Izumi Kyōka’s Animistic Prose: When the Semantic Becomes Mantic 

Wednesday, February 21st, 18:00h 

Speaker: Cody Poulton

Praised by younger writers like Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Kawabata Yasunari, and Mishima Yukio, Izumi Kyōka (1873-1939) is today one of the most challenging of modern Japanese novelists to read, much less translate into a foreign language. His prose style is one of enchantment: as Nakajima Atsushi put it, it has the effect of a narcotic like heroin, taking the reader into an altered state of consciousness. Using examples from his own translation of the story, in this lecture the speaker will focus on Sanjaku-kaku (“Three Feet Square,” 1898) and its sequel Kodama (“Echo”) to explore how, through language, Kyōka makes the lost world of late-nineteenth century Fukagawa come alive.


Cody Poulton is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, Canada, and currently serves as Director of the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies. A specialist in Japanese performance, he is author of Spirits of Another Sort: The Plays of Izumi Kyōka (2001) and A Beggar's Art: Scripting Modernity in Japan, 1900-1930 (2010). He is also chief editor and translator of Citizens of Tokyo: Six Plays by Oriza Hirata (2018), co-editor of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama (2014) and Okada Toshiki and Japanese Theatre (2021), and contributing editor to The Cambridge History of Japanese Theatre (2016). 
This hybrid lecture will be held on site and via Zoom.

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84022111804
Meeting ID: 840 2211 1804

If you will come to the center and participate in person, please send us email in advance.Mail: efeo.kyoto@efeo.net

EFEO Kyoto29 Kitashirakawa betto-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8276
You can find the place on Google Map with the words 'EFEO Kyoto'.


École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO)
Italian School of East Asian Studies (ISEAS)
Co-hosted by Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University


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