Lippit offers the first book-length study in English of Japanese modernist fiction from the 1920s to the 1930s. Through close readings of four leading figures of this movement—Akutagawa, Yokomitsu, Kawabata, and Hayashi—Lippit aims to establish a theoretical and historical framework for the analysis of Japanese modernism.

What happens when a critique of modernity—a "revolt against the traditions of the Western world"—is situated within a non-European context, where the concept of the modern has been inevitably tied to the image of the West?

Seiji M. Lippit offers the first comprehensive study in English of Japanese modernist fiction of the 1920s and 1930s. Through close readings of four leading figures of this movement— Akutagawa, Yokomitsu, Kawabata, and Hayashi—Lippit aims to establish a theoretical and historical framework for the analysis of Japanese modernism.

The 1920s and 1930s witnessed a general sense of crisis surrounding the institution of literature, marked by both the radical politicization of literary practice and the explosion of new forms of cultural production represented by mass culture. Against this backdrop, this study traces the heterogeneous literary topographies of modernist writings. Through an engagement with questions of representation, subjectivity, and ideology, it situates the disintegration of literary form in these texts within the writers' exploration of the fluid borderlines of Japanese modernity.

Seiji M. Lippit is assistant professor in the department of East Asian languages and cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the editor of Essential Akutagawa.

Ken K. Ito:
Lippit's book is destined to become an indispensable guide to modernist Japanese fiction.

Susan Napier:
In his excellent bookTopographies of Japanese Modernism, Seiji M. Lippit explores Japanese modernism of the 1920s and 1930s... The result is a richly argued and intellectually exciting entree into one of the most significant periods of modern Japanese fiction...Topographies is a superb contribution to our knowledge of twentieth-century Japanese literature.

Dennis Washburn, Dartmouth College:
Topographies of Japanese Modernism is an accomplished addition to the growing scholarly literature on the 1920s and 1930s. This study achieves a fine balance between addressing broad historical and critical topics and providing detailed analyses of a small number of important texts...a fine piece of scholarship... is thoughtful and carefully researched, and it makes a fascinating period in Japanese literary history more accessible to literary scholars across the academy.

Richly suggestive... always engaging... an impressive contribution to the field.

Donald Richie:
Here is a dazzling modernist work that questions our fictional assumptions, captures the impact of the new, and enlarges the perimeters we permit 'ourselves.'

Kojin Karatani:
This is a far-reaching and penetrating work that will be indispensable to rethinking the questions of modernity and postmodernity.