Primordial Narratives: The Jomon Period in Postwar Japanese Literature and Thought
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Date
2024-08-07
Authors
Strikwerda, Timothy
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This dissertation explores the reasons that Japanese intellectuals and writers reached back to the Jōmon period (12,500-500 BCE) to define Japanese culture in the wake of Imperial Japan’s defeat after World War II. The Jōmon period covers the Stone Age on the Japanese archipelago. Despite leaving no written records, Jōmon period inhabitants produced some of the world’s earliest pottery and left behind a cornucopia of anthropomorphic ceramics that have long fascinated archaeologists. Beginning in the 1950s, however, the discourse surrounding the Jōmon period shifted from a tone of antiquarian curiosity to a more ideologically fraught mode, where the period was recast as a foundational era of Japanese history and culture. Taking this shift in discourse as my departure point, my project examines the ways that the Jōmon period has functioned as a shifting signifier across the postwar period. Drawing equally from cultural studies and intellectual history, I trace the ways prehistory has been used to define modern Japanese identity in texts and media as varied as literary fiction, philosophy, ethnographic travel narratives, and film.
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Keywords
Japanese history, Japanese literature