The restoration of the emperor in 1868 heralded a period of stupendous change, during which Japan was transformed from an isolated assemblage of feudal fiefdoms under threat of colonization by the West, into a powerful modern nation. The Meiji Restoration commenced with a coup executed by a group […]
It is tongue-in-cheek, and with a measure of self-deprecation, that Jibun compares himself and Tsuru to Dante and Beatrice. At the same time, Mushanokoji subtly acknowledges Dante as a model. Like Jibun, Dante enjoyed only the most scant face-to-face encounters with his beloved Beatrice. In the Vita Nuova, […]
The Meiji era (1868 – 1912) gave rise to a variety of sexual attitudes relating to the importation of Western ideas and mores. Some Japanese leaders who travelled to western countries found a model for expression in European dandies, emulating their lifestyles and manners. Others derided these foreign […]
Jibun’s moralism, individualism and egocentrism are traits that Mushanokoji celebrates as ideal qualities. He drew his philosophy initially from Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910), whose humanism widely influenced young Japanese writers and intellectuals early in the twentieth century. For a time, Mushanokoji adopted the self-sacrificing Count Tolstoy as […]
Jibun, the I-character, attends an alumni reunion, where he is offended by some of the mildly off-colour gossip shared by his former classmates. His beloved Tsuru is not far from his thoughts at any time, an object of absolute purity. Hence, I have borrowed an anonymous erotic artwork […]
The wave recalls Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa, but this print is by another famous ukiyoe artist. Here Hiroshige depicts a Japanese crane, the “bird of happiness,” symbol also of good luck, long life, and fidelity. Mushanokoji uses the Japanese word for crane—tsuru—as the name of his “ideal […]
Saneatsu Mushanokoji (1885-1976) was one of the first great Japanese modernist writers. He is acknowledged to have founded the I-novel (shishosetsu), a specifically Japanese confessional genre in which the author speaks directly and colloquially to the reader (e.g., Lippit 28). Mushanokoji was also a painter of still lifes, […]
Welcome to the final dramatic chapter of Baron Montez of Panama and Paris. We witness the culmination of Louise and Harry’s romance and the end of Fernando Montez. Readers have been eagerly anticipating the final revenge against Montez, for every time they pick up the yellow-back novel to […]
The reader is treated to the resolution of affairs with Baron Montez, so far as the Larchmont family is concerned. This is orchestrated by Harry, with the unexpected assistance of his brother, who is still flitting between mental states. This penultimate chapter opens with Baron Montez deliberating on […]
Open Access Review | Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons (2019) by Hannah Frank | The truly monumental film director Sergei Eisenstein, pioneer of the “montage of attractions,” creator of the intense Russian masterpieces Battleship Potemkin (1925), Strike (1925) and Ivan the Terrible (1944), loved […]
Furin Chime 