My research pertains genre fiction in Japan, with a focus on the first half of the 20th century, and within that, my current research examines genre fiction of the interwar and Second World War period, with a focus on historical contextualization, the history of the reader, and analyzing how the works relate to societal anxieties. This leads to my work focusing on how genre fiction manifested or went against the larger cultural trends on certain topics, like the increasing relevance of science in civilian life, Japan’s colonial ambitions, and various other topics which carry over from earlier genre fiction, most of which concern the changing landscape of Japanese cities. I find my work to be illuminating not only of larger cultural histories, but also the small narratives of individual writers and readers, which makes for a richer portrait of the period overall.
The work I am doing is more generalist in a field that tends towards analysis of single works or single themes across authors. I, instead, want to use analysis of particular works to create a framework for the literary and historical analysis of genre fiction in this specific juncture of place and time. This means that the majority of my secondary sources are used as background literature, which provides valuable foundations in genre studies, studies of literature of this period, and modes of analysis which are useful for me in formulating my own patterns of study. Rather than being invested in a single discipline, I find that reading works across disciplines, including histories, cultural studies, and genre studies to be particularly instructive in informing the methods through which I construct arguments.
For example, articles like Sari Kawana’s “Reading Between the Lines: Young Readers and Wartime Japanese Literature,” which covers the reading practices of adolescent males in my period of interest were particularly valuable in presenting concrete examples of the structures of distribution and means of access through which many readers gained access to a single text. She also frames discussion of the literature of the time, primarily the genre fiction I am interested in, in a way that sidelines speculation over the amount of political control exerted over them, instead choosing to consciously center the experiences of the readers, which is extremely valuable in upending previous academic works which have sidelined these pieces as purely propaganda.
Another of Kawana’s pieces, “Mad Scientists and Their Prey: Bioethics, Murder and Fiction in Interwar Japan,” addresses the intersection of the history of science and the development of science based detective and science fiction, which provided me with a model through which to combine historical and literary analysis. To elaborate, she tracks the popular conception of science through prewar Japan, by tracing the history of science through both actual scientific developments, and the way that the government encouraged scientific learning, as well as the incoming influx of translated classic European, and particular English, science fiction. She effectively leverages the history of science portion, focusing on ethics and philosophies of science in order to frame the literary analysis section, which focuses on “mad scientist murders,” in conversation with the actual dialogues on bioethics present at the time. This article resembles what I wish to do with my own research, a melding of histories and literature, where in depth study of both leads to better understanding of the overlaps and a richer picture of the period.
In “Horror and Machines in Prewar Japan: The Mechanical Uncanny in Yumeno Kyûsaku’s ‘Dogura magura’,”Miri Nakamura examines the 1934 novel Dogura Magura (the title is untranslated when rendered in English) through the lens of “the mechanical uncanny,” making the argument that the horror of the book derives from the fear of becoming a machine. Nakamura does so by providing a summary of the history of “the mechanical uncanny” as a concept in Japan, tracing it to anxieties surrounding the rapid expansion and increased presence of technology in the lives of everyday people. This is relevant in my work because of the connection to Japan’s rapid industrialization, as well as the linkages between the most up to date science, both in medical and engineering fields, and the rise of the fascist Japanese state. Nakamura uses secondary sources in the fields of literary history and analysis, and psychology to elaborate upon concepts she uses in her analysis of the work. Her primary sources include not only Dogura Magura, but other examples of literature concerning technology from the time, to gain a better perspective of the specific stances that Yumeno takes. In addition, she uses letters Yumeno sent to other writers to great effect, making clear his view that science is antithetical to beauty, art and religion, and reduces people to data. This work is excellent in laying out both the theory grounding it, the Freudian uncanny, and making it specifically applicable to this work. Overall, this article is a solid study of the work through the chosen lens, but near the end Nakamura brings in a racialized notion of the doppleganger, drawing on the main character’s previously unknown Chinese heritage, and constructing two selves for the main character, where the Japanese self is an innocent and the Chinese self is connected to the easily controlled murderous aspect. To tack this on to the end of a larger piece without fully exploring the argument does a disservice to the rest of the article, and it should either have been explored more, or made the subject of an entire other piece.
