Roy Starrs
Encyclopedia
Roy Starrs is a scholar of Japanese literature and culture who teaches at the University of Otago
in New Zealand
. He has written critical studies of the major Japanese writers Yasunari Kawabata
, Naoya Shiga, Osamu Dazai
, and Yukio Mishima
, and edited books on Asian nationalism
(especially ethnic nationalism
, religious nationalism
, and cultural nationalism
), globalization
, and pan-Asianism
. He has also published essays on Japan-related topics such as the Kojiki
, Lafcadio Hearn
and Japanese calligraphy
.
Roy Starrs is also the Japan editor of the online The Literary Encyclopedia
(http://www.litencyc.com/).
He was born in Birmingham, England on November 18, 1946 and became a Canadian citizen as an adult. He received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in 1986 and previously taught at U.B.C., Union College (New York), and Aarhus University (Denmark).
University of Otago
The University of Otago in Dunedin is New Zealand's oldest university with over 22,000 students enrolled during 2010.The university has New Zealand's highest average research quality and in New Zealand is second only to the University of Auckland in the number of A rated academic researchers it...
in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
. He has written critical studies of the major Japanese writers Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata
was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award...
, Naoya Shiga, Osamu Dazai
Osamu Dazai
was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan.-Biography:-Early life:Dazai was born , the eighth surviving child of a wealthy landowner in Kanagi, a remote corner of Japan at the northern tip of Tōhoku in Aomori Prefecture...
, and Yukio Mishima
Yukio Mishima
was the pen name of , a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état...
, and edited books on Asian nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
(especially ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e...
, religious nationalism
Religious nationalism
Religious nationalism is the relationship of nationalism to a particular religious belief, dogma, or affiliation. This relationship can be broken down into two aspects; the politicisation of religion and the influence of religion on politics....
, and cultural nationalism
Cultural nationalism
Cultural nationalism is a form of nationalism in which the nation is defined by a shared culture. It is an intermediate position between ethnic nationalism on one hand and liberal nationalism on the other....
), globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
, and pan-Asianism
Pan-Asianism
Pan-Asianism is an ideology or a movement that Asian nations unite and solidify and create a continental identity to defeat the designs of the Western nations to perpetuate hegemony.-Japanese Asianism:...
. He has also published essays on Japan-related topics such as the Kojiki
Kojiki
is the oldest extant chronicle in Japan, dating from the early 8th century and composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Gemmei. The Kojiki is a collection of myths concerning the origin of the four home islands of Japan, and the Kami...
, Lafcadio Hearn
Lafcadio Hearn
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn , known also by the Japanese name , was an international writer, known best for his books about Japan, especially his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things...
and Japanese calligraphy
Japanese calligraphy
is a form of calligraphy, or artistic writing, of the Japanese language. For a long time, the most esteemed calligrapher in Japan had been Wang Xizhi, a Chinese calligrapher in the 4th century but after the invention of Hiragana and Katakana, the Japanese unique syllabaries, the distinctive...
.
Roy Starrs is also the Japan editor of the online The Literary Encyclopedia
The Literary Encyclopedia
The Literary Encyclopedia is an online reference work first published in October 2000 which, as of May 2008, offers freely available content together with full content and services for subscribing members. Articles are written by "nearly 2000 named scholars, most of whom are current university...
(http://www.litencyc.com/).
He was born in Birmingham, England on November 18, 1946 and became a Canadian citizen as an adult. He received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in 1986 and previously taught at U.B.C., Union College (New York), and Aarhus University (Denmark).
Works by Roy Starrs
- Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence, and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima (University of HawaiiUniversity of HawaiiThe University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...
PressUniversity of Hawaii PressThe University of Hawaii Press is a university press that is part of the University of Hawaii.The University of Hawaii Press was founded in 1947, with the mission of advancing and disseminating scholarship by publishing current research in all disciplines of the humanities and natural and social...
, 1994, ISBN 0-8248-1630-7 and ISBN 0-8248-1630-7) ISBN 1-873410-74-3 - An Artless Art - The Zen Aesthetic of Shiga Naoya: A Critical Study with Selected Translations. RoutledgeCurzon (1998). ISBN 1873410646
- "Writing the National Narrative: Changing Attitudes Towards Nation-Building Among Japanese Writers, 1900-1930", in Japan’s Competing Modernities: Issues in Culture and Democracy, 1900-1930. S. Minichiello ed. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press (1998) 161-189 [ISBN: cloth, 0-8248-1931-4, paper, 0-8248-2080-0]
- "Nation and Region in the Work of Dazai Osamu," in Roy Starrs
- "The Road to Violent Action: Mishima Yukio," in Fascism: Critical Concepts in Political Science, volume 5 (Postwar Fascisms), edited by Roger Griffin with Matthew Feldman. London; New York: Routledge. (Part of the Routledge Major Work series.) (2004), pp. 249–266. ISBN 100415290155
- "The Kojiki as Japan's National Narrative," in Asian Futures, Asian Traditions, edited by Edwina Palmer. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. ISBN 1-901903-16-8
- "Lafcadio Hearn as Japanese Nationalist," in Nichibunken Japan Review: Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Number 18, 2006, pp. 181–213.
- "Ink Traces of the Dancing Calligraphers: Zen-ei Sho in Japan Today," in Henry Johnson and Jerry C. Jaffe, eds. Performing Japan: Contemporary Expressions of Cultural Identity London, Global Oriental and Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press (2008). ISBN 1905246315.
- "Politics and Religion in Japan," in Religion Compass 3/4 (2009), pp. 752–769. (http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/religion/)
External links
- http://www.otago.ac.nz/japanese/staff/roy_starrs.html Roy Starrs’ homepage.
- http://shinku.nichibun.ac.jp/jpub/pdf/jr/JN1805.pdf essay by Roy Starrs on "Lafcadio Hearn as a Japanese Nationalist"
- http://www.nzasia.org.nz/downloads/NZJAS-June02/Starrs.pdf A review article by Roy Starrs on "Japanese Literature as a Modern Invention."
- http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_japanese_studies/v030/30.2starrs.pdf A review by Roy Starrs on Confluences: Postwar Japan and France, edited by Doug Slaymaker.
- http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25363-1946910,00.html A review by the poet Anthony Thwaite in the Times Literary Supplement of Roy Starrs’ book on Kawabata, Soundings in Time.
- http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=158901§ioncode=21 A review by Stephen Dodd in the Times Higher Educational Supplement of Roy Starrs’ book on Kawabata, Soundings in Time.
- http://www.newstatesman.com/200608210043 An article by Jason Cowley on Yasunari Kawabata in the New Statesman based partly on an interview with Roy Starrs.
- http://jas.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/34/2/239.pdf A review by Steven Heine on Roy Starrs' book on Shiga Naoya, An Artless Art: The Zen Aesthetic of Shiga Naoya.