The report revolves around two Japanese biographies of Lu Xun produced during the Greater East Asian War: Takeuchi Yoshimi’s scholarly biography Lu Xun (Rojin, 1944) and Dazai Osamu’s fictional biography A Regretful Farewell (Sekibetsu, 1945). It explores a dual structure of resistance in the two works that they not only represent the resistance of literature against political interference, but also exemplify a different positioning of literary imaginations—turn to China, which constitutes an oppositional alternative to the contemporaneous mainstream discourse of “overcoming modernity”—the search for the essence of Japanese civilization and the invention of Japanese traditions that is paradoxically promoted by intellectuals with Western-style mentality. Historicizing the production of the two works onto the very site of the violent collision between literature and politics, I examine their respective creative deployment of the aesthetic resources of Lu Xun: Takeuchi Yoshimi explicates a political understanding of literature as a force of opposition from the life and works of Lu Xun, Dazai Osamu reconstructs the origin myth of literature by rewriting the critical conversion of the “Lantern Slides Incident” in Lu Xun’s literary career. / text

Osamu Dazai é um dos poucos escritores japoneses da primeira metade do século XX que emprega mulheres como narradoras. Procuramos explorar essa peculiaridade de seus textos comparando-os, embora brevemente, com aqueles de alguns de seus contemporâneos, como Yasunari Kawabata e Junichirô Tanizaki. Fazemos algumas incursões na ideia de feminilidade que permeava a sociedade japonesa no início do século XX e as transformações que ela sofre até o final da Segunda Guerra, pois acreditamos que essas mesmas mudanças na imagem do feminino também sejam refletidas pelos textos de Dazai. Analisamos alguns de seus textos com narradoras para observar o quanto elas se distanciam ou se aproximam dos ideais de feminilidade da sociedade da época. Por fim, também comparamos as figuras femininas de suas obras do pós-guerra com suas figuras masculinas, estas, muito parecidas com o próprio autor, presas do niilismo e em rota de autodestruição. Nossa intenção, em suma, é explorar, mesmo que de forma limitada, as relações entre a cultura da época e a literatura por meio da análise de alguns textos com narradoras de Osamu Dazai, bem como sublinhar o caráter peculiar dessas mesmas narradoras no interior das obras do autor e em relação aos textos de seus contemporâneos. / Osamu Dazai is one of the few Japanese writers from the first half of the 20th century in whose texts we find female narrators. We intend to explore, although briefly, this peculiarity comparing his texts with those written by authors like Yasunari Kawabata and Junichirô Tanizaki. We make some incursions into the idea of womanliness which permeated the Japanese society in the beginning of the 20th century and the changes which it undergoes until the end of the Second World War because we believe that the same changes in the female image are reflected in Dazais texts. We analyze some of his texts with female narrators to see how far or close they are to societys ideals of womanliness. Lastly, we compare the female characters of Dazais postwar texts with the male ones (who resemble the author himself in their nihilism and self-destructive tendencies). In short, our objective is to examine, even if not as comprehensively as we could wish, how the culture of the period and the literature are related by analyzing some texts with female narrators written by Osamu Dazai. We also hope to stress the uniqueness of these female narrators within the authors texts and in relation to those of his contemporaries.

Osamu Dazai é um dos poucos escritores japoneses da primeira metade do século XX que emprega mulheres como narradoras. Procuramos explorar essa peculiaridade de seus textos comparando-os, embora brevemente, com aqueles de alguns de seus contemporâneos, como Yasunari Kawabata e Junichirô Tanizaki. Fazemos algumas incursões na ideia de feminilidade que permeava a sociedade japonesa no início do século XX e as transformações que ela sofre até o final da Segunda Guerra, pois acreditamos que essas mesmas mudanças na imagem do feminino também sejam refletidas pelos textos de Dazai. Analisamos alguns de seus textos com narradoras para observar o quanto elas se distanciam ou se aproximam dos ideais de feminilidade da sociedade da época. Por fim, também comparamos as figuras femininas de suas obras do pós-guerra com suas figuras masculinas, estas, muito parecidas com o próprio autor, presas do niilismo e em rota de autodestruição. Nossa intenção, em suma, é explorar, mesmo que de forma limitada, as relações entre a cultura da época e a literatura por meio da análise de alguns textos com narradoras de Osamu Dazai, bem como sublinhar o caráter peculiar dessas mesmas narradoras no interior das obras do autor e em relação aos textos de seus contemporâneos. / Osamu Dazai is one of the few Japanese writers from the first half of the 20th century in whose texts we find female narrators. We intend to explore, although briefly, this peculiarity comparing his texts with those written by authors like Yasunari Kawabata and Junichirô Tanizaki. We make some incursions into the idea of womanliness which permeated the Japanese society in the beginning of the 20th century and the changes which it undergoes until the end of the Second World War because we believe that the same changes in the female image are reflected in Dazais texts. We analyze some of his texts with female narrators to see how far or close they are to societys ideals of womanliness. Lastly, we compare the female characters of Dazais postwar texts with the male ones (who resemble the author himself in their nihilism and self-destructive tendencies). In short, our objective is to examine, even if not as comprehensively as we could wish, how the culture of the period and the literature are related by analyzing some texts with female narrators written by Osamu Dazai. We also hope to stress the uniqueness of these female narrators within the authors texts and in relation to those of his contemporaries.

Denna uppsats består av två översättningar av den japanska författaren Osamu Dazais noveller Spring, Moerus! och Hundra vyer över Fuji från japanska till svenska samt en analys som ur ett litteratur-vetenskapligt perspektiv hjälper till att fastställa översättningsstrategin – att göra en adekvansinriktad och främmandegörande översättning. Översättningarna följs av en översättningsteoretisk kommentar som fokuserar på de tre problemområdena grammatik och lexikon, menings- och styckesstruktur samt passivering. Ett litteraturvetenskapligt perspektiv för källtextanalysen visar sig vara mycket tillämpbart för dessa texter på grund av deras genre, jag-romanen, som är typisk för japansk 1900-talslitteratur. Källtexterna och måltexterna finns med som bilagor. / This essay consists of two translations of the two Japanese short stories Hashire Merosu and Fugaku Hyakkei (in Swedish Spring Moerus! and Hundra vyer över Fuji) by the author Osamu Dazai from Japanese to Swedish. An analysis through a literary science perspective helps to establish the translation strategy, which is to make an adequate and foreignized translation. The translations are followed by a theoretical translation annotation which focuses on the issues of grammar and lexicon, sentence and paragraph structure along with the usage of the passive form. A literary science perspective on the source text analysis proves to be very applicable for these texts because of their genre, the I-novel, which is typical for 20th century Japanese literature. The source and target texts are available as appendixes at the end of the essay.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-45).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-45). Also available in print.

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Dazai Osamu (born Tsushima Shûji) was a post-WWII writer who wrote a number of works using a female narrator. This thesis research focused on the reasons as to why Dazai may have written using female narratives, taking into consideration the time period and social milieu in which he was writing, as well as his own personal history with women. In addition, the history of male authors utilizing female narratives was explored, as well as the ideas of gender in the Japanese arts. Dazai works were also compared with Tankizaki Junichirô's to see how the roles of women in their works differ. The four main Dazai works analyzed were "Magic Lanterns" ("Tôrô"), "The Schoolgirl" ("Joseito"), "December 8th" ("Jûnigatsu yôka"), and "Villon's Wife" ("Biyon no tsuma"). The conclusion was that Dazai was using female narrators as a different approach to further critiquing himself, with the female narrator being used to critique a Dazai-like persona in the works.