Youth literature of the Meiji period (1868–1912) has been portrayed as moralistic and unable to overcome premodern literary styles and tropes. However, in this article I show how this literature... Show moreYouth literature of the Meiji period (1868–1912) has been portrayed as moralistic and unable to overcome premodern literary styles and tropes. However, in this article I show how this literature was transformative and functioned as an arena within which literary writers and the government contended for the minds of young Japanese citizens. I reexamine the early development of the genre of youth literature in Japan through the lens of Juri Lotman’s theory of cultural memory. In Lotman’s spatial model of culture, or semiosphere, foreign concepts travel from the periphery to the centre of a given cultural (sub)sphere through an amalgamation with established texts, in a process of ‘creative memory’. This process, I argue, is reflected in the serialized adaptations of premodern warrior legends by the pioneering author Iwaya Sazanami (1870–1933), in which he explores the conventions of nineteenth-century youth literature from the West. Recognizing the new genre’s deep connection to citizenship, he shaped his protagonists into exemplary boys who display wanpaku (spirited) dispositions, in opposition to the moralism and ‘narrow-minded nationalism’ imparted at home and in schools. As a mediator between premodern and modern concepts and modes of text production, Meiji youth literature thus offered adults a way to develop modern identities. Show less
This thesis investigates the formation of the Japanese nation-state from the angle of children’s literature. On the one hand, it elucidates how premodern warrior legends were canonized and adapted... Show moreThis thesis investigates the formation of the Japanese nation-state from the angle of children’s literature. On the one hand, it elucidates how premodern warrior legends were canonized and adapted in children’s literature and textbooks of the Meiji (1686-1912) and Taishō (1912-1926) period to shape the dispositions of young citizens according to various modern ideals. On the other hand, it analyses the role of children’s literature in Japan’s transition to modernity and the identity-formation of the adults involved. This thesis challenges the idea that ‘books for children’ did not exist before the Meiji period by placing the material within the contemporary context. Focusing on the work of the author Iwaya Sazanami (1870-1933), it consequently re-assesses the development of modern children’s literature in Japan through the lens of Yuri Lotman’s theory on cultural memory. The re-appropriation of warrior legends in a modern literary genre for young citizens contributed to the coherence of culture during Japan’s transition to modernity. The new genre moreover signified Japan’s status as a modern society that separates the sphere of childhood from adulthood, thereby providing the latter with a sense of Selfhood and the right to guide both real and metaphorical children in their development. Show less
