Japanese Poetry and Its Publics This book aims to explore precisely how modern Japanese poetry has re- mained central to public life in both Japan and its former colony of Taiwan. Though classical Japanese poetry has captivated the imagination of Asian studies scholars, little research has been conducted to explore its role in public life as a discourse influential in defining both the modern Japanese empire and contemporary postcolonial negotiations of identity. This book shows how highly visible poetry in regular newspaper columns and blogs have in various historical situations in Japan and Taiwan contested as well as promoted diverse colonial imaginaries. This poetry reflects both con- temporary life and traditional poetics with few counterpoints in Western media. Methodologically, this book offers a defense of the public influence of poetry, each chapter enlisting a wide range of social and media theorists from Japan, Europe, and North America to explore specific historical mo- ments in an original recasting of intertextuality as a vital feature of active inter-evental material engagements. In this book, rather than recite a standard survey of literary movements and key poets, the approach taken is to examine uses of poetry shown not only to support colonialism and imperialism, emerging objectionable forms of exploitation as well as the destruction of ecologies (including old-growth forests in Taiwan and the Fukushima Disaster), but also to present a me- dium of resistance, a minor literature for registering protest, forming trans- national affiliations, and promoting grass-roots democracy. The book is based on years of research and fieldwork partially in conjunction with the production of a documentary film, Horizons of the Rising Sun: Postcolonial Nostalgia and Politics in the Taiwan Tanka Association Today. Dean Anthony Brink, Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Chiao Tung University. Postcolonial Politics Edited by Pal Ahluwalia University of South Australia Michael Dutton, Goldsmiths University of London Leela Gandhi University of Chicago Sanjay Seth, Goldsmiths University of London For a full list of titles please see: https://www.routledge.com/Postcolonial-Politics/book-series/PP ‘Postcolonial Politics’ is a series that publishes books that lie at the inter- section of politics and postcolonial theory. That point of intersection once barely existed; its recent emergence is enabled, first, because a new form of ‘politics’ is beginning to make its appearance. Intellectual concerns that began life as a (yet unnamed) set of theoretical interventions from scholars largely working within the ‘New Humanities’ have now begun to migrate into the realm of politics. The result is politics with a difference, with a con- cern for the everyday, the ephemeral, the serendipitous and the unworldly. Second, postcolonial theory has raised a new set of concerns in relation to understandings of the non-West. At first these concerns and these questions found their home in literary studies, but they were also, always, political. Edward Said’s binary of ‘Europe and its other’ introduced us to a ‘style of thought’ that was as much political as it was cultural as much about the politics of knowledge as the production of knowledge, and as much about life on the street as about a philosophy of being, A new, broader and more reflexive understanding of politics, and a new style of thinking about the non-Western world, make it possible to ‘think’ politics through postcolonial theory, and to ‘do’ postcolonial theory in a fashion which picks up on its political implications. Postcolonial Politics attempts to pick up on these myriad trails and dis- ruptive practices. The series aims to help us read culture politically, read ‘difference’ concretely, and to problematise our ideas of the modern, the rational and the scientific by working at the margins of a knowledge system that is still logocentric and Eurocentric. This is where a postcolonial pol- itics hopes to offer new and fresh visions of both the postcolonial and the political. Subseries: Writing Past Colonialism The Institute of Postcolonial Studies (IPCS) Edited by Phillip Darby University of Melbourne Writing Past Colonialism is the signature series of the Institute of Postcolo- nial Studies, based in Melbourne, Australia.  By postcolonialism we under- stand modes of writing and artistic production that critically engage with the ideological legacy and continuing practices of colonialism, and provoke debate about the processes of globalisation.  The series is committed to pub- lishing works that break fresh ground in postcolonial studies and seek to make a difference both in the academy and outside it.  By way of illustration, our schedule includes books that address: • grounded issues such as nature and the environment, activist politics and indigenous peoples’ struggles • cultural writing that pays attention to the politics of literary forms • experimental approaches that produce new postcolonial imaginaries by bringing together different forms of documentation or combinations of theory, performance and practice 6 Reconciliation and Pedagogy Edited by Pal Ahluwalia, Stephen Atkinson, Peter Bishop, Pam Christie, Robert Hattam and Julie Matthews 7 From International Relations to Relations International (IPCS) Postcolonial Essays Phillip Darby 8 Gender, Orientalism, and the ‘War on Terror’ Representation, Discourse, and Intervention in Global Politics Maryam Khalid 9 Multicultural politics of recognition and postcolonial citizenship Rethinking the nation Rachel Busbridge 10 Japanese Poetry and Its Publics From Colonial Taiwan to Fukushima Dean Anthony Brink This page intentionally left blank Japanese Poetry and Its Publics From Colonial Taiwan to Fukushima Dean Anthony Brink First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Dean Anthony Brink The right of Dean Anthony Brink to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Names: Brink, Dean Anthony, author. Title: Japanese poetry and Its publics: from colonial Taiwan to Fukushima / Dean Anthony Brink. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2018. | Series: Postcolonial politics; 10 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017026358 Subjects: LCSH: Japanese poetry—History and criticism. | Literature and society—Japan. | Public art—Japan. | Mass media and literature—Japan. | National characteristics, Japanese, in literature. Classification: LCC PL727.65.S62 B75 2018 | DDC 895.61009—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017026358 ISBN: 978-1-138-30402-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-73044-7 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother, Antje Elizabeth Kaiser, born into war, teaching me its folly. This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Japanese poetry and its publics 1 Typological intertextuality and ontologies of postcolonial affiliation in Japanese poetry 5 1 Japanese imperialism and poetic matrices: Conventional and autopoietic projections of “nature,” place, and labor in early colonial Taiwan 15 Posthuman autopoiesis and the poetics of traditional Japanese form poetry in colonial contexts 17 Autopoietic inspiration: Love of virtual nature and the colonial economy 19 New poetic place names and the imperial naming of Nītakayama 26 Japanese poetry on Nītakayama 30 Japanese poetic place names 32 Jade Mountain in the “Song of Taiwanese Self-rule” 35 The poetic matrix and its codifications in saijiki 37 Infusing an imperial aura: “chrysanthemums in the shrine” and “wild chrysanthemums” 40 Aestheticizing labor of the colonized: “evening in a fishing village” and “buying flowers” 44 2 Transculturation and typological intertextuality: Taiwanese poets in the New Year’s Day poetry pages of colonial Taiwan 56 Questions of mimicry and transculturation for colonial subjects writing poetry 60 Japanese commentary on tanka by Taiwanese—The tendency toward exclusion 66 Keeping the invasion of China within a Japanese perspective in Taiwan: “times of emergency” 69