Michael K Bourdaghs
Biographic Data
| ID | 275295 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael K Bourdaghs |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael K |
| FAMILY NAME | Bourdaghs |
| SIGNATURE | BOURDAGHS M K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Chicago |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0035-8304 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Transpacific rehabilitations
Focusing on a recently discovered collection of private recordings of Japanese singers in concert in Sacramento, California, in 1950, this article examines the audio record of the performance by Yamaguchi Yoshiko, previously known as Ri Kōran (Li Xianglan), as an instance of the emergence of new maritime routes of circulation for popular music in the early Cold War period. In the light of the supposed need for both Yamaguchi and her audience of J…
Monstrous Melodies and Island Fantasies
This article explores popular music of Japan's Cold War era, with a special focus on singing duo The Peanuts and the film Mothra. It argues that Japanese culture of the Cold War must be understood as participating simultaneously in all three networks of the Cold War order-the First World of capitalist liberal democracies, the Second World of the socialist bloc, and the Third World of the decolonizing and nonaligned Bandung Movement
Sound Alignments
Early Freeze Warning
This essay revisits the 1946-7 "Politics and Literature Debate" (Seiji to bungaku ronsō), a pivotal controversy among leftist Japanese writers and intellectuals that is conventionally cited as the starting point of postwar literary history. Situating the debate in tandem with three influential texts published at roughly the same time in the West-Lionel Trilling's The Liberal Imagination (1951), Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (194…
Introduction
This introduction argues that there is a need to engage in a fresh re-reading of Kawabata Yasunari. It proposes several possible approaches, including using Kawabata as a model for understanding processes of literary canonization, a rethinking of his reception around the globe during the Cold War period, and a historicization of his work in relation to the various censorship regimes that existed in twentieth-century Japan. It also provides brief …
Dandelions dancing in the snow
This article is a translation of the keynote address delivered at the ‘Relire Kawabata au 21e siècle – modernisme et japonisme au-delà des mythes’ conference hosted by the Maison de la culture du Japon (Paris) and Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7 on 17–18 September 2014. It situates Kawabata Yasunari's late unfinished novel Tanpopo (Dandelions) within Japanese modernity and literary history, in particular drawing an array of connections between t…
The Remains of the Japanese Empire
This article focuses on three of Tsushima Yūko's later works. It examines Tsushima's criticism of Japanese ruling policy, especially aboriginal policies in colonial Taiwan, in All Too Barbarian. The second, Reed Boat, Flying, exposes the repressed history of how, just after Japan's defeat in the Second World War, Japanese women returning from Manchuria who were raped by Russian or other foreign soldiers were forced into having abortions.Wildcat D…
The Politics and Literature Debate in Postwar Japanese Criticism, 1945-52
In the wake of its defeat in World War II, as Japan was forced to remake itself from “empire” to “nation” in the face of an uncertain global situation, literature and literary criticism emerged as highly contested sites. Today, this remarkable period holds rich potential for opening new dialogue between scholars in Japan and North America as we rethink the historical and contemporary significance of a number of important issues, including the mea…
Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature
Reviewed by: Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value Michael K. Bourdaghs (bio) Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value. By Edward Mack. Duke University Press, Durham, 2010. x, 320 pages. $84.95, cloth; $23.95, paper. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of Japanese scholars stopped studying literature and took up instead “literature.…
Empire of Texts in Motion
Reviewed by: Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature Michael K. Bourdaghs Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature BY Karen Laura Thornber. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009. Pp. xiii + 591. $59.95. We are warned never to judge a book by its cover, usually for good reason. But sometimes even lowly book jackets can ser…
Understanding the Ongoing Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima
This summer, I participated for the seventeenth time in the "Pilgrimage for Peace," traveling to Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a group that included seventeen American students led by Professor Peter Kuznick of American University, seven international students from across Asia, and sixteen students from Japan. During our eleven days together, we had many discussions on the topic of "How to Understand the Relation between the Fukushima Nuclear Disas…
Resolving the China-Japan Conflict Over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands
On September 7 Japanese patrol boats intercepted a Chinese fishing trawler near Kubashima, one of the Senkaku [Chinese: Diaoyu] Islands in the East China Sea. After it repeatedly rammed the patrol boats in attempting to escape, the fishing boat was detained and its captain arrested and charged with interference in the execution of official duties. The incident would come to have enormous repercussions, shaking up Sino-Japanese relations
Translating Mount Fuji
Reviewed by: Translating Mount Fuji: Modern Japanese Fiction and the Ethics of Identity Michael K. Bourdaghs (bio) Translating Mount Fuji: Modern Japanese Fiction and the Ethics of Identity. By Dennis Washburn. Columbia University Press, New York, 2006. xiv, 303 pages. $40.00. "Why profess Japanese literature?" (p. xiii). After the critique of Orientalism and with the ongoing dismantling of the humanities within the contemporary university system…
