The Politics and Aesthetics of Haunting in 1950s Japan

This thesis examines the politics and aesthetics of haunting in 1950s Japan. A distinct historical conjuncture separate from the social upheaval of the immediate postwar as well as the overt politicization of the 1960s, the 1950s is characterized by a narrative of national rebuilding and return that marginalized discrepant experiences of the present—producing a disjointedness that I articulate as a form of ‘haunting.’ In order to develop this, I turn to two triptychs of creators (two writers, two filmmakers, two composers) who collaborated to document the ‘haunted’ reality of 1950s Japan: Marguerite Duras, Alain Resnais, and Giovanni Fusco; and Abe Kōbō, Teshigahara Hiroshi, and Takemitsu Tōru. Collectively, these artists articulate a crisis where concrete lived experiences did not correspond with national narratives of recovery and the economic, social, and political modes of structuring that regulated people’s lives. Their fiction and theory attempted to bring this crisis into focus by representing the ghostly estrangement of modern subjects and also by theorizing alternative methods of historicization following a logic of ‘haunting,’ one that challenged the accepted reality—the taken-for-grantedness—of celebratory narratives of postwar life.Ph.D