Murakami Haruki; the simulacrum in contemporary Japanese culture

Murakami Haruki; the simulacrum in contemporary Japanese culture.

Seats, Michael.

Lexington Books

2006

365 pages

$70.00

Hardcover

Studies of modern Japan

PL856

Seats (language studies, City University of Hong Kong) offers a new approach to dealing with Murakami's radical narrative project by demonstrating how his first and later trilogies employ the structure of the simulacrum, a second-order representation, to develop a complex critique of contemporary Japanese culture. Coverage includes an overview of the critical-fictional contours of the "Murakami Phenomenon"; Japanese modernity as seen within the contexts of the national-cultural imaginary, globalized artistic discourses and the idea of the Japanese novel; various perspectives on the theory of the simulacrum; and analyses of several of Murakami's works including Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball, 1973, A Wild Sheep Chase, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. For scholars and students of Japanese studies and critical theory, and modern Japanese literature.

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