Samurai in the Land of the Gaucho

Transpacific Modernity and Nikkei Literature in Argentina
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-0-8265-0570-5
Verlag: Vanderbilt University Press

Buch, Englisch, 212 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

The Argentine vision of “transpacific modernity” was in part informed by historical imaginings of Japan in the early twentieth century. Intellectuals such as Eduardo Wilde and Manuel Domecq GarcÍa celebrated Japanese customs and traditions as important values that can be integrated into Argentine society. But a new generation of Nikkei or Japanese Argentines is rewriting this conventional narrative in the twenty-first century. Nikkei writers such as Maximiliano Matayoshi and Anna Kazumi Stahl are challenging the earlier, unapologetic view of Japan based on their own immigrant experiences.

Compared to the experience of political persecution against Japanese immigrants in Brazil and Peru, the Japanese in Argentina generally lived under a more agreeable sociopolitical climate. In order to understand the “positive” perception of Japan in Argentine history and literature, Samurai in the Land of the Gaucho turns to the current debate on race in Argentina, particularly as it relates to the discourse of whiteness. One of the central arguments is that Argentina’s century-old interest in Japan represents a disguised method of (re)claiming its white, Western identity.

Through close readings of diverse genres (travel writing, essay, novel, short story, and film) Samurai in the Land of the Gaucho yields a multi-layered analysis in order to underline the role Japan has played in both defining and defying Argentine modernity from the twenty century to the present.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgments
- Foreword by Ignacio LÓpez-Calvo
- Introduction
- Part I: Transpacific Modernity: An Asia-Latin America Perspective
- 1. Argentine Chronicles on Japan: Hygiene, Aesthetics, and Spirituality in Eduardo Wilde and Jorge Max Rohde
- 2. Empire Across the Sea: Narratives of Japanese Imperialism in the Writings of Manuel Domecq GarcÍa and Yoshio Shinya
- Part II: Nikkei Literature as Counternarrative
- 3. Hybrid Nikkei Identity in HÉctor Dai Sugimura’s Buscadores en mis Últimas vidas and Maximiliano Matayoshi’s Gaijin
- 4. Gendering Orientalism and Female Agency in Anna Kazumi Stahl’s Flores de un solo dÍa and Alejandra Kamiya’s Los Árboles caÍdos tambiÉn son el bosque
- 5. Visual Representations of Japan in Contemporary Argentine Cinema
- Conclusion
- Notes 
- Bibliography
- Index