Fluent Essays

please check this reading Hell in the bottle from pages 240 - 250 1 2 Module 02 Content 1. Top of Form Write a 2-page literary analysis of one of the short stories from the assigned readings for Module 02, explaining how the author used characteristics of modernist literature or dystopian elements to create the dominant theme of the short story. You should include two of the terms used in your Module 02 literary terms exercise, and highlight the unique elements utilized in either modernist or dystopian fiction from your reading this week. Consider the following: · What was the main theme of your chosen story? (This is the main idea or message of the story). Examples of theme might be man vs. technology, man vs. nature, love, death, coming of age, freedom, the hero or heroine’s quest, etc. · If you chose a dystopian story, what vision of the future did the reading reflect? · Which of the literary terms or characteristics of modernist fiction did you find in your chosen story? (See your lesson content and literary terms in Module 02 for more on these). Focus as much as you can on how this short story exemplified the genre you have selected. You will also find it helpful to research the selected work online and in our library. You may use more than one article for your paper. Research includes at least  one outside  library article on the work selected. Your paper must be written in APA format. Use the APA template from the Course Guide to complete this assignment. You should have an APA cover page; two full pages of essay text with in-text citations, quotes, and lines from the readings; and a reference page. Rasmussens Library and Learning Services team has developed a LIT3382 Modern World Literature Course Guide with links to resources to help support students academic endeavors. To help you in writing a literary analysis, you will find a link to the Literary Analysis Guide in the Module 02 tab of the Course Guide. The Writing Guide and APA Guide may also assist you with the writing requirements. You can access the course guide in your Module 01 course tab. Submit your completed assignment by following the directions linked below. Please check the Course Calendar for specific due dates. Save your assignment as a Microsoft Word document. (Mac users, please remember to append the .docx extension to the filename.) The name of the file should be your first initial and last name, followed by an underscore and the name of the assignment, and an underscore and the date. An example is shown below: Jstudent_exampleproblem_101504 Bottom of Form Three-Dimensional Reading Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . Three-Dimensional Reading X Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911–1932 Edited by Angela Yiu University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . Publication of this book has been assisted by a grant from the Kajiyama Publications Fund for Japanese History, Culture, and Literature at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. © 2013 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15 14 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Three-dimensional reading : stories of time and space in Japanese modernist fiction, 1911–1932 / edited by Angela Yiu. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8248-3662-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8248-3801-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Time in literature. 2. Space in literature. 3. Japanese fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 4. Experimental fiction, Japanese— History and criticism. I. Yiu, Angela, editor of compilation. PL747.63.T52 T57 2013 895.6’34408—dc23 2012049637 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. Designed by Wanda China Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc. Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . carol Cross-Out this book is dedicated to my family Hitoshi Masaki Hiroyuki Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . Contents X Acknowledgments ix Introduction by Angela Yiu 1 Part I Scenes of the Mind Natsume Sōseki 29 A Strange Sound (Hen na oto, 1911) Uno Kōji 37 The Law Student in the Garret (Yaneura no hōgakushi, 1918) Kajii Motojirō 50 Scenes of the Mind (Aru kokoro no fūkei, 1926) Kawabata Yasunari 62 The Sound of Footsteps (Ningen no ashioto, 1925) Part II Time and Urban Space Inagaki Taruho 69 Astromania (Tentai shikōshō, 1928) Tamura Taijirō 85 Configuration (Keitai, 1932) Yokomitsu Riichi 101 The Underside of Town (Machi no soko, 1925) Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . viii Contents Hori Tatsuo 109 Aquarium (Suizokukan, 1930) Ryūtanji Yū 123 Pavement Snapshots (Peibumento sunappu– yonaka kara asa made, 1930) Nakajima Atsushi 143 Landscape with an Officer: A Sketch in 1923 (Junsa no iru fūkei, 1929) Part III Utopia and Dystopia Tanizaki Jun’ichirō 161 A Golden Death (Konjiki no shi, 1916) Akutagawa Ryūnosuke 201 Wonder Island (Fushigi na