Living the "Somehow Life"

Revision with unchanged content. Tanaka Yasuo's Nantonaku, kurisutaru (Somehow, Crystal, 1980) and Yoshimoto Banana's Kitchin (Kitchen, 1987) have been denigrated as emblematic of a so-called "bastardized line" of Japanese literature, characterized by an unabashed celebration of a "late-capitalist" consumerist ethos. Close readings of these works are undertaken in order to demonstrate that, while these works are reflective of late-capitalist postmodern Japan (the development of which is delineated prior to the readings), they nonetheless posit uniquely postmodern strategies for critically engaging issues of identity formation and maintenance, and the creation of meaning as they appear in the contemporary Japanese socio-cultural nexus. I argue that if such strategies are not immediately apparent, it is because they hold to what critic Fredric Jameson, in his discussion of the requisites for a "new political art," calls "the truth of postmodernism." This work will interest those concerned with postwar and contemporary Japanese culture, society and literature, as well as those engaged in the study of "global culture."