Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Lines of Mortality in Kurosawa Akira's Ikiru

2. Tsai Ming-liang and the Time of Survival

3. From Culture to Finitude: The Question of Death in Takeuchi Yoshimi's Reading of Lu Xun

4, Interlacings of Nothing: The Question of Death in Takeuchi Yoshimi's Reading of Lu Xun II

Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Richard F. Calichman is Professor of Japan Studies at the City College of New York, City University of New York. He is the author, translator, and editor of several books, including Before Identity: The Question of Method in Japan Studies, also published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"…enlightening and thought-provoking … Even for readers unfamiliar with the personalities discussed here, this well-researched book may serve as food for thought with its cross-cultural perspectives on mortality." — H-Net Reviews (H-Death)

"This book contributes not only to East Asian studies but also to the study of death as a general philosophical investigation. Although Calichman focuses his analysis on cultural texts from East Asia—Kurosawa Akira’s Ikiru, Tsai Ming-Liang’s various films, and Takeuchi Yoshimi’s reading of, or rather dialogue with, Lu Xun—the implications go beyond a culturalist understanding of death in Japan, Taiwan, and China. Instead, he brilliantly reads these cinematic and literary texts as a generalized deconstruction of normative understandings of death through various concepts such as time, traces, nothingness, and negativity." — Leo T. S. Ching, author of Anti-Japan: The Politics of Sentiment in Postcolonial East Asia