Decadent Literature In Twentiethcentury Japan Spectacles Of Idle Labor

"Ikuho Amano examines the significance of "decadence" in the context of twentieth-century Japanese literature. Decadence, the literary theme and motif surviving through the history of literary and cultural discourses in Japan since antiquity to the present, holds a key to understand the wide range of social consciousnesses that cannot be always molded by a given social mainstream. Drawing on the economic issues prevalent in twentieth-century fictions, the book argues that non-productive labor plays an integral part of modern society and culture while accommodating the entropic excess of modern society. Subversive practice of economy is in particular a recurrent theme in Japanese Decadent literature, including waste, squandering, wagering, and excessive generosity. Through these deviant dealing of resources such as money and body, the decadent individuals negotiate with modern utilitarian ideologies of society based on labor and production, showcasing their desire and dream outside the circle of diligence and productivity"--