When modern Japanese literature encounters other languages and cultures, a confrontation inevitably occurs between the supposedly universal “modernity” and the particular “Japanese modernity.” West-dominated studies of Japan have traditionally tended to focus on this particularity, but nowadays it is becoming increasingly important to question what changes might have occurred with the spread of the analytical concept of “world literature”, i.e., after Japanese literature too was liberated from the idea of being the literature of a specific region. In this special panel we want to consider the current state of research on modern Japanese literature from the perspective of translation.

In the West, the translation of Japanese literature was initially promoted mainly in order to introduce Japan to local audiences; nevertheless, the West’s desire to look at Japan from an Orientalist perspective often intersected with Japan’s own desire to break away from the East in favor of the West; this is seen, for example, in the use of crepe-paper books as souvenirs or the translation of The Tale of Genji by Suematsu Kenchō.

On the other hand, we must also consider the translation of Japanese literature in relation to Japan’s invasion of Asia. For instance, in Japan the translation and introduction of proletarian literature was mediated by Western ideology, but the proletarian literary and cultural movement was also subsequently introduced to colonial Korea; and Hino Ashihei’s Mugi to Heitai (Wheat and Soldiers) was translated into various languages as propaganda, made to symbolize Japan’s imperial desires. In contrast, Ishikawa Tatsuzō’s Ikite Iru Heitai (Soldiers Alive) was banned in Japan but, through its Chinese translation, reached a global audience and served as an indictment of the inhumanity of the Japanese army. Furthermore, in wartime, research on Japan was often conducted as military strategy, which calls for a reconsideration of the power relationships between translation, research, and domination. The fact that Donald Lawrence Keene and Edward George Seidensticker studied Japanese at the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School is directly linked to the postwar translation projects of Mishima Yukio and Kawabata Yasunari at the Alfred A. Knopf Publishing House. Also, the Ford Foundation-based translation projects carried out amidst the Cold War catalyzed the international promotion of Japanese studies as a field of area studies in the postwar period.

Since the 1980s, Haruki Murakami’s international popularity opened new research perspectives on Japanese literature as “world literature,” i.e., one not premised on the “nation of Japan.” The Japanese Literature Publishing Project, established in 2002 and sponsored by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, as well as projects initiated by the Japan Foundation, provide funding for the translation of Japanese literature into the languages of Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and other regions, while also promoting Japanese studies abroad. At the same time, the “soft power” of popular cultural products such as manga and anime, as promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s “Cool Japan” program (albeit with varied reception), has left its mark on current Japanese studies. In recent years, through the translation of works by Murata Sayaka, Kawakami Mieko et al, Japanese literature by women writers has made great strides in the English-speaking world, while recent translations of Yū Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station and Tawada Yōko’s The Last Children of Tokyo won the U.S. National Book Award, and Ogawa Yōko was nominated, too. There has also been a noticeable shift in research, including the publication of new introductory texts with a more attentive focus on cultural studies, such as the Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature (2016), which replace Keene’s 1984 Dawn to the West. With this in mind, in this special panel we aim to reconsider modern Japanese literature and its research from a transnational perspective.