Property and sociological knowledge
This paper explores Natsume Sōseki's 1912 novel, Until the Spring Equinox and Beyond, as a continuation of Sōseki's experimental project to produce a scientific theory of literature. It looks in particular at Sōseki's encounter with Western sociology and the role that private property systems played in it. It argues that Sōseki's theory and practice of literature can be understand as attempts to formulate a critique of sociological knowledge from…
Reborn from the Earth Scarred by Modernity
For nearly half a century, Ishimure Michiko (b. 1927) has been an important voice in Japanese environmental literature. She first came to national attention as a result of her writings on the ongoing environmental disaster of Minamata Disease. Caused by the methyl mercury and other poisonous industrial wastes dumped by the Chisso Corporation into the harbor at the town of Minamata, the debilitating neurological syndrome first began appearing in t…
Za Kinkusu
This article explores the relationship between the music of the Kinks and that of three distinct generations in the history of Japanese rock and roll: the Group Sounds movement from the 1960s, including bands such as the Spiders, the Tempters, and the Tigers; the New Music and folk‐rock movement of the 1970s, with special reference to the band Happy End; and the Indies rock scene that has arisen since the 1990s
Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan
Reviewed by: Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan: Nationalism as Aesthetics Michael K. Bourdaghs (bio) Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan: Nationalism as Aesthetics. By Yumiko Iida. Routledge, London, 2002. viii, 328 pages. $129.95. Any book that attempts, as does the present volume, to capture the entirety of twentieth-century Japanese intellectual discourse within a single analytical framework must—almost by definition—fail in its task. The im…
The Dawn That Never Comes
A critical rethinking of theories of national imagination, The Dawn That Never Comes offers the most detailed reading to date in English of one of modern Japan's most influential poets and novelists, Shimazaki Toson (1872–1943). It also reveals how Toson's works influenced the production of a fluid, shifting form of national imagination that has characterized twentieth-century Japan. Analyzing Toson's major works, Michael K. Bourdaghs demonstrate…
The Disease of Nationalism, the Empire of Hygiene
Research Article| August 01 1998 The Disease of Nationalism, the Empire of Hygiene Michael Bourdaghs Michael Bourdaghs Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google positions (1998) 6 (3): 637–673. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-6-3-637 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Michael Bourdaghs; The Disease of Nationalism, the Empire of Hygiene. positions 1 August 1998; 6 (3):…
The Disease of Nationalism, the Empire of Hygiene
Research Article| August 01 1998 The Disease of Nationalism, the Empire of Hygiene Michael Bourdaghs Michael Bourdaghs Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google positions (1998) 6 (3): 637–673. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-6-3-637 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Michael Bourdaghs; The Disease of Nationalism, the Empire of Hygiene. positions 1 August 1998; 6 (3):…
The Disease of Nationalism, the Empire of Hygiene
Research Article| August 01 1998 The Disease of Nationalism, the Empire of Hygiene Michael Bourdaghs Michael Bourdaghs Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google positions (1998) 6 (3): 637–673. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-6-3-637 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Michael Bourdaghs; The Disease of Nationalism, the Empire of Hygiene. positions 1 August 1998; 6 (3):…
The Dawn That Never Comes
A critical rethinking of theories of national imagination, The Dawn That Never Comes offers the most detailed reading to date in English of one of modern Japan's most influential poets and novelists, Shimazaki Toson (1872–1943). It also reveals how Toson's works influenced the production of a fluid, shifting form of national imagination that has characterized twentieth-century Japan. Analyzing Toson's major works, Michael K. Bourdaghs demonstrate…
Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan
Reviewed by: Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan: Nationalism as Aesthetics Michael K. Bourdaghs (bio) Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan: Nationalism as Aesthetics. By Yumiko Iida. Routledge, London, 2002. viii, 328 pages. $129.95. Any book that attempts, as does the present volume, to capture the entirety of twentieth-century Japanese intellectual discourse within a single analytical framework must—almost by definition—fail in its task. The im…
Za Kinkusu
This article explores the relationship between the music of the Kinks and that of three distinct generations in the history of Japanese rock and roll: the Group Sounds movement from the 1960s, including bands such as the Spiders, the Tempters, and the Tigers; the New Music and folk‐rock movement of the 1970s, with special reference to the band Happy End; and the Indies rock scene that has arisen since the 1990s
Translating Mount Fuji
Reviewed by: Translating Mount Fuji: Modern Japanese Fiction and the Ethics of Identity Michael K. Bourdaghs (bio) Translating Mount Fuji: Modern Japanese Fiction and the Ethics of Identity. By Dennis Washburn. Columbia University Press, New York, 2006. xiv, 303 pages. $40.00. "Why profess Japanese literature?" (p. xiii). After the critique of Orientalism and with the ongoing dismantling of the humanities within the contemporary university system…
Property and sociological knowledge
This paper explores Natsume Sōseki's 1912 novel, Until the Spring Equinox and Beyond, as a continuation of Sōseki's experimental project to produce a scientific theory of literature. It looks in particular at Sōseki's encounter with Western sociology and the role that private property systems played in it. It argues that Sōseki's theory and practice of literature can be understand as attempts to formulate a critique of sociological knowledge from…
