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MANUFACTURING MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value. Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society. By Edward Mack. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. x, 320 pp. (Tables, figures, maps, B&W photos, illus.) US$23.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-4672-2.
Although this book addresses modern Japanese literature, it is decidedly not a book of literary criticism in the usual sense. It is rather a historical and sociological study of how the concept of "modern Japanese literature" came to be. How does it, then, distance itself from the previous studies of Japanese literary history by scholars like Donald Keene or Nakamura Mitsuo? While their works seem to have taken the value and existence of "modern Japanese literature" for granted, Edward Mack, in this book, presents detailed historical accounts of how extra-literary sources have manufactured such a value and concept. Certainly, Mack acknowledges the multiple factors affecting the origin of "modern Japanese literature." He, however, singles out two historical events as most important for his analysis: the publication of the Complete Works of Contemporary Japanese Literature (1926-1931) and the establishment of the Akutagawa Prize in 1935.
This theoretical dictate of historicizing something that appears immanent and natural has become...