shima, 1924) Satō Haruo 211 A Record of Nonchalant (Nonsharan kiroku, 1929) Yumeno Kyūsaku 240 Hell in a Bottle (Binzume no jigoku, 1928) Selected Bibliography 251 List of Contributors 255 Index 259 Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . ix Acknowledgments X This book began with a happy meeting of minds. I was working on Satō Haruo’s “A Record of Nonchalant” and teaching it in my graduate semi- nar in June 2008 when one of my graduate students said she had found an image of the story on line. Thinking it improbable that a relatively unknown story would attract anyone’s interest, I accessed the website immediately, and the whole class was overwhelmed when the incredible image of “Nonchalant” floated on-screen before our eyes. This marked the unforgettable beginning of my friendship with the artist Sakaguchi Kyōhei. I e-mailed him promptly after class, and he replied within five minutes, promising to visit my class in a couple of weeks. When he came, a yet-to-be-discovered young artist in a yellow T-shirt, I knew that col- laboration between us was inevitable. “When I read a story, the entire spatial configuration just appears in my mind, and I sit down to draw for hours, sometimes through the night, until the image materializes on paper,” he said. “What do you use to draw?” one of the students asked. “A Mackee pen,” he said, referring to a commonplace oil-based felt-tip pen produced by Zebra that comes in various tips of precision. “Why?” “Why, because it’s affordable,” he laughed. Yet the vision of him conjur- ing the entire spatial and temporal dimension in one sitting using a non- erasable writing instrument always seems something out of this world to me. We spent the summer reading stories from the 1910s to 1930s—the age of modernism—I in the library and he among used-book stores, and we ended up with a short list that we both felt comfortable working with. That was the birth of this anthology. Since then, in the span of a couple of years, Sakaguchi has acquired Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . x Acknowledgments a high public profile as an artist, writer, and social mover for his work on what he called the “zero yen house”—a concept that rejects the doc- ile acquiescence to the astronomical cost of urban living in Japan and explores an alternative configuration of living space by means of urban hunting and gathering of materials at no cost. After the Fukushima nuclear plant explosions in the wake of the tsunami in March 2011, he moved from Tokyo to Kumamoto and built a community living center called Zero Center, attracting the attention of the media, artists and musi- cians, academics, and politicians. Despite a demanding schedule and new commitments, when I e-mailed him about the image for another story after receiving a book contract from the publisher, he sent me a beautiful composition of Aquarium within forty-eight hours of my request. This anthology would not be complete without Sakaguchi’s artistic input and friendship, and to him I convey my deep appreciation. I am also grateful to the translators who contributed their valuable time and effort to this volume. Jeffrey Angles, Alisa Freedman, Elaine Gerbert, Kyoko Kurita, James Lipson, D. Cuong O’Neill, Stephen Sny- der, and Dennis Washburn all responded without a moment’s hesitation when I requested their help. Not only did they give me their best work, they also had to live with my endless demands on revisions and strict deadlines. Many of them are prize-winning translators, yet they were all willing to work through every turn of phrase over many e-mail exchanges to perfect the translations. They also contributed significantly to the prefatory materials for the stories, and made helpful suggestions at vari- ous stages of the preparation of the manuscript. I feel very fortunate to be able to work with such conscientious translators and good friends. This anthology would not have been possible without the generous permission to translate the stories and publish worldwide that the hold- ers of copyrights gave me unconditionally. Many of them were descen- dents of the writers, and not only were they prompt in granting me the permission, their encouragement and faith in me were the driving force behind this project. To Hashizume Hikaru, Inagaki Miyako, Kawabata Kaori, Kanze Emiko, Satō Masaya, Toda Yuki, Uno Kazuo, and Yokomitsu Yūsuke—the anthology embodies my sincere and deep gratitude for your willingness to share great works of art with the world. My gratitude also Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . Acknowledgments xi goes to Aida Hirotsugu at Kyōdō News and Kawakami Shōko at Shinchō bunko for their advice on the matter of copyrights. The initial stage of this project was funded by a special grant from the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University. I am indebted to the director, James Farrer, for his unwavering support. With the fund- ing, we were able to hold a workshop for