Age of Disaffection

The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-0-231-22048-4
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 228 mm, Gewicht: 430 g

The 1960s in Japan have long been understood as a period of radical political engagement. But as political movements from Old Left Communism to New Left revolts appeared to fail in their efforts to revolutionize Japanese society, artists and intellectuals came to reject the ideals of postwar politics. Instead, they advocated withdrawing from political participation and making self-transformation the grounds for social change.

This provocative book uncovers a paradox at the heart of the 1960s: how political disillusionment became the basis for a new form of politics—a politics of the self. Examining aesthetic criticism, popular literature, avant-garde art, cinema, and political theory, Patrick Noonan argues that cultural producers in 1960s Japan cultivated what he calls an “ethos of disaffection” toward revolutionary politics and postwar society. Departing from approaches that define politics as contestation, Age of Disaffection foregrounds cultivation, or the production of ways of feeling and relating to the world in efforts to redefine the political. It presents an unorthodox account of the 1960s: withdrawal from political activity developed not as the decade ended but as it was unfolding. Noonan reveals how Japanese artists and intellectuals in this period confronted a crucial question that continues to vex efforts at radical change today: transform institutions or alter how people relate to themselves and others?

Autoren/Hrsg.

Noonan, Patrick

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturen sonstiger Sprachräume Ost- & Südostasiatische Literatur
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften Semiotik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. An Aesthetics of Autonomy: The Cultural Criticism of Yoshimoto Takaaki
2. The Literature of Left Melancholy: The 1960s Student Movement Novel
3. Ironic Communities: Terayama Shuji and the Art of Leaving Home
4. “Neutralize the Power of Politics”: Yoshida Kiju and the Cinema of Self-Negation
5. From Politics to Ethics: Alterity at the End of the 1960s
Epilogue: An Alternative Politics?
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Patrick Noonan is assistant professor of Japanese literature and culture at Northwestern University.