LETTERATURA GIAPPONESE

1)     Knowledge and understanding:

The course aims to equip students with the methods, concepts and tools to study and criticise Japanese literary and film works. Through analysing a selection of texts by contemporary authors, the knowledge of modern and contemporary Japanese literature acquired during the three-year course will be broadened, deepened and consolidated.

2)     Applying knowledge and understanding:

Students can analyse and interpret literary texts and their film adaptations through the critical and historiographical concepts and tools the course will refine.

3)     Making judgments

Students will be able to develop critical judgements on a wide range of authors and literary texts, using critically and historiographically sound arguments. They will also refine their ability to criticise essentialist and stereotypical discourses.

4)     Communication skills

Students will learn to analyse a literary text using the latest critical and historiographical tools. They will perfect their expository skills in presentations on specific topics and be involved in class discussions on issues related to the course content.

5)     Learning skills

Students can use lecture material and reference texts independently to supplement the notions learned during the lectures. They will also be able to deal alone with critical material and in-depth studies not covered during the classes. They will also improve their ability to use Japanese language materials and critical literature.

The course is divided into two modules, one of 36 hours and one of 18 hours (dedicated to the reading of the texts in the original language), which aim to deepen the modes of representation of identity and the Other in Japanese literature through the main historical phases of the 20th and 21st centuries.

After a theoretical introduction aimed at presenting the impact of modernisation on literary creation in Japan, the concepts of Orientalism, Occidentalism and Technocentrism, the course will focus on the following themes:

Reflection on cyborg identities in the Japanese science fiction imaginery through the novels Kachikujin Yapoo (Yapoo, the Human Cattle, 1956) by Shōzō Numa, Nippon apachi zoku (The Japanese Apache Tribe, 1964) by Komatsu Sakyō, the film trilogy of Tetsuo (Man of Steel, 1989-1996-2009) by director Tsukamoto Shin'ya, Kokaku Kido Tai (Ghost in the Shell, 1996) by Masamune Shiro and the animated version by Ishii Mamoru. Through these works, the course aims to explore the search for transhuman and posthuman subjectivities in Japanese science fiction and cyberpunk imagery in the postwar and postmodern period. Reading Murata Sayaka's novels (Konbini Ningen 2016, Satsujin Shussan 2014) and some of Fujino Kaori's short stories from the collection O hanashi shite Kochan (2013), the course will propose a reflection on the relationship between technology and the dissolution of gender identities.

The following theoretical reference texts are strongly recommended (and partly used in class) 

Braidotti Rosi (2013), The Posthuman, Polity Press, Cambridge; trad it. di A. Balzano (2014), Il postumano. La vita oltre l’individuo oltre la specie, oltre la morte, DeriveApprodi, Roma.

Buruma Ian, Margalit Avishai (2004, a cura di), Occidentalism. The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, The Penguin Press, New York; trad.it. di A. Nadotti (2004), Occidentalismo. L’Occidente agli occhi dei suoi nemici, Einaudi, Torino.

Butler Judith, (1990-1999) Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity, Routledge, New York; trad it. di Sergia Adamo: Questioni di genere. Il femminismo e la sovversione dell'identità, Laterza, Urbino 2013.

Creed Barbara (1993), The Monstrous Feminine. Film. Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Routledge, London and New York.

Cadzyn Eric (2002), The Flash of Capital. Film and Geopolitics in Japan, Duke University Press, Durham & London.

Haraway Donna.J. (1991), A Cyborg Manifesto. Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century in Haraway D.J. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, Routedge, New York, pp. 149-81; trad it di Borghi L. (1995), Un manifesto per Cyborg: scienza, tecnologia e femminismo socialista nel tardo ventesimo secolo in Borghi L. (trad.), prefazione di Braidotti R. (1995), Manifesto Cyborg. Donne, tecnologie e biopolitiche del corpo, Feltrinelli. Milano, pp. 39-84.

Harootunian H. (2000), Overcome by Modernity. History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.

Kristeva, Julia. 1981. Pouvours de l’Horreur. Essai sur l’Abjection. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

Mes Tom e Miike Takashi, (2005), Iron Man. The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto, FAB Press, Farleigh.

Said Edward. W. (1978), Orientalism, Pantheon Books, New York; trad. It. di S. Galli (1991), Orientalismo. L’immagine europea dell’Oriente, Feltrinelli, Milano.

Tatsumi Takayuki. (2007, a cura di), Robot Ghosts, Wired Dreams. Japanese Science Fiction from Origin to Anime, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis – London

Primary sources

• Satō Haruo, 1924, Fūryū ron (teoria sull'eleganza)
• Kuki Shuzō, 1930, Iki no kōzō (l'estetica dell'Iki).
• Kobayashi Hideo, 1933, Kokyo o Ushinatta Bungaku (la letteratura del paese natio perduto)
• Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, 1933, In'ei raisan (Il libro d'ombra)

§  Sakaguchi Ango, 1946, Darakuron.

• Numa, Shōzō, Ishinomori, Shōtarō, and Satō Sugar. 1984, 2013 ed. Kachikujin Yapū. (voll.1-4) . Tokyo: Kōdansha.Traduzione italiana di Federico Colpi, Yapoo il bestiame umano, D.Books, Tokyo-Taipei, 2003.

§  Komatsu, Sakyō. 1964, 2013 ed. Nippon Apacchi zoku, Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo.

§  Tetsuo, 1989, Testuo The Body Hammer, 1992, Tetsuo. The bullet Man, 2010, regia di Tsukamoto Shin'ya.

§  Fujino Kaori, 2013, O hanashi shite Kochan, Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo.

§  Murata Sayaka, 2014, Satsujin Shusshan. Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo.

§  Murata Sayaka, 2016, Konbini ningen. Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo. 

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 Oral examination

Students will prepare a presentation on specific topics related to the course program and write a final paper on a topic of their choice from those covered during the lectures.

The final assessment will take into consideration the following aspects:

critical mastery of the contents;

ability to identify intertextual relations and with the cultural context of the work;

methodological rigour;

ability to read and understand texts in the original language;

1. The definition of Japanese identity in the pre-war period through the aesthetic theorising of Sato Haruo, Kuki Shuzo, Kobayashi Hideo and Tanizaki Jun'ichiro.

2. What relationship can be identified between Orientalism and Occidentalism in the works dealt with during the course?

3. What is Techno-Orientalism?

4. Examples of creative masochism in post-war and post-modern Japanese science fiction.

5. The relationship between technology and procreation in the stories of Murata Sayaka and Fujino Kaori.