the project and hire a manag- ing editor for the first draft of the translation. I would like to thank my colleagues Shion Kono and Michio Hayashi for their direct and indirect support. Tom Kain, a former M.A. student in my literature seminar in the Graduate School of Global Studies at Sophia, served as my loyal and persevering managing editor, going through over half of all the transla- tions and making painstaking and constructive criticism for every word and phrase. That the draft manuscript was submitted in good shape and received a contract rather smoothly was no doubt thanks to Tom’s metic- ulous editing. I would also like to thank Yoo Seonggoo for his help with the Korean Romanization in the Nakajima story. My special gratitude goes to Pamela Kelley of the University of Hawai‘i Press, who guided and encouraged me in every step from submis- sion to publication. With her help and advice, I was able to focus on the manuscript and not worry about anything else, and I felt truly blessed to be working with her. I also wish to convey my heartfelt thanks to the two anonymous readers whose valuable comments were indispensable to the revision of the manuscript. I would add that I was genuinely touched not only by their enthusiasm but also by their promptness in sending their reports—while I was prepared to wait for months, they responded in a matter of weeks, and the speediness of their responses added great momentum to a manuscript that at one point I feared might disappear under the heavy demands of administrative duties. In the final and cru- cial stage of preparing the manuscript for publication, I was fortunate to receive the prompt and professional assistance from the copy editor Wendy Bolton, whose enthusiasm for the manuscript was heartwarming and encouraging. I was fortunate to have a chance to present different parts of this manuscript at Yale and Columbia in October 2011. I would like to thank John Treat, Edward Kamens, and Aaron Gerow at Yale for their feedback Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . xii Acknowledgments and advice, and the graduate students in East Asian Languages and Lit- eratures who attended my talk for their comments and enthusiasm. My sincere appreciation goes to Paul Anderer, Tomi Suzuki, and Hikari Hori at Columbia for their thought-provoking criticism. I was also thankful for the intelligent questions and positive responses from the audience, especially the graduate students in East Asian Languages and Cultures. I would also like to thank Lyman Tower Sargent, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, for showing a keen interest in my work on Japanese utopianism these past few years. He read my articles on Taishō utopianism and Satō Haruo’s dystopian fiction and solicited my opinions on many occasions on utopianism in non-Western literature. Thanks to his invitation, I presented the last sec- tion of this manuscript “Utopia and Dystopia” at the Society for Utopian Studies Conference in October 2011 and received positive and helpful feedback. Eager to try out the effectiveness of this manuscript as a teach- ing text, I had students in my graduate seminar JS 511 Interpretations of Modernity read and present on the near-final manuscript in fall 2011. There was nothing more gratifying and heartwarming than their thoughtful responses and close readings. Many of them read both the translation and Japanese texts and made excellent suggestions for fine- tuning the manuscript. Students in art history reacted sensitively to the visual impact of the stories, while others responded intelligently to the political and philosophical aspects of the texts. We read the manuscript immediately after William Tyler’s Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan 1913–1938, and students found the link and comparison informa- tive and meaningful. To graduate students in JS511, a big thank-you for sharing ideas and a memorable reading experience. The final phase of preparation for this manuscript took place when I assumed office as the Vice President for Academic Exchange at Sophia, immediately after the triple natural and man-made disasters of earth- quake, tsunami, and nuclear plant explosions in Japan. There were times when the demands of administrative work and teaching nearly pushed the manuscript off the horizon, but in the end, the intransigence, feisti- ness, and urgency of the stories proved to have a much larger hold on the Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . Acknowledgments xiii totality of my existence than I ever imagined. I would like to thank my friend and closest colleague Yoshiaki Terumichi for standing in for me at times when I ploughed away at my desk on this volume. This book is written in the memory of two teachers who had a last- ing impact on me as a scholar and an individual. Sister Agnes McKeir- nan (1911–2011) taught me the profound simplicity of light and life, and Edwin McClellan (1925–2009) revealed to me the complexity of darkness and humor. Together they nurtured what is worthy in me as a scholar and teacher, and now in their absence, I hope to approximate what they have done for me by nurturing the next generation of scholars. I would like to dedicate this book to my family with love and affec- tion. To my son Hitoshi, who shares my love of metaphors, may the adventure in reading never end. To my daughter Masaki, my steadfast companion and inspiration, follow your dreams and never give up. To my husband Hiroyuki, who is always there for me, thank you for being my home, my only home. Finally, to all those who supported me in ways that I cannot fully enumerate, thank you for giving me a chance to narrate my dreams. Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . 1 Introduction X by Angela Yiu This anthology examines the profound ways in which the modernist imagination re-presents time and space in Japanese experimental fiction in the interwar years of the 1910s to the 1930s. The fourteen writers selected for this anthology experimented with a protean modernist style in a vivacious period between the nation-building Meiji (1868–1912) and the dark war years of Showa (1926–89). Their works capture imaginary temporal and spatial dimensions that embody various forms of futuris- tic urban space, colonial space, utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia. The development of mass consumer culture and moneyed capital stimulated the publication of many new and experimental journals in that period, and these in turn became the venues for the debut and development of nouveau art and literary movements, such as the Shinkankaku (New Sensation) School, the Shinkō geijutsu (New Art) School, the Proletar- ian School, and mass literature (taishū bungaku). Meanwhile, the frantic development of Tokyo as a leading modern metropolis in Asia to rival the capitals in the West and the expansionist vision of the Imperial state to extend its colonial transformation of other Asian cities into model mod- ern metropolises continued to tease the imagination of experimental writers, who developed narrative strategies and a language drawn from new forms of visual representation to reconfigure time and space. This results in mind-bending spatial and temporal re-presentations in art and literary texts that are constantly in flux—fantastical, futurological, haunting, and cautionary—and shaped an experimental language that aims at the distortion of space, time, and motion. The modernist impulse Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . 2 introduction in the stories challenges realism, naturalism, temporal linearity, and the laws of physics. It is a language that is disorienting because of its formal disruption but also exhilarating and engaging for the same reason. Modernism rejects the mimetic function of art through a re-imagi- nation of the human experience, and this includes new forms of presenta- tion in space and time. In the West, impressionist and post-impressionist art privileges the new conception of space in its departure from a rep- resentation of objective reality, while modernist fiction privileges the individual experience and presentation of temporality in its rejection of linear chronological time. This diversification in art and literature has to do with the inherent difference in the two art forms: visual art captures effectively the presentation of space, and literary art, especially narra- tives, appeals to one’s sense of time. However, the perception of time and space is inextricably linked since modernist texts tend to juxtapose planes of existence and consciousness across geographical and temporal borders to create a multidimensional and multiperspective experience. This anthology attempts to explore how the physical and empirical expe- rience of time and space is distorted and reconfigured through the prism of modernist Japanese prose. In locating modernism in the spatial and temporal reality of Japanese narratives, I hope to provide a context to examine Japanese modernism on its own terms as well as to situate it in global modernism, overall. The title “Three-Dimensional Reading” does not refer to the Renais- sance system of perspective that created an illusion of three-dimensional depth on a flat, two-dimensional canvas. The term “three-dimensional” (rittaiteki) in this anthology comes from Rittai-ha, which is what cubism is called in Japanese, even though it is common now to refer to cubism as Kyubizumu. Rittai-ha suggests both a visual effect of presenting a single image from different temporal and/or spatial perspectives and a concep- tual cubist effect that emphasizes abstraction over realistic representa- tion. In 1908, the art critic Louis Vauxcelles, in writing about the art of George Braque, commented that he “reduces everything, places and figures and houses, to geometrical complexes, to cubes.”1 This form of reduction is a clear rejection of realism and a conventional three-dimen- sional