Freeter literature
Freeter literature ( Japanese フ リ ー タ ー 文学 , Furītā bungaku ) is a special form of Japanese literature of the 20th and 21st centuries.
term
Freeter literature, also Freeter novel ( フ リ ー タ ー 小説 , Furītā shōsetsu ), is a term that arose in the context of the Kawade Shobō Shinsha publishing house - just like the popular formula " J-Bungaku " (Eng. "J-literature", contemporary Japanese literature). In this context, Freeter means young Japanese people who do not have a professional relationship with an employer, but switch from part-time to part-time jobs. The name is derived from the English word free (as in Freelancer, German "frei") and the German word Arbeiter (here meaning part-time jobber). Freeter literature is discussed in the Japanese literary scene where the importance of the literary adaptation of macro-sociological discourses that is widely circulating in the media has been recognized. The increased reference of contemporary Japanese literature to problems in Japanese society can be interpreted as a “sociological turnaround” within contemporary Japanese literature.
Authors and Topics
The map on contemporary Japanese literature published in 1998 in the well-known Bungei Bessatsu ( J-Bungaku , '90 -nendai bungaku mappu , German "literary map of the 90s") shows a datsuryoku furītā-kei zōn (German "sloppy freetype department ") out. Authors who are counted in this area are e.g. B. Seigō Suzuki , Kō Machida , Megumu Sagisawa and Mitsuyo Kakuta .
The literary trend characterized by the label “Freeter Literature” is dominated by the debates about a new layer of losers and the hopeless in Japan, and deals with a deterioration of the Japanese family, commented on by the media, with a change in the Japanese working society under the conditions globalization (keyword reform, Japanese ristora ) as well as the orientation and values crisis of Japanese youth. “Freeter literature” is often addressed as new “proletarian literature”; it reflects the phenomena perpetuated in the debate about an endangered Japanese society of the “lost decade” and, as “ Japanese precariat literature ”, represents the feeling of crisis of the post- bubble era.
Protagonists of the discussion
To the Japanese media intellectuals, the discourse about the problem adolescents from duty - Freeter, NEETs and hikikomori - characterize include Yuji Genda and Tamaki Saitō . The latter also comments on contemporary literary texts under the sign of deficit sociological types. Literary critics who speak of "Freeter literature" are Akira Nagae and Minako Saitō . Mitsuyo Kakuta is a prototypical freeter writer. In texts such as the novel Economical Palace (2002) she deals with the topics of student livelihoods in the bubble and post-bubble era, the search for goals in life, couple relationships, family and collective.
literature
- Lisette Gebhardt : reflections on contemporary Japanese literature . In: Harald Meyer (Ed.): Ways of Japanology. Festschrift for Eduard Klopfenstein . LIT Verlag, Münster etc. 2008, pp. 265–289.
- Lisette Gebhardt : After Darkness - Contemporary Japanese Literature under the Sign of the Precarious ( Memento from April 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) . EB Verlag, Berlin 2010.