| Description |
1 online resource (x, 273 pages) |
| Contents |
Introduction: Detective Fiction, Diphtheria, and Modernity -- Tailing the Tail: How to Turn Paranoia into a Hobby -- Eyeing the Privates: Sexuality as Motive -- Mad Scientists and Their Prey: Bioethics and Murder -- Drafted Detectives and Total War: Three Editors of Shupio -- The Disfigured National Body: Unmasking Modernity in Postwar Mysteries -- Epilogue: Beyond the Whodunit |
| Summary |
The quintessential international genre, detective fiction often works under the guise of popular entertainment to expose its extensive readership to complex moral questions and timely ethical dilemmas. The first book-length study of interear Japanese detective fiction, Murder Most Modern considers the important role of detective fiction in defining the countrys emergence as a modern nation-state. Kawana explores the interactions between the popular genre and broader discourses of modernity, nation, and ethics that circulated at this pivotal moment in Japanese history. The author contrasts Japanese works by Edogawa Ranpo, Unno Juza, Oguri Mushitaro, and others with English-language works by Edgar Allan Poe, Dashiell Hammett, and Agatha Christie to show how Japanese writers of detective fiction used the genre to disseminate their ideas on some of the most startling aspects of modern life: the growth of urbanization, the protection and violation of privacy, the criminalization of abnormal sexuality, the dehumanization of scientific research, and the horrors of total war. Kawana’s comparative approach reveals how Japanese authors of the genre emphasized the vital social issues that captured the attention of thrill-seeking readers-while eluding the eyes of government censors |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Detective and mystery stories, Japanese -- History and criticism
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Japanese fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
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Culture in literature.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- Asian -- General.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- Asian -- Japanese.
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Culture in literature.
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Detective and mystery stories, Japanese.
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Japanese fiction.
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| LC no. |
2008000751 |
| ISBN |
9780816656592 |
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0816656592 |
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081665025X |
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9780816650255 |
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0816650268 |
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9780816650262 |
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