Nayoung Aimee Kwon. Intimate Empire

In a June 2016 interview published in The Japan Times, one of Japan’s leading contemporary novelists, Furukawa Hideo, observed, “Literature is part of a country’s history.” He continued, “history has been written so that those in positions of power can tell their version of how the country came into being. But there are many others who have a voice besides those in power. I believe it’s essential to include literature when writing the history of Japan, to give those other perspectives a voice” (Kris Kosaka, “Novelist Hideo Furukawa Views the Fukushima Disaster through Nonhuman Eyes,” The Japan Times, June 11, 2016, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/06/11/books/book-reviews/novelist-hideo-furukawa-views-fukushima-disaster-nonhuman-eyes/). Furukawa’s work embodies his beliefs. In 2011, at Brooklyn’s Book Court, he read from the English translation of his novel Belka, Why Don’t You Bark? (2012)—a surreal story of modern warfare told through the eyes of dogs trained for combat. Eschewing nationally defined conventions, Furukawa explained his choice of narrative vehicle for this work—dogs—as part of his concern with the bigger picture of modern history and violence, including how nonhuman creatures might view or recount modern history’s major events, as well as how those socially defined as less-than-human would, too.

Aesthetics · Art · Civilization · Colonialism · Creatures · Literature · Modernity · Narrative · Natural (archaeology) · Political science · Power (physics) · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies