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This Side of the Long Tunnel: The Emergence of the Idea of Japan’s ‘Snow Country’ in the Nineteenth Century
- Author(s):
- Tariq Sheikh (see profile)
- Date:
- 2020
- Group(s):
- 2021 MLA Convention, LLC Japanese to 1900, Premodern Japanese History, TC Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities
- Subject(s):
- Japanese literature, Literature, Sixteenth century, Seventeenth century, Intellectual life, History
- Item Type:
- Presentation
- Meeting Title:
- 2021 MLA Convention
- Meeting Org.:
- MLA
- Meeting Loc.:
- Toronto
- Meeting Date:
- 8 January 2021
- Tag(s):
- Suzuki Bokushi, Rural Literature, Environment and Literature, Snow, snow country japan, Early modern literature, Intellectual history
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/yrd9-my87
- Abstract:
- In Nobel laureate Kawabata Yasunari’s novel Snow Country, the protagonist Shimamura refers to an “old book” which gave him in-depth knowledge about the region known in Japan as the “Snow Country”. The name of the book is not disclosed by Kawabata, but it is now known that the “old book” is Hokuetsu Seppu (first published in 1837), written by Suzuki Bokushi (1770-1842). Suzuki Bokushi (1770-1842) was a peasant-entrepreneur, essayist and amateur haikai poet who lived in the Echigo province of Tokugawa period Japan, a region now designated as a “severe snowfall region”. With increasing commercial activity in the late Tokugawa period, local products gained demand in markets throughout the country, which in turn made residents of the provinces aware of their regional identity. This resulted in a visible shift from “literary” representations of the periphery to more objective and information-based writings. This presentation will look at how Hokuetsu Seppu, for the first time, established the idea of the “snow country”, not as a romanticized place beyond the tunnel which is visited occasionally, but as a region where people live their daily lives while coping with extreme weather.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 3 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
- Share this:
Open access, open source, open to all
session281_tariq_864x486.mp4