The Unnamable Archipelago: Wounds of the Postcolonial in Postwar Japanese Literature and Thought. By Dennitza Gabrakova. Leiden: Brill, 2018. 210 pp. ISBN: 9789004365919 (paper, also available as e-book)

Hino's Isle of Dreams in the Tokyo Bay, Shimada's Iturup, Ariyoshi's Puerto Rico, Ikezawa's imaginary island in Micronesia, and Tawada's Canary Islands are the topoi through which they question the sovereignty of Japan as a nation-state and explore the location of wounds con...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of Asian Studies 2021, Vol.80 (4), p.1091-1093
Main Author: Haga, Koichi
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Area studies
Asian literature
Asian studies
Book Reviews—Northeast Asia
Cold War
Contemporary literature
Dreams
E-books
Geopolitics
Inequality
Islands
Japanese literature
Lesions
Military bases
Military occupations
Modernization
Nation states
Postcolonialism
Sovereignty
War
World War II
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Summary:Hino's Isle of Dreams in the Tokyo Bay, Shimada's Iturup, Ariyoshi's Puerto Rico, Ikezawa's imaginary island in Micronesia, and Tawada's Canary Islands are the topoi through which they question the sovereignty of Japan as a nation-state and explore the location of wounds concealed under the guise of Japan's reidentification as an economic power after its defeat in World War II and subsequent military occupation. Furthermore, this gaze captures the presence of US military bases in contemporary Japan and the inequality of the Status of Forces Agreement and brings to light the similarities between Japan (Okinawa) and Southeast Asia and the Caribbean islands. [...]Gabrakova argues that we should deconstruct the framework of the quasi-sovereign “Japan” imposed during the Cold War and reread postwar contemporary literature from the perspective of postcolonial theory, which has been excluded from “Japanese studies.”
ISSN:0021-9118
1752-0401
DOI:10.1017/S0021911821001820