SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This book analyzes the theme of immediacy and the supremacy of the present in contemporary Japanese fiction. Examining immediacy in literary works by a diverse body of authors and works in popular culture released during the major social and economic changes of 1995 and the triple disaster of March 2011, the book underlines the importance of the perception of instability crucial for immediacy. By recontextualizing varied narratives of sudden action, violence, isolation, and alienation against crises of temporality, this book provides a model of analysis that, cutting across media and audiences, provides a key to understand the present and recent yesterday of contemporary Japanese literature and popular culture, together with a conscious glimpse into their possible future. Featuring an in-depth approach to examples of immediacy presented through literary and popular media, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of modern Japan and Japanese literature, popular culture, and media studies.