Event description
Get your autumn reading list sorted with Rebecca Suter as she examines a range of Japanese literary works of the 1980s and 1990s. About this Event
This is the second of three events in the talk series, Read Japan: A Booklover’s Guide to Japanese Literature in Translation, 1960-Now.
In the 1980s, Japanese society began to experience some of the downsides of rapid economic growth and prosperity. To describe the new social relations and identities that emerged during this period, the media of the time coined the term ‘shin-jinrui’ (‘new humans’). This referred to a new generation that, having grown up in a time of economic affluence, had no experience of the hardship of wartime and the early postwar years. These young people were portrayed as uninterested in the value of hard work and spirit of sacrifice that had inspired postwar reconstruction, and as result they were seen as individualistic, superficial, and lacking political consciousness.