Boldly challenging traditional understandings of Heian literature, Tomiko Yoda reveals the connections between gender, nationalism, and cultural representation evident in prevailing interpretations of classic Heian texts. Renowned for the wealth and sophistication of women’s writing, the literature of the Heian period (794–1192) has long been considered central to the Japanese literary canon and Japanese national identity. Yoda historicizes claims about the inherent femininity of this literature by revisiting key moments in the history of Japanese literary scholarship from the eighteenth century to the present. She argues that by foregrounding women’s voices in Heian literature, the discipline has repeatedly enacted the problematic modernizing gesture in which the “feminine” is recognized, canceled, and then contained within a national framework articulated in masculine terms.

Moving back and forth between a critique of modern discourses on Heian literature and close analyses of the Heian texts themselves, Yoda sheds light on some of the most persistent interpretive models underwriting Japanese literary studies, particularly the modern paradigm of a masculine national subject. She proposes new directions for disciplinary critique and suggests that historicized understandings of premodern texts offer significant insights into contemporary feminist theories of subjectivity and agency.

The prolonged downturn in the Japanese economy that began during the recessionary 1990s triggered a complex set of reactions both within Japan and abroad, reshaping not only the country’s economy but also its politics, society, and culture. In Japan After Japan, scholars of history, anthropology, literature, and film explore the profound transformations in Japan since the early 1990s, providing complex analyses of a nation in transition, linking its present to its past and connecting local situations to global developments.

Several of the essayists reflect on the politics of history, considering changes in the relationship between Japan and the United States, the complex legacy of Japanese colonialism, Japan’s chronic unease with its wartime history, and the postwar consolidation of an ethnocentric and racist nationalism. Others analyze anxieties related to the role of children in society and the weakening of the gendered divide between workplace and home. Turning to popular culture, contributors scrutinize the avid consumption of “real events” in formats including police shows, quiz shows, and live Web camera feeds; the creation, distribution, and reception of Pokémon, the game-based franchise that became a worldwide cultural phenomenon; and the ways that the behavior of zealous fans of anime both reinforces and clashes with corporate interests. Focusing on contemporary social and political movements, one essay relates how a local citizens’ group pressed the Japanese government to turn an international exposition, the Aichi Expo 2005, into a more environmentally conscious project. Another essay offers both a survey of emerging political movements and a manifesto identifying new possibilities for radical politics in Japan. Together the contributors to Japan After Japan present much-needed insight into the wide-ranging transformations of Japanese society that began in the 1990s.

Contributors. Anne Allison, Andrea G. Arai, Eric Cazdyn, Leo Ching, Harry Harootunian, Marilyn Ivy, Sabu Kohso, J. Victor Koschmann, Thomas LaMarre, Masao Miyoshi, Yutaka Nagahara, Naoki Sakai, Tomiko Yoda, Yoshimi Shunya, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto

Roughly a decade has passed since the bursting of Japan’s bubble economy, and despite some intermittent signs of recovery, the nation’s economic downturn that began in the early 1990s continues in the present. This special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, "Millennial Japan," was conceived as an attempt to take stock of the so-called Heisei recession in terms of its construction as a moment of major historical transition. The articles collected here examine the discourse surrounding the recession and the ways this discourse has influenced the production of scholarship on Japan.