Mark Gibeau

Mark Gibeau is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Culture, History and Languages, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University. He lectures in Japanese language and literature and focuses primarily on postwar Japanese literature and literary translation. His most recent project is a retranslation of Dazai Osamu’s seminal novel, A Shameful Life (Ningen shikkaku), due to be published by Stone Bridge Press in November 2018.

Mark Gibeau reviews 'The Rise and Fall of Modern Japanese Literature' by John Whittier Treat

March 2019, no. 409 • 25 February 2019

In his 1998 book, Japanese Literature as ‘fluctuation’ (‘Yuragi’ no nihon bungaku), Komori Yōichi deconstructs the concept of ‘modern Japanese literature’ by examining the Encyclopedia of Modern Japanese Literature (『日本近代文学大辞典』), an impressive work that, despite its six volumes, fails to provide an entry for the very thing it proposes to discuss: modern Japanese ... (read more)