In this Book
University of California Press
- Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: University of California Press
- Series: Asia Pacific Modern
summary
At the height of state censorship in Japan, more indexes of banned books circulated, more essays on censorship were published, more works of illicit erotic and proletarian fiction were produced, and more passages were Xed out than at any other moment before or since. As censors construct and maintain their own archives, their acts of suppression yield another archive, filled with documents on, against, and in favor of censorship. The extant archive of the Japanese imperial censor (1923-1945) and the archive of the Occupation censor (1945-1952) stand as tangible reminders of this contradictory function of censors. As censors removed specific genres, topics, and words from circulation, some Japanese writers converted their offensive rants to innocuous fluff after successive encounters with the authorities. But, another coterie of editors, bibliographers, and writers responded to censorship by pushing back, using their encounters with suppression as incitement to rail against the authorities and to appeal to the prurient interests of their readers. This study examines these contradictory relationships between preservation, production, and redaction to shed light on the dark valley attributed to wartime culture and to cast a shadow on the supposedly bright, open space of free postwar discourse. (Winner of the 2010-2011 First Book Award of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University" ).
Table of Contents
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- List of Illustrations
- pp. ix-x
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xi-xiv
- Note on the Translation
- pp. xv-xvi
- Introduction: Archiving Censors
- pp. 1-20
- Part I. Preservation
- 2. Indices of Censorship
- pp. 44-60
- 3. Essaying the Censors
- pp. 61-86
- Part II. Production
- 4. Seditious Obscenities
- pp. 89-111
- 5. Literary Casualties of War
- pp. 112-140
- Part III. Redaction
- 6. Epigraphs
- pp. 143-153
- 7. Redactionary Literature
- pp. 154-193
- 8. Beyond X
- pp. 194-216
- 9. Unnaming and the Language of Slaves Coda
- pp. 217-250
- 10. Redaction Countertime
- pp. 251-266
- Bibliography
- pp. 309-344
- Other Works in the Series
- pp. 376-377
Additional Information
ISBN
9780520953406
Related ISBN(s)
9780520273344
MARC Record
OCLC
810414729
Pages
376
Launched on MUSE
2014-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No