Lecture: Lights and Shadows of a Modernist: Kawabata Yasunari and Postwar High Economic Growth

March 21, 2005

Lecture: Lights and Shadows of a Modernist: Kawabata Yasunari and Postwar High Economic Growth
Toeda Hirokazu (Professor, Waseda University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. and Amsterdam Ave.)
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Lecture in Japanese

Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972), who started his literary career in the 1920s and 1930s as an avant-garde, modernist writer of New Sensationism (Shinkankakuha), came to be regarded in the postwar years as a national writer representing the Japanese tradition. Professor Toeda examines the way in which postwar mass media constructed Kawabata to become such a national writer. In addition to a consideration of popular print media such as pocket-book editions, anthologies, and school textbooks, Professor Toeda will analyze the manner in which Kawabata’s works have been reproduced and consumed through popular visual media such as film, television drama, and advertisement, as well as the ways in which tourist industries have explored Kawabata’s The Izu Dancer, Snow Country, The Sound of the Mountain, and Old Capital as cultural resources.