Reading Japanese Literature as “a Reader of the World”: Transformations of Two Modes of Reading

KONO, Shion

doi:2017.5.1.83

The Journal of Japanese Language Literature Studies > Volume 5(1); 2017 > Article

Article

Border Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies 2017;5(1): 83-90.
doi: https://doi.org/10.22628/bcjjl.2017.5.1.83

Reading Japanese Literature as “a Reader of the World”: Transformations of Two Modes of Reading

Shion KONO

上智大学国際教養学部グローバル․スタディーズ研究科准教授

世界の読者から読む日本文学 ―ふたつの｢読みのモード｣の変容

Correspondence Shion KONO ,Email: s-kono@sophia.ac.jp

Published online: 30 December 2017.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the main arguments of my recent book published in Japanese, Sekai no dokusha ni tsutaeru to iu koto (“Delivering Texts to the World Reader,” Kodansha gendai shinsho, 2014), I discuss two modes of reading Japanese literature: through Japanese studies (area studies) and as world literature. Over the years these modes of reading have played important roles in facilitating an understanding of Japanese literature outside Japan, but recently these two modes began to intertwine and inform each other, as the combination of the local expertise of area studies and the wider perspective of world literature suggests future possibilities of reading Japanese literature from outside Japan/Japanese. The perspectives “from the outside” are crucial in understanding the values of Japanese literature, as attested in the notion of “survival” (Überleben) discussed in Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator.”

Keywords: world literature, Japanese literature as world literature, Japanese literature in translation

キ―ワ―ド: 世界文学, 世界文学としての日本文学, 翻訳で読む日本文学