| This dissertation analyzes works of Japanese fiction from roughly the 1750s to the 1920s that use the image of a fantastic locale or society to comment upon contemporary politics and social issues. Such utopian works reveal much about Japan's developing modernity, including changing conceptions of class and gender-roles in an emerging mass society. They also suggest points of continuity between Edo (1603--1868), Meiji (1868--1912) and Taisho (1912--1925) era popular literature that have hitherto been neglected.; Despite the fact that in various literary traditions writers have used the trope of a fantastic locale or society to address topical events and politics, surprisingly little has been written on the topic of utopias in East Asian literatures. My dissertation thus begins with conceptions developed in studies largely of Western utopian fiction. This is appropriate, however, given that there are in fact important historical connections between the Japanese and Western traditions of utopian fiction. Due in part to a popular interest in circumstances in foreign and exotic lands, Western works depicting utopian locales were among the first Western literary texts translated into Japanese in the late Edo and early Meiji periods---works such as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, More's Utopia, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and Jules Verne's Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours. The influence of such quintessential Western utopian works can be seen in many Meiji era "records of the future" (miraiki) and political novels based on the idea of a perfect republic or commonwealth.; Taking a longer view of the phenomenon of utopian writings in Japan, I propose in this dissertation that such works were assimilated into a pre-existing native tradition of travel narratives depicting visits to similarly fantastic locales. I first consider several Edo period fantastic travel narratives, written by writers of popular fiction such as Hiraga Gennai (1728--1779), Yukokushi (pseud., fl. late 18th c.), and Takizawa Bakin (1767--1848), which served as models for later Japanese utopian works. In later chapters, I discuss the continued influence of both Asian and Western traditions of utopian fiction among such mid and late-Meiji writers as Hattori Busho (1842--1908), Yano Ryukei (1850--1931), Uchida Roan (1868--1929), and Natsume Soseki (1867--1916). |
