Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature

<p>Modern Japan's repressed anxieties fears and hopes come to the surface in the fantastic. A close analysis of fantasy fiction film and comics reveals the ambivalence felt by many Japanese towards the success story of the nation in the twentieth century.<br><em>The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature</em> explores the dark side to Japanese literature and Japanese society. It takes in the nightmarish future depicted in the animated film masterpiece <em>Akira</em> and the pastoral dream worlds created by Japan's Nobel Prize winning author Oe Kenzaburo. A wide range of fantasists many discussed here in English for the first time form the basis for a ground-breaking analysis of utopias dystopias the disturbing relationship between women sexuality and modernity and the role of the alien in the fantastic.</p>