Reviews | 303

techniques, particularly those presented in tables, the latter portions of the

book prove most useful.
In conclusion, RSL effectively achieves its stated goals and
appropriately targets its intended audience, providing valuable insights for
both researchers and practitioners across its chapters. However, three
points merit consideration. Firstly, regarding content, the guidance on
handling orthographical challenges in reading pedagogy (discussed in
Chapters 7 and 8) may be too general, particularly for teachers of Japanese
who are encouraged to promote extensive reading with these challenges.
Secondly, a practical issue arises when using the hard copy of the book:
the abundance of acronyms (e.g., PACT, CORI, CLIL, DET, and GISA)
throughout the text, not all of which are fully spelled out in the Subject
Index, can be challenging for readers. While the online version's search
function alleviates this issue, a separate list of acronyms would enhance
accessibility and convenience. Lastly, concerning timing, the publication
in 2022 unavoidably missed the opportunity to include the impact of
generative AI (artificial intelligence) publicly released in November 2022,
which significantly influences reading, writing, and their educational
practices. If this second edition were published now with such
developments incorporated, Chapter 16 on digital reading could have been
enriched significantly and thereby appreciated greatly.

Literature in Heisei Japan, 1989 – 2019 平成文学における様々な

声

Edited by Angela Yiu. Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 2024. 310 pp.
¥2400.

Reviewed by
Francesca Pizarro
Literature in Heisei Japan, 1989–2019 presents a rich collection of
scholarly essays that showcase the broad spectrum of artistic expression
produced during the Heisei era, illuminating “the literary landscape of this
thirty-year period” and offering “a glimpse into what is new and exciting
in contemporary literature in Japan” (12). The volume contributes to the

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growing body of English-language scholarship that examines how

narrative forms have responded to the historical, political, and
environmental changes defining the era, joining other resources such as
Marc Yamada’s Locating Heisei in Japanese Fiction and Film: The
Historical Imagination of the Lost Decades (Routledge, 2020) and the
volume Japan in the Heisei Era (1989–2019): Multidisciplinary
Perspectives edited by Noriko Murai, Jeff Kingston, and Tina Burrett
(Routledge, 2022).
The sixteen contributors to Literature in Heisei Japan include scholars
from various countries who are affiliated with universities across Japan,
the United States, and the United Kingdom. The volume consists of an
editor’s preface by Angela Yiu, followed by essays organized according
to three thematic categories: “Language,” “Spaces Seen and Unseen,” and
“Family, Identity, Gender, Body,” providing a useful framework for
navigating the volume. At the same time, many of the essays also resonate
with others across these thematic boundaries, producing cross-category
connections that enrich the reader’s understanding and appreciation of the
literary landscape in Heisei.
Yiu’s preface begins by addressing the challenges of defining
“Japanese literature” and “Heisei literature,” in “an amorphous age that
has outgrown the conventional identification with nation and the definable
literary genres and standards of previous eras” (9). She proposes
considering the volume as an examination of “literature in Heisei Japan.”
As she convincingly argues, “pairing Heisei with Japan but dislodging it
as a modifier for literature simply marks the three decades in the recent
past that provide an opportunity for retrospection and taking stock, even
though the imperial demarcation of time is not particularly relevant on a
historical, political, and quotidian level” (9). Indeed, many of the writers
selected for discussion in the volume are notably still active in the current
era, and the concerns that define their writing remain relevant in
discussions of “literature in Reiwa Japan.” But, as Yiu also points out,
“Heisei is not without its defining cataclysmic moments,” (9) referring to
the collapse of the economic bubble, the subsequent decades of existential
insecurity and precarity, and the disasters (natural and man-made) that left
an indelible mark on the culture and literature of the era.
“Part 1: Language” features five essays that foreground the diversity
and mutability in form, genre, and language of literature in the Heisei era,
and emphasize the increasing ambiguity behind such concepts as
“Japanese (national) literature” and “pure literature.” Two essays under

