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Scripting Suicide in Japan: Volume 5

Scripting Suicide in Japan: Volume 5

Paperback

Series: New Interventions in Japanese Studies

Literary CriticismGeneral Racism & Ethnic StudiesJapanese History

ISBN10: 0520400267
ISBN13: 9780520400269
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: Oct 29 2024
Pages: 350
Weight: 1.23
Height: 1.02 Width: 5.98 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Japan is a nation saddled with centuries of accumulated stereotypes and loaded assumptions about suicide. Many pronouncements have been made about those who have died by their own hand, without careful attention to the words of the dead themselves. Drawing upon far-ranging creations by famous twentieth- and twenty-first-century Japanese writers and little-known amateurs alike--such as death poems, suicide notes, memorials, suicide maps and manuals, works of literature, photography, film, and manga--Kirsten Cather interrogates how suicide is scripted and to what end. Entering the orbit of suicidal writers and readers with care, she shows that through close readings these works can reveal fundamental beliefs about suicide and, just as crucially, about acts of writing. These are not scripts set in stone but graven images and words nonetheless that serve to mourn the dead, straddling two impulses: to put the dead to rest and to keep them alive forever. These words reach out to us to initiate a dialogue with the dead, one that can reveal why it matters to write into and from the void.

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General Racism & Ethnic Studies