New Books in East Asian Studies

Satoru Hashimoto, "Afterlives of Letters: The Transnational Origins of Modern Literature in China, Japan, and Korea" (Columbia UP, 2023)

Oct 11, 2024

Satoru Hashimoto, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, dives into the transnational roots of modern literature in China, Japan, and Korea. He discusses the impact of 19th-century cultural exchanges and how writers navigated historical relationships to reshape literature during modernization. Hashimoto highlights the significance of political novels and historical narratives, examining how key figures influenced literary landscapes across borders. His insights connect classical traditions with contemporary themes, challenging nationalistic perspectives in East Asian literature.

01:13:16

Episode guests

Satoru Hashimoto

AI Summary

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Modern literature in East Asia originated from shared cultural exchanges between China, Japan, and Korea, reshaping literary practices during the 19th century.

Writers like Liang Qichao and Lu Xun exemplified the complex interplay between heritage and modernization, utilizing parody and historical fiction to redefine identity.

Deep dives

Transnational Origins of Modern Literature

Modern literature in East Asia emerged from complex cultural exchanges between China, Japan, and Korea during the 19th century. Intellectuals from these regions shared common literary concepts, which were profoundly influenced by historical transformations brought about by modernization. As traditional literary norms were destabilized, these writers sought to create literature appropriate for a new era. The interactions across these nations fostered a transnational literary environment that contributed significantly to the development of modern literary practices.

Intro

3min

Connecting Cultures: Modern Literature in East Asia

13min

Interconnected Literatures: Political Novels and Transregional Influences in East Asia

5min

Cultural Echoes: Chance Meetings and Political Fiction

7min

Crafting Korean Identity through Historical Narratives

6min

Literary Dialogues in East Asia

7min

Exploring Historical Fiction in East Asia

29min

When East Asia opened itself to the world in the nineteenth century, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean intellectuals had shared notions of literature because of the centuries-long cultural exchanges in the region. As modernization profoundly destabilized cultural norms, they ventured to create new literature for the new era.

Satoru Hashimoto offers a novel way of understanding the origins of modern literature in a transregional context, drawing on Chinese-, Japanese-, and Korean-language texts in both classical and vernacular forms. He argues that modern literature came into being in East Asia through writerly attempts at reconstructing the present’s historical relationship to the past across the cultural transformations caused by modernization. Hashimoto examines writers’ anachronistic engagement with past cultures that were deemed obsolete or antithetical to new systems of values, showing that this transnational process was integral to the emergence of modern literature.

A groundbreaking cross-cultural excavation of the origins of modern literature in East Asia featuring remarkable linguistic scope, Afterlives of Letters: The Transnational Origins of Modern Literature in China, Japan, and Korea (Columbia UP, 2023) bridges Asian studies and comparative literature and delivers a remapping of world literature.

Satoru Hashimoto is assistant professor of comparative thought and literature at the Johns Hopkins University. He has published in English, Japanese, Chinese, and French on topics in comparative literature, aesthetics, and thought engaging East Asian and European traditions. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of World Literature.

Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies