Complicit Fictions: The Subject in the Modern Japanese Prose Narrative

Complicit Fictions: The Subject in the Modern Japanese Prose Narrative was published in 1993 by the University of California Press. It emerged as a significant contribution to the field of Japanese literary studies during a period when scholars were increasingly applying Western critical theory to canonical Meiji and Taisho-era texts. By focusing on the construction of the subject in fiction, James A. Fujii aimed to challenge traditional readings that treated prose narratives as mere reflections of the author's own life or the nation's historical progress.

The book explores how writers like Natsume Soseki and Futabatei Shimei navigated the tensions of modernity, utilizing formal literary techniques to frame the individual identity. Designed as an academic monograph, it reflects the rigorous intellectual climate of humanities departments in the early 1990s. The work was received by the academic community as a dense, sophisticated intervention, noted for its emphasis on the interplay between the reader, the text, and the socio-historical conditions of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Japan.