An Outsider and Insider's Osaka: Osaka in Tanizaki Jun'ichirō and Oda Sakunosuke's Literature
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Date
2018-09-06
Authors
Wei, Ran
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This thesis looks at the representations of Osaka from the 1920s to the 1940s in Tokyo writer Tanizaki Jun’ichirō and Osaka writer Oda Sakunosuke’s literature. I examine how Tanizaki and Oda approached issues of local and national and responded to the changing power relations between the local and the national order, as well as Osaka’s gradual subordination into a greater national entity. I argue that the Osaka outsider Tanizaki and the Osaka insider Oda’s literary responses to Osaka’s changing relation with the nation share certain similarities and differences: the similarities lie in their awareness of the changing power dynamics between Tokyo and Osaka, and their attempt to accentuate Osaka’s uniqueness, in addition to their treatment with the wartime censorship in the 1940s. The differences lie in the era they wrote of, their positions via and attitudes toward Osaka, and their focus on different social classes.