Modernism - Literary Movements, Japanese Art, Modern Art

Inexorable Modernity

Name: Inexorable Modernity
Author: Hiroshi Nara
ISBN: 9780739118412

by Hiroshi Nara

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Overview

Beginning in the late Edo period, the Japanese faced a rapidly and irreversibly changing world in which industrialization, westernization, and internationalization were exerting pressure upon an entrenched traditional culture. The Japanese themselves felt threatened by Western powers, with their sense of superiority and military might. Yet the Japanese were more prepared to meet this challenge than was thought at the time, and they used a variety of strategies to address the tension between modernity and tradition. Inexorable Modernity illuminates our understanding of how Japan has dealt with modernity and of what mechanisms, universal and local, we can attribute to the mode of negotiation between tradition and modernity in three major forms of art: theatre, the visual arts, and literature. Dr. Hiroshi Nara brings together a thoughtful collection of essays that demonstrate that traditional and modern approaches to life draw from one another, and tradition, whether real or created, was sought out in order to find a way to live with the burden of modernity. Inexorable Modernity is a valuable and enlightening read for those interested in Asian studies and history.

Synopsis

The book represents a compilation of case studies about Japanese intellectuals' relationships to modernity in three majors arenas of art (art and aesthetics, theater, and literature) beginning in the 1850s to the 1970s. It discusses how inevitable wave of modernity was responded to, discussed, assimilated, changed by some of the most notable practitioners of art and intellectuals in Japan during this period.