Roy Starrs (born 1946) is a British-Canadian scholar of Japanese literature and culture who teaches at the
University of Otago
, image_name = University of Otago Registry Building2.jpg
, image_size =
, caption = University clock tower
, motto = la, Sapere aude
, mottoeng = Dare to be wise
, established = 1869; 152 years ago
, type = Public research collegiate u ...
in
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
. He has written critical studies of the major Japanese writers
Yasunari Kawabata
was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal an ...
,
Naoya Shiga
was a Japanese writer active during the Taishō and Shōwa periods of Japan, whose work was distinguished by its lucid, straightforward style and strong autobiographical overtones.
Early life
Shiga was born in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, ...
,
Osamu Dazai
was a Japanese author. A number of his most popular works, such as '' The Setting Sun'' (''Shayō'') and ''No Longer Human'' (''Ningen Shikkaku''), are considered modern-day classics.
His influences include Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Murasaki Shiki ...
, and
Yukio Mishima
, born , was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, Nationalism, nationalist, and founder of the , an unarmed civilian militia. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. He was ...
, and edited books on Asian
nationalism
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...
(especially
ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity, with emphasis on an ethnocentric (and in some cases an ethnocratic) approach to various politi ...
,
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 politic ...
, and
cultural nationalism
Cultural nationalism is nationalism in which the nation is defined by a shared culture and a common language, rather than on the concepts of common ancestry or race.
Cultural nationalism does not tend to manifest itself in independent movements, ...
),
globalization
Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20t ...
,
pan-Asianism
file:Asia satellite orthographic.jpg , Satellite photograph of Asia in orthographic projection.
Pan-Asianism (''also known as Asianism or Greater Asianism'') is an ideology aimed at creating a political and economic unity among Asian people, Asian ...
,
Japanese modernism, and
cultural responses to disaster in Japan. He has also published essays on Japan-related topics such as the
Kojiki
The , also sometimes read as or , is an early Japanese chronicle of myths, legends, hymns, genealogies, oral traditions, and semi-historical accounts down to 641 concerning the origin of the Japanese archipelago, the , and the Japanese imperia ...
,
Lafcadio Hearn
, born Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (; el, Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χέρν, Patríkios Lefkádios Chérn, Irish language, Irish: Pádraig Lafcadio O'hEarain), was an Irish people, Irish-Greeks, Greek-Japanese people, Japanese writer, t ...
and
Japanese calligraphy
also called is a form of calligraphy, or artistic writing, of the Japanese language.
Written Japanese was originally based on Chinese characters only, but the advent of the hiragana and katakana Japanese syllabaries resulted in intrin ...
.
Roy Starrs is also the Japan editor of the online ''
The Literary Encyclopedia
''The Literary Encyclopedia'' is an online reference work first published in October 2000. It was founded as an innovative project designed to bring the benefits of information technology to what at the time was still a largely conservative li ...
''.
Starrs was born in
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
, 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)
Union College is a private liberal arts college in Schenectady, New York. Founded in 1795, it was the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New York State Board of Regents, and second in the state of New York, after Columbia Co ...
, and
Aarhus University
Aarhus University ( da, Aarhus Universitet, abbreviated AU) is a public research university with its main campus located in Aarhus, Denmark. It is the second largest and second oldest university in Denmark. The university is part of the Coimbra Gr ...
(Denmark).
Works by Roy Starrs
* ''Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence, and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima'',
University of Hawaii
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
Press
Press may refer to:
Media
* Print media or news media, commonly called "the press"
* Printing press, commonly called "the press"
* Press (newspaper), a list of newspapers
* Press TV, an Iranian television network
People
* Press (surname), a fam ...
, 1994, and .
* .
* ''An Artless Art - The Zen Aesthetic of Shiga Naoya: A Critical Study with Selected Translations''. RoutledgeCurzon (1998). .
* "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), pp. 161–189 (cloth) (paper).
*
*
*
* "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. .
*"The Kojiki as Japan's National Narrative," in ''Asian Futures, Asian Traditions'', edited by Edwina Palmer. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. .
* "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). .
* "Politics and Religion in Japan," in ''Religion Compass 3/4'' (2009), pp. 752–769. (http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/religion/)
* "A Devil of a Job: Mishima and the Masochistic Drive," in "Angelaki" (2009), Volume 14, Issue 3 December 2009, pp. 85–99. (http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/09697250903407583)
* ''Modernism and Japanese Culture'', London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. (http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=360186)
* ed., "Politics and Religion in Modern Japan: Red Sun, White Lotus," London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. (http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=385916)
* "Zen, Japan, and the Art of Democracy," in the "New Statesman," July 4, 2011. (http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2011/07/japan-essay-nature-earthquake)
* ed., "Rethinking Japanese Modernism," Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. (http://www.brill.nl/rethinking-japanese-modernism)
* (http://www.brill.com/products/book/when-tsunami-came-shore)
* “La estética Zen de Muga (Ni-Ego) en el proyecto Renga de Octavio Paz.” In Rogelio Guedea, editor, ''Países en tránsito: estudios de literatura comparada''. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016.
* “Renga: A European Poem and its Japanese Model.” ''Comparative Literature Studies'' (May 2017).
* “Japanese Poetry and the Aesthetics of Disaster.” In Minh, N., ''New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics''. Lexington: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.
* “Japan’s Perennial New Man: The Liberal and Fascist Incarnations of Masamichi Rōyama.” In Matthew Feldman et al, editors, ''The ‘New Man’ in Radical Right Ideology and Practice, 1919-45''. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.
* "The Fortunes of Pan-Asianism: Past, Present and Future." In ''The Journal of World History''. (University of Hawai'i Press, June 2018).
* "The Tokyo Gas Attack Was Japan’s 9/11.” In ''Fair Observer'', July 11, 2018. (https://www.fairobserver.com/region/asia_pacific/tokyo-gas-attack-aum-shinrikyo-executions-japan-news-this-week-16521/)
**
External links
*http://www.otago.ac.nz/languagescultures/people/otago063368.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://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/reviews/literature_and_poetry/article752043.ece A review by the poet Anthony Thwaite behind the paywall of 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/node/154008 An article by Jason Cowley on Yasunari Kawabata in the ''New Statesman'' based partly on Roy Starrs’ book on Kawabata, ''Soundings in Time''.
*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''.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Starrs, Roy
1946 births
Living people
British emigrants to Canada
University of Otago faculty
Japanese literature academics