Writing, translating, and reading the disciplined subject in late Meiji Japan

The aim of this thesis will be to trace certain changes in the grammatical and narrative structure of the written Japanese language as well as the emergence of a particular mode of reading as these were evidenced in and around the Japanese novel---the shosetsu---over the latter half of the Meiji era (1868--1912). What these changes and this emergence lead to was a kind of self-regulating and self-propelling fusion of points of view with the dominant point-of-view within certain shosetsu-texts which directed the subjectivity of the Japanese reading subject in a direction that was in line with the demands of the new type of power---disciplinary---that was by the last decade of the Meiji era clearly the predominant form of power governing Japanese society.; That which was created in both cases was an illusion that reinforced perceptions of subjectivity (the self) and objectivity (natural and social) and led to the advent of a perpetually self-reaffirming subject that was unprecedentedly self-disciplined and self-governed. Through this subject that enormous end-effect of the new form of power called the Meiji State was helped into existence and subsequently sustained, not the least of which ways via the imaginings of a new type of community---the nation of Japan (kokka)---by a new type of community member---the national citizen (kokumin ).; In the end, there is no question of determinism here, for the resultant illusions produced by linguistic structure and conventions of reading could be dispelled through altering the very same strengthened perceptions of subjectivity and objectivity mentioned above. The fact that the subject exists as a nexus of discourses and not as a discourse delineates the frontiers of the potential resistance. Any other discourse that promotes any other mode of reading is potentially subversive of the disciplinary effects that arise from the particular grammatical and narrative structure and the particular mode of reading which will be examined in this dissertation. If not, then the sharpened identity with the point-of-view of the author/protagonist, who like the reader is produced within the socially sayable/readable, merely promotes a self-affirmation, a self-reaffirmation, and so a kind of increased disciplining and governing of the self.