Culture and authenticity

Abstract

In my thesis, I examine the discursive space of the detective fiction genre following Kasai Kiyoshi's periodization in his two-volume seminal work Tantei shosetsuron (The Theory of Detective Fiction, 1998). I investigate how Japanese detective fiction has developed in relation to Japan's modernization, industrialization, nationalism, and globalization, specifically in the 1920s-30s, the 1950s-60s, and from the 1990s to present. By historicizing the discursive formation of the genre in decisive moments in Japanese history, I examine how Japanese detective fiction delineated itself as a modern popular literature differentiating itself from serious literature (junbungaku) and also from other genres of popular fiction (taishu bungaku). My study exposes the socio-political, cultural and literary conditions that conditioned the emergence of the detective fiction genre as a problematic of Japanese society, stitching fantasy and desire for the formation of the national subject in the cultural domain.

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