Self-Construction In The Context Of Modernity

Yoshimoto Banana(1964--), a Japanese contemporary female writer, who has inherited the aesthetic tradition of classical Japanese literature and is different from the traditional Japanese writers, trying to transcend the narrow national limitations of Japanese national literature and seize every oppotunitiy to collect the literary materials that are dubbed with “modern self”. By adopting modern western literary skills, Yoshimoto Banana present the modern self-image in her novels. The popular literature and serious literature are fused by Yoshimoto Banana to create a series of youth novels featuring Japanese healing culture that are popular around the world and set off a worldwide boom of “Banana Literary”.From the literary and modern perspective of “loneliness, confusion, pursuing and hope”, Yoshimoto Banana’s novels mainly reflect a literary theme that the modern people look for the value of “self” and the construction of “self” in modern life. The “healing”culture aspects in novels show the process in which modern people are experiencing from the “self-loss” to“self-reconstruction”. With the the theme of self-construction, Yoshimoto Banana’s novels represents a brand new tendency of Japanese contemporary literature:under the atmosphere of multicultural literary world, the writer keens on“self” discovery--focusing on the present specific circumstance of individuals and employing the first person “I” to narrative perception of life and express diverse values. The specific pattern of novel represents that the writer shapes the meaningful “self” of modern people in current context. Under the circumstance of Japanese contemporary society and culture, the novels with specific theme are audited, which deepens the consideration of subject values in Japanese literature and reveals the modern connotation of Yoshimoto Banana’s novel and certain “modernity” in Japanese Literature. Based on the historic background and modern context, this thesis mainly discusses the “self” subject consciousness of Yoshimoto Banana’s novels, and illustrates “self” spirit and subject values from multiple angles, whichaims to explain the subject consciousness in Yoshimoto Banana’s novels and reveals the creative intention that the “self” design is adopted to reflect the“modernity”of people.In addition to “Introduction” and “Conclusion”,this thesis is composed of four parts.The introduction part mainly outlines the reason and significance to study“the modern subject consciousness in Yoshimoto Banana’s novel”from the perspective of Japanese literary tradition and social reality. This part also introduces the studies of Yoshimoto Banana’s novels at home and abroad, and then briefly describes several conceptions such as “modernity”, “subjectivity”, “ego” and “self”, and finally sorts out the main ideas of the thesis.By using two conceptions “self” and “other” of Imagoloy of comparative literature,the first chapter researches the Japanese traditional cultural subject and characters in Yoshimoto Banana’s novels. Under the historic context of Japanese modern literature construction, the author will explore the double connotation of “self”: the “self”of national culture and the“self” of character in Yoshimoto Banana’s novels. In the aspect of culture“self”, during the construction of Japanese modern literature, the traditional culture has encountered the impact and challenges of “the other” culture-- the modern western culture so that the pursuing of subject culture is sluggish. However, by actively absorbing into multicultural culture, Japanese literature slowly gropes for the modernization. For the“self”of characters, facing with life setbacks, the individuals generally present the situations of “self” lost and “self” reclusive. But, with the help of“the other”, individuals finally achieved “self” healing and recognized “self” values, and found the meaning of life.At the cultural level and individual subject level, Yoshimoto Banana’s main idea embodies certain “modernity”, diverse cultural concepts, and the transformation from the subjectivity of philosophy to the concept of inter-subjectivity under the multicultural background.Chapter two focuses on the women writer’s gender identity of Yoshimoto Banana and analyzes how she uses women psychologies to construct “self” in the context of modernity.Yoshimoto Banana’s novels show a strong feminine colors: first of all, the modern women are all protagonists in her novels, and she vividly portrays their inner world. In contrast,few men characters in her novels, and she treats them as the existence of “super gender”--the men characters often express obvious femininity. Yoshimoto Banana intentionally blurred the gender differences between man and women, and expressed her consciousness of female subject and her particular attitude to the problem of “social genderdifferences”. At the same time, for the pattern of manifestation, the Yoshimoto Banana pays attention to the narrative strategies of the description of emotion and the expression of feelings. The image setting, choice of language, scene layout, etc, are saturated with the consciousness of “self” expression. In addition, the women discourse in Yoshimoto Banana’s novels also reflects new concepts of ethics, family, career and so on. From these ideas, the researcher can observe women living and mental states, and think of the modern women aspiration for “self” value.The third chapter will talk about how Yoshimoto Banana sets the “self” subject in her novels under the postmodern cultural context. There are three aspects to demonstrate Yoshimoto Banana’s consideration of“self” in the postmodern context. Firstly, she focuses on the description of living condition and spiritual experience of urban people. The “self”in urban city stands for “modern self”. Yoshimoto Banana tries to embody urban people’s current experience and the perception of “self”, revealing the survival experiences of the“self-loss”, declined values and weakened belonging in urban city and searching for the realistic problem--meaning of “self”. Secondly, embracing the location of “self” of creative direction, Yoshimoto Banana’s creative concepts shows the consciousness of time--She combines serious literature with popular literature and makes her works cater to modern people’s psychological needs and cultural consumer market as well as sticks to the sharp view of Japanese pure literature to human nature. Finally, in terms of the value pursuit of literary subject, Yoshimoto Banana’s novels adopt supernatural plots to highlight realism spirit and guide people to face up to “self”with real humanistic care.On the basis of the above discussion about Yoshimoto Banana’s novels, the fourth chapter will give the understanding and aesthetic reflection of modern subjective consciousness. Regarding the “self construction” as the theme of the story, Yoshimoto Banana devotes to express certain “modern experience” and “modern problems”. However,the novel mode of Yoshimoto Banana is increasingly rigid, even though the “modern self”in her novels manifests the concept of “modernity” and “subject consciousness” and contains a vivid experience of modern life, these works still expose some shortcomings--relative narrow literary vision, lacking of consciously “self” rethink and deeper cognition of the connotation of modern spirit. In general, the Yoshimoto Banana’s“modern self” is a kind of“young”and modern narrative, which contains both the vitality and risks: on the one hand, because of its “youth”, the modern narration of YoshimotoBanana is close to the society and shows the multiple features of the cultural interaction,which vividly describes the mental states and the free choices of individuals in the concrete and new situation and reflects the pluralistic world outlooks and values of “modern self”.On the other hand, just for its“youth”, the “self” in Yoshimoto Banana’s novels represents the modern reality that is the expansion of subject consciousness. Her novels ensured the value of modern individual diversity, but failed to understand and avoid exposing the negative emotions and values in the process of narration. In the total thought of literary modernity, Yoshimoto Banana’s novels have surpasses a fixed pattern and deeply have probed into the modern spirit of literature, so the “young” modern narration has been becoming the “mature” modern narration slowly.