WRITING TECHNOLOGY IN MEIJI JAPAN: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture.

摘要

In this wide-ranging and fascinating study, Seth Jacobowitz provides an insightful perspective on the formative period of modern Japanese literature in the Meiji era (1868-1912). Here writing technology can be interpreted in two ways: in reference to the technologies employed in creating and disseminating written works, and in reference to technology as an explicit or implicit object of written discourse. Jacobowitz explores them both, connecting them to each other and contextualizing them within the broader trends in technology, politics, culture, and intellectual dialogue with the West that marked this transformative period of Japanese history. This is, in other words, a study of media history, going well beyond the confines of a traditional literary study. Jacobowitz's theoretical approach relies on the methodological framework of the twentieth-century German scholar Friedrich Kittler, who was interested in the ways that discourse networks-technological systems for recording and transmitting information-affect everything from the arts to cultural and political institutions.