| Summary/Abstract |
This paper explores the multifaceted construction of the Tsugaru region by its literary community in order to illuminate a fantastic theory of place. Writers who identify themselves as part of this ‘regional literary establishment’ [chihō bundan] have engaged in a sustained process of reflexively performing and defining their place-consciousness. Processes of localization are enacted in a wide variety of forms, particularly through the invocation of vernacular language, place-specific knowledge, and ideological discourse. This paper explores the conceptual writings of Fukushi Kōjirō (1889–1946) and the ‘dialect’ [hōgen] works of Takagi Kyōzō (1903–87), among others, bringing these influential and important – yet strongly marginalized – Japanese literary figures further into the purview of English-language scholarship. It analyzes Fukushi’s ‘regionalism’ [chihō shugi], its central concept of ‘spirit’ [seishin, tamashii], and the related invocation of place-based practices like ‘Tsugaru esprit’ and ‘godagu’ [bullshitting]. It then places Takagi’s strategic deployment of vernacular speech and localized folk knowledge within the context of that discourse in order to elucidate the active and intentional construction of Tsugaru within the local literary landscape. These writers move against the centralizing and homogenizing discourses of modernization theory, and provide a refreshing vantage for rethinking place and place-consciousness in modern Japan.
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