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 Reviews | 305

the subcategory of “The Past in the Present” introduce works of Heisei

fiction that reflect on and reevaluate the connections to Japan’s literary
past. Kyoko Kurita’s chapter on Asabuki Mariko’s Tracing the Flow
(2009) demonstrates one Japanese author’s purposeful attempts to dissolve
the conventions of the shōsetsu that have dominated and come to define
the notion of “national Japanese literature” in the twentieth century.
Meanwhile, Mathew W. Thompson’s chapter explores how Takagi
Nobuko’s novel, Narihira: A ‘Tales of Ise” Novel (2019), constructs a
modern vision of courtly elegance that is shaped by contemporary popular
culture and its relationship with Japan’s classic (Heian) literary past. Three
essays under the subcategory of “Plurilingual Literature and Storytelling”
explore works of fiction that engage with the multiplicity of linguistic
identities, cultural influences, and narrative voices in Heisei’s globalized
age. Shion Kono’s chapter on Mizumura Minae’s An I-Novel (1995) reads
the novel as “drama of language choice” (54) in which the narrator-
protagonist rejects English-language hegemony, while also
problematizing the easy definition of what it means to be a Japanese writer
through her bilingual, hybrid subjectivity. Matthew C. Strecher’s chapter
examines Murakami Haruki’s works as narratives of “primordial
memory”—universal, borderless archetypes that resonate across
cultures—that contest and complicate the once unassailable notion of
junbungaku, that is “national Japanese literature.” Finally, in the essay that
rounds out this section, Dennis Washburn uses Tsushima Yūko’s
Laughing Wolf (2000), to illustrate the retrospective turn in Heisei fiction
and the representation of Japan’s “confabulatory history” through the
narrative’s multiple voices and borrowing of indigenous storytelling
traditions.
Broadly, the essays in “Part 2: Spaces Seen and Unseen” examine the
representation of real-life geographical spaces and natural environments
alongside those of memory and imagination. Four essays under the
subcategory of “Space” explore how physical, cultural, and psychological
spaces are used in works of Heisei-era fiction to reflect, construct, and
destabilize prevailing notions of identity and conventional history. In
Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt’s chapter, she examines how Yū Miri’s
writing uses the interplay of memory and its unreliability to construct new
identities and foreground historically marginalized communities. The
“space” discussed here is the geographical and cultural landscape that Yū
seeks to reclaim and rewrite, particularly from the perspectives of those
erased by dominant cultural memories. Justyna Weronika Kasza’s chapter

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examines how Shiraishi Kazufumi’s novels thematize the relationship

between space and memory, particularly the way that spaces trigger
memories but also reconstruct this connection to the past. Valentina
Giammaria’s essay on Murakami Ryū’s In the Miso Soup (1997) interprets
the novel’s red-light district setting of Kabukichō as a reflection of the
“antisocial” behavior and empty consumerism the author found
emblematic of Japan’s post-bubble society. In the final essay on “Space,”
Andre Haag’s study of Fukazawa Ushio’s Green and Red (2015) reveals
the complex dynamics of Zainichi Korean identity in Heisei, highlighting
how it is negotiated in fraught cultural spaces where Korea-phobia, Korea-
philia, and anti-racist activism coexist.
Three essays under the subcategory of “The Environment” explore
works of “postdisaster” literature as they consider the question of recovery
and the restoration of humanity’s severed connection to nature. Munia
Hweidi’s chapter on Ishimure Michiko’s Lake of Heaven (1997) discusses
how the author constructs a “narrative of reconciliation” (187) between
past and present, as well as modernity and tradition, blending a sense of
ecological responsibility with spiritual and cultural renewal in the
aftermath of disaster. In his chapter, Dan O’Neill discusses the “creaturely
relations” (196) explored in Kawakami Hiromi’s short story, “God Bless
You, 2011” (2011), and Tawada Yōko’s novella, Memoirs of a Polar Bear
(2016), highlighting the shared precarity faced by humans and animals in
the wake of environmental disaster. Finally, Doug Slaymaker’s essay on
“postdisaster” literature concludes the section by exploring Heisei fiction
in the aftermath of the 3.11 Triple Disaster, which he observes is marked
by confrontations with historical memories of disaster, as well as
borrowing from Japanese art traditions to imagine ways of (re)connecting
with the past and the dead.
The four essays in “Part 3: Family, Identity, Gender and Body”
examine works of fiction (as well as films and manga) that address some
of the many shifting attitudes toward gender, sexuality, and the patriarchal
family in the Heisei era. Barbara E. Thornbury’s analysis of actress Kiki
Kirin’s roles in Kore’eda Hirokazu’s films highlights the figure of the
aging matriarch and interprets these works as powerful critiques of
normative heteropatriarchal family structures, which bring about gendered
disillusionment, isolation, and feelings of abandonment for women.
Similarly, Angela Yiu’s essay examines the fantastical elements—
instances of bodily transformation and ghostly encounters—in Oyamada
Hiroko’s fiction, which serve as potent metaphors for female discontent in

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 Reviews | 307

the context of Heisei-era patriarchal society. In the volume’s only

examination of the manga storytelling form, Daryl Maude presents
Tagame Gengorō’s My Brother’s Husband (2014–2017) as an exploration
of LGBTQ identity and experience within a society still often struggling
with inclusivity, requiring compromises in how these identities are
portrayed for mainstream cultural consumption. Wrapping up the essays
in the volume, Maria Roemer’s chapter delves into male homosocial
narratives in Abe Kazushige’s short story “Massacre” (1998), which
presents a critique of earlier patriarchal norms and the breakdown of
previously celebrated hegemonic masculinites in Heisei-era society.
The essays in Literature in Heisei, taken together, reveal significant
commonalities and points of intersection across the selected works of
Heisei-era fiction, even among those not grouped in the same thematic
categories. For example, many of the works examined by contributors give
voice to experiences of isolation, vulnerability, and precarity in the
aftermath of economic, social, and environmental upheavals. In their effort
to process and make sense of these conditions of crises, trauma, and
unmoored identities, the Heisei-era fiction examined in the volume often
revisits the past—both personal and collective—while confronting the
unreliability or malleability of memory. Some works also suggest that
while the mutability of memory can be unsettling, it also offers the
potential for personal reinvention and the possibility of reclaiming the
narratives of marginalized communities. Readers of the volume will also
find multiple examples of fiction that draw inspiration from classical
literary and performing arts traditions, borrow from narrative conventions
across cultures, and cross rigid genre boundaries to express their themes.
While these commonalities are notable, they do not coalesce into a single,
definitive understanding of the “literature of Heisei Japan.” Instead, the
overarching condition of destabilized social identities, national and
cultural border crossings, and the collapse of dominant narrative traditions
suggest—as Yiu argues in her preface—that seeking a single definitive
interpretation of “Heisei literature” may not be a very productive approach.
Overall, the volume provides a rich, multifaceted commentary on the
ever-shifting landscape of contemporary Japanese culture and society,
giving readers an excellent survey of “literature in Heisei Japan.” Its
strength as a sampling of the literary landscape lies in the diverse range of
fiction discussed. It does not only feature examinations of works by the
oft-studied and globally recognized stars of contemporary Japanese
literature, such as Murakami Haruki, Murakami Ryū, Yū Miri, and

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Tawada Yoko, but also introduces English-language readers to those

works of lesser-known or understudied writers like Asabuki Mariko,
Takagi Nobuko, Shiraishi Kazufumi, and Fukazawa Ushio, to name a few.
In this regard, it serves as an excellent introduction to the breadth and
variety of Heisei-era fiction and a valuable resource for teachers and
students of contemporary Japanese literature in English. The volume
offers a compelling contribution to the understanding of the literary and
artistic expression of the period.

Japanese Language and Literature | jll.pitt.edu

Vol. 58 | Number 2 | October 2024 | DOI: 10.5195/jll.2024.381