Gostujuće predavanje (11. 12. 2025.) - Gala Maria Follaco: „Urban Transformation and the Making of Modern Japanese Literature“

Odsjek za azijske studije Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta Jurja Dobrile u Puli poziva sve zainteresirane na predavanje koje će održati izvanredna profesorica Gala Maria Follaco sa Sveučilišta Napoli L’Orientale pod nazivom „Urban Transformation and the Making of Modern Japanese Literature“.

Predavanje će se održati u četvrtak, 11. prosinca 2025., u 9.30 sati u dvorani 255, na Filozofskom fakultetu u Puli, 2. kat (Negrijeva 6), a možete pristupiti i online, putem poveznice Zoom: 

https://unipu-hr.zoom.us/j/8687655752?omn=99586386859

Sažetak predavanja

This talk explores how the development of modern Japanese literature took shape alongside the transformation of Tokyo in the Meiji period. I argue that literary change and urban change were closely connected: the modern novel, the move toward vernacular writing, and new ideas about cultural progress all gained meaning within the rapidly evolving environment of the capital. At the same time, many of the concerns that seemed new in the Meiji years had already appeared in the late Tokugawa period, which provided the intellectual groundwork for later reforms. Modern Japanese literature was therefore rooted not only in Western models but also in earlier domestic debates about language, style, and social order.

The first part of the talk examines the hanjōki tradition. After introducing its formal features, I discuss its place in the urban culture of late Edo and show how writers such as Hattori Bushō, Narushima Ryūhoku, and Takamizawa Shigeru adapted the genre to describe the upheavals of Meiji Tokyo. The second part turns to Nagai Kafū, who drew on the hanjōki mode in his portrayals of the city. I look at his representations of the demi-monde and offer readings of Tsuyu no atosaki, Udekurabe, and Okamezasa. The final section considers the period following the Great Kantō Earthquake, including the “Teito fukkō keikaku,” the idea of “Greater Tokyo,” and works such as Dai Tōkyō hanjōki, as well as depictions of the reconstruction of the Ginza area.

Taken together, these cases show how writers responded to the changing appearance and social fabric of Tokyo, and how the city itself shaped new approaches to narrative form. The talk suggests that the making of modern Japanese literature cannot be separated from the physical and cultural reorganization of the capital during a time of intense change. 

Biografija predavačice

Gala Maria Follaco, Ph.D. (2012), University of Naples “L’Orientale”, is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at that University. She was trained between Japan and Italy and has held visiting scholar appointments at Waseda University, the University of Sydney, the University of Edinburgh, Yale University, and the University of Bordeaux. Her work reflects a strong international and cross-cultural orientation. She has been a Japan Foundation Fellow at Waseda University in 2024-2025. Follaco has translated the works of several Japanese writers, such as Yoshimoto Banana, Matsumoto Seichō, Yoshida Shūichi, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Hara Tamiki, Kawabata Yasunari and published articles on urban representation in modern and contemporary Japanese literature. Her first monograph, A Sense of the City. Modes of Urban Representation in the Works of Nagai Kafū (2017), examines Nagai Kafū’s literary construction of urban spatialities from the late 1890s to the late 1930s. She has curated a translation of seven stories by Higuchi Ichiyō (1872-1896) and excerpts from her diaries (2016), and edited a collection of essays focusing on urban representation in Asia (2018). Her most recent publications include the article A Soundscape of Urban Modernity: Voices and Din in 1874 Hanjōki, in «Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies», 82:1 (2023) and her latest monograph, Cronache di vita urbana da Edo a Tōkyō, a comprehensive study of early-Meiji hanjōki (2025). She is currently working on a book project about spatial justice in Meiji literature.

*Predavanje je dio projekta 10th Anniversary of Japanese Studies: Lecture Series @Pula, organiziran uz pomoć financijske potpore Japanske fondacije.*

Povodom 10. obljetnice osnutka programa Japanologije na Sveučilištu Jurja Dobrile u Puli, projektom se planira obilježavanje ovog događaja kroz organizaciju ciklusa hibridnih (uživo i online) predavanja međunarodno priznatih znanstvenika iz Japana i Europe. Sva predavanja bit će snimana, arhivirana i dostupna javnosti putem internetske platforme, čime se osigurava široka dostupnost i dugoročna iskoristivost edukativnog sadržaja.