Kawakami Chiyoko, in “The Metropolitan Uncanny in the Works of Izumi Kyōka: A Counter-discourse on Japan’s Modernization.” argues that Izumi’s ghost stories, in which individuals who embody the new, modernized Tokyo experience apparitions of those who do not fit into the new schema, intentionally unsettles the order of a society using logic to create a new “center” for the nation. She argues that by using fixtures associated with modernity, like gas lamps and phone booth, as sites of haunting, Izumi seeks to complicate binary notions of the old and new. This work is limited in that it only studies one author, but it does provide insight into the wider portrayals of modernity in the literary establishment, some of which are inseparable from notions of “the West.” This piece is especially useful to me because I am very interested in the way that the rapid change of “modernization” and technological advancement is reflected in fiction. In addition, the conversation between the “modern” and the “old” is a key part of both Izumi’s work, and a large number of detective fiction works from this period as well, and those interactions are interesting to examine within their contexts, thinking about how both writers and readers would have connected with them.
My use of secondary sources is hindered someone by the dearth of scholarly literature addressing both the subject (genre fiction) and period (roughly 1930-1945) I am most interested in, and the lack of a more generalist history of literature and literacy about Japan more broadly during this period. An excellent area study concentrated on Osaka, put together by Richard Torrance, fills this niche for that small geographic area, and gives me frameworks with which to conduct similar studies of elsewhere in Japan, or of other demographics, like student readers, though it also conveys the colossal effort it takes to gather, synthesize and create a compelling narrative including both quantitative and qualitative analysis.
In terms of primary sources, I work mainly with period genre fiction, in original Japanese, relying both on archival sites like Aozora Bunko, and available scans of original texts. For visual sources, my main interests are in the illustrations which both accompanied certain stories directly, and those which served as covers for magazines. For example, I have done a sustained analysis of Unno Jūza’s short story Uchū Senpei (Space Vanguard), through which I emphasized the importance of the reader as a vital consideration in the study of genre fiction, because the demographic which read genre fiction in this time period, and I would argue, most time periods, is much more diverse in their lived experience and point of view than is generally accounted for in academic studies. I also point out the contradictions present in the dominant academic narrative of genre fiction of this time, and particularly science fiction, as purely an ideological tool of the fascist government, when the reality is more complicated, and the readers experience of the text might have deviated from the expected response. Uchū Senpei, for example, deals readily with themes of space colonialism, questionably ethical experimentation, the loss of ones’ youth, and the idea of acceptable sacrifice. The degree to which these themes resonate with each reader is, by nature, variable, which is why it is important to think of audience and, as this was published in 1943, particularly considering how much of the work’s subject is defined by the ongoing war.
Furthermore, I read works by authors such as Edogawa Ranpo, Izumi Kyōka, Tanizaki Junichirō, and others, as examples of the inseparability of these works from their time, with the common use of the rapidly changing cities, often Tokyo, as both settings and in a way, characters. Ranpo readily uses them as a backdrop on which to defy social convention through the depiction of transgressive criminal and sexual behaviors within his detective fiction. Izumi conjures ghosts of the past in conversation with cities looking towards the future, while Tanizaki uses the same physical spaces as driving forces in both his literary and genre fiction.
Because primary sources are the most important part of my research, they take the forefront in my research papers, which generally take the form of longform analyses of works from this period, considering them from a multitude of angles, including additional historical and cultural research. For instance, when looking into another work by Unno Jūza, Denkifuro no kaishijiken (The Mysterious Murder at the Electric Baths), I found a secondary source, a book chapter by Seth Jacobowitz, suggesting a connection between it and Edogawa Ranpo’s Yaneura no sanposha (Stalker in the Attic) published three years prior, also in Shin Seinen. With this in mind, I was better equipped to do close readings of both in order to decide for myself how they were similar rather than take a secondary source totally at its word. While both use a similar stock character: the apathetic young man committing sadistic crimes out of boredom, they differ in both the object, the purpose, and the placement of the crimes. In Yaneura no sanposha, the target is a fellow boarder at a boardinghouse, a man, who the “attic stalker” kills via morphine solution dripped into the boarder’s mouth as he sleeps, distinctly in a private space, for personal gratification in witnessing death. Whereas in Unno’s later work, the crimes are taken into the public sphere, occurring at a public bathhouse, and the primary victim a woman, recorded by a film camera in her final moments for the murderer to watch later. The difference between public and private is a fundamental one, with the stalker’s violation of other’s privacy through eavesdropping from an attic crawlspace entirely different from the bathhouse killer, whose use of a public space to commit the crime interacts with his violation of sexual norms by spying on the women’s section in ways that make the differences between the two stories more apparent.
