Touching the Unreachable

Fusako Innami offers the first comprehensive study of touch and skinship—relationality with the other through the skin—in modern Japanese writing. The concept of the unreachable—that is, the lack of characters’ complete ability to touch what they try to reach for—provides a critical intervention on...

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主要作者: Innami, Fusako
格式: Online
語言:英语
出版: University of Michigan Press 2025
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author Innami, Fusako
author_browse Innami, Fusako
author_facet Innami, Fusako
author_sort Innami, Fusako
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Fusako Innami offers the first comprehensive study of touch and skinship—relationality with the other through the skin—in modern Japanese writing. The concept of the unreachable—that is, the lack of characters’ complete ability to touch what they try to reach for—provides a critical intervention on the issue of intimacy. Touch has been philosophically addressed in France, but literature is an effective—or possibly the most productive—venue for exploring touch in Japan, as literary texts depict what the characters may be concerned with but may not necessarily say out loud. Such a moment of capturing the gap between the felt and the said—the interaction between the body and language—can be effectively analyzed by paying attention to layers of verbalization, or indeed translation, by characters’ utterances, authors’ depictions, and readers’ interpretations. Each of the writers discussed in this book—starting with Nobel prize winner Kawabata Yasunari, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Yoshiyuki Junnosuke, and Matsuura Rieko—presents a particular obsession with objects or relationality to the other constructed via the desire for touch. In Touching the Unreachable, phenomenological and psychoanalytical approaches are cross-culturally interrogated in engaging with literary touch to constantly challenge what may seem like the limit of transferability regarding concepts, words, and practices. The book thereby not only bridges cultural gaps beyond geographic and linguistic constraints, but also aims to decentralize a Eurocentric hegemony in its production and use of theories and brings Japanese cultural and literary analyses into further productive and stimulating intellectual dialogues. Through close readings of the authors’ treatment of touch, Innami develops a theoretical framework with which to examine intersensorial bodies interacting with objects and the environment through touch.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1668322025-10-01T05:00:27Z Touching the Unreachable Innami, Fusako Touch, skinship, intimacy, embodiment, disembodiment, body, senses, contact, contact traces, haptic, haptic visuality, in-between-ness, interstice, perception, sensuality, modern Japanese literature, contemporary literature, writing, comparative literature, cultural studies, critical theories, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, gender, sexuality, disability, language, translation, performativity, membrane, palimpsest, intersensorial, translatability, displacement, accumulation, non-verbal, felt experience, affect, mediation thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism Fusako Innami offers the first comprehensive study of touch and skinship—relationality with the other through the skin—in modern Japanese writing. The concept of the unreachable—that is, the lack of characters’ complete ability to touch what they try to reach for—provides a critical intervention on the issue of intimacy. Touch has been philosophically addressed in France, but literature is an effective—or possibly the most productive—venue for exploring touch in Japan, as literary texts depict what the characters may be concerned with but may not necessarily say out loud. Such a moment of capturing the gap between the felt and the said—the interaction between the body and language—can be effectively analyzed by paying attention to layers of verbalization, or indeed translation, by characters’ utterances, authors’ depictions, and readers’ interpretations. Each of the writers discussed in this book—starting with Nobel prize winner Kawabata Yasunari, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Yoshiyuki Junnosuke, and Matsuura Rieko—presents a particular obsession with objects or relationality to the other constructed via the desire for touch. In Touching the Unreachable, phenomenological and psychoanalytical approaches are cross-culturally interrogated in engaging with literary touch to constantly challenge what may seem like the limit of transferability regarding concepts, words, and practices. The book thereby not only bridges cultural gaps beyond geographic and linguistic constraints, but also aims to decentralize a Eurocentric hegemony in its production and use of theories and brings Japanese cultural and literary analyses into further productive and stimulating intellectual dialogues. Through close readings of the authors’ treatment of touch, Innami develops a theoretical framework with which to examine intersensorial bodies interacting with objects and the environment through touch. 2025-10-01T05:00:26Z 2025-10-01T05:00:26Z 2025-09-30T07:27:11Z 2021 book ONIX_20250930T092424_9780472905874_3 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/106189 9780472905874 9780472074983 9780472054985 9780472129300 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/166832 eng Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies open access image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/106189/1/9780472905874.pdf University of Michigan Press 10.3998/mpub.11747440 10.3998/mpub.11747440 b7359529-e5f7-4510-a59f-d7dafa1d4d17 9780472905874 9780472074983 9780472054985 9780472129300 252 open access
spellingShingle Touch, skinship, intimacy, embodiment, disembodiment, body, senses, contact, contact traces, haptic, haptic visuality, in-between-ness, interstice, perception, sensuality, modern Japanese literature, contemporary literature, writing, comparative literature, cultural studies, critical theories, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, gender, sexuality, disability, language, translation, performativity, membrane, palimpsest, intersensorial, translatability, displacement, accumulation, non-verbal, felt experience, affect, mediation
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
Innami, Fusako
Touching the Unreachable
title Touching the Unreachable
title_full Touching the Unreachable
title_fullStr Touching the Unreachable
title_full_unstemmed Touching the Unreachable
title_short Touching the Unreachable
title_sort touching the unreachable
topic Touch, skinship, intimacy, embodiment, disembodiment, body, senses, contact, contact traces, haptic, haptic visuality, in-between-ness, interstice, perception, sensuality, modern Japanese literature, contemporary literature, writing, comparative literature, cultural studies, critical theories, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, gender, sexuality, disability, language, translation, performativity, membrane, palimpsest, intersensorial, translatability, displacement, accumulation, non-verbal, felt experience, affect, mediation
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
topic_facet Touch, skinship, intimacy, embodiment, disembodiment, body, senses, contact, contact traces, haptic, haptic visuality, in-between-ness, interstice, perception, sensuality, modern Japanese literature, contemporary literature, writing, comparative literature, cultural studies, critical theories, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, gender, sexuality, disability, language, translation, performativity, membrane, palimpsest, intersensorial, translatability, displacement, accumulation, non-verbal, felt experience, affect, mediation
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
url ONIX_20250930T092424_9780472905874_3
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