Full metadata
Title
Onikuma: The Sankebetsu Brown Bear Incident and Japanese Modernity
Description
In 1915, a bear slew and consumed seven residents of a farming hamlet in Hokkaido, Japan. The circumstances surrounding these killings are laden with semiotic gravitas. A comprehensive analysis of the millennia of historical forces that preceded and begat Japan's modern shift is impractical. Rather it is through the identification of the ideal précis of change, and a Thick Analysis thereof, that I arrive at an understanding of how, and precisely when, Japan crossed modernity's rampart. The attacks perpetrated by, and the hunt and dispatch of, the bear include aspects of separation from the past vis a vis their relationship to religion, the Ainu, and the artifacts of daily life. The bear's presence and anthropophagous propensity relate to the primal human urge to practice arctolatry, and Japanese patterns of relationship between men, land, and animals. So too is the gory nature of the incident analytically valuable insofar as macabre events resonate in the breasts of men. Finally, the presence of a monster indicates, as per Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, an epochal liminality. Thus through a disarticulation of this incident, I arrive at a cogent understanding of what sundered Japan from her past.
Date Created
2020
Contributors
- Laichtman, David Aaron (Author)
- Fixico, Donald (Thesis advisor)
- Hedberg, William C. (Committee member)
- Duan, Lei (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Topical Subject
Resource Type
Extent
218 pages
Language
eng
Copyright Statement
In Copyright
Primary Member of
Peer-reviewed
No
Open Access
No
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.57235
Level of coding
minimal
Note
Masters Thesis History 2020
System Created
- 2020-06-01 08:21:03
System Modified
- 2021-08-26 09:47:01
- 3 years ago
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