The Gothic Novel
The Gothic Novel
Izumi Kyōka and Tanizaki Jun’ichirō
This chapter focuses on the Japanese version of the gothic. The territory of the gothic—a wild, exotic landscape populated by ghosts, demons, and unreasoning fear—is the territory of the unconscious. Japanese gothic authors were among the first to explore this territory in literature, and thus the first to create a vital stage in the evolution of modernism in Japan. The chapter presents two writers emblematic of gothic concerns: Izumi Kyöka and Tanizaki Jun'ichirö, authors who have been regarded as among the finest in the twentieth century. While the same dark elements found in the works of Kyöka can be seen in Tanizaki's fiction, they differ in many respects. Tanizaki's use of the gothic mode of narrative is a more self-conscious working of the tradition, as he was much more familiar with it than Kyöka was.
Keywords: Japenese gothic, modernism, Izumi Kyöka, Tanizaki Jun'ichirö, gothic narrative, ghosts, demons, unreasoning fear
Hawaii Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