Reborn from the Earth Scarred by Modernity
For nearly half a century, Ishimure Michiko (b. 1927) has been an important voice in Japanese environmental literature. She first came to national attention as a result of her writings on the ongoing environmental disaster of Minamata Disease. Caused by the methyl mercury and other poisonous industrial wastes dumped by the Chisso Corporation into the harbor at the town of Minamata, the debilitating neurological syndrome first began appearing in t…
Resolving the China-Japan Conflict Over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands
On September 7 Japanese patrol boats intercepted a Chinese fishing trawler near Kubashima, one of the Senkaku [Chinese: Diaoyu] Islands in the East China Sea. After it repeatedly rammed the patrol boats in attempting to escape, the fishing boat was detained and its captain arrested and charged with interference in the execution of official duties. The incident would come to have enormous repercussions, shaking up Sino-Japanese relations
Empire of Texts in Motion
Reviewed by: Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature Michael K. Bourdaghs Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature BY Karen Laura Thornber. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009. Pp. xiii + 591. $59.95. We are warned never to judge a book by its cover, usually for good reason. But sometimes even lowly book jackets can ser…
Understanding the Ongoing Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima
This summer, I participated for the seventeenth time in the "Pilgrimage for Peace," traveling to Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a group that included seventeen American students led by Professor Peter Kuznick of American University, seven international students from across Asia, and sixteen students from Japan. During our eleven days together, we had many discussions on the topic of "How to Understand the Relation between the Fukushima Nuclear Disas…
Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature
Reviewed by: Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value Michael K. Bourdaghs (bio) Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value. By Edward Mack. Duke University Press, Durham, 2010. x, 320 pages. $84.95, cloth; $23.95, paper. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of Japanese scholars stopped studying literature and took up instead “literature.…
The Politics and Literature Debate in Postwar Japanese Criticism, 1945-52
In the wake of its defeat in World War II, as Japan was forced to remake itself from “empire” to “nation” in the face of an uncertain global situation, literature and literary criticism emerged as highly contested sites. Today, this remarkable period holds rich potential for opening new dialogue between scholars in Japan and North America as we rethink the historical and contemporary significance of a number of important issues, including the mea…
Introduction
This introduction argues that there is a need to engage in a fresh re-reading of Kawabata Yasunari. It proposes several possible approaches, including using Kawabata as a model for understanding processes of literary canonization, a rethinking of his reception around the globe during the Cold War period, and a historicization of his work in relation to the various censorship regimes that existed in twentieth-century Japan. It also provides brief …
Dandelions dancing in the snow
This article is a translation of the keynote address delivered at the ‘Relire Kawabata au 21e siècle – modernisme et japonisme au-delà des mythes’ conference hosted by the Maison de la culture du Japon (Paris) and Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7 on 17–18 September 2014. It situates Kawabata Yasunari's late unfinished novel Tanpopo (Dandelions) within Japanese modernity and literary history, in particular drawing an array of connections between t…
The Remains of the Japanese Empire
This article focuses on three of Tsushima Yūko's later works. It examines Tsushima's criticism of Japanese ruling policy, especially aboriginal policies in colonial Taiwan, in All Too Barbarian. The second, Reed Boat, Flying, exposes the repressed history of how, just after Japan's defeat in the Second World War, Japanese women returning from Manchuria who were raped by Russian or other foreign soldiers were forced into having abortions.Wildcat D…
Early Freeze Warning
This essay revisits the 1946-7 "Politics and Literature Debate" (Seiji to bungaku ronsō), a pivotal controversy among leftist Japanese writers and intellectuals that is conventionally cited as the starting point of postwar literary history. Situating the debate in tandem with three influential texts published at roughly the same time in the West-Lionel Trilling's The Liberal Imagination (1951), Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (194…
Sound Alignments
Transpacific rehabilitations
Focusing on a recently discovered collection of private recordings of Japanese singers in concert in Sacramento, California, in 1950, this article examines the audio record of the performance by Yamaguchi Yoshiko, previously known as Ri Kōran (Li Xianglan), as an instance of the emergence of new maritime routes of circulation for popular music in the early Cold War period. In the light of the supposed need for both Yamaguchi and her audience of J…
Monstrous Melodies and Island Fantasies
This article explores popular music of Japan's Cold War era, with a special focus on singing duo The Peanuts and the film Mothra. It argues that Japanese culture of the Cold War must be understood as participating simultaneously in all three networks of the Cold War order-the First World of capitalist liberal democracies, the Second World of the socialist bloc, and the Third World of the decolonizing and nonaligned Bandung Movement
History (17 works) · Japanese History and Culture (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Art (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Literature (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Asian Culture and Media Studies (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works)