinstated in the reception of literary discourse? How can modern Japanese literary discourse restore and evoke the corporeal experience of sensation? How can non-visual sensations—sound, touch, smell, taste—inform modern vernacular Japanese literary texts (other than plays, screenplays, and songs)? How can these sensations be transferred/translated in texts?

We welcome papers that inquire into literature–sensation relations across the mind–body-thing–space–time continuum that informed and formed modern Japanese literary works. These relations may be represented in the texts, though they do not have to be as long as they are discernible as formative through sources (primary or secondary—the latter not in themselves but to enhance the quality of exploration of the former).

Theoretically, we can benefit from inspirations from phenomenology (“being-in-the-world”; “immanent time”), semiotics (“indexicality”), media studies (“prostheses”; “haptics”), sound studies (“acoustic space”; “sonorous/lyrical bodies”), thing theory/new materialism/object-oriented ontology (“thingness”), neuroscience (“plasticity”), cognitive psychology/human-centered design (“affordance”), mobility studies (“kinetics”), human geography/qualitative ethnography (“narrative turn”), urban studies (“lived space”), and other related disciplines.

Ethically, this collaborative project calls for awareness and caution vis-à-vis human subjects’ self-entitlement of superiority to the effects of inanimate things, which tends to be assured through image and text. This approach can take a step toward a non-hierarchical, non-objectifying, non-coercive, and non-anthropomorphic order of things, senses, thoughts, and words. Since we live in a world that envisions a post-human, post-anthropocene paradigm, we look back to find forerunning resistance to the regime that subordinated non-lingual, non-visual, and non-human phenomena. This project, however, does not intend to silence humans or disavow images and texts. Instead, we seek interactive, synthetic, and humane negotiations between formerly divided senses, mediums, categories, and practices in the heyday of modern print culture, and release images and texts—or sight and language—into a larger and more fluid nexus of experience and the literary formation thereof.

The approximate time frame of 1910–1990 is proposed to articulate the period between the dominance of manuscript culture and that of digital culture: 1910 as roughly the date for the normalization of the use of vernacular literary language and the practice of silent and personal reading of mass-reproduced and mass-distributed texts; and 1990 as roughly the declaration of digital culture (e-books, e-journals, digitized publication on the internet, social media platforms, etc.) as normative in the distribution and reception of literature. This historical range is posited only to give a degree of coherence to the material and technical conditions that informed sources, and is not absolute. Studies of any example of anticipatory or residual practice will be considered.

Given the regime of cultural production and consumption that multi-sensorial practices face, the primary sources discussed should be texts written for publication and silent reading (Maeda). Scenarios and screenplays, which are primarily intended for oral and corporal performance and a live audience, cannot therefore be the center of attention, though they may be cited adjunct to the argument made about printed texts.

Both close and distant reading is expected to be performed in any given article.

The general orientation of the papers should be geared toward:

Indexicality (through trace, resonance, and other extensions of experience into adjacent space–time) rather than iconicity (the capture of essence in timeless and immobile enclosure); residue (including but not limited to forensic evidence in detective fiction) rather than existence; affect rather than essence; the process rather than the product (e.g., metafiction about how a work is being written); surface rather than (imagined) depth; relations rather than identity (e.g., characters without intrinsic personality portrayed by way of their positioning/action in relation to their environments); itinerary rather than the map (e.g., not an omniscient narrator telling the story in retrospect, but the story unfolding concurrently with the narrative discourse); a worm’s-eye view rather than a bird’s-eye view; apprehension rather than comprehension; immersion rather than anatomy; and contiguity in space from things to human subjects, rather than distance between them (not for analysis or ownership but for co-existence, as in eco criticism). Take Tanizaki Jun’ichirô’s “Yoshinokuzu” (English trans., “Arrowroot”) as a prime example of all these proclivities listed above.

Possible topics may include, though are not limited to, the following (either as represented in literary texts or as they contribute to/affect the process of literary production formatively):

Layering of an author’s handwritten drafts, dictated texts, editors’ notes, printers’ directions. Editing, formatting, layout, illustration, book design, printing, binding.

Stationery—pens, paper, ink—as things themselves (rather than neutral instruments).

Ergonomics—desks, chairs, cushions, lighting, and other things that affect the author’s arms, hands, shoulders, neck, back, thighs, knees, legs, eyes.

Writers taking a walk, sipping a drink (water, caffeine, alcohol), smoking, stretching, and engaging in other non-literary activities for a change of air, clearing of the mind, or restoration of energy in the osmotic system that connects rather than divides the interior and the exterior.

Prostheses (e.g., eyeglasses, hearing aids, dentures, wigs, canes, shoes, hats, gloves, clothes, accessories) and tools (e.g., musical/artistic instruments, sport equipment, cooking and other household utensils, technological apparatuses, vehicles), used with varied degrees of success.

Texture, grain, tailoring, and the rustle of clothes, paper, and other surfaces, touched for effects.

Affective environments (e.g., architecture, land, urban space; flora, fauna, minerals; air, water, soil; cosmos).

Kinetics and choreography (e.g., posture, gesture, antics, habits, steps, swings, swirls, kicks, jumps).

Rhythm, tempo, pace, pause, repetition, and echo in sound (musical/created or ambient/incidental, including industrial or quotidian noise).

Fitness, illness, disability, aptitude, caregiving, convalescence, trauma, rest, fatigue.

Accidents, injuries, issues with mobilities, and adjusted coordination of things and humans around injured bodies.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Atsuko Sakaki 
Guest Editor

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• Acoustic space/sonorous bodies (LaBelle, Nancy)
• Affordance (Gibson, Norman)
• Being-in-the-world (Heidegger)
• Haptics (Deleuze, Derrida, Nancy)
• Immanent time (Husserl)
• Lived space (Lefebvre)
• Plasticity (Malabou)
• Prostheses (McLuhan, Heidegger, Derrida)
• Rhythm (Lefebvre)
• Thingness (Heidegger, Brown)