ABSTRACT
KEN K. ITO
How to Read—and Be Read by—Konjiki yasha:
Reception, Performance, and the Turn-of-the-Century Japanese Novel
In 1902, a literary journal carried the account of a group of men and women who had gathered to discuss Ozaki Kōyō’s Konjiki yasha (The golden demon, 1897–1902). The account—which belongs to a genre known as gappyō, or “joint review”—provides insights into a distinct Meiji mode of reading. Bringing the joint review into conversation with Western reader-response theory, this article uncovers a view of reading as a transaction between a text and its readers that produces multiple interpretations through the performance of social positionalities.
Volume 49, Number 2 (Summer 2023)
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