Abstract

Timothy Van Compernolle examines the bestselling "novels of ambition" (risshi shōsetsu) that appeared at the end of the Meiji era-just when the school system had become so rigid as to narrow opportunities in the metropolis for social advancement. Focusing on the works of the now forgotten author Horiuchi Shensen (1873-?), who was a staff writer for the magazine Seikō (Success), Van Compernolle argues that these novels created an imaginative literary space in which a rural society under siege from both capitalism and urbanization was symbolically rejuvenated and then made the only authentic and meaningful place for rising in the world and achieving success. He further demonstrates how this subgenre of the modern novel, in mapping out a particular social topography, engaged with early-twentieth-century debates over the relationship between the country, city, and nation in a rapidly modernizing Japan.

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