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    STUDIA PHILOLOGIA - Issue no. 3 / 2010  
         
  Article:   HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION AS A SEARCH FOR FURUSATO. ŌE KENZABURO AND MURAKAMI HARUKI.

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  Abstract:  Even before the 20th century, modernization in Japan was represented by a constant negotiation with a cultural tradition, whether this tradition signified an intuition of a mythic Japan or a reinterpretation of a previous cultural trend. In postwar literature, writers such as Ōe Kenzaburo or Murakami Haruki attempt a reconstruction of Japanese national identity through the means of “historiographic metafiction”, which proves to acquire, in the field of Japanese contemporary literature, a deeper political significance than it does in its Western constructions. The revisiting of history takes the form of a quest whose purpose is the outlining of an authentic Japanese identity, which we termed furusato in order to underline its Japanese nation oriented nature. This paper will discuss the way in which history is re-written in the novels The Silent Cry and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, with an emphasis on the following aspects: the way in which the West constitutes the “Other” which prompts the individual to self re-evaluation, the descent into a dark depth as a narrative strategy to illustrate the nature of the quest, the violence as a necessary threshold experience and lastly the way in which each author chooses to bring his quest to a closure.

Keywords: historiographic metafiction, Japanese national identity, furusato, Ōe Kenzaburo, The Silent Cry, Murakami Haruki, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. 		 
         
     
         
         
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