For visual primary sources, a helpful example would be this spread from the July 1936 issue of Shin Seinen. This particular spread features two ink drawings created to accompany an Unno Jūza short story, entitled 深夜の市長 (Night Mayor) as well as the stylized title and author name. The ink drawing on the left depicts a woman wearing a fur coat and hat sitting on the side of a bed, while the one on the right is a man in a coat and hat smoking by an interior door. The design of the spread, with the title text beginning on one side and spreading to the next, implies that they are in the same room. Having browsed several magazines of this period, this black and white inked style is common, though tracking the output of the artists who created them is more difficult given that there are few fully scanned issues online, and those which have incomplete scans are largely from online auctions. The ease of access of these sources has proven to be a major issue in my research, as most are not accessible online, and those few that are up for auction are often prohibitively expensive, or only available to buyers in Japan. This leads to my main options being to save scans from these auctions before they go offline, to request complex interlibrary loans, or to go without this vital resource. Nevertheless, I find it crucial to use these kinds of visual sources because they give insight into how works were originally published, and these visuals acted as both eye catches and as accompaniment, meaning that they are a crucial piece in reconstructing the reading experience as it occurred, which is a key part of my research as a whole.
This overview should give an overall idea of what kinds of primary sources I am using, the various difficulties in obtaining access to them, the modes of analysis that I use in my work. It also leads well into my experiences in creating data visualization through the use of primary data, representing individual pieces in a single place in a way that promotes understanding.
My visualization draws on the data extant in the digital public domain library Aozora Bunko, which makes available public domain and released Japanese texts in full online. In specific, it uses the publishing data present in this archive about the works of prolific genre fiction writer Unno Jūza, including dates of publication and sites of publication, be they magazines or newspapers, for over 100 works. These are arranged on a timeline, with each work being represented by a bar which indicates either the initial month of publication, or the full publication range, from the first installment to the last one, in the case of serialized works. I purposely did not translate story titles as it would have been extremely time consuming to the detriment of the project, as well as being subjective translations which, without readings of the full stories, I would consider incomplete. I also chose to Romanize the titles of magazines and newspapers, with the exception of katakana phrases, which I have rendered in English equivalent, and the word “newspaper” which I have translated for clarity. This decision is deliberate in order to facilitate understanding of the nature of these different publishers to non-expert audiences.
My data visualization, this timeline, represents what I view as one of the few applications of data visualization in my work. In my view, the charting of word frequency and similar efforts to bring data strategies designed for statistics and sciences into the humanities is reductive as it removes context specific meaning. This timeline, on the other hand, allows me to visualize the writing output of a single author of interest to my study, Unno Jūza, over time. The introduction of a visual representation of time brings important and unique aspects of genre fiction of the time to the fore, mainly the prominence of serialization, and the shifting publishing landscape before, during, and after the Pacific war.
My goal with this visualization is to emphasize the impact of serialization by making time a more visible aspect of my research. This is important because of the sheer number of serialized works Unno produced. Additionally, through the use of a timeline, we can begin to see patterns in publishing habits, such as when there are gaps where he was not publishing works, and how long serializations tended to last. I also wanted to make this timeline because it makes it easier to arrange works chronologically, thereby making it easier to pick pieces from differing time periods in order to study the change over time.
