The politics of Japanese postmodern fiction

This dissertation examines three Japanese novelists often associated with a postmodern style in the 1980s and 90s: Takahashi Genichiro (1951), Kobayashi Kyoji (1957), and Murakami Haruki (1949), and the way these writers used metafiction to engage "political language"---a sign system, according to Takahashi, that upholds its claim to authority based on a perceived transparency of meaning in language. These writers disputed political language by exposing the way linguistic meaning is manufactured in the processes of signification rather than existing prior to representation. By exposing the signifying practices of language and narrative in their literary works, they challenged the authority of the language the Japanese government, media, educational establishment, and religious organizations used during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s to legitimate violent acts, to control the "official" representation of history, and to appropriate subjective identity according to a particular ideological agenda.