Professor Hibi Yoshitaka (日比嘉高) of Nagoya University will be joining us as the 2009 Visiting Scholar of Japanese Literature.

Hibi is the author of 'Jiko hyôshô' no bungakushi (A Literary History of 'Self-Representation') [expanded edition] (Tokyo: Kanrin Shobô, 2002). He also co-edited the volumes Bungaku de kangaeru 'Nihon' to wa nani ka (2007) and Tekusuto-tachi no ryotei (2008).

Professor Ted Mack and Professor Hibi Yoshitaka
TTh 1:30-3:20

This goals of this seminar are as follows:

1. To survey the Japanese-language texts held by Seattle's Nihongo Gakkô, arguably the oldest Japanese-language school in the contiguous United States, and produce an inventory of those texts so that they might become a valuable part of the Japanese Cultural & Community Center's collection.
2. To examine both literary and non-literary works not as disembodied texts, but as material books, possessing a diachronic existence amid a concrete readership, rather than ontologically belonging to an imaginary "national readership." The goal of this will not be to establish these books as "exceptional" in their existence among "marginal" readers, but as representative of the heterogeneous ways in which books circulate.
3. To study the history of the circulation of Japanese-language texts in North America, allowing the examination of this archive to deepen our understanding of the global flow of print during an age of mass migrations.
4. To work in conjunction with the Seattle Japanese Language School, the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington, and with Densho to see the various activities already underway to preserve Japanese American history in Seattle and beyond.

The following assignments and schedule are tentative and subject to change.

• Itô Kazuo, Hokubei hyakunen zakura (Tôkyô : Hokubei hyakunenzakura Jikkô Iinkai, 1969)
• Wada Atsuhiko, Shomotsu no Nichibei kankei: riterashii-shi ni mukete (Tokyo: Shin'yôsha, 2007)
• Selections from Tsukuba Daigaku Bunka Hihyô Kenkyûkai, ed., Tekusuto-tachi no ryotei (Fukuoka: Kashoin, 2008)
• Hibi Yoshitaka, "Nagai Kafû 'Amerika monogatari' wa 'Nihon bungaku' ka?," Nihon kindai bungaku 74, 92-107.
• Hibi Yoshitaka, "Nikkei Amerika imin issei no shinbun to bungaku," Nihon bungaku 53:11 (November 2004), 23-34.
• Hibi Yoshitaka, "Karamiau 'Namiki': Nihon kingai bungaku to Nikkei Amerika imin no Nihongo bungaku," Kyôto Kyôiku Daigaku kiyô 109 (2006), 143-154.
• Nakane Takayuki, "Kankoku, Taiwan, Okinawa no bungaku to no kôsa," Nihon kindai bungaku 75, 192-97.
• Kumei Teruko, "Zaibei Nihonjin 'Iminchi bungei' oboegaki," two parts; also "Japanese Immigrant Senryu, 1929-1945," Amerikastudien/American Studies 51:1 (2006), 29-50.
• Andrew B. Wertheimer, "Japanese American community libraries in America's concentration camps, 1942--1946," Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Wisconsin - Madison, 2004.

Students will be expected to supplement these core readings will relevant additional readings as necessary.