April 5, 2019: Saikaku-Bakin Symposium at Rutgers

Friday, 5 April 2019

Rutgers University, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures

Recent scholarship on Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) and Takizawa Bakin (1767-1848) has illuminated the literary influences, social contexts, and readership of the two authors who bracket the Edo period. Less apparent is the evolution or transformation of their influences, contexts, and readerships across the early modern period, spanning from the 16^th to mid-19^th centuries.

The symposium brought together four important scholars of early modern Japanese narrative—Daniel Struve (Paris Diderot University), William Hedberg (Arizona State University), David J. Gundry (University of California, Davis), and Glynne Walley (University of Oregon)— with the aim of exploring and illuminating continuities and discontinuities in the literary genealogies of Saikaku and Bakin. By bringing together these specialists of early-Edo and late-Edo narrative, we expect crucial new perspectives to emerge in the field of early modern Japanese literary studies.