Comparative study of colonial literatures

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520411
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Literatures/Literary theories in other countries and areas
• Research Institution: Ritsumeikan University
• Principal Investigator: NISHI Masahiko 立命館大学, 先端総合学術研究科, 教授 (40172621)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 比較文学 / 植民地主義 / ポストコロニアル / ディアスポラ / バイリンガリズム

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Every colonial empire had its own hegemonic system of “imperial literature”, though some like the Empires of Britain, Spain, Portugal, France and Russia succeeded in having this system to continue to prosper even after colonised countries obtained their political independence. Other Empires like Germany and Japan had, after the last World War, to reset the “imperial literature’ into an exclusively “national” literature confined within their national borders. This research aims at describing from this perspective the history of Nippo-phone literature mainly before 1945. One of its prominent results is a book, Images of Bilinguals in Hyphenated-Japanese Literatures (Jinbun Shoin, 2014), which focuses on the literary representation of bilinguals who had been forced to become bilinguals under the pressure of colonialism.

Free Research Field

比較文学