Living the Somehow Life-Tanaka Yasuo Banana Yoshimoto and Postmodern Japan

Tanaka Yasuo's Nantonaku kurisutaru (Somehow Crystal 1980) and Yoshimoto Banana's Kitchin (Kitchen 1987) have been denigrated as em­ble­matic of a so-called bastardized line of Japanese literature characterized by an un­abashed celebration of a late-capitalist consumerist ethos. Close rea­dings of these works are undertaken in order to demonstrate that while these works are reflective of late-capitalist postmodern Japan (the de­ve­lop­ment of which is delineated prior to the readings) they nonetheless posit uniquely post­modern strategies for critically engaging issues of identity for­ma­tion and main­tenance and the creation of meaning as they appear in the con­temporary Japanese socio-cultural nexus. I argue that if such strategies are not immedi­ately apparent it is because they hold to what critic Fredric Jameson in his dis­cussion of the requisites for a new political art calls the truth of postmo­dernism.This work will interest those concerned with postwar and contemporary Japa­nese culture society and literature as well as those engaged in the study of global culture.