Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures Department Kyoko Omori was invited to give the talk "Probing Taisho Modanizumu: Detective Fiction, Mass Production, and Vernacular Modernism" at the conference titled "The Space Between: The Cartographic Imagination of Japanese Modernism," October 14-15, at the University of California, Berkeley.
Omori's talk focused on the emergence and cultural logic of a form of Taisho vernacular modernism, namely what the culture magazine Shinseinen (New Youth) promoted as tantei shosetsu (detective fiction). Shinseinen, a product of the transformation in the publishing industry during the early 20th century, promoted detective fiction as the literary form most suited to the demands of the "modern" world. Most significantly, Omori focused on the newly pervasive practice of establishing financial "contracts" with salaried workers (i.e. writers) for the cultural commodity of texts as an important site where the economic and ideological spheres intersected and helped to shape each other. As a case study, she discussed the career of Edogawa Ranpo and the ways in which his literary production seeks to negotiate the onset of economic modernity.
Omori's talk focused on the emergence and cultural logic of a form of Taisho vernacular modernism, namely what the culture magazine Shinseinen (New Youth) promoted as tantei shosetsu (detective fiction). Shinseinen, a product of the transformation in the publishing industry during the early 20th century, promoted detective fiction as the literary form most suited to the demands of the "modern" world. Most significantly, Omori focused on the newly pervasive practice of establishing financial "contracts" with salaried workers (i.e. writers) for the cultural commodity of texts as an important site where the economic and ideological spheres intersected and helped to shape each other. As a case study, she discussed the career of Edogawa Ranpo and the ways in which his literary production seeks to negotiate the onset of economic modernity.
