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Nakamura, Miri. Monstrous Bodies: The Rise of the Uncanny in Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. 178 pp. Hardcover. ISBN 978-0-674-50432-5. $39.93.
Miri Nakamura's Monstrous Bodies: The Rise of the Uncanny in Modern Japan is an endeavor to understand the concept of the monster in modern Japan by utilizing the concept of the uncanny (in particular, Mori Masahiro's "The Uncanny Valley") to better appreciate the shift in monsters from the apparent and grotesque to that of the unseen. Nakamura's text utilizes "the Jentschian definition - the fear arising from the uncertainty of an object being animate or inanimate" as an anchoring point upon which the rest of the argument is built (3). By suggesting that modern (late nineteenth and early twentieth century) concerns about hygiene, colonialization, and the birth control movement are legible through fiction about uncanny bodies, Nakamura makes a compelling argument about how these concerns were interpreted.
This book is divided into four chapters that each takes on the text of an author or authors that fit this theme. Chapter one looks at Izumi Kyöka's Köya hijiri (The Holy Man of Mount Köya) in terms of anxiety about hygiene. Chapters two and three are concerned with issues of Japanese colonialism: Edogawa Rampo's "Söseiji" ("Twins") addresses the monstrous twin that tries to replace its double, and Yumeno Kyūsaku's Dogura magura (Dogra Magra) confronts concerns over the doppelgänger in the colonies and mental illness. Chapter four looks at two short stories of the same name, "Jinzö ningen" ("Robot"), by Takada Giichirö and Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke, and how the two stories are connected to fascinations with artificial life, eugenics, and the birth control movement.
Nakamura's text begins on a compelling note with the first chapter, entitled "The Invisible Monster: Translating Hygiene into Supernatural Language." Nakamura makes a persuasive argument about hygiene concerns at the national level and how they were disseminated to the public in ways echoed by Izumi Kyöka's text. "By reading Kyöka's canonical text, together with hygienic writings, this chapter will undo the image of Izumi Kyöka as an unrealistic writer trapped in premodern literature and situate him squarely in modernity" (Nakamura 16). Nakamura then elaborates on...