Urban ambiguity: modernist descriptions in Kajii Motojirō

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This article examines early twentieth-century Japanese writer Kajii Motojirō’s short story ‘Remon’ (‘The Lemon,’ 1925) and explores the intersection of Kajii’s descriptions and an emerging urbanscape in Kyoto. Turn-of-the-century Kyoto undertook a massive scale of urbanization, remaking itself as a resurgent imperial capital. Instead of taking note of transformations of the scenery or the frenzies of new experiences, ‘Remon’ illustrates the narrator’s movement unintelligibly suspended in Kyoto’s back alleys. The repeated juxtaposing of different forms of representational media in the narrative also creates intermedial confusion, intensifying the sense of perceptual uncertainty. The article contends that reading the descriptions of ambiguous in-betweenness in the text reveals Kajii’s writerly engagement with the urbanization of Kyoto and leads us to a reevaluation of Kajii’s investment in literary modernism.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)155-177
Number of pages23
JournalJapan Forum
Volume36
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright © 2023 BAJS.

Keywords

  • Kajii Motojirō
  • Kyoto
  • intermediality
  • urbanization
  • ‘Remon’ literary modernism

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Cultural Studies
  • History
  • Sociology and Political Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Urban ambiguity: modernist descriptions in Kajii Motojirō'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this