Cultural Translations

Carl Cassegard’s paper aims to better understand contemporary Japanese society through theconcept of the ‘public’.The papers written in Japanese start with that of Mei Dinge, which argues how political affiliationsaffected Manchurian and Japanese writers in colonial Manchuria. Reiko Abe Au¬estad’s paperanalyzes intertextuality between Itō Hiromi’s works and early Buddhist sutras. Chen Weifen’spaper examines Japanese modernity through translation of the notions of “nature”, “civilization”and “philosophy.” Kuranaka Shinobu’s paper discusses how historical accounts of the Chinesemonk Ganjin, an emblematic figure of Japanese-Chinese religious contact in the eighth century,were rewritten by fiction writer Inoie Yasushi. Finally, Suzuki Sadami’s paper evaluates the methodologicalvalidity of transcultural approaches in literary and cultural studies and, especially,when re-writing modern Japanese literature history.Taken as a whole, this compilation of papers convincingly demonstrates that the field of “culturaltranslations” offers rewarding insights that merit further exploration toward a deeper understandingof contemporary society from the perspectives of literature and culture.Gothenburg & Kyoto, summer 2011Noriko Takei-Thunman, Nanyan Guo