Amid the flurry of recent publications addressing the postwar period in Japan and issues of embodiment, Douglas N. Slaymaker's book is a provocative and timely study that explores the complex interaction between subjectivity and the body in literature written during the turbulent period immediately following Japan's defeat in the Asia-Pacific War. Of central concern in Slaymaker's study is the obsessive focus on imagery of the body in literature of the postwar era and the relationship among discourse on the carnal body (nikutai), gender, and identity formation. The carnal body of postwar literature is distinct from the material body (shintai), and Slaymaker suggests that it also functioned as a counterideology to the prewar construct of the national body/polity (kokutai). According to Slaymaker, the carnal body figured prominently in postwar fiction and discourse as a consequence of three main factors: the physicality of everyday existence brought...

You do not currently have access to this content.