This visualization is designed to show time, as well as to highlight publishing modes that make this time period in the history of genre fiction in Japan unique, like the popularity of serialized works, and the predominance of certain magazines, like Shinseinen. In addition, it can show the changing publishing landscape over time as Unno shifts between publishing in venues marketed towards children, science fiction magazines, as well as literary magazines which fall under the “modernist” label. I found creating a visualization helpful in terms of providing a format through which to make my work more available to This work compliments my other sources of research because of its quantitative nature, where the majority of my work is based on qualitative literary and historical analysis, making it an excellent supplement to my existing work. Moreover, by making time a visual element, it clarifies the specific period of time my research up to now covers, as well as making time a more consciously visual element of my research. It nicely complements the visual sources I am looking at, which are mainly illustrations and magazine covers that were published alongside these stories, as it is a data visualization more than a visual primary source in and of itself.
The one weakness of this timeline is the lack of an ability to encode an indication of different publishers into the bar or dot representation of a published work, no longer requiring a click to tell publishers apart. This is a gap in the toolset I have, where the program I used to create this timeline, which has many other functionalities I like, and is much more useable than the alternatives, has a few gaps that I would supplement using other diagrams which require less frontloaded work, but show data clearly. Another blind spot is that, because this visualization is specifically focused on Unno Jūza’s works, it obviously is not representative of other author’s works or genre fiction of the period on a whole, which, while great because it allows me to keep the focus on my current author of interest, limits what my visualization can do in a larger context. However, having gone through the procedure of making something like this once, that experience has given me the tools with which to make more detailed and broader reaching timelines with this same program.
Altogether, creating this visualization was valuable because it supplements my qualitative work in historical and literary analysis with a quantitative element. It was time consuming, primarily on the data collection end, as it is not all in one place, with each piece instead having its own information page. As such, I would rather use this same timeline creation tool to create more concentrated timelines in the future, with fewer data points, and more information for each data point generally. This could be used to more broadly chart major events in the genre fiction of early 20th century Japan as a whole, rather than just a single author’s oeuvre. One of my main takeaways from this project was that a “data visualization” for me is never going to be a graph or data representation transplanted into the humanities from science and mathematics, but instead going to be things like timelines and maps, which can draw more reliably on humanist traditions of history, geography, and literature. This timeline forms a base from which I could make a more detailed overview of Unno’s output and influential works, including more commentary on each timeline point, and “era” markers, which this program allows for.
Taken together, the secondary sources, primary sources, and the visualization I created from data, form a general picture of what my research is about: contextualizing the genre fiction of this era by focusing on both the reader, and the broader culture that produced the fiction. I find this work to be interesting because genre fiction is inherently reactive to its surroundings, molding both current events and cultural anxieties into an accessible space, where what frightens can be experienced safely, and the news of the day can be processed through levels of abstraction. Literary analysis of these works serves as a window into the culture and history of this time period, especially when considering the larger ecosystem of publishing, including magazines with included images, newspapers, and the complex networks that enabled the same copy of a story to be read by many readers. Getting a better picture of the culture of reading in the period requires not only literary and historical research, but also a grasp of memoirists who documented this time, demographic research to learn more about readers, and many other ephemera that when taken together form a compelling image of the time.
Works Cited
Jacobowitz, Seth. 2016. “Unno Jūza and the Uses of Science in Prewar Japanese Science Fiction.” in New Directions in Popular Fiction, ed. Ken Gelder, London: Palgrave Macmillan: 157-176.
Kanke0713. 2020. “Auction Page” https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/t743489525
Kawakami, Chiyoko. 1999. “The Metropolitan Uncanny in the Works of Izumi Kyōka: A Counter-discourse on Japan’s Modernization.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 59, No. 2 559-583
Kawana, Sari. 2010. “Reading Beyond the Lines: Young Readers and Wartime Japanese Literature.” Book History 13: 154-84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40930532.
Kawana, Sari. 2005. “Mad Scientists and Their Prey: Bioethics, Murder and Fiction in Interwar Japan.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 31, no. 1 (Winter): 89-120.
Nakamura, Miri. 2002. “Horror and Machines in Prewar Japan: The Mechanical Uncanny in Yumeno Kyûsaku’s ‘Dogura Magura’.” Science Fiction Studies 29, no. 3. (Nov): 364-381.
Torrance, Richard. 2005. “Literacy and Literature in Osaka, 1890-1940.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 31, no. 1: 27-60