RENEGOTIATING JAPANESE, JAPANESE-AMERICAN AND AMERICAN IDENTITIES AND CULTURAL SPECIFICITY IN POST-WORLD WAR II JAPAN: LYNNE KUTSUKAKE’S THE TRANSLATION OF LOVE
RENEGOTIATING JAPANESE, JAPANESE-AMERICAN AND AMERICAN IDENTITIES AND CULTURAL SPECIFICITY IN POST-WORLD WAR II JAPAN: LYNNE KUTSUKAKE’S THE TRANSLATION OF LOVE

Summary/Abstract: The paper looks into Japanese, Japanese-American and American identities, as they appear in the context of post-World War II in Kutsukake’s novel The Translation of Love, analyzing people’s mentalities and perceptions of them, the changes that occur in cultural specificity, as well as other post-war realities. This entails following what happens at the clash of tradition and change, and how identity gets renegotiated and reinterpreted against the background of historical and social alterations, revealing the irony and the ironic – in the sense of bitterness, absurdity, as well as off-guard (for the characters) complexity – behind it. We also want to discern the meaning of such notions as democracy and Americanization put forward in the novel.

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