perspective. Thus three-dimensional reading here refers to a Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . Introduction 3 cubist reading that involves the discovery of a conceptual depth in a two- dimensional presentation of time and space, when the modernist writer breaks away from the seemingly coherent and stable representation of linear time and external reality in a single perspective and re-imagines the world in multiple time and spatial planes jostling simultaneously and spontaneously in a text, as in the way dreams seep into consciousness or when past and future time crowd into a present moment to gener- ate a spectrum of meaning and possibility in an otherwise flat surface. One of the clearest examples in Western visual art is Marcel Duchamp’s (1887–1968) “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” (1911), a work that depicts the successive phases of the movement of a single machine-like body on a flat canvas. Another example is Pablo Picasso’s “Girl Portrait circa 1936” in which the left and right sides of the canvas contain differ- ent expressions and emotional states to symbolize the multiple selves within a single person. In Japanese literature, Yokomitsu Riichi cites Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Yabu no naka (1922; trans. “In a Grove,” 1954, 1999, 2006) in his treatise “Shinkankaku-ron” (On New Sensation)2 as an exemplary work that presents a single event in multiple perspectives without a unifying narrative voice (or the conventional omniscient point of view) and thus renders the event unstable and conceptually unfath- omable. Yokomitsu emphasizes the rittaisei in modernist prose—in the rejection of chronology and temporal linearity in plot development, the breakdown of a conventional and recognizable concept of time and space and a shift to mental images, as well as the use of a sensual or aural real- ity to express conceptual depth and three-dimensionality. To the three-dimensional reading of spatiality, I would add the need and possibility of a three-dimensional reading of temporality in order to understand the challenging presentation of time in the selected sto- ries. In an essay written in 1917, Satō Haruo provides a clue for a three- dimensional reading of time: Since the critic of civilization (bunmei hihyōka) is neither simply an idealist nor a sentimentalist prone to self-righteousness, he dwells in a place where it is possible to be simultaneously idealistic and realistic. In fact, his ideal finds its true meaning precisely when it Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23. C o p yr ig h t © 2 0 1 3 . U n iv e rs ity o f H a w a ii P re ss . A ll ri g h ts r e se rv e d . 4 introduction penetrates the innermost core of reality. A critic is also a prophet, a philosopher, and a poet. Yet precisely because he sees himself as a critic, he stares reality in the eye and maintains close contact with the flat temporal surface of “today.” He is in firm grasp of the fine point where the ideal three-dimensionality of eternal time (eien to iu risōteki rittai) penetrates the two-dimensional plane of today. That is where he anchors the basis of his existence.3 Here Satō has provided a model or a metaphor for thinking about the intersection between eternal time (past, present, future) and each existential moment. Eternal time takes the form of a three-dimensional shaft that penetrates the two-dimensional plane of this very moment of existence. He suggests that it is in the fine point of crossing between the two kinds of time that the critic anchors his or her existence to critique the world. Without the three-dimensionality embodied in the crossing, any attempt in criticism will be superficial at best. Satō’s idea of time is a modernist attitude found elsewhere in the world. “To me there is no past and future in art,” said Picasso,4 referring to the endless possibili- ties of reinterpretation and adaptation of past art in creating new works. In a similar vein, James Joyce and T. S. Eliot’s works are so abundant in allusions that the past is summoned to life in the present to address the future. In a modernist moment, past, present, and future exist simulta- neously in a work of art and demand a new conceptual understanding of time. In selecting stories from the modernist period to illuminate our understanding of past, present, and future time, and in harnessing our historical hindsight and the accumulation of critical insights to access past writings, we hope to establish the possibility of multiple imaginary crossings in which different temporal dimensions intersect to engender a rich and deep reading experience that liberates the reader from the shal- low confines of a present moment. This anthology also incorporates five images by the contemporary artist Sakaguchi Kyōhei, whose two-dimensional ink-on-paper drawings based on five stories in our anthology capture the powerful conceptual dimension within and in between the lines. Sakaguchi called his …