Critical Failures

Modern Japan and the Possibility of Reading Otherwise

Critical Failures revisits the overlooked messiness at the heart of Japan's early experiments with modern criticism. In the Meiji era, young intellectuals posited that mastering the art of critical reading – called hihyō – was essential for Japan's advancement on the world stage. Yet, while they made concerted efforts to theorize hihyō and proposed ambitious ideals, their actual reading practice often fell short of what they set out to accomplish. Miyabi Goto argues that this gap between theory and practice – hihyō's failure – opened unexpected pathways for what critical reading could be.

Through vivid case studies of spirited debates about how to engage with literature, Goto traces the ways in which these early critics navigated new print spaces and forged discourses that were unruly, anarchic, and generative precisely when they failed to meet hihyō's ideals. Critical Failures combines close reading with intellectual and media history to recast failure as a fertile ground for rethinking critique itself. In so doing, this study offers today's readers an invitation to reflect on our own critical habits and the possibility of an unprescribed mode of reading.

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