On Touch: Sensing the Haptic Beauty in Kawabata Yasunari’s (川端康成 1899-1972) Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (掌の小説 Tanagokoro no shôsetsu 1921-1972)

What is it about?

Abstract On Touch: Sensing the Haptic Beauty in Kawabata Yasunari’s (川端康成 1899-1972) Palm- of-the-Hand Stories (掌の小説 Tanagokoro no shôsetsu 1921-1972) by Vivien Jiaqian Zhu 朱嘉倩 Master of Arts in Japanese literature UC Berkeley Professor Daniel O’Neill (Chair) Among senses the haptic sense is the most elusive one - which is hard to describe in language but always multi-sensory. Some culturally attuned modernist theorists like Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)/Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966)/Fillippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) have observed new sensational experiences and the haptic transformation in the early twentieth century. This writing attempts to explore the interplay of the haptic sense and literary modernism in the palm-length stories of a Japanese modernist writer Kawabata Yasunari. Drawing on existent scholarship on the New Sensationalist School (in Japanese literature) and haptic modernism (in English literature/Film & Media studies/ History of Art/Performance Studies) this project questions: How does literary texts perform as an organ of the haptic sense that transmits the condition of nerve-endings? How does Kawabata produce a visceral writing of self-narration via the trope of the skin? How does film theories shed light on earlier avant-garde gestures of intermediality and the receptions of August Rodin (1840-1917) in 1920s Japan?

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Why is it important?

Abstract On Touch: Sensing the Haptic Beauty in Kawabata Yasunari’s (川端康成 1899-1972) Palm- of-the-Hand Stories (掌の小説 Tanagokoro no shôsetsu 1921-1972) by Vivien Jiaqian Zhu 朱嘉倩 Master of Arts in Japanese literature UC Berkeley Professor Daniel O’Neill (Chair) Among senses the haptic sense is the most elusive one - which is hard to describe in language but always multi-sensory. Some culturally attuned modernist theorists like Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)/Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966)/Fillippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) have observed new sensational experiences and the haptic transformation in the early twentieth century. This writing attempts to explore the interplay of the haptic sense and literary modernism in the palm-length stories of a Japanese modernist writer Kawabata Yasunari. Drawing on existent scholarship on the New Sensationalist School (in Japanese literature) and haptic modernism (in English literature/Film & Media studies/ History of Art/Performance Studies) this project questions: How does literary texts perform as an organ of the haptic sense that transmits the condition of nerve-endings? How does Kawabata produce a visceral writing of self-narration via the trope of the skin? How does film theories shed light on earlier avant-garde gestures of intermediality and the receptions of August Rodin (1840-1917) in 1920s Japan?

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